commentary jesse russell jesse (diana) russell is currently working on her m.a. thesis in the school of social work at carleton university. as both an "urban' metis and a feminist, jesse responds to ron bourgeault's article "the development of capitalism and the subjugation oi native women in northern canada" which appeared in volume 6 of alternate routes (1983). jesse hopes to stimulate an ongoing discussion of the problems native women encounter within their own culture and within the larger dominant culture. i would like to begin by describing my own particular social position which is in itself wrought with contradiction. as an urban metis raised in toronto, i possess neither treaty status nor an indian culture per se . through my mother, however, i was able to gleen a sense of what this culture is and to grasp the complexity of indian issues. i was forced to aeal with the difficulty of experiencing a female existence of subjugation directly, while indirectly dealing with the racism regarding indian people in canada. never being identified with the latter, my natural inclination was to become an active member of the white women's feminist movement. after ten years of experience working alternatively with white women's centres (rape crisis etc.) and working on reserves with indian women, i felt a strong urgency to address the inherent incompatability between the white women's feminist movement and the unique position (i.e. subjugation) of indian women. in response to ron bourgeault's article, i suppose the first issue i'd like to address is his conclusion that native women would benefit from participation in the "white' feminist movement, and that the feminist movement should in fact be a working class movement that could echo the struggles of native women. i sense bourgeault is naive in two vital senses; that the feminist movement seeks solutions as a "class," and that native women's assimilation into a white culture will resolve their problems. i fear bourgeault has missed the point on both occasions. the feminist 169 movement, from my own experience, does not appear to be a class struggle. more importantly, native women are far from being ready to participate in the white women's movement. by and large, native women's non-participation in the feminist movement is due neither to language differences, nor geography — it is due to culture. the western world-view, as i see it, has religious roots which emphasize a mastery over the earth — an on-going battle to subdue the earth. there is a strong sense of "self," of 'individualism,' which creates a hierarchical relationship between men and men, men and nature. the label i use to conceptualize the western world-view is "homo-centric," which basically refers to the western belief that the homo sapien is separate from animal — separate from nature. the indian world-view differs greatly from this. it is "eco-centric" in the sense that indian people see themselves as inseparable from nature. the great spirit or "life force' is part of all that makes up the earth and its function is to maintain a balance or harmony in nature. there is no concern with conquering nature. because there is no sense of 'separateness , ' ownership is not a concept in indian culture. objects, even man-made objects, possess a spirit which negates the possibility of one's "using" it for something. rather, in indian culture, one 'interacts' with objects. [o the white women's feminist movement, the homo-centric world-view dominates. individualism, in particular, is greatly stressed. indian women cannot share the same strategies used by white women because of their eco-centric world-view. becoming 'personally empowered' is alien to them, and using one's reproductive ability as a bargaining tool is unimaginable. i think using women's reproductive ability is a good example of the importance of different world-views when we're talking about women's struggle 170 against oppression. in terms of the simple threat of extinction, reproduction for native women is a moral obligation — although i must stress here that "obligation' is not the term these women would use to describe their thoughts about mothering. again, what we have here is a very different view of biological reproduction. in eco-centrism, women do not see their reproductive ability as something they "possess,' to withhold at any given time. the indian culture has a verbal tradition which has been maintained through motherhood/mothering. in the western world, mothering may be viewed as oppressive but, in indian culture, it is the reproduction of life — of nature itself; it is cyclical. children are important. to return to bourgeault's article, i feel it also perpetuates the stereotyped image of indian women as apathetic, and ignorant. i take exception to the portrayal of physically unaggressive women as weak in some way. indian women historically have possessed a quiet strength which has enabled them to successfully resist assimilation into white culture. sexism does exist in indian culture but its origin can be located in white culture. as bourgeault correctly points out, egalitarianism (respect for women's labour — both productive and reproductive) is part of " indianness' . reclaiming "indianness' would mean reclaiming respect for women. so it is important that sexism be addressed within indian culture first. this means bringing forward eco-centrism from its shadowy existence and re-asserting it. in conclusion, i do not wish to presume what may happen regarding indian and white women and their respective struggles for equality. i feel it would be elitist to suggest what should happen. if there is a commonality of issues — equal pay for example — then perhaps a joining of forces is a possibility. perhaps as two distinct groups, a joining of alliances may be 171 effective. i do know that sexism cannot be addressed by abandoning one's indian culture. native women must find ways to fight their oppression in ways which are part of indianness. sexism, like racism and classism, must be defined by its victims. solutions must be developed within this same dimension. 172 978-1-926958-01-9 167the ecological revolution making peace with the planet book review the ecological revolution making peace with the planet, by john bellamy foster. new york: monthly press review, 2009. $17.95 us., paper. isbn-13: 9781583671795. pages: 1-328. reviewed by: alda kokallaj1 john bellamy foster’s book is a critical treatise of the ecological crisis facing our planet and a scholarly contribution to the literature of political ecology. the book’s primary aim is to provide “resources for a journey of hope” towards an ecosocial revolution, while we stand at a crucial point regarding humanity’s relation to the earth. the book is divided in three parts. part one, entitled “the planetary crisis” begins by pointing out the ecological crisis that is looming upon the planet and briefly discusses the unsuccessful endeavors for addressing this crisis. particular attention has been paid to efforts undertaken as part of the 1992 rio earth summit and the johannesburg summit, which are seen as failed attempts to achieve a sustainable future. foster argues that sustainable development is increasingly seen as an opportunity for business, thus environmental reform is to be achieved through market-driven models. this part of the book reads easily and is rich in information about the inconsistencies that have lead to questionable environmental policies and the failure to achieve environmental reform on a large scale. in the second part entitled “marx’s ecology”, foster sets the ground for theorizing the ecological revolution. while its theoretical richness cannot be addressed here in its entirety, it is crucial to focus on the concept of ‘metabolic rift’. foster explains that instead of seeing marx’s work as blind towards nature, his work needs to be seen as providing a powerful analysis for the ecological crisis of our time. foster achieves this through an in-depth discussion of marx’s later work on political economy, especially by revealing his discussion of ‘the second agricultural revolu1 alda kokallaj is a ph.d candidate in the department of political science with a concentration in political economy. she can be reached at akokalla@connect.carleton.ca 168 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research tion’ and by unfolding marx’s inspiration with the work of german chemist justus von liebig (organic chemistry in its application to agriculture and physiology, 1840; animal chemistry, 1842; letters on modern agriculture, 1859). for foster, marx employed the concept of ‘metabolic rift’ in order to “capture the material estrangement of human beings in capitalist society from the natural conditions of their existence” (p.180). such discussion reveals that although marx did not attempt to provide a treatment of all ecological problems, his work was not ‘ecologically blind’. indeed, foster rightly maintains, that marx’s work “constitutes a possible starting point for a comprehensive sociology of the environment” (p.196). foster establishes that marx argued and wrote as if nature mattered, and that is the crux of his contribution to sociology as a field, as well as to the movements for an ecological revolution. the third part entitled “ecology and revolution”, presents an integration of theory with practice for establishing the argument that an ecological revolution needs to originate from ‘the social’ realm. thus, it is through a social revolution that secures the provision of basic human needs that an ecological civilization can be achieved. in this way foster maintains that the human relation to nature lies at the heart of the transition to socialism. this identification along with the discussion of the ‘metabolic rift’ found in marx’s work constitutes a significant contribution to socialist theory, which can serve as the starting point for the theorization of the transition from capitalism to socialism. this can also serve in understanding the struggles for sustainable society and human development that are taking place in the periphery of the capitalist system, which need to be seen as examples for fundamental change at the centre. in the last two chapters foster broadly discusses examples from cuba, venezuela, brazil and india as “islands of hope” for the establishment of the human metabolism with nature along with practices of human development, instead of solely economic development. although these are important cases for illustrating the transitional steps from capitalism to an ecological society, the discussion is somewhat insufficient. while expecting the argument for the ecological revolution to acquire more depth towards the end of the book, the reader encounters a rather romanticized and superficial treatment of the struggles for sustainable human development that have taken place in the periphery of the capitalist world system. one further problem with the book is that foster spends a lot of time trying to tie together theory and practice while dealing with some complicated theoretical questions and not-so-easy to sort out practical issues. this has resulted in often repetitive and overburdened sections, rather than providing more straightforward treatment of the practical and theoretical issues. better editing would have assisted the reader to get a clearer understanding of the dynamics of the socio-ecological 169 revolution presented in the book. this, coupled with the fact that the book is a collection of articles turned into chapters, demonstrates its lack of focus and at times makes it a difficult read. despite these problems foster’s book does offer an excellent discussion of some key concepts of marx’s work regarding the metabolism of humanity with nature and relates them to the problematique of eco-social sustainability. foster’s main achievement is to draw together a difficult body of theory with urging political questions and convincingly argue that it is high time ecological crises were addressed via a socialist, as opposed to a capitalist, approach. the root of addressing environmental crises for foster involves a “civilizational shift” that would be revolutionary for culture, economy and society. foster compellingly reveals that questions surrounding the capacity of the capitalist mode of production to wrought environmental destruction have been treated in the classical works of critical political economy. in this way, foster’s book is an important addition to the scholarly works, which assert that the work of marx, especially his later political economy, is characterized by an understanding that nature (non-human nature) matters. hence, the genesis of the questionable sustainability of capitalism can be discerned via marx’s discussion of ‘the second agricultural revolution’. another disciplinary contribution is for the field of sociology. through his discussion of marx, one of the classical thinkers of the field, and by unfolding the ‘metabolic rift’ as well as society – nature relation, foster reveals that theorization, particularly in environmental sociology, can be done on a more theoretically solid ground. more generally, from foster’s argument it can be discerned that in the face of ecological crises we need to think and act beyond disciplinary boundaries. he asserts that a “sociology of the environment” must recognize and consider changes that take place in the social and natural realms, as well as their mutual interaction. thus, social transformation cannot be understood without ecological transformation and vice versa. the ecological revolution making peace with the planet whole book pdf book review: the ecological rift: capitalism’s war on the earth | 285 book review the ecological rift: capitalism’s war on the earth, by john bellamy foster, brett clark, and richard york. new york: monthly review press, 2010. $17.95 u.s.; paper. isbn: 978-1-58367218-1. pages: 544. reviewed by: naomi alisa calnitsky1 in marx’s ecology: materialism and nature (2000), john bellamy foster offered a dynamic and in-depth interrogation of the ecological strands of karl marx’s thought, exploring a number of marx’s critiques of capitalist agriculture and linking his neglected ideas to the modern-day ecological movement. in ecology against capitalism (2002), foster problematized the relationship between contemporary american environmentalism and the needs and preferences of the labour movement, and offered critical insights into the environment’s relationship with the economic world, citing critical contemporary examples of the environmental costs associated with the capitalist industrial footprint. his innovative and up-to-date approach placed politicized ecological questions into direct focus, to ask, how might we incorporate the earth into the balance sheet? building upon past theoretical approaches and contributions, in the ecological rift: capitalism’s war on the earth (2010), foster, clark and york offer a radical and comprehensive critique of the planetary environmental crisis as exacerbated by industrial capitalism. situated within the subfield of environmental sociology, the authors posit arguments which depart from a distinctly marxist foundation. their central target is industrial capitalism and its derivative effects, namely, the unsustainable social habits of consumer forces associated with capitalist production, and the unprecedented levels of ecological destruction associated with accumulative capitalism. foster, clark and york highlight the alienating tendencies of capitalism, as well as the irreversible changes wrought upon our ecosystem and biosphere from capitalist activities. 1 naomi alisa calnitsky is a ph.d. candidate at the department of history, carleton university (ottawa, canada), with a focus on the history of mexican seasonal agricultural workers in western canada. 286 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times by re-inserting ecological thought into analyses of the human economy, this highly-needed and readable work comprised of scientific arguments and synthetic approaches underscores planetary assaults resulting from the human-industrial footprint and bemoans an apparent lack of concern within social science disciplines towards environmental questions at a time when the planet has approached a red alert status. situated within a critical anti-capitalist tradition, the authors point to an abandonment of a critique of capital in existing ecologically-minded social science approaches. they consider the question of “green capitalism,” or capitalism’s potential or ostensible ability to modernize and adapt along ecologically sustainable lines, in a critical light. additionally, they question the deceptive phenomenon of “corporate green-washing.” the work emphasizes accelerated transformations in the global environment, where ecosystem degradation and human-induced climate change is linked intimately to the expansion of industrial capitalism. the authors argue that the recovery of the environment may not be ameliorated solely through faith in capitalism’s ability to adapt or modernize according to green demands. while this remains a problematic viewpoint, given the fact of capitalism’s current position as the dominant economic system governing human economic interrelations across much of the globe, the marxist critique offered by the ecological rift nevertheless remains indispensable. one of the book’s central strengths is its questioning of the premise of unlimited economic growth from an ecologycentered perspective, in which capital is depicted as an “unstoppable” as well as “crushing” force upon nature. the ecological rift successfully bridges a diversity of academic fields including economics, ecology, and environmental/marxist sociology, taking its readership into the realm of a yet-to-be established field, that of political ecology. its authors highlight irreversible ecological transformations such as ocean warming and the degradation of coral reef systems, and place a good deal of emphasis upon scientific proofs for the existence of climate change. highlights of the work include one imaginative chapter entitled “capitalism in wonderland” which illustrates how environmental deterioration has stemmed from human mediations with the natural world and has been propelled by the demands of the capitalist marketplace. here, our capitalist wonderland is framed by foster, clark and york as a thoroughly artificial and alienating human landscape and construct. the ecological rift has global and international implications, and yet it would likely appeal only to an environmentalistinclined readership. the work requires attention from ecological and book review: the ecological rift: capitalism’s war on the earth | 287 economic schools alike, as its efforts to bridge fields represents a widening of boundaries in the name of ecological urgency. significantly, the authors engage with the concept of metabolic rift, defined loosely as the way in which the capitalist system has radically separated natural production from sites consumption, particularly at a global scale and across imperial divides. capitalism has radically separated humanity from nature, and through “metabolic rift analysis” the authors seek to comprehend environmental catastrophe in terms of the capitalist order of things. critically entertaining the question of capitalism’s ability to modernize and adapt according to the demands of sustainability, the ecological rift retains skepticism towards the destructive effects of individualist accumulation and prefers socialism as a route towards sustainability. critically, the work stresses the need for a renewed interrogation into the dynamic relationship between nature and capitalism. it is primarily concerned with an interrogation of capitalism as an anti-ecological force, yet remains wholly devoid of any analysis of capitalism’s relationship with gender, avoiding any discussion of capitalism’s continued place as maleoriented, rationalized economic regime which exploits and intersects with the natural world in profoundly powerful ways. still, the work offers a number of solutions deserving of consideration. offering a dialogue which incorporates the natural sciences with the social sciences, the ecological rift is profoundly multi-disciplinary and one of the strengths of the book is its sense of urgency. the authors claim that we are living in an age of unprecedented ecological destruction and only radical ecological approaches may offer sustainable pathways for environmental regeneration. the author’s discussion of “imperialism and ecological metabolism” probes the concept of imperialist extraction as it intersected with agricultural production and consumption in metropolitan england, exploring the nineteenth century peruvian guano trade to europe from a metabolic standpoint and citing the trade as an example of capitalist exploitation and structural dependency. marx’s humanism, “naturalism” and concept of labour as a metabolic mediation of nature are given due attention. while highly dependent upon marx’s “ecological” mind, without emphasizing contributions from more contemporary ecological thinkers, foster, clark and york reinforce their call for social scientists to interrogate capitalism as it intersects with the natural world. also significantly, the work charts disciplinary transformations and recent theoretical developments in the ecological sciences which have contributed to the genealogy of the sub-discipline of environmental sociology. 978-1-926958-01-9 145 movie review eyes wide shut, director: stanley kubrick; scenario: stanley kubrick, frederic raphael; starring: nicole kidman (alice harford), tom cruise (dr. william ‘bill’ harford), madison eginton (helena harford), sydney pollack (victor ziegler), 1999/usa, 159 min., adaptation from traumnovella by arthur schnitzler. reviewed by: bora erdagi1 eleven years after its release, it is worth remembering stanley kubrick’s last film eyes wide shut for its critique of dehumanized (bourgeois) lifestyles of our times. kubrick worked on the screenplay for quite a long time and could finish shooting only months before his death. the inspiration was the novel traumnovella by arthur schnitzler who was a close friend of sigmund freud. the film is an attempt to question the notions of love, trust, and sexuality in order to unfold the taken-for-granted relations between these notions. it also reveals the role these notions play in constructing and reconstructing social bodies in a certain way. it tells the story of an upper-middle class new york couple (bill harford performed by tom cruise and alice harford performed by nicole kidman) who lose their way upon having a few existential crises in three consecutive days. the diverse routes alice and bill take to deal with their own traumas opens up the possibility to observe the conditions of different levels of (un)consciousness. alice, as opposed to bill, is neither attached in an unbounded way to the dream she was thrown into nor is she too heavily involved in the circumstances surrounding her way of life. bill, on the other hand, is capable of easily justifying the conditions of his life through his instrumental rationality; nevertheless, he easily falls apart within the first crisis. this review attempts to unfold the ways in which the characters try to overcome 1 dr. bora erdagi is a research assistant in the department of philosophy at kocaeli university, izmit, turkey. he can be reached at berdagi@gmail.com. eyes wide shut 146 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research these crises with respect to their class positions. in so doing, it also undertakes a broader search to speculate about the reified nature of current social relations. in other words, while the film reflects the psychoanalytic exploration of the characters, this review aims at a socio-political analysis of the characters. bill is a medical doctor working for upper-class people, and his wife alice works as an art director. in the opening scene we see them in an extremely fancy christmas ball where they find themselves separated and try to find each other for the rest of the evening. the next night, during a moment of drunkenness before having sex, alice and bill start talking about the previous night. alice suddenly starts asking bill questions about their relationship. bill has a hard time answering alice’s simple questions such as “why do you love me?” as he tries to get out of the situation he is trapped in, he is faced with a confession from alice. alice tells him that she cannot avoid thinking about another man. more strikingly, she confesses that she was once ready to leave everything behind for the man she was thinking about. this confession shatters bill’s preconceived beliefs about his marriage as well as his own being. he is thus forced to open his eyes. however, he is not totally woken yet since opening one’s eyes does not necessarily imply they have abandoned the dream. bill, nevertheless, is now left scared and vulnerable, far from the stability of his security zone. upon receiving a phone call from a patient’s family, bill leaves home. but this trip will turn into a nightmare as he is now entirely defenseless. this nightmare will go on until alice wakes him up. when he arrives at the patient’s house, he is informed that his patient has died. afterwards, the deceased patient’s daughter confesses her love for bill in the funeral room to which he does not respond and leaves the house. walking on the street he encounters a prostitute, chats with her for a bit and goes to her place, something he would not have done before. these experiences greatly complicate things for bill, especially after losing his footing on the takenfor-granted ground upon which he formally stood. the light of the real world now dazzles his eyes and yet he does not stop there. for him, the night turns into a search for a story through which he may obtain a counter-position to his wife’s story so that he can reconstruct his lost self-esteem and strengthen his ego. the audience is then brought to a pivotal moment in the story when bill meets a friend in a pub. his friend mentions a private sex party for upper class new yorkers. bill obtains the secret password from his friend and attends by infiltrating the party house with a rented mask and costume. however, bill’s identity is revealed and a prostitute sacrifices herself in an effort to rescue him. after having to leave the party, he gets back home and finds alice talking in her sleep. he wakes her up. alice tells bill that, in her dream, he and she were naked in a deserted place. she says that when he left her to find their clothes, she felt better. then, the man she 147 had been constantly thinking about appeared and they began having sex in front of a crowd. alice’s dream brings forth an absolute possibility for bill to be woken up from his own dream that is his reality. however, bill denies that possibility and retains his calm position. the next day, he returns the rented costume and witnesses the store owner selling his teenage daughter to others for sex. in light of these, and other shocking events in two consecutive nights, he realizes that he has to face his own reality. that same night bill, who finally has something of his own to confess, starts explaining to alice what he had experienced over the last three days. this, for both of them, may denote the end of the sleep, but still not the dream. their sleep ends and eyes are now wide open! with the first sunlight falling on the ground, the harford family is metamorphosed. while christmas shopping the next day, we hear a short dialogue between our “exhausted warriors”: bill: what do you think we should do? alice: what do i think? i don’t know. maybe i think (...) we should be grateful that we’ve managed to survive through all of our adventures (…) whether they were real or only a dream. bill: a dream is never just a dream. alice: the important thing is we’re awake now. alice’s open, questioning and repentant attitude throughout the film proves to be healing for their relationship. she helps, despite all the hardship, the lived experience arise to the level of consciousness rather than suppressing it. throughout the film, bill appears on the screen much more than alice does. alice however, appears only in critical moments, mimicking the relationship between the conscious and unconscious. bill, on the other hand, acts ‘rationally’ under almost all circumstances. but his rationality lacks content; it is completely instrumental, and he observes reality from a paradigmatically representational perspective. questioning is rarely a feature of his rationality. he fears falling apart as he experiences something new and shocking. however, falling apart in bill’s case does not spring from the ‘shock of experience’, which walter benjamin defines in his miscellaneous writings as a norm of nineteenth-century intellectuals. according to benjamin, shock disintegrates people’s emotional world, but it also restructures their intellectual world. in bill’s case, it is hard to observe this restructuring of his reason because he does not utilize the shocking experiences to transform his reality. it is more as if bill has had an accident and keeps chasing whatever has crashed into him rather than trying to understand what had happened. it is, therefore, obvious that bill is not a typical inheritor of the nineteenth-century shock experience. in this sense, he indeed behaves in the exact opposite way to which benjamin describes. bill represents the instrumental reason eyes wide shut 148 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research that theodor w. adorno radically criticizes. moreover, bill resembles a typical reconciliatory bourgeois of twentieth-century keynesianism who declares himself as participative in social and political life, while completely ignoring the ongoing class struggles and yet wanting his ‘heroism’ to be acknowledged by others. his dreams and fantasies about the world—and about his heroic position in it—replace his real life experiences, and therefore it is difficult for him to be woken from his dreams (his constructed reality). alice, on the other hand, positions herself at the complete opposite pole. she thinks that it is foolish to hide behind masks, especially after the masks are uncovered. thus, unlike bill, she chooses to deal with reality, not through fantasy but through language. in that, she also tries to emancipate language from its given constraints. emancipating language from its chains allows for slippages and enables consciousness to set itself free from tensions. this opens up room for spontaneity. her use of story-telling, her first story occurring while her and bill were smoking marijuana and the second after just waking up, represents this process. alice’s peaceful reconciliation with reality is therefore much easier than bill’s, which moves alice to an advantageous position over bill. however, it by no means puts her in a revolutionary position because alice in a sense occupies the position of the bourgeoisie in the totality of the capitalist system, as georg lukacs would put it. for lukacs, the bourgeoisie is aware of the reality of class struggles with respect to their position within the master-slave dialectic. however, for the sake of their very existence, ‘the master’ (the bourgeoisie) forces ‘the slave’ (the proletariat) to obey. what this contradictory mechanism of subordination generates for the bourgeoisie is twofold: the awareness of their dependence on the proletariat and possibility of manipulation. yet this awareness does not put the bourgeoisie in a revolutionary position, which would allow them to overcome this contradiction. broadly speaking, as long as the bourgeoisie can survive this contradiction, the system will continue to benefit them. in this context, alice, unlike bill, is well aware of her and bill’s own class position and behaves in the way this awareness requires. she knows that, as members of the upper-middle class, they are afforded the privilege of enjoying their life through the denial and manipulation of the shocking contradictions their material conditions may reinforce. it is this knowledge that makes her a healing agent in their relationship even during times of crisis. this knowledge provides her with the flexibility to easily adjust her reality to the changing circumstances and assume the different stances necessary in defense of both herself and her husband. the two portraits drawn above help us to unpack two different modes of politics. the first, represented by bill, depends entirely on traditional modalities; the functioning of which is dependent less on awareness than it is on repression techniques as a defense mechanism. as opposed to its rational outlook, it is never 149 reconciled with critical reasoning. this is a bourgeois politics. the second, represented by alice, relies on awareness as well as manipulation; it also emanates from a bourgeois politics. despite the differences, both modes of politics require masks to be performed. because, as it is illustrated above for both alice and bill, family replaces free sex in their relationship, reality replaces fantasy, recognition by others replaces conflict, the conservation of lifestyle replaces alteration and finally, dream/ masks replaces real life. then, it seems reasonable to claim the following: waking up is not as difficult as imagined. it is however, more difficult to awaken from a dream that is thought to be limited by the sleep itself. because dreaming is not something that consciousness can deal with easily, unpacking a dream is only possible through the denial of various masks. abandoning the masks however, requires a realistic revolutionary position acknowledging the real life experiences and material conditions of today’s world where dreaming is made tremendously charming through the fantasy, ideologies and ubiquitous reification that occupies almost every aspect of modern life. in the last scene of the film, both alice and bill obtain awareness of their bourgeois lifestyles. in other words, both characters finally wake up from their sleep. neither of them however, abandons their dreams because neither wants to lose their world of fetishized commodities. in this way, lukacs’s prophecy does not come true: totality is preserved for the sake of totality. eyes wide shut 150 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research whole book pdf symposium on braverman comments by leo panitch i want to begin with a couple of comments on what braverman has accomplished. i think this is important because although burawoy began his paper and his talk with praise of braverman, by the time he's through with him, he's dragged him through what marx would call the "muck" . now, all of this puts me in an odd position because i have criticisms of braverman's work. i was struck, in coming into this room, by a resemblance to a court-chamber--the way we're sitting here, the way you're sitting there. and as i read burawoy's critique of braverman, i had the feeling that what was being engaged in here was a prosecution and that willy-nilly i was being cast into the role of the defence attorney. therefore, you may have to excuse me if what i say sounds like that to some extent, if i have to occasionally bring evidence into court, that is, the odd quotation, in order to salvage braverman from the critique which we just heard.. in order to counter the critique, i think one has to note braverman's achievements, the ones that haven't been noted. first of all, braverman has brought us back to a proper appreciation of what marx meant by the tendency to emiseration. those embourgeoisement theorists who thought that marx meant by this the increasing material impoverishment of workers simply did not know what they were talking about. on the contrary, marx saw capitalism as constantly, through its restless striving after the general forms of wealth, driving labour out beyond the limits of its natural needs and producing the material elements needed for the development of the rich individualityreplacing natural needs with needs that were historically produced. in other words, capital was itself constantly redefining subsistence at higher levels. what emiseration meant for marx in this context was 15 alternate routes something different. it was what braverman describes as the degradation of work, and marx put it extremely well in turns of capitalists establishing "the accumulation of misery corresponding to the accumulation of capital". and what he means by that is the accumulation of wealth at one pole is therefore at the same time the accumulation of misery expressed in marx's terms as "the agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital". that's what marx meant by the tendency to emiseration, and what braverman has done is salvage this definition for our own time. well, braverman also has done more than this, and one of the ways in which people who look at braverman have done him injustice is that they see the book as a book on the labour process. it's much more than that, its central core, its intent, to begin with, was to identify the structure of the working class, and the manner in which it had changed. if you read the first page of braverman's introduction, that's what he set out to do. he makes it clear that in the process of trying to look at occupational shifts, that is, between occupations and within occupations, he became aware of a contradiction in the literature between an argument that went something to the effect that modern work required higher levels of education, training, mental effort, etc., and a simultaneous argument that work was subdivided into petty tasks, petty operations, that are mundane, alienating, and so on. braverman found no attempt to reconcile those two processes. so he began to look for a dynamic which would explain the evolution of labour processes within occupations as well as between them, and this led him to stress the evolution of management and technology, of the modern corporation as well as of social structure. he found himself doing a history of the capitalist mode of production over the last hundred 16 symposium on braverman years. but this does not mean that his central concern was lost in the process. it's no accident that the last third of the book is concerned with the mapping-out of the structure of the modern working class, in the context of his examination of the dynamics of proletarianization. he arrives at part iv, at this point, and what he gives us is something not dissimilar to the kinds of mapping we receive from kinds of recent marxist theoreticians like carchedi or even erik olin wright. but unlike their work, he provides us not merely with a mapping which is deductively arrived at, but one which is also empirically and inductively arrived at. as a result, his mapping is much more detailed and richer; it has meat on it if you will. we will remember that the critique begins at the level of a divorce between evaluation and criticism, a divorce between "science" and critique in braverman, with the statement that in marx, these two things are combined, and i think that's very true and it's an important insight—probably the person who has given the best expression of that insight in marx is norman geras . and what he was getting at was the argument that marxism as a critique is not a moral critique, not an ethical critique; it doesn't take its standpoint in that sense from a set of values--it is scientific, and insofar as it attempts to get at the essence of things rather than the appearance of things, it cuts away mythology, ideology in the false sense, and establishes criticism by counteracting mythology and ideology. his criticism is therefore based on uncovering the essence of reality and it doesn't depend on a moral or ethical stance. i don't think braverman does in fact base his criticism of capitalism on a moral stance, but bases it on his attempt to uncover the dynamics of proletarianization in capitalism. moreover, i don't think one avoids the problem that burawoy seems to think braverman has by stepping out of capitalism. the whole 17 alternate routes problematic of speaking of inside and outside of capitalism in terms of points of view for us today is very bothersome. it's very difficult to imagine that we, living in a capitalist society, can step outside of capitalism when we try to define feudalism. we define those elements of feudalism that appear to us important vis-a-vis capitalism; we never step outside of capitalism (that seems to me an essential point in the sociology of knowledge). moreover, what burawoy gives us is a very ideal-typical definition of feudalism, one which-really i think would apply to all pre-capitalist formations, and not to feudalism itself. braverman would reject an attempt to understand the contrasts between feudalism and capitalism in ideal-typical terms; he in fact says very clearly and explicitly in his introduction that the same productive forces that are characteristic of the close of one epoch of social relations are also characteristic of the opening of the succeeding epoch. it is not a matter of craft production not being there in feudalism and suddenly being there in capitalism--in that sense braverman is both developing his point of view, if you like, from feudalism and from capitalism. what he is talking about is not the craft worker per se; what he is talking about is the paradox that labour is a commodity (labour-power is a commodity) that can't be separated from its owner. that's what he's talking about; and what capitalism has to do in treating labour-power as a commodity is in some way attempt to attenuate, although it can never remove, that indissoluble connection between labour-power and the individual to whom it belongs. a second point that burawoy made is a critique of braverman for treating class as an objective rather than a subjective category. i think that if one reads braverman carefully, one sees that an attack on braverman for not seeing class as class formation is a •traw man. braverman makes very clear that he doesn't want to 18 symposium on braverman deprecate the importance of the study of the state of consciousness of the working class, since it is only through consciousness that a class becomes an actor on the historic stage class consciousness is that state of social cohesion reflected in the understanding and activities of a class or portion of a class. its absolute expression is a pervasive and durable attitude on the part of a class toward its position in society. its long-term relative expression is found in the slowly changing traditions, experiences, education, and organization of the class. its short-term relative expression is a dynamic complex of moods and sentiments affected by circumstances and changing with them, sometimes in periods of stress and conflict, almost from day to day. a class, cannot exist in society without in some degree manifesting a consciousness of itself as a group, with common problems, interests and prospects, although this manifestation may for long periods be weak, confused and subject to manipulation by other classes. (braverman, 1974: 29, 30). so i think that the conception that braverman has is very much of a class as an historical actor. but what he is saying, is that in order to understand and examine empirically that class, one has to begin with a certain mapping, in order to know what to look for. przeworski , in his important paper on class formations, ends up by agreeing with this, but giving us a very crude mapping— industrial workers , white collar workers, bourgeoisie, will do. but what braverman gives us is a rich mapping, which marks out the paths to follow much more clearly. so again i think that the criticism is misconceived. there is another criticism of braverman--he doesn't talk enough about class struggle. clearly, this is part of our problem, which wasn't braverman 's problem (he didn't live in a university). in isolation, we have a need to shout class struggle from the rooftops in terms of understanding society. braverman has an understanding of society's dynamic being composed of class struggle so deep that it suffuses his work and he doesn't constantly have to keep crying class struggle. i think that if you read braverman (this is not new--many 19 alternate routes people have made this criticism of braverman) this criticism can be avoided. rather than, as burawoy suggests, seeing workers' responses to taylorism being merely impotent resistance, or simply internal friction, braverman makes it clear that it doesn't have that view at all. braverman points out that taylorism raised a storm of opposition among trade unions during the early part of the century, and then he goes on to quote, after discussing that opposition, a long passage from the international moulders journal in which he shows that the moulders understood perfectly what was happening to them. when he later speaks of internal friction, (and he doesn't use the term "mere" friction) he first makes clear that the pace of production is decided in a practice which' largely assumes the form of a struggle, whether organized or not. braverman very clearly has this image of class struggle taking place, not only and maybe even not so much, given his american context, at the level of the central organizations of the unions, at the level of the national civic federation in the nineteenth century, but at the level of the shopfloor in day-to-day struggle. and it's interesting how he's able to use taylor to make his own case in this regard, because his quotations from taylor are full of the class struggle (soldiering, etc.). burawoy argues that braverman doesn't have a concept of contradiction; at best it's only there in passing. to some extent i think this is true, in the sense that the contradiction that braverman identifies apart from class struggle is the gap between potential which exists in modern capitalism, and the actuality that we experience. but the irony of burawoy 's points with regard to contradiction, is that of the eclecticism that he indicates by referring to certain neo-marxists who do use the concept of contradiction. he refers to habermas and offe and others who have decided that the working class is not an 20 symposium on braverman element in the contradiction any longer, who identify contradiction at the highly abstract levels of legitimacy crises in the sense that crises then always beset capitalism. even the best of the works based on this, like o'connor, give very little play to the actual class struggle. sure, you can identify contradictions, the question is to what extent can you operationalize them in terms of being able to understand whether a society will in fact evolve in a certain direction or not. and it's interesting that the theoretical framework that burawoy adopts in terms of understanding capitalism and in terms of his critique of braverman, is that of understanding how capitalism in a concrete way reproduces itself. i think that is very important and it's one of the great contributions of the structuralist (marxist) developments. but i wonder whether, by simply looking at the way capitalism reproduces itself, we don't fall into the same error that parsons or parsons and shils fell into. parsons and chils argued that by understanding the way in which the system maintained itself, one could also understand the conditions for change. all one can understand, if the system doesn't reproduce itself, is breakdown; one doesn't understand conditions of transformation, by simply studying maintenance. and there's no doubt that one of the great problems with the structuralists, even the structuralists like poulantzas, is that they don't establish the conditions for change in any sense. they are simply talking, in a very functionalist way, of outcomes rather than purpose at the centre of their analysis, of how the state comes in to plug the gaps, the contradictions that develop in the system. one final point on socialist machines, and then i'll shut up. i think that in a sense burawoy 's onto something here, in what is i think an important section of the paper, but i'm not sure one can lay apathy on braverman, the kind of neutral view of technology that is 21 alternate routes suggested in the latter part of the paper. i don't think one can hang on braverman the conception that technology is neutral, that machines are neutral. braverman makes it very clear in the beginning of his work that the treatment of the interplay between forces and relations of production occupied marx in almost all of his historical writings, and while there is no question that he gave primacy to the forces of production in the long sweep of history, the idea that this primacy on a day-to-day basis could be used in a formalistic way in the analysis of history would never have entered his mind. within the historical, analytical limits of capitalism, according to marxist analysis, technology instead of simply producing social relations, is produced by social relations represented by capital. the concrete and determinate forms of society are indeed "determined" rather than accidental , but this is the determinacy of the thread-by-thread weaving of the fabric of history, not the imposition of external formulas... every society is a moment in the historical process, and can be grasped only as part of that process. capitalism, a social form, when it exists in time, space, population, and history, weaves a web of myriad threads; the conditions of its existence form a complex network each of which presupposes many others. it is because of this solid and tangible existence, this concrete form produced by history, no part of which may be changed by artificial suppositions without doing violence to its true mode of existence it is precisely because of this that it appears to us as "natural," "inevitable", and "eternal". and it is only in this sense, as a fabric woven over centuries, that we may say that capitalism "produced" the present capitalist mode of production. this is a far cry from a ready-made formula which enables us to "deduce" from a given state of technology a given mode of social organization. (braverman, 1974: 21, 22). braverman clearly argues here that technology is a product of social relations, and i think he is arguing, at least implicitly, that the bringing about of socialism involves not only the changing of social relations, but the changing of machines in the process, and his discussion of the soviet union yields this interpretation. 22 austerity is bad for our health | 199 austerity is bad for our health: gender and distributional impacts of ontario’s 2012 budget — sheila block1 there are many questions to be asked and answered about the shifts in fiscal policy stance and discourse from the start of the 2008 financial crisis to the present. the policy consensus on the need for concerted international government intervention and the need for constraints and regulation of markets has vanished from the mainstream policy discussion. it has been replaced by an austerity agenda that suffers from short-term amnesia about the causes of government deficits and debt, and is focused instead on a further reduction in the role of the state. this paper will, however, limit itself to an analysis of the 2012 ontario budget, and its gender and distributional impacts. the agreement reached between the ndp and the liberal government resulted in the first progressive change in canadian income tax rates in more than a decade (benzie & ferguson, 2012). the agreement included a temporary increase in taxes for ontarians earning more than $500,000 per year and a 1 percent increase in rates for people who are surviving on social assistance. these were small, but important, first steps in addressing the record levels of income inequality in ontario. these adjustments around the edges, however, will not change the fundamental impact of this budget. the budget document boasted that for every dollar in new revenues, there were four dollars of savings and cost containment measures. even after the agreement with the ndp, average annual growth in program spending will be held to 1.0 percent between 2011–12 and 2014–15 (ontario ministry of finance, 2012). this means that there will be real, per capita decreases in government spending in ontario. a program of reductions in government services to this size and scale will increase inequality. research by mackenzie and 1 sheila block is the director of economic analysis at the wellesley institute, an independent research and policy institute focused on advancing population health. 200 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism shillington (2009) shows the progressivity of government expenditures. these reductions will have the most detrimental impact on low-income ontarians, but will also reach far beyond them. some ontarians will have to do without the public services they have relied on because they will not be able to afford to purchase them privately. for others, life will become far more expensive when they have to start paying privately for services their tax dollars used to pay for. only those whose resources are so large that they rarely need to rely on public services will be unaffected by the impact of such a shift in the landscape of ontario public services. given their higher incidence of low income, racialized and immigrant communities will be disproportionately affected by these cutbacks. an example of the distributional impact of cutbacks in services is the changes to education funding (people for education, 2012). these changes will include cuts to programs that support math acquisition in schools. some children, who need this assistance, will go without it because their families will not be able to afford to purchase these services privately. for other families, life will become more expensive when they have to privately purchase this help for their children, previously paid for by their tax dollars. only those parents who were already privately purchasing these services for their children will be unaffected. the impact of the loss of public services will be compounded for the thousands of families who have members with public sector jobs. many of these families will face unemployment, reduced access to public services, reduced family incomes, and increased economic uncertainty. again, the impact of these changes will be felt more acutely by lower-income ontarians. workers in lower-paid occupations — such as cleaning, food preparation, and clerks — are generally better paid in the public sector than in the private sector. a cook working in the public sector was paid an average of $26,216 a year in 2006, which is 24 percent more than the $21,089 average received by private sector cooks. on the other hand, higher-paid occupations — such as managers, lawyers and accountants — tend to be paid considerably less in the public sector than in the private sector. for example, engineering managers in the public sector were paid an average of $93,514 in 2006, which is 27 percent below the average of $128,886 in the private sector (sanger, 2011). as a result, higher-income public sector workers who lose their jobs have better prospects in the private sector than lower-income workers who lose theirs. these cutbacks in services and loss of public sector jobs will come at a time when income inequality in canada is at levels that have not been seen since the 1920s (yalnizyan, 2010). austerity is bad for our health | 201 health impacts of austerity the government’s austerity agenda poses substantial risks to the health and well-being of ontarians. a recent report from statistics canada provides a stark example of the impact of income and income inequality on health. the difference in life expect ancy at age 25 between the highest and lowest income groups was 7.1 years for men and 4.9 years for women (tjepkema & wilkins, 2011). while these differences are striking, an equally important finding is that life expectancy increases with each and every step in the income scale. this research found that the gaps are even greater in health-related quality of life, where once again, there was an improvement in health at every step up the income scale. as this research shows, the health impacts of government actions that improve social conditions are not limited to low-income individuals and families. this is supported by international research that shows that inequality has an impact on our health and well-being (wilkinson & pickett, 2009). in more equal countries, people are healthier, live longer, and commit fewer crimes. these relationships hold among all income groups. even for the highest income segment of the population, people are safer, healthier and live longer when they live in a more equal society. there are many ways that austerity programs have an impact on health. the link between unemployment and ill-health has been clearly established. research on the aggregate level has shown that high levels of unemployment in society and in neighbourhoods are correlated with poor health and increased mortality (block, 2010). a recent imf report, based on international evidence, shows that austerity programs increase unemployment and long-term unemployment in particular (ball, leigh, & loungani, 2011). the report also shows that the burden of austerity is disproportionately borne by wage earners rather than those who rely on profits or rents for their incomes. increased unemployment, lower job quality, decreased levels of/access to social benefits, and reduced access to services that support social inclusion will all have a negative impact on ontarians’ health. and these impacts will fall disproportionately on ontarians from marginalized communities – particularly those who are low-income, racialized, and new immigrants. gender impacts of austerity the burden of reductions in public services, loss of public sector employment, and privatization of public sector employment falls more heavily on women than on men. the slowdown in spending proposed in the budget cannot be accomplished without reduced employment in the 202 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism public sector, and a shift of employment within the public sector from better paid unionized jobs with pensions and benefits to more precarious work. these changes will have a differential impact by gender. women comprise just over 60 percent of ontario public sector employees, and about 47 percent of private sector employees (statistics canada, n.d.). the impact of layoffs will be compounded by the differences in wages for women in the public and private sectors. on average, women employed in public sector jobs are paid 4.5 percent more than women in comparable occupations in the private sector: $45,821 compared to $43,841. women who are laid off from the public sector will likely have difficulty finding employment with similar remuneration, men in the public sector are paid an average of 5.3 percent less: $57,318 compared to $60,531 (sanger, 2011). as a result, a decrease in public sector employment will tend to widen the gap between men and women’s wages. the impact on women’s remuneration is not limited only to job losses. shifts in the method of public service delivery will also have a disproportionate impact. private delivery of services and a shift to community–based health care delivery will move women to more precarious employment situations, where they are less likely to be unionized and typically have lower compensation. caregiving makes up a substantial portion of public services. when these services are reduced, the responsibility falls on disproportionately on women to pick up the slack. for example, 21 percent of women in ontario provide unpaid caregiving to seniors as compared to 16 percent of men. women also provided more hours of caregiving, with 9 percent spending more than 5 hours a week as compared to 5.7 percent of men (statistics canada, 2008). the loss of public services will increase unpaid work for women while reducing their remuneration and opportunities for paid work. reducing women’s employment and wages has an impact on their families and their communities. the table below shows the increasing importance of women’s contributions to family incomes. the increase in the share of families where women contribute more than 50 percent of income has been sharpest in areas of the province that have been particularly hard hit by the downturn in manufacturing. these families and areas will be particularly disadvantaged by this year’s budget. austerity is bad for our health | 203 sh ar e o f t ot al n um be r of fa m il ie sw it h th e w if e c on tr ib ut in g ov er 50 % to h us ba nd -w if e e m pl oy m en t i nc om e 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 to ro nt o 27 .7% 28 .2% 28 .7% 29 .2% 29 .5% 29 .7% 30 .1% 30 .5% 31 .2% 32 .8% lo nd on 26 .2% 26 .3% 26 .8% 27 .2% 27 .4% 27 .8% 28 .0% 28 .8% 30 .0% 32 .4% w in ds or 20 .4% 21 .5% 22 .5% 22 .7% 23 .7% 24 .2% 25 .2% 26 .5% 27 .9% 31 .6% ha m ilt on 22 .8% 23 .7% 24 .4% 24 .7% 25 .1% 25 .9% 26 .7% 27 .5% 28 .3% 30 .4% on ta rio 25 .8% 26 .1% 26 .8% 27 .3% 27 .7% 28 .0% 28 .5% 29 .0% 29 .7% 31 .6% so ur ce : s ta tis tic s c an ad a. ta ble 11 100 21 fa m ily ch ar ac te ris tic s, hu sb an dwi fe fam ilie s, by w ife ’s c on tri bu tio n t o h us ba nd -w ife em plo ym en t i nc om e, an nu al (n um be r u nl es s o th er wi se no te d) 204 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism conclusion the changes to the 2012 ontario budget that resulted from the agreement between the liberal government and the ndp were a welcome departure from the austerity agenda. they increased the progressivity of the tax system, and mitigated the erosion of purchasing power of inadequate social assistance rates. however, the overall impact of this budget is to increase inequality in ontario. by relying much more heavily on cutback on expenditures than increasing tax revenues, it will have a disproportionate impact on lower income ontarians. because of the role of public sector employment in women’s working lives; it will also erode gender equity in the province. increased inequality, unemployment, and low income resulting from this budget will have negative health impacts for ontarians. references ball, l. leigh, d. and loungani, p. (2011). painful medicine: the international monetary fund finance and development, 48(3), 20-24. www.imf.org/ external/pubs/ft/fandd/2011/09/pdf/ball.pdf benzie, r. and ferguson, r. (2012, april 23). ontario budget: mcguinty agrees to horvath’s tax the rich scheme toronto star. http://www. thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1166296—ontario-budget mcguintyandhorwath-in-last-ditch-talks-to-prevent-election block, s. (2010). work and health: exploring the impact of employment on health disparities. the wellesley institute. http://www.wellesleyinstitute. com/publication/our-working lives-affect-our-health/ mackenzie, h., & shillington, r. (2009). canada’s quiet bargain the benefits of public spending canadian centre for policy alternatives. http://www.policyalternatives.ca/ sites/default/files/uploads/publications/national_office_pubs/2009/ benefits_from_public_spending.pdf ontario ministry of finance. (2012). balancing the budget. toronto: queen’s printer. http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/budget/ontariobudgets/2012/bk3.html people for education. (2012). education funding cuts in 2012 budget. http:// www.peopleforeducation.ca/pfe-news/ontario-budget-includes-cutsto-education-funding/ sanger, t. (2011). battle of the wages: who gets paid more, public or private sector workers? ottawa: canadian union of public employees. statistics canada. (n.d.).table 282 0012 labour force survey estimates (lfs), employment by class of worker, north american industry classification system (naics) and sex, annually (persons). austerity is bad for our health | 205 cansim (database). last updated january 4, 2012. http://www5.statcan. gc.ca/cansim/pick-choisir?lang=eng&p2=33&id=2820012 statistics canada. (2008). 2006 census. unpaid work, age groups and sex for the population 15 years and over of canada, provinces, territories, census divisions and census subdivisions. catalogue number 97-559xcb2006015.last updated july 4, 2011. http://goo.gl/hokxy statistics canada. (n.d.). table 111-0021 family characteristics, husbandwife families, by wife’s contribution to husband-wife employment income, annual (number). cansim (database). last updated june 26, 2012. http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/pickchoisir?lang=eng&p2=3 3&id=1110021 tjepkema, m. & wilkins, r. (2011). remaining life expectancy at age 25 and probability of survival to age 75, by socio-economic status and aboriginal ancestry. statistics canada health reports. 22(4), 2-7. http:// www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-003-x/2011004/article/11560-eng.pdf wilkinson, r. & pickett, k. (2009). the spirit level: why more equal societies always do better. london: allen lane. yalnizyan, a. (2010). the rise of canada’s richest 1%. canadian centre for policy alternatives. http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/ uploads/publications/national%20office/20 10/12/richest%201%20 percent.pdf | 255 an interview with noam chomsky democracy and the public university rebecca schein is assistant professor and acting coordinator of the human rights stream at the institute of interdisciplinary studies, carleton university (ottawa, canada) . her teaching and research interests include: nationalism and cosmopolitanism; citizenship and civic pedagogies; social movements; social and economic rights; science studies . research projects include: a critical cultural study of the u .s . peace corps and american cosmopolitanism; an examination of “risk management”, data ownership, and contemporary ideals of competent citizenship . noam chomsky is a political theorist and activist, and institute professor emeritus of linguistics at the massachusetts institute of technology (massachusetts, u .s .a) . in addition to his work in linguistics, chomsky has written widely on u .s . foreign and domestic policy, power and ideology, as well as the corporate media . having authored more than 100 books, his most recent include: profit over people, rogue states, the essential chomsky, and power and terror . noam chomsky was interviewed by rebecca schein at carleton university on april 8, 2011 .1 rebecca schein (rs): the title of this discussion was “democracy and the public university” and i thought i would start with a really big question which is what do we mean when we talk about a public university? what is it that makes a public university? noam chomsky (nc): well there’s a technical definition. this depends on who is in charge of the administration, the finances and so on. it’s either the government or the private institution. if it’s the government it’s a public university, if it’s a private institution it’s a private university. actually that’s just technical–the boundaries are extremely flexible. take my own university, mit. technically it’s a private university, but it’s overwhelmingly subsidized by the government. in fact when i got there in 1955 and up through the early 1970s probably ninety percent of the academic program was paid by the pentagon. the political science department was openly funded by the cia until the early 60s, when it got kind of embarrassing. after that some other technique was used and since then the funding has shifted for interesting reasons having to do with the nature of the economy. so 1  interview transcribed by kate gentle. a recording of this interview is available at: http:// www1.carleton.ca/iis/news/noam-chomsky/ an interview with noam chomsky democracy and the public university 256 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times technically, mit is private but from another point of view it’s public. the administration is private and the trustees are not specifically responsible to state authorities. on the other hand, if you go down the street to the university of massachusetts it’s entirely public and also gets some funding from the federal government. harvard has the biggest private endowment in the world. it’s a private university but again there is plenty of government funded work going on. rs: most of us are probably not imagining a time of pentagon funding or its equivalent when we talk about the need to defend or restore the public-ness of our universities, nor would most of us be likely to see pentagon funding as supportive of a democratic mission for universities. what is the relationship between democracy and a university’s public-ness? nc: you just can’t draw mechanical conclusions about how research will be carried out from the source of the funding. a lot of my friends on the left think that if you are pentagon funded you must be working for the military. its exactly the opposite. when you were pentagon funded they didn’t care what you did. if you wanted to overthrow the government in your spare time that’s ok. in 1968, when mit was completely pentagon funded, i was in a lab that was one-hundred percent funded by the three armed services. that lab was also the centre of anti-war resistance in the country. several of us, including me, were on the verge of long jail sentences. that was all under pentagon funding and there was no interference. for twenty-five years i was teaching undergraduate courses in social and political issues and social change. they were open to the community and usually met in the evening. i was doing them in my own time but the university didn’t shut them down. a lot of the students who came out were involved in the activism of the 60s. some of the former students are doing things right now. as i say, it was the centre of anti-war resistance but there was no interference. there was a little harassment of the courses from the fbi but not from the pentagon. interestingly, it was the increase in corporate funding through the later period that led to greater secrecy. in 1969, there was a period of a lot of student activism [at mit]. there were protests about military labs, which were administered by mit, and it was reaching a crisis which nobody wanted. so everybody did what you do when there’s a crisis–you establish a commission to look into it. i was on the commission which looked into institute financing. it turned out that about half the institute budget was administering | 257 the military labs, and the other half was the academic budget. the military labs did classified secret military work, but that was kind of a joke too. technically it was secret, but the academic side was open. again a kind of porous distinction. of the academic budget in 1969 maybe ninety percent was pentagon funded. there was no war work except for the political science department. the political science department was involved in pacification programs in vietnam, and naturally this was under the rubric of a peace research institute. they had secret seminars and things like that, which you’re not supposed to have, but outside the political science department there was no dedicated war work. the pentagon was not funding war work–they were funding the high tech economy. the pentagon was a technique. they were deluding tax payers into providing funds for the future benefit of private corporations. the pentagon funded advances in computing, the development of the internet, lasers–in fact the whole it revolution that enabled the high tech economy. the funding for innovation and initiative comes in many ways through the state sector, and for business that’s great. they wait around and eventually reap the profits of publicly resourced innovation. the tax payers pay them on the assumption that we’re saving ourselves from the russians or something like that. that’s basically the system. through the 50’s and the 60’s the cutting edge of the economy was electronics-based, and the pentagon was a good cover for that sort of research. now the cutting edge of the economy is more biology based. so we see funding shift to other government institutes like the national institutes of health. the shift in the sources of government money largely reflects the direction of the economy is headed, just as it did in the 1950’s and 60’s around mit and other research universities. this happens all over the country. mit is extreme but it is all over stanford, north carolina and so on. around the research universities you get small start ups. those are faculty members who are using the government funded research and development to start up small businesses. back then they were electronics-based, and if they were successful they’d be bought up by raytheon and i-tech and other big high tech companies. now if you go around the campus the start-ups are genetic engineering, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and the big buildings around are novartis and all these guys who want to milk the research an interview with noam chomsky democracy and the public university 258 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times development that is going on under government auspices in the university. that’s the basis for a lot of the economy. this goes a long way back but it really took off after the second world war–partly because of changes in the nature of science and technology. in the 1950’s, when i was there, mit was actually an engineering school: you went there if you wanted to build things. now if you want to build a bridge or an electric circuit you go to wentworth institute or some other place. mit is a science university–you study basic science and basic math and you take pretty much the same courses whether you’re in aeronautical engineering or electrical engineering. the technology changes fast, so if the students learns the technology of today, they won’t be able to get a job twenty years from now. technology will be different. if they learn fundamental science they can grow with it. so everything changed. the same is true in the biological-based areas such as pharmaceuticals. at the same time, we see an increase in corporate funding in universities, and that has to do not with changes in science and technology, but with changes in the way the economy is structured. there is more of an effort to build a business model for everything, and corporate funding is part of that picture. corporate funding has an effect. for one thing it tends to drive research towards short term applied work. when the pentagon or nih is funding something, they’re thinking about the long term health of the economy. when merck is funding something, they want something for themselves, not their competitors, and they want it tomorrow. so you end up getting more short term applied research. you also get secrecy for the first time. there was no secrecy under the pentagon. they wanted to be as open as possible because it just impedes communication between scientists and engineers. in fact there was no security in the buildings. you could walk in twenty-four hours a day. a corporation may not be able to enforce secrecy, but it can make it clear that you’re not going to get your contract renewed if something gets out. so there’s a coarsening effect, which you’d expect when a business model is imposed on research. rs: so is it reasonable to think that public universities, specifically, have a democratic function? can you spell out the relationship between publicness and democracy? nc: well you know, mit was a private university which means you have to pay tuition to get in. the tuition is not exorbitant, but it’s tuition. a public university is supposed to be free. its supposed to be for the | 259 public. that used to be the case. the university of pennsylvania is an ivy league college, and when i went it was one hundred dollars. you could easily get a scholarship, which i did. working students could get a scholarship. now it’s probably $20, 000, $30,000 and the public universities have changed radically since the 1970’s. i don’t know about here in canada. i’m talking about the united states. let me give you a personal example. a couple of months ago i happened to be giving talks in mexico city at the national university. it’s a big university–it has a couple of hundred thousand students, pretty high quality, good facilities, smart students, good faculty, low salaries by our standards but quite an efficient, good university. a perfectly respectable university. it’s free. ten years ago the government tried to slightly raise tuition. there was a national student strike and the government backed off. in fact one of the main administration buildings on campus, i discovered, is still occupied by students from that strike and it has become kind of a movement centre, a community activities centre. the administration doesn’t like it. a lot of the students don’t like it, but they’re not calling in the police to throw them out. in mexico city there is a public university that is not only free but open admissions, so it’s open to everyone. they have compensatory courses because a lot of the students don’t have the right background. i was there, met students, talked to faculty. it was pretty impressive. mexico is a very poor country, and i went from there to california, which is maybe the richest place in the world. in california they are consciously destroying the best public education system in the world. the california public education system was pretty amazing. the universities were great universities. there’s lower tiers like state colleges, lower colleges, other universities, all quite high level, and they used to be free. tuitions have gone sky high. in fact its very likely that berkeley and ucla, the two stars in the system, will be privatized. they’re almost private universities now if you look at the tuition and the endowments,. the rest of the system will be lowered in quality–more vocationally oriented and less funding. that’s one of the richest places in the world. in fact this year for the first time i think less than half of the cost of the university is provided by public funding. mostly it’s tuition. that’s true in many states in the united states now. these are all steps towards privatizing society and creating a kind of two-tiered society– these are big processes, happening not just in universities. none of this is economically driven. you can an interview with noam chomsky democracy and the public university 260 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times see that by comparing mexico to the united states. mexico is a very poor country. the united states is the richest country in history. so it’s not economic. these are social decisions both in mexico and in the united states. what’s a public university supposed to be? like mexico. it should be free, there should be an option for open admissions, and resources should go into it to making sure it works. it is not impossible. rs: rising tuition fees, increasing reliance on student fees for operating budgets, endowments–to what extent do you see all these trends as part of a general divestment from the public sphere? nc: its partly general, but i think some of this is oriented specifically toward the universities. this hasn’t really been studied so i’m just telling you what i think. all of this stuff began in the 70’s. there were a lot of changes in the economy in the 70’s, but one crucial thing changed with regard to the universities. the late 60’s was a period of a lot of activism and it terrified the business world and it also terrified liberal intellectuals across the spectrum. they were terrified. “the students are out of control, there’s too much democracy, what are we going to do?” there’s some very interesting reactions that you can read. there are two main ones at the opposite ends of the spectrum and they’re worth looking up. one of them is a book and the other you can find on the internet. at the right end of the spectrum, we have the powell memo. lewis powell, was a corporate lawyer who became a justice of the supreme court, and he wrote a memorandum to the education committee of the chamber of commerce in 1971. his memorandum was essentially reflected the paranoia of the business world. the business world is basically totalitarian. they’re used to running everything, and if anything gets out of control the world is falling apart. that’s a typical aspect of the totalitarian mentality. it shows up in foreign policy and all over the place. so his perspective was that the whole university system, as well as the media, television, and even the government, had been taken over by raging marxist lunatics. all of this is so surreal if you know anything about the facts. you’d laugh if you didn’t understand that this is a natural perception of the totalitarian mentality. you can’t allow anything to get out of control, and its true, things were partially out of control. so herbert marcuse was teaching some students in harvard that ralph nader was popular, and to the business world that meant that all the world was falling apart. so powell wrote to the chamber of commerce, the main business lobby, saying we’ve got to do something to “restore | 261 the balance”. do something to make sure that in the universities, in television, in the media, there’s at least some small voice that says the united states is not nazi germany and maybe something in american history is not just extermination and massacre. powell says to the business world, look, we’re the trustees of the universities, we’re the ones who make the decisions, we provide the tax funds, and we own the media. we ought to mobilize instead of letting ralph nader and herbert marcuse steal the whole world away from us. we ought to mobilize and use our power to “restore the balance”. powell’s suggestions were followed by the business world in all kinds of ways, and i think one of them is raising tuitions. its at that time that tuition starts to go up. that’s a disciplinary technique. kids in the 60’s assumed, “i can take off for a couple of years and become a political activist and work for women’s rights or civil rights, then i can come back and pick up my career.” that’s a dangerous situation–it frees people to think and that’s a terrible idea. so what you want to do is trap them. maybe some guy thinks that he wants to be a public interest lawyer. if you make sure he comes out of law school $100,000 in debt, he’s going to go into a corporate law firm because he just has no choice. once he’s in there he’ll internalize the culture and he’ll be safe. it’s the same across the board. raising tuition is a disciplinary technique. so we have the powell memo on the right. on the other end of the spectrum, which is in a way even more interesting, there’s an important book called the crisis of democracy. it comes out in 1974 and it’s the first publication of the trilateral commission. (the trilateral commission brought together liberal internationalists in the three major state capitalist societies–north america, western europe, japan. to get the tenor of it that’s what the carter administration was drawn from.) well what’s the crisis of democracy? the crisis of democracy is that there’s too much democracy. segments of the population that are usually passive and apathetic and obedient are entering the public arena and pressing their demands–women, youth, the elderly, workers and farmers. the population, in other words, or what they call the special interests. and that’s too much pressure on the state. they can’t deal with all the special interests. they have to be beaten back to establish what they called more moderation in democracy. with regard to the schools it was quite interesting. they said that the institutions that are responsible for the indoctrination of an interview with noam chomsky democracy and the public university 262 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times the young are not doing their job. schools, universities, churches– they’re not indoctrinating the young properly.” (this is the liberals that i’m talking about!) “we’ve got to do something to make sure they indoctrinate the young properly.” then comes various suggestions. they even wanted to control the media, because they’re too adversarial and free. well the two ends of the political spectrum are almost identical and that tells you something. my strong suspicion is that the attacks on public universities, including things like tuition, quite possibly came out of this whole sort of mentality. it was related to things happening in the economy. this is the period in the 1970s when the postwar economy was being dismantled–we see moves towards financialization and the off shoring of production. a lot of things happened. this was one of them. they tried to re-impose discipline so we wouldn’t have problems from these students, who aren’t indoctrinated properly. i think there was a confluence of all these things and it’s led to the period of increasing repression which we’re living under in the schools and everywhere else. there is a cultural dimension to the transition happening in thte economy–the fear of student independence and the fear of freedom. freedom is a scary thing so you want to make sure people are properly indoctrinated and controlled. you have a lot of debt and not a lot of choices, you’re insecure–you can’t take chances. in fact if you listen to alan greenspan’s testimony to congress every year, he’s crowing about the wonderful economy he’s administering, and he says straight out its best feature is what he calls “growing worker insecurity.” that’s the best feature of the economy and that makes sense on his assumptions. growing worker insecurity means that working people are afraid to ask for a raise in wages, decent working conditions, for secure jobs and so on. they’ll just grab on to anything they can, and that’s great. it makes the economy more healthy by standard economic principles. so yes, growing worker insecurity is a great thing and it’s the same with students. if they’re insecure they’re not going to go out onto the streets and demand things, and think about things. my feeling is that all of this is tied together very closely. rs: so if students are disciplined by things like rising student debt and rising student fees, you could also argue that the people who are in charge of indoctrinating those students are also disciplined by this casualization of the labour force. nc: that’s right because you have to discipline both students and teachers. when the trilateral commission goes after the institutions | 263 responsible for the indoctrination for the young, they’re saying it’s the teachers, the ministers, church figures, the people in charge are out of control. they’re out of control so they have to be disciplined. and its called casualization of the labour force, or cut backs, threats to tenure, and so on. that is disciplining the faculty. academic freedom always had two aspects. the freedom to teach and the freedom to learn and you’ve got to cut them both back if you want to really control people. rs: i think that you have said that you are uneasy about the notion of a politically engaged university, but that you also think that universities have a responsibility to foster political engagement. could you say more about that? nc: well take mit. i didn’t think myself that mit ought to become involved in the anti-war movement. it’s not their job. nor did i think they should become involved in the war. if they’re going to develop technology for the military they ought to also be developing technology for guerilla resistance. but in fact they should be doing neither. however, the university should be an open arena for people to get involved, and as i said, mit was at the centre of academic anti-war resistance. i think it was 1968 that the whole university was closed down for a couple of weeks. a small number of students, including mike albert (who now runs z-net), steve shallow, and a few others decided to organize a sanctuary for deserters. that was the kind of thing going on then, mostly in churches. a kid decides he wants to desert, so you organize a sort of sanctuary and people stay with him until the fbi comes and takes him. i should say i was against it. i thought this was just going to crash but their intuition was much better. the deserter was a very interesting young guy from the marines. he knew what he was doing–he had had a lot of briefing, thought about it, knew the consequences, and he wanted to do it. they had a press conference in a room in the student centre and about five people showed up. in about three days the whole institute was closed down. there were thousands of students in the student centre twenty-four hours a day doing everything that students do–everything from smoking pot to having seminars. it was quite exciting. there were two weeks of really active engagement on campus and the institute was virtually closed. a lot of things came out of that experience. one thing that came out of it was the commission i was talking about earlier. another was that an interview with noam chomsky democracy and the public university 264 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times the institute itself officially devoted a full day just to consider the uses of technology in society. this is the main technological institute in the world and the question had never come up. so it was march 4th 1969. the day was set aside for meetings, discussions, rallies, all sorts of things on the uses of technology in society. one thing that came out of that day was the union of concerned scientists, which is still around and very active. the whole culture of the place changed, and it’s never going back to what it was. it’s not as active as it was back in 68 but it’s just a changed place. this is the kind of thing the university ought to be open to. it’s right for the university to concern itself with the uses of technology in society; it should be open to letting these issues be discussed and debated. the discussion that happened at mit had a very good impact broadly over all kinds of subjects. one of the biggest issues in toronto is the school of public affairs that is being endowed by peter munk, who is the head of barrick gold, a big gold mining company. what should be done? mining is an absolute international scandal, extremely destructive. it’s environmentally destructive, it’s destructive of communities all over the place and canada has the worst record in the world for this. gold mining is absolutely the worst. so i think that what monk and the global affairs institute ought to do is investigate mining–gold mining in particular. and don’t just investigate, but offer a voice for people who have no voice. you go down in the summer to visit remote and endangered communities in colombia and they’re trying to protect themselves from mining. they have no voice. nobody’s going to hear them but people here do have a voice and they can support them. that’s a perfectly fine research and teaching engagement for a university, and out of it can come pretty good actions. i think you see things like that all over the place. you’re not trapped by funders. they may want to carry out indoctrination of the young but it doesn’t mean they have to succeed. the limits of keyncsianism: some theoretical observations john malcolmson the history of advanced capitalism is the history of a statebuttressed, state-controlled and state-regulated capitalism. for this reason, it is no longer possible to speak of vital areas and processes which fall outside of this near pervasive blanket of state intervention. when seen in context, the expansion of the state sector and of state interventionism in general form part of a larger dynamic at work in the advanced capitalist economies. the growth of the service and repair sectors, the proliferation of intermediary functions, the emergence of a complex networv of advertising and marketing, the establishment of a growing research sector, the extension of consumer credit all of these developments and others reflect the increasing technical socialization of the labour process as well as the increasing complexity of the sphere of commodity circulation. all in all, advanced capitalism faces growing difficulties in its attempts to realize value (mandel, 1978: 401-3). the expansion of the state sector has absorbed much of the growth in some of these areas. together with the emergence of state planning and of extensive state involvement in the socialization of private sector costs and risks, this overall expansion can be seen as an attempt, by the state, to assist capital in the transcendence of those barriers it finds in its path. in other words, the state attempts to secure the social existence of capital through the mobilization of counter-tendencies to capitalist crisis. thus, despite changes in the nature of capitalism and changes in the nature of state activity, the specific modes of intervention still reflect the attempt to meet certain form-specific needs associated with the maintenance of the capitalist order. generally speaking, there is an inherent trend under late capitalism for the state to incorporate an ever greater number of productive and reproductive sectors into the 'general conditions of production' which it finances (mandel, 1978: 484). the origins of the modern interventionist state can be traced back to the immediate postwar period. the immediate problem facing capital and the state was one of conversion to a peacetime economy. it had taken a world war to lift international capitalism out of a decade of stagnation and unemployment, during which the social and political cohesion of the capitalist order faced serious challenge. experiences gained in managing a wartime economy had demonstrated the potential inherent in state intervention, i.e. the ability of the state to virtually end unemployment and to set the economy back on the course of expansion and growth. clearly, the lessons derived from these experiences were not lost on capital and the state. the conversion to a peacetime economy could not involve a return to the disruptive boom-bust cycle of earlier times. a dismantling of the war machine 88 could not lead to the threat of a sudden contraction of business activity. the best that might be hoped for was some sort of balance between private sector activity and public sector intervention, a balance that could assure those conditions necessary for continued capital investment and economic growth. these considerations demonstrate that the growth of state interventionism is not something that can be observed and analysed apart from an analysis of the balance of forces in the class struggle. the state's conversion to a program of fiscal and monetary management (of which commitment to a policy of full employment is but one aspect) was itself a reflection of the need to deflect working class opposition away from any radical alternative. steps taken in the construction of the welfare state symbolize the effort by the state to integrate labour into a postwar 'settlement' or consensus, something essential for the maintenance of relative stability and class harmony and for the attainment of economic growth. certain aspects of the welfare state can even be seen as tactical victories for the working class and its organizations, as instances where the working class has been able to "impose its political will on the logic of capital within capitalist relations" (altvater, 1976: 3). all of these factors suggest that the actual character of state intervention is something largely dependent upon the nature of the class struggle and its outcome (i.e. 'the relative contingency of the political process'). keynesian economics represents an attempt to guide and theorize the practice of state fiscal and monetary intervention in the advanced capitalist economies. to keynes, the laissez-faire liberal image of the state (i.e. the best state is that which governs least) was hopelessly inadequate in the face of chronic economic stagnation and 89 massive unemployment. classical economy had erred in assuming that the capitalist market was an inherently self-correcting mechanism and that any prolonged imbalance between supply and demand, producing unemployment or idle capacity, was impossible. in the keynesian system, the central postulate was that market equilibrium was possible at any level of employment, the latter being dependent upon the volume of effective demand. full employment is, therefore, not something towards which an economy will naturally tend. it is, rather an "optimum relationship" to be produced only by either "accident or design" (keynes, 1965: 28). the unimpeded interaction of market forces is something just as likely to produce stagnation as prosperity, a colossal wastage of resources instead of their efficient employment. thus, the ostensible object of government policy was the attainment of full employment via a policy of selective state intervention. the short term manipulation of key economic variables by the state is what is termed economic 'finetuning*, a practice designed to level out the disruptive boom-bust cycle of capitalism and to attain a state of permanent 'quasi-boom' . in the keynesian system, a given rate of investment and a given 2 'propensity to consume' will together bring forth an actual volume of effective demand which, in turn, will determine a definite level of employment consistent with economic equilibrium. when effective demand, the sum of the demand for capital and consumption goods, is equal to a nation's total income (i.e. total savings = total investments), the economic system will operate at a full employment equilibrium. if effective demand falters, then savings will exceed investments, total income will drop and unemployment will result. in setting forth this model, keynes was explicitly ressurecting the "great puzzle of effective demand" which, with ricardo, had vanished from the realm of 90 orthodox economic theory to lead a subterranean existence in the underworlds of gesell, douglas and marx (keynes, 1965: 32). and in doing so, keynes was concentrating his attack upon say's law, the idea of a selfequilibrating market. the mere fact that savings and investments may be defined the same way (as the excess of income over consumption) does not necessarily mean that the two will always tend to coincide in actual practice (keynes, 1965: 63, 83-4). the factors which determine the former are distinct and separate from those influencing the latter. in the final analysis, the nature of the equilibrium will depend upon the level of aggregate effective demand. in a mature capitalist economy, keynes felt there were valid reasons for suspecting that the level of effective demand would be insufficient to produce equilibrium at full employment. increased income will augment consumption but not by so much as the initial increase in income. keynes, (1965: 27) attributed this to the psychological propensity to consume consequent upon the increase in material affluence. therefore to increase and justify increased employment, there must be an amount of current investment sufficient to absorb the excess of total output over what the community chooses to consume when employment is at the given level. for unless there is this amount of investment, the receipts of the entrepreneurs will be less than is required to induce them to offer the given amount of employment (keynes, 1965: 27). thus, the question of investment was central to the keynesian model. the health of a mature capitalist economy depends upon the maintenance of an appropriate level of capital investment. acceptance of this principle leads, in keynes' mind, to the same conclusion as before, namely, that employment can only increase pari passu with an 91 increase in investment; unless, indeed, there is a change in the propensity to consume (1965: 98). however, as with consumption, a mature capitalist economy tended to throw up barriers to the productive investment of capital which served to weaken the incentive to invest on the part of the individual capitalist (i.e. the saturation of investment outlets, the declining marginal efficiency of capital etc.). additional factors such as the prevailing 'business mood' and the cost of borrowing might induce an investment strike as capital exercises a 'liquidity preference'. all in all, these factors held out the distinct possibility of a secular tendency to stagnation as the incentive to private investment weakened. the object of state policy, given these factors, was to ensure the attainment of a full employment equilibrium through the use of fiscal and monetary devices designed to strengthen both the incentive to invest as well as the society's 'propensity to consume'. here, the overriding importance of investment was clear. as david horowit: states (1973: 92) , by stressing the pre-eminent significance of the investment decision, in determining the level of output and employment, and by illuminating the dependence of that decision on the expectation of investors, keynes provided the key to a theory of fiscal politics which would show that the pattern of government spending must fall predominantly within the channels coincident with business interest. keynes was enough of a realist to know that any state authority that failed to provide the necessary framework for business expansion would soon find the economy in the throes of a major depression. indeed, it was the duty of the state to ensure that investment and accumulation materialized, even despite what might be the temporary whims of capital. keynes writes: it is not the ownership of the instruments of production which it is important for the state 92 to assume. if the state is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources .devoted to augmenting the instruments and the basic rate of reward to those who own them, it will have accomplished all that is necessary. moreover, the necessary measures of socialization can be introduced gradually and without a break in the general traditions of society (1965: 378). the object is therefore one of saving capitalism and for this reason it is completely erroneous to view keynes as a socialist. in the words of maurice dobb, despite an inclination epater les bourgeois and to patronize heretics, he went no further than the position of an interventist liberal, alive to the needs of his time (1977: 220). in practical terms, keynesian fiscal and monetary policy aims at the stimulation of both investment and consumption. "for it is unlikely," keynes writes, that full employment can be maintained, whatever we may do about investment, with the existing propensity to consume. there is room, therefore, for both policies to operate together; to promote investment and, at the same time, to promote consumption... i should readily concede that the wisest course is to advance on both fronts at once (1965: 325). to this end, the state should attune its monetary policy (lower interest rates, a flexible money supply) and its fiscal policy (taxation, subsidization, welfare spending etc.) in the attempt to surmount the overall deficiencies in the level of effective demand. keynes* approach to the problems of capital accumulation, with its emphasis upon the key variable, effective demand, is indicative of a highly abstract and ahistorical conceptualization of the nature of production founded upon capital. in general, the aggregates and categories used by keynes posit the essence of capitalist production as production for use and consumption, and not as production for value . "capital", writes keynes, "is not a self-subsistent entity existing apart from 93 consumption" (keynes, 1965: 106). consumption must be seen as the object and purpose of all economic activity (mattick, 1974: 11). the implications of this approach are far reaching in a number of areas. to take a concrete example, the keynesian concept of 'national income' (i.e. consumption investment) establishes a separation between its two major components only to blur the distinction by evaluating the significance of these components primarily in terms of their impact upon the level of effective demand. shigeto tsuru (1968: 194) wtites, the result is the keynesian concept of national income which has only one dimension, that of being consumable sooner or later . the part which is consumed during a given period is called 'consumption 1 , and the remainder in whatever physical form it may be, is called 'investment'. tsuru goes on to demonstrate that a methodology based upon what is essentially crude aggregation cannot accurately gauge what he terms the 'productivity effect' of consumption and investment, or the actual significance of consumption expenditure and investment outlays vis-a-vis the accumulation of capital. paul mattick (1974: 116) develops a similar point in greater detail in his discussion of the role of the 'multiplier* within the keynesian system. given the existence of idle capacity and unemployed workers during a depression, state expenditures are seen as 'pump priming' devices that stimulate a resumption of private sector business activity. an initial expenditure in the area of public works or welfare assistance initiates a chain reaction of subsequent expenditures (the precise quantitative dimensions of which depend upon the society's marginal propensity to consume), thereby multiplying the cumulative impact of the initial outlay. given this process, state expenditure might well be seen as a panacea whose curative powers are sufficient to overcome the shortfall in effective demand. 94 however, as mattick points out, there are serious problems inherent in the multiplier concept, which, in the final analysis, are rooted in the nature of state intervention and state spending within a capitalist economy. firstly, the multiplier concept creates the illusion... that any given amount of additional income can multiply itself merely by travelling from one group to another. actually, of course, this is not so, just as a change in the velocity of money does not imply a change in its quantity or in the quantity of commodities in circulation (mattick, 1974: 158). he adds that it is only when money spent in consumption finds its way into productive investment that any real increase in income takes place. secondly, a problem emerges because the state is not a capitalist and must therefore finance its activities out of revenue in the form of taxes, or out of borrowing. whereas the private sector is involved in the direct creation of surplus value, direct state involvement in production is usually confined to a series of non-productive enclaves vital for the economy as a whole but unprofitable for private investment and exploitation. for this reason, almost all forms of state expenditure must be seen as forms of consumption of surplus value within the context of the capitalist system as a whole. even in the case of government contracts with the private sector, the costs associated with this kind of induced production as well as the profits that accrue to the private suppliers must be financed out of taxes on the private productive base or out of borrowings against the future profitability of that same base (mattick, 1974: 118). in either case the state appropriates a portion of the surplus value generated in the private sector and for this reason alone state finance must be labelled unproductive from the standpoint of the whole system (yaffe, 1973: 51). 95 the multiplier effect of state spending is therefore largely illusory, despite the fact that the stimulus of government spending may help arrest a downward trend in business activity. mattick (1974: 1s9) notes that as state spending may ease unemployment and increase production in the private sector, it may under special conditions, induce an acceleration of private investments. if this should be the case, it would increase total income by more than that brought forth by deficit-spending, but this 'multiplication' would be due directly to the additional profitable investments, not to the initial spending. in the case of deficit spending, the overall complex of capitalist valorization problems find their expression in the cumulative growth of the national debt. attempts to rationalize this indebtedness usually rest upon the claim that a rising national income will offset the problems associated with increased borrowing and debt servicing. it is, however, impossible to gauge the stimulative impact of deficit financing if comparisons are made on the basis of total national income. as mattick states, the growing national debt cannot be related to total national income, but only to that part of the total which has not been injected into the economy by the government. it is by counting an expense as an income that the illusion arises that the growing national debt is neutralized by a rising national income (1974: 162). the upshot of this analysis may be summed up as follows. state spending can only be viewed as a consumption of surplus value, or better, a redistributive appropriation and consumption of surplus value with an aim to establish and maintain certain, historically-specific 'general material conditions of production' in the era of advanced capitalism. this expenditure cannot be viewed simply as one vital input amidst a complex of socially-necessary tasks and functions which together constitute 96 the system of production based upon capital. a perspective like this tends to abstract the technical aspects of an advanced division of labour away from the social relations which constitute capitalist production as a valorization process, and, in doing so, it loses sight of the fact that only labour undertaken within the capital relation can be productive of surplus value. the result is an analysis which downplays the limits of state intervention, which, ultimately, stem from the fact that the state is not a capitalist and that the state must therefore appropriate and consume surplus value in the course of its interventions. given this understanding, state expenditure and state intervention can best be seen as "indirectly productive for capital in the sense used by marx" they constitute essential moments apart from capital which, nonetheless, make a vital contribution to the social conditions of capitalist reproduction (fine and harris, 1976: 104-5). the limits of contemporary state intervention inhere in the very nature of the form-specific functions the state is called upon to provide within the context of advanced capitalism. the use of fiscal and monetary devices to attenuate the business cycle and prevent the re-emergence of dangerously high levels of unemployment has served to displace the locus of contradiction and crisis to the level of the state itself. the cumulative growth of public debt, the mounting burden of debt servicing and the bias of permanent inflation together represent the price paid by 'capital in general 1 for the maintenance of state-buttressed 'prosperity' amidst conditions of declining profitability in vital sectors and growing difficulties in the sphere of commodity circulation. state intervention in the form of 'demand management' and an expanded money supply has served to arrest the necessary destruction of excess capitals in the economic crisis and to hinder the concentration and 97 re-organization of the capital structure necessary for a profitable upswing in business activity (itoh, 1978: 6-7). the use of credit leverage and deficit financing to further this end has led to the current phenomenon of 'stagflation', a steady and seemingly inexorable rise in the cost of living amidst either sluggish or non-existent growth rates. all in all, capital in crisis stands in need of a depression, a 'shake-out' that the state dare not risk in view of its likely social and political consequences. the current strategy of keynesian intervention, based as it is upon the use of fiscal and monetary means for the redistribution of existing values, cannot penetrate to the heart of the matter for, as fine and harris note, "the dominant recuperative force in crisis is the re-organization of capital and not the redistribution of values" (1976: 111). given this situation, the efficacy of the keynesian devices is severely limited by the expansion of state debt on one side, and the risk of refuelling inflation without any substantial improvement in business activity, on the other (itoh, 1978: 9). the growing obsolescence of keynesianism is reflected in the fact that the current high level of unemployment does not basically result from the needs of distributional struggle (although this plays a secondary related role), but from the need for a break in the circuit of capital to release money, means of production and labour-power so that they can, at a later stage of the cycle, when the expansion capital's circuit is renewed, be re-employed in a circuit based on a re-structuring of productive capital (fine and harris, 1976: 112). in the meantime, the crisis of a state-buttressed capitalism increasingly manifests itself in a crisis of state finance. the stage is thus set for a round of spending cuts, as the state attempts to 'rationalize' its spending and taxation priorities to suit the valorization needs of capital (o'connor, 1973). in the long run, the continued existence of 98 the welfare state, as it is currently known, is placed in serious jeopardy. the current crisis of capital, the fiscal crisis of the state and the growing impotence of keynesian economics all point in the final analysis to the dynamic, yet crisis-ridden course of capitalist development. state intervention, as the continuous and ongoing management of vital economic processes, emerged in a particular conjuncture in response to particular social and economic pressures. for a certain specified period, the efficacy of this intervention was clearly seen and hence unquestioned. yet, the crisis of the 1970' s demonstrates that a state-managed and state-regulated capitalism is still capitalism, still subject to the inner laws of motion that characterize capitalist production, and still subject to the barriers and limits that inhere in the form of capital itself. for this reason, the growing obsolescence of the keynesian prescription can best be seen as reflecting the transition of the capitalist mode of production to a higher phase of development which, in turn, will posit the form-specific functions of the state in a new and qualitatively different manner. whatever the change in state fort! and function, it must, nevertheless, remain consistent with the fom of capital itself and the immanent necessities posited by this form. all in all, the state must always face up to the need of securing the political and social domination of capital and, in doing so, secure the social exsitence of capital itself. conclusion : post-keynesianism ? in a wall street journal story, dated september 6, 1974, the following statement is attributed to robert gordon, then president of the american economic association: under keynes' influence, we've developed a theory of aggregate demand but haven't even started to develop a theory of aggregate supply (quoted in morris, 1974: 3) 99 in its own way, an admission like this one reflects a growing feeling that keynesian economics, and modern economic theory in general, docs not provide adequate insight into basic problems regarding capital accumulation and production, problems made more acute with the current economic crisis. current state intervention and emerging future trends in this area also reflect this. given the predicament of 'stagflation 1 , the atmosphere is ripe for the state to undertake new departures in setting the economy back on track, departures that push state intervention beyond the ambit of traditional keynesian practice. massive cutbacks in health, education and social services, inroads into the collective bargaining process and controls on wage increases all mark the arrival of a new phase of state intervention. the precise nature and direction of this new phase is hard to determine as of yet, but it will likely involve efforts to redistribute income away from working-class consumption, to co-opt organized labour into surrendering gains made over decades of struggle and to mobilize state funds in the attempt to remove the structural barriers to sustained capital accumulation. an image of the future that lies in store for the western world might be drawn from an article in the october, 1974 issue of business week . in discussing the problems and imperatives facing american capitalism, the author reaches the following matter-of-fact conclusion : some people will obviously have to do with less... indeed, cities and states, the home mortgage market, small business and the consumer will all get less than they want because the basic health of the u.s. is based on the basic health of its corporations and banks: the biggest borrowers and the biggest lenders (quoted in sweezy and magdoff, 197s: 2). 100 notes there are basic problems involved in simply equating state intcrventionism with keynesianism. as has been stated, much of what came to constitute the keynesian prescription in practice dates back at least as far as world war i and, in addition, certain aspects of modern state practice cannot be traced back to keynes. in spite of this, keynesianism does represent a general theorization of state intervention in advanced capitalism. it is with this general connexion in mind that this paper is based upon the admittedly rather loose and simplistic identification of the two entities. keynes (1965: 8-10) defines 'propensity to consume' as the ensemble of subjective and objective factors that guide the consumption habits and the decision whether to spend or save of individuals and classes. ian gough (1975) argues that it is wrong to see state spending as non-productive for this reason. 101 rfffrf.ncf.s alvater, elmar 1976 "reproduction conditions of the capital relation and the bourgeois state" bulletin of the conference of socialist economists , 5, (1). dobb, maurice 1977 theories of value and distribution since adam smith . london: cambridge. fine, ben and laurence harris 1976 "'state expenditure in advanced capitalism: a critique" new left review, 98. gough, ian 1975 "state expenditures in advanced capitalism" new left review, 92. horowitz, david 1973 the fate of midas and other essays san francisco: ramparts. itoh, makato 1978 "the inflational crisis of world capitalism" capital and class, 4. keynes , john maynard 1965 the general theory of employment, interest and money . new york: harbinger. mandel, ernest 1978 late capitalism london: verso. mattick, paul 1974 marx and keynes • london: merlin. morris , jacob 1974 "stagflation" monthly review, 26, (7). o'connor, james 1973 the fiscal crisis of the statenew york: st. martins. 102 sweezy, paul and harry magdoff 1975 "the economic crisis in historical perspective, part ii" monthly review 26, (11). tsuru, shigeto 1968 "keynes versus marx: the methodology of aggregates" in david horowitz ed. , marx and modern economics new york: monthly review. yaffe, david 1973 "the crisis of profitability" new left review, 80. 103 236 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism beyond the economic crisis: the crisis in trade unionism — sam gindin1 the earlier contributions to this collection might be summarized as warning us that that things are going to get a lot worse before they get… worse.2 this is not just a matter of the sustained attacks on the labour movement but as much a reflection of the crisis within labour. for some three decades now, labour has been stumbling on, unable to organizationally or ideologically rebut the attacks summarized as ‘neoliberalism’. though the great financial crisis held out the promise of finally exposing the right and its supporters and potentially opening the door to a union offensive and possible revival, the attacks on labour in actuality intensified and labour continues to have no coherent counter-response. as a prelude to directly addressing that impasse in labour, it is useful to begin with something that greg albo (2012) posed in his presentation to the conference forerunner to this collection: what is the larger historical significance of this particular crisis? though cyclical downturns are common in capitalism, structural crises are of relatively rare occurrence, generally separated by a generation or so (30 years or more).3 such crises reflect social and institutional barriers that block capitalism’s normal continuation, and the question for capital and its governments then becomes what, if anything, might take capitalism to a new stage that allows for the resumption of its drive. for example, the outcome of the crisis that began at the end of the 1960s and ran through the 1 sam gindin retired from the canadian auto workers’ union in 2000 after 27 years on staff, the last 16 as assistant to the president. from 2001 through 2011 he was the visiting packer chair in social justice at york university, toronto. 2 see also the presentations from the conference: the global economic crisis and canadian austerity: perception versus reality available at http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/ pages/view/video 3 it is common to identify three structural crises in capitalism before the latest one: the first occurring in the last quarter of the 19th century, the second introduced by the 1929 stock market crash and lasting through the 1930s, the third breaking out in the late 1960s and running through the 1970s. see panitch and gindin, 2011. beyond the economic crisis | 237 1970’s was first and foremost that the earlier strength of labour was broken. as well, finance was liberalized, globalization was accelerated, and the state was restructured – not weakened or withdrawn to the end of establishing more autonomy from popular pressures and therefore actually emerging stronger in terms of supporting private accumulation. the resolution of that crisis, in short, set the conditions and contradictions that frame the crisis we face today (panitch and gindin, 2012). four aspects of this present crisis seem especially significant. first, in spite of the domestic and international turmoil there has been remarkably little challenge to globalization and free trade. contrast this with the last time we had a crisis this deep, in the 1930’s, when protectionist sentiments were strong and common, and capitalism as an international system seemed threatened. yet today, no country has placed exiting global capitalism on the agenda.4 the issue, rather, is that with globalization taken for granted, how can crises, particularly the financial crises linked to the expansion of global capitalism, be contained (i.e. managed). this brings us to a second facet of the crisis. in spite of a general understanding that private bankers and other financial institutions were responsible for the crisis, the solution to the crisis is not to weaken but strengthen them and to develop the state capacities to contain – not end future volatility. we need to understand this not as a matter of stupidity or corruption (though both play a role!), but as a reflection of the structural importance of finance to capitalism as a whole. we often separate finance from the rest of the system and describe it as a speculative parasite (jim stanford (2012, in an otherwise valuable presentation, tended to do this as well). but if that were the case, we should have expected divisions within the capitalist class with the rest of capital, suffering in terms of stagnating markets, ready to join the attack on finance. instead, there has been remarkably little evidence of splits between financial capital and the rest. this reflects the extent to which finance and industry are in fact tightly integrated. it is not so much that large industrial corporations need daily credit since they have more profits and cash than they know what to do with but rather the importance of credit to mergers and restructuring, the need on the part of global corporations for specialized financial services to ease trade and limit exchange rate risks and other uncertainties, the discipline financial markets impose on workers, states, and capital itself to be true to the priorities of profits and private 4 even in greece, syriza (the leading left opposition group) has emphasized the need to modify, not transform, greece’s relationship to the international economy and has posed exit from the euro not as a goal, but as a reluctant option if the counter-productive austerity pressures continue. 238 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism capital accumulation, and in the case of the us its special access to the world’s savings. the contradiction lies in the fact that on the one hand all of capital would like finance to be less volatile and more orderly, but they don’t want to see it regulated to the point that they lose the advantages that global finance has brought them. a third aspect of the crisis is, as greg albo (2012) emphasized, the tendencies across countries towards a more authoritarian state. this has been most dramatic in europe where external institutions have placed ‘technical experts’ at the head of government to carry out ‘reforms’ but is also seen in the legislation essentially trying to outlaw protest in the student strike in quebec. this is part of a more general trend towards states gaining more autonomy from the electorate to do what’s necessary for capital accumulation. and it has especially emerged in regard to the fourth aspect, downsizing social services and attacking public sector unions, generally the last standing bastion of trade unionism. in this regard, the story of labour’s defeat doesn’t go back just to the 1970’s but to the immediate postwar period when the left inside and outside the labour movement was marginalized. in spite of that defeat, trade unionism was able to make gains, real gains, for a while. but that defeat of the left came with a loss of capacities critical to understanding, strategizing, and mobilizing. and when capitalism changed and now identified past labour gains as a barrier to continued progress, labour no longer had the capacity to resist. so the second defeat of labour, taking place through the 1980’s and 1990’s, shifted from that of a small but influential left to trade unionism as a whole, especially the private sector. today, capital is trying to consolidate and complete that defeat by going after the public sector and ensuring that it does not inspire any positive examples for private sector workers. a central aspect of this three decades long assault on the labour movement has been a profound lowering of expectations. the intensification of competition from the third world seems to have set boundaries on worker demands, even though most of our trade is still with the developed countries and most workers are now employed in private and public services, sectors not directly limited by trade. greater globalization seemed to place possible government responses beyond the reach of domestic politics, even though it was states that endorsed globalization (and can potentially also check it). the state-endorsed defeats workers suffered left many of them angry but still redefining what might be considered ‘success’. the world we criticized so strongly a short while ago was now looked back on with nostalgia. beyond the economic crisis | 239 herman rosenfeld (2012; this issue) captures this shift when he asks why responses that seemed so obvious in an earlier era are now so out of bounds (like rejecting a plant takeover at caterpillar in contrast to the takeover, with less provocation, in the early 1990s). this shift in what is possible in terms of both goals and tactics highlights the cultural change in the labour movement. talk to any worker and you don’t have to convince them that capitalism doesn’t work for them. they know that, but believe they just can’t do anything about it. confidence in resistance, let alone change, is at an all-time low. fatalism is now the dominant mood and the main barrier to fighting back. to some the stagnation of trade unions is often explained in terms of bureaucratization and the thin democracy characteristic of unions (even though relative to other institutions, unions democracy still compares very favorably). but as significant as such aspects are, they do not get to the core of the ‘union problem’. as steve tufts and mark thomas (2012) noted in terms of their discussion of populism, you can have a very militant and democratic movement but it can also end up being very particularistic (‘militant particularism’, in the phrase used by raymond williams (1989) and elaborated by david harvey (1996)). workers can, for example, demand militancy but also insist that their union concentrate entirely and narrowly on defending the workers that finance its operations and not only ignore the plight of other workers such as the poor or new immigrants and even join in the attacks on them. such sectionalism highlights the fact that though unions emerged out of the working class, they are not class organizations in the sense of representing the class as a whole. that sectionalism is directly tied to the issue of bureaucratization and limited democracy. if members see their unions as insurance agencies – instrumental organizations paid for by dues – they won’t be looking for more participation but only that they get the service ‘contracted for’. correspondingly, leaders don’t see much priority in developing and mobilizing the capacities of workers – never mind raising expectations and putting more pressure on themselves – and so look to developing only that level of democracy, tempered by ‘loyalty’, to achieve a level of gains that doesn’t undermine their leadership. there was a time when that narrow solidarity of unions didn’t hinder unions all that much; they made gains and those gains even spread to other workers and the community. but that era is over. the notion that workers can survive and defend past achievements, let alone make new gains, through just looking after their own with no larger understanding of the common attacks all workers face and their mutual dependence 240 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism on the rest of the working class, is now daily exposed. absent a class perspective unions can today neither defend their members nor come to grips with how to renew themselves. consider organizing. only a broader sense of building the class will lead to the commitment of resources and voluntary energy to unionize in the present hostile climate. moreover, making breakthroughs in the new sectors where the majority of workers are now employed is unlikely to occur without cooperation across unions. the present competition for union dues dollars blocks such cooperation and ends up undermining each union. it too can only come from recognizing that the issue isn’t the growth of any particular institution – canadian auto workers, united steel workers, canadian union of public employees or ontario public service employees union – but that of building the working class as a social force. and it is only when we start from the class perspective that other creative approaches, like bringing individual workers into a union culture whether or not they have a bargaining unit. 5 or consider bargaining. in the 2012 round of the canadian union of public employees (cupe) bargaining with the city of toronto, individual cupe locals bargained with the municipal state. it was obvious enough that the bargaining had ramifications for all cupe members and of course workers beyond cupe. yet there was no explicit acknowledgment that individual locals can’t win against the state and that coordination across the union – itself a step towards winning other workers and their communities over was paramount. a coordinated strategy might have put the library workers, the workers with the greatest support, first out of the gate. it might have then contemplated selective tactical strikes, escalating to mass mobilizations and eventually bringing in the rest of the public sector while also mobilizing the community around the services provided. the point is that the only way union renewal can happen in the public sector, is to recognize what workers are up against, the extent to which the state’s focus is on isolating them, that it is the state itself and not ‘an employer’ the union is fighting, and establish itself as the leader in the fight to defend and expand social services. this is not easy; it requires a transformation of everything about public sector unions. it is not a matter of simply passing strong resolutions and putting up expensive billboards. the public is – understandably too cynical to be moved by public relations alone. 5 the canadian auto workers and communications, energy and paperworkers union, in preparation for their merger, recently announced their enthusiasm for such an approach. see caw-cep, 2012 beyond the economic crisis | 241 rather, it means rethinking union strategic priorities, rethinking the role of staff and their subsequent training, and coming to see union members as potential organizers for moving the public and shifting research and education to that end. it means not just defensively insisting that the public sector is ‘good’ but also being at the forefront of criticizing its bureaucratization and waste through acting as whistleblowers actively defending the public. and it even means moving to place the level, quality and administration of social services on the bargaining table (in the last municipal strike, for example, might not the municipal workers have emerged more successful, with greater protection for their members, if their primary bargaining demand – the one they might strike for – was keeping garbage services public rather than handing them over to profit-hungry and service-poor multinational corporations?). finally, it means creatively addressing the contradiction that traditional strike tactics now isolate workers from the public while it is so crucial to win that public over: e.g. dumping garbage during strikes not in parks but on bay street to make the connection between austerity and finance; continuing bus service but not collecting fares; delivering, as cupw did in the 1990s, pension and welfare checks even though on strike.6 a class perspective is likewise central to union renewal in the private sector. here the fundamental issue revolves around jobs. the function of unions is to negotiate the sale of labour power yet the greatest concern of workers is something unions have little or no input into – the existence of jobs in the first place. unless unions can deal with workers’ prime concern, union renewal can’t happen and even the bargaining position of unions will be further eroded as workers, facing the alternative of indefinite unemployment or a very much inferior level of pay and benefits, end up vulnerable to making concessions in a vain attempt to protect their jobs.7 a number of things follow from any emphasis on seriously dealing with the jobs issue. toby sanger (2012; this issue) flagged one of them in noting that in not adequately reinvesting its profits in decent jobs, the private sector is openly admitting that it can’t provide decent jobs 6 for a discussion of such an alternative strike tactics, which at least set the stage for when traditional strikes become necessary, see hurley and gindin, 2012. 7 one particular concession that reflects the logic of thinking instrumentally and undermines even the internal solidarity in unions is passing concessions on to future workers by agreeing to lower wages for new hires (as recently occurred at the lear siegler plant in kitchener). this not only undercuts the union principle of equal pay for equal work but open the way for the next generation of workers using that ‘lesson’ to in turn betray retirees. and since the very first experience of the very workers on whom union revival will critically depend is to see unionism at its least solidaristic, it virtually guarantees its failure. 242 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism for everyone. jobs must therefore depend on an expanded public sector, including into spaces that were formerly seen as inherently private. that is, it’s not just a matter of keeping health care in the public domain and not outsourcing it, but also thinking in new ways about sectors like auto. for one thing, we can’t build new alliances if we’re calling for subsidies for gm and the rest of the industry while social services are being cut. moreover, those subsidies won’t, as we’ve seen deliver jobs because productivity in the auto industry keeps rising while the market is limited – and a push for far ‘more cars’ is also not a viable strategy given the already overwhelming traffic congestion and environmental concerns. on the other hand there is enormous productive capacity in all of those facilities and worker skills; they can make the widest range of things that we do need. what needs to be placed on the agenda, by unions above all, is the waste of closing them when they could be converted to producing socially useful goods, starting with the environment. taking the environmental crisis seriously means the entire material foundation of society will have to be changed: the transportation and communication infrastructure, the machinery and tools in every factory, the construction of homes and appliances, offices and equipment everything. this means explicitly talking about preserving our productive potential not gm and ford, planning instead of competition, asking about social utility not profit. we obviously can’t win this right now, but it poses the question of how we organize today so this becomes a real option down the road. as radical as this sounds it’s worth remembering that in the second world war, canada and the us demonstrated a astonishing capacity to convert facilities in a remarkably short time and then reconvert them again after the war. as fundamental as internal changes are to union renewal, this is only a step to changing the external environment facing workers. and in this regard, we can’t just lament the power of the financial system over our lives and occasional shale our fists at them. we need to question why, in an allegedly democratic society, they stand above us – profiting enormously in good times, blackmailing us to bail them out in bad, and always insisting that what is good for banks should frame public policy. if they are in fact to be treated as having the weight of essentially being ‘public utilities’, they should be taken over and become democratic public utilities. this is not just a matter of ideology; it is a practical issue. if we really want to convert industry, if we really want to defend the public sector, if we want to chart what kind of society we want to have, controlling finance is a precondition. otherwise, we’ll remain in the beyond the economic crisis | 243 trap of catering to them and being disciplined by them whether it’s in the workplace or in terms of government policy. here again, taking on such a fundamental part of the canadian power establishment is not something that will happen just because we assert its need. but unless we begin to talk about it now, educate around it and mobilize for it, it will always be out of reach. in criticizing the labour movement for its failure to change, it is vital to understand this as being as much a failure of the left itself; the crisis of labour and that of the left go hand in hand. there’s a strong case to be made that we will not see a renewal of the labour movement unless there’s also simultaneously a renewal of the left. it seems clear enough that in spite of some positive developments, the leadership of the trade union movement has neither the inclination nor capacity to radically transform their organizations while the membership is too fragmented and too overwhelmed to sustain anything but the occasional sporadic rebellion. for rank and file workers to do more will require the resources and support from a left with feet both inside and outside unions that can link workers across workplaces, clarify what workers face and why a class response is critical to what workers now face. what, more specifically, might be done? one initiative that came out of the crisis was the establishment of the greater toronto workers assembly. it was inspired by two realities. first, that the formation of a new socialist party was simply not on the agenda until a stronger labour base was laid. second, the fact that, as noted earlier, out of the last comparable crisis – the depression of the 1930s a new form of working class organization was born and this pointed to the challenge today. the craft unionism that dominated working class organization at that time was inadequate to what workers faced and in a remarkable act of working class creativity, industrial unionism emerged as a dynamic alternative. today we need to think just as honestly and creatively about whether unions in their present form are adequate. it’s not that unions are going to disappear; they will continue to soldier on and occasionally demonstrate their potential, but on their own unions are simply not enough to deal with what workers face. the greater toronto worker assembly was an attempt to think about a form of working class organization that could support union renewal but also act beyond unions.8 it was anti-capitalist, not a coalition but organization of individuals looking for another kind of politics that was class based. it defined class very broadly to include not just the minority of 8 see www.workersassembly.ca 244 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism workers who are unionized, but the unemployed, the poor, and lowwage non-union workers. and it included all the dimensions of our lives that reflect class outside of the workplace. one especially important goal of the assembly in terms of union renewal – one it remains a long way from achieving – was to establish networks of activists across workplaces. this might take the form of fight back committees in every local that are focused on educating their own members, establishing links to the community, and engaging in joint solidarity actions.9 the role of the assembly would be to facilitate the formation of such committees, contribute to organizing the crossworkplace educationals and training, hold forums where experiences could be shared and generally support the development of groups of activists who, among other things, would also fight to inject a class perspective into their unions (gindin, 2012). let me conclude with three observations. first, the argument that ‘there is no alternative’ (tina) is actually true in the sense that moderate options simply can’t stand up to what we today face in capitalism. options have been radicalized and we need to recognize and confidently assert is that the radical is now the only thing that’s practical. directly related to this, we now have to think bigger even to win small. even if we just hoped to defend what we have, the lesson of the past quarter century is clearly that tinkering around the edges or being modest will protect us. either we think more radically and bigger or things will continue to get worse. finally, what we face is an organizational barrier. if we understand the inactivity of workers as reflecting their fatalism, their sense that nothing can be done, then this can only be addressed by concretely demonstrating the potentials of organized collective action. workers aren’t inherently radical and they’re not inherently conservative; they adapt to the structured options they face. once they are convinced that organizations exist that hold out some confidence that struggle can change things, even if that will take time, workers will be there. it’s in this regard that the socialist left has failed over the last quarter-century, and it is this organizational challenge that identifies the principal current challenge for the left. 9 a group of locals in the airline industry in toronto (including locals from the international association of machinists and aerospace workers, the caw and cupe) have been working together with some other non-airline locals (particularly in the municipal sector) to support each other in conflicts, do joint educationals, and strategize. beyond the economic crisis | 245 references albo, g. 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(2011). capitalist crises and the crisis this time. in panitch, l., g. albo and v. chibber (eds.), the crisis this time, socialist register (p.120). london: merlin. panitch, l. and s. gindin. (2012). the making of global capitalism: the political economy of american empire. new york: verso. rosenfeld, h. (2012, march 23). cat closure: what have we lost? what can we learn? conference presentation. the global economic crisis and canada austerity, alternate routes, ryerson university. http://www. alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/pages/view/global%20economic%20 crisis%20%26%20canadian%20austerity sanger, t. (2012, march 23). public finance, pensions and p3’s. conference presentation. the global economic crisis and canada austerity, alternate routes, ryerson university. http://www.alternateroutes.ca/ index.php/ar/pages/view/global%20economic%20 crisis%20%26%20 canadian%20austerity stanford, j. (2012, march 23). canadian (non)exceptionalism: crisis, recovery, austerity. conference presentation. the global economic crisis and canada austerity, alternate routes, ryerson university. http://www. alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/pages/view/global%20economic%20 crisis%20%26%20canadian%20austerity thomas, m.p. and s. tufts. (2012, march 23). uneven worker power and the populism-austerity-labour nexus. conference presentation. the global economic crisis and canada austerity, alternate routes, ryerson university. http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/pages/view/ global%20economic%20 crisis%20%26%20canadian%20austerity williams, r. (1989). resources of hope. new york: verso. climate change and crisis | 215 climate change and crisis: in dialogue with simon dalby — jen wyre jen wrye1 (jw): since the economic collapse, spending on environmental programs has decreased around the globe. can you comment on the similarities and differences in such reductions between canada and the u.s. or eurozone? simon dalby2 (sd): in general environmental programs may have suffered but clearly european states remain much more concerned about environmental matters than at least the federal governments in both the u.s., given republican agendas, and canada, given the conservatives’ agenda. however, that said, other jurisdictions do have a very varied response. california’s climate change agenda is completely different from washington’s even if austerity is the order of the day there. if you count in such things as obama’s green jobs initiatives then things look rather different in the u.s.. europeans, and even ontario in the canadian federation, are working on initiatives that, while not traditional environmental regulations, are nonetheless important in terms of the larger climate change issue in particular. jw: how ideologically driven are cuts to environmental spending, canada’s abandonment of kyoto commitments, etc.? are the circumstances 1 jen wrye recently completed her ph.d. at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university. she now teaches in the humanities and social sciences department at north island college in courtenay, british columbia. 2 simon dalby holds the cigi chair in the political economy of climate change, and is professor of geography and environmental studies at wilfrid laurier university. his published research deals with climate change, political ecology, geopolitics, global security, environmental change, militarization and the spatial dimensions of governance. he is co-editor of rethinking geopolitics, the geopolitics reader, the journal geopolitics, and author of creating the second cold war, environmental security, and security and environmental change. 216 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism a reflection of the conservative government mainly or do you see these tendencies as part of broader transnational and neoliberal restructuring? sd: the canadian conservative government is particularly clear that its agenda is ideologically driven. yes, there is a certain structural dimension in the canadian political economy as resource extraction is a key part of the national economy. canada is also home, through both the toronto and vancouver stock exchanges, to many of the largest international mining companies. some of these companies are more concerned about their environmental records than the conservatives apparently are, and indeed if environmental standards are abandoned in canada, exporting may actually get more complicated given international standards on many things such things as food safety standards. abandoning kyoto is clearly ideologically driven, but in line with the anti-multilateralism of the conservatives, expressed in foreign minister john baird’s formulations of enlightened sovereignty quite as much as its anti-environmental agenda. in the so called stimulus package the federal government could have chosen to push hard on renewable energies, sensible public transit initiatives in canadian cities and other projects, and fund these by removing subsidies to the petroleum sector, but they ignored these opportunities to shift investment to build green projects. instead canada is portrayed as an energy superpower given its tar sands, although how much of this oil will make its way to international markets remains unclear given the difficulties with various pipeline projects. jw: can you highlight some of the environmental consequences to austerity we might expect in canada? for example, which communities might be impacted most? sd: if austerity is about reducing environmental reviews of numerous proposed mines, pipeline and other resource extraction “developments” then clearly communities close to such developments obviously are most likely to have to deal directly with the disruption of developments and subsequent habitat disruption and pollution issues. in terms of forgone green building initiatives and modernization of infrastructure then the effects are likely to be widespread. the big unknown in the next few years is of course how much of the reduction of federal activity will be taken up by the provinces. that depends on provincial politics in complicated ways. but clearly the gutting of federal environmental science programs and environmental reviews isn’t about austerity; that at least climate change and crisis | 217 is clearly an ideologically driven agenda to silence the production of information that might challenge the priority of promoting the resource extraction sector as the key to canadian prosperity. jw: there seem to be conflict between an austerity agenda that diminishes environmental spending on one hand, and the need, as the frequency and scale of environmental catastrophes increases, to prioritize the environment politically on the other. what types of responses might we anticipate to these events if state spending is retracting? sd: gradually it is dawning on policy makers in municipalities and provinces that the federal government can’t be relied on to help in ways that it used to. pretending that companies and contractors can step in to deal with floods or oil spills in the absence of resources and coordination from the federal government is a very dangerous way to conduct public policy. the neoliberal ideology that markets can provide and that government should have no role in many aspects of public life leads to the reduction of facilities and capabilities in ways that may imperil people in coming years. can municipalities and provinces agree to pool resources to compensate for the withdrawal of federal support? that remains to be seen, but as all the predictions of climate change make clear, extreme events are becoming more frequent. but some of the most important things that need to be done to prepare for what is coming are simple practical matters of sensible land use planning and building resilient emergency systems and infrastructure. if short-term market priorities continue to be the priority the prognosis isn’t good, especially if self-regulation in the construction sector leads to shoddy construction and bad planning decisions. marketizing risk in terms of catastrophe bonds, and relying on insurance for many things is logical if markets and adaptation are the policy priority. this leaves those without financial resources especially vulnerable when government programs are withdrawn. jw: the united nations anticipates that austerity will reduce environmental spending by up to $50 billion in the foreseeable future. what do you think this will mean for global human security, particularly in the global south? sd: this issue has to be handled very carefully given that some of the projects, such as community forestry projects funded by various 218 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism international development schemes, are dubious both in terms of their environmental and local community impacts. forestry plantations that are claimed to be carbon sinks are not always helpful to local communities and indeed one might argue that canceling some of these might actually be beneficial in many parts of the south. if the cuts affect urban infrastructure, flood prevention measures and such things then the security of many poor people are further imperiled. jw: how do you think ideas about a ‘depressed’ economy and austerity affect people’s opinions about environmental problems? does austerity shift public attention from environmental degradation and sustainability? for example, do we stop thinking in terms of reducing our dependency on non-renewable resources, curbing resource use, or funding green initiatives and more in terms of maintaining our current lifestyle as is? sd: constraints often have perverse consequences for the environment; reduced economic activity frequently reduces pollution and resource use. it may also prevent modernization projects that use cleaner technologies, meaning that old polluting technologies are used longer than might otherwise be the case. traditionally hard times have meant environmental matters slip down the list of political priorities; environment being seen as a matter of a luxury for affluent times. but the relationships are never that simple; and efficiency responses often reduce resource consumption and hence pollution. jw: which strategies might you expect to be most successful in resisting cuts to environmental investments? sd: in the canadian context electing tom mulcair as prime minister might seem to be the most obvious strategy! but clearly some of the ecological modernization arguments are important. efficiency matters in things like heating bills and electricity consumption for schools, hospitals and numerous parts of the public sector. conservation in such matters helps in dealing with controlling costs in all aspects of economic activity. what seems to be happening across the globe is that numerous institutions are starting to think much more carefully about their fuel use in terms of travel budgets and the running costs of factories, housing and numerous other things. here in fact neo-liberal mantras about efficiency do make environmental sense. but austerity will no doubt affect new innovative investments that might be cleaner alternatives to existing systems. climate change and crisis | 219 the key to all this remains the ability of the political left to articulate a clear vision of a more just future that is also one that uses less resources than the production systems of the past. in times of austerity unions are often politically boxed into fighting to protect existing jobs, even in “dirty” industries rather than trying to articulate a larger agenda of green jobs and public investments. this is what many green parties have tried to promote, but often ended up too close to the market ideologies of neo-liberalism, and too focused on the narrow technicalities of environment to produce a convincing alternative narrative that can challenge the ideologies of neoliberalism combined by the re-articulation of citizenship in terms of consumption and “life-style”. challenging this discourse of “entitlement” remains a key ideological task for those who think that a more just and less destructive mode of political economy is both necessary and possible. 131 "class analysis and technological determinism" ken campbell the role of technology and its interaction with other elements of social structure has been one of the least examined questions in social theory. as gordon (1976:35) has recently pointed out, there is a strong streak of technological determirism in both non-marxist and orthodox marxist literature. but, for numerous reasons, the charge of 'technological' or 'economic determinism" has been levelled far more commonly at marxist theory. rarely does one encounter an equivalent assessment of weberian theory, although it can be shown* that the weberian literature is heavily imbued with technological determinist assumptions. in large part, the assumptions of technological determinism which underly the weberian view have been obscured by the emphasis which weber and later weberian writers place on subjective and non-economi c factors in social life. it has generally been assumed that this emphasis in some way contradicts the assumptions of a technological determinist view. in fact, this is not the case. technological determinism is not a theory that defines the immediate motives of men as economic; indeed, it implies no psychological theory at all. rather, it assumes that technological and scientific progress exert a determining influence over social institutions, that technological development determines the division of labour, and that social development can best be understood in terms of technological advance. more concretely, it assumes that the modern organization of work — the division of labour within industry, the existence of various levels of skilled labour and th •the argument of this paper has been compressed from a much more lengthy review of the marxist and weberian concept of class and the division of labour. if its arguments appear assertive, rather than demons tat ivc , this — at least in p^rt— is due to the limitations of the present oresentati"' 132 growth of administrative hierarchies — are determined by the exigencies of advancing technique, i.e., by the technical requirements of modern industrial production. as a number of writers have observed, weber's views on class and the division of labour are heavily imbued with the assumptions of technological determinism (see johnson, 1976:5-8; also navarro, 1976:34). many features of social organization (the growth of bureaucracy, for example) were viewed by weber as the product of technological development and the technical demands of an industrial economy.! the concept of 'legal-rational' authority, around which weber's views on bureaucracy revolve, is a typification of the type of normative (value) structure presumably imposed by the technical imperatives of expanding technique. this concept expresses all that is essential to the weberian tradition: the view that social development is a process of "cumulative technological rationalization" (see gerth and mills', 1967:51). according to this principle, history can be viewed as the gradual, if uneven, emergence of social forms corresponding to an increasingly complex technique and its requirements. recent theoretical works within the weberian tradition remain completely wedded to this technological de termini st outlook. two recent, and popular works, frank parkin's class inequality and political order (1972) and anthony giddens' the class structure of the advanced societies (1973) exemplify the reliance upon technological determinist assumptions which characterizes much of modern sociology. both these writers address themselves directly to class inequality in capitalist societies, yet fail to adequately conceptualize their subject matter precisely because they accept the division of labour as (technologically) given. 1. according to weber, bureaucracy can be viewed as a technica 1 requirement of complex organization, i.e., it is technologically determined. "the decisive reason for the advance of bureaucratic organization has always been its purely technical superiority over any other form of organization" (1968:973) 133 on an immediate level, this is evident in the inability of parkin and giddens to move beyond a description of immediate market processes in their attempt to account for class inequality. class differences, according to these authors, arise from differences in skills, education, and expertise and the mannner in which these potential resourses are actualized by the market. parkin argues that differences in class position (which he defines, after weber, as *\narket position") are determined by the skills and knowledge necessary for performing different occupational roles. marketable expertise is the single most important determinant of occupational reward. . . . the greater the skills or knowledge commanded by an occupation, the greater is its relative scarcity in the market place (1972:21) similarly, for giddens, class differences derive from differences in skill and education ( conceptualized as different "market capacities") .... possession of recognized 'skills' — including educational qualifications — is the major factor influencing market capacity. (1973:103) parkin and giddens thus offer an "explanation" of class differences which focuses upon the occupational ly relevant characteristics (skills, education, expertise, etc) of class agents. the suggestion that class differences (i.e., differences in market position) are determined by differences in skill and education level is singularly uninstructive as an explanation of class inequality the attempt to explain class differences in terms of differences in skills and education merely pushes the need for explanation one step further back. if class di f ference s are determined by differences in skill and education, what (one must ask) are the factors that determine differences in skill level? the existence of differentially skilled labour-power is hardly something that can be taken for granted in class analysis, especially when these differences are thought to account for class inequality. differences in skill are not the "givens" around which the class structure is built; these differences broadly correspond to positions in the social division of labour, the determining conditions of which must themselves be theorized . concretely, it is necessary to ask what are the determinants of the modern division of labour which requires differentially qualified labour-power. the failure of parkin and giddens to theorize the problem at this level (i.e., to relate skills to specific positions within production and to analyze the development and inter-relation of thes -» positions ) is readily explained by the technological determinist outlook which informs their treatmentss giddens, in fact, is reasonably clear on this point. the division of labour and the in industry, structure of "paratechnical relations"a he argues, corresponds to , the level of industrial development; under these conditions a "wholesale reorganization" of the division of labour is quite impossible. in an argument not fundamentally different from that earlier advanced by dahrendorf (19 5 9:36-41), giddens charges marx with failing to recognize that many of the features of the capitalist division of labour are, in fact, features of industrialism per se , not a product of antagonistic relations of production (p . 136 ),_this is another way of saying that the modern division of labour is technologically determined, and that marx erred in not recognizing this, 135 parkin is far less direct in his treatment of these questions. like giddens, he is critical of so-called "technocratic" and "convergence" writers who assume a direct and inevi table correspondence between the level of technological development and social structure. he argues that "rewards" within the occupational structure and access (mobility) within the class structure are variable i.e., not technologically determined ( p. 140-159). yet, as a criticism of technocratic writers, this argument remains weak, for it fails, in any way, to question the theoretical foundation of technocratic theory: a technological determinist explanation of the division of labour . insofar as it accepts the existing division of labour and corresponding skill differentials as given, parkin's argument implicitly falls back upon a technological determinist explanation of these phenomena. is the division of labour in capitalist societies a product of the technical exigencies of large scale industrial production? can the existing pattern of "occupational differentiation" be taken as a given in class analysis, as neo-weberian argument suggests? these questions, which are central to class analysis, have been (uncritically) answered in the affirmative by the majority of nonmarxist sociologists. celebrants of the technocratic thesis of "post-industrialism", such as bell, kerr, inkeles and etzioni (to name only a few), not only accept this technological determinism, they relish in its implications. although they remain critical of some of the more egregious conclusions drawn by 'post-industrialist' theorists, progressive weberian writers such as giddens and parkin remain captive to the technological determinism which underlies the 'post-industrialist' view. this is a legacy of weber that is not easily shaken off. 136 in contrast, recent marxist writers have tended to take a more critical view of the relationship between technology and social •tructure. herbert gintis (1976:37), for example, writes of the "dynamic interaction" between technology and social relations — a view quite removed from the economic and technological determinism commonly ascribed to marxist writers. in gintis* view, the division of labour in capitalist society is not technologically determined; rather, it is the product of an interlacing set of management priorities designed to increase worker productivity while structuring the workplace in a manner consistent with capitalist relations of production. braverman, in labor and monopoly capitalism (1974), has tackled the relationship of technology and the division of labour in more depth. braverman has argued that while the proliferation of technical operations within production is determined by the level of technological development, the fragmentation of these operations (i.e., their assignment to different workers) is socially determined* determined, more specifically, by capital's interest in maximizing the productive output of the labour-power it employs. by dissociating the labour process into a series of fractional operations, capital not only gains greater control over the fragmented labour process, it is, also, able to reduce the overall wage bill. "the labour capable of performing the process may be purchased more cheaply as dissociated elements than as a capacity integrated into a single worker" (p. 81). the fragmentation and rou t in iza tion of tasks which characterize the modern organization of work are thus explained in terns of capital's domination over the labour process, not the inexorable demands of technique. 137 braverman's work offers a vivid contrast to the descriptive and ahistorical account of class inequality presented by parkin and giddens. whereas these weberiaft writers provide an immediate description of stratification processes based on skill and education differences, braverman provides an historical analysis of changes in the division of labour which are thought to determine the extended reproduction of differentially skilled labour-power. braverman's analysis thus offers an explanation of the sourse of skill and education differences which enter neo-weberian analyses as "givens". in this connection, he argues that the dissociation of the labour process in the large scale industrial enterprise involves a gradual destruction of general skills, and the creation of a large category of unskilled manual labour alongside a category of technical and scientific specialists who monopolize knowledge of the labour process. this division of labour has all the appearances of a technically ordained specialization; yet it expresses, above all else, the separation of the immediate producers from control over production, and their consequent inability to develop an alternative division of labour. ( 'see also poulantzas, 1975, for whom the division between manual and mental labour represents a condition of ideological domination of the working class; also, gorz, 1972) these changes wrought by capital in the labour process are thought to be responsible for the transformation of the occupational structure over the past century. whereas in craft production each worker is a "repository of human technique for the labour process of that branch" (p. 109), the dissociation of the labour process creates new categories of workers who perform work which is largely mental (p. 109, 239). braverman depicts this transformation in terms 138 of a separation between the process of execution and conception in production: the novelty of this development during the past century lies not in -f.he separate existence of hand and brain, conception a riji execution, but the rigor with which they are divided from one another, and then increasingly subdivided, so that conception is concentrated insofar as possible, in ever more limited groups within management or closely associated with it (p. 125) for braverman, the separation of conception from execution, and the reduction of all labour to increasingly fragmented elemental tasks is a product of social relations of production, not of technica l exigency. experiments conducted on a limited scale, such as those at electronics and automotive plants, have already demonstrated that productivity is not tied to any particular form of work organization. indeed, as gordon (1976:22) >. has pointed out, there appears to be no theoretical reason why a number of alternative organizational forms might not yield equivalent productivities. why then does industrial organization remain tied to the assembly-line model? what accounts for the division of labour as we now know it, in the factory and in society? weberian theorists implicitly assume that, at least in broad outline, the division of labour is technologically determined. the general explanation offered by marxist writers is that the division of labour is determined by the social relations of production, specifically, capital's interest in increased productivity and in maintaining the authoritarian and hierarchial structure of th'e enterprise. (braverman, 1974; carchedi, 1975; gintis, 1976; gor don , 1976 ) . job fragmentation and the separation of manual and mental labour, execution from conception, are related to political and ideological relations of production. — not merely quantitative technical efficiencies. technical imperatives 139 remain important, but the way these imperatives are translated into a detailed division of labour is determined by those who control industrial production, aot the "industrial system" itself quite clearly, it is impossible to establish the precise relationship between technology and social relations at the theoretical level. this demands a concrete study of the division of labour and the specific influences which determine its development. technological determinist assumptions have long dominated theoretical thinking in this area; these assumptions are firmly imbedded in the dominant ideology where they serve to legitimize existing social relations. serious questioning of these assumptions promises to bring sociology closer to the potential ities for overcoming class inequality — potentialities that, to date, have been obscured by determinist ideologies. uk) references braverman, harry labor and monopoly capitalism , new york 1974 perhaps the most important book on the development of the division of division available . carchedi, g "on the economic identification of the new middle class", 1975 science and society , london a useful, if somewhat laboured, discussion of the middle class written from a marxist perspective. dahrendorf, ralf class and class conflict in industrial society , 1959 stanford university press a well argued refutation of the marxist theory of class; widely recognized as such gerth, h.h. and c.wright mills (ed) introduction to from max weber : 1967 essays in sociology , new york giddens, anthony the class structure of the advanced countries , 1973 london, this work is a sophisticated wcberian synthesis of the major themes in the stratification literature . gintis, herbert "the nature of labor exchange and the theory of 1976 capitalist production" review of radical political economi s ts , vol 8, no. 2, an interesting and very readable marxist view of the internal structure of the capitalist firm. gintis considers a number of important sociological questions, including sexual and racial stratification. gorz, andre "technical intelligence and the capital ist division of 1972 labour", teleos , vol 12 may usefully be read alongside braverman' s more detailed study. gordon, david m. "capitalist efficiency and socialist efficiency" 1976 monthly review , vol 28, no 3 a general theoretical consideration of the limitations of the capitalist firm to introduce alternative technologies. very readable, regretably short. johnson, terrence, "professions, class and the state", university of leicester (mimeo) a path-finding marxist analysis of the professions. hopefully soon to appear in print. navarro, vicente "the fetishism of industrialism: a critique of ivan 1976 illlch", monthly review , vol 28, no 5 only tangentially related to the present discussion. offers a critique of counterins ti tut lonal is ts . parkin, frank class inequality and political order , london 1972 a very readable wcberian survey of the stratification literature. the central line of argument has been considerably modified in the author's later work . 141 poulantzas, nicos classes in contemporary capitalism , london 1975 a theoretical re-working of the marxist view of class. quite readable, and brilliantly presented weber, max economy and society , new york 1968 commentary : imaginaries and realities, utopia and dystopia | 265 commentary imaginaries and realities, utopia and dystopia garry potter is associate professor of sociology at wilfred laurier university (waterloo, ontario, canada) . he is author of the bet: truth in science, literature and everyday knowledges, the philosophy of social science: new perspectives, and co-edited (with jose lopez) after postmodernism . more recently he wrote and published dystopia: what is to be done? and made a documentary film of the same title . the film can be viewed for free and downloaded for educational purposes from the website www .dystopiafilm .com . introduction: contradictions of hope and despair the dystopia thesis is an analysis of humanity’s most serious problems of the present and a prediction of them being exacerbated and added to in the near future. i have presented this thesis in some detail in my 2010 book dystopia: what is to be done? i also made a documentary film of the same name that is available for free viewing (http://www. dystopiafilm.com). what i intend to do here, is to give a summarised flavour of the overall argument presented in the book and film, but also add some reflections upon the utopian dreams of both right and left, and more importantly consider the left’s continued failure to construct a left vision that captures ordinary people’s imagination and enthusiasm. the dystopia thesis propounds an argument that the structural features of the world political economy are such as to make the problems we collectively face impossible to solve. the dystopia thesis is grounded in present day fact and highly probabilistic trajectories and outcomes as regards the future. the logic and empirical content of the dystopia thesis concludes a near certain hopelessness with respect to avoiding a future of unimaginable horror and suffering. causally inter-connected, mutually enhancing catastrophes, are around the corner . . . and there is nothing we can do to prevent them yet at the same time, the dystopia thesis was founded on the contradiction of pessimistic assessment and sincere hope. if one believed absolutely in the hopelessness of any effort to avert catastrophe what would be the point in articulating the argument? 266 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times utopia and dystopia are bound up together in complex ways. both have their causal effects of interpenetration of imaginaries and realities. for example, both liberal and socialist utopias form a part of contemporary dystopian reality, as ideological barriers to an accurate understanding of both the present and future possibilities. the apocalyptic media visions of life after the bomb . . . or virus or asteroid strike etc. etc., also contribute to a lack of understanding of what is now and what might come to pass in the near future. these imaginaries are part of our dystopian reality because they serve to deceive and mystify us with regard to real problems. i will begin by summarising the dystopia thesis, giving particular attention to its knowledge, power and ideology component: the theory of structural mystification. i will then reflect upon some of the ways both utopian and dystopian fictions feed into this mystification. finally, i shall embrace the dystopia thesis’s own contradictions (that is to say my own) and discuss how a vision of hope is the only hope we have, how the dystopia thesis ultimately calls for a new marxist imaginary, a realistically feasible, yet nonetheless inspiring, utopian vision to sustain us in our struggles. this last component of this piece is perhaps too big to be anything other than a preliminary reflection here. it is a task i have been wrestling with ever since i began my work upon the dystopia thesis. the question of what is to be done was not part of my original project because quite frankly i only had the vaguest of vague ideas about what should be done. i was also, on some levels, persuaded that there was nothing to be done. i had only an instinct that sounding the alarm, as it were, might contribute to mitigating the horrors to come. however, as the project progressed it became clear that i simply could not present the dystopian vision and argument without engaging with potential strategies for dealing with the problems with respect to many of the dystopia thesis’s individual components, many people have provided far gloomier assessments than i. i tended to be rather cautious with predictions of catastrophe and apocalypse. but the cumulative emotional effect of seeing put together as a causally inter-linked conclusion, all the worst environmental problems facing humankind, along with all the most extreme suffering of poverty and disease, appeared to be too much for most of the people i consulted with. they told me that some strategies for the amelioration of crises had to at least be entertained, along with the analysis of their cause. some balance of hope had to be given along with analysis of calamity commentary : imaginaries and realities, utopia and dystopia | 267 however, my reflections upon the question of what is to be done began with critique. the analysis was of the inadequacies of many of the popular propounded solutions to the problems that were most serious. for example, the technocratic solutions to the world’s food or transport problems may have some value but miss the main point: the problems are most significantly political-economic problems rather than technological. for another example, charity may mitigate a small amount of suffering in the immediate present but cannot even begin to address the ocean of pain deriving from the systematically produced extremes of world poverty finally, i realized that utopian thinking, the right kind of utopian thinking that is, is actually a necessary counter-point to the dystopia thesis. it is a great irony that left-wing analysis, more specifically marxist analysis, is everywhere being proven correct and yet is not attended to. capitalism is in crisis on many fronts. there are rumblings of resistance and revolution in many parts of the world. and yet in the first world, most particularly in the american “heart of the beast”, where some of the contradictions of wealth and poverty are most extreme, the left has never been weaker . my conclusion with respect to this, is that while intellectual analysis of the problems has never been as acute, there still lacks an inspiring vision of a better world that is realistic enough for masses of people to see beyond the inertia of their present day to day living. reflection upon this situation shall be the conclusion of the article. the dystopia thesis the first argument of the dystopia thesis is that the future of misery and crisis that is dystopia is already here. perhaps a billion people live lives of such dreadful daily experience as to reduce any concerns about the future to the most immediate. they are starving or close to starving. they are watching their children being sold into the slavery of bonded labour or prostitution. they are dying of malaria or plague or tuberculosis or aids or any number of diseases. they live in a mundane poverty-stricken everyday life. or worse, they are incarcerated and perhaps are being tortured this very second. the list can go on and on through the drama of war and refugees, to the boredom and unpleasantness of under-paid, soul-destroying employment or unemployment. the future is already here for a billion people, if the future is dystopia the dystopia thesis’s predictions of the future are mainly simple probabilistic extensions of present problems being exacerbated. we are just beginning to see the effects of global warming but we can well 268 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times imagine increased future problems of flooding and hurricanes. and global warming is merely the most dramatic of the wide variety of environmental problems facing us. many of these link up with issues of resource shortages and energy. so yes, the dystopia thesis is a very simple argument in many respects: things that are bad now and are going to get worse however, entirely new problems are coming as well. peak oil will add to existing inequality, suffering, terrorism and warfare. but even more importantly, at some point, it will make our existing socio-political economic system impossible to maintain. there will be a post-carbon economy. this is coming whatever we do. but the dystopia thesis predicts an excruciatingly painful transition to this post-carbon future the dystopia thesis is also a causal analysis. on the one hand, it takes note of the immense complexity of inter-linkages of problems and causality. it observes the positive feedback loops and their snowballing effects. on the other hand, however, it posits a broad context of common structural causality. the world capitalist system possesses structural features that ensures extreme inequality and thus poverty. poverty is not only an effect that is suffered but is in turn a cause of many, many other problems. in this regard, the dystopia thesis is essentially marxist. it thus sees inequality, unemployment and poverty as features of the world political economy that are not contingent but rather are fundamental to the system unemployment rates (in any country), for example, may rise or fall; that much is contingent upon a variety of factors; but whether there is to be unemployment or not at all, that is not a variable. some level of unemployment is functionally necessary to the system. this is among the reasons why the dystopia thesis rejects reformism as a potential solution to the avoidance of dystopia the world capitalist system is just that, a world system1. globalization is not something new; it is an on-going developing process that emerged simultaneously with the birth of capitalism. the development of the richer countries was dependent upon the lack of development in the poorer. development and underdevelopment evolved together. the wealth of the rich, whether it be people or nations, is dependent upon the lack thereof by the poor the particularities of recent global economic change and the neo-liberal economic ideologies and policies that have driven them have had many dire consequences of course. but neo-liberalism per 1  i am indebted for the world systems theory here to immanual wallerstein and andre gunder frank. commentary : imaginaries and realities, utopia and dystopia | 269 se is not the real problem. capitalism is the real problem. a return to keynesian economic policies may well save capitalism from some of its contemporary crises . . . but it will not save us from dystopia2. it will not save the world; inequality will be maintained; the suffering of that inequality will be maintained; environmental destruction will continue unabated. in addition to a structural logic of profit which necessitates inequality, the world capitalist system has a structurally determined time-frame for decision and action. it has a temporal logic, which ensures that potentially beneficial decisions and actions of collective pain avoidance and responsible environmental stewardship will come too late. the peak oil problem can be used to clearly illustrate this. as we all know, the problem of peak oil is not that we will run out of oil eventually. rather it is that after the capacity for world production peaks, demand will not slacken but continue its ever increasing pressure. prices will dramatically rise to a point whereby the present world system of trade and commerce, of energy and transport, of agriculture and consumption, simply will not be able to continue without drastic change. we will move into what people are beginning to call a post-carbon world. the dystopian point with respect to the peak oil problem is not that a post-carbon world is necessarily a future to be feared. no, the problem, the future to be feared, is the transition to it. we could imagine (and people have, which we will discuss in a moment) a post-carbon economy and world as actually a good thing in many ways. what world capitalism will ensure is that the sensible planning in advance that would enable a smooth painless major transition of economy and lifestyle will not occur. capitalism’s political-economic temporal logic forbids it. there is a further key factor in capitalism which keeps our most serious problems from being effectively engaged with. this is the problem of power and knowledge and ideology. structural mystification structural mystification is the negative side of the dialectical contradiction found in the institutional production of knowledge. structural mystification exists as a counterpart to the real knowledge production and dissemination practices of the media, the education system and all other institutions fundamentally concerned with the production and dissemination of knowledge 2  see the excellent critique of the return to keynesian economics by richard wolff (2011). 270 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times the relationship between power and knowledge has been theorized in innumerable ways. ideology has also been theorized from many conflicting, and frequently confusing, perspectives. the key points of the theory of structural mystification, however, are clear and relatively simple3. power sometimes corrupts the production and dissemination of knowledge. but it is not as though the production of knowledge could take place without the influence of power relations. no, institutional power relations also facilitate the production and dissemination of knowledge. this is why the relationship between power and knowledge is dialectical. knowledge production (and dissemination) most significantly takes place within institutions. the institutions all have within them a dialectical contradiction for example, the university generally is fundamentally concerned with the production and dissemination of knowledge. this is not a contingent feature but essential to the very nature of what a university is. that that is not all the institution is, does not change this fact. knowledge production is fundamental in a way that having a football team is not (however important that may be for some universities). but also fundamental to the very nature of a university, is the dialectical opposite to knowledge production and dissemination: the obfuscation of the production of knowledge and the restriction and sometimes outright prevention of the dissemination of knowledge. while all university faculty would be forced to acknowledge that this sometimes occurs, few are aware that it is not a contingent feature the university, amongst other things, is a complex structural hierarchy of power relations. further, it is connected to the broader hierarchies and complexities of the power relations of the world . . . of the world capitalist system. this is not any simple matter of conspiracy or propaganda or intentional distortion. rather the production and dissemination of knowledge takes place at the nexus of many different levels of conflict there is frequently a conflict between the institution and the government in terms of priorities of spending on research and pedagogy, and in terms of academic freedom of speech and critique and dissent. there is an ongoing conflict between the priorities of the board of governors and the university senate. there is a constant scrambling over scarce resources between faculties and departments. there is genuine intellectual debate and politically coerced loyalties and acts of bad faith. there is not only conflict between individuals but conflict within individuals. 3  for a more complete account see potter, 2010c. commentary : imaginaries and realities, utopia and dystopia | 271 there is a struggle to “do the right thing” and a struggle to know what that is. it is both a moral and an intellectual struggle . . . and one that takes place very often within a mystifying fog . . . a mystifying fog that they both suffer and frequently help to construct. it is not for nothing that the word “academic” also has a pejorative sense to it. and as pierre bourdieu (1988, p. 207) puts it, academics are often “mystified mystifiers” the first ideological victims of the operations of power and classification they perform. structural mystification is also structurally embedded within science itself. yes, even that tremendous tool for acquiring information and potential understanding of so many things is frequently corrupted through its practical and ideological contextualization within the wider political economy. and yet science on another level, is absolutely our only hope of coming to terms with the crises of dystopia. there is a plethora of examples to choose from to make these points about science here. but i will briefly mention the “hydrogen highway” and hydrogen automobile. the hydrogen car (in a variety of formats) is often propounded by politicians and auto makers as the future solution to the problems of global warming and peak oil. it doesn’t use oil and it doesn’t pollute (directly). there is not space in this article to go into the practical limitations of this technology in relation to the political economy of it. these have been thoroughly explored elsewhere (see for example demirbas, 2009, romm, 2005, and the unattributed article on the alternative energies website). no, the major importance of the hydrogen “solution” is mystificatory. its practical realization is always far enough in the future as to necessitate a continuance of the gasoline vehicle status quo. the utopian promise of the idea is sufficient though, to deflect political action toward any more immediately viable technological solutions knowledge production and dissemination, including scientific knowledge production and dissemination, is profoundly affected by politics . . . and politics is profoundly affected by knowledge . . . and the lack of it. the problems of dystopia, whether global poverty or global warming, require radical change. radical change requires significant mass-scale collective political will. political will requires knowledge. the knowledge gets produced, as does its mystifying ideological counter-arguments and “facts”. the knowledge gets distributed . . . on a restricted scale. the knowledge gets produced and receives a restricted dissemination but the ideological counter-points are trumpeted and/or subtly and insidiously whispered in the media, or taught in the schools or even at home 272 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times among the most potent elements of dystopia with respect to knowledge and ideology are the utopian visions that grab the collective imagination. the utopian imaginaries are part and parcel of our dystopian reality. the utopian dream of capitalist reform slavoj zizek quotes john caputo (caputo and vattimo, 2009, p. 124-125) to make a point about utopian thinking concerning the possibilities of reforming the capitalist system: i would be perfectly happy if the far left politicians in the united states were able to reform the system by providing universal health care, effectively redistributing wealth more equitably with a revised irs code, effectively restricting campaign financing, enfranchising all voters, treating migrant workers humanely, and effecting multilateral foreign policy that would integrate american power within the international community etc., i.e., intervene upon capitalism by means of serious and far-reaching reforms. . . if after doing all that badiou and zizek complained that some monster called capital still stalks us, i would be inclined to greet that monster with a yawn. zizek (2009, p. 79) does not dispute whether such reforms would make for a better world, or even if we might be better able to remain within the system if such far reaching reforms were possible. instead he argues that: the problem lies with the “utopian premise” that it is possible to achieve all that within the coordinates of global capitalism. what if the particular malfunctionings of capitalism enumerated by caputo are not merely accidental disturbances but are rather structurally necessary? just to be completely clear, i will answer zizek’s rhetorical question. the “malfunctionings” are not such at all; the ill treatment of migrant workers, for example, is certainly a moral shame, but it is not because of an accidental flaw in the system. no, it and the rest enumerated by caputo, are structurally necessary to the system. utopian visions and dystopian realities vision. this is what we would like to see in our political leaders. in america, and elsewhere as well of course, but especially in america, vision is in short supply. so we are given utopian fiction. but it is often presented not as a vision of the future but as a pious hope for the present, through the idealized glasses of memory. it was not president bush or clinton or reagan that gave us this poetized vision, a: commentary : imaginaries and realities, utopia and dystopia | 273 . . . reminder of the time when two powerful nations challenged each other and then boldly raced into outer space. what would be the next thing to challenge us, that makes us go farther and work harder? you know when smallpox was eradicated? it was considered the single greatest humanitarian achievement of the century. surely we can do it again. as we did in a time when our eyes looked towards the heavens and with outstretched fingers, we touched the face of god. yes, poetic indeed, but it was president bartlett of the west wing (episode 5, 1999), not obama, that articulated this vision of past and future. its resonance, of course, is with kennedy and the beginnings of the “space race”. but along with kennedy’s perceived martyrdom (to what exactly?, i often wonder) goes a collective amnesia of the real fear of nuclear holocaust and a total ignorance of what was really going on with the cuban missile crisis. forgotten also, is the bay of pigs; and most of all it is forgotten that it was with kennedy that the american involvement in vietnam began the eradication of smallpox was undoubtedly a truly wonderful achievement. bartlett says: “surely we can do it again”. and of course this should be true. but this utopian moral imperative, stands alongside the historical reality of the tragic failure to eradicate malaria. in 1958, the worldwide effort to eradicate malaria began in earnest. it was led by paul russell from harvard’s school of public health. the united states congress directly allocated $23 million a year towards the battle. it also provided 90 percent of the world health organization’s anti-malaria budget and a significant proportion of the budgets of the pan-american health organization and unicef (united nations children’s education foundation). this constituted a financial commitment in the order of billions in today’s dollars. it was a serious commitment to eradicate a serious collective human problem. but it also was an effort with a definite time limit to it. paul russell in his international development advisory board report emphasized the time line of malaria eradication: four years of ddt spraying and four years of monitoring that there are three consecutive years of no mosquito transmission in an area. he also emphasized the dangers of failing to complete the program of eradication: ddt resistance, renewed disease pandemics and a virtual economic impossibility of having another attempt in the future be successful. a four-year commitment was made, and four years of funding was what was given. four years were nearly enough. in 1955, sri lanka had a million cases of malaria. in 1963, it had only eighteen. 274 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times only another two or three years of concerted effort and financial commitment would have given the world the same success with malaria as it had had with smallpox. but the funding was cut off4. the result, of course, was not merely the failure to eradicate something that was eradicable. the result was to make the problem worse, much worse. the insects developed resistance to ddt and other pesticides. the malarial parasites developed resistances to quinine, chloroquine and other drugs. most importantly, in areas where the mosquitoes and disease would almost certainly make a comeback, many millions of people now lacked all resistance to the disease. by cutting off funding to the eradication efforts, congress and the other “money people” were condemning millions of people to death in the future. such is the relationship between the time frame for capitalist political economic planning and future calamity. such is the relation between eloquent vision and a sad reality. but if the harsh reality stands in contrast to utopian vision there is something rather pathetic about the vision as well. people often imagine utopia as something very like small town america in the fifties. the dark side of this hope was portrayed nicely in the film pleasantville (ross, 1998). but as good as this film was, it cannot stand in comparison to the real life utopian monument to this vision of the world. i’m speaking here of the disney-built small town celebration near disney world in florida. it looks like main street usa in disney land but it is a real town that people live and work in. as someone once put it “it just seems to be the perfect little town back in a nicer time. except it feels creepy”.5 what is to be done? the answers to the question of what is to be done which i gave in my book and film were all fairly obvious. they could be fundamentally articulated in a number of traditional leftist slogans: “the people (the left, the workers) united will never be defeated”, “union!”, “one solution, revolution” “occupy, resist, produce” and so on. i advocated boycotts and protests and taking it to the street. i criticized reformist compromise and charitable band-aids. in short, i advocated what the radical left has advocated for years. that these activities and slogans are obvious does not diminish their importance nor their power to effect change (witness tunisia 4  i am indebted to laurie garret’s excellent (1995, p. 48-52) account for all the factual information of this history. 5  name withheld by request. commentary : imaginaries and realities, utopia and dystopia | 275 or egypt for recent examples of this). but still, in the face of all the forces of structural mystification, something crucial seems lacking. the masses may have been teeming into the streets of tunis and cairo; the poor may have come down from the shanty towns of caracas to have thwarted the 2002 coup in venezuela, but. . .while the arrest report of toronto’s 2010 g20 protests was impressive in terms of numbers, the numbers of people who merely peacefully marched in protest was on a relative scale, pitifully small. most torontonians, most canadians, simply went about their ordinary business and watched the violence on tv as a spectacle which had nothing to do with them. my point here again is obvious; cairo and toronto are different worlds; the developed and the developing, the core and the periphery, are miles apart in present political potential, as well as in terms of their economies but the problem is that we are one world; so the “first world” needs a revolution too. but the political consciousness is not there. . .or rather it is not here . there are contradictions in this. the majority of the affluent middle classes in countries such as canada or the us cannot seem to grasp what is obvious to millions of peasants and workers in the developing world. is it that their affluence blinds them? some would have us think so. but there is more to it than that marxist analysis of capitalism is repeatedly, and everywhere, being proven correct. right wing ideology is not faring well. we have had, for example, such an intellectual big gun for laissez-faire capitalism as alan greenspan admitting he was fundamentally wrong. . . about everything. yet in north america and europe, the left has never been weaker. why? i don’t presume to reduce the answer to this question to a single cause. however, i do want to focus here upon one of the causes. the left has thus far failed to articulate a positive vision of the future that truly catches people’s imagination! there is, of course, a good historical and analytical set of reasons for this failure. early in its history socialist thought divided in terms of hard and soft. proponents of these softer versions of socialism seemed to spend a lot of time dreaming. for many marxists the term “utopian socialism” was a pejorative. . .and rightly so. to spell out in great detail a picture of the future without having paid any attention to the process of getting there, without a proper appreciation of the problems of the present, is utopian in this negative sense, simply because the thinking is unrealistic. 276 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times it may be the case that there also is a certain, necessarily utopian element, to the dream of overthrowing of capital. but can one dream and still be realistic? can we fly and yet be grounded? good marxist analysis does not predict too specifically about the future. it rightly concludes that there are simply too many variables for such to be sensibly done. so where does that leave us? one of the excellent stunts of the yes men (2009) has given me an idea in this regard. they printed and distributed a hoax version of the new york times. this satirical version of the times had such headlines as “iraq war ends”, “maximum wage law succeeds” “popular pressure ushers recent progressive tilt: study cites movements for massive shift in dc” and “nationalized oil to fund climate change efforts”. there was a small caption by their times banner that gave me the idea: “all the news we hope to print”. we cannot realistically articulate a detailed far-off in the future vision. but we can clearly see what is wrong now. this can be our realistically grounded imaginary: the many problems being immediately solved let us begin articulating things that could be done, things just beyond the political realities of the moment, but nonetheless easily imagined. i have had so many conversations with ideology derived ignorant people about socialism. “well, if all property is going to be shared, does that mean somebody else will be allowed to use my toothbrush?”. or “ . . . just how exactly is it going to be organized for people to do their little bit of literary criticism in the afternoon?”. the conversation needs to be changed. john steinbeck articulated the direction of such a change in his classic novel the grapes of wrath: “what’s a red anyway?” “a red is somebody who, if you’re getting paid 15 cents an hour thinks you should get 25” “oh . . . i guess i’m a red then”. it is testimony to the power of such simplicity that when hollywood made their film of this novel they transformed this conversation. in answer to the question of what a red was the answer was given; “it’s hard to say. . . i really don’t know”. so instead of trying to present some detailed blueprint of the far-off future, let us give a series of questions and strong simple answers to people about the present and the immediate future . . . of what could be done. how can we eliminate hunger in the world? we can take the entire canadian wheat crop and offer to transport it free to where food is most urgently needed. could we afford to do this? yes, it would take an evenly distributed tax increase of only about 2% to afford to have canada save the world from starvation all by itself! how can we provide basic education and health care to the whole world’s population? well, we could commentary : imaginaries and realities, utopia and dystopia | 277 take half of bill gates’ money, and half of warren buffet’s money, and this special tax upon the two of them could alone easily finance the effort. the serious problems of poverty could be realistically costed. these costs could then be presented along with the estimates of individual wealth. yes, personalizing it would make a great difference. people seem to get lost when one talks about the top one percent of one percent. four hundred people in the us have a combined wealth greater than the wealth of half of the population of the us (johnston, 2011). people’s heads swim when one talks about the trillions of dollars spent on defense. we need to present to people what could be done for the price of a fleet of battleships or a single stealth fighter. we need to present to people that such and such changes in the national and international laws relevant to generic drugs would save exactly how many lives of people dying of aids or tb. i am not arguing for a single campaign. no, it needs to be bigger than that. the left, the world’s left, needs to continually present a vision of all the things that could be so quickly and easily done to make a better world. “a better world now” could be the new slogan arising from an unflinching look at the horror of dystopia. references bichlbaum, andy and bonanno, mike (2009). the yes men fix the world, renegade pictures uk . bourdieu, pierre (1988). homo academicus, california: stanford university press. caputo, john and vattimo, gianni (2009). after the death of god, pp. 124-125, quoted in slavoj zizek first as tragedy, then as farce, london: verso: pp. 78-79. demirbhas, ayhan, (2009). biohydrogen: for future engine fuel demands, springer press. frank, andre gunder (1966). “the development of underdevelopment” monthly review, volume 18. _____. (1967). capitalism and underdevelopment in latin america: historical studies of chile and brazil, monthly review press. garrett, laurie (1995). the coming plague: newly emerging diseases in a world out of balance, new york: penguin. johnson, dave (2011). “9 pictures that expose this country’s obscene division of wealth” alternet .org . http://bearmarketnews. blogspot.com/2011/02/9-pictures-that-expose-this-countrys.html kunstler, james howard (2005). the long emergency: surviving the converging catastrophes of the twenty-first century, grove atlantic. 278 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times paine, chris (writer/director) (2006). who killed the electric car? sony pictures classics. potter, garry (2010a). dystopia: what is to be done?, waterloo: new revolution press. ____. (2010b). dystopia: what is to be done? the film version–www. dystopiafilm.com. ____. (2010c). “power and knowledge: a dialectical contradiction”, journal of critical realism, equinox publishing. romm, joseph, j. (2005). the hype about hydrogen: fact and fiction in the race to save the climate, island press. ross, gary (director) (1998). pleasantville, new line cinema. sorkin, aaron (writer/director) (1999). “season one episode five” the west wing, nbc. turteltaub, jon (2006) jericho, cbs paramount network television. unattributed (2011). “hydrogen fuel vehicles looking at the disadvantages of hydrogen fuel vehicles” http://www.alternativeenergyresources.net/hydrogenfuelvehicles.html wallerstein, immanual (1974). the modern world-system i: capitalist agriculture and the origins of the european world-economy in the sixteenth century, academic press inc. wolff, richard (2011). “the keynesian revival: a marxian critique”, alternate routes, 22, 103-14 zizek, slavoj (2009). first as tragedy, then as farce, london: verso. neoliberalization and the matrix of action | 183 neoliberalization and the matrix of action: in conversation with neil brenner, jamie peck, and nik theodore — peter brogan peter brogan1 (pb): there’s been tons of ink spilled in the last few years in efforts to try to understand different formations neoliberalism has taken and the meaning of the capitalist crisis that broke in 2008 and what that has morphed into. in that context you guys have continued to refine and rethink your theorization of neoliberalization, part of which has been a consistent argument for the need to hold onto the concept of neoliberalism/neoliberalization. can you give me an outline about why you’ve made this argument for the continued relevance of understanding the contemporary period through a conceptualization of neoliberalism or neoliberalization and what’s different or unique about your understanding of neoliberalism? jamie peck2 (jp): there’s no point in holding onto the concept of neoliberalism for its own sake. clearly it has to be doing some work. i think the work that it does is to force you to think through connections across different geographical sites and historical time periods. it’s that impetus that it gives you to think through connections that is important, connections between neoliberal projects in one place and another, their family resemblances and structural features. it also provides a spur to think about opposition to neoliberalism in a more-than-local way. neoliberalism becomes one of the 1 peter brogan is a ph.d. candidate in the department of geography at york university, toronto, canada. his research focuses on the geopolitical economy of contemporary capitalism, urbanization, education and teachers’ unions. in may 2012 neil brenner, nik theodore and jamie peck sat down with peter brogan in chicago to discuss their scholarship and the present political and economic conjuncture. the following interview is an edited transcript of this dialogue. in the past 10 years they have collaboratively and individually published widely on the changing dynamics of neoliberalism, urbanization and labour market change. 2 jamie peck is the canada research chair in urban and regional political economy, and professor of geography at the university of british colombia. 184 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism points of reference—even if it’s an extremely problematic, unloved, rascal concept—which we have to be prepared to reconstruct. it at least places all of these developments in a wider frame. recently, we can see how it has provided a frame through which the global financial crisis has been understood and, as it turns out, responded to. and we can see that the character of neoliberalism postcrisis is not quite the same as it was before. it has gone through another of its mutations. at the same time, it is still recognizably neoliberal, even as it is being actively reproduced at such moments. the work it does as an ideological formation is an important part of understanding the present crisis, and the extremely ideologically constrained responses to that crisis that we’ve witnessed. of course, it was not absolutely predictable and necessary that the ideological and political responses have been constrained. the neoliberal frame will not hold forever. but that’s the way things have worked out, at least so far. we need to try and understand the limitations of the responses to neoliberalism and why it’s been possible to resuscitate a form of market rule on the back of a crisis manifestly created by the excesses of monetization and deregulation; how a kind of houdini escape has been fashioned once again. but i don’t think it offers you any pat, easy answers to this question. and certainly it’s not an excuse for saying; ah, it’s just neoliberalism again, end of story! that isn’t an explanation. invoking neoliberalism is the beginning of an explanation, not the end. you’ve actually got to get in and amongst the processes of institutional transformation, which i think is one of the reasons we argue for working at different levels of analysis, rather than just having an entirely macro-level understanding of neoliberalism. this is why we insist on exploring how neoliberalization is reproduced through all these domains—the institutional, the ideational, the ideological, the social and so on—as a contradictory process. and so that’s why we’ve argued for a fairly refined and complex notion of how this process works. neil brenner3 (nb): i would just add a couple of things to jamie’s arguments. first, we agree with the tradition of neo-gramscian political economy that there is a world-historical, epochal struggle under capitalism over the form and extent of commodification. throughout the history of capitalism there has been an ongoing political and institutional struggle to determine how far commodification processes can be extended into the fabric of society. obviously both the classical liberalism 3 neil brenner is a professor of urban theory at the harvard graduate school of design. neoliberalization and the matrix of action | 185 of the late 19th century and neoliberalism of the post-1970s period represent internally distinct sets of approaches to this problem that involve creating specific types of regulatory infrastructure designed to intensify the extension of commodification across society and across space. and the kind of keynesian interlude that, broadly construed, obtained after world war two can be construed as an attempt, albeit unevenly developed, to insulate the fabric of society from processes of commodification. so in this sense, our own use of the term neoliberalization is a way of trying to demarcate the historical and geographical specificity of the post-1970s regulatory reorganization of capitalism—it is not simply an ideological movement or a political alliance, but a pathway and trajectory of regulatory reorganization. this reorganization has involved a renewed attempt, as jamie has said, to intensify market rule at every spatial scale. but having said that—and i now turn to the latter part of your question—we are equally interested in uneven regulatory development. what this means is that the process of extending and intensifying market rule in the post-1970s period has been deeply unevenly developed, both spatially and temporally: it does not simply unfold in state-by-state or city-by-city, but involves regulatory recalibrations that crystallize a kind of wave like process in which inherited institutional infrastructures, including those inherited from postwar keynesianism undergo processes of institutional creative destruction, generating new institutional landscapes in which markets are promoted and commodification is extended. this is not simply a unilinear succession, along the lines of a total dismantling of keynesianism followed by the rise of a new, neoliberalized regulatory formation. in effect, our usage of the term neoliberalization is a first-cut attempt to demarcate the broadly developed force field of strategies and struggle in and around market rule in the wake of the collapse of the keynesian compromise. our arguments about the uneven development of regulation and the regulation of uneven development are an attempt to understand the different ways in which this process of regulatory restructuring unfolds, without embracing a traditional phase model of capitalist regulation in which one fully formed phase disappears and another fully formed model emerges. for us, neoliberalism is not a model at all—it is an unevenly developed process of market-oriented regulatory reorganization. jp: because we have to remember that absolute market rule is impossible. so the process of neoliberalization not trending towards some complete or 186 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism fully articulated condition. that’s why we think of neoliberalization as a transformative process, not as a label for this or that economic system or phase of development; it shapes a paradigm of restructuring. it’s a process of continuing to intensify, displace, and reschedule contradictions which are endemic to the prevailing regime of market-oriented development, corporate rule, and social discipline. but while neoliberalization is strategically focused in this way, it’s also repeatedly failing. so, in a sense that’s why we’re interested both in perpetual restructuring, crisis-driven experimentation, and what are often improvised, zigzagging responses to failure—which is inevitable because there is no historical trend towards absolute market rule. yet that’s the unattainable destination, the conservative-neoliberal utopia which remains the inspiration of these projects, but must not be seen as a prediction of where they are leading. hence the necessity for critical work on actually existing transformations of neoliberal rule, neoliberal policy failures, new forms of experimentation, and so on. you can’t just read the road to serfdom and conclude, “ah-ha, this is the plan!” actually, it works out very differently—always unpredictably, and always reshaping the political terrain. nik theodore4 (nt): so then the analytical and the political are linked by a shared concern to understand the terrain across which neoliberal projects are being prosecuted, as well as the processes through which they occur and of course their material effects. i really do believe the analytical and the political are firmly bound together with a set of shared concerns to understand the contours and limitations of neoliberalization. pb: i want to bring in the urban dimensions of all this because i think this is where you guys have been pushing the theoretical and political envelope in your work on neoliberalization. in what ways have cities played central and strategic roles in not just the extension of neoliberalism in the post-2008 crisis period, but the entrenchment or resurgence as you put it? conversely, how should we understand cities as sites for the renewal of organized resistance to neoliberalism? nb: one simple way to start in explaining our position on this is through a distinction we made a long time ago between the neoliberalization of urbanization and the urbanization of neoliberalism. this is a kind of short4 nik theodore is an associate professor at the university of illinois at chicago (uic), and former director of the center for urban and economic development (cued) at uic. neoliberalization and the matrix of action | 187 hand, but it’s simply a way of saying two things. on the one hand, if you’re interested in looking at urban governance during the last thirty years, you can see a tendential reorganization of local institutional arrangements in ways that promote, intensify and extend market rule as opposed to earlier, managerial and distributionist orientations. as david harvey argued back in 1989, reorientation has been transformed since the 1970s from postwar concerns with social reproduction and redistribution, towards the priorities of economic development, place promotion and territorial competitiveness. of course, this realignment has been documented extensively in the literature on urban entrepreneurialism and local economic development; it’s a pretty well-established argument. to some degree jamie’s more recent work criticizing richard florida and the idea of the creative city is a further development of that discussion—economic development is now connected to broader questions of culture and place identity. but, on the other hand, if you flip that idea around, it is also possible to observe various ways in which projects of neoliberalization around the world are now increasingly contingent upon the reorganization of urban built environments themselves. so it’s not just that cities and urban governance systems get neoliberalized, but that the broader, global project of neoliberalization is increasingly anchored in specific places—it doesn’t just involve reorganizing wide rule-regimes governing, say, financial transactions, trade and capital investment, but hinges massively upon investments in built environments to facilitate a kind of neoliberal societal project. to some degree some of david harvey’s recent work interpreting the global financial crisis as an urban crisis provides a very useful entry point into that idea—it goes beyond his earlier concept of urban entrepreneurialism to suggest that neoliberalism is today itself being urbanized in important ways. jp: and i’m just remembering one of the conversations that we had 10 years ago when we we’re setting up the workshop that nik and neil put on here. it’s the anniversary of this event that we’ve been marking this weekend. there was an early preamble to the original meeting, i remember, that raised the question of whether we should understand the urban and the city as a privileged scale where these processes work out, where the politics are played out, or a vital scale? and as a result of this conversation, we decided that we didn’t want to say that it was privileged in a straightforward way, but rather that it is vital; you need a multiscalar reading of these processes to really make sense of them. so we don’t sequester key processes or certain 188 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism kinds of politics to one scale; we don’t say that neoliberalization is a process that operates primarily at this scale or it is a creature of this scale, because it clearly operates across scales. but perhaps one of the more neglected scales—until relatively recently—has been the urban. the neo-gramscian strand of political economy talks very powerfully about the global. and we have a whole literature about national transitions to different forms of neoliberalism, say in britain and chile, and the politics of thatcher and pinochet. what didn’t exist 10 years ago was thinking about how the urban scale was connected to these wider transformations, and how cities had become a vital scale both for the projects’ reproduction and its contestation. so the city becomes a kind of crossroads, where you find some of its most excessive forms of neoliberal politics and the strongest forms of resistance, but it’s not only that scale that matters. we wanted to place an understanding of urban political economy in this broader context. and we can all see now how the most recent financial crisis as partly incubated in the american housing market, but was constituted globally at the same time. we can also see how speculative dynamics, financialization, and capital switching have driven an epic city-building across china in the last 20 years, but as harvey has argued that’s a development of world-historical significance, not just an urban thing. it’s simultaneously a global phenomenon. so we would argue against the privileging of one scale or another. yet, we also argue that the urban needs to be taken seriously, alongside those other scales which in many respects are well documented in politicaleconomic work. the urban really needed to be integrated into these accounts, far more effectively than it was 10 years ago. there has been a lot of progress on this front in recent years. nb: just a couple other things on this. first, a really important point for us hinges on the concept of the secondary circuit of capital which was developed in the 1970s by lefebvre and harvey. according to this idea, in a time of crisis, capital floods into the built environment as a potentially safe refuge – so urban property markets may experience particularly intense investment pressures precisely under conditions of industrial decline. this insight certainly provides some purchase on contemporary neoliberalization patterns in cities—but insofar as such property markets are also, today, tightly connected to global financial markets and instabilities, they certainly no longer provide the kind of “safe haven” from crisis tendencies that they appeared to offer during previous rounds of economic crisis. this dimension of neoliberalization neoliberalization and the matrix of action | 189 has been very productively explored by manuel aalbers and others in their recent work on the financialization of urban land markets. second, equally important to our interest in cities is that cities are sites of important forms of ideological work: they are represented, in media and policy discourse, as sites of crisis and policy failure, and simultaneously, they are situated rhetorically and practically as the target zones for increasingly punitive, repressive and exclusionary “solutions” to those issues. in this ideological trope, which is repeated in various ways across the global urban landscape, the city thus becomes the arena for both problem and solution—regulatory failure and marketbased pathway out of the crisis. now that the failures of these marketbased “solutions” to earlier regulatory failures are also becoming blatantly apparent within urban built environments around the world, can new or revamped forms of neoliberalized regulation be layered on to already deeply crisis-stricken, tendentially marketized regulatory environments? or will this situation provide an opening for alternative mobilizations, urban and otherwise, that challenge the illogics of market authoritarianism and hypercommodification? pb: that’s the thing i want to push on, because in an earlier interview nik and i discussed new organizational forces like the right to the city (rttc) alliance and other non-traditional urban struggles and movements that have emerged to contest neoliberalism in the united states.5 i want to ask where you think some of these struggles have moved in the past few years. in particular could you talk about different efforts to scale up or to build interurban networks like the right to the city alliance and amongst domestic workers and so on? occupy is another kind of movement which is very place-based but also has this kind of urban, translocal dimension to it. what’s going on with these struggles? nt: one of the important aspects of the rttc alliance is that it establishes a framework for local action but one that connects those actions across different localities. and so a national framework was in place to respond to the very financialization crises that neil was just mentioning. so when the housing market tanked and the bubble burst and the wave of foreclosures began to hit low-income, predominantly african american and latino communities, you had a set of organizations that had 5 hugill, d. and p. brogan. (2011). the everyday violence of urban neoliberalism: an interview with nik theodore. mrzine. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/theodore050411.html 190 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism aligned both to engage in struggle in their local communities but also to scale up that struggle to target what they viewed as some of the principle actors in that hardship, the banks. and so next week [early may 2012] you’ll see the rttc alliance ally with other networks like the national day laborers network and the national domestic workers alliance to descend on charlotte, north carolina the home of bank of america. this is similar to the alliance that formed about a year ago in boston where a number of social movement organizations went to the streets to target bank of america and other financial leaders to call attention to the foreclosure crises, which is disproportionately being wrought on lowincome african american and latino communities. and so it’s through those types of social movement formations that you’re able to do two things: deal with the local specificities of the crisis, but then scale up the struggle to go after financialized capital which operates not just locally but transnationally. jp: i believe that this is also a case where political responses to neoliberalism, even though they may begin at the local scale, and in many ways may need to, they do not stop at this scale. while resources and capacities can be built at the local level, experiments can gain traction at the local level, it’s crucial that the horizons of action and imagination exceed the local. the local is invariably where organizing starts, where mobilization begins. the logic, rationale, and the power structures of neoliberalizing regimes always exceed the local, however. so political responses—counter-neoliberal actions—have got to attack those targets, as well as taking on immediate issues at the local scale. the living wage movement is a good example, a movement which begins local and specific but which builds up and out as it develops. nt: and what these networks do is create spaces within which to develop a shared analysis. they are spaces to communicate that analysis to a wider public and they are spaces, crucially, to link up local resistance into something larger—something regional, national or international. so they are a strategic response to the globalizing, destablizing and displacing effects of neoliberalization. they are a way to try to project beyond the local and try to reveal at least some of the root causes of social suffering. usually when we think of “roots” we think of them as being local. but the root causes primarily are extralocal. this it requires resistance to move to a position of extralocal resistance, to something beyond the local. you can see this notion contained in the world social neoliberalization and the matrix of action | 191 forum, for example. the creation of those types of formations show that, even 20 years ago, activists worldwide were starting to think in this way. pb: i want to push on this question of resistance a bit further. it seems to me rather important to interrogate the fact that rather than coming out of one the worst crises periods in capitalism since 1929, arguably, with a more revitalized and fighting spirit movement of the left, both in north america and globally, to push for an alternative global rule regime or even more local alternatives to neoliberalism, what we have instead are working class and oppressed people on the defensive everywhere. in city after city the working class is being hit with massive austerity and from a progressive perspective we should have been able to take better advantage of this crisis, as people fighting for social justice. so, as your work has argued instead of taking advantage of the crisis to push forward socially just alternative we have this entrenchment of neoliberalism rather than a development of real alternatives. why? jp: one way of addressing this question is to first ask how neoliberalization works. it actually works as a kind of refraction and displacement machine. so a fiscal crisis which was germinated by the banks is refracted into a state crisis and projected onto marginalized populations. and so we get this period of austerity politics. it’s in this hall of mirrors that neoliberalization does its work, making sure that others pay for the cost of crisis. it also has a kind of shape-shifting character, exhibiting different forms, inhabiting different political shells. this means that it’s extremely elusive and intractable politically. it can leave many of its opponents flat footed as a result. and because we’ve gone through 30 years or so of neoliberalization, which has targeted organized labor and other sources of potential opposition, the foundations from which counter-responses might be constructed have been eroded. that gradual incapacitation has not been accidental, it’s been an explicit goal of the project. the current crisis has morphed into an attack on public-sector unions, now that something like half the remaining union members in the united states are in the public sector. in a sense neoliberalism is always going to take the fight to you, to the remaining sources of resistance. what the left i supposed needs to do is figure out a sort of jiu-jitsu move that would enable different kinds of responses to be imagined, to exploit the weight of the opponent. because clearly just relying on the old structures which have just been under relentless attack for decades is not going to be sufficient. it may be a place to 192 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism start but it’s never going to be enough on its own. so that’s why you need different kinds of coalitions, you need to think across scales in different ways and connect struggles in different locations. nt: in addition to that, many of the recent counter-neoliberalization moves that we have seen remain, in our terms, “disarticulated” in this time of crisis. they are disarticulated in the sense that explicit extralocal linkages—nationally, continentally and globally—are still, in most cases, only emergent. they may be gathering steam now, but at the onset of the crisis they were not capable of offering a plan that could avoid the false choices and politically rigged tradeoffs that have been presented by centrist and right-wing politicians. so the progressive response—in terms of offering alternatives to neoliberalism, to austerity politics, and to the goal of restoring corporate profits above all else—was not up to the task. i would add that from a political standpoint, the state of our public intellectuals is likewise not up to the task. there are not enough progressive public intellectuals who can clearly articulate an alternative vision and program, and seize upon the strategic openings that are created during times of crisis. but in defense of grassroots social movements let’s be clear that the social violence of the crash was visited most severely on marginalized communities, and while we may have wished or hoped for a more coherent and comprehensive response, the reality was they had to deal with the crisis first and foremost. in times of upheaval, sometimes you have to take care of the more immediate needs of your community, which makes it difficult to articulate the grand alternative. pb: you gotta put the fires out. nt: you must put the fire out; to stop the house from burning. and that was a major challenge. so our position would be to not judge social movements, and even public intellectuals, too harshly. we understand the constraints imposed during a time of crisis, but let’s remember for the future that you’ve got to strike when the moment presents itself. progressive alternatives need to be put forward precisely at the moment when upheaval is greatest, since it is in those moments that public attention is most fixated on social problems and the search for potential solutions. nb: i would add to that one specific point: it is very important to transpose the fight for redistribution into broader critiques of the capitalist character of production in the world today. obviously, the distribution of wealth, the surplus, matters a lot, and the occupy movement has neoliberalization and the matrix of action | 193 very effectively problematized this. but that shouldn’t distract us from a broader discussion about how economic life is organized—for instance, about the ramifications of private ownership and control over investment decisions that affect the entire world (socially and environmentally); about the endless reinvestment of socially produced surpluses in pursuit of privately appropriated profits; and about the financialization of huge dimensions of everyday life and public resources (including, in a neoliberal era, not only housing and food but, in many contexts, water and clean air). in other words, there’s a broader question here about social and political control over the surplus, at any spatial scale, and in my view this needs to be debated and to remain on the agenda for the left. such concerns do not displace the issue of redistribution; they are tightly connected and reinforce one another in powerful, productive ways. it may be useful, in other words, to re-appropriate and update some of the ideas about economic democracy that were mobilized by european communist and socialist movements during the interwar period and, later on, within the certain strands of eurocommunism and the new left in the wake of ‘68. pb: i want to push on this a little bit and get all you guys to chime in because i was going to ask this question before you made these comments, neil. should progressive forces be trying to build counter hegemonic strategies to neoliberalism or counter hegemonic strategies and alternatives to capitalism? and what’s the difference between the two? i think in some ways neil put it squarely when he said we need to raise critical questions about what the economy is for and how we make decisions about production and not just redistribution. because i feel like this has been a common critique of regulation theory, and it can be leveled at some of your work, which is that if we’re going to focus so much on neoliberalism/neoliberalization as a mode of regulation we don’t necessarily see or put the priority on the underlying system of capitalist production. jp: i wouldn’t see those as mutually exclusive choices. neoliberalism can be seen as the current historical form of capitalism, its contemporary expression if you like. this is the kind of institutional, ideological shape that capitalism has taken and this is also the landscape from which alternatives will have to be mobilized and articulated. so understanding this terrain is going to be important for how you can develop transformative responses to the present reality. but clearly you would never want to just stop at the institutional level; you can’t expect to achieve much simply by 194 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism switching neoliberal institutions for, say, retro-keynesian ones. these are both essentially liberal responses to regulating capitalism, and need to be understood as that. the agendas of anti-capitalist struggles and visions are clearly much more expansive than that. this said, i think one of the worst misrepresentations of regulation theory, one that is still out there, is that it’s a kind of nostalgic yearning for a return to fordism and keynesianism, those thirty golden years after the second world war, and if you could just get that system going again everything would be fine! clearly this is not possible in the world we live in now, neither would it address the racial and gender inequities, ecological problems, and such like, of the fordist-keynesian regime. we need something different than that. it’s kind of interesting though that the vacuum created in the financial crisis and the wall street crash, just about all that was sucked into that vacuum was a kind of retro-keynesianism, which seemed to last for a couple months before we found ourselves back with some rebooted version of the neoliberal program. and the public intellectuals that were calling for this were the likes of stiglitz and krugman. there was no other story in the mainstream debate around the crisis. there was clearly a vacuum there. but that was all there was to fill the void in that moment. at least in terms of the mainstream conversation about what the meaning of the crisis was and what appropriate responses were. so clearly you’ve got to transcend that. the inadequacy of that is self-evident. pb: i think that’s a really important clarification. i don’t know if you guys want to come in on that. n.b.: i agree with what jamie just said. many of the major disagreements in those classic debates between bob jessop and the british journal capital and class related less to matters of substance – the interpretation of what capitalism is and how to change it – but rather to questions of method – the question of which level of abstraction was most relevant to particular types of analytical and political concerns. one side emphasized the cmp (the capitalist mode of production) on a very high level of abstraction, whereas jessop built upon such arguments and – much like we do in our present work – emphasized a meso-level of abstraction connected to the regulation of that mode of production and its associated contradictions. jessop’s then-claim, and our claim now, is not that capitalism can be reduced simply to the institutions of regulation –this is not an institutional ontology but a stratified ontology in which different layers of reality are neoliberalization and the matrix of action | 195 expressed in different ways at each level of abstraction. one payoff of this stratified conceptualization of reality is that it permits analysis of the concrete institutional and regulatory forms in which broader, systemic features of capitalism are expressed. this in turn permits consideration of path-dependencies—whether of keynesianism, of first-wave neoliberalizations or of secondwave neoliberalizations – through which institutions may demonstrate resilience even in the face of systemic pressures associated with accumulation processes and crisis tendencies. if you’re only operating with abstract models, looking for “pure” expressions of capital’s dynamics, it is difficult to explain the variegated institutional and regulatory geographies that we have tried to explore in our work—they are often quite dysfunctional from the point of view of capital, but they are also not easy to dismantle or creatively destroy for a whole range of contingent political reasons. but, more generally, i think that many arguments from structuralist variants of marxism are quite compatible with—and can very usefully inform—the institution-centric and regulationist analyses that we and others have been developing. jp: it’s important to note that one of the ways in which neoliberalism works is through the downscaling and outsourcing social risk. that also explains why the contradictions tend to pile up in cities. because essentially everybody’s passed the buck down until it can’t be passed any further. in many ways this is quite specific to neoliberalization, or at least there is a particular nexus between neoliberalization and urbanization. i think if you paid some attention to that it will help give you a sense of the structure of the present terrain and what it means to try and respond to the challenges of neoliberalization, financialization, and the extension of corporate power in this historical moment. so the broader questions about capitalist transformation are always there, but you have to get at them by understanding some of these ideological and institutional realms that create the kind of matrix for action in the present time. pb: what do you think are the biggest challenges – politically, strategically and theoretically – for mobilizing a counter hegemonic alternative to this resurgent neoliberal capitalist world that we’re confronted with and embedded in? nb: we might want to break this question down and start with some of the problems with social-scientific analyses of neoliberalization. a lot of social-scientific research on neoliberalization, for example, might not have an immediate payoff for the practical question of what is to be done, 196 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism but we would argue that it still is really important, especially insofar as it contributes to theoretical conceptualizations of contemporary institutional and spatial transformations. from my point of view, a big part of what theory does is to illuminate the essential properties of structures and processes that exist in the world, and thus to clarify the parameters of necessity and possibility given current institutional arrangements. while such arguments may not have immediate consequences or payoffs for questions of political strategy, i believe that they can inform activism and the work of social movements by helping them understand what they are dealing with—systemically, institutionally, politically and so forth. this kind of argument is sometimes met with frustration by colleagues and friends who want theory to offer direct insights into the strategic questions that are of such urgent concern to the left. this is not an unreasonable demand, but i also would strongly defend the moment of abstraction, as distinct from immediate questions of practice, as also being hugely relevant to the work of the left. simply put, sometimes you have to wrestle with a theoretical problem in a focused way, as a basis for illuminating the dynamics and tendencies that obtain in the world, before you can even begin to figure out how that analysis might morph, on a more concrete level, into arguments about strategies and tactics. this position resonates a bit with the one theodore adorno took, very defensively, at the end of his life in relation to the activists of ‘68 who viewed his work as too theoretically distant. while i would not necessarily stand by that particularly austere conception of theory i do think that adorno’s position continues to have relevance for us today. part of the freedom which theory offers is precisely connected to the fact it’s not an immediate handmaiden to instrumental, practical concerns—that is how i understand adorno’s position in relation to the ‘68ers. in other words, it is precisely the autonomy of theory from the question of what is to be done that gives it a certain power to engender utopian and radical thinking about possibilities that might barely be visible in the everyday world. that’s of course not the only function of theory, and here i would not go as far as adorno did in distancing himself almost totally from the realm of practice. but i do believe in that moment of theory as a pulse of freedom, as a projection beyond the present into a realm of the possible. jp: something that is both a near-term and a strategic challenge is how to escape the localist trap. if, in a strategic sense, one of the consequences of the way in which neoliberalization has worked is that it has backed the neoliberalization and the matrix of action | 197 left into local enclaves. in a practical sense, left responses to neoliberalism may therefore have to begin with local action, but the local enclave cannot be the limit of the left’s imagination or ambition. but to get out of the trap, and to start to think much more translocally about political strategies, is a real challenge. there’s a huge challenge in figuring out how you move from those local responses to something that is more organized across scales and internationally. i’d say so far the kinds of networking that we have seen is suggestive, but it remains relatively frail. and certainly it is not enough to carry the project of countering neoliberalism to its next stage. globalizing resistance networks have been around for a couple of decades but in a sense we’re still trying to figure out how to take that next step, to move from these loosely networked global responses to something more generalized, which actually starts to tackle the rules of the game and turn around the rules of the game, which are still being organized according to the logic of finance capital and the logic of competition. the dominant rules of the neoliberal game also undermine local forms of resistance and counter-politics, not coincidentally, both in strongholds and in other places. working extra-locally is the next step. nt: we come from a tradition that values both action and thoughtful reflection. i think one of the positive developments, when you look at formations like the right to the city alliance, is that they act, they use that activity as a way to generate an analysis, they then reflect on that analysis and action, and they act again. so it’s not an approach that says there’s a distinct time for thinking and then you act. instead, you see an approach to social struggle that may turn to abstract analysis and theoretical reasoning, but then merges these with an on-the-ground analysis of contemporary conditions, and sees this as an ongoing process of action and reflection. this praxis can propel social struggle forward in ways that you may not have predicted at the outset of an action. it is both trying to forge a path towards social justice while reacting to the everyday realities and the obstacles that are put in that path. and you can only do that by simultaneously acting and reflecting, making the road as you walk, so to speak. i think we’re deeply sympathetic with that approach, and to the extent that our work has informed progressive social movements, even in a small way, we feel gratified and, i dare say, honored. 220 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism the electro-motive lockout and nonoccupation: what did we lose? what can learn? — herman rosenfeld1 in the months since the february 2012 settlement at the caterpillarowned electro-motive plant in london, ontario, the already bleak context for unionized workers in canada has deteriorated. austerity budgets at all levels of government and political attacks have continued to target public sector unions. the wall government in saskatchewan issued a consultation paper, which, if implemented, could eliminate the rand formula and attack union rights to engage in politics (cep, 2012), while ontario opposition tory leader tim hudak went even further calling for the kinds of anti-union policies initiated in wisconsin, ohio and indiana (ontario pc caucus, 2012). the ruling ontario liberals, with a minority government, have tabled a bill to freeze wages for teachers and plan to extend it to all provincial public sector workers. prime minister harper’s government has virtually eliminated the right to strike in areas under federal jurisdiction, forcing postal workers, airport and rail workers back to work in the name of preventing disruption to the economy. the notorious omnibus budget law targeted employment insurance (recipients must agree to seek jobs that pay dramatically below their normal pay rates); temporary foreign workers and even refugees. this has to be placed in the context of the dramatic pressure of restructuring, concessions bargaining and weak job demands in the private sector. while this has been an ongoing characteristic of the neoliberal period, a new phase began with the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, with the state-guided restructuring in auto, steel and other sectors (albo 1 herman rosenfeld is a former educator in the canadian auto workers’ education department, and has taught labour studies at mcmaster university and political science at york university. the electro-motive lockout and non-occupation | 221 et al, 2010). this process is still working itself through, as detroit-three auto bargaining recently ended with the union agreeing to extend a twotier wage for new hires with a “grow-in” period of 10 years, starting at 60 percent of the regular wage, with a “hybrid” pension, combining defined benefit and defined contributions plans (rosenfeld, 2012b). the high canadian dollar exchange rate – itself tied to the dominance of oil, gas and other natural resource export-dependency – certainly contributes to the problem (caw, 2012). there have been notable efforts at resistance by the labour movement and the social movement left. but these have been extremely weak, isolated and have, for the most part, ended in defeat. the larger labour centrals, such as the canadian labour congress and provincial federations have also been unable to mount impressive or even consistent resistance (although the experience in the latter is admittedly more mixed). this is the context that has driven a number of recent conflicts in this country, most notable the caterpillar-owned electro-motive lockout and closure. this experience is both particular to the changes in the larger transportation sector in north america, but also characteristic of the pressures facing the manufacturing industries, and therefore its unions and workers. electro-motive: what happened? by now, many people have a certain familiarity with the events at electro-motive in london. caterpillar, as part of its progress rail subsidiary, owns electro-motive.2 it was bought from two vulture funds that had previously purchased it from general motors in 2005 (wells, 2012). the notorious anti-union employer paid $820 million for emd, which also includes an electronic manufacturing facility in lagrange, 2 caterpillar is the world’s largest manufacturer of construction and mining equipment. general electric is its chief rival in locomotive production. caterpillar is noted for breaking the uaw plant in peoria, illinois, in 1995 and the closure of the brampton, ontario plant and caw occupation in 1993. in 2008, prime minister stephen harper visited the electro-motive plant to show off a $5 million federal tax break for buyers of the locomotive-maker’s products, and provided a further tax break on capital investment. in 2009, they set about a major expansion plan seeking to cut costs, laying off upward of 11,000 workers or 9 percent of its workforce. even though it lost sales and revenue through the 2008-2010 recession, caterpillars shares rose 64 percent on the down jones in 2010, reaching total sales of $43 billion in 2010, and profits rising 95 percent in the first 9 months of 2011. outgoing ceo james owens received $22.5 million for 6 months of work and a defined benefit pension plan worth $18.7 million. in the past year, caterpillar has opened new locomotive plants in brazil, mexico and muncie, indiana, in order to take advantage of their low-paid and exploited workforces. 222 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism illinois (griffin, 2004; moody, 1998).3 emd was the only manufacturer of locomotive engines in canada and the sale brought control over key technologies to cat. four months after the emd sale, cat announced plans to convert a factory in muncie, indiana into a union-free locomotive assembly plant. in december 2011, the company issued a final offer to its london workers that would cut hourly wages from $35 to $16.50 per hour, while slashing pensions and benefits, even though caterpillar enjoyed record profits and a 20 percent boost to production over the previous year (macdowell, 2012). the bargaining unit and local leadership refused and the company locked out its workers on new year’s day. the union local, with the support of the national caw, began a campaign to challenge and isolate the employer, and demand that they bargain seriously and withdraw the demands. the ofl called a “day of action” for 2012 january 21, drawing attention to the failure of the harper government to protect canadian jobs and interests when domestic companies are acquired by foreign multi-nationals. the demonstration drew upwards of 5,000 people, but was little more than a rally.4 the union did not occupy the plant. on february 3, after a month of campaigning, emd publicly announced the impending closure, and after a tense period, the union bargained a decent severance and closure package that the membership ratified on february 23rd” (grant and keenan, 2012).5 the closure of this facility in the face of the bullying by caterpillar is important – and will be addressed further in this article. but more important is the nature of the resistance – and the limitations of the strategic approaches used. the electro-motive/caterpillar experience is an example of a gross attack by a ruthless employer on a group of union members. the ultimate goal was not to get a wage cut, but to set the stage for a workplace closure and in the process, humiliate and defeat the union, thereby contributing another setback to the larger union movement. the union, caw local 27 refused to accept these outrageous demands and waged a locally-based campaign of resistance, on terms that traditionally would have meant something powerful, but in the cur3 a six-year struggle in the 1990’s defeated the uaw, one of a number of key defeats that the union suffered at the hands of this ruthless employer. 4 participants simply listened to speeches – difficult to hear with a faulty pa system. some went to the emd site and talked with the workers on their protest line, but there was a great deal of frustration and disappointment from many of the protesters. the author was also there. 5 later, at the caw-detroit-3 contract talks in september 2012, the caw was able to bargain job openings for 160 former gm workers from em at the auto assembly, at oshawa and cami. those working in oshawa would be able to add to their pension time, and retire at a full rate, while cami has an independent pension plan (grant and keenan, 2012). the electro-motive lockout and non-occupation | 223 rent era, turned out to mean very little.6 the kind of resistance chosen was unsatisfactory and, although the worst did not happen – the ultimate outcome was a decent severance package – it signalled both a serious defeat and a major opportunity lost. there is little to celebrate out of this episode. it should be sobering, disheartening and a learning moment, about what not to do and what must be done to win in this era. in a union culture that is unable to deal with defeats and retreats and learn from them, where every challenge must end up appearing as a ‘victory’ of sorts, it is difficult to learn the proper lessons and use that learning to make change. the union resistance was positive in a number of ways, but ultimately proved to be too limited. it resulted in a defeat that hurt the caw, the rest of the labour movement and the canadian working class. it helped contribute to the ongoing destruction of canadian manufacturing capacities, and therefore our sovereign capacity to build a different kind of economy. it helped the capitalist class and its political allies move forward in their efforts to deepen the neoliberal defeat of the working class. we need to look at what was done right and wrong. finally, this is not something that is limited to the caw. it is chronic throughout the canadian labour movement and is reflected in the recent defeat of the cupe municipal workers in toronto7 and the steelworkers locals at vale inco and us steel in hamilton (all of which had very different leadership structures and even ideological orientations).8 larger issues as it was unfolding, it was clearly on the radar of labour and people around north america and the world, who correctly, saw this as a kind of private-sector wisconsin, with all of the issues that this entails (yates, 2010). the interest in cat was, in a sense, a kind of culmination of the frustration that so many working class people have had to live with in this era of the re-constitution of neoliberalism. it touched a nerve with 6 local 27 is an amalgamated local – meaning it includes a number of bargaining units, including auto parts, manufacturing, public sector workers and members for other sectors. it has a long history of activism in the community, politics, in the caw and in the larger union movement. the current local president is also the president of the caw council (russell, 2011). 7 with the notable exception of the public library workers unit of cupe that waged a strike – after building public support – and came out rather successfully. (cupe, 2012, march 30). steelworkers at rio tinto in quebec also staved-off defeat (jamasmie, 2012) 8 even the caw, in its merger documents and at its major convention of august 2012, acknowledged the nature of these defeats and some of the underlying reasons for them (caw-cep 2012; rosenfeld, 2012). 224 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism many people. even mainstream pundits critiqued the larger phenomenon of blackmail against working people (and saw in it, the reality in most workplaces these days). it also linked up with the occupy narrative – of the unfairness of income and wealth inequality, in the face of the crisis unleashed by the financial elite. this sense of outrage diffused across north america, and, as was clear to all who would listen, working class people across cultures and labour market segments embraced the theme of the 1% versus the 99% as their own. it was a living example of the de-industrialization process and the loss of key manufacturing capacities; of large mega-corporations, moving capital investment at will just to pressure working class people to reduce living standards to accommodate private profit accumulation. it symbolized the threat to canadian sovereignty and the survival of our communities that capitalism has become. it was clearly part of a new and dangerously aggressive round of attacks on the working class in both the private and public sectors. it reinforced some key defeats in the private sector. there were times where the unions simply gave up and accepted the logic of competitiveness. these included 2 tier wages in auto in the us, acceptance of concessions in the canadian auto plants in recent bargaining rounds, situations where defeats were imposed by the state (e.g. auto concessions in 2008); and, even where the unions did mount a battle for resistance such as at vale inco, st. mary’s cement and us steel, where there were key defeats, anyway (rosenfeld, 2009; 2012). the losses in these situations were aimed at particular targets, such as wages, definedbenefit pensions and benefits. the attacks that electro-motive/cat imposed on workers, took this to another level the main thrust in the most recent period has been in the public sector, where these attacks have dovetailed with efforts to eliminate unionism completely (wisconsin, indiana, ohio, etc). in ontario, bc, and now through ottawa, attacks on unions threaten their very survival. the terrain of the current attacks are different in many ways than the previous rounds. they take advantage of capital mobility made possible by free trade. they seem to be centred in employers that have been favoured by government, either through negotiated aid deals or other forms of support (and are usually related to larger, continent-wide restructuring strategies). the demands of the employer result in either the destruction or dramatic weakening of the union and a radical shift in the rights of the workers. they mark a new level of defeat for the labour movement and affect the willingthe electro-motive lockout and non-occupation | 225 ness and capacity of workers to organize collective resistance. they undermine the rights of all working people – from those of us in the better paid jobs, to those of us out of work, on social assistance and in precarious jobs. what was wrong with the response to the em lockout and closure? there are many issues to raise with the response of the caw. both the national and the local leadership had very limited horizons and goals. they saw themselves as addressing the immediate needs of the workers in the em unit: refusing to accept the threatened wage cuts, but planning for a plant closing that seemed inevitable. the plan was to build a base of community and labour support in the london area and the larger labour movement, get material support for the workers during the lockout period and then work to bargain severance and pension rights. many of the political themes raised were the right ones: corporate greed, the need to maintain manufacturing capacity, how the attacks on the workers contrasted with the wealth of the corporate elite and the 1%, the role of harper and efforts to have the rest of the canadian auto workers and the ontario federation of labour support them. their tactics and strategy reflected those goals. their local campaign built widespread support across the london community. they engaged the provincial government behind the scenes to pressure cat for pension and severance. they blockaded the movement of goods in and out of the workplace and began a campaign to place information pickets outside cat outlets in southern ontario. but both their goals and their strategy were extremely limited and problematic. there was no move to occupy the workplace or extend and deepen the campaign to pressure caterpillar, or raise political demands to pressure the canadian government to stop an impending closure. they argued that “we didn’t want to turn people in the community off”, or threaten the possibility of bargaining a decent close-out agreement.9 the situation required a dramatic tactical move to politicize the struggle. a plant occupation, rather than “turning people off” could have galvanized already-existing concerns of working people across the province and continent. it could have created an opening to call for state intervention – in the form of nationalizing emd – as part of a larger project of building canadian capacity 9 while some might argue that there were differences inside the union, between the local, national and bargaining unit, the public face of the union at all levels clearly looked to downplay any radical actions, such as an occupation. any differences might be better explained with hindsight, but further research would be necessary. 226 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism to manufacture heavy transportation equipment, through the public sector. certainly, caterpillar is known as a ruthless employer, impervious to the claims of workers, unions or communities. no one seriously argued that actions could change their minds. but the struggle needed to be directed at the state – federal and provincial – to intervene to protect jobs and the manufacturing infrastructure that was clearly threatened. instead, the union’s perspective was local and short-term. there was absolutely no interest in making this a larger, political battle. there was blindness to the opening and opportunity that this universally condemned action by capital represented. it was almost as if the union was basking in the sun of public pity. the idea of pressuring harper for state intervention was seen as a pipe dream, beyond the pale of what and who the union is. an occupation could have concentrated interest and anger in london and created a platform to place nationalization on the public agenda, but this was the farthest thing from their sense of the possible. the tactic of occupation was portrayed as possibly threatening short-term interests of the workers at emd. (aside from the narrowness and strategic incompetence this represented, it made the positive links the union built with the occupy movement, rather hypocritical and embarrassing – ignoring the tactical and strategic audacity and originality of occupy).10 how might a different kind of campaign proceeded? the union could have expanded the campaign in london to include challenging government offices, banks, larger industrial employers, all of whom suddenly became “allies” in the union’s perspective. it could have built a campaign across southern ontario – that might have included new and exciting educational materials and challenges to employers. there could have been a boycott of cat products around the tar sands and construction projects. there might have been a new educational effort with the members so that they are no longer afraid of “turning off the rest of the community”. education turned the tide during the ontario days of action in the 1990’s, which relied on the organizational and educational capacities of many of the same local activists in london today to win over workers who had voted for tory mike harris, to a protest movement against him. 10 it is one thing to speak out against inequality and give material support to protesters occupying public spaces to challenge injustice, but it is quite another to take similar control over the private property of capital, to demand that it become the property of the community. the electro-motive lockout and non-occupation | 227 where is the will and capacity to develop and build those mobilizational and educational resources today?11 the caw has had experience with bold campaigns that challenge employers in the past. the 1997 contract bargained at gm successfully dealt with the issue of outsourcing. it was preceded by a strike and campaign waged by the union. in that campaign, the union was able to win over public opinion by appealing to common experiences in dealing with job insecurity. there were many workplace occupations in the early 1980’s and late 1990’s. true, they were mostly organized over demands for decent closeout agreements, but there is no reason that the tactic couldn’t also be used to be the central sparkplug for a larger political campaign to keep a workplace open. the caw has the institutional memory to carry out such a campaign. certainly, the times and context are different today – but the caw had no intention of considering an occupation for more than severance and a decent close-out. indeed, the current defeat of the labour movement and the working class as a whole – the strength and hegemony of employers and the entire, united, capitalist class – demands that bold actions and radical approaches be taken to help inspire an awakening in the labour movement. certainly, there is no tactic or individual struggle that can magically transform the dismal situation the labour movement faces overnight. but a more ambitious plan could have possibly helped get the labour movement off dead centre, where it remains. waiting until the political and economic balance of forces ‘improves’ is equally problematic – as if the stubborn power of capital can ever be challenged without an upsurge of some kind from below.12 this moment constituted “the” critical opening to deal with the unspoken issues and concerns of working people across the country. the moment was there to raise and answer questions like: 11 in the period preceding the hugely successful london day of action, local and national union activists and leaders came to london to engage with members, many of the latter whom were reluctant to oppose harris, let along strike employers or picket. this was a major game-changing educational effort, which made the early one-day general strikes possible (la botz, 2011). after a few minutes in conversation with workers at emd in front of the locked-out plant, it wasn’t difficult to see that the union could have quite easily convinced the membership to take part in an occupation. 12 can one seriously claim that tightening labour markets could, by itself, miraculously produce a surge in militancy, or a growth in radicalism? it seems that every new concessionary agreement coming from unions like the caw is couched in a discourse lamenting the unfavourable larger balance of forces, and claiming the “we will live to fight another day”. the latter, like tomorrow, never seems to come. 228 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism • why should we accept the constant threats to jobs in the name of cost-reduction and competitiveness? • why should ceo’s receive massive incomes, when we have to accept wage and benefit cuts? • why must we and our children “get used” to the lack of good, secure, well-paying jobs, and instead, accept the normalization of part-time, low paid, precarious work? if workplaces like this are going to close without any alternative plan – what have we to look forward to? but there are other political issues that could have and should have been raised as part of a fight to keep this workplace working: • why can’t we defend our right to produce locomotives in this country? isn’t it central to our needs for political sovereignty? isn’t it important for efforts to create a transportation system that is environmentally sustainable? what about mass transit investment for urban areas? • while harper continues to negotiate new free trade agreements, doesn’t the emd closure create an opening for us to raise the call to challenge and ultimately abrogate existing agreements that allow the free movement of investment and capital unregulated by democratic institutions? • wasn’t harper vulnerable on all of these points? his government intervened with the postal workers and repeatedly did so at air canada to supposedly protect the national interest. he was also seen to be in cahoots with cat in his praise of subsidies to the employer. while the p.m. claimed that the emd closure was between a union and a private employer and a matter of provincial jurisdiction, the hypocrisy of all of this made the federal government a legitimate target. • it poses the question of the role and limitations of the investment canada act. the demands of the union movement (often echoing the limitations of social democracy) have been largely limited to soft nationalistic issues of foreign takeovers; getting tradeoffs for financial help to help foster investment and local, provincial or national procurement policies. those are all important and positive. but, as in previous struggles, these are limited demands and will not address the larger issue of capitalist restructuring. the electro-motive lockout and non-occupation | 229 • shouldn’t ontario premier dalton mcguinty’s government be held to the fire, as well? ongoing corporatist illusions seemed to colour union’s comments about mcguinty’s 2012 january 31 limited public condemnation of cat. one can understand the union’s concerns about pressuring the province about severance issues, but it is quite another issue to be satisfied with mealy-mouthed statements from bourgeois politicians. corporatist relations with the liberals should be publicly repudiated. • demands to have the state finance and run a secondary manufacturing capacity (and in this case, heavy machinery, locomotives and engines and mining equipment) practically beg to be raised in this instance. • won’t the outcome of key private sector struggles such as this also affect the outcome of public sector struggles, such as the fight against cuts and privatization in toronto, b.c. and elsewhere? • then, there are issues of the rights of unionization and the right of collective bargaining, both being undermined by this sort of activity; this experience must be understood in the context of previous struggles, such as vale inco, us steel (hamilton) and st. mary’s cement. in each, there was important support from surrounding communities and other locals and unions, but there were no efforts to organize collective forms of direct action, such as rotating work stoppages in other workplaces or occupations. the struggles remained centred in their individual communities, with support from across the country in the form of picket lines and solidarity messages, but no co-ordinated efforts to pressure employers and/or governments. aside from the local unions involved, the campaigns were not transformed into large-scale movements, with educational components, geared towards reaching the entire working class. they were not tied to larger effects that working class and unionized workers have been experiencing – or to political strategies to shape the future of each of these sectors (steel, mining, cement, etc.) conclusion there are two general areas that come to mind when summarizing the lessons of the emd-cat experience: one, relating to the strategic challenges it raises for the union movement and second, larger economic and political issues raised by the loss of the electro-motive facility itself. the broader labour movement – even in its strongest and most militant 230 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism spaces – is still reeling from previous political defeats, the economic offensive of employers, the heritage of defensiveness and at times corporatist or concessionary tactical retreats, dependence on employers and the low-level of collective experience of political as well as industrial struggles that the neoliberal era has brought. in a seemingly neverending series of responses to vicious attacks, they repeat the same limited strategies. at best, they include local-based campaigns to get support for jobs, investment and livelihoods, looking for sympathy (“feel sorry for me”) and forms of solidarity, but never learning from mistakes and weaknesses of this strategy. they call for defending collective bargaining rights and protecting against foreign corporate predators, but the larger political demands are very limited and don’t challenge any of the rules of neoliberalism. there are no efforts to combine struggles with political demands that put capital on the defensive and plug into the real concerns of millions of canadians and americans. in order to address these weaknesses, the union movement must move in new directions and embrace the following strategies: • audacious industrial actions which challenge the power of the employer, and reinforce that challenge in the eye of other workers; • reliance on some of the more creative collective traditions of the respective unions; • seizing the moment to create political campaigns that tap into the almost universal revulsion with the attacks on living standards and jobs that come along with competitiveness requirements of neoliberalism; • putting forward demands for manufacturing investment and jobs, with a new and robust role for the state – including nationalization of manufacturing, finance and creation of new capacities, tied to industrial strategies linked to working peoples’ needs (transportation, health care, environmental transformation). we need demands that argue for a logic other than competitiveness and open up space for challenging our dependence on competitive export regimes and private sector accumulation in a crowded field – or worse, resource extraction. audacious demands need to be raised in the context of audacious actions, such as workplace occupations and strikes. • engaging members and working people in general on these themes. the electro-motive lockout and non-occupation | 231 • developing a different relationship between unions and community-based organizations and needs. for example, what kinds of links could have been built with working class communities over this struggle – communities literally dying for decent-paying and secure jobs? • reflective and self-critical “renewal” projects – which, i believe requires a socialist politics outside and inside unions. the consequences of not doing this have been unfolding right before our eyes. about two weeks after the ratification of the agreement at electro-motive, there was an announcement circulated in the local newspapers about a new collective agreement with the caw at lear seating, in kitchener. that contract was said to contain wage reductions of about 30 percent over the four years of the agreement and the workers are supposed to get a $40,000 transition payment to cushion the permanent wage cut. new hires would start at about half what the workers had been paid, allowing the company to bid on future work with a lower labour-cost base. (qmi agency, 2012) one wonders if this embarrassing agreement was in the works when the electro-motive struggle was going on. if it was, it certainly raises a number of questions about the way the lockout was handled. even if not, it provides a sorry, but all too predictable lesson about the consequences of not stepping up to the challenges raised by electro-motive. aside from the move into retirement for some of the 160 former gm workers laid off from emd, bargained by the caw in september 2012 (grant and keenan, 2012), others haven’t been as fortunate. a journalistic account in the globe and mail from october 5 2012, shows a story of financial and emotional strain: marriage breakups; lowpaid, part-time work for most; severance running out; food bank usage and so forth (grant 2012). but there is more. in the middle of august 2012 (as this essay underwent revision) caterpillar and the international association of machinists local union in joliet, illinois, signed a six year collective agreement that settled a four month strike of 780 workers making hydraulic parts. the contract freezes the wages for all workers hired before may 2005, provides a 3 percent one-time wage increase for workers hired after that date and doubles the cost of health care premiums, eliminates pensions and reduces seniority rights. this settlement took place in the context of hugely successful sales and profits for the company (second quarter profits of $1.75 billion, up 67 percent from the previous year) (cancino, 2012; keenan and mcfarland, 2012). 232 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism numerous commentators around the u.s. noted that this caterpillar settlement reflected a fundamental change in the balance of forces between labour and capital. the subtitle of the chicago tribune article cited above says it quite distinctly, “manufacturer breaks link between profits, workers’ pay; settlement raises wage issues for industry in general, labor experts say.” in other words, corporate behaviour towards workers that used to be considered “egregious” or beyond the pale, has now become the norm. it doesn’t take too much imagination to think about how this might have turned out differently, had the electro-motive struggle been expanded, deepened and fought to its potential conclusion. also in august of 2012, the merger talks between the canadian auto workers and the communications, energy and paperworkers of canada culminated in a proposal for new union. the documents accompanying the project – some of which have been cited in this essay – are rife with references to shortcomings in the collective resistance mounted against attacks by government and employers. with the timetable set for the formation of a new union, whose mandate will include efforts to addressing these weaknesses, one hopes that the lessons of the caterpillar experience will be critically evaluated – especially in the light of the other defeats that the labour movement has suffered in the past period (caw-cep, 2012; rosenfeld, 2012). finally, the lack of any serious discussion about strategies to create environmentally sustainable manufacturing capacities (aside from mild nationalistic commentaries from progressive academics and the bourgeois press13) was critical. militant resistance is absolutely essential, but it has to be tied to new sectoral strategies and approaches that challenge the neoliberal straightjacket that is dramatically weakening working class life and institutions. put another way, fighting back makes a difference, but it must be paired with independent working class strategies for rebuilding and re-imagining industrial and sectoral capacities. it should be clear that unions themselves are incapable of posing alternative industrial strategies that reject corporatism and dependence on progressive-sounding schemes for competitive private sector projects. this requires a larger socialist and anti-capitalist movement – left of social democracy – that could research, debate and place a range of alternatives into the large political arena. but even within the broader 13 actually, some of the commentaries posed key questions and raised issues that the labour movement seemed unable to put forward. (yates, 2012; macdowel, 2012; olive, 2012; walkom, 2012ab). the electro-motive lockout and non-occupation | 233 left, this is not yet happening (although some of jim stanford’s ideas for development of manufacturing industries tied to resource extraction is a legitimate contribution (stanford, 2012). changing this will require thinking through alternative plans for manufacturing and service job creation and political demands associated with them at local union and community levels, as well as through the creation of theoretical, organizational and political projects on larger national, provincial and municipal levels. references albo g., s. gindin and l. panitch. 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(n.d.). canadian auto workers union, moment of truth for canadian unions. http://www.caw.ca/assets/images/caw_ _cep_discussion_document-final.pdf; caw-cep. (2012, august). towards a new union: caw-cep proposal committee final report. http://www.newunionproject.ca/wpcontent/ uploads/2012/08/final.report.pdf. communications, energy and paperworkers union of canada (cep). (2012, july 24). submission to saskatchewan’s labour “consultation”, international standards and the bid to turn the clock back on workers’ rights. http://www.cep.ca/sites/cep.ca/files/docs/en/120724-saskatchewan labourconsult.pdf grant, t. (2012, october 5). for laid-off caterpillar employees, the fall continues. globe and mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on business/economy/manufacturing/for-laid-off-caterpillar-employeesthe-fallcontinues/article4593258/ 234 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism grant, t. and keenan, g. (2012, february 23). electro-motive workers ratify closeout deal. globe and mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ report-onbusiness/economy/manufacturing/electro-motive-workersratify-closeoutdeal/article548573/ griffin, m. (2004, june 4-6). caterpillar’s assault on the uaw. counterpunch. http://www.counterpunch.org/2004/06/04/caterpillars-assault-on-the-uaw/ http://www.mining.com/rio-tinto-strikes-dealwith-canadian-locked-out-workers/ jamasmie, c. (2012, june 6). rio tinto strikes deal with locked out workers in canada. mining.com. keenan, g. and t. grant. (2012, october 11). in ingersoll and oshawa, caterpillar’s forgotten find new life. globe and mail. https://secure. globeadvisor.com/servlet/articlenews/story/gam/20121011/rbca wjobs1010atl keenan, g., and mcfarland, j. (2012, august 20). new battleground of wage freezes takes centre stage with caw talks. globe and mail. http:// www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/new-battleground-ofwagefreezes-takes-centre-stage-with-caw-talks/article4490806/ la botz, dan. (2011, march 9). ontario’s ‘days of action’ – a citywide political strike offers a potential example for madison.” labor notes. http:// labornotes.org/2005/01/ontario-days-action-citywide-political-strike moody, k. (1998, june). despite defeat, cat workers “vote solidarity.” against the current, 74. http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/851 macdowell, l. (2012, jan-feb) what’s wrong with caterpillar?. our times. http://ourtimes.ca/between_times/article_188.php olive, d. (2012, january 3). why caterpillar has the upper hand in the london plant lockout. toronto star. http://www.thestar.com/business/ article/1110094—olivewhy-caterpillar-has-the-upper-hand-in-londonplant-lockout ontario pc caucus white paper. (2012, june). paths to prosperity: flexible labour markets. http://www.ontariopc.com/paths-to-prosperity/ flexible-labour-markets/ qmi agency (2012, march 6). revolutionary new contract could drive auto industry. st. thomas journal. http://www.stthomastimesjournal. com/2012/03/06/revolutionary-new-contractcould-drive-auto-industry rosenfeld, herman (2009). the north american auto industry in crisis. monthly review, 61(2, 18-36 ——— (2012). caw-cep merger: new union in a difficult world. the bullet, 701. http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/701.php. ——— (2012b, october 1). canadian auto workers ratify 10 year twotier. labor notes. http://labornotes.org/2012/10/canadian-auto-workersratify-10-year-two-tier the electro-motive lockout and non-occupation | 235 russell, j. (2011), our union: uaw/caw local 27 from 1950 to 1990. edmonton, alberta: athabasca university press. stanford, jim. (2012, march 19). buy canadian’ and upstream supply chain as sector development strategy. rabble.ca. http://rabble.ca/ columnists/2012/03/buycanadian-and-upstream-supply-chain-sectordevelopment-strategy. walkom, t. (2012a, february 3). caterpillar attack part of coordinated attack to cripple unions. toronto star. http://www.thestar.com/news/ canada/politics/article/1125920—walkom-caterpillarclosing-part-of-acoordinated-attack-on-unions ——— (2012b, february 8). the real villain of caterpillar shutdown? mindless free trade”, toronto star. http://www.thestar.com/news/ canada/politics/article/1128113— walkom-the-real-villain-ofcaterpillar-shutdown-mindless-free-trade wells, j. (2012, february 4). caterpillar cunning yields london shutdown. toronto star. yates, charlotte, a. b. (2012b, january 30). high stakes in caterpillar lockout. toronto star. http://www.thestar.com/opinion/ editorialopinion/article/1123881—highstakes-in-caterpillar-lockout yates, m. (2010). editor’s introduction: something is in the air. in m. yates (ed.), wisconsin uprising, (pp.19-25). new york: monthly review press. austerity and aboriginal communities | 207 austerity and aboriginal communities: an interview with david newhouse — carlo fanelli carlo fanelli1 (cf): the public service alliance of canada (psac) has suggested that the 2012 canadian federal budget “is true to conservative governments course of assimilating the aboriginal population by making life in aboriginal communities unbearable.”2 psac points to the fact that the budget has done little if nothing to address housing issues faced by indigenous peoples and is subsequently continuing a trend of inequality thereby subtly forcing indigenous communities to assimilate in attempts to escape impoverished conditions. to what extent would you agree with such a proposition? if so, in what ways is the current budget a continuation of past attempts to assimilate indigenous communities in canada? david newhouse3 (dn): the 2012 budget provides limited funding for services such as education and community infrastructure, primarily improvements to reserve water systems. there are no additional funds to address the chronic housing problems nor to assist those who wish to pursue post secondary education. as we all know, one of the keys to effective labour market participation is a high level of education. without adequate support for primary and secondary education, the graduation 1 carlo fanelli is a ph.d. candidate at the department of sociology & anthropology, carleton university, with interests in critical political economy, labour studies, canadian public policy, social movements, urban sociology and education. in addition to serving as editor of alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, his work has appeared in socialist studies, journal of critical education policy studies, new proposals: journal of marxism and interdisciplinary inquiry, as well as the bullet, mrzine and labor notes. 2 public service alliance of canada. (2012). impact of the 2012 budget on aboriginal peoples. http://www.psac-afpc.com/news/2012/issues/20120417-e.shtml 3 david newhouse is chair of the indigenous studies department, and associate professor of business administration at trent university. his works include improving the aboriginal quality of life: changing the public policy paradigm, from woundedness to resilience: urban aboriginal health, hidden in plain sight: aboriginal contributions to canada, not strangers in these parts: urban aboriginal peoples and well-being in the urban aboriginal community. 208 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism rate will not improve and without increased support for those who make it to post secondary education, fewer will be able to continue. the lack of adequate funding makes it difficult to break from the cycle of poverty that exists in many aboriginal communities. despite land claim agreements and other types of agreement, most researchers and policy analysts agree that the current level of funding is considerably below what is needed to close the gap in social and economic conditions between aboriginal peoples and canadians. the cuts to the aboriginal health organizations removes an important set of actors from the policy advice circle. at a time when all of the indicators tell us that increased attention to aboriginal health services are important, it doesn’t make sense to remove the source of advice that can assist in the effective and efficient spending of funding on aboriginal health. the removal of an independent aboriginal voice, effective to a modern canadian democracy, means that aboriginal people lose the ability to affect government policy and participate effectively in the design and delivery of their own programs in this extremely important area. as to the issue of assimilation, i think that this process is more complex. certainly governments can require certain types of organizational behaviours and structures from their funding partners but that doesn’t mean that aboriginal people are assimilated if they adhere to them. there is an incredible movement within aboriginal communities to use ideas, practices, theories, etc from our own intellectual heritage as the basis for everyday life, including organizational and community lives. what is important is that the thinking of organizational actors is aboriginal and that thought is translated into appropriate action. two of the foundational ideas of indigenous thought are transformation and adaptability. the truth test for indigenous knowledge is whether or not it works in real life; does it help one to survive? this allows for change and adaptation while remaining aboriginal. we see this in the remarkable resurgence of traditional ideas being brought back into everyday life. assimilation occurs when one stops thinking in aboriginal terms. i’ll tell you a story from one of my first year classes a decade ago. we were reading a paper on the introduction of iron pots into mi’kmaq culture in the 16th and 17th centuries. some of the non-indigenous students argued that the mi’kmaq should not have used the pots since it changed their way of life and was not ‘traditional.’ a mi’kmaq student in the class spoke up, after a lengthy debate: but we liked the pots. they austerity and aboriginal communities | 209 made life easier for us. using the pots didn’t make us any less mi’kmaq. they strengthened us by enabling us to do more things easier. my views on assimilation and that of the students were challenged and changed in this instant. the history of aboriginal people is filled with similar adaptations and yet we remain aboriginal (of all types). yes, life has changed and we have adapted, just like other cultures around the world. the real problem around assimilation is the homogenization that is occurring as a result of the dominance of north american modernity and the market, which are proving to be remarkably powerful forces. cf: recent focus on attawapiskat has caused much of the canadian public to become aware of the impoverished conditions apparent on a number of reserves and has highlighted the significant disparities in wealth and income between indigenous and non-indigenous communities. to some extent, this renewed interest in attawapiskat and elsewhere has compelled the canadian government to develop new strategies for tackling poverty amongst indigenous peoples both on and off the reserve. to what extent are these challenges rooted in the failure of earlier policies and have there been any major shifts in policy orientation? dn: the conditions that created attawapiskat-like situations are myriad and are rooted in canada’s colonial history, the indian act and government paternalism, the establishment of indian reserves outside the economic space of canada, the continued racism towards aboriginal peoples, and a lack of adequate funding for local government services including education and job training. in addition, the funding regulations for indian bands did not provide for much local discretion in shifting funds to meet local needs as they emerged and changed over the course of a funding cycle. while first nations councils now have some increases in flexibility and a higher modicum of local control, in reality, demands for higher level of accountability from governments (both federal and provincial) effectively remove this control and the cycle of colonial administration continues, albeit in a different guise. in the economic area, the focus is now on success and helping those who are most likely to be successful. the new aboriginal economic development framework is based on neo-liberal principles, providing assistance to those who need it least and leaving those who need it the most behind. we seem to be moving towards a policy that emphasizes the market as a primary vehicle for the way in which individuals participate in 210 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism society. the emphasis on individual participation is at odds with the collectivist nature of much of aboriginal society. it will be a challenge for aboriginal communities to develop institutions that can effectively mediate between these two approaches. without them, and lacking the high levels of education needed to effectively participate in the market, i have great fears that the economic and social divide will continue to widen. the playing field isn’t level yet. cf: although the 2012 budget has been presented as being focused on providing more educational opportunities for aboriginal children, the canadian coalition for the rights of children4 (ccrc) has argued that the budget fails to recognize the importance of early education and is ignoring the needs of canada’s youngest generation. although the government has assigned $275 million over three years for both literacy and for the building of new schools, do you think that they are failing to address the earlier educational needs of indigenous children? moreover, the funds have only been provided for elementary school education rather than high school or post-secondary education, so in addition to neglecting early educational needs it seems as if the government is also failing to encourage later educational opportunities. what might the consequences of this be both in the short and long term? dn: what we fail to recognize is that education is a system of institutions that include more than schools and local education programs. for the system to function well, all aspects of it need to well designed and adequately funded. funding for classroom teaching is important but also needs to be supplemented by other activities these days: local school boards/committees that bring local control and parents into governance activities of schools, breakfast and lunch programs for students who often come from low income families, academic assistance such as tutors, mentors and guidance counselors, important cultural elements such as elders, traditional teachers and language teachers which help to provide a sense of pride in one’s own heritage and culture. one also needs capital funding to ensure that schools are up to date and well maintained. learning in outdated schools or poorly maintained ones doesn’t do much to improve success. it is also important to have parents involved in meaningful ways in their children’s education. the consequences of not adequately funding edu4 canadian coalition for the rights of children. (2012). right in principle, right in practice. http://rightsofchildren.ca/wp-content/uploads/ccrc-report-to-un-on-crc.pdf austerity and aboriginal communities | 211 cation means lower graduation rates, lower labour force participation rates, lower incomes and an inability to contribute to canada at ones potential. as the aboriginal population grows, additional resources for social assistance are required, at funding levels higher than the cost of the initial educational investment. cf: the ccrc has also raised concern that the budget has allocated no new funds or resources to address youth rehabilitation. to the contrary, among prime minister stephen harper’s first tasks since gaining a majority government in 2011 has been to introduce bill c-10 which among other things eliminates conditional sentences for minor and property offenders and instead mandates mandatory minimum sentences. a plethora of research has shown that such an approach is not only counter-productive but actually intensifies the very problems they allegedly seek to solve.5 as a consequence, this has resulted in the canadian civil liberties association and canadian bar association, among other groups, opposing the implementation of such legislation.6 given that aboriginal youth make up only 5 percent of the overall canadian youth population but are disproportionately represented in canadian prisons at 28 percent of the population, what kind of impact will this lack of rehabilitative funds have on indigenous communities? does this threaten to further victimize the vulnerable? dn: the budget changes and bill c-10 make it likely that the level of incarceration of aboriginal youth will continue at its same level and even more likely that it will grow. the mandatory minimum sentences mean that more aboriginal youth (and others) will serve time; the loss of rehabilitative funds increases the possibility of re-offending upon release. one could analyze the effects through two lenses: the first is a loss of community productive capacity as a disproportionate number of aboriginal youth are removed; the second is through the lens of community safety as the cycle continues as youth return to communities after custody. the loss of funding for rehabilitative services also means a shift in philosophy away from restoration and rehabilitation towards deterrence and punishment. given the gains made over the last two decades in trying to bring aboriginal ideas into the justice system and the move towards restorative justice practices, it appears that the system would 5 for an introductory overview see barken, s.e. and g.j. bryjak. (2011). fundamentals of criminal justice: a sociological view, 2nd edition. toronto: jones and bartlett learning. 6 the ccla has called bill c-10 “unwise, unjust, unconstitutional.” see http://ccla.org/ omnibus-crime-bill-c-10/ 212 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism become less amicable to aboriginal peoples rather than more. cf: one of the most contentious issues emerging from the 2012 federal budget has been to grant the canada revenue agency and other federal departments the power to withdraw the tax-free status as well as government grants from charities that are involved in so-called political activities. environmental groups, in particular, have been singled-out by federal minister of the environment, peter kent, for having been accused of money laundering, illegal activities and ubiquitous with radicals and terrorists. given the intimate relationship between many indigenous communities and canadian charities, as well as efforts intent on, for instance, limiting the reckless development of the alberta tar sands, destructive resources extraction on first nations lands or broader issues related to climate change, how might such changes have potentially damaging affects for first nations communities and issues related to social justice? dn: as a society i think we have moved in a direction that criminalizes dissent. dissent itself is defined quite broadly as any criticism or opposition to the government positions. this is dangerous territory and goes against the foundations of an liberal democratic society. it creates a climate of fear where groups of citizens are unwilling to speak their mind and advance their views as part of the public policy process. since aboriginal peoples have been subject to public debate restrictions in the past and have successfully found ways to advance their views, i would anticipate that aboriginal leaders and organizations will continue to advance their views, even at the risk of having their funding cut or affairs investigated. threats of interrogation and the like have not been effective in the past at silencing aboriginal voices. there has been much effort at building alliances with non-aboriginal groups over the last few decades on social justice issues. i would forecast that the attempts at labeling criticism dissent would not be effective and might have the opposite effect of creating more alliance and more pointed criticism and action. the groups who might be most affected are those who have charitable status and who are engaged in advocacy work that is considered critical of government policy. cf: in from wounded to resilient, you argue that the indigenous community needs to become aware of the ongoing colonial discourse that constructs indigenous people as ‘wounded’, causes them to remain reliant and restricts their ability to become aware of their own agency. if i understand you correctly, you argue that a collective consciousness needs to be developed in austerity and aboriginal communities | 213 order for indigenous communities to see themselves as resilient. given the economic crisis and harper’s cuts to many social services that aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities often depend on in terms of health, welfare and so on, do you think that this process has been restricted? in your view has the economic crisis constrained this process of ‘healing’? how might these cuts have continued this notion of ‘woundedness’ or prevented indigenous communities from moving past this stereotype? dn: good question. will the reduction or loss of government funding stop the healing process? it may slow certain aspects of it down but i don’t think that it will be stopped as its essential core doesn’t depend upon government funding. the developing resilience i think will be able to find new ways to address some of the problems. my major concern is for those who are the most vulnerable and the most wounded who need specialized supports and attention. we seem to have forgotten about them and it is clear that the institutional support will not be available. aboriginal people have always lived in a polarized environment with sharp differences in economic and social conditions. reducing this distance is a national challenge which the state has been reluctant to take up, except on its own terms. aboriginal peoples have articulated over and over again what they believe needs to be done to reduce the economic and social distance as well as bring them into confederation. the best articulation of an aboriginal vision of canada is the final report of the royal commission on aboriginal peoples. it forms the foundation of contemporary aboriginal political action on many fronts. it’s aim is to reduce the polarization. the question in my own mind is whether or not canadians can deal with a ‘healed’ indian. so much of our public policy effort is based upon the notion of woundedness. this is not to say that there is not genuine poverty and social dislocation that needs addressing. can we support aboriginal led efforts as i believe that healing comes also from doing things for oneself. i was struck by the results of the environics urban aboriginal peoples study that indicated that 100 percent of those interviewed had experienced discrimination and racism in their lives and had to a large extent decided that there was nothing they could do about it and so were getting on with living with it.7 it was an astounding finding for the year 2011 but it is illustrative of the complex environment that we live in. a recent ipso-reid poll also showed that most canadians 7 environics. (2010). urban aboriginal peoples study. http://www.uaps.com 214 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism believe that aboriginal peoples get too much from government.8 a part of the issue as i see it changing the attitudes of non-aboriginal canadians so that they can find a way to live comfortably with us. cf: in an era of unprecedented austerity and continuing economic insecurity, what are some of the major challenges facing first nations communities that have yet to garner the serious media, academic and popular attention that is warranted? in what ways are health care, housing and other social services at risk of deteriorating? and why is the continuing study of first nations peoples central to improving the lives of both indigenous and non-indigenous communities? dn: what always strikes me is the fragility of some of the gains over the last two decades. it is clear that government funding for services and institutional development is important and critical to continued improvement in health, education and economic participation. without stable predictable funding for a set of societal institutions in these three areas it will be difficult to improve. the loss of national aboriginal health organization and the first nations statistical institute will be felt as they represent important sources of knowledge for policy makers in all foray. what many focus upon is only the delivery of services; what is missing is an understanding of the nature of the institutions that are necessary for direct support organizations to function. the issue of racism and its effects has been consistently ignored by researchers and governments as have urban issues (which are now slowly beginning to gain some attention). policy makers have consistently ignored urban aboriginal peoples until recently. research helps us to better understand the issues and to devise, hopefully, better policy and programming interventions. aboriginal leaders complain that their communities have been researched to death and that their interest in more in action than more research. and to some extent this is true. much of the research on aboriginal peoples has been performed by outsiders and directed towards improving the knowledge of outsiders. what is needed is more research that is undertaken on issues identified by aboriginal communities as important to them, undertaken by researchers working with them rather than for someone external and which helps local communities understand their situations better. the likelihood of improved local effort is much improved. 8 smith, teresa. (2012, june 30). canadians think government is too generous with aboriginals: poll. global news. http://www.globalnews.ca/canadians+think+government+is+too+generous+w ith+aboriginals+poll/6442671478/story.html public broadcasting in canada: subordinate service david skinner simon fraser university introduction it is a popular conception that although broadcasting regulation was undertaken to give public broadcasting the central role in the broadcasting system, today the situation is reversed and the public service mainly compensates for the inadequacies of private broadcasters (salter 232). generally, proponents of this view frame the history of broadcasting as a struggle between competing interest groups, with those representing the cultural objectives of broadcasting locked in a losing battle with economically motivated private interests. this paper places the history of public broadcasting, as represented in the canadian broadcasting corporation (cbc), in a different perspective. focusing on the historical relations constructed between the state and private capital through intervention, it demonstrates that the structure of regulation has subordinated public broadcasting to the economic interests of private broadcasters since the legislation of the 1932 broadcasting act. while the history of broadcasting is indeed the product of real historical struggles, the regulatory framework has contextualized these struggles so as to foreground the reproduction of private capital. in this way, the marginal ization of public broadcasting can be seen as more the product of the regulatory framework than the political prowess of any particular interest group . the state, capital, and regulatory instruments the history of broadcasting regulation is of course inextricably bound up within the history of the canadian state. from the rationales that have both prompted and guided intervention, to the regulatory bodies that have shepherded the growth of the system, to the political -economic forces that have contextualized its growth the state and its attendant instruments and policies have played a central role in shaping the broadcasting system. to develop a purchase on why public broadcasting is now marginal to private interests within the broadcasting system, the historical relations between the state and private capital must be examined. tracing such relations has long been the project of canadian political econcr.iy. here, the growth of private capital in canada 26 has often been seen as fostered by government intervention. as aitken (184) notes: the standard interpretation of the entire history of the canadian economy assigns to the state a major role in guiding and stimulating development; on any reading of the historical record government policies and decisions stand out as the key factor. moreover, panitch (14) writes that the state has "provided the technical infrastructure for capitalist development when this was too risky or costly for private capital to undertake itself, "and that state ownership has not traditionally been undertaken "with the aim of managing or controlling the economy, but always with a view to facilitating further capital accumulation in the private sphere to the end of economic growth." however, there is little consensus as to why or how the state has acted in this manner. marchak (692) illustrates that the literature in this area has traditionally forwarded two basic perspectives on the canadian state: i) an "instrumentalist version," which leads to the expectation that the state "heeds capitalist demands in specific instances"; ii) a structuralist version, which instead suggests that the state "has 'relative autonomy' from business and introduces legislation in response to numerous pressures." while the instrumental approach is useful for sketching social relations in particular historical moments, it portrays the state as subject to the whims of particular individuals or elites and offers little illustration of how the structure of the state constrains relationships between the state and private capital. the structuralist perspective, while moving to overcome this weakness, often falls prey to a functionalist vision of the relations between the state and private capital and fails to illustrate how these relationships are maintained through changing social conditions. the work of claus offe offers a way out of this impasse. for offe (13), the impetus to state intervention is embedded in the very structure of the capitalist system which leaves the state both dependent on the process of accumulation for its survival and yet prohibits it from "organizing" production according to its own political criteria (because) "property is private." thus the state is trapped in contradiction: on one hand, forced to intervene in the economy to guarantee its own reproduction; on the other, to structure its interventions such that they do not interfere with the prerogatives of private capital. in accomplishing this the state "protects and sanctions a set of rules and social relationships" which give rise to accumulation. over periods of time, these practices are sedimented into institutional relations between the state and private capital . here the state is not the instrument of the ruling class, nor does it defend the interests of one class in some mechanistic way. rather, by contextualizing social struggles in terms of reproduction of private capital, it 27 protects the "common interest of all members of a capitalist class society." following offe's line of analysis, both the regulatory commission and the crown corporation, instruments central to the broadcasting system, can be seen as sets of institutional relationships born of government support for the orderly growth and maintenance of capital accumulation: the former acting as an arbiter between competing interests; the latter providing infrastructure for capital development. the first regulatory commission was instituted in 1903 for the resolution of problems between competing economic interests in the operation of the railways. as the railways opened up areas of the country for exploitation, tensions developed between railway companies and economic interests situated in the hinterland. the structure of the state proved inadequate for dealing with this competition, and pressure mounted for an "independent" agency that would possess both the expertise to make decisions regarding railways and be distant enough from government to be somewhat insulated from political currents of perquisites and patronage. the regulatory commission combined legislative, judicial, and executive functions in one structure and basically functioned to adjudicate disputes between private interests and offer some assurance of the regular operation of these vital links in the economic infrastructure. the literature on regulatory commissions generally interprets their evolution in one of two ways: older works see state intervention as moving to "correct the failures of the marketplace, enhance the quality of life, and ensure economic efficiency and minimum rates by bringing a broader conception of public responsibility to bear on the conduct of private monopoly;" while more recent analyses forward "a much more critical 'capture' theory, which holds that regulatory agencies almost invariably become servants rather than masters of the industries over which they preside, and that in the rational pursuit of its long term security, business actively sought state regulation to escape the travails of the market," (nelles 189). however, questions of whether or not regulation was instituted at the behest of industry tend to obscure larger questions regarding the role of the regulatory commission in the economy. as the privy council (110) notes : regulatory commissions ... exists largely because the adjudicative role which they perform could not be performed by departments under the more or less continuous direction of a minister ... commissions and tribunals are uniquely constructed to dispense privileges usually amongst competing interests and arbitrate rights . indeed, in their dispensing of privileges and rights the board of railway commissioners and its progenitors can be seen as dedicated 28 to the smooth allocation of property rights and the orderly growth and maintenance of private capital . whether adjudicating between directly competing groups of private capital, or between monopoly capital and the "public interest", they foreground an allocative rationale that focuses on the growth or development of the system within which they are embedded. in fulfilling this role, the regulatory commission constructs a particular set of relations between the state and private capital relations which are not dependent on the policy stream in which the instrument is located. government ownership too was born out of pragmatic necessities in the maintenance of capital accumulation. with the union act of 1840, the state became directly involved in the development of economic infrastructure such as canals and railways. innis (1933: 80) offers a summary of the operational imperative of this activity : government ownership is fundamentally a phenomenon peculiar to a new country, and an effective weapon by which the government has been able to bring together the retarded development and the possession of vast natural resources, matured technique, and a market favourable to the purchasing of raw materials. it was essentially a clumsy, awkward means of attaining the end of immediate investment of tremendous sums of capital, but it was the only means of retaining a substantial share of the returns from virgin natural resources. canada's development was essentially transcontinental . private enterprise was not adequate to the task, although the success of government ownership has tended to obscure the paramount importance of its contributions during the early stages of capital formation. through both subsidy and direct ownership, the early canadian stage was able to rapidly secure territory and develop resources while deferring the cost of development through legislative structures. the crown corporation represents a further institutionalization of this process. fuelled by the unsubstantiated optimism of the federal government in the first decade of this century and the trials of war in the second, the debts of two of canada's three transcontinental railways had grown beyond the management of the private sector by 1917. after much deliberation, nationalization seemed to be the only way to prevent bankruptcy and the negative effects on both private individuals and canada's credit in foreign capital markets that might arise from it. the canadian national railway (cnr) was the state's response to this crisis. 29 as a means for the consolidation and public appropriation of private debt the new corporation was quite a success, investors were largely protected and the railways were maintained. however, the structure of the company was not conducive to capital accumulation. on one hand, its assets were a patchwork of isolated railways. while these were important for the maintenance of commercial activities in the communities which they serviced, as commercial enterprises they were marginal at best. on the other hand, the company was saddled with a tremendous debt to service and subject to small and unpredictable parliamentary appropriations for working capital. as innis (1933: 58) notes, this structure placed the cnr in a subordinate position to the cpr in relation to both railway markets and advances of new transportation technologies and, over time, would lead it "to become a buffer between the canadian pacific and the vicissitudes of railway earnings in canada." rather than offering direct competition to private enterprise then, this structure focussed the crown corporation on the edges of the commercial railway system and extended the reach of private capital in the development of national resources. further to this point, innis (1933: 55-56) writes: government ownership at present represents a force in favour of continued and rapid exploitation, and there is little evidence that it is being used, or that it can be used, as a weapon designed for other purposes of importance to the canadian people in the long run. government ownership will continue to be a most potent factor in the rapid development of the country. historically then, these regulatory instruments sedimented particular sets of relations between the state and private capital in institutional form: the regulatory commission working to safeguard the smooth allocation of resources and expedite the orderly expansion of capital; state ownership, with its focus on commercially marginal activities, working to extend the reach of private capital in the development of resources. the origins of public broadcasting prang notes that the introduction of public broadcasting to canada was a move of "defensive expansionism" as the state strove to protect and nurture its broadcasting resources from the intrusion of american broadcasting signals. however, this intervention was not motivated solely by economic concerns, for radio broadcasting was imbued with nationalist cultural significance early in its history. to understand how these cultural concerns structure broadcasting policy, some illustration of the historical significance of the nationalist ideal that gives rise to these concerns and its relation to the canadian state is necessary . 30 as charland (202) illustrates, the early development of the canadian nation state had both physical and discursive components: (1) the existence of a transcontinental canada required the development of a system of transportation facilitating territorial annexation, colonization, and the implantation of a physical presence. (2) the existence of this canada also required the development of a rhetoric which ideologically constituted those in canada as canadians, united in the national project and under the political authority of a national government. through constituting a particular set of historical subjects, this discourse constructed the idea of a "canadian" nation state. legitimated by this notion of nation, the state was empowered to intervene in the economy and undertake the physical components of nation building. however, once the project of confederation was firmly underway, this "discourse of nationalism" did not simply disappear. it remained a central legitimating force in underwriting federal initiatives. while the discourse of nationalism informed the practice of radio broadcasting in the early 1920's, it was not until the report of the royal commission on radio broadcasting (aird report) that it became central to the development of broadcasting policy. informed by a commercial rationale, private broadcasting in canada was largely constructed as an extension of american broadcasting empires. this inhibited the growth of a canadian based industry and raised nationalist concerns. building on these concerns, the aird report (6) stated that radio "could become a great agency in fostering national consciousness and unity" but because of the preponderance of foreign programming available "the minds, ideals, and opinions of canadians, particularly the young, are being shaped into moulds not specifically canadian." here then, the commission implicitly recognized what innis (1951) would call the "space binding" nature of the new medium. central to this vision, was a conception of the medium as a purveyor of nationalist cultural ideas the might bind the country together. from aird on, these nationalist concerns became a central feature of broadcasting policy discussions. these concerns, in concert with the structure of regulation, set up a series of relations between the state, private capital, and the practice of broadcasting relations which have been instrumental in the marginalization of public broadcasting in canada. the struggle for public broadcasting that followed the aird report is well documented in the literature and does not need to be rehearsed in detail here. it is generally argued that with the legislation of the 1932 broadcasting act and the institution of the canadian radio broadcasting commission (crbc) the nationalist forces won the day, (prang). indeed, the discourse of nationalism 31 and its attendant concerns appear to firmly undergird prime minister r. b. bennett's speech to the house of commons introducing the first broadcasting act: this country must be assured of complete canadian control of broadcasting from canadian sources, free from foreign interference of influence. without such control radio broadcasting can never become a great agency for communication of matters of national concern and for the diffusion of national thought and ideals, and without such control it can never be the agency by which consciousness may be fostered and sustained and national unity still further strengthened. .. .no other scheme than that of public ownership can ensure to the people of this country, without regard to class or place, equal enjoyment of the benefits and pleasures of radio broadcasting. private ownership must necessarily discriminate between densely and sparsely populated areas.... happily... under this system there is no need for discrimination: all may be served alike. (cited in peers 101-102.) however, in practice, the crbc fell short of being the "great agency" promised in bennett's speech. the crbc was somewhat of a hybrid of the regulatory commission and crown corporation: on one hand, empowered to regulate private broadcasting; on the other, charged with carrying on the business of broadcasting in canada. this division of responsibilities recognized the legitimacy of private ownership within the system while allowing for public participation. however, positioned as a government department, the commission's powers of selfdetermination were severely constrained by legislation, particularly regarding the acquisition of property, the appointment of staff, and the acquisition and disposition of funds. attempts to have the broadcasting act amended to provide greater autonomy were to no avail, (peers 118-128). this structure, which circumscribed the commission's activities in the marketplace and left it open to pressure from both the government and the private sector, focussed the commission's activities toward the edges of the commercial system. while enough money to make a substantial step toward building a wholly publicly owned broadcasting system was generated through regulation, the crbc was dependent on the government for passing on these funds and they were not forthcoming, (peers 108-136). consequently, the commission's plans to construct a chain of highpowered stations across the country were stymied and most of its 32 efforts focussed on network broadcasts and program production, (malone, 31). in those early days, high transmission costs mitigated against network broadcasting in canada, (weir 50-55). but because such arrangements were seen as important to the national character of the system, they were undertaken almost single-handedly by the commission. in an effort to induce broadcasters to run canadian programming rather than import or copy american programs, the commission produced and distributed programming free of charge. when private stations balked at this prospect, the commission often paid them to affiliate with its networks and/or take on its programming, (weir 56). further, because of national considerations, commercially unprofitable service to less populated areas of the country was shouldered by the commission. in practice then, the crbc's nationalist vision of broadcasting generally subordinated its activities to the commercial interests of the private stations. in the face of foreign broadcasting incursions, it moved to develop aspects of the canadian broadcasting resource that private industry was loathe to and subsidize the operation of private stations with both programming and cash during the tough economic times of the early 1930's. the role of the discourse of nationalism is crucial here. for, though constituting nationalist goals for broadcasting, it directed the activities of the commission away from those of private broadcasters. coupled with a structure that left it open to both budget restrictions and pressure from private broadcasters, these goals narrowed the activities of the commission to those of primary national concern. as a result, the crbc moved to fill in the void created by the contradiction between the logic of commercialism and the discourse of nationalism and lay the foundation for the development of a canadian-based broadcasting system. while the form of public broadcasting and its technological conditions have changed through time, the basic relations between the state, public broadcasting, and private capital constructed by regulation have remained the same. the early cbc the 1936 broadcasting act transferred the crbc's regulatory powers to the cbc while clearly distancing it from the government through casting it in the form of an "independent" crown corporation. but while it had a guaranteed income, the ability to borrow money, and control over its staff, the cbc's powers were still severely circumscribed by the requirements that it have permission from the governor-in-council for expenditures over a certain amount, for the acquisition of property, or for securing loans or advances. because the ability to acquire and dispose of capital is the essence of corporate freedom, the cbc's independence was in practice more of a possibility than an achievement. this structure, combined with its sel f -espoused national mandate, continued to focus the public broadcaster's commercial, network, 33 was in practice more of a possibility than an achievement. this structure, combined with its sel f -espoused national mandate, continued to focus the public broadcaster's commercial, network, and programming policies away from the practices of private broadcasters and toward the development of the national system. network activities were again structured in favour of private capital. while network broadcasting in the late 1930's was still not lucrative enough to attract private investment, it continued to form a major portion of the cbc's activities. private stations formed an important role in this network, filling in large gaps in national coverage. revenue sharing arrangements for such broadcasts were more generous than those american stations struck with their affiliates, and little if any pressure appears to have been exerted on private stations to join the cbc network or carry cbc programming (malone 34). as the economic climate improved and the cbc demonstrated the viability of network operations, pressure from the private sector resulted in both an increase in the cbc's national network coverage and the relaxing of network affiliation rules to allow private stations to form their own regional networks . through this period the cbc's production practices continued to offer little interference with the private sector. production often focused on types of programming that were considered to be either culturally enriching or of national significance, such as symphonies and radio plays or "actuality" broadcasts and current affairs. these types of programming were not particularly attractive to advertisers because of their narrow audience appeal and/or expense. advertising practices too were different from those of private broadcasters. in an attempt to set a high standard for advertising content, the cbc formulated a commercial acceptance policy which considerably narrowed the types of advertising revenue it would accept. further, because it perceived itself as a "national" broadcaster, the cbc does not appear to have contracted either local business or spot advertising through the 1940's, leaving this business for private broadcasters (weir 200203) . the crown corporation structure also left the cbc both financially and authoritatively ill-equipped to regulate the activities of the private sector. transgressions regarding commercial activity, content requirement, and promises of performance were often reprimanded yet evaded punishment in the face of unclear authority. these problems continued to grow through the 1940 's and were compounded after world war ii with the introduction of television in the united states. until, as peers (1969: 379) notes, by the year 1948: several questions demanded the attention from the government. first, an authoritative answer was needed on who should regulate and control the activities of the 34 private stations; their scope and function had to be defined or restated. second financial provision had to be made for the cbc; the license fee... was now clearly inadequate... third, there was the new problem of television. the country, it seemed, would be faced with the same kinds of difficult choices that had confronted it when radio broadcasting developed. the difference was that the pace would be faster, the costs would be greater and the stakes would be higher. while the cbc began to make plans for the implementation of television in 1947, these were dealt a serious blow early in 1948 when the government refused them funding. from this time until the legislation of the 1958 broadcasting act, the federal government assumed the responsibility for setting television policy, as both public and private broadcasters jockeyed for position in this new broadcasting market. in early 1948 it looked as though the cbc would be relegated to a licensing and regulatory role regarding television, similar to the us federal communications commission (fcc). however, the applicants apparently most able to proceed were foreign-owned, which raised objections from the canadian association of broadcasters (cab), (peers, 1979: 11). delay followed and canadian cities were flooded with programming from american border broadcasters . under pressure from a number of sources, the government announced an interim television policy in march of 1949. this policy stated that television would be developed by both public and private enterprise, with the cbc establishing stations and production centres in toronto and montreal and supplying programming to private stations in other parts of the country. however, these plans were again modified in 1952 when the government, reacting to the nationalist concerns of the report of the royal commission on national development in the arts, letters, and sciences (massey commission) made another major television policy statement: the government believes, with the royal commission, that television should be developed in canada with the aim of benefitting our national life and that it should have the structure and means required by canadian conditions to ensure adequate amounts of canadian programs for canadians as well as using some of the material from outside the country. television will undoubtedly play a considerable part in the lives of many canadian families... the government believes it should be so developed in canada that it is capable of providing a sensible pattern of programming for canadian homes with at least a good portion of canadian content reflecting 35 canadian ideas and creative abilities of our own people and life in all parts of canada, (fowler report: 315). while the nationalist goals of broadcasting contextualized this statement, the system the government envisioned was not a purely public model. this plan moved to establish cbc stations in ottawa, halifax, vancouver, and winnipeg as well as toronto and montreal while leaving other centres open to development by private interests. only one station would be licensed in any given area and network arrangements, still too expensive to be attractive to private capital, would be the responsibility of the cbc. the cbc began broadcasting in september of 1952 in toronto and montreal , and the first private station opened in sudbury in october of 1953. from this point television grew extremely quickly. a year and a half later there were seven cbc stations and nineteen private stations. and, by march of 1958, there were eight cbc stations and thirty-six private outlets, (ellis 35). the cbc supplied much of the impetus to this growth, funnelling $170,000,000 into the development of television between 1952 and 1957. much of this money indirectly subsidized the operations of private broadcasters through supplying them with programming and facilities. further, affiliate agreements between the cbc and private broadcasters operating in economically marginal markets acted as a buffer between these businesses and the travails of market development. after their election, the conservatives made good on their longstanding promise to institute an independent regulatory commission in broadcasting with the passage of the 1958 broadcasting act. with this act, the cbc lost control over licensing and network regulation and was set on more or less equal footing with private broadcasters before the board of broadcast governors (bbg), competing for licenses and privileges. however, in practice this realignment of power relations was not as dramatic a shift from the status quo as some critics claim. the 1957 report of the royal commission on broadcasting (fowler report: 224) had already recommended the creation of a separate public agency that would be responsible for all matters of regulation. while this report took pains to point out that this was not the same organization as the independent regulatory board advocated by private broadcasters, it did note that before the new board there might be "competition between the cbc and private applicants for new licenses." further, because the government had acted as an arbiter between the cbc and private interests in the competition for television licenses, the new legislation was in many ways simply legislative recognition of existing regulatory conceptions and relationships. the al locative rationale of the new board quickly became apparent. as the bbg assumed its responsibilities, the government announced that in mid-september of 1959 applications for second 36 stations in areas already served with television would be considered. rising out of this second station policy, an application to operate a private network was heard in april of 1961 and the ctv network began broadcasting in october. as anderson (84) illustrates, the new stations', and consequently the new network's, success was largely dependent on the degree to which they could "cut into cbc commercial revenues and the amount of programming it could sell to the corporation's affiliates." while both the new stations and the new network got off to a rocky start, with a little help from the bbg by way of relaxing regulations, the second stations were soon profitable while the cbc reported declines in commercial revenue. encouraged by government and its structure as a regulatory board, the bbg had both explicit and implicit mandates to expand the broadcasting system. throughout its tenure it was almost constantly at odds with the cbc over how such expansion would be undertaken. with the cbc constrained both financially and through its dedication to the national purposes of broadcasting, it was inevitable that thi.s expansion would come at the expense of the public broadcaster. 6 the crtc with the 1968 broadcasting act, and the institution of the canadian radio-television commission (crtc), the relations between the cbc and private broadcasters were little changed. however, with this act the nationalist goals of public broadcasting finally found voice in legislation and the cbc was officially harnessed to presenting a "balanced service of information" in both english and french, extending service to "all parts of canada", and contributing "to the development of national unity... (and the) continuing expression of canadian identity," (section 3(g)). while the forces at work in the broadcasting system during the 1970's and 1980 's have been varied and complex, both the structure of regulation and the cbc's mandate continued to focus public broadcasting toward the edges of the system. following an al locative rationale, the crtc sought to enhance canadian representation within the broadcasting system during the 1970's by increasing the number of licensees. generally, this led to a further marginalization of public broadcasting through both intensifying competition for audiences and increasing the amount of foreign programming available within the system. following its mandate, the cbc fought this tide by increasing its commitment to the production of canadian programming, extending broadcasting service through its accelerated coverage plan, and devoting increasing attention to issues such as northern and native broadcasting. as the 1970's drew to a close though, the uncontrolled reception of american satellite broadcasts threatened the whole regulatory framework, (crtc, 1980). in an effort to head off this latest invasion of american programming, the crtc 37 increased its licensing activity further fragmenting broadcasting markets, (crtc, 1985). throughout this period, budget cuts undermined the cbc ' s abilities to respond to these changes in the broadcasting environment. since the mid-1970's, recessionary pressures on the state have placed increasing emphasis on the role of the private sector and the supposed benefits of competition, (mcnulty 196). coupled with the increase in private sector representation, these economic forces have further diminished the role of public broadcasting in the system. as the private sector has continued to fill the broadcasting system with more foreign programming, the cbc has predictably reacted by renewing its commitment to develop a greater quantity of "distinctive" canadian programming. this strategy is evidenced in how the corporation dealt with the 1991 budget cuts: withdrawing from local news production (ostensibly because this service "duplicates" that of the private sector); promising increased regional news programming (a market now underserved by private broadcasters); and renewing its commitment to "canadianizing" its program schedule . however, this strategy again finds the public broadcaster emphasizing values that are marginal to the commercial system and it will put a further strain on the cbc's resources. given that local news and foreign programming have traditionally been major sources of commercial revenue, these cutbacks will bring about both a decline in revenue as audiences shrink and an increase in production costs as new programs are produced. it is interesting to note how these commitments, with their apparently negative impact on the commercial revenue of the corporation, come at a time when the proliferation of private broadcasting services have severely fractured advertising markets and threatens loss of income to all. however, while there has undoubtedly been pressure from the private sector to push the cbc further away from commercial advertising markets, the greatest impetus in this direction appears to have come from within the corporation itself as it has moved to pursue cultural concerns in the face of increased foreign program incursions and focus on developing aspects of the system that are being overlooked by the commercial rationale of private broadcasters. 38 conclusion while the history of broadcasting in canada has indeed been a history of struggles between competing interests, the structure of regulation has consistently placed the public sector forefront in developing the broadcasting system. first with the crbc, and later with the cbc, public broadcasting has functioned to both generate and consolidate broadcasting resources. with their abilities to both generate revenue and distribute it to specific sites, these organizations excelled as development instruments. under their shepherding the private sector flourished, leading to pressure for further allocation of available resources as private capital developed the capacity to undertake more responsibilities. at the centre of this division of labour between the private and public sectors has been the contradiction between the cultural goals of broadcasting and the economic rationale that guides private capital. presently, this contradiction is expressed at a number of different levels within the various elements of the system: in the practices of the cbc, where it is torn between the commercial imperatives of broadcasting and the pursuit of broad social and nationalist goals; in the practices of the private sector, where the purchase of cheap foreign programming is favoured over program production; in relations between the private sector, the public broadcaster, and the regulator, where the private sector is generally found to be in a better financial position to assume new licenses than the cbc; and in parliamentary debates and government studies, where commendations of the public sector are often accompanied by calls for further austerity. these contradictions have moved to frame power relations between the private and public sectors such that the public sector both seeks and is pushed toward the economic edge of the system and a subordinate position with regard to revenue production. however, while the mandate of the corporation will inevitably continue to focus its activities on the economic margins of the system, it need not continue its slow drift to obscurity. through instituting some form of funding independent of the political and economic fortunes of the state a form upon which the corporation might generate future revenue opportunities the cbc could strengthen its position at the leading edge of the broadcasting system. 39 endnotes 1. in this way they represent a step in the historical institutionalization of capital relations between the state and private capital. see dubruc (1966) for a discussion of how the canadian state has historically moved toward the promotion of private capital accumulation. 2. while the concept of discourse presented here dovetails with charl iid's notion of the term there are several important differences, particularly regarding the relationship between rhetoric and discourse and the role of technology in this discourse. for a comparison see charland (1986: 196-21) and skinner (1988: 5-24). 3. see canada. canadian-radio broadcasting act statutes of canada, (c. 51, 1932): section 8 a. 4. interestingly, weir (165) illustrates the crbc's first network contract with the railroad telegraph companies was sensitive to their commercial interests and contained this clause: the commission undertakes and agrees not to employ the said transmission lines for commercial broadcasting purposes and agrees not to compete with the railways in the commercial broadcasting field. if, however, the commission hereafter determines to undertake commercial broadcasting, it shall give to the railways and to each of them reasonable notice of its intention so to do and in such an event the commission shall not undertake such commercial broadcasting unless and until the amounts to be paid by the commission to the railways for the use of the said transmission lines for such purposes shall have been mutually agreed upon. 5. weir (200-203) illustrates how the crbc's close relationship with government led to its eventual downfall with the "mr. sage" scandal . 6. as the general manager of the cbc noted in 1946, scheduling practices often worked in conjunction with program production to minimize audience appeal : the cbc does not try to obtain a mass audience all of the time. the easy and profitable way of doing this is to put programs which are not supposed to be big audience builders outside peak listening times. this we have resolutely refused to do. (quoted in weir 272). 7. see the canadian broadcasting corporation annual report 1959. further, weir (331) notes that "during the first three months of the life of most private television stations, up to 85 per cent of 40 their programs were supplied by the cbc without cost to them." also, through lease agreements, the cbc was a major source of financing for the trans-canada telephone system's microwave system and it often shared these channels with the private networks free of charge, (weir 331). 8. skinner (1988) offers a thorough discussion of how this expansion took place at the expense of the cbc. 9. through its interest in the latter, the corporation played an important role in financing the development of satellite broadcasting as telesat's only broadcasting customer from 1973 to 1981. 10. see for instance: the cbc the strategy of the cbc 1983; cbc let's do it! 1985; cbc new broadcasting policy for canada march 1987. 41 references aitken, hugh. "defensive expansionism: the state and economic growth in canada" in w. t. easterbrook and m. h. watkins (eds.) approaches to canadian economic history. toronto: mclelland and stewart, 1967. anderson, peter. "the cbc and its mandate" unpublished ma thesis, simon fraser university, 1976. canada. royal commission on radio broadcasting report . ottawa: king's printer, 1929. canada. royal commission on broadcasting report. ottawa: queen's printer 1957. canada. privy council submission to the royal commission on financial accountability responsibility in the constitution: part ii non-departmental bodies. ottawa: minister of supply and services, 1979. crtc. 1980 's: a decade of diversity july 1980. . the costs of choice. canada: minister of supply and services, 1985. charland, maurice. "technological nationalism" in canadian journal of political and social theory. vol. x, nos . 1-2: 1986. dubruc, alfred. "the decline of confederation and the new nationalism" in peter russell (ed.) nationalism in canada. toronto: mcgraw-hill, 1966. ellis, david. evolution of the canadian broadcasting system ottawa: dept . of supply and services, 1979. innis, harold. the problems of staple production. toronto: ryerson press, 1933. innis, harold. the bias of communication. toronto: university of toronto press, 1951. malone, william. "broadcast regulation in canada" unpublished phd. dissertation, harvard university, 1962. marchak, patricia. "canadian political economy" in the review of canadian sociology and anthropology. 22(5) 1985. mcnulty, jean. "technology and nation-building in canadian broadcasting" in rowland lorimer and donald wilson (eds.) communication canada. toronto: kagan and woo, 1988. 42 nelles, h.v. and christopher armstrong. monopoly's moment. philadelphia: temple university press, 1986. offe, claus and volker ronge. "notes on theses and theories of the state" in new german critique 6, fall 1975. panitch, leo (ed.) the canadi an state. toronto: university of toronto press, 1977. peers, frank. the politics of canadian broadcasting: 1920-1951. toronto: university of toronto press, 1969. . the public eye. toronto: university of toronto press, 1979, prang, margaret. "the origins of public broadcasting in canada" in the canadian historical review 46 (1, 1965): 11-31. salter, liora. "reconceptual izing public broadcasting" in rowland lorimer and donald wilson ( eds . ) communication canada. toronto: kagan and woo, 1988. 43 pressuring the canadian state for women's rights: the role of the national action committee on the status of women cerise morris this paper examines the history , structure and operation of the national action committee on the status of women (nac) . charged with the enormous task of addressing all women's issues tiith public policy implications , the argument is that the organisation is undeservedly criticised as elitist and ineffective . in addition to its broad mandate , the weaknesses and limitations of nac are attributed to certain restraining conditions : class, ethnic and ideological divisions within the constituency and membership , a high leadership turn-over and the dilemma of restrictive government funding versus time consuming fund-raising . pressure groups, or public-interest groups as they are often called, are "organizations whose members act together to influence public policy in order to promote their common interest" (pross, 1975:2). interest-group liberalism assumes that the public interest and the public policy agenda should be defined in terms of the organized interests of society (lowi , 1968). accordingly, all sectors of society may participate in the democratic process by banding together to express and defend their interests. the aggregation, ordering and balancing of interests thus defined constitutes the ongoing policy process. according to lowi (1969:71) this working model rests on the following assumptions: (1) organized interests are homogeneous and easy to define, sometimes monolithic. any "duly elected" spokesman for any interest is taken as speaking in close approximation for each and every member. (2) organized interests pretty much fill up and adequately represent most of the sectors of our lives, so that one organized group can be found effectively answering and checking some other organized group as it seeks to prosecute its claims against society. and, (3) the role of government is one of ensuring access particularly to the most effectively organized and or ratifying the agreements and adjustments worked out among the competing leaders and their claims. this last assumption is supposed to be a statement of how our democracy works and how it ought to work. taken together, these assumptions constitute the adam smith "hidden hand" model. fbst of the literature on pressure groups is specific to the united states. wiile there are clearly many similarities between the united states and canadian socio-political systems, the differences are too important to be obscured by reliance on theory and analysis generated by the united states experience. as pross (1975:5) emphasizes, "the structure and behaviour of pressure groups are functions of the political systems in which they are located." the little research that has been done on canadian pressure groups is more descriptive than analytical. pross, therefore, has developed a 88 conceptual framework for analyzing pressure groups. the institutional continuum model, as he calls it, distinguishes between "issue-oriented" groups at one end of a four-point continuum, and "institutional" groups at the other end. groups are categorized according to their organizational characteristics. the process of institutionalization culminates in the ideal type of pressure group characterized by organizational continuity and cohesion; expert knowledge of relevant government sectors; stable membership; well-formu) ated , short-term objectives; and high regard for overall organizational imperatives. issue-oriented groups have characteristics which are opposite to those of the institutional pressure group. in reality, of course, particular groups cannot be expected to conform exactly to the typology here, but pross contends that the pattern does represent the central tendency. in canada, political power and control over policy lies within two federal structures: the party system and the bureaucracy, "both of which achieve an apex in the cabinet" (pross, 1975:18). parliament or individual mps are not the first target of pressure group activists. according to one experienced lobbyist, quoted by van loon and vshittington (1976:306), "vvrien i see members of parliament being lobbied, it's a sure sign to me that the lobby lost its fight in the civil service and the cabinet." the task of formulating policy belongs to the bureaucracy; for cabinet ministers this is a secondary role. recent changes in the canadian political process have altered the context in which pressure groups act, with subsequent implications for their behaviour (aucoin, 1975) . these changes have occurred in three areas: (1) the policy advisory functions of the prime minister's office and the privy council office have expanded to de-emphasize the bureaucratic departmentalization of policy formulation and re-assert the 89 primacy of the political executive in the setting and monitoring of policies. (2) the prime minister's office and the privy council office now advise on broad policy concerns across departmental lines, providing cabinet members with a broad context in which to evaluate advice from their individual departments. (3) the standing committees in the commons have been re-organized along national policy lines. these reforms have forced pressure groups to: (1) assume a more public role and provide more expert documentation; (2) demonstrate that their proposals conform with the public interest and national priorities; and (3) compete openly with other groups for material and power resources. canadian pressure groups face a different set of circumstances from their united states counterparts, because of canada's parliamentary-cabinet system (cawson, 1975:35). according to pross (1975), the canadian political system is based less on a pluralistic, competitive approach to decision-making than the united states political system. the parliamentary system of government does not allow pressure groups to exploit rivalries between houses of legislature as they do in the united states. nor is there as much rivalry betwen government agencies in canada as there is in the united states. consequently, issue generation is de-emphasized in canada in favour of access, which as pross notes, need not be a function of publicity. access to the bureaucracy and the cabinet depends upon careful cultivation of relationships and channels of communication, possession of expert knowledge, and adoption of an accommodative and consensus-seeking approach. it follows, then, that pressure groups whose characteristics most closely approximate the institutional type have the greatest likelihood of achieving their objectives for influencing public policy. as pross observes: 90 the canadian policy system. . .tends to favour elite groups, making functional accommodative, consensus-seeking techniques of political communication, rather than conflict-oriented techniques that are directed towards the achievement of objectives through arousing public opinion (1975:19). pross hypothesizes that pressure group success is associated with two main behavioural characteristics: the cultivation of access to public decision-makers in the relevant policy areas, and the demonstrated willingness to accept short-term defeats in the interest of maintaining good relations and achieving long-term success. two imperatives follow: the necessity for non-partisanship, and the necessity of maintaining staff headquarters in ottawa. dawson (1975:46) describes the prerequisites to successful pressure group influence on the bureaucracy in particular: a wide network of acquaintances, and even friends, within the bureaucracy, is essential for utilization of all the opportunities... the group and its officials must have a reputation for expertise, reliability and political non-partisanship. they should be able to provide accurate information quickly; they must be reliable about keeping confidences; preferably they should try to restrain their clientele from great public excesses. if the relationship is working properly there is a constant two-way flow of information. restraining conditions facing pressure groups in canada for groups willing to operate within this framework of realpolitik , what are the restraining conditions? goldstein contends in his study of the consumer's association of canada that pressure groups work with certain inherent disadvantages in the capitalist democracies. "these problems include limited financial resources, limited political legitimacy and particular difficulties in defining their priorities clearly" (1979:137-38). in particular, goldstein notes, "general" groups, characterized by broad goals and the inability to provide material rewards to members, have difficulty in developing strategies to 91 overcome these inherent disadvantages. lawson's (1975) analysis emphasizes the relationship between federalism on the one hand, with its over-riding question of jurisdiction and its requirement that a "national consensus" be constructed out of varying regional priorities and interests, and the financial constraints which pressure groups face on the other hand: the problems associated with unclear constitutional jurisdiction and group difficulty in aggregating client demands into cohesive country-wide policies are the cause of major weaknesses in pressure groups claiming national support. they affect not only the groups' ability to perform effectively their role in influencing federal government policies, but have also led... to financial instability. the problem is most serious for groups vvhich depend upon "voluntary assessment" from component organizations.. .the financial weakness is exacerbated by the necessity of maintaining well-staffed offices at both levels, and it also has an adverse effect on the frequency of board and executive meetings, thus compounding the normal communication problems extant in larger national organizations. lack of money has led to restrictions of activity at the national level or to acceptance of a government subsidy or grant (1 975: 33, emphasis added) . for loney, whose 1977 critique takes a marxist view, this last point is critical in understanding the restraining conditions facing voluntary groups concerned with social change. government funding of the voluntary sector must be understood as an important instrument of social control. in themid-60s, loney notes, the federal government expanded its support in the field of citizen participation beyond established agencies to include innovative and apparently radical groups: it could of course be argued that all of this represents no more than the laudable desire of the government to facilitate the fuller workings of democracy. in fact, government has a very pronounced effect on the way in which democracy works, serving to contain the debate within broad, but nonetheles definable, parameters (1977:457). loney' s data on such recent federal programs as company of young canadians and opportunities for youth lend some support to his claim. 92 as vvell , the literature generally supports the viev; that public interest groups have little hope of succe3sfully influencing public policy if they are belligerent or uncompromising, or if they employ non-routine techniques in pursuit of their goals. the case of the national action committee on the status of women: the women's federal lobby 1. history the roots of the national action committee on the status of women (nac) lie in the campaign to establish the royal commission on the status of women in canada (rcsw) , led by a group of prominent, toronto-based activists with laura sabia at their head (see morris, 1980) . nac was founded by these same women, and the thirty-two groups they represented along with some twenty newly-formed feminist groups, to pressure the federal government to implement the rcsw recommendations. the mandate to create nac was given by the five hundred delegates to the 1972 "strategy for change" convention, chaired by sabia. its formation represented a major response to the rcsw report by one of its main consti tuenci es . as an umbrella organization, nac maintained its diversity at the national level with the aim of truly representing canadian women. nac founders saw from the outset that it was essential to keep women of all classes involved, especially those from the labour movement. working-class women offered social criticism viiile professional, academic, and business women, and some women from the public service, offered mainstream political experience and contacts (lorna marsden, personal interview, september, 1978). 93 2. structure by 1980, nac represented one hundred and fifty non-governmental groups from across the country. these ranged from the large, established women's voluntary organizations which have been the mainstay of nac — groups such as the national council of jewish women and the canadian federation of business and professional women's clubs — to newer "status of women" and issue-oriented feminist groups, such as the hamilton rape crisis centre and kelowna status of women action society, lb join nac, groups must have at least ten members and be sponsored by another member organization. individuals do not have voting rights in nac, although they may participate as observers and "friends of nac." as such, they make financial contributions and are invited to support activities. eight of the twenty-two members on the executive are elected by groups within their own region. the executive is constitutionally empowered to run the organization; its agenda is set at n^c's annual meetings. all affiliates accept nac's official purposes, which are: 1. to press for the implementation of the recommendations of the royal commission on the status of women and for additional reforms supported by the participating organizations; 2. to encourage communication between organizations, local groups, and individuals working to improve the status of women in canada (nac brochure, n.d.) . because of the breadth and generality of these objectives, nac's member organizations are highly diversified in ideology, and class, regional, and ethnic interests. this diversity produces conflicts of interest among member organizations and disputes over priorities. yet nac has never formally excluded a group, and the views of both the communist party of canada and the ywca are aired. for historical reasons, nac was based in tbronto. although the 94 organization was national in scope, the initial organization and executive decision-making was largely carried out by the toronto women. given limited financial resources and the inevitable conflict of loyalties for women representing their far-flung local and regional organizations, it was deemed easier to depend upon members living in tbronto. predictably, this led to tensions and charges of narrowness and elitism in the executive, which, in any case, effectively is nac. the problem of adequate representation of regional interests and priorities was seriously debated in kpic. although funds were raised (or diverted) for members to travel to tbronto for monthly executive meetings, the whole question of regionalism remains a problem for the organization. one member of the executive articulated some of the difficulties and frustrations related to this question in 1978: when i hear the suggestion that regional representation include areas such as "the prairie provinces and territories" or "the atlantic provinces," i shudder. i cannot conceive of one person providing meaningful representation from areas which are so large. in alberta, for example, we face the problem of not being able to liaise with women from the far north and even south of the province. our needs and interests are often quite different and frequently i feel hopelessly inadequate when i attempt to speak for sisters scattered so far apart. ..i believe we must establish what regionalism implies to a) member groups and b) nac. what are the objectives of regional representatives and what obligations do they have to nac and to their areas? perhaps it's mandatory for regional rep's to have back up a consulting group in their areas, but then it seems to me that even more funding has to be found to not only back nac but also the smaller regional groups. funds everywhere are tight. . .being a member of the nac executive is a commitment to work, and electing a regional representative who has no commitment to working or being actively involved in some specific aspect (s) of nac is ridiculous. surely we can avoid tokenism in our feminist groups (pat preston, "regional representation.. .some thoughts" mimeo., undated). the problems for public interest groups with limited financial resources have been summed up by goldstein (1979:139): "since they represent no special interests, they are unlikely to possess any 95 automatic source cf financial support and must scramble for money where they can." this condition is aggravated when the public pressure group is an umbrella organization for voluntary groups, as is nac. f^embers of nac owe their primary allegiance to their own organizations. nac neither expects nor receives significant financial support from its groups or their individual members. annual dues range from $15.00 to $25.00, depending upon size and type of the group. while nac depends largely upon federal government funding for its operations [1], there are pronounced differences of opinion within the organization about the wisdom of this situation. some fear that dependence upon government funding will lead inevitably to cooptation; others that nac has already been coopted, in deed if not in word.t2] still others feel that cooptation is neither necessary nor inevitable. three models for funding were debated at nac's 1981 annual meeting (from discussion paper, finance and funding workshop, 1981 nac annual meeting) : 1. complete self-sufficiency, with all money being raised by nac and no government funding. 2. core funding from the government, with nac raising a percentage of its budget from other sources. 3. ail funding from the government, with additional input from affiliation fees. in the opinion of nac leadership, self-sufficiency is presently unattainable. the second model is currently followed within the organization and probably best reflects present realities. there is no strong current of opinion in favour of the third model, complete dependence upon government funding. the extent to which nac is constrained by limited funding is best illustrated by the fact that in 1981 it was still unable to maintain permanent headquarters or lobbyists in ottawa . 96 methods of influence 1. action oriented toward the policy system nac operates, as a canadian pressure group of national scope must, by attempting to influence the bureaucracy and cabinet. it has two ways of doing this: through its annual ottawa lobbying with cabinet ministers and mps, and through briefs and position papers on current policy issues affecting the status of women, which it is invited with increasing frequency to present to parliamentary committees. priorities are determined by the membership at an annual meeting. between meetings, the executive committee responds to issues as they arise. former nac president, lorna marsden, explained the campaign for 'equal pay for work of equal value': there was a wrangle within the cabinet about whether the equal wages provision should get into the human rights commission or should remain in labour. since we favoured its remaining in labour, we contacted monro and his officials to put forward that view. our contact took two forms. at our annual meeting and lobbying in ottawa in april 1976, we invited the ministers and representatives to come to appear on a panel. our members that evening included well-informed women from across the country. our anger and distress at the ill-informed responses from the members of parliament and their representatives had quite an impact on some members of parliament and government. subsequently we were invited to several long meetings in both toronto and ottawa with representatives of both the minister of labour and the minister of justice concerning our point of view. . . in the meantime, several of us inside the government party (liberal) had been lobbying with the prime minister and his assistants, the party leaders, and the minister responsible for the status of women, using nac materials and positions. women in the other parties had been lobbying with their members of parliament and party leaders. questions were asked in the house and in party meetings.. .the bill was withdrawn for amendments in 1975 and for a long time we had to rely on inside information and our contacts for news of what was going on... the lobbying had some impact although our view that equal pay for work of equal value be included in existing labour legislation was not sustained. the federal government re-introduced the issue as a new bill (c-25) in november 1976, complete with the equal value section added (1979:254-55). 97 although in this case nac was only partially successful in achieving its policy objectives, marsden's account demonstrates the way in which the organization operates. clearly, nac's informal methods of influence were important in this campaign, as dawson (1975) and pross (1975) stressed above. nac leaders are firmly plugged into the federal women's network and many key women in the government are also nac members. [3] nac need not rely entirely on informal contacts with women in high places. among its own leadership are women who have mainstream political legitimacy and political access on their own terms. marsden, for example, is a senior sociologist at the university of tbronto, and was elected to the national policy chair of the liberal party of canada in 1980. many nac leaders are affiliated with either the liberals or the ncp, and have attained prominence in their professional or public lives. in this way, nac is able to participate informally in the policy-raking process. marsden's account of nac's campaign for 'equal pay for equal value' also illustrates this aspect of influence: the bill was withdrawn for amendments in 1975 and for a long time we had to rely on inside information and our contacts for news of what was going on. influencial people, such as the former head of the women's eureau in the department of labour were reported to be against the equal value concept on "practical" grounds. several of us knew lawyers inside the ministry and asked them to get us news. "anonymous" brown paper envelopes came our way. at social gatherings we pressed for news and questions. officials in town on other business would stop off for a chat in our offices. a newly formed and highly effective organization of women lawyers and legal secretaries made presentations and briefs and accompanied us on lobbying visits. the ontario government formed a study group on which one of our members sat. officials in the ontario government, while remaining officially neutral, unofficially pressed us to continue, fed us information, and warned us of impending developments (1979:255). 2. mobilizing the constituency and influencing public opinion nac is always trying to strengthen its support base and inform 98 and influence public opinion about status-of-women issues. oie major vehicle has been its status of women news , a political magazine published an average of four times a year between 1974 and 1980. publication was suspended in 1980 due to lack of funds, but was to be resumed in 1981. tbtal circulation of the magazine in 1980 was about 2,500 copies. distribution was limited to feminist centres, community groups, women's organizations and subscribers. according to haviva hosek, nac's secretary at the time of writing, the importance of status of women news in achieving nac's goals is "unclear," but the organization remains committed to using the magazine as a platform for communication. it intends to launch a subscription campaign and otherwise attanpt to enlarge the magazine's circulation in canada. nac's decision to resume publication was based on two considerations. first, nac was granted a budget increase by the secretary of state in 1980, enabling the organization to meet publication costs without sacrificing other priorities. second, several other feminist publications ceased operation around the same time as status , and will not be resurrected. [4] there is, then, a lack of feminist-oriented publications with national focus and distribution. "our decision to resume publication of status can be viewed in a different publishing context now, which may influence its impact" (hosek, personal interview, october, 1981). all member groups and "friends of nac" receive nac memo , a monthly mimeographed bulletin concerning nac activities and current issues and events affecting women. as well, nac reproduces copies of its position papers and briefs, and has printed a cross-referenced index of all its resolutions and recommendations since 1972. the organization 99 also sponsors and participates in public events such as conferences. perceptions of nac nac is not a household word for women in canada, even though it is the only national voluntary organization dedicated entirely to defending and enlarging women's rights through political lobbying. it is likely that the majority of people outside of the women's movement and policy networks have never heard of the organization. among those who know nac, opinion is divided about its orientation and effectiveness. a humorous comment made by a feminist activist during a panel discussion on the direction of the women's movement in canada conveyed the unflattering image of ^c: "if the major american women's organization is called ncw, ours should be called later! t5] responding to the lack of public awareness of nac and perceptions of it as a pale and ineffective imitation of the american national organization for women (ncw) , marsden said t>pvc does not have the resources to influence the general public effectively. there is, however, a more fundamental reason for nac's style: first, many issues of the women's movement are too complex to be put forward in a useful way to influence public opinion; eg. "crummy pay" is ok to talk about, but strategic considerations of equal pay for work of equal value are too complex. . .more fundamentally, if you look at the way social change occurs in canada most impact comes from influence on institutional authorities challenged in a quiet, straightforward way not from populist protest. we're about change, not protest (marsden, interview, october, 1978). while the latter point (which marsden stressed was fundamental) is not necessarily an adequate description of the social change process in canada, it does support pross' (1975) argument. pross traced the process of organizational maturation within the women's liberation movement from its early beginnings in the 1960's to its present stage of 100 development : demonstrations still occurred but they were more orderly and less flamboyant, and increasingly they were supplemented or replaced by careful documentation of women's grievances and reasoned discussion of proposed solutions. confrontation with officials has become less common. as these changes occurred women's lib [sic] groups ceased to be issue-oriented and became fledgling and then mature organi2ations. . . those concerned with continuing problems or able to provide desirable selective benefits will be the most likely to survive at the institutional or mature level (1975:17). because many of the issues of the women's movement are philosophically and technically complex 'equal pay' and 'affirmative action' are two examples nac favours strategies which put "a group of well-prepared, articulate, and pragmatic women together with those who actually implement law in a face-to-face negotiation. the important point of a_ social movement is to get £ concept accepted (marsden, 1979:248; emphasis added) . nac's behaviour conforms to pross' model of an "institutional" pressure group. as such, it makes no sense to criticize it for failing to behave like an issue-oriented radical organization. in its own terms , nac is a relatively mature pressure group for women's rights; nevertheless, it has frequently been the object of criticism as summarized in saturday night ("building the feminist network," unsigned, september, 1978:4) : what critics contended is that it's either elitist, wishy-washy, ineffectual, invisible, has forgotten its middle name, and is a waste of time and money. for one thing, it remains entirely dependent for funds (about $55,000 a year) on the very government it's supposed to lobby; so, inevitably it has sought to avoid biting the hand that feeds it. for another, it continues to accommodate such a spectrum of viewpoints that it's been unable to avoid compromising on practically everything. many women within the federal government, some of whom belong to nac, either as "friends" or representatives of non-governmental, cntario women's groups, feel nftc has yet to develop sophisticated political 101 strategies. as one wc representative who refused to be named observed: "there is no shared analytic understanding of social change; it is more by leadership and luck than by design that nac has had an impact." another federal woman who is a "friend of nac" said: nac is the closest thing we have to a representative group... it is as effective as the women who come from the member groups, and there is frequent turnover— their lobbying is largely symbolic, but is a good learning process for women. their orientation is more 'women's rights' than feminist, per se, a 1978 version of the national council of women. the advisory council on the status of women is more sophisticated, and has more behind-the-scenes expertise than nac. nor does nac have the funds necessary to produce good research (hellie wilson, personal interview, july 1978) . and from a civil servant in the employment and immigration ministry, involved in the development of voluntary affirmative action programmes: nac is not equivalent to now, partly because it is an umbrella organization and they see themselves that way. nac has been useful in saying what needs to be said, but in this department we don't see any followup after their annual lobby day. . .what the bureaucrats understand is political pressure, and this is what women don't yet know how to do effectively (elizabeth mcallister, august, 1978). the key to understanding nac's weaknesses and limitations as a pressure group, i believe, is to be found in an examination of the restraining conditions it faces. restraining conditions for nac nac's diversity necessitates discussion, negotiation and compromise in order to arrive at organizational consensus. positions adopted through this process cannot please nor accurately reflect all of nac's constituent parts. since the rhetoric and to some extent the practice of nac is based on participatory democracy, internal dissension can be a draining experience for the organization. insiders fear the organization could fall apart over a fundamental issue and some feel that members need to tread carefully. what could destroy nac? 102 centrists fear a possible "take-over" by more left-leaning and confrontation-oriented members. leftists, on the other hand, view the dominant central tendency, middle of the road approach of nac as a fundamental obstacle to "real social action on behalf of women's liberation," as one critical delegate at the 1980 annual meeting put it. this is not to imply that nac fails to deal with fundamental women's issues; rather, the problem is nac's vulnerability to internal, ideological conflict. "the real split is in terms of the confrontation-adversarial approach versus the lobby-andinfluence approach" (hosek, personal interview, august, 1981) . the complex and technical task of defining issues, and the education and expertise called for by the 'brief and lobby 1 method tends to exclude less educated and less politically-involved women from a pressure group such as nac. vhile this may be inevitable, the fact is a source of irritation to women who have been steeped in an ideology stressing egalitarianism, anti-hierarchical organization, and the ideals of participatory democracy. given this orientation, the charges of 'elitism' leveled against i*ac are inevitable. class, ethnic and ideological divisions within nac are further exacerbated by 'regional pull,' which has been a great problem for the organization. the demands of regionalism appear too great for nac's limited resources. scholars such as eawson (1975) and van loon and whittington (1971) point to the impact on canadian pressure groups of problems associated with federalism and regional disparities. marsden summarizes the particular impact of these problems on voluntary organizations such as nac: the existence of two official languages in the country, and many cultural traditions, is a hard social fact which affects every social organization.. .any group trying to bring about social change in the country. . .has to face these divided loyalties. an 103 attempt to build a national network of people often breaks dovvn under the pull of regional concerns. it is also incredibly expensive in money and time to canvas a country over three thousand miles wide with five time zones. a voluntary movement, like the women's movement, is hard hit by these divisions. on issues of major concern, canadian women must address themselves to both federal and provincial legislation and administrations, usually with different political parties in charge. an attempt to build consensus on any issue implies building a compromise position that will take into account the sensibilities of french and english, catholics, protestants, and jews, the economic interests of the various regions, the dominance of central canada, especially much-hated toronto, and the dependent position of the economically poor regions such as much of the maritimes (1979:248). the critical problem of funding is exacerbated by the fact and implications of nac's raison d'etre as a woman's organization pursuing woc.en's rights. no matter which funding model prevails, the problems will likely remain: more government funding requires more vigilance in the face of real fears about dependence and cooptation, while less funding (or none at all) requires more organizational energy devoted to fund-raising — and the prospect, at least, of t^c's disintegration. finally, the fact that b&c is often used as a political training grojnd means that some leadership will inevitably be lost to other career pursuits. this phenomenon is neither unusual nor unexpected. active involvement in nac means participating in a wide social network curring across major areas of public life. training is available in loobying, research and brief writing, public speaking, organizational affairs, and politics. just as the voice of women served as a training ground in the 1960's for bright, middle-class women concerned with social change, nac has filled the same role since the 1970's. because n£c cannot afford a paid, professional staff, it must continue to rely on committed volunteers to carry out its executive work. yet recruiting capable women is becoming increasingly difficult; of all women, feminists are the most likely to be actively pursuing careers, higher 104 education, and other avenues to "a larger humanity." members of the executive work ten hours a week for n£c, on the average, in addition to their professional and personal commitments. che member of nac's executive said that, even though there .is a turnover, nac never completely loses its people, because they so frequently move on to positions of prominence and influence in canadian society and politics, carrying with them their identification with nac's objectives. [6] in this respect, at least, a high turnover on the nac executive has some benefit for the organization. conclusions nac's self-appointed task is enormous. the organization addresses, in effect, all women's issues with public policy implications. although nac focuses on the federal government, it frequently gives its attention to provincial politics as well. yet nac does not possess the resources to support offices and activities at the provincial level nor to maintain a systematic and effective follow-through or monitoring function in ottawa. instead, contacts in the advisory council on the status of women, office of the coordinator status of women and the various ministries must be relied upon for inside information. without funds for professional staff to perform research and public relations functions, nac must nonetheless be well-informed and able to demonstrate its technical expertise on any of the issues it is promoting. furthermore, nac must continue to inform the women's movement by producing regular newsletters and a magazine. women newly-elected to the executive as representatives of their grass-roots organizations often lack political sophistication. women 105 generally have not been encouraged, or afforded opportunities, to acquire this kind of learning. hence, political naivete frequently goes hand in hand with earnestness among the ranks of nac activists. it is important to appreciate fully all the conditions which shape and determine l^c's role in the policy system. some of these conditions are common to all pressure groups in canada; others are unique, or are exaggerated, because nac is a women's organization dedicated to changing the status of women. trie more we appreciate these conditions, the less we need to criticize nac for those things over which it has little or no control. as one informant said: "wc may not be everything we would wish for, but in reality, it's all we've got!" notes * this paper is a slightly modified version of a chapter in my doctoral dissertation, "no more than simple justice: the royal commission on the status of women and social change in canada" (mcgill university, department of sociology, 1982) . the data were gathered over the period 1978-1981 through personal interviews with representatives of nac's leadership, participants from member organizations and informed observers; and through study of organizational documents and participant-observation at several executive and annual general meetings of mac. [1] see morris (1982, chapter 8) for a discussion of the question of government funding of canadian women's groups. [2] loney (1977) analyzes government funding in the field of citizens' participation as a deliberate system of social control. [3] one is reminded of the feminist slogan: "we are everywhere!" more precisely, women are everywhere, though not all women are feminists nor even strongly pro-women in their sympathies. nevertheless, the j unique advantage possessed by nac as a pressure group is its raison d'etre . the women's network cuts across divisions which might block or limit the promotion of other issues or causes. the cooptable communications network which freeman (1975) posed as crucial to the formation of a social network is well-developed . its potential is even greater, since women not already active in or convinced about feminist issues may still be won over when they see the relevance to _ 106 _ their personal lives of the issue of sexual discrimination. as the ideas and vocabulary of the women's movement continue to gain currency, more women in strategic sectors will likely be recruited to the feminist cause. as lorna marsden observed: "there are two kinds of people in the bureaucracy for informal contacts nac members or converts" (from interview, october, 1978). [4] these include: branching out , upstream , and for a while, canadian women's studies . [5] my former colleague, roberta hamilton, gets the credit for this comment, though she may have been quoting a standard joke in feminist circles. [6] lynn verge, who was on the executive in 1978-79, was asked by the newfoundland progressive-conservatives to run for public office. she did, and became minister of education in newfoundland. carol swan, at the time of writing, was directing in-house economic research for the office of the coordinator status of women. and lynn macebnald and laura sabia have both run (unsuccessfully) for public office. pat preston from alberta served as an assistant to lloyd axworthy, who held the federal status of women portfolio in the federal government in 1980. wendy lawrence, executive assistant to doris anderson at the advisory council on the status of women, is a former part-time staff member at nac. lorna marsden and grace hartman remain accessible to nac. references aucoin, peter 1975 "pressure groups and recent changes in the policy-making process", paul a. pross (ed.) , pressure group behaviour in canadian politics . toronto: mcgraw-hill ryerson ltd. dawson, helen 1975 "national pressure groups and the federal government", paul a. pross (ed.) , pressure group behaviour in canadian politics . toronto: mcgraw-hill ryerson ltd. freeman, jo 1975 the politics of women's liberation . new york: david mckay co. goldstein, jonah 1979 "public interest groups and public policy: the case of the consumers association of canada", canadian journal of political science , 12(1) . loney, martin 1977 "a political economy of citizen participation", leo panitch (ed .) , the canadian state: political economy and political power . toronto: university of toronto press. 107 lowi , theodore, j. 1969 the end of liberalism: ideology, policy and the crisis of public authority . new york: norton. marsden, lorna , r. 1979 "the role of the national action commitee on the status of women in facilitating equal pay policy in canada", ronnie steinberg ratner (ed.) , equal employment policy for women , philadelphia: temple university press. morris, cerise 1980 "determination and thoroughness: the movement for a royal commission on the status of women in canada", atlantis 5(2) 1982 "no more than simple justice: the royal commission on the status of women and social change in canada", unpublished doctoral dissertation, mcgill university, 1982. national action committee on the status of women 1972 report of "strategy for change" convention, toronto. national ad hoc action committee on the status of women in canada 1972 submission to the government of canada, toronto. pross, paul a. (ed.) 1975 pressure group behaviour in canadian politics . toronto: mcgraw-hill ryerson, ltd. van loon, richard j. and michael s. whittington 1976 the canadian political system: environment, structure and process. toronto: mcgraw-hill ryerson, ltd, 2nd edition. interviews with the following people were conducted as part of the research for this paper: doris anderson, haviva hbsek, elizabeth mcallister, kay macpherson, maureen o'neil , laura sabia, and hellie wilson. i gratefully acknowledge their help, as well as that of other individuals connected to the women's movement who are too numerous to mention individually. 108 multiple files are bound together in this pdf package. adobe recommends using adobe reader or adobe acrobat version 8 or later to work with documents contained within a pdf package. by updating to the latest version, you’ll enjoy the following benefits: • efficient, integrated pdf viewing • easy printing • quick searches don’t have the latest version of adobe reader? click here to download the latest version of adobe reader if you already have adobe reader 8, click a file in this pdf package to view it. http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html 978-1-926958-01-9 139 play review multinational [g]rape corporation written and directed by ozgur cinar, performed by ozgur cinar and chara berk. 2010. reviewed by: aaron henry1 “welcome to the market time. everything has turned into a market today ergo it is not that surprising to see urinals exhibited in museums”. enter multinational [g]rape corporations (mgc), the play that took this year’s ottawa fringe theatre and arts festival by storm, winning the outstanding original work award. yet reviews of this play, for the most part, have entirely missed what is truly outstanding about it. while several reviews have praised the actors, who were indeed electrifying, or marveled over the irreverence and the spectacle of the play, none of them have discussed the meaning of this play. the meaning has been largely shoved aside, one reviewer even went so far as to suggest that “it defies explanation” (marr, 2010). this is disappointing because it is in the structure of the play where cinar’s brilliance, the play’s originality and its message lie. it is, then, the architecture of the play that needs to be given attention, if mgc is going to be reviewed for not just its spectacle but for its internal content. however, the two are necessarily interdependent. the set of the play is austere. it features a table and two chairs upstage, a suitcase full of different props and two squares on the floor formed by red-tape labeled security. the play opens with a man and a women vomiting through a slit in the closed curtain while eating and drinking behind it, a married couple who are the key subjects of the play. the play scrolls through many different locales in capitalist society, ranging from the interior of an immigration office where the man is made to pay over and over again to gain permanent residency; a doctor’s office where tapeworms are removed from the woman—played indomitably by chara berk— 1 aaron henry is a ma student at carleton university in the department of political economy. he can be reached at ahenry2@connect.carleton.ca multinational [g]rape corporation 140 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research where, as a consequence, the doctor informs her of not eating organic food; the first date between the married couple, to a scene of protest against exploitation. each of these scenes closes with the couple’s retreat to the table. the next scene begins with the transformation of the woman, following a sound cue that imitates defecation, into an advertisement for different products and services ranging from fair-trade coffee, cds or for a holiday vacation. following this metamorphosis of the woman into a commodity, the couple retreats into their respective security boxes where the man, played by cinar, attempts to commit suicide over and over again to no avail. this structure has a number of important effects that taken together form cinar’s critique of capitalist society—a critique that goes far beyond being merely anti-consumerist and anti-security, as other reviewers have commented on. foremost, the play is presented as a number of instances between subjects. the thread of unity that binds these instances is not that of unified characters with a linear narrative but the existence of the market within these relations. this is perhaps epitomized by the scene where the man applies for a study permit and then a permanent residency card to integrate into canada. this scene unfolds as primarily a monetary 141 relationship between the man and the canadian immigration officer who remains alienated from the man and treats him from a distance established by both the cash relationship and the sterile rationality of the bureaucracy. similarly, on the couple’s first date the romantic evening is disrupted as the woman laments that she must “take a dump” but that they can’t afford access to a toilet. the scene sublimates the tender moment of the couple back into the market. the love between them cannot exist without the commodification of the most basic and biological human needs. multinational [g]rape corporation 142 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research mgc produces its scenes around subjects that are produced by market relations. this forecloses on the unified character one would find in the classic plays of shakespeare, jonson, wilde, synge, etc. and substitutes this character for a fragmented subject that develops and disappears in line with the market relations that cinar exposes. the play progresses not as a linear narrative but as a process of interaction between fragmented subjects as the man and woman transform before the audience, into police officers, immigration officials, doctors, waiters and lovers. the subjects are then formed in context to the power relations that develop within capitalist society and, as such, they develop and disappear discontinuously and through this disclose the totality of these relations. this structure conveys the message that the market has fully crept into social life, to the degree where one is at once an advertisement and a person. living under these conditions produces a number of contradictions that constitute the insanity and hypocrisy of living in capitalist society. market society then, produces not only fragmented subjects but the complete fragmentation of social life. this fragmentation allows the brutality of capitalism to colonize the human condition. as cinar laments, we get urinals next to the wonders of human history, cosmetics next to the death tolls in afghanistan and iraq, the marketing of vacations alongside brutal exploitation and dictatorship. cinar reveals the societal response to this through the couples retreat to their own private security boxes, provided to them by the market. in this sense, the complete commodification of social life finds its terminal point of expression in the partitioning of our own social beings from these processes and our own feeble attempts to secure ourselves from them. the consequences mgc aptly shows is the reinforcement of our own alienation from ourselves and from each other, precisely because we all form part of capitalist society. the man, in particular, is a paragon of this reality as he attempts suicide in his own private security box to end his imprisonment from the market only to be distracted by the very processes he revolts against in disgust. his repeated failure to commit suicide is caused by his inability to see that he himself constitutes part of this market society. cinar in fact lays this theme out quite clearly and succinctly in the opening lines when the woman declares “we are the flowers of the commercial world. we are the vomit of the commercial world”. they, like all of us, are at once both of these things, nurtured and cared for as consumers, the subjects of society and at once the objects of it the refuse, the labourers who are exploited to constitute its existence. the tragedy and insanity is that the couple cannot recognize themselves as the subjects that constitute the processes that transform them into these wretched objects. 143 this is one of the central messages of mgc. the structure of the play conforms to that of capitalist society insofar as capitalist society cannot be understood through a single narrative. instead it can only be understood under the fragmentary conditions its relations of exploitation and alienation produce. superficially this reality appears disjointed, chaotic, and beyond explanation. however, with greater focus we see ourselves as the subjects of capitalist society that constitute these relations. our imprisonment to the market stems from the fact that we ourselves play a part, much like the man and woman, in the exploitation and alienation that constitute capitalist society. in the end we cannot understand this reality; we have after-all “only applied for cleaner, dish-washer or waiter positions”. we don’t understand that in these positions we ourselves are both the subject and object of these processes. cinar’s play is a scream to see outlining this insanity. as such, cinar’s play constitutes an important critique of capitalism in canadian society and warrants engagement by all. references marr, den. fully fringed, june 28th, 2010. www.fullyfringed.ca photos by a. erdem ozcan. multinational [g]rape corporation 144 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research whole book pdf 270 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism book review mexico’s revolution then and now by d. cockcroft. new york: monthly review press, 2010. $14.95 us, paper. isbn-13: 978-1-58367-224-2. pages: 1-160. reviewed by naomi alisa calnitsky1 in mexico’s revolution then and now, james cockcroft interrogates the parallels between the mexican revolution of 1910-17 and current political conflicts in mexico. he explores what persuasive ideas shaped and influenced revolutionary acts and the ways in which anarchist ideas and modes of thought were woven into revolutionary action. the author also attempts to provide a critical reassessment of continuities between early strands of revolutionary thought and those that persist, however embattled, in mexico today. in his first published book in 1968, intellectual precursors of the mexican revolution, 1900-1913, cockcroft explored the ideas which shaped revolution in mexico. mexico’s revolution then and now is a welcome addition to existing literature on mexican revolutionary ideology, relevant for its assessment of the ways in which revolutionary ideas have shaped contemporary resistance movements. cockcroft highlights magonistas’ influence upon the revolution, including their ideals of anarcho-communism and socialism. scholars such as john mason hart have explored the critical role played by ricardo flores magon as an organizer of a “pro-democracy movement” in mexico from the 1890’s through to 1910. hart’s emphasis upon the instrumental ideological work carried out by the partido liberal mexicano (p.l.m.) mirrors cockcroft’s assessments of the movement. cockcroft draws our attention to the “lessons and legacies” of the revolutionary period, illuminating present-day asymmetries and inequalities. in mexico, for example, the minimum wage remains the “weakest” across latin america. revolutionary struggles in contemporary mexico enrich the narrative, which intertwines past and present. cockcroft affords considerable attention the oaxacan-born revolutionary, ricardo flores magón, 1 naomi alisa calnitsky is a ph.d. candidate in the department of history at carleton university, ottawa. she received an ma in history from otago university in new zealand, where she specialized in pacific island seasonal migration to new zealand. her doctoral thesis research seeks to enhance the voices of mexican migrant workers in canadian labour history narratives. she currently lives in montreal, quebec. book review: mexico’s revolution then and now | 271 and the anti-imperialist mexican liberal party. in 1906 the p.l.m. disseminated an agenda for radical agrarian reform for communities dispossessed of lands and set out clauses to protect indigenous peoples. significantly, cockcroft weaves in the revolutionary contributions and sufferings experienced by magonista women (e.g. margarita ortega), redressing the paucity of historical attention devoted to mexican women involved with the magonista movement. cockcroft links revolutionary-era struggles to present-day labour conflict. the author emphasizes the magonistas’ goals of human emancipation and social justice and the role of the p.l.m. in co-ordinating a series of strikes prior to the revolution and the repression faced by those who joined its ranks. cockcroft flags persisting labour violations as key sites of contemporary struggle. of note are conflicts between working people’s rights and american, as well as transnational, companies based in mexico from anaconda copper at cananea to continental tire in el salto. the current political scene in mexico is assessed as wholly neoliberal and corrupt, poverty is viewed as generated (rather than worsened) by neoliberal policy, and mass emigrations and union-busting considered normalized features of mexican life. the militarization of the mexican border control, which increased under the obama administration, and consolidation of contemporary imperialism, particularly in oil, feature in cockcroft’s intrepid work. cultural items are treated in connection with the economy, including for instance, the dual monopoly over mexican television which operates under the “iron control” of two mexican billionaires. mexico’s uneven economic development is counterbalanced with the magonista era in which it was believed that the means of production were in need of a re-ordering. the revolution and its aftermath are deconstructed to their very core through a wholly economic analysis rooted in a social history approach. the ascent of the mexican bourgeoisie in the twentieth century is charted and the “institutional” revolution is exposed as counter-revolutionary, antagonistic to the interests of most mexicans. labour concerns remain at the heart of mexico’s revolution, then and now, which unearths contemporary popular uprisings against neoliberalism in the face of state-led, patriotic pacification campaigns that emphasized the “glorious revolution” and championed mexican identity through the celebration of public art. while the study does not go to great lengths to enrich our understanding of the revolutionary period, it does a fair job at emphasizing the ideological contributions made by magon and his followers. 272 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism cockcroft assesses the cárdenas administration as fraught with holes: during this time millions of hectares of land were transferred to peasants, yet best quality lands remained in the hands of twelve mostly foreign-owned corporations, enabling neolatifundismo to dominate mexican agriculture in ensuing decades. the abandonment of revolutionary ideals and political corruption are key themes. his immiseration thesis identifies n.a.f.t.a. as responsible for mexico’s dramatic loss of self-sufficiency in agriculture. neoliberal trading schemes are treated as naked imperialism. in spite of mexico retaining state-owned resources such as oil, pemex profits have not trickled down to the population and this state-owned company continues to fuel american consumption. as in mexico`s hope (1998), cockcroft is tuned into mexico’s most recent social conflicts. cockcroft believes that, while population growth does not create immiseration, in reality it has more to do with how capitalism operates. cockcroft credits injustices perpetuated upon the people to right-wing decision-making, and the book is concerned more with explaining current social ills facing the nation than with actually revisiting the revolutionary period. it emphasizes, for example, the high proportion of indigenous people and languages still present in mexico and the spread of neo-zapatismo from chiapas to other indigenous communities. resistance strategies are presented, for example the modern-day “sit-in” (plantón) of adelitos and adelitas advocating fair politics (actions taken by a female-led labour solidarity movement for maquiladora workers). modern attempts to reinstate political democracy are emphasized, including the neo-zapatistas who champion tierra y libertad (a magonista slogan) and continue to maintain autonomous “good government” municipalities. women`s issues are not ignored in this work. the author’s critiques of transnational capitalism’s inherently exploitative character refresh our understanding of current crises facing mexico, offering a relevant and necessary contribution and critical manifesto for change. perhaps lacking for not sufficiently engaging with the views of mexicans on their own revolutionary past and current predicament, cockcroft’s diligent and methodical work remains radical in nature and should be considered required reading for all those interested in gaining a better understanding of mexico today. knowledge and power: determinations of educational curriculum robert white several recent contributions to the sociology of education have attempted to present and assess the various theoretical perspectives utilized to examine schooling (karabel and halsey, 1977; hum, 1978; murphy, 1979). this work has been valuable in developing an understanding of the current sociological debates concerning education. what is lacking in these discussions, however, is a systematic appraisal of the basic assumptions of the various sociological approaches to the study of curriculum. for example, in his assessment of theoretical explanations in the sociology of education, murphy (1979) sees the relationship between social classes cor status groups) and school attainment as being of paramount importance. curriculum is accorded analytical treatment by murphy mainly in terms of the way it serves as a selection mechanism in the schooling process. he tends to ignore significant underlying factors which may affect how sociologists within each perspective view curriculum. studies and reviews which focus primarily on the problem of stratification run the risk of taking the curriculum for granted, as a 'given'. from this viewpoint the curriculum itself is not problematic, rather the concern is over differential appropriation of classroom knowledge. analysis which specifically centers on curriculum, however, does not adequately deal with the relationship between knowledge and power as this is manifested in the curriculum. on the one hand, curriculum is seen to be the outcome of 'negotiations' between teacher and students, thus downplaying external constraints on the interaction process. on the other hand, advocates for greater teacher and student autonomy in the development of curriculum underestimate the powerful forces and linkages which circumscribe the decision-making abilities of those involved in the educational process. alternatively, the 'overdetermined' approach goes beyond the 'given', 'negotiated', and 'reformist' approaches in its analysis of knowledge and control as it locates the educational system in the complex totality that is society. the differences between these approaches are to be found in certain identifiable notions of each concerning the nature of curriculum. theoretical considerations in the study of education it is useful to recognize the theoretical assumptions, both explicit and implicit, which underlie one's research. following the lead of sharp and green (1975: 4), the theme of this section will be ... not so much to chart the accomplishments of the available research showing just what substantive issues have been researched and illustrating the appropriate variables, but to look at the conceptual frameworks within which these 'findings' are generated. more specifically, i am interested in delineating certain basic assumptions of various sociological approaches to the study of curriculum. as a general r .4 formulation curriculum is that which defines what counts as valid knowledge (bernstein, 1971), knowledge referring here to ideas, beliefs and values which are transmitted in the classroom. recognizing the multitude of theories and theoretical positions on the understanding of curriculum, it should be stressed that i do not intend an exhaustive appraisal of each. i do, however, maintain that these varied perspectives can be categorized in a fashion which reflects the essential vantage point from which each views curriculum. accordingly, i propose to examine four approaches to the study of curriculum: the 'given', the 'negotiated', the 'reformist', and the 'overdetermined' . in the 'given' approach to the study of classroom knowledge, curriculum is viewed as a received body of understanding that is transmitted in the school and is accepted a priori as being legitimate and unproblematic. from this perspective classroom knowledge is considered as objective 'fact'. in that knowledge is perceived to be external to the knower, it can be appropriated by the student, and, as such, can become the private possession of each individual. there is littie question of the specific interests which may determine the nature of classroom knowledge. indeed, the problem of curriculum, from this approach, is one of appropriation -that is, how to make the established curriculum, (i.e., that knowledge which claims legitimacy) more relevant, and therefore teachable, to the student. this particular approach is most evident in the prevailing traditions in the sociology of education: structural functionalism and methodological empiricism (see sharp and green, 1975; karabel and halsey, 1977). although these labels are used to designate a vast number of theories and a whole gamut of research orientations, certain common features can be found which identify these types of work as being part of a 'tradition'. for instance, 55 functionalist theories a) take for granted existing institutional arrangements of education, b) underplay possible structural determinations of educational processes, and c) often ignore the role of man as an active participant in the production of knowledge. by seeing the educational system primarily in terms of its significance in the maintenance of social equilibrium or consensus, they tend to downplay any necessary structural incongruities within the school or society itself. on the other hand, empiricist studies, which tend to adopt a positivistic methodology, ara characterized by a particular epistemological stance to social reality. in this tradition the recording of 'facts' is paramount, rather than the prior issue of clarifying the conceptual scheme operating behind the collection and recording of these facts. in many cases these studies "are guided by structural functionalism which influences the formulation of the problems to be studied and the areas within which solutions can be sought" (sharp and green, 1975:2). as i have mentioned, the tradition of structural functionalism tends to emphasize the maintenance of an ongoing social equilibrium. characterized by an over-integrated view of social structure and an over-socialized view of man this perspective postulates the human actor as being passively socialized into consensual institutional frameworks. by emphasizing the role of the school in promoting consensus researchers in this tradition tend to downplay the notion of conflict. in viewing the role of the school in society in an uncritical manner the specific interests which underlie the schooling process are left unexamined. not only does this perspective underestimate the importance of conflict and ideology.it also leads one to neglect the content of the educational process. in other words, what counts as knowledge and why this particular knowledge is 56 transmitted in the school are questions which this perspective does not address. the school plays a major role in maintaining social order, but this social order itself is not considered problematic. the methodological empiricist tradition can be criticized in that while a great deal of statistical information can be gathered there are few theoretical or conceptual breakthroughs for interpreting such data (sharp and green, 1975). in many such studies an underlying value consensus is assumed. although there may be some concern with power such research ignores conflict. for example, brophy and good (1974: 3) have compiled a number of studies which "focus attention on the individual student's present status, his pattern of strengths and weaknesses, his methods of approaching problems, and his interests, in order to prescribe an education experience which is likely to succeed for him where others have failed". this type of statistical research may highlight the problem of differential achievement within the schools. methological innovations may be introduced to facilitate the collection of data and thus the mapping out of observable phenomena and the relations between them in which concern centres on individual differences (according to demographic, social and psychological criteria). consideration is not given to the underlying structure of relations which determine the patterns of school inequality. being policy oriented with respect to 'improving' the classroom situation (i.e., to increasing the opportunity of various students to appropriate what the school has to offer as it may appear to the researcher) there is a tendency for this kind of work to take for granted the dominant institutional arrangements of education. the results of such studies can lead to the implementation of compensation and intervention programmes, but they give us little insight into the interests which are at the root of the inequality and they provide no 57 alternatives to the existing educational system. in that the emphasis is on neutrality and the method is numerical, methodological empiricism is well adapted to the interests of administration, for it leaves ends in the hands of policy-makers and concentrates the efforts of the social scientist on the means by which these ends may be attained (karabel and halsey, 1977: 17). in recent years, the 'given' approach to curriculum as exemplified by structural functionalism and the methodological empiricist tradition has been criticized by sociologists who feel that research must focus on the levels of subjective meaning which are created in any social setting. the approach to the study of curriculum used by these people is the 'negotiated' perspective in which curriculum is seen as negotiable, as an artifact. knowledge is viewed as a process, something which is mutually created in the classroom. learning is the outcome of negotiation between teachers and students about meanings. "sociological phenomenology" is a broad and general term which can be used to describe the study of those researchers who feel that the social structure is a human construction and therefore 'reality' is that which is negotiated in any given social situation. in the sociology of education that research which raises questions about 'streaming' , 'selection', and the 'unintended consequences of educational arrangements' is criticized from this perspective for treating as unproblemat ic 'what it is to be educated'. for michael young (1971a) the starting point is 'what counts as educational knowledge' (i.e., the social organization of knowledge in educational institutions). young's concern in the early part of the 1970s was over the interrelation of the process of knowing and knowledge as a product. in other words, recognizing that existing categories (e.g., learning-play) must be conceived as socially constructed, young (1971b) was interested in the nature of the negotiation 58 process which occurred in the context of teacher-student relations. basil bernstein (1971) and nell keddie (1971) share similar concerns. for instance, bernstein explores the concept of 'boundary' in order to see both the power and control components of the structuring of educational knowledge. likewise, keddie casts as problematic what were held to be knowledge and ability in the school. the phenomenological approach is lucidly presented by esland(1971) as well. he criticizes the notion of man presented not as world-producer, but as world-produced, (i.e., the objectivistic view of knowledge -an image of man which is prevelant in the structural functionalist traditidn). as an alternative he states that we must see knowledge in terms of "the entire complex process of intersubjective negotiation of meanings" (1971: 75). while emphasizing man's active construction of experience esland argues that, in the schools, legitimation of knowledge is located at different levels, e.g., teachers, headmasters, and so on. the central concern for esland is to examine the ways and means in which teachers apprehend the world and to explain why and how these perspectives change over time. the sociological phenomenology which characterizes most , of the articles in young's book, knowledge and control (1971), has been 4 criticized for a number of reasons. by focusing solely on the levels of subjective meaning this perspective is 'guilty', to a certain extent, of 'subjective idealism'. michael young (1976) brings this point home when he critically examines two contrasting conceptions of the curriculum. he situates the conception of 'curriculum as fact' as being in opposition to the conception of 'curriculum as practice', and proceeds to criticize both approaches to the study of curriculum. the 'curriculum as fact' conception, which arises out of the structural 59 functionalist perspective, sees curriculum as the structure of socially prescribed knowledge which is external to the knower. not only are students passive in this model but teachers are presented as passively reproducing the knowledge which is produced elsewhere by others. teaching, then, merely means the transmission of preordained knowledge. by seeing curriculum as having a life of its own, this conception obscures the human relations in which it, as any conception of knowledge, is embedded. 'curriculum as practice', on the other hand, views curriculum as how men collectively attempt to order their world and in the process produce knowledge. "knowledge becomes that which is accomplished in the collaborative work of teachers and pupils" (yound 1976: 188). the problem with this model is that it reduces the social reality of curriculum to the subjective intentions and actions of teachers and pupils. similarly, by isolating classroom interaction as the sole focus of attention, the phenomenological approaches divorce the process of educational learning from other significant aspects of the social structure. sharp and green (1975: 10) for example, point out that, whilst it may be useful from an analytical point of view to differentiate different levels of analysis -the classroom from the school, the school from the community and so on -it is important to avoid reifying this analytic distinction and treating the different levels of analysis as theoretically distinct. the social processes which occur within classrooms, whilst they may not merely reproduce mechanically wider societal processes, are certainly not autonomous from them. by directing attention to the so-called microlevel interactions rather than to the larger social structure there is a tendency in studies of this sort to avoid direct confrontation with the status quo. insofar as this type of classroom analysis is not related to social structure it may "ignore the constraints under which human actors operate and so . . . exaggerate the fragility of the daily routine of school life" (karabel and llalsey, 1977: 58). what needs to be done is to integrate interactional analysis, which considers the management of knowledge as its central problem, with a structural analysis, which places greater emphasis on power and interests that may underlie the schooling process. a key difficulty, then, with sociological phenomenology is that it underplays "the extent to which negotiation of meaning in social situations takes place within a context of material and other givens where certain things are non-negotiable" (sharp and green, 1975: 29). the starting point for an analysis of classroom knowledge, in my view, should be the ways in which material circumstances affect activity and consciousness. this is to say that i am interested in how material conditions provide the opportunities made available and the constraints imposed upon what is to be transmitted via the educational system. to a certain extent the 'reformist' approach to the study of curriculum moves in this direction. this approach is an attempt to juxtapose che notion that there is a given body of knowledge which is considered legitimate at a particular moment in time with the position that definitions, evaluations and distribution of knowledge can change over time. to put it differently, the reformist approach recognizes that in a particular time-space location there will be some knowledge which is transmitted as given, but what gets to count as curriculum, (i.e., the definitions of what is accepted truth) is subject to the changing objective realities in which the curriculum is developed. central to this perspective is not so much the form and content of the learning process, but examination of the exercise of power in the development of curriculum. in analyzing the practice of curriculum 61 in the school, this approach, being primarily policy oriented, concentrates on the question of who makes curriculum decisions within the educational institution. for example, eggleston (1977) uses what i have called the reformist approach to examine the struggle for control over the curriculum. one of his concerns is to identify the parameters of the teachers'' and the students* roles in the development of curriculum. following this, he argues for the necessity of teacher autonomy combined with greater input from pupils, such that the definition of curriculum knowledge will lie with the main protagonists in the educational process. essentially it appears that eggleston's main emphasis is on increasing the decisionmaking role of teachers and students, as this presumably awakens them to a 'shared understanding of the human condition*. the main problem with this approach to classroom knowledge is that it tends to simplify the complex set of constraints on educational practices and it under-estimates the strong linkages between educational institutions on the one hand and the state and the economy on the other. the production of a "model curriculum appropriate for an active democratic society" is not nearly as 'easy' to achieve as eggleston (1977: 150) seems to suggest. ideally, for eggleston, schooling should result in differentiated curriculum achievements where the diverse backgrounds of the teachers and students can be accommodated by making them active participants in the schooling process. he uses the concept of power primarily in the context of a policy debate over whether decisions about curriculum development should continue to reside in present organizational arrangements (e.g., school boards, etc.) or whether they should be placed in the hands of the teachers and students themselves. the guiding rationale for eggleston's approach to the study of curriculum arises not so much from concern at a theoretical level over what curriculum is, or the <»2 processes through which it is produced, but what can be done on a practical, everyday level to change the roles of those involved in the definition, evaluation and distribution of knowledge in the educational system. there is little discussion of the ideological nature f schooling practices as these pertain to the class nature of capitalist society. eggleston's analysis places great emphasis on power as it affects the roles teachers and students are called upon to play in curriculum development. what is lacking in this approach is adequate consideration of the linkages between schooling practices and the structure of class relations in wider society, and the mechanisms whereby class power and class interests are manifested in the classroom. hence, although he argues that curriculum ought to enhance the expectations and capacity of students to exercise power, eggleston c 1977 : 71) leaves one wondering to what ends such an exercise is directed. this leads to a consideration of the fourth approach to the study of curriculum. the 'overdetermined' approach also looks at the relationship between knowledge and power, but the primary emphasis in on viewing classroom knowledge in terms of the socio-political context within which it exists. in doing so it looks to the specific determinants of educational practices. the central concern is: 'whose interests does that knowledge which is transmitted in and by the school represent?' what is problematic in this kind of study is the content of the typifications and the context in which they emerge (sharp and green, 1975). this approach views curriculum, both the officially and explicitly recognized subject matter, and the unstated norms, values and beliefs that are transmitted, as being 'overdetermined' by class interests. in examining what counts as valid knowledge this perspective maintains that the attitudes, values and beliefs which arise 63 out of the educational experience to a large extent may not relate to the workings of the 'real' world. the school is seen as acting instrumentally to legitimate and reproduce the fundamental inequalities of capitalist society by shaping the subjective disposition of the participants such that the existing social order is accepted as is. the process of overdetermination refers not only to the class bias in the transmission of classroom knowledge, but also to the limits of, and pressures on, curriculum as imposed by the capitalist class by virtue of its control and ownership of the material means of economic and cultural production. it can be said that this approach to curriculum is an attempt to tackle one of the main unresolved problems of bernstein's work how it is that "power relationships penetrate the organization, distribution and evaluation of knowledge through the social context" (quoted in karabel and halsey, 1977: 71). in the next section this problem is discussed in greater depth and an attempt is made to conceptualize the nature of the determinations of educational practices. knowledge and power in the educational process the practico-social function of ideas in their relation to the ruling class is crucial to the existence and degree of hegemony exercised in society. the 'over-determined' approach to the study of curriculum attempts to discover and examine the mechanisms specific to the educational system which reflect the power and interests of the capitalist class and which serve to reproduce class relations. these can be linked to external forces which impinge upon the process of schooling. class and classroom, in this view, should be examined in terms of two questions. these are 64 (a) "what counts as valid knowledge in the school?" which leads one to consider the nature of learning, and (b) "what are the specific determinations of classroom knowledge?" i.e., what constitutes the limits of, and pressures on, educational practices? that interaction which we call learning can be captured analytically to some extent through the use of the terms form and content . although conceptually distinct, these aspects of learning are at the same time members of an inextricable unity. thus, one cannot adequately examine and describe a learning situation within a particular time-space location through reference only to the form of this process, excluding the content and vice versa. these concepts designate general categories of analysis, although the usage of the term may vary in examination of a specific area of study (e.g. the school) . this point will be clarified later in the discussion. by 'form' i mean the structure or (established) manner of doing or saying something. 'content' as an aspect of learning includes the subject matter and topics treated in a social situation and the essential meaning of these (i.e., the image or representation of social reality which is c conveyed to the people involved). to emphasize an obvious, though certainly not trivial, point, the learning process, that is to say, learning in general, is first and foremost a social activity. as such it is necessarily context bound. form and content are expressions of how learning in general is manifested in any given situation. the process of learning is one of appropriation and 'knowledge', as the outcome of this process, simply refers to what is received or appropriated. conversely, teaching is a process of transmission, involving the 65 conscious and/or unconscious selection of a manner of conveying something to another person. being a social phenomenon the organization of the learning process will determine the material which is to be imparted and the manner in which this is done. with regard to this, one can distinguish between education and learning by describing learning as a social-psychic process of human development and education as a social organization of this process (holly, 1975). classroom knowledge (i.e., that knowledge which is considered valid) may be seen as the outcome of the educational process. schooling, as it is institutionalized in our society, structures the process of learning; it specifies the process of socialization that it involves. dandurand (1977: 67) makes the point that, "education is presented as a conscious undertaking of imposition of a way of thinking, acting or feeling". to understand classroom knowledge we must look at the form and the content of the process of learning as it is found within a specific institution (i.e., the school). in doing so we need to inquire into the manner in which it affects the way of thinking, acting or feeling on the part of the individuals involved. again, the specific applications of each term, form and content, become apparent depending on the particular instance in which it is used. for example, 9 study on the illusion of choice focuses our attention on the manner in which something is presented (e.g., as a choice which in fact does not really exist) . similarly, analysis of school textbooks may be significant in that their contents are presented as 'objective' fact, ignoring the subjective bias involved in the writing of the book. in both cases the concern is over the manner in which something is done, although the results will vary depending on the object of study. in discussion of content not only are we referring to that information which is 66 explicitly recognized in the classroom as valid knowledge, that is, the textbook knowledge, etc., which is taught; but also those ideas apart from the formal curriculum which further affect the student's ways of thinking, feeling and acting. an examination of the process of learning, as formulated in the form/content unity can be useful, but insofar as this process takes place within an institutional setting, it is structured according to the underlying principles of power and control. hence, the social organization of the learning process, with regard both to what is transmitted and to the manner in which this is done, will have no little effect on what is considered as valid knowledge. the educational system legitimates and places greater value on some forms of knowledge than other forms in the selective character of the transmission process. to put it differently, the school acts so as to pass on certain knowledge, and this knowledge is considered valid because it has been chosen to be taught in the first place. the importance of power and control in the classroom curriculum is that the outcome of the educational process provides specific interest groups with ideological support for their favoured positions. insofar as that valid knowledge which is appropriated by the student in the school reflects the interests and concerns of a certain class, sex, race, etc., through the structured misrepresentation of social reality, this knowledge can be said to be ideological (see figure 1) . in this particular approach to the study of schooling our focus has been on the relationship between classroom knowledge and the capitalist social structure. on the one hand, that knowledge which is transmitted by the school is problematic in that it entails specific experiences which are protective of certain class interests. on the other hand, it is necessary to examine the ways in which class bias intrudes upon the learning process within the educational system. 67 the above concerns can provide us with some insight into the role of the school in the hegemonic process. the school, as a particular institution, is an instance of the hegemony of the ruling class only insofar as it is articulated with the state and the economy. this is to say that the nature of learning and the development of the curriculum serve to reproduce the legitimacy of the existing social order in a manner which reflects to some extent the constraints imposed upon figure 1 learning in general time/sp ace location ^appropriation— form ^knowledge conl:ent social organi zation of learning process education (selection) > r > t z power > control school (learning) »valid knowledge ideological knowledge e.g. , class, sex consciousness -. reproduction e.g., political power/control educational practices from forces outside of the educational institution. in making these linkages explicit one is better able to determine the concrete limits of, and pressures on, educational practices which arise out of the power relations of the capitalist mode of production. two important notions underpin the analysis of specific determinations of classroom knowledge. first , 'knowledge' must be viewed in terms of 68 practices specific to the educational institution. this point was alluded to earlier when i stated that education is a particular social organization of the learning process. second, when discussing what counts as valid knowledge, concern is primarily with outlining those experiences within the school which lead to the production of a particular type of consciousness. to restate it, beginning with the premise that ideas are a concrete political force, one should attempt to elucidate the relationship between ideas which are fostered in the school, and the ruling class and the exercise of its hegemony. as part of the analysis there is an interest in how individuals 'make sense' of the world and their place it it. this requires that in addition to delineating those experiences which count as the valid outcomes of the learning process, we need to examine the relationship between that knowledge which is transmitted in the school and the students for whom this knowledge is intended. the consequences which follow or arise out of the students' relation to that knowledge which is considered valid will have some impact on the development of their conception of social reality. in effect, the selected perceptions regarding the direction and exercise of power in the social order are the result not only of the form and content of educational practices but the product of the structured relationship between the student and the learning process. in other words, not only is analysis of classroom knowledge important but, as well, we must consider the different ways in which this knowledge is appropriated by the student and implications that this has in terms of the hegemonic process. ideology and consciousness in the school in an effort to highlight features of the complex activity which we call educational practices one can consider a) the question of valid 69 (legitimate) knowledge, and b) the ties between this knowledge (and the treatment of this knowledge), the state and the economy. writers who do focus on socialization and cultural transmission in the school often distinguish between the "formal" curriculum and the "hidden" curriculum. the formal curriculum generally refers to the transmission of classroom knowledge through explicit instruction. it is overtly recognized and readily apparent to the participants. course outlines, curriculum guidelines, textbooks, etc., make it clear what is (or is not) to be taught in the classroom and through what procedures it is to be taught. there is a difference, however, between the 'official' curriculum statements and practices in the classroom. this is recognized in the conventional usage of the formal/hidden classification of dimensions of curriculum. study of the so-called 'hidden' curriculum concerns itself with the latent norms and values which are transmitted in the schooling process. one of the better formulations of the hidden curriculum is provided by giroux and penna (1977: 40). to these writers the concept includes those unstated norms, values, and beliefs that are transmitted to students through the underlying structure of classroom as opposed to the formally recognized and sanctioned dimensions of classroom experience. while researchers have long recognized the importance of studying this dimension of curriculum the term "'hidden' curriculum" is somewhat misleading. there are underlying structural relations in the classroom that shape behaviour, but these are not necessarily invisible to the participants. indeed, as eggleston (1977: 18) emphasizes, "the hidden curriculum is only hidden, if at all, to the teacher; it is clearly visible to the students -probably even more clearly visible than the official curriculum". 70 although there is considerable interest in the hidden curriculum, research in this area varies. for example, jackson (1968) examines the features of classroom life primarily in terms of the student-teacher relationship. his main concern is to describe the ways in which the students learn how to respond to the knowledge or normative context in ways that are acceptable to their peers as well as to their teachers. other writers (richer, 1980; parsons, 19s9; dreeben, 1968; bowles and gintis, 1976) attempt to address the relationship between what is taught in the hidden curriculum and the wider social context. the school is seen to teach general attitudes and qualities which prepare students for their future adult and work roles. where these researchers differ is in how they view the role of the school in society. parsons, for example, argues that what the school teaches is functional for wider society, and that schooling is necessary for effective performance of adult roles in industrial society (hum, 1978). alternatively, bowles and gintis see the school as teaching conformity and acquiescence to the demands of an essentially repressive society. the work of bowles and gintis provides some direction for analysis which links what the school does with the system of class relations existing in society. however, in discussing the values and qualities which the schools teach through the hidden curriculum, they tend to overstate their case when they categorize such qualities as "tactful", "perseverant", "consistent", and so on, as repressive. there is a need to discriminate between the inculcation of essentially human values, and the promotion of values and qualities specifically geared to the stability of the status quo (i.e., capitalist consumer society), entwistle (1978: 56) concisely outlines a general programmatic for this kind of analysis in the following passage: 71 if people are to be classified by reference to the values to which they suscribe, it is necessary to go beyond these abstract, firstorder human values to the second-order norms through which they find concrete expression in the lives of individuals or groups. this task is extremely difficult, however, if one attempts to organize research simply in terms of the hidden and formal curriculum. although this distinction is of considerable value in discovering aspects of curriculum which had not previously been revealed, numerous conceptual ambiguities remain. this is particularly apparent with regard to analysis of ideology and consciousness in the school. an initial problem lies in efforts to demarcate the boundaries between the formal and hidden curriculum. analytically, these categories may be useful in providing direction for study of the curriculum, but discussion of the actual content and form of the learning process can be complex and confusing. for example, textbooks can be cited as examples of the formal curriculum: they are part of the explicit instruction and the content is not hidden. yet, the presentation of textbook information as objective fact 'hides' the subjective biases which the book may embody. similarly, study of the hidden curriculum, which, for instance, examines the manner of which a child learns to give an acceptable performance in the classroom, must also consider institutional means of social control in order to explain classroom practices. the hidden curriculum is a particularly problematic concept. whilst the literature on the hidden curriculum can be utilized in discussions of ideology, to equate the hidden dimensions of schooling with ideology is to impose unsatisfactory limits on analysis. in a broad sense, all interaction and communication in the classroom is ideological. whether overtly or covertly, educational practices convey particular conceptions and impressions of the world. the examination of textbooks is a case in point. history, for example, is not only presented as an objective record of events and facts but it conveys certain information about the 72 world. the content of a history textbook is overt, 'open' for all to see. however, it tells "the story of heroes to be emulated and ideals to be striven for, of villians to be condemned and false prophets to be avoided" (hum, 1978: 192). thus formal instruction involves the imparting of specific notions about what is right and wrong, important or unimportant. we agree with egglcston (1977: 117) that the hidden curriculum acts as one with the official curriculum as an agent of social control. it identifies the students with 'their place 1 in the social system, brings them into compliance with its norms and values and with the structure and the sanctions with which they are imposed. yet the central problem is not whether certain aspects of curriculum are hidden or overt. the key question is to explain the processes whereby ideological knowledge is transmitted via the curriculum. this can be accomplished by examining a) what is taught, b) how it is taught, and c) the effects on the student of the mechanisms used to ensure that something is learned. the organization of the educational process shapes the behaviour of the participants: what we wish to know is how this affects the development of consciousness in students. recognizing the intimate ties between formal and hidden dimensions of curriculum it is encumbent upon the researcher to consider both the overt and covert ways in which ideological notions about social reality are marifested in the classroom. pressures and limits on schooling: state and economy as part of the 'overdetermined' approach it has been argued that the selective character of classroom knowledge has to be examined with reference to how it affects the students ways of thinking, acting or feeling. also to be considered is the question: 'how does the ruling class limit and exert pressures on the production of knowledge in the 73 school?' to answer this requires an examination of the ways in which the state and economy impinge upon educational practices. thorough analysis of the linkages between the school, state and economy is beyond the scope of this paper, but a sketch of some of the ways outside agencies influence public school curriculum can be provided. kith the bureaucratization of the school in the post-korld war ii period the state gained centralized administrative and social control. in the case of the public schools, the state at present has considerable legal and financial control. this is primarily in the hands of provincial and local governments. in recent years, however, the proportion of public school funds provided by provincial governments has continued to climb substantially. in addition, the consolidation of local school boards leaves even greater decision-making power in the hands of 'central' authorities. provincial governments have a number of legal, financial and informational instruments for school governance. central authorities exercise their legal control in the area of curriculum development. not only do they provide curriculum guidelines but they also exercise rights of approval over new courses, textbooks and other material. the provincial administrations play a key role in deciding the terms of teacher certification. as an essential instrument for control, this strongly influences the content of teacher training. financially, a ministry of education can effect decisions at the local level in a number of ways through formula financing and the provision of various grants. significantly, "new courses and programmes are not automatically financed even if they are kept within the framework of formula-based funds" (oecd, 1975: 11). governments also use informational policy instruments which are used to shape local programmes and school 74 organizations. for example, the oecd external examiners' report (197s: 12) points out that, the central production of curriculum materials reaches substantial levels in many provinces, which partly explains the large central staff found in some of them. . . 'supervisory' functions at central and regional level employ a large number of people, many of whom act as 'expert consultants' with a de facto combination of advisory and controlling functions. to illustrate the extensive bureaucratic controls on what is to be taught in the public schools, and how this is to be taught, one need only refer to provincial legislation regarding education. for example, in ontario the minister of education has broad powers in the development of curriculum and school programs. the minister may 8. -(1) (a) name the diplomas and certificates that are to be granted to pupils and prescribe their form and the conditions under which they are to be granted; (b) prescribe the courses of study that shall be taught and the courses of study that may be taught in the primary, junior, intermediate and senior divisions; (c) in respect of schools under the jurisdiction of a board, (i) issue curriculum guidelines and require that courses of study be developed therefrom and establish procedures for the approval of courses of study that are not developed from such curriculum guidelines, (ii) prescribe areas of study and require that courses of study be grouped thereunder and establish procedures for the approval of alternative areas of study under which courses of study shall be grouped, and (iii) approve or permit boards to approve, (a) courses of study that are not developed from such curriculum guidelines, and (b) alternative areas of study under which courses of study shall be grouped, and authorize such courses of study and areas of study to be used in lieu of or in addition to any prescribed course of study or area of study; 75 (d) establish procedures by which and the conditions under which books and other learning materials are selected and approved by the minister; (e) select and approve for use in schools textbooks, library books, reference books and other learning materials; ... (province of ontario, 1974: 11-12). although publicly controlled schools are operated by local school boards, the centralization and consolidation of these boards means that provincial ministries of education can keep a close rein on curriculum and educational programmes. to be sure, the state will endorse those programmes, and set guidelines for curricula, which will 'benefit' society. i would suggest that the 'best' in intellectual, aesthetic and moral standards and values, as determined to a large degree by state agencies, still reflects the class-based paternalism of early school movements which saw education as an integrative and civilizing force in society. that this type of educational control arbitrarily limits the definition and scope of classroom knowledge is an argument which is glossed over, especially in light of the fact that the school does teach certain 'fundamental' and 'essential' values. these values, however, reinforce the legitimacy of the existing social system and serve to 'naturalize' and mystify conflict and the nature of exploitation in society. it has been mentioned that the state has financial and administrative control over education. where does this leave teachers when it comes to curriculum control and development? briefly, two points can be mentioned. first, the provincial administrations play a key role in deciding the terms of teacher certification and the content of teacher training. for instance, in respect of teachers' colleges in ontario, the minister may 8. -(1) (r) (i) define courses of study and subjects to be taught, (ii) recommend reference books and library books. 76 (iii) approve textbooks, (iv) determine the number of terms and the dates upon which each term begins and ends, and (v) grant bachelor of education degrees; ... (province of ontario, 1974: 13). second, where teachers desire to have greater participation in the development of the curriculum, indications are that this interest is based more on opportunity for greater autonomy or for greater emphasis on local and regional issues (martin and macdonell, 1978), rather than constituting an attempt to depart in any radical fashion fro-n the general values currently being taught. the general pattern of political 'neutrality' on the part of teachers in the classroom, however, does have its exceptions as evidenced harp and betcherman's (1980) paper on teacher organizations. needless to say, the principal agent of educational change for the past three decades has been the government. there are several factors which help to explain the government's positive attitude toward education in the recent past. the post-world war two period saw many changes take place in canadian society. employment opportunities continued to shift from agriculture to manufacturing, and then to service jobs (copse, 1972). with intensive family formation and an increasing birth rate we experienced the 'baby boom', and as these children grew older it became necessary to fill an expanding and changed economy with educated workers. the new economic theory of "human capital" called for a highly qualified manpower and the ready absorption of graduates into well-paying jobs served to reinforce beliefs in the value of education (harvey, 1974). this was the era of the 'sputnik syndrome' when the russian satellite sputnik i touched off a nation-wide cold war trauma in the united states. the american drive to protect their 7technical and scientific leadership by making heavy investments in education influenced the federal and provincial governments' roles in the funding and expansion of educational facilities. again, the causes of higher employment levels and canada's lag behind the u.s. in its per capita gross national product were thought to stem from a lag in education. education, then, was seen as a crucial factor in economic growth and prosperity in a technological age. with close ties between the educational system and the economy the amount of learning one obtained became synonomous with the amount of one's life earnings. in recent years, however, as times get tough for capitalism, educational participation has taken on added significance. in that there appears to be a direct relationship between educational attainment and participation rates in the labour force (martin and macdonell, 1978), education is seen by the student as a valued commodity. the instrumental value of education is increased by virtue of the fact that employers have come to perceive education as more of a screening process than a prerequisite for job performance. the result of this credentialism is twofold, as bleasdale (1978: 30) explains: raising the educational ante has induced an artificial scarcity of talent, but it also latently served to exacerbate a commodity fetishism of certificates and degrees perceived as symbols of knowledge, consumed as a means in acquiring other commodities. it is not a case that workers with better educational qualifications are necessarily better than workers with lesser qualifications; rather credentialism is, in part, the response from employers to the supply of workers which have been produced by educational institutions. thus, credentialism has become "a new form of property holding involving 12 the right to work" (porter, 1977b: 9). 78 the linkage between the educational system and the economy is further reflected in the ways in which learning has been socially organized to subserve the requirements of production. on the one hand, we have already pointed out how education is principally seen in terms of its future utility. on the other hand, with the incursion of 'technical rationality' into the sphere of education, 'success* is measured according to the degree of competence in a closely-defined field of knowledge or area of specialization. this sorting process and the compartmentalization of knowledge into specified activities, each governed by its own technical rules and strategies, not only provides the capitalist economy with a technical division of labour, but it also results in the stultification of an integrative and critical consciousness. what is left is a limited form of thought which, to a large extent, simply responds to the determined requirements of technology (holly, 1975). from this brief sketch it can be seen that the linkages between the state and economy on the one hand and the educational institution on the other have no little effect on the control and development of curriculum. in that the state in capitalist society is a capitalist state, it can be seen as an agent of the bourgeoisie. as such, measures utilized by the state to influence educational practices will be ideological in character, serving to uphold the interests of the capitalist class. likewise the relationship between the economy and the school is geared to facilitate the accumulation of capital and thus to maintenance of capitalist relations. the educational process shapes the behaviour of the participants: what we wish to know is how this affects the development of consciousness in students. recognizing the intimate ties between formal and hidden dimensions of curriculum it is encumbent 79 upon research to consider both the overt and covert ways in which ideological notions about social reality are manifested in the classroom. my concern in this paper has been to present the theoretical assumptions which underlie various sociological approaches to the study of curriculum. it was argued that the overdetermined approach has much to offer for investigation which seeks to integrate interactional analysis (the phenomenologist 's concern with the management of knowledge) with structural analysis (power and interests). the particular framework outlined above can provide considerable insight into the complex system of power relations underlying the educational process. in addressing the question, 'what gets to count as educational knowledge?' it recognizes the limitations of the 'given' approach which, in focusing on school attainment, ignores the content of the curriculum. likewise, the overdetermined approach takes to task naive perspectives which look at school knowledge transmission simply as a process of negotiations between teacher and student. in doing so it attempts to situate educational practices in the context of capitalist class relations, acknowledging the complex structural constraints on classroom interaction and educational reform. 80 footnotes 1. the same might be said for certain marxist approaches, e.g. , bowles and gintis (1976), which are inclined toward what karabel and halsey (1977) call a "hyperfunctional ism" that sees a "perfect fit" between the educational system and other major social institutions. insofar as these approaches assume a functional role for curricula, it is not considered to be problematic and the content of the educational system may be neglected. 2. this is not to say that researchers in this tradition necessarily ignore conflict. however, such analysis tends to cover too much ground in order that a testable explanation for various kinds of social organization can be arrived at. collins (1977: 124) comments: functional analysis too easily operates as a justification for whatever particular pattern exists, asserting in effect that there is a proper reason for it to be so, but failing to state the conditions under which a particular pattern will hold rather than another. 3. "content", as it is used here, refers to not so much the technical skills and so on which are taught in school, or to the relationship between technological advances and the development of curriculur. in accordance to these changes, but to the ideological character of the educational process. 4. in particular, for comments on and criticisms of young and his associates see holly (1975: 6-8); sharp and green, (1975: 12-13); karabel and halsey (1977: 44-61). 5. "overdetermination" makes reference to the fact that while all relations are not class relations (e.g., teacher-student), these relations and the practices attendant to these relations are contingent upon their articulation with relations arising out of the capitalist mode of production. thus the class nature of schooling is to be understood by locating it contextual ly through examination of the exercise of power in capitalist society. 6. this class is primarily responsible for establishing the ideas and institutions which serve to guard the social order. this is not to say however, that members of the capitalist class consciously set about to deceive the people or that intellectuals are participants in a conspiracy to keep the capitalist class in its dominant position. members of the ruling class are bound and compelled by specific material conditions to represent their interests as the common interests of all members of society. the class which has control over the means of material production not only influences the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production, but these ideas can serve to reproduce the existing social relations. 7. my main concern in this paper is with examination of the ruling class and the exercise of its hegemony. a key problem for further research which arises out of this analysis is to elucidate 81 those traditions and ideas, values and attitudes which run counter to the dominant culture, i.e., to study counter-hegemonic forces, such as student resistence, or teacher militancy. 8. it should be recognized that the meaning of form/content in a specific time/space situation implies varying interpretations on the part of the observers and participants. with regard to sociological research, for example, the study of curriculum by liberals or by marxists will necessarily be informed by their theoretical vantage points. 9. smollet (1974) provides an interesting example of this in her article, "schools and the illusion of choice: the middle class, and the 'open' classroom". 10. are these repressive values or values of the middle class? entwistle (1978: 56) argues that, "in fact, in western culture, these have usually been regarded simply as human values, not distinguishing characteristics of any class, but virtues by reference to which persons are deemed human." 11. michael katz in his study of education in american history presents an analysis of the changes in organizational models from the paternalistic voluntarism in the early 1800's to the bureaucratic model which characterizes the public school system today. significantly, katz (1977: 393) observes that, the paternalistic voluntarists and the bureaucrats, of course, saw education as_ the educator of the people, leading, not reflecting, the general will and, at the least, shaping moral opinions... they hoped for, basically, an increasingly standardization of institutions, practices and culture in american society. 12. an interesting aspect of the relationship between education and occupation is the fact that along with the degradation of work noted by braverman (1974), the phenomenon of credentialism has meant an -increase in the substantial lack of fit between occupational requirements and the level of education one carries into the job situation. 13. for further discussion of linkages between the educational institution, and the state and the economy, see white, 1980. h : references bernstein, basil 1971 "on the classification and framing of educational knowledge", in young, ed. , knowledge and control , toronto: colliermacmil ian. bleasdale, graham 1978 "towards a political economy of capitalist educational values", in nelson and nock, eds., reading, writing and riches . toronto: between the lines. bowles, samuel and herbert gintis 1976 schooling in capitalist america . new york: basic books. braverman, harry 1974 labour and monopoly capital . new york: monthly review press. brophy, jere and thomas good 1974 teacher-student relationships . new york: holt, rinehart and winston, inc. collins, randall 1977 "functional and conflict theories of educational stratification' in karabel and halsey, eds., power and ideology in education . new york: oxford university press. copse 1972 report of the commission on post-secondary education, the learning societywright et. al., ministry of govemnent services, toronto. dandurand, pierre 1977 "education and power" in carlton, colley and mackinnon, eds.. education, change and societytoronto: gage educational publishing ltd. dreeban , robert 1968 on what is learned in school. reading, mass: addison wesley. eggleston, john 1977 the sociology of the school curriculum london: rou* ledge and kegan paul. entwistle, harold 1978 class, culture and educationlondon: methuen and co. ltd. esland, geoffrey m. 1971 "teaching and learning as the organization of knowledge", in young, ed. , knowledge and controltoronto: colliermacmillan. 83 giroux, henry and anthony pcnna 1977 "social relations in the classroom: the dialectic of the hidden curriculum", edcentric 40-41. harp, john and gordon betcherman 1980 "contradictory class locations and class action: the case of school teachers' organizations in ontario and quebec", canadian journal of sociology . harvey, edward 1974 "canadian higher education and the seventies", interchange . holly, douglas 1975 "education and the social relations of a capitalist society' a paper presented to the british sociological association, march. hum, j.c. 1978 the limits and possibilities of schooling . boston: allyn and bacon, inc. jackson, philip 1968 life in classrooms new york: holt, rinehart and winston. karabel, jerome and a. ii. ilalsey, (eds.) 1977 "introduction", power and ideology in education new york: oxford university press. katz, michael b. 1977 "from voluntarism to bureaucracy in american education", in karabel and halsey, eds., power and ideology in educationnew york: oxford university press. keddie, nell 1977 "classroom knowledge" in young, ed. , knowledge and controltoronto: col lier-macmil ian. martin, wilfred and allan macdonell 1978 canadian pducationscarborough: prentice -flail of canada, ltd. murphy, raymond 1979 sociological theories of educationtoronto: mcgraw-hill ryerson limited. ontario, province of 1974 the education actqueen's printer for ontario, toronto. organization for economic cooperation and development, (oecd) 1975 external examiners' report, "educational policy in canada", canadian association for adult education and university of toronto students' administrative council, toronto. 84 parsons, talcott 1959 "the school class as a social system: some of its functions in american society", harvard educational review , 29. porter, john 1977a "education and equality: the failure of a mission". the edgar mclnnis lectures, york university. 1977b "education and the just society". the edgar mclnnis lectures, york university. richer, stephen 1980 "the unofficial curriculum in ontario schools: a study of ottawa kindergartens", unpublished paper, carleton university. sharp, rachel and anthony green (with assistance of j. lewis) 1975 education and social control. boston: rout ledge and kegan paul. smollett, eleanor 1974 "schools and the illusion of choice: the middle class, and the 'open' classroom", in martell, ed. , the politics of the canadian public school. toronto: james lorimer and company white, robert d. 1980 "education in bourgeois society: a matter of common sense", interchange . young, michael f.d. 1971a "introduction", in young, ed. , knowledge and control. toronto: collier-macmillan. 1971b "an approach to the study of curricula as socially organized knowledge", in young, ed., knowledge and control. toronto: collier-macmillan. young, michael f.d. 1976 "curriculum change: limits and possibilities", in dale, esland and macdonald, eds., schooling and capitalismlondon: open university press. 85 248 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism book review activism that works edited by elizabeth whitmore, maureen g. wilson, and avery calhoun. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing, 2011. $19.95 can, paper. isbn: 978-1-55266-411-7. pages: 1-184. reviewed by christine pich1 activism that works provides an important empirical and collaborative contribution towards literature on action research and social justice activism. in raising the key question – “[h]ow do we know when we’re making a difference?” (p.7) – the editors, through part of a larger collaborative project with nine social justice-oriented organizations, challenge us to think about what it means to be successful in activist work that contributes, in a broad sense, towards social change oriented by “social or environmental justice” (p.8). in partnering with a range of diverse organizations throughout canada – such as oxfam canada, the calgary raging grannies, and the social justice committee – an aim of this book was to provide activists from these organizations the opportunity to reflect upon their work in terms of what factors they believe constitute effectiveness and success, and how they know that they are making a difference. it is in this regard that terms such as ‘activism’ and ‘success’ take on broad and encompassing conceptual meanings. for example, ‘success’ is understood as that which is “described by activists themselves reflecting on their own work” (p.8). this relates to the central theme of the book, that is, in attempting to understand what constitutes ‘successful activism’ in complex contexts, there is no ‘right answer’ or ‘best practice’ when undertaking social justice oriented work. it is in this regard that the editors challenge how success is commonly perceived in terms of linear and tangible outcomes. in contrast, the editors encourage us to think about success on a different scale through the everyday work and successes experienced by a wide range of people (paid workers, volunteers, members of the community) involved within these organizations. the book is organized with the majority of the contents constituting stories from the organizations themselves (in no particular identified order), and with the editors writing the introductory and concluding 1 christine pich is a ph.d. student in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university in ottawa. her research interests are in the areas of occupational health, work and labour. book review: activism that works | 249 chapters. it is within the chapters written by the editors that the theoretical and methodological focus is discussed. within the introductory chapters they highlight the difficulties posed by neoliberal capitalism towards activist work. in this regard, they point to the potential of “emancipatory social inquiry” (p.20) in terms of collaborative work between researchers and social movements, and the knowledge coproduced from such efforts. to frame this discussion, they briefly draw upon the work of antonio gramsci (structural and conjunctural analysis; ideological hegemony), paulo friere (conscientization; praxis; participatory action research), and george smith (political activist ethnography). in the concluding chapters, the editors elaborate upon complexity theory, with particular reference to the work of brenda zimmerman (2000). this theory is understood as “a loose network of ideas, a set of mental models” (p.155) which challenges “linear, mechanistic ways of thinking” (p.155) that are outcome-oriented. the theoretical works drawn upon, especially the introduction of complexity theory, provide an intriguing framework towards understanding the complexities of ‘successful activism’. however, a tension in this regard was that they were only briefly drawn upon. it would have been interesting to delve into further discussion of, and identify any potential tensions between, the theoretical approaches. through the use of an appreciative inquiry (ai) lens emphasis is cast upon success and positive experiences, as well as the data sources generated, take a narrative form. this approach is well suited to frame the range of stories of what success means. for example, the disability action hall considers successful features of their work to include building a “sense of community, sense of pride and culture” (p. 53), while the calgary raging grannies highlight the ability to attain media coverage and energize themselves and others through humour and catchy songs. the main contribution of this book is that it highlights how, even in a hostile neoliberal capitalist climate, successes of varying degrees are experienced within the processes of working on social justice issues and that important work is being done on a day-to-day basis in this regard. this is particularly important as it challenges the contemporary orientation of many funding sources in their measures of ‘success’ wherein focus tends to be on readily identifiable results and quantitative reporting mechanisms. in addition, through the involvement of various organizations, this book provides the space for activists to tell their own stories with through creative means, such as a comic book style format in the chapter by the youth project. 250 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism while providing important contributions, the main tension with the book stems from the framing of some key concepts – such as activists, social movements, and social justice – which could have benefited from a more elaborated conceptual analysis as they were quite broad and encompassing. while the intent may have been to provide generous conceptual framings, more discussion towards the potential benefits and limitations of this approach would have been useful. in addition, while the focus of the book is on ‘success,’ and the ai approach is suitable toward achieving this aim, the editors note the assumption “that something works in every organization” (p.24). it would have been useful to provide some discussion of what would be considered as falling outside of notions of success and positive work. furthermore, while the editors introduce the organizations they have worked with within this project, what remained to be more clearly addressed is the methodological rationale for identifying and working with these particular organizations and not others. overall, whitmore et. al.’s edited book provides an important collaborative space for multiple voices to creatively share and reflect upon what they understand as effectiveness and success and the importance of recognizing everyday successes that do not neatly fit into concrete outcomes. with its creative and accessible style and structure, this book will be of particular interest for researchers who work in researchercommunity collaborative projects with the aim to co-produce knowledge, as well as a more general public and activist audience. 7 permanent austerity: the politics of the canadian exit strategy from fiscal stimulus bryan evans and greg albo1 abstract: this paper fills a gap in the analysis to date in examining the political context of canada’s fiscal stimulus rescue strategy and the subsequent turn to exit. the central question in canada, as everywhere else, has been who will pay for the economic crisis? canada’s federal and provincial governments have answered by signaling a sharp turn to austerity in targeting public sector workers and public services. while examples of resistance are noted, these remain far too limited to effectively challenge what is becoming a return to not just neoliberalism but a more authoritarian form at that. keywords: austerity, public sector, deregulation, fiscal crisis, since erupting across the world market in 2007, the global economic crisis has held political centre-stage in the core capitalist states. what began as a liquidity crisis in mortgage markets in the heartlands of neoliberalism in 2007 – the us, britain, ireland, and the baltic countries – quickly turned into an insolvency crisis in 2008, and the worst economic downturn since the great depression in 2009. although the downward spiral is now contained, economic stagnation continues in the central economies of capitalism – including canada – across 2010. indeed, there remain palpable fears of a further slide into economic recession in economic forecasts for 2011. and slow growth is projected for the foreseeable future. the centre of the economic turmoil has been the us, the driving force of the world economy over the last century. as a small open economy with an overwhelming trade dependence on the us, economic conditions in the us have been a crucial determinant of prospects for accumulation in canada. a register of key de1 bryan evans teaches public administration at ryerson university. greg albo teaches political economy at york university, and is co-editor of socialist register, and author of in and out of crisis (2010). permanent austerity: the politics of the canadian exit strategy from fiscal stimulus 8 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research velopments in the us (noted in us dollars below) is indicative of the breadth and depth of the financial crisis (imf 2010; office of management and budget 2010; realtytrac 2010; bloomberg 2009; ilo 2009; mckinsey 2008; crotty 2009). at the height of the us housing market bubble in 2006, a startling one-• fifth of new mortgages taken out are high-risk sub-prime loans, with total outstanding residential mortgages valued at over $10 trillion. but in 2007 things turned sour: foreclosure proceedings by lenders on mortgages increase by 79 per cent from 2006 levels on 1.3 million properties; they increase again by 81 per cent for 2008 over 2007 on 2.3 million properties; and in 2009, foreclosure notices on 2.8 million properties shatter records. into 2010, the numbers of mortgages either delinquent or foreclosed continues to climb. from a mid-2006 peak, us house values decline by one-quarter by sep-• tember 2008 at the peak of the financial turbulence– a stunning $15 trillion in asset value vanishing. in february 2007, hsbc, the world’s largest bank, is forced to write-down • $10.5 billion in us sub-prime loan backed securities. this begins a chain of write-offs and bankruptcies that will take down over 100 mortgage lenders in 2007. by 2008, the imf estimates that over $1.5 trillion of subprime mortgage-backed securities have to be written-off in a total market valued at over $7 trillion. in march 2008, the us government mandates the shotgun merger of bear • stearns with jp morgan at a meager $2 a share after trading at $170 per share only one year earlier. in september 2008, global inter-bank lending completely freezes up on • realization that the sub-prime mortgage meltdown is moving from the shadow banking system into the formal banking system risking complete financial collapse. as a consequence, in september 2008 the major us investment houses are • eliminated virtually overnight with the collapse of lehman brothers, the forced merger of merrill lynch into bank of america and the automatic regulatory conversion of morgan stanley and goldman sachs into commercial banks. 9 as well, in september 2008 the us government is forced to takeover aig, • the largest insurance company in the world with assets of some $1 trillion and a yearly turnover in the order of $10 trillion. by may 2009, the government has provided credit facilities to aig in the order of $180 billion, the largest bailout in history. the us government also takes over fannie and freddie mac in septem-• ber 2008, owners or guarantors of about half of the $12 trillion mortgage market. a cut in half of global stock market capitalisation from some $63 trillion • to only $31 trillion by november 2008. in december 2008, the largest ponzi scheme in history at $65 billion, and • run by bernard l. madoff investment securities (madoff being a former head of the nasdaq), collapses. in february 2009, the obama administration gains congressional sup-• port for an emergency economic stabilization package nominally figured at $787 billion, the largest such stimulus measure in history. by april 2009, estimates are ranging from $2.7 trillion to $5 trillion for • potential losses to banks for collateralized debt obligations (cdos) assets, with half this falling on us banks. it is also estimated that an astounding half of all cdos will default. the filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection by general motors on • june 1, 2009, the largest such filing by an industrial company at $82 billion in assets and $173 billion in debt. the estimated costs to us taxpayers for the financial crisis are notoriously • hard to come by from the government, but one official puts the figure at a possible $23.7 trillion dollars. by 2009, the numbers of officially unemployed in the us are over 15 mil-• lion, or over 10 percent of the labour force, with over 20 million estimated global job losses since the onset of the crisis. the us budget deficit for fiscal year 2009 is estimated at a stunning $1.42 • trillion dollars, and 12.3 percent of gdp, a deficit share last seen during ww ii. budgetary forecasts for 2010 are only slightly improved. permanent austerity: the politics of the canadian exit strategy from fiscal stimulus 10 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research for the first time since the great depression, world output as a whole • declined by 0.6 percent in 2009, with the us suffering a slump of -2.4 percent, the advanced economies of -3.2 percent and the developing economies (including india and china) growing by only 2.5 percent. with the us mortgage meltdown and liquidity crisis triggering a global economic crisis, canada could not be insulated from the economic turbulence. nor was canada cut-off from the processes of financialization and credit bubbles that formed in the us. the crisis in canada has not been as severe as in the us, but there are certain features that bear noting (department of finance 2010; bank of canada 2009; mcnish and mcarthur 2008; baragar 2009). from budgetary measures introduced in 2006, state mortgage guarantees • in canada more than doubled by the end of 2008. this included the move by mortgage lenders into high risk mortgages of 40 years and no down payment (after prompting from us mortgage brokers, and notably aig). the canada mortgage and housing corporation (cmhc) effectively carrying much of the foreclosure risk, with financial institutions reaping the rewards of high leverage. this has included the cmhc taking major swaps in mortgages for ‘cash’ for the banks to help bolster their balance sheets. in august 2007 as problems in derivatives markets began to spread, the • asset-backed commercial paper market (abcp) in canada froze-up with some $32 billion in paper not being able to be traded. after removing the 30 percent limit on foreign asset holdings in canadian • retirement plans in 2005, us bond placements in canada increase from a mere $1.5 billion in 2004 to almost $27 billion in 2007. from the fall of 2007 through 2009, the bank of canada begins to take a • series of measures to increase liquidity in the financial system. this included driving interest rates down to just 0.5 per cent, and injecting billions into the financial system through purchases of government of canada securities, but also extending to the purchase of private sector securities and commercial paper. while the lead canadian financial institutions avoided collapse in 2008, • canadian equity markets more than matched the us decline, government of canada treasury bill yields collapsed, and spreads with commercial pa11 per shot up. these indications of liquidity problems moved the finance ministry to implement an extraordinary financing framework (eff) with $200 billion in available funds. with the turbulence in world markets, canadian growth rates fell sharply • from average rates of about 3 per cent from 2004-2007, to just about 0.4 per cent for 2008, before tanking at -2.6 per cent for 2009. positive growth is returning across 2010 but expected to remain sluggish. as a consequence, the official unemployment moved from 6.0 for 2007 to 8.3 in 2009, and has stayed in this range since. as a consequence of falling output and fiscal support for canadian finan-• cial institutions, the budgetary position of the federal government moved from a surplus in 2007-08 of about $10 billion, to a deficit of $6 billion for 2008-09 and spiraling to $-54 billion for 2009-10. from financial rescue to public sector austerity the severity of the economic crisis left little alternative to massive state-led ‘rescue strategies’ across the world market, although concentrated in the core countries, including canada. the rescue had two overarching components: a series of measures to stabilize the financial system and enhance conditions for borrowing; and fiscal stimulus to offset the demand shock from the collapse of the financial system and the severe decline in world trade (loxley 2009; roubini and mihm 2010). the first and most urgent measures were to address the insolvency crisis of specific financial institutions where firms were facing massive loan losses or runs on deposits. in an unprecedented number of countries, the actions included forced mergers, bank nationalizations and, in almost all countries, specific steps to bailout banks by offloading ‘troubled assets’ into the state sector or central banks. as well, governments established emergency credit facilities available to financial institutions (as canada did with the eff and the cmhc) and boosting guarantees on deposits. second, governments (in the form of central banks like the bank of canada) undertook a number of policies to re-establish liquidity in financial markets. these included: extensive interventions and guarantees for inter-bank lending market; purchases of government and private securities and commercial paper; allowing banks to increase their borrowing leverage against high-quality assets; purchase of bank equity to boost cash on balance-sheets; and by directly purchasing government debt issuances and thus government cash deposits held in banks. third, financial regulatory institutions moved to oversee directly the operations of specific markets, deploy emergency oversight of others and arrange extensive audits of financial inpermanent austerity: the politics of the canadian exit strategy from fiscal stimulus 12 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research stitutions. finally, central banks have driven down their key market-setting interest rate, often by 2009 to the point of negative real rates, to encourage lending and widen spreads for banks. as bank lending has remained sluggish and markets highly unstable, this has included central banks radically pushing down the yield curves on 5 and 10 year government bonds. these measures occurred, to various degrees and at different stages, across the core capitalist states from 2007-10 to ‘rescue’ the financial system from collapsing credit markets. to address the shock to aggregate demand, a coordinated turn to emergency fiscal expansion was led by the us government and the g20 states, with governments adopting, in general, fiscal deficits in the order of 2-5 percent of gdp (although with the severe banking crises and recession, these levels were much larger in the us and britain) (stiglitz 2010; onaran 2010). as a consequence, and after two decades of neoliberal efforts to enforce balanced budgeting doctrines, to lower government debt to gdp ratios, and to reduce overall non-military and non-debt servicing expenditures (in other words, to reduce programmed social spending and activist industrial policies), government debt levels rose dramatically. (by some measures, and despite no major collapse in financial institutions, canada had one of the largest fiscal stimulus packages and one of the most supportive monetary policies. see td economics 3 august 2010.) at the first sign of the crisis stabilizing in late 2009, a campaign began being waged for ‘exit strategies’ from the emergency measures. this has been led by neoliberal think-tanks, the financial sector, the wider business community and international financial institutions. one exit is to leave behind the emergency oversight of financial markets and complete the installation of a new regulatory structure so that full-blown derivatives trading, particularly in credit instruments and a fullrange of interest and exchange rate swaps, can be re-established. this exit includes the dodd-frank wall street reform and consumer protection act passed in july 2010, which focuses on increased transparency in derivatives trading, limits on bank proprietary trading, regulatory consolidation, financial products consumer protection, a ‘resolution regime’ for financial crises, and a new proposals for international financial rating and regulatory standards. the new basel iii accord agreed to in september 2010 among global bank regulators also sets higher reserves to be held against potential losses, and more than doubles the key capital ratio to 4.5 per cent from the current 2 per cent (financial times 13 september 2010). the widely discussed financial transactions tax (a version of the tobin tax long campaigned for by progressives to slow financial speculation) has come to naught, although a few eu countries are imposing a tiny levy on certain features of financial trades. canada, in this case, has viewed its financial regulatory regime as a success over the 13 crisis and mainly undertook special policy measures rather than develop emergency regulatory machinery. the canadian exit here will simply be to tail some of the international agreements as they proceed to implementation. a second exit is to return to a ‘normal’ monetary policy focused again on an ‘inflation-targeting regime’, and away from overly stimulative interest rates being set by central banks to spur bank lending and profitability. the bank of canada, for example, has moved the bank rate up three times since june 2010 to 1.25 per cent in september, to signal a return to more normal credit conditions. however, this exit remains highly contingent and no further increases are suggested into 2011 given the fragility of the recovery and the depth of problems still pervading the financial markets. and a third exit – and the focus of the most heated political debate – is from deficit-spending fiscal policies toward public sector austerity. although there is some caution on the rush to austerity, notably from the us government, the oecd, world bank, and the imf are all calling for austerity, with the last notably suggesting two decades of ‘fiscal consolidation’ may be in order; or, more or less, ‘permanent austerity’ (imf may 2010: 30). the first two exits attempt to return to finance-led growth and financial disciplining that have been characteristic of neoliberalism. that this approach is dominating banking and monetary policies suggests how little the ruling classes have been destabilized within states (and particularly in the us and canada where it is easy enough to see the political right and business in ascendancy) or across states (where competitive rivalries over world market shares have intensified in conditions of stagnant growth, but no general challenges or alternative approaches can plausibly be pointed to apart from the us). the fiscal exit to austerity revolves around ‘who will pay for the crisis?’ and reasserts the distributional and administrative dynamics of the neoliberal form of the state. this exit marginalizes attempts to move fiscal policy toward a ‘green new deal’ or rebuilding the welfare state and public infrastructure that fleetingly appeared on the political horizon in the midst of the crisis; and it insulates the financial sector and the capitalist classes for assuming the costs of the ‘rescue strategies’. instead, the fiscal exits are focused on: bolstering bank and corporate profits through further tax cuts and shifting away from taxes on property, income and capital; cutting public sector wages, pensions and employment levels; cutting welfare transfers; imposing user fees; and beginning another round of privatization and ‘monetization’ of public sector assets. the general notion, expressed at the toronto g20 summit and other international meetings, is cutting public sector deficits in half by 2013, and phasing in a reduction of debt to gdp rations after 2016. permanent austerity: the politics of the canadian exit strategy from fiscal stimulus 14 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research across the central capitalist states, the context of the exits to austerity and the political struggles they have invoked have been quite diverse (panitch, albo and chibber 2010). in the irish case, for example, a major banking collapse has led to a severe economic crisis. as part of the eurozone, this has left ireland without the possibility of resort to devaluation to aid adjustment and public sector restrain has been a central focus of restructuring. three austerity budgets have been introduced in less than 2 years. the first two largely coped with the collapse of the housing market and the main banks, while the last budget of december 2009 shifted the cost of the crisis onto the public sector. expenditure cuts of more than $4 billion euros were made with $1 billion of that coming from pay. public sector workers are to take an average 7 per cent pay cut, while there is a 4.1 percent reduction in social benefits including for unemployment. but after a number of public sector walkouts and threats of a general strike, the irish congress of trade unions and key public sector unions have attempted to maintain the ‘irish partnership’ and negotiate austerity. this led to an agreement that may result in the loss of 18-20,000 public sector jobs, largely ends overtime pay, creates a two-tier workforce marked by lower wages and pensions for all new hires into the public sector, and prohibits any industrial action for three years. greece faces some of the same constraints as ireland as part of the eurozone, but did not go through the same banking collapse. rather, the crisis in public finances has been a result of the general weakness of greek capitalism and the greek state. its exit strategy, therefore, has been a more proto-typical neoliberal stabilization programme. for example, pay for public sector workers is to be cut by 7 percent and frozen for the next five years; the value-added tax increased from 21 to 23 percent; contract/temporary workers in the public sector are to be terminated; the retirement age is to be raised; pensions will be based on lifetime earnings which will result in a 45 to 60 percent cut; and everything from water companies, railways and airlines are being discussed for privatization. this has, in turn, generated mass class conflict with five general strikes already launched by august 2010. with the social democratic pasok party in power, greece has been a case of ‘social liberal’ austerity. in contrast to these two cases, the us has had a massive financial crisis after years of credit-aided economic expansion as the world’s dominant economic power and issuer of the key reserve currency. as the world market’s ‘consumer of last resort’, the us government has played a key role in coordinating the rescue strategies of the financial system and of the stimulus measures. indeed, its global responsibilities for managing the world capitalist system has made the obama administration the most reluctant of the core states to turn to austerity. instead, austerity has been displaced to the state level. thirty-three states, for instance, are facing budget 15 shortfalls of 20 percent or more in 2010-11. since the summer of 2008, 231,000 state and local government jobs have been lost. all states combined are running a deficit of 30.2 percent of total budgetary requirements. to deal with this public services are being cut: states have reduced health benefits for low-income earners; 25 states are in the process of cutting support to primary and secondary education; 34 states are cutting support to state colleges and universities; 26 states have implemented hiring freezes; 13 states have laid off workers; and 22 states have cut public sector wages and salaries. in california alone the governor has proposed cuts that will result in the loss of 331,000 jobs. but across the us only sporadic protests have erupted, with public sector coalition fightbacks forming, but soon faltering. indeed, political space in the us is increasingly being taken up by the political right, most visibly seen in the emergence of the ‘tea party’ movement within the republican party. the us is a case where a defeated and traumatized working class is facing another period of punitive austerity in an effort to revitalize the american capitalist class and the delusions of the american dream. canada: from fiscal orthodoxy to ‘rescue’ and back canada has neither had the severe financial crisis of ireland, the uk and the us, nor the long-term competitiveness and financial problems of greece or other countries in the european periphery. canada’s monopolistic financial sector has been protected by its market structure, the underwriting of high-risk mortgages by the state, and the support given by the bank of canada to the financial sector to maintain profit margins. there has been, moreover, a long-term pattern of fiscal austerity by the federal and provincial governments that dates back to the 1980s (doern 2009; mcbride 2005). systematic reviews of programme expenditures were established in the last years of the liberal pierre trudeau government, and given particular prominence in the nielson task force on programme review of the conservative brian mulroney government. these governments began the neoliberal restructuring of the canadian state, in terms of programme administration and levels of support, shifting tax policies, and restraining expenditures and the deficit. it was, however, the liberal government of jean chretien and finance minister paul martin that the deficit was reduced through a radical programme of cuts and a displacement of fiscal responsibilities through the inter-government system. the canadian fiscal ‘miracle’ was founded upon the destruction of 50-50 cost sharing programs created in the 1960s to support health care, social services, income maintenance and post-secondary education. this programme spending was off-loaded onto the provinces. they, in turn, restrained expenditures and, following the same logic of displacement, dumped as much as they could onto municipalities and cities. local governments in canada are now entering a second decade of a fiscal crisis, permanent austerity: the politics of the canadian exit strategy from fiscal stimulus 16 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research of cutbacks and astonishing levels of unmet infrastructure spending. a canadian strategy of punitive austerity for public sector workers and services, coupled with the inter-governmental displacement of obligations, established a pattern of federal and provincial government surpluses. in coming to power in 2006, the hard right government of stephen harper had only to build on this financial legacy. it shaped, as will be shown, both the ‘rescue’ and ‘exit’ strategies to the financial crisis of the canadian state. the 2008 fiscal update: fiscal orthodoxy rarely does fiscal policy become the source of high drama, but that is exactly what unfolded at the national level of the canadian state over an 8 week period spanning 27 november 2008 to 27 january 2009. within that short timeframe, the harper government’s fiscal policy lurched from an uncompromising commitment to balanced budget orthodoxy to keynesian style emergency stimulus. the two forces behind the fiscal re-tacking were the severity of the economic crisis and washington’s call for a coordinated global stimulus package led by the g20, and the possibility that a vote of non-confidence would see the minority conservative government replaced in government by a coalition of liberals and new democratic party (ndp) backed by the bloc quebecois (bq). on 27 november 2008, finance minister jim flaherty delivered the annual economic and fiscal statement, essentially an update of the previous budget. in his address to parliament flaherty acknowledged that this was a dire time of “unprecedented deterioration in economic and financial systems around the world” and that such “difficult times” would require “difficult choices” (department of finance 2008). while governments around the globe embarked upon unprecedented public spending programs to contain the damage to their imploding economies and financial systems, canada’s conservative government announced that their antirecession plan was to keep the budget balanced. they did cede, however, that they would re-assess the situation in the weeks ahead (department of finance 2008). alongside flaherty’s out-of-step budget orthodoxy, the minister proceeded to lay down a series of political attacks that would, on the one hand, challenge the fundraising capacity of the opposition parties to exist and, on the other, intensify the assault on federal public service unions. prefacing his first bombshell by saying that tax dollars should not be “spent frivolously”, he announced that the $1.95 per vote subsidy parties received would be terminated. this would deprive the political parties of a major source of income. based on the votes received for each party in the 2008 election this would result in a loss for the liberals of $7.7 million, for the ndp $4.9 million, and $2.6 million for the bq (cbc 26 november 2008). second, he announced that legislation would be presented suspending the right to strike for federal public servants for 2010-11, 17 and that the wages of public service workers would be constrained for four years at 2.3 per cent in the first year and 1.5 per cent for the subsequent three years. third, in an effort to undermine the success of pay equity complaints filed against the federal government and adjudicated by the canadian human rights commission, flaherty announced that legislation would be introduced to terminate adjudication by the canadian human rights commission. instead, they would require that pay equity be dealt with only through the collective bargaining process – a process that could itself be uprooted at any time as he had just demonstrated (department of finance 2008). in the midst of an exploding financial crisis, the conservative government appeared adamant that they would rather cut spending than engage in the type of massive stimulus spending programs that the us and others were embarking upon. instead, their focus was on taking advantage of a liberal party in disarray and attempting to bankrupt the opposition parties. the opposition response was rapid. ndp leader jack layton, responding to earlier rumours of what the update contained, had already asked former leader ed broadbent to call former liberal prime minister jean chretien to discuss how the two parties might coordinate a response (valpy 2009, 11). the liberals had also announced that they would be moving a non-confidence motion on 1 december, three days hence. harper’s operatives and mps were picking up news that the three opposition parties were rapidly moving toward some form of common front. harper moved to delay the confidence vote to 8 december and thus began a series of government retreats from what they had just announced. on 29 november, the government announced it was dropping its plan to eliminate the subsidy to political parties. the next day, 30 november, the government retreated from the strike ban and announced that it would table a budget on 27 january 2009 to respond to the economic crisis. the opposition parties pressed ahead saying that harper had revealed what his real agenda was and that he had to be stopped. on monday december 1st, the liberals, ndp and bq unveiled their accord that would see the liberals and ndp share cabinet seats with the support of the bq which would remain outside cabinet (valpy 2009: 11-13). the accord ensured that the coalition would command a majority in parliament until 30 june, 2011 (dion and layton 2008). harper immediately said he would seek a prorogation of parliament: on december 3rd in an address on national television harper poured vitriol on the coalition arguing that it was a fundamentally undemocratic maneuver that did not respect the choice canadians had made in the previous election. his government would “use every legal means at our disposal to protect our democracy, to protect our economy, and to protect canada” (national post 2008). the following day harper met with the permanent austerity: the politics of the canadian exit strategy from fiscal stimulus 18 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research governor-general, who granted his request for prorogation. the coalition was dead. the question now turned to whether the fiscal update was as well. budget 2009: emergency keynesianism a new speech from the throne was delivered on january 26 and signaled that the harper government was now going to set a more conciliatory tone and, quite remarkably given the remarks just a few months prior, a budgetary u-turn. the speech noted that “the government’s agenda and the priorities of parliament must adapt in response to the deepening crisis. old assumptions must be tested and old decisions must be rethought” (clark and galloway 26 january 2009). the finance minister’s conversion from the most dogmatic of balanced budget conservatives to a deficit spending ‘keynesian’ came the next day in the 2009 budget speech. at the core of “canada’s economic action plan” was an emergency fiscal stimulus built on a budgetary deficit of $34 billion and then $30 billion over two years. emergency stimulus measures were then to be terminated, with deficit spending steadily reduced. this included $12 billion for infrastructure projects (department of finance 27 january 2009: 4). in addition, other key budget measures included a $20 billion cut to personal income taxes, $50 billion to expand a government program to purchase mortgages from banks, and $13 billion in additional financing for several state-owned agencies concerned with insuring mortgages, export marketing and business loans (globe and mail 27 january 2009). with the possibility of a liberal-ndp coalition government all but gone, and with michael ignatieff, a reluctant supporter of the coalition accord, replacing stephan dion as leader, the liberals decided to support the budget if the conservatives agreed to an amendment that required the government to a regimen of three updates on the implementation of the budget. although the pettiest of symbols, ignatieff characterized it as “putting this government on probation” (cbc 28 january 2009). as for the prospects of the coalition, bq leader gilles duceppe summed up: “it’s dead. it’s over. it’s finished” (cbc 28 january 2009). budget 2010: back to austerity on march 4, 2010, jim flaherty tabled his fifth budget as harper’s finance minister. the fiscal plan presented in budget 2010 contrasts with the previous year’s reluctant ‘rescue’ budget. ‘canada’s economic action plan’ was born out of, on the one side, the efforts to coordinate emergency stimulus spending by the g20, and, on the other, the coalition accord challenging the political stability of the harper minority government. in contrast, budget 2010 assumed the corner has turned on the economic crisis and presents a plan for ‘exit’ from deficit financing and a return to balanced budget orthodoxy. moreover, a ‘crisis in public finance’ is now assessed as the foremost problem to be addressed. the conservatives are seizing an 19 opportunity to deepen the neoliberalization of the canadian state well beyond an exit strategy from the emergency fiscal keynesianism. budget 2010 proposes an aggressive plan to bring federal public finances back to balance, although the actual state of the canadian economy and public finances measures comparatively well against other large economies. for example, through the ‘great recession’ the canadian economy contracted less than the average of the core economies at 2.5 per cent in 2009, and is expected to grow at a faster clip for both 2010 and 2011 (imf 2010). in 2009-10, the combined federal and provincial deficits equaled -5.5 per cent of gdp. the federal deficit alone equals -3.1 per cent of total gdp. in historical perspective, this is modest given that during the mulroney era in the 1980s, the federal deficit stood between 5.6 and 5.8 per cent of gdp (td economics august 3 2010). in comparative perspective, the canadian position is rather modest given that deficit to gdp calculations for the us is -11.0 per cent, in the uk -11.3 per cent, and for the oecd as a whole -7.9 per cent. similarly, with respect to debt levels, canada falls toward the lower end of the spectrum with debt accounting for 28.6 per cent of gdp. this looks rather manageable compared with 56.4 per cent for the us, 46.9 per cent for the uk, and 50.2 per cent for germany (td economics august 3 2010, 4). while the recovery is widely regarded as fragile and uncertain, the harper government has with budget 2010 declared the great recession a historical relic. the priority now is an uncompromising five-year march to a near balanced budget in the fiscal year 2015-16. a range of constraint measures are to be deployed but without question a big part of achieving that target is the winding down of stimulus spending as of march 31, 2011. in addition to the termination of this spending, the budget plans to cap international assistance spending at 2010 levels, reduce defense spending by $500 million in 2012 through to 2014 as the afghanistan mission shrinks, and a three year freeze on federal program spending that will see 11 thousand public service jobs disappear (conference board of canada 2010, 11). these measures are expected to contain growth in program spending to 2.2 per cent per year. to place this in comparative perspective what this means is that within a five year frame, the federal deficit as a percentage of gdp will shrink from -3.1 per cent in 2010-11 to -0.1 per cent (td economics 4 march 2010, 2). one bank forecast even projects a surplus of $1 billion in 2014-15, although there is also the caution that the scale of the cuts may slow economic growth in canada by 0.2 to 0.4 per cent (td economics 3 august 2010, 6). another forecast suggests that the government revenue forecasts are set low based on exceedingly low growth expectations. the result is that revenues to the government will be better than expected and by 2013 these may be as much as $6.3 billion higher than forecast. if this proves accupermanent austerity: the politics of the canadian exit strategy from fiscal stimulus 20 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research rate, a fiscal balance will be achieved a full year ahead of target (browarski, stewart, and derby 2010, 1; hodgson and stewart 29 july 2010). but even while a program for aggressively shrinking public expenditures was being presented, the finance minister boasted that canada’s federal tax-to-gdp ratio had dropped to its lowest level since 1961 (budget 2010, 10). this is astonishing given that 1961 precedes the advent of the important redistributive cost-sharing programs of the late 1960s that enabled an expansion in public health care, postsecondary education, social assistance and a myriad of other services and programs. there is clearly the fiscal space in canada to increase spending and taxation by at least two per cent of gdp to bring canada’s spending up to the level it was during a period marked by the most progressive innovations in redistributive policy in this country’s history (yalnizyan, 22 march 2010). in short, the response presented in budget 2010 to canada’s federal public deficit and debt is an exaggeration. however, other policies sprinkled throughout the budget suggest that this exit is about more than public finances. budget 2010 includes a massive deregulation program, corporate tax cuts, and a further liberalization of foreign investment. with respect to cuts to corporate income tax, the finance minister noted that by 2012 “canada will have the lowest statutory corporate income tax rate in the g7” (budget 2010, 10). the goal is to reduce the federal general corporate tax rate to 15 per cent and to move toward a combined federal and provincial corporate tax rate of 25 per cent by 2012. to place this in perspective, in 2000 the federal corporate tax rate was 28 per cent and the combined federal and provincial corporate tax rates were 43.6 per cent. within a 12 year span, taxes on corporations operating in canada will have been nearly halved by a succession of liberal and conservative governments (budget 2010, 47; department of finance 2003). the deregulatory dimension of the budget received scant attention despite the fact that these proposals seriously erode environment protection and open the door wide for mining and hydro carbon exploration in the fragile eco-systems of the arctic. the budget proposes a ‘red tape reduction commission’ involving both conservative members of parliament and ‘private sector representatives’, to review and eliminate federal regulations that are seen to impede investment and development. this mimics the red tape commission set up by the harris government in ontario in 1995 but goes even further. business interests who had been subject to regulation can now advocate from within the canadian state to terminate or change regulations to which their industries are subjected. in the absurdly named objective of ‘green jobs and growth’, environmental regulations that have served to at least assess and shape investment and development projects are undermined. indian and northern affairs have been directed to ‘accelerate’ the process of reviewing resource extraction projects in the arctic so as to ‘remove barriers to private investment’. the 21 regulatory system is to be ‘modernized’ by transferring responsibility for conducting environmental assessments of large energy projects from the canadian environmental assessment agency to the much more producer and investment friendly national energy board. and budget 2010 furthers foreign investment liberalization by removing restrictions on foreign ownership in canada’s satellite sector (budget 2010, 93-102). while the heavy hand of state regulation over the environment and economy is lightened, the canadian security and intelligence service will see its budget grow by $28 million (budget 2010, 127). the harper government’s 2010 budget is leading an aggressive attack on the fiscal deficit engendered by the economic crisis and the bailouts of the financial system. in many ways canada is at the forefront of the central capitalist states in undermining public services as it has been since the chretien-martin budgets of the mid-1990s. the punitive austerity they imposed has been sustained across the last decade and the harper government. the ‘fiscal crisis’ that has been sparked by the panic rush to exit strategies from the emergency fiscal stimulus is being used as a further opportunity to intensify the neoliberal restructuring of the regulatory and redistributive remnants of the welfare state. it would not be too far off to describe the evolution of canadian fiscal strategy as a turn to permanent austerity, particularly when the constraints on provincial budgetary policies are also considered. the provincial exits to austerity while the federal government is attempting to move methodically toward balance within five years, the budgetary position of the canadian provinces is much more uneven. in fiscal year 2009, the ten provinces collectively ran the largest provincial deficit in history at $48.2 billion. this equals 3.2 per cent of provincial gdp. it is expected that a combination of improving economic conditions and the conclusion of provincial stimulus programs will help the provinces reduce this deficit to $34 billion in 2011 (conference board of canada 2010). but beyond that, how some of the provinces, especially ontario and quebec, exit fiscal deficit without a radical reconsideration of how revenues are raised or public services are delivered is difficult to imagine. the provinces diverge widely in their exit planning both in time frame and policy measures. whether social democratic or conservative, they all share a fidelity to ensuring the cost of the crisis is borne by workers via tax shifting, declining levels and quality of public services and regressive user fees. for example, various new and higher consumption taxes have been introduced in nova scotia, quebec, manitoba and saskatchewan. quebec has further added new user fees and introduced a health ‘premium’. all provinces have presented budgets that aim to keep program expenditure growth at or below 2 per cent per year; have cut or frozen operational budgets permanent austerity: the politics of the canadian exit strategy from fiscal stimulus 22 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research and introduced constraints on public sector compensation and the number of staff working in the core public services. only nova scotia has introduced a tax on high income earners and only manitoba has indefinitely postponed a planned 1 point cut in the corporate income tax rate (td economics 3 august 2010, 7). of all the provinces, ontario’s budget position is the most politically and fiscally complicated. ontario’s ‘third-way’ liberals have reinvested in public services since arriving in government in 2003 after defeating a conservative party led largely by mike harris. however, they have also been committed to some of the key principles of the common sense revolution—regressive taxation, a fidelity to balanced budgets, and an ongoing erosion of social assistance benefits. the finance minister, dwight duncan, signaled a new era of austerity in his 2010 budget. first, the public sector compensation restraint to protect public services act was tabled and which froze the salaries and wages of 350,000 non-union public sector workers until march 31 2012. the second signal delivered was that the liberal government would ask the unions representing 700,000 broader public sector workers to accept a minimum 2 year wage freeze. such an agreement would yield an estimated $750 million per year in savings (ontario ministry of finance 2010). third, ontario will continue with its ongoing plan to cut corporate taxes. this will cost the province $1.2 billion in each of the next three years resulting in an accumulative loss of $3.6 billion (nupge 31 march 2010). fourth, the budget contemplates a massive privatization of public assets including the liquor control board that regulates the sale of alcohol, the ontario lottery and gaming commission, public electricity producers and distributors among others as a means to generate a large amount of revenue. (however, the political focus appears to be on public sector wage cuts, with the privatization measures being delayed or shunted to the side.) as a whole, ontario’s 2010 budget forecasts 7 years of austerity with a plan that extends to 2017-18 when a zero-deficit is achieved. this will result in a shrinking of ontario’s public economy from a current 19.2 per cent of gdp to 15.5 per cent in 2017-18 (td economics 25 march 2010, 1). this translates as a nearly 20 per cent contraction of ontario’s public sector, leaving it at a size that corresponds to that of the period of the common sense revolution. if the ontario budget was the most complex of the provincial budgets in the hardest hit economy from the financial crisis, the most draconian budget of all the 2010 provincial budgets was delivered by the liberal government of quebec on 30 march 2010. the more regressive measures include a health care user-fee that applies to all citizens 18 years of age and older. this user fee will reach $200/year in 2012; a $25 fee per visit with a medical doctor; a 17 per cent increase in electricity costs by 2018; a 2 per cent increase in the sales tax; the core public service is subject 23 to a pay freeze until 2014; an ongoing shrinking of the number of public sector workers by allowing only one replacement hire for every two retirements/departures; a review of all government programs; and the closure or amalgamation of 30 public agencies (quebec ministry of finance march 30 2010, press release #1). it needs noting that the measures directed at public sector workers is in addition to the charest government’s draconian law c-43 passed in 2005. the legislation imposed a two-year wage freeze and restricted wage increases thereafter to 2 per cent. moreover, the bill introduced anti-strike provision ensuring there would be no union resistance and backed this up with punitive provisions including a $500 fine for any worker defying the legislation in addition to a penalty for striking of two days pay for every day on strike. the combined effect of five years of frozen wages followed by increases falling below the rate of inflation resulted in a decline in real incomes for public sector workers of 4 per cent (mandel 2010). resisting austerity, defending public services the turn to austerity in the core capitalist states has generated general strikes, disruption of public service delivery and sustained protests. these will continue over the coming year as the cuts are only starting and the impacts of austerity more severe and inequitable through time. in all cases, the cuts are revitalizing anti-neoliberal movements, and leading to new attempts to forge coalitions between public sector workers and users. the form of these alliances, however, varies greatly: from the general strikes and fusion with an emerging socialist politics in the european periphery; to the contradiction between the community based anti-cuts alliances and the peak-union ‘partnership’ with the government in ireland; to the surging then sputtering fightback campaigns at the state and local levels in the us under the shadow of an ascending hard right. after a number of previous coalitions against neoliberalism—in the struggles against nafta, the ontario days of action, the public sector common fronts in b.c. and quebec, the militant walkouts by nurses in alberta and other provinces— the union movement in canada has retreated into a defensive posture and the social movements are in a sustained phase of disorganization and political uncertainty. the exit strategy of ‘permanent austerity’ emerging out of the canadian state and capitalist classes provides a direct challenge to the left in canada at a moment of historical weakness. the federal ‘exit’ budget, for example, was met with criticism from the canadian labour congress, the council of canadians, among others. they argued that it laid out a program for eroding public services, economic sovereignty, and environmental protections, as well as its targeting public sector wages and work. but there is little evidence of strategy for resisting the cuts, or of a broader permanent austerity: the politics of the canadian exit strategy from fiscal stimulus 24 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research campaign of resistance through grass-roots mobilization of union members, social movements and users of public services. there is little beyond the ad hoc negotiating fronts of public sector unions and the sectoral campaigns around specific policy issues—climate change, healthcare, erosion of public broadcasting, and so forth. this is in part explained by canada’s decentralized federalism with the provinces delivering public goods, such as health, education and social services, which are a key terrain for struggles over cuts. in quebec, for instance, there has been a measure of political mobilization in defence of public services and workers’ rights. after five years of legislated wage restraint, quebec’s public sector workers formed a common front—composed of the confederation of national trade unions, the quebec federation of labour, and the inter-union secretariat of public services, and representing 475,000 workers—in anticipation of law 43’s expiration in march 2010 and an austerity budget being delivered to the national assembly. the front’s main demand was for an 11.25 per cent wage increase over a three year period. but the common front refused to join forces with the broad-based coalition against user fees and privatization that emerged in response to the 2010 budget. instead, the unions signed a five year ‘accord’ with the government that falls far short of restoring public sector wages and working conditions. the five year agreement will provide a 7 per cent increase or 10.5 per cent if there is better than expected economic growth. given inflation, quebec’s public sector workers are facing a further five years of declining income (mandel 2010). the quebec case bears parallels to the irish unions negotiating to preserve the illusions of ‘partnership’ with the state at the expense of austerity. in ontario, the momentum for a similar union accommodation, in this case without any union mobilization at all, may well prove unavoidable. since 2003, the ontario liberals have built something of the old ‘lib-lab’ alliance with several key unions that has filled the electoral vacuum left by much of labour abandoning the ndp after imposing a ‘social contract’ under the rae government in the 1990s. the ontario government has been holding preliminary talks on restraint with a wide number of unions with public employees. to date, most unions have walked away from the talks, and voiced opposition to the wage restraint. but it is not so clear that the unions will mobilize opposition to the wage restraint or the cuts to government services, and build toward the strikes that will be necessary to break the budgetary proposals to have workers and the poor pay for the crisis. it would be foolish to rule out a deal emerging between a number of unions and the mcguinty government and further consolidation of a ‘lib-lab’ alliance under the fear that a conservative government would be even worse. it is completely delusional that such ‘there is no alternative’ politics challenges austerity or builds an anti-neoliberal political bloc. 25 there is, however, a number of campaigns in ontario—notably, against welfare cuts to the special diet and for disabilities support, indigenous peoples struggles around mining, demands for improved public transit, ecology fights about commodification of water and the boreal forest—that are illustrative of the anti-austerity politics forming in specific sectors. these need to deepen their struggles over specific state apparatuses and bases of support in local communities and develop the organizational linkages of a province-wide anti-neoliberal front. the ontario health coalition (ohc) includes nurses, unions, progressive doctors, and a vast array of community organizations, and is part of the canada health coalition network; it is a good example of the potential to build an alternate political campaign to defend public services. in response to ontario’s 2010 budget, for example, the ohc rejected the 1.5 per cent increase in hospital funding that budget provided. the ohc concluded that this created a “gap between hospital funding and inflation for the third year in a row” (ohc 25 march 2010). the ohc has also effectively opposed the ontario government’s policy of incremental privatization of health care institutions and delivery. examples include the ohcs opposition to the marketization of home care where a steady increase in for-profit contracting has been observed and the government’s policy of public-private partnerships (p3s) in the hospital sector. p3 hospital projects have been characterized by public healthcare advocates as ‘pay more, get less’ projects that fatten private profits at public expense. an analysis of four ontario p3 hospital projects in sarnia, ottawa, brampton and north bay found that they were posting budget overruns of 75 per cent. they were costing not the planned $1.2 billion but rather $2.1 billion, and delivered less bed capacity than had been planned as well (canadian health coalition march 2009). these campaigns have built up impressive community alliances between public sector healthcare workers, local health policy activists and the wider union and progressive movements in defence of public healthcare. the campaigns to defend public hospitals and healthcare offer an example of popular resistance, and the potential to expand this mobilization to other parts of the public sector such as waste management, transit, and energy production. opposition to workers bearing the cost of the crisis and defence of public expenditure is the beginning case to be made. this will require linking public sector ‘producers’ with ‘users’ of public services. the quality of these services is directly connected to public sector workers. and there is any number of areas where the quality of public goods and spaces—parks, welfare provision, public transit—needs democratization and expansion. however, it is increasingly clear that the ‘exits’ from the emergency keynesian measures introduced at the height of the crisis are intensifying the market and class disciplines of neoliberalism. this does not mean less state, or even permanent austerity: the politics of the canadian exit strategy from fiscal stimulus 26 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research less regulation, but a particular form of state and regulatory policies that enhance capitalist class power. the political opposition to the austerity exits need to account for the class nature of neoliberalism in building new organizational capacities for resistance. the lines of social division and political conflicts forming at this phase of the crisis suggest that these will be struggles, in the first instance, against and within the neoliberal state and the politics in canada of permanent austerity. references bank of canada, july 2009, monetary policy report, available at www.bankofcanada.ca/en/mpr/. baragar, fletcher, 2009, “canada and the crisis,” in julie guard and wayne antony, eds., bankruptcies and bailouts, halifax: fernwood. bloomberg, july 20, 2009, “u.s. rescue may reach $23.7 trillion, barofsky says”, at http://www. bloomberg.com/. browarski, sabrina, matthew stewart and paul derby, 2010, budget report 2010: the long road to fiscal balance, conference board of canada, available at http://www.conferenceboard.ca/topics/economics/budgets/fed_2010_budget.aspx. canadian health coalition, 2009, “p3s = private profits, public pays”, available at http://medicare. ca/main/the-facts/p3s-private-profits-public-pays. cbc, 28 january 2009, “ignatieff puts tories ‘on probation’ with budget demand”, available at http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/01/28/ignatieff-decision.html. conference board of canada, summer 2010, canadian outlook, available at http://www.conferenceboard.ca/temp/9e6cbdc6-81e8-4a33-b0c1-c33bf33dc455/11-022_co-summer10-otlk_ web.pdf clark, campbell and gloria galloway, 26 january 2009, “harper’s words carry softer tone”, globe and mail. crotty, james, 2009, “structural causes of the global financial crisis,” cambridge journal of economics, 33. department of finance, 27 november 2008, the economic and fiscal statement 2008, available at http://www.fin.gc.ca/ec2008/speech-eng.html. department of finance, 4 march 2010, budget 2010: leading the way on jobs and growth available at http://www.budget.gc.ca/2010/pdf/speech-eng.pdf . department of finance, august 2003, federal corporate tax rate reductions, available at http:// www.fin.gc.ca/toc/2003/taxratered_-eng.asp. 27 dion, stephane and jack layton, 1 december 2008, an accord on a cooperative government to address the present economic crisis, available at http://www.liberal.ca/pdf/docs/081201_accord_en_signed.pdf. doern, bruce, 2009, “evolving budgetary policies and experiments,” in alan maslove, ed., how ottawa spends, 2009-2010: economic upheaval and political dysfunction, montreal: mcgillqueen’s university press. financial times, 13 september 2010, “basel deal reached on banks’ reserves.” government of canada, 3 march 2010, speech from the throne, a stronger canada. a stronger economy. now and for the future, available at http://www.speech.gc.ca/grfx/docs/sft-ddt-2010_e. pdf. globe and mail, 27 january 2009, “tax relief and major spending projects: a plan for troubled times”, available at http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/rtgam.20090127.wbudget_highlights0127/bnstory/budget2009/home. hodgson, glen and matthew stewart, 2010, canadian feds ahead of plan on fiscal rebalancing, conference board of canada, available at http://www.conferenceboard.ca/economics/hot_ eco_topics/default/10-07-29/canadian_feds_ahead_of_plan_on_fiscal_rebalancing.aspx. ilo, 2009, world of work report 2009: the global jobs crisis and beyond, geneva: ilo. imf, may 2010, fiscal monitor: navigating the fiscal challenges ahead, washington: imf. imf, july 2010, world economic outlook, washington: imf. loxley, john, 2009, “financial dimensions: origins and state responses,” in julie guard and wayne antony, eds., bankruptcies and bailouts, halifax: fernwood. mackenzie, hugh and richard shillington, 2009, canada’s quiet bargain: the benefits of public spending, toronto: canadian centre for policy alternatives. mandel, david. july 25 2010, fighting austerity? the public sector and the common front in quebec, the bullet, n. 396, available at http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/396.php. mcbride, stephen, 2005, paradigm shift: globalization and the canadian state, halifax: fernwood. mckinsey global institute, october 2008, mapping global capital markets: fifth annual report, new york: mckinsey global institute. mcnish, jacquie and greg mcarthur, december 13 2008, “how high risk mortgages crept north,’ globe and mail. national post, 3 december 2008, “stephen harper’s dec. 3, 2008 statement”, available at http://www. nationalpost.com/news/politics/story.html?id=1028147. permanent austerity: the politics of the canadian exit strategy from fiscal stimulus 28 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research national union of public and general employees, 31 march 2010, “public sector workers paying for corporate tax cuts”, available at http://www.nupge.ca/content/public-sector-workers-paying-corporate-tax-cuts. office of management and budget, 2010, “the budget” at www.budget.gov. onaran, özlem, 2010, ‘fiscal crisis in europe or a crisis of distribution?’ soas, research on money and finance, discussion paper, no. 18. ontario health coalition, 25 march 2010, “ontario health coalition response to provincial budget”, available at http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/ontario-health-coalition-responseprovincial-budget-mcguinty-must-stop-over-top-crisis-1138192.htm. ontario health coalition, 20 january 2006, “say no to privatized hospitals!”, available at http:// www.web.net/ohc/p3s/p3updatejan06.pdf. ontario ministry of finance, 25 march 2010, open ontario: ontario’s plan for jobs and growth, available at http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/budget/ontariobudgets/2010/statement.pdf. panitch, leo, greg albo and vivek chibber, eds., 2010, the socialist register 2011: the crisis this time, london: merlin press. quebec ministry of finance, 30 march 2010, choices for the future press release # 1, available at http://www.budget.finances.gouv.qc.ca/budget/2010-2011/en/documents/ communique_1en.pdf. realtytrac, 2010, “us foreclosures market report,” at www.realtytrac.com. roubini, nouriel and stephen mihm, 2010, crisis economics, new york: penguin. stiglitz, george, 2010, freefall, new york: w.w. norton. td economics, 4 march 2010, the 2010 federal budget, available at www.td.com/economics/budgets/fed10.pdf. td economics, 25 march 2010, a long road back to balance, available at http://www.td.com/economics/budgets/on10.pdf. td economics, 30 april 2010, fiscal green shoots, available at http://www.td.com/economics/special/db0410_fiscal.pdf. td economics, 3 august 2010, special report: canada’s fiscal exit strategy, available at http://www. td.com/economics/special/pg0810_fiscal_exit.pdf. valpy, michael, 2009, the ‘crisis’: a narrative, in peter russell and lorne sossin eds., parliamentary democracy in crisis, toronto: university of toronto press. yalnizyan, armine, 22 march 2010, now is the wrong time for fiscal frugality, canadian centre for policy alternatives, available at http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/now-wrong-time-fiscal-frugality. 29 janus-faced austerity: strengthening the ‘competitive’ canadian state carlo fanelli & chris hurl1 abstract: the global economic crisis has triggered a wave of stimulus spending throughout the world, with particular concentrations in north america, the eurozone and china. this paper examines its canadian context. focusing broadly on the deepening integration of neoliberalism since the election of stephan harper in 2006 as well as federal conservative fiscal and monetary policy, this paper delves into the janus-faced character of canadian austerity measures. it is argued that while social services and spending are restricted for certain segments of the canadian working class, new arrangements and spending initiatives are rolled out by the federal government in order to fuel enhanced capital accumulation. this paper concludes with some propositions for resisting austerity and strengthening the resolve of the canadian working class. keywords: canada; austerity; fiscal & monetary policy; capitalpreserving federalism; neoliberalism. introduction the times are tough, we are told. the grim economic climate appears unmatched in severity since the great depression. it is on this basis that social spending is being slashed and wage freezes are imposed on public sector workers across the country and around the world. in order to save a sinking ship, workers are asked to throw wages, benefits and social security overboard. however, the thin veil of collective belt-tightening, the attitude that we must all share the burden, belies an enduring project of class polarization. hence, rather than viewing the current 1 carlo fanelli and chris hurl are phd candidates (abd) in the department of sociology & anthropology with a specialization in political economy. janus-faced austerity: strengthening the ‘competitive’ canadian state 30 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research responses to ‘economic’ crisis as somehow marking a break with neoliberalism, government stimulus policies reflect a profound continuity and further entrenchment of past strategies of privatization, creating openings for capital and public sector spending restraint. in this paper, we will argue that the current round of austerity measures advanced by the harper conservatives is janus-faced: on the one hand public services, social programs, labour and environmental supports and protections are being ‘rolled back’ for the working class, while state supports are ‘rolled out’ to serve the needs of capital. in so doing, harper is showing no hesitation to use the coercive power of the federal government to centralize policies and institutional arrangements that appease business interests. after briefly tracing the theoretical presuppositions of neoliberalism and the realignment of governance at intersecting scales of operation, we situate the continuing assault on public services and organized labour by drawing attention to what we refer to as capital-preserving federalism. as a political and economic strategy, capital-preserving federalism provides a means of imposing constraints upon newly elected federal governments and sub-national constituent-units’ (e.g. provinces, municipalities) ability to bypass market access to goods and services, in addition to restrictions upon withdrawing or opting-out of trade and investment agreements negotiated supra-nationally2. in other words, successive federal governments have firmly fixed the parameters of reform to meet the needs of capital accumulation3. while this dynamic is advanced on a federal level, it entails the enforcement of market-dependence through multi-scaler, multi-spatial and multi-temporal institutional and legal arrangements, as well as corresponding shifts in socio-cultural and political practices. this entails the marketization of public goods and services, the re-regulation of capital controls such as foreign direct investment (fdi), and the creation of new institutional arrangements under the auspices of ‘scarcity’ and ‘restraint’. what’s more, this entails a missionary faith in balanced budgets, fiscal discipline and monetary policy. 2 ‘capital-preserving’ federalism represents an effort on our part to develop a corrective to the concept of “market-preserving” federalism. while we cannot enter into a full analysis here, we base our critique on three main propositions. first, the notion of market-preserving federalism reifies the ‘market’ as if functioning by autonomous laws of supply and demand disembedded from broader social relations. second, this mystification serves to obscure fundamentally antagonistic class relations where the extraction of surplus-value takes place at the detriment of labour for the benefit of capital. third, in naturalizing social relations of capital, takes for granted the liberal dichotomization of the economic and political spheres of social life, while--incorrectly we might add—treating the state and market as competitors as opposed to mutually reinforcing. see, for example, weingast, 1995; yingyi & weingast, 1996; mckinnon, 1997). 3 while not employing the notion of capital-preserving federalism, anderson (2010) outlines similar processes at work. for instance, in 2000 brazil adopted a fiscal responsibility law that constrains both federal and state governments, with limits on spending for government employees, public debt, expenditures and short-term spending in election years. the federal government can withhold transfers to states when they do not comply and criminal proceedings can be brought against elected officials. similar examples include argentina, mexico, nigeria, russia, south africa and belgium for example. see anderson, 2010. 31 as we will attempt to show throughout, this is reflected in the federal government’s most recent stimulus policies. these policies impose restraint measures on the public sector while ceding fiscal control and authority over domestic policies away from local governments and communities toward political and economic elites. for this reason, the response to the current economic crisis entails the ‘rolling back’ of certain state activities, such as social programs and capital controls, and the ‘rolling out’ of new institutions and governmentalities that aim to stabilize neoliberal accumulation strategies (peck and tickell, 2002). while the federal government’s janus-faced strategy is significant, this by no means marks the beginning of a new era. as thomas workman (2009, p.7) has recently reminded: “these institutional constellations evolve very slowly over decades of class struggle.” in fact, the adoption of federal stimulus policies should be viewed in continuity with past neoliberal projects. the issue, then, in our view is what these multi-level arrangements and institutions do and on whose behalf? in other words, it’s a class question. in what follows, we argue that the federal conservative government has taken advantage of the current economic crisis and the regulatory, administrative and institutional powers of the state in order to facilitate planning, underwrite expansions, take on liabilities and contain class conflict. in other words, political and economic agents, via institutional arrangements and socio-cultural practices (i.e. “the market”), work through the state utilizing their positions of power to simultaneously cut services, while extending others to suit the valorization needs of capital. while we focus our analysis on the federal government, as this special forum in alternate routes suggests, this is a pattern being generalized across the country and around the world. theorizing neoliberalism: realigning governance to facilitate capital accumulation in the wake of the economic crisis of the mid-1970s, neoliberalism emerged as a response to the failure of the post-war keynesian welfare state to sustain capital accumulation. with the unprecedented profit rates of the 1950s and 60s faltering due to the rebuilding of western europe’s and japan’s productive capacities, increased competition from emergent economies in latin america and asia, rising militancy on the part of the working classes and especially trade unions, in addition to increasingly aggressive cold war geopolitics, a ruling class coup d’état was launched to reestablish higher rates of profit. with an adherence to neoclassical economics and classical liberalism, neoliberalism emerged in the 1970s as a comprehensive set of political and economic practices intent on reordering state administrations, creating new profit opportunities for businesses, imposing labour market discipline janus-faced austerity: strengthening the ‘competitive’ canadian state 32 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research and a prioritization of ‘finance’ capital over industrial or fixed capital4. a central aspect of this process has been the realignment of governance: unloading the costs of social services onto the individual and compelling diverse communities to compete with one another for ‘scarce’ resources under an institutional framework of private property, free markets and free trade, while continuing to slash taxes for the wealthy, marketizing all aspects of life, and selling off public assets at bargain basement prices. this entails a variety of cross-penetrating strategies that reconfigure the jurisdiction of markets across intersecting scales of governance, revamp institutional responsibilities and encourage socio-cultural changes around four central processes. first, neoliberalism presupposes the ongoing and active separation of people from the means of subsistence, cultivating dependency on market mechanisms in areas of life previously outside of the market. second, under neoliberalism, class solidarities are actively decomposed through the individuation of the labour process and service-provision, increasingly rendering individuals responsible for their own self-management and pitting them against one another for ‘scarce’ resources. third, neoliberalism cultivates short-term speculation, aspiring to transform every aspect of life into an investment opportunity. fourth, this entails the reconfiguration of the labour market away from a stable, skills-based labour force and toward temporary, contract-based labour arrangements that encourage competition between the private and public spheres. internationally, ‘globalization’ is the neoliberal face of a worldwide strategy that aims toward the creation of new zones of accumulation through increasingly authoritarian state apparatuses that seek to entrench market imperatives and reduce the power of labour (saad-filho & johnston, 2005). this includes: lowering and eliminating tariffs on imported goods, the removal of restrictions on foreign direct investment, domestic quotas and monopolies, an export-led growth strategy, the reregulation of domestic capital markets, as well as the weakening of environmental and labour laws, for example, which are seen as market impediments. this does not simply entail deregulation and dismantlement of the institutions of the keynesian welfare state. in fact, as peck and tickell (2002) note, there has been a shift from the ‘roll-back’ neoliberalism of the 1980s to an “emergent phase of 4 in our view, finance capital is not merely speculative or parasitic, nor the result of the stagnation tendencies of advanced capitalist economies. rather, what makes finance unique in its neoliberal form is its coalescing with industry, as well as leadership role. in other words, financial volatility actually becomes a developmental feature of neoliberalism that reinforces, rather than undermines the central position of finance-led neoliberalism and capitalist power structures. for instance, while finance may speculate in global money markets or bundle and repackage a host of derivative trading forms, a good many transactions are more often than not based on some form of real assets and commodity production. moreover, finance has been central to the disciplining of industry and the working class through the availability of credit and reinvestments in mortgages, pensions and loans. though neoliberalism was from its very beginning a project intent on restoring ruling class power, it went beyond this thoroughly integrating and subordinating the working classes into its dependent orbit. for a fuller exposition, see albo, gindin and panitch, 2010. 33 active state-building and regulatory reform” which they describe as “roll out” neoliberalism through the 1990s. while the crisis of the 1970s entailed wages freezes and dramatic austerity budgets, over the past twenty years governments have moved toward a more proactive position in unfolding new institutional frameworks that facilitate a deepening project of class polarization under the rubric of ‘scarcity’ and ‘restraint’. despite the political and ideological antagonism toward state ‘interference’ in the market, state intervention is central to securing the political, economic and social conditions necessary for accumulation such as the privatization of stateowned industries and utilities, the opening of its banking, healthcare, education and telecommunications systems to private ownership, in addition to competing international pensions and mutual funds. domestically, neoliberalism seeks to deepen and intensify internal competition among competing business interests, thereby pitting workers and workplaces in competition with one another through ever-increasing market compulsions. this includes efforts to contract-out and privatize provincial and municipal services, extract concessions from its unionized and non-unionized workforce, in addition to an increased reliance on public-private partnerships (p3’s). central banks are envisaged as inflation fighters, with an inflation control regime of between one and three percent. provincially, and as creatures of the provinces, municipally, neoliberal policies have sought to shift the burden of taxes from businesses to consumers for competitiveness, slash social services and liquidate assets. in order to become more ‘flexible’ and ‘leaner’ in a globalizing economy, provinces and cities have increasingly responded with attempts to move away from the universal provision of social services to marketized provisions with attached user-fees, enhanced inter-jurisdictional competition and sought a confrontational approach with unions, which have aimed to reorient accumulation strategies and to concentrate capital in metropolitan cores, which serve international markets (albo, 1994; kipfer & keil, 2002; tufts, 2004). the most recent emphasis on austerity and balanced budgets, however, is counteracted by growing state involvement in creating new spaces for accumulation. in confronting the growing indebtedness of the state, an all out offensive is launched against remaining social provisions and universal entitlements, thereby tipping the balance of class forces away from labour and toward creditors and locally dominant capitalist coalitions with alliances to the us ruling-class. in this manner, politicians, economists and policy-makers ensconced in the neoliberal doctrine were successful in moving the terrain of debate from the realm of production whereby labour and capital struggled over the control of the working-day and the appropriation of surplus-value, to the terrain of distribution and exchange thereby strengthening the alliance between capital and the state. janus-faced austerity: strengthening the ‘competitive’ canadian state 34 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research as the always global scope of capital accumulation and the persistent need for more domestic and local forms of ‘extra-market’ (i.e. legal, juridical, political, repressive) supports enmeshed, rather than ceding power away from the nation-state neoliberalism created new and shifting scales of governance each with an historically unique dynamism. this includes, for instance, the devolution of regulating responsibilities onto local governments without matching fiscal supports or a proportional transfer of power, while also scaling regulatory capacities ‘upwards’ to regional or international institutions (brenner, 2004). likewise, efforts to extend and consolidate neoliberalism have centered on attempts to: reduce the power of organized labour through market disciplining; the commodification and marketization of the state through measures that promote ‘competitive austerity’; reducing welfare disincentives to work; promoting the massive encouragement of part-time, precarious and contingent forms of service-sector employment; recklessly opening-up goods and capital markets to international competition; as well as disproportionately cutting taxes for higher-income earners and businesses, while moving-away from the social provision of universal programs to consumption-based levies (albo, 1993; clarke, 2005; brenner & theodore, 2002; mcbride, 2005). for organized labour this has meant the institutionalization of policies that aim to make it easier to decertify unions, unilaterally proclaim them “essential” and thereby removing the right to strike, as well as the increased use of coercive back-to-work legislation. all things considered, then, the capitalist classes have used the economic recession and the rhetoric of ‘fiscal consolidation’, ‘prudent business management’ and ‘government responsibility” as a strategic political opportunity to strengthen and expand processes of neoliberalism—from the urban to the international—through the state and market. under the guise of new public management mantras, there has been a retreat from the provision of social services through a stable, full-time labour force, increasingly toward part-time, seasonal and short-term contracts, which are seen as providing a more docile and globally competitive labour force (ilcan et al., 2003). likewise, through reduced social expenditures and long-term investments, all levels of government have sought to shed ‘liabilities’ through attrition, downsizing, leaving vacancies unfilled and retirements. by means of outsourcing, the government is increasingly advanced as a consumer that is responsible for purchasing services rather than actively producing them. this has served to weaken job security, seniority allowances, transfer and promotion opportunities, cost-of-living increases, erode pensions and benefits, in addition to increasing the absolute managerial control over the working-day. indeed, a renewed assault on the public-sector, and in particular unionized jobs (as we argue below), will likely come down hardest on racial35 ized groups and women since not only has this been where many have made the most gains but also because they are likely to see increases in the unpaid sphere of social life and reproduction. all things considered, we now turn to a discussion of the particular ways in which the election of prime minister stephan harper’s federal conservatives have acted to preserve the mobility and power of capital, while subordinating and intensifying pressures for the working-class. ‘constitutionalizing’ neoliberalism: integrating the ‘competitive’ logic of the state the current economic crisis has provided a calculated political and economic opportunity for the federal government to simultaneously ‘roll back’ its commitment to the provision of social services, while at the same time ‘rolling out’ institutions and social policies that are oriented towards the cultivation of new channels for accumulation. the measures advanced by the federal government are by no means based on austerity or restraint, but on expanding and deepening opportunities for capital valorization unburdened by the costs of social infrastructure. welfare state retrenchment and tight fiscal constraints go hand in hand with irresponsible tax cuts and spectacular mega projects. as the immediacy of the financial crisis recedes and governments around the world restrict spending, with the most dramatic conflicts over public goods and services occurring in europe, these so-called ‘exit strategies’ are attempting to re-establish liberalized financial systems and reconstruct the neoliberal policy framework and dominance of the market in regulating economic output and distribution. it is important, therefore, to begin by identifying some of the features of these so-called exit strategies being adopted by the harper government in canada, particularly with respect to fiscal policies, given that fiscal austerity is likely to be a flashpoint of political struggles in the coming period. from his very first budget speech in 2006, titled “restoring fiscal balance in canada”, harper demonstrated his hard-line commitment to constitutionalism in the conservatives proposal for a stricter separation of responsibilities by cutting federal social programs that would fall under the auspices of the provinces. almost immediately after coming to power, prime minister harper slashed the goods and services tax (gst) from 7 percent to 6 and later 5 percent in an attempt to attract investment and spur economic development. the conservatives devoted the canadian state to “competitive and efficient” economic policies and proposed plans to harmonize the tax system. meanwhile, they moved quickly to scrap plans for a non-profit, centre-based, affordable national child care program that had been negotiated by the liberals with the provinces and territories and replaced it with the universal child care benefit that saw families on janus-faced austerity: strengthening the ‘competitive’ canadian state 36 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research welfare, the working poor and modest-income families netting between $600 and $951 per annum; nowhere near close enough to cover the costs of childcare or to allow a parent to stay at home (batte et al, 2006; bezanson, 2010). a short time thereafter, the 2007 global financial meltdown plunged the international political economy into the most significant crisis of accumulation since the great depression. in an act of political brinkmanship, soon after fixing federal election dates to every four years prime minister harper called a snap election breaking his own election promise in the hope of gaining a clear majority. while this did not happen, the biggest losers in the election were the liberals who had lost twenty-six seats; two-thirds of which were redistributed to the conservatives and the remainder to the ndp. meanwhile, governments of all stripes the world over responded with unprecedented levels of stimulus funding. the harper conservatives, long a sanctuary for fiscal hawks, likewise responded with stimulus spending. the centerpiece of the 2009 budget, titled “canada’s economic action plan”, injected $64 billion over two years toward infrastructure spending, personal income tax cuts and the ‘securitization’ (or preemptive bailout) of state-backed mortgage and insurance agencies. harper’s government, which since late-2006 required all provinces to consider the p3 route as a condition for receiving federal infrastructure money and in 2007 created the aggressive public-private partnerships canada crown corporation, was using its fiscal leverage as a source of cost-sharing and the economic crisis as a pretext to promote p3 projects nationally (see loxley, 2010). this is in spite of the fact that a growing number of studies indicate that the privatization of formerly public services is often no more efficient or less costly than traditional approaches to service delivery (loxley, 2010; armstrong et al, 2001; mackenzie, 2004). despite exceptional amounts of stimulus spending, however, the harper government has remained steadfastly committed neoliberals. with the two year stimulus spending coming to an end and economic “recovery” allegedly underway, harper’s conservatives are looking to halve their deficits by 2013 under the euphemism of “fiscal consolidation”, otherwise known as austerity. with an estimated deficit of nearly $56 billion for 2010-11 that is expected to remain well into 2013-2014, and a forecast debt-to-gdp ratio of about 34-35 percent, this is nowhere near the 25 percent threshold when the books were balanced. however, the state of the federal budget is by no means dire, when taking into consideration the record $14 billion surplus that harper inherited from an earlier decade of liberal austerity. in addition, prior to the onset of the current crisis, canada’s debt at 32.3 percent of national gdp was at its lowest in more than a quarter century given the largest payments in canadian history and federal law that requires all surpluses to be used to pay down the national debt and not for new spending initiatives. 37 in an effort to rebalance the books, the most recent speech from the throne (march 3, 2010) suggests that, rather than depart from neoliberal austerity and monetary policy, harper’s conservatives are seeking to further expand and intensify them. in other words, a private-sector crisis is being shifted onto the public sector and the power of finance capital is emerging stronger than ever. in their blatantly ideological quest to return to balanced budgets, harper’s conservatives—no less aided by the federal liberals and new democratic party—have turned their attention toward an aggressive strategy premised on public sector austerity and private sector prosperity. for instance, hidden deep in the 2010 budget is a technical change to tax regulations that aim to entice fdi through the weakening of domestic constraints. the budget removes restrictions that foreign investors, especially venture capitalists and private-equity funds, face in selling shares in canadian firms. this change to section 116 of the income tax act effectively eliminates the need for tax reporting to the canada revenue agency (cra). previously, the cra required investors to disclose details of the sale for approval in the case that taxes needed to be paid. as a result, rather than repatriate any capital gains, investors kept the proceeds of the sale in canadian accounts for fear of taxation. as of the speech, these restrictions have been for the most part eliminated (viera, 2010). touting the alleged benefits of the change, finance minister flaherty recently remarked, “[t]he best way to build a more competitive economy is to create an environment that allows the entrepreneurs who employ so many canadians to succeed and expand—not an environment that stands in the way of their success with high taxes and red tape” (department of finance, 2010). of course, flaherty failed to mention that these changes are expected to cost ottawa $130-million in lost revenue over five-years. meanwhile, in all areas but defense spending which has increased 37% since 2000-2001, government operating expenditures have been frozen for two-years, which given inflation means real cuts. the conservatives have recently pledged $9 billion to build jails for criminals who do not exist, spent $1.1 billion on turning toronto into a militarized city for the recent g8/g20 meetings and promised another $16 billion for f-35 fighter jets for fighting ‘terrorism’ abroad. finance minister jim flaherty has also suggested that there are some opportunities for the privatization of crown assets, including real estate and the outsourcing of public contracts. in particular, the conservatives are taking aim at atomic energy canada ltd., seeking to open-up canada posts’ procurement of overseas mail, and grant the minister of the environment unilateral powers to waive environmental assessments. in seeking to create new clusters of accumulation, environmental regulations in the arctic have been ‘streamlined’ for oil and mining companies to drill, while federal environmental assessment reports have been removed from the purview of the canadian environmental agency to the busijanus-faced austerity: strengthening the ‘competitive’ canadian state 38 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research ness-friendly national energy board. this continues the removal of environmental initiatives by the conservatives made most explicit by harper’s dismissal of the kyoto protocol as a “socialist scheme” designed to suck money from the rich countries. the weakening of social provisions, labour and environmental laws has been paralleled by new spending as harper has further concentrated federal stimulus monies in the energy, resource and construction industries. certainly new public spending is gravely needed given canada’s crumbling infrastructure (estimated at over $123 billion) and the fact that total public investment as a percentage of gdp has fallen from between two and three percent in the 1960s and 70s to about 0.5 percent by the 1990s (mackenzie, 2004); however this spending has not been equally distributed among the various segments of the canadian labour market, nor racial and gender neutral (ontario health coaltion, 2008; armstong et al, 2001; opseu, 2007). attacks against the poor, refugee claimants, temporary workers, live-in caregivers, and non-status persons are increasing as the blatant power of the federal state is summoned to service capital, while abandoning any responsibilities to labour (thomas, 2010; hussan and scott, 2009; teelucksingh & galabuzzi, 2005; galabuzzi, 2006; paz, 2008). indeed, recent research by kathleen lahey (2009) suggests that women have received only about 7 percent to 22 percent of stimulus funding, since men tend to predominate in the construction, mining and forestry industries. the bulwark of stimulus spending has been untargeted without any long-term planning, community involvement or proactive infrastructural spending, going mainly toward existing backlogs as opposed to rethinking development and the spatial development of where we live and work. the federal conservatives have continued to ‘slash and burn’ funding for equity seeking groups such as the status of women, or groups critical of israeli state policies such as kairos, and have in the process punished those that dare to criticize their policies. for example, a short-list of recent harper controversies includes what have (arguably) been labeled ‘politically-motivated’ removals such as the dismissal of openly critical and outspoken veterans ombudsman pat strogran, chief superintendent marty cheliak a strong supporter of the long-gun registry, former president of the canadian nuclear safety commission linda keen who shut down the chalk river nuclear facility over safety concerns, chair of the military complaints commission peter tinsley who was investigating the controversial transfer of afghan detainees and, most recently, chief statistician at statistics canada munir sheikh who resigned after the mandatory long-form census was scrapped in favour of a voluntary survey, which has been harshly criticized by a plethora of academics, think tanks, politicians, community groups and other levels of government. in addition, this includes last year’s prorogation (the fourth time in three years) of parliament for more than two months amid speculation of a coalition liberal-ndp, the helena guergis 39 affair, the dismissal of the arts and cultural community, alleged spending favouritism for conservative ridings, a foreign aid policy that denies funding for abortion services, a bold-faced 802 page omnibus or “dumpster” bill bulging with disparate issues, and public attacks targeting employment equity and affirmative action for federal employees. put into perspective, then, this can be understood as none other than an act of capitalist militancy on behalf of and in accordance with the state. a renewed round of austerity under the banner of “fiscal prudence” has led new president of the treasury board, the main cabinet committee responsible for the administration and operations of the federal civil service, stockwell day, to suggest that public-sector unions need to ‘share the pain’. this was a thinly veiled reference to the concessions extracted by private-sector unions from gm, ford, chrysler and vale-inco, for example, as well as the political failures and public resentment of striking public-sector workers from toronto and ottawa to windsor and vancouver (rosenfeld, 2009; albo et al, 2010; fanelli and paulson, 2009). stimulus and restraint go hand-in-hand: capital-preserving tax cuts cause deficits that then need to be resolved, which translates into social cuts and wage restraint for the working-class and a vicious circle of more tax cuts to spur business investment further eroding the fiscal base. for instance, over the next five years federal workers will subsidize corporate tax-cuts by $6.8-billion in transfers extracted through wage-freezes and job cuts, which will total nearly $21-billion. oddly, though, a great percentage of canadian federal tax-cuts will flow directly right back into the us treasury, which taxes its companies the difference between foreign taxes and domestic ones in order to stimulate internal production and slow outsourcing (weir, 2009). the recently negotiated “buy american” deal gives permanent and unrestricted foreign access to publicly funded contracts. this is an historical deed as it is the first time canadian governments have agreed to open procurement contracts to bids by other world trade organization members since the 1988 free trade agreement. this is particularly confusing as only about 2 percent of us federal stimulus funding, that is, about $4-5-billion of $275-billion, remains. still worse, canada and the european union are in trade negotiations to enact what the trade justice network, an alliance comprised of labour and social justice groups, has argued would be the largest, most intrusive free trade deal that canada has ever entered into and is progressing quite quickly with little public scrutiny (trade justice network). according to a recent study by scott sinclair (2010, p.3) of the canadian centre for policy alternatives (ccpa): the ceta [comprehensive economic and trade agreement] also will have an adverse impact on public services, especially those provided by local, territorial and provincial governments. the agreement would promote and entrench new forms of commercialization, janus-faced austerity: strengthening the ‘competitive’ canadian state 40 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research especially pub lic-private partnerships. it would also prohibit governments from setting performance require ments that oblige foreign investors or service pro viders to purchase locally, transfer technology or train local workers. the combined impact of its investment, services and procurement rules would make it far more difficult to reverse failed privatizations. the austerity agenda of the federal government has entailed the drastic reconfiguration of public services as canada is essentially offering to make commitments at the federal, provincial and municipal tiers that go beyond nafta and the wto, opening up services and investments, domestic regulation and standards, public procurement contracts and intellectual property rights (mcbride, 2005; johnson and mahon, 2005). foreign multinationals could potentially gain unprecedented access to municipal water services, while the demand for local offsets, the most important leverage that towns and cities have, such as local purchasing of goods and services or labour reinvestments, may no longer be permitted. in seeking to ‘constitutionalize’ neoliberalism, canada is pushing to include a nafta-like investor-state dispute mechanism that would allow european companies to sue any tier of government should they enact policies that cut into profits. in effect this could nullify and void, for example, fair wage policies and ethical strategies enacted by some provinces and cities, in addition to ceding authority and control over domestic policies away from local governments and communities to business elites whose profit interests trump all others. the ceta, in particular, takes aim at ontario’s green energy act, which offers grants and exemptions for cleaner energy sources and local job creation. toronto’s “buy local” food policy which has committed to increasing the amount of locally procured food served at city owned facilities and the celebrated ‘living wage’ in new westminster, for instance, could be prohibited. for months ahead of the g8/g20 meetings in toronto, the federal government had been lobbying world leaders to block proposals for a global bank tax for g20 members to be used as a slush fund for expected future bailouts and to prevent banks from shifting to jurisdictions with lower taxes. in an effort to convince g20 member states otherwise, harper touted the stability of the canadian banks, which he misleadingly promoted as not requiring a bailout similar in kind to those in the u.s. and european union. this praise however is both unjustified and dubious, when in fact canadian banks received upwards of $200 billion—that is more than the initial $700 billion bailout in the u.s. as a percentage of gdp—not to mention a host of additional accounting trickery that kept the ‘real’ costs of the bank bailouts out of the books (dobbin, 2010; stanford, 2010; campbell, 2009). in fact, stephan harper has recently gone as far as to say this would “punish” and be 41 “unfair” to canadian banks that, in the midst of the crisis in 2007, racked in nearly $20 billion in profits, and which have since had a field day buying up insolvent american banks. successful with their propaganda, the conservatives managed to persuade g20 leaders to forego a bank tax and, instead, convinced them to commit to a unified push for austerity pledging to halve their deficits by 2013. in canada, the potential class-based consequences are clear. with tens of thousands of baby-boomers expected to retire in the next decade, dwindling revenues and rising social services costs are expected to compound the budget fiasco. considering the twin perils of a falling birth rate and increasing retirements, parliamentary budget officer kevin page has warned that a shrinking tax-base coupled with increasing usage of health care and service benefits will lead to higher government costs and therefore an uncertain fiscal future (campion-smith, 2010). the changing demographics of the canadian labour market is expected to increase by 7 percent the number of retired people compared to those still in the workforce in the next ten years: that’s nearly as much as it grew in the last forty years. wait another ten years and the estimated cost to rectify this dilemma rises from $20 billion to $30 billion as nearly 40 percent of federal service workers are expected to retire in the next five years. in response, page has argued that permanent fiscal actions are needed either through significant tax-hikes, serious cuts in social spending, or some combination of both. unfortunately though, while understanding and analyzing the changing demographics of the canadian labour market is crucial, such uncertainty often invokes alarmist exclamations on the need to shrink the public sector and shed ‘liabilities’ (such as that which is currently happening throughout the eurozone, especially around health care and pension reform). true to form and typifying the inherent short-sightedness of neoliberal ideologues, finance minister flaherty’s spokesperson, crisholm potheier, called page’s warnings an “academic exercise” before dismissing it by replying that “canadians expect the government to focus on today’s fragile economic recovery”. despite harper’s dutiful allegiance to capital-preserving federalism, however, the conservatives continue to remain under pressure from business interests and corporate lobbyists, such as canadian federation of independent businesses president catherine swift, to withdraw health benefits and pension supports. in a letter to the federal pension review panel, swift stressed the need to do something about the “large and growing disunity between the pension benefits of private and public employees” stressing that the public sector should follow the lead of the private sector which the market will reward appropriately, in addition to urging the government to raise the retirement age beyond 65 (whittington, 2010). in making these remarks, swift was implying that unionized workers are overly compensated janus-faced austerity: strengthening the ‘competitive’ canadian state 42 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research and to be blamed for causing the deep economic downturn. more to the point, it is likely that the key reason swift was encouraging part-time seniors to re-join the labour force was because they remain one of the most ‘easily’ exploitable subsets in the labour market as they are often seen as flexible, part-time, easily disposable and unlikely to demand higher wages and benefits since many are under duress and relying on their meager earnings given inadequate pensions, social supports and rising living costs. contrary to swift’s exaggerated remarks, nearly two-thirds of all canadian workers lack a workplace pension and over 1.6-million seniors get by on less than $15,000 per year. according to the public service alliance of canada (psac, 2010), in 2008 the average federal civil service pension was just over $23,000, which pales in comparison with the “diamond encrusted” pensions and retirement packages for c-level executives (e.g. chief financial and executive officers). furthermore, as toby sanger (2010) of the canadian union of public employees (cupe) has recently shown, total public spending dropped to its lowest since 1974 to about 36 percent of the economy in 2007 while total government revenues from taxes, on the other hand, dropped to less than 32 percent of the economy in 2009, its lowest since 1985. in fact, federal program spending fell from 17.2 percent of gdp in the early-1990s to 11.7 percent by the end of the decade (loxley, 2010). likewise, from 1990-2008, the share of total government spending in the economy has been reduced by 20 percent which, when considering that the federal government plans to cut its corporate tax on income from 18 percent to 15 percent leading to a decline in revenue by $20 billion over the next five-years, may spell long-term budget trouble. with inflation expected to rise 1.7 percent in 2010 and 2 percent or more in 2011, together with the ever-present fear of rating agencies downgrading the federal aaa status, which would lead to vast increases in interest payments and thereby increasing canada’s dependence on foreign capital injections, canada is by no means out of the global slump. as of january 2010, 380,000 more people are unemployed and 270,000 fewer people are employed than 15-months earlier. with the canadian dollar near parity with the us dollar, canada’s manufacturing sector continues to suffer from both the increased penetration of imports and the difficulty of trying to compete in foreign markets, which are either strategically subsidized or draw their ‘competitive advantage’ by poverty-wages or externalizing costs onto the environment. despite productivity output per employee rising by more than 37 percent between 19802005, real wages in canada have been generally stagnant since at least 1982, despite the lowest levels of unemployment since the 1970s prior to the recent economic crisis. there has been an inverse relationship, then, between productivity growth 43 and real wages. in an effort to maintain modest living standards workers have increased their hours of work, emptied their savings, added family members to the workforce, and took on huge debt loads by borrowing against their homes and accepting multiple credit cards. recent job data suggests that a significant majority of newly created jobs are often 10 percent lower than the average wage of the jobs lost, with 20 percent having lost their pension plan by changing jobs (bernard & galarneau, 2010; sanger, 2010b). emerging amidst such blatantly janus-faced austerity is a quest to return to the same old orthodoxy of neoliberalism. under the auspices of ‘spiraling’ budget deficits, growing unemployment and low capacity utilization, conservatives have used the crisis to attack the various segments of the working class, in particular those unionized, to lower wages, extract concessions and increase profits, thereby further indebting ‘consumers’ and leaving them more precarious and with less time to spare than ever. in turn, this further undermines federal fiscal capacities in an attempt to return to a mythical era of unbridled “free market” capitalism and proverbial small government. the urge to curtail unsustainable spending, therefore, obscures capitalist militancy. while working class incomes have either stagnated or declined over the past thirty years, the wealthiest members of society have enjoyed unprecedented gains. while in 1995 the average executive compensation of the top 50 ceo’s in canada was eighty-five times that of the average worker, by 2007 it was two-hundred and fifty-nine times that (mcnally, 2009). likewise, the income share taken by the top 0.1 percent of income earners in canada approached 5 percent by the mid-1990s, a level unseen since the 1930s and early years of wwii. the personal savings rate that was nearly 20.2 percent of disposable income in 1982 had plummeted to 2 percent by 2005 (baragar, 2009). indeed, 2009 marked the highest-ever debt-to-income ratio of 145 percent in canada. the vanier institute of the family found that the average canadian household debt climbed to $96,000 while compared with 2008 mortgages 90-days or more overdue had risen by 50 percent, and the number of credit card holders at least 90-days arrears was up 40 percent. the report also went on the suggest that there is a looming housing bubble in canada as prices toward the end of 2009 rose to about $340,000, which is about five-times the average aftertax income of canadian homes. the long-term trend is just over three and one-halftimes that (sauve, 2010). a sudden rise in interest rates, changes in mortgage terms and the bitter realization that current prices are in the long run unsustainable may cause the bubble to burst. as ‘exit strategies’ come to the forefront, contesting the ruinous effects of these policies becomes a central imperative. janus-faced austerity: strengthening the ‘competitive’ canadian state 44 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research where do we go from here? resisting austerity, reestablishing the power of the working class the capitalist classes have used the economic recession as a strategic political opportunity to strengthen and expand processes of neoliberalism through the state and market, and into every aspect of social life. while the federal government proclaims the need to impose wage freezes, sell off public assets, and restructure social services in the face of the baby boom generation’s looming retirement, this is by no means driven simply by restraint. in fact, just as the federal government has advanced austerity in the face of new spending, it has also pursued massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, rolling out new institutional structures that facilitate the increasing mobility of capital, and utilizing stimulus as a way of subsidizing the burgeoning construction and energy sector. in this context, new government spending does not spell out a return to keynesian policies, but is rather symptomatic of a deepening program of class polarization. how can this be challenged? how may social movements adapt? is the ndp a viable alternative? how can labour unions be pushed in a positive manner? the struggle over austerity cannot be limited to its federal expression as issues related to service retrenchment and the increasing penetration of neoliberal policies manifests throughout the provinces and municipalities. likewise, in an increasingly intertwined global political economy, national and sub-national decisions cannot be abstracted from their international context. while exit strategies targeting the public sector are emerging unconcealed in their aggressiveness and vigor, canadian responses have so far been tepid. the capitalist class is recomposing and repositioning itself to make the public pay, spread the risk and hoard the gains. the shape taken by struggles over austerity and social services may very well dictate the next round of accumulation or, alternatively, lead to something historically unique. indeed, a good many predictions already suggest a looming ‘lost decade’ of austerity. new alignments, coalitions and networks will no doubt emerge. more importantly, however, a frank and sober discussion will need to begin that seeks to move beyond the fractured coalition of network politics in hopes of creating something historically unique, all-encompassing and capable of challenging what the working class is collectively up against. the course of neoliberalism has thoroughly beaten down what vestiges remain of trade union militancy and existing social movements must come to the bitter realization of historical defeat. this is the only realistic starting point from which to move forward (anderson, 2000). three decades of neoliberalism have eroded whatever ‘progressive’ remnants of social-democratic and labour parties that exist. the ndp is not an alternative and neither is, regrettably, the green party trapped in erstwhile eco-capitalist “solutions”. both parties have no transformative vision of society, adhere to the eco45 nomic agenda of neoliberalism and display no interest in challenging the logic of capital or the democratic functions of the state. moreover, they remain entrapped in top-down organizational structures with little interest in building mobilizational capacities at the community and grassroots level. finally, when in power they have strayed little from conservative and liberal policies. this is demonstrated time and again in the countless cutbacks and repressive policies of a good many social democratic governments’ over the past three decades (caroll & ratner, 2005). moreoever, organized labour bodies from the canadian labour congress to the ontario federation of labour, canadian auto workers and canadian union of public employees, for instance, have increasingly shown signs of confusion having failed to break ideologically or politically with a social dependence on capital and by their inability to meaningfully intervene in recent battles. great political and social divergences between local’s and their national or provincial affiliates continue to mar the collective bargaining landscape. if worker militancy as demonstrated by workplace stoppages is an indication of growing labour unrest, the 126 workplace stoppages in 2006 (its lowest since 1935) pales in comparison with the historic high of 1,173 in 1974, and indeed paints a grim picture of the state of labour militancy in canada (workman, 2009). by focusing narrowly on workplace gains such as, say, higher wages, the capitalist class and a good many politicians feed off the rhetoric that workplace gains undermine social services. this is a trap that labour gets caught up in when it focuses only on workplace benefits. labour will need to develop counter-narrative strategies and seek to politicize their gains by rooting them in their communities and also in the form of non-economic improvements (paid leave, educationals, etc). unfortunately, instead of inspiring new waves of mass protest, demonstrations and the spawning of new working class organizations, the current global economic insecurity seems to have weakened labour’s resolve and risks signaling its ultimate class defeat. to conclude, the power of capital and the state, as well as the impasse of both organized labour and many social movements to confront what the working class is collectively up against, belies the need for a new kind of radical, anti-capitalist political project suited to the current historical and social conjuncture. new political experiments will need to emerge that aim to incorporate the strongest elements of the traditional party, trade unions, social movements and community groups. in this regard, the left may due well to study the growing brashness of political and economic elites as they reconfigure and reorganize themselves to seize the crisis. nevertheless, the european anti-austerity protests and emergent anti-capitalist projects may provide a glimmer of optimism. what is certain is that the failure to take up such a challenge to reestablish the power of the working class in canada would be to accept the existing social relations as unalterable and would therefore recognize the right of capital to exploit labour. janus-faced austerity: strengthening the ‘competitive’ canadian state 46 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research references albo, g. 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(2009). if your in my way, i’m walking: the assault on working people since 1970. halifax: fernwood. janus-faced austerity: strengthening the ‘competitive’ canadian state 50 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research symposium on braverman _ comments by john porter i cannot comment on michael burawoy's paper from the point of view of any of the current "problematiques" of contemporary marxism, since i am not schooled in them. what little i have read does not particularly help me in clarifying the kinds of problems that interest me. but when i first read braverman, i was very much impressed and after rereading large sections of the book for this particular task, i am still very much impressed and i do not make that judgement in terms of his contribution, whatever that may be, to marxian labour economics or marxian sociology. nor is it because what braverman has said is new. most of this compilation of materials studies of work, labour force statistics and other things we knew before. perhaps i was impressed because the book was an articulate reminder of facts we did know but were prepared to overlook, and i use "we" here in the sense of the whole gamut of followers of conventional social science, of the post-second-world war period. i think we were prepared to overlook this evidence because of our overconcern for economic growth as the raison-d'etre of industrialization, and the way we saw worker productivity linked to economic growth. as well we believed consumption to be one of the major goals of the industrialization process. so convinced were we of these objectives, both those in actual work situations and those studying them, that we overlooked much of the change that braverman analyses. certainly social scientists accepted growth and upgrading of the labour force as basic to modernism, and i think the best illustration of that is found in every intergenerational mobility matrix where one compares the marginals of fathers and sons, and takes the difference as representative of progress because overall 23 alternate routes the sons have done better than the fathers. the objective of the exercise in mobility analysis is to discover how respondents have exploited the opportunity provided by occupational upgrading. so we ask whether or not the class structure is permeable, and to what degree. again, the basic assumption underlying analyses of these father-son occupational data, on which i have been engaged myself, is that the overall effects of industrialization have been beneficial and progressive. social scientists, of course, bear this burden of oversight, or guilt depending on how severe one considers the offence to be. i can remember papers back in the fifties in which industrial sociology was being condemned as "cow" sociology, and in which industrial psychology was referred to as deep therapy on the assembly line, so that the picture is not totally one of the social sciences going to work for capitalist enterprise, although i would not deny for a moment that that has been their major thrust. there have always been critics of this direction, however. many of the things said about the degradation of work, or the character of work, have been criticized through various art forms, if not sociology, and certainly taylorism has been subject to ridicule for a very long time. so i would see braverman's contribution as a massive critique of what work has become, whether or not he made any contribution to theory. i think the critique is particularly strong not only because of his analysis of work in the factory, but also because of the extent to which automation and new forms of technology have affected the tertiary sector, as well as the application of science and technology to the work process and the effects they have brought about. also, his observations (he is eclectic here) on the role of education and how it has helped to create the illusion of upgrading 24 symposium on braverman of the contemporary labour force is consistent with other current criticisms of credential ism. his appendix on occupational classifications is fascinating for anybody who has attempted to develop occupational classifications, but more importantly his analysis of the methodology of the prevailing official ones, more than any other part of the book calls into question the notion of an upgraded labour force. all of these things add up to a tremendously powerful critique of how we have looked at work. 25 book review: debt, the imf, and the world bank | 255 book review debt, the imf, and the world bank: sixty questions, sixty answers by eric toussaint and damien millet. new york: monthly review press, 2010. $17.95 us. isbn: 978-1-58367-222-8. pages: 1-361. reviewed by jillian l. curtin1 in their book, debt, the imf, and the world bank: sixty questions, sixty answers, eric toussaint and damien millet provide an extensive overview of the impact that debt has on highly indebted poor countries (hipcs). they show how debt inhibits hipcs from investing in infrastructure, health, education, and other development-oriented socialpolicies. the problem, they argue, is not just debt itself, but the capitalist global economic system that fuels it. this process contributes to an endless cycle of poverty and human suffering. the book is written for a general audience. it is organized in a way that showcases the causes of the cyclical debt crisis, the major actors involved, and ways of addressing the problems. it is especially proficient in outlining how private actors in the global financial system have had a negative impact on hipcs. throughout the book toussaint and millet display marxists overtones. their critique of the global financial system and the exploitive nature of the global trade system is accurate. they provide some “radical alternatives” to the current, broken system. however, many of their ideas are not overly radical. for example, their argument focusing on the elimination of structural adjustment programs (saps) is in line with many other experts in the field. in fact, this discussion on saps is the highlight of the book. toussaint and millet give an in depth explanation of the role saps have played in this debt crisis. they describe them as entities geared toward developing institutions and policies to allow private foreign investment into countries. this process shapes the structure of the domestic political economic policy in debtor countries. it gives lenders 1 jillian curtin is currently completing her ph.d. in political science at carleton university, with a focus on political economy. she specializes in governance of the global economy and the politics of private enterprise. she is also the co-founder and content manager of discourse magazine. 256 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism the ability to control indebted countries through conditionality which has helped to create a system of dependence, exploitation, and indirect rule. the use of saps not only interferes with sovereignty but implies that some countries lack the ability to rule themselves. toussaint and millet argue that any lending should consist of a simple transaction in which the lender provides money solely on the condition that the debtor will pay it back. conditions should not be applied. it is difficult to disagree with this position. interestingly, toussaint and millet do not call for the abolition of lending and debt all-together. however, they do argue against usury. they claim that private banks and investment houses in the global north have been making “easy money” off of the global south. these countries have paid back their debts – many times over – but the interest in some cases is so high that an endless cycles of debt ensues. they also argue against certain foreign “investment” in hipcs. they believe that often this “investment” is a cover which allows wealthier countries to take hipcs’ natural resources without sufficient financial compensation. this has had profound ecological and economic consequences for hipcs and is why the shift toward chinese investment – even though china infringes less on sovereignty – is simply exchanging one resource exploiter for another. they articulate that the process of external loans in exchange for resources does not help a hipc establish long-term human and/or economic development. it is the conditions under which lending and debt are currently conducted which is the crux of the problem. one problem with this book is the way in which it answers its own questions. while they ask some great questions, often their answers could be further unpacked. for example, in addition to their argument on how debt has redistributed financial resources from important social policies like health and education they make some important points about the impact of debt on resources and food sovereignty. but, the analysis of these problems is somewhat shallow. more space could have been dedicated to explaining why these areas are essential to meaningful development. the analysis is also problematic when they discuss the significance of self-determination and the right to self-governance. deeper, empirically grounded examples and a theoretical examination of the consequences of resources depletion and food sovereignty would have added more to their argument and allowed this book to make a deeper contribution to contemporary debates on development and debt. book review: debt, the imf, and the world bank | 257 a second problem is, at several points, the book borders on becoming a polemic. often the author’s choice of words is incendiary. they use loaded language to support their argument in areas where more empirically based explanations are desirable. this detracts from their overall argument. for example, they claim that the debt burden has “crushed all attempts” for hipcs to develop. in addition to the implication of hopelessness, the tenor of the phrase externalizes the responsibility of development and ignores any complicity amongst the governments of the hipcs. this is a problem found throughout the book. another issue with this work is that their solutions are only partly explained. they argue that much of the citizenry in hipcs are too poor to formally participate in the market. as such, only governments are able to redistribute wealth and provide the programs necessary for human and economic development. however, they do not adequately address the potential problems of economic corruption associated with authoritarian regimes and shell governments. their correlation between the elimination of debt and deterring the formation and maintenance of authoritarian regimes is weakly argued. the rationale toussaint and millet do provide – that the immediate forgiveness of debt acquired under dictators would deter external lenders from providing credit to dictators – counters their own call for the abolition of the current risk and confidence-based financial system. this is a logical inconsistency in the book. government control of economic assets often leads to dictatorships. toussaint and millet also fail to explain how wealth will be generated in these countries once debt is forgiven. aside from these problems toussaint and millet do provide a general overview of how the burden of debt is crippling development efforts in many countries. this is an ongoing crisis that has been overlooked in the wake of the current economic crisis that is preoccupying european and american politics. their question and answer and answer format makes their work easy to understand. this book provides an enticing argument for interested readers with little to no background in economics, politics, or development studies. sociology, philosophy and materialism wilfrid denis few sociologists question whether their writings in sociology are scientific. having settled the issue of "science" in social science long ago, the major task for sociologists is conceived as empirical research and its relationship to theory. since a certain definition of science is usually taken for granted, the scientificity of new theories and approaches is evaluated on the basis of existing social science. issues such as contradictory definitions of science are usually left to philosophers while theoretical questions are debated within a common conception of science. at least, this was the situation until fairly recently. recent developments which have changed such a situation include the impact of some philosophical debates on sociologists , the development of phenomenology/ethnomethodology in sociology, and the pheonix-like rise of marxism in the 1960's. these three factors, each in their own right, have shaken the philosophical foundations of traditional sociology and produced very awkward if not insurmountable theoretical and philosophical problems for current sociology. this paper focuses on the philosophical dimension in social theory and attempts to deal with it in terms of social analysis and the development of a science of man. using thomas kuhn as a starting point, i shall review some of the literature on sociological theory, indicating the major difficulties of discussing social theory while omitting any philosophical dimension. efforts to include a minimum of philosophy in theory will also be included. after commenting on the problems inherent in such efforts, i shall summarize a recent attempt at elaborating the philosophical bases of sociology, as a demonstration of the kind of exercise necessary to overcome these problems. 73 alternate routes my closing comments will take the form of a discussion on the relationship of philosophy to sociology. my position essentially is that social theory cannot be fully understood without its philosophical roots. through these roots, social theories are directly related to the actual and historical dimensions of social reality. the philosophical traditions and premises ingrained in social theory comprise basic worldviews which reflect class ideologies. thus the discussion of various philosophies of science lead us to conclude with a few summary statements on the ideological dimension of social theory. i. sociology without philosophy since the turn of the century, sociology has been largely antiphilosophical. passing references are made to philosophical traditions which engendered the discipline. after all, it is difficult to mention corate and not refer to "positivism". but, in spite of a "sociology of knowledge" , the philosophical underpinnings of sociological theories and approaches rarely surface in the literature. it is possible at times in empirical research to tease out ontological and epistemological assumptions. however, disdain or unconcern for these aspects, frequently results in a lact of logical consistency and continuity. theoretical and conceptual syntheses and borrowings very often contain contradictory premises, which, when pushed to their limits, reveal a jumbled and incoherent philosophical base. as stated earlier, recent events are stimulating a greater willingness among sociologists to discuss assumptions inherent in their theories, interest in this dimension of theory has manifested itself in the widespread usage of the concept "paradigm" and the numerous attempts to identify the major "paradigms" in sociology. 74 sociology. . .materialism thomas kuhn's the structure of scientific revolutions is largelyresponsible for the current popularity of the term "paradigm". for kuhn (19?0»10) paradigms arei "accepted examples of actual scientific practise.. . (which) provide models from which spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research." such models include the laws, theories, applications and instrumentations accepted as being scientific by a community of scholars in a discipline. according to kuhn, scientific paradigms go through various stages. as a paradigm becomes dominant, it enters a normal stage where research is done within its intellectual framework. new explanations are not sought, and when they surface, they are rejected as being "unscientific", as knowledge expands, certain anomalies develop which cannot be adequately explained by the dominant paradigm. as these anomalies become increasingly salient, the dominant paradigm enters a crisis stage. alternate explanations are sought. a new kind of explanation develops and replaces the former paradigm through a scientific revolution. the new paradigm may have less explanatory power than the established paradigm generally, but it claims to at least solve the latter* s "crisis provoking problem". however, changing paradigm is not a question of logic or rationality, since even these are paradigm dependent. rather, the new paradigm involves a new way of seeing the world. the simplest and most obvious examples arei the world as round rather than flat; or revolving around the sun, rather than center of the universe. such a change of perspective requires a change of one 4 s mental set akin to religious conversion. acceptance of the new paradigm becomes largely a question of faith, of "subjective and aesthetic considerations" (19?0« 144-159). thus kuhn rejects the notion of objective theory free criteria for evaluating competing paradigms. 75 alternate routes that kuhn refers almost exclusively to the natural sciences, and that he uses the term in twenty-two different ways (kuhn 1970 » 181 j ritzer 1975 »*0 presents problems for sociologists adopting his concept 2 and theory . the term has been reduced to three types by masterman (kuhn 1970:17^). at the highest level, a metaphysical paradigm presents a total world view in a given science. at the next level "sociological" paradigms are more concrete and specific interpretations of the world view. it includes theories and problems to be solved based on accepted examples of research. the lowest level is the construct paradigm which includes tools, instruments and research measurement techniques . most sociologists who use the concept "paradigm" refer to the two lowest levels. merton (1968«104) for example uses the term in the narrow sense of codification of concepts, problems, procedures, and inferences related to a particular theory. such a codification has a dual purpose! the clarification and tighter specification of the whole conceptual apparatus one brings to a problem; and consciousness-raising. codification should make researchers aware of the political, ideological, and scientific implications of the tacit assumptions underlying concepts (i968tl09). merton's paradigm can be summarized in this schemai (manifest effect * ; latent effect > ): consciousness raising > > codification political, taxonomy hypothesis,-^ ideological, theory > of si >* assumptions—» scientific ^-^ concepts ^ procedures, and ** problems //.» tests tacit ideological, theory > of a :ientific .»-* concepts^ procedures,, implications ' ' " * and *, ^j such codification indicates a theory can have more than one 76 sociology. . .materialism "paradigm" which then become confined to problem areas. this leads merton (1968:69) to refer to paradigms of deviant behaviour, racial intermarriage, and sociology of knowledge.. although recognizing the importance of underlying assumptions, merton 's (i968i73_136) own effort at codifying functionalism emphasizes clarification of concepts through empirical research, and pays scant attention to "consciousness-raising". his "tacit assumptions" may refer to different philosophical traditions, but his own work on functionalism indicates that his analysis stops at the much lower level of differences between theories. goertzel (1976) and alford (1975) both attempt to classify theories in political sociology into three paradigms » elite, class, and pluralism. for goertzel (19?6:6) the basis of theoretical models are "the basic beliefs about the nature of man and society", whereas alford (1975 » 1^5) acknowledges "...the implicit but powerful influence of the assumptions upon all aspects of the intellectual processes involved 1 selection of problems, unit of analysis, key terms, definition .of the relevant data, interpretation of data and generalizations beyond data." for both goertzel and alford, paradigms are equivalent to theoretical models whose bases are alternate conceptions of the organization and distribution of power in society. both restrict their analyses to the political realm. goertzel (1976 »42) even goes so far as to claim that the three paradigms often agree about facts. it is at the level of interpretation that disagreement occurs. "but on the more mundane level of social research, the three perspectives can often be effectively combined." alford associates different explanatory power to each paradigm, and thus each of his paradigms corresponds to one of the three levels 77 alternate routes at which society can be analysed. pluralism explains the actions and mobilization of individuals and small groups; elite analysis explains decision making and social structures at the institutional level; and class analysis "sets limits of policy formation and of state structure within class relations of a given society." (1975«153). although alford is more consistent in demonstrating the effect assumptions can have on a theory and its analysis, he doesn't systematically discuss the fundamental differences between his paradigms. his discussion convincingly demonstrates the relationship between implicit assumptions and the competing perceptions of power in society. but, the implicit assumptions which he discusses remain in the political realm. these assumptions, part of a philosophical tradition lead alford to accept the state, the political, as the base of power in society. the result is such conceptual monstrosities as to identify fascism as the pathological form of the class paradigm (1975' 15° )• for both alford and goertzel, the issue is one of competing interpretations of fact rather than one of alternate definitions of reality. the importance of certain ontological assumptions are recognized, but these are not systematically linked to different philosophical traditions which include different methodologies, definitions of science, and conceptions of reality. ritzer (1975) develops the idea of sociology as a multi-paradigm discipline, also identifying three paradigms: social fact, social definition, and social behaviour. ritzer (1975«?) claims a synthesis of kuhn's three types by defining paradigms as "a fundamental image of the subject matter within a science". already a contradiction appears between his definition of "a fundamental image" and his three 78 sociology. . .materialism paradigms. either sociology consists of three sciences or his paradigms are identical. although each paradigm incorporates a number of theories, these share the same values, methodology and subject matter. ritzer can be summarized as follows! ftiradigm: examplari subject matters theories t methods! social fact social definition durkheim suicide weber social action social facts a) structural functionalism individual definition of social facts a) action theory b) symbolic intersocial behaviour skinner beyond freedom and dignity human behaviour a) behavioural sociology b) exchange theory b) conflict theory actionism c) systems theory c) phenomenology ethnomethodology dramaturgy survey, questionobservation, interview experimental, naire, interviews laboratory and real life the base for each paradigm is the definition given to its subject matter. since ritzer adds a special category of "paradigm bridgers", most sociological literature could be thus classified. durkheim, weber and marx bridged the first two paradigms, while parsons covered all three (1975 t 212-216). there is also the possibility that new schools such as the frankfurt school, or social biology might become paradigms. but the major concern for ritzer is the political bickering between sociologists using different paradlgns. unfortunately, he does not relate this to "underlying values" which he recognizes but does not deal with extensively. to do so may have lead to a certain awareness of his own assumptions underlying his call for peace in sociology so that syntheses, bridges, and "triangulation" between paradigms can lead the day to a brighter sociology. this lack of depth also manifests 79 alternate routes itself in his assumption that the images on which his paradigms rest all reflect the same social reality. the idea that contradictory definitions of reality are involved, is never entertained. ritzer claims to include the metaphysical dimension in his paradigms, but i find it lacking. as a result his taxonomy becomes artificial and limited to secondary characteristics. its boundaries remain superficial as long as they are not based on more fundamental aspects of these perspectives. in this respect, j. turner (1978: 11 ) is more consistent in using the terms "orientation" and "perspective" to identify the equivalent of ritzer' s "paradigms". turner identifies four major orientations in sociology: functional, conflict, exchange and interactionist orientations. recognizing that there exist "sharp disagreements among advocates of these four orientations", turner states that the divergences are not fundamental enough to constitute paradigms. contrary to ritzer, turner sees the overlap and convergence of these orientations as indicating that they fall within the same broad overview. nevertheless, turner recognizes the development of another paradigm, ethnomethodology, which has developed from german phenomonology and interactionism. this new approach presents an alternate view of the social world (1978:404-421 ). turner states that his four orientations share a common base (kuhn's metaphysical level), from which he can discuss similarities and differences of these 4 four orientations while recognizing the development of another paradigm . but, turner does not analyse the fundamental differences between his two paradigms in great detail. nor does he refer to the frankfurt or althusserian "schools". he presents an excellent discussion of positivist 80 sociology. . .materialism sociology but without elaborating its philosophical base. ii . sociology and some philosophy so far, one might conclude that sociologists are not fully aware of the level at which one locates "tacit assumptions", "basic beliefs" and "images of subject matter". their sociology of knowledge would seem inadequate for discussing the core issue of fundamental philosophical differences . such conclusions are partly correct, but some sociologists do attempt to delve into this aspect of theory. their efforts have given rise to what could be called the "crisis in sociology" literature. the word "crisis" immediately brings to mind gouldner's work, the coming crisis of western sociology . arguing that sociology is affected by sub-theoretical sets of beliefs, he attempts to demonstrate the presence, source and effects of such background assumptions in parsonian structural-functionalism. interesting as gouldner's work is, it is very incomplete because it limits itself to one exemplar of a paradigm, and does not effectively contrast it with the assumptions of alternate forms of sociology. neither does he elaborate on his own "reflexive sociology" (smart 19?6tl0). gouldner, like the sociologists above, fails to push his analysis to its philosophical roots. consequently, he overlooks the fundamental differences which he claims underlies parsonian sociology and his own reflexive sociology. the popularity of gouldner's "crisis" can be explained largely by the rise of phenomenology-ethnomethodology, and its challenge to the structuralist-functionalist perspective. some sociologists argue that what is involved is not just a new methodology, or a new way of collec7 ting data, but another way of seeing the world . it is presented as 81 alternate routes a different definition of social reality (mason in thorns 1976:103-114; filmer 1972 1 j. turner 1978:408-9). some sociologists pursue the matter even further. smart (1976) contends that marxian analysis and phenomenology cannot be integrated into academic sociology without questionning the assumptions of each regarding the nature of social reality and the subjective/objective distinctions. his discussion of contemporary sociology lead him to conclude that both critical theory (frankfurt) and marxian phenomenology "share the beginnings of an approach to study society" which overcome the problems of positivism and german phenomenology (19?6:153)« only by integrating marx, as in the frankfurt school for example, will sociology eliminate its reifications and ideological distortions, and be able to overcome not only epistemological differences, but also its political complicity. not all sociologists who perceive epistemological differences in distinct "kinds" of sociology take such a strong stance. many eagerly call for immediate syntheses. brown (1977) for example sees essentially two epistemological approaches to sociology » positivist-empiricist, and phenomenology-ethnomethodology; one materialist, the other subjectivist or idealist. for him, however, science and sociology are simply symbol systems which do not have any priority or ascendance over such systems. brown then uses aesthetics to evaluate the symbol systems in sociology in hope of developing a metalanguage to overcome epistemological differences between empiricists and subjectivists. such a creation will allow for an "epistemlc self-consciousness for sociological thought" (brown 1977 »243). "this view finds its justification in a post-positlvist, post romantic, dialectical, symbolic realist theory of knowledge." 82 sociology. . .materialism (brown 1977*233). his approach reveals the philosophical superficiality of his analysis. his symbolic realism places him squarely in the idealist camp. thus, his efforts although acceptable within this perspective, will immediately be rejected by positivists as pure idealist abstractions. the materialist-idealist dilemma is obviously not a fresh rediscovery. oestereicher (1968) attempted to deal with it ten years ago. drawing on similarities between hegel, marx and g.h. mead, he seeks a social-psychological explanation of the development of science within a structural context. the need to compare "facts" is not the issue, but rather "the conceptual structures which organize them and give them meaning '{ 1968 »^3) • oestereicher argues against the empiricist tradition that science develops through accumulation of facts. agreeing with kuhn to a certain extent, he maintains that science develops through a succession of conceptual schemas which provide different perspectives with which to order and give meanings to facts. "we may only assume that the structuration of rational thought tends to take the form of successive states of dynamic equilibrium and that the increasing generality and inclusiveness of these states corresponds to the increase of rational human knowledge itself" (1968:2^8) the above comment for brown is equally applicable to oestereicher. neither one recognizes the importance of the questions on the origins of "the structuration of rational thought',' let alone address the issue. zeitlln (l973) does essentially the same thing. after criticizing the more established positivist approaches, such as structural-functionalism, conflict and exchange theories, he seeks to develop a marx-weber model of historical analysis, based largely on c.w.mills interpretation of marx. to this he adds phenomenology and the dialectical naturalism of both marx and g.h.mead. needless to say his ieferences to marx are limited to the "young marx',' that, is mostly the theses on feuerbach and 83 alternate routes the economic and philosophical manuscripts of 1844 . this leads to a final attempt at discovering the convergence of freud (as interpreted by marcuse), head and marx so as to provide a structural basis for social psychology. zeitlin present the usual critiques of positivist sociology (a-historical, pro-status quo, etc.) then flirts with epistemology in marx (l9?3«243-9) to produce forth his synthesis. although zeitlin (1973 » preface) claims his synthesis hmost adequately considers both the structural and situational dimension of the social process" it seems theoretically weak. the use of relnterpretations of marx by mills and of freud by marcuse, as well as the emphasis on the young marx indicates the nature of his synthesis. mead, marx, and freud are interpreted from within the same perspctlve, one which emphasises the situational dimension and which, in spite of zeitlin' s claim, leaves out the structural aspect. other works similar to the above exist. but these well-known cases illustrate very well the fundamental weakness. the point is not that the authors fail to include a systematic analysis of the various philosophical traditions in sociology. the point is that they have not done so for the theories which they use. thus even if recognition of different traditions is given, the failure to systematically examine their basis results in syntheses and comparisons based either on secondary aspects, or on a compatible re-interpretation. consequently such work falls within one specific tradition or other. iii. critique of sociology without philosophy there are a number of related points to be made from the above discussions. first, there is much confusion in the definition and the usage of the concept "paradigm". avoiding or overlooking the actual 84 sociology. . .material ism philosophical basis of paradigms results in conceptual confusion which accounts for much of the terminological confusion. philosophical underpinnings provide the conceptual orientation of the paradigms, and consequently affect, if not determine, the theories, concepts, methods ar*l research problems. the conceptual orientation coincides with certain ideological currents (ie positivism and liberalism). both have a direct effect on the values and the political orientation academics develop. without a systematic elaboration of these aspects of paradigms, the term itself becomes more of a fad than a meaningful concept in sociology. secondly, since .sociologists generally "do" theory without philosophy, they fail to grasp the importance of kuhn's religious conversion from one paradigm to another. since what is involved is changing completely one's worldview, it seems improbable that people can shift readily from one to another. yet this is implied by many taxonomies. loose definitions of paradigms and lack of a philosophical base allow such authors to discover "bridgers", syntheses, "paradigm jumpers" and other such energumen. such classifications are superficial and incomplete. their arbitrariness results in limited usefulness and reduced accuracy. another aspect to this problem is that without a philosophical base, sociologists are prone to discover numerous theoretical syntheses. these usually assume that gradual quantitative change in theory can lead to qualitative change. although kuhn (l9?0:l8l) later attenuated the importance of qualitative change in theory, the notion of revolution in science remains central to his argument. one simple example illustrates the significance of such change. to think of the world as round 85 alternate routes instead of flat presents few problems of qualitative change for modern theorists. undoubtedly some will argue that such a simple example is not analogous to modern complex social theories. but, the principle is still the same, and such a simple example does indicate the type of change which qualifies as qualitative and revolutionary, in kuhn's terms, gradual quantitative change can set the stage, but it does not actuate or induce this more fundamental change. rupture is necessary to pass from one type of change to the other, and from one type of theory to another. to attempt syntheses of contradicting theories is not only impossible when the full significance of the opposing world views are appreciated, but unnecessary. to attempt it leads only to obscurantism. to successfully synthesize such theories indicates a fundamental agreement, a common pardigmatic base from which the theories either originate 9 or are interpreted. there are few, if any, syntheses between paradigms, many within. thirdly, sociologists are generally not aware of their own paradigm, that is, the philosophical foundation or their own thought. as kuhn states regarding "normal science',' the world view is taken so much for granted that it is never questionned; it never comes to mind, unless challenged by an alternate paradigm, and even then. consequently many sociologists find it easy to do syntheses, discover "bridgers" and the rest, since they are operating essentially on the same epistemological and ontological assumptions. the confusion in sociology as to different "philosophies of science" may well be the result of positivist sociology's attempt to separate itself from philosophy. as marcuse (l 955 « 323-388) argues, comte inaugurated this seperatlon, and emplricist-positivists have eagerly fol86 sociology. . .materialism lowed the tradition of distinguishing between the "real" (the eraprirical) and the metaphysical. since any question relating to "philosophy of science" was of the metaphysical realm, it obviously fell outside of sociology proper. inasmuch as positivist sociology dominated the field, such issues were non-issues because they were defined as non-sociological, however as different philosophies of science appear within sociology, they not only challenge the dominant positivist philosophy of science , but they also reintroduce philosophy into sociology. they reintroduce at the heart of sociological theory such "philosophical" debates as the identification of competing philosophies of science and their pervasive influence on sociology. iv. sociology and philosophy of science one recent attempt to systematically examine philosophy of science within modern sociology is that of keat and urry (1975) social theory as science . they identify three main philosophies: positivist, realist, 11 and conventionalist. although they present a lengthy discussion of these philosophies, numerous writers have commented briefly on various aspects. we shall use keat and urry's effort as the general approach to the issue of philosophy of science in sociology, referring to other works when appropriate. the major aspects of each philosophy will be presented with cursory remarks on sociology. a) positivism positivist sociologists have not written very much recently on 12 positivism. most who write, do not share its philosophy, namely phenomenologists (smart 1976; filraer et al 1972) and realists (keat and urry 1975)* the features which are usually stressed include the following. 87 alternate routes naturalism i in positivlst sociology, naturalism refers to the belief that social and natural phenomena are not qualitatively different. consequently, the methods, techniques and approaches of the natural sciences are directly transposable to the social sciences (thorns 1976:10; lally in thorns 19?6:55)» ®ne °f the strongest advocates of this position was lundberg (keat and urry 1975*91 )• unity of science ! if social and natural phenomena are scientifically similar, then the development of a unity of science follows quite naturally. all sciences are progressing towards a greater synthesis of knowledge where sciences will eventually lose their arbitrary boundaries and become one (kolakowskl 1968 «8). some sociologists prefer a weaker view of science developing gradually but not necessarily reaching that particular outcome. two views of this development exist (keat and urry 1975»24). science either develops through accumulation of facts, increasing accuracy of information, and development of increasingly more general theories, in the inductivist view; or sporadically as new theories are discovered and empirically tested. in this "hypothetico-deductivist" view, not all new theories are empirically acceptable, thus making scientific progress unsteady. regardless of the approach preferred, all > would agree to the fundamental unity of logic and methodology which underlies all sciences and which relates to the naturalism mentioned above. phenomenalism : if such unity exists, it is because all sciences define reality in the same way. for positivists, what is real, factual and scientifically acceptable as knowledge is observable. thus no distinction is drawn between essence and phenomenon. what cannot be perceived through sensory experience belongs to the realm of philosophy 88 sociology. . .materialism and the metaphysical (kolakowski 196qtk). all other forms of knowledge other than empirical observation are rejected as unscientific, and all knowledge which claims a distinction between the essence of an object and its observable manifestation is rejected as metaphysical fabrication. nominalism t kolakowski (1968«5) relates this label to the idea that scientific knowledge must rest an real concrete objects. this requires two different kinds of statements and languages: one observational, 13 the other theoretical. keat and urry (1975? 18) refer to the "ontological and eplstemological privilege" of observational language, that is only the observational language is accepted by positivists as having real referents in the physical world. as a result, epistemologically, terms in this language have the greatest truth, or the highest degree of certainty to them. theory neutrality ? it follows from the above that the observational language is theory neutral since it refers to real, actual things. thus this language can be verified as being true or false without referring to theory (keat and urry 1975s 19). the same does not apply to theoretical language since its truth or accuracy can only be assessed in reference to observational terms. another aspect to theory neutrality which also relates to phenomenalism, is its application to facts. facts are seen as being theory neutral or theory independant. all can agree on the facts, it is the interpretations of facts (theory) which is problematic. value neutrality t not only are facts theory and value neutral but scientific knowledge is also value neutral (thorns 1976il0;5?). the question is not simply the rejection of values and beliefs as a source of knowledge, but rather seeing the whole scientific enterprise as being 89 alternate routes objective and free of values. this gave rise to the debate on value ik free sociology, based largely on a misinterpretation of weber , propagated by the influential parsons (zeitlin 1973*58). although today few would support the extreme position of seeing all sociology as value free, «uch difficulty remains in determining the demarcation between objective value free knowledge and value based interpretation. correspondence rules i the separation of theory from facts in all positivist social sciences raises the problem of relating the "ontologically and epistemologically privileged" language to the inferior theore15 tical language . the translation of one to the other requires increasingly complex rules, detailed and complex operationalizations, an ever greater number of indicators and statistical tests of indicators to overcome the problem. yet, the problem always remains! are the concepts and theoretical terms accurately translated into observational language, or is some vitally crucial element left out? theory t keat and urry (1975*13-16) claim that for positivists, theories are simply sets of highly general universal statements to be empirically verified through observation and experiment. few positivists 16 today would argue for conclusively proving theories. consequently two partial solutions have been developed. confirmationiots argue for strengthening a theory by empirically validating applications of it, while falsificationists hold that a theory is strengthened by proving competing theories to be false (hypothetico-deductive method). both accept empirical research as the objective basis for science, and both believe that theories which are accepted are "universal statements about regular contingent relationships in nature" (keat and urry 1975' 16). on the other hand, positivists see models simply as heuristic aids which 90 sociology. . .material ism help one to understand a theory. but such analogies and representations are nothing more than psychological crutches to assist understanding, and have nothing to do with knowledge as such (keat and urry 1975523). conservaism > a criticism raised especially by the frankfurt school is that positivist sociology leads to the acceptance of the status quo since it rejects any non-empirical knowledge as being non-scientific (keat and urryl 975*220). since this sociology is concerned with society the way it is rather than the way it could or should be, it leads to political conservatism. or as stinchcombe (1968:91 ) described it in terms of functionalism: its conservatism consists of "... a feeling that... homeostatic variables constitute a list of good things about societies and that focusing on the positive consequences of existing institutions tends in a conservative direction" both are partly correct. at best positivism leads to reformism. but conservatism inherent in positivism originates mostly in its ontology phenomenalism requires positivists to accept phenomena at face value. as a result fetishes are accepted a real, rather than as a facade for an underlying reality. examples of this are seeing the market in economics and elections in political science or political sociology as alldetermining. stinchcombe (1968:91 ) for example accepts these statements as facts. such beliefs correspond with 19th century liberal-democratic ideology, the ideological counterpart to positivism. but to explain positivist conservatism simply by its ideology or by "feelings" is to overlook its primary source: its ontology. one is tempted to transform hegel's proposition: "what is rational is actual and what is actual is rational? (bender 1975«15) to read:"what is observable is, what is, is observable" for kolakowski (1968:204) this phenomenalism and the dorai91 alternate routes nant value system together explain the posltlvists' tendency to favour parliamentary democracy as, at most, social democrats. causal theory t one final, but essential feature of positivism is its humean regularity theory of causation. for posltlvists, science is an attempt to develop knowledge which permits prediction and explanation of events in the world. this is done by constructing general theories expressing regular relationships that research demonstrates actually exist. for posltlvists, ability to predict such relationships also comprises ability to explain. causes are explained by regularities rather than by logical or natural necessity. the same applies to explanations of events using j.s.mills'set of conditions, where no one condition alone is sufficient. according to keat and urry (197501-2) this set of conditions is still founded on a regularity theory since no distinction is made between necessary and sufficient conditions. although other aspects of positivist sociology could be indicated, the above points lead us to conclude that the comtian distinction between philosophy and science has prevented positivists from identifying philosophy in their own science. thus most fail to see that the assumption of dealing only with empirically based knowledge is itself part of a philosophy of science, part of a belief system. or, in kolakowski's words i "...positivism is a normative attitude regulating how we are to use such terms as "knowledge',' "science',' "cognition" ... .(196813). keat and urry (1975*71-95) identify many sociologists, especially in the united states, as positivists. from comte, spencer and durkheim, they include merton, farsons, lundberg, cuttman, stouffer, bales, shils, to name a few. the sociological theories associated with this philosophy include structural-functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and 92 sociology. . .materialism exchange theory. however, apart from empirical studies related to these theories, many of the standard works on sociological theory are written from within this tradition. some are openly apologetic of one theory, such as lazarsfeld (1970) for structural-functionalism . others simply view all theory from the positivist perspective (ritzer 1975; cohen 1968; 17 18 19 elsenstadt and curelaru 1976 ; timasheff 1967 ; martindale 197^ ). to complete keat and urry, one could identify specifically which features above are included in each theory and its variants. certain theories and writers emphasise certain features only. also, as keat and urry recognize, these aspects can be accepted with varying degrees of strength. however, such questions go beyond the scope of this paper. b) realism since most sociology up to the 1969' s was positivist, very little realist sociology has been done. according to keat and urry (1975 '68) marx remains one of the few who has written systematically within this paradigm. this causes difficulties in maintaining a distinction between a realist philosophy of science and marxism (keat and urry 1975 '• 96). their comments can be grouped under naturalism; causal theory; ontology; and models. naturalism 1 both positivists and realists accept a reality external to man. however realists reject phenomenalism, and have a different theory of causation. consequently, realist naturalism includes an objective empirical world where science can discover non-positivist causal relationships. except for these points, the distinction which keat and urry make between realist naturalism and positivist naturalism is not very clear. 93 alternate routes causal theory i realists share with positivists a "conception of science as an empirically based, rational, and objective enterprise, the purpose of which is to provide us with a true explanatory and predictive knowledge of nature." (keat and urry 1975*5) • however realists differentiate between prediction and explanation of nature, and insist the latter should be science's prime concern. to explain a phenomenon means to discover its natural cause. a realist explanation consists in discovering a "regular relationship between phenomena, and some kind of mechanism that links them. this requires knowledge of the underlying structures that are present, and the manner in which they generate or produce the phenomenon to be explained." (keat and urry 1975o0). much importance is attached to explanation because realists reject the humean regularity theory of causation in favour of a natural causal theory. phenomena have natural or real causes. prediction of future events on the basis of past regularities does not reveal or explain the actual cause of such events. such explanations require the other elements of the realist philosophy of science. theories i the main objective of theory is to explain; to provide a description of a regular relationship and its underlying cause of structure. theory is an attempt to actually describe reality. this reality includes the phenomenon to be explained, the underlying structures and mechanisms which generate the phenomenon, and an explanation of how the latter generate the former (keat and urry 197502-6). ontology : realist ontology differs from the positivist one in at least two important aspects. first, realists reject positivist phenomenalism. a distinction is drawn between the true object or its 94 sociology. . .materialism essence, and its phenomenon or appearance. since such "natures" are not open to direct observation, positivists relegate them to the "metaphysical realm", the realm of the scientifically unprovable. for realists, objects have underlying "natures" which are disguised behind observable manifestations, but which can also be perceived through their effects on other phenomena. another aspect to be considered is that unlike positivists, no distinction is made between observational and theoretical language. no ontological privilege is given to observational language since theoretical terms presumably refer to real facts. thus realists avoid the problem of correspondence rules which plague positivists. realists argue that terms cannot be classified by the positivist dichotomy observational/theoretical, because many terms are both. it is assumed that if terms are relatively unproblematic at the observational level, they remain unproblematic at the theoretical level. terms can also be defined by means of analogies from some already understood term. since both observational and theoretical terms have ontological value, theories become actual descriptions of social reality. thus they are not simply generalizations, heuristic devices, or abstract conjectures. theoretical terms refer to real things which are explained by theories describing the true nature of the phenomenon, and the underlying structures and mechanisms that are its natural cause. science progresses inasmuch as theories and terms become increasingly accurate and precise descriptions of social or natural reality (keat and urry 197508-44). models t realists see models as a relatively early stage in the 95 alternate routes process of developing a theory. models are analogies drawn from known phenomena to unknown and often unobservable phenomena. "models are of a subject and modelled on a source." (keat and urry 1975* 33 )• thus an analogy is drawn from the underlying structures and mechanism of a known case or similar phenomenon (source of the model) to those of the phenomenon to be explained (subject of the model). as such •odels are attempts to describe underlying structures and mechanisms, and since these are accepted as real, models become a description of actually existing entities and relations. one of the main activities of scientific research is to extend these models in empirically testable form and test them. in this respect, positivists would argue realists are doing hypothesis testing. but such model testing refers to real natural causal relationships rather than generalizations from empirical observation of regularities. keat and urry (197 5o^) indicate differences in positivist and realist ontological premises resulting not only in different uses for models, but in altogether different conceptions of models. positivists develop models by "a process of abstraction and idealization of the concrete." for realists, "abstraction and idealization are involved in the relationship between the elements of the model and the essence that it represents" (keat and urry 1975«135). ttiese are essentially the main features which keat and urry associate with realism. as stated earlier, they identify marx as the only social scientist who consistently worked within a realist philosophy of science. a realist sociology has yet to develop. c) conventionalism the third philosophy of science which keat and urry (1975^6-66) 96 sociology. . .materialism discuss is conventionalism. arising mostly out of german phenomenology and american pragmatism, it can be traced mostly through husserl, schutz (smart 1976:ch.3), bretano and max scheler .(ritzer 1975:103; zeitlin 1 973 i 167-170) and partly through max weber (zeitlin 1 973 « 1 67-170 ) and marxism (smart 19?6s 115-1^-9; zeitlin 1973:167-170). there exist few attempts to identify the main features of its philosophy of science, apart from keat and urry (l975s46-65), but these seem fragmentary and incomplete (lally in thorns 197 61 62 5 turner 1978; 395-402; ritzer 1975»109-112). the main aspects usually include antinaturalism, "value partiality1 ,' and relativity. anti-naturalism : unlike positivists and realists, conventionalists reject the idea that an "objective social reality exists independent of knowing human subjects" (lally in thorns 1976:59). in its most extreme form of idealism, only the image or ideas man develops of reality are seen as real. today, most would accept a modified version which calls for a shift of emphasis from the material objective world to the subjective world of consciousness. most agree that the former exists, but argue that knowledge of the world depends on man's consciousness. universal empirical knowledge is not possible because all knowledge is based on a system of beliefs (keat and urry 1975:142-144). since all science carries varying elements of subjectivity, the focus of science is not objective reality but rather the manner in which man makes sense, establishes order and gives meaning to the world in which he lives. this idea can be expanded by looking at other features of this philosophy . value partiality : i suggest this term as an opposite to "value neutrality" so as to regroup a number of aspects. first it means that theory neutral facts are not possible. that people agree on a given 97 alternate routes fact simply indicates that they share the same meaning system for evaluating or identifying facts. perception is influenced by, if not a reflection of, values, ideas, and general knowledge. consequently definition and even perception of the objective world depends on one's perception of the world. since data on facts are value laden, scientific knowledge becomes simply a system of symbols for making sense of the world. as such scientific theories have no precedence over other meaning systems. also, scientific theories and science as a whole requires study and explanation just as any other system of knowledge (turner 1978 :42l). implicit in this is rejection of the positivist "unity of science" and "theory neutrality of observational language" if facts are theory laden so is the language used to describe them. the frankfurt school goes further than most, claiming that science not only can not, but should not be value neutral (lally in thorns 1976:67). social science should be programmatic. it should seek to change society in regards not only to social problems, but to the very structure of society, so as to overcome fundamental problems such as alienation. rejection of value neutrality has other implications which can be regrouped under the following heading. relativity : implicit in conventionalist ontology is the notion that theories cannot be empirically verified. today few argue for a definitive or conclusive proof or disproof of a theory. most argue for varying degrees of confirmation. the problem that this raises is the development of criteria for choosing between theories. keat and urry (1975:^9) indicate lakatos' solution of abandoning a theory only if an alternate theory explains all the first one explained, and still 98 sociology. . .material ism generates predictions not derivable from" the first theory, "some of which have been confirmed by empirical testing" . however this solution rests on the assumption of value neutrality of facts and theories. all approaches seeking to compare theories, either for evaluation or syntheses, assume the possibility of translating the observations, concepts, and"facts" of both theories into a common language . (keat and urry 1975'50)» conventionalists argue that even a theory neutral observational language is not possible. theory affects perception and definition of data. consequently it is not possible to rationally compare or evaluate their explantory powers. this brings us back to kuhn, discussed earlier, and his claim that all methodological standards and . rules are paradigm dependent. for conventionalists, theories and observations always include a subjective element, either of the researcher directly involved, or within the larger scientific community which developed and supports a particular theory and method of observation. even if facts could be objectively determined, there could always be more than one explanatory hypothesis, and the one to be chosen as true or better, cannot be determined by experience (kolakowski 1968:1^3). thus rejection of value neutrality of facts and scientific knowledge result in relativity in theory, methodology and substantive knowledge. everything becomes relative to the meaning system of which it is a part. if positivist sociology seeks to disembody itself from philosophy, conventionalism seeks its integration. for positivists, the conventionalist emphasis on man's consciousness automatically places all such sociology in the metaphysical realm. however, keat and urry argue that the issue is not science versus philosophy, but rather conflicting philosophies 99 alternate routes of science. thus they identify schutz' phenomenology (1&j-5), levistrauss' structuralism (l?3-^) and the frankfurt school with marcuse and adorno (218-221) as conventionalist social theories. again one can elaborate considerably on the specific philosophical premisses of the major works related to these theories. y sociology and materialism the main argument which underlies this paper is the need for philosophy to understand social theory. some of the errors and difficulties of discussing social theory without philosophy were demonstrated. these include superficial synthese and taxonomies of theories which compound confusion rather than enlighten. i also indicated the inadequacies of including only a simple awareness of some of the underlying assumptions to theories. vhat is needed are systematic discussions and expositions of philosophical traditions and premisses ingrained into social theory. one such exposition, that of keat and urry, as supported by others, was presented. their effort could be expanded substantially. it can no doubt be challenged on numerous points, especially the lack of sufficient distinction between the realist and the positivist philosophies. their work is far from final, but at least it gives some idea as to the nature of the exercise, an exercise which seems totally alien to the writers mentioned in the first part of the paper. the problem so far appears to be philosophical: the discovery and identification of philosophical underpinnings in theory formulation, and their effect on empirical research. thus the problem can be defined as one of competing philosophies of science which provide legitimation for non-positivist sociology. it is an attempt to expand the definition 100 sociology. . .materialism of "science" so that non-positivist sociologists will have their work accepted, or at least tolerated, as "science" within the social science community. as long as non-positivists have to prove the scientificity of their work according to the canons and criteria of established sociology, they face the choice of distorting their work into variants of 20 the dominant paradigm , or having it rejected as un-scientific. the scientificity of non-positivist sociology cannot be demonstrated on the basis of positivist canons. so, philosophy of science not only justifies and legitimates non-positivist sociology, but even challenges the dominant paradigm. one might then expect the conclusion of this paper to expand on this dimension. however, this definition of the problem can easily lead to theoretical relativity where empirical research and theory formulation are defended on the basis of competing notions of science. for keat and urry, this would be identified as a conventionalist argument, that of competing meaning systems. like kuhn, one can argue that alternate paradigms are challenging the dominant paradigm, and preparing the ground for a scientific revolution. these two positions of complete replacement of the dominant paradigm or of paradigm coexistence correspond to the strong and weak version of the same conventionalist argument. nevertheless, many sociologists will be more than happy to stop here. a few may wish to push their analysis further. if the notion of theoretical relativity outlined earlier is rejected, the problem has to be defined differently. it can be redefined as two very broad and general philosophical traditions, materialism and idealism. as long as the debate remains within idealist philosophy, the 101 alternate routes earlier definition of the problem is adequate and the suggested solution of greater tolerance for non-positivlst sociology is satisfactory. as a redefinition of the problem situates the debate outside idealism, philosophy of science becomes incomplete, inadequate. to redefine the problem as a materialist-idealist dichotomy, with the regrouping of conventionalism and positivism in the latter may appear simplistic at first glance. yet, even keat and urry (1975*63-5) and others (kolakowski 1968:15^-173; hollis and nells 1975sl53-l69) need a special category of "instrumentalism" or "pragmatism" for those who combine positivism and conventionalism. the materialism-idealism dichotomy involves a clash of mutually exclusive world views which are embodied in various philosophical traditions. allen (1975) althusser (i976 a) balibar (1978) and hoffman (1975) outline these world views, raising numerous points of which three are of particular significance to sociology. these indicate the direction the materialist-idealist debate would take in the discipline. the first point is historical materialism versus marxist social science. some academics attempt to discover or develope a marxian variant of their particular discipline. such marxist social sciences do not have to be invented or adapted from modified empiricism or phenomenology. marxist science already exists in historical materialism. it has its own framework and approach. however it transcends the artificial discipline boundaries of academia. as a result, marxist scholars attempting to do historical materialism are constantly challenged or hindered by these imaginary boundaries. many academics who try to develop historical materialism remain prisoners of these boundaries. a few examples such as smart and zeitlin were mentioned earlier, not 102 sociology. . .material ism to exclude the countless humanist and empiricist revisions of marx. in spite of marxist rhetoric, they deform marx's scientific discoveries (althusser 19?6a.:kl)t "sauf exception, ils sont encore aujourd'hui en train de bricoler en economie politique, en sociologie, en ethnologie, en anthropologic leurs theories, ce sont des vieilleries ideologiques, rajeunies a grand renfort de subtilites intellectuelles et de techniques mathematiques ultra-modemes." it isn't that sociology, or any social science, has nothing to contribute to marxism. rather they can contribute inasmuch as they share a common materialist philosophy and are incorporated into marxist science: hiaorical materialism. the second point is that the issue is not just one of finding a suitable and acceptable philosophy of science for marxism as keat and urry seem to suggest. making marxism academically acceptable is a very difficult problem for its practitioners. one solution is to use different philosophies of science to disguise dialectical materialism. to do so is to sneak marxism in through the back door. such a strategy, whether conscious or not, tends to weaken and dilute marxism. by seeking to make marxism academically acceptable in this fashion, the danger is very great that it will be transformed into a variant of the dominant conceptualizations of social science. one risks making it safe and uncritical. historical materialism has its philosophical base: dialectical materialism. there is no need to seek other philosophies to support it. what has to be defended is not philosophy of science but dialectical materialism. introducing a marxist world view into academia is not a purely intellectual exercise. as althusser (l976a:^2) explains: 103 alternate routes "lea conceptions du monde sont icpresentees dans le domaine de la theorie... par la phllosophie. la philosophie represente la lutte des classes dans la theorie. c'est pourquoi la philosophie est une lutte, et lutte fondamentalement politique: lutte de classe." superficially, the struggle in which marxist academics are involved is that of having historical materialism accepted as a science, and work done in historical materialism accepted as scientific. "ve therefore have the right and the duty to speak (as all the classics have done) of marxist theory, and within theory, of a science , and a philosophy. . .we must fight for the word science.." (althusser 19?6b:l6). at first glance this seems simple enough, but its simplicity is misleading for this task embodies what allen refers to as the class struggle between bourgeois and proletarian ideology(l975:42,53,231 ). getting historical materialism accepted by academia as a "science" involves a direct challenge of the dominant conception of science, the dominant parcelization of knowledge into arbitrary disciplines, and the dominant ideology as institutionalized into the academic community. therefore, it is not a question of competing philosophies of science, but rather class struggle in academia, which is our third point. the dominant paradigm reflects the ideological hegemony of the bourgeoisie in one particular ideological apparatus. the domination of the bourgeois ideology in academia accounts for the weakness of marxist science and theory. "or ce scandale theorique n'est pas du tout un scandale. c'est un effet de la lutte de ciasse ideologique: car c'est l'ideologie bourgeoise, la "culture" bourgeoise qui est au pouvoir, qui exerce "l'hegemonie" dans leur masse, les intellectuels communistes et marxistes, sont sauf exceptions, domines dans leur theorie par l'ideologie bourgeoise. sauf exceptions, les sciences humaines aussi." (althusser 19?6at4l) bourgeois ideological hegemony explains" the fact that they (scientists) most often present themselves in the terminology of marxism, "tinkering 104 sociology. . .materialism around" with and turning inside out its major theses" (balibar 1978»7). superficial use of marxist terminology and categories disguises "radical chic" bourgeois social science. it also confuses the issues involved whenever they appear. the struggle manifests itself in publishing, in hiring practises, in thesis committees, undergraduate papers, graduate exams, conferences and seminars; in every academic activity in which different conceptions of science clash as an expression of class struggle. this aspect of philosophy in sociology needs further elaboration, for class struggle in social theory is directly related to, and even a part of the proletarian class struggle. one simply has to compare the development of marxist studies where the proletarian movement is strong, in such countries as italy and france with that of english canada or the united states where it is weak. also, the relative autonomy of ideological apparatuses such as the university is crucial in explaining the current tolerance and even the need for a token marxist in each social science department of these "liberal" institutions. these are some fundamental aspects of philosophy as class struggle in the social sciences which a detailed analysis would have to include. the struggle is ideological but it is class struggle nevertheless, and it permeates the university. in conclusion, the problem is not simply that of identifying "philosophical underpinnings" in social theory, but rather that of replacing idealist philosophy with materialist philosophy. to do so is to challenge and weaken the dominant ideology as it exists in social science and as it is institutionalized within academia. 105 alternate routes conclusion the relationship between philosophy and sociological theory has been described in this paper as utterly lacking in much of the literature, and quite superficial in most of the rest. some of the resulting problems were indicated, as well as one attempt to use philosophy of science to overcome them. that competing philosophies of science tend to result in theoretical relativity forced the analysis one step further, to the materialism-idealism dichotomy. an easy criticism of this paper will be that these two world views, or conceptualizations have not been outlined. similarly the points of historical materialism, dialectical materialism, and class struggle in academia, especially in relation to sociology, were not fully elaborated. to reply by refering to one's sources is not very satisfactory. that these points in themselves provide more than* enough material for another lengthy paper is a partial excuse. after all, these points were presented simply to indicate the direction a more complete analysis should take. another partial answer is that many critics insist other people do the work for them. parading under different shades of radicalism, they display a chronic allergy to marxist classics and serious neoharxist literature. eager to attack numerous injustices in society, these "safe radicals" insist on constantly referring to theoretical models and approaches which, at their best, have never lead to anything but reformism. satisfied with diluted and eroded interpretations of marxist science, they are unable to penetrate beyond the intellectual barriers of the dominant paradigm. 106 sociology.. .materialism inasmuch as the university remains liberal, and bourgeois hegemony is not too threatened, either internally, or at the world level such as in recent events in africa, marxists can expect tokenism to continue. in liberal institutions, marxist philosophy and science can be defended. if conditions worsen, we can expect some replay of mccarthyite witchhunts, in a conservative setting, marxists will be lucky if they can get away with competing philosophies of science. 107 alternate routes footnotes 1. a full article could be written on this topic alone, illustrating the influence of hayek, hempel, and wittgenstein for example on sociologists. one is also reminded of the popper-adorno debate among others. t. kuhn's the structure of scientific revolutions has had a significant impact on sociology, of which certain aspects will be discussed in this paper. 2. for a lengthy discussion and marxist critique of the influence of kuhn and his use of the paradigm concept on sociology see allen (l975 : 3-66). 3. in reaction to reviewers, kuhn attempted to clarify his term by redefining the metaphysical level as a "disciplinary matrix',' a shared system of symbols, beliefs, models and values, which identify a scientific community (1970 i 176-186). the second level, he now refers to as exemplars which while being part of the matrix, are of a lower order. these provide models as examples from which solutions to current research problems can be drawn. the term "paradigm" could be retained for this level, according to kuhn (1970:186-190). 4,_ turner's use of the concept paradigm conforms closely to that of kuhn. also his account of sociological theory can correspond to kuhn's theory if one sees structural-functionalisra as a dominant paradigm carrying this discipline through a period of "normal science" over the last two generations or^so, and ethnomethodology as the emerging paradigm, in this "crisis of sociology". however this would be unfair to turner since his account has relatively little to do with kuhn's theory, depite the easy similarity. 5. allen (l975 :^2) is quite categorical on this point. he states that the only two conceptualizations of social reality possible are of static versus dynamic phenomenon. it is on either one of these two irreconcilable initial assumptions that various social theories are erected, adding further supporting assumptions as they develope. the premise of social reality as static phenomenon is so fundamental to accepted theories of social reality that practitioners hardly ever question it. according to allen, this initial premise is so pervasive that discussions usually remain at the level of secondary assumptions and differences. 6. for incisive reviews and critiques of gouldner's book, see shaw(l973) for a narxian perspective; and rhoads (1972) for a positivist proparsons perspective. 7. thorns (1976) presents a collection of essays which address such questions. although most of the authors reveal their positivist training, they indicate at least an awareness that ethnomethodology and althusser, for example, are not simply branch offs from normal sociology". 8. an interesting example of one who discusses some crucial differences between phenomenology and positivist empiricist sociology and yetcan not resist the urge to call for merging these two approaches is thorns (1976:161-177). less remarkable examples are ritzer (1975; and catton (in thorns 1976:25-52). 108 sociology. . .materialism 9. van den berghe (196?) claims to synthesize marx and structural-functionalism. in fact he synthesizes an empiricist reading of marx with an equally empiricist structural-functionalism. the same argument applies to smart (l9?6) with phenomenology and marx, and zeitlin (1973) with marx and social psychology. for critiques of such facile syntheses, see applebaum (1978) and swingewood (l970). 10. turner ( 1978:21-22) makes much the same statement regarding comte and the separation of philosophy from sociology. 11. bhaskar(l975) refers to these as: empirical realism, transcendental realism, and transcendental idealism. bhaskar does not explore sociology as such, but presents a systematic analysis of these philosophies of science. 12. turner (1978:393) for example identifies three features to positivist sociology. these could be labelled phenomenalism, unity of science and nominalism. however his description is in such general terms that it could apply to more than one philosophy of science. more accurate summaries of positivism are found in thorns (l976:9-22;55_75; bottomore 1975*9; giddens 1974:2-8). kolakowski (1968) presents an excellent elaboration of positivist philosophy. giddens (1974) presents an interesting collection of articles by phenomenologists and critical theorists, against the positivism which he defends in the introduction. 13. hollis and nells (1975:4-10) identify these as synthetic and analytic statements, in economics. the major part of their book is a criticism of positivist separation of fact from theory, which provides the basis for a sustained criticism of neo-classical theory in economics. 14. for an excellent discussion of weber's position, and of some objections to it, see keat and urry (1975:196-204). 15. for a detailed analysis of the problems positivist economists face in developing correspondence rules, see hollis and nells (1975 '89-1 06). keat and urry (l975:20-22;l60-l) address this problem in social science in general, and in sociology in particular. 16. this aspect of theory verification is referred to as the "logical problem of induction" (keat and urry 1975'-15) or the "inductive problem" (hollis and nells 1975:11 ).c the problem is essentially that of predicting future outcomes on the basis of past experience. to do so is to go beyond knowledge provided by observation. for an excellent elaboration of this problem, that of correspondence rules, and the necessity for hypothesis testing as the only road to cumulative knowledge, by a positivist sociologist, see zetterberg (1954). 17. one of the most recent efforts at systematically exposing sociological theory is that of eisenstadt and curelaru. true to the positivist tradition, they seek to demonstrate the convergence of sociological theory since its inception by confucius and aristotle, as developed by the founding fathers (marx, durkheim, .etc.) not only in europe and in the 109 alternate routes ^£i ^"shout the world. (the index lists three continents ibcountries plus "conununist bloc" and "scandanavia" . ) however the n£lt? "^ the t^ h0rs face in this ^tensive caklo^e (footnotes ™%l) , ^"j ^^^ material" accounts for alsst so or thej?5 pages) is the fact that much of the literature refers to a "cri^»in sociology. recalling that cries of "crisis" generall? si™ important breakthroughs (preface iv) the^thov^^siin ^scribing the major paradigms, theories, and counter-msels and is ^mlltl^f their b f° ad^tellectual and instit^tiotl fra^em^'etesfsf+f t^le r° n^bendlx and lip3efs explanation ofmarx stratification theory (25) they are able to discover under all 2o^er er flt:h and dlscorf e n^. a -nimng thrust. "in one w^y or s svilstxius^flv^r^:^^"/11^5561 t0 marcuse phenomenology +!l tr 4 , ? / accepted or incorporated the basic premisses ofthe sociological tradition as developed by toennies, weber and scntim thl^n's; ui fs *" the st™tural-functional model and its varies"thus in the crucible of positivism, all contradictory theor varleties molten and after discarding some slag, a new alloy forms! with its arit^lf 1111 , 5 ? ^k' "* lts expla-tory power so overwentas to propel sociology beyond the narrow confines of present knowledgetowards uncharted galaxies of empirical reality. present *™»ledge 18. a somewhat older account of the origins and development of sociological theory, timasheff is as much a positivist as eisenstadt. for example, he spends four chapters on comte, spencer, durkheim and weber (total 53 pages) for three pages on marx. although number of pages is a weak indicator, he does label marx as "economic determinism" (^8 ) and phenomenology as "philosophical sociology" (ch. 21 ). 19. martindale (197*0 presents an interesting taxonomy based on the history of philosophy. his eight cell typology can accommodate any theory. however, since the whole typology is so abstract and general, and since martindale actually refers to very few exemplars, it remains a hasty sketch in need of a more thorough foundation even if it were an accurate reflection of sociological theory. 20. as demonstrated in the first part of the paper, the term "paradigm" is quite ambiguous for sociologists. in this context, i use the term in the sense of a body of theories which share the same philosophy of science. for now, i am using keat and urry's three philosophies of science as being relevant for sociology, and with positivist philosophy as being the dominant one. 110 sociology. . .materialism bibliography allen, v.l.; s ocial analysis: a marxist critique and alternative ; london: longman, 1975. alford, robert; "paradigms of relations between state and society" in lindberg, leon (ed) 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1975. kolakowski , leszek; "althusser's marx" in the socialist register , (111-128); 1971. ; the alienation of reason; new york: doubleday and co. inc. 1968. ; toward a marxist humanism; new york: grove press inc., 1968. kuhn, thomas; the structure of scientific revolutions ; chicago: university of chicago press, 1970. lazarsfelo, p.f.; main trends in sociology ; new york: harper torchbooks, 1970. marcuse, herbert; studies in critical philosophy ; london: new left books ,1972. ; reason and revolution ; london: routledge and kegan paul ltd.; 1955 (orig. 194tt marti ndale, don; sociological theory and the problem of values ; columbia, ohio: charles e. merrill, 1974. mehan, hugh, wood, h.; the reality of ethnomethodology ; new york: john wiley and sons ; 1975. merton, robert k.; social theory and social structure ; new york: the free press, 1968. oestereicher, emil; consciousness and social action, towards a structural dialectical conceptualization of action and thought ; ph.d. thesis; university of illinois: urbana illinois, 1968. parsons, talcott; the system of modern societies ; englewood cliff, n.j.: prentice hall , 1971 . rhoads, john; "on gouldner's crisis of western society"; american journal of sociology ; no. 78, 1972, (136-153). ritzer, george; sociology as a multiple paradigm science ; boston: ally and bacon inc. ; 1975. 112 sociology. . .materialism shaw, m.; "the coming crisis of radical sociology" in r. blackburn: ideology in social science ; bungay, suffolk: the chaucer press, (32-44). 1972. smart, barry; sociology, phenomenology and marxian analysis ; london: routledge and kegan paul ltd., 1976. stinchcombe, arthur; constructing social theories ; new york: harcourt brace and world inc.; 1968. swin6ew00d, alan; "comte , marx and political economy" sociological review , vol. 18, 1970 (335-349). thorns, david (ed); new directions in sociology ; london: david and charles; 1976. timasheff, nicholas; sociological theory ; new york: random house, 1967. turner, jonathan; the structure of sociological theory ; homewood, illinois: the dorsey press; 1978, revised. van den berghe, pierre; "dialectic and functionalism: toward a theoretical synthesis"; american sociological review ; no. 28, 1963; (695-705) walter, wallace; the logic of science in sociology ; chicago: aldine atherton; 1971. zeitlin, irving; rethinking sociology, a critique of comtemporary sociology ; new york: appleton century crafts; 1973. zetterberg, hans; on theory verification in sociology ; totowa, n.j.: bedminster press; 1963. 113 great recession-proof? shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism 2013 alternate routes edited by: carlo fanelli & bryan evans g reat recession-proof? carlo fanelli & bryan evans great recession-proof? shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism 2013 alternate routes edited by: carlo fanelli & bryan evans g reat recession-proof? carlo fanelli & bryan evans great recession-proof? shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism 2013 alternate routes edited by: carlo fanelli & bryan evans g reat recession-proof? carlo fanelli & bryan evans © red quill books ltd. 2013 ottawa www.redquillbooks.com isbn 978-1-926958-24-8 printed on acid-free paper. the paper used in this book incorporates post-consumer waste and has not been sourced from endangered old growth forests, forests of exceptional conservation value or the amazon basin. red quill books subscribes to a one-book-at-a-time manufacturing process that substantially lessens supply chain waste, reduces greenhouse emissions, and conserves valuable natural resources. includes bibliographical references. isbn 978-1-926958-24-8 also published as a serial: “alternate routes” issn 1923-7081 (online) issn 0702-8865 (print) red quill books is an alternative publishing house. proceeds from the sale of this book will support future critical scholarship. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research volume 24, 2013 editors: carlo fanelli and bryan evans book review editors: priscillia lefebvre and nicolas carrier editorial board: nahla abdo, pat armstrong, david camfield, nicolas carrier, wallace clement, simten cosar, simon dalby, aaron doyle, ann duffy, bryan mitchell evans, luis fernandez, randall germain, peter gose, alan hunt, paul kellogg, jacqueline kennelly, mark neocleous, mi park, georgios papanicolaou, justin paulson, garry potter, stephanie ross, herman rosenfeld, george s. rigakos, heidi rimke, arne christoph ruckert, alan sears, mitu sengupta, donald swartz, ingo schmidt, toby sanger, janet lee siltanen, susan jane spronk, mark p. thomas, rosemary warskett. journal mandate established in 1977 at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university, alternate routes’ central mandate has been to create outlets for critical social research and interdisciplinary inquiry. a scholarly peer-reviewed annual, ar works closely with labour and social justice activists to promote the publication of non-traditional, provocative and radical analyses that may not find a forum in conventional academic venues. ar seeks to be a public academic journal and encourages submissions that advance or challenge theoretical, historical and contemporary socio-political, economic and cultural issues. in addition to full-length articles, we welcome review essays sparked by previously published material, interviews, short commentaries, as well as poetry, drawings and photos. ar publishes primarily special-themed issues and therefore requests that submissions be related to the current call for papers. submissions must be free of racist and sexist language, have limited technical or specialized terms and be written in a style that is accessible to our diverse readership. 4 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism table of contents | 5 table of contents introduction from great recession to great deception: reimagining the roots of the crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 —carlo fanelli and bryan evans articles 1. the myth of canadian exceptionalism: crisis, non-recovery, and austerity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 —jim stanford 2. crisis and opportunism: public finance trends from stimulus to austerity in canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 —christopher stoney and tamara krawchenko 3. canada’s conservative class war: using austerity to squeeze labour at the expense of economic growth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 —toby sanger 4. stabilizing privatization: crisis, enabling fields, and public-private partnerships in canada. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 —heather whiteside 5. when resistance isn’t futile: understanding canadian labour’s fight for decent pensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 —joel davidson harden 6. what is trade union bureaucracy? a theoretical account . . . 133 —david camfield interventions 1. social property relations in the 21st century: an interview with ellen meiksins wood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 —jordy cummings 2. twenty-first century socialism and the global financial meltdown: in conversation with michael lebowitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 —rebekah wetmore and ryan romard 3. neoliberalization and the matrix of action: in conversation with neil brenner, jamie peck, and nik theodore . . . . . . . . . 183 —peter brogan 6 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism 4. austerity is bad for our health: gender and distributional impacts of ontario’s 2012 budget . . . . . . . . . . . 199 —shelia block 5. austerity and aboriginal communities: an interview with david newhouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 —carlo fanelli 6. climate change and crisis: in dialogue with simon dalby . . . 215 —jen wrye 7. the electro-motive lockout and non-occupation: what did we lose? what can we learn? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 —herman rosenfeld 8. beyond the economic crisis: this crisis in trade unionism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 —sam gindin reviews 1. christine pich —whitmore, elizabeth, et al. “activism that works.”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 2. natalie spagnuolo —engler, yves. “canada and israel: building apartheid”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 3. jillian l. curtin —toussaint, eric and damien millet. “debt, the imf and the world bank: sixty questions, sixty answers. . . 255 4. kevin partridge —hill, gord. “500 years of indigenous resistance.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 5. tiffany hall —frölich, paul. “rosa luxemburg: ideas in action.” 261 6. james braun —tully, john. “the devil’s milk: a social history of rubber.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 7. rebekah wetmore —brouwer, steve. “revolutionary doctors: how venezuela and cuba and changing the world’s conception of health care.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 8. naomi alisa calnitsky —cockcroft, james. “mexico’s revolution then and now.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 9. rania tfaily —ruben, albert. “the people’s lawyer.” . . . . . . . . . . 273 10. sabrina fernandes —dwyer, augusta. “broke but unbroken: grassroots social movements and their radical solutions to poverty.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 editorial introduction from great recession to great deception: reimagining the roots of the crisis —carlo fanelli and bryan evans on march 23, 2012, alternate routes in conjunction with carleton university and ryerson university’s centre for labour-management relations hosted the conference: the global economic crisis and canada: perception versus reality. the original call for papers which inspired the event and later this issue, stated: “it is now broadly recognized that the global economic crisis that struck in late 2007 is by far the most significant and wide-ranging since the depression years of the 1930s. while there have been signs of tepid recovery over the last five years, the international monetary fund (2011, p.xv) has recently warned that “[t]he global economy is in a dangerous new phase. global activity has weakened and become more uneven, confidence has fallen sharply recently, and downside risks are growing...thus, the structural problems facing recessionhit economies have proven more intractable than expected, and the process of devising and implementing reforms more complicated.” given fears of an ongoing recession, particularly as a result of europe’s sovereign debt crisis and a record level u.s. budget deficit, the global recession that struck in 2007 is by no means over. “in canada, however, the economic downturn has been shorter and milder than many of its g7 counterparts. in fact, according to statistics canada, while the canadian economy began contracting in the fourth quarter of 2008 by the third quarter of 2009 the recession had already passed. indeed, the great recession is allegedly no greater than previous slumps such as those in the early 1980s and 1990s as measured by job losses, home sales, bankruptcies, credit availability and consumer spending (cross, 2011). but numbers rarely, if ever, tell the whole story. federal, provincial and local governments across the country, regardless of political stripes, are turning to a range of austerity measures that will erode public services and the quality of public sector employment. it is also being demanded that private sector workers take pay and benefit cuts.” 8 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism despite official pronouncements suggesting a recovery is well underway, the articles and interviews collected here problematize prevailing characterizations of recession and recovery. rather than focusing on narrowly economistic measures, contributors challenge standard explanations of the great recession drawing attention to the multifaceted socio-political, ethno-racial and gendered dimensions of austerity and retrenchment. furthermore, instead of glossing over or ignoring the capitalist context that leaves workers dependent on the imperatives of capital, the analyses collected here take seriously the inherently antagonistic class relations that structure our daily lives. the challenge, as we saw it, was to bring together contributors who considered the uneven and often contradictory impacts of recession that stretch across the canadian political economic landscape. we are confident that the voices presented in this edition of ar have made a serious contribution to that objective. as the 2008 global economic slump made its way to canada, the initial response by the federal conservatives to a deteriorating economic climate was one of confusion and denial. in the midst of the 2008 general election p.m. harper suggested that there were some great buying opportunities in the stock market, while his finance minister, jim flaherty, insisted that canada would not run a deficit. six months later the deficit was estimated to be roughly $50 billion (laxer, 2009). despite dubious financial advice and eyebrow-raising budgetary forecasting, the conservatives have since gone on to win a majority government in 2011. like their counterparts across the provinces, most notably in ontario, alberta, and nova scotia —each province having elected a different political party —austerity and attacks against public services and unionized workers has been established as the orthodox policy response. needless to say, the shape taken by struggles over austerity and the protection of public services may well determine whether (neoliberal) capitalism continues uninterrupted or, alternatively, whether something new and historically unique can capture the public’s imagination. before introducing the articles presented here, however, we found it necessary to bring attention to what we are calling the great deception. it is plain to see that the assault on trade union rights and freedoms, the public provision of social services and working class standards of living are currently under attack and will remain so indefinitely.1 while austerity has been the buzzword of the last five years, when considered in historical perspective it is clear that 1 parts of this section are drawn from fanelli, 2012 editorial introduction from great recession to great deception | 9 canadians have been living with varying degrees of austerity for at least the last three decades (mcbride and shields, 1997; panitch and swartz, 2003). in this sense, public services and collective bargaining have been gradually eroded over an otherwise “permanent era of austerity” (evans and albo, 2010). the severity of the great recession has merely intensified and given impetus to long-term efforts to undermine the public production and delivery of public services and reduce workers’ ability to chart a path independent from the vagaries of capital. indeed, democracy in the workplace, understood as the ability of workers to have a say over how and what gets made, under what conditions and what rewards, are proving increasingly incompatible with the logic of capitalist development. since the 1980s, there has been a slow but steady downward convergence in working conditions and wages, backed by employer and state efforts to lower working class expectations. these efforts have been in combination with unprecedented amounts of personal affluence among certain groups in the midst of public sector austerity. . as the great recession recedes from public scrutiny in canada, its aftereffects continue to frame political debate and strain public finances. despite the public treasury bailing-out corporations, supplying new subsidies, lowering corporate taxes, and increasing state spending in order to counter the recession, the banks and capitalist classes continue to demand public sector austerity. emphasis has increasingly moved away from a critical investigation into the historical origins and root causes of the recession, excessive executive compensation, and even inquiries into the nature of capitalism to an emphasis on cutting public services and attacking those who produce, deliver and use those services, the poor, the elderly, and beyond. in our view, the redefinition of the crisis as stemming from a bloated and inefficient public sector and unionized workers’ wages more broadly, can be understood as nothing less than a great deception. this is not to imply that those who believe that the public sector is wasteful and unproductive are duped or foolish, nor to suggest that the public sector is uniformly a beacon of efficiency (since efficiency itself is a politically loaded phrase that often obscures more than it reveals), but to draw attention to the purposeful attempt to obfuscate, confuse, muddy, mislead and deflect critical inquiry away from a social and economic system —capitalism —that not only caused the crisis but constrains the scope for change. the essays collected here ensure that such a deception does not go unnoticed. 10 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism while greater detail is beyond the purview of this short editorial introduction and issue in its entirety, it is our contention that a new historical project that seeks to transcend (neoliberal) capitalism is urgently needed. a strong starting point for such a project —counter to the prevailing orthodoxy —is to expand the scope of the public sector. while the capitalist class bathed in excess in the midst of the crisis, politicians, the media and leading business pundits dogmatically asserted that workers must do more with less, that pensions, healthcare, unemployment insurance and social services were in need of modernization to better fit the new normal of declining working class incomes, increasingly ineffective collective bargaining, and global competition for investment. honest explanations as to why such social protections were no longer possible were few and far between. the fact that decades of cuts to high-income earners and corporations’ taxes had utterly failed to produce any real benefits for the majority of working people continued to elude the economic and political officialdom. quite paradoxically, decades of neoliberal reforms almost disappeared from the historical record as collective dementia (or deception) shifted the debate away from the origins and causes of the private sector-led great recession to a one-sided emphasis on the public sector. in our view, making the case for an expanded public sector necessarily entails the conversion of spaces formerly understood to be the sacrosanct domain of the private sector. nationalizing some parts of the economy, from the banking and finance sectors which sustain the institutional power of capital to the goods-producing sectors which create tangible outputs, may open up the possibility for escaping from the cycle of austerity and retrenchment which has long since characterized the body politic. democracy is never a fast-frozen state of being. rather democratic rights and freedoms are always a work in progress. expanding the terrain of the public sector via the democratization of finance and industry, carries the potential to deepen and extend such popular capacities, rights and freedoms. as marx (1875, n.p.) once put it, freedom consists in converting the state from being an organ of despotism superimposed upon society to one completely subordinate to it. thus an alternative class project from below must seek to extend the application of democratic forms out of the limited political sphere and into the organization of society as a whole. in a similar vein, marx also suggested that social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong, but always by the strength of the weak (marx, 1847, n.p.). despite the setbacks to trade unionists and social editorial introduction from great recession to great deception | 11 justice activists over the period of neoliberalism, new political forms and organizational experiments are necessary in order to turn defeats into victory. all things considered, contrary to claims that the great recession is a thing of the past —as p.m. harper and finance minister flaherty are keen to remind —the articles assembled here collectively shatter the myth of canadian exceptionalism by showing that the aftershocks of the recession continue to have grave implications. starting us off, jim stanford debunks the notion that canada stands as a bastion of economic stability and superior economic management. rather, he demonstrates the shortcomings of conventional economic indicators arguing, contrary to mainstream analyses, that canada’s so-called recovery has been incomplete and relatively weak when compared with similar organization for economic cooperation and development countries. stoney and krawchencko follow with an overview of the transition from rescue strategies to exit strategies, that is, the shift from stimulus to austerity. they analyze where and how large changes in spending and restraint have taken place within the narrative of ‘crisis’ and the political opportunism that this has afforded. their analysis shows that rather than abandoning the neoliberal project, recent budgets, policies and priorities indicate a more intense and comprehensive neoliberal agenda is emerging in canada. moving forward, toby sanger argues that the acceleration of neoliberal-inspired austerity budgets will accomplish the same thing as previous recessions: lowering wage growth and shrinking the share of labour’s national income. focusing on the 2011 and 2012 federal conservative budgets, he makes the case that conventional economic approaches are incapable of adequately addressing contemporary needs, thus an alternative framework is gravely needed.the following article by heather whiteside explores the troubled track record of public-private-partnerships (p3s) in canada when delivering public infrastructure and services. her chapter investigates how recent projects in british columbia and ontario —“p3 enthusiasts” —have enabled privatization measures while disabling public oversight. the fifth article in this issue by joel harden details the canadian labour congress’ (clc) “retirement security for everyone” campaign. harden discusses how the clc grappled with the complexities of canada’s pension plan and the concrete challenges encountered along the way. despite some important shortcomings in the clc’s campaign, harden stresses the importance of expanding canada’s public pension plan in accordance with rebuilding the political capacities of organized 12 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism labour. the final article by david camfield problematizes the uncritical treatment of ‘trade union bureaucracy’ by academics and labour activists asking what do we mean when we talk about the trade union bureaucracy? in short, he argues that the sources of bureaucracy in unions lie in wage-labour contracts, the separation of conception from execution in human practical activity, the political administration of unions by state power, and the trade union officialdom. this year’s interventions section, which continues ar’s long-held emphasis on pushing the boundaries of academic orthodoxy, brings together some of the most original and innovative thinkers in a variety of sub-fields. in her wide-ranging and insightful interview, ellen meiksins wood discusses the similarities and differences of the current phase of austerity with past policy objectives; what is meant by “political marxism”; ongoing debates about the value of the term “imperialism”; the significance of the occupy movements and horizontalism; and the importance of freedom as a politically animating principle. the following interview with michael lebowitz explores the current crisis of world capitalism and its relation to canadian exceptionalism; the present state of the anti-capitalist left and its relation to party politics; the contradictions of ‘really-existing socialism’ and what socialistic responses to the recession might look like. in “neoliberalization and the matrix of action”, neil brenner, jamie peck and nick theodore take us through an examination of the different forms that neoliberalism has taken over the years; the urban dimensions of the crisis and the specific ways in which cities reproduce capital accumulation yet create openings for organized resistance to the ongoing encroachments of capital; the significance of the right to the city and occupy movements; and the importance of counter-hegemonic strategies and alternatives to capitalism. in the following commentary, shelia block considers the gender and distributional impacts of the 2012 ontario budget. she argues that reductions to services will have disproportionate impacts on low-income ontarians, and racialized and immigrant communities. furthermore, block shows how cutbacks in public sector employment will increase inequality and unemployment, in addition to expanding the share of unpaid caregiving work done primarily by women. an interview with david newhouse follows where he discusses the impacts of austerity on aboriginal communities. newhouse discusses issues related to housing and poverty reduction; health and education; mandatory minimum sentences and their impact on rehabilitative services; the relationship between first nations communities and social justice; and the continuing importance of first editorial introduction from great recession to great deception | 13 nations studies. in his valuable study of the electro-motive lockout, herman rosenfeld addresses the shortcomings and limitations of union tactics and strategy in fighting against concessionary demands from the caterpillar-owned plant. he asks why unions’ responses to concessionary demands have been so tepid and unwilling to demonstrate some of the confrontational tactics of the past? while rosenfeld is critical of the union’s non-occupation, he concludes that unions themselves are incapable of posing alternative industrial strategies that reject corporatism and dependence on progressive-sounding schemes for competitive private sector projects. instead, he argues that this requires a larger socialist and anti-capitalist movement —left of social democracy —that could research, debate and place a range of alternatives onto the larger political arena. the final article by sam gindin argues that the ‘crisis’ that desperately needs addressing is not just the economic crisis but the crisis inside the labour movement. he argues that working people have now been under concerted attack for some three decades, culminating in the austerity agenda presented as the ‘solution’ to the latest crisis. gindin reminds that the last time an economic and social crisis this deep occurred —the great depression of the 1930s —working people responded by reinventing forms of labour organization: placing industrial unionism firmly on the map and introducing dramatic new tactics like sit-downs and plant occupations. he asks: what comparable institutional and strategic changes might emerge from the present moment? rounding off ar’s thirty-sixth year of publication and twenty-fourth issue are ten book reviews which explore issues ranging from social movements and progressive activism to indigenous resistance, revolutionary health care and political theory. in including a broad survey of recently published material we hope that readers will find our reviews section useful. this issue of alternate routes would not have been possible without the tremendous support of carleton university’s departments of: sociology and anthropology; political science; law; geography and environmental studies; as well as, the institute of interdisciplinary studies; institute of political economy; and the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral affairs. we would also like to thank ryerson university’s department of politics and public administration and, in particular, the very generous support —financial, administrative and otherwise —of the centre for labour-management relations at the ted rogers school of management, and its director maurice maze14 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism rolle. thanks are also due to eric leclerc and hillary ryde collins for their valuable assistance. without the above-mentioned sources of support, this issue of ar would not have been possible. we look forward to what we hope is a long and fruitful relationship in the promotion of critical social research. last but certainly not least, a sincere thank you to all contributors and referees who took time out of their schedules to write, review, revise and re-evaluate the articles assembled here. your commitment to the most pressing issues of the day is a constant reminder of the importance of dissenting voices. for that we are grateful. in the year since the publication of ar’s 2011 issue, we are pleased to have added an online photo and video section which contains a series of presentations from past ar conferences.2 thanks are due to pance stojkovski for his tremendous assistance in editing 2012’s online conference presentations. we hope that readers and viewers will find them useful for stimulating class and other discussions. as a final note, all previously published material from 1977 to 2012 are now fully available on our website —www.alternateroutes. ca —free of charge. references cross, p. (2011). how did the 2008-10 recession and recovery compare to previous cycles. statistics canada. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11010-x/2011001/partpartie3-eng.htm evans, b. and g. albo. (2010). permanent austerity: the politics of the canadian exit strategy from fiscal stimulus. in fanelli, c. , c. hurl, p. lefebvre and g. ozcan (eds.), saving global capitalism: interrogating austerity and working class responses to crises (pp.7-28). ottawa: red quill books. fanelli, c. (forthcoming, 2012). fragile future. public services and collective bargaining in an era of austerity. unpublished doctoral dissertation. carleton university, ottawa, on. international monetary fund. (2011, september). world economic outlook: slowing growth, rising risks. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/ weo/2011/02/pdf/text.pdf laxer, j. (2009). beyond the bubble: imagining a new canadian economy. toronto: between the lines. marx, k. (1847). the poverty of philosophy. http://www.marxists.org/archive/ marx/works/subject/hist-mat/pov-phil/ch02.htm 2 see http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/pages/view/video editorial introduction from great recession to great deception | 15 ———(1875). critique of the gotha programme. http://www.marxists.org/ archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ mcbride, s. and j. shields. (1997). dismantling a nation: the transition to corporate rule in canada, second edition. halifax: fernwood publishing. panitch, l. & d. swartz. (2003). from consent to coercion: the assault on trade union freedoms. aurora, on: garamond press. 300 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times book review the politics of genocide by edward s. herman and david peterson. new york: monthly review press, 2010. $12.95; paper. isbn: 978-1-58367-212-9. pages: 159. reviewed by: matthew nelson1 while genocide commonly refers to the killing or attempted killing of an entire ethnic group or people, its definition is highly controversial and the subject of extensive debate. the term is often used to describe diverse forms of direct or indirect killing, which has resulted in its “frequency of use and recklessness of application” over the past several decades (103). in the politics of genocide, herman and peterson argue that while members of the western establishment and news media have rushed to denounce bloodbaths in bosnia-herzegovina, rwanda, kosovo, and darfur, they have largely remained silent over war crimes and mass atrocities committed by allied regimes in southeast asia, central america, the middle east, and sub-saharan africa. as noam chomsky suggests in the foreword to the book, since the end of the cold war, we have witnessed the emergence of an era of virtual “holocaust denial” or “genocide denial with a vengeance” (7-9). in substantiating their argument, herman and peterson draw on years of meticulous research, careful documentation and in-depth, empirical analysis of atrocities and bloodbaths around the world. the authors have done an excellent job at exposing the double standards of the us news media and its hypocritical system of propaganda. in this sense, the politics of genocide offers a needed corrective to those who manipulate and abuse the genocide label for the purposes of promoting the expansion of imperial power interests around the globe. similar to herman’s past work, however, the book offers less in the way of a theoretical addition to debates surrounding the nature of genocide and imperialism, instead providing a series of well-documented case studies. like the five ‘filters’ in herman and chomsky’s manufacturing consent, the phenomenon of genocide is simply classified through four categories—in this case, of bloodbaths. moreover, while herman and 1  matthew nelson is a ph.d. candidate at the department of political science, carleton university (ottawa, canada). book review: the politics of genocide | 301 peterson, like chomsky, do perceive imperialism fundamentally in race and class terms, their use of terms such as ‘elite’ and western ‘establishment’ rather than class or ruling class tends to obscure the real material links between genocide, capitalism and western imperialism. for herman and peterson, “a remarkable degree of continuity stretches across the many decades of bribes and threats, economic sanctions, subversion, terrorism, aggression, and occupation ordered-up by the policymaking elite of the united states” (13). after the us emerged from the second world war in a dominant economic, political and military position, it had to confront numerous nationalist upheavals in former colonial areas by peoples seeking “independence, self-determination and better lives” (14). to counter these increasingly popular demands for improvement in living standards, the us supported a series of dictatorships in countries like indonesia, south vietnam and chile. although these “national security” states were “torture-prone” and “deeply undemocratic,” they helped improve the overall climate of capitalist investment by keeping their majorities fearful and atomized (14). when local dictators failed, direct us military intervention often followed, as illustrated in the cases of vietnam, and more recently, in iraq and afghanistan. the authors draw on the framework for analyzing mass killings provided by chomsky, and herman himself in their counter-revolutionary violence: bloodbaths in fact and propaganda (crv), first published in 1973. in this work, herman and chomsky conclude that it is obvious and demonstrable that us officials, with the help of the established media, would engage in “atrocities management,” by producing incessant propaganda to deflect attention away from us-approved violence, and onto its enemies. in its framework of analysis, crv provided four categories of bloodbaths: “constructive,” “benign,” “nefarious,” and “mythical” (a sub-category under nefarious). as herman and peterson explain, “[t]hose bloodbaths carried out by the united states itself or that serve immediate and major us interests are constructive; those carried out by allies or clients are benign; and those carried out by us target states are nefarious and (sometimes) mythical” (16). in essence, instances of mass violence are evaluated differently by the us political establishment and media depending on who is responsible for carrying them out. the authors apply this analytical framework in their current work by subsuming more recent bloodbaths under the four categories, which they argue are “eerily applicable to the present”, and “apply now with the same political bias and rigor” (17-19). using empirical measures such as the coverage of key events in the media, what the authors offer the 302 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times reader is more or less a classificatory schema or conceptual model for understanding bloodbaths rather than a specific interjection into theoretical debates surrounding critical accounts of genocide, imperialism and international law. today’s leading ‘experts’ on genocide and mass atrocities, including many journalists, academics, legal scholars and policymakers, are often careful to exclude from consideration the vietnam war, the 1965-1966 indonesian massacres, and the invasion and occupation of east timor by indonesia in 1975, the latter of which resulted in the deaths of somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians (although this is a hugely debatable claim) (18). the vietnam war, and the massive “sanctions of mass destruction” directed at iraq during the 1990s, are examples of constructive atrocities, where the victims of war crimes are deemed unworthy of our attention. however, when the perpetrators of genocide are considered enemies of the west, the atrocities are nefarious and their victims are seen to be worthy of our focus and sympathy. examples of nefarious atrocities include: cambodia under the khmer rouge, iraq under saddam hussein, halabja, bosnia, rwanda, kosovo and darfur. when systematic violence is carried out by us clients—such as indonesia in east timor from 1975-1999, israel in the gaza strip and west bank from 1967 to the present, or rwanda and uganda in congo—they are viewed by the us political establishment as benign and not worthy of condemnation. the final category, mythical, results from the inflation of numbers or invention of incidents by the us government, media sources and ngos to implement pre-planned interventions such as sanctions, embargoes and the funding of various ‘color revolutions.’ the politics of genocide has done much to emphasize the biases and contradictions of us foreign policy, but it should be read in conjunction with other theoretical contributions to themes related to genocide, imperialism and international law. first, while herman and peterson recognize that the history of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity demonstrates “the centrality of racism to the imperial project” (22), there is little discussion of why advanced capitalist powers and oppressed nations are, in the first place, not equal partners in shaping the world. due in part to their use of terms such as ‘elite’ and western ‘establishment’ rather than class, their analysis should be complimented by recent work that is more explicit in highlighting the centrality of racism to issues of class, capitalism and imperialism in the international system. while not directly touching on the topic of genocide, marxist theorists writing on current modes of imperialism such as leo panitch and book review: the politics of genocide | 303 sam gindin (global capitalism and american empire, 2004) and david harvey (the new imperialism, 2003) emphasize the extent to which current modes of imperialism continue to exacerbate racial as well as global class inequalities. identifying the class basis of the new imperialism would help identify some of the underlying reasons for why media coverage of genocides in the west is often silent with respect to crimes committed by the various client regimes of advanced capitalist states. second, herman and peterson are highly critical of the “selective investigation” and “selective impunity” of the international criminal court (icc) in prosecuting alleged perpetrators of genocide, especially, in the contemporary age of ‘responsibility to protect,’ the exclusion from its jurisdiction of the international crime of aggression, judged at nuremburg to be the “supreme international crime” (21). however, on this theme, the authors seem to imply that the responsibility to protect doctrine and the very notion of human rights are to be located outside of contemporary imperialism. in this sense, they are often ambiguous on whether they seek to defend a position of legal neutrality, holding out hope for the reformed international law and institutions, which marxist theorist of international law china miéville has recently argued in between equal rights (2006), are completely incapable of adequately resisting imperialism. not only does legal equality, in this sense, mask actually existing inequality, the appeal to international law tends to undermine the most effective avenue for advancing necessary political resistance against the new imperialism—building solidarity as widely as possible through social movements centered not only on antiracism, but also on class struggle. 304 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times 978-1-926958-01-9 163 book review cops, crime and capitalism: the law and order agenda in canada by todd gordon. halifax: fernwood publishing, 2006. $21.95 can, paper. isbn 1-55266-185-7. pages 1-171. reviewer: gulden ozcan1 debates around the notions of security, police, the state and the dissent have accelerated in the aftermath of the g8/20 summit in toronto. on the face of these debates, revisiting one of the ambitious contributions to the critical literature on police in canada is important. todd gordon’s cops, crime and capitalism: the law and order agenda in canada provides two primary insights that can be utilized in current discussions. first, gordon situates his analysis of the broader police project in the context of massive restructuring of social relations after each crisis of capitalism. thus, the increasing adoption of the ‘law-and-order policies’ by the canadian state since the 1990s is depicted in relation to the neoliberal restructuring of social relations after the downfall of keynesian policies. second, gordon’s focus on racialised and gendered aspects of policing in canada opens up the possibility for new approaches to locate this long-delayed discussion at the very centre of the materialist analysis of state power, capital and labour relations. gordon, by conducting a careful empirical study of legal regulations, demonstrates how police practices have served the systematic subordination of racialised and gendered populations in canada. the theoretical stance gordon employs in the book is informed by open marxism and the concepts developed by mark neocleous, one of the leading figures in critical police/security studies. the open marxism approach provides him with theoretical tools in defining the state as the political form of the class antagonism between labour and capital. even though the organization of social relations are 1 gulden ozcan is a phd student in the department of sociology & anthropology at carleton university. she can be reached at gozcan@connect.carleton.ca cops, crime and capitalism: the law and order agenda in canada 164 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research operated by the state and its apparatuses, gordon argues these operations originate from the struggles between labour and capital. gordon draws on neocleous’s historical analysis of the broader police project in relation to the rise of capitalism as well as his conceptualizations of the “political administration” and the “fabrication of social order”. paralleling neocleous, gordon defines policing as a form of “political administration” that has historically played an important role in the “fabrication of social order” (pp. 38-50). i shall also acknowledge a third theoretical stance gordon uses, that is, his critical attitude towards “marxist-oriented functionalism” and foucauldian “panoptical theories”. although he mentions the former very briefly only in the introduction, he spends a great deal of the first chapter on the latter. it is, therefore, important to mention gordon’s critique of what he calls “panoptical theories”, i.e., theories that take “governing at a distance” approach as their starting point. gordon pinpoints a “gap between the reality of contemporary policing and its portrayal” in this literature (p. 7). he identifies three main assumptions of panoptic theories: (1) policing is done electronically at-a-distance; (2) electronic policing is exercised equally on everybody regardless of class, race and gender differences; (3) electronic policing reinforces the emergence of more local and autonomous forms of policing (pp. 7-8). gordon’s position toward these assumptions unfolds in the question of “at a distance or in your face?” (p. 13). he basically argues that the new tactics of policing does not change the historical objective of police forces, i.e., targeting working-class, racialised and gendered populations through ever-ascending centralized and intense state power (pp. 8-27). drawing attention to the problematic aspects of panoptic theories strengthens gordon’s approach to police as a state-centred strategy. although his criticisms of the panoptical and at-a-distance approaches are persuasive, his equation of foucault with foucauldians is not. it is obvious that foucault’s work has generated a basis for both panoptical theories and governing at a distance approach. however, some aspects of these approaches contradict foucault’s own writings. gordon does not distinguish foucault from the foucauldians and thus presents a reductionist attitude towards foucault’s contribution to the literature on police. his miscomprehension of foucault’s oeuvre results in a few literally wrong assumptions such as the naming of ‘at a distance approach’ after foucault—which was originally suggested by p. miller and n. rose in 19922—, the rejection of foucault’s meticulous attention to material social relations, the denial of foucault’s understanding of police as a state-centric initiative at its birth, and his attack of foucault’s notion of “docile bodies” on the basis of the absence of agency. nevertheless, this confusion neither 2 rose, n. and miller, p. 1992 “political power beyond the state: problematics of government”, british journal of sociology 43(2): 173-205. 165cops, crime and capitalism: the law and order agenda in canada diminishes the strong basis of the arguments in the book, nor contributes anything to it. following the theoretical debate in the second chapter, gordon draws on the history of police in the making of the capitalist social order from the nineteenth century onwards. gordon defines this historical role of police as such: police power has been mobilized [by the ruling classes] to criminalize a series of street-based activities that either provide people with an opportunity to survive outside market relations or serve as distractions from waged work. in the process, policing has worked to constitute a class of labourers dependent on the wage for subsistence and thereby a bourgeois order rooted in the authority of private property and the subordination of working people to the imperatives of capital accumulation (p. 50). in what follows, he compares and contrasts nineteenth-century police practices with more current police practices and thus illustrates the continuous dynamic that lies at the very raison d’etre of the police project, i.e., targeting labour power to build a more orderly, disciplined, regulated and supervised society in accord with the changing needs of capitalism. the third chapter provides a brief history of the neoliberal transition from keynesianism in advanced capitalist countries, with specific attention to canada. in order to respond to the growing structural imbalances in the economy, gordon explains that labour costs have been reduced significantly since the 1960s through increasing the number of non-standard, non-unionized, and unqualified types of labour as a state policy. this of course was not a pain-free process. although the initial attempt of consecutive governments was to have policies of “austerity by consent”, gordon argues this did not work due to the disruptive power of labour at the time. as a result, the coercive power of the state has been increased and lawand-order policies increasingly adopted (pp. 54-57). the fourth chapter portrays that new regulations introduced with the lawand-order policies that target not so much the poor, but the contemporary indigent that seek to live outside the labour market. in this sense, gordon examines the vagrancy act of 1869 and shows that following the economic crisis of the 1970s, vagrancy status did not come back to the criminal code; however, substitutes have taken their place in an attempt to serve the same objective. this is evidenced, for example, in provincial legislation and municipal by-laws such as the safe streets acts, panhandling by-laws, and the adoption of targeting and intelligence policing strategies (pp. 82-85). accompanying this new work ethic has been a re-regulation of social assistance programs. gordon reveals that people in need of social assistance 166 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research due to unemployment are encouraged to gain and/or improve their “transferable skills” (p. 105). these skills are defined as self-discipline, getting to work on time, meeting the expectations of the employer and being motivated to work. in the last chapter of the book gordon problematizes how policing as “an administrative feature of state power” takes on a certain position when it comes to immigrant communities (p. 128). unlike some marxist approaches to immigration, gordon does not limit his account to portraying immigrants only as a source of cheap foreign labour. although the initial emphasis is put on the role of immigrant labour in filling the worst jobs canada has to offer, gordon does not ignore other circumstances surrounding immigrants. he especially takes issue with the conditions of women and non-white immigrants. for instance, he demonstrates how the points system used in immigration applications neglects the unpaid domestic labour of women and makes them rely on their husband in the application process (p. 115). moreover, he establishes the link between the exploitative immigration policies of the federal government and the cheap labour requirements of capital by drawing attention to the non-immigrant employment authorization program (nieap), live-in caregiver program, as well as the government’s blindness to nonstatus immigrants’ participation in the labour process. gordon also speaks to the fact that the criminalization of certain drugs are strongly related to canada’s immigration policies. he claims, for example, that the prohibition of opium in 1908 was a direct response to chinese immigration. the ruling class was concerned that opium shows “signs of non-conformity with “canadian” order, and that this vice of bodily pleasure might infiltrate the ranks of the white working class” (p. 130). the same applies to the prohibition of cocaine in 1911, cannabis in 1923 and khat in 1997, however this time as a response to black, mexican and somalian immigrants, with the explicit aim being to produce public order on the streets (p. 135). all in all, gordon’s book provides a significant overview of policing in canada. it has much to contribute to the current debates on the role of police in the current reformation of the neoliberal order. although gordon’s approach to police as a state-centred strategy leaves some questions unanswered such as the ever-increasing numbers of private police, he provides an accessible account to remind us that policing is a strategy driven by a moral discourse on the importance of employment and self-discipline, rather than a strategy to fight crime. whole book pdf what is trade union bureaucracy? | 133 what is trade union bureaucracy? a theoretical account — david camfield1 ‘union bureaucracy’ is an important yet vexed term in the study of trade unions and in radical politics. at worst, it can be a label pinned by left-wing activists on those union officers whose actions or beliefs are seen as repugnant. this usage confers the label of ‘bureaucrat’ on some union officials but not on those whose behaviour is seen as praiseworthy. the term is also used in a more serious way. many critical analysts (and others) have drawn attention to the existence of a layer of full-time union officers and staff and argued that this group of people – ‘the trade union bureaucracy’ – plays a conservative role in unions. there are many versions of this kind of analysis of ‘the bureaucracy,’ some much more insightful than others. yet there have been scarcely any recent attempts to refine and present a coherent theory of union bureaucracy.2 unfortunately, it remains the case that in the study of unions, as john kelly (1988) argued over two decades ago, ‘rarely is the term “bureaucracy” defined or its use justified on any theoretical grounds, and it is normally unclear which of several different definitions is actually being employed’ (p.155). moreover, theories of ‘the trade union bureaucracy’ understood as a group of people can function as blinkers to a critical understanding of the character of union activity itself. a focus on official leaderships can lead us to ignore or neglect how union activity happens, how the relations among members and between officials and members are organized. to put the same point 1 david camfield teaches labour studies at the university of manitoba and is the author of canadian labour in crisis: reinventing the workers’ movement (2011). thanks to david mcnally, charlie post, alan sears and sheila wilmot for discussions about some of the ideas in this article, earlier versions of which were presented at the annual meetings of the society for socialist studies in 2009 and at the 2010 toronto historical materialism conference. 2 brenner (1986), leier (1991) and some of the essays collected in hyman (1989) represent original contributions that attempt to clarify the character of union bureaucracy. the past two decades have seen very few theoretical contributions on this question. darlington and upchurch (2012) is a notable exception. 134 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism differently, bureaucratic forms of social practice in union organizations risk escaping examination when ‘the bureaucracy’ is the centre of our field of vision. when this happens, the result is a very partial understanding of unions as working-class movement organisations. consequently, this article proposes an alternative theoretical account of union bureaucracy and union officialdom (members who hold elected or appointed union office, and union staff). this account seeks to incorporate the best insights of the tradition of critical analysis of ‘the trade union bureaucracy’ (full-time union officials) into a theoretical framework founded on an original conceptualization of bureaucracy as a particular mode of existence of social relations, whose relevance is not limited to the study of unions.3 the development of an explicit conceptualization of bureaucracy as a social phenomenon and, on that foundation, an account of union bureaucracy is intended to address the problem of theoretical unclarity identified by kelly. another reason for addressing the nature of bureaucracy itself is that marxist writers on bureaucracy (e.g. mandel, 1992) have tended to pay relatively little attention to theorizing the phenomenon at the most basic level, in contrast to the care paid to concepts such as class. the account proposed here attempts to grasp core processes of bureaucratization within unions in capitalist societies. it identifies the sources of bureaucracy in unions as wage-labour contracts, the separation of conception from execution in human practical activity, the political administration of unions by state power and union officialdom. the perspective advanced encourages analysis that combines attention to different manifestations of bureaucracy throughout union organizations with examination of the specific role of full-time officers and staff (rather than one or the other). the article concludes with a brief discussion of how this theory directs our attention in the analysis of contemporary unions, with specific reference to the us and canada. trade union bureaucracy as the officialdom when the concept of union bureaucracy is used in a serious fashion (rather than as a superficial political criticism), it usually refers to a group of people. this is how the concept figures in classic sociological studies such as robert michels’s oft-cited book of a century ago on 3 an anonymous reviewer pointed out that this theory could be used to scrutinize the “’ngoization’ of social movements” and “the relationship between ngos and social movements,” but i am unable to address those issues here. what is trade union bureaucracy? | 135 working-class movement organizations (1966)4 and c wright mills’s 1948 book on us union officials, the new men of power (2001, p.224). union bureaucracy is equated with a group of people by most marxist writers. for ernest mandel (1992), it is a layer of full-time officials that has carried out ‘the usurpation of decision-making power’ within the union organisation; a stratum of full-timers who have not accomplished this are ‘an incipient bureaucracy’ (p.68). for alex callinicos (1995), the union bureaucracy is ‘a social layer made up of full time officials with a material interest in confining the class struggle to the search for reforms within a capitalist framework’ (p.16). robert brenner (1985) uses the term in a similar manner, and many more examples of this kind could be cited. this usage is also common among non-marxist radicals. for example, historian mark leier (1991) advances a perspective on union bureaucracy influenced by the anarchist mikhail bakunin. leier argues that the bureaucracy is made up of leaders whose ‘offices are protected from immediate and effective control by the membership’ (p.420). by including shop stewards as part of the bureaucracy (p.424), leier differs with the previously-mentioned writers, but he shares with them the idea that the term ‘union bureaucracy’ refers to a group of people. in identifying the widespread use of the term trade union bureaucracy in this sense, i do not want to imply that all those who use it in this manner theorize union bureaucracy in the same way or equally well. for example, callinicos (1995) argues that union struggle within capitalist society inevitably requires compromises with capital, which must be negotiated by workers’ representatives. some of these representatives become full-time officials and ‘the effect, whatever the beliefs of the officials, is to isolate them from those they represent.’ removed from the paid workplace and no longer employed by capital, they ‘come to see negotiation, compromise, the reconciliation of capital and labour as the very stuff of trade unionism’ (p.17) and oppose struggle because it threatens negotiations and union funds. mandel (1992)’s theory is different in important respects. in power and money, he sees the ‘cultural underdevelopment’ of the working class (the normal ‘status of the proletariat under the rule of capital’) as the basis of union bureaucracy (p.60). at the same time, he identifies an inexorable organizational logic that creates a bureaucracy: ‘the development of mass political or trade-union organisations is incon4 while michels’s focus is on political parties and he does not use the exact term ‘union bureaucracy,’ his work considers unions as well as parties and his discussion of party bureaucracy equates it with a group of people. see the comments on michels by perusek (1995). 136 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism ceivable without an apparatus of full-timers and functionaries. at the most basic level, it is impossible to collect, centralise and administer the dues of a million members through purely voluntary labour’ (p.59). leier (1991)’s notion of bureaucracy is different again, as he argues that the bureaucracy’s ‘distinguishing characteristic...is their power over the membership’ (p.420). my point is simply that these writers share a certain understanding: union bureaucracy means the labour officialdom. the strengths and weaknesses of these specific accounts is not my concern here, though it is worth pointing out that they are all more sound theoretical efforts than michels’s belief in an iron law of oligarchy rooted in the allegedly universal incompetence of ‘the masses’ and the inherent nature of organization itself (michels, 1966; barker, 2001; perusek, 1995) or lenin’s influential but deeply flawed idea that union officials are conservative because they are part of a ‘labour aristocracy’ bribed with imperialist super-profits (lenin, 1920; post, 2011). these theories highlight the significance of the existence of layers of union officials, particularly full-time officers and staff, and nothing that follows should be interpreted as dismissing the importance of this social phenomenon, to which i will return. the most important problem common to such accounts is that their focus on full-time union officials is conducive to neglecting how union activity is socially organized more broadly. at worst, it can lead to a depiction of union officialdom as a rotten crust beneath which lies a pure, untainted organization and membership. another pitfall is that in situations where there are few or no full-time officials – as is the case in many smaller union locals in the us and canada – the theory implies by definition that bureaucracy is not a significant issue, since there are few or no bureaucrats present. above all, focusing on the head can, so to speak, lead to neglect of the body. for example, callinicos (1995) devotes most of a chapter on ‘capitalism, the unions and union leaders’ to ‘the union bureaucracy.’ it says very little about how relations between officers (whether lay, to use the british term for workers holding union office who remain on the job, or full-time) and other members are organized in the country whose unions are at the centre of the book, the uk. it also pays scant attention to the nature of collective bargaining relations or how the regulation of unions by state power (the political administration [neocleous, 1996] of unions) influences uk unions, including the officialdom. questions about the condition of union organization in paid workplaces what is trade union bureaucracy? | 137 and in branches (union locals), levels of member participation and control, the relationship between unionized workers and the nonunionized majority of the working class and the gender and racial order within british unions are raised barely or not at all. this kind of critical analysis leaves many important dimensions of a union movement unexamined or treats them as of little importance. the elaboration and defence by ralph darlington and martin upchurch (2012) of the same theoretical perspective on full-time union officials for which callinicos argues is less narrow in scope. however, it has little to say about unions as bureaucratic organizations, rather than the character of the stratum of officials at their head. this suggests that to identify bureaucracy with ‘the bureaucracy’ is too limited a notion. we need a theoretical approach that embraces other phenomena too, not just full-time officials. if union bureaucracy is not to be equated with the officialdom, what is it? richard hyman (1989) has proposed that bureaucracy in unions is ‘a corrosive pattern of internal social relations manifest in a differential distribution of expertise and activism; in a dependence of the mass of union members on the initiative and experience of a relatively small group of leaders – both official and ‘unofficial’’ (p.246). to distinguish bureaucracy as a social relation from union officers and staff as a group, one can use the term ‘labour officialdom’ to refer to the latter. from this perspective, to the degree that the relationship between members and the officers and staff is one of dependence, then what we have is a bureaucratic officialdom. this approach has the advantage of conceptually distinguishing the phenomenon of bureaucracy from that of the officialdom as a social layer. it allows us to understand many contemporary unions as bureaucratic mass organizations headed by particular bureaucratic officialdoms. unfortunately, it also creates new problems: it severs bureaucracy from any notion of regulations that constrain agents, and its emphasis on dependence on leaders blurs the line between the problematic of bureaucracy and the broader problematic of subaltern agency, self-activity and leadership. the latter is relevant in situations where bureaucracy is absent or insignificant. for these and perhaps other reasons,5 hyman’s approach, while a thoughtful attempt to move beyond the limitations of a conventional marxist theory of union bureaucracy, is flawed and unsatisfactory. 5 see darlington and upchurch (2012) and the rejoinder by hyman (2012). 138 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism what is bureaucracy? to raise the level of theoretical reflection on union bureaucracy to a higher level in a way that allows us to understand many unions as bureaucratic mass organizations, it is helpful to pose the question directly: what is bureaucracy? i suggest that bureaucracy is best understood as a mode of existence of social relations in which people’s activity (labour) is organized through formal rules that limit their ability to determine its character and goals, and which they themselves are not able to alter with ease. although informal rules may also affect people’s activity in similar ways, one of the distinguishing features of bureaucracy as a social phenomenon is the formal character of rules, as recognized by max weber (1952).6 it should also be noted that the understanding of bureaucracy suggested here does not claim that all social organization involving formal rules is bureaucratic (as might be argued by supporters of an extremely individualistic version of anarchism); rules are bureaucratic only when they limit people’s ability to determine the character and goals of their own activity and cannot be easily changed by those affected. this form of organizing social relations, while commonplace in contemporary capitalist societies, does not originate with capitalism. bureaucracy can be found in societies that long pre-date capitalism. anthropologist david graeber (2006) argues that bureaucracy occurs where ‘social situations...founded on structural violence’ (by which he means ‘forms of pervasive social inequality that are ultimately backed up by the threat of physical harm’) are being managed (pp. 4-5). the development and geographical expansion of capitalism is associated with the spread of bureaucracy; as georg lukács (1971) noted, the concern for prediction and calculability in the capitalist enterprise observed by weber is part of a broader drive to subject different aspects of social life to ‘an increasingly formal and standardised treatment...in which there is an ever-increasing remoteness from the qualitative and material essence of the “things” to which bureaucratic activity pertains’ (p.99). one of the ‘forms of pervasive social inequality’ most relevant to bureaucracy is the separation of intellectual from manual labour and the monopolization of the former by a small number of people. alfred sohn-rethel (1978) argues that intellectual labour, as distinct from manual labour, is defined by ‘the use of non-empirical form-abstractions which may be represented by nothing other than non-empirical, “pure” 6 the conceptualization of bureaucracy being proposed here is obviously not weber’s. my point is simply that weber was right to recognize the significance of formal rules to the phenomenon of bureaucracy. what is trade union bureaucracy? | 139 concepts’ (p.66). intellectual labour in this sense, he contends, first arose with the emergence of philosophy in greece, a development made possible by the ‘non-empirical real abstraction’ (p.66) involved in a ‘social synthesis’ – sohn-rethel’s term for ‘the network of relations by which society forms a coherent whole’ (p.4) – that is ‘in strict spatio-temporal separation from all acts of man’s [sic] material interchange with nature’ (p.67). thus intellectual labour was made possible by ‘the generalisation intrinsic in the monetary commensuration of commodity values promoted by coinage’ (p.102). the first occurrence of coinage he dates to ‘about 680 bc on the ionian side of the aegean, in lydia or phrygia’ (p.59).7 a number of questions can be raised about sohn-rethel’s account.8 however, for present purposes, what matters is that intellectual labour has been a source of bureaucracy to the extent that it has been monopolized by privileged social groups with the power to impose restrictive formal rules that organize the life activity of other people. examples of such groups include priests and other office-holders in religious institutions and scientists in the service of state power. a related but distinct form of domination giving rise to bureaucracy is the separation of the activity of conceptualizing the goals and methods of human activity from its execution.9 we can see rudimentary examples of this before the development of capitalism, for instance in rule-books of military organisation and state administration and in patriarchal laws that authorize men’s control over women’s labour. but it is under capitalism that the separation of conception (thinking) from execution (doing) becomes pervasive. as cornelius castoriadis (1988a) observed 7 according to seaford (2012, p. 82), “opinion has now shifted to a date towards the end of the seventh century.” 8 to contemporary readers sohn-rethel (1978)’s historical argument as presented in compressed summary here may appear as simply an example of the kind of hellenocentrism that was so marked in eurocentric german culture in the 1800s. for discussion of egypt (where he locates the earliest initial manifestation of the separation of intellectual labour), asia and greece, see pp. 86-103. an assessment of his theoretical account would require an interrogation of both his general claim about the social conditions required for the emergence of intellectual labour and the specific geographical and historical coordinates he posits for its emergence, bearing in mind the critique of western european hellenocentrism raised by authors such as goody (2006). kapferer (1980) raises a number of questions about sohnrethel’s argument, including about his claim that social synthesis in ancient greek societies was based on commodity exchange. seaford (2012) defends sohn-rethel’s analysis. 9 i distinguish the separation of conception from execution from the split between intellectual and manual labour in order to help us recognize examples of the former that do not involve the use of what sohn-rethel calls ‘non-empirical form-abstractions which may be represented by nothing other than non-empirical, ‘pure’ concepts’ and to grasp that in contemporary capitalist societies intellectual labour itself is subjected to the separation of conception from execution. for a brief discussion of this in the case of physics see schmidt (2000, p. 140). schmidt (2000) deserves to be read by anyone concerned with bureaucracy in contemporary society. 140 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism in 1960, the ‘arbitrary end’ of ‘maximum production’ ‘is accomplished through the ever-heightened separation of direction and execution, by reducing workers to the status of mere executants, and by transferring the functions of management outside the labor process’ of producing goods and services (p. 273). as harry braverman (1998)’s better-known and slightly later version of such an analysis argues, capitalist development fuels an ‘incessant breakdown of labor processes into simplified operations taught to workers as tasks,’ creating more ‘labor from which all conceptual elements have been removed and along with them most of the skill, knowledge and understanding’ (p.319). even paul thompson (1989), who does not argue that the separation of conception from execution is a necessary feature of capitalism’s organization of labour processes, recognises that competitive accumulation drives capital to reorganize production in order to reduce costs, and that this ‘sets limits to the use of workers’ creative capacities and constrains attempts to dispense with hierarchical relations’ (p.243). whether one accepts the stronger or the weaker claim (or an intermediate position), it is evident that the separation of conception from execution takes place on a large scale in the sphere of paid work in capitalist societies. this is a feature of labour processes in capitalist societies in all but their earliest phases, and is often enforced through formal rules. although capitalist development creates new productive forces and patterns of workplace organisation that generate novel kinds of conceptual work, employers have historically proceeded to attempt to separate conception from execution within such new types of labour. the example of computer programming work illustrates this trend (p. 111-112). importantly, the process of separating conception from execution is not limited to the sphere of paid work.10 this separation is also basic to public political life in capitalist societies. in capitalist states with liberal democratic systems of government the contours of the political administration of society are decided by small numbers of elected officials and unelected high-ranking civil servants; other citizens are left to execute what is decided for them. whether in the relations between employers 10 a merit of castoriadis’s work is his sensitivity to this, but he errs in going so far as to claim that ‘the fundamental social relationship of modern capitalism’ is that ‘between directors and executants’ (1988b, p. 201). writing in 1963, castoriadis displaced the relationship between capital and labour from the core of capitalist society: for classical marxism, ‘society was seen as dominated by the abstract power of impersonal capital. today, we see it as dominated by a hierarchical bureaucratic structure’ (1993, p. 31). he contrasts ‘the market’ to ‘bureaucratichierarchical organisation’ as ‘the central structuring moment of contemporary society’ (p. 31). in so doing he wrongly conflates market with capital (value). such a perspective is extremely ill-equipped to understand the rise of neoliberal capitalism and its current crisis. what is trade union bureaucracy? | 141 and wage-workers or between state power and the governed, this separation is frequently accomplished by organizing people’s life activity through the restrictive regulations of bureaucracy. in the understanding proposed here, then, bureaucracy refers to a form of social relations, a way of organising social activity, rather than a group of people. this conceptualization is quite open, but also delimits the concept clearly. bureaucracy does not encompass all situations in which people’s ability to determine their own objectives and how to act are constrained. it is present when such constraint is associated with formal rules that people cannot easily change themselves. for example, a small business run in an utterly arbitrary and despotic fashion by an owner who ‘micro-manages’ a workforce of people carrying out extremely deskilled work and who goes to great lengths to prevent workers from having access to information about the enterprise’s affairs is not a case of bureaucracy. instead, it is a classic case of the employer control strategy that richard edwards (1979) dubs simple control. this conceptualization also recognises that bureaucracy is not the only phenomenon that can impede subaltern self-activity. the phenomenon of substitutionism needs to be distinguished from bureaucracy. substitutionism involves one or more persons substituting their own actions for those of a larger number of people. to put it differently, substitutionist actions are those which do not raise the level of self-activity among members of a given group. bureaucratic methods are often substitutionist – as in the case of union rules which allow rank-and-file members little or no way to be involved in union affairs and which assign all important tasks to officers and staff, thereby substituting executive members and staff for an active membership – but not all substitutionism is bureaucratic. for example, a militant local union president who preaches ‘leave it to me’ to members and attempts to squelch or take control of any initiative that does not emanate from himself is undoubtedly a barrier to workers’ self-activity. however, his behaviour should only be considered bureaucratic if (or to the extent that) it involves the use of formal rules that limit workers’ ability to determine their own goals and actions.11 the conceptualization developed here can help us to understand how bureaucracy can pervade the practice of unionism. it is broad enough to cover a range of practices found in contemporary labour movements, including some phenomena excluded by the ‘bureaucracy 11 my use of substitutionism is influenced by but not identical to that in cliff (1960), which discusses it as a problem in the relationship between workers and a political party ‘act[ing] as proxy in their name and on their behalf, regardless of what the workers thought or wanted.’ 142 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism as officialdom’ approach. for example, it alerts us to the fact that basic distinguishing features of how unions are politically administered by state power in canada and the us – the legal and contractual prohibition of mid-contract strikes and sympathy strikes, and the requirement to resolve mid-contract disputes through grievance and arbitration procedures – are sources of union bureaucracy. these legal impositions take complaints about the employer out of the hands of unionized workers and channel them into a formal process. once a grievance enters the process, it is ‘owned’ by union officials, not the workers affected. another example of bureaucracy in the labour movement is when union rules sanction the monopolization of access to important information by a union executive or negotiating team. members deprived of such information are less able to act independently. a union organizational structure that allows few or no opportunities for democratic decisionmaking by members during a strike is also an example of bureaucracy; even if the members have democratically set the goals of the strike, their inability to direct its course means that only a few people can determine how it is conducted. a union whose constitution gives members who hold no union office few or even no ways to participate in its affairs on an ongoing basis – for example, because general membership meetings are rare – is also bureaucratic. in such unions a few people conceive and execute union work, leaving most members with literally no way to get involved. when rules of order for the running of union meetings impede members’ influence, this too is a case of bureaucracy. these examples, which are simply meant to give a sense of some of the ways that bureaucracy can be manifested within union organizations, suggest just how much is missed when a theory of union bureaucracy focuses solely or mainly on union full-time officers and staff. the social roots of union bureaucracy what gives rise to union bureaucracy? it is arguably still true, as alvin gouldner (1955) claimed, that the root causes of bureaucracy are most often seen as human nature and the complexity and size of organizations such as unions (p.498-500). even darlington (2010), a marxist, has written that ‘a hierarchical and bureaucratic structure... is inherent in the requirement that unions are administratively efficient’ (p.9). as gouldner (1955) argues, such explanations, found in the work of theorists including weber, michels and talcott parsons, are shot through with ‘pessimism and fatalism’ (p. 498). a few years after gouldner published his challenge to the dominant sociological theories of bureaucracy what is trade union bureaucracy? | 143 of the day, castoriadis responded to the claim that large organizations must inevitably be bureaucratic by arguing that the need to organize centralization in organizations is indeed an inevitable and objective problem. however, it is a problem that can be resolved either through bureaucracy or direct democracy. ‘a general meeting of strikers, an elected strike committee, the commune, the soviet, the factory council – that’s centralisation’ (castoriadis, 1988b, p.207) or, more precisely, these are anti-bureaucratic responses created by self-organized workers in struggle to the problem of centralization. castoriadis’s demonstration that there are alternatives to bureaucratic organization suggests that theories which deduce union bureaucracy as simply the inevitable outcome of organizational scale are flawed. instead of adopting an empty fatalism, we need to explore the determinate social conditions out of which union bureaucracy arises. arguably the most important cause of union bureaucracy is the practice at the centre of unionism itself: negotiating the price of labour power. the subordination of wageearners to capital in the paid workplace sphere leads organized workers to seek to regulate aspects of their working lives through collective agreements with their employers. the unequal balance of power between capital and labour is the reason why workers tend to try to codify wage levels and conditions of work in contracts. only when workers’ collective power and willingness to confront employers is so strong that they find it unnecessary or even undesirable to fix wages or conditions will wage-earners not try to lock in such matters in contracts. the ‘episodic and discontinuous character of working-class struggle under capitalism’ (post, 1999, p.122) means that circumstances in which wage-earners enjoy such a highly favourable relationship of forces are both uncommon and generally short-lived. these rare situations have given rise to unions that refuse to sign contracts, such as the industrial workers of the world in the early 20th century and some early locals of the committee for industrial organisation/ congress of industrial organisations (cio).12 once contracts are in place, employers, who are concerned with the uninterrupted production of goods and services, have strong incentives to insist that there be no strikes for the duration of the agreement. similarly, they have an incentive to assert their control over how their employees work. since it is rare for the balance of class power in the paid workplace sphere in capitalist societies to be decisively in workers’ favour – after all, this is the fundamental reason why workers fight for collective agreements in the first place – unions face pressures to accept 12 see brissenden (1957), p.115, 324, 330, 371; lynd (1996), p.5. 144 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism limits on strikes and to recognize managerial authority. such concessions arise directly out of the relations between capital and labour in the labour market and the labour process. when formalized, they are bureaucratic: they limit workers’ ability to determine the character and goals of their activity. this, then, is the source of union bureaucracy at the very core of unionism, probably its most important source. although the rule-governed separation of intellectual from manual labour is an important source of bureaucracy in contemporary capitalist societies, above all in matters related to the natural sciences and society, it is not especially important in the case of union bureaucracy. if we follow sohn-rethel (1978) and understand intellectual labour as involving ‘the use of non-empirical form-abstractions which may be represented by nothing other than non-empirical, ‘pure’ concepts’ (p.66) – for example, abstract time, space and motion – then it is difficult to see them as important to unionism. a far more important source of union bureaucracy is the separation of conception from execution. this is a key element of the alienation of labour – the structural lack of control by workers over the labour process, workplace organization and production in general – that is a hallmark of capitalist societies after their earliest phases (rinehart, 2006). in societies in which the separation of conception from execution has become normalized, or even just common, it is little surprise that workers tend to organize unions in ways that bureaucratically reflect and reproduce this separation. organizing in this way is consistent with how many aspects of their social lives are structured, including schooling, paid work, state-citizen relations and, often, voluntary associations. the separation between conception and execution can be seen in, for example, union rules that give enormous decision-making power to staff and elected officers, treating the membership as passive executants. this corresponds to how many employers treat employees, state officials treat citizens and religious authorities treat members of their congregations. nevertheless, it is also noteworthy that the tendency for workers to organize unions in ways that embody this dominant feature of capitalist society coexists with a countertendency: workers can and do organize in directly democratic ways. this democratic impulse arises out of experiences of workers’ self-activity and self-organization, and disrupts the separation between conception and execution. it can be observed most clearly in the most democratic contemporary unions, such as the fledgling national union of healthcare workers in the us (early, 2011); the unions affiliated with france’s union syndicale solidaires federation what is trade union bureaucracy? | 145 (coupé, 2007); and in forms of collective action such as strikes in which workers make important decisions in mass meetings and elect recallable strike committees.13 many unions bear, to some extent, the imprint of both this democratic countertendency and the tendency to reproduce the separation of conception from execution. the relative strength of the two in a particular case is the product of a concrete history. capitalist state power is also a significant root of union bureaucracy. states often impose formal rules that influence the social organization of unions. such rules are examples of what mark neocleous (1996) dubs political administration, his term for the legal and administrative activity of capitalist state power in civil society. political administration constitutes legal persons as both subjects of rights and objects of administration and regulates the working class through mechanisms that respond to workers’ struggles but in ways that aim to extinguish their subversive potential (p. 88-92, 110-116). it is very common for capitalist states, once they legally recognize unions, to use their legal and regulatory powers to compel unions to structure themselves in ways that limit members’ ability to determine the goals and methods of action. bans on strikes or restrictions on the timing and nature of strikes are perhaps the most frequently imposed restrictions. in the us, the ‘gradual metamorphosis of grievance arbitration from a voluntary and private mode of dispute resolution into a semicompulsory, institutional system for the management of complex enterprises’ (klare, 1978, p.377) was driven in large part by a series of judicial decisions, and the taft-hartley act of 1947 imposed important restrictions on strike action (green, 1980, p.198). in canada, legislation passed in the 1940s prohibited all strikes during the term of a contract and made grievance arbitration compulsory (fudge and tucker, 2001). however, we should not forget that bureaucratic rules concerning such matters need not be imposed by state power, since they also arise from within capital-labour relations in the labour process and the labour market, as argued above. for example, in the us the initial 1937 contract between general motors and the united auto workers ‘established a grievance procedure designed to circumvent the shop steward systems and prevent wildcat strikes’ and the 1940 contract stipulated that the grievance procedure would be the only way that the union would challenge management actions (edsforth, 1987, p.177, 193). the new bureaucratic state mechanisms for the political administration of labour that were instituted in canada in the 1940s amplified and generalized developments such as management rights clauses and grievance procedures 13 for example, the wildcat construction strikes in britain in february 2009 (gall, 2010). 146 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism that had already begun to emerge in collective bargaining (while also drawing on the us wagner act model of industrial legality and elements of pre-war canadian legislation) (camfield, 2002, p. 318). having argued that fatalist theories which simply deduce union bureaucracy from the existence of large-scale organisation are unconvincing, this article has discussed three social roots of union bureaucracy: contracts arising out of the wage relation, the separation of conception from execution and the political administration of unions by capitalist state power. it is now time to return to our starting point, the union officialdom. in addition to being a fourth source of union bureaucracy, it deserves some examination as a specific phenomenon. what about the officialdom? so far this alternative account of union bureaucracy has said almost nothing about union officials. some readers may be inclined to think that this is a theory of bureaucracy that gives bureaucrats an alibi. my concern, however, has simply been to foreground what is so often neglected or ignored in discussions of ‘the trade union bureaucracy,’ namely bureaucracy as a form of social relations. to use an imperfect analogy, this is no more an alibi for union officials than marx’s theory of the capitalist mode of production is an alibi for capitalists. the more bureaucratic a union is, the more bureaucratic its officialdom. but we should be more careful about making sweeping generalizations about union officialdoms than some radical theorists have been. that said, there is plenty of historical evidence that as collective bargaining relations become more established, giving rise to or strengthening union bureaucracy as discussed above, unions tend to acquire (more) full-time officers and staff. three examples will illustrate the pattern. as local contracts between craft unions and employers spread in the us and canada at the end of the nineteenth century these unions began to hire full-time ‘business agents’ to administer their contracts. as craig heron (1996) puts it, these staff, along with the top officers and organisers of the craft unions, developed into an officialdom which began to develop a concern with protecting the union organization, its assets, its procedures, and its contractual obligations, as well as their own status and salaries. by denying access to central strike funds or ordering strikers back to work, these full-time officials sometimes put brakes on workers’ anger and resentment (p.32).14 14 see also heron (1999) and green (1980, p.35-40). what is trade union bureaucracy? | 147 half a century later, the stabilization in the us and canada of collective bargaining between employers and industrial unions that had recently become more bureaucratic also brought with it an expansion of union officialdom; the need to process grievances within the new mandatory grievance and arbitration systems was an important reason for this growth (heron, 1996, p.80; green, 1980, p.187). in south africa, after the passage of the 1995 labour relations act, which established a new mode of industrial legality, the officialdom of the congress of south african trade unions swelled with the development of a layer of fulltime shop stewards (appolis and sikwebu, 2003). many more similar cases could be cited. the development of an extensive union officialdom is significant for a union movement. regardless of their ideological outlooks or personal commitments, full-time officials (whether officers or union staff) have material conditions that are objectively different from those of the members they are supposed to serve.15 they do not share workers’ working conditions. they are often more highly-paid than rank-and-file members and lay officials. full-time officials are only indirectly affected by employer attacks on wages and working conditions. full-time officials who deal with management on a regular basis are particularly subject to employer efforts to enlist them in efforts to limit work stoppages, get workers to accept managerial control on the job, motivate workers to work harder, and the like. these material conditions create a real tendency for full-time officials to be less sensitive to the realities of workers’ lives on the job and more attuned to management’s desires than are rank-and-file workers. this is true even when a union is an insecure organization with very few full-time officials and meagre funds. to the degree that serving as a full-time official actually becomes an occupation rather than a temporary commitment, this existence cultivates a different outlook. as the welsh radical pamphlet the miners’ next step observes, full-time officers become ‘”trade unionists by trade” and their profession demands certain privileges’ (anonymous, 1912, p.3), or at least tends to. for full-time officials who can contemplate remaining full-timers for years, the union ‘constitutes...a whole way of life – their day to day function, formative social relationships with peers and superiors on the organisational ladder, a potential career, and, on many occasions, a social meaning, a raison d’être.’ preserving this existence imposes its own imperatives: 15 this is also true for part-time officers (and other union members who are allowed time away from work for union activity), though obviously to a much lesser extent. 148 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism to maintain themselves as they are, the whole layer of officials must, first and above all, maintain their organizations. it is thus easy to understand how an irresistible tendency emerges on the part of the trade union officials... to treat their organizations as ends in themselves, rather than as the means to defend their memberships – to come to conflate the interests of the organizations upon which they depend with the interests of those they ostensibly represent (brenner, 1985, p.45). the material need to preserve the union in order to continue as a full-time official, which gives rise to the tendency to treat the union institution as an end in itself, is just as significant for a radical who takes office because of a sincere desire to further the fight for workers’ rights as it is for someone who becomes a full-timer as a way to boost their income and status and escape from highly alienated labour. an individual official may, of course, remain personally more committed to the workers she serves than to defending the union as an institution. the case of national union of mineworkers’ leader arthur scargill in the 1984-1985 miners’ strike in britain springs to mind.16 brenner’s point is not that all full-time officials are always more concerned with the institutional fate of unions than they are with workers’ interests. rather, it is that the officialdom as a whole cannot reproduce itself without preserving union institutions. there is more than one way to do this. an orientation to preserving union institutions is often accompanied with overtly class-collaborationist ideology, but need not be. it does not necessarily translate into a refusal by full-time officials to mobilize workers in struggles that defy the law to some extent – consider the political strikes organized by leaders of the canadian auto workers (caw) and most public sector unions during the days of action in province of ontario in the second half of the 1990s (camfield, 2000) and the efforts by leaders of the british columbia division of cupe to organize sympathy strikes to support striking teachers in 2005 (camfield, 2009). the central issue is that when union officialdoms become consolidated social layers their continued existence depends on the security of union institutions. consequently, the actions of full-time officials as a group will be influenced – and, in the last instance, determined by – the goal of preserving these institutions. this allows us to pinpoint why union officialdom as a social layer is a fourth source of union bureaucracy. motivated by the need to preserve union institutions in order to reproduce themselves as an officialdom, 16 see callinicos and simons (1985), which combines an appreciation of scargill’s strengths with observations about his political weaknesses. what is trade union bureaucracy? | 149 full-time officials tend to organize union activity in ways that reflect their distinct interests as a group. officials tend to favour ways of functioning that give themselves a great deal of decision-making power, at the expense of democratic rank-and-file control. as the miners’ next step puts it, of the privileges demanded by ‘”trade unionists by trade”...the greatest of all these are plenary powers...every inroad the rank and file make on this privilege lessens the power and prestige’ (anonymous, 1912, p.3-4) of full-time officials, who for this reason have an interest in opposing such democratizing moves. in short, full-time officials tend to organize union activity in ways that enhance their own sway. these are bureaucratic when they involve formal rules that limit the ability of members to determine the methods and goals of union action. this is a general tendency of the behaviour of full-time officials where union officialdom has become consolidated as a social layer; obviously there are individual exceptions. when this kind of practice does arise, it can be challenged by the influence of active members firmly committed to democratic methods designed to limit the power of full-timers, such as the radical welsh workers who a century ago proposed the miners’ next step. there are undoubtedly full-time officials who are so deeply committed to membership control that they seek to develop rather than curtail it. nevertheless, full-time officials do generally tend to promote bureaucratic functioning rooted in their distinct interests as a social layer. contrary to a common assumption, the sway of the officialdom is not always exercised against militancy or radicalism. full-time officials may try to advance one or both within unions within a bureaucratic framework. this can be seen, for example, in the militancy of the justice for janitors campaign initiated by leaders of the service employees international union (tait, 2005, p.188-189, 200-202) and the caw’s left turn in the second half of the 1990s.17 however, as a theoretical generalization, we can say that once a union officialdom has crystallized as a social layer it will tend to display institutional conservatism. the strength of this conservatism varies enormously, and is influenced by a range of factors including the extent of union bureaucratization, the degree of unions’ institutional security, the intensity of class struggle and the ideology of the union in question. the conservatism of union officials is not found only in stable contemporary unions in advanced capitalist countries; it 17 this turn and the caw’s subsequent evolution have not yet received adequate study, but see gindin (1995) and allen (2006). recognizing the possibility of bureaucratic militancy implies a questioning of the notion (present in voss and sherman [2000]) that militant mobilization is evidence of a challenge to bureaucratic unionism. 150 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism has manifested itself in far more fragile and less bureaucratic organizations. for example, late nineteenth-century us and canadian craft unions had weak legal rights, few officials and small bank accounts. yet, as discussed above, their full-time officials were increasingly preoccupied with the defence of union institutions as well as contract obligations and their own perks. in addition to noting the tendency to a conservatism based on the preservation of union institutions, we can also conclude that full-time officials tend to favour their own control within union organizations, thereby promoting bureaucracy. analyzing unions today where does this theory direct our attention in the analysis of unions? first, by highlighting the importance of formal rules that limit workers’ ability to determine the character and goals of their actions and which they themselves are not easily able to change, this approach directs our attention to the double-sided nature of collective agreements and labour law. both are often sources of union rights as well as restrictions on collective action. for example, many basic features of us and canadian labour law qualify as bureaucratic. in the us, the law prohibits sympathy (‘secondary’) strikes (lynd and gross, 2008). it also bans ‘bargaining over managerial decisions “which lie at the core of entrepreneurial control”’ and makes grievance arbitration ‘semicompulsory’ (klare, 1978, p.337). canadian law goes even further in its imposition of bureaucracy. it makes labour board certification the only permissible route to union recognition, bans recognition strikes, requires grievance arbitration procedures and (in most jurisdictions) a pre-strike compulsory conciliation process, contains a blanket prohibition of mid-contract, political and sympathy strikes, makes management rights clauses in contracts mandatory and requires the rand formula for union security (fudge and tucker, 2001, p.302-315). such instances of bureaucracy are widely accepted by unionists, precisely because they are mandated by law. as philip corrigan and derek sayer (1981) have argued, ‘integral to the law is a moral topography, a mapping of the social world which normalises its preferred contours – and, equally importantly, suppresses or at best marginalises other ways of seeing and being’ (p.33) and, i would add, doing. although many instances of bureaucracy stemming from law and contract have the straightforward effect of making it difficult for workers to engage in collective action against employers and governments, some – such as exclusive representation rights and the rand what is trade union bureaucracy? | 151 formula’s requirement that all workers covered by a union contract pay union dues – have effects on workers’ power that are more complicated. second, this theoretical perspective underscores the significance of others kinds of formal rules restricting the activity of unionized workers, chiefly those found in union constitutions and other union rules. in both the us and canada, bureaucracy is widespread in the form of organizational structures and practices at all levels – from locals all the way up to the top labour centrals – that make it difficult or impossible for unionized workers to determine what their organizations will do and how they will do it. in these countries, this kind of bureaucracy is not the result of the political administration of labour by state power. us laws in fact guarantee many union members a number of basic democratic rights (benson, 1979) while canadian law and administration impose very few requirements on the internal organization of unions (lynk, 2002). much more significant as an influence on union organizational structures in the us and canada is the pervasiveness of the separation of conception from execution in social life. the working-class movement is affected by the norms of societies in which organizations are generally understood to be properly run by small numbers of managers and ‘experts,’ with little or no popular participation. this approach has been unchallenged in the most influential political traditions within us and canadian unions. what heron (1996) writes of the politics of canadian union officials in the years after the second world war was also true of the outlook of many of their us counterparts (mills, 2001): they ‘had always emphasized the importance of expertise and centralized bureaucratic administration, rather than direct rank-and-file initiative’ (p.80). following the legal entrenchment of unions and collective bargaining in the us in the 1930s and in canada in the following decade, newlyconsolidated labour officialdoms put a stronger bureaucratic stamp on union organization. the perspective advanced in this article broadens our understanding of what union bureaucracy is. bureaucracy is not a group of leaders. nor is it an external cage in which unions are trapped. rather, as a mode of existence of social relations, it is, to varying degrees, a significant quality of unionism itself – to be precise, of particular forms of union praxis in specific times and places. where union bureaucracy exists, it is usually deeply internal to unions as workingclass movement organizations. for this reason, ‘resolutionary radicalism’ at union meetings and conferences and the denunciation of bureaucrats offer no escape from bureaucracy, which can only be 152 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism weakened through the promotion of forms of action whose character and goals are determined by workers themselves. self-activity, self-organization and democratic control from below are central to anti-bureaucratic unionism, in which the conception and execution of union activity are brought together through workers’ active participation in and control over their organisations. conditions which are conducive to this kind of unionism and practices that foster its development deserve study. references allen, b. 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(1952). the essentials of bureaucratic organization: an ideal-type construction. in r.k. merton (ed.), reader in bureaucracy (p. 18-27). glencoe: the free press. 156 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism 264 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism book review the devil’s milk: a social history of rubber, by john tully. new york, ny: monthly review press, 2011. $24.95 us. isbn: 987-1-58367-231-0. pages: 1-480. reviewed by james braun1 drawing upon marx’s famous formulation of commodity fetishism, john tully seeks to uncover “the whole buried world of social and ecological relations” that have historically constituted the production of rubber and its derivative products (p.359). rubber, tully argues, is an indispensable commodity for the industrial age, facilitating revolutions in transportation, sexuality and communications (p.41-45). its myriad industrial applications and unique properties meant that government and industry were prepared to go to great lengths to secure a reliable supply, abusing workers and ecologies in their wake. from the amazon rubber boom to the rise of synthetic rubber production in world war 2, tully documents the history of rubber production and processing “inextricably bound up with the rise of capitalism, imperialism and modernity” (p.345). although tully presents his book as “a social history of rubber,” his methodology focuses narrowly on labour history. from the subtitle, one might expect a comprehensive investigation of how rubber transformed everyday life from the viewpoint of “ordinary” people. the book hints at interesting directions such a history might proceed, but only ever briefly engages with them. the development of the rubber condom and its associated controversies suggests transformations in sexual and religious politics (p.44-45). likewise, the pneumatic tire had crucial implications for the ascendancy of truck transport over rails, but the political and social contests that facilitated this change are glossed over (p.139-40). the subjects of tully’s history are primarily workers, and their lives away from the worksite are not given much consideration. most of the book documents in detail the brutal labour practices that characterized (and continue to characterize) the rubber industry. wild rubber tapping in the amazon and the congo, driven by extortion and 1 james braun is an m.a. candidate at the institute of political economy, carleton university. he can be reached at jbraun@connect.carleton.ca. book review: the devil's milk | 265 sadism, was supplanted by hevea plantations and indentured labour in malaya, liberia and indochina, and ultimately synthetic production in world war 2 after japan captured most of the world’s natural rubber supply. his study of rubber production and processing begins with the early industrial revolution in britain, but is primarily focused on the birth and growth of the pneumatic tire industry in akron, ohio. despite rubber’s many applications, this is a reasonable limit on scope; as tully notes, by the end of world war 1, akron tire plants processed roughly forty percent of the world’s supply of raw rubber (p.138). his discussion of worker resistance is somewhat uneven. resistance tactics in akron, indochina and auschwitz are discussed at length, whereas one is left with the unlikely impression that indigenous workers in the congo and the amazon hardly fought against their oppression. the methodological challenges of writing history from the perspective of rubber tappers or plantation labourers are obvious; nevertheless, a social history should seek to highlight the agency of its subjects and to make visible the world as they understood it, not to merely paint them as the passive victims of forces from above. tully makes good use of tran tu binh’s memoir, a seminary-educated communist organizer who worked as a coolie “in order to carry out communist agitation among the michelin estate laborers” in indochina, but such first-hand accounts are exceedingly rare (p.239-40). innovative readings of other types of sources would shed a much-needed light on these hidden histories, a task crucial to tully’s project. among tully’s admirable achievements is to bridge the histories of colonial rubber extraction and metropolitan rubber processing. imperialism is a key theme of his work; at each stage in the rubber industry’s development, political and economic power intertwines transnationally to secure the rubber supply so vital to industrial modernity. among the more notable examples: british capital and peruvian desperation to assert sovereignty in the putomayo valley facilitated julio césar arana’s murderous rubber fiefdom (p.90-100). leopold ii of belgium’s instincts for political aggrandizement and financial enrichment coincide in his reign of terror in the congo (p.102-103). strikebreaking tactics developed by firestone in akron are used against plantation workers in malaya (p.273). ig farben’s collusion with the third reich creates legal complications for us efforts to develop synthetic rubber during the second world war, via farben’s agreements with standard oil (p.322-323). throughout this history, capital operates both as a productive and constraining force, both feeding the ravenous resource appetites of metropolitan industry and frustrating the efforts of those who would put a more “human face” on the labour processes involved. 266 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism given the importance of the colonized world in this book, there is space in his analysis to interrogate the coloniality of processes that brought rise to the rubber industry. the narrative he sketches in chapter one, of rubber as a mesoamerican article of ritual and curiosity transformed by european science and rationalism into a utilitarian commodity for industry, should be familiar to post-colonialists and other critics of modernity. the foundations of this rationalism have been thoroughly dissected, but tully does not engage with those critiques. rubber fetishism is described briefly as a cultural aberration on rubber’s march to utilitarian respectability, but could be used as an avenue to explore ongoing affective relationships to rubber (p.45-46). implicit in tully’s discussion of worker resistance in malaya is an acceptance of a normative, eurocentric conceptualization of economic organization. tully describes how trade unions and strikes emerged from “primitive protests” such as assaults on overseers and desertion, but he misses how this tactical evolution normalizes the relations of the capitalist wage economy imposed by european imperialism (p.260-270). in some respects, tully has done for rubber much of what sidney mintz did for sugar. in highlighting “the social character of the commodity of rubber,” (p.20) he demonstrates the crucial and brutal relationship between the metropolis and periphery that produces industrial capitalism. in other words, metropolitan machinery would not run without a steady stream of peripheral resources. 978-1-926958-01-9 151 the faces of austerity kyle hamilton philippines: a culture of impunity confronting afp soldiers, lanao del sur, autonomous region of muslim mindanao, philippines. election day in the philippines (may 10, 2010) a local marano woman right, confronts an armed forces philippines soldier looking for answers regarding a fight that took place inside a polling precinct only minutes before. the faces of austerity 152 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research couple in the green cart, manila, philippines. a young couple is found sleeping as the city comes to life for another day. the green cart is their home which serves as their bed and carries all their possessions. a common site throughout metro manila, a city where poverty is the norm and many are forced to live in such circumstances. 153 boy on makeshift raft – manila, philippines. young boy wades through garbage on a river in hopes of recycling his way out of abject poverty. the faces of austerity 154 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research girl in her doorway smokey mountain, manila philippines. young girl stands in the doorway of her home, which is constructed out of discarded spring mattresses. smokey mountain is a landfill site in metro manila where thousands scavenge for their livelihood. 155 toronto: g8/g20 summit flower offering, toronto, canada. peaceful protesters on the front lines offer police flowers in exchange for dropping their heavy arms. the faces of austerity 156 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research protester sitting on yonge st. toronto, canada. a protester peacefully confronts a wall of riot police in downtown toronto as world leaders gather only steps away to commence the g20 summit. 157 sitting protestors, toronto, canada. protestors join hands and sing to win the hearts of police and passers by. one man’s shirt reads, “i love you and i forgive you”. the faces of austerity 158 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research peaceful protesting, toronto, canada. as protestors marched down the streets of toronto, multiple police blockades were set up at each intersection, preventing protestors from gaining access to the secure area where world leaders gathered for the g20 summit. whole book pdf the development of capitalism and the subjugation of native women in northern canada ron bourgeault the subject of this paper is the subjugation of. native (indian and half-breed) women in northern and western canada as a result of the institution of capitalism under the aegis of the fur trade. the racial, colonial and class divisions which were imposed upon native women resulted in a form of subjugation which needs to be differentiated from that affecting euro-canadian women. in this paper i will deal with some of the historical background concerning native women and changes in their role during the development of capitalism in what is now considered northern canada. i intend to establish the basis of class and racial divisions, together with colonial relations that resulted from the particular form of exploitation and oppression of native women within the fur trade of the hudson's eay basin. the oppression of native women (indian and !*etis) can only be understood and dealt with if one first comes to terms with the historical development of their class, colonial and national (racial) status. it has been a common belief that the native population as a whole has somehow been isolated from the history of capitalism in this country and, hence, class relations, and, consequently, that their oppression is somehow the result of their being disadvantaged in relationship to the rest of society. in addition to this, there is a commonly held belief that the indian act as a piece of legislation has existed historically as a means of democratically defining for the benefit of indian people who they are as a people; and that if it did not exist the people would have long ago become assimilated into the greater 'white' canadian society. the indian act has never been, however, a guarantor of the native heritage, and to focus almost exclusively on this piece of legislation in an analysis of the position of native women in contemporary canadian society, as many women in the women's movement do, cannot give us any insight into the history of the struggle against racism and the struggle for emancipation from colonial, class and sexual oppression, nor the long standing resistance to assimilation mounted by native women. although northern native women have their own particular 110 history, their oppression is not something that is peculiar to their circumstances or territory. rathe., as with all women, they are, and have been for centuries, incorporated into a broader world system in which this oppression takes place. however, their subjugation, as differentiated from that of european and euro-canadian women, occurred under a condition of colonialism. this is an important difference even now since it has resulted in the existence of national or racial oppression. the oppression of women who have been living under a state of colonialism is different from that of those who are oppressed within colonizing societies. this is not a question of antagonism; but, rather, a difference that will probably force a self-determining or autonomous relationship to exist between native and euro-canadian women as the former become more organized. first contact the penetration of eritish mercantilism into the hudson's bay basin during the 17th century heralded the beginning of the class/national struggle of the indian peoples within that region. it also marked the creation of exploitable divisions between indian men and women, f^ercantil ism was interested in only one thing, fur as a commodity for the european market. the resident indian population did not prove, however, to be a source of labour that would produce or deliver that commodity in the consistent manner required by the merchant traders. commodity production for exchange was no part of the economic activity of the non-capitalist hunting, gathering, and foraging societies of the indian people of the hudson's bay basin. it was also impossible to introduce another source of labour into the territory; as fur production required the labour skills that the indian ill population had acquired over centuries. it was, therefore, incumbent upon mercantilism to alter the relations of production in the indian societies. as primitive communist societies, they were both classless and egalitarian. as classless societies, there existed no internal social division of labour beyond that of sex and age. there was no class/group of non-labourers existing solely to appropriate the surplus labour of labouring individuals or groups within the society. as a primitive commixiist society the appropriation of surplus labour was communal , but the productive mechanisms and social relations of production could be called backward or undeveloped. indian societies were egalitarian in the sense that individuals (or groups) held power and influence over what and how goods were to be produced and where and how they were to be distributed. in this sense, individuals within their respective societies were able to control the conditions of their work and production for the communal use of the whole society. although divisions of labour existed that were based upon sex, what women did, or women's work, was complementary to that of men. it was not deemed to be of lesser importance. the fact that women were able to control the conditions of their own work and production made, as leacock says (1981:13-29, 133-182), for egalitarian relations with men. the form of egalitarian relations varied, of course, from group to group depending upon the objective conditions of natural environment and the level of development of the productive forces. economic conquest the process of transforming the indian population into commodity producers involved imposing one mode of production upon another. in 112 order to accomplish this, it was necessary to alter or change the system of producing goods for their own internal use into the producing of goods for trade or barter. internal social relations among the people were altered, inequalities were created between women and men, and unequal external relations were established between indian and european. the imposition of a foreign economic system upon a national, in this case, an indigenous, group was the substance of colonial relations; it was also the way in which one people "conquered" another. in the case of the northern indian people it was not military, but economic, conquest. merchant capital did not necessarily totally destroy non-capitalist societies, supplanting them with the capitalist mode of production. as in europe, a free labour market was required in the interest of capital accumulation. merchant capital was quite compatible with different non-capitalist modes of production, as long as it could gain control of them and alter their productive mechanisms to what was required (marx, 1977b: 326-27) . [1] i would argue that there is a parallel to be considered between the establishment of feudal production in latin america (as explained by laclau, 1971) and what was established during the dominant presence of mercantilism in northern canada. i do not mean to suggest, of course, that the situation today is exactly the same. laclau argues that the exploitation of latin america peasantry increased along with demands by the world market and this is certainly the case with the indians of northern canada. [2] with the advent of capitalism, the indian came to be bound to particular outposts, harvesting wildlife no longer for personal consumption but as a commodity to be exchanged. in the course of becoming a commodity producer, the indian adopted from the merchant 113 capitalists new instruments of work such as the gun, traps, knives, and axes. although they owned their means of production, purchasing them with the money they received for their furs, they did not control them. the indians were kept from reproducing or repairing their own tools of work, tasks which remained in the hands of the merchant capitalists. in this manner, the production of the indians was ultimately controlled. they did not, then, act as totally independent producers. land became a subject of their labour process the working of the land for vriat existed naturally in the production of fur (marx, 1977a: 174-76; meillassoux, 1972:103). the manner in which the surplus labour of the indian was extracted in the production of fur determined all relations of existence. the social structure that emerged, the restructured nature of relationships between indian women and men, the form of colonialism that developed and the nature and form of the state that emerged within the fur trade, all were dependent upon the mode of extraction of the surplus labour (marx, 1977b: 791; marx, 1977a:209). since merchant capital was not interested in completely altering indian society, much of what appeared to be the 'traditional' economy or subsistence economy remained intact. the reason for this was that merchant capital was not interested in assuming the costs of the reproduction of the labour force. in this manner, the subsistence economy of the indian, and that included internal social relations of production (women's egalitarian inter-relationships with men), cort:nued to meet the ccsts of social reproduction of the labour force. hence, much of what was primitive communism, now no longer independent, ves allowed to reproduce itself and became a facilitating mechanism by vfiich indian labour was exploited. 114 i indian women within egalitarian society there are many ongoing debates concerning women's actual status within primitive communism or egalitarian society (see, for eg. leacock, 1981; reed, 1975; godelier, 1978) and whether or not men did hold power and influence over women's lives. some maintain that men dominated women and that this domination has its roots within innate characteristics of both men and women. quite frankly, there is not much to suggest that there is anything innate within the human species that predetermines their social behaviour. if, in fact, within different stages or forms of primitive communism, men did hold decision making power over women (in relation to certain tasks) , then, like the issue of female autonomy, male dominated inter-relationships must be considered within the context of the nature of the egalitarian society. in other words, if we reject the idea of domination as being innate, we would attempt to explain it in its social context. why did men play a predominant role in certain tasks? male domination of women in these cases may or may not have been more significant than in situations in which domination did not occur or those in which women held decision making powers. this article is not, however, concerned with sorting out the nature of egalitarian society and the autonomous role of women. its intent is to reflect upon the way in which indian women were in fact conquered and drawn into a class society and how male domination assumed a form that did not exist before the penetration of capitalism. now perhaps the question of male dominance in primitive communism could lead to another question. was it necessary for conquest to occur and male domination to be established that women's autonomy be exploited and then destroyed, or was it necessary just to establish the 115 conquering procedure through the use of males, with the result being the disintegration of primitive communism and the ensuing subjugation of women? if either was the case, what does it mean today in terms of strategy and tactics within the native movement? the egalitarian nature of northern indian society existed to the extent that all adults, both men and women, were mutually engaged in the socially necessary labour required for the reproduction of their society. as well, all adults participated equally in the distribution and consumption of the necessities of life. the autonomy of indian women existed to the extent that they had control over the conditions of their own work and over the distribution of what they produced within their society. women held power over what they produced and the work that women did was deemed to be as socially important as that of men. men did not have decision making powers over the work activities of women. women's social and economic power was held to be as valuable as that of men, even though they were engaged in sharing socially necessary labour (leacock, 1975:34). within the egalitarian society, indian women also enjoyed, as did men, sexual autonomy. women made decisions about their labour, and they held the same decision making power over their bodies. since they were not individually bound to nor dependent upon men, men did not hold any decision making powers over women's sexual lives, lb have sexual relationships with different men, before and after 'marriage,' was not seen as being out of the ordinary. parentage of children was not perceived as being all that important since children were considered to be the responsibility of the collective society. within egalitarian indian society, all individuals were as dependent upon the larger collective society as upon the varied forms 116 of family units. unlike the situation in class societies, where the family functions as an individual unit of production, the family in traditional indian society functioned as an integral part of the collective. the family as an economic unit of the collective society did not demand monogamy and, accordingly, women were not restricted through 'marriage.' relationships of 'marriage' between women and men were formed for the most part out of mutual domestic convenience. and, as the ensuing family formations, children for instance, existed as a unit in support of the greater collective society, they were not individual units responsible for their own individual livelihood (leacock, 1975:33). since women held mutual decision making powers with men over work and production within the collective society, they and their children were not economically or socially bound nor dependent upon men. divorce, for whatever reason, was arrived at through mutual recognition between women and men. abortion was considered to be a socially responsible act, with women having the right to self-administer if prospective children were seen as being an economic burden. the following description was written by an officer of the hudson's bay company in 1771; it is part of a general report on the social conditions of the indians during the fur trade: they have a very strange maxim of policy which is, obliging their women to procure frequent abortions by the use of a certain herb in this country, in order to ease themselves of the heavy burthen of a helples family (hbca, e2/7,7.9) . [3] what does all this mean in the everyday practical operation of egalitarian indian society? both men and women did in fact have particular tasks which they were required to execute for the general maintenance of the society. men did the majority of the hunting for 117 food and trapping for clothing, but women made clothes and prepared food. neither of these two 'types' of work was seen as being more important than the other. one did not hold a particular status at the expense of the other. as well, what was produced by particular people or individuals within the society was done for the use of the society as a whole. no individual, because of his or her skills, produced a good or a service and then exchanged it for something else that they might have needed. the fact that fur was eventually produced for exchange made that itan a commodity and it was considered to be the private property of the person who produced it. that was entirely different than producing fur for the use of individuals within the collective society. women and the development of class society the subjugation of indian women began when the collective economy in which they exercised their autonomy was changed. this change resulted from foreign domination which lead to the undermining or outright conquest of indian societies. tne change in the collective economy was signified by the specialisation of labour and the replacement of communal appropriation with individual production of goods or commodities for exchange. once this process is begun, the revenue from production of commodities becomes the private property of individuals. no longer does labour produce goods or services to be collectively used. eventually, individuals begin to lose control over the production, distribution, and use of the goods they produce. the existing division of labour within the collective society slowly becomes a part of the new productive process. since men were the primary producers of fur in the first place, as commodity production developed 118 they slowly assumed control over the production process. women, no longer utilizing the fur harvest for clothes or food, then began to lose control over the production process. their role became more that of support in the production of the exchange commodity. inevitably, the mutual relationship of men and women within the egalitarian society started to crumble, as did the egalitarian society itself (engels, 1975:233) . with the crumbling of collective society, the family no longer functioned as a productive unit of the egalitarian society. rather, it slowly became an independent economic unit in the production of commodities for exchange. as women's power diminished in relation to that of men, their developing dependent relationship as support workers eventually carried over to a dependent role within the family. this was facilitated by the development of the family as the primary unit of production under mercantile capitalism. as engels suggested (1975:221) women's socially necessary labour and their control over it, no longer was of equal value to that of men. it became exploitable and secondary to commodity production for exchange. the impact of mercantilism: economic conquest and the creation and imposition of class society on northern indian women the reality of merchant capital's first contact with the indian people around the coast of hudson's bay meant that the autonomous role of indian women was destroyed. the intent of merchant capital was the establishment of commodity production in which men worked for exchange and this necessitated destruction of the reciprocal relationship between women and men. with the development of colonial relations and the increasing 119 dependency of indian women upon men, some women considered it to be in their interest to advance themselves in relationships with european men. the european colonizers were only too willing to avail themselves of the indian women, especially since their position of equality with men provided the mercantilists with the opportunity to penetrate the communal society. indian women became a valuable commodity, exploited both politically and sexually in the conquest of indian society. the colonial subjugation of both indian men and women meant then, a double subjugation for indian women. in the early 1700's, the british wanted to move northward from york factory (where they had established themselves in the late 1600' s) to establish trade relations with the dene-chipewyan people. the british, through trading with the cree, captured a chipewyan woman whom they referred to as 'the slave woman.' their strategy was to familiarise the slave woman with the value of british goods and, once accomplished, use her as a means of penetrating and developing initial trade relations with the chipewyans. towards this end, the slave woman was deliberately kept within york factory for one year in order that she might comprehend the system of commodity trade goods and absorb the philosophy of private property. the slave woman was then sent throughout the interior where she organized four hundred chipewyan people for the first trade meeting. one hundred sixty of these were men who were present to conduct the trade negotiations. she organized and brought back to york factory some people to be trained in the selection and preparation of furs whirh w?r° of value for trade. as well, she arranged for men to be trained in the use of the rifle and other tools of work. the slave woman was so committed to the idea of developing trade between the chipewyan and the european that she made a solemn promise that she would not rest until 120 the whole of the interior dene people were delivered into a trade relationship with the british. so well did she understand the process of commodity production that was to be developed that, in return for her work, she requested only to be rewarded with a position for her brother — that he be made a trade captain. the following quotes are from the journal of the chief officer at york factory in 1716-17. the journal was kept as a means of recording how the british developed initial trading with the chipewyan people. it included as well comments on the death of the slave woman in 1717. the quotes serve to show the process of conquest and the utilisation of the power of women within indian society in order to facilitate that process : ...but these poor people have none but are forced to live by the bows and arrows and they cannot live a great many together, because they have nothing to subsist on but what they hunt but if please god when i have settled a trade amongst them and can bring what i am working upon to pass i will stop the trade with those indians for a year or two and lett them make ? on them and drive the cogg's to the devill.... ...the northern slave women departed her life after about seven weeks illness. the misfortune in loosing her will be very prejudical to the company's interests ...she was one of a very high spirit and of the firmest resolution that ever i see anybody in my days and of great courage and forecast also (endued) with an extraordinary vivacity of apprehension. readily taking anything right as was proposed to he and presently give her opinion whether it would doo or not. and i am sure the death of her was a very considerable loss to the company for the wintering here allmost 2 years with us and going one year to make the peace and being chief promoter and acter in it which has caus'd respect to her and carry'd allso a great sway among the indians.... as i have been writing about the slave woman [deceas'd] it will not be amiss to mention one thing. last june she gave away a little kettle as i had given her to carry with her when she went back into her country again. i (tax'd) her about it she said she had not gave it away. i sent to the indian as had it and fetched it aw3y and show' d it her. she told me was a iyer for he had stole it for she did not give it to him and said that her indians should kill me when i come to churchill river and did rise in such a passion as i never did see the like before and i 121 cuff d her ears for her but the next morning she came and cry'd to me and said she was a. fool and mad and told me that i was a father to them all and that she and all her indians would love me and i should never come to any harm. she had been very good ever since in giving me any information and always speaking in our praise to these indians and her own. we buried her ab't 4 a clock... (hbca, b239/a/2, 3, f .28-30,23) . the journal clearly reveals the power and status that the slave woman had within chipewyan society. although the interpretation given by the writer hints that she may have been exceptional, her exceptionality is really a natural outgrowth of egalitarian society. individualism and exceptional ism existed, but within the context of collectivism. making use of the slave woman, or any other person for that matter, to develop contacts to facilitate commodity exchange was not sufficient for conquest. a form of subservience and personalized property had to be created; hence the strategy of first developing trade, then, once dependency was established, stopping trade "and drive the eogg's to the eevill." this destroyed any notion of mutuality in trading and provided the basis for the development of a situation not unlike the lord-peasant relationship of feudalism. [4] in the situation of the slave woman, the kettle was symbolic of whether or not she was going to accept the idea of private property and ties to the european trader or whether she would cling to the notion of communal property. her being hit was symbolic of her new domination by a man and a european. as well as being exploited pol itically by the european, indian women were also exploited sexually. at no time throughout the mercantile fur trade were european women allowed into the fur trade territory of rupert's land and the ensuing shortage of women made indian women a valuable sexual commodity to the european colonizers. it was a 122 common practice for the resident officers to have permanent, or even just casual, sexual relationships with influential indian women as a means of developing and maintaining trade relations with the surrounding indian groups. the following was an officer's comment in 1743 at moose factory concerning the importance of a particular indian woman to the continuation of trade at that post. she apparently lived for a period of time with the officer within the fort and had a child by him: ausiskashagan came in here hawling his sick wife on a sledge, relieved them with provisions—she having been brought up at albany s used to these comforts, as being of ye blood royal & has a child by mr. adams, is very industrious in catching martins, i having had above two hundred from her husband already & must use them with tenderness on acc't of ye comp' ys interest (hbca, b135/a/14,f .63-65). in addition, women were taken possession of as a form of concubine by the officers as a privilege of their class. the same privilege was, however, denied the european servant class. it was a privilege that was taken in much the same manner as a feudal lord would exhibit towards peasant women in europe. the following description of the relationship between indian women and the european resident merchant traders around the different posts was written around 1771 by an officer of the company who himself engaged in the same practices: no european women are allowed to be brought to hudson's bay, and no person is allowed to have any correspondence with the natives without the chief's orders. .. .however , the factors for the most part at proper times allows an officer to take in an indian lady to his apartment, but by no means or on any account whatever to harbour her within the fort at night. however, the factors keeps a bedfellow within the fort at all times, and have carried several of their children home as before observed (williams, 1969:248). in order for commodity production to develop, it was important that the communal family be destroyed. the social interrelationships in which surplus labour was appropriated collectively had to be terminated or ruptured. although the actual development and process of commodity 123 production contributed to its destruction, the communal family had to be dealt with directly by merchant capital. the fur trade post displaced the communal society (hence the establishment of a form of feudal society) by arranging that individual families or family units become dependent upon and bound to each fur trade post for their existence. arrangements were made for the care of dependent women and children while the men were induced to go out and hunt or trap for trade, making it clear that women were no longer considered to be making a contribution to a collective society. in return for their maintenance, women were induced to contribute their labour to the upkeep of their respective posts. so what began to unfold was production by individual family units for the respective posts to which they were increasingly attached. women within these changing family units provided support work for the men and, at the same time, had their labour exploited in support work for each particular post. less than ten years after the chipewyan were drawn into fur production, the post of prince of wales was quite deliberately trying to displace the collective family: the indian which came here ye 22'd of last month went away with his wife in order to look for some deer, he leaving ? children by reason they would be a hindrance if he had taken them with him, he having been employed all this fall a making things necessary for our men which lay abroad this winter. so i think to entertain him he having a small family for to hunt for us this winter, also to knitt snow shoes & making indian shooes & other things is wanting for ye men in ye winter time & itt being usual to entertain an indian for ye same purpose (hbca, b42/a/5,f .7) . cx/er the years, indian women acted as support workers for their respective fur trading posts, making moccassins and snowshoes for the servants, preparing and drying meat and fish, etc. by the turn of the 19th century, indian women were doing much the same support work as they 124 had been forced into one hundred years earlier. this would continue for another hundred years. a description of women's post work was given in an 1802 report to london: we wish to remark that the women are deserving of some encouragement and indulgence from your honors, they clean and put into a state of preservation all beaver and otter skins brought by the indians undried and in bad condition. they prepare line for snow shoes and knit them also without which your honors servants could not give efficient opposition to the canadian traders. they make leather shoes for the men who are obliged to travel about in search of indians and furs and are useful in a variety of other instances, in short they are virtually your honors servants... (hbca, e239/b/79,f .39) . as the communal indian society continued to break down under commodity production, indian women gradually became more dependent upon men. the colonial situation presented an opportunity to some women seeking economic security or benefits from varied relationships with european men. if a woman was able to become a live-in companion or even a 'country wife' of a high officer or a living-out companion of any junior officers, the material benefits were considerably greater than that received as a peasant. the creation of the dependency conditions which forced women to seek these particular opportunities laid the basis for privileged positions and eventually class differences among indian women. to the officer class, maintaining an indian woman was considered a class privilege but, in reality, it was a hidden form of prostitution. as these same privileges were denied the servant or working class, the dependent relationship of indian women with working class european men became a more overt form of prostitution. to indian women, these relationships were, in part, an expression of their sexual autonomy but, within the colonial situation, it signified the creation of prostitution. the just-arrived officer reported in his journal at york factory in 1762, "that the worst erothel house in london is not so common a (stew) as the mens house in this factory was before i 125 put a stop to it" ihbca. b259/a/50, f.3-7). exiring the first one hundred years, mercantilism discouraged any formal family formations to arise around the posts outside of the indian society. the reason was that mercantilism did not require any form of a free labour market to develop outside the indian peasantry. in fact, that vas one of the reasons why european women were not brought into the country. family formations, either european or mixed, outside of the indians would have meant the growth of a labour pool that was not needed and, as well, the existence of non-productive families was considered a burden upon the trade. the capitalist labour market was to remain in europe while merchant capital exploited the indians as simple commodity producers. the age of f*ercantile nbnopoly competition: indian women and the creation of the labour market, 1760' s to 1821 the 1760' s until the turn of the 18th century was marked by the rapid inland penetration of mercantile capital through the aegis of the hudson's bay company and the northwest company. this was a continuation of the previous economic domination of what may be characterized as primitive commur.ist societies. this monopoly period was characterized by the further internal development of class and racial divisions, as well as an intensification of colonial relations with the indian population. as a result of the inland penetration, the costs of maintaining the post infrastructure and increased importation of european labour became astronomical. what began to emerge out of the double necessity to decrease overhead expenses and to retain labour within the service was the creation of a potential wage labour supply from within the fur 12 6 trade territory. inasmuch as mercantilism ves in need of a cheaper internal source of wage labour, there was also a long range interest in developing a national elite that would assist in the implementation of colonial rule. in addition to this, whatever other labour was needed had to be provided from outside. this was accomplished through intermarriage, which then created radical changes. the required elite could not be recruited from the indian population which was needed for commodity production. an internal labour market was encouraged from which mercantilism could draw wage labour when it was needed and to which it could expel labour when it was no longer necessary. this labour market was separate from the indian producers but was not intended to supplant them. cnce the labour market was established, it would reproduce itself through formal individual family structures and 'marriage.' the company began to realize the benefits of relaxing strictures on relations between european men and indian women. previously, family units outside of the indian community were not allowed and mixed-bloods born out of clandestine relationships between europeans and indian women were, as a matter of policy, to be treated as indians. now, however, male mixed-bloods were raised and recruited into the service of the company, as workers if they were born of the servant class and as a rising petty bourgeois elite if they were born of fathers in the officer class. as workers, they were used as cheaper labour than that of europeans and, as a petty elite, they were used in junior positions within the company to facilitate trade relationships and inland penetration. the petty elites were not considered to have the same class position as their fathers since they were "nationals" and the running of the fur trade was not to be entrusted to them. thus, there 127 was created a colonized native elite and wage labour class, which for reasons of class and race, were no longer to be considered as indians. nor were they allowed to be english. they were, as their colonizers, called them "half-breeds." with forced colonialism and dependency, indian women and increasing numbers of mixed-blood women found themselves in a position of having to take advantage of the system for their own individual benefit and well-being. native women (indian and mixed-blood) gradually partook or engaged, as the system demanded, in formalized individual relationships or family formations (as 'country wives' ) with european men. such relationships between ttetive women and european men, formed out of dependency and colonialism, further exacerbated class differences between native women. as well, the resident european officer class found it more fitting to their class position to take a mixed-blood woman as a companion rather than an indian woman. the following quote is an example of the situation in 1783 of the mixed-blood wife of an officer who made a request to london that their child be educated in britain. the correspondence also illuminates the strategy of creating a petty bourgeois elite through education: ...the request arises not from a sudden fit of affection from the infant but from a long-wished-for desire; from a duty i owe him, as well as from the affection i bare him, and i the more strongly wish it as his mother is the daughter of an englishman and has few or no indian friends to protect the child should any accident happen to me (hbca, all/4, f .208) . indian women and mixed-blood women born of the servant class were considered to be more suitable companions for the european working class. the distinction made between mixed-blood and indian women, either as developing petty elites or within the small working class, now took on a class nature, but one overlaid with racial divisions. 128 mixed-blood women were no longer, as was the case previously, to be considered as indians. as dependent women, their new role and class in relationship with european males did not, however, prepare them for thatlike their 'brothers' they were no longer indians nor were they considered to be english. so their new position as a native woman was that of a half-caste or half-breed. curing the fur trade, then, there emerged a new and interwoven structure of race and class. nothing was so revealing of the racist transformation of mixed-blood women as the educational system that was developed around some of the bigger posts at the turn of the 19th century. take as an example the instructions for education in 1807: ...education & religion should be imparted without distinction to the children of both sexes & that the female youth in particular should experience that delicacy & attention to their person their peculiar situation requires. native women as attendant on these young persons seem improper their society would keep alive the indian language & with it its native superstitions which ought to be obliterated from the mind with all possible care. it is therefore, humbly suggested that a female from england of suitable ability & good moral character accompany the school master (hbca, all/118, f. 2) . through education and the divorcing of mixed-blood women from their indian roots arose the anticipated elite class of women that would function as colonial companions for the resident british mercantile officers. as with their brothers, some mixed-blood women were sent to britain for higher level british education. the receiving of a british education prepared the half-breed elites ideologically as a national petty bourgeois class loyal to british colonial policies. but as non-white colonial nationals they were never allowed to be the equal of their british masters. for half-breed women, british education merely prepared them as class companions for the resident british colonial administrators . 123 the situation of indian or half-breed women within the forming wording class was quite different. the labour of i^fetive women within t. u e nixed family units became exploitable either as support work for the european men or directly as labour in and around the different posts. in this sense, native women were not divorced from their labour skills as long as the family units kept themselves outside of peasant society and their social relations of production. the age of british colonialism and imperialism: 1821-1870 the period from 1821, when the two mercantile companies merged, until 1870, when rupert's land was annexed to canada, was one in which formal british colonialism was established. the class formations and contradictions that developed during the era of monopoly competition started to crystallize after 1821, resulting in overt class/national struggles. the rise of national consciousness among the dominant ntetis population grew out of the class oppression and racial hierarchy that formed within the mercantile system. the hudson's bay company no longer exercised political power solely as an independent mercantile concern; but, rather, it came more closely under the control of the british parliament and colonial office. the company, in effect, became more directly an agent of british imperial interests. in turn, a political and state organization was created in assiniboia to deal with the developing internal class formations and divisions of labour in the interest of maintaining britain's imperial interests in the area. we have seen that merchant capital, from the 1780's to the 1820's, resulted in the creation of an internal capitalist labour market. the non-capitalist mode was not, however, destroyed. at this time, with the rise of industrial capital within britain, merchant iso capital in general, was no longer an independent or even the dominant form of capital. rather, it became a subordinate aspect of industrial capital within the developing capitalist mode of production. because merchant capital does not develop the productive mechanisms of societies in which it operates, its constant presence serves only, as marx pointed out ( 1977b: 327-28) , to underdevelop the society. relations of production within the fur trade were not allowed to change as long as merchant capital remained as the dominant form within the fur trade territory, and this was true even when merchant capital became merely an agent of industrial capital. as industrial capital continues to develop, the northern indian people continue to 'underdevelop.' whatever internal changes that came from the implementation of a capitalist mode of production and labour market the formation of a wage labour class and petty bourgeoisie did not serve to develop the society. rather, the class formations only became underdeveloped classes in an overall underdeveloped society. as simply one aspect of the overall development of capital, merchant capital's previously high rate of profit was reduced correspondingly. in the fur trade this led to greater exploitation of the northern indian population and the further erosion of their society, as the mercantile company needed to extract more of the resource for profit. after 1821, there was further systematic development of the labour market with all operations of the fur trade being centralized in the red river. individual family units were deliberately encouraged and marriages became more rigidly controlled. no longer were servants (labourers) or officers allowed to intermarry with indian women but, rather, only with half-breed women as per directive by a company official in 1811: 131 as the colony is at length set on foot & there is a prospect of civilization diffusing itself among us in a few years i would not advise you for the sake of the rising generation to consent to either officers or p^en contracting matrimonial connections unless with the daughters of englishmen & then only with the previous concurrence of the superintend ant (hbca, b239/b/82,f .9d) . both ftoman catholic and protestant churches became an integral part of the colonial structure. church-sanctioned marriages guaranteed the formalization of individual families as the basic unit needed for the reproduction of labour within the internal labour market and, as well, to formalized individual family units of production that operated out of the labour pool. native women outside of the peasantry became further subjugated in dependent relationships to men and further alienated from mutuality as the individual family increasingly became the basic unit of the developing class society. as well, more clearly demarcated class divisions among indian peasantry women, half-breed working class women, and petty bourgeois half-breed women developed. the half-breed surplus labour pool established in the red river provided the seasonal wage labourers needed to run the transportation boats (voyageurs) throughout the infrastructure, the seasonal and annual labourers to work around different posts within the interior and, as well, the plains buffalo hunters needed to produce surplus food (pemican) for distribution throughout the post infrastructure, f 5] as with other forms of labour coming out of the red river, the f*etis buffalo hunters were well organized around individual family units of production. in all cases, it was the women who did the support work within these units. if they were attached to different posts throughout the interior, then their labour also went tovards the support of their respective posts. for those women situated in the red river, labour went into the small plots of land the families were allowed to squat on iz2 as a means of supplementing their meagre wages. the buffalo hunt half-breed women and indian women, who were detached through marriage from their communal background, did the support work of stripping the buffalo carcass and preparing the pemican for trade. after 1821, the fur trade moved in a more systematic manner up the mckenzie river into what is now the northwest territories. the same patterns of conquering and quasi-feudal relations of production developed one hundred and fifty years previously were again implemented. slowly, dene women saw their egalitarian society and relations of production transformed into a class society. the formation of individual family units slowly came into being as the development of class society proceeded. the church and christianization was not imposed upon the indian population until around the 1840's. it was with christianity that the intellectual conquering of the northern indian finally took hold. as merchant capital became more an agent of industrial capital, its profits began to decrease and it was necessary to increase exploitation of the indian population in the production of fur. religion and the church were then used as a means of further facilitating and controlling the indian peasantry in the interests of a declining merchant capital. as well, the church functioned on behalf of industrial capital by extending its political sovereignty over rupert's land. within the indian peasantry, individual units of production had to be further exploited in the quest for profits and market. the dependent position of women was worsened, as was their exploitation within these units of production in a system whose productive mechanisms were even more 'underdeveloped.' in short, the church helped to define intellectually and to legitimate the existence of individual units of production within the indian 133 population. within the central operations of the red river, the company intentionally situated and developed a native or half-breed petit bourgeoisie in conjunction with the selkirk settlers and colonial administrative officers of the company. the half-breed petty bourgeoisie became commercially active by being contracted out to certain enterprises that the company considered to be too costly to manage themselves. they were established in such enterprises as transportation, fur trading and buffalo trading, with the company determining the price of transportation contracts and the only market for the individual traders. what emerged through this colonial economy was the foreign exploitation of both a national petty bourgeoisie, small working class and a large peasantry. it was the petty bourgeoisie and working class that eventually came to see that their national oppression resulted from class exploitation by foreign elements. in the 1840's the metis petty bourgeoisie engaged in political and economic struggle against the monopoly of the fur trade. their ultimate class intent was to displace the hudson's bay company and to become, themselves, the bourgeois merchant capitalists. in 1849, an armed insurrection occurred against the company's colonial rule. the response of the british was co-optive reprisals. concessions were made but, at the same time, british troops were brought in to maintain law and order. what looked on the surface to be concessions actually amounted to nothing more than a deflection of the metis class interests. regardless of how the eritish responded, they still perceived it as a thrust against their class interests. although this class confrontation was put down, it was an ongoing struggle against british colonialism and imperialism that again emerged in 1869-70. 134 a parallel situation for petty bourgeois native women emerged in 1850 following the anti-colonial outbreak of 1849. it had to do with the social status and relations of petty bourgeois ffelf-breed women within the then colonialism of the fur trade. a particular half-breed woman who was the daughter of a british officer and a half-breed woman, and who was the wife of the governor of assiniboia, became involved in a scandal. she was reputed to have had an affair with an officer of the british occupation forces. as she was a part of the colonial elite of native women in the red river, her reputed actions elicited a reaction from the resident european ruling class. her alleged immorality ultimately resulted in assiniboia becoming racially/nationally divided between the european ruling elites and the native population. european women at that time were slowly displacing half-breed women within the elite enclaves of colonial red river society. the actions of the wife of the governor of assiniboia were seen as unbecoming to a woman of such class position. regardless of whether or not it occurred, the political reality was that native elite women were excluded from access to ruling circles through dependent relationships with european men in much the same manner as the half-breed commercial petty bourgeoisie was prevented from having access to bourgeois capital. the ruling european class of the red river was becoming a part of the new colonialism and imperialism of the british empire and half-breed women were no longer seen as being of any 'value' as companions. as industrial capital continued to displace merchant capital within the world system, the british ruling elites in red river, although still administers of merchant capital in the fur trade, had their profits from the trade invested in railroad and bank shares in britain. their allegiances were with the new rising industrial order and, accordingly, 135 alliances with european women were seen as being more appropriate to their class interests. the anti-colonial struggle again emerged in 1869-70 under the leadership of riel. in spite of what has been written by bourgeois historians concerning the events of 1869-70, riel's main task was to establish bourgeois responsible government and to lead the people from under the historic yoke of colonial rule. his strategy was to gain access to capital through the establishment of a native liberal democratic state and a negotiated political relationship with the rest of canada. his belief was that the oppression of the native population was the result of the colonial exploitation by mercantile capitalism. by acquiring access to capital on their own, the l^etis could, he thought, establish new relations of production that would liberate the people from colonial oppression. this strategy was undermined and smashed by both london and ottawa. vnat this meant to native women was that whatever dependency relationships were established throughout exploitation by merchant capital, colonial relations and class formations were perpetuated within the developing canadian nation-state. in the north, london 'strategy was that the fur trade would continue under ever more backward and exploitative merchant capital. the relationship of indian women to the means of production, also ever more backward, was perpetuated in an ever more exploitative manner. with very few internal changes, conditions remained the same until after the second world war. it is then that profound changes started to occur. conclusion with the conquering of communal egalitarian society came the 126 destruction of indian women's egalitarian and mutual relationship with men. in its place was created a class society and the individual family as the basic unit of production within that society. as indian vomen were transformed into what i suggest is an exploited peasantry, the family unit became the basis of their exploitation. the labour of indian women, no longer existing in mutuality with men, became exploitable as support work either in relationship with indian men or with european men. the colonial relations that were imposed upon indian women placed them in a position of being sexually exploited by european men. this sexual exploitation occurred with women being used by the europeans to first conquer and then to develop trade relations with the indian population. early in the fur trade, indian women were used as created class and racial differences within the indian population, but in particular, within the population of indian women as they were forced to develop dependent relationships with european men. as a source of labour, indian women were more or less always exploited as support labour. as merchant capital became more 'backward' in relation to the development of industrial capital, the units of production and relations of production in which they then found themselves also become more backward and heavily exploited. with the influx of imperialism and the development of the market place after the second world war, the relations of production (instituted during the fur trade) broke down. the historic colonial agents were correspondingly usurped by the canadian state, the new agent of imperialism. in the north today, the struggles are many. an anti-colonial struggle continues but is now directed against the canadian state. at 127 the basis of all the struggles of class oppression and exploitation is the need of both women and men for jobs. but because of imperialism, the focus on capital intensive projects, resource extraction and the growing presence of the marketplace, the population is being throve into a labour market that cannot be dealt with. 'back to the land' projects and mentality cannot overcome these problems, as the labour power of the northern native is now in need of wage labour. in the most general of solutions there must be developed a relationship between the native and the greater white working class. it is in this relationship, with the working class echoing the struggles of the native, that the solutions through struggle will emerge. in the same sense native women and white women must come together and work out a strategy, a class struggle strategy that comes to terms with the roots and commonality of their oppression. to focus only on the reform of the indian act is, obviously, to focus only on the tip of the iceberg. notes [1] in the case of the plantation economies of the caribbean it was necessary that the indian population, since they were not willing to succumb to slavery, be exterminated in order that the slave mode of production could be established. [2] see also my soon to be published paper (fall of 1983?) in studies in fblitical economy, entitled "the indians, metis and the fur trade; class, colonialism and sexism in the transition from communism to capitalism." [31 although this was written one hundred years after the conquest, the exercising of autonomy over birth control by women still existed. this was partly because the indians were still responsible for their own social reproduction of labour and maintained some internal autonomous, i.e. egalitarian, relations. it is not until much later, (i.e. one hundred years) that indian individual family formations as units of production came under greater control, by 133 capital through christianization that attempts would have been made to do away with the autonomy of women over abortion. [4] although the relation between indian and trader was an instance of the penetration of capitalism, there ware certain similarities to the feudal mode of production: the psychological aspect of colonial dependency and of being passive to exploitation at every turn. certain gratis services were offered at the posts (eg. brandy) that served to enforce the developing servitude and, in return, indians ware expected to undertake certain donated duties and support work in recognition and acceptance of the 'new order of things.' this free labour also functioned as a form of tithe in recognition of the new owners of the land. [5] the production of surplus food from the buffalo had to be effective and complete. the plains indians ware still primitive-communist and more or less independent and, as such, would not produce the surplus required as a source of labour. it would have been necessary that they be conquered in a manner beyond economic domination, i.e. military. at that time, this was not feasible. instead, an alternate source of labour was introduced. it was necessary that the disciplined labour that was needed come from within capitalism and so it did, with the metis buffalo hunters. references engels, frederick 1975 the origin of the family, private property and the state. new york: international publishers. godelier, maurice 1978 "infrastructures, societies, and history," new left review no. 112. hudson's bay company archives, public archives of canada, ottawa section a 11 london correspondence inward from posts. section b post records 42. churchill or prince of v&les 135. moose 239. york section e 2. miscellaneous records. observations of hudson's bay. laclau, ernesto 1971 "feudalism and capitalism in latin america," new left review, no. 67. leacock, eleanor 1975 introduction to the origin of the family, private property and the state , by frederick engels. new york: international publishers. 1981 myths of male dominance . new york: monthly review press. 139 ••e rx , karl .311a capital , vol. 1. (moscow: progress publishers. 1977b capital , vol. 3. nbscow: progress publishers. 'eillassoux, claude 1972 "from reproduction to production," economy and society, vol. 1, no. 4. ?>eed , evelyn 1975 women's revolution. new york: pathfinder press. williams, glyndwr (ed.) 1969 andres grahams observations on hudson's bay, 1767-91. london: the hudson's eay record society. 140 296 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times book review economic democracy: the working class alternative to capitalism, by allan engler, halifax: fernwood publishing, 2010. $15.95 cad paper. isbn 9781552663462. pages 1-112. reviewed by: chris hurl1 in this world of highly specialized academic discourse, the art of writing a manifesto has all but disappeared. a good manifesto should be short, concise and all-encompassing. through sharp language it should cut to the core. in this sense, allan engler’s short book, economic democracy, should be seen as a contribution to the revival of the manifesto in confronting neoliberalism in canada and around the world. as a long-time activist in the labour movement, heading up local 400 of the international longshore and warehouse union (ilwu) and contributing to a strong left current in the vancouver and district labour council (vdlc), engler approaches the problems of modern capitalism as an organic intellectual. building on his earlier work, in which he examines the myth of market individualism, he diagnoses in clear language the many deep-seated problems inherent under capitalism and attempts to prescribe a solution, based on grassroots economic democracy. inspired by marx, engler situates modern capitalism in the disjuncture between the narrow restriction of property rights and the growing socialization of labour. on the one hand, ownership under capitalism is concentrated into the hands of an “entitled minority”. while this is often obfuscated through the apparent freedom of individuals to buy and sell things on the market, engler argues that market freedom is just another word for “letting the capitalists decide” (18). engler traces the implications of minority entitlement over the past three hundred years, which has entailed the destabilization of the world market, the destruction of the environment, the rise of colonial wars and the exploitation of peripheral regions by the core countries. on the other hand, people are increasingly interdependent, tied together in a complex division of labour. less and less capable of existing 1  chris hurl is a ph.d. candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university (ottawa, canada). book review: economic democracy | 297 outside of market relations, they become dependent on social cooperation in order to survive. with the growing socialization of labour, the myth of competitive individualism becomes open to contestation as, increasingly, working people come to recognize that productivity cannot be simply attributed to the entrepreneurial spirit of individual capitalists, but is the outcome of complex relationships advanced between workers, communities, and nature. while engler goes some distance in diagnosing the problems of modern capitalism, he does not quite meet his mark. the key to writing a good manifesto is not only exposing the dark and dismal reality, but also evoking the collective protagonist that promises a way out, cobbling together a shared sensibility that transcends the relationship between author and reader. a good manifesto stands between voluntarism and determinism, such that the transformation envisioned is neither the result of the inevitable march of progress, nor is it simply a matter of waking people up out of false consciousness. on the one hand, the book falls short to the extent that it falls back on deterministic arguments. just like the transition from feudalism to capitalism, engler argues, the movement to a post-capitalist world will be a gradual one. it will not be produced through a revolutionary dictatorship or armed uprising. no single event will bring it about. in fact, the change will be incremental through the advancement of workplace organization, community mobilization and democratic political action. through slowly extending the power of social ownership, the powers of the “entitled minority” will be necessarily weakened. eventually, a “tipping point” will be reached and the system will be transformed as a whole. but how will the power of “social ownership” be advanced? at times this reads as an inevitable process. from the emergence of the early industrial unions through to the development of social security and the advancement of the rights of women and people of colour, engler’s account of twentieth century history appears as a ceaseless movement forward fuelled by the growing socialization of labour. however, barring a few comments on the deregulation of capital flows, he fails to sufficiently explain the significant shift in ruling relations over the last forty years. the rise of neoliberalism is simply attributed to the failure of trade union leaders and single-issue social activists to challenge the system as a whole. it is attributed to the lack of faith by the working class that a viable alternative to capitalism exists. missing from engler’s analysis is an in-depth discussion of “socialized labour,” which he defines as “people who depend on income from 298 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times their labour” (45). the rise of socialized labour is in part attributed to a process of primitive accumulation, by which people are dispossessed of their land and are compelled to sell their labour for a wage. it is fuelled by a process of technological innovation, through which people are integrated into an increasingly complex social machine. however, the notion of socialized labour is limited. to the extent that it includes everyone, this category lacks analytical power. it does not provide an adequate means of understanding the divisions in progressive social movements or the problem of building solidarity in the broader community. on the other hand, engler poses the solution as a matter of proper consciousness. it is simply a matter of showing people that a world of human equality, democracy and cooperation is practical and attainable. “once the scaffoldings of capitalist property relations have been removed, people will understand that well-being everywhere depends on human equality” (62). unfortunately, engler does not convincingly show how such a world is possible. instead, he falls back on the evocation of the hypothetical situation, that moment when revolution has been achieved, minority entitlement has been abolished and the community finally sits down to make its own decisions. the problem is that engler does not explain who or what this “community” is. this can, in part, be attributed to his latent populism. he tends to target forces external to the community that are responsible for its downfall. the “working class alternative” is purely negative, in the sense that it is simply contingent on denying minority entitlement. however, there is no sense of how this is a positive program. aside from a few hints of union organizing and social activism, there is no discussion of existing movements that are taking concrete steps towards a better world. in the absence of such a discussion, the advancement of alternatives is inevitably abstract and schematic. at times, engler appears as a makeshift fortune-teller, promising an end to war, environmental degradation and social inequality, viewing this more as a natural outcome than as a process that must be actively pursued through the adoption of specific strategies and tactics over the course of struggle. “socialized labour” and “community” are the two black-boxes that engler leaves unexplained. however, the book does take us in the direction of rethinking these terms and their relationship in practice. certainly, the rise of neoliberalism over the past forty years reflects the advancement of a fractured landscape upon which citizenship and wage labour have been unevenly inscribed. in this context, how can we effectively struggle to reconstitute the relationship between “work” book review: economic democracy | 299 and “citizenship” in a manner that undermines the market individualism that has been so prevalent over the past forty years? for instance, how does this play out on the ground through the struggles of public sector workers to retain their collective bargaining freedoms? or in the struggles of illegal immigrants to obtain the right to residence, gaining access to public schools and hospitals? in appraising the prefigurative possibilities of such struggles, it is not enough to simply invoke the universal protagonist that promises a way out. rather, it is important to recognize how these struggles come to develop concrete relationships with a broader community in practice. 87 cutting government deficits: economic science or class war? hugo radice1 abstract: the financial crisis of 2008 was widely blamed on reckless and predatory behavior by the banks, and public debate therefore centred on supporting employment and reforming the financial system. but during 2010, the focus of attention has shifted to the deficits and debts of governments, which are widely believed to be excessive and unsustainable. it is argued here that cutting government deficits is not an economic necessity, but a strategy for justifying attacks on the living standards of workers and heading off reforms that might threaten the power of the dominant business and financial elites. keywords: public finances; keynesianism; neoliberalism; class rule introduction shortly before the british general election of 6 may 2010 an independent london economic policy think-tank, the institute for fiscal studies (ifs), called for the major parties to ‘come clean’ about their strategies for reducing the public sector debt, if elected to office (chote 2010). the ifs report resonated strongly with the overall public attitude towards the main political parties in the campaign: fuelled by the parliamentary expenses scandal that dominated british politics for much of 2009, many people had come to regard all politicians as devious and untrustworthy. the media response pandered to this attitude by unthinkingly echoing the ifs position. the centre-left guardian asserted that the ifs was “the leading economics think-tank” in the country, clearly implying that its views must be accepted without question. in this particular case that meant accepting not only that 1 life fellow, school of politics and international studies, university of leeds, leeds, u.k.; correspondence to h.k.radice@ leeds.ac.uk. this paper develops arguments originally presented in an article published in the bullet on 4 may 2010: see http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/350.php. cutting government deficits: economic science or class war? 88 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the political parties had to be transparent, but also that the public sector debt had to be reduced. to any critical social scientist, such claims require substantiation. leaving aside the less contentious first claim, that political parties should be open about their intentions, the purpose of this paper is to examine the second claim. is cutting the public debt really an objective economic necessity, or is it actually a deeply political stance, reflecting the interests of business and financial élites? in the next section, i look at the historical reconfiguration of public finances over the last forty years, focusing on the shift during that period from post-war keynesian state interventionism to the neoliberal hegemony that characterizes the current economic policy landscape across the world. the following section then examines the contemporary debates over public sector deficits and sovereign debt, arguing that because of the global savings glut that has persisted right through the crisis that began in 2007, it is not ‘economically necessary’ to give immediate priority to cutting public deficits and debts. in the final section, i suggest that the real reason for the cuts is twofold. on the one hand, the business, financial and political élites—in short, the ruling classes— were obliged in 2008 to summon the interventionist state back onto the stage to avoid a total collapse of global finance, and now want to banish it once more to a merely supportive role. on the other hand, the cuts in state spending and increases in taxes are being structured in such a way as to transfer income and wealth from working people to the rich and powerful: ironically, this has now been authoritatively confirmed in a detailed study by the self-same ifs (browne, 2010). this combined attack, at once economic, political and ideological, requires a response that breaks decisively both with the easy compromises of social democracy, as well as with the unpalatable elitism of vanguard communism. the political economy of state spending in historical perspective over the last forty years, the theory and practice of economic policy has shifted markedly from mainstream post-war keynesianism to the unchallenged hegemony of free-market neoliberalism. although there have been many elements in this overall shift—notably privatization of state enterprises, deregulation of financial markets, the globalization of finance and attacks on trade union rights—public finances have consistently played a central role. continuing a long historical tradition, britain was a pioneer in this shift to neoliberalism. there were two key campaigns in particular that affected the uk: the first during the ‘stagflation’ crisis of the mid-1970s, and the second during the sharp recession of the early 1990s. 89 the 1970s and the rise of thatcherism through the 1950s and 1960s, economic growth in britain had been slower than in continental europe, let alone japan. in the 1970s, slow growth came to be accompanied by both high inflation and the return of mass unemployment, a combination that was completely at odds with conventional keynesian thinking at the time. a long decline of industrial employment in britain also accelerated in the 1970s. this ‘deindustrialization’ was blamed variously on poor business management, a national culture hostile to scientific and technical education, the continuing cost of empire, excessive investment abroad, or the obstructiveness of highlyorganized trade unions. attempts by successive governments to address these problems of decline started under the 1964-70 wilson administrations, and continued through the heath years to the return of labour in 1974. in the decade from 1964, restricting public spending might have been necessitated when sterling was under pressure, but it was not seen as the key to macroeconomic stability. instead, the predominantly keynesian policy mainstream favoured state initiatives in the form of income policies and indicative planning, aiming to reconcile the conflicting interests of employers and unions through the good offices of the state. however, by 1976 these efforts appeared to have failed, as inflation reached a record level of 26% even though unemployment remained stubbornly high—an unprecedented combination that came to be called ‘stagflation’. although keynesians tried to argue that the inflation was largely the result of international developments such as the breakdown of the dollar-gold link in 1971 and the oil shock of 1973, their policies were clearly in disarray. this led to the emergence of two policy platforms standing to left and right of the mainstream. on the left, labour and the unions flirted with an alternative economic strategy which centred on a radical extension of state intervention in the modernization of british industry (london cse group, 1980). on the right, the monetarist followers of milton friedman offered an equally radical diagnosis, blaming stagflation on the fiscal and monetary indiscipline of the government (laidler, 1982). while friedman’s followers argued that inflation was always due to excessive expansion of the money supply by the central bank, in britain bacon and eltis (1980) argued that alongside this, successive governments had ‘crowded out’ private economic activity through the excessive growth of the public sector. following a sudden dip in britain’s trade balance in 1976, a run on the pound forced chancellor healey to turn to the international monetary fund (imf) for help. the public spending cuts that followed signalled an early victory for the monetarist right, and the end of the road for both mainstream keynesianism and the leftist alternative economic strategy. thatcher’s election success in 1979, followed cutting government deficits: economic science or class war? 90 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research by reagan’s in the usa, signalled the return of pre-keynesian economic and social conservatism. in britain, the fierce monetary and fiscal squeeze that ensued put manufacturing to the sword, while the abolition of exchange controls allowed the burgeoning wealth from north sea oil to be invested largely abroad. trade union rights were severely restricted through a series of legislative measures. the breaking of the print unions by rupert murdoch and the defeat of the year-long miners’ strike of 1984-5 signalled an end to the power of organized labour. the second half of the 1980s saw an eventual revival in economic growth, which was widely seen as a triumph for thatcherism (coates and hillard, 1987). politically, that triumph was very well summed up by gamble (1988) as combining the free economy and the strong state: in order to liberate capital from the suffocating embrace of the state, it was necessary for the state itself to act decisively to restrict its own sphere of action. internationally there were soon clear parallels to the rise of thatcherism in britain. the bretton woods international monetary order, set up in 1944 and broadly inspired by keynes, had tied most currencies to the us dollar, which in turn had been tied to gold. the availability of temporary loans from the imf in principle gave governments the leeway to work out their own solutions to deficits in their balance of payments. this system had been abandoned in 1971-2, when the us no longer had the gold reserves to support it, and thereafter currencies were mostly allowed to float, meaning that their values were determined by international market forces. the revival of private international finance accelerated as a result of the massive 1973 rise in oil prices, when oil producers’ revenues were recycled as loans to oil-consuming countries. in 1979, president carter’s federal reserve chairman paul volcker attacked us inflation through a dramatic monetary squeeze, raising interest rates sharply and plunging the us into recession. this not only signalled a shift to monetarist economic policies in the us, but also directly contributed to the third world debt crisis of the 1980s. hit by falling export revenues and a rising cost of debt service from higher interest rates, many developing countries were forced to seek help from the imf and the world bank precisely when those bodies were themselves adopting the revived economic ideology of free markets and sound money. loans were only made available on condition of cuts in public spending and the liberalization of trade and finance, the new development policy that became known as the washington consensus (williamson, 1993). the triumph of neoliberalism – and globalization while the third world was devastated by the debt crisis of the 1980s (haggard & kaufman, 1992), the uk and us financial sectors pressed forward with deregulation at home and expansion abroad, laying the basis for their joint domination of global financial markets. however, by the end of the decade, the us 91 recovery under the reagan administrations ended in a major financial crisis centred on the savings and loan companies that traditionally provided residential mortgage loans. recovery in the uk centred on financial services, retail and property, generating a boom that led to renewed inflation and an unsustainable expansion of credit. meanwhile in japan too, a frenetic stock market and property boom led to a spectacular crash in 1987. when these developments culminated in a global financial bust in 1990-91, coinciding with the fall of communist regimes across the soviet bloc, the freemarket right once again blamed lax monetary policy and excessive public spending. within the european union, this resulted in the strictures of the maastricht treaty, first negotiated in 1991 and finally enacted, after some resistance, in 1993. in relation to public finance, from now on all eu member states were enjoined to limit their fiscal deficits to 3% of gdp, and their aggregate public debts to 60% of gdp. the free-market reforms that the washington consensus had imposed on the third world were now also imposed upon the post-communist ‘transition’ countries of eastern europe and the former soviet union. as a result, economic policy regimes across the world began rapidly converging on a single model, that of neoliberalism. within each country, this took the form of monetary and fiscal policies that prioritized open markets and low inflation, rather than full employment or the eradication of poverty. in the monetary field, the overriding purpose was to achieve a target rate of inflation. because banking and finance were both deregulated and internationally integrated, the money supply became almost impossible to measure, let alone control, and selective state intervention in credit markets was now ruled out. as a result, the rate of interest became the key policy instrument; if inflation exceeded its target, the central bank would raise the rate of interest charged to banks, and if it fell below, they would reduce it. meanwhile, the limits on public expenditure and government deficits not only brought to a halt the expansion of welfare states, but also accelerated the privatization of state-owned industries everywhere, most extensively in the excommunist countries. the wider political economy of neoliberalism centred on two significant processes through the 1990s. the first of these was financialization (epstein, 2005), in which capital accumulation shifts to the financial services sector from the production of other goods and services. while financial firms certainly took full advantage of the sector’s deregulation, the growth in financial markets and the development of new financial products was enthusiastically welcomed by businesses and households alike. for big business in particular, the 1990s saw a boom in mergers, buy-outs and restructuring, and the embedding of financial imperatives within the firm aimed at maximizing profits. this signalled an abrupt end to the more benign ‘managerial cutting government deficits: economic science or class war? 92 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research revolution’ of the post-war period, in which professional management and organized labour supposedly worked together in pursuit of growth, innovation and good working conditions. households, suffering from stagnation in earnings as a result of fierce competition in labour markets, began to pile up debt as they sought to maintain the growth in living standards to which they had become accustomed. unwittingly, they were being transformed from wage-earning workers into universal financial subjects, viewing the world in terms of investment opportunities and capital gains (radice, 2010b). the second important process of change was globalization, which became a dominant subject of study across the social sciences and in political and cultural discourse. after two decades of relative stagnation, the 1990s saw dramatic growth in trade and foreign direct investment (fdi) across all sectors of the economy and in all parts of the world. within the washington consensus, fdi was to replace publicly-funded aid programmes as the primary means of modernization and development, enabling ‘emerging economies’ to take advantage of trade liberalization by expanding their exports to the consumer markets of the rich countries. fdi was also central to the remarkable acceleration of economic growth in asia, especially the rise of china, and in latin america. by the end of the decade, the conventional perception on the left of a third world entirely and inevitably mired in poverty and stagnation had become seriously out of date. these twin processes strongly reinforced the transformation in economic policy regimes everywhere. globalization and financialization ensured that the state’s fiscal and monetary discipline was backed up by the mighty power of global credit markets. the capacity to withdraw funds from states backsliding on their commitment to neoliberalism was exemplified in the dramatic crises that hit mexico in 1994, many east asian countries in 1997, and russia in 1998. with active monetary and fiscal policies to pursue national economic goals now outlawed, the standard policy model became that of the ‘competition state’ (cerny 1997), seeking to attract inward investment flows to boost employment and exports, and to provide the ‘supply-side’ infrastructure for domestic businesses. although the turn of the millennium was accompanied by further outbreaks of financial crisis—for instance, the ‘dot.com’ stock-market bust and argentina in 2001—a new wave of global economic growth accompanied by low inflation appeared to justify the self-satisfied claim that ‘the ‘great moderation’ had arrived (bernanke, 2004). until 2007, the hegemony of neoliberalism seemed assured. the course of the crisis: government deficits and the bond markets the origins and course of the crisis that began in that year have by now generated a large literature (for a fuller account see radice, 2010b). the combination 93 of a long period of growth with exceptionally low interest rates had led to the over-selling of ‘sub-prime’ mortgages to poorer households in the usa, who were persuaded that ever-increasing house prices could provide economic security. like other forms of household loan, these mortgages were funded through securitization, issuing bonds whose value was based on the stream of expected mortgage payments. for the purchasers of such bonds, the risk appeared minimal, since each was based on a diversified bundle of mortgages, so that if some were to go into default, the rest would carry on generating income. in any case, the risk could also be laid off through a new form of insurance eagerly supplied by global investors—the credit default swap. through 2005-7, mortgage defaults climbed as interest rates rose, while both house prices and employment stalled, and it slowly became clear that the risk to the value of mortgage-backed securities had been drastically underestimated. as defaults increased, thousands of banks, insurance companies and other investors such as hedge funds found themselves facing potentially catastrophic losses. with the markets unable to arrive at any clear idea of the real value of trillions of dollars worth of financial assets, day-to-day lending transactions between banks ground to a halt, not just in the usa but around the world. during 2008, the entire global financial sector slid inexorably towards total breakdown. after the bankruptcy of lehman brothers in september 2008, governments began a hectic programme of concerted actions. these were aimed first at supporting the banks so that they could continue to manage the world’s monetary flows, and then, as a world recession rapidly set in, at sustaining aggregate demand. interest rates fell to near-zero and central banks pumped money into their economies. for the worst-hit countries, the imf organised rescues using the methods established in the 1980s third world debt crisis. the traditional g8 summits were hastily supplemented by larger g20 meetings, bringing china, india and brazil among others into the mix. global governance agencies, such as the bank for international settlements and the organization for economic cooperation and development, provided coordination and advice, and began the process of crafting regulatory reforms for the banking sector aimed at avoiding any repetition of the crisis. despite the obvious echoes of the global crisis of the 1930s, however, there has been no repetition, at least in the major capitalist nations, of the catastrophic rises in unemployment and falls in international trade that characterized that decade. this is surely partly due to the dense web of global governance institutions, which scarcely existed eighty years ago. the cooperative response has also reflected the dramatically greater extent of cross-border economic interdependence. however, the proximate reason is undoubtedly the adoption of massive fiscal stimulus packages, most notably in the usa and in china, but also in many other countries. the fiscal stringency of the maastricht treaty and the washington consensus was cutting government deficits: economic science or class war? 94 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research quickly abandoned from late 2008, with current budget deficits rising rapidly to levels ranging from 5% to 15% of gdp or more. however, through the second half of 2009 the tide of support for public intervention began to turn. precisely because the giant investment banks make their money from market-making and transactions, rather than loans and investments, their fortunes quickly recovered from the 2008 debacle, the supreme irony being the vast commissions they got for marketing the flood of new sovereign borrowing, and restructuring and refinancing busted large corporations like general motors. as credit markets began to function again, even the derided ratings agencies like moody’s, which had happily taken fat fees for doling out aaa ratings on sub-prime mortgage-backed securities, recovered their nerve and began to pronounce upon the sustainability of the much higher—and still rising—post-crisis levels of government debt. as the eurozone powers bickered over how to address greece’s fiscal crisis in late 2009, governments recently freed from the shackles of fiscal restraint found themselves once more on the defensive. how and why has this happened? it is striking that at no point in the past forty years of debate on public finances did the monetarist economists—or their neoliberal successors—explain why any particular limit to public deficits and debt was economically necessary. instead we have been offered, then as now, an entirely circular argument. we are told by supposed economic experts that deficit cuts are necessary because international bond markets require them. so why do the investors in international bond markets require cuts? because the economic experts say they are necessary! now it is certainly the case that any single government which accumulates debts that are very high compared to those of other governments will find itself subject to special scrutiny by the bond markets, as the greeks now know only too well, and as many third world governments found out already back in the 1980s. we should of course also make allowance for the pernicious effects of speculators: for instance, the role of george soros in britain’s 1992 crisis that forced it out of the european union’s exchange rate mechanism, or the flight of ‘hot money’ from east asia in 1997. but a reasonable case can still be made that governments should, in normal times, avoid excessive reliance on borrowing, especially to fund current expenditure as opposed to capital investments. however, from the standpoint of macroeconomic stability, and especially that of maintaining full or near-full employment, our overriding concern today should remain that of keynes: the need for governments to sustain economic activity at a time when savings in the private sector greatly exceed investments. this need is met by absorbing excess savings through the sale of government securities, the proceeds of which are then spent so as to sustain aggregate output and employment. 95 there are however big differences in the nature of capitalism today, compared to the 1930s when keynes first made the case for counter-cyclical public spending. in 1933, after the failure of yet another international conference aimed at coordinating responses to the crisis, keynes reluctantly made the case for a national solution led by the state. as a lifelong liberal, he rejected both the soviet experiment of central planning, and the emerging nazi model of extreme economic nationalism under the joint dictatorship of capital and the state. from then on, he consistently argued that international capital movements should be tightly restricted, so that governments could fully exercise the control over national financial markets that they acquired through the sheer scale of their borrowing and their control of the money supply (radice, 1988). but precisely as a result of the combined processes of deregulation, financialization and globalization discussed earlier, governments no longer have this degree of structural power over finance. in addition, for decades now, massive imbalances in international trade between countries have been sustained, with the huge trade surpluses of japan, germany, and now china being matched by the huge deficits of the usa and britain. these trade imbalances are by definition offset by capital flows from surplus to deficit countries, and these flows—as well as the financing of expanded trade—have been a major feature of financial globalization. as a result the keynesian premise, of the state’s structural power over finance, can only be fully applied collectively at the global level. state power over finance could only be re-established within a single country by a radical disengagement from the world economy, but given the economic and political resources invested in building the global economy and its neoliberal order, the cost of doing so would be immense. adopting this approach, we can see that the continued growth and prosperity of countries with chronic trade surpluses, like germany and china, depend, in conditions of global recession, on the willingness of other countries like the usa and britain to continue to run trade deficits. as a corollary—and this is really an economic fact—there will be continuing matching outflows of capital from the former countries, and inflows into the latter. given the current reluctance of businesses and households in the trade-deficit countries to borrow and spend, it is their government borrowing that keeps the world economy going. and the very fact that so many governments have been able to borrow so much since 2008 shows that, despite the global recession, there remains a global savings glut. this savings glut has arisen because of the massive shift from wages to profits, and from the closely-related subordination of hundreds of millions of peasants and independent producers to wage labour in those ‘emerging’ economies. as states have abandoned their earlier commitment to the fiscal mitigation of inequality, the wealthy have increased their grip on global savings. cutting government deficits: economic science or class war? 96 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research as long as those savings continue to exceed global private sector investments, governments must continue to absorb that excess. otherwise, the world economy will slip back into the famous ‘double-dip’ recession, a prospect that has become increasingly likely through the summer of 2010. indeed, as and when the global recovery has reached the point where private sector investment has substantially recovered and cyclical unemployment has disappeared, why should ‘the markets’ require a reduction of government deficits to ‘normal’ levels? there is, after all, no economic law that dictates a 3% cap on the government deficit, and 60% on debt, or indeed any other numerical values. the level of aggregate economic activity is entirely unaffected by the proportion of demand that flows through the public rather than the private sector. as real interest rates swing back to being moderately positive, the power of compound interest is surely enough to sustain the economic advantage of the rich, as well as the pensions of the middle classes. resolving the crisis: restoring class rule in the end, now as in the 1970s, the real reason for the attacks on state borrowing and state expenditure lies not in economics, but in politics, or more specifically in class warfare. for it is primarily through the politics of democracy—even our highly restricted form of it—that the privileged position of private wealth has historically come under threat. after 1945 the propertyless in most parts of the world, west, east and south, made remarkable gains in their well-being and in the strength of their political voice. by the mid-1970s, the propertied classes—whether capitalists, usurers, merchants or landlords, or indeed the soviet-bloc bureaucratic élite—found themselves on the defensive on many fronts. many radical nationalist governments in the third world continued to press for reforms in the governance of the world economy, challenging the new forms of economic colonialism that followed independence (biel, 2000, ch.6). in the soviet bloc, the 1968 prague spring and the first stirrings of the polish workers’ movement in 1970 threatened the bureaucrats’ highly centralised power (harman, 1974). and in the west, not only had new social movements challenged the elites on issues of gender, race and the environment, but workers were also advancing new claims to workplace democracy and economic security that seriously threatened the power of big business and high finance (e.g. rowbotham, segal and wainwright, 1979; gorz, 1985). the previous two sections charted the rise of neoliberalism with a particular focus on public finances. with the benefit of hindsight, the historical logic of that rise seems all too apparent. but the political articulation of an effective response by the ruling classes to the combined challenges of the 1970s was by no means clear at the time. for more than thirty years, the ideologues of neoliberalism, with econo97 mists at the fore, worked assiduously to construct a new common-sense about the economy based on the old liberal mantra: property rights, individualism and the residual state. yet they were constantly faced with resistance, not only from the diverse forces of the left, seeking to at least defend the post-war gains of workers, but also from political strands of the right: nationalism, religious authoritarianism, and even, in parts of the global south, the traditional paternalism that remained from the rule of precapitalist landed interests (barrington moore, 1966). karl polányi (1944) had argued that the nineteenth-century liberal utopia of a market society had historically foundered on the social consequences of subordinating not only produced commodities, but also land, labour and money, to the market—in marx’s terms, to the rule of capital. the result was a historical ‘double movement’: first towards the market society, and then towards social protection. by the turn of the millennium, the restructuring of the state, the redistribution of income and wealth to the rich, and the removal of workers’ collective rights had seemingly turned the tide once more towards the market society. yet in 2007-9, the crisis immediately led to widespread public challenges to the neoliberal order, and the ruling classes were obliged to tear up the neoliberal rulebook in favour of vigorous state intervention. perhaps this heralded the second phase of a new polányian double movement, as hettne (1997) had argued a decade earlier (for a sceptical view see wade, 2010). but as we have seen, within about six months the neoliberals regrouped. in britain, as the debate over labour’s 2009 budget already showed, their ownership of the economic common sense allowed them to steadily shift the focus of debate from exacting retribution and repayment from the banks, to blaming governments for assuming the vast fiscal deficits that have kept capitalism afloat. meanwhile, those who spoke up for real alternatives—for green new deals, for radical reform of the banks, for a new international financial architecture—have been pushed to the margins of public attention. the immediate need, at this juncture, is for the left to continue to make the case for maintaining public expenditure, supporting the efforts of keynesian economists such as paul krugman, robert reich and joseph stiglitz in the us, or david blanchflower and robert skidelsky in britain. across the eu, the progressive economists of the euromemorandum group (2009) have argued this case, and even the international monetary fund has argued that “growth prospects in advanced economies could suffer if an overly severe or poorly planned fiscal consolidation stifles still-weak domestic demand” (imf, 2010, p. 7). however, it is becoming increasingly clear that this is by no means enough, because it takes the easy course of looking back at how the world was before neoliberalism—and often doing so through rose-tinted glasses. james ferguson (2010) argues, in relation to the global south, that returning to the alternative of the decutting government deficits: economic science or class war? 98 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research velopmental state is not enough because the building-blocks of politics—workers, markets, nation-states—have been so fundamentally reconfigured by neoliberal restructuring. in the context of a realistic appreciation of these changes, we can see that the assault on public spending goes far beyond the simple matter of the macroeconomic management of effective demand. in this respect, britain is leading the way, as has so often been the case historically. following the election on 6 may 2010, a coalition government was unexpectedly formed between the conservative party under david cameron, which had won the largest number of seats but not an overall majority, and the much smaller liberal democrats under nick clegg, which had widely been assumed to favour a centre-left coalition with labour. on 22 june, the coalition announced an emergency budget, setting out savage cuts in public spending of up to 25% in all areas except health and overseas aid” (for details see radice, 2010a). however, as government ministers began to detail their substantive plans for the years ahead, it quickly became clear that the immediate macroeconomic consequences were only one issue for the government’s critics. in the key areas of health, education and welfare, the coalition intends a far more radical assault on the nature of the state and its relation to society. this assault is not only aimed at deepening the neoliberal restructuring of institutions, but also at banishing the very idea that societal goals can be advanced through the collective state provision of public goods. the message is relentlessly driven home, that the coalition wants to ‘restore power to the people’, linking service provision directly to clients and engaging the public actively in the substantive shaping of that provision. in historical terms, this is taking britain back not merely to the era before the post-1945 welfare state, but to before the liberal reforms of the early 20th cent ury. however, in every respect the coalition is cleverly building upon initiatives and perceptions already established not only by the tory administrations from 1979 to1997, but also under new labour from 1997 to 2010. new labour dropped the tory experiment under which family doctors commissioned specialist medical services; but in opting for an indirect commissioning model via local bureaucracies under central state control, they ensured that the nhs would still be driven by financial motives and managed along private-sector lines. in education, new labour persistently undermined democratic local control through central initiatives and through the creation of specialist academies at the secondary level. and in welfare, despite some successful initiatives aimed at tackling child poverty, they pursued ‘modernization’ and ‘value for money’ programmes that did nothing to break the weary cycles of poverty and welfare dependency in which so many millions were trapped. however, at a deeper level the neoliberal project is also about reshaping the very nature of citizenship, the way in which individuals imagine and live their relations with each other and with social institutions. in the post-war period, it was generally 99 taken for granted that these relations were shaped by institutions structured around class interests: trade unions, professional associations, and political parties whose ideologies reflected the interests of capital or labour. today, any such concept of class as a mediating force has been expunged from public discourse. on the left, the retreat from statism (social-democratic or communist) led in the 1990s to the famous ‘third way’ of giddens (1999), and the search for progressive elements in ‘civil society’ and ‘social movements’. on the right, the currently-fashionable british ‘red tory’ thinker philip blond (2010) argues that the modern citizen can be mindful of social needs and active in ensuring their provision, while still responding to market signals in the more narrowly economic sphere. the consequence is to deprive anyone seeking to pursue traditional progressive goals of equality, solidarity and sustainable livelihoods of the potential for a collective response to neoliberalism. so can the concept of class be resuscitated? in marx’s work in particular, class is a relational concept centred on the way in which society’s material reproduction is ensured. under capitalism, the predominant but by no means exclusive form of this is capitalist production, based on the separation of the majority from direct appropriation of the means of production. this separation divides society into workers and capitalists, with the many and varied strata of society comprehensible only in terms of their standing in relation to that fundamental division. neoliberalism has developed a double denial of the significance of class division in this sense, building upon the dominant theoretical traditions of mainstream sociology. first, class is redefined empirically in terms of the detailed differentiation of income levels and occupations in society, whose multiple groups are then aggregated into ‘working class’ and ‘middle class’. many marxists have been drawn into this position, accepting the divide between the two, and arguing only that elements of this middle class could still challenge the rule of capital, either in conjunction with or in place of the industrial working class (walker, 1979; for a general review of ‘new class’ theories see king & szelényi, 2004). but as long as the main axes of differentiation are rooted in the production of goods and services as commodities, the common subordination to the dynamics of capitalist accumulation ensures common experiences that potentially unite these supposedly separate ‘classes’, however elusive this unity may have become (meiksins, 1986). the second denial addresses this problem directly, by positing other systematic determinants of the relation between individual and society, firmly based outside the realm of production. this has also been a perennial feature of mainstream sociology, but in recent decades it has been fuelled by the universal rejection of most varieties of marxism for their ‘economic determinism’. twentieth-century marxism, from gramsci to poulantzas and on, had in many respects accepted the criticism, downcutting government deficits: economic science or class war? 100 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research playing the analysis of ‘economic’ production relations in favour of an approach in which ‘the political’ is constituted as ‘relatively autonomous’. but equally, since the 1970s much of the left has rejected ‘class politics’—interpreted narrowly as the sectional interests of the traditional male industrial working class—in favour of the ‘rainbow politics’ of social movements, rooted in the different, supposedly more authentic needs of particular social groups. it seems clear that the rejection of class politics goes hand in hand with the view that economic activity really is constituted separately from other aspects of life in capitalist societies, including politics. however, such a view is at the very core of liberalism as a political ideology. for if the economic is really separated from the political, then its regulation can and should lie outside the realm of political action. in other words, the institution of private property cannot be politically challenged, and property rights cannot be subordinated to human or civil rights in forms such as ‘the right to livelihood’. it is precisely in order to develop a substantive underpinning for this proposition that neoliberalism now seeks to redefine the individual in effect as a capitalist, an economic subject whose engagement with others is mediated by the market, and structured by the accumulation of private capital. since it is self-evident that the great majority of individuals are not ‘capitalists’ in marx’s sense—possessing a sufficient mass of money-capital that can generate at least a subsistence income— they are, instead, seen as capable of accumulating ‘human’ or ‘social’ capital (fine, 2010), the possession of which enables them in principle to acquire money capital. yet they can only do that through the sale of their labour-power—in other words, through wage labour, as members of the working class. in order to escape from the trap that neoliberalism is now springing the left needs to reassert the class nature of capitalism in these terms, albeit without in any sense denying the political significance of other forms of oppression. in a letter to marx, engels (1858) famously quipped that “the english proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that the ultimate aim of this most bourgeois of all nations would appear to be the possession, alongside the bourgeoisie, of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat”. the reality is that britain is the most proletarian of nations, in terms of the proportion of its population who rely on wage-labour for their subsistence: there are no peasants left, and small-business capitalism has always been feebler than in other capitalist countries. by recognizing such foundations in present-day economic reality, it may yet prove possible to build a movement of universal appeal that can challenge the class rule of capital. 101 references bacon, r. and eltis, w. (1980). britain’s economic problem: too few producers. london: macmillan. barrington moore, j. r. (1966). social origins of dictatorship and democracy: lord and peasant in the making of the modern world. boston: beacon press. bernanke, b. (2004). ‘the great moderation’. speech to the eastern economic association, 20 february 2004. see http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2004/20040220/default. htm. biel, r. (2000). the new imperialism: crisis and contradictions in north/south relations. london: zed press. blond, p. (2010). red tory: how left and right have broken britain and how we can fix it. london: faber. browne, j. et al. (2010). ‘the distributional effects of tax and benefit reforms between june 2010 and april 2014: a revised assessment’. institute for fiscal studies briefing note bn108, 25 august, available at www.ifs.org.uk/publications/5246. cerny, p. (1997). ‘paradoxes of the competition state: the dynamics of political globalization’. government and opposition 32(1), 251-74. chote, r. et al. (2010). ‘filling the hole: how do the three main uk parties plan to repair the public finances?’. institute for fiscal studies 2010 election briefing note no.12, 27 april, available at www.ifs.org.uk/publications/4848. coates, d. and hillard, j. (eds) (1987). the economic revival of modern britain: the debate between left and right. aldershot: edward elgar. engels, f. (1858). letter to marx of 7 october 1858, in marx-engels collected works 40, 343. epstein, g. (ed) (2005). financialization and the world economy. cheltenham: edward elgar. euromemorandum group (2009). europe in crisis: a critique of the eu’s failure to respond. at http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/ebooks/euromemorandum%202009-2010.pdf. ferguson, j. (2010). ‘the uses of neoliberalism’. antipode 41(s1), 166-84. fine, b. (2010). theories of social capital: researchers behaving badly. london: pluto press. gamble, a. (1988). the free economy and the strong state: the politics of thatcherism. london: macmillan. giddens, a. (1999). the third way: the renewal of social democracy. cambridge: polity press. gorz, a. (1985). paths to paradise: on the liberation from work. boston: south end press. cutting government deficits: economic science or class war? 102 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research harman, c. (1974). bureaucracy and revolution in eastern europe. london: pluto press. haggard, s. and kaufman, r. (eds) (1992). the politics of economic adjustment. princeton: princeton up. hettne, b. (1997). ‘development, security and world order: a regionalist approach’. european journal of development research 9(1), 83-106. international monetary fund (2010). world economic outlook update. 7 july, at http://www.imf. org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/update/02/pdf/0710.pdf. king, l.p. and szelényi, i. (2004). theories of the new class: intellectuals and power. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. laidler, d. (1982). monetarist perspectives. oxford: philip allan. london cse group (1980). the alternative economic strategy: a response by the labour movement to the economic crisis. london: cse books. meiksins, p. (1986). ‘beyond the boundary question’. new left review 157, 101-20. polányi, k. (1944). the great transformation: the political and economic origins of our times. beacon hill: beacon press. radice, h. (1988). ‘keynes and the policy of practical protectionism’, in j. v. hillard (ed), j. m. keynes in retrospect. aldershot: edward elgar, 153-71. radice, h. (2010a). ‘britain’s austerity budget: a class act’, the bullet 385. at http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/385.php. radice, h. (2010b). ‘confronting the crisis: a class analysis’. socialist register 2011, forthcoming. rowbotham, s., segal, l. and wainwright, h. (1979). beyond the fragments: feminism and the making of socialism. london: merlin books. wade, r. (2010). ‘is the globalization consensus dead?’. antipode 41(s1), 142-65. walker, p. (ed.) (1979). between labour and capital. brighton: harvester press. williamson, j. (1993). ‘democracy and the “washington consensus”’. world development 21(8), 1329-36. 252 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism book review canada and israel: building apartheid by yves engler. winnipeg: fernwood publishing, 2010. $15.95 can. isbn: 978-1-55266-355-4. pages: 1-168. reviewed by natalie spagnuolo1 canada’s policy towards israel constitutes a minefield of contentious issues which historians of canadian foreign relations seldom directly address. among the accounts that are most visible, few diverge from the nationalist narrative that represents canada as historically favouring peace-keeping over militarism. this positive portrait of canada, as suggested by paul heinbecker and bessma momani’s, compliments a somewhat more critical stance that imagines canada’s role as a less consequential, neutral player in middle east affairs.2 in canada and israel: building apartheid, engler problematizes the claims of current analysts, such the former canadian ambassador to israel michael bell,3 who would like to see greater canadian involvement in the middle east. engler takes issue with the perception of canada’s suitability as an “honest-broker” in the israel-palestine conflict. he argues that a consistently pro-israel attitude has characterized canada’s foreign policy towards the conflict from the nineteenth century onwards. perhaps no other study makes as strong a claim as engler does for historical consistency in terms of canadian complicity in the zionist expansion of jewish settlements. building on the foundation of leftwing revisionist readings of zionism as a form of colonialism, engler implicates canada in the controversial expansion of the state of israel and the current apartheid conditions by considering the domestic and international events that have supported these developments. following a tradition that traces canadian interest in the region back to the anti-semitic christian political 1 natalie spagnuolo completed an ma in history at carleton university. 2 heinbecker, p. and b. momani (eds.). canada and the middle east: in theory and practice. waterloo: wilfred laurier university. 3 bell, m., m. malloy, d. sultan and s. shaker. practitioner’ perspectives on canada-middle east relations. in heinbecker, p. and b. momani (eds.). canada and the middle east: in theory and practice (pp.7-24). waterloo: wilfred laurier university. canada and israel | 253 culture of the nineteenth century, the first chapter of this book attempts to develop a historical trend by assuming continuity between disparate time periods. engler represents the general tone of entire decades with single statements that demonstrate a “fortuitous political climate” for the federation of zionist societies of canada (p.13). considering the scope of the study, these leaps are likely made to allow engler to address the present-day consequences of canada’s support for israeli expansionism. nevertheless, his less-than-precise treatment of zionism conflates various versions of the movement and misleadingly overlooks participation by canadians in anti-expansionist zionist organizations, such as the union of progressive zionists (upz). engler’s larger point is that historically, canadian society has facilitated israel’s expansion by conjuring its own justifications for sustaining nationalist aggression, and not by simply borrowing the arguments of political zionists. through salient case studies, he highlights some of the advantages that canada has gained throughout various stages of its support for israeli expansionism, including such economic benefits as might result from the sale of weapons by canadian manufacturers to israeli buyers (p.10). a more thorough exposition of this thesis occurs in chapters 2, 3 and 4, which focus on the ways in which canadian policy has been influenced by broader international relations and a tendency to remain “preoccupied with the great powers,” namely britain and america (p.24). however, engler derives this trend from a reading of various media sources without comparing coverage of events, and this, along with his reliance on secondary sources that are often considered polemical, detracts from the credibility of this section. his humanitarian convictions and his motivation to mould his argument along these lines leads to a somewhat univocal interpretation of events. by not considering the subjectivity of his own accounts, engler consistently eschews the academic integrity necessary to persuade opponents of this perspective. these early chapters are balanced with a final section that is derived from a leftist, politically-conscious reading of present-day canada. more convincingly, chapters 5 and 6 document how canada’s supportive attitude for israel has been consistent with the activities of intelligence agencies, lobby groups, and major canadian corporations and charities. engler exposes aspects of canadian society that function to directly support israel’s expansion but which are, interestingly enough, unknown to most canadians, supporting the idea that “israel is highly dependent on north american financial, military, ideological and diplomatic support” 254 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism (p.145). key to engler’s claim is the connection he draws between the charitable status granted to israeli expansionist organizations in canada, such as the jewish national fund, and the support for canadian industries active in palestinian territory that falls beyond the green line. engler suggests the anti-semitic nature of explanations exaggerate the role of canada’s jewish communities. carefully distinguishing between anti-semitism and anti-zionism in chapter 9, he highlights the extensive efforts of anti-zionist jewish organizations and warns against the use of anti-semitism to discourage anti-zionist values (p.146). canadian complicity in israel is, according to engler, the outcome of a discourse that has developed while most canadians have been “shut-out of the discussion” (p.147). this political commentary is supplemented with engler’s own experience as a political activist. his skill in researching economic connections to foreign policy (see his black book of canadian foreign policy) lends this book greater weight as a counter-narrative, despite his failure to follow academic conventions. throughout canada and israel, engler insists that the relevancy of the current conflict in palestine and the suffering of palestinians must be defended based on canada’s role in that conflict and “canadian complicity with that suffering” (p.142). according to engler, failure to adequately defend the prioritization of this issue to canadians will not only sideline the problem but will risk insinuating anti-semitism (p.142). ingraining his argument in the thick fabric of controversy, engler’s book is a welcome contribution to the sparsely populated field of critical studies of canadian-israeli relations. the struggle for equal pay for work of equal value: a case study stella lord introduction the concept of equal pay for women has not been tied to the concept of 'value' in most provincial equal pay legislation in canada. the pay of men in similar jobs in the same establishment has, in most cases, been the criterion for equal pay legislation. consequently, if women work in sex segregated jobs, or job 'ghettos', they remain outside the present legislation in most canadian provinces. possibly as a natural effect of the women's liberation movement on the one hand and frustration with the slow progress towards effective equal pay legislation on the other, women are now tending to turn to 2 unionization and union militancy to achieve higher rates of pay. except in one or two isolated instances, however, there have been few explicit demands based on the concept of equal pay for work of equal value. moreover, there is little uniformity in the extent to which the process of unionization itself is successful, or the economic benefits to be gained from it jre realized. unionization amongst nurses has been relatively successful on both counts, whereas unionization amongst bank tellers has been slow, spasmodic and localized , and unions have been unable to make real economic gains. the strike of the communication workers (bell canada) succeeded in making economic gains, whereas workers at radio shack, fleck and blue cross in ontario underwent long strikes merely to gain union recognition and the right to bargain. even where women are unionized, therefore, higher rates of pay (to say nothing of general overall parity with male workers) are not achieved without a struggle. unions, even the most militant and well organized, must face not only the economic power of their employers, but an ideologically structured industrial relations system which is also weighted against radical change in bargaining patterns. union militancy around the issue ot higher wages for women is certainly a step in the right direction. but while it provides a vehicle and a tool for the attainment of equal pay, unless demands are tied to the concept of value there are limitations on what it can do for women working in highly sex segregated jobs and for those with little or no collective bargaining strength. union militancy, therefore, is not a panacea. if the concept of equal pay for work of equal value were to become an accepted criterion on which pay rates were to be negotiated, however, it could have wide ranging effects on the status of women in our society, both inside and outside the labour movement. there is also the possibility that it could raise broader, more fundamental, questions about the 'value' of labour. for the concept of 'value' as a measurement for wage rates introduces a criterion which raises a number of questions about the labour market, the collective bargaining system and the 22 structure of wage rates. more important ly , for women in sex segregated work, it raises the question: what is the nature and function of the work that women have traditionally performed in our society? what is the 'real value' of women's work? in early october, 1977, local 31 of the steel plate examiners at the british american bank note company in ottawa went on strike for equal pay. their demand was for equal pay with some of the men in their plant whom they contended were doing jobs of considerably less skill and responsibility than their own. there was more than one dollar difference between the full hourly rate of pay of the lowest paid men in the plant and the women. in addition, the male 'floor boys' started at a higher rate of pay and achieved the maximum rate after one year; the women did not achieve their full rate until they had been with the company for two years.* the steel plate examiners local was, therefore, demanding a 29.2% increase which would have given them parity with the lowest paid male workers in the plant. during negotiations and until the local went on strike in october, they had only received an offer of 3 12.8% by the company. but the strike was more than a strike about a specific wage increase. it was a strike about equal pay and as a result it became (somewhat after the fact) a 'cause celebre' for women's groups inside and outside the labour movement in ontario. but this was the first strike in which the steel plate examiners local had ever been involved in their 4 thirty year history at the plant. the women, therefore, were fairly inexperienced in organizing for a strike. more importantly, however. because the political significance of their demands were not immediately apparent to them, they did not exploit to their advantage the broader political support of women which might otherwise have been available *stecl plate (examiners started at $3.75/hr., reaching a maximum of $5.00/hr. a^tcr two years. 23 co them. for this, and several other reasons which will be discussed later, the strike was not very successful in meeting their immediate demands. in particular, it did not succeed in changing the company's opposition to recognizing the local's claim to parity with the male workers. the women went back to work after nine weeks, having only obtained the agreement of the company to submit the dispute to arbitration. on april 13, 1978, owen shime, the arbitrator in the case, made his decision in favour of the company's original offer of 12.8% retroactive to may 1977. in view of the terms of reference of the case, the reasoning behind shime's decision seemed dubious to the counsel for the union and it was decided to submit the decision to judicial review. but the counsel later advised against this because it was felt that the chances of a reversal of the decision would be limited. instead, it was decided to put the case before the canadian human rights commission, which had coiie into being in january 1979 to act as a tribunal court on alleged contraventions of the canadian bill of rights. the decision to go this route was made because it could be argued that the company was contravening clause 11 of the federal bill of rights which provides for non-discrimination in pay on the basis of equal pay for work of equal . 6 value. although the company's main customer is the bank of canada, it was not at all clear whether the labour relations of this company would be held to fall within federal or provincial jurisdiction. nor was it clear whether the canadian bill of rights would take precedence ovt-r provincial legislation in labour relations. on february 26, 1980, the huaan rights tribunal decided 'with regret' that because the labour relations of the company did not fall under federal jurisdiction, the 24 equal pay clause in the canadian bill of rights could not apply. since the minister of labour for the province of ontario had already ruled before the strike commenced that the women were "not performing substantially similar work" to the men in the plant, the matter had not been put to the ontario human rights commission. for the future, therefore, the steel plate examiners have only two avenues open to them to improve their present position to rely on their own bargaining strength with the company or, together with the opposition parties and labour and women's pressure groups in the province, to put pressure on the government to change the legislation. in terms of the women themselves and the sustained effort which was demanded of them over the period of 2'-j years the outcome was more than just an economic setback, it was a defeat which struck at their own self respect as working women. as a result, the impetus for future 8 struggle around the issue in their local was seriously stunted. in terms of the industrial relations and legal systems within which these women were involved for that 2*s years, there exist serious barriers to the attainment of equal pay which" appear to be insuperable. these barriers exist for any group of women working in job 'ghettos' who seek to obtain equal pay for work of equal value through the collective bargaining process. an understanding of the structural barriers within the collective bargaining route tr~ the attainment of equal pay for work of equal value is essential if these are to be overcome for that goal to be reached. it is proposed in this paper, therefore, to examine in greater detail the collective bargaining/industrial relations process and the political appeal process as these affected the outcome of this specific case. while it will be difficult to generalize beyond this particular case 25 to any ocher case as to the final outcome, many of the same structural barriers and sets of assumptions that he behind these processes will exist in most collective bargaining situations. the case study 1. collective bargaining (a) the workplace, the company and its employees the british american bank note company is engaged in the business of engraving and printing of high security material such as bank notes, postage stamps, lottery tickets, share certificates and travellers cheques. the ottawa plant prints mainly bank notes and postage stamps and it is the only one of its four subsidiaries which operates the steel 9 plate presses. the company has been in operation since 1866 and was incorporated in 1909. it was in the control of the estate of the founder until 1929 when these holdings were bought out privately. shares were not offered on the stock exchange until 1945. since 1967 the company has been involved in a number of acquisitions and takeovers and has recently experienced expansion in sales and profits. in 1978 the company's net income increased by 45z. in the same year, sdes were up by 232. similarly, for the first 6 months of 1979, profits rose by 42z and sales by 211. in constant dollars, the company's earnings per share rose from $1.68 in 1974 to s^.62 in 1978 while in the same period profits rose from $754,000 to $2,528,000. the company is. therefore, a growing concern and it attributes this growth to "an expansion of the company's product base plus increased productive efficiency . the company has only one other major competitor, the canadian bank note company, also based in ottawa. 26 local 31 of the steel plate examiners is made up of 24 women whose average seniority at the company was 17 years at the time of the strike. the turnover of workers, therefore, is low and this is an 12 acknowledged asset to the company. the local is part of the international plate printers, die strippers and engravers union whose head office is in the u.s. the union has no full time personnel in ottawa and the locals have traditionally maintained a great deal of autonomy from the international and its other locals in bargaining. * 'phe steel plate examiners have also historically negotiated separately from the printers local and the five other unions in the plant. they have, however, negotiated jointly with the steel plate exaraiiers at the canadian 14 bank note company. these women are also members of local 31. working in pairs or threes, the r.xarainer's job consists of examining sva stacking the printed material as it comes off the presses. the fxatniner removes defective work and at the same rime, from about six possible problem areas connected with the specialized process, attempts to diagnose what might be causing the defect. if it is considered serious enough, the lxaminer is responsible for signalling problems to the printer or for stopping the press in order to rectify the problem. the steel plate examiners have first responsibility for determining whether the product is acceptable. failure to correct an error may result in excessive spoilage or damage to the machine. another group of workers, the graphic artists, carry out a later, more detailed examination of the printed material but they have nothing to do with the printing process itself. this group of workers is also made up of women and their rate of pay was the same as that of the examiners. these workers are members of the graphic artists international, local 'iss. 27 besides checking the printed material, the examiner is sometimes called upon to place tissue sheets between printed sheets. the presses deliver between 25 and 60 sheets per minute depending on the type of material printed and the press which is in use. the work was described by the arbitrator as "of a fatiguing nature". the basic training for the examiner is on the job training working with an experienced lxamimr. after three months the employee may work alone on the simpler processes or on a less demanding job and will then be moved gradually to more difficult work. an examiner is expected to be proficient after one year although the full rate of pay is not reached until after two years on the job. the company employs about 250 hourly paid workers at its ottawa plant and with the exception of one unrepresented group they are represented by 6 unions and covered by 11 separate collective agreements. the unions and the company, therefore, are engaged in a multiple collective bargaining situation with both skilled and unskilled workers. although this kind of craft bargaining situation can result in f.iirly established relationships between the rates of pay of the crafts, their helpers, apprentices and journeymen, pay differentials between the steel plate examiners and other semi-skilled and unskilled workers in the plant had widened in recent years. although the arbitration decision placed the main portion of the blame for this with the examiner's union and their ineffectiveness in bargaining, the women themselves argued that the differentials were the result of discriminatory hiring and training practices of the company. the company, thev argued, hired women only for training into the position of steel i'late l.xaminer. in addition, until the post arbitration period, women had not been giv«n the opportunity to apply for positions in the plant then held by men, such as printer's helper or porter. 28 there also seems to huve been nn attempt on the part of the company to control the labour market in tiie area. the job is fairly specialized and few similar jobs exist in the ottawa area but the women alleged that there was an unofficial agreement with the canadian bank note company not to hire each other's employees. because of the lack of mobility both inside and outside the firm, one possible explanation for the maintenance of wage discrimination inside the company was that it was able to take advantage of this situation to impose starting wages and wage settlements below those obtained in dollar terms by male workers. b) collective bargaining the one year collective agreement between the company and the union was due to expire in april 1977. in february 1977, under the terms of the agreement, the local notified the company of its intention to negotiate a new collective agreement in which "equal wages with the men on the floor" would be the central issue. at the same time, the local requested that joint negotiations be held with the canadian bank note company. the male workers with whom the women of local 31 were comparing themselves in their negotiations belonged to the lowest paid group of the ottawa printing specialties and paper products union. these workers were designated as "porters, paper handlers and cleaners" by the company and referred to as "porters" and "floor boys" by the women. the higher categories within this union were classed into three grades designated by the company as building maintenance workers. as of april 1977, the pry range for the lowest classified workers in this union was between $5.11 19 ard $6.26 and for the highest it was between $6.48 and $6.89. a second group of male workers with whom the women subsequently compared themselves during the arbitration process were the printer s 29 helpers, also members of the printers international union. these workers received two years on the job training and the rate of pay ranged from 20 $6.17 to $9.59 an hour after two years. the collective agreements of the other bargaining groups in the company were also due to expire at the beginning of may. the company agreed to commence bargaining with local 31 as all the other negotiations would hang on che outcome. the company's initial offer to all bargaining units was 8%. local 31 rejected this. by the middle of may negotiations seemed to be going nowhere and the president of local 31, shirley cooligan, wrote to the employment standards branch of the ontario ministry of labour asking them to investigate the matter as a case of wage discrimination on the basis of sex. the reply from the ministry indicated that because the women were not doing substantially similar work as the men, the matter did not fall under the ontario labour standards act. the ministry advised the local to pursue their goals through collective bargain4 21 ing. a conciliator was called in during the summer but neither the company nor the union was willing to move from their positions. as the possibility of a strike seemed to be no longer just a threat, in september the company increased its offer to 10% to all bargaining units, with an additional 2.8% to the examiners and the graphic artists from january. the graphic artists accepted this two-stage offer and the other all male bargaining units in the plant followed suit. the examiners at both companies again refused the offer because it did nothing to meet their demands for parity with the lowest paid male workers. a week before the strike was due to be called in mid-october, the company threatened to withdraw the usual retroactive pay clause if the local went out on strike. when it became obvious that thev would so either have to accept the company's latest offer or go out on strike and risk losing their back pay, the examiners from the canadian bank note company voted to accept their employer's latest offer which was the same as that of the british american bank note company. the acceptance of the two-stage pay increase by the graphic artists and later by the examiners from the canadian bank note company not only isolated the examiners at the british american bank note company in their strike action and rendered it much less effective than it might otherwise have been, but it also jeopardized their case in the arbitration hearing. the british american bank note company made the case that the examiners had requested joint bargaining with the canadian bank note company. because the workers there had accepted their employer's latest offer, it was questionable, argued the company, whether the higher claims of the british american employees were legitimate. but the fact was that negotiations were never actually carried on jointly. the tvo companies seem to have made the same offer to both sets of workers and the local, as far as possible until the strike was called, maintained a unified bargaining position. in early october 1977, the examiners at the british american bank note company were in a legal position to strike and they voted to do so on october 14, with the explicit demand that this was a strike for 22 equal pay for work of equal value. c) the strike the strike lasted for nine weeks and the picket line was 'manned' every day and night during that period. the women received only $25.00 a week in strike pay and this was due to run out after the tenth week. although the plant was never at any time completely shut down during the strike, production slowed down considerably after a few weeks. this was largely because the printers refused to cooperate with the 31 company in putting two men on each press, one of whom, it was intended, should perform the examiner's tasks. although some picketing was successful in keeping out suppliers and maintenance people, in order not to alienate their fellow workers. local 31 agreed that other workers in the plant could cross the picket line. the picket was not successful, however, in its main purpose of blocking the shipping out of material for delivery to the bank of canada. nor was it successful in preventing some material from being sent to the company's plant in montreal. nevertheless, because the printers refused to cooperate with the company in working with blackleg labour, production at the ottawa plant slowed down enough so that by the beginning of 23 december, the printers and several other employees were laid off. the company did not approach the union for further negotiations until the women had been on strike for two weeks, at which time they merely 2 4 repeated their previous offer. the mediator was called in on the fifth week of the strike. at this point the union understood that arbitration was not a possible alternative in this case, even though they believed that the company favoured this solution. the confusion over this was cleared up and the union and the company met with the mediator early in december to discuss the issue. the mediator later met with the union privately and indicated that they would have to spell out the terms of the arbitration very carefully if they wanted to have the case considered on the basis of equal pay. the terms were then the subject of further negotiation with the company over a period of about one week before the 25 strike was finally called off. the company had attempted to counteract the effects of the strike in two specific ways. firstly, there was an attempt to maintain production in^idr the pl.int by persuading the printers and the graphic artists 32 lo take on the l-'xaroiner s' work. when this failed because of the lark of cooperation from the printer's union, the company shipped material to its montreal plant for processing and checking. the company s strategy to obtain cooperation from other workers to help break the strike took the form of persuasion and threat. in the first instance, the company contrived to set those employees still working in the plant against the striking workers. meetings were called and letters sent to employees who were laid off 'explaining' the situation. although the all female graphic artists' union seems to have been willing to comply with the company's request, the printers' union refused to cooperate by working two men to a press. it was then suggested by the company to the printers that if the strike was allowed to continue technological changes 27 might have to be introduced, putt ing some of the printers' iobs in jeopardy. what finally persuaded the women to go back to work was their own economic hardship combined with what they knew to be the economic h.irdship of the other employees from the plant who had been laid off." the printers, for instance, were in a particularly bad situation because not only were they not receiving strike pay, but the uic had ruled that because they were members of the same international as the stnikinc employees, they were ineligible for uic payments.^ christmas was approaching and the strike pay was running out. the local voted to return to work and on december 15, the union met with the company to discuss submitting the easv. to arbitration. 2. arbitration instead of the 29.2% originally demanded durine bargaining, the local changed its demand in the arbitration brief to equal pay for work of equal value based on job evaluations drawn up by an expert from cupe. on this reckoning, the steel plate examiner's job fell between that of $3 printer's helper and the floor boy/portor and would need a 772 pay inc31 rease to give the women parity. the terms of reference of the arbitration case agreed between the union and the company, however, were somewhat ambiguous as to the question 32 of equal pay for work of equal value. in the written agreement to send the matter to arbitration dated december 17, the dispute was described as one which had "arisen out of a difference of opinion between the parties on the merits of skill and responsibility of a job with the company regardless of sex." following this preamble, the specific point for arbitration was specified as "the rate of wage to be paid to the examiners during the term of the contract." the union's brief in the arbitration case used the opening paragraph of the agreement as the definition of what the dispute was about. with the use of evaluations, therefore, the union was able to compare the jobs and the rate of pay for the examiners with that of other (male) jobs and rates of pay for the men in the plant who were closely conm-cred with the printing process. the company, on the other hand, chose to b;ise its case solely on the question of the rate of pay. in doing so they compared the examiners to the graphic artists who performed an examination function inside the plant and to workers doing similar work outside the company in the federal government or the printing industry. the arbitrator, owen shime, took the middle ground between these two positions. in doing so, he circumvented the issue of equal pav for work of equal value because he addressed the question of sex discrimination separately from that of comparability. this undermined the union's argument that the two were inevitably linked because of the 'job ghetto' situation inside the plant which had been created by the hiring ami training practices of the company. secondly, because shine argu<-d that 14 the method of job evaluation had historically not been used in collective bargaining in the printing industry, he ignored the union's calculation of where the examined job stood in relation to others at the plant. shime dealt with the comparability issue explicitly from the point of view of the traditional collective bargaining practices in the printing industry. thiitily, shime argued that the arbitration process was not a 'judgement' but an 'adjudication' based on what existed in similar jobs and situations elsewhere, and/or, if applicable, on a set of historical relationships which have been established over time. shime, therefore, ruled out the possibility that the arbitration could be a precedent setting case which would in any way alter established practices. more specifically, shime refused to accept the union's case of comparability on the basis of job evaluation for three reasons: 1) the history of bargaining in the printing industry had been 'splintered' and "the relationships among workers were not capable of being analyzed on a purely rational or objective basis." 2) the job evaluations provided by the union had been 'too selective' because they had not included the graphic artists at british american who were paid similar wages as the examiners. because the issue of pay was separated from the issue of d iscr itninat ion . he did not take up the question of job ghetto iza tion. 3) the job evaluation had not been the result of a consultative process with the company but had been unilaterally formulated by the union. while shime did not argue against the union's case that the company, because of its profitable record, had the ability to pay the wage demanded, he agreed with the company that its competitive position had to be taken into account and that the settlement of a 77% wage demand could jeopardise this. although the companydid not fall within the terms of reference of the aib, it also made the case in its brief that because 35 wage and price controls were in effect in canada at that time, a wage settlement above the norm set by the anti-inflation board regulations would b« inflationary and irresponsible.36 addressing the question of discrimination, shime agreed with the ontario ministry of labour that the work was 'not similar' to that of the male workers. he argued in fact that the work of the floor boys was 'dirtier' than that of the examiners and this could account for the difference in wages. in this context, the usual criteria of skill and responsibility were ignored. in his concluding remarks, shime argued that while there was inconsistency in the wage rates of the floor boys and the examiners, this was not necessarily evidence of discrimination on the part of the company. instead, he made two kinds of argument which, while it attributed the difference in pay to the collective bargaining process, also placed the solution in that arena. firstly, the work force in the industry is splintered into multiple bargaining units which of itself produces inconsistency in wage bargaining. since this occurs elsewhere under similar conditions, he argued, inconsistency was nor unusual and was not evidence of discrimination. secondly, the wage rate of the 'floor boys' could be' accounted for by more effective collective bargaining on the part of their union. the solution to the widening differentials and the different rates of pay between the two sets of workers, therefore, lay in the collective bargaining process. on this question shime took a similar position to that of the ontario ministry of labour. the onu;; was quite clearlv put upon the steel plate examiners' local and the printer's union to bargain more effectively on behalf of the women. furthermore, shime accepted the company's argument that in comparison with the rraphlc artists at the company and other examiners at the bank v, of canada and the federal government, as well as in other printing establishments elsewhere, the wagi> offered to the steel plate examiners was 'a fair one'. again the question of job ghettos—whether the examiners at the other plants were also women or predominently womin--was not addressed, nor could it be under the terms of reference which the arbitrator had set for himself. shime also accepted the company's argument that because the offer of 12.8% had been accepted by the steel plate examiners at the canadian bank note company as a result of the "normal, bilateral bargaining and decisionmaking process", the charge of discrimination on the basis of sex could not be upheld. the union's argument , that the women at the canadian bank note company had made their own decision to accept the offer of ] 2 . 8% after an assessment of the possibilities of winning a strike, was discounted. on the one hand, shime argued that it was up to the union to rectify the problem of widening wage differentials and ensure that it was not a party to an agreement which contravened the labour relations act forbidding discriminatory bargaining practices. on the other hand, he argued that "the process of making the decision about wage rates was bilateral, and it is reasonable to infer that it was arrived at in the normal collective bargaining process after a relative assessment of bargaining strength, including the willingness of the members to withdraw their services." on the basis of these arguments the arbitrator's decision was in favour of the company's original offer to the union of 12.8%. 3. the political and legal processes a) political pressure after being notified by the ontario ministry of labour that the ontario legislation would not cover their case, the executive of local 31 went beyond the collective bargaining process in an attempt to bring polit37 ical pressure to bear on the company both during and after the negotiat ions. contact was made with the clc and the ofl, both of whom made unsuccessful attempts tc change the situation. shirley carr, vice president of the ci.c, appealed to the then minister of labour bette stephenson to put a wider interpretation on the implementation of the ontario human rights act. the ofl convention which was held during the strike voted to make representation to the government to amend the ontario legislation.39 because of the federal government's connection with the company, appeals were made by the clc to the federal minister of labour, john munro, to put pressure to bear on the company to change its bargaining position. ottawa ndp mla's evelyn cigantes and ndp provincial leader michael cassldy both raised questions in the ontario legislature on the issue of the need 40 to change the present legislation. the matter was later taken up by the ndp through a private member's bill. this was defeated in committee in early 1980. u most of the political pressure and lobbying activity was reported in the media at the time of the strike ,-ind while it made the case something of a 'cause celebre' it served little to change the situation for the steel plate examiners. since the company was not directly involved in selling to the public, adverse publicity of this kind could have little impact. although the publicity served to drum up some financial support for the strikers from women's groups across the province, most of this arrived after the strike had ended. initially, the executive of the local had been reluctant to take the issue outside the union movement and it was particularly reluctant to rake what it conxtdited to he an extreme militant position, for example. by expanding their picket line to include women's nroups or to a 1 low the issue to become the focus of mass demonstrations or meetings. although the women had been aware in the early stages of the strike that political pressure might be needed to change the company's bargaining position, this was seen in terms of the legitimate channels of the democratic political process— letters to mp's, lobbying by recognized pressure groups (the clc, ofl) and raising the matter with the political parties in opposition at queen's park. 44 while it was unsuccessful in terms of the examiners' specific case, the political pressure did have some repurcussions, however. in early 1980, the ontario minister of labour upgraded the employment standards branch inspectorate by hiring 11 more inspectors in an effort to remove the onus of complaint from the individual employee. as a result, within the first few weeks of the new program, several new cases of wage discrimination were uncovered in the province, even though the branch is still operating under the original terms of reference of 'equal pay for similar work . premier davis, under pressure from womnn in his own party on the issue, in the spring of 1980 promised a new conservative bill which would address the issue of equal pay for work of equal value. in malcing this announcement, however, he cautioned that implementation of this kind of legislation could be difficult. given the government's previous record with its existing legislation, the warning is probably appropriate, b) the human rights commission the strike ended in december 1977. in january 1978, the federal government's human rights commission came into operation. during the course of the strike .quest ions had been raised in parliament about the federal government's responsibility in the case because section 11 39 of the canadian human rights act bases sex discrimination in wages on equal pay for work of equal value. cordon fairweather, the chairman of the commission, had issued a statement indicating that if the strike was not settled when the commission came into operation in january 1978. the commission would examine the case. although he indicated at that time that the company's affairs fell under provincial jurisdiction, because the company did a large amount of its business with the federal government through the bank of canada, it could be argued that it was a government contractor. in this case, the human rights act had provisions in section 19 for the governor in council "to make recommendations respecting the terms and conditions to be included in or applicable to any contract, licence or grant."" questioned on the possibility of using this provision in the commons, prime minister trudeau replied that this would be "a completely incorrect procedure." "as a matter of principle we do not encourage third parties to involve themselves in disputes by exercising any kind of economic boycott. it seemed unlikely, therefore, that fairweather 's willingness to take up the issue on the basis of the government's contractual position and its responsibility under the act would nor receive the necessary cabinet backing. nevertheless, when the arbitration failed to meet the union'-; demands, instead of proceeding with a judicial review of the case, which was initially planned, the union decided to leave the matter in the hands of the federal human rights commission. the hearing took place in december 1979 and judgement in the case was handed down in march 1980 . the tribunal arrued, firstly, th.it the nature of the act was human rights, clearly d if f erent iat lf)r it from the 40 narrower aspects of labour legislation. secondly, they argued that the unintended scope of the canadian human rights act had been fairly narrowly defined by parliamentary discussion when it was enacted. during parliamentary debate on the issue it was clear that the act was not intended to have wide ranging constitutional jurisdiction under civil law. even here, the residual powers of the "peace, order and good government" clause of the british north america act had not been invoked which might have ensured that the act had universal applicability in canada. the human rights act specifically stares that the legislation is to "extend the present laws in canada to give effect, within a purview of matters coming within the legislative authority of the parliament of canada." this was interpreted by the tribunal to mean that the act only applies to enterprises falling under federal jurisdiction and that it should not be seen as "an attemor to supplant existing provincial legislation in the field, but rather to supplement it by filling in some of the gaps left by it." giveii this rather narrow interpretation of the scope of the act, the tribunal had to decide, it was argued, whether the business of the british american bank note company fell under provincial or federal jurisdiction in the matter of human rights. basing their discussion on two precedent cases, it was argued that while the control of paper money, which was the major part of the company's business, was clearly a matter of federal competence, it could not be argued on this basis that the employment practices of the company also fell under federal jurisdiction in respect to human rights. the employment practices of the company were already covered by the ontario human rights act and by ontario labour legislation and there could only 41 be a basis for supplementing this legislation if the practices of the company's operation in other than actual bank note production amounted to discrimination in their provision of services to the general public. since the company's employmen t practices did not come into the specific category of the actual issuing of paper money (such as banking) which would have placed it in the category of the federal government's incidental control, it was decided that the matter of wage discrimination in this case did not come within the powers of the tribunal. in making its decision, the tribunal reasoned the case on the basis of precedents which, although they were about employment, were not argued in terms of human rights but in terms of the constitutionality of the question. the question of human rights, therefore, was clearly viewed as subordinate to the question of constitutional jurisdiction. while it could be argued that the tribunal was unnecessarily narrow in its interpretation of the scope of the act, it was constrained by political realities. the tribunal itself acknowledged the act's weak position both legally and constitutionally by suggesting several ways in which, given the will to do so, parliament could have expanded the act's efficacy and 52 jurisdiction. it has already been noted that, in theory, under the terms of the act, the federal government had the power to act. but that it did not do so. this reluctance is comprehensible in both political and economic terms. apart from the sensitive political considerations surrounding the question of federal or provincial jurisdiction in this area, the federal government would have been setting a precedent with fairly broad ramifications for the labour relations system in the private sector if it had extended the concept of equal pay for work of equal 12 value to include companies with any kind of contractual relations with the federal government. the political repurcussions would have been even greater, however, if the human rights tribunal had not been careful to differentiate the human rights aspects of the act's power from thst of labour legislation. the human rights commission is now in the process of appealing the tribunal's decision in the supreme court of appeal. civen, however, the fairly weak position of the act constitutionally and legally, and the politically ascendant position of provincial jurisdictions in recent years, it is unlikely that a decision coming down in favour of the commission's case will remain unchallenged by the province of ontario or the company. conclusions the above case study has documented one instance in which equal pay for work of equal value became the explicit demand of a union in the process of a collective bargaining situation. but the strike was to all intents spd purposes defeated. although the organizational structure of the unions in the plant was in part to blame for both the discrepency in pay and for the failure of the strike, it is also clear that the defeat was only possible because the issue was either obscured or deflected by the processes and ideological discourse within which the issue was fought out. this 'mystification' of the real issue of the value of women's work, however, raises contradictions, which upon examination, become very apparent. while the union was defeated on the issue in this specific instance, the kind of demands they were making will not go down into historical oblivion. for many women inside and outside the labour movement, it has served as yet another example of the limitations of the 43 present legislation in ontario. but more than this, a close examination of the structure and ideology of collective bargaining reveals the full weight of the kind of barriers which must be overcome if women are to achieve equal pay in practice. concretely, the reasons for the failure of the examiners to achieve their goals within the collective bargaining and industrial relations system are obviously complex. as far as the local itself was concerned, these related to both organizational and ideological factors. it seems that the women had only relatively recently begun to feel justified in demanding equal pay. indeed, the initial demands were not for equal pay for work of equal value but only for parity with the lowest paid men in the plant. even here, there was some reluctance on the part of the other all-female local at the plant to support local 31 in this demand. although all the women in local 31 supported the strike in principle, it seems to have been a relatively small group within the local who felt strongly enough about the issue to take on the tasks of organization. there seems to have been a profound sense among this group of women that the situation at the plant was intolerable. having voiced their grievances to fellow workers on a number of occasions, they were taunted by some of the male workers for seeming to be unable 53 to do anything about their situation. their demand only became one for 'equal pay for work of equal value' after the strike had commenced and their attempts to close the gap in pay using existing means were fruitless. in the arbitration case, the union took up the principle of equal pay for work of equal value because it was the only logical way to present thdr case .which rested on comparability with the male workers. this demand was one which evolved as confrontation proceeded a.nd the issue became more clear. this unplanned approach to 14 a politically sensitive aril yet powerful issue had both advantages and disadvantages. it meant on the one hand that the strike had not been designed specifically to challenge the legislation. this 'political innocence' and the fact that the women were prepared to work within the existing legislation and structures served to highlight the inadequacy of the ontario legislation in a way which a more politically motivated strike might not have done. partly because of the local's autonomy in decision making, the nature of their demands developed spontaneouslv. while there were drawbacks in the lack of strategy, it also meant that there were few constraints on tailoring their strategy in the interests of the long-term. thus, by the time the strike was over, the issue and its real nature had been brought into clear focus, not only for the women themselves but for a broader public who were fcllowing the case, by the apparent audacity of their claim. on the other hand, the lack of planning and of a clear strategy also meant that there were loopholes in making a consistent case before the arbitrator which gave the company the opportunity to argue that the local's demands were inconsistent and unreasonable. the high degree of autonomy enjoyed by the local may also, in the long run, have worked against them. owen shime was perhaps correct in claiming that the union itself was in part to blame for the situation in which the women initially found themselves. the international seems to have done little or nothing to remeay what had been a fairly longstanding practice of hiring and wage discrimination by the employer. although the strike was legally recognized by the international and the women received a small amount of strike pay for the duration of the strike, they were left to themselves to organize and drum up support for the strike both inside 45 and outside the plant. local 31, like several of the other locals at the plant, is part of an old international craft union. these unions have traditionally taken little interest in 'politicizing' their members or putting their weight behind issues which take on an overt political content. the fact that the strike took place in a craft union shop placed not only organizational, but ideological, constraints on the polit icization of the issue inside and outside the plant. solidarity amongst the women in the plant was not uniformly maintained and the multi-union situation did not help to create it, but tended rather to foster competition between the two all-female locals. when the collective bargaining process failed, the issue was brought into the political arena. as discussed earlier, the women in the local initially had a great deal of confidence in the democratic political process and they were not reticent about trying to make their complaints heard. but they tended to see politics only in institutional terms. protest was directed through established pressure groups or members of parliament. such overt political action as there was was planned in accordance with this view. there was little appreciatbn on th'e part of the local that lobbying the ndp or liberal opposition parties at queen's park or writing to the local mla was unlikely to effect an immediate change in the ontario law or its implementation on their behalf. the other side of the coin to the obstacles created by the union organizational structure and the lack of strategy was the collective bargaining and arbitration process itself. as is clear from shiroe's report, this took place within a set of ideological assumptions about what constitutes a 'just' or 'fair' wage. within the discourse of collective bargaining and the industrial relations system, a wage which has been bargained for is, by definition, a fair one. according to the labour practices act, only where a union knowingly accepts a discriminatory wage rate is such a wage considered discriminatory. although it was recognized that the bargaining strength of a particular union can in reality vary and that this would have implications for the outcome, this was not considered to be an argument which justified intervention to rectify unequal or discriminatory wage practices on the part of the arbitrator. the onus, therefore, to achieve a 'fair wage' was placed entirely with the union. in other words, the structure of collective bargaining itself, for the purposes of reaching an arbitration decision, was considered to be a situation in which the union and the employer meet as equals. within thp discourse of the industrial relations system, therefore, collective bargaining is extracted from the unequal relationship which exists structurally between capital and labour and is assumed to take place between equals. the findings of this case study have immediate practical implications for the women's movement. but the case study also raises interesting questions for further study by sociologists. has the present ontario legislation, for instance, contributed to the problem of job ghettoization because one means of getting around the legislation is through discriminatory hiring and training practices? to what extent does the structure and practice of trade unions help to maintain job ghettos? to what extent is it possible that the demand for equal pav for work of equal value could present a challenge to the pattern of rewards which now exist in society, and what are the implications of this? these are just some of the quest ions which might be pursued by those interested in further research in this area. 47 but there are also practical lessons to be drawn from this case study. firstly, women in the union movement must learn tc work and fight together for equal pay. traditional, particularistic, union or trade interests and loyalties must be re-examined in the light of the equal pay principle. this may mean struggles will emerge within unions and between unions as much as they do with employers. secondly, women cannot afford to rely solely on the legislative process to change their situation. legislation must be interpreted and put to the test before its effectiveness can be judged. more progressive legislation can only back-up militant and united union struggle for the abolition of wage discrimination in practice at the work place. 18 footnotes 1 besides the federal llumnn rights legislation, b.c. and quebec do not limit equal pay rights to the same work. but there are constraints in both provinces on the universal application of equal pay for work of equal value. see lynn mcdonald, "equal pay-how far off?" c anadian dimension , vol. 14, no. 6, 1980. 2 see jule white, women in unions , ottawa: advisory council on the status of women, 1980, for statistical information on women in unions in canada. 3 affidavit of shirley cooligan, president of local 31, steel plate examiners union, august 2, 1978. 4 union brief to arbitration hearing. february 7, 1978. 5 arbitration decision of mr. owen shime, april 13, 1978. 6 interview with lynn kaye, counsel for the union, april 1980. 7 the decision of the canadian human rights tribunal, februarv 26, 1980, p. 19. 8 interview with shirley cooligan, former president of local 3 1 , steel plate examiners union, april 1980. 9 the details of the company's operations were taken from f>ven shime's arbitration decision, op . c i t . 10 the details of the company's financial position were taken from the financial post corporations service, revised edition, december, 1979, 11 union brief to arbitration hearing, february 7, 1978. 12 interview with personnel officer at british american bank note co., april 1980. 13 other than strike pay, the international did very little to help the local win its strike or the arbitration. in the latter case the local received considerable help from cupe. 14 arbitration decision, op.cit . 15 this description of the work and the workplace is based on the union brief, the company's brief and the arbitration decision, op . c i t 16 interview with shirley cooligan and maureen mckenney, january 1978 . 17 this does not account for the genesis of wage discrimination. in an interview with the ottawa journal in december 1977, r.p. white, vice chairman of the company is quoted as saying that "it wastraditional in the industry for men and women to be segregated in different unions and job categories." he also observed that a lot of women were second wage earners but contended that this was 'hot a reason why they received lower wages." 18 letter dated february 25, 1977, from maureen mckenney, secretary of the local to industrial relations manager at british american bank note company. 19 union brief to arbitration hearing, op . c i t . 20 ibid 21 letter from employment standards branch of the ontario ministry of labour, may 26 1977. 22 this account of the negotiations was taken from the arbitration documents and from interviews with shirley cooligan, union president and lynn kaye, the local's counsel. 23 this account is based on interviews with shirley cooligan and maureen mckenney in november 1977 and january 1978. 24 affidavit of shirley cooligan, august 2, 1978. 25 there was some confusion on the part of the union as to whether the case could legally be put to arbitration. according to cooligan the union was told during the mediation proceedings in november that the case was not eligible for arbitration. mien it was finally realized that it was, negotiations began with the company through the mediator as to the terms of reference for arbitration. 26 the company changed its trucking contractor during the strike because brinks drivers refused to cross the picket lines. the company then hired rydcrs trucking co. whose drivers crossed the picket line. 27 interviews with shirley cooligan and maureen mckenney with mr. kuiack of the printers union, november 1977. 28 many of the women in local 31 were heads of single parent families or the main bread winners in their family. 50 29 citizen , december, 1977 30 union reply to company brief to arbitration hearing 31 union brief to arbitration hearing, op.cit 32 the union made the case in its rebuttal to the company's brief that the terms of reference were clear and that they had been the point of protracted negotiations between the parties for almost a week in mid-december indicating that the intention was clear. agreement to arbitrate december 17, 1977. 33 agreement to arbitrate, december 17, 1977. 34 arbitration decision, op . c i t . 35 ibid 36 company's brief to arbitration hearing, op.cit . 37 arbitration decision, op.cit . 38 ibid 39 press reports, november-december, 1977. 40 press reports, december 1977. 41 maclean 's magazine, april 1980. 42 interview with shirley cooligan and maureen mckenney, january 1978. 43 discussion with shirley cooligan in late october, 1977. 44 ibid 45 citizen , april 1980. 46 davis stated that he favoured a program of affirmative action. this largely skirts the problem of wage discrimination in iob ghettos by concentrating on upgrading the skills of a united number of women. the solution is thus individualized. ( i t izen , april 15, 1980. 47 citizen , december 1977 48 ibid 49 the canadian human rights act, tribunal decision, february 26, 1980. si 50 the cases used as precedents were construction montcalm vs. minimum wage commission and one which was referred to as the steevedoring case. counsel for the respondent made his case on the former while the commission's counsel made his case on the latter. both cases concerned the question of federal or provincial jurisdiction over labour relations for firms whose operations included some connection with areas of federal jurisdiction, e.g., aeronautics and shipping. 51 the tribunal's decision was based on the montcalm case in which justice baetz had argued that although the company was engaged in operations (the construction of an airport) which clearly came under federal jurisdiction, its employee relations were fundamentally an integral part of these operations and therefore this came under provincial jurisdiction. 52 tribunal decision, op.cit . 53 based on interviews with shirley cooligan and maureen mckenney october 1977, november 1977 and january 1978. trade unions and the state: an interpretative essay on the historical development of class and state relations in canada, 1889 1947 daniel glenday and christopher schrenk introduction this essay investigates the interaction between the canadian state and trade unions during the first half of this century primarily in terms of the political incorporation of trade unions in canada. the basis of our investigation is the work of those theorists who spoke to the importance of the state and trade unions under advanced capitalism and whose familiarity in this area aided our historical exploration. we discovered that incorporation of canada's unions was an uneven process with the federal level taking the lead over the provincial. we conclude by expanding on certain notions of the state and the role trade unions play within advanced capitalism. theories stressing the limits and possibilities of trade union action in capitalist societies can be subsumed under two broad categories. first, what might broadly be termed the sociological tradition was founded upon such writers as s. perlman (1928) in the united states and sidney and beatrice webb (1902) in the united kingdom. more recently, a group based at the berkeley institute of industrial relations and which included such noted academics as daniel bell, r. dubin, clark kerr, s.m. lipset and a.m. ross came to dominate the field in the 1950 ' s and 1960 ' s . in britain as well there are many theorists who belong in this tradition. some, such as alan fox (1974) and j.h. goldthorpe (1974) are more 'radical' in their approach while others like h.a. clegg (1951), a. flanders (1965), h.a. turner (1962), g.s. bain (1970), to mention only a few, remain more "liberal" in their orientation. second, there is the marxist tradition which 114 trade unions and the state includes revolutionaries such as k. marx, a. grams ci , r. luxemburg, v. lenin and l. trotsky. it is represented today by a growing number of young practioners, mostly, though not exclusively, from great britain: robin blackburn (1967), victor allen (1972), richard hyman (1971) and perry anderson (1967). the sociological approach the dominant sociological approach centres on the changing dynamics of class consciousness and class conflict under advanced capitalism. distilling from the literature, we can outline at least five major interrelated propositions. first, industrialization is depicted as a modernizing trend which will eventually eliminate vestiges of traditional institutions and values. in other words, the secular will come to replace the sacred. second, as michael mann (1973: 10) notes with reference to the "end of ideology" theorists, their "central tenet would be that there is an inherent strain in the industrialization process toward the compromise of class interests and the institutionalization of conflict." third, once institutionalized, class conflict becomes isolated or fragmented into separate spheres of dispute. this is due to an argument that sees the institutionalization of conflict necessarily involving the isolation of economic from political action. as mann further argues "the institutionalization of industrial conflict is nothing more nor less than the narrowing down of conflict to aggressive economism and defensive control" (mann, 1973: 21). in addition, it is held that such conflict is so fragmented that it no longer threatens social stability but becomes a functional part of 2 society. put another way, the segmentation of life in advanced capitalist society constitutes an obstacle to the realization of class consciousness (dunlop: 1958). fourth, the rising standard of living or working class affluence in advanced industrial societies inevitably 115 alternate routes leads to a decline in conflict. and, finally, the working class is reasonably content with its lot and exhibits little indication of alienation, deprivation or socialist consciousness. trade unions enter the picture as reducing the class nature of the conflict by focusing almost exclusively on economistic or instrumental demands. they represent the organization apparatus which has plugged into the complicated web of government and business agencies, boards and committees. although it varies from industry to industry, general 1y the older the labour union, the more complete the institutionalization of class conflict would be, thereby reducing the necessity for the organization to exhibit a radical political content. the process of institutionalization is never complete. the sociological explanation for why this happens can be reduced to two root factors. first, we must consider the particular characteristic of each national economy; this includes the important differences in the industrial segments of mining, and manufacturing, and the service sector which, in turn, result in variations in the level of legitimate trade union involvement in the national economy. second, employers of labour become critical components in the working out of the role of trade unions under capitalism. as employer attitudes change away from what richard lester has called the "commodity concept" of employment to the "welfare concept", a reduction in the intensity and violence of industrial conflict results. on the other hand, the reverse is also true. class conflict will intensify if the employer refuses to play by the rules of the game which include trade union recognition and collective bargaining (ingham: 1974: 16). the major thrust of the sociological approach characterizes capitalist social relations as tending towards the isolation of conflict into separate industrial disputes and the narrowing of lift trade unions and the state conflict to aggressive economism provided the employer will play the game. in all, compromise and sectoral conflict are seen to be the dominant tendencies which bear on the problem of trade unions under advanced capitalism. the marxist tradition the sociological approach has indeed borrowed many of the ideas which were germane to the marxist tradition. a key difference is the 3 political thrust of their arguments. while the sociological approach ends with the limited or constrained political role of trade unions the marxist tradition moves in a revolu tionary direction while at the same time acknowledging certain limitations to trade union action under capitalism. the limitations of trade union action under capitalism were seen to be the result of the fact that trade unions crystal li zed or institution alized the existence of the working class in the factory. they did not transcend capitalist social relations. trade unions were the expression of class relations and as such would become a prisoner of them. consequently, as lenin came to argue, the labour movement by itself can only develop trade union consciousness that is, "the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation" (1967: 117). such consciousness, he argues, cannot transcend the existing social structure without the intervention of a revolutionary party. socialism as the political generalization of immediate economic interests had to be learned, and it was up to the party cadres to become the active participants within the working class to bring about the desired goal. we do not intend to go into any detail on the historical experiences which led most revolutionaries to this position, nor will we delve into the important differences in strategy and tactics within this 117 alternate routes tradition. the problematic of the contracted political role of trade unions under advance capitalism is shared by both the marxist and sociological traditions each of which provides some indication as to why this has occurred. what distinguishes the marxist tradition from the sociological approach centers on the theoretical analysis of the exploitive relationship between capitalists and workers. the inherently antagonistic interests between the two great classes of capitalism rest on the appropriation of surplus value by capitalists from the working class. therefore, the incorporation of the working class and its organizations can only be of limited success. the fundamental contradiction still remains and is a constant source of conflict for the system as a whole (hyman, 1975: 68, 96, 103). one, but by no means the only marxist to contribute to the understanding of this problematic was leon trotsky. just before his assassination he was investigating the question of the role of trade unions under late ...capitalism (1975). he added certain dimensions to the study of this problem by stressing trade union bureaucratization and the "growing together" of "modern trade union organizations throughout the i world" with the state (1975: 68). he saw this process as being "equally characteristic of the neutral, the social democratic, the communist and the anarchist trade unions" because it derived from "social conditions common to all unions" (1975: 68-69). as with lenin, these common social conditions were seen to stem from the emergence of monopoly capitalism which forced trade unions to "confront a centralized capitalist adversary, intimately bound up with state power". as such, trade unions "insofar as they remain on reformist positions, i.e. on positions of adapting themselves to private property (must) adapt themselves to the capitalist state and ...contend for its cooperation" (1975: 69). unlike the sociological approach which made impressionistic 118 trade unions and the state references to the impact of industrialization on trade unions and the changing attitudes of employers, trotsky stressed the centralizing tendencies of capital and its connections with the state. this facilitated boththe consolidation of trade union organizations and their bureaucratization, a process which hyman (1971) refers to as trotsky's thesis of incorporation . here trotsky, more explicitly than lenin, encompasses in his examination the intentional strategies of industry and the state. he notes, how, particularly in periods of economic and political 'difficulty', government and leaders of large corporate enterprises deliberately plan to integrate trade unions into state structures thereby mitigating threats from below to the dominance of capital. while government and industry viewed positively an incorporated. and therefore more easily regulated and controlled labour force, the trade union leadership, for its own bureaucratic reasons also favoured such a development. trade union leaders would see their primary task as "freeing the state from the embrace of capitalism, in weakening its dependence on trusts, in pulling it over to their side" (1975: 69). in this manner, they mistakenly believed the "independence" of trade unions would be assured and a better deal for the workers could be extracted form the profits of monopoly capitalism. reformist leaders using their authority gained by "delivering the goods" in periods of expansion now function to condone, if not promote, this strategy. "implicit in this argument," says hyman (1971: 18), "is the thesis of incorporation: that union leaders, having acquired authority over their 4 members, are used to assist capitalism in controlling the workers." in a period of capitalist decline and crises, trotsky predicted that trade unions could move in one of two directions, either to serve as "secondary instruments of capitalism for the subordination and disciplining of workers or, on the contrary, the trade unions could 119 alternate routes become the instruments of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat" (1975: 71). the tendency (not "iron law"), towards incorporation differs fundamentally from the notion of the institutionalization of conflict discussed above. it is analysed as a tendency which attempts to temporarily counter the dynamic of class conflict. the conflictual dynamic between the two dominant social classes within capitalism is endemic to it and remains central here as it is in all writings within the marxist tradition. it is not necessary for this short essay to deal with the criticism that trotsky did not envision the durability of capitalism after world war ii and that his projections therefore failed to include the renewed basis for reformist action in the trade unions. his analysis has shown that one fruitful avenue to explore towards understanding the limited political role of trade unions would be an historical investigation of the interaction between the state and trade unions. to this question we now turn. trade unions and the state in canada: 1889 1947 over the past three-quarters of a century, a most important development for the working class in western capi talistcountries has been the expansion of the state's involvement in the class struggle. in the pages to follow, we intend to trace the historical development of the federal and provincial government's role in incorporating trade unions into specific state structures under the domination of capital. we begin our investigation by delving into some of the background statements and past positions taken by the federal government concerning labour legislation in canada. 120 trade unions and the state the royal commissions we intend to refer to two royal commissions, the royal commission on labour and capital (1889) and the royal commission on industrial relations (1919) , both influenced by similar musings in great britain, in order to outline the government's position on organized labour. first, the royal commission on capital and labour (1889) tells us that: labour organizations are necessary to enable working men to deal on equal terms with their employers. they encourage their members to study and discuss matters affecting their interests and to devise means for the betterment of their class. it is gratifying to be assured by many competent witnesses that labour bodies discourage strikes and other disturbances in industry, favour conciliation and arbitration for the settlement of disputes, and adopt conservative and legitimate methods for promoting the welfare of the producing members of society. it is in evidence that most labour bodies strive effectively to promote temperance throughout the country, and especially among their members (emphasis added). ,two points are clear from this statement. first, "responsible" and "competent" trade unions were those which were effectively able to foster "temperance" in their membership by "discouraging strikes" and "adopting conservative and legitimate methods" to achieve their ends. the royal commissioners sought trade union leaders who were willing and able to compromise on their demands and minimize disruptive acticns by the rank and file against the sanctity of property. second, to focus on the legitimacy of trade unions as bargaining agents with capital in the era of "laissez-faire" capitalism is one indication of the farsightedness of the commissioners. the commission argued that on the basis of testimony from individuals representing all sections of canadian society, trade unions should be accepted as representing the interests of the working class. their willingness to compete for rewards wi thin the system and not against 121 alternate routes it must have compelled the commissioners to view trade unions as "responsible" agents for the working class. as such, a further explanation for the position taken by the royal commission could have been due to the fact that industrialization was still in its infancy in canada. with an eye to great britain the commissioners may have felt that the exploitation and degradation of nascent capitalism there had resulted in indiscriminate acts of vandalism and destruction by the workers (e.g. luddism). the restraints which trade union organizations could exercise over their membership may have been seen as a means of protecting property and fixed capital from those same destructive tendencies which appeared to be. inherent in early industrial capitalist development. the political logic important as that early statement may have been, it must be qualified to scne extent. not all unions were viewed in this manner by both the federal and provincial levels of the canadian government. for instance, in 1903, a royal commission on industrial disputes in british columbia emphatically stated that "foreigners" from the united states who were nothing more than "socialist agitators of the most bigoted and ignorant type" should be punished for their trade union activities. these men came to canada for no other reason than to "keep up unceasing friction between the employer and the employed." the action taken by the federal government in this matter has been neatly summarized by john crispo: "this report sparked the senate of canada to propose a similar amendment to the criminal code. although the bill was defeated by an overwhelming margin in the house of commons, a member of the senate put forward a comparable bill four years later. this time, however, it was tossed out by the senate itself. the cma (canadian manufacturers association) proposal of two years later had no better luck. this scries of defeats hardly suggests that the canadian government was prepared to make an issue 122 trade unions and the state of international unionism (1967: 292). what we see emerging is the divergent paths which the two levels of the canadian government follow when they seek to interpret and deal practically with the role of trade unions in canadian society. the federal government will come to endorse their positive role, at least in words and occasionally in deeds, while the provincial governments will not, until many bitter struggles have been waged. but, it was not simply a matter of dealing with trade unions per se which annoyed the leaders of the more industrialized provincial governments; it was also the incursion of american-based international trade unions into 'their' territory. on the other hand, the federal government's position towards international unionism appeared to be an affirmation of their role and contribution to canadian society and industry. another important event which symbolized the federal government's positive attitude towards american-based international unions came when the president of the af of l was invited to address a joint session of both houses of parliament in april, 1917. this was the first time that such an invitation had been made to any labour leader. and, that it was not a canadian but an american labour leader "must be taken as a sign of the esteem in which international unions were hel c by the government of the day" (crispo, 1967: 292). twenty years later, we hear again the echo of the spectre of international trade unionism. this time it comes from mitchell hepburn, premier of the province of ontario. in commenting on the strike between the united auto workers and general motors at oshawa, ontario in 1937, hepburn remarked: the issue is whether or not foreign agitators, who already have brought the united states to a state of anarchy, were to attain their goal of smashing our export business. we know what these agitators are up to, they are working their way into the 123 alternate routes lumber camps, the pulp mills and our mines. well, that has got to stop and we are going to stop it. if necessary, we will raise an army to do so (ware, 1937: 66-67). all of the premier's rhetoric went to no avail. besides losing the minister of labour and the attorney general over the strike, he failed to enlist the support of the federal government in this matter. mr. king showed no sympathy for mr. hepburn's position, while the dominion minister of labour, the honourable norman mcleod rogers, laid down the dominion's attitude on the rights of trade union organizers crossing the border. he said that american organizers had free entry into canada as representatives of the af of l or the c.i.o. or any other organization. the dominion government had no interest in the differences among organizations whether native or alien and was ready to offer its conciliation services on request (ware, 1937: 70-71). the history of the quebec government's attitude towards international trade unionism is probably better known and is not significantly different from ontario's or british columbia's attitudes described above. the one important qualification concerns quebec's endorsement of the catholic syndicate movement at least up to the asbestos strike. the position of the federal government at this time, in contrast to the provincial governments was certainly aimed at facilitating the incorporation of international trade unions within the political framework of canadian society. the provincial governments and the canadian manufacturers association (cma), on the other hand, lobbyed against the international trade unions. they were prepared to support national trade union organizations against the international if need be, but would have preferred not to deal with trade unions at all. why do we see bifurcation of political interests on this issue? one plausible explanation, besides the oft noted influence of british legislative precedence on the federal government, rests with the economic interests which lie beneath both levels of the state apparatus. the 124 trade unions and the state federal government was allied to finance capital and foreign, primarily u.s. controlled, international corporations (armstrong and nelles, 1973; naylor,1975). big business is not always as challenged by trade union demands as are locally based industries since it is more difficult for a trade union to paralyze a large corporation than it is to close down a small domestic one. it is also noteworthy that the financial institutions, such as the large canadian banks, were always able to thwart unionization attempts and were therefore under no serious threat from the canadian labour movement. therefore, big business can, if necessary, tolerate trade unions and in the long run may even attempt to use them to their advantage (bendix, 1956; weinstein, 1968). the provincial governments and local business present a different case. the governments of more industrialized provinces such as ontario, quebec and british columbia were more strongly influenced by smallscale domestic manufacturing industries and the independent commodity producer (armstrong and nelles, 1973; nelles, 1974), whose political conservatism should be noted. during the first half of this century, many provinces felt the impact of the rise of important petit bourgeois parties (macpherson, 1953; quinn, 1960; young, 1971). putting these pieces together, we can argue that the parts played by both levels of the canadian state vis-a-vis trade unions can be understood if they are situated historically in terms of the two different class interests which they in many respects reflected. the provincial state's intransigence toward international trade unions, for instance, can be seen as a response to the small-scale businessman's fears that a large and, relatively speaking, powerful international trade union could destroy his business. such fears, on the other hand, would not necessarily be felt as strongly by banking and large-scale business interests which would explain the federal government's more positive 125 alternate routes attitude towards international unions. this interpretation is in part borne out by the royal commission on industrial relations commissioned in 1919. this commission was more analytical than the former study (1889) and therefore provides a clearer insight into the problem of class conflict in canada in the early 20th century. the problem, it seems, fell on the internal divisions within canada's capitalist class. employers may be divided into three classes -(1) those who deny the right of their employees to organize (2) those who, while not denying that right of their employees to organize, refuse to recognize organization among their employees. .. .and (3) those who not only admit the right of their employees to organize, but recognize and bargain with the organization on behalf of their employees... there are not many employers in canada who belong to the first class, but there are a very large number who belong to the second class. to the third class belong the great railway , telegraph and mining companies and many building trades . . . . we believe the frank acknowledgement of this right by employers will remove one of the most serious causes of unrest (emphasis added), g class struggle in canada was primarily seen as resulting from the large number of business organizations which did not acknowledge the legitimate role of trade unions in the nation's economy. it was only the giant corporations at this point in time which were able to transcend their parochial interests and face up to the legitimacy of the collective representation of workers in canada. the statements from these royal commissions have shown the federal state's concern for labour's role within canadian capitalist society. it only remains to describe the stages in which the federal government attempted to implement these concerns. the political 'praxis' the implementation of these concerns has followed roughly two stages. as indicated in the previous section, the federal government 126 trade unions and the state endorsed labour's contribution to the development of the canadian economy. however, government only provided for registration, conciliation and arbitration on a voluntary basis. the object of the industrial disputes investigation act of june 17, 1925 is essentially the voluntary settlement of disputes before they develop into stoppages of work. the instrument employed is an ad hoc body consisting of three membe rs , one appointed on the recommendation of the other two members. the minister of labour makes any appointments necessitated by failure to recommend., the principal problem with this arrangement, as soon became obvious, was the institutional separateness between the state, industry and organized labour. only in times of crisis and only through ad hoc committees do the three parties involved come together. as long as labour was ket out of society, then the potential for violence always remained. the establishment of appropriate labour legislation would permit if not the complete incorporation of labour, at least its significant integration through its organized representatives, within the state system. the process of establishing such procedures as trade union recognition and collective bargaining by the canadian state was about to begin. this leads us to the second phase -direct state intervention between capital and labour. the first piece of legislation to help accomplish this end became the federal government's adoption of p.c. 1003 in 1943. wartime labour relations board concerning the particular contribution of p.c. 1003 effected for the incorporation of organized labour into canadian society, professor logan notes: 127 alternate routes p.c. 1003 means the bringing of the wagner act and american experience under it to canada. but it involves more: for in some respects it goes beyond, while in others it modifies the pattern. it copies the american act in setting up a special board , in strictures it directs towards employers regarding unfair labour practises, in compelling negotiations in good faith with certified representatives of their workers, in vote taking, majority rule, etc. it goes beyond it: (1) in naming and prescribing unfair practices by unions (2) it goes beyond the american act also in assuming a responsibil i ty by the state to assist the two negotiating parties to reach agreement (3) it exceeds the american act again in that it forbids strikes and lockouts during negotiations and for the term of the agreement and compels the parties to fulfil (emphasis added). ,. the important points to bear in mind are contained in the thrust of the legislation towards state intervention and the behavioural control of trade unions. significantly, this piece of labour legislation set down the basic ground rules which management, certified trade unions and the state must still follow today. the machinery implemented to bring trade unions into canadian society was the wartime labour relations board, composed of a chairman and eight representatives of employers and employees -four from each group. the board's effect on trade union activity was immediately felt. the principal cause for many strikes, union recognition, had been removed. in the words of arthur macnamara, the deputy minister of labour during the war period: ...a wartime experiment in industrial relations was to prove to have more than temporary utility, and was subsequently embodied in peacetime legislation. this was the introduction, in 1944, of compulsory collective bargaining between employers and the certified bargaining representatives of their employees. . . . its introduction had the effect of virtually ending strikes over the issue of union recognition ; a result of considerable importance during a period when unions were more than doubling their membership (emphasis added). 128 trade unions and the state certainly the increasing pressure from below which came from the doubling of trade union membership in the first few short years of the war contributed to the canadian state's positive intervention in regards to trade union recognition (jamieson, 1973: 90-91). but on matters pertaining to manpower programs and social legislation, the canadian state took a more"cautious route" by consulting with labour, management and third parties before implementing policy. again, we hear from arthur macnamara: a significant feature of the manpower program was the care that was taken to consult with labour , management and other groups on policy matters. before regulations were passed and put into effect they were reviewed by the national selective service advisory committee, made up of representatives of labour , management, the armed forces, agriculture, the universities and other groups (emphasis added) j? in matters pertaining to social legislation, a similar procedure was followed: for example, the unemployment insurance act of 1940: ...the insurance fund, financed by compulsory contributions from the employer , employed worker and the government is an excellent example of responsibility and cooperation that may exist between groups of citizens (emphasis added).,.. the importance of these consultations did not rest in the equal status of the contending parties. indeed such was not the case as labour did not have an equal voice with management. what is significant centers on the conscious action by the federal state to open the ground for future acts of incorporation. conclusion in summary, with the above changes in industrial relations the various sections of the canadian trade union movement had by 1947 14 moved significantly in the direction of incorporation. they became increasingly enmeshed in the complicated machinery of state agencies beginning, of course, on the federal level. furthermore, this trend of the canadian labour movement was facilitated by the fact that, with the 129 alternate routes short-lived exception of western syndicalists, it had always been a reform movement and never desired to seriously challenge capitalist hegemony in canada. this despite the fact that at certain historical moments, such as the massive strike waves of the post-world wars and particularly the later years of the depression, a revolu tionary leadership could have posed a substantial challenge to corporate rule in canada. however, it was only when its legitimacy within the system was not guaranteed that the trade union movement felt compelled to display a show of force. once it gained recognition and collective bargaining rights and was accepted as an integral part of canadian society the dynamics of class conflict could become more routinized. as a social institution, the unions now form not only an integral part of the commun i ty but also of the nation. the labour congresses make known the view-points of their members on national affairs through the presentation of briefs to government. in addition, representatives of unions as well as of management organizations now serve on many governmental boards and commi ttees (emphasis added). ,c by 1947, every province in canada, except saskatchewan, had, in effect, adopted p.c. 1003 as standard labour policy. variations between provinces as to its implementation were due to differences in constitutional interpretation and on the relation of class forces, that is, large versus small capital, the strength of the independent commodity producer and working class militancy. conflict continued but the implementation of p.c. 1003 virtually across canada meant that organized labour's role moved away from finhting for recognition at the national level towards consolidating these gains at the provincial level. in general, the arena within which industrial conflict would be concentrated in the post world war ii period would be in those provinces whose political machinery had the strongest support coming from local businessmen and independent farmers. 130 trade unions and the state in all, then, the role of the canadian state is a complicated picture because the two principal levels of the state, the federal and the provincial, acted in contradictory ways. the federal level was clearly in the vanguard of the political incorporation of trade unions while the provincial state apparatus had to be dragged. finally, a theory of the state and trade unions must also include an analysis of the key responses and initiatives of the working class. in dealing with process of political incorporation of trade unions in canada, we had to assume the oppositional influence of class conflict that so dramatically surfaced at such historical moments as the winnipeg general strike (1919), oshawa (1937), windsor (1945), asbestos (1949), to mention just a few examples. on the basis of the above overview, then, it appears to be too simple to see the state in capitalist societies as acting only in one direction or manner at every historical point in time. a theory of the state and trade unions must be expanded to incorporate different levels of the state apparatus and an analysis of class fractions within society which ally themselves to these different levels. in other words, the explanation for the uneven or incomplete process of incorporation of trade unions within civil society must include an analysis of the effectiveness with which the local businessmen and independent commodity producers are capable of politically implementing their ends in the face of a growing industrial working class. in our opinion, such an approach was not forthcoming from the sociological tradition but can be seen to derive from the marxist theories. 131 footnotes 1. 'secular* in terms of working class politics refers to instrumental attitudes, that is, the sober calculation of material advantages. see r.t. mackenzie and a. silver, angels in marble (london ,1969) . 2. there are of course partial exception to functionalist). for example, clark kerr has argued that "aggressive industrial conflict cannot be eliminated and can only be temporarily suppressed". he grounds his thesis on four assumptions; "labour-management conflict flows inevitably from the unsatiated desires of men, the relationship of managers and managed, the need to adapt to changed conditions in one fashion or another and the drive for institutional separateness". his mixture of hedonist philosophy and liberal pluralism does not contradict the conservative thrust of his conclusion: "but conflict may be destructive as well as constructive, and thus it needs to be guided if the social fabric is to be protected and serious injury to individuals and groups avoided" (1954: 230,231,234). 3. see the "debate with marx's ghost" in irving zeitlin, ideology and the development of sociological theory (new jersey, 1968) . 4. for further elaboration on trade union officials' powe r "over" versus "for" members, see hyman (1975) chapter three. 5. the labour gazette , september 1950, p. 1346. 6. for an alternate explanation see eric hobsbawm's "the machine breakers" in l abouring men (london, 1964). 7. c. b. williams, "development of relations between canadian and american national trade union centers 1886-1925", industrial relations (quebec ), vol. 20, no. 2, 1965. 8. there is some evidence that the same samuel gompers was quite acceptable to business interests. in a 1901 address to the national civic federation he had proclaimed "a community of interests .. between the organization of the wage earners and the organization of the employers" (cited from howard and scott in teeple, 1972: 69). 9. the labour gczette , september 1950, p. 1347. 10. international labour org anization , studies and reports, series a., no. 34, conciliation and arbitration in industrial disputes, geneva, 1933. 11. h.a. logan, "the state and collective bargaining", cjeps, 1944, vol. 10, p. 482. "(up to 1943) the canadian acts, however, provided no special machinery for enforcing their provisions, a most serious ommission." h.a. logan and m.j. inman, op. ci t . , p. 596. 12. the labour gazette, ibid . , pp. 1342, 1344, 1345. 13. ibid . , p. 1369. 14. while we have emphasized the legislative aspect of industrial relations in this sketch, a more thorough investigation would also note the role of state coercion i.e., use of the police and judiciary. 15. the labour gazette , op. cit., p. 1372. 16. see i. abel la (ed.) on s trike: six key labour struggles in canada 1919-1949 (toronto, 1974). 132 abel la, irving 1974 on strike: six key labor struggles in canada 1919-1949 . toronto: james lewis 5 samuel. armstrong, c. and h.v. nelles 1973 "private property in peril: ontario businessmen and the federal system, 1898-1911" in g. porter and r. cliff (eds) enterprise and national development . toronto: hakkert. bendix, r. 19s6 work and authority in industry . new york: harper 5 row. crispo, john 1967 international unionism: a study in canadian-american relations . toronto: mcgraw-hill. dunlop, j.t. 1958 industrial relations systems . new york: holt. hobsbawm, eric 1964 labouring men: studies in the history of labour . london: weidenfeld and nicolson. howard, roger and jack scott 1972 "international unions and the ideology of class collaboration" in g. teeple (ed.) capitalism and the national question in canada. toronto: u. of t. press. hyman, richard 1971 marxism and the sociology of trade unionism . london: pluto. 1975 industrial relations . london: macmillan. international labour organization 1933 conciliation and arbitration in industrial disputes . studies and reports, series a., no. 34, geneva. ingham, g. 1974 strikes and industrial conflict . london: macmillan. jamieson, stuart 1973 industrial relations in canada . toronto: macmillan. kerr, clark 1954 "industrial conflict and its mediation", american journal of sociology , vol. 60, pp. 230-245. labour , dept . of 1950 labour gazette . ottawa. lenin, v.i. 1967 "what is to be done?", selected works, volume i . moscow: progress . logan, h.a. 1944 "the state and collective bargaining", canadi an journal of economics and political science , vol. 10, pp. 476-488. mackenzie, r.t. and a. silver 1969 • angels in marble . london. 133 macpherson, c.b. 1953 mann, michael 1973 nay lor, tom 1975 nelles, h.v. 1974 trotsky, leon 1975 ware, n.j. 1937 weinstein, james 1968 williams, c.b. 1965 young, walter 1969 zeitlin, irving 1968 democracy in alberta: social credit and the party system . toronto: university of toronto press. consciousness and action among the western working class. london: macmillan. the history of canadian business 1867-1914 . toronto: james lorimer. the politics of development . toronto: macmillan. leon trotsky on the trade unions . new york: pathfinder. "the history of labour interactions", in n.j. ware and h.a. logan, labour in canadian-american relations . toronto: ryerson. corporate ideal in the liberal state, 1900-1918 . boston: beacon. "development of relations between canadian and american national trade union centers 1886-1925" in i ndustrial relations (quebec) , vol. 20, no. 2. anatomy of a party . toronto: university of toronto press. ideology and the development of sociological theory. new jersey: prentice-hall. 134 neoliberalism and the state | 85 neoliberalism and the state martijn konings1 introduction many political economists have tended to view the global financial crisis as a turning-point, leading us out of neoliberalism and into a more regulated form of capitalism (gamble, 2009; altvater, 2009; wade, 2008).2 the fact that even financial elites felt that insufficient regulatory constraints might have been a factor in the making of the crisis was taken as indicating the demise of free-market dogmas. further confirmation of this diagnosis came in the form of the massive public interventions in the wake of the crisis, which ran counter to all the core tenets of neoliberalism. such arguments often follow the logic of a polanyian conceptual framework, according to which market expansion will generate contradictions that trigger a double movement whereby society organizes to re-impose its values on the market’s commodification logic. in polanyian metaphors, after several decades of market ‘disembedding’ we are potentially witnessing a new phase of regulatory‘re-embedding’. by now, this optimism has been tempered somewhat: it has become clear that the public interventions in the wake of the crisis represent some of the most inegalitarian uses to which state power has ever been put–that is to say, that massive amounts of public funds have shielded financial elites from experiencing the consequences of bad bets while ordinary people are suffering the full effects of the crisis, including unprecedented rates of eviction and unemployment. yet what persists is the notion that the crisis and the governmental responses it triggered 1  martijn konings is lecturer in political economy at the university of sydney (sydney, australia) and has published widely on american and global finance. his current research interests relate to the changing ways in which households are connected to financial institutions, shifts in pension funds’ investment strategies since the onset of the subprime crisis, and the need for political economy to enrich its understanding of core economic categories by drawing on perspectives in social psychology and psychoanalysis. he recently edited the great credit crash and american empire and the political economy of global finance (with leo panitch). he can be reached at: martijn.konings@sydney.edu.au 2  this article incorporates material previously published in neoliberalism and the american state, critical sociology, 36 (5), 741-765. 86 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times represent a progressive moment: according to this reasoning, some form of regulated capitalism is not just imperative from an ethical point of view, but it is a practical necessity, as the self-regulating market will sweep away the very conditions of social and political order. this article argues that such assessments of the current situation are based on a misappraisal of the past three decades, and it will elaborate this argument with reference to the us case. its central claim is that neoliberalism was a return to classical liberalism only on an ideological level; neoliberal practices were never about institutional retreat or the subordination of public and private actors to the discipline of disembedded markets, but precisely involved the creation, legitimation and consolidation of new institutional capacities and mechanisms of control. to view the neoliberal era through the lens of institutionalization is to say that it has been a process whereby financial forms penetrated more deeply into the everyday life of ordinary americans, financial innovation assumed a certain systemic coherence and functionality, and regulators created new policy channels that gave them more grip on financial expansion. this had little to do with the generalized subordination of private and public actors to market imperatives but rather involved a contraction of the room to maneuver available to the bulk of the population that found its counterpart in the growth of the state’s capacities and the increased leverage commanded by financial elites. in the construction of these new relations, the idea of a return to a pre-keynesian free market has played a crucial role, but it is the task of the critical social scientist to show how practices diverge from (even if they are also profoundly shaped by) people’s ideas about them. the idea that neoliberalism has enhanced political control represents a counter-intuitive conceptualization, but this article suggests that that is the case precisely because neoliberal ideology has such a hold on our common sense and intuitions. in order to uncover the nature of neoliberal practices we need to shift to a conceptual register not shaped by neoliberal free-market discourse–to a framework that allows us to see what such practices affect and do rather than say and project. this means that, in order to uncover precisely those dimensions of power that neoliberal discourse obscures, we need to broaden our conception of political authority and learn to operate with more capacious concepts of statehood and state power. attempts to counter the hegemony of neoliberalism often rely too much on a narrow conception of public authority that, by seeking to reassert the salience of the official state vis-à-vis the neoliberalism and the state | 87 market, tend to remain within the conceptual parameters set up by neoliberal thought. this article first develops an alternative conceptualization of the state-market relationship and then discusses how this allows us to make sense of key aspects of the neoliberal era. neoliberalism and infrastructural power we may usefully draw here on mann’s (1984) conception of ‘infrastructural’ power: whereas ‘despotic’ power refers to fairly direct authority over a specific set of actors that is backed up by the threat of coercion, infrastructural power denotes a capacity to implement political projects through social life–that is, an ability to employ institutionalized networks of connections among social actors for the transmission of authority. infrastructural power is more indirect and diffuse and confers more control over the systemic properties of social interaction. it is crucially dependent on the kind of hegemonic socialization that secures active cooperation from social actors. such legitimacy is constructed through institutions that present us with formal, idealized accounts of the operation of our social relations. that norms and institutions should not reveal everything about social life is essential to the emergence of stable mechanisms of social control: their full exposure would entail continuous questioning and so prevent them from becoming entrenched in the routines of everyday life. at the same time, however, the complexity and opacity at the heart of modern power means that its operation is often highly unclear to its participants, making it difficult to wield even for those who are positioned favourably in its networks. in other words, actors may exercise power without being aware of it or without knowing how to wield it most effectively. the capacities that modern power builds are contradictory and fragile, precisely because they require the navigation and manipulation of indirect social relations. although dominant actors like financial elites and policymakers are likely to have more systemic oversight than subordinate actors, their actions are refracted by institutional mediations in ways that they cannot always control or fully foresee. these considerations suggest a particular angle from which to view the dynamics of the neoliberal era. from this perspective, the fact that the modern american state’s capacity to manage economic life and secure financial stability is regularly under threat should not be seen primarily as evidence for the idea (prevalent especially in (ipe) international political economy) that capitalism tends to destroy its institutional preconditions and that neoliberalism has given free rein to this tendency. the interpre88 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times tation proposed here relies on the idea that, instead, the tensions faced by and running through the neoliberal state are the very process through which the state’s modalities of control evolve, reflective of the difficulties involved in managing more intricately interwoven social relations. from a historical perspective the unprecedented infrastructural capacity of the modern american state’s institutional complex to steer and regulate social processes is much more remarkable than the fact that, like all relationships of political control, it is characterized by myriad problems, contradictions and unintended consequences. the infrastructural power wielded by the modern american state is without historical precedent, and so is the intensity of the contradictions that it must negotiate. infrastructural power cannot be easily conceptualized using the categories of political economy. while ipe has not only tried to bring the state and regulatory institutions back in but also tried to distance itself from a ‘state vs. markets’ perspective, its emphasis on the fluidity of the distinction between these spheres has not yet generated the conceptual instruments to understand the role of the neoliberal state in a qualitatively different way. despite the attention to the state and its institutions, financial globalization is still conceptualized as the ‘disembedding’ of financial markets from their erstwhile ‘embedded liberal’ institutional environment and the resulting imposition of market discipline on public and private actors (e.g. helleiner, 1994; best, 2003; ruggie, 2007). to suggest that the lingering influence of a ‘state vs. markets’ perspective is apparent in the continued reliance on polanyian metaphors of ‘embeddedness’ and ‘disembedding’ might seem to be inconsistent with the fact that many scholars use the work of polanyi precisely in order to conceptualize markets as institutional structures. polanyi’s (1957) central argument was that markets are institutional constructions and that the periodically recurring tendencies of markets to disembed themselves from their institutional context would give rise to a counter-movement through which social forces would emerge seeking to re-embed and re-regulate the market. but, as gemici’s (2008) analysis of polanyi’s writings demonstrates, the way the problematic is framed–i.e. the tendency of markets to escape their institutional environment and the possibilities for re-embedding–suggests that a preor extra-institutional logic is at work. that is, insofar as the role of institutions is primarily conceptualized in terms of their ability to regulate and embed markets, the expansionary logic of markets is not itself seen as an institutional construction. rather, it features as a pre-social mechanism that will emerge and expand whenever it is not neoliberalism and the state | 89 actively prevented from doing so. this point echoes recent critiques of the notion of embeddedness as a metaphor to theorize the locus of markets and exchange in social life, which argue that it allows for the persistence of an economistic understanding of the market as a sphere governed by actors’ natural, pre-social propensities and not structured and produced through the norms, conventions and rules provided by institutions (krippner 2002, beckert 2003, jones 2008). we need to move beyond an account of neoliberalism that is consistent with its self-description, i.e., as the subordination of governmental authority and public purpose to the disciplinary pressures of disembedding markets. this argument needs to be differentiated from other perspectives that emphasize the continued salience of institutions in the era of financial globalization and neoliberalism. one of the central theoretical points of critical ipe has been the role of the state in fostering the globalization of financial markets. moreover, it is widely recognized that neoliberal policies do not involve a literal retreat of the state from society and that deregulation is always re-regulation (i.e. that ‘freer markets’ mean ‘more rules’, in vogel’s (1996) terms). however, such interpretations tend to generate conceptual problems characteristic of a polanyian understanding of markets, which stresses on the one hand their many institutional preconditions and on the other their periodically surfacing tendency to escape from that environment and to reverse the direction of causality as their own logic comes to prevail over the control that can be exercised through institutional structures. that is to say, even if it is acknowledged that markets are always dependent on institutional supports, neoliberalism still tends to be considered in terms of the declining capacities of states vis-à-vis disembedded financial markets, the diminished control of political authority over the financial system. the argument made here is different–it is that neoliberalism has involved a process of institutional reconfiguration that adjusted some of the key parameters of the existing financial regime in a way that enhanced rather than diminished the infrastructural capacities of the american state, as well as multiplied the strategic leeway available to those who enjoy privileged access to the state’s mechanisms of infrastructural control (panitch and gindin, 2005). neoliberalism did not represent a return to a purer form of capitalism more in line with the prescriptions of classical liberalism, i.e., ‘an attempt once again to disembed the market from society’ and as such ‘merely the latest iteration of polanyi’s double movement’ (blyth 2002: 4). rather, it connected the state’s formal institutions in more functional ways to the networks of 90 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times governance and control that had evolved at the level of financial intermediation and everyday life, thereby improving the state’s ability to manage those dynamics. the understanding of market expansion implicit in the political economy literature contrasts in an interesting way with the way such processes have been conceptualized in other fields. in recent years, authors working in the field of ‘cultural economy’ have attempted to go beyond the residual economism of ipe to conceptualize financial expansion not as a dynamic of disembedding that destroys social bonds and cohesion, but precisely as a process through which new social forms and relations are created, whereby hitherto uncharted aspects of human life become incorporated into the webs of disciplinary social power and subsumed under the organizational forms of modernity (e.g. aitken, 2005; langley, 2008). the argument in this article bears some similarities to these foucauldian approaches. but it prefers the theoretical lens of ‘infrastructural power’ over concepts such as ‘governmentality’ or ‘disciplinary power’ because it permits us to foreground two key dimensions of contemporary capitalism that have generally not received sufficient attention in the cultural economy literature: the role of the state and the inequality embedded in the operation of power. foucauldian perspectives have tended to assume that the proliferation of governance mechanisms in social life has meant an attenuation of the centrality of the formal state, but this tends to reproduce the image of neoliberal capitalism as a movement of ‘disembedding’. second, such approaches have tended to conceptualize the discursive structures of market governance as a somewhat anonymous nebuleuse that exerts its disciplinary effects evenly across the social field. the market may now be considered as a network of social relations, but these have become so web-like and anonymous that it still does not allow us to think of discipline as an asymmetrical relationship of control. the argument advanced in this article is built on the notion that discipline does not affect social actors in uniform ways, but consists of institutional mechanisms through which some actors build and leverage their agency and expand their strategic options at the expense of the room for manoeuvre and capacities available to others. re-interpreting the neoliberal era in order to fully understand the configuration of social forces out of which the neoliberal era emerged, we need to begin with a schematic look at the nature of the preceding era (from the new deal to the 1970s), which saw the emergence of modern mechanisms of infrastructural neoliberalism and the state | 91 power. the development of this order during the post-wwii period was characterized by contradictions that motivated new strategies and policies that would consolidate and extend the mechanisms of infrastructural power during the neoliberal era. ipe usually understands the post-new deal era as a polanyian mix of markets and state intervention. however, the concept of ‘embedded liberalism’, which suggests a balance of governmental institutions and market forces, doesn’t give us much conceptual grip on that period. far from being contained or suppressed, the post-new deal american financial system underwent a dynamic of vigorous expansion. the point of many new deal reforms had been not to reduce, but precisely to promote, the integration of the american middle and working class into the financial system. this was evident above all in public sanction and support for the use of securitization techniques in order to increase the supply of popular (especially consumer and mortgage) credit. finance was seen not as a force of social fragmentation but as a cluster of institutions that could be used as a means of social integration (calder 1999). the new deal had thus created institutional foundations for the deeper penetration of financial forms into the fabric of american life. and such financial expansion was seen not as increasing but undermining public control: policymaking in the post-new deal era reflected an emerging awareness of the mechanisms of infrastructural control, of the potentially symbiotic relationship between public authority and economic expansion. this was allied to growing awareness of the fact that the proliferation of economic connections produced network characteristics and systemic properties that allowed for more effective institutional steering and manipulation (mitchell 2005)–expressed in the prominence of keynesian economics. for a range of complex (and mostly familiar) reasons, this order came under pressure during the 1960s and 1970s. in this context, the demand for consumer and mortgage credit accelerated in a way that the existing financial system was not designed to accommodate. in order to respond to this demand, banks initiated a huge wave of innovation, dramatically expanding their securitization options. this had contradictory effects: it promoted the state’s institutional capacities in one respect but complicated them in another. on the one hand, the expansion of popular credit compensated for the growing gap between wages and economic aspirations, integrated americans into the discipline of indebtedness and repayment and in this way was crucial in blunting the political edge of social discontent and fortifying the logic of capitalist socialization. on 92 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times the other hand, innovative financial constructions created tremendous regulatory problems: policymakers did not have the instruments to stabilize this pattern of financial expansion (degen 1987). while finance was increasingly important as a means of social integration, the fact that this function was insufficiently supported by the existing institutional regime was visible in high levels of inflation. it is in this context that the emergence of a neoliberal regime should be situated. one of the key moments here was the federal reserve’s turn to monetarism. monetarism is often described as a return to more traditional, pre-keynesian financial policies, but this is a misleading portrayal. pre-new deal financial authorities simply did not have the kind of policy levers that might have permitted them to manipulate financial markets in such a comprehensive way. it had taken the developments of the intervening decades to produce the financial connectivity that permitted such policy leverage. monetarism was a policy to address problems that proceeded on the basis of institutional capacities built up over the previous decades. the standard view of neoliberalism in terms of the subordination of policy and politics to the discipline of the market fails to capture either its origins or effects: the turn to monetarism was initiated by policymakers within the state who sought not to abandon but precisely to increase regulatory control; and it had the effect of enhancing regulatory control over financial markets. monetarist policies involved putting strict limits on the amount of federal funds that banks could access, resulting in higher interest rates. this did not, however, suppress the creation of money and credit. rather, it triggered a new wave of innovation and liquidity creation. banks benefited from the increased price of credit without suffering the downside of restricted quantity (greider, 1987, p. 139-40). capital markets activity surged and financial markets began to function as a kind of vortex, sucking in economic activity. monetarism therefore did not stamp out inflationary pressures but rather re-directed them: inflation was concentrated in the financial sector and so transformed from a generalized problem into a dynamic beneficial to financial capital. the flipside of this development was the recession in the manufacturing sector, which, in combination with the social policies of the reagan administration, had a devastating impact on the income of the lower strata of the american population, pushing these groups to borrow against unfavourable rates and often to borrow more in order to be able to repay their loans and interest charges. everyday life and high finance, main street and wall street, became connected in a highly asymneoliberalism and the state | 93 metrical relationship. in other words, what neoliberalism meant was not across-the-board market discipline but a redistribution of discipline and constraints: it gave financial capital much more leeway, and the other side of this was the intensification of economic discipline on the lower strata of the american population. this redistribution of financial discipline was highly functional from the systemic perspective with which policymakers were concerned: the inflation of asset prices was much more manageable than the consumerprice inflation of the 1970s. so the monetarist shock reconfigured the financial regime in such a way as to eliminate its most serious institutional contradictions and to bolster the infrastructural capacities of the us state. debt-based socialization could now proceed without creating the kind of regulatory contradictions that had marked the 1970s. this did not mean that active financial management had become unnecessary, but that the american state had created sufficient policy room for itself that it could deal with the contradictions of financial markets in more constructive ways. increased public capacities were evident in the treasury’s ability to sell massive amounts of public debt in expanding financial markets, allowing it to finance large budget deficits with relative ease. these public financing capacities would become crucial in the american state’s management of the crises of the 1980s (like the debt crisis and the savings and loan crisis (s&l)), as it permitted the treasury to bail outs firms that were considered ‘too big to fail’. and such interventions created expectations for the way in which financial authorities were likely to respond to the threat of large financial intermediaries failing in the future, i.e., it created a regime of implicit bailout guarantees (de cecco, n.d.). ‘too-big-to-fail’ policies involve a socialization of risk that is inherently asymmetrical in nature, since access to its benefits is conditional on the degree of market power that actors already enjoy. the interests that can count on public backing are those that have already become leveraged to such an extent that, if they were to collapse, would bring entire segments of economic life down with them. since the onset of the subprime crisis, ‘too-big-to-fail’ policies have been portrayed as a very recent development and a departure from the hegemony of neoliberalism, as a kind of pathological ‘moral hazard’. however, public bailouts have been a consistent feature of us financial policy since the early 1980s, and it is crucial to see that the state’s willingness to selectively socialize risk has never just been a moral problem: the ability of financial elites to externalize the risks associ94 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times ated with their strategies has been a consistent driving force behind financial innovation and to the market expansion from which the us state benefited so much. much of the neoliberal period can be understood in terms of a publicly sanctioned and promoted unfolding of a highly symbiotic relationship between financial innovation and elites’ market power on the one hand and social trends like growing inequality and stagnant wages on the other. in the wake of the s&l crisis, regulators and banks cooperated to expand the techniques and instruments for securitization (macdonald, 1996, p. 298), and the clinton administration’s social policies were heavily based on improving access to financial services. the government-sponsored enterprises fannie mae and freddie mac increased their investments in mortgages for lower-income borrowers, and other financial institutions were given incentives to do the same. the availability of securitization techniques interacted with neoliberal social trends and policies to produce a massive expansion of asset-backed debt (montgomerie 2007, dymski 2007). while the integration of lowerincome groups into the formal financial system was widely portrayed as promoting financial inclusion, intermediaries increasingly treated lowincome households as a ‘captured market’ (montgomerie, 2007, p. 21). the nineties saw the steady expansion of an elaborate web of financial relations based on the mutually reinforcing further penetration of financial relations into everyday life and the accelerating gyrations of the wholesale capital markets. during this time ‘too-big-to-fail’ functioned as a background regime that, owing to the decade’s relatively stable growth, did not have to be invoked very often. the infrastructural aspects of us state power were more immediately obvious in the very significant policy leverage that the federal reserve developed. not entirely unlike an economist who can alter the parameters of a model on the basis of an understanding of its systemic properties, the fed could set some of the institutional parameters of a system of highly liquid financial markets. due to the growth of market depth and the consequent improvement in market arbitrage, the price of federal funds was now almost instantly transmitted across highly integrated financial markets, allowing the fed an unprecedented degree of control over market interest rates (krippner, 2007; phillips, 1996). to be sure, the fed’s regulatory authority remained dependent on the networks of institutional linkages through which it had been constituted. its policy autonomy was specifically a capacity to manage and stabilize financial expansion; it was not in a position to control the total quantity of money and credit created in the financial neoliberalism and the state | 95 markets. even if federal reserve chairman greenspan’s expression of concern regarding ‘irrational exuberance’ threw the markets off-kilter for a few weeks, this lamentation was itself testimony to the fact that the fed was not in a position to reduce their dynamism on a structural basis (parenteau, 2005). this logic of financial expansion and governance survived the dotcom meltdown of the first years of the century largely intact. owing to the fed’s liquidity-infusions, the effects of the stock market meltdown, while spectacular, were prevented from spilling over into the wider financial system and triggering a system-wide credit crunch. banks quickly embarked on a new set of profitable strategies, with securitized mortgage and consumer debt the driving forces behind financial growth (blackburn, 2008, p. 81). lending practices took on increasingly predatory qualities. many mortgage lenders found their way into poor neighbourhoods that in the past they had ‘redlined’, that is, designated as areas ineligible for loans. the incorporation of new actors into the forms and relations of american finance produced contradictions that were more serious than financial authorities had imagined possible. as banks and brokers adopted lending strategies that in earlier times had been the preserve of loan sharks, they went well beyond enlisting subordinate actors into hegemonic patterns of control. instead, by tightening the financial screws to the point of overstrain, they undermined their ability to function as competent social actors with access to the requisite set of capacities. many poor americans were less creditworthy than lenders and creditrating agencies had hoped. and so it was that, in the summer of 2007, it became clear that many americans had for some time been unable to service the debts they had taken on. because much of this ‘bad debt’ was hidden in larger pools of asset-backed securities, uncertainty spread and markets froze. over the course of the following year, the gravity of the situation became fully apparent. when the federal reserve’s attempts to restore confidence proved ineffective and several wall street giants teetered on the brink, authorities quickly signalled their willingness to extend financial guarantees. as it became clear that selectively rescuing firms was not going to hold the american financial system together, ‘too-big-to-fail’ policies assumed entirely new dimensions, beginning with the troubled asset relief program. over the past years the us state has extended major public guarantees to financial institutions. this has reinforced the structural salience of the ‘too-big-to-fail’ logic: since post-crisis legisla96 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times tion has not in any meaningful way changed the configuration of incentives facing american financial institutions, they will still be able to take on risks that will have to be socialized when they go sour. the question is how this continued redistribution of financial pressure will be managed and what kind of responses it will provoke. conclusion the us state’s recent crisis management efforts have been highly nonneoliberal in spirit. however, we should exercise considerable caution when depicting the highly visible role of the state in the present situation as a break with a preceding neoliberal era. for, as this essay has argued, neoliberal practices have never been very neoliberal in spirit. if we see the disjunction between neoliberal theory and practice as a constitutive aspect of the construction of power relations and political capacities over the past three decades, then the recent deployment of political capacities appears less as the breakdown than as the provisional culmination of the neoliberal era and its distinctive practices. like all episodes of intense strategic manoeuvring, these strategies generate contradictions and will be affected by a range of unforeseen consequences and unacknowledged interdependencies. yet they are not without foundation, as they operate on the basis of capacities rooted in the institutional construction of the american financial system. if, as a result of the severity of the crisis, the discrepancy between theory and practice has now become so flagrant that it has actually undermined the credibility of neoliberal free market myths, we should bear in mind that that myth has only ever been the tip of the iceberg of neoliberal patterns of power. we are not just dealing with neoliberal policies and ideas but with a much wider infrastructure of power that involves organically rooted norms, institutions and actor capacities (cahill 2009). a conventional perspective that aims to re-assert the state against financial markets is profoundly inconsistent with developments of the past years. the current strategies of the american government, far from representing a classic instance of direct state intervention or a return to keynesianism, are profoundly imbricated with and reliant on the financial institutions and connections that have proliferated throughout social life during the neoliberal era. the sheer degree of infrastructural control that is involved in the bailout packages goes well beyond the kind of intervention mechanisms that were available to keynesian welfare state planners during the post-wwii period. the state’s tentacles have been neoliberalism and the state | 97 wrapped around the heart of economic life, and it is now wielding these to reconfigure the institutional parameters of financial growth and in such a way as to restore systemic properties that allow for stable expansion. the progressive potential of this will be slim, unless we can muster the political agency to effect such change. references aitken, r. (2005) ‘a direct personal stake’: cultural economy, mass investment and the new york stock exchange. review of international political economy 12 (2): 334-363. altvater eltmar, 2009. ‘‘postneoliberalism or postcapitalism? the failure of neoliberalism in the financial market crisis’’, development dialogue, 51. beckert, j. (2003) economic action and embeddedness: how shall we conceptualize economic action? journal of economic issues 37 (3): 769-787. best, j. (2003) from the top down: the new financial architecture and the re-embedding of global finance. new political economy 8 (3): 363-384. blackburn, r. (2008) the subprime crisis. new left review 50: 63-106. blyth, m. (2002) great transformations: economic ideas and political change in the twentieth century. cambridge: cambridge university press. cahill, d. (2009) ‘the end of neoliberalism?’, zcommunications, http:// www.zcommunications.org/the-end-of-neoliberalism-by-damien-cahill calder, l. (1999) financing the american dream . a cultural history of consumer credit. princeton: princeton university press. de cecco, m. (n.d.) the lender of last resort. cidei working paper no. 49. degen, r. a. (1987) the american monetary system . a concise survey of its evolution since 1896. massachutts/toronto: d.c. heath and company/ lexington. dymski, g.a. (2007) from financial exploitation to global banking instability: two overlooked roots of the subprime crisis. url (consulted on 17 july 2009): http://www.soas.ac.uk/economics/events/ crisis/43938.pdf. gamble andrew (2009) the spectre at the feast . capitalist crisis and the politics of recession. new york: palgrave. gemici, k. (2008) karl polanyi and the antinomies of embeddedness. socio-economic review 6 (1): 5-33. greider,w. (1987) secrets of the temple: how the federal reserve runs the country. new york: simon and schuster. helleiner, e. (1994) states and the reemergence of global finance . from bretton woods to the 1990s. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. 98 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times jones, a. (2008) beyond embeddedness: economic practices and the invisible dimensions of transnational business activity. progress in human geography 32 (1): 71-88. krippner, g. (2002) the elusive market: embeddedness and the paradigm of economic sociology. theory & society 30 (6): 775-810. krippner, g. (2007) the making of us monetary policy: central bank transparency and the neoliberal dilemma. theory & society 36 (6): 477-513. langley, p. (2008) the everyday life of global finance . saving and borrowing in anglo-america. oxford: oxford university press. macdonald, h. (1996) expanding access to the secondary mortgage markets: the role of central city lending goals. growth & change 27 (summer): 298-312. mann, m. (1984) ‘the autonomous power of the state: its origins, mechanisms and results’, archives europeennes de sociologie, 25 (2). mitchell, t. (2005) economists and the economy in the twentieth century. g. steinmetz (ed.) the politics of method in the human sciences: positivism and its epistemological others, pp.126-141. durham: duke university press. montgomerie, j. (2007) financialization and consumption: an alternative account of rising consumer debt levels in anglo-america. cresc working paper series no. 43, university of manchester. panitch, l. and gindin, s. (2005) finance and american empire. l. panitch and c. leys (eds.) socialist register 2005, pp. 46-81. london: merlin. parenteau, r. (2005) the late 1990s’ us bubble: financialization in the extreme. in g.a. epstein (ed.) financialization and the world economy, pp. 111-148. cheltenham: edward elgar. phillips, s. m. (1996) the place of securitization in the financial system: implications for banking and monetary policy. l. t. kendall and m. j. fishman (eds.) a primer on securitization, pp. 129-138. cambridge, ma/ london: mit press. polanyi, k. (1957) the great transformation. boston: beacon press. ruggie, j.g. (2007) global markets and global governance. the prospects for convergence. s. bernstein and l. pauly (eds.) global liberalism and political order, pp. 23-48. new york: suny press. vogel, s.k. (1996) freer markets, more rules . regulatory reform in advanced industrial countries. ithaca: cornell university press. wade, r. (2008) ‘financial regime change?’, new left review, 53 (september–october). mature marx: the case against an epistemological break by jan mayer "the philosophers have only interpreted the world differently, the point is, to change it" -1 this quotation, taken along with marx's other theses on feuerbach, such as his critique of "contemplative materialism" as stopping at isolated man or human essence conceived of outside the aggregate of social relations and objective activity, sums up his attitude to idealist philosophy in general, as well as his dissatisfaction with feuerbach 's anthropological humanism. his was from the beginning 2 a "revolt against the rule of thoughts. , an attempt to turn hegel on his head" as he stated in his critique of hegel's philosophy of right; that is, to rescue what were valuable insights from idealism and to put these in the context of a materialist philosophy. the left hegelians such as feuerbach thought that merely by reinterpreting the world they would solve the problems of idealist philosophy; marx's intent was not only to criticize philosophy but to criticize and to change the real world. marx's sea thing attack on idealism was prompted by the way in which material existence and social consciousness were treated. in hegel, they were mere epiphenomena, emanations of the progress of the world, or absolute, spirit or mind through various stages of its development to its ultimate state (the thesis-antithesis-synthesis), the "really real" to hegel was not "real individuals, their o activity and the material conditions under which they live , not real flesh and blood men, but an abstraction which existed purely in the transcendental realm of reason. marx's materialist antidote to hegel's idealism was found through political economy.'* it is the purpose of this short essay to examine the ways in which this element is retained and developed throughout marx's career and to argue that despite various more systematic and scientific reworkings, many of the important categories of analysis were retained. there are both continuities and discontinuities between the "early" and the "mature" marx, but no epistemological break, contrary to what has been argued particularly by althusserian structuralists. these lines of development are especially evident in the following items: marx's method, including dialectics; his 135 alternate routes treatment of the conditions underlying alienation; and related to this, the way in which he perceives the structure of capitalist society and works his way from "surface phenomena" such as markets, competition, etc. in the early works, to a mature analysis of the hidden mechanisms underpinning them. there are three important and central components in capital which not only represent an advance over marx's earlier analysis of capitalism but also serve as keys to the continuities at the heart of marx's concerns. these three interconnected concepts are: the relations of production, surplus value, and the commodity. the "relation" may be thought of as a basic unit of reality: it is a unity of contradictory parts, and the notion of "contradiction" and "totality" are joined in marx's use of the dialectical method. the mode of production subsumes two types of conditions: means, or forces, of production, and social relations of production; the relations of production under capital unite two antagonistic social actors, the capitalist and the labourer, who are of necessity in conflict because of their relationship in the creation and appropriation of surplus value. it is through the historical conditions which make this appropriation possible that the worker is exploited and his labour alienated from him as labourpo^er , an abstract commodity which has the unique property of producing values greater than itself which then enter into the exchange process and add to the accumulation of capital, under the control of the capitalist who has rights of disposition over capital and labour. the "commodity" (in the special sense intended by marx) is a unique product of capitalism, combining within itself the unity of use-value and exchange-value, with exchange-value becoming the dominant force in the development of the capitalist mode of production. together, surplus value aid the commodity are keys to understanding the structure of capitalist society, taken in context with the social relations of production. these concepts will be elaborated upon in the course of the ensuing discussion. let us first exanine the concept of alienation as it is used in the early economic and philosophic manuscripts and through this analysis, indicate in what form the concept remains in marx's mature political economy. it may be recalled that marx had objected to feuerbach's analysis of religion as being a projection 136 mature marx and reification of man's reflection of himself in an idealized form, a creation not recognized by its creator. this was for marx too psychological a model and said nothing about the relationship between man and his material conditions which were at the basis of all such idealized productions of which religion (the separation between man and his creation, the creation standing over against him as an alien force) was the exemplar. it is at this point that marx's anthropology or ontology (the nature of man and being), his materialist philosophy and his borrowed categories of political economy converge to produce an explanation of alienation. it is because man is an "active, sensual being" in nature that man necessarily realizes himself and his fellow actors only in and by acting on nature— by producing the means of his subsistence. through this activity man refines his human capacities and produces objects which reflect himself (man thus "makes" himself and, in co-operation with others, makes a human, social world). however, under certain historical conditions, the connection between productive activity and the objects of production are lost, and these objects come to take on a separate, hostile existence: under the conditions of division of labour and private property. those who control the means by which men produce their world control both the men and their products; under capitalism, therefore, the worker becomes separated from these and as a consequence, becomes estranged from his fellow men, from himself, and from his true human nature or "species-being". thus the concept of alienation refers to an objective set of conditions caused by particular material arrangements. they involve a producer, a means and an object of production, and an appropriator of these in a set of property relations. these are the elements which appear in rudimentary form in the early writings of marx. in his mature works, he develops in detail the mechanisms which link appropriation, exploitation and accumulation— and the word alienation, but not the sense of the concept, disappears. marx wrote the manuscripts in 1844, the _german ideology in 1846, and he subsequently repudiated most of what he had written as "unscientific." in 1851 he began more intensive study of ricardo although had not yet developed the full implications of 137 alternate routes surplus value. the notebooks towards a critique of political economy (the grundrisse) were written between 1857 and 1858 and are generally acknowledged as representing a "watershed" between marx's early and mature works. contained within them are the elements which would later appear in capital , and it was at this time that marx realized his previous analysis had dealt only with the appearances, the "surface phenomena" of political economy and the structure of capitalist society. earlier, he had treated labour as any other commodity--now he realized its special nature, and this was linked to the creation of surplus value which now was to become the basis of the theory of capitalist accumulation. the extraction of surplus value under the conditions of capitalist domination becomes the motor of the process in which the world comes to be dominated by impersonal exchange relationships. labourpower , as an abstract general category, and money, become the universal solvents by which all things are reduced to equivalents, made mobile and exchangeable, and make the growing accumulation of capital possible. these conditions, however, presuppose historical developments whereby all personal ties, as in feudalism, have been sundered; persons and things have become freed to enter into a system of exchange relations, and a formally free labour force created to enter into contractual relationships with capital, exchanging labourpower for wage-money. however, this is an unequal exchange ev^n if on the surface it appears equal, since labourpower, the unique commodity, creates wealth which is under the control of capitalists. by causing the worker to labour part of the day for the capitalist and only part of the day for himself, conditions are created in which stored-up value adds to the wealthaccumulating capacity of capital when the circuits of production and circulation are completed. hence, as the worker creates more wealth, he becomes more impoverished relative to it--capital, embodying the creative power alienated from him. stands as an alien power over him which grows with the growth of capital. accumulation becomes an end in itself, and the commodity becomes "fetishized" . it is thus in his analysis of th? turning of labour into the commodity labourpower by its separation from the labourer that 138 mature marx marx's analysis of surplus value relates to his earlier analysis of alienation-the term is now "exploitation." earlier, marx saw the relationship between man and his world as one in which productive activity mediates between the individual and the external world as the means by which he appropriates objects. under capitalism, labour and other elements become "abstractions" (that is, the links are severed). alienation implies the breakdown or sundering of a unity of interconnected elements (as oilman, in his 1971 book alienation, points out). in capital , it is now evident that as activity goes through its metamorphosis into value, to be expressed as money, commodities, etc., these become fetishized and take on a life of their own, expressing in distorted fashion the original relation. man's relationship to his world (which includes other men) is now mediated by the abstractions created under capitalism, just as capitalists and labourers, or buyers and sellers in the marketplace, now relate to one another only indirectly, through the mediation of exchange-value. private property (which marx originally saw as the cause of alienation) is now recognized by him as only one form of value and that more fundamental are the conditions which create surplus value and exchange value. let us now turn to an examination of dialectics, another element in marx's development which exhibits both continuity between early and late works and was also from the very beginning, entirely different from hegel's idealistphilosophy use of it. marx's dialectics is both historical-materialist and treats contradictions differently—he does not merely "turn hegel upside down" by converting idealism to materialism. in his early usage, marx corrected hegel by making history "march on its feet" instead of in the airy realm of pure reason; his principal concern was with the contradiction between bourgeoisie and proletariat and the way in which modes of production develop historically through the conflictual supercession of previous forms and social relations. in the mature works, marx adds to this the notion of contradiction within capital itself, as between productive forces (as they develop through the socialization of accumulation and production in large-scale units), and the private ownership of those forces, that is, as godelier p.its it, between two structures, production and ownership. 139 alternate routes dialectics did not originate with hegel but in greek usage, the combined "dia" and "logos" meaning "to reason by splitting in two", of phenomena which are split, their elements in clashing opposition . from the beginning, there was implied in the notion of dialectics a world in flux, moving, changing and transforming into its opposite. the world is conceived of as a unity of opposites in contradiction with one another, even if at any particular "moment" appearances seem static and in harmony. this conception was adopted both by hegel and by marx. however, marx rejected hegel's progress of an "independent objective mind" and posited instead the movement of history through human subjects actively creating and changing their world. there is no ultimate reality which transcends passive humans and proceeds in mechanical and subjectless fashion; rather, to marx, contradictions and conflicts which move history are within and between human actors and structural elements which they have created but which nevertheless condition and limit them at any one point. this unity in contradiction which is material reality also has production as its basis, grasped via the categories not of philosophy but of political economy. components are related together internally in a totality, a set of circumstances which are the products of historical processes and which determine at any point the conceptual status of elements within that totality. it is for these reasons that the starting point of the scientific method in marxian political economy must be fundamentally different from that of idealist philosophy. as nicolaus comments: "unlike hegel's logic, and unlike marx's own initial attempts earlier, th~is beginning begins not with a pure, indeterminate, eternal and universal abstraction, but rather with a compound, determinate, delimited and concrete whole..." ("foreword" to the 1973 pelican grundrisse ; and see "the method of political economy", marx, grundrisse ) a significant example in the mature marx's work of the particular and "delimited" concrete entity is the commodity as central to understanding what is unique and crucial about the mechanisms of capitalist society. it makes possible the analysis of value which contains within it the unity of two contradictory elements, usevalue and exchangevalue, with the latter dominating, just as there is in capitalist society as a whole a "unity in domination" of 140 mature marx capital and labour, bourgeoisie and proletariat. beginning the analysis with a particular concrete entity such as the commodity, illustrates that the unity of production and consumption is not direct and immediate, but is part of a process linked to other conditions, as nicolaus points out. in other words, we are not concerned with the universal qualities of production and consumption as they would be useful in analysing any and all societies, but rather, with historically specific ones, those under conditions which create and sustain capitalist society. the commodity represents the essence of the uniqueness of the historical product, capitalism, because it contains within it all of the other contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. as marx proceeded with his detailed study of political economy in the grundrisse notebooks, nicolaus (1973) observes, his methodological approach changed: one must not work up from simple, general, abstract relations to complex particular wholes, but from the particular to the general, an essential difference between idealist and materialist dialectics. this has implications for the role of "abstraction" as a methodological procedure. as keat and urry (1975) point out, marx was not a positivist—he wished to lay bare the internal structure of the capitalist mode of production and society, hidden workings which are related together internally and not readily observable in appearances or isolated "social facts": his was a "realist" conception. social reality could therefore be understood only by examining both parts and whole, both concrete facts and abstract categories, by a process of moving back and forth between them in order to reach closer and closer approximations to the nature of this reality in its historical specificity. the process of abstraction involves a reduction of pheno.nena to their "pure form" in order to grasp how particular processes are worked out and interrelated (and to separate out residues of previous forms which have not yet been superceded). thus, for example, the significance of the spinning jenny cannot be understood unless we know the context in which it is located in the relations of production; similarly, labour takes on a particular meaning because of the social relations in which it is embedded: the subordination of labour to capital and the domination of the commodity form of value. 141 alternate routes the contention made by such theorists as althusser that there was a break between the early "ideological" and "philosophical" marx and the mature "scientific" marx is, therefore, misleading, as well as incorrect. marx was throughout his career both a materialist philosophically and an empiricist scientifically (and it could be added, an "enlightenment child" who did not see the problems with scientificity that concern us today). the early marx was interested in uncovering the false or reified nature of notions by relating them to the material conditions of existence; the mature marx with examining the hidden mechanisms of capitalism. at both points in his development, he was therefore interested in what was in the world of appearance not readily apparent but hidden and examinable only through scientific categories. philosophy (as a bourgeois activity) was for marx unscientific; the nature of reality, society and history had to be examined scientifically--it could be said, then, that as he developed he merely became more scientific, more systematic. although he recognized individuals as the creators of their social world and history, at no point did he ever begin from purposive action of individual actors. he did not begin, that is, from presuppositions of a psychologistic utilitarianism, but began, rather. from the structured unity in which actions were to be understood. unlike functionalism, however, this unity was one of inherent contradictions, and it is this point which links the notions of "dialectics" and "totality." thus, marx's theoretical and methodological approaches separate him from both idealism and utilitarianism on the one hand, and also from positivistic social science and functionalism on the other. to sum up, there are a number of continuities (despite differences in terminology and focus) which link the ^arly and mature marx, despite some discontinuities which may legitimately be considered of a developmental kind: 1) society is the product of struggle between man and nature and between groups of men, with material conditions (economic organization, means of subsistence) as the focal point of this struggle. 2) since "man makes himself" through his activities, knowledge of society must be concerned both with action and with objective 142 mature marx conditions in which actions occur; they are not merely epiphenomenal of a hidden "ultimate reality." 3) society is a structure of interrelated parts in which social processes containing contradictory elements generate conflicts — society and history are therefore to be analysed in dynamic and dialectical terms in the context of specific objective conditions. 4) "false consciousness," "alienation", or "reification" are processes which contribute to masking the true nature of social relations, products and society from their creators and arise because of those social relations and products in particular societal contexts. philosophy, religion, and the "fc-tishism of commodities" are examples of masked and misunderstood processes. 143 51 can global capitalism be saved? “exit strategies” for capitalism or humanity minqi li1 abstract: global capitalism is currently recovering from the great recession of 2009. but the basic contradiction of neoliberalism has not been resolved. the fiscal deficits in the western countries and china’s real estate bubble are setting up the world for a potentially more devastating crisis. china may emerge as the key battleground of global class struggle. as the global ecological system approaches total collapse, any further expansion of capitalism is now in fundamental conflict with the long-term survival of humanity. keywords: global capitalism, crisis, class struggle, global ecological crisis introduction in 2009, global capitalism suffered the deepest economic crisis since the great depression. in previous crises, such as in the early 1980s, early 1990s, 1998, and 2001, the global economy had managed to grow, though at comparatively slower rates. in 2009, according to the international monetary fund (imf), the global economy as a whole contracted in absolute terms for the first time since the second world war (see figure 1). in response to the crisis, leading capitalist governments have thrown trillions of dollars to bail out the financial markets and kept the economies afloat through massive increases in fiscal deficits. since then, the global economy seems to have recovered. the imf now predicts the global economy to grow by 4.6 percent in 2010 (imf 2010). has global capitalism been saved, after all? the question may be addressed at three different levels. first, there is no doubt that capitalism has survived the most recent economic crisis. however is the world 1 assistant professor, department of economics, university of utah, salt lake city, utah, usa. he is the author of the rise of china and the demise of the capitalist world economy (pluto press and monthly review press, 2009). can global capitalism be saved? “exit strategies” for capitalism or humanity 52 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research back to some form of “normal conditions”? capitalism is basically an economic system based on the pursuit of profit and capital accumulation. saving capitalism, in this sense, has to do with securing the conditions that favor high profit rates and rapid capital accumulation (economic growth). will these “normal conditions” required for capitalist expansion be reestablished in the foreseeable future? second, there is the long-term, world historical question whether capitalism as an economic and social system can be saved in the long run. what historical conditions are required for capitalism to remain a “savable” system? under what historical conditions may capitalism cease to exist as a historically viable system? third, if it turns out that capitalism is no longer historically viable, in that case, what might be the “exit strategies” that are available for humanity? the following pages attempt to shed some light on each of these questions. -0.01 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 figure 1. world economic growth (annual growth rate of world gdp, 1951-2009) annual growth rate sources: maddison (2003); world bank (2010); and imf (2010). profit and accumulation capitalist profit derives from the exploitation of workers’ surplus labor. from this point of view, maximum profit requires maximum exploitation of labor. however, other things being equal, maximum exploitation is always beneficial for individual capitalists; it is not necessarily in the interest of the entire capitalist class however. excessive exploitation reduces workers’ purchasing power. under certain conditions, it could also reduce the overall “effective demand” in the capitalist econ53 omy, thus lowering the total profits for capitalists. successful capitalist accumulation requires an effective (though temporary) solution to this contradiction. this may be illustrated by the following formula: w + π + t = c + i + g + nx this equation shows that in a capitalist economy, the sum of wages (w), profits (π), and taxes (t) must equal the sum of consumption (c), investment (i), government purchases (g), and net exports (nx), that is exports less imports, or net purchases by foreigners. in other words, total incomes must equal total expenditures. rearrange terms and one arrives at the following profit determination formula: π = i + (c-w) + (g-t) + nx this equation illustrates that capitalist profits may increase if there is a rise in capitalist investment, or household consumption in excess of wages (which roughly corresponds to “household deficit”), government deficit or trade surplus.2 from the point of view of a national capitalist economy, the most ideal solution would be to keep wages and taxes low, while keeping profits high through large trade surpluses. however, this obviously cannot work for all national capitalist economies as some economies’ surpluses have to be matched by other economies’ deficits and, for the global capitalist economy as a whole, imports and exports by definition should cancel out. for the global capitalist economy or any national capitalist economy that has a trade account that is in rough balance, the “optimal” solution would appear to be keeping wages and taxes low, while solving the “effective demand” problem (also known as the “realization” problem) through high investment. this would maximize the rate of capital accumulation. however, capitalists would make large investments only when they expect high rates of return (the profit rate). but excessively high investment could lead to excess production capacity and higher production costs, leading to lower profit rates. finally, there are the “second best” options such as household deficits or government deficits. the problem with these less than ideal solutions is that they will inevitably lead to unsustainable household or public debt, likely ending with devastating financial crises. how has capitalism historically managed to maneuver between these different temporary “solutions”? figure 2 presents the historical trajectory of the profit rate in the us economy, a crucial indicator that represents the degree of “health” of a capitalist economy.3 2 this profit rate determination formula was first developed by polish marxist economist michael kalecki and later adopted by hyman minsky (minsky 2008[1986]: 160-169). 3 the profit rate is defined as the ratio of the broadly defined profit (including corporate profits, interests, and rent) over the can global capitalism be saved? “exit strategies” for capitalism or humanity 54 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the great depression marked the bankruptcy of free market capitalism and demonstrated that modern capitalism could not function without substantial government intervention. after the second world war, capitalism underwent major institutional restructuring. government spending now accounted for a substantial portion of the national economic output and keynesian policies helped to stabilize the capitalist economy. several factors contributed to comparatively high profit rates in the 1950s and 1960s. u.s. corporations benefited from monopoly over world industry in the early postwar years. on the other hand, in western europe and japan, a large rural surplus labor force kept pressure on wages, thereby keeping labor costs low. all advanced capitalist countries benefited from cheap energy and raw materials imported from the periphery (the “third world”). however, by the mid-1960s all of these favourable factors started to fade. competition between the us, japan and western europe in the world market intensified. after decades of economic expansion, strengthened by welfare state institutions, western working classes enjoyed a period of rising bargaining power and wages started to grow rapidly. finally, given the triumph of a good many national liberation movements, and politically strengthened by “cold war” geopolitics, peripheral states started to demand more favourable terms in the world division of labor.4 the collapse of the profit rate led to the crisis of the 1970s and early 1980s. in response, the global capitalist classes undertook a counter-offensive in the form of neoliberalism which in effect amounted in a strategy to revive the global profit rate through global redistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital. “globalization” was a key component of neoliberalism, which had to do with opening up the markets and resources of several large peripheral or former socialist states. the massive increase in the global reserve army of cheap labour turned the global balance of power decisively in the favour of the capitalist class. as is presented in figure 2, neoliberalism did succeed in reviving the profit rate. but by lowering the global wages, neoliberalism necessarily depressed the global mass of consumption. the neoliberal global economy was thus confronted with a serious problem of insufficient global effective demand. in this context, many capitalist economies (china, japan, other asian economies, and germany) attempted to promote capital accumulation through expansion of exports (that is, net stock of private nonresidential fixed assets. ideally, if the purpose is to study the overall performance of global capitalist economies, one would like to examine the evidence of the global average profit rate. but reliable data on the subject is not available. given the leading position of the us in the global economy, one may think about the us profit rate as representative of the profit rate in the global capitalist economy. the profit rate trajectories of other advanced capitalist economies have been similar to that of the us in the postwar era and until recently the overall performance of the global capitalist economy had been largely determined by the performance of the advanced capitalist economies. for an attempt to study the “world profit rate”, see li, xiao, and zhu (2007). 4 for detailed discussions on the rise and fall of the postwar capitalist “social structure of accumulation,” see gordon, weisskopf, and bowles (1987). 55 through rising nx). however, as mentioned earlier, this meant that some economies would have to run trade surpluses, while others ran trade deficits. since the 1990s, the us economy has consistently run large trade deficits, absorbing much of the overproduction from the rest of the world. within the us economy, demand expansion has relied mostly upon debt-financed consumption (that is, through rising c-w). the situation was already unsustainable by the early 2000s. but the us federal reserve attempted to prolong the expansion by fueling a massive housing bubble, paving the way for the 2008-2009 economic crisis.5 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 figure 2. e profit rate (us economy, 1929-2008) profit rate source: bea (2010). “exit strategies” for capitalism? to save global capitalism, all major capitalist governments have responded with massive increases in fiscal deficits. in terms of the profit determination formula discussed above, this amounts to an effort to substitute (g-t) for (c-w) to sustain capitalist profits. the problem is that such a strategy will simply substitute fiscal crises for private debt crises. according to the bank of international settlements, by 2011 the general government debt to gdp ratio is expected to approach 100 percent in france, portugal and the united kingdom; 130 percent in greece and italy; and exceed 200 percent in japan (cecchetti, mohanti, and zampolli 2010). in fact, several southern european countries (greece, spain, portugal, and italy) are 5 for detailed discussions on the structural contradictions of neoliberalism, see crotty (2000) and li (2009). can global capitalism be saved? “exit strategies” for capitalism or humanity 56 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research now threatened with imminent fiscal bankruptcy. in a few years, major capitalist countries such as the us and uk may have to confront an explosive fiscal crisis. the current dilemma for western capitalism, then, is the following. if western capitalist governments respond to the fiscal crisis by imposing massive fiscal austerity programs (through cutting social spending and increasing taxes on the working classes), it would dramatically reduce global effective demand. this would, at best, result in a period of prolonged stagnation throughout the advanced capitalist world and, at worst, trigger a collapse of the global economy. on the other hand, if western governments fail to address the fiscal crisis in accordance with the dictates of financial markets, financial capitalists may respond with massive sales of government bonds, leading to surging interest rates and economic collapses. in this context, the so-called “emerging markets” (such as china, india, russia, eastern europe and latin america and especially china), have emerged as a major pillar of global economic growth. figure 3 presents the share of world gdp of the world’s major economies. in 2008, the us, eurozone and japan combined accounted for 42 percent of the world’s total gdp (and us accounted for 20 percent). the socalled “bric” countries (brazil, russia, india, and china) combined accounted for 22 percent of world gdp (and china accounted for 11 percent). can china sustain global economic growth in spite of western stagnation? 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 figure 3. share of world gdp (selected economies, 1980-2008) us euro area japan china india brazil russia source: world bank (2010). 57 figure 4 presents china’s changing macroeconomic structure. household consumption as a share of china’s gdp declined from about 50 percent in the 1980s to about 35 percent by 2008 (by comparison, in the us household consumption accounts for about 70 percent of gdp). the relative decline of consumption reflects the fact that chinese working class incomes have fallen behind the growth of gdp. according to the official chinese general federation of labor survey, labour income as a share of china’s gdp declined from 57 percent in 1983 to 37 percent in 2005. further, according to the survey, in an economy with double-digit growth, about a quarter of the labour force has not seen any wage growth over the past five years. about 75 percent of workers believe the current income distribution in china is “unjust” and about 60 percent of workers believe excessively low labour income represents the greatest social injustice (xin jing bao 2010). on the other hand, capital formation (investment) as a share of china’s gdp increased from 35 percent in 2000 to 44 percent in 2008, and net exports as a share of china’s gdp increased from 2 percent in 2001 to 8 percent in 2008. from 2001 to 2008, china’s total merchandise exports (not subtracting imports) increased from 20 percent of gdp to 33 percent of gdp. thus, before the recent crisis, china’s economic growth was led primarily by investment and exports. -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 figure 4. china's macroeconomic structure (share of gdp, 1980-2008) household consumption government consumption capital formation source: state statistical bureau (2009). can global capitalism be saved? “exit strategies” for capitalism or humanity 58 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research during 2009, in the midst of global economic crisis, chinese exports decelerated sharply. total merchandise exports fell by 16 percent from 2008. china’s trade surplus fell from $196 billion in 2008 to $102 billion in 2009, falling by 48 percent. investment emerged as china’s only remaining engine of economic growth. from 2008 to 2009, china’s total fixed investments increased from 17.3 trillion yuan to 22.5 trillion yuan (or an increase of 5.2 trillion yuan). china’s nominal gdp increased from 31.4 trillion yuan to 33.5 trillion yuan (or an increase of 2.1 trillion yuan). increase in total fixed investments thus accounted for 240 percent of china’s economic growth in 2009 (that is, the increase in fixed investments more than offset declines in consumption and net exports to have sustained economic growth) (state statistical bureau 2010a). in early 2010, china’s economic growth continued to be led by investment. over the first four months of 2010, total urban fixed investments increased by 26 percent from the same period in 2009 (about twice as fast as overall economic growth). however, excessively high investment has by now built up enormous excess capacity in productive sectors. unable to profit from productive investment any more, chinese capitalists are shifting a growing proportion of capital into property and financial speculation. over the first four months of 2010, about 21 percent of the fixed investments went to real estate development, which increased by 36 percent from the same period in 2009 (state statistical bureau 2010b). andy xie, the former chief asian economist of morgan stanley, recently commented that china could face major economic and political instabilities in a few years. it is likely that china will face rising labour, raw materials and environmental costs in the coming years. also, china’s share in the world export market may shrink against the background of western economic stagnation. as a result, capital accumulation in the productive industries is no longer profitable. in this context, chinese capitalists and local governments have relied upon real estate development to prolong the economic boom. china is in effect following the same path as japan, korea, and southeast asian economies once did. these asian economies relied upon property bubbles to sustain economic growth after the export boom ended. xie (2010) has argued that in a few years, china’s property bubble will likely burst, leaving china with a stagnant economy and threatening china’s political stability. the basic contradiction of the neoliberal global economy is that under neoliberalism, working class incomes and purchasing power tends to be depressed and liberalized capital flows tend to generate financial instability, discouraging productive investment and government social spending. global effective demand thus tends to be depressed. many national capitalist economies attempt to overcome this contradiction by promoting export-led growth. but for much of the world to pursue export-led growth, there will have to be economies that are willing to run large 59 trade deficits. in the deficit countries, either the private sector or the government has to run large deficits, leading to rising private or public debts over time. sooner or later, the deficit countries will be hit by financial crises as rising debts become unsustainable. during the current “recovery”, this basic contradiction has not in any way been resolved. on the contrary, fiscal deficits in western countries and china’s real estate bubble are setting up the world for a potentially more devastating crisis. how will the evolving global capitalist crisis affect the conditions of global class struggle? this is the basic political question confronting global working classes. what has happened to the grave diggers of capitalism? in the communist manifesto, marx and engels famously predicted that capitalist development would inevitably lead to the growth of the proletarianized working class and prepare the necessary conditions for the working class to organize economically and politically. as the organized working classes grow in size and strength, they argued, eventually they will prove themselves the grave diggers of capitalism (marx and engels 1978). nearly one and a half centuries after the communist manifesto, what has happened? the late 19th and early 20th century saw the rapid growth of working class movements and socialist political parties throughout europe. however, as western working class movements gained strength politically, their stake in the existing capitalist system has also increased. reformist tendencies (known as “revisionism”) gradually became dominant within the european socialist parties (the “second international” parties). after the second world war, european socialist parties officially abandoned revolutionary objectives and committed themselves to incremental reforms within the capitalist system. the russian bolshevik party was the only major party within the “second international” that remained committed to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. during the first world war, lenin attempted to analyze and understand the phenomenon of “revisionism”. lenin argued that in the “imperialist” era, western capitalism benefited from “super profits” exploited from the colonies and semicolonies. the western capitalists would then use a portion of the super profits to buy off the working class leaders, or the “labor aristocracies”. lenin argued that the colonial super profits constituted the material basis of revisionism (lenin, 1916). after the second world war, a growing marxist literature followed the leninist tradition and further argued that because of “unequal exchanges” and the operations of the “capitalist world system”, western capitalist wealth had been largely based on the exploitation of the peripheries. the so-called “technological revolutions” had basically been different ways to create world market monopolies that would allow a few “core” capitalist states to extract surplus value from the rest of the world (emmanuel, 1972; amin, 1974; wallerstein, 1979). can global capitalism be saved? “exit strategies” for capitalism or humanity 60 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research however, neither the super profits nor the unequal exchanges had succeeded in maintaining permanent social peace in the west. through long-term economic and political struggles, the western working classes had been able to secure important concessions from the capitalist classes, winning a growing range of economic, social, and political rights. by the 1960s, these working class gains had begun to put pressure on capitalist profits, threatening to undermine the basic conditions of capitalist accumulation. neoliberalism was the global capitalist response to this crisis. neoliberalism is a significant world historical development. it clearly demonstrates that global capitalism has developed to such a point that it is no longer possible for capitalism to simultaneously meet the basic requirements of capital accumulation while accommodating the historically determined demands of the working classes in the core capitalist states. in other words, the second international reformism (or the social contract) that had secured basic social peace within western capitalism since the mid-20th century has run into irreconcilable contradictions and is therefore historically bankrupt. another major development in the neoliberal era has to do with the changing balance of global economic forces. the relocation of global capital to exploit cheap labour forces in the “emerging markets” has been a major component of the neoliberal project. however this has led to the large formations of working classes in the “semi-periphery” (the geographical zone in the capitalist world system that has a position, in terms of the world division of labour and political strength, between the core and the periphery). over time, the semi-periphery working classes will demand economic, social and political rights comparable to those enjoyed by the western working classes. this development, once it happens, will presumably dismantle the global system of unequal exchange (which has been based on the super exploitation of the peripheral working classes) and therefore destroy the material foundation of western labor aristocracies. the current intensification of class struggles, such as in europe, could thus mark the beginning of a new historical era. it is no longer possible for european capitalism to accommodate both the historically established “social contracts” (most importantly pensions and health care commitments) and the requirements of capital accumulation. this contradiction has manifested itself in the form of fiscal crises throughout europe. the european capitalist classes are now attempting to impose the entire burden of adjustment onto the working classes in order to reestablish favourable conditions for capital accumulation by creating a new regime of cheap labour. the current struggle is therefore a life-and-death question for both the capitalist classes and the working classes. for the working classes, they will have to either fight back or eventually accept the loss of the historic gains made since the 19th century. indeed, it is quite possible that the european working classes might 61 lose the impending battle. the basic problem is that after a century of dominance of social democratic reformism, currently no effective revolutionary political force is playing a significant role in european working class politics. as a result, the european working classes have politically failed to break free from the historical limitations of capitalism, in the process coming to terms with capital. if the capitalist classes succeed in depriving the european workers of their historic gains, their “victory” could yet prove to be no more than a pyrrhic one. if the capitalist classes manage to impose massive declines of living standards onto the european working classes, this would dramatically reduce the european-wide effective demand and, in turn, reduce the export demand for “emerging market” economies. the decline of global effective demand could then lead to a global depression. as such, the economic crisis could then evolve into a general social and political crisis. under the second possible scenario, some effective revolutionary political forces may emerge in europe in the next few years, breaking the current political stalemate. under this scenario, the european working classes would undertake effective, unified struggles to make a decisive break with the existing capitalist order, moving towards the general socialization of the basic means of production and democratization of state power (in other words, establishing the “dictatorship of the proletariat”). the new socialist powers would then redirect the economy towards meeting peoples’ basic needs and ecological sustainability. if such a scenario does unfold, europe could emerge as the center of the 21st century global socialist revolution. the most likely scenario, though, is for europe to repeat the pattern that has been established in the neoliberal era. the european working classes would wave off defensive struggles against capitalist attacks. as a result, the european working classes would suffer from some declines in living standards but manage to maintain most of their historic gains. the setbacks for the working classes, however, would prove to be inadequate to revive the european capitalism which would sink into an increasingly deeper accumulation crisis. in other words a slow motion, but increasingly deeper, vicious circle. from a global perspective, under such a scenario, the european working classes would play an important role in weakening but not defeating global capitalism. the decisive battleground of global class struggle will then likely take place in other parts of the world. it is the global semi-periphery (china, india, russia, and latin america) that could prove to be the focus of global capitalist contradictions. over the past two or three decades, capitalist development in the semi-periphery has depended upon (to different degrees) super exploitation of a cheap domestic labour force, intensive exploitation of material resources and the environment, based on exports to western markets. these factors are no longer possible. in the coming years, the semi-peripheral capitalist economies will probably encounter shrinking can global capitalism be saved? “exit strategies” for capitalism or humanity 62 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research western markets, rising tides of working class struggle, resource depletion and an increasingly devastating environmental crisis. the combination of these contradictions may lead to the breakdown of the semi-peripheral capitalist regimes and potentially a general revolutionary crisis. the surge of revolutionary struggles in the semi-periphery could decisively change the dynamics of global class struggle. china: the key battleground of global class struggle? within the semi-periphery, china may emerge as the key battleground. china is already the world’s second largest economy and under the current trend will replace the u.s. to become the world’s largest economy within a decade. in the neoliberal era, china has become the centre of global industrial production, playing a central role in the global division of labor. china has become one of the major markets of energy and raw materials for latin america, the middle east, russia, and africa. china is the main importer of capital goods from germany, japan and south korea. china is also the leading supplier of low and medium-valued manufactured goods to the world market, especially to the u.s. market. in a way, then, the entire global capitalist market now works around china. likewise, china is also at the very centre of global ecological contradictions. chinese capitalist development has caused enormous devastation to china’s own environment and china has overtaken the u.s. to become the world’s largest energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter. as china now accounts for fully one quarter of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions, it is virtually impossible to resolve the global climate change crisis without china being committed to large absolute emission reductions. how did china turn from a revolutionary socialist state in the 1960s and 1970s into a major pillar of global capitalism today? in short, after the counter-revolutionary coup in 1976 (when radical maoist leaders were arrested), the emerging bureaucratic capitalist class took over and consolidated political power. in the 1980s, the state sector working class continued to enjoy many socialist rights and remained strong at the factory level. instead of organizing a direct, frontal attack on the working class that would be politically costly and might not succeed, the chinese bureaucratic capitalist class adopted—in line with mao’s revolutionary approach—a strategy of surrounding the cities with the countryside. china’s “economic reform” started with the privatization of agriculture. with the dismantling of the collective peoples’ communes, hundreds of millions of “surplus workers” in the rural areas were made available for capitalist exploitation. foreign and domestic capitalist enterprises grew explosively, profiting from china’s cheap labor force, low taxes and lack of social and environmental regulations. by the 1990s, the capitalist sector has overtaken the state sector to become the dominant economic force. the chinese government was ready to push for massive privatization in the cities. tens 63 of millions of state workers were laid off. those who were employed were deprived of any remaining socialist protections. however, the very success of chinese capitalism may have prepared the conditions for its eventual downfall. first of all, the state sector working class (including the laid off state sector workers) has developed political experience in both the socialist period and the capitalist period. this rich historical experience has contributed to a dramatic increase in class consciousness and organizational capacity among china’s state sector workers. in recent years, the state sector workers have organized many anti-privatization struggles and many are led by activists influenced by marxist-leninist-maoist ideas.6 by contrast, the migrant working class (the workers who have their origin in the countryside and work in the new capitalist sector) remains politically inexperienced. in recent years, however, migrant workers have also developed the consciousness to demand more economic and social rights (not yet political rights or socialism). as chinese capitalist accumulation continues to deplete rural surpluses of labour and a new generation of migrants increasingly considers themselves as “workers” rather than “peasants”, the objective balance of class power could increasingly shift in favour of the working class, encouraging migrant workers to get organized and fight for economic and social rights. in addition, under capitalist development, many among the petty bourgeoisie (or the urban “middle class”) have also suffered from declining living standards. many cannot afford to buy an apartment in the city. several college graduates cannot find jobs and have to live in slum-like conditions. the proletarianization of the petty bourgeoisie has contributed to the rise of the intellectual left in china. a growing number of young people have turned into marxist-leninist-maoists. the future of china depends on whether political unity can be developed between state sector workers, migrant workers and the proletarianized petty bourgeoisie. if such a unity does take shape, it may become a political force that the chinese capitalist class cannot defeat. is it conceivable that the chinese capitalist class could undertake certain social reforms to accommodate rising class tensions and redirect chinese capitalism onto a more “sustainable” path? over the past few years, the hu jintao-wen jiabao administration has been discussing building a so-called “harmonious society” with less inequality. in reality, despite some minor policy adjustments, economic and social inequality has continued to widen. for several reasons, meaningful social reform is unlikely to be achieved. first, much of the chinese capitalist wealth has its origin in the theft of state and collective assets from the socialist era. the entire ruling class is thoroughly corrupt and, at the local level, political power increasingly rests upon cooperation 6 on the class consciousness and anti-privatization struggle of the state sector workers, see weil (2010). can global capitalism be saved? “exit strategies” for capitalism or humanity 64 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research with local mafias. in this context, the central government has little ability to discipline the ruling class. even if the central government cares about the long-term sustainability of capitalism, it does not have the ability or will to force any significant capitalist group to make major concessions. second, despite the rapid growth of the chinese economy, china has failed to make inroads into the truly high value added segments of global commodity chains. china now relies upon foreign capital for almost all key technological areas in industry. without access to the monopolistic profits associated with the high value added activities, chinese capitalism will have to rely upon cheap labour forces to maintain its global “competitive advantage”. in the future, as the chinese working class gets organized and demands a growing range of rights, chinese capitalism may no longer be able to maintain social stability without in some way undermining capitalist accumulation.7 third, and potentially the most important, both chinese capitalist accumulation and global capitalist accumulation have rested upon the relentless exploitation of the environment. as the global ecological system approaches total collapse, any further expansion of capitalism is now in fundamental conflict with the long-term survival of the humanity. global catastrophes or “exit strategies” for humanity? in socialism: utopian and scientific, engels summarized the basic contradiction of capitalism as one between objective socialization of production and the capitalist system of private appropriation. this contradiction had led to increasingly more violent crises, demonstrating the inherent conflict between capitalist relations of production and the objective development of social productive forces. such a contradiction could only be resolved through the establishment of a more democratic and egalitarian form of social relations of production, based on social ownership of the means of production and rational economic planning. in other words, socialism (engels, 1978 [1880]). for classical marxists, socialism would prove to be a superior social system by developing social productive forces more rationally than capitalism. however, the greatest challenge confronting humanity today is no longer economic crisis but the fact that after centuries of relentless capital accumulation the global ecological system is now on the verge of complete collapse. consider the following aspects of the global ecological crisis (climate action tracker 2010; speth 2010; wild 2010): • according to the “climate action tracker,” the climate actions pledged by a good many national governments will commit the world to a warming of 3 7 on how china has failed to rise to the technology frontier, see hart-landsberg (2010). 65 degrees celsius by the end of the 21st century, steering the world onto a path of unprecedented catastrophes. • according to the united nations, by 2025 about 1.8 billion people will be living in countries with absolute water scarcity and about two-thirds of the world population could be under conditions of water stress. • the world is currently losing soil 10 to 20 times faster than it is being replenished, threatening the very foundation of world agriculture. • a recent foreign policy article argued that the world could face peak phosphorus production in the near future. phosphorus is a key input in the production of fertilizers. the authors warned that “if we fail to meet this challenge, humanity faces a malthusian trap of widespread famine on a scale that we have not yet experienced.” • about half the world’s wetlands and a third of the mangroves are gone. an estimated 90 percent of large predatory fish are gone, and 75 percent of marine fisheries are now over-fished or fished to capacity. • twenty percent of ocean corals are gone and another 20 percent are severely threatened. half the world’s temperate and tropical forests no loner exist. species are disappearing at rates about 1,000 times faster than normal. how may the rapidly developing global ecological crisis be dealt with? apologists claim that capitalism may be made “sustainable” or “green” by promoting “green technologies” or “eco-efficiency”. this argument may be illustrated by the following “ipat” formula: i = p * a * t the formula suggests that environmental impacts (t) are determined by population (p), “affluence” (a, that is, gdp per capita), and technology (t, which measures the environmental impact per unit of gdp). according to basic laws of ecology, ecological sustainability requires stable or falling environmental impacts. according to the ipat formula, unlimited economic growth (that is, capital accumulation) can be made compatible with ecological sustainability if technological progress leads to increasingly higher eco-efficiency, that is, falling t, which presumably falls more rapidly than the growth of gdp. the fundamental problem with the “green capitalist” argument is that it fails to understand, on the one hand, why uncan global capitalism be saved? “exit strategies” for capitalism or humanity 66 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research der capitalism there has been a powerful tendency towards endless accumulation of capital and, on the other hand, the insurmountable physical and political-economic limitations of “eco-efficiency” as a countervailing factor. all human civilizations have been based on the existence of a substantial surplus product (the part of total social product that is above the population’s basic consumption and the means of production required to maintain society’s simple reproduction). in pre-capitalist societies, the surplus product was used by ruling elites primarily for luxury consumption and various wasteful activities (such as war, religious rituals, or grand imperial projects), leaving little for the expansion of production. modern capitalism is unique in that it is the only socio-economic system that has ever existed in human history where market relations have become dominant in every aspect of social life. the dominance of market relations leads to universal and unending competition between producers, forcing every producer to use a substantial portion of the surplus-value (profit) to engage in capital accumulation and expand the scale of production. this dynamic, once it is dominant, becomes a self-sustaining economic force reproducing itself on increasingly larger scales. in the world market, world-wide competition forces all national states to pursue as much economic growth as possible. those nations that fail to compete often suffer economic and political crises or are defeated militarily. against this powerful tendency towards unlimited capital accumulation (represented by increasingly larger p and a), what has been the counteracting force? green capitalist advocates argue that market functions generate the most efficient economic system. for such a view, resource scarcity through rising prices will stimulate innovation leading to resource-saving technologies that can lower t and offset the growth of p and a. this argument, however, was found to be flawed as early as the 19th century by british economist william stanley jevons. jevons argued that any resource-saving technology, by temporarily reducing the consumption of a resource, would lead to lower price, which would then encourage people to consume more of the resource. the perverse phenomenon was known as the “jevons paradox”. jevons’ paradox could explain why in reality, despite improvements in resource efficiency (that is, falling resource consumption per unit of economic output), overall resource consumption keeps growing persistently.8 natural resources are, after all, “priced” in a capitalist economy, however flawed the pricing mechanisms might be. by contrast, generations of material waste from human activities or human pollutants are treated as “free” by capitalist markets. in economic terms, the ecological system is treated as an “externality” that is considered to have zero costs 8 for an explanation of jevons’ paradox, see orford (2010). 67 in a free market system. in a capitalist system, government regulations provide the only countervailing mechanism against externalities. however, as environmental regulations tend to increase the costs associated with accumulation, governments will typically only regulate those pollutants that do not significantly affect business profitability. thus, even on national scales, government environmental regulations are often inadequate and ineffective. on a global scale, any national capitalist economy that seriously regulates the environment will increase its own accumulation costs and suffer a competitive disadvantage in the global market. thus, when the question concerns global environmental problems (such as climate change), few capitalist economies are willing to undertake the necessary actions. international agreements are supposed to help solve this dilemma by sharing the costs among national capitalist states. however, major capitalist powers rarely agree upon how the costs should be shared and few want to contemplate any restrictions on their own accumulation. the recent united nations conference fiasco on climate change at copenhagen demonstrates this clearly. in addition to the political-economic limits on “t”, there are also fundamental physical-ecological limits. all human economic activities have to do with either physical or chemical transformations of the natural world, and thus necessarily require the consumption of material resources and lead to the generation of material wastes. it is therefore not possible to invent an economic activity with zero environmental impacts. unlimited economic growth will inevitably lead to unlimited environmental impacts. in the long run, the only way to achieve ecological sustainability is to develop an economy with stable material flows (or a “steady-state” economy) that can meet the world population’s basic needs and are consistent with the normal operations of ecological systems. the capitalist system is taking humanity down the path of global ecological catastrophe, which threatens the destruction of civilization. at this critical threshold of the early 21st century, what will be humanity’s “exit strategy” for survival? under capitalism, society’s surplus product is under the control of many big and small capitalists that engage in ruthless competition against one another. this competition generates an enormous, immensely irrational social force that is beyond any individual capitalist’s control, forcing businesses to pursue ruthless exploitation of both nature and humanity. the only way for humanity to escape this ridiculous trap, an enormous irony of alienation (that the very social force created by human beings is now turned against humanity itself ), is to establish society’s collective and self-conscious control over the social surplus product—that is to say, over the economy and over the makeup of society itself. as classical marxism argued, this control would in turn require social ownership of the means of production and the development of democratic, rational economic planning that determines the can global capitalism be saved? “exit strategies” for capitalism or humanity 68 alternate routes: a journal of 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lianxu 22 nian xiajiang, yi yingxiang shehui wending (labor income share of gdp had fallen for 22 years, threatening social stability)”, may 12, 2010. website: http://finance.eastmoney.com/ news/1346,2010051275119040.html. social property relations in the 21st century | 159 social property relations in the 21st century: an interview with ellen meiksins wood — jordy cummings jordy cummings1 (jc): let’s start with canada. what do you make of the current context of the canadian state? is it exceptionally right wing in comparison with earlier governments, for example, on issues like palestine or the environment? or are current policies continuous with past policy trajectories? ellen meiksins wood2 (emw): i don’t think the two options here are mutually exclusive. yes, this government is distinctively rightwing, not least on matters like palestine and the environment. but, like everything else, it has a history. the simple continuity, of course, is that canada was and remains a capitalist economy, with all this entails: the imperatives of profit-maximization imposed by the capitalist market, the necessity of constant capital accumulation, the constant need to reduce the costs of labour, the subordination of all social goods including ecological sustainability to the requirements of profit, the inequities and social injustices these imperatives inevitably engender, and the limitations placed on states as long as the economy is regulated by capitalist requirements. but let’s be more specific. for 1 jordy cummings is a ph.d. candidate in political science at york university, toronto, canada. he has written for counter punch, the bullet and socialist studies. his main research area is classical marxist political theory and is working on a dissertation examining the significance of the french revolution for the socialist project in light of the rethinking of the concept of bourgeois revolution. 2 ellen meiksins wood, who for many years taught at york university, toronto, canada, is the author of, among other books, the pristine culture of capitalism, the origin of capitalism, democracy against capitalism, empire of capital, and most recently two volumes of a social history of western political thought: citizens to lords and liberty and property. she was an editor of new left review from 1984 to 1993 and co-editor of monthly review from 1997 to 2000. 160 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism instance, inequality in canada today is growing at a faster pace than in most oecd countries, and we have to acknowledge that this isn’t entirely harper’s doing. a previous liberal government in the 1990s did more than its share in bringing about the current conditions: massive cuts in public spending which have made paul martin—who boasted that he had brought public spending back to 1950s standards—a model often cited by the current austerity maniacs. but this doesn’t mean that harper isn’t a particularly malevolent development in canadian history, devoted to reversing as much as he can of what has been best about canada. it hasn’t even been enough for him to undermine the social functions of the state and to do everything he can to create a new culture in canada which treats the state not as an instrument of social responsibility but as the source of our problems. he has also been conducting a lethal attack on civil society and its independent institutions, undermining everything from sources of public information like stats canada to various autonomous human rights and environmental organizations – to say nothing of the ongoing attack on trade union rights. it’s all very well to attack other governments as instruments of capital, but this government is undermining canadian democracy in wholly new ways. jc: the new buzzword is “austerity.” like neoliberalism (and sometimes used in combination), to what extent is austerity the specific manner in which the capitalist state is dealing with the current slowdown of capitalist accumulation? in other words, is there a risk that when we talk too much about austerity or neoliberalism and corporations that we risk softening our critique of capitalism? emw: that’s a good point. we have to be careful that by stressing adjectives like ‘neoliberal’, or for that matter ‘globalized’, in the characterization of capitalism (to say nothing of ‘market capitalism’, as if there were any other kind) we don’t obscure as much as we reveal, at least when we’re trying to explain capitalist crisis or the damage done by capitalism. of course we have to understand the differences among various kinds or phases of capitalism. but we also have to acknowledge the problems endemic to capitalism in all its forms. the imperatives of capital inevitably create periods of crisis. we don’t have to underestimate the importance of, say, neoliberal ideology in creating the mess we’re in today in order to understand that this ideology itself was a response to an already existing problem in the social property relations in the 21st century | 161 profitability especially of us capital. the decline started with the end of the long postwar boom, some time after american capital had been challenged by competition from germany and japan. that economic decline was generated by the systemic mechanisms of capitalism, and neoliberalism, set in motion by reagan and thatcher, was in large measure an ideological response to that decline. this brought with it attacks on the labour movement, extracting huge concessions from workers, the deregulation of markets, and so on. but the ultimate effect wasn’t to correct the problem. on the contrary, it was to make matters worse by reducing aggregate demand, which would be countered by what robert brenner has called ‘assetprice keynesianism’, the stock market bubble, the encouragement of increasing indebtedness, and so on. instead of genuine growth in the ‘real’ economy, there was a kind of ‘bubblenomics’. in other words, this ‘privatized keynesianism’ and the encouragement of private debt by means of reckless financial practices were designed to enhance capitalist profit without social spending, while, of course, reducing taxes for the rich. so the neoliberal ‘solution’, like current austerity programs, was an ideologically driven response to an unavoidable structural problem. i think it would be safe to argue that the solution hasn’t worked, to put it mildly, and it has never worked. there are no doubt insurmountable problems in any growth-stimulating alternative, and we will eventually have to confront the whole difficult question of ‘growth’—how sustainable it is to have an economy driven by a constant need to accumulate capital and maximize profit. but we’d certainly be entitled to say that even an imperfect kind of keynesian demand management would work better even now as a mode of crisis management. at the same time, there’s no use pretending that even the most democratic and humane mode of state intervention could avoid the recurrence of crisis. that leaves us, as ever, with a political conundrum: it’s always tempting to say that, capitalism is capitalism is capitalism, and that since, no matter what we do, capitalism inevitably produces crisis— to say nothing of endemic problems like social injustices and gross inequality—we should maintain our political purity by not settling for imperfect solutions. but the simple truth is that, for most people, imperfect solutions like increased social spending and the raising of taxes on the rich are a far better option than neoliberalism and austerity—which, however driven by big financial interests, don’t even seem to work on their own terms. 162 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism jc: you have always accepted the label “political marxist”, as originally a riposte by guy bois to robert brenner. recently, charlie post claimed a preference for “capital-centric” marxist. in any case, whichever way we label it, what is it about political or capital-centric marxism that so arouses, even to the point of vituperation, such polemical disagreement and criticism? emw: i’ve always had my doubts about that label ‘political marxism’, though i have to take some responsibility for starting it. but i’ve come to accept it, more or less reluctantly, to identify what has become a very fruitful approach to the study of history and social reality. when guy bois accused brenner of this heresy, it was on the grounds that brenner had adopted a voluntarist kind of marxism, which placed too much emphasis on ‘social factors’, in particular class struggle, while neglecting ‘the most operative concept of historical materialism’ (the mode of production) and abandoning ‘the field of economic realities’. in my article on ‘the separation of the economic and the political in capitalism’ i argued that this criticism was based on a false dichotomy, because there was no such thing as a ‘mode of production’ in opposition to ‘social factors’. in fact, marx’s most radical innovation was precisely to define the mode of production and economic laws themselves in terms of ‘social factors’. political marxism’, as i understood it, believed in the importance of material factors and the mode of production just as much as economistic marxism did, and it certainly didn’t involve some kind of voluntarist denial of historical causality. but it took seriously the proposition that production is a social phenomenon. so, the first premise of this approach is that economic relations are social relations, and its primary organizing principle is what bob brenner called ‘social property relations’. one of the main points that follows from this is that each specific system of social property relations has its own dynamics, its own ‘rules for reproduction’, and, of course, this is true of capitalism in particular. the old forms of marxist technological determinism tended to read back into all history capitalism’s laws of motion as if the drive constantly to improve the forces of production by technical means were a universal, transhistorical law. political marxism is far more conscious of the specificities of capitalism, and so it can shed more light on how capitalism operates today, why it does what it does, why its crises take the form that they do, and what the possibilities are for the future – though i’d hesitate to call the approach ‘capital-centric’, if only because of its social property relations in the 21st century | 163 usefulness in identifying the specificity of other social forms too, not just capitalism. the whole point is that it seeks to be a truly historical approach, as distinct, say, from the teleological tendencies of certain kinds of marxism. i’m not really sure why this approach has provoked hostility in certain quarters – though i don’t think this should be exaggerated, given the growing number of impressive scholars it has attracted, and the very fruitful and wide-ranging research agenda it has produced. some of the hostility is probably just the old bad habit of the left, the so-called narcissism of small difference and the kind of sectarianism that tends to be most antagonistic to those outside one’s sect but closest to it. but there’s no denying that our approach to history represents a significant challenge to certain old orthodoxies, not just the old technological determinism but specific notions like ‘bourgeois revolution’, an idea that some people regard as sacrosanct even if it no longer serves any useful purpose, theoretical or political. there has also been another kind of criticism, which simply misunderstands ‘political marxism’ in the most fundamental way. one such criticism responds to my arguments about capitalist social property relations and how they generate the specific market imperatives of profit-maximization, constant capital accumulation, increasing labour-productivity, etc., by claiming that this emphasis on market (‘economic’) imperatives fails to acknowledge the persistence of ‘extra-economic’ coercion in capitalism, in particular in capitalism’s exploitation not only of free wage labour but of unfree labour, and that my analysis of the ‘economic’ as formally separate from the ‘political’ in capitalism makes such an approach incapable of recognizing the political implications of ‘economic’ relations and of dealing with ‘extra-economic’ factors like race or gender. this criticism seems to me completely, and astonishingly, offbase for a whole variety of reasons: because the whole point of my argument about the distinctive relation between the ‘economic’ and the ‘political’ in capitalism is to insist that the ‘economic’ is a social, and indeed a fundamentally political, relation; because i, like others who have adopted this approach, have said quite a bit about capitalism’s exploitation of unfree labour, to say nothing of my writings on the interactions between capitalism and ‘extra-economic’ identities like race and gender; because one of the first premises of political marxism is brenner’s important observation that the market-dependence of economic actors, which creates its characteristic imperatives, long predates the generalization of wage labour and that its original imperatives were not generated by a relation between capital and wage labour; because 164 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism i have elaborated at great length my views on the ‘extra-economic’ power of the state, which, i argue, has always been essential to capitalism and even – in some ways even more – to neoliberal ‘globalized’ capital; and so on and so on. there’s no space to go into this here, so let me just say this: it’s one thing to acknowledge the persistence of ‘extra-economic’ relations and coercion in capitalism; it’s quite another to understand the very specific social property relations that create capitalism’s specific imperatives. if you want to understand the relations between capitalism and, say, race, gender, or slavery, you obviously need to understand what makes capitalism distinct from other social forms, what generates its very specific operating principles and the distinctive historical dynamic that it has set in motion. of course it’s important to recognize the ‘extra-economic’ realities of race, gender, or unfree labour. but to say, for instance, that capitalism continued to exploit slave labour, not just wage labour, gets you nowhere in explaining capitalism and why it operates the way it does, which means you can’t even explain how capitalism interacted with, how it affected and was affected by, slavery itself in ways distinct from other slave societies. i’ve said a few things about this in my own work, but, of course, the specialist on this is charlie post. nor can we explain how race and gender operate in capitalist societies, as distinct from other social forms, without understanding the specific dynamics of capitalism. jc: in relation to criticism of political marxism, at a recent left forum panel, one of post’s critics claimed that political marxism was fundamentally in error, more than anything else, over its rejection of leninist and other “classical” theories of imperialism. speaking personally, one of the things that made the most sense to me when i first read your work was your continuing argument that the early theories of imperialism presupposed a world in which capitalism was not yet universal, yet today for all intents and purposes, capitalism has penetrated social relations everywhere, it has indeed “created a world in its own image”? what kind of theory of imperialism do we now need? emw: i’m not sure who exactly has rejected leninist and other ‘classical’ theories of imperialism, but at any rate, my own argument has always been that those classical theories, as powerful as they were and remain, belong precisely to, and are most illuminating about, the ‘classic’ age of imperialism, in which major colonial powers were engaged in inter-imperialist rivalries to divide and redivide the tersocial property relations in the 21st century | 165 ritories of a largely non-capitalist world. this simply isn’t true today, and i’ve suggested that what we’ve been lacking is a theory of today’s capitalist imperialism, when, among other things, conflicts among capitalist powers take a very different form. i’ve argued in various places that, for all their strengths, neither lenin’s nor luxemburg’s theories were intended to deal with a new historical reality in which the economic imperatives of capitalism have overtaken old forms of colonial domination and inter-imperialist rivalries. i’ve also explained, for instance, why i think lenin’s idea of finance capital and his prediction of its growing dominance, however prophetic they may seem, were dealing with a form of financial dominance quite different from what’s on display today: when, for example, he adopted hilferding’s notion of finance capital, he had in mind the very particular role of german banks in consolidating industrial production into ‘cartels’ and thus, in the process, fusing with industrial capital, not detaching speculation from the ‘real’ economy in the disastrous ways finance capital has been doing, or seeking to do, in our most recent crises. in any case, his ideas don’t, and couldn’t have been intended to, offer an explanation of imperialism in our own time, especially given the ways in which the imperialism of his day was still significantly shaped by noncapitalist relations and forces. if we’re going to cite lenin, the least we have to do is apprehend not only what binds the capitalism of his day to our own but also what differentiates one from the other. and what this means above all is that any theory of imperialism today has to deal with the very specific forms of domination made possible by capitalism, not simply capitalism’s continuing use of ‘extra-economic’ forms of colonial domination but its elaboration and universalization of its own specific forms of purely ‘economic’ coercion, the expansion and manipulation of market dependence and market imperatives, which have really come into their own in barely more than the last half-century. jc: you have written with cautious optimism about the strength of the occupy movement that has developed in the last year. what is it about this movement, its ideas, its rhetoric, that gives you this sense of optimism, in comparison, for example, with the global justice movement of the late 90s? emw: i guess the most heartening thing about the occupy movement is how it has started to change the conversation. one of the things that has always struck me about the earlier movements you mention is how they 166 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism tended to blame global capitalism often less because it was capitalist than because it was global. the principal target of many ‘anti-capitalists’ was less capitalism than ‘globalization’, at least in its present form, and particularly transnational corporations, together with the international organizations like the imf, world bank, wto, and g8 that help to organize the world for global capital. there’s still a lot of that emphasis today, and it certainly has its place. but i think we’re beginning to see more directly anti-capitalist sentiment. i don’t want to exaggerate this shift to a focus on capitalism as capitalism. there’s probably still too much focus on the greed of bankers rather than on the systemic imperatives of capitalism, which compel even the most socially responsible and least personally greedy capitalist to pursue profitmaximization and subordinate social goods like equity or environmental sustainability. but we may now be seeing something different – for instance, in the growing concern about inequality as endemic to the system, or in an increasing recognition of the ways the capitalist market restricts our choices and our individual freedoms. it’s encouraging, too, that at least in some places there are signs of collaboration between occupy groups and the labour movement. and it’s certainly encouraging to see the concerns of the occupy movement expressed in the most mainstream media, who have clearly been compelled to take notice. we’ve yet to see the movement take a truly political form with a capacity for organized action, and i’m not entirely convinced that it’s well suited to producing that kind of effect. but i’d never underestimate the importance of changing the conversation in – eventually – giving rise to something more. one thing that may be encouraging in this respect is that the new movements seem more inclined to see the point of national struggles. the old global justice movement certainly had room for very local struggles, but with its focus on global institutions it seemed to suggest that any truly effective political action would have to occur on the global stage, and this in the end may have proved politically disabling. after all, ‘global’ power is rather hard to target and in the end seems beyond the practical reach of any effective political action, in contrast to national states, which represent more visible, less daunting targets, more susceptible to local struggles and some kind of democratic accountability. it’s not insignificant that globalization theories on the left have tended to emphasize the uselessness of national struggles in globalized capitalism, or even, as in the case of hardt and negri, the absence of any identifiable locus of power at which we can aim some kind of organized counter-power. what we may be seeing now is a different perception of where the targets social property relations in the 21st century | 167 lie. i don’t want to stretch this point too much, but the occupy movement, while certainly aware of globalization and open to international solidarity, may be more inclined to look closer to home, not just to meetings of the g20 but, say, to wall street and washington, not just as symbols but as identifiable centers of power. this applies in various ways to other instances of turbulence you talk about, in the arab spring or the eurozone crisis. i can’t say much with any confidence about the arab spring, given the setbacks we’ve been witnessing, which are likely to continue – except that it’s hard not to be moved by the passionate and courageous demands for freedom and dignity we were hearing at the height of the revolutions, and it’s hard not to believe that they have changed the world for good, in both senses of the word. the crisis in the eurozone may have more immediate implications for the kinds of working class and popular struggles you seem to have in mind. this is a crisis that, like no other in the recent past, has forced a confrontation with the realities of capitalism. the tensions between the purveyors of austerity and their vicitms can’t help but draw the lines more sharply along class lines than we’ve seen, or been willing to see, for a while. but there’s also something else: as, say, the greek state takes on the job of doing the dirty work for german banks, there’s no mistaking the role played by local states as the primary instruments of capital, however ‘global’ – or at least regional – capital may be. it is, after all, national states that have been putting more and more of our lives outside the reach of democratic accountability by subjecting us more and more to market imperatives, by privatizing and commodifying ever more aspects of life. what greater ‘democratic deficit’ is there than the one effected by increasing marketization? and how can this be resisted without directing struggles at the local state? what other struggle is there that can offer greeks – or spaniards or italians – any better hope than a struggle directed at the power concentrated in their own national states? we have to see those struggles as not only a challenge to this or that austerity program but as an effort to restore and expand democracy – and also as a challenge to the long prevailing wisdom that the state has become an irrelevance, not worthy of targetting in struggle. jc: one aspect of the current left conversation is an interest in horizontalism, as it is called, and a skepticism towards engaging with state power. what do you make of the continued resilience of this 168 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism phenomenon? emw: if you’re asking me why many on the left are disinclined to regard the state as a useful target of struggle, or the achievement of state power as a useful objective, i think there are several different kinds of reasons. there are what we might call general structural reasons having to do with the nature of capitalism, which appears to make the state a less relevant player in everday struggles than the daily struggles of the workplace or the tensions between employers and workers. then there are historical reasons, not least the dark record of the state in ‘actually existing socialism’ or the disappointments of social democracy. there’s also something specific to the current generation of young people, which distinguishes them sharply from their parents and grandparents. the generation that went through the great depression and world war ii and lived to see the golden age of welfare state capitalism had a very particular experience of the state as a source of social goods, from housing to health care to universal education. this was particularly true of canada. the next generation, the so-called ‘baby boomers’, may have taken these things for granted, but that’s no longer true of the current generation of young people. they are hard pressed to think of any positive example of state action that has emerged in their own life-time, as their grandparents may have experienced the rise of the health service and other public goods. on the contrary, young people today have witnessed deteriorating public services. long after the decline of postwar capitalism and the end of the postwar boom, they have grown up with both the ideology and the consequences of neoliberalism. i don’t think it’s too much to say that the objective of neoliberalism has been to destroy the state as an instrument of social solidarity and democratic responsibility. it has left the state bereft of both resources and positive objectives, deliberately destroying, in large part simply by means of cuts in funding, much that has been good about state services. so it’s no wonder that this generation finds it hard to think of the state as a positive force in the way that their grandparents did. meanwhile, as i suggested before, we’re constantly inundated by what’s become an almost unchallenged convention: that globalization has rendered the state pretty much irrelevant, a spent force that – for better or worse – can’t keep up with global capital. this kind of thing, which we get from the left no less than the right, has long seemed to me a particularly disabling idea and, as it happens, not even close to social property relations in the 21st century | 169 the truth. i’ve argued endlessly that global capital needs the state, in many ways more than before, and that it remains a very relevant target of struggle, so i won’t go on about it here again but, again, i think it’s worth considering how the current crisis might dramatically bear out the view that struggles at the level of national states may be the most effective counter to the current depradations of global capital. i certainly wouldn’t dismiss the importance of popular efforts to challenge transnational organizations like the g20, but in the eu, for example, take greece. it’s hard to imagine any popular action on the international stage that could have anything like the effects, however limited so far, brought about by the the upsurge of popular opinion that led to the rise of syriza. even without an electoral victory for that radical party, the rules of the game have changed, not only for the greek government itself but for the politics of europe. jc: your new book liberty and property, a companion to citizens to lords has as an underlying theme the contestation over the meaning of freedom as we currently understand it. what is the significance of this contestation i’m thinking in particular about the putney debates, but stretching from hobbes and locke to the diggers, the original “occupy movement”? in relation to this, can and should, as recently suggested by corey robin – the left reclaim “freedom” as an animating principle, in our rhetoric, in our organizing strategies, in our guiding principles? emw: of course the left should ‘reclaim’ freedom as an animating principle –though i’m not really clear on what it means to suggest that ‘the left’ has ever abandoned it or what particular left we’re talking about. the kind of socialism i’ve always believed in – and i’m hardly alone in this – has always regarded freedom as a central guiding principle. i might be tempted to add that various postmodernist trends have in their own ways tended to undermine such ‘universalistic’ principles. but i’ve said enough about all this too often, so let me try to answer the question as you posed it. for corey robin, if i understand him correctly, the issue really has to do with us politics and how the left can challenge the monopoly claimed by the right on the traditional american ideology of individual freedom and mobilize that ideology in favour of progressive causes. progressives in the us, he suggests, tend to invoke security or equality as their animating principles, which has the effect of treating people not as free and active citizens but as passive beneficiaries of state intervention, social welfare, redistributive policies, and so on. this may be a useful comment on us political discourse; but robin’s argument may beg the essential 170 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism question by conceding too much to rightwing conceptions of rights and liberties, which, in a classically american way, define freedom in opposition to equality and collective solidarity. for me, any convincing idea of freedom has to recognize from the start, for example, that liberty and equality are anything but antithetical and that for vast numbers of people the growing inequality we have today is a restriction, not an enhancement, of individual freedom. one of the points i make in liberty and property is that western conceptions of freedom have long been distorted and constrained by the fact that they owe so much to ideas of ‘liberty’ conceived not as a defence of democratic freedoms but as an assertion of class privilege and the autonomy of dominant property classes in their conflicts with monarchical states or other claimants to superior jurisdiction. of course there have been more democratic ideas too, like those of the levellers and the diggers whom you mention, and they are more likely to recognize the mutual reinforcement of liberty and equality, individual and collective. but we shouldn’t underestimate the influence of the dominant tradition and the ways in which our own ideas are still restricted by it. the other essential point i make in liberty and property, as elsewhere in my work, is that our contemporary ideas of freedom haven’t adequately acknowledged the new forms of power and coercion created by capitalism. it’s not enough to defend our liberties against the power of the state. we also have to consider the compulsions imposed on us by distinctively capitalist forms of coercion – and here i mean not just the excessive power of money in politics, nor even just the power of capital in the workplace, but also the compulsions of the market, its imperatives of profit-maximization and constant capital accumulation. we’re so used to thinking of the market as a realm of choice and freedom that we tend to overlook the degree to which it’s a form of coercion and domination, which compels us to subordinate all other considerations –fairness, social justice, human dignity, ecological sustainability, and, yes, the freedom of the individual – to the demands of profit. a race of cuckoos : cninese migration, anti-chinese logialation and the canadian pacific railway. ronald faust ino-santos chinese labour migration to canada in the nineteenth century is explained in terms of the respective positions of china and canada within the world system. the role of the state in determining this position is discussed . with respect to the several states occupying china, this took the form of attempts to officially regulate the migrant labour trade. the canadian state provided for the general interests of capital by reinforcing the use of chinese as cheap labour for work on railway construction . race as an ideology is used to explain the concrete actions of class fractions as they appropriated racism to promote their material interests . in china this took the form of european merchants and plantation owners aligned against exploited chinese labour. within canada, the merchant class, which favoured political marginal ization of the chinese but not necessarily exclusion , was aligned against the white working class which favoured the outright exclusion of chinese from canada. 42 at the economic level, it is clear that race must be given its distinctive and 'relatively autonomous' effectivity, as a distinctive feature. this does not mean that the economic is sufficient to found an explanation of how these relations concretely function. one needs to know how different racial and ethnic groups were inserted historically, and the relations which tended to erode and transform, preserve these distinctions through time not simply as residues and traces of previous modes, but as active structuring principles of the present organization of society. racial categories will not provide or explain these. what are the different forms and relations in which these racial fractions were combined under capital? do they stand in significantly different relations to capital do they stand within an articulation of different modes of production? .... nevertheless, such an analysis would need to be complemented by an analysis of the specific forms which racism assumes in its ideological functioning. here, we would have to begin by investigating the different ways in which racist ideologies have been constructed and made operative under different historical conditions: the racisms of mercantilist theory and of chattel slavery; of conquest and colonialism; of trade and 'high imperialism'; of 'popular imperialism' and of so-called 'post-imperialism'. in each case, in specific social formations, racism as an ideological configuration has been reconstituted by the dominant class relations and thoroughly reworked (see hall , 1980 : 338 ) . introduction the above quotation establishes the salience of race and ethnicity within capitalism. hall suggests that one must examine the historically specific 'articulation' of race and the economic base, while attributing 'relative autonomy' to race as a 'distinctive feature' of capitalist social relations. this suggests an examination of the material base for racism as well as how racism at the political and ideological level reproduces the existing capital relations structured along racial lines. 43 the purpose of this paper is to examine how class struggle at the political level came to be defined along racial lines within two contexts: the british imperial state in china and the canadian state. this paper will deal specifically with chinese migration to canada in the late nineteenth century. the analysis will tawe place at two levels. the first level will involve an examination of the particular economic conditions within the world capitalist system which led to chinese migration. the role of the british imperial state in promoting this migration will be discussed. in an indirect way the material conditions* within the world system and the role of the british state in creating these conditions contributed to the structuring of class struggle along racial lines in the canadian context. the role of the canadian state in reproducing class relations along racial lines will be examined. moreover, the play of class forces which determined the expression of racism in the canadian state will also be investigated. the focus will be on how racism is appropriated by class fractions to promote their own material interests. true to the method suggested above, the material conditions for the salience of race within capitalist social relations must be established. the salience of race within this particular historical period can be related to the imperialist stage of competitive capitalism. the root of imperialism lies in the tendency of the capitalist system towards cyclical crises, due to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (trpf), and the 44 resulting barriers in the valorization of capital i bonac ich , 1 984 and hirsch, 1 978 ) . the developed capitalist countries in europe attempted to deal with these crises by exporting capital to its colonies . the export of labour from the colonies as a means to counter the trpf is one of the chief attractions of imperialist expansion ( bonachich , 1 984 : 1 7 ) . employers in the metropole can deal with the trpf by increasing the extraction of absolute surplus value through the lowering of workers' wages (5). workers from the colonies can be paid a lower wage rate than their metropole counterparts because the cost of reproducing migrant labor power is borne by the colony (burawoy, 1976). the state also plays a part in the exploitation of migrant labor power. from the perspective of the colony, the exportation of its labor force is characterized by a relationship of dependency and domination in the form of an international division of labor ( baratt-brown, 1974 ) . in the late nineteenth century, imperialism made britain the 'workshop of the world' to be supplied with raw aterials (including labor) by its colonies. an international division of labor emerged, with advanced european countries being supplied with resources and markets by its colonies. goods manufactured with foreign capital from the colony were then exported back to the metropole. thus, there was an unequal exchange of value between the metropole and the colony with the profit from manufactured goods flowing to the metropole (bonachich, 1984:12-16). the relationship between the colony 45 and the metropole was one of dominance and exploitation on the part of the metropole, and led to the underdevelopment of the colony (16-20). therefore, at the economic level, race is a salient characteristic of capitalist social relations because of the domination of non-european countries by european imperial powers . this is not to reduce race to the needs of capital accumulation. hall (1980) notes that the structures through which black labor is reproduced are not simply 'colored' by race, they work through race. therefore, a problem in marxist conceptualizations of racism is to define racism in such a way as to affirm its material base without reducing it to the economic. miles' (1982) conceptualization of racism as an ideology is the most profitable. he does not attribute the emergence of racism to the capitalist mode of production. miles claims that the relative autonomy of racism as an ideology can be explained in two ways. first, racism in the nineteenth century was the product of a number of relatively 'independent' ideologies such as christianity and 'scientific' racism as well as the 'lived experience' of early explorers to africa. racism was relatively autonomous as well in that it was not reducible to a single class. the most significant aspect of miles' argument is the process by which racism in the nineteenth century was appropriated by the bourgeoisie to legitimate imperialism, "racism was used by those advancing the policy of expansionism as justification for intervention in africa" ( mi les , 1 982 : 1 1 6 ) . the working class can also appropriate racism 46 to further its own material self-interests, as was the case with the anti-oriental policy adopted by organized labor in british columbia. china and the world system non-capitalist social relations can exist within a larger capitalist system. lever-tracy (1983), at a global level, conceptualizes a world system, the general form of which can be characterized as capitalist. subsumed within this capitalist form are non-capitalist social relations which contribute to the world system. bonacich (1984) also attributes the existence of cheap migrant labor to subsistence economies in the periphery. the articulation of china as a non-capitalist social formation within the world capitalist system set the conditions for labour migration from china. this describes accurately the relationship of china to the british state within the world system. the chinese social system in the early seventeenth century can be characterized as feudal, the power resting, on the one hand, with the absentee landlord and the impotence of the landless peasant on the other ( li , 1979 : 326 ) . imperialism laid the ground work for labour emigration to canada because of the considerable displacement which occurred as a result of imperialism in china. local craft workers were driven out of their trades by competition from cheap manufactured imports. peasants were forced off their lands (bonacich, 1984:27). in the competitive stage of capitalism, transitory or propertyless labour was needed in the colonies because settlers 47 became small landowners and were not predisposed to participate in wage labour. (marx in barrat-brown , 1 974 : 50 ) the migrant, with kinship ties elsewhere, was suited to the needs of capital. according to bonachich (1984:27): the temporary nature of colonial labor (sic) was completely rational from the point of view of the emigrant and his family. his supplementary remittances meant a great deal to the well-being of his family in the subsistence sector, while he could only support the most degraded style of life within the capitalist economy. china's integration into the world market was detrimental to its internal development. those who benefited from the chinese migrant labour trade were the imperial states which could expropriate chinese labour for use in the colonies. china, being debt-burdened, was dependent on remittances from its workers abroad for foreign currency ( friedman , 1980 : 1 18 ) . at the political level, the british imperial state played an important role in determining china's mode of articulation within the world system. part i: the imperial state and migrant labour the state plays a crucial role in capitalist expansion, providing the general and external conditions for the accumulation of capital (hirsch 1978:67). the form of the capitalist state can therefore be derived from the laws of motion of capital. the form of the state is bounded and structured by the precondition of its own existence, i.e. the need to attempt to ensure the general conditions for the continued accumulation of capital which individual capitalists cannot create for themselves (67). deri vat ioni sts , like hirsch, are mainly 48 concerned with the modern capitalist state, but the above observation may also be applied to the imperial state. if imperialism is a strategy to counter the trpf, then the imperial state mediates the crisis by providing the political conditions advantageous to imperialist expansionism. thus, the opium wars of 1839 to 1842 marked the coming of western imperialism to china by securing the military domination of china for western imperial powers. during the early part of the seventeenth century, china was a source of raw materials for export to britain. by 1839, china began to be viewed as a potential market for british goods. opium exports to china were a major source of profit for britain. needless to say, china's efforts to stem the flow of opium (due to the growing addiction of the chinese population to the drug) was met with hostility on the part of the british. the sinking of three chinese gunboats on november 3, 1839 marked the beginning of the opium wars. the imperial navy blockaded the yangtze river thereby cutting off the northern part of china from its food source, securing a victory for the british (chan, 1983:23-29). the british state, as a member of the alliance of foreign capital in china, played a role in opening the country to the world market by legitimating the presence of foreign capital in china. before 1842, the trading rights of the western powers were severely curtailed. only one port, canton, was open to foreign traders. the import and export trade was regulated by a 49 group of firms (collectively known as the cohong ) to which the qing government had awarded a monopoly. in return, the cohong closely monitored the activities of all foreigners in canton. all of this changed with the signing of the treaty at nanking which ended the opium wars. this treaty, signed in 1842, provided for the establishment of five treaty ports where foreigners could trade freely. it also ceded hong kong to great britain. more importantly, the treaty abolished the cohong ( chan , 1 983 : 23-29 ) . on the political and diplomatic level, western imperialism laid the groundwork for chinese migration. one third of the foreign treasury of china went to pay reparations for the opium war ( bonacich , 1984 : 30 ) . in 1859, the provincial government of quandong was forced to officially sanction the contract labour trade (230). this could have been due to the fact that allied troops had control of the provincial capital, canton, because of the popular unrest directed at foreigners and specifically, at their involvement in the coolie trade ( campbell , 1 923 : 1 1 9 ) . another important treaty that benefited canada directly was the burlingame treaty of 1868, signed between china and the united states. the treaty affirmed the right "of free migration of aliens and subjects from one country to another." the most favoured nation clause, where rights gained by one imperial nation would apply to all other nations occupying china, automatically granted the same privilege to britain and all its former colonies ( chan , 1983 : 43 ) . the treaties imposed by the imperial powers is an example of 50 how the imperial state provided the general and external conditions for the accumulation of capital by securing the political domination of china by the european powers. the treaties assured the smooth accumulation of capital byintegrating china into the world system. free labour was allowed to circulate from china, essentially removing barriers for its expropriation and facilitating its movement into canada. the military power of the imperialist nations also created an unequal political relationship which meant that the foreign powers were able to regulate the flow of chinese labour. the commerce of migration: the contract labour trade the 'coolie' trade was debt-bondage based on the 'credit-ticket' system by which a chinese worker would be advanced passage money and would therefore be bound to a foreign employer for a certain amount of free labour while having to work off the commission of the coolie-broker. 'coolies' very often could not pay back this debt and were not guaranteed passage back. foreign merchant houses in the treaty ports were connected to a vast network of 'eating houses' in the countryside. these 'eating houses' were run as labour depots by crimps (coolie brokers) who were continually kept informed of the labour market needs in the treaty ports. crimps frequently bought persons outright as debt-payment, reselling them to foreign immigration merchant houses. kidnapping was a common form of recruitment (campbell, 1923:2-120) . the abuses of the 'coolie' system led to an alternative form 51 of labour recruitment which came to be regulated by the foreign powers in china: the contract labour system. the formal distinction between the contract and the credit-ticket systems was that the contract between labourer and employer specified the period of employment and other obligations of the employer and thus protected the labourer ( campbell , 1923 : 91 ) . the chinese labourer was, therefore, selling his labour freely by signing the contract. in practice, there was no distinction between the credit-ticket system and the contract labour system. prospective migrant chinese workers were often coerced into signing contracts by the crimps of the white trading houses. torture was not an uncommon practice for extracting consent (118). the link between the international capitalist labour market and the chinese feudal economy was the comprador. compradors were the traditional merchant brokers ( ya-hang ) who now worked for specific foreign merchant houses. they acted as intermediaries between chinese officials and merchant houses. the hong kong compradors were the principal administrators of the contract labour system and used their kinship and regional ties to promote the trade ( hao , 1970 : 99 ) . the compradors processed migrant workers when they were in hong kong. the agent's task included collecting regular fees from the north american contract labourers for the purposes of registration fees and arranging contracts with foreign companies. he would also be responsible for seeing that remittances from the workers were sent to the workers' family in china, or guaranteed 52 workers' return (dead or alive) to china after the contracts expired. at the north american end there was another network of chinese businessmen known in the u.s. as the six companies and in canada, after 1884, as the chinese benevolent association. 1 (chan, 1983:44 ) . the imperial state and the 'coolie' trade the content of state activities develops through a process of mediated reaction to the crisis in accumulation ( carnoy , 1984 : 142 ) . the evolution of the coolie trade from an unregulated 'industry' to a regulated and state-sponsored trade, is a response by the imperial nation states to the crisis in accumulation brought about by the abolition of slavery and the animosity of the chinese to the 'coolie' trade. race informed this class conflict with white european merchants and plantation owners aligned against exploited chinese labour. the emancipation act of 1833 which abolished slavery in britain and its colonies threatened the dominant mode of production (the plantation economy) in the west indies (campbell , 1923 :86 ) . in 1842, by the terms of the websterashburton treaty, great britain and the united states agreed to enforce the international abolition of the slave trade by patrolling the coast of africa; thus effectively eliminating the trade ( ching-hwang , 1 985 : 32 ) . with the abolition of the slave trade a new source of labour for the west indies and other slave/plantation economies had to be found. the competition for chinese labour became fierce with 53 all the major foreign powers competing for labourers. the high demand led to deceitful practices on the part of the foreign merchant houses. for example, syme-muir inc., the leading foreign coolie broker, confined chinese workers to compounds at the front of the merchant house.' some were held there against their will < campbell , 1 923 : 1 28 ) . given the fierce competition among the foreign powers and the agitation against the trade by the chinese, it was in the interest of the british state to rationalize the trade where it had jurisdiction, and to induce other foreign powers to do likewise. the british state did this in a way which assured the west indian plantation owners that their interests were taken into account. 3 the contract system, which legally bound the worker to the employer for a specified period of time, was favoured by the west indian plantation owners. this was because of the militancy of the chinese who, according to one planter, would not accept wages "lower than the amount at the time" implying that migrant workers were traditionally paid below the average wage rate ( campbell , 1 923 : 89 ) . the contract system was, therefore, a form of labour control. the 'coolie' trade was further disrupted by the fact that the increase in chinese labour recruitment was accompanied by a corresponding increase in the sentiment against it. in canton, a mob killed a group of crimps who had been accused of kidnapping ( campbell , 1923 : 1 19 ) . the opposition to the trade culminated in the 1852 amoy and 1859 shanghai ant i-kidnapping riots. 4 (chinghwang, 1985: 74-81 ) . 54 it was probably the animosity of the chinese and the fierce competition that led the british state to attempt to eliminate the abuses of the 'coolie' trade by negotiating, with the other foreign powers, a contract system universally applicable to all countries participating in the trade. the british state introduced the canton system in 1859 which regulated the trade by appointing a government official to act as agent between west indian plantation owners and chinese labourers. the british emigration house would insure that the labourer entered freely into the contract and that travel accommodations were humane (campbell, 1923:124). the emigration house was to be supported with public funds as well as by a tax on employers of chinese labourers (108). canada, as a colony of britain, benefited from this regulation in that it ensured that 'coolies' were in good health on coming to canada, "if for no other reason than that the investment outlay was greater.'' ( chan , 1983 : 45 ). 5 the material basis for the antagonism between the white working class and chinese labour can be related, in part, to the historically lower subsistence level of asians compared to europeans (creese, 1984:10) and to the fact that the costs of reproducing migrant labour are confined to china. 6 this, in turn, can be attributed to conditions at the level of the capitalist world system; conditions that were created and reproduced by the british imperial state in china. these conditions at the level of the world system contributed in turn to the 'making' of a labour market split along racial lines in british columbia. 7 55 part ii: chinese migration and the canadian state at the national level, the canadian state contributed to the reproduction of the split labour market as well. just as class conflict over the 'coolie' trade was structured by race (i.e. the exploitation of chinese labour by european merchants and plantation owners), race informed class conflict in the canadian context. all of these issues must be discussed within the context of the changing economic structure of canada as well as canada's own 'articulation' within the world system. canada in the world system canada's economy in the early 1800s, like that of any other british colony, was geared to the interests of the british empire. for example, canada was required to take all its imports from britain ( pentland , 1981 : 101 ) . furthermore, canada's economy was geared to the export of staples to britain (131). therefore, canada possessed two basic characteristics of a colonial economy: it was a source of raw materials for the metropole as well a market for its manufactured goods. as naylor has noted, "the metropole defines the character and extent of economic development in the hinterland area" ( naylor , 1 972 : 2 ) . therefore, the general need for chinese labour in the canadian economy can be linked to the interests of the empire. given that canada's economy was geared towards the circulation of staples, the dominant class fraction (the merchant class) had built a considerable trade in timber and grain with 56 britain ( nayior , 1972 : 90 ) . mercantile capital works within the sphere of circulation and accumulates wealth through intermediary activities between producers and consumers (90). therefore, it was in the interest of canadian merchant capital, as well as british capital, to expedite the circulation of raw materials from canada to britain. infrastructure construction (i.e. railways, canals, and roads) which expedites the circulation process, was, therefore, important for mercantile capital and the general needs of the empire. the construction of the cpr can be seen as a state-sponsored attempt to provide the needed infrastructure for merchant capital. 8 it is not surprising, then, that the greatest influx of chinese to british columbia occurred during the construction of the railroad. fifteen thousand chinese labourers worked for andrew onderdonk, the largest railroad contractor, between may 1880 and july 1885 ( chan, 1983 : 63 ) . in 1882 alone, onderdonk contracted with lian chan inc. for two thousand workers from hong kong (wickberg et al, 1982: 21). several authors have commented on the fact that the presence of chinese labour dampened wages because of their lower subsistence level compared to whites ( berton, 1971 ; chan, 1983 and fang, 1931). thus, chinese migrant labour helped to promote the interests of the empire by being a source of cheap labour, acting as a damper on the wages of white workers, especially with respect to keeping the cost of railway construction down. the low cost of chinese labour relative to white labour 57 resulted in antagonisms between these class fractions. the practices of white employers and that of the canadian state contributed to conditions in the labour market which formed the material foundation for racial antagonisms. the labour market, split along racial lines, was the structure in which this antagonism took place. 9 at the political level, one way in which the state reproduced this labour market was by politically marginalizing the chinese. first, chinese and asians in general were accorded the official status of 'non-settler' by the canadian government ( creese , 1 984 : 15 ) . second, in a series of amendments to the voter's act, the british columbian legislature disenfranchised the chinese at the provincial and municipal level (wickberg et al., 1982:83). by 1920, the chinese were formally disenfranchised at all levels of government (119). the stage was set for labour to make anti-orientalism an issue in their political conflict with capital. organized labour and racism by the middle of the nineteenth century, the economic structure of canada began to shift gradually from a staple economy to a nascent industrial economy: "mercantile capital and an unmistakable agrarian dominance gave way to a more pervasive industrial capitalism" ( palmer , 1983 : 60 ) . one particular consequence of the gradual shift from a staple to an industrial economy was the rise of organized labour and an increase in class conflict. "the 1880s was a decade of unprecedented working 58 class militancy and cultural cohesion" (99). one of the largest and most influential labour organizations was the knights of labor. in the west, workers' associations made ant l-or lental ism a vital plank in their policy platforms. for example, r.d. pitt, master workman for the vancouver chapter of the knights of labor, ran on an anti-chinese platform and later formed the anti-chinese league. (wickberg et al . , 1982 : 62 ) . another anti-chinese organization, the working man's protective association ( wpa ) , was formed in victoria under noah shakespeare, an avowed racist (48). the explicitly racist ideology of the wpa can be seen in its declarations of purpose, which were: the mutual protection of the working class in b.c. against the great influx of chinese; to use all legitimate means for the suppression of their immigration; to assist each other in the obtaining of employment; and to devise means for the amelioration of the condition of the working class of this province in general ( 48 ) . at the national level, much of the success of the trades and labor congress of canada between 1880-1900 can be attributed to its anti-oriental policy which tended to unify otherwise dissenting groups. ireland (1960) suggests that the trades and labor congress incorporated the chinese exclusionary policy in their platform of principles largely as an expedient measure to secure continued support from british columbian representatives. it would be a mistake to reduce labour's racist attitudes to differences in wages. implicit in a racist ideology is that one race possesses a moral and cultural superiority over all otner races. this 'moral imperative' is used as a rationale for the 59 domination of one racial group over another. therefore, labour representatives expressed negative attitudes towards chinese in moral and cultural terms when calling for their exclusion. this can be seen in the submission of the nanaimo trades association to the royal commission on chinese immigration, vice, including prostitution and gambling, is abundant in those (chinese) quarters .... they are a non-assimilat ing race. their vices are most disgusting. they turn their sick out to die in the streets and their lepers to fill our prisons .... our children oust seek employment in other countries to make room for a race of cuckoos ... in fact, the results of our investigation brings us to the conclusion that the chinese are a disgrace to a civilised community, and we beg that steps may be taken to stop the influx of chinese to our shores ( 54 ) . the wpa ' s declaration of purpose clearly shows that the 'working class' was defined along racial terms, marked by the exclusion of chinese labour. chinese labourers were in effect seen as 'non-workers', and possibly sub-human, if we consider seriously the submission of the nanaimo trades association. racist attitudes, therefore, informed the political strategies of the labour movement. instead of seeking to include the chinese in the organized labour structures, the canadian labour movement sought to exclude them from canada. this, of course, reinforced the position of the chinese in the labour market. in the long run this strategy was detrimental to the working class as a whole . racism was appropriated by certain class fractions to further their own self-interests. the specific issue was anti-chinese legislation. the political power of labour was 60 growing and the calls for exclusionary legislation could not go unheeded. cheap migrant labour was needed for the completion of the railway, but the availability of a cheap labour supply was not in the interests of the white working class. the positions of capitalists and the working class with respect to anti-chinese legislation varied according to their class interests. capitalists could be seen as favouring forms of anti-chinese legislation which created the political conditions that favoured the continued exploitation of chinese labour. capitalists then would favour legislation politically marginalizing the chinese, but not necessarily excluding them from canada. the working class, on the other hand, would favour legislation that would terminate the use of the chinese as a source of cheap labour. given the racist attitudes of the working class, this meant calls for the exclusion of chinese workers from canada. these issues will be dealt with in the next section. a short review of anti-chinese legislation in canada the evolution of anti-chinese legislation from political marg inalizat ion to de facto exclusion can be explained in terms of class conflict at the political level. more specifically, the change in anti-chinese legislation can be attributed to the growing political power of organized labour. a review of anti-chinese legislation will show, however, that the political pressure from labour for exclusionary chinese legislation was resisted until the completion of the cpr. the string of exclusionary anti-chinese legislation since 61 1885 was the culmination of anti-chinese sentiment evident since the 1860s. 10 the gold rush period marked a sudden surge of economic prosperity for victoria which was transformed fron 'a quiet english village' into a busy commercial centre 'with several thousand residents'" (13). while racism did not find expression in legislation at the provincial or federal level, racist sentiments against the chinese were already evident in 1858. amor de cosmos, editor of the colonist and prominent vancouver island businessman, wrote that the chinese were: inferior to europeans and americans in ability, hostile to us in race language and habits and may remain among us a pariah race . . . when the time arrives that we can dispose of them, we will heartily second a check to their immigration (43). the first attempt at monitoring chinese immigration to the west coast came as early as 1860 when the house of assembly colony of vancouver island proposed a poll tax of $10 to be levied on each chinese (42). the tax was opposed by amor de cosmos who, despite his racism, believed that chinese labour was profitable for the colony (43). this is a prime example of 'situational' racism since he would later be at the fore of anti -oriental agitation. by 1864, the gold boom began to level off and antagonisms between white and chinese labour in the cariboo began to grow (44). it was not surprising that the most strident voices for anti-chinese legislation came from labour representatives. for example, noah shakespeare, leader of the racist working man's protective association and a victoria city councillor, was responsible for legislation banning the chinese from city works u8) the first attempt at banning the chinese from railway construction came five years before the government of canada called tenders for railway construction. john robson (a pro-labour member from nanaimo ) presented a resolution in the provincial legislature prohibiting the hiring of any chinese on any public works in the province, effectively banning the chinese from the proposed railway construction (46). this motion was defeated on the grounds that it interfered with free enterprise (46). when the government of canada called tenders for railway construction in 1877, the governor of british columbia petitioned j. a. macdonald to insert in all contracts a clause prohibiting the employment of chinese workers (20). this appeal was rejected by the macdonald government (20). amor de cosmos presented a petition to the government of canada calling for the exclusion of chinese from railway construction as well as other proposals designed to exclude chinese immigration to canada ( -18 ) . these proposals were rejected although the petition did prod the macdonald government to create a select committee, chaired by amor the cosmos, to examine the 'oriental question' (49). up to the time of the select committee it seems that the form of racist legislation was meant to politically marginalize the chinese. all attempts at outright exclusion were rebuffed by the canadian government. further evidence of this can be seen in the response of the macdonald government to the select committee report. while the 63 recommendat ions of the committee are not known, the fact that it was chaired by one of british columbia's leading racists and that oniy two witnesses spoke favourably of the chinese, (49) is a good indication of what the recommendations must have been. it would appear that no official policies came from the committee's recommendations. the government of the day seems to have subordinated calls for chinese exclusion to the completion of the railway. as macdonald bluntly told members of parliament from british columbia, if they wanted the railway built they would have to accept chinese labour (49). the macdonald government's actions in 1884 are also significant. in 1884, the provincial parliament of british columbia proposed an act which would levy a head tax on all chinese in british columbia and forbid them from owning crown lands (56). the government of canada disallowed the bill. 11 however, macdonald was forced to commit himself to an investigation of chinese immigration restrictions and measures to regulate chinese migration. the result was the royal commission of 1884 (55). in february of 1885, the provincial act of 1884 was reenacted as a protest to the perceived ineffectual solutions to chinese immigration proposed by the commission of 1884 (56). this was a direct threat to the completion of the railway. as onderdonk wrote to george stephen, president of the cpr: a large number of chinamen will necessarily have to come from oregon and california in the spring to work on your road above kamloops. it would be well for you to see that this act is disallowed immediately (see ward, 1978:39) . 64 macdonald disallowed the act for the second time (39j. the royal commission that macdonald had been forced to create to investigate chinese immigration gave full expression to racism in british columbia. unfair competition between chinese and white workers was a major issue. other issues were raised concerning the shortcomings of chinese culture, including: the hazard they posed to the health of the white community (chinese were unclean and spread disease); and their morality (gamblers and opium smokers (39). the recommendations of the commissioners are especially enlightening because they represent the class-selective nature of official racism against the chinese. mr. justice gray readily admitted that the chinese were a 'boon to the economy'. the principle which should govern future legislation was a policy of "judicious selection" to make sure that "the great interests and enterprises not be harmed" (40). it is more than apparent that justice gray had the interests of the large capitalists at heart. unlike in 1879, when the government of canada ignored the findings of the select committee, the government acted swiftly on the commission's recommendations. this may have been due, in part, to the fact that the railway was nearing completion. according to chan (1984) the railway was completed in july 29,1885. the new chinese immigration act gained royal assent on july 20, 1885 (see wickberg et al . . 1982). it is true that part of the explanation for the emergence of exclusionary legislation can be a attributed to the growing 65 political power of labour. this can be seen in the evolution of anti-chinese legislation in the late nineteenth century from those measures to politically marginalize the chinese, to those which exclude them from immigrating to canada. creese (1984) has noted that the denial of political franchise and the progressively more stringent restrictions and taxes on asian immigration occurred through pressure by the working class and small business rather than at the 'behest' of the capitalists in british columbia (although it may have been in their long term sel finterests ) . calls for the exclusion and di senf ranchisement of the chinese were made by labour. one can make the argument that the actual point at which the demands of labour were expressed in the state occurred at the behest of capital. witness how macdonald studiously ignored petitions for measures to exclude chinese labour from railway construction, or for measures to exclude chinese immigration before the end of railway construction was in sight, or in his twice-ordered disallowance of british columbia's attempts at exclusionist legislation -given, it seems, at the bidding of the president of the cpr. thus, it seems that the particular expression of racism in the canadian state, here in the form of anti-chinese legislation -from political marginal ization to de facto exclusion -was subordinated to the needs of capital accumulation and reflected the power of the working class in relation to capital within the state at that particular historical moment. 66 conclusions we have seen in the above discussion that race played an important part in the structuring of class relations along racial lines in british columbia. at the level of the world system, race was made salient as a structuring element of class relations in british columbia through the imperial expansionism of the european powers. the british state played a crucial role in creating the conditions which indirectly contributed to the significance of race in british columbia by creating conditions at the level of the world system which favoured labour migration from china. the concrete actions of the british state in creating these conditions was determined by the play of class forces in china. class conflict in china proper was structured along racial lines with exploited chinese labour aligned against the white plantation owners and the foreign trading house merchants . within the canadian context, race was made a salient feature of class relations in three ways: first, through the practices of white employers who used chinese as a source of cheap labour and as strike-breakers; secondly, through the appropriation of a racist ideology by the canadian white working class and the canadian merchant capitalist class to further their own material self-interests; and thirdly, through the practices of the canadian state which, firstly, politically marginalized the chinese and then proceeded to exclude them from canada. as in the british imperial state, the concrete activities of 67 the state were conditioned by class conflict. specifically, expressions of racism in the state, in the form of anti-chinese legislation, were conditioned by the play of class forces at the political le\el. one could further speculate that the relatively weak position of the white working class vis a vis the capitalist class could have been improved if chinese labour were incorporated into existing labour organizations. again, however, we see the influence of a racist ideology on the balance of class forces . notes 1. chinese contract labour in canada seems to have been principally organized through the affiliates of the larger chinese merchant houses operating in the united states. the recruitment of chinese from the united states for the railway was undertaken by a chinese company, the lian chang company, organized by a chinese businessman from san francisco, (see wickberg et al . . 1982 : 21 ) other affiliates of chinese merchant houses in the united states supplying chinese labour to british columbia include the hop kee and co. of san francisco which arranged with the shipping company allan lowe and co. for passage to victoria on the caribbean for 300 chinese (13). evidence seems to indicate, however, that the dominant company dealing in chinese labour recruitment to the railway was non-chinese, stahlschmidt & ward. this company received five thousand of the eight thousand chinese who landed in victoria during 1882 (21). 2. the common designation for the recruitment of migrant chinese was the 'buying and selling of pigs'. the compounds in front of the foreign trading houses where migrant chinese waited to be shipped out were called 'pig-pens' ( campbell , 1 923 : 97 ) . this term accurately reflects the living conditions within these compounds . 3. for example while calling for the end to the abuses of the coolie trade, the british state introduced legislation narrowing the permissible minimum space allowed for asian and black workers on ships. minimum allowable space on ships was reduced from 15 to 12 feet for 'natives of asia or africa' ( campbell , 1 923 : 1 08 ) . 68 4. in both instances the riots centered around the kidnapping of chinese by crimps for the foreign merchant houses (hongs) which dealt in the 'coolie' trade. the amoy riot was sparked by the actions of mr. syrae of syme, muir 4 co., a foreign 'hong' with a notorious reputation for abusive 'coolie' recruitment practices. mr. muir attempted to forcibly 'liberate' one of his 'crimps' (who was charged with kidnapping) from the chinese authorities (ching-hwa, 1985:75). the ensuing riot left twelve killed and sixteen wounded (campbell, 1923: 101 ) . the shanghai riots were precipitated by the friends and relatives of kidnapped chinese who attacked foreign sailors of 'coolie 'bearing ships. the mob attacked several people including the inspector general of the chinese maritime customs and a british doctor (ching-hwa, 1923 : 81 ) . 5. other foreign powers were quick to follow the british lead. all foreign consuls gave their support to the canton system. in december 1859, the french emigration agent formally applied and received permission from the governor-general of quandong to establish an emigration house under the canton system. the spanish also established emigration houses in canton. the american consul required all american ships to conform to the regulations governing emigration under contract, pending receipt of further instructions from the secretary of state (campbell ,1923:12 6127). enforcement of a contract labour system applicable to all foreign powers proved to be a problem in the years following the canton system. under the canton system no labour recruitment was allowed outside of licensed emigration houses in the treatyports. in reality, a substantial amount of the trade was still conducted outside of the emigration houses. subsequent attempts at the replacement of the coolie trade with a contract labour system, such as the peking regulations of 1866, proved to have limited success. the abuses of the coolie trade persisted until 1874 when portugal, the last of the foreign powers which still sanctioned the trade, abolished it in macao (chinghwang, 1985 : 103) . 6.burawoy (1976) has made a similar argument in his analysis of south african and mexican migrant workers. the relative low cost of migrant labour is due to the fact that the reproduction costs of the worker are borne by the migrant's family at the periphery. 7. creese (1984) applies the split labou market model to describe the labour market structure in british columbia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. the essence of the split labour according to bonachich is that the dynamic of capitalism attempts to drive down the price of labour, and an 69 ethnically split labour market results from the differential resources available to dearer and cheaper workers in tneir attempt to improve wages and working conditions (see in creese, 1984 : 6 ) . 8.naylor (1972) has pointed to the fact that the national policy of the macdonald government i of which the construction of the cpr was only an aspect; was a construct of the merchant class to benefit its material interests by suppressing the growth of other class fractions of the bourgeoisie i.e. the petite bourgeoisie and the 'nascent' industrial class. 9. the relative cheapness of chinese labour, aside from the existence of a split labour market, can also be attributed to the form of labour recruitment used by the railroad contractors. chinese labour was not contracted individually, but in work gangs. probably*, an agent of the contracting company was resident in the camp. each gang had a non-chinese foreman or 'herder' who was responsible to the construction company (wickberg et al. . 1983 : 22 ) according to muszynski, (1986) the chinese labourers were forced into a continuing dependence on the contractor. the cycle of continuing indebtedness prevented the workers from going back to china. thus the chinese custom of indebtedness was used as an instrument to provide for a pool of cheap labour, this is an instance of a precapitalist relation of production being used within a capitalist mode of production . ( 93 ) 10. the first piece of anti-chinese legislation meant to exclude chinese immigrants to canada was passed in 1885 in the form of a $50 head tax levied on every chinese entering canada. the special tax was raised to s10q in 1900 and $500 in 1903. anti-chinese sentiment reached a climax in 1923 when the parliament of canada passed the chinese immigration act which basically excluded all chinese from entering canada. between 1925 and 1947, the year that the chinese immigration act was repealed, chinese immigration to canada was virtually stopped (li, 1979:323). 11. the chinese in british columbia did not depend on the charity of the federal government to ensure that their rights were protected. in 1878, the government of british columbia attempted to pass what amounted to a head tax on all chinese (wickberg et al . 1982:48). opposition was immediate and culminated in a general strike by the chinese community (lasting five days) where stores closed, domestic servants stayed away from homes, chinese workers refused to report to hotels and boot factories. the governor general of canada disallowed the law on october 28, 1879 (49) . 70 references barat -brown , 1974 the economics of imperialism . middlesex, england: penguin book ltd. berton, pierre 1971 the last spike . montreal: mcclelland and stewart ltd. bonacich, edna and lucie cheng 1 984 labour immigration under capitalism: asian workers in the united states . berkeley: university of california press . burawoy, micheal 1981 "the functions and reproduction of migrant labor: comparative material from southern africa and the united states", american journal of sociology : 1050-1087. cambell, persia 1923 chinese coolie emigration . new york: negro universities press. carnoy , martin 1984 the state and political theory . princeton: princeton university press chan, anthony 1983 gold mountain . vancouver: new star books creese, gillian 1984 "immigration policies and the creation of an ethnically segmented work force in british columbia 1880-1923", alternate routes . vol 7, pp. 1-34. friedeman, edward 1980 "maoist conceptulaizat ions of the capitalist world system" in the process of the world system . terence k. hopkins and immanuel wallerstein (eds. ) pol itical economy of the world system annuals . vol 3, london: sage publications hall , stuart 1980 "race articulations and societies structured dominance", unesco sociological theories race colonisation . paris: unesco hao , yen-p ' ing 1970 the comprador in nineteenth century china . cambridge mass: harvard university press 71 riirscr., joachim 1978 'the state apparatus and social reproduction: elements of a theory of the bourgeoisie state" in j. holloway and s. picciotio (eds. ) state and capital: a marxist debate . usa: london publishers co. ireland, ralph r. 1960 "some effects of oriental immigration on canadian trade lnion ideology", american journal of economics and sociology , vol.19, pp. 217-220. lenin, v.i. 1939 imperialism highest stage of capitalism . isa: international publishers co. lever-tracy, constance 1983 "immigrant workers and postwar capitalism: in reserve or core troops in the front line ", pol itics and society , vol.12, no . 2 , pp. 125-57. li , peter 1979 "a historical approach to ethnic stratification: the case of the chinese in canada" the canadian review of sociology and anthropology . vol.16, no. 3, pp. 3 20332. and b. sing bolaria 1979 "canadian immigration policv and assimilation theory' in john allen ed. economy class and social reality . toronto: buttersworth mcenvoy , f.j. 1982 "a symbol of racial discrimination: the chinese immigration act and canada's relations with china, 1942-1947", canadian ethnic studies . vol. xiv no. 3 muszynski , alicja 1986 "class formation and class consciousness: the making of shoreworkers in the bc fishing industry", studies in political economy 20 summer. nay lor, r.t. 1972 "the rise and fall of the third commercial empire of the st. lawrence", in g.teeple, capitalism and the national question in canada , pp. 2-36. 72 palmer, bryan 198 3 working class experience: the rise and reconst 1 tut ion of canadian labour: 1800-1980 . toronto: butterworth and co. ltd. pentland, h.c. 1981 labour and capital in canada 1650-1860 . toronto: james lorimer and co. shaw, p. 19 7 5 migration theory and fact: a review and bibliography of current literature . philadelphia: regional research i nst l tute yen, ching-wang 1985 coolies and mandarins . singapore: university of singapore press. 73 nationalism and class: a case application henri lustiger-thaler this paper examines the relationship between class and nationalism within quebec. an effort has been made to reconstruct the historical narrative through reference to suggestive and complex factors of political discourse. in the quebec conjuncture, the crossroads of these varied forms of discourse have had a profound effect upon the disorganization of working class ascendency in the political sphere. this paper sheds light upon the nature of the present vacuum at the center of the mainstream nationalist crisis. dans cette etude, nous nous penchons sur le rapport qui existe au quebec, entre les phenomenes de classe et de nationalisme . ce faisant, nous nous sommes ef forces de reconstruire la trame historique, a la lumiere des elements signif icatif s et complexes du discours politique. dans le contexte quebecois, la rencontre de ces differentes formes du discours a contribue de facon marquante a la disorganisation deja amorcee de 1' influence de la classe ouvriere sur la vie politique. dans cette etude, nous tentons egalement de faire la lumiere sur la nature du vide presentement au coeur de la crise du courant nationaliste. introduction the relationship between class and nationalism in quebec has often been posed within the context of assigning broad or at times narrow definitions to ethnicity as the primary analytic format. similarly, the class-oriented structuralist analyses by marxists and non-marxists alike have often been reduced to the now classic framework of a rising regional and/or petite bourgeoisie as the sole gatekeepers of the new politico-territorial consciousness. this paper will argue, on the contrary, that nationalism within relatively homogeneous societies is expressed as well as appropriated by various class interests under the pervasiveness of a complex hegemony. whilst the expression of this hegemonic process is deeply rooted in cultural, social and economic factors, its manifestation becomes most apparent in the realm of political discourse and "popular' organization. in this regard, i will attempt to explain the contradictions which exist between the organized sector of the quebec working class and the contemporary nationalist format. in the process, i will be underlining the problematic and protean nature of these varied ideological positions. the case studies which will be reviewed for this task are the confederation des syndicats nationaux (csn) and the federation des travailleurs du quebec (ftq). both of these union centrals have often been uncritically identified with the nationalist persona since the early 1960s. i shall show that this relationship is best understood within the contemporary complex of class alliances. in so doing, this paper, in a broader sense, equally addresses the effects which the contemporary mainstream nationalist discourse has had upon the disorganization of working class ascendancy in the political sphere. 62 theoretical considerations the question of class and nationalism is primarily a problem within marxism itself. in effect, how does one relate nationalism, a political manifestation, and its defining characteristics within the working classes in a paradigm which lacks a comprehensive approach to political organization?^ the association of these two analytic processes, i.e., class and nationalism, have, however, provided an intellectual and pragmatic agenda of some debate. no doubt, this has been due in some part to the instrumentalist perspective often found at the heart of the controversy itself. the essence of the polemic revolves around the inherent and seemingly irreconcilable priority of one historic category and its explanatory features to the detriment of the other. attempts to redress the contradictory nature of these two concepts have generated various interpretations. within marx's own writing the issue of nationalism, though an implicit undercurrent, remains a relatively undeveloped notion. davis (1975:3) attributes this condition to the general absence of a systematic political theory within marx's early and later monographs. without doubt, nationalism as a legitimate area of study has been relegated to a secondary and epiphenomenal status precisely because of the analytic primary accorded to class analysis within the historically specific materialist framework. in this regard, the contradictions arising between these two concepts creates a cancelling effect in the production of analytic terms when, in fact, they are particularly needed. bloom (1941:16) has argued that marx used the concepts of nation and nationhood less than rigorously. in fact, early mention of these designations were fraught with ambiguity. as bloom has shown in his meticulous and seminal study of national concepts within capital , marx often made reference to the nation with considerable licence, using it as a synonym for country, state, and occasionally, the ruling class of a given country. 63 the general thrust of bloom's argument merits some consideration. in his view, marx considered the national question in an indirect manner. therefore, nationalism became an implicit notion within the many monographs. it is in the totality of marx's analyses regarding the problematic of modern and earlier societies that one finds the national perspective. in this light, for marx, a nation as well as a society represented a degree of autonomy and self-consciousness within a particular historical bloc. nations in this sense were often depicted in marx's writing as containing necessary historical background which centered around traditions, questions of unification and so forth. ^ these preconditions were then set against the identifiable structure of class relations. one of the approaches various writers have used to assess marx's thought on the national question, and its expression amongst various classes, has been to decipher his usage of such terms as "the national class and the universal class.' in this instance, bloom posits the horizontal notion of class and the vertical concept of nationalism as fundamental inquiries into the process of class struggle. this dichotomy, he argues, is resolved through marx's use of the concept of "national class' (1941:59). this class, bloom asserts, assumes a leadership role regarding the organization of production and the content of social, political and legal institutions. it is, in a sense, the juncture within marx's work wherein class meets the nation. the "national interest' in this regard is subservient to the interests of the national class, a role traditionally occupied by the bourgeoisie. davis (1967) questions the usefulness of the national class concept, so central to bloom's understanding of marx. for davis, though there are many references in marx's work to the leading class, national class and universal 64 class, caution should be exercised in their explanatory value. he finds within bloom's classic study a notion of common purpose hovering tenuously over the battlefield of contending classes (76). haupt, lowy and weill (1974) have also examined the relationship between class and nationalism in marx's work. these writers have, however, attributed considerably less emphasis to concepts such as the national class in their search for an explanatory correlation. an analysis of national implications in marx's work, they assert, must recognize his emphasis upon the absolute primacy of class formation above any other historic category or process. they argue (33): (a) the nation in this regard is a transitory category that corresponds to the development of capitalism and its peculiarities, (b) there is an absence in marx's work of an explicit theoretical position vis-a-vis nationalism. there is however an implicit assertion in marx's work not to treat the problematic in an autonomous manner, i.e., affording it a theoretical status, (c) the notion of nationalism often developed incidentally is however present in all of marx's work as a condition of historic legacy. for marx, according to haupt et al . , the issue of nationalism, in whatever context, was never a goal in itself, but an instrument within which workers may or may not pursue their own interests. certainly, this was an important element in marx and engels' analysis of german unity in 1848. it was also in this sense that marx supported the unification of italy and germany during the 1860s as revolutionary events even though he acknowledged the immediate benefits accrued by the bourgeoisie. marx's writing on the irish question was another example of how he dealt with the problem. it was within a consideration of the irish question that marx and engels in effect dealt with the notion of the oppressed nation through an understanding of the 65 articulation between national interests and the progression of working class interests. this was, of course, always placed within the larger framework of class struggle outside the exigencies of the particular nation-state. in fact, as marx argued, ireland was without question the key to solving the english question, as england itself was the key to resolving the larger european question. most representative of the modern marxist approach to the question of self-determination is the work of nairn (1981). he equates the growth of nationalism with the political entry of the lower classes into the actual process of history. nationalism receives its social and political thrust from a joint occurrence of external pressure and an internal balance of class forces (41). as nairn would argue, nationalism arises when conscious middle class elites react to the phenomenon of uneven development through the mobilization of cross-class characteristics, myth, etc. the populist element of nationalist or revolutionary nationalist movements receives its momentum at this crossroads in class relations. national self-determination, nairn asserts, whether of the left or the right is never independent of class structure. it has, however, become the mobilizing ideology most effective in portraying the common concerns of a given society and that society's perception of its own internal and external relations. nairn argues in this regard for an amended version of lenin's conception of self-determination. however, whereas lenin's grappling with the problem took place within the historic context of the multinational state, new theorizing, it seems clear from nairn's position, must proceed from the uneven development of modern capitalism. 66 for nairn, the silent intellectual interim between the vibrant 1914 debates of lenin and luxembourg and recent theorizing in the area of class and the nation are linked to various historic weaknesses in marxist studies. principally, this area of concern is one in which marxism has tended to be particularly vague, i.e., the analysis of political structures and the state, particularly the bourgeois democratic state and its accompanying ideology. secondly, in areas where marxism is particularly strong, such as historical development, orthodoxy has prevented new approaches until the recent growth in developmental studies. nairn's contention, in a reformulation of lenin's dictum, postulates that nationalism has been the necessary alliance sought by the middle classes with the working class in the form of a new political complex. this process, he contends, is particular to the current stage of capitalist development in the first as well as the third worlds. hobsbawm has become nairn's most articulate interlocutor regarding the problematic relationship of marxism and nationalism. briefly, in a rebuttal to nairn's thesis, he argues three salient points: first, addressing nairn's assertion of the positive characteristics of nationalism in the global capitalist system, he argues that independent sates are clearly dependent upon a global economy which transforms sovereignty into a modern form of dependence. in effect, as hobsbawm asserts, transnational neo-colonialism favours a maximization of sovereign states to effect a minimization of power under which foreign capital will ultimately have to operate.-' second, he argues that there is a danger that territorial demands would come to be seen as the criterion of a potential nation. hobsbawm's concern here is that this assumption can too easily become a premise for satisfying the various aims of groups. this second observation ties in well with his third consideration which remains the problem of how to organize the co-existence of various 67 ethnic linguistic factors in indivisible areas under the guise of nationalism to the exclusivity of one or the other group. in hobsbawm's view, therefore, nationalism, far from clarifying class relations, at best obscures and prohibits the development of socialism within individual nation-states (1977:7) clearly, the central question asked earlier regarding the relationship of the working classes and nationalism retains a significant level of complexity as well as ambiguity. this has been the case particularly when seen in purely structuralist terms, as by our previous authors, or in a more strategic design, as put forward by hobsbawm. the parameters, therefore, within which the question has been posed are delineated by a towering sense of irreconcilability. the task remains to draw upon a framework which puts the problematic upon a different terrain and suggests, if but in a broad theoretical context, an analysis of levels of articulation between and within social classes while maintaining the essential position of historical materialism. gramsci and nationalism antonio gramsci's conceptualization of the relationship amongst social groups, particularly within the political sphere, offers, at the very least, a point of departure. in this sense, gramsci's understanding of the complex interplay of social relations suggests a method by which to progress from the structure in which classes are constituted at the economic level (i.e., fundamental classes and class fractions) to the political level in which classes and class fractions combine. gramsci's notion of the political allows us to project the issue of nationalism toward the level of superstructure, to give it a complex political stance while maintaining the 68 essential link with structure itself. for gramsci, the relationship of these two levels is, in effect, mediated by the political . ^ pivotal to this form of analysis, which lays a significant emphasis upon political discourse, is the gramscian notion of hegemony. hegemony refers to the dialectic relation of class forces. as hall, lumley and mclennan have asserted (1978:79), the richness of the concept allows an analysis that keeps the levels of the social formation distinct "and yet held in combination." hegemony: an operationalization for gramsci, hegemony (and its numerous ideological components) is tied to the political moment and is achieved "experiencially" through such inclusive notions as transformism and expansiveness. as he contended in the prison notebooks , transformism is indicative of parties of the left and right who merge their interests in the form of common political programs. this aspects of hegemony is synonymous with the notion of passive revolution , wherein class interests become neutralized through political groupings. a transformist hegemony, as gramsci argued, is a process of class absorption wherein the class striving for hegemony has extended its ideological hold ...active elements produced by allied groups and even of those which come from antagonistic groups and seemed irreconcilably hostile (1971:59). the above form of hegemony, and this can be practically read as a type of corporatism, entails a strong dose of political momentum and implies the steady absorption of elites. the dialectic of a transformist hegemony is the expansive hegemony. expansive hegemony results in consensus wherein the interests of the popular 69 classes would be adopted by the hegemonic class and thus give rise to the creation of a genuine "national popular will." these two notions of hegemony as a "lived relation" have, therefore, two components, as mouffe (1979:183) points out: (a) the ability to neutralize class interests ( transformism) , and (b) an articulation of class interests (expansiveness ) which through their full development would ultimately bring to the foreground their inherent contradictions. such an understanding of hegemony would suggest that ideology, through its material base (social class), develops "inter-class subjects which manifest themselves politically." the essence of the problem rests in understanding the development of a given hegemony and the political processes whereby we can pinpoint the adoption of one world view by a social class with apparent differing interests. an application and analysis: quebec the following discussion of class and nationalism in quebec will be divided into three distinct time periods: (a) 1960 to 1965; the period of the quiet revolution characterized by its transformist qualities. (b) 1966 to 1975; a period of sustained state repression indicative of a harsher "transformism', bordering upon integration by coercion. (c) 1976 to 1980; the political ascendancy of the parti quebecois and the referendum on sovereignty-association characterized by the expansive nature of class alliances. each conjuncture is typified by a particular form of nationalism as exemplified by the mainstream (political parties) as well as marginal 'nationalist political groups) political current. it is impossible within the confines of this paper to elaborate upon the exact nature of these 70 periodic mainstream nationalise expressions. i have done this in some detail elsewhere ( 1984 :28-47 ) . it i_s however possible to appraise the positions of the two union centrals under consideration during these same periods and thereby establish their divergence or capitulation to the predominant political expression. these two centrals have played a unique role in the intellectual formation and dissemination of ideas within the quebec working class. this becomes particularly important given the absence of a legitimate left-oriented political party within the province. 1960-1965: the transformist project of the modernizing state the confederation des syndicats nationaux (csn) entered the decade of the sixties having surmounted a vast array of structural changes. in may 1961, jean marchand was elected president of the organization, succeeding roger mathieu. the marchand period, which lasted until 1965, was characterized externally by the transformative project of the lesage liberals and internally by a particular genre of trade-union reformism. a review of minutes of annual congresses through the marchand period provides a perspective on these important years. the fortieth congress of the csn in 1962 occurred within a span of great expansion for the central. specifically, massive reform of the educational system and the development of the social service sector by the state created a significant reservoir for syndical growth. as shown in table 1, the public service sector representation within the csn increased roughly 100% in a six year period. similarly, industrial and skilled workers decreased in relative terms. 71 table 1 : composition of membership of the csn by sector of activity by percentage 1960-1981 1960 1966 1973 1981 public service sector 27 52 67 56 industrial and skilled workers 73 48 33 44 source: rouillard, histoire de la csn 1921-1981 surrounding these internal structural changes were, however, the political realities operating in the larger social formation. major themes throughout the union literature during this period were focused upon attempts by the csn to clarify its role in relation to the state in both its provincial and federal form . this type of dialogue took place during a period of structural symbiosis and a growing ideological affinity of the union central within the modernization projects of the lesage liberals. the groundwork for this political response was laid at the 1962 convention which dealt specifically with various strategies for political action in view of the federal and provincial state structures. marchand addressed himself at some length to the 1959 constitution of the csn concerning the substance of its political outlook. the following is a condensed version of positions taken during the 1959 convention (csn, 1962:48-49) : (a) to reaffirm the csn's independence toward political parties; (b) to pledge complete freedom of affiliated organizations regarding political action as long as it caused no prejudice to the general interest of the movement and (c) to restrict political interventions on the part of the president or the secretary general during electoral campaigns. marchand sought to change various precepts of the 1959 charter. primarily, the political independence of the csn would remain intact, i.e., 72 trade unions and policies would remain disjointed realities lest political opinions weaken and divide the union. however, the president or the secretary general would have the power to make political interventions during election campaigns. marchand went further and suggested that the confederated board of the csn should, under certain circumstances, recommend support for a party of its choosing. this reassessment must be seen within the support of affiliated locals for the new democratic party, and the more immediate provincial political stage in which the lesage liberals were dominant. in effect, marchand' s amendments were intended to address the central's lukewarm support of the ndp, the proportionally greater support of the ndp within the locals and the central's increasing reformist pact with the provincial state. the forty-first congress which took place in 1964 resembled the 1962 session in many respects. the major theme was not, however, the evident strains of political alignments which were at the apex of various positions taken during the previous congress. the 1964 session returned to a more traditional discussion of economic development of the province and the pressing problem of intersyndical relations, particularly given the intense raiding practices between the csn and the federation des travailleurs du quebec (ftq). the national question for the csn represented a contradiction in terms of its own political orientation. the two congresses of 1962 and 1964 suggested a measure of autonomy from the federal state, which was not dissimilar from the left-oriented expression within the lesage liberals spearheaded by the levesque faction. the csn's regular yearly memorandum submittted to the federal cabinet was, however, indicative of its own self-perception as a pan-canadian central , concerned with such issues as the nationalization of 73 bell canada, the canadianization of the economy and the opening of relations between canada and the international labour organization (ilo). in the 1964 memorandum, federal/provincial relations were pervasive. the csn discourse offered various approaches toward powershar ing, with greater revenue generating power for the province. also, the immediate need for federal/provincial conferences was stressed. the demands which the csn submitted to the federal cabinet paralleled quite closely the general political debate between the province and ottawa. the larger context within which these appeals were being made was that of a greater alliance between the central's actions and the interests of the provincial form of the state. it is little wonder that in its 1964 memorandum to the cabinet the csn would plunge more deeply into the current centralization/decentralization debate. in a sense, the vicarious quality of the previous memoranda in which the central expressed the concerns of larger regions for greater canadian independence had come to an abrupt halt. le borgne (1976:12) argued that, given the prevailing circumstances of the period, it was inevitable that the militants within the csn as well as the progressive sector of the provincial liberals would share a common ideological framework. this commonality was fixed, amongst other factors, with the emergence of new class fractions in the sphere of unproductive labour which was intent upon pushing forward the reforms of the quiet revolution. perhaps most indicative of this period, for the csn, was a firmly held perception of the state as being in the forefront of the grand notion of common purpose being actively pursued by the lesage liberals. the ftq, in contradistinction to the csn, entered the period of the sixties more inclined toward structural affiliation with a workers' party. certainly this was due in large part to the ftq link with the canadian labour 74 congress, which had already committed itself to the ndp platform. in his introduction to the 1960 convention, the president of the central, roger provost, outlined the ftq perspective toward traditional provincial parties: today we have another new government which has made us new promises and which apparently contains some loyal friends of the working class. we will not change our political outlook however which is non-support for either of the two parties. we must maintain our political orientation all the more because the foremost problem of the hour (which will likely be the major problem of the years to come) is unemployment. there exists not one single example of a political party with a traditional philosophy which has taken effective measures to solve the problem except in times of war. this ideology, or lack of ideology, and the interests they represent mean that the old parties invariably stop in the threshold of real reforms and full employment (ftq, 1960 :4) . perhaps not surprisingly however, on an ideological level (as with the csn) a comparative analysis of various declarations adopted by the ftq in 1959 and the liberal program of 1960 shows little disagreement as to the agenda of proposed reforms. the difference between the ftq and the csn was, however, nonetheless evident above the prerequisites of the modernizing state which they both acknowledged to varying degrees. the main difference was contained in the differing notions of reform held by either central. in the case of the ftq there was a sense of reform which was immersed in a tradition (through structural links with the canadian labour congress as well as the ndp) of addressing the federal form of the state. the csn was, on the other hand, quebec-oriented in its relation with the provincial form of the state, and, to a greater extent, the immediate provincial social formation. the ftq was as well a recipient of two particular types of political mobilization as expressed by its predecessors, the federation provinciale des travailleurs du quebec (fptq) and the federation des unions industrielles du quebec (fuiq). 5 in this regard, the fptq had a "bread and butter 75 orientation" and favoured structural links with the ccf/ndp political apparatus. the fuiq advocated direct workers' action and was often behind the organizational attempts to create separate working class parties within the province. ^ the ideological gulf between these two factions was no doubt considerable at the time of the merger. the newly formed ftq, over and above these traditions, found itself immediately ensnarled by the nature of the working class struggles which were increasingly being enacted upon the provincial stage. this situation, in purely political terms, was further complicated by the active nurturing of the ftq's shaky alliance with the ndp by the provincial liberals who utilized the pact to justify excluding the ftq from an organizational slice of the growing public and para-public pie. the conditions facing the ftq were therefore: (a) the growth of the quebec state and the concomitant isolation of the ftq from the political arena, while participating in the reformist practices of the state and (b) the inability of the ftq to institute a viable arm of the ndp within the province to represent the political form they so clearly sought. both of these aspects were related to the new historic emergence of the national question. the isolation of the ftq should in this sense be appraised equally through the growing importance of the csn. the csn incidentally faced none of the two above conditions as acutely as did the ftq. roback (1973) has argued similarly that, given the decline of efficiency by the international unions (as represented by the ftq) and confronted with the more effective structure of the csn, the ftq was less adept in maintaining a collective front in its various struggles with the state. ' 76 the quiet revolution: a summary aside from representing a period of considerable growth in the composition of the working classes within quebec, 1960 to 1965 was an equally important time in the development of a modernizing petite bourgeoisie. this juncture is best characterized by its reformist participation and appropriation of class interests through the exigencies of the modernizing state. to a certain extent, these factors provided the background for the articulation of a type of working class nationalism immersed in a transformist pact with the state. nationalism for the working classes of 1960 to 1965 was in this sense primarily, but not solely, of a structural design given the conditions of a changing class structure and modernization of state apparatuses. in the case of the ftq, this was translated into a process of integration of its class interests with a more defined territorial perspective. accordingly, the format of nationalism in the ftq during this period was removed to some degree from the cultural claims of the quiet revolution. 8 this was less the case in the csn which was well implicated as a spokesperson for the working classes. its structural problem resided, however, in the absence of a defined political approach particularly given marchand's earlier guidelines. it was precisely these types of conditions, in both centrals, which would intertwine the political nature of working class interests in the then emerging petit bourgeois political and social agenda. 1966 to 1976: the growth of the repressive state while the early sixties was a period in which working class organizations were adjusting to their own structural incapacities, 1966 to 1976 presented a more complex configuration. the conclusion of the quiet revolution found the 77 syndical movement within quebec in a particularly fragile position. the dynamism of the period created the conditions for union participation in a series of state mechanisms such as the soci6te gsnerale de financement (sgf), the caisse de depots et de placement, and l'office de planification. cracks in the social momentum were, however, beginning to appear. this was evident in the absence of cohesion amongst the new factions in power. technocratic attempts to further the gains of nationalist ideologies conflicted with a neo-capitalist faction which was content with the structural changes already achieved. the program of the technocratic faction was finding political expression in the left of the liberal party and, eventually, in the mouvement souverainete association. the developments influencing the csn and the ftq during this juncture can be concretely typified by (a) a substantial change in the composition of union membership given the public sector expansion; (b) the defeat of the liberal regime and (c) the increasing conflict between the centrals and the state, which had already begun in the final year of the lesage mandate. the last point is particularly pertinent, given the acquiescence of the two centrals toward state decisions throughout the early sixties. mascotto and soucy argue that the prevailing interests and forms of nationalism reminiscent of the social bloc identified with the quiet revolution had reached the frontiers of its own capacity for change (1979:107). this capacity entailed the contextual framework of reformism which, for the centrals could no longer maintain the types of policies they were increasingly advocating. mascotto and soucy refer to some of these stillborn policies as a substantially watered-down hospital insurance plan, slow progression in educational reform and unsatisfactory reforms to the labour code. this last point elicited a strong reaction from the syndical movement which resulted in a march upon the quebec legislative assembly. 78 these failures of the quiet revolution were certainly at the base of disenchantment with the liberal regime. however, as mascotto and soucy point out, instead of retreating to the classic posture of working class organizations (i.e. a greater inward emphasis upon syndical organization during periods of crisis), the two centrals utilized the social dynamic of the period to develop a radical view of social forces in the larger society. certainly, given the nature of discourse during the period, this seems to have been the case. in one sense, the radicalization of the two centrals from the mid-sixties could be seen within the context of an absence of any other form of political organization firmly entrenched in the popular masses. as a consequence of this situation, the centrals became, by necessity, the sole polarized formation for working class grievances. these circumstances were not only operative for the then current plethora of social questions (given the trauma of economic and compositional changes with the working classes), but the centrals also took upon themselves another function. this role was to act as a repository for various class interests on the national question while attempting to clarify its own voice. in 1966, the unionized working class in quebec was composed of 540,000 persons, 35% of the active labour force. of this number, 35,000 belonged to the centrale de l'enseignement du quebec (ceq), 150,000 adhered to the ftq (out of 350,000 members of the international unions) and 200,000 belonged to the csn. table 2 shows this distribution over a 17 year period: table 2: union affiliation of working class in quebec over a seventeen year period 1960 1966 1976 1977 ceq 28,000 55,000 70,000 80,000 csn 94,000 200,000 245,000 200,000 ftq 100,000 150,000 230,000 260,000 source: document de travail, centre de formation populaire 79 the political ascendancy of daniel johnson's union nationale in 1966 was marked by a changed relationship between the centrals and the state. during the lesage regime, the fruits of neo-gomperism blossomed from legislation favourable to the then perceived interests of working classes. the various projets de lois were seen by virtue of successful, however intense, lobbying efforts as geared toward the interests of the collectivity. this was uniformly the case, as both centrals were active participants in state reform regardless of the level of recalcitrant rhetoric, particularly on the part of the ftq. during the johnson regime, we begin to see a division wherein the state uses its ideological appratuses to distinguish the public interest from those of the centrals. johnson saw the role of the state in more coercive terms than his predecessor, and certainly this is borne out by the regressive labour legislation which he helped to enact. the johnson and bertrand regimes (1966-1970) were, on the whole, less entrenched in the particular composition of social forces which typified the lesage period. the union nationale represented a rear—guard reaction to the changes which had occurred during the quiet revolution, particularly the acquisition of greater powers from the federal state. it should be stressed, however, that the un did follow through on various projects of the lesage liberals, particularly educational reform. in fact, once in power, the un became a strong advocate of provincial autonomy. the lesser reliance which the johnson/bertrand regimes initially placed upon state intervention in the economy is evident from a comparison of expenditures with the previous lesage government. latouche's inquiry (1976:167) into the area of expenditure during these periods has yielded some interesting results. he found that 80 from 1960 total expenditure by the quebec government rose steadily, reaching a significant increase of 29% in 1965 over the year before (in constant dollars). during the first year of the johnson government, expenditures rose by only 9.6%. there was an elevation of 13.7% in 1967. each following year, expenditure rose less than 10%. in 1970, expenditures decreased by 0.3% in constant dollars. the above figures can be used to explain the political and social prerequisites of class forces represented by the un. these were regional interests which were less tied to the expanding technocracy of the state. however, given the new structural composition of the centrals (particularly of the csn, 50% of whose members were in the public and para-public sector) it was clear that the centrals and the state were on a collision course. there were, of course, other relevant factors for this situation. the 42nd congress of the csn in 1966 was indicative of the growing militancy of the central vis-a-vis the state. it was the first congress chaired by the new president, marcel pepin. pepin expressed clearly the disappointments of the previous years for the working classes in quebec. these observations were put forward mostly in terms of the full political weight of quebec in provincial matters to counteract the imbalance in economic development. the imbalance to which pepin was referring was most evident in the levels of unemployment throughout the province. these levels remained consistently higher than the national average. the moral report of 1966, a society built for man , addressed various issues. to a great extent, the monograph called for a democratization of the workplace as well as a rationalization of the economy. these issues were not very different from the views expressed in previous presidential reports. this, however, was the period during which the csn had just completed its 81 first round of negotiations with the state for salary policies in the public sector. the effects of these negotiations were evident in the report. pepin left little doubt as to the new perspective of the central toward the state: conrme employeur le gouvernement provinciale ou ses agences se sont revelss parfois au moins aussi durs que l'entreprise privge.. les difficultes que nous avons rencontrses a 1' hydro par exemple, sont de ce nombre. nous comprenons mal que l'etat puisse copier les mgthodes les plus mauvaises des entreprises priv§es ou plutfit nous croyons le comprendre trop bien; il nous est apparu assez clalrement au cours de plusieurs de nos n&gociations avec l'etat oil avec ses agences a la regie des alcools, par exemple oil a l'hydro, que ces nsgociations se d§roulaient sous l'oeil vigilant des grands inte're'ts privss et que ceux-ci n'entendaient pas voir le gouvernement adopter a l'egard de la main-d'oeuvre plus sociales que celles dont eux-memes etaient disposes a faire preuve envers leurs propre employes (csn, 1966:16). there remained, however, a contradiction regarding the outlook of the csn toward the state, one which would continue for years. this contradiction rested upon the recognition that the state, as a vigilant employer, was no more or less favourably disposed to the working classes than the private sector, and the state as ...that which must intervene and not leave economic domain to big capitalism. it (the state) must reassert its preeminence.' within the csn, the image of the state acquired two faces, a perception shared by a rising petite bourgeoisie attempting to convince the regional bourgeoisie of the validity of its political project. this duality consisted of: (a) a dynamic structure whose interventionist quality had been muted and (b) a structure favourably annexed to the interests of big capital. the view of the state as a dynamic structure was in keeping with the developing hegemony of nationalist ideological elements within the general sphere of class formations. struggles to revive the dynamism of state intervention in the economy and to remold the dialogue between labour and the state were at the base of this perception by the central. often, the struggles of labour 82 and the concerns of the new petit bourgeois acquired very concrete forms. this certainly was the case in the now famous cbc strike to affiliate with the csn, which the canada labour relations board refused to accredit. the state's favourable disposition to big capital again coincided with new petit bourgeois struggles against the prevalence of monopoly capital intrusion. its interests lay in the encouragement of indigenous capital of a non-monopolistic character, which is not to suggest that the interests of these two classes were concurrent. they were not. the central's perspective of capital and the state were often confrontational by their inherent class nature. this was not the case with the new petite bourgeoisie. however, what did cause a collusion of interests was the lack of a viable instrument of political expression by the working classes during a period of intense petit bourgeois mobilization. this mobilization was centered precisely on the national question which had at its very heart a quest for state power. the csn remained, in this regard, a receptacle of latent political class interests with no legitimate ideological or practical channel. these interests were to find expression within the political project of a new emerging social bloc, which utilized the ideology of neo-nationalism as a motor for its vision of quebec society. the ftq was more immersed in the federal/provincial debates than its counterpart in quebec. the general council report in 1967 outlined the official position of the ftq regarding the emerging constitutional question. the report refers to the brief submitted by the csn/ftq and the union des cultivateurs catholique (ucc) to the constitution committee of the quebec legislative assembly. in that brief, the ftq rejected a series of propositions aimed at resolving the constitutional crisis. the options objected to were: (a) an independent quebec, (b) associate states, (c) the 83 status quo, and (d) greater centralization under the federal government. in lieu of the above, the central proposed a federal system adapted to present-day realities and entailing a greater state role for quebec. it should be noted that the general council's report occurred during a year in which the national question was quite topical within the central. it is not surprising that, given the differences amongst various factions within the ftq, the central's official proposal should remain so vague. the congress did not, however, come out strongly against separatism. in a repeat of laberge's monologue of 1965, nationalism cum separatism was described as a bourgeois ideology that would ultimately reduce the standard of living of workers. at the same convention a resolution was passed, however, which acknowledged the right of autodetermination of the french canadian homeland .including, if necessary, the right of secession. this indicated the enduring strength of the fuiq tradition, as well as the divided opinion within the central itself. regardless of the divisions, the official position called for a revised federalism through the growth of provincial state power: we would, without any inconvenience reduce the preponderant place of the federal government in certain fields. certain material that jurisprudence has declared to be under federal jurisdiction should come under joint control such as radio and television (rapport de conseil general, 1967:6). surely, the ftq was reacting to a complex series of events. given the various ideological stances within the central, the ftq sought a middle ground. in this regard, while having adopted a left inspired analysis of quebec society, it also articulated what was seen by many militant nationalists as a conservative approach toward federalism. the central's position in the report to the quebec assembly satisfied for the moment both tendencies, as it contained a strong affirmation of a greater role for the provincial state on the language issue. 84 the substance of political action was once again assessed at the 1967 congress. suggestions were put forward to organize with other progressive groups in quebec and an exploratory conference toward unification of left-wing political forces in a provincial party was proposed. the irony of the suggestion must have weighed heavily upon militants, given the earlier failure of the parti socialiste du quebec (psq). the report stressed the need for local union affiliation with the ndp. resolution six stated: ...that the ftq reiterate its intention to give its moral and material support to a provincial political party when it is required in the interest of workers, and when it is sure that there is a provincial party whose program and structures offer both in terms of ideology and integrity the same guarantees as the ndp-q presently offers in federal politics (rapport de conseil general, 1967:6). as well as being a turning point for the central, laberge's opening speech at the 1969 convention revealed much ambiguity. it was obvious by now that the great project of 1967 (to rally progressive forces in quebec to create a new party) had not materialized and laberge's statement reads like an indictment of the ftq at having been "taken over by events." he addressed the seeming inability of the ftq to implicate itself in progressive struggles outside of the union movement. clearly, this speech was directed at the increasing impatience of militants within the central to clarify a political approach. the essence of the convention, as the title of the speech, "operation collective searching," indicated, was more than a reformulation of the inadequacies of political representation of the working class in quebec. rather, it was an affirmation that a new approach was needed. this was evident, given the realization of the difficulty of sustaining an ndp-q presence in the province as well as the taking-up of the mantle of social democracy by the parti quebecois. in this context, he made no mention of the creation of a new party but, rather, urged the ftq to re-examine its response to the large issues of the day. 85 the 1969 address was a harbinger of the type of political appropriation which would occur by the early seventies. through its hegemonic regrouping of nationalist forces, the pq had, in a very broad sense, acquired at least the appearance of the social democratic party for which the ftq had hoped, for so long. radlcalization and reform the decade of the seventies was initiated by the return of the provincial liberal party. the privileged relationship that the csn had maintained with the party during the sixties had been dramatically altered, given the departure of the pq, its progressive wing. during the preceding four years, the union nationale had enlarged the role of the state in industrial relations, restricting union gains made during the first half of the decade. the liberal party had in mind, no doubt, a further expansion of this aspect of the state, given their incoming platform of industrial peace. the first half of the seventies was a crucial period for the re-definition of syndical goals for both centrals. it was during this time frame that we see a significant change in the outlook within the csn/ftq towards the entire question of nationalism. the period of 1970-76 was also marked by a more official movement by the two centrals towards the parti quebecols. the 44th congress of the csn in 1970 stressed the need to eliminate the political vacuum which existed in the province. the atmosphere surrounding the convention was ripe for manifestation of solidarity amongst the various centrals and diverse political groupings. this was the period of the war measures act. as a display of unity against the acquiescence of the bourassa regime in the face of severe federal actions, the csn, ftq and ceq formed the first united front against the military occupation of the province. the 86 natural party ongoing to counteract the repressive military action, was the pq. the urgency of the political moment was not, however, the only aspect binding various class forces of the period. the 44th congress was also the occasion upon which the csn called for an affirmation of the unilingual nature of quebec, curiously rejecting, however, the application of this principle within the central itself. the 1971 ftq document, political action crossroads , summed up the magnitude of conflicting influences to which the central was subject. the committee begins by examining the reason why the political orientation of the central, adopted at the 1967 convention, never rallied support amongst workers. their conclusion was that support for the new democratic party of quebec (ndp-q) was premature. workers were not sufficiently educated to accept this type of labour militancy. the problem lay with the fact that the political education of the working class had been provided by the traditional parties. the idea of politics for the working classes was one which was identified as a "dirty but essential thing which calls for our vote every four years" (ftq, 1971:136). the above assessment of the political action committee was quite remarkable and perhaps attests more to the ideological disarray within the central than to the actual political education of the workers. certainly, by 1971, the ftq had already given its implicit support to the parti quebecois. within the rank and file, the party had done amazingly well in securing a large base over a very short period of time. the question was clearly not to educate the worker away from the crass political attitudes of the traditional parties but, rather, to offer an alternative to a party which was ideologically capable of winning the working class. the committee did suggest the integration of working class representatives in various extraneous organizations, most importantly, 87 municipal and school board elections. they also advocated a greater syndical support role for those workers who did engage in independent political action: up to now those organized workers who have been elected at the municipal and school board level were left to their own means. we should not be surprised if after some time those individuals hold views close to those of the middle classes and the financial elites than the working classes (ftq, 1971:139). the manifestos the well-known 1971 manifestos, ne comptons que sur nos propres moyens by the csn and l'etat rouage de notre exploitation by the ftq, were major articulations of the socialism/nationalism dialectic which was gaining ground in the centrals. both manifestos were illustrative of several facets of the national question within the two centrals. primarily, the documents clearly separated the economic and social contexts from the dominant cultural context of the period. relationships were not posed in quebecois and anglo canadian terms, but in terms of the exploitative effect of capital upon the labouring classes: the point, is not to engage in leftist activism of a particular tendency but to begin an authentic return to the trade union movement's grass roots, that is to forget the verbal battles especially the purely nationalist ones and to plunge into the very heart of a struggle against the exploitation of workers by capitalists (csn, 1972:159) the attempt to keep the two issues separate subjected the centrals to much criticism from various left nationalist coalitions. it was clear that centrals had taken a distinct stand regarding working class priorities outside the realm of culturally motivated concerns. 38 while proposing a socialist definition of society, the csn was particularly restrained in offering an examination of the role of state agencies. this was quite remarkable, given the popularity of state expansion in many sectors of the economy. the csn approach to the economy was encapsulated in its call for the nationalization of sectors controlled by american capital. the ftq proposal was qualitatively different. it saw the extension of state agencies as a solution to various indicators of class struggle, most notably unemployment: our first collective tool is the economic power of the state of quebec. the state should be the only agency able to direct the use of everyone's savings, competence and initiative toward the creation of a real instrument of collective economic liberation. the first task facing trade unionism and the people of quebec is that of involving the state in economic activity and specifying the modalities of this action: (a) participation in the economy through the strengthening of government agencies; (b) the use of peoples' savings for collective purposes (ftq, 1972:183) both of the documents stressed that the territorial prerequisite of quebec was inextricable from the condition of the working class. however, the vagueness of their social project during some very crucial political moments created much room for the appropriation of consent within the labour movement. in effect, the two organizations were radicalizing workers in terms of their objective class position but they were not offering the necessary political dimension needed to express those interests. this was most evident during the debate within the centrals concerning the implications of the manifestos. while the movement was debating the consequences of determined class action of a progressive nature, it was similarly aligning itself with a reformist approach reminiscent of the early sixties. 89 sumnary: an absence of options the perspective of the ftq, although similar to the csn in that it offered no clear alternative to the political morass of the times, went somewhat further. this may have been due to the tradition of commitment to a party sympathetic to the working class, coupled with the repressive state mechanisms during the bourassa regime. the 1975 convention of the ftq (a year before the provincial election) saw an unprecedented shift by a quebec central toward a major party. the move, in strategic terms, was meant to plant workers in the party. a similar rationale was used by f. daoust of the former parti socialiste de quebec as well as the conseil centrale de montreal of the csn, in the early seventies. the opening speech of the president of the ftq on the eve of a new political arrangement within the province was particularly illuminating. the official line of the ftq, particularly when it came to laberge, was to relegate any nationalist rhetoric to the sideline. in no uncertain terms, however, the address was a capitulation to the various pressures within the central for a greater implication in the pq's social project. laberge situated the ftq in terms of the party, stressing that the pq was not a worker's coalition but could still constitute a channel of change. it was, laberge argued, a challenge workers should accept. in 1974 as well as during the special congress in 1975, the csn echoed the same type of movement toward the social platform of the pq, but with considerably less official aplomb than the ftq. though coming from different inclinations and strategies, both centrals were involving themselves in the form of mainstream nationalism in the crucial year prior to the pq victory in 1976. both used essentially the same rationale in the appropriation of their consent. in terms of the developing hegemony, the securing of a stable social base seemed at hand. 90 the parti quebecois and the referendum the election of the parti quebecois in 1976 was a welcome relief for the labour movement in quebec. over and above the vision of a sympathetic party which many workers saw in the pq, the direction of the working class vote was clearly anti-bourassa. interestingly, the researcher investigating this period, intent upon finding material within the centrals related to the national question, comes up against a wall of relative silence. the absence of dialogue was broken earlier by the csn in 1978 and followed hesitatingly by the ftq in 1979 and, more forcefully, a month prior to the referendum in 1980. given the earlier recalcitrant tone of the '71 manifestos implying a socialist vision of quebec society, the lack of position papers, resolutions, etc, was certainly significant. the paucity of analysis within the centrals was indicative of a sceptical "wait and see" attitude exercised by the csn and the ftq towards the new party in power. the absence of an official line by the centrals was, however, not indicative of the substance of debate amongst the militants. at the 1977 congress of the ftq, we do see a developing opposition to the ftq's acquiescent relationship with the pq. this opposition called for syndical unity and the creation of a true workers' party to offset the influence of the pq amongst the working classes. quite apart from these distancing attempts (which were consistently stronger in the csn), it was the mobilization of the new petit bourgeois strategies for the referendum which ultimately motivated the enlivening of debate in both centrals. to a certain extent, it was once more the political which became a factor in class relations. whereas the political moment had appropriated class elements earlier in the parti quebecois' formation and later victory, it became (through the referendum testing, so to speak) the parameters of the existing hegemony. 91 the 49th congress of the csn, held in 1978, had much to resolve. the preceding two years of pq government had shown significantly less promise than the workers' movement had hoped for. the rapport du comite d'orientation was reflective of the need to extrapolate the significance of the national question for the central. the report, published a full two years prior to the referendum, made no mention of the approaching plebiscite. in part, the document represented a clarification of the socialist project enunciated in the 1971 manifesto. it was, however, more clearly directed at the preceding two years of pq rule. the working paper was indicative of the ending of a very disturbing two years of consensual integration. the terms of consent were based upon a disorganization of the working classes, as bill 45 had illustrated. the bill offered a mixed bag of reform and repression which tended to polarize factions within the working classes themselves. it would seem that this is inherent in a process of consensual integration, which incorporates a dialectic but is concretized in terms of the demobilization (in this case of a political type) of class interests. the rapport du comit§ d'orientation was an attempt to address this type of hegemonic process by squarely situating workers' interests on the ideological battleground of the parti quebecois, i.e., the national question. the conditions of the debate, as the document state, were to be found in the efforts of political parties and associations to woo workers to their particular view of the nation. the paper argued that working people of all sectors in quebec were threatened by bill 45, as well as by federal legislation dealing with the economic crisis. it then became essential for workers to analyse the national question within the context of capitalist exploitation. the national question, like the state, the paper continued, 92 could not be seen in neutral terms, i.e., it takes on the form of the dominant class relationship: les partis politiques ont des representations differentes de la realite canadienne et qugbecoise, et cela en fonction des intsrsts qu'ils dependent; lis ont pourtant en commun d'utiliser le concept de nation (canadienne ou quebecoise) pour masquer le9 rapports d'exploitation qui sont le fondement msme de la societe capitaliste (rapport du comite d'orientation, csn, 1978:5). the relationship between the pq and the csn was examined in some detail by the report. the document recalls the support of the csn in the 1976 election. its own studies indicated that 60% of all organized workers voted for the pequistes (pq), with 15% going to the liberal party. in the anglophone sector, it was the working classes which voted pq, (33.3% of anglophone workers under the age of 35 voted for the pq as opposed to 22% who voted liberal.) the interim between the 1978 congress and special congress on the national question in 1979 saw two position papers by the csn. the first of these, proposition de la csn pour la discussion sur la question nationale , approached the large question of stimulating debate within the popular classes. this working paper, as many before it, had clearly defined its intervention as that of a union composed of workers who hold many differing ideas, opinions and ideologies: what binds us together are our common interests as workers and the resultant desire to formulate together and have implemented the changes needed to defend and transform our working and living conditions (csn, 1979:6). the mode of intervention, the document argues, must address cultural, economic, social and political consequences of oppression. this is to be done while maintaining its autonomy from any particular umbrella organization within each camp which "may bring together business and political groupings whose intersts are diametrically opposed to those of the workers" (csn, 93 1979:42). in a sense, lacking its own political mechanism, the csn was outlining the many pitfalls ahead for itself. it would seem that the central had underestimated the pervasiveness of the pq as well as federalist dominance in the debate. the central proposed equal time for labour groups and popular organizations in the various forms of the media. little of this occurred. it is not surprising that the side with which the csn had so hoped to avoid affiliating had already chosen. the paper argues that the election of the parti quebecois (over and above the disappointments) was esentially a positive development for the working classes, as it opened up the debate for the real issue of national oppression, which must be posed by the popular classes. it would seem from resolutions 21 and 22 of the 1979 working paper, that the central was again ready to afford the party its strategic accord: it is proposed that the csn resolutely engage in the debate to determine if it should decide in favour of the people of quebec exercising their right to self-determination, that is the right of the people of quebec to freely choose its political status including independence and to ensure freely its political, social and cultural development . it is proposed that the csn recognize that this struggle against national oppression may necessitate the independence of quebec (resolution 21, 22, csn, 1979:40). the 1979 brochure, la csn et la question nationale , was a strategic working paper focusing upon the exact nature of entry into the political debate: it is the common interest of workers beyond the working environment which makes union intervention in the national question a necessity (csn, 1979:10). however, the union's goals regarding its entry into the political debate were seen to be significantly different from that of political parties. in this sense, ...a political party's basic goal is to get into or stay in power and whose members join on the basis of a common platform or ideology (csn, 1979:11). 94 from the csn's view of the party , it was obvious that it had not yet sharpened its understanding of the class dynamic of political and social relations within the province. the ftq: the politics of nationalism the ftq entered the referendum debate at a relatively late date. the parameters of its discourse were evident during its 16th annual convention in 1979. at that convention the parti quebecois was singled out as being a "hesitant harbinger of change." yet it was this party which had "proposed a political project which would have a determinant effect upon the collective future of the working class" (ftq, 1979:2). the tone of the congress suggested caution. the president's inaugural speech asserted that the ftq would have to examine its response to the national question very carefully, particularly given the hasty resolutions occurring over this matter in the csn. as did the various csn documents before it, the 16th ftq convention enumerated the drawbacks of the pq performance, given their previous selection promises. as well, the csn position taken at its 1978 congress regarding the national question was roundly criticized. in this context, laberge argued that the csn had avoided an analysis of the national question from a distinctively labour viewpoint. in reference to the csn interpretation, laberge argued: it is indeed, starting from a renewed vision that we will be able to tackle the difficult national issue from a true labour perspective. there is no question of a sort of flight forward , of skipping the national issue debate behind a project for society . quite the contrary, we must conduct two rather separate debates: one on the national issue and the other on our project for a society. whatever approach we may follow on this national issue and whatever future quebecers will decide for themselves at the constitutional level, the ftq must continue the fight for the implementation of its project for society (ftq, 1979:22-23). 95 having determined che distinction between the two issues, the president's speech outlined the ftq's "project for quebec society'. this project of democratic socialism stressed increased control of the community over its natural resources, key industries and management of the economy. the president's enunciation of the social and economic policy of the ftq, although not dissimilar from earlier statements, shed a particular light upon a then prevalent perception of the national question. in previous ftq documents, the same type of analysis had been put forward, but suggesting a distinct relationship between the national issue and class struggle. often this relationship was posed within the context of the centralizing/decentralizing debate. this was still in marked distinction to the csn documents of the early seventies, which many readers had interpreted as an implicit nationalist stance. given the approaching referendum, the ftq, as was obvious through the 1979 convention, had little choice but to address the linkages. the csn and the ftq: variations in response the affirmative responses of the csn and the ftq to the referendum differed. the csn position has been referred to within the labour movement as being largely the "yes critique'. on the other hand, the ftq response has been colloquially called the "unconditional yes'.^ the disparity between the two centrals can be attributed to various factors. primarily, the ftq tradition of support for parties sympathetic to working class interests brought it relatively closer to a form of political integration by the dominant nationalist forces within the seventies. as well, by 1980, the ftq had given up hope tor the mdp-0 and, instead, continued their tumultuous relationship with the 96 parti quebecois. but the ftq's articulation of nationalism concentrated upon distancing themselves from the pq platform throughout the debate. principally, this was done by approaching the question from a detached labour standpoint, and by isolating the national issue as a tactical manoeuvre. this type of strategy failed, given: (a) the overwhelming desire of the membership to see their central act as a podium for enunciating workers' interests within the debate and (b) the general effect of the mainstream nationalist debate, and its overlapping characteristic vis-a-vis working class nationalism. the csn had no such ideological attachment towards supporting a party sympathetic to working class interests — the csn relationship with the lesage liberals could hardly be seen in this light. this situation may well have been the reason for its more critical stance in the face of the pq. the csn and the ftq both displayed different backgrounds endemic to a constitutional outlook. the ftq was well entrenched in the federal/provincial debate; its own relationship with the ctc in many ways mimicking the larger ottawa/quebec conflict. the csn had no such tradition, outside of once considering itself, in theory anyhow, a pan-canadian central, with a yearly submission of briefs to the federal cabinet. in a sense, as i have mentioned, the csn was more implicated and perhaps more prepared historically to interlock the national question with its struggle for a socialist program. conclusion what i have tried to show in this paper is the utility of employing a class-based analysis to explain the internal articulation of interests around the national question within a relatively homogeneous ethnic setting. in 97 this respect, the paradigmatic application of a structural marxism is not without its difficulties. i suggest there is a need to further develop approaches which treat inter-class relations and characteristics through an examination of the political implications of these factors. this must be done in the context of assessing the political realization of specific classes . in an application of various theoretical guidelines, particularly those of gramsci, i have examined the political manifestations of these inter-class occurrences. the analysis of the csn and the ftq has addressed a series of processes: the transformist periods of 1960-65 and 1966-75 were distinguished by certain structural conditions which formed the foundation (in consentful as well as coercive terms) of the union central/state relationship. the association between the labour centrals and the parti quebecois from 1976 onwards was distinguished by an expansive dialectic which mobilized the working class within a political project which was entirely outside their sphere of influence. the varied conditions and circumstances outlined in this paper have prompted both centrals in recent years (particularly the csn) to reassess their method of political intervention. notes 1. indeed, hobsbawm (1977) states that marx did begin an analysis of political theory particularly in reference to hegel's philosophy of law. this effort was abandoned, however, in favour of a political economy approach which, for marx, was the "anatomy of civil society." in fact, hobsbawm maintains that "the materialist conception of history actually discouraged the study of politics and the state as autonomous subjects — except in the crucial field of the state and revolution." see "gramsci and marxist political theory" in approaches to gramsci , ed., anne showstack sassoon, writers and readers publishing cooperative society ltd., london, england, 1981. 2. it is noteworthy that much of the actual political arguments which were dominant in marx's era were concerned with the issue of unification. the same concern for unification and its class implication was to be a continuing point of contention which overshadowed the debate between luxembourg and lenin. 98 3. this idea is picked up by j.h. ehrenreich. he argues that "...nationalism leads not towards socialism but towards the integration of working class into the capitalist system and towards the integration of the less developed countries into the capitalist work marketplace." (john h. ehrenreich, "socialism, nationalism and capitalist development" in review of radical political economics , vol. xv, no. 1, spring, 1983.) 4. s. hall, b. lumley and g. mclennan argue that for gramsci it is the purely political moment that marks the passage from the structure to the sphere of the complex superstructure. ("politics and ideology, gramsci" in on ideology , centre for contemporary cultural studies, hutchinson of london, 1978). 5. both the fptq and the fuiq merged in 1957 to form the ftq. 6. many prominent members of the then defunct fuiq, such as fernand daoust, were involved in the creation of the parti socialiste du quebec (psq). 7. it was precisely this drawback, i.e. that the ftq was simply not as entrenched a central as the csn, due to its reliance upon the clc to ratify its decisions, which precipitated a certain crisis of identity leading to an internal struggle for greater autonomy from the parent body. 8. it should be pointed out, however, that both centrals addressed the question of french language rights in the workplace during this period. 9. this was particularly clear given the report's approval of such state agencies as the general investment corporation. see "a society built for man," csn, 1966. 10. yvon charbonneau discusses the significance of these two affirmative responses in relation to the position of the centrale de l'enseignement du quebec (ceo) in his article "d'octobre 1970 a octobre 1980" in l'impasse: enjeux et perspectives de l'apres referendum, ed. nicole laurin-frenette and jean-francois leonard, les editions nouvelle optique, 1980. references black rose collective 1972 quebec labour , montreal: black rose books. bloom, s.f. 1941 the world of nations: a study of the national implications in the world of karl marx , new york: columbia university press. centre de formation populaire 1978 la question nationale, un defi a relever pour le mouvement ouvrier , montreal: centre de formation populaire. 99 centre for contemporary cultural studies 1977 "politics and ideology: gramsci," by stuart hall, bob lumley and gregor mclennan, in on ideology , london, hutchinson. davis, horace b. 1967 nationalism and socialism , new york: monthly review press. drache, daniel 1972 quebec — only the beginning, manifestos of the common front , toronto. gramsci, antonio 1971 the prison notebooks , eds. quinton hoare and geoffrey noweil smith, london: lawrence and wishart. haupt, georges; lowy , michel & weill, claudie 1974 les marxistes et la question nationale 1848-1914 , montreal: editions d'etincelle. hobsbawm, eric 1977 "some reflections on the break-up of britain," new left review , no. 105, september. leborgne, louis 1976 la c.s.n, et la question nationale depuis 1960 . montreal: editions albert st. martin. lenin, v.i. 1965 "question of national policy and proletarian internationalism," collected works , moscow: progress publishers. marx, karl 1964 ireland and the irish questions , new york: new world paperbacks. mascotto, jacques; soucy, pierre yves 1979 sociologie politique de la question nationale . editions cooperatives albert st. martin. nairn, tom 1981 the break-up of britain , london: verso. roback, leo 1973 "les formes historique de politisation du syndicalisme au quebec in g. dion, ed. la politisation des relations du travail ou&bec , quebec: les presses de l'universite laval. thaler, henri 1984 nationalism and the working class: a study of two union centrals of quebec , m.a. thesis, department of sociology, carleton university. union documentation proces verbal de la quarantisme session de congres de la csn , 1962. 100 prcces verbal de la quarante-et-une session de congres de la csn , 1964. a society built for man , moral report of the csn, 1966. positions , csn publication, 1968. political action crossroads , 1971. general resolution for the defence of the working men and women interests, in the struggle against national opression of the quebecois people , csn, 1977. proposition de la csn pour la discussion sur la question nationale . csn, 1977 union documentation fto officers report submitted to the 5th convention of the ftq , 1960. officers report submitted to the 6th convention of the ftq , 1961. inaugural speech of the president, ninth congress , 1965. opening speech of the president, target and speared , ftq, 14th congress, 1975. the ftq and the national question , 1979. 101 crisis and opportunism | 33 crisis and opportunism: public finance trends from stimulus to austerity in canada — christopher stoney and tamara krawchenko1 with crisis comes uncertainly and with it, opportunity. this has certainly characterized responses to the 2007 economic crises and its aftermath. in the early days of the crisis, economists and the neoclassical model alike were battered with contempt from internal and external criticism (nadeau, 2008). even the staunchly neoliberal magazine, the economist, briefly declared the death of neoclassical economics—only to rectify and defend it in its subsequent issue. leading up to the 2007 economic crisis, there had been a movement within economics to question market fundamentalist logic and the increasingly divorced-fromreality mathematical models that had come to define the profession (williams & mcneill, 2005, p.3). neoclassical economics and its bedfellow, neoliberalism, has dominated public policy for so long that its widespread critique since the most recent economic crisis has led to speculation that we are witnessing a paradigm shift. our review of canadian federal public policy and expenditures finds that there has been no such significant or sustained shift and the economic crisis and resulting federal stimulus expenditures have done little to reorient the dominance of neoliberal policy in canada. indeed by 2012 talk of a paradigm shift or significant realignment in the neoliberal consensus had largely evaporated. 1 christopher stoney is associate professor in the school of public policy and administration, director of the centre for urban research and education at carleton university, and co-editor of how ottawa spends. his research interests include infrastructure funding, municipal government and urban sustainability. tamara krawchenko is assistant professor in political science at dalhousie university. her current research focuses on rural community and economic development in the atlantic provinces. 34 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism using powerful imagery, harvie and milburn (2011) epitomize the sense of despair felt by many towards neoliberalism’s seemingly inexorable march: “neoliberalism no longer “makes sense”, but its logic keeps stumbling on, without conscious direction, like a zombie: ugly, persistent and dangerous. such is the “unlife” of a zombie, a body stripped of its goals, unable to adjust itself to the future, unable to make plans. it can only act habitually as it pursues a monomaniacal hunger” (harvie and milburn, 2011). in order to illuminate aspects of the return to ‘business as usual,’ the paper focuses on telling the story of stimulus and austerity in canada by examining federal government expenditures from 2006 onwards using public accounts data (fiscal years 2005-2011). we highlight how the crisis (and the way it was presented) provided opportunities for the harper government to deliver strategic shifts in priorities and spending. in particular, we focus in on the two biggest ministerial portfolio ‘winners’ over this period –the ministries of transport (namely, the department of infrastructure canada) and natural resources. rather than initiating a change in thinking amongst the policy elites we see a continuation, if not a heightening of existing ‘growth-first’ priorities. for canada, this has included a focus on supporting a natural resource driven export economy in support of a political commitment to economic expansion, wealth creation and employment. canada’s stimulus response to the economic crisis can be seen to have been consistent with the harper government’s overall approach of “open federalism,” the two major tenets of which are: smaller government (“keeping the federal government’s spending power within bounds”) and adherence to the constitutional divisions of powers (“respecting areas of provincial jurisdiction” (pm of canada, 2006). significantly, compared to many other countries, the size of canada’s stimulus measures were relatively small (ccpa, 2009, p.2) and much of it focused on tax cuts and some infrastructure spending in which funding contributions from other levels of government were required. harmes argues that ‘open federalism’ is consistent with a “broader neoliberal approach to federalism which, among other aims, seeks to use institutional reforms to lock in more market-oriented public policies” (2007, p.418). of interest in the areas of natural resources and trade is how public policy has promoted an energy-based export agenda—a continuation and yet, new manifestation of harold innis’ staples theory crisis and opportunism | 35 of canadian development (innis, 1956). here, open federalism’s tenets are somewhat relaxed, as the federal government takes a strong interest in resource extraction and the development of infrastructure to support canada’s export markets – areas of major government expenditure and intervention in provincial affairs. in this area the prime minister has been eager to exploit opportunities to sell canada’s oil, gas and other natural resources abroad with particular attention focused on the giant us and emerging chinese markets. consequently, despite a commitment to smaller government and respect for provincial jurisdiction, the federal government finds itself involved in major interventions that favor some regions over others and appears to contradict the basic principles of open federalism. given the political and calculated nature of these interventions we contend that ‘strategic federalism’ provides a better description of the government’s approach than ‘open federalism’. because our focus is on federal spending in canada, we engage mainly with the literature seeking to dissect how neoliberal policies are adopted across time and place. this includes the literature on ‘varieties of neoliberalism’ (cerny, 2004) and that which seeks to understand the distinctive ways in which it is practiced at different scales (e.g., varro, 2010; mackinnon & shaw, 2010). however we are also influenced by ongoing debates concerning broader manifestations of neoliberalism and the impact of particular types of state intervention. in this wider context the paper’s conception of neoliberalization draws on the so-called neoliberal commandments (harvey, 2003) predicated on the washington consensus (williamson, 1990). in particular we emphasize the focus these approaches place on fiscal and monetary austerity, the lowering of inflation rates, trade and financial liberalization, deregulation, and reorientation of public expenditure, the freeing of interest rates, and emergence of independent central banks. we also share harvey’s view that neo-liberalism must be understood as a comprehensive theory of political as well as economic practices as this firmly acknowledges that the state has a key and selective role to play in advancing the neo-liberal project including the creation of “free markets” and “free trade”. (harvey, 2003) state interventions into the economy during the neoliberal era have shifted drastically from protecting individuals from the perils of the market and limiting corporate power during the keynesian era to subsidizing corporations, promoting competitiveness of national economies, and undermining the power of labor (ruckert, 2006). significant in this shift has been the growing power of increasingly global capital, in contrast to largely immobile labour (ruckert, 2009). this has been facilitated 36 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism and reflected by the ‘internationalization of the state’ whereby nation states increasingly prioritize the interests of transnational (financial) capital over domestic (industrial) capital and social groupings (ruckert, 2010; baker, 1999). this has helped fashion the deregulation of financial markets and the opening up of national economies to international competition. importantly ruckert (2010) connects this process to institutional changes, in particular the growing influence of the state agencies that are linked to (and often directly represent) the interests of transnational capital, such as ministries of finance and central banks. the ascendency of financial institutions and the deregulation that has accompanied it has been highly significant in the emergence of neoliberalism and the resulting crisis. as harvie and milburn (2011) argue, while the postwar keynesian settlement contained an explicit deal linking rising real wages to rising productivity, neoliberalism contained an implicit deal based on access to cheap credit. while real wages have stagnated since the late 1970s, the mechanisms of debt have maintained most people’s living standards. the financial crisis shattered the central component of this deal by restricting access to cheap credit and undermining confidence in financial markets and continued growth. faced with a severe financial crisis, governments initially intervened to stimulate spending, subsidize corporations and shore up markets leading to suggestions of a return to keynesian style government and the demise of neoliberal hegemony. however, the hasty return to austerity measures combined with attacks on public services and the public servants that provide them have reaffirmed that any shift in policy will be short-lived and should not be conflated with paradigmatic or fundamental reforms. our analysis of spending trends combined with the government’s stated priorities suggests that canadians face an intensification of neoliberal policies rather than a shift or decline. as such we are likely to see continued and growing inequality within canadian society on a scale greater than before the crisis. warning of the dangers of growing inequality, stiglitz (2012) identifies this trend in the us, with america’s current level of income inequality at historic levels not seen before the great depression. in the boom years before the financial crisis in 2008, the top 1 percent seized more than 65 percent of the gain in national income. in 2010, as the us struggled to emerge from a deep recession, the 1 percent gained 93 percent of the additional income created in the so-called recovery (stiglitz, 2012). with respect to neoliberalism, stiglitz points out that inequality does not arise in a vacuum but from the interplay of market forces and political crisis and opportunism | 37 machinations. over time, he argues, politics has shaped the market in ways that advantage those at the top at the expense of the rest of society. with an economic system that seems to fail most citizens and a political system that appears captive to moneyed interests, he warns of the price of growing inequality in terms of slower growth, lower gdp, greater instability and a variety of social and democratic threats. it is in this context that we examine the policy response of the harper government following the financial crisis and consider the implications for canada the paper is organized into four parts. first, we examine the ‘big picture’ of federal revenue and expenses in canada over the last decade with a focus on stimulus and austerity measures. second, we turn to the ministries of trade and natural resources—two of the biggest ‘winners’ in revenue terms over recent years. we examine just how these ministries have expanded and consider the meaning of this within the broader context of fiscal federalism and the economy. from this high level analysis of public accounts we consider the federal government’s policy priorities and policy focus. third, we reflect on the most recent budget (2012) and what this means for the direction of change. the final section offers conclusions. from stimulus to austerity the onset of the global economic crisis led to a common refrain amongst commentators that “we are all keynesians now”. interestingly, governments that were ideologically opposed to such spending would now need to adopt stimulus policies in order to strengthen investment, consumer and business confidence (and capital liquidity). canada’s response was launched through its 2007 economic statement. the stimulus budget proposed $60 billion in broad-based tax relief over five years. this was followed by a two-year commitment to financial stimulus measures focused on taxation, employment insurance benefits, and infrastructure investments, as outlined in the 2009-10 budget, entitled canada’s economic action plan. similar to other countries, the stimulus measures adopted through canada’s 2009-2010 budget focused on encouraging economic growth. that budget stated stimulus measures were guided by three principles—that they be “timely, targeted and temporary” (government of canada 2009, p.4). the budget further stated that measures would begin within 120 days of the budget being passed; that the measures would focus on targeting businesses and families in the greatest need in order to trigger increases in jobs and output and; finally, that the plan would be phased out 38 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism “when the economy recovers [in order] to avoid long-term structural deficits” (ibid). while some aspects of the plan would be phased out (i.e., infrastructure spending) the stimulus measures clearly stated that one objective would be to “reduce taxes permanently” (department of finance, 2010). we can see in chart 1 below the recession reflected in the government’s public accounts. program expenses increased as a percent of gdp while revenues decreased. it is important to note that part of this revenue decline comes from the decision to reduce taxation in a number of areas. for example the decision to drop two percentage points off of the goods and services tax(gst) and to reduce the corporate tax rate. this figure is further compounded by a contraction of economic growth over these years. while federal government revenues as a percentage of gdp have steadily decreased over the past decade (from 18.1 per cent in 2000-01 to 14.6 per cent in 2010-11), program expenses as a percentage of gdp saw increases in the 2009-10 and 2010-11 periods (at 16.0 and 14.7 per cent respectively). this is a slight increase from the previous three years where program expenditures as a percentage of gdp were steady at 13 per cent. in the past two years there has been an operating deficit (2009-10 and 2010-11) and over the past three year period there has been a budgetary deficit (between 2008-09 and 2010-11). the increasing size of the deficit (both budgetary and operational) has been instrumental in the narrative of austerity. chart 1. public accounts, fiscal transactions, per cent of gdp, 2000-2011 the government posted a budgetary deficit of $55.6 billion for the fiscal year ending march 31, 2010 (department of finance, 2010). finance minister flaherty blamed the 2010 fiscal year record deficit on the $5.6 billion payout to british columbia and ontario to assist with the transition to the harmonized sales tax, and the decision to limit increases in employcrisis and opportunism | 39 ment insurance premiums (ibid.). while these obviously contributed to the overall size of the deficit, they are only part of the fiscal equation with the government also responsible for cuts in direct and indirect taxation over this period in addition to its spending on stimulus measures. clearly the policy preference for tax cuts has helped to diminish government revenues and in doing so has also contributed to the narrative of ‘belt tightening’ for the public sector. having helped manufacture a sizeable deficit, minister flaherty has made it the deficit into as a major public issue and used it to justify austerity measures, warning canadians to brace themselves against significant cutbacks in budget 2012 (ibid.). the chart below illustrates these trends. personal income tax, expressed as a percentage of gdp, has consistently declined over that past decade, with the exception of the 2010-11 period, when there was a slight increase (from 6.8 percent to 7.0 per cent of gdp). total tax revenue as a percentage of gdp has declined and flattened, hitting an all time low over the past three years. corporate income tax as a percentage of gdp has been lower in the past three years than in the previous five. overall, revenues as a percentage of gdp show a declining trend over the past decade. economically, this shift is consistent with the political shift to ‘open federalism’s’ commitment to smaller government. chart 2. public accounts, government of canada revenue by type, percent of gdp, 2000-2011 a high level analysis of public accounts from the past decade shows evidence of ‘roll-back neoliberalism’ (peck and tickell, 2002). government revenues have slowly declined and the public sector is urged to do less with less. the conservative government has expressed a commitment to leave as much as possible to the private sector. the economic crisis has brought with it opportunism – it has led to a wide swath of 40 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism tax cuts (some of them, permanent) and has reoriented spending in a number of areas. the size of the deficit is however part of a fiscal choice to reduce taxation. while the conservative government expresses preference for smaller government and limited spending, there are inconsistencies in the expression of these preferences across portfolios—some ministries and departments have grown considerably, while others have diminished in revenue and policy importance. while we have seen evidence of ‘roll-back neo-liberalism’ there is also evidence of ‘roll-out neoliberalism’ as certain ministries become the focus of government policies and spending. the chart below provides an analysis of the changes in public accounts since 2006. it shows the percentage change of total net expenditures by ministry between the years 2006 and 2001 (in constant 2002 dollars). the red line denotes the average percentage change for all – a 14.30 percentage increase. those ministries above the red line gained more than the average in revenue terms over those years, and those below it lost more than the average. hence, this gives some indications of relative spending priorities. by this analysis, the ministries of transport and natural resources have seen the greatest percentage increases. this percentage change figure should be read with caution in the case of some ministries – the privy council, the governor general, parliament, finance and justice can see major fluctuations in funding for a variety of reasons. for example, parliament and the governor general may have large capital expenditure due to renovations. the privy council (pco) may have special royal commission expenditures (or see fluctuations because it includes the office of the chief electoral officer), and finance can have highly fluctuating transfer payments. from this overall analysis, two federal priorities clearly emerge – infrastructure and natural resources. crisis and opportunism | 41 chart 3. public accounts, percentage change total net ministerial expenditure, 2006-2011, constant dollars federal priorities: infrastructure and natural resources transport and infrastructure the ministry of transport has grown in importance over the years, with numerous agencies and authorities being added to it.2 the chart below shows the total budget by authority within the transport ministry for the fiscal years 2006-2011 (in millions, 2002 constant dollars). it is clear from this analysis why the revenues of the ministry have increased 2 in 2004, the ministry was composed of transport canada, the canadian transportation agency (a regulatory agency) and the transportation appeal tribunal of canada. in 2005, this portfolio was expanded to include the office of infrastructure of canada, the national capital commission, the canada post corporation and the royal canadian mint two years later, it would include the canadian air transport security authority, the federal bridge corporation limited, the jacques cartier and champlain bridges incorporated, via rail canada inc., marine atlantic inc. and old port of montreal corporation inc. the old port of montreal corporation existed under this portfolio from 2006-2009. 42 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism so considerably in the past several years – infrastructure canada has seen massive budgetary increases over this period. the remainder of this section will focus on the gains of this department. chart 4. transport ministry—total budget of authorities used by fiscal year, millions of dollars, 2002 constant dollars stimulus responses in the wake of the late 2007 financial crisis focused on short-term growth (raising aggregate demand) as well as long-term growth by aiming to create favorable conditions for investment and innovation. these measures entailed both revenue side policies (cuts to direct and indirect taxes and social insurance contributions) and spending side policies of which there are many possibilities. one of the most popular choices made by governments on the spending side has been the ramping up of public investment in infrastructure. the infrastructure components of the stimulus measures in canada were approximately $40 billion (cad) over two years.3 the largest portions of the infrastructure measures were tax credits for households – e.g., home renovation and energy efficiency tax credits administered through the canada revenue agency.4 these tax incentives to households accounted for approximately 28 per cent of all 3 this figure is the sum of total reported stimulus measures for 2009 and 2010. this figure does not include funds leveraged by other orders of government e.g., through the creation of stimulus programs requiring matching grants, which, in the canadian case are a significant amount (department of finance canada, 2009). 4 knowledge infrastructure has been excluded (department of finance canada, 2009). crisis and opportunism | 43 infrastructure related stimulus spending.5 the second largest proportion was allocated to social housing, first nations housing and northern housing at approximately 15.4 per cent of total infrastructure related funding and administered through the canada mortgage and housing corporation (cmhc) and indian and northern affairs (inac) in some cases.6 the third largest component of funding was allocated to a mixture of provincial, municipal and first nations, territorial and some federal infrastructure—amounting to approximately nine per cent of total infrastructure related investments.7 many of the infrastructure investments that were chosen were often less complicated projects such as road expansion as opposed to more transformative projects such as transit for which the employment effects of stimulus spending are greater (ccpa, 2009, p.2). in many oecd countries, the infrastructure components of stimulus programs included transformative long-term projects (oecd, 2011). the chart below details spending by major program area for infrastructure canada between the years 2008-2011 (in 2002 constant dollars).8 funding programs have significantly expanded in infrastructure from but two major program areas in the 2008-09 fiscal year to 14 in the 2010-11 fiscal year. some of this is one time funding, such as support for the g20 and g8 summits. however, much of it represents a major program of investment into large infrastructure projects, particularly in areas that support trade such as the asia pacific gateways and corridors initiative; the ontario-quebec continental gateway and trade corridor and; the atlantic gateway and trade corridor. these initiatives involve major partnerships between the federal and provincial and municipal governments to connect canada to eastern, western and southern markets with significant funding attached to the development of border crossings, ports, airports, railway lines and major highways across the region. 5 calculation includes funding for the programs home renovation tax credit; enhancing the energy efficiency of our homes; increasing withdrawal limits under the home buyers’ plan and; first-time home buyers’ tax credit as a proportion of all infrastructure-related funding measures. this figure excludes knowledge infrastructure. 6 ibid. 7 ibid. 8 fields noted ‘not applicable’ (n/a) indicate funding has been discontinued. 44 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism chart 5. office of infrastructure canada – expenditure components by program type, millions of dollars, 2002 constant dollars. the role of the federal government in municipal affairs has gone through waves of engagement and disengagement over the past decades. the harper government is publicly committed to the principles of ‘open federalism’ and seeks to adhere to the constitutional division of powers wherein municipalities are ‘creatures’ of the provinces. however, their strong role in infrastructure development and a particular orientation to trade is a major area of federal involvement—one that sets a strong direction for urban policy in canada’s biggest city regions. in this role, the federal government is a leader, committing vast sums of money to build partnerships that will reorient our urban regions around a trade agenda. crisis and opportunism | 45 natural resources unlike the ministry of transport, the ministry of natural resources has been a relatively stable portfolio.9 the chart below shows the total budget by authority within the natural resources ministry for the fiscal years 2006-2011 (in millions, 2002 constant dollars). as was seen in the case of infrastructure canada, the department of natural resources leads in gains. chart 6. ministry of natural resources, total budget of authorities used by fiscal year, millions of dollars, 2002 constant dollars. the department of natural resources seeks to enhance the use and competitiveness of canada’s natural resources products. the department conducts scientific research and technology development in the fields of energy, forests, mineral and metals and earth sciences. as a lead department in the natural resources development they are involved in environmental assessments and their work must comply with the cana9 it is composed of the department of natural resources, atomic energy of canada limited, the northern pipeline agency, the canadian nuclear safety commission, the national energy board and cape breton development corporation. the cape breton development corporation was disbanded in 2009. 46 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism dian environmental assessment act and the cabinet directive on the environmental assessment of policy plan and program proposals. chart 7 (below) shows expenditure components by program type for the department of natural resources (millions of dollars, 2002 constant dollars). one can see that over the past few years, the department has focused its attentions on adaptation management (including hazard risk management and climate adaptation). some of these functions had previously been undertaken by environment canada and one can make the argument that environmental protection might be better placed there rather than a department whose mandate is resource development. chart 7. department of natural resources – expenditure components by program type, millions of dollars, 2002 constant dollars. the prime minister’s efforts to promote canadian exports abroad and natural resources in particular, has been a key feature of canada’s recent trade and foreign policy. strong lobbying for the keystone xl pipeline and the recent visits to china, malaysia and japan were aimed at increasing trade surpluses with these countries and underline the govcrisis and opportunism | 47 ernment’s strategy to use economic growth as means of paying down the deficit in time for the next election. in a 2006 speech, mr. harper set out his vision of canada as a “global energy superpower power” and was reportedly furious with president obama’s 2011 announcement to delay the keystone xl pipeline for at least a year. soon after, harper had established energy exports as the government’s new top strategic priority, with asia seen as the key market to target, making enbridge’ northern gateway pipeline to the seaport at kitimat bc an essential project (wells and mcmahon, 2012). this context helps explain why environmental assessments have recently been streamlined and also the alacrity with which prime minister harper appears to have backtracked in relation to china’s record on human rights. as corcoran observes “his [mr. harper’s] previous issues with china appear to have been sidelined, replaced in part by some neonixonian strategizing over potential economic advantage over the united states” (corcoran, 2012). heading to china, mr. harper set out his intentions and his hopes very clearly: “[a]s you know, our country is looking for new markets for our goods and services and china and the entire asiapacific region is an area of tremendous opportunity,” and added, “[w]e hope to expand on our strategic partnership with china and, in particular, we hope to deepen the economic and trade ties between our two countries” (corcoran, 2012). this represents a significant shift in policy by the government and it remains to be seen how the us will react and how deeper trade ties with china and asia will develop. opportunism amidst crisis: the narrative of austerity and the 2012 federal budget having examined federal expenditures over the past several years, we turn here to the most recent federal budget to examine some of its implications for policy development in the near term. for several reasons, the 2012 budget can be seen as a watershed moment in a politically realigned canada and speculation was intense leading up to its release. the conservatives having secured a much sought after majority were finally in a position to define their political agenda without having to depend on the mercurial support of the opposition parties. political opponents feared that the way was now clear for the conservatives to push ahead with the implementation of the so-called harper agenda, particularly in view of the fact that both the ndp and liberal parties had spent most of 2011-12 in limbo as they attempted to (re)establish long-term leadership and political direction. that said an uncertain 48 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism and fragile fiscal and economic climate, a weak majority and a series of political scandals including the so-called “in and out” scandal, misuse of the g8/g20 border infrastructure fund and the “robocall” election fraud made this a challenging environment within which to introduce an austerity budget. in particular it required the government to tread carefully as it balanced cuts in public spending with the fragile economic recovery and the political fallout that typically accompanies cuts in core services and benefits such as pensions and old age security spending. when the conservatives came to power in 2006 they inherited a budget surplus of $8-billion. in 2008, the government entered into a deficit due to falling tax revenue and higher spending. in its november 2011 economic update, the government projected canada’s deficit for 2011-2012 would be $31-billion, although recent indicators suggest it could be lower. in 2010-2011, canada’s actual deficit was $33.4-billion. whether or not the 2012 budget is seen as draconian response to this size of deficit, the government’s majority allied to its commitment to slay the deficit created an opportunity to prioritize its spending and program commitments in a way that was not conceivable in previous years. as during the election campaign, mr. flaherty and the prime minister said repeatedly that jobs and economic growth are their first priority. not surprisingly therefore, the first harper majority government budget on march 29th was titled and pitched as a jobs, growth and long-term prosperity budget, with links back to the economic action plan from their minority government years. stressing that canada has done relatively well in the global recession context and in job creation since 2009, finance minister jim flaherty emphasized instead the structural problems that canada must now address both for long-term prosperity and “to ensure the sustainability of public finances and social programs for future generations” the structural fundamentalism of the budget, that is, its greater focus on steps needed to ensure the full potential of the economy is intended to be the main message.10 the harper list of policies and initiatives (spending, tax and regulatory in nature) in their order of presentation include: • supporting entrepreneurs, innovators and worldclass research • responsible resource development • expanding trade and opening new markets for canadian business 10 on structural fundamentalism, see doern et al, 2013, chapter 3. crisis and opportunism | 49 • investing in training, infrastructure and opportunity • expanding opportunities for aboriginal peoples to fully participate in the economy • building a fast and flexible economic immigration system • sustainable social programs and secure retirement • responsible expenditure management11 the budget cuts of $5.2 billion, mainly referred to in the final “responsible expenditure management” section are not highlighted although considerable attention is drawn in the budget to the elimination of 19,200 civil service jobs. among the agencies mentioned in the budget to be eliminated outright are assisted human reproduction canada (beset with constitutional and court challenges) and the national roundtable on the environment and the economy (an advisory body not favoured by the conservatives, in part because of its climate change policy advocacy). further budget cuts are planned to reach about $5 billion a year by 2014-2015 (see further discussion below of cuts and the strategic review process headed by treasury board president, tony clement). under the above structural themes other key particular initiatives were announced in budget 2012). among these are: • increase funding for research and development by small and medium-sized companies, including through a refocusing of the role of the national research council. • in the resource development sphere, bring forward legislation to achieve the goal of “one project, one review” in a clearly defined period. • pursue new and deeper trading relationships, particularly with large, dynamic and fast-growing economies. • invest in first nations education on reserve, including early literacy programming and other supports and services to first nations schools and students. • move to an increasingly fast and flexible immigration system where priority focus is on meeting canada’s labour market needs. • gradually increase the age of eligibility for old age security (oas) and guaranteed income supplement benefits from 65 to 67. 11 government of canada, 2012, p.5-11. 50 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism this change will start in april 2023 with full implementation by january 2029, and will not affect anyone who is 54 years of age or older as of march 31st, 2012.12 as these priorities and initiatives demonstrate, the government’s response to the fiscal crisis has been influenced by the neoliberal framework and “commandments” outlined in the introduction. just as the financial crisis in canada was at least in part manufactured by domestic fiscal policy, the urgency with which the deficit is being tackled is just as much a question of politics as it is economics. in a political context it is important that the deficit is reduced quickly and, specifically, in time for the next federal election. having already committed to return to a surplus position by then the question for the conservatives appears to be how not whether to implement cuts. to this end much emphasis has been placed on strategic review. in canada, “program reviews” that check all government spending have been a feature of public sector managing since the late 1970s. at that time these reviews were infrequent and usually responded to political promises that spending would be kept to a minimum. it was not until the late 1990s that such reviews became a routine feature of canadian public management, culminating in “strategic reviews” introduced in 2006, and now “operational reviews” (not the same thing) introduced in 2011. these latter reviews are intended to find significant one-time cuts in services, rather than ongoing and permanent cuts as in the case of the former. “strategic reviews” were introduced to force departments and agencies to find critical savings and to use these savings to align with key government priorities. such reviews are conducted every four years with the objective of finding five percent savings from low performing, low priority programs and services. the goal of the latest strategic and operating review is to find ongoing savings of at least $4-billion a year by 2014-2015 from departments’ total $80-billion operating budget. this represents only one part of total federal spending and includes the cost of staff and benefits etc. the rest of the spending, including $150-billion in program spending and transfers, are not part of the spending review. consequently out of a total spending of almost $250-billion, including about $30-billion in interest on the federal debt, the government aims to cut spending by 1.5%. more than 60 departments have submitted plans to cabinet for either five to 10 per cent cuts to their budgets, by finding operating efficiencies and examining the usefulness of programs. 12 government of canada, 2012, p.5-11. crisis and opportunism | 51 the stated desire to avoid cuts in services is attractive to governments because it reduces the political fall-out with the electorate and provides the opposition and critics with less ammunition. the government’s strategy is to present cuts as targeting inefficiency, red tape and redundant “back room” bureaucrats rather than services and benefits. in order to further reduce the political pain some commentators have suggested that mr. flaherty is also conducting a “strategy by stealth” approach to realizing cuts and deficit reduction (reynolds, 2011). this view is predicated on two main patterns of action that have helped minister flaherty achieve “real dollar, per-capita austerity” over the each of the last 5 years without the kinds of protests and political fallout seen in other countries in response to austerity measures. first, reynolds points to program spending increases that are less than the amount needed to keep pace with population-plus inflation adjustments. a budget prepared in this way will show nominal increases in national expenditure every year (averaging 2 per cent a year) even though they are, de-facto, cuts. second, he points to minister flaherty’s attempts to look for and weed out government programs that are no longer seen to serve a productive purpose. by making small, incremental spending cuts, “here and there, hither and yon”, he contends that minister. flaherty has provided the world with a good example of “responsible restraint – without inciting mobs” (reynolds, 2011). because these kinds of cuts are difficult to notice, he describes the process as “austerity on the quiet” (reynolds, 2011). clearly this approach is politically attractive as it avoids minus signs on the fiscal ledger, and it is harder for the opposition to galvanize resistance around specific or draconian cuts. reynolds concludes it is an effective strategy that has managed to realize $10billion of savings in recent years. in spite of the political attractiveness of stealth as a means of achieving reductions many fiscal conservatives would like to see more severe cuts, particularly in areas that have become political and ideological targets or simply to signal government priorities. not surprisingly in this context, further job cuts are predicted for environment canada, in addition to the 776 already announced in 2011-12. consistent with a neoliberal agenda, environmental assessments have been seen to slow down projects and the exploitation of natural resources across canada, and in its northern regions in particular, and the government is keen to suspend these for projects pending, labeling them as excessive red tape and impediments to economic growth and jobs. specific programs and green energy initiatives were also being pinpointed for cuts and/or eradication. the target of these proposed cuts are clearly green and renewable energy programs 52 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism which, since the expansion of the alberta tar sands, have increasingly come to symbolize the deepening ideological divide between canada’s left and right on energy and environmental policy as well as the splits between the provinces. while ontario and other provinces have begun to seriously invest in renewable energy programs, alberta and saskatchewan look to the federal government for policies that facilitate greater exploitation of oil and gas as well as other natural resources. given the harper conservative’s commitment to jobs, growth, increased trade and their western political base, it is no surprise that spending on the environment and in renewable energies continues to be vulnerable. consequently the government has sought to minimize climate change as an issue, withdrawn from kyoto and effectively given up the pretence of taking serious action to reduce emissions. however, it is not just the substance of the 2012 budget that has caused concern; critics also point to the lack of transparency and informed debate that has been a constant feature of the process. bill c-38, also called the jobs, growth and long-term prosperity act, tabled the 2012 budget as part of a so-called omnibus bill. over 420 pages long, it has been described as a “statutory juggernaut” that introduces, amends, or repeals nearly 70 federal laws. it has been presented to the house of commons in a manner that may be without close precedent in canadian parliamentary history and has made proper parliamentary scrutiny impossible in the time available (galvin, 2012). the parliamentary budget officer has also been concerned by the lack of reporting to parliament on the impact of the cuts announced in the 2012 budget as well as the previous two and is fighting to have details released by the government. liberal mp john mccallum said this “slow oozing” of information over months erodes transparency and accountability and silences any debate at committees on what programs and services canadians may be losing (may, 2012). he also expected this delay and “lack of transparency” since treasury board recently ordered departments not to include details about the reductions in their annual planning and priorities reports to parliament (may 2012). conclusion the policy practices of the harper government over the past few years have transformed much of what the state does and how it does it. the narrative of austerity has been formative in the ability of the government to push through these transformative changes. in particular, the economic crisis and canada’s growing reliance on oil and crisis and opportunism | 53 gas for its economic wellbeing has allowed the government to shift policy direction in ways that might have seemed impossible when they came to power. as this paper has shown, the crisis of austerity is at least in part a manufactured one—based on the decision to reduce taxation in a number of areas. this narrative of ‘crisis’ has been instrumental in reducing government involvement in a range of activities and in plans to decrease the size of the public service significantly. numerous women’s groups have lost their funding; the roundtable for the environment and the economy has been disbanded; as has the canadian council on learning.13 these are but a small sample of groups and policy issues affected. at the same time, regulatory and oversight mechanisms are being eroded in such areas as trade and environmental assessments (woods, 2012). while the government is divesting its involvement in many areas, it is increasing them in others—as we have shown through the departments of infrastructure and natural resources. consequently, we argue that ‘open federalism’ is a serious misnomer and that ‘strategic federalism’ better describes the selective nature of the federal role under the harper government. our analysis of public accounts has sought to take a look at overall spending patterns and focus on two examples, but the data holds many stories of interest. rather than abandoning the neoliberal project, we believe that recent budgets, policies and priorities suggest that a more intense and comprehensive neoliberal agenda is emerging in canada. dissecting these changes and what they mean for the longer term will be a major task in the coming years. the well-documented restriction of information and control of communications complicates this task (office of the information commissioner of canada, 2010; the professional institute of the public service of canada, 2011; maher, 2011). but, such work will be pivotal in understanding how neoliberal policies, in the case of this government, are being practiced. we hope to have contributed in some small way to this dialogue. 13 as of april 25, 2011, thirty-five women’s organizations in canada have had federal funding significantly cut or ended all together (ad hoc coalition for women’s equality and human rights 2011). 54 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian 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(2005). the current crisis in neoclassical economics and the case for an economic analysis based on sustainable development. u21 global working paper, no. 001/2005. williamson, j. (1990). latin american adjustment: how much has happened? washington, d.c.: institute for international economics. woods, m. (2012, april 17). federal budget: critics blast ottawa’s plan to overhaul environmental review process. the star. http://www. thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1162871—tories-introduce sweeping-changes-to-environmental-assessments 103 toward a marxist theory of transition chuck smith this essay attempts to do two things: 1) to familiarize the reader with certain theoretical concepts (problematic, mode of production, social formation, historical conjuncture, class struggle; 2) to further the process of theorization of these concepts in order that they may be further elaborated and more fruitfully applied to the study and propagation of large scale social change. such an approach is utilized by the writer as the method of theoretical analysis in the study of colonial social formations. the basic thesis i wish to put forward is that, the elaboration of the concepts mode of product ion, social formation and class struggle will lead to the building up of an adequate conceptual framework for understanding and changing man's social relations. the key concepts mode of production and social formation are formulated and utilized in such varied ways that they often have very different meanings. this is not merely a matter of 'semantics' since these varied conceptualizations often lead to radically different theories and practises in determinate concrete situations, rather than being a question of semantics this is a theoretical divergence which at least in the first instance centers on what althusser calls problematics. that is the underlying structure of knowledge which renders possible the raising of certain questions in a particular form while ruling out certain other questions as unsuitable. to ask questions (even the right ones) is not the same as answering them. yet one's theoretical perspective is very much a reflection of one's problematic. following from this, the main questions i wish to raise, concern the theoretical status of the concept mode of production and the manner in which it exists in actu within concrete social formations given, specific conditions of existence (material conditions) and specific class struggle or class struggles, social relations and a specific historical conjuncture. within the context of modes of production it seems that many of the varying positions and differences of opinion arise precisely from the manner in which the concept is employed and 104 questions are posed. as cardoso points out, marx, from whom the concept mode of production is derived was himself less than instructive since he used "mode of production" ambiguously encompassing at least three distinct meanings (with possible combinations): the first refers in a descriptive way simplyto ways of producing; the second to a series of modes of production which become dominant in particular regions and periods and which define "progressive epochs" in the evolution of history (e.g. feudalism and capitalism); and thirdly, secondary modes of production which never become dominant "e.g. petty bourgeois modes, peasant small-holding modes". one can clearly recongize all three tendencies in marx but i do not agree with cardoso's conclusion that one must move from such a categorization to the concrete study of the evolutionary process of the totality of the european mediterranean area in order to tathom capitalism as the first universal mode of production which then dissolves previous modes of production." rather i believe one must begin with a reading which spells out the relation between the whole and its parts , as althusser proposes in this case between a dominant and other modes of production. before doing so, it is necessary to provide a definition of a mode of production at the most abstract level. i believe that with some modifications the basic problematic proposed by balibar can be retained. following the classic althusserian conception one can discern a pattern of invariants encompassing: 1) labourer (always labour power within the cm. p.); 2) means of production (the object and instruments [means} of labour) 3) non-labourer (appropriating surplus value in one or more of its component parts). these invariants are held together by two connections (relations), 1) relations of real appropriation, and 2) relations of property. the former refers to the appropriation of nature by man, or the real material appropriation of the means of production by the producer in the labour process, i.e. the production process. this concept approximates the classical marxist notion of forces of production encompassing raw materials and other subjects of labour, the labour process and object of labour (commodities) but explicitly manifests effects on the other (superstructural) elements. within the context used relation 1) also refers to the ability and skill of the non-worker appropridting surplus to set the labour process in motion. 105 the latter (property) relation in the combination, refers to more than legal property, rather it includes use/enjoyment as well as (legal) "property strictly speaking", the process of exploitation of labour within the ensemble of social and technical relations. it approximates relations 3 of production, as used in capital . balibar then goes on to complete the picture by introducing the concept of determination in the last instance by the economy. of the three inter-related structures, (otherwise called levels, elements , instances or moments ) economic, political-legal, ideological the economy is determinant in that it determines which of the instances of the social structure occupies the dominant place. dominance refers back to althusser's definition of over-determination... "it is the manifestation of the structure in dominance that unifies the whole. this reflection of the conditions of existence of the contradiction within itself, this reflection of the structure articulated in dominance that constitutes the unity of the complex whole within each contradiction , this is the most profound characteristic of the marxist dialectic." 5 the structure in dominance then provides the main determinant of the effectivity of material conditions and defines the primary conditions of existence of class struggle and other social forms. determination in the last instance, must be interpreted as determination by 'economic' material conditions, through a dominant instance. as balibar states in his self criticism. "the economic aspect (the 'economic' class struggle) is only one of these aspects cof class struggle], unevenly developed, unevenly decisive according to historical conjunctures, and never capable of producing revolutionary effects by itself . which by no means rules out , but on the contrary demands that in all historical periods , whatever the dominant mode of production and whatever the conjuncture, the ensemble of the class struggle is still determined by the 'economic' material conditions. "^ that is, the structures, define the conditions of existence of a class struggle which expresses an effectivity at the level of a transformation of the structures. change is never necessary in a teleological sense but 106 mutually conditioned and determined by the ongoing process of the structures combined with the specific events of class struggle. as pouiantzas points out each structure operates in its own connected yet distinct 'region' of practise, within a mode of production. the political exists as a specific level but also as the crucial level in which the contradictions of a social formation are reflected and condensed. political practise has as its specific object the present moment, the nodal point where the contradictions of the various levels of a formation are condensed in the complex relations governed by overdetermination and by their dislocation and uneven development. the problem of state power arises inside the structure of several levels dislocated by uneven development. the state has the particular function of constituting the factor of cohesion between the levels of a social formation. the struggle for control of the state, class struggle, operates along complex lines of development. following gramsci, pouiantzas posits dominant classes with specific hegemonic fractions engaged in compromises and power alliances with popular classes and fractions, whose power is reflected in ideological and repressive state apparatuses, generally reflected by the reigning class (upper levels of the state and corporate bureaucratic hierarchy) and manifested in all the structural levels especially ideology. for pouiantzas, unlike gramsci, agents are tied to the reproduction of the positions occupied by a social class. "we are faced with a series of relations between apparatuses, whose roots are deep in the class struggle. in other words the primary distribution of agents is tied to the primary reproduction of the positions occupied by social classes. according to the stages and phases of the social formation, that primary distribution assigns to a given apparatus or series of apparatuses its own proper role which it is to play in distributing agents."' during a revolutionary conjuncture or period of transition the possibility exists for radical changes in the primary distribution of agents and the role of the various apparatuses in the distribution of agents may in fact be drastically altered or in extreme cases the apparatuses themselves eliminated. 107 further elaboration of the concept of mode of production can now be made on the basis of these formulations. hindess and hirst very clearly define the structure of the unity of the two relations (property and real appropriation). they define mode of production as an articulated combination of relations of production and forces of production structured 8 by the dominance of relations of production. relations of production, define a specific mode of appropriation of surplus labour and the specific form of social distribution of the means of production corresponding to that mode of appropriation of surplus labour. furthermore the distribution of agents to the positions labourer/non-labourer is seen as a function of the social distribution of the means of production. in fairness to hindess and hirst they do not attempt to do this outside of their rather inclusive study of specific modes of production. hindess and hirst specifically define forces of production as the subject of work (raw materials, etc.), the labour process (personal activity of man) and its instruments. this is a vast inprovement over the all too prevalent ambiguity in the use of the term production by many marxists. for example "pierre-philippe rey quotes a passage from marx wherein the term production is used in a context referring to mode of production. this is not clear in rey's presentation where this term might easily be mistaken for productive forces. "in all forms of society, it is a determined production and the relations engendered by it which assigns to all other productions and relations engendered by them, their level and their importance. "9 similarly terray even more incorrectly posits that the instruments of labour are determinant in the enumeration and identification of the indices of a mode of production present, i.e. the order of investigation hindess and hirst wisely ignore terray' s formulation and extend that of rey to preclude any definition of forces of relations of production independently of the mode of production in which they are combined. yet despite their apropos criticisms of certain technicist notions, hindess and hirst carry their articulated combination of forces and relations of production too far, i.e. to the point of denying the specific effectivity of forces of production 108 as a social relation. in their attempt to deduce the productive forces from the concept of mode of appropriation, hindess and hirst establish a direct relationship between mode of appropriation, dominant instance and class struggle which bypasses the forces of production subsumed in this articulated combination, and denegates the labour process. in such a forroalistic deductive connection the possibility of a contradictory relation between the forces and relations of production virtually disappears in the articulated combination such that it is hard to envisage how such a construct can avoid reproducing its conditions of existence. ** more will be said on this in relation to the question of transition and class struggle. to avoid possible ambiguities it is necessary to clearly define relations of production. as mentioned such a definition must include appropriation of the product or some portion of it by the labourer and appropriation of the surplus labour by the non-labourer. following poulantzas . relations of production in class society, can be viewed as a double relation encompassing man's relations to nature in material production. "these two relations are relations first between men and other men class relations, and secondly between the agents of production and the object and means of labour the productive forces. these two relations thus concern the relation of the non-worker (the owner-director) to the object and means of labour. these relations involve two aspects (a) economic ownership: by this is meant the real economic control of the means of production, i.e. the power to assign the means of production to given uses and so to dispose of the products obtained (b) possession: by this is meant the capacity to put the means of production into operation."12 ernesto laclau, posits a similar hierarchical definition of a means of production as an "integrated complex of social productive forces and relations linked to a determinate type of ownership of the mean^ of production ownership of means of production are essential relations among the ensemble of relations of production. logically and mutually co-ordiri<itcd articulation of 1. determinate type of ownership of moans of production 2. determinate form of appropriation of economic surplus 3. determinate degree of development of the division of labour 109 •*. determinate development of productive forces ... a totality defined by itli mutual interconnections. within this totality, property in means of production constitutes the decisive element ."13 i will assume here that property refers both to legal property and the ability to set the labour process into motion (as noted cf. balibar) , not necessarily combined. my main criticism of this formulation and the similar less explicit concept used by hindess and hirst is that it's logic is basically economistic. property in means of production is the key element in the chain of determination which does not leave enough scope for the mutual inter-relation between the economic and its effects on the other levels which are reflected back in the form of the effects of the other levels on the economic as part of the totality of a mode of production or even co-existing modes structured by some form of dominance. if the economy is determinate it is because property in means of production and the other relations of production articulate with forces of production (as a social relation) and all oth^jr social relations and their effects at the level of determinant practises. in other words no hard and fast connection can be assigned to property in the means of production or other relations of production whereby certain productive forces and/or certain political, ideological or economic structures might inevitably be deduced. rather i prefer to consider these other elements as social relations which act upon and are acted upon by property relations. one must logically begin with real appropriation or the the forces of production. what does it mean to say that the forces of production consitute a social relation? i believe that this problem has for the most part been inadequately dealt with as a problem within marxist theory. despite these large gaps and silences i should like to offer some tentative k *u i 1* hypotheses . if one considers first of all the subject of labour (raw materials etc.) one sees that they are almost inseparable from the overall dominant relations of production. the distribution, exchange, circulation and consumption of the subject of labour are moments in the overall totality 110 of social relations which may involve a whole chain of agents in an extended series of social relations. if one considers the capitalist mode of production (cm. p.) it is undeniable that it expands the scale and scope of operations to secure a regular and cheap supply of raw materials often from pre capitalist rrodes of production which may subsequently become part of a world capitalist system of trade relations. much debate has gone on as to the need for the cm. p. to expand into all parts of the globe. colonization and imperialism are often said to arise by necessity from the inherent tendency of the cm. p. to expand. while a detailed review of such debates arc beyond the scope of this essay, i would like to put forward the position (in essence that of bukharin) that capitalism profits from the super exploitation of non-capitalist areas but does not need them in an absolute sense to continue as a system. that is the appropriation of raw materials is not determined by the dominant relations of production but is rather a discrete moment in the totality of interdependent social relations structured by the economic instance in a complex fashion (in the sense that theory and the real need not correspond directly). capitalism may not need to expand outside of its own system but will do so if apportunities for profit (an integral part of the system of capitalist relations) are presented. productive forces encompassed within the second level that of the organization of the labour process also constitutes a social relation. this is true in the sense that the form and extent of co-operation among workers and between workers and supervisors often are conditioned if not wholly determined by the level of productive forces as well as by relations of production in the strict sense. also the part played by the non-labourer may have some direct bearing on the reproduction/non reproduction of a given mode of production. finally technology itself is never completely neutral. the tool or machine arises within a certain context and serves certain functions. in the case of military technology it might serve either to defend existing institutions or to overthrow them. such a role is not simply a function of the level of culture, science, production of commodities, or general affluence, ill at least in the short run as the mongol invasions of china illustrate. similarly communications networks often manifest an effectivity on the nature of economic organization. in an extremely evolved form, given a determinate mode of production such networks may drastically change the nature of work and types of work needed. an obvious example is automation or cybernetics, in which technology originally developed for use in communications networks have entered and in fact revolutionized production. similarly energy sources prove more or less efficient and operable over time and the viability of certain types of energy may come to depend on extra costs incurred by resource depletion. another factor is that in any given mode of production the organization of the labour process, has certain ideological and political manifestations, as well as reflecting ideology and politics. for example the increasing organic composition of capital can serve to render certain occupations redundant, replacing workers by machines thus changing the nature of the previous social structure. the level of the productive forces is to some extent a reflection of the structure of demand itself conditioned by the totality. also rhythms of family life and popular culture reflect the nature of the productive forces in a distillation of effects from the totality of practises. thirdly there is a reciprocal determination (conditioned by the structure) between elements such as: the transfer of the social product; distribution of social labour; levels and amount of consumption and the nature of technical relations; raw materials available; the type and extent of supervision and the scale of production within a given conjucture, which determines what commodities are producible and in what quantities. 1 am not arguing that the forces of production are autonomous, but rather that their intervention with respect to the other practices should never be ignored or underplayed. the relations of production are determinate as marx points out in the last chapter of vol. 1 of capital but specific forces corresponding to those relations are not as simply and unilaterally deducible from the latter as hindess and hirst would have it. the two are inseparably tied together as each can and does manifest determination and effectivity upon the other. what is necessary as a precondition is that 112 balibar's three invariants (the labourer, means of production, non labourer) be present. in such a case changes in the social relations of production must ensue for the mode of production to change. generally speaking changes in productive relations will precede changes in productive forces. as marx pointed out attempts by english systematic colonizers to export capitalist agriculture to virtually uninhabited new lands like swan river failed to also export english productive relations. wage workers faced with free land (access to means of production) did not remain workers for long. they quickly became petty bourgeois farmers on their own. in many cases though .the introduction of new productive forces from a more developed mode of production will quickly transform existing productive relations. witness the rapid transformation of underdeveloped countries today when industrialization takes place. so as one can see it is sometimes the case that changes in the productive forces preced a transformation of the relations of production and create a new articulated combination of forces and relations encompassing a transformed mode of production. in such cases it is necessary for the old productive relations to change in accordance with new technological possibilities. if such change is not forthcoming then total transformation cannot occur. it is for this reason that despite technological innovations, phenomena such as the "industrial revolution of the sixteenth century" proved chimerical in terms of sustained growth and development. one must also keep in mind that within any particular social formation various modes of production often co-exist and that the articulated combination of forces and relations of production have to be viewed within the context of a world economy, a complex structure of complex structures which delimits but does not define modes of production. as bettelheim puts it "the development of the productive forces in every country is to some extent conditioned by world production relations. furthermore, within social formations social relations of production determine distribution relations (as noted by terray). • thus attempts to define capitalism in terms of commercial factors alone cannot prove theoretically feasible. it is not the instance of circulation or commerce which is determinate but that of production within a given social 113 context. that is consumption and circulation, the salto mortale of commodities is determined by what can economically be produced and the historically determined needs and wherewithal available to consumers. in other words the articulated combination relations/forces of production manifests a certain effectivity upon the political and ideological s^tructures which in turn reflect prevalent ideology and superstructural controls or effects upon the moment of production i.e. the economic base. so to reiterate, it is the totality of the mode of production which is determined in the last instance by the economy and upon which the effects of the practises intervenes generally, mediated by the dominant practise or practises. the conditions of existence of a mode of production must be thought of in terms of the demarcation of that mode of production by the global effect of the structures on social relations. this cannot be equated with the labourer/non-labourer distinction nor even the delimilation of classes with regard to the economic, which poulantzas defined as, "... classes with regard to the "economic" includes the following relations : relations of production, in the strict sense: producer/owner of the means of production. relations of distribution of social labour: producer/producer. relations of the transfer of the social product: producer/producer. these relations are dependent on the combination of the two economic relations, real appropriation and property, and so refer to the organization of the labour process and to the division of labour . "^^ rather the global effect of the structures on social relations must encompass the notion of social classes. social classes must be seen as " the result of the ensemble of the structures of a mode of production and a social formation, and to the relations which are maintained there by the different levels 1. economic 2. political 3. ideological. social classes thus manifest themselves (not inside the structure) but entirely as the "global effect of the structures in the field of social relations" . poulantzas then goes on to define social relations of production as, 114 "relations among agents of production distributed in social classes, i.e. class relations. in other words, the " social" relations of production , class relations, manifest themselves at the economic level, as an effect of this specific combination: agents of production/material-technical conditions of labour (real appropriation, c.s.) constituted by the relations of production . "17 now polantzas posits social relations, the distribution of supports (agents) to social classes as distinct from structures, "in social relations, the relations of production correspond to the social relations of production: but we can also speak in all strictness of political "social" relations and of ideological "social" relations. these social relations, as class relations, isolated here with respect to the instances of the political and the ideological, manifest themselves as the effect of the political and ideological structures on social relations. the different instances therefore mark levels and degrees in structures and at the same time in social relations ."18 i believe all this can be interpreted to mean that the conditions of existence of a mode of production are delimited by social classes and other social relations, (political and ideological) themselves the result of the global effect of the structures. thus before a mode of production can be transformed, its conditions of existence must cease to be operable. at this point i believe one must reject poulantzas' structural causality and posit at least the possibility of historical agents playing a direct autonomous and unpredetermined role in their conditions of life within the context of a given class struggle acted out within a specific set of historically determined parameters with differing degrees of freedom at the level of structures and the institutions. take for example the institution of the family. here one generally finds hierarchically ordered social relations which display a definite character or effectivity conditioned by the ideological, political and economic structures. the family, the school, the peer group, the community etc all play a role in structuring social relations i.e. socialization, and other such mechanism for the placement of agents into differing structural positions. yet all these institutions operate with a certain degree of relative autonomy and their exact nature can never be equivocally deduced from the structures. one might then argue that 115 it is not whether a particular agent occupies a particular structure that is the most important issue, but rather the limitations imposed upon any agent occupying a particular position are fundamentally more important. i would agree with this given the important exception of transitional conjunctures where fundamental changes often of a revolutionary nature become possible. these issues, of course, can not be resolved at the level of modes of production but must be theorized within additional concepts providing further approximations of the real. at a slightly less ethereal level i should like to introduce the concept of a social formation. a social formation closely corresponds with the ideological notion of a society, but since 'a society has no rigorous, clearly defined generally accepted theoretical position, the term is of dubious conceptual value. thus, i prefer to use the term social formation defined as the articulated combination of structures within co-existing modes of production or more specifically, "the social formation itself constitutes a complex unity in which a certain mode of production dominates the others which compose it... the dominance of one mode of production over the others in a social formation causes the matrix of this mode of production (i.e. the particular reflection of determination by the economic element in the last instance by which it is specified) to mark the whole of the formation. in this way a historically determined social formation is specified by a particular articulation (through an index of dominance and over-determination) of its different economic, political ideological and theoretical levels or instances. as a general rule, taking account of the dislocations which will be encountered, this articulation is that of the dominant mode of production. "19 a significantly different definition is offered by hindess and hirst. for them, "'social formation'... designates a complex structure of social relations, a unity of economic, ideological and in certain cases, political structural levels in which the role of the economy is determinant. it is determinant in the sense that the conditions of existence of the dominant relations of production assign to each of the levelr, a certain form of effectivity dnd a mode ut intervention with regard to the other levels . if the dominant relations of production are antagonistic, involving a social division of labour between a class of labourers and a class of nonlabourers, then the social formation contains a state and a political level as the necessary space of representation of the antagonistic classes. "20 116 they also specify that, "... the structure of the social formation is not deducible from the concept of its determinant mode of production. the conditions of existence of a particular mode of production prescribe the limits of variation in the structures of the economic, political and ideological levels if the mode of production is to survive. thus the structure of the economic level of a particular social formation must be governed by a variant or set of variants of a determinate mode of production but it may also include certain elements of other modes provided only that the presence of these elements does not contradict the conditions of existence of the dominant relations of production. ...the presence of a particular mode of production is not sufficient to secure the reproduction of its conditions of existence. ...the economic, political and ideological conditions of existence of the mode of production are secured, modified, or transformed as the outcome of specific class struggles conducted under the particular conditions of the economic, political and ideological levels of the social formation. the particular structure of economic political and ideological conditions in the social formation determines the possible outcomes of the class struggle conducted under such conditions ."21 both poulantzas and hindess and hirst seem to be in basic agreement that a social formation operates under a particular articulation conditioned by dominance and overdetermination originating at the economic level of the dominant mode of production. but more importantly the relations between conditions of existence, dominant mode of production and the possible outcome of class struggle (conjuncture) are not adequately theorized. hindess and hirst seem to move further in this respect than anyone else i know of, but there are still problems. for if the conditions of existence prescribe the limits of variation in the structures and the reproduction of the conditions of existence are secured, modified or transformed by the outcome of class struggles conducted under the particular economic, political and ideological levels of the social formation then we seem to have at least the hint of a vicious circle. crudely speaking the formula seems to go like this class struggle (conditioned by the structures) secures, modifies or transforms conditions of existence. prescribes limits of variation in the structure. 117 if class struggle which is conditioned by the structures secures or transforms the conditions of existence of a m.p. or s.f. which prescribes limits to the structures, then the structures are both determined and determinate. or from another angle, is it possible for class struggle to secure the conditions of existence of a m.p. and thus prescribe limits of variation to the structures if it is itself 'conditioned' by the structures? clearly the outcome of any given class struggle cannot be pre-determined by the nature of the structures. ample demonstration of this is expressed by the varied nature of revolutionary conjunctures as well as the lack of success by historians and sociologists in finding universal causal variables to explain revolutions. nevertheless class struggle does take place within limits set by the social formation and its conditions of existence. for example it is necessary to posit capitalist productive forces or post capitalist ones (even if they must be rapidly developed) before the socialist mode of production could exist. that is, an adequate surplus to satisfy the needs of all including those not directly engaged in production must exist. theoretically one is left in a position where it is class struggle which determines the reproduction, non-reproduction of a social formation but it is the economic, political and ideological conditions in the social formation which determines the possible outcome of class struggle conducted under these conditions (conjuncture) and yet class struggle itself indirectly prescribes limits of variation upon the structures. how then do class struggles come about? even when the conditions of class struggle i.e. non-reproduction of the conditions of existence of a mode of production are met, what is the spark which sets off the powder keg? or even, is such a revolutionary catalyst (the spark) necessary? if so what is the role of the party, the intellectual, trade unions etc within the conjuncture? also what of the premature revolutionary attempt? perhaps it is unfair to pose these questions outside of a specific conjuncture but the point is, what theoretical tools are available for an analysis of these questions. the best answers available are contingent upon some notion of social classes. that is, given hindcco and hirst's guidelines concerning class antagonism as the representation of 118 antagonistic relations of production at the political level, then class struggle becomes crystallized within the state which exemplifies the political level in all modes of production they deal with, (except primitive communism before the gentile constitution). at the level of social formations and conjunctures if not even at the level of modes of production one must also incorporate civil society into the political moment. it is at this broadly political level that transition takes place. the role of the party is to channel revolutionary energy, to organize to provide the spark at the right time etc. i do not see this as a zero sum total game but rather as an ongoing revolutionary process where the party must not only direct but also learn from and reflect the energies of the labouring class. at the level of the social formation one finds a multiplicity of class and status groups or fractions of class and the necessity for coalitions against the hegemonic bloc arises. it is any mention of such a revolutionary process which is missing in hindess and hirst, poulantzas and balibar and it is at this level that the work of 22 pierre-philippe rey provides a useful counterpoint. it is also at this level the role of the individual and specific institutions are most relevant and least pre-determined. there still remains the problem of how one conceptualizes a social formation. it is one thing to define social formation as "historically determined as a particular object" or as a real concrete object as poulantzas 23 does. it is quite another thing to formulate immanent tendencies with the social formation of a particularly constituted object. if bismarck's germany, france under louis bonaparte, england during the industrial 24 revolution and infinite other possibilities constitute a social formation then what if any is their common denominator? the presence of a state in class societies seems to be one very loose indicator but clearly the conception social formation does not imply the necessity of a state. similarly the "ideological" notion of a society does not really explain anything but merely gives a name to some kind of loosely knit social organisation. one is then left with a choice, determination by the dominant mode of production which structures the articulation (poulantzar?) or determination by the dominant economic structure within the* dominant mode more specifically 119 dominant relations of production/possession separation from the means of production) (hindess and ilirst). if one chooses the dominance of one mode of production which produces complex effects of dissolution or conservation on the other m.p.'s which give these societies their character as does poulantzas then one cannot also posit a social formation as a concrete 25 society at a given moment of time; since articulation of m.p.'s is itself a theoretical concept which has not as yet approximated the level of the concrete. my preference is to posit as hindess and hirst do a combination of reciprocally determined and determining elements of possibly more than one m.p. structured by the determinate nature of the economic level of the dominant variant or set of variants of a determinate mode of production. the presence of some or even all of the elements of a mode of production does not in any way necessitate that this m.p. will reproduce itself. in my view it is possible that not all the elements of a particular m.p. even the dominant one in a social form£ition need be present in some sort of necessary unity. one might sometimes find a feudal political level articulated with a capitalist economic level and perhaps some sort of mixed ideological level. it is not my intention to specify such combinations but i merely want to specify the possibility of such combinations within a social formation. this brings one back to the question of transition. is it possible to have more than one ruling class within the same social formation? is there an expecially unstable period within the conjucture where a dominant m.p. no longer exists and one can discern a 'transitional* mode of production? this is an area which has often been left untheorized in the literature on social formations. for example, take the third step in godelier's definition of a social formation. "3) define the exact form and content of the articulation and combination of these various modes of production in a hierarchical order, insofar as one mode of production dominates the others, and in some way -subjects them to the needs and logic of its own mode of functioning , and integrates them, more or less , in the mechanism of its own reproduction." (italics c.s.)26 120 the silence expressed here by the more or less speaks volumes. clearly if the dominant m.p. structured the social formation in a rigid hierarchical determination then the effectivity of class struggle within the social formation would become problematic, except as a reflection of the antagonistic nature of the labourer/non-labourer classes within the dominant m.p. such a notion would exclude class alliances, obfuscate fractions, in short become a practical absurdity. i do not believe that this is godelier's intention, in which case the reproduction/non-reproduction of the hierarchically articulated social formation is relegated to the 'in some way' in which the dominant m.p. subjects subordinate m.p.s to its 'needs and logic 1 . in this case reproduction is not theorized but merely hinted at, which further obfuscates the question of transition. if the manner in which structures and conditions of existence reproduce themselves is not known then it becomes impossible to specify how this reproduction ceases to operate and transition occurs. it has become fairly commonplace to criticize balibar's conceptualization of modes of production as a static inventory where the 27 problems of correspondence or non-correspondence becomes meaningless . yet i believe that a careful reading of balibar shows that his position is in many ways the most sophisticated one presented to date. i believe that balibar's problematic concerning his notions of synchrony and diachrony can be used quite fruitfully. it should be noted that balibar himself has rejected the idea of a transitional mode of production which he put forward in reading capital. in his self criticism balibar makes it clear that "transition is not, is never, for reasons of principle, mere supersession, an 'internal' results of 'tendencies' observable in the mode of production itself and responsible for the development of its characteristic relations of production, even if this development is simultaneously a development of contradictions. ...transition requires the analysis of other material conditions and other social forms than those implied in the concept of mode of production alone. "28 121 balibar then adds "there is a general problematic... of 'transition' in social formations i.e. of 'revolution in the relations of production'. this pertains to the fact that the concept of 'class societies', resting on mode of production which are of the same time mode of exploitation, cannot be constituted without reference to the historical transformation of modes of exploitation (in other words, there is no such thing as exploitation in general, only determinate forms of exploitation). but for all that there is no such thing as a general theory of transition , in the strong sense of an explanation of the causality of a process. on the contrary, it emerges that each historical 'transition' different , materially and therefore conceptually. ... historical materialism is not only a theory of the necessity of the (revolutionary) transformation of the social relations, but also a theory of the transformation of the mode of transformation of social relations such that two revolutions never have the same concept 29 earlier within the text of rcaiing capital balibar had elaborated a theory of social change which distinguished between modes of production reproducing themselves (synchrony) and those in a state of transition (diachrony) . "we have seen that the analysis of the relations which appertain to a determinate mode of production and constitute its structure must be thought as the constitution of a theoretical "synchrony": this is reflected with respect to the mode of production by marx in the concept of reproduction . the analysis of all the peculiar effects of the structure of the mode of production is necessarily part of the synchrony. the concept of diachrony will therefore be reserved for the time of the transition from one mode of production to another, i.e. for the time determined by the replacement and transformation of the relations of production which constitute the double articulation of the structure. "30 balibar then goes on to develop the notion of the complexity of a mode of production defined by the correspondence or non-correspondence of the two connections (productive forces and the relations of production). 122 "in the form of non-correspondence which is that of the phases of transition such as manufacture, the relationship between the two connections no longer takes the form of a reciprocal limitation, but becomes the transformation of the one by the effect of the other : this is shown by the whole analysis of the manufacture and the industrial revolution, in which the capitalist nature of production (the necessity of creating surplus value in the form of relative surplus value) determines and governs the transition of the productive forces to their specifically capitalist form ... the "reproduction" of this specific complexity is the reproduction of the effect of the one connection on the other... in the one case (correspondence c.s.) we are dealing with the reciprocal limitation of the effectivities of the two connections, in the other (noncorrespondence c.s.) with the transformation of one by the effecivity of the other. "31 the mode of correspondence between the different levels of the social structure (mode of articulation) of these levels can likewise be generalized. this articulation "depends in turn on the form of the internal correspondence of the structure of production". this generalized relationship (correspondence) can he analysed as the "mode of intervention of one practise within limits determined by another" for example the intervention of the class struggle within limits determined by the 32 economic structure. the length of the working day and wages are subject to a variation which is not determined by the structure but depends on the balance of forces. but the limits to this variation are set by the structure thus its autonomy is relative. so in this case the result of the intervention of political practise is to transform and fix the limits of the mode of production. "in the transition period, the forms of law and of state policy are not as hitherto, adopted to the economic structure (articulated with the peculiar limits of the structure of production) but dislocated with respect to it: as well as showing force as an economic agent, the analyses of primitive accumulation also reveal the precession of law and of the forms of the state with respect to the forms of the capitalist economic structure. this dislocation can be translated by saying that the correspondence appears here, too in the form of a "non-correspondence" between the different levels. in 123 a transition period, there is a "non-correspondence" because the mode of intervention of political practise, instead of conserving limits and producing its effects within their determination, displaces them and transforms them. there is therefore no general form of correspondence between the level, but a variation of forms, which depend on the degree of autonomy of one instance with respect to another (and to the economic instance) and on the mode of their mutual intervention . . . the theory of dislocations (within the economic structure, between the instances) and of the forms of non-correspondence is only ever possible by a double reference to the structure of two mode of production . . . periods of tranisition are therefore characterized by the co-existence of several modes of production, as well as by these forms of non-correspondence. "33 as noted earlier in this paper i would agree with this formulation of synchrony and diachrony only given the proviso that the structure of two modes of production need not be present in toto. this brings us back to engels ' question (one taken up recently by perry anderson in his analysis of the absolutist state). is it possible for more than one ruling class to co-exist in such a way that these antagonistic (warring) classes of non-labourers somehow balance each other and the state acquires a certain amount of independence? this may in fact be a real problem for the study of absolutism or even for the study of certain colonial social formations with dual indigenous and foreign ruling classes. yet if one accepts that no general theoretical concept of diachrony or transition is possible then i do not believe that one can posit state autonomy in some sort of teleological fashion as an invariant element in transition. this does not solve the problem of whether the state can function independently of the ruling class or classes in some instances which is a question not yet fully worked out. i feel that an independent state is possible and perhaps may have existed in sixteenth and seventeenth century europe and might -exist today in certain third world countries, but full periodizat ion of this problem would require a separate work and is not resolvable within the realm of theory abstracted from concrete states, social formations and class struggles. 12^ there has in fact been much debate on the nature of transitional "societies" such as that between sweezy, dobb et al on the nature of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in western europe (including a perfunctory comparison with japan). i believe that the main problems with such debates (e.g. whether to characterize manufacturing as feudal, capitalist or a transitional mode of production) have to be resolved into levels of abstraction to become comprehensible. it is at the most abstract level that the formulations of hindess and hirst are most operational. that is, the relations of production are determinate of the structure of the dominant mode of production which characterizes a social formation. that is, the mode of production as such does not constitute the object of theoretical investigation in this case, but rather the social formation. in the example given i.e. the case of sixteenth century western europe, i would agree neither with dobb who posits that the social formation ("economic system") was characterized by capitalism nor with sweezy who sees it as a transitional conjuncture, but rather with rodney hilton who posits a dominant feudal m.p. within the varying social formations, albeit one that was being undermined. that is the economic basis of those who still held commanding positions in the state was still feudal and in the terms of analysis offered here the predominant relations of production were still feudal (or so they seem to me without claiming any special expertise on the period). the point is at the level of abstraction of a social formation one can coherently make such a judgement. a very important theroetical question remains i.e. at what point in an historical conjucture do the conditions of existence of the dominant m.p. stop reproducing themselves and therefore the dominant relations of production? generally speaking i believe that the site of the problem can be identified as the point of intersection of the base (the articulated combination of forces and relations of production replete with ideological effectivities) and the superstructure (the state and political-legal level also replete with ideological effectivities). it is this correspondence which conditions transition. yet as in the example sited the changing nature of productive forces and relations undermining this correspondence may continue for a 125 period of say roughly 300 years in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. i do not believe that one can pinpoint the exact moment whence a given social formation is no longer dominated by a particular mode of production. on the contrary, what i wish to achieve is to provide broad parameters for the characterization of given social formations in given conjunctures. such analysis are not straightforwardly open to empirical prediction based on manipulation of key variables. one cannot specify the exact percentage of separation of direct producers from the means of production which would make capitalism operable for example. such an exercise would be an absurdity since obviously many other factos are at work and play important roles. the transition phase provides a difficult problem in theorization. it cannot represent a transitional mode of production but rather an unstable social formation, caveat emptor . for as bettelheim points out the starting point of analysis is not instability but rather the dislocation or nonhomology between formal (property) and real appropriation. "what marks the transition phase as a whole is not mainly the instability of the new social order, nor is it the abscence of domination by the new production-relations, it is the fact that there is still a relatively large degree of non-correspondence between the new production-relations, henceforth dominant , and the nature of the essential production forces.'^4 as noted i don't agree with bettelheim or balibar that this dislocation (diachrony) characterizes a new transitional mode of production. such a concept would emasculate the theoretical specificity of modes of production into infinte permutations and combinations. how then does one periodize transition? i will offer three possible modes of analysis corresponding to the degree of complexity of a social formation. at the most general level, formal appropriation (the possession of or separation from the means of production, appropriation of surplus, distribution of surplus labour) determines the economic structure of the dominant practise within a given social formation. in the first case that of a social formation almost completely dominated by one mode of production, 126 for example primitive communism, it is the immanent contradiction within the economic structure of the single and therefore dominant m.p. which provides the mode of transformation i.e. determines whether reproduction or non-reproduction of the conditions of existence of the m.p. takes place. the tendency toward territorial expansion accompanying population growth under primitive communism could lead to various crises at the level of ideological social relations. as the tribe, phratry or whatever expanded new forms of social control through kinship or religion might be called into existence. transitional forms of a superstructure (already dislocated in terms of correspondence with the economic base) might arise, such as the gentile consitution. at this point under certain conditions the state itself might come into existence a state once consituted would involve a different system of productive forces and property and this would help to create a new mode of production. the second type of transitional conjuncture again involves a noncorrespondence (in no way complete of course) between productive forces and productive relations, but in this cas.-> one will be able to discern quite clearly the presence of essential elements of two distinct modes of production. in such cases the dominant mode of production is demarcated by its more or less hegemonic control of productive property and productive relations albeit often in rather bastardized forms. such articulated modes ay in fact be particularly resilient and long lasting. in the case of domestic manufacture predominating in a social formation one finds predominant capitalist freehold property, bourgeois law combined with artisanal production carried out by direct producers (perhaps cottars) still in possession of most of their own means of production and a situation where merchants and usurers capital fulfills the directive functions and mediates between production and exchange. such social formations (common in eighteenth century europe) are not yet entirely capitalist, in fact metayage may still exist in widespread form, but they are for the most part dominated by capitalist institutions (even if sometimes of a perfunctory nature) capitalist relations of production and a capitalist state i.e. one controled primarily in the interests (if not by) a bourgeoisie. i would characterize 12? such a conjuncture as capitalist at the point at which the predominant mode of appropriation of surplus takes place within predominantly capitalist relations of exchange and social relations. the actual forms that the transformation of productive and corresponding superstructural relations take depend on specific internal and external contradictions of the the social formation delineating its conditions of existence and the actual course of class struggle witnin such prescribed limits. the third transitional conjuncture involves a multiplicity of more than two modes and forms of production which can again be expressed in terms of dominance set by the economic level but where direct state intervention would seem to be necessary to stabilize such a complex articulation in order that the dominant relations of production might reproduce themselves. for example in 192i lenin periodized soviet russia in terms of five separate modes and forms of production wherein the collective ownership of the means of production provided the determinant level but one which could only structure articulation of the social formation through the state and political practise. multiple contradictions within the varied elements existed which could have possibly served to undermine socialism of various points, one could in fact argue that this is what happened under stalin. but at any rate the main, point i wish to make is only that new productive forces were not immediately forthcoming as an inevitable result of changed relations production. such correspondance can only come about through struggle at the level of all existing social relations which is necessary because the outcome of such struggle while prescribed within certain limits is in no way pre-determined in any strict sense. in summary then actual transition does not constitute a new separate mode of production but a dislocated state of an articulated combination of modes of production (diachrony) where one mode is dominant. in practise the boundaries can be obscure, capricious and relatively undefined, but i prefer this uncertainty to positing a transitional mode which undermines mode of production as a theoretical concept. in concrete terms the actual transition is defined by a non-inevitable class struggle between the major 128 classes and fractions so the co-existing modes and forms of production which takes place at different levels and reflects the structural and superstructural totality. the state manifests itself as the region of condensation of the levels, but control of the state does represent a complex and possibly long and arduous accession to power. a further problem involves the generally contradictory nature of articulation of m.p.'s. can synchrony as a concept exist outside of tendencies toward transition? the answer i believe does not lie simply within the realm of theory. as i have said transition depends on determinate class struggle within the structural complexity of a mode of production or more generally a social formation. unique circumstances with their own causal specificity and relative autonomy play an important part at the level of concrete conjunctures. it is at this level that factors such as geography, climate, demography, personality, etc. come into play. they are never isolated from the structural complexity but neither are they simply or unilaterally determined by it or subsumed within it. thus the concrete conjuncture must be separated from social formation as a threoretical construct and should be seen not merely as possible outcomes predetermined by the structures but also as outcomes derived from the give and take of actual class struggle. 129 footnotes 1. callinicos, n., althusser 's marxism , p. 34, pluto fress , london, 1976. 2. cardoso, c.f.s., "colonial modes of production", critique of anthropology , nos. 4 and 5, autumn, 1975. 3. balibar, etienne in reading capital (b. brewster, trans), new left books, london, 1970. althusser, louis, pages 209-253. 4. another level theoretical is sometimes introduced but for methodological reasons beyond this essay i reject althusser 's distinction between theory and ideology and thus i leave it out for my purposes here. my reasons for doing so are grounded in what 1 take to be althusser 's fundamental demarcation of scientific work as the activity of generality ii, theoretical concepts on generality i ideological representations. for example marx's concept of mode of production could be applied to the representations of a particular social formation to produce scientific theory. whether this theory would have a specific effectivit^y from the ideological instance and thus would constitute a transformative element cannot be posited in a mechanical fashion and would very much depend upon the particular historical conjuncture, and it is the conjuncture which is at issue here. if as althusser maintains "the knowledge effect is the appropriation of the real object" then the real object of revolutionary theory must be revolutionary politics and the two cannot be separated as althusser would at times maintain. 5. balibar, e. , op. cit ., p. 224. althusser, l. for marx , allen lane, (b. brewster, trans), 1969, p. 200. 6. balibar, etienne, "self criticism: an answer to questions from 'theoretical practise"' in theoretical practise , no. 7/8 january 1973. 7. poulantzas, nicos, folitical power and social classes (t. o'hagan, trans), new left books, london, 1973, 12, 13, 40, 42, "on social classes", new left review , p. 54. 8. hindess, b. hirst, p.q., pre-capitalist modes of production , routledge and kegan paul, london, 1375, p. 125. 9. rey, pierre-philippe, les alliances de classes , my translation, p. 22, maspero, paris, 1973. 10. cf. balibar, e., in althusser and balibar, op. cit. , 1970, p. 235. 11. gareth stedman-jor.es, "modes of production workshop", communist university of cambridge, april, 25, 1976. 12. poulantzas, niccs, "cn social classes", p. 28, new left feview , no. tj-. 13. laclau, ernesto, "feudalism and capitalism in latin america, new left review , no. 67, kay-june, 1971, p. 33. 130 m. in cases where the technical conditions of existence for a new mode of production come into existence before the social relations of production, this does not necessitate transition but might facilitate such an historical process given a suitable conjuncture. an example of such a conjuncture could be china during the period of the warring states or tokugawa japan. 15. poulantzas, n., op. cit ., 1973, p. 63, footnote 8. 16. ibid. , p. 63. 17. ibid. , p. 64. 18. ibid. , p. 66. 19. j:n>ia.^;-p..i5.^?i}7> hindess and hirst, op. cit. , p. 31. 21. ibid. , p. 15. 22. cf. rey p.p., op. cit. , postscript. 23. poulantzas, n., op. cit. , 1973, p. 15. 24. ibid. , p. 15. 25. poulantzas, n., "on social classes" in new left review , p. 33. 26. godelier, maurice, "on the definition of a social formation" critique of anthropology , no. 1, spring 1974, p. 63. 27. rey, p.p. "the linneage mode of production", critique of anthropology no. 3, spring 1975. 28. balibar, e. in theoretical practise , op. cit. p. 64. 29. ibid. , p. 69. 30. balibar, e., op. cit. 1970, p. 297. 31. ibid. , p. 304. 32. ibid. , p. 305 33. ibid. , p. 306-307 carleton university symposium: braverman and beyond introduction by john myles in a period when the intellectual division of labour is intensifying, it is rare to find a work which is generally acclaimed as being "important", much less read, by social scientists representing a wide range of disciplines and specialties. such a work is harry braverman's labor and monopoly capital and it is for this reason that braverman's analysis of "the degradation of work in the twentieth century" was selected as the topic for a special symposium held at carleton university in the fall of 1977, a summary of which appears in the following pages. the centerpiece of the symposium was an address delivered by michael burawoy, assistant professor of sociology at the university of california, berkeley. it is reprinted in this volume under the title: "between marxist orthodoxy and critical theory: comments on braverman's labor and monopoly capital" . the paper presents in summary form the major points developed in a much longer manuscript made available to the participants beforehand. a subsequent revision which in manuscript form runs to 119 pages is forthcoming in politics and society (vol. 8, no. 4). in agreeing to prepare this paper for the symposium, burawoy accepted the difficult and challenging task of critiquing braverman from within the perspective of marxist analysis. the widespread acclaim with which braverman's work has been met makes this task all the more crucial. as with any great work, it stands in danger of being accepted as the last word on its subject matter, thereby becoming an impediment alternate routes rather than an impetus to further theoretical and empirical analysis. burawoy comes well qualified for his task. his discussion of braverman, which is mainly pitched at a theoretical level, is informed by his own experience and research in a chicago factory, the results of which are to appear in a forthcoming book entitled the production of consent on the shop floor, 1945 1975: the labor process under monopoly capitalism . perhaps more than any other contemporary work, braverman 's labor and monopoly capital reflects the vitality and relevance of the recent resurgence of marxist analysis in north american sociology. the seeds which braverman has planted, however, will wither and die unless nurtured in an atmosphere of intellectual struggle and debate. accordingly the participants in the symposium were deliberately encouraged to confront one another and avoid the unfortunate practice of avoiding points of disagreement which often passes for academic good manners and professional respect. as will be apparent, the discussants of burawoy 's paper fulfilled their mandate admirably. the most extensive replies came from leo panitch and donald swartz who, like burawoy, take their position from within the marxist perspective. john porter's comments, on the other hand, are probably representative of those sociologists who have been profoundly impressed by braverman 's work without accepting his marxist frame of reference. it is hoped that the presentation of the carleton debate in this issue of alternate routes will encourage more of the same elsewhere. | 223 an interview with pat armstrong canadian health care: privatization and gendered labour priscillia lefebvre is a collaborative ph .d . student at the department of sociology and anthropology/institute of political economy, carleton university (ottawa, canada) . pat armstrong is professor of sociology and women’s studies at york university (toronto, canada) . she held a chsrf/cihr chair in health services and nursing research, focused on gender and chaired the group women and health care reform for more than a decade . she has published on a wide range of issues related to gender, health care and work . pat was interviewed by priscillia lefebvre over august 2011 . priscillia lefebvre (pl): a large focus on your research seems to be the ways in which gender and labour intersect from the vantage point of health care delivery. what have been the main influences that have affected the trajectory of your research in terms of a feminist rooted political economy approach? why is this approach so important in understanding the contradictions that exist regarding the role of women within health care? pat armstrong (pa): it is difficult to identify the main influences on my thinking and research. growing up in a family where community involvement was not only encouraged but required meant seeking engagement at university. also, the red tory approach in our household did not fit so comfortably with the marx i read as a student in the 1960s or with the growing feminist movement i participated in. as juliet mitchell1 explained, marx was not good about women and did not provide a detailed blueprint for analysis, but he did offer a way to make systems transparent and to think about progressive change. in my reading of marx, work and the political economy are where the analysis should start because they are so powerful in shaping our lives; however, both productive and reproductive work have to be understood in historically specific ways and in ways that comprehend contradictions as well as interrelations. indeed, contradictions can provide a basis for creating alternatives. starting with power and economic forces did not imply ignoring ideas, discourses and cultural practices, but it did put those ideas, often blamed for an interview with pat armstrong canadian health care: privatization and gendered labour 224 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times women’s subordination, into a context that allowed us to see the power embedded in them and in their reproduction. furthermore, starting with the political economy did not mean ignoring gender and other basis for inequities. rather, as we are argued in the 1970s and 1980s, gender had to be theorized at the highest level of abstraction if we are to think through the implications for change in our lives. this relates, in turn, to another influence, which was involvement in student and other politics. my feminist political economy approach develops in such practices, as well as through engagement with other academics. canadian studies at carleton university in the early 1970s provided fertile ground for the further development of my ideas about political economy with a clearly canadian twist and so has my continuing policy work. as i became increasingly interested in feminist issues, i abandoned a thesis on the class origins of student activists and focused instead on women’s paid and unpaid work. the result was the double ghetto; canadian women and their segregated work,2 a joint project with my partner hugh armstrong, as is much of my research . when our daughter broke her leg and ended up in the hospital for weeks, we realized that health care covered all aspects of women’s work. paid and unpaid work overlapped in obvious and gendered ways, as the staff told me, but not hugh, where i could get our daughter juice and empty the bed pan. there were unionized and non-union workers, full, part-time and casual jobs, work defined as highly skilled and jobs defined as unskilled, occupations dominated by women classified as managerial, clerical, professional, and service, with many women from racialized and/ or immigrant groups. what it took us longer to realize but what we should have realized as political economists was that health care provides a unique context and required us to learn about a wider range of forces, policies and practices in care. women are not only the majority of workers, but also the majority of patients and of those who take others for care, creating complicated and often contradictory gender relations. equally important from our perspective, health care in canada offers a clear example of how universal programmes can create social solidarity by demonstrating the impact of collective action. what a political economy approach allows us to do is think through the ways work, gender and other inequities intersect, to explore the ways economic and political forces shape not only services and employment, but | 225 also ideas, and to bring together the complexity of work relations within this specific historical context. this approach also helps us see the contradictions in, for example, nurses fighting to distance themselves from links with women’s caring.3 pl: in a previous article published in a 1983 special edition of alternate routes1, you outline the problematic nature of quantitative data analysis as gender-blind. since then, you have been involved in several working groups, including the national coordinating group on health care reform and women (now women and health care reform), dedicated to researching health care reform policies and their impact on women both as health care providers and recipients. in your experience, what have been the greatest research challenges in gathering information on gender and sex differences within health care in canada? in your opinion, what needs to be explored further? pa: in my view, many of the challenges remain the same. there are still problems with the way data are collected and categorized, with the failure to collect some kinds of data and a further problem with the way the data are analyzed and with what gets accepted as good science. in too many cases, quantitative data are still seen as providing the truth and the whole truth, while qualitative data are too often treated as suspect. especially in health care, there is a hierarchy of evidence in terms of what kinds of data are accepted as legitimate and worthy of attention with the meta-analysis of double-blind randomized clinical trials taken as the gold standard because they are assumed to remove all bias. yet numbers, and categories, continue to reflect values. one example from our recent research is the definition of industry.4 in the past, statistics canada defined industry as ‘where people work.’ thus, everyone who worked in hospital would be counted as working in the health care industry. now industry is defined as ‘who you work for,’ removing from health care all those whose jobs have been contracted out, most of whom are women and many of whom are from racialized groups. a second example comes from data on work-related violence.5 our interviews with women employed in long-term residential care indicate that many women fail to report violence, in part because they will be blamed, in part because they won’t be believed, and in part because it takes too much time. the result is underestimates of violence in the numbers. 1  beyond numbers: problems with quantitative data, by pat armstrong and hugh armstrong in alternate routes: a critical review, vol. 6. ottawa, ontario: carleton university, 1983. pages: 1-40. an interview with pat armstrong canadian health care: privatization and gendered labour 226 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times at the same time, research is still published that failed to collect data by sex, and even more frequently, without analyzing the data by sex or gender. most frequently, the approach to data collection and analysis makes it impossible to do a gender analysis. women and health care reform has illustrated the problem by looking at wait times for hip and knee surgery, demonstrating that we need to look at the entire patient journey to see the ways gender influences how long women wait and even whether or not women get the surgery they need.6 a mere comparison of the number of women who get surgery compared to the number of men tells us little about equity. as women and health care reform struggled to figure out how to ensure gender could be included as a criterion in meta-analysis such as cochrane reviews, we came to realize that in their attempt to ensure scientific validity such reviews sought to eliminate context. as a result, they eliminated gender and racialization because both are about social relations in context. in addition, new problems have arisen since we wrote that article. at the time statistics canada data were free and now much of it must be paid for. in the past, we could analyze the data in the way we saw fit. now for access to much of the original data, you apply for access and then you have to go through a data analysis centre where the analysis must be vetted. of course, the government has attacked the long-form census in general and a critical question for feminist in particular, the one that asked about unpaid work. does gender have an impact, and in what ways, needs to always be part of the question, whatever the research, but this lesson has still not been learned by far too many researchers and policy makers. so, what needs to be explored further is a huge question. in short, we have some more data by sex, but too little analysis by gender and too much faith in numbers. pl: much of your work focuses on the privatization of health care and its detrimental effects in terms of access to treatment and quality of care. in exposing privatization2 (p. 163), you outline the introduction of privatization measures to health care beginning with the majority conservative government in ontario in the mid-90s. given the current tory majority at the federal level and provincial inroads to privatization in ontario, do you see this as a particularly critical time in defending health care as a public good, rather than a competitive market com2 bernier, kay wilson, karen r. grant, and ann pederson. toronto, ontario: university of toronto press, 2001. $24.76 cdn, paper. isbn-13: 978-1551930374. pages: 1-310. | 227 modity? what are your thoughts regarding stephen harper’s recent statement that, although the federal conservatives have no plans to go private, he cannot control the kinds of alternative delivery models used at the provincial level? pa: the best defence of public health care is popular support and we need to mobilize that support more than ever because we are facing a huge threat. the biggest threat now, in my view, is not costs but further privatization in all its forms. those pushing for privatization know that medicare is canada’s best loved social programme and so have privatized by stealth, always promising public payment. they have claimed there is a crisis and that health care cannot be sustained; that it must be radically transformed in order to save it. fear is a powerful force, especially when your health is at stake. our biggest problem in defending public care is complexity and the difficulty of getting people to understand why it is wrong to have forprofit delivery, even if the money comes from the public purse rather than from private payment, and why health care is as sustainable as we want it to be. i think the federal government will be very crafty while promoting deep privatization. it will negotiate individually with provinces and territories, allowing them to go their own way and blame the consequences on them. of course, the prime minister can stop that. monique begin did when she was minister of health and welfare. but prime minister harper will not intervene, so we need to put pressure at the local level and keep educating people about the perils of profits in care. if we do not stop this erosion soon, it will be too late. pl: in your opinion, how harmful are agreements such as the canadaeuropean union comprehensive economic and trade agreement (eu-ceta) to canadian health care and how are women affected in particular? pa: in many ways, these new agreements have much the same impact as earlier ones and have particularly negative consequences for women as a group and for particular groups of women.7 the agreements are written to promote profit and limit governments’ capacity to shape their own economies and public policies. it is much harder to influence policies if governments are prohibited from acting in the public’s interests and are instead forced to act in the interests of global profits. because more women than men depend on the state for services, financial support, jobs and protections against things like violence at work, agreements that limit or prevent governments from an interview with pat armstrong canadian health care: privatization and gendered labour 228 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times regulating, protecting, and providing have a particularly negative impact on them. the result is likely to be greater inequities among women, as well as greater inequity between women and men. pl: labour disputes, in particular organized labour, have received much political attention recently. for example, in an unprecedented move, postal workers were recently legislated back to work on a lockout. do you consider the recent use of back to work legislation in both the private and public sectors as threatening to the collective bargaining rights of unions? also, how do you think these latest negotiations will affect the collective organization and labour struggles of health service workers (for example, nurses and home care workers)? pa: the attacks on labour are no surprise and it should be clear that attacks on unions in the public sector are attacks on women who make up the majority of unionized workers there. one factor that kept families going during the most recent economic crisis was women’s employment in the public sector in general.8 we are building up to massive cuts in the health sector, where four out of five workers are women and where one in five women works. those who keep their jobs are likely to see them get worse as privatization is pushed further. cutbacks in public pensions and benefits will also hurt these women, as well as their families. at the same time however, women employed in health care enjoy tremendous public support. if the unions in the public sector can come together and resist, we may see real limits on attacks from the government. few doubt these women work hard, few think they are overpaid or pandered to by their employers, so it is much harder to sell the line about being pampered employees or to promote the politics of envy with them, as has been done with other unionized workers. pl: finally, in critical to care3 (p. 53), you argue that much of the labour performed by women in health services is essential in terms of providing care, yet remains peripheral in terms of social and economic status. your research indicates that due to this gendered division of labour in health care women are the primary health care providers in canada, yet women hold very little decision making power when it comes to policy. also, not only is it highly gendered, it is highly racialized. in your opinion, to what extent has the introduction of state level initiatives, such as the foreign live-in caregiver program, 3  critical to care: the invisible women in health services, by pat armstrong, hugh armstrong, and krista scott-dixon. toronto, ontario: university of toronto press, 2008. $20.76 cdn, paper. isbn-13: 978-0802096081. pages: 1-176. | 229 perpetuated these inequities? also, even if such initiatives did not exist, how far do you think ‘within system’ efforts, such as changes to policy, will go in resolving these inequities? is a shift beyond the present political system also needed? pa: these are complicated questions and difficult to answer in part because i think there are contradictory policies and practices. universal health care has undoubtedly helped women, both as care providers and as those with care needs. women’s employment conditions are better in the public sector and they have more power there, in large measure because unions have been strong, but also because there are pressures within and outside government to respond to calls for human rights and to set an example as a model employer.9 initiatives such as pay and employment equity have helped make employment in the public sector more equitable than in the private sector. of course, these gains are precisely why there is pressure on governments to abandon these policies and to attack unions; attacks supported by many within governments. this is not to claim that health care has been equally accessible or that employment practices in the public sector have resulted in equity but we can demonstrate that women do better in the public sector than they do in the for-profit one. at the same time, the way health care has been organized and policies developed have in many ways reinforced not only women’s responsibilities for care, but also the inequities among women. this is happening increasingly with current reforms. nor is it to argue that we should try to return to some ‘good old days.’ those days were not all good and, in any case, they are gone. we are dealing with a new reality and ‘old’ means of undermining the gains we made. nevertheless, i think that we should struggle for government policies that promote equity. universal public daycare combined with more public homecare, for example, could help make the foreign live-in caregiver programme irrelevant. if workers in these services were unionized and supported by strong anti-racist programmes, it would help address some inequities. however, it is not sufficient, in my view, to rely on governments alone. we need strategies that address conditions of work and care within the voluntary and for-profit sectors as well, even while we work for public care. we also need strategies to change the power inequities within households. i agree, then, with the implications of your question that we need to shift beyond the system and that we need to connect multiple policies in and outside the state, but i think that it is still important to work to change public policies. an interview with pat armstrong canadian health care: privatization and gendered labour 230 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times notes 1 women’s estate by juliet mitchell. harmondsworth: penguin, 1971 and “marxism and women’s liberation” by juliet mitchell. social praxis 1(1):23-33. 2 the double ghetto: canadian women and their segregated work by pat armstrong and hugh armstrong. toronto: mcclelland and stewart, 1978. 3 “contradictions at work: struggles for control in canadian health care” by pat armstrong and hugh armstrong in morbid symptoms health under capitalism, edited by leo panitch and colin leys. 2009. pontypool: merlin press, pages 145-183 4 “doubtful data: why paradigms matter in counting the health-care labor force” by pat armstrong, hugh armstrong and kate laxer in. work in tumultuous times: critical perspectives , edited byvivian shalla and wallace clement. montreal and kingston: mcgill-queen’s university press, 2007 “precarious work, privatization, and the health care industry: the case of ancillary workers” . pat armstrong and kate laxer in precarious employment . understanding labour market insecurity in canada edited by leah vosko. montreal: mcgillqueen’s university press, 2006. 5 critical to care: the invisible women in health services, by pat armstrong, hugh armstrong, and krista scott-dixon. toronto, ontario: university of toronto press, 2008. $20.76 cdn, paper. isbn-13: 978-0802096081. pages: 1-176. 6 “waiting to wait: improving wait times evidence through gender-based analysis by beth jackson, ann pederson and madeline boscoe in women’s health . intersections of policy, research, and practice. edited by pat arsmtrong and jennifer deadman. toronto: women’s press, 2009. pages 35-52. 7 “trade agreements, home care and women’s health.” by olena hankivsky, marina morrow, pat armstrong, lindsay, galvin and holly grinvalds. ottawa: status of women in canada, 2004. 8 “women forced to work longer, harder, for less pay by pat armstrong in speaking truth to power edited by trish hennessey and ed finn. ottawa: ccpa, 2010. pages 7-14. 9 precarious work, privatization, and the health care industry: the case of ancillary workers” . pat armstrong and kate laxer in precarious employment . understanding labour market insecurity in canada edited by leah vosko. montreal: mcgill-queen’s university press, 2006. | 231 an interview with sut jhally articulation, cultural studies, and education justin paulson is an assistant professor of sociology at carleton university (ottawa, canada), where he teaches political economy and social theory . he recently co-edited capitalism and confrontation: critical perspectives. sut jhally is professor of communication at the university of massachusetts (massachusetts, u .s .a) and founder and executive director of the media education foundation . he is the author of numerous books, articles, and films on advertising, media, and culture . for more information, please visit his website: www .sutjhally .com . justin spoke with sut jhally on september 8, 2011 . justin paulson (jp): as you know, alternate routes was recently relaunched after several years of dormancy, and we are quite pleased to have the opportunity to hear from you again. you were not only one of the first contributors to ar (vol. 3, 1979), but i understand that the journal also carried your first publication as a scholar? sut jhally (sj): yes, that’s why alternate routes has always held a very fond place in my heart. i was a master’s student in sociology at the university of victoria, and this was the very first thing that i had published. i remember having to provide a copy-ready piece to the journal, and because this was before the age of computers, a secretary had to type up my paper. the process was just very different than today, and reflects how the practices of intellectual life have changed over the last 30 years–from a time when almost every thing was written by hand, and then someone typed it, to a situation now where writing by hand is almost non-existent, and everyone types straight into a computer. and i think that is a very significant change. i remember talking to stuart hall about this a few years ago, and he believed that writing on a computer had actually negatively affected the quality of his prose. his reasoning was that using a typewriter makes major corrections difficult, so you really had to think carefully about sentence construction, etc., before committing it to paper. whereas with computers, you just write down your first conceptualization, knowing you can always change it later on. the problem is, once un-thoughtful stuff is in some (if only virtual) form, that becomes the starting point for both theorizing and writing. an interview with sut jhally articulation, cultural studies, and education 232 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times jp: let’s talk about that early piece for a minute. in “marxism and underdevelopment: the modes of production debate,” you reviewed the debates of the 1970s on what constitute the modes of production and how societies transition to capitalism. on the face of it, your work since then took you in a very different direction: you are well-known today as a leading media critic and an expert in cultural studies. but i’m wondering how, or if, this early publication nevertheless helped to shape your future direction as a scholar. do you ever find yourself taking up such theoretical debates in your more recent work, or in your teaching? sj: although i didn’t really follow up on the specific content of that piece–i haven’t written about underdevelopment or international relations since that time, in fact–i think the broader problematic that they were located in has never gone away. there is a very key theoretical term–“articulation”– that has been important to me, and to the debates in cultural studies in general, that is infused throughout the article. so when i teach these issues today, for example in a graduate class i teach on the cultural studies theorist, stuart hall, i refer back to the frank-laclau debate as the first time that i really came across the term articulation, and the modes of production debate as really one of the first places that it was used to theorize relations between things that seem separate but are connected in some way, a way to talk about sameness and difference. jp: i’m reminded of hall’s working paper from the mid-70s on marx’s 1857 introduction to the grundrisse, which touched on similar issues. were you influenced by that as well? sj: absolutely. what i find interesting right now is that the modes of production debate that focused around articulation led laclau then to move from thinking about modes of production within a social formation, to thinking about the relationship between different levels of the social formation (between culture and politics and economics, etc.) and he really became, along with chantal mouffe, one of the leading theorists in how to conceptualize that question. but the first place he dealt with this was not in the realm of politics, culture or social movements, which is where he ended up, but in the articulation between much larger structures. hall also has a 1980 piece “race, articulation and societies structured in dominance” where articulation is employed in an analysis of modes of production, colonialism and neo-colonialism. so i always refer back to this kind of forgotten genesis of articulation, that it actually really emerged in | 233 another place and then went from the modes of production debate to becoming a central conceptual piece within western marxism to talk about social movements and culture, politics, the state, etc. so, going back to your original question, although i haven’t really bumped into the same themes in content, conceptually i think i have retained that interest in how to conceptualize connection. jp: i wonder if we ought to go full circle and bring the concept of articulation back into conversation with political economy. sj: actually, that is my trajectory into these issues, because my first cut into media studies per se, in the realm of communication specifically (rather than through sociology, for example), came though the work of dallas smythe, who was a canadian communication theorist teaching at simon fraser. he argued that marxism had a “blind spot” when it came to communication in that it regarded the media as principally an ideological institution, whereas it’s really an economic institution. so he wanted to re-think within the marxist tradition how media should be properly conceptualized. because at that time, and we’re talking in the late 1970s, within political economy the media were still largely regarded as ideological institutions that were functional to the state, that were functional to the reproductive process of capitalism. what dallas argued was that instead, we should think about them first as economic institutions that produce surplus in and of themselves, but then also look at the role they play in the circulation and distribution of commodities. and in this understanding advertising was absolutely fundamental. so that was really the first time i started to think about advertising. and it was the same problematic of part-whole understandings, of how to understand what seems to be secondary and peripheral in terms of its place within the entire system. looking back, actually at around the same time i got interested in the debates that were taking place in cultural studies, through the working papers series of the birmingham centre, about how women’s domestic work, housework, should be understood in economic terms. was housework part of wage labor? was it separate from wage labor? did it produce value? essentially it was asking those same questions, which is ‘what’s the relationship between this activity, which seems to be not an economic activity or a key economic activity, and what people thought was real economic activity in the workplace?’ again, the same set of questions as the modes of production debate. are housework and wage labor the same? are they different? what’s the an interview with sut jhally articulation, cultural studies, and education 234 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times connection between them? what’s the articulation between them? that was really interesting to me, and then from that i started to think about advertising within the context of all this material i was reading about the relationships between things that seem different but are connected. that was what the modes of production debate was really about. so as i said, the content of it certainly didn’t stick but the general kind of conceptual questions that were raised have remained with me since then, and partly i think they remain with me because they were always central to cultural studies. jp: could you talk a little bit about the concept of critique that you worked with? the 1979 essay operated within a particular framework, yet also subjected that framework to significant criticism. in one sense this is the true meaning of critique, but it also strikes me as somewhat distinct from our academic publishing environment today, in which young scholars are too often content to simply denounce those who preceded them and move on–even if it means throwing the baby out with the bathwater. it’s less common to see students arguing that a particular framework is basically correct, and yet needs to be critiqued and improved for x or y reasons. have you noticed a change in the nature of critique over the thirty years you’ve been engaged in scholarship? sj: i’m not too sure i’ve seen it change a great deal because i think there have always been those different kinds of approaches to criticism, those different dimensions to it. what i do think exists is good critique and bad critique, and that has always been around. for me critique has to be productive, a kind of sympathetic critique, otherwise its just criticism. i don’t think you should be sympathetic to everything, i think there are some things that are just wrong and you need to say that they’re wrong. but in my view theory doesn’t proceed with giant steps. theory proceeds in small steps, and it proceeds on the shoulders of people who have gone before. i think that’s exactly how marx operated. he started his work with existing economic thinkers because that was the most developed work at that time. he didn’t say this was all wrong, he didn’t say classical economics was all wrong–he started there because he thought that was the most sophisticated understanding of where things were, but it didn’t get everything. and he proceeded to critique it in a pretty fundamental way. he called his work after all “a critique of political economy”. everything operates on the basis of what has gone before. | 235 i guess i take my intellectual lead here again from stuart hall, who i think has always had this kind of very generous way of reading theory–which is, you can evaluate literatures, you can evaluate people’s work, but if you want to move it on, let’s take the best of what’s there without rejecting everything. so, i think that’s the notion that i would urge young scholars to engage in. when i think back to when i was first a grad student, i think the piece that you refer to may be the first time where i was perhaps becoming more thoughtful and really trying to dig out what was useful in people’s work. it was only when i realized how much i didn’t know, how much we didn’t know, that’s when i think i started to develop a more mature view of intellectual work and research. not starting off with what you know you want to find out, but by really not knowing what it is you’re going to find out, really not knowing where you’re going to end up. if you know where you’re going to end up when you start doing research, i wouldn’t really call that research, i’d call that something else. so for me, open-mindedness, a kind of sympathetic view of what’s gone before is a key aspect of advancing knowledge. i am not saying that everything that’s gone on before is great, but taking the most productive aspects and moving theory on, one step at a time. i think that marx operates that way and i think that stuart hall operates that way–in this very, very sympathetic and productive way where you keep on theorizing, you don’t stop at any time and it’s a constant process of evaluating what’s there and moving on slowly. jp: i liked the way you framed that. i think you once noted that your interest in the question of determination is not based in political dogmatism, it’s simply in the nature of being a social scientist. and similarly you’ve argued that the function of universities is to train people to change the world in some way–not necessarily to offer them a pre-written script for how to do that, or to tell them what kind of world to change it into–but universities shouldn’t merely reproduce knowledge about the world nor merely train people for jobs. and this conviction has led you to become a public intellectual. but as a public intellectual based in the university, do you find much resistance to these principles? is the university changing in its ability to train students to think critically, and try to change the world in some way? is it becoming less receptive for criticism and praxis, and more about career training? sj: i think it depends on which university, and which sector of higher education you look at. there’s no doubt that the american univeran interview with sut jhally articulation, cultural studies, and education 236 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times sity is changing. public universities are becoming less public in that there is just less public money that goes into education now. and as that has dried up, what’s taken its place is corporate money, and so i think you’re seeing a kind of corporatization and a militarization of the university in terms of its funding that you never saw before. for example, at the university where i am there are essentially two campuses: there’s the sciences which have all the external research money (either corporate or federal) and then there’s the social sciences and humanities, and we’re very much the poor neighbours of the rich people who live up the hill. our function is essentially to teach people, and the function of the north side of the university is to bring in the money and do the research. and as public money is drying up, the nature of teaching is changing as well in that there are just less tenure track people and positions, with a lot of them being converted to adjunct positions, or to limited term positions. so there’s just a lack of stability on the employment side. i think tenure is fundamental to the intellectual life of a university in that it gives you the chance to experiment, it gives you the chance to take a risk, it gives you the opportunity to say things that might be unpopular in the classroom. and that aspect of academic life is changing, at least in the u.s. i don’t think that tenure is being taken away in some major way; it’s just being slowly eroded because there’s fewer of those kinds of positions. so the people who are teaching students these days, especially in the social sciences and humanities, don’t have the stability and the protection that they perhaps once would have had. and i think that is influencing both research and teaching. at the same time i think students are also changing in the sense that a post-secondary education is seen by many students as a necessity, and as training for a job. so there is a push for professional training, the push for something that’s practical, that will provide a more or less immediate return on the very large personal investment many students make in their education. there has of course always been an element of this, but i think the emphasis is increasing, and it’s really putting the notion of a “liberal education” under pressure, and changing the context within which we operate in the classroom. so i think we just have be much more aware of what we are doing in our pedagogy. teaching for me is a key component of being an intellectual (as important as research and writing). actually, it is a key component of being a public intellectual, because the public is not just out there | 237 beyond the ivory tower–the classroom is also a public space populated by people who do not read our disciplinary journals. these publications have an important role in our professional lives, but our scholarly articles are written for a particular audience of our colleagues that require a quite specialized, technical and sometime jargonistic language. so in that sense i think teaching is a vital practice for people who aspire to have some kind of “public” presence, who regard the function of knowledge as being broader than just job qualification. i think there is a sense that if you want to have this kind of more engaged public presence, you have to think beyond the walls of the academy. but there is a great opportunity within the academy to talk to people who you wouldn’t be otherwise able to reach, and to be able to get them to ask questions in a new way. now one of the questions you asked me was about the nature of critique, and how you engage that. i don’t think my job, especially in the classroom, is to tell people what to do–that’s their job to figure out, and will be driven by their own ethical and moral sense about their lives. that’s not a function that universities should engage in, to tell what people what kinds of political action they should take. i think our job is to get people to see the world as clearly as possible, and that in itself is a radical act. to see the world as clearly as possible in all its complexity and with the implications of why the world operates like it does, and then to say, look, the world isn’t just created, it doesn’t fall from heaven fully formed, it’s created by people, it’s created by interests, it’s created by human activity, and you can either be a bystander to that, or you can participate actively in the creation of the world in which you want to live. but if you’re a bystander, don’t tell me you’re not political, bystanders are also political, bystanders are essentially going along with the world the way it is. that is also a political statement. so what is the function of knowledge? it’s to destroy the illusion that people are somehow separate from the world. i want to destroy the illusion that people do not have a responsibility to the world. in my classes, when students leave i want them to think about what their moral responsibility is. my student evaluations at the end of the semester are quite interesting sometimes. one person wrote, “i guess it’s good to know this stuff, but i just wish i didn’t.” because ignorance is, literally, bliss. i think that should be the key intellectual function of universities, to destroy ignorance, and to give people real an interview with sut jhally articulation, cultural studies, and education 238 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times information and understandings about the world in which they live, and to empower them to be able to take a stance in and to the world. i’ll say to my students, “look, i’m not telling you what to do, you want to go and work in business, in corporations, then that’s fine, but be aware of what you’re doing, that you’re making a moral decision, an ethical decision, that you are going to participate in this system which we just spent a semester looking at. that the values of that system are now your values, you are not just going along blindly, you are now part of that.” that’s what i want to do, to empower people in terms of their own responsibilities and on the basis that they really understand the world as clearly as possible. beyond that i don’t think that’s there’s much we can, or even should do. but having said that, i think there’s a reason why a lot of students come out of universities with a different political viewpoint than when they went in. because the post-secondary sector, at least in the united states, is the last place in the culture where there is any kind of intellectual diversity left. the political culture is now totally bought up, it’s totally colonized, and there is no way that you can have any kind of real meaningful debate about fundamental things within the political sphere. that was one the most brilliant things that corporations figured out–we’ll take over not only the republican party, that’s our traditional party, but we’ll take over the democratic party as well, and in that way take over the whole of politics. that is how corporate interests become the national interest. the political sphere is gone, the media sphere is gone, the public sphere is gone, the state is gone. the universities and colleges are the last place left, and that’s why they’re now coming under attack from the right wing, why they’re coming under attack from corporations– it’s an attempt to shut down the last bastion of seeming diversity. but it’s no accident that when young people are exposed to diversity, when they’re given opposing view points, it’s not surprising to me that they often think that those left wing progressive ideas actually make sense. that’s what always gives me hope, that the right is scared stiff of real debate, the right is scared stiff of real knowledge because they know the vast majority of people, if you presented things to them in a fair way, that the game of hegemony will be over. so they have to shut down that debate through monopoly. for those of us who are in the university, i think we are engaged in one of the last efforts of resistance to this corporate takeover. | 239 jp: and this was one of the insights of cultural studies, was it not? that most people aren’t simply stupid or beset with ‘false consciousness’, but that if given the opportunity to think critically, without proselytization by the party, that they will look somewhat askance at what’s going on in the world. sj: the question i would want to pose is “why do the majority of people vote solemnly every four years against their economic interests?” i don’t think that’s because they’re stupid, i think that’s because there are more aspects of people’s identities than just their economic identities. and the right has figured this out, and especially in the united states, has really made quite explicit appeals to racial identity. and i think that’s one of the things that marxists couldn’t quite figure out, that there are other things in people’s experiences were just as powerful, perhaps more powerful, than class. for them it was as people got poorer and poorer, the more radical they would become, the more the proletarian consciousness will rise. what that ignored was some of the key findings of cultural studies, that there is never a straightforward relationship between reality and peoples’ perception of that reality. that the perception of reality always goes through a cultural and symbolic filter, and if you can control that cultural and symbolic filter you can appeal to people on some other level, and tell a story about why they’re poor, and how the people to blame for why they’re poor aren’t capitalists but those filthy immigrants who have come and taken our jobs. this is what althusser called an “imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.” it is important to stress that it wasn’t a “false” relationship, but an imaginary one that audiences have to actively engage with, and there is no guarantee as to its success. however, i think sometimes cultural studies went too far on the active audience stuff, the idea that people are really active and you can’t control them. well, i think people are active, as human beings we are always active in the creation of meaning because there is never such a thing as natural meaning. meaning is always up for grabs, so the idea of an active audience is fundamentally built into the nature of us as human beings. but that doesn’t mean that active audiences can’t be controlled. the “imaginary relation” that we are encouraged to experience the world through can be a very powerful filter of control that talks to you, again in althusser’s terms it “interpellates” you in powerful ways, and leads you down a particular direction. an interview with sut jhally articulation, cultural studies, and education 240 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times in that way you can actively make meaning (actually i don’t know any other way you make meaning if not actively) but someone else can direct it because the conditions of interpretation are not of your own making. and that is why the institutions of public relations and advertising form such a large part of the work of control of modern society. unfortunately, cultural studies lurched for a time into a direction where that broader social, economic and cultural context of interpretation kind of disappeared, and what we got were lots of fan studies about pleasure, about why people were doing certain kinds of things, making certain kinds of meanings divorced from this broader structure. and i think that’s still the case. so i encourage graduate students to go back to the kinds of concerns that animated cultural studies in the original phase. for example the book policing the crisis, which i think is one of the seminal pieces that emerged out of cultural studies with a central focus on questions of articulation and of conjuncture, is in my mind an exemplary methodological and theoretical text. it starts off with the phenomena in the mid 1970s of british (english actually) judges starting to hand down these ridiculously lengthy jail sentences, twenty years, for what were very common crimes that used to be punished by a few years. and stuart hall and his colleagues at the birmingham centre for contemporary cultural studies started to ask, ‘what is going on here? why are black youth being treated in this way?’ and starting from these small incidents they teased out, theoretically and empirically, what was going on in society as a whole, that this was part of a new conjuncture, a new economicpolitical conjuncture that was responding to the changing imperial role of britain in global terms. hall argues that we are still in the hegemonic project that was birthed at that time: thatcherism was the first part, blair was the second , and now the conservative-liberal coalition is the third. jp: you’ve seen the reaction to the riots–someone was jailed three years for stealing a loaf of bread? sj: and four years for simply posting on facebook! again, we are in that moment where these sentences tell you something else about what’s going on. that was the brilliance of policing the crisis. they started off somewhere small and they ended up with a crisis of the whole society. that is the best kind of sociological work, empirically grounded and theoretically important. i think the best work | 241 has to be empirically grounded. we need theory, yes, but theory by itself is not enough. for me (and i might be unusual in this) theory only helps make sense of the world, helps make sense of something we could call reality. and for that you need to have other ways of linking theory up with the world: evidence. in my own work, and in my teaching, its always about evidence. i start off telling my students that they shouldn’t believe me, that i am just spinning them a story about the world and how it works. so how do we decide what is useful for explaining the world? how do we decide between different “theories”? well, that requires intellectual work. that requires research. that requires proof. i think that’s what c. wright mills called ‘the sociological imagination’. you need the sociological imagination. otherwise, you’re just in religion, you’re just in faith–“i think this is correct this because i believe it.” this is really relevant within the united states right now because there are actually questions about how best to understand the world: by a kind of rational, scientific view of the world, or a view of the world that just refuses that and is based on faith. it’s really a very, very worrying sign right now that the next president of the united states, if he’s one of the republican frontrunners, may not believe in science, won’t believe in evolution, doesn’t believe the science around climate change. jp: i don’t think the last one did, either. sj: well, the view on bush was that he was just a front, and that the people running behind him were much more rational. but there wasn’t this anti-scientific view that is really now so powerful within the mainstream of the republican party. and again, i don’t think that’s just an accident. it’s being created and spun through public relations and through ideological work. the fact that 40 percent of the population in the united states doesn’t believe that climate change is connected to human activity isn’t just because americans are stupid. it’s because there has been an immense amount of ideological work that has gone into constructing that as an opinion. jp: so thinking about teaching again, do you see the role of teaching in part to inoculate students against this kind of, what shall we call it, faith-based storytelling? sj: i think it actually is much more to do with an old-fashioned sense of what “liberal education” is, what learning is, and figuring out exactly how the world works in some kind of rational way. it is a commitment to a rational view of the world, it is a commitment to an interview with sut jhally articulation, cultural studies, and education 242 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times the enlightenment view of the world that for a long time we didn’t even question. what’s happening right now is that that view of the world is being questioned from both the right (who see the truth in faith) and the postmodernists who don’t see truth anywhere. at the very moment when we need scientific clarity to deal with the collapse of our physical and financial environment is the very moment when a commitment to that view of the world is eroding. jp: speaking of collapse, you argued in “advertising and the end of the world” that advertising would be responsible for destroying the world as we knew it in about ten years. it’s now more than a decade later, and the world seems to sputter on in some recognizable form. sj: what i think i said was that the environmental catastrophe would hit some 70 or 80 years down the road, but to avert it, we have to take action now, so that we have very little time left to deal with it. actually, given where we are in terms of climate change and the collapse of the oceans and fishing, 70 years may have optimistic! and while it is impossible to predict with any certainty when things will happen, i don’t think there is any doubt that they will happen. the actual crisis when we won’t be able to continue might be a long time coming, and will certainly happen after i am dead and my ashes scattered in the ocean. and yet to stop that crisis occurring then, we have to take action now. which is why i always use the metaphor (which i got from my doctoral advisor bill leiss) of the oil tanker, which because of its size and momentum has to start turning well before their seems to be any visible danger, heading towards the shore,. and that’s where we are right now. we have to make that change right now, even though the effects of it may not be felt for quite a while. i think that’s what some people call the “sunny day syndrome”. things seem to be fine, the sun is shining, the weather isn’t that extreme, you turn on your tap and water comes out of it, and right now we’re saying, “where’s the crisis?” and so you’ve got to have this long-term view of the world. which is very difficult to do. i mean, from an evolutionary perspective, we have never had to think about our actions that far into the future. most of the time through human history we’ve been, “okay, how do we survive until tomorrow? how do we get enough food now, and perhaps last us through the winter?” and so we’re actually, in one sense, going against eons of evolution, in terms of having to think that far into the future. and i think that’s the function of knowledge, and we have to evolve, or at least develop, a new way of thinking about ourselves. | 243 i think actually everything i said in “advertising and the end of the world” is quite accurate. the crises have just gotten worse and worse, our environmental crisis, our ecological crisis, just the resource crisis around oil. i mean when i first wrote “advertising at the edge of the apocalypse” peak oil wasn’t really a thing at that time. now we know we are in trouble around resources. we know that our oceans are in trouble, through acidification. we’re overfishing and fish are being made extinct by the day. our financial systems are collapsing. and i don’t think there’s any guarantee that the collapse of capitalism will led to socialism. as marx said, “the future could be either socialism or barbarism.” and i think there’s very strong evidence, and especially if this kind of the anti-scientific, faith-based view of the world is going to continue–i’m not sure it’s going to predominate, but it’s going to stop the political system from functioning properly–that our future may be barbarism. again in the article and film, i talked about how the cultural and intellectual ground on which we operate will determine how far into the future we can see and what we regard as important issues. to the extent that advertising remains the ground, it remains the environment within which we think about these things, all these questions, these long-term questions, they’re beyond the horizon, they’re beyond our capability to think about. and it’s partly also that advertising and marketing, to the extent that they are so fundamental to promoting expanding consumption, are pushing the environmental and resource collapse even faster. actually in the film i pointed to the depletion of the ozone layer as an indication of the coming catastrophe. but i think we can actually point to that as a way of showing what a possible solution may be, because the depletion of the ozone layer has partly been dealt with by taking collective action. by nations coming together and deciding to take collective action, and that’s exactly what we need. i think we’re at a time in the world where urgent action is needed. and one piece of advice i give to graduate students in particular is to concentrate your intellectual work on something that’s important, research something that’s connected to the world out there. don’t just do research on things that you find interesting in and of themselves. your work is part of this movement that needs to change how we look at things, and we all play small parts in that. what role are you going to play? for example, within communication, are you going an interview with sut jhally articulation, cultural studies, and education 244 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times to study (and i don’t mean to insult people) the ironic dimensions of the simpsons and the contradictions of postmodern ideology, or are you going to look at really something much more fundamental? are you going to look at, for example, how the simpsons and irony are used to paralyze people from actually taking action? because they think they are taking action by watching the simpsons, by laughing along at the irony. jp: before we wrap up, i’d like to ask you a bit about how you view your work with the media education foundation. with the rise of so much social media, is there a continued role for documentary films, the kinds of things that the media education foundation produces? is that going to have to change at some point, or will there still be a role for ‘old-fashioned’ films in the classroom? sj: well i hope there’s a role for it, because that’s how the media education foundation is going to survive, and i think there will be a role for it, but you have to watch things as they progress. classroom technology is changing, and it’s much easier now for people to be directly connected to the web when they are teaching. it’s easier for students to be connected too, and it’s one of the most maddening things teachers face these days–students who are on their cell phones and on laptops checking their facebook pages when they’re in class. but instructors also have access to this, and i think that will change things. you can go straight to a youtube clip to show something. and i think that’s a positive move forward. there’s more access to immediate knowledge, there are more possibilities for people to use things that are going to engage students. but i think we will continue to do serious documentaries, because at some point, you can’t just communicate through threeminute clips. at some point you need sustained intellectual attention to something to really understand it. and that’s actually one of the things i worry about most, is what is happening to our ability to engage in this sustained intellectual effort. can young people who have grown up in an internet age where everything is short, read a book of theory? can they read a book of research? do they have the ability to focus for how long it takes to read a book? can they sit in a lecture for an hour and a quarter, without being disrupted by having to check their email or twitter account? i know i sound like an old grump, and it is not because i am a reflexive luddite. but environment and context is everything in my book, and intellectual work requires sustained focus on one thing. but at the same time, i am not | 245 going to fight some defensive battle around this. if the new context requires shorter, snappier pieces, then that’s the language and form we will have to use. jp: would the shorter pieces be teasers for longer documentary films? sj: i don’t think so. i’m not sure if you’ve seen this animated piece that was produced in conjunction with a david harvey lecture called “the crisis of capitalism.” it is really quite wonderful and a great way to communicate complex ideas. you look at youtube, and the harvey lecture got a million and a half hits! and so i’m actually really interested in that as a model, experimenting with those kinds of techniques and those kinds of animation strategies to get people to think about—in two or three minute pieces–something like the healthcare system in the u.s. in a new way. can you get them to think about welfare in a new way? can you get them to think about immigration? i don’t know that it’s going to transform how people are thinking, but these are small ideas that will be seeds, i hope, to something else. you know i don’t really consider myself a film maker per se, even though that’s what i do these days. i’ve always considered myself an educator, and educators have to go wherever the action is. you have to go where the attention is. if the attention now is through facebook and social media sites and youtube etc. then i think we have to have a strategy for getting into that space. so i’m thinking, okay, how does mef really evolve beyond just making films for the classroom, which i want to keep doing, but also making things that will engage people where they are. and again, i think that’s the same question for progressive intellectuals about engaging in a public discourse, and the question of how you translate the work that you do into a form whereby a lay person, or a non specialist, could understand it. how do you translate high theoretical work into a form of exposition that can be comprehended by a smart and eager non-specialist? i think a lot of academics actually are very very bad at that, they haven’t really thought about how you speak to the public. there’s a lot of critique about the monopolization of the media and culture by the right and there is no doubt that those are vital questions. but i often wonder, if we had access to the mass of the people, what would we say that would engage them and move them to take action? would we be able to get them to pay attention, to engage with, interact with our ideas and our values? an interview with sut jhally articulation, cultural studies, and education 246 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times and i’m not too sure we would, because i don’t think we as academics have really thought about it a great deal. you go to an academic conference and you see the papers people present–a lot of them are unlistenable. i mean people literally read papers and sometimes say “oh i’ve got a 20 page paper i’ll just read until i run out of time!” they talk in really heavy theoretical ways, and you look around the room and most people are dozing off because they have no idea what people are talking about. for me, that’s just being lazy. i have to say that one of the things i do is to take every opportunity to speak really seriously. i always ask, “who’s my audience”, and then how do you communicate with that audience. if i’m talking to a group of heavy marxist theorists i’ll have one way of speaking, but if i’m talking to a group of 18 year old students who are interested in coming to the university you have to talk in a different way. if you talk to communication students who already are interested in these issues, and you’ve had them in a class before, you talk to them in a different way. that requires thought, it requires really thinking through, it actually requires having the viewpoint of an advertiser. advertisers are always interested in communication, they’re never interested in just exposure, they’re interested in communicating an idea. i wish more intellectuals were interested in the idea of communication, and of how you translate your work into a form where someone can actually understand it and can actually engage in it. they may not agree with it–that’s the nature of politics, there is no guarantee in politics–but engaging people is the goal. stuart hall argues that progressive intellectuals, organic intellectuals in gramsci’s language, have two responsibilities. the first is to understand the world better than anyone else. there’s no room for dogma in understanding the world. you have to understand it the best way you can. that may require specialist language, that may require high theory, that may require jargon. that’s the work of knowledge production. and then second, you have to think about how you translate that into a form where someone else can understand it? and although hall articulated this for me in a formal way, i think i already understood it instinctively right back at the beginning of my career when i was working on that alternate routes article, because i was reading marx’s grundrisse, his notebooks. and the grundrisse is literally unreadable and it’s unreadable because this is marx’s mind in operation, he is trying to work things out. | 247 jp: there’s a reason he didn’t publish the notebooks. sj: yes, absolutely. they are works in progress, where he was developing his analysis. some people have actually called them the mode of analysis. by contrast capital is the mode of exposition and it is beautifully written. it is a rhetorical tour de force. marx spent a long time writing capital (especially volume one) in a way that workers would be able to understand. and those are two different moments. i wish more intellectuals understood that the work of analysis is not the work of exposition, and that exposition takes time and effort. you have to really think about translation. again, i think that’s one of things that i did very early on, partly because i took teaching seriously. for me, teaching wasn’t just part of what i had to do, it was this opportunity to get in front of people who otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to these ideas. so once you’ve got that chance, how do you go about it? for me, the teaching, the research, the politics, is all very closely connected. that’s why i always say, the most important part of media education foundation is the “education” part: it’s media education foundation. what we’re trying to do is to take the best work that’s been done in the academy, and in line with what hall argues, in line with marx’s intellectual practice, to take the ivory tower of the intellectual mind into different places, to take it into hallways, into classrooms. take it into church basements, to community centres, take it into other places where people actually gather and where this vital debate has to take place. twenty-first century socialism and the global financial meltdown | 171 twenty-first century socialism and the global financial meltdown: in conversation with michael lebowitz — rebekah wetmore and ryan romard rebekah wetmore and ryan romard1 (rw/rr): the crisis of world capitalism starting in 2007 was the most severe crisis of capitalism since the great depression and thus far the recovery, both globally and within canada, has been weak at best. with this mind, to what extent is the current crisis cyclical and in what ways is this related to a broader, systemic crisis of the capitalist system? michael lebowitz2 (ml): this is not a question for which there is a quick answer. what do we mean by a crisis of capitalism? i distinguish between a crisis in capitalism and a crisis of capitalism. for me, there is only a crisis of capitalism when there is an organized and conscious subject prepared to put an end to capitalism. there are always crises, though, within capitalism. understanding this distinguishes a marxian perspective from the perspective of mainstream neoclassical economists for whom the normal state of capitalism is equilibrium and crises are aberrations. for marx and marxists, crises are inherent in capital’s tendency toward overaccumulation. it is inherent in the nature of capital that its orientation is to grow, to expand — to accumulate, accumulate! in a crisis, though, that process of accumulation is checked. all crises take the form initially of the inability of capital to realise the 1 rebekah wetmore is an independent researcher and community organizer. she has an ma in sociology from acadia university in wolfville, nova scotia. ryan romard is a ma candidate in sociology at acadia university. he studies the sociology of agriculture in cuba. 2 michael a. lebowitz is professor emeritus of economics at simon fraser university in vancouver, canada, and the author of, most recently, the socialist alternative: real human development, and the contradictions of “real socialism”: the conductor and the conducted. he was the director of the program in transformative practice and human development, centro internacional miranda, in caracas, venezuela, from 2006-11. 172 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism surplus value extracted from workers through exploitation in the process of production. if capital is unable to realise the surplus value which is contained within commodities through sale of those commodities, it will cut back on their production. and, the result is unemployment as well as reduced demand for investment—in other words, reduced demand for the sector producing means of production. growing unemployment in both the consumer goods sector and the sector producing means of production means that there will be greater difficulties in selling commodities. thus, the initial emergence of the inability to sell commodities brings with it a deepening crisis within capitalism. part of that deepening of the crisis involves a significant reduction in the values of capital — in the value of raw material stocks, for example, but especially what is called fictitious capital. by fictitious capital, we mean the capital invested in various vehicles which, while linked ultimately to the fortunes of real capital within the spheres of production and circulation, takes on a life of its own. for example, the values of shares in corporations (which have their real basis in the profitability of those corporations) expand significantly in the period of a boom. presumably, these values are related to expectations of that profitability but those stock values are determined instead by prospects of money to be made in the stock market. until the moment of truth, there comes a point as a crisis within the real economy emerges in which there is an enormous destruction of those values contained in this particular form of fictitious capital— i.e., a crisis of the stock market. and this is not the only form of fictitious capital. we’ve seen a great destruction of fictitious capital in the form of various financial instruments such as derivatives, etc. as well as real estate values. all of this has its impact and feeds back on the real, underlying economy to deepen a crisis. none of this explains why crises occur, though—why capital’s drive to expand comes up against barriers. in marx’s capital, he indicated that capital develops an ability to grow by leaps and bounds and comes up against no barriers except those presented by the availability of raw materials and the extent of sales outlets. both those barriers are the result of capital’s tendency for overaccumulation. in the case of the first, marx described how overaccumulation tends to be manifested in lagging production of raw materials and other products whose source is nature. agriculture and extractive industries such as mining, marx noted, are modes of production sui generis — they cannot be expanded in the same way as spheres of production which are users of raw materials. precisely for this reason, then, in an extended period of accumulation, capital often twenty-first century socialism and the global financial meltdown | 173 comes up against the problem of the rising value of raw materials with the result that a greater proportion of capital outlays must be for what is called constant capital. these will be periods in which the rate of profit tends to fall because overaccumulation in industry has as its counterpart underaccumulation in the production of raw materials. you can see my discussion of marx’s argument in ‘the general and the specific in marx’s theory of crisis’, which is reprinted in my book, following marx: method, critique and crisis. the second barrier that marx identified is rooted in the antagonistic conditions within which capital functions — in other words, in the nature of capitalist relations of production themselves (recall that marx stressed that the real barrier of capital is capital itself). capital’s drive to increase the rate of exploitation brings with it a tendency for its ability to produce more and more articles of consumption to come up against a barrier in terms of its ability to realise the surplus value contained in those commodities; this tendency for overproduction of capital often takes the form of intensification of capitalist competition. the begged question, though, is if a rising rate of exploitation is significant, why doesn’t the relatively increased share of income for capital lead to increased capitalist expenditures (investment and consumption)? the answer is that capitalists are not likely to expand productive capacity if there is already unused capacity in the productive sector (because of overaccumulation) and falling profit rates because of the burden of the high costs of raw materials. the situation is one in which workers can’t spend and capitalists won’t. it’s a situation when capitalists choose to place their funds elsewhere—in securities, real estate, etc. i have been describing a crisis which is essentially a cyclical crisis. cyclical crises, though, by definition don’t last. for one, the process of destruction of values can restore the conditions for resumption of profitable production. but crises can be more than cyclical; they can also be structural. when we talk about the overaccumulation of capital, it is essential to recognise that capital does not expand in unison. there is an inherent tendency toward unevenness: some capitals will be the major contributors to the growth and accumulation of capital while others may bear the brunt of the effects of overaccumulation. in particular, there are periods in which capital expands in new areas, new geographical regions, more rapidly than in the old regions of capitalist expansion. this process may reflect new, advanced productive forces (thus, better means of securing relative surplus value) or very high rates of exploitation based upon low real wages and a high length and intensity of work—and sometimes it 174 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism may be both modern techniques and very low wages. this emergence of new capitals and new forms of production provides a basis for a structural crisis — in other words, a crisis which is the result of the changing structure of capital. although it does not occur with the periodicity of a cyclical crisis, this definitely has happened before—in what was called the great depression in england in the latter part of the 19th century (as the result of the growth of production in germany and elsewhere on the continent as well as the us) and in the 1930s (after the growth of mass production in the us and the growth of the rate of exploitation in the 20s). crises in capitalism which embody both cyclical elements but also significant structural elements will be deeper and longer than those which only involve cyclical swings. further, structural crises may generate significant tensions because the change in the geographical locus of capital resulting from unevenness may lead to an attempt to redivide spheres of influence and power (and thus inter-imperialist rivalry). finally, their resolution may require a process of restructuring of capitalist institutions in order to incorporate the new elements and manage these new relations—the obvious case being the restructuring which occurred with the bretton woods agreements after the depression of the 30s and world war ii. i have been stressing this question of restructuring because it is obvious that the current crisis within capitalism is both cyclical and also structural in this sense. there’s been a very significant growth in productive capacity, an accumulation of capital, in centres such as china, south korea, india, brazil, etc. a significant part of the explanation of this process has been the enormous reserve armies of labour in the countryside which could be drawn upon for the expansion of wage labour within industry at wage rates well below the levels in the old capitalist centres. as a result, this has been a period marked by a rising rate of exploitation on a world scale and at the same time a rising demand for raw materials from these new expanding centres of capitalist accumulation (reflected in prosperity in raw material producing centres). both these characteristics tend to generate a crisis within world capitalism; however, within that general crisis, the unevenness is obvious. in the old centres of capital, we see that rather than the expansion of productive capital, money has flowed into finance and real estate; thus, one can speak accurately about the separation of finance capital from productive capital there (much like england’s shift toward rentier capitalism in the late 19th century). but there is more: in the context of capitalist competition and pressures upon profits we see that capital in twenty-first century socialism and the global financial meltdown | 175 these old centres has managed to insulate itself somewhat because of its success in shifting the tax burden to the working class—reducing taxes upon corporations and upon those with high income (who are described as the ‘job creators’). capital has been able to do this because the defeat of the working class in these centres. to describe, though, the growth of finance capital at the expense of productive capital as characteristic of this crisis in capitalism (and especially to see this as a sign of the crisis of capitalism) is an example of onesidedness (which happens to coincide with the location of those who come to this conclusion). it doesn’t look at all like a crisis of capitalism in china, vietnam, india, brazil etc. in short, what we are seeing is a change in the structure of world capitalism, and the attempt to manage the change in that structure is reflected in such developments as the shift from the g7 to the g20. will that restructuring of capital succeed? i suggest that, in the absence of the ability of the working class throughout the world to prevent it, capital will succeed in this as it has in the past. let me turn, though, to a question which you didn’t ask explicitly: is there anything in this existing situation which points to the ultimate, final crisis of capitalism? although there are many marxist economists who are predicting the end of capitalism (something marxist economists are prone to do), my perspective is somewhat different. it is obvious that there is a very serious problem of an emerging ecological crisis to which capital is contributing substantially. however, that is a crisis of humanity—not a crisis of capital. how and if this crisis of humanity can be prevented depends upon a serious movement of working people to put an end to capitalism by all means possible and as soon as possible. and that will be the crisis of capitalism. rw/rr: canada’s prime minister stephan harper has unashamedly promoted the myth that the financial crisis did not greatly affect canada. is this notion of canadian exceptionalism warranted? if not, what might the next couple of years be like for canadians, particularly in light of the recent austerity measures? ml: it is true that canada has not been as affected by the financial crisis as the united states. but that has really little to do with the actions of the harper government. in part, it reflects the difference in the nature of the banking system and the traditions of finance in canada. in part, too, it also reflects the difference in the risk orientation of canadians. but this is not a case of canadian exceptionalism at all. not unless you forget about 176 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism all those other exceptions like chile, ecuador, venezuela, brazil, and indeed all countries exporting raw materials to china and experiencing a boom based upon this. there have been two distinct tendencies affecting the canadian economy. one is the tendency related to the depression in the united states, given canada’s long-term dependence upon that market. the other tendency reflects the resource boom based upon exports to china and other asian countries. those two tendencies reflect the changing structure of world capitalism, and the geographical division involved is reproduced within canada itself. thus, provinces like québec and ontario, which have focused upon manufacturing, are suffering significantly whereas prairie provinces like alberta, saskatchewan and manitoba in particular have been benefiting from their resources. the harper government has thrown its lot in with the latter group of provinces and with the emerging new centres of capital. in its so-called budget bill, its determination to push through pipelines to serve china, its interest in chinese foreign investment, its removal of environmental protection measures, etc, we can see that it is placing a wager on the structural changes in capital. this strategy has major implications for the canadian economy. thomas mulcair of the ndp has raised the question of the ‘dutch disease’ — i.e., the blow to canadian manufacturing as a result of a rising value of the canadian dollar linked to resource exports. i think that’s a bit premature because we cannot say at this point how much of this particular decline is cyclical and how much is structural. however, over a long time period, i think it is correct to talk about the spectre of the dutch disease. the harper government strategy points in the direction of a new model — actually a return to the old model, that of the hewers of wood and drawers of water (i.e., to a hollowing-out of the economy similar to what happened to venezuela over a number of years as the result of its oil wealth). in this period, the two tendencies interact. budget deficits reflect the fate of the old capitals—in particular, the problems in the u.s. economy and the pattern of tax cuts for corporations and high income earners that have occurred here. as in the case of the united states, the defeat of the working class and the weakness of working class institutions has meant the successful imposition of capital’s austerity plan which is an attack on the working class. to this can be added the effect of resource exports which have significantly elevated the value of the canadian dollar relative to that of the us and seriously affected manufacturing exports as well as those of sectors such as the forest industry (and thus employment in these sectors). twenty-first century socialism and the global financial meltdown | 177 of course, it is essential to recognise that these two tendencies are not occurring in two separate worlds. the rapid accumulation of capital in china and other emerging capitalist countries has itself been based on the existence of markets in the developed north. to the extent that the latter continue to slump, it can not help but affect the accumulation of capital in the former and thus their demand for resources. when that happens (and i think the only thing in question will be its extent), canada faces the real prospect of a serious decline. all other things equal, this will accelerate and intensify the capitalist austerity project. so, when you ask the question as to what may the next couple of years be like for canadians, it is difficult to provide a definite answer. it depends. all other things are not necessarily equal. if the working class continues to be defeated, we can look forward to one defeat after another—one attack after another on social services, health and safety, education, everything that people have made sacrifices and struggled to achieve in the past. it’s not, of course, inevitable. nothing is inevitable when it comes to the question of class struggle. rw/rr: in the socialist alternative, you argue that “given the heterogeneity of the collective worker (and its various forms of immiseration) and capital’s use of differences to divide the working class in order to defeat it, a political instrument is needed to mediate among the parts of the collective worker, provide the welcoming space where popular movements can learn from each other and develop the unity necessary to defeat capital..” is the anti-capitalist left in canada ready to form such a party? if not, what can be done to foster the development of this type of party? ml: my immediate response is no, the anti-capitalist left in canada is definitely not ready to form a party which can defeat capital. but there is also the question as to whether an anti-capitalist left as such can ever defeat capital. i doubt that. when i was involved in rebuilding the left in vancouver, i argued that we needed to go beyond organising on the basis of anti-capitalism and instead to stress explicitly the necessity for a socialist alternative. anti-capitalism means something different for everyone. for some people, it is opposition to big corporations; for others, it is opposition to the banks or the capitalist state or money or large-scale industry, international capital or inequality in income and wealth. accordingly, the perceived alternative can range from breaking up the corporations to developing alternative currencies to supporting cooperatives and credit unions to putting an end to private ownership 178 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism of the means of production and to returning simply to the good old days when people could anticipate a good job, a home of their own and all the amenities that their parents had. the multiplicity of views about what we don’t like about capitalism (ie., anti-capitalism) was apparent in the occupy movement. of course people should struggle against every assault by capital and every violation of our conceptions of justice. marx made the point well: without the struggles of workers over wages, workers would be a ‘heartbroken, a weak-minded, a worn-out, unresisting mass’ and would be incapable of any larger struggles. of course, too, it is essential to try to link these struggles. however, in the absence of a positive vision, capital can and will separate and defeat those who oppose it. trade unions under attack and facing capital’s demand for concessions, for example, can look at issues outside their immediate concerns and say, ‘what’s this got to do with our members?’ sometimes, though, capital and the capitalist state make it easier to connect issues. in 1983, a simultaneous blanket assault by the social credit government in bc created conditions in which it was possible to unify teachers, hospital workers, renters, poverty movements and private sector trade unions who were injured by the proposed legislation in a movement toward a general strike. similarly, when capital is in a crisis period and moves to administer its affairs through a general programme of capitalist austerity, it is possible to bring together those under attack—both those suffering from the crisis itself and those under attack by the capitalist state. that is what occupy, the enraged and the middle east spring demonstrate. and, right now that potential is there as the result of the harper government’s so-called budget bill. but, as the disintegration of the general strike movement in bc demonstrated, many ‘no’s’ do not make a big ‘yes’. at the present time, people are fighting against reductions in social services, against measures which make universities and education inaccessible for many, against the removal of measures protecting against the destruction of the environment, against the removal of support for our current healthcare system — against, indeed, many characteristics of what is viewed as our entitlement, an entitlement which didn’t drop from the sky but which was the result of years of struggle. in short, people are struggling out of a sense of fairness. but there’s a difference between struggling over questions of fairness (sometimes identified as characteristic of moral economy) and being able to understand why all this is occurring — enough so to be able to put an end to such attacks. if you don’t undertwenty-first century socialism and the global financial meltdown | 179 stand the underlying factors, you are likely to look upon what you’re fighting for as the restoration of the good old days. marx made this point in talking about the limits of wage struggles. 99% of those struggles, he said, were reactions against capital’s previous actions to drive down wages. they were attempts to restore the traditional standard of life and occurred under the conservative banner of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. and, it was accurate to describe this as a conservative slogan because workers fighting under that banner were seeking to conserve or preserve the pre-existing conditions. while though those struggles were essential for developing their collective strength and dignity, marx stressed the necessity for workers to go beyond those guerrilla wars against capital and its state and to struggle under the revolutionary banner of putting an end to capitalist relations. we need to understand the nature of capitalism, and we need a vision of a socialist alternative if we are to defeat capital. this is my point in the socialist alternative: real human development, where i argue for a vision of socialism which involves social ownership of the means of production, worker and community decision-making and production for social needs rather than exchange. a focus upon human development unifies these elements and, indeed, has the potential to unify all our separate struggles. this vision of a society in which all human beings are able to develop their capacities and realize their potential is the vision contained in the communist manifesto—a society in which ‘the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all’. we need to communicate and struggle for the realization of that vision. defeating capital won’t happen spontaneously through some kind of collective epiphany. it requires conscious effort. but any attempt to create at this point a party to defeat capital would be viewed correctly as just another vanguard sect promising to deliver socialism. it is important to start from people’s conception of fairness and to understand why they are moved to struggle. however, we need to recognise the limits of guerrilla wars against capital and to learn to work together in practice to build an understanding about the nature of capitalism and the need for a socialist vision. that means finding ways to create spaces where popular movements can learn from each other—spaces and new forms like people’s assemblies at every level. we need but we’re not ready to form a socialist party that can defeat capital. but we can develop a socialist project, one which listens, educates and helps to create the basis for a new type of party which is integral to and does not stand over and above social movements. 180 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism rw/rr: drawing on your work in venezuela, cuba and the former soviet union what might a socialistic response to the ongoing economic crisis look like? what has been venezuela’s response to the economic crisis? what can socialists in canada and elsewhere learn from these experiences about how to respond to the crises of capitalism? ml: i’ve just completed a new book, contradictions of ‘real socialism’: the conductor and the conducted, which stressed, among other things, the importance of building upon aspects of the ‘moral economy’ of the working class in the former soviet union in order to move forward to socialism. as we know, however, what did happen was precisely the opposite—an attack on the concepts of fairness and justice of workers as part of the process of moving to capitalism. unfortunately, too, there are many signs in cuba that the response to their current crisis is to move in the same direction although it is still too soon to rule out the possibility that there can be a return to the ideas of che guevara about the importance of building socialist human beings. venezuela, though, does offer some ideas that canadians can draw upon—precisely because it is a capitalist country with resource wealth, has the experience of suffering the dutch disease and now has a government with the articulated goal of building a new socialism different from the experiences of the 20th century. in particular, the government of hugo chavez has decided to use its resource wealth to expand enormously access to health services and education, to reclaim as state property the oil and other basic industries as well as telecommunications, electricity, steel, cement, airlines and a host of other sectors seen as important for satisfying the many needs of venezuelans. by building up local industry, housing and agriculture with oil revenues, it is explicitly attempting to demonstrate that there is nothing inevitable about the dutch disease if you have a government committed to food sovereignty and to creating opportunities for jobs that can serve the needs of people. there are many problems in venezuela, and not the least is the inherited culture of clientalism and corruption (as well as a tendency to populism) to which the chavez government is not at all immune. but there are elements that can inspire many people within canada who don’t think of themselves as part of an anti-capitalist or socialist left. the idea of neighbourhood government where people can work together with their neighbours to solve local problems and to plan (something embodied in the communal councils and communes in venezuela) and the idea twenty-first century socialism and the global financial meltdown | 181 of workers councils (without which, chavez has said, you can’t build socialism)—these are ideas which don’t need oil revenues or major state-directed programmes. this concept of protagonistic democracy, a concept of democracy as practice through which people can develop their potential, can appeal to people precisely because of their sense of their powerlessness in modern capitalist society. are there ideas here for canadian socialists to draw upon in the context of the current crisis and the capitalist austerity programme under way? think about it. taking resource wealth away from private corporations to be used for fostering the education and health of the people and building new socially-owned industry, creating new institutions which allow for the development of the capacities of people through their own practices, i.e., developing the ultimate productive forces—wouldn’t these be elements with which to counter capital’s austerity programme and to substitute for it a socialist austerity programme (i.e., austerity for capital)? consider how different would be the situation in the current crisis in canada if resource revenues were poured back into the economy for education and health and for building and modernising economic activity—investments for the future as well as a means of mitigating (instead of exacerbating) the current crisis. capitalism, as chavez has said, is a perverse system—one which doesn’t care about human beings. we can use the opportunity of the current crisis to demonstrate how it is a system that we need to go beyond. 248 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times an interview with michael perelman the invisible handcuffs of capitalism: how market tyranny stifles the economy by stunting workers by michael perelman. new york, new york: monthly review press, 2011. $19.95 u.s., paper. isbn-13: 978-1-58367-229-7. pages: 1-360. carlo fanelli is a ph .d . candidate at the department of sociology & anthropology, carleton university, with interests in critical political economy, labour studies, canadian public policy, social movements, urban sociology and education . carlo serves as editor of alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, and recently co-edited capitalism & confrontation: critical perspectives . michael perelman teaches economics at california state university, chico . he has published 19 books, including, the confiscation of american prosperity, railroading economics, manufacturing discontent, the perverse economy, and the invention of capitalism. michael spoke to carlo fanelli about his most recent book over june 2011 . carlo fanelli (cf): your early work pays a great deal of attention to the classical political economists (e.g. ricardo, smith, j.b. say, j.s. mill, marx, etc.), with later writings engaging with economic luminaries such as alfred marshal and john maynard keynes. could you briefly discuss how this research has influenced your thinking about economics? and in what ways has this motivated your present explorations? michael perelman (mp): the disconnect between what purports to be objective analysis and the underlying power relationships fascinates me. like moliere’s bourgeois gentlemen, who was unaware that he was speaking prose, economists have developed a culture in which they communicate without any recognition of how much they have internalized the distorted perspective of a capitalist system. what is more surprising is how thoroughly the economists were able to propagate their flawed worldview throughout much of society. the economic worldview loses sight of essential elements of the world economists to analyze. once their simplistic world of economics spins out control, economists’ instinct is to explain away their deficiencies rather than finally coming to grips with the real world. in that sense, | 249 an interview with michael perelman the invisible handcuffs of capitalism: i feel that a critical study of economists and their economics becomes useful as a means of self-defense against the tyranny of markets. cf: a central theme running throughout much of your work has been to denaturalize capitalism–that is, as one of your previous book titles indicates, show how capitalism was “invented” and is not, as is commonly assumed, the natural culmination of age-old historical practices. rather your studies show how, as marx put it, capitalism was ‘written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire.’ in this book you critique adam smith’s notion of fair, harmonious and efficient markets, and instead, argue that wage-labour depended on violence and coercion to accept the discipline of the workplace. how does this compare with previous forms of social organization? could you illustrate this with some examples? mp: to be fair, capitalism was not invented in some eureka moment. already in pre-historical times, people traded, but, of course, trade is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for capitalism. early on, people began to take up trades, moving the world closer to a capitalist economy. next, people would face hard times or need money for weddings or funerals. unable to pay their debts, they might find themselves forced into wage labor. however, wage labor at this stage of development represented a relatively small portion of the population. a mixture of wage labor and slavery existed in greece and rome, hence the word proletariat. once the great empires fell, feudal lords acquired far more power. serfdom increased at the expense wage labor. eventually, as modern technology took hold, power shifted again in the direction of traders, often under the shadow of the newly emerging european empires. the landed gentry either lost power or joined in the commercial revolution, which morphed into the industrial revolution. at this point, forcing people to work to make commodities for foreign trade became a high priority. marx described this process as primitive accumulation, where he wrote about the blood and fire. i followed up his work in my book, the invention of capitalism, where i described some of the harsh measures used to drive people off the land, where they could provide for their own needs, leaving them with the necessity of having to work for wages. the laws against hunting were particularly interesting. the legend of robin hood represented the feudal measures to protect the aristocrats’ hunting preserves. by the early 17th century, these laws had fallen into disuse. at the end of the century, as the shoots of modern capitalism were being 250 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times laid down, the law was suddenly enforced again. hunting became a capital offense. during the next century, australia became populated with by leaders of these game laws. at the same time, clumps of aristocratic hunters were allowed to ride across farmers’ land, in order to chase down foxes. in their published books, the political economists at the time ignored the injustices associated with the enforcement of the feudal game laws, as well as the enormous economic damage done by the hunters. instead, they described the economy as the result of voluntary transactions between willing buyers and sellers. away from the public eye, these same economists applauded the displacement of rural masses, which was providing new bodies for the emerging proletariat. in this sense, capitalism was invented as i described in the invention of capitalism. capitalism was invented in another sense. the early economists described the emergence of capitalism as a voluntary system that benefited everybody. this falsification of history, which was central to their analysis, was a very creative invention. cf: your most recent book, as you state (p.9), takes aim at capitalism in terms of its own basic rationale: the creation of an efficient method of organizing production. you argue that the failure by economists and employers alike to adequately take work, workers and working conditions into account has led to actions that have stifled the economy. this inattention, however, has not been accidental. can you describe the consequences of this largely ignored dimension of market inefficiency? mp: good question. in the invisible handcuffs, i tried to show how economists tried to frame capitalism as a system of voluntary transactions, as i mentioned in my previous answer. one can understand how the economists could have gotten away with this evasion of reality in a world when literacy was limited and communications, expensive. in a modern world, to be able to get away with such nonsense is an audacious act of genius. economic theory also abstracts from virtually anything having to do with time. for example, business is assumed to invest efficiently when it purchases durable equipment. how is that possible when business has no knowledge about future demand conditions, technology, or competition? considerations of such matters would make mathematical models impossible. how is it possible to efficiently value the existing stock of resource, such as petroleum, when nobody knows precisely how much petroleum | 251 there is, or whether alternative sources of energy will appear, or whether creating even more carbon dioxide would be too dangerous to contemplate? what economics does do very well is to create an effective ideological system that pretends to prove that whatever business wants to do is good. within this framework of voluntary transactions, workers agree to a wage bargain in which they give up their leisure time in return for wages, which more than compensate for their lost leisure. no thought is given to the context in which the transaction is made. from this perspective, the conditions of workers who accept the lethal consequences of accepting a job at the fukushima nuclear plant are no different a high priced athlete playing an enjoyable game. also missing from this picture is anything having to do with work, workers, and working conditions. the only relevant action is the wage bargain. just as an individual consumer tries to buy commodities at the cheapest possible price, employers want to buy their workers for as little as they can. unions become framed as a monopoly that interferes with the transactions. at the same time, this transaction-based perspective, neither employers nor society have any reason to nurture the skills or the creativity of the working class. why not break the unions and defund education. not surprisingly, productivity suffers. traumatized workers, as alan greenspan called them, may often be docile, but their fear of job loss is likely to interfere with efficient performance. but since all that counts is buying work at the cheapest possible price, even though the ultimate effect of that arrangement is detrimental to productivity, as well as society at large. in the book, i do describe the hostile treatment meted out to economists who stray from this perspective. in part, this attitude reflects the defensive behavior of academics who want to defend the purity of their supposed science, but, i suspect, that there may also be an intuition that to move beyond the transaction perspective ultimately leads to marx. part of what is involved is the unproductive effort used to maintain of power relations. once a worker is reduced to a means of production and managers can believe that they are selected because of their superior abilities. this perspective is obviously detrimental to workers’ creativity. in one of my favorite cases, when computerization was first being introduced into manufacturing, a paper mill opened up its computer system to the whole workforce. the workers who manned the facan interview with michael perelman the invisible handcuffs of capitalism: 252 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times tory took advantage of this access to information and quickly ramped up productivity and efficiency. recognizing the growing threat to their authority, management quickly shut off their access. imagine a team sport–basketball or soccer–in which no one could do anything without prior authorization from their coach. any deviations would be punished. not only would the players’ restriction hurt their play, but the players’ development would also suffer. cf: you make the case in the invention of capitalism (p. 10) that economics is an ideology masquerading as a science buttressed by mathematical models. scientific pretentions aside, the economics profession in your view supports the interests of the rich and powerful at the expense of the vast majority of the working class. contra mainstream economics, you show how the interests of employers and employees are fundamentally at odds. instead, you contend that what might be called “invisible handcuffs” blind workers from realizing how capitalism both constrains their potential and degrades their quality of life. can you briefly describe what you mean by this? in what ways has the economics profession, particularly their role in academe, played in reinforcing capitalism? how do neoclassical presuppositions, such as natural assumptions concerning human behavior, differ from your own starting points? mp: let me take issue with your premise. you suggest that economics supports the (perceived) interest of the rich. i inserted the parenthesis to suggest that economists are not doing the rich a real favor. i am convinced that a more egalitarian society would improve the general quality of life, not just of the working class. by all measures, the quality of life increases with equality. ignoring that point, in the united states the economics profession, fearing to suggest anything that will upset the rich and powerful, has practiced severe self-censorship for more than a century. other countries are not as extreme in this respect, but diversity is relatively rare in the study of economics around the world. a leftist– let alone a marxist–can hope to get a job in literary criticism or even sociology, but the chances in an economics department is less than slim. there are a few liberal arts college, some jesuit institutions, and a handful of state universities that are less rigid, but nonetheless relatively few of them. there was a brief opening in the 60s, but that has long passed. besides, the rigor (mortis?) of economists’ training is extremely demanding in terms of mastering mathematics and statistics. even if a student is already advanced enough | 253 to breeze through that work, he or she will have to find a sympathetic professor to oversee anything outside of the mainstream. if that effort is successful, the vast majority of departments would not consider that person as a potential colleague. i am fascinated by human potential—what unlikely people are able to accomplish despite the odds. i believe that everybody has the capacity to be the worlds best at something; that the role of society (not just family, or education) should be to help people discover what that something is. to the extent that this kind of discovery becomes widespread, societies will prosper. hierarchical systems prevent that kind of discovery and need to be eliminated as soon as possible. cf: you argue (p.29) that the promise of job creation drives the rhetoric of almost all economic policies. how has this influenced policymakers and what have been the consequences? what role have large corporations played? and how have changes in the organization of work, workers and working conditions affected the quality of employment? mp: the rhetoric of job creation smacks of blackmail. give us everything you want or we will make unemployment worse. but if you look at the last decade, business got virtually everything it requested, but without much job creation. what is worse, the largest corporations were most effective in reducing jobs. besides, real hourly wages peaked back in 1973. the corporations run around from state to state, offering to create new jobs in return for tax breaks and other incentives. sometimes the jobs never materialize; other times they do, but disappear soon after. cf: with the focus on workplace (especially union) concessions and attacks against the public provision of social services a current flashpoint of political contestation, how does economics serve to obscure relations of class and the compulsions of the market? mp: abstract economics does not play much of a role, either in the discussion of job creation or in the concessions and cutbacks that are rolling across the country. the basic justification is that business, by its very nature, will create all of the preconditions for prosperity as long as nothing impedes “the magic of the marketplace.” adults should not believe in magic. as long as opportunities exist to cut back on wages and benefits by moving work abroad to where people work for pennies an hour, expectation of a tsunami of good, highpaying jobs is ridiculous–even more so when companies get tax breaks to take advantage of such labor arbitrage. an interview with michael perelman the invisible handcuffs of capitalism: 254 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times cf: finally, where do we go from here? how may economists and the economic profession, within and external to academe, be challenged in progressive ways? what role does political education and mobilization play? how might academics, activists and trade unionists begin to break the chains of the “invisible handcuffs” ? mp: now you are getting to the toughest question. even marx never described the specifics of his ideal society. although he frequently recommended tactics to address particular situations, he never laid out a long-term strategy. in a sense, he had no choice. he was trying to assemble disparate political factions who could never agree on anything. some of his german followers then adopted the attitude that they should just wait for the crisis to open the door to a new society. now, after more than a century, that quietist strategy should be thoroughly discredited. the first step is the easiest. develop the thoroughgoing critique of the status quo. unfortunately, radicals have been quicker to snipe at each other’s analysis than to collaborate on something to appeal to the larger population. in short, the easiest part is still difficult. next, we must be able to communicate an alternative. merely to suggest the abstract idea of socialism is vulnerable to the charge of proposing to duplicate all the abuses, real or imagined, of any society that purports to be socialist. now, in the midst of a sadistic round of austerity, proposing an alternative should be easier than ever, but i haven’t seen much progress in that regard. the next step becomes even more difficult. people need to be able to organize in a way that not only appeals to the masses, but it makes them feel empowered. although i have not offered any concrete program, i think it might be useful in considering any action to think about how it might contribute to, or detract from the simple steps that i suggested. sr embourgeoisement or proletarianization? stan marshall society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other; bourgeoisie and proletariat. * marx and engles' proposition that the system of capitalist relations would inevitably result in a polarization of the two main classes the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is and has been under considerable debate. the rise of a new middle class which appears to be located between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat has sparked speculation that the expected polarization of the class structure would not occur. the debate, of course, centres around whether there are any processes in operation which will have such a polarization as its end result. two theoretical propositions have been advanced. the first, the proletarianization thesis, asserts that the old and new middle classes are being drawn into the proletariat or working class. the second, the embourgeoisement thesis, argues that the upper levels of the working class are being assimilntcd ir.to an ever increasing ndo'dle class. this paper will endeavour to examine critically these two hypotheses in order to determine the merits of each in studying the class structure of capitalist societies. in order to accomplish this task it is necessary to allow for the examination of society at the level of production relations as well as at the level of distributive relations. more specifically, the aims of this paper will be (1) to identify the 59 processes of embourgeoisement and proletarianization in terms of their operation in capitalist society, (2) to determine the coniposition and location of the "new middle class", and (3) to formulate a basis from which to look at the middle classes of modern capitalist society in order to determine if there has been or will be a significant change in the class structure. before this can be accomplished, it is necessary to look at both proletarianization and embourgeoisement in order to determine the emphasis of each thesis. at first glance, it appears that these propositions are polar opposites. however, it is not the case when one looks at the arguments at different levels of analysis. as will be 2 3 seen later on, g. carchedi and harry braverman both attempt to look at the proletarianization of the middle classes from the level of the economic substructure and changes in the relations to the means of production. on the other hand, the embourgeoisement thesis is primarily concerned with changes in the superstructural elements resulting from a change in consumption patterns and life styles within the working . 4 class. embourgeoisement has as its major focus the perceived increasing affluence of the western working class." these changed material conditions and increased opportunities for workers are seen as resulting in a general homogeneity of lifestyles and values. in other words, the traditional working class is seen as developing middle class lifestyles. the argument rests on the increase in the affluence of workers and the perception that material conditions are better for western workers today 60 than they have ever been at any other time. these improved conditions are seen as being paramount in stifling any development of a working class consciousness. thus the cmbourgeoisement process is seen as operating upon the traditional working class in a manner which has changing material conditions resulting in changing values and lifestyles. proletarianization has as its major focus the economic or objectiveconditions which perpetuate the traditional working class and adds to its number by forcing segments of the middle class to become working class. these segments are proletarianized only in an economic sense i.e., their economic identification is with the working class. this does not mean that at any given point in time, their values or behaviour will be the same as production workers. g. carchedi is one author who recognizes that a proper class analysis must take into account all the analytical components. there is no autoratic correspondence between the economic identification of classes and their definitions. this is so because classes must be defined in economic, political and ideological terms. ^ the proletarianization process is seen as operating upon the middle classes in a manner in which the economic (objective) identification of the middle class is changed. once the economic condition is changed we can expect a corresponding change in the superstructural elements. it is recognized that changes in the political and ideological spheres are not necessarily immediate. however, at its limit, the proletarianization process will result in the middle classes "becoring proletariat". 6: it is clear that proletarianization is not necessarily opposed to the embourgeoisement thesis. its basis does not rest entirely upon the assumption that workers are becoming less affluent. proletarianization refers to a structural transformation in the relation of the worker to the means of production. the embourgeoisement thesis, on the other hand, rests upon the assertion that workers are becoming more affluent and is concerned mainly with distributive relations. one area where the two theses tend to make opposite projections is in the development of a working class consciousness. proletarianization supporters claim that changing economic conditions set the stage for a rising working class consciousness while embourgeoisement supporters claim that the material affluence of workers militates against the development of a working class consciousness. these are questions worthy of examination but due to the limited scope of this paper, they can be touched upon only superficially here. it is now necessary to examine each of these processes individually. embourgeoisement the thesis of working class embourgeoisement in its simple formulation is no longer in fashion. but its political corollary has come in again by the back door, with these newer and more sophisticated interpretations of the situation of the "affluent worker". 8 the studies concerning the "affluent worker" that are the most well known are those of john goldthorpe, david lockwood, f. bechhofer 9 and j. piatt at luton in britain. these authors set out to determine if workers are becoming "bourgeois". the locale which they chose, they believed to be one in which the conditions would lead to the 62 embourgeoisement of the workers. for goldthorpe ctal . , the test to prove embourgeoisement would be to prove that the acquisition of incomes and living standards by manual workers similar to white collar workers would lead to the adoption of a new social outlook and new social norms that are middle class. the acquisition of this new outlook and these new norms would then have to lead to an acceptance of the manual worker by the middle class on the basis of equality. in this way it was to be a stiff test of the embourgeoisement thesis. goldthorpe et al . concluded that the affluent worker is not becoming bourgeois but is becoming a new type of worker whose work is no longer central to his life and whose orientation is "instrumental". this "instrumental" worker is concerned primarily with making money which he can spend on his family. in other words, his "outside of work" activities become his central life interest. goldthorpe et al . , call such a worker the privatized worker and as such he is not middle class. however, this privatization militates against collective organization by the worker and in this way hinders the development of a class consciousness. privatization does not preclude militancy or radical action but it does decrease the probability that radical action ... 11 will occur. j.h. westergaard criticizes these studies from both a theoretical and methodological viewpoint. his main criticism is that the authors of these studies do not recognize that the workers' monetary orientation to the job is remarkably similar to marx's "cash nexus". marx rccog12 nized this "cash nexus" as the binding force in capitalist society. 63 the interpretation of these studies ...underplays evidence [strikes, industrial sabotage, work stoppages] to indicate the precariousness of the balance between attitudes of cooperation and "societal resignation" on the one hand, and on the other hand those conflicting attitudes involving a generalized social discontent which may be released once the single .stranded "cash orientation" becomes strained or broken. 1* in other words, at any one point in time, the workers may be cooperative and resigned to the workings of the existing society but the cooperation and resignation does not preclude the possibility of action resulting from the"continuing conflict once the cash nexus is broken. although goldthjrpe etal . , make a case for the inaction of the working class, their case is not strong enough to say that workers are becoming bourgeois. in addition, their argument is not strong enough to say that becoming affluent or privatized, eliminates the possibility of some radical action in the future. for while the affluent workers' ' "instrumental" orientation to work militates against any radicalization stemming from his employment situation, new and more radical demands may well be engendered by the clash between steadily rising aspirations and the barriers to their achievement in the world outside work. 14 in addition to the possibility of action resulting from the strain on the cash nexus, there is also a possibility of action resulting from the inability of the system to maintain and increase the workers desire for individual upward mobility. if these aspirations are stifled then m the potential for radical action may be stimulated. up to this point, the possibility of such events taking place are mostly speculative based upon a few isolated labor disputes which have resulted from similar conditions. however, sucli a possibility cannot be dismissed offhand. an integral part of the affluence thesis is that blue collar or manual workers' incomes are converging with those of white collar workers. this convergence results in increased consumption by the working class from which results a corresponding identification with the middle class. richard hamilton points out that people tend to assune that there was a wide gap between manual and non-manual incomes in the past and that the tendency today is for incomes to converge and overlap. hamilton disputes this convergence. he maintains that those workers viewed as well-off are in those families in which there is more than one wage earner and that the pattern of work for families of nonmanuals is different from that of families formed by manual workers. affluent working class families are not like equivalent middle-class families. the majority of well off working-class families achieve "affluence" through a greater expenditure of effort. 1° there are several other differences between so called affluent working class families and rriddle class families. for example, in middle class families, wives and children are more free from work. in this sense, the determinants of income for middle class are linked to the head of the family's job and career; while working class "affluence" is dependent upon the wife's job and career. in other words, the wife's 65 income auguments the husband's and accounts for the "extras" that the family may buy. one can see that the expenditure of effort in the working class family is significantly different from that of the middle class family. the acceptance of the idea that incomes are converging i.e., that manual wages are increasing, provides the basis for a theory of general satisfaction in society. however, there are some misconceptions about 18 increasing incomes. hamilton notes three in particular: (1) the frame of reference is usually past experience, therefore people perceive that their wages are increasing. they are perceiving an absolute increase as opposed to a relative increase. (2) incomes estimates are often based on hourly rates of pay and people assume full employment at that specific rate. however, they do not consider that many jobs which have high hourly pay rates are not jobs which guarantee year round employment. in many fields, construction for example, year round employment is a rarity. (3) the third misconception is related to the first in that there is a perceptual distortion due to continuing inflation. for example, the minimum wage keeps increasing. people remember when the minimum wage was much lower and draw a conclusion that incomes are increasing. this is obviously true in absolute terms but is questionable when viewed in relative terms. due to the increasing incomes (in absolute terms), living standards are also assumed to be increasing for the working class and converging with the middle class. hamilton measured living standards 66 in terms of home ownership and automobile ownership, tie found that the ip lower middle class " and the working class shared a similar life condition, that is, a lower percentage own homes in comparison to the upper middle class and the homes that they do own are less expensive. similarly, the upper middle class are significantly differentiated from the lower middle and working classes in automobile ownership. the ability to buy new cars varies directly with social class. hamilton concludes that convergence in income and consumption theses are not well founded. it might appear from hamilton's work that there is some convergence between the lower middle class and the working class. associated with this is a problem of definition and identification of 20 the middle class. related to ha-i.ilton 1 s work and corroborating it to some extc.t is 21 the work of andrew l.evison. he purposely sets out to dispel some of the myths associated with the embourgeoisement thesis. he attacks the 22 assumption that the majority of americans are white collar workers by pointing out inaccuracies in the census categories researchers use to determine the number of people who make up the white collar or blue collar ranks. he notes especially two instances (1) the lumping of large numbers of clerical and sales occupations into white collar categories and (2) the contention that service categories are something other than blue collar. by rectifying these two situations, he estimates that 60°. of america is in the working class. a second myth which lcvison attacks is the myth that blue collar workers earn as much as white collar workers. his procedure for 67 determining this is directly related to the work of richard hamilton. he corrects tor inaccuracies in categories used to show the distribution of income. his conslusion is that the working class earns less. related to the distribution of income is the condition of lifestyle. the myth maintains that blue collar lifestyle is similar to white collar lifestyle. levison dispels this by noting differences in the lifestyles of working class and middle class families especially in the location of working class areas vis a vis middle class areas. he makes a valid criticism of this myth by saying that the working class and the middle class very seldom come into contact with each other. in other words, the working class are not being assimilated into the middle class. he elaborates by looking at community life. blue collar life is permeated 23 by economic insecurit) and a lower quality of life. in other words, the blue collar worker is not "affluent" in that he does not have job security. in addition the "affluence" of the blue collar worker often refers to the ability to buy a house. it is questionable whether being able to meet such an essential need as shelter constitutes "affluence". there is also a problem of comparability in that working class communities tend to have less expensive homes and their neighborhoods are seldom given the priority that middle class communities are given with regard to services or development. even the educational system which was to have opened up opportunities for the working class has failed to do so. there have been many studies documenting middle class bias in the school system, discrimin24 ating against working class children. at the same time higher ' education has become more universal, the educational requirements for jebs (even manual jobs) have shifted upwards. coincident with this, there are not enough jobs available for those who have a university education. in other words, an increase in education has not resulted .-. ar. increase in opportunity within the upper and middle levels of the occupational structure. obviously, this paper has not taken the position that the workers arc becoming bourgeois. it supports the position that the working class has not decreased and has not become more affluent relative to other segments of society. it is optimistic that the working class is becoming more aware of their objective class condition and that the potential for radical action is reflected in high absenteeism, shoddy vcrkr.ar.ship, sabotage, use of drugs, periodic refusals to accept the authority of the foreman, strikes, increasing incidences of rejecting settlements, wild cat strikes, and challenges to incumbent union leaders. in this sense, the working class is alive and retaining its revolutionary potential. up to this point, the discussion has revolved around the embourgec:?ercr.t or "affluent worker" thesis. as mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the central focus of the embourgeoiscment thesis lies in the distributive relations in society. this fact is obvious in light of the works discussed here. although they formulate an effective refutation of the embourgeoiscment thesis, the works of hamilton and levison tend to be descriptive rather than explanatory. they tend to focus upon a descriptive account of the distribution of surplus in b9 society rather than those factors which underly changes in the class structure. moreover, to refute embourgeoisement is not to illustrate proletarianization for the two, as i have argued, are not cecrpletely antithetical. with this in mind, it is now necessary to turn to the proletarianization thesis. proletarianization one of the main obstacles to a study of proletarianization has been an inadequate understanding of the class position of those v«hc appear to be in contradictory class positions. this lack of understanding of the class position of the middle classes has led to the criticism that the process of proletarianization is inadequately or improperly defined. in other words, if the criteria for placing individuals in the middle class are not clear, then it is impossible to understand how any process could lead to a deterioration of that class position. however, the work of g. carchedi has gone a long way to identifying the class location of those who seem to be neither wholly in the bourgeoisie nor wholly in the proletariat. harry braverman also acknowledges that this is a problem and both he and carchedi come to a similar type of conclusion. the most important problem in locating the "middle class" is not that they are a class unto themselves but that they take on characteristics from both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. braverman comes to the conclusion this way. the complexities of the class structure of pre-monopoly capitalism arose from the fact that so large a proportion of -o the working population, being neither ecployed by capital not itself employing labour to any significant extent, fell outside the capital-labor polarity. the complexity of the class structure of modern monopoly capitalism arises from the very opposite consideration: namely that almost all of the population has been transformed into employees cf capital . ^5 this quotation suggests that it is necessary to make a distinction between the "old" riddle class and the "new" middle class. the old middle classes are the petite bourgeoisie the small businessman and the independent commodity producers. the new middle classes are the managers and supervisors. for braverman the old middle class is neither bourgeoisie nor proletariat because they lie outside the dominant relations of production i.e., capital-labor-polarity. on the other har.d, the new middle clas: is situated between capital and labor. their class location becomes difficult to define because they are both manager and worker. ...there is a range of intermediate categories, sharing the characteristics of worker on the one side and manager on the other in varying degrees.-^ implicit in this statement is a recognition that managers and workers carry on different functions and that there is a group of people who are both manager and worker. as such, they must carry out the functions of both these positions. carchcdi makes it very clear that there is a definite distinction between the old and the new middle class. his conclusion is similar to braverman's in that the new middle class seems to be both bourgeoisie and proletariat. however he introduces specifically that component which we extrapolated implicitly from 71 braverman the idea that functions are important in determining class 27 position. carchedi's main contribution to the controversy surrounding the middle class and whether this sector of the labor force is being proletarianized, is the introduction of the two functions the function of global capital and the function of the collective worker . it is necessary to try to understand exactly what carchedi means when he speaks of these two functions and how they enable us to understand the economic identification of the middle class. it is unnecessary to go through the rather lengthy and complex derivations of these definitions as given by carchedi. instead the definitions will be borrowed as he finalizes them. . . . to perform the function of the collective worker means to take part in the capitalist production process as a whole ... from the point of view of the labour process and thus of the surplus labour producing process . conversely, to perform the global function of capital means to take part in the capitalist production process as a whole exclusively from the point of view of the surplus labour producing process . ^ put more simply "there will be those who will collectively perform 29 the labour process and those who will supervise". returning to the distinction between old and new middle class, carchedi makes his distinction very clear. the old middle class (1) owns (legally and economically) the means of production, (2) performs the function of capital and the function of the collective worker, (3) is laborer and non-laborer and (4) is exploiter and exploited. -: however, carchedi maintains that at the level of production relations, the role of ownership is dominant over the functions performed and thus the old middle class belongs to the capitalist class. however, in the monopoly stage of capitalism, the function of capital becomes the global function of capital which can be performed by agents outside the capitalist class. these agents are the new middle class and are characterized by (1) not owning (legally or economically) the means of production, (2) performing the global function of capital and the function of the collective worker, (3) being laborer and non-laborer and (4) being exploiter and exploited. _ thus the differences between the new middle class and the old middle class according to carchedi are substantial. the old middle class perform the function of capital individually while the new rr.iddle class perform, the function in conjunction with the capitalist and with other members of the new middle class. in the old iriddlc class the function of capital is always dominant but in the new middle class either the global function of capital or the function of the collective worker could be dominant at any given time. these are the key points to understanding the new middle class. ...that the new rr.iddle class performs the global function of capital even without owning the means of production, and that it performs this function in conjunction with the function of the collective worker, is the basic point for an understanding of the nature of this class. 32 carchedi claims that the new middle class can perform the two functions (not simultaneously) in varying degrees. the range is from performing exclusively the function of global capital to performing any combination 73 of the two functions. any definition of proletarianization formulated at this point must be composed of two elements (1) a change in function performed and (2) a devaluation of labor power. from a completely economic standpoint, proletarianization for carchedi becomes ... . the limit of the process of devaluation of the new niddle class ' labour-power, i.e., the reduction of this labour-power to an average un skilled lev'fl coupled with the elimination of the global function of capital . -^ the phenomena which are associated with proletarianization (lower level of living, unemployment, lowering of lifes' conditions degradation of the work process etc.) are manifestations of the devaluation of labor power in conjunction with the stripping away from the new 34 middle class of the global function of capital. carchedi makes one final remark which is central to understanding the process of proletarianization. it is a remark which relates to the beginning of this paper where it is noted that proletarianization has a different focus than embourgeoisement . it was not«d that the analysis may focus on the economic, the political or the ideological. proletarianization is generally focused on the economic while the embourgeoisement thesis is generally focused on the political and the ideological. carchedi makes it clear that the processes operating in this limited sense will not be sufficient to change the definition of a class. ...we should be careful not to confuse proletarianization with "becoming proletariat". the former term only refers to the economic sphere which, as we know, is not enough to classify groups and strata within one or another class. khen the "4 process of proletarianization has been completed we have only the objective conditions for a certain stratum to become part of the proletariat. there are, however, also political and ideological conditions which must be met before that stratum or group will actually become part of the proletariat . 35 kith this in mind, we can see that any definition of proletarianization taken from carchedi will be limited exclusively to the economic sphere and will give us only one dimension to examine in trying to ascertain any changes in the class structure. this is not a criticism of the excellent work carchedi has done, but is a plea for a more comprehensive definition of proletarianisation at both the political and ideological levels as well as at the economic level. as mentioned pr»viously, carchedi has opened up a new avenue in the research of proletarianization by introducing the two functions. previous research, especially that done by leo johnson and harry braverran has provided some empirical substantiation of the devaluation of labor power in canada as a condition of becoming proletarianized. however, further research is needed in the area to determine if there are changes in the functions performed by the middle class in canada i.e., changes in the balance of functions performed as described by carchedi. the devaluation of labor power is adequately documented in many places in harry draverman's book labor and monopoly capital . he highlights the processes of change in the economic sphere which had a resultant change in the objective identification of workers. the introduction of samuel taylor's techniques allowed the capitalist to extract far greater surplus value from the worker than ever before. 75 the advancement of technology allowed the capitalist to usurp control of the work process from the worker. it separated the worker from the conception and planning portion of the labor process. increasing division of labor in the workshop further removed the worker from engaging in the entire production process. thus the worker was further degraded. braverman indicates that the same processes were occurring in the offices of the capitalist enterprise. the clerical workers were undergoing a process of change as well. the meaning of "clerk" has changed in the transformation from early capitalism to monopoly capitalism. in carchedi's terms, office workers have had the global function of capital removed from them. many office jobs are no longer associated with management but with manual labor and have been mechanized in order to increase efficiency. the clerical portion of the new middle class is becoming increasingly proletarianized. ...the process in the course of which the body of salaried employees becomes a mass group rests on the successful attempt to replace the personal experience of the individual by a rational scientific business administration, so that an increasing proportion of the workers can be changed without danger to the efficiency of the enterprise... the salaried employees as a whole are being subjected to a process of decreasing social esteem. 37 an excellent example of this process is documented by joan greenbaum in monthly review , "division of labor in the computer field". in this article she documents the rise and fall of computer related occupations. 76 in a short twenty-year span, work in the computer field has been transformed by capitalism to suit its needs, through carefully planned division of labor. °° greenbaun; describes this rise and fall as the degradation of a technical work force into a "white collar assembly line where control of knowledge 39 in concentrated" in addition to the down grading of skills, the situation outlined by joan greenbaum also highlights another consequence of the process of the increasing division of labor. this consequence is the formation of a surplus labor force as there is an increasing centralization of computer companies. the centralization compounded the other consequences by continuing the lowering of wages and by further reducing task definitions. the end result seems to be ...lower salaries relative to the cost of living, expansion of clerical like jobs, and a shift away from computer specialists. technological skill has been removed from all but a handful of workers. 40 it seems obvious from the foregoing discussion that the devaluation of labor power is integral to any definition of proletarianization and so we must accept it as part of the definition used here. it is necessary to make a distinction between proletarianization as it affects the "old middle class" as opposed to how it affects the "new middle class". because of the differences between the two segments of the ciddlc class, proletarianization is going to have a different consequence for each. according to the definition of proletarianization at the econoric level, there must be a devaluation of labor power plus a change in the function performed i.e., a shift from the global function of capital towards the function of the collective worker. however, the proletarianization of the old middle class would have to entail an elimination of the function of capital and thus an elimination of that occupational grouping. this is necessarily so because in the old middle class the function of capital is always dominant as they own the means of production. the shift away from employment classified as petite bourgeoise in this century would be an indication that this proletarianization is taking place. the decreasing proportion of the income allocated to the petite bourgeoisie is another indication and is a factor involved in the elimination of those ei7iplo>nient sectors. leo johnson documents the decline of the petite bourgeoisie in canada. this decide is illustrated in a drop in their relative numbers from 14.7* of income earners in 1£ms to 10.9% in 196s. in addition the petite bourgeoisie have become relatively more impoverished in terms cf income during that period. the petite bourgeoisie income as a percentage of the average income decreased from 120% in 1948 to 94* in 41 1968. this decline occurred for both the small independent commodity producer, especially the small farmer, and the small independent businessman, although for each of these subgroups the decline was at different rates. we have already documented the tendency of capitalism to erode the new middle class and now we see an even more startling erosion of the old middle class. thus far the paper has dealt with the emphasis of both the cmbourgeoisement and proletarianization theses. in doing so it has highlighted 7fi and refuted the embourgeoiserr.cnt thesis as being an inaccurate and incocplete assessment of the changing class structure. this paper has accepted the proletarianization thesis as being infinitely more amenable tc erpirical research which would allow for a complete and indepth analysis of the class structure. the cmbourgeoisement thesis is deficient in that it concentrates on the distributive relations and the superstructural elements in society. this deficiency is a fundamental one in that it neglects changes in the production relations and it is these changes which are determinant and dominant over changes in 42 the superstructure. conversely, the proletarianization argument uses this as its very starting point. if any criticism can be made of this approach, it is that it rarely progresses past this starting point i.e., it is concerned alirost entirely with the economic level of analysis. khat needs to be developed is a more comprehensive definition and cxaminaticn of proletarianization which would account for the political and ideological levels as well. basically the conclusion which must be reached at this time is that it is an erpirical question as to whether the formation of the ''new niddle class" is a class with middle class characteristics or a class with traditional working class characteristics. either way, the most appropriate way to analyze it is to prove or disprove the increasing deterioration cf the old and new niddle classes in conjunction with the contir.ui:.^ proletarian condition of the traditional working class. khat follows is a \ery brief outline of how this may be accomplished. as mentioned earlier the new and old middle classes have to be 79 treated somewhat differently. a deterioration in the old middle class will be detected by an absolute decrease in the percentage of the population making a living in the petite bourgeois occupations. however, this in itself is not sufficient in that a corresponding increase must be found in occupations which are traditionally working class or are devalued new middle class occupations. in this way there must be a change over time in the occupational groupings. there are several indicators which can be used to detect these changes. the devaluation of occupations can be tested by analyzing the income (including benefits) changes over time. a devaluation in labor power will lead to corresponding devaluation in income of that group relative to the incomes of other occupational groupings. this analysis could be used to check the embourgeoi semen t thesis as well by checking the incomes of traditional working class occupations relative to other occupations. another aspect which has to be examined in the changing class locations of occupations is the innovation of technology. it is necessary to look at how diversified jobs have become as a result of the implementation of technology. the result could have either of two consequences (1) routinization i.e. a more complex job is broken down into two or more additional, more routine, less skillful jobs or (2) technological rationalization i.e. several jobs are brought together into one job which does not demand as much skill as the original jobs. either way, it is an indication that the labor power of those performing the jobs has been devaluated. the most obvious consequence should be a reduction in the relative income of those occupations. 80 not unrelated to the above is the degree of unemployment in occupational sectors. rationalization of jobs due to technological change can result in large numbers of unemployed. before an occupation is devalued there should be a high demand for workers in that area. as devaluation takes place the supply of workers capable of filling devalued positions should outstrip the demand. therefore, an indication of devaluation should be a large number of unemployed who are qualified to work in that occupational sector. other variables which have to be considered include trade union activity, male-female occupations, and education and experience. the trade unions could have the effect of obscuring some of the obvious differences in income differentials. at the same time, increased trade union activity in o:cupational sectors where there has been little activity previously may be an indication that the workers are becoming aware cf the deterioration of their position. it matters not whether the activity is a result of their becoming proletarian or a reaction against their becoming proletarian. the same obvious indicator, increased trade union activity, is still there. the sexual differentiation among occupations is important in looking at proletarianization. one must determine whether occupations with a high proportion of female manpower are more prone to deterioration than those with mainly male manpower or whether women are drawn into jobs where the deterioration process has already begun. the amount of experience and education required for performing jobs must be analyzed to determine if there is a deterioration of these qualifications in certain sectors relative to other sectors. bl the brief discussion given above states some of the factors which may be examined in a study of the devaluation of labor power. however, if one follows carchedi's definition, then the functions which the agents perform must be analyzed as well. in this case the operationalization is somewhat more difficult. the function of global capital may be related to the work of supervision and control. the function of the 43 collective worker occurs when the agent takes part in the labor process. if over any two time periods the function of the job shifts from that of global capital to that of the collective worker then the occupation is becoming more proletarian. in order to research this type of change it is necessary to look at such variables as (1) supervisory duties of the job and (2) the amount of control over other employees the job requires. obviously the investigation of the changes occurring in the middle classes is an exceedingly difficult and imposing task. this task has been touched upon only very superficially in this paper but it is a topic worthy of much more intensive scrutiny. 82 notes 1. marx, karl and frederick engels. the communist manifesto , new york: international publishers, 1st published 1s48. p. 9. 2. carchedi, g. "on the economic identification of the new middle class" in economy and society , 1975. 3. braverman, harry. labor and monopoly capital , monthly review press 1974. 4. these superstructural elements are the political and the ideological. 5. the embourgeoisement thesis was most popular in the 1950s and 1960s. some of its major proponents were kurt b. mayer, class and society , new york: random house, 1955; ferdinand zweig, the worker in an affluent society , london: heinrmann, 1961; and gerhard lenski, power and privilege , new york: mcgraw-hill, 1966. 6. g. carchedi op. cit . p. 59. 7. the difference between "proletarianization" and "becoming proletariat' will be expounded upon later in this paper. 8. kestergaard, j.h. "the rediscovery of the cash nexus" in socialist register , 1970, p. 113. 9. this study is published in three volumes. (1) the affluent worker : industrial attitudes and behavior , cambridge university press, 19t8, (2) the affluent worker: political attitudes and behavior , 1966 and (3) the affluent worker in the class structure , 1969. 10. goldthorpe, j.h. et.al . the affluent worker in the class structure , 1969, p. 24. also see j.h. westergaard. op. cit . p,113~ 11. studies conducted by k.g. runciinan, relative deprivaticn and social justice , 1966 and r.t. mckenzie and a. silver, angels in marble : working class conservatives in england , 1968 lend support to the conclusions of goldthorpe et.al . pertaining to the development of the working class. workers are described as "secular and pragmatic" "instrumental ly oriented" and "privatised". 12. j.h. westergaard. op.cit . p. 120. 13. ibid , p. 121. 14. ibid , p. 132. 83 15. hamilton, richard. class and politics in the united states , new york: wiley, 1972, p. 378. 16. ibid , p. 369. 17. ibid , p. 371. 18. ibid , pp. 380-381. 19. by using this type of designation for classes, hamilton differs soirewhat from the conception of classes used in this paper. a more fully developed definition of class will be attempted later in a discussion of the middle class which is integral to the proletarianization thesis. however, for the purposes of illustrating the problems of the embourgeoisement thesis, hamilton's concept of class can be accepted here. 20. harry braverman, op . c i t . and g. carchedi, op . c i t . address themselves to this problem and lend support to the thesis of proletarianization of certain segments ofthe middle class. 21. levison, andrew. the working class majority , new york: coward, mccann and geoghegan, inc. 1974. 22. levison uses strictly american data gathered from the u.s. cer.: us and the dept. of labor statistics. 23. see also richard sennett and jonathon cobb. the hidden injuries of class , new york: vintage books, 1973. 24. for example, see marion r. porter, john porter and bernard blishcn, does money matter? prospects for higher education , toronto: institute for beharioral research, york university, 1973. 25. harry braverman, op . c i t . p. 4 04. 26. ibid , p. 405. 27. andre gorz, in an earlier article "technical intelligence and the capitalist division of labor" in telos , 1972, points out that functions are important in the process of capital accumulation. ...we shall not succeed in locating technical and scientific labor within the class structure of advanced capitalist society unless wc start analyzing what functions technical and scientific labor perform in the process of capital accumulation and in the process of reproducing capitalist relations, (p. 27). gorz's statement, although it is speaking specifically of scientific and technical orployn.ent , could be applied to all these middle levels of employment which seem to be both proletariat and bourgeoisie. s4 johnson, leo. "the development of class in canada in the twentieth century" in gary teeple (ed.) capitalism and the national question ir, canada , university of toronto press, 1972. 37. harry braverman, op . c i t . pp. 350-351. 38. grecnbaum, joan. "division of labor in the computer field" in monthly review , vol.28, july-august, 1976, pp. 40-55. see also john and barbara ehrenreiih, "hospital workers: a case study in the 'new working class'" in monthly review , vol.24, *8, jan. 1973. 39. ibid , p. 41. 40. ibid , p. 42. 41. leo johnson, op. cit . p. 148, table 1. these figures are for the total petite bourgeoisie. also harry braverman, op. cit . notes these same changes in the occupationsl structure especially in the drastic reduction in the proportion of the population engaged in agriculture. 42. the political and ideological can react back upon the economic in a form of overdetermination. however, they react back upon the economic only within the limits set by the economic substructure. 43. this may be either productive or unproductive work. both carchedi op . cit . and leo johnson op. cit . allow that non-productive workers can be part of the working class and thus perform the function of the collective worker. however, nicos poulantzas, "on social classes" in new left review , 1973 assigns non-productive workers to the middle class specifically on the grounds that they are unproductive. thus for both carchedi and johnson the proletarianization of non-productive workers in the middle class is possible without changing their unproductive nature, while for poulantz.is this proletarianization is not possible save for a change from unproductive work to productive wor> . ss bibliography braverman, harry, labor and monopoly capital, monthly review press, 1974. carchedi, g. "on the economic determination of the new middle class" in economy and society, 1975. ehrenreich, john and barbara. "hospital workers: a case study in the 'new working class"" in monthly review , vol.24, #8, jan. 1973. goldthorpe, j.h. ct . al . the affluent worker: industrial attitudes and behavior , cambridge university fress, 1968. goldthorpe et.al . the affluent worker: political attitudes and behavior , cambridge university press, 1968. goldthorpe et .al . the affluent worker in the class structure , cambridge university fress, 1969. gorz, andre. "technical intelligence and the capitalist division of labor" in telos , 1972. greenbaum, joan. "division of labor in the computer field" in montnly review , vol.28, july-august 1976. hamilton, richard. class and politics in the united states , new york: wiley, 1972. johnson, leo. "the development of class in canada in the twentieth century: in gary teeple (ed.) capitalism and the national question in canada , university of toronto press, 1972. lenski, gerhard. power and privilege , new york: mcgraw-hill 1966. levison, andrew, the working class majority , new york: coward, mccann and geoghegan inc. 1974. marx, karl and frederick engels. the communist manifesto , international publishers, 1st published in 1848. mayer, kurt b. class and society , new york: random house, 195s. mckenzie, r.t. and a. silver. angels in marble: working class conser vatives in urban england , chicago: university of chicago press, 1968. porter, marion r., john porter and bernard blishen. docs money matter ? prospects for higher education , tctonto: institute for behavioral research, york university, 1973. 86 runciman, k.c. relative deprivation and social justice , berkeley: university of california press, 1966. scnnett, richard and jonathon cobb. the hidden injuries of class , vintage books, 1973. kestergaard, j.h. "the rediscovery of the cash nexus" in socalist register , 1970. zweig, ferdinand. the worker in an affluent society , london: heineman, 1961. 103 the keynesian revival: a marxian critique richard d. wolff1 abstract: the global economic crisis, unfolding since late 2007, has begun to undermine the hegemony of neoclassical economics and neo-liberalism generally, thereby provoking a widespread resurgence of keynesian economics in various forms. the historical adequacy of keynesian economics to modify, reverse or prevent capitalist crisis is criticized systematically. capitalism is shown to have exhibited repeated oscillations between private and state-interventionist forms for centuries, since neither proved capable of preventing recurring crises. an alternative to both neoclassical and keynesian responses to crises—a new kind of marxian response—is developed. it stresses micro-level transformations, adding them to balance the one-sided macro-focus of the traditional interpretations of marxism, socialism, and communism. keywords: economic crisis, keynesian economics, marxian economics, marxian critique a critique of the revival of keynesian counter-recessionary policies in the modern history of capitalism, keynesian counter-recessionary policies (broadly defined) have failed in two major ways. first, those policies have not consistently succeeded as means to end capitalism’s cyclical downturns. they failed, for example, to extract the us from the great depression of the 1930s. as this is written, their effectiveness in today’s global capitalist crisis is questionable. second, the promise that has almost always accompanied each application of keynesian policies 1 richard d. wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the university of massachusetts, amherst and currently visiting professor in the graduate program in international affairs of the new school university in new york city. wolff has authored many articles and books, often together with stephen a. resnick; their latest book is new departures in marxian theory (2006). wolff has written widely on the current economic crisis, produced a dvd and book, each entitled “capitalism hits the fan”, and made much of his work freely available at www.rdwolff.com. the keynesian revival: a marxian critique 104 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research everywhere—that it would also prevent future economic downturns—has never yet been kept. the keynesian policies have included varying mixtures of monetary (easing) and fiscal (expansionary) policies and market regulations (especially in finance). they have sometimes included controls on capital flows as well as subsidies, bailouts, and outright nationalizations of private enterprises. different combinations of these components characterize keynesian policies in different countries and at different historical moments. the chief means that actually ended capitalism’s downturns have been declines in the following: productive laborers’ real wages, finished product inventories, means of production prices, and the associated costs of securing profits (managers and other non-productive workers’ wages and operating budgets, taxes, access to credit, rents, etc.). once those declines sufficed to reach certain thresholds, capitalists could see profit possibilities and so resumed productive investment. that generated more or less “recovery” via multiplier and accelerator effects particular to each place and time. in short, capitalism is a systematically unstable economic system whose cycles are basic features of its normal functioning. keynesian policies have never basically altered that systemic instability. keynesian policies, i propose to argue, have largely provided quite secondary supports to the normal functioning of capitalist cycles. they marginally moderate the cycles’ amplitude and duration. they temporarily impose both costs and constraints on the profit-seeking activities of corporate boards of directors. in these ways, keynesian policies successfully buy both political space and time for the capitalist cycle to run through its usual downward phase. in the current global capitalist crisis, massive keynesian deficit spending, as well as credit-market bailouts have generated huge increases in many capitalist countries’ national debts. lenders eventually balk at further loans to the most over-indebted nations, demanding that they raise taxes and/or cut spending to qualify for more loans. if and when that proves politically impossible for lenders to impose on borrowing nations, multilateral agencies offer less onerous terms for loan assistance but with the same demand for austerity conditions. those conditions—conveniently imposed by others and not the national government—all serve to drive down wages and other costs of business and so once again set the stage for the usual capitalist cycle. besides their secondary role, keynesian policies also serve an important diversionary function. governments appear to be working mightily to “overcome the economic crisis” by implementing those policies with great fanfare. they thereby distract publics from yet another repetition of the normal capitalist’s cyclical downturn. exploding national debts, like other keynesian policy programs constitute an elaborate diversionary political theater. 105 as capitalist crises deepen and last, politicians of most persuasions increasingly express concern, compassion, and/or anger about mass unemployment, home foreclosures, bankruptcies, poverty, etc. they engage in heavily publicized debates and legislative contests over the appropriate monetary, fiscal, regulatory, subsidy, bailout, capital control, and private-enterprisetake-over policies to be executed by the state. these theatrics usually absorb the political energies of many left and right forces that might otherwise, separately or together, make the capitalist system itself the object of opposition, struggle, and transformation. left-tilting inflections of keynesian policies often include, for example, direct state subsidies to or hiring’s of un/underemployed workers, controls over private investment flows, and enterprise nationalizations. right-tilting inflections often include, for example, restrictions on immigration, reduced taxes on small businesses, and spending on business-friendly infrastructure construction. in the context of this argument, figure 1 below supports the basic irrelevance of keynesian policies to the basic contours of capitalist exploitation measured roughly by the relation between labor productivity and real wages.2 first, it covers a long period of us economic history: before, during, and after keynesian interventions occurred in their classic form in the 1930s. figure 1 reveals trends for manufacturing, in both labor productivity and real wages that show no systematic sensitivity to either the imposition or the negation of keynesian policies over the last century. the complex over-determinations of real wage and productivity movements were not much influenced by the rise and fall of keynesian policy regimes nor by whether neo-liberal/neo-classical economics or keynesian macro-economics prevailed in academic and policy-making circles. 2 graphically juxtaposing productivity and real wage trend lines is suggested by but not the exact equivalent to the marxian notion of surplus value (s/v or the ratio of value added less productive workers’ value of labor power – numerator to productive workers’ value of labor power – denominator). first, what contemporary statistical practice counts as manufacturing workers’ wages conflates both productive and unproductive laborers in manufacturing; marxian theory keeps these separate. second, the relevant variable for marxian theory–value of productive laborer’s labor power—is not equivalent to real wages, but is rather real wages adjusted for changes in the productivity of producing real wage goods. because of the difficulties in translating available statistics into their marxian analogues, i use here the available manufacturing productivity and real wage trends which allow me to substantiate the argument offered in the text. the keynesian revival: a marxian critique 106 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 figure 1: productivity and the hourly wage (u.s. ecnomomy, 1890-2009) productivity real hourly wage (index: 1890 = 100; sources and details for figure 1: see appendix) indeed, the relatively laissez-faire period before the 1930s saw productivity and real wages rise more or less together, whereas productivity rose somewhat faster than real wages during the 1930s when keynesian policies were imposed. however, in the second half of the 1960s into the 1970s, during a second spurt of keynesian policies (johnson’s “great society”, etc.), productivity rose much faster than real wages. then, driving home the irrelevance of keynesian policies to the productivity-real wage relation, the extreme laissez-faire, neoliberal undoing of keynesian policies after 1980 then saw the last century’s most unequal of productivity to real wage ratios. the end of world war i marks the beginning of a near century of capitalist growth in the us (notwithstanding the great depression’s impact) that saw a self-reinforcing divergence between what workers produced for their employers (productivity) and what they were paid by their employers for doing so (real wages). capitalist cycles punctuated but did not basically alter that growth pattern.3 keynesian policies punctuated but did not basically alter the cycles, let alone the growth pattern. 3 this point parallels an argument about capitalist growth globally presented by david ruccio (1991). 107 for the working classes, the alternation between laissez-faire and keynesian policy regimes made little discernible difference in the long-run relationship between labour productivity and real wages. put otherwise, both regimes could and did facilitate growing gaps between productivity and wages over the last half century, much as earlier both regimes facilitated minimal gaps between them. in rough terms, the productivity of labor exceeded the real wage in 1890, the base year used to compute figure 1 above. that is, in marxian terms, workers produced a surplus for their employers already then. thereafter, that surplus grew both absolutely and relative to real wages. measured in value terms, the marxian metric, the rate of exploitation rose as us capitalism prospered across its cycles. alternations between keynesian and laissez-faire policy regimes, like the accompanying oscillations of theoretical hegemony between neoclassical and keynesian economics, were secondary side shows to the main event of rising exploitation. if workers in the us hoped that supporting the keynesian policies of roosevelt, truman, kennedy, johnson, nixon and others would alter their basic positions inside us capitalism, they were disappointed. notwithstanding their rising real wages from the 1940s to the 1970s and all sorts of political and cultural obfuscations (about everyone being “middle class” or the us being a “people’s capitalism”), the workers lived in the growing gap between their real incomes and the wealth of those who took the lions’ share of the surpluses they delivered to employers. their accumulating disappointment helps to explain some periodic disaffection of workers from the democrats. after real wages stopped rising in the late 1970s, workers increasingly defected even to clearly pro-business republicans (greenberg,1996). a critique of keynesian theory’s revival the laissez-faire (neo-liberalist) phase of capitalism that dominated the world economy over the last 30 years has crashed. that, in turn, has now challenged the hegemony of neo-classical economics as the theoretical rationale for celebrating private enterprise and free markets, privatizing public enterprises, and deregulating markets. keynesian economics is reviving (skidelsky, 2008). as states everywhere again intervene in the “private” economy—more massively than ever this time— keynesian economics provides many of the prescriptions and rationales for state economic interventions. with revival come renewed contestations among different interpretations of keynes. the differences reflect especially long-standing pressures upon keynesians from both the left (those who criticize them for “saving” capitalism) and the right (those who attack them for “threatening” capitalism). the most widespread keynesianism is what prevails in the treatments by most economics textbooks and among advisors to most governments now intervening in their economies to contain and the keynesian revival: a marxian critique 108 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research reverse the damages from the current capitalist crisis. this interpretation of keynesian theory rationalizes state interventions (especially expansionary monetary and fiscal policies and financial market regulations) in an otherwise private capitalism. it represents the predictable first (and quite moderate) phase of a keynesianism just emerging after 30 years of neoclassical theory’s near total hegemony. this keynesian theory’s goal is quite clearly to save capitalism from what it understands to be the dangerous consequences of laissez-faire (neo-liberal) policy regimes. most partisans of another interpretation, the relatively new variant sometimes called green keynesianism, want traditional monetary, fiscal, and regulatory policies redesigned to stress ecological goals (jones, 2008). they seem, at least implicitly, to offer an alliance, a political deal to the dominant keynesians. green keynesians will basically support the goal of saving capitalism in exchange for a keynesian policy package that makes capitalism significantly greener. thus, for example, green keynesians want expansionary deficit government spending to favor energy-saving mass transportation, installation of solar energy facilities, etc., while tax cuts should favor those who undertake pollution reduction. left keynesians typically want larger, more extensive, and more intrusive state intervention into the private economy. they seek state seizures of private enterprises when their demise threatens broad economic collapse (sometimes referred to as corporations “too big to fail”). they particularly favor state controls over investment and other capital flows, domestically and internationally, to limit and prevent those flows’ otherwise destabilizing effects. many left keynesians share the green keynesians’ goals and thus offer them an alternative political deal. instead of allying with the socially prevalent, rather moderate keynesians, the green keynesians are invited to see better chances of realizing their environmental goals with left keynesian policies in command. left-right divisions among green keynesians are now shaping who among them allies with whom. the furthest left keynesians advocate the most intrusive state interventions. many of them refer to such interventions as key parts of a transition to what they sometimes call socialism. allied with other kinds of socialists, including some marxists, the far left keynesians seek to expand state intervention to include officials permanently replacing share-holder elected corporate boards of directors and officials permanently controlling or even replacing markets (with more or less central planning of the distribution of resources and products). for them, those two permanent replacements define socialism.4 4 for a systematic critique of definitions of socialism in terms of state ownership and state planning, see resnick & wolff, 2002. we show there why and how capitalism has oscillated between private and state forms that are both as old as capitalism itself. 109 whether and to what extent any interpretation of keynesian economics can now displace the last 30 years’ hegemony of neoclassical economics will depend on all the economic, political and cultural processes shaping the contesting protagonists of both paradigms. those processes will simultaneously over-determine the outcome of disputes among alternative interpretations of keynesian economics.5 meanwhile and contrary to notions that neoclassical versus keynesian economics encompasses the total range of possible economic theory, the marxian alternatives offer something different from both of them. one particular marxian approach does not ally with any variant of keynesian economics; it stresses its differences from all of them. i want to develop that approach briefly here by noting first that it rejects the keynesians’ nearly exclusive focus on the macro-level of the economy. this marxian theory goes well beyond state regulation, controls, and ownership of capitalist enterprises (versus their private counterparts) and likewise beyond planning (versus markets). the hallmark of this marxian theory is an explicit micro-focus drawn from marx’s critique of the class structure of production. a marxian theoretical alternative this marxian theory begins from the historical observations summarized in this paper’s first paragraph.6 keynesian policies have not overcome the capitalist system’s inherent instabilities. nor have keynesian economists seriously measured, let alone found ways to eliminate, the vast and long-lasting social costs of that instability. as we now live through the second great crisis of capitalism in 75 years, we do know that its global social costs are again immense. between the end of the great depression and the onset of today’s crisis, the national bureau of economic research (nber) counts an additional eleven “business cycle downturns” that also generated large social costs (nber, 2008). so many large and small crises underscore marxian theory’s advocacy of changing the economic system as a solution for such crises, rather than repeated oscillations between neoclassical (private) and keynesian (state or state-interventionist) forms of capitalism. modern society can do better than capitalism. from the standpoint of this marxian theory, the failures of keynesian policies—and the keynesian economics that rationalize them—flow from their neglect of the micro-dimensions of capitalism. in short, the unattended contributor to capitalist instability is the relationship inside enterprises between the workers who 5 limited space and the main foci of this paper prevent a discussion here of the alternative, contesting variants of neoclassical economics. those constraints have also minimized attention to the different interpretations of marxian economics; such attention is available in resnick & wolff, 2006. 6 for the basic propositions of this marxist theory and its differences from alternatives, see resnick & wolff 1987; 2006. the keynesian revival: a marxian critique 110 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research produce the surpluses and the employers (e.g. corporate boards of directors) who appropriate and distribute those surpluses.7 because keynesian policies impose costs and constraints on employers in their exploitative relations with workers and in their competitive struggles within and across industries, those employers have great incentives to evade, weaken or end those keynesian policies. because employers appropriate the surpluses (and hence the profits) of enterprise, they dispose of the resources needed to respond positively to those incentives. that is what happened to roosevelt’s 1930s new deal and what has more recently been happening to much of western european social democracy (clayton & ponstusson, 1998). in both cases, the employers used the surpluses appropriated from their employees to move their societies back toward a laissez-faire policy regime as soon as they secured the political conditions enabling them to do so.8 macro-level efforts to control and constrain capitalism’s instability failed because of the capitalists’ continued appropriation and politically effective distributions of the surpluses produced inside enterprises. marxian theory emphasizes how employers’ decisions about distributing the surpluses are significantly influenced by the struggles between producers and appropriators of surpluses inside capitalist enterprises as well as by the competitive struggles among them. hence marxian theory suggests the internal transformation of enterprise structures. instead of their typical capitalist structures that split employers from employees, a post-capitalist structure would position workers as, collectively, their enterprise’s own board of directors—i.e. marx’s “associated workers.” the era of capitalist employers (e.g., corporate boards selected by and responsible to major private shareholders) would then have come to an historic end. the capitalist class structure of production would have been superseded by such a collectivization of surplus appropriation inside enterprises (wolff, 2010). for example, consider enterprises newly structured such that the workers produce outputs in the usual way mondays through thursdays, but on fridays, assembled in both plenaries and subgroups, they make decisions previously taken by boards of directors selected by (major) shareholders. that is, the workers democratically decide what, where, and how to produce and how to distribute their realized surpluses. they decide when and how to expand and contract. but they do not do that alone. they enter into co-respective power-sharing agreements with the local and regional communities where their physical production facilities are located. 7 a full exposition of how capitalist enterprises organize the production, appropriation, and distribution of surpluses can be found in resnick & wolff, 1987 (chapter 3). 8 an alternative mode of articulating this argument—one that uses the terms “private capitalism” and “state capitalism” to differentiate laissez-faire from crs policy regimes—is developed in resnick & wolff, 2002. there we extend the analysis to include the state capitalisms of the ussr and other “actually existing socialisms” which have demonstrated the same vulnerability to reversals back to laissez-faire or private capitalism as have crs policy regimes and for parallel reasons. 111 the workers participate in the residential communities’ decision-making processes and vice-versa.9 such a micro-based level of socialism becomes the necessary new complement to the classic macro-level socialisms that stressed socialization of means of production and planning over markets. indeed, the microand macro-levels of socialism would then support and, just as importantly, constrain one another. macro-level property socialization and economic planning would emerge from and be accountable to the micro-level collectives appropriating the enterprise-level surpluses they would use to enforce that accountability. at the same time, the micro-level enterprise collectives would have their production and distribution decisions constrained by the macrolevel (social) needs, priorities, and planning mechanisms (possibly co-existing with market mechanisms). this micro-level socialism supports genuine democracy inside each enterprise. it also creates the parallel economic partner for democratic political institutions in residential communities. democratic collectivities inside enterprises and their residential community counterparts would henceforth together reach their interdependent decisions. likewise, they would share their interdependence with macro-level institutions, both economic and political. today’s reviving keynesianism once again largely ignores the micro-level issues raised in and by the marxian criticism and alternative briefly sketched above. most keynesian programs now aimed to end the economic crisis, if they actually restabilized contemporary capitalism, would thereby initiate their own demise. that is, they would then repeat the historical pattern of oscillating back to a laissez-faire capitalism. the marxian alternative program that included the micro-level transformation of production sketched above would break, finally, from the repeated oscillations between private and state-interventionist capitalisms and the unnecessary social costs of capitalism’s instability. 9 a rich literature explores experiments in and analyses of such enterprises (producer co-operatives modeled on the mondragon enterprises in spain, yugoslavia’s worker-run enterprises, etc.) in which workers more or less appropriate and distribute the surpluses they produce; see gibson-graham (2006) for a theoretically sophisticated entrée into that literature. the keynesian revival: a marxian critique 112 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research appendix: sources for figure 1 [compiled by jason ricciuti-borenstein] 1. for wage series for manufacturing workers, 1890-2007 a. historical statistics of the united states (hsus), series d 765-778, “average hours and average earnings in manufacturing”, 1890 to 1926 b. hsus, series d 845-876, “average days in operation per year, average daily hours, and annual and hourly earnings, in manufacturing”, 1889 to 1914 c. hsus, series d 830-844, “earnings and hours of production workers in 25 manufacturing industries”, 1914 to 1948 d. hsus, series d 802-810, “earnings and hours of production workers in manufacturing”, 1909 to 1970 e. u.s. bureau of labor statistics, current employment statistics, “average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory workers in manufacturing”, 1939 to 2007, http://www.bls.gov/ces/. 2. for consumer price index: f. hsus, series d 735-738, “average annual and daily earnings of nonfarm employees”, 1860 to 1900 g. hsus, series d 722-727, “average annual earnings of employees”, 1900 to 1970 h. u.s. bureau of labor statistics, http://www.bls.gov/cpi/. notes: the series was constructed first by converting the various hourly wage series into real values of 2007. second, in years for which multiple entries of the hourly wage existed, an average was taken such that: 1890-1914, average of sources a and b 1914-1919, b was the only source 1920-1938, average of sources c and d 1939-1948, average of sources c, d and e 1949-1970, average of sources d and e 1970-2007, e was the only source next, this hourly real wage series was converted into an index, in which 100 was set equal to the real hourly wage for 1890. 113 3. for productivity series for manufacturing output per hour a. historical statistics of the united states, series d 683-688, “indexes of employee output”, 1869 to 1969 b. u.s. bureau of labor statistics, http://www.bls.gov/lpc/ “industry analytical ratios for the manufacturing, all persons,” http://www.google.com/ search?ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=supers eded+historical+sic+measures+for+manufacturing%2c+durable+man ufacturing%2c+and+nondurable+manufacturing+sectors%2c+19492003++ftp%3a%2f%2fftp.bls.gov%2fpub%2fspecial.requests%2fopt%2f lpr%2fhistmfgsic.zip c. u.s. bureau of labor statistics, http://www.bls.gov/lpc/, series id: prs30006092, 1987 to 2007 notes: the above data sources provide the annual percentage change in the quantity of output per hour for the manufacturing sector. the index was constructed as follows: 1890 to 1949, from source a 1949 to 1987, from source b 1987 to 2007, from source c year 1890 was set equal to 100. the keynesian revival: a marxian critique 114 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research references cayton, r., & pontusson, j. (1998). welfare state retrenchment revisited: entitlemet cuts, public sector retrenchment, and inegalitarian trends in advanced capitalist societies, world politics, 51(1), 67-98. gibson-graham, j.k. (1996). a post-capitalist politics. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. greenberg, s. b. (1996). middle class dreams: the politics and power of the new american majority. new haven and london: yale university press. jones, v. (2008). the green collar economy. new york: harper collins. national bureau of economic research. (2008). us business cycle expansion and contradiction. retrieved august 21 2010, from http://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html resnick, s., & wolff, r. d. (1987). knowledge and class: a marxian critique of political economy. chicago: university of chicago press. resnick, s., & wolff, r. d. (2002). class theory and history: captalism and communism in the ussr. new york and london: routledge publishers. resnick, s., & wolff, r. d. (2006). new departures in marxian theory. new york and london: routledge publishers ruccio, d. f. (1991). when failure becomes success: class and the debate over stabilization and adjustment, world development, 19, 1315-34. skidelsky, r. (2008, december 12). the remedist. the new york times magazine [online]. retrieved december 12, 2008, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/magazine/14wwlnlede-t.html. wolff, r.d. (2010). taking over the enterprise: a new strategy for labor and the left.new labor forum, 19(1), 8-12. the collusion with patriarchy: a psychoanalytic account roberta hamilton this paper seeks an understanding within psychoanalytic theory for how people come to collude with patriarchal structures that oppress them. the bisexuality of the child, the distinction between basic and surplus repression and horowitz' analysis that surplus repression involves the repudiation of bisexuality is explored through the active and passive oedipal complexes . their 'normal' result involves monogamy , hetero sexuality and the denigration of femininity . the paper concludes that the struggles for sexual liberation belong at the centre of the struggle against capitalism and patriarchy . ttie most important insight that feminist theory and practice has given to traditional marxist theory is the insistence that the reproduction of the species, the institutions within which this occurs, and the entire network of relationships which result from it must be analysed if the nature of society is to be understood and transformed. within ma rx is tfeminist theory, this has led to the analysis of the role played by the family in perpetuating both the social relations of capitalism and patriarchy. while it is recognized, in the words of christopher lasch (1975) , that "the development of capitalism and the rise of the state reverberate in the individual's inner being,'' understanding the mediations for this interchange has proven an elusive task. it is not just marxists who have faltered in the attempt to understand why and how individuals collude with social and personal structures which exploit and oppress them, or for that matter why they resist, as miraculously they do, so often. it was dennis wrong who pointed out in his seminal article, "the cversocialized conception of man in modern sociology," that sociologists have tended to generate a view of man sufficiently "disembodied and non-materialistic to satisfy bishop berkeley, as well as being desexualized enough to please mrs. grundy" (1961:183-193). as a result, he argues, there has been a marked failure to keep in mind the long-time sociological and philosophical question: "how is it that man becomes tractable to social discipline?". he called for a sociological reassessment of the nature of man which would incorporate the findings of freud and psychoanalysis. and he did not have in mind the kind of truncated version of psychoanalysis that talcott etersons produced, extracting the concept of the superego from the rest of the theory to explain that men 42 internalise the values of their society. rather, wrong insisted that full weight be given to freud's understanding of the human psyche as a complex, conflict-ridden arena in which there is a life-long attempt to reconcile the desires of the material body with social possibilities. wiile mainstream sociology has, with few exceptions, resisted wrong's challenge, tending, as edward boldt pointed out, to return to symbolic interactionism and george herbert mead for an understanding of human motivation (1979:1-4), the particular intersection of questions posed by marxistfeminists are now leading to some tentative explorations of psychoanalytic theory, fl] what conjuncture of interests has brought this about? as eli zaretsky has put it (1976:133-34): marxists have rightly pointed out that society must organize the production of food, clothing and shelter, but they have forgotten that it must equally organize the sexual and instinctual life of its members and the process of human reproduction. this lacuna was, of course, particularly important to feminists whose primary concern with the hierarchical relationship between men and women, even in their intimate day-to-day encounters, led them to the appreciation expressed in the slogan, 'the personal is political.' the analysis that resulted from the marxist-feminist encounter led to the breakdown of the mystification that there were two autonomous arenas for human activity: the public world of work and social relations of production and the private world of the family and personal relations. [2] engel's (1948) understanding of the family as historically shaped by the particular mode of production has been extended to show the role of the family in capitalist society as both producer and reproducer of 'appropriate' kinds of labour power for capitalist enterprise and, also, as a unit of consumption for the products of that enterprise (zaretsky, 1976). the sexual division of labour, both in the 43 family and in the work world, has been analysed and used to help account for the perpetuation both of social relations of production and of patriarchy (armstrong and armstrong, 1978). ims work has, however, tended to rely upon superficial assumptions about human motivations. the collusion of men and women with the social structure has been variously accounted for by political and economic coercion, behavioural conformity and individual intention. it is not surprising that this inadequacy has been more acutely felt in marxistfeminist theory than in other theoretical perspectives. our interest in that intersection between social and economic structure and the behaviour of individuals has forced us to be peculiarly sensitive to individual resistance to change. we have had to wonder in new and bitter ways about the cliche, 'she is her own worst enemy. 1 kate millett's expression 'interior colonization' is an effective description but also raises questions about how and why. since our interest is not simply to understand the world but to change it, our theories are flawed if they do not include viable formulations about the nature of human beings. just as we need to understand the social structure in order to participate actively in its transformation, so we need to understand how the psychosexual structure of men and women will lead them to conform to, or to resist, the social order that they encounter. at the same time, the consequences of the transformations of social systems without the transformations of underlying psychosexual structure are becoming apparent. this, together with the lonaevity of capitalism and the tenacity of patriarchy, can lead us to unbecomingly cynical answers to the old questions, 'can men and women in fact live by bread alone, and under what circumstances will they demand more than that?' it has not been easy for feminists to turn to psychoanalysis. 44 freud's personal commitment to patriarchy was often reflected in his writings about women and have been an easy foil for feminist anger, f 3] this anger resonated with that of most marxists who believe that their theory is irreconcilable with freud. yet, as paul robinson (1969:3) argues, a serious controversy about the nature of freud's theories has long existed among the left: the question can be formulated in both political and sexual terms. did freud's theoretical achievement imply a revolutionary or a reactionary attitude toward the human situation? vvfes freud truly the apologist of sexual and political repression, drawing a picture of inevitable unhappiness, unfreedom, and aggression, or did his new science contain within it the promise of gratification, liberty and peace? in the last ten years or so, sparked by juliet mitchell's psychoanalysis and feminism (1974) , marxistfeminists have begun to draw out the radical implications of freud's theory as part of their attempt to show that patriarchy is not a universal but an historically specific phenomenon. [4] it is my own view that what we can have minimally from psychoanalytic theory are serious answers to questions about how and why women and men come to collude with the system of male dominance and female subordination and thereby participate in its perpetuation. it cannot explain why men are dominant and women subordinate. for that we must look elsewhere: to the implications of the unequal role men and women play in the perpetuation of the species and to the ramifications of the development of private property and social relations of production (hamilton, 1978: 104-05). here, i will argue that we internalise and legitimate this hierarchy in the course of the early development of our ego; that it becomes enmeshed in what we feel about or bodies, our behaviour and our actions, in our fantasies and dreams and in our self-concepts. in particular, in this paper i want to outline the specific kind 45 of contribution that i believe psychoanalytic theory can make: 1. it can account for, as freud put it (1965:116), how men and women are made in social terms and for how they are so tenaciously made. 2. it can account for the social reproduction of primarily heterosexual human beings out of bisexual human infants. 3. it can account for the social devaluation of what is perceived as femininity (with its more extreme manifestations in mysogyny) and the overvaluation of what is perceived as masculinity. the social reproduction of heterosexual men and women who place unequal value upon masculinity and femininity implies its corollary: that a whole range of needs, feelings, attitudes, desires and behaviours have had to be repressed in the process. [5] in other words, we have individuals who, in the course of their development, come to collude both with patriarchal and social structures. i would, of course, not argue that economic, political and social coercion do not play a crucial role in ensuring this conformity. i maintain, however, that the system does not, nor could not, rely simply on coercion to ensure that individuals perform the thousands of small and large acts which sustain it from day to day. lb start, "we must remember that in the beginning is the body" (wrong, 1961:183). radical feminists have had no difficulty with this departure. their concern has been with the social consequences of the biological differences between the sexes, differences which have made possible the reproduction of the species (firestone, 1970:12). the question arising from biological differences that has been posed most fruitfully within psychoanalysis is at what point, and in what ways, do these biological differences register themselves in the psychic development of the human child? before discussing this further, it is necessary to look briefly at freud's theory of ego development. qjr 46 interest is in that phase in the development of the ego (if indeed at all) that it becomes a gendered ego (wbllheim, 1975:65) . wiile marxists have had difficulty accepting the concept of repression, feminists have reacted negatively to the argument for penis envy. both these aspects of freud's theory have been the focus of new research, clarification, systematization and reformulation. the first concern is the link which freud drew between repression and civil ization. cn the surface at least, he advanced an image of the nature of man which is antithetical to marx's formulation. for marx, man's alienation from himself, from his fellows and from nature, is not an inevitable aspect of humanness but is historically specific, located in his alienation from the productive process and from the products of that process (marx, 1964:106-19). in an attempt to reconcile marx's theory with freud's concept of repression, herbert marcuse (1955), and more recently, gad horowitz (1977) have undertaken the task of analytically separating basic repression from vhat they call 'surplus repression.' vtiat is basic repression and vhy is it fundamental to the freudian account? under its rubric come many different processes. as horowitz says (1977:44-54), repression includes, for example, the physiological renunciation of certain infantile pleasures as the libido shifts to different areas of the body and sublimation, the process vhereby some neutralization and redirection of libido occurs (painting instead of smearing) . repression also explains the resolving of the oedipus complexes in which incestuous love objects are renounced and the subsequent identification with parental figures occurs. this neutralization, sublimation and substitution of desires occurs in the unconscious which operates according to its own laws and does not 47 recognize realities of time, space or 'logic.' the nature of the human child makes repression intrinsic to human development. on the one hand, she arrives on this earth dependent and helpless, unable to satisfy her bodily drives without the active intervention of caretakers. cn the other hand, unlike the young in the rest of the animal kingdom, she possesses no automatic script for the playing out of those drives. [6] what we have, therefore, is a small being alive with potential, but inevitable contradictions. she is not a tabula rasa , awaiting the imprint of her society. but, on the other hand, her dependence, helplessness and the very diffuseness of her drives means that she is unable to seek their gratification except insofar as they are being chanelled, fashioned, controlled, redirected and mediated by others. this process does not result only from the social pressures being exerted by the primary caretakers who engage in a "training" process. it is also very much a physiological process, in which the ego and the concept of the ego are developing in response to the body's sexual maturation. that is, the libido (the sexual instincts) successively organizes around four erotogenic zones, the mouth, anus, phallus and genitals. each stage does not simply replace the next but, in a dialectical fashion, the content of former stages persists in similar and altered forms within the new (wbllheim, 1975:64-65; horowitz, 1977:54). although with each successive stage, there is some repression of the wishes of earlier stages (it is unlikely even in the millenium that most adults would spend a lot of time sucking their thumbs) , marcuse and horowitz argue that, in our society, there is more repression at each stage than is called for by the requirements of ego development or civilization, (maybe thumbs would be better than cigarettes) . 48 repression is, then, our guarantee of humanness; in marcuse's words, (1955:38), it is that which enables the child "to transform the blind necessity of the fulfilment of want into desired gratification." but freud believed that the amount of renunciation necessary for civilization had become so intolerable that he could characterize man in society as discontented, even though man apart from society was a logical and practical absurdity. marcuse saw as his task, the rescuing of the idea of repression but without its devastating implications for man which freud foresaw. his solution was to separate repression into "basic" and "surplus" components. this was an analytic distinction only; for, in experience, they were intertwined. basic repression, necessary for civilization, is intrinsic to ego development and is not itself especially burdensome. surplus repression, which he posited, is by far the greater component, refers to renunciation in order that man accept patriarchal domination and toil. robinson (1969:232) refers to marcuse' s argument as follows: he was able to correlate the repression of pregenital sexuality with the economic needs of the capitalist order the requirement that libido be concentrated in the genitals in order that the rest of the body might be transformed into an instrument of labor. working with marcuse 1 s concepts, horowitz' contribution was to separate out what constitutes basic repression and what surplus repression. he has provided an analysis which explains the internalization of patriarchy and which has important implications for revolutionary feminism. horowitz' argument is that the main component of surplus repression involves the renunciation of all non-reproductive sexuality and therefore, primarily of bisexuality. in a society informed by scarcity, either actual or controlled, the libido will be free to pursue bodily pleasure insofar as it serves the perpetuation of 49 the species; i.e., heterosexual, genital sexuality. all other libidinal desires will be renounced and that energy will ultimately be redirected towards toil. this renunciation, firstly in the service of meeting human survival needs, but finally (and most evidently in capitalist society) in the service of the ruling class involves individual collusion with patriarchy. central to horowitz' critique is an analysis of the oedipus complexes and it is at this point that his analysis intersects with the concept of penis envy which, as i pointed out earlier, has been a particular 'problem' for feminists. freud posited the essential bisexuality of the human child (freud, 1965:116; wollheim, 1975:68). as the child proceeds through the first three stages of ego development (oral, anal, and phallic) she remains psychically bisexual. the biological differences between male and female do not yet register themselves psychically; for, the function of the dominant organ is experienced and represented in the same way in the two sexes (wollheim, 1975:68). it is, then, a psychically bisexual child wiich arrives at the oedipei stage. furthermore, for each sex, there is not one oedipus complex but two: the active and the passive. the resolution of these two oedipal dramas will determine the biological maturation of the child and its subsequent entry into 'human' society through the incorporation of the parents' social standards. when we consider the oedipus complex we can start with the assurance that for almost all children everywhere their first love object has been a female primary caretaker or caretakers. hi in our society, because of the nuclear family structure (fehich has taken its shape from, and in the course of, the development of capitalist social relations of production), it is likely to be one woman, the mother, who will carry out her mothering task in virtual so isolation from all other adults. v\hile a ma rx is tfeminist analysis has revealed the consequences of this for the hierarchical sex division of labour, the incorporation of a psychoanalytic account of ego development can demonstrate the manner in which children are prepared during their early psychosexual development for collusion with that structure. in other words, the renunciation of the oedipal complexes will also reflect the particular nature of the socializing society in our case, a patriarchal, heterosexual, sexually monogamous one, based on a sexual division of labour that the infant will have experienced profoundly through her primary caretaker, in all likelihood the female parent. under these circumstances, both sexes will emerge from the stage of pre-oedipal attachment and identification with the mother towards the inevitable mother-infant separation and the taking up of the mother as a love object. the father, because he distracts maternal attention from the child, is experienced as a rival. the male child fears that his father will do to him what he would like to do to his father; namely, castrate him. in such a struggle, the child acknowledges his powerlessness, represses his oedipal love for his mother, and compensates himself for his loss through identification with his father. this internalization of the father's standards forces part of the child's ego to split off into the observing and judging function viiich freud called the superego (1965:63-65) . this is the renunciation of the male child's active oedipus complex; "active" because active libidinal aims are called up in the desire to possess the mother. for the male child, however, the active aims are not forfeited, since he will one day have what his father now has. the vehicle for the incorporation of society's standards is, therefore castration anxiety. but, it is precisely this experience of castration anxiety which, horowitz argues si (95) , is felt much more intensely than it has to be because of the child's perception of the undoubted value of the penis, and what it represents in patriarchal society. the overvaluation (hyper-cathexis) of the penis in patriarchal society will also help determine the fate of the boy's passive oedipal complex. the male child will also take his father as love-object and see his mother as rival. when he realizes, however, that to desire his father means, in a patriarchal, heterosexual world, that he cannot have a penis, his desire for his father will arouse all the intense castration anxiety that was involved in his active oedipus complex. the 'normal' way to deal with this will be for him to repress not only his incestuous desire for his father in particular, but his homosexual desires in general, and therefore, his passive libidinal aims (including his desire to be penetrated) , for when roused they will summon up the anxiety surrounding castration (horowitz, 1977:95-103) . what he represses, then, are his passive aims which he equates with femininity since only females do not have a penis. these desires will be projected onto the female, who, as the possessor of those anxiety-creating desires, will be threatening (horowitz, 1977:108). she will have to be mastered or controlled and since this is an uncertain business, even in patriarchy hostility and contempt for women will also be summoned to aid in controlling his castration anxiety. the male repudiation of femininity, which ruth brunswick (1948:246) described as "what we have come to consider the normal male contempt for women," is an intrinsic feature of male psychosexual structure in patriarchal society. wbllheim (1975:68-69) puts it this way: "what women have suffered from over the centuries is man's inability to tolerate the feminine side of his nature." this, then, as 52 i understand it, would be, in skeletal form, the psychoanalytic case for male collusion with patriarchy. let us turn now to female children. like the little boy, the little girl will emerge from pre-oedipal attachment to her mother to the taking of her mother as her first love object. in freud's early formulations, the girl child passed directly from pre-oedipal attachment to her mother to the oedipal relationship with her father. he was, however, forced to reconsider (1965:119): we knew, of course, that there had been a preliminary stage of attachment to the mother, but we did not know that it could be so rich in content and so long-lasting, and could leave behind so many opportunities for fixations and dispositions. during this time the girl's father is only a troublesome rival: in some cases the attachment to her mother lasts beyond the fourth year of life. almost everything that we find later in her relation to her father was already present in this earlier attachment and has been transferred subsequently onto her father. more concisely put by brunswick (1948:236), "the pre-oedipal sexuality of the girl becomes her active oedipus complex with the mother as its object." the taking of the mother as love object will, however, be resolved in different ways by the male and female child. the little girl does experience her father as rival for her mother's attention, but this problem is soon eclipsed by a new dilemma. as she enters the genital phase she becomes aware of the significance of the fact that she does not have a penis and that a penis is what you need in a heterosexual world in order to possess your mother (horowitz, 1977:103). the resulting penis envy then has two sources: (1) the wish of the bisexual child to possess the organs of the other sex (penis envy, uterus envy, breast envy) , (horowitz, 104) and (2) the desire to do the things that having those organs permits one to do. lampl-de groot (1948:186) puts it this way: 53 the acceptance of castration anxiety has for her (the girlj the same consequences as for the boy. ' not only does her narcissism suffer a blow on account of her physical inferiority (the boy finds himself and his penis unbearably puny compared to his father; the girl finds her clitoris unimpressive compared to the larger and handier penis), but (secondly) she is forced to renounce the fulfilment of her first love longings. (just as the boy had to renounce his mother to avoid castration anxiety, the girl has to renounce her because, lacking a penis, she cannot possess her.) horowitz argues, however, that penis envy becomes intense penis envy, just as castration anxiety becomes intense castration anxiety for the male, because the phallo-centric civilization, the patriarchal, heterosexual world announces to the girl child that she cannot possess her mother, or indeed any other women, because she has no penis. she will be forced to repress not only her desire for her mother but also her homosexuality, in her case, her active libidinal aims. intense penis envy is for her then, just as castration anxiety is for the male, a repudiation of 'femininity.' but in her case, it is a repudiation of precisely what patriarchal civilization insists that she be feminine, i.e. passive and submissive. in this resolution of her active oedipal complex, she gives up her active libidinal aims. i have not yet dealt with the passive oedipal complex in which the girl takes her father as love object and experiences her mother as rival. by the time she turns to her father as love object, the girl child cannot be threatened by castration since, in the course of resolving her active oedipus complex, she has already accepted her 'castration,' and, more importantly, its implications (lampl de groot , 1948:186). as a result, she does not have the same motivation to renounce her father as love object. equally interesting, however, is why she takes him as a love object at all in a society in vrich he is not her primary caretaker. is it only, as freud suggested, in defensive flight from her active oedipal complex? "the girl is driven out of her 54 attachment to her mother through the influence of her envy for the penis and she enters the cedipus situation (with her father) as though into a haven of refuge" (1965:129). or is it, as nancy chodo row posits, (1978:160) , a question of seduction by her father? in other words, she responds to his treatment of her as a little girl. or is it, rather, a result of her 'essential' bisexual ity? wiile i would not deny the role of the first two processes, particularly in patriarchal society, i agree with horowitz that the acquisition of heterosexual genital aims by women (the acquisition of which is the species guarantee of survival; rape surely not being a viable alternative) cannot be an entirely learned behaviour (as chodorow seems to posit) and is rather one of the outcomes of the normal psychosexual development of a bisexual child (horowitz, 1977:115-116) . horowitz' aim is to show that the presence of these heterosexual genital aims is not incompatible with the retention both of pregenital sexuality and homosexuality. the male child need not give up his homosexuality and his passive aims and the girl child need not give up her homosexuality and her active aims, except in surplus repressive civilization (horowitz, 1977:106). the argument that both men and women repudiate femininity in the course of their early psychosexual development provides, i believe, a plausible explanation of the collusion of men and women with patriarchy. as v*>llheim (1975:97) argues, "psychoanalysis can at best explain why men and for that matter women have colluded", have conspired with the organization of society to secure male dominance and fer =1 e subordination. efert of this explanation demonstrates how both sexes come to repudiate their 'female' side, though only one sex is expected to live it. horowitz (1977:123) states categorically, "revolutionary 55 movements which do not revolutionize the psychosexual structure formed by surplus repression must fail, for this psychosexual structure is both product and source of domination." but if we are now trying to understand a world through such concepts as "basic" and "surplus" repression, are we in a realm that is not so much antithetical to marxist theory, as foreign to it? and if that is the case, how can we view the relationship between the dismantling of patriarchy and the overthrow of capitalism? at this point, i can only indicate where one important point of convergence would seem to lie. i would suggest that the concepts of objectification and alienation in marx have some affinity with the concepts of basic and surplus repression in marcuse and horowitz. psychoanalytic theory informs us that the young child's passage into human society involves an initial erotic dependence upon its primary caretakers, followed by the renunciation of that dependence and the internalization of the adults' socializing standards. this involves processes which horowitz describes as basic repression. intrinsic to this process, is the child's separation from her primary caretakers and, more especially, her growing realization that she is separate from the people and objects around her. in the course of ego development she moves from identification with the mother "briefly one may state that every successful act of identification with the mother makes the mother less necessary to the child" (brunswick, 1948:237) to objectification, the separation of the se! f from the other, the capacity to reflect upon oneself, that is to take oneself as object and to take the other as love object. this occurs in the very process in which she interacts with others and achieves growing mastery over her environment. compare marx (1964:113-114) who, we must remember, did not, like some of his 56 disciples, ever believe that consciousness started at the factory door: in creating a vvorld of objects by his practical activity, in his work upon organic nature, man proves himself a conscious species being, i.e. as a being that treats the species as its own essential being, or that treats itself as a species being .. .through and because of this production, nature appears as his work and his reality. the object of labor, is therefore, the objectif ication of man's species life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he contemplates himself [emphasis added] in a world that he has created. this activity in and upon the world commences with birth. we participate in the creation of our world even as we undergo its primary initiation rights. and this capacity for objectification is made possible through basic repression without which we could never experience separateness, without which we would never come to treat ourselves as the "actual living species" (marx, 1964:112). in our society, the human capacity of objectif ication turns against itself (marx, 1964:114): in tearing away from man the object of his production, therefore, estranged labor tears from him his species life , [emphasis added] his real objectivity as a member of the species and transforms his advantage over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken away from him. in the very process of producing objects which will be controlled by others and used by others to enhance their life, man is alienated from his labour, the objects of his labour, himself and his fellows. his preparation for this has been lifelong, and his willingness is both the result and the cause of surplus repression, a surplus repression that has been fashioned by scarcity, real and controlled. for, in the course of renouncing many forms of bodily gratification, we renounce many pleasures to be found in our own company and in the company of others. this is true not just in directly sexual pleasures but in all the derivatives of sexuality including general sociability, affection 57 and in the activities arising from non-surplus repressive sublimation. we not only come to reflect upon ourselves, but also to experience a painful separation from self and from othersmarx's concept of alienation includes estrangement from self, other people and nature. its transcendence involves the reclamation of work and the productive process as the species activity of man. a psychoanalytic account informs us that our understanding of what constitutes 'work' must include all the activities in which we engage as we produce and reproduce our social world (williams, 1977:80, 91). its reclamation, therefore, must include the re-eroticization of the body, the retention of pregenital sexuality and the re-fusion of passive and active libidinal aims. such a perspective brings the struggles for sexual liberation away from the sidelines and into the centre of the struggle against capitalism and patriarchy. notes * an earlier draft of this paper was read at the annual meetings of the canadian sociology and anthropology association in saskatoon, june 1979. i would like to thank meg luxton (who was the discussant at that session) and, through her, heather jon m3roney, pat armstrong, john mcmillan and susan russell for their useful criticism of that draft. [1] mitchell, juliet; psychoanalysis and feminism , new york: pantheon books, 1974. there has been a debate in the new left review : richard wollheim (nlr 93 and 97), nancy chodorow and" eli zaretsky (nlr 96), the lacan study group (nlr 97). foreman, ann; femininity as alienation: women and the family in marxism and psychoanalysis , london: pluto press, 1977. chodorow, n=»ncy; the reproduction of mothering , university of california press, 1978. dinnerstein, dorothy, the mermaid and the minotaur . [2] morton, peggy, "women's work is never done," women unite toronto: women's educational press, 1972, pp. 46-68; smith, dorothy, "women, the family and corporate capitalism," women in canada , marylee stephenson, ed . general publishing co., 1977; hamilton, roberta, the liberation of women , london: allen and unwin, 1978. 58 [3] ada farber provides a thoughtful and sympathetic insight into freud's personal views on men and women through an analysis of his love letters to his fiance, martha bernays, in "freud's love letters: intimations of psychoanalytic theory," in the psychoanalytic review , vol. 65, no. 1, spring 1978, pp. 166-189. [4] see footnote 1. [5] it should be clear here, as throughout the paper, that i am talking only about the general case; the life history of any particular individual has its own specificity and requires its own analysis. it is equally important and interesting to investigate the conditions under which individuals depart from heterosexual ity and from societal concepts of masculinity and femininity but that is beyond the scope of this paper. [6] for example, the honey bee does not need to repress her desires in ordet for her to be willing to work until she dies of exhaustion. [7] nancy chodorow and ebrothy dinnerstein have both provided interesting accounts of the implications for human development of the universality of mothering as a gendered activity (footnote 1) . references armstrong, pat and hugh armstrong 1978 the double ghetto . mcclelland and stewart, toronto. boldt, edward d. 1979 "homo sociologicies" , society societe , 3, 1, pp. 1-4. brunswick, ruth 1948 "the preoedipal phase of the libido development", the psycho-analytic reader , robert fleiss (ed.), international universities press, new york. chodorow, nancy 1978 the reproduction of mothering . university of california press. engels, frederick 1948 the origin of the family, private property and the state . moscow: progress publishers. firestone, shulamath 1970 the dialectic of sex . new york: morrow. freud, slgmund 1965 new introductory lectures in psychoanalysis . new york: w.w. norton & co. 59 hamilton, roberta 1978 the liberation of women: a study of capitalism and patriarchy . london: george allen and unwin. horowitz, gad 1977 basic and surplus repression in psychoanalytic theory: freud , reich and marcuse . toronto: university of toronto press. lampl-de groot, j. 1948 "the evolution of the oedipus complex in women", in the psychoanalytic reader , robert fleiss (ed.) new york: international universities press. lasch, christopher 1975 "the family in history", new york review of books , november 13. marcuse, herbert 1955 eros and civilization . boston: beacon press. marx, karl 1964 the economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844 . new york: international publishers. mitchell, juliet 1974 psychoanalysis and feminism . new york: pantheon books. robinson, paul a. 1969 the freudian left . new york: harper and row. williams, raymond 1977 marxism and literature . oxford university press. wrong, dennis 1961 "the oversocialized conception of man in modern sociology", american sociological review 26, pp. 183-93. zaretsky, eli 1976 capitalism, the family and personal life . new york: harper and row. 60 alternate routes comments by donald swartz when the organizers of this symposium gave me a copy of michael burawoy's stimulating examination of braverman's labour and monopoly capital , i found myself in a quandary as to whether i was expected to address michael's paper or braverman's book. as the time allocated didn't permit me to do both, i have decided to focus on michael's paper as i found some of his arguments quite questionable. my remarks will concentrate on three of burawoy's assertions which are, i believe, central to his critique of braverman. firstly, burawoy argues that the separation of conception and execution is an outcome of the division of labour and the scientific-technical revolution whereas braverman sees it as a consequence of the application of taylorism. secondly, burawoy disputes braverman's view that it was with the development of monopoly capital that it was possible to institutionalize this separation. instead, burawoy advances the periodization of capitalist development which essentially sees taylorism in its failure, giving rise to a scientific and technical revolution. the third assertion, which i will address myself to quite briefly, is burawoy's claim that braverman's analysis is pessimistic, as "he takes for granted the capacity of capitalism to survive class struggles and dismisses them as ineffectual outbursts". burawoy refers us to chapter six, "the habituation of the worker", with the comment "his title mirrors its content". in brief, i'm not persuaded by burawoy's analysis. it is important to note that part of the confusion stems from a certain weakness 26 symposium on braverman in braverman 's treatment of taylorism, which burawoy correctly picks up on. (i'll elaborate on this point in the course of my remarks). in general burawoy' s argument seems based on the view that braverman has not paid proper attention to working-class struggles in the course of american history (and elsewhere, insofar as braverman is talking about the development of monopoly capital generally). specifically, burawoy's analysis rests heavily on worker resistance to taylcrism. burawoy defines taylorism as the specification of task performance. he notes that it certainly gives rise to a management conception of the labour process but precisely because labour power can not be physically separated from labour, workers' conceptual faculties remain. thus burawoy asserts that taylorism simply results in a management as well as a worker's conception of the labour process. effective worker resistance historically to management's attempts to specify task performance means that the separation of conception and execution cannot be identified with taylorism. secondly, building on braverman and marx's argument that technological change is an attempt to increase efficiency and hence surplus value in the face of competition, burawoy argues first that efficiency, not control, is management's prime motive. to equate the two is to assume that taylorism generates efficiency, management knows this, and management has the power to impose taylorism on the work force. burawoy disputes these three assumptions. then, adding that the impetus to technological change can also come from class struggle (i.e: successful wage claims which render labour saving machinery profitable), suggests that taylorism, by intensifying class struggles, spurred the technicalscientific revolution which led to monopoly capitalism. taylorism is to be seen not as the hand-maiden of monopoly capitalism as braverman 27 alternate routes suggests, but as its mid-wife. and of course, the separation of conception and execution is a tendential result of the scientifictechnical revolution and the division of labour. now, it is important not to deny the control that workers exercise both over the method of performing their tasks and the pace at which it is performed, but to see taylorism only as the specification of task performance as burawoy does, is to misconceive, i think, what taylorism and scientific management were all about. as brian palmer has noted, referring to the united states, as late as the progressive era capital still lacked decisive control over the basic processes of work. what this lack of control involved is illustrated very well in the study by katherine stone of steelmaking prior to the homestead strike of 1892, which is an example contrary to many of those cited by montgomery, where the workers were decisively defeated. (among progressive historians seeking to reinterpret u.s. labour history, i think there is probably a tendency to confuse substantial and sustained working class resistance with victory). in essence, prior to that strike, the employers of the steel mills contracted with the unions to produce steel on a rate per ton basis. the organization of the labour process, the division of labour, the pace, manpower requirements, recruitment, wage differentials and training, were determined by the unions virtually unilaterally. quality levels, tools and techniques were substantially controlled by the union as well, and i quote from stone's study: "changes for the improvement of the mill required the consent of mill committees". the ground capital has covered since then is reflected in the public amazement when the postal workers demand the right to veto technological change. the key point here is that the scientific-technical revolution, 28 symposium on braverman just like taylorism, had to confront the control of workers over the production process. taylorism was no mere technique for specifying tasks but an expression of capital's demand for the control labour then exercised over the execution of the labour process; a demand that control rest with its hirelings, not those from whom surplus value was to be extracted. management would assume the responsibility to conceptualize the entire work process, decompose it into constituent task elements each geared to the capacities of "a first-class man", select and train workers to perform these tasks, determine wage rates and differentials based upon task requirements and performance, and control the progress of workers from task to task. in general terms, i am advancing a much more dialectical view of the relationship between conception and execution, and implying that there was a lot of conscious purpose in management's activities and thinking at the time. let us not forget marx's distinction of the human labour process and the way in which animals go about producing on an instinctual basis "--what distinguishes the worst of architects from the best of bees is precisely that the architect conceptualizes his structure in his imagination before he realizes it concretely". it is very important not to get lost in specific scientific management techniques, many of which were as farcical as those peddled by human relations experts today. scientific management, as palmer notes, was part of a general thrust for efficiency, whose proponents despite differences in technique found common ground in the objectives of specialization, standardization and simplification. to these points of consensus it should also be added that job hierarchies, and individual piece-rates (where possible) were also widely advanced to promote competition and individualism. this vertical structure had nothing to 29 alternate routes do with mechanization per se, as burawoy in quoting lukacs seems to imply, but rather was seen as necessary to the realization of surplus value in the context of conflicting objective interests between capital and labour. in taylor's words of earning to bosses preferring rules of thumb to 'scientific management', "when employers herd the men together in classes, pay all of each class the same wages, the only remedy for the men comes in combination". this broader view of taylorism is suggestive of the relationship between it and monopoly capitalism more generally. its implementation meant the development of the management cadre, responsible for conceptualizing the production process, production planning and control, personnel, etc.; in short, a large administrative component. it presupposes a certain scale of production and degree of market control without which taking on the substantial investment is not likely to seem feasible. the significance of the magnitude of the investment is reflected in statistics in the united states which show that between 1899 and 1923, the administrative component of manufacturing industries doubled from less than 8% to 15% of all employees, a tremendous increase in overhead. what i'm suggesting is that the division of labour, taylorism, and the scientific-technical revolution are not easily separable and pcriodizable but rather form a very integrated unity. this idea is reinforced when we consider the specific relationship between the growth of monopoly capitalism and taylorism in the united states. kolko, in his study of the progressive era, points out that the bulk of the merger movement which generated monopoly capitalism, began in the late 1880's and peaked between 1897 and 1901. the date most commonly associated with the beginnings of the movement to establish industrial 30 symposium on bravennan management as a profession subject to scientific laws was 1903, when taylor addressed the american society of mechanical engineers. in other words, when one looks at the timing of the transformation of the structure of industry and one looks at the tremendous growth in all forms of 'scientific management' organizations etc., one sees a very close, indeed inseparable, linkage between the two processes. finally, it is important not to overlook the significance of scientific management as an instrument of the bourgeoisie's struggle for ideological hegemony, by undermining the working class's selfconception and its sense of its own worth, much of which was bound up in the image of the craftsmen. as palmer notes, "called into being by the structural imperatives of the developing industrial capitalism which required to refine the division of labour, 'efficiency' fulfilled another more specific function. in relegating the labouring man and the capitalist to their respective positions in the hierarchy, the new managers buried the populist conception of labour and took a long forceful stride in the direction of lessening working-class autonomy on the shop floor". in a sense (to use one of burawoy's concepts), the whole thrust for efficiency, including scientific management, was directed toward the process of obscuring surplus by suggesting that surplus came not from direct productive labour but rather from the skills and abilities of management. now let me briefly turn to the question of braverman's pessimism. i will confine my remarks to the now-infamous chapter six, whose title in my view does not at all mirror its content. braverman, to me, is talking about the post-taylor evolution in management thought and practices to some extent, which to quote braverman "do not by and large concern themselves with the organization of work but rather with the 31 alternate routes conditions under which the worker may be brought to co-operate in the scheme of work organized by the industrial engineer". braverman begins by overviewing the various subtle manifestations of working class resistance: absenteeism, output restriction, sabotage, as well as overt hostility to management (i.e. strikes). he is derisive in his treatment of management efforts to gain labours' co-operation. in his conclusion he directs our attention not to the apparent acclimatization of the working class but beneath it, to "the hostility of workers to the degenerated forms of work which are forced upon them... this hostility renews itself in new generations, expresses itself in the unbounded cynicism and revulsion which large numbers of workers feel about their work, and comes to the fore repeatedly as a social issue". if anything, such assertions promote optimism (and perhaps even adventurism) . conversely, it is burawoy rather than braverman whom i find pessimistic. his analysis of games of habituation which focusses particularly on surface adaptation of workers to capitalism, it seems to me, contradicts his shouting of class struggle from the rooftops in criticizing braverman. moreover, his conclusion too is pessimistic -in looking to contemporary theories of capitalist crisis and breakdown to jolt labour into revolutionary action. crisis and breakdown are no automatic economic event but presuppose the working class strong enough to counter bourgeois efforts to resolve the contradictions of capitalism at the expense of the working class. without addressing the question of how to build that strength, there will be no revolutionary crisis, but poverty, unemployment, and loss of freedom. and i think, in conclusion, the way to build upon braverman is to build upon the various manifestations of class struggle which are very obviously often individualized, localized, union as opposed to community or 32 symposium on braverman industry or more broadly class-based, and to try to build out of those manifestations an understanding of how to generalize them and how to broaden them into the kind of consciousness which will give the working class the capacity to create the political crisis which may lead us to a new era. -end -33 the state of cultural theory: a review of past and present fashions debra clarke it is always important to situate distinctive theoretical developments within the historical conditions of their emergence, yet, in order to fully appreciate the substance of developments within cultural theory, the task seems imperative. there are several reasons. firstly, much of what can now, in retrospect, be identified as distinctive modes of cultural thought arose within and remained peculiar to a specific geographically-bound location, whether a nation or a continent -nowhere, for example, is there more apparent a fundamental rift between theoretical modes than that between north america and the european nation-states. secondly, and paradoxically, a close inspection of the essential propositions characteristic of each reveals some profound parallels, despite the diversity of their material origins. the points of interpenetration between and among new and old schools of cultural thought are sometimes considerable, and the analysis of relations between schools can often tell more about the way culture has been 'thought' than the analysis of any single case. thirdly, cultural theorizing is at the present moment so confused and unstable that any discussion of its material development can only aid understanding. the present discussion works towards that end. one of the more visible cases of cross-fertilization between modes is the relation between the frankfurt theorists and u.s. currents of the war and post-war periods. while the frankfurt theorists summoned a considerable authority in their own right (and, importantly, in their own place and time) , their work also later shaped nascent american modes of thought about culture: indirectly, through the export of whole propositions and cultural conceptions; and directly, through the exile of individual frankfurt theorists to the united states. their importance for the subsequent development of theoretical traditions in their adopted homeland, especially for the development of mass society theory, should not be underrated. the seeming novelty of mcluhanism in the 1960s supplied one of the few contrasts to the otherwise unilinear development of cultural theory in north america throughout the post-war era. these developments will be outlined first, while later discussion will look to the very different course traversed by european theorists, especially those in britain, a major site of the current theoretical struggles. it is here that more contemporary attempts to theorize culture have been vigorously pursued. a major concern will be to trace the origin and development of the new 'cultural studies', most closely associated with the centre for contemporary cultural studies at the university of birmingham. lastly, and relatedly, there will be a brief attempt to isolate some sources of the current divisions within "m.irxist cultural theory" and to assess, in light of these divisions, the 106 possibilities for a truly materialist analysis of culture. space limitations demand that a good deal be assumed, and that important facets of the literature be excluded. it will not, for example, be possible to outline with rigorous detail the major precepts that delineate each perspective. instead, our prime purpose is to demonstrate the operation and recurrence of several overriding weaknesses threaded through all of these attempts at theorization; among them, the absence of a well-integrated model of stratification or class conflict. it will be argued that the development and articulation of the assorted theoretical modes was in every case heavily conditioned by (1) the historical circumstances of the assorted cultural theorists, which in turn shaped (2) the means in which 'culture' was conceptualized: aesthetically, anthropologically, or as something more broadiy social. much of this is revealed through the treatment (or 'non-treatment', which is more often the case) of class conflict or even simply some notion of 'social' conflict devoid of class connotations. the failure to incorporate stratification models into their theories about culture led there various theorists to start with either a non-stratified or crudely stratified notion of the way that societies are organized, and hence left then illequipped to account for the place of culture therein. the radical pessimism of the frankfurt theorists established in 1923 as a (somewhat unique) centre for marxist studies, the institute for social research at frankfurt was concerned throughout the twenties with the problems of labour and the labour movement, and combined solid empirical work with serious theoretical analysis. anderson (1976: 32) claims that the institute occupied a pivotal point of juncture between "western" and "eastern" marxist currents during the twenties, and thus its trajectory was crucial to 107 the progression of marxist theory in intcr-war europe. the year 1950, however, threw doubt on its role when llorkheimer assumed control of the institute (following grunberg's retirement), at the same time that lukacs was exiled to austria and gramsci was censored, in the interests of his personal safety, even while in prison. horkheimcr was a philosopher whereas his predecessor was a historian. at the outset he established a new orientation to the institute's work, one that meant less concern with the science of historical materialism and a greater concern with "social philosophy". soon afterwards the institute ceased to publish the archives for the history of socialism and the workers' movement , and in its place introduced the new journal of social research . however tamed in its outward appearances, the 1933 n'azi victory drove most institute members to the united states, where a new institute was constituted at columbia university a year later. here it was transferred "into a political environment devoid of a mass working class movement even formally committed to socialism, or of any substantial marxist tradition" (anderson, 1976: 33). by the time of its return to frankfurt in 1949-50, the institute's period in the states, and the conditions of that period, had already circumscribed the character of the work. most of the formative work on aesthetic theory, however, was elaborated and shaped during the preand post -exile moments of the thirties, a time of titanic class struggles in austria, france, and germany. it was in the turbulent climate of this period that the frankfurt theorists concluded that marx's projection of capitalist development could no longer be sustained: massive state intervention in the market, the reification of the place of technology and science within the mode of production, and the growth of a consunptionist working class rendered, in their view, the classic marxist idea 108 of class struggle obsolete (see swingewood, 1977: 10-18). therborn argues that the impact of their experiences with fascism was so great that it'was reified in their subsequent critique of american society, preventing them from making a scientific analysis of american monopoly capitalism, or developing a revolutionary practice' (1970: 69). what is most problematic about the frankfurt defeatism is that it survived long enough to colour a good deal of later theoretical work (their own and that of others) . a theory of mass society or mass culture was worked out well before their exile to the united states, where it was transferred wholesale to the somewhat different social circumstances of a north american case. the historical sepcifics of 1930s germany were generalized to explain the underdevelopment of working class revolutionary potential throughout the western capitalist world, and it would not be much of a stretch to argue that their historical fatalism, born out of a complex and highly particularized historical moment, grew to underline and characterize both orthodox and unorthodox marxist analyses of culture. the original impetus to the construction of mass society propositions, complete with visions of "masses duped into false beliefs and bourgeois values", re-appears in later theories of "late capitalism" where, in the work of too many contemporary marxists, the very use of the phrases "implies that the historically necessary collapse of capitalism has been averted by the conscious ideological and cultural manipulation of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat" (swingewood, 1977: x) . while it is scarcely a widely held position, swingewood argues that the development of the capitalist mode of production has served to augment, and not destroy, civil society. its development has led to a highly complexified socia} structure where the key institutions of trade unions, political parties, professional associations, and 109 communications apparatuses arc not dominated by a massive and omnipotent state. on the contrary, these institutions exercise a tremendous and unprecedented mediating influence that has only now become fully realized in social practice. the emergence of a new and strengthened network of social relations (wherein, for example, working class organizations come to the fore) means that "a far more delicate balance of forces is now capitalism's most characteristic feature" (1977: ix-x) . those contemporary marxists who suffer the hangover of frankfurt-style defeatism operate with a monolithic concept of social structure that cuts short the dialectical movement: as swingewood expresses it, "of course the modern state grows in size and complexity, but as capitalism strengthens the sphere of direct domination so it necessarily creates the basis of a powerful civil society" (1977: x) . although swingewood never identifies his alignment explicitly, this is a more properly gramscian position. to briefly illustrate the kinship with gramsci, we can simply cite a statement from a 1917 av.int i ! article, titled, significantly enough, "towards a cultural association": at a certain moment in its development and its history, the proletariat becomes aware that the complexity of its life lacks a necessary organization. thus, it creates one for its own ends, with its strength, and with its good will ... this need will also come into being and be felt in other parts of italy (other than turin, where institutions like the co-operative alliance were already strong). and the proletariat movement will thereby grow in compactness and victorious energy (gramsci, 1975: 97). at the very least, then, there is a need to re -introduce a dynamic into theories about culture. tlainly, there is a good deal more to the process than some simple one-way (and therefore inevitable) domination from above; yet this one-sided and 'one-dimensional' account underlies and pervades the works of both the frankfurt theorists (notably adorno and marcusc) and later u.s. mass society theorists. 110 swingewood's argument also suggests that at the root of frankfurt and mass society conceptions lies the equally fundamental problem of agency (and with it, the problem of determination). the radical pessimism of the frankfurt theorists amounted to historicism, and traced to their own 'crisis of confidence' in the recalcitrant capacities of the working class. the problem of mediation was, at this early stage, resolved through elimination; the supposed "mass society" contained no mediatory or oppositional institutions, let alone working class institutions and organizations. once mediation is tossed out, notions of agency quickly follow; the working class was deemed somehow inherently unable to countervail the overpowering reifications brought about with the fascist regime. faced with a world that appeared beyond human control, a concept of human agency became difficult to digest, and hence the frankfurt theorists preferred to regard workers (or rather, masses) as resigned and passive, fully prey to powerful, emergent political movements like nazism (see swingewood, 1977: 11-12). the 'crisis of confidence' in working class potential and in the mediating possibilities of particular institutions is evident in the work of adorno, horkheimer, marcuse , and numerous others writing at much later points (see, for example, sallach, 1974). the notion of a weak civil society is re-affirmed in mills' influential work, the power elite , published in 1956. one might usefully ask how it is that gramsci managed to surpass the problem in his theorizations about culture and working class potential. is it possible to introduce a concept of agency without instantly inviting charges of voluntarism (to which gramsci is always subject)? the frankfurt kind of radical pessimism does not enter his thought, although gramsci pondered the same problems while subject to similar historical conditions. yet for adorno, horkheimer, and the others, 111 history was everything. during the thirties, these thinkers bore witness to the rapid rise of fascism and the complete collapse of european socialism; it seemed that the forces of total reaction had seized the working class and that neither liberal democracy nor the labour movement could withstand the pressures or respond with sufficient strength. many years later, horkheimer disclosed the reasoning behind their original affiliation with marxist thought: already near the end of the twenties, certainly by the beginning of the thirties, we were convinced of the probability of a national socialist victory, as well as of the fact that it could be met only through revolutionary actions. that it needed a world war we did not yet envisage at that time. we thought of an uprising in our own country and because of that, marxism won its decisive meaning for our thought (foreword to jay, 1973). * whatever 'decisive meaning' marxism might have had at that early stage was soon extinguished when it became apparent that the collapse of liberal democracy would come about "not in the way marx had predicted but rather from the combined forces of totalitarian politics (fascism) and totalitarian economics (the growth of giant monopolies and cartels and the fusion of banking and industrial capital)" (swingewood, 1077: 13). this made possible their desertion of orthodox marxist principles of determination and led ultimately to a more or less complete loss of commitment to a marxist account of capitalist development. there are parallels here with the theoretical results of similar disenchantments among british marxists of the 60s and 70s, and these will be discussed later. at this point it should simply be stressed that the absence of a spontaneous uprising, originating within the german people, led horkheimer and the others to dismiss the working class entirely as a potentially revolutionary force -not just the german working class, but the working class-in-general, and this in turn enabled them to easily transfer their conclusions to the american case, where the u.s. 112 'culture industry' (a concept preferred to 'mass culture') could be equated in its consequences with the german fascist state. within this account lies a crucial difference between their conclusions and those of gramsci. whereas the frankfurt theorists developed their notions about cultural potentials and about the future of capitalism itself on the basis of the historical specifics of their own time and place, gramsci took as his task the development of a whole theory of revolution and of the state through his analysis of 'what went wrong 1 in 1930s italy. this was the raw material of his analysis of 'late capitalism' and of the state, and on this basis gramsci attempted to specify the appropriate meterial-cultural conditions under which revolution might be possible and to formulate revolutionary strategies. the difference in theoretical outcomes also points to gramsci's position as simultaneously marxist theorist and key political actor of his period -not true of the frankfurt theorists, who chose to abandon the political struggles of their homeland and to make sense of these struggles only once safely in exile. apart from the kind of elitism contained in their dismissal of the working class, there is, in the work of adorno and horkheimer particularly, a familiar elitist conception of culture, though in a somewhat disguised form, where 'high' culture is the means to transform social order through the spread of a critical consciousness. 'critical' is used in a sense that echoes the appeals of matthew arnold (see later discussion). although the charge is always easy to level, there is also an idealism at work in their underlying theory (or 'non-theory') of social change, one that is later wholly adopted by mass society theorists in the united states. it is most apparent in their later analyses of 'modern* (i.e. u.s.) totalitarianism, where mass culture itself is seen to be the major dctcrmin.ir.t . 113 on the one hand, it is possible to draw at least a tentative epistemological parallel between the early frankfurt work (i.e. pre-1940) and so-called 'immanent structural analysis' (see slater's argument, 1974). one of the institute's official histories explained that "we interpret art as a kind of code language for processes taking place within society, which must be deciphered by means of critical analysis" (cited in jay, 1973: 177). on the other hand, jay suggests (1973: 178) that their sociology of art refused to reduce cultural phenomena to ideological reflexes of class interests. it is more certain that adorno, at least, refused to engage in a class analysis of culture; instead, he argued that "the task of criticism must be not so much to search for the particular interest-groups to which cultural phenomena are to be assigned, but rather to decipher the general social tendencies which are expressed in these phenomena and through which the most powerful interests realize themselves" (1967: 30). it seems that adorno and the others (perhaps including benjamin) were unable to glean anything more than a crude rudiment of cultural theory out of orthodox marxism, which, in their view, reduced all culture to 'a bourgeois swindle' and all art to false consciousness or ideology. exasperated by a vain serach for a theory of substance in marx, the frankfurt theorists substituted their own "dialectical or immanent critique of art" which "takes seriously the principle that it is not ideology in itself which is untrue but rather its pretension to correspond to reality" (adorno, 1967: 32). disastrously, it effectively turned marx and marxism upside down, and became inductively non -dialectical . one example of the attempt at a 'dialectical anti-reductionism' lies in adorno's treatment of one major marxist category, commodity fetishism. on this point (among others) adorno disagreed with benjamin, to whom he wrote on 114 2 august 1935 that "the fetish character of commodities is not a fact of consciousness, but dialectic in the eminent sense that it products consciousness" (cited in jay, 1973: 181; emphasis added). more evidence of the frankfurt antagonism to marxist orthodoxy can be found in their relations with benjamin, and particularly in their distrust of his relationship with brecht. brecht was admired by the institute members for his literary and theatrical accomplishments and simultaneously despised for his 'crude materialism 1 . there are important ways in which benjamin's work distinguishes itself from the work of adorno, horkheimer, and notably lowenthal, and significantly enough, benjamin's biography and his pre-war experiences set him considerably apart from the others. throughout the thirties, for example, he continually resisted the pleas of other institute members to join them in new york, arguing, as late as 1938, that 'there are still positions in europe to defend' (cited in jay, 1973: 197). benjairin never did rake it to the united states, and ultimately committed a tragically needless suicide when denied passage across the franco-spain border durinr a final, resigned effort to flee europe in 1940 (see jay, 1973: 197-198). the institute had not been "entirely enthusiastic about the brand of varxism benjamin adopted in the mid-twenties" (jay, 1973: 201). unlike the others , benjamin first encountered historical materialism immediately following the first war and, unlike the others, was active in the pre-wwii zionist movement, president for a time of the berlin free student association, and frequent contributor to the journal of gustav wynckcn's youth movement, per anfang (jay, 1973: 159). in addition to the institute's discorfort with his acceptance of brecht's 'crude materialism', adorno and others were disturbed th;it benjamin seemed to share brecht's optimism about the revolutionary 115 potential of popular art and technological innovation. on the other hand, brecht's attitude towards the institute was not altogether supportive; he regarded them all as 'tui-intellcctuals' who prostituted themselves for american foundation support (jay, 1973: 201-202). there is also considerable evidence to suggest that benjamin's essays (including the seminal piece, "the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction") were often considered 'too radical for their taste' and substantially censored prior to their publication in the zeitschrift (jay, 1973: 206). benjamin, therefore, and his 'radical optimism' should be set apart from the general work of the institute pior to 1940 and from what is now referred to as 'the frankfurt school', since he alone reserved hope for the progressive nature of politicized, collectivized art that accompanied the (mass) mechanical reproduction of artistic and other cultural commodities. the contrast between benjamin and adorno is outlined by benjamin himself in a letter to the latter: "in my work i sought to articulate the positive moments as clearly as you brought the negative to the fore. i consequently see a strength of your work where a weakness of mine lay" (cited in jay, 1973: 211). his death in 1940 marked the end of any optimistic, revolutionary, or dialectical thrust in frankfurt cultural theory, and the institute's subsequent work on mass culture in the 1940s pursued and became limited to static, nondialectical, empirical studies of, for example, newspaper content. now fully settled in america, institute members proceeded to weld themselves more tightly into this mold by eradicating agency once and for all and by arguing that culture was now completely divorced from material production and life. horkheimer, for example, sowed the seeds for american mass society theory when he suggested, in a 1942 letter to lowenthal, that reception and absorption had fused into the 116 same moment, wiping out very definitively notions of subjectivity, voluntarism, or agency: you lay too much stress on activity vs. passivity, sphere of production vs. sphere of consumption. you say that the life of the reader is scheduled and governed by what he gets, not by what he does. the truth is, however, that doing and getting (have) become identical in this society (cited in jay, 1973: 213). and it was marcuse who argued in 1937 that "the segregation of cultural life from its material base serves to reconcile man to the inequalities implicit in the latter" (jay, 1973: 215). not only was any notion of agency discarded, but so also was any concept of mediation and therefore resistance. in light of these developments, the historical and intellectual background to marcuse's one-dimensional man of 1964 scarcely needs to be sketched. in so many ways, it marked the crescendo of all previous frankfurt work, complete with all of its endemic theoretical faults. radical pessimism and conservative optimism: the u.s. jay suggests that it was the institute's critique of mass culture and its related analysis of the american authoritarian potential that most strongly influenced the texture of american intellectual life (1p"3: 217); firstly, because a good portion of the work was available in english, and secondly, because it coincided with a growing distrust of mass culture on the part of indigenous american intellectuals. prior to world war ii, sociologists like robert park and his student herbert blumer had conducted relatively isolated and somewhat more optimistic studies of 'mass society'. the mid-forties, however, witnessed a new and renewed interest in the area, and it quickly became fashionable inside and outside the academy. riesman (the lonely crowd) and others popularized the fashion, and the work of the institute added substance and momentum to the attack (see jay, 1973: 117 217). swingewood argues, in response to all theories that first posit a 'mass' of undifferentiated non-persons, that 'consumer capitalism, rather than creating a vast, homogeneous and culturally brutalized mass, generates different levels of taste, different audiences and consumers. culture is stratified, its consumption differentiated' (1977: 20). yet so overpowering has been the impact of 'mass' theories on all areas of empirical and other work on culture and communication that only recently has it been possible to re-introduce, or perhaps posit for the first time, the notion of a stratified audience (see, for example, the work of morley, 1975 anj 1980). moreover, 'culture' itself was reified through the progressive, or rather regressive, articulation of mass society theories. '.vhere, for example, is there any careful, thoroughgoing discussion of what culture really means or any critical re-thinking of the traditional definitions? furthermore, and this is a condemnatory feature of both the mass society and 'culture industry' arguments, the concept of culture 'is severed from production in all but a general and superficial sense; culture is thus transformed into an independent, autonomous realm of human activity (or lack of activity) explicable in terms of its own norms and concepts' (swingewood, 1977: 25). finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is nothing intrinsically unifying about culture, just as there is nothing intrinsically functional about cultural or ideological state apparatuses; it seems at least as likely that culture can be a divisive force. indeed, if culture is 'a whole way of life', then there is clearly no such thing as a singular, all-embracing 'culture of capitalism'. there are many cultures, and many cultural forms, some of which are appropriated by class-bound groups and some of which are not -however, in the lonjrun , one's 'whole way of life' is, necessarily, heavily conditioned by 118 and intimately bound up with one's place within capitalist social relations of production ; consumption merely sumptomatizes this fundamental relation. the theories of mass society and mass culture that came to characterize much of cultural theorizing in the united states hark back much further than the frankfurt thinkers to tonnies' gemeinschaft/gesellschaft distinction and to the classical works of comte, spencer, durkheim, and weber on the general theme of the effects of industrialization and urbanization. in its contemporary formulations, the new 'mass' media are linked to 'mass' behaviour and then to a new 'mass' culture or mass society, and all this without benefit of historical analysis. the first major problem, then, with later and current versions of mass society theory is that the existence of media of mass communication is first taken as given, and not explained within an account of historical transformations within capitalism that initiated and fostered the rapid growth of mass market production and the mass reproduction of artistic and cultural commodities, which in turn transformed the media into a 'necessary' and 'natural' feature of class domination. overwhelmingly obvious is its underlying organic-functionalist model wherein all the pieces of the puzzle (mass media mass behaviour mass culture mass society) fit neatly into their allotted and expected roles, a fault made possible by the ahistoricism of the approach, which severely constrains a thorough de-mystification of the media 'effect'. among other things, the leap between 'mass media' and 'mass behaviour' is far too great, and, considering the obsession with 'doing empirical work" on the media, it is remarkable that few or no studies set out to establish this alleged relationship empirically. if anything, the volumes of (largely american) empirical studies of 'media effects' are, at best, inconclusive (see klapper, i960). 119 a second najor problem concerns the absence of a model of stratification, a silence characteristic of all the approaches discussed here and not unique to u.s. mass society theory, although more outstanding in its case. even writers situated on the left, like c. wright mills, operated with no more than a crude concept of stratification (i.e. one large mass and one small elite or elites), and wholeheartedly absorbed and reiterated the reportedly frightful consequences of mass media production. it was mills who argued, in the power elite , that 'the media, as now organized and operated, are ... a major cause of the transformation of america into a mass society' (1956: 315). in a thoroughly non-marxist fashion, mills proceeded to argue that the mass media 'created' new forms of dependence and made 'the (classless) masses' newly vulnerable to greater control under power-wielding elites. miliband reproduced a similar argument some time later in the state in capitalist society (1969) and again in marxism and politics (1977). the dependence of the individual is intensified by a lack of reciprocal, obligatory moral attachments to others, spurred on by rapid industrial expansion and the existence of disparate value systems, which in turn forced the individual to rely more on extraneous media of communication than on primary group or interpersonal relations in developing a world-view. the centralized authority of mass communication systems thus came to take precedence over micro-social forces in defining the social world for the individual. at a larger scale, the movement towards mass society creates the requisite conditions for totalitarianism by increasing the isolation of the individual by instilling a singular and all-pervasive ideology in the interests of the dominant elite(s), and by monopolizing media channels and thereby eliminating all contending ideological options (see clarke, 1978). 120 the contribution of the frankfurt theorists to the development of this powerful argument comes through in two senses. firstly, it is evident in the concentration on the individual and the psychosocial, which points to the relation between the aesthetic studies of the frankfurt theorists and their investigations of american authoritarianism conductrd in the forties, where the relation between culture and politics was thought to be best understood in psychosocial terras. mass society theorists, however, took up only the psychosocial and dropped any connection between culture and politics, as well as any hint that culture was or could be politicized. secondly, their influence can be seen in the denial of any remaining mediating forces that might have survived the rubble of mass society's rise to prominence. a third major problem with mass society or mass culture theories is the moralism that underlies the arguments. on the left, mills and marcuse bemoaned the one-directional and one-din.ensional flow of information and appealed to social democracy, defining inequality of access to the means of communication as the central problematic, since it obstructs the free flow of ideas and violates libertarian notions about press freedom: ideas flow freely from the elite(s) to the masses and not vice versa, and therefore are not representative of the general population. accordingly, there is a need to 'democratize' the communication process such that libertarian ideals can be realized in practice. the assumptive principles of their position were thus libertarian, while their proposals were reformist. at the politico-ideological centre, wirth (1948), warner (1962), and others modified the essence of mass society theory in a more positive or optimistic light. the development of mass communications and the unproblcmatically concomitant emergence of 'mass society' were welcomed and thought to be required integrative 121 forces, vital to social cohesion. along with the development of mass communications came a newly democratized culture that permitted the greater participation of subordinate social groups in the 'common life' of society. equality of access to the means of communication was simply assumed. on the right, blumer (1951), van den haag (1957), howe (1957), and others decried the emergence of mass society and its cultural vulgarities. their works were tainted with a romantic, nostalgic yen for 'tranditional values', a sense of 'community spirit', and a return to the stability of the extended family (see clarke, 1978). mcquail (1969: 35) notes some of the consequences of the latter version: ... the sociology of mass communications has not prospered under the shadow of mass society theory. not only have inappropriate questions been fostered and alternative ones discouraged, but the very weight of intellectual and ideological force behind these theories has discouraged competitors, and forced opponents to appear in the light of apologists for an existing social order, for capitalism and commercial exploitation, for ugliness and incipient totalitarianism. the parallels with english 'cultural criticism' are apparent here and will become more apparent through the course of later discussion. in the united states, it meant that much of the evidence for a new 'mass society' was based on the mass production of media commodities, notably radio, televesion, and film, which in turn fed the distinctively american brand of 'media sociology'. to understand how this particular specialized discipline took shape historically, we need to consider how the rise of a new 'mass culture' came to be ascribed. it was first necessary to ignore the historical prerequisites for the emergence of a 'popular' culture, and the economic changes that contributed to the growth of the middle class and the spread of literacy, each of which in turn presaged the creation of a truly 'mass' audience (see also bigsby, 1976). audience size was assumed to be the contingent, and, 122 just as the popular literature of the 19th century presupposed a literate public, so the media of the 20th seemed to require for their viability (and profitability) the capacity to satisfy the desires of a large and seemingly homogeneous audience. the new media of 'mass' communication became coterminous with 'mass' or popular culture. it is easy to see how this superficial account led, in the 'sociology of mass communications', to a narrowed concentration en audience studies and content analyses, to 'uses and gratifications' 4 research and 'effects' studies, many of which took their direction troir. lasswell's famous dictum: 'who says what, in which channel, to whon, with what effects?'. otto larsen complained in 1964 that this research "tended to viev persons as 'targets' of communications impact rather than as part of a total communication process" (1964: 368 569). most of the work fitted well within the tradition of post-war u.s. empiricism. by their very nature, therefore, these studies necessarily contributed little to a worthwhile or meaningful understanding of communication , and even less to the understanding of culture. canada, innis, and mcluhan innis' early analyses of the staples industries led, in his later years, to a special interest in the historical development of communications, and to the production of two major works, empire and ccr-.i.-'.icatior.s (1950) and the bias of communication (1951). while his commitment to 'technological determinism 1 is still arguable, it is plain in his hork on the communications industries that the developing complexities of communications technology were seen as central to understanding communications and to technological innovations in non-media industries. the predominance of the new 'mass' means of communication over 'pre-rrinting' 125 media (e.g. clay, papyrus, parchment) 3nd the decline of the oral tradition were both important elements in shaping potentially emergent forms of social organization. in other words, the types of media dominant ly featured in a society, once wholly developed, could be expected to determine the type and quality of human associations characteristic of a period. innis also argued that any given medium of communication is biased in terms of either time or space, and tends to 'bias' social organization by encouraging the emergence of particular types of institutions to the exclusion of others, and by imposing on these institutions a particular form of organization. 'space-biased' media, for example, are, according to innis, causal in the growth of the state, the military, and decentralized and expansionist institutions, whereas 'time-biased' media facilitate the growth of religion, of hierarchical forms of organization, and of contractionist institutions. thus for innis, it is the nature of the medium of communication (oral versus written, time-biased versus spacebiased) that determines the nature of social organization; a unique yet unverifiable premise that runs contrary to the bulk of sociological knowledge regarding the growth of particular forms of social organization. moreover, it would be difficult to make the claim that the argur.ent amounts to a distinctive moment in the development of cultural theory per se . since innis' concerns were largely limited to the development of a macro-theory of the general historical implications of 'landmark' innovations in communications technology. following very closely in innis' footsteps (if not treading directly on his toes) , mcl.uhan also stressed the nature of the mcdiuf as opposed to its content or the organization of production, and like innis, placed considerable emphasis on technological developments in the communication industries. however, in mcluhan's case, the effects of the medium were directly related to sensory organization, perception, and thought, rather than to social organization and culture. it seems pointless to fully elaborate mcluhan's notions in the context of this discussion. the utility of his formulations is limited for the same reasons that those of innis contribute little to the formation of a worthwhile theory of culture. furthermore, mcluhan's position is not at all internallyconsistent and has fluctuated considerably with time; more recently, his musings have included a fear of the forthcoming 'homogenization' of 8 the masses, which smacks of mass society theory and contradicts, in some very essential ways, his earlier arguments. u.k. developments : the foundations of 'cultural studies' a very different sequence of developments characterizes the field of cultural theory in european, especially british, social thought. the differences are exemplified in the work of the birmingham centre for contemporary cultural studies, work that will be referred to here as the 9 'cultural studies' approach. since, in large measure, the material represents both a culmination and a configuration of all past' theoretical legacies, it will be useful to outline the traditions out of which cultural studies emerged, and the succession of later 'influences' that penetrated their work, none of which (and this should be borne in mind) qualify as rigorously marxist approaches. at least five identifiable 'bodies of influence' account for the direction of the work: (1) the early english 'culture critics' (e.g. arnold and leavis) ; (2) hoggart, williams, and works of the 1950s; (3) at around the same time, another crucial initiative in the formation of cultural studies, thompson's 12s the making of the english working class , and the significance of cultural histories; (4) the later impact of the work of three neo-marxist theorists (althusser, gramsci , and poulantzas) ; and (5) structuralism and semiotics. the latter struck the centre in two successive waves: the first drew largely from the work of levi-strauss and barthes , and the second, more currently fashionable, takes its cues from lacan, kristeva, derrida, and others in france (now dubbed the 'post-structuralists'). the early influences of the english 'culture critics' (arnold, leavis, hoggart and williams) will be briefly traced, prior to a discussion of the development of the birmingham centre work itself. fi) arnold, leavis, and the 'culture critics' first, we need to look back a considerable historical distance to the origins of debate about popular culture (see burke, 1978, for a richly detailed analysis of the 'discovery' of popular culture in early capitalist europe). debates about popular culture, and notions abcut what it is, trace to early responses to the commercialization of culture in the first phase of european capitalism. the debate gathered r.orentum during the 19th century, and was spearheaded by literary critics and 'men of letters'. one of the most influential of the 19th century sources was matthew arnold's culture and anarchy , originally published in 1869. significantly, arnold emerged out of a tradition of literary criticism, was a poet and literary critic, held posts at oxford, and so forth. much of arnold's now classic formulations about culture grew out of his own disenchantment with the increasingly apparent implications of "the new industrial order', circa 1850. "i see", he wrote in 1848, "a wave of more than american vulgarity, moral, intellectual, and social, preparing to break over us ..." (cited in arnold, 1938). arnold's calls for the 126 establishment of formalized education under the wing of the state were intended to sophisticate the uncivilized masses made newly vulnerable to cultural deterioration, and parallel those of egerton ryerson in canada. culture, and especially the indoctrination of the new industrial working class into bourgeois culture, was to arnold the means to secure order, to inject self-discipline, and, in his words, "to do away with classes (read 'class-based cultures')" (1938: 70). culture was to occupy the new leisure time afforded to the working class through the arrival of industrialization and the mechanization of factory production. the state was to be cast in the role of cultural guardian, and, not unrelatedly, guardian of the new social order: we have not the notion, so familiar on the continent and to antiquity, of the state the nation in its collective and corporate character, entrusted with stringent powers for the general advantage, and controlling individual wills in the name of an interest wider than that of individuals (1938: 75; original emphasis). sometime later, once the full sway of industrialization was solidly in place, and it became clear that arnold's proposals for the administration of culture (and hence the containment of class conflict) through the state were insufficient, literary critics like t.s. eliot and.f.r. leavis -reflected on the cultural changes that had accompanied industrialization and were highly critical of both, more loudly of the former. their work features the same nostalgic longings for a pre-industrial , non-capitalist society that preoccupied howe and other american critics in the 1950s; in both cases, these sentiments provided the (weak) basis for a critique of industrial capitalism. the english critics held little stock in the capacity of the bourgeoisie to overcome the "pallid, mechanical, lifedenying civilization" that seemed part of the industrialization package (see swingewood, 1977: 2-10). 127 eliot's notes towards a definition of culture (1962) is exemplary. here eliot espoused the view that since culture is inevitably stratified, it ought to be stratified according to "a continuous gradation of cultural levels" (1962: passim). the concept of culture was organic, i.e. the culture of every individual flows from his/her membership of specific groups and classes, which in turn depend for their culture on the whole social order; culture is, therefore, a way of life and all societies witness some form of common culture. each national culture contains a variety of local cultures which therefore ensure unity and diversity within the whole. nevertheless, working class institutions and ideals, above all socialist ideals, must be assimilated by the dominant culture. this eliot made very clear. leavis, in mass civilization and minority culture , written in 1930, accepted that "culture was at a crisis" and blamed mechanization for destroying a genuine "common culture" with widely shared moral assumptions. like eliot, leavis stressed the importance of tradition in the life of a culture and its basis in the "organic community". he rued the demise of some pre-industrial , conflict-free period, the "old england" where work was meaningful and workers "could, without a sense of oppression, bear with long hours and low pay" (1930: 3-5); see also leavis and thompson, 1942: 68-91). in light of leavis' concern with folk culture, with a common culture that includes the everyday experience of common peorlc within a morally binding community, it is possible to see his legacy to the later concerns of cultural studies. it is also possible to see the theoretical links between leavis' 'critique of capitalism' and the postwar american 'critique of mass society'. williams argues, however, that leavis' concern with folk culture idealizes feudal, not modern, social relations and attempts to "attach humane feelings to pre-capitalist culture, whereas the historical reality 128 was of a hard and brutal world dominated by illiteracy, superstition, servility, squalor, and poverty" (1975: 48-51; see also bigsby, 1976: 16). williams' own critique of mass society theory and other bourgeois sociologies is most recently set forth in marxism and literature (1977), where he argues that the bourgeois concept of 'mass communications' and the related radical concept of 'mass manipulation' both need to be re-worked, if not completely replaced with terms that more cogently specify the movement of hegemony. it is suggested that the concept of the 'mass' has served to merely replace and neutralize the specificity of class structures, while the preoccupation with 'manipulation' has stifled any understanding of the phases of social consciousness that "correspond to real social situations and relations" (1977: 136-137). attention now turns briefly to the earlier work of williams himself and to one other equally important figure in the formation of the new cultural studies: richard hoggart. (ii) hoggart, williams, and the 1950s the importance of the literary criticism tradition carries through to the work of hoggart, which continued that "certain studied romanticism" (bigsby, 1976: 24) of the english literary approach. hoggart. replaced the conservative nostalgia of arnold and his descendants with a liberal nostalgia; although, like leavis, hoggart argued that a standardized mass culture had overtaken a fractured "urban culture of the people". to hoggart, working class culture (and he freely made this association) is precisely the same urban local culture of tightly knit communities, where myth, ritual, superstition, fatalism, and short-term hedonism occupy positions of centrality in everyday life. hoggart' s approach to culture is highly selective, impressionistic, and divorces the working class from its position within the division of labour and its place in production 129 relations. we might also note the absence of any discussion about the role of ideology in the configuration of popular consciousness. the concept of culture is static and passive, and denies culture its active, historical character. culture is reduced to a series or list of adaptive mechanisms adopted by the working class to ward off the alienation of urban capitalist life. moreover, the analysis in the uses of literacy (1957) deals strictly with superficial aspects of working class existence and is heavily imbued with hoggart's own romantic reminiscences of his working class youth. unlike hoggart , raymond williams (the early culture and society williams) offers a more radical approach, yet he still follows leavis and eliot and defines culture as an organic, co-operative, and collaborative activity. to williams, "culture is ordinary" and working class culture is "a basic collective idea, and the institutions, manners, habits of thought and intentions which proceed from this" (1958: 313-314). like leavis, this early williams argues explicitly against marxist interpretations when he suggests that working class institutions contribute to social growth through their contributions to the development of a cor.-.on culture. needless to say, this proposition eliminates all contradiction and conflict, and divests culture of any role in class domination. there is no theorization about cultures in conflict with each other, only "a destructured and static model (where) culture is defined in terms of meanings" (swingewood, 1977: 43). furthermore, culture obviously cannot be reduced to (or summed up in) a directory listing of habits, customs, and rituals. if culture is to be understood as a way of life, then it must indeed be understood, in williams* widelysubscribed phrase, as a whole way of life, and not merely a way of "coping with capitalism". 130 above all, culture needs to be understood inside a historical account of class struggle and explained vis-a-vis class interests, through the historical development of classes and class fractions. some evidence that williams has now come to recognize this inadequacy appears in marxism and literature where he attempts to sketch out the direction of his comparatively recent "embrace" of marxism for a "marxist cultural sociology" that would be "recognizable, in its simplest outlines, in studies of different types of institution and formation in cultural production and distribution, and in the linking of these within whole social material processes" (1977: 138). nevertheless, williams' embrace of marxism has yet to come full circle: a more faithfully marxist analysis should not feel it necessary to 'link' culture with material processes — it should start with the realization that culture is, itself, a material process. (iii) stuart hall, the birmingham centre, and 'cultural studies ' the importance of hoggart and the early williams to the work of the birmingham centre cannot be underestimated. sparks (1977), in fact, starts with hoggart and williams and takes their legacy as prime to the early and later centre work. cultural studies is usually associated with the work of the centre at birmingham (established in 1964) , although the late 1970s saw its influence blossom rapidly outward to what is now a whole network of centres (within britain and without) that follow or attempt to follow the approach. the kind of 'cultural studies' that came to be practiced at the birmingham centre was very much an outgrowth of the english tradition of literary criticism (tellingly enough, the centre was orignially subsumed within the department of english literature at birmingham university) and, in many ways, it still has not managed to get beyond the literary and the textual. sparks even suggests that 151 "cultural studies took over the total project of literary criticism" (1977: 18) with one crucial qualification; namely, the way in which the old opposition of high and low culture was overturned and now understood. while the early conceptualizations of culture remained largely intact, the reverence of arnold, leavis, et al . for bourgeois culture was supplanted with a new reverence for working class culture (heavily inspired by hoggart) that amounts to a kind of perverse elitism. otherwise, as sparks observes, there is not a great deal to distinguish the cultural conceptions of the centre and those of (classical) english literary criticism. one of the decisive developments at work was a rejection of oncedominant aesthetic definitions of culture (e.g. the 'sweetness and light' that constituted arnold's vision) and a movement towards anthropological conceptions, with a new focus on the community, especially the urban working class community, as the place where culture is practiced or 'lived' as a relation (note the althusserian reference) . the model represented in arnold and other liberal versions began with a sharp separation between •work' and 'culture', thereby discarding determination at the outset, and substituting the vague, empty, and non-contradictory notion of 'commodity'. according to sparks (1977: 18-22): that false resolution ... was in fact taken over wholesale by cultural studies. within that fundamental separation the conception of culture was once again reified to exclude any reference to social antagonism ... the ground was well prepared for a marxism which systematically evaded the squalid concerns of political parties, trade unions, and all the rest of the baggage of marxist orthodoxy, and which elevated debates on culture, epistemology, etc., to the centre of theoretical concern. similarly, as sparks argues, the centre's so-called 'encounter with marxism' (and this description seems appropriate) is highly problematic. at the surface level, it is evident in the rather marked changes in the 132 nature of the work produced at the centre throughout the late 60s and 70s (it's possible to trace these changes through the successive issues of the working papers in cultural studies , the centre's journal), whereas at a more fundamental level the transformation to a full-fledged legitimate marxism is still incomplete. indeed, one might well argue that such a total transformation can never be realized, that it was stymied at the start by the historical and epistemological traps that the centre inherited from literary criticism. this is not to say that cultural studies did not have its own very noble beginnings and intentions. take, for exar.ple, hall's early statement of the centre's objectives, part of the introduction to the first issue of the working papers : "it has been one aim of the centre to rescue the concept of "culture" itself from its reified form" (1971: 6). hall enlists the aid of williams to set in motion this "de-reification", enumerating williams' three meanings outlined in the long revolution (1965). the discussion is worth quoting at scr.c length, since it represents one of the few clear and precise statements of the centre's original (and, some would argue, still current) conceptualization of what culture is and where it is to be found: culture, (williams) suggested, can refer to 'the description , in lives and works, of those values which can be seen to compose a timeless order, or to have permanent reference to the universal human condition'; it can refer to the 'body of intellectual and imaginative work in which, in a detailed way, human thought and experience are variously recorded'; or it can refer to the 'description of a particular way of life, which expresses certain meanings and values, not only in art and learning but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour'. our own approach, while drawing on all three of those definitions, adheres most closely to the third. from this perspective, culture is the way social life is experienced and handled, the meanings and values which inform human action, which are embodied in and mediate social relationships, political life, etc. (1971: 6). this is all well and good, as it stands. it is quite another thing, however, to go on to argue, in the next breath, that this conceptualization "returns 133 culture to its root in the soil of specific historical and social situations (and) restores the dimension of meaning and praxis to the sphere of human action" (1971: 6). the meaning of culture that hall identified and adopts simply does not stand up to the grand claims of his next statement. there is a logical (or illogical) leap in the argument, one that carried disastrous results for the way that culture came to be approached through the centre's subsequent work, and one that facilitated their (false) claim to a marxist analysis of culture. the falsity of their claim can be at least partially understood through a consideration of the changed (and rapidly changing) politicopractical position of centre members, and more generally, of the dislocation of the intellectual through the course of the accelerated rationalization of british higher education during the 1960s and onward. no discussion here could do full justice to the complexities of these development:: or their implications for the state of british marxism. sparks' discussion of "the new mood of 1968" and " the creation of a new labour aristocracy structurally dependent upon the state machine" (19-77: 18-24), garnham's discussion of "the intellectualist fallacy" (1979), and anderson's broader discussion of changes within european marxism during the same period (1976), should all be consulted. briefly, it meant, in the work of centre members and others, a movement towards pure theoreticism (spelled out, for example, in the pages of the popular and extremely influential journal screen) ; a movement that signifies a very real obstruction to the development of a marxist cultural analysis (see later discussion). sparks concludes his account with the cleverly cryptic observation that "given this political and intellectual impasse the popularity of louis althusser in british was, one might say, overdetenmined" (1977: 22). 134 prior to the appropriation of althusser, however, there is a third influence that intervenes in the early centre work, namely edward thompson's 'cultural history' of the english working class (1963). it is particularly noticeable in their studies of "working class communities" (see, for example, lidia curtis et al., 1973), and was concretized in the formation of the "cultural history" sub-group during the mid-seventies. this work, too, started out with worthwhile intentions. there was the initial rejection of the abstract, ahistorical use of the word "culture" in the singular (since, among other problems, it implied some non-existent culture -in -general) and an attempt to give culture, or rather cultures^, "a more concrete historical reference" (cccs, 1976-78: 5-6). one such project, for example, detailed the evolution of post-war youth sub-cultures and was subsequently published in the form of resistance through rituals (hall and jefferson, 1976). curiously, though, the work reads more like the approacn of thompson in the making of the english working class (1963), where 'culture* (not 'cultures') is subjected to historical investigation, and where culture was viewed rather idealistically and class itself was said to happen "when some men, as a result of common experiences, feel and articulate the identity of their interests" (see the important preface, 1963: 9; emphasis added). while it is rightful to recognize that "a historical perspective lends a necessary specificity to the study of cultures" (cccs, 1976-78: 6), it is not enough to therefore pose "questions of cultural power and hegemony, of domination and subordination through the exercise of cultural power, and the transmission of cultural skills and competence" (cccs, 1976-78: 6-7). there is far more to the potency of bourgeois hegemony than simply things cultural, which points to their basic misappropriation of gramsci's writings (highlighted in their discussion 135 of the prison notebooks : see hall, lumley, fi mclennan, 1977). this type of approach to the study of cither culture or cultures necessarily elevates the object of analysis to the level of concerns about ideology and consciousness, and severs these concerns from things economic and broadly political; it consequently poses a serious contradiction between intent and result in the work of the centre. one can look more recently, for example, to richard johnson's comparative study of the traditions represented by the works of thompson and althusser, where johnson admits that "thompson's sole and explicit criterion for the existence of class concerns forms of consciousness and collective action or organization: in the making class is seen as a wholly political and cultural category" (1979: 65) and yet he still goes on, in conclusion, to "insist on the need to retain culture ideology as a couplet, where culture is understood as a ground or result of the work of ideologies" (1979: 75; emphasis added). while it is perhaps unfair to rob this conclusion of its context in the text of the article, it is nevertheless lucidly illustrative of what remains a fundamentally non-materialist conceptualization of culture in the work of the birmingham centre. a fourth and later influence in the development of cultural studies marks a strong attraction to work carried out in france and elsewhere on the continent. of the three neo-marxist thinkers (althusser, cramsci, and poulantzas) whose work touched off and accented the centre's concern about ideology theories (see, for example, working papers in cultural studies 10, 1977 and the more widely distributed version, on ideology , 1978), althusser's work, especially the "ideology and ideological state 12 apparatuses" or 'isas essay', occupied the most central place. importantly, the interest in althusser occurred not long after thompson's work had left its mark, and it is revealing to consider the similar 136 origins and motives of the two writers. both althusser and thompson set out to establish positions that would stand firmly opposed to stalinist and exonomistic tendencies in marxist work, both formulated their early arguments during a period of cold war hostility, and both attempted to transcend or evade that hostility by developing (in very different ways, of course) marxist work on non-economic questions (see johnson, 1979: 57ff). this last commonality is absolutely vital, for it came to be true, tragically, that these works set the direction for most subsequent work on culture and ideology. at this circumstantial moment in european intellectual history the concerns of at least the next decade were firmly grounded, even though the pressing need to polemicize against stalinist tendencies had long since been removed. somehow, through the course of later developments in cultural theory, the (ordinarily crucial) concern with the economic was never re-inserted into its proper place, and soon fell into a state of serious neglect. without engaging impractically in a full-scale treatise on the relation between althusserian structuralism and new currents in british marxism, it is at least possible to briefly summarize some of the most commonly identified weaknesses to be found in althusser's work on ideology. the usual complaints include the functionalist charges (particularly with respect to his discussion of the system-functions of the isas) , the internal inconsistencies, the too ominpotent role that is accorded to the state, and, notably, the over-emphasis on reproduction. a najor problem regarding the isas essay in particular is that, although subtitled "notes towards an investigation" and including althusser's own admission that "we are advancing in still poorly explored domains" (1971: 269), this single, crude and abbreviated 'exploratory' discussion has been appropriated as a fullyfledged 'theory of ideology'. not only 137 does althusser fail to provide a comprehensive, adequate or even workable theory of ideology, or of the state (although it may be unfair to assess his work against this misread intention), his 'notes' about the state and about ideology, taken together, contain some serious and by now wellacknowledged faults. sumner (1979) makes the point that the one-sided concept of ideological reflection has left a persistent perception of ideological transmission from above and only from above, such that, in order to proceed with his argument for the role of the state as the agent of ideological domination, althusser is compelled to deny the existence of contradictions or practices that might give rise to non-ruling class ideologies, which traps him inside a non-dialectical analysis. only later does althusser realize that the emergence of the isas and the dominance of ruling class ideologies within them, is possible only through class struggle within the isas (e.g. within legal and educational institutions). however, through the artificial insertion of contradictions into the analysis, althusser reduces ideologies to class ideologies, and hence short-forms the rich and complex ensemble of ideological formations. no longer is it possible to discuss class fractions or class alliances and their subscription to contending ideologies, a relation that becomes lost to analysis forever. to sumner (see, in particular, 1979: 25-so, 101-130), althusscr's class reductionisra is a serious theoretical limitation: it precludes the understanding of ideological differences that divide or cut across classes, and this is especially problematic since, according to sumner, these intra-class rivalries and ideological struggles holj the rreatest political import for contemporary marxist analysis. all of these inadequacies, intrinsic to althusser's theoretical 'notes' about ideology, are uncritically overlooked and hence systematically 'reproduced' in the 138 birmingham work on cultures and ideologies. the last important point to note about the absorption of althusser into cultural studies, however, is that their uncritical (mis) appropriation effectively and solidly wedged the centre further into the trap of abstract theoreticism. there is always a danger, in general discussions like the present one, that a review of a given body of literature can appear to attribute a monolithic character to the material. this is in fact somewhat justified in the case of the centre's work, which is largely collaborative and rarely authored by a single individual, reflecting the organization of the centre as a uniquely democratic collective and its preference for co-operative, rather than competitive, intellectual activity. (indeed, outside observers often comment on its 'cultlike 1 operation). in this sense, charges of theoreticism can be levelled at more than just this or that 'tendency' in the studies of one or more individuals. mention should be maae, however, of some peripheral and 'exiled' birminghar thinkers who do_ manage to escape the theoreticist trap. paul willis and dave morley exemplify the few who pursue more substantive questions: the relation between formalized education, cultural production, and the reproduction of labour power in willis' case (1977), and the stratification of audience readings in morley' s case (1975, 1980). willis, for example, acknowledges that trade unions are "by far the most important working lcass institution", and sparks notes that this acknowledgement alone "marks an important advance for an institution which, while dedicated to the study of working class culture has not, as yet , produced any major study, either theoretical or empirical, of the trade union movement" (1977: 27-28). regardless, sparks holds out little hope for an approach that disregards the contradictory nature of these sane working class institutions: "if it is agreed that the culture we are 139 studying is that of a subordinate class, and that this subordination is something which can be ended, then it follows that a great deal of contemporary working class culture is an historically transient formation" (1977: 28). one of the problems that rendered the birmingham and screen work openly susceptible to charges of theoreticism was its operation in a field traditionally weak in one important sense. cultural studies was, for some time during its formative period, an 'approach' without a methodology. literary criticism could offer little on that score, and so for its methodological impetus the centre turned once more to the continent and to european structuralism and semiotics, the fifth and latest influence that directs their work. this move, it can be argued, did little more than complicate or add to the existing problems of method. again, it is not possible to demonstrate the full consequences within the limits of this discussion; only a few illustrative points can be made. murdock and golding (e.g. 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980), sumner (1979: 131-203), and others have carried out sustained critiques of the methodological faults endemic to 'immanent structural' or semiotic analysis. the former, for example, concede that the approach has opened wide the field of potential objects of analysis to include art, literature, religion, cosmetic fashions, bodily gestures, and many other everyday symbolic forms: "in a field where people are still apt to regard contemporary culture as more or less synonymous with television programming, this contextualization represents a considerable gain in breadth" (1978: 348). problems arise, however, when one attempts to unravel the significance of these symbolic forms through the use of immanent strucutral analysis. murdock and colding argue that the epistemological and 140 methodological principles of the approach irrevocably lead to "a highly asymmetric analysis in which an elaborate anatomy of symbolic forms sits alongside a schematic and incomplete account of social processes" (1978: 349). in other words, there are degrees of contextualization, and cultural studies, however ambitious in its range, has not achieved the greatest degree that it might. to some, this potential is unrealizable: murdock and golding, operating within a more orthodox perspective, see no way out, and conclude that "textual and sociological analyses are rooted in fundamentally opposed approaches to the study of culture and ... eventually a choice must be made between the two" (1978: 351). the later, and very different, williams seems to opt for the latter. in a landmark new left review article (1973) that in many ways marks the point of his rupture with earlier theoretical affiliations, williams asserts that "we have to break from the notion of isolating the object and then discovering its components. on the contrary, we have to discover the nature of a practice and then its conditions" (1973: 16). and, in a 1974 work, television: technology and cultural form, williams reiterates the need for a greater degree of contextualization: to say that television is now a factor in socialization,, or that its controllers and communicators are exercising a particular social function, is to say very little until the forms of the society which determine any particular socialization and which allocate the function of control and communication have been precisely specified (1974: 120; emphasis added) . critiques of immanent structural or semiotic analysis most often cite the following major weakenesses of the method: (1) its insistence on the immanent revelations of cultural texts; (2) its inductive epistemological principles; (3) its impressionistic, 'subjective', and inferential nature; (4) its unreplicable (and hence unverifiable) character; (5) its too weighted reliance on the ingenuity of the 141 individual analyst; and (6) its necessary ahistoricism. sumner, however, argues that these weakenesses are not immutable, and attempts to salvage the more worthy traits of the approach through his proposals for a "historical materialist semiology" (1979: 207-245). although still tentative and cumbersome (see the four 'approximations' and their attendant empirical contingents, 1979: 238-245), sumner's approach contrasts sharply with the enthusiastic birmingham adoption of the study of the text for the sake of the text. indeed, the new currency of debates about authorship represents an alarming 'sign' of further and future over-subscriptions to french structuralism, and especially the new 'post-structuralism' (represented by derrida, kristeva, et^ al_. ) , which is content not only to decompose a text with blind disregard to its material sources and conditions, but to decompose the text for the sake of analysis itself, and not for the sake of revealing its politico-ideological implications. this is tantamount to "deconstruct ion for the hell of it", as norman snider so pointedly expressed it in, significantly, a recent edition of his 'trends' column (globe 6 mail , 20 september, 1980). even those who still perceive their work as part of and contributory to larger politico-practical objectives, still limit their analytical range to the text itself in their explanations (if included) of social process. murdock and golding rightfully question the capacity of social texts to reveal all that there is to cultural production and reproduction. their damning critique of semiotics suggests that what is at stake here is much more than a problem of method: ... it is not just a question of devising more adequate modes of textual analysis and applying them to a comprehensive range of media output ... there is a fundamental methodological difficulty in approaching social and structural relations 142 through the analysis of texts. however well conceived and executed, textual readings remain a variety of content analysis and as such they suffer from the familiar but intractable problem of inference. it is one thing to argue that all cultural forms contain traces of the relations of production underlying their construction, and of the structural relations which surround them. it is quite another to go on to argue that an analysis of form can deliver an adequate and satisfactory account of these sets of relations and of the determinations they exert on the production process. they can't. in our view the sociology of culture and communication has been seriously incapacitated by the tendency of over-privilege texts as objects of analysis (1979: 206-207; emphasis added). what is most alarming about the new 'trend* towards post-structuralist semiotics is that it represents a fundamental inversion of the principles of historical materialism, and yet it operates under the guise of 'marxist' cultural theory. rather than refer to these developments as 'neo-' or even 'post-' marxism, we might more properly identify the latest theoretical fashions as a kind of anti -marxism. who better to illustrate this point than marx himself: it is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earthly core of the misty creations of religion, than, conversely, it is to develop from the actual relations of life the corresponding celestialized forms of those relations. the latter method is the only materialistic, and therefore the only scientific one (1967: 352n) . conclusions: towards a materialist analysis of culture despite the promise of the new conception of culture as 'a whole way of life', culture is still treated as a realm apart, both by literary-structural theorists and by more orthodox thinkers. or. one side, traditional notions have been extended to encompass a wide range of cultural commodities and symbolic forms; on the other, culture is still separated from work and reduced, in essence, to life styles and not life ways . both traditions have contributed to the further reificaticn of the concept, abstracted it from the web of social relations, ir.l transformed it into a monolithic notion of not just 'culture as a whole' but 'culture as a whole realm of social life' and therefore, somehow, separable 143 from other material productions. meanwhile, mass society theorists (including "culture industry' theorists) start with a moralistic observation that 'culture' is disintegrating, and proceed to centre entirely on their abstract, ungrounded notion of culture rather than on the specific determinations and historical configurations of cultures within capitalist. the result is "a crude "consumptionist" theory of culture in which subjective judgement and moral evaluation dominate to the exclusion of scientific analysis" (swingewood, 1977: xi). this underlines even more the need to locate culture by first looking towards production , and by conceptualizing culture itself as first and foremost a material production. in contrast, all of the approaches discussed start out with either a firm rejection of exasperation with, or sheer desertion of, the principles of materialist analysis, and some, as we have seen, arrive at either an implicitly anti-marxist or (at best) quasi-marxist stance. such categorizations, and the general profusion of lables that attempt to identify the various strands of thought, reflect the current state of theoretical confusion about culture. at least three critical and interrelated problems occupy the current debates: those of mediation, of agency, and of determination. the consequences of the first two of these have already been noted, and therefore greater attention must now be paid to the problem of determination itself. the conditions that led these problems to attain their acute significance for contemporary cultural theorists are suggested throughout the discussion. anderson (1976), however, more broadly contextualizes the developments. according to his account, the "organic unity of theorv and practice" realized in the generation of prc-wwi marxists suffered a serious rupture during the five decades between 1918 and 1968. the political forces that came into play following the first world war (e.g. 144 fascism and stalinism) served to sever the bond between theory and practice and to scatter and suppress certain key theorists like cramsci, korsch, and lukacs. from this point forward, the possibilities for a lively and dynamic exchange of marxist thought, one informed by concrete political practice, were seriously diminished. moreover, after 1920, most major theoretical works were produced in a context of political isolation and (often) defeatist despair, including: lukacs' history and class conscious ness (1923), written during his period of exile in austria; gramsci's notes, compiles during his imprisonment under mussolini's triumphant fascism; the early works of the frankfurt theorists, written under the conditions of german fascism; marcuse's eros and civilization (1954), produced in the era of mccarthyism in the united states; and sartre's critique of dialiectical reason (1960), which appeared following the gaullist coup of 1958. anderson concludes that "the hidden hallmark of western marxism as a whole is thus that it is a product of defeat" (1976: 42; original emphasis). one painful consequence of the impasse brought about by these conditions became "the studied silence of western marxism in those areas most central to the classical traditions of historical materialism" (1976: 44); notably, analysis of economic changes within the developing capitalist mode of production, of the significance of the growing state machine, and of the ongoing class struggles within capitalist societies. at the same time, the post-war capitalist economic boom, and with it the global consolidation of capital all around the industrialized world, signalled a new phase of capitalism that seemed to undermine the classical account of its inevitable decline, and posed instead a 'crisis' for marxist analysis. in light of these circumstances, the appearance of althusser's works during the 1960s, and their widespread influence, is 145 readily comprehensible. althusser's reformulations of the classic marxist precepts (e.g. the crucial concept of "structural causality" of a mode of production in reading capital , and the concept of a social totality "determined in the last instance" by one preponderant level within it, which in itself blew open the whole surge of functionalist attacks, and deservedly so) , undermined the already weakened vitality of classical political economy, and led to an inordinate amount of concentration on the study of superstructures , in which analyses of culture and ideology rose to unwarranted prominence. furthermore, there are those who argue (e.g. mrudock and golding, 1979) that ultimately the most dreadful implication of althusser's work was its final and definitive eradication of one of the core, distinguishing features of historical materialisir ; namely, the real and ever-present determination of the economic. the sole outstanding exception to these otherwise pervasive tendencies is represented in the work of one of the last great 'politically informed' marxist theorists: gramsci. it is particularly remarknble in that gramsci 's work also concentrated on the study of superstructures, yet "unlike any other theorist in western marxism he took the autonomv and efficacy of cultural superstructures as a political problem, to be explicitly theorized as such in its 'relationship to the maintenance or subversion of the social order" (anderson, 1976: 78; original emphasis). this is the critical difference, although popular misappropriations of his work have themselves 'subverted' the distinctiveness of his approach to culture, and the cryptic nature of his writings has obstructed a clear understanding of their theoretical significance. the construction of a comprehensive gramscian approach to the study of culture would no doubt be a massive, yet not impossible, project; it would need to take into acccint and piece together all of the observations about culture (and 146 ideology) dispersed throughout the voluminous prison notes. the project is made all the more massive by the recent availability of the first english translation of some of the early political writings (gransci, 14 1977, 1978). nevertheless, in order to fulfill the requirements of a materialist analysis of culture, we might usefully start with gramsci's seminal works. it is a tribute to his unique insights that gramsci, at a very early historical stage, recognized the dangers of and understood the developments behind the growth of idealist elements within marxist theory: the currents which have attempted combinations of the philosophy of praxis with idealist tendencies consist for the most part of 'pure' intellectuals, whereas the current which has constituted the orthodoxy consisted of intellectual personalities more markedly dedicated to practical activity and therefore more closely linked to the great popular mases (1971: 389). part of the explanation for this i^si^ht lies in gramsci'i frequent polemics against the idealism of croce , his chief opponent in the local italian debate. in a similar vein, gransci also recognized the overriding problem of determination, and insisted that "it is the problem of the relations between structure and superstructure which must be accurately posed and resolved if the forces which are active in the history of a particular period are to be correctly analyzed, and the relations between them determined" (1971: 177). with respect to this overriding problem, garnham (1979) has helpfully identified the roots of the debate about determination in his search for congruities between the work of screen and historical materialism. in the first place, the imbalanced concern with ideology and culture has placed traditional understandings of determination in doubt. ... the economic is determinant in certain historically specific ways, i.e. each one of us would literally starve 147 to death unless wc entered into this structure of economic relationships. the same cannot be said of many so-called superstructural activities which are in this sense, relatively autonomous, relatively matters of free choice (1979: 125). garnham argues that this straightforward distinction has been inflated beyond reason, and that this can be understood in terms of the relatively privileged position of intellectuals within modern relations of production; hence their susceptibility to confusions about determination. the argument suggests that, as a first step towards a materialist approach, we need to remove culture, or at least ideology, from its position of centrality in 'marxist' thought and work. it may mean, for example, looking for 'culture' in hitherto unlikely places, i.e. inside factories and offices and not just in working or middle class neighbourhoods, and making sense of the findings not with the dubious aid of althusserian 'theories', but with reference to substantive works like, for example, beynon's working for ford (1973) or thompson's research on the problems encountered in introducing the notion of regulated working hours in the early moments of industrialization (1967). a second source of the confusion about determination lies in the associated (and, some would argue, 'manufactured') problem of 'levels', brought on in part by althusser's re-reading of capital . in a valiant effort to "bring back the dialectic", garnham argues forcefully that the whole notion of levels is a false one. discussions of "levels of the social formation" tend to (incorrectly) specify "discrete areas of concrete social practice (e.g. the economic is material production and circulation, the ideological is concerned with ideas and cultural forms, the political concerned with political parties, the state and so on). on the contrary, levels are not actual social practices but analytically distinct perspectives upon concrete social phenomena which arc at one 148 and the same time economic, ideological, and political" (1079: 1 jo) . a third source of trouble traces to the widely pcrcicved limitations of the classic equation between ideology and false consciousness as well as the opposition between real relations and phenomenal foros , on the basis of which many cultural theorists instantly dismiss marx as a source of theoretical insight into the workings of ideology and culture. yet, as gamhara points out: all that historical materialism posits is that economic class positions produce one set of positions as an average or probabilistically, rather than another. it then sometimes goes on to argue that the gap precisely between the real and 'reality' or between economic relations and phenomenological forms makes possible a disjunction between the real interests and a false consciousness of those interests. it does not necessarily ... then make ideology merely 'the misleading phenomenal form of the real movement'. it claims that, because there is mediation (or relative autonomy or disjuncture or indeed whatever word or theoretical construct one uses to describe the manifestly obvious and anciently attested fact that there is a difference between the real and its representation) there is a possibility of misunderstanding. but it does depend . . . upon an assumption of the primacy and determinacy of the real ... marx certainly, and i believe, marxism, rests upon the ultimate primacy of the real (1979: 126-127). granham's defense is quoted at length here, since it marks a rare type of intervention into the current debates of marxist cultural theory. on a more optimistic note, there is some recent evidence that oppositions of this nature are on the increase (see, for example, the debate between coward (1979), and chambers et_ al_. (1979) . in the interests of a maturing materialist approach to the study of culture, such interventions must be heartily welcomed. 149 notf.s 1. the unique position of walter benjamin vis-a-vis other menbers of the institute for social research is still a subject of debate (see later discussion) , and hence the theoretical cohesion suggested by the phrase 'the frankfurt school' renders its usage somewhat inappropriate. 2. horkheimer died in 1973. the quotation derives from a letter written to martin jay in 1971, subsequently published as the forward to jay's account of the institute (1973). 3. a problematic feature of mass society theory is this limited attention to these three media and its relative neglect of other significant culture industries and cultural forms (literature, drama, newspapers, magazines, theatre, etc.). 4. the material imperatives that determined the direction of much american 'mass communications' research are by now well known. the needs of the u.s. private radio industry for some knowledge of its broadcast markets and the requirements of war-time propaganda each figured within the development of the dominant modes of media empiricism. several leading figures within this tradition were directly employed by private audience research agencies or private research foundations linked to the media industries. in addition, hovland directed the research branch of the u.s. army's information and education division (see golding and murdock , 1978). 5. innis' theory is introduced in empire and communications (19") and further developed in the bias of communication (1951). related works include ch anging concepts of tire (toronto: university of toronto press, 1952) and the strategy of culture (toronto: university of toronto press, 1952). 6. see carey (1968) for evidence that mcluhan's 'borrowings' i'ror. innis were more than substantial, verging on sheer plagiarisr. 7. their limited utility is illustrated in the fact that few studies have followed or attempted to develop the tradition further. a notable exception is carpenter's oh, htiat a blow that phantom cave me ! (1976). his idle musings, however fascinating to read, demonstrate the impressionistic and fundamentally non-analytical nature of mcluhan's formulations about culture. 8. keynote address, 11th annual conference of the canadian association for american studies, waterloo, ontario, .22-25 october 19". 9. the phrase 'cultural studies' is preferred to 'cultural mnrxisr.' (as some refer to the approach), for reasons that will become apparent. iso 10. hoggart shared the anxieties and lived the contradictions of other british working class academics of the 1950s who moved upward through the academy during the post-war expansion of higher education, and, like the others, was compelled by a need to 'settle accounts' with his class origins. the uses of literacy should be read in this light. 11. it is indicative of 'the new williams' that statements like the following appear in the latest text: "it is in practice impossible to separate the development of the novel as a literary form fror. the highly specific economics of fiction publication" (1977: 137) -a far cry indeed from the young literary critic of the 1950s. 12. in a revealing admission, johnson notes that the isas essay "has been massively influential, defining, for many readers, the actual terrain of "materialism"" (1979: 58). 13. that thompson's motives in the production of making were largely polemical is disclosed in the following excerpt from a recent interview: "the making of the english working class undoubtedly arose from a two-sided theoretical polemic. on the one hand it could not have been written without the extremely firmly, intellectually very well-based, discipline of economic history ... it is a tradition largely contaminated with capitalist ideoiogy ... on the other hand it was in a sense a polemic against abbreviated economistic notations of marxism..." 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"consensus and mass communication". american soc i ological review 13: 1-15. 156 alternate routes a critical review editorial board: jim conley, joan st. laurent, eileen saunders alternate routes is an annual publication of graduate students in sociology and anthropology. manuscripts, subscriptions and communications should be addressed to: alternate routes department of sociology and anthropology carleton university ottawa* ontario, canada k1s 5b6 phone: 231-6634. the editorial board wishes to establish a genuine forum for the exchange of ideas. we welcome critical responses , commentaries or rejoinders, which we will endeavour to publish in subsequent issues. the editors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton univere is chairperson, dennis forcese. we also wish to thank cruikshank for her administrative assistance. subscriptions : individuals and institutions: $2. 75. payable to alternate routes. copyright 1979, alternate routes, unless otherwise noted. alternate routes a critical review editorial board: jim conley, joan st. laurent, eileen saunders alternate routes is an annual publication of graduate students in sociology and anthropology. manuscripts, subscriptions and communications should be addressed to: alternate routes department of sociology and anthropology carleton university ottawa, ontario, canada k1s 5b6 phone: 231-6634. the editorial board wishes to establish a genuine forum for the exchange of ideas. we welcome critical responses, commentaries or rejoinders, which we will endeavour to publish in subsequent issues. the editors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university, and its chairperson, dennis foroese. we also wish to thank bev cruikshank for her administrative assistance. subscriptions : individuals and institutions: $2. ?s. make cheques payable to alternate routes. copyright 1979, alternate routes, unless otherwise noted. digitized by the internet archive in 2011 with funding from carleton university, department of sociology & anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesc03alte alternate routes a critical review vol. 3 1979 contents phil heiple 7 university of california, santa barbara the poxitios of probability ...1 gordon haas / carleton university claus offe and the capitalist state: a critique ...25 bonnie ward / queen's university the myth of autonomy in family farm production . . .49 sut jhally / university of victoria marxism and underdevelopment: the modes of production debate ...63 janice belkaoui / rosary college a critical assessment of media studies ...94 votes to contributors ...128 editorial statement alternate routes is a critical review of sociology and related disciplines. we strive to publish the critical work of graduate students which will inform, and be of interest to students and teachers of social science. in our view, sociologists must be critical, both of their own society and of the work of other social analysts. we seek, therefore, to publish work which challenges existing sociological and societal orthodoxies. to achieve this goal we require manuscripts. we encourage graduate students among our readers to submit essays, reviews, commentaries and rejoinders on a wide variety of subjects. we particularly welcome v^rk which treats some aspect of canadian society within the wider concerns of critical social science. isbn 0-7709-0061-5 john porter 1921 1979 the editors of alternate routed wish to acknowledge the contributions of the late john porter to carleton university, to canadian sociology, and to the academic community at large. his seminal work, the vertical mosaic (1965j, stands as a benchmark in the development of sociological analyses of canadian society, serving to encourage the continuing investigation of the nature of social inequality. while beet known for this book, dr. porter was also the author of numerous other works, including canadian social structure: a statistical profile, amd does money matter? (co-authored with marion porter and bernard bliehen). john porter will be keenly missed, as a scholar, as a member of the university community, and above all, for graduate students at carleton, as a teacher committed to his students and to their training as critical, skilled sociologists . the politics of probability phil heiple "statistics" was first used in the middle of the sixteenth century and related to matters concerning the state. statistics continued in this sense for the next two hundred years. these matters of state concern became more and more numerical and summary methods were used. these provided a framework for social policy and also played a rhetorical function of legitimation due to popular attitudes toward exact figures (kendall, 1972:196; clark, 1937:122-124). by the mid-seventeenth century, mathematicians, physicists, astronomers and other scientists adopted and advanced the summary methods of statistics. these advances were aided by the developing systems of rational accounting in use in business and by the philosophies of natural science developed by galileo, bacon, descartes, and newton (clark, 1937:79, 133-137; kendall, 1972:197). quantification was first being attempted as a form of social thought at this time. the general background was the rational spirit of rising capitalism and the increasing size of different countries which necessitated a more impersonal and abstract basis for public administration. specific attempts were related to concrete problems of refining the numerical bases of the new insurance systems and to the mercantilists' belief that population size was a crucial factor in the wealth and power of the state (douglas, 1971a:50; lazarsfeld, 1961:279). new economic conditions forced the new importance of recordskeeping for political assessment. changing modes of production led to prolonged depression and massive unemployment throughout europe. vagrancy laws and institutionalized houses of confinement were among the bureaucratic responses to these conditions (c.f., chambliss, 1964; foucault, 1965). these required systematic records as well as agencies charged with the execution of these tasks. this was the beginnings of the bureaucracies of official morality. the growing size and complexity of western societies created a need for some form of accountable information which could be legally and morally sanctioned as the basis for policy judgments (douglas, 1971b :51-52). the symbiosis of quantitative social thought with the analytical and calculating form of thought of the bourgeoisie had advanced by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the point where social statisticians and official statistics helped promote a formal standardization of morality as justice and helped civil service and state interventionist power to grow and to become increasingly remote from the qualitative relations of a socially produced and understood world. this is compatible with what weber depicted as the rationalizing character of bureaucratic thought, which lukacs later depicted as fundamental to the process of capitalist reification. parallel with the late-nineteenth century transition from entrepreneurial capitalism to corporate capitalism and the administrative welfare state of the new deal, sociology in the united states abandoned early descriptive participant-observer methods (e.g. chicago school) in favor of survey methods and the analysis of official statistics. by the 1930's, sociological methods as represented by the increasing number of methods texts came to be synonymous with quantitative analysis (douglas, 1971a:55). articles in social science journals from 1895 to the present reveal an increasing use of quantification and statistical manipulation. snizek (1975:42—424) found that these methods tended to produce " a realist view of social reality, often associated with the fallacy of reification, ... one that focuses on group properties in hopes of discovering the structural laws that govern behavior" (1975:416). statistical reasoning's claim to validity in social analysis is that the calculus of probability adequately describes the relative likelihood of events occurring in the social world. or, as blalock (1960:509) negatively stated it: if probabilities are unknown, it will be impossible to make legitimate use of statistical inference. i am interpreting this to mean that probability theory is the philosophical (i.e., metaphysical) link between statistical measurement and the world of observables. this dichotomy is interesting. blalock (1960:19) himself evokes it in an anticipatory aside where he says, "this is a question of fact which is irrelevant to the question of whether or not there is a legitimate unit of measurement." to me, the irrelevant is relevant. my basic thesis is that methods and politics are inseparable because methods for social analysis always contain certain presuppositions about the nature of the social world. insofar as these presuppositions express or imply a concept or evaluation of social order, or an excuse or means to evaluate social order, they are metaphysical. these metaphysics are a metaphysics of normality. they delimit the scope of normal social relations and are therefore political in their implications for social life. antonio gramsci 's criticism of the law of large numbers illustrates this approach. in brief, the law of large numbers states that the larger the number of samples the greater the likelihood (probability) that their average will approximate the average of the population from which they were drawn. several times in the prison notebooks gramsci (1971:401, 412) mentions the usefulness of this concept for analysing the quantitative expressions of social phenomena. this is acceptable because it does not pretend to avoid selecting for specific characteristics of the sample. when dealing with human subjects, however, gramsci (1971:428-429) finds the law of large numbers (and the concept of statistical law generally) to be deeply flawed: but the fact has not been properly emphasized that statistical laws can be employed in the science and art of politics only so long as the great masses of the population remain (or at least are reputed to remain) essentially passive, in relation to the questions which interest historians and politicians. furthermore, the extension of statistics to the science and art of politics can have very serious consequences to the extent that it is adopted for working out future perspectives and programmes of action ... indeed in politics the assumption of the law of statistics as an essential law operating of necessity is not only a scientific error, but becomes a practical error in action ... it should be observed that political action tends precisely to rouse the masses from passivity, in other words to destroy the law of large numbers. gramsci is arguing that the law of large numbers contains an important presupposition about its unit of analysis. the presupposition is that the unit of analysis is a passive object. gramsci points out that the unit of analysis cannot be an active subject. it cannot be in a state of becoming i.e. , it cannot be in a state that is undergoing any kind of qualitative change. this is the metaphysic of normality for the law of large numbers. it delimits its units to static relations. even if stochastic measures are used, only quantitative changes are possible. in short, it systematically ignores the possibility of a revolutionary subject. gramsci did not attempt a study of probability theory to see if metaphysics of normality were only accidentally and occasionally present, or generally so. in the next several pages i will survey probability theory with a search for metaphysics in mind. first, let me delineate which issues in probability theory i will be addressing. three perspectives dominate modern probability theory: the "objective" or "frequentist" position, the "subjective" or "personalist" approach, and the "logical" theory of probability. putting aside the logical theory for a moment, the distinction between the objective and subjective theories can be posed by their different accounts of the relationship between the concept of probability and the nature of probable knowledge. according to the objectivist position, probability is an objective characteristic of a multi-leveled physical reality. probable knowledge is knowledge of one of those levels and is incomplete because of the incompleteness of our information. strict determinacy is assumed in the physical reality. statistical methods are used to bridge the gap between insufficient information and the strict determinacy of objective reality. the objectivist position is the predominant form of probability theory used in the social sciences. the less widely held subjectivist position holds that our knowledge of physical reality is inevitably limited in principle and that our knowledge is therefore only probably true. this is the interpretation of probability' predominant in orthodox quantum physics: the quantum level is the level of inseparability between the knower and the object known where the knower is nonetheless compelled to speak of the object as if it were not affected by the knower, which results in statements of only probable validity. statistical methods are employed to express the degree of certitude the knower attaches to these statements (suppes, 1969:238-242). quantum theory is, in part, a theory of the indeterminateness of knowledge. no such theory exists in the social sciences, although, to me, its adoption there is long overdue. the logical theory of probability is not in use in the social sciences, unsuccessful attempts have been made to formulate social probability along the lines of the logical theory. basically, the logical theory of probability directly addresses the problem of metaphysical content. it tries to avoid metaphysics witn a strictly inductive non-demonstrative mathematical logic of self-evident maxims. in this it is hoped that all subjective judgments will be precluded. my basic thesis on probability is that it is in essence metaphysical and all attempts to remove the metaphysical content are doomed to fail. further, i will argue that it is precisely because of the metaphysical content that probability theory has been useful to quantitative social scientists. this usefulness is in large part a function of the degree to which the mataphysics of probability are compatible with the hegemonic ideologies of social science. i will try to illustrate this thesis with a few brief looks at the origins and development of the modern theory of probability. byrne (1968:292-293) provides the following thumbnail sketch of the development of the calculus of probability: in the course of time, cardano and then pascal and fermat came to recognize that gambler's rules already in existence might provide a more effective instrument with which to deal with the contingent. these gambler's rules they and then others developed and systematized. that this more or less systematic instrument of the nonsystematic came to be known as a calculus is due not only to its character as a mathematical instrument but to imitation and adulation of the great new instrument of the systematic, the calculus of leibnitz and newton ... ... the new instrument thus inaugurated was eventually systematized by laplace according to standards of his day. but it is important to bear in mind that what is now a demonstrative system in its own right began as an instrument to deal with the non-systematic on the basis of a new theory about how to express the non-systematic: not disjunctively but in terms of a continuum of values between what happens always and what never happens. the "notion of non-systematic" needs clarification. byrne (1968:285) writes: notion is here taken in a general sense broader than that of concept and is meant to imply, without further precision, awareness of or consciousness of. non-sy s temat ic is also taken in a broad sense and is meant to imply non-necessity, or non-certain, or non-demonstrated, or even non-scientific in the thomlst sense which is not unrelated to the modern 'indeterminate'. being negative non-systematic is meant to imply also 'with respect to a given system. ' thereby what one calls non-systematic will depend on one's conception of a system. for example, if newtonian mechanics is taken to be the system, then the non-systematic will be all the relevant phenomena not explained by newtonian mechanics. this was, in fact, the original relation of the non-systematic: the first probabilists were trying to develop an instrument to handle specifically what was non-systematic with respect to the newtonian system of celestial mechanics. whereas the newtonian mechanics replaced medieval cosmology, the founders of proability theory sought to replace medieval disputational means of discerning the probability of judgments. the medieval concepts of probability as (1) probabilis : an argumentatively supported proposition, and (2) contingens : events that occur either ut in pluribus or ut in paucioribus were carried over into the new probability theory as (1) the logical interpretation: probability or degree of confirmation of a proposition, and (2) mathematical interpretation: probability or relative frequency of a class of variables (byrne, 1968:302). now let us take a look at the leading models and see what manifestations these concepts have once fully articulated. the logical theory of probability, as i mentioned earlier, is not in use in the social sciences, but it does indicate the culmination of a particular line of probabilistic thinking and is noteworthy in this respect. following a theme initiated by leibniz, attempts have been made to develop a general logic combining formal logic and the calculus of probability. john venn, c.s. peirce, richard von mises, hans reichenbach, and j.m. keynes all made contributions toward this project, and the work of rudolf carnap represents its most successful formulation (byrne , 1968:20-21; nagel, 1939:42-43). carnap distinguished between probability as (1) degree of confirmation, and (2) relative frequency over time. taking the former as his problematic, he says, "a definition of an explicandum for probability must not refer to any person and his beliefs but only to the two sentences and their logical properties within a given language system" (carnap, 1950:43; quoted in byrne, 1968:21). hence, a deliberate attempt is made to control opinionative (metaphysical) content. carnap 's approach to probability is part of his project to develop a wholly non-demonstrative inductive logic. the basic problem lies in consistently assigning numerical values to the degrees of confirmation for opinionative judgments. carnap believes that quantification is the only guarantor of this needed consistency (1950:220-226). as a general logic, all this could be constructed on the basis of elementary set theory, which carnap proceeds to do. however, the effectiveness of the construction is problematical. it is already disputable whether opinionative judgments about contingent events are in any sense quantitative and hence mathematically formalizable. carnap suggests that this issue is merely technical: if the logic can be constructed, then it will be effective (1950:242). yet, as byrne (1968:22) points out, that a formal logic can ever be capable of such a task is seriously challenged by two important theorems of meta-logic: craig's and godel's. craig's theorem is for replacing a formal linguistic system of theoretical terms with another with the same empirical content but no theoretical terms. nagel (1961:135-137) shows that this method of replacement becomes unworkable when the subject axioms (in this case opinionative judgments) are very numerousand that in order to specify, the replacement axioms the set of true statements about the subject axioms must be closed (i.e., known in advance). byrne (1968: 22-23) adds that opinionative judgments are at least numerous and in principle unlimited and that the very notion of opinionative judgments entails openness for the set of true statements about them. godel's theorem shows that formal axiomatic systems such as catnap's are necessarily incomplete in that proof of internal consistency (in this case, effectiveness) cannot be made within that system. instead, such proofs must come from without — a requirement that puts carnap' s entire project of a non-demonstrative inductive logic into serious question (nagel and newman, 1958:96-97). in sum, although the issue is not yet closed, there appear to be insurmountable 8 obstacles confronting a non-metaphysical logic of probability at levels both material (craig's theorem) and formal (gtidel's theorem). the mathematical theory of probability is like the logical theory of probability in that it can be constructed out of elementary set theory but would be subject to the critique of gbdel's theorem if metaphysical assumptions were not acknowledged. as with carnap's logical theory, the question being posed of the mathematical theory is not the adequacy of the formal system, but rather the interpretation of that system. while there are numerous ways that a mathematical theory of probability could be built upon the arithmetic of proper fractions (nagel, 1939:40-41), the linkages between the formal system and physical events would have to be drawn extra-mathematically. as venn (1962:87; quoted in byrne, 1968: 31) observes: when probability is ... divorced from direct reference to objects, as it substantially is by not being founded upon experience, it simply resolves itself into the common algebraical or arithmetical doctrine of permutations and combinations . emil borel and george polya suggest that the link is to be established by the practical certitude of the user. borel is distrustful of the opinion of a single individual, because it is too likely to be subjective. objective certitude arises through the common agreement of many prudent individuals. borel (quoted in byrne, 1968:18) states: the only reason why we regard as certain some well demonstrated mathematical facts ... is that the demonstrations have been reconsidered and verified by a large number of persons. it is fair to infer that these persons are assumed to be mathematicians, thus creating an elite consensus theory of truth (to which i will return in my examination of polanyi's views). it is also fair to make a strict logical rejection of this view on the grounds that it is tautological: borel seeks to justify practical applications of the mathematical theory of probability, which would include the law of large numbers, through reference to a practical situation in which the law of large numbers is 9 apparently assumed to be valid a priori. polya avoids the errors of carnap and borel by admitting that a formal system is neither selfjustifying nor connected to an observable reality in a non-mediated way. according to polya, we can, nonetheless, approach a formal system as if it were integrally connected to observable reality, insorfar as it is plausible to do so. polya (1954a: 198-199) outlines the grounds of plausibility: ... the credence that we place in a conjecture is bound to depend on our whole background , on the scientific atmosphere of our time ... in dealing with the observable reality, we can never arrive at any demonstrative truth, we have always to rely on some plausible ground. i think polya points in the right direction. why does probability theory have credibility as a deductive system? it has credibility only because it conforms to our background expectations about what a deductive system is like. why is there such confidence in the applicability of probability theory to social phenomena? because our background assumptions about the nature of social phenomena makes such application entirely plausible (though non-demonstrable). in this, polya is making tacit reference to what i have been calling a "metaphysics of normality." the only thing he has not done is put this into its historical and political context. i hope that the first part of this essay succeeded in establishing some of this context: (1) probability theory was adopted as a technique for use within the general method of quantitative social thought, wherein the conception of social phenomenon employed necessitated the assumptions that social reality had a pre-categorical facticity, that human behavior was quantifiable, and that these quantities had corresponding elements in number theory; and (2) this development was instrumental (a) to the rising bourgeoisie's interest in the rational planning of society through bureaucracies of official morality, and (b) to the ability to legitimate bourgeois rule through rhetorical reference to hard, numerical, quantitative science. in sura, 10 probability theory is plausibly applied to social phenomena because we have historically arrived at reified conceptions of what tocial phenomena are like and how to study them. of all the probabi lists surveyed thus far, some have acknowledged the presence of metaphysics in their conceptions of science and others have asserted its absence. of those who recognize the incompleteness or impossibility of logical and/or mathematical formulations of social probability without metaphysical presuppositions, none have tried to specify the use of metaphysics in this enterprise. micheal polanyi is an exception. polanyi provides a strong but ultimately circular critique of the myth of scientific objectivity. against the view of the relationship between science and its object as being impersonal and dispassionate, polanyi (1964) presents a wealth of evidence from the history of science to show that in all forms of knowing there is a tacit dimension which is ultimately more important than any established scientific method, evidence, or explanation. this dimension is the "personal participation of the knower in all acts of understanding" (1964:xiii). this participation is the effect of the opinions, prejudices, and preconceptions (i.e., metaphysics) of the knower upon the act of knowing. for the scientist, these would include "personal obligations to universal standards" (1964:17). with regards to probability, a probability statement is an incomplete and personal commitment according to one's framework of personal judgment (1964: 29). probability statements are thereby partially formalized within certain maxims understood to be no more than "rules of the art" (thus utilizing the strengths of an internally-consistent system without the weaknesses of extra-systemic truth claims) (1964 : 30-31) . polanyi recognizes that the scientist acts in dialogue with other scientists and with the traditions and norms of scientific practice, i.e., the social nature of science and, 11 hence, the social character of personal commitment. this means that a scientist's personal commitment to "universal standards" is influenced by factors outside the scientist. polanyi (1964:375) considers the influence on scientists to be "superior knowlege," which he defines, as "beside the systems of science and other factual truths, all that is coherently believed to be right and excellent by men within their culture." this "network of confidence" enables science to survive as a "coherent system of superior knowledge, upheld by people mutually recognizing each other as scientists, and acknowledged by modern society as its guide." full of post-enlightenment optimism, polanyi becomes a propagandist for a hegemonic elite technocracy. well aware of the horrors of stalinist and nazi scientism (1964:224-245), polanyi nonetheless opts for an elite consesus theory of truth. despite his sympathy for galileo, mesmer, d.c.miller, and other victim s of elite hegemony, nowhere does polanyi question the ability of the present scientific community to make the right decisions at the right times. he improves probability theory by including metaphysics in the creative act of probability assertion, but capitulates to bourgeois hegemony by not institutionalizing any means to critically reflect upon the metaphysics received. polya (1948: 208-209) recognizes this as a procedural necessity: "no idea is really bad, unless we are uncritical ... don't let your suspicion, or guess, or conjecture grow without examination till it becomes ineradicable. at any rate, in theoretical matters, the best of ideas is hurt by uncritical acceptance and thrives on critical examination." in contradistinction, polanyi is advocating what i warn against : technocratic planning by scientists uncritical of their own metaphysical presuppositions. some of the general problems of probability theory have been demonstrated. more difficulties arise when it is used in social science. this can be demonstrated by examining the ways it is used there. one way probability theory enters the methods of social research is 12 as an aid to sampling statistics. there it is used to ensure the selection of a representative sample. the problem it solves is the problem created by purposive sampling — maybe we can control for all extraneous variables we can anticipate, but what about extraneous variables ve have not anticipated? ford (1975:271) describes fisher's solution through probability sampling: his idea was to go about the whole business of casting for samples the other way around. if you can select imaginary variables to render them systematic, then, he reasoned, perhaps you can unselect the unimaginary ones to render them unsystematic. if you can be reasonably sure that their variation is indeed unsystematic from the point of view of your theory, then you can assume that any biases in your sample are also unsystematic, so these biases can be regarded as irrelevant from all conceivable points of view and thus can be ignored. the key to this is randomization. through randomization it is hoped that there will be no relevant differences between the sample and the universe from which it is drawn, and therefore any differences present are irrelevant. once you have a sample whose members were as equally likely to have been drawn as all those in the universe from which they came,, the calculus of probability may be employed to calculate the probability that your sample is biased in any relevant respect (ford, 1968:273). this is all well and good as long as one is dealing with experimental data hut, as selvin (1957) has pointed out, when non-experimental data are used certain problems arise. since the data are non-experimental, the researcher has no grounds for believing that there are no correlated biases greater than the random errors in the sample. these biases may have even an undetectable supressor effect. this rules out the calculus of probability (in this case, tests of significance). according to selvin (1957:522), "... only when all important correlated biases have been controlled is it legitimate to measure the possible influence of random errors by statistical tests of significance." of course, in order to control "all 13 important correlated biases" it is necessary to know what they are. this sounds to me like purposive sampling. if selvin is right, then probability sampling is randomly-collected purposive sampling with the assumption that there are no correlated biases greater than the random errors (a metaphysic of normality). while finding value in selvin, ford takes a different route to the same conclusion. she looks at the formal mathematics involved, specifically the requirement that "whenever the separate probability values of all mutually exclusive units are added together at the same time, che result must add up to 1" (1975:290). that this is impossible to link with events has been recognized in some statistical circles. in 1948 g.a. barnard criticized h. jeffreys' social statistics on this point (it is equally applicable to the school of r.a. fisher): the snag in professor jeffreys' theory is that to work it one has to specify a probability distribution for a class of alternative hypotheses and the whole of the probability has to be distributed. one must when interpreting one's experiments be able to think of all possible explanations of the data, and that, i think, none of us believe that we can do. it is always possible for someone to produce later an entirely new explanation we had never thought of, and which would not be represented in the hypothesis nor in the alternatives we had tested, (quoted in hogben, 1957:25.) ford (1975:291) sees this as a severe restriction of the applicability of probability statistics in general: for, unless the cases under consideration at any particular level of analysis may be properly regarded as derivable from a precisely defined and logically exhaustive set of nonoverlapping (i.e., mutually exclusive) units, then none of the impressive methods and techniques of probability theory will be applicable. the case against probability sampling is especially strong, for instead of solving the problems of purposive sampling, the formal requirements of the calculus of probability mean that they can only be employed "within a clearly defined set of units, that is, within a purposive sample" (ford, 1975:291, her emphasis). 14 an illustration of latent political bias is provided by an extension of neuberg's (1977:4-5, 20) critique of objectivist probability on the grounds of the unique character of a social event. he argues that social-level events (such as france becoming a monarchy) occur in a manner which cannot be recreated by replicating the circumstances. this is equally true for individual elements of a random sample. neuberg (1977:5) argues: the usual situation in a social-statistical study is a population model . . . the a priori assumption is that each element of the sample has been drawn at random, under similar circumstances, from the same population. if this assumption is not fulfilled the meaningfulness of the resulting explanation is open to question. one area, for example, where the assumption appears systematically doubtable is in .econometric time-series analysis. here the sample points are, originally, possibly distant from each other in social-level time. it is difficult to conceive a sense in which the elements of such a sample have been "drawn at random, under similar circumstances, from the same population". hence the uniqueness of social-level events is the basis of an explanation of the explanatory unreliability of econometric time-series models over longer periods of time. neuberg (1977:19-20) briefly notes that this may be because of the"special quality of soc.al-level («* historical) time" and cites lukacs' (.1971:89-90) argument that reified thought "degrades time to the dimension of space." in this way "time sheds its qualitative, variable, flowing nature; it freezes into an exactly delimited, quantifiable continuum filled with quantifiable 'things' ... in short, it becomes space." i would extend this argument somewhat to underscore the a priori assumption that social time is quantitative (newtonian). gurvitch (1964: 27-38) argues that social time is a conceptual derivative of a world-view and varies considerably within world-views according to need. husserl (1964:29, 77) argues that social time is wholly constituted by the experiential subject and that phenomenal time (e.g. standard time) has nothing more than an ascriptive status. both of these positions seriously challenge the assumption that time frames between unique events are comparable in any quantitative sense. this assumption has three additional features — the metaphysics of normality — which make the theorem politically 15 conservative : (1) the social subject cannot be an active participant in social time, either physically (e.g., intervening in such a way as to cause changes within the time frame) or cognitively (reflecting upon, interpreting, or reconstituting the experience of social time) ; (2) no part of the time frame can be anything other than a quantitative development of earlier parts (e.g., quantum leaps in time are precluded as well as any concept of determinism other than a linear causal model. the possibilities/probabilities for the future are wholly limited to quantitative developments of the present.) ; (3) if social time is viewed as newtonian space, then motive forces to change states woi.ld have to be extrinsic to the subjects at hand. this makes it possible for the subjects to be wholly quantifiable, i.e., for all behavior to be subsumed by and understood through number theory. to assume that social behavior can be subsumed by number theory is to believe that the limitations of numerical formulations do not apply to social analysis or social behavior. this metaphysics of normality is also the logical error of affirming the consequent because the second premise affirms the consequence of the hypothetical first premise. probability theory is only for the testing of judgments. it is when probability is seen as referring to material occurrence, i.t., events, that the confusion of causality and probability comes about. while i have no sympathy for any causal models in social research, probability in no way fits into a causal model. the concept of a probabilistic law is only possible when the unknown, a feature of judgments, is viewed as a material force in social events. this is one of the most common errors of bourgeois thought: to equate one's way of thinking about the world with the way things happen in the world (mistaking epistemology for ontology). in this way probability theory could be viewed as a source for social theory inductively drawn from frequency distributions (recall snizek's (1975) finding that mode of analysis determines theoretical perspective). logical grounds for rejecting inductively obtained explanations are given by hempel, who finds probabilistic laws to have nothing other than analogic credibility (1966:67). i think the most explicit dismissal of any connection between causal laws and probabilistic reasoning is provided by 16 polya (1954b; 100), who imagines a doctor trying to comfort a patient with the remark, "you have a very serious disease. of ten persons who get this disease, only one survives. but do not worry. it is lucky you came to me, for i have recently had nine patients with this disease and they all died of it." my final remark on probability theory as a method in social science deals with several small points made previously about the conflation of events with judgments and about the closed and unambiguous set of transformations available to probability. it has been suggested that graduate study in the social sciences is chiefly a process of indoctrination which occurs surreptitiously through the acquisition of a new language (pozzuto, 1975:20-21, 166-171). the notion that social probability is a language unto itself is plausible. in wittgenstein's view, language is a socially shared and practiced activity through which we learn and know what things are: "we predicate of the thing what lies in the method of representing it" (wittgenstein, 1953:46). that the truth claims of a language cannot be made within that language, but rather must be established through a richer language, is demonstrated by tarski (1944:341-376). what this means for the problem at hand is that if it is true that social probability is a language or like a language, then it constitutes a picture of the world whose validity cannot be established within its own logic. instead, validation must come from without, and i think i know where. consider the plausibility of the following experiment. go back in mnemonic time to your first indoctrination session into the secret meta-language of statistical probabilistic social analysis. remember all the examples about coins, dice, cards, and roulette wheels which made the case for the applicability of probability to social analysis so strong. those examples mystified us. the problem is that social-level events simply do not occur within 17 the same conditions necessary to say anything meaningful about the coins, dice, cards, and roulette wheels. in the case of the latter, it is not by chance that one knows the total distribution of probabilities, i.e., that a coin has two faces, that dice have six sides, and so on. in fact, the key concept of the latter is that everyone has full and complete knowledge of the total set of possibilities. it is in terms of this knowledge that meaningful frequencies can be calculated because everything relevant is known about them. the basic law of social statistics is that you must have a representative sample. powerful andef fective randomizing techniques are available to ensure this. but in ensuring representation, they also ensure that the parameters of the sample are unknown. nothing is known about the sample except that it is unknown and that anything discovered about it will be new data, i.e., everything relevant is unknown about it . this difference between dice, etc., and random samples, is irreducible and prevents transferability from one system to the next. nonetheless inductive leaps are frequently made between the two levels because of common sensical habits of mind, gramsci (1971:419) said that common sense is "the conception .of the world which is uncritically absorbed by the various social and cultural environments in which the moral individuality of the average (person) is developed," the inductive leap is facilely made because of the pre-ref lective habit of mind to think quantiatively and probabilistically about social events as a way of using human foresight in planning one's day. life u'ider capitalism predisposes people to pervasive habits of this sort in that every part of one's day can be fractured into discrete units, the manipulation of which is rarely reflectively regarded. the dominant ideas in social reasoning (commonsensical or quantitative-probabilistic) conform to the ideology of the ruling class. 18 in sum, probability theory is a logic, a language, a set theory, or a way of comraonsensical reasoning; the connection of which to social events can only be inductively (metaphysically) established. rather than making the link to the social world for statistical methods, probability theory is a stalking horse with which we can be ideological and confirm our commonsensical presuppositions about the social world while appearing to be scientific and anti-metaphysical. (perhaps the discipline selects for people who are predisposed to this sort of reasoning; just the fact that all these people at some time in their lives decided to go to graduate school indicates they are all gamblers to a certain extent). finally, i wish to conclude by returning to a point raised previously: the connection between quantitative social thought and the "analytical and calculating form of thought of the bourgeoisie." douglas (1971b ;58-59) believes that there are two major points of confluence : first, (bureaucratic rationality) contributed the view of men and their actions as absolute categories (or absolute typifications) . that is, rather than see men and their actions as the continuous, situation-bound, concrete persons we normally assume for our purposes of everyday interaction, it saw them as discrete, discontinuous phenomena that are independent of time and situations. it is this set of properties which is necessary before one can validly apply real numbers and mathematical analyses to human beings and their actions; it is this assumption that generates the pigeon-hole perspective on man known to all students of introductory methods in the social sciences ... second, this calculative attitude was fundamental to the development of the rational policy orientation of officials and rulers that made official information the means of 'testing' and 'proving' the effectiveness of official policies . . . the calculation of the effects of official action relative to the policy-determined practices (i.e. , effectiveness) was fundamental to the development of all official information. quantitative methods have a legitimating function. despite the undermining of the rhetorical claim to absolute rationality by twentieth century physical scientists themselves, mathematical formulations still evoke an ideology of absolute rationality in social science and the public 19 sphere (c,f. mumford, 1967). in this way, the official bureaucracies of social planning are invulnerable to any criticism that does not transcend quantitative reasoning, i.e., that does not reject the rhetorical appeal of mathematical formulations as absolute rationality. weber (1947:184-185) describes formal rationality as resting upon quantification and calculability . he views it as the mode of reasoning for modern science and industrial capitalism, especially in planning. without it, a capitalist economy could not be rationally (efficiently) administered (1958:26-27). in addition to being indispensable, it is absolutely unavoidable as the fate of the west and will pervade every apsect of social life from the administration of state bureaucracies to everyday life (1946:228-229). his scenario closes with a whole society completely rationalized by capitalism and experiencing "the absolute and complete dependence of its existence, of the political, technical and economic conditions of its life on a specially trained organization of officals" (1958:16). these ideas are very useful, but incomplete. lukacs (1971:99) expands upon weber (1946:228) to show that the members of the bureaucracy are themselves subject to rationalization and become dehumanized and mechanized as their service becomes a commodity form. schroyer (1973:184) adds that what weber calls formal rationalization is also the rising organic composition of capital, or in other words, increasing value production or growth of the capacity to create value. this is at the same time the growth of the capacity to extract surplus, i.e. material exploitation. developing themes inaugurated by kant, marx, weber and lukacs, are the recent observations of horkheimer (1947:8-9), mills (1959: 165-176), and kosik (1976:56-60) on the spread of irrationality simultaneous with and caused by advancing rationalization. rather than making individual everyday life more understandable and easier to control, rationalization 20 makes social reality more opaque and less subject to control — irrational in these senses. finally, buried within schlltz's social phenomenology is a theory of the invisibility of the expert. as experts become both more specialized and more important in the successful concentration of power in society (monopolization) t their role as constructors of world views and as corroborators of taken for granted social knowledge becomes "nearly completely invisible" (schlltz, and luckmann, 1973:315) and "entirely hidden in its anonymity" (schlltz, 1964:133). i think this is an important addition to marx's concept of reification as the domination of living human potentiality by dead, objectified labor (marx, 1969:17-18). what these additions do to weber's formulation is to turn it into a crisis theory. if this is a meaningful description of the tendencies associated with my subject, then the fundamental question to ask is what are the implications for our practical activity — as people trying to understand social reality (perhaps as critical social scientists) , and as people who have everyday lives in that social reality? there are partial answers to the first question. investigations need to be conducted into the available methodologies of social research to see (1) if they are in fact able to do what they are conceived to do, (2) if there are unacknowledged limitations on the picture of social reality they create, and (3) if these limitations have political consequences, particularly if bureaucracies of official planning are empowered to make social policy on the basis of their picture of social reality. for example, if the view of social reality is a reified one, then their policy will presuppose reification, and the "guns and butter" they impose will correspond best to the reified needs of society, and, hence, be materially constitutive of further societal reification (which is then studied and — lo and behold — confirms the presupposed reified picture 21 of social reality). my criticisms q f quantitative reasoning, statistics, and social probability can be summed up as a critique of reification. the details of the criticism can be included in lukacs' (1971:104, passim ) more general critique of reification in science for (1) losing contact with the totality by becoming a "formally closed system of partial laws", (2) ignoring the world-manufacturing effect of its work ("ontological problems of its own sphere of influence") , and (3) losing history through a freezing of the given to produce apodictically certain facts. although it is necessary to develop alternative methodologies, the answer is not a categorical rejection of quantitative methods. some of the techniques, like ordinal variables, probability sampling, probabilistic laws, and certain features of analysis, inference, and significance, must be cast on the junkheap forthwith. other techniques are not inappropriate in that they can be useful as long as one does not pretend that they are capable of dealing with anything other than appearances. what this means is that reified substitutes for real knowledge (quantified observables) are important and necessary means of apprehending and describing indicators of phenomena which as yet cannot be accounted for in any superior manner, as long as the reified status of the observables is acknowledged. this may seem like an overly simplistic solution but in practice it means an active struggle with the makers of social policy over the legitimacy of their research methods. this implies a struggle for social policy. this struggle (if the efforts of working peoples, the third world, and all others disenfranchised from the decision-making that effects them are unsuccessful) is a struggle for the future. if unsuccesful, there may be no basis for social policy other than the truncated visions of the technocrat. department <->f sociology, university of california, santa barbara. bibliography blalock, herbert m. social statistics , new york: mcgraw-hill. 1960 byrne, edmund f. 1968 carnap, rudolf. 1950 probability and 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"the history and future of statistics: in t.a. bancroft (ed.) statistical papers in honor of george w. snedecor , ames, iowa: iowa state university press. 23 lazarsfeld, paul f. "notes on the history of quantification in sociology 1961 trends, sources, and problems," isis, 52:2, lukacs, georg. 1971 marx, karl. 1969 (1863) history and class consciousness: studies in marxist dialectics , cambridge, mass.: mit resultate des unwittelbaren produktionsprozesses , franfurt: verlag neue kritik. mills, c. wright, 1959 the sociological imagination , new york: oxford university press. mumford, lewis, 1964 the pentagon of power ,' new york: harcourt-brace-jovanovich. 1967 "quality in the control of quantity," in s.v.ciriacwantrup and james j. parsons (eds.), natural resources: quality and quantity , berkeley, california university of california press. nagel, ernest. principles of the theory of probability , chicago: 1939 university of chicago press. 1961 the structure of science: problems in the logic of scientific explanation , new york: harcourt, brace & world. nagel, ernest and james r. newman. godel's proof , new york: new york 1960 university press. neubert.leland gerson. "the limits of statistics in planning analysis" 1977 polanyi, michael. 1964 quality and quantity , 11. personal knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy , new york: harper & row. polya, george 1948 how to solve it , princeton, n.j.: princeton university press. 1954a induction and analogy in mathematics : volume one of mathematics and plausible reasoning , princeton, n.j. princeton unviersity press. 1954b patterns of plausible inference : volume two of mathematics and plausible reasoning , princeton, n.j. princeton unviersity press. pozzuto, richard. 1975 schroyer, trent. 1973 scientific sociology, alienation and community, phd dissertation, sociology department, university of oregon, eugene, oregon. the critique of domination: the origins and development of critical theory , new york: george braziller. 24 schutz, alfred. "the well-informed citizen: an essay on the social 1964 distribution of knowledge," in collected papers, volume ii, the hague: martinus nijhoff. schutz, alfred and thomas luckmann. structures of the life-world , 1973 evanston, illinois: northwestern university press. selvin, hanan c. "a critique of tests of significance in survey research,^ 1957 american sociological review , 22:4. snizek, william e. "the relationship between theory and research: 1975 a study in the sociology of sociology, sociological quarterly , 16:3. suppes, patrick. "the role of probability in quantum mechanics," 1969 in studies in the methodology and foundations of science , dordrecht, holland: d. reidel. tarski, alfred. "the semantic conception of truth and the foundations 1944 of semantics,: philosophy and phenoroenological research , 4. venn, john. 1962 logic of chance, new york: chelsea. weber, max. from max weber: essays in sociology , h.h. gerth and 1946' c. wright mills ceds.), new york: oxford university press 1947 the theor • of social and economic organization . new york: macmillan. 1958 the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, new york: scribners. wittgenstein, ludwig. philosophical investigations , new york:macmillan. 1953 25 the myth of autonomy in family farm production bonnie ward agricultural practice on family farms throughout ontario history provides an example of independent commodity production. according to this description, farm producers own, operate and control the means of production (hedley, 1976:415; johnson, 1979:91). the autonomy of farm producers is derived from their ability to determine the conditions of production, for example, the type and quantity of commodity produced and application of technological innovation. the capacity of producers to influence the conditions of the sale and purchase of agricultural goods significantly influences the degree of productive autonomy characteristic of farming. in a capitalist society where private ownership prevails, and the autonomy of owners is seen as providing scope for the expansion of production and innovation, the real relation between ownership and autonomy mi_st be made explicit. it will be argued that the real relationship between ownership and autonomy in farm practice is an historical relationship which is determined and conditioned by: 1. the transformation of the mode of production in society, 2. the transformation of the relations of production immediate to farming, 3. the role of the state in these transformations. through the examination of these historical processes it appears that the autonomy of small farm producers at present is a myth. farm production seems to be increasingly characterized not by autonomy but by dependency; dependency among members of farm families and of small farmers on the state. the transformation of the mode of production may be more precisely described as the process by which a particular mode of production emerges as dominant in a society. in ontario history, the most significant transformation in this regard is the emergence of the * revised version of a paper presented to the canadian sociology and anthropology association, saskatoon, june, 1979. capitalist mode of production. the rise of capitalism has two effects: capitalist relations may replace previously existing relations of production, or previously existing relations of production may be retained but in a new relation to the capitalist market. in ontario farm history both effects can be observed. at present, in ontario, there is evidence that the production of agricultural commodities is increasingly organized by capitalist relations (warnock:123; johnson, 1979:94). the replacement of the family farm by corporate (capitalist) farming occurs after the incorporation of family farm production into the capitalist market. in fact, it is incorporation of the family farm into capitalist market relations which results in the eventual elimination of increasing numbers of small farms. the process by which family farm production is transformed by the emergence of capitalism is the context for the analysis of the relation between ownership and autonomy. h. saffioti, describing the emergence to dominance of the capitalist mode of production, states: a mode of production is dominant insofar as it interferes vertically in other modes of production thus provoking the latter's loss of autonomy and redefining their specific activities . . . hence they are only able to survive thanks to a process of redefinition governed by the capitalist mode of production ... what remains are precapitalist work relations which now have new connotations. (1977:30) vertical interference by the capitalist mode of production describes the process which has transformed independent commodity production in agriculture. the family farm persists but under conditions substantially altered by the capitalist market. competitive conditions for marketing agricultural produce confront the farmer as pressure for specialization, with consequent risks of overproduction, and loss in real income in addition to the natural/biological risks of agricultural production 50 (smith, 1978:19-23; mitchell, .1975:18-21; hedley, 1976:417). what is clearly suggested by the vertical interference of capitalism is the possibility of retaining individual ownership while experiencing significant alteration in other conditions of production. the alteration of market conditions and pressure for specialization with its concomitant risks, result in risk minimizing practices which may in themselves limit productivity (hedley, 1976:418). the double bind that emerges with transformed productive conditions limits the autonomy of the farmer in terms of the type and quantity of goods produced, the scale of operation and the necessity of adopting technological innovations in order to remain competitive. vertical interference of the capitalist mode of production limits autonomy further in the sphere of ownership of the means of production. the necessity of greater investment in land and machinery in order to maintain competitive levels of production leads to ever increasing dependence on credit and corporate controlled production and marketing of farm machinery, fertilizer and fuel. that is, there emerges a dependence of the farmer on capitalist relations for the necessities of productive consumption. the increasing determination by capitalist market relations of not only the type and quantity of product but also the costs of production continually narrows the sphere of autonomy of agricultural producers. is the integration of independent commodity production in agriculture into capitalist market relations simply a precursor to the eventual demise of all "family farm" production? evidence of the increasing corporatization of agriculture and the decrease in small farms have led some to conclude that this is the case (johnson, 1979:98). there are, however, factors and conditions which mediate the tendency to corporatization and the erosion of small farm production. 51 it appears that certain types of agricultural production (e.g. fruit, tobacco) are particularly amenable to organization on capitalist lines, whereas other sectors retain more traditional forms of productive organization. region also appears to be a mediating factor in the corporatization process. the comparison of the rate of corporatization of agriculture in ontario and quebec reveals that quebec agricultural practice may be more resistant to change (johnson, 1979:98). protective legislation and tax concessions which benefit individual farmers may be understood as legitimating activities of the state which affect the corporatization process. to the extent that tradition, region and ideology may influence the rate of corporatization of agriculture, their relationship to the transformation of the mode of production needs clarification. saffioti, in her analysis of the process of vertical interference with precapitalist forms of productive organization by the capitalist mode of production, postulates that this process has the effect of retaining only the economic aspect of precapitalist work, relations and eliminating their ideological aspect, which it replaces with bourgeois ideology (saf fioti :30) . such a hypothesized replacement of one ideology with another does not appear to adequately reflect the way in which world views change. while it seems likely that new productive relations generate new ideological counterparts, some aspects of traditional world views persist and continue to be reproduced. if ideas are viewed as singularly determined by productive relations, then the transformation of productive relations ought to lead directly to the transformation of ideas. however, this appears not necessarily to be the case. in the preceding discussion it was suggested that the conditions of farming have been significantly transformed such that the margin of autonomy of the small producer is increasingly reduced. in spite of the altered 52 conditions of production, autonomy persists ideologically as the counterpart of private ownership. belief in the autonomy of individual owners may persist as a result of the reluctance of individuals to alter their beliefs in accordance with changes in the world. alternately, this belief may be reproduced ideologically and serve to justify practices related to capitalist expansion. (owners of capitalist enterprises may have considerable autonomy) . ideological reproduction of the relation of ownership to autonomy in the context of capitalist development mystifies the real effects of that development for small agricultural producers. the latter explanation can be examined by reference to the degree of autonomy which existed in family farming historically. the myth of autonomy in agricultural production has its historical origins in the notion of the self sufficient agriculture of pioneer families. v. fowke has argued that self sufficiency is itself a myth "which is an integral part of canadian folklore" (fowke, 1962:23). far from self sufficiency, pioneer agriculture was characterized by the need for capital as a precondition for settlement, barter and the extension of credit as a means to provide for domestic and productive consumption, and the need for markets for surplus products (fowke, 1962). settlement of the canadian frontier was not the culmination of the pioneering dream of daring individuals. it was rather, a means to escape industrial labour, famine and political revolution (loyalists) and for some, the chance to acquire greater wealth and position. ontario pioneer settlements were not located by chance but were a product of british interest in providing defense for trade routes and for the provisioning of military personnel and traders (fowke, 1946:118). from the outset, it became apparent that settlement provided an excellent investment opportunity, not through agricultural production but in the movement of settlers. "there were profitable investment opportunities 53 associated with the original transfer and installation of prospective farm populations" (fowke, 1946:118). this relation is further evidenced by the responsibility of the bureau of agriculture established in 1852, for immigration policy (fowke, 1946:121). the combination of the dependence of farmers on market conditions (capital, barter, credit) and on the state for acquiring land is evidence of the interconnectedness of agricultural production with political and economic interests from its inception. while this interconnectedness does not necessarily imply a lack of autonomy, it does create a basis from which historical relations of dependence may be seen to emerge. v. fowke, in identifying the historical pattern in canadian agricultural policy states: the clearest and most significant uniformity regarding canadian agriculture for more than three hundred years has been its deliberate and consistent use as a basis for economic and political empire. (1978:3) while economic and political interests are significant in the determination of agricultural settlement, it would appear that at least for a time, a period of relative autonomy of agricultural producers could be said to have existed. this is in part due to periods of favourable market conditions and minimally due to the protective actions of the state (jones: 196, 307). in addition, it could be argued that productive relations organized on the basi6 of collective labours of family members contributed to the possibility of a relative degree of autonomy in agricultural production. the family constitutes a basis for production from which a considerable number of benefits can be derived. the division of labour among family members facilitated the diversification of production which contributed both to domestic consumption and to the production of commodities. the work of women, often associated with production closer 54 to the home, could be drawn upon at times when additional labour was required in the fields. the contribution of children to agricultural production beginning at an early age provided additional necessary labour (johnson, 1974:17). when inadequate resources were available for establishing a farm, family members worked for wages before or during the early years of settlement (fowke, 1962:32-33). the intense labour required and the need for financial resources in agriculture prior to 1850 necessitated a co-operative productive unit like the family for survival (johnson, 1974:15-22). however, these conditions would change. the introduction of mass education and use of technology in agricultural production were significant in the change in participation of family members (johnson, 1974:23). with increasing specialization and transformation of productive relations, women (and children) became increasingly separated from the production of commodities. this separation was enhanced ideologically by the emergent role of 'chatelaine 1 , the wife of the 'better class' of entrepreneur. the agricultural practice of the wealthiest settlers was thus set up as the model for all agricultural practice. this point is illustrated by the tendency for the wealthiest settlers to be the organizers of agricultural societies and the initiators of technological innovation (jones :157, 174). similarly, the separation of the "chatelaine" from the production of commodities may have exerted ideological pre-eminence over relations of interdependence of family members which characterized most farming. at this point i would like to note that i am somewhat skeptical about historical accounts of the time and degree of separation of women from agricultural commodity production. it is unclear whether the productive relations described are those of the majority of farmers or of "ideal" (affluent) farmers. for the moment, this question must be 55 suspended pending further investigation. what is clear however, is that while there may be evidence of the decreasing role of women in commodity production (hedley, 1977:6; johnson, 1974:24) the work of women in creating conditions for continued commodity production is significant. women have often taken on tasks of bookkeeping and business management (kohl, 1978:52). women's role in reproduction and domestic work also provides the basis for long and short run production of labour power required by the enterprise. further, the efforts of the family, particularly of women, toward decreasing consumption of commodities and the production of use value offers a measure of protection in "lean" times. more relevant in recent times would be the contribution by family members of wages. as input of capital comes to have ever increasing importance, family members more frequently have off-farm employment. it may be argued that the shift from interdependence of family members in agricultural labour to dependence on family members for wage inputs is a qualitative change. analysis of the significance of wage inputs to the persistence of many family farm operations in ontario warrants further investigation and evidence. in all of the above ways, the productive interdependence of family members has contributed greatly to creating conditions of flexibility in an enterprise vulnerable to "acts of god", of the market and of the state. this flexibility could be said to account for the relative degree of autonomy differentially experienced by farm producers historically. as is implicit in the foregoing discussion, the capacity of internal relations of family farm production to offer protection from transformed market conditions is limited. m. hedley states, "the significance of the involvement of domestic producers in commodity production is that reproduction of the mode of production is unavoidably 56 dependent on the process of exchange" (hedley, 1977: a). this dependency is at present mediated by the state through agricultural policy, trade policy, supervision of marketing boards, and tax, succession and zoning laws, to name a few examples. fowkes' thesis of the dependence of farm producers on dominant economic and political interests, extended into the present, suggests there is little basis for believing that small producers will, in the long run, be offered any measure of protection. this skepticism is well founded, as an examination of the report of the task force on agriculture, (1967) reveals. the recommendations of this report include : 1. reduction of the number of farms with about 2/3 of farm families removed. 2. increase in farm size. 3# greater rationalization of farming with an increase in "backward, forward, horizontal integration" with agricultural business interests. 4. "a clearcut separation of welfare and commercial farm policy". (summarized from warnock, 1971:126) my emphasis the government disowned this report without providing a substitute policy (cayley, 19.73:8). however, a detailed analysis of the historical conditions which give rise to recommendations of this sort is required. points like the emergence of an overlap in "welfare and commercial policy" obviously need to be examined. these recommendations are indicative of the extensive involvement of the state in the reproduction and transformation of agricultural production and certainly suggest the emergence of dependency and the almost complete erosion of the autonomy of small producers. some further, and perhaps less obvious, characteristics of the role of the state may be suggested. if in fact an appropriation of ideologies of pre-capitalist modes of production occurs, what is the concrete 57 character of that appropriation? one example would be the continued affirmation of individual patriarchal ownership (see hedley, 1977:7). this clearly denies the history of productive interdependence of family members in favour of a definition which reproduces an individualistic ideology and the legal subordination of women. at the interpersonal level, this relation is reproduced in the reluctance of federal and provincial bureaucratic agents to deal with farmers' wives in business matters (kohl, 1978:51). kohl states: "the formal definition of the male role as the official 'producer' in north american society is based on and reinforced by the embodiment of that status in law" (1978:51). in marketing, the state has played a primary mediating role in the establishment and control of production quotas through marketing boards. the protection offered to farmers through these agencies is useful only insofar as increases in productivity and conditions of the purchase of quota facilitate the expansion necessary for survival. this places the small producers in an increasingly vulnerable position (cayley, 1973:5). it appears that autonomy in agricultural production has been progressively eroded by the transformation of market conditions. the internal relations of production of the family farm offer a limited amount of protection from these tendencies. the state, while periodically offering limited protection to individual producers, ultimately functions to facilitate that development and expansion of capitalist interests. in spite of these developmental tendencies, the ideology of autonomy derived from private ownership of the means of production persists and is reproduced. in terms of highly visible cultural tendencies, the "back to nature" movement and the purchase of hobby farms by members of high income groups reaffirm the myth of autonomy. loss of ownership (the final loss of autonomy) is explained in terms of the "inefficiency" of producers. this explanation serves to 58 transpose a characteristic defined by the mode of production to a statement of the inadequacy of an individual producer. as long as the loss of autonomy of individual producers can be explained in terms of their individual shortcomings, changes at the level of the social organization of production remain unexamined. the framework for analysis outlined in the preceding discussion yields several areas requiring further investigation: 1. the persistence of farm based independent commodity production in certain sectors delimited by type of production, geography and culture needs to be examined. to what extent does independent commodity production in these sectors serve the interests of capitalist expansion? that is, to what extent are the risks borne by the producers such that corporatization of that sector would be a poor investment? a further question raised is the extent that corporatization of agriculture is impeded by traditional practices and by cultural considerations. research into these questions would contribute greatly to an understanding of the transformation of farming which occurs with the emergence of capitalism in ontario. 2. the relations of production on the family farm, i have argued, offer certain limited protection to the enterprise by providing some flexibility. in the present day, the most significant contribution of family members residing on small farms may be the income they derive from other sources. a work-farm pattern is emerging in canadian agriculture. in ontario, it would be worthwhile to look at the wage contributions of farm wives as i suspect they may be significant for the persistence of many small farm operations. the transformation from interdependence in production of family members to dependence on wage inputs for security of the farm is a phenomenon which remains unexamined. 3. a third area requiring elaboration is the role of the state. 59 critical analyses of the state are fairly recent and the complexity of thia task makes it formidable. such analyses as applied to farming would have to encompass the mediating role of the state in the market, the ideological function of the state and political parties* and the history and impact of agrarian protest movements, to mention only several aspects. this task is central to work in agricultural history because of the peculiar relation of political practice to agriculture from the first settlements. while the scope of the analytic task here outlined is broad, a more comprehensive analysis of the determinants of agricultural production is required. it is essential that analyses cease to focus on "inefficiency" and "traditionalism" of individual producers and become recast at the level of explaining individual practice in terms of the social relations of production. the relation between autonomy and individual ownership must be demystified in order that the collective interests of farm producers can be articulated. the realities of productive organization rather than their ideological representations are the only adequate basis for political action of farm producers. department of sociology/ queen's university 60 references cayley, david 1973 "the rise of the national fanners union." this magazine , vol. 7, no. 3. fowke, vernon c. 1946 canadian agricultural policy the historical pattern . toronto: university of toronto press. 1962 "the myth of the self sufficient canadian pioneer." transactions of the royal society of canada , vol. lvi , series iii. hedley, max j. 1976 "independent commodity production and the dynamics of tradition." canadian review of sociology and anthropology , 13, 4. 1977 "transformation of the domestic mode of production." paper presented at the annual meetings of the canadian sociology and anthropology association, fredericton. johnson, leo. 1972 "the development of class in canada in the twentieth century," in g. teeple, ed., capitalism and the national question in canada . toronto: university of toroi.to press. 1974 'the political economy of ontario women in the nineteenth century," in women at work ontario 1850-1930 . toronto: canadian women's educational press. 1979 "precapitalist economic formations and the capitalist market in canada 1911-1971," in j. curtis and w. g. scott, eds., social stratification: canada . scarborough: prentice-hall. jones, robert l. 1977 the history of agriculture in ontario 1613-1880 . toronto: university of toronto press. kohl, seena b. 1976 working together: women and the family in south western saskatchewan . toronto: holt, rinehart and winston. 1978 "women's participation in the north american family farm." women's studies international quarterly , vol. 1, no. 1. mitchell, don. 1975 the politics of food . toronto: james lorimer and co. saffioti, heleieth i. b. 1977 "women, mode of production and social formations." latin american perspectives , vol. 4, nos . 1 § 2. 61 smith, pamela 1978 "comments on the analysis of the political economy of canadian agriculture." paper presented at the political economy session, learned societies meetings, london, ont. taylor, norma 1976 '"all this for three and a half a day': the farm wife," in g. matheson, ed., women in the canadian mosaic . toronto: peter martin associates. warnock, john w. 1971 "the farm crisis" in l. lapierre, e_t. al . , eds., essays on the left. toronto: mcclelland and stewart. 62 claus orfe and the capitalist state: a critique gordon haas claus offe's work may be regarded as a synthesis between certain marxist concepts and systems theory and has broad implications for marxist theories of the state. this paper will present and criticize offe's ideas with special regard to the status of historical materialism in his work. the historical materialist method (the analysis of production and appropriation of surplus) is not immune to improvement. however, the borrowing of concepts specific to historical materialism for use in a synthesis serves only to vitiate the method. this occurs because the differing background assumptions of the concepts utilized are contradictory and thus render the conclusions incomprehensible. offe's synthesis is an exemplar of the problems inherent in synthesizing approaches. offe's work blends functional ism, marxian political economy, and systems theory. the characteristic teleology of functional analysis is established on the basis of a 'marxian' analysis of the commodity. we shall demonstrate that the concepts which offe borrows from marxism are not utilized in a valid fashion and that logical inconsistencies exist in his work even if the former is ignored. in the first section of the paper, offe's thesis is presented; the second section will provide a critical assessment. the paper concludes with an evaluation of offe's contribution to marxist research. offe's theory of state and society from the outset of his argument offe dispenses with the marxist revised version of a paper presented to the canadian sociology and anthropology association, saskatoon, june, 1979. base/superstructure distinction and instead portrays capitalist society as three functionally related sub-systems: the economic, the political, and the normative. a sub-system is defined as a set of relationships and processes having a specific coherence based in an 'organizing principle' specific to the sub-system. the principle of the economic system is exchange, the political system is organized on the basis of power, while the normative system is neglected by offe and, aside from an indication of its normative nature, does not have a principle defined for it (1976:. 34,53).* offe argues that sub-system relations are concerned with the creation and maintenance of the conditions of economic dominance as the economic system is dominant (in that its stability is crucial to general system stability). for this reason, the non-economic systems are cast as 'flanking' systems as their operation must uphold the dominance of the exchange principle (1976: 34,35). adding that a system is inherently unstable offe is able to reduce the question of general system equilibrium to the inter-play of the three organizing principles. to be precise, however, system instability is not the result of the principles themselves but rather is due to the processes based on the principles. in this view, over-all system crisis consists of processes based in one principle coming to control processes organized by another principle. given that three unstable sub-systems are linked in an over-all unstable system we can see that offe's intent is to investigate the nature and conditions of equilibrium for each sub-system as well as the general system. through such an investigation an over-all social dynamic may be found. for each system offe must ask: 'what is it about the processes within the system that produces instability, what •unless otherwise noted, all references are to offe. 27 are the implications of this instability for the other systems, and how is stability regained in all systems?'. simply stated then, offe's object consists of the conditions of the maintenance of economic dominance. note, however, that offe reduces each system to an organizing principlethus, maintenance of the economic system is seen by offe as maintenance of the exchange principle. further, as the organizing principle actually refers to processes, the conditions under investigation must also be processes. thus, offe's object is made up by the processes which maintain the dominance of the exchange principle in capitalist society. primary amongst these processes are those involving the noneconomic systems. offe conceptualizes the flanking relationships of these systems as being one of either positive or negative subordination. positive subordination concerns: ...the adjustment of the content of those sub-systems not organized and formed by exchange to conform to economic processes. . .(1976: 35). negative subordination is a relationship where non-economic systems are related to the economic systems: ...in such a way that they are limited and are insulated from the economic system, without, however, being able to contribute to the content of its ability to function... (1976: 35). negative subordination is not the opposite of positive subordination and is best understood as a relation of exclusion. either type of subordination may be regarded as a system state, i.e. we may analyze inter-system relations and reach a conclusion concerning the type of subordination that describes the system. the dynamic which operates here is called 'system autonomy'. this is the '...partial emanc ipa(t ion) .. .from the relationship of positive subordination' (1976: 48) and refers to the functionally necessary 28 'freedom of system' (my term) which is required for maintenance of economic dominance when the very maintenance is so problematic that processes subject to non-economic principles are required to uphold it. autonomy is a system response to economic instability, its meaning embedded in the economic processes which it functions to maintain. offe's understanding of capitalist society thus rests upon his analysis of the economic processes. . offe argues that economic instability is a product of the developmental tendency f capital accumulation, a process which engenders '...the relative decline in the organizing potential of the wagelabour/capital pattern with regard to the total social labour power ...' (1976: 34). the characteristic instability of the economic system is that it makes its own dominance problematic. the decline of the exchange principle means that less labour is organized as a commodity whereas economic stability depends on labour in this form. a four sector model of labour power utilization illustrates this conclusion (1976: 40). the monopoly, competitive, public, and residual (all other labour power) sectors represent proportions of labour organized according to specific principles. as commodity relationships exist only on the basis of exchange offe argues that only in the monopoly sector is labour power organized solely on the basis of that priniciple. the dependency of the competitive sector (made up mainly of firms which are integrated with the monopoly sector via, for example, input or output dependency) on the monopoly sector means that the vast proportion of its labour power is organized on the basis of administered decisions rather than exchange. as the state sector cannot make reference to the market (as its services are not marketable as commodities) offe concludes that labour power is here organized 29 on the basis of administered decisions while the dependence of the residual sector (eg. welfare, schools, etc.) on the state sector means that its proportion of labour power is also administered. offe's point is that the expansion of the monopoly sector causes more and more labour to be administered. the systemic response is the autonomy of the political system. however, because of its specific organizing principle (i.e. power) political intervention is, in itself, a cause of de-commodification as it requires utilizing labour on the basis of power rather than exchange. due to the nature of its flanking relationship, offe can argue that : . . .what the state protects and sanctions is a set of rules and social relationships which are pre-supposed by the class rule of the capitalist class. the state does not defend the interests of one class, but the common interest of all members of a capitalist class society (1975a: 139). the state then is defined not as a set of institutions but in terms of '...the way it is functionally related to and dependent upon the accumulation process' (1975a: 125). this functional relation excludes the state from direct participation in production processes but mandates the state to create the conditions of accumulation. as this functional relation is also an historical one offe can cast the question of the rise of state intervention as one of 'modes' of intervention. the modes of intervention are 'allocative' and 'productive' (1975a: 128). allocative strategies are policy measures which stabilize accumulation by use of strictly political resources, i.e. the state allocates resources which are under its direct control (eg. education policy, trade tariffs, etc.). in pursuing productive strategies the state takes direct responsibility for the provision of inputs required by the accumulation process in the case where units of the economy will 30 not undertake production of the input because of low profit potential (1975a: 128-132). the difference between the two modes of intervention is that for productive intervention: ...what is needed in a given situation is not already at the disposal of the state but must be 'produced' by the state in the first place. the state-owned resources... are...merely the raw materials out of which certain outputs have to be manufactured according to decision rules ...that the state cannot take from its environment but has to generate for itself (1975a: 134). but as the state can only operate as a political entity we can say that its economic intervention must meet conditions defined by the economic system. the state must, because it is not a capitalist enterprise, direct its economic related activities on the basis of a defined'general capitalist interest*. the content of this definition is the forum of state/capitals conflict. the distillation oi a general capitalist interest from the narrow interests of individual capital units is seen as a question of policy determination. the concept of 'system selectivity' allows offe to conceptualize the nature of the capitalist state as a question of policy formation. 'selectivity' refers to a set of 'filtering mechanisms' which, in their functioning, result in '...the systematic restriction of the scope of possibility...' of the policy process (1974: 37). offe argues that the selectivity of the state structure is such that only interests which correspond to the state-defined 'general interest' are allowed representation (1974: 34). as a corollary of this, anti-capitalist interests are denied articulation (1974: 38). capitalist interest is guaranteed by the conditions of interest representation. to be articulated in the political arena, a group 'need' must meet two conditions: it must be capable of conflict (i.e. it must 31 have a collective ability for refusal to perform), and it must also be capable of being organized. the ultimate effect is that groups with access to large amounts of resources have a better chance of gaining interest representation (1972: 85-87). thus: the pluralistic system of organized interests excludes ...all articulation of demands which are general in nature and not associated with any status group; that are incapable on conflict because they have no functional significance for the utilization of labour power, and that represent utopian projections beyond the historically specific system, (1972: 89). offe's intent is to define the nature of the class state, not of the state ruling in response to external demands, and it is argued that such a difference may be explored in the selectivity which results in policy generation. this is why the concept of selectivity has the status of a set of hypotheses for offe. investigation of these hypotheses is, however, problematic because '...state power in capitalist industrial societies is the method of class rule whijh does not disclose its identity as such' (1974: 46); thus, concealment of the state's relation to the accumulation process is seen as one of the pre-conditions of the capitalist state. this 'concealment' is revealed only in 'crisis' situations, i.e. in those situations where the state acts directly and incontrovertibly as a class state. offe's functional definition of the state illustrates this. as the state has the role of maintaining both the legitimacy of the overall system and directing the economy offe argues that these two roles are contradictory in terms of their effects on system stability. while 'direction' is subject to external demands (demands from individual capitals, sectors of capital, and other pressure groups), the attainment of legitimacy involves the fulfilling of specific demands (to a greater or lesser extent), i.e. policies are created which do not 32 satisfy everyone. thus, the contradiction is that meeting demands will cause groups whose demands are not met to withhold legitimacy (1973: 245-248). the state's problem is balancing these two roles. the conditions of the balance are: ...achieved if (a) the acceptance of legitimating rules of democratic and constitutional regimes is reinforced by the material outcomes of governmental policies and measures, and (b) if these measures and policies are 'efficient' in the only way a capitalist state can be efficient, namely in succeeding to provide, to restore, and to maintain commodity relations for all citizens and for the totality of their needs (1973: 252). thus, legitimacy is tied to the attainment of economic stability. further, legitimacy is now a function of the commodity form as the method by which the state can gain legitimacy is dictated by the state's relation to economic processes. we can now appreciate the logic behind offe's statement that: 'the commodity form is the general point of equilibrium for the capitalist state'. (1975a: 140) we are also in a position to appreciate offe's ideas regarding subordination, system autonomy, and the intrusion of foreign organizing principles. because of its functional role the state faces what offe calls a 'crisis of crises management'. offe presents an illustrative diagram: * regulatory welfare ^^ services state economic political/ normative system administrative system system fiscal ^ ^ mass absorption *^ ^ loyalty (1976: 52) 2 the problems which the state must 'balance' are 1) maintaining the balance of input/output within each separate system, and 2) maintaining the balance of the system as a whole (1976: 53), 33 offe's principal argument is that as the state is the central actor in society the social bases of conflict are restructured because of the intrusion of the political organizing principle into the economic sphere. the basic conflicts are now political rather than economic in nature. this may be seen in the dramatic effects of political intrusion on class relationships: as politically manipulable variables now intervene extensively between labour and income, and between the latter and the concrete structures of life chances, the new forms of social inequality are no longer directly reducible to economically defined class relationships which they are assumed to reflect (1972: 95). thus, the real issues of conflict in capitalist society are now derived from the mechanisms of political intervention which generate a '...horizontal system of disparities between vital areas...' (1972: 96) . vital areas are defined as such by virtue of their functional relevance for the accumu^tion process. in late capitalist societies then, a dominance of functions now exists rather than class dominance, and conflict now occurs between groups having differing degrees of 'functional relevance' and not differing relations to the means of production. offe argues that it is this conflict which is the driving force of social change (1972: 98,101) as the 'horizontal privilege distribution' is not necessarily related to class, even if the effects of both class and functional privilege inequality tend to accumulate '...on the lower levels of the income scale' (1972: 102). offe concludes that the final outcome of the functionally required state intervention is the autonomy of the political system from a relation of subordination. the political system has come to dominate the economic system. thus: the decisions and actions which are the output of the labour of the civil service and other categories of employees are no longer deducible from criteria of their relevance for 34 capital accumulation, but, on the contrary, themselves determine exchange relations between commodities (1973: 114) . due to the dominance of political control, the need for legitimacy is amplified. that is, not only must the political system as such be legitimated but also the intrusion of the political into the economic system must be legitimated. capitalist domination is now so bound with the political system that only the legitimacy of the political system makes the domination possible (1973: 74). offe's general thesis of crisis in capitalist society is that: ...the increasing utilization of the regulatory medium of state power a medium external to the market leads, cumulatively, to the production of breaches that enable intrusions into the (economic) system by non-capitalist structures; the closing of these breaches through mechanisms of 'negative subordination' consequently becomes the main problem of late capitalist social systems (1976: 47). the basic problem in resolving this crisis is that its resolution rests on the action of the system (the political) which is responsible for the crisis. critical assessment our critique will first address offe's characterization of crisis 3 in capitalist society ;then, having demonstrated the shortcomings of his approach to the problem,we shall show that offe's economic analysis is seriously flawed by an inadequate understanding of the commodity. we will conclude with a brief discussion of legitimacy and of the political system. that the concept of the commodity is crucial to offe's analysis is proven by (a) the reduction of system stability to economic stability and (b) the reduction of the economic system to the exchange principle, where the 'commodity form' is taken as the indicator of the proper 35 functioning of the principle. we shall now turn to offe's concept of the totality. as we have seen, the totality is conceived as a system composed of three functionally related sub-systems. here we can ask of offe what laclau asks of althusser: 'why only three? what has been the method of their deduction? does there exist any logical link between them?' (laclau, 1975: 104). offe's answer is 'silence to the first two and functional to the third'. offe does not present any reasons as to why there are three systems or why it is these three particular systems. we argue here that the three systems are identified as such as a function of offe's over-riding concern with system crisis. the concept of crisis is the first point of analysis. as offe states: ...one conceptualizes crises not at the level of events but rather at the super-ordinate level of mechanisms that generate events (1976: 32) . offe points out that '...such a definition predisposes one to favour a processual concept of crisis...' as '...crises would be processes which violate the "grammar" of social processes' (1976: 32). the view of crisis as a super-ordinate mechanism is compatible with offe's reduction of all systems to organizing principles; in this usage, crisis becomes the failure of an organizing principle. the concept of crisis is therefore contained within the concept of organizing principle because the principle involves the crisis-prone processes. as the processes must follow the pre-defined functional imperative of economic stability offe has only to define those processes which are of functional importance to the economic system and which are capable of being described as based in an organizing principle. if such a principle can be formulated then, ipso facto , crisis pertains within the processes referred to by the principle. as we can see however, offe is able to do 36 this only for two systems. there are implications here for offe's theory of the state. a tenet of the systems theory employed by offe is that if crisis exists then a 'crisis-resolving mechanism' mast also exist. in offe's work, this mechanism is found in the state. such a view of the state dovetails with a functional definition of the state such as the one used by offe. referring now to the organizing principles we argue that while offe holds that processes are of basic importance in his formulation, the 'logic of crisis' exists only at the level of the principles. however, the derivation of a principle involves not an abstraction of system content (i.e. the processes) but, rather, a reduction of the content to a statement of form. this reduction is severe enough to expel content,* for instance, the reduction of the economic system to the principle of exchange means that offe cannot approach the specificity of capitalism as exchange characterizes any economic system. the reduction is, however, functional for offe's analysis as it facilitates the extension of the idea of crisis to the functional relations between sub-systems. another problem connected to the functional relations of the systems is that in a formal sense either of the two flanking systems can achieve autonomy and so come to dominate the economic system. but the absence of a defined principle of the normative system means that offe cannot account for the hypothetical case of normative system autonomy. offe would argue that the issue here is one of substantive content, the point being that hypothetical problems are best left as such. we agree but offe cannot argue 'content' as a resolution because the problem actually exists in the pre-conditions of his argument, in 37 the reduction to the organizing principle that facilitates the concept of crisis. the point here is that offe's model of capitalist society is based on reductions of content. the reductions lend coherence to the theory but offe is unable to account for the potential relationships which could pertain in the model. if we ask why these potential relationships are not explored the answer will also tell us why the political system has the role described by offe. however, the only answer that offe provides rests upon the assumption of functional necessity and thus the analysis of system relations becomes teleological. turning now to the specific analysis of the economic system we recall that a basic system problem is the tendency for less and less social labour to be organized in the commodity form (where this form is the 'natural' basis of the exchange principle). offe argues that: the pre-requisite for the conversion of ever larger qu?ntities of labour power into the commodity form inherent to the wagelabour relation was, from the emergence of capitalist society, the organization of labour power within a noncommodity form, that is, the existence of the bureaucratic worker (1973: 109). this formulation clearly states the relationship of functional necessity between the political and economic systems. offe holds that capital accumulation is functionally dependent on the state in that the state has the role of '...creating the conditions under which values can function as commodities' (1975: 143). offe's view of the developmental processes of late capitalist societies is that within them '...values cease to operate in the commodity form' (1975: 141). in these societies, the state (upon which the existence of the commodity form is dependent) is not a part of the economic system as it is organized on the basis of a principle foreign to exchange. by virtue of this offe concludes that labour performed 'in' the state is not of the commodity form. 38 in the above formulation, 'noncommodity' labour is a form of labour which is, in some way, not determined by the exchange principle. a closer examination of the 'commodity form of labour' is required here. offe holds that 'commodified' labour is only that labour which is directly productive of surplus value for capital accumulation ,i .e. only labour organized on the basis of the exchange principle exists as a commodity (1973: 109). thus, as the state does not accumulate surplusvalue its 'workers' must not exist in the commodity form. we have located the problem. offe has confused the commodity with productive labour. as laclau points out, the commodity and productive labour (the latter being an aspect of the labour process) are two different sets of abstract conditions of the theory of the capitalist mode of production, and are entirely different theoretical and empirical categories (1975: 106). offe says of state labour power: such labour is not abstract, it is not a commodity and produces no commodities. the social utilization of this kind of labour is determined by its concrete results; it is deployed with regard to its use-value and to the use-value of its performance and not, as is the case of abstract labour, with regard to its exchange value, where use-value is not the primary factor but only a necessary by-product (1973: 109) • here the use-value and the exchange-value of labour as the producer of commodities (which have both use and exchange value) is confused with the use-value and exchange-value of a commodity in itself. offe has totally misunderstood capitalist production. just because labour power is not productive of surplus value does not imply that such labour power does not exist in the commodity form. the 'productivity' of labour is a matter of '...the definite social form, the social relations of production, within which the labour is realized' (marx, 1963: 157). the productivity of labour (that is, productive labour) cannot be 39 identified with the existence of labour power as a commodity because labour power in the capitalist mode of production is a commodity by virtue of the value of labour being a function of socially necessary labour time. offe has missed the crucial role of the relations of production which serve to constitute labour as productive or unproductive of surplus value. we may see this as an effect of the reduction of the economic system, as this reduction dispenses with the concept of relations of production upon which the concept of productive labour rests. therefore, to say 'commodity form of value' and apply the term to the labour force is to state a redundancy and then to look for precise differentiations within it. the real question is (as we shall see) one concerning productive labour, but offe's invalid equation of the commodity and productive labour prevents him from seeing ihis.as he cannot differentiate between the two. returning now to offe's argument regarding system relations, we see that he cannot proceed from an analysis of production as his approach to the economic system expunges production and replaces it with a flawed analysis of the commodity, an analysis which is then incorporated into the functional logic of system relations. we can see the pernicious effects of offe's misunderstanding of the commodity in his model. in offe's usage, for labour to be a commodity it must (a) be directly productive of surplus-value and (b) have its value determined solely on the basis of exchange. this double definition makes it easy to discover a decline in the organizing potential of the exchange principle as any indication that labour value is determined by non-economic forces is sufficient to disqualify that labour from existence as a commodity. 40 labour which is organized through the exchange principle is characterized by the fact that: ...all coercion to which labour power is subjected emanates from an organization with which it is simultaneously linked through the relationship of exchange. .. (1976: 41). to say 'exchange relationships' means that '...all determinants of the individual's chances in life... 1 are based in exchange (1976: 40). as offe says: ...labour power is here incorporated into a relationship of coercion (namely the structure of domination of the large scale industrial establishment) that is in all aspects the object of the exchange relationship. . .here labour power is in all its aspects a 'commodity' and not the object of administrative coercion (1976: 40-41; offe's emphasis) . as offe's argument is that the amount of labour existing in such a relationship tends to decline, a direct implication is that the amount of labour given over to the production of surplus value is declining, the corollary being that the amount of labour which drains surplus value grows. clearly then, offe points to the need of late capitalist societies to increase the amount of surplus value and this is the real issue. offe's concern, because of his usage of the concepts of labour power and the commodity can only approach the question of how many people are producing surplus value. this involves an underutilization (if not misunderstanding) of the concept of surplus value. offe's idiosyncratic understanding of labour power as a commodity makes it easy for him to argue its decline when that understanding is conjoined to the argument that political intervention represents •administrative coercion' and therefore the 'de-commodifi cation' of labour. this coercion refers to the effects of state intervention and alters exchange relationships in that competition is no longer the basis of determination of exchange. thus, in offe's view, the material conditions of exchange are no longer directly linked to exchange. but here offe demonstrates his misunderstanding of the determination 41 of labour value. offe does not imply that exchange relationships no longer obtain; he has correctly identified some of the dynamics of the determination of exchange in late capitalist societies. if we see, following marx, that all labour power is a commodity and that offe is actually dealing with the problem of productive and unproductive labour, then we can see the 'administered coercion' does not alter the nature of value determination. offe, however, thinks that the return to labour is strictly an economic process, hence, the importance of establishing exchange in his analysis. we may conclude that offe utilizes a neo-classical meaning of the economic system. leaving aside the intracacies of marxist economics, we see that the value of labour power is the result of the social process of class struggle, and this process has never been concerned solely with exchange as it is a social as well as an economic process. this calls into question offe's understanding of class and transformation of class struggle. offe states: because the lines of conflict are no longer drawn between classes but between vital areas affecting the same individuals, disjunctions in living standards are no longer a fit basis for the organization of conflicts of broad social relevance (1973: 103). given our demonstration that offe's theory points to the continued importance of the pool of surplus value and that (from marxist theory) surplus depends on productivity, we suggest that offe's contention is misinformed. the surplus value pool is drained through strictly economistic strategies on the part of trade unions. the immediate object of such a strategy is the living standard. as well, in offe's argument, the level of labour process (labour power as a 'commodity') and the level of state/economy relations are mixed. if we are to follow offe's logic to its conclusion then we must say, by virtue of the functional definition of the state, all capitalism 42 is 'de-commodified' . obviously we have the problem of drawing boundaries here. our point is that the simplicity of the reductions employed by offe in order to establish his analysis make the drawing of such boundaries intensely problematic. even if we accept the pssibility of boundaries, certain problems still pertain. for example, a monopoly sector firm may exist by virtue of government contracts. now while the exchange relation may exist within the firm, is this existence not the product of an administrative coercion? further, the boundaries make it impossible to analyse the social determination of labour value; thus even if offe's political economy refers to new forms of the determination of the value of socially necessary labour, he cannot elaborate on these forms because of his concern with the interaction of principles. as mentioned previously, offe sees the attainment of legitimacy (as a minimum of mass loyalty) as the basic problem facing the capitalist state. as our previous lemarks show, offe's analysis does not always deal with what he thinks it does and this is the case for legitimacy. offe holds that legitimation problems arise as a function of state intervention (1975c: 107). as intervention causes the ideology of equivalent exchange to decline (the fetishism of commodities is broken and the new social relations are easily comprehended), a new basis of integration is required to legitimate the intervention. as shown, because of the central ity of the state in the argument, offe reduces legitimacy to the provision of material goods and so turns his theory into one concerned with economic stability—given stability, the legitimacy will, somehow, follow naturally. in this sense, offe treats legitimacy in a'residual' fashion. thus, instead of being the crucial problem we see instead that when offe's economic analysis is combined with his 'basic material level' approach to legitimacy, the problem of legitimacy actually disappears from offe's work. contrary to his own statement, the real problem is one of 43 economic stability. in any case, the concept of legitimacy as such is problematical. offe's normative system does not seem to be an active process in the same way that the economic and political processes are. additionally, given offe's argument about legitimacy and his argument that crisis is seen only in open conflict we can say, following giddens 1 critique of functionalism (1976), that the very operation of the social system indicates that the minimum level of legitimacy is met. thus, the concept and the attainment of the empirical state to which legitimacy refers, is unimportant. even if one accepts offe's analysis to this point, some further problems exist. for example, like the analysis of the economic system, offe's treatment of the political system involves sweeping simplifications. proceeding from his definition of systems and principles, we can ask offe to identify processes within the political system whic'.produce strictly political instability. however, aside from a discussion of policy determination we are not informed as to such processes and must be satisfied with an indication of externally caused political instability (i.e. the instability of the economic system to which the policies are a reaction). in this case, however, apart from being told of the reaction of the political as a system we are, again, not given clarification as to the internal determination of this reaction. symptomatic of this denial of internal processes is the amcept of the state defining a general capitalist interest. we are not told how this comes about and are given only the clue of policy formulation. we suggest that while the concept of selectivity seems fruitful, offe has presented a view of the state which takes the apparent unity as a homogeneity. by this we mean that the processes which operate so as to create, in their apparent unity, the state as such (or in a specific sense, a general capitalist interest) 44 may be sources of conflict (instability?) internal to the state. but because offe begins his analysis with the 'apparent unity' he cannot approach the internal workings and this detracts from his work. conclusion our critique has avoided the supposition that offe is a firmly entrenched member of the critical school. an argument of this nature implies the existence of a clearly defined discourse known as 'critical theory' , whereas at most we can identify a 'critical tradition' and see offe's work as a part of this tradition. the contemporary fount of the critical tradition is, of course, habermas. but our interest here is to analyse the work of offe in and of itself and not to 'locate' offe in relation to habermas. a comparison of the two theorists would have turned a critique of offe into an enumeration of the similarities and differences with habermas. at most we will express our agreement with woodiwiss that habermas' theory of the state (or rather, aspects of habermas' theory of politics) clearly draws upon concepts developed by offe (woodiwiss 1978: 175). nonetheless, a summary of the critical tradition sensitizes us to offe's concerns. generally, critical theory may be seen as a response to the classical marxist emphasis on production at the expense (so perceived) of an analysis of the superstructure. it is argued that historical materialism must be reformulated in order that, for example, political and cultural phenomena may be accommodated. one fashion of establishing this accommodation involves the claim that the transition of capitalism from a competitive to monopoly form has seen the collapse of base and superstructure. in this view, the production process is no longer the locus of the class struggle. the argument is that the class struggle has expanded to encompass all of society. 45 offe's analysis is within this tradition. his object is the change wrought by state intervention into the accumulation process. we may thus see offe as exploring the relations of a totality where the classic base/ superstructure distinction does not pertain. offe may thus be seen as presenting a theory of post-capitalist society (this being quite apropos to his critical school heritage) . offe's conclusions are not, however, linked to his theoretical approach. offe is free to argue that the attainment of a state of negative subordination is the basic problem facing capitalist society but it can be just as easily argued that the system autonomy which offe identifies means that we are beyond capitalist society. if this is so then offe's project of identifying the true class state is virtually meaningless. the issue hangs on the meaning and direction of 'system autonomy'. it is entirely plausible to think that a state of system autonomy will operate in ^ fashion which actually redefines functional imperatives. offe's whole analysis points in this direction but he is prevented from pursuing this argument because his assumption of the nature of economic dominance forces him to view capitalist society as obeying only a particular matrix of functional relations. the problem is twofold. offe's analysis is both ahistorical and abstract; his functional approach can be applied to the soviet union as easily as it is to any capitalist social formation. this is to say that offe's statement of functional relations cannot specifically identify capitalist society. in addition the analysis of capitalism is, as demonstrated, confused and this makes offe's treatment of the outcome of functional relations within capitalist society problematic as a basis of research. we conclude with the observation that offe may be seen as presenting an unsophisticated economic reductionism . offe's political economy is at 46 once simplistic and confused; the integration of historical materialism and systems theory fails miserably because offe's systemic approach to the economy involves stripping the concept of relations of production from the economic . the systems approach requires that a system be seen as somehow insulated from its environment, but the concept of relations of production (which gives coherence to historical materialism) is 'inter-systemic' and cannot, strictly speaking, be used in a systems approach. the use of marx'scategories of political economy in conjunction with a systems approach requires that one or the other be massively simplified. in offe's case, marx is simplified to the point where errors are made which could have been avoided had offe used the concept of relations of production. department of sociology and anthropology/ carleton university notes 1) legitimacy is a source of political power; its nature is one of a minimum loyalty engendered through the normative system (1975a: 126). 2) the rather obvious resemblance to parsons is noteworthy but will not be pursued. our interest in offe's ideas about functional relations lies in his economic reductionism. 3) the basis of critique in this section will be laclau's contention that: a theory is false only to the extent that it is internally inconsistent, i.e. if in the process of construction of its concepts it has entered into contradiction with its postulates. 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by john porter (1965) and wallace clement (1975; 1977) as one of the seminal publications from the carleton school of sociology. 2 the post-world war ii era of the cold war resulted in the terminology of first world to describe the developed capitalist countries, generally found in the northern hemisphere, second world to describe the nominally socialist countries of the so-called eastern bloc, and third world to describe the underdeveloped countries, found mostly in the southern hemisphere. hence the terms north and south are sometimes applied to the first world and third world. dependency theorists have also used the term subimperialism to describe the larger countries of the third world, such as brazil and south africa. world-systems theorists have used the term semi-periphery to describe these countries, which lie between the centre and periphery in economic and political power. some authors (e.g., amin, 2004) now refer to certain countries in africa, which have been largely marginalized from the world economy, as the fourth world. this term has also been applied to the situation of many of the world’s indigenous populations. 3 dependency theorists writing in canada and elsewhere have applied the concept of centre-periphery relations to political-economic relations within as well as between countries. 4 with the breakup of the soviet union in 1989, we witnessed the same process with the re-peripheralization of countries in eastern europe by the west (see, e.g., rosenberg, 1991). 5 in my article i had quoted frobel et al. (1980: 45) as saying that the nidl “should be understood as an ongoing process, and not a final result.” 6 see page 12 of my alternate routes article (broad, 1988). 7 panitch and swartz’ book from consent to coercion: the assault on trade union freedoms was updated and expanded twice, most recently as panitch and swartz, 1993. 8 the child care resource and research unit at the university of toronto is a good source for materials on child day care. see www.childcarecanada.org. 9 the canadian centre for policy alternatives provides useful studies on employment, poverty and other social issues in canada. see www.policyalternatives.ca. 10 the four governments were canada, the united states, australia, and new zealand, but with the subsequent election of a labour government australia ratified the declaration. when resistance isn’t futile | 109 when resistance isn’t futile: understanding canadian labour’s fight for decent pensions — joel davison harden1 in recent years, the canadian labour congress (clc) – the political voice for over 3.2 million union members in english canada – waged a “retirement security for everyone” campaign. at the core of the campaign were three demands: doubling future canada pension plan (cpp) benefits; eliminating retiree poverty; and creating a federal insurance system for workplace pensions. from 2009-2010, the campaign was the top priority for canadian unions with most allocating significant attention and resources to the effort. many consider this the best work canadian unions have done since the “free trade” battles of the late 1980s (wilson, 2011). during the height of the clc’s pension campaign, employers and governments were compelled to acknowledge union perspectives. important legislative reforms were introduced while thousands of ordinary union members shared common demands articulated through their own experience. this article describes how the campaign took shape, and its lessons for progressive strategy. of any, the importance of bottom-up, inclusive activism was reinforced by this example, far more of which must happen if unions want effective anti-austerity campaigns in tough political conditions. despite the many challenges facing unions, effective resistance isn’t futile with an educated, empowered, and confident union membership. there are four distinct phases to the clc’s pension campaign explored here. the first involved the years preceding the 2008 financial crisis when unions were hamstrung by an expert-led focus on pension 1 joel davison harden is an ottawa-based writer and activist. he was the previous registrar of the labour college of canada, and director of the labour education department at the canadian labour congress. i sincerely thank the following reviewers who offered helpful advice and comments: alan zuege, govind rao, rebecca schein, and ingo schmidt. any mistakes that remain are mine alone. 110 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism issues, and stymied by a stalemate in canada’s pension debate. this period then gave way to a second “discovery phase” from 2006-2008 as the clc grappled with the complexity of pension issues on the one hand, and the need for inclusive pension activism (of relevance to union and non-union workers) on the other. by the autumn of 2009, with an effective campaign in place, the clc entered into a third “capacity development phase” where hundreds (perhaps thousands) of activists received training on pension issues. once a critical mobilization point was achieved, substantial momentum developed for pension reforms, with a wide array of observers crediting the clc for driving the discussion. by the end of 2010, however, the clc pension campaign entered a tough fourth phase of limited opportunity for activism on pension issues. a key factor was the federal government’s decision to withdraw interest in cpp expansion, but the clc also suffered from a drop in bottom-up pension activism. what follows is an attempt to grasp the lessons learned over the entirety of these four campaign phases. canada’s pension stalemate ends (2005-2006) the years preceding the clc’s pension campaign are best understood against the “tech wreck” of 2000-2002, when dot com firms became investor nightmares. robert brown, an actuary and academic from the university of waterloo, reflected on canada’s pension debate at the height of this crisis. his conclusion was instructive: the key issue in canada was an unwillingness from unions to exchange defined benefit (db) workplace pensions for individual account arrangements (2001). the biggest reason was the simplicity and security of db plans, which allowed workers to predict their future pension based on years of service, best average or career salary, and a certain percentage of earnings. with this in mind, the rest of this article refers to db plans as “decent pensions”, unlike rrsps, 401k’s, or so-called “defined contribution” plans where retirement benefits are based on the performance of pension investments and prevailing interest rates at the moment of a worker’s retirement. db pensions are decent because of the pension promise that underpins them; benefits, at least in theory, are predictable, and union negotiators were reluctant to let them go (though some felt compelled to make that choice). as a result, the number of workers covered by db plans in canada, unlike other countries, increased from the mid 1970s to 2004 (even as the percentage of workers enjoying db plans dropped by 7 percent from 1992 to 2005) (statscan, 2005; townson, 2009). a major source of db plan growth came from women in the canadian public sector. when resistance isn’t futile | 111 by 2004, bob baldwin – then a clc pension specialist – wrote about a stalemate produced by these conditions (2004). one end of this stalemate was the failure of pension industry lobbyists to succeed in major campaigns of privatization. in the 1990s they had campaigned unsuccessfully to transform the cpp/qpp into a system of individual accounts. industry lobbyists took a further hit when the tech wreck devastated pensions, particularly market-linked individual accounts. it was hardly a time to suggest that canadians should fend for themselves. but if conditions were not ideal for canada’s pension industry, they were more troublesome for unions. by 2005, a third of workingage canadians (18-64) had no personal retirement savings, and only 30 percent contributed to registered retired savings plans (or rrsps, the canadian version of the american 401k) (statistics canada: 2006). of the 17 million workers in paid employment in 2005, almost 11 million (or 62 percent) were not part of any workplace pension plan (statistics canada, 2005). organized labour had negotiated pensions for union members, but decent coverage had not spread widely outside the public sector. by 2005, barely 20 percent of private sector workers had decent pensions, and this had much to do with the growth of precarious, non-union work, and the stalled position of union organizing in general. this regrettable situation posed major problems for unions’ intent on advancing the progressive side of canada’s pension debate. the pension industry was first in attempting to break this stalemate. in the summer of 2005, the association of canadian pension management released a paper entitled back from the brink: securing the future of defined benefit pension plans (acpm, 2005). its key demand was control of the surplus that accrued on a yearly basis when pension investments performed well, and a call for less stringent pension funding rules. without question, these arguments were made at an opportune time. by 2005, the u.s. housing market was in full stride, and finance capital was building a new speculative bubble. in 2005 and 2006, as employers sought control of pension surplus, this bubble was peaking. any financial organization (or employer with the access to pension fund investments) was freeing up available cash to get in on the game, either through listed trades on stock markets or via the shadow banking system of over-the-counter derivatives trading (blackburn, 2007). the fight over pension funding and surplus was therefore a fight over a lucrative source of profit, among the most generous in all of global capitalism. what frustrated canadian employers were regulations and court rulings that made ownership of pension surplus unclear, and therefore 112 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism subject to extensive legal battles. in a unionized environment, collective bargaining agreements often specified ownership of pension surplus be negotiated or shared. it faced a similar challenge in efforts to weaken pension funding rules. by 2005, unions were in no mood to offer that consent, and politicians were nervous about being perceived as advocates of an insecure pension system. nonetheless, the intensity of the moment forced governments to intervene, and facilitate discussion on this issue. in november 2005, the canadian federal government hosted a “work to retirement roundtable” at wilson house (where the meech lake accord constitutional negotiations were once held in 1987). what transpired there spoke to the status of canada’s pension debate. following a brief introduction by federal government facilitators, both union and industry leaders staked out positions. employer executives wanted more “fairness” and “flexibility” to facilitate the growth of decent pensions. union leaders insisted that meant strengthening (not weakening) the existing pension system, notably the well-being of db plans. government facilitators looked on with increasing unease – there was no clear consensus on the key issues. both sides were dug in, with no apparent appetite for compromise. industry was attempting to break the 2004 stalemate, but unions were not budging. at the same time, the stalemate was already unraveling under the force of other pressures. in the private sector, many employers were following through on threats to convert db plans into less secure arrangements. the cost of public sector worker pensions was (and remains) a frequent source of banter among the usual pundits. to effectively counter these attacks, the clc needed a vision for change that could compete with the industry-employer view, and unite a broad coalition for progressive reform. but first, the clc needed its own analysis of the pension industry, and a better sense of the industry’s role in the architecture of global capitalism. as the next section explains, a series of important research discoveries would allow this to happen. 2006-2007: the clc in discovery mode on pensions starting in early 2006, research surfaced which undermined industry arguments, and helped clarify the clc’s positions in canada’s pension debate. since the acpm’s back from the brink paper, industry lobbyists claimed (to some degree of success) that funding rules restricted the growth of decent pensions. curiously enough, an article for an industry magazine, the pensions and benefits monitor (by greg hurst, an influential pensions consultant from vancouver), demolished this position (2006). when resistance isn’t futile | 113 what stood in the way of decent pension coverage, hurst argued, were employers who viewed pension plans as “cash management tools”. in the 1980s and 1990s, high interest rates generated huge windfalls for pension funds, often to the point where most were fully funded from investment returns alone. in these situations, pension rules in canada allow employers to pursue “contribution holidays”, an unfortunate practice that continues to this day. research from elsewhere confirmed hurst’s analysis. quebec’s pension regulator has estimated that over $2.9 billion was taken in contribution holidays by employers from 1991 to 2000 (gold, 2006). bernard dussault, the former chief actuary of the canada pension plan from 1992-1998, insists this led to the hobbled funding condition of pension plans in general, and their lack of preparation for the leaner years of 2001-2003 and 2008 (2009). thanks to contribution holidays, employers did not maintain a “rainy day” fund to cushion the blow of market slumps. instead, they could redirect pension surplus for other purposes – the details for which will never be known. hurst painted a picture that did not fit with the industry’s explanation, and it gave rise to lively debate in progressive circles. union researchers soon questioned whether “cupboard is bare” arguments by employers on pensions had any merit, and they quickly found grist for their mill. in april 2006, non-financial employers enjoyed a “net lending position” (or balance sheet surplus) of $80.6 billion, and the international monetary fund documented a similar trend worldwide (tomas, 2006; cardarelli et al, 2006). two years later, a report from desjardins securities, a financial services firm, explained canadian employers had operating profits 18.3 times the size of their pension liabilities (gibson et al, 2008). an averagesized employer, the report argued, could pay down pension liabilities with just one to two months of profit, or a year’s worth of operating cash flow. the april 2006 issue of benefits canada (a widely-read industry magazine) noted the pension industry had grown to a size of $1.3 trillion, larger than the total of all goods and services sold in canada the previous year (cakebread, 2006). the following month, a british study posed more ambitious questions. according to the authors, the industry push for pension privatization (in canada and elsewhere) was part of a more ambitious effort: “pension privatization is not really about pensions at all, but about extending capital markets, the free movement of capital, and changing the role of the state. the philosophy of [pensions] has changed over the twentieth 114 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism century because politics has changed ... the critical issue is not a choice between the state and the private sector, nor the precise balance between a basic pension and a supplemental one, nor non-funding versus funding, nor general taxation versus contributions based on income. instead, it is the question of whether financial institutions, financial markets and the “free movement of capital” should play leading roles in social welfare. debates about pensions cannot ignore the effects pension schemes have on relationships between finance and industry, investment, and the broader social and economic implications of the stock-market approach to welfare or social security.” (minns and sexton, 2006, p.35-36). robin blackburn, a british historian, took this analysis even further (2007). for him, the attack on decent pensions was not just about creating freer reign for global finance, it was primarily an attempt to restore employer profitability which had gradually slipped since the mid-1970s. if employers and finance executives could access retirement savings, these substantial funds could be diverted to the lucrative paper chase of stock traders and ticker boards. empowered by a new political context, employers could siphon off money meant for pensions to invest in various financial products, earning a tidy sum in the process. over time, many did precisely this, but the perks were temporary if employers remained on the hook for a workers’ pension. hence the industry-employer preference to close decent pensions, and opt for schemes where workers bear the risk of market slumps. seen in this light, the attack on decent pensions was part of what blackburn called the “financialization” of capitalism in general. in the course of a few short decades, pension funds were no longer sources of “patient capital”, facilitating the lending of money to create investment and jobs. instead, in a relatively short period of time, they became enmeshed in a paper chase where rampant speculation and fee extraction trumped reasonable judgement. as this happened, precious little went to genuine economic expansion, or what jim stanford has called the “real economy” (1999; 2008). in fact stanford explains that, at the height of recent financialization, every dollar of investment in real production was eclipsed by a hundred dollars in pure speculation (stanford, 2008). such speculative activity was permitted by loose financial regulation in us stock markets, the heart of the system. stock traders and ticker boards, propelled by the heavyweights of global finance, were ballooning a bubble of massive proportions, and often using workers’ retirement savings to supply the hot air. the attack on pensions, while when resistance isn’t futile | 115 profitable, also had the additional benefit of disciplining unions, and taking back much of the postwar compromise in which workplace pensions emerged. soon enough, as the clc grasped this bigger picture, they began challenging the framework for pension discussions in general. in a submission to finance canada on pension reform, clc president ken georgetti made this explicit: “in a letter to minister flaherty dated march 27, 2005, i expressed the clc’s deep regret that the federal review of defined benefit pensions was taking place in a context where corporate lobbyists were guiding the discussion. this has been confirmed in recent months with the government’s proposed [pension funding] regulations, which read like a wish list for the pension industry. the federal debate on defined benefit pensions – and retirement security for all canadians – must be refocused, and reflect the cooperative values most canadians share. in the twenty-first century, after eight decades of federal pension policy, it should no longer be acceptable for any working canadian to retire into insecurity. a secure, enjoyable retirement should be the reward for decades of contributions to one’s community and canada’s economy.” (georgetti, 2006, p.7). at a federal government “pension policy dialogue” in 2007, the clc also came out swinging. why should unions, they asked, take hits in pension rights after years of employer contribution holidays? why should consumers be charged ridiculous fees (so-called “management expense ratios”) for the mutual funds sold by canada’s financial sector (see: korma et al, 2006)? and, above all, given most workers are without decent pensions or significant retirement savings, what is the government’s vision to ensure retirement security for everyone? the clc soon realized that power brokers were ignoring such questions. instead, debate remained focused on one thing: closing decent pensions, increasing employer access to pension surpluses, and weakening pension funding rules. at government pension consultations in 2006-2007, these objectives were repeatedly sought. finance minister jim flaherty wrote to the congress of union retirees of canada responding to their concerns about canada pension plan benefits. at that time, minister flaherty insisted the cpp status quo was acceptable, and that current contribution rates “will remain unchanged” (2007). the letter confirmed what the clc already knew: in 2007, there was little appetite to expand the modest cpp benefits available to all in paid employment. 116 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism given these realities, the clc faced tough conditions. it had gone through a valuable discovery phase, gained a broader awareness of pension issues, and expressed it well to reporters and politicians. these interventions made an impact, but they had not shifted the industry and employer framework that defined canada’s pension debate. through polling research, the clc had confirmed union members wanted action on pension reform, but the kind of reform was unclear. most union activists, while an important voice in communities across canada, were not informed players in the pension debate. given this situation, union leaders and researchers were labour’s political action team, and that limited group ensured less political influence. for that to change the clc needed a “capacity development phase” that could empower union activists to engage in pension activism; this activist core could then recruit others, and apply pressure to waverers and opponents. but for that to happen, a clear and compelling vision was required. if this was done well, politicians would face constituent anger (and electoral consequences) for not championing a more adequate, fair and secure pension system. as many have explained, canadian history had seen this happen before, particularly when pensioners were involved (finlayson, 1989; deaton, 1989; morton, 1987). a golden opportunity soon presented itself: the clc had pledged to hold a pension conference in late 2007, and union activists were motivated to participate. but what kind of conference would this be? would it feature technical workshops of use to pension specialists, or a clear and compelling vision for pension reform? between these two choices, unions leaders picked the latter, and at times to the dismay of their pension specialists. the 3rd clc pension conference theme was move forward together or fend for yourself? the future of canadian pensions, and offered a clear indication that labour had grasped the bigger picture. the conference was structured around political demands and aimed to refocus the clc’s pension work. a discussion paper was circulated that prioritized cpp expansion, improved public pensions, and a federal system of pension insurance (clc, 2007). three hundred and thirty-five delegates participated, making it the most successful event the clc had held in some time. all delegates were registered on a “clc pension activism” email list, which proved useful given mobilizations that happened later. one could sense union confidence on pensions was building. debbie marantz, a pension representative for the communications, energy, and paperworkers union, captured this in a report to her executive board: when resistance isn’t futile | 117 “the 3rd annual clc pension conference from november 1 to 3 in ottawa was meant to energize those attending and to assist them in focusing on labour’s campaign to protect pensions and retirement security. and, may i say, for myself and everyone else who had the opportunity to attend, it did that and a lot more.” (2007, p. 5). 2008-2010: crisis and opportunity for labour on pensions by 2008, the clc shifted into action on pensions, and not a moment too soon. in april, the viral impact of wall street’s defective investments was clear, setting off a chain of events well documented by others (ferguson, 2012; mcnally, 2010). the resulting slump, at its worst, caused stock markets to plummet by 52 percent and pension funds worldwide lost $5 trillion usd in assets (over three times the size of canada’s economy in 2008) (oecd, 2009). at first, canada’s federal government denied these problems seeped north of the 49th parallel. in his economic and fiscal update of november 21, 2008, finance minister jim flaherty announced a budget surplus, and prime minister stephen harper speculated about “buying opportunities” in plummeting stock markets (as cited in palmer, 2008). in a further bizarre move, a clawback on party financing was also announced (canceling, among other things, the $1.75 per vote federal political parties had received since 2003) which forced the hand of the government’s opposition. a constitutional crisis followed, with a coalition of opposition parties threatening to oust the federal government from power. to avoid that outcome, the federal government introduced a range of economic measures (which now meant forecasting a deficit of $64 billion) (harper, 2008). among these measures were new rounds of consultations on pension reforms, which the clc rightly saw as an opportunity to advance its agenda for progressive change. after organizing an initial round of public forums on the economic crisis in january 2009, the clc began a nationwide process of pension education sessions empowering union activists to attend federal pension consultations en masse. this proved to be challenging given details for consultations were often released a week before they were held, but the member response was unlike anything the clc had seen in decades. the first consultation took place in ottawa on march 13, 2009, and union activists accounted for most of the 150 people in attendance. this hardly surprised officials who were aware of labour’s focus on pension issues. what shocked them, however, were ideas that came from the front 118 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism of the room. bernard dussault, the chief actuary of the canada pension plan and old age security from 1992-1998, had been invited as an expert to share his thoughts on specific reforms to federally-regulated pension plans. but dussault, a major player in the cpp debates of the 1990s, did not restrict his comments to such narrow parameters. he instead proposed a dramatic expansion of cpp benefits that would eventually see all canadians earn 70 per cent of their salary in retirement (dussault, 2008). it was a case to shift the canadian pension system to a “medicare” model, and away from its largely “fend for yourself” design. the direct losers would be banks and financial services companies who would almost certainly forego rrsp clients. dussault’s vision shook the pension establishment, and labour now realized it had a powerful ally in the case for pension reform. as the consultations moved to six other canadian cities, halls were filled with angry union members and retirees. soon after, a conference room in halifax meant for eighty participants was swamped by 150 people. loretta kent, a worker based at av pulp and paper in nackawic, new brunswick, shared one of many compelling pension stories heard that day. loretta’s employer had declared bankruptcy in 2004 after underfunding the pension plan for five years. as a result, her pension went from 92 per cent funded to 48 per cent funded. when the employer emerged from bankruptcy protection, loretta and her co-workers realized how much they lost given canada’s unfair bankruptcy rules, which rank workers’ pensions at the bottom of an employer’s list of creditors. for loretta, it meant $400 in pension after sixteen years of service. not $400 a month, or $400 a year, but a one-time post-bankruptcy payout of $400 (kent, 2009). after she spoke, the entire room (industry experts included) stood and applauded her courage in sharing this story. in toronto, a room for 150 was packed by over 300 participants. one after another, they berated the government for failing to adequately protect their pensions, and provide decent options for the next generation. as len wallace, a retiree leader for the canadian autoworkers union (caw) spoke, heads nodded around the room: “why should politicians and ceos,” he fumed, “get amazing pension plans, but not fight to ensure everyone else gets the same? what’s the message to young people there? do our kids have to be politicians and ceos to retire with dignity?” (wallace, 2009). in vancouver, a room meant for 225 was filled well beyond capacity, and once again retirees in particular made their presence felt. art kube, past-president of the council of senior citizens organizations of b.c., reminded government officials not to use consultations to delay reform. “consultation is fine, and talking is fine,” kube said, “but we’ve had when resistance isn’t futile | 119 many years of that. we want action. and let me remind you of the obvious: seniors vote and we vote for people who care about pensions. you get this issue wrong, and you could be out of a job” (kube, 2009). the 2009 federal pension consultations confirmed what union leaders had said all along: pension anxiety was wide and deep, and action was required to fix the system. the clc had prepared briefings and materials for union participants in the consultations, and these proved useful for the predictable deflections that came from the front of the room. a joint submission by seven federal employers (employing over 50 percent of all federal sector workers) once again demanded greater access to pension surplus and weaker pension funding rules (air canada et al, 2009). as they made these demands, the pension stories shared by workers and retirees became a powerful source of resistance. it was difficult to seek concessions in rooms filled with people facing an insecure pension future. on april 23, 2009, yet another event added to labour’s pension momentum. following a call from the caw, over 15,000 people demonstrated at the ontario legislature in toronto to “protect our pensions.” rally participants included angry nortel networks workers and pensioners (facing significant concessions from a bankrupt employer), irate caw members, and several concerned citizens who came for their own reasons. a toronto “stewards assembly” held two weeks later (called by the toronto and york region labour council) drew over 1800 participants, from rank and file union stewards and elected union officials, and pensions were a hot topic. the globe and mail – a widely-read newspaper in english canada among intellectuals and policymakers – took close notes at both events, capturing several compelling stories for an influential series than ran six months later (entitled “retirement lost”). union activists realized that politicians could no longer, after bailouts for finance companies in 2008, ignore pleas to fix canada’s pension system. momentum for change was starting to build — pension anger and anxiety had traction in the mainstream press and public mind. in the midst of these opportune conditions, the clc released its latest vision for pension reform (clc, 2009b). its july 2009 discussion paper — entitled adequacy, security, fairness: labour’s proposals for the future of canadian pensions – proposed three core demands: 1. doubling future cpp benefits through a phased-in increase of 60% to worker and employer contributions; 2. a 15 percent increase to the guaranteed income supplement to federal old age security pensions (amounting to a $100 per month boost for low-income pensioners at a yearly cost of $1.2 billion); 120 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism 3. implementing an insurance system to protect workplace pensions should an employer declare bankruptcy, to a value of $2500 per month (pp. 6-8). these demands formed the backbone of the clc’s retirement security for everyone campaign launched on september 7, 2009, and elements of this vision were soon evident well beyond progressive circles. on september 11, 2009, the provinces of saskatchewan, alberta and british columbia threatened to “go it alone” on pension reform in the absence of coordinated action from ottawa, and referenced cpp reform among other options (d’alliesio, 2009). on september 15, the financial post ran a lead story entitled “pensions loom as election issue” that featured angry nortel retirees, and quoted clc chief economist andrew jackson on labour’s plan to expand the cpp (mazurkewich, 2009). the following day, david dennison, president and ceo of the cpp investment board (cppib), commented on the public debate over the fund’s future (dennison, 2009). the cppib had usually restricted its public relations to investment issues, but dennison confirmed the depth of canada’s pension problems, and acknowledged a range of potential cpp reforms (including the clc’s proposal). on october 16, the globe and mail’s “retirement lost” was released, beginning with these words: “canadians can no longer assume they will retire with security. many are seeking increasingly scarce work while others flail as their onceflush retirement accounts hemorrhage. a globe and mail series beginning today shows that the crisis in canadian pensions is not looming; it is here, and has been for some time. a concerted national effort, involving changes in policy, behaviour and mindset from governments, businesses, unions, pension overseers and individual canadians, is needed to repel the crisis.” (mcnish et al., 2009). a week later, over three thousand nortel workers and retirees joined union activists on parliament hill, demanding justice for a company once thought to the jewel of canada’s “silicon valley north”. earlier that month, nortel ceo mike zafirovski appeared before the house of commons finance committee, and was forced to account for demanding a 30 percent reduction in pensioner cheques while authorizing a $45 million bonus plan for top executives (cbc, 2009). this was a “hairshirt” moment for corporate canada, and the clc did much to publicize the exuberant heights to which executive pay and pensions had soared. when resistance isn’t futile | 121 politicians promised reforms due to an unrelenting wave of negative publicity, mobilizations, and appeals for change. after being ignored or dismissed by the pension establishment, the logjam that kept progressive options off the table had been broken. almost immediately, canada’s federal political parties began jostling for position on pension issues. the new democratic party and bloc quebecois supported the clc’s demands, while the liberal party proposed an expansion of the cpp through a private sector model. the ruling conservatives, however, were cool to any ambitious plans. reacting to the liberal proposal, federal finance minister jim flaherty accused his opponents of a “knee-jerk reaction to a serious issue”, while his staff warned against policy ideas that might “saddle taxpayers with big obligations” (cited in chase, 2007). this was the first sign of a counter-attack to the clc’s new momentum on pensions, with more to come soon. as provincial, federal and territorial finance ministers prepared to meet in december (in whitehorse, yukon territory), similar appeals continued from government reports and spokespersons. jack mintz, a public policy professor based at the university of calgary, wrote a report for the whitehorse meeting which emphasized the strength of the existing pension system (2009). bob baldwin, the former pension clc expert, produced a study for the ontario government which downplayed ambitious reform, preferring instead to suggest “key subordinate questions”, and hint at “mixing and matching” various policy ideas (2009, p. 76, 78). “fend for yourself” advocates seized on the ambiguity produced by these claims. the canadian bankers association released a paper calling for raised rrsp limits (2009), while the c.d. howe institute published a study attacking federal public service pensions (using, critics charged, questionable assumptions to balloon the perceived costs) (laurin and robson, 2009). david dodge, former governor of the bank of canada, likened an expansion of the cpp to a “nanny state solution”, and urged finance ministers to embrace policy options that allow “choice” in retirement planning (as cited in scoffield, 2009). these arguments gave politicians an excuse to deflect appeals for substantial reform, but they confirmed the clc’s pension campaign had traction. the province of british columbia said as much through its own independent study (also shared with finance ministers) that discussed cpp reform in positive terms (2009). nevertheless, the whitehorse talks ended with no commitment to reform, and most space given to dismissals from mintz and others. the positive outcome was a pledge 122 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism to hold further public hearings, leave “no policy option off the table”, and articulate a clear direction on pension reform at the next finance ministers meeting in june 2010. if whitehorse was a tough moment for the clc campaign, it was also clear that momentum for progressive options had not stalled. in fact, the clc’s lesson from whitehorse was that more grass-roots mobilization was needed to push politicians in the right direction. so, from january to april 2010, the clc worked with others in organized labour to host large pension forums, many of which invited attendees to share their own pension anxieties and concerns. the anger expressed at these forums generated more political action as labour activists pressed local politicians, held rallies and occupied constituency offices of pension industry supporters. this second wave of bottom-up pension activism quickly morphed into a movement for pension justice. the movement’s climax happened in march 2010, when the clc and ontario federation of labour hosted a “pension summit” in toronto that offered space to divergent perspectives to debate the way forward. almost six hundred delegates attended, including federal finance minister jim flaherty, canadian federation of independent business ceo catherine swift, pension consultant keith ambachtscheer, and influential employer-side actuary malcolm hamilton. these voices, unlike usual, did not dominate the proceedings. union delegates posed tough questions, and soon realized how brittle the “fend for yourself” establishment was. it was a moment where organized labour discovered a sense of its power, and one could feel received wisdom starting to shift. incredibly, this shift was also on display a month later at an elite pension conference hosted by jack mintz at the university of calgary. ken georgetti was invited to speak on a panel with industry heavyweights (who, we can presume, were expected to lay waste to the clc pension campaign). but when robert brown (a former top executive for price waterhouse coopers) spoke after georgetti, he told a stunned audience that expanding the canada pension plan was likely the “best of all available options” (georgetti, personal interview, 2010). georgetti nearly tumbled from his chair, and that reaction was modest compared to mintz’s gaping jaw. without question, the clc notched a minor victory in the heart of canada’s conservative policy establishment. in june, this was followed by a resolution passed at the federation of canadian municipalities convention, where delegates when resistance isn’t futile | 123 (including the mayors of canada’s large cities) backed he clc’s call to expand the cpp. the call for pension reform was making an impact at the highest official levels of canadian politics. this was confirmed in june 2010 when federal finance minister jim flaherty announced a new consensus among his colleagues for pension reform. the policy direction, he argued, would involve a “modest expansion of the canada pension plan”, while encouraging the financial sector to offer new retirement savings products (as cited in curry, 2010). alberta stressed its objections to the cpp reform, but it emerged as a lone voice doing so (with, perhaps, some support from right-leaning saskatchewan as well). union activists celebrated the result, and took pride in creating an historic moment in canada’s long-running pension debate. the rest of the summer, however, was unkind to organized labour. by the time union activists returned for labour day weekend, cpp reform was sputtering in the top levels of the federal government. in november, the federal government unveiled legislation enabling pooled registered pension plans (prpps), the latest “fend for yourself” policy option (department of finance, 2010). prpps would be voluntary in nature, and did not even require employer contributions. critics from across the political spectrum argued prpps would do little to expand the scope of workplace pension coverage. the clc fumed about prpps receiving higher priority than cpp reform, and this fact was confirmed a month later when prime minister stephen harper confirmed the latter was officially off the table. “canadians”, harper insisted, “are looking for options ... not a hike in their cpp premiums” (as cited in scoffield, 2010). the union reaction was furious: flaherty’s constituency office was occupied by enraged protesters, and the clc would later announce two access-to-information requests aimed at exposing who undermined cpp reform. prior to a meeting of finance ministers in late december, a joint letter from the governments of british columbia, ontario, prince edward island, new brunswick, manitoba, and nova scotia urged the federal government to re-commit to cpp expansion, but this overture was rebuffed by flaherty at a meeting the following week. the window of opportunity evident months earlier was abruptly closed. looking forward: how did it happen? how can it happen again? despite this unfortunate result, the clc’s pension campaign is a good news story in otherwise tough times for unions. as observers sift through the tea leaves of this experience, it will be important to under124 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism stand where the clc’s clout on pensions came from, and how it can be restored. at a time when many question the political capacity of organized labour, this was an example of collective action winning positive results. not mentioned in the above narrative, for example, were legislative changes canadian governments felt compelled to make given widespread pension activism. these included guaranteed wage payouts in the event of corporate bankruptcies, strengthened rights for pension plan members, and guidelines to prevent federal sector employers “walking away” from unfunded liabilities in their pension plans. these were not the specific objectives the clc sought, but significant in their own right, and more than could have been won without any activity at all. they also offer important lessons about what kind of activism is effective in today’s challenging times. the first is the necessity for unions, where possible, to pursue broad and inclusive campaigns. in 2007, the clc made the crucial decision to depart from an expert-led focus on pensions, and embrace demands that bridged the concerns of union and non-union workers. in this vein, the decision to champion cpp reform and public pensions was important; industry critics could not easily criticize unions for being “self-interested”, and non-union workers could be credibly told the clc was fighting for everyone. the opposite would have happened if the focus had been protecting the pensions of unionized workers. such defensive campaigns do not appeal to a wider public grown weary from decades of “fend for yourself” economic policy (in pensions and elsewhere). if organized labour is unable or unwilling to mount broad campaigns, employers will do so, and redirect public anger against “privileged unions”. this is why us labour’s recent pursuit of the employee free choice act was doomed to fail, and the clc learned a similar lesson after a vigorous pursuit of federal “antiscab” legislation in 2007 (harden, 2007). these goals, while important, will not appeal to a broad enough base, and will cater to the perception that unions are driven by self-interest. to regain momentum, unions must demonstrate their capacity to win victories for all workers. this was the first strength of the clc’s pension campaign — it offered a compelling vision of “retirement security for everyone”, and forced opponents to defend a flawed status quo. the second strength of the clc pension campaign was its efforts to harness the fears, energies, and dreams of everyday union members. when it first realized an opportunity to mobilize on pension issues, the clc could have simply presented its spokespersons to “multiwhen resistance isn’t futile | 125 stakeholder” meetings and media opportunities. instead, following the advice of marshall ganz (2001; 2009) and others, the clc did that and much more. it recognized the power of workers’ stories, and invited them into a focused campaign. for that to happen, the clc financed an extensive, two-year process of pension education, at first to intervene in federal government hearings, but later to ensure inspired advocacy took place in every region possible. as clc campaigners criss-crossed the nation, they empowered union members to argue the merits of improved public pensions through the realities of a retiree on their street. the argument for pension insurance, likewise, was articulated locally as a backstop to prevent more nortels, abitibi-bowaters, or av pulp and papers (as referenced in loretta’s story above) from tearing communities apart. the costs of cpp expansion were explained as a sacrifice of a few take-out coffees or magazine subscriptions per month. from these local, accessible perspectives, union activists could speak from a position of strength, recruit supporters, and apply significant pressure to intransigent decision-makers. to this the clc added an array of attractive materials which activists would colour with local stories (which were often more difficult for politicians to dispute). this was a welcome departure from clc’s earlier pension education efforts – intermittent regional courses, and research papers published for a specialist audience. solid research would remain a key element of the campaign, but a newly-mobilized layer of pension activists gave the clc renewed agency on pension issues. this vindicated those who insist that “staffing up” or “hyper-professionalizing” takes unions away from their source of strength: the activism of union members (clawson, 2008). if the grassroots of organized labour take ownership of campaigns, mass participation can happen, and much is possible. if union activists are compelled to act as a stage army, far less enthusiasm can be expected. for genuine success, labour’s rank and file must be the authors of change. relatedly, the need to sustain local activism is third and final lesson from the clc’s campaign and it is likely the most challenging to understand. during the clc’s capacity development phase, it was never clear how bottom-up mobilizations would continue beyond appeals to politicians or mobilizations for various events. and yet, many of the campaign’s most impressive moments came because activists themselves scored blows against the forces of pension austerity. the mass meetings, rallies, and sit-ins happened because union members gained a sense of their power, and focused it against a common adversary. 126 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism by june 2010, an apparent victory (through cpp reform) caused many to think change was coming. the truth, of course, was otherwise — and blame is hard to allocate about why this perception was widespread. the clc leadership urged vigilance following flaherty’s june 2010 announcement, and called on local pressure to “get the job done”. pension activists sent in numerous requests for additional campaign materials and further trainings, many of which came to fruition. however one interprets the federal government’s final decision, they clearly believed that betraying an earlier pledge would not entail significant political consequences. as it happened, this turned out to be true – in canada’s may 2011 federal election, the ruling conservatives won their first majority government. clc supporters (particularly the ndp) also did well, but not well enough to ensure greater adequacy, fairness, and security for canada’s pension system. that weighty task remains, and it is one organized labour must take seriously. if capitalism’s crisis-prone history portends anything, it is more economic slumps and major assaults on the living conditions of workers. when (and not if) that happens, unions must present a vision of change that inspires action, rather like the 99 percent visionaries whose protest encampments challenged the world’s financial elite, or the quebec student movement who (as these words were written) held fast in the face of enormous 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(february 2006). lies, damned lies, and canada’s private pensions funding crisis. pension and benefits monitor. http://www. bpmmagazine.com/02_archives/2006/february/lies_canada_private_p ension_funding.html. kent, l. (2009, march 21). my story about a/v pulp and paper. presentation to the department of finance, government of canada, on “federal regulation of private pension plans. halifax, ns, canada. korma et al. (2006, may). mutual fund fees around the world. http:// randsco.com/_img/blog/0702/fees.pdf. kube, a. (2009, april 12) oral remarks made to the department of finance, government of canada, on “federal regulation of private pension plans”. vancouver, bc, canada. laurin, a. and robson, w. (december 2009). supersized superannuation: the startling fair-value cost of federal government pensions. backgrounder no 122. toronto: c.d. howe institute. marantz, d. (2007). report from the 3rd clc pension conference [letter to cep national executive board]. mazurkewich, k. (2009, september 15). pensions loom as election issue. financial post, p. a4. mccullough. m. (2009, november 22). why there is no retirement crisis. canadian business. http://www.canadianbusiness.com/article/11403— why-there-is-noretirement-crisis. mcnally, d. (2010). global slump: the economics and politics of crisis and resistance. san fransisco: pm press / spectre. mcnish, j. et al (2009, october 16). beyond the illusion of security. globe and mail. p. f3. 130 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism minns, r. and sexton, s. (2006). too many grannies? private pensions, corporate welfare and growing insecurity. london: the corner house. http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/sites/thecornerhouse.org.uk/ files/35grannies.p df. mintz, j. (2009, december 18). summary report on retirement income adequacy research [prepared for he research working group on retirement income adequacy of federal-provincial-territorial ministers of finance]. retrieved from http://www.fin.gc.ca/activty/ pubs/pension/riar-narr-eng.asp. morton, d. (1987). resisting the pension evil: bureaucracy, democracy, and canada’s board of pension commissioners, 1916-1933. canadian historical review, 68(2),199-224. national advisory council on the status of aging (naca), government of canada. (2005). seniors on the margins: aging and poverty in canada. retrieved from http://publications.gc.ca/collections/ collection/h88-5-3-2005e.pdf. organization of economic cooperation and development (oecd). (2009, october). pension markets in focus. issue 6. paris: oecd. retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/30/40/43943964.pdf. palmer, r et al. (2008, october 7). canada’s harper sees possible stock market bargains. reuters. retrieved from http://www. reuters.com/article/2008/10/07/financial-canada-opportunities idusn0747329620081007. scoffield, h. (2009, december 17). cut standard of living now for comfortable pension later: dodge. the canadian press. retrieved from http://www.capebretonpost.com/business/personal-finance/2009-12-18/ article777748/cut-standard-of-living-now-for-comfortable-pensionlater%3a-dodge/1. scoffield, h. (2010, november 17). prpp: ottawa launches new pooled registered pension plans to boost retirement savings. the canadian press. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/11/17/prpp-pooledregistered-pensionplans_n_1099456.html. stanford, j. (2008) economics for everyone: a short guide to the economics of capitalism. toronto: fernwood. stanford, j. (2001). paper boom: why real prosperity requires a new approach to canada’s economy. toronto: lorimer. statistics canada. (2006). survey of financial security. ottawa: government of canada. statistics canada. (2005). pension plans in canada. ottawa: government of canada. tomas, a. (2006). recent trends in corporate finance. canadian economic observer. ottawa: statistics canada. when resistance isn’t futile | 131 townson, m. (2001). pensions under attack: what’s behind the push to privatize pensions. ottawa: canadian centre for policy alternatives. ——— (2009). what can we do about pensions? ottawa: canadian centre for policy alternatives. van riesen, g. (2007, february 12). oral remarks made to the government of ontario expert roundtable on pensions. wallace, l. (2009, april 16). oral remarks made to the department of finance, government of canada, on “federal regulation of private pension plans, ottawa, on, canada. wilson, f. (2011, may 27). how the ndp gave unions a new opportunity to organize. rabble.ca. http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/fwilson/2011/05/ how-ndp-gavecanadas-unions-new-opportunity-organize. | 147 québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party richard fidler1 a number of attempts have been made in recent years to launch new parties and processes, addressing a broad left or popular constituency, that are programmatically anti-neoliberal if not anti-capitalist, some of them self-identifying as part of an international effort to create a “socialism of the 21st century.” they vary widely in origins, size, social composition, and influence. the process has gone furthest in a number of latin american countries; among the best known are the united socialist party of venezuela (psuv), led by hugo chávez, and the bolivian movement towards socialism–political instrument of the sovereignty of the peoples (mas-ipsp), led by evo morales. efforts in western europe, such as italy’s refoundation party, germany’s die linke, or france’s parti de gauche originated in part in splits in the traditional parties of “20th century socialism,” in avowed rejection of both stalinism and social democracy. many of these parties include members who in the past were associated with one or another of the marxist currents identified historically with trotsky’s anti-stalinist legacy. in france, the nouveau parti anti-capitaliste (npa) was initiated under their aegis. parallel developments have not yet occurred in the united states or canada, where anticapitalist ideas and movements have less presence in the political landscape today than they had a century ago. however, as it does in so many respects, quebec constitutes something of an exception. a new left party, québec solidaire, created during the past decade, is attracting considerable interest and growing support as an anti-neoliberal alternative to quebec’s three capitalist parties. while not explicitly anti-capitalist or socialist, it defines itself 1  richard fidler is an independent researcher and writer who publishes the blog life on the left (www.lifeonleft.blogspot.com). he is based in ottawa and can be reached at: rfidler_8@ sympatico.ca. thanks are due to john riddell and david mandel for their critical comments on an earlier draft. the usual caveats apply. québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party 148 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times as a party “resolutely of the left, feminist, ecologist, altermondialiste,2 pacifist, democratic and sovereigntist.” this paper will outline how this party originated, describe how it functions, and explore some major challenges it faces and how it is confronting them. the quebec exception quebec’s political evolution has always followed a distinct trajectory within the canadian social formation. a crucial determinant has been the province’s character as the homeland of a distinct nation, with its own territory, language, culture, historical tradition and a well-defined national consciousness as a minority people within canada and north america. until well past the mid-20th century, french-canadian nationalism was essentially defensive, focused on protecting the autonomy of quebec, the last major enclave of the francophone presence in canada, against involvement in imperialist wars and the increasing encroachment on the province’s constitutional jurisdiction by the federal state with its expanding economic and social functions. industrialization and the concomitant urbanization and growth of trade unions aggravated these tensions, disrupting the social and political culture of a francophone population long dependent on church and parish for the provision of basic social and community services. in the 1960s a new, more assertive nationalist dynamic gained force as quebec rapidly moved to modernize its industrial infrastructure, nationalized hydro-electric power resources and expanded and secularized its education, health and social welfare systems. a large provincial state bureaucracy developed, increasingly directed to stimulating the expansion of a skilled labour force and the growth of a francophone bourgeoisie through the provision of financial and other assistance. quebec pushed increasingly — but unsuccessfully — for constitutional changes that would give it greater autonomy within the federation, especially in areas crucial to its national identity and development. union membership expanded exponentially. a veritable cultural revolution occurred with the appearance of many new radical publications and other media, many of them raising the demand for quebec autonomy, political sovereignty or independence. on the left, pro-independence movements sprouted, their members inspired by the post-war afroasian decolonization and, closer to home, the socialist ideology of the cuban revolutionists. 2  in french, those who advocate “another world” of global justice and solidarity. | 149 national consciousness and class consciousness have maintained a close and reciprocal relationship in quebec in recent decades. but this social ferment, both a product and promoter of rising québécois national consciousness, largely bypassed the parties of the existing “20th century” canadian left. their historical failure to sink mass roots in quebec was directly related to their programmatic orientation toward strengthening the canadian state and their indifference to quebec’s national oppression and/or hostility to québécois nationalist sentiment. the regina manifesto, the founding document of canadian socialdemocracy, omitted any reference to the quebec national question.3 the communist party expelled québécois members who developed a proautonomy interpretation of the party’s formal support of quebec’s right to self-determination.4 the labour-based new democratic party, founded in 1961, has been unwilling to embrace any fundamental alteration to canada’s existing institutional structure that would reflect quebec’s national character, or even to develop a coherent approach that differed significantly from the constitutional priorities of the federal government of the day.5 soon after its founding, its quebec section voted to form a distinct parti socialiste du québec (psq). the psq advocated that quebec and canada be constitutionally recognized as “associated states.” if such an agreement proved impossible, it said, “quebec should declare its independence.”6 but the psq was upstaged on its nationalist flank by the pro-independence rassemblement pour l’indépendance nationale (rin), while the quebec trade unions were still unprepared to drop their longstanding support of the quebec liberals in favour of independent labour political action. the psq dissolved in the late 1960s. in the absence of a viable left-wing alternative sympathetic to québécois national aspirations, this consciousness was politically channeled into support for the pro-sovereignty parti québécois. founded in the late 1960s, the pq came to hegemonize the national movement as its political expression. moreover, its increasing attraction for the leaderships of quebec’s three big union centrals — which gradually shifted to seeing the pq, and not the liberals, as their preferred vehicle for political 3  regina manifesto, 1933. the manifesto was adopted by the first “national” convention of the co-operative commonwealth federation (ccf). 4  henri gagnon, n.d. 5  for a summary of ndp positions in this regard, see cooke, 2004. for a critique of the ndp’s sherbrooke declaration, its most complete and recent statement on the quebec national question, see fidler, 2011b. see also fidler, 2011d. 6  parti socialiste du québec, 1966 québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party 150 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times influence and reform — tended to eclipse early attempts by some union militants to found independent and anticapitalist political formations. a notable effort, the front d’action politique (frap), a radical municipal party initiated in part by the montréal section of the csn, foundered in the wake of the october 1970 crisis and repression. an upsurge in mass nationalist and pro-sovereignty sentiment fueled a radicalization in the labour movement that in the early 1970s saw all three labour centrals7 issue and debate anticapitalist manifestos. but the capitalist pq was the primary political beneficiary, although a nationalist left within the party that included some prominent union officials often had a problematic relationship to the party hierarchy. the pq project was, and remains, to achieve a bourgeois-nationalist form of state sovereignty associated — the political context permitting — with canada outside quebec, or if necessary functioning as a fully independent (but thoroughly capitalist) quebec state. the pq’s popular support derived from its advocacy of sovereignty, its strong defense of the french language, culture and national identity and, initially at least, its promise of social reforms. during its first term in office, the pq enacted some important reforms, particularly in the area of french-language rights, although its legislation in this regard has been subject to constant challenges and adverse court rulings over the years. but after a total of 18 years in government (1976-1985, 1994-2003), the party no longer inspires the hopes for change that it once did. pq governments have on occasion viciously attacked unions, as in 1982 when the lévesque government legislated a 20% reduction in the salaries of government workers. the pq has consistently supported anti-worker “free trade” and investment agreements and its governments have imposed harsh austerity programs. although opinion polls have registered high and remarkably consistent support for quebec independence,8 the pq has failed to win its two sovereignty referendums. equally important, ongoing developments in bourgeois politics — such as the 1982 unilateral patriation of canada’s constitution without quebec’s consent; the 1990 defeat of the meech lake accord; or the federal parliament’s enactment of the clarity act in the wake of the narrow 1995 referendum defeat — have signalled the 7  the three centrals were the quebec federation of labour (ftq), the confederation of national trade unions (csn) and the teachers’ union, the ceq (now the centrale des syndicats du québec, or csq). 8  opinion polls indicate that even today more than 40% of québécois support independence (more than those who declare support for the pq), and a substantial majority favour greater autonomy for quebec. | 151 lack of sympathy in canada’s ruling circles not only for quebec sovereignty but for any meaningful constitutional recognition of quebec’s national identity, let alone unfettered provincial autonomy in jurisdictions essential to that identity. the new francophone bourgeoisie that has developed since the sixties, with state support (both provincial and federal), functions largely as a subset of the canadian bourgeoisie and no major component favours quebec sovereignty. today the parti québécois has less appetite for independence, although the goal of “sovereignty” is still article one in its program. doubts are growing about the party’s ability to capture enough popular support for its program to create the “winning conditions” for a successful referendum vote on sovereignty. the pq’s commitment to working within the neoliberal order, which has often brought it into sharp conflict with the unions, has fueled disenchantment with the party among the very social layers that are the driving force of the national movement. however, a credible left alternative to the parti québécois was slow to emerge within the broad québécois nationalist and left milieu. until the early 1980s, when they unceremoniously collapsed, the mao-stalinist currents that largely dominated the far left for a decade opposed quebec sovereignty, which they regarded as a purely bourgeois objective dividing the “canadian” working class. and although they opposed the pq, they also opposed proposals within the trade unions in favour of establishing an independent working-class party, advocating instead, in true sectarian fashion, the constitution of their own “proletarian party.”9 like the ccf and pro-moscow cp before them, this “far left” was ideologically defined around international events and alliances that had little or no resonance in the conditions of quebec, where the class struggle tends to unfold within a nationalist framework of opposition to linguistic and cultural oppression. there was always, of course, a smaller left that favoured independence and rejected the pq and its capitalist program. sporadic attempts were made in the 1980s to build new parties of the left, but without lasting success. the trade unions remained resistant to proposals to engage in political action independent of the pq. and during the 1980s and 1990s, the major labour centrals initiated — with political support and generous tax breaks from both levels of government — investment funds that have enmeshed the unions in the financial industry, company management structures and other strategic “partnerships” with capital. 9  for a critical analysis of this experience, see moreau, 1986. for a more extended analysis, see dubuc, 2003, especially chapters 3 and 4. québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party 152 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times during the late 1990s, however, some cracks began to appear in the edifice of bourgeois sovereigntist hegemony in the left. feminists, the one broadly-based social movement that had largely survived the neoliberal onslaught of the 1980s — waging a successful defense of abortion rights, for example — organized a mass “march for bread and roses” that directly challenged lucien bouchard’s pq government and its “zero deficit” austerity program. they followed up with further demonstrations and, in 2000, sponsored a world march of women that mobilized tens of thousands in quebec and elsewhere. when the government rejected their modest demands for an increase in the minimum wage, women’s federation leader françoise david publicly mused on the need to create a “feminist left-wing political alternative” to the parti québécois. then, in 2001, tens of thousands mobilized at the quebec summit in opposition to the proposed free trade area of the americas. opponents of neoliberal globalization — “altermondialistes” as they are known in quebec — were soon joined by hundreds of thousands more in massive demonstrations in the lead-up to the 2003 u.s. invasion of iraq, the largest antiwar mobilization in quebec history. for the first time in decades, there was now a realistic potential for a new configuration of progressive forces. regroupment and fusion the initiative was taken — first separately, then in combination — by three far-left groups:10 the parti de la démocratie socialiste (pds) originated as the quebec section of the federal ndp. in 1995 it broke definitively from the ndp; adopted its new name; defined itself as “anti-capitalist, anti-neoliberal, feminist, internationalist and independentist”; and campaigned for a yes to sovereignty in the referendum. the pds was joined by some independent left-wing nationalists who had left the pq. members of gauche socialiste, a section of the trotskyist fourth international, were prominent in the pds leadership. the rassemblement pour une alternative politique (rap) was founded in 1998, in response to a public appeal for a “political alternative” issued in november 1997 by prominent left-wing personalities including former psq leader and union militant michel chartrand; pierre dubuc (editor of the popular independentist monthly l’aut’journal); and paul cliche, a journalist who in 1970 had led the left-wing municipal party 10  the following chronology borrows in part from dostie et al., 2006. see also lavallée, 2011, p. 202-14. | 153 frap in montréal. the rap later (in november 2000) voted to change its name to rassemblement pour l’alternative progressiste. the parti communiste du québec (pcq), the quebec section of the canadian cp, now led by individuals who had once been prominently associated with quebec’s mao-stalinist parties.11 in the 1998 general election, the rap ran seven candidates while the pds contested 97 ridings; their overall vote was small (36,000), although in jonquière the rap candidate michel chartrand took 15% of the popular vote against the pq’s premier lucien bouchard. in 2000, a joint public meeting in montréal organized by the pds, rap and pcq attracted some 650 persons to discuss “unity of the political left and progressive forces.” a liaison committee was set up by the three groups along with the bloc pot (a marijuana legalization group) and the quebec section of the green party of canada, with the objective of establishing common positions and actions. in april 2001, just days before the huge protest demonstrations at the pro-free trade québec summit of the americas, independent candidate paul cliche won 24% of the popular vote in a by-election in montréal’s mercier riding. his campaign, supported by the liaison committee, some trade unions and community organizations, indicated the positive potential of left unity. the liaison committee then became the coalition of the union des forces progressistes (ufp). in december 2001 the rap voted by a narrow majority at its congress to join the ufp.12 at a convention in june 2002 the ufp was founded as “a federated party that seeks to become a mass alternative to the parties of neoliberalism.” those attending included a large number of independent activists in addition to members of the pds, rap and pcq.13 at a subsequent policy convention in february 2003 the new party adopted a radical platform opposing free-trade agreements and calling for international solidarity (palestine, cuba, iraq), cancellation of third-world foreign debts, 11  the pcq separated from the canadian cp in 2005 when a majority of its members voted to support quebec independence. some members of the reconstituted quebec section of the canadian cp are members today of québec solidaire, but they do not constitute a recognized “collective” within qs. 12  rap founder pierre dubuc, in the minority, abandoned the project of building a political alternative to the pq. in june 2005, he joined with some trade union leaders and “left” pq members (péquistes) to found syndicalistes et progressistes pour un québec libre (spqlibre), which for a time was officially recognized as a “club” within the pq. 13  according to an internal ufp study cited by amir khadir, 56% of the members were under the age of 35 and 29% were under 29; 50% of them were first-time party members; there was a minor yet real presence of anglophone activists as well as several members of montreal’s cultural communities (amir khadir, interview by pascale dufour, march 2006), cited in dufour, 2003. québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party 154 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times defence of the environment, extensive social and educational reforms, electoral reform, labour rights, first nations self-determination, and a constituent assembly to draft a constitution for a “progressive, republican, secular and democratic quebec.”14 the ufp adopted a pluralist structure recognizing the right of organized tendencies (“political entities”) to “promote specific orientations compatible with the platform and statutes of the ufp.” the pds was now a political entity called démocratie socialiste (later québec socialiste), although it soon dissolved as such. the rap, for its part, simply dissolved into the ufp, while the pcq became a recognized political entity within the new party. in the april 2003 general election the ufp, now registered as an official party, ran 73 candidates (26% were women) and obtained just over 40,000 votes — barely attaining the 1% of the popular vote required to qualify for partial rebate of expenses under the elections act. the highest vote was amir khadir’s 18% in mercier riding. this campaign was considered a success; some ufp candidates were endorsed by unions, and a post-election report noted that a considerable number of students had been recruited. the party now claimed a membership of some 1,800 members, almost double its membership in 2002. at a june 2003 meeting, the ufp council adopted an ambitious agenda of social movement participation, antiwar mobilizing, unification talks with the parti vert (a resuscitated green party), and fighting for an electoral regime of proportional representation to help overcome quebec’s “democratic deficit.” the members voted to investigate possible participation in municipal elections and creation of a “youth organization... both independent of and in solidarity with the ufp.” meanwhile, during the fall and winter of 2002-03, d’abord solidaires, a “non-partisan collective” of activists from the women’s and other social movements, had been formed independently of the ufp to mount a public campaign against a rise in right-wing politics that was aimed primarily against action démocratique du québec (adq), a party that split from the provincial liberals in the early 1990s on a pro-autonomy program and at one point in the months before the 2003 election was registering 40 percent support in public opinion polls on a platform centered on “family values” and “old-stock” québécois identity issues. d’abord solidaires was officially indifferent between the governing pq and the opposition liberals, not opposing a vote for either as a “lesser evil” to the adq. as it turned out, the adq polled just 18%, the pq was 14  see fidler, 2003. | 155 defeated — its vote dropped by 10 percentage points from its previous result — and the liberals led by jean charest formed the government.15 in may 2004, one of the three component collectives in d’abord solidaires, led by feminist leader françoise david and social housing activist françois saillant, founded option citoyenne (oc–citizens’ choice). it favoured political action to the left of the pq but initially rejected an invitation to join the ufp.16 david toured quebec promoting her book bien commun recherché (“seeking the common good”) and probing support for a new left party. david encountered much support for uniting the political forces to the left of the pq, and considerable openness to the idea of joining with the ufp in a new party — notwithstanding the reservations of many of her supporters, and david herself,17 about the ufp’s strong commitment to quebec independence. in december 2004 option citoyenne began negotiations with the ufp to explore the possibility of forming “a single progressive, ecologist and feminist party.” the year-long fusion process posed some major challenges to both groups. each had its distinct constituency or corporate culture. the ufp’s membership included young people from the global justice movement — internationalist and strong supporters of quebec independence, which they saw as essential to their anti-capitalist politics — along with an older layer of members, many with long experience in left and far-left politics. oc members, on the other hand, were primarily active within feminist and community organizations (60% were women) and in local grass-roots organizing around tenants’ rights, food and housing co-ops and the like, a milieu in which the politics of consensus and accommodation of conflicting views and interests are valued. oc members tended to radicalize around anti-poverty concerns, and were less likely to be concerned with quebec’s national question. but the ufp was adamant that the new party must advocate quebec independence. over a year, beginning in november 2004, option citoyenne held three “national [quebec] meetings” of its membership to develop a programmatic basis for negotiations with the ufp. draft position papers were circulated and resolutions adopted on feminism, democracy, plu15  in the 2007 election, the adq managed to displace the pq as official opposition until the following year’s election, when it was reduced to 7 seats. 16  ufp leader pierre dostie later explained that his party would have preferred that oc simply join the ufp. “but reality is very often more complex than we imagine. once we found that this political movement, given its composition and what it represented, had to comply with its own process, we sought areas of convergence and we entered into a dialogue.” à bâbord !, february-march, 2005. 17  david was once a member of en lutte, a mao-stalinist group that opposed quebec independence. québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party 156 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times ralism and economic questions.18 a typical resolution declared that “a party of the common good, inspired by feminism” should be oriented around “values of social justice, equality, peace, solidarity, respect for the integrity of individuals and the environment, while recognizing the importance of struggles against forms of exclusion, racism, discrimination and violence, including those that continue to be exercised against women in the private and public sphere.” a resolution on economic issues, adopted unanimously, proposed that the “private-public” economic model be replaced by a “plural model” based on “the domestic economy” of family and gratuitous or volunteer services, the “social economy” of non-profit community or cooperative agencies, in addition to “private undertakings... that agree to function in accordance with collective (social, environmental, etc.) rules,” and a “public, state and parastate” sector providing equal and accessible services to the entire population. these positions differed substantially from the explicit anti-capitalism of the ufp’s program. the most contentious issue among oc members was the national question, and it was not resolved until the last oc national meeting in october 2005, when the 300 delegates voted overwhelmingly in favour of quebec sovereignty, thus fulfilling a key condition for ufp consent to a merger. the coordinating committee’s position paper justified its position largely on the basis that there was no credible or workable perspective for a renewed federalism that would allow quebec the additional powers it needed in order to resolve its social problems, but insisted that the defining characteristic of the new party should be its “social agenda” (projet social) and not its position on the national question. the delegates then voted unanimously to join with the ufp to form a new pro-sovereignty party. just three days earlier, on october 19, a right-wing manifesto had been published by former pq premier lucien bouchard, some other prominent péquistes, and equally prominent liberals. entitled pour un québec lucide (for a clear-eyed vision of quebec), it castigated “big unions” and called for lifting the freeze on university tuition fees, raising electricity rates and consumption taxes, focusing on debt reduction, opening the doors further to private sector investment in public infrastructures and ending the “unhealthy suspicion of private business that has developed in some sectors.” the important challenges facing quebecers, it proclaimed, were declining demographics and increasing global competition from asia — not sovereignty. the manifesto reflected 18  option citoyenne, 2004. | 157 a strong rightward drift of both the neoliberal pq and its federal counterpart the bloc québécois.19 thus, while the traditional pro-sovereignty parties were shifting further to the right and some prominent péquistes like bouchard were retreating from their previous commitment to a sovereigntist perspective, there was a perceptible trend developing in the opposite direction on the left, which now tended overwhelmingly to see a sovereign quebec as the framework for its social agenda. during 2005 option citoyenne and the ufp participated in some common actions and published joint briefs on sustainable development and electoral reform. and in response to the lucides’ manifesto, they initiated a counter-manifesto, pour un québec solidaire, that garnered more than 2,500 signatures.a special convention of the ufp in november 2005 voted unanimously in favour of a fusion with option citoyenne, and in february 2006 the two organizations held a joint congress to establish the new party, québec solidaire. the founding declaration of principles defined it as a party “resolutely of the left, feminist, ecologist, altermondialiste, pacifist, democratic and sovereigntist.” it was an impressive achievement — uniting leading activists in the women’s movement, some prominent trade-union militants, grassroots community organizers and long-standing leftists around a project to build a new québécois political movement based on popular and national sovereignty grounded in general principles of solidarity with the oppressed and exploited. a work in progress québec solidaire celebrated its fifth anniversary in february 2011. how has it fared? the balance sheet is uneven. during its first year, québec solidaire’s membership rose from 3,000 to just over 5,000, about 50% of them women, but since then has remained fairly stable. the party has just over 70 local associations organized on the basis of their respective electoral ridings as well as some university campus sections. about one third of these associations are considered “very active,” another one third less so, while the remainder function only minimally.20 in the last 19  at its convention in october 2005, the bloc voted to support nato membership, an eu free-trade (and investment) agreement, and the development of a quebec army and air force that would participate actively in international “peacekeeping”, as in canada’s occupation of haiti. at about the same time, pierre dubuc, the left-wing spq-libre candidate, received barely 1% support in his campaign for the pq leadership. 20  information provided at the party’s fifth convention, november 2009. québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party 158 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times election, in 2008, the party nominated candidates in almost all of quebec’s 125 electoral counties, or ridings. québec solidaire strives for male-female parity in its structures and representation at all levels, and is headed by two “co-spokespersons”: françoise david, the party president, and amir khadir, currently its sole member of the quebec legislature, the national assembly. the party has an office with a small full-time staff, a web site and members’ intranet, and makes ample use of modern communications media such as twitter, facebook, blogs and videos. however, it has no newspaper, although this deficiency is partially compensated by various independent alternative media published by members and sympathizers of the party.21 the party lacks an internal discussion bulletin or email list, so there is little horizontal communication at the general membership level apart from organized pre-convention discussions, which are held in general assemblies in areas of greater membership density such as montréal and quebec city. a national (i.e. quebec-wide) policy commission is composed of a dozen or so theme committees, responsible for drafting papers and proposals for program development. a national women’s commission is composed of delegates from the various regions of quebec, and is charged with ensuring adherence by the party to the values of feminism. in the december 2008 general election, québec solidaire scored a major breakthrough. despite an undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system, it managed to elect a member to the national assembly. the election of amir khadir in mercier riding brought welcome media attention to the party. his effective interventions in the national assembly have given the party considerable media exposure, and he has been able to speak out on many issues not previously associated with the left.22 however, his high media profile and popularity — opinion polls recently rated him the “most popular” mna in quebec! — have not translated into corresponding support for the party as a whole. although some recent polls have attributed 8-10% or more support to qs among the electorate, the overall score of its candidates in the two general elections since its founding (2007 and 2008) has been just under 4%. a handful of individual candidates, including david, have won electoral scores of between 10% and 30%, however; in each such case they are well-known activists in trade unions or other social movements. 21  presse-toi a gauche, http://www.pressegauche.org/ (on-line webzine), à bâbord! http:// www.ababord.org/ (bimonthly magazine), and nouveaux cahiers du socialisme, http:// www.cahiersdusocialisme.org/ (semi-annual journal, which also hosts a webzine). 22  to see khadir’s interventions in the assembly (there are hundreds of them since his election), see: http://www.assnat.qc.ca/fr/deputes/khadir-amir-25/interventions.html. | 159 although it styles itself “a party of the ballot-box and the streets” — a party of mass action as well as elections — this has not been an easy balance to establish or maintain. the political context, at least until khadir’s election, has been a difficult one in which to find opportunities to establish a visible presence in quebec’s political landscape. as in other parts of north america, quebec experienced a general downturn in extra-parliamentary mobilizations after 9-11, with the notable exception of the massive antiwar actions prior to the iraq war. added to this was the political demoralization of many militants following almost a decade of neoliberal austerity under a parti québécois government that for many discredited the very idea of quebec “sovereignty” as envisaged by the pq. the trade union movement has suffered major defeats in the face of an antilabour offensive orchestrated since 2003 by the liberal government. the student movement has been relatively quiescent since a successful mobilization against tuition fee increases in 2005. although antiwar sentiment remains high, mass actions are fewer and smaller. thus, québec solidaire has had to build itself in a period of general retreat for the very movements that generated its existence. in addition, québec solidaire has found its attention, energy and finances absorbed by election organizing, often to the detriment of extra-parliamentary mobilization. in its first three years the party faced two general elections and more than a half-dozen by-elections. besides meeting the demanding legal requirements of a registered party, it had to find and train candidates, raise funds, and hold successive delegated conventions to cobble together interim election platforms. the 2007 election platform,23 was limited to modest reforms that (as the party admitted) could be implemented within the “neoliberal and provincial framework.” it featured proposals for modest social reforms, free education, a publicly-owned pharmacare (prescription drugs insurance) agency, repeal of antilabour legislation, electoral reform through institution of proportional representation, tax reform, nationalization of wind power and expansion of public transit. however, this platform did not even reflect the minimal basis of agreement between the party’s founding components. for example, it called for a constituent assembly to determine quebec’s political and constitutional future, but did not call for sovereignty or independence. 23  http://www.quebecsolidaire.net/files/25engagementsqs.pdf. summarized in fidler, 2006. québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party 160 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times the 2008 platform24 was much more elaborate. it called for “making quebec a country by way of popular sovereignty,” and included detailed proposals on language rights, intercultural secularism and international solidarity (for example, replacing free trade agreements with “new international treaties based on individual and collective rights, respect for the environment and a widening of democracy (such as the alba25).” but it also contained some notable omissions; for example, it opposed “canadian imperialist intervention” in the war in afghanistan but did not mention nato or canada’s other military alliances. in the 2008 election, more than half of québec solidaire’s 122 candidates were women — a first for a party in quebec and possibly in canada. the party was endorsed by the montréal council of the csn, and some candidates were endorsed by other unions. adopting a program in 2009 the party launched a lengthy process aimed at producing a formal program setting out québec solidaire’s proposals for a “democratic transformation of the whole of society over the medium and long term.” the program is distinguished from an election platform, which applies to a single government mandate, or an emergency program, a plan of action addressed to a specific context or issue.26 over a three-year period, culminating before the next quebec election, a series of delegated conventions are being held, each to debate and adopt sections of the program organized according to subject matter. the first convention, in november 2009, adopted resolutions on the national question, electoral reform, immigration policy and secularism. a second convention, held in march 2011, was addressed to the economy, the environment, and labour. other topics — health and social services, education, social and formal justice, culture, agriculture, and international solidarity and altermondialisation — will be addressed in subsequent conventions. under the complex procedure the party has chosen for conducting its program debates, initial written submissions by the members (or by “citizens’ circles” composed of both members and non-members) must 24  http://www.quebecsolidaire.net/files/qs-commitments-2008.pdf (in english). discussed in fidler, 2008. 25  alianza bolivariana para los pueblos de nuestra américa (bolivarian alliance for the peoples of our america), a progressive economic and social alliance for fair trade and mutual assistance initiated by venezuela and cuba, which now comprises eight countries of latin america and the caribbean. 26  see québec solidaire, 2009b. | 161 not exceed 800 words in length. the policy commission then compiles a “perspectives booklet” presenting concise demands based on what it considers the “principal orientations” in these submissions. these are discussed and amended or added to by qs local associations and general assemblies, following which the policy commission produces a “synthesis booklet” that arranges the revised demands by topic and, where appropriate, lists differing resolutions addressed to a particular issue as “options” (a half-dozen or so, in some cases) for debate and decision at the convention — first in topic workshops, then in plenary session, where delegates are limited to two or three minute interventions from the floor.27 at each stage the draft documents are published on the members’ intranet. (in the lead-up to the first convention, written contributions to the debate by individual members or groups of members were published on the qs web site; however, it appears this practice is no longer being implemented.) whatever the democratic merits of this procedure– and there are some, to be sure–it effectively precludes lengthier written contributions within the party structures that could outline a general strategic or programmatic framework on the given subjects and allow a broader debate among opposing approaches. as noted earlier, the party has no public or internal discussion bulletin or even an email discussion list that would allow such debates. the main topics for debate at the first program convention, in november 2009, were the national question and reform or creation of “democratic institutions.” the three hundred delegates agreed, by large majorities:28 that the quebec “nation” includes all residents of quebec, and is based not on ethnic origin but on voluntary membership in the political community, with french as the common language of public communication; this nation being composed historically by the successive integration of people originating from other communities, including the anglophone community. qs also acknowledges the sovereignty of “the ten amerindian peoples and the inuit people who also inhabit quebec territory,” and their fundamental right to national self-determination, however they choose to exercise that right. 27  in the most recent discussion, prior to the sixth convention held in march 2011, the policy commission received about 150 submissions. following publication of the perspectives booklet, members submitted about 600 amendments and new proposals or comments from about 40 local associations or committees entitled to representation at the convention. (introduction to the cahier synthèse–programme) this suggests that most of the internal preconvention discussion was on the basis of the perspectives document, with its succinct specific demands. 28  for a full report, see fidler, 2009. québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party 162 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times that “canadian federalism is basically unreformable. it is impossible for quebec to obtain all the powers it wants and needs for the profound changes proposed by québec solidaire.” a new relationship with the rest of canada can only be negotiated once the québécois have clearly established their intent and ability to form an independent state. that independence should be achieved through a process of participatory and representative democracy, through election of a constituent assembly composed equally of women and men, with “proportional representation of tendencies and the various socio-economic milieus within quebec society.” the assembly would conduct an extensive consultation of opinion and, following its debates, its conclusions — in effect, a draft constitution — would then be put to a popular vote in a referendum. these positions mark a major advance in the party’s understanding of the national question, when compared with the minimal agreement on this question at its founding. and they clearly delimit it from the pq’s sovereignty-association and ethnic nationalism, as well as its referendum strategy which limits popular input to a vote on a question negotiated between the parties in the national assembly. the convention also addressed another of québec solidaire’s founding “values” — laïcité, or secularism — basically, separation of church and state. this is a hot-button issue in quebec, where right-wing ideologues, narrow nationalists, and some leftists and feminists have campaigned in recent years against “reasonable accommodation” of ethnic minority practices. those particularly targeted include muslim women wearing “ostentatious symbols” of their religious faith such as the hijab, or scarf, which are deemed threats to national identity or challenges to women’s rights. the qs delegates ratified the party leadership’s concept of “open” and “intercultural” secularism and opposed proposals for state-enforced dress codes that would effectively outlaw the wearing of symbols of religious belief. debate continues in the party on some related issues such as the growing demand by many nationalists and feminists that the government adopt a “charte de laïcité,” a charter to control more generally the expression of religious beliefs in the public sphere. the convention also adopted progressive proposals on measures to integrate immigrants into quebec society and on democratic reform of electoral institutions. in regard to the latter topic, qs advocates a system of proportional representation that would elect 60% of mnas as individual riding representatives, the other 40% of the seats being allocated to the various parties in proportion to their respective shares of the popular vote. | 163 the second program convention, held in march 2011, focused on environmental, economic and labour issues.29 environment. the 350 delegates voted for a major turn to “green energy,” including: a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, and by 95% by 2050. abandonment of fossil fuels by 2030. opposition to carbon taxes, carbon trading and storage schemes, biofuels, and geo-engineering. “public control” over energy firms, defined as majority participation of the state up to and including 100% nationalization as needed. prohibition of any new hydro-electric development. production of renewable energies: solar, geothermal, wind, to limit to the maximum any supplementary resort to hydro-electricity. an end to all exploration and development of fossil fuels, such as petroleum in the gulf of st. lawrence (old harry), shale gas, and lng ports. elimination of quebec’s nuclear reactor system, and an end to the exploration and development of uranium mines. development of electrified transportation to ensure the accessibility, universality “or even gratuity” of public transit. support for a new, legally binding international agreement, and participation in the world movement linking climate and social justice. it was noted that this movement is inspired by the alternative peoples’ summit on the environment held at cochabamba, bolivia in april 2010. natural resources. the convention voted by large majorities that the mining and forestry industries should be placed under “public control,” with up to 100% nationalization “as needed.” in addition: all resource industries to be subject to strict environmental regulations, and no project to be approved without meaningful public consultation in the communities concerned and a veto by local or regional authorities over development plans. mining royalties to be increased and shared equitably between the resource region and the government. in the forest industry, elimination of laws allowing clear cutting and cutting in the boreal forest north of the 49th parallel. a reduction in disparities between natural and managed forests, and a need for prior agreements with the indigenous people in all regions under aboriginal treaties or land claims. fresh water, whether surface or underground, to be considered a 29  see fidler, 2011a. québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party 164 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times “non-commodified common good accessible to all but the property of no one,” with the state as guardian. water used by industry and businesses to be considered a “loaned” public property subject to royalties and post-treatment controls. trade union and labour rights. among the programmatic demands adopted by the convention — usually by large majorities, in some cases unanimously — are the following: constitutional protection of the right to join unions, bargain and strike, including the right to political and solidarity strikes (strikes for political objectives and in solidarity with striking workers and students). prohibition of lockouts, and strict controls on layoffs and shutdowns — including mandatory justification before a government agency, protection of company pensions, compulsory retraining and re-employment in similar jobs, etc. state assistance to employees wishing to form local worker coops when companies relocate. union rights for farmworkers and self-employed workers, and the right to multi-employer certifications. right of full employment in safe, stable, socially useful, ecologically sound work free of discrimination, with social protection in case of loss of employment, incapacity and ageing. affirmative action for women, disabled, visible minorities and indigenous. immediate reduction in the workweek to 35 hours, and “gradual” transition to 32 hours with no loss of pay, compensatory hiring and no speed-up in workload or pace. legal restrictions on the use of overtime work. an immediate increase in the minimum wage to the low-income (poverty) threshold for a person working full time, with a “gradual” increase to 50% over this threshold, indexed to the cost of living. this would mean a gradual increase from $10.66 to $15.99 per hour. expanded public employment in social services, construction, infrastructures maintenance and environmental clean-up. accessible programs for job retraining, free and funded by employers and government. virtually all of these demands have been raised by the unions and social movements; québec solidaire sees itself as their political and electoral representative. beyond capitalism? introducing the preconvention debates, the policy commission asked qs members to consider a question that goes to the very heart of | 165 the party’s conception of its overall objective: “as we work on our program, we should spell out the nature and limits of the system, and ask ourselves the following question: isn’t the capitalist system, based as it is on maximizing profit and irresponsible exploitation of nature, the main obstacle to social progress and a healthy relationship to the environment? we need a serious debate on the question so we can determine whether our social problems can be corrected by reforms that respect the logic of the system or if we need to adopt the perspective of going beyond the system.”30 this was also the question put by the québec solidaire leadership in a manifesto issued for may day 2009, entitled “to emerge from the crisis, should we go beyond capitalism?”31 the manifesto’s anticapitalist rhetoric met with a very favourable response in qs ranks.this defining issue was debated briefly during the preconvention period, although not in official party publications. some members argued that qs should remain a “rainbow coalition,” fighting “for immediate changes realizable within the framework of the present capitalist state and system.” others, however, argued for a more radical perspective: “ecosocialism,” and an explicit attention to “the class interests of the workers’ movement.”32 judging from the debates at the march convention, these questions remain open for “serious debate” in québec solidaire. in the plenary session on “general orientations,” delegates voted by a large majority for a statement declaring that “qs ultimately intends to go beyond capitalism,” and calling for a “plural economy” and “an eventual socialization of economic activities, based on a strengthened public economy (state-owned companies and nationalization of major enterprises in some strategic sectors), a greater role of the social economy (cooperatives, community-owned firms), and a controlled private sector, with much greater emphasis on promoting small and medium enterprises (smes).” no relative weight was assigned to any of these sectors. a number of delegates objected that many smes are low-wage sweatshops, the proprietors being bitter opponents of trade unions. their alternative motions were outvoted after brief debate. delegates voted as well that: nationalized enterprises are to be operated in a framework of national and democratic planning, with decentralized management including 30  québec solidaire, 2010, p.5 31  québec solidaire, 2009a. 32  for excerpts, see fidler, 2011a. québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party 166 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times representatives of employees, the community, and first nations where applicable. forms of self-management are to be promoted in place of bureaucratic oversight. economic growth must cease to be considered an objective in itself. a qs government will take immediate legal, regulatory, fiscal or other measures to discourage over-production, over-indebtedness, and overconsumption. the emphasis on the “social economy” is not surprising, perhaps, given the traditional prominence within quebec society of farming co-operatives, the caisses populaires (originally, parish-based credit unions), and similar service-based not-for-profit organizations, with selfdefined “social missions” and relatively democratic decision-making structures.33 the attention to the “domestic economy” reflects as well the traditions and roots of many qs members in the feminist movement and its recognition that many important economic functions of society go unpaid or underpaid relative to other economic sectors. however, many of these undertakings operate in low-wage ghettos, and they often serve to legitimize the privatization of public services. and although some sectors, as in the childcare industry, have managed to unionize, some major proponents of quebec’s “social economy” are heavily implicated in collaborating with the trade union-sponsored investment funds such as the ftq’s solidarity fund or the csn’s fondaction, which have served as a major economic and ideological bulwark for the conservative union bureaucracy.34 the “social economy,” as it actually functions in quebec society, is an integral part of its capitalist economy. and some of its components, such as the massive desjardins movement, a dominant player in retail banking and insurance in the province, are major institutions of “québec inc.,” the new francophone corporate elite. a packed agenda did not allow time for debate on important resolutions on banking and the financial industry — where some draft proposals called for complete expropriation — and taxation, where pro33  in quebec as a whole, the “social economy” comprises more than 7,000 “collective enterprises (cooperatives and non-profits)” employing 125,000 workers and accounting for 8% of the province’s gdp. see: http://www.chantier.qc.ca/?module=document&uid=871. a recent study of the “social economy” in montréal alone lists close to 4,000 establishments with $2 billion in revenues and employing more than 65,000 salaried workers (women occupying about 59% of full-time and 66% of part-time jobs). they encompass a wide variety of undertakings: housing cooperatives, child-care centres, caterers, domestic care agencies, as well as some major operations in the retail, finance and insurance sectors. see université du québec à montréal, 2008. 34  see, for example, neamtam,2010. | 167 posals included, inter alia, rejection of consumption taxes and radically shifting the tax burden from individuals to corporations. these topics were left for future debate and decision. a party of the ballot boxes... and the streets? aware that “politics” is conventionally viewed as electoral and parliamentary activity, québec solidaire has established itself as an officially recognized party under quebec law. since its founding, and particularly since khadir’s election in 2008, the focus has been increasingly on a strategy of building the party through the ballot box, to the neglect of extra-parliamentary action “in the streets.” a “development plan” adopted at a national council meeting, in june 2010, summarized the objectives for the next two years as “advancing our ideas in the population, gaining a greater presence in public debates, electing more mnas and appreciably increasing our percentage of the vote in the next general elections.” a draft resolution of the qs policy commission, still to be debated and adopted in a future convention, addresses “the relations between québec solidaire, the trade-union movement and the social movements in general.” the draft text outlines a strategy by which qs, “as a party and as a government, should seek to strengthen the capacities of the social movements, encourage their unity in action and participate in them on the basis of a program of social transformation.” it proposes that qs members who belong to the various social movements be encouraged to “network” within the party — that is, coordinate their activities within the unions and other movements around a strategy of reciprocal reinforcement of the movements and the party while respecting “the organizational and political autonomy of the social movements.” this draft text addresses an important lacuna in québec solidaire’s activities. québec solidaire works alongside the unions and some social movements in a number of coalitions, such as the pro-independence conseil de la souveraineté. but its modest campaign in relation to the public-sector unions’ negotiations with the quebec government last year, labelled “courage politique,” failed to mount a clear defense of the unions’ demands and was largely confined to arguments in support of existing social programs and opposition to privatization. the party has no organized presence as such in the unions. as the policy commission puts it, the conquest of political power requires “a structured political organization whose program integrates québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party 168 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times the demands of the social movements and an overall projet de société [program for society].” and thus it is important to think in particular about the party’s relation with “the trade-union movement, which occupies a central place within quebec’s social movements.” the undemocratic first-past-the-post system in quebec (as in every other jurisdiction in canada) poses some formidable obstacles to a new party with radical ideas facing a hostile mass media in a multiparty environment. québec solidaire promotes a detailed proposal for a system of proportional representation, but recognizes that there is no early prospect of its adoption. with this in mind, the party leadership asked delegates to the march convention to consider whether qs should seek electoral agreements with other parties under which each party would agree not to contest certain ridings in which the other stood a better chance of electing its candidate. two options were on the table: (a) a possible tactical agreement with the parti québécois and/or the verts (a small green party); or (b) a possible tactical agreement with the verts alone, a “strategic alliance” with that party being deemed conceivable if based on the global greens charter, but ruled out for “practical reasons pertaining to internal decisions of the verts in quebec.” after an intense debate, the delegates rejected any such alliances, despite appeals from both amir khadir and françoise david, among others, in support of either option. opponents noted that such alliances would blur québec solidaire’s programmatic differences from the other parties, particularly the pq, and in any case were impractical — the pq is apprehensive of the growing popularity of qs among many of its traditional supporters, and pq governments have always resisted implementing any form of proportional representation. the vote also reaffirmed the members’ determination to build québec solidaire as an independent left-wing political alternative to the parti québécois. a ‘country of projects’ the unexpected surge in support for the new democratic party in the may 2 federal election, and the sharp decline in the bloc québécois vote,35 have underscored the volatility of the quebec electorate and stimulated hopes in québec solidaire, which does not run for federal office, for major gains in the next provincial election. it has also given 35  the ndp took 43% of the popular vote in quebec, electing 59 of the province’s 75 mps. in 2008 it had polled only 12.2%, electing one mp. the bloc vote fell from close to 40% in 2008 to less than 24%, and it elected only 4 mps, although it had elected a majority of quebec’s mps since 1993. see fidler, 2011b. the bloc’s collapse has touched off a profound crisis within the parti québécois and traditional pro-sovereignty movement: see fidler, 2011e | 169 a powerful boost to the party’s campaign “for a country of projects,” launched in mid-april of 2011 pursuant to a resolution adopted at its november 2009 convention.36 the campaign web site sets out the party’s vision of sovereignty and the approach it favours for achieving it. it also outlines the party’s approach to strengthening the status of the french language, especially in montréal. as the web site explains: “some of these projects can be achieved here and now, without affecting quebec’s constitutional status. however, the people’s ambition to realize many other projects will soon be hobbled by the total or partial absence of any latitude for quebec in areas as fundamental as the environment, foreign policy, foreign trade and even language. the full mastery of our destiny is therefore indispensable for achieving all of the projects of our dreams.” associated materials (all on-line) include a historical survey that dates a québécois quest for sovereignty back to the 18th century, a critique of canadian federalism and the failure of past efforts to reform the system, and a critique of “the impasse of the pq and its referendum strategy,” to which it counterposes québec solidaire’s proposed grassroots campaign to build support for sovereignty and, eventually, the election of a democratic non-partisan constituent assembly to adopt a constitution for an independent quebec. associated articles describe parallel “inspiring experiences” in bolivia, ecuador and, most recently, in tunisia. in the fall of 2011, the campaign will feature a tour of quebec by qs president françoise david and public meetings “on themes chosen by local party associations.” this campaign has the potential to boost québec solidaire’s profile as the left wing of the independence movement, with a “project for society” and a “country of projects” that points toward an anticapitalist alternative vision that breaks sharply with the pq-bloc strategy for independence — a strategy “based on alienation from canada,” and “fuelled by resentment,” as amir khadir described it in a recent analysis of the federal election results.37 21st century socialism? the rightward evolution of the traditional sovereigntist parties, the pq and bq, has left a very broad space to their left, one that québec soli36  see fidler, 2009. the interactive campaign web site may be accessed at: quèbec solidaire 2011. 37  le devoir, may 14, 2011. translated in fidler, 2011c québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party 170 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times daire aspires to fill. the party has managed to cast a wide net, encompassing leading activists from the women’s movement and community social action groups, veterans of previous but unsuccessful attempts to found viable parties of socialism and a marxist left, and some trade unionists. it cannot (yet) be classified as anti-capitalist, or a party of 21st century socialism as that concept has generally been conceived. but it is clearly much more than a québécois version of the federalist ndp, notwithstanding hopes expressed by qs leaders that the ndp will some day prove a valuable canadian interlocutor for quebec as it moves to independence. québec solidaire’s support of quebec independence means that its strategic framework is not limited to the existing form of the state; it opens the party’s imagination and perspectives to conceiving another, very different quebec based on the “values” or principles upheld by the party. this is not a line of march that facilitates accommodation with the canadian bourgeoisie or its quebec component. this independentism is one of québec solidaire’s strongest programmatic assets, offering it the potential to build a party that encompasses and represents the driving forces for progressive social transformation within the quebec social formation. there are other important features of the party, however, that underscore its sui generis nature in the quebec, and indeed canadian, political landscape and that offer hope for its evolution and development into a mass socialist party with deep roots among quebec working people. the party’s strong commitment to feminist principles has given it a compass in navigating through the shoals of the public debate over quebec identity and “reasonable accommodation.” despite some backsliding by the party leadership,38 qs has generally stood firm behind its support of “open secularism” in the face of harsh criticism from some on the left. the near parity of women with men in the party’s membership and structures is unique in quebec, and in canada. québec solidaire’s internationalism has been given limited expres38  qs has given critical support to the charest government’s bill 94, which would deny government-funded health care, education and child care services to all whose clothing prevents disclosure of their face, and would bar them from government and public-service employment. the bill patently targets a tiny number of muslim women who wear niqabs or burqas. and when some sikhs sought to appear before a parliamentary committee to express their opposition to bill 94, amir khadir added his vote on a pq motion, supported by the other parties, to exclude them from the national assembly because they were wearing their ceremonial dagger, the kirpan. this action is arguably inconsistent with the resolutions on laïcité adopted a year ago, mentioned in this paper. | 171 sion in its opposition to capitalist trade and investment deals, its opposition to the war in afghanistan, and in its sympathy toward progressive governments in latin america. the party has been harshly attacked in the mainstream media for its participation in the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against israeli apartheid, which the delegates to its november 2009 convention voted unanimously to endorse — a position that demarks québec solidaire from the ndp’s strong support of the zionist state.39 the party’s commitment to defence of the environment, if adhered to consistently, points it toward anti-capitalist solutions and the formulation of a radical ecosocialism that can link up with the worldwide movement developing in the wake of bolivia’s cochabamba conference of 2010. last but not least, the pluralism of québec solidaire, its desire to include within its ranks all those in quebec who wish to fight for another, better world, opens space for revolutionary socialists and marxists to join the party and to fight for their perspectives within the party as organized “collectives” democratically recognized by the party’s statutes although not represented as such in its leadership bodies. although they have maintained a rather low profile so far, some of these collectives could play a leading role in helping to bring theoretical understanding and clarity to the evolving debates on the party’s program and its activities. perhaps more importantly, they could help to overcome a glaring deficiency in the party: its lack of any coherent organized educational effort among its members and the larger left constituency. this paper has described in considerable detail the process of formation of québec solidaire because it has features that can serve as guides for other processes in other settings. the left groups that initiated the process recognized a shift in the objective situation — in this case the growing disillusionment with the pq, the new vibrancy of the women’s movement, and the appearance of a new altermondialiste movement mobilizing young people in opposition to capitalist oppression and injustice. they laid down a minimal set of principles for regroupment and consolidation: a strategic framework of striving for the independence of quebec; feminism, both programmatically and organizationally (as in male-female parity in party structures); pluralism, inclusion of all who agreed to support and work to implement the party’s “values” and general orientations, and respect for minority opinions including the right 39  québec solidaire was a strong supporter of the recent “boat to gaza” solidarity project, delegating a qs leader, manon massé, to participate personally on the party’s behalf in the international attempt to breach the israeli blockade of the palestinian statelet. québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party 172 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times of members with particular perspectives to organize within the party in support of their views; internationalism — placing anti-imperialism, solidarity and global justice at the core of the new party’s politics. and throughout, they were willing to let the process follow its own rhythm. as pierre dostie said, in describing the ufp’s approach to fusion with option citoyenne, the latter “had to comply with its own process, [so] we sought areas of convergence and we entered into a dialogue.” (note 15, supra) the goal is to build a party that encompasses and represents the leading militants in all those movements that are, in various ways, engaged in struggles against capital. the future of québec solidaire is closely linked to its ability to become more integrated in quebec’s broad labour-radical subculture, and to develop the “reciprocal relationship” with the trade union and popular movements that is outlined in the policy commission proposal. to the degree that it does this, the social and ethnic composition of the party will change. qs is still a “white” party, for example. neither its membership nor its leading bodies reflect the diverse ethnic and immigrant composition of quebec. it is no accident that its major achievements so far, the election of amir khadir, an iranian-quebecois with deep roots in the independence movement, was scored in one of montréal’s most ethnically diverse constituencies. québec solidaire cannot yet be characterized as an anticapitalist party. but it is fair to say that it is much more than a québécois version of, say, the federal ndp. some important features of the party underscore its sui generis nature and offer hope for its evolution and development into a mass socialist party with deep roots among quebec working people. references à bâbord ! (february-march 2005). négociations ufp-option citoyenne: go! go! gauche!. chantier de l’économie sociale (march 28, 2011). définition. retrieved from http://www.chantier.qc.ca/?module=document&uid=871. cooke, m. (2004). constitutional confusion on the left: the ndp’s position in canada’s constitutional debates. retrieved from http://www.cpsa acsp.ca/papers-2004/cooke.pdf dostie, p. et al . (2006) .quelques repères dans l’histoire de la gauche politique québécoise. (website of the union des forces progressistes, no longer available). dubuc, p. (2003). l’autre histoire de l’indépendance (éditions trois-pistoles, | 173 éditions du renouveau québécois). dufour, p. (2009). from protest to partisan politics: when and how collective actors cross the line. sociological perspectives on québec solidaire, canadian journal of sociology/cahiers canadiens de sociologie 34(1), page range. fidler, r. (december 10, 2003). quebec’s new united left party. retrieved from http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/28531 –-. (december 10, 2006). québec solidaire adopts a program for government. retrieved from http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=142 –-. (december 15, 2008). québec solidaire scores major breakthrough in quebec election. retrieved from http://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2008/12/qubecsolidairescores-major.html –-. (december 4, 2009). quebec left debates strategy for independence. retrieved from http://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2009/12/quebec-left-debatesstrategy-for.html –. (2011a). beyond capitalism? québec solidaire launches debate on its program for social transformation. retrieved from http://www .socialistproject .ca/ bullet/491 .php –-. (2011b). the federal ndp’s electoral breakthrough in quebec: a challenge to progressives in canada. retrieved from http://lifeonleft.blogspot. com/2011/05/federal-ndps-electoral-breakthrough-in.html –-. (2011c).more on that election. retrieved from http://lifeonleft.blogspot. com/2011/05/more-on-that-election.html –. (2011d). layton chooses supreme court, clarity act over ndp’s sherbrooke declaration. retrieved from http://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2011/05/layton chooses-supreme-court-clarity.html –-. (2011e). behind those resignations from the parti québécois. retrieved from http://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2011/06/behind-those-resignations-fromparti.html gagnon, h. (n.d.). les militants socialistes du québec. retrieved from http:// www.pcq.qc.ca/dossiers/pcq/histoire/lesmilitantssocialistes.pdf lavallée, j, (2011). du parti de la démocratie socialiste à québec solidaire,” in la gauche au québec depuis 1945, (bulletin d’histoire politique, 19, 2, winter 2011), p. 202-14. moreau, f . (1986) . balance sheet of the quebec far left. retrieved from http://socialisthistory.ca/docs/history/bilan-moreau-english.htm neamtam, n.. (2010). interview: integration with trade unions is key to the success of social/solidarity economy initiatives. retrieved from http:// www.chantier.qc.ca/?module=document&action=get&uid=1059 option citoyenne. (2004). document préparatoire à la rencontre nationale. retrieved from http://www.lagauche.com/lagauche/spip.php?article1078 parti socialiste du québec. (1966). programme 66. longueil: les presses québec solidaire: a québécois approach to building a broad left party 174 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times sociales. québec solidaire (2009b). définition du programme politique. retrieved from http://programme.quebecsolidaire.net/definition –-. (2009a). pour sortir de la crise: dépasser le capitalisme? manifeste de québec solidaire . retrieved from http://www.quebecsolidaire.net/ files/2009-05manifeste-crise.pdf –-. (2011). pour un pays de projets. retrieved from www.paysdeprojets.org –-. (2010). pour une société solidaire et écologique....cahier de participation au programme, enjeu 2.retrieved from http://programme. quebecsolidaire.net/documents/cahier_de_participation corrige.pdf#page=5 regina manifesto. (1933). title (italics) retrieved from http://www. saskndp.ca/assets/file/history/manifest.pdf université du québec à montréal. (2008). chaire de recherche en économie sociale . portrait statistique de l’économie sociale de la région administrative de montréal. retrieved from http://www.credemontreal.qc.ca/ publications/developpement%20economique/p ortrait%20 statistique%20economie%20sociale.pdf alternate routes a critical review editorial board : marybelle myers, erika van meurs distribution and promotion : brian mckee alternate routes is a multi-disciplinary journal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university in ottawa. it is not, however , restricted to work from students at carleton. we are interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or co-authored with faculty) in any university . editorial emphasis is on provocative analysis of contemporary issues and we particularly welcome papers dealing with debates within canadian society. the theme of volume 7, to be published in 1984 is class and ethnicity . ve also welcome critical responses to articles published and we occasionally publish review articles of important works. two copies of your typewritten manuscript should be sent to: alternate routes, department of sociology and anthropology , carleton university , ottawa, ontario, kls sb6 the editors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the carleton university community : the department of sociology and anthropology and its chairperson, gordon irving; the dean of social sciences , dennis forcese; the graduate students ' association and the sociology and anthropology graduate students ' caucus. we also wish to thank eva hegmann, jennifer davidson and kim mitchell for their assistance . subscriptions : individuals and institutions : $4.50. make cheques payable to a iternate routes . copyright 1983 alternate routes printed in canada editorial statement the papers in this special issue reflect both the versity of perspectives which have been applied to eminist issues and the wide range of substantive problems eing addressed. armstrong and armstrong examine quantitative data ollection by statistics canada. they argue that the onceptualizations and operationalizations employed reflect male bias. the authors suggest changes to remedy this ias, and in addition to this, emphasize the need for a reater use of qualitative techniques . in a second paper, written from a psychoanalytic erspective , hamilton contributes to the ongoing feminist ebate on the oppression of women by capitalism and atriarchy . saunders focuses on the roles of women during '.iffevent stages of post revolutionary china. she argues hat since revolution is an engineered process , the status f women is to some extent, determined by those who have the ower to direct this process . morris examines the history , structure and operation f the national action committee on the status of women (nac) lather than simply endorsing the popular view that the organization is elitist and ineffective , the author stresses he structural constraints which prevent it from realising it< pal cf representing azz women. in the last contribution , bourgeault deals v'.z'-. the ~ub$ugation of native (indian and half-breed) women in lorthern and western canada since the development of the k-r trade. be emphasizes that an analysis of the rac' . , colonial and class divisions which came into being is crucial por our understanding of the process of oppression cf native oomen . biographical sketches hugh armstrong obtained his b.a. (political science and history) and his m.a. (sociology ) from carleton university . his ph.d. thesis was recently 'deposited' at the universite de montreal . he now teaches sociology and humanities at vanier college , montreal. most of his research is conducted with pat armstrong on women and work. their book, a working majority : what women 'lust do for pay , was published earlier this year and they are at present revising the double ghetto canadian women and their segregated work , first published in 1978. he is a manuscript editor for studies in political economy . pat armstrong obtained her b.a. (sociology) from the university of toronto and her m.a. (canadian studies) from carleton university . her m.a. thesis formed the basis of the double ghetto . she now teaches sociology and women's studies at vanier college, montreal and is a ph.d. candidate in sociology at carleton university . her thesis is on women and the economic crisis. she has been on the executive of the canadian sociology and anthropology association and is now on the editorial boards of perception and of australia/ canada studies . ron bourgeault currently works for the association of metis and nor:status indians of saskatchewan (amnsis) and the gabriel dumont institute of native studies and applied research, regina, saskatchewan. his current research deals with the modern history of the indian and metis of western and northern canada. roberta hamilton received her b.a. (sociology ) from carleton university in 1963 and her m.a. from concordia university in 1975. she is now completing a doctoral thesis in humanities at concordia university and has just been appointed assistant professor in the faculty of arts and sciences at queen's university . she is the author of the liberation of women: a study in patriarchy and capitalism . cerise morris worked for several years as an activist in the women's movement in montreal , co-ordinating a women's centre and focussing on women ' s issues in social work practice . her graduate work was done at mcgill university where she obtained a msw in 1971 and a ph.d. (sociology ) in 1982. her research interest is in how the demands and issues of feminism get translated into policy. eileen saunders is presently employed as an assistant professor in the school of journalism, at carleton university , she obtained her m.a. at queen's and recently completed her ph.d. (in sociology) at carleton university. her doctoral dissertation was entitled feminist theory and socialist revolution. carleton university ottawa, ontario offers programs of study leading to the master's degree in • anthropology • geography • international affairs • public administration • social work • soviet and east european studies • canadian studies • management studies and to the master's and ph.d. degrees in • economics • political science • psychology • sociology generous support is available to qualified candidates. further information may be obtained from the graduate studies and research office, 15th floor, arts tower, carleton university, ottawa, ontario k1s 5b6. a critical review vol. 6, 1983 contents pat and hugh armstrong 1 beyond numbers: problems with quantitative data roberta hamilton 41 the collusion with patriarchy: a psychoanalytic account eileen saunders 61 socialist feminist theory: the issue of revolution cerise morris 87 pressuring the canadian state for women's rights: the role of the national action committee on the status of women ron bourgeault 109 the development of capitalism and the subjugation of native women in northern canada graduate studies in sociology and anthropology carleton university the department of sociology and anthropology offers the following programs of advanced study and research: m.a. and ph.d. degrees in sociology, with specialization in comparative social organization social demography ecology theory methodology m.a. degree in anthropology, with specialization in north american studies theory methodology information regarding admission requirements and financial support may be obtained from: coordinator of graduate studies department of sociology and anthropology carleton university ottawa, canada k1s 5b6 beyond numbers: problems with quantitative data pat and hugh armstrong using statistics canada as an example , the authors argue that statistical data collection must be sex-conscious where it is now sex-blind. it must take the different work, location , bodies and experiences of women and men into account . the theoretical assumptions behind the numbers must be examined from the perspective of women; the claim to truth and the monopoly of fact challenged. supported by examples from interviews conducted by them for other research , the authors go on to argue that qualitative techniques can expose the holes in, as well as complement and check, the data collected by more quantitative means. introduction as c. wright mills pointed out many years ago, "social research of any kind is advanced by ideas; it is only disciplined by fact" (1959:71). ideas, particularly the systematic organization of ideas into theory, are, however, too often forgotten in social research. facts are frequently identified with numbers and numbers with neutrality or, even, truth. this is especially the case when the numbers are collected by a state agency such as statistics canada. in this paper, we argue that numbers, and the methodology used to gather them, cannot and should not, be separated from their social context, nor from the ideas that direct their selection, toreover, numbers cannot be viewed as the sole, nor even necessarily the most accurate and relevant kind of fact. the inadequacy of numbers for a full understanding of the position of women is camouflaged by reference to "scientific" methodology, by the adoption of non-sexist language, by the use of similar questions for both sexes and by the tabulation, according to sex, of most data. but for the most part, women and men do different work, in different places, for different pay. given this segregation, as well as the different reproductive capacities of the sexes, many questions are women's questions, many answers are women's answers, many categories are women's categories, many omissions primarily affect women. from this perspective, we begin with a critical examination of statistics canada, the chief source of the numbers so often taken as the facts. explicit and, more often, implicit assumptions are built into the collection and tabulation of these data, assumptions which may serve to conceal or to distort important aspects of 2 women's work. moreover, some information which is crucial for understanding the nature and conditions of women's work is inaccessible to, or lost from, quantitative measures, however carefully structured the questions and explicit the ideas. building on this critique of statistics canada in particular and quantitative approaches in general, we go on to suggest how qualitative techniques can expand and correct our view of women's work, complementing and acting as a check upon information gathered by quantitative means. in conclusion, we recommend, first, that more funds be allocated to theory development, that is, to the ideas which advance social science research. secondly, we recommend that a thorough examination of the assumptions, methodology and presentation of data by statistics canada be initiated from the perspective of women, with a recognition of the sex-segregated nature of women's work. finally, financial support should be directed towards research which goes beyond surveys and the limited data available from statistics canada to connect these with the qualitative aspects of women's work, to the nature and conditions of their jobs in and out of the labour force. in what follows, examples from statistics canada are used only to illustrate the argument. a comprehensive and systematic examination of this important agency's approach still needs to be done. assumptions and concepts according to mills (1959:67), all empirical research involves "a choice as to what is most real." but the basis of these choices, the theoretical assumptions inherent in the collection and tabulation of data, are often obscure, sometimes even to the 3 statisticians themselves. as john irvine, ian miles and jeff evans (1979:5) explain in their introduction to demystifying social statistics : it is not enough, however, merely to make the case that statistical data cannot be interpreted without reference to their underlying theoretical assumptions. all data, whether produced in the course of academic research or by state bureaucracies, are structured by the conceptual framework that is applied as well as by the technical instruments used in their production. it is the precise nature of these practical and theoretical commitments that needs investigating for each set of data. while the technical instruments are usually clearly described in statistics canada material, the theoretical commitments are seldom discussed. few publications explore the assumptions behind the research or the specific selection of questions, responses and techniques of analysis. [1] this alone suggests a perspective which considers its theoretical approaches unimportant or absent, its methods scientific, and its numbers objective reflections of reality. as a result, it is not always a simple task to determine what is being measured and why, let alone what is being ignored and for what reasons. explicit statements outlining theoretical approaches are rare but an examination of concepts and how they are operational ised does reveal some of the assumptions behind the data. for women, probably the most obvious example is the definition of work: it includes working for wages, salary, tips or commission, working in their own business, farm or professional practice, or working without pay in a family business or farm owned or operated by a relative in the same household. "work" excludes housework or other work around the house, and volunteer work (statistics canada, 1982a :17). what statistics canada is interested in counting is not all the ways people spend their days or their energy, not how they survive on a daily basis, not how food gets to their tables, nor even how they improve 4 their standard of living. ch the other hand, interest is not limited to paid employment, to work that brings individuals money income. rather, the focus of concern is work which results directly in profit and exchange. as the guide to labour force survey data explains: the concepts of employment and unemployment are derived from the concept of the supply of labour as a factor of production measured over a short interval of time. the production referred to is in turn defined as those goods and services included in the national accounts (statistics canada, 1979:15). the interests served are not those of women, since the work most women do at home for their families, as well as the important volunteer work they do in hospitals, schools, playgrounds and a wide variety of other institutions disappears. this is not to suggest that counting housework or volunteer work would change the nature of that work. that they are not considered reflects the perspective of statistics canada. the omission indicates that there are assumptions behind the data, assumptions which produce a picture that excludes much of the work most women do and dramatically underestimates the labour involved in daily survival. less obvious than the assumptions about the kind of work that counts are the assumptions related to the structure of families. mien collecting data on households, statistics canada seems to assume that each household has one person primarily responsible for financial support, that this person is normally male if there is a man in the house and that women by themselves have the babies. here too, the concern seems to be with the connection of the household to the economy outside the home rather than with what happens within this domain. largely in response to feminist protests, statistics canada has dropped the term "head of the household" and replaced it with "person 1". for the 1981 census, respondents were instructed to: 5 choose one of the following as person 1: either tre husband or wife in any married couple living here either pertner in a common-law relationship the parent, where one parent only lives with his or her never-ferried son(s) or daughter(s) of any age if none of the above applies, choose any adult member of this household. but in spite of the introduction of non-sexist terminology, little change in the data was anticipated. indeed, alterations in other sections of the census helped ensure that this would be the case. according to the 1981 census dictionary : in 1981, the criterion for determining family type was changed. a new question was added to the census questionnaire to determine a person responsible for paying the rent, or mortgage, or taxes, or electricity, and is used to identify primary and secondary families. in previous censuses, the primary family was defined as the family of the head of the household. while we anticipate that in the majority of cases the person responsible for household payments will also be considered as the household reference person (person 1) , this will not always be the case (statistics canada, 1982a:63). research in the united states (vickery, 1979) and in canada (armstrong and armstrong, 1983) suggests that the income of employed women who live with men pays for food, clothing and services rather than shelter and energy. thus, the criteria selected to determine the family maintainer favour men, even though the actual amount allocated for mortgages, taxes and electricity may be lower than that spent on food (canada department of finance, 1981:13). the primary family, then, becomes another way of getting men beck as the head of the household. men's headship is further reinforced by the decision to record only one family maintainer. if respondents write in that these expenses are jointly paid, one will be selected by the statistician. maintenance, the census assumes, cannot be shared. according to a statistics canada spokesperson, it is not possible to obtain the financial contributions and expenditures of each member of the household 6 because "household income is not important data." not important for whom? once again, it is women's contribution which is the most likely to disappear. one aspect of the household, however, does seem to be recorded for women alone. census question number 37 asks: for women [emphasis in the original] who are married or have ever been married: how many children were ever born to you? furthermore, according to the 1981 census dictionary , "childless families refers to those families where the wife has reported that no children were ever born to her" (statistics canada, 1982a:62). biological reproduction does require male participation, ferriage is not required for conception. yet the census records the fertility of ever-married women only. wnile women always know how many babies they produce and while some men may be in doubt, the lack of male precision hardly seems large enough to warrant their exclusion from these parenting records. in the absence of a clear justification for this approach, it is tempting to assume that women's childrearing responsibilities — the social extension of biological reality — are the focus of concern. however, given that some men retain alone the responsibility for their children and given that some never-married women also keep their children, the data obscure actual child care arrangements. the same is true of the practice of counting only never-married children living at home.f2] divorced and separated offscrinq may, however, be returning to their parents' homes, seeking financial and emotional support as well as babysitting and other family care services. failing to record these dependencies, like the omission of data on the financial and work contributions of each member, hides the actual 7 economic relationship within the family. it also conceals the additional work such dependencies may mean for women. moreover, given the growing unemployment and inflated housing costs facing young people, it seems plausible that more and more young marrieds will be looking to their parents for financial support and for accommodation. statistics canada seems ready to provide little assistance in monitoring these growing dependencies. the conceptualisation and operational isation of work, maintainer, and fertility illustrate the importance of assumptions to findings, of choices to the selection of facts. the development of the problem, of the hypothesis, takes place at least as much before the information is collected as after statistics canada publishes its numbers. however, in the absence of explicit theoretical justification for these choices, it is possible only to speculate about the theoretical framework guiding the data collection. consequently, debate has focused on the techniques, which are explicit, rather than on the hypotheses, which are obscure. but, as e. p. thompson (1978:231) said of historical research, scientific investigation "consists in a dialogue between concept and evidence." wien one half of the dialogue is missing, it is difficult to evaluate the results. in canada, theoretical work has been divorced from, and has taken second place to, empirical research. both suffer in isolation. the theoretical assumptions behind the data should be brought to light for examination and the development of theory should be strongly supported as legitimate social science work. collection of data the methods used to gather data both reflect the assumptions behind the research and affect the information collected. techniques cannot be fully evaluated nor understood outside the social and economic structure or their particular historical period. who is interviewed , how they are interviewed, the information sought, the alternative responses offered and the consequences of the answers are all significant factors in the production of statistics. here, too, choices are necessary and the choices have important consequences for our view of women's work as is shown below. the point, of course, is not to argue that everything is relative; it is not to deny the existence of the 'real' world in some phenomenological sense. rather, it is to advocate theoretically-informed and sceptical caution in the use of data as we, quite reasonably, seek more reliable knowledge about the world. 1. deskilling harry braverman (1974) , in his perceptive analysis of work in the twentieth century, describes how the pursuit of profit has encouraged the separation of manual and mental labour as well as the progressive deskilling of both white collar and blue collar jobs. in these times of government restraint, a similar process seems to be taking place in the collection of statistics. many of the tasks are simplified to allow their completion by untrained persons. while the labour force survey continues to employ trained enumerators, the census now depends heavily upon self-enumeration. however, as statistics canada (1980a:14) points out in the social concepts directory , "the questions are usually phrased to be suitable for self-enumeration for a reasonably well-educated respondent." the assumption of "reasonably well-educated" respondents can be made neither about the population covered by the census nor about those included in the more comprehensive questions of the 1/5 sample. not only does this procedure encourage the simplification, and perhaps 9 even the omission of important questions, it also means that errors in the interpretation and responses to questions are much more likely. those many women who have not had the opportunity to learn to read and write one of our major languages cannot be sure that they are counted in (and many of those viio have, in previous censuses, earned money administering the questionnaire are counted out of those paid jobs) . 2. restraining legislation even if the respondents clearly comprehend the questions, they may be unwilling to expose their position to government scrutiny, in spite of assurances about confidentiality. according to the women we interviewed, a range of government programmes and regulations discourage them from reporting their employment and earnings (armstrong and armstrong, 1983). for example, veterans' allowances, disability pensions and welfare payments set a low maximum on family income. reporting employment and pay often means, then, a reduction in much needed benefits. low maximum earnings set for day care subsidies have a similar effect. for those relatively low-income families, the effective tax rate on paid employment may well be 100 per cent. and the income tax regulation wiich sets a low maximum on the amount a spouse may earn and still be claimed as a deduction also frightens some away from declaring their employment to any government representative conducting a survey. employers may discourage their employees from reporting income, wishing to evade regulations and contributions to government programmes. rules related to contributory plans such as unemployment insurance and canada/quebec ftension also encourage women to hide their employment, sacrificing their future and current protection in order to take home a little more money at the end of the week. many of these people are 10 unwilling to take the chance on promises of secrecy. that such factors can have a significant effect on data collection has not been entirely ignored by statistics canada. the 1981 census dictionary (statistics canada, 1982a :13) notes that tax changes allowing for the deduction of spouse's wages as expenses "may have changed the status of some self-employed persons from 'without paid help' to 'with paid help' if they decided to pay wages to their spouses." few of those disappearing from and appearing in the unpaid spouse category are male. that this hidden economy, this invisible workforce, is composed primarily of women is, of course, difficult to prove. our research suggests, however, that many of them are women who do hairdressing or typing at home, look after children in their ovn or other people's houses, scrub floors and do errands for pay, sew baby clothes and stick labels on bottles, or sell their sexual services on the street. it seems likely, then, that labour force data fail to capture many of the women vino work for pay, especially those who are employed in the lowest paid and least protected work. employers as well as individuals may be influenced in their responses by government regulations. for example, the statistics canada monthly publication employment , earnings and hours which provides the current information in this area, is based on employers' answers to survey questions. but laws related to minimum wages and equal pay, to hours and overtime, to piece rates and benefits may discourage some employers from accurately filling in the blanks. it should also be noted that the survey includes only those establishments with twenty or more employees. since many women are employed in smaller workplaces, this information may not only count some women inaccurately but also exclude entirely many of those in the lowest paid jobs. ii 3. sampling financial and geographical considerations frequently make sampling techniques necessary. however, important data can be lost through the choice of sample over comprehensive methods, or through the choice of a small sample size. when many people are in a category, they are accurately picked up by sampling techniques but the method is much less precise when few people fit into the group. with women highly concentrated in some occupations and industries and virtually absent from others, the use of samples in collecting labour force data in both the monthly surveys and the 1981 census means that some women will not show up in non-traditional occupations and industries, because the estimates are unreliable. trie female electricians in prince edward island, for example, are extremely unlikely to become visible, although the female professors in ontario have a better chance. 4. machine processing when large numbers of responses must be processed quickly, the tendency is to rely on those questions and responses which can be read by machine and easily categorised into neat tables. as c. wright mills (1959:57) pointed out, "the kinds of problems that will be taken up and the way in which they are formulated are quite severely limited by the scientific method. methodology, in short, seems to determine the problems." it is difficult, of course, to tell what is left out as a result of being difficult to measure numerically, or to determine the extent to which questions are structured by methodological as against theoretical considerations. but the two kinds of consideration are clearly linked, and the consequence is that we miss out on some important issues. for example, the absence of questions on the labour 12 process is perhaps a result of both theoretical and technical considerations. the absence of statistics on the nature and conditions of work influences our understanding of the employment situation of women since it is on the shop floor, and in the bank, the restaurant, the hospital and the grocery store that sex segregation and inequality become reality. 5. the wbrding of questions statistics canada argues in its social concepts directory , that "the key consideration to be borne foremost in mind, when constructing questions, is the viewpoint of the respondent with the needs of the survey sponsor in the background" (1980a:15). while the viewpoint of the respondent is certainly important, sponsor needs are seldom explicitly revealed to those using the data. moreover, it is not simply the viewpoint of the respondent which should be thought about but also the structural constraints influencing the answers. in developing the wording of questions, more than their clarity, brevity and simplicity should be considered; sex segregation of work should also be taken into account . the census asked, for example: "last week, how many hours did you work (not including housework or other work around the house)?" cxir research suggests that such questions are answered in a variety of ways, depending upon the nature and conditions of the work. women who work part-time frequently have short daily hours of steady work, with few if any paid breaks. the hours they report working are fully spent at the desk, behind the counter or on the line. with few, if any, paid holidays, the days per week they report may also not be comparable to those with full-time jobs. moreover, those who work in non-unionised 13 establishments often work without breaks, have short lunch periods and stay late to finish up. yet they calculate their hours from when they are required to be at work until the formal quitting time. not only are they not paid overtime, but they do not view these extra minutes as time on the job. finally, those who work in homes as domestics, babysitters, cleaners and piece workers normally have very long, but inaccurately recorded, hours. the point, of course, is that these part-time, non-unionised and/or home workers are disproportionately women. the recorded sex differences in hours worked are only in part the result of actual differences. they also reflect the way in which the question is asked and answered. to ignore the sex segregation of the labour force is to produce faulty data on issues such as hours worked. 6. excluded questions it is not only the questions that are asked but the ones that are not asked which should be considered in light of women's structural segregation in and out of the market. for instance, the monthly survey of employment, earnings and hours requests information on the total number of female employees as well as the proportion that are wage and salary earners. employers are not questioned, however, on how much they pay these female wage and salary workers. nor are they asked about turnover rates, about which people leave which jobs after what period of time for what reasons. once again, it is women who are most concerned about revealing wage differentials. it is women who are accused (in the absence of evidence) of having high turnover rates resulting from their low level of commitment to their paid jobs. fofriile people are asked about their formal education, they are not 14 asked about their skills. in assuming competence can be measured by formal certification, statistics canada fails to measure the actual skills people employ in their jobs. women's skills, in particular, disappear because as one woman explained to us about the requirements of her job, "it's what every woman knows how to do." furthermore, the absence of such a question means that there is no real assessment of the resources available for coping with the new micro-electronic technology. because these skills are new and constantly changing, many are learned on the job and cannot, therefore, be measured by questions on formal education. and many more women are learning how to use this equipment on the job than are acquiring these skills in credit courses. although fringe benefits are an increasingly important part of workers' incomes, the sex differences in this field are virtually ignored by statistics canada. various factors — such as the ineligibility of some part-time, salaried and young workers, not to mention the wage and salary basis of most benefits — may mean that female employees receive fewer rewards in this area as well. yet the monthly survey reported in employment , earnings and hours does not cover fringe benefits. and between 1967 and 1975 several surveys of labour costs in various industries were conducted and then jointly published by statistics canada and the department of labour, but with no data on the benefits by sex. finally, only in saskatchewan are workers' compensation records published by sex of claimants, and these figures indicate significantly lower claims for women (statistics canada, 1980b:27). in part because statistics canada produces so little information on occupational health and safety, it is difficult to learn just why this is the case. the failure to ask a question about relatives requiring special is care has a similar effect. information is collected on the number and ages of children but not on aging grandparents or disabled younger people who make up part of the "personal or family responsibi] ities" fulfilled by women as part of the invisible work that reduces their labour force participation. in general, by not asking these questions, and by not collecting information by sex, significant aspects of women's, and men's, work are hidden from view. 7. selecting alternative responses the data are not only conditioned by the questions asked, or not asked, but also by the choices of response that are offered. in the census question on major source of income, for instance, one choice was "working for wages, salaries, tips or commissions." that statistics canada asks employers answering their monthly survey to distinguish between wage and salary earners clearly indicates that these differences are seen to be significant, yet they disappear from the census, from what is supposed to be the more complete source of information. workers may well be concentrated by sex into each of these categories, but this is impossible to tell, given the choices offered. perhaps the problem is more obvious in another possible response to this question. the "other income from government sources" choice includes, "alimony, child support, periodic support from persons not in the household, net income from roomers and boarders, noninvestment income such as retirement income from abroad, scholarships, etc." (statistics canada, 1982a:24). by lumping together these diverse sources, statistics canada does not facilitate the analysis of income sources by sex and occupation. in not offering technological change as a reason for leaving last 16 job, the labour force survey is missing the opportunity to monitor the effect of micro-technology on employment. since the research to date (eg. menzies, 1981) suggests that women will be hit first and most, omitting this alternative conceals important factors influencing female labour force work. 8. denying history if the purpose is to understand what is happening to women today and what will happen to them in the future, it is necessary to examine the changes that have been taking place, to take an historical perspective that exposes the factors influencing these changes. but statistics canada makes such analysis difficult by failing to ask historical questions and by changing questions or categories. few historical questions can be found in the census. in the questionnaire distributed to the 1/5 sample, those designated "person 1" are asked how long they have lived in their current dwelling. everyone is asked where they lived five years ago. ever-married women are asked how many children were ever born to them. labour force information is collected only for the last year or at most for the last year and a half, and job search for the last four weeks. for personal history, then, the only information available from the census is ever-married women's life-long fertility, most people's residence change from five years ago, and some people's recent labour force experience. nor does the monthly labour force survey collect much historical data, although some occasional publications do look at labour force activity over time. for example, in 1976 statistics canada published earnings and work histories of the 1972 canadian labour force . based on the 1973 survey of consumer finances, the study reported data on male 17 and female earnings differentials and work history between 1967 and 1972. respondents to the sample were asked what their main activity was while not working for periods of one year or more, with "kept house, raised children" as one possible answer. they were not asked why they left their last job. the analysis of the data suggests that the higher turnover and lower wages reported for women were related to their decision to stay home with the house and children, to their choice of dropping out of the labour force to do their unpaid women's work. yet, since most women continue to do the housework and child care work whether or not they have paid employment, it seems unlikely that many women without a paid job would not be mainly keeping house and raising children. with the rare historical investigations based on such questions and alternative responses, it is difficult to find out what is happening to women over time and what factors influence these patterns. little, if any, information is available on the historical impact of new technologies, particularly of the micro-electronic technology now so important to women's work. nor is it possible, from statistics canada data, to examine the effect over time of different kinds of work on the health of men and women. it is also extremely difficult to relate alterations in the resources and structure of families to labour force changes. if the data followed some families, recording the hours, duration, type and wages of work for both spouses and for children, as well as their health situation, their skills and their reasons for entering or leaving specific jobs, it might be possible to understand the factors structuring people of different ages and sexes into and out of labour force jobs. without such information, any explanation is necessarily partial and superficial, focused on individuals outside their historical, familial and even much of their economic context. 18 changes in the collection and categorization of data also make historical investigation difficult. of course, the alterations may reflect primarily changes that are taking place in the labour force. this was the case, for example, in the separation of file clerks and receptionists from the secretarial category and in the new definition of part-time work (a reduction in weekly hours from less than 35 to less than 30). in other cases, the changes may result in part from new government policies and programmes. for farm workers, (statistics canada, 1982a: 12) : the data between 1971 and 1981 may not be strictly comparable because of small changes in definitions. females who were unpaid family workers, worked as farm labourers and did less than 20 hours of unpaid work a week were excluded from the labour force according to the 1971 definitions. these persons are now included in the employed labour force. cue to changes in the tax laws and census procedures, some persons formerly identified as unpaid family workers may now be classified as paid workers. the tax changes permitted for the first time, in the 1980 tax year, the deduction of a spouse's wages as expenses. this may have resulted in some changes in the status from unpaid family workers to paid workers. as well, census editing of this category was more stringent in 1981. some alterations, such as the switch from "head of household" to "person 1," may be related to pressure from feminist groups. but some changes seem unrelated to any of these concerns. for example, the census dictionary reports that: in all the 1981 tables on "occupation based on the 1980 classification", the 1971 "not stated" category will no longer appear. this category has been redistributed by imputation into new "imputed groups" within each minor group (statistics canada, 1982a: 37). since clerical employees, part-time workers, unpaid employed spouses, workers with unstated occupations and people not heading households are usually women, these new definitions and categories primarily affect the analysis of women's work. whatever the reasons for the changes, the need for historically comparable data should be a central concern. in 19 explaining the objectives of the labour force survey revision project, statistics canada (1977:19) indicated an awareness of the problem, noting a ...demand for new information on the dynamic aspects of the labour force to supplement the monthly "snapshots" the new survey provides, much more information is required on the gross movements between various labour force categories each month, along with somewhat longer term longitudinal data covering the six month period over which the respondents are surveyed. the problem is, however, far from solved. 9. comparing data sources the problem of comparable data is not confined to history. many government agencies and departments collect statistics but the definitions, categories, responses, techniques, time periods and tabulations are often different, making comparisons difficult. even within statistics canada, these differences sometimes exist. miile statistics canada is working to eliminate these discrepancies, some do remain, obscuring the actual situation of women at work. for example: for the unemployed and the not in the labour force groups, data from the labour force survey refer to the last job held by persons who have worked in the last five years. since no question is asked on the most important activities or duties in the job held, as in the census, the labour force survey may classify more persons to the "managerial" group on the basis of job titles than would be the case with the census (statistics canada, 1982a: 37) . itfiile the numbers are probably not large, the discrepancy makes comparison difficult. and once again, it is most likely women who are the extra persons classified by the labour force survey into the managerial group, since they are the ones most likely to have jobs that are labelled managerial but whose actual tasks would place them lower on the hierarchy of census occupational categories. 20 tabulation of data not only the collection but also the tabulation of data can influence the view of women at work. as statistics canada points out in its guide to labour force survey data (1979:13) "virtually any combination of questionnaire values can be cross-tabulated on request, subject to a 'reliability' criterion which is related strictly to the sampling variability and size of the estimate." however, such extra tabulations often cost money, limiting their access to those with research funds. and of course, the information available for tabulation is restricted by the problems with data collection cited above. furthermore, the tabulations that are published, since they are the most accessible, are the most widely used, especially by the media. thus, although most information is now collected by sex and could be tabulated for men and women, the published compilations form the basis for most of the public commentary on women as well as much of the research. these tabulations therefore deserve particular attention for the view of women they present. tabulations may both reflect and confirm assumptions about women. the proposed tables on census families to be drawn from the 1981 census are a case in point. according to statistics canada's products and services of the 1981 census of canada (1982b:32-36) , tables will be published on husband-wife families in private households by the wife's age and highest level of schooling. these are the only listed tables on husband-wife families in private households which use the wife's characteristics as the basis for compilation. data will be tabulated for these households by both the husband's and wife's highest level of schooling, labour force activity and age. the rest of the tables for these households will be compiled primarily on the basis of the husband/pa rent's characteristics. in particular, this is the case for 21 the income data which will be tabulated by husband/parent's age, highest level of schooling, work activity and period of immigration. that income tables are not based on the wife's characteristics indicates a particular view of women's place as well as reinforcing the perspective which sees the economic contribution of wives as secondary. perhaps their childbearing and childrearing responsibilities account for the concern about their age and schooling. the categories used in tables also influence the perception of women's work. the labour force survey's "managerial, professional, etc." category, for example, lumps together laboratory technicians and neurosurgeons, library technicians and full professors, managers of small shops and senior executives from general fotors.r3] trie wide differences in power and pay, as well as the sex segregation, disappear. indeed, the growth in the proportion of women in this category has helped to create the false impression that there has been a significant improvement in the position of women. in publishing tables by occupation and industry separately, the labour force survey data also creates the impression that women have been moving into prestigious management jobs and into traditional male fields such as construction work. cross-tabulations of industry and occupation data indicate, however, that, in 1980, three-quarters (74.8%) of female managers worked in the service industries while less than half (42.8%) of the male managers were employed there. in the construction industry, less than ten per cent (9.3%) of the women actually did construction work; over seventy per cent of the women employed in that industry held clerical jobs (armstrong and armstrong, 1983: tables 3 and 10). wien such cross-tabulations are unpublished, segregation is camouflaged. furthermore, change may be suggested where little has, in 22 fact, taken place. theory and methodology in quantitative research counting women in means much more than including a question on sex and tabulating the results separately for women and men. it requires not only an awareness that people come in two sexes but, also, a recognition that the experiences of women and men are segregated in many ways, that policies, programmes, concepts and questions have a differential impact on women and men, that some questions are women's questions while others ignore or denigrate their contribution. the intention here is not to attack statistics canada. indeed, it should be noted that statistics canada has been willing to alter some concepts to bring them more in line with the actual contributions of women and men. note, for example, its abandonment of the census policy permitting respondent's paternal ancestry only to be recorded. nor is the intention to draw up a shopping list of changes required in established techniques. the examples provided here are designed merely to illustrate problems with its methodology and thus to indicate that official data collection and the funding of research need to be re-examined if women's work is to be counted in. but to begin such a re-examination, it is necessary to start with theory, with the systematic organization of ideas, both because theory is the major way of advancing our understanding and because methodology is inseparable from the perspective which guides the choice of what is real. the assumptions behind the data should be drawn out for critical appraisal. however concretely the questions surrounding the collection and tabulation of statistical information are posed, the methodological answers must be theoretically informed if they are to be useful. in 23 order for statistical information to be improved, theoretical work, as well as theoretically informed methodological work, must be undertaken. this in turn entails that theoretical work be financially supported. in particular, problems of deskilling, restraining legislation, sampling, machine readability, the wording and avoidance of specific questions, the selection of possible response choices, the denial of history, the comparability of data sources, and the choices about what to tabulate and what tabulations to publish need to be examined from a theoretical perspective which takes the sexual division of labour into account. and that theoretical perspective itself needs to be refined. no matter how finely tuned and sex conscious the theory and techniques are, however, some information will continue to evade quantitative approaches, whether based on sample or universal surveys. some of the information collected through such methods, no matter how carefully the questionnaires are structured and the data collected and tabulated, may create an inaccurate view of women's work. at best, such techniques can produce only a partial picture of the daily working lives of canadian women. quantitative data miss, and may misrepresent, many aspects of women's experiences in and out of the labour force. in the final section of this paper, we draw on material and lessons learned from lengthy interviews conducted with women in working class jobs to argue that qualitative data are at least as important as quantitative data in developing an accurate view of women's work. qualitative research from horace miner's 1939 study of a french canadian parish to v>eg luxtor ' s 1980 examination of women's work in the home, qualitative research has provided valuable insights into women's daily experiences. 24 such studies are rare, however, in part because they are expensive and time-consuming, but mainly because they are considered somehow less legitimate than statistical analysis. as a recent letter to the public from the 1981 census manager makes clear, statistics canada views itself as producing "facts," profiles which are "useful, convenient, complete." and many social scientists would agree that these facts, these numbers, are more reliable and accurate than data collected from lengthy hours spent and conversations with women in flin flon. but the bias in favour of 'hard' data is seldom based on a rigorous comparison of the findings of quantitative methods with those of qualitative research, or of their value in explaining or predicting women's actions. nor is the bias often based on respondents' assessnent of the accuracy of the facts, on the ability of these facts, in lillian rubin's (1976:13) phrase, "to generate an 'aha' experience." nor is the bias gender-neutral , as pauline bart has so eloquently pointed out: we speak of hard data as being better than soft data, hard science better than soft science, hard money better than soft money. in the fifties, one was criticised for being "soft on communism." this is of course a male sexual metaphor, so since discovering this, i have substituted a metaphor based on female sexual experience and refer to wet and dry data (quoted in roberts, 1981:22) . the bias is not, however, simply a matter of metaphor. it reflects the priority given to the collection of some kinds of data, those which are easily counted, frequently repeated and amenable to statistical analysis. but, as feminists have long made clear, the personal is political. daily work and family relationships have a profound impact on work activity; physical and social conditions influence ideas and actions, lb leave them out — and many are difficult or impossible to include in sample survey and statistical analysis — is to create not only huge gaps in the data but, often, inaccurate information as well. 25 our experience in interviewing women about the nature and conditions of their work suggests that gualitative research provides a necessary complement to quantitative analysis because it can test the reliability of quantitative data, can collect information not accessible to survey techniques and can indicate areas that should be included in quantitative analysis. t4] 1. checking the facts keeping questions clear, simple and direct does not necessarily guarantee the accuracy of responses. because the approaches used in gathering qualitative information take many aspects of the individual's life and relationships into account, and because the less rigid and more informal style of data collection often encourages a more open exchange, these qualitative "facts" can frequently be used to test the results of quantitative research. interview procedures which are flexible, unstructured or partially structured, and wide ranging, permitting people to offer their own responses and views, frequently draw out quite different information than that collected through highly structured , official sounding questionnaires which allow only machine-readable choices. in our experience, direct questions may elicit responses which are often contradicted by information gathered through more probing and indirect techniques. for example, when we asked women if they knew of any health dangers in their jobs, some simply said no. yet, when describing in detail an average day on the job, various work related problems emerged. a clerical worker who uses visual display terminals (vdt's) in a trust company responded negatively to the health question but earlier had told us that during the day, "sometimes i'll go dovn to 26 the lounge and fall asleep, my eyes are so sore." a factory worker who offered a similar response also told us that, with her right foot operating the sewing machine, her right hand adding cloth, and her left hand guiding the material as quickly as possible all day to ensure a survival wage from her piece work job, her arms, feet and legs hurt: "sometimes when i come home, i can't make more job in my house." various explanations were offered for this discrepancy. they expect work to hurt, so sore arms, legs, heads and hands may not be defined as health hazards but simply as part of the job. many of the dangers women face are invisible and have a slow, cumulative effect. thus, they are less likely to be associated with the job than are the broken toes or burnt hands that men more often suffer. and a few do not want to think about the dangers, because they have to go back there to work tomorrow. wiatever the reasons for these seemingly contradictory responses, they indicate that simple, direct questions will not always reveal the simple truth. like the questions on health and safety, those on sexual harassment also suggest that direct questions provide only limited, or inaccurate, pictures of the situation. v^en we asked women if they had ever been sexually harassed, some had difficulty answering the question — even when examples were given — often, because they had come to accept this behaviour as part of the job. some defined such treatment as a problem only if they could not resist. one woman offered a very definite no to the question . when reminded, however, that she had said, in describing her work history, "that was something else — if you could keep out of the boss's hands," she explained that she had made it clear to "knock it off." therefore, she felt "you don't have to write a book about it." some said it was unlikely, given they worked with women only or had a lone male boss. what this evidence suggests is that, if a question on sexual harassment were asked of all employed women, there would probably be an overwhelmingly negative response because of the way women perceive and respond to advances and because many women are segregated into jobs where there are few men to do the harassing. i^oreover, if the only answers recorded were those given for this question — as is the case with most machine-readable questionnaires — then much of the counter-evidence would disappear. there are also often quite valid reasons for women to hide information from official government statisticians or from written questionnaires they fill out for the government . when we asked one woman for her age, she requested that the tape recorder be turned off so she could tell us her real age. her boss, she explained, thought her below retirement age. she could not live without her employment income and thus she could not risk exposure. this woman not only had our assurances that we would not link her age to her name, job or employer, she also lived in a large metropolitan area where any identification was extremely unlikely (as was the possibility that her employer would read a book on work by a couple of sociologists writing for the canadian advisory council on the status of women) . however, she was not alone. barely making ends meet, one woman collects a small unemployment insurance cheque, takes in foster children, babysits on weekends and does odd clerical jobs while the children are in school. although willing to exchange this information over coffee in the kitchen, she made it very clear that, since her survival was at stake, there was no way she would write that information down on a questionnaire. thus, even on such seemingly straightforward questions as age and employment, 28 the facts may not be accurate. the qualitative date can help us become more accurate and become more sceptical about the supposedly hard data. in other cases, the answers given may be literally correct but hide a significantly different reality. one waitress, for instance, is paid the required minimum wage, but her employer then forces her to sign the cheque back to him. the taxes are paid, the law is obeyed to the letter; however, her real income is low and irregular. a similar problem is evident in data on segregation and wage differentials. as one clerical worker explained, the difference in wages can be justified on the basis of different job categories but conceals both segregation and unequal pay: ("there used to be] rnale accounting clerks. they promoted all those male accounting clerks to management and left the women in accounting, and they hired nothing but women in accounting since. so they're hiring women to work for lower jobs than the men and the excuse is that [the men] have a family. women don't have families? plus, when there were men in accounting they always got paid higher than the women and the excuse they use is because they're men. women don't live any more cheaply than men... it was a pretty sick excuse but to fight it wasn't worth it. ..the manager was called in and twe] bluntly asked , "why are the men getting paid more than us?" we're not saying we're doing any more work but we are equal in work, we should be equal in pay. we know as much, maybe even sometimes more. he said, "if the men are married and if they're not, men always get paid higher." i couldn't believe it! at least find a decent excuse. don't use that one on me. whatever the excuse, such inequality is unlikely to appear in the survey data. rather, evidence for equality and for conformity to the law is more likely to show up. these examples are designed to illustrate how qualitative data can be used to check quantitative data. but this methodology can do more than suggest where the figures do not measure what they are supposed to measure. this approach can also indicate where there are holes in the data, where information could be, but is not, collected in 29 quantitative research. 2. exposing the holes whole areas of women's lives remain virtually untouched by government and other quantitative research and it would be impossible to do an inventory here. in the course of our interviews, however, many conditions were exposed which could be measured by existing quantitative techniques, and thus serve to illustrate the oft-complementary nature of these approaches. for example, some women indicated that they could not join the company pension plan until they had been with the organization for a specified period of time or until they had reached a certain age. general questions on persons covered by pensions overlook policies like these which have the effect (and perhaps the purpose) of preventing women from adequately protecting themselves in their old age. the wcmen we interviewed also drew attention to sick pay policies. simple to measure but seldom enquired about, sick leave is not covered by most labour codes. for many women, "if you sick, you sick." no work means no pay. given their meagre earnings, most simply cannot miss work if they are ill. "clerks cough in your face because they can't afford to be sick. i know i do." the significance of workers' health to the transmission of disease was recognized many years ago when special labels were attached to homework goods to warn potential customers that they might spread contagious diseases from workers' homes (johnson and johnson, 1982:47). but today, women who are not well may process food, sew clothes, care for other people's children, and serve meals in restaurants because they cannot miss a day's wages. gnce again, the interview response indicated an important issue easily measured by quantitative methods but all too often ignored. 30 another example of the contribution qualitative research can make to the collection of quantitative data comes from the investigation of procedures for promotion. niany of the women we interviewed told us, "i don't think there's such a thing there as promotion," suggesting that enquiries into women's upward mobility should begin by examining whether or not such movement is possible. although many people have pointed out that women are often locked into dead end jobs, few have exposed another difficulty mentioned by these women. some refused promotions because a move to a higher position meant little, if any, increase in power or pay and because it would eliminate the only satisfying aspect of their work — companionship with other women. oie woman turned down a promotion because it meant working at night, with more responsibility and virtually no increase in pay. here too, questions on what rewards are offered by promotion, if promotion is possible, are not difficult to get at through survey techniques but the researcher must first be aware of such possibilities. in quantitative research, the problems revealed are likely to be technical. in qualitative research, the difficulties exposed are more frequently substantive, suggesting new areas for investigation, ones which are often amenable to quantitative techniques. the examples of pensions, sick pay and promotions serve to indicate some ways qualitative data can improve the collection of facts in quantitative research, and can aid in the selection of what is real. 3. collecting efeta inaccessible to quantitative techniques qualitative research can do more than merely indicate ways to improve quantitative techniques. it can provide complementary (or contradictory) information that brings life to the statistics, fills in 31 the numbers and explores relationships, moreover, such methods can look at the meanings of experiences in a way that cannot be measured by multiple-choice questionnaires that generate machinereadable answers. they can permit the investigation process to be an exchange which allows those being studied to participate actively in the description and definition of their lives. how could a survey of worker skills take into account the kind of conscientious performance revealed in a fish packer's description of her work? for my job, i don't think it requires too much skill. it takes energy. it takes common sense to try to keep doing your work properly so it doesn't slow down production. if you have no interest and no common sense... you know that the bosses are going to stop you and the machine is not going to take it and there you're going to stop production. there are some girls that just don't care. i'm not saying i'm perfect 'cause i'm not and i do lots of blunders myself but i do respect my job. after all, it can do something to your job if you're not going to pack good fish that the public will want to buy, and if the people are not going to buy from the plant that's going to be bad for your job. or the pride of a home worker who is paid by the number of skirts she sews? my sister-in-law says, "i don't know how you work so fast," but i have to do fast. everything i have to do fast. on thursday i have 74 skirts. my husband said, "you don't finish this week." i said, "sure".. . .and i finish on friday night. or the sound of an office? the noise level is unreal because we have— 11 phones in a small area. they ring constantly. all of the typewriters going... 10 typewriters and usually 4 or 5 more for the casuals. ..by 3 o'clock, i can't stand it and my nerves are really bad. or the reality of working on a line? basically, i stand there all day and slash the necks of the chickens. you make one slash up on the skin of the neck and then you cut around the base of the neck so the next person beside you can crop it... the chickens go in front of you on the line and you do every other chicken or whatever. and you stand there for 8 hours on one spot and do it. on a regular day tfive people] can do maybe about 30,000 fryers. 32 or the dangers that many women face? one day the propane dryer caught on fire. they never evacuated the plant. they just tried to put the fire out. i think when a propane dryer that size catches on fire, it's a big fire. the plant should have been evacuated. that's my opinion now. and there are people working right by that dryer. if you die, you die. if you don't, you get the work done. such things cannot be easily measured, tabulated and fed into a computer for the analysis of statistical relationships. it is not only descriptions that emerge from qualitative analysis. often, some of the most important processes at work, some of the most potent forces, are missed in quantitative data collection. for example, the implied threat of firing and the awareness of a huge reserve of women desperately searching for work have a powerful influence on women's performance on the job. according to one clerk: to get fired from office staff, all you gotta do is look sideways. it's got to the point where everybody knows that you've got to do your work to keep your job. there's always another person ready to take your job. close supervision also has an impact that is difficult to measure. a supervisor of proof-readers ... ...used to time us with his stopwatch behind your back... you can imagine what it was like. i came home on friday night and my husband, he had to give me two good slaps in the face because i was knocking my head on the wall. i wanted to kill the foreman. the structure of work, too, strongly influences performance, as a chicken slasher explained: basically, the reason that you don't make too many mistakes is because one job relies so much on the other. if you don't slash it and if they can't crop it, then it can't be drawn. so you can't miss a chicken because then further down the line they bring it back or they holler, "hey, what are you doing?" so this pretty well means you stay awake. these relations with other workers both ensure that the pace is maintained and help women get through the day — that is, if they are permitted to talk: 33 if you were standing there all day and you wouldn't talk, well you go right bananas— a. friend by me, she always says, "for goodness sakes...say something, say something," 'cause it breaks up the time if you have a little conversation. you're not allowed to stand and talk but. ..you can talk as much as you like as long as your hands go. such research can also show that women are not merely passive but actively participate in shaping their working conditions. from the women who adjust the thermostat when the boss is not looking, to the women who develop elaborate strategies to vary their tasks and eliminate boredom, there are many examples of women individually resisting the structure of their work. women also get together to slowdown the line when it is going too fast, or to force changes in their work environment, as was the case in one plant: when i'm working, it is hot. ..we don't have ventilation enough. where i'm working, there are three big fryers and the fat is hot and when that fish strikes the fat, it gives smoke. and there's times when you go in there, you can just about see through the place. now, we're inhaling this all day. now, we don't have no ventilation. there's no windows. when you're in there you don't know if it's raining, snowing, hurricane or whatever outside. when you go in, you're there; when you come out, then you see what kind of day it is. they have fans and half the time they are not working for the simple reason that it's the fat that clogs them. we have walked out already and i was the head one on our line too. i told my supervisor, "there's no way i can stand it in there. i'm choking and i cannot stand it. i'm going out 'till it's cleared up." and the girls followed us... they got it fixed the next day. although justified by the conditions, this woman was frightened: "t*y heart pounded like you'd never believe. i hate doing anything like that 'cause i'm scared of getting fired." it was not her sex but her lack of job security that had discouraged this kind of resistance in the past. qualitative research can also capture, in a way that is impossible in quantitative investigations, what it is like to be an employed woman. for example, the women we interviewed reported that they were frequently asked to do extra tasks that were unrelated to 34 their job description but fell into that all too broad category "women's work." as a woman hired to fill mail orders explained, "i hate dusting and cleaning. i don't go to work to do these things. i can do them at home. ..yeah, i do it." most women go home to yet more of these same kinds of tasks: all i have to say is that a working mother, when she has to work and leave her kids at home, it's pretty hard whether she's married or single. a mother that works and raises a family has to be pretty strong, very strong. i really feel sorry for the mother with the little kids — have to bundle them up in the morning and take them to the day care center and pick them up again at night. i wouldn't go through that again that way. it's too hard. in our research, we were unable to explore the relationship between home and work in any detail, but the recent case study of an east coast fishing village (cbnnelly and maceonald, 1983) clearly illustrates the importance of relating domestic and wage labour to each other and to the wider economic structure. such relationships and such an integrated approach are missing from quantitative data which usually measure individual activity, for short periods of time, in a restricted context. and quantitative research misses what technological change means to the workers: "before, everyone was a typesetter. now everyone works on a typesetting machine." "i went through tests two years ago and they found out that my hearing is poorer in one ear than the other. mien i started there they told me that my hearing was very good." perhaps even more elusive are the silent, psychological firings that never appear in the statistics. che long-time secretary described how she was refused training on the new electronic equipment, how her job slowly disappeared, how she spent hours at her desk with nothing to do, how she had to stay at her desk in order to get paid and how staying there meant it was difficult to look for alternative work. finally she quit and was therefore not defined as a victim of the new technology. 35 qualitative data are often dismissed as anecdotal, as unscientific, as unrepresentative because they do not include a statistically selected sample of the target population. researchers often respond to this criticism by resorting to statistical analysis alone or by transforming their information into numbers. komarovsky (1962:204), for instance, takes a group of fifty-eight marriages and tells us that "among the older couples. . .only three per cent of the less-educated husbands" complained that "we have nothing interesting to talk about." yet, the way our examples resonate in the lives of women suggests that they tap many shared experiences. they may provide not only a fuller, more humane, picture of women's daily lives, but a more accurate one as well. conclusion theory, statistics and qualitative data are all necessary for rigorous research. theory guides the selection of the real, the techniques employed to expose it, and the explanations used to understand it. statistics can help to establish the broad outline of the picture, a picture that can only be fully developed with the aid of qualitative data. we have argued that, like all methodologies, those of statistics canada reflect a perspective, one that better serves the interests of men and the economy than those of women and the home. available data do not permit a thorough examination of the sex-segregated labour force; they offer little assistance in examining the labour process, health and safety, hiring, promotion, wages and benefits, job security — to mention only a few issues — as they affect women. the priorities of the agency thus allow only a partial, and sometimes distorted, view of 36 women's work. we have also argued that statistics are not all they have been cracked up to be. the way data are collected and tabulated, the way questions are asked and not asked, the way government programmes and policies are structured and the way in which history is considered, all influence the data and in the process often leave out and sometimes misrepresent the position of women. qualitative data, while not free of faults, can provide an effective complement to quantitative techniques, checking the results, suggesting alternative areas and methods for research and filling in the numbers with the actual experiences of women. what is required is, first, a more thorough evaluation of statistics canada from a perspective which acknowledges that, given the sexual division of labour, most structures, processes and programmes have a particular impact on women. second, more theoretical work should be done to aid this critical evaluation and to promote the development of other ideas. third, more funding for qualitative research is necessary if we are to understand, and change, what it is like to be a woman in canada today. notes * this is a slightly revised version of a paper appearing in mary kinnear and greg mason (eds.) , women and work: proceedings of a conference on data requirements to support research into women and the canadian economy (winnipeg: university of manitoba institute for social and economic research for the social sciences and humanities research council of canada, 1983). our thanks to pat grainger, bob stirling and maryanne webber for comments on the original version. [1] statistics canada does explain its methodology but the justification 37 for particular kinds of techniques rests on the assumption that these are primarily scientific and practical rather than theoretical issues. the tools are not related consistently to the theoretical framework. for example, statistics canada's methodology of the canadian labour force survey (1977:23) offers the following justification for the use of a stratified sample: though the main advantage of stratified sampling is the possible increase in efficiency per unit cost in estimating the population characteristics, stratification also introduces considerable flexibility in the sense that, depending upon the information available, sampling and estimation procedures may differ from stratlm to stratum. further, in a continuous survey like the lfs, stratification provides an added flexibility of updating or redesigning the sample of a specified stratum or groups of strata, without affecting the design in the remaining strata. see also the tool-kit orientation of statistics canada's (1980a) social concepts directory . for a contrary example, however, see kim farrell7^ (1975) article on the impact of keynesian and post-keynesian developments in economic theory on labour force survey measures. [2] the census does publish data on additional persons in the household (see, for example, statistics canada, 1982c:table 6) but the nature of this relationship and, particularly, the consequences for the household economy and domestic labour are difficult to determine from such figures. the assumption seems to be that only never-married children are dependent. [3] some lfs occupational data are now available at the minor group (three-digit) level of detail, at which the broad "managerial, professional, etc." category is broken down into 26 distinct occupations. shortcomings remain, however. this information can be obtained in unpublished form only, and, because of the 'reliability' criterion, as part of only a few, general cross-tabulations. [4] the 65 interviews included in our study (armstrong and armstrong, 1983) were conducted by 7 researchers selected for their expertise in interviewing techniques, knowledge of feminist issues and familiarity with a particular area of canada. the interview schedule was designed as an outline of areas to be covered rather than as specific questions to be asked. interviewers were instructed to gather as much information as possible on each area, to record conversations on tape and to view the work site. we wish to acknowledge the assistance of sonja greckol , sharon kirsh, judy mosoff , shirley pettifer and martha tracey in the interview stage of the project. 38 references armstrong, pat and hugh armstrong 1983 a working majority . ottawa: supply and services canada. canada department of finance 1981 economic review . ottawa: supply and services canada. connelly, m. patricia and martha maceonald 1983 "women's work: domestic and wage labour in a nova scotia community", studies in political economy 10. farrall, kim 1975 "theories, concepts and the art of measurement: economic theories' relationship to the labour force survey concepts," notes on labour statistics 1973 (statistics canada cat. no 72-207) 20-28. ottawa: information canada. irvine, john, ian miles and jeff evans (eds.) 1979 demystifying social statistics . london: pluto press. johnson, laura c. and robert e. johnson 1982 the seam allowance: industrial home sewing in canada . tbronto: the women's press. komarovsky, mirra 1962 blue-collar marriage . new york: random house. luxton, meg 1980 more than a labour of love. three generations of women's work in the home . tbronto: the women's press. menzies, heather 1981 women and the chip: case studies of the effects of informatics on employment in canada . montreal: the institute for research on public policy. mills, c. wright 1959 the sociological imagination . new york: grove. miner, horace 1939 st. denis: a french-canadian parish . chicago: university of chicago press. roberts, helen (ed.) 1981 doing feminist research . london: routledge and kegan paul. rubin, lillian breslau 1976 worlds of pain . new york: basic books. statistics canada employment, earnings and hours , monthly (cat. no. 72-002). ottawa: supply and services canada. the labour force , monthly (cat. no. 71-001). ottawa: supply and services canada. 3.9 1976 earnings and work histories of the 1972 canadian labour force . (cat. no. 15-55"). ottawa: industry, trade and commerce. 1977 methodology of the canadian labour force survey 1976 (cat. no. 71-526). ottawa: industry, trade and commerce. 1979 guide to labour force survey data (cat. no. 71-528). ottawa: supply and services canada. 1980a social concepts directory (cat. no. 12-560). ottawa: supply and services canada. 1980b workmen's/workers' compensation: social security, provincial programs (cat, no. 86-501). ottawa : supply and services canada. 1982a 1981 census dictionary (cat. no. 99-901). ottawa: supply and services canada. 1982b products and services of the 1981 census of canada . ottawa: supply supply and services canada. 1982c 1981 census, volume 1. census families in private households . (cat. no. 92-955) . ottawa: supply and services canada. thompson, e.p. 1978 the poverty of theory . london: merlin press. vickery, clair 1979 "women's economic contribution to the family," in ralph e. smith (ed.) the subtle revolution: women at work . washington: the urban institute. 40 socialist feminist theory: the issue of revolution eileen saunders this paper explains the reproduction of sexual inequality in socialist systems with the argument that an emancipated role for women is strategic during the phase of revolutionary mobilisation but, given the productive priorities of the new state, equality will be downplayed during the period of consolidation. the case of china is used to illustrate the tension between female productive and reproductive roles and to support the argument -hat, since revolution is an engineered process, female status is partially determined by the priorities of the engineer . introduction socialist feminists are beginning to arrive at some common understanding of the role of women under capitalism, at least at a general level of analysis. we agree that we must focus on the interconnections between patriarchal relations and the historicallysituated interests of capitalism, supporting our arguments with research detailing the relationship between the exigencies of evolving capitalism and the socio-political position of women. the position, however, on the relationship of women to socialism is less clear. while juliet mitchell was calling for the "articulation" of our relationship to socialism over a decade ago, our response has been uneven, at times contradictory, and, above all, limited at the theoretical level. as with the proverbial donkey, we dangle the carrot of socialist revolution in front of our collective noses, with the implicit knowledge that its consumption may alleviate the hunger without eliminating it. we know that which we negate, but are not as sure of that which we affirm. but, that said, we still fall back on a precarious "after-the-revolut ion-trust" fweinbaum, 1978:8) . accordingly, confronted by feminists who point to existing sexual inequalities in various contemporary socialist states, the response, though varied, contains one unifying theme, the attempt to 'explain avey' the inequalities. this occurs in several ways: ch the one hand, there are those who would deny that inequality persists in socialism, citing bourgeois propaganda, liberal distortions, and north american ethnocentric standards as the sources of such conclusions. essentially, they argue that female emancipation can be demonstrated through a comparison of pre-social ist and socialist female status. oi the other hand, there are those who would argue that 62 persisting inequality is a consequence of cultural lag, the remnants of a feudal tradition which will eventually disappear. finally, a similar strand focuses on technological underdevelopment, arguing that full emancipation must await sufficient development in the forces of production. wiile obviously different in terms of their focus of analysis, each category of response assumes a processual transition from the pre-revolutionary period through to the post-revolutionary period. in other words, there is an implicit acceptance of the linear rationality of socialist revolution; namely, that ideology of women's role developed during the concrete revolutionary process is a pre-figurative version of the post-revolutionary regime's policy toward the role of women in the 'new' society. underlying this assumption is an expectation of gradual elevation in female socio-political status as the socialist regime extends its control over the entire society. if the expectation remains unrealized, we are locked into either examining the prefigurative version (i.e. where did engels go wrong?) or arguing that the transitional process has not fully evolved (i.e. give us another ten years to get the 'kinks' worked out) . essentially, the motivation for this paper lies in a dissatisfaction with the socialist feminist response to the feminist dismissal of socialism. what appears to have happened is that socialist feminists have felt we must either deny the 'accusations' or argue for patience in the face of impending cultural/economic development for the 'accused' regime. wiat i would argue is that neither approach sheds light on the role of women within a socialist revolution, lb deny the reality of the phenomenon is as meaningless as to apologize for history by promising a better future. 63 the real theoretical problems are to account for the context of the participation of women relative to men, and to articulate the mechanisms of change . female emancipation under socialism is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon; it is a process which has taken on different dimensions in different historical periods. it is precisely this fluctuating nature of progress and retrenchment in women's issues under socialist revolution which must be explained, lb accomplish this, one must look at the historical process involved in the development of socialist revolution. in other words, we must use history to determine the mechanisms of change, not merely to "compare the present to the past and see progress" (sidel, 1974:123). a starting point in this task is to treat as problematic the assumption of a processual transition from prerevolutionary ideology to post-revolutionary praxis. in other words, i will begin by treating as analytically separate the period of revolutionary insurgency and the period of post-revolutionary consolidation of power. the problem is to examine the interaction of the revolutionary party/state exigencies in each period and policies concerning the productive and reproductive roles that women play in each period, d] hopefully this approach will avoid the error of treating ideology as determining praxis, by arguing that historical material realities necessitate a praxis which may have little to do with the ideology of liberation. in the following, i will attempt to suggest how one can proceed to investigate the interaction of socialist revolutionary requisites and policies regarding women, and how one can use the 'model' to make sense of certain developments in the chinese revolution. 64 revolution: the process and the product as suggested in the introduction, the analysis of socialist revolutions must take account of two distinct phases: the process of attempting seizure of the incumbent state apparatus; and the process of consolidation of the new state apparatus (in marx's terms, the insertion of a 'dictatorship of the proletariat') . [2] the problem is that there is a void within marxism in terms of a political theory which addresses either process in any detail (see miliband, 1977 and boggs, 1977) . although there is a general framework with which to approach the issue of socialist revolution and transition (i.e. the notion of a proletariat achieving self-anancipation with the aid of an organizing party) , the problem of how, and the problem of transition to a new stage was never fully worked out by marx. the emphasis on the historical inevitability of the transition has subordinated the question of how a revolutionary movement actually brings about the process. this problem becomes even more acute when an industrial proletariat is either weak or non-existent, and when capitalism is at an early stage of development (and often inserted from outside) . the general framework, as mapped by marx and engels and modified by lenin, seems even more remote in these cases, cases which become important vshen one looks at the growth of socialist movements in the third wbrld. the fundamental question becomes: how does a revolutionary socialist movement build socialism under those conditions? in other words, what is required of the organizing revolutionary party? and , how can those requisites affect policy toward women? i turn first to the process of seizure of power. 65 a. phase of insurgency lb begin, one can isolate two clear tasks of a revolutionary party at this stage. first, the movement, through the direction of the party, must seize effective control of the state apparatus from the incumbent elite. thus, through force , the movement can remove a regime from power. this is essentially a military question concerning the strategic mobilization and deployment of armed forces. i am not concerned with the relation of this task to the role of women, other than to point out the necessity of replacing labour power displaced by military mobilization. second, the movement, through the direction of the party, must destroy loyalties to the old regime. this task is essentially a question of dealing with the impact of traditionalism, an obstacle which cannot be dealt with by force alone. as mliband (1977:47,50) argues, it involves a "battle for consciousness": the problem, for victorious revolutions, is to prevent tradition from corroding them and ultimately defeating them from within. . .traditions are sustained and mediated by a network of particular institutions, which are actively involved in the performance of a process of transmission. it is in terns of this task that the relationship of women to revolutionary goals may be understood. what role do women play in the 'institutions of tradition' and how may a revolutionary party overcome this obstacle? a significant contribution can be made to this set of questions by drawing upon the work of gregory massell (1974). massell's intention was to study a ' revolution-from-above' in this case, the soviet union's extension into central asia (between 1919-1929), with the following questions in mind : ...how and to what extent, political power may be deliberately used in the revolutionary transformation of societies, especially those we call 'traditional' societies; conversely, how, and to what extent, traditional structures and life styles may serve as obstacles to engineered revolution, (p.xx) 66 the problems faced by the soviets in central asia were typical of traditional society: no industrial proletariat to speak of and the minimal presence of a capitalist mode of production. massell (75, 76) argues that their solutions essentially broke down into two possible responses: on the one hand, the use of force to 'excise' the traditional elites and coerce the population into compliance and, on the other, the discovery of "a weak link in society, a relatively deprived and hence potentially subversive stratum susceptible to militant appeal, a surrogate proletariat where no proletariat in the real marxist sense existed". both responses were used by the soviets in central asia, but what is interesting for the issues at hand is their perception of the weak link and its strategic contribution to the subversion of traditionalism. through an analysis of soviet documents, massell (76) demonstrates that women in these traditional moslem societies were defined as "crucial actors" whose mobilization would severely weaken the key institutions. this plan of action obviously assumes that class position was not the sole basis for expression of social conflict; rather, patriarchy vested in a range of authority relations was a key element (87-88) . chce the decision to mobilize women was taken, the task of the revolutionary party became to "maximize female discontent" and "channel" it into directions optimal to the revolutionary movement (massell, 1974:131-132). the source of the discontent was fairly clear; a quick scan of female status in traditional moslem societies gave clues as to the potential tension inherent in their roles. thus, the 'payoffs' for women in mobilization were the wide range of citizen rights not 67 previously open to them (ranging from rights to education to protection from sentence of death for illegitimate loss of virginity) . the payoffs for the revolutionary movement were not as obvious. the links between the mobilization of women and the demise of traditionalism were more implicit than explicit. this is exactly where the significance of tessell's argument to the issues raised at the beginning of this paper emerges. he articulates those linkages by demonstrating the expectations the soviets expressed through their policies and action regarding women. his analysis illustrates the leverage gained by the soviet state through the strategic use of women to destabilize the traditional regime. briefly summarized, the "payoffs of female mobilization" are (133-181): 1. liberation and humanitarian implications: the moral legitimation of the soviet movement on humanitarian grounds become an important rallying point for both appeals to foslem women (who gained personal benefits) and for the recruitment of cadres to work for the cause. 2. implications for traditional authority relations: the role network links between authority, kinship, lineage and male superiority become vulnerable when the political cohesion afforded through the female role is removed. 3. implications for kinship and community: the increased opportunities to women, the liberalization of divorce, and the stress on public participation subordinates local traditional loyalties based on clan, family and custom ties. in addition, the disruption of kinship control over sex and marriage strengthens loyalties to the new regime among women and young people. to undercut primary social units and induce 'fragmentation' makes individuals more accessible to mobilization and the society more open to penetration. 4. implications for religion and custom: to challenge the legitimacy of religious control over daily life through the subversion of islamic custom regarding women is a key to weakening the overall control of these religious institutions and their elites. 68 5. implications for property relations: the importance of the links between customs involving the female role and certain 'institutions of property* (arranged marriage, bride-price, etc.) suggests that mobil izat ion of women can weaken patterns of property controlthis is compounded with challenge to lack of control over property, including land. moreover, the new accessibility of poor males to marriage increases the latter' s attraction for the new regime. 6. implications for recruitment of labour and technical cadres: the mobilization of women involves the provision of a large, previously untapped labour pool which increases the scope of economic development and the optimal productive potential of the society. 7. implications for recruitment of political cadres: the recruitment of indigenous cadres through appeals to moslem women is useful not only in expanding party influence but also in their serving as prefigurative models of the role of women in the new society. 8. implications for revolutionary potentials abroad: this theme, more historically tied to the nature of the soviet 'satellite' system, involves the expectation that the ofttern set for women in central asia could serve as a revolutionary model for societies on its borders. the importance of massell's analysis to socialist feminists lies in his focus on the strategic use of feminist issues both to weaken the traditional regime and to strengthen loyalties to the emerging regime. again, this is not to say that 'liberation' motives played no part in their policies on women, only that these were secondary to the priorities of gaining a foothold in the society. this fact becomes even more apparent when massell documents the retrenchment and, even, reversals in policies of mobilization within two and one half years of their origin (1974:322-389). however, it is concerning the problem of explaining the retrenchment that i think massell fails. he notes that the "imperatives of insurgency are not easily reconciled with imperatives of incumbency" 69 (1974:407-408) but, when faced with the elaboration of the latter imperatives, he falls back on the idealist argument that the threat posed by radical policies of liberation to male identity , vested in tradition, created a situation of tension which was unhealthy for a regime seeking stabilization. wiile one cannot ignore this dimension of resistance, to give it causal status is, i think, misleading. it obscures the question of what set of conditions emerges when a revolutionary party is transformed into a legitimate state apparatus. it is necessary to specify the conditions under which the 'payoffs' became too costly. to do that one needs to question the role of the state in socialism, its tasks, and how they interact with the role of women in the new regime. in other words, is the new regime forced to retrench its position on women (for reasons of resistance, cultural lag or whatever) or, are there payoffs to the socialist state for retaining or reproducing particular elements of patriarchal relations? b. phase of consolidation/development as i discussed earlier, there is a lack of analysis by marxists of the role of the state in socialism. the explanation of the socialist state apparatus cannot be found, though, by merely equating the state's role in capitalist and socialist states as some convergence theorists would seek to do. the conditions within which the state operates cannot be ignored. collective ownership of the means of production and the absence of an appropriating class cannot help but have an effect on the concrete operations of the socialist state. vfriat then can one say of the requisites the socialist party faces at this phase? on a general level, what is required is the replacement 70 of the seized state apparatus with a new organ of planning and control and the replacement of engineered separation from old regime loyalties with popular support and loyalty to the new regime. moreover, it is important to recognize the broad constraints on the state in terms of its ability to meet those requisites. ch this point, miliband's discussion of the 'functions' of a state is incisive. essentially, he argues that every state must carry out the following functions, although the conditions of doing so will vary (1977:90): 1. the repressive function (the state must maintain social order within its boundaries) 2. the idealogical-cultural function (the state must engineer and maintain consent to the form of the system) 3. the economic function (used in the broadest sense, the state must sustain the population and foster productive growth) 4. the international function (the state must foster and protect the 'national* interest in international matters) the important question is how the 'nature' of socialism affects the role of the state in carrying out these functions. while it is fairly clear how the capitalist state operates as a class instrument (although we may debate its degree of autonomy) in the performance of these functions, the matter is complicated in the analysis of socialism by its economic context. as miliband (1977:114, my emphasis) notes: . . .the collectivist character of the society precludes it from being such an instrument .. .instead, the state may be taken to 'represent' the collective society or system itself, and to have as its function the service of its needs as these are perceived and defined by those who control the state . the role of the party/state (in socialism the terms are realistically interchangeable in terms of actual control) is, then, to define needs and the strategy for dealing with them. this is not to suggest that the state becomes an instrument for bureaucratic class 71 privilege although one cannot deny that privilege can accrue in this manner. rather, the state is still constrained by the "rationality of state action" in a socialist context; i.e. "statefostered economic growth... and statefostered provision of social services and cultural developments" (miliband, 1977:113-114). but, a factor which _is significant is the degree of power wielded by the apex of the socialist state in the interpretation of needs and allocation of resources to meet them. this does not imply a purposeful conspiracy of those individuals who hold the reins of state power but it does recognize the place of the state in intersecting historical material conditions through planning direction and implementing policy . certainly, one must recognize the genuine role of mass parties in socialist states, but these are parties which are "distinguished by their pyramidal structures, with an extreme concentration of power at the top of the pyramid" (miliband, 1977:115). lb return to the issue of women in this process of consolidation and development: the above discussion focuses attention on the interplay of the historically situated material conditions which socialist regimes inherit; the role of the state in intersecting the material conditions and the necessity of growth and provision of services; and the policies regarding women in the consolidation of socialism as a reflection of the conditions proceeding from the first two factors rather than from a prefigurative ideology or their role in the insurgency phase. my argument is that to talk about women's relationship to socialism is a complex matter. it requires that we first look at the conditions of taking power , its requisites and the strategic role women can play, and, secondly, look at the conditions of replacing and consolidating power , its requisites and the strategic role women can 72 play. this mode of analysis does not assume the party/state as an a_ priori monolith. quite the opposite. it suggests, to rework an old marxist adage, that socialist parties/states make history, but not under conditions of their own choosing. in other words, socialist ideology concerning women does not necessarily transform into socialist praxis towards women. case application: china i have been attempting to suggest that a focus on the stages or phases in the building of socialism in traditional societies and on their parallel requisites can lead to a better understanding of the unfulfilled promise of socialism for women. i would now like to suggest how one might make sense of particular developments in china with respect to policies regarding women. cbviously, in a paper of this scope, i cannot mount a full historical analysis of the role of women in china from the prerevolutionary period through the present. what i will attempt is a selective discussion of the broad policies of the chinese communist party (c.c.p.) relevant to the role of women. i will focus specifically on the phase of insurgency and the phase of consolidation/development. a. the phase of insurgency keeping in mind the two periods of alliance between the c.c.p. and the guomindang nationalist party (1923-27 and 1938-45), the important periods of insurgency are 1927-37 and 1945-49. tne period of 1927-33 is important as the time during which the initial collectivist soviets were established as rural bases in central and southeast china. they are especially important as a 'testing ground' for development of party policies regarding women, policies later expanded in the liberated 73 areas of northern china following the long march of 1934. mule there are many policies of significance in the insurgency period, those regarding marriage are of particular relevance. i will focus on these policies, and also make brief reference to labour and land policies. two key marriage policies in the insurgency period are the ferriage regulations (1931) and the marriage law (1934). t3] both policies contained an emphasis on: 1) freedom of choice in marriage by individuals involved 2) freedom of choice in divorce by individuals involved 3) registration of marriage and divorce with local party officials 4) responsibility of the male in divorce action to provide for wife and children (the latter remaining in custody of wife) the law of 1934 seems to have taken a qual ifed stand on divorce. [4] the restrictions placed on women who were seeking divorce from males serving in the red army are particularly interesting since such a suit required the husband's consent. as croll notes, several documents appeared during this period viiich stressed the difference between freedom and 'absolute' freedom in marriage and divorce. this was, apparently, a response to negative reaction to the law (1978:195) on the part of peasants. vrtiile recognizing that the implementation of the law was uneven, what can we say about its links to revolutionary goals at large? following is a brief summary of what i think are some of the important linkages: (i) the c.c.p. policies on marriage most certainly reflected liberation and humanitarian themes. their recognition of the impact of such practices as marriage, bride-price and widow suicide on women as individuals became an important inducement for the feminist organizations in china at that time to join with the communist cause. 74 (for discussion of this engineered alliance, see croll, 1978:117-152). (ii) the impact of the marriage law on traditional authority relations is particularly significant in china where a women was subject to three authorities in her lifetime: that of her father, her husband, and her son. the granting of unprecedented female rights disrupted that entire role network. with respect to the attack on an arranged marriage system, the law significantly affected the practice of the land-holding classes to use marriage as a mechanism for social mobility (see wolf, 1969:107). the disruption of traditional authority is particularly evident with respect to the role of confucian ideology in sustaining a hierarchy of authority. at the root of the confucian system of 'proper relations' was the notion of patriarchy, vested in the dominance of the male 'yang' over the female 'yin.* indeed, to challenge the legitimacy of this domination was to challenge the whole confucian system of authority relations. (iii) the granting of equal rights to women in marriage and divorce seriously undermined the control of the kinship system over such processes. in so doing, it undermined a crucial link between the peasants and the ruling class; namely, the clan system. as barrington moore notes (1966:207), peasant conservatism in feudal china can largely be explained through the extended kin groups, the clan. it was the one binding link between ruled and ruler and it was determined by patrilineal descent. to 'equalize' women as partners in a freely-chosen marital arrangement (including the retention of maiden name) is a direct challenge to the lineage system and the control exercised by the clan. this is even more significant when the locus of 'approval' is transferred to the c.c.p. through registration of marriage and divorce. the local officials had significant discretion in the recognition of 75 such arrangements. also important is the fact that it was the middle and upper class members of a clan who really controlled the clan itself, generally because of the importance accorded to literacy as a requisite of political poter (wblf, 1966:108-109). thus, the undermining and subordination of clan authority to party control was a blow against class authority as well. in this manner, radical reform in marriage custom provided important leverage for the c.c.p. in breaking the strong clan ties, ties which often encompassed entire villages. in addition, the new accessibility of the sexes encouraged the loyalty of poor male peasants (known as 'bare sticks') vho previously could not afford brides, and of young people in general. (iv) the impact of the marriage law on religious tradition is important with respect to the place of confucian ideology in sustaining traditional authority, as discussed above. not only did the law i challenge the legitimacy of confucian beliefs and values in relation to i women, it extended the challenge to the fundamental axis of filial duty j and to ancestoral worship (again based on patrilineal descent). (v) the links between the marriage law and property relations are quite clear. the former fundamentally challenged the tradition of females as property to be used and disposed of at will by father or husband. in outlawing arranged marriage and bride-price, it took away significant control from fathers. in liberalizing divorce, it eroded the control of husbands over their wives. in both cases, it increased the accessibility of women to the revolutionary movement, a significant consequence vhen a party is seeking the quick mobilization of individuals for revolutionary tasks. in addition to marriage policies, the linkages of land and labour 76 , reform policies to female mobilization are significant. the land reform laws[5] formulated during the period of the early soviets, withdrawn during the 2nd lhited front and expanded during the civil war period, contained one important theme, the equal right of all individuals to land allotments, and went so far as to issue separate deeds to husband and wife to specify the share of each. the impact of this law was clear in one respect. redistribution of land on an individual basis rather than on a family unit basis broke the village network apart at its base by undermining the crucial link between property and kinship and forging a new link between the individual and the c.c.p. thus, while c.c.p. documents of this time contain explicit reference to the equation of land reform and female liberation (see eavin, 1976:26-27) the more obvious consequence was the subversion of the traditional property network. this becomes clearer when one notes the refusal of the c.c.p. to extend allotments to all 'landless' women. class position of the husband was a determinate boundary. policies regarding the labour of women in the insurgency phase contained one dominant aim: the mobilization of women for the war effort. in a society dependent upon labour-intensive agriculture for subsistence, the ability to recruit military forces was directly tied to the ability to provide for the dependents left behind. tack of financial resources for 'welfare support' leaves but one choice, to replace the lost labour power. this was the primary role of chinese women in the revolutionary process, engaging in support activities for the red army. they were not recruited into combat activity. we know, for example, that only fifty women went along on the long march of 50,000 (salaff and terkle, 1970:82). in contributions other than agricultural labour, their tasks were 77 consistently of a domestic nature. this selectivity of participation was reflected in the issues dealt with by the women's congresses of this period. davin summarizes the major subjects of debate of the 1933 women's district congress as: enlarging and giving aid to the red army, caring for dependents of the latter, learning to plough, and selling personal valuables to finance the movement (1976:26). issues such as literacy, health care, footbinding, and feudal marriage were relatively ignored by these 'ffminist' organizations in the pursuit of the party priorities. for those feminists, like ding ling in 1941, who protested the subordination of these questions, the party response was that sexual liberation was already established and further feminist action was harmful to the cause (see davin, 1976:36). apparently, the strategic use of women had its limitations, imposed by party priorities. trie general labour law of this period, modelled after the soviet union labour code, did not have much impact on women's labour due to its emphasis on industrial workers, a significant minority in the liberated areas. it _i£ significant as a prefigurative version of protective legislation restricting women's labour, limiting certain industries, night work, and 'heavy' labour (see croll 1978:263-264 and davin 1976:31). also included was a policy to arrange day care services at the female's place of employment so that she might better organize her dual responsibilities. the above discussion provides, i think, some clues as to the relationship of women and revolutionary requisites in the insurgency phases in china. certainly, there were payoffs for chinese women and to ignore this fact is to do a gross injustice to the real successes of the revolution. trie equally interesting question, however, is the degree to which these payoffs were in keeping with party requisites in seizing 78 power and combatting traditionalism. the admittedly brief summary of certain policies and their links to revolutionary goals seems to suggest that feminism had its value, but only to a point. the retrenchment in divorce during the civil war, the emphasis on the war effort over particular female-specific reforms, the segregation of women from active military participation, and the extension of domestic-type tasks indicate some of the boundaries of patriarchy that the party was not willing to cross. b. the phase of consolidation/development as elaborated earlier, the essential requisites of the socialist state in this phase are the fostering of economic growth and the provision of necessary services to the population. these are carried out under the restraints of particular material conditions which the state intersects through the implementation of policies defined as necessary by those in control of 'problem perception 1 . to understand the role of women in the chinese socialist state, one must first examine the conditions under which policies regarding their role emerged. again, there is a significant body of literature addressing various developments in post-revolutionary china which time does not permit me to pursue here. rather, i will attempt to summarize what seem to have been the major shifts in policy regarding women. i will restrict the time period in question to 1953-1960, for reasons involving the 'statistical blackout' of 1961 and policy shifts and factional struggles in china since 1960 which reflect the competing models (the "two roads to socialism") which emerged in the first decade. two quite different approaches to economic development emerged in china following the demise of the new democratic period in 1953 and the 79 break with a capital isr mode of production. the first was a soviet-modelled, urban-oriented and capital-intensive strategy, the first five year plan (1953-1957). the second model was really mao zedong's version of a dual approach to economic development, the great leap forward (1958-196c) . based on mass mobilization of labour power, it stressed the simult< neous development of small-scale and large-scale industry, employing labour-intensive means in the former and capital-intensive means in the latter. these alternative strategies for promoting growth led to differing and sometimes contradictory policies on women. 1. the first five year plan the problems facing post-war china were severe: a fragmented, war-torn economy, a weak industrial base, technological backwardness and low labour productivity in agriculture, and a population of about five hundred million (see eckstein et al., 1968). with soviet guidance and support, the c.c.p. attempted a massive industrial drive by increasing the state capital investment by sixty percent by 1956, by sharply increasing industrial output, and by creating a massive in-flow to urban areas ;see yeh, 1968). the difficulties contained in this approach were the inordinate share of fixed investment in heavy industry, about eighty-six percent in the 53-57 period according to cheng (1974:55), and stabilization of the agricultural sector at low growth levels. the impact of these conditions on women was a significant retrenchment of previous policies. during the contraction of the urban market in 1955-1957, the "whole apparatus of persuasion and propaganda was mobilized to keep women out of the labour force" (howe, 1971:97). it was also in 1955 that davin notes a significant increase in women's 30 organizations known as dependents' associations, groups whose purpose was to encourage the participation of women, not as productive workers, but as wives and mothers (1976:59-61). an additional consequence of the focus on heavy industry was a decline in the state's investment in consumer goods to about nine percent of total investment (cheng, 1974:55). as weinbaum argues, the slack led to inflated consumer prices and thus to higher wage demands by state workers, lb deflect rising wage costs, the state encouraged women to engage in domestic production of consumer goods for use (weinbaum, 1976:42-43). again, women's organizations played an important role in implementing this policy. indeed, the slogan of the women's congress of 1957 became "build up the country economically; manage the household thriftily; and struggle for socialist construction" (davin, 1976:65). finally, family solidarity was an important theme in this period and divorce became increasingly difficult to obtain (see kristeva, 1975:65). the overall thrust was a resurgence in traditional female roles (including arranged marriage) during the period of urban-centered industrial expansion. by the end of the plan, industrial growth was impressive, but it was not in any way matched by growth in agriculture. intersectoral imbalances led to raw material shortages, supply bottlenecks and inadequate consumer goods provision (eckstein et al . , 1968:6). it was in the context of these conditions that the leap policy was implemented. the problem they faced was that of maintaining industrial growth in addition to fostering agricultural growth. 2. the great leap forward mao's solution, that of 'walking on two legs' was the 81 simultaneous development of agriculture and industry, heavy and light industry, and modern and traditional technology (hou, 1968:379). in a context of scarce capital, the state's solution was to use capital-intensive means in heavy industry and substitute labour for capital in other development (hou, 1968:381). the impact on the policies regarding women was clear. mass mobilization of labour power for socialist development demanded the large scale entrance of women into production. vt\at is interesting, however, is the context of their entrance. in rural areas, where male cadres significantly controlled the production process, women were overwhelmingly represented in seasonal labour and in sectors of traditional technological organization such as irrigation, reclamation and flood-control (see andors, 1976:91 and hou, 1968). in urban areas there were several consequences of significance. first, between 1958 and 1960, the state set up a state-controlled sector of urban commune cr 'street' industry. this sector employed a total of two million workers, of whom eighty-five percent were women (hou, 1968:381). organized for small-scale production of consumer goods, this sector allowed several advantages: it alleviated the state's need for consumer goods production given its low rate of investment; it brought private supplementary income into the household, lowering the necessary wage bill to the state, and, finally, it was a means of absorbing a large supply of labour in the urban area (weinbaum, 1977:43). in addition, a sectoral division of labour by sex tended to peripheral ize women into either service sectors or the traditionally organized , low investment sectors of industry (see hou, 1968) . finally, in 1959 the birth control campaign of earlier periods was halted (hou, 1968:383). apparently the strategy of using labour as 82 a primary form of capital implies a renewed emphasis on the role of women as reproducers. unfortunately, the state expected women to serve both productive and reproductive roles with no compensation and little service support for the latter. the leap period was a dismal failure for several reasons, not the least of which were a variety of natural disasters. in the years to follow, what occurred was really a power struggle concerning approaches to development. while right-wing strategists controlled the state, a reversion to social conservatism and material incentives was accompanied by a retrenchment in the role of women, including the revival of feudal customs such as bride-price in certain areas (£ndors, 1976:94). when mao regained control, a re-anphasis on leap strategies led to policies on women similar to those of 1958-60. while historical conditions obviously differed, the real patterns for fluctuating state policies on women in socialism stem from the first decade of chinese development. while an in-depth historical treatment of these periods is required to fully explore the role of the state and its manipulation of female status, i think the above discussion is suggestive of the linkages. essentially, it indicates that women are used to 'absorb 1 the costs of production in socialism. i emphasize that the tenor of this analysis is not to suggest that socialist revolution is, therefore, a dead-end for socialist feminists. certainly in china, the position of women has progressed remarkably relative to pre-revolutionary conditions. what i am suggesting is that there have also been blocks in that process toward liberation, blocks which do not seem to wither away with time or technology. the task seems to be that of articulating the process of revolution, the process of transition to socialism, and above all, our place in these processes. glib references to historical 83 inevitability can only bind us to a naive faith in the historical ocnent. ultimately, it is necessary to realize that revolution is an engineered process and, consequently, that female status is partially determined by the priorities of the engineer. notes fl] the distinction as employed here refers to the type and organization of labour performed. 'productive' refers to labour performed in the public sphere and 'reproductive' refers to labour (including actual reproduction) performed in the private sphere of the family unit. [2] it is perhaps important to note at this point that i am not concerned in this paper with the issue of conditions leading to socialist revolution in the pre-revolutionary period. rather, i am interested in the point at which the revolutionary movement is already in progress and, subsequent to success, is transformed into a socialist regime. [3] documents available in english in meijer (1972). [4] for extended discussion, see croll (1978:194-196) or davin (1976:28-29). [5] for extended discussion, see wong (1973) and hsiao (1969). hsiao also contains english translations of documents. references andors, phyllis 1976 "politics of chinese development: the case of women, 1960-1966", signs , 2(1):89-119. boggs, carl 1977 "revolutionary process, political strategy, and the dilemma of power", theory and society , 4(3) :359-393. cheng , chu-yuan 1974 china's allocation of fixed capital investment, 1952-1957 . ann arbor: michigan papers in chinese studies, no. 17. croll, elizabeth 1978 feminism and socialism in china . london: routledge and keagan pau! 84 davin, delia 1976 women work . oxford: clarendon press. eckstein, a. 1968 economic trends in communist china . w. galenson and ta-chung liu (eds.) , edinburgh: edinburgh university press. hou, chi-ming 1968 "manpower, employment and unemployment", economic trends in communist china , a. eckstein, w. galenson and t. liu (eds.) , edinburgh: university of edinburgh press. howe, christopher 1971 employment and economic growth in urban china: 1949-1957 . cambridge: cambridge university press. howe, christopher 1973 wage patterns and wage policy in modern china: 1919-1972 . cambridge: cambridge university press. hsiao, tso-liang 1969 the hand revolution in china, 1930-1934: a study of documents. seattle: university of washington press. kristeva, j. 1975 "ch the women of china", signs , (1):57-81. massell, gregory j. 1974 the surrogate proletariat . princeton, new jersey: princeton university press. meijer, m.j. 1972 marriage law and policy in the chinese people's republic . hong kong: hong kong university press. miliband, ralph 1972 marxism and politics . oxford: oxford university press. moore, earrington 1966 the social origins of dictatorship and democracy . new york: harper and row. salaff, j. and j. merkle 1970 "women in revolution", berkeley journal of sociology , xv: 166-191. sid el, ruth 1974 families of fenshang: urban life in china. london: penguin books. ?5 weinbaum, eatya 1976 "wor.e.n in transition to socialism: perspectives on the chinese case", the review of radical political economics , (1) : 24-58. weinbaum, batya 1977 "redefining the question of revolution", the review of radical political economics , 9(3):54-78. weinbaum, batya 1978 the curious courtship of women's liberation and socialism . boston: south end press. wolf, eric ?. 1969 peasant wars of the twentieth century . new york: harper & row. wong , john 1973 land reform in the people's republic of china . new york: praecer publishers. yeh, k.c. 1968 "capital formation", economic trends in communist china , a. eckstein, w. gslenson and t. liu (eds.) , edinburgh: university of edinburgh press. 86 accountable to whom? trends in managementlabour relations in local government miriam edelson this paper 'begins with a discussion of the growing financial problems facing local governments at a time when senior levels of government are intent upon following policies of fiscal restraint. it looks at the connection between the labourintensive character of services in this sector and the attempt by local government employers to reduce costs through the development of new collective bargaining strategies . public sector accreditation in legislation and the establishment of a public sector employ ers ' council in british columbia are examined in detail. the argument is that labour conflicts provoked by recent changes in the bargaining structure require unions to take a new approach which entails the building of alliances between civic workers and the consumers of public and social services . cet article s'ouvre sur une discussion des problemes financiers auxquels font de plus en plus face les gouvernements locaux au moment ou les niveaux superieurs de gouvernement appliauent des politiques de restriction fiscale . le lien entre le caractere intensif du travail dans ces secteurs et la tentative des gouvernements locaux de developper de nouvelles strategies de negociation collective afin de reduire les couts, est mis en evidence. l'examen detaille de la legislation sur i 'accreditation et de i ' etablissement d'un conseil des employeurs du secteur public en colombie-britannique , amene i 'argument que les conflits de travail provoques par les changements recents dans la structure de negociation imposent aux syndicats d 'adopter une nouvelle approche favoricant les alliances entre les employes de ces secteurs et les consommateurs de services publics et sociaux. alternate routes vol. 5 1982 96 introduction in late january of 1981, civic workers in british columbia's lower mainland region went on strike. public employers asserted that they could not meet workers' demands because of inadequate funding. private employers complained of potential spill-over effects to their enterprises if the workers' demands were met. neither protest was without some justification. they did little, however, to illuminate the issues which were really at stake. in recent years, pressure for the restraint of government spending has grown dramatically. cutbacks have occurred in a wide range of public services. restraint policies have also had a profound impact on public sector labour relations. it is the purpose of this paper to examine developments which have taken place in state workers' bargaining as a result of the changing economic and political climate of the past decade. what constraints do employers face? what interests are actually served via public sector settlements? how should public sector bargaining evolve in the future? a satisfactory answer to questions such as these would require a comprehensive historical and economic analysis of public sector bargaining. such a study might include, for exarcile , an investigation into labour legislation and the impact of widespread unionization. further, it would have to look at the development of the state sector and at how certain responsibilities have been shifted between jurisdictions. the focus of the present text is, of necessity, more modest. in an attempt to assess more precisely what changes public 97 sector collective bargaining has undergone, the paper begins with an investigation of local state finances and the constraints facing employers at this level. two trends exemplified in british columbia, toward employer accreditation and public sector employers' councils, are then considered. specific reference is made to why, in political, ideological and economic terms, the state and capital have initiated changes in the bargaining system. of particular interest is how the balance of class forces has conditioned the state's ability to transform its structures. the paper concludes with an inquiry into the 1981 civic strike in british columbia and some speculation as to how public sector workers and their unions may respond to the disturbing trends highlighted in this study. the crisis of local government finance while all levels of government have experienced financial problems in recent years, it appears that such problems have been most severe at the municipal level, a major reason for this being the disparity that exists between the constitutional responsibility of local school boards and municipalities to provide public services and their ability to raise revenues. local governments are expected to provide a wide variety of services, including primary and secondary education, police, fire and ambulance services, social services and daycare, among others. unlike provincial and federal governments, however, local taxes are derived from only two sources: corporate and property taxes and school taxes. in 1978, these taxes accounted for 39 per cent of the total gross general revenue. another alternate routes vol. 5 1982 98 source of municipal revenue is the sale of goods and services, especially water, license and permit fees, and fines. in 1978, these accounted for some 10.5 per cent of total gross general ] revenues . the major source of revenue to municipal governments, accounting for over half of total revenue, is transfers from higher levels of government. in 1980, the federal government transferred 296 million dollars directly to municipal governments, primarily as payment in lieu of local property taxes. the provinces transferred 11,475 million to local governments, part of which came indirectly from federal transfers to the provinces. the provinces also transferred an additional 7,741 million dollars to pay for the hospital system (statistics canada, 1977). during the same year, local government expenditures amounted to 21,335 million dollars. the combined federal and provincial transfers accounted for 55.2 per cent of local government expenditure. this figure has risen since 1970, when federal and provincial government transfers as a proportion of total local government expenditure was 47.8 per cent (statistics canada, 1977:12). even with an increasing proportion of total local expenditure paid for by transfers from higher levels of government, local governments have consistently faced budget deficits. in 1978, the local government deficit (for all canada), even including intergovernmental transfers, was 565 million dollars. if the intergovernmental transfers are excluded from the deficit calculation, the figure would be 10,062 million dollars ( prov incial and municipal finances , 1979:4). clearly, 99 even with substantial support through transfers from other levels of government, local expenditure far outstrips revenues. the share of total government spending by local governments has decreased in recent years. in 1965, local government expenditures constituted 27.3 per cent of total government expenditures. fifteen years later, in 1980, they accounted for only 21.3 per cent. at the local government level, education is by far the largest expenditure item. in 1978, it accounted for almost 42 per cent of total gross general municipal expenditure. expenditure on health and welfare amounted to 7.4 per cent in the same year ( provincial and municipal finances , 1979:46). these services fulfill a function which is not of a particularly "local" nature. schools and health clinics, for example, are among the public institutions for which local governments are particularly responsible. although administered by the local state, they meet economic, political and social requirements not limited by municipal boundaries. the logic of the capitalist system requires that the state, at some level, provide these services because they play a central role in reproducing the labour force. in essence, state-funded programs amount to costs incurred by the public for private benefit. they ensure the stability of the system and perpetuate labour's subordinate position to capital. that education, health and welfare are among the services most dependent upon funding from senior levels of gevernment is not surprising, given their general importance to the system. in 1976, they represented 63.5, 80.3 and 54.5 per cent, respectively, of local governments' specific purpose transfers. alzevnate routes vol. 5 1982 100 the degree to which these services are funded by the provincial governments points to one of the most difficult problems facing local governments. as demand for local services has increased, higher levels of government have had to step in to help fund these programs. in addition, local government has been used to implement programs, especially social services, initiated at the provincial level. as policy and funding is increasingly centralized at higher levels of government, local officials find themselves inundated with extensive policy guidelines. although local representatives are charged with providing their communities with certain services, they have less and less autonomy in terms of program design and the specific details of their operations. yet, it is precisely the locally elected municipal councils and school boards which are seen as responsible for the extent and quality of services and which feel the pressure most directly from local residents. for example, provincial governments' decisions to reduce the level of daycare spending have serious repercussions for local communities; yet, public protests are most often directed at municipal and regional councils which administer the actual cutbacks in services. this fact points to two problems: first, under current cost-sharing arrangements, there is a great deal of confusion as to who is responsible for providing what services and, moreover, where the political "buck" ultimately stops. second, because it is most accessible to community residents and is viewed as responsible for local services, the local state is open to considerable public criticism for decisions over which it has little control. 101 local governments are, then, caught in a financial squeeze. even, -where the will to do so exists, they have a limited ability to raise the revenue they need to fund programs properly. they do not control the levels of grants made available by the provincial and federal governments. to raise additional revenues, they must increase local property taxes, something they are reluctant to do for fear of repercussions from the electorate and the business community. even councils not entirely controlled by developers and small business interests tend to be fearful of increasing taxes since they do not want to discourage private investment in their communities. the resulting revenue shortfall, coupled with the structural problems outlined above, points to the serious nature of the fiscal crisis facing the local state. 1. the local state as employer the fact that a considerable number of decisions regarding local government services are made by senior levels of government has a profound impact upon municipal budgets. it also has a direct effect upon the size and composition of the local labour force. this is because appoximately 70 per cent of canadian local government revenues (excluding spending requirements for debt service and education) are devoted to the employment of personnel (mcallister ,1979 : 13) . since 1976, federal and provincial governments across canada have been following restraint policies and, by reducing the level of transfers to municipalities, they have been able to enforce these policies at the local level as well. keeping down wage costs is one way that public administrators try alternate routes vol. 5 1982 102 to keep expenditure levels in line with revenues. public sector bargaining becomes an arena in which governments attempt to "manage" the crisis. employers face many constraints peculiar to the state sector. these constraints, or, more precisely, structural problems, are two-fold: first, unlike private companies, public institutions are unable to pass on the cost of wage increases by raising prices. their revenues originate primarily in the form of taxes and raising taxes is a delicate undertaking, particularly in terms of a potential electorate backlash. public officials tend to consider such repercussions during contract negotiations with their employees. second, work in this sector is largely labour intensive. productivity increases tend to be low and unit labour costs high. it is very difficult to bring about significant increases in productivity or to reduce spending on wages and benefits by introducing new technology. teaching is not readily automated. health and social services require human contact. consequently, the cost of public services tends to rise faster than in the private sector where technology can more easily be substituted for labour. public employers at all levels face these constraints in attempting to meet their labour costs. widespread unionization of public employees has had a double-ed^ed impact upon municipal management practices. although workers unionize in order to improve their wages and conditions of employment, unionization has also entailed certain advantages for public employers. formalized labour relations, generally, ensures a degree of standardization which may be helpful to the elected officials' 103 task of managing public funds. for example, collective bargaining in the canadian legal framework (e.g. the grievance procedure and job evaluation and reclassification) leads to certain forms of workplace regulation which promotes labour discipline. bargaining at regular intervals according to predetermined rules also provides public officials with reliable and centralized administrative procedures. at the local state level, however, the advantages which unionization affords employers are mitigated by the very character of the services workers provide. if we distinguish between the traditional services provided by local government (e.g. sewage systems, roads, land-use planning and public utilities) and the more recent expansion of services directed more precisely to community residents (e.g. welfare programmes, recreation and child care facilities) this point becomes especially meaningful. the explicitly reproductive character of this latter group of services presupposes a substantial amount of direct contact between employees and the public they serve. the parent who drops her/his child off at the community daycare centre each morning, for example, is likely to be familiar with the problems which the staff and centre face. it is less likely that an unemployment insurance recipient would be aware of the problems confronting workers in the unemployment insurance commission offices. this kind of contact creates the possibility for the people who provide services to work together with those who use them against threats to their community's social programs. further, local politicians have traditionally been responsive alternate routes vol. 5 1982 104 to interest groups represented in their communities due, in part, to the short length of their terms of office. the combined effect of these two factors is that the elected officials, as employers, are potentially vulnerable to pressures from public service workers in coalition with users of services. this is not to suggest that municipal employers are at the mercy of the unions, although it would be a mistake to underestimate the potential of campaigns organized by public employees in conjunction with the public they serve. the existence of such "pressure points" within the local state reflects its distinct quality among public employers. it is this distinctive quality, however, which poses a further problem for both union and management. when the workers are able to force local governments to accede to their demands, the latter must often attempt to obtain additional funding from higher levels of government. where this has been possible, substantial gains have been made (e.g. ottawa-car leton battles for daycare funding during 1980). but, where no additional funding is forthcoming from provincial or federal coffers, or where funding has been cut, demands by workers and the users of services are less likely to be acceded to by locally-elected representatives. during the last five years, the latter pattern has become increasingly common. yet, the challenge presented bv well organized union and community political campaigns remains a potent one. the task of attempting to manage the fiscal crisis, coupled with labour's access to certain pressure points, has forced public emplover? to develop new collective bargaining strategies. 105 contract negotiations have been more coordinated and centralized. new structures have been established to assist local government employers in resisting campaigns mounted by unions. the effects which unionization of the canadian municipal sector have had on public budgets and labour relation practices, explored briefly below, will provide a basis for analyzing the character of the state's response. 2. canadian municipalities public employers have developed a more sophisticated approach to labour relations as part of their attempt to manage the fiscal crisis. centralizing compensation data and coordinating bargaining strategies for employers in certain sectors has been part of the effort to rationalize public services. as early as 1962, the canadian federation of mayors and municipalities (cfmm) conducted a wage survey of employees in that sector. their findings emphasized municipal employers' need for better negotiating information. the unionization of many of their employees had required that they be better prepared. as the forword to the cfmm wage survey (1962:12) outlined : the widespread introduction of collective bargaining in the municipal public service has, from the point of view of municipal governments, made the matter of municipal personnel administration infinitely more complex. questions relative to wages, salaries and conditions of employment, formerly decided by unilateral action, must now be resolved through the process of collective bargaining. this development has made it necessary for municipal governments to become fully conversant with the skills and techniques involved in negotiations between employer and employee organizations. moreover, the nature of this bargaining process is such that municipal governments, as employers, must have available a wide variety of comparative information alternate routes vol. 5 1982 106 on wages, salaries and working conditions. evidently, municipal employers were aware that they would encounter more formidable opposition with the advent of widespread collective bargaining. what was perhaps less clear then was how increased labour costs, combined with their inability to raise revenues independently, would affect their budgets. by 1971, the cfmm was calling upon the federal government for substantial increases in municipal funding. in a brief presented to the prime minister that year it argued: a general goal must be to attain a proportionately larger allocation of the nation's revenue resources for municipal governments. where municipal governments have attained the capacity to initiate, plan and carry out comprehensive community building programs -programs aimed at a sound balance of social, economic and physical development -substantial increases in unconditioned grants should become general practice. its message was clear, if unheeded. rising expenditures and increasing directions from senior levels of government as to how monies were to be spent were becoming a source of contention. the creation of new bureaucratic labour relations structures is one means by which the state has attempted to lessen the impact which fiscal constraints have had on local governments and communities. how the state responds: the british columbia example british columbia is the canadian province in which the state and capital's strategy for managing the economic crisis has been least subtle. this is especially cbvious with respect to public sector bargaining. british columbia's economic and historic background explain in large part why the struggle there between labour and capital is so little disguised. 107 the province's economy is primarily resource -based , with canadian, american and japanese ownership of the mining and forest industries. in 1979, these two industries accounted for just over 40 per cent of the provincial gross domestic product. markets in the united states, japan and europe are supplied with coal, indrustrial metals and paper. labour has historically been powerful with 49.2 per cent of the nonagricultural work force unionized as of 1980. in the same year, the total for all of canada was only 37.6 per cent (wood and kumar, 1980). that capital's moves to counter workers' bargaining power would be most sophisticated in the north american jurisdiction with the most highly organized workforce comes as no surprise. during the 1970's, for example, two significant additions were made to the public sector bargaining scene in british columbia: public employer accreditation and the establishment of an employers' organization for the public sector. each of these attest to the seriousness with which both capital and the state have responded to labour's challenge. i will comment on each of these initiatives in turn, with specific reference to how and why new bargaining structures have emerged in the present political and economic context. 1. accreditation british columbia is the only canadian province which has legislation providing for employer accreditation outside the construction industry. accreditation means that workers no longer bargain exclusively with their own employer. rather, the legal relationship in a collective agreement is between alternate routes vol 5 1982 108 the employers' organization and the employees of each of its members. an accredited organization has the right to make policy which is binding on all of its members. individual employers may even decide to relinquish the day-to-day enforcement and administration of their collective agreements to the "expertise" of the accredited body. british columbia is the only province where public sector employers may form accredited organizations. unions such as the canadian union of public employees (cupe) have argued that employer accreditation is inappropriate for the public sector. they suggest that public sector officials abdicate all responsibility for decision-making when they join an accredited organization (cupe, 1978) . labour relations is removed from local jurisdiction and taken over by a body created expresslv for that purpose. that accredited body, staffed by hired labour relations experts, is one step further removed from the electorate. as such, it is less susceptible to public concern or pressure. one of the most vocal advocates for employer accreditation to be generalized beyond the construction industry was the british columbia employers council. formed in 1965, this association is composed of both private and public sector members >.cupe , 1 978 : 51) . in november 1979, it had about 150 members in total, including 110 corporate members, crown corporations, and 27 major bargaining associations (list, 1979: 88). it makes no attempt to conceal the fact that accreditation enhances the bargaining strength of employers. the council's 1970 annual report was blunt: 109 early in the year the council strongly supported legislation to enable employers' accreditation. subsequently enacted in the b.c. legislature it has resulted in considerable strengthening of the bargaining position of many of our member associations (cupe, 1978 : 51) . for the public sector specifically, the implications of accreditation are profound. accreditation of public employers has one central objective, the establishment of bargaining structures designed to strengthen employers, especially those historically weak due to lack of negotiating expertise or their responsiveness to public opinion. the state, by adopting labour legislation to allow public employers to form accredited bodies, effectively maximizes the employer's advantage. the private sector's ability to influence municipal and school board bargaining through accreditation is evident in the following ways: first, the establishment of centralized, professionally administered accredited organizations enhances its ability to place pressure on public employers to keep public sector settlements in line with or below those in the private sector. private sector employers want to keep public sector wages depressed as this will improve their competitive position in the labour market making it easier for private employers to attract skilled people. more important is the determination of capital to keep the global costs of public services down. it seeks to avoid increased tax burdens which might erode its profits. low public settlements, in the view of capital, contribute to minimizing the drain on public coffers and they have a significant impact on the overall level of wage settlements, some tending to depress private sector increases as well. by restructuring public alternate routes vol. 5 1981 no sector bargaining, accreditation served to meet these objectives . public employer accreditation, with its explicit antiworker bias, is not, however, always easily achievable in political terms. in certain communities the result of extensive union campaigns bringing public pressure on municipal councils has been that councils have refused to participate in accredited bodies. in november 1978, for example, vancouver city council voted 8 to 1 against the greater vancouver regional district (gvrd) labour relations committee proposal to join an accredited organization. vancouver's decision followed similar actions taken in burnaby and surrey (cupe.1978 : 1) . elected officials were made accountable for their decisions regarding labour relations. local councils, vulnerable to pressure brought to bear upon them by their constituents, were forced to reject proposals which might have proven useful in the short term. this example is interesting because it illustrates how pressure points within the local state may be manipulated. moreover, it demonstrates the contradictions which rest within "the state", most broadly defined. in this specific instance, popular pressure forced the municipal government to take an autonomous stand by rejecting initiatives emanating from the private sector and higher levels of government (i.e. the gvrd). in essence, it shows how the state's ability to adapt its structures, even when bolstered by the demands of capital, is conditioned by the balance of class forces. 2. public employers of british columbia a second illustration of how the state adapts its ill structures to meet challenges posed by a highly organized labour force was the creation by the british columbia government in june, 1977 of the council of public sector employers (calvert, 1979:165-167). established just before the 1975 wage controls program ended, the council's main function was to keep public sector wage settlements in line with those in the private sector. modelled along the lines of the british columbia's employers council, it was the first (and remains the only) provincial council of public employers in canada. on june 7, 1977, british columbia finance minister, evan wolfe, announced that the new council would be given a budget of 1.25 million dollars and would command a staff of fifty people (vancouver sun , july 28, 1977:21). it would be a voluntary organization, including the greater vancouver regional district, the british columbia school trustees association, health labour relations association and british columbia hydro, in addition to provincial government employees. in a speech given in january 1977 wolfe stated: in the area of wage increases, governments have a special responsibility to ensure that compensation levels for public employees do not run away from those in the private sector... i wish to announce the establishment of a new organization -the british columbia council of public sector employers -to provide better coordination and exchange of information of public sector wages among public service employers in the province. this is not a new bargaining agency. its purpose is to encourage the development of a fair and equitable correlation between private and public sector compensation packages in b. c . " fcupe , 1977 : 25) ? 3 by april of 1979 the council boasted that its members employed 200,000 workers or 45 per cent, of the province's unionized workforce (calvert , 1979 : 165167) . in addition to the direct grant of public funds, they were given unlimited access to alternate routes vol. 5 1982 112 government -paid computer facilities. brian foley, who had worked as director of the job evaluation department for the public service alliance of canada, and then headed the public sector compensation division of the ant i -inflation board, was hired as executive director of the council (calvert , 1979 : 165) . the council has three main functions: to conduct research on collective bargaining, to coordinate the negotiating strategy for its members and to foster cooperation between public and private employers. in its research capacity, data on every public sector wage settlement in british columbia is collected. in cooperation with the british columbia employers council, it also collects data on key private sector settlements. settlements are analyzed, using the average comparability on total compensation (actc) , a concept devised by the federal anti inflation board to help employers compare the costs of everv component of their collective agreement with other agreements throughout the province. in its coordinating capacity, the council holds regular monthlv meetings to exchange information, conducts training programs to ensure that their negotiators are conversant with the latest bargaining techniques, and formulates a provincewide bargaining strategy for its members. it also attempts to coordinate the timing of negotiations so that the strongest employers establish pace-setting agreements (calvert , 1979: 165-167) . it is not surprising that employers would seek to strengthen their position in anticipation of demands they expect labour to make during the post -controls period. that the british columbia government took explicit steps in that direction, 113 demonstrates their cognizance that british columbia labour had some ability to make its demands stick. the decision to set up the council also reflects, in two ways, the state's capacity to adapt its structures to meet the corporate sector's unmitigated demand for conditions favourable to the accumulation of capital. first, the notion of employers councils relies fundamentally upon pluralist ideology which assigns equal strength to labour and management. in this framework, the two sides confront one another with the same resources and authority. bargaining is merely a technical exercise, with equally-matched opponents vying for points. the british columbia government's decision to devote public funds to the creation of such an organization was publicly justified in terms of the need to rectify an alleged imbalance between the two sides, an objective broadly embraced as beneficial to society at large. a closer look at the logic employed suggests, however, that the two sides are not equal. labour does not control public budgets, set taxes, dictate production standards or working conditions. neither does it make investment decisions, control how the workplace is organized or decide how new technology is implemented. in all of these areas, and most others with the exception of what the union is able to explicitly limit through the terms of the collective agreement, management alone has control. the notion of management control is at present no different in the public sector than that exercised by private employers. acting (not surprisingly) without any critique of alternate routes vol. s 1982 114 the dominant pluralist ideology, the british columbia government set up a council which could only serve to institutionalize and further entrench habitual managerial practices. its primary effect was that public employers were urged, and indeed compelled, to drive hard bargains with public service workers. all conceivable research and negotiating techniques were placed at the employer's disposal. the government's readiness to devote public funds to the council, apparently without any regard for its questionable effects in terms of labour relations, demonstrates clearly how the state socializes costs in order to guarantee private benefits. the state's penchant for incurring public costs to ensure private benefits and its readiness to adapt its structures in order to bring this about is revealed in a second way. the existence of a public sector employers' council means that locally-elected representatives no longer make decisions at the bargaining table. instead, labour relations decisions are shifted to a purely technocratic realm. hired experts, appointed rather than elected, make crucial decisions regarding the disposition of community funds. one result is that a local government's accountability to its constituents is severely undermined. the council's experts, rather than elected officials, may decide to minimize labour costs and significantly alter the character of public services which a community offers. creating a publiclyfunded , but unaccountable, organization of public employers constitutes a transference of authoritv within the state, away from elected officials into administrative hi or technocratic hands. in the process, local officials are stripped of an important governing function. the long term repercussions, in terms of local control over the quality of social programs are considerable. once again the state's policy, motivated by its preparedness to act on behalf of private over public interest, contributes to the weakening of local democracy. with labour relations removed to a strictly technical level, the local community's ability to put pressure on elected officials is eroded. relieving the local state of its vulnerable position vis-a-vis the electorate is an effective means of forestalling the potential threat that labour wields. in effect the british columbia government had committed itself, at public expense, to erect a more sophisticated collective bargaining system for the public sector. judging from its structure, mandate, and choice of executive director, the council's purpose was obvious: to place pressure on employers to keep public sector settlements in line with, or below, those in the private sector. using the same rationale outlined in the previous section regarding comparability of the two sectors and the determination to keep the global costs of public services down, this aspect of the council's thrust was paramount. employer's positions would be bolstered at the bargaining table and the threat posed by a highly organized labour force reduced. labour's ability to represent its members effectively would be minimized, thereby encouraging disillusion in the ranks and threatening union solidarity. acting with such a pernicious mandate, it could only be expected that the alternate routes vol. 5 1982 116 council would dramatically affect the negotiating process. in february 1979, executive director, brian foley, suggested in the council's newsletter that public employers be wary of unions' ability to produce "colourful and eyecatching comparison charts/graphs that 'demonstrate' the inferior position 'suffered' by their membership" (foley ,1979 : 18 , 1 9) . foley, writing with more than a bit of cynicism, was familiar with these practices from his days at the public service alliance. he went on to explain that the public employer must not "be swayed by the simplicity of the data presented and he must especially not allow his elected representatives to develop opinions based solely on the data presented by the union" (foley ,1979) . his obvious intent was to counter the ability of the union to educate and thus, to influence, local state representatives. in 1979, the council changed its name to the "public employers of b.c." early that year, the minister of finance for the province, evan wolfe, sent a memorandum to all public sector employers in the province in which he reiterated council's purpose of devising coordinated bargaining strategies and centralized collective bargaining information and research. he emphasized the need to rationalize employers' labour relations activities and to avoid unnecessary duplication. wolfe also stipulated that council would receive full funding of 400,000 dollars in 1979 but would be urged to move to a cost-sharing arrangement to ensure that it be "fully effective, responsible and accountable to its members" (olsen, 1979) . the letter ended with a reaffirmation of the minister's support 117 of council's mandate to "enable public sector employers ... to attain fair and equitable levels of compensation relative ^to the private sector and to each other" (wolf e , 1978) . stated explicitly in a covering letter from the pebc chairperson, j.n. olsen, was the government's desire to: "allay mistaken fears that the council (would) function either as a post controls monitoring agency, or participate in the collective bargaining process" (olsen, 1979) . the 1979 decision by the british columbia government, ostensibly to withdraw as council's funding source, points to some interesting trends. the impact of the pebc in terms of shifting responsibility for labour relations decisions and the effect on local democracy is not unlike that of the accreditation legislation described previously. the council, due to its facilitating role and voluntary nature, was perhaps more palatable in political terms but, in a fashion similar to the controversy surrounding public sector accreditation, the pebc was unable to escape criticism. the british columbia canadian union of public employees research bulletin documents specific cases in which municipal councils, subject to extensive union and public pressure, rejected requests that they affiliate to the pebc. cupe further suggested that council was trying to reduce its dependence upon the provincial government for fear that, under a future new democratic party government, it would be dismantled (cupe, 1979:4). on one level, such fears may have constituted ample reason for the government's decision to reduce its funding commitment. more significantly, however, is the state's alternate routes vol. 5 1982 118 demonstrated tendency to withdraw itself from any role which might leave it isolated in political terms. reacting in part to public pressure, the state had to create the appearance that it was not culpable. once again, such trends illustrate how state initiatives to establish bargaining structures designed to strengthen employers are conditioned by the ability of the working class to effectively press its own interests. like employer accreditation, the creation of the pebc was a means by which the bargaining power of local state employers, in particular, could be expanded. as suggested above, maximizing advantage for public employers fulfills certain objectives held dear in the private sector. that the provincial government established the council is testimony both to the challenge posed by a highly organized workforce and to the heightened stakes between iabour and capital in a period of economic crisis. 3ritish columbia lower mainland civic strike, 1981 the main concern of this paper has been to demonstrate how the state has had to adapt its approach to public sector labour relations in order to counter both labour's bargaining power and its potential for engaging in explicitly political struggles. the 1981 british columbia lower mainland civic strike illustrated many aspects of the trends pointed to in the foregoing analysis. in the following pages we will explore the main strike issues and evaluate their significance in terms of the exigencies of capital and their consequent impact upon the local state's negotiating position. 119 1. the demands in late january, 1981, more than 11,000 civic, library and school board workers went on strike. lasting up to 15 weeks in some jurisdictions, the strike revolved around three main issues. the first was a substantial wage increase for all employees. the second issue was a much more radical demand for "equal pay for work of equal value" between the predominantly female clerical workers and mainly male outside municipal workers. the union argued (but did not, with a few exceptions win) , that the base rate for outside and clerical workers be the same. they demanded further that the current practice whereby clerical workers have to pass through extensive increment steps to reach full pay be abolished (cupe,1980). the third issue was put forward by the employers. it was to replace the existing sick leave plan with a weekly indemnity plan. this would have had. the effect of forcing employees to pay for short term sick leave costs. and it would have allowed private insurance companies to profit from providing insurance coverage . "equal pay for work of equal value" (epwev) is an issue which has, in recent years, reached the forefront of human rights legislation. its supporters argue that work traditionally performed by women is low-paid and will continue to be, so long as women are crowded into a few occupational ghettos and employers can offer low salaries with the knowledge that women will take these jobs. especially in a period of high unemployment, the ghettoization of women in low-paid work will continue. at this time, only the federal and quebec governments have alternate routes vol. 5 1982 120 enacted legislation that requires employers to pay workers epkev. the contentious element of the issue is the basis on which "equal value" is determined. the canadian human rights act, section ii (2) stipulates that: in assessing the value of work performed by employees employed in the same establishment, the criteria to be applied is the composite of the skill, effort, and responsibility in the performance of the work and the conditions under which the work is performed. job evaluation systems can be used to assess value according to these criteria, but such systems are not, themselves, free of bias. they were not established with an aim to eliminate sex discrimination. for example, a system may give skill points for driving a car, but not for preparing food, though both skills are learned off the job (bell, 1981). further, as long as employers retain the right to define and modify what tasks and responsibilities are included in particular jobs, attempts to compare dissimilar jobs may be easily thwarted. the union's demand, supported by both clerical and outside workers, was to redress the discrimination where it begins, at the entry level to the workforce. the employer's proposal that the workers' benefit plan be restructured was a "take-away" demand. in effect, the gvrd requested that workers give up their severance pay and sick leave banks in return for a combination of three insurance plans; medium term sick leave, long term sick leave, and long term disability insurance. the employer offered to increase the coverage of these insurance plans and to pay the full cost of the latter two. in return, workers would have to pay the 121 full costs of short term sick leave. the gvrd estimated, but could not guarantee, that the new sick leave fund would cost employees approximately two per cent of their gross earnings. research by the canadian union of public employees claimed that the cost to workers would be closer to six per cent of their gross earnings. cupe argued further that the loss of the present sick leave plan, whereby workers receive full payment of wages from the first day of illness, would be a major disadvantage not outweighed by the other components of the employer's benefit proposal. specifically, the real cost of sick leave is the replacement cost of workers hired to fill in for ill employees. since employers frequently do not replace absent workers, however, the actual cost is often zero. under the gvrd scheme workers would automatically pay an absent employees' wages, even if the employer did not hire a replacement. in financial terms the employers would stand to make substantial gains. in non-monetary terms, the employer would also benefit from having engineered a system whereby workers would end up policing each others' use of sick leave (cupe, 1981 : 4-6) . management's control would be enhanced and union solidarity effectively threatened. that cupe completely rejected the gvrd proposal is not surprising. it seems possible that the employer, aware that the union would never give in on sick leave, left it on the table until the very last minute in order to ensure that the strike was prolonged. 2. what was really at stake a careful examination of these demands suggests that more was at stake in this strike than first meets the eye. alternate routes vol. 5 1982 122 in both cases, the extent to which private business articulated its interests and thereby influenced public employers' deliberations was notable. equally striking was the provincial ministry of labour's virtual silence during the controversy. further, the pebc had a relatively low profile during the strike, even though it was one of the most significant public sector disputes since the council's inception. observations such as these raise important issues in terms of management practices in the public sector and the question as to whom local state representatives are actually accountable. with respect to the sick leave demand, two problems stand out. first, central to the gvrd benefit proposal was the fact that private insurance companies stood to make substantial profits because a great deal of new business would be generated. the gvrd stated explicitly in a memo drafted on october 29, 1981, that total administrative control over benefits would be placed in the hands of the employer. they also would decide which insurance carriers to use (cupe , 1981 : 11 ) . second, one of the major public justifications for the restructured benefits package was the gvrd's own estimate that it would save taxpayers 1.3 million dollars (vancouver sun , jan. 29 , 1981) . by means of a high profile advertising campaign in the local media, the employer used its budgetary woes to justify regressive bargaining demands. in essence, the employer's sick leave demand amounted to two things: the taxpayers were promised savings and the insurance companies were promised profits. private interests were also at stake in the dispute over "equal pay for work of equal value". cupe's strongest 123 opposition came from the british columbia employers' council. william hamilton, president and chief executive officer of the council, sent letters to municipal and school board employers throughout the lower mainland area. in a letter to gvrd labour relations committee member, john parks, dated march 12, hamilton made clear his organization's concern over the epwev issue. he was quite frank in writing: to grant these inside workers similar starting rates as outside workers without having an exhaustive examination (of whether the jobs are equal) will have a serious rippling effect throughout your administration and thereby a negative impact upon taxpayers and other employers. he closed by offering the gvrd (and other public employers) any assistance they might require and reaffirming "the support of the members of (the) council in rejecting this union demand" (hamilton, 1981) . it is not surprising that the private sector feared epwev. no doubt the potential costs involved gave impetus to the direct involvement of the employers' council. disseminating their views widely in a high profile campaign, the council was the union's single most vocal opponent. they strongly endorsed the gvrd position, notwithstanding broad -based support for cupe's demand among trade unions and women's organizations. constant pressure through letters and newspaper advertisements was put on public employers not to enshrine the epwev principle in their settlements. the stance taken by the gvrd and ably supported by the province's representative of capital is interesting in two ways. as mentioned earlier, the federal government and the province of quebec have already legislated (if imperfectly) alternate routes vol. 5 1982 124 equal pay for work of equal value. other provincial and local governments have been reluctant to follow suit. it seems that state employers, divided in terms of jurisdiction, lack a cohesive position on the question. this point is instructive in that it belies the notion that the state sector "at large" operates in a homogeneous fashion. in the case of public sector labour relations, the interplay of class forces with the limits set by employers' fiscal constraints, is critical. in certain instances, pressure applied by unions may bring about progressive changes in legislation. in others, workers are unable to compel their employers to accede to similar demands. while it is likely that gains made in certain sectors eventually become generalized, the timing of such a process is not predetermined, equal pay for work of equal value legislation is currently inconsistent from one jurisdiction to another. the civic workers in the lower mainland did not fully succeed in this strike. their ability to make employers confront the issue directly during the next round of negotiations will depend in part upon whether the union decides to sustain a broad-based campaign dealing with the issue. moreover, labour's ability to force capital to pay the costs involved directly out of their own surpluses, and not through some scheme that socializes the cost of their wage bill, is even less predictable. the second point of speculation regarding the epwev controversy deals more with the mechanics of the negotiations. the gvrd is a member of the british columbia employers ' council . it is also a member of the pepc. representatives of the gvrd 225 labour relations committee normally attend weekly negotiators' coordinating meetings sponsored by the private sector council (thompson, 1981). during the strike, these meetings would have provided for valuable informationsharing and strategy discussions. clearly evident is the intimate involvement of representatives of private capital in public employers' deliberations. moreover it suggests a plausible explanation as to why the gvrd ' s negotiating stance was so consonant with managerial practices typical of the private sector. as discussed in a previous section of this paper, normal managerial practices can serve to deny the uniqueness of the public employer's role. the accountability of the gvrd labour relations committee (an appointed body) to its constituents is uncertain. at minimum, the close interplay between the gvrd's negotiators and the british columbia employers' council during the strike raises the question as to whom the civic officials were really answerable . the rather autonomous role played by the employers' negotiators had very specific effects on the character of negotiations. in one case, evidence suggests that gvrd negotiator graham leslie, intervened directly in one municipality's negotiations. surrey, which is not a member of the gvrd was poised for a settlement in early march which would have enshrined the epwev principle. at the last moment, management's proposal was pulled from the table (ward, 1981; thompson , 1981b) . the fact that an independent municipality which was prepared to accede to the union's demands would be subjected to such pressures is a graphic revelation of the most pernicious aspect alternate routes vol. s 1982 126 of local state's new bargaining's character. elected representatives, stripped of the political responsibility integral to their function as employers, were hindered from taking a progressive step in meeting the union's demands. in jeopardy, as a result, was the representative character of the civic government. considering the trends outlined throughout this paper such threats to local state democracy can only be expected to increase. in closing this discussion of the civic strike, a series of questions emerge. why was the pebc virtually silent on the epwev issue during the strike? what positive role might the provincial government have played in resolving the dispute? could the provincial human rights commission have been instructed to intervene? would a new democratic party government have taken the same (non) position as the socreds? the answers to these questions are not, for the moment, obvious. what i£ clear is that the stakes involved in the civic strike were considerable. as the pebc's reference report of may 29, 1981 stated : the issue of equal pay for work of equal value will certainly cause changes in the economic, and no doubt, the social fabric of the country ... unions are not waiting for legislation but are demanding action already. the issue is upon us. the time for preparation is now. the character which the preparation will take, for either labour or capital, is not entirely predictable. but in light of the present fiscal crisis and its consequent impact upon the nature of public sector bargaining, the struggle can be expected to be a bitter one. 127 conclusion throughout this paper, public sector collective bargaining has been viewed in terms of its location in the struggle between labour and capital. forces giving impetus to state initiatives and those provoking popular protest have also been considered from this perspective. in each instance, our central concern has been to demonstrate the existence of a dynamic relationship between the hegemony of capital and the ability of workers to advance their interests successfully. if we judge labour relations in the state sector as a coherent or static process, it is difficult to foresee many improvements for public sector members. although there has been no paucity of defeats in recent years, as suggested above, such a pessimistic judgement would be a mistake. since the state does not operate in strict accordance with some infallible internal logic struggles against attempts to dismantle the public sector must have many independent, if related, facets. in the current context, british columbia labour was unable to block the establishment of the public employers of british columbia. neither were they effectively able to counter the british columbia employers' council's highly-orchestrated onslaught during the civic strike. such josses need not remain etched in stone. earlier in this paper, i posited the notion of "pressure points" within the local state. these may be manipulated toward specific reforms by popular movements. though admittedly circumscribed, the local state does command a degree of political leverage. popular -based struggles in alternate routes vol. 5 1982 12". defense of public services can be generalized beyond city limits. in the absence of an alternate economic strategy, such efforts will have only limited consequences. in conjuction, however, with a broader program for reform including specific measures to overhaul the municipal tax structure and the election of municipal officials who are critical of senior governments' restraint policies, conflicts at the local state level would take on greater meaning. unions may not be prepared to extend their sights beyond narrowly-defined collective bargaining issues. clearly, technical approaches to bargaining are not exclusive to the management contingent. reforms sought through political action, demanding both quality public services and improved conditions for workers, can be threatening to a union's own entrenched bureaucracy. but the presence of such resistance (and it i_s there) does not make such struggles inconceivable. campaigns for equal pay for work of equal value, for example, will require systematic pressure on many fronts. employers must continue to be confronted at the bargaining table. human rights commissions in all provinces must be pressured to develop enforceabl e policy. unions will have to devote substantial resources to building active and broadbased colalitions including woking people, women's organizations and citizen groups. governments must be compelled not to assume through public funds the costs of correcting sex-based wage discrimination. there is no guarantee that strategies to defend the public sector designed along these lines will be successful. 129 in fact, the odds in the short run seem pretty heavily stacked. as the examples cited in this study have suggested, however, the state's ability to adapt its structures is not absolute. the process of transforming public sector bargaining, just one aspect of the state's attempt to manage the present economic crisis, is not invulnerable to counter vailing pressures. how, in precise terms, labour will exploit the potential avenues open to it is not yet certain. as the losses at stake for public service workers and their organizations become even more ominous, it can only be hoped that they will not retreat from a most formidable challenge. postscript: april, 1982 in the period since this paper was written, the situation facing british columbia labour has become more acute. most noteworthy, of course, is the provincial government's imposition of wage controls on public sector workers. it is no accident that such a move coincides with the attempt by large numbers of female workers to achieve substantial "catch-up" wage increases, based on the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. the hospital employees union, representing some 24,000 workers across the province, has made the issue a central bargaining demand in its current round of negotiations. the 40 , 000-member british columbia government employees union is also entering negotiations with a similar demand for its lowest paid clerical workers (the pacific tribune .march 5,1982:3). also, the gvrd workers' contract expires at the end of this year. with controls holding wage increases below the rate of alternate routes vol. 5 1982 130 inflation and no provision for allowing settlements that would end wage discrimination, it is unlikely that these demands from workers will be met in the short term. initial indications from the unions, however, are that they will continue to fight for equal pay for work of equal value, wage controls notwithstanding. the direction and form that this struggle takes will warrant our attention in the coming months. notes 1. figures based on calculations from data found in provincial and municipal finances (toronto, canada tax foundation, t579) , table 3-7 "gross general revenue estimates of local governments by province, 1978:45. 2. excluding a very small amount (.03 and .01 per cent of total local government expenditure) paid by local governments to provinces and hospitals, respectively. 3. department of finance, economic review (ottawa: ministry of supply and services, april 1981), reference table 70, "allocation of expenditures by level of government before and after transfer payments 1926-1980: 194. 4. my calculations are based on provincial and municipal finances (1979 ed . ) tables regarding education, heal th and welfare spending by local governments: 216,202 and 243. 5. publicly-owned corporations and the institution of user-fees are exceptions to this. in addition, local utilities exercise some discretion with respect to hydro-electric power and the sale of water. 6. central statistics bureau, ministry of industry and development of small business, victoria, british columbia . 7. research department, canadian union of public employees, "employer accreditation in the public sector", submitted to the british columbia ministry of labour (february, 1978). cupe has a series of briefs dealing with this subject which provide historical data concerning accreditation, in addition to critical analysis. 131 references bell, gail 1981 "equal pay: nothing to do with need". vancouver sun , april 15, 1981. calvert, john 1979 "b.c. council of public sector employers: using our money to cut our wages". the facts , canadian union of public employees, ottawa, april, 1979, vol. 1, no. 10: 165-167. canada t?x foundation 1979 provincial and municipal finances 1979 . toronto . canadian federation of mayors and municipalities 1962 survey of wages and working conditions of municipal employees . 1971 brief to the government of canada . april 26, iwtt. canadian union of public employees 1977 employer accreditation in the public sector . 1978 employer accreditation in the public sector . 1979 b.c. council of public sector employers gets facelift , but policies renain the same . june, 1979, vol.2, no. 4. 1981 "raises not roses: vancouver clerical workers strike for equal pay." the public employee , spring, 1981. foley, brian 1979 "the problem faced by the public sector employer -determining where he really stands." newsletter , b.c. council of public sector employers, february 2, 1979, vol.2, no . 4 . hamilton, william 1981 lette r to john parks . march 12, 1981. list, wilfred 1979 "b.c. employers' council: model of co-operation' the globe and mail, october 12, 1979:38. 17,2 mcallister, anne 197 9 an approach to manpower planning and management development in canadian municipal government. toronto., trie fnsti tute for public administration in canada. olsen, j.n. 1979 memorandum to all publ j c sector employers , province of british columbia . janunary , t979. public employersof british columbia fpebc) j 981 reference report , no. 67, may 29, 1981. statistics canada 1977/1981 national income and expenditure accounts . catalogue 13-001, ottawa , ministry of supply and services, august, 1977 and april 198]. the pacific tribune 1982 equal pay a victim of bennett wage control . march, 5, 1982:3. the vancouver sun 1977 new government group rapped by volrich . july, 1977:21. 1981 cupe hints at b.c. -wide strike january 29, 19jtt 1981 the facts about the civic workers ' strike . gwd advertisement, february 10, 198t~: thompson, joey 1981a "gvrd strikers gear for long fight". vancouver province , february 17, 1981. 1981b "talks fail and civic dispute drags on." vancouver province , march ]7, 1981. wolfe, evan 1978 concerning the goals and objectives of the british colunusia council of ' public sector employers . letter to all british columbia publ ic sector employers. december, 1978. wood, w.d and pradeep kumar (eds) 1980 the canadian industrial relations scene. kingston, queen's university press . 133 community colleges and the division between mental and manual labour david robinson poulantzas ' (1978) analysis of the contribution of the educational apparatus to the reproduction of the division between mental and manual labour is elaborated upon to provide a theoretical framework for examining community colleges in terms of their relationship to the capitalist labour process. the thesis is that community colleges legitimize political relations in the labour process by defining the knowledge of graduates as inferior to the knowledge of university-educated workers trained in comparable specialities . community college programs designed for engineering technicians are discussed in seme detail and a number of suggestions for future research are advanced. alternate routes vol. 5 1982 288 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times book review state power and democracy: before and after the presidency of george w. bush, by andrew kolin. new york, new york: palgrave macmillan, 2010. $85.00 u.s., paper. isbn: 978-0-230-10935-3. 262 pages. reviewed by: brandon tozzo1 did america under george w. bush become a police state? andrew kolin’s book traces the centralization of control in the presidency at the expense of congress and american democracy. kolin argues the extreme security measures taken during the bush administration are not unique in american history, but part of a longer trend to limit democratic institutions and curtail individual rights and freedoms. according to kolin, under the bush presidency america became a police state. the administration used measures to quell opposition through the usa patriot act, and tortured enemy combatants in military prisons. while kolin provides a compelling account of the immoral and–under american law–illegal policies before and during the presidency of george w. bush, the book makes a less persuasive argument that this led to the elimination of domestic american democracy. the first chapters provide a brief historical account of the consolidation of political power in the executive branch. starting in the 19th and early 20th century, the american government used the police to investigate political opponents, such as black rights groups, communists, and women’s rights advocates. with ascendancy of the united states after world war ii, this increased in scope with the formation of the federal bureau of investigations (fbi) and the central intelligence agency (cia). the external threat of the cold war and the conflict in vietnam led to the american executive using the cia and fbi to infringe on the legal rights of american citizens. though many facets of the police state started with nixon in order to repress protest, it has culminated with george w. bush’s response to the terrorist attacks of september 11th, 2001. the strongest part of the book is the evidence that the american executive is allowed free rein to conduct foreign policy. other domestic institutions and social forces such as congress, the media and the public 1  brandon tozzo is a ph. d. candidate in political economy at queen’s university (kingston, ontario, canada). book review: state power and democracy | 289 ignore or are indifferent to the extreme measures taken by american presidents dating back to richard nixon. among the most alarming recent abuses were the use of torture in guantanamo bay and the iraqi abu ghraib prison, and the policy of extraordinary rendition to kidnap foreign nationals. all the while, the presidency insulated itself from criminal liability and congressional oversight. kolin goes into great detail to outline the lack of accountability for the military and the cia when it carries out presidential orders, and the need for substantial changes in the way america conducts its foreign policy. moreover, kolin outlines how american institutions failed to limit the actions of the bush administration in fighting the war on terror, a problem that continues under president obama. however, kolin’s argument that the bush administration has instituted a police state in america is less persuasive. a significant issue is that several key concepts are left unclear throughout the book, such as ‘police state,’ ‘democracy’ and ‘mass democracy’. this is not necessarily problematic–terms and concepts can vary depending on time and location–but there needs more discussion why concepts shift throughout the book. since the definitions are vague, it often obscures their meaning. for example, there is no discussion of why mass democracy movements such as the black panthers and the socialist party are favourable to american democracy, while others such as the religious right and tea party are not, since they are both mass movements albeit with different agendas. also, there is little comparative historical analysis of police states. if the united states has developed into a police state under george w. bush, then some caparison between it and other obvious police states such as maoist china, stalinist russia, and north korea under kim ilsung would have strengthened the book’s analysis and provided a more explicit conceptual framework. more substantively, the bush administration’s elimination of american internal democracy and subversion of the constitution is less convincing when examining contemporary resistance movements in the united states. kolin argues the bush administration took radical measures to eliminate formal democracy in reaction to the september 11th terrorist attacks through the usa patriot act for warrantless wiretaps, and imprisoned and deported over 6000 muslim non-citizens. however many muslims detained after 9/11 returned to the united states and sued the bush administration for compensation. even some of the more controversial pieces of legislation –such as the warrantless wiretaps -have been struck down by the courts showing that formal democracy 290 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times may not have been entirely subverted. such legal recourse does not exist in guantanamo bay or in abu gharib. moreover, despite the actions of the bush presidency to limit dissent, there were mass social movements against the invasion of iraq and throughout his presidency. the book shows the bush administration did go too far restricting liberties in the war on terror against enemy combatants, but there was more domestic dissent than presented. many social groups and formal institutions such as activist groups, the courts, congress and the media combated the extremism of the bush presidency. so unlike foreign policy, domestic political forces in the united states had the ability –albeit with varying degrees of successto contest the extreme policies of the american president. kolin’s book is an effective warning to readers that the media, congress and the courts, and social forces must work to prevent the executive from abusing its power and control over america’s foreign policy. without the public forcing american institutions to keep watch, the president can commit illegal or immoral acts in the name of security. this book is recommended for those interested in a comprehensive, and thorough, overview of covert actions taken by the cia and fbi before and during the bush presidency, particularly in reaction to the september 11th terrorist attacks. book review: the people’s lawyer | 273 book review the people’s lawyer by albert ruben. new york: monthly review press, 2011. $17.95 us paper. isbn: 978-1-58367-237-2. pages: 1-200. reviewed by rania tfaily1 “my job is to defend the constitution from its enemies. its main enemies right now are the justice department and the white house.” (bill goodman, legal director of the center for constitutional rights, 2001) for about five decades, the center for constitutional rights (ccr) has waged significant legal, educational and public awareness battles to defend marginalized communities and to uphold rights guaranteed by the u.s. constitution and the universal declaration of human rights. since its inception, it was dedicated to progressive politics, social justice and social change. it branded itself as being in the service of the people’s movements whether it is civil rights, women’s rights, war against vietnam, and more recently campaigns against torture, renditions and indefinite detention. the ccr cases often set legal precedents. however, the impact of the ccr varied with times. during the 1990s, it suffered from a financial crunch that intensified tensions between the board and staff. these tensions which have been brewing for a number of years culminated in the staff’s seven weeks long strike. after a period of decline, the ccr saw its fortunes and profile increase following 9/11 and the war on terror which resulted in human rights violations of thousands of arabs and muslims. the center’s decision to defend the right to habeas corpus of guantanamo detainees was a turning point given that the crc often focused on civil cases, and it tended to represent people with whom it usually shared a common (leftist) political vision. the ccr’s decision to take on the government of the u.s. during a time of high patriotic fever was not without its risks, and a number of individuals and organizations withdrew their financial support. after a definite defeat in two lower courts, the center’s legal effort culminated in a surprising and significant win in 1 rania tfaily is an assistant professor of sociology in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university, ottawa. 274 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism rasul vs. bush in which the u.s. supreme court ruled 6 to 3 that guantanamo detainees have the right to access the federal courts. the ccr’s budget rose from $1.2 million in 2001 to $5.5 million following this crucial victory. albert ruben takes us through a condensed history of the ccr, from its humble beginnings to help lawyers in the south who were challenging racial segregation and the disenfranchisement of the voting rights of african americans, to its involvement in women’s rights movement, antiwar activism and more recently its defense of victims of the war on terror. ruben shows how the ccr pioneered the creative use of the law by adopting novel and often untested arguments to launch legal battles along with educational campaigns with the purpose of facilitating social change. the ccr defined success not only in terms of winning cases and setting legal precedents but also in terms of its ability to raise public awareness and galvanize social movements. ruben provides us with detailed synopsis of the lives of the center’s four founding fathers – arthur kinoy, morton stavis, william kunstler, and benjamin smith. he shows the significant impact that a handful of hardworking, motivated and committed professionals and activists can make. ruben’s book includes a detailed chapter about the ccr’s most significant cases classified under “international human rights and solidarity”, “government misconduct”, and “attacks on dissent”. it is obvious that ruben highly values the ccr and the fighting spirits, motivation and dedication of its founding fathers and staff. nevertheless, he exposes the struggles and the difficulties encountered in running the ccr. he does not shy away from including unflattering characteristics of the founding fathers. “the people’s lawyer” is a valuable contribution detailing the history of one of the most progressive american organizations. it also depicts work-related challenges that face progressive organizations that do not wish to conform to the capitalist/ corporatist work model. these include monetary compensation, decision-making process, board-staff relations, and gender and generational tensions. the book raises the important question of how best to facilitate social change and whether channeling the struggle through the courts and its lengthy litigation defuses and sets back social movements. on this point, however, it fails to provide a clear assessment and position. the book is written in a lively and engaging manner. it is definitely an interesting read for lawyers, activists and social scientists. however, the narrative of the book goes back and forth between different time book review: the people’s lawyer | 275 periods and different issues. in addition, it does not adequately address the social, political and legal context that prevailed in the united states at various periods. i would have appreciated a more chronological history coupled with an analysis of whether the ccr’s successes in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were byproduct of the social and political turmoil engulfing the united states at that time. this is relevant as one ponders the future of the ccr and the ability to challenge oppressive laws through the courts given the changing social and political environment. the dramatic (and negative) changes in the u.s. justice system have included draconian sentencing, expansion of state surveillance, increased prosecutorial power and particularly diminished judicial authority and oversight. the increase in the power of prosecutors (often at the expense of judges) coupled with draconian sentencing means that the accused (often poor and marginalized) are almost always compelled to accept plea bargains even if they were innocent since the consequences of convictions are severe. about 90% of criminal cases end in plea bargains without trials. recent journalistic articles in the new york times and the washington post paint a very dim picture of the u.s. justice system which is characterized by concealing exculpatory evidence, framing and entrapment, evidence manipulation, incompetent and flawed forensic analysis, and prosecutorial misconduct. as we contemplate the future of progressive organizations such as the ccr, it is important to take into account that the u.s. justice system is becoming increasingly repressive and that it is becoming harder to achieve significant social change through the courts. alternate routes science as capitalist ideology: the sociology of max weber reconsidered randle w. nelsen abstract max weber's sociology is viewed within the conteat of the changing socio-economic arrangements of his time. in attempting to develop a value-neutral sociology by creating a superhuman sociologist, weber in fact creates the persistent capitalistic valuebias of a sociology which reproduces the major characteristics of socio-economic reforms initiated by bismarck and his immediate successors. this bias makes capitalism interchangeable with bureaucracy, and the crucial "social-political problem" becomes the development of independent political leadership rather than the unequal distribution of profits among socio-economic classes. as with his super scientist, weber creates as problem-solver a super agent of change, the charismatic political leader, whose charisma becomes routinized to help ensure the continued capitalistic domination which weber's sociology supports. introduction max weber's sociology, in order to be most fully understood, should be viewed within the context of the changing socio-economic arrangements of his time. in germany, as in the united states, the transition from laissez faire to corporate capitalism contributed to, and was accomplished during, a period (c. 1865-1900) of severe 34 capitalist ideology economic disturbances (engels 1887-88; williams 1966). l the task of bringing stability to the german economy during the last third of the nineteenth century became in large part the responsibility of one man — germany's most charismatic leader prior to adolph hitler, chancellor otto von bismarck. this paper argues that the sociology developed by weber can be linked to the socio-economic reforms initiated by bismarck and his successors -reforms which were, like weber's sociology, favorable to the development of capitalism in its new corporate form. bismarck's reforms joined the interests of the more liberal professional and middle classes into which weber was born and the more conservative upper-class junkers with the interests of german workers. he promised direct universal vote in the election of parliament and worker security with a government-sponsored insurance program. he also endorsed and protected limited incorporation and trade combinations. the combined effect of these reforms was to provide bureaucratic support for an emerging corporate capitalism made synonymous with allegiance to the fatherland --a combination of factors that constitutes the central focus of weber's scientific sociology. 4 ironically, in his attempt to eliminate value bias by creating a superhuman sociologist capable of separating scientist from citizen (political) self, weber in fact creates the persistent capitalistic value bias that characterizes his sociology. in attempting to neutralize his analysis by maintaining a distinction between the 35 alternate routes socio-economic policy of politics and the objective requirements of science, weber attempts to provide scientific respectability for a sociology harmonious with, and subservient to, the new corporate arrangements of bismarck's nationalistic capitalism. specifically, weber's science serves as an attempt to legitimize capitalism because it makes bureaucracy as a form of social organization equivalent to, and interchangeable with, the existent division of labor produced by modern capitalism (giddens 1972). thus, through a process of substitution, bureaucracy rather than capitalism, the development of independent political leadership rather than the fact that one class profits by the labor of another, becomes the central problem of the german socio-economic order (see cohen 1972 and wright 1974-75) scientist weber provides citizen weber with a solution to this problem, the leader with charisma. however, in the final analysis, even this agent of change -the charismatic political leader -attempts to provide individualistic opposition to the status quo by working from within bureaucracy/capitalism, cooperating with the privileged social strata in cooling (routinizing) charisma. weber's faith in the charisma of a super change agent -the logical extension of, and counterpart to, his super scientist -is transformed into a faith in prevailing socio-economic arrangements. in brief, the salvation urged by weber's sociology helps ensure the continuation of capitalistic domination. 36 ' capitalist ideology bismarck, the junkers, and weber: an emphasis upon administrative efficiency bismarck created governmental policy without bothering to consult the great majority of the governed; he simply made decisions for them. the german tradition had long supported leadership of this type. in his summary of the germans' "war of liberation" against napoleon in 1813, a. j. p. taylor refers to this legacy of executive rule: . . . thus germany passively endured the war of liberation, just as previously it had endured conquest by the french and before that the balance of the system of westphalia. the allies defeated the french, but they could not undo the effects of french rule; and they had to devise a new system for germany which would serve the interests of europe, as previously the napoleonic system had served the interests of france. the people of germany were not consulted. they could not be consulted. as a political force they did not exist. [taylor 1945, p. 46] fifty years later bismarck was engaged in developing an increasingly self-serving power with which he could make sure that most germans still "did not exist" as a political force -a power that was soon to make him, as imperial chancellor, the chief administrator of his "new system for germany." during bismarck's rule weber, born in 1864, was maturing as a liberal intellectual. weber's father, who came from a financially secure family of textile manufacturers in western germany, was a successful lawyer and national-liberal parliamentarian; his mother, "a woman of culture and piety whose humanitarian and religious interests were not shared by her husband" (bendix 1962, p. 1). what weber's parents did share was their active involvement in attempting 37 alternate routes to increase the political influence of a declining liberalism. their house served, for the first twenty-nine years of weber's life, as a meeting place for the coalition of prominent politicians and professors from the university of berlin responsible for developing liberal opinion -that opinion which was so easily dominated by the autocratic rule of bismarck. this domination was made possible by skillful administration of a tariff system that restored the financial security of prussia's aristocratic landowners, the junkers. bismarck's administrative skill permitted him to develop what appeared to be a policy of national unity, while in actuality he was fashioning an economic reality in accordance with his now-famous statement to one of the liberals in 1848: "i am a junker and mean to benefit by it." the junkers were somewhat unique as an aristocratic class of landholders in east prussia. in contrast with the landowners of western europe, they were not a leisured class (see shuster and bergstraesser 1944, pp. 58-59). as owners of colonial lands they worked their estates themselves, without tenants: . . . the junker estates were never feudal; they were capitalist undertakings, which closely resembled the great capitalist farms of the american prairie -also the result of a colonial expropriation of the american indians. the junkers were hardworking estate managers, thinking of their estates solely in terms of profits and efficiency, neither more nor less than agrarian capitalists. [taylor 1945, pp. 28-29] in brief, the prussian junkers were "too poor to afford the aristocratic luxury of unbalanced accounts; and they brought to the 38 capitalist ideology affairs of state the same competence as was demanded on their own estates" (taylor 1945, pp. 60-61). thus, it is not surprising that the prussian tariff of 1818, which gave at least moderate protection to the junkers, marked the beginning of the first tariff system in all of europe. to return to the description of the junkers offered by taylor (1945, p. 61), "it was their application at the office desk which kept them afloat" as europe's most durable, hereditary governing class. the junker emphasis on administrative efficiency was the distinguishing characteristic of the professional and intellectual middle classes into which weber was born. it was these classes that still dominated the relatively small towns of germany in 1848, the year the german masses revolted against the military monarchies in vienna and berlin. these uprisings, the response of the unemployed to germany's first general economic crisis in winter 1847-48, led to a centralizing of power and the calling of a national assembly at frankfort. the work of this assembly revealed and strengthened the administrative tie that permitted the liberal, middle-class professionals to unite with the more conservative, upper-class junkers to dominate the german masses. the bonds of this liberal union -a union to which weber was later to lend scientific legitimation in his writings on social science methodology and bureaucracy -were cemented by force. the frankfort liberals, lawyers and professors, wanted to create a united germany by consent. however, as the class analysis of karl 39 alternate routes marx (1851-52, especially p. 71) clearly shows, they were frightened of the "disorder" being created by the revolutionary masses; consequently and paradoxically, the liberals increased their own vulnerability to the decisive power of the armed state by turning away from politics of consent to support the repressive activities of the armed forces as being essential to their cause of national security. as a commissioned officer, weber also considered the armed forces essential to this cause. his reliance on persuasion by force was made clear in a speech delivered to the 1907 congress of the verein fur sozialpolitik . speaking of the future of the social democratic party weber issues this warning: ... if the party seeks political power and yet fails to control the one effective means of power, military power , in order to overthrow the state, its dominance in the community and in public corporations and associations would only show its political impotence more distinctly, and the more it thought to rule simply as a political party and not objectively , the sooner it would be discredited. [mayer 1955, p. 65] weber's year of military training in 1883-84 had turned his initial condemnation into objective admiration of the requirements of military discipline. converted by his training experience to believe that the body works more precisely when all thinking is eliminated, weber apparently found considerable appeal in this partitioned view of men; taking leave from his university studies, he returned to strassburg for summer exercises in 1885 and again in •87, and participated in more military maneuvers a year later in posen (see gerth and mills 1946, p. 8). some twenty-five years 40 capitalist ideology later he was anxious to march at the head of his company in a world war about which he said: "in spite of all," it was " a great and wonderful war" (gerth and mills 1946, p. 22). while his health would not permit his participation as a leader of a company, he did serve from august 1914 to the fall of 1915 as a disciplinary and economic officer in charge of operating nine hospitals in the heidelberg area. with the peace of 1918, weber called upon "the designated war criminals" among germany's political leaders to offer their heads to the enemy as compensation for the mistakes they had made in conducting the war. his hope was that this offering would restore prestige to the german officer corps he so dearly loved -a love clearly shown in this answer to a favorite student's question concerning his post-war political plans: "i have no political plans except to concentrate all my intellectual strength on the one problem, how to get once more for germany a great general staff" (mayer 1955, p. 107). weber's emphasis on the importance of developing this general staff supported the cause of the liberals, which was also that of the junkers -namely, the protection of the capitalistic socioeconomic arrangements by which they were profiting. thus, the frankfort assembly's answer to the riots of the unemployed in the cities, and the more widespread general uprisings which followed, was a government without power to change existent socio-economic conditions. the central power legitimized by the frankfort assembly, 41 alternate routes referred to by marx (1851-52, p. 56) as "the parliament of an imaginary country," gave every appearance of having all the qualities of government; however, the imperial constitution creating this government was "a mere sheet of paper, with no power to back its provisions" (marx 1851-52, p. 114): ... as to the legal force of the decrees of the assembly, that point was never recognized by the larger governments, nor enforced by the assembly itself; it therefore remained in suspense. thus we had the strange spectacle of an assembly pretending to be the only legal representative of a great and sovereign nation, and yet never possessing either the will or the force to make its claims recognized. . . . thus the pretended new central authority of germany left everything as it had found it. [marx 1851-52, p. 54] when bismarck became the central power he, like the frankfort liberals of 1848, created a hollow government. however, it was a hollowness of a different kind in that it stemmed not from a lack of centralized power, but rather, precisely the opposite condition -that is, bismarck's administrative ability to efficiently consolidate and concentrate power which flowed from his own position as imperial chancellor. bismarck's socio-econoraic reforms: the administration of corporate economic unity the government fashioned by bismarck provided an illusion of power widely-dispersed. it was based on bismarck's 1866 proposal to establish a german parliament elected by direct universal vote, the junkers, perhaps the weakest and most reactionary group in 42 capitalist ideology germany at that time, were forced to accept this proposal in order that they might appear to be aligned with policy that was both powerful and progressive; thus, they were placed in a "ruling" position by bismarck while at the same time, they were being made accountable to him. so too were both the professionals and merchants of the middle classes and the working class who endorsed the proposal and accepted junker rule; the former were promised continued prosperity through the reinforcement of ties that strengthened their bond with the junkers, while the latter was convinced that the vote would bring social security. "the only loss was freedom, and that is not an item which appears in a balance sheet or in a list of trade union benefits" (taylor 1945, p. 108). 9 freedom to the liberals of the middle classes became transformed, under junker rule, from a desire for "liberal government" into a wish for "liberal administration." thus, the administrative talent of the prussian general staff that directed the war of 1870, became, under bismarck's direction, ever more efficient at achieving liberal demands without relinquishing power. as with the parliamentary proposal of 1866, bismarck initiated reforms designed to maintain the reality of his autocratic rule by retaining the image or appearance of pluralism. this was accomplished, as the following description makes clear, by encouraging development of the corporate capitalism upon which the liberal-junker alliance was based. the bismarckian order of 1871 had a simple pattern: junker prussia and middle-class germany, the coalition which sprang from the 43 alternate routes victories of 1866 . . . between 1867 and 1879 the german liberals achieved every liberal demand except power: ;ind in germany the demand for power had never bulked large in the liberal programme. never have liberal reforms been crowded into so short a period. . . . germany was given at a stroke uniform legal procedure, uniform coinage, uniformity of administration; all restrictions on freedom of enterprise and freedom of movement were removed, limited companies and trade combinations allowed. it is not surprising that in face of such a revolution the liberals did not challenge bismarck's possession of power: he was carrying out their programme far more rapidly than they could ever execute it themselves. [taylor 1945, pp. 122-123] endorsing limited incorporation and trade combinations, bismarck tied his own position of power and the security of the liberals' middle-class status position ever more closely to the development of capitalism in its new corporate form. thus, the end of the free trade era -heralded by the 1873 financial panic which marked the beginning of severe depression in germany and the rest of europe, and in the united states as well -was met by bismarck's policy favoring development of the kartells that fixed prices and regulated production during the 1880s. while the liberals received governmental support for industrial consolidation, the new capitalism required bismarck -somewhat against his will, because it was a step towards the greater germany he was resisting *" _-to further stabilize emerging socio-economic arrangements by implementing a policy that would protect the junker position. the moderate tariff of 1879, and the much higher tariffs of the 1880s, lessened the possibility that the newly-built railways of russia and the american continent could provide enough cheap grain to destroy german agriculture. in brief, 44 capitalist ideology it was a policy that not only made secure the junker position, but it also created allegiance to bismarck on the part of small farmers in east prussia; they, much more than the junker managers of large estates, needed protection. this protection, the method by which bismarck retained and strengthened his control over the liberals, junkers, and small farmers, was soon extended to the working class -the wage laborers. in exchange for their liberty -their freedom to oppose bismarck -between 1883 and 1889 he established for german workers a compulsory insurance program against sickness, accident, and old age. this program of social security was yet another indication of bismarck's administrative genius; not only did he manage to organize worker security at no expense to the state -it was subsidized for the state by employers and the workers themselves -but he also used the good will engendered by the program to collaborate with his rivals and eventual successors, the social democrats (see roth 1963, especially pp. 212-248). bismarck's administrative legacy : the bethmann conscience and weber's sociology the new chancellor of 1890, general leo von caprivi, carried on the bismarck tradition by giving empha; is to efficient organization and administration. while caprivi 's integrity was incorruptible, he was also politically inexperienced. his government, often ignoring the fact that power remained centralized in relatively few hands, 45 alternate routes was barely able to avert several potential economic crises -the army law renewal of 1893 is probably the most well-known example -by administering at least temporary unity among the various socioeconomic classes. caprivi's successors, prince chlodwig hohenlohe and then prince bemhard von bu'low, placed even more emphasis upon, and were considerably less discreet about, creating economic unity. bulow's germany of 1900 was searching for "world policy" that would provide an outlet for the overproduction of a rapidly maturing industrial capitalism; and the chief accomplishment of bulow's administration was that his minister of finance, johannes von miquel -a frequent guest in weber's parents' house -quite simply was able to buy, with the high tariff of 1902, the support of the prussian junkers for the reich. bulow's successor in 1909, theobald von bethmann-hollweg, was, even more markedly than bismarck and his other predecessors, an administrator. the descendent of a frankfort family that had for generations supplied the state with bureaucrats, bethmann became a civil servant who exemplified the "objective" bureaucrat-statesman that weber's sociology idealized. thus, while bethmann has been described by taylor (1945, p. 160) as "cultured, sympathetic, honest, he ran over with good intentions," it was his administration that most truly fulfilled bismarck's "blood and iron" promise of 1862 by leading germany into world war one and military rule. . . . all he lacked was any sense of power; and so it came about that this 'great gentleman' became, through his very irresponsibility, 46 capitalist ideology responsible for the agadir crisis, for the military violence at saverne, for the violation of belgian neutrality, for the deportation of conquered peoples, and for the campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare -crimes a good deal beyond bismarck's record, all extremely distasteful to bethmann, but all shouldered by his inexhaustible civil servant's conscience. it was useless, one night say dishonest, for him to have a high character: his sin was to belong to a class which had failed in its historic task and had become the blind instrument of power which it could not itself master. bismarck had said in 1867: 'let us put germany into the saddle. she will ride'; but in reality he had been the rider and germany the horse. now bethmann threw the reins on the horse's back. [taylor 1945, p. 160] the bethmann conscience that helped shape max weber's germany is precisely what weber advocates and encourages as he develops his sociology. the violence that resulted from bethmann' s attempt to be value neutral is herein viewed as nothing more nor less than weber's attempt to transfer the supposed objectivity of his science to bureaucracy. the result was a scientific equation that attempted to link the social organization of bureaucracy with the socio-economic arrangements of a nationalistic corporate capitalism -to make capitalism as value-neutral as weber believed bureaucracy was. such objectivity was, among other things, to form the core of the kind of education weber thought necessary to reconstruct war-torn germany. in a 1918 letter addressed to a frankfort colleague he writes: " 'objectivity' (sachlichkeit) as sole means to achieve pureness and the feeling of shame against the disgusting exhibitionism of those who are morally broken down --only this will provide us with a firm attitude ..." (see mayer 1955, p. 65). for weber, this objective 47 alternate routes attitude was fostered by the supposedly value-neutral social organization of bureaucracy and he celebrated, patterning his science after, the increasing efficiency with which modern government from bismarck to bethmann was able to exclude "love, hatred, and every purely personal . . . feeling from the execution of official tasks" (see bendix 1962, p. 483). l2 weber's objectivity: scientific schizophrenia in his essay on " 'objectivity' in social science and social policy" weber argues that "it can never be the task of an empirical science tc provide binding norms and ideals from which directives for immediate practical activity can be derived." [weber (1904) 1949, p. 52] "existential knowledge" is to be distinguished from "normative knowledge" -what "is" must be separated from what "should be." [weber (1904) 1949, p. 51] for weber, scientific analysis cannot directly evaluate the appropriateness of a given goal or end, but only the appropriateness of the means for achieving that end. [see weber (1904) 1949, pp. 52-54] in order to maintain this view that social science ("the analysis of f.icts") cannot directly address questions of social policy ("statement of ideals") weber introduces a scientific rationality that permits the sociologist to detach, at least partially, science from its cultural context. thus, weber's sociologist is allowed to consider, and be influenced by, cultural surroundings only in the initial stages of research and only on the condition that motives and afi capitalist ideology values remain "scientifically oriented." ... in social sciences the stimulus to the posing of scientific problems is in actuality always given by practical "questions." hence the very recognition of the existence of a scientific problem coincides, personally, with the possession of scientifically oriented motives and values. . . [weber (1904) 1949, p. 61] as research progresses, this cultural influence that initially helps to determine the scientific problem can be, in weber's view, carefully controlled by the social scientist. capable of distinguishing between "scientifically oriented" values and "normative standards," weber's sociologist uses scientific wisdom to separate empirical from normative self -the objective-scientist self leaves questions concerning social policy to be answered by sentimental-citizen self: ... it should be constantly made clear to the readers (and -again we say it -above all to one's self!) exactly at which point the scientific investigator becomes silent and the evaluating and acting person begins to speak. in other words, it should be made explicit just where the arguments are addressed to the analytical understanding and where to the sentiments . . . [weber (1904) 1949, p. 60] in this manner weber reasons a scientific schizophrenia that permits the sociologist to develop a value-relevant understanding of social reality without making value judgments, [see weber (1904) 1949, pp. 55-56] the result is a sociology that is shaped by weber's efforts to be value neutral -to separate his scien:ific from his political (citizen) self. this separation can be viewed as an important heuristic device aiding weber in exploring and explaining the rationality of his scientific methodology. this separation can also be viewed as 49 alitknait kuuitb being largely responsible for prohibiting weber from sufficientlyexploring and explaining the logic of the way in which value judgments influence the practice of social scientists. in failing to attend to this matter of value rationality weber is unable to adequately understand either the content of, or be clear about when he is moving between, the two selves and their respective worlds which he creates. ironically, then, it is precisely the movement between these two worlds, a separation weber made with the intention of eliminating bias, which accounts for the persistent value bias that characterizes his sociology -namely, his scientific support of capitalism. schizophrenic objectivity and weber's capitalism = bureaucracy equation the science that allows weber to distinguish between and separate means from end, fact from value, objective knowledge from emotional action as he moves between his scientist and citizen worlds also facilitates a separation sf the economic from the political. this dichotomy permits weber in defining power--"the possibility of imposing one's will upon the behavior of other persons" (see rheinstein and shils 1954, p. 323) -to make a further distinction between voluntary agreement and authoritative imposition. [weber (1925) 1947, pp. 148-149] it is this split which in turn forms the basis for weber's distinction between interest groups, the primary focus of his economic sociology, and types of authority, 50 capitalist ideology the major concern of his political sociology. [see weber (1925) 1947] 1s the result of this bifurcation of reality is that weber obscures the interrelationships between the agreements of interest groups and the imposition of authorities; as jean cohen (1972, p. 65) and more recently, erik olin wright (1974-75, pp. 94-95) have argued, domination becomes the "authoritarian power of command" as weber locates power not in economic relations of class, but in the political relations of bureaucracy. for weber, the primary characteristic of bureaucratic social organization is the rationalized specialization of tasks, the development of a hierarchy of authority. as anthony giddens (1972) points out, this characteristic is also the most important, the most essential, feature of weber's rational capitalism -an economic system he defines as being "identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational . . . enterprise." [weber (1904-05) 1958, p. 17] weber argues -to follow the giddens thesis -that the labor of administrative officials is like the labor of the workers whom they administer (control), "expropriated" from the means of production by the bureaucratic form of social organization. this separation of administrative staff from the material means of administrative organization allows weber to equate managers with workers; similarly, it also serves to equate bureaucracy with, and to legitimate, the existent division of labor produced by modern capitalism. (see giddens 1972, pp. 34-36) much of weber's work, in addition to his writing on bureaucracy, 51 is concerned with the development of capitalism in germany. his doctoral dissertation of 1889 examined the various legal principles by which medieval trading companies were allowed to combine in order to minimize the risk of private enterprise. subsequently, he studied the junker estates of east prussia and worker-motivation in his grandfather's linen factory in westphalia. his several speeches to the congresses of the verein fur sozialpolitik in 1905, 1907, 1909 and 1911, touched upon such topics as cartels and the state, economic communal enterprises, the growth of bureaucracy, and the problems of productivity and psychology of the working classes. in none of this work does weber ever seem to 18 fundamentally question the sanctity of capitalism. however, he is careful to promote a particular kind of capitalism. accordingly, in his 1909 speech weber decries the addiction to order produced by "the unquestioning idolization of bureaucracy." he argues that this "predilection for bureaucracy" is "a purely moral sentiment." therefore, he urges that this "belief in the unshakability of the undoubtedly high moral standard of german officialdom" be replaced with a more objective system. although this system would be based upon "the expansion of private capital, coupled with a purely business officialdom which is more easily exposed to corruption," it would help germany increase her 'power value', "the ultimate value," among the nations of the world. 19 [weber (1909) in mayer 1955, pp. 125-131] ten years later, amidst the post-war clamor for socio-economic arrangements that 52 capitalist ideology were more socialistic, weber again offers an "objective" defense of an "objective" capitalism: we have truly no reason to love the lords of heavy industry. indeed, it is one of the main tasks of democracy to break their destructive political influence. however, economically their leadership is not only indispensable, but becomes more so than ever now, when our whole economy and all its industrial enterprises will have to be organized anew. the communist manifesto quite correctly emphasized the economically (not the politically) revolutionary character of the work of the bourgeois-capitalist entrepreneur. no trade union, least of all a state-socialist official, can carry out these functions for us. we must simply make use of them, in their right place: hold out to them their necessary premium -profits -without, however, allowing this to go to their heads. only in this way today'. -is the advance of socialism possible. [giddens 1972, pp. 24-25] once again, weber's scientific schizophrenia permits him to posit a fragmented world -a world in which the development of a science that is objective links weber's sociology to a capitalism built upon the objectivity of bureaucracy. the value neutrality that supposedly results, in fact, creates the value bias of his impotent sociology. it is a sociology that can be nothing else but a legitimation of prevailing socio-economic arrangements -the arrangements of a german capitalism that weber himself referred to as "the fate of our time" (see loewith 1970, p. 119). thus, in perceptively criticizing those who mistake state-controlled cartel lization (monopolization) of profit and wage interests for the ideal of a "democratic" or "socialist" future, weber proceeds to characterize a viable alternative moving in the direction of 53 alternate routes this ideal, the organization of consumer interests, as a "pipe dream." [weber (1918) 1968, p. 1454] for weber, then, the development of a workable socialism must wait upon the capitalism of a refined state bureaucracy. in weber's sociology, capitalism becomes equated with, interchangeable with, bureaucracy. through a process of substitution the central problem of the german socio-economic order becomes bureaucracy, rather than capitalism; the problem is no longer economic, the fact that one class profits by the labor of another, but political -that is to say, bureaucratic. people do not dominate (control) one another; instead, hierarchical offices (bureaucratic roles) dominate each other (see cohen 1972; giddens 1972, p. 36). people "alienate" each other not because of the way in which interaction is affected by their relationship to the means of production, but because of their "objective" relationship to bureaucratic hierarchies. thus, weber focuses considerable attention on what he referred to as "the leadership 20 problem" (see wright 1974-7s, pp. 96-97). bureaucratic social change: the routinization of charismatic leadership weber was early aware that it was the political leaders elected by the people, and not the people or masses themselves, who safeguard capitalism, and the economic leaders "necessary premium 21 profits --", against "the dictatorship of the official." i bismarck regime had left germany with a strongly centralized s4 capitalist ideology bureaucracy unable, in weber's view, to provide the independent political leadership to carry out the "tasks of the nation" 22 (giddens 1972, p. 35). thus, in his 1895 inaugural lecture (antrittsrede) as professor of ecoromics at the university of freiburg, he speaks of the necessity for developing the political leadership of the economically prosperous bourgeoisie -leadership which would, without becoming despotic, "place the political power interests of the nation above all other considerations" (see giddens 1972, p. 17). the threatening thing in our situation ... is that the bourgeois classes, as the bearers of the pflkfirinterests of the nation, seem to wilt away, while thete are no signs that the workers are beginning to show the maturity to replace them. the danger does not . . . lie with the masses. it is not a question of the economic position of the ruled , but rather the political qualification of the ruling and ascending classes which is the ultimate issue in tn~e social-political problem. [giddens 1972, pp. 17-18] scientist weber provides citizen weber with a solution to this problem, the leader with charisma. this extraordinary individual, like weber's superhuman sociologist, is able to put his fragmented world back together again, protecting both the wilting bourgeoisie and the immature workers from the political dangers of bureaucracy/ capitalism. that these dangers, in weber's view, have little or nothing to do with class differences, the economic relationship between the rulers and the rulec, logically anticipates his particular kind of "voluntarism." in brief, it is a freedom of action that becomes rationally reserved for the super individual, the charismatic leader, whose personal magnetism "preaches, creates, 55 alternate routes or demands new obligations" [weber (1925) 1947, p. 361] of bureaucracy/capitalism. for weber, charismatic domination is, at least initially, the very opposite of bureaucratic domination. "pure" charisma is antithetical to all ordered economy. "it is the very force that disregards economy . . . where its 'pure' type is at work, it is the very opposite of the institutionally permanent" (gerth and mills 1946, p. 248). however, it is precisely this instability of charismatic authority which according to weber permits it to be fitted into the reality of socio-economic relations: . . . genuine charisma rests upon the legitimation of personal heroism or personal revelation. yet precisely this quality of charisma as an extraordinary, supernatural, divine power transforms it, after its routinization, into a suitable source for the legitimate acquisition of sovereign power by the successors of the charismatic hero. routinized charisma thus continues to work in favor of all those whose power and possession is guaranteed by that sovereign power, and who thus depend upon the continued existence of such power. [gerth and mills 1946, p. 262] charisma, then, becomes routinized to answer the "need of social strata, privileged through existing political, social, and economic orders, to have their social and economic positions 'legitimized'" (see gerth and mills 1946, p. 262). in the final analysis, even weber's super individual, the charismatic leader, must eventually cooperate in tailoring (routinizing) 'irrational" and "revolutionary' passions to fit the bureaucracy (the capitalism) of prevailing socio-economic arrangements. weber writes: "the routinization of charisma, in quite essential respects, is identical with adjustment to the conditions of the economy, that is, to the continuously 56 capitalist ideology effective routines of workaday life. in this, the economy leads and is not led" (see gerth and mills 1946, p. 54). 23 weber's antidote for this deadening effect of bureaucracy/ capitalism, is, as both cohen (1972) and wright (1974-75) point out, individualistic opposition -an opposition which is to be based upon acceptance of the prevailing normative definitions of the existent socio-economic system. even weber's chosen agent of change, the charismatic political leader, has no other alternative but to work from within bureaucracy/capitalism, cooperating with the privileged social strata in cooling charisma. the passions which initiate change are to be carefully monitored (routinized) to fall considerably short of that "carnival we decorate with the proud name of •revolution'." [weber (1919) 1946, p. 115] for weber, the point is not to alter the bureaucracy/capitalism that allows some individuals to dominate at the expense of others; rather, "the point is to salvage the soul against the impersonal, calculating formal rationality of domination" (cohen 1972, p. 82). 24 super leaders, superman sociologists, and weber's ideal type as stereotype the salvation urged by weber's sociology helps ensure the continuation of bureaucratic/capitalistic domination. both weber's "mildmannered daily reporter," the superman sociologist, and his charismatic leader can , like clark kent, "leap tall buildings at a single bound" -providing the appearance of transcending reality, while actually preserving it. weber's faith in the charisma of a 57 alternate routes super agent of change -the logical extension of, and counterpart to, his super scientist -is transformed into a faith in prevailing socio-economic arrangements. thus, while his charismatic leader and sociologist alike are able to momentarily transcend their cultural surroundings -the former at the outset, prior to the routinization of charisma, and the latter nearer the completion of value-relevant, but not value-biased, scientific work -they resign themselves to cultural influences at that point in their work most crucial to the maintenance of the established socio-economic system. in brief, the charismatic leader's' personal magnetism creates a passion that, in falling short of revolution, becomes locked into (routinized by) the prevailing socio-economic system. similarly, the superman sociologist's objectivity creates a science in which his problem-producing reality becomes locked into the "phone booth" 25 of weber's imagination -a science that leaves him incapable of emerging to observe how his sociology is changed by, but unable to change, existent socio-economic arrangements . weber's phone booth is the ideal type. it is this methodological technique that permits the transformation of citizen weber's empirical reality into the "mental constructs" cf scientist weber. he describes the ideal type as a research procedure in both negative and positive terms. it is not ideal in the sense of advocating something which ought to be. neither is it average in either the sense of a mediation or a summary of all traits common to a given phenomenon. it is not a 58 capitalist ideology proposition about reality which can be empirically verified as reality's "true" essence. thus, the ideal type is neither a hypothesis, nor can it be construed as an end in itself. rather, the ideal type is a technique, a means for constructing and testing hypotheses in order to facilitate comparisons of various aspects of the empirical world. according to weber: ... an ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct (gedankenbild) . in its conceptual purity, this mental construct (gedankenbild) cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality. it is a utopia . . . [weber (1904) 1949, p. 90] however, while the ideal type is never actually found in reality, it must be "objectively possible." [weber (1904) 1949, p. 80] logical soundness, then, is the basis upon which such a type is to be accepted as a reliable tool for use in research designed to check its validity. emphasis on logic to construct abstractions which neither are fully realized in, nor are accurately representative of, the material world is often characteristic of another type, the stereotype. both the ideal type and the stereotype involve exaggerating certain key features, while ignoring certain other features, of a phenomenon for the purpose of organizing observation into categories. it is usually argued by weber's many current disciples that such a comparison is unfair, not legitimate. the ideal type, they contend, 59 alternate routes is a "scientific" tool used to guard against the tendency to stereotype -to type emotionally, using both preconceived beliefs and varied empirical data gathered from biased sources to emphasize negative characteristics. [weber (1904) 1949, especially pp. 90-91] such reasoning is, however, extremely weak protest, as it fails to dismiss the fact that both types can be formulated so as to meet weber's primary criteria of abstractness and logical soundness leading to objective possibility. the result of typing in both instances is often a "picture in the mind -a preconceived (i.e., not based on experience) standardized, group-shared idea" which has been oversimplified (hoult 1974, p. 319). the phenomenon examined is logically cleansed of its contradictions — made into "a pure abstraction of the understanding" (see mueller 1959) . the world becomes a matter of competing interpretations -definitions of the situation -with the appellation "scientific" used to distinguish among various typologies, withholding credibility from some and lending it to others. in sun, in constructing his sociology, weber carefully overlooks the primary fact concerning this competition: namely, that both the ideal type of the scientist and the stereotype of the citizen are, like all other abstractions, given a fixed form in the reality of everyday living by the powerful -usually at the expense of the less powerful. weber's inability to see that it is the powerful 's desire to replace symbols (definitions of the situation) no longer effective in dominating the less powerful which constitutes 60 capitalist ideology the new knowledge necessitating the construction of fresh ideal types, is scientific blindness attributable to the "objectivity" of his sociology. this objectivity, residing in the sociologist's scientific and not citizen self, is supposed to produce a science that is value neutral; instead, it encourages development of a body of knowledge that is subjective and biased -a sociology that permits weber to live in both his worlds without adequately understanding either one. it is a sociology that, like the ideal type which provides its basic insights, confuses appearances with the actualities of the social world it attempts to describe and analyze. thus, bureaucracy appears to be equatable with capitalism, manager with worker, people with offices, power with politics, political leadership with change. such confusion is characteristic of a science most concerned with preserving rather than changing the reality of prevailing socio-economic arrangements; a science that enlists the superhuman qualities of charismatic leaders and scientific sociologists to create a sociology which supports that which is, as opposed to that which might be. conclusion and present-day implications the sociology of max weber, above all else, is a science oriented towards preserving the rapidly maturing german capitalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. his justification of existing socio-economic arrangements was accomplished "objectively." for weber, the socio-economic arrangements of german capitalism at the turn of the century were not only "the fate" of his time, but also the facts "the truth is the truth," spoke weber from his deathbed in munich -61 alternate routes his last attempt to support the objective sociology which could alone give credence to these final words. since that june day in 1920 the many and varied implications of weber's objective science have been explored by his disciples and critics alike. there is one major implication which continues to be of primary importance: the "executive privilege" that has welded nationalistic passions to the developing multi-national economic system from bismarck to bethmann to pierre eliott trudeau, richard m. nixon and gerald r. ford, can be more readily extended to bureaucratic sociologists if scientific work is thought to exist in a realm of reason set apart from a sphere of sentiment. for modern social scientists this apparently objective sociology capable of separating values from facts, the political economy from science, has; been most appealing. it becomes even more appealing when combined with weber's bureaucracy-equals-capitalism analysis which gives considerable impetus to a trend he bemoaned -namely, the increasingly narrow range of choices open to most individuals as capitalism matures. such analysis makes it easier for modern sociologists to take a "factual" view of the dominant socio-economic arrangements of their day that is in harmony with weber's description of german capitalism in 1900 as "the fate of our time." in developing this view, they may be able to gain a measure of security for themselves by reproducing the curious paradox which makes it appear that weber's sociology mourns the decline and replacement of the cultivated and well-rounded individual by the technician, while it actually 62 capitalist ideology encourages a role of growing importance for the specialized expert -a professional. in sum, the most potentially dangerous suggestion implied by weber's legacy to present-day social scientists involves the possibility of their continued emphasis upon, and the consequent growth in importance of, objective sociology as the focal point of the professionalism which guides their scientific practice. dangerous, because it is a professionalism that encourages weber's social scientists to see themselves as members of interest groups of a particular kind -interest groups which they view as being somewhat autonomous from other groups in a society supposedly made more pluralistic ("democratic") by their presence. with objective training in a specific discipline, social scientists in the weberian mold claim the capability to stand apart from and control the passions that sway the masses. like weber, their "constellations of interest" give way to both charismatic leaders and superhuman sociologists who transcend the ordinary by pacifying passion in a professional manner. these educated and relatively autonomous professionals know the truth as weber saw it. also, their sociologies continue to develop arguments reiterating the most fundamental paradox characteristic of his science: the objectivity that is supposed to preserve the pluralism of choice among conflicting values, results instead in a value-partisanship -a partisanship that further strengthens the dominating position of a wealthy and privileged elite engaged in fashioning a capitalism that is increasingly one-dimensional. 63 alternate routes notes 1. the riots of unemployed germans and the nearly continual depression suffered by the americans from 1873 to 1898 called into question the central assumptions of laissez faire capitalism. the transition to corporate capitalism questioned the harmony between self-interests and the interests of the larger society, the "natural law" of supply and demand as automatic balance, and the state's role of non-interference with this natural law. as the state moved from its role of referee to that of regulator of economic activity, it repeatedly intervened to extend the limits of the marketplace and further concentrate industrial wealth in the holdings of a relatively few corporate capitalists. this process proceeded somewhat more rapidly in the united states than in germany. even so, the concentration of available german capital in banks, to take an important indicator of corporate development, was occurring at the same time (the last quarter of the nineteenth century), if not a little earlier, in germany than it was in the united states. by 1900 both countries were characterized by comparatively well-developed corporate economies. mann (1968, especially pp. 200-203) provides more details concerning the growth of corporate socio-economic arrangements in germany, and williams (1966) does the same for the united states. 2. the adjective charismatic is used here to indicate the fact that "specifically exceptional qualities," to borrow from weber's own definition of charisma, of bismarck's personality had important effects on the german masses. its use is not meant to suggest, however, that bismarck (or hitler) derived the power with which he ruled by personal magnetism alone. on the contrary, the governmental administration bismarck created is a near-perfect example of social organization designed to routinize charisma by legitimating power within the confines of bureaucratic routine. 3. with reference to the american economy, this link between socio-economic reforms which marked the transformation from laissez faire to corporate capitalism and the origins of a scientific sociology has been traced by smith (1965; 1970). with reference to the socio-economic reform of the german economy in relation to political leadership and the development of a scientific sociology, it should be noted that weber at times spoke against bismarck. [weber (1918) 1968, pp. 138s-1392; gerth and mills 1946, pp. 31-33; bendix 1962, pp. 443-444] however, the fact that weber sometimes denounced eismarck for his intolerance of independent-minded political leaders and his reliance upon advisors who were nothing more than docile and obedient servants of governmental bureaucracy, does not alter and should not overshadow the equally important, if not more important, fact that weber's sociology was a powerful reinforcement for -essentially an imitation of -bismarck's 64 capita n sx. laeoiogy bureaucratic administration. bendix (1962, p. 451) includes a brief note to the effect that weber exempted bismarck from his "wholesale indictment" of monarchical and bureaucratic absolutism. 4. this combination of factors constituting the central focus of weber's sociology was not new among german intellectuals. weber's notion of an "objective" science dates back at least to kant and hegel, as well as being clearly evident in the beliefs and actions of johann fichte. professor fichte of the university of berlin was an outspoken advocate of german nationalism -believing that the superiority of the german people made it imperative that the germans not only govern themselves, but also the french and all the other peoples of europe as well. fichte's nationalism was strongly supported by his conceptions of the nature of science and of the university setting within which it was taught. nearly 100 years before weber wrote about separating reason from emotion, fichte, evidently fearing that the outbreak of war in 1813 might bring emotional bias into his classroom, dramatically cancelled his lectures and retired to his study "until the liberation of the fatherland" (see taylor 1945, pp. 44-45). 5. the general point emphasized here has been well-made by blackburn (1969). he, like myself, emphasizes the interconnections between prevailing socio-economic arrangements and bureaucratic fatalism, charismatic leadership, and social change. the present paper attempts to elaborate these interconnections by offering a more detailed examination of weber's value-neutral methodology, the fundamental scientific base upon which weber's sociology rests. 6. for an excellent elaboration of the way in which bismarck attempted to create economic reality that would be in accord with this statement, see engels (1887-88, especially pp. 89-108). despite bismarck's close identification with the junkers, many biographers suggest that he was not raised as one (see, for example, taylor 1955, especially pp. 13-14). 7. some scholars claim that friederich engels and not marx was primarily responsible for writing the series of new york tribune articles bearing the title germany: revolution and counterrevolution . however, whether one chooses to cite engels as does leonard krieger, and link revolution and counter-revolution with engels' earlier work, the peasant war in germany , in order to demonstrate that they are continuous sections of a single theme, or whether one cites marx as is done here, is of li.ttle matter. • the important point is the marx-engels emphasis on analysis which focuses upon the composition and interactions of the different socio-economic classes before and after the revolution of 1848 in germany (see marx 1851-52, especially pp. 4-11, 13, 30-31, 37, 39, 65 alternate routes 41, 43, 46-47, 51-52, infra.) . it should be noted here that historian taylor (1945, p. 77) makes an attempt to disclaim class as a motivating factor in liberal activities during this period; however, this disclaimer does not alter either the essential correctness of the marx-engels analysis, or the fact that these liberals, as professionals, were a part of the emerging middle classes. 8. military power is mayer's emphasis, objectively is mine. earlier weber had supported the naval program of secretary of state for the imperial navy, admiral von tirpitz. as mann (1968) points out, weber "surrendered as much to the cult of power as the imperial admiral" and most other germans by urging the development of sea power as an essential part of world politics designed to protect the german economy. weber writes: only complete political dishonesty and naive optimism can fail to recognize that, after a period of peaceful competition, the inevitable urge of all nations with bourgeois societies to expand their trade must now once more lead to a situation in which power alone will have a decisive influence on the extent to which individual nations will share in the economic control of the world, and thus determine the economic prospects of their peoples and of their workers in particular, [see mann 1968, p. 262] 9. for another historian's view concerning the conservative and reactionary policy developed by bismarck, see eyck (1948, especially pp. 15-18). 10. this was the paradoxical irony of the bismarck administration: that in order to protect his own power, bismarck was continually forced to support a policy of unification which moved the nation ever closer to the greater germany he did not desire. 11. biilow's "world policy" had been developing for some years under his predecessors. caprivi, especially, was very active in foreign affairs (see mann 1968, pp. 255-256). for more details on the way in which biilow directed germany's international relations see mann (1968, pp. 265-270, especially pp. 266 and 268). 12. evidently, weber had no small measure of success in training many of his closest friends and relatives to exclude such sentiment. thus, writing his wife-to-be, marianne, weber cautions: "we must not tolerate within us vague and mystical attitudes. if feelings run high, you must tame them, to steer your life soberly" (mayer 1955, p. 37). later, marianne, in a biography of her 66 vop i (.a i i o fa i ucu i uyj husband, would wtite in the third person (speaking of herself as "she" and of her husband and herself as "they") ; in short, "the indestructible barriers against yielding to passions" (even such "passion" as writing in the first person when speaking about oneself), which marianne notes that weber's mother had developed in him, are also readily observable in marianne herself (see green 1974, pp. 119-120). 13. it should be made clear at the outset of this discussion and analysis that i appreciate the breadth, and realize the several lasting contributions of weber's work. accordingly, only a small portion of his work has been scrutinized, focusing in particular on weber's conceptions of objectivity and bureaucracy, in order to show the way in which his writings on scientific method and social organization have made a lasting impact upon present-day sociology. further, the criticism of weber's notion of "objectivity" presented herein is not meant to undermine or destroy the idea that science as logical method can be of value in comparing several arguments, one to another, in order to attempt a determination of the validity of each. the judgment implied in this determination is recognition of the reality that some arguments make a stronger case then others. the stronger arguments constitute better interpretations of the material world because, to borrow a phrase from c. wright mills, they are closer to "the run of fact." this fact is interpreted by human beings who, rather than possessing as individuals two independent selves, are whole persons whose beings are shaped by a value configuration that results from the intersection of historical influences, the milieu of present social structure, and individual biography. it is within this framework that some arguments and analyses can be considered to be more "objective" than others. for elaboration of this conception of objectivity, the relationship between fact and value, see mills (1961, pp. 76-79, 129-131, and 178). 14. this is not to argue that weber was not acting in "good faith" by emphasizing this separation; he was well aware of the abuse of power and privilege that results when prejudice predominates fact as the major determinant of policy decisions. it is to argue that in moving between his separate worlds weber developed a science, the logic of which could do little other than to offer support for prevailing socio-economic arrangements. it is to argue against the view that the development of sociology by weber which supported and/or paralleled capitalist interests is in the main attributable to accident. 15. the attempt by bendix (1962, p. 289) to apologize for weber's inability to adequately relate his analytical abstractions to the material world cannot make weber's fragmented conception of reality whole. 67 alternate routes 16. for further elaboration see weber (1904-05, p. 19 and chapter ii, "the spirit of capitalism," especially pp. 62-69). also, see gerth and mills (1946, "social structures and types of capitalism," pp. 6s-69); and weber (1925, "the principal modes of capitalistic orientation of profit making, " pp. 278-280). 17. a fuller appreciation of the way in which weber's understanding of the close relationship between bureaucracy and capitalism helped to unite them in his sociology may be gained from further examination of his own writings. [see weber (1918) 1968, pp. 1381-1469, especially pp. 1393-1395] 18. weber [(1918) 1968, pp. 1423-1424] gives further and later evidence of his consistency in protecting capitalistic socioeconomic arrangements. for a complete list of weber's several speeches to the verein fur sozialpolitik see mayer (1955, p. 67). 19. see green (1974) for an excellent study showing the ways in which this split between the moral sentiment of ethics and the objectivity of science affected weber's most intimate relationships. when it comes to drawing out the connections between weber's science and his daily round of activities, the green analysis is superior to any i have read. 20. this focus upon leadership has been carried from weber's work into the present-day by those modern sociologists who develop a pluralistic view of the structure of authority. among the pluralists listed by gillam (1971, pp. 191-198), the "veto group" theory of riesman (1950) and the "dispersed inequalities" thesis of dahl (1961) are two of the most well-known arguments traceable to weber's concern with leadership. in contrast, the legacy left by marx with his "ruling class" model of the structure of power is exemplified today in the "power elite"thesis of mills (1956) and the "governing class" argument of domhoff (1967; 1970) . 21. both giddens (1972, pp. 17-19) and mayer (1955, pp. 44, 94-96) provide short, but excellent, reviews of weber's thinking on the relationship between bureaucracy and democracy. for a more lengthy treatment of similar high quality which compares weber's analysis of this relationship to that of v.i. lenin, see wright (1974-75). 22. weber's emphasis upon leadership has been accurately summarized as follows: "it was weber as much as anyone who made imperialism a respectable political cause in germany" (green 1974, p. 155, also see pp. 149-150, 153). 23. weber thought that "of all those powers that lessen the importance of individual action, the most irresistible is rational discipline" (see gerth and mills 1946, p. 253). for weber, it is 68 capitalist ideology clear that even the charismatic leader must, at some point, submit to the dictates of rationality. thus, weber was able to create and practice a science that could routinize the charisma of a bismarck, supporting he and his successors by separating doctrine from the person who advocates it. he attempted to do this in his own life even when the person involved, otto gross, was openly loved by weber's lover, else von richthofen, and lived a style of life disapproved of by weber (see green 1974, especially pp. 56, 129). 24. the term "superman" should be thought of in a generic sense, for its use is not intended to exclude women. superhuman activities are not limited to the male sex alone, as comic book readers and television viewers who follow the super feats of "wonder woman" are well aware. 25. for those readers who are unfamiliar with superman comics, radio and television programs, public phone booths, as well as restrooms were locations often used by clark kent for his transformation from "mild-mannered daily reporter" into superman. 26. it should be pointed out that the material quoted here is only part of a more complete definition which seems to support weber's notion of the ideal type. 69 alternate routes references bendix, reinhard. 1962. max weber: an intellectual portrait . garden city: doubleday. blackburn, robin. 1969. "a brief guide to bourgeois ideology." pp. 37-46 in student power , edited by alexander cockburn and robin blackburn. baltimore: penguin books. cohen, jean. 1972. "max weber and the dynamics of rationalized domination." telos (winter) : 63-86. dahl, robert a. 1961. who governs? democracy and power in an american city . new haven: yale university press. dcmhoff, g. william. 1967. who rules america?. englewood cliffs: prentice-hall. . 1970. the higher circles . new york: random house. engels, friedrich. (1850, 1851-52) 1967. the german revolutions ( the peasant war in germany and germany: revolution and counter-revolut ion) . leonard krieger, ed. chicago: the university of chicago press. (1887-88) 1972. the role of force in history: a study of bismark's policy of blood and iron , translated by jack cohen and edited by ernst kangermann. new york: international publishers. eyck, erich. 1948. bismarck after fifty years . london: george philip 5 son. gerth, hans h., and c. wright mills. 1946. from max weber: essays in sociology . new york: oxford. giddens, anthony. 1972. politics and sociology in the thought of max weber . toronto: macmillan. gillam, richard, ed. 1971. power in postwar america . boston: little, brown and company. green, martin. 1974. the von richthofen sisters: the triumphant and the tragic modes of love . new york: basic books. 70 capitalist ideology hoult, thomas ford. 1974. dictionary of modern sociology . totowa, new jersey: littlefield, adams $ company. loewith, karl. 1970. "weber's interpretation of the bourgeoiscapitalistic world in terms of the guiding principle of •rationalization*." pp. 101-122 in max weber , edited by dennis wrong. englewood cliffs: prentice-hall. mann, golo. 1968. the history of germany since 1789 . new york: frederick a. praeger. marx, karl. (1851-52) 1952. revolution and counter-revolution or germany in 1848 . eleanor marx ave ling, ed. london: george allen and unwin ltd. mayer, j. p. 1955. max weber and german politics . london: faber and faber. mills, c. wright. 1956. the power elite . new york: oxford. . 1961. the sociological imagination . new york: oxford. mitzman, arthur. 1970. the iron cage: an historical interpretation of max weber . new york: grosset 6 dunlap, inc. mueller, gustav emil, tr. 1959. g.w. f.hegel in encyclopedia of philosophy . new york: philosophical library. rheinstein, max, ed. (edward shils and m. rheinstein, trans.). 1954. max weber on law in economy and society . cambridge: harvard university press. riesman, david. 1950. the lonely crowd . new haven: yale university press. roth, guenther. 1963. the social democrats in imperial germany: a study in working-class isolation and national integration . totowa, new jersey: bedminster press. shuster, george n., and arnold bergstraesser. 1944. germany: a short history . new york: w.w. norton. smith, dusky lee. 1965. "sociology and the rise of corporate capitalism." science and society 29: 401-418. . 1970. some socio-economic influences upon the founding fathers o f sociology in the united states (unpublished ph.d. dissertation) . buffalo: state university of new york. 71 alternate routes taylor, a. j. p. 1945. the course of german history: a survey of the development of germany since 1815 . london: hamish hamilton. . 1955. bismarck: the man and the statesman . new york: alfred a. knopf. weber, max. (1904) 1949. '** objectivity' in social science and social policy." pp. 49-112 in the methodology of the social sciences , translated and edited by edward a. shils and henry a. finch. new york: the free press. . (1904-05) 1958. the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism , translated by talcott parsons. new york: charles scribner's sons. . (1909) 1955. "max weber on bureaucratization in 1909." pp. 125-131 in max weber and german politics , j. p. mayer. london: faber and faber. . (1918) 1968. "parliament and government in a reconstructed germany." pp. 1381-1469 in economy and society , edited by guenther ross and claus wittich. new york: bedminster. (1919) 1946. "politics as a vocation." pp. 77-128 in from max weber , translated, edited and introduced by gerth and mills. new york: oxford. . (1925) 1947. the theory of social and economic organization , talcott parsons, ed.(a.m. henderson and t. parsons, trans.). new york: oxford. williams, william a. 1966. the contours of american history . chicago: quadrangle books. wright, erik olin. 1974-75. "to control or to smash bureaucracy: weber and lenin on politics, the state, and bureaucracy." berkeley journal of sociology 19: 69-108. 72 the myth of canadian exceptionalism | 19 the myth of canadian exceptionalism: crisis, non-recovery, and austerity —jim stanford1 since the onset of the global financial crisis and resulting worldwide recession in 2008, canadian political leaders have consistently boasted (to both domestic and international audiences) about canada’s supposedly superior record in avoiding the worst effects of that crisis, and then quickly repairing the damage and getting back to previous trajectories of growth and prosperity.2 indeed, at first federal leaders (led by finance minister jim flaherty) even denied that canada would be caught in the global conflagration at all – illustrated most strikingly by mr. flaherty’s ill-fated fiscal update of october 2008, which denied the existence of a recession which in fact had already hit the country (department of finance, 2008).3 once it became obvious that this could not be true, the government changed tack, and – in cooperation with other countries, as agreed at the g20’s emergency summit meeting in washington in november 2008 – launched a powerful but temporary series of emergency fiscal, monetary, and financial measures. the recession that then hit canada was quick and sharp, but shortlived (by technical economic definitions, anyway): real gross domestic product (gdp) bottomed out in july 2009 and began to grow again. by the autumn of 2010 real gdp had regained its pre-recession peak (reached two years earlier). a few months later (by january 2011), total employment also regained its pre-recession peak, and the government crowed that the damage from the recession had thus been fully repaired. political 1 jim stanford is an economist with the canadian auto workers. he can be reached at stanford@caw.ca. the author acknowledges very helpful comments on an earlier draft from stephen mcbride. 2 this work extends and updates previous research by the author. see stanford, 2012; 2012b. 3 the glaring sense of denial which infused that document sparked the subsequent political crisis during which the opposition parties united to vote non-confidence in the minority conservative government, followed by the prorogation of parliament by the governorgeneral. 20 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism figures naturally credited their own economic management for this purported recovery – including, variously, tax cuts (implemented before and during the recession), canada’s relatively lower public debt, the emergency fiscal and financial measures taken during the crisis, and canada’s more stringent banking regulations. economic conditions may be suboptimal, it was acknowledged, but canadians should be grateful that the country survived the crisis so much better than the rest of the world. this argument was a potent weapon in the conservatives’ successful campaign to win a majority mandate in the election of spring 2011. the traditional “rule of thumb” of economists in canada is that a recession occurs when real gdp declines for two consecutive quarters, and a “recovery” commences when real gdp begins to expand again. by this definition, the recession lasted for three quarters beginning in the autumn of 2008, and recovery began in the summer of 2009. real gdp has continued to edge ahead (albeit unspectacularly and unsteadily), employment has increased (also fitfully), and the economy seems headed in a forward direction. so has the canadian economy indeed been “exceptional” in how the crisis was experienced and managed here? it turns out that both components of the government’s dual boast – that canada fared much better than other countries, and that the damage from the recession has already been repaired – are false. and both claims founder on the same underlying empirical fact: canada’s population grows over time, and relatively quickly. trends in absolute levels of output and employment need to be considered in the context of that population growth. on average over the last five years, canada’s total population has increased by about 1.2 percent per year. the working age population (aged 15 years and over, by canadian statistical definitions) has been growing slightly faster than that: about 1.3 percent per year. with a growing population, therefore, the economy must continuously generate new employment opportunities, and new output and income, simply to support a constant standard of living and a steady degree of labour market utilization. comparisons of the total number of jobs, or the total volume of output, over time require adjustments for this ongoing expansion in the canadian population. in fact, canada’s population growth is among the fastest in the industrialized world. canada’s population growth rate is faster than any other g7 economy (including the u.s.), faster than mexico’s, and nearly twice the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) average. strong population growth generates a certain underlying economic momentum (since growing population naturally stimulates underlying growth in consumer spending and other variables). but it also sets the myth of canadian exceptionalism | 21 a higher “bar” in order to maintain a steady-state economic standard: the canadian economy must generate hundreds of thousands of new jobs each year, and tens of billions of dollars in new gdp, just to maintain existing economic and labour market conditions. when canadian officials boast that the pace of job-creation or gdp growth is relatively high compared to other countries, they neglect to mention that canada’s economy must generate more growth and jobs, just to stand still. other industrialized countries (like japan or germany), where population is stagnant or even declining, do not need to generate such significant annual expansion in order to protect existing benchmarks. similarly, when political leaders claim that the absolute level of employment or production has regained and surpassed pre-recession peaks, they neglect to consider the impact of ongoing population growth in the several years since those pre-recession peaks were reached. any comparisons of economic and employment performance, therefore, whether over time or across countries, must take account of the impact of population growth on measures of utilization or prosperity. once those adjustments are made, then the tone of self-congratulation which typifies so many official pronouncements on canada’s recent economic performance is shown to be thoroughly unjustified. this paper will consider in turn the twin claims made by canadian political leaders: namely, that the damage done by the recession to the canadian economy and labour market has now been repaired, and that canada did much better than other industrialized countries in traversing the difficult economic conditions of the last few years. section i indicates that after adjusting for population growth, the recovery in neither gdp nor employment since the recession has yet to recoup the ground lost during the 2008-09 downturn. in the labour market, in particular, the pace of employment-creation has lagged far behind the pace of population growth. after adjusting for population growth, just one-fifth of the damage done by the recession had been repaired by mid-2012 – fully three years after the official onset of the recovery. moreover, this key labour market indicator has not improved since the spring of 2010, highlighting the stalling of the canadian recovery since that time. as discussed in section ii, canada’s international economic reputation similarly loses considerable lustre when the data are adjusted for canada’s faster-than-average population growth. in per capita terms, the change in canada’s real gdp since 2007 ranks an uninspiring 16th among the 34 countries of the oecd. similarly, after adjusting for growth in the working age population, canada’s employment performance has been equally middling: once again ranking 17th (out of 33 22 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism reporting countries) in terms of the change in the employment rate since 2007. if there is one word to summarize canada’s economic standing among its industrialized peers, it should be “mediocre.” section iii provides further comment on another factor that has been suggested as contributing to canada’s economic performance during and after the global financial crisis: the relative stability of the canadian banking system. while canadian financial markets experienced significant stress during the worst moments of the global crisis, no canadian banks failed, and credit conditions did not experience the same degree of contraction as in u.s. and european markets. this relative stability certainly constituted a canadian “advantage” in recent years. the reasons for this stability are considered, with special emphasis on the role of powerful stabilizing state interventions – both long-standing policies and regulations, and emergency measures implemented during the crisis. the exceptionalist claim that canadian banks were somehow inherently immune from the global meltdown is refuted; the success of the canadian financial system in traversing the global meltdown reflects state policy, not any embedded advantages of canadian banks. part i: historical comparisons canada’s economy (measured by real output) began to shrink in the third quarter of 2008, and declined close to 4 percent by summer 2009, when the official recession ended and real gdp began to recover. in per capita terms, however, the downturn began somewhat earlier: at the beginning of 2008, when slowing economic expansion began to lag behind ongoing population growth. real per capita gdp then fell by over 5 percent by summer 2009. the decline in the per capita measure was worse than the fall in total gdp, because of the impact of ongoing population growth that continued even as the economy was in recession. as indicated in figure 1, real per capita gdp has improved fairly steadily but slowly since mid-2009, with the exception of the second quarter of 2011 when total gdp (and, of course, per capita gdp) declined. however, those 9 quarters (over two years) of economic progress have repaired only about 70 percent of the reduction in real per capita gdp that occurred during the downturn. real per capita gdp remains 1.4 percent lower as of the third quarter of 2011, than it was at the beginning of 2008. in fact, real per capita gdp is still lower in canada than it was at the beginning of 2006 (when the harper conservative government first took power); during almost six years of conservative “stewardship,” therefore, canadians have experienced no economic progress (by this measure) whatsoever. the myth of canadian exceptionalism | 23 put differently, real gdp declined by some $2,100 per canadian (measured in 2002 dollar terms) during the 9 months of the official recession. the subsequent 27 months of recovery recouped some $1,500 of that loss, leaving gdp per person $600 lower than before the recession. of course, trends in average real gdp per capita are not an adequate portrayal of actual living standards of the majority of canadians anyway, for several well-known reasons. average gdp per capita takes no account of the distribution of income, so at a time of growing income polarization, the average measure is an increasingly misleading indicator of the actual material standards experienced by the growing share of marginalized canadians. and many components of gdp (including corporate profits, depreciation, and others) are never fully reflected in individual incomes or living standards. for this reason, the decline in average real per capita personal incomes has been slightly worse than the decline in real per capita gdp. in fact, the lasting damage from the recession is considerably worse than that. it is normal for an economy to demonstrate rising real per capita output over time, as a result of technological improvements and productivity growth. the pre-recession trend in canada was for real per capita gdp to increase by around 1.5 percent per year (reflecting capital accumulation, productivity growth, and innovation). trend potential output has continued to grow during the years of recession and subsequent slow recovery (as indicated in figure 1). relative to that potential,4 current real per capita gdp (of about $39,400 per person, in 2002 dollar terms) is at least 6 percent (or $3,000) below the level it would have reached if the prerecession trend had been sustained. in this regard, the fact that canada’s economy continues to operate well below its productive potential costs each canadian thousands of dollars in foregone income each year. and the modest rebound in real per capita gdp experienced since summer 2009 has not been strong enough to begin to close that gap with potential output that was opened up during the recession. this is different from most previous recoveries, which featured periods of above-trend growth which allowed the economy to catch up to potential output.5 4 the canadian economy was not fully-employed even before the crisis and recession hit in 2008, so even that pre-recession trend does not capture the true full-employment potential of the economy. 5 for example, as canada exited the painful recession of 1981-82, real gdp began to grow at an annual average rate of 5.6 percent during the first three years after the trough of the recession –more than twice as fast as the average gdp growth experienced in the first three years of the present recovery (author’s calculations from statistics canada cansim table 380-0002). the recovery after the 1990s recession, however, was also initially halting and uncertain; only by the last five years of that decade was the economy growing at a fast enough clip (almost 5 percent on an average annual basis) to absorb excess capacity still being carried from the 1990-91 recession. 24 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism adjusting employment statistics for population growth results in an even starker comparison to pre-recession benchmarks. because the potential labour force (represented by the working age population) grows by some 1.3 percent (or around 350,000 canadians) each year, it is not enough for the canadian economy to simply create new jobs. it must produce enough new jobs to keep up with ongoing population growth; in fact, during a recovery job creation must be even faster, in order to repair the damage done by the recession (as well as offsetting ongoing population growth). the best statistic for comparing the pace of job creation with ongoing population growth is the employment rate, which is the ratio of total employment to the working age population. especially during periods of sustained labour market slackness, the employment rate is a more appropriate indicator of labour market well-being than the unemployment rate; in particular, it is unaffected by factors such as the decline in formal labour force participation which results when discouraged workers simply give up looking for work.6 falling labour force participation reduces the unemployment rate, making it seem like the labour market is strengthening, when in fact discouraged workers are simply throwing in the towel. in this context, the employment rate provides a more accurate reading on labour market conditions than the unemployment rate. like real per capita gdp, canada’s employment rate peaked some months before the official onset of recession. the employment rate peaked at 63.8 percent of the working age population in february 2008, after which point the decelerating pace of job creation no longer kept up with ongoing population growth. during the next 17 frightening months, the employment rate plunged by 2.5 percentage points, reaching a trough of 61.3 percent of the working age population in july 2009. that represented the fastest decline in the employment rate of any recession since the 1930s. the subsequent bottoming and recovery of real output in canada has hardly recouped any of this sharp downturn. from july 2009 through mid-2010, the employment rate recovered by about one-half of a percentage point, representing one-fifth of the damage that was done to canadian labour markets by the recession. after summer 2010, however, further labour market progress ground to a halt, as governments shifted from stimulus to austerity and private business investment stagnated. 6 as will be discussed, even the employment rate does not capture the deterioration in the quality of work (represented by trends such as increased part-time, contract, and precarious work) that is another feature of a chronically depressed labour market. the myth of canadian exceptionalism | 25 during the two years from mid-2010 through mid-2012, the employment rate stagnated at an average of 61.8 percent. the employment rate remains 2 full percentage points below the pre-recession peak. regaining that pre-recession peak would require the creation of an incremental 570,000 jobs, doubling the number of actual net jobs created in canada between fall 2008 and mid-2012. this analysis is rooted solely in the quantity of employment in canada’s labour market, not its quality. but since 2008 there has also been a significant deterioration in the quality of employment in canada, measured by the incidence of part-time, temporary, and lowwage work. from october 2008 (the pre-recession peak in canadian employment) through summer 2012, over one third of net new jobs created in canada were part-time. the share of part-time employment has declined slightly since the recovery formally began in july 2009, but is nevertheless considerably higher than before the recession began. similarly, there has been a net reallocation of employment toward lower-wage industries since the recession began. employment in those sectors of the economy (defined at the two-digit level) which pay higher-than-average wages was still lower in mid-2012 than in october 2008 (mostly due to the net loss of over 200,000 jobs during this time in manufacturing). that means that new jobs in lower-wage sectors account for more than 100 percent of all net new jobs created since the pre-recession peak. this has reinforced the continuing longer-run decline in the average quality of jobs in the canadian labour market. this decline in employment quality means that the quantitative data on the employment rate described above (properly adjusted for population growth) understates the true extent of weakness in the canadian labour market. whether measured by output or employment, therefore, it is clear that canada is still grappling with the after-effects of the 2008-09 downturn. in an interesting public opinion poll conducted in late 2011 by the pollara (2011) firm for the economic club of canada, a full 70 percent of canadians believed the country was still in an economic recession – even though, according to economists, the recession had officially ended two-and-a-half years earlier. from the perspective of a labour market that was hammered by the recession, and has barely recouped any of that damage since, it is quite understandable why average canadians could be forgiven for concluding that the recession is still with us. in terms of the employment rate, it clearly still is. 26 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism part ii: international comparisons failing to take account of population growth also distorts international comparisons of economic and employment performance, just as it distorts comparisons over time. for example, canada experienced the 9th fastest rate of gdp expansion in the oecd, on average, since 2007. however, canada has a higher-than-average rate of population growth, and hence must generate faster gdp growth simply to “stand still” in terms of per capita standards. if we adjust for differential population growth rates, then canada’s gdp performance is only mediocre within the sample of industrialized countries. table 1 reports the cumulative evolution of real per capita gdp across the oecd from 2007 through 2011. of the 34 countries in the oecd, canada ranks only 16th – almost exactly in the middle. real per capita gdp for 2011 was still 1.4 percent lower than in 2007. twelve oecd countries have regained and surpassed their pre-recession levels of real per capita gdp (including germany, korea, australia, and several others). these countries might more honestly be able to claim to have repaired the economic damage from their recessions.7 canada, in contrast, can make no such claim. other countries (including sweden, the netherlands, belgium, and new zealand) have yet to regain their pre-recession real per capita gdp benchmarks, but have experienced smaller declines in that measure than canada has. of the countries which have experienced a worse decline in real per capita gdp since 2007 than canada, several experienced full-blown financial crises, complete with bank failures and large losses of apparent wealth. this group includes ireland, greece, and iceland (the worst-hit countries), along with the u.k. and the u.s. the fact that canada’s more strongly regulated banking system avoided these worst-case manifestations of the global crisis clearly contributed to canada’s avoidance of those very large declines in living standards (and the reasons for this outcome are discussed below). however, among the sub-set of countries which did not experience bank failures and associated consequences, canada’s gdp performance has been relatively poor. of course, there are many factors affecting each country’s performance during and after the crisis (in addition to the stability of their respective financial institutions). canada’s international standing is similarly mediocre in terms of our labour market recovery. canada’s economy must generate some7 as noted in section i, however, simply regaining a pre-recession peak in per capita gdp does not take into account the problem that real output, in the intervening years, has continued to lag far behind potential output. the myth of canadian exceptionalism | 27 thing like 225,000 new jobs per year just to keep pace with the ongoing expansion of the working age population.8 it is not sufficient, then, for politicians to point out that the total number of jobs now exceeds the prerecession peak. in the nearly four years since that time, the working age population has grown by 1.3 million. a much faster pace of job creation would have been needed in order to create opportunity for new labour force entrants, as well as re-employ those who were displaced by the downturn. many other industrialized countries, in contrast, do not face that same challenge. population in some oecd countries (like japan, germany, much of eastern europe, and several others) is stagnant or growing very slowly. in that context, total employment might not grow much at all – yet a given employment rate could still be sustained. table 2 reports the change in each oecd country’s employment rate from 2007 (the last full year before the recession) to 2011.9 canada’s average employment rate for 2011 was 0.8 points below its average level for 2007.10 that ranks canada 17th out of the 33 reporting oecd countries included in table 2. eleven countries (including germany, korea, and australia) achieved a higher employment rate by 2011 than was experienced before the recession. these countries, then, can more genuinely claim to have fully repaired the labour market damage of the recession. in france and japan, the employment rate is still lower than in 2007, but the decline was not as steep as in canada. as with table 1, the hardest-hit countries in terms of the decline in the employment rate include those (such as greece, ireland, iceland, and the u.s.) where banks collapsed and vast amounts of credit were destroyed. among a peer group of oecd economies which did not experience such extreme financial shocks, however, canada’s employment performance (like the evolution of gdp) has been relatively poor. part iii: understanding canadian financial stability an influential stream within the broader ideology of canadian exceptionalism is the myth that canadian banks were blameless in the events of the 2008-09 financial crisis and the resulting recession. canadian banks are strong and safe, the argument goes; they were prudent, 8 this estimate represents the product of the annual absolute growth in the working age population times the pre-recession employment rate. 9 chile does not report this data and hence is excluded from table 2. 10 table 2 reports the decline in canada’s employment rate between 2007 and 2011 as 0.8 percentage points, compared to the full 2-point decline in that rate illustrated above in figure 2. the reason for the difference is because table 2 reports the difference in full-year averages (in order to facilitate international comparisons), whereas figure 2 illustrates the more dramatic evolution in the monthly series. 28 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism and above all they (unlike u.s. banks) were not bailed out.11 this argument is invoked in order to deflect critical attention away from canadian financial players, even as other countries (like the u.k. and u.s.) debate how to strengthen financial regulation, and indeed challenge the general political and cultural legitimacy of financial elites. in actuality, canadian banks were bailed out – and powerfully so. at the end of 2008, and the beginning of 2009, federal finance minister flaherty and other federal officials implemented a new program called the extraordinary financing framework (eff). this package of measures consisted of several different ways to assist canadian banks, enhancing their liquidity and shifting risks off their balance sheets, during their hour of need. the major components of the eff included: • using the public mortgage insurance company (canadian mortgage and housing corporation) to buy securitized mortgages from the banks in order to inject cash into the banks’ coffers. • providing large loans, at near-zero interest rates, from the bank of canada, when commercial lenders would not do so. • providing other lines of credit from the bank of canada and other agencies, including in u.s. dollars. • even the u.s. federal reserve bank supported the canadian banks with major assistance offered through its emergency liquidity program. these loans and other liquidity injections were backed up with very unusual forms of collateral – or sometimes with no collateral at all. for example, the bank of canada was willing to accept asset-backed commercial paper (abcp) from the banks to back up some of these emergency loans. this was just a year after the entire abcp market froze up in canada, even before the global meltdown, as a result of growing investor concern regarding the true nature and value of some of the securitized assets contained in abcp products. individual abcp owners were left 11 federal government officials boasted about the relative stability of canadian banks right through the crisis – even as they were channeling unprecedented sums of emergency assistance to those institutions. for example, the government claimed in 2009 that “canada’s financial system has shown exceptional stability throughout the crisis and has become a globally noted leader in best banking practices.” (government of canada, 2009, p.165). the president of the canadian bankers’ association (cba) stated baldly that “not one bank in canada …required a cent in taxpayer-funded bailouts” (anthony, 2010, p.11). some of the debate hinges on a matter of semantics: when is a bail-out not a bail-out? as another cba spokesperson put it, bank critics “seem to be implying that liquidity support is the same as a bank bailout and this is not the case” (tencer, 2012). whether it is called a “bailout” or “liquidity support,” it is a matter of record that over $100 billion of public funds were injected into the private banks in their moment of need. the myth of canadian exceptionalism | 29 holding illiquid paper. but banks with abcp were able to convert it into liquid cash, courtesy of the bank of canada, when they needed it. in total, various federal agencies offered the banks a maximum of up to $200 billion in cash and short term low-interest loans, at a point in time when the banks could not attain this financing from normal commercial sources because of the global crisis. at peak, it is estimated that canadian banks tapped $114 billion of this potential line of credit (macdonald, 2012). incredibly, canadian banks remained profitable right through the dramatic events of 2008 and 2009. every one of the five largest banks declared an annual profit, and only one of them (the cibc) declared even a quarterly loss during the darkest days of the crisis. as credit and economic conditions stabilized, profits strengthened further, and the banks were able to quickly repay the government assistance, with interest in some cases. nevertheless, there is no denying that canadian banks received unprecedented financial support from government in order to survive the crisis, and that without that support there is considerable likelihood that one or more major canadian banks would have failed.12 in this regard, canadian banks were clearly “saved” (or “bailed out”) by powerful public intervention. moreover, quite distinct from the emergency support offered up during the moment of crisis in 2008-09, the canadian financial system has benefited in a longer-term sense from a public policy regime which is accommodating, supportive, and protective. these long-standing protections and subsidies have served to create a domestic financial industry that is more stable and profitable than those in other countries. it was this policy context (not the good judgment or “prudence” of canadian bank executives) which explains why canada’s financial system withstood the storms of 2008-09 more safely than banks in the u.s., the u.k., or europe did.13 deposits up to $100,000 per person per bank are fully guaranteed by the canadian deposit insurance corporation. this eliminates the incentive for a “run” on the bank, and stabilizes the whole system. most home mortgages are insured by the canadian mortgage and housing corporation. this eliminates most of the risk for banks in 12 macdonald’s (2012) study notes that at various times the estimated extent of public lending to three of the big five canadian banks exceeded the market value of the banks; without government support, then, those banks would have been fully “under water.” 13 a very useful summary of the history and nature of canadian bank regulation, and the continuing risks associated with leveraged private banking even in that more stable context, is provided by russell, 2012. 30 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism writing new mortgages, and also makes it easier for them to “collateralize” their mortgages (packaging them into bonds which are sold to financial investors).14 by attaching conditions to the mortgages it ensures (such as requiring minimum down payment ratios or maximum amortization timetables), the cmhc contributes to higher quality in mortgage loans, further reducing risk. the federal government prohibits foreign takeovers of canadian banks. this prevented any major bank from being swallowed up in the mid-2000s when u.s. banks (riding high on the bubble) were scouring the world for acquisitions. earlier in the 200s, the previous liberal federal government also vetoed mergers between the major canadian banks, which also likely contributed to their relatively lower leverage ratios as they headed into the crisis. canadian bank services are heavily subsidized by the canadian tax system, including through the partial taxation of capital gains and dividends, the deductibility of carrying charges, and a plethora of tax shelters for financial investments (such as registered retirement savings plans, registered education savings plans, tax-free savings accounts, and now pooled registered pension plans. both during the global financial crisis, and in a longer-term perspective, the canadian financial industry benefits from a multidimensional framework of government support, subsidy, and stabilization. it is certainly true that the relative stability of canadian banks has been a positive feature of canada’s economic experience since 2008. but that relative stability can be ascribed neither to the judgment or acumen of canadian bankers (who were heavily engaged in leveraged, speculative activities like their counterparts around the world), nor to the specific policy actions of the current canadian government (which inherited the structure of canadian bank regulation from much-earlier predecessors). conclusion since the onset of the global financial crisis and subsequent recession, canadian political leaders have stressed that while things may be difficult for canadians, they are getting better, and the ground lost in the recession has been quickly recovered. moreover, canada is said to have escaped the worst effects of the recession, which hit home 14 this practice also meant that the incremental risk shifted to government by the purchase of mortgages from the banks during the crisis was modest, since those mortgages were already insured by the public agency. the myth of canadian exceptionalism | 31 more painfully in other industrialized countries. many canadians accepted this argument (perhaps due more to the power of sheer repetition, rather than empirical validity), and this contributed to the conservative party’s successful campaign for a majority mandate in may 2011. this mantra of canadian exceptionalism is refuted by an analysis of appropriate measures of economic performance. the damage of the recession is still very much with canadians – and is especially visible in the labour market. real per capita gdp is still below its pre-recession peak, and several thousand dollars per person below its potential level (given pre-recession trends). and the labour market is still much weaker (measured by the employment rate) than before the recession. indeed, measured by the employment rate, only one-fifth of the damage has been repaired, and no further progress has been made on this measure in the last two years. internationally, canada’s performance according to both standards is at best mediocre. certainly, canada has done better than those countries which experienced major banking and financial crises during the 2008-09 downturn (such as the u.s., the u.k., ireland, iceland, greece, and italy). but among the broader set of industrialized countries, canadian performance in terms of output and employment ranks exactly at the mid-point of the sample. instead of allowing politicians to claim credit for doing better than america or italy, they should be challenged to explain why canada’s performance during this time has lagged so far behind many other industrial countries (including germany, korea, australia, and others). in short, the self-congratulatory and triumphalist tone of so many official economic pronouncements in canada is clearly unjustified. in terms of its implications for economic and fiscal policy, the incomplete and relatively weak state of canada’s economic recovery should give considerable pause to policy-makers before embarking on a campaign of fiscal austerity – a campaign which will clearly further undermine output and employment which are still weak. instead, top priority needs to be placed on expansionary measures to strengthen a recovery that has been slow, incomplete, and unsteady. 32 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism references anthony, n.h. (2010, june 30). the facts on banks. winnipeg free press, p.11. department of finance canada. (2008, november 21). protecting canada’s future: economic and fiscal statement. ottawa: department of finance. government of canada. (2009). canada’s economic action plan: a fourth report to canadians. ottawa: government of canada. macdonald, d. (2012). the big banks’ big secret: estimating government support for canadian banks during the financial crisis. ottawa: canadian centre for policy alternatives. pollara. (2011). the economic club of canada. http://www.pollara.com/ eclub2012/report.pdf russell, e. (2012). no more swimming naked: the need for modesty in canadian banking. ottawa: canadian centre for policy alternatives. stanford, j. (2012). canada’s incomplete, mediocre recovery. ottawa: canadian centre for policy alternatives. ——— (2012). a budget for the rest of us: alternative federal budget 2012. ottawa: canadian centre for policy alternatives. tencer, d. (2012, april 30). canada bank bailout cost $114 billion at peak. huffington post. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/04/30/canadabank-bailout-costccpa_n_1464398.html canada’s conservative class war | 59 canada’s conservative class war: using austerity to squeeze labour at the expense of economic growth —toby sanger1 introduction this time was different. in contrast with previous post-war recessions, the 2008/9 economic crisis was unquestionably caused by an internal crisis of capitalism. canada’s two previous recessions in the past half-century were directly caused by the federal government hiking interest rates to slow economic growth and reduce the pace of wage increases, ostensibly to reduce inflation. while the recent economic crisis was not caused by similar higher interest rate policies, reactions to it with an austerity agenda and other measures to suppress wages were designed to accomplish the same thing: a weakening of the power of workers in relation to capital and a further shrinking of labour’s share of national income. this is despite the fact that the negative impacts of these economic policies on the distribution of national income and economic growth are now quite broadly accepted among economists. even the international monetary fund (imf) and the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) have publicly stated that a more equitable distribution of income would lead to stronger economic growth (imf, 2011; oecd, 2011; 2012). however, canadian and other governments have largely rejected these policies. the question is why? this paper argues that the conservative federal government’s macroeconomic cyclical policies, characterized by austerity and additional neoliberal measures, are designed not to respond to short-term economic problems but to further entrench a shift in the national income away from labour to capital at the expense of stronger economic growth. this is evident in an analysis of the 2012 conservative budget, which not only cut public spending, but also put in place measures that will 1 toby sanger is senior economist for the canadian union of public employees. 60 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism lead to a corrosion of wages, thereby reducing economic demand and making the state of household finances more treacherous. the absence of a political counter-weight to capital has meant that the half-hearted attempts at structural reform to reduce the likelihood of further financial crises have been overtaken by business-as-usual economic policies that will increase inequality, weaken economic growth and ultimately result in another cycle of economic crises. history suggests there will be little prospect of even moderate progressive change without increased social and political mobilization and the emergence of more radical threats to challenge the power of capital. this recession was different in the three years prior to the start of the 1981/2 and 1990/1 recessions, the bank of canada almost doubled its short-term interest rate, which also pushed up mediumand longer-term rates (see figure 1). this hiking of short-term interest rates to over 10 percent reduced investment, increased personal and business bankruptcies and pushed the unemployment rate to over 10 percent for four years after these recessions (statistics canada, 2012). the economic decline, lower government revenues, higher social spending and these higher interest rates also caused large increases in government deficits and deficit ratios (finance canada, 2012). coming out of these recessions, canadian governments embarked on deficit-cutting crusades, largely through cuts to program spending along with public sector wage freezes and constraints to “share the pain” with public sector workers. despite contractionary fiscal policies, canada’s economy was ultimately able to grow at reasonable rates coming out of these previous recessions because of expansionary monetary policies. as figure 1 illustrates, the bank of canada cut its key interest rate by more than half following both the 1981/2 and 1990/1 recessions, providing a very large monetary stimulus for the economy. lower interest rates relative to the united states also helped reduce the value of the canadian dollar in the years following these recessions, providing a big boost to canada’s net exports.2 canada faced a completely different situation in the 2008/9 recession. instead of hiking interest rates, the bank of canada steeply cut its key lending rate going into the downturn. as the economic crisis 2 in the years following the early 1980s recession, the value of canada’s dollar declined from over us $0.86 in 1980 to us $0.71 in early 1986. following the early 1990s recession, the value of canada’s dollar declined from a high of over us $0.88 in october 1991 down to below us $0.70 by 1998 (statistics canada, 2012). canada’s conservative class war | 61 progressed, the bank of canada further reduced its lending rate to record lows and has remained at close to historical lows since, with further monetary stimulus provided through “quantitative easing” and other extraordinary financial market measures.3 consequently, the canadian economy has had little capacity to grow through further monetary stimulus as it did in the recoveries following previous post-war recessions. instead, interest rates are widely expected to be increased, which will not only slow economic growth with lower investment, but are also likely to precipitate a long overdue ‘correction’ for canada’s housing market. while canada’s federal conservative government engaged in stimulus measures in its 2009 and 2010 budgets to bring the economy out of the financial and economic crisis, most of these measures were time-limited to two years only. since then, the harper government has strongly promoted contractionary fiscal policies both domestically and internationally, with successive spending cuts at the federal level and advocacy of fiscal austerity through the g20. these measures are causing unnecessary economic harm, particularly without the potential for offsetting monetary stimulus to mitigate the damage. as a result of austerity budgets, countries around the world including canada are suffering from slow economic growth, with the u.k. and a number of other european countries forced into secondary recessions in 2012. with their economies weakening, these spending cuts have perversely increased the debt burdens of many countries instead of reducing them (thomas and jolly, 2012). as a result, even the imf called for countries to focus on policies to strengthen growth over “fiscal consolidation” in its october 2012 world economic outlook (imf, 2012). while the 2008/9 financial and economic crisis was the result of internal crises of capitalism, these secondary recessions and resulting slow growth have been by design. as even traditionally neoliberal organizations such as the imf have advised against these policies because they will slow economic growth, it is becoming ever more apparent that they are being implemented for political economy reasons: to strengthen the power of capital and weaken the power of labour as part of the longer term project of capital. 3 “quantitative easing” involves central banks creating money to directly purchase assets such as bonds on financial markets. this is usually focused on longer-term assets in order to reduce longer-term interest rates. 62 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism labour’s declining share successive contractionary fiscal policies together with other forms of direct and indirect wage suppression led to a steep decline in the rate of wage increases in both the private and public sectors following the post-war recessions. figure 2 shows the rate of private and public wage increases in large collective agreements, illustrating sharp declines following both the 1981/2 and 1990/1 recessions. while inflation was also reduced, wage increases were lower, leading to real wage declines. these real wage declines took up to a decade of economic growth to recover from, especially for public sector workers. these periods of wage suppression ushered in a long-term shift in the share of national income from labour to capital. neoclassical economic growth models generally assume that labour and capital’s shares of national income stay roughly constant over time: this was one of kaldor’s “stylized facts” about long-term economic growth (kaldor, 1957). fluctuations over the economic cycle are expected to occur – with more volatile corporate profits reducing capital’s share and labour’s share increasing during recessions – but over the long term these shares were expected to be fairly constant. instead the past three decades have brought a longer-term decline in labour’s share together with a long-term increase in capital’s share of national income in both canada and many other industrialized countries (oecd, 2012). the cyclical decline for profits in the recent recession was a short-lived blip in the long-term trend toward increasing shares of national income going to capital and diminishing shares going to labour (oecd, 2012). in the united states, labour’s share recently reached its lowest recorded level since numbers were first kept in 1947, and more than 10 percent below its pre-2000 level (federal reserve bank of st louis, 2012).4 within the household share of national income, inequality has also reached levels not seen since the 1930s, with a high share of the income gains going to the top one percent of the income distribution. the share of national income going to the top one percent reached 14 percent in 2007, almost double their share of the 1970s and 1980s (veall, 2012). the shrinking share of labour in national income has become so significant 4 these figures underestimate the decline because much executive compensation, bonuses and stock options are actually included in labour income. the share of this top 1 percent recently escalated to the highest share of labour income since the 1930s (hein, 2011, p.11-16). if the top 1 percent of income earners are excluded, the drop in labour’s share of national income in canada is close to double the rate when the wealthiest are included, from 1990 to the mid-2000s (oecd, 2012, p.115). canada’s conservative class war | 63 that even neoliberal organizations such as the oecd and the imf have recently raised concern. the oecd included a chapter on “labour losing to capital: what explains the declining labour share” in its 2012 employment outlook (oecd, 2012), following the imf’s chapter on “the globalization of labor” in their 2007 world economic outlook (imf, 2007). a recent oecd paper states clearly that declining labour shares and growing inequality are likely to slow down the economic recovery as well as endanger social cohesion. together with the imf’s previous analysis on this issue, the oecd argues that the main factor reducing labour’s share of national income has been technological change and capital deepening. in particular, the spread of information and communication technologies has led to the elimination of jobs involving routine tasks with machines leading to much greater polarization of employment and pay within the labour market. this report (oecd, 2012) now acknowledges that neoliberal economic policies – those they have advocated for for decades – have had a significant impact in reducing labour’s share of income. these include increasing trade and globalization, outsourcing, privatization, reduction in workers bargaining power and changes in collective bargaining. in terms of collective bargaining structures, it notes that governments and employers have used both centralized and decentralized bargaining structures – whatever works, often imposing settlements – to constrain wages, thereby reducing labour’s share of pay and income. increasing financialization of the economy – switching from the principle of “retain and invest” to “downsize and distribute” – has also significantly weakened workers’ bargaining power (lazonick and sullivan, 2000), as well as eroded economic growth. other studies have found that levels of government spending and employment protection also have a strong impact on the distribution of national income between capital and labour (harrison, 2002) numerous studies have found that increasing globalization led to lower shares for labour in higher wage countries (guscina, 2007). labour’s share in most other regions of the world also declined following increased globalization (rodriguez and jayadev, 2010; tytell and jaumotte, 2008). increased openness to trade has been associated with higher income inequality in industrialized countries by many (guscina, 2007), while employment protection policies are associated with lower rates of inequality. inequality has also increased in most emerging countries, with the exception of some countries with antipoverty programs and strong social and employment protections, such as brazil and indonesia (oecd, 2011, p.51-64). 64 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism the shifts between these sectors are far greater when one considers accumulated capital rather than income. following keynesian national income accounting frameworks, analysis of our macro-economy focuses more on income than on capital measures. this is problematic (especially for a system called “capitalism”) and is no doubt why so many economists remained blind to the growing imbalances of accumulated capital and the precariousness of a consumer debt-fuelled asset boom. the balance sheets of corporate and household sectors reflect these shifts. public attention is usually focused on the annual balance – deficits or surpluses – of the government sector. a more remarkable trend is the unprecedented shift in savings and surpluses from the household sector to the corporate sector in the 2000s. from at least 1960 until the late 1990s, the household sector recorded surpluses year after year which were invested in corporations to finance their capital investments. this relationship completely changed at the turn of this century. as figure 4 shows, from 2000 onwards canadian non-financial corporations have run massive surpluses (profits in excess of their capital investments), accumulating an additional $500 billion in cumulative surpluses. the total is even higher if the surpluses of banks and other financial corporations are included. these funds have been put into financial investments, used to reduce debt or buy back stock, or are sitting as excess cash or “dead money” as they were notably described by bank of canada governor mark carney (carmichael, 2012). by 2011, canadian corporate debt-to-equity ratios reached record lows. meanwhile, slow wage and income growth together with rising house prices resulted in unprecedented deficits for individuals and households and record rates of household indebtedness.5 the economic crisis and the crisis in neoliberal economics while most western governments continued to implement supply-side economic policies, these growing imbalances and inequalities created an ever more unstable economy. an overgrown and under-regulated financial sector, large pools of speculative financial investments and growth financed by household debt masked a stagnant underlying economy. 5 in the fourth quarter of 2011, the credit market debt of canadian non-financial corporations had dropped to below 54 percent of the value of their equity, down from over 90 percent in 1994. on the other hand, the credit market debt of canadian households reached a record high of over 163 percent in the second quarter of 2012, almost double the 85 percent rate it was in 1990 (statistics canada, 2012). the ratio of household debt to disposable income is now at record highs in canada while these ratios have declined in other countries. for instance, in the united states household credit market debt has declined by about 7 percent in gross terms from 2007 to 2012 (federal reserve bank of st louis economic research data, 2012). canada’s conservative class war | 65 when the financial house of cards finally started to collapse in 2007/8, it sparked a financial crisis, credit crunch, evaporation of business credit and an economic crisis, marking the first downturn in global gdp since the 1930s. fortunately, governments around the world had learnt from the great depression and responded relatively swiftly and in a coordinated fashion, providing extraordinary sources of credit to business, bailing out the financial industry, reducing interest rates to all-time lows (in some cases negative) and introducing fiscal stimulus spending measures to counteract the economic downturn and prevent an even deeper economic decline. the almost complete reversal of neoliberal supplyside policies that had ruled for decades belied previous claims that that they were impossible or would be damaging for the economy. the fact that neoliberal organizations like the imf and the oecd now acknowledge that growing income inequality is damaging for the economy is a significant reversal for these organizations after decades of advocating supply-side trickle-down economic policies (imf, 2011; oecd, 2011, 2012).6 it also reflects a growing crisis within neoliberal economics. in canada, don drummond, former chief economist of td bank and former federal associate minister of finance, recently confessed that, despite governments implementing most of the public policy changes he had advocated – including tax cuts, free trade, competition, labour market flexibility deregulation, etc – productivity in canada had actually deteriorated (drummond, 2011). this confession followed just five years after he claimed all economists agreed on these policy measures – and after advocating that ontario cut its public spending at twice the rate as during the 1990s! (drummond, 2011; sanger, 2011). also notable, the former chief and deputy chief economist of canada’s department of foreign affairs and international trade, dan ciuriak, recently co-authored a paper publicly questioning the alleged benefits of trade policy and other conventional wisdoms of economics, including supply-side economic measures, privatization, labour market flexibility, and other market-based incentive measures in their provocatively entitled paper, “what if everything we know about economic policy is wrong?” (ciuriak and curtis 2011). despite this very fundamental questioning and repudiation of neoliberal economic policies by former advocates (even if they did not offer 6 while these organizations have reflected similar concerns in some of their other policy prescriptions for canada and other countries, they may not be reflected in more extensive reconsiderations of their approach. often their concern is focused on how inequalities in the distribution of personal income might threaten “social cohesion” rather than on how changes in the distribution of national income are affecting economic and political relations. 66 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism alternatives), there has been no such questioning of these policies by canada’s federal conservative government. instead, they accelerated the implementation of these policies despite ample evidence that some of these measures will likely weaken economic growth. canada’s conservative government initially denied that the country was in recession in late 2008. only when a coalition of opposition parties threatened to replace them as government did they acknowledge there was a real problem, proroguing parliament and implementing stimulus spending measures. the discretionary fiscal policy that resulted was far more expansionary than in previous recessions in canada, and in particular government capital investment increased at a far faster pace.7 still, stimulus measures were unbalanced: spending measures and those benefiting workers or households were time-limited and temporary while tax cuts for business were made permanent. neoliberal austerity and manufactured recessions following this close brush with worldwide depression and questioning of the validity of neoliberal economics, many hoped it would lead to some positive structural measures to stabilize the economic system and at least marginally reduce inequalities, as had eventually happened after both the 19th century “long depression” and the 1930s great depression. by 2012, such hopes had pretty much evaporated. instead, crude keynesian policies drove up deficits, which were subsequently used to justify austerity budgets, cuts to employment protection, retirement security, social spending, other government programs and the weakening of environmental regulations. at the same time, businesses had not used their accumulated and growing surpluses to make productive investments, exacerbating the problem of stagnation. the conservative government’s focus on spending cuts belies the fact that the federal government is in a much better fiscal situation than after previous recessions. while government deficits increased as a result of the economic crisis and stimulus measures, as a ratio of gdp they are still far below the rates they reached during the 1990s. with low borrowing rates, debt servicing costs for canadian governments are about half of what they were during the mid-1990s (figure 5). 7 statistics canada figures show that general government gross fixed capital formation (investment) increased to a share of 4.75 percent of canada’s economy (gdp) in the fourth quarter of 2010 from a low of below 3 percent a decade earlier, an increase of over 50 percent. in contrast, during the recessions of the early 1980s and 1990s, government capital investment increased to no more than 4 percent of the economy, hikes of only about 10 percent (statistics canada, 2012). canada’s conservative class war | 67 the on-going shift in national income and accumulated surpluses towards capital mean that canada’s non-financial corporations were, by 2012, sitting on over $526 billion in excess cash, up 42 percent since the recession ended in mid-2009. this amount is equivalent to 30 percent of gdp: just a small proportion could provide a significant boost to the economy and to household incomes. as bank of canada governor mark carney stated, canadian companies are in “historically rude health, have the means to act -and the incentives,” calling their surpluses “dead money” (carney, 2011; carmichael, 2012). despite exhortations from carney and finance ministers in the provinces and federally, corporations have done little to invest their surpluses back into the economy (isfeld, 2012). in response, the obvious route would be for governments to tax this excess cash and use it to undertake productive investments, redistribute income and reduce household debt and inequality through the expansion of public services or direct transfers. while public spending quite appropriately increased during the recession, it remains a relatively small share of the economy. in fact, total public spending of all governments in canada as a share of gdp dropped to at least a 30 year low just prior to the economic crisis (figure 6). the increase during the past few years is as much a result of the shrinking of the underlying economy as it is of increased public spending: with a growing economy, this ratio will gradually decline. with existing fiscal policies, the federal government would be in a structural surplus of over $25 billion, as the parliamentary budget officer demonstrated in his september 2012 fiscal sustainability report (parliamentary budget officer, 2012b). in other words, as the economy grows to its full capacity, the federal deficit would soon be eliminated. in addition, federal and provincial deficits could be eliminated much faster with a few fair tax measures, there is no need for deep spending cuts and austerity measures to balance these budgets. instead, we should see public spending cuts as politically-driven, constituting “janus” or two-faced austerity (fanelli and hurl, 2010). fanelli and hurl examined how conservative budgets between 2006 and 2010 had constitutionalized neoliberalism and used austerity arguments to weaken labour and social protections while at the same time fuelling capital accumulation through tax cuts, privatization and increased neoliberalism. after winning a majority in the 2011 federal election, the conservatives’ political and economic agenda became even more transparent in what some described as their “transfor68 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism mative” 2012 budget (ibbitson, 2012). extending fanelli and hurl’s analysis, i now examine the 2011 and 2012 budgets and their impact on the distribution of national income between capital and labour.8 conservative budgets, the attack on workers’ wages and labour’s share the 2011 and 2012 federal conservative budgets have focused on constraining public and private sector wages, reducing employment protections and weakening workers’ bargaining power; expanding free trade and corporate property rights; increasing resource extraction and weakening environmental protections; reducing taxation of capital; and implementing selective austerity and increased privatization. as we have seen above, each of these is associated with shrinking labour’s share of national income, increasing capital accumulation and increasing inequalities. constraining public and private sector wages public sector wage constraints and freezes have been politically justified for fiscal reasons, garnering public support as a fair way for public sector workers to “share the pain” along with private sector workers suffering from the economic crisis. this is despite evidence that wages and salaries in the public sector are, on average, very similar to wages for similar jobs in the private sector but are much more equitable, with less of a wage gap for women and lower paid workers, and less excessive compensation at the top (sanger 2011b). much less overtly disclosed was one of the federal government’s reasons for constraining public sector wages, which was to suppress wage increases in the private sector as well. in a court affidavit, in response to a court challenge of the federal government’s wage constraint measures by the association of justice counsel, canada’s associate deputy minister of finance, paul rochon (2011, p.20), stated: “the era’s [expenditure review act] policy objectives were complementary elements of the government’s larger economic and fiscal policy. these objectives were threefold: 1. to help reduce upward pressure on private sector wages and salaries; 2. to provide leadership by showing restraint and respect for public money; and 3. to manage public sector wage costs in an appropriate and predictable manner that would help ensure the ongoing soundness of the government’s fiscal position.” 8 the focus here is very much on the federal government, although some provincial governments have also implemented similar measures. canada’s conservative class war | 69 this was a rare admission of the government’s broader economic objectives: to squeeze private sector wages and ultimately reduce labour’s share of national income; but canada is of course not alone on this. the european central bank previously published a number of studies urging governments to squeeze public sector wages so that private sector wages would also be reduced “in order to enhance economic stability and competitiveness in the economic and monetary union” (holm-hadulla et al, 2010, p.4; afonso and gomes, 2010; fernàndez-de-córdoba et al., 2009; lamo et al., 2008). the subsequent policies of many governments in europe to cut public sector wages were developed and implemented with this in mind. after winning a majority government in the 2011 federal election, the conservatives made their objective of squeezing workers’ wages much more transparent in their 2012 budget. while some measures were rationalized for fiscal reasons, others were focused at more directly limiting wage growth in the private sector. first, the government announced new rules to allow employers to pay temporary foreign workers wages 15 percent below the prevailing rate, and fast-tracked approvals for skilled workers to no more than ten days (less time than it takes canadian banks to clear cheques on foreign banks). second, the conservatives eliminated employment insurance (ei) benefits for claimants who fail to take jobs at up to less than 30 percent below their previous wage. as well, they abolished the employment insurance tribunal and delegated ei appeals to a much smaller centralized social services tribunal also responsible for dealing with canadian pension plan and old age security (oas) appeals, with members directly appointed by the federal government, thereby eliminating balance and local input into the appeals process and directly enforcing the government’s directives. third, the government eliminated the federal fair wage and hours of labour act, meaning that contractors on federal construction jobs can pay their workers as little as the minimum wage, accelerating the proverbial race to the bottom (cupe, 2012). these measures follow the harper government’s repeated curtailment of the right to strike by legislating workers under federal jurisdiction back to work with little hesitation, including rail workers at canadian pacific, airline workers at air canada and postal workers at canada post. in the case of postal workers, they also directly intervened to reduce wage increases below the rates previously offered by their employer. these actions sent a strong message that this federal government would not allow workers to exercise their right to collectively withdraw their labour through strikes, thereby undermining canada’s system of free collective bargaining (fanelli and lefebvre, 2011). 70 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism one of the most controversial measures in the 2012 budget – the increase in the retirement age to 67 to qualify for oas benefits – was rationalized and promoted by the harper government as a necessary change required to ensure that public pensions would be fiscally sustainable. as the finance minister jim flaherty (2012, p.6) stated in his budget speech, “today it is clear we must take action to ensure the sustainability of the old age security program, which is the largest spending program of the federal government.” however the increase in the age of retirement was made much more for political and labour market reasons – to increase the supply of labour by requiring workers to work longer before collecting retirement benefits – than for fiscal reasons. canada’s parliamentary budget officer, kevin page, released a report in 2012 demonstrating that the federal government’s oas and guaranteed income supplement (gis) programs are already on a fiscally sustainable path. while the costs of these benefits are forecasted to rise to a peak of 3.2 percent of gdp by 2031 from the current level of 2.2 percent of gdp, they are then set to ultimately decline to 1.8 percent of gdp – below current rates (parliamentary budget officer, 2012a, p.ii). the federal conservative government’s move to increase the age of retirement was introduced together with other measures to directly increase incentives for later retirement followed lobbying by the canadian chamber of commerce (ccc) for changes to get seniors to work more, but went further than the ccc was prepared to publicly advocate (canadian chamber of commerce, 2011). layoffs of public sector workers and cuts in the 2012 federal budget will reduce employment by approximately 40,000. job losses increase to well over 100,000 when taking account of cuts in the previous two budgets and spending cuts by provincial governments wages (parliamentary budget officer, 2012a; 2012b). together with cuts to public services, these job losses will also weaken workers’ bargaining power and lead to a broader erosion of wages. expansion of free trade agreements and corporate property rights the conservative government’s relentless pursuit of free trade deals with countries and trading blocs around the world are also a major factor in strengthening the power of corporate capital, weakening labour and limiting the democratic powers of governments. the federal government now has eighteen different sets of free trade agreements in negotiation or discussion and has concluded six others in the past three years (canada department of foreign affairs and international trade, 2012). gaining canada’s conservative class war | 71 better access for trade of goods is actually a minor element of most of these deals: the real interest is in eliminating “non-tariff barriers” – such as local content provisions and marketing boards – and expanding corporate property rights, including patent protection. in fact, canada’s trade balance with countries that it has signed major trade deals has become worse than with countries that it doesn’t have trade deals with. as jim stanford has noted, “if the policy goal (sensibly) is to boost exports and strengthen the trade balance, then signing free trade deals is exactly the wrong thing to do” (stanford 2012, n.p.). increasing resource extraction and weakening of environmental protections the conservatives’ 2012 federal budget bill also significantly expanded the power of corporate capital over canada’s natural or environmental resources through numerous measures that roll-back environmental protections and accelerate resource extraction (sierra club of canada, 2012). these included the elimination of and deep cuts to environmental protection programs and protective legislation to the extent that it was even criticized by a former conservative minister of fisheries (halifax chronicle herald, 2012). it has also gone on the attack against environmental organizations, denouncing them as “extremists” funded by foreign money, threatening their charitable status and, in a move redolent of the mccarthy and bennett era, adding some of them to the list of potential terrorists along with anti-capitalist groups. this follows the harper government’s leadership in scuttling the kyoto accord and resistance to any significant measures to address climate change. weakened environmental protections and increased resource extraction significantly increases capital accumulation by speeding the appropriation of natural resource rents. reducing taxation of capital capital accumulation has also been significantly increased through cuts to corporate and capital taxes at the federal level and strong pressure and billions in support from the federal government to provinces to reduce corporate tax rates and remove sales taxes from business inputs. corporate tax rates have been cut even further despite evidence that these tax cuts have not stimulated investment but, on the contrary, have been associated with declining rates of business investment (figure 7). instead, these corporate tax cuts have been far more successful at increasing capital accumulation at the expense of labour, in addition to increasing deficits to provide a rationale for selective austerity measures. 72 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism selective austerity and privatization selective austerity measures have included elimination of funding for civil society organizations, including any involved in “advocacy”. many of these measures have been discussed elsewhere (see, for example, fanelli and hurl 2010). however, recent measures expanded the involvement and control of capital over public services and public policy in some notable ways beyond the traditional scope of commercialization, contractingout, public-private partnership and asset-sale privatizations beyond that already being implemented. these include providing business employers with much greater say over the selection of permanent immigrants (in addition to the often exploitative power they have over temporary foreign workers), use of development assistance funds to help promote canadian mining firms abroad, exploring the use of social impact bonds and introducing legislation to allow private ownership of first nations land (mendleson, 2012; leblanc, 2012; wingrove, 2012). concluding remarks with current economic policies in place, prospects for a healthy recovery will remain meager in canada. lower interest rates cannot provide the stimulus for economic recovery they did following previous recessions. household debt is at record levels and a housing price bust is imminent. business is failing to reinvest its growing surpluses into productive capital investments and export expansion is largely limited to resources. with canadian governments slashing public spending, contractionary fiscal policy is creating the conditions for another lost decade. the federal conservative government has not only used the economic crisis as an opportunity to impose selective austerity measures which are slowing the economy, but are also using it to accelerate neoliberal economic policies that will further shrink labour’s share of income and increase that of capital. this is being done at a time when the economic crisis has provoked a number of high profile neoliberal economists to question their fundamental economic policies and prescriptions. with the bankruptcy of neoliberal economic policies, it is difficult to reach any other conclusion except that the conservative government is continuing to aggressively implement neoliberal policies for political reasons: to expand the power of capital and to weaken the power of labour in a continued class war. as warren buffett, one of the wealthiest men in the world, once stated: “there’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” (stein 2006). canada’s conservative class war | 73 one of the great achievements of neoliberal economic theory was the perpetuation of the illusion that economics is a science and that its analysis can be divorced from consideration of economic and political power, as well as human and social behavioral considerations. while some in the economics profession may continue to cling to these illusions, many are moving beyond it. for example, joseph stiglitz, the prominent new keynesian economist and nobel-prize winner, is only one of many who are now declaiming how appropriation of political and economic power by a small elite is endangering our future but also entreating them to support new policies (stiglitz, 2012). but entreaties to the one percent to embrace different economic policies will likely have little effect unless the alternatives are starker and they feel more threatened. it may be largely forgotten now but at the time of the last major global crisis of capitalism, john maynard keynes felt compelled to address the power of vested interests in his conclusion to the general theory (keynes, 1936, n.p.) “the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. indeed the world is ruled by little else. practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. i am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. but, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.” these concluding comments of keynes were clearly made in a different world. the threats to capital and the elite were far more present with the strength of the soviet union and growing appeal of socialism in the west. his ideas and approach provided a much more palatable alternative for the vested interests than the other threats they were facing in the world of ideas and politics at that time. 74 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism while conventional, keynesian, new keynesian and even postkeynesian economic solutions may appear convincing to some on their own, even their marginal changes have little chance of being adopted unless the growing power of the “vested interests” also considers them in their interests – or at least, a lesser threat than the alternatives. for some in this class, the occupy movement is starting to have that effect. american billionaire jeff greene recently warned (pressier, 2012, n.p.): “there are all these people in this country who are just not participating in the american dream at all. right now, for some bizarre reason, a lot of these people are supporting republicans who want to cut taxes on the wealthy. at some point, if we keep doing this, their numbers are going to keep swelling, it won’t be an obama or a romney. it will be a hollande. a chávez.” while neoliberal economic policies are being increasingly questioned and abandoned by economists, politicians – including canada’s conservative federal government – continue to implement them for purely political and ideological reasons: to further concentrate economic and political power among the owners of capital and to weaken the power of labour. with these conditions, it should be increasingly apparent that there will be little prospect of even moderate change without increased social and political mobilization and the emergence of more radical threats to challenge the power of capital. canada’s conservative class war | 75 figures figure 1 source: bank of canada interest rates: bank of canada rate. http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/interest-rates/ 76 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism figure 2 sources: statistics canada consumer price index (cansim table 326-0021); human resources and skills development canada annual wage settlements. http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/ labour/labour_relations/info_analysis/datas/wages/in dex.shtml figure 3 source: statistics canada gdp income-based (cansim table 380-0001). canada’s conservative class war | 77 figure 4 sources: statistics canada, financial flows (cansim tables 378-0018, 378-0019 and 378-0040). 78 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism figure 5 source: statistics canada, fiscal reference tables, http://www.fin.gc.ca/pub/frt-trf/index-eng.asp canada’s conservative class war | 79 figure 6 source: statistics canada provincial and territorial economic accounts data tables 1 and 6. 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(2012). top income shares in canada: recent trends and policy implications. canadian journal of economics, 45(4), 1247-1272. wingrove, j. (2012, august 6). ottawa’s plan to allow private property on reserves reignites debate. globe and mail. http://www.theglobeandmail. com/news/politics/ottawas-plan-to-allow-privateproperty-onreserves-re-ignites-debate/article4466019/ telecommunication policy for whom? an analysis of recent crtc decisions vanda rideout carleton university structural theoretical considerations this paper critically examines political and sociological relations in public telecommunication policy by arguing that the canadian state has and continues to play an important role in forging and shaping a competitive telecommunication environment. federal telecommunication decisions approved by the state regulator, the canadian radio-television and telecommunications commission (crtc), are examined from the years 1977 to 1990. the pro-competitive policies approved by the crtc reflect the state's shift from regulating rates and capital expansion programs by monopoly telecommunication providers (bell canada and bc tel), toward permitting competition for an array of business services supplied by monopoly, as well as new, telecommunication providers. competition in telecommunication business services has, paradoxically, resulted in a more regulated telecommunication environment; one in which there is less regulation in the public interest but more regulation to manage market forces. structural theory (poulantzas, 1973, 1978; offe, 1984; mahon 1980, 1984; jessop, 1991) best allows us to analyze the role that the crtc takes in formulating pro-competitive telecommunication policy. to get a more complete picture of this it is necessary to interpret and analyze the state's responses to changes in the nature of capitalism. structural state theory reveals that the primary function of the state in a capitalist society is to serve the interests of the ruling class by creating and maintaining conditions favourable for capital accumulation. the state must also reduce the inherent conflicts between fractions of capital, the working class, and forces within civil society'. furthermore, the state has to create and maintain conditions of social harmony by producing policies which legitimize capitalist social relations. structural theory, therefore, explains how the relationship between the ruling class and the state is a complex one in which the state serves the capitalist class without appearing to do so. as part of its ideological function, the state re-defincs workers. alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 27 alternate routes. volume 10. 1993 civil society groups, and capitalists politically as individual subjects, a process that carnoy (1984:99) calls 'individualization'. this process of individualization, realized through legal and political ideology, isolates workers and capitalists from their respective class positions. this is why, in poulantzas' view, the capitalist class chooses a 'democratic state' as an expression of class power. the process of capitalist production defines the formation of classes, but the state reconstitutes buyers and sellers of labour politically as individual subjects, subjects free of any 'classbelongingness'. the state reinforces this belief by presenting itself "as representing the general interest of the competing groups" (carnoy, 1984:100). the dominant power bloc, capitalist fractions and relative a utonomy: poulantzas' (1973, 1978) work shows how the state provides the framework for struggles between dominant and subordinate classes, both reintegrated as 'individuals' detached from any class position. at the same time, the state provides the political arena for and is itself shaped by the class struggle. the state unifies the reintegrated dominant class and subordinate class so that capitalist society is reproduced in a class structure. nonetheless, contradictions arise through the relationship between the state and the dominant class, and through the state's relationship to the working class and civil society groups. poulantzas (1973:43-4) explains that the state plays a principle role in organizing and unifying the dominant class. he argues that the capitalist class is itself internally divided into a number of competing elements, substructures, or fractions. members of the dominant class compete among themselves, forging alliances in the process. frequently, alliances function under leadership of one of the fractions. the power alliance that these capital fractions make is called the power bloc. the leadership which unites the power bloc under its stewardship is the hegemonic fraction which guarantees that the general interest of the ruling class is realized through the state. structural theory moves beyond the notion that the state is the captive agent of the capitalist class, arguing instead that the state is relatively autonomous. as poulantzas (1978: 313) notes, this implies that there is a relative separation of economic power from political power hence, political struggles tend to conceal their economic and class basis. the state thus tends to constitute class unity for the capitalist class in isolation from the economic struggle. moreover, the relative autonomy 28 rideout/telecommunication policy of the state sanctions the unity of individual capitalists, reconstituted into fractions and a dominant bloc, to further their political ideological operation and to constitute their political interests. poulantzas's concept of the relative autonomy of the capitalist state is used to underline how the operations of the state correspond to the political interest of the dominant class. this means that the degree, extent, and form of the state's relative autonomy can only be examined with reference to the class struggle. both poulantzas (1973) and mahon (1984) argue that the concept of relative autonomy also means that other forces can advance and realize their interests. for example, as will be shown below, the crtc encourages a compromise of competing interests, but this does not mean that bell canada and bc tel are forced to make unlimited concessions to other dominant class fractions or to the subordinate class in order to maintain their privileged hegemonic position. according to jessop (1991:92), it is also important to examine the infra-structural power of the state in this context — the manner in which the state shapes the spatial, temporal, corporeal and social order of capitalist society. using the telecommunication regulatory process as an example, one can see that those 'closest' to state power benefit the most (i.e. bell canada, bc tel, unitel, bc rail/lightel, and the large telecommunication users), while those furthest away benefit the least. this process helps to further fragment the subordinate class's resistance. state regulation and unequal representation: mahon's (1980:160) contribution to structuralist theory is her explanation of how the state politically organizes the strategies and compromises necessary to maintain the capitalist system, while at the same time develops policies that benefit the leading fraction. she maintains that a regulatory agency's role is a dual one. first, it represents the interests of the regulated and it subordinates their interests to the long term interests of the hegemonic fraction. second, the regulatory agency is a special case because it is independent of regular state departments and the political apparatus. hearings are adversarial and are open to competing private inputs. furthermore, the agency's authority is linked to its capacity to make politically neutral technical judgements. a regulator)' agency is an "unequal structure of representation" (1980:159), a structure of bias that organizes the interests of various social forces around the core interests of the hegemonic fraction, thus creating an "equilibrium of compromises" 29 alternate routes, i olume 10, 1993 (1980:159). similarly, the state arranges and reorganizes the political relations of class domination through its policy agenda. in this way, the state supports and maintains political struggle through its function as a political organizer of various dominant fractions, non-dominant capitalists and subordinate classes. resulting compromises may give access to, and representation for, the subordinate class. all members of the subordinate class have been and continue to be, active participants in the regulatory process. while the conditions won by the subordinate class must be more than symbolic if their consent is to be secured, the regulatory process and policy compromises, on the whole, help to disorganize and fragment this class. the state also provides suitable conditions for the organization of capitalist fractions into a power bloc, while aiding in the reproduction of capitalist hegemonic domination. for example, compromises reached between bell/bc tel and the new telecommunication providers were created by the crtc in order to neutralize the threat to hegemony that could not be contained by normal functioning of the political apparatus of the state. the crtc is an instrument of hegemony because it arranges compromises that reflect a combination of the demands of the regulated (bell and bc tel), other capitalist fractions (the larger user groups and the new telecommunication providers), and subordinate classes. by applying structural analyses to crtc decisions, i will argue below that the settlement of these disputes and demands entails more than regulating telecommunication monopoly pricing and limiting competition. the crtc's decision to permit telecommunication competition in key areas furthers the interest of the whole capitalist class, not just a dominant fraction. pro-competition telecommunication decisions also serve dominant economic interests by facilitating the international integration of economies, a process reflected most notably by the canadau.s. free trade agreement. the state as crisis manager: when problems arise in the accumulation process the state responds with specific policies in order to maintain this process. responding to economic crisis through policy intervention, the state acts as a crisis manager (offe and range. 1982:253). state policy is an attempt to neutralize economic contradictions. such policies arc designed to enhance stability of the 30 rideoutatelecommunication policy whole capital accumulation process, rather than advance the interests of one dominant fraction. some policies are geared towards continental or global accumulation, such as the telecommunication enhanced service decisions. other policies reorganize the importance of exchange relationships among capital fractions. as offe (1982:254-6) argues, policy shifts subject the dominant bloc to new rules in order to provide for economic growth and the survival of the larger capitalist class. with its renewed role as crisis manager, the state shifts the focus of public policy to meet the competitive demands of private sector market criteria. at the same time, the policy shifts intensify class conflict by reinscribing these social and political struggles to the state administrative apparatus, such as the crtc. in canadian telecommunication, the dominant bloc (bell canada and bc tel) has been subjected to new rules. the old 'natural monopoly' has been changed in a number of specific areas: mobile telephone services; interconnection and private line voice service, terminal attachment, enhanced services; resale and sharing; rate rebalancing and the new resale and sharing application that permits existing and new telecommunication service providers to meet the demands of the large telecommunication users. structural telecommunication relations a structural model of state telecommunication relations is presented in figure 1. the model identifies the major participants in the power bloc, organized according to their structural position within the federal telecommunication system. the model helps to explain the relations evident in the telecommunication field as well as the policy strategies by capitalist fractions, the state, and subordinate classes. this section describes how each capital fraction and the subordinate class attempt to influence and change these relations. the dominant power bloc: (i) the established powers. it is useful to begin telecommunication policy analysis by identifying the dominant power bloc because the interests of these organizations set the pattern for other forces in the system. bell canada and bc tel are the established powers in telecommunication. until recently, their dominant position was met with only minor challenges from other capitalist fractions and from the 31 i liemate routes, volume 10, 1993 federal government. bell canada and bc tel held a virtual monopoly on local and long distance residential and business telephone communications. responding to earlier conflicts, the state regulated this bloc to meet the social demands of subordinate classes by holding the companies publicly accountable for rate increases and capital expansion plans (babe, 1990:91-101).' (ii) telecommunication domestic challengers. the major challenger to the hegemony of the established powers within the telecommunication industry has been cncp communications. cncp recently amalgamated with rogers communications and is now known as unitel. in 1979 cncp petitioned the crtc to allow it to connect to bell canada's network in order to provide voice service to its private line customers; cncp launched a similar challenge to bc tel's monopoly position in 1981 (telecom decisions crtc 79-11 and 81-24). 2 both crtc decisions allowed cncp customers dial-up access for its voice and data business services. similar challenges came from would-be telecommunication service providers such as challenge communications, harding communications, and call-net. they also lobbied the state for a 'liberalized' terminal attachment policy similar to the one granted cncp. the crtc responded with an interim decision followed by a final decision permitting terminal attachment to bell's telephone network (telecom decisions crtc 80-13 and 82-14). moreover, it was decided to permit residential customers to own their phones, rather than being obligated to rent them from the telephone companies. cncp communications made a second challenge to the dominant bloc in 1985. their application to the crtc requested approval to interconnect to bell canada and bc tel in order to provide long distance telephone services for their business customers. the subsequent crtc ruling (telecom crtc 85-19) is considered by many to be a watershed decision (janisch, 1986; stanbury, 1986; woodrow and woodside, 1986). although the crtc denied cncp's request to compete in long distance voice services and private voice services such as mts, wats and pbx, 3 telecom decision crtc 85-19 encouraged the formation of more powerful telecommunication-user affiliations, coalitions and lobby groups. 32 c3 c/3 u if £ b -z u v — 02 o 2 s— 3 -i 2 c 2 gfl 1 'e. r. u 4/ en o a c s 3 e e o o jj co e -1 3 <u c co cm e o u 3 o _3 — cu'-o 3 o-^ is <-! s3 „ 3 3 h s.e uqu c 3 e e bo vu 2 h c oo . cl o o p2 c c — ©t3— qs c o * ra je •2cu oo so cswrve_ o <u 04 8|q hdcq c 03 cm u o e m §•§ u 2-g s"0 s utucj 00 s<.. «s • 2 .2 m — c« t? c e3'g % 5 c o 3 uu q— • — ^— ° 2^ 3 c o 3 3 3— co t>cq en u.—. 13 en „^^ s=3< o*^ «c1cue o .§3.2 iu -s o ml« -3 s =s-3« 3 3 c_ teo^/b^ 0-0*3 <3 ft c^*3 co cj c-oo © § en g? g-2 « g c^u 3 « r9 y « «-3 3 o 3 »*s "—.si g 3 3 3 3 3 3-3 ojffi'g-^ ;!f co co co co co co • ai e-i <— c±333333332 e.o iy co co co co co c0"o o 3 c "3 e-ooooooosoume u 3 o en j 3 co o e"3 "3 ^ 3 a»rv-3 3 en 6 cj co d-co 3--: .; u c m («-h mr , «— 2(-h ohco co 3 3 3 ut-1 -u-3^ — •it h*«37j oh 37; o cjx) >-3 o >3§.-eoor, « p „ co s3 en o> o g s-'s 3 o3 3 e<_ w r ) o e o h j r;x5 e e 3 oi 3,3 o c ucr-}2u~ 3 '£ co 3 co ft on g-s ^oft 2"3 cm ^ c 2 c 1 5 3 3 .2 co d e 8 o -£u >^= !> en § cmgc ok •3 co. b0h 5^ 3^ « -v,2^ ._: 2 ^— 3 en c^ ft o . 3 u co ^.2^-2 ^3 «> 3 i e e-5 o « 5 cmo •2 3 e u u o.-2c e x. x. as — — 3 co co— — n x. as 73 < 3 e alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 the second major challenger, bc rail telecommunications lightel inc. (bcrl), participated in the recent crtc hearings for permission to provide long distance service (telecom public notice 199073). bcrl is a joint venture company operated by bc rail ltd., callnet, and lightel inc. it is not presently operational except as a legal paper organization. bc rail ltd. operates a microwave network. lightel, owned by call-net, operates a fibre route from toronto to fort erie and is also presently negotiating a right of way agreement with cn rail. call-net and lightel form a facilities-based reselling service. what is significant about the bcrl application is that call-net, as a re-seller of enhanced services and value added services, interconnects its switches to facilities leased from unitel. it also connects with the u.s. carrier, sprint, and has an exchange agreement with rochester communications inc. (interrogatories bcrl (bell) 14 sept 90100-105 1c2). bcrl plans to build a number of facilities in canada and another supplier (perhaps sprint) is to build facilities along the canadau.s. border. the bcrl application thus represents the creation of a potential bypass network. 4 as a microwave fibre network, bcrl could provide a private mts/wats-like service, selling only to large business users. rather than develop their own private networks, it would benefit the large telecommunication users to have one approved by the crtc in place. (iii) policy recommendations by telecommunication user associations. the list of telecommunication users in figure 1 reveals that a number of broad-based associations and coalitions have been formed. these act to unite competing capitalists into a counter-hegemonic bloc. the associations and coalitions, all heavy communication users, have combined into these lobby groups to influence and promote telecommunication competition in the state policy-making process. the members of the associations and coalitions represent various capital fractions such as finance, manufacturing, and service industries. they form the lion's share of the large corporate and business telecommunication users. the telecommunication users formed these umbrella associations to get cheaper, efficient, flexible, integrated, and specially designed telecommunication services. the large users and the new telecommunication providers recognize the importance and significance of telecommunication. telecommunication is no longer simply a business operating cost recent technological advances in the industry 34 rideout/telecommunication policy have generated new services which can be sold as commodities. unlike other goods, however, telecommunication service commodities have an never-ending life; they may be (re)commodified into various additional services and re-sold. cheaper and specialized services are, in the users' view, necessary in order to take advantage of competitive markets domestically, continentally, and internationally. canadians for competitive telecommunications (cct) includes the following groups and associations: canadian association of data and professional service organizations, canadian bankers association, canadian business equipment manufacturers association, canadian business telecommunications alliance, canadian federation of independent business, canadian organization of small business, canadian radio common carriers association, hotel association of canada, and the ontario hotel and motel association. formed after the crtc rejection of cncp's application in 1985, the coalition expected their united views to influence federal policy outcomes. their report. the crisis for canadian business: telecommunication rates and the public interest (1986), argues that policy makers should reduce long distance rates for the business community because industries involved in the distribution of goods and sen ices cannot improve their productivity in the face of excessive long distance rates. in canada, long distance rates represent the third highest business operating cost, after wages and capital expenditures. for example, long distance and private bulk line rates for teleordering and telemarketing are 50 to 100 percent higher in canada than in the united states. the cct report warns that if telecommunication rates are not lowered canadian businesses will simply bypass the canadian system and use american systems. two policy reports were prepared by the canadian bankers association (taylor, 1989) and the canadian business telecommunication alliance (cbta, 1989). the canadian bankers association, and specifically the royal bank, recommended that telecommunications should be set more firmly under federal jurisdiction and that policy should be centrally regulated. 5 the canadian business telecommunication alliance, following the position taken by the business council on national issues (langille, 1987:43-44), favoured a market driven telecommunication environment with less or no government regulation. both the canadian bankers association and cbta are ideologically aligned with neo-liberal demands for a return to tree enterprise'. 35 alternate routes, 1 olume 10. 1993 the communications competition coalition (ccc) was formed in november 1989 to lobby and influence the department of communications, the crtc, and other government departments and agencies. membership includes company presidents and corporate executive officers of 150 canadian corporations. 6 the ccc supports an economic policy model of telecommunications, one which relies on the market rather than a regulated duopoly. finally, the information technology association of canada (itac) represents approximately sixty members from information and technology companies. itac supports the free trade agreement, and argues that canadian businesses must be internationally competitive and that telecommunication policy must be restructured to meet these challenges (itac, 1989). these large telecommunication users have concentrated and consolidated their positions by forming these powerful pro-competition lobby groups in order to influence the federal government to pass telecommunication decisions which reflect their position. user coalitions and associations have made policy recommendations suggesting how the state should: (a) formulate general national policy; (b) ensure that all telecommunications fall under federal regulation; and (c) determine that there be little or no state regulation of telecommunications. (iv) bell canada's response. bell canada responded to the issue of what was, in their view, excessive state regulation by reorganizing itself into bell canada enterprises (bce). the reorganization was approved by the federal government's bill c-19 and telecom decision crtc 83-10. prior to bill c-19 bell was almost entirely state regulated; after the bce reorganization only telephone services were regulated. bell has also responded to increased competition by introducing major discounts for both residential and business users who call canadian and/or american destinations. the discount packages, 'between friends' and 'teleplus canada', are part of a large offensive mounted by bell to counter the various challengers (telecom decision crtc 88-19). other discount packages have been filed with the crtc for special purposes business long distance lines. one package, called megalink, is based on the international standard for integrated sen ices digital network (isdn) (surtecs, december 3, 199():b4). this discount package is aimed at medium and large corporate customers. a second response by bell canada is their plan to rebalance telephone rates it is claimed that if competition is permitted in long distance services, local rates will have to be rebalanced to counter the 36 hideout/telecommunication policy current subsidy they receive from long distance revenues (telecom decision crtc 88-4). bell's rate rebalancing proposal, and the phase iii costing study, reveals that in order to reduce long distance and mts/wats charges, subsidization would have to stop and local usage would have to increase (telecom decisions crtc 88-4; 89-17; 85-19). bell's proposal to increase residential subscribers' local rates is coupled with its support of some form of targeted subsidies for needy subscribers. targeted subsidies are part of the current discourse of telecommunication policy liberalization, a discourse that camouflages the effects of competition on low and fixed income subscribers. targeted subsidies do not address the needs of those subscribers who are currently barely able to maintain their services. similarly, they ignore regional disparities as well as the differences between urban and rural subscribers. bell has argued in various rebalancing proposals that long distance revenues subsidize local rates. yet, critical telecommunication writers (babe, 1990; mosco, 1990 a,b,c; roman, 1990) question bell's accounting allocation practices. tinker, leham and neimark (1988:188216) explain that, like other forms of information, accounting is a set of social practices that reflect and reinforce a dominant ideology. 7 they argue that accounting standards and terminology produce what is considered to be the objective reporting of business activity. they maintain that when accounting applications, standards and definitions are accepted and used by the state in a rational manner their importance is heightened. business accounting practices are legitimized by the state via taxation legislation and the acceptance by state regulators of business accounting practices audited by the private sector but not by the state. roman (1990:96-1 1 0) questions the whole accounting premise for rate rebalancing and costing in the telecommunication industry. he argues that the crtc has been making decisions based on accounting hypotheses used by bell and bc tel; hypotheses which are largely untested. the crtc does not provide independent audits. for example, an argument can be made that bell canada's claim that long distance rates subsidize local service is based on a particular costing method which justifies their request for rate rebalancing. babe (1990:121-6) reveals that bell does not have separate accounting practices for long distance and local services. consequently, it is difficult to identify which costs and expenses should go to which services. at best, the argument that local service is subsidized is an arbitrary assessment. others also question the premise that long distance rates subsidize 37 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 local telephone service. melody (1982) claims that the reverse is true. huber (1987) argues that allocating true common costs is arbitrary and mysterious. hills (1989:131) suggests that telephone rates tend to be distance-related, making long distance calls more expensive than local calls, although in terms of costs to the enterprise they are cheaper. according to oettinger (1988), current pricing policies are 'fairy tales'; 'subsidies' are accounting constructs that allow for changes in political relationships. selecting a particular costing method helps to determine final corporate outcomes for tax purposes, shareholders return on investments, and the equitable position of business. the particular accounting methods a business chooses are not neutral, but are chosen to reflect the best position of the corporation to shareholders, the tax department, state regulators and/or stock market investors. the capitalist state and the crtc: an analysis of crtc telecommunication decisions from 1977 to 1990 is provided in figure 2. these decisions are pro-competitive, reflecting a 'liberalized' environment for canadian telecommunications. new telecommunication policy has been approved by the crtc to meet the demands of large telecommunication users and the new telecommunication providers. nonetheless, the crtc must also mediate the conflicts and compromises between the large user groups, would-be telecommunication providers, and bell canada and bc tel. in order to ensure economic survival of the larger capitalist class, the crtc has permitted competition in some key areas, thereby denying the telecommunication power bloc their monopoly position. by permitting more competition in mobile and cellular telephone service, the crtc allowed more companies to provide similar services to those offered by bell and bc tel. the crtc also approved cantel (rogers communications) as the national cellular radio service carrier (telecom decisions crtc 77-16; 84-10; 84-29; 87-13). considered a watershed decision. telecom decision crtc 791 1 , permitted cncp to interconnect to bell canada's network, allowing cncp to set up their own private business network. a second decision (telecom decision crtc 81-14) allowed cncp to interconnect with bc tel. the commission also permitted cncp to set its private line service rates 5 to 10 per cent lower than bell and bc tel. one exception to the pro-compctitivc rulings during this period 38 rideout/telecommunication policy figure 2 crtc pro-competition telecommunication decisions from 1977 to 1990 mobile and cellular radio telephone seivice telecommunication decision crtc 77-16 challenge v. bell canada telecommunication decision crtc 84-10 mobile/cellular interconnect to bell and bc tel telecommunication decision crtc 84-29 follow up to decision 84-10 telecommunication decision crtc 87-13 cantel national cellular radio telephone service interconnection and private line voice service telecommunication decision crtc 79-1 1 cncp interconnection with bell telecommunication decision crtc 81-24 cncp interconnection with bc tel telecommunication decision crtc 83-10 cncp rates for private line service telecommunication decision crtc 85-19 cncp denied competition in long distance service terminal attachment telecommunication decision crtc 80-13 telecommunication decision crtc 81-19 telecommunication decision crtc 81-21 telecommunication decision crtc 81-23 telecommunication decision crtc 82-14 telecommunication decision crtc 84-11 telecommunication decision crtc 84-12 telecommunication decision crtc 84-13 telecommunication decision crtc 84-14 telecommunication decision crtc 85-5 interim terminal attachment requirements bell interim terminal attachment requirements bell pre-hearing on terminal attachment competition standards for terminal attachment to bell attachment of subscriber terminal equipment terminal attachment tariffs by bell and bc tel terminal attachment to northwestel terminal attachment to terra nova terminal attachment for telex and twx equipment paradyne attachment for telex & twx equipment enhanced services telecommunication decision crtc 84-18 regulatory policy for enhanced services telecommunication decision crtc 85-17 identity & classification enhanced services telecommunication decision crtc 87-5 call-net's service only basic service telecommunication decision crtc 87-14 call-net's review of decision 87-5 telecommunication decision crtc 89-17 call-net illegal resale & sharing basic service resale and sharing telecommunication decision crtc 85-19 some resale & sharing permitted telecommunication decision crtc 87-1 resale & sharing of primary exchange voice telecommunication decision crtc 87-2 resale & sharing classifications and tariffs telecommunication decision crtc 90-2 resale & sharing teleglobe international service telecommunication decision crtc 90-3 resale & sharing of private line service source: adapted and extended from janisch et. al., 1987. 39 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 was the denial of cncp's application to provide long distance public telephone services (telecom decision crtc 85-19). retreating from its former position, the crtc was concerned that cncp would not be able to provide universal service or offer the price discounts it forecasted in its business plan. 8 the crtc noted that cncp's net income would be negative for its first four years of operation, yet the next six years would provide a rate of return of 20.6 percent. hence, the crtc's refusal to permit cncp to compete in long distance telephone service appears to be primarily influenced by questions concerning the economic feasibility of cncp's plan. faced with challenges to its monopoly position, bell canada applied to the crtc to be given permission to liberalize its corporate rules (telecom decision crtc 80-13). the subsequent decision gave the telephone subscriber the choice of purchasing or leasing their phone sets. after five years the crtc followed this decision by extending terminal attachment to telex and twx equipment (telecom decisions crtc 81-19,21, 23; 82-14; 84-11, 12, 13, 14). in the area of enhanced services, the crtc permitted more competitors with less regulation. only bell's and bc tel's enhanced services would be regulated by the crtc. bell and bc tel had to make sure there would be no cross subsidization from their phone monopolies to lower their enhanced service rates. the crtc held both carriers accountable to make sure they would not participate in unfair competition practices. finally, the commission established a dispute resolution mechanism placing onus on the carrier to justify a denial of the resale and sharing of enhanced services to would-be providers (telecom decisions crtc 84-18; 85-17; 87-5, 14; 89-17). the rulings reached by the crtc on enhanced services helped to intensify disputes throughout the 1980s. bell and cncp denied the resale of enhanced services to call-net communications ltd. accepting bell's argument, the crtc concluded that except for voice mail and the routing of calls, all other call-net services were not enhanced but basic services (telecom decision crtc 87-5). accordingly, the crtc directed both bell and cncp to stop supplying call-net with their mts/wats facilities. call-net responded by having decision 87-5 reviewed. in telecom decision crtc 87-14 call-net claimed that the crtc had made a number of errors. the crtc's investigation of its decision found that no errors had been made. call-net applied directly to the 40 rideout/teucommunication policy government and through an order-in-council the government permitted call-net to extend its access to bell and cncp for almost one year. the order-in-council overruled the crtc decision, giving callnet time to restructure its business operations to conform with the commission's ruling in decision 87-5. in 1988 (telecom decision crtc 88-11) call-net reapplied to the crtc to examine its new enhanced services, cdar. the commission ruled that except for incoming call identification and voice recording storage and retrieval, all other cdar services were basic and not enhanced services. moreover, call-net's wide area telephone services (wats) did not meet the definition for enhanced services (telecom decisions crtc 84-18; 87-2, 5; 88-11). these events were repeated as call-net tried to organize its customers into sharing groups so that private lines could be used jointly. the crtc considered this reorganization an illegal way to re-sell enhanced sendees (telecom letter decision 88-9). however, a second order-in-council extended call-net's cut-off from bell and cncp. these disputes were resolved when the crtc relaxed its rules governing the resale and sharing of private network services (telecom decision crtc 90-3). until telecom decision crtc 85-19, federally regulated carriers were prohibited from re-selling and sharing their services, except via a special agreement approved by the crtc. 9 the crtc concluded that resale and sharing would benefit through more competition. nonregulated suppliers would not be regulated. the rational offered by the commission was that the new competitors would rely on competitive pricing. in other words, the environment would be governed by market forces rather than government regulation. meanwhile, the resale and sharing services offered by bell and bc tel would continue to be regulated. the subordinate class: telecommunication trade unions: in a commissioned study (mosco and zureik, 1987), the communication, energy and paper workers union of canada (cep), formerly the communication and electrical workers of canada (cewc), note that technological modernization in the telecommunication industry leads to job losses, deskilling, the computerized monitoring of work performance, and increases in part-time and contract work. aside from these issues, the cep has also been active in sharing information with the canada 41 alternate routes. i olume 10. 199j public on the effects of deregulation and long distance competition. part of their campaign in 1985 to defeat cncp's bid to compete in long distance services involved the distribution of petitions and pamphlets, the creation of toll free phone information, and the launching of a national media campaign. along with the telecommunication workers union (twu) and other civil society organizations, the cep was successful in preventing cncp from competing in long distance services (telecom decision crtc 85-19). more recently, the cep has spoken out against similar applications filed by unitel and bcrl (cewc, 1989). the cep supports a single regulated monopoly network, arguing that the creation of more long distance networks would involve an expensive capital outlay that would result in substantial telephone rate increases. the cep also supports a single future broadband network. the cep favours a single network because it would help create and protect jobs. it is also felt that it would be easier to set policy over one network. ironically, this leaves the cep in a contradictory position, supporting similar policies to those of bell. the telecommunication workers union (twu), like the cep, has been actively involved in the telecommunication policy process. the twu has made policy recommendations to the department of communications and the crtc (schniad, 1990). they argue that competition in long distance voice and data services would not be in the public interest, but would only benefit the business community. instead, the union supports a state-of-the-art unitary network governed by strict regulatory requirements. civil society groups and organizations: (i) first nations organizations. koebberling (1990:22) notes that as early as 1970 the inuit presented their telecommunication needs to the department of communications. the inuit tapirisat of canada (itc) lobbied for reliable and inexpensive interactive services suitable for the harsh conditions of the arctic. often the whole inuit community participated and spoke at hearings (telecom decision crtc 77-16). along with complaints about a system that did not work for up to three or four weeks at a time, the itc expressed concerns with disconnections that resulted because bills were received late or written only in english. service problems were resolved in the late 1970s, but this was followed in the 1980s by fewer specialty services and increased rates. mcnulty (1980:1-15) argues that northern telecommunication expansion 42 rideout/telecommunication policy and control was geared to meet the needs not of the inuit, but particular northern development projects (for example, mining exploration), the major telephone companies, and the federal government. the itc challenged bell's rates at a number of hearings, arguing that remote northern areas should have specialized flat rates and be able to take advantage of the special discount packages offered to southern subscribers. the crtc rejected the itc's recommendation for a 24 hour flat rate (koebberling, 1990:25). however, the inuit are not only interested in the economic advantage of telecommunication services but, more importantly, in the capabilities for education, health and transportation as well as social and cultural applications. (ii) disabled people's groups. the canadian hearing society and the canadian coordinating council on deafness have participated in a number of crtc hearings on rate rebalancing, resale and sharing, and interconnection. both organizations urged the crtc to introduce technical standards to ensure that all telephones are compatible with a hearing aid device called a telecoil can. bc tel, the canadian manufacturers association and the canadian business manufacturers association argued that it would cost too much ($10 per telephone) to convert single line phones. the crtc ruled that canada is committed to disabled groups and that telephone devices for the hearing impaired should be as low as possible. nonetheless, the crtc did not change the standards rule for hearing aid compatibilitv (telecom decision crtc 8214). it was only after further standards hearings and additional participation by other disabled organizations such as the advocacy resource centre for the handicapped and the british columbia old age pensioners organization, that the crtc approved the changes for telephone sets for federally regulated carriers in 1987 (telecom decision crtc 87-1). (iii) anti poverty groups and public interest advocacy organizations. the national anti-poverty organization (napo) has and continues to participate in the telecommunication policy process. napo was an active participant in the liberalization of terminal attachment hearing and in cncp's long distance bid in 1985. permitting competition in telecommunication services, according to napo, benefits business users and the new telecommunication providers at the expense of ordinary canadian telephone subscribers. the public interest advocacy centre (pia), a non-public law 43 alternate routes. x olume 10, 1993 organization, represents various civil groups before regulatory tribunals, the courts, and legislative committees. past hearing involvement includes those concerning interim terminal attachment, rate rebalancing (telecom decisions crtc 85-19, 88-4), and the recent hearing on competition in long distance telephone service (crtc telecom public notice 1990-73). pia agreed with the federal provincial territorial task force (1988) that if competition is permitted and long distance rates are reduced, economic supply and demand theory predicts that long distance calling would increase, consequently increasing long distance revenues. hence, pia argues that local rates would not have to increase. pia also notes that bell and bc tel's modernization programs are subsidized by residential subscribers, even though most of the programs only benefit the business subscribers (todd, 1990:iii-iv). (iv) senior citizen groups and coalitions. various senior citizen coalitions, such as the british columbia old age pensioners' organization (bcoap) have taken part in a number of hearings. bcoap's position in rate rebalancing and long distance competition is that if local phone rates increase, numerous seniors on fixed incomes would be adversely affected. seniors consider telephone services to be a necessity for emergency and social use. such groups hold the view that it is the telephone system's social aspect which increases its service value to all subscribers. if competition is permitted in long distance service and local rates go up, a number of subscribers would drop off the system. it is interesting to note that in 1985 (telecom decision crtc 8519) bell estimated that 160,000 subscribers, or 400,000 individuals, would drop of the system if rates were rebalanced. similarly, bc tel forecasted that 30,000 of its subscribers would have to leave the network and 70 percent of its population would pay higher prices. in the recent long distance competition hearing bell, bc tel, unitel and bcrl as well as the large telecommunication user groups all supported 'targeted subsidies' to alleviate the drop-off of subscribers. targeted subsidies, however, is simply another name for telephone welfare programs. mosco (1991:4), in evidence presented before the crtc on long distance competition, emphasizes that there are important lessons to be learned from the american experience with telephone welfare programs: by 1990, 49 states, the district of columbia, and the federal government operated a wide range of programs to subsidize the cost of telephone installation. 44 rideout/telecommunicat'wn policy admittedly the names of these programs avoid identification with traditional social assistance. link-up america, which subsidizes installation, and lifeline, which provides service discounts have replaced earlier reference to phone stamps. included in these programs are not only federal subsidies, but state run programs each with varying criteria for welfare eligibility, including income verification tests that are often administered by the phone companies. moreover, the welfare programs have failed to reach the majority of the eligible subscribers. 10 (v) consumers association of canada. the only organization which claims to represent all canadian residential telephone subscribers, the consumers association of canada (cac), occupies a shifting ideological position which is increasingly difficult to identify. in numerous hearings, the cac supported competition on behalf of business users (see the terminal attachment decisions 80-13, 82-14, and enhanced services decision 84-10, etc.), but often ignored the interests of residential subscribers. the cac's (1991) evidence in the 1990-91 long distance competition hearings recommends that the consumer price index would be a good measure of affordability if applied to telephone bills. according to the cac, residential subscribers can afford to pay more for their services. 11 further, the cac (1991:24) emphasizes the importance of developing economic and technical criteria for meeting the needs of medium and small business. what is noteworthy about the cac is that their position is unlike that presented by american consumer organizations during at&t hearings; the cac has virtually abandoned the non-business subscriber. this position is a good example of how a group within the subordinate class can become fractionalized and serve the interest of the power bloc. conclusion telecommunication services have been and continue to be created to meet the demands of large users and the business sector. the crtc has contributed to the process by permitting more competition and liberalizing telecommunication policy. this shift has meant that many business services are no longer placed under public supervision or regulation. 45 alternate routes. volume 10. 199 i conversely, the submissions offered by unions, anti-poverty organizations, the hearing impaired, seniors organizations, and native peoples reveal that recent policy shifts come at the expense of public interest and universality. in canada, the concept of universality is increasingly approached from an economic and/or technical point of viewby the telecommunication industry and the crtc. universal service simply means the ability to reach more consumers. however, as garnham (1989:125) explains, this approach is limiting because it regards telecommunication service solely as an economic good to be consumed like any other commodity. hence, the distribution of telecommunication welfare becomes an important policy consideration for suppliers, the state, unions and various civil society groups and organizations. policy objectives are translated into reasonable costs (affordability) for consumers, ignoring the vital issue of the needs of citizens. targeted subsidies' are also part of the current discourse of telecommunication policy liberalization. this discourse is an attempt to camouflage the effects of telecommunication competition on low and fixed income subscribers, but it does not address subscribers who value telephony for its social/cultural usefulness. the shift away from public service also increases the problems of regional disparity, the differences between northern and southern, urban and rural subscribers. until the late 1940s telephone service in canada discriminated against many canadians on a class basis. service was considered to be a business tool or a luxury (mosco and pike, 1986). the evidence presented in this analysis suggests that a shift to liberal policies is eroding the social principles associated with public policy, generating a two tiered system; one for basic services and one for privileged and business users. in the process, the telephone could be transformed back into the luxury item it was fifty years ago. an alternative to a two tiered telecommunication system is a telecommunication environment influenced and guided by social regulation. mosco (1990c:30-32) offers important suggestions for social regulation, breaking it into short term and long term goals and objectives. in the short run, a commitment to universality requires a stronger focus on the social regulation of the telecommunication industry. this would mean stronger regulation of accounting, pricing and investment practices of all the carriers, including the telecommunication canada consortium. unitcl. bc rail/lightel. and call-net. stronger social regulation also means that issues with significant social implications must receive 46 rideoiu/telecommunic&ion policy heightened attention. this includes informing and educating the public about the social, cultural, and economic implications of new services. in the long term, it is necessary to examine the values, network types, forms of governance, and pricing mechanisms that can frame another vision of a transformed telecommunication system. what this means is that rather than building on a market frame-work, as workers and citizens we need to determine the real communication and information needs of people. we need to begin with a broader commitment to universality; one which includes the fundamental right of access to the production, distribution and use of information services in general. further, the fundamental right to universal access to telecommunication networks needs to include a wide range of voice, information, and signalling services. longer range values involve developing a strong and democratic policy process which defines issues for the policy agenda by soliciting and organizing public participation in policy decision making and implementation. postscript since this research was conducted, significant developments have occurred which warrant further comment. in 1992, the crtc permitted competition in long distance services, breaking up the monopoly held by bell canada and bc tel. although new long distance telephone service suppliers such as unitel and bc rail/lightel will be able to compete with telecommunication canada members, the process is far from over and the telecommunication arena continues to change. bell canada has unsuccessfully contested the crtc ruling. more recently, bell has applied to the crtc to increase its residential and business local rates. these rate increases range from 10 to 65 per cent. bell maintains these increases are necessary so that it can now compete effectively in canadian telecommunications. call-net, a partner with bc rail/lightel, is in the process of acquiring other telecommunication companies as it strengthens its position through consolidation to compete in the public long distance market. similarly, significant changes are occurring at unitel which recently sold a 20 per cent share of its corporation to at&t. this is the first step in breaking a hundred-year tradition in which decision-making and control of the telecommunications industry was overseen by the canadian public. 47 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 notes 1. babe (1990:90) explains that in 1880 bell telephone company of canada was given a charter to incorporate a national company. the charter was a de facto monopoly for early telecommunicationmunications. bell's charter permitted the company to manufacture and develop a telephone system with a guarantee from the federal government that there would be no interference from other competitors. from 1880 until 1906 bell's "monopolistic price gouging, over predatory business practices, and over service deprivation in rural areas" (babe, 1990:90) led to a public outcry. numerous petitions were sent to the government demanding that the company be nationalized. the federal government responded to public pressure by subjecting bell to a very loose form of regulation in 1906 by a state agency known as the board of railway commissioners for canada. their mandate was extremely vague, dealing only with the issue of rates; their only criteria was that rates be just, reasonable and applied to all people at the same rate. in 1976 federal telecommunication regulation was assigned to the canadian radio-television and telecommunication commission. 2. cncp is the monopoly producer of telegraph services such as teletex and telex. the organization also provides a wide range of private telephone services. more recently cncp offers private line voice, video, facsimile and data services. it is also the exclusive supplier of canada's broad band data services (datapro, 1989). 3. private branch exchanges (pbx) are terminal and switching devices. when located on the customer's premises, they are called terminals but when they are provided by a telephone company on its premises, they are refereed to as centrex exchanges (babe, 1990:28). 4. the term by-pass' refers to the capability of the new communication technology and the new telecommunication networks to redirect (by computer or networks) telecommunication traffic to other networks. 48 rideout/telecommunication policy 5. until the supreme court decision of august 14, 1989, telecommunication regulation and policy was split between federal, provincial and a few municipal governments. the federal regulator, the crtc, regulated the private telecommunication providers, bell canada and bc tel. provincial governments were responsible for regulating the public telecommunication sector. a few municipalities such as edmonton own, operate and regulate their own telecommunication systems. 6. as part of this research project a written request was made to the ccc for a list of its members. gloria schpales, mr. richardson's executive assistant, informed this researcher on july 13, 1990 that the ccc was "unable to send a list of its members." 7. in canada, the canadian institute of chartered accounts (cica), the national body of chartered accounts, is responsible for accounting and auditing standards. its recommendations are used by public accountants, small businesses, commerce and industry, governments, finance, etc., are published in the cica handbook (smith et. al., 1978). the accounting profession, business and the state accept the legality and legitimacy of these practices. the critique of accounting methods and practices offered in this paper is an attempt to show that within a class analysis accounting practices are not neutral. it is common practice, for example, for trade unions, when negotiating collective agreements with business, to scrutinize the audited annual corporate reports for various legal ways to defer taxation through depreciation, reserved funds, shareholder's equity, contingency funds, etc. 8. cncp's application proposed that it would obtain a market share of mts/wats service of approximately eight per cent over 10 years, make contribution payments equal to 1 1.5 cents per minute, and offer prices 20 to 30 per cent below the existing telephone rates. the crtc noted that in order to make cncp's mts/wats services profitable, a large discount would be required from bell and bc tel. the commission was concerned that requesting such a discount would result in higher local rates (telecom decision crtc 85-19 and interrogatory cncp (crtc) 05 october 84-1302). 49 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 10. as of 1990 in the united states only 3.06 percent of eligible link-up subscribers have enroled in the program and 31.8 per cent of life-line eligible subscribers have signed up in 48 states (mosco, 1991:4). 11. after applying the consumer price index to telephone bills from 1986 to 1990, the cac argues that bills have declined by 7.9 per cent, whereas other residential bills increased by 16.0 per cent. references babe, robert. 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(1990) "a national strategy for the information age: the telecommunications workers union "response to doc". submission notice #dgtp-09-89. local distribution telecommunications network. the telecommunication workers of british columbia, may. smith jay, skousen, k. fred, and parker, john r. e. (1978) intermediate accounting: canadian edition. toronto: gage publishing. stanbury. w.t. (1986) "decision making in telecommunications: the interplay of* distributional and efficiency considerations", (ed.) telecommunications policv and regulations. montreal: the institute for research on public policv, 481-509. 55 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 surtees, lawrence. (1990) "megalink discounts for medium and large business" globe and mail. december 3: b4. taylor, allan. (1989) "the new national dream: a telecommunications policy for the 21st century." ceo of royal bank of canada. a speech presented to the canadian club of toronto. tinker, tony, leham, cheryl and neimark, marilyn. (1988) "bookkeeping for capitalism: the mystery of accounting for unequal exchange . in mosco and wasko (ed.)' the political economy of information. madison, wisconsin: university of wisconsin press; 188-216. todd. john. (1990) "paying for what you need: technological advances and competition in telecommunications. " paper prepared for the public interest advocacy centre; june. woodrow. r. brian and woodside, kenneth b. (1986) "players, stakes and politics in the future of telecommunications regulation in canada". in stanburv (ed.) telecommunications policy and regulation. montreal: the institute for research on public policy; 101-288. 56 rural manufacture in lower canada: understanding seigneurial privilege and the transition in the countryside * david schulze the paper is a discussion of the theoretical implications of capitalist production based on seigneurial privilege in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century quebec. this phenomenon is evaluated in the context of the marxist analysis of the transition to capitalism. while earlier interpretations have characterized such production as essentially mercantile and/or feudalistic, the author considers that it matches marx's description of the transitional phenomenon of manufacture , the form of capital's first appearance. l'article est une discussion des implications theoriques de la production capitaliste basee sur le privilege seigneurial au quebec, a la fin du dix-huitieme et au debut du dix-neuvieme siscles. ce phenomene est apparent dans le contexte de l'analyse marxiste de la transition au capitalisme. tandis que les interpretations anterieures ont traite cette production d'essentiellement marchande et/ou feodaliste, elle se range a la description par marx du phenomene de transition qui est la manufacture , la forme de la premiere apparition du capital. theory: the transition the nineteenth century saw the emergence of industrial capitalism in quebec (lower canada); that much is acknowledged by any historian of the period. this implied a transition from a predominantly rural society specializing in agricultural production to a predominantly urban one, characterized by industrial production. marxist analyses offer a clear and precise characterization of this transition, seeing it as a change in the mode of production; that is, in the social existence of labour. the change was from a primarily agrarian society of petty producers, whose surplus "whether in direct labour or in rent in kind or in money, is transferred under coercive sanction" to "a society producing commodities for exchange in the market, whose principal classes were capital owning entrepreneurs and propertyless wage-earners," the surplus of the latter being appropriated by the former through the sale of labour-pcwer as a commodity. * the historical context within the marxist school, no fully satisfying work of synthesis has been published which enables us to place early nineteenth century lower canada in context. tom naylor's thesis is that "anglo-canadian merchants, factors and representatives of british joint-stock mercantile companies, in collaboration with a franco-canadian landed class, intermediated flows of primary staples from the u.s. [sic] to britain along the st. lawrence route. "^ stanley ryerson suggested that capitalist industry developed along three paths: first, via the timber trade; secondly, manufactories and machine shops as a more direct outgrowth of the industrial revolution in england and, thirdly, a rural french canadian industrial capitalism. capitalist development was then blocked by land monopolies and seigneurial tenure which impedea settlement, 135 the spread of communications, and the growth of a home market, as well as by the imperial trade favoured by the english canadian merchant-landowners. •* these analyses strike me as being at once too pessimistic and too simplistic, for reasons which will be made clearer below. i suggest that lower canada is not usefully thought of as belonging to ernest mandel's category of "less developed countries" in the period of freely competitive capitalism (for him, roughly from the beginning of the industrial revolution to 1860). i quote at length: the concrete articulation between these countries, which were at that time capitalist 'developing nations', and the capitalist world market was two-fold. on the one hand, the import of cheap machine goods from abroad with the accompanying "artillery of cheap prices' was the great destroyer of traditional domestic production. [ . . . ] but . . . local machine industry was able to take the place of local domestic industry in about ten years, i.e., the foreign products simply cleared the ground for the development of "national' capitalism. on the other hand, the rapid specialization in their foreign trade was able to secure important sectors of the world market as outlets for these rising capitalist economies. the profits thus realized became, in their turn, the main source for the local accumulation of capital. it is also true, of course, that integration into the world market and conditions of relative underdevelopment in this phase had very negative effects on primitive accumulation of capital in these countries. the exchange of commodities produced in conditions of a lower productivity of labour was an unequal one: it was an exchange of less against more labour, which inevitably led to a drain, an outward flow of value and capital from these countries to the advantage of western europe. the presence of large reserves of cheap labour and land in these countries logically resulted in a capital accumulation with a lower organic composition of capital than in the first industrialized countries. but the extent of this drain and of this lower organic composition were not sufficient to pose a serious threat to the indigenous and independent accumulation of capital — at least not in those countries where social and political class forces were already capable of replacing the destruction of an artisanate by the development of national large-scale industry. the most important point, with reference to quebec's economy is that it was decidedly not "underdeveloped" (as in much of latin america, for instance), nor was its development chiefly "mercantile," in the sense of being 136 predominantly oriented toward circulation as such rather than (capitalist) production. for instance, it is true that production in this period was affected by increased british demand for canadian wheat and timber, created by napoleon's continental blockade which greatly affected lower canada's development, but the growth of the population (estimated at 65,000 in 1765 and over 1,000,000 one hundred years later^) also had an effect since production was for both an export and a domestic market. crucial to an understanding of pre-industrial quebec is the fact that the major part of the land occupied by european petty producers was not owned "free-hold," but, in the words of lord durham, had "feudal burthens" attached to it.° land, the principal means of production, was held under seigneurial tenure and the privileges of the seigneurs included the right of concession, the right to an annual rent ("cens et rentes"), the right to one-twelfth of the price of sale or exchange of land, the "droit de banalite" (the seigneurs provided a mill which their censitaires were obliged to use at the price of one-fourteenth of their grain) as well as having rights over hunting and fishing. in addition, certain privileges were attached, depending upon the contracts between the seigneur and the first censitaire: "corvee" (obligatory labour), the right to retain concessions which changed hands through the reimbursement of the buyer, and the "servitudes," including the censitaires' obligation to maintain the roads and the right of the seigneur to take or reserve wood, stone, minerals, or land for the construction and placement of churches, manors, farms, mills or public works, as well as the right to forbid the construction of mills or manufactures by others, subject to his conditions.' 137 louise dech'ene has described the seigneuries of new france not as a "cadre de production," but a "systeme fiscal, cree pour des structures economiques et sociales quasi-immobiles, qui a survecu a l'extension du marche."° seigneurial tenure was ended in 1854 through a reimbursement of the seigneurs for these privileges by the government and the censitaires, and the conversion of the rights over unconceded land to outright property. there has been considerable debate on the state of agricultural production in early nineteenth century lower canada which i cannot adequately survey here. generally speaking, i adopt the analysis presented by serge courville: that that was no crisis in agricultural production, though the habitant reoriented his production to better meet the changing demands of the market: en 1844, cette transformation est completee, l'agriculture etant tout a fait integr§e dans l'espace. ce qui laisse croire que les malaises enregistres par les chroniqueurs temoignent plus d'une crise du monde rural que d'une crise agricole comme telle, mettant ainsi en cause davantage les conditions dans lesquelles evolue l'agriculture que les techniques de production de l'habitant . . . * using 1831 census data, courville was able to make the nature of this "malaise" quite clear: "d'un rang a l'autre, d'une paroisse a l'autre, les taux [de cens et rentes] varient du simple au double ou au triple, parfois plus, pour atteindre sur les fronts pionniers des seuils sans precedents, lies "a l'augmentation des tarifs en numeraire et an produits a l'insertion, dans les contrats de concession, de servitudes et de reserves nouvelles (sur le bois notamment) qui grevent d'autant les conditions de detention des censives. " '^ in their frequent petitions to the house of assembly, the censitaires themselves eloquently described the general state of the administration of the seigneuries in the early nineteenth century: "that the petitioners [the 138 freeholders of the parish of st. nicholas] complain of the seigniorial rents which have been raised to three or four times what they originally were, and which may be, as in fact they daily are, raised still higher; [...] of numerous unjust and vexatious reserves, the principal of which are, the reserve of all the timber fit for the saw mill or the lumber market... "** most important, in the context of the population increase mentioned earlier, were the difficulties in acquiring land. a group of "divers censitaires possessors of land en roture in this province" in 1825 observed that "vast quantities of these lands [i.e., "of this province"] are at this day lying in a state of nature" due to "an unwillingness on the part of the present proprietors to concede these lands, being willing to avail themselves of the present rapid increase in the value of landed property in order to be enabled to exact hereafter more lucrative rents and duties, thereby perverting royal munificence into a land speculation."^ the problem: theoretical considerations this essay's real starting point is barthelemy boliette, the seigneur of lavaltrie from 1822 until his death in 1850, whose biography was published in 1972 in the revue d'histoire de l'amerique francaise by jean-claude robert. 1 -^ joliette was a notary who, in 1822, inherited a quarter of the seigneury of lavaltrie through his wife. his uncle, mill-owner and notary at l'assomption with whom joliette had apprenticed, had administered the seigneury for ten years previously. joliette administered the seigneury for his brother-in-law and his sister-in-law's husband, the co-inheritors. within the first two years of his administration, the majority of arrears on the part of the censitaires were paid off by them, partly in the form of labour and wood. joliette then established the village d'industrie by 139 building a complex of saw mills at a cost of 128,467 livres on one of the two seigneurial domains (which also provided much of the wood at first). by 1842, these mills employed approximately thirty people. he obtained the wood from his own seigneury (in part through the "droit de retrait"), from property in the neighbouring township of kildare and by buying the rights to wood on neighbouring seigneuries, apparently running the lumber shanties himself. later on, he built a distillery which he sold to an associate and which burned to the ground shortly afterwards. he also made plans for glass manufacturing, but these were never carried out. at the end of his life, he had a twelve-mile railroad built to expedite the shipment of wood from joliette to quebec city (financed, in part, by shares sold to his censitaires ; . 14 robert's article has not gone unnoticed in the literature, but the commentaries which are available have not solved, to my satisfaction, the problem of how to understand the economic activity of a man who was a "capital owning entrepreneur" employing "propertyless wage-earners" — with funds and resources accumulated through a form of coercive sanction, however modified. robert himself chose to analyze a canadian seigneur and the village he founded using the concepts of urbanization and the entrepreneur. the concept of a transition between modes of production, characterized by different means of appropriating surplus (and, by implication, the dynamic of class conflict) are absent from his study. fernand ouellet, historian of early nineteenth century quebec, saw seigneurs like joliette as "int§ressants dans la perspective de la mise en place du conflit entre capitalisme et propriete seigneuriale" but concludes that it is chiefly anglophone bourgeois seigneurs who thus put the seigneurial system in question, while among the bourgeois francophones "la primaute va d6cid6ment dans l'ensemble aux considerations sociales. " '-> 140 joliette received considerable attention from gerald bernier and daniel salee, two political scientists attempting a neo-marxist analysis of the economy of lower canada, whose over-all analysis is similar to naylor's and which cites his work. they define lower canada as an "§conomie marchande" whose essential characteristics are: a "hypertrophic" in circulation at the expense of production, the dominance of capital accumulated and recycled through exchange ("capital marchand"), the exploitation of land for speculative purposes and/or mercantilist ones (i.e., the categories of goods produced are determined by external demand), and the enlarged reproduction of dominant, non-capitalist relations of production. "forme de production insolite s'il en est, elle revet certaines allures capitalistes, mais procede d'une logique fondamentalement feodaliste." the manufacturing potential of lower canada was largely ignored by the "bourgeoisie marchande" and the expansion of capitalist relations of production finally came through a gradual passage from artisanal production to manufacturing. ^ in a manner not unlike ouellet, who mentions joliette only to put him aside since he has already decided that for francophone bourgeois seigneurs "l'attrait des valeurs nobiliaires" is prime, bernier and salee decide his activities are not genuinely capitalist: dans le cadre d'une economie a dominante marchande, la capitalisation de la rente fonciere est essentiellement tributaire des imperatifs du capital marchand; tant que persiste, a tout le moins, le caractere mercantiliste dominant des fonctions economiques. la construction de canaux ou l'erection de moulins a scie sont d'abord motivses par la nature des activitss commerciales en cours dans la colonie. elles sont directement fonction des echanges avec la metropole; d'une part, les nouveaux canaux dans beauharnois sont essentiels a l'amelioration des echanges marchands, et , d'autre part, le developpement de l'industrie du bois dans lavaltrie est completement dependant de la demande britannique pour ce produit . *' this is further supported with the following: 141 ainsi done, bien que les initiatives economiques de certains seigneurs puissent revstir une apparence typiquement capitaliste, elles s 'accomplissent en realite non pas sur la base d'extorsion de plus value, ce qui est le propre du capitalisme, mais sur la base de corvees obligatoires , du travail gratuit en remboursement de dettes et de rapports de soumission/exploitation de nature essentiellement feodaliste. ^ the assertion that the labour for the seigneurs' seemingly capitalist activity was provided by corvee and as repayment of debts is simply untrue. joliette did receive some of the arrears due to him in the form of labour, 1' just as at least one other seigneur, joseph drapeau at la baie-du-ha!ha! , built his moulin banal (but never anything else) with corvee labour in 1844-45.20 however, neither arrears nor, especially, corvee, could have guaranteed enough labour for undertakings like joliette's, nor was it necessary, given that the population was increasing while land for settlement became more inaccessible. as the cure wrote of the village d'industrie's first inhabitants: gens inconnus qui viennent deja assaillir nos portes le sac au dos. [...] ces gens sans le sou s 'etablissent dans le voisinage du moulin. . . ** it could, perhaps, more reasonably be objected that the work-force of many of the capitalist seigneurs' enterprises may sometimes have been part-time farmers and thus not yet a proletariat in the sense of subsisting only through the sale of its labour-power, though not for joliette it appears. much more important, however, is bernier and salee's insistence that production responding to demand in the metropole, conditioned by exchange, is not genuinely capitalist, but merely another incarnation of merchant capital. this results from a fundamental misconception of the nature of merchant capital, shared by authors such as naylor. to cite marx: "...merchant's capital is penned in the sphere of circulation ... its function consists exclusively of promoting the exchange of commodities"" 142 (emphasis added). joliette's activity in large part was in fact intimately connected to production: his mills, for instance, match marx's formula for capital, "in which living labour stands in the relation of non-property to raw material, instrument and the means of subsistence required during the period of production."" for bernier and salee, the introduction of new, capitalist relations of production seems to be only directly attributable to a gradual passage from "artisanat" to manufacture.^ this suggests a misunderstanding of marx's description of the two forms of transition to capitalism: first , the merchant becomes an industrial capitalist. this is true in crafts based on trade . . . second , the merchant turns the small masters into his middlemen, or buys directly from the independent producer, leaving him nominally independent and his mode of production unchanged. third , the industrialist becomes merchant and produces directly for the whole market." 26 marx calls the last way "the really revolutionising path," in which "the producer becomes merchant and capitalist, in contrast to the natural agricultural economy and guild-bound handicrafts," but he does not put in doubt the extent to which the first path (merchant capital taking over industrial production) fully constitutes industrial capitalism. moreover, he recognizes the connection to circulation as crucial to that transformation, not somehow non-capitalist. perhaps the example of barthelemy joliette does not make this theoretical point sufficiently clear. a better example would be simon mctavish, fur trader and seigneur of terrebonne from 1802 until his death in 1804 after which the executors of his will administered the seigneury until it was sold to joseph masson in 1832. the fur trade was indeed merchant capital, with only an incidental use of wage-labour relative to over-all activity; namely, the exchange of commodities between two different modes of production. a 143 portion of mctavish's merchant capital became industrial capital at terrebonne, from where voyageurs departed for the interior and had to be supplied with provisions: [mctavish] ran a store and two very modern flour mills, built a bakery that made biscuit for the northwest, set up a sawmill and encouraged the manufacture of barrels. he was not content just to collect the seigneurial rents but tried to channel the region's surplus production to his mills. the wheat he processed was intended for the local market and for export. " it seems that, as with joliette's developments, those of mctavish attracted a pool of labourers, giving birth to the village of terrebonne . 2° in this form, then, merchant capital had invested in industrial capitalist production, albeit in a subsidiary function, having provided a market through trade. it should be noted that the technology most important in the capitalist production discussed here, the mill, was itself in the midst of a transition. "merchant milling" for commercial purposes, using a technology that increasingly required a small labour force, was displacing the "custom milling" for local use (often merely the farmer's personal use) that had been artisanal, needing only a master miller, his journeyman and apprentice. in this sense, then, seigneurs like joliette were also following the non-revolutionary path in terms of a« transition to capitalist milling operations. i7 the activity of capitalist seigneurs does not, however, merely raise the theoretical issue of merchant capital. marx explicitly deals with the type of enterprise in which joliette and mctavish were involved. we quote him here at length because his remarks are so directly relevant: the original historical forms in which capital appears at first sporadically or locally, side by side with the old modes of production, but gradually bursting them asunder, make up manufacture in the proper sense of the word (not yet the factory). this arises, where there is mass-production for export — hence on the basis of large-scale maritime and overland trade , and in the centres of such 144 trade ... manufacture does not initially capture the so-called urban crafts , but the rural subsidiary occupations , spinning and weaving, the sort of work which least requires craft skill, technical training. apart from those great emporia, in which it finds the basis of an export market, and where production is, as it were by its spontaneous nature , directed towards exchange-value — i.e. manufactures directly connected with shipping, including shipbuilding itself, etc. — manufacture first establishes itself not in the cities but in the countryside, in villages lacking gilds, etc. the rural subsidiary occupations contain the broad basis of manufactures, whereas a high degree of progress in production is required in order to carry on the urban crafts as factory industries. such branches of production as glassworks, metal factories, sawmills, etc., which from the start demand a greater concentration of labour-power, utilise more natural power, and demand both mass-production and a concentration of the means of production, etc.: these also lend themselves to manufacture. similarly papermills, etc. [...] for its first prerequisite is the involvement of the entire countryside in the production, not of use values, but of exchange values. glassworks, papermills, ironworks, etc. cannot be conducted on gild principles. they require mass-production, sales to a general market, monetary wealth on the part of the entrepreneur. not that he creates the subjective or objective conditions; but under the old relations of property and production these conditions cannot be brought together. (after this the dissolution of the relations of serfdom and the rise of manufacture gradually transform all branches of production into branches operated by capital.)-^ for marx, rural manufacture is a preliminary form of capital production, appearing in the countryside before the transformation has fully taken place in the town — where it later leads to a concentration of production which subordinates the countryside and enforces rural backwardness.-^ it requires a concentration of labour and of the means of production, needs natural power and mass production, and requires monetary wealth (the latter, by marx's definition, "accumulated through mercantile profits"-"). could there be a more succinct summary of the essential elements of joliette's activity? in fact, it is virtually a list of the potential resources offered by the canadian seigneury. moreover, regarding the role of monetary wealth and the connection between the question of rural manufacture on the one hand, and the question of merchant to industrial capital on the other, it is useful to cite marx on 145 one more point: "[capital's] original formation occurs simply because the historic process of the dissolution of an old mode of production allows value, existing in the form of monetary wealth to buy the objective conditions of labour on one hand, to exchange the living labour of the now free workers for money, on the other." by establishing a strict definition of capitalism which joliette does not match, bernier and salee have missed the point: we are dealing here with an inherently transitional form. the presence of semi-feudal elements is not proof of its non-capitalist nature, but an indication of its position relative to the eventual full development of a capitalist mode of production in quebec. characterizing the phenomenon in discussing capitalist production by seigneurs, most authors have been content to deal with joliette and, occasionally, joseph masson. there has been no real attempt to enumerate the use of seigneurial privilege such as joliette's, nor is there any reason to if one does not view them in terms of control of the means of production — that is, class relations — nor if, like bernier and salee, one regards the phenomenon as somehow illegitimate. 3a unfortunately, the most likely source for a quantitative analysis of the phenomenon, the census, is of only minimal use since, for the three major censuses before commutation (1831, 1842, 1851), neither ownership of mills, nor numbers of employees are listed with any regularity. for at least the 1851 census the printed totals are, in my experience, unreliable, so that the larger picture would have to be reconstructed from a tabulation of the manuscript. moreover, since there is reason to believe that the enumerators 146 35 of the 1851 census missed many of the ontario mills, there is a strong possibility their quebec counterparts did the same, so that even the manuscript would be inaccurate. in all likelihood, a roughly reliable quantitative portrait of this phenomenon could only emerge after exhaustive searches of the notarial, judicial and (remaining) seigneurial records, a project not within the scope of this analysis. in spite of these difficulties, certain aspects of the industrial capitalist use of seigneurial privilege are readily apparent, even after an analysis of only the secondary and printed primary sources. to begin with, the question must be posed not in terms of seigneurs, but of seigneurial privilege, or it becomes a study of biographies rather than of relations of production. when thomas mears and peter mcgill (jr.) ran saw mills and shanties in the seigneury of la petite nation, they rented mills built by the papineaus, paid for the privilege of "coupe de bois" and used a labour force provided by the papineaus' concession of marginal land. by 1851, one of the saw mills employed ten men, the other forty. the former was sold to alanson cook in 1852; but louis-joseph papineau reserved the land and the rights over its use, including the power of the chaudiere falls.-'" their fully capitalist activity took place using the pre-condition of seigneurial privilege, fully exploited by both the papineaus (in terms of contractual rights and collection of revenue) and joliette." for mears and mcgill, as for edouard scallon, a partner of joliette whose access to lavaltrie's productive possibilities always required payment to joliette or his widow, 38 the use of seigneurial privilege was an essential part of their institution of capitalist production. 147 significantly, it was the privilege perhaps more than the activities of the specific seigneurs (since control would often pass from their heirs to others, as from joliette's widow to scallon) which continued to influence the development of rural industry after the commutation of seigneurial tenure. the etchemin mills, for instance, were one of lower canada's largest complexes of saw mills, built in the seigneury of lauzon by henry caldwell who had used his privileges as seigneur to assemble the land and ensure a steady supply of timber.-" they were bought at a sheriff's sale in 1856 by the merchant, henry atkinson, whose family kept them producing various wood-related products until 1935. they remained of such importance that in 1958 one local wrote "la plupart [des gens de st _romuald] ont des parents qui y ont travaille, s'ils n'y ont pas travaille eux-mtmes. . . "^ the most striking feature of the phenomenon we are analyzing — albeit through an inevitably incomplete search for evidence — is its pervasiveness, precisely because it stems not from mentalites (as in ouellet's psycho-social analysis), nor individual characteristics (as in robert's entrepreneurialbiographical approach), but from the nature of seigneurial privilege itself. capitalist production on the basis of seigneurial privilege was introduced by francophones such as joliette and anglophones such as mctavish, by political reactionaries such as caldwell and by no less a political figure than the patriote dr. wolfred nelson, who operated a distillery at st-denis-sur-richelieu in partnership with the seigneur louis deschambault ("burned to the ground by british soldiers during the 1837 rebellion he helped to lead).** eustache-nicolas lambert-dumont , the seigneur of mille-isles (division du chene), was a direct descendant of the original seigneur (he was the fifth generation) and ran six flour mills, five saw mills and a carding and fulling u8 42 mill there. his grandson, godroy laviolette, inheritor of the augmentation des mille-isles, carried on this capitalist tradition in the period 1850-1881: "ii fut pour les travailleurs de saint-jerome une vraie providence, s'inggniant sans cesse, de longues annees durant, a creer des industries qui employaient quantite d'ouvriers. "^ if any seigneurs belonged to ouellet's dubious category of canadian "noblesse" (dubious since being a seigneur carried no privileges not attached to the seigneury), it would be dumont and laviolette yet, this did not make their activity any less capitalist than that of an "enrichi" like nicolas montour who built iron forges and furnaces on the seigneury of pointe-du-lac which he bought in his forties, after having made his fortune in the fur trade . ^ by the same token, this phenomenon occurred in the district of montreal (mille-isles, terrebonne), of trois-rivieres (montour), quebec (george allsopp ran a paper mill and a large flour milling and biscuit-baking operation on his jacques-cartier seigneury^-*) . it also occurred to a large extent in the gaspssie, where seigneuries were acquired by fish merchants to complete their control over their fishermen clients, but where they also organized lumber shanties, operated saw mills and used the lumber for shipbuilding. ^" in addition to existing in every region and under the auspices of seigneurs of varying backgrounds, it should be emphasized that this incipient capitalist production did produce for a local market, distilling, for instance, and, in some cases, woollen and textile manufacturing, as in montarville in the 1820s where american industrialists rented a seigneurial flour mill and used it for carding and textile manufacturing or, in beauharnois in the 1850s where montreal entrepreneurs bought water-power rights from the seigneur and formed the dominion woolen manufacturing 149 47 co. many kinds of production were of course complementary: a mill receiving grain might easily use it for distilling, which might also require glass production; one producing flour might use it for biscuits and, if it received timber as well, add a cooperage to produce barrels in which to store the flour. iron manufacturing took place via seigneurial privilege, both at the st. maurice forges, where the lease from the crown carried the privileges of a seigneury"*° and at ste-genevieve-de-batiscan , where the batiscan was leased from the crown and neighbouring champlain bought by the. group of merchants running them.^' it involved both the production of bar iron for export and of stoves for local use. 50 the st. maurice forges at least (the batiscan forges failed after a short time) were of considerable importance in terms of their use of wage labour. in 1843, their lessee, mathew bell, called the attention of the government "to the destitute situation of workmen and their families, residents at the works, should the [lease] be discontinued:" these people, four hundred and twenty-five souls, (mr. bell adds,) are nearly all canadians, born and brought up at the post, and several of the families are descendants of the workmen found there at the conquest, who never left the establishment; and there are besides about three hundred more people fed at the works at particular seasons of the year; and the farmers in the neighbourhood have always had a ready market for hay and oats, etc., etc., thus showing the vast importance which these works have hitherto been to the town and district ... ^ capitalist production through seigneurial privilege can thus not be easily dismissed: though the cursory evidence assembled here shows a predominance of production for export, it also produced for the domestic market, and while it used a system of production as primitive as the lumber shanty or as limited as a mill with a half-dozen employees, it could be as large and sophisticated as the st. maurice forges. 150 the phenomenon in comparative perspective the involvement of landed nobility and gentry in capitalist production in europe is already well-known to historians . " of particular interest for this study are guy richard's articles on nobility's involvement in industry in normandy after the french revolution. 53 even after the revolutionary abolition of feudal tenure, noble families—old and new--were able to use their control of natural power (streams and rivers running through land they still owned) to introduce mass production. in the eighteenth century in the british colony of new york, the manorial system (left from the dutch regime) allowed the landlords, many of whom were also merchants, to establish saw mills, grist mills, bolting houses, bake houses and iron manufacturing, using the exclusive milling and mining rights which conveyances (contracts with tenants) gave them, presumably financed through the annual rent and the sale rights paid to them by their tenants. ^^ on prince edward island, in the early nineteenth century, the land monopolies used their resources to develop a lumber and shipbuilding industry: the land being rich with timber, the landlords brought out new settlers from britain, rented them land, and offered them the "opportunity" of paying their rents by cutting lumber and working in shipyards. the value of this labour was rated so low however that it was insufficient -to pay the rents. the landlords demanded additional payments in cash, which the tenants seldom had. consequently they sank into debt to the landlords . ^ the most interesting comparisons, however, can be made with other regions of lower canada, those settled under the free-hold system. to begin with, however, it should be noted that free-hold tenure (applied to new lands conceded after the conquest) was not necessarily as free as has often been assumed. the seigneurs of lavaltrie, for instance, controlled a large part of the neighbouring township of kildare (township land was assigned through a 151 leader system which granted vast portions of townships to individuals or land companies who were then responsible for further granting lots to settlers). robert maintains that free and common soccage "impliquait un achat pur et simple de la terre, libre par la suite de tout lien", but writes elsewhere that the contracts of concession joliette made for land in kildare included the obligation to have wood sawed at his mills. thus, the township lands "§taient dans la realite partie integrante de la seigneurie de lavaltrie et etaient consideres comme tels par les seigneurs."-5" there is reason to believe that this was not an isolated case: the 1851 reports of the special committee appointed to inquire into the causes which retard the settlement of the eastern townships reproduced in its entirety a contract of concession with an impressive list of obligations, between charles turgeon, esq., "merchant, residing in the city of quebec, proprietor of certain lands situate in the township of maddington" and jacques dion, farmer. the sale was made "in consideration of an annual, perpetual and irredeemable ground-rent, rent fonciere, non rachetable , of one shilling currency" payable after redemption of a constituted rent of l 112. 10s; payment of consituted rent could be delayed in return for an annual and perpetual ground rent of 20 shillings during the purchaser's personal occupation which upon any transfer of the property would "be increased by the said change of title, until it be equivalent to the legal interest upon the said capital sum of i 112." the vendor and his heirs also had the right of pre-emption over the land in whole or in part. he reserved the rivers and brooks, mines, mineral lands, minerals, quarries of stone or slate, and limestone, timber, "as also the proprietorship of a land of six arpents in superficie, fit and proper for the construction and erection of one or more ?rist or saw mills, or any other mills or manufactories whatsoever; as also 152 for a road, as a means of communications therewith" subject only to payment of "the value of the clearing or improvement." it was also "expressly agreed, by and between the said parties, that neither the said purchaser, his heirs, nor any of their successors whomsoever .. .shall ever in any case construct any grist-mill or saw-mill upon the said land."-'' this was a set of servitudes as complete as any seigneurial contract might include. not surprisingly, then, there are cases of township land grantees who operated manufactures on their land grants. in his 1815 topographical description of lower canada , for instance, joseph bouchette described hyat's mills, "a valuable property" at the foot of the great fall at the forks of the st. francis, township of ascot, belonging to gilbert hyat, one of ascot's original grantees, and its largest landowner. ^° when ascot came under the domination of the british american land company in the mid-nineteenth century, the town of hyat's mills was renamed sherbrooke. another interesting case is that of paul holland knowlton, who was appointed agent to dispose of unsold land in brome township in 1827 and had purchased much of the land himself in a few years' time. at his first farm, on brome lake, settled in 1815, he had operated a store and distillery. in 1834 he moved to a stream flowing into the lake, over which he took up water rights, and set up a saw mill to produce building materials, as well as "a large house with offices attached, a smithy and its shop, a pearlashery and, later, a store and grist mill which became the nucleus of the village of knowlton ... these facilties enhanced the value of the wild land in the neighbourhood, much of which either belonged to him or passed through his hands. "->' more important to this analysis than the fact that even township land sometimes included the expropriation of the producer's surplus through legal 153 coercion (i.e., rent, milling obligations) is the exploitation by grantees of their control over resources such as land, motive power and raw materials to establish manufactures. in nations such as france, where feudal tenure had been almost universal, the control of such resources was historically connected to coercive surplus extortion. in north america, however, once the aboriginal population was eliminated there was an abundance of unsettled, unoccupied land, and these resources could be monopolized by an elite under a variety of legal forms. thus, the capitalist activity of seigneurs in lower canada must be seen as growing out of the institutionalization of the control and exploitation of resources in a land in large part not yet settled (by europeans) during the transition to capitalism, not merely a capitalistic transformation of the exploitation of feudalistic privilege. "0 rural manufacture was a transitional phenomenon which no longer required the outright control over land and labour exercised by feudal lords but, merely, the coercive power of the law and market relationships. this coercive power or de facto control could be exercised through bourgeois property (as in post-revolutionary france or in prince edward island) or through a semi-feudal system such as that in lower canada. a final qualification worth making is that, berthelemy joliette notwithstanding, the relationship between seigneurial privilege and the development of capitalist production was not necessarily simple nor smooth, the former by no means automatically facilitating the latter. to begin with, a seigneur could very profitably exploit his seigneury in an essentially rentier fashion: simply using his various privileges (such as the rents, banalitfis, corvee, right of concession and retrait and, thus, of speculation) to extract the maximum amount of surplus from his censitaires without "ever introducing new, capitalist productive relationships.^ moreover, the 154 agitation by the montreal bourgeoisie for an end to the sulpician seminary's privilege over their seigneury of montreal as early as the 1820s demonstrates that the existence of those privileges could also conflict with capitalist development. °^ the "commutation" of seigneurial tenure in 1854 suggests that it eventually did become incompatible with further capitalist development. it was legislated by a liberal-tory coalition in the assembly, under the influence of the lieutenant-governor, suggesting a high degree of consensus on the issue among various elements of the dominant classes. the result was a profoundly non-revolutionary transformation of land tenure, in which seigneurs kept unconceded land as private property and were indemnified by the state for their privileges, while the cens et rentes were paid off to them by the censitaires in either a lump sum or over time."-' this transformation was necessary, however, for the consolidation of capitalism in quebec. rural manufacture under whatever form was, as i have pointed out, inherently transitional. the full development of capitalism required the elimination of urban crafts in favour of factory production. fully capitalist production in the cities required "la dif ferenciation de la masse paysanne et sa polarisation entre le capital et le travail salarie,""^ which the "commutation" of the older, pre-capitalist relations of production in the countryside ensured. conclusions the most important aspect of nineteenth century quebec history is its transition from a rural society dominated by agricultural production to an urban one characterized by industrial production. in marxist terms, this was the transition to capitalism, from a population of petty producers whose 155 surplus was expropriated under coercive sanction (as well as through exchange), to one of property-less wage earners whose surplus was expropriated by those in control of the means of production to whom they sold their labour-power. earlier marxist and neo-marxist analyses have emphasized the importance of merchant capital ("penned in the sphere of circulation") and of the burdens imposed on agricultural production by seigneurial tenure and land monopolies in lower canada, implying some form of "underdevelopment" in the (capitalist) economy (which eventually resulted). the only such analysis which has examined industrial production which emerged on the basis of seigneurial privilege (and often in connection with merchant capital )rejected such production as essentially mercantile and feudalistic. in fact, not only was such industrial production capitalist, in the sense of the sale of labour-power by property-less wage earners to persons monopolizing the means of production but, other characteristics of this production matched marx's description of the transitional phenomenon of manufacture ("not yet the factory"), the form of capital's first appearance, manufacture transforms the rural subsidiary occupations, requiring a concentration of labour-power, natural power and of the means of production as well as "mass-production, sales to a general market, [and] monetary wealth on the part of the entrepreneur." moreover, the fact that such production followed the "non-revolutionizing path" of capitalist development ("the merchant becomes an industrialist") did not make it any less capitalist. the ensemble of privileges which constituted seigneurial tenure for the seigneur (and were sometimes found even under free-hold tenure) steadily increased during this period at the expense of the petty producers and included many of the requirements of manufacture, particularly concentration 156 of natural power and the means of production. speculative practices in the concession of land increased the available labour power, just as upward pressure on cens et rentes provided a growing source of monetary wealth. thus, while barthelemy joliette and his village d'industrie at lavaltrie is the best-known example in the historical literature, a survev of the secondary and printed primary sources quickly reveals that the institution of capitalist production on the basis of seigneurial privilege was widespread in lov?er canada, occurring in all regions, under seigneurs of varying backgrounds and with a variety of products, including some for domestic consumption as well as export and sometimes using quite sophisticated technology. manufacture developed similarly (under the direction of landlords or their lessees) in other parts of north america where land tenure allowed a monopolization of motive power and natural resources and sometimes, in addition, the coercive extortion of surplus from producers in the form of rent. profitable exploitation of seigneurial privilege did not necessarily result in manufacture, nor did manufacture always develop out of seigneurial privilege and, in the case of montreal, seigneurial privilege came into conflict with nascent capitalist production early on. yet, in louise dech§ne's words: loin d'etre un repoussoir, les diverses fonctions et contraintes extra-economiques autorisees par la loi des fiefs constituaient une forme ideale de prelevement sur la petite production. la bourgeoisie de toutes origines trouvait provisoirement son compte a oaintenir les rapports sociaux existants, un type de propriete qui n'entre pas en contradiction avec le developpement general du pays avant la seconde moitie du xixe siecle." this is in sharp contrast to mediterranean france, for instance, where, by 1788, the bourgeoisie had already concluded that seigneurial property— in particular the "moulin banal"—was an obstacle to growth end to progress in production. 66 157 this analysis has included only a discussion of the theoretical implications of capitalist production based on seigneurial privilege, as well as its broadest characteristics. a quantitative portrait of the phenomenon over time is needed, though it may prove elusive in view of the available sources. beyond that, however, the very fact of capitalist development growing out of seigneurial privilege in lower canada places the institution of seigneurial tenure and its eventual "communtation" , the political and social struggles surrounding it, at the top of the historical agenda if we are to understand quebec's transition to capitalism. notes * the author gratefully acknowledges the help stet professors richard rice, brian young, and louise dechsne, and by alexander wright and vince masciotra, through their comments and criticism, and most especially richard rice's inspired teaching. responsibility for any errors rests, of course, with me. 1. rodney hilton, "introduction," p. 30; "capitalism—what's in a name?", p. 148; in hilton, et al, the transition from feudalism to capitalism , london: verso, 1980. 2. r.t. naylor, "the rise and fall of the third commercial empire of the st. lawrence," in gary teeple, ed., capitalism and the national question in canada , toronto: university of toronto press, 1972, p. 35. 3. stanley b. ryerson, unequal union: confederation and the roots of conflict in the canadas, 1815-1873 , toronto: progress, 1973, p. 30-31, 39-40. 4. ernest mandel, late capitalism , london: verso, 1978, p. 53-54. the historical materialist analysis of canada's social and economic evolution is in its infancy. what follows is an examination of a single aspect of quebec's transition to a capitalism still poorly understood. 5. serge courville, "la crise agricole au bas-canada, elements d'une reflexion geographique , " (2 parts) cahiers de geographie du quebec , vol. 24, nos. 62 and 63 ("septembre, decembre 1980), p. 391. 6. c.p. lucas, ed., lord durham's report on the affairs of british north america, vol. 2, p. 24; cited in ryerson, p. 30. 158 7. louise dechine, "l'evolution du regime seigneurial au canada: le cas de montreal aux xviie et xviiie siecles," recherches sociographiques , vol. 12, no. 2 (mai-aotit 1971), p. 151-73. 8. dechene, p. 181. seigneurial tenure in quebec was, after all, the creation of the seventeenth century french absolutist state, a state perry anderson characterized as "accompanied not by a decrease in the economic security of noble landownership, but by a corresponding increase in the general rights of private property"; perry anderson, lineages of the absolutist state , london: rilb, 1974, p. 428-29. 9. courville, p. 221. 10. serge courville, "rente declaree payee sur la censive de 90 arpents au recensement nominatif de 1831: methodologie d'une recherche," cahiers de geographie du quebec , vol. 27, no. 70 (avril 1983), p. 59. 11. journals of the house of assembly of lower canada , vol. 42, 1832-33, 12th december. 12. ibid ., vol. 34, 1825, 16th march. 13. j.c. robert, "un seigneur entrepreneur, barthelemy joliette et la fondation du village d'industrie (joliette), 1822-1851," revue d'histoire de l'amerique francaise , vol. 26, no. 3 (decembre 1972), p. 375-97. 14. for this essay we have used robert's thesis: "l'activite economique de berthelemy joliette et la fondation du village d'industrie (joliette), 1822-1850," m.a. these, universite de montreal, 1971. 15. fernand ouellet, "propriete seigneuriale et groupes sociaux dans la vallee du st-laurent (1663-1840)," in melanges d'histoire du canada francais offerts au professeur marcel trudel , ottawa: ed. de l'universite d'ottawa, p. 206, 212. 16. gerald bernier and daniel salee, "appropriation fonciere et bourgeoisie oerchande: elements pour une analyse de l'economie aarchande du 3as-canada avant 1846," rhaf , vol. 36, no. 2 (septembre 1982), p. 165, 191, 192. 17. ibid ., p. 179-80. 18. ibidem , p. 180. 19. robert, p. 30. 20. j.w.m. (sic), "notes sur les seigneuries du district de rimouski," bulletin des recherches historiques , vol. 17 (1911), p. 243. 21. robert, p. 92-93. in this essay i do not explicitly consider class struggle, either between censitaires and seigneurs (courville is useful on this point) or seigneur-capitalists and wage-labourers. this is because most of the sources used (local histories, parliamentary papers) refer co it only rarely and even these references would require a separate and cotaplex analysis. 159 22. karl marx, capital , vol. 3, moscow: progress, 1959 ed., part iv, chapter xx, p. 325. 23. karl marx, pre-capitalist economic formations , new york: international, 1964, p. 99. 24. sernier and salee, p. 192; naylor .also suggests this, p. 3 and p. 34, n. 7. 25. marx, capital , vol. 3, p. 335. 26. ibid ., p. 334. 27. fernand ouellet, "simon mctavish," dictionary of canadian biography v (1801-1820), toronto: university of toronto press, 1983, p. 566. 28. l'tle des moulins , quebec city: ministere des affaires culturelles, direction general du patrimoine, 1979, p. 15. 29. felicity l. leung, grist and flour mills in ontario , ottawa: parks canada, national historic parks and sites branch, 1981 ("history and archaeology," no. 53), p. 24-25, 72, 92-101. 30. marx, pre-capitalist. . , p. 116,117. 31. john merington, "town and country in the transition to capitalism," in rodney hilton, et al, p. 190. 32. marx, pre-capitalist. . . , p. 107. 33. ibid ., p. 110. 34. in fact, both bernier and salee's and naylor's articles are less the presentation and analysis of historical processes, than of what failed to happen, on the basis of an inexplicit construct of what should have taken place. for a non-marxist survey of the tradition from which they proceed, see: l.r. macdonald, "merchants against industry: an idea and its origins," canadian historical review , vol. 56, no. 3 (september 1975), p. 263-81. 35. leung, p. 73. 36. claude bar beau, la seigneurie de la petite-nation, 1801-1854 , hull: ed. asticou, 1983, p. 101-108. 37. ibid . , p. 66. 38. roger barrette, "edouard scallon," dictionary of canadian biography ix (1861-1870), toronto: university of toronto press, 1976, p. 703-704. 39. marcel cava, "henry caldwell," dcb v , p. 131. 160 40. paul de saurel, "les moulins atkinson," la seigneurie de lauzon: bulletin de la societe d'histoire regionale de levis, no. 14 (ete 1984), p. 8-14. (originally published in le foyer , st-roouald, 16, 23, 30 janvier, 13 fevrier 1958). 41. l'abbe jean-b. allaire, histoire de la paroisse de saint-denis-sur-richelieu , st .-hyacinthe : impr. du "courrier de st.-hyacinthe", 1905, p. 346. ryerson is clearly mistaken in using this distillery as an example of "indigenous industrial capitalism" opposed to the "imperial-mercantile framework" upheld by merchants, clergy, landowners and seigneurs (p. 40-41). for our part, we are assuming that as manufacture taking place within a seigneury, the establishment of the distillery necessarily involved seigneurial privilege. 42. mcgill university library special collections. documents of the lambert-dumont family. ch 230.s208; document concerning the demarcation of the eustache dumont and j. brassier properties near st. eustache. 43. cited in l'abbe elie-j. auclair, saint-jerome de terrebonne , st-jerome: v impr. -photogravure j.-h.-a. labelle, 1934, p . 297. 44. l'abbe albert tessier, "deux enrichis: aaron hart et nicolas montour," les cahiers des dix , vol. 3 (1938), p. 219-21. a catholic chauvinist, tessier's presentation of a jewish and of a protestant seigneur is marked by anti-protestant and anti-senitic bigotry. 45. david roberts, "george allsopp," dcb v p. 20-23; w. stewart wallace, the macmillan dictionary of canadian biography , toronto: macmillan of canada, 1978 (4th ed., rev.), ?. 13. 46. jules belanger, et al , histoire de la gaspesie , montreal: boreal express, 1981, p. 162-65, 186-89, 210-12. 47. montarville boucher de la bruere, "le "livre de raison' des seigneurs de montarville," les cahiers des dix , vol. 4 (1939), p. 257; r.p. augustin leduc , beauharnois: paroisse saint-clement: histoire religieuse: histoire civile , ottawa: cie. d'imprimerie d'ottawa, 1920, p. 193. it is important to note that carding and fulling mills merely performed parts of the process of preparation of wool and could easily be integrated into domestic production, simply making it easier. woolen and textile manufacture , by contrast, necessarily displaced domestic production. 48. "copy of a report of the honourable the executive council on the subject of the forges of st. maurice, dated the 15th of september, 1843...," appendix 0, appendix to the fourth volume of the journals of the legislative assembly of the province of canada , 1844-45, 14th january. the st. maurice forges were not the only example of this: shipbuilding began at sorel on the seigneurial domain (including saw mills), first leased ana then sold by the crown, which had retained the seigneury after the conquest; l'abbe e. couillard despres, histoire de sorel: des origines a nos jours , sorel: ed. beaudry et frappier, 1980 (reprint of the 1926 edition), p. 309. 161 49. l'abbe albert tessier, les forges saint-maurice (1729-1883) , montreal: boreal express, 1974, p. 140; e.-z. massicotte, sainte-genevieve-debatiscan , trois-rivieres : ed. du "bien public", 1936, p. 79. interestingly, thomas dunn and george allsopp, with others, first leased the st. maurice forges from 1767 to 1782, then lost the lease and set up the forges at batiscan. 50. pierre toussignant and jean-pierre wallot, "thomas dunn," dcb ix , p. 289; massicotte, p. 80-81. 51. "copy of a report..." 52. see for example, guy richard, noblesse d'affaires au xviiie siecle , paris: a. colin, 1974; jerome blum, the end of the old order in rural europe , princeton, n.j.: princeton university press, 1978, p. 295-301. from a marxist perspective, see witold kula's, "l'origine de l'alliance entre la bourgeoisie et les proprietaires fonciers dans la premiere moitie du xixe siecle," in la pologne au xe congres international des sciences historiques a rome , warsaw: academie polonaise des sciences/institut d'histoire, 1955, p. 217-36; and, r.s. neale presents an argument for the english gentry as the economically revolutionary class, in ""the bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part,'" in e. kamenka and r.s. neale, eds . , feudalism, capitalism and beyond , canberra: a.n.u. press, 1975, p. 85-102. 53. i have consulted richard's "du moulin banal au tissage mecanique: la nobless dans l'industrie textile en haute-normandie dans la premiere moitie du xixe siecle," revue d'histoire economique et sociale , vol. 46, dos. 3 and 4 (1968), p. 305-38, 506-49. of related interest are: "les nobles metallurgistes dans le departement de l'eure de 1789 a 1850," in actes du 87e congres des societes savantes , poitiers, 1962, and "les fonderies romilly-sur-andelle et let debuts de la tnetallurgie non ferreuse en normandie," in actes du 88e congres des societes savantes , clermont-ferrand, 1963. 54. sung bok kim, landlord and tenant in colonial new york: manorial society, 1664-1775 , chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 1978, p. 142-61; irving mark, agrarian conflicts in colonial new york, 1711-1775 , new york: columbia university theses, 1940 (vol. 1), p. 64. 55. errol sharpe, a people's history of prince edward island , toronto: steel rail, 1976, p. 63, 65. 56. robert, p. 33,83,38. joliette also conceded a number of lots to himself and to his brother-in-law, p. 83. 57. first and second reports of the special committee appointed to inquire into the causes which retard the settlement of the eastern tounships of lower canada , quebec city: printed by order of the legislative assembly of canada, 1851, p. 132-38. 58. joseph bouchette, a topographical description of lower canada , st-lambert: canada east reprints, 1973 (reproduction of the 1815 edition), p. 354-55. 162 59. marion l. phelps, "paul holland knowlton," dcb ix , p. 434. 60. for a fascinating testimonial to the possibilities of a new seigneury, see john macnider's description of how he settled mitis, in appendix t, appendices to the journals of the house of assembly of lower canada , vol . 32, 1823, 17th march. macnider's establishment of farming, fishing and lumbering was made possible not just by seigneurial privilege, but also by his judicious generosity, which left settlers with just enough supplies to have to work for him and that, in turn, just enough money to be able to buy from his store. his considerable expenditures seem to have bankrupted him, however; j.w. m. , "notes..." p. 357. 61. for a clear, albeit urban, example of this, see: louise dechene, "la rente du faubourg saint-roch a quebec, 1750-1850," rhaf , vol. 34, no. 4 (mars 1981), p. 569-96. 62. brian young, "the commutation of property privilege from seigneurial to free tenure on the seigneury of montreal, 1340-1870," paper presented at the meetings of the canadian historical association, june 7, 1983, p. 19-20. note, for example, the molsons' commutation of valuable land holdings, p. 16. 63. ryerson, p. 290. 64. albert soboul, "la revolution francaise dans l'histoire du monde contemporain (etude comparative)," recherches internationales a la lumiere du marxisme , no. 62 (1970), p. 18. 65. l. dechene, "la rente du faubourg...," p. 569-70. 66. antoine casanova, techniques, societe rurale et ideologie en france a la fine du xviiie siecle , paris: annales litteraires de l'universite de besancon, 1977 ("les belles lettres," vol. 203), p. 39-40. bibliography allaire, l'abbe jean-b.-a. histoire de la parcoisse de saint-denis-surrichelieu . st-hyacinthe : impr. du "courrier de saint-hyacinth", 1905. anderson, perry. lineages of the absolutist state . london: nlb, 1974. auclair, l'abbe elie-j. saint-jerome de terrebonne . st-jerome: impr. -photogravure j.-h.-a. labelle, 1934. baribeau, claude. la seigneurie de la petite-nation, 1801-1854: le role economique et social du seigneur . (preface de fernand ouellet) hull: ed. asticou, 1983. barrette, roger. "edouard scallon." dictionary of canadian biography ix (1861-1870). toronto: university of toronto press, 1976, p. 703-704. 163 belanger, jules, marc desjardins, jean-yves frenette, with pierre dansereau. histoire de la gaspesie . montr&al: boreal express/institut quebecois de recherche sur la culture, 1981. bernier, gsrald, and daniel salse. "appropriation fonciere et bourgeoisie marchande: elements pour une analyse de l'economie marchande du bas-canada avant 1846." revue d'histoire de l'amerique francaise , vol. 36, no. 2 (septembre 1982), p. 163-94. casanova, antoine. techniques, societe rurale et ideologie en france a la fin du xviiie sie*cle: recherches sur les rapports entre les possibilities technologiques , banalites du moulin 3 huile en france mediterraneenne et critique de l'ancien rggime vers 1789: la critique des banalitgs d'aprgs le "msmoire pour servir a l'histoire naturelle de l'olivier" de bernard . paris: annales litt?raires de l'universite de besan§on ("les belles lettres", vol. 203), 1977. cava, marcel. "henry caldwell." dcb v (1801-1820). toronto: university of toronto press, 1983, p. 130-33. cothart, james m. "edward ellice." dcb ix , p. 234-39. courville, serge. "la crise agricole au bas-canada, elements d'une reflexion gsographique. " cahiers de geographie du quebec , vol.24, nos. 62-63 (septembre, decembre 1980), p. 193-223, 386-428. "rente d?claree payee sur la censive de 90 arpents au recensement nominatif de 1831: methodologie d'une recherche." cahiers de geographie du quebec , vol. 27, no. 70 (avril 1983), p. 43-61. cyr, celine, and pierre dufour. "joseph drapeau." dcb v , p. 269-72. dech£ne, louise. "l'evolution du regime seigneurial au canada: le cas de montreal aux xviie et xviiie siecles." recherches sociographiques , vol. 12, no. 2 (mai-aout 1971), p. 143-83. "la rente du faubourg saint-roch a quebec, 1750-1850." rhaf , vol. 34, no. 4 (mars 1981), p. 569-96. despres, l'abbi e. couillard. histoire de sorel: des origines a nos jours . sorel: ed. beaudry et frappier, 1980. (reprint of the 1926 edition). hilton, rodney, et. at. the transition from feudalism to capitalism . london: verso edition, 1980. (new left books, 1976) l'ile des moulins . quebec city: ministere des affaires culturelles du quebec, direction generale du patrimoine, 1979. j.w. m. (sic) "notes sur les seigneuries du district de rimouski." bulletin des recherches historiques , vol. 17 (1911), p. 237-46, 257-67, 312-20, 331-38, 353-68. kim sung bok. landlord and tenant in colonial new york: manorial society, 1664-1775 . chapel hill, n.c.: university of north carolina press for the institute of early american history and culture, 1978. 164 de la bruere, montarville boucher. "le "livre de raison' des seigneurs de montarville. " les cahiers des dix , vol. 4 (1939), p. 243-70. leduc , r.p. augustin. beauharnols : paroisse salnt~clement : hlstoire religleuse; histolre civile; fetes du centenalre . ottawa: impr. d'ottawa, 1920. leung, felicity l. grist and flour mills in ontario . ottawa: parks canada, national historic parks and sites branch ("history and archaeology," no. 53), 1981. macdonald, l.r. "merchants against industry: an idea and its origins." canadian historical review , vol. 56, no. 3 (september 1975), p. 263-81. mandel, ernest. late capitalism . london: verso, 1978. (new left books, 1975; german language edition, 1972). mark, irving. agrarian conflicts in colonial new york, 1711-1775 . new york: columbia university these , vol. 1, 1940. marx, karl. pre-capitalist economic formations . introduction by eric j. hobsbawm. new york: international publishers, 1965. capital: a critique of political economy . volume i. moscow: progress publishers, 1954 edition. capital . volume iii. moscow: progress publishers, 1959 edition. massicotte, e. z. sainte-genevieve de batiscan . trois-rivieres: ed. du "bien public", 1936 (pages trifluviennes , serie a-no. 18). naylor, r.t. "the rise and fall of the third commercial empire of the st. lawrence." in gary teeple, ed. capitalism and the national question in canada . toronto: university of toronto press, 1972. ouellet, fernand. "propriete seigneuriale et groupes sociaux dans la vallee du saint-laurent (1663-1840)." in melanges d'histoire du canada franc,ais offerts au professeur marcel trudel . ottawa: ed. de l'universite d'ottawa, 1978 (cahiers du centre de recherche en civilisation canadienne-francaise , no. 14), p. 182-213. "simon mctavish." dcb v , p. 559-66. phelps, marion l. "paul holland knowlton." dcb ix , p. 433-35. richard, guy. "du noulin banal au tissage mecanique: la noblesse dans l'industrie textile en haute-normandie dans la premiere moitie du xixe siecle." revue d'histoire economique et sociale , vol. 46, no. 3-4 (1968), p. 305-338, 505-49. robert, jean-claude. "l'activite economique de barthelemy joliette et la fondation du village d'industrie (joliette), 1822-1850." m.a. thesis: universite de montreal, 1971. 165 robert, jean-claude. "un seigneur entrepreneur, barthelemy joliette et la fondation du village d'industrie (joliette), 1822-1851." rhaf , vol. 26, no. 3 (decembre 1972), p. 375-97. roberts, david. "george allsopp." dcb v , p. 19-23. ryerson, stanley b. unequal union: confederation and the roots of conflict in the canadas, 1815-1873 . toronto: progress books, 1973. (2nd ed.) de saurel, paul. "les moulins atkinson." la seigneur ie de lauzon: bulletin de la societe d'histoire regionale de levis , no. 14 (ete 1984), p. 8-14 (originally published in le foyer , st. romuald, 16, 23, 30 janvier, 13 fevrier 1958). sharpe, errol. a people's history of prince edward island . toronto: steel rail publishing, 1976. soboul, albert. "la revolution frangaise dans l'histoire du monde contemporain (etude comparative)." recherche internationales a la lumiere du aarxisme , no. 62 (1970), p. 3-40. tessier, mgr. albert. "deux enrichis: aaron hart et nicolas montour." les cahiers des dix , vol. 3 (1938), p. 217-42. les forges saint-maurice (1729-1883) . montreal: boreal express, 1974. toussignant, pierre, and jean-pierre wallot. "thomas dunn." dcb ix , p. 2wallace, w. stewart, ed. the macmillan dictionary of canadian biography . revised, etc. by w.a. mckay. toronto: macmillan of canada, 1978. (4th edition) young, brian. "the commutation of property privilege from seigneurial to free tenure on the seigneury of montreal, 1840-1870." paper delivered at the canadian historical association meetings, june 7, 1983, vancouver, 3.c. primary sources mcgill university library special collections. documents of the lambert-dumont family. ch 230.s208. legal documents of the lambert-dumont family, 1780-1838. bouchette, joseph. a topographical description of lower canada... st. lambert: canada east reprints, 1973. (reproduction of the 1815 edition) the british dominions in north america... london: logman, rees, onne, brown, green and longman, 1832. appendix t., appendices to the journals of the house of assembly of lower canada , 1823, vol. 32. testimony of john macnider. 166 "a petition of divers censitaires possessors of land en roture in this province..." journals. . . , 1825, vol. 34, 16th march. "a petition of divers inhabitants censitaires and resident in the seigniory of lotbiniere. . . " journals. . . , 1832-33, vol. 42, 20th november. "a petition of divers proprietors censitaires of the seigniory of beauharnois . . . " journals . . . , 1832-33, vol. 42, 5th december. "a petition of the freeholders of the parish of st. nicholas..." journals. . . , 1832-33, vol. 42, 12th december. "a petition of the inhabitants, censitaires and proprietors of the seigniory of lotbiniere..." journals . . . , 1834, vol. 43, 24th january. "copy of a report of the honourable the executive council on the subject of the forges of st. maurice, dated the 15th of september, 1843..." appendix 0. , appendix to the fourth volume of the journals of the legislative assembly of the province of canada , 1844-45. pveport of the commissioners appointed to inquire into the state of the laws and other circumstances connected with the seigniorial tenure in lower canada, and appendix . laid before the legislative assembly, 4th october, 1843, and ordered to be printed. kingston: desbarats and derbishire, 1844. first and second reports of the special committee appointed to inquire into the causes which retard the settlement of the eastern townships of lower canada . printed by order of the legislative assembly. quebec city: rollo campbell, 1851. 167 marxism and underdevelopment the modes of production debate sut jhally there can be little doubt now, in any circles, as to the complete inadequacy of the development perspective that rose to prominence in the 1950's under the title of the "modernisation" approach and which found its main apologists in american social science (see the critique by frank, 1970). the events of the 1970' s (latin america, vietnam, angola, rhodesia, iran, chile) have illustrated the importance of marxist analysis, and its use as the ideological base of liberation movements. but increasingly, as more and more work has been produced on this particular subject so it .-as become clear that it is impossible any longer to talk of a single marxist perspective on the issue of underdevelopment and imperialism (see foster-carter, 1973). beginning with the frank/laclau debate in the 1960's marxist theory has been increasingly divided within itself as to developing a coherent and practically useful paradigm. what this paper will attempt to do is to review the main body of literature that has grown up around the central theme of 'mode of production' and the process of transition between different modes, and will tentatively suggest future lines of analysis that could prove useful. in particular we will look at the work of frank, laclau, rey and dupre, banaji and hamza alavi and suggest that the latter's approach is the most convincing. to apply the main features of the debate to contemporary underdevelopment we will argue that we need to reintegrate discussion in terms of a true marxist social formation that is a complex unity, combining relations of exploitation, relations of production, circulation, distribution, reproduction and other elements of the traditionally economic side of mode of production. in addition an integration of the superstructures and especially the role of the state into a marxist perspective of the colonial and post-colonial reality is necessary. history, process and totality become the key terms, as well as the theoretical relationship between modes of production and social formations. (for parts of the ensuing argument we have drawn on foster-carter, 1978, especially his exposition of rey's general theory.) i the critique of frank at the root of most radical analyses of underdevelopment we find the name of andre gunder frank and it is with his most influential essay that we will start here. "the development of underdevelopment" (frank, 1970) posited the theory of metropolis-satellite relations between the advanced capitalist countries and the underdeveloped periphery. in his work on chile (frank, 1967) frank introduced two important concepts that underlay his whole work. the first one was the rejection of the theory of the 'dual society' where latin america is divided into capitalist (developed) and feudal (underdeveloped) sectors. from its very first contact with mercantile capitalism latin america has been incorporated into a capitalist world system. he writes, the expansion of the capitalist system over past centuries effectively and entirely penetrated even the apparently most isolated sectors of the underdeveloped world (frank. 1970:5). thus there were only seemingly feudal remnants that were created by the process of underdevelopment. we shall come back to this important point later with laclau. the second concept that he introduced was the contradictions of capitalism that 'caused' underdevelopment. the first contradiction was that of the "expropriation/appropriation of economic surplus" and involved 64 the distinction made by paul baran (to whom frank owes an enormous intellectual debt) between 'actual' and 'potential' surplus. 'actual' surplus is that part of the economic surplus that is saved and invested. 'potential* surplus is that which is not available to society because of the monopoly structure of power. as david booth has pointed out this is a different usage of the term 'surplus' than other marxists have used. (in oxall et al, 1975:68). the second contradiction that led to underdevelopment was 'metropolis-satellite polarisation' . other analysts have termed this phenomenon unequal development (amin, 1976). so, one and the same historical process of the expansion and development of capitalism throughout the world has simultaneously generated and continues to generate both economic development and structural underdevelopment. rather than being stages of evolution (or 'stages of growth' as rostov has labeled them) underdevelopment and development are dialectically related and interdependent . this polarisation between metropolis/ satellite takes place on the national as well as the international level. the third contradiction was that of continuity in change. he referred to the continuity and ubiquity of the structural essentials of economic development and underdevelopment throughout the expansion and development of the capitalist system at all times and places (frank, 1967:12). so the emphasis was on structures of dominance rather than on other historical changes that latin america had experienced. this very basically is frank's model. latin america is and always was capitalist. the response to frank has come in two main stages, both of them marxist. firstly a group of latin american marxists argued that the metropolis/satellite model was overschematic and that what needed to be emphasized was the relations of dominance between the social classes internal to the colony. dos santos argued, the process under consideration, rather than being one 65 of satellizatton as frank believes, is a case of the formulation of a certain type of internal structure conditioned by international relationships of dependence, and weaver has stated, the use of economic surplus, not merely its quantity, must be the centre of attention and this necessitates class analysis. frank has agreed himself that such a focus is vital and in one of his later works, lumpenbourgeoisie; lumpendevelopment , he writes, this colonial and neo-colonial relationship to the capitalist metropolis has formed and transformed the economic and class structure , as well as the culture of latin american society. . these changes in national structures have occurred as a result of periodic changes in the form of colonial dependence. . . . this colonial and class structure establishes very well defined class interests for the dominant sector of the bourgeoisie. using government cabinets and other instruments of the state, the bourgeoisie produces a policy of underdevelopment in the economic, social and political life of the 'nation' and the people of latin america. when a change in the forms of dependence modifies the economic and class structure, this in turn generates changes in the p licy of the dominant class which further strengthens the same bonds of economic dependence which produced the policy and thus aggravate still further the development of underdevelopment in latin america (frank, 1972). what this suggests then is an alliance between different bourgeoisies in the world system and while they may be structured in an hierarchy their collective interests are such as to ensure the active participation by the 'junior' members in perpetuating relations of exploitation that subjugate the mass of the people in the colonial countries so that the march of capital goes unimpeded. although we would argue that frank has got the essence of the relationship, in terms of marxist theory it is not expressed in a coherent and sound manner. we will see one aspect of this below. the most wideranging critique to emerge of frank has been from e. laclau in his article ."feudalism and capitalism in latin america" (laclau, 1971). he agrees that to view latin america as a dual economy 66 is wrong. but instead of frank's all-embracing and homogeneous capitalism laclau suggests we view a structured and differentiated whole which is capitalist (i.e. the economic system). but within this are placed modes of production which are principally identified with relations of production and which are feudal and capitalist. thus for laclau a mode of production is not characterized by exchange (as for frank) but by relations of production , and he goes to great lengths to point out the sections in marx's work where he also identifies relations of production as the central element in mode of production. he suggests that frank's difficulties in his definition (or non-definition) of what capitalism is start from his failure to recognize the difference between what marx called 'capitals' and 'capitalism'. so in marxist terms the mere existence of capital does not mean the existence of capitalism. (the essence of this critique of frank is a point which laclau himself would be as well to examine in his own work.) merchant capital standi as a precursor of the capitalist mode of production . indeed both marx and weber recognize the necessity of mercantile capital for the development of capitalism 'proper'. for laclau then the mere existence of capital in the realm of exchange in the agrarian sector in latin america is no proof that it is "developed capitalism's" capital, and explains frank's basic mistake by reference to translation difficulties of marx's german (i.e. translating 'capital' into 'capitalism'). laclau defines a mode of production as an integrated complex of social productive forces and relations linked to a determinate type of ownership of the means of production (laclau, 1971) . ownership of the means of production is recognized as the essential element in the definition of a mode of production which consists of (1) a determinative type of ownership of the means of production; (2) a determinative form of appropriation of the economic surplus; (3) a 67 determinative degree of development of the division of labour; (4) a determinative level of development of the productive forces. feudalism exists in latin america because on these levels there can be observed a difference between the agrarian sector and the urban sector. the agrarian sector is characterized by: extra-economic pressures that subject the labour force to produce a surplus (feudal dues and obligations); that surplus is then appropriated by someone other than the direct producer (appropriated by the landlord from the peasant) ; the means of production remain the property of the direct producer (the peasant owns the instruments of production as well as 'owning' the land a share cropper). laclau writes, in the capitalist mode of production, the economic surplus is also subject to private appropriation, but as distinct from feudalism, ownership of the means of production is severed from ownership of labour power; it is that which permits the transformation of labour-power into a commodity, and with this the birth of the wage relation. i believe it is possible within this theoretical framework to situate the problem of dependence at the level of relations of production (laclau, 1971). having thus established to his theoretical satisfaction the existence of different modes of production laclau then has to theorize the relations between the different modes. as already mentioned the context in which relations between feudal and capitalist take place is the 'economic system' (others have called it the social formation) which designates the mutual relations between different modes. again marx is used to differentiate between the concepts of 'mode of production' and 'economic system'. when marx talked of the production of surplus value he was talking of a mode of production. but when he was theorizing the relations between different modes of production, or different sectors of the same mode, then he was talking about an economic system. so the level of exchange and circulation, which is the level that frank is operating on, is only the level of the economic system and not that of the mode of 68 production. for laclau, far from capitalism being contradictory to feudalism, the effect it has is to actually accentuate and consolidate the 'subordinate' mode. rather than capital destroying feudalism it strengthens it. examples are given from the history of chile which show that capitalist entrepreneurs strengthened servile and traditional exploitation in the countryside to maximize profits. thus far from the dualist thesis which maintains that two modes of production in an economic system exist independently of each other laclau emphasizes the ' indissoluble unity ' between them. ii modes of production in indian agriculture although laclau' s critique of frank has provided invaluable insights into the problem of theorizing the nature of dependence, his own work also has serious weaknesses which until recently were not really recognized. indeed the influence he has had on development field work has been immense but because of some theor. tical deficiencies in his model these have also been problematic. a little publicized debate that went on in the pages of the economic and political weekly between 1970 and 1973 on the characterization of the mode of production of indian agriculture illustrates some of the problems. doug mceachern has neatly summarized this debate (mceachern, 1976) in considering the questions that arose within the debate (what are the defining features of capitalism? how do we recognize them in agriculture? how do we define feudalism and its associated forms?). we have to focus on the following issues concerning the transition from "feudalism to capitalism". (1) the extent to which commodity production was generalised. (2) the extent to which landless labourers constituted a force of free wage-labourers. (3) the extent of capitals' involvement in circulation and relations of production. 69 (4) the significance of tenancy relations in agrarian production. firstly, on the question of the extent to which commodity production was generalized, the main protagonists were agreed as to the existence of general commodity production during the colonial period but a failure to specify when it became dominant in the mode resulted in a difference as to its significance. patnaik argued that generalized commodity production was essentially a graft onto the traditional mode and that it did not alter existing conditions of production. chattopadhayay, on the other hand, argued that generalized commodity production had to entail the existence of capitalist relations of production. that is, something (relations of production) must have changed to alter the status of non-commodities to commodities. but as banaji argues, and as we agree below, relations of production are more than just the immediate relations apparent at the point of production. so even if the relations of production at the point of production remain the same it is possible that this could cocaal a change in the effective relations of production (as compared to the relations of exploitation ) within the context of a much wider definition of mode of production that includes a whole host of other elements. this is one of the major problems with laclau and we will expand on this later. secondly, is thequestion of the extent to which landless labourers constituted a force of free wage-labourers. again the argument centred on the extent to which landless labourers were free. patnaik argued along the thoroughly unmarxist lines that the landless labourers were not really free (although they were free to sell nothing but their labour) because they were bound by poverty, numbers, lack of alternative employment and extra-economic pressures more in common with feudalism. but this is similar to arguing that the working class of new york is not really free (in the strictly marxist sense of course) because of their lack of educational qualifications, their domination through t.v., etc.. 70 chattopadhyay, treating the landless labourers as a capitalist workforce was able to connect this to the generalization of commodity production as capitalism. again we would emphasize the need to examine this in an overall context. thirdly, the debate focussed on the extent to which capital in the countryside remained in the sphere of circulation and did not actively affect the production relations in agriculture. this is the main focus of the frank-laclau debate and the debaters on india are tied up with very similar types of questions. for patnaik the distinguishing feature between the feudal landlord and the capitalist was that the surplus be reinvested in improved techniques of agricultural production. this issue of reinvestment raised the very difficult question which mceachern identifies as "the extent to which the experience of colonialism served to intensify various forms of exploitation without capital entering the sphere of production " (mceachern, 1976: 449). patnaik reiterated laclau's perspective that the existence of capital in circulation does not entail capitalism. but then chattopadhyay does not argue that. again as in the first two cases the context in which this capital operates is all important, and neither element on its own can be used to justify a characterization one way or the other. fourthly, the debate centred on the significance of tenancy relations in agrarian production. it is assumed that tenancy is incompatible with capitalism but both patnaik and chattopadhyay agreed that there were possible examples where tenancy was compatible with capitalism. thus landlords can develop as representatives of landed capital, with tenancy thus transformed as a consequence or they can continue to live through the exploitation of rent. there was also the case whereby the tenant farmed through the use of wage labour and paid the landlord ground rent. we introduced the indian debate here as an important example of the 71 tendencies in development work since laclau's critique and the kinds of difficulties it leads to. hamza alavi has written ,"the indian debate accepts too readily the assumptions and arguments advanced by laclau having dismissed frank's problematic totally " (alavi, 1975). alavi is not concerned with identifying whether indian agriculture is capitalist or feudal, for it is clearly neither but in identifying its inbetween nature. he does so by integrating the type of issues examined above into an overall historical process which is reflected in the place of india in the development of a world system and her present role in such. he is positing a new mode of production, a colonial mode of production , which arises directly out of india's colonial relationship with britain. that will be examined in more detail below. here we wish to point out two further problems in laclau's critique (in addition to the above). firstly, there is the issue of banaji's distinction between 'relations of exploitation' and 'relatirns of production'. relations of exploitation are the particular form in which surplus is appropriated from the direct producer. relations of production, on the other hand, are the specific historically determined form which particular relations of exploitation assume due to a certain level of development of the productive forces, to the predominance of particular property forms and so on.... thus capitalism cannot be defined in terms of the existence or non-existence of wage labour, for the latter is only transformed into a capitalist relation of production under certain historical conditions, in the first place its insertion into a framework of extended reproduction where 'unlimited expansion, perpetual progress, becomes the law of production' in contrast to all pre-capitalist modes of production where production was every time resumed in the same form and on the same scale as previously ... thus the error which deduced feudalism from the prevalance of serfdom and the one which deduces capitalism from the existence of wage labour are symmetrical; they both confuse relations of production with relations of exploitation (banaji, 1972, p. 2498). thus both laclau and frank are guilty of abstracting from a complex model and process elements that do not make sense except within that framework. but at least frank is aware of some of the difficulties. 72 how, for example, would laclau handle a single worker who is simultaneously "(1) owner of his own land and house; (2) sharecropper on another's land; (3) tenant on a third's land; (4) wage worker during harvest on all these lands; and (5) independent trader of his own home produced commodities " (frank, 1967, pp. 271-2). the second problem with laclau which has been pinpointed with great accuracy by alavi concerns the problem of contradiction . laclau posits relations between the two modes as coexisting within the economic system. but if they were separate modes then in a marxist sense the only relation between them would be one of contradiction and not coexistence. although he speaks of an "indissoluble unity" it is a unity in an hierarchy, which is a feature of a single mode of production. what seems to be missing in laclau' s account is a notion of process from coexistence to domination. contradiction implies process and because there is no contradiction there is no process. at least in frank there is -.rocess even if it is of the very simple pre-capitalist to capitalist variety. we will come back to the work of alavi and banaji later but we now wish to focus on a european writer, pierre-phillipe rey, who is dealing with similar types of problems, (the transition from primitive to modern) but uses entirely different language in their conceptualization. as such he is, we believe, more theoretically developed than either frank or laclau, although we will argue that his work has serious shortcomings which must be dealt with. ill rey and the articulation of modes of production for frank the issue of contradiction does not arise because we are dealing with a single mode of production. for laclau contradiction is negated by 'indissoluble unity'. for rey, contradiction and coexistence are not seen as total opposites but as conflicting features of a historical process in which the althusserian notion of 'articulation' is vital to 73 his work. one of the defining features of the seminal work undertaken by louis althusser is a redefinition of the classical base/superstructure metaphor from one where the superstructures are a mere reflection of the economic base to a model where the superstructures have their own indices of effectivity (althusser, 1977) (i.e. they have a determinate role in relation to the base and the other superstructures) both internally, and externally in relation to the base. what rey and his colleagues have done is to apply this internal articulation between different levels of a mode of production to the articulation between modes of production. so the central notion of contradiction becomes a much more theoretically useful concept because articulation can define and specify the nature of that contradiction. foster-carter has written. ...just as simmel observed 'conflict is a form of sociation' so contradiction among modes of production ±s^ a form of articulation. each concept needs the other: articulation without contradiction would indeed be static and anti-marxist, but contradiction without articulation (or transition without articulation) fallaciously implies that the waxing and waning of modes of production are quite separate activities, each internally determined, whereas in fact they are linked as are wrestlers in a clinch (foster-carter, 1978, p. 73). this concept thus brings closer the mutual determining effects of contact between different economic units than certainly either frank or laclau managed, and even clearer than that 'articulated' by alavi. rey, who is the most theoretically advanced of those influenced by althusser, seeks to explore the place of exchange in the relations between modes of production and the effect of this on relations of exploitation and production especially on the dominance of one mode over another. rey, after introducing the notion of capitalism in europe as developing not out of a contradiction in feudalism but in fact as feudalism protecting capitalism in its infancy (so that ground rent is identified by rey as being part of feudalism and appearing as an integral part of 74 capitalism because of the articulation between the two modes), then goes on to examine the articulation of capitalism with pre-capitalist modes. post has pointed out that the notion of articulation has two meanings, both of which give a clear definition of the process of articulation. firstly it means to join together . secondly it means to give expression to . so as two modes interact they are both affected by their interaction with the other. it is not a case of pure domination. as rey writes , capitalism can never immediately and totally eliminate the preceding modes of production, nor above all the relations of exploitation which characterize these modes of production. on the contrary, during an entire period it must reinforce these relations of exploitation since it is only this development which permits its own provisioning with goods coming from these modes of production, or with men driven from these modes of production and therefore compelled to sell their labour ' power to capitalism in order to survive (foster-carter, 1978, p. 59 ) rey identifies three main stages in the process of articulation, (a) capitalism reinforces the pre-capitalist modes; (b) capitalism subordinates the pre-capitalist whilst still using it; (c) the precapitalist totally disappears. as stated before such a labelling gives articulation a process as well as approaching the notion of the problematic of the contradiction which it negates. rey writes of the articulation of two modes of production, one of which establishes its dominance over the other... not as a static given, but as a process , that is to say a combat between two modes of production, with the confrontations and alliances which such a combat implies: confrontations and alliances essentially between the classes which these modes of production define (foster-carter, 1978, p. 56 ) • so articulation is not just an abstract concept. it is about the basic essentials of imperialism labour power and raw materials. it is also about alliances between classes with mutual interests of exploitation in the two modes. this notion of exploitation in the pre-capitalist mode is another important advance by rey. 75 to illustrate the above types of concepts, rey (in conjunction with dupre) chose the case of west african lineage societies and the process of their articulation with capitalism. they start off by examining the role of exchange between elder groups in reproducing the conditions of production in the pre-capitalist mode. we are back again on frankian territory. rey and dupre use meillassoux's work and set out to examine why goods produced by one group (cadets unmarried, young, male) can be entirely controlled by another group (the elders). after rejecting a number of conventional explanations based on physical coercion and control of technical knowledge, they argue that the vital element is that they reserve for themselves control of social knowledge and control of the cadets' access to women, which they guarantee by possessing the elite goods which are essential for marriage. so reproduction is achieved, in a sense, both materially and 'ideologically'. elders in different groups within the mode of production form an alliance to protect their authority and power. the control of matrimonial exchanges is one of the means by which the elders as a group guarantee the control of the demographic reproduction of the lineages. the reproduction of the cadets' dependence in relation to the elders is correlatively guaranteed (rey and dupre, 1973, p. 146). for a cadet to become an elder he has to follow certain prescribed behaviour. thus the elders had control of demographic reproduction and they in addition exercised control over the exchange of slaves , which entailed controlling the redistribution of men from demographically strong lineages to weak ones . this demographic reproduction is identified by rey and dupre as the essential condition for the reproduction of the conditions of production. the place of exchange (of slaves) is vital in reproduction. so what we have is the exchange of slaves between exchange partners as far as the coast; an exchange which is controlled by the elders of neighbouring groups to guarantee demographic reproduction and 76 which is based on these elders collectively controlling the elite goods which guarantee their dominant role in relation to the cadets. having now an idea of the traditional mode of production with which capitalism articulates we can now look at the precise process of that relationship. in the first period capitalism makes use of the exchange networks which allowed the movement of slaves from the interior to the coast and also the movement of products in the same direction. factories are then set up on the coast which make use of both labour and raw materials supplied through the traditional mode and protected by the local chiefs. there is an alliance between the elders and the western traders and 'industrialists'. in addition to the installation of factories we can identify the 'tagging on' to the end of the lineage slave exchange, the slave trade of the west, this initial contact with capitalism served to reinforce the pre-capitalist mode of production. but, of course, it was no mere co-existence, for the slave trade could only survive by exploiting the internal contradictions of the lineage societies. the demographically strong lineages which traditionally had no interest in reintegrating slaves as nominal cadets formed between themselves chains of exchange which excluded weak lineages in which slavery was no longer able to play the role of demographic corrective to more than a minimal extent (rey and dupre, 1973, p. 146) . the contradiction between the social function of exchange and the control by elders was further reinforced by this move towards hierarchization. but there is stability for a time. the dominant instance between the two modes is that of exchange . this first phase of articulation thus reinforces the existing mode while heightening and concentrating the contradiction. the second phase of articulation is the colonial period where capitalism has taken root and become the dominant mode. for rey and dupre, colonialism arises because, when commodity exchange replaces slave and trade exchange, the political power of the local power holders (where the 77 changes of exchange terminated,) collapsed. as a result political protection for trade has to be recreated from 'outside'. the period of trade in products, as opposed to the period of slave trade, is an unstable period which goes by the name of colonialism (rey and dupre, 1973, p. 146) . to destroy the pre-capitalist mode rey and dupre state that violence is a necessity . where capitalism is dominant but where pre-capitalist modes still exist and where they are needed by capitalism, violence has to take place on more than the economic level and must enter the superstructural level as well. capitalism must have a legal and institutional framework to protect its naked economic violence. this mode is described as a ' transitional mode of production' and will dissolve when the time comes to give way to capitalism proper. we will question below the validity of this notion of the development of capitalism proper. by uniting different relations of exploitation under one unity rey is working on the same ground as alavi. the third phase, the complete destruction of pre-capitalist modes by capitalism) has not as yet happened anywhere (and as we shall argue below it cannot structurally happen anywhere). what we would want to stress is that rey. and dupr^'s approach seems to us to offer a much clearer picture of the actual process by which capitalism relates to other forms of society which it encounters in its expansion. it is not a mere imposition but a dialectical relationship that is taking place under the notion of articulation. it was mentioned earlier that rey and dupre saw the use of violence between the first and second stage as a universal necessity in the articulation between capitalist and other modes. but it is this colonial relationship and its impact which they do not fully integrate into their otherwise sound theoretical scheme. the problems occur principally when we carefully study the role of the homoficence of 78 capitalism, the inside/outside distinction on the development of capitalism and the role of the colonial period in characterizing the nature of contemporary underdevelopment. rey has insisted vociferously his opposition to voluntaristic notions of the development of capitalism (as in kay's "capital created underdevelopment not because it exploited the underdeveloped world but because it did not exploit enough") and the need to view capitalism as homoficient i.e. its internal structures and economic laws only allow one form of development. again we are back in frankian polemics (frank, 1975). thus articulation will have as its final stage the development of capitalism in all the colonies. but this is to leave out of the analysis of capitalist development the role played by active human beings. as foster-carter observes, we have heard a lot in the past few years of the latter part of marx's dictum that "men make their own history but not in conditions of their choosing" and not enough of the former. as he points out, rey is prepared to make an exc-ption to this homoficence of capitalism in the case of france between 1871 and 1958. the theoretical question is, if it can happen in france then why not elsewhere? this insistence on homoficence is all the more irritating in that he has been one of the few marxist development theorists to fully appreciate the impact the traditional mode of production has on capitalism. leading from this problem is his view on the distinction (or lack of it) between capitalism emerging from outside or inside . again foster-carter has provided the most illuminating insights into this issue. that rey is aware of the distinction is clear from some of his statements: thus is the transitional social formation subject to a double history, where the contradiction bursts forth between two orders of necessity: on the one hand the history of capital itself, which for the most part is written outside such social formations; on the other hand the history of the transition, specific to the modes of production which are there articulated (foster-carter, 1978, p. 64). 79 but although he is prepared to allow the transitional form this double history he does not seem to see it as significant in terms of the overall development of capitalism. regardless of its history (indigenous, colonial) capitalism will finally only have one form. but the deficiency in his work of such a distinction leads to the third problem identified above the role of the colonial period in characterizing the contemporary state of underdevelopment. the important point is that capitalism in the third world has not taken a course similar to its development in the west. it is precisely because of tnis that we can talk of underdevelopment. foster-carter has written, and we quote at length, the 'extraverted' nature of the third world's original insertion in the capitalist world economy is not just of historical interest: it is a continuing and defining feature, not to be abstracted from, of the very essence of what we mean by 'underdevelopment'. certainly we may see the thrust of, and indeed accept, rey's basic claim that at one level the action of capitalism must be homoficent (else we would not be right to call it by a singular name, capitalism). but this must be complemented by analysis at the level of the social formations and their interrelationships, in a world system which gives analytical pride of place to what rey blithley grants en passant : that capitalism comes to the 'third world' from the outside, as foreign capital, indeed as colonial capitalism, and the extraversion thus created persists defining the character of contemporary underdevelopment, viz. as an externally oriented , distorted and indeed disarticulated 'part-economy' subordinated (now as ever) to metropolitan capital (foster-carter, 1978, pp. 65-66). so the history of capitalism in the colonies continues to be written from outside the social formation. it is this that rey misses but that alavi captures. the development of a world system perspective has been a response to this phenomenon, as of course has the work of frank. balibar has summed up this problem of colonialism as the event in their (the colonies) history is produced in the time of their diachrony without being produced in the time of their dynamics : a limit case which brings out the conceptual difference between the two 80 times, and the necessity of thinking their articulation (balibar and althusser, 1970, p. 301). as far as rey is concerned, despite the serious problems that were discussed, we feel that the theoretical basis of articulation is such as to suggest that some of the more recent attempts to characterize the process of underdevelopment would greatly benefit from their insertion into such a perspective and would prove to have greater historical incisiveness , as well as helping to pin down the nature of contemporary underdevelopment. alavi' s work is a case in point. iv alavi and the colonial mode of production alavi is clearly dealing with the same problematic, although the word 'articulation' does not arise in the precise sense that was used by the french school. banaji is the first to see the value of a new mode of production that arises as a result of capitalism's articulation with traditional modes, and as a solution to the confusion surrounding frank's basic "mistake". that is the process of integration of particular areas of the globe into a world market dominated by the capitalist mode of production was confused with the installation of the capitalist mode within these areas (banaji, 1972, p. 2499). for him the distance between the concepts of installation and integration can only be overcome by an adequate theory of colonialism, and in particular a colonial mode of production . arguing against the coexistence of modes and using the distinction made above between relations of exploitation and production he sees no reason why a single mode of production may not contain a variety of relations of exploitation . we have to try and develop in terms of a colonial mode of production why capitalism did not take its 'logical' course in the colonies. the reason of course is that the colonies suffered from the part that they played as they were initially integrated into the world-wide pattern of capital accumulation under british domination. and because of the nature of the transition from colony to 81 independence some colonies still play a subordinate role in relation to the metropolis, which has shifted westwards from britain to the u.s.a. between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries the dominant form of accumulation remained colonial plunder, which was largely used to finance the industrialization and development of the white colonies as well as aiding industrialization in britain itself. banaji writes, the colonial modes transmitted to the colonies the pressures of the accumulation process in the metropolis without unleasing any corresponding expansion in the forces of production. .. the mode of production installed in the colonies reduced the entire process of production to an immense superexploitation of variable capital (banaji, 1972, p. 2500) (our emphasis). thus the original and continuing colonial relationship "mutated" the "pure development" of capitalism in the colonies. certainly development in india did not take the path forseen by marx, who saw colonialism as a revolutionary force that destroyed the traditional mode, which was enclosed and static (a strange thing for marx to be saying considering his stress on dialectics and contradiction), and opened the way for an eventual development of socialism. although marx was correctly able to pinpoint the truly revolutionary nature of the impact of capitalism, the installation of private ownership (instead of possession) of land, he did not fully comprehend the nature of india's insertion into a developing world system (marx, 1976, chapter 33). to examine the precise 'inbetween' nature of the colonial mode we shall now turn to alavi and his penetrating analysis of indian agriculture. we have to examine the notion of a colonial mode in the context of the class relationships and class alliances that manifested themselves in the period before and after independence. the landlords before independence lined up alongside the british rulers but even after independence they were able to retain power at the vital points, namely in the state 82 and the villages . thus the populist ideology and rhetoric of the nationalists was considerably toned down when it finally came through as legislation. land reforms were a failure in india because attempts to create a small peasant economy along the chinese lines could not be successful without a basic upheaval in the rural structure (alavi, 1975, p. 163). the impetus to develop a small peasant economy was provided not just by populist ideology but by the desires of the dominant bourgeoisie (indigenous and foreign) to derive a greater marketable surplus of agricultural produce.. they were not directly concerned with the productivity of the peasant but with an increase in the marketable surplus. clearly the small peasant strategy was failing and a new policy would be based on the re-alignment of class forces that took place in the 1950' s. before independence the indigenous bourgeoisie had been on the nationalist side against the landed class and the imperialist bourgeoisie. but after independence universal adult suffrage conferred on the rural power holders (the landlords) a new political role for it was they who dominated village politics. thus the nationalist leadership, the indigenous bourgeoisie, allied with the traditional rural power holders, and landed families which before independence had supported the pro-british justice party joined the congress party. while at the national level the indigenous bourgeoisie and the imperialist bourgeoisie influenced the strategic decisions of the government, the main body of the congress party machine was taken over by the land-owning classes. there was no more any question of the indigenous and foreign bourgeoisie attacking the interests of the landowning classes who were now their allies (alavi, 1975, p. 163). the new policy placed an emphasis on technological solutions within the confines of the existing class structure and it is this complex situation and process that led to the coining of a colonial and post-colonial mode of production. 83 alavi attempts to conceptualize the main elements of a colonial mode by comparing it to the pure forms of feudalism and capitalism, but particularly in relation to the former. as such it emerges as a powerful critique of laclau's thesis. one of the defining features of precapitalist modes is that they exhibit a low level of technology in the exploitation of the land and tend to small commodity production. another feature is that the feudal economy is geared towards 'conspicuous consumption' by the landlords in a system of 'simple reproduction'. there are a couple of things to note in relation to these factors. firstly, the scale of investments (i.e. the green* revolution) in the last few decades have only been possible because of the installation and encapsulation of the colonial agrarian economy within the industrial world imperialist economy. secondly in the colonial mode there is a system of expanded reproduction in contrast to the simple reproduction of pre-capitalist modes, but of a deformed nature that characterizes the colonial mode, because a substantial part of the surplus generated in the colonial agrarian economy (as well as that generated in colonial industry) is appropriated by the imperialist bourgeoisie and enters into expanded reproduction not directly within the colonial economy but rather at its centre. .. (it) benefits the imperialist bourgeoisie rather than the colony (alavi, 1975, p. 163). so it is a deformed extended reproduction neither capitalist or feudal. in pre-capitalist modes there is also an absence of generalized commodity production (although one of the elements in the transition from feudalism to capitalism in europe was the development of simple commodity production). in india generalized commodity production was created and nurtured by imperialism and is at its precise service. indeed the generalized commodity production is also of a deformed type. arain terms the economies of the colonies as disarticulated internally so that different sections of the economy do not trade with each other directly but only through the imperialist centre, to which they are 84 subordinated. referring back to the distinction between relations of exploitation and production we have to understand the former as the latter only within an overall context that includes the legal and institutional frameworks within which such relations occur. so the distance between the political system of feudalism and the colonial state points to the different impact the relations at the point of production will have within different modes of production. thus the localized power structure of feudalism was transformed in the colonial mode to a dialectic between central authority and local power which perry anderson has called the "parcellization of sovereignty" (anderson, 1974, p. 148). so the colonial power subordinated the power of local power holders to its own power and the 'bourgeois revolution' in the "colonies (overseen by the imperalist bourgeois) created a bourgeois state and bourgeois property and a bourgeois legal and institutional apparatus precisely as an integral and necessary component to its economic domination (alavi, 1975, p. 163). one of the most refreshing parts of alavi 's overall work is his stress on the superstructures and specifically the role of the state in the colonial mode. just as most other features of the colonial mode are a deformed form somewhere in between feudalism and capitalism so the colonial state is a deformed caricature of its capitalist model, whereas in the metropolis the state oversees the affairs of the bourgeoisie and retains a relative autonomy in relation to the different fractions of the ruling class, in the colonies the state accomplishes this in relation to a wider range of interested classes, although still with the same interest (the maintenance of the colonial mode). the notion of a colonial state will become increasingly important when we start discussing alavi' s conceptualization of a post-colonial mode of production, and the need to 85 use some of the theoretical constructs of 'articulation'. so the colonial state has to mediate relations between the three dominant classes; the indigenous bourgeoisie, the imperialist bourgeoisie, and the landed classes. and the instruments of this mediation are the state/ military oligarchy that retain state power at the moment of independence because the indigenous bourgeoisie is too weak to wrest it from them. without a fundamental break in the class structure of the colony metropolitan domination would continue, only under another guise and with the help of interested indigenous classes. alavi writes, the bourgeois revolution in the colony... is characterized by the imposition of colonial rule by the metropolitan bourgeoisie. in carrying out the tasks of the bourgeois revolution in the colony, however, the metropolitan bourgeoisie has to accomplish an additional task that was specific to the colonial situation. its task is not merely to replicate the superstructure of the state which it has established in the metropolitan country; it must also create a state apparatus through which it can exercise dominion over all the indigenous social classes in the colony. it might be said that the 'superstructure' in the colony is therefore 'overdeveloped' in relation to the 'structure' in the colony, for its basis lies in the metropolitan structure itself, from which it is later separated at the time of independence. the colonial state is therefore equipped with a powerful bureaucratic-military apparatus and with governmental mechanisms that enable it, through routine operations, to subordinate the native social classes. the post colonial society inherits that overdeveloped state apparatus... (alavi, 1973, p. 147). the political level is also brought into his analysis. but again the important thing to note is the deformed character of the colonial state in relation to the pure capitalist form. before we examine the post colonial mode it would be as well here to review alavi 's enormous contribution to the debate of modes of production and the problematic elements in his work that could be improved with reference to some of the other literature we have been discussing. what alavi has ingeniously accomplished is the reversal of the proposal of the articulation theorists, i.e. the articulation of several modes of production within a single social formation, into a single mode of 86 production which is inserted into numerous social formations. as mentioned before, for him the notion of contradiction precludes a conceptualization of the problem in terms of a number of modes of production within a social formation. but we have suggested that rey is very aware of the problem and in fact gives contradiction a concrete process. but in the end we have to ask the question: is the reformulation of laclau's 'indissoluble unity' into "a hierarchical structural relationship within a single mode of production, namely the colonial mode of production" any advance beyond the world system perspective? as alavi himself asks, "should we not speak instead of an imperialist mode of production that embraces a global unity"? (alavi, 1975, p. 190). this leads to a whole set of unanswered questions. what is the relationship of the colonial mode to the capitalist mode? obviously it is a product of capitalism yet is it only a transitional form or the final form? but alavi talks of a postcolonial mode so in some way it is not the final form. yet it seems to be getting nearer the pure form all the time. or can structural change only take place within certain capitalist defined limits? and if it is only a transitional form, alavi is giving a lot of substance to shifting criteria. so the colonial mode of production is not a self contained unity. is it then possible or legitimate to talk in terms of a mode of production? it seems the problems could be endless. but the articulation literature could help out here. transition, process and articulation are vital ingredients to a coherent marxist theory of underdevelopment and social change. so is alavi 's emphasis on the structures of dominance that operate within the colony, and between the colony and the metropolitan centre. it is just such a synthesis that is required at present. a proper conceptualization of the problem of modes of production as an abstract theoretical tool to help analyze the concrete reality of the social formation which is made up of many conflicting 87 elements. in other words what is being suggested is a shift of emphasis from the problematic notion of a mode of production to the level of the social formation. both concepts still play a vital role but it seems easier to integrate the superstructures into a coherent analysis at the level of social formation rather than at the level of modes of production. so in a sense the superstructures and the role of exchange are easier to situate at the level of the formation, mediating as they do relations of exploitation. we wish to conclude here with an exposition of alavi's notion of a postcolonial mode of production and a discussion of the issues that this raises. we will try to supplement his theory with elements from the articulation school. the basic question here concerns the nature of the indigenous development of capitalism and its precise relation to metropolitan capitalism. also it deals with the internally disarticulated nature of the colonial economy. alavi states that a new kind of struct.ral dependence between the indian bourgeoisie and the imperialist bourgeoisies has been developing in the field of research intensive industries which has led to technical collaboration and a further convergence of interests between the two bourgeoisies. so with the consolidation of their relationship, the relationship between the dominating classes and the subordinated classes is even more acute. the structural exploitation of the indian peasantry and proletariat by the metropolitan bourgeoisie is still present. what seems difficult to conceptualize is this change occurring within the confines of alavi's previous theoretical schema, which seemed to imply that the colonial mode was such because of the structural role it played in relation to the industrialized world. process was a vitally needed term. just as structure is a term which rey needs. as stated before, process without structure is thoroughly unmarxist. 88 because of this change in the relationship between the two bourgeoisies the nature of the internal disarticulation of the economy has also changed. the deformed generalized commodity production and the deformed extended reproduction have been partially altered. firstly, the pattern of generalized commodity production is now more internalized so that the internal disarticulation is less acute. however, "the external dependence is increasingly in the field of capital goods and research intensive technology, and not with regard to industrial commodities in general as before " (alavi, 1975, p. 192). secondly, there is an increased proportion of the surplus that is appropriated internally so that the process of extended reproduction is more internalized than before. because the articulation approach includes the notions of contradiction and process it is easier to conceptualize this transformation in those terms. in alavi' s colonial mode it seemed that indigenous development was being held in a stranglehold by metropolitan capital. but the contradictions that were manifest on the economic and political level between indigenous and metropolitan were given room for expression as a result of class conflict and political changes and this has led to some kind of "independent" indigenous development. articulation can still hold the distinction between outside and inside and integrate it into a process. yet the structural component of alavi' s analysis is just as important for a coherent conceptualization of contemporary underdevelopment. a true synthesis is what is required. conclusion as is clear from the above exposition, we believe that a global perspective to the issue of the development of underdevelopment is essential, incorporating as it does the history of imperialism, colonialism, domination and underdevelopment. but such a perspective should also transcend a theory of geographical domination of one area by another by placing 89 firmly in the centre of the analysis the vital notion of class and class alliances . the frankian model needs a clarification and extension that is suggested by the work of rey where the precise nature of the articulation between capitalism and the pre-capitalist form is specified. it was suggested in the analysis that alavi is the most theoretically advanced of the recent theorists but that there existed various problems in his work which although it captured the vital colonial relationship and the structural changes that this instituted, as well as the effects of those structures on contemporary underdevelopment, was somewhat lacking in the notion of process and contradiction within what he terms a colonial mode of production. thus what was suggested was an application of some of rey's theoretical concepts to alavi's work, i.e. a true synthesis which would advance marxist theory. a distinction between the types of relationship between capitalist and pre-capitalist societies is much needed. one of the major cc ceptual problems that we dealt with was the distinction between modes of production as theoretical entities and social formations . rey and laclau refer to the social formation within which separate modes articulate, although they differ on the nature of the articulation. alavi on the other hand identifies a single mode of production within which exist several social formations (an essentially correct position). the problem with alavi's (and frank's and wallerstein' s) work is that the mode of production is so gigantic in scope (international and global) that in a practical sense there is a need to conduct the debate at a slightly lower level, whilst still working with a world perspective. we need to find a middle road between the micro notion of laclau' s relations of production (exploitation) and frank's macro exchange systems. and if we want to include within our units of analysis elements of both the base and superstructures and remember marx's adage that 90 production, distribution, exchange and consumption ...all form the members of a totality, distinctions within a unity (foster-carter, 1978, p. 76). then it seems at a practical level that the social formation is the easiest and most fruitful level at which to conduct debate, whilst at the same time using the abstract notion of mode of production to inform the details of the debate. social formations can deal better with an incorporation of superstructural elements into the discussion. thus, the political and state levels are easier to define and identify on the level of the social formation, enclosing as they do, and refering to, distinct cultural and national boundaries. foster-carter warns against a narrow economism that has dogged the modes of production debate: reification aside, too little attention has been paid to other 'instances' and 'practices' than the economic: notably the political, not to mention those areas (ideology, religion, kinship ideas) which correspond to people's own consciousness of their position. this is not a plea for ethnomethodology but it is certainly above all a clarion call for class seen as the key mediator between (to oversimplify) modes of production and human action (foster-carter, 1978, p. 72). thus, the study of the colonial state can only make sense within a study of the world system. yet it makes little practical sense to talk about a single mode of production with a single set of superstructures. the state in the nation-state of the colony plays a different role than the state in capitalist societies. to talk about them as elements of a single superstructural framework is not at all fruitful. in a practical sense the social formation within which it immediately functions seems a useful place to start the debate. all the elements we have discussed have to be integrated into an overall complex of relationships and structures of action and in the end we have to acknowledge as basically correct frank's shadow across the whole literature. department of sociology/ g. university of victoria references alavl.hamza 1973 1975 althusser ,louis 1977 "the state in post-colonial society" in gough and shanna eds. imperialism and revolution in south east asia . mrp . "the colonial mode of production" in miliband and saville eds. socialist register 1975. for marx. nlb . athusser, louis and balibar.e. 1970 amin,s. 1976 banaji.j. 1972 baran.p. 1973 foster-carter ,a. 1973 reading capital . nlb. unequal development . mrp. 1978 "for a theory of colonial modes of production", economic and political weekly (bombay) vol 8 no 2 the political economy of growth . penguin. "neo-marxist approaches to development and underdevelopment" , journal of contemporary asia vol 3 no 1. "the modes of production debate" new left review 107 frank, a. g. 1967 1970 1972 1975 kay.g. 1975 laclau.e. 1971 capitalism and underdevelopment in latin america .mrp latin america underdevelopment or revolution .mrp . lumpenbourgeoisie -.lump end eve lopment . mrp . "development and underdevelopment in the new world" , in theory and society 2 . development and underdevelopment . macmillan "feudalism and capitalism in latin america", new left review 67 . marx.k and engels.f. 1968 selected works. lawrence and wishart . marx.k. 1976 mceachern.d. 1976 capital penguin "the mode of production in india", journal of contemporary asia. 92 oxall,i.barnett,t.booth,d. eds. 1975 beyond the sociology of development . rkp. rey,p. and dupre.g. 1973 "reflections on the pertinence of a theory for the history of exchange',' economy and society vol 2 no 1. 93 a rough climate for migration | 59 a rough climate for migration elaine kelly1 “understanding climate change as a security issue risks making it a military rather than foreign policy problem and a sovereignty rather than global commons problem .” (barnett, 2003, p .14) “this is the double law of hospitality: to calculate the risks, yes, but without closing the door on the incalculable, that is, on the future and the foreigner . it defines the unstable site of strategy and decision .” (derrida, 2005, p . 6) introduction in 2010, writer and director michael nash released a film detailing the impact of climate change and environmental degradation in terms of mass migration. nash’s film, titled climate refugees has since gone around the world, gaining official selection into countless film festivals. according to information contained on the official website http://www.climaterefugees. com, the film has made its way across much of the united states, presumably in an effort to educate americans about the global nature of climate change as well as possible impacts at a domestic level with regard to displacement and migration. a call for political action, the film places emphasis on the negative implications of neglecting climate issues, casting this in terms of threats to national security. given its dominant market (so far), its cover imagery of the u.s. and south america across a face, and its inclusion of prominent american academics, scientists and politicians, such as al gore, paul ehlrich and lester brown, it is not unreasonable to assume that u.s. national security is an important theme of the film. in fact, approximately two minutes into ‘trailer two’ is the following quote from navy vice admiral lee f. gunn: 1 elaine kelly is chancellor’s postdoctoral candidate at the university of technology, sydney, australia. her work examines the political, ethical and scientific issues associated with the climate-migration nexus. she is particularly interested in the works of jacques derrida and the concept of hospitality in the context of climate-migration. she can be reached at: elaine.kelly@uts.edu.au 60 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times addressing the changes in the earth’s climate is not simply about saving polar bears and preserving the beauty of the mountain glaciers. climate change is a threat to our national security. “climate change is a threat to our national security”. such a statement reveals some potentially important implications for policy directions in relation to international or cross-border climate-induced migration. an issue that has no formal recognition or (inter)national structures2, environmental migration remains in a policy vacuum. this leaves it open to be being absorbed by a security platform. thus the contention of this paper is that if work is not done to assert an ethical foundation for responding to climate-induced migration, law and policy will be dominated (in and for the global north) by a national security paradigm. this is already an emerging trend with countries such as australia deploying the navy in ‘deter and deny’ migration strategies, and the us drawing heavily upon the military following the devastating earthquake in haiti in 2010, an example i will return to later in this paper. while the nation-state is usually assumed in security studies to be the bedrock for stability, i argue that it can be viewed as an active agent in producing insecurity when we examine the north-south divide and the ways in which in the global north disaster narratives promote apocalyptic visions of environmental migration which in turn perpetuate racialised discourses of invasion and fear. for instance, one article warns of the 50 million environmental refugees who are set to “flood the global north by 2020” (smh, 2011) or another which reports that ‘mexican “climate migrants” predicted to flood us’ (naturenews, 2011). this nightmarish narrative functions in the global north to stall policy development, while in the global south many states continue to deal with the reality of regional and internal mass migration. against the logic that posits this as a regional problem, i agree with warner et al ., who argue that solutions must be thought through at a global level (warner et al, 2009). from here, i consider the privileged nation-state as bound up with the production of insecurity in numerous ways. firstly, in relation to the ongoing complicity of many privileged states in the emission of the 2 legal scholarship on climate refugees and environmental migration is available, but has not been put into action by the international community at present. see: bierman and boas, 2008; warner et al ., 2009. moreover there is a debate amongst legal scholars as to what mechanism and definitional system would be most appropriate. this paper is concerned with the dominance of national securisation and the impact of having no protective framework rather than with outlining the positions within this debate. a rough climate for migration | 61 very pollutants that contribute to environmental and climate displacement and migration. in 2007, namibian’s representative to the united nations, kaire mbuende, reportedly referred to the continued levels of greenhouse gas emissions by developed nations as equivalent to “low intensity biological and chemical warfare” (cited in brown et al ., 2007, p. 1142). secondly, in relation to the policing of borders and the militaristic management of ‘mass migration’ and, thirdly, in reference to the ways in which these more dominant states may override another state’s sovereignty or decision-making capacity in the event of natural disaster (or in the future, climate change disaster). this shifts the discourse away from positioning the privileged nation-state as a potential victim, in the position of impeding insecurity from waves and floods of migration, and toward an understanding of its active role in sustaining the conditions of instability and indeed insecurity for vulnerable states and populations. throughout, i shift between examples of more broadly understood environmental disaster such as the 2010 earthquake in haiti, and more specific climate change issues. this shifting is not to be understood as a conflation of environmental disasters with climate-related events. rather, haiti is drawn upon because it exemplifies the manner in which existing policy patterns toward specific forms of migration will contribute to, if not determine, potential responses to climate-related disasters in the future. moreover, because the effects of climate change on migration are difficult to determine in advance, it is useful to “use past and current experiences as analogous” (tacoli, 2009, p. 517). by calling into question the logic of security at play, this paper attempts to disrupt the dominant political vocabulary of national security and securitisation more generally in relation to matters of migration and climate. securitisation refers to the copenhagen school’s paradigm which regards security as the “social practice” of constructing an issue as a threat (trombetta, 2008, p. 588). this in turn permits the suspension of the normal order of things and the deployment of a “‘decisionist’ attitude which emphasizes the importance of reactive emergency measures” (trombetta, 2008, p. 588). heeding mark neocleous’ call for an “alternative political language” to contend with the dominance of securitisation (neocleous, 2008, p. 186), i present the concept of hospitality as one way that we may be able to ethically engage with and prepare for climateinduced migration; to engage at the “unstable site of strategy and decision” (derrida, 2005, p. 6) without shutting out the foreigner or reducing politics to the identification of enemies, as in schmitt’s logic.3 derrida’s 3 see huysman, 2006. 62 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times double law of hospitality refers to the notion that a fundamental unconditional openness must negotiate with the imperative to condition gestures of hospitality via programmes, rights discourse, and other policies, and vice versa, that the latter cannot be closed off. using derrida i argue that the concept of hospitality provides us with greater scope for ethical engagement with the issue. in so doing, i compare the mobilisation of the military by the us following the earthquake in haiti to the gesture of radical hospitality put forth by senegal president abdoulaye wade. rather than bracketing ‘hospitality’ off as a utopian or unrealistic ideal, i argue that it must contest the political vocabularies that constitute the climate-security discourse. securitising climate-migration literature dealing with issues of security tends to be interdisciplinary in scope and thus encompasses a wide range of approaches. it is consequently impossible to generalise about the ‘field’. a dominant area of research however concerns national security which is, according to lester brown, “as old as the nation-state” itself, but took on greater significance post-wwii when it was reduced, from this period until the end of the cold war, to military might with a “policy of continual preparedness” (brown, 1977, p. 4). underpinning the operation of national security is a belief that the political and economic structures of the nation-state provide stability and protection, and that threats external may undermine this (traditionally this specified war/military threats). before i get to an analysis of the potential response to climate migration to the global north, it seems imperative to outline and analyse the ways in which security is tied to the nation-state and the development of this field to encompass the environment, migration and more recently, climate change.4 this discussion is important in order to contextualise issues of migration and demonstrates the dominance of the security model when discussing the environment and climate change. lester brown’s foundational piece, redefining national security (1977), marks a discursive shift away from national security as a military issue and toward understanding the relationship between man and nature in terms of security. brown outlines the environmental basis of much polit4 anthropocentric climate change has and will continue to result in the increased frequency, duration and force of harsh weather events (storms, hurricanes and droughts for example), as well as rising sea levels. such events occur in addition to more broadly understood environmental problems such as desertification, soil erosion, resource depletion, an expanding population and natural disasters such as earthquakes. a rough climate for migration | 63 ical conflict, the importance of energy and resources, and the manner in which the economy is dependent upon the biosphere for its raw materials. it stands to reason then that if domestic political and economic stability is the objective of national security imperatives, the environment would need to be accommodated under such an umbrella. brown concludes that “the purpose of national security deliberations should not be to maximize military strength but to maximize national security” (brown, 1977, p. 37). over fifteen years later, joseph j. romm likewise notes that the broadening of security outside of traditional military concerns and into areas like the environment witnesses the diminishing import of military security (romm, 1993, p.1). in this sense, widening the concept acknowledges the diversity of issues that may impact the nation-state’s sense of wellbeing as well as the variety of possible ways of responding to problems. theoretically, ‘human security’ goes a step further, shifting the emphasis away from the state and toward the individual.5 however, even as the discourse of security is now recognisable in discussions outside of traditional military concerns, the alignment of the environment as a defence issue has become increasingly apparent. as richard a. matthew tells us, while many, especially environmentalists, saw the defence industry as inextricably bound up with the problems of ecological disaster, the environment soon emerged as an aspect of national security and, from the 1980s onward in the united states, continued to be included in its agenda (matthew, 2000, p. 105). despite some reservations on the left side of political activism, many fought for the inclusion of environmentalism in the national security policy domain (matthews, 2000, p. 107). with this move, matthew marks precisely what is at stake: while inclusion may have initially been desired as a result of a fear that without any recognition of the problem at a national level the response would be one of neglect and continued environmental degradation, the contemporary context reveals to us the costs of such inclusion. in the decision to include environmental security into its defence agenda, a large range of economic, social and political issues could now be interpreted utilising the rubric of defence and the apparatus of the military. 5 roland paris’ much cited text “human security: paradigm shift or hot air” (2001), suggests that the umbrella term human security is too broad to assist policy makers or academic researchers alike. in a different manner, migel de larrinaga and marc g. doucet in “sovereign power and the biopolitics of human security” (2008), argue that the paradigm of human security extends the reach of sovereign and biopolitical modalities of power. in this sense, taking an approach popularised by giorgio agamben they contend that human security is simply another means via which sovereign power takes hold of life. 64 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times drawing diverse issues under the same umbrella of securitisation has the effect of, as jef huysmans notes regarding migration, determining the operation of the political as the identification of an “existential” threat, in the tradition of politics handed down since schmitt (huysmans, 2006, p. 126). across the global north–for instance, in the eu6, australia, and the us–unexpected migration has witnessed the deployment of the military, something which united states naval war college associate professor paul smith writes, “partially reflects a paradigm shift in how international migration is being considered. what was once a social or labor issue has now transformed often into a security matter” (smith, 2007, p. 628). following this, smith argues that while this may present a workable short-term solution for the ‘host’ state, in the long-term, states must confront the “dilemma” of “how to accommodate the predicated surge in environmental migrants” (smith, 2007, p. 633). the dominance of the security paradigm can be seen in recent efforts to lock down a concept of climate security which can then be effectively mobilised by policymakers, extending its reach from environmental and migration discourse into climate change. steen nordstrom has suggested that even though climate change is an “odd security problem to address” (nordstrom, 2010, p. 6), because it is a “threat multiplier” it needs to be more tightly tied to national security and multilateral discussion forums (nordstrom, 2010, p. 9). again the language of threat dominates. because migration is a knock-on or one of the threats multiplied by unstable climatic conditions, one can only assume then that it should be subsumed under the umbrella of national security. indeed, joshua w. busby has contended that the “spillover from neighbours” may in turn require “military mobilization to contain the population movement or provide essential services” (busby, 2008, p. 477). in the following section, this blurring of humanitarian aid and military mission in the interests of national security will be discussed. marie julia trombetta recognises the difficulty of implementing climate security, arguing that its complexity arises in the paradoxical need to both transform and protect “the existing economic structure and way of life” (trombetta, 2008, p. 591). while environmental security takes account of the entire biosphere, climate security concerns the “maintenance of stable climatic conditions as a prerequisite of all human enterprises” (trombetta, 2008, p. 595). the ambition to secure stable climatic conditions is central to the issues of displacement and migration 6 smith (2007, p.628) notes that the eu’s border protection agency, frontex, utilises the military regularly. a rough climate for migration | 65 which arise when climatic conditions are destabilised and chaotic. and yet, the desire to tie political action to a notion of climate security reads ambiguously. how would this be achieved? normative questions of responsibility arise: if a nation-state has benefited historically from high carbon emissions should it take on more migrants/refugees? how can we weigh this against the host nations own sustainability needs? how can we think through hospitality in this setting? it is at this juncture–of sustainability and social justice–that states need to do ethical work. even as the difficulties, paradoxes and oddities of merging climate and security are signposted by academics, the coupling of climate change with security, and thus the association to “potential or real threat” (liotta, 2005, p. 49) can be seen in the establishment of major government and non-government bodies such as the cia’s centre on climate change and national security in late september 2009.7 indeed this development builds on what john tirman has highlighted as the ways in which security discourse has taken a leading role in the administration and regulation of immigration post 9/11 in the us (tirman, 2006). in addition to the formation of national bodies, the united states department of defence quadrennial defence review report 2010, which provides an overview of the strategic framework for its national defence force, includes the subsection “creating a strategic approach to climate and energy”. in this brief section we are told that that climate change, alongside energy, will play a key role “in shaping the future security environment” (p. 84). taking a holistic approach, the document notes that “climate change, energy security and economic stability are inextricably linked” (p. 84). this echoes brown, writing almost 40 years earlier, rhetorically tying national security to sustainability (even the defence force is involved in making its operations more ecologically sustainable!). the preservation or defence of the environment and climate is crucial for continued economic prosperity. the conclusion is drawn that the military as well as civil bodies will be required to deal with “instability or conflict” resulting from climate change (p. 85). interestingly, mass migration is mentioned once briefly and cautiously–pointing to the possibility that national responses will privilege national security over other possible modes of engagement. the move toward heightened border protectionism8 is crucial to scrutinise given the role of such privileged nation-states in the emergence of anthropocentric climate change as well as the uneven burden 7 see https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/center-on-climatechange-and-national-security.html. 8 see paul smith (2007) for an overview of the various ways in which military security paradigms have been employed against migrants. 66 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times the global south will be dealt in terms of migration (tacoli, 2009, p. 515).9 in the context of climate change and migration the apparatus of security extends in two directions: one, it simultaneously, and from afar, contains migratory movements by positing responsibility as a local or regional issue, rather than a global concern, a point reflected in the failure to generate an international definition of a climate and/or environmental migrant or refugee. as simon dalby has noted, “spatial strategies of containment” have always been part of security discourse (dalby, 2002, p. 38). even as pre-established migration routes suggest a local or regional trajectory, there needs to be a global focus to policy outlook and an appreciation of “mobility...as part of the solution rather than the problem” (tacoli, 2009, p. 514). part of this solution needs to be the reintroduction of hospitality into the debate. this would challenge the current practice of “warehousing” refugees, or what u.s committee for refugee’s executive director, levinia limón, referred to as “coercing people who have fled persecution to live in crowded, destitute and dangerous encampments” (limón cited in fernandes, 2007, p. 142). secondly, as outlined above, in the global north, securitising migration promotes the deployment of the military in the event of mass migration, setting security against hospitality or ethics, and short-term reactionary politics against long term legislative and policy development. while there seems to be an acknowledgement of the difficulty yet urgency of defining climate-induced migration, there is little argument over the fact that numbers are increasing (kalin, 2010, p. 82). according to norman myers, a conservative estimate of environmental migrant numbers in the 1990s was 25 million, more than the figure of traditional refugees at the time (myers, 2002, p. 609). current figures put this between 50 million and as high as one billion by 2050 (christian aid, 2007), with 200 million often repeated (iom). many of these migrants come from “impoverished communities” (myers, 2002, p. 612) where the environment has exceeded its carrying capacity and can no longer sustain life. scholars indicate that when migration occurs it is usually regionally focused, leaving neighbouring countries in the position of having to negotiate large numbers of new arrivals (matthews, 1989; myers, 2002; ramlogan, 1996; swain, 1996; fernandes, 2007; tacoli, 2009). as feldman and hsu have pointed out, it is not simply a matter of chance that the effects of environmental damage, destruction and harm are unevenly 9 as tacoli (2009) indicates, only a small proportion of movement is global in scope, with most migration occurring regionally or even within the same state (rural to rural, urban to urban or rural to urban). a rough climate for migration | 67 distributed. they argue that the “distribution of environmental burdens and risks reflects the legacies of racialisation and colonialism” (feldman & hsu, 2009, p.199; also see dalby, 2002). when the political response by states such as the us, australia and the european union to the migration of peoples characterises their movement as illegal through, in the case of climate-induced migration, a failure of recognition, it could be argued that a model of security is reiterated in which racial privileging protects some at the expense of others (feldman and hsu 2009, p. 199). ashok swain reveals to us the fact that for years marginal peoples have called for an expansion of the concept of refugee beyond the post-wwii definition, which can be viewed as somewhat eurocentric in nature. swain informs us that the organisation of african unity as well as central american bodies have lobbied for change and greater inclusion (swain, 1996, p. 964). more recently, bangladesh’s finance minister, abul maal abdul muhith, noted that “the convention on refugees could be revised to protect people. it’s been through other revisions, so this should be possible” (grant, randerson and vidal, 2009). stalled political action and legal implementation forces us to question the reasons for such reluctance to either re-define refugee or open up new categories of protection. p.h liotta suggests that when threats are not deemed to be immediate and undeniable the political response is often one of refusal followed by reactive action: given the uncertainty, the complexity, and the sheer non-linear unpredictability of creeping vulnerabilities, the frequent–and classic– mistake of the decision maker is to respond with the ‘gut reaction’: the intuitive response to situations of clear ambiguity is, classically, to do nothing at all . the more appropriate response is to take an adaptive posture. (liotta, 2005, p. 52) a reactive reaction can be juxtaposed to “an adaptive posture”, which i suggest can be read as one open to the uncertainty inherent to hospitality (unconditional hospitality) while also preparing in advance–adapting–to changing circumstances (conditional hospitality). a security apparatus is mobilised in a reactive manner by global north states and forecloses or dramatically restricts both a conditional economy of hospitality, and unconditionality. moreover, in the movement from reaction to adaptation, a ‘threat’ can be re-signified. in this instance, while legal recognition has its limits, a more ethically informed conditional hospitality can be attained which responds to the needs outlined by vulnerable countries. 68 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times for the global north then, the failure (or refusal?) to adapt protocols for protection or regulation leads then to the adoption of military tactics when confronting migration and reproduces a racialised apparatus of security in which privileged states must be protected from potential mass migration, while poorer states are left to deal with growing numbers of displaced peoples. here i draw again on feldman and hsu who understand “racialisation as, in part, a function of differentially distributed vulnerabilities” (feldman & hsu, 2009, p. 204).10 while there is an acknowledgment that some locales are more vulnerable to the impact of climate change, for instance the works of myers and others brings to light the uneven effects of climate change; legacies of racialisation and colonialism are not fleshed out for their ongoing significance. in fact, the language deployed by myers in his book ultimate security re-inscribes the sorts of racial fear invoked more casually in mainstream media. the rhetoric of flooding, spreading and waves, of poverty and destruction, has the effect of portraying such peoples in homogenising ways with the logic of ‘us’ and ‘them’ implicitly apparent. for example, take the following excerpt from myers: we could eventually (or soon?) witness multitudes of despair-driven migrants heading from tropical asia toward “empty” australia, from china toward siberia, from latin america toward north america, and from africa toward europe… the repercussions would be profound. refugees often arrive with what is perceived by host communities as “unwanted luggage” in the form of alien customs, religious practise, and dietary habits, plus new pathogens and susceptibility to local pathogens. resettlement is generally difficult, full assimilation is rare. economic and social dislocations would proliferate, cultural and ethnic problems would multiply, and the political fallout would be extensive if not explosive (myers, 1993, p. 200-1). 10 at the time of writing this paper, a humanitarian catastrophe is occurring in the horn of africa, where at least 10 million people are affected by drought with many moving toward large refugee camps in the region. while i cannot do justice to this issue in this paper, the emergency presents us with an example of what limón refers to as “warehousing”. near the borders of ethiopia and somalia, the dadaab camp usually holds 90,000 people at capacity, but currently has 400,000 people with more waiting to be processed. while not all of these people may be requesting resettlement in another country, all are moving because their homelands are at least temporarily unable to nourish them. in response, the british are leading the way with aid packages, pledging firstly £38 million and then another £52.25 million. a rough climate for migration | 69 although potentially well-intentioned (as a call for action to mitigate environmental destruction), myers’ disaster narrative positions the racialised ‘other’ as a bringer of disease, disorder, and incompatible cultural differences which may lead to conflict and political breakdown. the global north faces invasion by “multitudes of despair-driven migrants”. dalby expresses this well when he writes that such representational strategies highlight “the modern impulse to control and the medical tropes of endangerment and disease, abnormality and threat” (dalby, 2002, p. 154). myers’ scenario negatively overemphasises the risks and dangers of extending hospitality. such framing is unhelpful to any constructive efforts to understand the necessary and inevitable role that migration and resettlement will play in the future.11 from this we can see that from the representational economies perpetuated in media, academic texts and so on, to the positions held by governments, security is privileged over hospitality; they are, in fact, placed in opposition to one another. in this section, i have traced the way in which environmental, migration and climate issues have been included in security debates. these debates have attempted to move beyond the national paradigm. by introducing a discussion of climate-induced migration, i have suggested that despite this conceptual development, the nation-state continues to hold enormous power over the scope of policymaking with a policy vacuum at the international level in relation to climate and environmentally-induced migration. this in turn reiterates a racialised north-south divide, with the global south carrying most of the impacts of environmental migration. finally, i have started to highlight the potential for military models of security to become the norm in privileged states in response to the possibility of environmental and climate-induced disaster migration. in the next section, i will focus on the us response to the haiti earthquake in 2010 in order to develop this line of argument. 11 that hospitality is not on the agenda for the global north is evidenced in the unfolding horn of africa humanitarian crisis where emergency aid tops the international agenda (and rightly so), but the possibility of global gestures of hospitality in terms of resettlement is not addressed. while it is undeniably important to restore homelands, to provide funding for infrastructure and local resilience strategies, the plight of hundreds of thousands of peoples demands measures which extend beyond the maintenance of refugee camps. 70 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times a rough climate for migration “border security–and the ability to decide who comes in and who is excluded–is an essential aspect of state sovereignty .” (smith, 2007, p . 621) it has almost become a truism to say that humans have for thousands of years moved in response to climate, either opportunistically or as a result of circumstance (see carto et al ., 2009; mcleman and smit, 2006). with the system of nation-states firmly established since the treaty of westphalia in 1648, movement has been read through a paradigm of sovereign rights and responsibilities. the logic that paul smith expresses– that border security is central to state sovereignty–has been echoed in politics and law with, for instance, the former australian prime minister stating that “[w]e will decide who comes to this country and the conditions in which they come” (howard, 2001) following an influx of asylum seekers arriving by boat from iraq, afghanistan and iran between 1999 and 2001.12 this mode of politics, one which barnett–in the quote which opens this paper–refers to as a security paradigm tying military efforts and sovereignty together (barnett, 2003, p. 14), contains an extremely conditional version of hospitality reliant upon invitations. barnett contends that a paradigm change is needed in which climate change should be put under the banner of foreign policy and regarded as a global commons concern. what this means is that it must look outward instead of inward; it must understand the nation-state as in-relation with other states and non-state actors. in our current political environment and imagination turning to foreign policy may only confirm the priority of the nation-state even as it demands global engagement and puts into question traditional understandings of responsibility, ownership and sovereignty. while this shift in perspective has potential, its relationship to security discourse needs to be carefully thought through. part of this demands that we disentangle hospitality from discourses of insecurity and threat. in ‘the case against linking environmental degradation and national security’ (1990), daniel deudney carefully thinks through the ramifications of linking the environment with security. writing in response to figures such as jessica t. matthews and lester brown, deudney contests the relevance of national security–as concerned with interstate violence–with the environment. there are two other points deudney highlights that have importance for this paper. firstly, deudney points out that national security has traditionally been understood as imposing a form of “organised violence” (deudney, 1990, p. 462) 12 see pugliese, 2002; perera, 2002. a rough climate for migration | 71 and secondly, nationalism is always coupled with national security. indeed, deudney argues that “[n]ational security thinking and action is all premised upon a relatively sharp distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’, between friend and foe” (deudney, 1990, p. 467). thus, if we continue to promote a national security approach to climate change and environmental migration, the baggage of nationalism comes along too, with strong racialised distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’, between ‘citizen’ and ‘foreigner’, and ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’. before considering ways in which we can intervene ethically into this complex political issue, ways that break down the reliance on national security, the case of the 2010 haiti earthquake will be discussed. is there a form of organised violence functioning in the actions of the us government, despite its humanitarian guise? is there a nationalistic sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ evident in the response? what understanding of hospitality does this entail? is hospitality even possible within security regimes, or do we need an entirely different language? haiti: ‘compassionate invasion’? a compelling example of the use of a national security paradigm by the us is the event of the haitian earthquake of january 2010.13 the response to this crisis provides insights into ways in which climate security across national borders or in the name of defending one’s borders may in the future be militarised. the use of the us defence force for humanitarian aid following natural disaster is not something new. indeed in 2005, following hurricane katrina in new orleans, the us military was deployed to ‘restore order’ and assist with aid, with a ‘public health emergency’ declared, effectively placing new orleans under martial law.14 for the american critical theorist, henry giroux, hurricane katrina revealed a “politics of disposability” in which some us citizens were blatantly “abandoned” by the us government (giroux, 2006, p. 180). this systematic neglect, according to giroux, reflected larger racial and class divides in america, which came to determine a differential response in the event of disaster. the case of haiti takes on several additional troubling dimensions. although i am not focusing on the biopolitical dimensions of national security, it is possible to adjust and apply giroux’s critical framework to the situation in haiti and argue that a “politics of disposability” has been operational. departing from giroux, i am interested in the ways in 13 ‘compassionate invasion’ was how one times editor put it for mark thompson’s piece “the u.s. military in haiti: a compassionate invasion’, 12 january 2010. available online at: http:// www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1953379_1953494_1954326,00.html . 14 see giroux 2006, for a critical analysis of hurricane katrina. 72 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times which us national security measures contained any possible migratory movements out of haiti as well as the ways in which haitian sovereignty has been completely undermined in the year following the tragedy. this, in and of itself, may be considered an exercise of biopower as distinct from biopolitics (esposito, 2008, p. 15). according to roberto esposito, biopolitics, or “politics in the name of life” is sometimes conflated with “biopower” which refers to “life subjected to the command of politics” (esposito, 2008, p. 15). this is not what giroux does, preferring the term necropolitics derived from achille mbembe to discuss life negatively affected by politics–disposable life–and deploying the term biopower in relation to the operation of racialised and classed neoliberalism: given the increasing perilous state of the those who are poor and dispossessed in america, it is crucial to re-examine how biopower functions within global neoliberalism and the simultaneous rise of security states organised around cultural (and racial) homogeneity . this task is made all the more urgent by the destruction, politics, and death that followed hurricane katrina (giroux, 2006, p. 182, my emphasis). giroux’s inclusion of security states defined here as enforcing a “cultural (and racial) homogeneity” is a useful way to frame the response of the us to the haitian earthquake, and ties in with deudney’s argument concerning nationalism. the security apparatus around migration in the us-caribbean region has been developing since the 1980s, increasingly reinforcing national sovereignty and the right to protect its borders, and culminating in operation vigilant sentry introduced in 2007: this plan provides guidance for four, broad mass-migration activities: (1) at sea rescue and interdiction operations in response to a mass migration from cuba, haiti, or other caribbean nations; (2) deterrence and dissuasion; 3) land-based-law enforcement operations; and (4) migrant processing, protection, and detention procedures (homeland security fact sheet, 2007). deepa fernandes argues that haitians in particular have been “disproportionately targeted” by us immigration and homeland security measures (fernandes, 2007, p. 123). for instance, fernandes brings our attention to the automatic denial and deportation of haitians arriving by boat while historically refugees from neighbouring nations like cuba are provided the opportunity to apply for asylum (fernandes, 2007, p. a rough climate for migration | 73 133), a point overturned with the passage of vigilant sentry. that haitians occupy a particular place as a security threat in the us imaginary is highlighted by two things in particular. firstly, it was in 1972 with the arrival of haitians fleeing political violence that indefinite detention was introduced, and secondly, the us government’s funding of the haitian coast guard (fernandes, 2007, p.135-138). it is against this background that the response to the 2010 earthquake must be read. on 12 january 2010, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude struck the small island state of haiti leaving its major city, port-au-prince, in ruin and resulting in the death of 300, 000 locals.15 the response of the us government was swift and significant, with a massive deployment of military personnel issued within hours; “one of the globe’s biggest warships” in addition to 10,000 troops (thompson, 2010). in the words of times journalist mark thompson, “haiti for all intents and purposes, became the 51st [american] state…[or] ward of the state” (thompson, 2010). while this is certainly true in terms of the liberties the us government took with haitian state sovereignty, the us government did not extend all of the benefits of us citizenship to haitian victims of the earthquake.16 thompson’s language is of import here: to become a ward of the state is to be placed under the state’s care, to be regarded as unfit to govern oneself, a condition usually placed upon minors who are deemed to no longer have adequate parental supervision. this move has been discussed with reference to colonisation across a range of contexts, with designated populations being under the control of the coloniser’s law while not offered citizenship. that the us sought to dominate aid and, later, reconstruction efforts, undermines the political independence of haiti, the ‘first black republic’ in the world (overthrowing its french colonisers in the late 18th/early 19th century). repeating the phrase “only the u.s. military” throughout the second half of the article, thompson’s nationalistic piece gives the impression that the us government has taken on the responsibility of a big brother, compassionately pouring resources into the vulnerable region, taking the lead–even outnumbering the international community efforts with only 9,000 un peacekeepers initially sent out (thompson, 2010). the actions of the us government to this natural disaster were, from the outset, framed in terms of national security even as they sought to provide essential aid. the use of such a paradigm for an environmental 15 the haitian population is approximately 10 million. 16 the us government did provide temporary rights to undocumented haitians in the us at the time of the disaster, but this ended in february 2011 when the us started deporting 4,000 undocumented haitian immigrants back to haiti. 74 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times catastrophe makes it a relevant example for more speculative discussions of climate security and migration to the global north. the us government did not make any secret of its security imperatives, immediately deploying its national security team led by deputy national security adviser, denis mcdonough (thompson, 2010). the us gained air traffic control at the major airport in port-au-prince, regulating the arrival of aid and international personnel and, perhaps equally importantly, who could leave haiti (afp, 2010). the impact of this was heavily scrutinised in the media when a group of critically ill patients scheduled to be flying out of haiti to florida for immediate care, were delayed treatment for four days (padgett, 2010). it has been reported that the majority of us money was spent on military endeavours with only a small amount allocated to the haitian government to spend on food for its displaced population (which exceeded one million in the capital city). haitian president rene preval’s comments were paraphrased by democracy now! journalist in the following manner: “his government is receiving less than a penny for each dollar the us spends on aid efforts in haiti. thirty-three cents of every dollar goes to us military aid, over three times the nine cents spent on food” (democracy now!, 2010). aid and defence worked hand in hand with a large navy hospital anchored off the coast of haiti. thus, in addition to securing the right to control the airport, the us government’s deployment of a navy hospital in conjunction with coast guard worked to prevent passages across the sea to miami, only 681 miles away from the small island. the show of force was clear: us coast guard commander christopher o’neal saying that “the goal is to interdict them at sea and repatriate them” conforming to the directives of operation vigilant sentry outlined above (cited in rezouni, 2010, p.12; waterfield, 2010). salaheddine rezouni has noted that immediately following the earthquake, “us soldiers in guantanamo bay have already set up tents and beds as a prudent measure to prepare for possible refugees” (rezouni, 2010, p. 12). thus, guantanamo bay, a site of exception from us law whilst firmly under its jurisdiction, would function as an ad hoc emergency detention camp in the event of mass migration. this provision had been initiated in the early 1990s by george bush senior, who set up guantanamo bay for use “as a refugee camp exclusively for haitians” (fernandes, 2007, p. 136). if we are to understand biopower as the subjugation of life to the demands of political power, in this instance a foreign sovereign force has effectively sought control over movement of bodies out of another sovereign territory, as well as blocking off the avenues for migration across the a rough climate for migration | 75 sea. the decision to intervene in haiti and assume a degree of sovereign right perhaps signals a changing conception of sovereignty in the era of climate change and natural catastrophe. such changes are not geared toward recognising interdependence and forming cooperative forms of responsible action or “shared identity”, a movement toward globalism (matthews, 1989, p.175); rather this example illustrates the vulnerability of another’s state sovereignty in the interests of us national security and us biopower. this occurred under the seemingly more ethical umbrella of humanitarian aid, but it is useful to recall deudney’s warning that “taken to the absurd extreme–as national security threat sometimes are–seeing environmental degradation in a neighbouring country as a national security threat could trigger various types of interventions, a new imperialism of the strong against the weak” (deudney, 1990, p. 468). writing twenty years ago, deudney’s fear can be seen unfolding in haiti at least, most explicitly, until the us military withdrew in late april 2010 and, implicitly, in the internationally organised reconstruction process which has followed. haitian writer and activist jean saint-vil argues that this reconstruction effort is “mobilizing resources to maintain the status quo” with all but two of the construction contracts given to us contractors (democracy now!, 2011). against this sort of response “[f]or those countries already dealing with large influxes of migrants, and for those likely to receive increasing numbers of migrants as a consequence of climate change, forward looking assessments and forward planning for climate immigrants should be a policy priority” (barnett, 2003, p. 12). moving beyond security: hospitality and the climate-migrant/refugee following the devastation in haiti, a gesture of hospitality shone through the wreckage and systematic organised violence of us national security. amidst the blurring of humanitarianism and militarism and the firm commitment to us power, the president of senegal, abdoulaye wade, offered land to haitian victims: “the repeated calamities that befall haiti prompt me to propose a radical solution: to take measures to create somewhere in africa, the conditions for haitians to return”. such a gesture of goodwill recognised an historical context of colonialism and slavery: “they did not choose to go to that island. it is our duty to recognise their right to come back to the land of their ancestors” (abc, 2010). more than this, on offer was fertile land, to ensure the sustainability of any potential community. while there was no mass permanent migration from haiti to senegal, by october 2010, 163 haitian students had been granted full 76 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times scholarships to study in senegal. even this gesture is exceptional given the economic backdrop in senegal where half the population is unemployed and literacy rates remain low (39.3%).17 in a speech to the students, president wade invoked the language of hospitality: “your ancestors left here by physical force...you have returned through moral force... you are neither strangers nor refugees. you are members of our family” (cited in bojang, 2010). this message was reinforced by iba der thaim, vice-president of senegal’s national assembly, when he spoke of giving the world “a lesson in humanity”: “senegal has shown that it’s in the hearts of the poor that you can find the gift of generosity...a country that is neither rich nor developed has agreed to share the little it has with its brothers” (cited in bojang 2010). while both officials deploy the language of brotherhood and familial ties, thus “introducing the circles of conditionality” (derrida, 2000a, p. 8), it was under the dominance of security discourse that this act of radical hospitality was put forward. i call this gesture radical because it goes beyond determined rights and responsibilities and speaks to the particularities of the situation. what are the solutions, radical or otherwise, that we in the global north, are willing to put forward? in the global north, it is necessary to re-think our conditional modes of hospitality (as well as our inhospitable responses) and learn to more ethically adapt to the unconditionality of hospitality. while it may read strangely to say that we must prepare for what we cannot know in advance, for the unexpected, this is precisely what much action in the realm of climate change requires. in so doing, there is an ethical necessity to move beyond the notion of security. while some have pointed out that the constructed nature of the discourse gives it the capacity to work in the name of progressive outcomes (see trombetta (2008) for instance, as well as the acceptance of the term ‘human security’), others have argued that the term is irredeemable (neocleous, 2008). trombetta’s claim that “[s]ecuritization is not about applying a fixed meaning of security as exceptionality that inscribes enemies in a context... it is ‘an always (situated and iterative) process’ [citing stritzel, 2007, 366] of generating meaning” (trombetta, 2008, p. 591), is correct. however, introducing hospitality as the lens through which we should plan for movements of people holds moral appeal and seeks to shortcircuit dominant security discourse. while security is discursively maintained, the dominance of militarisation in the realm of migration is evident in the ways in which many privileged nation-states are deploying deterrence techniques. 17 see: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sg.html a rough climate for migration | 77 as we have seen, in the context of climate change paul smith acknowledges the need to move beyond the security paradigm and in the direction of morally defensible positions, while jef huysmans’ analysis of migration demands that we rethink our understandings of the political, security and the relationship between the two. dalby also argues that a shift away from “exceptional measures” and toward “routine political and economic” procedures is important in de-securitising a range of issues (dalby, 2006, p. 10). barnett and tacoli both state the need to include mobility as part of any solution to climate-induced migration. however, such dispositions are not available from within the logic of militarisation which inherently requires the violent closure of the border and thus denies the question of ethics or a more pluralistic notion of politics (huysmans, 2006, p. 127). nor, i would argue, are they available within the discourse of security even if it does not automatically infer the use of the military. because security produces “a practice of exclusion: a practice of identity and being through exclusion” (burke, 2008, p. 5), the logic that motors policy and discourse around (national) security perpetuates a form of identity that is separate from the ‘other’ or, when pushed, views alterity as a threat to selfhood/statehood. a politics of (in)security assumes that a fully protected state can be realised through force, and the re-establishment of borders, something pursued under the rubric of national security. the need to root sovereignty in forms of national securitisation denies what butler thinks of as a preexisting interdependency and vulnerability, “an impressionability and violability that are ineradicable dimension of human dependency and sociality” (butler, 2004, p. xiv). as noted above, hospitality is a double law, requiring the movement between the unconditional and the conditional. this movement is deconstructive in the sense that rather than taking an either/or position, hospitality arises out of the negotiation of the two poles. this process is also bound up with the construction of subjectivity and statehood. hospitality involves the negotiation rather than reconsolidation of identity. as derrida writes it is “the foreigner...the one who, putting the first question, puts me in question” (derrida, 2000b, p. 3). why is this significant? returning to burke, we saw that security imposes a mode of identity premised upon exclusion. deconstructive reasoning challenges the possibility of discrete identities by emphasising the interdependent relationship between self/other, host/guest and so on. for derrida, the performance of hospitality is not merely the reiteration of the categories of host and guest, but demonstrates how they rely upon and challenge 78 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times one another. in this way, notions of interdependency and sociality are compatible with deconstructive engagements with hospitality and provide a theoretical foundation for ethically informed practice. i opened this paper with a quote from derrida which suggests that hospitality contains an inherent riskiness and incalculability. this has two central implications for proposing a political vocabulary of hospitality in the context of climate-migration. firstly, the acknowledgement of risk as something needing recognition could potentially be read as re-imposing the language of security, or justifying its presence (security is, after all, one strategy for eliminating or reducing potential risks). this raises the following questions: outside of security measures how can risk be responded to ethically? does hospitality as a conceptual alternative provide a way to take account of risk without returning us to a political space of threat and danger, characteristic of securitisation? it is at this critical intersection that further work is needed, work which exceeds the scope of this paper. secondly, in spite of every effort to calculate and prepare in advance, the incalculable remains. what this means is that even if we create protocols and legal frameworks of recognition, something will remain excessive to these measures and disrupt them. in this sense, derrida’s double law gives space for hospitality outside of legal imperatives. the implication for our concern is that the currently undefined nature of climate migration should not result in a default defensive reaction; rather, it is a chance for hospitality. this philosophical reorientation is where a new discussion of practices of hospitality can be generated, where perhaps we can “reorient the politics of the state” (derrida, 2001, p. 4). jon barnett’s argument, captured in the other quote opening this paper, suggests that we shift away from a military-sovereignty response to a foreign policy-global commons framework. this may provide us with a starting point for such a reorientation and is certainly compatible with the concept of hospitality. however, in order to avoid the exclusionary logic of security, this would need to renegotiate the binary relations of ‘us’ and ‘them’ or ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ and ‘host’ and ‘guest’ which tend to underpin foreign policy considerations. it is precisely by privileging a deconstructive language of hospitality that this may be achieved. in the domain of migration, this would require co-operative action and equitable responsibilitysharing at the level of programs, as well as rethinking concepts of identity and belonging at a conceptual level. it is here that the theoretical approach of a global commons discourse may be useful in conjunction with discourses of hospitality. if global commons regards a rough climate for migration | 79 ownership, sovereignty and responsibility in ways that stretch the dominant western tradition, understandings of host and guest and of citizen and foreigner may be able to be rethought. conclusion despite efforts to expand the security discourse beyond the state and to mark it as constructed, the “national referent dominates discussions of security” (barnett, 2003, p. 2). if national security inherently excludes the concerns of non-citizens by privileging national priorities, the protection of citizen rights and the “classic national security burden–ensuring its territorial inviolability” (romm, 1993, p. 4), i have asked if it is the most appropriate paradigm to utilise in response to climate-induced migration. my critical intervention is not an attempt to argue for the dissolution of the state in the name of a world of open borders. rather it seeks it highlight limitations and point toward the importance of ethical models that might help re-orient the response of privileged states to climateinduced displacement and migration. if our critical work has to take place within the context of nation-states, then it needs to imagine ethical solutions to major problems. part of this will involve making more central the language of hospitality. as such, this paper has offered a 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(1992). environmental refugees: a growing category of displaced person. environmental conservation. 19, 201-207 84 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times 142 implications of the domestic role of women eileen saunders the feminist movement has posed a fundemental challenge to social scientists, a challenge reflected in the necessity of providing an analysis of the causes of the oppression of women. the response has been varied, with available models ranging from a focus on biological explanations to class analysis. i would argue, however, that we have not yet reached the point where we are able to integrate these various positions into an adequate analysis of the forms of oppression women have experienced and continue to experience, the sources of their oppression, the mechanisms by which it is maintained, and the means to eliminate it. the resolution of this "impasse" requires that we begin to fully examine the spheres of female activity and attempt to integrate our understanding of the social forces which shape female participation in society. as juliet mitchell has shown in her criticisms of socialist movements, we have failed to look at woman's role through the structures that compose it i production, reproduction, sexuality and socialization (mitchell, 1966). the value of her analysis i3 its ability to examine the position of wom«n historically in terms of their variable role within each structure. the difficulty, on the other hand, emerges in treating these categories as independent structures which are unrelated in origin. for this reason, r. bridenthal has argued that it is possible to fuse mitchell's latter three 143 structures into one, each representing an aspect of the reproduction of the species (bridenthal, 1976:3-5). one is then able to examine the situation of women through an analysis of their position in the productive sphere (as workers) and the reproductive sphere (as housewives and mothers). through an historical examination, one can discover the nature of the relationship between these spheres, and the implications this holds for the societal position of women. a beginning point in such an attempt is an examination of the structure of the reproductive sphere and the position it occupies under capitalist relations. using a marxist framework, w. seccombe has questioned toe role of household labour (i.e., reproductive) in the creation of value, and examines its linkages to the overall wage-relation system (seccombe, 1973). seccombe* s thesis is that sexual oppression emerged, with the advance of capitalism, due to the sexual division of labour: a division into an "industrial unit" and a "domestic unit" (1973»6). moreover, this development required the physical seperation of this workplace and the home (i will return to a discussion of this "division" in my discussion of the transition from a precapitalist mode to a capitalist mode of production). seccombe argues that the labour of the domestic unit has a dual nature. on the one hand, domestic labour is necessary labour because the commodities of capital require 1w additional labour (i.e., housework) before consumption. in the preparation of food for family consumption, the housewife's labour creates a use-value insofar as the product of her labour directly serves certain consumption needs. such labour also allows for the reproduction of the wage earner's labourpower (i.e., capacity for work, 1973»l /0« domestic labour thus creates value because "all labour produees value when it produces any part of a commodity that achieves equivalence in the market place with other commodities" (seccombe, 1973'9)domestic labour helps produce and reproduce labour power as a commodity. on the other hand, and here is where we begin to approach the dual nature of domestic labour, the marxist "law of value" cannot apply to labour in the reproductive sphere. there are two reasons for thisi first, domestic labour is not engaged in an exchange relation with capital, and second, it is unproductive because it produces no surplus value . in other words, because domestic labour has only a use-value, it has no direct relation to capital. it then becomes difficult to measure the value of such labour. for other commodities, this is unproblematic. for example, labour power as a commodity achieves its equivalence through the wage relation. but, since domestic labour is not exchanged on a market, it has no apparent exchange value . seccombe 's solution is to argue that the value of domestic labour is equivalent to that part of the worker's wage that goes to the maintenance of 1*5 domestic labour (1973«8-10). its value, in this sense is mediated by the wage transaction between capital and the wage earner. it is also for this reason that seccombe argues that one cannot speak of surplus value creation in reference to domestic labour. because the value of this labour is seen as equivalent to its maintenance costs, the possibility of an extraction of a surplus value from household labour by capital is rendered impossible under seccombe* s scheme. the housewife is assumed to receive the value she creates. he recognizes that a "mystification" of the wage relation occurs under capitalism. whereas wages are equivalent to the value of labour power, not the value produced by labour power, this is not the case with the relation between capital and 'the housewife. the value she produces is contained in the wage received by the wage earner. seccombe* s analysis is valuable in several respects. it represents needed insight into an area which marxists have tended to ignore in theoretical endeavors. moreover, his analysis of the mediation of the relation between capital and domestic labour by the wage transaction contains important implications regarding the "political potential" of housewives (1973 ! 21-23) . the problem however is that he does not really develop his argument tothe necessary point. it is useful to explicate the structure of domestic labour under capitalism, but this in itself is not sufficient. one must question the motivation behind the continuing reproduction ik6 of that structure in its present form. in other words, does domestic labour, in its privatized and unwaged form, serve a value to capital in addition to the simple use value it creates? i am really seeking to question the conception of household labour as non-productive, in the sense of creating no surplus value. a strict marxist application of the term surplus value blinds us to the value extracted by capital from domestic labour. the structure of the domestic sphere allows for the reproduction of class relations in various forms. these must be explicated before one can attempt to account for the reproduction of sexism in contemporary society. what i am suggesting is a reconceptualization of our understanding of surplus value creation so that we are not forced to deal only with those exchange transactions which occur on an open market. if one can demonstrate a value served by domestic labour in the direct reproduction of class relations, and the extraction of that value by capital, then it becomes possible to discuss the productivity of domestic labour. i will now discuss the role of domestic labour in the satisfaction of certain of capital's needs. first, capitalism cannot satisfy all a worker's needs through commodity production. these needs must however be met in order to maintain a passive working force. domestic labour becomes the forum for the satisfaction of these needs in that it has personal value which cannot be reproduced by socialized domestic labour. 147 the family and the role of the housewife provide an area where the male worker can achieve some sense of authority and control (which is otherwise lacking in his relation to capital). secondly, domestic labour realizes a higher standard of living for the worker than is realized in his actual wages. workers are paid a wage to cover the cost of maintaining their labour power. domestic labour is the activity which transforms that wage into usable goods. obviously, there are alternative methods of maintaining labour power: restaurants, laundries, tailors, etc. but it is cheaper for capital to maintain domestic labour than to give workers higher wages so that they can buy these services on a competitive market. the wage labour system is sustained by the socially necessary, but private, labour of housewives and mothers. child rearing, cleaning, laundry, maintenance of property, food preparation, reproduction, etc. are all necessary elements in the maintenance of life and the reproduction of the work force. in this sense, they are all aspects of the mode of reproduction. this sphere produces daily and generationally the labour needed by capital. fianlly, by maintaining an economically dependent, and therefore passive, individual within the family the industrial sector creates an individual who is easier to manipulate. historieally this has been the casei women have functioned as a cheap and passive reserve work force. this is reflected in their unequal wages, narrow choice of occupations, and ikb underrepresentation in trade unions. it is a situation which has been relativiely easy to maintain. she has no structural responsibility in the waged labour force. rather, her participation is seen as transitory, depending on the labour needs of the industrialized sector. reserve labour power is stored in the family, drawn upon when necessary, and then reabsorded when no longer needed. the position of women as unwaged privatized labourers in the family is reproduced outside of the family. they have traditionally been located in low wage positions in more or less marginal occupations. however, one must be careful not to view female wage labour as only transitory in nature. this is a problem in seccombe's analysis, as well as in that of other marxists who only deal with the housewife and ignore women as workers. the error is compounded when marxists attempt to find a ba;is for the unity between the working class and housewives. to see only her domestic labour or her position as wage earner as the source of unity is to ignore that women are often both domestic labourers and wage earners. the central feature of women under capitalism is not their position as domestic labourers, but rather their dual role . the task is to relate these two roles in a coherent fashion -something which marxists have not yet done. when marxist feminists deal with the issue of wage labour, they assume that their interests are synonymous with working class interests. this is not the case however, due to the contradictory nature of wage labour and 1^9 domestic labour, a contradiction contained in the female role. female wage labour is not synonymous with male wage labourj the former's economic position as domestic labourers has transformed their economic position as wage labourers. their increased proletarianization has not eliminated the gap between female and male workers. it is a question again of the specific oppression of women: this is an issue which is not dealt with by merely recognizing that women serve two roles. the key is to see the integration of these two roles, and the contradiction that integration poses for women. female labour is both privatized and socialised: she is both a domestic and an industrial unit. her status as worker reduces her isolation, but has done nothing to reduce the oppression of her privatized labour at home. her domination within the family is controlled by the male worker. granted, it was originally based on his relation to the means of production, but it has been maintained, even with the entry of women into industry. the solution is to look for the interplay of this dual role of women, a situation which has given rise to a tension between the productive sphere and the reproductive sphere. women are positioned historically in the center of this dialectic, and with advanced capitalism the opposing forces of production and reproduction have posed contradictions for women which demand a resolution. if one can isolate these 150 contradictions, then perhaps one can build a base for a successful feminist movement. the women's work study group (1976) has argued that these contradictions do in fact reflect "stress points" in the capitalist system. one needs to examine the historical emergence of these contradictions and the changing nature of the productive and reproductive spheres. i will ' briefly discuss three historical phases and the impact the changing roles of production and reproduction has had on the position of women. the historical phases are the stages of precapitalism, industrialization, and monopoly capitalism. in precapitalist societies, the family was the major productive unit in the economy. the female performed tha tasks of the rpproductive sphere (reproduction, health care, laundry, and so on), as well as the tasks associated with the material production of necessities. production was generally for immediate consumption, but also involved the market exchange of goods. there was a sexual division of labor at work, both categories of sexually divided tasks being regarded as valuable and socially necessary. moreover, both forms of labour were performed within the family unit. in fact, one could say that the productive and reproductive spheres maintained a symbiotic relationship, in that each sphere was dependent to a great extent on the labour which occured within the other sphere (bridenthal, 1976:5). it is only with capitalism that material production, organized socially in the form of wage labour, 151 became seperated from the reproductive tasks within the family. with this seperation of production and reproduction, the family relinquished its economic functions, and the household was devalued in terms of its socio-economic contribution. it was devalued precisely because it became isolated from the socialized production of surplus value. in the nineteenth century, with the rise of industry, commodity production shifted increasingly to the factory system. the shift fundementally altered the position of women. it shifted the nature of demand from skilled workers to low wage unskilled workers who could perform the tasks of running the machines. since physical strength was no longer as important a variable for this task, women were increasingly brought in as a cheap and readily available source of unskilled labour. however, the increased entry of women posed a serious threat to the bargainning position of the skilled male worker. it waa during this period that the ideology of the family unit was transformed. the focus shifted from its value as a productive unit to its value as an institution for securing personal happiness and fulfillment (zaretsky, 1976:^7-57). females were regarded as the key figures in that unit, thereby reinforcing motherhood as the feminine ideal. at the same time, the ideology defined the labour undertaken by women in this sphere as economically unproductive. such an ideology served two purposes. first, by upholding motherhood and the household as the "natural" and "true" position of women, the male worker 152 was able to restrict the entry of a large number of women into the labour market. at the same time, capital's needs were met. for those women who could not afford the "luxury" of remaining in the home, their ideological position as unproductive domestic labourers left them in a weak bargaining position upon entry into socialized production. capitalists were then able to maintain a cheap supply of labour, which could be easily laid off during economic recessions. women workers are the first to go when jobs are scarce. part of this is due to the ideology that a male worker has a family to support, whereas a female probably has a husband to support her. the sexist ideology of this period crossed classboundaries as well. whereas the vote was extended to all white men, regardless of social position, in the mid 1800's in north america, women , regardless of their economic standing, were refused the franchise (women's work study group, 1976:31). the increasing socialization of production, and its seperation from the more privatized reproductive sphere posed visible contradictions for women in this period. female workers were doubly exploited, both as domestic and as wage labourers, while bourgeois women were increasingly isolated in their separate sphere. the result was an upsurge of feminist protest. as zaretsky notes, the protest took two forms. first, the bourgeois women organized a protest against the enforced idleness of their domestic lives, and demanded access to middle class occupations. protest from working class women was focused 153 on a call for reforms in the industrial sphere so as to lessen the hardships of their working position (zaretsky, 1973s 37). unfortunately, both movements placed their hopes solely on the granting of the franchise; they assumed that contradictions could be resolved through legal means. as they quickly came to realize, this was not the case. the oppression of women was too integrally connected to the specific mode of production. the monopoly phase of capitalism which began to emerge in the early twentieth century is characterized by several developments: an increasing concentration of capital, a shift away from labour intensive industry, and a rise in profit rates which is accompanied by a need to maintain high consumption rates. it is a period marked by a rise in wages, which is controlled for by capitalists by a corresponding rise in commodity prices (see braverman, 197*0. furthermore, monopoly capitalists reorganized corporate facilities to spread the ideology of consumerism, and thereby ensure a market for their commodities. the family unit took on a new value for capital as a market for products. with increasingly sophisticated forces of production and ideological manipulation at their control, capitalists were able to cultivate that family market through an ideology of mass consumption. a cheap yet educated work force was required to perform the task of marketing the increasing mass of commodities. the result was a rapidly expanding white collar sector for which women provided an ideal source of labour. however, the rising expectations imposed by mass 15* consumerism often could not be met by a single wage earner in the family unit. to facilitate the entry of married women into the work force, the technology of capitalism produced new labour saving devices (automatic washers, dryers, freezers, tv dinners, and so on) which decreased the time spent on household tasks. these devices undoubtedly have had an impact on domestic labour; at the same time there has been a qualitative expansion of woman's work. due to the increased emphasis on consumption and standard of living, women have had more tasks to perform. her responsibilities in the reproductive sphere were not reduced: if anything, they were redefined in order to widen their scope. women now have to be child psychologists, aware consumers, and "efficient" housekeepers. what has occurred with monopoly capitalism is the development of a larger group of women who are engaged in labour in both the productive and reproductive spheres. women have entered the productive sphere largely in work tasks which are part of the reproductive sphere (i.e., teaching, nursing, social work, domestic service sectors). bridenthal argues quite convincingly that this phenomenon is indicative of an increasing shift of the mode of reproduction from the personal to the public forum (1976«6-8). while the labour within the family remains privatized, decisions and policy concerning the form and use of that labour are no longer in the woman's control. bridenthal 's discussion focuses on the increasing intervention of the capitalist system 155 into the reproductive sphere in order to ensure the control of the reproduction of the labour force. the increased entry of the female into socialized production transformed the area of reproductive labour. this in turn threatens the maintenance of the specific mode of production unless the former is controlled by capital. in other words, capital must on the one hand maintain the stability of the nuclear family (to ensure the personal happiness of the worker and obscure his alienation on the job), and on the other hand, it requires women as an available source of reserve labour. the structural contradiction of these needs has left women in advanced capitalism both socialized and privatized in their labour; both waged and unwaged. the contradictory nature of capitalist ideology becomes only too evident. the family unit is portrayed as a separate entity from the economic sphere. but in fact, the household as a productive and consumptive unit is integrally tied to certain economic needs of the system. the myth of the family as independent of the productive sphere is necessary if society is to maintain the notion that the personal life of the worker has an entirely self controlled meaning. because the family is organized around reproduction and consumption however, it is impossible to speak of family organization without considering the labour needs of capital. as already noted, monopoly capital relies on high rates of consumption and high commodity prices. these needs, in turn, force women into the work force 156 on an increasingly permanent basis in order to maintain the standard of living demanded by mass consumerism. this poses a challenge to the traditional position of the male as the wage earner, and to the authority that position has given him over the female. the result is an erosion of the traditional ideology of the family unit, though the demand by capital for such a unit remains. this is not to say that capital has reorganized its sexist ideology. on the contrary, it is reproduced as long as women receive lower wages and are concentrated in low-skilled occupations. however the transformation in the reproductive sphere (it is becoming less and less the primary position for women as greater numbers join the work force) makes visible the need for a transformation in the productive sphere. women are now both regular participants in the wage labour force and in the domestic labour force, yet still the ideology defines them in terms of housewives and mothers. the tension and contradiction inherent in their dual role is masked by a false separation of the two spheres. capital has mystified the place of women within capitalist production. it thus becomes the task of a revolutionary movement to "demystify" their position, and organize on the basis of an understanding of both spheres of female labour. 157 references braverman, harry 197^ labor and monopoly capital. new york: monthly review press. bridenthal, renate 1976 "the dialectics of reproduction and production in history." radical america 10 ( march-april ) . mitchell, juliet 1966 "women: the longest revolution." new left review uo(november-december) . seccombe, wallace 1973 "the housev/ife and her labour under capitalism. new left review 83( january-february) . women's work study group 1976 "loom, broom and womb: producers, maintainers and reproducers." radical america 10(marchapril) . zaretsky, eli 1973 "capitalism, the family and personal life." socialist revolution, 1 3lk{ january-april) , and 1 5 ( may-june ) . commentary indigenous women and capitalist exploitation: ron bourgeault replies to jesse russell what follows is a response to jesse russell's commentary in alternate routes, vol.7 on my article "the development of capitalism and the subjugation of native women in northern canada'" (ar, vol.6). i hope that this response will lead to an ongoing discussion, which would be useful in addressing certain "myths" that are constantly perpetrated against indigenous (indian and metis) people. i would like to begin by stating why i wrote the article and then address russell's criticisms of my approach to culture and class. the article was written in response to a heated discussion between myself and a "white" feminist at a "third world" benefit in ottawa. the discussion centred on indian women and the indian act. i argued then and continue to argue that the "dominant" white women's movement has to go beyond simple criticism of the indian act as obviously sexist legislation when dealing with aboriginal women. to dwell only on the indian act is too convenient and too liberal. the realities facing aboriginal women today (race, sex and class oppression) far exceeded the politics of the indian act. this reality is predicated on the fact that the subjugation of indigenous women has occurred in a manner unlike that of white women, and the indian act serves only to exacerbate historic differences between indian and metis women. the white women's movement has not 144 really made an attempt to understand how indigenous women have become oppressed, and especially to understand the nature of the similarities and differences which exist between themselves and other women. recognizing that class differences do exist between women, manifest themselves within the women's movement and, at the same time, influence feminism as an ideology, i suggest that aboriginal women (the majority of whom are working class) align themselves with white working class women on the basis that they do have a great deal in common. russell, in her critique of my paper and position, focuses on two points. first, according to russell, i advocate that indigenous women would benefit from participation i_n the white feminist movement. she adds that to do so would assimilate aboriginal women into white culture, claiming that i advocate assimilation as a solution to the problems of indigenous women. second, russell says that i argue the feminist movement should be a working-class movement that would echo the struggles of indigenous women. concerning the first point, russell states that aboriginal women are not ready to participate in the white women's movement primarily because of profound cultural differences. whites, according to russell, are homo-centric, which means they are divorced from nature and possess a world view based on individualism. indians, on the other hand, are eco-centric. they live in harmony with nature and are not individualistic. on the second point, russell maintains that the feminist movement does not seek class-based solutions. finally, 145 russell contends that i portray indian women as apathetic, ignorant, and physically unaggressive. in response i would first like to restate my argument, and then reply to russell's major points of criticism. at the outset i would like to say that russell has read opinions into my article that are absolutely not there. since the 1600's northern indians have been drawn into and deeply involved in capitalism as a system, which means their social organization, and culture, has been seriously altered over the centuries. capitalism was imposed through colonial relations of domination. that is, there was the imposition of foreign cultural, social, economic and political relations and institutions for the express purpose of exploitation. accordingly, the subjugation of indian women, and later metis women, is external in its origin and directly linked to the expansion of european capitalism. today, women's oppression is a world-wide condition of the development and expansion of capitalism as a system, but with marked material differences between the developed and underdeveloped world. nevertheless, women world-wide are all victims of the same system. in canada indigenous and white women meet in the same society under similar, but specific, conditions. white women can trace the roots of their oppression to the initial stages of capitalism in europe. indian and metis women owe their subjugation to capitalism and its socio-economic structure as it unfolded in what is now north america. the main points of my article are the following: 146 1. the hunting-gathering (communal) societies of the north were in general egalitarian, which means indian women held autonomy over their lives in terms of what they produced and distributed within the gender division of labour. 2. capitalism, in the form of the fur trade, required that indian societies be drastically altered so that production and exchange of the commodity fur could be undertaken. 3. the destruction of communalism meant the destruction of the communal family and the autonomy of indian women. this destruction was a lengthy process associated with the development and expansion of capitalism. 4. the destruction of communalism was predicated on capital gaining access to and control over indian labour for the purpose of exploitation. 5. the destruction of communal society could not be accomplished by imposing exploitative relationships just on indian men, but required the destruction of indian women's autonomous role within the respective communal societies. indian men were caused to interfere with and later to dominate the labour tasks of indian women. in short, indian society was dominated, and in turn indian men were caused to dominate indian women. 6. as relations of exploitation were imposed, and continued to develop, northern indians (women and men) were drawn into a class society and the international division of labour (capitalism as a world system). the mercha destroying production ) labour-powe indian's co labour-powe became a f exploited . traditional perpetuatio distorted a nt bourgeoisi indian "cult their fu " in the ntinued subsis r to be obt acilitating me what appe indian soci n of pre-capi nd altered for was not interested in totally ure" (pre-capitalist relations of ndamental interest was in "cheap ommodity production of fur. the tence from the land allowed their ained cheaply. natural subsistence chanism by which indian labour was ars to be the continuation of ety (culture) is in fact the talist relations of production in a m for the purpose of exploitation. indian women were caused to be exploited as support labour for indian men, with the imposition of capitalist relations on their society by europeans. also, with the imposition of dependent relationships on european men, indian women were exploited both sexually and as support labour. the birth of the half-breed stands as a direct symbol of the subjugation of the indian and the sexual exploitation of indian women. 147 9. the labour of indian and metis women, and men, has been exploited over the centuries in different capacities by different forms of capital. the breakdown of pre-capitalist relations has culminated, in the present period of imperialism, in their incorporation into the universal wage labour force. presently, as historically, the majority of indian and metis women are members of the working class. it must be acknowledged, however, that there is a racial and gender division of labour today that manifests itself in the marg inal izat ion and under-employment of indian and metis women . now, i will return to russell's criticism and her insinuation that i am naive. to suggest that i was advocating assimilation as a solution to indigenous women's problems is in fact her own misinterpretation and misconception of what i was saying. what i suggested was a semi-autonomous alliance between working-class indigenous women, and working-class white women on the basis of their common interests, so that they can deal more effectively with what divides them. i should add that such an alliance should also include ethnic and immigrant women. class, race and gender divisions have been intentionally imposed, viciously and effectively, on people for economic reasons. to call for an alliance between people who are being discriminated against is not advocating assimilation. russell seems to believe that if aboriginal and white people were to have a democratic relationship with each other it would automatically lead to the assimilation of aboriginals into "white society". such a conclusion is not only superficial, it is also irresponsible. besides, i do not believe aboriginals are being assimilated into "white" canadian society. assimilation cannot take place so long as there are serious divisions based on race. 148 1 would argue instead that, since the second world war, there has been a process of homogeni zat ion of people through the universal izat ion of the wage-labour market. in canada, since wwii, indian and metis men and women have been drawn into the wage-labour market, but without proportional jobs. in this sense, the capitalist socialization process is becoming complete, but with inequalities. concerning culture, i do not believe that what separates indigenous and white people today is a question of cultural differences, including the illusion of different "mind sets". what separates indigenous and white women today is historicallybased differences in the nature of their oppression. aboriginal women are subject to racism and national oppression. this is not the case for white women. it is important to note that racism operates in the women's movement, as a broad movement, just as it operates in the trade-union movement. in the women's movement, middle-class women are only interested in seeing aboriginal women as "our sisters in culture". i do not believe culturalism to be the case with working-class women. racism and its institutionalization, including a racial division of labour, which is more obvious and distinct in some areas of the country than in others, is dividing people, especially the broad working class . to simply ascribe cultural difference to indigenous women is nothing more than a poor excuse to prevent understanding of the historic and current basis for their oppression. in a society 149 where racism is very profound, russell would do well to understand the differences between culturalism and racialism, since the former is often used to justify the latter. what russell alludes to in terms of culture and living in harmony with nature, albeit rationalized as indianness, is a current misrepresentation of communalism. culture must be seen in terms of present material reality. indian culture today is not the homogeneous and autonomous culture which existed as an expression of communalism. communalism is dead . class and exploitation are alive. now, before i am misinterpreted again, i am not advocating the total destruction of culture to be replaced by assimilation. indian culture, and metis for that matter, must be liberated from the conditions of its distortion, just as the people must be liberated from the conditions of their oppression and explo i tat ion . my response to russell's second point of criticism will be brief, since part of my response is contained in the above reply. russell contends that the feminist movement does not contain class struggle. i think that close examination will show there are differences in the conditions and issues affecting working class women and middle class women, although gender (and race) discrimination and oppression does cut across class lines. women are not a class unto themselves but, at the same time, they are not classless. women belong to classes. the women's movement does have as its basis class, and feminism as an ideology is 150 influenced by class. there is a great deal of information which shows that indigenous women, for over three hundred years, nave been involved in and exploited through class relationships. all classes have a tendency to see the world in their own image, t.ne middle class being no exception. perhaps this is why russell sees cultural differences being a reason for not having relationships between indigenous and white working-class women, and views the white feminist movement as being a coalition of individual women against sexist discrimination and oppression. i agree with elanor leacock when she states that the women's movement has historically been middle-class and oriented toward parity with middle-class men in the capitalist system. i think russell has been caught by these contradictions, which operate in the women's movement. i anticipate that, in the future, workingclass women of all races will exert themselves and establish' hegemony over the women's movement, and direct it towards the transformation of the system. in response to russell's final point of criticism, i admit i did not deal explicitly with the resistance of indian women to the conquest. the intention of the article was to show how class, race and gender relationships were created in the early period of capitalism. i agree with russell that indian women have not been, at any time, passive. as i stated above, communal society could not be conquered without destroying women's role within their respective societies. in other words, there were systematic acts of aggression directed against indian women in 151 order to destroy communal 1 sm . i think that russell's criticism is more applicable to arthur ray, sylvia \ an kirk and jennifer brown, who portray indians (women and men i as succumbing to the exigencies of trade, with the passive acceptance of material dependency ( economi sm ) . i repeat, indian women were not passive, and to portray their resistance in terms of assimilation is e rroneous . if debate arises at all from this exchange, i would prefer to see it directed at how class, race and gender divisions have been created as a consequence (dialectical outgrowth) of the development and expansion of capitalism globally. i am posing this position against what i consider to be the eurocentrist nature of western feminism, which assumes the subjugation of women to be universal, based on the manner in which it occurred within western capitalism, and not as a consequence of the global spread of capitalism. i think any debate based on cultural differences addressed to inequalities is fruitless. 152 book review: first as tragedy then as farc | 279 book review first as tragedy then as farce by slavoj žižek, london, united kingdom: verso press, 2009. $12.95 u.s paper. isbn 978-1-84467-2. pages 1-157 reviewed by: aaron henry1 the best way into this review is to start with slavoj žižek’s opening premise of first as tragedy than as farce: liberalism has died twice in the 21st century. following 9/11, the retrenchment of democratic rights, the construction of new models of containment and exclusion marked the death of liberalisms promised “liberal-democratic political utopia”. the 2008 economic meltdown further revealed that prosperity, contrary to the claims of neoliberal ideologues, could not be delivered through free market mechanisms. as such, using “ the ongoing crisis as a starting point” (5) žižek asks the following: how does ideology function to maintain capitalism as the only option when the inherent irrationality and authoritarian tendencies in the system have been unmasked by liberalisms failures as political and economic ideology? žižek ’s diagnosis is this: the death of liberal ideology leaves us with no other belief, no other imagination of our social bonds other than the non-ideological. this non-ideology maintains or exists in capitalist society through a very cynical functioning, “we only imagine that we do not really believe in our ideology”which makes it all the more pervasive (3). as such, perception, action and, therein what is politically possible, are now structured by the other of ideologynon-ideology; and, thus, non-ideology is itself the ruling ideology. the logical question that follows is how does an ideology that is constituted by the fact that we imagine that we do not really believe in it, function and how does it function differently from its twin-form, ideology? the entire first half the book is devoted to this question. at a glance, this non-ideology is in many ways more of less consistent with how ‘ideology’ functions regularly in marxist thought (i.e. it normalizes the status quo by positing that existing institutions and relations are directly analogous to human nature or de-historicizes the existence of the 1  aaron henry is a ph.d. candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university (ottawa, canada). 280 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times established order ) the departure, however, is in the specific role nonideology and the suppression of the possibility of alternatives within a given historical moment. ideology suppresses the “possibility immanent to the situation”: it does this not by fighting actual political opponents but by closing down the “possibility (the utopian revolutionary-emancipatory potential) which is immanent to the situation” (27). žižek argues that in the 2008 economic crisis this suppression was made through a number of interventions ranging from pope benedict’s claim “that all is vanity” to jacques alain-miller’s assertion that things must be terrible but eventually trust in the monetary system would be restoredby an all ‘knowing subject’ (28). it is tempting to level the critique that the suppression of immanent possibilities is not unique to our current moment of capitalist society. after-all, voltaire’s candide character professor pangloss’s declaration that “this is the best of all possible worlds” seems to be jib at this very function of ideology. there is a subtle difference though. the idea of the current order being the best of all possible world’s and the idea that things are ‘bad but are the least bad’ do both serve to suppress the possibility of an alternative. however, where the former functions through a utopian optimismthere is nothing better than capitalismthe latter operates through a disavowal of its own cynicism of the existing order (i.e the existing order of relations are broken, miserable and destructive and we no longer believe in this order; and yet things will only be worse without it). žižek is, arguably, quite convincing here about this shift to cynical suppression of alternatives. after-all was this not the sort of reflex-action behind the financial bail-outs contained within the sentiment, ‘the global economy is broken but what can we really do but save it?’ the argument gets somewhat reductive, however, as žižek traces the function of cynicism of non-ideology into working class and liberal bourgeois forms of consciousness, in the forms of fundamental populism and permissive cynicism, respectively. žižek argues that the bourgeois liberal (largely in the form of social democrat) clings to the ‘symptom’ of the repressed truth of the existing order whereas the working class subject fetishizes some other relation in place of the direct truth of its relations. put concisely, žižek argues that permissive-cynicism functions insofar as the subject is not aware of the content that belies the form of its initial claim (68). the liberal, for instance, may claim, “i believe everyone has equal opportunity” but they make this claim as something guaranteed by the political sphere; and, thus, the subject here book review: first as tragedy then as farc | 281 overlooks the unjust social relations that actually underpin the political sphere they articulate their belief of ‘equality’ through (see marx’s “on the jewish question”). in this sense, the political sphere, operates within this form of consciousness as the content (the materiality of the right to equal opportunity) when in fact it is nothing more than the symptom (one could use the word abstraction) of actual existing social relations that are in fact unequal. populist-fundamentalism, in contrast, operates through a fetishization of something in place of the immediate antagonistic relations one confronts (e.g when canadians say they worry about immigrants taking all of the jobs, the immigrant is standing in place of capital, de-industrialization and outsourcing etc). for žižek, the point of this comparison of the different class relations attached to symptom and fetishism seems to be this: the permissive-cynical subject is the easier of the class positions to mobilize because the form of the subjects ideological belief (i.e equality) can be recognized to be rooted in its content (i.e unequal relations) and as such the subject can simply integrate the content further into the form (i.e we will not be equal politically until we transform our economic relations therefore, let’s change economic relations). conversely, the populist fundamentalist must be told that what they take as the truth of their relations is in itself untrue (e.g. your ‘enemy’ is not the immigrant but capital). the paradox is that the opposing class position (liberal bourgeois thinkers) is easier to demystify and mobilize than those who ‘the left’ is actually suppose to support, workers and the down-trodden (68). in this sense, žižek attempts here, using lacanian psychoanalysis, an indirect answer to the infamous question that has occupied marxism since the 20th century: why has their not been a working class revolution? i think there are two questions though that arise with žižek’s explanation. first, and most importantly, i think the idea that fundamental populism can be simply characterized as a movement that puts the fetishized object in place of the real relations it encounters misses the mark on why the ‘second death of liberalism’, the opening premise of the book, is potentially so dangerous. the death of liberalism has created the opportunity for social forces, previously discredited or marginalized in liberal society, to provide a new narrative on the economy. in particular, take the british national party (bnp) in the england, this is a perfect example of a fundamentalist-populist force insofar as the bnp pledges to defend working class england from immigrants and ‘islamization’ and, thus, obscures real exploitative social relations in english society. however, this movement has also critiqued, no doubt with anti-semitic under282 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times tones, the bailouts to the big banks and the power of london’s financial sector. the point being, žižek’s analysis seems to suggest fundamentalpopulism simply functions by putting false objects in place of actual relations, the problem though, as gramsci noted long ago, is that right wing ideology does not simply displace ‘true’ relations with ‘false’ relations; rather, it combines them so that one cannot tell one from the other; and, as such, common sense, the mainstay of fascist ideology, always contains some kernel of good sense; thus, common sense contains some form of truth (gramsci, 2007, 329). in this sense, the problem with fundamental populism is not merely that one displaces the truth of relations with fetishisms but that real relations can be represented (i.e. big bail outs, the privilege of finance capital over labour) and articulated alongside false objects. arguably, with the death of liberalism is not only that of cynicism but that one now has a situation where a dissatisfaction with the actual relations in liberalism is not only possible to articulate but can be articulated by social forces that liberalism as an ideology previously maligned or discredited; such movements do not displace discontent with real relations with false objects, they merge them. second, if we buy žižek’s analysis of fundamental-populism and the cynical permissive subject, we are left with the following question: if the working class is locked in its own modes of populist fetishisms and increasingly we are trapped within the political and economic systems of capitalist society precisely because we imagine we do not believe in them, and thus continually reaffirm them in our actions, how are we to overthrow the system? while zizek does directly confront the paradox he has constructed around the difficulty of mobilizing the working class his answer is “fidelity to the communist idea” (97). in particular, for žižek the communist idea is understood here as eternal idea (one that pivots around the ending the injustice relations between the included and excluded) that needs to be reinvented in each historical period. žižek argues that in our present day we have four main antagonisms which despite being integral to the reproduction of capital are at the same-time the sites of possible disruption to its functioning: ecological catastrophe, “private property in relation to so-called intellectual property”, the science of bio-genetics and “new forms of apartheid, new walls and slums” (91). for žižek, the relations between excluded and included are fundamentally different from the other antagonisms in that the latter are issues of human survival that can be resolved “through authoritarian measures which will simply intensify existing social hierarchies, divisions and exclusions” (98). as such, book review: first as tragedy then as farc | 283 the relation of exclusion and inclusion will not just be unresolved by the measures but the relation itself will become the dominant mode of social control. the antagonism of exclusion and inclusion, in contrast, is a relation of justice or rather the injustice of the human condition in its current form; and, as such, because the relation is a question of justice rather than the survival of the species, it is the only antagonism “that justifies the use of the term communism” (96). as such, žižek makes the case that we should in fact be wary of ‘progressive’ political projects that attempt to overcome these antagonisms from a vantage point that does not take the relation of the injustice of exclusion and inclusion as its fundamental starting point. in this regards, žižek targets the ‘progressive’ environmental movements that treat the environment as something akin to the christian tale of the fall from eden, with simply the industrial revolution sitting in the place of original sin as the event in which we lost our “roots to mother earth”, a relationship that must be restored through a deification of nature and the disavowal of modern technology (97). in addition to this he also casts doubt on the maoist perspective as these approaches have a tendency to “attack the modern subjectivity” as it is understood in western political thought and society. while these may seem like disparate progressive movements to target, they are united, for žižek, by the fact that both movements actually destroy the possibility of the communist ideal insofar as the former seeks to abolish the technical productive forces wrought by the industrial revolution, while the latter calls into question the very notions of freedom capable of harnessing the technological forces of capitalism for a project of human emancipation. in this sense, neither project has the capacity to come to terms with the social conditions produced by capitalist society let alone to posit how very possibilities inherent to these conditions could be used to establish an order outside capital. this critique is made quite apparent in žižek’s discussion of the hegelian mode of subtraction from the situation as the mode of praxis the ‘left’ must adopt. in particular, subtraction here is meant to operate simultaneously on three dimensions: withdrawal from a situation in such a way that the relations sustaining the situation itself are exposed so as to see their points of contact (the minimal difference between them) and thus, in exposing these relations, to disintegrate the situation itself (129). such a process is stillborn without the modern subjectivity insofar as the modern subjectivity posits the critical distance between itself as a reasoning being and the relations of the existing order (benjamin’s notion 284 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times of the ‘stilled present2). in other words, to withdraw from the situation, which is in itself to presuppose the possibility of critical distance from the situation itself, is to see the situation as something external to one’s own social being. as such, then, subtraction from the situation, a process that requires the critical reflection of the modern subjectivity, reveals the fundamental antagonism of included/excluded, which alone presents the context to reinvent communism in our historical period. so in the end what are we to make of all this? while žižek weaves together starbuck’s ads, hotel policy on smoking and export processing zones into an impressive analysis of ideology, one cannot help that the question of the nature of ideology in first as tragedy then as farce is only partially examined. indeed, while žižek uses psychoanalysis to try to come to terms with the consciousness of the subject in capitalist society, at times, given that zizek has introduced his concept of nonideology in his previous works, it is hard pinpoint what is unique about ideology in capitalist society following the economic death of liberalism. moreover, the discussion of the working class as a subject that has fallen under the sway of fundamental-populism simply fetishizing false objects is one dimensional and, subsequently, overlooks the complex relations between truth and false objects, the power of the latter arguably needs to be considered in terms of the degree to which ideology allows it to reconcile, rather than displace, itself to the former. in this sense, žižek delivers an important analysis of ideology in capitalist society, whether this analysis comes to grips with our current situation, however, is another question. references: benjamin, walter. (1968). “theses on the philosophy of history.” in hannah arendt, trans. harry zohn. (ed.), illuminations. new york: schocken books. gramsci, antonio. (2007). “philosophy, common sense, language and folklore.” in david forgacs (ed.), the antonio gramsci reader, selected writings 1916-1935. new york: lawrance and wishart. 2  as benjamin states in theses on the philosophy of history, “a historical materialist cannot do without the notion of a present which is not a transition, but in which time stands still and has come to a stop” (1968, p. 265). book review: rosa luxemburg: ideas in action | 261 book review rosa luxemburg: ideas in action by paul frölich, translated by johanna hoornweg. chicago, illinois: haymarket books, 2010. $18 u.s., paper. isbn 97-1-60846-074-8. pages: 1-311. reviewed by tiffany hall1 rosa luxemburg: ideas in action is the intellectual biography of rosa luxemburg and her role in socialist party movements in poland, russia, and germany at the turn of the 20th century. author paul frolich sketches a portrait of a woman who greatly shaped the composition and direction of socialist ideology. the author was himself once a member of the german socialist democratic party and, like luxemburg, was a founding member of the german communist party. these positions allowed for an intimate relationship with luxemburg, giving him access to her incredible character before she died. frölich combines what few writings of luxemburg still exist with other personal and political writings from other party members during that time. by doing so, he constructs a vivid account of luxemburg’s progression through the socialist party system up until her murder in january of 1919. while reading frölich’s book it becomes questionable whether he should have created two separate pieces instead of one: only chapters one and ten speak specifically to luxemburg’s personality and life in a biographical manner. the other chapters, which make up a substantial part of the book, alternatively may have been presented as a history of the socialist party. several chapters are more focused on the relationships between luxemburg, kautsky, mehring, and liebknecth, party members and writers who worked closely with luxemburg and held key positions in the party, and many chapters describe the intricate details large events, such as the russian revolution and the first world war. yet there are few mentions of clara zetkin, who was known to be luxemburg’s most intimate friend. frölich’s decision to create the book as it appears is a testament to the dedication of luxemburg to the socialist cause; separating the two would be disingenuous. thus, those looking specifically for information on luxemburg the individual may be slightly disappointed; her life was too much a part of politics to ignore 1 tiffany hall is an ma candidate in sociology and anthropology at carleton university, ottawa. 262 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism any of her political endeavors in attempting to understand the person she was. for this reason, the book is a much more substantial contribution to understanding the creation and progression of the socialist party. due to her role in the changing nature of the party, luxemburg could not help but have a heavy presence in the discussion of party politics. frölich’s strongest aspect is his detailing of the progression of socialist ideas and movement during the most intense times. for instance, the chapter on the outbreak of the first world war is a substantial contribution to the understanding of the socialist position in germany and prussia at the time. frölich integrates aspects from luxemburg’s writing for pamphlets and articles to highlight the parallels and progression of her ideology. his discussion of her piece the accumulation of capital reveals luxemburg’s process in her own understanding of marxism. he describes the effect it had on understanding imperialism and capitalism and how it changed the approach of the party toward policies for the working class. although the entirety of the book is informative and succinct, the real beauty of frölich’s writing as an author comes to fruition during the last two chapters of the book; the final two months of the german revolution leading up to luxemburg’s murder. frölich describes the creation of the “spartakusbund” and provides many excerpts from the rote fahne, the journal in which luxemburg would write for the final time. frölich points to this time period as the clearest indication of a direct extension of karl marx’s ideas, particularly the communist manifesto. this adds greater emphasis on the importance of luxemburg and her socialist advocacy within historical marxism. in final chapter, frölich reveals the little known facts about luxemburg’s life and character, as well as provides his own opinion on the events leading to her death. the strength of the counter-revolution is seen by frölich as a ‘diabolical plan’ in which luxemburg and her spartans were deliberately dismantled through political guises. frölich’s witness of the decline in mental health following her weakening physical state provides enough speculation for him to ask whether luxemburg was the great leader they believed her to be: “…did her physical strength simply not suffice for the necessary tasks, or did this great leader, who as a theoretician and as a strategist of class struggle moved ahead with such unshakeable inner strength and tenacity, lack that crowning touch of the party leader who can make realistically sound judgments at critical moments irrespective of his mood book review: rosa luxemburg: ideas in action | 263 and who knows how to see to it that his decisions are carried out that crowning touch which became lenin’s second nature. this question, of course, can never be answered” (p.293). frölich’s question is somewhat sorrowful, as he acknowledges that the events led to the rise of the counter-revolution, and to the eventual rise to power of hitler in 1933. overall, frölich’s piece allows for an extensive yet clear description of the creation of the socialist party in prussia, russia, and germany at the turn of the 20th century. this newly translated edition provides greater detail of luxemburg’s life as well as excerpts from her most influential writings, particularly those that had great impact on the socialist party. frölich’s book provides a significant contribution to understanding the progression of the socialist party and, more importantly, to understanding the role luxemburg had in advocating for socialism and the power of the working class. frölich’s book is an important historical contribution to marxist literature and an important tool for understanding past socialist ideologies and the current political landscape. alternate editorial board: dan gl alternate routes is an a dents in socio, unicatic department subscript: ; | the unite payable to alternate rou' copyright, 1976, alternate routes, unless o vol. 1 contents i977 macrosociological approaches toward a 1 'canadian sociology' wallace clement the dominion government as gatekeeper to the 38 canadian ethnic mosaic, the case of quebec, 1867-1885 dan glenday embourgeoisement or proletarianization? 58 stan marshall social mobility: current thrusts (and non87 thrusts) :a critical approach to the analysis of mobility jan mayer toward a marxist theory of transition 103 chuck smith commentary class analysis and technological determinism 131 ken campbell implications of the domestic role of women 1^2 eileen saunders editorial statement this, is the first issue of a canadian graduate students journal dedicated to the dissemination of theoretical and empirical problems in the disciplines of sociology and anthropology. we have had to rely on our colleagues within the carleton university community due, in part, to our feeling of isolation from other centers of intellectual activity in canada. i believe it can be safely said that we, here at carleton, are not alone in this perception. we hope the publication of this journal will help to 'break the ice"* and in the years to cone contribute to a dialogue between our friends and colleagues, not only in the province of ontario but throughout canada. isbn 0-7709-0012-7 macrosociological approaches toward a 'canadian sociology ' * wallace clement there is an element of truth to the analogy between the blind men and an elephant and the sociologist and a society. this paper is no more than an attempt to move toward a wider perspective, a macrosociological approach to canadian society, by examining some models and theories of modern national societies. it attempts to contribute to the development of what will be called a 'canadian sociology' approach. as a topic of substantive inquiry, canading society needs to be informed by many disciplines, encompassing history, economics, political science (or more generally political economy), social pyschol°gy» social geography, anthropology and sociology. because of its breadth the latter seems suited, more than the others, to encompass each of these disciplines— at least potentially it can. there is little evidence of a general movement in englishspeaking canada toward a 'canadian sociology' approach in the sense of a holistic analysis generated from an understanding of distinctive characteristics, relations and patterns within canada. many approaches have been 'imported', largely by way of the united states, using canada simply as another data source or experimental situation without developing a national society perspective. however, in quebec the situation is exceptional since a 'total society' or societe globale viewpoint is common and the analysis has been indigenous to quebec , thus recognizing the obvious: quebec is not a miniature replica of the united states— something english-speaking counterparts often find hard to comprehend for the rest of canada*. levels of analysis following georges gurvitch, guy rocher suggests three classif icatory levels of analysis: the first is the macrosociological plane of total societies, which includes social groups that are sufficiently complete to satisfy all the needs of their members— such as a country, or western civilization. these groups are considered as wholes or units. the •canada's 'two solitudes' are suggested by guy rocher, "it must be recognized that among many differences, canadian sociology separates clearly into two major categories: frenchlanguage sociology and english-language sociology. they are almost airtight entities. two almost impermeable worlds live side by side in almost total, mutual ignorance" (1974:501). ignorance of the societe glohale perspective used by quebec sociologists has impeded others from developing a perspective on canadian society as a whole while quebec sociologists seldom venture into the res* of canada to apply their perspective, maintaining a somewhat understandable but narrowed inward focus. see also claude gousse's, "reflexions sur l'avenir de la sociologie au quebec" in loubser (editor), 1970. second is the plane of partial groupings which form part of total societies, such as the family, lineal groupings, voluntary associations, social classes, and so forth. finally, there is the microsociological plane of different types of social links... the various social relationships which are established between the members of a collectivity and the different ways in which these members are linked to and by the total society (1972:3-4). these are various points of perception for the analyst but are meant to "interpenetrate" and "link" with one another. for rocher, the macrosociological plane is both the place to begin and end; it is the context for all other investigation and the level towards which all investigation is directed (5). the goal is the "total context" or a holistic analysis.* however, rocher's meaning of macrosociology is much more precise than others. usually macrosociology refers to "largescale social systems and patterns of interrelationships within and between these systems, including, for example, national and international forms of social organization" in contrast to microsociology as "the study of small groups".** thus many of the aspects classified by rocher on the second plane are often referred to as macrosociological, serving to impose a very large gap between macro and micro levels without any mediating levels. for this reason the rocher-gurvitch classification is more useful. classif icatory problems are different from analytical ones. to provide an analysis of canadian society it will be necessary to distinguish three types of macrosociological terms. the first may be called 'macrogroupings ' and corresponds to rocher's second plane and what is usually referred to as macrosociology. the other two aim at a holistic perspective and may be referred to as 'total society' and 'national society' approaches. a 'total society' approximates the first plane identified by rocher in the sense that common social and cultural bonds prevail, as exhibited in common identity, values and traditions, usually carried in a common language and organizations which serve to preserve a particular culture. the conditions for a 'total society' are much stronger than those for a 'national society' in terms of the degree of cultural integra•this approach may be contrasted with a social -psychological one like manzer who turns his analysis towards 'human needs' or the microsociological level (1974:5-22). •*these definitions are provided in george and achilles theodorson's modern dictionary of sociology , thomas y. crowell: new york, 1969. tion evident since the latter is delineated simply by territory and legal-political perimeters commonly referred to as a 'state'. in the former, the degree of social integration is much more important in terms of setting 'boundaries' for analysis while in the latter, the extent of integration within states is left problematic. to demonstrate that a 'national society' is at the same time a 'total society', it would be necessary to show that its members share a common identity, common values and traditions and that these members are bounded by a political-legal state which they command. it may be that in some cases the two coincide at particular historical junctures--although it appears this seldom occurs--wh ile in other cases they do not. this distinction is particularly relevant to canada but elsewhere as well.* the primary defining characteristic of macro units is the scale of their implications for the total society and the scope of their inter-relationships within the total social structure. thus, s.z. klausner has adopted the term "total society", to refer to: an ecologically delimited, more or less interdependent set of human collectivities. the student of a total society could inquire into the spatial and/or organizational interdependence of events. he could report the impact of a society's northern upon its southern region, of its army upon its factories, and of its ethnic groups upon its political parties. the term 'total' indicates an intent to consider all of the people in that particular area (1967:3). as this suggests, what is of central importance is the relationships, or as klausner prefers "links", which mediate between various dimensions. as he says, "a model of a 'total society', while recognizing the distinctness of various theoretical levels, must be concerned with statements which link a term on one level with a term on another" (6) . he remarks that many attempts at 'total society' analysis have failed to specify these 'links' between different aspects and levels. these 'mediating mechanisms* are the critical component for models of 'total societies' because they specify how relationships occur and provide direction to correlations. this parallels the •see, for example, jan szczepanski' s , polish society , where he says, "in the years 1795-1918, poland was a nation without statehood, and, because it lacked its own independent political organization, culture constituted the very basis of national existence ....this distinction must always be kept in mind when dealing with eastern and central europe, where the ethnic and cultural areas have never been the same as the political-state demarcations" (1970:4). jews and israel may be a further example. earlier point by rocher but just as with rocher does not distinguish between a 'total' and 'national' society as two distinct ways of delineating tht-perimeters of study. in canada it may be that les quebecois have a 'total society', as may some english-speaking canadians, but les que becois do not have a 'national society' (although some are striving to achieve this); moreover, it may be that for some the english-speaking 'total society' extends beyond canada as a state into the united states and possibly the west as a whole. these are both empirical propositions which could be explored. language is a problem here because in french, nat ion has the connotation given here to 'total society', as in lord durham's famous caricature of "two nations warring in the bosom of a single state".* the tension between the lack of coincidence between a 'total' and 'national' society in quebec has been one of the major motor forces explaining developments in that society and accounts for many of the reasons why quebec sociologists have been so intimately concerned with this issue. however, in the rest of canada a similar problem has also emerged in the for« of nationalism which attempts to identify a distinctiveness vis 1 vis the united states. the native peoples in canada experience a similar dilemma vis a vis the white world, while there are runblings of similar contradictions between western, eastern and central canada. to th cify focus refer socio note indee the n later does pi ica ter-^s devel final e majo the pa is on red to logy, this d d, the at iona in th not ig t ions of th opment ly, in r dist rticul what earli this oes no exter 1 leve e pape norc t of int e impl s. terms of inction in ar level o may be cal er as a 'n being sai t mean tha nal impact 1 and will r . s i m i 1 a he interna ernal phen ications o leve thi f an led atio d, h t th is rec riy. 1 le omen f th is of s pape alysis the na nal so owever e e x t e crucia eive a a foe vel , e on on e nati analy r, it bein t iona ciety . it rnal 1 to good us on ither the n onal sis , is i g pur 1 lev ' app is im level an un deal the in t ation level befo mpor sued el o roac port can ders of nati erms al 1 for re proceeding tant to spehere. the r what w3s h to macroant to be ignored; tandinc of emphasis onal level of the imevel or in internal 'the distinction between 'total' and 'national' society adds a necessary analytical distinction to macrosociological theory. this problem is pointed to by anthony giddens when he says, "the primary unit of sociological analysis, the sociologists' 'society', in this sense, has never been the isolated, 'internally developing' system which has normally been implied in social theory" (1973:264-265). it is only a 'total society' which is really a 'society' in this sense, yet it too must be placed in the context of other societies which compose its environment. the ultimate level of analysis in macrosociology would be the study of a wide range of total societies and national societies. but it will be argued later that a prerequisite to this is a solid base in a number of national society analyses, and particularly here, to develop such an analysis for canada. a 'sociology of canada 1 and a 'canadian sociology* a 'sociology of canada' is restricted to the level of 'macrogroupings ' at best, and at a microsociological level at worst. on the other hand, a 'canadian sociology' attempts to move between the analytical levels of 'national' and 'total' societies, both of which inform the type of analysis being promoted here, and be informed by a holistic perspective. there have been some recent attempts to develop a 'canadian sociology' approach, an analysis of the enterprise as a whole and the formation of canada as a state, but a variety of 'sociology of canada' perspectives continue to dominate; that is, most sociological studies are of individual aspects of canadian society viewed either in isolation or compared with similar phenomenon elsewhere. each approach is important but essentially different. a 'canadian sociology' focuses on major structural features of the country--such as regionalism, ethnic relations, foreign and indigenous investment patterns, political-legal formations and class structures--as they relate in a national context, especially as they unfold and transform historically. 'canadian sociology' is not a theory about canadian society, although it implies a series of models for organizing information, rather, it is a synoptic perspective which conceptually links together a variety of theories and data on canada while making the analyst aware of other factors which may affect or be affected by the particular aspect of society under study. for example, if the subject under study is education, it would be fruitful to know the linkage this has with immigration and the canadian practice of importing highly qualified manpower rather than creating indigenous educational institutions or the linkage between the type of economy canada has and demands this creates for particular training. similarly, it is important to know the type of class structure canada has if education is to be related to class inequalities or the type of sex roles if it is to be related to sexual inequalities. the point is selfevident. the implication being that there emerges from these linkages a broader understanding of various developments by removing them from a narrow view common to a great deal of sociology. similarly, it is concerned about aggregating data on canada into meaningful units of analysis. all that makes it a ' canad ian sociology' perspective as distinct from a 'japanese, american, polish, british, french, australian, russian, etc. sociology' is the substantive focus. this does not mean that various key features such as regionalism, ethnicity, class, etc. will be identical or even similar in each nation. the similarity is that what is being pursued here is simply a specific case of a more general 'national society' perspective. the key is the holistic analysis of a variety of important social phenomenon within a national context. a 'sociology of canada 1 perspective, on the other hand, focuses on particular aspects of the society, such as those listed above or others like education, immigration, sex roles, deviance, voting patterns, urban studies, etc. but does not relate each to other developments within canada. it may compare them with other countries, a la lipset or alford, but is not essentially concerned about the way they combine, emerge and affect one another. if rocher's point about the macrosociological plane being both the place to begin and end is accepted, then the problematic is the extent to which several 'sociologies of canada 1 could be turned into a 'canadian sociology' by transcending individual studies and relating them to one another.* while the individual models and frameworks used in ' soc iolc gies of canada' do not facilitate this end, the information and theories generated may be able to inform a 'canadian sociology'. the idea of a 'canadian sociology' is not based simply on a series of microsociological or macrogrouping studies or even an enumeration of national statistics, but hinges on the relationships and combinations of various elements which crystallize into a unique whole. rather than dealing with each substantive aspect of canadian society discretely, it attempts to tie them into a total framework on the development, structure and operation of the society. a recent book by ronald manzer, canada: a socio-pol i t ical report (1974), will illustrate the distinction being drawn here. although covering a very wide range of topics and providing abundant empirical data on canada, manzer does not organize his analysis or direct himself to the question of a national society, rather, he tends to deal with a wide range of rather specialized topics without attempting to bring them together in a comprehensive national statement in the way, say, john porter did in the vertical mosaic (1965) where he elaborated relations between *as amitai ltzioni metaphorically points out, it may be "that the study of the trivial fruit fly led to the understanding of some general laws of genet ics .... but just as the anatomy of elephants cannot be studied by dissecting fruit flies, so, too, the morphology of macroscopic social units cannot be effectively explored by studying the structure of small groups" (196r:4r). the themes of class, power and ethnicity within the context of canada as a national society. manzer provides a 'sociolocy of canada', porter a 'canadian sociology'. this is not to sav porter produced the complete analysis of canada as a national society; this probably could never be accomplished in one book (and even if possible, it would certainly become dated). for instance, porter focused his analysis of canada on indigenous national elites and tends to by-pass regional differences which a national framework could have paid more attention to, particularly asking why some regions tend not to produce elites or elites of different types. similarly, he had a tendency to bvpass in some senses the external impact on canada and also overlook the historical specificity of some of the many studies recorded in his book. but what he did do was analyse the interaction between class, power and ethnicity as they form canada's social structure and 'the vertical mosaic'. manzer's report, however, has no real theme or theory about the operation or organization of canadian society.* he provides an evaluation based on the ideals of fraternity, equality and liberty, hut not a national society approach which would be addressed to a total set of conditions explaining why these ideals have not been achieved, if indeed, they are the ideals of canadian society. in this paper there is no attempt to provide a sociology of sociology for canada, nor a survey of sociological findincs themselves. rather, the attempt is to examine a series of models and approaches which may prove useful in developing a 'canadian sociology', particularly those which may expand the analysis of canadian society already provided by porter's pathbreaking work and some issues relevant to such an analysis. but first, a larger context is necessary. macrosociology and the 'classical tradition' macrosociology** focuses on structures, types of relationships, and their degree of dependence or independence; in short, how social systems work***. it is in the tradition of sociolo*for example, in a book of well over 300 pages, manzer devotes less than 10 pages to his introduction and conclusion combined, while his first chapter on "human needs and political goods" has only a passing reference to canada. the remainder of the book is devoted to reporting on important statistical comparisons with other countries. **for a recent discussion of macrosociology, see paul f. lazarsfeld's main trends in sociology . harper & row: ny, 1973:22-36. ***c. wright mills provides a series of questions in his sociol og ical imagination which represent some areas a national society approach could explore: "(1) what is the structure of this par8 gists like marx and weber who attempted, in the words of gerth and mills, "to grasp the interrelations on all institutional orders making up a social structure" (1946:49). but what is meant by 'structure'? a social structure is a stable set of relationships among the various parts or elements making up the totality of a society. however, to say these relationships are stable does not discount their continuous transformation. as z.a. jordan has said in his summary of marx, "macro-sociological structures and laws can claim validity only within a specified period of time and, therefore, must be considered historically" (1971:66). "to analytically 'weave' various institutional orders into a whole from the perspective of national societies requires a historical dimension which seeks to comprehend the interactive effects between different orders, their exchanges— both of decision-makers and resources— and their relative strengths or weaknesses vis a vis each other and different orders. for example, someone examining present-day canada may tend to dismiss the religious order in the overall pattern of power but historically it has had_an enormous effect, particularly in ouebec, but elsewhere as well, in helping to shape the current orders. in quebec it could be argued that the church was important in retarding indigenous capitalism but effective in increasing the power of the strte and unions vis a vis capital. the impact of religion thus could be detected only through a historical analysis.* thus the call for a 'canadian sociology 1 is not meant as a replacement for the 'classical tradition'** in sociology; exticular society as a whole? what are its essential components and how are they related to one another? how does it differ from other varieties of social order? within it, what is the meaning of any particular feature for its continuance and for its chance? (2) where does this society stand in human history? what are the mechanics by which it is changing? what is its place within and its meaning for the development of humanity as a whole? how does any particular feature we are examining affect, and how is it affected by, the historical period in which it moves? and this period—what are its essential features? how does it differ from other period? what are its characteristic ways of history-making? (3) what varieties of men and women now prevail in this society and in this period? and what varieties are coming to prevail? in what ways are they selected and formed, liberated and repressed, made sensitive and blunted? what kinds of 'human nature' are revealed in the conduct and character we observe in this society in this period? and what is the meaning for 'human nature' of each and every feature of the society we are examining?" (1959:6-7). •see hubert cuindon's, "the social evolution of quebec reconsidered" (1964: 154ff) . "for an important collection of some major works in the 'classical tradition' of sociology, see c. wright mills (editor), images actly the opposite. it is the application of classical approaches, such as those used by marx and weber, to macrosociological issues of canadian society. it is within the tradition of 'holistic' analysis which maintains that the whole cannot be reconstructed from the parts; the parts can only be understood in light of the whole. rather than a separate focus on theory and methodology, it calls for a reflexive relationship between theorv and research and the development of sociologies at several levels of analysis, especially as the/ relate to one another, including an understanding of the past, toeling for the present and an eye to the future. a 'canadian sociology' approach is consistent with what irving zeitlin sees as the main task of theory construction, 'a problem oriented approach to social science'. he argues th3t, "if one is generally interested in empirical social systems, one ought to have questions a^out thcii workings that one would like to answer. to do this, oie does n< t begin with 'society' in the abstract but with a specific society (or several of them) and with an interesting problem" (1973:23). one major guiding question t^r a 'canadian sociology' already posed is how do major inequalities such as class, regionalism, ethnicity education, occupation, income distribution, foreign control, etc., affect and reinforce one another? of the few national society studies now available, most seem to present their analysis around a particular theme or euidinc value. ralf dahrendorf writes in 'is society and democracy in germany that "the analysis of total societies requires an attempt to relate the structures of mi=ny specific areas of society to an underlying political problem" (1967:ix). he identifies his problem as follows: good analyses of total c ocieties require... a problem that removes all s'. <*tements from the tedious fog of arbitrariness an i provides the whole with a beginning and an end. tocqueville had a problem of this kind: 'democracy , however, we mean something different from tocque\ille, to wit, liberte rather than 6gal ite , a liberal political community rather than an egalitarian society (viii). there need not bei agreement with the particular problem of liberty chosen by darendorf but few would disagree that this is a of man , george braziller: new york (i960], where he says, "classteal sociology contains an enormous variety of conception, value, and method, and its relevance to the life-ways of the individual and to the ways of history-making in our epoch is obvious and immediate. this is why it is central to contemporary cultural work, and among the most valuable legacies of western civilization" (17) 10 macro level problem and an interesting guiding question. in the vertical mosaic , john porter also uses a guiding, theme, that or* inequal i ty , aimed at the image of a 'middle class society'. similar problems are posed by sol encel in his equal ity and authority: a study of class, status and power in aus tralia ! these are also some of! the types of problems which could be posed by a 'canadian soc iology' --problems not constrained by either theory or methodology, but problems which use theories and methodologies to resolve problems. as c. wright mills has said, "for the classical social scientists, neither method nor theory is an autonomous domain; methods are methods for some range of problems; theories are theories for some range of phenomenon" (1959:121).* the first task of the analyst is to provide the macro problem whether these are liberty, equality, democracy, efficiency or whatever will depend on each researcher's values. as has been argued, one of the most important units of analysis is the nation state within which is encompassed a national society**. within this framework the focus is on major structural components and their relationships as they interact to form the whole. many macro studies have used the nation state as a unit of comparative analysis but this is not the same as analysing a national society. stein rokkan has pointed to what he calls the "whole nation bias" in comparative studies and the weakness inherent in taking aggregates rather than components. he says, "most comparisons have been limited •following this, mills offers some advice to those concerned about substantive problems: "in actual practice, every working social scientist must be his own methodologist and his own theorist, which means only that he must be an intellectual craftsman. every craftsman can of course learn not much more than a general kind of awareness" (1959:121), going on to add that, "the classic focus, in short, is on substantive problems. the character of these problems limits and suggests the methods and the conceptions that are used and how they are used" (128). **a case for using the nation state as the key level of analysis is made by c.w. mills, "in our period, social structures are usuallv organized under a political state. in terms of power, and in many other interesting terms as well, the most inclusive unit of social structure is the nation-state. the nation-state is now the dominating form in world history and, as such, a major fact in the life of every man.... in choosing the national social structure as our generic working unit, we are adopting a suitable level of eenerality: one that enables us to avoid abandoning our problems and yet to include the structural forces obviously involved in many details and troubles of human conduct today. moreover, the choice of national social structures enables us most readily to take ud the 11 to institutional or aggregate statistical data for each nation as a unit and have tended to neglect highly significant variations in the rates of growth among competing economic, political or cultural centres and between such centres and the rural peripheries" (1970:49). in other words, to overcome the "whole nation bias" in comparative studies requires the apriori analysis of the national society which in turn may then be compared in terms of the types of relationships found within the national society and the processes* of developing to this stage. it may seem unusual that a paper on canadian society would have this concern about comparative studies but it is to be understood that each nation has its differences as well as similarities and much can be learned from these. indeed, c. wright mills has noted, "it is only by comparative studies that we can become aware of the absence of certain historical phases from a society, which is often quite essential to understanding its contemporary shape" (1959:157). moreover, it is not merely a theoretical or academic exercise but many canadians themselves engage in just such comparisons— principally with the united states, but with europe and other industrialized nations as well, although typically limiting these to other liberal democracies. aside from the outstanding work of john porter, there are only a handful oi sociologists in english-speaking canada who have taken a total or national society approach--such as, at times, s.d. clark, kasper naegele, a . k. davis and, to some extent, frank vallee and don whyte. but in quebec there are many more, such as hubert guindon, maurice pinard, guy rocher, marcel rioux, jean-charles falardeau, jacques dofny, gerald fortin, phillipe garigue, pioneer quebec sociologist leon geerin and fernand dumont,** to name but a few. as suggested earlier, major issues of public concern, for it is within and between the nation-states of the world that the effective means of power, and hence to a considerable extent of history-making, are now, for better or worse, tightly organized" (1959:135). •john porter has commented, "there is no comparative analysis, for example, when six scholars produce separate papers on the educational systems of six different countries. each study may as well have been published separately rather than bound together since they draw nothing from each other" (1970a: 144). the same, of course, may be said for readers which are called canadian society but lack any internal unity aside from the common subject matter of canada. they might more appropriately be called 'sociologies of canada'. **see especially dumont's, "the systematic study of french-canadian total society" (original, 1962) along with the 14 articles in the section on 'sociological interpretations on the social evolution of french canada', 'economic structure and social stratification 1 and 'social organization and culture' in marcel rioux and yves martin (cds.), french-canadian society (1964). see also nock (1974). 12 however, quebec sociologists have limited themselves to a 'total society' analysis of quebec and have not engaged in a 'national society' analysis of canada. these contributions cannot be minimized because they represent necessary starting points, but their lead must be expanded, elaborated and developed if a reasonable sociological understanding of canadian society is to be achieved. this emphasis, it needs to be stressed, is not parochial. it should be seen as a necessary requisite to national comparative analysis, as rokkan suggested above. ncr should it be abstracted from sociological theories and methodologies developed elsewhere; rather, these should be adapted to the canadian experience, if and when they fit. vallee and whyte, in their paper "canadian society: trends and perspectives", have argued that "sociologists are too busy making up for the backlog of sheer information about canadian society to worry about the enterprise as a whole and to engage in much soul-searching concerning the theoretical and methodological aspects of this enterprise" (1968:849). in terms of the distinction presented earlier, they are arguing that most of what has been occurring is a 'sociology of canada' rather than a 'canadian sociology'. in fact, they argue that, with a few notable exceptions, "canadian sociologists have rarely adopted a holistic perspective, one in which the system-as-a-whole is the universe of study" (849).* this does not mean that every piece of research must cover all aspects of canadian society and address every issue. it does mean that regardless of the particular focus of study--be it ethnicity, regionalism, immigration, class, or whatever--a central question is what this means for the national society, that is, how each part relates to the whole. similarly, it is important to stress again that the focus on a national society suggests that the differences with in society are important as differences between one society and* others. thus ethnic differences, regional splits and class relations within canada go a long way to understanding that society. at the same time aspects such as these cannot be abstracted from an analysis of canada's international context. this means more than simply a 'comparative perspective', which itself is interesting and informative, but an international framework of analysis placing canada's internal developments in the context of external ones. •similarly, a.k. davis argues, "by and large anglophone academic sociology in canada has failed to present a realistic and holis' tic picture of the evolution of canadian society" fl*>7f>:31). 13 some frameworks for the study of national societies* (i) regional power relationship frameworks recently there have emerged some frameworks, developed mainly for latin america's relationship with advanced capitalist nations, based on regional power relationships. these models integrate both national and international dimensions and are built on both a national society and total system perspective. that is, they analyse each nation state in terms of the indigenous regional and class power structures while simultaneously analysing the relationships between these structures and external centers of power. central to all of these models is an unequal relationship between interdependent units which form a set of asymmetrical associations either within national societies or between nation states.** according to andre gunder frank and his 'development of underdevelopment' model, "contemporary underdevelopment is in large part the historical product of past and continuing econ*in the canadian corporate elite (1975:345-353), i d i ?cussed a national society framework which will not be presenttd here, except to say ralph miliband's distinction between the state system and political system suggests a fruitful organizing framework. **barrington moore, jr., although applying an interesting analytical scheme to various societies, is a suoject to a 'large society bias'. he writes, "the fact that smaller countries depend economically and politically on big and powerful ones means that the decisive causes of their politics lie outside their own boundaries. it also means that their political problems are not really comparable to those of larger countries" (1966:xiii). is canada a 'small country' in moore's terms? in some respects, but not in all, nor is it an underdeveloped nation, nor totally politically or economically dependent. but it is also not a 'large country' in international terms. the 'decisive causes' are not totally outside canada and to the extent they are, it is in large part a result of internal policy or non-policy, as the case may be. theda skocpal has made a similar point in her critique of moore, emphasizing the relationship between "intersocietal" and "intrasocietal structures and processes", suggesting his focus is intrasocietal. she writes, "variations of ultimate political outcomes of the modernizing process (moore's dependent variable) are explained by a combination of the strength of the 'commercial impulse' and the type of class structure through which its effects are channeled ... .moore was anxious to establish his cases as societies free from 'foreign influences'. but, of course, no society is free from foreign influences, and, in his case accounts, moore is repeatedly forced to refer to 'external' conditions or events in order to explain 'internal' states or chanc es" ("a critical review of barrington moore's, social origins of dictatorship and democracy", politics and society, vol. 4, no. 1. 1973:28-29). l 14 omic and other relations between the satellite underdeveloped and now developed metropolitan countries" (1969:4). the model is not restricted to international relations; rather, it attempts to link internal developments to relationships within as well as outside of nations, or what he refers to as "a whole chain of constellations of metropoles and satellites" (6). his central hypothesis is that "within this world-embracine metropolis-satellite structure the metropoles tend to develod and the satellites to underdevelop" (9). in other words, there is a chain of exploitive relations between various levels from the local to' the regional to the national and international which serve to accumulate power and resources at the highest levels and drain them from the lowest. johan galtung presents a variation on the themes of prank. he begins, as did frank, by focusing on "inequality within and between nations" and specifically analyses the interactive relations contained therein. the key linking or mediating mechanism he defines as ".coupling" which means "some type of social causation in interaction relations and interaction structure" (1971:83). using the imagery of 'center' and 'periphery'*, galtung argues "there is a disharmony of interest between the center nation [metropolitan nationj as a whole and the periphery nation [satellite nationj as a whole" but maintains that this misses an important refinement "because it blurs the harmony of interest between the two centers, and leads to the belief that imperialism is merely an international relationship, not a combination of intraand inter-national relations" (84). the key mediating party in the galtung model is the "bridgehead" in the center of the periphery nation. inequality results from the way interaction takes place and can be identified in terms of sets of elites. in what he calls the "multinational, asymmetric stage", galtung argues, "elites have emerged in the periphery nations, strongly identified with and well harmonizing with the center elites" (96). one final refinement galtung introduces has particular relevance to canada and that is the 'go-between' status of some nations, mediating between center and periphery nations in much the same way the center in the periphery nation mediates in the general model (104) because of the type of imagery used, a problem with the regional power structure models is their emphasis on geographical distinctions rather than class distinctions; for example, the bourgeoisie may be located in metropolitan areas but so is much of the proletariat. while keeping the overall perspective •the terms 'periphery' and 'center' as images of international economic relations have been used since at least 1949 by raul prebish in his the economic development of latin america and its principal probl erns" ]j siew york , united nations department of social and economic affairs, 1950:1 (original published in spanish in 1949). 15 of international relationships and their intra-nat ional implications, recent analysts have paid much more attention to the class structures within these nations and have argued that some elements of these class structures have become ' internationalized' . these types of analyses norman girvan has classified as "historical/ institutional/structural" approaches.* the most impressive example of such an approach is the work of osvaldo sunkel in "transnational capitalism and national disintegration in latin america". using five inter-related concepts of "development, underdevelopment, dependence, marginality and spatial imbalances", sunkel argues: a realistic analysis of latin america development should therefore be based on a conception which assumes our socio-economic system to be formed by two groups of structural elements: internal and external. among the internal factors are: the pattern of natural resources and population; political institutions, especially the state; sociopolitical groups and classes; the ideologies and attitudes of different groups and classes; the specific policies followed by the government; etc. the complex of internal and external structural elements, and the interrelations among them, define the structure of the system, and constitute, therefore, the framework within which the functioning of the national system and its processes of structural transformations take place (1973:135). more specifically, there are three dimensions of the analysis-' process, structure and system--whereby "it is postulated that underdevelopment is part and parcel of the historical process of global development of the international svstem, and therefore, that underdevelopment and development are simply two faces of one single universal process" (135-136). the most recent phase in these relationships maintains the overall structural asymmetry between nations but now that they have become "ever more closely integrated— it is necessary to take into account that this new model of international economic relations is based operationally on the transnational conglomerate, a new kind of business organization that has experienced an enormous growth during the last decades" (139). there now appears an "internationalized" sector in both the center and periphery nations built on the institution of the multinational corporation. for the periphery nation this likely means that "international mobility will correspond to the internal •for an important overview of the types of analysis which have been performed in third world countries, see girvan's, "the development of dependency f.conomics in the caribbean and latin america: review and comparison", social and economic studies , vol. 22, no. 1 (1973: 1-33) . 16 nobility particularly between the internationalized sectors of developed and under-developed countries, which, as we have indicated before, constitute the nucleus of the international capitalist system, and, therefore, probably also constitutes an international market for skilled resources" (170). sunkel's model thus focuses on developments within center and periphery nations but, in addition, adds an international category because of his 'global perspective'. from this wider perspective, analogous with the continental system between canada and the united states, two basic components can be identified: a) a complex of activities, social groups and regions in different countries which conform to the develooed part of the global system and which are closely linked transnationally through many concrete interests as well as by similar styles, ways and levels of living and cultural affinities; b) a national complement of activities, social groups and regions partially or totally excluded from the national developed part of the global system and without any links with similar activities, groups and regions of other countries (146) . thus the imagery used by sunkel is of a "transnational kernel or nucleus" at the "heart" of the international system which tends to be integrated plus national segments which tend to be "segregated or marginal" to the core of the dominant national and international system. the importance of these segregated sectors in both the center and periphery is their relationship with the transnational integrated sectors in terms of the types of demands they may make and conflicts which may occur. it is important to recognize that in sunkel's model class relationships are of crucial importance but do not correspond to the ' integrated-marginalized ' dichotomy. rather, there is a 'core' of international capitalism into which some segments of the periphery bourgeoisie, middle class and a portion of the working class or even agricultural classes are incorporated while some parts of all classes are marginalized. there is still an overall international hierarchy between nations based on an asymmetrical relationship but above this is an integrated multinational segment 'transcending' this in an international capitalist system. the effect of integrating galtung's idea of 'go-between' nations with sunkel's 'integrated and marginalized' segments of the class structures of center and periphery nations means that a rather integrate model of international and internal economic relations could be developed. mediating between the various structural components of the model would be the institution of the multinational corporation and the elites who control them 17 and others who work for them. to turn this general model into a theory of international and regional capitalism would require a great deal of empirical work but as a guide to this system requires a model somewhat more developed than that for latin american nations because of canada's unique role of mediator for foreign controlled capital plus its own foreign investment and the extensive foreign investment within canada itself.* although there has been some discussion of various regional power structure frameworks within canada, very little empirical work has actually been done. what has been undertaken is at the level of the frank 'development of underdevelopment' thesis and not in terms of more recent models such as c-altune's or sunkel's. mel watkins, for instance, suggests using a "center-margin framework" similar to frank's model for examining the national bourgeoisie and "its relationship of dependency or independence with respect to the imperial business class or the imperial bourgeoisie" (1970:35). in so doing, he recognizes the importance of the "metropolis-satellite chian" used by frank (37-39), arguing that in the international framework, "canada would lie above the line as one of the exnloiting nations rather than an exploited nation" (40). but at the same time the internal relationships must also be taken into account and it is in this context that arthur k. davis' paper, "caradian society and history as hinterland versus metropolis" (1971), is important**. however, these humble beginnings have led to very little in the way of model building or theories, not to mention the absence of empirical research. while this is somewhat better in the case of regional analysis within canada, there is virtually nothing published about the continental context . *** •see wallace clement, "the canadian bourgeoise: merely comprador?", a paper presented at the marxist study institute, toronto, feb., 1975 and the section on "absentee ownership and 'linkages'" at the end of the next section. **the importance of the boundaries selected for study is also noted by keyfitz when he writes, "if we study any institution in canada, for example, trade unions or an automobile plant, our conclusions will come out one way if we treat it as autonomous, as though anv links with the united states can be disregarded, and another way if we treat it as part of a larger continental entity" (1974:34). ***to comprehend the nature of the relationship between canada and the united states at any given time, it is necessary to understand what is happening within each. milner and milner are amonc the few who have actually practiced this, writing, "the united states behaves toward other nations in ways which are to a great extent a reflection and outgrowth of the economic structures and social system inside its borders... in order to understand many of the most important aspects of everyday experience in quebec, we must understand 18 these frameworks have a particular promise for canadian social science as models because they reflect a centralist tradition important in canada's development, particularly in terms of its early colonial links and the early development of central canada as exemplified in innis's staple theory and the lower/creighton 'laurentian thesis'. each has been built on an analysis of structural power links binding them into a whole founded on geography, regionalism, and resource extraction. one of the differences between most elite models, such as that used by john porter in the vertical mosaic , and the regional power structure frameworks outlined here is the force of opposition built into the latter. they see the relationship as one of running conflict whereby canadians are placed in a 'doublebind' between the united states and canadian business interests, both of whom have turned toward the regional hinterlands for their surplus extraction. replicated in canada are the beginnings of a model of a national society in its international context.* although these have not as yet been developed sufficiently or applied adequately to canadian society, there are clearly beginnings in this direction. many more specifications are required in such a model, some of which are suggested in the international models, before it can address some particular characteristics of canadian society. it would seem important to specify more clearlv the dimensions such as regionalism, class or ethnicity being analysed and recognizing some of the differences and clusterings which may occur. for instance, there may be an important difference in french-english relations with respect to the economic domain as compared to the state. indeed, this has recently been shown to be the case (clement and olsen, 19741. also, the links between various levels must be more clearly specified and the mechanisms of mediation examined more carefully. furthermore, the relationships between the various 'parties' in both the 'center' and 'periphery' must be examined more thoroughly. this means, for instance, examining relations based on economic and state power in terms of the ethnicity of the power holders and their regional location. it may be that there is uniformity within the 'center' but diversity in the •periphery' which affects the types of resistences davis suggests should exist. finally, the international dimension must be explored more thoroughly for the internal implications of some of the crucial facts of life in the united states--beg inning with its internal class structure and the culture which sustains this structure" (1973:9). •while the international context has been stressed here, internal relations can also be examined within this model. for example, frank vallee notes, "one cannot understand situations and trends among the native people without taking into account the nonnative people who form part of the social environment" (1171:149) 19 these structures. these preliminary points arising from various regional power structure models may prove useful in the attempt to develop a 'canadian sociology' . they would clearly allay any criticism of such an undertaking as parochial. indeed, they would bring the analysis of canada into an international framework in a more meaningful fashion than could anv series of 'sociologies of canada'--or traditional comparative studies— because they demand that relations between various institutions in canada and other national societies be specified, not simply as they compare. for example, rather than comnaring political, judicia], economic, or educational institutions and policies in 'canada, the united states and the united kingdom, the researcher would ask what implications the institutions and policies of one nation have for others--both in terms of models that have been adapted after being established in one place as well as the impact of policies and institutions from other nations and their implications for the nation under study*. some of these questions will be returned to later but first the consociational democracy model will be examined. (ii) consociational democracy there has been an attempt to present a model of certain types of nationa*. societies characterized as 'segmented' in terms of ethnicity, religion, language, or political .tructure. this approach has been presented and applied specifically to canada and other nations in a collection of papers edited by kenneth mcrae, consociational democracy: political accomoda tion in segmented societies (1974). although variously called "segmented plural ism" , and "contradictarian democracy", mcrae suggests that the term "consociational democracy' is most convenient (3-4) . he distinguishes three perspectives in the general consociational literature: 1) as a pattern of social structure, emphasizing the degree of religious, ideological, cultural or linguistic segmentation in the society itself; 2) as a pattern of elite behavior and mass-elite relationships emphasizing the processes of decision-making and conflict regulation; 3) as an underlying characteristic of the political culture arising from historical circumstances that may antedate the period of mass politics (5) . mcrae* s summary of the literature suggests that one element stands out as most important and is a prerequisite for a society being 'on the relationship between 'endogenous' and 'outside* factors on development, see giddens (1973:265). 20 considered consociat ional ; he says, "the cleavage in question should be sufficiently intensive and durable to rive members of the respective groups a distinctive and persistent outlook or cultural orientation that is different from that of other sectors, a raison d'etre for maintaining organized segmentation" (6). underlying the entire model, but not made explicit, is the assumption that these cleavages will become organized and be manifest in the political system so as to stabilize the society as a whole. this is apparent, for example, in lijphart's definition: "consoc iat ional democracy means government by elite cartel designed to turn a democracy with a fragmented political culture into a stable democracy" (1974:79). while the model explicitly deals with cleavages based on regional, religious, linguistic and ideological splits, it does not attempt to incorporate social classes as possible subcultures. similarly, the consociat ional model stresses the role of the political system but does not take into account others such as the bureaucratic, economic, labour, or mass media in terms of representing population segments. mcrae has made a cautioned application of the consociat ional model to canada, albeit limited to the political system hecause of the bias contained within the general model. his main findings are that, "the primary lines of segmentation in canada are difficult to identify with precision on account of (.sicj the reinforcing but not completely overlapping effects of province, language and religion", especially because there is not one government in canada but eleven, including the provinces and federal government thus creating a "distorting forum" for the segments. using a comparative method to place canada's segmentation in a relative position to 'classic' segmented societies, the results are "inconclusive" since "by any of these criteria province, religion and language canada must he ranked significantly lower". probably most significant, given the political orientation of the model, is his finding that "because of the nature of the party system and the electoral system, modern political parties in canada have not divided alon^ any of the axes of subcultural cleavage—accommodations between subcultures must take place within the governing party" (260-261). while there may be some resemblance between canada and the consociational model, it does not adequately explain developments even within the political system. some of the preconditions for the development of a consociat ional political system mav in fact exist but they have not become organized and represented in the political system in the way the consociat ional model suggests. in his book, elite accommodation in canadian politics (1973), robert presthus has adopted a consoc iat ional approach , part icularly as developed by lijphart. his use of the model, however, is more metaphoric than real because he adapts it to the study of interest groups rather than the study of cleavages based on so21 cial segments. in fact, what he does abstract from the general model are those elements related to "elite accommodation" as "an integral part of the larger process of national integration" (4). this is simply another way of saying "elite pluralism" (see bachrach, 1967). but what is made quite explicit in presthus' analysis is that he regards this not only as a desirable way to organize a 'democratic' society but as the only way. he says, "elite accommodation may be regarded as a structural requisite of any democratic society in which political decisions are the result of negotiation and consultation among the elites concerned ... -.el ite accommodation is inherent in the process of democratic government" (4). while presthus' account of "elite accommodation" may be an interesting ideology* as a "way to overcome pervasive modern schisms between labour and capital, social classes, and indeed, between government and the governed" (25), it is not an adequate base upon which to build a theory or model of the way canadian society operates. it is subject to the same limitations mcrae pointed out for the consociational model and confines the analysis to the role of the state system, virtually ignoring the operation of other power domains in the society and not providing any insight into such issues as regionalism or class structures.** while the consociational model does not address sufficient issues necessary to develop a 'canadian sociology' it does provide at least some potential in terms of the two major segments of canadian society. these are the 'two nations' of french and english canada. language, religion, political units and regional centralization are all elements serving to reinforce this major cleavage, as is economic position and, at least to some extent, political parties with the liberals dominant in quebec and the conservatives and ndp almost totally absent. however, the issue of social class is not integrated in the model and for this it is necessary to turn to a long standing debate over the place of the concepts 'class 1 , 'nation' and 'ethnicity' in canadian society. (iii) the problems of class, nation and ethnicity*** although the theoretical debate has been centered mainly in quebec, the issue has relevance for all of canadian society, *see, for example, w.l. mackenzie king's, industry and humanity . macmillan: toronto, 1913. **in a highly critical reveiw of the book, john meisel has noted that presthus introduces the idea of elite accommodation but fails to integrate it, saying, "the book makes only a marginal contribution to this still open issue", canadian forum , may-june, 1974:44-46. ***this question will be discussed again shortly in terms of dominant issues in canadian society. hubert guindon's work, especially "two cultures: an essay on nationalism, class, and ethnic tension" (1968), as john porter's extensive analysis has demonstrated. bourque and laurin-frer.ette h3ve analysed the relation between the concents 'class' and 'nation' within quebec, raintaining that "a diversified class structure has existed within the two nations present in quebec's social format ion ... the stri-.ctuve <'.oes not prevent, on the one hand, the collaboration between the elates whose members are in the main from different nations, and on the other hand, the class struggle, within e^ch nation". while they see the two concepts as related they are by no means identical, nor should they be merged into such hvbrids as 'ethnicclass'. they define and analyse the concepts as fellows: an ethnic group forming a single dominated social class cannot therefore constitute a nation. we can only analyse it as a social class within the social formation and, in the case of the capitalist mode of production, the nation to which it belongs. in the case of an ethnically differentiated class, the ethnic character may be the vestigial result of another social formation; an earlier social formation in the case oi conquest; another nation, where large-scale emigration is involved (1972: 192) . the distinction _s put more simply by stanlev p.yerson when he says, "the concepts of class anil nation are not equatable. classes enbody relationships of property and work, in the context of a mode of product ion .. .nat ion-communi ty embodies an identity linguistic and cultural, that is not simply an 'effect' of class, however closely its evolution may he interwoven with the shifting patterns of class relations" (1972 : 224 ) . for some time now, quebec sociologists have been relating the issues of class and nation to a total society analysis. more than other sociologists in canada, they have ilso given a 'richer' meaning to the concept of class.* this can be seen, for exairple, in the use given the term by dofny and xioux: on the role of the middle class in french canada is a total society analysis which takes into account its larger context and the interplay between 'class' and 'nation'. tie clearly relates class developments and political movements within the context of ethnic differentiation. see also maurice pinard's paper on this topic, "working class politics: an interpretation of the quebec case", canadian review of sociology and anthropology , vol. 7, no. 2 (may 1970) . •contrast dofnv and rioux with porter's use of class (1965:9:s). 23 the concept of social class is intrinsically related to the concept of 'total society'; unless social and cultural phenomena are placed in the context of the total society, there is the risk of confusing social classes with groups based on occupation or socio-economic interests ... .social classes are very large groups, real rather than nominal, that appear in those societies where the economic structure predominates and determines the congruence between the other sub-systems of the society. these groups we call -social classes are mainly differentiated according to economic inequalities. social classes appear in heterogeneous societies and tend to form subcultures, in other words, cultural systems which are relatively coherent (1964:307-308). later dofny and rioux raise the problem of the "truncated" nature of the class system in quebec, a problem also raised by rocher when he speaks of "a double system of classes, permeating each other at certain leve'ls, but relatively autonomous in relation to each other" (1964:336). while porter is generally noted for his 'nominal' use of the term class, it is apparent in the following comment on quebec that he iz using the term as more than statistical categories. he says, "because british and french live as largely separate groups there are two class systems, each bearing the stamp of its own culture. both french and british have their old aristocratic families as well as their lower classes. however, these two class systems while operating side by side are also firmly interlocked in the economic system" (1165:91). unfortunately, there has not been a major attempt to provide a class analysis for the national society in the way this has been done for quebec. leo johnson's article (1972) is the closest there is to analysing classes as large, active groups on a national scale. this may be because they are not real or associational groups on this level but research has not been done to either confirm or deny this. aside from their importance in terms of 'class' and 'nation' , what is important in the way these concepts have been related analytically is the use of a historical perspective. this is particularly true for bourque and laurin-frenette, ryerson and guindon, but is also evident in porter, who says, "to understand the interplay between ethnic inequalities and class inequalities it is important to look at how ethnic differentiation within a society develops. in most historical instances it has been through conquest or migration" (1974:5). porter differs from others mentioned in one other important respect; he analyses the relationship between 'ethnicity' and 'class' 2k rather than 'nation' and 'class'.* this allows him to deal more broadly with canadian society as a whole because it extends the analysis to cover 'third' ethnic groups, representing about one quarter of the canadian population. a recent book by david hughes and evelyn kallen, the ana tomy of racism: canadian dimensions (1974), has expanded^ trie study of ethnicity well beyond earlier attempts. although they begin with one central problem, that of racism in canada, they expand their analysis to include a wide range of inter-related phenomenon, such as conquest, immigration, individual, institutional and structural racism, ethnic group boundaries, the role of education, religion and language, and the effect of state policies, as they affect and are affected by their central problem. of particular note is the way they are able to relate ethnicity and power, privilege and prestige in canada in a wav not evident since the vertical mosaic . hughes and kallen systematically deal with many problems at the core of a 'canadian sociology' by searching out the linkage between inequalities in each of these phenomenon. thus there are two fairly distinct issues; one concerning the place of quebec in confederation and another the relationship between class and other relatively fragmented eihnic eroups the first may be analysed in terms of conquest; the second is better understood in terms of selective migration and other factors . to summarize this discussion before examining some dominant issues in canadian society, it may be said that there is much that is suggestive in regional power struggle models, the consoc iat ional democracy model and the "class ''nation' distinction but they have not been developed into what could be called a model of canadian society. a number of sub-theories or models are available in the literature but they have not been brought together into a coherent and comprehensive 'canadian sociology ' . some issues in canadian society the preceding sections have discussed the idea of a 'canadian sociology' and some approaches which may prove useful in the attempt to develop this perspective. this final section will provide a few dominant issues (for illustrative purposes) which could be addressed in such an undertaking. the conclusion will provide some suggestions about how these issues could be related and expanded. •on the relationship between ethnicity, cultural groups and territory, see hughes and kallen (1974:88). (i) national identity and the social psychology of canadians the literature in canadian sociology on 'national identity 1 is probably more extensive than on any other single tonic*, particularly one at the national level, yet little consensus has emerged in terms of what this means in canada or -hat it? implications are for a 'canadian sociology'. some have argued canada is conservative because of its 'tory' origins and reiection of the american revolution, others that it is liberal because of its american orientation, still others that canadians are engaged in a love-hate relation with themselves and the united states. whatever the case may be, the 'national character 1 route to understanding canadian society seems a 'dead end' not a place to begin but a place to arrive. the onlv conclusion seems to be that there are a number of social forces affecting the way canadians act and believe. it seer.s -nore reasonable to first identify these social forces and the", address the consequences for the canadian consciousness. one of these social forces is ethnic diversity, the struggle between the french and english plus the ethnic pluralism of the other one quarter of the population. in the absence of alternative identities, the canadian state has pursued policies of ' biculturalism ' , and more recently, 'mult icul tural i? v , which serve to reinforce these atomized 'organized' mir orities . ' it is difficult to tell if these are identities arisinc from the canadian 'mosaic' or ideologies projected by the canadian state elite (see clement and olsen, 1974). sociologists themselves are not free from responsibility on this matter, as vallee and whyte have said: sociologists who have written on national character and values in canada have based their conclusions on impressions, introspection, and on inferences from such disparate sources as literature, historical developments, and statistics on a variety of subjects. the framework within which these studies are carried out and presented is almost always a comparative one in which canadians are •see, for example, kasper naegele (1968); s.d. clark (1974); george grant (1965); mildred schwartz (1967); j. m.s. careless (1969); john porter (1967, 1971, 1974); g. horowitz (1971); s. m. lipset (1964, 1971); don whyte (1973). ••examining the consequences of these policies porter says, "it really seems questionable that we seek our psychic shelters through ethnic identification. there is no doubt that ethnic groupings can play this role, but at the cost of perpetuating ethnic stratification" (1974:10). 26 viewed as not quite as american as the americans, not quite as british as the british, not quite as australian as the australians, not quite as french as the french. in this way, sociologists reinforce a folk impression of long standing that canada is a hyhrid product arid an intermediary between the united states and europe (1968:836). religion, ethnicity, linguistic groups, class, sex and region all compete with a sense of national identity but it seems an understanding of how and why these operate can best follow from the studv of the structure of canadian society. a study of regionalism using the framework outlined earlier would suggest some of the reasons why there are several identity references operating simultaneously. in the west, for example, there is one pull to central canada and another north-south pull to the united states. nations need not be monolithic or highly integrated; indeed, precisely the way the parts (be they ethnic, regional, class, etc.) relate to the whole is one of the most important and interesting variables. only very recently with the appearance of patricia marchak ' s ideological persp e ctive on canada has the weakness of the 'canadian character literature begun to be overcome an j this has been done by using a methodology different from the earlier studies. she has chosen to do her macrosocioloi;v of canada by counterposi ng "two versions of the canadian reality" --dominant and counter ideologies (1975:viff). the method is to contrast ideology and reality and see why some classes adopt one or another, and evaluate which 'fits' an understanding of canadian society. marchak is able to weave an analysis of history, class, nation, foreign ownership, sovereignty, regionalism, french canada, ethnicity, native peoples, sexual inequality, professions, unions, political parties, institutional arrangements--publ ic and private, education, wealth and income distribution into her theme of dominant and counter ideologies, and this is all done at the national society level. although they are not as yet related in such a way that it could be said that they constitute a model or theory of canadian society, the beginnings of such an attempt are apparent. an analysis using the regional power structure discussed earlier which attempted to integrate the findings of rex lucas' study, minetown, milltown, kail town , john porter's study of the national power structure anh other work on the international level* is another approach worth exploring. the number of such 'in a paper, "econfomic elites in ontario: a broader perspective on regionalism" (presented to the canadian studies institute, university of waterloo, november, l (->74), i attempted to show the linkages between the local, regional, national and international levels. this approach is particularly useful for illustrating the implications of broader powei structures on the day to day activitites of canal ians. 27 links as education, corporate control, regionalism, urban-rural migration, social mobility, unions anil others, are innumerable.* a study which tried to examine national identities based on these types of linkages would probably have more to say about how people develop 'identities' than those undertaken within the 'national identity' approach thus far. indeed, studies such as the impressive work of lucas have done a great deal to link the social psychological level of analysis into broader social forces and structures. it is likely that studies such as his or marchak's would be the primary way that a 'canadian sociology' approach could tap this level of analysis yet still retain its broad national focus. (ii) french canada as a hinterland model it was mentioned earlier that hubert guindon's analysis of french canada provides an analysis of a total society which could be expanded to the whole of canada. guindon links the "increase in the political and economic relevance of the provincial governments at the expense of the federal government" to changes which have occurred in the class structure of quebec (1968:33ff). this could also be related to postwar transformations in the prairies, particularly oil in alber*a, which have catalysed ;.imilar developments there.** althougi all of the parallels and points of analysis cannot be developed here, it is worthwhile to suggest some of the more obvious. guindon says, the vulnerability of the traditional elite set the stage for an easy introduction of industrialization even if it meant dependence on foreign capitalists. the capitalists transformed the french canadians into urban dwellers. to service the needs of the recently urbanized masses, the traditional power elite had to transform its institutions into large scale bureaucracies, giving birth in the process to the new middle class of french-canadian society (44). in these few sentences guindon has introduced and integrated a historical framework for the study of industrialization, bureaucratization, foreign investment, class transformations and the study of elites. later he discusses social mobility, saying, "french-canadian bureaucratic pyramids have a narrow base --geographically, socially, and organizat ionally--because of their small scale. this means that upward mobility is more re•these linkages will be returned to in the final section. *see john barr and owen anderson (editors), the unfinished revolt , mcclelland and stewart: toronto, 1971. stricted, less diversified, and less extended" (51). all of this resembles closely the experience of other regional hinterlands in canada.* it places the analysis within its canadian and international context, shows the limitations of attempting to create parallel mobility structures alongside dominant ones (and the need to do this because of exclusion from dominant ones) it explains the role local elites have in mediating with outside rower centers and where their interests are located. vallee and whyte have commented: compared to the total canadian nation-state, the distinctive entity called french-canadian societv is easy to grasp in its totality. the inter-dependence of the parts that make up the socio-political entity called quebec can be traced historically and synchronical ly in a way which it would be extremelv difficult to do for canada as a whole, except at the most abstract level (1968:850). perhaps it is not so much the size or complexity of canadian societv as the lack of attempting to develop such an approach anong english-speaking sociologists that explains this failure. surely the same ;ind of analysis can be done for the rest of canada; it even has the model of such analyses as guindon's to start with. . absentee ownership and 'linkages' since i have discussed the international setting of canada's economy elsewhere in "the changing structure of the canadian economy" (1974), only a few aspects of national level absentee ownership will be provided for illustrative purposes of some of the 'linkages' necessary to develop a 'canadian sociology'. canada's economy has two types of elites, comprador and indigenous, which are centered in relatively distinct economic sectors. the '.dor elites are the canadian counterpart of foreign controlled multinationals. in terms of the galtung model, they are the 'go-between' elites in the periphery nation. some modifications to this model are necessary because, in addition to the comprador or 'go-between' economic elites, there exist independent indigenous elites. aside from this amendment, the fragmented economic system in canada can be related to the fragmented political system, particularly in the context of the above re*the case studies of philip mathias', forced growth , james lewis and samuel: toronto, 1971 are interesting illustrations. all five cases are located within the weakest provinces. see also garth stevenson, "continental integration and canadian unity" in andrew airline, et al, editors, continental community ?, mcclelland and stewart: toronto, 1974. 29 marks on the relationship between foreign investment and regional hinterlands. that is, the fragmented political system has encouraged the development of foreign direct investment within various provinces which compete with each other thus encouraging differential patterns of growth between provinces and higher rates of foreign investment. this, in turn, has resulted in an increase in provincial power in the postwar period, particularly in the oil rich prairies, which has also weakened the federal system. these brief remarks suggest that it is important to establish relationships between various developments a*nd places them within their international context. absentee ownership on the national level has had important economic, political and regional implications but these represent only one side of the relationship. if the full implications for a 'canadian sociology' are to be explored, then other aspects must also be taken into account. absentee ownership may be defined in terms of the distance from a particular center, similar to the metropolis-hinterland chain discussed earlier. the boundaries under consideration must be specified; for example, at the national level foreign ownership is absentee and the economic boundaries do not coincide with the nation state. on the community or regional level, absentee ownership refers to the branches of firms which are not locally owned but are part of larger corporations, themselves either canadian or foreign owned. the consequences of foreign ownership at the national level and local level exhibit similar characteristics, including lack of autonomy from outside control and decision-making, withdrawal of capital and resources, as well as a higher degree of uncertainty about the continuation of the branch plant at both levels since by definition they are peripheral to the overall operation. another consequence of importance is the effect on the class structure and mobility of the indigenous population, either local or national. with a branch plant system, management is typically recruited outside the community and frequently transferred thus creating a system of 'transient managers'. this means local people have a lower probability of upward mobility and participation within this type of structure. on the national level the matter is more complex. if management is brought in from outside, as has often been the case in the past, the opportunity structure for indigneous canadians is blocked. however, if foreign firms recruit within canada to fill these positions, this opens the possibility for middle class canadians who are university educated. given the high degree of blockage which occurs within canadian controlled firms, this may be desirable from the perspective of individual mobility, but must be weighted against other consequences of absentee ownership suggested above plus the fact that this may be a way that indigenous entrepreneurial talent is drained off within canada, thus inhibiting the creation of indigneously controlled activity. 30 in some respects it does make a difference whether the absentee owners are canadian or foreign. these would be with respect to the retention of profits within canada which could be used to expand industrial activity thus creating greater surplus and more jobs. it would also mean that many of the secondary and tertiary spin-offs such as technological development could be supported and encouraged within canada. being based within canada may also mean the firms would be subject to greater regulation by the canadian state. in other respects it makes little difference whether the branch plant is canadian or foreign controlled, particularly for the regional or local level. in either case the major access points to occupational mobility, the major accumulation of surplus, and the sources of decision-making, occur outside the area. the community or region within which the branch plant is located is equally vulnerable to decisions taken at head office, be it in toronto or new york. this discussion is the result of taking several levels of analysis such as the local or regional level represented by rex lucas' minetown, mill town , rail town , john porter's analysis of national economic elites and tying them all together in a variation of regional power structure model. while tnis discussion is very brief and only illustrative, as well as being confined mainly to economic dimensions, it does provide some indication of the type of analysis that could be developed into a national society framework. the key analytical points are in the linking mechanisms between each level and a concern with the entire scope of the society, including the frequently missing local level. several other types of analyses could be provided which link external and internal developments; for example, the relationship between immigration and retaining a french-speaking population base for the purposes of political power as evident in the recent bill 22 controversy in quebec or the relationship between foreign control of industry, the occupational structure of the labour force and the implications this has for postindust rial ism. while these cannot be developed here, they give some indication of other types of studies which could be related to a national society analysis. conclusion the future of canadian sociology will depend upon its keepin? up with current trends and being able to place them within the context of the national society. in canada there is a double dilemma of trying to catch up empirically and theoretically by developing the basis for a 'canadian sociology' while at the sane time staying abreast of current developments and remaining relevant. moreover, there are many areas that have been almost totally neglected, not only in a substantive sense hut in the sense of the types of perspectives used in the analysis. for 31 example, there has never been in canada a macrosoc iological approach by a marxist on the scale of, say, charles ii. anderson (1974) for the united states, although elements of such an analysis exist such as leo .johnson (1972) on the decline of the petite bourgeoisie or in some respects davis' metropolishinterland analysis (1971) following the town-country dichotonv in marx. more work needs to be done even with existing studies. for instance, an important undertaking would be tying the analysis of class, power and elites together empirically; put crudely, this means tying part i of the vertical mosaic , 'the structure of class", into part ii, 'the structure of power', by maintaining the national perspective and adding an historical analvsis. there do exist a number of theories, models or at least themes about the nature of canadian society, some of which have already been mentioned. porter, for instance, has identified the relationship between class, power and ethnicity, and this has now been expanded by hughes and kallen; a.k. davis' hinterland-metropolis relationship based on regional inequalities; a. richmond's relationship between immigration and ethnic inequalities, following, in part, from porter's 'two stream model' of migration; leo johnson's changing occupational structure and the decline of the petite bourgeoisie; pat marchak's two competing versions of social reality; and i have suggested the relationship between foreign and indigneous economic development . together, and with others, it may be possible to form these into a 'canadian sociology 1 . social life is highly complex and experiments in types of societies have been varied. the task of social studies is to 'make sense 1 out of the variety of experiences and experimentations by identifying major processes, structures and relationships. therefore, the study of canadian society can and should be approached from a number of perspectives, using a variety of methodologies and data sources. but ultimately, to have relevance for the study of the national society, they have to be tied into an overriding framework and presumably be aimed at a common concern--such as improving the lot of canadians, which could mean being concerned about the decline of inequalities of all sorts and the increase and redistribution of the society's resources. it has been argued that the focus of a 'canadian sociology' should be on an array of substantive problems in canadian society but these in turn must also be worked out in terms of the priorities of each researcher. this means an evaluation of what are considered important or significant social issues and concerns, an analysis of them and reporting these results. the process of reporting to other scholars and the public is intended to have others re-examine what they consider to be social issues and to re-order their priorities accordingly. this goal would be one of the major tasks of such an undertaking, and one of its most important rewards. 32 one important question remains: is there a uniqueness to canadian society that makes it a valuable topic beyond its intrinsic interest to its residents? the answer offered in this paper has been in the affirmative. canada lends itself for comparison to probably a wider range of nations than does any other single country. it encompasses a number of problems such as its industrial development, ethnic diversity and regionalism, comparable with, yet distinct from, other countries. its rolr as a 'mediator' or 'go-between' generates a number of unique internal developments different from most other nations. for these reason's and more, it seems a worthwhile undertaking to continue to develop a 'canadian sociology'. postscript 1977 in the two years since this paper was written there has been a maturing of my thinking about models and theories of canadian societyt although i continue to accept the paper's central direction. i would now adopt the political economy tradition as the most fruitful approach; in my view, it has the strongest historical roots and the greatest insights int:> canada's social structure. it is a tradition represented in different ways in the works of such diverse people as donald creighton, harold innis, tom naylor and stanley ryerson. it encompasses scholars from c.e.macpherson to h. claire pentland to john porter. broadly contained within this tradition is the tasis for a distinctive canadian social science which would make sense of and give meaning to the development and current structure of canadian society. the following are what i regard as the most central components of a model of canada as develops 1 within the political economy tradition. these features of canadian society give direction to the most appropriate questions to be asked and relationships to be explained: 1. the implications of external relations for internal development, especially early colonial ties with france and the united kingdom and current dependence on the united states in many economic, political and military activities. 2. the. persistently active role of the canadian state in the economy and its fragmented federal-provincial structure . 3the continued survival of two nations within a single state--the conquered french and the conquering ;lish--and the demise of the native population. '* . the role of immigration in filling the west during t-arly stages ol pment (1879 to 191^) and the urban centres of too;<y {< specially montreal, toronto, and vancouver), which hnve served to build an indigenous 33 labour force and domestic market while creating an ethnically diverse society startified by class. 5. the persistence of enormous regional differences within the country, especially the underdevelopment of the atlantic region and the northern sections of the central and western provinces. 6. the constraints imposed by geography, especially the rapids of the st. lawrence river, the laurentian shield, the rockies, and now the north. 7. the effect of technology and the ownership of that technology, especially patent rights, in shaping the economy and labour force. 8. the tremendous costs of transportation networks from early roads, canals, ports, seaways, and railways to pipelines for oil and gas and their role in creating a national and continental economy. 9. the dependence on external markets, both as outlets for raw materials (making canada vulnerable to world conditions) and as capital sources (which ultimately act as drains on capital). 10. the origin of canadian capitalism in a staple economy, its movement into commercial and financial specialization and its continued reliance on resource extraction. 11. the persistence of a petty bourgeoisie class as the most powerful class outside the capitalist class until the second world .var, prior to which canada was largely rural and agrarian/resource based. 12. the slov/er development of an industrial working class, the product of large-scale industrialization which does not become a dominant force in canada until well into the twentieth century and continues today to be rivaled in importance by the service sector of the labour force, especially the growing number of state workers adding to an already overdeveloped commercial sector. as in any model, these central compenents are each related to the others. various theories have been offered in the political economy tradition which order these components and purport to explaintheir relationships in canada. for example, innis offered the "character of the staple' as explaining most of these other factors. creighton, on the other hand, contended that the central explanatory relationship of canada's development was the creative role of its commercial capitalists and their relationship to the state. naylor also focuses on this relationship as a r-.eans of explaining canadian development, but for him financial capitalists in canada have a distorting rather than creative role. for ryerson the relationship between the capitalist class and the working class is the central dynamic , although for him this class relationship is necessarily framed in the context of two nations in an 'unequal union'. contrary to ryerson's marxist approach is the liberal fra-nework of john porter and his thesis of a 'vertical mosaic' of social class and ethnicity which hac shaped canadian society. i am still not prepared to offer my own theory of canadian society as a whole or to present my theory of a canadian sociology, but i do know that those twelve features will le most important in doing so, and that the task itself is a valuable one . 31* references anderson, charles h. 1974 the political economy of social class. prentice-hall: englewood cliffs. bachrach, peter the theory of democratic elitism. little, brown: boston. bo'jrque, g. and n. laurin-frenet t i 72 "social classes and national ideologies in quebec, 176019~0" in g. teeple (ed.) capitalism and the national question in canada. university of toronto press. careless, j. m.s. 1969 '"limited identities' in canada", canadian historical review, vol. l, no. 1 (march). clark, s.d. 1974 "canada and her great neighbour", canadian review of sociology and anthropology, special issue: aspects of canadian societv. original 1964. clement, wallace 1974 "the changing structure of the 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perspective" in b. blishen, et al (eds.), canadian society. macmillan: toronto. watkins, mel 1970 "the branch plant condition" in a.k. davis (ed.), canadian corf rontations : hinterland vs. metropolis, proceedings of the 11 annual western association of sociology and anthropology, banff, alberta (december 19b9) . whyte, don 1973 "canadian identity and the colonial tradition", mimeo, carleton university: ottawa. zeitlin, irving 1973 rethinking sociology. prentice-hall: englewood cliffs, n.j. commentary: profit pathology and disposable planet | 217 commentary: profit pathology and disposable planet michael parenti is an award-winning author and lecturer . his recent books include god and his demons, contrary notions: the michael parenti reader, and the face of imperialism . for more information, please visit his website: www .michaelparenti .org some years ago in new england, a group of environmentalists asked a corporate executive how his company (a paper mill) could justify dumping its raw industrial effluent into a nearby river. the river—which had taken mother nature centuries to create–was used for drinking water, fishing, boating, and swimming. in just a few years, the paper mill had turned it into a highly toxic open sewer. the executive shrugged and said that river dumping was the most cost-effective way of removing the mill’s wastes. if the company had to absorb the additional expense of having to clean up after itself, it might not be able to maintain its competitive edge and would then have to go out of business or move to a cheaper labor market, resulting in a loss of jobs for the local economy. free market über alles it was a familiar argument: the company had no choice. it was compelled to act that way in a competitive market. the mill was not in the business of protecting the environment but in the business of making a profit, the highest possible profit at the highest possible rate of return. profit is the name of the game, as business leaders make clear when pressed on the point. the overriding purpose of business is capital accumulation. to justify its single-minded profiteering, corporate america promotes the classic laissez-faire theory which claims that the free market–-a congestion of unregulated and unbridled enterprises all selfishly pursuing their own ends–-is governed by a benign “invisible hand” that miraculously produces optimal outputs for everybody. the free marketeers have a deep all-abiding faith in laissez-faire for it is a faith that serves them well. it means no government oversight, no being held accountable for the environmental disasters they perpetrate. like greedy spoiled brats, they repeatedly get bailed out by the government (some free market!) so that they can continue to take irresponsible 218 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times risks, plunder the land, poison the seas, sicken whole communities, lay waste to entire regions, and pocket obscene profits. this corporate system of capital accumulation treats the earth’s lifesustaining resources (arable land, groundwater, wetlands, foliage, forests, fisheries, ocean beds, bays, rivers, air quality) as disposable ingredients presumed to be of limitless supply, to be consumed or toxified at will. as british petroleum demonstrated so well in the gulf-of-mexico catastrophe, considerations of cost weigh much more heavily than considerations of safety. as one congressional inquiry concluded: “time after time, it appears that bp made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense” (associated press, 2011). indeed, the function of the transnational corporation is not to promote a healthy ecology but to extract as much marketable value out of the natural world as possible even if it means treating the environment like a septic tank. an ever-expanding corporate capitalism and a fragile finite ecology are on a calamitous collision course, so much so that the support systems of the entire ecosphere–-the earth’s thin skin of fresh air, water, and topsoil–-are at risk. it is not true that the ruling politico-economic interests are in a state of denial about all this. far worse than denial, they have shown outright antagonism toward those who think our planet is more important than their profits. so they defame environmentalists as “eco-terrorists,” “epa gestapo,” “earth day alarmists,” “tree huggers,” and purveyors of “green hysteria.” in an enormous departure from free-market ideology, most of the diseconomies of big business are foisted upon the general populace, including the costs of cleaning up toxic wastes, the cost of monitoring production, the cost of disposing of industrial effluence (which composes 40 to 60 percent of the loads treated by taxpayer-supported municipal sewer plants), the cost of developing new water sources (while industry and agribusiness consume 80 percent of the nation’s daily water supply), and the costs of attending to the sickness and disease caused by all the toxicity created. with many of these diseconomies regularly passed on to the government, the private sector then boasts of its superior costefficiency over the public sector. the superrich are different from us isn’t ecological disaster a threat to the health and survival of corporate plutocrats just as it is to us ordinary citizens? we can understand why the corporate rich might want to destroy public housing, public commentary: profit pathology and disposable planet | 219 education, social security, medicare, and medicaid. such cutbacks would bring us closer to a free market society devoid of the publiclyfunded “socialistic” human services that the ideological reactionaries detest. and such cuts would not deprive the superrich and their families of anything. the superrich have more than sufficient private wealth to procure whatever services and protections they need for themselves. but the environment is a different story, is it not? don’t wealthy reactionaries and their corporate lobbyists inhabit the same polluted planet as everyone else, eat the same chemicalized food, and breathe the same toxified air? in fact, they do not live exactly as everyone else. they experience a different class reality, often residing in places where the air is markedly better than in low and middle income areas. they have access to food that is organically raised and specially transported and prepared. the nation’s toxic dumps and freeways usually are not situated in or near their swanky neighborhoods. in fact, the superrich do not live in neighborhoods as such. they usually reside on landed estates with plenty of wooded areas, streams, meadows, and only a few well-monitored access roads. pesticide sprays are not poured over their trees and gardens. clear cutting does not desolate their ranches, estates, family forests, lakes, and prime vacation spots. still, should they not fear the threat of an ecological apocalypse brought on by global warming? do they want to see life on earth, including their own lives, destroyed? in the long run they indeed will be sealing their own doom along with everyone else’s. however, like us all, they live not in the long run but in the here and now. what is now at stake for them is something more proximate and more urgent than global ecology; it is global profits. the fate of the biosphere seems like a remote abstraction compared to the fate of one’s immediate–and enormous–investments. with their eye on the bottom line, big business leaders know that every dollar a company spends on oddball things like environmental protection is one less dollar in earnings. moving away from fossil fuels and toward solar, wind, and tidal energy could help avert ecological disaster, but six of the world’s ten top industrial corporations are involved primarily in the production of oil, gasoline, and motor vehicles. fossil fuel pollution brings billions of dollars in returns. ecologically sustainable forms of production threaten to compromise such profits, the big producers are convinced. immediate gain for oneself is a far more compelling consideration than 220 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times a future loss shared by the general public. every time you drive your car, you are putting your immediate need to get somewhere ahead of the collective need to avoid poisoning the air we all breathe. so, with the big players, the social cost of turning a forest into a wasteland weighs little against the immense and immediate profit that comes from harvesting the timber and walking away with a neat bundle of cash. and it can always be rationalized away: there are lots of other forests for people to visit, they don’t need this one; society needs the timber; lumberjacks need the jobs, and so on. the future is now some of the very same scientists and environmentalists who see the ecological crisis as urgent rather annoyingly warn us of a catastrophic climate crisis by “the end of this century.” but that’s some ninety years away when all of us and most of our kids will be dead–-which makes global warming a much less urgent issue. there are other scientists who manage to be even more irritating by warning us of an impending ecological crisis then putting it even further into the future: “we’ll have to stop thinking in terms of eons and start thinking in terms of centuries,” one scientific sage was quoted in the new york times in 2006. this is supposed to put us on alert? if a global catastrophe is a century or several centuries away, who is going to make the terribly difficult and costly decisions today whose effects will be felt far in the future? often we are told to think of our dear grandchildren who will be fully victimized by it all (an appeal usually made in a beseeching tone). but most of the young people i address on college campuses have a hard time imagining the world that their nonexistent grandchildren will be experiencing thirty or forty years hence. such appeals should be put to rest. we do not have centuries or generations or even many decades before disaster is upon us. ecological crisis is not some distant urgency. most of us alive today probably will not have the luxury of saying “après moi, le déluge” because we will still be around to experience the catastrophe ourselves. we know this to be true because the ecological crisis is already acting upon us with an accelerated and compounded effect that may soon prove irreversible. the profiteering madness sad to say, the environment cannot defend itself. it is up to us to protect it—or what’s left of it. but all the superrich want is to keep transforming living nature into commodities and commodities into dead commentary: profit pathology and disposable planet | 221 capital. impending ecological disasters are of no great moment to the corporate plunderers. of living nature they have no measure. wealth becomes addictive. fortune whets the appetite for still more fortune. there is no end to the amount of money one might wish to accumulate, driven onward by the auri sacra fames, the cursed hunger for gold. so the money addicts grab more and more for themselves, more than can be spent in a thousand lifetimes of limitless indulgence, driven by what begins to resemble an obsessional pathology, a monomania that blots out every other human consideration. they are more wedded to their wealth than to the earth upon which they live, more concerned about the fate of their fortunes than the fate of humanity, so possessed by their pursuit of profit as to not see the disaster looming ahead. there was a new yorker cartoon showing a corporate executive standing at a lectern addressing a business meeting with these words: “and so, while the end-of-the-world scenario will be rife with unimaginable horrors, we believe that the pre-end period will be filled with unprecedented opportunities for profit.” not such a joke. years ago i remarked that those who denied the existence of global warming would not change their opinion until the north pole itself started melting. (i never expected it to actually start dissolving in my lifetime.) today we are facing an arctic meltdown that carries horrendous implications for the oceanic gulf streams, coastal water levels, the planet’s entire temperate zone, and world agricultural output. so how are the captains of industry and finance responding? as we might expect: like monomaniacal profiteers. they hear the music: ca-ching, ca-ching. first, the arctic melting will open a direct northwest passage between the two great oceans, a dream older than lewis and clark. this will make for shorter and more accessible and inexpensive global trade routes. no more having to plod through the panama canal or around cape horn. lower transportation costs mean more trade and higher profits. second, they joyfully note that the melting is opening up vast new oil reserves to drilling. they will be able to drill-baby-drill for more of the same fossil fuel that is causing the very calamity descending upon us. more meltdown means more oil and more profits; such is the mantra of the free marketeers who think the world belongs only to them. imagine now that we are all inside one big bus hurtling down a road that is headed for a fatal plunge into a deep ravine. what are our profit addicts doing? they are hustling up and down the aisle, selling us crash 222 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times cushions and seat belts at exorbitant prices. they planned ahead for this sales opportunity. we have to get up from our seats, quickly place them under adult supervision, rush the front of the bus, yank the driver away, grab hold of the wheel, slow the bus down, and turn it around. not easy but maybe still possible. with me it’s a recurrent dream. 978-1-926958-01-9 175 book review canada’s 1960s: the ironies of identity in a rebellious era by bryan d. palmer. toronto: university of toronto press, 2008. $35.00 us, paper. isbn 978-08020-9954-9. pages: 1-605. reviewed by edward hilchey1 curious about ‘what it is to be canadian’? if so, you are not alone. grounding this question of identity in history, bryan palmer theorises that the turbulence of the 1960s played a significant role in the destabilization of established notions of canadian identity. re-evaluating the personalities and movements of the 1960s, palmer argues that the 60s push towards an equitable society acted as a catalyst for questioning canada’s historic british identity. however, these movements did not provide any long lasting certainty over what canada’s national identity should entail. palmer’s style of writing quietly and gently guides us into his perception of canada’s experience of the 1960s. layering his work topically, palmer demonstrates himself to be as much of a cultural as he is a labour historian. well-supported with 143 pages of notes, he adds a humanistic depth to this work through a series of anecdotes from newspapers, poems, activist manifestos and other lesser known works. through the effective use of these resources with broader themes and debates, palmer critically engages the developments of the 1960s. palmer connects a range of events which emerged in the 1960s through creative and concise language, blending the transformation of this social and political climate. the choice to examine canada during the 1960s for palmer lies precisely in its overt activism. the 60s were marred with patterns of hostility demarcating regional, political, cultural, and linguistic disparities. through a marxist definition of irony (drawn from terry eagleton), palmer comments that “capitalism is that of a system 1 edward hilchey is an m.a. candidate at carleton university. he can be reached at ehilchey@connect.carleton.ca canada’s 1960s: the ironies of identity in a rebellious era 176 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research frozen in its fixed modes of representation, yet mobilizing a desire to overturn all representation; which gives birth to a great carnival of difference... which constantly conjures material inequality out of abstract equality; which is in need of an authority it continually flouts” (p. 9). the post-world war image of canada was that of a white european colony emerging to become a state. the irony was that canada was on the verge of confronting its own self image. in a renewed analysis, palmer counters the notion that canada’s 1960s was sui generis, that is, a spent generation whose objectives were not obtained (p. 5), and argues that this particular period was characterized with widespread changes in canada. palmer sets the stage by contextualizing events within the broader history affecting canada in the post-war era. part 1 begins with the fluctuation of the canadian dollar and its subsequent inflation in the early 60s. reflecting on the unstable dollar as an indicator of political and economic ineffectiveness, political blunderings became the backdrop to express (and subsequently elect) needed change in canada. these episodes quashed canada’s image as one of british dominion, settled by a robust and progressive populace. as well, it severed many historical economic ties with britain by shifting economic focus to the rise of the imperialist united states. in part 2, palmer tracks the international attention being afforded to canada through a variety of publicized events and scandals. emphasizing the role of electronic media in broadcasting and journalism, canadians became fascinated with sex scandals and political wrangling. from the munsinger affair wherein a displaced women from world war ii came to media attention due to her personal relationships with prominent conservative figures, to the acceptance of the ali-chuvolo fight where an underdog boxer survived fifteen rounds with the ‘louisville lip”. the way canadians perceived sexuality and white-ness was being transformed, paving the way for trudeau mania. canadians found themselves elated by the international recognition these events received, though these events flew in the face of victorian values and conventions. in parts 3 & 4, he mentions that the politicization of youth and striking workers lead to the opening of canada’s political organizations for debate. with airwaves and television screens saturated with nationalistic fervour, the unruly, reactive, and openly rebellious youth had moved from the margins of social transformation (paralleling labour) into “the very core of a decade’s understanding of social-political meaning” (p. 209). youth were rejecting integration into family and nation, as represented in the victoria day disturbances. street youth hostility shifted towards the development of subsequent banners of new left radicalism, revolutionary strife in quebec and indian red power. alternative identities awoke and broadcasted their displeasure with british canada. they drew their ideals, strength and support from the pantheon of marginal groups which were reinventing and redefining themselves. 177 the conclusion ends with the vanguard of british canada gathering with the world in montreal’s expo 67, celebrating canada’s arrival into the modern era. with the replacement of the red ensign for the maple leaf and an army of rcmp keeping the protestors and the flq at bay, canadian identity would remain precarious. yet, expo 67 and the maple leaf flag would be as unsuccessful at charting a unified path for canada as the victoria day celebrations and bank of canada issued currency before it. palmer’s remarks in the introduction are epitomized in this final section in which canadians “finally extricated themselves from a national identity... [that] so many voices had come to proclaim outmoded” (24). palmers understanding and application of historical materialism places increased emphasis on content and examples as compared to theoretical debate (five pages in the introduction are devoted to eagleson & his theoretical perspective). choosing to elaborate the historical antagonism bred from exploitation and struggle within canada, as seen in the dearth of detail, he presents an interpretive history of canada during the 60s, refocusing the period as a topic worthy of analytical spotlight. palmer uses this work to ‘suggest’ (p. 21) the reasons why the past happened as it did, and how the outcome of these events maintained a destabilized canadian identity. his analytical approach focuses on how the conflicting ideas were critically important to history. palmer concludes that the dominate relations of class conflict may be seen in the struggle over canadian identity, an identity which required significant consideration of how gender, race, empire and imperialism, social movements and identity interplay. the significance of this book lies within its reminder to scholars that the struggles of the 1960s have not completely died, and that this period has made a lasting contribution to canadian society. the intent is for others to understand the significant impact that 1960s & 70s politics and activism had in the uprooting of victorian canada. this book was written for both those who were present during the 60s and those who are interested in the implications of views from this period in canada. palmer asserts that what he offers through his work is “not so much a synthesis of the 60s, as suggestion on what destabilized the canadian identity, rooted in some specifics” (21). the point becomes clear that everything has a history; that before trudeau, we needed munsinger; that before red power or the flq, we needed ‘white niggers of america’ and hooliganism; that the transition of the canadian identity could only occur while being rooted in these events. reinforcing the point that canadians have accepted an undetermined identity rather than one passed down from establishment, this book reopens the tumultuous period which was the 1960s for further analysis. canada’s 1960s: the ironies of identity in a rebellious era 178 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research whole book pdf *±&fcm m the body deferred: reconsidering feminist approaches to embodiment diane enns carleton university biology provides a bedrock for social inscription but is not a fixed or static substratum: it interacts with and is overlaid by psychic, social and signifying relations. . . . the body can thus be seen not as a blank, passive page, a neutral ground of meaning, but as an active, productive, 'whiteness ' that constitutes the writing surface as resistant to the imposition ofany or all patterned arrangements (grosz, 1990:72). whileearlier feminists have cautiously circumvented any allusion to the body to avoid both the pitfalls of sexual difference and accusations of "biologism" or "essentialism", contemporary anglo-american feminists are frequent participants in what terry eagleton calls academic "body-talk" (1993:7). reasons for this shift are as varied and complex as the history of western ambivalence towards the body. but most significant is the advent of post-structuralist critiques of the autonomous, rational, masculine subject, and the concurrent feminist struggle to articulate women as subjects. the voicing ofsuspicions against these critiques, particularly bywomen ofcolour like bell hooks who claims they surface "at a historical moment when many subjugated people feel themselves coming to voice for the first time," (1990:28) has generated a proliferation of ideas concerning embodied subjectivity. as elizabeth grosz suggests, feminists are now eager to "question the terms in which the body has been previously theorized, as well as to question feminist rejections ofnotions ofwomen's lived bodily specificities" ( 1 99 1 :2) with a viewto dismantling the dualisms ofmind/body, self/other, and subject/ object, that continue to permit relations of domination. in this paper i <e) alternate routes, volume12, 1995 problematize the claim grosz makes that this retheorizing ofthe body moves it away from an uncritical association with nature and otherness, and an opposition to mind and self (1991:2). i argue that many of these new articulations of an embodied subject continue to bump up against articulations of the body, and by association, the referent, the real, the signified and nature. this body is always one more layer beneath the culturally-inscribed body, an inaccessible ground or beginning on which the spectre of essentialism lingers, rendering our efforts to speak as subjects unattainable. in effect, despite its promise to disassemble binary oppositions, much of the feminist work on the body inadvertently assumes the very categories it wishes to undermine. hence, wl\ile grosz is right to enunciate an "active" and "productive" notion ofbiology that acknowledges the contingencies in which our bodies are embedded, she simultaneously refuses contingency by invoking the "whiteness" of the writing surface that is our flesh. the tension inherent in tins stunning blindness to the effects of white consciousness, one of which is to obscure these effects, is characteristic of the contemporary discussion of embodied subjectivity. i will focus on two responses to the problem of bringing the body back into feminist concerns with identity and subjectivity that i believe clearly highlight the difficulty grosz displays in conceiving the flesh as contingent rather than fixed and immutable. attempts to speak with/in a body that cannot be reduced to "sexual indifference" or to an essentially-defined meaning ofwoman, are complicated by an uneasy shift between a demand for a theory ofthe female subject, and an adamant denunciation of such a demand as itself contributing to an essentialist discourse. those who hope to articulate a female embodied subjectivity no longer exposed to the errors of exclusionary politics, are attempting to revalue former notions of essentialism. conscious of the criticism by women of colour that white feminists' notions of subjectivity often mirror the traditional masculine model ofthe self dominating the other, feminists such as rosi braidotti attempt to situate subject positions in the contingent spaces of our bodies. to this end she states: i believe that the redefinition ofthe female feminist subject starts with the revaluation of the bodily roots of subjectivity, rejecting the traditional vision ofthe knowing subject as universal, neutral, and consequently gender-free. this 'positional' or situated way of seeing the subject states that the most important location or situation is the rooting ofthe subject into the spatial frame of the body. (1993:6-7) braidotti argues that the feminine needs to be re-connected to the "bodily sexed reality of the female," permitting a revaluation of what remains the condition of possibility for political activism-essentialism (1989:93). it allows for a politics of location that rejects global statements about women and in their place enables us "to be as aware as possible of where one is speaking from" (braidotti, 1993:8). with this in mind, braidotti calls for a recognition of "a bond ofcommonality among women," meaning "a consensus that all women partake ofthe condition of 'the second sex "' which "seals a pact among women... the foundation stone that allows for the feminist position or standpoint to be articulated" (1993:8). indeed, she goes so far as to define woman as "an umbrella term" that brings together a variety of different levels of subjectivity and different relationships to and notions of time (1993:7). it is difficult to seejust how a definition ofwoman as "an umbrella term" leads us to a politics of location, where the particularities of women's lives are not glossed over. it appears that braidotti's revaluation of essentialism has not overcome the central problematic for feminists concerned with this paradox. to circumvent it, braidotti advocates "an epistemological and a political distinction between 'woman' and 'feminist'" (1993:8); that is, between real women, speaking from a multitude of different locations, and feminist women, who must unite for political reasons. yet a third term is introduced, "woman," the historical representation of the feminine, 1 a "culturally dominant model for female identity" (braidotti, 1 993 : 8) that must be recognized as distinct from the reality of women's lives in order for feminists to elaborate a political subjectivity. braidotti concludes that "[t]he myth ofwoman is now a vacant lot where differentwomen can play with their subjectivity" (1993:9). what happens to the body in the kind of separations that allow women to play with what kind ofwoman they want to be, and at the same time (or maybe only sometimes) decide to be feminists for political reasons? it turns out that braidotti's notion of the body is as fraught with distinctions as her elaboration ofwoman. when shegets down tothetask ofdescribingjust what a "bodily sexed reality" is, we read that: the 'body' in question is the threshold of subjectivity: as such it is neither the sum of its organs—a fixed biological essence—nor the alternate routes, volume12, 1995 result of social conditioning... the 'body' is rather to bethought of as the point of intersection, as the interface between the biological and the social... (1989:97) in other words, this body that braidotti puts in quotation marks, marking it apart from what we know to be real, is not a collection of organs, tissue, and skin—that remains another layer beneath this 'body.' just what kind of body is this, and how many kinds are there? in arguing that "there is a fundamental qualitative distinction to be made between anatomy and sexuality as such," (1989:97) braidotti distances herselffrom the flesh-and-blood body that she argues so eloquently for incorporating into a theory of subjectivity. braidotti provides one example among many ever more sophisticated attempts by feminists to separate the flesh from metaphorical, symbolic, discursive, or theoretical bodies, in an attempt to givewomen apolitical voice. the body is stuck in the middle ofthese attempts, either uncritically assumed in its undesirable "natural" state and ignored, or re-dressed and propped up to pose in its new position as the indicator of particularity and locale for the female subject a second response to the problematic of essentialist discourses of the iffo body rejects altogether the notion of feminine subjectivity for being in itself an essentialistproject. judith butlerprovides an excellent exampleofonewho is critical ofthe perceived political need to construct a ground for identity, that is, a notion of woman as subject, since it is this ground that invariably excludes other identity positions. butler's opponents are those who claim that "politics requires a stable subject" to be effective (butler, 1993:4). on the contrary, she insists, we need to deconstruct the notion ofthe subject, not to negate it, but "to ask after the process of its construction and the political meaning and consequentially of taking the subject as a requirement or presupposition oftheory" ( 1 993 :4). to demonstrate such a consequence, butler asks how she is personally positioned as a theorizing subject: "how is it that a position becomes a positionf?]" for is it "one that i devise, publish, and defend, that belongs to me as a kind of academic property? or is there a grammar of the subject that merely encourages us to position me as the proprietor of those theories?" ( 1 993:9). in other words, while butler explicitly states that she does not "shirk" from using the pronoun "i,"she is adamant that this "i" is not theoriginator ofthese positions, but is constituted by them, for "[n]o subject is its own point of departure" (1903:9) similarly, butler states that she does not shirk from using the term women, admittingwe have to "speak as and forwomen" for political reasons. for "[s]urely, that is theway in which representational politics operates, and in this country, [the united states] lobbying efforts are virtually impossible without recourse to identity politics" (butler, 1 993 : 1 5). rather than shying away from it, butler argues we can release the term woman ' into a future of multiple significations. . . emancipate itfromthe maternal or racialist ontologies to which it has been restricted, and. . . give it play as a site where unanticipated meanings might come to bear" (1993:16). in order to facilitate this accommodation of both the destabilization of the category and the recognition of its usefulness, butler espouses a strategy that is critical of the common feminist assumption of a radical distinction between sex and gender. originally, she asserts, this distinction was stressed in order to free gender from the immutable natural-ness of sex, a prediscursive and pre-cultural given (1993:6-7). but the problem with this distinction, according to butler, is the assumption of sex as a natural category. if such a position is contested, butler argues, then "perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all" (1990:7). in butler's view, sex cannot bethe surface on which gender, as a form ofcultural inscription, imposes meaning. rather, sex itself is a gendered category, discursively constructed as a pre-discursive ground: "[t]his production ofsex as the prediscursive ought to be understood as the effect of the apparatus of cultural construction designated by gender" (butler, 1990:7). butler's denunciation ofthe subject is clearly caught up in what she sees as a problematicpositioningofthe body. in her notion ofsex—bywhich i think she means the body—as culturally constructed and therefore the same as gender, butler effectively collapses sex and gender into one free-floating signifier and removes them both from the body. where do we find a reconceived notion of the body? where do we find any body at all? once the distinction between the body and gender has been synthesized, butler outlines a strategy for "denaturalizing" sex. she proposes "a set of parodic practices based in a performative theory of gender acts" that allow a subversive "resignification and proliferation beyond the binary frame" of the body, sex, gender, and sexuality ( 1 990 :x). since parody is understood by butler to mean an imitation "that mocks the notion ofan original" ( 1 990: 138) <s> alternate routes, volume12, 1995 gender parody reveals only that there is no original gender identity on which gender "fashions" itself. what we think is an original is really a copy, a failed "ideal that no one can embody" (butler, 1 990: 139). she concludes from this that gender is merely "a stylized repetition of acts," a performance, neither real nor true, played out by cultural and political discursive regimes. 2 since she has already collapsed sex and gender into a single performance, we can only presume then that the body is also neither real nor true. hence butler has succeeded in removing our flesh from any considerations of identity, subjectivity, and voice. sex and gender are merely effects of discourse, despite butler's lip-service to reconceiving the body "no longer as a passive medium or instrument awaiting the enlivening capacity of a distinctly immaterial will" (1990:8). from these brief examples, and many others, 3 it is clear that feminist discussions ofembodiment reveal a relentless rejection ofthe "literal," "real," "biological," "p re-discursive," or "referent." indeed, the search for a way to separate the flesh from speech, consciousness, and subjectivity, can be thought of as seeking to position women's bodies somewhere else. as vicki kirby argues: ffo although rethinking essentialism marks an avowed return to the body, the reunion is always be-ing deferred. it is certainly not an easy homecoming. perhaps commerce with the body is considered risky business because the border between the mind/body split... just cannot be secured. (1992:6) the problem facing feminist attempts to envision a re-embodied subject arises out of the assumption of the very terms they are struggling to destabilize: the notion of a fixed universal body that must be rejected as an inaccessible pre-discursive reality. in effect, as kirby claims, it is assumed that "ifthe ground isn't solid then it isn't a ground—if it moves and changes, then it must bejust the representation ofa ground" ( 1 992: 1 4). in other words, the feminist anti-essentialist stance is ironically founded on an essentialist notion of the body, nature, or biology, that is absolute and immutable (kirby, 1992:14) we cannot continue to talk about a female embodied subject that is rooted in the traditional notion of the body alienated from consciousness and the world while there are several feminist intellectuals currently engaged in such a critical project, most notably grosz and kirby, ' what i think is missing in even the most eloquent and persuasive invitations to rethink the body, is a sustained conceptualization of the body as flesh, as inseparable from consciousness and actively interacting with the surrounding world. 5 once we accomplish this, it will no longer be necessary to speak of the body as though it were some entity isolated from minds, others, and the world we share. the urgency of such a project is evident in grosz's assumption of the "bedrock" that is the body; that while viewed as interacting with social inscription and thereby accounting for all the contingencies and particularities of life, it is nevertheless conceived of as a "whiteness." sidonie smith is right to remark that the discourse of embodied woman is comprised of the subjectivities of those "angels in houses": the bourgeois women. as the universal, male subject is formed through the discourses of identities such as race, class and sexuality, "so those angels take shape through the discourses of various kinds of contaminated women, those even more 'colorful' others who are denied the possibility of escaping the drag of the body" (smith, 1993:17). notes 1. see teresa de lauretis, sexual difference: a theory of socio-symbolw practice, (1990) for a description of her differentiation between "woman" as cultural imago, and women, /ft) as real agents of change. 2. for example, the practice of drag, butler suggests, "plays upon the distinction between the anatomy of the performer and the gender that is being performed," thereby exposing the imitative and contingent structure of gender itself (1990:137). 3. elsewhere i have included the work of elspeth probyn who makes distinctions between a "natural" body and a "discursive" body (see "this body which is not one: speaking an embodied self," hyparia 6:, no. 3, 1991). see also feminist responses to irigaray, whose discussions of female embodiment provoke enormous ambivalence and anxiety in anglo-american feminist writing: maggie berg (1988), diana fuss (1989), toril moi (1985), margaret whitford (1989). 4. tania modleski and moira gatens should also be noted here. modleski convincingly argues against an "as if' position in her first chapter of feminism without women (1991), appropriately entitled "post-mortem on post-feminism," where she asks "could we... say of anti-essentialist feminists that only those possessing vastly wider options than the majority of women living in the world today can play at 'being if while theorizing themselves into the belief that they are not it?" (1991:22). gatens points to the split between representation and reality, and the "impotence of our political vocabulary" for articulating bodily difference ("corporeal representation in/and <e> alternate routes, volume 12, 1995 the body politic,'' cartographies: poststructuralism and the mapping of bodies and spaces, north sydney: allen & unwin, 1991: 85). 5. i am thinking here of the work of maurice merleau-ponty as well as the novels of toni morrison: two examples of writers who ignore the dualities of flesh and consciousness, flesh and object, and flesh and word, and move on to an understanding of what it means to be sentient beings references braidotti, rosi 1989 'the politics of ontological difference." pp. 89-105 in teresa brennan (ed), between feminism and psychoanalysis. new york: routledge 1993 "embodiment, sexual difference, and the nomadic subject." hypatia 8 (1):1-13. butler, judith 1 990 gender trouble: feminism and the subversion ofidentity. new york: routledge 1992 "contingentfoundations:feminismandthequestionof"postmodernism." pp. 3-2 1 in judith butler and joan w. scott (eds.), feminists theorize the political. new york: routledge 1993 bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of "sex". new york: routledge eagleton, terry 1993 "it is not quite true that i have a body, and not quite true that i am one either," london review ofbooks 15 (10):7-8. grosz, elizabeth 1990 "inscriptions and body-maps: representations and the corporeal." pp. 6274 in terry threadgold and anne cranny-francis (eds), feminine, masculine and representation. sydney: allen & unwin 1991 "introduction." hypatia 6 (3): 1-3. hooks, bell 1 990 yearning: race, gender and cultural politics. toronto: between the lines kirby, vicki 1992 "addressing essentialism differently... some thoughts on the corporeal." i niversityof'waikato women \s studies occasional paper series. new zealand: university of waikato, 4: 1-23. smith, sidonie 1 993 subjectivity, identityand the body: women 'sa utobiographical practices in the twentieth century. bloomington: indiana university press alternate routes a critical review editorial board: jim conley, joan st. laurent alternate routes is an annual publication of graduate students in sociology and anthropology. manuscripts, subscriptions and communications should be addressed to: alternate routes department of sociology and anthropology carleton university ottawa, ontario, canada k1s 6b6 the editorial board wishes to establish a genuine forum for the exchange of ideas. we welcome critical responses, commentaries or rejoinders, which we will endeavour to publish in subsequent the editors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university, and its chairperson, gordon irving. we also wish to thank bev cruikshank for her administrative assistance and karen bouris for for speedy and expert typing. subscriptions : individuals and institutions: $3.50. make cheques payable to alternate routes. copyright 1980, alternate routes, unless otherwise noted. editorial statement alternate routes is a critical review of sociology and related disciplines. we strive to publish the critical work of graduate students which will inform, and be of interest to students and teachers of social science. in our view, sociologists must be critical, both of their own society and of the work of other social analysts. we seek, therefore, to publish work which challenges existing sociological and societal orthodoxies. to achieve this goal we require manuscripts. we encourage graduate students among our readers to submit essays, reviews, commentaries and rejoinders on a wide variety of subjects. we particularly welcome work which treats some aspect of canadian society within the wider concerns of critical social science. isbn 0-7709-0108-5 a critical review vol. 4 1980 contents robert alford (u. of california, santa cruz) elections, state policy and the marxian tradition in political sociology: an interview 1 stella lord (carleton university) the struggle for equal pay for work of equal value: a case study 21 robert white (australian national university) knowledge and power: determinations of educational curriculum 53 john malcolmson (simon fraser university) the limits of keynesianism: some theoretical observations 87 debra clarke (carleton university) the state of cultural theory: a review of past and present fashions 105 digitized by the internet archive in 2011 with funding from carleton university, department of sociology & anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesc04alte elections, state policy and the marxian tradition in political sociology: an interview robert alford introduction like the discipline in general, political sociology in north america has undergone considerable change since the early 1960s. in his career and publications, robert alford reflects many of those changes, which are of more than merely historical interest for scholars working in political sociology. alford is probably best known in canada for the published version of his doctoral thesis, party and society: the anglo-american democracies , in this comparative study of "class voting" in great britain, australia, the united states and canada, he found that canada scored lowest on the index of class voting. although not always welcomed or accepted by them, this seminal work has provided subsequent canadian scholars with an agenda for debates on the methods, conceptions, indicators and explanations concerning the presence of class in canadian elections. from these early pluralist beginnings, alford went on to study the development of health policy in new york, from what might be called an elite perspective, and liter to studies of political participation and urban politics from a broadly marxian perspective, critical of both elite and pluralist approaches. along the way, an article on paradigms in political sociology summarized some of the differences among these approaches. the transformations represented by robert alford' s career, which reflect and are part of broader changes in political sociology, are of more than historical interest because he has attempted to combine the insights, levels of analysis and concepts of pluralist, elite and marxist approaches into a perspective able to deal with the complexities of politics in liberal democracies. the interview is presented in the hope that it will stimulate thought and discussion on the relationships among voting, the operations of state agencies, capital accumulation, and social class. directions for further work are indicated tentatively in the interview, but they need to be developed in theoretical reflection and empirical research on politics in canada and elsewhere. that the interview ends abruptly, with loose ends left dangling, is thus appropriate. robert alford was interviewed at carleton university on march 20, 1980, by jim conley. 1. e.g. r. ogmundson, "party class images and the class vote in canada," american sociological review 40 (1975): 506-512. 2. see the interview for references. j.c. to start from the beginning, you are probably best known in canada for party and society , where you compare class voting in canada, the united states, great britain, and australia. as you no doubt know, it continues to inspire work by canadians such as john myles and others. your recent work seems to take a starting point that's a long way from the pluralist assumptions that were behind party and society . that change seems to reflect wider trends in political sociology in north america. how do you explain this change in north american sociology, and perhaps in robert alford? second, do you consider the kind of voting study you did in party and society to be worthwhile still? if it is and you were to do it today, would you do it differently? in what ways? how would you analyse the electoral system and elections in liberal democracies? r.a. those are large questions and it is a little hard to formulate a coherent and well-developed answer on the spur of the moment. i suppose the quick and easy, but basically accurate answer to the first one is that the change in my own perspective does reflect certain trends in north american political sociology. old problems have persisted and new crises have emerged which cannot be theoretically understood or politically dealt with in the framework of existing political theories or mechanisms for liberal reform. that's the quick answer. i think the change in sociology is more marked than in other social sciences partly because of the more diverse intellectual traditions within sociology. historically, sociology always has been more 1 (chicago: rand mcnally, 1963) influenced by marxist or neo-marxist ideas. even people who have been pluralists have always included some aspects of analysis of the class structure. lipset is the best example. i think his agrarian socialism is a very important work. whatever criticisms you can make of sociology, many in the field recognize the importance of class interests and the class structure for state policy. the critical tradition is not alien to sociology; it remains dormant under some historical conditions and re-etierges under others. with respect to the second part of your question, elections and voting are not merely devices to control or co-opt popular struggles. they are important democratic institutions, however much they are biased and distorted through the ways in which participation is rendered fictitious and despite the pact thct voting and party competition have relatively little effect on major developments. my answer is that voting studies are important, and i don't think they have to be done within a pluralist perspective. i haven't really thought about the issue of how i would do party and society differently. that book differed from the classic pluralist analyses of voting in the sense that i was analyzing class voting as an attribute of the system, rather than examining the factors predisposing individuals to vote in a certain way. the "columbia" and "michigan" traditions were primarily interested in the determinants of the voting decision. you have on the one hand the concern of the michigan school with issues, candidates and party identification as the triple determinants of individual behavior. the classic studies respectively are: bernard berelsen, et al.. voting (chicago: univ. of chicago press, 1954) and angus campbell, et al . , elections and the political order (ny: wiley, 1966). on the other hand, you have the more institutional concern of the columbia school with cross-pressures and the impact of religion versus class in the earliest studies. because i was a student of lipset's i drew more upon the columbia tradition in my dissertation, but i transformed it into a structural analysis of an attribute of the system and not of a set of individual variables predicting individual voting. i still think that was the right way to do it. with different measures, in the light of john myles' critique of the index of class voting and with more theoretically self-conscious and empirically adequate indices of the social base of parties in different regions and nations, such studies can still be useful. now given the line of development of my more recent work, i would look for the links of voting much more with state policy, the political strategies of elites and the changing class situation in particular political units. i now would use a much broader theoretical framework for the analysis of elections and voting. j.c. i found what you said earlier about elections being important a bit surprising. although it may simply be my reading of it, the paper on 4 political participation and public policy you did with roger friedland gives me the impression of a concentration on the symbolic effects of voting and similar forms of political participation, and an emphasis on the social control aspects rather than the policy effects of political participation. r.a. i absolutely agree; i think you stated the point of that article correctly. but elections have both aspects: they are genuine democratic john myles, "differences in the canadian and american class vote: fact or pseudo-fact," american journal of sociology 84, no. 5, march 1979, pp. 1232-1237. "political participation and public policy," annual review of sociology , vol. i, 1975, pp. 429-479. institutions because they provide equal rights to participate to all citizens and because their outcome installs a regime with great potential power over important decisions. the fact that they are genuine gives them great symbolic power as an instrument of social control. that's the paradox. elections have an impact: proposition 13 in california is a good recent example. it was an overwhelming demonstration of the electoral power oi the people. this particular decision had reactionary consequences, but the referendum shows people that their vote has an impact. elections and the machinery of voting, and the biennial and quadrennial spectacles of party competition around congressional and national elections in the united states do absorb the political attention of the population. in that sense they are like sports events: the symbolic function of elections that murray edelman and ike balbus, among others, have emphasized. but they wouldn't have that effect if they did not have genuine and real political import as well. if elections were purely spectacle and thus only symbolic, they would not have that impact. j.c. in a recent paper on the urban fiscal crises, or better, on urban fiscal strains and the way crises are created out of them, you and your co-authors try to analyse the forces making for a rise in public expenditures. in the context of neo-conservative or reactionary attacks on public expenditures (particularly social services) exemplified by proposition 13, which seem to be able to mobilize many people against the visible sources of their personal fiscal strains of taxes, etc., that sort of analysis seems 'roger friedland, frances fox piven, and robert r. alford, "political conflict, urban structure and the fiscal crisis," intl. journal of urban and regional research , vol. 1 #3, oct. 1977, pp. 447-471. an important topic for left sociologists. they are politically important, but as you and your co-authors note at the end of that article, in the absence of any mass movements of political change, they seem also to be politically impotent. do you see that sort of analysis connecting up in any way to political movements, and in more general terms, what role does sociological analysis have in this kind of situation? r.a. well, you're asking three or four related but somewhat different questions. i do think that our point was an important one, namely that there is a potential political basis for challenges to the cuts in public and social services. but i don't see that our analysis or others like it have had much direct impact in mobilizing a reaction to them. the connection between research and intellectual analyses and political movements has always been a highly indirect and mediated one, so that the role of critical analyses of particular policies and their impact in enlivening a movement or providing ammunition for it is quite unclear. j.c. it is also a question that seems to have plagued sociologists. they usually seem to have been particularly concerned about the social and political effects of their work and often try to give what they do some political relevance. it is very obvious in the case of piven and cloward's poor people's movements , where the analysis is intended to inform the strategy of that sort of movement. it is less clear in the case of most other work, but there still seems very often to be some political impetus. r.a. of course piven and cloward are among the few left social scientists who have been actively involved in the movements that they write (new york: vintage books, 1979) about. as you know they were instrumental in helping to shape the welfare rights movement and earlier cloward helped form mobilization for youth in new york city. but it is unclear what their analyses contributed as opposed to their own presence as organizers. it may be that sociologists have to participate directly in order to have an impact, like anybody else. j.c. we've already spoken indirectly about a flowering of marxist sociology in north america. as a paradigm in sociology, is marxism a fragile flower always in danger of fading, or is it a fairly hardy young weed that will strongly resist any attempts to get rid of it? what are the strengths and weaknesses of marxist theory and research in sociology? r.a. that question presupposes an answer to a question that you didn't ask. i think it's a mistake to talk about marxist sociology, because i think that implies that "arxism is a sufficiently comprehensive and adequate theory by itself on which to base an analysis of sorietv. marxist concepts are intrinsically interdisciplinary, and for marx they belong to a "critique of political economy." even that currently popular phrase— "political economy"—seems to me in some ways to be untrue to the spirit of marxism as a critique of the partial theories that derive from the arbitrary disciplinary boundaries of the social sciences and history. there is also another reason why speaking of "marxist sociology" is not a good idea. i think such a usage reinforces and maintains lines of antagonism within political and theoretical debates that are not healthy. that is, it tends to set up a polarization between people who are willing to include themselves as marxists and those who are then willy-nilly in a non-marxist camp, i think that is politically and theoretically dangerous. to answer your question rephrased, i would regard marxism as an intellectual tradition that should be available and dealt with seriously by all sociologists as a very important component both of the education of students and available for people to deal with regardless of the problem they are working on. given that, i would say that the marxist theoretical tradition is developing and likely to have more and more influence, if it avoids the double tendencies towards self-ghettoization and repression: the exclusion of people who use the marxist tradition from jobs, or the intimidation of those who have jobs. while political repression is certainly not created by sectarianism, it is at least made possible to some extent by the tendency of the left to fragment and become hostile sects. you asked about the strengths and weaknesses of marxism as a paradigm in political sociology. let me speak to the strengths first. first, in a marxist analysis crises of the state are not simply exogenous phenomena that burst upon the scene like a storm but are explainable within the structure of the theory and of the society. second, class relations and class conflict are recognized directly and centrally as having an independent causal impact on state policies and state structures. organizations of both capital and of the working class are regarded as among the fundamental forces at work in society, both to shape its structure and to bring about change. to start from those premises as starting points of analysis i think is a contribution of fundamental importance. the main deficiencies of marxism in political sociology are that marxism has no satisfactory theory of the state or of democracy. the recent attempts to develop a concept of the relative autonomy of the state do not go far enough in recognizing the internal dynamics of the state. once institutionally established, separated by the very requirements of capitalist rule, the state 9 cannot be understood in any direct way as representing the interests of the capitalist class. that is recognized in general by the formula "relative autonomy of the state" but not in practical analysis. in concrete analyses these tend to fall back on either an "instrumentalist" or a "structuralist" perspective, either to discover to what extent agents of the capitalist class are directly present in the making of state decisions or to assume that the structure of the state in the "last instance" serves or represents the interests of capital as a whole. neither of these assumptions is a good starting point for analysis. j.c. if i'm not mistaking your position, your solution to that problem is basically to look at the consequences of state policy, at who benefits from state policy. that leaves the question of who is served by state policy open, but it doesn't avoid the functionalist trap of going from who benefits to an implied causal mechanism. the only way to avoid that is to go back and look at the causes of state policies, and it seems to me that the so-called structuralist theory of the state is at least starting to do that. you're correct that there is still this assumption that in the last analysis (a nice loophole) the state will serve the capitalist class or a fraction of the capitalist class. but there is starting to be a recognition, e.g., in poulantzas' state, power, socialism , ' that you have to look at the mechanism by which that happens and an implicit question of whether that is always going to happen. r.a. well, it is certainly inadequate to say "to look at the mechanism" because that formulation still accepts the assumption that "that happens" (i.e. the function for capital) in the normal political process. that assumption is precisely what has to be questioned. that is thr theoretical inadequacy of the marxist tradition at 7 lxmdon: nlb, 1978. 10 this time. i'm obviously gliding over the significant differences among marxists with respect to this question, e.g., among miliband, poulantzas, and o'connor .that leo panitch and others have been trying to specify and which are very important. in talking about the consequences of state policy i wasn't saying that approach will solve all the problems because that is not really a theoretical position but rather an "entry point," the point where you analytically enter this complex system and develop a research question which will enable you to ask something quite concrete. the opposite approach is somewhat easier—to postulate, and be right, incidentally—that the causes of state policies and state structures are constrained in some broad way by the fact that the state exists within the capitalist context. but if one examines the consequences of state policies then i think it's harder tc accept that theoretical postulate. both for causes and consequences, the form and level of class conflict—among other factors—have an impact. i think that in the famous poulantzas-miliband debate they're both right. what i mean by that is that poulantzas is right in arguing that the direct participation of members or agents of the capitalist class is indeed as he puts it "chance and contingent," that it's not necessary for the capitalist class always to be present in order for their interests to be served. but i think miliband was right in sayina that we have to specify the concrete conditions under which specific political elites function and in whose interests they function. you can't postulate that the structure of the state is organized in such a way as to serve capitalist interests either in the short run or in the long run. j.c. there's a difference of levels then. 11 r.a. that's right. the issue must be defined as one about the historical conditions under which different class agents must be mobilized to serve their interests. it has to become a historically concrete problem. i would even argue that if you find members of the capitalist class directly present, it is a sign that they are either losing or in danger of losing. that is, only in political and economic crisis must they become active in order to influence policy. if the state is running smoothly, then in effect they don't have to be active (it is even better that they are not active) to have their interests served. i'm not arguing this empirically; this is a theoretical speculation. now look at what this theoretical position leads to. certain kinds of issues are likely to become public, visible, and then politically open to the participation of more groups. in such instances of crisis the situation has the appearance of pluralism, that is, the outcome is genuinely uncertain. therefore ruling elites and dominant class interests are vulnerable in those moments and must mobilize if the outcome is indeed vital to their interests. yet the outcome is problematic, because the issues have become public and visible and therefore politicized. that's why "mapping" the whole range of state decisions and state policies is important. otherwise you. tend to have a biased sample of either those issues and decisions which are insulated from popular and democratic influence or those which are highly politicized and in which the outcome is genuinely doubtful. j.c. in the article about the urban crisis that we've already referred to, the argument is made that there is a seqreqation between public and o politicized issues dealing with what o'connor calls legitimation and you call political integration, and the insulated ones, out of public view and a the fiscal crisis of the state . new york: st. martin's, 1973. 12 concerned with accumulation. are you saying then that in cases of crisis the ones that are ordinarily insulated become public issues? r.a. no, not necessarily, but if they do then the balance of political and class forces has shifted and the outcome becomes problematic. we are assuming that we are dealing with capitalist societies that are democratic in the sense that mechanisms of participation do make a difference, if popular interests get mobilized. i'm not at all assuming that the balance of power always shifts in moments of crisis, quite the contrary. 9 j.c. both in health care politics and in this urban crisis article, and in contrast to much marxist writing that tends to see crises as more or less automatic results of tendencies of the system, you appear to be arguing that crises are created by elites as a way of resolving strains that exist within the state. r.a. i guess this might be looked at as the transposition into the state of what marxists used to call in the economy a "shakeout," i.e., the destruction or elimination of the less efficient firms in the economic crisis. maybe political crises have that same character, as a way of getting rid of the less efficient state agencies. j.c. it sounds awfully conspiratorial. r.a. no, not necessarily. i don't think we intended to imply (although we may have come close to it) that crises were that free floating and could be created by political elites almost at their will. certainly not. different interests are strategically located at different places to take advantage of crises and to exacerbate them, to define them ideologically in certain ways 9 (chicago: university of chicago press, 1975) 13 or to use them to get leverage in different ways. once a situation like that is in existence, the outcome is to some extent open. they may not be able to control the outcome. popular interests may mobilize and have an impact that could not be foreseen or controlled. and not all crises are created by elites in any direct sense, for example the sort of thing discussed by piven and cloward in poor people's movements . j.c. in party and society you did a comparative study, and in the urban crisis article called for more comparative studies of such phenomena. it seems very often that marxists and left sociologists haven't done that, often i suppose because they find that a lot of very basic work has to be done in their own society before any attempt is made to be comparative (such is the case in canada, i'd say). do you see much prospect for real comparative work that takes account of the different levels of analysis in political sociology? r.a. i think this is a general problem for people working in the marxist tradition and for others. perhaps it is more difficult for people working in the marxist tradition because of their refusal to see different levels or different units of analysis as autonomous. the best marxist analyses are both multi-level and historical, so the problems of comparative analysis are compounded. i'm not sure that it's a good starting point to say that much of the fundamental work has to be done in one society, because you don't know what the criteria for relevance are until you have some sense of comparison. if you're doing a case study of one country, you can quickly get enmeshed in the details which may be unique so that they are not general izable. if the specific family alliances among elites, say, in canadian society are completely idiosyncratic and yet have decisively influenced some rather : i critical investment decisions, you may not know that unless you've started out with a comparative framework using the economic consequences of ruling class family networks as your problem. it's a chicken and egg problem to some extent. you don't know what the relevant factors are until you've done the comparative study, but you don't know how to do the comparative study unless you know enough about each case to make the comparison. it depends on the state of knowledge in a particular area as to whether it's better to get the facts straight history of a particular institution or state policy. a lot of groundwork like that certainly has to be done in many areas. on the other hand, it may be better to start out comparatively, if you are able to develop a comparative framework using theoretical guidelines as to what is relevant. this rather important issue of research design underlines the importance of creating a research group where it's possible to have a genuine division of labour, not necessarily collective work but at least a genuine intellectual division of labour on some of these problems. j.c. in the sense of people working on different problems or people working in different areas? r.a. both. i recommend this approach highly. people in france, britain, the united states and canada may be working on pension policy, for example. they get together for an initial conference where they compare notes in a kind of gestalt about the general pattern of the policy making and history of pensions. the process will sensitize them to the dimensions of variability as well as about factors each person is not aware of because some process is absent in their own country. if the research process becomes a quasi-collective division of labour both detailed case studies and systematic comparisons can be done at once in some sense. is i advance that vision of the ideal research process as theoretically desirable but in practice i haven't done any mors comparative work than most other people. but i have been involved in an international group trying to work on urban crises. we want to analyze the differences in the specific structures of the state which deal with these problems. in canada, for example, you could look at the centralization and de-centralization of the state as a rolitical strategy, not as the iron boundaries within which political struggle occurs. the very structure of the state is an object of political and class conflict. j.c. one question that lies behind some of the questions i've already asked concerns r. paper you did on paradigms in political sociology several years ago. in that paper, you appear to simply set out the alternative paradigms without really taking a stand on any of them. in the work you've done since then you do seem to take some position. what i would like you to do is not so much to say that one is better than another (although i want you to do that too) , but rather to state the grounds on the basis of which you would say that you should use one paradigm in preference to another. perhaps you'd have to take all three in any concrete problem. r.a. the essay you refer to was written in 1973 and it certainly did not take a stand on any of them. it attempted to state the assumptions of the class, elite and pluralist paradigms and contrast their distinctive assumptions and power to explain different aspects of social reality. to some extent i would still take that position, i.e. , that there is no adequate general theory. as "paradigms of relations between state and society," in leon lindberg, et al., editors. stress and contradiction in modern capitalism (lexington: lexington books, 1975), pp. 145-160. 16 i said earlier in the interview, marxism has no satisfactory theory of either the state or of democracy and can only with great effort be extended to cover some phenomena. they tend to be regarded as residual or unique features of the "social formation" or of the "conjuncture." i don't object to that mode of theorizing as long as it's clear what limited realms of experience and historical evidence the person who is making that statement realizes they are explaining, that other historical processes and factors remain open for investigation and interpretation. but you're also certainly right that in later writings i come closer to containing what i would now describe as the insights of pluralism within a combination of elite and class perspectives. if i had to describe the nature of a position or a synthesis i would put it that way. the autonomy of groups and the free formation of preferences as in the classic pluralist approach to politics i regard as a useful mode of explanation only within a very narrow range of real political issues. i think there are certain parameters or conditions under which you can describe the outcomes of political conflict using a pluralist model, but those conditions then have to be specified using concepts drawn from essentially a theory which specifies the autonomy of the state structure and the autonomy of the class structure. i realize that's a cryptic statement. you're raising one of the most fundamenta epistemological issues, that is, how (if it is possible) to integrate alternativi paradigms or perspectives. in effect you're asking me to give you a brief and almost glib synthesis, which is a very difficult thing to do, but i will try. first, the requirements of legitimation and accumulation in the capitalist state requires that the state be institutionally separated from the economy, that is the state cannot be under the direct and visible control of the capitalist class for various reasons that the neo-marxists have specified. 17 second, once the state is institutionally separated, it becomes internally differentiated into a politicized and de-politicized sector. this differentiation does not happen in ways which necessarily serve the interests of capital. this is the elite component and it is not the same as either an instrumentalist or a structuralist marxist prediction of the structure. now the pluralist element is that the politicized sectois genuinely open to change brought by the demands of diverse social groups. the political energies of the mobilized groups and parties are absorbed in attempts to influence state decisions largely in the politicized sector of the state. you could call it the sector of pluralist politics, which consumes the political energies of the population in certain kinds of reforms. the issues arour.d which it is possible to mobilize, or to have an impact are quite limited. this interpretation is quite consistent with the whole pluralist position. for example, the whole argument of dahl in who governs? (in different language) is that the impact of political action is limited to the political consensus at any given time, to a quite limited set of issues. now the plural ists do not theorize political consensus: that's their residual category. what accounts for those constraints on the effective range of issues? very briefly, i think both the internal differentiation of the state structure at any given time and the way in which the state is organized in a larger sense to meet certain kinds of requirement for a capitalist economy limit the impact of political mobilization. what i have just given is a structural description , not a prediction of any particular outcomes. i've attempted to state the ways in which each theory (hew haven: yale university press, 1961) 18 locates a particular aspect of reality and explains it with distinctive factors. again, that's only an approach, only a starting point, bat i think it enables one to take into account the incredibly complex and diverse panoply of political actors that get involved in a particular situation, without saying that all the sound and fury of pluralist politics is all of reality, or even the most important part. the other levels still exist at which issues are being decided and benefits allocated. (incidentally, 1 an currently struggling with a book which will expand this argument, with many illustrations from the empirical literature.) j.c. the way you've done it is to go from structures to be analysed in class terms, to the more specific structures of states, such as the segregation of agencies, and finally to the sound and fury of pluralist politics. presumably you car. trace it back then to the effects of pluralist politics on transforming the other levels. r.a. that's precisely right. if you take seriously the idea that the outcomes of the actual issues that emerge into political conflict are not completely determined by the structure of the system, then one can develop a more adequate explanation for the incredibly internally contradictory and fragmented structure of the state and the diverse public policies it produces. j.c. and it would account then for circumstances where it seems that the state is not serving the needs of the capitalist class. r.a. that's correct. this approach argues that if you look at a "cross-section" of the state at any given point in time it will be a reflection simultaneously of the impact of popular mobilization, of working class and other group interests as reflected in various organizations, of the outcomes of the internal strategies of state elites struggling to build bureaucratic empires 19 and of the direct impact of capitalist class interests either mobilized or not mobilized depending on the existing policy of the relevant state agency. because the state depends upon economic growth and tax revenue, it's internal processes are biased (in ways the structuralists have stated) toward the interests of capital. the sum total is a highly internally contradictory apparatus. the implication of this approach is that one cannot and should not leap to quick and easy judgments about the overall function of the state. nationalism and ideology stephen blight the purpose of this paper is two fold. it seeks firstly to place the concepts of "nation" and nationalism firmly within a materialist framework and, secondly, to analyze the relationship between nationalism and class. various forms of nationalism are discussed and the implications of nationalism for socialist strategy are considered. cet article a deux buts. premierement , il tente a placer les conceptes de "la nation" et la nationalisme firmement dans un contexte materialiste et, deuxiemement, il tient a analyser la relation entre la nationalisme et la classe. des formes variees de la nationalisme sont discutees, et les implications de la nationalisme pour la strategie socialiste sont considerees. historical materialism posits the primacy of the relations of production in society, with class struggle constituting history's motive force. accordingly, marxists tend to become bellicose when confronted with assertions (such as tudjman's (1981:233)) that "nationalism [rather than class) is the most important determinant in the course of history." modern nationalism is surely a momentous political fact, and there is good reason for approaching it with caution. socialist revolutions have met with success only in conjunction with nationalist movements and, in every capitalist crisis, the working class has displayed a stronger national than class identity. while some marxists have tried to accommodate these realities by reducing nationalism to class interests, others have conceded that nationalism is a mysterious independent force. in this paper, i shall situate the concepts of "nation" and "nationalism" within a materialist framework and, secondly, attempt to analyze the relationship between class and nation. it is my belief that recent theories of ideology will throw light on these two key problems and provide us with an understanding of nationalism which is both innovative and comprehensive. illustration will be provided through a discussion of nationalism in its various forms: state, sub-state, anti-imperialist and socialist. the nation: real or ideal? in order to have a clear understanding of the ideology of nationalism, we must first apprehend its relationship with, and the meaning of, the concept of "nation" itself. are the terms "nation" and "nationalism," as rosa luxembourg asserts, no more than empty husks into which each historical epoch and system of class relations deposit their particular material content? or 36 does the nation have some constitutive essence? does it refer to any discernible material factors? the philosophy of idealism locates the nation in the consciousness, with external symbols and practices being merely the outcome, the realization of the inner effect. according to ernest renan (1954:659): nation is the embodiment of a spiritual principle... land provides the substratum, the field of battle and work; man provides the soul; man is everything in the formation of that sacred thing that is called a people. nothing of material nature suffices for it. for renan, the nation is based on "collective consciousness" and "active will." symbols and practices associated with nationality become completely subjective products of the human mind. marxist theory emphasizes that consciousness itself is a social product, rooted in the material conditions of life. yet, an examination of marxist thought on this matter will reveal a strong tension between material factors and subjective consciousness in defining the nation. more often than not, however, an understanding of nations as "ideas" seems to take priority over objective factors. this reliance on subjective factors was implicit in some of the texts of austro-marxism. otto bauer (1907:107), for instance, maintained that the nation was essentially an idea, a "community of character awakening from a community of destiny" while renner (1917:123) advanced the startling concept of a "national spirit." lenin identified these abstract notions as an "idealist theory," and stalin polemicized against the austro-marxists in his 1913 essay, "marxism and the national question." in this essay, stalin summed up bauer's concept of nation as nothing but the "mystical national spirit of the spiritualists" (1953:310). he put forth his own definition 37 of the nation as "an historically constituted, stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture" (301). in order for a community to qualify as a nation, it must possess that "specific spiritual complexion of the people," otherwise known as the "national character," which distinguished one nation from another but was intangible to the observer (306). stalin has of course, resorted to the same type of language for which he will, a few pages later, chastise bauer. his definition seems to concede the priority of subjective consciousness over the mere operation of material factors in the make-up of the nation. tom nairn likewise stresses subjectivity in his analysis of nationalism in the break-up of britain (1977). for nairn, nationalism is an idea originating in the european "enlightenment" and spread to the rest of the world along with capitalist development. the uneven development of capitalism stimulates envy and frustration among peripheral elites who seize upon the idea of nationalism in order to mobilize the masses to right the balance. it is thus seen as a purely psychological construct; its materiality is denied: to say the assorted phenomenon and bric-a-brac of nationalism have a "material' basis is akin to saying that individual neurosis has a sexual explanation. .. "nationalism' is the pathology of modern developmental history, as inescapable as a "neurosis' in the individual, with a similar built-in capacity for descent into dementia, rooted in the dilemmas of helplessness thrust upon most of the world (the equivalent of infantilism for societies), and largely incurable. (1977:359) here, nairn localizes nationalism in the consciousness, a conglomeration of psychological reactions resulting somehow in a unified functional ideology. it is severed from it»s^foundation in reality. (8 psychological reactions resulting somehow in a unified functional ideology. it is severed from its foundation in reality. the work of regis debray (1977) and nicos poulantzas (1978) may prove to be helpful in dealing with the nation from a materialist standpoint. the striking similarities which characterise the theoretical perspectives of both authors on this particular issue allows us to lump them together here. both view the nation as substantial, transhistorical, and inscribed in the conceptual matrices of space and time. while the form of the modern nation is seen as historically transient, an invariable "something else" has cut across pre-existing modes of production. (for the sake of simplicity, i shall refer to all such spatially and temporally defined formations as "nations" ) . temporally, the nation's materiality is manifest in "ritual repetition, ritualisation of memory, celebration and commemoration" (debray, 1977:27) or what is generally designated by the term "common historical tradition" (poulantzas, 1978:107). spatially, we are dealing with territory, "from the growth of towns through communications, transport and military apparatus, to the emergence of borders" (poulantzas, 1978:99) or what debray calls "enclosed space" (1977:27). what these authors seem to be getting at is that what is conventially seen as indicative of the nation — economic unity, territory, tradition and the like — now must be viewed as the very constitutive essences of nationhood. the nation emerges out of the concrete practices of each social formation as it works to transform nature. at this level, it is no superstructure. along with the productive forces and social relations, the practices which constitute the nation hinge upon the determinant ecological and geographical conditions which make up the infrastructure. 39 the organization of people into politico-territorial structures is the result of many factors. the early superstructural forms of kinship or religion provided groups with identical objects of worship or common practices such as totem or taboo. the modern nation is, however, the creation of capitalism. most significantly, capitalism entails the separation of direct producers from their means of production and the creation of a mass of people free to sell their labour power, providing the material basis of modern "citizenship" (navari, 1981:13). capitalism created new classes tied together by an intricate division of labour, cast over vast territories and bringing together distant regions into immediate and functional relationships. it created the need to preserve and expand a system of domination and exploitation of complex interdependencies . the state is not a product of the nation; rather, the nodern nation is constructed by the state through a process of unification and homogenization. to return to poulantzas (1978:105): the state marks out the frontiers of this serial space in the very process of unifying and homogenizing what these frontiers enclose... the exact configuration and topography followed by this territory will, of course, depend on a whole series of historical factors (economic, political, linguistic, and so on). but what matters here is the appearance of territory and frontiers in the modern sense of the terms. the territory becomes national, and, by means of the state, constitutes an element of the modern nation. the tendency to substantialize and reify the nation on the part of poulantzas and debray is not without its dangers. for instance, according to debray (1977:27): "we must locate the nation phenomenon within the general laws regulating the survival of the human species... against death. against entropy." similarly, the poulantzean nation is an "object both theoretical and real," possessing "transhistorical irreducibil i ty" (1978:94). as james 31aut (1982) has pointed out, these kinds of arguments are derived from 40 german idealist theories of the state, especially the theses of herder and fichte. here, the view is that all people and the land upon which they reside form a metaphysical whole, a superorganic nation destined to become a unified state. as such, these recent contributions are seen by blaut as essentially a throwback to conservative thought. more serious, however, is the conceptualization of the nation itself as an active force in history. there is a danger of viewing it as prior to, more basic than, and autononouus from the class struggle: "the state is rooted not in class but in a deeper and more abiding substance, the nation" (blaut, 1982:12). while stressing the material basis of nationhood, it is not my purpose to substantialize and reify the nation on its own terms. further, it is necessary to avoid that idealism by which national phenomena are reduced to consciousness. how, then, are we to understand the ideology of nationalism? here, the work of althusser on ideology is instructive. for althusser, ideology has a material existence and is not ideal because it is always inscribed in social practices and expressed in objective social forms, such as languages, rituals. for the single subject, the existence of the ideas of his belief is material in that his ideas are his material actions inserted into material practices governed by material rituals which are themselves defined by the material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas of that subject (1971:169). althusser is arguing against those who would overemphasize the role of men and women as creative agents, whose ideas determine the actions that he or she performs. instead, he inserts actions into practices, which are in turn governed by the rituals in which these practices are inscribed. in graphic form: ideal ist schema althusser •ideas ijsubjcct, consciousness, belief, actions -•practices, rituals, ideological apparatus thus, consciousness itself can arise only as a reflection of material practices. this supports my earlier contention that those items that are conventionally viewed as symptomatic elements of the nation (territory, tradition, and so on) may be seen precisely as the very constitutive essences of nationhood. these common objective factors lie outside of national consciousness; meaning is applied to them externally. but without these elements, there can be no ideology of nationalism. in other words, at the infrastructural level the materiality of the nation is the effect of concrete practice on its own terms. it is only through this understanding that we may comprehend the ideology of nationalism, which lies in the realm of superstructures. nationalism and class what is the relationship between nationalism and class? we can identify several tendencies within the marxist tradition concerning this question. the first tendency is most closely associated with lenin. here, the ideology of nationalism is reduced to the class interests of the bourgeoisie. for lenin, the historico-economic basis of national movements was that in order to achieve complete victory for commodity production, "the bourgeoisie must capture the home market, and there must be politically united territories whose population speak a single language, with all obstacles to the 42 development of that language and to its consolidation in literature removed" (1970:46). bourgeois-democratic national movements were confined to the "period of the collapse of feudalism and absolutism) (1970:46) and as such, should be given only conditional support by the proletariat. this view is entirely consistent with lenin's emphasis upon the existence of "paradigmatic" class ideologies. in his world of highly polarized political struggles, "the only choice is — either bourgeois or socialist ideology. there is no middle course (for mankind has not created a ~third' ideology and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms, there can never be a non-class or an above-class ideology)" (1975:48). each concrete ideology has a necessary class belonging, and nationalism was the ideology of the bourgeoisie during a particular historical epoch. the second tendency is to view nationalism as prior to and autonomous from the class struggle. 1 this is, of course, the view which predominates in mainstream social science. the appearance of ethnic conflict is enough for such authors to dispense with class analysis. but what is disturbing is the trend in this direction among numerous marxists. for example, it is affirmed that the class struggle has been "eclipsed" by nationalism in nairn's subjectivist formulations (1977:351). furthermore, as we have seen, the inclination on the part of debray and poulantzas to invest the nation with an actual existence indicates a view of nationalism as being independent of the class struggle (as shall be clear later, however, poulantzas is somewhat ambiguous). this trend is entirely consistent with the current overemphasis on the "relative autonomy of superstructures" characteristic of much of neo-marxist theory. a third tendency is that of viewing nationalism as an empty concept. according to hobsbawm (1977:3), for instance, nationalism is a fuzzy 43 ideological construct "devoid of any rational theory." the decline of the economic role of the nation-state due to the internationalization of capital has resulted, he says, in the proliferation of "neo-nationalisms . " these nonsensical "neo-nationalisms" do not in themselves require any special theoretical effort by marxists. in taking this approach, hobsbawm is practically conceding the irrelevance of class analysis in dealing with this concrete form of political movement. although it may be no more than an illusion, we would still, however, have to explain the illusion. finally, i shall return to poulantzas, whose position, as i have indicated earlier, is ambiguous. in state, power, socialism , the book that is of most interest to us here, the nation appears as substantial, transhistorically irreducible, and likely to persist long after the end of class society (1978:94). nationalism can have a progressive character; it encompasses both the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the working class and the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie (119). nationalism, it would seem, has no history and is not tied to the interests of any one class. elsewhere, however, poulantzas (1974) breaks down ideology into constitutive elements which necessarily have a class belonging. deriving from lenin's conception, social classes are seen as possessing paradigmatic ideologies. concrete historical ideologies are an amalgam of heterogeneous elements, each with a necessary class belonging. thus, the dominant bourgeois ideology has both petty bourgeois and working class elements contained within it. poulantzas considers nationalism an ideological element of the bourgeoisie; as such, it is not subject to transformation in a socialist direction. how can we reconcile these two views? has nationalism remained the ideological element of the bourgeoisie, perhaps now belonging to relatively 44 more progressive sectors of this class? or, is nationalism free of any necessary class belonging and, by implication, not fundamentally a product of the class struggle? this is the kind of ambiguity which has plagued marxist discourse on nationalism for too long. we are faced with two momentous realities: class struggle and national struggle. how may we reaffirm the primacy of the former without falling into reductionism? fortunately, recent analyses of ernesto laclau (1977) will help to extricate us from this dilemma. although laclau focuses upon different phenomena (he is concerned with populism and fascism), we may, with caution, apply the thrust of his analysis to our problem. laclau begins by rejecting the notion of paradigmatic class ideologies, specifically the poulantzean version which stresses that ideological elements have a necessary class belonging. conversely, he argues that "ideological elements taken in isolation have no necessary class connotation, and that this connotation is only the result of the articulation of those elements in a concrete ideological discourse" (99). how are these neutral ideological elements incorporated into class discourse? here, he cites althusser: ideology "acts' or "functions' in such a way that it recruits subjects among individuals (it recruits them all), or "transforms' the individuals < it transforms them all) by the very precise operation that i have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most common police (or other) hailing: "hey, you there!' ... (100-101). interpellation is the mechanism by which individuals, who are simply bearers of structures, are transformed by ideology into subjects. the ideological level of society is made up of different types of interpellations. for laclau, then, the unifying principle of an ideological discourse is the "subject" interpellated and thus constituted through this discourse. this approach constitutes a real step forward over traditional marxist theories of ideology. laclau transcends the problem of paradigmatic class ideologies, which often tend to fall into abstract reductionlsm (i.e. "marxism-leninism is the ideology of the working class"). the idea that neutral ideological elements are articulated into class discourse through interpellation, which cuts across class boundaries, is a far more satisfactory way of accounting for spontaneous popular traditions and empirical forms of consciousness. next, laclau makes a distinction between class struggle and "classes-in-struggle. " class struggle is intelligible at the abstract level of the mode of production: the production relation that constitutes its two poles as classes in an antagonistic relation. "classes-in-struggle," however, is an antagonism distinct from the former in that it is only intelligible at the level of a concrete social formation, and only apparent in the ideological and political sphere. thus, in addition to the overdetermining class struggle, in any class society, there is a second contradiction, that between the "power bloc" and the "people." this kind of contradiction characteristically takes the form of dominated classes or class fractions struggling for hegemony against the dominant class or class fraction. "if the first contradiction. .. is expressed on the ideological level in the interpellation of agents as a class, this second contradiction is expressed through the interpellation of the agents as the people. the first contradiction is the sphere of class struggle; the second, that of popular-democratic struggle" (1977:107). how can laclau's formulation shed light on the kind of struggles we are concerned with here; namely, national struggles? in addition to the interpellation of agents as a class, attendant upon the contradictions at the level of the mode of production, we may also imagine the interpellation of agents as "the nation". in this kind of struggle, the dominated sectors would not identify themselves as a class but as "the nation," counterposed to the dominant power bloc which exists external to this nation. the people/power bloc struggle may thus be transformed into a national struggle, specifically where there exists (a) a territorial separation between the "people" and the power bloc and (b) a cultural, linguistic, and/or ethnic distinction between the "people" and the power bloc. it becomes apparent just how potentially volatile national interpellations can become when we consider first the antagonisms wrought by the uneven development of capitalism, (which tend to fall along national lines), and second, the reservoir of easily recognizable, immediate, and neutral ideological raw materials, such as language and symbols. along with john saul (1979:401), we can recognize that the centre-periphery contradiction may be articulated with the class contradiction and become the primary non-class interpellation in a significant proportion of the world. furthermore, laclau asserts that "classes do exist at the ideological and political level in a process of articulation and not of reduction" (1977:161). he is able to make this assertion by distinguishing between the form and content of an ideology: "the class character of an ideology is given by its form and not by its content" (1977:160). the elements which constitute the nation have a real existence in time and space, but these elements in themselves are neutral. they have no necessary class connotation. class determination is applied to them by means of an articulating principle. i shall now turn to an examination of its various articulations in detail. nationalism and hegemony nationalism is one of the primary forces of unification and integration in capitalist society. the process of nationalist socialization masks class antagonisms, absorbs contradictions, and legitimates the rule of the dominant class. nationalism here is the ideology of the dominant class and, to paraphrase laclau, it is dominant precisely because it is able to interpellate not only members of that class but, also, members of the dominated classes. "a class is hegemonic not so much to the extent that it is able to impose a uniform conception of the world on the rest of society, but to the extent that it can articulate different visions of the world in such a way that their potential antagonism is neutralized" (1977:161). this conception is reminiscent of antonio gramsci's notion of hegemony. for gramsci, hegemony refers to the ability of the dominant class to secure the consent and cohesion of the broad masses; ideology serves to cement and unify the entire social bloc: "the development and expansion of the particular group which has imposed its hegemony are conceived of, and presented, as being the motor force of a universal expansion, of a development of all "national' energies" (1971:182). the dominant ideology, he says (12), is able to "propagate itself throughout society — bringing about not only a unison of political and economic aims, but also intellectual and moral unity, posing all the questions around which the struggle rages not on a corporate but on a "universal' plane, and thus creating the hegemony of a fundamental social group over a series of subordinate groups." thus gramsci recognized the necessity of the dominant class to interpellate subjects by appealing to non-economic sentiments in order to transcend the limits of a single economic class. as miliband (1969) has shown, the dominant class that articulates national consciousness in its ideological discourse has articulated a particularly potent legitimizing force. "narrow" class interests are subordinated to the "national interest," a convenient state of affairs for the national bourgeoisie and the national state. the state, organic intellectuals, and various apparatuses in civil society are involved in the fostering and propagating of nationalist ideology. it is only through a highly developed national consciousness that the dominant class may go so far as to lead the working class into its imperialist adventures. the current terminological confusion between "state" and "nation" is symptomatic of this dominant ideology. according to common usage, the nation is synonymous with the state, and the state with its "subjects" (e.g. "united nations"). this misnomer is not the result of sloppiness; for, politicians are generally cunning in their use of words. rather, it is one of the basic strategies in the modern legitimation of regimes. for new post-colonial states (such as those in africa), created within territorial boundaries which appear artificial once the authority of the colonial power is removed, the creation of a national consciousness plays a much more urgent role (saul, 1979:170). this would explain the concern with "nation-building" which characterizes bourgeois development literature. part of the reason for the preponderance of military regimes in many post-colonial states becomes clear when examined in this light. should the hegemony of the dominant class in these countries falter, the state's repressive power is there to legally enforce the social order. 49 sub-state nationalism as ambercrombie , hill and turner (1980) contend in their critique of the "dominant ideology thesis," however, ideology is more than a mere "social cement" which unambiguously incorporates subordinate classes. rather, ideology has a fundamentally dialectical character. through the interpellation of subjects, it sets up a self/other opposition. national interpellations, therefore, have a dual function: on one hand, as i have outlined in the previous case, nationalism can be synthetic; on the other, nationalism can position subjects in antagonism to the dominant power bloc. the phenomenon of sub-state nationalism is an example of the latter case. earlier, in my discussion of laclau, i concluded that, in addition to class struggle (which is fundamental in any capitalist society) there exists a second contradiction, only intelligible at the level of a concrete social formation, that between the "people" and the power bloc. here the dominated sectors in society would be interpellated not as separate classes but as the "people," counterposed to the dominant power bloc. further, i hypothesized that the people/power bloc struggle may be transformed into a national struggle in situations where there exists (a) a territorial separation between the power bloc and the "people" and (b) a cultural, linguistic, and/or ethnic distinction between the "people" and the power bloc. when this struggle occurs within the boundaries of a single state, it is manifest in the phenomenon of sub-state nationalism. the eritrea-ethiopia conflict will serve as a good illustration of this. eritrea, colonized by the italians in 1896, was quickly transformed into a predominantly capitalist political economy. meanwhile, ethiopia has remained a feudal autocracy, at least up until the 1974 revolution which deposed emperor haile selassie. the federation of these two distinct social 50 formations in 1952 and the subsequent annextion of eritrea by ethiopia in 1962 has resulted in a situation in which the feudal landowning class has remained dominant within the power bloc. this hegemonic fraction not only directly exploits the peasantry at the level of the mode of production, but also subordinates the eritrean workers, petty bourgeoisie, and budding indigenous bourgeoisie. this contradiction has sought expression on the ideological level through the interpellation of agents as the "nation." the leading eritrean factions set about constructing the idea of an eritrean "nation," based upon historical, cultural and territorial attributes — and emphasizing its inherent "right of self-determination" — in order that they might become hegemonic within their "own" state (c.f. tseggai , 1976) . the following example of sub-state national struggle will highlight the role of the petty bourgeoisie, the group most often associated with modern nationalism. i refer again to laclau. he considers the basic feature of the petty bourgeoisie to be its separation from the dominant relations of production in society. its struggle takes place, therefore, not at the level of the dominant relations of production, but at the level of the political and ideological relations that make up the system of domination in that social formation. thus, "...in these sectors, the identity as the "people' plays a much more important role than the identity as a class" (1977:114). moore and latouche (1976) have emphasized the role of the petty bourgeoisie in their examination of quebec nationalism. for these authors, the roots of modern nationalism are found in the "quiet revolution" of the 1960s. under the slogan of maitres chez nous , the liberal government of quebec initiated a process of state nationalization, repatriation, and modernization. by subordinating the church, the dislocation that had existed between the political and ideological institutions was eliminated. in addition to consolidating the role of the petty and middle bourgeoisies of 51 the private sector, state intervention also created a "real" bureaucracy with a technocratic outlook. these fractions saw the logical prolongation of the quiet revolution to be the establishment of a mixed economy in which state capitalism would play a major role. lacking a firm economic base of their own, they sought to use the quebec state as a source of economic power; in doing so they came into conflict with the canadian hegemonic system. they saw political sovereignty as the only solution. the classes-in-struggle here are the quebec petty-bourgeoisie (led by its technocratic fraction) and the canadian bourgeoisie. each class sought to give coherence to its ideological discourse by presenting its class objectives as the consummation of popular objectives rather than narrow economic interests. the result was quite striking. the interpellations of the canadian bourgeoisie, with pierre trudeau as its mouthpiece, took on a distinctly liberal-democratic character and, of course, the petty-bourgeois parti quebecois incorporated nationalism into its ideological discourse, the interpellation to which the leading fractions could best appeal in order to establish their own hegemonic system. nationalism in the periphery the centre-periphery contradiction alluded to earlier presents a new set of problems. this contradiction, attendant upon the uneven development of capitalism, is manifest at the superstructural level in situations of structural dependency as well as direct colonial exploitation. it will obviously leave indigenous classes and fractions in a subordinate position in relation to the metropolitan bourgeoisie. it is not for this reason, however, that it is a contradiction. commonly, in colonial situations, parts of the autochthonous superstructure are instrumentalized for the interests of 52 the colonial power during the conquest and administration of the colony. local leaders had their power considerably enhanced in this manner. furthermore, in post-colonial situations, comprador classes benefit significantly from their role as intermediaries. in these instances, the leading indigenous classes and fractions are incorporated within the power bloc. contradictions inevitably emerge, however, when the indigenous fractions seek to impose their own hegemony but are unable to do so because of the (neo-) colonial structure of the power bloc. in the resultant ideological struggle, the indigenous contenders would certainly not interpellate individuals as class conscious subjects; for this would threaten their own privileged positions within the social formation. rather, they will draw upon the easily recognizable ingredients of territory, tradition, and race in recruiting subjects. the experience of kenya is an interesting case in point. here, as colin leys (1978) has shown, a class of indigenous accumulators had existed from pre-colonial times, based upon the concentration of land and livestock. the colonial state launched a number of these precolonial accumulators on a fresh path of accumulation by appointing them "chiefs" who were enabled to tax and fine their "subjects" and to further accumulate land within the restricted african land areas by engaging in costly litigation. however, their drive toward embourgeoisiement was thwarted by the contradiction with the european estate farmers who had the monopoly over surplus labour, agricultural commodities, and markets, and secondly, with the metropolitan bourgeoisie and its intervention in commodity production. 53 this indigenous class of capital had several strengthening features. it was heavily concentrated in the kikuyu, the largest ethnic group, located at the political and economic centre of kenya. confounded in their bourgeois aspirations as accumulators, the members turned increasingly to education. as a result, kikuyu elites were heavily represented in the state apparatus and, naturally, came to the forefront of the nationalist movement. out of concern for maintaining their central leadership position, and anxious that the nationalist movement, which by now had a mass base of landless peasants, might be transformed into a revolutionary movement, the kikuyu elites articulated an ethnic interpellation. mass oathings, cultural nationalism, culminating in the militancy of "mau-mau," all served to consolidate kikuyu consciousness and strengthen the kikuyu organizational ability to challenge the colonial state. 2 at independence, as leys has observed, the kikuyu capitalist class was in a "position of strategic control over post-colonial re-alignments needed for the next phase of accumulation" (1978:250). since independence, the kenyan bourgeoisie has continued to struggle against the neo-colonial structure of the power bloc. "african socialism," "kenyanization, " and often openly racist policies directed against the asian comprador class have been invoked in order to enlist consent and support from the subordinate classes for the dominant indigenous fractions in their assault upon the barriers of international capital. thus the national interpellation attendant upon the centre-periphery contradiction is not necessarily progressive in spite of the anti-imperialist rhetoric. more often than not, it serves only to replace one form of class rule with another. 54 amilcar cabral (1969), on the other hand, saw national consciousness as a progressive force in the african context. for him, imperialism entailed the negation of the historical process of the dominated sectors through the subjugation of the national productive forces. national struggle was viewed as ...the phenomenon in which a given socio-economic whole rejects the negation of its historical process. in other words, the national liberation of a people is the regaining of the historical personality of that people, its return to history through the destruction of the imperialist domination to which it was subjected (83). in the neo-colonial context, where the petty bourgeoisie is allied with imperialist capital, nationalism is clearly identified as part of the international class struggle. cabral recognized the possibility of the petty bourgeoisie "committing class suicide" and emerging as the revolutionary vanguard of workers and peasants. national interpellations here are revolutionary; they seek to destroy the very structures upon which the exploitation of workers and peasants are built. nationalism and socialism what is the relationship between nationalism and socialism? under what circumstances can nationalism be considered a progressive force? two extreme points of view can be identified in regard to these questions. the first is represented by eric hobsbawm (1977). marxists cannot be nationalists, he claims, since nationalism, by definition, subordinates all other interests to those of the "nation." he advocates the need for marxists to distance themselves from it. a contrary position is taken by regis debray (1977), who argues that marxists must acknowledge their own popular-national roots. communists will never win in france or elsewhere unless they capture national heritage for their own ends. any contradiction 55 between the french tricolour and the red flag is denied. it appears that the disagreement here is one between idealism and pragmatism. while hobsbawm is concerned with the tainting of working class ideology with nationalist infusions, debray sees nationalism as a necessary device for furthering the revolutionary cause. as i have argued, no class can be hegemonic on the basis of class interpellations alone; a hegemonic class must incorporate the "people" into its ideological discourse. national traditions crystallized into immediate and easily recognizable symbols represent a potent force in which the subjects interpellated by them find a strong principle of identity. their relative continuity is in contrast to the historical discontinuities that characterize class structures (laclau, 1977:166). this last point may be useful in an examination of the successes of socialist revolutions. significantly, they have taken place only in countries with low levels of capitalist development and always in conjunction with nationalist movements. russian, chinese, cuban, vietnamese, and mozambican political economies, among others, were characterized in their pre-revolut ionary periods by the simultaneous existence of both capitalist and pre-capitalist modes of production. is it any wonder that the class interpellations of proletarian ideology alone proved to be an insufficient device for mobilizing the masses without the simultaneous interpellation of subjects through nationalist ideology? lenin understood the tactical significance of this and sought to capture nationalist aspirations for revolutionarv ends. this explains all the rhetoric concerning the "right of self-determination. " lenin's assurance of this right to finns, poles and ukrainians allowed him to enlist their support while ensuring that their complacency would prevent their pressing for it (lenin, 1970). 56 the nation will not go away, but has a real existence in time and space. it is, both literally and figuratively speaking, the terrain of class struggle. figuratively, the elements which constitute the nation (territory, tradition, ethnicity and so on) provide a quarry of immediate and easily recognizable ideological raw materials. in themselves, these elements are passive. they receive meaning externally, through articulation into class discourse. hegemony is not achieved at the level of the relations of production, but at the level of political and ideological relations. the working class must present its class interests as the "national interest," and dis-articulate national interpellations from the dominant bourgeois ideology. nationalism is a potent ideology and an important resource for popular mobilization. literally speaking, in spite of internationalism, the masses live in circumscribed national communities. only a national transition to socialism is possible, through the capture of the national state. herein lies an important point of coincidence for socialists and nationalists; for, nationalism often involves a struggle for state power, whether through succession or independence. nationalism may thus lead to a radical break with the interests of the dominant class and develop into an ideology seeking to destroy the fundamental structures of domination in society. nationalism should not, however, be welcomed uncritically into working class discourse. by definition, it subordinates all interests to those of the nation. as such, it is, as hobsbawm (1977) argues, incompatible with marxism. nationalism is, above all, the ideology of class collaboration. its primary historical function has been to mask class antagonisms, absorb contradictions, and legitimate the rule of the dominant class. the ideology of nationalism confronts socialists with serious dilemmas and without a 57 proper understanding of the opportunities and dangers it presents, appropriate political strategies will remain obscure. notes 1. see james blaut's 1982 critique. 2. following connor (1972), "tribalism" is here considered to be a form of nationalism. for more on kikuyu nationalism, see nottingham and roseberg (1966). 3. hobsbawm (1983) argues, however, that nationalism, when combined with working class radicalism, can be a powerful force for progressive social change. he cites the examples of britain during the chartist period and immediately following the second world war. references abercrombie, n. , s. hill and b.s. turner 1980 the dominant ideology thesis . london: allen unwin. althusser, l. 1971 lenin and philosophy . new york: monthly review press. bauer, 0. 1907 "the concept of the "nation"', in bottomore, t.b. and p. goode (eds.), austro-marxism . oxford: clarendon, 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scholarship is organized. the disciplines of international relations (ir) and international political economy (ipe) have long faced such pressure. for example, some see the interwar years and the great depression as the precursor not only to the empirical development of american hegemony, but also as a key spur to the emergence of realism as a central method of apprehending power (carr, 1946; schmidt, 1998; cox, 2000). several decades later, scholars took the breakdown of the bretton woods system as a prompt both to re-evaluate the utility of realism as a theoretical lens for ir and ipe, and as a signal that the post-war structure of the global political economy was itself entering a period of ‘after hegemony’, to use the title of a significant text from that era (keohane and nye, 1977; keohane, 1984). this last debate over american decline of power was seemingly resolved in the closing years of the 20th century, amid the aftermath of the end of the cold war, the collapse of the soviet union and the re-assertion of american power (cox, 2001). the uni-polar era had arrived even as governance was becoming increasingly globalized (scholte, 2000; ikenberry, mastanduno and wohlforth, 2009). the financial crisis of 2007-2009 has brought this paradoxical resolution into question. the central features of the crisis include both domestic and international dynamics: regulatory failure among leading 1  randall germain is professor and chair of the department of political science at carleton university (ottawa, canada). he is the author of global politics and financial governance and the international organization of credit: states and global finance in the world-economy. he can be reached at: randall_germain@carleton.ca power, the state and global politics after the great freeze: towards a new articulation? 100 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times financial powers (most critically the united states (u.s.) but others as well); financial innovation among banks, investment banks and nonbank financial institutions that built up significant systemic risk; macroeconomic imbalances at the global level that included trade and capital account disequilibria alongside currency misalignments; inappropriate monetary policies; high sovereign debt loads; and ultimately massive institutional failure. i have elsewhere labelled this crisis the great freeze, because one of its principal consequences was a steady constriction of credit markets from the summer of 2007 that ultimately resulted in a near total blockage–or flash freeze–after lehman brothers went bust in september 2008 (germain, 2010). the twelve months following this spectacular bankruptcy saw the harshest contraction of global economic activity since the worst days of the great depression. indeed, 2009 is the only year since 1945 that the global economy as a whole has been in recession (imf, 2009). this article uses this crisis as the occasion to explore the changing global articulation of power. power in ir and ipe is usually viewed in relational terms, as the ability to effect change in actor’s behaviour, where actor a gets actor b to do what it might not otherwise would (baldwin, 2002; schmidt, 2005). power here is understood as the capacity–derived most often from control over material capabilities that translate into instruments of pressure–of one actor to influence (directly or indirectly) the decisions of another actor. in contrast, i deploy an understanding of power that is more structural in orientation, derived from the work of susan strange, who argues that it is the structural determinants of power that are more important to understand than the relational determinants (strange, 1988b). on this basis, strange disagreed with those who, in the mid-1980s, viewed the global political economy to be entering a period marked by american decline (strange, 1987). the argument i advance below takes it cue from her framework to argue that the new global articulation of power suggested by the great freeze is both highly fluid and relatively opaque or ambiguous. this is so because even as some key structural determinants of power have become hollowed out, other elements remain intact while yet more have yet to emerge fully. the result will be a period of struggle waged around and through the principal organizational pillars of the global political economy for control over the very foundations of political order. the outcome of this struggle will not be resolved any time soon. | 101 power, the state and global politics the idea that we can measure power in global politics has long been attractive to scholars, even as they have acknowledged the immense difficulties of the task (knorr, 1975; kirshner, 1995; hardt and negri, 2000; andrews, 2006). here i wish to follow the british ipe scholar susan strange in asking how changes in the structural determinants of power help us to understand select contemporary trends. strange developed her understanding of power against prevailing views, largely american in origin, that saw in the 1980s a sharp and steep decline in the ability of the u.s. to shape the international economic order. at the time, ir and ipe scholars were concerned primarily with the ability of the u.s. to compel its long-time allies to follow american preferences and accommodate themselves to american interests as they had for much of the bretton woods period. from across the theoretical spectrum, this was most often articulated as the erosion of international regimes, whose main cause was a decline in american power (block ,1977; gilpin, 1981; krasner, 1983). in contrast, strange argued that such measurements of american power were at the very least inaccurate, and at worst entirely misleading (strange, 1983; 1987). she noted that even as the share of american gross domestic product (gdp) in relation to global gdp had declined, the control of american corporations over key international markets remained high and was even (in certain industries such as services) growing. for strange, the key question was not the weight of the american economy in the global economy, but the control exerted by american corporations and lawmakers over global markets (strange, 1988; cf nizan and bichler, 2009). here she pointed out that this control was not under threat from global competition; in fact, global competition was defined and shaped inexorably by the demands, preferences and resources of american corporations. in short, the structure of global competition was determined (or controlled) by american interests, even if these interests were themselves no longer expressly related to the territorial borders of the u.s. she sometimes styled these interests in the form of a ‘transnational’ or ‘american’ empire’ (strange, 1988b; 1989). it was this structural capacity to control the global economic agenda which counted in the power sweepstakes, not where widgets were actually produced. and such power at its heart was constituted by a complicated amalgam of public and private authority. at one level, for strange, the global articulation of power in the 1980s was constituted by an iron triangle of inordinate (american) military power, an inter-state system that refracted and radiated america’s govpower, the state and global politics after the great freeze: towards a new articulation? 102 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times ernmental power throughout its most important elements, and the dominance of an ideational framework that privileged american principles and ideals. here strange disagreed with two of the strongest proponents of the argument that america was no longer ascendant. from a realist perspective, robert gilpin argued that american power, measured as its ability to compel its allies to make contributions to the pax americana, was in terminal decline (gilpin, 1981). and from a critical historical materialist perspective, robert cox argued that the u.s. was no longer able to direct a hegemonic structure of world order (cox, 1987). both gilpin and cox, albeit for quite different reasons, pointed to the inability of the u.s. to fashion consensus or accommodate its allies’ needs as part of the negotiations necessary to maintain a benevolent (from an american point of view) global economic system. for them, a neo-liberal (or hyper-liberal, to use the term initially coined by cox) world signalled the end of american dominance. strange had a different answer to the question of american decline, relying instead on a careful distinction between relational and structural power. relational power was of course above all about the u.s. being able to coerce or compel its allies and competitors to undertake particular courses of action. here she acknowledged that this form of power waxed and waned with global economic circumstances, and was entirely dependent upon very specific and particular contexts. on this reading, from the early 1970s until the late 1980s it did appear that u.s. relational power was in retreat. the instrumental capacity of the u.s. to exert its willpower seemed to have eroded, or at the very least to be under severe stress.2 however, what was significant for strange’s counter-intuitive analysis was the capacity of some states to set the rules by which others would have to play the ‘great power’ game. in other words, for strange the key to understanding who actually ‘had’ power lay not in determining who could prevail in specific decisions, but who could set the rules by which such decisions were made in the first place (strange, 1988b). in her estimation at the time, it was still american political leaders who had it within their grasp to provide such leadership. even though not all decisions went america’s way, they were made under american rules that reflected american interests. this social fact also called attention to the global reach of american domestic political conflicts, which had a disproportionate impact on international regulatory developments. beyond 2  for strange, however, this decline in relational power was predominantly caused by u.s. domestic politics, by an inability on the part of the american political system to organize itself effectively so as to project and use its (structural) power appropriately (strange, 1987). | 103 this, there were also some decisions that were simply not taken because the u.s. in effect blocked the way; such ‘non-decisions’ as she called them were also the product of american structural power (strange, 1986). in strange’s view, this ability to set the rules derived from several sources, some public or state-centred and some centred more in the operation of the (capitalist) economic system. the american state still maintained a considerable military edge over its closest rivals, which was bolstered by the continued reluctance of european states to devote adequate resources to defending themselves. but equally importantly, american corporations continued to dominate transnational production systems, which were a principal source of high value profits. the superior innovative capacities of these firms, bolstered by statesponsored military research, bestowed onto certain segments of america’s ‘private’ economy an unalloyed competitive advantage. as well, american ideas about how to organize economic activity (and its associated set of political values and ideals) complemented these advantages, and held a global appeal. and finally, and for her critically, the u.s. (through its government, its markets and its private institutions) had a lock-grip over the organization and operation of the world’s monetary and financial system (strange, 1987; 1988; cf may, 1996). for strange, all that was required for america to actually exercise its structural power was a willingness to act politically in a manner congruent with its underlying power capacities.3 this understanding of power ties together the capacity of the state with the operation of private institutions and the inter-state system to provide for strange a structural reading that suggests where power actually resides in the global political economy. because power is about the capacity to decide agendas, it is not directly related to the ability of a to compel b to undertake a particular course of action; rather, it is related to the context of agency, which has two levels: (1) the capacity of a to convince b that its menu of choice involves x, y and z and nothing else; and (2) the capacity of a to influence this menu of choice either directly, through its own ability to compel the acceptance of the menu, or indirectly, because the majority of the elements of the menu remain in a dependent relationship to a. this kind of power, which she called structural power, belonged as a property to the u.s. throughout the period of supposed american decline. to highlight the exercise of such power, strange (1988b) considered the example of the international debt crisis of the early 1980s, when several countries ran into significant debt repayment problems. instruc3  by the end of her life, strange had finally concluded that the u.s. was in fact unwilling to act in a manner congruent with its own ‘structural’ interests (strange, 1998). power, the state and global politics after the great freeze: towards a new articulation? 104 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times tively for her, only those countries with close ties to the u.s. were able to work towards a resolution that involved creditors booking losses on their assets within the framework of an overall imf-sanctioned debt recovery scheme. crucially, it was the u.s. which was able to dictate these rules of engagement, and it was these rules which all indebted countries had to follow if they wanted debt relief on a multilateral scale. american power here was omnipresent but structural, reflecting its pole position within the inter-state system rather than a calculated exploitation of its own instrumental power. strange’s view of structural power–and indeed power in general–is not of course without problems, many of which are connected to her idiosyncratic view of theory in ir and ipe. some of these are noted in a volume dedicated to engaging with the corpus and legacy of her work (lawton, rosenau and verdun, 2000). we could, for example, take her to task for developing taxonomies rather than theoretical insights (cohen, 2000); for not working through the tension in her work between materialism and idealism (guzzini, 2000); for failing to overcome the de facto analytical barriers between economics and politics (cutler, 2000); and for refusing to socialize adequately her fundamentally empiricist reading of knowledge, ideology and ultimately power itself (tooze, 2000). what these critiques of strange’s view on power suggest is that she offers an insightful but yet truncated conception of power, which only partially connects the foundations of power to the way in which it is exercised. most importantly, strange seems oddly reluctant to reflect theoretically on her insights, and determined to restrict her theoretical reflections to the terrain of empirical falsification. this is perhaps due to her ambiguous acceptance of the place of positivism within the social sciences, and to her ultimate unwillingness to modify its evidence-based evaluative precepts (may, 1996; palan, 1999; cutler, 2000; tooze, 2000). even with these caveats, however, her conception of structural power offers a useful framework to consider how the global articulation of power has been affected by the great freeze. this is because it directs our attention to two key developments: (1) the changing role of the state in regulating financial markets; and (2) the rise of emerging market economies and their new role in setting the agenda of global economic decision-making. on both counts, what emerges from such a consideration is a recognition that established patterns of decision-making are unravelling, even if new patterns have yet to be firmly established. each development will be reviewed below. | 105 power and the state: financial regulation the key authorities involved in global financial regulation are american and european officials together with their counterparts in international regulatory institutions. this should not be surprising, as historically these states sit astride the world’s deepest and most liquid financial markets. what is noteworthy from the perspective of considering the effects of the great freeze is to observe how systematically these states are moving forward to intervene more forcefully in the operation of financial markets under their jurisdiction. states are renewing their authority to set the agenda of global finance. in the u.s., two major directions of change are developing: in the organization and logic of supervision; and in the range and extent of supervision. each of these regulatory changes will increase the degree of state intervention in its financial system, and thereby encourage other states to intervene more forcefully in their financial systems. the first major change concerns the organization of financial supervision and in particular the question of whether such supervision should be sectoral or unified in scope and scale. while the u.s. may be an extreme case with its plethora of financial regulatory bodies, the logic of sectoral supervision has a considerable historical record (russell, 2008).4 the great freeze has brought into sharp relief how problematic such a fragmented regulatory apparatus is when set within the context of an integrated set of financial markets. here the great freeze has unquestionably tipped the balance in favour of a more strongly unified supervisory framework. in the u.s., the obama administration’s efforts to recalibrate u.s. financial regulation have resulted in the passage of the dodd-frank bill, which among other things identifies the federal reserve board (fed) as the principal overseer of systemic risk. a combined council of regulators will further close many of the remaining gaps within the u.s. system. equally important are new powers given to regulators to wind-up insolvent firms, and to compel banks to limit or restrict their proprietary treading units under the so-called volcker rule. this rule prescribes how banks are to capitalize their special investment vehicles, and how much they are allowed 4  financial markets have historically been differentiated by the kinds of instruments that comprise them and their institutional makeup. regulation has evolved in line with how these markets operate and what kinds of products they generate. this has traditionally been understood in terms of key pillars, most importantly banking, equities, insurance and pensions. almost everywhere each pillar has spawned its own regulatory apparatus, together with a few more recent developments such as organized futures markets. see germain (2010) and porter (2005) for an historical account. power, the state and global politics after the great freeze: towards a new articulation? 106 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times to invest in hedge funds and private equity firms. together with the vetting powers which the new consumer protection agency will have for financial instruments, the dodd-frank bill will push the government to cast a much heavier footprint over the organization and operation of the american financial system.5 a heavier footprint is also taking shape in europe, where british and e.u. authorities are moving to give the state a much stronger presence within their respective financial systems. in the u.k., a major reorganization of financial supervision has been undertaken to strip the financial services authority of its supervisory role and to relocate it within the bank of england.6 this has been further supported by the recommendations made by an independent commission struck by the new british government to examine how to strengthen the british financial system in light of the great freeze (economist 2011: april 16th–22nd). this commission–known as the vickers’ commission–has recommended that british banks organize themselves to insulate or ring fence their domestic u.k. retail arms from their investment and commercial banking operations. in other words, the (british) state looks set to intervene more forcefully in how financial institutions active in the u.k. are actually run. similar albeit weaker trajectories are underway in the e.u.7 of course, none of these developments have yet to be fully implemented as of the time of writing of this manuscript, and there are some who doubt that their impact will be as argued here. such scepti5  other provisions in the ‘wall street reform and consumer protection act’ include bringing all major financial institutions–whether bank or non-bank–within the purview of federal regulation, more closely regulating derivatives trading and hedge funds, limiting the proprietary trading prerogatives of banks, and providing the federal government with a more clearly specified way of closing down insolvent financial institutions. see http://www. opencongress.org/bill/111-h4173/show (accessed august 6th, 2010). 6  among the proposals published by the british government in july 2010 were to return both macroand microprudential supervisory responsibilities to the bank of england, and to create a new consumer protection agency to absorb the institutional responsibilities of the financial services authority (which will effectively be gutted). these proposals arise out of the turner review–the official enquiry into how the uk’s supervisory arrangements failed to contain the fallout from the great freeze–as well as the political preferences of the conservative and liberal-democrat partners in the new coalition government. see http:// www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/other/turner_review.pdf (accessed may 04, 2009) and http://www. hm-treasury.gov.uk/consult_financial_regulation.htm (accessed august 06, 2010). 7  the e.u. struck a high-level committee to examine the crisis and how to respond to it, chaired by jacques de larosière, a former managing director of the imf who also played a leading role in preparing the e.u. for monetary union. in addition to proposing e.u.-wide risk and supervisory councils, this panel recommended reviewing accounting standards and basel ii (especially its capital adequacy requirements), tighter regulation of derivatives trading and the shadow banking system, and the harmonization of deposit insurance schemes on an e.u.-wide basis. see http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/finances/docs/ de_larosiere_report_en.pdf (accessed on july 29, 2009). | 107 cism however should be treated with caution, for two reasons. first, across europe and the u.s., banks have been recapitalized and are being forced to hold much more capital in relation to their lending and proprietary operations than prior to 2008. swiss banks, for example, are being compelled by their government to hold nearly 20% capital buffers whereas prior to 2008 they were capitalized at nearer to 7%.8 the british and dutch governments are arguing strenuously with the e.u. that they should be allowed to impose higher capital requirements than the new basel iii rules. here, minimum tier 1 capital ratios are being raised from a pre-crisis requirement of 4% to at least 7%, with a further tranche of easily accessible capital at 3%. furthermore, somewhere between 20 and 30 globally-active financial institutions are about to be categorized by the basel committee on banking supervision as ‘systemically important financial institutions’, or sifis, which will need to hold extra capital buffers above and beyond normal operating guidelines of between 1.5-2.5%, due to their perceived systemic importance. no one should doubt that increased capital ratios, which influence how much banks can lend, are on the way, and that these will have an impact on banking operations. it is through the mechanism of increased capital ratios that major banks are having their activities more closely supervised, and similar consequences are in train for other regulatory developments.9 the second reason why sceptics should be cautious relates to the politics of financial regulation. for much of the post-war period, financial regulation in the rich economies has been debated and conducted in a kind of segregated, insulated bubble, removed for the most part from popular (and democratic) pressures (helleiner, 1994; strange, 1998; porter, 2005; wood, 2005; germain, 2010). this is no longer the case. from the tea party phenomenon in the u.s. to the role played by populist and nationalist political parties in scandinavia in addressing the 2010-2011 european debt crisis to the refusal of icelandic voters to sanction an imf bailout, financial supervision and the politics of finance have moved to centre stage in national politics. and while this development has yet to fully play itself out, all indications are that the relatively insulated nature of financial politics has for the moment become impossible to maintain (thirkwell-white, 2009). 8  see http://online.wsj.com/article/sb10001424052748704631504575531222507779044.html (accessed october 15, 2010). 9  a summary of the basel iii can be found at http://www.bis.org/press/p100912.htm (accessed october 15, 2010). power, the state and global politics after the great freeze: towards a new articulation? 108 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times and yet a word of caution is in order. the state that is at the centre of this reassertion of authority is not itself entirely distinct from private authority. in all three jurisdictions examined here, private financial institutions have over the 1990s won a strengthened degree of involvement in the debate over how the financial system should be regulated. in the u.s. this is because of the porous and fragmented nature of the american political system, which has long been open to lobbying efforts from private firms. in the u.k. this is because of the historic ties between the city, the exchequer and the bank of england, and the single-minded determination of successive governments to maintain london’s role as a leading international financial centre. and in the e.u., although the influence of the private sector is not as strong as in the u.s. or u.k., it has grown over the years due to the sheer increase in the weight of financial affairs in the overall economy of europe, as well as the organizational efforts of europe’s leading banks to lobby on their own behalf in brussels (underhill and zhang, 2008; king and sinclair, 2003). geoffrey underhill (2000) is surely correct to note that there is a growing condominium between state and market in today’s global political economy. here, it is helpful to follow susan strange’s understanding of the intimate relationship between public and private forms of authority, as she recognizes that this relationship is part of a continuum whose balance changes over time. in her last major publication, she argued that markets and private authority had outrun state authority to the point where only an almost complete collapse of confidence in the capacity of private authority to effectively organize global finance could catalyze state authorities to reassert their traditional grip on financial systems (strange, 1998, p. 190). this collapse came upon us in 2008, when it fell to public authorities alone to stem the tide, which was estimated by one respected analyst to cost nearly us$14 trillion (haldane and alessandri, 2009). so, while the precise nature of the new balance between public and private authority has yet to be stabilized, there should be no questions about the direction of change: in each of the world’s major financial markets, the role of the state is being up-scaled, with the result that state authority is being re-articulated to exert more structural power over how financial markets are organized. we may say that the agenda-setting capacity of the state has been re-asserted over financial markets, even if this reassertion is uneven and subject to private sector push-back. | 109 power and the state system: emerging market economies and the balance of power many scholars and commentators have observed that global politics, understood primarily through the lens of the inter-state system, has been in a period of transformation (e.g. jacques, 2009; halliday, 2009). on the debit side of this ledger is the weakening grip of western powers, symbolized by the economic troubles of the u.s. on the credit side of this ledger are the emerging market economies, symbolized most importantly by the rise of the bric countries but including other non-g7 countries whose economies and international profiles have been growing rapidly. for these countries the early years of the 21st century have at last brought dynamic economic growth and public sector reform that has enabled them to acquire the material vestiges of real power: their economies have hummed; their trade has skyrocketed; their companies have gone global; their reserves have been bolstered; and their armies have become better equipped. in short, enough emerging market and other non-g-7 economies have grown in relation to the historically-powerful countries that talk of a new and emerging international balance of power is warranted. following from our earlier analysis, however, we can ask whether scholars are not committing the same analytical error that strange reprimanded her peers for making over two decades ago? a critical example is the accumulation of international reserves by the bric countries, which is often considered a key barometer of the growing power of emerging market economies. for strange, this would be a clear example of how structural power works, because the stockpiling of foreign currency reserves denominated in u.s. dollars confirms three important features of american structural power: (1) america still has the world’s confidence as the pre-eminent provider of global liquidity; (2) there are at this time no serious rivals to accumulating and using u.s. dollars as an international reserve currency, even if those accumulating such reserves complain about the injustice of it; and (3) whereas bric and other countries have to earn their liquidity (which are what such reserves represent), america can simply create its liquidity. it is hard to think of a better indicator of structural power than this, what strange (1987, p. 569) in her own time called super-exorbitant privilege. nevertheless, since 2009 chinese officials (often but not always supported by other bric countries) have stepped up calls for the development of a non-dollar-denominated international reserve currency unit. what would be needed for such a development to occur? on the governpower, the state and global politics after the great freeze: towards a new articulation? 110 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times ment side, it would require holders of large dollar-denominated reserves to make their own currencies completely convertible in order to allow for their use abroad as trade and investment vehicles. in other words, emerging market economies such as china, russia, india and brazil need to liberalize their current and capital accounts to the point where others will have the necessary confidence to diversify into these currencies and use them as genuine reserve currencies. as these governments tighten their hold on undesired movements of capital into and out of their economies (as indeed many emerging market economies are doing), such a possibility seems more remote today than at any time in the past twenty years.10 indeed, one only has to look back to the experience of japan during the 1980s and its antipathy towards internationalizing the yen to understand the deep political forces that constrain governments which otherwise might challenge existing reserve currencies.11 but on the private or market side of the equation the forces supporting the continuing use of the u.s. dollar are equally powerful. private firms and market actors demand not just that governments relinquish control over currencies in order that they may be used for purposes dictated by the interests of private accumulation, but also that there be ample liquidity in order that the temporary use of a currency (as a store of value, for example) does not become a permanent and unwanted longterm investment. for this condition to obtain, governments need to adopt a liberal view of their currencies, most importantly by freeing their use abroad and by abjuring their use as a developmental tool. there also needs to be an adequate supply of the currency in question. absent suitable liberalization and an ample supply, private firms and markets will not have the confidence to use a currency (or facilitate its use), and will therefore minimize how they employ it. 10  over the past two years, countries including china, south korea, singapore, brazil and turkey have joined russia and india to implement controls on the inflow of capital as an important tool in the battle to protect their economies from currency appreciation and, to a lesser extent, over-heating. these controls are now supported by the imf, which has shifted its long-standing blanket opposition to capital controls. see for example http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/business/global/11capital.html?_r=1&ref=business (accessed december 5, 2010). 11  the basic problem faced by a country possessing an international reserve currency is that it loses its ability to hold onto direct control of its exchange rate, and thereby the ability to use its currency as a developmental tool. by its very nature an international reserve currency is widely dispersed and intensely traded, and this compromises the ability of its issuing government to control its value. of course, there are significant advantages to the issuer of an international reserve currency, most importantly the ability to fund its government’s activities cheaply because of the international demand for its government bonds (which are the chief component of international reserves). to most developing and emerging market countries, however, the benefits of issuing a reserve currency are far outweighed by the disadvantages, hence their reluctance to allow their currency to act as such. | 111 and this is where we are in 2011 with respect to the future of the american dollar as an international reserve currency. many countries (and not just bric countries) are uncomfortable with the international role of the u.s. dollar. by making it cheap for the u.s. to fund its budgetary and current account deficits (what economists often call seigniorage), using the dollar as the international reserve currency retards the adjustment process the u.s. needs to undertake to bring its trade, current and capital accounts into a more sustainable balance. it also prolongs the vulnerability other countries experience with respect to having to follow or react to america’s monetary policies. yet, the world is not rushing out to adopt the rouble or the rupee or the yuan as reserve currencies, simply because they cannot. and neither can they freely use the pound sterling, japanese yen, swiss franc or, most significantly, the euro. there are simply not enough of the former to be thrust into this role, while the political mismatch between the issuance of euro-denominated debt and who controls its value ultimately means that an enormous question mark hangs over precisely how robust an international role the euro can play. by default, the dollar will be required for use as an international reserve currency until well into the middle decades of the 21st century.12 so, the accumulation of a mountain of u.s. dollar-denominated reserve assets by bric and other countries such as japan does not prima facie indicate the decline of american power. in relational terms, to return to susan strange’s argument, it may indeed appear that the u.s. now has serious rivals to its monetary power. however, in structural terms, its challengers are hobbled by the framework of practices that have developed over the past decades that have been entirely cantered on american interests and needs. the u.s. has held a firm grasp on monetary and financial power since 1945, and this has allowed it to build up 12 the problems of the euro zone in 2010-11 have clarified how significant the political mismatch is in europe, possibly dealing a fatal blow to a global role for the euro. two developments could conceivably undermine the future role of the u.s. dollar. one development might be a genuine budgetary (and therefore political) crisis in the u.s., involving both default and devaluation. if this happens all bets are off. the august 2011 downgrade u.s. debt by standard and poor’s sets up an interesting confrontation between the u.s. government and american credit rating agencies in this respect, but it is difficult to see quite what the practical outcome of this move will be, since a large part of these agencies’ role in the global financial system derives in part from their explicit (american) government sanctioned role in rating government and private debt (sinclair 2005). moreover, it is difficult to identify america’s budgetary woes as a ‘debt’ problem when in fact its effective tax rate is less than 25% of gdp, well below the oecd average of 35%. the other development might be the development of sdrs into a kind of proper international reserve currency. even if this were to happen it would still not address the needs of private firms and market actors for an internationally-tradable currency, which an sdr is most manifestly not. international reserve currencies need to be accepted and used by both public and private agents; this accounts for how difficult they are to establish as well as why they take so long to fade. power, the state and global politics after the great freeze: towards a new articulation? 112 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times an historic reservoir of influence and power that will not be easily dislodged.13 yet, the balance of economic power has not been entirely static over the post-war era, and even though american firms and indeed the american government together constitute a significant element of the world’s monetary and financial system, they are not as ubiquitous an element as they once were. the u.s. has been to a certain extent decentred from the structure of financial governance over the past decade and a half, so that even though it is still an immensely powerful actor it must now negotiate the framework of this structure with other actors and their concerns (germain, 2010). it is this political fact which marks out the salience of current governance developments, where the interaction of international political relations with the demands of regulatory change are generating a set of issues whose importance is both novel and potentially long-lasting. structural power and political order two important sets of long-term structural consequences have been set in motion. one set of consequences revolves around the role of the state in the global financial system. as states–in both the developed and developing economies–move to re-calibrate how they intervene in the organization and operation of financial systems, their centrality within the globalized structure of financial governance will grow. the nationstate is not simply important here because it is the instrument through which all regulation actually gets implemented. even more critically, it is the only institution which can generate financial regulation that is appropriate and suitable for its own economy. emerging market economies–and the bric countries in particular–will here take their cue from what the u.s. and e.u. states actually do to impose tighter regulations on financial institutions; a slightly less globalized financial system is most likely to be the outcome. this is so because higher capital requirements, more capital controls and more tightly circumscribed operating environments will inevitably generate a global financial system less hospitable 13  many of the themes canvassed in the above paragraphs can be found also in a recent volume on the future of the u.s. dollar (helleiner and kirshner, 2009). interestingly, the experts in that volume agree to disagree on the future of the dollar. | 113 to what i elsewhere describe as deep globalization.14 this does not mean that globalization as we know it is coming to an end, merely that there will be less of it going forward. we will move from a highly globalized world to a world in which the pull of the nation-state away from deep globalization is more clearly felt. intersecting with the strengthening of the state is the second set of consequences, namely the refashioning of the inter-state balance of power. we have seen how this works in terms of the role of the u.s. dollar as an international reserve currency: its role is being eroded and brought into question, yet with no alternative in sight. in other words, one of the critical foundations of political order for the global political economy is entering a period of intense uncertainty. we have not witnessed such a situation since the inter-war period. strange might have observed here that the structural power of the u.s. is changing only very slowly, while its instrumental power to shape decisions directly is increasingly haphazard, reflecting the volatility of circumstances (including significantly an increasingly unstable domestic political landscape). what is especially important at the current moment, however, is that the global economic decision-making agenda does not yet appear to have ceded substantial power to emerging market economies, despite for example their accumulation of enormous reserves of u.s. dollars. structural power remains asymmetrically concentrated in american institutions and subject to american rules. how much longer will this remain so? if we return to strange’s conceptual formulation of structural power, we can recall that it relied on american military dominance, the continuing dominance of american ideals and values, and the place of american financial institutions, markets and government in the global financial system. if these fundamental elements of the global political order become further constrained or even undermined, then those adopting strange’s position would have to concede that the structural power of the u.s. is weakening. what is the status of these elements of global political order? the u.s. continues to outspend the rest of the world combined on defence, and it continues to be the only state with the military capacity 14  deep globalization here refers to the intensity of liberalization efforts which have driven economic growth since the end of the bretton woods era in the early 1980s. globalization– understood as increasing levels of economic integration among major economies together with the emergence of a global political consensus organized around neo-liberal principles– has been sustained by the global reach of liberalization, and it is precisely this which is coming unstuck as a consequence of the great freeze. this theme is explored below and in some detail in germain (2010: ch. 6). power, the state and global politics after the great freeze: towards a new articulation? 114 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times to fight a two-front war. yet, its military might is no longer unrivalled, and the build up of military assets by china could be viewed by some as a significant challenge. but it must be acknowledged that the only potential military rival to the u.s. is china, and so long as european states continue to rely disproportionally on american security via nato it is unlikely that the military dominance of the u.s. will collapse any time soon. while the idea of a uni-polar moment may be overstating the case, we are in many respects well short of a genuine multi-polar inter-state system (ikenberry, mastanduno and wohlfarth, 2009). what should be of more concern to scholars of global power is the condition of american values and ideals, which support in so many ways the entrenched american-centred global economic agenda. here it is interesting that one of the consequences of the great freeze has been the severe questioning of liberalization as the default ideational template for global capitalism. there are still no serious alternatives to organizing the global economy along capitalist lines. what has changed, however, is the degree to which capitalism needs to be organized along liberal (or neo-liberal) lines. here liberalization as an ethos is now subject to two important charges: (1) it is unsustainable as a form of economic regulation; and (2) that state-organized capitalism is in fact more stable than liberal capitalism. and while neither of these charges are categorical or themselves without controversy, they have undermined the persuasive power of liberalization’s ideologues to spread their gospel. from europe to asia to latin america and africa, liberalism is in retreat, and this has undermined the ideational supports for the operationalization of american structural power. finally, the great freeze began in the u.s. financial system, even if it was aided and abetted by global forces and dynamics. has it also challenged the centrality of the american financial system to the global financial system? this question is difficult to assess at this moment in time. on one hand, even with the carnage wreaked by the great freeze, american financial markets remain the deepest and most liquid in the world. and while american banks and financial institutions no longer remain the world’s largest by many ratios, they continue to be among the most profitable and innovative, and equally important they continue to provide unparalleled access for foreigners to american capital markets. their centrality to the organization and operation of the global financial system will not soon disappear. and because both u.s. markets and financial institutions remain key components of the global financial system, so too does the american government. its image and halo may | 115 be tarnished and dented, but it continues to possess a definite and considerable weight in how the global financial system runs. this sets up an interesting scholarly debate between those, like myself, who now emphasize the extent of change in the landscape of global political economy, and those who remain impressed by the continuity of capitalist relations as the key factor that explains current trajectories. at one level this is a debate about the relative weight to assign to competing explanatory variables: are we focusing on state versus class; public versus private; or global versus national? at another level it is about the grounds of adjudication: does more regulatory control also mean that state authorities are somehow in ascendancy, when in fact the dividing line between public and private authority may be impossible to identify? and at still another level, it is about the means used to understand and verify the categories we are using: do we appeal to ‘evidence’ or ‘theory’ (‘beliefs’?) when it comes to establishing the fundamental basis of our arguments? there are no easy or clear answers to these questions; thus such debates will long maintain their traction. yet here again it is worthwhile to return to the work of susan strange, for she offers at the very least a way of negotiating some of the hurdles thrown up by these debates. for strange, who understood that there were several ways of apprehending all important events, the question of the significance of current changes would need to be addressed within the context of cui bono, or for whose advantage? this context almost always provides a clear causal chain to follow, even if the measurement of ‘advantage’ can be a bit messy. in the case of changes to financial regulation, it appears that the biggest beneficiaries of higher capital requirements, increased capital controls and less liberalization are states in general and major developed states in particular, because it is they who will have to spend less to bail out their financial institutions if regulatory reforms are successful. of course, private financial institutions should also benefit from these reforms, but the weight of advantage lies with states. similarly, the unevenness of the changes outlined above regarding the inter-state balance of power, while not directly challenging the structural power of the u.s., certainly begin to undermine the ideational core of that power. over time, this will have the effect of eroding from within the dominant position of the u.s. in the global political economy. it is for these reasons that i can argue that the global articulation of power within the global political economy is entering a period of power, the state and global politics after the great freeze: towards a new articulation? 116 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times uncertainty as established patterns of power erode and new patterns emerge unevenly. there is no question that the relational power of the u.s. is eroding: firms from emerging market economies are challenging american firms in some areas, while the ability of the u.s. state to dictate its preferences onto a pliant world no longer holds. at the same time, the agenda setting ability of american authorities, both public and private, has not entirely deteriorated, and in some areas remains substantial. this is what continues to generate america’s continuing structural power. the interesting aspect of this situation, from the perspective of scholars of ir and ipe, will be how it plays out over the medium term, when the economic and security capabilities of the u.s. seem to be moving in opposite directions. the prediction i would make in late 2011 is that as nation-states reassert their authority over their financial systems and intervene to blunt the advance of globalization, the entire fabric of the global political economy is becoming rebalanced, ushering in a new inter-state balance of power and a new era in the history of global 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(2008). “setting the rules: private power, political underpinnings, and legitimacy in global monetary and financial governance,” international affairs, vol. 84, no. 3: 536-54. | 119 wood, duncan. (2005). governing global banking: the basel committee and the politics of financial globalization. aldershot: ashgate. power, the state and global politics after the great freeze: towards a new articulation? myths on the left: the narrative and discursive practices of the aflcio news francois huot university ofiviassaciiusetts at amiierst the question that presents itself is what, if any, differences are there between the ultimate objectives of organized industry and those of organized labor? suppose we pierce through the flaming slogans, noble writings and dramatic stories and look into the purposes and the philosophy of the organized labor movement in terms ofits contrastto the character oforganized capital . (alinsky, 1969:26) maybe it is because progressive academics can always remember a verse or two from a woody guthrie song or because they cannot make old images of striking wobblies disappear, but the number of studies of the ideological practices ofthe labour movement remains surprisingly low. even if a general mistrust of labor organizations exists in left-wing circles, tradeunions are often constructed as fundamentally 'good' organizations in which little ideological or symbolical manipulation is actually taking place. the defense of the oppressed, the nobleness of purpose and the trade-unions' democratic pretension are seen as saf(^;uards preventing this evoituality (guerard, 1987:1994). i believe, however, that ideological work is taking place 'on the left' and that alinsky's question still needs to be asked. are the american tradealternate routes, volumell, 1994 alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 unions really different from organized industry? which forms ofideological and symbolical manipulation are being used mside the labour movement? i mtendto bnnga preliminary answerto these questions by looking at a cultural production ofamerican labour and by conducting an analysis ofthe narrative and the discursive practices of the afl-cio news, 21 biweekly newspaper distnbuted to the unions' officers, employees and subscribing members.^ however, before going any further, it is important to introduce the theoretical perspectives on ideology which allow for the examination of 'left-wing' practices and justify the selection of a labour newspaper as the object of analysis. ideology: from representation to socul practices when rene descartes defined thefundamental dichotomy between the mental process and the natural world (mind and body, subject and object), he also laid the groundwork that allowed for the conceptualization of ideology as a set of ideas or, to borrow from althusser (1971), "representations." in classical marxist thought, which must be situated inside this cartesian paradigm, ideology can only be defined as the imaginary (false) representation of real (extenor) conditions of existence. from this perspective, two basic assumptions emerge: first, the discovery of a true or valid representation is possible and second, ideology cannot exist 'on the left' because what is created there, according to marxist theory, is an exact representation ofone's conditions of existence. in the semiological formulation, on the contrary, meamng never simply reflects the 'real.' meaning is earned by the sign which is created when persons, connect a signifier and a signified (de saussure, 1 959). the creation of meaning appears as an individual process, but this does not imply a guarantee of total freedom: "we are not free to determine these relations [between signifier and signified] as we please: we are a part of a prearranged semiological world" (lewis, 1991:30). as angus and jhally( 1989:2) point out: "people create their own meaning, but as marx noted, 'not in conditions of their own choosing'." huot/myths on the left the mobilization of this prearranged world of signification is the domain of ideological work. thus, as thompson (1984: 13 1) suggests, "[t]o study ideology is to study the ways in which meaning (or signification) serves to sustain relations of domination." this connection ofmeaning to the social order permits the transformation ofthe notion of ideology from a concept of internal ideas, into one of social practices. as althusser notes, "certain notions have purely and simply disappeared from our presentation, whereas others on the contrary survive, and new terms appear...practices, rituals, ideological apparatus" (1971:159). these concepts open the door to the examination of the influence of cultural and ideological practices on the creation of meaning. ideological practices must be connected to discursive and narrative practices and brought into the realm ofthe everyday, for they are a part of "a complex series ofmechanisms whereby meaning is mobilized in the discursive practices of everyday life" (thompson, 1984:63). ideological practices and the trade-unions the production of a labour newspaper, the organization of a strike, the training of newly elected officers, the negotiation encounters, the rallies, the conventions, the meetings and even the informal tete-a-tete around a well deserved drink, all become occasions ofcreation, enactment and reproduction of ideological practices. these practices interact and are mobilized in every phase of union life: the proceedings of a meeting are printed in the union's newspaper, which is studied in a training session and in turn, the knowledge produced there helps to solve an interpersonal problem that occurs in a local committee. through these ideological practices, the leadership ofthe tradeunions will attempt to develop and maintain a hegemonic control of the organization. however, i believe that these ideological practices are better conceptualized as a set ofresources used by relatively autonomous parts (sub-systems) ofthe trade-union than as a set oftruths imposed upon the organization by the leadership. the 'control room' metaphor (collins, 1 989) fails to explain the observed ideological coherence.^ as a resource, ideological practices will be m alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 aiacted by various actors in the everyday life ofan organization. in his work asylum, which decribes the characteristics of total institutions, erving goflfman crafted the notion of institutionalized motives, or frames of referqice, which "may nevertheless function to restrain other types of interpretation" ( 1 96 1 :9 1 ). these frames of reference are ideological practices that will be used to regulate the organizational life. nevertheless, even if such social actors can oijoy a relative autonomy, the battle for the hegemonic control of labour organizations persists. in this struggle, a newspaper like the afl-cio news remains a crucial apparatus that needs to be controlled by the union leadership . in the everyday life ofthe american trade-unions, the afl-cio news provides the assorted stories, narratives and meta-narratives needed to interpret the social world. it presents the main social actors, describes their accomplishments and their predicaments, and constructs a totalizing representation of the world. the texts pnnted in this newspaper reflect the trade-union life and cannot be dissoaated from thepractices ofproduction and decoding (reading). because of this connection between the texts and the organizational practices, an analysis of the afl-cio news will allow for the discovery of the forms of ideological and symbolical manipulation that are taking place inside the organization. each and every story that is printed becomes a battleground in the quest for hegemony. when barthes (1988b) discusses the nature of the text, he opposes the concept of a writerly text with the notion of a readerly one. the reader of a writerly text will be allowed to construct a variety of meanings from this source; the text is characterized by its openness. "we knownow that a text is not a line of words releasing a single 'theological' meaning, but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety ofwritings, none ofthem original, blond and clash" (barthes, 1988b: 146). the cultivation of this hegemonic control is performed through multifarious efforts to close texts, to transform the wnterly into the readerly and to limit the possibilities of meaning creation/^ huot/myths on the left the objective ofthis paper is to examine which stories are told, to find outwho tells us these tales and to uncover which world view is promoted. the analysis will highlight the narrative and discursive elements that support three key ideological practices: practices of transformation, practices of commodification and practices of definition. the afl-cio news performs a transformation of the social actors' nature and characteristics: members who occupy an active social position as workers are transformed into the passive baieficiaries of the union's victories. the battles of the past—^the worker's struggles and victories—are reduced to simple discursive commodities that are mobilized to support labour's image of continuity and radicalness. finally, the newspaper defines, for the purposes of the internal debate, certain key political or organizational concepts: it establishes what are democratic practices, progressive attitudes and important issues. through these practices, ideological structures that contribute to the perpetuation of the existing social and organizational systems are constructed, maintained and reproduced. sources of data and methods for the analysis the afl-cio news was founded in 1 955 at the time ofthe merger between the afl's trade-based unions and the cio's industry based ones,^ most probably out of a necessity to create some sense of organizational cohesiveness in the renewed partnership. the publication evolved, slowly replacing articles constructed around formal statements of the labour's policy with stories more in tune with a modem 'journalistic' style. nowadays, a rapid glance at any issue ofthe afl-cio news evokes images ofthe usa today: colour on the first page, bold graphics, colour photographs and relatively short stories. each story printed in the afl-cio news reproduces the name of the writer and this practice suggests the existence of mainstream media concepts such as the objectivity of the press. the studywas conductedthrough an analysis ofthree issues ofthe aflcio official newspaper: the afl-cio news. these issues were randomly selected over a one year period (1990). each story and photograph was alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 constructed as a basic unit of analysis, using the concq)t oflexia defined by barthes (1974:13): "the best possible space in which we can observe meaning." this method produced 131 different items for the analysis (89 articles, 35 photographs and 7 graphics/tables). the social actors ''qiii est le donateur du recit?"" (barthes, 1971:25). when he asks who gives us the tale, barthes implicitly states the importance ofthe identification ofthe story's narrator. according to the framework developed in l 'analyse stnicturale du recit, the tale can either be narrated by a single individual (the expression of a personal subjectivity), or attributed to a total consciousness (a diffuse and godlike authority). it is also possible for the characters of a story to give an account of their own actions. in the case of the afl-cio news, the second option seems to be the rule: a diffuse authority, the consaence of the union movement, describes a complex world in which r^ vanous protagonists aigage m social actions. the photographic evidence in the modem newspaper, the text is still an essential element, the photograph an optional one. yet photographs, when they appear, add new dimensions of meamng to a text. as roland barthes has observed, "pictures ...are more imperativethan writing, they impose meaningat one stroke, without analyzing or diluting it." (hall, 1972:53) leaders members politicians others total men 46 35 3 4 88 women 1 11 1 3 16 children 2 2 total 47 46 4 9 106 figure 1: the representation of persons according to gender and stated occupation with only one exception' the 35 photographs included in the selected issues of the afl-cio news represent persons taking part in various huot/myths on the left activities. figure 1 identifies the represented persons according to their gender and their stated occupation. the obvious situation revealed bythese numbers is that men outnumber women on a 5:1 ratio. the unions are descnbed as places where men take control ofthe action and occupy the roles of protector ofwomen and owners ofthe public life. this description reinforces the dominant values of struggle, brute force and violence. in union life, women participate in protests or in membership meetings; the union allows some place forwomen but only ifthey assume a pre-defined role as a member. there is no place here for specificity, as the following story demonstrates: "for 114 years, conventions of the marine engineers have been a men only function. . . . the tradition ended this year... two women delegates were present... they received a round of applause from the 46 male delegates" (afl-cio, 1990b:4). even if the presence oftwo womoi is acknowledged the story will quickly reduce them totheirnormal status—simple delegates. in addition to this split alonggender lines, a second division is established between the members and the leaders of the unions: the latter roughly equal the number of the former, but there is only one woman among the 47 leaders depicted. furthermore, the distinction between leadership and membership is deepened, usingthecntena of vanety and senousness ofthe activity. figure 2 describes the activities in which the leaders engage. men who are leaders. . . are taking part in a meeting or in a discussion 17 stand or speak on a podium to a crowd 12 talk to or listen to a politician 9 lead a rally or a protest 3 inspect a factory 2 attend training sessions 2 portrait of. . . 1 figure 2: activities of trade-union leaders. alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 the leaders are active. they take part in meetings and discussions with other union leaders or with important individuals such as technical experts, politiaans, public agenaes managers or company chairpersons. the representation of this activity simultaneously produces an opposition between the nature of the work performed by the officers and ordinary workers, and creates a theatrical opposition/relation between union and society's leaders. the dramatic action will be charactenzed by the exchanges between these important social actors, thus excluding the members from the definition and the resolution oftheir own problems. a second oppositional/relational pair is defined between the leaders and the union's members when the officers are represented standing on a podium, addressing a crowd or leading a rally. each of these performances requires an audience and the members fulfill that function and contribute to the construction of a dynamic relation between the leaders' activity and the members' passivity. on the other hand, the members represented in the photographs of the afl-cio news act as good union members, holding signs, protesting or picketing. figure 3 offers a complete tally ofthe pictured activities. workers are represented almost exclusively as participants in union activities, emphasizing their identity as members. this implied definition relates directlyto the needs of the organization and to those of its leaders. it also excludes from labour's scene the non-unionized workers (unemployed persons, welfare reapients). the political and ideological life of the afl-cio and its social projects refer only to the world of the members. men who are members.. . protest, picket or hold signs 26 talk and chat with other members 3 work at their usual jobs 2 take care of a child while protesting 1 inspect the site of an accident 1 sit on a couch with wife and child 1 portrait of. . . 1 figure 3: activities of trade-union members. huot/myths on the left outside the organization the members simply do not exist as significant social actors in the public sphere, outside the organizational realm. this public world belongs to the unions' leaders. labour's action, an essentially collective process, are individualized and reduced in the afl-cio news' reports to the union leader's activities. leaders are named and their functions and responsibilities are always spelled out. "afl-cio vice-president lenore miller... vicepresident owen bieber of the uaw... charles b. dale president of the newspaper guild... alfred di tolla, president of the stages employees..." (afl-cio, 1990c:8). this techniquetransforms the benefits ofthe collective action into the results of the hard work of certain individuals, a direct connection to the dominant ideological values ofindividuality. the unions are successfiil because they have effective leaders. in addition, the trade-unions are transformed into tools or resources personally owned by the officers. in the following story a reader may believe that the leaders are pledging their own money to support the new york daily news strikers. vice-president morton bahr of the communication workers pledged $50 000, while vice-president john j. sweeny of the service employees and john kelly ofthe office and professional workers each pledged $30 000..." (afl-cio, 1990c:8) in the social world, labour's leaders interact with various politicians who are always referred to as representatives of one political party. in the description of the politicians, there are no surprises: the democrats are the good guys "...an amendment was offered by sen. robert byrd (d-w.va.). supported by the afl-cio, it would have granted supplemental benefits. . . " (afl-cio, 1990b:3) and the republicans the bad ones "...symbolic of the scraps left over for working people under the bush capital gains tax plan" (afl-cio, 1990b:3). the leaders also meet with employers (the real producers of wealth') and appeal to judges (who protect society from the actions of the greedy captains of industry). o alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 a study of the narratives now that the key actors that inhabit the world of the afl-cio news have been identified, an analysis ofthe narrative structures used in the newspaper may reveal how they act and what is the nature of the relations between the protagonists. the organization of the narrative constructs an internal structure into the text and, in so doing, limits the reader's abilityto create meaning. eco ( 1 981) illustrated how such configurations organize the decoding of a specific story. however, the influence of the narratives goes beyond this internal effect: the repetition of specific structures produces an ideological effect by limiting the range of possible decodings oftexts. the interpretation pattern thus created will be transferred and used in the interpretation of a wider range of social events. the study of the labour movement's publications reveals the existence of a central narrative and the presence of a series of secondary narratives used as supporting stones. the main narrative the main narrative is reproduced in a number of stories and it can be used to integrate the remaining articles inside a coherent ideological framework. an effective way to introduce this narrative is to examine a story constructed around it: local 802 also won a first contract for the musicians who perform with the concert pops of long island. those members overwhelmingly ratified a first contract with the new york brass choir inc., the parent group ofthe concert pops. the three year accord provides job secunty for the 39 musicians who were organized in july 1990. complaints of late payment ofwages and of arbitrary dismissals had prompted the organizing dnve. the contract addresses those issues. (afl-cio, 1990c:7) the basic narrative structure displayed here consists of a succession of three different moments: the union won a contract, the members approved it huot/myths on the left and finally, the contract provided benefits to the union's members. two preliminary stages usually appear before this dramaticprogression: the union knows how to act and, using this knowledge, it initiates the action. if these initial phases are included in the basic framework, the completed sequence of action unfolds in the order illustrated in figure 4. the afl-cio news main narrative union knows what to do i , union takes action i union wins agreement i members accept the aggrement i society benefts from union action figure 4: the afl-cio news main narrative structure. the first moment ofthe sequence is characterized by the construction ofthe union as a legitimate organization: the unions know what to do. this legitimation is performed through a series ofstories that promote thepersonal qualities of the union leaders. a recurring column, appearing in every issue oftheafl-cionews, is entitled "newsmakers." inside this feature information regarding the whereabouts of the movement's leaders is published. "robert t. mclntyre, executive vice-president ofthe pennsylvania aflcio. . . recently was presented the first annual williame. cockerill sr. award by the umted way of lackawanna county..." (afl-cio, 1990c:9). in addition, the unionists will appear in photographs that represent them working, often early in the morning, in the company of important public personages. "sen, john glenn (d-ohio) addresses nuclear concerns at a breakfast meeting with conference delegates" (afl-cio, 1990b:4). at a second level a valorization of the technical skills mastered by the union officers is produced when the afl-cio news promotes the organization's o alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 training program: " the craft ofnegotiation. negotiation and writing contract language. advanced arbitration and working with the news media..." are several of the showcased skills (afl-cio, 1990c:7). however, this fabncation of the unions' legitimacy depends for the greater part on the appropnation (reinterpretation) of the past and on the continuous demonstration of the justness of the orgamzation's cause. in the first issue of the year the afl-cio news ran a three-page story oititled "amencan labour in the 80's" (afl-cio, 1990a: 1012). this article presctits a senes of cases in which the persistence displayed by the workers lead to important victories. the clothing and textile workers won a contract at j. p. stevois after a 17-year struggle. t&n years after the uaw began an organizing drive, the tenacity of its members finally yielded a contract with ortner freight car co. (afl-cio, 1990a: 10) the survey ofthe previous battles is used to construct the image ofthe 'noble worker.' it associates this image with the american trade-unions and creates a reservoir of tales that will be slowly added to labour's mythology. the article moves forward and gives the reader the official history of the preceding decade. the 1 980 's were marked by another phenomenon: the emergence of the two-tier contract, which permitted lower wage scales for new entrants. . this management demand was less than palatable for workers and their unions. but the double-digit unemployment rate of the reagan recession was taking its toll on workers and their families, and unions reluctantly bowed to this economic necessity. (afl-cio, 1990a: 11) ttiis reinterpretation ofthe past will be etched in stone and will become as definitive, within the movement, as is the story of the great depression. union members or officers who opposed this political line ofconcessions will not be able to refer back to their own interpretation of what is now labelled as the 'reagan recession.''' the bottom line is that the labour movemait huot/myths on the left survived the reagan years and business can go on as usual. "a union card remains the worker's best friend" (afl-cio, 1990a: 12). this commodification ofthe workers' past struggles through ideological practices does not stop there as selected worker's biographies are used to intimate the union's actions. a series of articles on the issue ofoccupational health and safety accomplishes this task bypresenting several cases ofinjured workers. "harold gallegos, a soft-spoken man, has endured two years of untold pain and suffering since being contaminated by a chemical soup mixture..." (afl-cio, 1990b:7). this is the classical appeal to a higher moral ground: ifthe unions are fightingto protect the sick and even to prevent death, how can one oppose its actions? the second stage of the narrative sequence occurs when the union initiates action. this narrative moment reifies the union itself and presoits it as the real initiator ofvarious actions. as a consequence, workers and umon members are excluded from the key moments of collective action, the elaboration ofthe strategy and the deci sion to act. ifthe union can be identified as the source ofthe action, the future benefits will be attributed to the union, thus justifying its existence. this process is used in the body ofthe various stories. "the arkansas afl-cio joined in a complaint to the federal communication commission claiming that a major television station slanted its coverage on a state ballot question" {afl-cio news, 1990c:5). but most often it operates in the headlines' text. "unions seek right to act to save workers lives" (afl-cio, 1990c:2). the other technique used to produce this effect is to credit the union's leader with the initiation of the action. a typical illustration of this method can be found in the caption of one photograph: "union presidents vincent sombrotto, left, and moe biller rally members of the letter carriers and postal workers outside the usps headquarters" (afl-cio, 1990c:6). the members disappear from the scene as the union leads the way: "afl-cio vice-president lenore miller of the retail, wholesale and department stores umon, said rwdsu pledged $75 000, with $55 000 coming from its local 1 199." (afl-cio, 1990c:8) the alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 fact that real members contnbuted their own money in solidarity for thenew york daily news strikers becomes irrelevant. the natural consequence of any action on the part of the union is that the union wins an agreement, this constitutes the third stage ofthe narrative. the union gains new benefits for its members, "food and commercial workers (ufcw) at three arizona supermarket chains won wage increases andlump-sum payments under anewfive-year contract" (afl-cio, 1990a:2); signs agreements with employers, ". . the uaw has won agreements that the companies will join in the effort for a national solution to the u. s . health care problem" (afl-cio, 1 990c: 1 ) or wins court battles, "actwu legal action wins retiree center for 20 000" (afl-cio, 1990b: 13). once again, the contribution made from the workers becomes an element ofthe background. sometimes the workers have to strike: "a week long stnke by 1 1 000 members of the services employees local 399..." (afl-cio, 1990b: 15). however, even ifthis action was staged by the union's members, the headline of this article reads: "seiu local wins contract at hmo." the reified union becomes the true social actor. the fourth stage ofthe narrative begins when the members accept the agreement which the union obtained for them. the role reserved for the members is quite limited, essentially they will have the opportunity to cast a ballot to approve the results ofthe bargaining between the union ' s rep resentatives and the employer. "lam members at mcdonnell douglas aircraft co. ratified a three-year agreement that provides a 1 1.5% wage increase plus lump-sum bonuses over the contract term" (afl-cio, 1990a:2). in this article, the percentages of the approval vote are emphasized. this provides a clear indication of the democratic structure of the union and, especially when the result of the ratification vote is overwhelming, gives an indication of the approval rating of the union performance. to give an impression of being a democratic organization seems to be important. another story explains that a union organized a ratification vote through a mail-in ballot. what can be more democratic than a vote in which every member had the opportunity to express his/her opinion in the pnvacy ofhis/her own home? no huot/myths on the left membership meetings where anti-democratic practices may take place, no debate and no pressure. the kind ofdemocracy promoted by the trade-unions bears a striking resemblance to the mainstream american practice of voting once every four years without taking part in any kind of public debate. the last part of the central narrative describes how the workers and society in general benefit from the trade-union's actions. the workers' gains are presented in every article reporting on the settlement ofa negotiation. the descriptions ofthe benefits are usually very detailed so that everyone can have a precise idea ofthe gains reaped by the union. moreover, the effects of the union's action reach not onlytheworkers but also members ofsociety at large. in a report ofa conference on nuclear safety this is stated in a straightforward manner: "concerned activity by the various unions have helped reduce risks in recent years, but the greed ofprivate contractors and the lax administration ofthe doe has added to those risks" (afl-cio, 1990a:4). but sometimes the connections are far more subtle. one article runs under the following headline: "umawwins right to work navajo repeal" (afl-cio, 1990c:5). the story explains how the navajo tribal council, under pressure from the united mine workers of america, removed a right to work disposition in favour ofthe navajo workers from the local l^slation. the result ofthe vote was 34-33. "[s]aid eugene badonie, president ofumwa local 1924. 'from now on, the navajo people will have good labour laws'" (afl-cio, i990c:5). one man's notion ofprogress is another man's notion ofgenocide. the power of the main narrative the basic form ofthis main narrative is so predominant in the articles ofthe afl-cio news that it will be used to report the 'not so successful ' contract negotiations. "the united transportation urnon reached agreement with the csx corp. railroad subsidiary to reduce crew sizes. about 375 workers will be affected bythe change. . . . another 1 75 furloughed brakemen will not return to their jobs under the accord. they may have either a $5000 separation allowance or the relocation money ($20 000 if jobs are available)" (aflcio, 1990a:4). in this story, the main narrative sequoice is used and its alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 ideological dominance allows for the presentation of this defeat (375 eliminatedjobs) as an ordinary bargaining report. the employer bargained in good faith and reached an agreement, the union did its job and the employees will be awarded a separation allowance. a defeat becomes a victory. the narrative structure clearly limits the possibility to look for global explanations outside the typical pattern. if it cannot be explained, then it becomes an act of god. the narratives for action in the second stage of the main narrative the unions organize and engage in various social actions. the examination ofthe different conceptions of social action displayed in the afl-cio news reveals a strong preference for legal action, political action and collective bargaining. figure 5 shows the articulation of these different modes of action. negotiation with a 'good' capitalist union wins an agreement union takes action negotiation with a 'bad' capitalist union organizes a strike legal action lobbying society benefits from union action figure 5: the narratives for union action initiating legal action is one of the preferred tactical avenues used by amencan trade-unions. a labour organization instigates l^al action to gain huot/myths on the left gaieral benefits for its members or to solve a complex bargaining process. legal action is important for the labour movemait mostly because its conception ofthe interrelations between the social system and the legal world is similar to the point ofview usually promoted in the american society. the possibilities for individual and collective action are embodied in 'rights' which are created by laws. "that includes the right to refuse life-threataiing work without suffering recrimination for the employer, and the right for the workers' representative to participate fully..." (afl-cio, 1990c:2). in consequence, pressing to get new legislation passed is constructed as an important activity because this action results in further protection for members and society. "the communication workers urgedthe swift passage of legislation to curb workplace violations of privacy by employers and to protect the rights ofworkers and consumers" (afl-cio, 1 990c: 11). getting new l^slation is the way to reform society and to use such tactics demonstrates complete agreement of the labour movemait with the actual 'rules of the game.' "orgamzed labour is completely committed to gettmg reform l^slation introduced in the next congress and 'we will do everything we can do to get it passed' donahue said" (afl-cio, 1990c:2). whenthelaw is constructed as the prime ruling force of society and when the u.s. constitution provides 'justice for all,' appealing to the courts to obtain justice becomes the legitimateway to act. "a union and human rights alliance is suing the bush administration..." (afl-cio, 1990b:4) or "the lawsuit was brought by civil service employees association local 830, on behalf of 7000 public workers" (afl-cio, 1990a:3). even if the courts are portrayed as neutral bodies, the union prefers to keep a firm control over their actions. "biller said that the unions still would like to settle negotiation without proceedingto arbitration, 'where anything can happen'" (afl-cio, 1990c:l). in this context, the activity of lobbying becomes an appealing way to press for new legislative protection. union leaders perform this mission whai they schedule meetings with state or federal politicians. " georgia building trades delegation calls on rep. bai jones (d-ga.) dunng the bctd alternate routes, volume 1 1,1 994 legislative conferoice in washington" (afl-cio, 1990 b:3). the promotion of members' interests is also acxx)mplished through public lobbying, when unions stage press conferences in which the leaders present their policy proposals on vanous topics. "in a white paper titled 'legacy of neglect: amenca's decaying roads and bndges' iron workers' president jake west warns that the decaying road system also would undercut productivity, jobs and even global competitiveness" (afl-cio, 1 990c:3). yet, a more effective way to exert influence is for the union officers to become accepted members ofthe 'old boys network.' the afl-cio's officers excel in this trade. "cochairs of the event included afl-cio secretary-treasurer thomas r. donahue, general motors corp. chairman robert stempel and richard j. schmeelk, chairman of c.a.i. advisors" (afl-cio, 1990c:7). nevertheless, even if l^al action and lobbying remain important activities, the negotiation of collective agreements remains the afl-cio raison d'etre. "through contract negotiation where possible and through legislative action when necessary, labour will ..." (afl-cio, 1 990a: 12). the examination of contract bargaining stories reveals the basic ideological assumptions of american labour and a fundamental community of interest existing between the employers and the unions. "in every sector of our society, there is a growing commitment to consider a new national approach..." (afl-cio, 1990c: 1). this is not only expliatly stated in the articles but also suggested by the kind of treatment reserved for the good capitalist, the employer who chooses to play within the good faith bargaimng scenano proposed by the unions. these rational employers are praised for their actions: "exel, a subsidiary of cargill inc., undertook the agreement out of enlightened management philosophy that a company that is not part ofthe solution is part ofthe problem" (afl-cio, 1990a:3). the ideal narrative for the bargaimng stories is built around the idea that a senous and intensive bargaining taking place between a union and an enlightened employer will yield an agreement both parties will find beneficial. a small dose ofcommon sense then proves that the economic system works for everyone. "[r]apid conclusion ofour negotiations was possible only because both parties entered huot/myths on the left the process with a firm commitment to move forward and to avoid the kind ofadversarial labour relations we had seen at eastern" (afl-cio, 1 990a: 2). ultimately, this construction goes beyond the bargaining process itself and becomes the metaphor upon which society should be organized: a negotiation of interests and advantages in which each party enters in good faith is seen as the only civilized way to work in a capitalist society. if everyone agrees to abide by this general rule, no one should lose and the emergence of conflict becomes rare, if not impossible. however, a small number of employers, because of bad faith or mere ineptitude, reject the model proposed bythe labour movement. ifthe employer displays an improper behaviour, theafl-cionews will compare its actions to those ofmore responsible managers. "theatrical stage employees local 1 voted strike authorization against cbs inc., after successfully bargaining new agreements with rival networksnbc and abc" (afl-cio, 1 990b: 1 5). the workers had to give the union a strike authorization, but this kind of action is always the consequence ofthe employers' position in the bargaining process. "the news management made a cold, deliberate decision to work against unions and their employees..." (afl-cio, 1990c:l). if, later in the process, the employees have to walk out, it will be in response to the employer's bad faith: either management delayed too long to initiate the bargainingprocess or demanded unreasonable concessions fromthe workers. "the 1700 miners walked offthejob after 17 months of stalled negotiations. pittston was seeking to eliminate or sharply cut health benefits. . . " (afl-cio, 1 990a:2). at this point, it is important to stress that the afl-cio will never describe an ongoing strike as a success, the decision to initiate this pressure tactic is always a result of the employer's action and a major failure of the bargainingprocess. onlywhen the strike is over will its memories and images be transformed and become part of the union's mythology. the union continually works for a quick termination of the strike and tries to convince the employer of the losses caused by this ordeal. "but the company's own financial reports...show that an end to the strike would be in the interests of all parties: workers, creditors and management" (afl-cio, 1990b:2). the alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 aid ofa labour dispute is always presented as the end ofa nightmare, and both labour and management wish for a different scenano when thetimeto bargain a new contract arrives. "pittston chairman paul w. douglas saluted the miners and their families. . . he expressed hope that labour and management could develop a long term solution..." (afl-cio, 1990a:2). the mythical discourses the utilization ofmyth can be related to a series of discursive practices that support the narratives and strengthen the worldview presented in the aflcio news. however, the existence and the effects ofmyth remain subtle and difficult to detect and this is why its investigation bears such a weight in the discovery of ideological practices. according to barthes (1988a), myth naturalizes the association of determinate meanings with specific signifiers and performs this association in an ambiguous manner: it can be donethrough a simplejuxtaposition oftwo different sets of signifiers or through displacement (or substitution) of usual meaningful associations. the impact of the myth is instantaneous in nature: "...myth essentially aims at causing an immediate impression—it does not matter if one is later allowed to see through the myth, its action is assumed to be stronger than the rational explanations which may later belie it... that is all and that is enough" (barthes, 1988a: 130). because of its naturalness, the ideological effects of the myth will survive its unravelling. "a more attentive reading of the myth will in no way increase its power or its ineffectiveness: a myth is at the same time imperfectible and unquestionable; time or knowledge will not make it better or worse" (barthes, 1988a: 130). a demonstration of a mythical creation of meaning by a juxtaposition of signifiers can be found in the article entitled "unions seek right to act to save workers' lives" (afl-cio, 1990c:2). the first step used here descnbes the safety conditions existing in the american factones as similar to those of wartime conditions: "...the war in the american workplace daily claims victims. workers pay the toll, employers pocket the profits and 20 years of attempts by the osha to diminish the sacrifice have failed" (aflhuot/myths on the left cio, 1990c:2). the juxtaposition is completed, a paragraph later, recalling the vietnam war: "for 1 6 years the bloodshed in vietnam appeared in nightly newscasts and the tally is inscribed on a memorial black granite walls—58 175 names..." (afl-cio, 1990c:2). this association yields a predominant meaning: the killing that takes place in the workplace produces real deaths, as serious as the ones occurring in combat. still, it goes beyond the obvious; comparison between the workers and the soldiers, between the trade-unions and the nation, between the employers and the enemy, and finally, an association between the workers' struggle and the plight of the american soldiers forced to fight with 'a hand tied behind their back' are created. in some cases, the discursive strat^es become more subtle and involve a succession of associations and substitutions that foster the desired effect. several days before thanksgiving, this complex technique is displayed in a feature headlined "children are the victims of foreign toymakers" (aflcio, 1990c:3). the title of the article builds on an ambiguity; at the first glance it can be deciphered as 'american kids arethe victims oiunsafe foreign made toys' during the christmas season, every parent or adult wishes to protect the safety of his/her children, nephews and nieces. this headline creates an enigma and the reader seeks to know which toys to avoid in order to fiilfill his/her mission and bring joy and pleasure to american childr^i. readingthe article resolves this aiigma by creating an additional mystery, the story describes the conditions of exploitation of child labour in overseas factories located in asia. "the young workers slept in dormitories, two or three to a bed, and earned $10 to $3 1 a month. twice a month, children as young as 10wereforcedtowork24-hours shifts" (afl-cio, 1990c:3). five countries are named in the first two paragraphs of the story: taiwan, hong kong, the philippines, thailand and china, but in the rest ofthe article, only china is mentioned. this feature is constructed on three main arguments: first, capitalists who exploit childroi are 'evil ' capitalists and must not be encouraged, second these exploiters are foreign nationals or evai communists (the multiple references to china), and finally, to stay on the safe side, all foreign-madetoys alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 should be avoided. the myth is created when the american trade-unions cast themselves in the role ofthe defender ofchildren and implore the reader tojoin them in the boycott offoreign made toys. this illusion is completed by a side story entitled "buy these toys," in which the american corporations are named and a list ofthe appropriate and safe products is displayed. now, the consumer knows how to act and can alleviate his/her guilt by enacting a dominant bourgeois myth, the ideal of a good consumer. not only does this story negate the fact that exploitation and domination thrive in amencan factories and conceal the connection between overseas sub-contractors and u.s. companies, but it also contributes to the support ofone ofthe /ifl-c/o news ' main narratives: that the trade-unions are the best defense against exploitation in general. the techniques of myth in the last pages of mythologies, barthes describes a group of rhetorical practices (that he situates 'on the right') used in everyday discourse in the creation of myths: inoculation, the privation of history, identification, neither-norism, the quantification of quality, tautology and the statement of fact are some of these discursive figures. examples of several of these rhetorical techniques can be found in the afl-cio news. for the purposes ofthis article only inoculation, identification, and the quantification ofquality shall be discussed. inoculation works by admitting into the narratives a small quantity of opposing stories, tying in with notions of freedom of speech, plurality and democracy. this nominal dose of evil awakens the ideological immune system and in so doing supports a gaieral claim that the system as a whole functions well. more oftai than not, theafl-cio news uses this method by opposing a small number of 'bad' capitalists to a group of employers who accqdt the rules of the game and bargain with the trade unions. the construction of eastern airiines as such an antagonistic employer starts in january (afl-cio, 1990a:2), continues in apnl (afl-cio, 1990b: 1) and is still going on at the end of november (afl-cio, 1990c:2); a surpnsing huot/myths on the left continuity ifthe randomness ofthe selection ofthe material for the analysis is taken into account. naming the individuals involved contributes to the attribution of the responsibility for the system's mishaps to individual behaviour. the trustee (martin shugrue) is presented as a misbehaving administratorwho is overoptimistic, who lies and refuses totalktothe unions. "[a] trustee be appointed to replace former eastern boss frank lorenzo.... instead ofbargaining with the iam, shugrue conducted a 'smoke and mirror' campaign to rebuild ndership..." (afl-cio, 1990c:2). the reader is asked to remember the irrational actions of frank lorenzo, those that led to the demise ofeastern airlines: "...the latest chapter in the downward spiral ofan airlinethat oncewas a major force inthe industry" (afl-cio, 1 990c:2). this presentation of 'evil' capitalists ultimately reinforces the belief that the system can work well if everyone contributes; the whole society benefited from the existence of eastern airlines and now, it no longer exists. identification relates to the representation ofthe other; its conventions enablethe readerto deal with the question ofdifference and similaritybetween individuals or groups and, in so doing, to construct a sense of identity. depending on what the preferred effect is, the manipulation of identity that takes place in the afl-cio news revolves around the opposition between being an american and being a worker. to a union member, being a worker is important when he/she is confronted with other workers having different identities or a different set ofsocial problems, and thecommon bond oflabour will be stressed by a number of articles. union leaders from different countries are presented in the pages of the paper: a bulgarian leader meets with the amencan labour president (afl-cio, 1990b: 13), a polish sohdarity member expresses support for u.s. miners (afl-cio, 1990b: 15), salvadorian unionists are portrayed as participants in a peace conferoice (afl-cio, 1990b:6) and the plight of cuban workers will be the angle used to discuss the social and economic situation in that country (afl-cio, 1990c:4). however, stressing the similarities between workers of diflferait nations is always balanced by an appeal to american values or interests. an interesting angle on this can be found in an article oititled "union, right alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 group sue bush over trade preference." (afl-cio, 1990b:4). in this, the afl-cio appears to be preoccupied with the human rights violations that happen in foreign countries and where employers " . . take advantage ofcheap, exploited labour" (afl-cio, 1990b:4). in fact, this article develops side by side narratives: the first one tells the members that american jobs can be protected by revertingto protectionist measures and the second storypretaids that something is done to promote the cause of human rights in foreign countries. in this case, the labour movemait is not asking the administration to put pressure on the nations v^th bad records but rather to cut trade, thus removing unfair competition for afl-cio's members. suddoily, the foreigners are not workers any more and the good foreigners are the ones who imitate american values. "geraldo aroyo, president ofthe afscme local 3345, delivered a remarkable soliloquy that ranged from his six-mile swim to freedom 25 years ago to his vietnam war service, to his fight for justice for thegroundskeepers at florida international university" (afl-cio, 1 990c:4). for the american trade-unions, international solidarity still translates in the export ofthe u. s . model ofunions : free unions, capitalism and democracy are included in the same package. the quantification ofquality is an operation that reduces an aesthetic or a political quality to mere numbers. "by reducing any quality to quantity, myth economizes intelligence" (barthes, 1988a: 153). the afl-cio news returns to this practice whai dealing with the concepts of rq)resctitativaiess and democracy. a trade-union is representative and efficient whoi it rqjresents an important number of persons and many stories will leave no doubt of the importance of afl-cio's unions in the mind of the reader: "the apwu andnalc representing 568 000 employees formed thejoint bargaining committee..." (afl-cio, 1990c:l) or "...is a 22 minutes documentary video tape describing rwdsu local 1 199's recent contract victory for 50 000 health care workers..." (afl-cio, 1990c:7). the sheer force of numbers can also be expressed in actions of solidarity: "a coordinated campaign by 8000 steelworkers at 23 plants in the u s . and canada. . . " (aflcio, 1 990b:4). this method also serves to establish the democratic character of the unions: the number of actual voters or percentages are disclosed in huot/myths on the left numerous stories and are used to qualify the approval vote on a contract agreement. "steelworkers at 13 ltv steel plants overwhelmingly ratified a new agreement. . .uswa members approved the settlement by a 1 0261131 margin" (afl-cio, 1990b:2). on these grounds, it becomes impossible to use a different criteria to judge the quality of the agreement; one just has to look at the numbers. the fact that the union was unable to organize a strike, that the pattern of negotiation was set in a similar factory or that the bargaining committee sold out, are transformed into useless arguments. in a way, this line taps in the argument developed by the rock the vote media blitz:^ ifyou do not vote, you cannot criticize the results ofthe election or the actions of the elected officials. the world according to the afl-cio this description ofthe social actors, narrative structures and myths created in the afl-cio news can be summarized along two axes of opposition presented in figure 6. ulion leaders £xpo5c brok«ik bad eaitk scpu'blicanf prot«c< i<ad r.uy(to) ki^v/1*^* skill* expert; i>«moent5 a^r««mcnt5 ixploftalioil "^^ lossts court* arlitration i><l«gat« approv« victim* foliowi&g li*t«& aceid«&t* vorlcers figure 6; the vorld aycconding to the afl-cio neva. alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 the first opposition links the union leaders and the workers in a relationship of membership in the trade-union. the workers are powerless victims of the inequities of the system. their only hope to get out of this situation is to join the union where they will find a place to fit into a more global system. by joining the union, they will delegate their power to the leaders and receive the benefits provided by them. the leaders have the knowledge and the skills to negotiate with employers and to protect the members from the greediness of 'evil' employers. the second oppositional axis describes the social system. the world is organized on a continuum of good will. at one extreme, the good capitalists and the fnendly politicians understand the need for the presence oftrade-unions in the economic system. at the other end the 'evil' employers are the cause of exploitation, strikes and concessions. in a clockwise order, the first of the four quadrants represents the relation between the good capitalists and the union leaders: through negotiation and lobbying, union leaders and employers build a mutual understanding and agree on new contracts . in the second quadrant the umon members benefit from the agreements and from the exi stence ofthe good employers : they show gratitude for this situation when they democratically accept the new contracts. in the third quadrant the members are the victims of the bad faith of the 'evil' employers: this is the world of losses, concessions, strikes, and of events ultimately caused by the employer. the final quadrant is the place where the union leaders fight the greedy capitalists and expose their actions in order to protect the workers. in the center of this world the court system stands as the final arbitrator. conclusion this study focused on a textual analysis of the afl-cio news. whatever view one takes on the validity of this approach, it would be interesting to complete this initial research with an examination of the conditions of production of the newspaper and with an analysis of the readings produced by actual audiences. huot/myths on the left however, as the title of this paper suggests, the fundamental question is to know if ideological practices exist 'on the left'. a practical answer would be to state that ideological practices do exist in the american tradeunions and that, as this fmal story shows, trade-unions are a part of mainstreaming ideological practices. the california afl-cio plans to mount a legal challenge to a voter-approved initiative that would allow private industries to employ prison inmates 'not only will public safety be endangered and jobs of law-abiding workers threatened but inmates will be put back on the streets with shortened sentaices,' henning stated. . . . two current inmate labour programs. . allow inmates to take reservations for a major hotel chain and for a major airline. these inmates know wherethe customers live, the customer credit card number and when they are leaving and returning home. . . (afl-cio, 1990c:5) this article creates a direct connection between a social event and the ^^ worst fears of the public. less than two years after the willie horton advertisement campaign, this article taps into the popular perception of prison inmates. this manoeuvre is to be expected on the right, not inside an organization which describes itselfas progressive. the structure ofthis story closes the text and forbids every possible interpretation ofthe social eventthat would not agree with the organizational purposes of the trade-union movement. barthes answers the question ofleft-wing ideological work by creating a distinction between an idealized left (the revolution) and the actual left. "i have been asked whether there are myths 'on the left. ' of course, inasmuch, precisely as the left is not the revolution. left-wing myth supervenes precisely at the moment when revolution changes itselfinto 'the left, ' that is, when it accepts to wear a mask. . ." (barthes, 1988: 146). on this point, i agree with this statement. however, what would be the way to engage in a soaal practice aimed at changing the conditions of existaice, without reverting to alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 ideological work? is this possible or is the domination ofothers a fundamental charactenstic of human activity? these questions open the door to a redefinition of the concept of ideology on a more relativistic perspective. ideology should be better described not as ideas, but as practices. notes 1. the afl-cio news is published by the washington ofibce of the afl-cio and describes itself as the labor movement's official newspaper. in the case of individual subscribers, the paper is dehvered by mail and the cost of a one year subscription is $10. 2. in his discusaon of ideology, john b. thompson describes the concept as "a coherent system of statements imposed on a population from above" (thompson, 1984:63). jim collins states: "this notion of culture czars in master control rooms orchestrating all forms of mass culture bears a striking resemblance to the vision of the state constructed by fritz lang films. and dr mabuse, the gambler (1922), in which virtually everything is manipulated by the evil geiuus mabuse, again in a master control room with an army of eyes" (couins, 1989:10). 3. in this context, the text can take various forms. at a first level, each story printed in the afl-cio news is a text which will be interpreted through the other texts (past and present) contained in the newspaper. furthermore, it is possible to use the metaphor crafted by paul ricoeur (1977) and to describe as texts a series of historical circumstances that are taking place in union life: situations like strikes, economic changes, pohtical events, trade wars, etc. "my claim is that action itself, action as meaiungful, may become an object of science without loosing its character of meaiungfulness, through a kind of objectification similar to the fixation which occurs in writing" (ricoeur, 1977:322). 4. on the different philosophies of the afl and the cio, see stolberg (1938). for a canadian perspective on this merger, see lipton (1966). 5. the only exception was a photograph of a collapsed bridge. 6. utuons \^o chose to use different strategies will simply disappear from the history. around 1986, the canadian uaw disagreed with the u.s. union about the concession strategy in the auto industry. the canadian union seceded from the american movement and staged \^at can be labelled as a victorious strike. 7. an advertising campaign organized by mtv during the 1992 us presidential election. the goal of the campaign was to convince young voters to register and vote. huot/myths on the left references afl-cio 1990a afl-cio news. vol. 35 (1). washington: american federation of labor and congress of industrial organizations. afl-cio 1990b afl-cio news. vol. 35 (8). washington: american federation of labor and congress of industrial organizations. afl-cio 1990c afl-cio news. vol.35 (24). washington: amencan federation of labor and congress of industrial organizations. alinsky, saul d. 1969 reveillefor radicals. new york: vintage books. althusser, louis. 1971 "ideology and ideological state apparatuses." in lenin and philosophy and other essays. london: new left books. angus, ian, and sut jhally. (eds) 1 989 cultural politics in contemporaryamerica. new york: routledge. barthes, roland. 1 974 s/z. new york: hill and wang. barthes, roland. 1 98 1 "introduction a 1 'analyse structurale des recits . " in communication #8: l 'analyse structurale du recit. paris: editions du seuil. barthes, roland. 1985 l 'aventure semiologique . paris: editions du seuil. barthes, roland. 1988a mythologies . new york: noonday press. barthes, roland. 1988b image, music, text. new york: noonday press. collins, jim. 1989 uncommon cultures : popular cultures andpost-modemism. new york: routledge. alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 de saussure, ferdinand. 1959 course in general linguistics . (e6s.)c bawy and a.reidhnger new york: philosophical library. eco, umberto. 1 98 1 "james bond; une combinatoire narrative." in communication #5; l 'analyse stnicturale du recit. paris: editions du seuil. goffman, erving. 1961 asylums. new york: anchor books. guerard, ghislaine. 1987 une organisation syndicale, son language : impact sur laplace des femmes unpublished masters thesis. montreal: universite du quebec. guerard, ghislaine. 1994 la pretention democratique : analyse communicationnelle du fonctionnement d'une centrale syndicale. unpublished doctoral dissertation. montreal: universite du quebec. hall, stuart. 1972 "the determination ofnews photographs." in working papers in cultural studies #3. birmingham: cccs. lewis, justin. 1991 the ideological octopus. new york: routledge. lipton, charles. 1966 the trade union movement of canada 1827-1959. montreal: canadian social publications limited. ricoeur, paul. 1 977 "ttie model ofthe text: meaningful action considered as a text." in f dallmayr and t. mccarthy (eds.) understanding and social inquiry. notre-dame: university of notre dame press. stolberg, bmjamin. 1 938 the story of the cio. new york: the viking press. taylor, charles. 1989 sources of the self: the making ofmodem identity cambridge: harvard university press. thompson, john b 1 984 studies in the theory ofideology berkeley: university ofcalifornia press alternate routes article disproportional involvement in the use of crack and powder cocaine: findings from the arrestee drug abuse monitoring (adam) program george s. yacoubian, jr blake j. urbaclr abstract inspired by the crack cocaine epidemic of the mid-1980s, the united states congress passed the anti-drug abuse act of 1986, legislation that provided harsh new penalties for violations involving crack cocaine. penalties for violations involving powder cocaine, however, were not altered proportionally. this is a curious distinction given the similarities between crack cocaine and cocaine hydrochloride, the powder form of the drug from which crack is derived. to date, only a limited body of scholarly research has examined the relationship between race and the preference for crack versus powder cocaine. in the present study, we explore this relationship with a sample of 1,438 adult new york arrestees surveyed through the arrestee drug abuse monitoring (adam) program in 1997. while a moderate relationship between race and cocaine use is discerned, logistic regression analyses identify a stronger association between gender and the use of crack cocaine. legal and social implications are assessed in light of the current findings. 54 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternates theoretical framework media reports of the increasing popularity of crack cocaine in the united states surfaced in late 1984. within two years, crack had been labeled as the most dangerous drug available in terms of addiction propensity and association with crime, precipitating the outbreak of a national "crack epidemic" (angeli, 1997; lowney, 1994; finkleman, 1993; powell and hershenov, 1991; wisotsky, 1987). inspired by this hysteria, the united states congress passed the anti-drug abuse act of 1986 1 to provide harsh penalties for violations involving crack cocaine. two facets of this law created a potential constitutional violation. first, the federal code 2 and united states sentencing guidelines 3 adopted a 100: 1 quantity ratio, treating one gram of crack as 100 grams of powder cocaine for sentencing purposes (angeli, 1997; lowney, 1994; finkleman, 1993; powell and hershenov, 1991; wisotsky, 1987). second, harsh new mandatory minimum sentences were adopted for drug violations involving crack cocaine (angeli, 1997; lowney, 1994; finkleman, 1993; powell and hershenov, 1991; wisotsky, 1987). under these new federal laws, individuals convicted of crimes involving even small amounts of crack cocaine were required to serve mandatory minimum sentences without the possibility of parole. those convicted of crimes involving substantially greater amounts of powder cocaine, however, were not subject to mandatory minimum sentences. the constitutional guarantee of equal protection is potentially implicated because past research has demonstrated an association between race and the preference for crack over powder cocaine use by certain ethnic groups (inciardi and surratt, 1998; lockwood et al., 1995; lowney, 1994; lillie-blanton et al., 1993; mcdonald and carlson, 1993; national institute on drug abuse (nida), 1990). lillie-blanton et al. (1993), for example, explored ethnic group differences in crack cocaine smoking through an analysis of data collected through the 1988 national household survey of drug abuse (nhsda). after controlling for social and environmental factors, the authors determined that the likelihood of smoking crack cocaine did not differ by ethnicity. lillie-blanton et al. (1993: 996) concluded that their findings "strengthen the evidence that... crack cocaine smoking does not depend strongly on race per se as a personal characteristic of individuals." volume 17 2001 55 alternate routes in contrast, mcdonald and carlson (1993) examined the effect of the 100: 1 quantity ratio on differences in average federal sentences imposed on various racial groups between 1986 and 1990. their research illustrated that both the rate and the average length of incarceration for federal offenders increased for blacks in comparison to whites. they deduced that this increase was caused largely by the mandatory minimum penalties for drug offenses, and, more specifically, by the 100:1 quantity ratio of powder to crack cocaine (mcdonald and carlson, 1993). as mcdonald and carlson (1993:1) stated, "the main reason that blacks' sentences were longer than whites' during the period from january 1989 to june 1990 was that 83% of all federal offenders convicted of trafficking in crack cocaine cases... were black, and the average sentence imposed for crack trafficking was twice as long as for trafficking in powdered cocaine." most recently, inciardi and surratt (1998) illustrated that the use of crack cocaine did not differ substantively among ethnic groups. in a study of 699 cocaine users in miami, florida between september 1987 and august 1991, the authors demonstrated that the only significant crack/ethnicity association was that hispanic males were less likely to prefer crack cocaine (inciardi and surratt, 1998). thus, "being black ... was unrelated to having crack as a primary cocaine type" (inciardi and surratt, 1998: 175). this ambiguity within the literature suggests that the relationship between race and the use of crack and powder cocaine should be reevaluated. in the present study, we build on previous work by exploring the relationship between race and the use of cocaine from a sample of 1,437 adult new york arrestees surveyed through the arrestee drug abuse monitoring (adam) program in 1997. one primary research question is addressed: is there a relationship between race and the self-reported recent use of crack and powder cocaine? with this preliminary framework, research methods are described below. methods the national institute of justice (nij) in the united states established the adam program formerly the drug use forecasting (duf) program in 1987 (yacoubian, 2000b). the six primary goals of adam 56 volume 17,2001 chemins alternatifs are: identifying the levels of drug use among arrestees; tracking changing drug-use patterns; determining what drugs are being used in specific jurisdictions; alerting local officials to trends in drug use and the availability of new drugs; providing data to help understand the drug-crime connection; and serving as a research platform upon which a wide variety of drug-related initiatives can be based (yacoubian, 2000b). during each day of data collection, field staff obtained a list of arrestees who had been in custody for no more than 48 hours. following the collection of demographic information from official records, arrestees were approached by an interviewer and introduced to the study. the introduction included the purpose and sponsorship of the study and informed consent provisions. arrestees were assured that their participation was voluntary, that their responses were confidential, and that they would receive a candy bar as an incentive for participation. subjects were interviewed out of hearing range of police or other arrestees. interviews lasted approximately 15 minutes, with the length contingent upon the amount and degree of drug use disclosure. arrestees were first asked several demographic questions, including race, education level, marital and employment status, and income level. participants were then asked to report whether they had ever used a number of specific drugs (yacoubian, 2000b). for those drugs the arrestees reported having ever tried, they were asked to indicate age of first use, whether they had used the drug within the past twelve months, the number of times used within the past thirty days, and whether they had used the drug within the past three days. participants who admitted to drug use were also asked whether or not they considered themselves drugdependent, and whether they were under the influence or in need of drugs at the time of arrest (yacoubian, 2000b). several questions also focused on treatment whether the person had ever received treatment, was currently in a treatment program, or perceived a need for treatment (yacoubian, 2000b). in addition to the survey data, a urine sample was obtained to measure recent drug use and to validate self-report data (nij, 2000). the enzyme multiplied immunoassay test (emit) screened for ten drugs: amphetamines, barbiturates (e.g., phenobarbital), benzodiazepines (e.g., valium and xanax), marijuana, metabolite (crack and powder) cocaine, methadone, methaqualone (quaaludes), opiates, phencyclidine (pcp), and propoxyphene (darvon). all positive results for amphetamines were volume 17 2001 57 alternate routes confirmed by gas chromatography (gc) to eliminate any over-thecounter medications. between 1990 and 1998, several methodological issues influenced the duf/adam protocol. first, all sites operated according to a charge priority system, where non-drug felons, drug felons, non-drug misdemeanants, and drug misdemeanants were prioritized hierarchically (yacoubian, 2000b). that is, the program emphasized serious non-drug offenders. second, the number of drug offenders surveyed during a data collection period could not exceed 20% of the total sample (yacoubian, 2000b). this prevented the oversampling of drug offenders, who, presumably, would report more frequent drug use than their non-drugoffending counterparts. third, all arrestees were eligible to be interviewed except for those whose primary charges involved vagrancy, loitering, or traffic offenses (yacoubian, 2000b). these arrestees were excluded from the sample a priori. in addition to these program-level limitations, it is important to recognize that the data used in the current analysis were collected as 'new york' arrestees. it should be noted, however, that through 1998, arrestees in the new york duf/adam site were interviewed at one central booking facility in manhattan. no data were collected in any of the other four new york city boroughs the bronx, brooklyn, queens, or staten island. as such, it is more accurate to label the subjects in the current study as manhattan arrestees.4 these caveats aside, a number of scholarly works have been generated with the adam data (yacoubian, 2000a; yacoubian, 1999; yacoubian and kane, 1998; johnson et al., 1998; kane and yacoubian, 1998; katz and webb, 1996; harrison, 1995; rosenfeld and decker, 1993; wellisch et al., 1993; wish, 1990). it is important to note that interviewing arrestees is often an arduous assignment, and one not always amenable to the same standards of scientific rigor possible in other environments (yacoubian, 2000b). with these methodological cautions, data analysis and findings are presented below. data analysis and findings the sample is comprised of 1,438 adult male and female arrestees interviewed in manhattan in 1997. data analysis was accomplished in three phases. first, demographic statistics were computed for all of the arres58 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternates tees in the sample. second, drug-positive rates were calculated for all of the arrestees in the sample. third, logistic regression was utilized to explore the relationship between race and the self-reported recent use of crack and powder cocaine. demographic characteristics as shown in table 1, 70% of the arrestees in the sample were male and 56% were african-american. the mean age of the sample was 33.4 years old, though the range extended from 16 to 71 years old. sixty-one percent of the offenders were either high school graduates or had their general equivalency diplomas (ged), while 55% were single and had never been married. thirty-seven percent of the arrestees were charged with a property offense, while 25% were charged with a personal offense. drug-positive rates the detection period for urinalysis is generally considered to be two to four days for most illegal drugs of abuse (cone, 1997). it is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that positive assays are indicative of very recent illicit drug use. as shown in table 2, 79% of the arrestees tested positive for at least one illicit drug, with the most prevalent drug of abuse being cocaine (59%), followed by opiates (20%), marijuana (12%), and methadone (12%). each of the remaining drugs were detected in 5% or less of the sample. no methaqualone-positives were detected. volume 17 2001 59 alternate routes table 1: demographic characteristics for new york arrestees, 1997 (n=l,438) variable percent gender male female 70% 30% race african-american hipanic white other 56% 28% 14% 2% age in years (mean) 33.4 high school graduatcs/geds 61% marital status single, never married living with boy/girlfriend married separated/divorced/widowed 55% 17% 14% 14% primary charge property offenses personal offenses miscellaneous offenses drug/alcohol offenses 37% 25% 23% 15% note: personal offenses include assault and robbery. drug or alcohol offenses include drug possession and sale. property offenses include theft and receiving stolen property. miscellaneous offenses include loitering and unspecified parole/probation violations. 60 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternatifs table 2: drug-positive rates for arrestees, 1997 (n=l,438) drug percentage positive for at least one drug 79% cocaine 59% opiates 20% marijuana 12% methadone 12% benzodiazepines 5% pcp 1% babituates <1% propoxyphene <1% amphetamines <1% methamphetamine <1% methaqualone 0% logistic regression to supplement our descriptive findings, we explored the relationship between race and the self-reported recent use of crack and powder cocaine. the interview required that arrestees identify whether they had ever tried crack and powder cocaine. if arrestees reported ever having used these drugs, questions were posed about 12-month, 30-day, and three-day patterns of use. as such, the dependent variables utilized in the two models were self-reported crack cocaine use within the past three days and self-reported powder cocaine use within the past three days. the four independent variables included in the models were gender, race, marital status, and age (measured continuously). the variable measuring race, originally coded as african-american, white, hispanic, or volume 17 2001 61 alternate routes "other," was re-coded into two categories "white" and "non-white." the variable measuring marital status originally coded as "single, never married," "living with boy/girlfriend," "married," "separated/ divorced," and "widowed" was re-coded into two categories "married" and "non-married." the reference categories used in the current model were "male," "white," and "married." the results of the logistic regression model for self-reported recent powder cocaine use are shown in table 3. as shown, if an arrestee was unmarried, the odds ratio (or) of recent powder cocaine use was 62% higher than for an arrestee who was married, holding all other variables constant. if an arrestee was nonwhite, the or of recent powder cocaine use was 42% higher than for a white arrestee, holding all other variables constant. if an arrestee was female, the or of recent powder cocaine use was 39% greater than for an arrestee who was male, holding all other variables constant. table 3. logistic regression on self-reported three-day powder cocaine use (n=l,438) bivariate logistic regression model or ci multiple logistic regression model or ci female 1.44 1.07-1.92 1.39 1.04-1.88 nonwhite 1.41 1.00-1.98 1.42 1.00-2.00 unmarried 1.68 1.20-2.35 1.62 1.15-2.28 age 1.04 1.02-1.05 1.04 1.02-1.05 the results of the logistic regression model for self-reported recent crack cocaine use are shown in table 4. as shown, if an arrestee was female, the or of recent crack cocaine use was 139% higher than for an arrestee who was male, holding all other variables constant. if an arrestee was nonwhite, the or of recent crack cocaine use was 28% 62 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternatifs higher than for an arrestee who was nonwhite, holding all other variables constant. taken collectively, the findings for both crack and powder cocaine suggest disproportional involvement among new york arrestees, though not necessarily consistent with previous research. while results in the current study did support previous findings (mcdonald and carlson, 1993) that nonwhite offenders were more likely than their white counterparts to use crack cocaine, the variable of particular interest is gender. female arrestees were 139% more likely to use crack cocaine than their male counterparts. these findings not only suggest disproportional cocaine involvement across ethnicity, but also across gender. table 4. logistic regression on self-reported three-day powder cocaine use (n=l,438) bivariate logistic regression model or ci multiple logistic regression model or ci female 2.38 3.15-6.97 2.39 3.16-7.20 non-white 1.23 1.16-1.81 1.28 1.17-1.82 unmarried 1.04 1.04-1.07 1.04 1.04-1.06 age 1.03 1.03-1.04 1.04 1.03-1.04 discussion in the current study, 1,438 arrestees were surveyed through new york's adam program in 1997. we sought to explore the relationship between race and the self-reported recent use of crack and powder cocaine. while analyses demonstrated that the likelihood of using crack cocaine was only 28% greater for nonwhite arrestees than their white counterparts, female arrestees were 139% more likely to use crack cocaine than their volume 17 2001 63 alternate routes male counterparts. while a moderate race effect did exist, the stronger relationship was with gender. several methodological limitations should be noted. while all new york arrestees were booked at a single manhattan facility in 1997, their eligibility to be interviewed was determined according to the established crime-charge priority system. given this methodological restriction, the external validity of the present findings is clearly an issue. without further research, an assumption that the current findings are generalizable to other arrestee populations would be a precarious one. it is recommended, therefore, that similar analyses be conducted with arrestees in other jurisdictions to confirm the relationships delineated in the current study. second, the adam reporting system collects data solely for arrestees. the findings presented here may not necessarily parallel those from other deviant populations (e.g., prisoners or probationers). it is recommended, therefore, that our analysis be replicated beyond arrestees to assess the broader implications of these drug-reporting trends. a third limitation of the current study is utilizing city-level adam data as a basis for assessing federal law. clearly, the two may not be analogous. nevertheless, a comparison is appropriate to demonstrate descriptively that the basis of the federal statute unfairly targets certain groups for sentencing purposes. the current study has illustrated that females will receive harsher drug sentences given their preferences for crack over powder cocaine. fourth, while the adam protocol required the collection of a urine specimen, urinalysis could not distinguish between the two types of cocaine for which self-reported data were collected. that is, a cocainepositive arrestee may have ingested crack or powder cocaine. given the extensive research documenting low validity of self-reported recent drug-using behaviors (yacoubian, 2000a; wish et al., 1997; mieczkowski, 1991), our results should be taken with caution. when the testing of biological specimens advances to the point of being able to distinguish between crack and powder cocaine, future research should replicate the current analysis with objective measures of dnig use as the dependent variables. 64 volume 17,2001 chemins alternatifs legal implications harsher penalties for crack cocaine offenses, prescribed by the federal code and u.s. sentencing guidelines, have been judged unconstitutional by a number of scholars (angeli, 1997; lowney, 1994). that is, it has been argued that the federal guarantee of equal protection is violated because harsher penalties are imposed for crack cocaine, a drug more strongly favored by minorities. unfortunately, however, illustration of a potentially discriminatory law is not enough to permit its repudiation. in order to strike down a statute for violating equal protection, the law must be shown to have been enacted with the purpose of discrimination. absent this intent, courts must uphold the laws if they are 'rationally related' to a 'legitimate' government objective (angeli, 1997; lowney, 1994). thus, a rational basis will always outweigh discriminatory impact. given this standard, equal protection challenges to enhanced penalties for crack have, to date, been rejected universally. 5 however, the findings in the current study suggest that racial disparity may not necessarily be the principal issue surrounding disproportional involvement in crack versus powder cocaine. rather, the critical variable in assessing disproportionality appears to be gender. females are significantly more likely to be overrepresented in the use of crack cocaine than their male counterparts. while a race effect exists, the likelihood of recent self-reported crack cocaine use is 139% higher for a female arrestee than for an arrestee who is male. when assessing potential violations of equal protection, the united states supreme court has articulated three different standards of review: strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, and rational basis scrutiny. traditionally, the intermediate scrutiny standard has been applied to gender classifications. the court first articulated this standard of review for gender classifications in craig v. boren (1976). 6 in order to prevail under the intermediate standard established in craig, the government must prove that the use of gender as a classifying tool is substantially related to the advancement of an important government objective. the court stated that "classifications by gender must serve important government objectives and must be substantially related to the achievement of those objectives." 7 thus, the element added to craig is that the statutory objective must be an 'important' one, as opposed to the 'legitimate' one established in reed v. reed (1971). 8 while government arguments in favor of volume 17 2001 65 alternate routes crack cocaine legislation point routinely to a variety of public health and safety concerns as their foundation, the standards for their arguments become stricter if challenged based on gender discrimination. social implications with the advent of crack cocaine, women became more involved with hard-drug use than had been the case with powder cocaine or heroin (mccoy et al., 1995; fagan, 1994; inciardi et al., 1993, 1991; forney et al., 1992; johnson, 1991). there are two potential explanations for the disproportional involvement in the use of crack cocaine. first, because crack is relatively affordable, it can be consumed in higher doses than more expensive drugs of abuse (morningstar and chitwood, 1987). the low cost is not only conducive to experimentation, but makes it easier to advance to drug addiction, particularly among users whose resources are relatively limited. second, a body of research has explored a "sex for crack" exchange (elwood et al., 1997; boyd et al., 1994; weatherby et al., 1992; james, 1976). the literature suggests that, in lieu of cash, female prostitutes are reimbursed for services rendered with crack cocaine. this type of exchange begins a cycle where women are entirely dependent on a serious drug of abuse (elwood et al., 1997). these gender-based findings have clear implications for social policy. first, treatment alternatives would necessarily have to take into consideration the large female population entering the criminal justice and health systems (mahan, 1996). the needs of female clients are drastically different than those for males. treatment plans would necessarily have to accommodate issues such as sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, and child rearing (elwood et al, 1997; mahan, 1996; mccoy et al., 1995). second, for crack-addicted mothers, the future of the children is compromised. as primary caregivers, crack-addicted mothers tend to neglect their children, both emotionally and physically (hawley et al., 1995). without an environment in which legitimate goals and attitudes can be fostered, children are at increased risk for antisocial behavior (akers, 1985). third, if there is a sex/crack connection, public health issues become amplified. as prostitutes indulge in serious drugs of abuse, risks of hiv and other sexually transmitted disease within the general public increase (logan et al., 1998; wallace et al., 1997; elwood et al., 1997; inciardi et al., 1991). 66 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternates conclusion recent literature has demonstrated that the pharmacological effects and health hazards of crack parallel those of powder cocaine (inciardi and mcelrath, 1998; hatsukami and fischman, 1996). given their indistinguishable characteristics, the argument that crack cocaine should be treated as a more dangerous drug than powder cocaine for criminal sentencing purposes seems groundless. the current findings have illustrated that females are more likely to be overrepresented in the use of crack cocaine than their male counterparts. if a rational sentencing policy presumes that like penalties be imposed for similar offenses, we would argue that the harsher criminal sentences for offenses involving crack cocaine should be reevaluated. notes a. george s. yacoubian, jr. is a doctoral student in the department of criminology and criminal justice at the university of maryland. b. blake. j. urbach is a graduate student in the department of criminal justice and legal studies at the university of central florida. 1. pub. l. no. 99-570, 100 stat. 3207 (1986) (codified as amended in scattered sections of 21 u.s.c. sections 801-970). 2. 21 u.s.c. section 841(b)(1)(a), (b) (1988). 3. united states sentencing guidelines, 18 u.s.c.s. app. section 2d 1.1 (law. co-op. 1993). 4. the adam program now has a county-based data collection protocol. since 1999, arrestee data have been collected in all five boroughs of new york city. 5. see, for example, united states v. galloway, 951 f.2d 64, 65 (5th cir. 1992), united states v. madison, 781 f. supp. 281, 285 (s.d.n.y 1992), and united states v. cyrus, 890 f.2d 1245, 1248 (d.c. cir. 1989). 6. 429 u.s. 190. 7. id. at 197. 8. 404 u.s. 71. 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(1995). crack use, crime by crack users, and ethnicity. in d.f. hawkins (ed.), ethnicity. race, and crime (pp. 212-234). albany, ny: state university ofnew york (suny) press. logan, t.k., c. leukfeld, and d. farabee. (1998). sexual and drug use behaviors among women crack users: implications for prevention. aids education and prevention. 10(4). 327-340. lowney, k.d. (1994). smoked not snorted: is racism inherent in our crack cocaine laws? journal of urban and contemporary law. 45. 121-171. mahan, s. (1996). crack cocaine. crime, and women: legal. social, and treatment issues. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. mccoy, h.v., j. a. inciardi, l.r. metsch, a.e. pottieger, and ca. saum. (1995). women, crack, and crime: gender comparisons of criminal activity among crack cocaine users. contemporary drug problems. 22. 435-45 1 . mcdonald, d., and k. carlson. (1993). sentencing in the federal courts: does race matter? washington, dc: u.s. department of justice. mieczkowski, t, d. barzelay, b. gropper, and e.d. wish. (1991). concordance of three measures of cocaine use in an arrestee population: hair, urine, and self-report. journal of psychoactive drugs. 23. 241-246. morningstar, p.j., and d.d. chitwood. (1987). how women and men get cocaine: sex-role stereotypes and acquisition patterns. journal of psychoactive drugs. 19(2). 135-142. volume 17 2001 69 alternate routes national institute of justice. (2000). 1999 arrestee drug abuse monitoring (adam) annual report. washington, dc: united states department of justice. national institute on drug abuse. (1990). national household survey on drug abuse. washington, dc: department of health. powell, j. a., and e.b. hershenov. 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(1993). numbers and characteristics of drug-using women in the criminal justice system: implications for treatment. journal of drug issues. 23. 7-30. wish, e.d. ( 1 990). u.s. drug policy in the 1 990s: insights from new data from arrestees. the international journal of the addictions. 25. 377-409. wish, e.d., j.a. hoffman, and s. nemes. (1997). the validity of self-reports of drug use at treatment admission and at follow-up: comparisons with urinalysis and hair assays. in l. harrison and a. hughes (eds.), the validity of self-reported drug use: improving the accuracy of survey estimates (pp. 200-226). rockvillc, md: national institute of drug abuse. wisotsky, s. (1987). crackdown: the emerging "drug exception" to the bill of rights. hastings law journal. 38. 889-925. yacoubian, g. (2000b). assessing adam's domain: past, present, and future. contemporary drug problems. 27. 121-135. yacoubian, g. (2000a). reassessing the need for urinalysis as a validation technique. journal of drug issues. 30(2). 323-334 yacoubian, g. (1999). a drug use typology for treatment intervention. western criminology review. 1(2). http://wcr.sonoma.edu/vin2/vacoubian.html . yacoubian, g., and r. kane. (1998). identifying a drug use typology of philadelphia arrestees: a cluster analysis. journal of drug issues. 28(2). 559-574. 70 volume 17,2001 alternate routes a journal of critical social research issue coordinators: christine vincent, roswitha diehl -maclean and doug booker. editorial collective: christine vincent, rolina van gaalen, paul shreenan, vivian shalla, mary-anne kandrack, sandra harder, kari froschauer, roswitha diehl -maclean , ron crawley, dave broad, doug booker and stuart allan. assistance : shahid alvi, brian mckee. alternate routes is a refereed multi-disciplinary journal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university in ottawa. we hope to make ar a forum for debate and exchange among graduate students throughout the country and are therefore interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or co-authored with faculty), regardless of their university affiliation. the editorial emphasis is on the publication of critical and provocative analyses of theoretical and substantive issues which clearly have relevance for progressive political intervention. although we welcome papers on a broad range of topics, members of the editorial board work within a feminist and/or marxist tradition. therefore, we encourage submissions which advance or challenge questions and issues raised by these two broadly defined perspectives. we also welcome responses to and reviews of recent publications. three copies of your typewritten manuscript should be sent to: alternate routes department of sociology and anthropology carleton university ottawa, ontario k1s 5b6 each manuscript will be anonymously reviewed by faculty members from academic institutions across canada. the editors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the carleton university community: the department of sociology and anthropology and its chairperson, john dev'ries, the dean of social science, marilyn marshall, and the dean of graduate studies and reasearch, sidney wise. subscriptions : individuals $6.00 foreign: $6.00 (u.s. ) institutions $12.00 foreign: $12.00(u.s.) make cheques payable to alternate routes . copyright 1988 alternate routes biographical sketches dave broad is a phd. candidate in sociology at carleton university and is active in third world solidarity and trade union work. ron faustinosantos is a graduate student in sociology at carleton university. ron is interested in migration and refugees and has been active in philippine solidarity work. ron bourgeault is a ph.d. candidate in sociology at carleton university, and is active in aboriginal and third world politics. ian mackenzie is currently a second year student in the faculty of law at the university of windsor and is a graduate of carleton university's department of sociology and anthropology master's program. mz graduate studies in sociology and anthropology carleton university the department of sociology and anthropology offers the following programs of advanced study and research: m.a. and ph.d. degrees in sociology, with specialization in power and social stratification culture and gender studies comparative institutions theory and methodology m.a. degree in anthropology, with specialization in north american studies theoretical analysis ethnographic studies developmental issues information regarding admission requirements and financial support may be obtained from: coordinator of graduate studies department of sociology and anthropology carleton university ottawa, canada k1s 5b6 alternate routes a journal of critical social research, vol. 8, 1988 dave broad peripheralization of the centre: h(h)ither canada? 1 ronald faustino-santos a race of cuckoos: chinese migration, anti-chinese 42 legislation and the canadian pacific railway. ron bourgeault the struggle of class and ration: 74 the canadian fur trade, 1670's to 1870. ian r. mackenzie early movements of doaestics froa the caribbean 124 and canadian iaaigration policy: a research note. coaaentary indigenous wonen and capitalist exploitation: 144 ron bourgeault replies to jesse russell book reviews justice and the young offender in canada edited by 154 j. hudson, j. hornick. and b. burrows (shahid alvi) killing tine, losing ground: experiences of unemployment 156 by patrick buraan (doug booker) manufacturing consent: the political economy of the mass media by edward s. hernan and noan choosky 159 (stuart allan) digitized by the internet archive in 2011 with funding from carleton university, department of sociology & anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesj08alte e>eir±e>l-*e:irelx±jza.-fc.±c3« of the centre: w(h)ither canada? dave broad this paper offers a conceptualization of canada 's social, economic and political (toes in terns of a peripheralization of the centre or, core colloquially, latinamericanization of canada. drawing on literature which deals with the "new international division of labour", the author argues that current problems of so-called deindustrialization , high unemployment , state and corporate attacks on trade unions and cuts in welfare-state funding may not simply be symptoms of economic crisis in general, but phenomena related to a much larger process of global industrial restructuring. this restructuring could drastically alter the capital/wage-labour relation, processes of production and the role of the state in the reproduction of canada s social relations. there are foreboding signs that this transformation is one which will bring canadian society closer to the third morld norm. but there are also signs that the process of peripheralization is breeding resistance. introduct ion the purpose of this essay is to ascertain how world systems analysis might help us to understand current social changes in canadian society. and i must state from the outset that this essay is more a theoretical elaboration and illustration than an empirical demonstration. there are two sets of literature in world systems scholarship which are germane to this enterprise. the first is that literature which deals with the "restructuring" of the international division of labour (jonas and dixon, 1980), or the tendency toward a "new international division of labour" ( frobel et al . 1980). the second is that which deals with the "peripheral ization of the centre" (dixon et al . , 1983), or what barnet and muller (1974) have discussed as the "latinamericanization of the united states." 1 in what follows i wish to explore the fruitfulness of suggesting that, given the context of a restructuring of the international division of labour (idl) toward a globalization of production, there is the tendency toward a peripheralization of canadian society -such that canadian society is coming to look more like what we expect to find in the so-called third world. this essay was presented to the annual meeting of the canadian sociology and anthropology association, mcmaster university, hamilton, ontario, june 2-5, 1987. the author wishes to thank lori foster, dennis olsen and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft while remaining culpable for the final product. this implies contextual izing high unemployment, state and corporate attacks on trade unions, cuts in welfare state funding, and so forth not simply as symptoms of depression or economic decline, but as phenomena related to a much larger process of global industrial restructuring which is drastically altering the relation between capital and wage labour, the process of production and the role of the state in the reproduction of canadian social relations. foreboding signs can be found in the present tory free-trade initiative, the privatization binge, the review of unemployment insurance benefits, the growth of food banks, and rumblings about a larger "security" role for the canadian state. but there are also signs that the process of peripheral izat ion is breeding resistance through; canadianization of the united auto workers and labour struggles against all that the free-trade initiative implies; through church struggles against increasing immiseration of the population; through aboriginal people's struggles against intensified exploitation of their resource heritage, et cetera. the world system there are liberal and marxist variants of world systems analysis. for both, nation-states are conceived to be part of an international division of labour and are ranked hierarchically according to their mode of insertion into the world economy. host developed are centre, or core states, followed by semiperipheries and peripheries. 2 interstate relations are typified 3 by domination and exploitation. historically, centre states have benefited from their exploitation of periphery and semi-periphery economies. various forms of imperialist exploitation have distorted the development of non-centre state productive forces, leaving them dependent on export to the world market. international divisions of labour (idl) have changed since the inception of the so-called european world economy 3 , with changes in power relations between states and with the development of world capitalism. but the idl has continued to be characterized by the centre-periphery axis. for marxist world systems analysts, these nation-state relations are based on and crosscut by class relations and exploitation. with the advancing transnationalizat ion of the capitalist production process there is some indication that centre-periphery relations of exploitation are changing. the freedom with which transnational corporations can move many factors of production over the globe is making state boundaries less significant. if production conditions are more profitable in one area than another, the transnat ionals can pick up and move. labour unions in the centre perceive this as a direct threat to wage levels and job security. this threat is compounded by the fact that production processes are being both deskilled and parcelled over the globe. thus labour's still localized struggles are weakened. current high rates of unemployment and lower skill requirements make recalcitrant workers relatively easy to replace. and globally-parcelled and internationally-duplicated production make local and national walkouts less of a threat to transnational capital . according to dixon et al (1983:190) these changes, "at the theoretical level, point toward a redefinition of the concepts of core, periphery, and semi-periphery." they suggest that, because of deskilling and transnat ional izat ion of the production process, working and living conditions in the centre of the world system are coming to replicate those of the periphery. discussing the u.s. case, dixon et al . (1983:176) state that: in their effort to become more competitive, u.s. capitalists have sought ever cheaper. ever more productive (but deskilled and degraded), ever more vulnerable sources of labour. for the u.s. working class this results in ever-increasing unemployment among unionized blue-collar workers. further irowth of the permanently unemployed underclass, and an increasing demand for the low-paid, unskilled labour of superexploited 4 , undocumented immigrants (cf. barnet and muller, 1974). for the canadian case, holmes and leys (1987:9) argue "that a shift is occurring from highly paid, full-time, male employment in manufacturing to lower paid, part-time. female, and youth employment in the service sector." this is all part of the process i am calling the "peripheral ization of the centre" -the transformation of high-wage liberal-democratic societies, into low-wage authoritarian societies. though canada may not share all the features of per ipheral ization which dixon et al . attribute to the u.s., i think that their conceptualization of this process of social transformation can be fruitfully applied to canada. i will begin with a discussion of changes in the international division of labour and the contemporary crisis of global capital accumulation. this will be followed by a look at canada's role and place in the world economy, and a discussion of tendenciessocial, economic and political -at work in canadian society which support the peripheral ization thesis. i will conclude by pointing to countertendencies which might mitigate the deleterious effects of the per ipheral i zat ion process on working and middle-class sectors, and by discussing current labour and social struggles against increasing austerity and authoritarianism. restructuring the international division of labour the modern world system is the product of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in western europe and the birth of the european world economy at the end of the fifteenth century. until the 1960 's the world economy has witnessed three phases of what frobel et al (1980:11) refer to as the "classical" international division of labour. these phases have been characterized by the creation of centres and peripheries "both intraand international ly ... with different forms of control over labour for different types of production in different regions of the capitalist world economy" (frobel et al . . 1980 : 32 ) . what has typified the classical idl is that the centre countries have developed through production of manufacturing exports by highwage labour, while the periphery has been relegated to the production of agricultural and resource exports by superexploi ted labour . the three phases of the classical idl correspond roughly to the three phases of the capitalist world system: 1) merchant capitalism -1500-1780; 2) industrial capitalism -1780-1880; and 3) monopoly capitalism -1880-present . the growth of the transnational corporation and advances in technology under the monopoly phase lay the basis for a new international division of labour (nidl) which began to gel in the 1960's. according to frobel et al . (1980:45), this nidl is the result of the transnationalization of the capitalist production process: we use the term 'the new international division of labour' to designate that tendency which: a) undermines the traditional bisection of the world into a few industrialized countries on one hand, and a great majority of developing countries integrated into the world economy solely as raw material producers on the other; and b) compels the increasing subdivision of manufacturing processes into a number of partial operations at different industrial sites throughout the world, where the division of labour should be understood as an ongoing process, and not as a final result. how did it come about that this nidl was possible? frobel et al . suggest three conditions which were necessary for the restructuring of the idl: a) "the development of a worldwide reservoir of potential labour power" (1980:34). this condition resulted from social and technological transformations in the third world which are closely related to the second condition: b) "the development and refinement of technology and job organization makes it possible to decompose complex production processes into elementary units such that even unskilled labour can be easily trained in quite a short period of time to carry out the rudimentary operations" (1980:35). this process of deskilling, which braverman (1974) refers to as "the degradation of work," allows capital to use the cheapest, most docile, labour available -often female labour. the third condition necessary for a nidl allows capital to wander the globe in search of that low-wage labour: c) "the development of a technology which renders industrial location and the management of production itself largely independent of geographical distances" (1980:36). vuskovic (1980:10) summarizes the impact of these changes: in at least three areas, technological developments now exist that were not available earlier. first, even in relatively more complex activities there is a growing technical ability to "break-up" the productive process, separating out "segments" which require a higher input of skilled labour from those which, though highly capitalintensive, can be undertaken by unskilled or semiskilled workers. second, a more efficient transportation system ( containerizat ion , air freight, etc.) permits the geographical dispersion of those segments without prohibitive cost increases. and third, advances in communication, information and control techniques allow for centralized direction and administration of industrial complexes despite dispersed plant locations. these changes have resulted in what frobel et al . term "world market oriented industrialization" and the world market factory." production in world market factories is highly vertically integrated into the transnational operations of the individual companies and involves non-complex production operations; as regards the processing of each product or product group, the production process is largely confined to part operations: the manufacturing of parts, assembling of parts, or final assembly (1980:22). transnational capital has begun to spread its operations over the globe not only in search of cheap labour, but also to avoid militant labour struggles, environmental protection laws, 8 taxes, et cetera. operations are being set up wherever costs for each aspect of production are lowest. not only is there a division of labour in production -that division of labour itself is global. the beauty of this for capital is that it is now often possible to escape labour demands by running away ( thus the "runaway shop") or by threatening labour with that possibility (cf. barnet and muller , 1974 : 303f f , on "the obsolescence of american labour"). frobel et al . use the case of german transnational textile capital to illustrate these trends. but others have noted the same trends in transnational automobile production. monopoly capital has been attracted to third world countries where wages are 10-20x of those in the centre, where the working day (week or year) is longer, and where productivities are now comparable to those in the centre. this means that labourers worldwide can now more easily be discarded and replaced, and that capital can pick and choose its labour force (increasingly young, third world women ) . consequently, there has been a proliferation of so-called "free production zones" 5 in the third world. periphery states have been vying with one another to offer capital premium conditions for accumulation. frobel et al . (1980;22) tell us that since the mid-1960's literally thousands of world market factories have set up shop in the third world. and far from improving the lot of third world workers and peasants as some writers have projected, transnational industrialization has worsened living and working conditions in the periphery (cf. amin, 1984). so far the trade unions have more or less succeeded in preventing the large-scale penetration of these adverse conditions into the 'centre.' however, the competition on the world labour market, and the large amount of structural unemployment in the traditional industrialized capitalist countries which results from it, are increasingly undermining this not inconsiderable achievement... workers in the already industrialized countries are now placed on a worldwide labour market and forced to compete for their jobs with their fellow workers in the developing countries. today, with the development of a worldwide market in production sites, the traditional industrialized and the developing countries have to compete against one another to attract industry to their sites (frobel et aju.1980:35,13). while some (e.g. petras, 1981) dismiss the notion of a nidl, the theme has gained popularity in development literature, including canadian literature, as we shall see. and it forms the basis for dixon et al . ' s (1983) study of the peripheralization of the u.s. centre (cf. jonas and dixon, 1980). dixon et al^. note three tendencies which are beginning to affect american society: 1) the relocation of industries to the third world (runaway shops); 2) increasing employment of migrant labour -meaning low-wage, unskilled, third world labour -and the creation of a transnational labour force; and 3) the re-industrialization of the united states. the first of these tendencies has been outlined above. given the united states' common border with mexico and close proximity to the caribbean, the use of migrant (often illegal) labour by u.s. capital has been easy to facilitate. since wwii the use of migrant labour has increased not only in the u.s., but 10 in other centre nations -for example, west germany's importation of "guest workers" from the middle east and africa ( frobel et al . . 1980). the incidence of immigrant labour in canada has been a consistent feature -especially, in recent years, in less capital-intensive manufacturing sectors such as textiles where third world women are often used. however, the employment of migrant labour is not as extensive as in the u.s. capital's need to re-industrialize in the centre is a subject that is receiving increasing attention in the u.s. and canada. re-industr lal izat ion is seen to be more of a burning issue in the u.s. and canada than in, for example, germany and japan. this is so because the latter countries have experienced a re-industrialization in the post-wwii period which makes their industry more competitive on the world market. dixon et al . (1983:184-5) suggest that there are three routes for industrial restructuring: the first option, at least theoretically, would be to modernize and upgrade the technology of existing plants in major heavy industries such as auto and steel, in part through government subsidies... the second route is through investment in the "high-tech" world of microchips, computers. and robotics (silicon valley), using the research and development programs created and subsidized by defense and space-related government investment. high technology industries are fundamentally capital intensive... but there is a third option or route. an alternative for those u.s. industries that must remain labour intensive and cannot be automated ... this is the route of investment reviving primitive forms of superexploi tat ion : garment industry sweatshops, putting-out svstems. and the like. so-called "urban enterprise zones" -the counterpart to 11 third world free production zones -are the main setting for the third option. in these zones. and throuffhout the restructured industries, low-wage and semior unskilled labour will become the norm. high technology production dortenrfs the necessity of only a few highly-skilled positions. von werholf (1984) makes the point that low-skilled (in capital's terms), low-wage labour is not becoming the norm, but has been the norm throughout the history of the capitalist world system. this fact has simply been obscured by eurocentrist notions that capitalism is not a world svstem. von werholf (1984:135) notes: "eighty to ninety percent of the world population consists of women, peasants, craftsmen, pettv traders, and wage labourers whom one cannot call 'free' or 'proletarian.'" she goes on to say: the solution of the puzzle is verv simple: everything is just the opposite of what it appears to be. not the 10x free wage labourers but the 90% unfree non-wage labourers are the pillar of accumulation and growth, the truly exploited, the real 'producers.' the 'norm,' and represent the general condition in which human beings find themselves under capitalism. and now this is also threatening the proletariat to their great horror (1984:138). von werholf contends that the "pillar" of accumulation and the "vision of the future" are the third world and the housewife, and that labour is becoming "femalized." her "thesis is that the principles of organization of housework will determine our future and not, as assured until now, the principles of organization of proletarian wage labour" (1984:158). this is a provocative, though not surprising, contention. and it dovetails nicely with dixon et al . ' s (1983:189-90) thesis that 12 we are seeing a process of semi-per lpheral izat ion of certain sectors of the i' . s . labour force, and the importation of the periphery and the semi-per lphery into the heart of the united state -tnat is, the increasing imposition of forms of exploitation on sectors of the u.s. working class that have previously been imposed primarily on third world populations and, within the united states, on the transnational labour force. in short, this suggests that in increasing proportion of the u.s. working class (though certainly not the u.s. working class as a whole) will fail under the technical definition of superexplo itat ion . but the consolidation of this tendency is not a foregone conclusion. the outcome will depend upon what direction class struggles take us. and these struggles promise to be fierce because industrial restructuring and per ipheral izat ion of centre societies must include heavy doses of "austerity." dixon e t al ( 1983: 183 ) tell us that the social, and eventually, the economic cost of austerity policies are high: aggravation of the social crisis and the creation of rising social unrest, and aggravation of the economic crisis by contracting the consumer market. von werholf (1984:132) asks: "if there is a worldwide economic crisis, then it means that everywhere economic changes will take place. but can these be implemented without the application of violence?" she goes on to make a foreboding comparison: from the countries that were the first and the quickest to set out for this change we hear daily of the brutal consequences: first chile, then great britain, then the united states. pinochet, thatcher, and reagan are applying the new medicine, the drastic treatment of the chicago boys of milton friedman. in discussing "austerity capitalism" dixon et al (1983:130) such a scenario portends potentially explosive conditions in u.s. cities. the response of the bourgeoisie must almost certainly involve greatly increased and institutionalized repression. in its most 13 extreme form, as we have written elsewhere, we are facing the implosion of empire -the beginning of an era in which the people of the united states will begin to see the democratic veils stripped away from the face of i. s. power; they will begin to experience what has been the fate of the colony. before i turn to a discussion of the implications of the restructuring of the international division of labour for the transformation of canadian society -a note on the possibility that this restructuring is not the panacea which will pull the capitalist world system out of its post-1960's economic depression is in order. magdoff and sweezy, writing in monthly review in recent years, foresee the renewal of dynamic accumulation as a shaky prospect. their analysis is based on a theory of stagnation formalized by baran and sweezy (1966). baran and sweezy note a long-run tendency toward stagnation in the capitalist accumulation process. they also note, however, that secular tendencies in the world economy have promoted renewed accumulation in the past. the post-1873 depression was overcome by the rapid spread of railway-building activity, and by the burst of colonial expansion referred to as the "new imperialism." the depression of the 1930's was overcome by war production, followed by the "automobi 1 izat ion" of the developed societies, and by the increasing transnational izat ion of the production process under u.s. hegemony. although there may be room for a global extension of these processes, magdoff and sweezy see no countertendenc ies on the order of those which pulled capital out of previous crises. 14 on the other hand wallerstein, writing in recent issues of review about cyclical rhythms of the world economy, suggests that if we can depend on past experiences, we may see the renewal of global accumulation as early as the 1990's. wallerstein bases his projections on the apparent regularity of 45-60 year waves of alternating boom and bust in the capital accumulation process-so-called long, or kondratieff waves ( kondrat ief f , 1926). longwave logic would suggest a boom based on the further extension of transnational capitalist production arising from innovations in transportation, communication and other technological "grey matter . " magdoff and sweezy, for their part, caution against ready reliance on long waves as a basis for economic projection. amin, going a step further, tells us that the current crisis has a twofold source: the challenge which the peoples and states of the periphery are posing to the conditions that fostered [the] "prosperity" [of the centre in the past] (energy and raw material crises, international division of labour, etc. ) and the resistance by the working classes in the west to a "readjustment" at their expense ( 1977b:35) . the present crisis is therefore a crisis of imperialism, and not of capitalism in general. it can be superseded only by socialist revolutions, or by a new stage of centralization of capital and of the international division of labour which would tend to bring the western world very much closer to the soviet (statist) mode [of production] (1977a:116). 15 canada in the new international division of labour canada is a country that resists ready classification within conventional taxonomies. its status as what might be aptly called a 'rich dependency' puts it at the interstices between the advanced industrial countries and the dependent capitalisms of the 'third world'. in terms of per capita income, patterns of consumption, social structure, and levels of education, as well as form of political regime, canada clearly resembles the former countries. in terms of the extent of foreign ownership and control over the economy and of canada's international trade pattern (export of resources and import of manufactured goods), canada looks more like belonging in the company of venezuela or nigeria ( panitch, 1985 : 1 ) . radical academics have not settled on a single explanation of the canadian anomaly. nay lor (1972) refers to "canadian branch plant quasi-imper ialism . levitt (1970) calls canada a "rich, industrialized, underdeveloped economy"; livingstone (1985) identifies it as a "secondary advanced capitalist formation"; and williams (1976) discusses canada as "the case of the wealthiest colony." panitch (1981) refers to canada as a "rich dependency" and critiques "neo-mercant il ist " and "high-wage proletariat" explanations for that status. in a recent discussion of so-called semi-peripheral zones 6 , arrighi and drangel (1986:55,62) classify canada as a centre country on the basis of "core-like industrial activities" and "the distribution of rewards in the world economy and the approximate position of states in relation to that distribution." but given the degree of canada's dependence on first britain and then the u.s., i find it hard to classify canada as a centre in its own right. here it seems useful to note clement's (1977) discussion of "continental corporate power" and lipietz' (1982:37) reference to the "process whereby systems of production 16 tend to 'overstep' national boundaries i leading 1 to the formation of huge blocs (the u.s.a. and canada, the e.e.c.)" (cf. teeple , 1 986 ) . whether one sees canada as a centre in its own right, or as a part of a "bloc" of continental corporate power, the important point for the present discussion is that canada has had a "high-wage" working class. however, over the last couple of decades that status has been threatened. in the 1960's left and liberal politicians and academics began to decry the "deindustrialization" of canada. caloren (1978) and laxer (1973) have presented data on plant shutdowns and worker layoffs -enough to show that the phenomenon of the "runaway shop" has hit canada with a vengeance. canada is especially vulnerable in this area because so much of canada's industry is foreign-owned. calvert (1984) tells us that. of canada's ten largest private corporations, six have three quarters or more foreign ownership, and a seventh is half foreign-owned. he also notes that there is a high degree of corporate concentration in manufacturing. it must be noted, of course, that foreign control of canadian manufacturing decreased from 59% in 1970 to 49% in 1979 (williams, 1986 ) . but this is more a sign of the deindustrialization process than an upsurge in nationalization. the point to be made of all this is that canada's manufacturing sector is particularly vulnerable to rationalization and shut-down trends in the present crisis because it is foreign-controlled. not only is it foreign17 controlled but, as williams (1986) and others have noted, canada has experienced import -substi tut ion industrialization over the last century -in canada's case branch plant industrialization. much "canadian" manufacturing was set up by foreign capital to serve primarily the domestic market. moreover, there is only a weak national grid of capital and commodity goods production. canada is locked into a canada-u.s. (continental) grid. control over most investment decisions and research and development are retained in the american head office. so the move toward a nidl, commencing with high-technology operations for the centre and low-skilled more labour-intensive .jobs for the periphery, leaves canada even more open to peripheral izat ion trends than the u.s. proper . while the more autocentric economies allow industrial restructuring for competition on the world market, canada's disarticulated, foreign-controlled economy is shown to have little resilience. williams (1983:9) cites one canadian state bureaucrat's note of "considerable evidence that canada-based subsidiaries of foreign-controlled companies are not aggressively seeking export opportunities abroad. because of corporate policy, many firms are either unable or unwilling to pursue projects abroad". and, to add insult to injury, williams (1983:42) notes how some bureaucrats in the department of industry, trade and commerce have "been concerned that branch plants in canada have used federal export assistance as a foot in the door for the sale of products from their foreign parents or 18 from associated subsidiaries in third countries" -a telling statement on canada's "independence"' laxer (1981:89) presents the findings of a government of ontario brief on problems in canadian manufacturing: the brief concluded that canada's manufacturing sector was 'not only weak but in a state of fundamental structural disequilibrium' . this disequilibrium was evidenced in the following symptoms : a process of deindustrial izat ion ; the decline in international competitiveness that has led to a deteriorating merchandise trade performance; the erosion of technological strength and capability in the manufacturing sector; and the persistence of a substantial productivity gap vis-a-vis the u.s. for moore and wells (1977:45): de-industrialization is, then, a myth. ... international capitalism in decline brings stagnation to all advanced countries -not just canada. american domination of canada is only a manifestation of a larger problem-the instability of world capitalism. i would suggest that so-called deindustrial izat ion is simply an aspect of the restructuring of the international division of labour (idl) and the peripheral ization of the centre. contributors to a recent volume on canada and the nidl have suggested that the process of de-industrialization is directly tied to the restructuring of the idl (cameron and houle, 1985). in this context the canadian state has felt the pressure to promote national industrial restructuring. recent liberal governments adopted nationalist policies which pointed in this 19 direction. but the present aovernment is placing all of its eggs in the basket of freer trade with the u.s. ( hi 11 lams , 1 986 ) . some left critics contend that the latter initiative simply removes the last impediments to the complete incorporation of canada into the l' . s . -dominated continental bloc, and portends a gloomy future for canadian manufacturing and any remaining vestiges of canadian independence ( teeple , 1 986 ) . in terms of the thesis being developed in this essay, canada-u.s. "free trade" deal is a subterfuge behind which the peripheral izat ion of the center will be accelerated -for the future of labour, both in canada and the u.s., promises to be even more gloomy than the future of some capitals ( gudmundson , 1986 ) . houle (1983) contends that industrial restructur ing-increasing organic composition of capital, deskilling and low wages -is the logic of transnational capital and the basis for the nidl. moreover, this logic is being applied to the canadian economy's mainstay -the resource sector. to remain competitive in the nidl, monopoly capital and the state have begun dispensing with the so-called fordist wage labour relationship -i.e. maintenance of high wages to ensure a consumer market. houle (1983:135-6) accounts for this change as follows: if the future of accumulation is based on energy resources, and the manufacturing sector upstream from them, a situation is created similar to that of the regime of extensive accumulation, where the prime mover of accumulation was first of all the sector of the means of production. the dominant form of production of surplus-value will remain, however, relative surplus-value. the development of this type of accumulation in canada would facilitate the integration of the canadian economy into a restructured world-capitalist economy, would respect what seem to be the 20 tendencies of the new international division of labour, and would not require the maintenance of the present growth model, nor, therefore, the maintenance of the fordist wagelabour relationship. in fact, the elimination of the latter, or at least its contraction, is a prerequisite for the submission of the canadian economy to the demands of the world market. to maintain the fordist wage-labour relationship the state would have to take over a sizeable share of surplus-value, and this seizure would endanger the place on the world market of canadian energy resources and of some branches of the sector of the means of production upstream from these. the question of the non-maintenance of the fordist-wage-labour relationship appears therefore to be inseparable from the crisis and from the restructuring of the regime of accumulation in relation to the international division of labour. according to houle this is the path down which the liberal government of prime minister trudeau began to tread in the 1970's. and the conservative government of prime minister mulroney has not strayed from this path. both governments have begun and continue cuts in social services and an assault on labour apparently recognizing that, as houle (1983:133) puts it, "to be worthwhile for capital, an end to the crisis must involve a major defeat of the popular classes by provoking a sizeable and lasting increase in the rate of exploitation." labour's acquiescence in the destruction of the welfare state has, until recently, been sought through tripartism and further integration of the workers' movement into liberal ideology. "when these measures are not sufficient to make wageearners accept a restructuring of the wage-labour relationship, the state resorts to the apparatus of repression (the judiciary and the police) to inflict defeats on the workers or to invalidate some of their gains" ( houle , 1983 : 1 35 ) . such moves are not new to canadian history. but their incidence has increased 21 since the crisis of the 1970's. calvert 11984) notes, for example, that there have been seventeen separate pieces of federal legislation directed against public sector unions alone since 1980. panitch and swartz (1985) see this as part of a general shift from "consent" to "coercion" in state/capitallabour relations. both capital and the state are pushing "austerity capitalism". laxer (1981:40) cites the prestigious business council on national issues' representative w.o. twaits' suggestions for renewed accumulation: a freeze on social programs; revisions to the unemployment insurance commission ( uic ) plan to make unemployment "less attractive"; restraint on new net government borrowing to release dollars to the private sector; -elimination of double taxation in the resource industries and decisions on critical energy projects, without which the economy has little prospect. these proposals were presented to a 1977 conservative party conference when the liberal party was still in power. twaits, a former chief executive officer of imperial oil, must be gratified that the new conservative government was not long in moving on his last proposal. but conservative and liberal governments alike are increasingly succumbing to the ideology of the new conservatism and attempt to legitimize the need for austerity and high 22 unemployment rates. according to gingrich (1978:97): "the state in most capitalist countries is in the process of instituting austerity programs against the working class". reducing expectations "is the means by which the politics of austerity is translated into practice at the individual or group level" (1978:98). the aim of propaganda is to persuade each family or individual to expect less, and as workers, demand less in wages. this is consciously stated by those like [liberal] finance minister chretien who trumpet the need for reduced inflationary expectations on everyone's part. they hope that wage demands will be voluntarily moderated, thus making it easier to reduce labour costs. wage controls, unemployment or increased taxation are used to actually reduce wages. the main purpose of impressing on workers the need for reduced expectations is a psychological one, that is, to change the perception of problems in such a way that austerity can be imposed with minimal amounts of dissent (1978:98-9). so while the state leads an attack on first inflation, then the state deficit as public enemy number one, politicians and bourgeois academics try to convince us that present high rates of unemployment are "normal". in the post-wwii boom years, the accepted wisdom was that unemployment rates of 3-4% were normal. now that official rates of unemployment are in the 10-12% range, new right economists and their political counterparts are telling the public that 10% unemployment is normal. but even keeping unemployment figures that low requires that whole sectors of the unemployed be "fudged" off the list -those employed part-time who wish full-time employment, those who have become discouraged and stopped looking for work, and those who, for one reason or another, have never made it onto the official rollcall 23 ( gingrich, 1 978 ) . officially canada's unemployed number about one and one-half million. unofficially, more like two million are unemployed l calvert , 1 984 ) . high levels of unemployment and underemployment are coming to be structured into the socioeconomic system. in this sense, we see the rise of the so-called underclass that prevails on the periphery. periods of unemployment grow longer, work alternatives are of increasingly lower status, and the myth of the male as family "breadwinner", already challenged in feminist literature, is even less certain. the family unit may survive, but more along third world lines where not just husband and wife, but all able family members must work to provide for subsistence. this will entail an increase in output by the "household economy" -part of the growing "informal economy." here goods and services are produced not only for the family, but for sale in the "underground" or "black economy." these variations of informal economy may not be new to residents of less-developed parts of canada (e.g. the maritime provinces) but they are a new and psychologically debilitating experience for residents of many areas. this is part of the experience that von werlhof (1984) refers to when she says that housework and the third world are the vision of the future. 7 this is the flipaide to the neo-conservat ive world of market freedom. but apparently, only the formally sanctioned market will be "free." canada's present conservative government, shortly after taking office, announced that it was "cracking 24 down" on earners of unreported income. an amnesty was announced in 1984 so that those who had received income from the informal economy could declare that income without recrimination. thereafter, the government's revenue and taxation department would "get tough." in a sea of free enterprise rhetoric, this was an obvious sign that the market is free for capital, but not for labour, and also a sign that the informal economy is expanding . the neo-conservative onslaught neo-conservat i ve rhetoric of free enterprise, free markets, and free trade has spread across canada. this is the rhetoric, though not the full reality, of the new federal conservative government. in announcing a new energy deal with alberta in the house of commons on march 28, 1985, the federal energy minister stated that "under deregulation the market will decide what crude oil prices should be." the code word here is "deregulation" -ostensibly the ideology of the new conservative government. the new defrocked minister of industry, trade and commerce sinclair stevens promised to get government out of the marketplace. he moved to do this by transforming the foreign investment agency ( fira a liberal government response to nationalist pressures of the 1960's and early 1970's) into investment canada -with a mandate not to monitor but to entice foreign investors. (foreign investment has more than doubled since the conservatives came to office.) and we now have a minister of privatization, whose sole 25 purpose is to promote economic renewal by turning crown corporations back to the "magic of the market." havemann (1986:14-5) asserts: arrogant, aggressive capital enmeshed in the high-tech indust r ial -mi 1 i tary complex, supported by elements in the bureaucracy, the media, federal and provincial governments, and sections of the churches and universities, seeks to dismantle even this (weak) version of the welfare state. their goal is to erode the hegemony of canada's seemingly liberal democratic ideology to build a state requiring 'exceptional' coercive powers over the working class. only bennett's social credit government in british columbia has come out with this as an overt policy, but a polarization of class interest will occur elsewhere as more canadians experience the forms of state-sponsored immiseration perpetrated by reagan, thatcher, and bennett in their support of the 'revolt of the rich.' havemann (1986:25) adds that "british columbia now has all the characteristics of an 'exceptional state' which blends neoconservative economic policy, new right social policy, and neofascist repression." and the recently elected social credit government of bill vander zalm does not appear likely to break out of this mold -campaign promises to the contrary notwithstanding. marchak (1984:31-2) commenting on the neo-conservati ve programs of premier bennett's government in b.c. states: "the ideology of this government is promoted in words such as restraint. incentives. productivity. efficiency. downsizing, privatization, free enterprise, high technology, the new economic real itr and our international competitive position. " marchak notes that two words are missing from the b.c. government's vocabulary -"unemployment" and "democracy." she says that the "omission of unemployment is a means of neglecting the 26 consequences of 'downsizing', 'restraint' and 'privatization'" (1984:36). to "delete the ideology of democracy is to provide the ground for deleting the forms as well... along with the welfare state" (1984:37). in recent years, thousands of public sector workers in b.c. have been fired. welfare services have been axed and hospitals and educational institutions across the province have been closed down or have lost state funding (magnusson et al . . 1984 ) . in addition to cutting social services spending, the b.c. government has closed its human rights and rentalsman's offices. "at the same time, greater expenditures have been directed toward private capital in the form of grants for technological changes, tax incentives, subsidies, infrastructure, marketing arrangements, etc." (marchak: 1985:4 ) . marchak (1985) contends that b.c.'s woes result largely from dependence, and that resource-rich b.c. is now becoming a periphery of japan as well as the u.s. she says "that b.c. has been developed as a resource periphery, and is fast becoming an underdeveloped country at the mercy of international corporations seeking low-wage labour" (ibid.:5). vancouver is beginning to earn itself the title of "hong kong west." the b.c. government has teamed up with b.c.'s rightwing "think" tank, the fraser institute, to advance this "newreality. " the institute, in its publications (e.g. grubel , 1983 ) , has been advocating the construction of "free market zones" (frobel et. al . ' s "free production zones" by another name), not 27 only in b.c. but across canada. according to a recent report in the globe and mail (november 29, 1984), the b.c. government has been negotiating with ottawa on plans to promote such zones (called "special enterprise zones" by the b.c. government itself). for its part, the federal government has recently proposed making montreal and vancouver international banking centres. but anyone familiar with examples such as panama knows this promises nothing but increasing hardship for the canadian masses . the free zones are proposed as a politically expedient alternative to a completely free market (i.e. per ipheral izat ion snuck in through the back door). but it is envisioned that the "demonstration effect" produced by free-zone successes would prompt the spread of the free market approach through the economy -a dubious proposition if judged by third world indicators. 8 one commentator ( 01 iver , 1985 ) contends that de facto free zones have already been initiated in b.c. -the expo (world trade fair) production site being one example. that site, and vancouver in general, was the scene of a militant labour struggle in 1984, in which the state legislated workers back to work and paved the way for no-union (and therefore low-wage) work sites. in the process, the bennett government adopted margaret thatcher's tactic of dividing the populace into two -in this case "good" british columbians who favour the "new economic reality" of restraint and restructuring, and "bad" british columbians who do not. 28 the question, 'who can work on the expo site?' is easilyanswered in the bennett code: "good" british columbians, of course. expo is the most ambitious of the new reality projects, not only because it exhibits the capacity of the "good people" to plan, organize, and build a world-class trade fair, but also because it is the testing ground for bennett's new reality union-busting strategy. by law, the expo site is open, an economic zone where anyone has the right to work except "bad" british columbians like union members. but even they can be redeemed. they can become "good" by going to work for a "new" and "real" construction company which is certain to bid $20,000 under union contractors on every tender ( 01 iver , 1985 : 7 ) . despite the recent re-election of the social credit party, labour and popular opposition to the peripheral izat ion process in b.c. (and now saskatchewan) suggests that there is a limit to which canada's heretofore high-wage population can be pushed. programs of economic restructuring and social service cuts in b.c. called forth a massive opposition in the form of b.c.'s "operation solidarity" -a coalition of labour (public and private sector -blue and white-collar), community organizations, feminist groups, etc. the fight-back developed an enormous base of popular support. in the lower mainland alone, three massive demonstrations occurred after july 7 [1983]: 25,000 marched the week following the budget introductions, 50,000 rallied at empire stadium in august (many walking off the job to attend). finally, exceeding all expectations, 60,000 marched around the socred convention on october 14, some carrying general strike placards and many chanting "socreds out." many people have become active for the first time and have developed a concern for a wide number of issues (larkin, 1984:4 ) . b.c.'s solidarity coalition demonstrates that there is a popular base for opposition to the peripheral izat ion trend (cf. havemann, 1986). the long-range potential, however, of solidarity-type coalitions clearly hinges on the problem of 29 leadership. many in b.c. were unhappy when reformist labour leaders "caved-in" to premier bennett and cancelled a provincewide general strike planned for november 14, 1983 (larkin, 1984). while the canadian labour congress (clc) has officially called for a "total mobilization" against neo-conservat i ve attacks on labour, the capacity of the presently reformist clc leadership and structure to affect such a mobilization must be questioned. in their march 1984 editorial, the editors of canadian dimension commented : this is the third consecutive issue in which dimension has covered the activities of b.c.'s operation solidarity and solidarity coalition. our coverage will continue, not only because of the importance of solidarity's struggle in b.c., but because we expect it to recur elsewhere in canada... the aggression with which capital and the state have responded to the crisis in capitalism necessitate a new form of trade union politics -a politics of confrontation in which the organization and mobilization of membership and creation of coalitions take on added importance. some leaders of trade unions and popular organizations have not yet made this adjustment. conclusion--w( h) ither canada? in this essay i have attempted to set present trends in canadian society into the context of a changing world economy-with an emergent new international division of labour and a peripheral ization of centre societies. in this light, we see that phenomena such as deindustrial izat ion and state attacks on welfare are not peculiar to canada. they are part of a restructuring of the world economy and a redefinition of the social status of workers of centre and periphery. amin 30 (1981:xvi) contends: "there is still a qualitative difference between centres and peripheries." but this is not to deny that there is a move afoot to restructure social relations as part of the transnational izat ion of the production process itself. most important, for the majority of centre workers, is the restructuring of the fordist wage-labour relationship to turn relatively privileged sectors into a low-skilled, low-waged labour force attractive to transnational capital. this is the logic of transnational capital. but as marchak (1984) points out in her discussion of b.c., there is absolutely no guarantee that peripheral i zat ion of the centre will bring "high-tech" investment . yet eric trigg, chairman of alcan aluminum, and thomas bata, president of bata shoes, speaking on cbc radio's "ideas" (april 3, 1985), tell us that canadian industry must be restructured for world market production or it will wither away. this may be true for transnational corporations like alcan and bata, but small and medium capitals in canada are suffering because their mainstay-the domestic market -is being eroded by unemployment and low wage settlements. calvert (1984:8) note3 that from 1978 to 1982, real wages dropped by ix. from 1977 to 1983, business and consumer bankruptcies rose by 122% (ibid.:"). most bankruptcies are in small business. small and medium capitals thus wither up and are absorbed by large capital as centralization and concentration accelerates. 9 monopoly banks and oil companies make exorbitant profits. 31 all of this should serve to emphasize a point which has been made at least since marx and engels' time -that capitalism is fraught with contradictions. the logic of transnational capital may be toward a peripheral izat ion of the centre. but reducing labour costs to improve competitive ability on the (hardly competitive) world market is certainly not logical when we consider that the basis for that market is the same high-wage labour which is under attack. this contradiction immediately strikes small and medium national capitals. the state, for its part, is caught in a bind of trying to organize the demands of labour and the various capitals in such a way as to ensure hegemonic class domination. canadian rulers must be sensing the possibility of social upheaval. in recent years, our popular media began to pick up signs that the canadian state is preparing for increased internal "instability". at the turn of the decade, the canadian military began to acquire vehicles with the sole purpose of "crowd control". in 1982, the canadian government announced that it was readying plans for "internment (concentration) camps". this news came to light because then solicitor general robert kaplan did not feel it politically expedient to acquiesce in such a plan. prime minster trudeau had no qualms about the plan, but then he had no qualms about a hasty institution of the war measures act to "solve" the quebec crisis of 1970. frank (1980) has noted that the chinese word for "crisis" can also be translated as "opportunity." certainly the present 32 conjuncture presents canadian labour with the opportunity of coalescing with other popular sectors and small business in opposition to the pe r lphe ral 1 zat ion of the centre. panitch, noting recent events such as the canad iani zat ion of the united auto workers, suggests that canadian labour as a whole is confronted with the opportunity of overcoming its regionallyand sectorally-div ided past. "the prospects for socialist advance in canada are by no means rosy, but one of the preconditions for it -the forging of greater national identity and unity of the working class -stands a better chance today than at any time in the past" ( panitch, 1985 : 12 ) . dixon et al . (1983:190-1) go so far as to assert that: the future presents great dangers and great opportunities for the u.s. working c lass . . . . [ f ] or the first time since the 1930's, the possibility of a revolutionary situation is emerging at the center of traditional core power, in the heart of the united states. in light of the per ipheral izat ion of the centre, this conclusion has some logic -if we accept that the centre of world revolution is in the periphery (cf. amin, 1977a; cwg , 1986). there is reason to argue that the extreme social dislocation and superexplo i tat ion that accompanies the per ipheral izat ion process will provide the "objective" conditions for revolution. 10 however, workers in the u.s. and canada have been steeped in 1 iberalindividual ism in the post wwii period (o'connor, 1984). some argue that centre working classes in general have been bought into imperialist superexplo l tat ion of workers in the periphery through reformism and social democracy (cwg, 1986). 33 at any rate, given amin's above noted contention that the present crisis is a crisis of imperialism, workers' struggles in the centre would have to be ant iimperial ist struggles to be part of a socialist solution to that crisis. and a look at third world revolutions themselves should tell us that socialist struggles in the centre must be broad-based popular struggles and not the sort of pure working-class struggles that marxists have long expected. progressive church, community and women's struggles are essential ingredients (cf. havemann, 1986). we must conclude with the hope that the trend toward a per ipheral i zat ion of the centre is simply part of a long-range world-socialist transformation, not a slide into barbarism. notes 1. debates on the "new international division of labour" and on the "peripheral izat ion of the centre" can be found in the journals, contemporary marxism and review . and in the political economy of the world-system annuals. 2. i must note that i think " semi -per iphery" is more a static category than a relational concept. amin (1983:56) contends: "the category ' semi-periphery '... seems to me misleading for the following reasons: 1) the major distinction between the centre and the per iphery ... concerns wage trends; 2) on the whole wages in the centre tend to rise with productivity, while in the periphery wages stagnate or lag behind productivity increases; 3) to the extent that wages in the 'semi-periphery' behave in a fashion similar to that of the periphery, despite other differences that may exist there is no such thing as a semiperiphery. " 3. the capitalist world economy is often referred to as the european world economy because of its birth in northwestern europe -despite the fact that non-european states such as japan and the u.s. now hold core status in the world economy (cf. wallerstein, 1979). 34 4. "superexploitation is the appropriation by capital of so many of the fruits of the workers' labour that the workers cannot maintain themselves or reproduce their labour power. in each major crisis of accumulation, capital has resorted to increased exploitation and superexploitation somewhere in the world" ( frank, 1981 : 157 ) . 5. "free production zones are industrial areas which are separated off from the rest of the country, located at places where labour is cheap and designated as sites for world market oriented industry; world market factories are factories which are built on these sites, but can also be situated elsewhere, and intended for the industrial utilization of the available labour and the processing of goods destined essentially for the markets of the industrialized countries. in 1975, seventy-nine free production zones were in operation in twenty-five underdeveloped countries; eleven of these countries were in asia, five in africa and nine in latin america" (frobel et al . , 1 980 : 22 ) . since that time, the free-zone "craze" has spread, with even "socialist" china getting into the act by designating fourteen free zones in coastal areas [marshall, 1984). though free zone exports have hardly taken over the world market as yet, the growth trend for free-zone areas is clear (cf. hall iday, 1980 ) . 6. see note two above. 7. women are being particularly hard hit by the neoconservative onslaught. havemann (1986:20) speaks of british columbia "legislation to encourage women to return to the private realm of the family in order to fulfill their 'rightful' place", noting: "the burden of care has been shifted to families and in particular to women." but all too often women's "rightful place" also includes new forms of degraded and often dangerous contract work which is done in the home. 8. as to the "demonstration effect" of the third world free zone "export-led" growth model, frank (1981:103-107) has the following to say: 1. not external balance, but foreign debts are promoted because foreign exchange earnings are limited while import expenditures and indebtedness to finance them seems to grow without limit . . . 2. the promise that manufacturing for export will result in technical training of the labour force and technological development of the economy is belied by the logic of and extensive experience with such manufacturing throughout the third world. . . 3. the promise of increased employment and the elimination or amelioration of unemployment through export of even all industry is an illusion at best, and more likely a 35 delusion. . . 4. the summary claim that "export substitution" and "export promotion" of manufacture lead to "export-led growth and economic development " is belied by many of our findings with regard to the more specific claims about export earnings, technical and technological development, and employment. but manufacturing export promotion has many other drawbacks . . . the other drawbacks which frank goes on to discuss are the human costs incurred through the superexploitation of labour and violent repression of human rights upon which the transnational production process has come to depend. (ostensibly, the charter of rights and freedoms in the new canadian constitution would preclude such human rights abuses in canada. but civil rights activists claim that the charter "has no teeth.") when all is said and done, it is not even certain that the t ransnat ional izat ion of production will pull capital out of its global crisis. 9. the economic council of canada (1984:104) argues that "the manufacturing sector has not withered and is not withering in the face of increased compe t i t ion . . . [ t ] he upshot of this is that canada is a far cry from deindustrial izat ion . in our considered judgement, there is no evidence of this process even beginning." but holmes and leys (1987:21) note "that this conclusion, while denying that canada is experiencing deindustrial izat ion does not preclude (and in fact strongly implies) that canadian manufacturing nevertheless has been, and is, experiencing a period of significant industrial reorganization and restructuring. 10. should this notion require pedigree, see marx and engels' comments on the "silesian weavers revolt" of 1844 (cf. draper, 1977: 174ff). references amin, samir 1977a imperialism and unequal development . new york: monthly review press. 1977b "capitalism, state collectivism, and socialise. " monthly review . vol. 29, no. 2 (june 1977). 1981 "preface" in f. clairmonte and j. cavanagh, the world in their web . london: zed press, 1981. 1983 "a.g. frank and the crisis". monthly review. vol. 35, no. 6 (nov. 1983). 36 1984 "income distribution in the capitalist system," review , vol. 8, no. 1 (summer 1984). arrighi, giovanni and jessica drangel 1986 "the stratification of the world economy: an exploration of the semiperi pheral zone," review, vol. 10, no. 1 (summer 1986). baran, paul and paul sweezy 1966 monopoly capital . new york: monthly review press. barnet, richard and ronald muller 1974 global reach: the power of the multinational corporal ions . new york: simon & schuster. braverman, harry 1974 labor and monopoly capital . new york: monthly rev iew press . caloren, fred 1978 "the logic of layoffs and factory closures: cases occurring when 'times were bad'", in f. caloren et al . , is the canadian economy closing down . montreal: black rose books, 1978. calvert , john 1984 government, limited: the corporate takeover of the public sector in canada. ottawa: canadian centre for policy alternatives. cameron, duncan and francois houle (eds. ) 1985 canada and the new international division of labour . ottawa: university of ottawa press. clement, wallace 1977 continental corporate power: economic linkages between canada and the united states. toronto: mcclelland and stewart. cwg (communist working group) 1986 unequal exchange and the prospects of socialism. copenhagen: manifest press. dixon, marlene, susanne jonas and ed mcgaughan 1983 "changes in the international division of labor and low-wage labor in the united states," in a. bergeser, ( ed . ) , crises in the world-system . beverly hills: sage publications, 1983. 37 draper. hal 197" karl marx's theory of revolution: state and bureaucracy new york: monthly review press. economic council of canada 1984 the bottom line . ottawa: economic council of canada, frank, andre gunder 1980 crisis: in the world economy . new york: holmes and meier publishers. 1981 crisis: in the third world. new york: holmes and meier publishers. frobel, folker, jurgen heinrichs and otto kreye 1980 the new international division of labour . cambridge: cambridge university press. gingrich, paul 1978 "unemployment and capitalist crisis," in f. caloren et al . , is the canadian economy closing down? . montreal: black rose books, 1978. grubel , herbert 1983 free market zones: deregulating canadian enterprise . vancouver: the fraser institute. gudmundson, fred 1986 "free trade: the real agenda," canadian dimension . vol. 20, no. 5 (sept. -oct. 1986). halliday, jon 1980 "capitalism and socialism in east asia," new left review . no. 124 (nov. -dec. 1980). havemann, paul 1986 "marketing, the new establishment ideology in canada," crime and social justice , no. 26. holmes, john and colin leys (eds. ) 1987 frontyard/backyard : the americas in global crisis . toronto: between the lines. houle, francois 1983 "economic strategy and the restructuring of the fordist wage-labour relationship in canada," studies in political economy . no. 11 (summer 1983). 38 jones, susanne and marlene dixon 1980 "proletarianization and class alliances in the americas," in t, hopkins and i. wallerstein (eds. i, processes of the world-system . beverly hills: sage publications, 1980. kondratieff, nikolai 1926 the long wave cycle . new york: richardson 4 snyder, 1984. larkin, jackie 1984 "the generals didn't strike," canadian dimension , vol. 18, no. 1 (march 1984). laxer, james 1973 "canadian manufacturing and u.s. trade policy," in r. laxer ( ed . ) , (canada) ltd. toronto: mcclelland and stewart, 1973. 1981 canada's economic strategy . toronto: mcclelland and stewart . levitt, kari 19 70 silent surrender: the multinational corporation in canada toronto: macmillan of canada. lipietz, alain 1982 "towards global fordism?", new le ft review . no. 132, (march-april 1982). livingstone, d. w. 1985 social crisis and schooling . toronto: garamond press . magnusson, warren et al . (eds.) 1984 the new reality: the politics of restraint in british columbia . vancouver: new star books. marchak, patricia 1984 "the new economic reality: substance and rhetoric," in w. magnusson et al . (eds.), the new reality . vancouver: new star books, 1984. 1985 "the ideology of restraint," canadian dimension . vol. 18, no. 6 (dec. 1984-jan. 1985). marshall , jane 1984 "china extends open door trade policy," manchester guardian weekly, july 29, 1984. 39 moore, steve and debi wells 197" "the myth of canadian deindus tr iai i zat ion , " in c. heron ( ed . ) , imperialism. nationalism and canada . toronto: new hogtown press, 1977. say lor, tom 1972 "the rise and fall of the third commercial empire of the st. lawrence," in g. teeple ( ed . ) , capitalism and the national question in canada. toronto: university of toronto press, 1972. o'connor, james 1984 accumulation c risis. oxford: basil blackwell. oliver, thelma 1985 "the bennett code: a beginner's guide to b.c.," canadian dimension . vol. 18, no. 6 (dec. 1984-jan. 1985). panitch, leo 1981 "dependency and class in canadian political economy," studies in political economy . no. 6 (autumn 1981). 1985 "class and power in canada," monthly review . vol. 36, no. 11 (april 1985). panitch, leo and donald swartz 1985 from consent to coercion: the assault on trade union freedoms toronto: garamond press. pet ras , james 1981 class. state and power in the third world . montclair: allanheld, osraun. teeple, gary 1986 "north american free trade: the last debate," two thirds . vol. 7, no. 3 (fall 1986). von werlhof, claudia 1984 "the proletarian is dead: long live the housewife " in s. smith et al . (eds.), households in the world economy . beverly hills: sage publications, 1984. vuskovic, pedro 1980 "latin america and the changing world economy," nacla report on the americas . vol. 14, no. 1 (jan. -feb. 1980) . wallerstein, immanuel 1979 the capitalist world-economy . cambridge: cambridge university press. 40 williams, glen 1976 "canada-the case of the wealthiest colony," this magazine , vol. 10, so. 1 (feb. -march 1976). 1983 "still not for export," canadian forum, vol. 63, no, 732 (oct. 1983). williams, glen 1986 not for ex port : toward a political economy of canada's arrested industrialization . toronto: mcclelland and stewart. 41 71 european capitalism: varieties of crisis ingo schmidt abstract: the article rejects the notion that countries of the eu periphery, some of which were recently labelled as piigs, are prone to fiscal and sovereign debt crises because of spend-thrifty governments and their negative impact on private investments. as an alternative to such views, the article argues that the eu periphery is prone to crisis because its economies can’t successfully compete with exports from core countries, especially germany. it will also be argued that world market integration in a time of economic stagnation, combined with an explosion of debt, speculation and recurrent financial crisis, is no way to overcome a country’s peripheral position. these arguments will be developed on the basis of some mini case studies on core and peripheral eu member states. keywords: european capitalism, centre-periphery relations, fiscal crisis, sovereign debt crisis introduction in the midst of the 2008/9 crisis of the world economy (european commission 2009), a new term crept into financial parlance: piigs, short for: portugal, ireland, italy, greece, spain. at that time, the broader public was still trying to understand the meaning of cdos (collateralized debt obligations), cdss (credit default swaps), and other fancy financial products including their role in the financial crisis. governments and central bankers were busy working to contain a sharp recession and save private profits with huge infusions of zero-interest credit, government spending and bank bailouts. as a result of these efforts, the crisis of private finance and capital more generally was transformed into a fiscal crisis of the state. neoliberal economists and media pundits happily used their chance to point at rapidly rising levels of public deficits and debt but downplayed the share european capitalism: varieties of crisis 72 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research of bank-bailouts in rising deficits. at the same time, they constructed the piigs to show how spend-thrifty governments run the risks of capital flight and state bankruptcy. the old familiar message: states, not markets, are the problem. since states can’t be totally abolished—after all, they serve capital interests quite well as protectors of private property and spenders of last resort—one has to carefully distinguish between good and bad. good states turn the fiscal tap off as soon as big money asks them to do so. bad states are either unwilling or too weak to turn to austerity once big money sees that as a necessity. bad states need to be punished by disinvestment that will deplete their finances and drive them into the arms of financial parole officers like the imf who offer urgently needed credit at high interest rates and unwanted policy advice. retired government officials from around the world, from then socialist eastern europe through the global south to the asian tigers and post-soviet russia can tell of their experiences with fiscal and sovereign debt crisis and imf-intervention. yet, the wall street crash and its aftermath offered an ironic turn of capitalist history. when the dow jones was plunging and investment banks were defaulting, a number of european governments used the chance to advocate their variety of regulated capitalism as superior to the american model of free market capitalism. then german finance minister steinbrück, a third way social democrat and usually a good atlanticist, went so far as to proclaim the end of dollar-supremacy. but then the piigs destroyed the european dream of a multilateral world in which american great power politics would be replaced by european multilateralism. rising levels of public and foreign debt, the neoliberal argument went, put the piigs at risk of state bankruptcy. in the spring 2010, greece, apparently the weakest member of this group, came close to bankruptcy, indeed. however, the reason was neither an uncontrollable explosion of debt, nor runaway inflation that neoliberal theory presents as an inevitable by-product of government debt. the risk of the greek state defaulting was produced by international financiers who, fired up by the neoliberal piigs-story, denied credit to the greeks at a rate of interest that would have allowed continuing circulation of capital within the country and beyond its borders. a €110bn credit from the eu, which the imf co-sponsored and enriched by a structural adjustment program, solved this acute fiscal and sovereign debt crises, momentarily at least. this intervention, which essentially represents another case of throwing public money at private finance, certainly satisfies the short-term interests of international financiers. whether it helps to avoid recurrent crises in the future is another question though. in this article, it will be argued that the reasons for the greek crisis (moschovis, servera 2009) were not the ones presented in the piigs-story. 73 this story neglects three factors that are crucial for an understanding of the greek crisis. first, it does not recognize that the current account deficits of one country are matched by respective surpluses of other countries. second, poor countries are not the only ones who produce deficits (european commission 2010). current accounts and public households in the us and britain, to name just the most two outstanding examples, are as deep in the red as those of the average piigs-state. third, governments and central banks can’t freely choose to either run deficits or surpluses; they may try either way but the ultimate outcome of their efforts will be determined by the competition for world market share. this competition has considerably stiffened during the neoliberal era. during that era, some states, like britain and the us, found out that they can afford to run deficits and actually make them part of their accumulation strategy while greece and countless other peripheral countries, were pushed into deficits by stronger competitors and then found structural adjustment policies imposed onto them. presenting experiences from a number of eu countries, this article will look at centre – periphery relations, macroeconomic imbalances and the design of the emu as key factors that can explain why speculative attacks against an economically small country like greece, contributing about 2.5% to the eu’s total gdp, translated into a severe crisis of european capitalism (european central bank 2010). these case studies will show how neoliberal capitalism could successfully be established in the west, in some cases against left strategies of socialist transformation, and invade eastern europe after the collapse of the soviet empire. they will also show that the crisis of neoliberal capitalism in europe takes on a variety of different forms, which depend on a countries’ position in the hierarchy of states and world markets. case studies on the crisis of european capitalism the country sample under consideration here connects the core countries france, germany, and the uk, to the peripheral country greece, ireland, and hungary. italy is included in this sample because its position as part of the eu core was recently challenged by its inclusion into the piigs-group. in this sample, germany is the bullying powerhouse that puts weaker economies under competitive pressure through the export-orientation of many of its companies and the hardcore neoliberalism its political class managed to inscribe into eu-institutions. german export success is often presented as the result of high savings, hard work, and long-term perspectives as opposed to the allegedly wasteful way of short-term speculation in the anglo-saxon world. however, while it is true that the financial markets in the us play a key role in neoliberal capitalism, and the city of london can certainly be seen as the european outpost of the dollar-wallstreet-regime (gowan 1999), it is also true that german capitalists happily funnel european capitalism: varieties of crisis 74 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research their money through the financial centres in london and new york. thus, the picture of european capitalism would be incomplete without understanding how the uk, once the workshop of the world, developed into such a powerful centre of world finance. the recurrent quests of france to complement the european central bank (ecb) and its political impact on accumulation with some sort of economic government on the eu level is often understood as a keynesian alternative to the combined powers of germany’s export economy and british financial markets. yet, it will be shown that french keynesianism was defeated by the interplay of domestic and international forces in the early 1980s. since then, french governments have embraced, not always as successfully as they were hoping, neoliberalism and seek to institute european economic policies in such a way that would compensate french capital for its competitive disadvantages vis-à-vis german export companies and british financial firms. the italian experience represents the significance of centre-periphery relations within the eu. on the one hand, italian governments are constantly struggling to keep the country’s place in the core group of eu powers, which didn’t stop international finance from classifying italy as part of the piigs. on the other hand, centre – periphery divisions within the country have posed a key problem of internal cohesion which has undermined italy’s position within the eu. the inability to overcome such divisions domestically contains some lessons for the future of the eu with its even deeper divisions between centres and peripheries. another variation of this theme is the irish case. for a while, ireland seemed to prove neoliberal claims according to which free trade within the eu would allow poor countries to catch-up to the rich countries. however, neither a temporary spurt in foreign direct investment nor a housing boom could prevent a us-style financial crisis in ireland. hopes to catch up with the rich were not only dashed in ireland but in hungary, too. like other eastern european countries after the collapse of the soviet empire, hungarians had to recognize that a place in the periphery was all the eu had for them. the last of the mini case studies in this article looks at greece, which is obvious because this was the first target among the piigs. apart from that, greece shows that even a country that could never aspire to escape its peripheral position can play key roles for the core countries. greece’s enormously big merchandise fleet and its strategic position as a nato-outpost on the borders to the muslim and arabic worlds are indispensible for european capitalism and its american allies. germany: export über alles in the early 1990s, when the terms and conditions of european monetary union (emu) were negotiated, the german export-model, which was established 75 with us-support after wwii and maintained its dominant position in world markets even during the crisis-ridden 1970s and the growth slowdown of the 1980s, was under stress. accession of formerly socialist east germany to capitalist west germany in 1990 had boosted domestic demand including government spending significantly and produced current account and public deficits that reminded the german bourgeoisie of the much despised twin deficits their american friends and mentors were running under reagan and bush senior. germany’s balance on current accounts deteriorated from a 4.2%-surplus 1986-90 to a -1.2%-deficit in 1991-95, public deficits increased from -1.4% to -2.8% over the same period.1 in an attempt to reign in its deficits, regain current account surpluses and extend its mercantilist model of accumulation (schmidt, 2007) to all prospective emu members, the german government pushed for tight limits on public deficits and debts, 3% and 60% of gdp respectively, and a maximum inflation rate of 2% as a precondition of emu membership. the institutionalization of austerity policies in the maastricht treaty, 1992, and the stability and growth pact, 1997, helped germany to re-start its export-oriented growth machine (see tables 1&2) after recessions in 1993 and 2002/3. constant pressures on government spending and wages kept inflation and unit labour costs low. yet, the same means that spurred exports put a lid on domestic growth. as a result, current account surpluses were soaring, producing complementary deficits on the side of most of germany’s trading partners, and increasing the german economy’s dependence on demand created elsewhere (lapavitsas, 2010, ch. 2-4). this dependence on foreign markets notwithstanding, the german ruling class is clinging to its export-orientation and keeps on pointing at other countries’ deficits as a source of financial instability, although they are largely a result of german export surpluses. france: european integration as a means against german domination french governments used european integration in the post-war period as a means to contain germany’s real or perceived appetites for dominance (parsons, 2003). this was true for the 1950s european steel and coal community that subordinated german heavy industries, the long-time economic backbone behind german imperialism, to multilateral control. french consent to the emu, including germany’s austerity prescriptions, was also motivated by an attempt to tie postunification germany into multilateral institutions. german governments agreed to this kind of political containment by integration because they clearly understood that the us, the unchallenged though sometimes unloved leader of the western bloc, supported germany’s transformation from a great political power into an economic export power. 1 all data in the text: european commission. european capitalism: varieties of crisis 76 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research hosting the world’s largest corporations and controlling the world’s money, the us found it easier to cope with german export competition than the french. however, this does not mean that the french bourgeoisie was necessarily hostile to the monetarist principles that germany used, even in the keynesian era from the 1950s to the 1970s, to fuel its export machine. faced with a socialist-communist coalition government that tried to stem the general tide from keynesianism to monetarism in the early 1980s, french capitalists were quite happy that the german bundesbank’s tight monetary policies put pressure on the french balance of payments. a perfect invitation to capital flight, which was then used to urge the socialists in the government to abandon their left-keynesian program and offend their communist coalition partners (lombard, 1995). the french bourgeoisie was as eager as their german, american and other counterparts to embrace neoliberalism. thus, french quests for eu-wide coordination of macroeconomic policies are not inspired by attempts to pursue keynesian policies but are a recognition of the superior competitiveness and market power of german export industries. policy coordination, from this angle, is meant to contain current account deficits and its negative impact on domestic growth and employment. considering how much the french balance on current account deteriorated since the introduction of the euro in 1999, which eliminated the possibility to limit imports through currency devaluations (see table 2), it is understandable that the current euro-crisis was accompanied by french complaints about germany’s beggar-thy-neighbour policies and new quests for macroeconomic policy coordination within the emu. britain: euro-dollars in the city rather than euros all over britain while the post-war boom allowed germany to emerge as an export powerhouse, british industries were struggling with underinvestment and permanent current account deficits. unlike france, where similar deficits were caused by the late development of large corporations, compared to its main competitor germany, british deficits were the result of relative industrial decline (kitson, michie, 1996). and whereas the french ruling class eventually decided to follow the german way of promoting national champions as core of their neoliberal model, the british bourgeoisie not only accepted but furthered industrial decline in favour of its financial sector (radice, 1995). the shift from industrial production to financial industries was so successful that britain—the city of london, to be more precise—could emerge as the european outpost of the dollar wall street regime (gowan, 1999; gowan, 2009). obviously the city never enjoyed the close connections and support that the us treasury offered, and still offers, to wall street. yet, in one respect, the city was even more attractive to profit-hungry investors than wall street: its euro-dollar markets bypassed us regulations and thus offered the least political control over financial flows and holdings. naturally, the british government was 77 eager to maintain this competitive advantage and thus rejected emu right from the start. ironically, a number of multinational corporations that discovered britain as a low cost and union free location in the 1990s advocated for british membership in the emu in order to limit the costs and risks associated with exchange rate fluctuations. emu membership would have helped to turn britain into a major site of transplant production to serve eu markets. yet, the city’s successful resistance against such plans made ireland a more attractive destination for foreign direct investments in the late 1990s and early 2000s. just as in the us, britain’s dominant position in international financial markets went hand in hand with a depletion of household savings, a surge in real estate prices and debt-financed consumption. though the tories had paved the way, the british bubble economy really took off under new labour. private household savings declined from 4.7% of gdp in 1991-95 to 2.2% in 1996-2000 to -0.1% in 2001-5 (see also table 3), while gdp growth went from 1.6% to 3.4% and 2.5% over the same period. though not impressive, this is more than the german combination of exports and domestic austerity had accomplished (respective growth rates for germany are: 2.2%, 2.0%, and 0.6%; see also table 1). because of britain’s leading position in international financial markets, the financial crisis hit the british economy earlier and harder than other countries. crisis containment consequently needed much higher doses of fiscal stimulus, which brought the british deficit close to the levels reached by the financial superpower america and peripheral countries in europe, such as greece and ireland (see table 2). italy: subordination to euro-austerity to escape regional disparity from its early days, italian capitalism developed in a highly uneven way that led to a deep polarization between the industrial north and the rural south (goldstein, 1998). in the 1960s, the italian bourgeoisie thought about the use of the keynesian state to overcome this north – south divide. yet, because the bourgeoisie was fractured as the country was divided economically, no consensus towards such an industrial policy extension of keynesian demand management could be reached. in the 1970s, the italian communists picked up this project as a building bloc towards the historical compromise with the conservatives who had dominated italian politics in the post-war period but were thrown into a crisis of legitimacy and strategic reorientation by the class struggles and economic crisis of the late 1960s and 1970s. like in france and britain, key organizations of the left sought to use industrial policies as a means of a gradual transformation from the keynesian welfare state towards socialism. however, the italian version of this strategy, euro-communism, failed as much as the common program of the french socialist and communist parties and the alternative economic strategy of the british labour party. european capitalism: varieties of crisis 78 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the neoliberal turn in italy abandoned attempts to overcome the north – south divide by political means and put praise for regional economies and industrial districts in its place (piore, sabel, 1984). however, while northern italy was integrated into emerging international supply chains, the italian south remained as dependent on fiscal transfers from rome as ever. continuing divisions between the northern core and its southern periphery were a source for right-wing regionalism, political tensions, a clientele state and the concomitant accumulation of public debt. eventually, export-oriented factions of the italian bourgeoisie, in conjunction with the post-keynesian socialist party, saw emu as a chance to escape the negative impact that political instability, accumulation of debt and recurrent currency devaluations had on their strategy of integration into international supply-chains. the outcomes of italy’s subordination to emu’s policy guidelines were mixed. public deficits were reduced from -11.5% in 1986-90 to -9.0 in 1991-95 to -3.0 in 1996-2000, but growth also slowed from 3.1 to 1.3 and 1.9, respectively, over the same period. unemployment went from 9.4 to 9.8 and 11.0, respectively. slow growth since the introduction of the euro helped to keep imports and thus current account deficits lower than in other countries that had higher growth rates. thus, dependence on capital imports to finance such deficits is lower than in many of eu’s peripheral member states, modest public deficits make the country a lesser target for speculative attacks like the one greece experienced in the spring of 2010 (see table 2). however, emu membership was anything but a way to solve italy’s long-time problem of uneven development. ireland: showcase of neoliberal development gone bust most, if not all, core and peripheral countries in europe experienced a growth slowdown after the crisis-ridden 1970s. in this respect, they resemble core countries and peripheries in other parts of the world. however, at any point in time there were also countries that could escape the tendency to economic stagnation: japan in the 1980s, the so-called asian tigers in the 1990s, and china from the 1980s until today. ireland earned the title of celtic tiger because its growth accelerated from 3.8% in 1974-85 to 4.6% in 1986-90 to 4.7% in 1991-95 to a peak level of 9.6% in 1996-2000. everything neoliberals ever said about free trade as a means to promote growth seemed to be true in ireland. the european single market program, which was launched in the mid-1980s and completed in the 1990s, coincided with a surge of foreign direct investments (fdis) and growth. neoliberal economists see enhanced possibilities to move capital across borders as a key to higher growth rates. yet, if this would be true, irish growth in the 1980s and 1990s should have been the european rule rather than its exception. arguably, the irish experience owes more to the accumulation strategies of us79 corporations than to the growth-effects of free trade (o’hearn, 2001). parallel to britain’s transformation into the european outpost of the dollar wall street regime, ireland became a prime location for low cost production within the european single market and, later, the emu. production in ireland allowed us-corporations to bypass import restrictions that goods coming from outside the single market are still facing. moreover, irish membership in the emu eliminated the risks associated with fluctuating exchange rates. yet, the ensuing foreign investment boom led to increasing control of foreign corporations over ireland’s economic and social development and was also accompanied by increasing social polarization (kirby, 2004). even in purely economic terms, fdis had questionable results. first, the high volatility of fdi-flows translates into an unstable process of capital formation (see table 1). second, a significant share of foreign and domestic capital fuelled a us-style housing and consumption boom that used up much of ireland’s private household savings (see table 3). third, though fdis massively contributed to the build-up of export production capacities they also led to high levels of parts imports. together with the import of consumer goods that were spurred by the combined booms in housing speculation and consumption, ireland was barely able to run current account surpluses at the height of its boom in the late 1990s. in the early 2000s, its current account turned negative. the boom in ireland was dependent on fdi-inflows, soaring house prices and debt-financed consumption. the world economic crisis in 2008/9 led to netoutflows of fdis and a collapse of the housing market that had been so vital in propping up consumption. the combined effect of fdi-outflows and a plunging housing market made the crisis in ireland much more severe than in the us or britain, two countries that were also confronted with housing bubbles going bust but weren’t dependent on fdi-inflows like ireland was (kanda, 2010). as a result, unemployment doubled from 4.7% in 2007 to 11.9% in 2009. fiscal stimulus and a collapse of tax revenue drove public deficits to levels higher than in greece (see table 2) and led to an explosion of public debt from 25% of gdp in 2007 to 64% in 2009. to contain the ensuing fiscal crisis and avoid outside intervention from the eu and/or imf, the irish government turned to pre-emptive austerity as early as late 2008 (imf 2009). most likely, these policies will trigger a period of stagnation, during which the government won’t be able to successfully consolidate public finances because of insufficient tax revenues. no western european country was flying as high as ireland before the crisis, but no other country was affected as badly by the crisis either. european capitalism: varieties of crisis 80 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research hungary: lost between the soviet empire and the empire of capital the implosion of the soviet empire in the early 1990s led to a period of economic downturn and political instability across eastern europe. these were the conditions under which new capitalist classes struggled to constitute and consolidate themselves. eu membership appeared as one of the ways to achieve this goal (green & petrick, 1999). in this respect, hungary is just one case in point (andor, 2000). like other eastern european countries who found themselves on the periphery of world capitalism after the state socialist system was gone, the new hungarian ruling class thought of eu membership not just as a way to gain political stability but also to attract foreign capital and promote economic growth (barnes & randerson, 2007). this strategy to ‘import’ stability and growth through eu, and possibly emu, membership is actually similar to italian attempts of overcoming a domestic deadlock of the political system through subordination to emu policy guidelines and irish efforts to use the european single market as a springboard for fdi-led growth. such attempts failed in hungary as they failed in italy and ireland. in the early 2000s, hungary did achieve growth rates of gdp and capital formation that were significantly higher than the respective rates in core countries of the eu (see table 1). thus, it seemed as if hungary, along with some other eastern european countries, had taken the road towards european integration and catch-up growth as successfully as ireland had done two decades earlier. however, the period of high growth was short and followed a sharp and prolonged downturn in the 1990s. moreover, the integration of hungary into the capitalist world market went hand in hand with massive imports. hungary’s new rich were keen on western luxuries to demonstrate their new status, and capital formation on the ruins of the former state socialist economy created a market for western makers of investment goods. as a result, hungary’s current account was deep in the red until 2008, when the combined effects of imf-intervention (imf 2010), which the government called for in november 2008, and recession led to import reductions that were significantly higher than the crisis-triggered decrease of exports (see table 2). another reason for the improvement of hungary’s current account position was the return to currency devaluations. the forint had massively depreciated against the euro and its predecessor-currencies during the 1990s and could be stabilized in the earlyand mid-2000s when hungary’s rulers were hoping to move from eu membership, which they achieved along with nine other eastern european countries in 2004, to the introduction to the euro. the current crisis dashed such hopes. at this point, the hungarian government is busy enough to deal with imf policies and may actually be quite happy that it doesn’t also have to deal with emu policy advice. failure to join the emu and catch up with the per-capita incomes of eu core countries are not the only disappointments for hungary’s rulers and ordinary 81 citizens. measures taken to achieve these goals have led to the country’s domination by western corporations and international organizations like the imf and the eu. there was just a short moment of independence between the collapse of the soviet empire and hungary’s integration into the western empire of capital as a subordinate state and peripheral economy. greece: weak economy in a strategic location greece didn’t experience a phase of accelerated growth since the 1980s like some other countries of the european peripheries. its growth pattern is more like that of core countries with a strong post-war boom, a growth slowdown in the 1970s and 1980s and a limited resurgence of growth in the 1990s and 2000s (maniatis, 2005). consumer spending that used up household savings drove this resurgence—the savings rate deteriorated from 3.9 in 1996/2000 to -5.8 in 2001/5 (see also table 3)—and was increasingly dependent on credit financing. because of a lack of domestic funding sources and production, consumption-driven growth was accompanied by increasing foreign debt and extraordinarily high current account deficits (see table 2). thus, greece showed all symptoms of a peripheral country whose hopes for prosperity are long gone. yet, this macroeconomic picture should not conceal greek’s strategic importance for european and other core countries of world capitalism. during the cold war, greece served as nato-outpost on the balkans and today it balances turkish influence in the middle east. though the latter is also a nato member because of its strategic location on the borders of the soviet union, now georgia, and oil-rich iran and iraq, western governments see turkey with suspicion because of its mostly muslim population. greece’s strategic role partly explains continuing public deficits and current account deficits: relative to gdp, greece spends more than double the amount of money on the military than the nato average, which includes the chief-military spender us (kollias & rafailidis, 2003). moreover, greece shipping companies operate the largest merchandise fleet of any eu member by far (unctad 2007). they own and control 40% of eu’s and 15% of the world’s carrying capacity and contribute around 8% to the greek gdp. control over merchandise trade has become increasingly important since world market integration and international supply chains became key ingredients of neoliberal capitalism. the media campaign that accompanied speculation against greece’s sovereign debt in the spring of 2010, presented the country as one that is run by spend-thrifty and corrupt governments who faked deficit and debt figures to sneak into the emu without actually matching its macroeconomic accession criteria. corruption is certainly not a privilege of governments in athens and the faking of economic data has been an integral part of high-flying stock markets in the centres of world capitalism before the crisis revealed the poor performance behind much fancy-fake data. european capitalism: varieties of crisis 82 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research what media commentators fail to mention is that eu core countries were eager to get greece on board the emu to underscore the country’s strategic position and get some level of control over its merchandise fleet. so important were these goals that even germany’s chief monetarists didn’t ask too many questions when they approved greece’s emu membership. of course, these days the germans happily use the chance to use speculative attacks against greece as a pretext to reinvent austerity as the sole means to overcome economic crisis. conclusions some conclusions can be drawn from the ‘mini case studies’ above. the first one is that macroeconomic imbalances within the emu, and the eu more generally, are largely caused by germany’s efforts to spur exports and growth through wage restraint and other anti-inflationary policies. the downside of these export-boosting measures is that they limit domestic demand so that export-growth didn’t translate into growth of overall-gdp but into increasing current account surpluses. this was only possible because demand growth in other countries was high enough to absorb german export surpluses without their governments turning towards protectionist measures to reign in their current account deficits. this group of foreign deficit countries includes not only peripheral countries like greece, hungary and ireland but also the eu core countries britain and france. the difference between core and periphery is not that the former are, with regards to their current accounts, surplus countries and the latter are deficit countries; the difference is that, in times of economic crisis, core countries have the power to intervene politically, either directly or through international organizations like the eu or the imf, in the periphery. this is the reason why crisis-management in high-deficit countries like britain and the us is left to the respective ruling and political classes of these countries, whereas peripheral countries with similar or even lower deficits are either faced with direct euor imf-intervention, for example greece and hungary, or are threatened with such interventions if their governments shy away from pre-emptive austerity policies like the ones adopted by ireland during the 2008/9 crisis. the second conclusion is that the integration of peripheral countries into international supply chains and world markets did not allow them to gain the same strength that germany could acquire through the making of its export economy during the post-war prosperity. the build-up of additional capacities for export production can contribute, in a world economy that is already plagued with overcapacities, to short-lived investment booms like the ones ireland and hungary experienced. but this neither helped their economies to gain any significant share in world markets nor their states to climb up in the international hierarchy of states. 83 the significant share of construction in ireland’s investment boom—one of the reasons why the irish boom lasted longer than the one in hungary—leads to the third conclusion that can be drawn from the case studies above. ever larger overcapacities can only be avoided if consumer demand keeps up with increasing production capacities. housing construction, concomitant surges of house prices and the expansion of consumer credit based on rising property values have been key for the growth of consumer demand over the last two decades. the us, though most prominent for its housing bubble and subprime crisis, was not the only country witnessing such housing-speculation and debt-driven increases in consumer demand. the same is true for britain, ireland, spain and japan. to be sure, the financial instruments used to prop up house prices and consumer-demand are largely ‘made on wall street’. the city of london was crucial in making them available to european countries including those of the euro-zone. far from representing an alternative to the unregulated and speculative world of the dollar wall street regime (schmidt 2009a), emu is well integrated into the us-dominated system of world finance. without the bubble economies in the us, britain and a number of peripheral economies, german export success would have been impossible. monetarist economists are right, and surprisingly close to many of their keynesian counterparts, when they point at the instability that such bubbles produce. yet, this was the way neoliberal capitalism solved the problem of insufficient demand after a decade of crises in the 1970s—until another ‘great crisis’ hit the world in 2008 (schmidt 2009b). references andor, l. 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(2001): the atlantic economy: britain, the us, and ireland. manchester: manchester university press. parsons, craig (2003). a certain kind of europe. ithaca, london: cornell university press. piore, m. j.; sabel. c. f. (1984): the second industrial divide: possibilities for prosperity. new york: basic books. 85 radice, h. k. (1995). britain in the world economy: national decline, capital success? in: david coates and john hillard (eds.): uk economic decline. englewood cliffs: prentice hall, 233249. schmidt, i. (2007): atlantic capitalism – one world or more? state of nature – online journal on radical ideas, autumn 2007, http://www.stateofnature.org/atlanticcapitalism.html. schmidt, i. (2009a): new institutions, old ideas: the passing moment of the european social model. studies in political economy, vol. 84, 7-28. schmidt, i. (2009b): große krisen seit den 1930er jahren. prokla – zeitschrift für kritische sozialwissenschaft, vol. 157, 523-540. united nations conference on trade and development (2007): review of maritime transport 2007, geneva. european capitalism: varieties of crisis 86 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research 87 social mobility: current thrusts (and non-thrusts) a critical approach to the analysis of mobility jan mayer "...the most important thing. ..that we can know about a man is what he takes for granted, and the most elemental and important facts about a society are those that are seldom debated and generally regarded as settled." (louis v.'irth, preface to karl mannheim's ideology and utopia, 1936, xxii, cited in pease, form and rytina, 1970: 127) in the sections which follow, various aspects of mobility research will be examined, beginning in section ii with a orief summary of various approaches which have been taken. the discussion of the sources and functions of social mooility in industrial societies leads to a discussion of the relationship between mobility and industrialization trends, including changes in the occupational structure. the paper ends with a critique of some of the dominant assumptions and lacks of attention in mobility research. the title of the paper indicates a certain skepticism with regard to any progression to date towards shedding light on the "taken for grantedness" of the mobility researcher's world, which encourages a narrow focus on some elements to the exclusion of others. some reasons why this is so are suggested in the concluding section. i introduction: the meaning of mobility the theory of social mobility, goldhaner informs us in the international encyclopedia 0? the social sciences, attempts to account for the frequencies in movements of individuals, families and groups from one social position to another. as moore (1966: 19?) notes, such movements may he in terms of location, relative position, sector or industry, in terms of lateral or occupational moves, or in terms of employer. movements may be intra-generational (career mobility) or intergenerational (change from father's to offspring's status). clearly, some types of mobility will be of more importance than others when such questions as degrees of opportunity or social inequality are raised. the subject of social mobility is an element in the more general study of "social selection"--the distribution of people into positions in social structures, with positions in turn varying in terms of three major "scarce and desirable" social rewards: income (or material goods), prestige, and power. thus, there is a relationship between the stratification system of a society and mobility within it--an "open" class system produces a certain kind and degree of mobility distinct from more closed "estate" systems or nearly rigid caste systems. different mechanisms or processes 88 are said to operate in each type, and these types have a relationship to the type of society—agrarian or industrial, and within industrial, whether "market" (capitalist) or "command" (soviettype) systems. industrialism and its impact on the stratification system and implications for mobility will be examined in section iv. at this point, however, it is important to note a number of general features of social structures which determine forms mobility will take in different societies. smelser and lipset (1966: £-11) identify three such features: (1) "ascription" or "achievement" as the institutionalized basis of legitimation for movement, implying collective and individualistic bases respectively; (2) the degree to which differentiation in the kinship, religious, economic, and political institutions makes for differential status of individuals among the dimensions of wealth, power and prestige (a high degree of formal segregation existing in highly institutionally differentiated social structures making it easier for individuals to move on the basis of a single role); and (3) the locus of control of sanctions ( rewards) --and if in the hands of a few, the degree to which these concentrations coincide in various institutional orders. smelser and lipset (:2) also make the point that economic development (specifically, industrialization) requires more movement, or at least different forms of movement, and that the ease or difficulty of such moveients will depend on the social structure of that society—there is an "emerging tension" between the "demands" of the developing structure and the characteristics of traditional structures. social systems, in their view, have certain "directional tendencies" and certain resources, which are linked by social structure in terms of basic units: roles and social organization (clusters of roles). systems have "functional imperatives" which must be met if systems are to survive: the economic, political, and "integrative" (norms, values, culture) are basic. these imperatives are interrelated, both in terms of interdependence and also in terms of the way in which sanctions produced in one may be used or involved in complex interchanges in another context, to produce other sanctions (e.g. wealth transformed as power, or education as inforration) . thus the stratification system must be seen in terms of roles characterized by different (and differential) receipts of sanctions; roles, organizations, individuals or classes may oe seen as stratified on the basis of these distributions ( :2-7) . to the functionalist, stratification (and hence inequality) is both necessary and inevitable if efficiency and survival of the social system are to be assured. historical and empirical data have at least confirmed the ubiquitousness of stratification. parkin (1973: 49) states that "as a rough general estimate, between a quarter and a third of those born into tne manual working class in modern western countries will move into the ranks of the middle class."—and for most of these, as blau and duncan (ls>67) have found, mobility will involve only short-range changes, such as to low white-collar positions, with the less usual cases, parkin notes, becoming mobile by entry into middle-class professions. 89 mcroberts' (1975) survey of the literature shows that mobility, whether up or down, occurs in sin£le "steps" (i.e. to adjacent categories) ( :7) . lipset and zetterberg (1966: 566; first published 1956), using only the statistically crude comparative tools available at the time, concluded that most western industrial societies revealed roughly the sane "high" rate as the u.s., but perhaps it would be preferable to say "low" (for ooviously, what one regards as evidence of an acceptable rate of mobility will be a normative judgment). (rates of mobility, however, were not related to differences in income inequality^ these findings have been confirmed by more recent comparisons which show that there is little difference in mobility between countries at different levels of economic development, having different normative orientations or class structures (kcroberts, 1975: 7; from muller and kayer, 1973). as for the united states over time, for example, duncan (196?) concludes that the data to the 19oo's tell a "monotonously repetitive story"--no regular increases or decreases in the magnitudes of correlations to be expected if stratification were becoming less rigid since about world war i, that is. no trend either towards increasing or decreasing mobility ( :711) . moreover, hlau an i duncan's (1967: 424) findings indicate that manual workers are less likely than others to achieve an occupational status different from that of their fathers. they identify the three major class divisions in terms of manual/non-raanual and blue-collar/farm as manifested in intergenerational and intragenerational mobility matrices; the lowest white-collar and lowest blue-coliar categories, located just above the class boundaries, apparently serve as channels for upward mobility, while self-employed groups are largely "self-contained" (:422). ii approaches to the study of mobility perhaps the most striking aspect of mobility research over the decades is how little it has progressed. duncan, as cited in the introductory section, concluded that the results of his research were "monotonously repetitive" ; the same could be said about mobility research in general. research has been dominated by the questions "v.'hat factors affect mobility?" and "how 'open' a society is this?" (or more often, "v.'hat is the rate of mobility?"). some different kinds of questions have recently been raised, but as will be shovm in the concluding section, even these have fallen short of the mark in terms of a contriuution to a more encompassing understanding of the mechanisms, consequences, and structural causal roots of lack of mobility, the other side of the coin which comes closer to the heart of questions of inequality, "relative deprivation," and the like. goldhamer highlights one objection to the mobility-measurement enterprise: "...moral and political critiques of society must rest not on distributions of children's status by parents' status., but on the nature of the processes that produce these distributions." (inter! atiokal encyclopedia..; :430) 90 obviously, such questions are not contained within the limits of statistical inference—they r.ust be placed there through theory which guides data-gathering and interpretation, and what is included in theory as relevant depends upon the researcher's bias and the bias of the dominant mode of thinking he accepts. what is absent in the theory will not magically appear in the statistics. duncan (1962) dates the methodological emphasis on measurement from the 1940's with the publication of an article by sibley (1942). up to that time only cooley and sorokin had made some contribution to an understanding of mobility. but even sibley's work had no data on vertical mobility per se , only on net shifts in the occupational structure as presumed evidence for past mobility. sibley's focus was on structural factors—demography, in terms of immigration and differential fertility, and on the educational system as a mechanism facilitating selection of talent and merit. between that time and about 1952, most writers were concerned with the "rigidification" thesis--that the opportunity structure of america had rigidified or that people had "lost the belief" in the possibility of mobility. it was not until natalie kogoff's 1953 study, with its "methodological elegance," that any significant data was brought forward, according to duncan; her finding was that there had been no significant changes in mobility rates between 1910 and 1940. mcroberts (1975: 2-6) defines three main approaches to the study of mobility. these are all approaches at the "macro," societal level, as distinguished from much rarer "micro" approaches such as that of harrison white in chains of offohtui.'ity (1970), in which a mathematically sophisticated "systems" analysis is applied to the mechanisms of mobility within organizational settings involving populations within them. all three "macro" models, the "matrix," "status-attainment," and "life-history" approaches, are essentially mathematical models, relating variables together and searching out statistical associations. the. earlier approach uses a matrix of father's occupation and son's current occupation (father's occupation represented at approximately mid-career by specifying his occupation at the point when the son was 16) ; the matrix describes the amount of mobility in a society intergenerationally. the status-attainment approach goes further. initially developed by blau and duncan (1967), the model introduces the variables of father's education, respondent's education, and respondent's first job on completion of education. it attempts to account for factors which contribute to the transformation of son's origin status into son's present status, but also allows for an examination of the relationship between educational attainment and status attainment independent of origin, through the statistical method of path analysis, which also allows the introduction of other factors thought to be relevant (mcroberts :2-6) . as duncan (1966: 681) explains it: 91 "the rigidity of stratification, in this sense l i.e. intertemporal predictability greater than chance] , is measured by the intergenerational correlation or coefficient of association. . .to be distinguished from the degree of inequality, which refers to the extent of differentiation on a relevant scale of rewards...". the analysis "places" the present generation on an occupational scale relative to placement of the father, but little more. aside from the limitations of the model, a number of methodological problems come to mind: first, the impact of structural change on occupational categories (this is addressed in section iv) ; second, the question of scaling of positions in terms of whether a "step" from one occupation to another always has the same significance (a point raised by goldhamer :430 and also by smelser and lipset, 1966: ib, particularly in terms of the autonomy and social relations connected with jobs) . the elau and duncan model appears to be able to deal with the first but not the second objection. the life-history approach (which kcroberts thinks of not as distinct from but as an extension of the status-attainment model) places its emphasis not so much on inter-generational movement but on the process of intra-generational (career mobility) movements and factors in the opportunity structure (1975: 7). as developed in the later work of hatalie rogoff (now ramsey) in the norwegian occupational life-history study (1974), the focus is on "the socio-economic life cycle of a cohort" and on the distances between groupings in terms not only of societal goods but "bads" (the distribution of negative rewards such as unemployment, illness, work discomforts, and factors usually labelled "quality of life"). ramsey questions "how effective the occupational system is as a transmitter of the rewards involved in the stratification system." (:14), noting that occupational status has been found to account for "relatively little of the variance in income in the united states." ( :15) . the norwegian study found it accounted for only 22$ of the variance in income (:1£). education and occupational status correlated .70 (slightly less than half of the variance), the highest correlation obtained (:19). ramsey also pointed to the possibility in there being a trend towards education bringing a lower monetary return than it did in the past (:22). although she did not raise the question, a relevant concern of research would seem to be the variance unaccounted for—what is there in the structure of industrial (specifically, capitalist) societies which perpetuates inequality and lack of mobility? ill sources and function s of mobility as mentioned in section i, sibley's (1942) analysis of mobility focussed on structural conditions, including the demographic "clues" of immigration, which aided mobility of native americans by injecting a large number of unskilled workers into the bottom end of the labour force, and fertility differentials between the 92 lower and higher occupational clas.-es, which created a surplus at the lower end who could r.ove up the social ladder to fill places left vacant there due to lower rates of reproduction. two other sources of upward mobility sibley identified were continuing technological progress, and the ability of the educational system to outfit people for positions of skill and responsilility. as sibley suspected immigration and differential fertility might eventually be "dwindling sources of upward mobility," he placed great erphasis on the educational system rather than on the effects of technology for upgrading the labour force, since he also noted the appearance of the offsetting effects of unemployment. he saw the future of technological progress as depending on the "ability of the nation's leaders to readjust political-economic institutions so as to produce a genuine 'economy of plenty.'" ( :32 5 ) , thus preventing political unrest and polarization into distinct classes. an important mechanism of stratification is intergenerational transmission of status including not only those parental statuses which influence offsprings' opportunities and orientations, such as parental occupational status ana educational attainment, but also, as duncan (l$t>8: 683) points out, such ascribed statuses as racial, ethnic, cultural, or religious group membership. other factors which affect nobility are inheritance of property, wealth or "intangibles," genetics, socialization, access to opportunities, advantages or handicaps of environment, and something which duncan calls "differential association," which includes items such as assortive mating, which place constraints on the socialization field or act as limits on access to opportunity ( :685) . causes of mobility identified in the literature may be divided into two types—those whicn are structural in nature such as demographic factors and occupational structure as related to industrial development, the creation of vacancies; and those which are "individual" in nature: genetic (intelligence, native ability) conditioned by environment, education, training, motivational factors (aspirations to achieve and to oe mobile), and variational (cultural orientations and belief in mobility as a good end) (see lipset and bendix, 1959; goldhamer; lipset and zetterberg, 1966; blau and duncan, 1967). it can be argued that much of the latter concern constitutes an "individualistic bias" in the literature, inasmuch as it places a great deal of responsibility for success or failure on tne individual rather than on social conditions (as, for example, lipset and bendix' s 1959: 286-7 statement that "the cumulation of disadvantages at th» bottom of the social scale is in large part the result of a lack of interest in educational and occupational achievenents" which cannot be attributed solely to the environment but to individuals' defence mechanisms against psychological burdens of mobility) . by focussing undue attention only on the characteristics of mobile versus non-mobile individuals qua individuals, attention is drawn away from characteristics of social structures and of social groupinrs relative to one another--that is, from the relationship between existing social arrangements and social classes, in the v/eberian and marxian senses. 93 smelser and lipset (1966) argue that "status values"—a "strong concern for social mobility in a society"—will contribute to economic growth because those desiring mobility success "will seek ways to maximize resources" ( :2u). their distinction, cited earlier, between ascriptionand achievement-oriented societies is important here—in societies where enphasis is on ascribed status of people based on kin groupings, "particularistic" rather than "universalistic" standards will tend to prevail, and so impede the workings of meritocratic principles to seek out and elevate talent--principles which are applicable to individuals and not to like groupings. thus, according to these theorists, "this phenomenon of increasing individual nobility appears to be one of the universal consequences of industrialization" ( :12) . blau and duncan (1967: 430) also express a belief that "expanding universalism" (the prevailing of objective criteria of evaluation of individuals over particularistic and subjective bases of evaluations) are causes of mobility, since such criteria become tied to a concern of individuals with materialistic values and hence to an interest in achievement and efficiency. for technological progress and efficiency to continue, the social system has to be such that "the great potential of society's human resources can be more fully exploited in a fluid class structure with a high degree of mobility" ( :43d . hence class lines which restrict mobility are a waste of human talent. the assertion of the democratizing and politically stabilizing effects of industrialization and hence mobility has been expressed by many writers, among them blau and duncan (1967: 439), and also by lipset and bendix (1959) , although the latter also remark that it is a strong belief in mobility, aside from the actual rate, which has the stabilizing influence (:260). lipset and zetterberg (1966: 571) observe that it is strains introduced by thwarted mobility aspirations which predispose individuals towards more extreme political views. they see a consequence of economic development being a potential tension in contradictions between the aristocratic and egalitarian sentiments, where egalitarianism is a characteristic of mature industrial societies. the functions of mobility are also taken up by lipset and bendix (1959: 260-265) in connection with the impact of rapid industrialization creating structural instabilities and disrupting orderly political processes through such factors as conflicts between individual aspirations and kin loyalties, or between emphasis on personal achievement and the management of failure; they speak of the "social and psychic costs" of high rates of mobility. this concern is also expressed by tumin (1970), who views the enphasis of mass societies on mobility strivings and the success ethic as creating: (1) fragmentation of the social order into statuscompeting groups each striving to emulate higher groups and shut out lower ones, (2) a move away from the belief in the dignity of work and work for its own sake to a cynical instrumental use of work as a means to the ends of social and financial success, and (3) a "cult of gratitude" among those who are mobile, blunting social criticism and reinforcing an acceptance of the ''status quo" ( :335-33#) • tumin's overriding concern, however, does not appear to be for individuals or for social classes, but rather for social 9* stability and cohesion of society. tumin's functionalist (and conservative) concern for the social system makes of individuals merely means for the ends of "system needs," it would seem. although blau and duncan (1967: 40?) identified social origins, career preparation, and first job as important conditions for occupational success, they also argued that it is the "basic structural features" of industrial society which are the source of high rates of occupational nobility, and expressed a faith that technological progress would continue to improve chances for upward mobility by making possible the shift from primary and secondary to tertiary industry (especially in professional and semi-professional services) , thus expanding the occupations at the top of the hierarchy, contracting the bottom, and acting as a vehicle for upward mobility ( :426-429) . this is the thesis of the general upgrading of the labour force which many writers have seen as basic to the process of industrialization, and these remarks will thus serve as a suitable introduction to the critical issues raised in the next section. iv industrialization. social structure. amd mobility the assertion of the occupational upgrading of the labour force as a result of advanced industrialism^ and the assertion of the increasing homogenization of class groupings arise from two kinds of social structural analysis which are closely related: the "logic of industrialism" model as exemplified by clark kerr (see goldthorpe, 1966: 649; see ossowski's statement cited in lipset and bendix, 19^9: 281), and the "post-industrial society" thesis as exemplified by daniel bell (see rinehart, 1975: 83-88). both of these approaches have been much criticized for their lack of accord with empirical facts, and they will not be dealt with here. however, they both share the "upgrading" thesis in common and it is this aspect which has important implications for mobility theory. although goldthorpe (1966: 651-3) agrees that in general, industrial societies appear to have higher rates of mobility than non-industrial societies, it does not follow that industrial society is in essence "open" or "meritocratic" or that high rates of mobility are inevitable consequences of technology, increasing specialization and the need for talent expressed in the division of labour. he cites two sources of counter-argument: after kolko and myrdal, goldthorpe argues that levelling in some ranges of the income distribution (as, for example, a swelling of the middle ranks) does not mean more equality, since other trends may be operating—the gap between top and bottom may have remained the same or have widened (indeed there is evidence that in some nations, this latter appears to be the case). moreover, goldthorpe points out, increased inter-generational mobility as indicated by the data may be associated with an actual limitation on intra-gene rational, or career, mobility. lipset and zetterberg (1966: 567) argue that the expansion in whitecollar positions at the expense of manual creates a "surge of upward occupational mobility to the extent that new industrial labour is 95 drawn from farm areas." although they cite a study by bendix which shows a parallel trend in a number of western industrial countries towards an increase in adninistrative employees per 100 production workers since the beginning of this century, they give no evidence to support the argunent that i_n general whitecollar work represents upgrading, or that a move from farm work to industrial manual work represents upward mobility. far from representing upgrading, rinehart {1975: 86) argues that the swelling of white-collar ranks has not occurred at the expense of manual work but at the expense of farm, and that in 1971 the over-whelming majority of white-collar workers (six out of ten in clerical and sales) were engaged in low-level white-collar work, and that within the category "professional and technical," 70$ were semi-professional or technical workers not involved in the complex and challenging "knowledge-work" attributed to them by post-industrial society theorists. moreover, he indicates there is evidence that people are becoming over-educated for their jobs (:#7). an extended argument is made by braverman (1974) for the increasing "deskilling" of much work which previously demanded higher amounts of skill and thought, through the process of subdivision of tasks and the separation of conceptualization from execution of tasks, with control of conceptualization and execution in the hands of high-ranking members of hierarchies or their agents. thus, in effect, much of what may appear to resemble mobility from blue-collar to low-level white-collar and the proliferation of low-level technicians is in actuality a process of "proletarianization" of increasing proportions of the labour force. these arguments would point to a form of downward mobility as more blockages are introduced into the occupational structure, or at minimum, that relative position in terms of class distribution has remained the same despite changes in the nature of work. despite the fond hopes of some of the structural theorists cited here, attempts at measuring structural (occupational) trends also lend support to the interp retation that the progression of industrialism has not resulted in increased mobility—as for example is shown by natalie rogoff's 1953 finding that when changes in the occupational structure were "standardized out", a major factor in mobility changes between 1910 and 1940 was accounted for (cited in koore, 19o6: 1^0). although moore recognizes that skill dilution rather than upgrading is a possibility of structural change ( :197) and that it is not clear why seme white-collar occupations are termed "head" work (such as typists) while some bluecollar' jobs are "hand" work (such as linotypists) (:206), he argues that "it is generally true that occupations commonly classified as non-manual require somewhat higher educational levels and... yield higher incomes." ( :206) . the question of certification through education will be addressed shortly. arguments for upgrading (and hence, sources of mobility) tend to take on a curiously circular cast. occupations which require more education often do so as a result of decisions by employers and may have nothing to do with job content. a listing of occupations in some kind of rank-order says little about differences in authority or job-content between two adjacent categories and may in fact be 96 a reflection of other factors, such as income differentials which may be the result of unionization or its absence. status rankings on which objective rankings are in part based have experienced little change in consensus over the years or from country to country because they are part of the dominant definition of reality. the last point refers to parkin's insight that through socialization into or by dominant-class ideologies, people learn not the placement of every occupation in the scale but rather, "the criteria by which positions are to be ranked. . .certain criteria become institutionalized as 'relevant' fcr ranking purposes, while other criteria are excluded or defined as 'irrelevant'." so that technical expertise, skill, or responsibility are accepted by subordinate classes as relevant fur high prestige, and not physical effort, danger, or dirtiness (1973: 42). if the assertion of occupational upgrading is based upon upgrading in status, and status is a subjective dimension, then a serious point of confusion is introduced into what is purported to be an attempt to measure objective phenomena. since blau and duncan's task was to measure the extent to which a man's occupational achievements depended on occupational status of his father, the question of occupational changes was a crucial one. the issue, as duncan sees it, is "whether occupational status... is sufficiently stable over time as to permit meaningful intertemporal comparisons..." (196?: 70}). duncan's "strong presumptive evidence" of stability was based on income positions and on prestige rankings, and he concluded that the occupational status structure is subject to such snail "random shocks" that changes cumulatevery slowly and have thus not affected the statistics to an appreciable degree ( :709) . it could be argued equally as well, following parkin, that after all, there has been no major overturning of the criteria by which the dominant view accords status, and no major questioning of its legitimacy. the question of whether or not an occupational structure has been "upgraded" cannot be answered by reference to a scale but involves other criteria and other kinds of observations. if upgrading cannot be shown, then one is left only with data which indicates there has at best been no change in the occupational structure, however much it may have changed in other ways, to make any difference to mobility. before proceeding to some general critical comments, it will be in order to discuss one other aspect of the industrialization arguments which pertains to what night be described as "the myth of increasing rationality" and "the myth of increasing universalism." since a highly sophisticated industrial society needs efficiency and rational means for allocating ability, so blau and duncan's argument went, "objective criteria of evaluation that are universally accepted increasingly pervade all spheres of life and displace particularistic standards of diverse ingroups, intuitive judgments, and humanistic values not susceptible to empirical verification." (1967: 429). however, in "strategies of social closure in class formation," parkin (1974) puts forward a different interpretation of the use of universalistic criteria. he distinguishes between two historically distinct ways in which dominant groups exclude others 97 from claims to social rewards: "classes of nomination" are the product of rules of exclusion "that single out the specific attributes of individuals rather than the generalized attributes of social collectivities" (:o) which are the historically older "classes of reproduction." he points out that individualistic rules of exclusion operate within societies dominated by the "liberal ideal." the establishing of universal criteria for evaluating individuals in the form of "credent ialism" is a way of controlling entry to valued positions to those qualified, using eeemingly impersonal means, but universalism is distorted when the "means of credentialism" are monopolized by one social group, and by the transmission of "cultural capital" which introduce "socially inherited handicaps and easements" that are de facto types of collectivist exclusion ana class reproduction ( :7-8) . certain desired social qualities (that is, desired by groups in control of occupational recruitment and selection) come to be more predominant in some groups than others—the nebulous quality of "character" is one such that is sufficiently loose to be used by dominant groups subject to their own definition. there are many such "intangibles"which go into the selection process of potential new elites, for example, by established elites, such that through the recruitment of people "like" tnemselves and through co-optation, existing social arrangements are perpetuated. v critiques of the kceility-measurement enterprise what follows is not a critique of measurement per se , but of the way it has been used, particularly its lack of including any other methods of data-collection. the attempt at making statistical connections usually begins or ends with a nod to social structure and accepts the dominant theories and assumptions about industrial societies as put forward by structuralists who are often functionalists in one guise or another. the fact remains that statistics do not tell a story in ther.selves—they are subject to interpretation and they are only as reliable as the operationalization of variables that went into them. the selection of variables in turn is only-as good as the theory behind them. a number of reasons will be suggested for why this theory may be found lacking. the study of mobility over the years has been largely an enterprise based on variations of the same themes; it has utilized mathematical models of increasing sophistication which have nevertheless been premised on an oversimplified view of the social system, one aspect of which they purport to account for. their variables have been few, their assumptions lacking in tneoretical inclusiveness—many have fallen easily into the "individualistic" trap and have hence been overly psychologistic in their explanations of the sources and mechanisms of mobility; many, often the same, have also fallen into the "logic of industrialism" trap. it is perhaps no accident that the two types of explanation are not unrelated in their minds: that is, the belief in the overriding effect of meritocratic and universalistic principles operating impersonally in the selection system means that the burden of responsibility for mobility is upon the indiviuual, and that if there are any 98 imperfections in the system, "tinkering" with the system to increase equality of opportunity will make the race more fairly run. duncan (196?: 6£>) notes that "from a normative standpoint" one could be concerned with whether the race is fairly run, given the rules, or whether changes should be made in the rules— but the problem with mobility studies is that they rarely get around to explicating the implications of their findings in even the first instance, let alone the second. although some studies (particularly the work of blau and duncan) have noted the differential rates of mobility between the two broad occupational (and societal) groupings centering around the manual/nonmanual "divide," to my knowledge few if any have spent much time on intra-group differences, and none has related these differential rates to dominant class-configurations in society: that is between different categories of manual or of white-collar workers and their differing relationship to the dominant value and resource centres of the society. the one exception is that of elite studies, which have made exhaustive analyses of social origins, career patterns, and mechanisms of exclusion and cohesion which mark off elites from non-elites—but the studies have not been linked to the mainstream of mobility research. it would appear from this lack of connection that the reality of the elite world is not thought to have repercussions for the non-elite world in terms of opportunity structure at lower points on the ladder, in terms of the locus of control and power, and the basis of elite dominance. this is particularly curious considering the concern expressed by elite researchers about the economic and institutional consequences of concentration of power. the notion of dominant and subordinate classes and of the property system around which their relations revolve in capitalist societies have been conspicuously absent in the mobility theoristresearchers' kit of concepts and explanations. it appears not to occur to them that, as parkin (1973: ch. 2) sees it, some degree of mobility in capitalist societies not only assures the infusion of talent when needed but also serves to legitimate the existing set of relations by reinforcing the belief in the rise of merit regardless of origins. both parkin (1973: ch. 1) and anderson (1974: 121-122) criticize the use of the "multidimensional" framework for the analysis of social class common not only to stratification theorists in general, but to those cited here. v/hen wealth, status and power are treated as separate variables with little relationship to one another, or at least, with some disjunctions, attention is drawn away from what is the major societal underpinning in capitalist systems: control of productive property. anderson argues that property classes or ownership must occupy the first and central part of any theory of stratification, as was held by marx and weber, and that from the fact of property other dimensions of stratification can then be examined in proper context. he goes beyond parkin's view that the occupational order is the "backbone" of the class structure and reward system in modern western societies, stating that occupation has always been an important and usually only source of sustenance for the masses; 99 the shift from self-employment to salaried employment is due not to the demise but to the "increasing preponderanc e of property in shaping industrial society" (:122; his err.phasist^ anderson also argues that what is at issue is not the operation of the mobility system but "why such a stepladder society exists in the first place and how and why it is perpetuated." ( :140) . mobility researchers have been obsessed with establishing the rate of mobility, and with the existence of stratification systems almost (if not completely) universally as an important fact—but one may ask whether it is the fact of stratification which is the important concern of research once the fact is established, or whether it ought to be the basis of stratification, its underpinnings, and its meaning. this venture has not gone far enough, and the reason it has not within "mainstream" sociology a; pears due to the limitations imposed by theory and behind that, of an ideological inclination which impedes it. strauss (1971: 1) has concluded that sociological theory is "shot through with rhetoric and ideological commitment"—he has found from an analysis of clusters of images in american stratification literature that the dominant themes of the frontiers as "seedbeds of democracy," the honest workman, the "rugged individualist," the emphasis on personal character, "destiny and civilization" and the "just rewards" of social mobility contained in social theories about industrialization "reflect and are virtually inseparable from their views about social mobility." (:10>). the conviction that americfn stratification literature has been dominated by notions of "evolutionary liberalism" and functionalism has also been expressed by pease, form and rytina (1v70). they trace dominant themes and assumptions in the research to the present, and find that in the postwar period, despite the critique of functionalism and the discovery of some merit in the theories particularly of weber (and to a lesser extent marx), only a perfunctory nod has been made in their direction. social mobility researchers have trivialized weber's work by separating out status from its theoretical brothers; by the 19>0's interest evolved into a concern for "mass middle-class society" with consumption patterns of more importance than income patterns. the authors give three reasons why stratification research seems to have steered clear of hard-hitting issues: the dominant american ideology of individualism which has seeped into sociological theory despite the sociological perspective on "social" explanations for phenomena; the public ideology which conceives of any theoretical debt to i-.arx as implying marxism ; and the struggle of sociology to achieve scientific status, hence its emphasis on improving quantification procedures and choosing variables like status which are easier to operationalize than power (: 132-133). in summary, the sociological enterprise as it is represented in the vast majority of north american stratification and mobility 100 studies is aptly characterized by pease, form and rytina thus: "sociologists who view stratification as a matter of individual occurrences rather than social structure, who study consumption to the neglect of distribution and production, who study the labor market but not the credit and commodity markets, who emphasize status, oversimplify class, neglect wealth, define power as being outside stratification, and who fail to see 'race relations,' minority status, and poverty in the context of stratification confirm robert lynd's observation that when it ccmes to matters of class stratification, 'the social sciences tiptoe evasively around the problem' ." ( :134) . 101 bibli ography anderson, charles h., the political economy of social class, 1974 englewood cliffs, n.j.: prentice-hall blau, peter h. , duncan, otis dudley, the american occupational 1967 structure, new york: john v/iley &. sons brave rman, harry, labor and monopoly capital, new york and london: 1974 monthly review press duncan, otis dudley, "problems in the measurement of trend," in 1968 e. b. sheldon and w. e. moore (eds.), indicators of social change, new york: russell sage foundation goldhamer, herbert, "social mobility," international encyclopedia of the social sciences goldthorpe, john h., "social stratification in industrial society," 1966 in reinhard bendix and seymour martin lipset (eds.) class, status and fower, new york: the free press lipset, seymour martin; bendix, reinhard, social mobility in 1959 industrial society, berkeley and los angeles: university of california press lipset, seymour martin; zetterberg, hans l., "a theory of social 1966 mobility," in bendix and lipset (eds.) class, status and pov.'er, new york: the free press mcroberts, hugh a., social stratification in canada: a prelimin1975 ary analysis, doctoral dissertation, carleton university moore, wilbert e., "changes in occupational structures," in smelser 1966 and lipset, (eds.) social structure and mobility in economic development, chicago: aldine parkin, frank, "strategies of social closure in class formation," 1974 in parkin (ed,), the social analysis of class structure, london: tavistock , class inequality and political order, paladin (u.k.) t973 pease, john; form, william h.; rytina, joan huber, "ideological 1970 currents in american stratification literature," the american sociologist (may), pp. 127-137 ramsey, natalie rogoff, "social equality in the here and now," 1974 institute of applied social research, oslo raimeo rinehart, james w., the tyranny of work, don mills: longman canada 1975 102 sibley, elbridge, "some demographic clues to stratification," 1942 american sociological review, vol. 7, pp. 322-330 smelser, neil j.; lipset, seymour kartin, "social structure, 1966 mobility and development," in smelser and lipset (eds.), social structure and mobility in economic development, chicago; aldine strauss, anselra, the contexts of social mobility, chicago: 1971 aldine tuilin, melvin m. , "some unapplauded consequences of social mobility 1970 in a mass society," in tumin (ed.), readings on social stratification, englewood cliffs, n.j.: prentice-hall digitized by the internet archive in 2011 with funding from carleton university, department of sociology & anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesj09alte alternate routes presentation and editorial policy alternate routes is a ref ereed mul ti-disciplinary journal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university in ottawa. we hope to make ar a forum for debate and exchange among graduate students throughout the country and are therefore interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or co-authored with faculty), regardless of their university affiliation. the editorial emphasis is on the publication of critical and provocative analysis of theoretical and substantive issues which clearly have relevance for progressive political intervention. although we welcome papers on a broad range of topics, members of the editorial board work within a feminist and/or marxist tradition. therefore, we encourage submissions which advance or challenge questions and issues raised by these two broadly defined perspectives. we also welcome responses to and reviews of recent publications . alternate routes a journal of critical social research editorial collective: behnam behnia, veronica vazquez garcia, cristina gheorghe, david hubka , paul label le, brigitte malenfant, valerie norlen, paul shreenan, edith smith, barbara sussenberger . the editors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the carleton university community: the department of sociology and anthropology and its chairperson, stephen richer; the dean of graduate studies and research, j.w. apsimon; the dean of social sciences, marilyn marshall. we also thank all the anonymous reviewers and mary-anne kandrack. subscriptions (1 year) students and unemployed $10.00 regular $12.00 foreign $12.00 (u.s.) institutions $18.00 foreign $18.00 (u.s.) make cheques payable to: alternate routes department of sociology and anthropology carleton university ottawa, ontario k1s 5b6 alternate routes is printed by 1 ' imprimerie gauvin in hull contents contributors and introduction v gramsci , women and the state veronica vazquez garcia 1 public broadcasting in canada: subordinate service david skinner 2 6 on the devaluation of women's labour: hegemonic and local ideological practices paul shreenan 44 historical materialism by cross-sectional survey design: the limits of e.o. wright's study of class structure david hubka 64 book reviews parker, r.g. bodies, pleasures and passions : sexual culture in contemporary brazil, boston: beacon press, 1991. (michel turcotte) 78 aronowitz, stanlezy & henry a. giroux. postmodern education: politics , culture and social criticism, minneapolis, minnesota: university of minnesota press, 1991. (george a. fogarasi ) 80 research notes la folie au declin du moyen-age paul label le 82 studying psychotherapeutic knowledge: notes toward a working definition of ideology mary-anne kandrack 90 contributors and introduction the cultural studies approach was imported to canada through the birmingham school and more recently has been enriched by scholarship coming from france and the united states. today the approach is even broader than the sum of these international traditions because canadians have brought to cultural studies a unique historical perspective. this new generation of canadian trained social scientists cut their teeth in english canadian political economy. what results are syntheses of these two very different approaches. class, along with gender and ethnicity remain important shapers of the lives of people and bring a richer and deeper understanding of canadian social reality. the articles in this issue are representative of the breadth of interests that contribute to our knowledge of canadian social practices and institutions. the uniqueness of the canadian historical experience is evident in the papers included in this volume. veronica vazquez garcia is a graduate student at the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university, ottawa. her research focuses on the impact of cattle and oil industries on nahua communities in veracruz, southeastern mexico. her article in this issue explores the potential contribution that the marxism of antonio gramsci , and in particular his concepts of ideology, hegemony, civil society and the state can make to the neo-marxist current within feminist theory. the exploration of these concepts is located in the context of the absence of concepts of the sexual division of labour and of women's oppression in gramsci 's work. the paper concludes that gramsci's innovative theoretical and political contributions can be reformulated to deal with the contemporary concerns of socialist feminism. david skinner is a graduate student at the department of communications at simon fraser university, british columbia. focusing on the historical relations between the state and private capital, his paper argues that broadcasting regulations in canada have generally subordinated the interests of public broadcasting to those of private capital since the advent of these regulations. paul shreenan is a graduate student at the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university. his research is on the development of the maritime fhishermen's union with specific focus on the impact of acadian culture on the union in different sub-regions of the maritimes. his article in this issue addresses the invisibility and undervaluation of women's labour among small boat fishers in atlantic canada. his basic contribution is the discussion of the role played by what the author terms "the ideological practice of independence" in reproducing the subordination of women in fisher households. this local ideological practice articulates with liberal, capitalist and patriarchal practices to legitimate the oppression of women. david hubka is a graduate student at the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university. his area of interest is the construction of canadian national identity through the media. in his paper in this issue, e.o. wright's project is reviewed with respect to history and class structure. it is argued that wright's treatment of historicity has been neglected within the debates generated by his project, and that, taken out of historical context, his conceptualization of class loses its explanatory power regarding marxist theoretical integration and emancipatory strategies. alternate formulations of marxist theory and method for understanding class and history and offered, as well as directions for future research. we hope that our readers will respond to this issue by sharing their ideas and critiques with the editorial collective. gramsci , women and the state veronica vazquez garcia carleton university introduction the "unhappy marriage" between marxism and feminism has given rise to an extensive debate. however, the feminist scholarship dealing with ideology and consciousness has not worked within a marxist framework but rather has turned to psychoanalytic and poststructuralist theories to conceptualize consciousness, particularly the relationship of the body, sexuality and consciousness (sandra morgen, 1990). the purpose of this paper is to locate the feminist discussion of ideology within a neo-marxist framework by arguing the usefulness of some aspects of gramscian theory to feminist theory and to consider its implications for feminist politics. the paper is divided into four sections. in the first section i discuss some key concepts of gramscian thought. the second section involves an assessment of gramsci's work and suggests that he failed to account for both the sexual division of labour and women's oppression. the third and fourth sections focus on the use of key concepts of gramscian thought from a feminist theoretical perspective aiming to address this failure. finally, i outline some suggestions for feminist cultural critique and feminist politics drawing on gramsci's idea of counter-hegemony. i will organize my discussion of gramsci around his concept of hegemony as it relates to his conception of civil society. i will then seek to explore the implications of these two concepts for his political strategy in relation to the state. i will argue that gramsci's project for the construction of socialism and the revolution in the west neglects gender issues and as such can be located within the mainstream of marxist thought which leaves the sexual division of labour untouched. however, gramsci's concern with ideology allows for the theorization of the reproduction of patriarchy through cultural and ideological processes. more importantly, he helps us to understand the structures underpinning patriarchal ideology. similarly, feminist political agenda can be read as counter-hegemonic practices facing the type of state that gramsci had in mind. the focus of this paper is the reconceptualization of gramscian tools of analysis from a feminist perspective . gramsci: hegemony, civil society amd the state. the nature of gramsci' s texts has given rise to numerous problems. the prison notebooks were produced under difficult physical and intellectual conditions, and gramsci considered them "unfinished fragments, elements and indications for further study" (anne showstack sassoon, 1980:12). he used the same terms in different ways and created a code to deal with censorship. the development of his thought has been difficult to trace in terms of its continuity and change. consequently, there is a large variety of readings of gramsci. showstack sassoon refers to two types of readings. the first one, the "textual reading", "can attempt to trace the history of a concept internal to gramsci's theoretical work, examining gaps, contradictions, coherence, advances", while neglecting the historical context from which gramsci's work emerged (ibid:15). the second possible type of reading emphasises this context, namely, "the debates and the experiences of the second international and of the working-class movement in post-first world war europe" (ibid:16). showstack sassoon bel ieves that reference to this context is necessary to understand gramsci's major theoretical concerns. hence, gramsci's work can be read as dealing with the construction of socialism in the ussr as well as in terms of the "revolution in the west", which had to take into account special conditions of advanced capitalist societies. gramsci's major contribution to marxist theory is his departure from the economistic version of marxism which sees the relationship between the material relations of production and the superstructure (ideological, legal, and political practices) as a mechanical one, where the latter are determined by the former. for gramsci, "'popular beliefs' and similar ideas are themselves material forces" (gramsci, 1971: 165). ideas "are not spontaneously 'born' in each individual brain", but rather have "a centre of formation, of irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion..." (ibid:192). ideology "is the more general term for the ways in which certain sets of ideas and assumptions become dominant forces in society" (tony bennett et al , 1981:207). these ideas are contained in 1. -language itself, which is a totality of determined notions and concepts and not just of words grammatically devoid of content; 2. -"common sense" and "good sense","3.popular religion and, therefore, also in the entire system of beliefs, superstitions, opinions, ways of seeing things and of acting, which are collectively bundled together under the name of 'folklore' (gramsci, 1971:323) . the implication of gramsci 's conception of ideology is fivefold: focus is shifted from the intellectual plane of philosophical systems to the formation of popular consciousness or common sense. second there is less emphasis on ideology as "system", as integrated or coherent. third ideological struggle is viewed, not as titanic struggles between rival weltanschauung, but as practical engagements about shifts and modifications in "common sense" or popular consciousness. fourth is the emphasis on ideologies as active processes which "'organize' human masses and create the terrain on which men (sic) move, acquire consciousness of their position, struggle, etc." (1971:377). fifth his conception of ideology is positive whilst marx's was negative. for marx ideology blocked and distorted, whilst for gramsci it provided the very mechanisms through which any participation in social life was possible (alan hunt, 1990:5) . gramsci 's conception of ideology as a non-unitary bloc where the interests of subordinate classes are constantly negotiated, allows us to trace the constitution of a social class as politically dominant in particular historical circumstances. gramsci calls hegemony the mobilizing capacity of a social class to both dominate subaltern classes and lead allied ones. he suggests that a class must exercise "leadership before winning governmental power", and when it becomes dominant "it must continue to 'lead' as well" (1971:58). a particular historical bloc emerges from the various processes of conflicts, negotiations and compromises among different classes and social groups. the hegemony that this historical bloc exercises "must necessarily be based on the decisive function exercised by the leading group [class] in the decisive nucleus of economic activity", but this nucleus is far from being the only determinant, since hegemony must also be "ethical -political" (ibid:161). hence, the political hegemony of a social class depends on its ability to generate "the 'spontaneous' consent given by the great mass of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group [class]" (ibid:12). a new way of looking at the relationship between civil society and the state stems from gramsci 's conception of hegemony. for gramsci, civil society is no longer the private realm of mere economic relations, as in marx, but rather it is "the ensemble of organisms called "private'", where hegemony of the dominant class is exercised (idem). in other words, civil society is the social space where consent is generated and resistance to dominant hegemony may be built upon. as ralph dahrendorf puts it, civil society is "the intermediate world" between the state and the individual (1990:18). civil society is constituted by institutions whose degree of autonomy from the state vary from case to case. gramsci defines the state in modern societies as "the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules" (1971:244). by insisting that "by 'state' should be understood not only the apparatus of government, but also the 'private' apparatus of 'hegemony' or civil society" (ibid: 261), gramsci avoids an overemphasis on either the coercive or consensual elements of the state. he conceives the state as having a possible historical existence between the two poles of coercion and consent, and the relationship between civil society and the state takes a special form in every historical conjuncture. therefore, the distinction between civil society as the realm for consent and political society or the state as the realm for coercion is for gramsci a "methodological" rather than an "organic one". the relationship between civil society and the state is the major difference between the "east" and the "west": in russia the state was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the west there was a proper relation between state and civil society, and when the state trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed. the state was only on outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks (ibid:238). gramsci's new strategy for socialist revolution in the west stems from this distinction between the "east" and the "west". the fact that in the west there is a "sturdy structure of civil society", or a complex network of institutions, makes crucial the battle for hegemony. gramsci refers to this battle as the war of position. the success of the working class in this battle is the pre-condition for securing its political power. as anne showstack sassoon suggests, "the key phrase is gramsci's specification that once the war of position is won, it is won definitively. or, in other terms, only when the working class has won the battle of hegemony will it have triumphed definitively" (1980:196). this battle must continue during the building of socialism; it is never won once and for all. the war of position is a battle for hegemony in which intellectuals play an essential role. although gramsci believes that "all men [sic] are intellectuals" (1971:9) in the sense that all individuals make sense of their world, he makes clear that only some of them "have in society the function of intellectuals" (idem). this function is mainly on "organisational" and "connective" one. the intellectual's relationship with "the world of production" is "'mediated' by the whole fabric of society of which the intellectuals are, precisely, the 'functionaries'" (ibid:12). hence, intellectuals articulate social hegemony not only in the field of production, but also in that of culture and political administration (ibid:97). the degree of connection between intellectuals and "a fundamental social group" varies for each case, and gramsci suggests that a whole range of "organicity" of intellectual strata can be established depending on this connection. gramsci calls organic intellectuals those created together with a social class and responsible for giving this class homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields. the capitalist entrepreneur creates alongside himself the industrial technician, the specialist in political economy, the organisers of a new culture, of a new legal system, etc (ibid:5). traditional intellectuals, by contrast, are those "already in existence" when a new social class emerges. since they belong to a previous historical time, and have links with previous dominant classes, they remain unconnected with the emerging mode of production. traditional intellectuals "represent an historical continuity uninterrupted even by the most complicated and radical changes in political and social forms" (gramsci quoted by showstack sassoon, 1980) . since the nature of the relationship both between intellectuals themselves and between intellectuals and the various social classes affects the very nature of hegemony, it is essential that the working class creates its own organic intellectuals. it is within the party that these intellectuals are to be formed, since the party is the central organizer of the working class hegemony. gramsci compares the political party to the state in its role of articulating an hegemonic project: the political party... is precisely the mechanism which carries out in civil society the same function as the state carries out, more synthetically and over a larger scale, in political society. in other words it is responsible for welding together the organic intellectuals of a given group -the dominant oneand the traditional intellectuals. the party carries out this function in strict dependence on its basic function, which is that of elaborating its own component parts those elements of a social group which has been born and developed as an "economic" groupand of turning them into qualified intellectuals, leaders and organisers of all activities and functions inherent in the organic development of an integral society, both civil and political (gramsci, 1971:15-16). in order to turn the working class as an "economic group" into "qualified intellectuals, leaders and organizers", the party must exercise some leadership. this leadership must not be an "abstract" one but rather must apply itself to real men [sic], formed in specific historical relations, with specific feelings, outlooks, fragmentary conceptions of the world, etc., which [are] the result of "spontaneous' combinations of a given situation of material production with the * fortuitous' agglomeration within it of disparate social elements (ibid:198). the role of the party is to "educate", "direct", "purge of extraneous contaminations" this element of "spontaneity", in order to "bring it into line with modern theory -but in a living and historically effective manner" (idem). hence, the "unity between "spontaneity' and "conscious leadership' or "discipline' is precisely the real political action of the subaltern classes, insofar as this is mass politics and not merely an adventure by groups claiming to represent the masses" (idem). gramsci: a feminist critique gramsci 's originality is mainly due to his emphasis on the reproduction of forms of ideological domination through social practices at a daily level. from this conception of ideology, a paramount need is to look at civil society as a major site where dominant hegemony can be contested. however, the fact that gramsci wrote the prison notebooks thinking of a working class project somehow narrows the applicability of his categories to other kinds of analysis. gramsci's starting point is the assumption that the working class is being oppressed by the place it occupies in the relations of production, and therefore the working class is its own agent of liberation in the sense that it is capable of "leading" other classes towards revolutionary change. in the organization of working class hegemony, other social groups and classes can only work as either allies or enemies, and gramsci gives no indication about how to articulate the struggle against class oppression with other kinds of oppression other than under the working class and the party's leadership. hence, the whole set of categories of gramsci emerges from the centrality that the working class has in his project for socialist revolution. for example, although dominant hegemony is articulated at different levels of the superstructure by organic intellectuals, "it must be based on the decisive function exercised by the leading group [class] in the decisive nucleus of economic activity" (ibid:161) and therefore is closely linked to material relations of production, or "the factory" (ibid:285). this does not have to be a problem per se, except for the fact that gramsci also assumes that all the members of the working class are male, and in doing so he obscures women's oppression not only as members of the working class but also as women. this problem becomes relevant in gramsci's discussion of fordism, which deals with gramsci's exposure of monogamy among the working class as functional for capitalist profit. gramsci draws the link between a discipline of the instincts in the assembly-line and a regimentation of sexual life and in so doing he shows how capitalism has generated a civilta or a way of living beneficial to capitalist production. however, only the classes tied to production are subjected to puritanical morality, since the ""puritanical' initiatives simply have the purpose of preserving, outside of work, a certain psycho-physical equilibrium which prevents the physiological collapse of the worker, exhausted by the new method of production" (gramsci quoted by buci -glucksmann , 1980:84). concerning the morality of classes other than the working class, gramsci argues that 8 the most noteworthy fact in the american phenomenon in relation to these manifestations is the gap which has been formed and is likely to be increasingly accentuated, between the morality and way of life of the workers and those of other strata of the population (1971:304). thus, gramsci's claim that "the new industrialism wants monogamy" (idem) refers only to the working class' family where monogamy as a repression of sexual needs can be explained by the link of the worker to the relations of production. however, this repression applies only to male workers who cannot afford "a night of 'excess'" after work because it affects their performance at work the following day. gramsci does not speak about the repression of women's sexuality, and so we have to assume that there is not such thing, or that it is similar to that of their husbands (which, needless to say, is quite unlikely) if women are also working in the assembly line. moreover, gramsci leaves unproblematized the availability of women to meet men's sexual needs, when equating the (male) worker's impossibility "to dedicate himself to the pursuit of drink or to sport or evading the law" (idem) to his lack of time for "womanizing", since all these activities demand too much leisure. gramsci does not talk about the male worker's wife nor does he problematize the existence of prostitutes with whom working class men can have a "night of excess" whereas their wives cannot. the only type of prostitutes gramsci speaks of are the wives of american mil lionaires who go to europe to "contract 'marriages' for a season" as a way of escaping boredom and a mere form of entertainment (ibid: 306). gramsci's discussion of puritanical morality precludes the possibility of analysis of the family as a realm where a different type of relations of subordination of women by men takes place. gramsci does not examine the sexual division of labour and the power relations between men and women resulting from this division, and therefore the little insight that he sheds in the nature of women's oppression is an appendix of the relations of production, where women's situation is defined by their husbands' link to these relations. women whose husbands are closely tied to these relations do not represent a problem (repression of sexuality in gramsci refers only to male sexuality), while women whose husbands are millionaires are "luxury mammals" and can afford behaving like prostitutes as a way of entertainment. what is even more striking is that gramsci speaks of these millionaires as hardworking men whose wealth make their wives passive, and so the "loose" morality of upper classes is applicable only to women. gramsci presents the "prostitution" of women of the upper classes as resulting from their own will ("the women, with nothing to do, travel" [idem]) rather than from men's financial power, while the prostitution of women in the lower classes is not even dealt with. gramsci's assumption that all members of the working class are male translates into his agenda for cultural critique and therefore the scope of this critique is a limited one. the critique of culture involves for gramsci "a critique of capitalist civilization" in order to form "the unified consciousness of the proletariat" (gramsci quoted by buci-glucksmann, 1980:39); he refers to his own work in the cultural field as a battle for a culture that would be "an instrument and form needed for the political emancipation of a class" (ibid:79). accordingly, the intellectuals who organize a counter-hegemonic project "have to be oriented towards the revolutionary proletariat" (ibid:28) and must work with the political party. when gramsci talks about the role of the party as articulator of a new civilta he clearly refers to the working class as the generator of these new ways of life and calls them "proletarian culture". hence, although it is true that there is great novelty in gramsci's political strategy for social change, the new hegemony he refers to is a working class hegemony which leaves untouched other forms of oppression. the key issue now is to examine the extent to which gramsci's failure to account for women's oppression and his project of emancipation for the working class obscures gender inequality and precludes women's own emancipatory practices. in other words, the usefulness of gramscian analysis for feminist politics has to established. i think that the possibility exists for a dialogue between gramsci and feminist theory in order to expose women's oppression and explore how it interweaves with class oppression. however, this is not a matter of just "adding on" women to the gramscian project in terms of political struggle, but rather of giving centrality to the relationships of oppression of women by 10 men in theoretical analysis. this kind of work has to be done if we want to create critical awareness and problematize works produced by progressive intellectuals, such as paul willis' learning to labour , (1977) where patriarchal attitudes and assumptions of working class "lads" are uncritically viewed as forms of resistance to dominant hegemony (angela mcrobbie, 1981). women and civil society as pointed out in the previous section, gramsci's assumption that all members of the working class are male leads to a failure to theorize women's oppression in the work place and in other spheres of their lives. in this section, i will discuss the socialist feminist approach to women's subordination in capitalist society in order to broaden the gramscian project of counterhegemony by incorporating into the analysis two points traditionally overlooked by marxist class analysis: a)the notion of a gendered working class (and labour force) and b)the sphere of reproduction. i will mainly refer to alison m. jaggar's (1983) account of socialist feminist theory. socialist feminists believe that "a full understanding of the capitalist system requires a recognition of the way in which it is structured by male dominance and, conversely, that a full understanding of contemporary male dominance requires a recognition of the way it is organized by the capitalist division of labour" (alison m. jaggar, 1983:125). hence, the socialist feminist approach utilizes the method of historical materialism to explore "the social relations that constitute humans not only as workers and capitalists but also as women and men" (ibid:132). in order to achieve this, socialist feminist theory attempts to reconceptual ize both the private sphere of human reproduction and the public sphere of human production. socialist feminists argue that human reproduction is a form of labour and that the prevailing system of organizing reproduction is alienating and exploitative for women. this theory provides a way of understanding the segregation by sex of the labour force as well as sexuality, childbearing and personal maintenance in political and economic terms. 11 socialist feminists' major divergency with traditional marxism is their conception of what sets of relationships constitute the economic base of a mode of production. they claim that the economic foundation of society includes a characteristic system of organizing procreation [reproduction] which, in historical times, has been defined in part by a characteristic sexual division of labour. this system of procreation is among the most pervasive influences on the culture of a society, understood in the sense of its "legal, political, religious, aesthetic and philosophic ... forms" and is important in setting limits to what forms can ultimately exist in that society. much feminist theory consist precisely in tracing connections between the sexual division of labour and procreation, the sexual division of labour in the market and the ideological sexism embodied in law, politics, religion, aesthetics and philosophy (ibid:142). thus, socialist feminists believe it is misleading to think of the public and private as two distinct spheres: "production" and "reproduction", work and the family, far from being separate territories like the moon and the sun of the kitchen and the shop, are really intimately related modes that reverberate upon one another and frequently occur in the same social, physical, and even psychic spaces... not only reproduction and kinship, or the family, have their own, historical ly determined, products, material techniques, modes or organization and power relationships, but reproduction and kinship are themselves integrally related to the social relations of production and the state, they reshape these relations all the time (rosalind petchesky quoted by alison m. jaggar , ibid : 146) . 12 similarly, joan kelly believes that we can no longer focus upon productive relations of class, suppressing those of consumption (sexuality/family) as marx did, or focus on sex and family arrangements (freud, and juliet mitchell in psychoanalysis and feminism ) without those of class, any more than we can place one sex in the category of sexuality/family and the other in that of society. to do so violates our social experience and the new consciousness that is emerging out of it. a more complex pattern of sociosexual arrangements is called for and is appearing in feminist social thought. feminist thought regards the sexual /f ami 1 ial organization of society as integral to any conception of social structure or social change. and conversely, it sees the relation of the sexes as formed by both socioeconomic and sexual-familial structures in their systematic interconnectedness (ibid:147) . by including childbearing and sexual activities into the socio-economic foundation of society, socialist feminist theory broadens the set of institutions that shape civil society. from a socialist feminist perspective, civil society is not, as in marx, the realm of mere relations of production. nor is it "the ensemble of organisms called 'private'", as in gramsci , since he did not see the specificity of relations of subordination of women by men in some institutions of civil society. as pointed out by mary o'brien: gramsci's notion of civil society is . . . circumscribed by his fixation on education and his neglect of family relations. he speaks of civil society as local culture centred on school and family but ... has little to say about family. he is more interested in the birth of organic intellectuals than in the birth of real babies (1984:92) . by contrast, socialist feminist theory demonstrates that sexuality and reproduction are organized through institutions such as 13 marriage and the family, which have a historical development, are subject to state regulation and are closely interconnected with the relations of production. sexuality and reproduction are a part of the socio-economic foundation of society or the public sphere, and civil society is constituted by institutions that channel women into motherhood and childbearing and the sex-segregated job market. accordingly, the conception of dominant hegemony implies not only class domination but also male supremacy. an analysis of dominant hegemony must explore the relationship between, on the one hand, women's lack of access to resources and economic as well as political power and, on the other hand, the social constructions of motherhood and "women's work". the conception of dominant hegemony can illuminate the processes through which male supremacy is accepted as common sense and as part of the natural order in order to explore women's consent to patriarchal practices or, in jaggar's words, women's "internalization" of their oppressive "external" reality. finally, gramsci's notion of counter-hegemony allows us to see patriarchal ideology as' a non-unitary bloc where women may constantly open up spaces for negotiation. women and the state a feminist approach to the state must explore the processes through which the whole set of interconnections between the division of labour in the domestic sphere, the labour market and state policy reproduce male supremacy and capitalist relations of production while also creating new contradictions in people's lives and hence new spaces for negotiation. this analysis is essential because the fact that today most women combine formal paid work with full adult domestic responsibilities or (as in the third world) perform several activities as a source for extra income (i.e. the informal sector) coupled with domestic work at home has generated a whole new set of policies which directly affect women. state policies have the power to construct categories of women as workers and mothers. state legislation sets the limits within which women control their own sexuality in terms of birth control, abortion law, maternity leaves and child care services. it also establishes the legal means and implications of forming or dissolving a family unit. in other words, the state has a lot of 14 say in the organization of reproduction, in the sense that it reinforces existing familial forms where women are responsible for taking care of the family needs. this fact creates constant contradictions in women's lives and opens up new spaces for negotiation . the expansion of the welfare state aiming to respond to emerging women's needs is a process that can be traced from a gramscian perspective. concomitantly, possibilities for social change can be explored in the articulation of these new needs which the state decides to either act or not act upon. gramsci helps to see pieces of legislation on women's needs as resulting from pressures that the women's movement puts on a capitalist state and at the same time as an attempt of this state to intervene into a new area of civil society in order to avoid possible social explosion and reorganize a social base of consent. thus, gramsci is useful to see the changes of state practices as a positive "sign of ideological change in the wider society and a measure of the strength of women's mobilizations", while keeping in mind that "the ideological consensus into which feminist demands are integrated is not only one that balances gender oppression, but is fundamentally conservative, part of managing a society by a capitalist state" (heather jon maroney, 29). gramsci then offers the theoretical guidelines for a "third way" in feminist politics. his notion of historical bloc highlights the relationship between women and the state, an overlooked area of study in feminist literature (jane jenson, 1986; drude dahlerup, 1987). from a gramscian perspective, women's needs can be seen as partially represented in the dominant hegemony in a particular historical conjuncture. this representation can be viewed as resulting from processes of negotiation between different social groups and interests, among them women's organizations. the notion of historic bloc allows us to escape from an instrumental view of the state (i.e. men control the state and use it to keep women in a subordinate position) or a functionalist one (i.e. the state is a patriarchal state and in all ways contributes to women's oppression). since the historic bloc is not reducible to a ruling class or group (i.e. men), it allows to see the state as a structure where various groups and interests are unevenly organized 15 rather than as an entity with its own will (i.e. "the state is at present looking for new forms of patriarchal control", zillah eisenstein quoted by dahlerup, 1987). consequently, the state becomes an arena of negotiation where some battles can be "won" by subordinate groups, in this case women. however, gramsci's emphasis on both sides of domination (coercion and consent) keeps us away from the danger of overestimating these triumphs. indeed, gramsci's war of position allows us to overcome the difficulty of considering the same state action as either oppressive of women or liberating, if we place it within a context of constant negotiation. more importantly, gramsci reminds us of the importance of civil society as a major arena where consensus occurs and a counter-hegemonic project must be built upon. in her analysis of women's dual role and the british welfare state, anne showstack sassoon argues that there is a contradiction between the domestic sphere, the world of work and the welfare state, in that the institutions and practices of the welfare state are organized around the same traditional model of work and domestic life, where women remain the backbone of domestic labour, and the world of work is organized round a "male model" which assumes one human being at work for, say, forty hours a week (plus commuting and possible overtime) with a partner available fulltime for domestic tasks (1987:160). showstack sassoon describes these conflicts as "part of a long-term development, what gramsci would have called an organic crisis" (idem). accordingly, she points out that "a battle on all fronts, a war of position in gramsci's terms, a strategy of reforms" (ibid:174) is the solution to the problem. hence, she suggests that the struggle should involve not only the negotiation over "caring and servicing responsibilities" between civil society and the state, but also the emergence of "post-male models of work", that is, a structural change in the organization of people's time. this change would imply the abolition of particular conceptions of male work and female work, both in the labour market and the family, as well as a total restructuration of the sexual division of labour at 16 all levels of society. in order to do so, showstack sassoon states that a "cultural revolution" both in the part of women and men is needed. in other words, state legislation favouring child care and parental leaves are a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve equality between women and men. civil society as a whole should be involved in the implementation of changes in the organization of all spheres of work. the logic of work in the productive sphere as well as that of state provided services should be transformed in order to meet the social needs of concrete individuals . the socialist feminism's goal of human emancipation involves not only the full development of human potentialities through free productive labour, but also "for free sexual expression, for freely bearing children and for freely rearing them" (alison m. jaggar, 1983:131). this ideal of human well-being also calls for change in all institutions in civil society: to restructure how we come to know self and others in our birthing, growing up, loving and working, feminist politics must reach the institutions that fatefully bear upon sexuality, family, and community. schools and all socializing agencies will have to be rid of sex and sexual bias. work and welfare will have to be placed in the humane context of the basic right to all to live, work, and love in dignity. and there will have to be a genuine participation by all in shaping the modes and purposes of our labour and distributing its returns. a feminist politics that aims at abolishing all forms of hierarchy so as to restructure personal relations as well as relations among peers has to reach and transform the social organization of work, property and power (joan kelly quoted by alison m. jaggar, ibid:147) socialist feminism's conception of social change underpin the necessity of new types of organizations to bring about this change. showstack sassoon suggests that organizations such as trade unions should be concerned not only with the protection of people's work but also with the organization of their domestic needs in relation 17 to their paid work and vice versa, and break with the assumption "that people should adjust their lives to the job and not the other way around" (1987:176). analogously, jaggar argues that the organizations advocated by socialist feminists are not only dedicated to overthrow the capitalist mode of production but also to struggle against the way through which men perpetuate their dominance: rape, sexual harassment, domestic assault, refusal to take equal share of household responsibilities and sexism within the organizations themselves (1983:331-332). socialist feminists advocate the need for a cultural revolution and believe that the creation of a women's culture is an important way in which women can develop political selfconsciousness. jaggar argues that a socialist feminist culture is part of a wide range of political activity which has not clearcut priorities; socialist feminists struggle on all fronts and constantly pursue to create alternative institutions. however, they are aware of the limits that the larger society imposes on the possibilities of alternative ways for living and working. there is a great similarity between gramsci's idea that the working class has to ensure hegemony before winning political power and the socialist feminist approach to social change: socialist feminists expect that there will be a distinctive revolutionary period, characterized by acute social turmoil, but they also expect that the outcome of this turmoil will be determined by the kind and quality of the pre-revolutionary activity that preceded it. to this extent, they see themselves not so much as living the revolution as preparing for it and attempting in limited ways to prefigure it (ibid:340). before the social turmoil reaches us, i shall give an example of the type of institutional change socialist feminists are aiming for. in her study on the effects that the work of feminist teachers has for social change, kathleen weiler combines three major themes of feminist methodology with some of the premises of what she calls critical educational theory, of which gramsci is considered an essential contribution. the first theme is that "feminist researchers begin their investigation of the social world from a 18 grounded position in their own subjective oppression", what "leads them to a sensitivity to power that comes from being subordinate". second, "feminist research is characterized by an emphasis on lived experience and the significance of everyday life". finally, "feminist research is politically committed". these two last themes imply that feminist research has to shed light in women's personal experiences of subjugation within a male dominated society and that this research is committed to search for ways to change women's situation (1988: 58-59). from critical educational theory weiler retains gramsci's "analysis of the power of hegemonic ideas to shape consciousness coupled with his unshakable belief in the power of critique and political activism" (ibid:17). accordingly, weiler argues that the gramscian concept of counter-hegemony has to be applied to feminist work, because counter-hegemony "implies a more critical theoretical understanding and is expressed in organized and active political opposition" (ibid:54). weiler concludes that the in the school , which she considers an "institution for social control", the attitudes of feminist teachers can be viewed as counter-hegemonic in that they encourage students to explore the forces acting upon their own lives and to understand their own history and culture: in their work, these feminist teachers raise issues of sexism and racism directly in texts, but also in classroom relationships with students. as feminists they make the gendered subjectivities of themselves and their students part of the texts they teach. and at the same time, they ground a critical inquiry in a deep respect for their student's lives and cultural values (ibid:149). the points of intersection between gramsci and feminism can be clearly drawn upon in this last paragraph: both gramsci and feminism stress the importance of daily lives and cultural values (or, in gramsci's words, "popular beliefs"); both of them believe that these values reproduce power relations (or, in gramsci's words, dominant hegemony) and therefore they require critical inquiry (or, in gramsci's words, the struggle between "common sense" and "good sense" has to be carried out), which in turn opens up spaces for negotiation. and finally, the work of inquiry is undertaken both at the level of texts, and at the level of social 19 relationships between teachers and students and the students themselves. in gramsci's words, ideology is not a set of ideas but rather a set of material practices and social relations. once the central role of a male working class in instigating social change has been problematized, the question still remains of which social group or class is more likely to bring about social change, or where is it going to come from. evidently, the socialist feminist answer to this question is that women must play an essential role in bringing about social change. in fact, it can be argued that there has been an increasing role of women's participation in socialist revolutions, with nicaragua as the best example of a crucial women's involvement in the revolutionary as well as in the post-revolutionary period (maxine molyneux, 1985, 1989). it is clear now that, after nicaragua, there cannot be a socialist revolution without women, or in other words, a real revolution must be not only a socialist but rather a socialist feminist one. interestingly, women's involvement has been determined not only by their concern to protect specific women's interests, but also to defend popular-democratic or national interests, like in nicaragua, where a long anti-american tradition rooted in a popular movement existed long time before the sandinistas took power in 1979. in that particular case, women were struggling not only against their subordinate status in society but also against a dictatorship backed up by american intervention. correspondingly, women were benefited by post-revolutionary policies not only as women but also as members of a particular class, since these "policies were targeted in favour of the poorest sections of the population and focused on basic needs in the areas of health, housing, education and food subsidies" (maxine molyneux, 1985:248). obviously, poor women benefited more than other women, although needless to say, women formed more than 60 percent of the poorest nicaraguans (idem). thus, the case of nicaragua is useful to see how factors of class, gender, race, ethnicity and nationality intersect in a particular historical conjuncture, so that it becomes difficult to establish the role of a particular class or group to "lead" the revolution. my suggestion here is that, rather than establishing a priori the revolutionary agent, we have to emphasize the idea that 20 counter -hegemony involves the articulation of the interests of various classes and groups, and that this articulation depends on the visibility of these classes and groups in a particular historical moment. again, the gestation of counter-hegemony has to be looked at as an ongoing process of negotiation. however, this is not to say that class or group interests are indistinguishable from one another or equally valid, or that the articulation is an easy one and goes without struggle between and within the groups. rather, the case of nicaragua demonstrates that women must constantly put pressure on the revolutionary government to defend women's interests and, more importantly, that women must have their own independent organizations. in this sense, a distinction between different levels within a counter-hegemonic project regarding women's interests can be established, similar to the different stages that alan hunt describes for the "incorporative hegemony" of the working class (1990:7-10). molyneux's distinction between strategic gender interests and practical gender interests is an useful one for this purpose. molyneux grounds her distinction on the recognition that "there is no theoretically adequate and universally applicable causal explanation of women's oppression from which a general account of women's interests can be derived" (231). hence, "a theory of interests that has an application to the debate about women's capacity to struggle for and benefit from social change must begin by recognizing difference rather than by assuming homogeneity" (232). molyneux's distinction helps us to explain how the intersection among different factors other than gender that affect women -class, ethnicity, nationality and so onproduce different ways of defining women's interests. according to molyneux, strategic gender interests are those derived in the first instance deductively, that is, from the analysis of women's subordination and from the formulation of an alternative, more satisfactory set of arrangements to those which exist . . . such as the abolition of the sexual division of labour, the alleviation of the burden of domestic labour and childcare, the removal of institutionalized forms of 21 discrimination, the attainment of political equality, the establishment of freedom of choice over childbearing , and the adoption of adequate measures against male violence and control over women . . . the demands that are formulated on this basis are usually termed "feminist" as is the level of consciousness required to struggle effectively for them ( ibid: 232-233) . in contrast , practical gender interests are given inductively and arise from the concrete conditions of women's positioning within the gender division of labour ... [they ] are formulated by the women who are themselves within these positions rather than through external interventions. practical interests are usually a response to an immediate perceived need, and they do not generally entail a strategic goal such as women's emancipation or gender equality (ibid:233) hence, women's special interest in domestic provision and public welfare is a practical gender interest which does not necessarily promote gender equality, since it may eventually strengthen women's role as the primary responsible for the household daily welfare. the two levels of gender interests can be articulated differently into what alan hunt refers to as "incorporative hegemony". according to him "for a hegemony to be dominant it must address and incorporate, if only partially, some aspects of the aspirations, interests and ideology of subordinate groups" (1990:6). just as the working class has to give up some of its interests when articulating this "incorporative hegemony" in order to transcend the "economic-corporate" stage and reach that of "hegemonic consciousness", women may also have to give up temporarily the final goal of complete abolition of gender inequality (a strategic gender interest) whilst still struggling for gender practical interests. however, this is not to say that women should substitute the male working class or any other group in the leadership of a counter-hegemonic project; rather, the complexity of social reality and the intersection of different factors influencing social change call for a more pluralistic 22 conception of agency, where, as stated before, different social groups have more or less weight and say in a counter-hegemonic historical bloc depending on their visibility at a particular moment in history. in this sense, it is essential to stress again the necessity of women's own independent organizations whose final goal must be to overcome women's subordination; needless to say, the initiative to achieve this goal must come primarily from women. conclusions in this paper i have argued that gramsci's assumption that all members of the working class are male leads to a failure to theorize women's oppression in the work place and other spheres of their lives. consequently, gramsci's working class hegemony is a male hegemony and his project for socialist revolution does not include per se women's emancipation. the socialist feminist approach to women's subordination brings the organization of reproduction into the agenda and inserts the significance of gender into the labour process. this allows us to explain not only the constitution of people as capitalists and workers but. also as women and men. thus, gramsci's project of counter-hegemony should include changes in the sexual division of labour at all levels of society. in this sense, gramsci is useful to grasp the processes of articulation of women needs within a historical bloc as well as women's responses to the existing contradictions in their own lives through the negotiation with the state over servicing and caring responsibilities, which are deeply shaped by the sexual division of labour. finally, i discussed some similarities between gramsci's suggestion to organize a new alternative hegemony at the level of civil society before gaining political power and the feminist claims that "the personal is political" and "a woman's place is everywhere". gramsci's conception of the relationship between civil society and the state and his notion of war of position over civil society provide the theoretical guidelines for feminist politics in order to keep on thinking of the personal as political and seek to change people's ideas of a socially constructed femininity which is oppressive for women, search for alliances in the process of gestation of counter-hegemony and dismiss as irrelevant the dilemma to struggle either "within or outside the state". 23 references bennett, tony,et al.(ed) culture, ideology and social process. london: the open university press, 1981. buci-glucksmann, christine. gramsci and the state. london: lawrence and wishart, 1980. dahlerup, drude. confusing concepts -confusing reality: a theoretical discussion of the patriarchal state, in anne showstack sassoon, women and the state . london: hutchinson, 1987. gramsci, antonio. selections from the prison notebooks . new york: international publishers, 1971. hunt, alan. rights and social movements: counter-hegemonic strategies . february 1990. jaggar, alison m. feminist politics and human nature . sussex: the harvester press, 1983. jenson, jane. gender and reproduction, or babies and the state. studies in political economy 20 , summer 1986. la sociedad civil amenazada. una entrevista con ralph dahrendorf . nexos 154 , mexico city, october 1990. maroney, heather jon. using gramsci for women: feminism and the quebec state, 1960-1980. rfr/ drf vol ume 17 number 3 . mcrobbie, angela. setting accounts with subcultures: a feminist critique, in tony bennett (ed.), culture, ideology and social process , london: the open university press, 1981. molyneux, maxine. mobilization without emancipation? women's interests, the state and revolution in nicaragua. feminist studies 11. no. 2 , summer 1985. 24 -. women's role in the nicaraguan revolutionary process: the early years. promissory notes n.y.:monthly review press, 1989. morgen, sandra. conceptualizing and changing consciousness: socialist-feminist perspectives, in women, class and the feminist imagination . philadelphia: temple university press, 1990. o'brien, mary. hegemony and superstructure: a feminist critique of neo-marxism. in mccalla vickers, gill taking sex into account ottawa: carleton university press, 1984. showstack sassoon, anne. gramsci's politics. london: croom helm ltd, 1980. . women's new social role: contradictions of the welfare state, in women and the state, 1987. weiler, kathleen. women teaching for change. gender, class and power . mass.: bergin & garvey publishers, inc., 1988. willis, paul. learning to labour . westmead, england: saxon house, 1977. 25 sujet de droit et sujets de droit: de la pratique juridiquc au pluriel daniel sansfacon cet article s ' adresse au droit. ii y est question de discours juridique mais aussi de discours marxiste sur le droit. par i'analyse d'un exemple conoret de discours juridique, i'auteur explore quelques problemes d'une theorie marxiste de droit, suggerant principalement une decentration du discours marxi3te , et propose une recherche ulterieure. alternate routes vol. 5 1982 68 this article deals with law and some problems in a marxist theory of law. although many marxian theorists treat the law as being concerned with a uniform subject, the argument here is that law, as a complex practice , creates different subjects, not all of which may be equated with homo economicus , a topic for future research i3 proposed. l'analyse marxiste de l'univers jurdique se contente souvent de l'articuler a l'etat conune forme necessaire de la domination de la forme marchande fetichisee et par la de la bourgeoisie. inversement, les jurisprudences offrent un discours idealiste, coupe de la materialite des pratiques sociales, qui presente le droit comme un ensemble de regies se developpant sur la base de relations evoluant vers la raison. le droit lui-meme par ailleurs rebute, par son langage formel, ses technical ites , sa complexite'. pourtant, le juridique est de toutes les relations sociales. pourtant aussi, l'imagerie juridique la plus vehiculee, et apparemment la plus simple, 1 ' idee de justice, est aussi, peut-etre, l'une des notions les plus complexes. dans le droit, de facon indelebile, il y a d'abord le sujet de droit. si l'on peut dire "nulla crimen, nulla poene 69 sine lege", a plus forte raison peut-on dire sans sujet point de droit. or cette question du sujet est elle-meme rien moins que fort complexe. et si 1 'analyse marxiste du droit et de son sujet a certes permis des propres, elle n'en demeure pas moins gravement fautive. c'est du moins ce que pretend cette courte et bien partielle etude, ou il sera question non plus de sujet de droit mais bien des sujets du juridique. l'univers juridique le juridique occupe une place particuliere dans la formation sociale capitaliste. ii se place a la fois dans la societe, ou il regie les differends qui opposent les individus entre eux ou individus et institutions; mais il se situe aussi au-dessus d'elle en ce qu'il se veut le rempart de la legitimite (e.g. la constitution) et la representation (ideale) d'un ordre ultime a atteindre. qui plus est, le droit ne se limite pas a regler un champ donn§ d'activites mais s'etend a toutes les spheres de la vie sociale: depuis les relations economiques jusqu'aux formes politiques, en passant par le fonctionnement des institutions et appareils d'etat jusqu'au comportement individuel. le juridique ne constitute done certes pas un champ monolithique qui se pourrait aborder dans son ensemble d'un coup d'oeil global et general. bien au contraire la sphere juridique ressemble a un molosse eclate. pourtant, la systematisation et la technique juridiques, dans la forme du droit et de la loi, presentent un caractere unifie sous les principes d'equite, de justice et de "due process". ainsi, il n'est pas rare d'entendre parler de faqon equivalente de droit et de justice, comme de deux cotes inseparables d'une alternate routes vol. 5 1982 70 meme piece. les reglements de litiges ou les assurances juridiques a la legitimite deviennent justice: que justice soit faite ! et le ce*lebre symbole de la balance juridique de reapparai tre . ii y a la une premiere confusion: celle du droit et de la loi, dont il sera question plus loin. mais il faut ici souligner qu'entre la loi adoptee par le legislateur dans une enceinte democratique et la loi prononcee par le juge qui, dans 1 'enceinte de la cour, devient droit, se glissent, a prime abord, des differences. une premiere se trouve dans l'acte lui-meme: l'elu du peuple qui accorde son appui i un texte le fait au nom, dit-il, de ses commettants . le juge qui se prononce sur un texte et l'evalue "a sa juste valeur" le fait au nom de la justice, dont un tiers l'a imparti. une seconde tient i 1 ' impact et au contenu de la decision: l'elu accorde ou refuse son appui, c'est-a-dire qu'il se pose publiquement en faveur ou en defaveur d'un texte. le juge qui tranche un litige accorde un droit et/ou refuse une pretention de droit ou de fait: il departit done des odposants. une troisieme difference apparente tient a la division des pouvoirs: l'elu appartient au corps l€gislatif et le juge au corps judiciaire, et si l'un et l'autre travaillent de concert a batir l'ordre social, ils n'en restent pas moins independants ; le premier travaille a ^laborer une politique de bien commun, le second al'appliquer i la transformer en "common law" du moins a 1 'experience de la realitg. ces differences ne sont rien moins qu ' apparences ce qui ne signifie pas que pour concretes qu'elles soient elles 71 n'aient une efficace propre dans la formation des pratiques sociales et individuelles . d'abord 1'acte. l'elu avons-nous dit le conjugue a 1 'opinion publique, le juge au texte du droit dans lequel se decouvre la justesse du legislateur, et la justice par extension. de deux actes d'abord differencies il ne reste qu'un, celui de l'expression sociale d'un pouvoir. ii pourrait bien ne pas s'agir du meme douvoir cependant puisque , selon la seconde difference l'elu tranche pour exposer publiquement ses convictions, alors que le juge decide impartialement de la justice. encore que justice et convictions ne soient pas si eloignees au sens ou les convictions du juge decideront du lieu ou se situe la justice. mais surtout , il s'agit du meme exercice social du pouvoir en ce que l'un et 1 'autre produisent, via des moyens divergeants certes , une discrimination. discrimination, nous dit la troisieme difference entre le bien commun et les inte'rsts specifiques pour le legislateur et entre justice et injustice pour le juge. dans un cas comme dans 1' autre cependant, cette discrimination s'exerce a partir des representations faites devant l'autorite par les parties antagonistes defendant chacune leur conception de ce qui est et de ce qui doit etre. voila justement ce qui unit davantage juge et legislateur que ce qui ne les separe: l'etre et le devoir-etre. parce que munis chacun d'un mandat sur l'origine duquel nous ne nous attarderons pas , elu et juge decident de ce qui est et de ce qui doit etre. et au nom de qui, sinon, en derni^re instance, du "sujet"? car dans l'un et l'autre cas, c'est le meme sujet qui git au centre des preoccupations du legislateur et du juge. ici, sujet politique alternate routes vol. 5 1982 72 et suiet de droit se confondent, indif ferencies et pourtant sollicites di f fgremment , qui au nom du bien commun, qui au nora de la iustice. en somme, le sujet est a la fois le sujet de 1 ' ir.teret general et des interets particul iers . apparemment done , et apparemment de fagons distinctes, le legislateur et le judiciaire investissent le sujet. mais quel suiet? le politique dit l'un; le justiciable dit l'autre; et en derniere instance ils ne font qu'un. ii y a la un discours commun. discours qui curieusement est commun aussi a certains marxistes analysant le juridique. ainsi, pashukanis (1978), bien que cherchant une analyse de la forme juridique dans les relations objectives qui la fondent et qu'elle vient ensuite regler, constate-til que le forme juridique correspond en derniere analyse a la forme marchandise de l'schange capitaliste. en d'autres termes , la forme marchandise fetichisee par la valeur acquise dans le processus d' exploitation du travail est transoosee dans le domaine juridique via le marche. dans la forme iuridique, se revele le fetichisme du sujet porteur de droits qui est libre d'echanger et de s'echanger, a valeur egale, sur le marche. de meme , miaille (1976) soutient un raisonnement similaire. selon lui, seul le concept d'une personnalite' iuriiique pourvue de droits et libre de participer au marche' pouvait permettre la realisation globale du processus de production capitaliste: en effet, le suiet de droit est sujet de droits virtuels, tout a fait abstraits: anim6 par sa seule volont6, il a la possibility, la liberty ie s'obliger, notamment de vendre sa force de travail a un autre sujet de droit (miaille, 19^6:132) . 73 ainsi, la ou les relations de production capitalistes se developpent, et la ou l'echange marchand est fetichise, il y aura necessairement creation d'un sujet de droit. en somme , la categorie de sujet de droit permet "la realisation des echanges marchands generalises" (miaille, 1976:132). bien que de maniere differente, et inspire plus particulierement des travaux d'althusser, edelman soutient aussi la centralite du sujet dans le discours juridique: l 1 ideologic juridique se denonce en dressant son acte de naissance. et son acte de naissance, c'est la postulation que l'homme est naturellement un sujet de droit, i.e. un proprietaire en puissance, puisqu'il est de son essence de s'approprier la nature (edelman, 1973:17). c'est de la qu'edelman developpe son essai sur le droit et la photographie . dans ce processus ou, en un premier temps le droit nie le suj et photographe en niant son activite comme artistique pour la releguer au plan d'une technique, et ou en un second temps, le capital investissant le champ photographique et cinematographique , le droit reconnait un sujet de droit qui cependant est le producteur, i.e. le capitaliste, et non plus le "createur" i.e. le photographe ou le realisateur on reconnait ici les effets de denegation et de deplacement althusseriens il faut voir, nous dit edelman, le cycle du capital se refermer sur lui-meme. ce a quoi on assiste ici, c'est done a une "sur-appropriation du reel", e'est-a-dire a 1 ' appropriation d'un reel "deja investi par la propriete" (1973:29-30). de dire edelman, dans ce proces, "le droit fixe et assure la realisation, comme donne naturel, de la sphere de la circulation" et simultanement "il rend possible la alternate routes vol. 5 1982 74 production" [1973:37). le sujet de droit est done encore 1 ' incarnation privilegiee de son interpellation par le processus de circulation, puisqu'il est constitue libre, volontaire, propr ietaire , en mesure de contracter, e'est-a-dire de se vendre comme objet sur le marche . le problemat ique du sujet de droit n'appartient done pas qu'au juridique lui-meme. bien sur, elle y est posee en des termes fort differents: en termes idealistes, theologiques ou "socioloqiques" " . ainsi, le sujet juridique y est ici un sujet naturel, i.e. naturellement donne pour le droit soit par la volonte divine, soit par la nature des choses. ou si le sujet est socialement cree, il sera dans l'ordre des choses qu'une juridicite vienne regler les interactions humaines. que se soit dans la perspective marxiste ou autre, le sujet occupe done une position centrale dans le droit. mais plus particul ierement pour la perspective marxiste, le sujet juridique se confond avec le sujet economique. on essentialise ainsi la forme juridique, e'est-a-dire qu'on lui donne une essence qui est celle de correspondre aux pratiques economiques, et encore plus, de les permettre meme. d'autre part, on reduit la forme juridique \ son expression fetichiste du sujet comme sujet libre et possedant une valeur (d'6change) egale. comme le souligne hirst (1979:111), ce genre d'analyse inverse en les repliquant les perspectives idealistes. de meme, ces approches presupposent une efficace au droit non seulement dans la creation du sujet juridique mais dans la regulation des pratiques economiques . enfin, ces positions ont deux autres effets complementaires : elles fetichisent la forme juridique, 75 i.e. en font une superstructure ideologique qui en soi n'est qu'un "derive" des conditions in frastructurales , mais paradoxalement, elles accordent au droit une legitimite qu'il se pretend, a savoir sa capacite de definir le sujet et ses comportements . debusquer le discours juridique ne doit pas signifier le reduire a un discours exterieur ni lui faire dire ou faire ce qu'il ne dit ou ne fait pas. ii ne s'agit pas davantage de chercher derriere le discours juridique comme si l'on cherchait a soulever un voile qui cacherait la "vraie" realite, bien que ce qui est derriere le juridique serve sans doute a le comprendre dans sa pratique. nous en donnerons ici un exemple, a partir d'une realite juridique, celle du "nul n'est cense ignorer la loi", exemple qui ne se veut ni exhaustif de la question ni necessairement novateur, mais qui cherche plutot a introduire a une preoccupation plus vaste. la connaissance du juridique le code criminel canadien' 3 dit expressement que "1 ' ignorance de la loi chez une personne qui commet une infraction n'excuse pas la perpetration de cette infraction" f a-19) . c'est dire que tout individu est repute connaitre la loi. mais c'est aussi signifier que la loi ne se preoccupe de cette connaissance que chez 1 ' infracteur : chacun est un infracteur en puissance, mais la structure juridique institutionnelle n'a pas a s 'assurer de cette connaissance chez tous les individus, a priori, sans parler du fait bien connu qu'on n'enseigne pas la loi a l'ecole. certaines regies viennent limiter 1 ' appl ication de ce principe general: l'age de juvenile par example 1 'enfant alternate routes vol. 5 1982 76 de moins de sept ans ne peut "etre declare coupable a l'e'gard d'un acte ou d'une omission de sa dart" (a-12); l'enfant entre sept et quatorze ans doit etre "en etat de comprendre la nature et les consequences de sa conduite et de juger qu ' i 1 agissait mal" (a-13) , ou les cas d'alienation mentale (a-16) ou de deficience mentale (a-2) . hormis ces restrictions, le principe de la connaissance du droit est assuietti a certaines contraintes. on doit d'abord distinguer les formes de connaissance et ensuite s'assurer de la possibilite materielle, pour 4 l'individu, de connaitre. 1. les formes de connaissance la connaissance constitue bien sur un evenement factuel, mesurable. ou bien l'individu connait, ou bien il ne connait pas. cette dichotomie ne rend certes pas compte des niveaux de qualite" de la connaissance. le droit ne demande pas a l'individu de connaitre les subtilit^s, les interpretations de la loi. pourtant , on le sait, ces memes subtilites ou interpretations peuvent decider de la culpabilite ou de 1' innocence. le droit n'est-il pas d'ailleurs ainsi fait que le r£sultat d'un litige n'est jamais connu a 1 ' avance ? quoiqu'il en soit, le droit n'exige du sujet que l'effort diligent qu'il est en mesure de faire, pour connaitre les lois que le parlement adopte. a l'aide d'une situation quelque peu diff€rente, on peut decouvrir les formes de connaissance que souleve le tribunal. le code criminel prevoit a l'article 21, qu'"est partie a une infraction quiconque... b) accomplit ou omet d'accomplir quelque chose en vue d'aider quelqu'un a la commettre" (nous 77 soulignons d.s.). cet article peut etre invoque pour signifier que l'accuse aurait du, avait les moyens de connaitre la loi, et que son ignorance a permis la commission d'une infraction. r. v woolworth souleve ce point. sans entrer dans les details de l'affaire, precisons qu'une infraction a ete commise par deux individus qui avaient conclu une entente avec un magasin woolworth de toronto, pour vendre, dans le magasin, des stylos a bille, moyennant une ristourne de trente pour cent a la compagnie. condamnee en premiere instance sous pretexte, entre autres, que la compagnie "aurait du savoir" ce qui se passait dans son magasin, le tribunal d'appel rejette les motifs, recoit l'appel et casse le jugement. ii stipule dans son jugement que l'on doit distinguer entre une connaissance de fait qu'une infraction est commise, une connaissance irresdonsable ou, malgre sa connaissance, le sujet ne s'assure pas de ses fondements ni n'informe d'autres autorites competentes de cette connaissance, et finalement une connaissance constructive, ou l'individu ne savait pas mais avait la possibility, sinon le devoir, de connaitre. si les deux premieres formes relevent immediatement de la norme juridique, la troisieme, la "connaissance constructive" ne constitue tout simplement pas un cas de droit ( r. v woolworth, loc . cit.: 30) . c'est cette seule forme de connaissance qu'aurait pu avoir woolworth des delits commis sur sa propriete et le tribunal affirme ne pouvoir en tenir compte. dans le cas de la connaissance de la loi, seules les deux premieres formes existent. la connaissance de fait est une connaissance postulee chez tous les individus, sous respect alternate routes vol. 5 1982 78 des contraintes d'ordre legal. ouant 1 la connaissance irresponsable, on parlera ici d'un sujet qui, croyant qu'existe une loi, commet un acte, sans s'etre assure qu'existe cette loi, et l'enfreint ainsi. z. la connaissance rip la lni le cas de r. v catholique (1980) expl ique 1 ' element materiel de la connaissance et renferme aussi la question de la connaissance constructive. ici, un individu est condamne a la peine maximale (six semaines d' emprisonnement) , pour avoir enfreint un reolement local le ''snowdrift liquor prohibition regulations act" concernant la nossession de boissons alcoolisees sur le territoire de snowdrift aux territoires du n'ord ouest .pendant son emprisonnement , 1' individu rencontre un avocat oui lui suggere d'en apneler de la sentence. la cour d'aupel constate alors que cette legislation n'a pas ete propremer.t oubliee par le conseil leqislatif, et qu'il est, des lors, inacceptable en droit, "qu 'une personne soit condamnee, punie, et derde sa liberte personnelle par une sentence d'emprisonnement , pour avoir enfreint un reglement dont elle q n'avait ni connaissance ni avis a ce moment." ii appert clairement ici qu'un individu doit faire des efforts nomaux dour connaltre la loi, la connaissance du droit, a contrario de celie d'une infraction, est done necessairement constructive mai? jue ceci implique aussi que le legislateur s'assure que les lois sont publiees correctement et qu'une p£riode temps est accordee aux individus pour prendre connaissance de la loi .ivant qu'elle ne prenne effet. nous avons done la totality du principe: ignorantia 79 facti excusat, ignorantia juris non excusat. d'une part, le sujet ne peut construire sa connaissance de la loi que si les circonstances le lui permettent. le legislateur doit fournir au sujet la possibilite de prendre connaissance des lois: par une publication dans une gazette officielle par exemple. ce qui nous met ici en presence du sujet-etat, qui devient sujetde-droit. de plus, le suj et-individu beneficie d'une autre possibilite: s'il a fait effort diligent pour connaitre la loi, peut-on lui tenir rigueur d'une infraction commise, autrement dit, y a-t-il infraction? r. v maclean (1974) repond par la negative. dans ce cas en effet, la cour maintient que l'individu, ayant demontre sa bonne volonte, ayant tente de construire, par les canaux usuels, sa connaissance de la loi, ne peut etre accuse d'une infraction puisque depourvu de mens rea, d'inten9 v v tion coupable. cette autre exception a la regie generale ne peut etre invoquee constamment sous peine de rendre inoperant le droit, ni ne peut etre invoquee en toutes circonstances; certaines infractions ou une responsabilite generale suffit a demontrer la culpabilite ne pretent pas a une telle excuse. cette autre exception souleve ici le probleme de 1' interpretation du droittc'est par le travail interpretatif des juges que la loi devient droit, i.e. que les intentions du legislateur sont accordees aux conditions concretes de la volonte collective. autrement dit, les individus, meme connaissant une loi, peuvent commettre une infraction qui n'en sera finalement une qu ' a la loi et non au droit, en raison d'une part de leur volonte de connaitre la loi et d'autre part de 1 ' interpretation du droit. ce qui aioute force au precepte imperieux pour le alternate routes vol. 5 1982 le-islateur de divulguer ses prescriptions, c'est done dire que l'acte legislatif, s'il definit les bornes de l'interet general, ne peut , en droit commun, specifier toutes les regies et toutes les applications de ces regies qu'il adopte. le travail de la cour pourvoiera justement & ces lacunes qui n'en sont pas. et c'est dans ce travail juridique que la loi devient droit. c'est aussi dans ce travail que le sujet politique devient sujet de droit, pour utiliser le langage theorioue deja mentionne. nous verrons , 4 nartir d'un extrait d'un discours juridique, que la coherence interne de ces raisonnements logiques n'est pas de toute rigueur, que le discours apparemment evident contient sa propre opacite, et surtout que le sujet de droit n'est plus un mais multiple. les sujets du juridique le juridique parle. ii se parle k lui-meme d'abord: il definit, dans sa pratique, les conditions de sa reproduction. ii parle aux sujets: a l'etat qu'il interpelle comme son fondateur, lui rappelant aussi les bornes a respecter; aux suiets qu'il pretend souverains et qu'il limite. ii parle enfin d'un sujet: celui de l'ordre a maintenir comme ordre publique indispensable. mais ces locuteurs ne sont pas identiques. pas davantage d'ailleurs que les sujets (matieres) de 12 leurs discours. ainsi cet extrait de r. v maclean: it is true that on occasion the word legis has been substituted for juris and the maxim (ignorantia... d.s.) does apply to that kind of law, but only when the lex, i.e. the positive command of the prince or legislature, has entered into the realm of jus, i.e., the realm of legal right 81 and obligation generally. this distinction... has become obscured in common law countries by the lack of appropriate legal terminology and the consequent use of "law" for the entire field. lex becomes part of jus by promulgation and assimilation. for if an enactment is notably at odds with general notions of justice it usually suffers considerable attrition in judicial and other leeal interpretations until its rough edges have been smoothed down enough to fit into the general plan. the point of noting this however is that it again accentuates the need in justice to give publicity to an enactment ... if the subject is to be required to conform himself to it. un discours demembre les acteurs sont campes , ici, comme membres d'un seul et meme processus: d'une part les elements abstraits, lex et jus, la loi et le droit, d'autre part les sujets qui sont determines et determinants de ces elements, a savoir l'etat, le tribunal, l'individu. la loi, lex, c'est la volonte du prince, son activity legislative democratique en tant qu'elu par le peuple; la loi devrait done exprimer la volonte du peuple. le droit, jus, c'est la justice faite, c'est l'activite juridique rendue conforme a la volonte du peuple, ce "plan general" ou s'exercent les grandes idees d'egalite, de liberte. d'une certaine fa<;on, le discours pose ici le probleme de l'etre et du devoiretre. peut-on dire que "lex" est l'etre, le fait, et que "jus" est le devoir-etre? une reponse affirmative est tentante puisqu'en effet, la loi demeure un outil imparfait en face du devoir-etre, la valeur ,realise"e dans le droit. mais le devoiretre realise dans le droit devient fait, et le tribunal nous dit justement que l'activite du juge consiste a effectuer ce passage. de plus, ce devoir-etre, le jus, correspond-il vraiment a la volonte collective, aux valeurs des individus qui forment alternate routes vol. 5 1982 82 une society donnee, regie par un corps juridique donne? de meme, une volonte collective est-elle possible; de quoi s'agitil? enfin, le juridique, de par sa nature ici decrite, d'etreen-devenir, peut-il jamais etre donne? ces questions, le juridique ne les pose pas. et ces questions ne s'imposent pas, sinon justement, par leur absence. les acteurs que sont le prince, le tribunal et le sujet, le discours les isole. d'un cote, le politique qui decide pour les sujets. de 1 'autre les sujets qui sont agis dans le droitjus. au centre le juge, qui mediatise les deux poles, muni d'une sorte de super-conscience, capable de comprendre le message de prince et de connaitre la volonte du peuple que d'ailleurs le pouvoir voulait exprimer, bien que parfois gauchement si l'on peut dire. la boucle apparait: le sujet collectif, expression de la valeur, porte au pouvoir un politique qui emet des regies, transformees par le juridique pour que le sujet "s'y con forme'. premiere question: le suj.et qui elit le politique est-il le meme que celui qui doit se conformer? autrement dit, notre sujet politique egale-t-il sujet de droit? bien que d ' importance , cette question sera laissee sans reponse ici. seconde question: ce passage de la loi au droit n ' exprime-t-il qu'un probleme terminologique comme le pretend le tribunal? nous suggererons quelques responses. 1. contradictions et repression premiere possibility, le probleme ne releve que d'une question terminologique , dans le corps juridique lui-meme. mais pourquoi cette confusion, deja au moins bi-centenaire devrait-elle persister? le juge n'aurait-il pu suggerer, dans 83 le meme effort, une solution a cette navrante situation? les linguistes competents en langue anglaise feraient-ils defaut? fut-elle aussi technique et concise, cette langue doit tout de meme permettre de resoudre de telles embuches. s'il s'agit d'un probleme terminologique , nous pouvons supposer qu'il est entretenu par le droit lui-meme qui ne fait pas d'effort diligent afin de le solutionner. mais encore faudrait-il savoir pourquoi cette confusion particuliere et pas une autre est entretenue. si le droit, comme le dretend la theorie de la division des pouvois, est en relation d'independance et de collaboration tout a la fois avec le legislatif, il se trouve peut-etre la une explication. nous avons deja entame cette question. ii s'agit de tenter ici d'aller un peu plus loin. nous avons vu plus haut que, dans les differences apparentes entre le travail legislatif et le travail judiciaire se trouvent des similitudes certaines. mais il y a plus encore: il y a peut-etre le fait, comme le pretend miaille (1978: 70-87; 105-124) que le systeme juridique s'est eleve, dans l'etat, a l'epoque de l'extinction du feodal isme ,en accord avec la transformation du fief en bien economique, permettant ainsi "la privatisation de toute la vie sociale ' de sorte que "les rois purent, par la suite, donner 1' image d'un interet "public"" fl 978: 60-61) . de sorte encore que l'etat liberal a pu se specifier "sur une double separation: separation entre la societe civile et l'etat...; separation des pouvoirs dans l'etat..." (1978:87), qui ne constituent que les "figures" de l'autonomie de l'etat. figures recouvrant done en fait la nature de classes de l'etat et la cachant sous le voile juridique. ainsi, le droit alternate routes vol. 5 1982 84 et la loi seraient deux figures d'une seule realite: "law". mais alors, comment se fait-il que le droit anglais n'ait pas exige cette meme distinction et n'ait pas cree sa propre figure de style? s'agit-il des conditions historiques sur lesquelles s'est eleve l'etat anglais? ii appert pour sur que le droit de la common law et que le droit continental existent bien ... et non pas comme simples figures de style. faudraitil supposer des lors que ce sont des differences propres aux systemes iuridiques d'abord, systemes qui eux originent de conditions materielles particuli&res , qui expliquent ici l'absence et la la presence? nous sommes enclins a penser qu'avant de chercher du cote des fonctions de ce manque et de sa relation avec d'autres pratiques, il y aurait lieu de chercher d'abord a le saisir dans le juridique lui-meme. seconde possibility, le probleme n'est pas terminologique. ou bien l'habitude est tellement bien ancree, qu'on a renonce, dans la profession, a combler cette lacune. la encore, on ne repondrait qu 1 imparfaitement a la question puisque ce qui est ici en jeu c'est bien la raison de cette habitude. ou bien alors c'est que de lacune il n'y a que dans les subtilites juridiques, c'est-a-dire que lorsque le droit est confronts a lui-meme. et de fait nous assistons bien, dans ce cas-ci, a une reflexion du droit sur lui-meme: place dans une situation ou il y a erreur dans la loi, le tribunal doit eviter une erreur de droit. l'erreur de loi, c'est celle du politique, qui, par son pouvoir impositif, pour assurer la dissuasion et la conforrute, instaure a la fois une responsabi 1 i t€ legale universelle: la connaissance de la loi, et une defense contre 85 cette responsabilite , au nora de la volonte lihre. l'erreur de droit serait done de condamner un individu qui ne pouvait savoir comme dans la cause r. v catholique ou qui croyai t savoir comme dans la cause r. v maclean bafouant alors les idees generales du citoyen quant a la justice. le juriste se doit done de creer une difference, pour fins de resoudre une contradiction temporaire. d ' ou une troisieme possibility deja suggeree: il n'y a pas, comme le pretend le juge, confusion juridique ou terminologique. a contrario, il y a la une situation qui est caracteristique au droit commun, e'est-a-dire une situation qui correspond au developpement historique de la pratique juridique britannique. et avec cette pratique juridique, en elle et derriere elle, une evolution historique particuliere qui ne se resume pas a une determination en derniere instance ou autrement, mais qui possede sa propre signification. et si l'on accepte 1 'argument presente plus tot sur le role du juge comme mediateur entre le sujet-etat et le suj et-individu, ce qu'on constate ici e'est bien plus une repression par le juge de son role mediateur, ou par une inversion, le juge desoriente ce role. en effet, le juge remet le fardeau au legislateur, son collaborateur gemellaire, de faire en sorte que le sujet-individu reconnaisse le sujet-etat et se reconnaisse ensuite dans le droit (law) comme suj et-de-droit . un discours decentre ce que le juge signifie ici, explicitement , e'est son inquietude comme mediateur, devant les incongruences des deux protagonistes que sont l'etat et 1' individu. ce qu'il ne sigalternate routes vol. 5 1982 86 ni f ie das clairement, c'est la nature de ce role de mediateur. dans le premier cas , il propose un moyen de sortir de 1 ' impasse, et cree la division loi-droit. dans le second cas, il s'instaure comme centre du processus juridique, mediateur neutre, parfait interpr^te de deux ensembles de volontes. l'un ne peut aller sans l'autre. le juge ne peut se donner comme medium sans l'existence de deux poles qu'il relie. ii ne deut se donner comme exercant ce passage de la loi au droit, que comme medium neutre, sujet central. c'est done a soi-meme que s'adresse le juridique. puisqu'en effet, en s'adressant au lecislateur, comme a son double, le juriste s'adresse en ^ait au juridique comme ne pouvant en fa\t se contenir tout entier. car de meme que le droit n'est pas dans la loi mais est obtenu par un processus de transformation (et de denlacement?) que le juge appelle promulgation et assimilation, de meme, le juridique ne peut contenir tous les suiets de droit. le juridique s'adresse ainsi aux sujetsde-droit qui sont pourvus en droit d 'obi igat ions et de droits, et de ce fait, il les cree. mais il les cree de facon imparfaite et provisoire. imnarfaite tant que lex ne devient pas ius; provisoire tant que lex n'est pas connue, ou changee par le legislateur. ainsi done, cette categorie de sujet de droit que visent aussi bien le juriste que certains marxistes n'estelle pas fixe ni stable ni uniaue mais au contraire mouvante, chanqeante et multinle. celui qu'on nomme theor iauement ou i ur idiquement sujet de droit apparait rlutot multiple qu'uniiue. la boucle nui origine du sujet collectif sujet de droit pour se refermer sur lui , pose, dans sa circularite meme, des 87 sujets qui ne sont pas necessairement sujets-de-droit . le sujet politique, on l'a deja mentionne, n'egale pas de facto le sujet de droit. l'etat on le sait, peut etre hors le droit, il peut meme etre contre le droit. mais il demeure sujet de droit au moins dans certaines de ses functions. le juridique d'autre dart, se parle avons-nous dit. en ce sens, il se cree lui-meme comme sujet de ses propres transformations. et le sujet economique pourrait aussi etre mentionne. en somme, d'une sujet unique il faut bien plutot passer a une multiplicity de sujets dans le droit. ce qui par ailleurs, ne signi^ie pas que la categorie sujet de droit soit eclatee a tel point qu'elle ne permette plus de comprendre le fonctionnement du droit. ii semble au contraire que c'est bien a un processus de creation de sujets de droit que s 'affaire, entre autres, le droit, et en ce sens, 1 'analyse de la pratique juridique implique un recours a cette categorie. ii faut cependant se garder de reduire cette categorie a une expression simpliste. conclusion: l'analyse de la pratique juridique la question de jus et lex, et devoir-etre et etre, souleve done avec acuite la nature sociale du droit, sa materiality comme corps normatif formel, et son ideologie comme ensemble deja oriente, dans une certaine mesure, par une pratique discursive de classe, au sens ou se laisse percevoir le droit, e'est-a-dire comme relation sociale sp€cifique, inscrite dans une formation sociale historique, celle de la societe bourgeoise, et non pas comme simple reflet de la volonte bourgeoise. alternate routes vol. s 1982 88 a travers la categorie sujet de droit, c'est non settlement toute une pratique mais aussi toute une pratique theorique qui sont en cause. ii ne s'agit plus ici, de concevoir le juridique a travers les categories qu'il presente pour le demasquer comme une absence ou un reflet, fut-il speculaire. le juridique peut bien etre une persona (au sens grec du terme) , tout comme il instaure une "personne" juridique. mais c'est justement a travers cette personnalite qu'il faut le decouvrir et 1 ' analyser . de plus, le juridique se presente dans l'etat et dans une formation sociale donnee. mais les liens qui l'unissent a ces autres pratiques ne peuvent etre reduits a des determinismes formels. le juridique a une histoire plus lonpue que l'etat et que le caditalisme , faut-il le rappeler. faut-il souligner aussi que le juridique n'est pas soumis aux memes crises que l'etat ou que le mode de production economique. oue le juridique puisse servir certaines fonctions et, comme 18 le suggerent par exemple les auteurs d'un recent ouvrage , oarticiper dans l'etat a assurer la domination hegemonique, et en temps de crise, a s'affirmer comme le rempart de l'ordre etabli, ne saurait resumer tout le juridique. ne serait-ce ^ue parce que le juridique vehicule une pratique ideologique rart icul ierement vivace, ramifiee et £scterique, il ne se resume pas, selon nous, a quelques liens mecaniques ou expressifs . ce sont la du moins quelques principes generaux a partir jesquels nous travaillons presentement a une recherche jur la privaute au canada. la loi sur la vie privge au canada 89 loi c-l 7 6 adoptee en 1974 par le parlement canadien se situe justement au carrefour d'une pratique juridique apparemment centree sur le sujet de droit puisque son objectif est, of f iciellement , de delimiter les zones publiques et les zones privees via les pratiques policieres. l'analyse de cette loi tentera de deboucher non seulement sur une comprehension historique de la pratique juridique mais aussi sur une vision theorique plus globale de 1 ' articulation du juridique dans 1 'etat . notes 1. c'est aussi ce que soutient par example, vincent (1973: 40-41) : la societe syllanagmatique , c'est-a-dire fond6e sur la reciprocity des obligations, apparalt en realite comme une societe* de la division et de la domination dans laquelle 1 ' independance personnelle est construite sur la dependance materielle ... le droit trouve par consequent sa validite dans la f&rantie et l a defense de la separation ... au sein de la socialisation..., d'oii son caractere d'obligation opposable a tous . en ce sens il ne se confond pas immediatement avec les interets des classes dominantes tout en traduisant les valeurs profondes qui les inspirent. indispensable aux rapports sociaux capitalistes , il en est inseparable. sur le formalisme juridique inspire de pashukanis, voir aussi hirsch,1978: blanke e_t al_,1978; kinsey, 1979; et jessop,1980. 2. on nourrait citer ici presque toute la jurisprudence. contentons-nous , pour la perspective idealiste, de renvoyer 4 villey (1968; 1969), pour la perspective theologique, qui est une section de la precedente, a schwarz-lieberman (1978) et nour la perspective ''sociologique ', a poun-' (1942; 1959) et a podgorecki (1974). on en trouvera une excellente critique dans poulantzas (1965) et dans miaille (1976). 3. code criminel, s.r.c.,1970, chap. c-34, et lois connexes par l. saintonge-poitevin. montreal: wilson et lafleur, 1978. 90 4. ii s'agit en somme des deux aspects d'une definition de la connaissance . l'aspect formel, abstrait, correspond aux elements conceptuels de la connaissance: l'acte de volonte, la curiosite aussi de l'individu, entrent ici en jeu. dans l'aspect concret-materiel , ce ne sont plus les capacites volitives ou intellectuelles de l'individu que le droit evalue, mais la mater ialite des documents legaux disponibles. dans le premier cas on demandera: le sujet veut-il connaitre? et dans le second cas, le sujet peut-il connaitre? 5. cf. long v state (delaware) (1949), cite dans r. v maclean, 104 (1974) . 6. r. v f.w.woolworth co. ltd. (1974) 24 cf. aussi roper v taylor's central garage (exeter) ltd. (1951) et r. v kester (1980) entre autres. 8. r. v catholique, loc. cit , : 69, nous traduisons. cf. lim chin aik v queen (1963) , ou le juge note que la connaissance concrete d'une regie est un element essentiel de 1' intention criminelle, du princip de "mens rea". voir aussi r. v michelin tires manufacturing (canada) ltd., (1976), et r. v dry bones (1970). 9. voir aussi r. v de marco (1973), ou le iuge reintroduit la notion "d ' apparence de droit", qui signifie que la ou un individu a agi honnetement en se croyant dans le bon droit, ou ik ou l'individu croit honnetement que les faits sont legaux, il ne peut etre tenu responsable, meme si, en droit, il a illegalement agi. voir aussi r. v howson (1966). 10. cf. r. v villeneuve (1968). voir aussi long v state (delaware) in r. v maclean, loc . cit . : 105: "the reasons for disallowing it are practical considerations dictated by deterrent effects upon the administration and enforcement of the criminal law. which are deemed likely to result if it were allowed as a general defence 11. cf. miaille, op . cit . 127-158. voir aussi sala-molins l. 197-7 : 101-126 et 131-146. 12. r, v maclean, loc . cit . : 104; nous laissons en langue anglaise cette citation puisque, telle quelle, elle est au coeur de ce qui suit. 15. le terme "law" en effet est herite du droit brit annique 14. on constatera ici 1 ' importance que prendrait une analyse du sujet qui elit et du sujet qui se conforme. 13. voir entre autres poulantzas, 1978. ii ne s'agit pas ici que des etats "spe'ciaux" ou "anormaux" mais bien de situations part iculieresdans l'etat "normal". 91 16. nous renvoyons le lecteur a la these de poulantzas (1965), pour un expose detaille de cette question. 17. dujardin p., j. michel (1978), qui deplorent en premier lieu la trop longue periode "stal inienne" de 1 'economisme , "cette conception lineaire et unilateral du developpement historique concu comme entierement determine par un schema economique" (15) et qui "aboutit... a une non-analyse "( 15) du droit entre autres. cependant, il n'en reste pas moins que "la transformation du rapport economique en rapport juridique, done 1 ' occultat ion du premier sous le second, sont permises par 1 ' idee d'autonomie du suiet de droit et renvoient encore une fois aux categories politiques bourgeoises fondamentales" (22), de sorte "qu'il n'y a plus de place que pour une anthropologic economique ou le droit trouve la position qui est la sienne" (23) et que finalement "rapporter le droit a la circulation permettrait d'eclairer l'un par 1' autre" (27) en tant qu'ils sont tous deux "entremetteurs" entre le capital realisation de la valeur et le travailleur moyen de cette realisation (cf. 24-26). c'est, dans le cas du droit, poursuivent-ils , le passage incessant du suj et-de-droit a 1 'objet-de-droit du proprietaire (potentiel) a la propriete de soi-meme. ainsi 1' ideologic n'est pas "mensonge sur-ajoute au reel, mais mensonge de la realite elle-meme" (28) . et s'il faut aller plus loin, c'est a la reproduction qu'on s'adressera. en some, malgre une pretention d'eviter un mecanicisme(economiste) , les auteurs retrouvent une vieille "verite" essentialiste , celle de la "realite" sur l'ideologie, dans laquelle ils donnent a pleines pages. s'il est autorise, par la "nature des choses" (poulantzas, op „ cit.) de parler de droit bourgeois, qu'on ne lui enleve pas sa logique, sa "verite" interne. 18. hall et al 1978: chap. 2 et 7 particulierement . 92 bibliographie blanke.b., j. jurgens , h. kastendiek 1978 "on the current marxist discussion on the analysis of form and function of the bourgeois state." state and capital , holloway j., and s. picciotto, eds . london: arnold. code criminel 1978 s.r.c., 1970, chap. c-34, et lois connexes par l. saintonge-poitevin. montreal: wilson et la^leur. dujardin.p., j. michel 1978 "marx et la question du droit : raisons d'une approche et d'un detour. " pour une critique du droit : du juridique au politique , collec t i f . presses universitaires de grenoble et maspero. edelman, b 1973 le doit saisi par la photographie . paris : maspero . hall.s et al 1 _ 9"7s — policing the crisis: mugging, the state and law and order" london : macmillan . hirsch, j. 1978 "the state apparatus and social reproduction: elements of a theory of the bourgeois state." state and capital , holloway, j., s .• picciotto, eds . london: arnold. hirst, p.o. 1979 on law and ideology . atlantic highlands, new-jersey: humanities press jessop, b. 1980 "on recent marxist theories of law, the state, and juridico-political ideology." internatio nal journal of the sociology of law 8, 51 339-368. kinsey, j. 1979 "despotism and legality in national deviancy conference." capitalism and the rule of law . london: hutchinson. lim chin aik v queen 1963 1 all e.r. : 223-237 . long v state (delaware) 1949 65 a. (2d) 489, 5 terry 262. 93 miaille, m. 1976 miaille, m. 1978 pashukanis, e.b, 1978 poulantzas, n. 1965 poulantzas, n. 1978 pound, r. 1942 pound, r. 1959 r. v catholique 1980 r. v de marco 1973 r. v dry bones 1970 r. v howson 1966 r. v kester 1980 r. v maclean 1974 une introduction critique au droit paris : maspero . l'etat du droit paris : maspero . law and marxism: a general theory . edited and introduced by chris arthur , translated by b. einhorn. london: ink links nature des choses et droit . paris : pichon et durand auz i a s . l'etat, le pouvoir, le socialisms . paris: maspero. social control through law . new york: yale university press jurisprudence . st .paul (minn.) : west publishing c. 5. vol 49, c.c.c. (ad) 65-77. 13 c.c.c. (2d) 369, 22 c.r.n.s. 25! 3 c.c.c. (3d) 355, 9 d.l.r. (3d). 3 c.c.c. (3d) 348, 55 d.l.r. (2d) 582, 2 d.r. 63. 58 c.c.c. (2d) 219, 17 c.c.c. (2d) 84-107 r. v michelin tires manufacturing (canada) ltd, 1976 15 n.s.r. (2d) . r. v villeneuve 1968 1 c.c.c. (2d) 267, 2 c.r.n.s. 301 94 r. v r.w. woolworth co. ltd. 1974 18 c.c.c. (2d) 24 roper v tavlor's central garage (exeter) ltd. 1951 2 t.l.r. 284. sala-mol ins , l. 1977 la loi: de quel droit? paris : flammarion. schwartz-lieberman von wahlendorf, m.a. 1 9 " s les dimensions du droit . paris: lgdj. villey, m. 1968 la formation de la pensee juridique moderne paris : montchrestien . 1969 seize essais de philosophic du droit . paris: dalloz. vincent, j.m. 19"3 fetichisme et societe . paris: anthropos . re-thinking cultural policy: critical approaches in the era of privatization david skinner simon fraser university david c. robinson^ carleton university long established practices of cultural policy are rapidly changing throughout the world. indeed, it might not be overstating the issue to say that we are approachingthe end ofan era in which nation-states played the central role in managing the production, distribution, and consumption of cultural products. where once cultural policies were developed to serve a broadly defined 'public interest,' todaywe are witnessing the introduction ofpolicies that are primarily geared to serve private accumulation. throughout the aitire global cultural sector, the private market, not the state, is now being promoted as the preferred mode forthe allocation ofcultural resources. thus, as gamham (1992:362-363) notes, cultural products today are viewed less as a public good than as a privately appropriable commodity. what forces are underlying this dramatic shift? while researchers may debate the extent and the speed by which changes are taking place, it is generally agreed that cultural policy i s under pressure from four broad fronts : 1) technological—such as the developmait of alternative distribution systems in broadcasting; 2) economic—^the creation of a 'global market' in ^g^ alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 response to nsing production costs and the need to expand markets; 3) political—assaults on the intimacy of the soaal democratic state and the rise of a neo-liberal agaida; and 4) socio-cultural—demands from various constituencies for cultural mstitutions that serve not just a 'mass public,' but supply a wider range of views and tastes which respond to a 'cultural pluralism' that postmodern theorists have long stressed. these forces and pressures have been particularly evident in canada. while cultural policy was until recaitly implemented to serve a national or 'nation-building' agenda (clarkson, 1 99 1 ), contemporary state poliaes, on the contrary, appear to be contributing to the progressive destruction of national publicly-funded cultural institutions. canada's trade agreement with the united states and mexico seems to take yet more powers away form national state agencies and place them under the auspices of international regulatory bodies that are controlled by transnational businesses. the postmeech era has dramatically exposed the illusion of any univocal myth of 'nationhood' as provinces, regions, and soaal movements all vie for constitutional representation. finally, the recent emergence ofpopulist and regional politics suggests a fundamental realignment of traditional political alliances and class forces. in this climate, unifying themes traditionally employed in cultural policy—such as 'nationalism,' 'thepublic,' and even 'sovereignty' — seem to be losing their force. what arethe implications ofthese developments for those ofus working within a critical tradition of policy studies? does our current theoretical framework allow us to adequately assess these changes and confront these problems'j' or is there a need to re-think the terrain upon which our traditional lines of analysis have been drawn? if so, how do we begin to 're-theorize' cntical policy studies in light of the profound realignments that are taking place? it is clear that any answers to these questions will at best be contingent and provisional given the rapidly shifting balance of forces and political struggles currently being waged with that caveat in mind, however, it is our view that traditional frameworks do not seem able to adequately assess the skinner and robinson/rethinking cultural policy complexity of the current forces at play, nor do they offer any effective alternative model that might aid in the construction ofa more democratic and pluralistic cultural order. responses to current problems have continued to be posed in terms ofwhat we view as a simple dichotomy ofthe 'free market' versus 'state control,' a division that has long dominated much research in the area. it is our belief, on the contrary, that both the oligopolistic capitalist market and the intervaitionist welfare state threaten the development and expansion of a democratic cultural order. as critical researchers, therefore, we need to avoid the prevailing tendaicy to retreat to a 'left keynesian' or 'statist' position whereby we oid up defending the very institutions and practices that not so long ago we soundly criticized as devilish instrumaits of 'social control.' while we recognize that state intervention, often at the behest of social movements, has many positive and even 'emancipatory' baiefits, it is also the case that these interventions are limited and can even be potentially detrimental for democratic cultural expression. welfare state intervaition, inhabermas's (1987) saise, can lead to the "colonization ofthe lifeworld"—the bureaucratization and normalization of public culture that |^| undercuts community-based self-expression and solidarity. in other ways, state agencies can actively censor public expression. as keane (1991) has demonstrated inthe case ofpublic broadcasting, the democratic state can take on leviathan colours by influencing the range of media output through appointmoits, funding, the granting or with-holding of state advertising contracts, and the establishmait of 'policy guidelines. ' in our current research, we want to explore these issues by outliningthe pressures that are guiding cultural policy-making today and by suggesting alternatives that might lead toward a more democratic cultural order. while we remain absolutely convinced that state intervention in the broadly-defined 'public interest' remains an important vehicle by which boiefits can be had by a wide population, we also recognize that the state should not be the only instrumoit in this goal . in pursuing options forthe democratization ofcultural production, critical research must also look beyond the market/state dichotomy andtoward the creation of institutions within civil society, insulated alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 from both the market and the state, that will help ensure democratic accountability in an era of increasing conc«itrations oftransnational corporate power. the shifting tide of cultural production in canada within the federal arena, the era ofmandating cultural agencies with a nationbuilding agenda appears to be drawing to a close. while the removal of the 'national unity' clause from the cbc's mandate is perhaps the most dramatic indication of this, it is simply illustrative of a general erosion in support for a state-drivai cultural policy. in its absaice, market forces have come to dominate the allocation of cultural resources. since the early 1980s, the canadian economy has been increasingly subject to the pressures of transnational capital accumulation. these competitive pressures have radically transformed the economic landscape ofthe country as capital has shifted to take advantage of international wage differentials andnew trading opportunities. while the federal government has claimed that the cultural sector has been exempt from trade agreements, canadian media markets have nevertheless been pressured into taking on commercial and transnational flavours in the wake of these deals (mosco, 1990). drivenbythepromiseofgreatereconomiesof scale, the state, which once pursued policies that encouraged small and diverse nationally-oriented units ofproduction, has now developed polices that favour the concentration of ownership and transnational marketing opportunities. other symptoms of this regulatory shift include the market-directed expansion of new tv delivery services (such as video cassettes and cable) on an international basis, the progressive deregulation ofnational telecommunications monopolies, the 'rationalization' of cultural agencies to conform with commeraal imperatives, and the growing tendency, as reflected in new international copyright laws, to treat information and cultural resources as a pnvately appropnable commodity (schiller, 1994). the effect of these changes on policy initiatives has been dramatic in the publishing sector, for instance, the withdrawal of the postal subsidy and skinner and robinson/rethinking cultural policy the imposition ofthe goods and services tax (gst) has reinforced distribution inequities between national and transnational producers, thus erodingthe already marginal profitability of canadian book and magazme publishers. while the film industry has experienced some success with both international co-productions and hollywood branch-plant productions, national production remains underdeveloped in the face of transnational strangleholds on distribution and exhibition. as their markets fragment and revenues shnnk, radio broadcasters are turning to programming formats that minimize production costs and maximize advertising revenue at local levels. television broadcasters, threatened by direct-broadcasting satellites and the proliferation of cable channels and video cassettes, are moving to develop regional markets and patterns of ownership concentration that extract as much as possible from their economies of scale. and in the newspaper industry, plummeting readership and lost advertising revenues are forcing concentration of ownership between daily and weekly newspaper producers. accompanying these political and economic changes, the 'politics of difference' and 'place' have swept through the social fabric ofthe nation and y^ fractured the political spectrum. as the charlottetown accord defeat signalled, 'new' social movements based on regional, ethnic, racial, gender, and environmental concerns have challenged the very possibility of constructing a univocal 'national culture.' these 'new' political forces have greatly influenced the field of cultural policy. provinces and regions are seeking stronger regional representation in formulating policy. the canadian radio television and telecommunications commission (crtc), the federal regulatory broadcasting agency, has been challenged by a number of minority groups who have disagreed with recent licensing decisions. television networks are also under pressure to better balance gender and ethnic representation within programming. finally, public funding agencies are being asked to improve representation on their juries and in their granting patterns. the combination of such forces—^technological, economic, political, and socio-cultural—may be read, on one level, as the emergence of a 'new ^ alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 pluralism' in cultural politics. the breaking up of state monopolies and the fracturing of the 'mass' audience into segmented niches has been seen, by commentators from both the left and the right, as evidence ofan increase in consumer power and a proliferation of cultural difference and choice.^ such optimism, however, appears to be premature, if not misguided. with declining state-sponsored support ofthe cultural mdustries, oligopolistictransnational commercial interests are increasingly governing the operation of cultural production. despite the promises of a '500 channel universe,' audiaice demands and interests that are not commercially viable will continue to find it difficult to have their voices heard. challenges for the field the new directions being pursued in the structure of cultural markets bring into focus some of the difficulties that critical policy analysis faces in forwarding progressive interventions. the changes noted above raider many traditional terms of reference within the field incomplete and inadequate. thelongcherishedprinciple of 'cultural nationalism'—^the state-driven promotion of a shared and indigenous form of cultural production—appears caught betweenthedemandsofafracturedpublic andthetransnationalization of capital. as a policy-guiding creed, it appears to have been put to rest. for many critics, the response to this untimely death has been muted at best. there are many reasons for this apparent lack of mourning. in quebec, the repressive tendencies of a pan-canadian national culture have long given the idea little currency (raboy, 1 992). in english canada, mainstream critics have traditionally viewed the idea of 'cultural nationalism' with suspicion, reading within it the protection and promotion of a narrow elite culture at the expense ofconsumer sovereignty and choice (globerman, 1 983 ; woodcock, 1 985) for neo-marxists, on the other hand, the concept of nationalism has sparked little interest outside of its relationship to questions of ownership of the cultural industnes (clement, 1975; smythe, 1981). similarly, theterms 'public' and 'public interest' which havebeen atthe heart of policy debates are proving problematic. a new generation of skinner and robinson/rethinking cultural policy 'postmodernists' have argued that the 'pubhc interest' is httle more than a stand-in for the interests of white, male, urban, middle-class canadians. in creating an imagined community of the 'public,' postmodernists suggest, traditional cultural policyhas effectivelyneutralized identities and collectivities based on gender, class, and ethnicity (lee, 1992:406). finally, the concept of 'cultural sovereignty' also appears to be losing its efficacy. at thepolicy level, this principlehad been traditionally expressed in state commitments to providing the necessary infrastructure to support indigenous cultural production. policies governing telecommunications monopolies, media content regulations, and the simultaneous substitution of canadian broadcast signals over cable have been enacted and defended according to the principle of 'cultural sovereignty. ' however, the decline of the nation-building mandate coupled with newly emerging communication technologies and transnational pressures are making such interventions difficult to maintain. whiletheprinciples of 'nationalism, 'the 'public interest,' and 'cultural sovereignty' have in all cases been nghtly criticized, it is also important to |||{^ recognize the uneven and contradictory nature of such terms. despite their problems, policies enacted under these banners have also served the purpose ofproviding a rallying point around which disparate social groups have been able to coalesce their interests and demands. consequently, the collapse of such 'meta-narratives' signals important changes in the dynamics of cultural policy. if the idea of 'cultural nationalism' no longer carnes currency, ifwe can no longer speak confidently of the 'public interest,' and if the pnnciple of 'cultural sovereignty' has been eclipsed by new forces and interests, thai what analytic frames of reference are we as cntical researchers left with? some critics have faced this dilemma by retrenching and defending old principles and state forms of intervention. others have been content to abandon the field ofculture to the logic oftransnational capital accumulation. in our view neither approach will do. instead, we propose that research aimed at progressive interventions must more thoroughly engage with what bennett (1992:25) notes are "the institutional conditions which regulate different alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 fields of culture." this involves a recognition that policy and governmental processes informing cultural practices give rise to specific political relations that regulate access to symbolic forms. in other words, how do specific cultural policies and structures—within both the market and the state—work to systematically exclude/include particular social interests at the expaise of others. on the one hand, these exclusionary/inclusionary practices can be defined as discursive—forms of exclusion or inclusion that arise from the normative agenda embedded within particular cultural policies. for instance, how do policy distinctions between pnvate and public, commercial and nonprofit cultural institutions regulate access to cultural practices? how do such distinctions define what is legitimate and what is not? on the other hand, structural forms of exclusion and inclusion can be identified. these refer to the broad social pressures and limits that influence the production, distribution, and consumption of cultural products. in canada, such structural factors to be considered include technology, econo1^ mies of scale, market size, and ownership patterns. in the case oftechnology, for instance, little research has been done that examineshow thenew relations of technology in the cultural sector might actually influence the structure of symbolic forms and to whom they are made available (gamham, 1 990: 1 1 ). discursive and structural practices, as fields that regulate access to cultural resources, are interdependent. historically, discursive forms have impacted upon the structure of the market, and vice versa. these practices, moreover, are both enabling and constraining. pnnciples of 'nation-building,' for instance, enabled some social groups to organize to advocate forms of intervention in the name of the 'public,' yet in the process other social interests were excluded. an analysis of this kind paves the way for a renewed interrogation of how state practices structure the field of cultural production. as such, this research will allow us to propose progressive interventions aimed at expanding the cultural field to include more voices and interests. at one level, this involves, in bennett's (1992:32) terms, 'talking to' and 'working with' what skinner and robinson/rethinking cultural policy used to be pejoratively called the 'ideological state apparatus. ' rather than simply writing offthe state as a repressive instrument of control, we need to think about more strategic interventions, addressing specific cultural institutions in order to openly engage with the policy-making process. at another level, however, we need to be aware ofthe limitations of state administration, its propensities to alienate certain constituencies and 'police' cultural activities. in an era when nation-states are increasingly cedingpower to unelected transnational bodies, the political benefit of relying solely on state-sponsored cultural support is also suspect. while we cannot ignore the nation-state, we must nevertheless seek out new social spaces in which cultural practices can be developed and insulated from the tyranny of the market. theneedto find such 'spaces' i s critical giventhe rapidcommodification of contemporary culture. information and cultural products that were once readily accessible through public libraries and other institutions, are increasingly privatized and inaccessible (schiller, 1 989). in the current climate, how can we ensure that developments within the cultural industnes do not ^^ exacerbate differential access to symbolic forms? to answer this question, as melody ( 1 990 : 1 7) notes, requires that we develop a renewed defimtion ofthe 'public interest.' one potentially fruitful way to approach this, without fallingback to some repressivenormative and totalizing vision ofthe 'public, ' is to think about the kinds of cultural goods various constituencies or 'publics' need in order for their members to participate as full and active citizens within the larger community. the goal of cultural policy studies then is to think about these basic citizenship needs and to propose progressive interventions that can ensure that these needs are met. without such intervoitions, as mosco (1993:22) suggests, a great many people are in danger of becoming 'culturally-illiterate.' alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 notes 1. david robinson wishes to acknowledge the financial support provided through a doctoral fellowship award granted by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada. 2. for discusaons of the 'cultural poutics of consumption/ see mort (1989) and mcrobbie (1990). references bainett, tony 1992 "putting policy into cultural studies." in l. grossberg, c. nelson, and p treichler(eds.) cultural studies . new york; routledge; 2337. clarkson, stephen. 1991 "disjunctions: free trade and the paradox of canadian development." in d. drache and m.s. gertler (eds.) the nem era /wv ofglobal competition: state policy andmarket power. montreal ; ^^ mcgill-queen^s press; 103-125. clement, wallace. 1975 77?^ canadian corporate elite: an analysis ofeconomic power. toronto: mcclelland & stewart. gamham, nicholas. 1990 capitalism andcommunication : global culture and the economics ofinformation london: sage. gamham, nicholas. 1992 "the media and the public sphere." in c. calhoun (ed ) habermas and the public sphere. cambndge, ma: mit press; 359-376. globerman, steven. 1 983 cultural regulation in canada. montreal : institute for research in public policy. habermas, jurgen. 1987 the theory of communicative action, volume 2: lifeworld and system—a critique offunctionalist reason (trans. )t. mccarthy. boston: beacon press. skinner and robinson/rethinking cultural policy keane, john. 1991 the media and democracy . cambridge, uk: polity press. lee, benjamin. 1992 "textuality, mediation, and public discourse." in c. calhoun (ed.) habermas and the public sphere. cambridge, ma: mit press; 402-418. melody, william. 1 990 "communication policy intheglobal information economy: whither the public interest?" in m. ferguson (ed.) public communication: the new imperatives. london: sage; 16-39. mcrobbie, angela. 1990 "new times in cultural studies." new formations . (spring): 1-17. mort, frank. 1989 "the politics ofconsumption." in s. hall andm. jacques (eds.)new times: the changing face of politics in the 1990s. london: lawrence &wishart; 160-172. mosco, vincent. tfti 1990 "towards a transnational world information order: the canadaus. free trade agreement." canadianjournalofcommunication. 15 (2): 46-53. mosco, vincent. 1993 "communication, culture and power: an interview with vincent mosco." alternate routes. (10): 7-25. raboy, marc. 1992 "canadian broadcasting, canadian nationhood: two concepts, two solitudes, and great expectations." in h. holmes and d. taras {eds.)seeingourselves:mediapowerandmediapolicy in canada. toronto: harcourt, brace, javanovich; 156-173. schiller, dan. 1 994 "from culture to information and back again: commoditization as a route to knowledge." critical studies in mass communication. 11(1): 93-115. alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 schiller, herbert. 1989 culture inc. : the corporate takeover ofpublic expression. new york: oxford university press. smythe, dallas. 1981 dependency road: communications, capitalism, consciousness and canada. norwood, nj: ablex. woodcock, george 1 985 strange bedfellows: the state and the a rts in canada. vancouver: douglas & mclntyre. d^ on knowledge production, learning and research in struggle | 175 on knowledge production, learning and research in struggle aziz choudry1 [t]he most powerful, visionary dreams of a new society don’t come from little think tanks of smart people or out of the atomized, individualistic world of consumer capitalism, where raging against the status quo is simply the hip thing to do. revolutionary dreams erupt out of political engagement; collective social movements are incubators of new knowledge (robin kelley, 2002, p. 8). introduction in his book, freedom dreams: the black radical imagination, historian robin kelley (2002) points out that social movements generate new knowledge, questions, and theory.2 he also emphasizes the need for concrete and critical engagement with the movements confronting the problems of oppressed peoples. in this article i discuss the politics of learning, knowledge production and research “from the ground up”– that which takes place in social action/social movement contexts. while on the one hand, scholarship on social movements owes significant intellectual debts to the learning, knowledge production and theorizing which occur in the course of social struggles, on the other, the intellectual work, ideas and analysis which emerge from concrete engagement in these struggles are often overlooked and undervalued by the dominant theorizing practices of the academy. further, drawing firstly from the author’s involvement with research and activism around montreal’s 1  aziz choudry is assistant professor, international education, in the department of integrated studies in education, mcgill university (montreal, canada). he recently co-edited organize! building from the local for global justice, learning from the ground up: global perspectives on social movements and knowledge production, and fight back: workplace justice for immigrants . he can be reached at: aziz.choudry@mcgill.ca 2  an earlier draft of this paper was presented at “varieties of socialism, varieties of approaches”, organized by the critical social research collaborative (www.csrcproject. ca), carleton university, ottawa, 5 march 2011. 176 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times immigrant workers centre and wider struggles for immigration/labour justice, and secondly from global justice/anti-colonial organizing in aotearoa/new zealand and the asia-pacific region, for this discussion, this paper argues that critical scholarship should strive to be engaged concretely with social struggles and the knowledge produced in these contexts for both political and intellectual reasons. a growing interdisciplinary body of literature explores the politics and processes of knowledge production from within social movement and political activist milieus. in their article on “movement-relevant theory,” doug bevington and chris dixon (2005) note that just as few activists read social movement theory, important debates inside movement networks often do not enter the scholarly literature about social movements. they contend that social movement scholars do not have a monopoly on theory about movements. they call for recognition of existing movement-generated theory and of dynamic reciprocal engagement by theorists and movement activists in formulating, producing, refining and applying research. they hold that: “[m]ovement participants produce theory as well, although much of it may not be recognizable to conventional social movement studies. this kind of theory both ranges and traverses through multiple levels of abstraction, from everyday organizing to broad analysis” (p. 195). as flacks (2004) asserts, much social movement theory is being driven by attempts to define and refine theoretical concepts which are likely to be “irrelevant or obvious to organizers” (p. 147). kelley (2002) notes that “too often, our standards for evaluating social movements pivot around whether or not they ‘succeeded’ in realizing their visions rather than on their merits or power of the visions themselves” (p. ix). there are dominant tendencies–even among those on the left, within the university and outside–to make assumptions in relation to the relative value and significance of the location of intellectual work (in universities or in a myriad of everyday social action settings), what processes of knowledge production are recognized, and what counts as knowledge, theory or research. as alan sears (2005) puts it, deeper theoretical work is crucial, but “is not simply the property of specialized theorists with lots of formal education.” (p.151). the historian staughton lynd (2011) reminds us that “of the principal luminaries of …marxism, no onenot marx, not engels, not plekhanov, not lenin, not trotsky, not bukharin, not rosa luxemburg (who has a particular contempt for professors), not antonio gramsci, not mao-tse tung–put bread on the table by university teaching…without exception the most significant contribuon knowledge production, learning and research in struggle | 177 tions to marxist thought have come from men and women who were not academics, who passed through the university but did not remain there” (p.144). in addition, there are many located outside of universities who, as maori educationalist linda smith (1999) notes “are referred to as project workers, community activists or consultants, anything but ‘researchers’. they search and record, they select and interpret, they organize and re-present, they make claims on the basis of what they assemble. this is research” (p.17). the voices, ideas, and, indeed, theories produced by those engaged in social struggles are often ignored, rendered invisible, or overwritten with accounts by professionalized ‘experts’ or university-based intellectuals. in the realm of academic knowledge production, original, single authorship is highly valued, which can contribute to a tendency to fail to acknowledge the intellectual contributions of activism, or to recognize the lineages of ideas and theories that have been forged in struggles largely outside of universities, often incrementally, collectively, informally, and sometimes incidentally. an example of scholarly work which has explored the impact of anti-colonial struggles on an influential academic theoretical tradition is the attention that tavares (1992) and buck-morss (2009) have brought to the way in which the haitian revolution (the first and only successful slave revolution in the americas) influenced hegel’s theorizing–in particular the master-slave dialectic. marx (1984) rewrote his theory of the state under the impact of the paris commune. raya dunayevskaya (1958) points out that the spur to finishing the first volume of capital came from the revival of the british working class movement in the context of the u.s. civil war. many examples of feminist, anti-racist, and indigenous scholarship have also arisen and benefited from mass mobilizations challenging patriarchal, racist, colonial–and often capitalist–relations. yet within the university, there remains relatively little awareness of the many important debates and thinking occurring within those networks of activists, social movements, trade unions, community organizations and ngos that take more critical stances in relation to state power and capital. further, we should be aware of the importance of drawing from those who have sought to extend marx, firstly, in terms of thinkers who have emerged from, and been closely tied to anti-colonial and other left democratic struggles in the global south, such as fanon (1968), aijaz ahmad (2000), c.l.r. james (1963), and many others. how, where and in which forms social struggles take place may differ greatly from context to context and challenge some of the dominant lenses applied to 178 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times typologizing/categorizing them as both bayat (1997, 2010) and eschle (2001) remind us. in thinking through the challenges of theorizing social relations and struggles in both global south and north, himani bannerji (2011) contends that “historical and social realities of the world are neither macro-spaces of free-floating imaginaries and abstractions nor bounded within micro-formations and spaces of geographically discrete cultural identities” (p.3). equally, these diverse contexts can be important sites of knowledge production and conceptual tools for other struggles. biju mathew (2005) suggests that “[m]aybe our collective task …is to look carefully as the resurgent left social movements all across africa, asia and latin america and comprehend the ideas of justice that inhere within these movements and the historical memory they are rooted in” (203). david austin (2009) describes theory as being “congealed experience, which, in a concentrated form, can bring years of accumulated knowledge to bear on a particular issue or cause and help to prevent strategic mishaps” (p.115), while kelley (2002) also reminds us of the importance of drawing conceptual resources for contemporary struggles from critical readings of histories of older movements. theorizing social movements, ngos, community organizations and ‘civil society’ at a level which is too abstracted from the very real differences, contradictions and particularities on the ground, especially the geo-historical context, has severe limitations. as adult educationalist paula allman (2001, p.165) puts it, “our action in and on the material world is the mediation or link between our consciousness and objective reality. our consciousness develops from our active engagement with other people, nature, and the objects or processes we produce. in other words, it develops from the sensuous experiencing of reality from within the social relations in which we exist (marx and engels, 1846).” analysis of social movements need to be situated in social dynamics and concrete conditions. bannerji (2011) reminds us that “all meaningful, useful generalizations need to be shown as having a material, a social/ existential and an historical ontology. to think otherwise is to indulge in the absurdity of separating human consciousness from existing human beings and detaching both from lived time. thus micro-histories are part of history or history’s mode of existence, they are inconceivable without each other, and subjugated knowledges are the pedestals of the dominant knowledge” (p.4). thus, in order to understand social movements we need to carefully attend to the political, historical, cultural and economic forces that are at play in any one place, and explicate how they relate to the state, to capital, and to each other. the dominant strands on knowledge production, learning and research in struggle | 179 of social movement theory tend to be reductionist, eurocentric, and disconnected from the social movements and organizations that are the objects of its study. some movements are overlooked or ignored simply because they do not conform to a model or typology through which the researcher approaches the subject (eschle, 2001). inadequate attention is given to questions of geo-history, political economy, and to the politics of knowledge production, both in terms of constructing theory, and of the knowledge(s) emerging from movements. i suggest that a sounder analytical framework might draw from knowledge and theory arising from movements themselves. it would recognize the importance of “history from below” rather than seeking to only interpret movements and mobilizations solely through an imposed interpretative framework or set of variables. close attention must be paid to analyzing the trends of bureaucratization and professionalization in these movement and ngo networks. so theory is not merely created from above to be imposed on material conditions of struggle–it is also born out of practice. just as d. smith (1987, p. 80) notes “the basis for a political economy from the standpoint of labour, according to marx, is precisely that it is grounded in the work and activity of actual individuals producing their existence under definite material conditions,” so too does theory and analysis about ngo and social movement networks require such a concrete grounding in our everyday activities in the world. learning from the ground up in his work on social movements and radical adult education, john holst (2002) refers to the “pedagogy of mobilization” to describe the learning inherent in the building and maintaining of a social movement and its organizations. through participation in a social movement, people learn numerous skills and ways of thinking analytically and strategically as they struggle to understand their movement in motion…. moreover, as coalitions are formed people’s understanding of the interconnectedness of relations within a social totality become increasingly sophisticated (holst, 2002, pp. 87–88). both holst and griff foley’s (1999) work on learning in social action highlight and value the incremental learning and building of knowledge, which arises from actual and dialectical engagement in our everyday world. located in a historical materialist framework, foley’s (1999) book, learning in social action: a contribution to understanding informal education makes a vital contribution to theorizing and making explicit the 180 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times incidental learning processes arising from and contributing to engagement in a range of social struggles. foley emphasizes the importance of “developing an understanding of learning in popular struggle” (p.140). his attention to documenting, making explicit, and valuing incidental forms of learning and knowledge production in social action is in keeping with others who understand that critical consciousness, rigorous research, and theory can and do emerge from engagement in action and organizing contexts, rather than as ideas developed elsewhere by movement elites and dropped down from “above” to “the people” (smith, 1999; shragge, 2003; carroll, 2004; bevington & dixon, 2005; kelley, 2002; kinsman, 2006; newman, 2006). in doing so, foley cautions that although learning through involvement in social struggles can indeed transform power relations, it can also be contradictory and ambiguous. critical alternatives arise from struggle, active engagement, reflection and action. there remains much work to be done in thinking through what kinds of social relations, contexts and circumstances help people move from learning only to adapt to learning that supports resistance, and which can generate theoretical insights and more complex understandings about the world. for foley (1999) this involves theorizing experience, standing back from it, and reordering it, using categories like power, conflict, structure, values and choice. novelli (2010) highlights the dialectics of strategic learning through struggle and contestation which includes incidental, formal, informal, and non-formal education. this implies an engagement in “strategic analysis, which in turn leads to strategic action, and then to intended and unintended consequences of action, and to further reflection/analysis and action” (p.124). foley suggests that we need to make case studies of learning in struggle which make explanatory connections “between learning and education on the one hand, and analysis of political economy, micropolitics, ideology and discourse (or ‘discursive practices’) on the other (p.9). he highlights the importance of embracing a broad conception of education and learning, the relationship between struggle and learning, and an analytical framework which connects learning to its context. i turn now to discuss two examples of activist learning, knowledge production, research and theorizing in social action contexts to further illustrate the significance of these sites and their contributions to intellectual work. firstly, i reflect upon questions of knowledge production, research and theorizing in the context of ‘global justice’ struggles against trade and investment liberalization in networks of ngos, trade unions and social movements opposing the asia pacific economic cooperaon knowledge production, learning and research in struggle | 181 tion (apec) forum during the 1990s. secondly, i discuss aspects of the learning and knowledge production in contemporary immigrant and migrant workers’ struggles. finally, i share some critiques of ngoization which have emerged from within activist milieus engaged in struggles against global capitalism in recent decades. research, knowledge production and activism as noted earlier, social movements and activist milieux can be important sites of research which takes place outside of formal and/or professionalized research settings such as universities. effective research can help move activist practice beyond reacting only to the immediate, and inform longer-term strategy and vision. this is not to claim that all ‘activist research’ is inherently progressive or rigorous anymore than all university research can claim to be rigorous and immaculately constructed. nor is it argued that academic and activist research necessarily exist in finite, separate worlds, although sometimes this might seem to be the case. much activist research of the kind that i have engaged in involves an ongoing process of research in which information has to serve a purpose, is ongoing, and not usually channeled towards the production of one particular research output. taking the time to “get the research right” is crucial–whether in the case of adequately researching details of a meeting venue in order to mount an effective protest action, or in the more formal sense of research on a corporation, policy or practice, which, if poorly researched, can be easily, and publicly discredited by a far better-resourced protagonist and media outlets. this in turn can have serious effects on efforts to build a campaign through reaching and mobilizing a broader base of people. a central aspect of effective activist research is the relationship of trust and engagement built up with social struggles and movements. articulating or explicating activist research methodologies from our own practices (and those of colleagues) is an interesting, and perhaps challenging task which falls outside of the scope of this article. but the notion that there is some kind of natural separation between what some have called the ‘brain’ and the ‘brawn’ of movement is to be challenged since intellectual work, knowledge production, and forms of investigation/research which take place within activism are often inextricably linked to action in many mobilizations, although sometimes overlooked or unrecognized (see choudry and kuyek, forthcoming, 2012). kinsman (2006) warns: “sometimes when we talk about research and activism in the academic world we replicate distinctions 182 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times around notions of consciousness and activity that are detrimental to our objectives. we can fall back on research as being an analysis, or a particular form of consciousness, and activism as about doing things “out there”, which leads to a divorce between consciousness and practice” (p.153). in turn, we should also be wary of replicating such dynamics in activist milieux. political activist ethnography, which builds on dorothy smith’s (1987) work on institutional ethnography, offers useful tools for activist research and knowledge production. george smith (2006) suggests that for activist researchers, there is a wealth of research material and signposts derived from moments of confrontation to explore the way that power in our world is socially organized. he contends that being interrogated by insiders to a ruling regime, like a crown attorney for example, brings a researcher into direct contact with the conceptual relevancies and organizing principles of such regimes. moments of confrontation with ruling regimes were crucial to uncovering aspects of their social organization in global justice activism and research which i have been part of, before entering the university as a student, and, more recently, as faculty. during the 1990s, i was an organizer, educator and researcher for two small aotearoa/new zealand-based activist groups, gatt watchdog and the aotearoa/new zealand apec monitoring group which focused on building opposition to free trade and investment agreements, at domestic and regional (asiapacific) levels. a major focus was the asia pacific economic cooperation (apec) process that included 21 governments in the region, with a goal to advance trade and investment liberalization. apec’s highest profile event was a leaders’ summit, which rotated among apec member countries each year, and had become a target for mobilizations against neoliberal globalization. an important goal for anti-apec activism has been to delegitimize the apec forum and to expose apec governments’ claims of ‘civil society’ involvement and consultation as a sham. analysis of official texts was a key aspect of practice that informed strategy for the opposition to the hosting of apec 1999 in aotearoa/ new zealand. in 1998, well in advance of the start of new zealand’s chairing of apec the following year, i obtained a new zealand cabinet strategy committee paper “apec 1999–engagement with ngos” (new zealand government, 1998) for gatt watchdog under new zealand’s official information act (access to information act). from analyzing this document, it became evident that government intentions were to co-opt ngos and harness them to promote apec domestically, and on knowledge production, learning and research in struggle | 183 also to project to international audiences an image of a democratic government which valued differing opinions. deletions in the document clearly refer to managing the risks (militant opposition to apec), since there are several references to risk management and preparedness for “a protest element”, but gave no specific details to what this entailed, corresponding to sections that have been withheld. what remains in the document is instructive. on the positive side, the government has a real opportunity to develop a wider sense of ownership and participation. ensuring constructive participation by ngos in the apec process will be a critical part of the overall strategy of communicating the what, why and how of apec to the new zealand community. it would serve to demonstrate to the international community new zealand’s ability, as a participatory democracy, to accommodate debate and dissent among a variety of ngos… on the other hand, as the experience of chogm and the mai indicated, there is significant risk of disruption and protest at apec events. in particular we are likely to see a protest element around the leaders’ meeting in auckland in september (p.3). the document also advised that “new zealand’s chairing of apec should reflect the values of an open and participatory democracy where ngos have an opportunity freely to express their views” (p.5). “we propose a dual strategy of constructive engagement: [paragraph deleted]” and then: the target audience in this strategy is not just ngos per se, but also the wider group of “middle” new zealand who will want to see ngo voices given a fair hearing. [deletion] this will require engaging effectively with responsive groups and helping to meet, as far as possible, their own objectives of being seen to influence outcomes…the requirement for cost-effectiveness suggests there will be limits to the extent of outreach that may be possible. it will be important to avoid getting bogged down in long, resource-intensive consultations (p.6). the strategy “involves building broad support for apec and actively managing the risk of disruption” (my italics) (p.7). the new zealand government’s ngo engagement strategy paper was a clear example of a document which operates in the state’s interest in drawing up a plan to contain dissent and manage the government’s image, rather than being a background paper to inform a dialogue among equals. by its use of the term “responsive groups”, the government assumed the right to determine who was in and who was out in new zealand ‘civil society’. it also clearly sought to divide and rule ngos (and other groups) into supposedly constructive and disruptive elements. 184 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times for gatt watchdog and aotearoa/new zealand apec monitoring group activists, our reading of the document was accomplished because of our own confrontation with the government over apec, experience of being targeted by new zealand state security forces for lawful dissent against apec in 1996, involvement in previous years’ anti-apec mobilizations in several countries, and interactions with police at demonstrations and increased surveillance during 1999. having these experiences and analysis was important, but collecting, analyzing and disseminating these documents was essential to building an effective strategy to counter the government’s promotion of apec to ngo networks and community organizations. drawing from these documents, a key part of our anti-apec strategy of 1999 was to explicitly and publicly denounce the new zealand government’s apec taskforce communications strategy, and to politicize attempts to co-opt or silence critics through ‘dialogue’ in a similar fashion to that revealed in canadian official documents relating to the vancouver apec summit. this included a picket of the first dialogue on apec 1999 with ngos outside the office of the ministry of foreign affairs and trade in wellington in january 1999, and a rejection of approaches made by the official apec ngo liaison officer (hired by the new zealand government’s apec taskforce) to discuss apec matters. through media work and dissemination through ngo and community group mailings and meetings, we publicly revealed the government strategy of containment and propaganda through limited dialogue and state surveillance and harassment of the more radical critics. our strategy involved politicizing the disjuncture between stated intentions for dialogue, the calculated actual rationale expressed by the official documents obtained under the official information act, and past actual experience of state practice of criminalization of lawful dissenters who were critical of free trade and investment. after we circulated the cabinet papers to a wide range of ngos and trade unions, the government’s plan to co-opt ngos and harness them to do their work of selling apec to “middle” new zealand failed dismally, with few attending their ngo consultation sessions. the operation of the official information act, and broader questions of transparency, state power and claims of democracy became politicized in this research activism work when various government ministries either refused to divulge or release information, or insisted on imposing expensive processing fees before even considering a request. in turn, we publicized this through mainstream and independent media, finding some journalists sympathetic on this issue for their own reasons of frustration over obstacles to accessing official information, and willing to write critical articles on the matter. on knowledge production, learning and research in struggle | 185 learning and knowledge production in im/migrant workers’ struggles i turn now to focus on aspects of the politics of learning and knowledge production in migrant and immigrant workers’ struggles both in canada and in international networks. defilippis, fisher and shragge (2010) argue that for community organizations to be part of a broader longer-term movement for social change, social analysis and political education are vital. they argue that “[b]oth contribute to understanding that the specific gains made and the struggles organizations undertake are part of something larger, but so is the broader political economy that structures organizational choices” (p.177). montreal’s immigrant workers’ centre (iwc) was set up in 2000 as a community-based workers’ organization in the diverse, working-class neighbourhood of côte-des-neiges by some filipino-canadian union and former union organizers, and other activist and academic allies.3 the iwc engages in individual rights counseling and casework, as well as popular education and political campaigns that reflect the general issues facing immigrant and temporary foreign workers–dismissal, problems with employers, and sometimes inadequate representation by their unions. often these arise from individual cases and form the basis for campaigns and demands which are expressed collectively. labour education is a priority, targeting organizations in the community and increasing workers’ skills and analysis. workshops on themes such as the history of the labour movement, the labour standards act and collective organizing processes have been presented in many organizations that work with immigrants as well as at the iwc itself. for example, the “skills for change” program teaches basic computer literacy, while incorporating workplace analysis and information on labour rights and supporting individuals in becoming more active in defending those rights in their workplaces. the iwc strives to develop leadership among immigrant workers in order to take action on their own behalf. support for self-organizing, direct action, coalition-building and campaigning are used to win gains for workers and to build broader awareness of and support for systemic change in relation to their working conditions and, often, immigration status. as iwc organizer mostafa henaway (forthcoming 2012) puts it, the centre: tries to build from an organizing model that incorporates radical traditions, going back to basics, focusing on outreach, collective organizing, casework, and education. at times, there are many challenges faced in balancing all of these facets in the organization; but each facet 3  immigrant workers centre website: http://iwc-cti.ca 186 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times has proven to be critically important to the political work of the centre, such as weekly outreach outside metro [subway] stations, building relationships with both communities and individual immigrant workers, or attempts to collectivize the casework and individual issues faced by workers, and to respond in a politicized way. the foundation of this organizing has come from these principal organizing methods, in addition to a flexibility in tactics and strategy, due to ever-changing economic conditions in montreal, and globally. significantly, organizations such as the immigrant workers centre, and the workers’ struggles that they support can be key sites of informal and non-formal learning and knowledge production for labour justice struggles. this process occurs through workers’ struggles and contestation of their conditions and rights and is important in winning gains for workers. a recent study on immigrant workers’ struggles in quebec, which conducted extensive interviews (choudry et al. 2009, p. 112) notes: individuals that did eventually take action always did so with the support of others, who provided information and other resources to help them in a dispute with an employer. these others can be unions, community organizations or co-workers or friends with whom they have informal relationships. ‘street smarts’ and small victories are shared between people: this in turn encourages others to take action. such learning most often grows out of pre-existing relations with other individuals, peers or friends. however, organizations play a key role. this study found that learning to question or to resist exists in tension with learning to cope, adapt or ‘get by’–as indeed it does in workplace industrial relations since the emergence of capitalism. sometimes, as rodriguez (2010) notes, such knowledge forms contest not only the power (and knowledge) produced by governments, but also that of professionalized non-governmental organizations (ngos) which purport to speak on behalf of migrant workers. but building alliances with trade unions, through education and supporting internal debates occurring within organized labour to encourage unions to more meaningfully represent the needs and concerns of immigrant and migrant workers is an important aspect of these local and global struggles for justice. as mathew (2005) and others note, migrant and immigrant workers can and do bring their own histories of struggle and organizing strategies from their countries of origin to the new countries in which they labour. for those of us located in universities and engaged in research on im/ migrant workers this work requires some careful reflection and political commitment. commenting on the role of a growing number of ngos on knowledge production, learning and research in struggle | 187 and think-tanks which purport to represent migrant workers’ interests at national and international levels, yet exclude workers themselves, rodriguez (2010) argues that it is vital to pay attention to the knowledge production of those excluded from official venues and who cannot participate in the circuits, virtual and otherwise, frequented by others in the ‘global justice movement’. she says (p. 67), in order to be able to document the kinds of struggles engaged in by migrant worker activists…requires some level of political investment on our part as scholars, for it is in spaces outside of the seats of power, like the space of the street, where migrants can come together not only to narrate their experiences, but also to articulate radical alternatives to the contemporary global order. we must also be aware of the politics of which campaigns, organizations and movements are documented, and which are not. for, as rahila gupta (2004, p. 3) of southall black sisters, a long-established organization supporting asian and african-caribbean women against violence in britain notes, it is not easy for activists “to sit down and record their work, but in this age of information overload you need to record in order almost to prove that you exist.” indeed, for engaged academics working on immigration and labour issues, and for organizers on the frontlines of struggles for social justice, the analyses and knowledge produced in the course of such struggles can be seen as not only important intellectual contributions, but as rich conceptual resources for understanding and challenging the continued exploitation and commodification of migrant workers and immigrants, locally and internationally. the politics of activist research are inevitably impacted by challenges related to mobilizing and maintaining support, continuity and accountability among (and between) activist researchers and broader social struggles. funding and institutional recognition of movement research is not necessarily proportionate to the utility of such work, especially if it is disconnected from the task of building and supporting movements, but rather oriented towards outputs intended to influence decisionmakers in government, private sectors or international organizations. indeed, some ngo research is driven by project-centric cycles and/or compartmentalized logics that are disconnected from social struggles, and more reflective of tensions around funding priorities (petras and veltmeyer, 2001; bazan et al ., 2008). in the above examples, small activist groups which operated on a shoestring budget were able to uncover, analyze and disseminate their research through popular education and relationships with other organizations. 188 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times ngos, ngoization and the ‘global justice’ movement the past decades have seen the ascendancy of non-governmental organizations (ngos) and the widespread valorization of the notion of “civil society” at global and local levels. fowler (2000) sees a number of factors which account for the growth of ngos involved in third world development, and their increased relationships with governments and the private sector. he sees the rightwards shift in northern politics during the reagan-thatcher era as key to “the start of the rise in official finance to, and number of ngos that continues today” (p. 2). this was due to the move away from government to the market as the engine of growth and progress, and “meant more responsibility to citizens and their organizations” (ibid). although funds used to flow primarily from northern governments or financial institutions to southern governments, ngos have increasingly become channels for, and direct recipients of this ‘development assistance’ (hancock, 1989; biel, 2000; petras and veltmeyer, 2001; wallace, 2003; hewson, 2005). there has been an enormous amount of celebratory and triumphalist writing about “civil society”, and both development and advocacy ngos as being inherently “good” forces for progressive change. such claims often fail to consider who is included in and excluded from “civil society”, and pay inadequate attention to the power and role of the state, private sector and international institutions in relation to ngo/community organization milieus which, many argue, are complicit with, and dependent upon the state. even before the fiscal austerity and public sector cuts of the reagan-thatcher era, united nations conferences, increasing intergovernmental forums, agreements, treaties and negotiations had been accompanied by a parallel process of international ngo meetings, campaigns and other activity. besides the institutionalization of ngo involvement in the various arms of the united nations, the policies and statements of intergovernmental organizations such as the world bank (2008) and the asian development bank (asian development bank, 1998) and their representatives have also set parameters for which kinds of ngos will be validated by dialogue or other forms of engagement. alongside this, for many years, a number of critiques of ngos and “ngoization” have been advanced by feminist, marxist, critical race and other critical scholars. these include jad’s (2004) work on the ngoization, cooptation and undermining of the women’s movement and other parts of palestinian “civil society”, kamat’s (2002, 2004) work on the impacts of ngoization and the growth of ngos on political space and development in india and internationally, and incite! women of color on knowledge production, learning and research in struggle | 189 against violence’s (2007) recent analyses of the “non-profit industrial complex” in the americas. for petras and veltmeyer, (2005), and others, the professionalization of community-based ngos and their depoliticization works well for neoliberal regimes, keeping “the existing power structure (vis-à-vis the distribution of society’s resources) intact while promoting a degree (and a local form) of change and development” (p.20). indeed, neoliberal states have often downloaded, privatized and individualized responsibility for social welfare and ‘development’ via ngos and community organizations. in turn, if we trace the lineage of existing scholarly critiques of ngos and institutionalization/demobilization, such analyses of ngoization often owe a debt to collective forms of critical knowledge production, learning and debates emerging from within social movements and activist networks committed to progressive social change. often these tensions and critiques are raised and even worked out in practice before being subjected to academic inquiry. there is a relationship between the ngoization of social change and its impact on knowledge production, and the disciplining of dissent at national and global levels. elsewhere (choudry, 2009, 2010a, 2010b, choudry and shragge, 2011), i interrogate how, within supposedly ‘alternative’ global justice networks, a relatively small ngo elite attempts to claim positional superiority for forms of professionalized knowledge and advocacy that attempt to sideline, filter, or erase more critical positions opposed to capitalism and colonialism. while emphasizing the importance of context-specific approaches to understanding ngos and social movements, i contend that the dominant tendency of ngos is to compartmentalize the world into ‘issues,’ and ‘projects’, and the practice of an “ideology of pragmatism” (choudry, 2010b, p.20) which entails an unwillingness to name or confront capitalism. a form of colonial amnesia seems particularly entrenched in many social justice networks in settler colonial-states like aotearoa/new zealand, canada and australia. a liberal “white economic progressive nationalist” (choudry, 2010b, p.27) nostalgia underpins the framing of alternatives to neoliberalism, entailing the erasure or writing out of canada’s own ongoing colonial injustices and struggles by indigenous peoples for self-determination, and rendering invisible the historical and presentday experiences and struggles of racialized communities. these positions, which replicate, rather than challenge dominant national practices, serve to undermine and contain more critical forms of knowledge production and action in relation to confronting global capitalism. but these processes are also being challenged by ideas and mobilization strategies arising from past and present anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles. 190 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times in sum, even within movement networks purportedly committed to ‘global justice’, one finds hierarchies and dynamics around power and knowledge similar to that found in the academy. frequently, for example, questions of immigration, indigenous sovereignty, racism and colonialism are viewed as separate, unrelated issues by ngos and activists critical of neoliberal globalization in the north, while they are often seen as intimately connected by movements in the south (sivanandan, 1982; petras and veltmeyer, 2001; mathew, 2005). many ngos in the north and south replicate dominant approaches to hierarchies of knowledge by favouring academic, professionalized forms over learning developed in social struggles. conclusion: a call for reengagement of academics there is a danger that the conventional processes of production of academic scholarship, and assumptions or claims that such activity constitutes the apex of intellectual rigour and inquiry, can in fact overlook the complexities and dynamics of activism, and the intellectual contributions of activist practice (bevington & dixon, 2005; frampton et al., 2006). i do not imply that these various epistemologies of knowledge (academic and activist) and processes of knowledge production and learning (formal, non-formal, and informal) exist in completely separate universes. yet it seems important to consider how critically engaged scholars located in universities can avoid replicating the tendency to ignore or misconstrue forms of social action and the knowledge produced therein, because they do not fit neatly within a pre-established theoretical framework? academic work on activism and social movements requires some level of political investment on our part as scholars. it also requires an acknowledgement of the intellectual debts that many of us have to knowledge and theory arising from conversations, debates, discussions, dilemmas in the everyday worlds of organizing for social change, reconnecting with ideas and action and the importance of context/dynamics of institutionalization. if we are to play a role in creating a future in a world marked by devastating economic and ecological crises, militarized violence, war and occupation, in which canada is complicit, we need to urgently direct some thought and energy towards building social movements. we now face a period of global economic and political crisis–to be addressed by austerity measures which download the social costs onto the poor and marginalized (mcnally, 2011). we need movements to create counterpower and radical alternatives to the prevailing world order which is on knowledge production, learning and research in struggle | 191 steeped in colonialism, imperialism and war, by building upon, and in dialogue with the intellectual/conceptual resources produced in the course of social movement activism. perhaps one of the most important challenges in the early part of the 21st century for those of us who are privileged to work in universities and are committed to social justice, is to connect, reconnect, renew and ground our scholarly work with/ in continuing struggles here in canada, and around the world. and to make our work count. for, as marx (1968) noted nearly two hundred years ago, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it”. in theses on feuerbach (ibid), he further reminds us: “all social life is essentially practical. all mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.” references: ahmad, a. 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(2008, january). world bank civil society engagement newsletter. retrieved 4 february 2008, from http://web.worldbank.org/ wbsite/external/topics/cso/0,,contentmdk:216 14446~pagepk:220503~pipk:220476~thesitepk:228717,00.html on. stabilizing privatization | 85 stabilizing privatization: crisis, enabling fields, and public-private partnerships in canada — heather whiteside1 public-private partnerships (p3s) – or “cooperative ventures between the state and private business” (linder, 1999, p.35) – are now commonly used in canada to deliver public infrastructure such as hospitals, highways, water treatment facilities, and schools. however, despite their growing popularity, p3 arrangements are seldom able to provide better value for money than traditional public procurement given the higher costs associated with private financing and for-profit service delivery. problems of this sort were only further compounded during the recent global financial crisis as private financing became more expensive and difficult to secure, leading to several project delays and cancellations across the country (mackenzie, 2009). with the onset of a new round of fiscal austerity as of late, one might reasonably expect that this policy would be scrapped in favour of lower cost public procurement. instead, as of 2010, the p3 model is flourishing once again. this is particularly problematic given that these arrangements link important public services to highly volatile global financial markets and poorer value for money leads to additional unnecessary costs over the long run. the relatively quick recovery of the p3 model in the face of recent and longstanding concerns requires explanation. one obvious driver is neoliberal ideology and its dogged commitment to privatization. yet however accurate this explanation may be, on its own it is inadequate since it tells us very little about the specific policy forms that these normative commitments take. to this end, attention is paid here to the changes in public infrastructure decision-making that have occurred 1 heather whiteside is a ph.d. candidate in the department of political science at simon fraser university. she is the co-author of private affluence, public austerity: economic crisis & democratic malaise in canada (with stephen mcbride), and has published articles in journals such as studies in political economy, health sociology review, and socialist studies. 86 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism over the past decade which shore up the ideological underpinnings of privatization via p3. this is not to suggest that the normatively-based preference for p3s has disappeared, but it does point to its normalization within a public sector reoriented toward greater market dependence. this has helped to promote p3s over the long run and to stabilize their use more recently despite the growing list of drawbacks. this article makes two interrelated arguments. first, in canadian jurisdictions most enthusiastic for p3s – ontario and british columbia – p3 proliferation is encouraged through important changes within government made to capital planning procedures and bureaucratic decision-making, and new forms of institutional support for privatization. this constellation of new arrangements will be referred to here as a ‘p3 enabling field’.2 these provincial enabling fields normalize p3 use through the routinization, institutionalization, and depoliticization of this policy. routinizing p3 implementation involves the creation of infrastructure planning protocols and routines that deeply embed the language and calculus of the private for-profit sector into the heart of public policy making. institutionalizing support for p3s has been advanced through the creation of new capital planning procedures and public authorities, both of which create an air of permanency for this policy. finally, depoliticization through provincial p3 enabling fields helps to obscure the normative basis of p3 use by making it appear as though privatization is merely a pragmatic decision. depoliticization also occurs through the actual shift from public to private authority, making it both a strategy and a reality. however, given that p3 markets are vulnerable to the volatility of global finance, existing problems with the model (such as poor value for money) are exacerbated during times of crisis which can readily lead to collapsed/abandoned deals and crises of faith on the part of policy makers. this recently occurred when newly initiated projects – those in the high risk bidding or construction stages – were hard hit in 2008/9 when access to capital markets narrowed significantly. thus the second argument made here flows from the first: the subsequent stabilization and recovery of p3 use in canada after 2009 relates in large part to the routinizing, insti2 the use of this term has been inspired by, though differs from, jooste and scott’s (2012) discussion of p3 enabling fields. for them an enabling field is composed of a “network of new ‘enabling organizations’ (public, private, nonprofit)” (2012, p.151). these organizations include specialized p3 units, auditors general, private consultants, and advocacy organizations. while these actors are no doubt crucial to the maturation of p3 markets, by focusing only on organizations (essentially the ‘institutional support’ category of the enabling field as conceptualized here) their concept of an enabling field ignores legislation, capital planning frameworks, and supportive secondary reforms which are particularly important for p3s in canada. stabilizing privatization | 87 tutionalizing, and depoliticizing effects of provincial p3 enabling fields. this has led to the curious condition that p3s are now increasingly the new ‘traditional’ mode of public infrastructure procurement despite their longstanding inability to live up to the promises made by proponents.3 these arguments will be substantiated through a series of steps. first, the article discusses the (misleading) basis on which p3s are often justified in canada, and how problems with the private financing component in particular were compounded by the recent financial crisis. second, it describes the principal features of the p3 enabling fields that have been set up in ontario and bc, and examines how they routinize, institutionalize, and depoliticize privatization policy. public-private partnerships the canadian public sector is becoming increasingly reliant upon capitalist markets to deliver ‘public’ infrastructure and support services at all levels of government, and p3s are a leading way in which this occurs. p3 policy is typically passed off as a new and innovative approach to ‘alternative service delivery’ (e.g., see hodge and greve, 2005, p.7-8), as though partnering with for-profit partners is simply one innocuous option among many. however, p3s contribute to a transformation in the social relations of power, and therefore they should be more precisely understood to be a form of what david harvey (2003) calls ‘accumulation by dispossession’. reminiscent of ‘original accumulation’ as described by marx, dispossession involves the expansion of capitalist market relations in a number of ways, namely through the creation of new opportunities for profit making and by redistributing assets, thereby enhancing the breadth and depth of capitalist accumulation (harvey, 2003). this form of market expansion is achieved by incorporating into the realm of private accumulation that which has come to exist ‘outside’ of these circuits of capital (ibid). through this predatory mechanism, privatization opens up new investment and profit-making opportunities in three distinct ways. as discussed by ashman and callinicos (2006), privatization can involve commodification, recommodification, and/or state restructuring. their qualification of harvey’s argument is an important contribution as 3 this applies to hospital re/development in particular. though the numbers fluctuate over time, hospital p3s make up the majority of all p3 projects in bc and ontario, particularly with projects that cost in excess of $50 million (for up-to-date project lists see partnerships bc, n.d.; infrastructure ontario, n.d.). this has been relatively consistent over the past decade due to the strategic targeting of health care infrastructure in provincial infrastructure renewal plans. 88 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism privatization is not a homogenous process. commodification turns assets that were not previously commodities into private property which can be bought and sold in capitalist markets; recommodification converts what was once produced privately but subsequently taken over by the state back into a commodity; and restructuring creates a reliance upon private for-profit provision (ibid, p.121-123). p3s can involve commodification and/or recommodification, depending on the project, as well as state restructuring. the latter feature is of principal interest here and its key elements (routinization, institutionalization, and depoliticization) will be examined in subsequent sections.4 like other forms of privatization (e.g., selling state assets), p3s create new markets for capital through re/commodification. restructuring via p3s intensifies market dependence and awards greater authority and decision-making over public policy to private for-profit investors. sometimes labeled ‘privatization by stealth’ (e.g., cupe, 2003), p3s also allow for dispossession within potentially unprofitable or especially sensitive areas which would not otherwise be suitable candidates for more overt privatization initiatives. however, an important distinguishing characteristic of the p3 model is that while it features dispossession, state obligations to provide that particular good or service are not severed (grimsey and lewis, 2004, p.55). in other words, should the purported benefits of a p3 project fail to materialize, the public sector (i.e., taxpayer) ultimately remains on the hook. policy makers make several misleading claims to justify p3 use. transferring projects risks away from taxpayers and onto the shoulders of private partners is often touted as the central advantage of the p3 model (hodge and greve, 2005). the most common risks attributed to infrastructure projects are those relating to the site (tenure, access, suitability), design and construction (delays, weather, cost overruns), operation and maintenance (cost overruns), and financing (interest rate fluctuation, inflation). while these are indeed important concerns, the risks addressed in p3 contracts are restricted to those which can be insured against through market actors, thus excluding other forms of risk relevant to the public sector.5 for instance, this involves ignoring social concerns related to privatization (e.g., more precarious working conditions and lower quality services) and the creation of long run risk when the public sector is locked in to more 4 other aspects of p3s as accumulation by dispossession, particularly as this relates to the canadian public health care system, are addressed in whiteside, forthcoming 2013. 5 furthermore, the auditor general of ontario argues that a well-designed public procurement contract can adequately protect the public from many of these risks (especially cost overruns, delays, and design flaws). see ontario auditor general, 2008. stabilizing privatization | 89 expensive, inflexible, multi-decade p3 agreements. further, in practice risk transfer is often illusory given that private consortia build these costs into the price of their bids, and thus acceptance of risk translates into the anticipated profit margin of the private partner. this essentially cancels out public sector gains whilst the private partner is fully compensated by the state (cohn, 2004, p.8). risk transfer is a very lucrative arrangement for the private partner, with investors earning real rates of return of roughly 15-25 percent per year (gaffney et al., 1999, p.116; hodge, 2004, p.162). financial risk transfer played a large role in the justification of early p3s in canada (see loxley, 2010). these arguments rely on the belief that infrastructure ought to be funded by private firms, and financed by loans, particularly when government funds are scarce. in canada this rationale is in part ideological (i.e., the perception of public debt as a sign of mismanagement) and in part practical due to fiscal austerity. however p3s cannot actually reduce the financial obligations of the state, they are only able to mask costs since traditional infrastructure tends to be paid for upfront while p3s tend to be structured as lease arrangements, spreading payments out over time. whether or not p3s can actually deliver value for money and cost savings over the long run therefore becomes of primary concern. proponents base value for money (vfm) arguments on risk transfer as well as the neoclassical assumption that competition (in this case for the p3 contract) combined with the profit-maximizing behaviour of the private sector will result in lower overall project costs (loxley, 2010, p.2-3).6 there are a number of problems with these claims, the most important being the suggestion that private sector cost superiority will actually lead to lower public sector costs rather than being absorbed by the private partner in the form of higher profit (vining and boardman, 2008, p.15). these arguments also do not take into account social concerns produced by reducing labour costs and through a relaxation of standards (e.g., environmental, design, hiring and training). finally, claims that value for money is achieved through ‘on time’ and ‘on budget’ delivery must, of course, be confirmed through the empirical record. in canada like elsewhere many p3s have been delivered late and there have been serious cost overruns (e.g., see edwards and shaoul, 2002; mckee et al., 2006; mehra, 2005). compounding these more straightforward financial concerns is the methodological deception that occurs with vfm calculations. a central component of any vfm assessment is a comparison between the cost 6 see spronk, 2010 for a discussion of the normative assumptions used to justify privatization on the basis of ‘economic efficiency’. 90 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism of a p3 in relation to a public sector comparator (psc) – a hypothetical model created to represent the traditional delivery method. a key part of this process involves the application of a discount rate to the project costs in order to estimate the “cost of capital over time” which allows for considerations such as interest and inflation (partnerships bc, 2005, p.19). yet the choice of which discount rate to use is not a neutral decision, it is both political and controversial. the higher the discount rate, the more attractive the p3 option becomes since it favours expenditure in later years relative to that which is spent now (gaffney et al., 1999, p.117). as loxley (2012; 2010) indicates, even though there is no universally agreed upon discount rate, rates used to calculate vfm in ontario and bc are well above the uk’s best practice rate of 3.5%, often by 1-3 percent respectively. this practice makes it appear as though a p3 offers better value even in cases where cost savings fail to materialize. public-private partnerships and the 2008/9 global financial crisis many of the long-standing problems that accompany p3 projects were made even worse by the recent global financial crisis. the most obvious impact was the ratcheting up of costs associated with the private finance portion of newly initiated partnerships. prior to 2007 government borrowers in canada were able to secure interest rates that were, on average, 2 percent lower than those charged to private borrowers, but between 2007 and 2009 this increased to an average of 3 or 4 percent – making p3s nearly 70 percent more expensive than publicly funded infrastructure (when measured in present value terms) (mackenzie, 2009, p.2). transaction costs also increased as the timeframe for negotiations was lengthened due to financial market instability (drapak, 2009). this impacted p3 value for money as any unbiased assessment would have to favour the traditional procurement model on these grounds alone. along with increased costs came the implications of the credit crunch and changes in financial market dynamics. when the option to secure monoline wrapped bonds disappeared during the subprime meltdown, the main source of private financing used by p3s was suddenly eliminated.7 together these developments posed serious challenges for newly initiated projects (those that were in the bidding and construction stages) and led to a series of delays, renegotiations, and collapsed deals in 2008/9. 7 a monoline wrapped bond refers to when companies take out insurance against the risk that they will default on their debt (‘monoline’), and by using a high quality insurance group (‘wrapped’) debtors are able to secure very high credit ratings, leading to lower interest rates (see tett, 2007 for further detail). stabilizing privatization | 91 in canada the effects of the financial crisis began to show in mid-2008 and most projects that reached financial close at this time were smaller in scope and required only short term financing (canadian council for public-private partnerships [ccppp], 2009, p.1). several high profile and high cost deals also faced serious challenges during this time. with the port mann bridge p3, one of the private partners (macquarie infrastructure group) was unable to come up with the requisite $700 million and as a result the province of british columbia was forced to renegotiate the agreement in order to keep the project going (hunter, 2009). this renegotiation occurred just weeks before construction was scheduled to begin. with the fort st. john hospital p3 project, also in bc, financial market instability meant that a new private partner was needed to bailout the original private equity partner that had been contracted to finance the $268 million hospital (mackenzie, 2009, p.11). further, although the bc provincial government remained committed to actively pursuing p3 projects throughout the crisis, stimulus fund spending targeted speedier traditional infrastructure projects and decision makers suspended the requirement that p3s be first considered for all large infrastructure projects (mackenzie, 2009, p.10).8 other pro-p3 provinces faced similar problems. in ontario, for example, the niagara health systems p3 project, originally scheduled to begin construction in spring 2009, was delayed for several months when the private financing portion fell through (mackenzie, 2009, p.12). a new private financing partner then stepped in. rather than abandon p3 policy altogether, the province temporarily moved away from partnerships which relied on private financing. equally troublesome were the problems posed for operational projects. based on the assumption that projects could be refinanced periodically at projected rates, many existing p3s have secured financing for a shorter term than the life of the project. as mackenzie (2009) suggests, the rationale underpinning privately financed p3s therefore had a builtin expectation that the credit-fueled bubble would continue indefinitely. there was little prudence demonstrated despite p3-proponents often justifying partnerships on the basis of fiscal austerity, and promoters ignored the possibility of a looming financial crisis. fiscal recklessness such as this led scotland’s finance minister john swinney to label the use of private financing associated with p3s “one of the worst excesses of the age of financial irresponsibility” (fraser, 2009). 8 the requirement that p3s must be first considered for all large infrastructure projects has since been re-imposed. 92 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism crises of faith began to emerge in canada’s public sector as well. while labour unions and public service advocacy groups have long been vocal and determined opponents of p3s, the global financial crisis and its immediate aftermath also led several policy makers to publicly question their use. for instance, quebec health minister yves bolduc stated in 2009 that “p3s were not a religion” for his party (canadian union of public employees, 2009). the treasury board president, minister of transport, and minister of municipal affairs also cast doubt on the future of p3s in that province, and several proposed p3s were scrapped in favour of public procurement (ibid). altogether, the new and longstanding problems and widening opposition could have easily nurtured a movement away from the p3 model. that it has since rebounded was never inevitable, but rather the legacy of the p3 enabling fields created nearly a decade earlier. this constellation of initiatives stabilized the p3 model during the darkest days of the financial crisis and helped it subsequently recover given the reorientation of public policy and public sector decision-making that had been initiated several years earlier. p3 enabling fields in light of their troubled track record, governments seeking not to abandon p3 policy but to normalize its use have restructured and reoriented certain key elements of their public sectors. in addition to the expansion of, and enhanced public sector dependence on, capitalist markets that accompanies dispossession, p3s have also come to entail the application of private sector logic and rationale to public infrastructure and service delivery. these new rules, and the institutions that have been created to enforce and promote them, are conceptualized here as forming a ‘p3 enabling field’. over the long run, enabling fields promote dispossession through state restructuring, and on a more immediate level they help stabilize p3 policy during times of crisis – as witnessed in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. the p3 enabling fields set up by canada’s key p3 enthusiasts – the bc and ontario provincial governments – are composed of several crucial elements, including new capital planning frameworks, and new forms of institutional support for privatization.9 the capital planning changes relevant to these provinces are: bc’s capital asset management frame9 there are other legislative and supportive secondary reforms which have also been implemented although these contain elements unique to particular sectors (e.g., transportation and health) and therefore will not be addressed here. stabilizing privatization | 93 work (camf) and ontario’s infrastructure planning, financing and procurement framework (ipfp) and alternative financing and procurement (afp) model. new institutional support for p3s is now provided by specialized p3 units, named partnerships bc and infrastructure ontario. p3 enabling fields bc ontario capital planning frameworks camf (2002) ipfp (2004); afp (2004) institutional support partnerships bc (2002) infrastructure ontario (2005) capital planning frameworks in may 2002, the capital asset management framework (camf) was introduced in bc to serve as new “rules of the road” for public infrastructure development, governed by five best-practice principles: sound fiscal management, strong accountability, value for money, protecting the public interest, and competition and transparency (bc ministry of finance, 2002, p.1-2). the camf applies province-wide and all ministries, public sector agencies, and public organizations must now comply with these rules when seeking approval and funding for infrastructure projects. when it was first introduced, the ministry of finance made an effort to present the camf as being pragmatic, claiming that it “does not predetermine that every project will be a public-private partnership” (bc ministry of finance, 2002, p.1). the value for money camf document furthermore states that: “the framework does not assume that any one sector [public or private] is inherently more efficient in building and operating public assets. instead, it emphasizes that capital decisions will be based on a practical, project-specific assessment of a full range of options” (bc ministry of finance, n.d., p.5). yet pragmatism is more rhetorical than real since the camf also dictates that all capital project proposals in excess of $50 million must first be considered as p3s.10 cohn (2008, p.89) suggests that the camf shifts the bias away from traditional public procurement by “chang[ing] the terms of debate regarding p3s. instead of explaining why a p3 was justified, it [is now] necessary to explain why a p3 (or some other form of alternative service delivery) [is] not being employed”. less obvious but equally important are the implications of its focus on market-oriented notions of risk and the heavy emphasis placed on 10 from 2002-2008 this stipulation applied to all proposals above an even lower threshold of $20 million (since 2008 those in the $20-$50 million range are subject to a p3 screen which is used to determine whether a more comprehensive p3 evaluation should proceed) (bc ministry of finance, 2008). 94 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism identifying and valuating risk throughout the camf procedures. before a project can move beyond the initial proposal stage it is subjected to a risk-based assessment which assumes that additional responsibilities bring greater risks, and thus risk can be mitigated and minimized through partnership agreements. this creates an innate bias against public financing and ownership given that any new infrastructure project taken on by a public sector agency is assumed to generate risk. risks are then monetized and added onto publicly delivered projects, penalizing public procurement even though these risks may be entirely hypothetical. reliance upon the private sector to reduce risk also ignores the potential for cost savings that can be achieved through risk pooling (i.e., publicly financing a large number of projects), which can amount to a huge loss for the citizen and taxpayer. mackenzie’s (2007, p.iv) study of alberta p3 schools found that “for every two schools financed using the p3 model, an additional school could be built if they were all financed using conventional public sector financing.” the camf also enshrines a market-based notion of what defines the public interest. under the camf this feature of policy making is to be determined through criteria such as assessing service outcomes (mediated by monetary relations) and monitoring the performance of service providers (using market-based contracts). this is an extremely narrow conception of the public interest and does not take into consideration other concerns such as the contradiction that exists between profit-making and commercial confidentiality on the one hand, and democratic oversight and local control on the other (see wood 1995 for more on this tension). initiated in july 2004, ontario’s infrastructure planning, financing and procurement framework (ipfp) is similar to bc’s camf given that it outlines the strategies that will be used when developing (planning, building, financing and managing) new public infrastructure projects across the province. like the camf, the ipfp framework enshrines five key principles in the planning, financing, and approval of project proposals submitted by ministries, municipalities, and other public sector entities: the public interest is paramount, value for money must be demonstrated, appropriate public ownership/control must be preserved, accountability must be maintained, all processes must be fair, transparent, and efficient (ontario ministry of public infrastructure renewal [mpir], 2004, p.9). these are presented as a pragmatic, technocratic approach to infrastructure investment but there is an explicit emphasis on “innovative engagement of the private sector to leverage expertise and capital” (mpir, 2004, p.17); and p3s must be considered stabilizing privatization | 95 for all projects over $20 million. of the nine infrastructure and procurement models discussed in the ifpf, eight are p3s (mpir, 2004, p.21-22), and the public procurement option is only recommended for very minor investments (mpir, 2004, p.24). a risk-focus is present here too, as is an emphasis on value for money which incentivizes private financing and procurement. in 2003 dalton mcguinty, while campaigning for premier of ontario, vowed to scrap the province’s first p3 hospitals which had been recently initiated by his predecessor mike harris. however, not only did these particular deals go forward (although some renegotiation did take place), but attempts to depoliticize p3s were soon initiated when the newly elected mcguinty government rebranded them as ‘alternative financing and procurement’ (afp) projects. though improvements have been made when compared to how p3s were previously developed (e.g., see ontario auditor general, 2008), there is no specific legislation in place to ensure that ipfp principles are upheld and in practice afp projects are still p3s. both involve partnering with for-profit private consortia for the design, construction, financing, and operation of public infrastructure and support services. p3 industry insiders and advocates also confirm that they see no substantial difference between the p3 and afp models (e.g., see ontario standing committee on government agencies, 2008, p. 1530), as did the minister of health when initially presenting afp to the private sector (ccppp, 2005). an important feature of afp as it applies specifically to ontario’s health sector which is worth highlighting here is the 2006 decision by the ministry of health and long term care to exclude what they call ‘soft support services’ from future hospital deals (block, 2008, p.2). this means that p3 hospitals in ontario now involve only hard facility services such as maintenance, security, and operation of the physical plant but not care-related services like housekeeping, dietary, and laundry services. there is no such exemption in bc though some recent p3 hospital deals have excluded cleaning services. why exactly soft services were excluded in ontario is a multifaceted issue. the canadian union of public employees (cupe) and the ontario health coalition (ohc) claim that this was largely the result of a series of community-initiated plebiscites organized by the ohc which indicated overwhelming community support for the proposition that new hospital projects be kept fully public. a plebiscite in hamilton, for example, returned a vote of 98% in favour of this proposition (ohc, 2006). from a more cynical perspective, soft support services may have been exempted 96 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism from p3 hospital project agreements not due to community activism but instead because of the serious and ongoing problems that have resulted from their incorporation within early project agreements in that province (see ontario standing committee on public accounts, 2009, p.1340). it is therefore likely that this exemption serves two purposes: assuaging some public concerns whilst helping to make p3s run smoother in the future. by serving as both a concession offered to opponents and a pragmatic modification to the p3 model, overall this development has helped ensure the longevity of the p3 model in ontario’s public health care sector. there is also no guarantee that this exemption of soft services will be maintained in the future. new forms of institutional support new forms of institutional support for p3s are the backbone of the enabling field. the creation of specialized government agencies, or ‘p3 units’, best exemplifies this component. p3 units promote and evaluate these projects and act as repositories of knowledge which facilitates policy learning by building government expertise surrounding the complex bidding, negotiation, and operational phase of p3 projects (rachwalski and ross, 2010). the presence of these p3 units has been essential to the entrenchment of privatization within the public sector. the role of the p3 unit extends beyond the more prosaic activities outlined on their websites and in policy documents as they must translate global policy models and dispossession imperatives, ensuring that this unfolds in ways which meet local needs whilst simultaneously ensuring profitability for global investors. without the institutional support that p3 units provide, problems experienced with individual projects would not readily transform into a sophistication of the local p3 model but instead could easily lead to its abandonment. dispossession via p3s is relatively unique from other types of privatization since even though individual projects are locked in through multi-decade contracts, the model itself must be continually renewed through new projects and thus it contains a future-oriented component. this means that committed policy makers must take into consideration the long run implications of decisions made today. p3 units are currently the central way to ensure that this happens in bc and ontario. as jooste and scott (2012, p.150) put it: “the move toward private participation in infrastructure does not simply substitute private sector capacity for public sector capacity, it requires new forms of public sector capacity to be developed to overcome [p3] challenges” (emphasis added). stabilizing privatization | 97 the need for new forms of public sector capacity to facilitate dispossession was resolved in bc and ontario through the creation of crown corporations (in 2002 and 2006, respectively). this organizational form is significant given that in some countries greater political control is retained through the development of expertise and p3 unit-like roles within line departments (e.g., mission d’appui aux ppp in france and parapublica in portugal; see farrugia et al., 2008). the use of crown corporations, an arm’s length quasi-public organizational form, has a long history in canada and has been used for many different purposes ranging from economic development to cultural preservation (whiteside, 2012). yet something entirely new appears to have occurred in the past decade with p3 units: the use of crown corporations to facilitate dispossession. this occurs not through their sale but through their very existence – they are developed by the state to manage and encourage privatization in other areas of the public sector. thus the crown corporation is now being used to extend market-led restructuring in canada’s public sector. these crown corporations also help root market rules and norms within the public sector, and this is role appears to be expanding as their purview grows. with partnerships bc this expansion is both internal and external to the province. within the province, greater use of p3s means that partnerships bc has been gradually taking over the roles previously played by the bc building corporation (bcbc) (mckellar, 2006). created in 1977 to manage public sector real estate, land, and infrastructure, bcbc is thus being increasingly replaced with a commercialized crown corporation oriented toward privatization. further, as indicated in its 2011 annual report (partnerships bc, 2011), its future strategy includes diversifying its client base. this involves selling its expertise to other jurisdictions without p3 units and pushing the p3 model into new sectors within the province. the roles assigned to infrastructure ontario have also been greatly expanded over the years and it is now responsible for many different aspects of infrastructure and land development in the province: from large p3 infrastructure development and operation in 2005 to small infrastructure loans (offered to municipal borrowers only) in 2006 when it absorbed the ontario strategic infrastructure financing authority (osifa), and more recently in 2011 it took on the responsibilities of the ontario reality corporation (orc) (the manager of government owned and occupied land and buildings) (see infrastructure ontario, 2011). this has not only given infrastructure ontario a greater degree of permanence within the province but it also means that its p3-specific tasks are increasingly normalized within the day-to-day operations of government. 98 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism in order to assist jurisdictions without a p3 unit, in 2007 the federal government has also increased its commitment to p3s through the creation of ppp canada inc. as a way of promoting and assisting p3 development across the country (especially at the municipal level). once the p3 market deteriorated sharply with the financial crisis in 2008, ppp canada inc. also began to engage in ‘extensive discussions’ throughout 2008/9 with the provinces/territories, private sector stakeholders and other federal organizations to gauge the nature and extent of public sector support needed to ensure that new projects were started and that recently initiated projects reached financial close. through these efforts ppp canada determined its priority would be to help ease the “significant roadblock” to p3 projects posed by the financial crisis (ppp canada, 2009). in furtherance of its mandate to “develop the canadian market for public-private partnerships,” it has received funding commitments from the federal government of $2.8 billion per annum for 2011-2013 (ppp canada, 2009). ppp canada also teamed up with export development canada to provide surety, bonding support, and co-lending to enable troubled p3 projects to proceed (ibid). in contrast, fiscal austerity is making a comeback in most other areas of government. enabling field support cannot ultimately resolve all the problems associated with p3s but it does make them easier to implement, smoothes out and regularizes the process, and promotes privatization. and to the degree that some policy learning takes place then p3s may in fact perform slightly better – or at least appear to. the real significance of the enabling field is thus the way in which it creates a ‘common sense’ that permeates public sector processes and decision-making. this insulates the p3 model from crises through routinization, institutionalization, and depoliticization. routinization routinizing dispossession within the public sector involves the development and normalization of protocols which facilitate the selection of p3s. there are two important components here: the language of the enabling field (and an entrenchment of risk, derived through calculations of relatively short term costs and value for money, as the primary focus of decision-making) and the normalization of a market-based and market-reliant view of how the ‘public interest’ is to be conceptualized and upheld. this is accomplished not through grand overt offenses but instead through mundane, technocratic procedures. given the market-oriented nature of this form of decision-making, the language of the enabling field is part rhetoric and part reality. the rhetoric of public provision as being inherently riskier and of poorer value stabilizing privatization | 99 for money demonizes traditional projects and incentivizes privatization. for this reason p3 development remains a highly normative process as adherence to, and support for, logics of dispossession require a strong ideological commitment to privatization. however, even though the establishment of routines surrounding p3 selection may initially be normatively-based, once enabling fields are up and running normalization can proceed through its everyday routines. thus normalized and normative processes are not mutually exclusive. rhetoric is further transformed into reality when, as larner (2000, p.33) describes, discourse comes to constitute the institutions and practices of decision makers. after nearly a decade of developing most/many large infrastructure projects as p3s, and of placing an importance on particular conceptions of risk, the public interest, and value for money, the normative basis of the p3 option is shored up in ways that transcend narrow ideological dogma. self-referentiality also characterizes p3 policy as assumptions and biases are recirculated and used to justify future p3 selection. this is paradoxical given that p3s remain, on the face of it, superior only when judged against a public sector comparator (psc). yet since a psc is merely a hypothetical scenario and values alien to privatization policy (such as public provision in order to allow for collective decision-making and democratic accountability) are inherently penalized, the role of the psc is not actually that of engaging with alternatives to p3s – instead it is often a device used to mask these normative aspects through technocratic procedures. reinforcing this is the presumption that large infrastructure projects ought to be first considered as a p3. even when improvements are made to overcome past problems, p3 policy innovations (e.g., exempting some services, standardizing contracts and bidding procedures) involve moving the privatization agenda forward, not searching for public alternatives. institutionalization an important element in the shift to p3s as the new ‘traditional’ is the institutionalization of this model as the de facto standard way in which large infrastructure projects are delivered in bc and ontario (especially hospital projects). the term ‘institutionalization’ is used here to denote a number of different things. first, the root word – institution – should be taken to literally represent the creation of new public sector agencies (p3 units) which act as centres of expertise for p3 development protocols. another way to think of institutionalization is the way in which new ‘rules of the game’ are formalized through the enabling field and come to shape future decisions, connoting a new system of action and a reori100 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism entation of standards and decision-making.11 p3 units and new capital planning procedures tailored to privatization therefore lead to a change in the rules of the game, the norms of the public sector, and the social processes and actions repeated by decision-makers. an increasing permanence is also suggested by the use of the term institutionalization: these agencies and protocols are no longer expendable and temporary, but are indicative of a regulatory shift. as captured by selznick (1957, p.16-17), “institutionalization is a process… to ‘institutionalize’ is to infuse with value beyond the technical requirements of the task at hand”. when p3 development begins to shed its reliance upon external validation through reference to previous traditional methods, it begins to take on a life of its own (as the new ‘traditional’). institutionalization should therefore be conceptualized in process-based terms. in selznick’s (1957) description, institutionalization is something which happens to an organization over time but with the enabling field it is obvious that increasing permanence can also be sped up by state policy. in fact both evolution and entrenchment are visible with p3 units and the norms and procedures they embody and reproduce. this is not to say that processes relating to the evolution of the enabling field are unidirectional and heading ineluctably toward a situation where p3s are the hegemonic model for all public sector infrastructure projects. this category of institutionalization equally captures how different moments of p3 policy are crystallized (i.e., the ways in which challenges are dealt with, created, and absorbed). these challenges come from many directions: neutralizing and accommodating p3 opponents; making good on election promises (or at least appearing to – i.e., afp in ontario); dealing with the inherent problems and conflicts associated with privatization and economic crises; and adjusting to the tensions associated with marketized state restructuring. as larner (2000, p.20) suggests, “the emergence of new forms of political power does not simply involve the imposition of a new understanding on top of the old … [it] involves the complex linking of various domains of practice, is ongoingly contested, and the result is not a foregone conclusion”. in other words, p3 development and the ‘lock-in’ of the privatization model is not a foregone conclusion by any stretch; the argument being made here is that the whole purpose behind enabling fields and institutionalization is to provide for some semblance of permanency even though dispossession via p3s requires constant renewal and therefore ongoing political/ideo11 see burnham, 1999 on rules-based forms of state management and depoliticization. stabilizing privatization | 101 logical commitment. as mentioned above, efforts by cupe and the ohc to politicize p3 use in ontario’s public health care sector clearly stand out as an example of how effective, targeted resistance can lead to tangible changes in p3 policy. depoliticization depoliticizing privatization policy, or how dispossession now proceeds largely through technocratic decision-making rather than grand normative gestures, is another key implication of the p3 enabling fields in bc and ontario. peter burnham (2001, p.127) connects depoliticization to a particular governing strategy which “plac[es] at one remove the political character of decision-making”. this benefits state managers by redirecting blame and dampening expectations whilst still allowing them to retain control. more than merely rhetoric, depoliticization also relies on new bureaucratic practices and a shift from discretion-based to rules-based regimes in particular (burham, 2001, p.130-1). the routines of the new capital planning and procurement frameworks and p3 units correspond to this conceptualization. it is also suited to describing the p3 enabling field as it deals with the internal transformations that occur with state restructuring, and indicates that depoliticized decisionmaking remains simultaneously political in nature in addition to burnham’s (2001) version of depoliticization (which deals mainly with internal state restructuring) we must specifically add the privatization dimension. colin hay (2007, p.80-87) provides this in his description of three forms of depoliticization: when issues are demoted from the governmental to the public sphere, from the public sphere to the private sphere, and from the private sphere to the realm of necessity. depoliticization is therefore a process with many faces. changes that have occurred with p3s and the creation of enabling fields generally fall within the first two categories of depoliticization. most obviously it involves shifting decision-making from the public sphere into the profit-oriented private sphere. this moment captures the new authority and influence awarded to the private consortia representatives who now influence individual projects, and the private consultants, accountants, auditors which form the private technocracy that informs policy and evaluates projects. in addition, when issues are demoted from the governmental sphere to the public sphere it means that public infrastructure and service decisions are no longer primarily managed through the formal democratic arena (where decision-makers are accountable and public deliberation takes place), but instead are 102 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism shifted into the far less transparent realm of bureaucratic management (conducted by public or quasi-public agencies). this is the realm of the public technocracy and where officials become fairly insulated from public accountability (i.e., p3 units). like with routinization, depoliticization can become a reality in the sense that decisions are actually shifted into the private sphere, however it is also remains a powerful rhetorical tactic used by policy makers attempting to duck responsibility for, or reduce the visibility of, privatization. as ascoli and ranci (2002, p.14) suggest, marketization will always remain politicized since it “changes the direction in which [government] policies are developing” making it “an eminently political process, which redistributes rights and power, modifies policy networks and the institutional context in which [public] policy is made, and influences the ways in which welfare needs are defined.” furthermore, since public infrastructure delivered via a p3 remains a political responsibility (with the governmental sphere ultimately on the hook for funding, procuring, and broadly overseeing the operation of new public infrastructure and support services), this form of privatization cannot be truly depoliticized given that issues are never entirely demoted to the private sphere. conclusion routinizing, institutionalizing, and depoliticizing p3 development is an ongoing process, not a stationary state. it is increasingly ‘lockedin’ through various changes and innovations in the p3 enabling field. provincial enabling fields have become more sophisticated over time, leading to p3 project proliferation and the entrenchment of privatization particularly in the area of large infrastructure projects. since this process requires policy learning and p3 program evolution, elements of these p3 enabling fields in ontario and bc have been altered in response to market changes and community activism. however, so long as this involves changes made to how p3s proceed and not whether p3s proceed, adaptations have ultimately strengthened the model overall. nothing presented here should be taken to suggest that jurisdictions without enabling fields are not, or have not been, developing p3s. whether at the provincial or municipal level, most provinces in canada have developed at least one p3 in the past, although outside of bc and ontario these efforts have been far more sporadic. at the federal level there are also several operational p3s and the harper conservatives have implemented a p3 screen (federal funding through the building stabilizing privatization | 103 canada initiative is tied to the use of p3s) and a p3 unit (ppp canada). however, due to the constitutional division of powers, the sectors with projects most suitable for partnership agreements are mainly located within provincial jurisdiction (e.g., hospitals, schools, highways, water treatment facilities) which inherently limits the number of federal p3s. furthermore, the argument made here is not that enabling fields unequivocally force ministries and other public authorities to choose the p3 procurement model. mainly what enabling fields do, as the name would suggest, is enable p3s by simplifying processes, and encouraging, supporting and promoting their use. some items compel public authorities to consider p3s (i.e., camf and ipfp) but even these are mere frameworks which could be easily altered, transcended, or ignored if the political will to do so existed. instead it is the sheer bulk of the enabling field which acts as a form of soft lock-in by shifting the bias away from traditional public procurement. soft lock-in also helps depoliticize these activities just as p3s themselves depoliticize dispossession through technocratic decision-making. enabling fields also help p3s weather crises, whether the crisis is related to financial market volatility or a loss of faith in the model. we have recently seen this in action as routinizing and institutionalizing p3 adoption played an important role in helping to avert widespread p3 abandonment after the 2008/9 crisis. this has allowed the p3 model to retain its privileged policy position in ontario and bc, despite all of its drawbacks. changes in p3 markets and policy have nonetheless occurred over the past five years. it is likely that the global volume of annual p3 deals will not return to the heyday of 2002-7 given that this was an era of cheap credit and euphoric financialization (ccppp, 2009, p.1). concerns around debt refinancing have also led to the inclusion of clauses within ontario’s p3 hospital project agreements which stipulate that financial gains reaped through debt refinancing must now be shared with the relevant public hospital board (loxley, 2010, p.110). a reversal of some elements of privatization enabling legislation has also occurred. most notably, in 2007 the supreme court of canada sided with bc’s hospital employees union, and other health sector unions, in their fight against bc bill 29-2002 (the health and social services delivery improvement act) which unilaterally rescinded provisions in signed collective agreements and paved the way for unprecedented privatization of health care support staff in the province. this forced changes to similar unconstitutional provisions in p3-related legislation (bc bill 94-2003 the health sector 104 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism partnerships agreement act) as well. more recently, in 2011/12 the province of manitoba took an important step toward expanding protections for the public with its bill 34 (the public-private partnerships transparency and accountability act) which requires greater public consultation and involvement of officials such as the provincial auditor general and fairness monitors. these victories and initiatives help dampen the more deleterious effects of dispossession but they do not entirely counter it, nor do they root out the specific elements of privatization-driven state restructuring that have occurred over the past decade. a greater focus on p3 enabling fields would be useful for opponents as it helps to uncover the ways in which privatization by stealth proceeds through the support of even more obscure changes being made to public sector decision-making in some jurisdictions. resistance must therefore be not only directed at the outcomes of p3 use (i.e., dispossession) but also at the processes encouraging and supporting p3 selection (i.e., enabling fields). this includes politicizing the institutionalization, routinization and normalization of the market-based rationale that informs p3 policy and reorients public sector decision-making. stabilizing privatization | 105 references ascoli, u., & ranci, c. 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(1995). democracy against capitalism: renewing historical materialism. cambridge: cambridge university press. 115 free transit and social movement infrastructure: assessing the political potential of toronto’s nascent free transit campaign rebecca schein abstract: this article examines the movement-building potential of a campaign for free and accessible public transit in the city of toronto. the campaign, launched by the newly formed “greater toronto workers’ assembly,” calls for the de-commodification of toronto’s transit system, arguing that mass transportation is a public good that should be paid for by fair taxation. the demand for free transit represents a positive, concrete anti-capitalist vision for the future of the city, which could open a space for a broader public dialogue about public goods and public control over resource allocation. the process of developing and organizing a free transit campaign will present a productive set of challenges to the newly formed assembly, pushing it to develop the relationships, skills, and internal processes necessary for nurturing a broad-based anti-capitalist movement. keywords: g20; transit; public sector; social movements; “right to the city” the demonstrations surrounding the g20 summit in toronto unfolded more or less as scripted. the state spent obscene amounts of public money to install security cameras in toronto’s streets, build an enormous fence, and augment the capacities of the local, provincial, and national police forces, both logistically and legally. demonstrators marched peacefully along a designated route through deserted downtown streets. a few people broke windows and set fire to abandoned police cars. police made full use of their brand new riot gear and special legal powers. steve paiken of tvo was shocked, shocked, to see police aggression directed at journalists and, as he put it, “middle class people” peacefully assembling. a thousand arrests. the keynesian revival: a marxian critique 116 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research denunciations of police lawlessness and brutality. calls for a public inquiry. denunciations of vandalism. calls for solidarity. and of course, the perennial lament that the voices and messages of labour and civil society were lost in the clamor. to say the events were scripted is not to say that the violence and rights violations were not serious, or that people’s anger, shock, and frustration are not real, righteous, and deeply felt. the problem with this script is that our side loses. we get bogged down in the postmortem, denouncing each other, and then denouncing the denouncers. we pour scarce resources of time and money into mobilizing for legal defense: we are literally put on the defensive. we react with renewed outrage to the predictable “over-reaction” of the state and continue to mourn the movements we should be working to build. the aftermath of the g20 summit will be an important test for a newly formed activist organization called the greater toronto workers assembly (www.workersassembly.ca). formally convened in january 2010, the assembly is comprised of individual members from a diverse array of unions, leftist political groups, and grassroots community organizations1. the assembly’s organizational culture is still very much a work in progress, and it has not yet proven its capacity to sustain over the long haul the diligent, principled non-sectarianism that it has begun to cultivate over the past year. but coming out of the g20 summit, the analysis and political ambitions that have driven the assembly’s formation seem all the more urgent and necessary. the impetus behind the assembly, as i see it, is the idea that “changing the script” will require a new form of organization, one deliberately geared to gain traction against the contours of contemporary capitalism. at a time when unions have largely stopped acting like organs of a labour movement, and when workers increasingly identify their own fate with the fate of capital (and not without reason, given the financialization of many pensions), we need an organization capable of confronting the specific ways in which neoliberalism divides, demobilizes, and demoralizes its potential opponents. since joining the workers assembly, i have often been asked about the use of the word “worker” in the organization’s name. my answer has been that the work of the assembly is to rebuild the meaning of “working class.” that meaning will not be realized by fiat, and no organizational vision statement, however comprehensive or inclusive, will generate the cultural meanings that give shape and power to political identities. to rebuild the meaning and political potency of working class identities, we need an organization that will foster sustained relationships and sustained political dialogue—not as a precursor to movement-building, but as an intrinsic feature of the movement itself. 1 for a list of members’ organizational affiliations see http://www.workersassembly.ca/links 117 in the weeks since the g20 summit, i have had many conversations debating the need for various organizations to weigh in on the question of property destruction, “diversity of tactics,” and the meaning of solidarity in the face of state repression. although i was dismayed that broken windows played their part in the g20 drama, it was hard for me to feel that a movement had been discredited, or that the messages of “legitimate protestors” had been undermined. in the absence of a movement with clear ambitions, an ostensibly tactical debate quickly becomes unmoored from strategy and devolves into a discussion of principles—principles of non-violence, solidarity, opposition to police violence, etc. as long as we are neither harnessed by the practicalities of building a mass movement nor oriented towards a vision we really believe we can win, these debates are unlikely to generate productive disagreement and dialogue on the broader left. the greater toronto workers’ assembly, however, has embarked on a project that has real potential to develop into the kind of movement in which impassioned debates over tactics will be inspiring and energizing, rather than defeatist and moralizing. at its general meeting in april, 2010, the assembly voted to dedicate significant energy to a campaign for free, fully accessible public transit in the city of toronto. many of our members have been inspired by recent efforts to elaborate the “right to the city” as a rubric organizing demands for public services and city infrastructure (harvey, 2008; world charter on the right to the city, 2004). in toronto, recent fare-hikes, strikes, provincial funding cuts, cancelled or delayed construction projects, insufficient service, piecemeal and inadequate accessibility infrastructure, and public relations debacles have made our transit system the target of considerable public anger, much of which has been channeled into generalized anti-union resentment and calls for privatization. the assembly began to see a role for itself here—not only to respond to rhetoric pitting transit riders and transit workers against each other, but to popularize an analysis of public goods and an argument for democratic control over city resources. mass transit is an essential pillar of toronto’s public infrastructure, yet its transit system is among the least “public” public systems in the world. estimated at between 70 and 80 percent, toronto’s “fare-box recovery ratio”—the percentage of the system’s operating budget paid for by individual riders at the fare-box—is among the highest in the north america and more than doubles that of some other large cities around the world (toronto environmental alliance, 2009; toronto board of trade, 2010). many other transit systems in comparable cities “recoup” less than half of their operating budgets from fares, relying more heavily on subsidies from multiple levels of government. according to the toronto board of trade (2010), “essentially no north american or european transit systems operate in [the] manner [of toronto]” with respect to transit funding. the keynesian revival: a marxian critique 118 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research riders rarely think about rising “fare-box recovery ratios,” but few have failed to notice that fares have increased from $1.10 in 1991 to $3.00 in 2010—the last fare-hike in january 2010 arriving in the context of high unemployment and rising demand for emergency food and shelter services in the city. the fare-box recovery ratio represents a rough quantification of the efficiency with which neoliberal governments have divested from the public sphere and downloaded costs to the most vulnerable individuals. the failure to invest seriously in mass transit in recent decades has meant, moreover, that many toronto residents outside the downtown core pay high fares for service that is inconvenient and inefficient. while the operating subsidies that support other transit systems reflect an understanding of mass transit as a public good, yielding benefits to entire communities and ecosystems, toronto’s system increasingly treats transit as a commodity, consumed and paid for by individual riders. the funding structure of toronto’s transit system is effectively a form of regressive taxation: although all of toronto’s residents benefit from transit infrastructure—including the car-owners who never ride a bus—our “public” system is funded disproportionately out of the pockets of the lowand middle-income people who rely on mass transportation in their daily lives. the demand for free and accessible public transit has the potential not only to develop into a broad-based movement, but also to drive the development of the new kind of organization that the assembly aspires to become. the assembly is committed to its call for the outright abolition of transit fares, not merely a fare-freeze or fare-reduction. what is exciting to me about the free transit campaign is that the expression of a radical anti-capitalist principle—the outright de-commodification of public goods and services—actually serves in this instance to invite rather than foreclose genuine political dialogue about values, tactics, and strategies. while still in its early stages, the free transit campaign is already pushing us to elaborate both analytical and strategic links between commodification, environmental justice, the limits and capacities of public sector unions, and the interlocking forms of exclusion faced by people marginalized by poverty, racism, immigration status, or disability. free transit could represent a site of convergence between many distinct activist circles in the city and foster greater integration and collaboration between environmental advocacy, anti-poverty work, and diverse human rights organizations. if the free transit campaign does succeed in bringing diverse and distinct activist cultures into conversation with each other, it will force the assembly to grapple with strategic questions about its relationship to less radical organizations in the city. given the marginalization and isolation that have long plagued leftist groups in toronto and elsewhere, this should be a welcome challenge, particularly if the assembly hopes to become an effective left pole in a broad alliance. 119 among the strengths of the free transit campaign is the concreteness of vision. within the left, efforts to elaborate a broad anti-capitalist vision too often run aground at the level of abstractions, generalities, and platitudes. most toronto residents would draw a blank if asked to “imagine a world without capitalism,” but what torontonian who has ever waited for a bus can’t begin to imagine an alternate future for the city, built on the backbone of a fully public mass transit system? the invitation to imagine free transit is an invitation for transit riders to imagine themselves not simply as consumers of a commodity, but as members of a public entitled to participate in conversations about the kind of city they want to live in. without devolving into abstract and alienating debates over the meaning of, say, socialism, the call for free transit invokes the things we value: vibrant neighbourhoods; clean air and water; participatory politics; equitable distribution of resources; public space where we are free to speak, gather, play, create, and organize. even the most skeptical response to the idea of free transit—“how will you fund it?”—is the opening of a productive conversation about taxation and control over public resources. the call for free transit can effectively open a space for an unscripted political dialogue about the meaning of fair taxation, public goods, collective priorities, and public accountability for resource allocation. but perhaps more fundamentally, the free transit campaign is a rare example of a political project on the left that is not reactive, defensive, nostalgic, or alarmist, but hopeful, proactive, and forward-looking. “crisis talk” is pervasive in much of contemporary culture, but in left circles, it has become difficult to imagine a mode of organizing that is not oriented around predicting or responding to punctuated calamities of various kinds—whether a financial meltdown, an un/natural disaster, the latest wave of layoffs and service cuts, or the systematic violation of basic civil liberties on a weekend in downtown toronto. in the case of free transit, however, we are free to move ahead with the campaign on our own timeline, to seek out and develop the kinds of relationships and democratic spaces that are necessary to sustain grassroots movements over the long term. for the assembly, this will mean having the space and time to realistically assess its own capacities and to organically develop its own strategies and priorities. the assembly does not have modest ambitions: it hopes to nurture a broadbased anti-capitalist movement and to vitalize a new working class politics (rosenfeld & fanelli, 2010; dealy, 2010). its members are, i think, tired of listening to militant rhetoric unanchored to any genuine hope of winning. the push for an excellent, fully public and accessible transit system is a radical demand with immense popular appeal, an ambitious, long-range goal for which clear, achievable interim political victories are possible along the way. free transit is not a crazy idea. arguments in favour of free transit have surfaced sporadically in toronto over the the keynesian revival: a marxian critique 120 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research years, whether in an editorial by caw economist jim stanford in the globe and mail or in a cbc interview with deborah cowen, a professor of geography at the university of toronto (stanford, 2005; cowen, 2010). some cities already have free transit systems, and many have partially free systems—in the downtown core, during holiday seasons or off-peak hours, or on “spare the air” days when smog levels are high. but in toronto there has not yet been an initiative focused on building a broad-based movement dedicated to the eventual abolition of transit fares in the name of social, economic, and environmental justice. without abandoning or compromising its radicalism, the assembly can push for concrete steps in the direction of de-commodified transit and build productive relationships with individuals and organizations who do not necessarily identify themselves as anti-capitalist. it will be in the process of pushing for interim reforms along the way to a de-commodified transit system that the assembly will most need to articulate its political principles and its analysis of the spatialization of race and class in toronto. free transit in the downtown core may, for instance, be good for toronto’s tourism industry, but will it benefit the immigrant and working class communities in transit-poor areas of the inner suburbs, who spend proportionately more of their income to access poorer quality services than those available downtown? proposals to pay for free transit through suburban road tolls will similarly hit hardest those working class communities whose neighbourhoods are so underserved by transit that they have no choice but to drive into the city for work. the process of developing interim priorities will not, in other words, postpone the challenge of articulating and popularizing a class-based and anti-racist argument for public infrastructure. instead, the assembly will be forced to pursue its most radical aspirations by cultivating a sustained dialogue about the interim remedies and strategies that will both address real needs in our communities and help build a broad-based movement over the long term. it will be through this process of dialogue, i hope, that a new articulation of a politicized working class identity might emerge. our earliest discussions of the free transit campaign are already pushing us to think about the social complexities that will need to be navigated if we are to build an effective free transit movement. success will depend on our capacity to carve out and sustain a space for dialogue and negotiation among transit workers and riders, within unions, and across neighbourhoods and communities that have been unevenly affected by fare hikes and inadequate services. questions of tactics and strategy cannot be divorced from the process of identifying, developing, and strengthening the complex connections between the people who need and use public goods and services and the workers who provide them. we will need to recognize the different ways in which our various constituencies are powerful and vulnerable and learn how to defend and 121 protect each other. the free transit campaign lends itself to the kind of intensely local organizing through which honest dialogue, trust, and long-term relationships can be developed and nurtured—within and across neighbourhoods and among transit riders and workers. and of course, without these things, the campaign will go nowhere. among the strengths of the free transit campaign is its potential to foreground and develop an analysis of our collective stake in the protection of public goods. it is not difficult to talk about public goods in the context of mass transportation infrastructure. the shared benefits of public transportation are difficult to deny, particularly in a city as large and as sprawling as toronto. even setting aside the obvious ecological imperatives that should be driving public investment in greener infrastructure, there are powerful economic reasons to support a massive re-investment in ontario’s transportation sector. a serious effort to expand the reach and accessibility of the public transit system would serve not only to ease the burden of toronto’s most vulnerable residents and reduce the economic and health costs associated with air pollution and traffic congestion: such an investment could re-direct the wasted skills and resources embodied in ontario’s laid-off auto-workers and silent auto-plants, which could be converted to the production of high efficiency mass transit vehicles. as sam gindin and leo panitch (2010) argued recently in the toronto star, public borrowing to finance such investments represents not a wasteful burden on future generations, but a commitment to securing them a future. the real squandering of our collective resources lies not in public borrowing or benefits packages for public employees, but in our failure to direct existing skills, knowledge, and material capacities into a coherent strategy for building sustainable communities. the idea of a free transit movement immediately foregrounds a number of thorny strategic questions for the left in toronto: how to build trust, dialogue, and support for a free transit movement within the transit union; how to address and re-focus the widespread anger, mistrust, and resentment directed at the public sector in the current climate; how to sustain and advance anti-capitalist principles while building productive relationships within broader progressive milieux. navigating these questions will be challenging, and the assembly is still a long way from a coherent and systematic approach to answering them. but the fact that these questions surface so quickly and urgently is a positive sign of the ambition and seriousness with which the assembly is approaching the organization of a free transit movement. the free transit campaign will push the assembly to develop further its internal organizational and decision-making capacities, but it will also demand an outward-looking, inclusive process, in which the assembly’s role is to open space for debate, dialogue, and collective strategizing. the keynesian revival: a marxian critique 122 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research in fact, the transit system itself can provide the venue for us to stage public discussions about our collective resources and to share alternative visions for our city: the transit system is a readymade classroom, theatre, and art gallery, attended every day by people who could come to recognize their stake in the de-commodification of public goods of many kinds. my hope is that toronto’s buses, streetcars, and subway platforms could be places for experimentation, places to develop the new tactics, organizing skills, and relationships that might permit us to really depart from the prevailing script. references dealy w. (2010). the greater toronto workers’ assembly: building a space of solidarity, resistance, change. relay, 30, 27-28. gindin s, and l. panitch. public sector austerity unreasonable and irrational. toronto star. retrieved on august 25, 2010 from, http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/ article/837616--public-sector-austerity-unreasonable-and-irrational. greater toronto workers assembly. retrieved on september 9, 2010 from, www.workersassembly.ca harvey d. (2008). the right to the city. new left review. 53, 23-40. rosenfeld h, and c. fanelli. (2010). a new type of political organization? the greater toronto workers assembly. mr zine: a project of the monthly review foundation. retrieved on august 23, 2010 from, http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/rf050810.html. stanford j. (2005). free public transit on the dirty brown horizon? the globe and mail. retrieved on august 12, 2010 from, http://freepublictransit.org/jim_stanford.php. toronto board of trade. (2010). the move ahead: funding ‘the big move’. retrieved on september 12, 2010from, http://www.bot.com/am/template.cfm?section=growing_the_ economy&template=/cm/contentdisplay.cfm&contentid=4702. toronto environmental alliance. (2009). transit commission briefing note ttc operating budget 2010: fare increase. retrieved on september 8, 2010 from, http://www.torontoenvironment. org/campaigns/transit/fareincrease2010. transit funding challenges for toronto’s communities -interview with deb cowen. metro morning. canada: canadian broadcasting corporation march 29, 2010: runtime 8:03; http:// www.cbc.ca/metromorning/2010/03/transit-funding-challenges-for-torontos-communitiesruns-803.html world charter on the right to the city. (2004). social forum of the americas, quito, ecuador. retrieved on september 12, 2010 from, http://v1.dpi.org/lang-en/events/details.php?page=124. 326 | climate change and its discontents book review josé carlos mariátegui: an anthology by harry e. vanden and marc becker, editors and translators. new york, ny: monthly review press, 2011. $29.95 us, paper. isbn: 978-1-58367245-7. pages: 1-480. matthew hawkins1 carleton university josé carlos mariátegui, the noted peruvian marxist activist and intellectual, wrote in 1925 that “each era wishes to have its own sense of the world” (p.386-387). to create a ‘sense of the world’ – achieved through a contextual and historical analysis of the contemporary reality – for mariátegui is the opening for transforming the dominant social relations. harry e. vanden and marc becker in their introduction to the anthology put forward mariátegui as an important non-dogmatic marxist thinker worth our attention amidst unfolding global political and economic crises. as a major influence on latin american heterodox approaches to marxism as well as other critical intellectual trends including decolonialist, dependency, and liberation theology perspectives, mariátegui has been an important reference for many movements and political actors from the region in their challenges to neoliberalism and global capitalism. mariategui’s seven interpretive essays on peruvian reality (first published as a collection in 1928), representing one of the first comprehensive marxist text from a latin american perspective, is an examination of the racial and class relations and the underlying vestiges of colonial feudalism in peru’s political economy. beyond this publication, much of mariátegui’s writing appears in the form of short articles and essays that were printed in newspapers and popular critical journals, as well as printed discourses to unions and political organizations. many of these texts, rarely translated into english, provide the basis for much of this anthology. mariátegui was born on june 14th, 1894 in moquegua, peru, a small southern provincial capital, and raised in a working-class household by his single-mother. he began a career in journalism at the lima news1 matthew hawkins is a phd candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university. book review: josé carlos mariátegui | 327 paper la prensa where he eventually began writing on high society, literature and art. in 1919, mariátegui and césar falcón founded the political paper la razon. both falcón and mariátegui were exiled to europe by the military government of augusto leguía in october 1919 for their radical and critical viewpoints. in the following four years, mariátegui spent time in barcelona, paris and northern italy where he was exposed to the revolutionary-focused writing of georges sorel and italian critical thinkers in turin and became a committed marxist. returning to peru in 1923, he was invited to lecture at the universidad popular and interacted with organized labour in lima. mariátegui continued to be a target of surveillance and political imprisonment by the leguía government, which exacerbated his already poor health. mariátegui’s intellectual endeavours increased in this period: he founded the socialist-focused journal amauta – meaning “teacher” in kichwa – in 1926, participated in the formation of the partido socialista del peru (socialist party of peru) in 1928, and published the seven interpretative essays in the same year. deteriorating health and ongoing political pressure encouraged mariátegui to consider leaving peru once again in 1930; mariátegui died that year on april 15th from health complications that had persisted for most of his life. one of mariátegui’s greatest contributions to a revolutionary marxist perspective stems from his emphasis on mutual interactions of the working class and indigenous people as potentially creative producers of new social realities. mariátegui argued that in peru the “indian problem” – better understood he argues as the “problem of land” –emerged not from racial or cultural differences but the inequalities created by the colonial political economy and its particular vestiges left by an incomplete liberal revolution (p.69-115). mariátegui noted the resistance and resilience of indigenous people throughout the colonial process: the history of indigenous struggles against colonialism (p.147) and the continued reproduction of alternative non-capitalist and non-feudalist relations of production in contemporary indigenous communities (p.97). challenging marxist scepticism of rural ‘peasantry’, mariátegui encouraged the urban proletariat to form an engaged relationship with indigenous activists as equal participants in the revolutionary transformation of the peruvian political economy (p.142; 239; 322). for mariátegui, a socialist revolution only emerges by a process of creative and collective engagement of people acting with an understanding of their historical realities. vanden and becker have selected and organized selections in the anthology into thematic categories including sections on indigenismo, 328 | climate change and its discontents myth, imperialism, women, and marxism and socialism – which is based on a large selection from mariátegui’s defence of marxism. academics may find that mariátegui’s brief articles individually rarely achieve theoretical or conceptual depth. through the organization of the anthology, however, each theme develops into a more holistic perspective demonstrating the peruvian’s complex and nuanced marxist understanding. the trade off in this organization is that the chronological development of mariátegui’s thought is obscured. as an activist intellectual, mariátegui’s writing often responded to and engaged with particular historical moments and organizational relationships – particularly with other anti-imperialist movements in peru and the developing influence of the comintern in south america. a pragmatic intellectual engagement that responded to the immediate political situation underlined important parts of mariátegui’s thought. while reading this anthology the reader should reflect on the contextual development of his arguments. mariátegui’s prose in rare moments suffers from the translation, which leads to awkward phrasing and the loss of some of the nuances. unfortunately notes were not written by the translators to explain their difficulties and translation choices. in the context of exposing an englishreading audience to mariátegui, however, the anthology is very readable and fairly precise. in the 1928 anniversary and balance sheet at the end of amauta’s second publication year mariátegui wrote: “history is endurance. the isolated cry, no matter how large its echo, is not valid; the constant continual persistent sermon is what matters. ideas that are perfect, absolute, abstract, indifferent to the facts, to changing and moving reality do not work; ideas that are germinal, concrete, dialectic, workable, rich in potential and capable of movement do” (p.127). mariátegui is a powerful example of an engaged intellectual whose ideas have contributed to latin america’s political transformations; greater attention by english readers is long overdue. vanden and becker’s anthology is an encouraging start. alternate routes a critical review editorial board: marybelle myers, daniel sansfacon, erika van meurs the previous editors jim conley and joan st. laurent were involved in selecting papers for this issue. distribution and promotion: joseph cooper, brian mokee illustrations: alwin and erika van meurs a iternate routes is an annual publication of graduate students in sociology and anthropology . manuscripts , subscriptions and communications should be addressed to: alternate routes department of sociology and anthropology carleton university ottawa, ontario, canada k1s sb6 the editioral board wishes to establish a genuine forum for the exchange of ideas. we welcome critical responses , commentaries or rejoinders , which we will endeavour to publish in subsequent issues. the editors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the carleton university community : the department of sociology and anthropology and its chairperson, gordon irving; the dean of social sciences, dennis forcese; the graduate students ' association and the sociology and anthropology graduate students' caucus. ue also wish to thank bev cruikshank for : iministrative assistance . subscriptions : individuals and institutions: $3.50. make cheques payable to alternate routes. copyright 1982, alternate routes, unless otherwise noted. prin:nada. alternate routes vol 5 1982 editorial la revue alternate routes est publide par les etudiants gradues du departement de soaiologie et d'anthropologie de i'universite carleton. la revue se veut une alternative offerte aux etudiants desireux de developper une connaissance critique et de partiaiper aux debats actuels dans la societe canadienne . reconnaissant les contradictions inherentes a cette societe aussi bien qu'aux sciences sociales, nous rejetons d' emblee les divisions traditionnelles du savoir. notre objectif est done de contribuer au developpement d'une pensee originale qui ne s'enferme plus dans les orthodoxies du pouvoir mais ouvre sur une vision radicale de la societe canadienne. nous invitons done les etudiants que concernent ces questions a nous soumettre leurs articles . dans ce volume, les deux premiers articles 8 'adressent au probleme des petits producteurs independants . christensen analyse la crise de la production fruitiere dans la vallee de i'okanagan en colombie-britannique; myers, de son cqte, etudie le dsveloppement des cooperatives d'etat chez les inuit suite a i 'extinction du marche de la fourrure . dans le premier article publii en francais dans la revue, sansfacon explore quelques-uns des problemes relies a une lecture marxiste du droit, en analysant une decision juridique . s 'attardant aussi aux luttes en colombie-britannique , edelson relate les tendances dans les relations de travail au niveau des gouvernement8 locaux et soutient qu'une alliance entre les travailleurs des services publics et les consommateurs de ces services est essentielle au syndicalisme dans ce secteur . enfin, robinson s 'insere dans le debet marxiste sur la division entre travail manuel et travail intellectuel pour defendre i'argument que les colleges communautaires idgitiment les relations politiques de domination dans le procea de travail. soulignons enfin, que dans la veine de notre editorial, le prochain volume de la revue sera consacre aux articles touchant les questions feminines . editorial statement a iternate routes is a journal published by the graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university . the journal offers an alternative to students attempting to develop critical knowledge and to participate in continuing debates in canadian society. acknowledging the inherent contradictions in this society, as well as in the social sciences , we reject the traditional division of knowledge . it is our purpose to contribute to the development of thought which is critical of conventional science and open to a radical vision of canadian society and we invite papers from graduate students concerned with these issues . in the current issue, two contributions deal with independent commodity production. christensen addresses the crisis in fruit farming in the okanagan valley in british columbia and myers looks at the rise of state-sponsored co-operatives among the inuit after the collapse of the fur trade. in the first french paper published by a iternate routes , sansf'aeon explores some of the problems related to a marxist reading of law by way of a concrete analysis of a juridical decision. yet another paper dealing with struggles in british columbia comes from edelson who looks at trends in management-labour relations in local government and argues .for an alliance between civic workers and consumers of their services . finally, robinson enters the marxist debate on the division between manual and mental labour to argue that community colleges legitimize political relations in the labour process. in line with our emphasis on provocative analysis of contemporary issues, our next volume will be devoted to papers on women. biographical sketches erling christensen obtained his b.a. (sociology and political science) from simon fraser university and his m.a. (sociology ) from carleton university . he worked as a research coordinator with the canadian farmworkers' union. he is presently finishing a dissertation on the political economy of agriculture at simon fraser university . miriam edelson completed her b.a. hon. (political science) at mcmaster (1980). she is currently studying for an m.a. in political science at carleton university . she is president of cupe 2222, carleton'8 student assistants' union. the paper presented here is based on ongoing research on public sector unionization. marybelle myers obtained her b.a. (eng lit) in 1962 from trinity college, university of toronto. she taught in the northwest territories for two years, from 1965 to 1967 and was manager of project development for arctic quebec co-operatives from 1970 to 1980. her m.a. (sociology ) was obtained at mcgill university in 1978 and she is now a doctoral candidate at carleton university . david robinson obtained his b.a. hon. (sociology ) from st. francis xavier university in 1980. he is currently writing his m.a. thesis in sociology , on community colleges , at carleton university . daniel sansfaeon received his b.a. (psychology ) and m.a. (criminology ) from ottawa university in 1976 and 1981 respectively . he is presently a graduate student in the doctoral program in sociology at carleton university . his "tain research interests focus on the sociology of law and on the organization of social control . a critical review vol. 5, 1982 contents erling v. christensen aspects of the crisis in petit commodity production in the okanagan valley 1 marybelle myers beyond the fur trade: the rise and fall of the eskimo co-operative 27 daniel sansfacon sujet de droit et sujets de droit: de la pratique juridique au pluriel 67 miriam edelson accountable to whom? trends in managementlabour relations in local government 95 david robinson community colleges and the division between mental and manual labour 133 fiasfjusou jb. itz-ite (x6lst&q&j /d.l-zs aspects of the crisis in petit commodity production in the okanagan valley erling v. christensen petit commodity production in agriculture has been undergoing changes since 1945, with the general trend being towards increased capitalization of production. co-operative organization of production and distribution has enabled producers in the okanagan valley to resist, to a certain extent, the encroachment of capital. a crisis exists, nonetheless , in petit commodity production due to a pending breakdown of the co-operative structure as well as rising land prices due to speculation. les changements intervenus dans la petite production agriculturale depuis 1945 ddnotent une tendance croissante vers la capitalisation de la production. l' organisation cooperative de la production et de la distribution a permis aux producteurs de la vallee de i 'okanagan de resister, jusqu'a un certain point, a cet envahissement du capital. toutefois , en raison de sdrieuses difficultes dans la structure cooperative et des hausses du prix des terres dues a la speculation, la petite production indspendante traverse prisentement un etat de arise. alternate routes vol. 5 1982 2 introduction petit commodity production has, historically, been the basis of agricultural production in canada. although this basis has been transformed into larger capitalist units in some spheres of agricultural production, it has persisted in others. consequently, much debate has developed in recent years over the concept of petit commodity production and its role in canadian agriculture. in this paper, i focus on petit commodity production as a specific form of production. my argument is that, in the okanagan valley of british columbia, this form of tree fruit production persists, not as an isolated instance that exists in spite of a changing capitalist economy, but rather as a part of it. its persistence is due, in part, to the collective action of independent producers and their complementary roles in the larger capitalist economy. however, as independent producers in a capitalist economy they cannot escape the imminence of class struggle. it is, in fact, the contradictions inherent in their participation in the dominant capitalist economy that are responsible both for their persistence as independent producers and the severe crisis in their ability to continue as such. these contradictions are both external and internal. the internal contradictions become manifest, in part, by a crisis in collective responses to stave off transformation. the external contradictions become manifest, in part, by the pressures on agricultural land by state and capital. the most important structural element of independent commodity production in the tree fruit industry in the okanagan 3 valley has been the co-operative structure known as the british columbia fruit growers association (bcfga) . this co-operative structure developed as an attempt to protect and rationalize an industry dominated by independent producers. it has enabled producers to band together and to put some logic into both production and marketing. the bcfga has, however, been unable to control marketing. it has to compete with imports for the same market and, consequently, some producers have split from the organization and gone completely independent or have set up competing corporate structures. this split in the protective umbrella of the co-operative structure has created a crisis in both production and marketing in the industry as a whole. another important factor has been the limited land available in the okanagan, a narrow valley, affected by favourable climatic conditions not existing elsewhere in the province. some land has become available with increased technological advances in irrigation and fertilizing, but, as a whole, suitable land for tree fruit production remains limited. since land is at a premium for the agricultural industry, as well as the recreation industry , reproduction and/or transformation of petit commodity producers is contingent upon the availability and price of land. in turn, these factors affect the returns of agricultural production. there have been attempts to keep the price of agricultural land at artificially lower prices by putting a freeze on non-agricultural development, in spite of land protection, however, speculation and rising prices are reappearing, due to the pressure of recreational alternate routes vol. 5 1982 development as well as to. the inconsistency of the social credit government in removing certain parcels of land from the agricultural land reserves. these important aspects of independent commodity production -co-operative structure and land availability and price -have undergone some critical changes which have created a crisis in both the industry and in the viability of petit commodity producers to reproduce themselves as an economic unit. as i argue, this crisis will accelerate the contradictory forces affecting independent commodity producers in a capitalist dominated mode of production. the outcome of this accelerated class struggle is dealt with at the end of this paper. petit commodity production agricultural production in british columbia is generally organized into small independent production units, relying primarily upon family, as opposed to wage labour, a crucial distinction in the production of commodities (marx, 1967b: 548). in family production units there is virtually no distinction between capital and labour. the producer owns the means of production and is directly engaged in labour as one aspect of the relations of production. consequently, petit commodity production has been seen as constituting an independent mode of production. the conditions of petit commodity producers are, however, such that one cannot talk of an independent mode of production existing within a dominant capitalist mode of production (marx, 1967a:713). the merging of labour and capital is generally thought of as a transitory stage of development from feudalism to capitlaism, not expected to persevere in any significant form under the onslaught of capitalist development within an increasingly dominant capitalist mode of production (marx, 1967a : 7 13-716; 1971:810,812-813). herein lies the crux of the problem: why has petit commodity production persisted in agriculture for over a hundred years of capital development? or, to put it differently, why has agricultural production not been fully "rationalized" within the capitalist mode of production? there have been a number of recent attempts to develop a theoretical explanation of the persistence of independent commodity production and its varying rates of transformation. for, while it is true that it has per sisted, especial] y in agricultural production, it has also been changed and, even, transformed, in certain areas and spheres of production. petit commodity production persists, changes and transforms, 'then, in reaction to pressures and changes in the dominant capitalist mode of production. it has been argued by some that petit commodity production in agriculture, or "the family farm" is an apparition, or fossilized left-over from a previous time, and as such, must be understood in isolation (hedley, 1976:414). others argue that it is inevitable that small independent holdings will become part of a large corporate or capitalist structure (burbach and flynn,1980; hedley ,1976a) . such analyses, however, have found it difficult to explain the persistence of petit commodity production. they have been even less successful at explaining the small holding's contribution to and role in the larger economy. some have even argued that alternate routes vol. 5 1982 scale is of primary importance and that "... large farm units are necessary to allow efficient production of agricultural commodities" (flynn and buttel, 1980:949). agricultural organization in japan, denmark and france, as well as certain sectors in canadian agriculture, however, serves to refute that argument. one of the more insightful attempts to analyze the role of petit commodity production in agriculture is that of susan mann and james dickinson, who argue that the persistence of petit commodity production is due to "... an excess of production time over labour time..., labour recruitment problems, a lower rate of profit, and complications in the smooth realization of value in the sphere of circulation (1978:478)." this appears to be the first clear attempt to provide answers to why such forms persist. mann and dicikinson argue that it is the nature of agricultural production which creates the obstacles for capitalist development. in agriculture, much time is devoted to "natural processes" of growth before labour time is expended to produce value. during the intervals between planting and harvesting, for example, neither value nor surplus value is created (1978:472). they make a strong argument, separating "unproductive" ("of value) production time from "productive" (of value) production time. in computing value, they take into account labour invested in activities such as fertilizing and pruning, which create increases in production, hence, in value, but they eliminate activities such as tractor maintenance and shed building, which they consider to be nonvalue producing labour. such labour may be necessary to 7 production but it does not "create" value. the authors go on to link the possibilities of agricultural production with the problems of circulation, agreeing with marx that, although the circulation sphere produces no value, it is necessary in order that surplus value may be realized. the speed of circulation, for instance is important to capital; for, the quicker the turn-over, the quicker capital is required to renew the process. in canada, however, this process is determined, to a large extent, by climate which necessitates quick start-up of a new production cycle. nonetheless, circulation time is still of utmost importance, especially in the sphere of fresh fruit production. certain agricultural commodities, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, do not store well and require a quick turn-over in order to realize the full potential surplus value. purchasers of such commodities are not likely to buy at prices reflecting the cost and profit if the commodity is in the process of spoiling. while other agricultural commodities have benefitted by increased technology in cold storage facilities and transportation systems, fresh products still pose a firm or "absolute" limit for the circuit of commodity capital (mann and dickinson, 1987:475; marx, 1967b:131). as a consequence, capital has been slow to move into the production sector in most spheres of agricultural production. this limitation does not, of course, affect food grown for processing and in that sector there is already substantial involvement of capital. another attempt to analyze the persistence of petit commodity forms of production in agriculture has been undertaken alternate routes vol. s 1982 by carol maclennon and richard walker, who argue that the number of "family-owned and operated" farms has been declining and that the rural class structure is undergoing dramatic changes (1980:22). their contention is that a new "agrarian bourgeoisie with roots in the traditional family farms" will emerge from this crisis to create "a polarized structure, dominated by a small but powerful agrarian bourgeoisie" f 1980: 20) . the reason they give for the lack of corporate or "agribusiness" development is, however, superficial. they simply state that industrial corporations do not want to be bothered with direct agricultural production. big capital... has found it more advantageous in certain crops to contract with small farmers for their products rather than to invest directly in production (1980:3). they offer no explanation as to why this is so but, if their argement is put into the context established by mann and dickinson, there is, i believe, the possibility of further theoretical development. the major focus of the argument made by maclennon and walker is the changing rural class structure. illustration 1 is an attempt to graphically expand their argument, the crux of which is that family farm production is doomed to become a capitalist unit of production with a number of these farmers/owners being proletarianized into a combination of owner/of f -farm labourers. as we shall see later, however, family farm production has options which will delay this transformation, if not stop it altogether in certain spheres such as fresh fruit production. maclennon and walker argue further that increased labour productivity with increased debt to meet the cost price squeeze (where the costs of production, including heavy finance charges to banks and other lending agencies, greatly outdistance returns to the producer) will generate an increased reliance on wage labour at which point the "farm is pushed to become a capitalist unit of production" (1980:36). the difference between the development of a new "agrarian bourgeoisie" and the integration of agribusiness into industrial capital is not exlained sufficiently. illustration 1 the changing rural class structure (proletarianization of farm classes) family owner operators combination owner/wage earner in town sion small medium farmer edged out family farm production maintained through increases in family labour productivity + an attempt to solve the debt-income squeeze by combining increased debt with exploitation of a low wage labour force growth of agribusiness + increased mechanization as a way of increasing profits \r vertical integration with processors, distributors and retailers to maximize surplus value .v horizontal integration 4at this point the family farm is pushed to become a capitalist unit of agricultural production again, this argument could be made more attractive if combined with the argument made by mann and dickinson. this would help to clarify the dynamics of production which encourages expansion and integreation in certain spheres of production and alternate routes vol. 5 1982 10 consolidation and change, which maintains smaller "independent" units in other spheres. at any rate, both argue that capital integration is not inevitable (at least into the industrial sectors) for reasons which lie in the peculiarities of agricultural production which puts obstacles in the way of capital's need and development. while it is true that petit commodity production has persisted, it is also true that it. is in a state of constant turmoil. petit commodity producers are pressured and hemmed in in every direction. capital has developed control of production at both the input and the output side of agricultural production. the input level is dominated by capital in the areas of seed and fertilizer production, pesticides, farm machinery, etc. the output level is dominated in such areas as processing, wholesaling and retailing, as well as in the provision of transportation and storage facilities. this squeeze on the "independent" producer has the effect of increasing their dependence to the point where they can no longer control costs and prices or returns on their production. in fact, in certain instances and in certain spheres of petit commodity production in agriculture, it can be argued that the producer, far from being in control, is, rather, in possession of "sham property". as marx argues (the merchant) buys their (the independent producer's) labour and takes their property first in the form of the product, and soon after that the instrument as well, or he leaves it to them as sham property in order to reduce his own production costs (1973:510). this argument has been developed by hegedus in his distinction between ownership and possession of the means of production 11 (1976:95). the producer may "own" his property but the corporations which sell and buy from the producer may enjoy a"restricted-ownership exercise" or possession of the producer's means of production, labour power and product. the producer has often been forced to take conventional steps in order to survive such as increasing debt and attempts to increase productivity. as bernard bernier has so convincingly shown in his analysis of quebec agriculture, however, scale is "not a guarantee of rising income; for, the increase in productivity is more than offset by larger increases in expenses" (1976: 431). the same can be said of increased labour exploitation. as the percentage of labour costs goes up, so do management costs. at a certain level, the economic unit will either transform into a "capital" unit or it will have to increase labour productivity by further mechanization which, in turn, increases debt. this debt is not necessarily met with an increase in the price of the commodity. increases in debt are, in fact, often an important stage in the transformation of petit commodity producers or proletarianized labour (marx, 1971:435-441). other attempts which have been more successful in maintaininj independent units of production have been the development of marketing boards and co-operative structures as mechanisms to rationalize costs, production and price. these attempts help to develop a solution to the pressures of capital upon agricultural production. as marx argues: the moral of history... is that the capitalist system works against a rational agriculture, or that a rational agriculture is incompatible with the capitalist system . . . and needs either the alternate routes vol. 5 1982 12 small farmer living on his own labour or the control of associated producers (1971:121). what works specifically against a "rational" agriculture for capitalism is the long periods of "non-productive" (of value) time where large amounts of capital are tied up but create no value as well as factors such as climate and soil conditions which affect the production process and restrict the circulation of capital. it has also become increasingly difficult to exist strictly by one's own labour, due to the control over the input levels by capital and to land prices which do not reflect agricultural productivity. in response, many producers have formed associated organizations or co-operatives. petit commodity production in the okanagan valley tree fruit production in the okanagan valley has long been organized along co-operative lines. since 1939, singledesk selling (marketing control by one agency) through the grower owned british columbia tree fruits limited (bctf) has controlled the marketing of tree fruits in that province. as well as marketing control, the bctf has expanded into processing under the name of sun-rype limited and into controlled atmosphere storage under the name of british columbia fresh storage limited. these companies all come under the nominal control of the british columbia tree fruit growers association (bcfga). the 2200 members of the bcfga constitute the vast majority of the tree fruit producers in the okanagan valley. in the valley there are 2703 farms under crops and 91.6 per cent of these farms are classified as individual or family owned and operated farms. of the total number of crop producers 65.4 per cent are engaged in tree fruit production. 13 table 1 farms in the okanagan valley type acres % of growers % of land part-time 2-5 22 6 small commercial 5 -25 58 57 medium commercial 25 -60 8 24 large commercial 60 plus 1 11 these farms are generally small in size and, for the purpose of this study, are broken into four distinct categories (table 1) with 80 per cent of all tree fruit producers farming less than 25 acres, petit commodity production is the most common type of enterprise. these farms rely primarily upon family labour. the average small commercial farm will hire five to seven pickers at various times over a four month period to pick fruit as it ripens. it is estimated that wage labour constitutes 20 to 30 2 per cent of the total yearly labour. of the two larger categories, medium commercial farms rely to a greater extent on wage labour (estimated at 30 to 60 per cent of the total labour depending upon a number of variables such as family size and type of crop produced) , while the large commercial farm is a capitalist unit of production with more than 60 per cent reliance on wage labour. in my study, any farm requiring over 50 per cent wage labour is not considered a family owned and operated farm (mann and dickinson, 1978:477). the majority of production is destined for the fresh fruit market, a crucial market if small independent producers are to realize a price for their produce sufficiently high to allow them to continue production. fruit destined for processing is alternate routes vol. 5 1982 14 designated as "culls", and realizes only one third of the price of fresh fruit. the returns on processed fruit are, however, beginning to climb, comparatively, due to huge increases in packing costs of fresh fruit. for example, in 1972, packing costs represented 37.4 per cent of the total returns on all fruit commodities. this proportion of the cost has risen steadily and, by 1976, it constituted over 50 per cent of total returns (table 2) . table 2 british columbia tree fruits limited distribution of the sales dollar all commodities % 30grower — return to naked fruit packinghouse operation costs igencr «ium1 • fwoooctiom cott» taiiui acaimst iu.1 197« source: british columbia tree fruits limited annual reports. 15 this has created a problem for the grower in that the price of the commodity has not risen accordingly. the returns on apples and pears, for example, have remained constant in terms of sales value, and grower returns have decreased from approximately five cents a pound to less than three cents a pound (select standing committee on agriculture, 1978:10). the combined effects of climbing costs and diminishing returns has put the independent producers into a precarious position. this problem is exacerbated by the bctf's inability to generate fresh fruit markets capable of absorbing the majority of fruit produced. in certain commodities, the bctf has been unable to market even 50 per cent of the production. a case in point is cherries. in 1978, only 30 per cent of all cherries produced could be marketed through the association. consequently, much of the cherry production was marketed independently on roadside stands, the alternative being to have them designated as culls receiving a lower return. vast quantities were also sold to "fruitleggers" , or, directly, to wholesalers and retailers. the developing crisis in the industry's inability to market all of the fruit production through the bctf exploded in 1974. after numerous demonstrations and battles with the police, dissident growers put enough pressure on the provincial ndp government to have marketing restrictions lifted. this was done by instituting a farm income assurance program which would pay all farmers who stayed in the bcfga the difference between production and marketing quotas when the need arose. the only criterion for benefit would be marketing through the bctf. alternate routes vol. 5 1982 16 this development gave growers the legitimate right to sell independently, but as a consequence they would be struck from the bcfga and thus not be eligible for assurance benefits. even though most growers did not opt out of the bcfga, independent sales were, however, not curtailed. many farmers play both sides of the fence, selling to the bctf , in order to claim assurance benefits from the government, and then selling the remainder to "fruitrunners" from the lower mainland and alberta. according to government figures, more than 20 per cent of fruit production is sold outside agency control (select standing committee on agriculture, 1978:24), although some estimates are that up to 50 per cent of all producers are involved in this scheme (vancouver sun : june 19,1978:3). certainly, fruitlegging has become a lucrative business in the valley. in the 1960's it was common for a few people to arrive with half -ton trucks, buy fruit and then travel to alberta to sell if from roadside stands. by the mid-1970' s, fleets of semi -trailers were arriving to purchase 100 per cent of some farmers' production in commodities such as cherries. the fruitrunners would then travel throughout british columbia and the prairies, undercutting major retailers. this had the effect of pressure being put on the bcfga by major wholesalers and retailers, who threatened not to purchase through them if they did not control or clean up the industry. in fact, one of the major wholesalers and retailers in western canada is already being supplied outside the bctf. kelly douglas and super-valu (a part of the weston chain) is now purchasing from a newly formed, independent corporation. 17 two dissident growers, ronald fournier and graeme nelson, broke away from the bcfga and set up their own corporation, black sage orchards, which sells directly to kelly douglas. in 1979, this new corporation was being supplied by 75 orchardists and marketedin excess of 3/4 million pounds of apples to the weston empire. they undersold the bctf by a sufficient amount to enable super-valu to sell apples at twenty cents per pound below its competitors' price ( the province , october 5,1979:a2). safeway, the other major retailer in western canada, is contemplating following suit. the major saving that these "independents" have achieved is in the packaging of the fruit. since, for example, they do not wax and individually pack apples, they can realise a higher profit than they can on the returns they receive from the bctf. they can still sell cheaper to the wholesalers and retailers than the bctf can. the long term effect of this trend will be to erode industry protection of single-desk marketing. this, in turn, will allow large wholesalers and retailers to play producers off against each other. potentially, this situation may create a severe economic crisis among petit commodity producers in the valley, one from which they may not recover. at this stage, larger productive units will become increasingly viable and necessary. and, with larger productive units, mechanization and production for processing become possible. the advantages of discord in the industry for capital, whether processors, wholesalers or retailers, are obvious. discord allows increasing control and the merging of okanagan tree fruit production into a capitalist organized and alternate routes vol. 5 1982 18 controlled market. this may allow the producers to remain owners of their property but they will have lost more of what they possess as a result of their production by losing the ability to even partially determine price by control over marketing. in order for that to occur, the protection that petit commodity producers have provided for themselves must be eroded. a second factor creating pressure on petit commodity producers in the okanagan valley is that of agricultural land prices. the price of farm land in the okanagan has been going up rapidly, in spite of the freeze put on agricultural land bv the creation of the agricultural land reserves. these reserves were created to protect agricultural land for future use and thus to aid the survival of viable farm units. this was seen as an important step in protecting british columbia agriculture. prime agricultural land in the province occupies less than 1 per cent of the total land area. land suitable for fruit production occupies only l/100th of 1 per cent of the land area (british columbia land commission, 1975 : 5) . agricultural land is generally "lost" through three related processes (environment canada, 1978 : 4-4) . the first is through direct conversion to urban, commercial, industrial, or transport use. the second is through indirect urban impacts such as recreational development. the third is through economic decline and uncertainty in the agricultural industry. in the okanagan, pressures to take over farm land are generally related to growth in the recreation industry and urban growth. unfortunately for the agricultural industry in the valley, 19 lake frontage, the most desirable land, is also prime agricultural land. although the vast majority of producers support legislation protecting farm land (environment canada, 1978:73), organizations such as the okanagan mainland real estate board, various construction firms, and municipal councils frequently put pressure on the provincial cabinet to "unfreeze" certain land. others, such as private entrepreneurs with known social credit affiliation, have put pressure on the government to take land out of the reserve. a prime example is that of tom capozzi, a long-time social credit party supporter, who attempted to remove 1400 acres for subdivision into "ranchettes" to be sold to retiring albertans. he was so confident about the successful outcome of his application that he went ahead with subdivision and roadbuilding before a formal decision was made. while still under protection, the price of his land rose from $350 an acre in 1972 to $1750 an acre in 1979 (vancouver sun , october 27 , 1979 :a10) . this speculation in reserve land is not unusual in the okanagan valley, nor in the province as a whole. the implementation of land reserves has had two immediate effects: a rise in land prices for non-reserve land and demands for exclusion of certain lands from reserve protection. this also had the effect of increasing the price of protected land since the government has been amenable to passing orders-incouncil to release land, upon request, bypassing the protective commission. this made speculating in agricultural reserve land, for eventual removal, quite lucrative. alternate routes vol. 5 1982 20 two related pressures developed on agricultural petit commodity production. further growth through the acquisition of more land was stunted, and secondly, younger or new producers were discouraged from entering agriculture. a number of producers, being squeezed by an increasing price/debt trap, became quite amenable to selling out. the only way a number of producers stood to gain from their enterprise was to sell out and reap the benefits of rapidly rising land prices. rather than attempting to discourage speculation in agricultural land, the provincial government fed the uncertainty of land protection through erratic approval of apllication for land reserve removals. conclusion the net effect of problems in the co-operative organization of tree fruit production and the protected today/ >;one tomorrow land policies of the provincial government is a crisis in petit commodity production in the okanagan. it is a crisis that has very real consequences for the maintenance and reproduction of petit commodity production as the basis of agriculture in the valley. in terms of maintenance and reproduction, land prices ire too high to encourage the upcoming generation of producers to enter farming. land prices further encourage the selling of agricultural land to reap the benefits of high prices. this may suit present growers, but it will have devastating effects on future agricultural production. if the land is not removed from production through sales, then it will likely be transformed into larger capital units, either directly 21 controlled by a newly developing agrarian bourgeoisie or controlled by a hired manager on behalf of a non-farming owner or corporate enterprise holding the land for speculation. in either case, the land is removed from fresh fruit production. the so-called "new agrarian bourgeoisie" will likely mechanize and grow crops for processing since fresh fruit production is too labour intensive to be profitable. non-farming owners may be expected to remove agricultural land from production and turn it into more profitable parking lots or condominium projects geared to the tourist industry. the second aspect of the crisis in petit commodity production, that of strains in the protective umbrella of single-desk selling, has accentuated the attractiveness of selling out. this occurs w"hen sufficient income cannot be generated through' production. the crisis in co-operation in the valley has the potential of accelerating the transformation of production to larger units of production. it likewise has the potential to increase the necessity of having to augment family income by off -farm labour, if complete bankrupcy is to be avoided. there is, of course, also the possibility that the petit commodity producers will weather this storm, as they have others in the past. this time, however, they are beset by other problems. the importation of cheap fresh and processed products has cut into the industry's share of the market and farm labour problems are increasing and will lead to higher labour costs. last year, the newly formed canadian farmworkers' union started organizing in the valley. this will alternate routes vol. 5 1982 22 put pressure on the small producer and help accelerate the transformation of the industry away from petit commodity based productive units. also, the costs of increasing productivity through technology are growing at a faster rate than are the returns on production. in conclusion, the basis of the crisis of continued existence of petit commodity producers lies in the relationship between petty commodity producers and the larger capitalist economy. numerous pressures, two of which are dealt with in this paper, are brought to bear on these producers. as a class, they are waging a constant struggle with the larger capitalist economy to avoid being swallowed up or proletar ianized. their long-term survival prospects seem bleak. they have always been bleak. historically, they have played a role compatible with the needs of the larger capitalist economy and it is far from clear that this role has ceased. independent producers have persevered, creating new solutions to contradictions which in turn generate new contradictions requiring new solutions. their survival is due, in part to the nature of agricultural production, and, in part, to the needs of capital. it is not always beneficial for corporate capital to enter all spheres of production. 23 notes the same climatic conditions which make tree fruit production possible, also make this area a very desirable place for recreational activities, including a commodified tourist industry. farmers and speculators in the tourist industry are competing for the same land, the price of which increasingly reflects the higher prices that the investors in the recreation industry can offer. it is difficult to compare the exact amount of wage labour with family labour due to the lack of compatible statistical dat a .however , the small commercial and part-time farms hire wage labour only at peak picking times and during the rest of the year rely upon family labour . the estimate of 20 to 30 per cent hired labour comes from a comparison of farm labour pool data, census data and interviews with farmers. the estimates for the larger units were somewhat easier due to more permanent employment of wage labour and clearer statistical data. "fruitleggers" and "fruitrunners" are terms given to private entrepreneurs who come into the valley, buy fruit directly from the producers and then sell the fruit to small retailers and on roadside stands throughout the western provinces. since this bypasses the marketing control of the bctf, it is seen as an illegal activity. references bernier, bernard 1976 "the penetration of capitalism in agriculture." canadian review of sociology and anthropology 13, 4: 422-434. flinn, william and frederick h.buttel 1980 "sociological aspects of farm size: ideological and social consequences of scale in production." american journal of agricultural economics 1980: 946-953 . hedley, max , . .. 1976a "independent commodity production and the dynamics of tradition." canadian review of sociology and anthropology 13, 4: 413-4zj>gy and anthropology alternate routes vol. 5 1982 24 1976b "the social conditions of production and the dynamics of tradition: independent commodity production in canadian agriculture." doctoral dissertation, university of alberta, edmonton . hegedus, andras 1976 socialism and bureaucracy . london: allison and busby. maclennan, carol and richard walker 1980 "crisis and change in u.s. agriculture: an overview." agribusiness in the americas . burbach, roger and patricia flynn, edit. new york: monthly review press: 21-40. mann, susan and james m. dickinson 1978 "obstacles to the development of a capitalist agriculture." journal of peasant studies 5: 466-481. manning, edward w. and sandra s. eddy 197 8 agricultural land reserves of british columbia: an impact analysis . ottawa: environment canada. marx, karl „ «.«., ». 1967a capital , vol. 1. moscow: progress publishers. 1967b capital , vol. 2. moscow: progress publishers. 1971 capital , vol. 3. moscow: progress publishers. 1973 grundrisse . new york: vintage books. okanagan historical society 1964 "british columbia fruit growers association." the twenty -eighth report of the okanagan historical society . kelowna : 149-191 . raup, p. 1978 "some questions of value and scale in american agriculture." american journal of agricultural economics 60 : 503 -308 . select standing committee on agriculture 1978 the british columbia tree fruit industry . victoria : government of british columbia. shaw, paul 1979 canada's farm population . ottawa: statistics canada. 25 statistics canada 197 3 1971 census of canada, agriculture: british columbfa t ottawa : statistics canada. 197 8 1976 census of canada, agriculture: british columbia"! ottawa : statistics canada . the peoples food commission 1979 are your oysters ready dear? vancouver: the peoples food commission report to british columbia. 1980 the land of milk and money . canada: the alger press. veltmeyer, henry 1979 "the capitalist underdevelopment of atlantic canada." underdevelopment and social movements in atlantic canada . brym, r. j . and r. james sacauman , edit . toronto: new hogtown press: 17-35. warnock, j. 1971 "the farm crisis." essays on the left . lapierre, l e_t al, edit . toronto : mc lei land and stewart. alternate routes vol. 5 1982. graduate studies in sociology and anthropology carleton university the department of sociology and anthropology offers the following programs of advanced study and research: m.a. and ph.d. degrees in sociology, with specialization in comparative social organization social demography ecology theory methodology m.a. degree in anthropology, with specialization in north american studies theory methodology information regarding admission requirements and financial support may be obtained from: coordinator of graduate studies department of sociology and anthropology carleton university ottawa, canada k1s 5b6 historical materialism by crosssectional survey design : the limits of e.o. wright's study of class structure david s. hubka carleton university introduction few sociological debates have generated as much interest as those dealing with marxist or neo-marxist class analysis. the most discussed and critiqued contribution to this area in the past decade has been that of e.o. wright (e.g. wright, 1978; wright, 1986a). wright's project has undergone a number of significant revisions and reformulations, as wright has continually acknowledged and incorporated suggestions by his critics (see wright, 1989). this discussion will first review wright's attempts to extend marx's analysis of class. though the author is supportive of wright's general project to seek high levels of marxist theoretical integration (1989, p. 277), it is argued that this integration is limited by a theory of history based on a flawed thesis of structural determinacy with respect to class. while wright's efforts are specifically and admirably in the interests of 'grand theorizing' (i.e. viewing class structures as macro-level societal properties), his research focus is on microlevel mechanisms related to individual class positions (pp. 274278). though much discussion elsewhere deals with this and other issues related to marxist theories of history, the work of marxist historian derek sayer is presented as an example effective in emphasizing the shortcomings of wright's analysis. in sum, wright's practice of placing class position as causally prior to other variables related conceptually to authority, autonomy and property in a cross-sectional survey design provides less of a basis for emancipatory strategy than do traditional marxist attempts to explain class through historical analysis. the most optimistic prospects for wright's efforts are finally argued to be in repeating his research in the future, thereby providing a basis for addressing historical evolutions in capitalist class relations. in his most recent work, wright (1989) considers a full range of the many criticisms directed at his conceptualization and analysis of class structure. his first assertion is that class as a fundamental determinant of social change is "at the core of marxian class analysis" (p. 269). theoretical impulses arising from this core feature are, as wright sees it, torn between developing either simple or complex models of class structure in order to enhance its explanatory power. to occupy class location is thereby for wright to be affected by a set of mechanisms which limit 64 individual capacities to make choices and act (p. 275). these mechanisms for wright generate empirically observable effects, one of which is the capacity for collective action (p. 280). this derives partially from a model of class in which individual consciousness comes about through commonly lived experiences (in this case jobs) and the theoretical assumption that class structure shapes class conflict (p. 286). wright seems limited in many ways to describing how, in a single historical instance of class relations, classes represent exploitative relations. marxist emancipatory strategy, on the other hand, can be argued as best achieved by explaining class relations through historical analysis, rather than by explaining various individual conditions by class position through a cross-sectional survey design. wright (1986a) contends that marx's original theory is polarized between analysis of abstract structural maps and concrete conjunctural maps (p. 6). the first of these is a structural account of class positions, while the second is concerned with the collective struggles of individual actors. marx, according to wright, failed to systematically define and elaborate a concept of "class" (ibid.) and thus provided little basis for linking these polarized elements of structure and action. despite this, recent theory and research has attempted to bridge this gap between the concrete and the abstract. wright (1986a) describes the first of these neo-marxist attempts as dealing directly with the problem of the "new middle class" (p. 8). the second of these attempts has focused on processes of class formation. these processes have been characterized through institutional mechanisms which are largely autonomous from class structure, for example, political ideology (ibid.). in general, neo-marxist theory has attempted to reconcile traditional marxism with contemporary sociological class theory. wright's work (e.g. 1978; 1989) has also focused on this reconciliation, and has in this way made significant contributions to neo-marxist debate. it is in this spirit of theoretical integration that the present discussion weighs wright's approach with that of a more historically oriented method. wright's class theory (1978, 1986a) motivated the design of the survey used in the machine-readable data file: class structure and class consciousness: merged multi-nation file (1986b). this project was intended to provide data for comparative research of relational dimensions of inequality with special emphasis on authority, autonomy, and property. while providing the basis for scores of interesting studies, it can be argued that these data provide wright little basis for asserting macro-level theoretical claims. it is argued in the present paper that this limitation is a result of wright's failure to adequately specify historicity within the context of class formation and the potential for large scale social change. wright's theory of history is next reviewed, and counter-arguments are presented. 65 the history of empty places wright (1986a) typifies marx's analysis of class as elaborating 1) abstract structural maps: the determination of a structure of empty places in class relations which are devoid of people and 2) concrete conjunctural maps: the manner in which the people occupying these empty places organize in class struggle. he argues that marx emphasized only the second of these analyses: "while he gives us a list of descriptive categories, corresponding to the actual actors in the conflicts, he does not provide a set of precise concepts for decoding rigorously the structural basis of most of those categories" (p. 7). wright's purpose is thus to carry on marx's work, 'filling in' the elaboration of these abstract structural maps, in order to develop an 'effective correspondence' between the two levels of analysis (p. 8). wright thus proceeds to apply concepts derived from historical analysis, without himself carrying out historical analysis. he contrasts poulantzas and skocpol , claiming that while poulantzas argues that the level of abstraction of mode of production is sufficient to characterize the historical association of class and state, skocpol rejects the validity of this level of abstraction, and argues for a "strictly historical (i.e. conjunctural)" analysis of the relationship of the state to class structure (1986a, p. 12). both, claims wright, are theorizing on the same level of abstraction that of the level of social formation. in marxist analysis, according to wright, social formation equates to mode of production. for wright, mode of production is hence at the core of the marxist theory of the "developmental stages" of capitalism (p. 17). given that these stages are in fact "a specific kind of general structural property" (ibid.), the level of abstraction of the mode of production is, for wright, effective in analyzing historical stages of development. by combining conceptually four historic modes of production, wright develops a typology of interpenetrated forms of production. he is then able to identify divergent phases of capitalism, and to thereby provide a range of possible immanent phases (wright, 1983). wright furthermore discredits marx for failing to develop this so-called 'legitimate' form of historical materialism. in focusing on the historical conditions of the formation of "concrete class organizations, parties, shop floor organization unions," marx is argued to have 1) neglected the structural conditions of class: "institutional variability in class relations in given jobs" (p. 9), and furthermore to have 2) failed to develop a link between theorized conjunctural class formation and undertheorized conjunctural class structure (p. 13). in proposing a 'theory of history' wright (1986a) provides a "typology of class structures, exploitation, and historical transitions" (p. 115). the types of social formation in this typology are sequentially feudalism, capitalism, statism, socialism 66 and communism. wright also provides the 'historical task of revolutionary transformation'. these in "turn represent respectively increasing levels of emancipation: individual liberty, socializing means of production, democratization of organizational control, substantive equality, and sel f -actualization. these increasing levels of emancipation, he claims, represent the conditions by which successful transition to the next stage may be made. the probability of achieving his tasks depend directly on the level of the development of productive forces on each level (p. 116). his trajectory of future societies is thus probabilistic, as it is contingent on a set of preconditions (ibid.). the historical transitions outlined by wright's version of historical materialism are consequently not 'iron laws', but rather provides a range of possibilities which depend on the class structure at each given stage. this is claimed to be an effective modification of traditional historical materialism, which argues: "whenever a transition from one form of class relations to another becomes historically possible, forms of class struggle will develop that guarantee that some transitions will occur" (wright, 1986a, p. 117). in developing a thesis specifically of "capitalism's futures'", wright takes to task rescuing historical materialism from this iron-clad law of history: "one of the central thrusts of historical materialism has always been that historical development occurred along a single developmental trajectory... it is for this reason that historical materialism is often considered a teleological philosophy of history with one final state inexorably pulling social change towards it" (wright, 1983, p. 122). arguing for a new structural mode of production: "statism", wright claims to effectively show that there is not one future to capitalism (socialism), but in fact two (socialism and statism). the structural determination of capitalism's futures thus becomes a probabilistic determination rather than an inexorable determination. not only does wright claim to rescue historical materialism from its surfeit of determinacy, but also increases the revolutionary strategist's level of certainty. the primacy of productive relations remains the key to social change, given that this power structure determines the manner in which essential resources can be used: "the decisive alternatives that are historically possible revolve around the system of production and appropriation" (p. 123). thus, in the event of "revolutionary rupture", an active, conscious effort must be made to prevent a restoration of both capitalist power and statist power. invaluable to the revolutionary is this guide to the 'actual patterns of social change' not readily provided by an unmodified historical materialism (p. 123). it can be argued, on the other hand, that marx's method supports neither an iron-clad law of history, nor a probabilistically contingent one. the charges that marx's 67 interpretation of history promotes iron-clad laws, resulted partially from the fact that his method of presentation differs from his method of inquiry (eg. sayer, 1979, pp. 96-103). marx notes: "(inquiry) has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyze its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connections. only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. if this is done successfully... it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction" (marx quoted in sayer, 1989, p. 92). "what is designated with the words 'destiny', 'goal', 'germ', or 'idea' of earlier history is nothing more than an abstraction from later history, from the active influence which earlier history exercises on later history" (ibid., p. 74). there is evidence that marx was hostile toward interpretations of his work as advocating a generalized model of historical determinacy. in rebutting such an interpretation, marx charges the author with taking out of context incidental texts and "transforming (his) historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in western europe into a historico-philosophical theory of the general course fatally imposed on all peoples, whatever the historical circumstances in which they find themselves placed..." (marx quoted in sayer, 1989, pp. 69-70). gramsci's criticisms of bukharin are also suggestive here. bukharin's division of marx into two components: 1) "a theory of evolution appearing as sociology" and 2) "a philosophy which amount to crude materialism", leads to an empty typology of historical forms. "separated from the theory of history and politics, philosophy cannot be other than metaphysics, whereas the great conquest in the history of modern thought, represented by the philosophy of praxis, is precisely the concrete historicization of philosophy and its identification with history" (gramsci, 1971, p. 436). if one accepts this as a viable interpretation, marx's methods and conclusions seem opposed to rather than elaborative of those suggested by wright. production as an historical abstraction is a theme common among marxist scholars, but is itself "multiply divided and diverges into different determinations", and as such facilitates the identification of divergent, more concrete features of these abstract continuities (marx quoted in sayer, 1989, p. 74). while all historical epochs have different determinations of production, they also have certain common determinations. this is given by the very nature of production as an historical continuity (p. 74-75). the labour process is the production of use-value, which is necessary for affecting exchange of matter between people and nature. this necessity implies that the production of use-value is common to every phase of human existence. this continuity, however, is not the entire picture and indeed, is not even the most crucial part, in that it fails to provide the differing social conditions of the production of use-value (for example slavery, capitalism or hunting and gathering). from this position, one can assert that marx's method involves somewhat more 68 than identifying a rigid model of production relations and that, in fact, such models could only form a single level of abstraction useful only in defining a common aspect from which essential differences can be further concluded. marx claims: "success will never come with the master-key of a general historico-philosophical theory, whose supreme virtue consists in being supra-historical" (ibid., p. 73). yet three traditional marxist theses are redefined according to wright's "sympathetic" modifications. the first rejects the traditional view (marx's own) that "socialism is the immediate imminent future capitalism", given that such a transition would necessitate the equalization of two "exploitation assets": means of production and organization (1986a, p. 117). there is clearly no logical necessity for these to simultaneously occur, and hence wright concludes that both statism and socialism are possible futures to capitalism. second, wright argues that other classes have the potential to carry out revolution, and hence refutes the marxist opinion that "the proletariat are the only bearers of a revolutionary mission within capitalism" (ibid.). third, wright claims to show that socialism, contrary to marx, has a "distinctive form of exploitation". marx, he claims, argued that socialism is not a mode of production and merely constituted an intermediate step to communism (p. 118). these three modifications do not, according to wright, undermine the important notion of progression in marx's view of historical trajectory, and consequently supposes to retain support for marx's claims (p. 118). wright (1986a) provides a typology of exploitation relations which correspond to specific class structures, described as "essentially a typology of modes of production" (p. 109). he admits, however, that no society has only one form of exploitation. in order to better characterize the form of exploitation observed in societies, wright provides three "axes of variabilities", which typify the unique combinations of types of exploitation: 1) "relative weight" of exploitation, 2) the degree of linkage of exploitation to "internal" or "external" relations, and 3) the degree to which various exploitations "overlap" or are "distinct" from each other in a given society. given the possible combinations of four modes of production, which necessarily involves four types of exploitation (feudal, capitalist, statist, or socialist), wright attempts to operationalize the "relative weight" of these exploitations. he first rejects the marxist notion that one or another form of exploitation must remain the "dominant mode", on the basis that two or more forms may in fact carry equal weight in a single society (p. 109). possible operationalizations of relative weight are then identified as 1) "the relative, aggregate magnitudes of... appropriations of social surplus based on property rights by owners of different exploitation-generating assets", 2) "a measure of the 'class power' of those who appropriate surplus", 3) the degree to 69 which the dominant mode is functionally associated with subordinate modes and 4) the "dynamic effects of different exploitations" (p. 109-111) . wright then proceeds to argue for the fourth approach, but claims that due to the "theoretical underdevelopment of our understanding of the dynamics rooted in each of the forms of exploitation other than capitalism, let alone the possibility of distinct 'laws of motion' forced by distinct combinations of these forms of production" it is overly difficult to operationalize this notion of exploitation (p. 112). wright provides no means of identifying the degree to which types of exploitation overlap, or are distinct from one another. he does assert, however, that in societies where an overlap occurs, a higher degree of class polarization exists. implied in this is the notion that multiple forms of exploitations, as reflected in class structure, can have an additive effect on class struggle when combined in the same society . wright's form of structural causality is neither linear (historic), nor expressive (i.e. reducing the constituent parts to an essence of totality), but rather represents a causality "imminent" in its effects. though supposing to contribute to con junctural , historical analysis through survey method, wright is limited by the historical specificity of cross-sectional data. his model of class structure derives from marx' s historical analysis of the development of capital, but is reduced to expressing the constituent elements of capital (e.g. class structure, class struggle, class consciousness) within a recursive, cross-sectional causal model . cohen (1982) comments on the demise of marxian sociology: "despite the variety of theoretical strategies and political positions that make up the spectrum of neo-marxian class theory, an unreflective relation to the marxian original is characteristic of them all" (p. 2). in contesting the theory of class boundaries advocated by poulantzas and wright, she remarks: "the analysis always proceeds from the side of 'structure', juggling and elaborating categories ad infinitum in order that they might mesh with the 'realities' of social stratification. yet it is unclear whether these realities are simply given, or, worse, derived from the structures themselves. since the old class concepts and prejudices are presupposed from the onset, the key dilemma endemic to any class theory based on das kapital cannot even be posed" (p. 10). schmidt (1981) represents another opposition, and identifies the dominant lack of interest in history as not simply the demise of current western sociology, but also as a function of the progress of bourgeois society (pp. 1-2). a generalized loss of historical consciousness, leads to a failing conception of the nexus of past and future. this further undermines a comprehension 70 of the causes of present conditions, and delimits the role of individual agency in effecting future states. wright's analysis of cross-sectional data permits no explanation of the causes of present class structure, and provides no evidence that present exploitative relations are not in fact natural and eternal. wright attempts in this sense not even a crude historiographic analysis, but rather proposes a series of hypotheses to be tested within historically decontextualized data. wright relies on historical analysis only to the point that marxist analysis has already provided him with static class categories. failing to incorporate historical data, wright's form of statistical method is not justified by, but rather tends to require the causal determinacy of class structure. wright ' s method in effect does not conform to, but rather opposes the logic of historical materialism. class struggle by class structure the criteria for developing his model of class structure, claims wright (1986a, pp. 27-37), is based on six constraints: 1) class structure imposes limits on class formation, class consciousness and class struggle. this constraint does not imply that class structure exclusively determines class formation, class consciousness, and class struggle (p. 29), but does necessitate the conception of a causal association of class structure on these other elements of class: "the argument that class structure imposes basic limits on class formation, class consciousness, and class struggle is essentially a claim that it constitutes the basic mechanism for distributing access to resources in a society, and thus distributing the capacity to act" (p. 28). this mechanism of distribution is a qualifier placed by wright on the claim made by 'most marxists' that class structure is identified one way or another as the basic determinant of the other three elements (ibid.). while deeming class structure to be the basic mechanism determining these elements, wright acknowledges that he is unable to provide a description of the precise manner in which this determination occurs. though offering that the precise mechanisms are cognitive, or psychological, wright proposes to inform as to the more important, 'real' social mechanisms of determination. class struggle, in wright's schema, provides the 'transformative principle' of class, but is ultimately determined by class structure (p. 30). his second conceptual constraint is thus: 2) "class structures constitute the essential qualitative lines of social demarcation in the historical trajectories of social change" (ibid.). not only does class structure determine class formation, class consciousness, and class struggle, but it also "limits the possibility for other aspects of social structure" (p. 31). class structure, in this way "constitutes the central organizing principles of societies" and within the area of classical marxism "the crucial historical line of social demarcation remains class relations" (p. 31). from these premises, 71 wright is able to claim that "class structure is the central determinant of social power" (p. 31). organizational status is hence for wright, a function of class structure, which in turn imposes limits on an individual's or a collectivities' capacity to act. consciousness is the "realization by the subordinate class that it is necessary to transform the class structure if there is to be any basic changes in their capacities to act, and the realization by the dominant class that the reproduction of their own power depends on the reproduction of the class structure" (1986a, p. 28). though acknowledging that class struggle constitutes the central transformative principle of class structure, wright argues that this process is itself determined by class structure. wright's third constraint is simply 3) the concept of class is a relational concept. this argument simply dissociates marxist, relational class concepts from gradational , typically income determined class concepts. wright argues that gradational class concepts could not possibly provide the necessary "demarcations" upon which a theory of history could be developed (p. 35). 4) the social relations which define classes are intrinsically antagonistic rather than symmetrical. stated simply, classes constitute opposing interests. consequently, 5) the objective basis of these antagonistic interests is exploitation, and hence results in exploitative relations. finally, 6) the fundamental basis of exploitation is to be found in the social relations of production. here, wright argues that marxist class models are necessarily production-centred. in studying a cross-section of class structure, consequently, wright limits his approach to testing hypotheses in which class position is causally prior to other variables measured in his survey. while he identifies this ?.s a distinct contribution fundamentally opposed to other types of class analysis (1989, p. 269-78), he also claims to be committed to a high level of marxist theoretical integration (ibid., p. 277). the impetus for this commitment comes partly from marx's untimely death during his work on class categories in the last chapter of capital volume iii: "what constitutes a class" (see tucker, p. 441). marx identifies the three "big classes" of modern society as: 1) wage labourers 2) capitalists and 3) land owners. though marx views the class divisions of his england as "obliterated" by middle and intermediate strata, he views the process of capital as one of increasing polarization or "the (concentration) of scattered means of production into large groups" (p. 441). answering what constitutes a class, marx responds (at first glance) "the identity of revenues and sources of revenues" (p. 442). this, however, is seen as far too simplistic, given that, for example, physicians and officials also constitute separate classes with this criteria. marx hence proposes that each class further involves an "infinite fragmentation of interest and rank into which the division of 72 labour splits labourers as well as capitalists and landlords" (p. 442). this suggests again that marx's concept of class should not be reduced to crude analytic categories, but as a continuing process of polarization and concentration of class interests. sayer (1979) describes the paradox of althusserian interpretations of marx, which seems relevant in addressing wright's specific approach. they attempt to overcome marx's difficulty by ensuring a correspondence of concept and reality. the "mystif actory mechanism" which corresponds to ideological and phenomenological forms could not be located as a subjective error of experience, but must rather be seen as a subjective falsehood. in other words, reality is not misinterpreted, but rather misrepresents itself. if consciousness itself was to be doubted, a scientific interpretation of reality would be impossible. marx could not begin to promote the "falsity of ideology (through a) materialist theory of consciousness" if he were to accept that this falsity is only subjective (p . 31) . emancipation, could not, for marx, be promoted through such an investigation as is prescribed by wright (1989, p. 16). it is not the subjective illusions of capital, but rather the illusory function of the objective forms of capital which promote human alienation. it is an empirical analysis of the historical development of these objective forms that provides the historical revelation that capital is not given by nature, but is rather imposed on people, by people. sayer (1979) argues: "fetishism involves a two-fold transgression of proper categorical boundaries... on the one hand, properties which distinguish phenomena as individual members of classes and hence ought properly to be the object of historical categories are subsumed under transhistorical categories and explained by theses logically capable of accounting only for the characteristics of the classes to which they belong... and on the other hand, the historical attributes of the phenomena are thereby falsely universalized (p. 46). wright's analysis of class categories does not avoid the fetishized nature of class, but in fact contributes to it. for instance, the class distribution of respondents appears to wright only as a cross-sectional description, not as historically contingent on capitalist forces of production. "fetishism presents a dehistoricized, desocialized world whose makers are reduced to passive spectators in a mystery not of their making. marx's critique points behind this, to a history. this is how marx promotes the overcoming of human self-alienation" (sayer, 1979, p . 47 ) . 73 conclusion wright (1986a) claims to defend what he identifies as "the core theses of marxism" (p. 2). he terms his segment of the academic community "analytic marxism"; "the systematic interpretation and clarification of basic concepts and their reconstruction into a more competent theoretical structure" (ibid.)in reference to marx's unfinished section of capital, volume 3 "what constitutes a class", wright proposes that classes (1986a) represents an extension of marx's theory of class structure and class formation "faithful both to the theoretical agenda forged in marx's work, that is, understanding the development of the contradictions of capitalism, and the political goals that agenda was meant to promote" understanding the conditions for the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society (p. 16). historical materialism can be viewed as an approach wherein the various forms of exploitation as manifested in certain historical instances are studied. this materialist conception thus generates a higher level of theoretical abstraction whereby specific, less abstract societal forms can be understood. the key to marx's analysis is not the generalized mode of economic exploitation as prescribed by wright, but rather the specific historical forms or manifestations of this universal fact. wright's empiricism fails to move beyond describing existing structures, and is never conditioned by an awareness of the diachronic. this implies that to understand a structure, one must also understand both its transformations, and the range of its possible transformations. though wright (1989) admits that his method of class analysis "risks losing the dialectical and dynamic character" of marxist explanations, he claims that these risks are worth taking (p. 16). admitting further that his empirical operationalizations of marx's theory of class have generated only modest insights, they have nonetheless served to "clarify a range of dilemmas" (ibid.). given, however, serious departures from both marx's methods and observations, wright possibly reifies a questionable version of marx's classes, rather than extend his explanations . wright admits that while progress has been made in the conceptualization of class through his project in the past decade, "nevertheless the goal of producing a class structure concept which is at one time theoretically coherent and empirically comprehensive remains elusive" (1989, p. 270). his approach remains, however, that of increasing the complexity of his various class structure typologies as a means of enhancing their explanatory power. in discussing advances made in his project, wright alludes to the value of a general marxist theory of history. his new structural typology, wright argues, has a "much stronger connection to the general marxist theory of history than did the earlier framework. the structural typology on which the class structure map was based 74 had a clear standing within the general theory of the historical trajectory of social forms" (p. 306). however, conceptually basing a class typology on a generalized notion of epochal forms of material relations is no more than paying a lip service to the logic of historical analysis. the transformative principles providing the means to emancipation at each stage can only be implied, and not directly accessed through wright's micro, ahistorical research focus. this is not to say that wright's project is not valuable, for it is in fact highly valuable. the survey has provided data for a wide range of interesting and important studies (e.g. clement, 1990; hubka and gillespie, 1989; baer et al , 1987; black and myles, 1986; winn, 1984) and has made significant inroads to combining classical social theory with contemporary quantitative research methods. however, as i have argued above, class is more interesting as a dependent variable than as an independent variable and, in the interests of social change, is best seen as a process rather than as a structure. this opposition, on the other hand, is a fact of meta-theory, and is not to be resolved presently, if at all. the most valuable contribution of wright's work will possibly be made, ironically, at the point that his project itself becomes a part of history data of a past phase in capital relations. historians, for example, often rely on centuries old church records to understand past demographic compositions. marx's 18th brumaire is a now famous schematic of class interests and material relations. erich fromm's survey of class consciousness among the working class in weimar germany is a fascinating and insightful study during an important period in world history (fromm, 1984) . the value of these sources of data to the social researcher today lies in the capacity to observe an historical trajectory. the rise of quantitative social research has involved a number of ongoing survey projects (eg. the general social survey conducted by statistics canada) enabling for the first time study of changes in survey data over time. given recent changes in the world order, the predicted decline of u.s. economic strength and the continuing rise of global capital, it seems likely that wright's in depth study of class structure will increase in value in the coming decades . 75 references althusser, l. (1971) lenin and philosophy and other essays. middlesex: new left books. baer, d., e. grabb and w. johnston. (1987) "class, crisis, and political ideology in canada: recent trends." canadian review of sociology and anthropology, 24, 1, pp. 1-22. black, don and john myles. (1986) "dependent industrialization and the canadian class structure: a comparative analysis of canada, the united states and sweden." canadian review of sociology and anthropology, 23, 2, pp. 157-181. bottomore, tom. (1981) modern interpretations of marx. oxford: basil blackwell. clement, wallace. (1984) "comparative class analysis: locating canada in a north american and nordic context." canadian review of sociology and anthropology, 27, 4. cohen, jean l. (1982) class and civil society: the limits of the marxian approach. university of massachusetts press, amherst . fromm, erich. (1984) (bonss b. weinberger trans.) the working class in weimar germany. london: berg publishers inc. gandy , d. ross. (1979) marx and history. austin: university of texas press. gramsci , antonio quinton hoare. (1971) (geoffrey novell smith trans.) antonio gramsci: selections from the prison notebooks. new york: international. hubka, david s. and michael gillespie. (1989) "a comparison of two marxist class typologies." presented at the western association of sociologists and anthropologists conference. banff, alberta. poulantzas, nicos. (1973) "on social classes." new left review, 78, pp. 27-54. poulantzas, nicos. (1975) classes in contemporary capitalism. london: new left books. sayer , derek. (1979) in mephan, john and d.h. ruben (ed) issues in philosophical marxism. sussex: harvester press. sayer, derek. (1987) the violence of abstraction: analytic foundations of historical materialism. oxford: basil blackwel 1 . 76 sayer , derek. (1989) readings from karl marx. london: routledge. schmidt, alfred. jeffrey herf (trans). (1981). history and structure: an essay on hegelian -marxist and structuralist theories of history. massachusetts: mit press. tucker, robert c. (ed) (1978) the marx-engels reader. w. w. norton and company, new york. winn, s. (1984) "class and income in sweden." social forces, 62, 4, pp. 1027-1034. wright, erik olin. (1976) "class boundaries in advanced capitalist societies." new left review, 98, pp. 3-11. wright, erik olin. (1978) class, crisis and the state. london: new left books. wright, erik olin. (1979) class structure and income determination. new york: academic press. wright, erik olin. (1980) "varieties of marxist conceptions of class structure." politics and society, 9, pp. 323-370. wright, erik olin. (1983) "capitalism's futures'." socialist review, 13, pp. 77-126. wright, erik olin. (1986a) classes. london: verso books. wright, erik olin. (1986b) "class structure and class consciousness: merged multi-nation file: united states survey, 1980, sweiien survey, 1980, norway survey, 1982, canada survey, 1983, finland survey, 1981." (machine readable data file). principal investigator: erik olin wright. institute for research on poverty (distributor). inter-university consortium for political and social research (distributor). ann arbour michigan. wright, erik olin. (1989) "the comparative project on class structure and class consciousness: an overview." acta sociologica 32, 1, pp. 2-33. wright, erik olin et al . (1980) "the american class structure." american sociological review, 47, pp. 70-726. wright, erik olin et al . (1989) the debate on classes. london: verso books . 77 on the devaluation of women's labour: hegemonic and local ideological practices paul shreenan carleton university introduction the atlantic region of canada has a history of underdevelopment beginning shortly after confederation and which continues to the present . the particular form of capitalist underdevelopment which has occurred in the region is one characterized by a heavy reliance on the government sector and also on resource extraction industries like fishing and forestry. the fishing industry presents a complex of relations between levels of state regulatory mechanisms , class conflict, and gender inequality. one particular division, that between inshore and offshore fishing, is important in this paper. offshore fishing is carried out on large vessels (65 feet and over) owned by large fishing and fish processing companies (e.g., national sea products or fisheries products international). small boat fishers with boats under 45 feet in length pursue inshore fisheries including lobster, herring, mackerel, cod and other groundfish when conditions permit. they are versatile, multi-purpose fishers. small boat fishers operate out of the household unit of production and comprise the mainstay of hundreds of small fishing communities on the whole of canada's east coast. in fishing communities, the focus of this paper, women contribute to the family economy through a variety of productive strategies including subsistence production, the informal economy and waged labour (connelly and macdonald, 1983:46), yet women's work has consistently been devalued, undervalued or simply ignored by both the scholarly and broader community (porter, 1987:48). it is in the sphere of domestic labour, both productive and reproductive, that women's work is most undervalued because it is not public/visible and because its contribution has been systematically ignored in terms of the enduring cultural production surrounding the fishing industry and related sea-going cultures. in brunton et al . (1981) we see, for example, an extensive compilation of song and poetry about the lives of working class (including fisher) atlantic canadians over the past century or more. unfortunately, as the authors are well aware, the material is practically devoid of the presence of women and women's experience except where they are mentioned in a sexist and derogatory way. cultural production, thus, reflects the kinds of ideological practices which legitimate certain kinds of discourse and render alternate voices inaudible. in this paper i will be concerned, mainly, with the question of how the invisibility of 44 much of women's labour and its under-valuation is reproduced through ideological practices which legitimate female subordination . i will examine the ways in which three hegemonic ideological practices (capitalism, liberalism, patriarchy) together legitimate and reproduce this subordination. then moving from the general to the specific i will introduce an exploratory discussion of a local ideological practice which, though not unheard of in other industries or regions, has manifestations peculiar to small boat fishers. the purpose of this paper is thus modest; to begin to recognize particular, local forms of knowledge and practice which articulate with other hegemonic practices hence contributing to the reproduction of the subordination of women. i offer an analysis of those ideological practices integral to the reproduction of unequal gender relations in the maritimes. in particular the focus is on the culture in which small boat fisher families are immersed. it should be stated at the outset that my analysis is an exploratory discussion of gender relations in maritime fishing communities rather than a comprehensive examination. the analytical focus is, therefore, admittedly theoretical and self-consciously lacking in detailed empirical material. in addition this discussion should not be read as an attack on small boat fishers, their communities, or their ways of surviving. instead, it is advanced in an effort to recognize gender inequality in this historically specific material and cultural context; to begin to explicitly define one such local ideological practice, what i call the ideological practice of independence; and to make some tentative suggestions pertaining to possibilities for social action and social change. few studies articulate the actual labour processes of the women of fisher households in the contemporary context. however, in an important case study on women of small boat fisher households in gloucester, massachusetts, clark shows how women's labour is integral to the overall labour processes of small boat fishing. in some circumstances, for example, women may represent the fisher household's interests at the level of political organizing activities, whether these are formally established or not. this may entail lobbying at the local level or at other state regulatory sites. clark also explains how some women have initiated creative marketing of the catch through marketing a cookbook which spreads the knowledge of local seafood cookery. women, acting as "land agents" for the household fishing enterprise work to get the best deal possible for the catch by negotiating with more than one buyer; they are, in other words, sales agents for the catch. fisher women have often stayed in school for significantly longer than their partners, their reading and writing skills are better than their partners' thus enabling them to be more effective managers of particular organizational tasks involved in the fishery. they have been responsible for the negotiation of loans, equipment purchases, bills payment, crew payment, repair arrangements, mortgages, insurance policies and licences (clark, 45 1988:264-8). each of these tasks merits close examination in order to articulate the nitty gritty of household production in the age of monopoly capitalism. as already mentioned my goal here is more modest -to move toward the recognition of local ideological practices and the development of a theoretical framework which may assist in this area of research. to that end the concepts of hegemony and ideological practice must be introduced. the concept of hegemony borrowed from gramsci and developed by others serves as a corrective to the exclusively class determined analysis of orthodox marxists (mouf f e, 1987 ) . hegemonic domination in present day capitalist society, or the way in which capital establishes and reproduces its rule is not accomplished through force. hegemonic rule is always precarious or unstable. consent or hegemony is produced and reproduced through the institutions and practices of civil society as opposed to being solely enforced through the repressive state apparatus. the concept of ideological practice is central to the present analysis; practices are ideological when they legitimate relations of inequality . as dorothy smith points out ideological practices "are pervasive features of the organization of the juncture between the relations of ruling and the actualities of people's lives they organize and govern" ( smith, 1990 : 43) . these practices make social relations intelligible to us although they are systematically selective and incomplete. they tell partial truths, thereby obfuscating the major contradictions that characterize power relations. these concepts will be more fully developed below, but will nevertheless be illuminated here. what makes certain practices ideological is that they embody highly selective representations of reality. for example, liberal philosophy posits free and equal individuals; by doing so it defines out of existence a vast array of social structural elements like gender, class, ethnicity or sexual orientation. furthermore the philosophy posits that all individuals are equal before the law; yet when confronted with the reality of the law, individuals who bring to the court vastly different economic and social resources predictably get vastly different outcomes. in fact, given an historically informed theory of social relations it would indeed be odd if all groups had similar experiences vis a vis the law . formally equal individuals also freely compete for places in the world of paid work. if we systematically ignore the above mentioned structural differences we can look, for example, at the labour market and assume that any individual is free to take up any occupation given the proper motivation. the divergence between ideological practice and reality is readily apparent. we know that it is neither happenstance, poor individual choices nor biological 46 programming that push and pull women disproportionately into particular occupations (armstrong and armstrong , 1978) . hegemonic practices amd women's subordination in this section i will discuss liberal, capitalist, and patriarchal ideological practices each of which includes important constituent relations that contribute to the reproduction of the subordination of women in general. it is, however, only for heuristic purposes that i separate these hegemonic practices; in everyday life they are inextricably intertwined. liberalism ideological practices make the contradictions between lived experience and the theory disappear by not addressing them. as a later example will illustrate in more detail, the pervasive liberal conception of equality carries a highly specific meaning which is much narrower than other conceptions of equality. one common illustration of the breadth in the potential meaning of equality is posed as the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of condition. the everyday experience of people often points up the contradictions between the purpose of ideological practice and reality, but there remains albeit a limited and selective "truth" to the practice nevertheless. the liberal subject is thus formally free and formally equal; these formalisms are supported by selectively chosen examples (the fords, horatio alger and other dead white males that are part of the cultural baggage of the americas) which are used to illustrate that "anyone can make it". it is true that these individuals have succeeded; what is ideological in the use of the examples is that the vast majority of hard working people do not make it, and cannot, for structural reasons. pervasive though it is, liberalism should be understood as having developed out of a particular historical conjuncture and as a result it embodies a set of practices which are historically specific. so often today analyses utilise a totalizing discourse which confers an almost transhistorical status to the liberal status quo. one of the main tenets of liberalism is that all individuals are equal before the law; this postulate establishes the grounds for another liberal principal, that of, equality of opportunity. in our society, however, the belief in not only the ideal but also the practice of equality of opportunity (and this practice has some major flaws) has served to both obscure and legitimate in significant ways inequality of condition. since liberal theory posits that all people are free individuals abstracted from society and history, as it were, anyone can simply be or do anything one wants given the proper motivation. women's oppression in this case may be conceived of as their own fault and the familiar practice of blaming the victim is reinforced. 47 liberal feminists contend that women's subordination is reproduced through traditional (i.e. non-western and therefore by definition non-rational or illiberal) values and their concomitant social structures. this position has certain idealist tendencies which have important consequences for the kinds of political strategies or policy goals that are suggested. in her discussion of liberal feminism (in particular the wid school) , asoka bandarage makes reference to the kinds of social and economic strategies of this kind of analysis, similar to liberal thinkers in the west, wid thinkers seek this [primarily economic] integration [of women] through legal measures and changes in attitude. to this end many conferences, declarations and legislation including the un decade for women (1984:498). there is a problem with these strategies; to the extent that they spend a great deal of time and energy on the changing of attitudes they neglect the more fundamental problem of material conditions. even legislation, in and of itself, does little to address this problem as has been seen throughout the world where women in industrialised liberal democracies who enjoy de jure equal rights remain marginal in terms of ownership and control of resources . capitalism capitalism is a mode of production which entails a variety of ideological practices. my discussion of capitalism is very much tied to the preceding section on liberalism because the two are inextricably linked historically, as such, in this section i make frequent reference to both liberalism and capitalism. the point of departure for critical, gendered analyses of capitalist society is engel's treatment of gender inequality in the origin of the family, private property and the state . in this work engels drew from notes written by both he and marx while reflecting on the work of lewis henry morgan who wrote extensive empirical researches on the iroquois in new york (leacock, 1973:9). while morgan was interested in how change occurred in terms of social relations and ultimately developed a typology of stages of human history supporting the unilinear evolutionary theory of his day, engels had quite a different use for morgan's empirical data. he used morgan's work as a basis upon which to develop a more consistent and theoretically informed, materialist understanding of the question of the social change from so-called primitive society onward. leacock points out that the issues raised by both morgan and engels remain the concern of many scholars today. socialist feminist scholars like mies (1982;1986) and eisenstein (1979:43) acknowledge the importance of many of engels' insights, but reformulate his question about the origins of gender inequality in such a way that it serves to explain the ongoing problem of women's subordination. that is, they ask how women's subordination is 48 reproduced and attempt to get at questions of reproduction, and the legitimation of subordination. in a context of regional underdevelopment, distinct from, but in many ways similar to, that experienced by women and the broader working class in the third world, connelly and macdonald make the another important link between capitalism and women's subordination, working class households here always required more than the male wage and [...] women here always contributed to the family household either by intensifying their domestic labour in the home, by earning money through an informal econojny, or by participating in the labour force and earning a wage themselves (in porter , 1987 : 47 ) . since in many cases women's work has been in the home it has remained invisible (and was considered private, domestic and nonproductive). when they have gone, or do go, from the household to sell their labour power women's work has, however, been devalued. it has become apparent that this enabled capitalists to exploit women's labour to an even greater extent than has traditionally been the case with men's. the most important international example of this is found in the burgeoning maquiladoras of mexico; however, the same strategies are in evidence around the world (elson and pearson, 1981:92). in part this is where the practice of patriarchal relations is important, but this is the focus of an ensuing section. in terms of the focus on capitalist production what the above quotation leaves out is the fact that women contribute directly to what is generally thought to be their husband's fishing enterprise. the fact that this is largely ignored may be a result of the structural invisibility of the woman's contribution to what i and others argue must be recognized as the household's fishing enterprise -not just that of the male fisher (see klein and davis, 1988:31-33). this broader perspective on the fishing operation, one that is based in the household unit of production, would be a positive step in challenging the false dichotomy of the public/private work worlds where one is viewed as productive and the other is regarded as natural (mies, 1982:2-3). in canada, for example, the public/private split only occurred with the development of capitalism and eventually with the de facto privatization of land across the country. popular knowledge of this is, however, limited and there seems to be the broad based perception that the public-male/private-female split has always been the way social life has been organized. once the land was claimed immigrants could no longer go out and enter subsistence production where men and women living in households worked together or separately, but almost always from the household (household production for use-value). they were forced to find work as 49 labour for capitalist enterprises or government inf rastructural projects which ultimately were built to the great benefit of capital . several of the characteristics of liberalism were taken up and utilized in the development of capitalism. one example of the interconnectedness of capitalism and liberalism is the particular usage or definition of the concept of equality. capitalist practice and its ideological use thus overlaps with liberalism (they are in agreement). each shares the ideal of equality, but as mina davis caulfield points out, the conception of equality which they share has a culturally specific and consequently a very limited meaning. equality, was inextricable from the concept of individual achievement in 'free' competition, and never included (except among socialist theorists) the idea of any kind of equal sharing of societal products (1981:202-203). caulfield elaborates further on how this cultural ideal of equality (and the widespread belief in this particular definition of equality as the only possible one) acts to conceal the extreme inequality inherent in capitalist society. she offers an important critique of the capitalist definition of equality. what caulfield does not bring out is the connection between the capitalist and liberal definitions of equality. fundamentally they rely on a definition of equality which targets equality of opportunity and not that of condition. equality of opportunity focuses, as caul field makes ,clear , on the freedom of individuals to compete for unequal rewards'. the individualist emphasis in capitalism is in many ways an outgrowth of the same emphasis in liberalism which conceives of individuals as existing prior to, or as jaggar says, "in abstraction from" a society. this leads to the faulty assumption that individuals' needs can be fulfilled without any real impact on others (1983:29). another contradiction between capitalism and liberalism is apparent when we look at the idea that, in liberal theory, inequality can be eliminated or minimized through reform. from this conceptualization, liberal theory legitimates inequality by suggesting that inequality is an aberration that can be eliminated through education, attitudinal changes, legal reforms and intervention projects (bandarage, 1984:499) none of which broach the problem of inequality as a structural imperative of capitalism (bandarage, 1984 : 500) . both caulfield and bandarage bring out important criticisms of liberal theory and capitalism which illustrate how each established beliefs and practices which, understood in culturally specific ways, serve to legitimate the structure of inequality. mies points out several major contradictions of capitalism when she discusses the approach which she advocates (socialist feminism) in opposition to the dominant, capitalist and patriarchal 50 practices. first she points out the ideological nature of the dominant definition of work. it is thus necessary, regarding the concept of the productivity of labour, to reject its narrow definition and to show that labour can only be productive in the sense of producing surplus value as long as it can tap, extract, exploit, and appropriate labour which is spent in the production of life or subsistence production which is largely non-wage labour done by women (mies, 1982:3). what mies argues here and elsewhere is that traditionally defined "women's work" is the fundamental precondition of all other work including that involved in capital accumulation. women, then, can be conceived of as productive and exploited even though they appear external to the direct processes of capital accumulation. in fact they are not external, but are intimately connected to the system through their labour. to the extent that women's work is considered private and nonproductive their subordination under capitalism is reproduced through a systematic ignorance of the material base of the actual system; it therefore becomes, as mies points out, "a mystification" (1982:4) which legitimates women's subordination, thus the practice is ideological. classical or orthodox marxist accounts of productive work also offer little room for analyses of work which does not take place under the classical capitalist relations of production: where surplus value is directly extracted from the labour of the dispossessed worker. other forms of work which do not directly produce surplus value as a result fail to pass the test of the definition of "productivity". as has been pointed out this is often the bulk of the work done by women. the effect of defining work in this way is important in terms of reproducing the subordination of women because it reinforces the widespread dualistic notion of private and public work stratified by gender. there are those who argue that the underlying use of dualisms (i.e., as in the work of levi-strauss) is itself a product of male modes of analysis (daly , 1978: 11) . however, the use of dualisms often relies on naturalistic explanations of gender differences which see, for example, the family and women's traditional role within it as products of biological differences and therefore their legitimation relies on a functional analysis of nature shaping the human social order (barrett ,1985 : 199) . the ideological practice of patriarchy in the broadest terms, patriarchal ideological practices may be defined as social relations in which women tend to exist in an unequal and subordinate power relation vis a vis men. in explaining patriarchal relations the view that male dominance is biologically determined is widespread among both anti-feminists and feminists. anti-feminists see women's subordination (although they 51 would not call it that) as designed by nature; therefore; it cannot even be conceived as oppressive ( jaggar , 1983 : 88-89) . antifeminists often adopt a scientific discourse to explain women's inequality as natural. in gough's analysis she unmasks the implications of such naturalistic, and biologically determinist, theories ; a "scientific" argument which states that all such features of female inferiority are instinctual is a powerful weapon in maintaining the traditional family with male dominance (gough, 1975:58). gough is critical of anthropologists who attempt to establish a scientific basis for a theory of gender inequality in humans; however, the critique works equally well when applied to capitalism because it is under capitalism that the rational, scientific model heavily influenced by the ideological practice of patriarchy, has been largely developed and tested. radical feminists like firestone (1970) and brownmiller (1976) also consider biology to be the determining factor in their own analyses of, for example, the division of labour by sex and rape respectively. a variety of criticisms have been levelled at analyses which favour biological determinism. among the most problematic assumptions made by those who accept biological determinism is the fact that such a position makes social change highly unlikely if not impossible because of the "fact" of this biological or natural inequality. in her discussion of the lacemakers of narsapur, maria mies shows how the system of capitalist production built upon previously existing patriarchal practices and beliefs to transform the lives of the kapus , a peasant agricultural caste, and some christian women. as the industry developed women became segregated in the production jobs while men captured the jobs of agents -which gave them access to the actual site where the value of the women's labour was realized. in this way the women's labour was exploited. the reason that was given for women's exclusion from the activity of agent was that they were not mobile enough since, among other things, they could not ride bicycles due to local social traditions (1982:10). such beliefs about what is socially acceptable are effective ideological and material barriers to women's emancipation, the tenacity with which women cling to these oppressive [patriarchal] norms, because they are symbols of a bygone higher status ... is the ideological and psychological base on which a new phase of exploitation can be built (mies, 1982:13). similar methods of social control and gender oppression are evident in the fisher society of atlantic canada. one researcher 52 relates how women in the fishing communities of newfoundland formerly had a higher status because their work was more directly related to production, the older women are guided by the past in much the same way as the men, and they too defer to the identity of "fisherman" ... their role as fishermen's wives has vanished. not only are there no fish to be dried on flakes [drying racks], but virtually all other aspects of their past lives have gone as well (porter, 1988:175). the tendency to want a return to the old norms which guided life is evident as porter indicates. we must recognize, however, that such practices offer hierarchical, gender inegalitarian based definitions of women and men. for example, the idea that the man is the head of the household in fisher society, as in india, legitimates such things as the knowledge that women's sphere of activity is in the house, and more broadly, it can legitimate the unequal gender division of labour. finally, it is in evident that material interests underlie these ideological practices. although porter makes useful reference to the desire to maintain the norms of a bygone era, i think she over-states the case when she says that "virtually all other aspects of their lives have gone as well". in the past women's labour may have been more visibly a part of the fisher household's production . in contrast to porter what i am emphasizing here is the extent to which women's labour remains an indispensable, albeit ignored, component of contemporary household production. women in small boat fisher households are not left with nothing to do, rather with the concentration on production for exchange-value, women's labour (connected to the household's fishery activities) has become less visible, but it has not ended. to expand on this, i would suggest that the development of capitalism has distorted the labour processes of women such that the content of their labour has changed, but not necessarily the amount. they have in some cases been left with a much less public role within the family of the fishing household; for example, most fish processing is now done in specialized processing plants -that job, as a productive household or community -based activity, is no longer available. since processing work is almost always seasonal women's public exposure through this sort of work changes accordingly. the point here is that while the demands of capitalism have changed the process of production immensely, it has left women in a less powerful position, but not a less integral one. 53 southwest nova scotia's "independent" small boat fishers: culture and class in a harsh environment in this section i will examine another ideological practice which helps to legitimate and reproduce the subordination of women in various parts of the atlantic provinces. the sub-region of southwest nova scotia is of interest here as a kind of precursory case study. the dominant ideological practice in southwest nova scotia, especially prevalent in the powerful fishing community (fishers, processors and suppliers inclusive), comprises a brand of laissez-faire capitalist and petty bourgeois production (clement, 1986). this practice is distinctly free enterprise in relation to the rest of the province and the region. in practice however, even southwest nova scotia's fishers analyze the system based on their own constellation of interests and objectives. like other groups they selectively reject laissez-faire policies when it is in their interests to do so. in instances where fishers have felt threatened by a particular group or perhaps a state policy they have mobilized in order to circumvent the strictly laissez-faire operation of the market. special social programs represent the most obvious state interventions taken at the behest of fishers; examples include, special loans for vessel replacement and unemployment insurance considerations, but virtually all state policies affect the market in some way. under such circumstances fisher families, like many other actors in the economy, are often unwilling participants in a hegemonic practice, namely capitalism and they attempt to make the best of their situation -sometimes successfully, sometimes not. as explained earlier, small boat fishing tends to be gender stratified activity with men tending to do the fishing and women being involved in a variety of on-shore labour processes. typically, a male fisher has formal ownership of the boat and crews are made up of family members whenever possible. otherwise close friends or neighbours crew boats on a share of the catch basis (clement, 1986:27,29,32; brym and sacouman, 1979). in his discussion of some of the contradictions between fishers' view of their work and the reality of their work, davis clearly gives his analysis of the contribution that the fishing labour process makes toward the fisher's ideological practice of independence, fishing boats and gear are formally the property of their users. the units of production are self-contained smallscale and individually operationalized in an often risky environment. all of the work tasks in each unit of production are generally completed by its crew members. fishing incomes are solely derived from the production strategies and the expenditures of each unit of production. in short, small boat fishing is in many ways characterized by the independence and the individuality of each crew. moreover, attributes of production strategies lend a sense of inter-boat competition to some 54 of the activities, e.g., lobster fishing. the fishermen's ideology of self reliance and rugged individualism is in these ways reflective of aspects of their real experiences (1984:435). fishers clearly have a material basis for the ideological practice of individualism and "independence". however, it has been constructed on a highly selective basis. the influence of patriarchal practice is evident in davis' quotation in that the work task description has excluded virtually all work that does not take place at sea. again, in the highly gender stratified society of the fishing communities this, by definition, excludes most, if not all, of the work women do. by ignoring the contribution of women the ideological practice of independence is reproduced along with women's subordination. the labour process, as just outlined, is one characterized in some instances by autonomy or "selfdependence", but not independence. it is true that fishers decide when, how, where, and how hard to work. they do not make, however, these "autonomous" decisions as though they were extracted from the exigencies of daily survival as fishers or as members of households -outside forces affect their decisions and these include the need to turn a profit which in practice translates into catching enough fish, and selling it, at the going rate of fish per kilogram or tonne to reproduce the enterprise. women's role in affecting the decisions that fishers make have also traditionally been ignored by scholars (porter, 1987:45) as well as by the state and capital. at the level of the market where oligoponistic and paternalistic relations abound (kearney, 1983) between fishers (sellers) and merchants (buyers/processors) the ideological practice of independence ceases to function. in that context the bases of the fisher's sense of independence, the product of their labour, and the romantic, idealist notions of fisher "independence" produced in patriarchal culture and folklore are unmasked before the harsh material forces of market exchange. the glorification of the male culture of fishers is an important part of the ideological practice in the maritimes where the male culture is often characterized as engaged in a taming the natural "she-world". the peculiar strain of the ideological practice characteristic of southwest nova scotia, with its perhaps more adamant than average free enterprise position, is more completely understood when we also consider the cultural ties or the historical linkages between the area and new england. the local adherence to the individualism of laissez-faire capitalism is, in effect, a function of these two primary influences -the material base of fishers at the level of labour process and the new england connection. new england's historical economic and cultural \ideological domination of southwest nova scotia established conditions which clearly fostered a cultural climate amenable to their free enterprise practice. 55 in the market exchange the unequal and antagonistic nature of relations (fishers dependent on a few buyers for the purchase of their catch) is de-emphasized in the local culture; instead, paternalistic relations between them often legitimate these inequalities in conjunction h^-th the hegemonic ideological practices: capital ism/ 1 iberalism. fishers are relevant here in two particular respects. first, fishers' labour is commodified in the fish that is caught, consequently when they sell their fish they are actually, at some level, selling their labour power. in the same labour process women's organizational labour is also commodified in the fish which is caught; this is so because their labour is socially necessary. socially necessary labour or abstract labour, as opposed to individual labour in any given firm, is defined in terms of units of time and entails "the labour time required to produce any use-value under the conditions of production normal for a given society" (marx, 1986:46-47). we also know that marx and many others regard certain practices as productive which at first glance do not seem to be. consider, for example, the case of manufacturing. actual manufacturing is proceeded by organizational labour processes in which raw materials must be purchased, the labour that goes into this is thus socially necessary, as is women's organizational labour in the fisher household. furthermore the distribution of the product is regarded as productive. so too i would argue is organizational labour in fishing which is broader than the simple labour process of casting nets or laying traps and later pulling them in. nevertheless, the value of a commodity appears only as the exchange ratio between the commodity in question and the money commodity in a particular exchange and at the time of sale the social relations which produced the commodity are not readily apparent, except to the producer. in this way women's labour is obscured through a form of commodity fetishism. that is, the sales transaction is allowed to reify relations between commodities, while relations between producers and buyers are conceptualized as free transactions uncumbered by enduring social relations of either a classed or gendered character. secondly, because of the oligoponistic nature of the fish markets, which are inextricably linked to and are part of the capitalist system, "freedom" is limited to such an extent that it is equated with coercion, i.e., sell on the oligoponistic market, even if you are not being paid the real value for your fish, or get out of the industry. the fisher, and for that matter the entire household, is in a position similar to that of any other worker under capitalism. they are freely compel led to sell their labour (commodified in the fish they catch) or not sell it and take no income . one other important characteristic of the ideological practice of independence is the underlying misogyny which structures the gendered division of labour. for a variety of local cultural reasons women rarely take part in the fishing (porter, 1988:170; 56 davis, 1984). several instances of this are noted in faris (1972:73). for example, women may not be permitted to set foot on the boat for fear of "polluting" the vessel for the day. such social prohibitions additionally serve to perpetuate women's devalued and subordinated status within the household by clearly situating the means of production in the hands of the male. the fact that women's contribution to their household's fishing enterprise is minimized or ignored completely is, as i have argued, partly a manifestation of the hegemonic ideological practices discussed in the first section and also the local fisher variant. there is relatively little work done on what i have termed here the "ideological practice of independence" specific to atlantic fishers. one of its most striking facets is the exclusion of women from its analysis and the lack of attention to women's work which contributes directly to the fishing enterprise of the household. it is slowly becoming recognized that, historically, women's labour was important in the mercantilist (or salt-cod) era of fishing. ellen antler wrote an important piece on women's historical, though often hidden contribution, to production in the newfoundland fisheries as well as producing a wide variety of use values for subsistence. in it she estimated, that the process of drying fish added $2400 (1950 values) to the value of the seasons catch in labrador, and $15002000 (1969 values) in conception bay. in all antler suggested women contribute around 35% of the family income in direct, measurable economic values (porter;1987:45) . equally important as porter indicates is the fact that antler's analysis finally made visible the economic activity of rural women which, to that point, had been ignored by male analysts. however recognizing past sins is easier than admitting those of the present. nevertheless recognition is slowly emerging as to the extent of the contribution to the fisher household by women today (connelly and macdonald, 1990). since there is little research that deals specifically with the issue of women's labour in fishing, empirical evidence of their participation is difficult to locate. my own research points to some trends already mentioned. during field work in the summer of 1989 i was able to discuss with a lobster fisher, albeit superficially, the question of the household as a unit of production and the gendered division of labour that existed therein. in this discussion, the male fisher while admitting that his spouse's labour was important attempted to minimize it by making light of it: ps: when you do your income tax or your inventory of how much you've spent on equipment ... does your wife do that? 57 fisher: oh yeah she does it ... in fact she gets paid year round for doing it ... she gets to live with me. (southwest nova scotia interviews, june 23, 1989). the underlying relations of ruling are made apparent and the ideological practice of independence is shown to be in effect even at the level of casual conversation. unfortunately what barely gets recognized in the informal context of casual conversation is ever more difficult to recognize and legitimate in public discourse . subsistence activities were undertaken by each partner during other times of the year, but during the fishing season both partners, not only the male, contributed to the fishing enterprise. the woman i spoke with did what she modestly called "book-keeping" and was therefore instrumental in terms of budgeting, maintenance decisions, crew payment and outfitting (i.e. equipment purchasing). the problem of recognition, however, requires discussion in a theoretical light which will make visible that which much past theoretical and empirical work made invisible. additional fieldwork is planned to explore this. women's labour is commodified in the fish they make it possible to catch. what i attempt to highlight is the diversity of labour processes which are included in the term "domestic labour"; and the way in which this term slides women's decidedly productive labour into the category of unproductive or domestic labour. through this i attempt to problematize fisher women's productive and reproductive labour and sketch the kinds of considerations that must inform a fully developed analysis. the requirement therefore is to begin to recognize and value women's decidedly productive labour and to formally differentiate it from other domestic labour while at the same time attempting to change the fact of women's sole responsibility for domestic labour. in terms of the ideological practice of independence, the women of fisher households are caught in a difficult position. their unpaid work is not recognized as contributing to fishing and as long as their work is not recognized as productive they remain subordinate in the household unit of production. conclusion at the level of praxis, women are developing strategies which may begin to break down the exploitative elements of the ideological practice of independence. one such strategy would be to take an active part in gaining recognition of their work. this might be done at the individual level by encouraging more women to go to the dock side to be part of the fish sales process. in this way women would be part of the process in which the value of the catch is realized; their contribution would be concretized. i think this might be a significant material change in circumstances. it would perhaps change the woman's role from that of isolated, 58 powerless and dependent worker in the household domain to that of equal partner/actor in the realization of the household's material well-being. initially such a transformation would have to be negotiated at the level of the individual . notwithstanding some imminent structural transformation in both gender and class relations it seems to me to merit some consideration. this practice of course has been happening in some areas (clark, 1988:267) and it has an admittedly double-edged characteristic. while it would help to concretize the labour of the women it adds yet another task to women's already double-burdening responsibility for reproductive labour in the home. another facet of this strategy would have to include a redistribution of reproductive domestic labour -not an easy challenge. as in the gloucester example, women may establish their own organization where they could act at a political level in their own and their household's interests. another possible strategy might be for women to struggle for a place within the local fisher's associations or the maritime fishermen's union (mfu). at present the mfu only allows certain types of fishers in the union and all of them actually have to be "doing fishing"; however, some other fishing unions encompass both "shore/plant" and "at sea" workers (e.g., nffawu -newfoundland fisherman, food and allied workers union). if this approach were adopted the union would have a greatly expanded membership. on the other hand it would have to begin to address the very real issue of women's subordination in fisher households. 59 endnotes 1. thanks are due to jared keil and mary-anne kandrack for comments on early and later drafts respectively. 2. for a variety of positions discussing the meaning of underdevelopment in atlantic canada see brym and sacouman, 1979. 3. things ideological here are defined in a way that has been termed critical by thompson who points out that ideology "is essentially linked to the process of sustaining asymmetrical relations of power that is the process of maintaining domination" (1984:4). 4. dorothy smith (1990) calls these "relations of ruling" and others have different names for such relations. see armstrong and armstrong (1990); thompson (1984). 5. women in development (wid) . 6. jaggar (1983:62) points out the contradiction inherent in the liberal focus on equality of opportunity; equal opportunity to compete for unequal rewards is impossible to achieve as long as rewards are conspicuously unequal. 7. initial fish processing work used to be organized and controlled by women in a community based labour process. 8. although the capitalist mode of production and its many underlying practices derived from the practice of the theory of liberalism this is not to say that the two are, in fact, unproblematical ly compatible. see for example mcpherson on the contradictions between capitalism and democracy. in practice liberalism has clearly served as a legitimating force for capitalism. 9. as noted in a previous example mies gives of the prohibitions that certain women should not ride bicycles. 60 references armstrong, pat and hugh armstrong. the double ghetto: canadian women and their segregated work . toronto: mcclelland and stewart, 1978. bandarage, asoka. "women in development: liberalism, marxism and marxist feminism." development and change , 15 (october ): 495-515, 1984. brownmiller, susan. against our will: men, women and rape . new york: bantam, 1976. brunton, r., j. overton, and j. sacouman. "uneven underdevelopment and song: culture and development in atlantic canada." in l. salter (ed.), communication studies in canada . toronto: butterworth, 1981. brym, robert j. and r. james sacouman eds . underdevelopment and social movements in atlantic canada . toronto: new hogtown press, 1979. clark, margaret-elwyn. "managing uncertainty: family religion and collective action among fishermen's wives in gloucester, massachusetts." in jane nadel-klein and dona lee davis, to work and to weep: women in fishing economies . st. john's, nfld.:iser, 1988. connelly, patricia and martha macdonald. "women's domestic work and wage labour in a nova scotia community." studies in political economy , (10):45-72, 1983. "class and gender in fishing communities in nova scotia." studies in political economy , (30):61-85, 1990 daly, mary. gyn/ecology: the metaethics of radical feminism . boston: beacon, 1978. davis, anthony. " 'you're your own boss: an economic anthropology of small boat fishing in port lameron harbour, southwest nova scotia." ph.d. thesis. halifax: dalhousie university, 1984. eisenstein, zillah, r. (ed.). capitalist patriarchy and the case for socialist feminism . new york: monthly review press, 1979. elson, diane and ruth pearson. 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"capitalism, patriarchy, and job segregation by sex." in zillah eisenstein (ed.). capitalist patriarchy and the case for socialist feminism . new york and london: monthly review press, 1979. jaggar, alison m. feminist politics and human nature . sussex: the harvester press, 1983. kearney, john. "common tragedies: a study of resource access in the bay of fundy herring fisheries", unpublished master's thesis, department of environmental studies, dalhousie university , halifax, nova scotia, 1983. leacock, eleanor ed., "introduction" in frederick engels the origin of the family. private property and the state . new york: international publishers, 1973. marx, karl. capital . moscow: progress publishers, 1986. mcpherson, c.b. democratic theory: essays in retrieval . oxford: clarendon press, 1973. mies, maria. patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale: women in the international division of labour . london and atlantic highlands, n.j.: zed books, 1986. _"the dynamics of the sexual division of labour and integration of rural women into the world market." in lourdes beneria (ed. ) women and development: the sexual division of labour in rural societies . new york: praeger, 1982. mouffe, chantal . "hegemony and ideology in gramsci." in culture. ideology and social process . london: batsford, 1987. porter, marilyn. "women and old boats: the sexual division in a newfoundland outport." in arlene tigar mclaren ed . gender and society: creating a canadian women's sociology , 1988. 62 "peripheral women: towards a feminist analysis of the atlantic region." studies in political economy , (23):41-71, 1987. smith, dorothy. conceptual practices of power: a feminist sociology of knowledge . toronto: university of toronto press, 1990. thompson, john b. studies in the theory of ideology . berkeley: university of california press, 1984. 63 978-1-926958-01-9 159 reviews book review about canada: animal rights, by john sorenson. black point, nova scotia and winnipeg, manitoba: fernwood publishing company limited, 2010. $17.95 can, paper. isbn: 978-1-55266-356-1. pages: 1-192. reviewed by priscillia lefebvre1 about canada: animal rights is one in a series of books that critically examines vital issues pertaining to social justice, healthcare, and public services in canadian society. john sorenson delivers an extensive analysis of animal rights in canada, which is both extremely disturbing and informative. in his exploration of this important and controversial topic, sorenson provides us with numerous examples of the exploitation and abuse of animals within industry, as well as the sad shortcomings of canadian legislation intended to regulate it. he explains the issue of animal rights in a comprehensive and yet extremely accessible way. because of its broad nature, sorenson does not delve into an exhaustive analysis of any one topic but provides the reader with an excellent overview of the legal, historical, and social issues surrounding animal rights in canada as well as the arguments, misconceptions, and industry propaganda embedded within it. sorenson begins with a discussion of animal rights within the broader social justice movement by remarking that all too often animal rights are disregarded by many otherwise progressive people as a legitimate concern. for many, he explains, animal rights are considered inferior to the widely accepted notion of the hierarchical order of nature in which human beings dominate and take priority over concerns of other species. labeled as pretentious or sentimental, animal rights issues are placed at odds with other struggles instead of being considered central to many sites 1 priscillia lefebvre is a ph.d candidate in the department of sociology & anthropology with a concentration in political economy. she can be reached at plefebvr@connect.carleton.ca about canada: animal rights 160 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research of oppression. sorenson takes issue with this by stating that to view a compassion for the suffering of animals as somehow indicative of a disregard for the suffering of humans is nonsensical and creates a false dichotomy between the two, as if systemic violence towards animals and the environment does not also include an attack on human labour and health under patriarchal capitalism. animal rights activists, to a great extent, are also accused of extremism and called terrorists, mainly pointing to groups such as the animal liberation front, by those who would defend animal exploitation and cruelty under the present system. sorenson likens this socially constructed bifurcation to racism and sexism, ideologies which have been historically used to justify the oppression of marginalized others. sorenson readies his audience for this discussion with the following passage (p.11): capitalism involves exploitation of animals as well as humans and the profit-motive extends suffering to a broader scale: billions of animals are killed each year in the food, vivisection, fashion, hunting, and entertainment industries. mistreatment of animals is shaped by systems of oppression that developed over time to maintain profit, privilege and power. sorenson’s abolitionist perspective is based first and foremost on the premise, outlined by gary francione, that animals are to be recognized as having one basic right—the right not to be considered property. all animals are sentient beings who deserve respect and are not to be seen as at the disposal of humans, and for this he makes no apologies. sorenson maintains that the commodification of animals enables their usage by humans to attain whatever ends deemed fit by the owner, be it for profit, labour, experimentation or otherwise. he details accounts of the gruesome activities taking place in industrial meat production, factory farming, and in the slaughter of cows, pigs, chickens as well as the production of more so-called upscale delicacies such as duck foie gras, marine animals, and exotic meats. he explores animals being tortured and abused for entertainment purposes and sport such as in hunting, rodeos, horse-racing, circuses, and zoos. sorenson also speaks of the ugliness of the pet industry in his examples of puppy mills, as well as cases of extreme animal cruelty on the part of pet owners and individuals. he also refers to and provides examples of the redundancy and ineffectualness of animal research in canada. although reading numerous accounts of violence and excruciating pain being inflicted on animals does not make for an enjoyable read per se, it is an important one for those willing to confront the truly horrible production methods of what we, as a society, consume on a daily basis. sorenson reestablishes the links between animal and human suffering through a survey of the detrimental role that animal exploitation and the killing of animals for profit plays in capitalist colonial expansion. he argues that animal rights issues 161 must be integrated as part of the greater ecological and economic crisis by interrogating the animal industry’s contribution to serious threats to human survival such as global warming and starvation. corporate interests will never allow for animal rights as that would interfere with their profits. to combat this, corporations have invested millions of dollars, a significant portion of which comes from taxpayers awarded through government subsidies, in public relations propaganda. for example, sorenson outlines the opportunistic use of indigenous people by the fur industry as marketing tools to promote themselves as preserving canada’s rich cultural heritage and supporting traditional ways of living by paying aboriginal fur-trappers next to nothing for the bloody work of killing animals. many would say this relationship is far more representative of canada’s tradition of colonization and genocide of indigenous people than it is of respecting or preserving aboriginal culture. lending to the strength of his arguments, particularly when speaking of canada’s indefensible seal hunt, he also lays out the irrationality of much of the animal industry’s practices not only in moral, but economic terms. in doing so, he calls into question the sustainability of such practices and explores who really profits from them. in most cases, such as the seal hunt, it is fur industry corporations who lobby the federal government’s department of fisheries and oceans to continue defending the mass killing of seals under the guise of job creation for off-season fishermen and animal population control, even in the face of embarrassing international public anger and costly boycotts. ironically, this also follows the same orwellian logic that conservation through culling initiatives propagate in that in order to preserve animals we must kill them. sorenson also points out that, in reality, these brutal annual practices only account for a tiny fraction of income for labourers, while producing hazardous consequences for the ocean’s ecosystem and costing governments several times more money to orchestrate than it generates. in fact, one gets the impression that it would be cheaper to cancel the hunt altogether and just give sealers the money they make during this mass killing outright. as the fur market declines, it would seem that the seal hunt, referred to by many as ‘canada’s shame,’ is only lucrative for the commercial fur industry. in the final chapter, sorenson presents veganism as the only ethical choice when facing an industry bent on such cruelty and total disregard for the wellbeing of both animals and humans; an industry inflicting countless long-term harms on the environment in search of profit. however, his call for veganism as a (at least partial) solution fails in part due to the lack of addressing the shortcomings of following a vegan lifestyle without examining other forms of exploitation that, on its own, veganism does not address. problems surrounding grain production and other foods under capitalist industrial agriculture that are not animal based, for example. about canada: animal rights 162 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research where does veganism situate itself, in the resistance of not only animal exploitation but human exploitation as well, in the import of fruits and other foods from countries such as the philippines and costa rica grown under extremely oppressive, dangerous, and environmentally harmful conditions, not to mention the use of migrant labour in canada’s own fruit and vegetable production? sorenson’s call for veganism would have been much stronger had he clarified this point. nor does sorenson problematize his call for eco-tourism as an alternative to safari-style vacationing as a colonial practice in itself which often requires the appropriation and ‘clearing’ of land already in use by indigenous people in order to prepare it for viewing as a pristine wilderness. in my opinion, these are vital topics for discussion if we are not to simply trade one oppression for another in an attempt to, as sorenson himself would say, “salve our consciences.” that said, about canada: animal rights provides an excellent overview of this issue, as well as its far-reaching implications and vital place within the broader movement for social justice for all. whole book pdf book review: missing women, missing news | 291 book review missing women, missing news: covering crisis in vancouver’s downtown eastside, by david hugill. black point, ns: fernwood publishing, 2010. $17.95 cad., paper. isbn: 9781552663776. pages: 1-111. reviewed by ryan boyd1 in missing women, missing news, david hugill offers an insightful and critical study of the national newspaper coverage of the crisis of missing women in vancouver’s downtown eastside that followed through the proceedings against robert pickton, a critique of police responses to the crisis, and an analysis of the roles of the federal, provincial, and municipal governments in creating the socioeconomic conditions of the downtown eastside. hugill charges journalists and police as missing in action after sixty women, most of them sex workers, from this neighbourhood were murdered between 1978 and 2002. on the one hand, he criticizes journalists because mainstream news coverage of the crisis did not appear until 1998. on the other hand, he criticizes police for their contempt and negligence: “at best, they failed to notice. at worst, they failed to care” (p. 10). hugill argues that the narrative combining down on their luck women, a psychotic serial killer, and bad policing cannot satisfactorily explain why this crisis was ignored for so long. this prudent and topical study reveals the complexity of what was presented as a simple narrative and reassigns the culpability of the crisis to the state. the crux of hugill’s argument is that news coverage generally offered uncomplicated reasons why these women were neglected and victimized. media reasoning positioned the local vancouver police as the negligent party and the women as victims of pickton alone. hugill’s focus is to reconsider these partial yet dominant explanations by examining additional layers of complexity (p. 22). hugill explores the historically, politically and culturally pervasive reasons why this crisis was ignored for so long. the state should be implicated as structuring and perpetuating the vulnerability of these women through the lingering impact of 1  ryan boyd is a master’s candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university (ottawa, canada). 292 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times colonialism, prostitution laws and policing patterns, the lack of a federal housing plan, and continued funding cutbacks for social programs directly impacting vancouver’s downtown eastside. his consideration of ideology as the primary force of shaping the logic of these narratives is his contribution to several studies already covering the mishandling of the crisis. chapter 1 examines the initial limitations of the media coverage and explanations for the crisis, as well as their lasting effects. hugill’s research reveals that newspapers reported that the crisis was largely neglected for two decades because of the negligence of the local vancouver police department (p. 24). this emerged as the central theme for explaining the crisis in the media. drawing from stuart hall, hugill suggests that local police negligence became the “primary interpretation” of the crisis, thereby limiting the physical space and parties responsible for the crisis at the local level. this is problematic for hugill as this interpretation defines both the sources and solutions at the local level, meaning “the narratives of newspapers mask the larger contradictions about the universality of state protection” (p. 24). this primary interpretation sets an ideological limit for the other narratives that would follow. while hugill commends journalists for implicating local authorities and their role in perpetuating the crisis, he argues that ultimately these groups were the only ones held accountable and that the structural conditions set by the state were neglected. chapter 2 is devoted to the role of the state in fostering the conditions that both produced and imperiled marginalized women in british columbia. hugill writes that the state is responsible for producing the structural conditions that put these women in danger in three central ways: (1) sweeping retrenchments of state systems of social solidarity beginning in 1983; (2) amendments to the criminal code targeted at curbing street prostitution; and (3) the persistent effects of state colonial policy (p. 32). the retrenchment of the state occurred in three distinct periods, beginning in 1983 with provincial budget cuts that “hollowed out social services” (p. 35). the liberal federal government attacked social services again during the 1990s. hugill argues that declining federal support both forced and inspired provincial liberals to further reduce spending beginning in 2001, resulting in the “single deepest cuts to social spending in canadian history” (p. 37). with this information in hand, hugill engages with his media analysis and discovers that newspapers report overwhelmingly that women engage in prostitution to support their drug addictions. despite the reality that many women book review: missing women, missing news | 293 engage in sex work as a way to supplement reduced or precarious incomes, this reporting has helped produce an ideological conflation with “drug addict” and “prostitute” (p. 39). changes to the canadian criminal code under brian mulroney in 1985 resulted in pushing already vulnerable women into the unseen margins of the downtown eastside and forcing them to work in relative isolation from one another. these changes impeded sex workers from forming cohesive community that could share information about bad dates and pressured them into making quicker, less-informed decisions about their clients. yet, only six out of 157 articles studied covering the crisis were critical of these sanctions.2 hugill’s layered work has the potential to inform current debates in prostitution laws, in which the federal government and provincial government of ontario are appealing an ontario superior court ruling that dismissed laws against keeping a common bawdy house, communicating for the purposes of prostitution and living on the avails of the trade (jones 2011). in a critical analysis of the racial component of the state’s culpability of endangering sex workers, hugill’s study finds that only thirteen of 157 newspaper articles acknowledged that a significant proportion of missing women were aboriginal (p. 47). despite coverage that goes beyond just-the-facts reporting, trying to invoke some deeper meaning to the crisis, journalists overlooked an abundance of research and statistics from well-established authorities that “clearly demonstrates the disproportionate burden of social suffering carried by aboriginal people in this neighbourhood” (p. 47). hugill questions why this central factor was neglected despite a number of credible sources for answers. his answer is in canadian commonsense ideology. our image of canada as a fair, democratic, and tolerant society creates “race blindness” as a by-product of commonsense. this commonsense reasoning posits that racism cannot possibly exist in this type of society, so it is ignored almost outright. with this layer being ignored, newspaper coverage focused mainly on the exotic nature of violence and drugs, the self-imposed risky lifestyle in society’s seedy underbelly, and the presence of a serial killer to add to the well-established coverage of police negligence. chapter 3 focuses on reported images of the missing women and sex workers from the downtown eastside. hugill pays special attention to who is speaking on behalf of missing women and prostitutes and their perceived credibility. hugill suggests that credibility is based on per2  while this is mainly a qualitative study, hugill uses several numerical representations as another way to illustrate the themes in newspaper coverage. 294 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times sonal relationships to victims rather than an understanding of the systemic issues facing the downtown eastside. his study finds that family and friends of missing women were quoted 109 times, advocates and allies of street women were quoted 25 times, and sex workers themselves were quoted 10 times (p. 62). this is indicative of vastly differentiated access to discourse and shows that sex workers were not in the position to describe themselves, but were rather described by others. one critique is that while it is implied, access to discourse is not something that hugill writes about in detail. a second critique is that this analysis also would have been more nuanced if details of quotes from police officers and their role in describing the women and the crisis had been included. when prostitutes were allowed to define themselves it was only to describe their one-dimensional drive for narcotics. hugill notes that each paper reminds its readers that these murdered women were “real people,” but describes them more like caricatures. conflating prostitution with crime makes it appear self-inflicted or self-selected—especially with drug addiction. drawing on hall, hugill suggests that through conflation with drug use, prostitution is criminalized and therefore depoliticized (p. 75). chapter 4 is where hugill’s work in human geography shines through. the aim of this chapter is to detail the ways in which coverage mapped the downtown eastside, using a multitude of images on streetlevel chaos that set the neighbourhood as symbolically distinct and disconnected from the rest of the city. hugill writes, “[t]hough seemingly disconnected, patterns of divestment in the dtes and patterns of geographically specific tolerance of illicit activity offer potent ways to interrogate the hollowness of the claim that vancouver’s inner city has been “taken over” by a degenerate population” (p. 83). here hugill is pointing to the ways in which capital and state interest had slowly disappeared from the area. furthermore, differentiated police presence and enforcement created a zone of tolerance that ultimately neglected missing women, suggesting that their disappearances were part of the transient nature of the job. the coverage of the downtown eastside is described through text and photographs as if it were ground zero of a zombie apocalypse, where the undead exchange sex for drugs with human beings instead of simply eating them. the neighbourhood is framed as “a horrifying hobbesian enclosure where the war of all against all is waged with unyielding fury” (p. 92). no one can be trusted and political intervention is seen as futile. however, hugill’s conclusion suggests that all is not lost. the book review: missing women, missing news | 295 downtown eastside has shown a great deal of leadership, bottom-up resistance, ground-level support, and ingenuity in a number of groundbreaking programs, such as insite, canada’s first safe-injection venue (p. 98). he suggests that sex workers must make changes even if they are not officially sanctioned by the state, such as collective work environments, networks that share bad-date lists, or sex worker unions. they must also push for a venue for safer sex work. these suggestions have partially come to fruition in the aforementioned ontario superior court case ruling, which has seen current and former sex workers advocate for safer conditions. work like missing women, missing news questions commonsense ideology and urges critical thinking. while hugill focuses on vancouver’s downtown eastside, his work is relevant in current debates surrounding prostitution laws, spatial identities of other urban areas with concentrated poverty3, and the residual effects of colonialism in an aboriginal population. the aboriginal population faces structural issues such as systemic poverty, high rates of incarceration, mental health concerns, and loss of culture, among many others, because of canada’s racist history. this history cannot be ignored because of the contemporary commonsense of tolerance. in the case of vastly disparate birthrates, without developing strategies that problematize and work to resolve the negative impacts of colonialism, institutionally and culturally disenfranchised aboriginal communities will continue to grow in a culture of contempt and indifference. references: aboriginal peoples in canada in 2006: inuit, métis and first nations, 2006 census (2008). ottawa: ministry of industry statistics canada. jones, a. (2011, may 4). “sex-trade workers say ottawa trivializing their serious claims in appeal”. maclean’s .ca. retrieved may 18, 2011 from www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=n6755746. walks, r. and l. bourne. (2006). “ghettos in canada’s cities? racial segregation, ethnic enclaves and poverty concentration in canadian urban areas”. canadian geographer, 50(3), 273-297 . 3  walks and bourne (2006) report a growing trend of racialized concentrated poverty that suggests a ‘ghettoization’ in major canadian cities, such toronto, saskatoon, and winnipeg. 978-1-926958-01-9 133 culture political poetry lyle daggett1 “political” poetry. all human activity is political because it takes place in a context — the context of history. sending someone a recipe for crab meat salad is one thing if you work food prep in a restaurant kitchen. it means something else if you’re nancy reagan. poets have been political, in some sense of the word, from the earliest beginnings to the present. enheduanna, sumerian poet, priestess of the moon goddess inanna, the earliest poet whose name is known. the chinese government compiled collections of popular folk songs — for example, the shih ching, the book of songs — as a way of learning something about what the people were thinking. (did nixon listen to bob dylan or joan baez or pete seeger? does george bush listen to billy bragg or tracy chapman or rap music?) homer was political. (george bush on the walls of troy.) the bhagavad gita (which j. robert oppenheimer quoted as he watched the first atomic bomb explode in the new mexico desert) was and is political. the plays of aeschylus and sophocles and euripedes were defining forces in greek society. dante and shakespeare were all political. (if dante were writing today, who would he consign to the ninth circle of hell?) the great flowering of art and culture in medieval spain grew originally from the founding of a new umayyad dynasty in exile by survivors of the conquest of damascus by the abbasids. the trouveres and troubadours of medieval france lived in a time of constant upheaval and displacement and continuously shifting political alliances, in which most if not all of them were intimately involved. (many died during the wholesale slaughter that took place during the albigensian crusades, following which troubadour poetry essentially came to a halt.) 1 this work was first published by pemmican press. political poetry 134 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research chaucer was political, tu fu (or du fu) was political, murasaki shikibu was political. andrew marvell, william blake, shelley, keats, byron, whitman, rubén darío, josé martí, yosano akiko. political, in at least some sense of the word. what we’re talking about here is something more specific. we’re talking about poetry that expresses or reflects — either explicitly or at least by suggestion — politics that are left-wing, working-class, populist, or of a similar character. how to combine politics with creative work remains an unsettled question on the political left. this is not simply a question of socialist or communist realism versus whatever else. the widespread stereotype of socialist realism emphasizes the huge public portraits and statues of lenin, stalin, mao, etc., and maybe allows for some murals and poster art of muscle-bound workers in factories and rosy-cheeked starry-eyed young men and women gazing off at the bright horizon of the future. this, again, is the stereotype. but it should be patently obvious that public portraits and monument sculpture, poster art, and so on, comprise only a portion of (and not necessarily the best) of a culture’s art. we cannot judge the effectiveness of socialst realism (or any other artistic movement or tendency of the political left) based only on the more mediocre or homogenized examples. should we judge the art of capitalist societies based only on norman rockwell and mount rushmore? should we judge american literature based on mcguffey’s reader? are these the basis for the prevailing critical standards advocated by the literature and art departments at leading universities? for every norman rockwell there’s a diego rivera, a david siqueiros, a walter crane, a sue coe; for every edgar guest and joyce kilmer there’s a thomas mcgrath, a muriel rukeyser, a hugh macdiarmid. some people argue that there is much badly written political poetry — that much of it reads like a political pamphlet chopped into line breaks, or sing-song rhyming doggerel — and that this proves that political subject matter is not suited to poetry. but there is also much badly written love poetry, badly written poetry about religion, nature, and every other subject. do we then conclude that love, religion, nature, etc., are also unsuitable subjects for poetry? do hallmark greeting cards invalidate the work of dante and shakespeare and shelley and wordsworth? journalism reports facts; poetry tells the truth. in our time much political discourse in english — including discourse on the political left — is weighted with high-sounding rhetoric, with the greco-roman vocabulary of philosophy, psychology, and the other social sciences. one of our tasks, when writing about political subject matter (or any other subjects) is to make decisions about the vocabulary we use. 135 there is nothing wrong with using, in a poem, words such as “capitalism,” “working class,” “imperialism,” “revolution,” etc. the challenge is to ground such language in the concrete physical texture and detail of the world we live in from day to day, to reclaim it from the bourgeois abuse and alienation it has suffered, to give it the life and meaning it can actually have. we are not talking about merely taking a political speech or pamphlet, or a set of theoretical statements, and simplistically grafting them onto the skeleton of a poem — as if writing a poem were an act of taxidermy. it’s difficult to write a love poem if you’ve never been in love, or to write a poem about nature if you’ve never touched a tree. similarly, it can be difficult to write a good political poem if you’ve never marched in an anti-war demonstration, or faced a platoon of police in riot gear preparing to charge, or tried to pay rent or medicals when you’ve been unemployed for six months. the best examples of good left-wing political poetry are written out of an organic understanding of the politics, and out of a passionate involvement in the political movements of the time and place in which the poet lives. poetry of the political left from the twentieth century has developed along several currents or tendencies. my intention here is not to define rigid categories but to give examples of some of the possibilities poets have explored. though one or two of the poets i’ve named below might not strictly be considered politically left, all have at least shown a general outlook in their work that is populist, workingclass, anti-fascist, radically democratic, or of a similar character. 1. poetry rich in metaphor and imagery, poetry that works mainly be evoking feeling and sensory experience (rather than by elaborating intellectual argument or rhetorical appeal). example poets might be pablo neruda (usually), paul éluard, lorca, yosano akiko, mahmoud darwish, dale jacobson, rené depestre. sometimes verging on surrealism, as with éluard and lorca and depestre. 2. poetry that is agitational in tone, spare in imagery and metaphor, working by the kinetic energy of public speech. examples are bertolt brecht, mayakovsky, sol funaroff, langston hughes, césar vallejo in spain, take this cup from me. 3. poetry similar to the second type above but with a quieter voice, more personal, direct face-to-face speech rather than public oratory. examples are nazim hikmet, otto rené castillo, roque dalton, claribel alegría, maria aliger, anna swir, joy harjo sometimes, carl sandburg, luis j. rodríguez often, faiz ahmed faiz. 4. poetry that derives from or consciously imitates folk song. examples include brecht (sometimes), thomas mcgrath (sometimes), josé martí, hugh macdiarmid occasionally, langston hughes, naomi replansky at times. 5. poetry that is essentially traditional or classical lyric in tone (whether or not employing the external forms — sonnets, quatrains, etc.). examples are thomas political poetry 136 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research mcgrath (most characteristically), louis aragon, miguel hernández, rafael alberti, mao tse-tung [or mao zedong], william blake (in the shorter lyric poems), rubén darío, yannis ritsos, nancy morejón, don gordon, olga cabral, nelly sachs. 6. poetry that communicates by its rhetorical strength, poetry of ecstatic utterance. similar to type 2 above but with more elevated language. examples are william blake (in the “prophetic” poems), léopold senghor, walt whitman, kenneth fearing, yannis ritsos in some of his longer poems, anuradha mahapatra, joy harjo sometimes, dennis brutus, janice mirikitani, muriel rukeyser. 7. poetry that communicates mainly by intellectual argument or statement. examples are w. h. auden, edwin rolfe, jack beeching. 8. poetry that is documentary or journalistic in tone and method. examples are agostinho neto, javier heraud, leonel rugama, zöe anglesey (often), yannis ritsos (sometimes), anna swir (sometimes), nazim hikmet especially in his booklength poem human landscapes from my country. 9. poetry that works by humor or satire, or by an overall humorous or satirical tone. examples include kenneth patchen (often), thomas mcgrath now and then, kenneth fearing from time to time, mayakovsky often. obviously none of the poets named above wrote purely in the manners or styles outlined here. all have written poetry that fluidly combines the various approaches described above, and are certainly not limited to the possibilities given here. the above list is, again, intended to suggest some of the existing possibilities, not to limit or define rigidly. let us state here for the record that political correctness, understood properly, is a good thing. the expression “politically correct” originally meant “politically (and/or ethically/morally) the right thing to do.” it became a little confusing, sometimes, to talk about what was “politically right” because it sounded a little bit like “the political right” (who are, of course, politically wrong). so people got into the habit of saying “politically correct” instead, which sounded a little pompous sometimes but tended to be less confusing. to write poetry with political content that is left-wing, working-class, populist, or of a similar nature, is the right thing to do. the examples above make it clear that it is thoroughly possible to write poetry that has progressive political content and that is well-written. the fact is that leftwing political poetry, taken as a whole, is better poetry than poetry in which the poet has tried to leave politics out of it, or in which the poet has deliberately written from a right-wing perspective (i suppose a few examples of the latter do exist). we should have no hesitation about saying this — not, obviously, as absolute decrees from olympus, but as acts of affirmative belief: carl sandburg wrote better poetry than ezra pound. muriel rukeyser wrote better poetry than t. s. eliot. thomas mcgrath wrote better poetry than robert lowell. langston hughes 137 wrote better poetry than wallace stevens. gwendolyn brooks wrote better poetry than marianne moore. mayakovsky wrote better poetry than akhmatova or mandelstam. brecht wrote better poetry than rilke. otto rené castillo and leonel rugama wrote better poetry than octavio paz. etheridge knight wrote better poetry than john berryman. sharon doubiago and joy harjo and dale jacobson and luis rodríguez and nellie wong write better poetry than jorie graham or marvin bell or c. k. williams or billy collins or sharon olds. we don’t need the ruling class (or its representatives in arts and letters) to tell us whether or not we’re good poets. the record of our poetry, and the history from which it arises, speaks for itself. we reject “literary” standards that preclude politics as acceptable or essential subject matter. we belong in the real world of the living — breathing, changing, revolutionary — and the real world (and the poetry that grows from it) is the only answer we need to give. political poetry 138 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research whole book pdf global village chic: multicultural fashion" and the commodification of pluralism nicole bennett "i wanted to point out the tribal roots of body art and offer a little history lesson. "-fashion designer jean paul gaultier (cited in vogue, 1994:321) "blending primitive accessories, eighteenth-century shapes and stocking-sheer layers printed with ancient motifs, gaultier presents a startling vision of cross cultural harmony." {vogue, 1994:321) 1. introduction in his 1994 "global village chic" collection, jean paul gaultier, a french designer known for his eccentricities, and often labelled one of the 'bad boys' of paris fashion, brings together an eclectic combination of clothes meant to celebrate ethnic plurality. 1 the outfits which make up the global village chic collection, combine various prints, cuts, fabrics, and accessories which borrow heavily from a variety of different cultural styles in order to produce a "multicultural effect. " gaultier's global village chic is arguably the quintessential example of a recent trend within the fashion industry which expresses a concern for cultural pluralism. this interest in pluralism is characteristic of the contemporary revival of exoticism within designer fashion in which elements associated with 'nonwestern' 2 cultural styles are incorporated into 'western' haute alternate routes, volume 14, 1997 © ^) couture lines. this renewed influence of 'ethnic' styles in the high fashion industry seemed to have reached its peak as gaultier's global village chic hit the runways. the trend is evident in the large number of fashion magazine articles and tv fashion spots which note the turn to ethnicity, exoticism, cultural blending, and multiculturalism in fashion in the 1990s. as flare proclaims: at the moment, it seems, nothing is more fashionable than being a woman of culture. . .designers are sewing up a cultural mosaic, with threads of roman, greek, african, asian and indian influence. the result is a multiethnic celebration of dress... (flare, 1994c:70). dubbed "ethnic," "exotic," or "multicultural" fashion, this most recent appeal to non-western styles was presented as one of the main trends of the 1994 season (flare, 1994b:74). in this paper, i explore some of the meanings and messages associated with multicultural fashion as it is exemplified by gaultier's work. 3 1 am particularly interested in the way in which gaultier and other designers— including giorgio, donna karan, rifatozbek, christian lacroix, emanuel ungaro, romeo gigli and oscar de la renta—present themselves and are presented by others as commentators on racial and ethnic pluralism. i explore the ways in which their perspectives on pluralism resonate with discourses on race and ethnicity which take place in other fields. gaultier's work, and the larger trend of which it is a part, is of interest to me because of the way in which it incorporates, and responds to, current discourses on racial and ethnic tolerance. global village chic, as part of a larger fashion trend in which ethnicity becomes a central element of fashion collections, provides us with a glimpse of the possibilities both opened up and foreclosed when ethno-cultural difference becomes commodified; when notions of racial and ethnic difference, tolerance, and blending are presented in commodity form. in examining the way that the fashion industry describes its most recent turn to non-western influences, i begin with an understanding of fashion systems as culturally embedded; as both reflecting upon and contributing to contemporary cultural politics. like other cultural products, fashion systems can be seen as responses to, or representations of, contemporary cultural politics, and also as component parts of those politics. while it can be argued that multicultural fashion is primarily a response to broader debates concerning ethno-cultural difference and plurality, it also makes some contribution to those debates. we should remain open to the possibility that, in presenting fashion which resonates with particular strands of the ongoing debates and dialogues concerning how we should understand and manage plurality and difference in contemporary western nation-states, multicultural fashion makes modest interventions into those debates. having said this, i should stress that i do not want to over emphasize the influence of high fashion in shaping our understandings of racial and ethnic difference. clearly, the influence of ethnic fashion is limited by its structural location within the larger systems of meaning-making which serve to £$% produce and reproduce our cultural understandings of ethnic and cultural differences. my interest in ethnic fashion is primarily as a case in which we can begin to examine the limitations of racial and ethnic pluralism as commodity forms. one point which this paper makes, through its examination of how cultural pluralism is expressed in fashion, is that the location of different contributions or interventions may also set boundaries on how difference is conceptualized within them. pluralism expressed in the fashion industry in commodity form is, i suggest, inherently limited such that it is unable to move beyond particular ways of understanding of ethno-cultural difference. though designers may genuinely be seeking to promote cultural understanding throughout their collections, ultimately their work cannot help but incorporate ethnicity in stereotypical ways reproducing exaggerated, reified, and over simplified notions of ethnic distinctions. i suggest that ethnicity, once commodified, is unable to engage with the more radical strands of multiculturalism, as to do so would require understandings of difference which are simply incompatible with the needs of the commodity market. 2. ethnic fashion in the 1990s: eastern influences and cultural pluralism two distinct and somewhat contradictory trends are discernible within the turn to ethnic fashion in the 1990s. the first trend is characterised by a focus upon 'the east' 4 as a source of inspiration, as asian (and occasionally middle eastern) cultural forms are incorporated into western fashion collections. here, the turn to ethnicity is one in which designers have appropriated elements from styles associated with particular asian or middle eastern cultures (for example indian saris, or japanese cuts and prints) and used these in constructing collections which interpret and transform these supposedly 'exotic' costumes into western fashion collections. as toronto live fashion, states: you can ^^ tell that "the west's top designers have got the global spirit... by the eastern influences in so many of their collections" (1994:42emphasis in original). the cover story of flare's january 1994 issue, entitled "what's hot and what's not in 1994," also attests to the turn to "eastern influences" in contemporary collections. amongst those things listed as "hot" in canadian fashion for 1994 are, "a passage to india" (referring to styles which get inspiration from the sari), "fine china" (referring to collections which incorporate both the silhouettes and fabric patterns inspired by 'traditional' chinese designs) and "asian beauty" {flare, 1994a:52). while overall a fairly wide variety of eastern cultural products are drawn upon, the normal pattern here is one in which a single cultural source of inspiration for each line. the second trend associated with ethnic fashion in the 1990s foregrounds cultural plurality and is represented by the mixing or blending of different ethno-cultural elements. jean paul gaultier's and rifat ozbek's collections may be the clearest examples of this trend in which designers bring a number of different cultural influences together. sometimes referred to as "multicultural fashion," these collections are described by the designers themselves and by those who comment on their work as both reflecting and commenting on contemporary ethno/racial politics. multicultural fashion can be distinguished both from earlier appeals to non-western fashion and from the work of other contemporary designers who use a 'touch of ethnic' in their lines or who focus on a single non-western influence, by the way it brings many disparate elements together as a type of global fashion pastiche. the "multicultural effect" of each of the global village chic outfits is produced by combining elements which evoke cultures from disparate historical periods and geographical regions. in one example pictured in vogue, the caption reads: "around the world in one outfit" (vogue, march 1994). the photo itself shows fih a model donning a skin tight "tattoo" tube dress which is made of a combination of translucent elastic and opaque fabrics with a complicated print which reproduces parts of the patterns found on a number of eastern european paper currencies, including both border and background designs and also denomination numbers. her left wrist and forearm are tattooed with a swirly geometric pattern reminiscent of the more complicated henna patterns worn on the hands and feet of brides and young women in a number of regions of india (vogue, 1994:332). the themes of this outfit are repeated in altered forms in the other photographs which represent gaultier's collection. the models sport a variety of clothes ranging from a bustier and leggings to a scarf-like sarong skirt matched with a see-through, skin tight, one armed, cropped top. each is heavily jewelled with a combination of necklaces, ear, nose, and finger rings, wrist and ankle bracelets and headgear, all apparently influenced by non-western traditions. body tattooing in swirling abstract patterns, stick on jewels (reminiscent of the more fancy dress'b indies' worn by indian women, but placed in rows either along the bone of the nose or at the upper outside edges of the eyebrows) and a broad vertical shimmering grey line pained in the centre of the brow complicate the outfits and add a further layer of exoticism (vogue, 1994:334-338). within each outfit of the global village collection, gaultier's combining of elements, drawn from a variety of different cultural "inspirations," effectively foregrounds both pluralism and exoticism. together the use of eastern influences and the emergence of multiculturalfashion exemplified by the global village chic collection, form the dominant trends which characterise the appeal to exoticism in contemporary western high fashion systems. we should not, of course, be surprised that high fashion designers have recently rediscovered exoticism. in the fashion industry context, exoticism is one of a large number of variables &% which are drawn upon by designers in an industry which is continually searching for ways to move beyond, build upon, or otherwise transform last year's look into something new. as elizabeth fox-genovese (1987:11) has noted, the "first criteria" of the fashion industry is "newness or nowness." fashion, she rightly points out "derives an important part of its everyday existence . . . from change" (1987:11). in order to create designs which are reflective of the "nowness" of a particular period, which stand for, reflect, and in part define different historical moments, designers draw upon and combine in different ways all sorts of themes of which 'ethnicity' is one: ...designers are constantly searching for new ideas, themes and motifs from historical dress, non-european dress, popular culture and subcultures. like birds of prey, they rob the nests of other fashion systems in a process of appropriation and cannibalization. these stylistic motifs are then reconstructed in a process of bricolage, the creation of new patterns and modes from the kaleidoscopic pits and pieces of cultural debris. (craik, 1994:ix-x) though the passage above may be read as suggesting that the process of selection and appropriation of 'non-western' fashion elements is more or less arbitrary, this is not altogether the case. as both the designers themselves and fashion industry commentators note, the use of different 'ethnic' elements should be seen in terms of industry responses and interventions into contemporary cultural politics. 3. meanings and messages: how difference is/can be understood in multicultural fashion what messages are designers such as gaultier making with their multicultural fashion collections? what do they and the fashion commentators who interpret their collections say about ethnicity and racial and ethnic tolerance in their explanations of the various ethnic and multicultural fashion collections? (a) celebrating pluralism with the global village chic collection, gaultier is implicitly responding and contributing to current debates on cultural pluralism, and cultural border-crossing. in global village chic, he presents a 'celebration' of pluralism by combining elements associated with different ethno-cultural groups, and making them speak to each other in the various outfits that make up the collection. the repetition of styles and colours in the various elements of each outfit allow the viewer to see each as an outfit rather than as an assembly of clashing or incompatible parts. as a metaphor for the peoples whose cultural products were the inspiration for the various elements of each outfit, gaultier's global village chic presents a clear statement about the ability for different ethno-cultural groups to come together © in harmony without losing their specificity. as vogue (1994:333) states, in reference to the global village chic line, "gaultier presents a starling vision of cross-cultural harmony." through the global village collection, gaultier responds (and contributes) to debates about the heterogeneity of contemporary societies in a way which celebrates cultural plurality and cross cultural experiences. rather than responding by appealing to rhetorics of ethnic purity, separation, or assimilation, gaultier presents consumers with a series of outfits that bring a number of different cultural products together in a celebration of diversity. this celebration of diversity can also be witnessed in the work of rifat ozbek who, along with gaultier, is described as being representative of the "multicultural slant" found in nineties fashions (vogue, 1993:471). ozbek's "culture club" collection which incorporates indonesian prints, cavalry cut jackets, and nepalese inspired hats trimmed with mongolian fir, is described ^^ in vogue as a style which is "truly a global cocktail:" like a posse of vagabonds, [ozbek's] eclectic group of girls decked out in wild mixes of mongolian-furtrimmed nepalese hats and nylon taffeta trenches lend new meaning to the term global village (vogue, 1993:471). the models who pose in ozbek's collection in vogue embrace each other as they walk together in a line down a park lane. in ozbek's image of the "global village" it is not conflict but rather harmony that results from crossing the borders that exist in diversity. (b) on the nature of ethnicity: geographical and temporal distinctions what of the nature of ethnicity as it is presented in the fashions of gaultier, ozbek and others? in examining the descriptions of ethnic fashion in the 1990s, it is clear that the celebration of diversity expressed in the recent turn to ethnicity in fashion is one which is consistent with understandings of ethno-cultural difference in which the term ethnic is associated with non-western and 'pre-modern' influences. ethnicity is defined in terms of both geographical and temporal distinctions. (i) ethnicity as non-western it is quickly evident from the descriptions of ethnic and multicultural fashion that ethnic refers to fashion which draws upon any l non-western' cultural product. 5 ostensibly a geographical categorisation, in fact, the term ethnic is used as a banner under which fashion elements associated with any and all of the west's cultural "others" are grouped. ethnic fashion refers to fashion whose designs (either in terms of cut, silhouette, type of apparel, accessories, prints, or details) are influenced by any cultural product not associated with the western cultural norm. incorporating any 'non-western' influence seems to be sufficient for a collection to be grouped under the ethnic fashion ^^ banner. thus we see christian lacroix's gilt embroidered silk %& kimono house dresses, franco mirabelle's crumpled linen nehru suits, and the eclectic mixing of gaultier, all described as part of the recent re-emergence of ethnic fashion. while the ethnic fashion collections introduced in the 1990s contain messages about celebrating cultural diversity, they also make clear distinctions between that which is ethnic and that which is non-ethnic fashion. while claiming to celebrate cultural and racial tolerance and border crossing, the collections also serve to maintain long held beliefs about the normality or universality of euro-american cultural products by setting off all other cultural products as 'ethnic,' and/or exotic. this positioning of some cultures as the norm and some as different is a common element in many of the liberal appeals to cultural, racial, and ethnic pluralism. though the liberal approach seems to strive towards laudable goals such as recognition and celebration of diversity, it has been criticised by more radical theorists for its failure to significantly challenge status quo conceptions of race and ethnicity. the liberal approach is criticised firstly for limiting the social contribution of 'ethnic' communities to that of being providers of cultural spice; livening up, but not fundamentally altering western cultural norms. secondly, it is stressed that the liberal celebration of diversity serves ultimately to reproduce the privileged space of the (supposedly non-ethnic) norm and to maintain existing power hierarchies related to racial and ethnic differences. as homi bhabha (1990:208) states in his critique of liberal notions associated with the celebration of diversity, "it is commonplace of plural, democratic societies to say that they can encourage and accommodate cultural diversity;" that, in fact, "the sign of the cultured civilised attitude is the ability to appreciate cultures in a kind of musee imaginaire; as though one should be able to collect and appreciate them." however, while this approach encourages or celebrates plurality on one level, bhabha also notes that there is ff!% an element of containment ever present with such appeals to cultural diversity, for there remains a transparent (often unarticulated) norm "given by the host society or dominant culture, which says 'these other cultures are fine, but we must be able to locate them within our own grid"' (1990:208). radical multicultural ists such as bhabha suggest that it is not only the refusal to recognise difference which creates and maintains hierarchical dualities. as bhabha points out, the liberal appeal to cultural pluralism also serves to contain difference and reproduce associated hierarchies through the continued reference to an imagined cultural norm (or grid as he puts it) as it celebrates cultural diversity. as he states "the universal ism [of liberal multicultural societiesl that paradoxically permits diversity masks ethnocentric norms, values and interests" (bhabha, 1990:208). bhabha's critique of the "liberal relativist perspective" echoes critiques of early multiculturalism in canada, which claimed that the celebration of diversity reflected in federal multicultural policies and programs was one which forever relegated many groups to the position of second class "multicultural" citizens whose role was to add cultural spice to the apparently otherwise bland canadian cultural landscape. the celebration of diversity promoted by multiculturalism, it was argued, while acknowledging plurality on one level, ultimately reproduced existing ethno-cultural hierarchies. 6 both the global village chic collection and the overall turn to ethnic fashion of which it is a part are grounded in the same liberal understandings of ethnic and racial difference described and criticised above. the turn to ethnic fashion remains very much within a "celebration of diversity" approach to racial and ethnic tolerance as it is described by bhabha. though they appear to acknowledge and promote pluralism, they do so in ways which reproduce ethnocentric norms by positioning those that differ from the norm as ethnic others. the appeal to ethno-cultural diversity found in the fashion industry's turn to ethnicity is similar in this respect to the ways ^h in which other industries have commodified ethnicity in the contemporary period. world beat music provides another example of commodified ethnicity whose emergence and popularity roughly coincide with the contemporary return to ethnic fashion. as goodwin and gore (1990:65) note, while the term world beat was originally "adopted by a loose aggregation of san francisco musicians...who wanted a convenient label for their fusion of rock, funk, african and afro caribbean musics," its current meaning is significantly broader in scope. more recently, they note, "the term world beat has become a fashionable label for the musical traditions of regions other than north america and europe" (goodwin and gore, 1990:65) 7 . in this respect, the term world beat incorporates and highlights "ethnicity" using a similar categorisation of norm and other as that reproduced by ethnic fashion. 8 as with ethnic fashion, the defining characteristic of world beat music is based upon an oversimplified distinction between western cultural products and non-western cultural products, a distinction that ultimately rests upon discourses of exoticism. el i i lester's work on the use of discourses of the exotic in fashion advertising presents a critical assessment of the way in which these discourses serve the purpose of a "global material culture" (1992:75). the ethnic fashion example which i am examining here, is similar to the case which lester examines in the way in which ethnicity and exoticism are set off from the norm defined in terms of western european and north american traditions, and in the way in which stereotypical images serve to objectify the ethnic other. lester relates the banana republic catalogue to other texts in which the "costumed 'native,' is abstracted from his or her setting, and re-created as a metaphor for exotic difference." through the strategies of (a) "the creation of the subject through the construction of a preferred reader," (with the exclusive use of white models) (b) the "uses of history and 'invented tradition' from the point of view £f% of the preferred reader" (not from the point of view of the 'natives' in other words), (c) "the jumbling of spatial and temporal images" using collage and montage, and (d) "the construction of authenticity," lester argues that the banana republic text accomplishes the "creation of the exotic other" (1992:77-79). while there are similarities between the banana republic catalogue's strategic use of images of exoticism and the way in which the exotic is presented in ethnic fashion, lester's analysis also brings to light a number of differences. for one thing, in ethnic fashion (in keeping with more recent trends in the fashion industry) the models who present the clothing are more often than not both white and women of colour. thus, while there is a distinction between western and non-western which reproduces notions of which cultures are considered 'ethnic' in contemporary societies, there is also a space provided for western women of colour to be interpellated by this fashion. as well, the appeal to ethnicity is very different given the fact that within ethnic fashion, ethnicity becomes an integral part of the product being sold, not simply a background image as in the banana republic catalogue. with ethnic fashion, consumers are encouraged to appropriate and play with ethnicity in much more intimate ways than anything being suggested by the banana republic catalogue which reproduces ethnicity at a distance from its preferred audience. the most striking difference, however, is that of the issue of cross-cultural blending. within the contemporary turn to ethnic fashion in general, and especially within multicultural fashion as exemplified by the work of gaultier and ozbek, we can see appeals to cultural blending which resonate with contemporary calls for racial tolerance, and multiculturalism. i should stress, however, that despite these appeals to ethnocultural plurality, the commodification of ethno-cultural difference in contemporary ethnic fashion allows little room for representations which address the complexities and tensions surrounding ethno-cultural difference as it is actually lived by individuals and groups in contemporary societies. this sometimes results in rather odd representations of different ethno-cultural dcjcfc groups. again, gaultier's work provides an interesting example. in an earlier collection which combines elements inspired by street punk styles and the outfits worn by hasidic jewish men, models are dressed in outfits reminiscent of the long black coats worn by hasidic men, with their hair made up to resemble the men's "payees" and donning imitation sabbath "platter" hats. gaultier, reflecting on his collection states that "fashion always reflects society and what's going on in the world... right now you can't ignore the mix of cultures and religions; you have to respond" (vogue, 1993:471). he also describes the collection as a "homage to the jewish religion" (vogue, 1993:484). his choice of a hasidic jew-street punk fusion as his response to cultural and religious mixing and as "homage" to judaism is rather perplexing. hasidic communities are well known for their self-segregating practices. as communities, they support neither the mixing of cultures, nor the mixing of religions. attempts to establish institutional completeness, with separate schools, stores, and community centres attest to the hasidic communities' desire to remain distinct from other groups with whom they often share neighbourhoods. they are also generally hostile to the "immodesty" of contemporary fashion maintaining rather strict gendered dress codes. (in recent years publicity has been garnered by hasidic jews in jerusalem who have torched bus shelters with posters of "immodestly" dressed women.) it is unlikely given this, that the hasidic communities would respond favourably to gaultier's punk/hasidic collection. they would, i think, neither see it as an appropriate homage to their faith nor would they likely endorse its message of cultural blending. rather than paying homage to their faith, gaultier's collection ends up making light of it in order to present a new flavour of exoticism for western fashion consumers. ultimately, gaultier's lofty punk-hasid collection can in no way communicate the importance and meaning that hasidic communities associate with their dress (nor for that matter does ^^ it likely communicate the importance and meaning of dress for street punks). the consumers of gaultier's hasid-punk outfits will likely have no greater understanding after their purchase of either the hasid or punk sub-cultures and how their experiences and perspectives might differ from (and perhaps challenge) their own. instead of promoting greater understanding, gaultier's hasid-punk collection simply slaps two very different images together in a series of outfits which reduce culture to exotic flare. (ii) ethnicity as a temporal distinction besides the western/non-western dichotomy, there is a second defining characteristic of ethnicity as expressed in ethnic fashion. ethnicity is presented within global fashion as pre-rnodern or at the very least aspre-present. while vogue credits gaultier with having created wardrobe for a "futuristic globe-trotting tribe," this is achieved by "blending primitive accessories, eighteenthcentury shapes, and stocking sheer layers printed with ancient motifs" (vogue, 1994:333-my emphasis). that which is ethnic is clearly represented here and elsewhere as being located frozen in some moment prior to the present. this, despite the fact that the ethnic groups whose cultural products are being 'borrowed" exist very much in the present; despite the fact that the currencies which make up the "ancient motifs" on gaultier's tube dresses were still being used in people's every day transactions even as gaultier's models were posing with their designs hugging their bodies. in representing non-western cultures as things of the past, western linear notions of the 'evolution' of cultures are reproduced and/or reinforced. this representation of non-western cultures as existing in some pre-present moment resonates with what james clifford has called the "salvage paradigm" in anthropology in which "most non-western peoples are [perceived as] marginal to the advancing world system" (1987:122). the role of anthropology in the salvage paradigm, as clifford describes it, is to salvage or collect the authentic identities and artefacts of £% these 'untouched' non-western groups before they are assimilated into the "modern world: " authenticity in culture or art exists just prior to the present—but not so distant or eroded as to make collection or salvage impossible. marginal, non-western groups constantly (as the saying goes) enter the modern world. and whether this entry is celebrated or lamented, the price is always this: local, distinctive paths through modernity vanish. these historicities are swept up in a destiny dominated by the capitalist west and by various technologically advanced socialisms. what's different about peoples seen to be moving out of 'tradition' into 'the modern world' remains tied to inherited structures that either resist or yield to the new but cannotproduce it (1987: 122—emphasis in original). clifford's discussion is applicable to the ethnic fashion example which tends to highlight ethnic elements as artefacts from the past, and which relies primarily on the designer to take these 'historical' elements and transform them for present (or future) consumers in the west. 9 as one article notes, "even ralph lauren, the king of aristocratic style" has embraced ethnic fashion with a collection of outfits that "conjure up images of nomadic immigrants adapting their own customs to a new world" (vogue 1993:471) 10 . in representing non-western cultures as existing in the past, and in reducing their cultural products to signifiers of exoticism, western designers are in fact dehistoricising and decontexualizing the communities whose products have inspired the various elements of different ethnic fashion collections. this being the case, it is particularly odd that gaultier would claim as quoted above, that with the global village chic collection, he wanted "to offer a little history lesson." global village chic dsl cannot provide us with a history lesson. rather, what it presents us with is merely a collage of easily recognised symbols of exoticism. while non-western cultures are presented as things of the past, their products are nonetheless fused by designers into "the latest fashion trend. " in this way ethnic fashion is presented as a celebration both of the blending of culture and also of the blending of times. (hi) ethnicity as exoticism ethnic fashion which appeals to the idea that ethnic cultural products "come from" a specific (foreign/ancient) cultural context are presented to potential consumers primarily through the discourses of exoticism. in describing the elements of ethnic fashion collections, commentators highlight the idea that these products have 'come from' some cultural context other than the western norm. however, few of the descriptions of ethnic fashion mention the various cultures and groups whose cultural products have been used by designers to create their collections; often the influences remain completely unnamed. when descriptions do name influences, the references are often quite broad. vogue, for example, notes that gaultier's face jewellery borrows from "the far east" but leaves it at that. while we are told that the patterns of the tube dress "duplicate. . .snippets of eastern european currency" {vogue, 1994:333), we are not told which currencies. despite the fact that the detailed henna painting from which gaultier draws inspiration is a regionally specific cultural product, with different communities producing distinct patterns and using the paintings for different occasions, these specificities are lost as the body painting is appropriated and transformed by gaultier for his collection. in uprooting cultural products, gaultier and others are unable to communicate to the consumer anything of the specific cultural purpose or meaning previously attached to them as they are transformed into markers of exoticism. the reduction of the elements of ethnic fashion to markers of exoticism, enables consumers to engage with ethnic plural^ft ism in commodified forms without taking on any of the more difficult issues of power, hierarchy, privilege and oppression related to ethno-cultural difference as it is experienced both here in canada and elsewhere. it is only through this process of simplification that ethnicity can appear as something that can be bought and sold. in this respect, the contemporary turn to ethnic and multicultural fashion is consistent with the fashion industry's earlier appeals to exoticism. as craik points out in reference to yves saint laurent's peasant dress collection of 1976, the collection "enabled the rich to 'play act' at being peasants" at the same time as it appealed to "ordinary women" who "felt an affinity with the humble origins of . . .the new style. " the recent turn to exoticism, like saint laurent's peasant collection, allows individuals who can afford it, to take on, and to play with the ethnicity of the other at a superficial level without their having to engage with the true complexities of ethnicity as it is experienced by individuals in the cultures whose products they have ^) appropriated in altered forms. this is fashion which presents ethnicity as something that one can take up and then alter as easily as we change our clothes: a russian gypsy swathed in a paisley chiffon scarfskirt today could very well turn up as a sexy italian bombshell in a transparent black evening dress tomorrow. call it a new democracy of style. (vogue, 1993:471) as bell hooks rightly notes, there is nothing in this type of appropriation and play with ethnicity which will necessarily lead to greater respect for ethno-cultural differences. the pleasure which commodified ethnicity brings, she argues, does not challenge people to re-examine their own positionalities within hierarchies of power. it does not even require that we acknowldege that such hierarchies exist. hooks' discussion of the commodification of otherness both highlights the recent fascination with other cultures and their products, and shows how this trend does little to challenge the existing order: within current debates about race and difference, mass culture is the contemporary location that both publicly declares and perpetuates the idea that there is pleasure to be found in the acknowledgement and enjoyment of racial difference. the commodification of otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes a spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture, (hooks, 1992:21) hooks argues that within contemporary north american and british popular culture, otherness is exploited by mainstream social forces, and that this exploitation serves to maintain the inequalities and structural relations which are associated with ethno-cultural difference. as she states, from the standpoint of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the hope is that desires for the "primitive" or fantasies about the other can be continually exploited, and that such exploitation will occur in a manner that reinscribes and maintains the status quo (1992:22-emphasis in original). the commodification of otherness which hooks describes is engaged in similar processes of othering as that represented by global village chic and other fashion lines incorporating "ethnic flavour" into western fashion. hooks stresses that the commodification of otherness which perpetuates the idea that "there is pleasure to be found in the acknowledgement and enjoyment of racial difference," in no way challenges the existing social hierarchies: to make one's self vulnerable to the seduction of difference, to seek an encounter with the other, does not require that one relinquish forever one's mainstream positionality. when race and ethnicity become commodified as resources for pleasure, the culture of specific groups, as well as the bodies of individuals, can be seen as constituting an alternative playground where members of dominating races, genders, sexual practices affirm their power-over in intimate relations with the other (1992:23). although ethnic fashion does not usually involve the sort of intimate relations between the dominating consumer and the ethnic other which hooks is describing in the passage above, her comments are nonetheless relevant. the affirmation of the belief that there is pleasure to be found in an encounter with the other, that there is pleasure in ethno-cultural diversity, is part of the message projected with multicultural fashion. like the commodification of otherness to which hooks refers, the celebration of ethno-cultural diversity found in global village chic, is, ultimately, incompatible with the more radical understandings © of contemporary ethno-cultural difference proposed by bhabha, hooks and other cultural theorists, who challenge us to take note not only of the existence of ethno-cultural differences, but to also critically explore how these differences are maintained and constructed and how they relate to the ways in which groups and individuals are symbolically and materially positioned within hierarchical societies. the appeal to exoticism found in ethnic fashion fails to involve the questioning of positionalities or privilege. whether the possibility exists of alternative constructions within the fashion industry which do allow for and perhaps even promote more critical re-evaluations of difference is doubtful, given the designers' needs to present clear, easily marketed images of exoticism for the consumer market. 4. conclusion in adorned in dreams, elizabeth wilson argues that fash£$% ion is "a cultural phenomenon... an aesthetic medium for expression of ideas, beliefs and desires circulating in society" (1985:9). as i have shown, ethnic fashion as an aesthetic medium expresses particular ideas, particular beliefs, and particular desires about ethno-cultural difference and ethno-cultural tolerance. while there is clearly room within the descriptions of designers and fashion commentators for some differences in interpretation, it seems clear that some strands of the ongoing debates and dialogues on ethno-cultural difference will likely remain beyond the scope of commodified ethnicity such as exists in ethnic fashion. while fashion designers such as gaultier can claim to be encouraging racial and ethnic understanding, their type of work, drawing as it does upon discourses of the exotic, does not lead to greater cross-cultural understanding. rather, their collections simply reproduce in different forms stereotypical images which serve to further objectify groups and individuals positioned as 'ethnic' notes. 1. i would like to thank jacob bakan, alan hunt and two anonymous reviewers for critical comments on earlier drafts of this paper. 2. the author seeking to explore how stereotypical categories are evoked and used quickly encounters a difficulty: on the one hand there is a desire to challenge the existence of such categories, on the other hand it is difficult to describe and explore their use without adopting and thereby reproducing them. though this appears to be a rather straight forward problem, it is one with which i continue to struggle. here i have tried to follow what i think are two useful academic norms developed to deal with this issue—when introducing a term which i feel is problematic, i have highlighted this with the use of scare quotes. as well, i have tried where convenient to point out to the reader how/why i think the term is problematic. 3. this paper is part of a larger, ongoing project which seeks to explore and analyze how multicultural and pluralistic ideals are taken up in a variety of social settings by individuals and groups. 4. the classification of fashion as ethnic and/or exotic relies heavily upon a whole series of questionable assumptions about what are 'normal' western cultural forms and what are not. references to the east and eastern influences which are common in representations of ethnic fashion in the 1990s serve to reify and artificially divide cultural forms into an oversimplified western/eastern dichotomy. in categorizing fashion in this way, individuals in the fashion industry treat cultures and cultural products as static, distinct classifications. in so doing they necessarily ignore hundreds of years of cultural influence and exchange. the ongoing movement of peoples and cross fertilization of cultural forms is such that to speak in terms of western and eastern fashion elements is necessarily somewhat of an oversimplification. 5. once again, i should stress that these are highly problematic terms. as it is used, non-western cultural products can be understood here to refer to products associated with cultures which lie outside of the euro-american industrial, capitalist imagined norm. as such they include cultural products associated with the majority of the world's population including people from asia, africa, the middle east, and south america. also included in this classification of non-western are products from the west's internal others such as the aboriginal communities which have long inhabited regions such as north america and australia and the western communities who have immigrated from or whose ancestors came from o © non-european regions. 6. for examples of this line of critique in the canadian multicultural context, see the work of lupul (1982, 1983, 1989), bullivant (1981), and peter (1981). 7. as goodwin and gore note (1990:65), this has resulted in the recategorization as world beat of music such as la mystcre de voix bulgares (a bulgarian women's choir), whose "largely traditional music... which would once have been categorized under the older label of 'international music' was considered, in 1988, to be on the cutting edge of 'new' music." 8. there are, of course, a number of differences between how ethnocultural difference is dealt with by world beat and ethnic fashion. for example, with many traditional musical forms recategorised as world beat music, the world beat genre does not necessarily involve the same transformative processes through which non-western cultural products are packaged for western consumption as that which is characteristic of ethnic fashion. under the category of world beat we can find not only a wide variety of different musical fusions, and transformed styles but also nonwestern cultural products which are not significantly transformed before being marketed to western consumers. 9. for a discussion of the transformative processes through which 'authentic' ethnic costumes are appropriated and incorporated into western fashion collections see eric cohen's case study of the "boutiquisation" of textiles from the hill tribes of northern thailand (1988). 10. representations of non-western people's cultural products as 'ancient' are consistent with the belief that those cultures themselves come from the past. in the canadian context the combination of the geographical and temporal assumptions about ethnicity underlie the continued belief that rather than ever-changing dynamic human creations which are part of the present canadian experience, 'ethnic' cultures are something brought to canada (usually through the immigration process) with people from "the old country." references bhabha, homi k. 1990 "the third space: interview with homi bhabha" pp. 207-221 in identity, community, culture, difference jonathan rutherford (ed.) london: lawrence and wishart. bullivant, brian m. 1981 "multiculturalismpluralist orthodoxy or ethnic hegemony?" canadian ethnic studies. 13(2). clifford, james 1987 "of odier peoples: beyond the salvage paradigm" pp. 121-130 in discussions in contemporary culture. hal foster (ed.) seattle: bay press. craik, jennifer 1994 the face offashion: cultural studies in fashion. new york: routledge. cohen, eric 1988 "from tribal costume to pop fashion: the 'boutiquisation' of the textiles of the hill tribes of northern thailand." studies in popular culture. 11(2): 49-59. flare 1994a "what's hot and what's not for 1994. " january, 1994: 52. 1994b "spring '94 trends. " march, 1994: 59-76. 1994c "fashion advisor. " may, 1994: 70. fox-genovese 1987 "the empress's new clodies: the politics of fashion. " socialist review, 17(1)): 6-30. goodwin, andrew and gore, joe 1990 "world beat and the cultural imperialism debate. " socialist review. 20(3) 63-80. hooks, bell 1 992 " eating the other" pp. 2 1 -39 in black looks: race and representation. toronto: between the lines: lester, elli 1992 "buying the exotic other: reading die 'banana republic' mail order catalogue" journal ofcommunication inquiry. 16(2): pp. 74-85. lupul, manoly r. 1982 "the political implementation of multiculturalism." journal of canadian studies. 17: 93-102. 1983 "multiculturalism and canada's white edmics." canadian ethnic studies. 15: 99-107. 1989 "networking, discrimination and multiculturalism as a social philosophy. " canadian ethnic studies 21(2). © peter, karl 1981 "the myth of multiculturalism and other political fables" pp. 5667 in ethnicity, power and politics in canada. jorgen dahlie and tisa fernando (eds.) toronto: methuen. toronto life fasliion 1994 no title toronto life fashion. november, 1994: 42. wilson, elizabeth 1985 adorned in dreams: fashion and modernity. berkeley: university of california press. vogue 1 993 " independents' day. " september 1 993 : 47 1-487 . 1 994 "the independents: jean paul gaultier . " (fashion editor: grace coddington). march 1994, pp. 332-337. © 133 community colleges and the division between mental and manual labour david robinson poulantzas ' (1978) analysis of the contribution of the educational apparatus to the reproduction of the division between mental and manual labour is elaborated upon to provide a theoretical framework for examining community colleges in terms of their relationship to the capitalist labour process. the thesis is that community colleges legitimize political relations in the labour process by defining the knowledge of graduates as inferior to the knowledge of university-educated workers trained in comparable specialities . community college programs designed for engineering technicians are discussed in seme detail and a number of suggestions for future research are advanced. alternate routes vol. 5 1982 134 cet article utilise i 'analyse de poulantzas (1978) sur la contribution de i 'appareil educatif dans la reproduction ie la division entre travail manuel et travail intellectuel -our elaborer un cadre theorique permettant i ' examen de la relation entre les colleges communautaires et le proces du travail aapitaliste . l'auteur soutient que les colleges communautaires legitiment les relations politiques dans le proc"es de travail en accordant un statut infirieur au savoir de leurs gradues face aux universitaires formes dans des domaines comparables . ii analyse en detail les programmes des colleges communautaires des techniciens en genie et suggsere quelques avenues de recherche . few theoretical or empirical analyses of community college systems have been conducted by canadian sociologists of education. as pike's (1981) recent review of canadian literature on postsecondary education makes very clear, canadian sociologists have devoted far less attention to the area of higher education then they have to elementary and secondary education. the most obvious reason for the paucity of literature on community colleges is that their emergence has been a very recent development in the history of postsecondary education in canada. in fact, most community colleges first opened their doors to students in the early sixties. in spite of their late inception in canada, community colleges currently serve a surprising proportion of postsecondary students, although universities continue to maintain the largest share of graduates, in 1978, community colleges awarded 62,443 135 certificates and diplomas compared to 103,738 degrees awarded by universities (clark and zsigmond , 1981 : 62 , 66) . in the united states, where the genisis of community colleges can be traced to the turn of the century, some sociological work has been carried out. this literature emphasizes the extent to which community colleges have contributed to a stratification process in postsecondary education in the united states as well as the implications of this process for individual mobility (pincus , 1978 , 1980; karabel , 1977 ; mayes, 1977; bowles and gintis,1976; zwerling , 1976) . 1 in this paper, i will depart somewhat from this emphasis, to focus on the role of community colleges in the transmission of skills which are employable in the workplace. while the stratification process is not the immediate concern here, it is, however, an important one at a more general level. in raising the issue of community colleges and work skills, various perspectives which focus on the relationship between schools and the workplace will be examined. after identifying some of the shortcomings of this literature, an alternative position will be proposed, one which focuses on the ideological role of the educational system in the transmission of skills. the work of nicos poulantzas on the contribution of the educational apparatus to the reproduction of the division of mental and manual labour will be utilized since it is particularly helpful in understanding the relationship between community college education and the capitalist workplace. one of the most salient features of community college systems in canada is their emphasis on vocational training or alternate routes vol. 5 1982 136 educational programs which are designed to prepare individuals to assume particular positions in the work world (martin and macdonell , 1978 : 28) . unlike postsecondary education at the university level, which is typically more general, community college programs are often geared toward specific work destinations. as the designation "community college" conveys, many of these institutions are perceived as responding to particular labour market demands arising in the communities in which they are situated. a variety of career -or iented programs are offered to students: training in numerous engineering and medical technologies, nursing studies, clerical and business education, and various other vocational programs which evoke images of skilled positions in the realm of work. the term "community college" is normally associated with larger educational establishments offering a comprehensive range of postsecondary programs. in addition, a variety of more specialized institutions such as schools of technology, agriculture, and nursing, can be included under the broad category of "community college". in comparison to the type of credential conferred by the university, community colleges offer no degrees, although, in some provinces, studies may be continued at the university level. community college programs usually lead to certificates and diplomas, with courses varying 2 in length from one to three years of study." although the "training for skills" function is often explicitly claimed by community colleges, recent "conflict" interpretations of schooling call such an assertion into question (bowles and gintis,1976; shecter , 197" ; collins , 1979; 137 harp, 1980). for example, sociologists who have investigated the origins of public education in canada have advanced the view that the need for technical skills was never a major impetus in the development of canadian educational policy. nor, as its proponents implied, was universal public education designed to provide mobility for the masses. the schools were depended upon to constitute "a successful program of integration" which "would lead to a passivity on the part of people towards the inequality of society" (harp , 1980 : 222) . according to shecter (1977:379), the school system was fashioned to train workers who would be sufficiently disciplined to perform the function of labour in industrial capitalism. bleasdale (1978:14) writes: "the social organization of the school was, in its early form, an almost exact replica of factory organization." with specific regard to technical and vocational training in canada, after examining the historical record, shecter (1977:390-398) and harp (1980: 222-224) arrive at similar judgements. they conclude that the real goal behind such education reflected its social control potential rather than a desire to deliver technical skills. a number of theoretical stances concerning the school's ability to supply technical skills can be isolated. the perspective which views the education system as primarily engaged in training students to fulfil the technical requirements of work has been identified as "technological functionalism" in the sociological literature on education. adherents of this position, perhaps best represented by burton clarke (1962), argue that the skills marketed by the school are tailored to alternate routes vol. 5 1982 138 the exigencies of a technologically complex and advanced societies. in contrast thecentral argument running through the neo-marxist stance put forward by bowles and gintis (1976) is that the chief role of the school is to turn out students whose non-cognitive personality traits and attitudes are conducive to acquiescence in a capitalist work world. in this view of the manner in which educational activities are related to the workplace, the ostensible function of the school in the delivery of cognitive or* technical skills camouflages its role in producing students who will adapt easily to the social relations of production. in this way, the education system aids in the smooth reproduction of capitalist society. randall collins amplifies on bowles and gintis' position that the school's forte is not in the realm of technical training. writing in a neo-weberian conflict vein, collins portrays the school as an agency for producing and distributing status cultures, suggesting that status groups manipulate educational policy in order to regulate entrance into their particular ranks. the myriad types of knowledge which the school produces are understood as contributions to the identity and exclusiveness of status groups rather than to the need for skilled workers. while collins shares bowles and gintis' indictment of technological functionalist theories, his analysis does not proceed from a critique of capitalist society. bowles and gintis have influenced conceptions of the relationship between schools and work more than any other recent writers in the sociology of education. for this reason, the 139 tenets of their thesis and the criticisms which have been leveled against them will be explored further. in their celebrated schooling in capitalist america , bowles and gintis (1976:47) assert that, in the past, theorists have incorrectly perceived work in capitalist society as essentially a technical process requiring an education system which prepares individuals for mastery of technical skills. alternatively, they point to work under capitalism as being principally a social process demanding schools which equip students with the social dispositions necessary for the success of the capitalist system of production. bowles and gintis provide examples of how the evolution of the education system in the united states has been shaped by interests which have primarily reflected capital's need for control over the labour process, rather than for the technical expertise of workers (1976:73-81). in their formulation of what has been 4 labeled the "correspondence principle", they describe how the education system accomplishes its task: the educational system helps integrate youth into the economic system, we believe, through a structural correspondence between its social relations and those of production. the structure of social relations in education not only inures the student to the discipline of the work place, but develops the type of personal demeanor, or modes of self -presentation, self-image, and socialclass identifications which are the crucial ingredients of job adequacy (1976:131). beyond correspondence at the aggregate level, the social relations at varying levels in the education system correspond to the social relations at different layers in the hierarchical division of labour. kence, emphasis on rule following at lower levels of the education system (e.g., junior and senior high alternate routes vol. 5 1982 140 school) parallels the capitalist imperative of tight control over workers at lower levels in the workplace. at higher levels in the education system (e.g., university), the social relations are arranged to prepare students for roles in higher levels of the workplace where dependability and internalization ot the norms of tne enterprise are expected. in their application of the correspondence principle to the educational processes of community colleges, bowles and gintis draw attention to the heavy vocational orientation there compared to four-year universities. they suggest that community colleges have evolved in response to the needs generated by the expansion of corporate capital for new kinds of workers which they define as "skilled sub-professional white-collar workers" (1976:205,206). with regard to social relations, their impression is that the general milieu of the commmunity college classroom bears more resemblance to the high school than to the university. community colleges have often been described as "high schools with ashtrays" (1976: 2] 2). more guidance and control is operative in the community college, there is much less room for individual decisionmaking regarding selection of courses, and the student is restrictd in the pursuit of a liberal education. bowles and gintis also remark that discipline is stressed much more in the community college than in the university, with specific assignments and deadlines more likely to be employed in evaluation procedures. bowles and gintis' work has been helpful in identifying elements of the education system which had previously escaped 141 the attention of sociologists. their contribution has, however, met with a critical reception from neo-marxists as well as sociologists of other theoretical persuasions. the most pervasive objection to their analysis is that it over-estimates the fit between education systems and the capitalist workplace. shapiro (1980), while defending the position that schools assist in the maintnance of the capitalist system, allows the school much more autonomy from the direct influence of capital on educational policy. he suggests that, far from being completely malleable, education systems experience much conflict and contradiction. gorlick c1977) and apple (1980) join in this criticism, contending that students do not merely submit passively to the social relations of the classroom. moreover, worker resistance to the social relations in the workplace is ubiquitous. the implication is that the correspondence principle may not be functioning as bowles and gintis believe. another major problem is that bowles and gintis' approach neglects a large area of investigation which may be crucial in explicating the ideological role of education systems in capitalist society. the concern here is that bowles and gintis have taken for granted the formal or overt curriculum of the school by focusing almost exclusively on what has been feferred to as the "hidden curriculum" (white , 1980 : 56 , 57 , 81) . in the sociology of education literature, the "hidden curriculum" pertains to the mechanisms by which values and norms are promoted by the school. as opposed to the formal content of the explicit curriculum (i.e., such school subjects as alternate routes vol. 5 1982 142 mathematics and reading) , the "hidden curriculum" operates through "the organization of the classroom and the rewards and punishments schools employ to regulate student behavior" (. hum, 1978 : 192) . in this context, because bowles and gintis view the relationship between the education system and the workplace almost exclusively in terms of how the former reproduces the social relations of work, they omit analysis of what is transmitted to students through the overt or explicit curriculum. recent developments in the perspective emerging in britain "the new sociology of education", have challenged this convention of taking the school curriculum as a given. this work points to the importance of examining the nature of school knowledge, an area which has previously remained o unexplored by sociologists. bowles and gintis' assumption that the capitalist system does not rely upon the school for technical skills appears to have prevented them from considering the fact that students at all levels of the education system spend most of their school hours learning and being taught what is presented as "objective knowledge". even if it is conceded that the school's role in reproducing the social relations of production supercedes its contribution to the technical forces of production, it would not be safe to assume that the school has no contribution to nake in training workers to perform specific skills. many workers arrive at the workplace ready to carry out tasks which rhey would be unprepared to conduct successfully if it were not for their educational experience. for example, the computer programmer must learn the skills necessary to command particular 143 computer operations, the draughtsman must be proficient in executing designs on the draughtboard, and the medical practicioner must know the appropriate treatments to prescribe for given illnesses. that the educational system at various levels has the capacity to equip individuals with skills which are, to some extent, applicable in the workplace cannot be q debated. what can be questioned is the logic by which these skills are organized or divided in the capitalist workplace and, subsequently, how the education system succeeds or fails in responding to such logic. it is in this respect that it becomes important to closely scrutinize the overt curriculum which pertains to the delivery of technical skill , and how it relates to the capitalist workplace. from this vantage point, what warrants study is not only the varying social relations at different levels of the education system but, also, the types of knowledge which are peculiar to particular levels. the sociological investigation of classroom knowledge is particularly important when it is considered that the education system is purported to be an agency which generates and dispenses "knowledge". this is not intended to suggest that the elements of the hidden curriculum are of no significance. as apple proposes (1979:40), there is a complementary interplay between the social relations of the classroom and the formal corpus of school knowledge. nevertheless, it is certainly true that sociologists need to know much more about classroom knowledge and its affinity to the workplace. before proceeding to an examination of the relationship between the community college curriculum and the organization alternate routes vol. 5 1982 144 of the capitalist labour process, it is necessary to review some of the primary characteristics of the latter. the owners of the means of production organize and control the labour process to correspond to their interests. work under capitalism is not arranged and modified according to the needs of the workers who perform the labour. braverman's (1974) work has been useful in identifying features of the division of labour in monopoly capitalism. a central theme in his writing is that the capitalist labour process separates the functions of conception and execution: "the separation of hand and brain is the most decisive single step in the division of labour taken by the capitalist mode of production" (braverman, 1974 : 126). this separation results in a small number of managers becoming responsible for the mental labour involved in planning and organizing production while the majority of workers simply carry out the work which has been conceived by management. effectively, capital's monopolization of the technical knowledge of the labour process is ensured and workers are prevented from initiating any changes in the organization of production. poulantzas (1978) has given more rigorous theoretical attention to the notion of the separation of conception from execution, which he speaks of as the mental/manual division of labour. he is emphatic on the point that the division of mental and manual labour is essentially an ideological division rather than one inherent in the actual technologies of capitalist production. it is in this context that he writes (1978:225): "in the actual organization of the labour process, the social division of labour, directly dependant on the relations of 145 production, dominates the technical division." echoing braverman, poulantzas asserts that this division takes place as a condition for ensuring that knowledge is monopolized by capital, through its agents, and removed from the direct producers or manual labourers. the work of mental labour is more precisely delimited in the following manner (1978:238): we could thus say that every form of work that takes the form of a knowledge from which the direct producers are excluded, falls on the mental labour side of the capitalist production process, irrespective of its empirical/natural content, and that this is so whether the direct producers actually do know how to perform this work but do not do so (again not by chance) , or whether they in fact do not know how to perform it (since they are systematically kept away from it) , or whether again there is quite simply nothing that needs to be known. the management and supervision of workers, which constitutes political relations in the capitalist labour process, are legitimized by the division of mental and manual labour. the functions of management and supervision in their capitalist form are justified by the concentration of knowledge or technical expertise in the hands of those individuals who carry out these functions. poulantzas describes this monopolization as a "secrecy of knowledge" which excludes manual labour and is a further step in the capitalist compulsion to detach the direct producers from their means of production. manual labourers are ideologcally dominated by capital in the sense that the knowledge they are supposed not to possess is depicted as the basis for their preclusion from participation in the organization of production. poulantzas elaborates (1978:241) it is not by chance that the various categories of foreman who perform direct supervisory tasks also alternate routes vol. 5 1982 146 present thenselves as bearers of a particular knowledge in relation to the workers whom they control. this is precisely how this work of management and control that is necessary to every "co-operative process" falls to mental labour within the capitalist social division of labour. gorz (1976:175,176) provides a good example of how the possession of knowledge is used to defend political relations, citing the reflections of a technician who justified his supervisory role over manual workers on the basis of his aquisition of training in calculus. the technician admitted he did not use calculus in his job and that workers could gain comparable knowledge through practical experience. he maintained, however, that his calculus set him apart from other workers because he had gained a more comprehensive theoretical knowledge of the work supervised. most of poulantzas' discussion of mental and manual labour is specific to his theory of the political and ideological determinants of the "new petty bourgeoisie". the "new petty bourgeoisie" are agents of capital who perform unproductive labour (economic determination), carry out the functions of supervision and management in the labour process (political determination) , and are located primarily on the mental side of the division between mental and manual labour (ideological determination). it is not necessary, however, to view the division between mental and manual labour only as it pertains to the class determination of the new petty bourgeoisie. the division between mental and manual labour has wider applications. it exists in varying degrees within mental and manual labour and can be understood as a process tendential to 147 1 2 alj levels of the labour process (1978:255). on the side of manual labour, poulantzas notes that the division between mental and manual labour is manifested in the various partitions of skill that exist in the labour process (unskilled, semi-skilled , etc. ) . understood as a monopolization of knowledge which legitimates political relations, the division between mental and manual labour can also be detected in work categories which have traditionally been perceived as mental in orientation. braverman (1974:243-258) illustrates this point in his treatment of how the functions of conception and execution are separated in clerical work as management takes possession of the knowledge involved in the technology of office work. the same holds true for scientific workers who perform supervisory and management functions. braverman (1974:236-247) portrays their work as being divided in such a manner that knowledge is concentrated in varying measures at different levels within their ranks. poulantzas devotes considerable attention to the contribution of the capitalist education system to the reproduction of the division between mental and manual labour (1978:259-270). although based upon observations of the french educational system, his basic propositions may be reworked and applied to the role played by community colleges in the division between mental and manual labour. first, poulantzas considers the major role of the school to be the preparation of mental labour for its function in capitalist production. at the level of higher education, this is achieved through the provision of a general knowledge of the symbols and rituals of technical expertise appropriate to mental labour. alternate routes vol. 5 1982 148 at levels ir the system charged with preparation for manual labour, interest is mainly in teaching "discipline, respect for authority, and the veneration of mental labour that is always "somewhere else" in the educational apparatus" (1978: 266). poulantzas assigns no weight to the ability of the educational system to transfer specific skills to students who will carry out manual work. all components of the educational process in elementary and secondary schools are dismissed as having no utility, with the exception of the hidden curriculum. similarly, poulantzas proposes that the education of mental labour is so general that it is not geared toward providing specific technical skills. again, he emphasizes that the primarv educational transmission at this level entails the ideological "secrecy of knowledge" which elevates mental labour above manual labour. poulantzas' position is well summarized in the following statement (1978:266): the main role of the capitalist school is not to "qualify" manual and mental labour in different ways, but far more to disqualify manual labour (to subjugate it) , by only qualifying mental labour there is no doubt that, in expounding his position on education, poulantzas has exaggerated the role of the division between mental and manual labour. in dichotomizing the education system in terms of preparation for mental and manual labour, he ignores subtle variations at different levels in the system. in one sense, it could even be argued that poulantzas' analysis of the training of manual labour brings us no further than the correspondence principle, in that he reduces the schooling process to the operation of the hidden curriculum. what is seminal about poulantzas' thinking on the school, however, is 149 that he credits the education system with the capacity to inculcate particular conceptions of mental and manual labour which aid in the legitimation of the capitalist division of labour . elements of the division between mental and manual labour are visible in the way in which the education system fragments knowledge to reflect different levels of skills. this is evident in the categories of credentials for many professional specializations, each purporting to correspond to a particular concentration of knowledge or technical expertise. the community college system plays a crucial role in this fragmentation of knowledge. in many cases, the programs available to students relegate them to places in the labour process which are associated with lower or intermediate rungs in the hierarchy of knowledge. graduates of university programs, on the other hand, are placed in the upper reaches of the hierarchy^ if we refer to the division between mental and manual labour in terms of the propensity for knowledge to be monopolized at certain levels in the labour process, it is not difficult to locate community college graduates on the manual side of the division in contrast to university graduates. the discrepancy between the places occupied by the two groups in the workplace is demonstrated in table 1, which presents the most frequent occupational categories of students who graduated from community colleges and universities in 1976. the figures are based on the 1978 statistics canada employment outcome survey, involving a sample of 29,609 postsecondary graduates (clark and zsigmond ,1981) . alternate routes vol. 5 1982 iso table 1 most frequent occupations of 1976 university and college graduates senior § middle managers management support (accountants, auditors, financial 5 personnel officers, etc.) architects 5 engineers architecture s engineering technologists, draughting occupations, surveyors salespeople (commodities) elementary 5 secondary school teaching 5 related occupations vocational § community college, § specialized teachers mathematicians, statiticians, computer scientists physicians, dentists, veterinarians pharmacists, dieticians, optometrists, medical 5 dental technologists nurses, therapists lawyers 5 other law occupations social welfare, community service workers finance 5 statistics clerks stenographers 5 typists general office clerks other » university average annual salary $ 5 college average annual salary $ 7.4 17,200 4.5 12,600 6.9 14,500 3.1 13,100 4.8 18,200 5.5 13,500 2.8 13,900 4.6 11,000 29.5 15,8-2.7 8,900 4.1 16,000 2.7 16,100 2.4 18,800 6.5 12,400 20.0 13,000 3.2 16,000 2.8 14,100 4.2 9,600 6.8 9,100 2.6 10,000 33.4 13,500 39.7 12,500 100.0 100.0total source: table 1 is taken from tab]e 6 and 7 of clark and zsigmond (1981:63,67). the figures represent estimates based on the total sub-sample of 18,849 university graduates and 10,790 college graduates. data on the occupations of 4,629 respondents (15.61 of the total sample) were not available. only the ten most frequent occuptional categories for each group are indicated. consequently, emptv cells do not imply freqencies of zero. the actual frequencies for many of the emptv cells, however, would be too small to permit statistical reliability sub-sample sizes and missing data documentation arp derived from the statistics canada 1976 employment outcome survey data file maintained by the social science data archives, carleton university, ottawa. 151 the sample was designed to represent the 1976 canadian cohort of 26,250 "college", and 66,481 university graduates from nine provinces (qubec was excluded). the tabulations reveal that, relative to university graduates, community college graduates have a much lower rate of participation at the managerial decision-making level. moreover, the large differences in salaries imply that community college graduates who are employed in this category are likely to be assigned to the lower echelons. their representation in the "management support" category leads to a similar conclusion about their position in the workplace relative to university graduates. the clerical occupations, where a large number of community college graduates are clustered, suggest roles comprised of little control over the direction and organization of work. it is also notable that, in the classifications related to engineering and health services, community college graduates fulfil support or assistant functions to higher level positions which are linked to university training. a range of occupational specializations, such as business administration, engineering, and health sciences, may be pursued at both the university and community college levels. what often distinguishes community college programs from university programs within the same specialization, however, is that recruits of the former are prepared for positions which are frequently subject to the supervision of university graduates in the political relations of the labour process. titles such as "assistants", "technicians"., and "technologists" abound in the course offerings of community colleges and are alternate routes vol. 5 1982 152 indicative of the positions community college graduates occupy vis-a-vis workers who have completed university degrees. the specific tasks which its graduates are and are not qualified to perform in the actual work setting are often made quite explicit by the community college. for instance, in an academic calendar for one of ontario's colleges of applied arts and technology (caats) , the roles of graduates are often negatively defined in terms of what the graduate cannot expect to do. it is not uncommon for course descriptions to declare that certain work duties are reserved only for individuals who possess the kind of advanced training provided by universities. in turn, students are alerted to the fact that these superiorqualified workers will be responsible for supervising the work of community college graduates. one is left with the distinct impression that this community college wished to allay any illusions about the scope of the training it provided, and to establish that the knowledge it had to offer was inferior to that of the university. a good example of how the community college circumscribes the range of students' work skills in relation to "advanced" university education is provided in the training of engineering technicians and technologists. accounting for about 16.2 per cent of community college graduates in 1976 (clark and zsigmond, 1981:54), the case of technicians and technologists is worth chronicling in some detail. a unesco document which reports on an international comparison of the education of technicians and technologists, describes the work of this group as "middle men". according to the report, their activities fall between 153 lower level "craftsmen" and university trained engineers, "top level personnel" (french. 1981 : 16-17 ) . braverman (1974: 236-247) has noted that, under monopoly capitalism, the separation of conception from execution has penetrated the work of engineers and other scientists. he atttributes the appearance of a middle layer cadre of technical workers to this phenomenon within the engineering profession. referring to the new group of technical workers, he writes (1974:245,246): there is generally no accepted definition of the term but the distinguishing characteristic of the technician is that he or she functions as a "support" for the engineer or scientist; the routine which can be passed to a lower-paid and slightly trained person goes to the technician. the two to three year community college training period undergone by canadian technicians and technologists would 17 suggest that they are more than "slightly" trained. utilizing poulantzas' criterion, however, it is clear that this group would incline towards the manual side of the division between mental and manual labour, in light of their relationship to engineers. in the province of ontario, materials promoting technician and technologist careers in the various engineering specialities emphasize that training in such fields offers challenging opportunities in the labour force, where comprehensive practical and theoretical skills will be demanded. the accompanying enumerations of routines in which graduates are expected to show competence, point, however, to very specific work skills. the materials intimate that more creative work is the preserve of professional engineers who will summon the services of alternate routes vol. 5 1982 technicians and technologists to implement the practical operations necessary to test their ideas. when more stimulating responsibilities are delegated, aspiring technicians and technologists are assured that engineers will often be available to provide direction. it is not unreasonable to speculate that engineering technology students are reminded daily of the relative merits of their knowledge to that of engineers. frequently, their instructors are professional engineers who have had several years of industrial experience before teaching. not only is educational experience presented as the basis for the exclusion of technicians and technologists from much of the work of engineers, but, within the area of engineering technology itself, there is a further differentiation. the training of technicians, which normally lasts for two years in the community college, is designed to develop skills which are more manual in nature than those of the technologist. the technologist, whose schooling is extended to an additional year, is supposedly certified for more theoretical pursuits. as an electronics engineering technology instructor in an ontario caat put it, the work of the technician is a "hands-on operation" while the technologist's duties require more "thinking". in turn, just as the engineer's training justifies the supervisory role over technicians 3nd technologists, the technologist will sometimes be responsible for overseeing the work of technicians. in ontario, many of the technician and technology programs share a common core of courses during the first four semesters of study, with technologists remaining for a fifth and sixth semester. eight months' of supplementary 1ss training apparently equips technologists with the necessary knowledge to enable them to take a superordinate position to technicians. the role of the educational system in the legitimation of political relations in the labour process is particularly evident in this example. the argument has additional cogency when we consider that the schooling of most engineers, whose knowledge is reputed to be "advanced" in comparison to the knowledge of technicians and technologists, takes place in four years of university training. the education system makes a very definitive contribution to the reproduction of the division between mental and manual labour as it applies to the case of engineers and the engineering technology coterie. in fact, the education system appears to have been structured to permanently maintain the sharp division between the two groups. to take the example of ontario again, the terminal quality of community college credentials prevents technicians and technologists from building on their educational experience to become engineers. the only course open to themis to enrol in a university engineering program. clement (1981: 213-214) provides a good example of this educational barrier in one of the inco mining company's research and development department where engineers and technicians worked closely together in a team environment. in spite of a fair degree of autonomy and input into the research process, the only strategy for career mobility available to the community collegetrained technician was a return to school to pursue a university degree. because the diplomas and certificates awarded by caats are not transferable to university programs, to attain the status of alternate routes vol. 5 1982 is6 engineer the technician or technologist must return to "square one" in the postsecondary system. while i have focused on the training of engineering technicians and technologists, it would not be difficult to expand the analysis to other community college programs. as alluded earlier, a large number of programs are geared towards preparing graduates for roles in the workplace which are subordinate to positions filled by individuals with university training. with its many skill distinctions, the health sciences field provides parallels to the engineering speciality in terms of the division between mental and manual labour. community college programs related to dental, laboratory, and pharmacy technology are also comparable to engineering technician and technologist programs. the field of nursing comprises the largest segment of community college graduates. this is clearly a field subservient to medical careers reserved for university graduates, including nurses trained in four-year bachelor of science programs. finally, community college courses that provide training for cartographic, survey, architectural, museum, and library technicians, and assistants in the legal and accounting professions, can be situated within this 19 discussion. theorists influenced by the technological functionalist paradigm might, argue that the various divisions in postsecondary education reflect the need to arrange the education system in a manner which efficiently transmits technical skills. included in this tradition would be the insistence that advances in science and technology have made it necessary to organize 157 training so that certain individuals master the practical skills required to execute technical advances made in production. at a more theoretical level, the education system is requested to supply a cadre of experts who posses the esoteric knowledge needed to introduce improvements and innovations, as well as to supervise workers who are involved in more rudimentary facets of production. implicit in this view is the assumption that the arrangement of technical roles in production emanates naturally from the progress of technology, and that the labour process is rationally organized to guarantee that production proceeds at maximum efficiency. it is not reconcilable with the marxist premise that the technical division of labour is shaped by the social division of labour. the ideological components of the education system, which operate to maintain the technical division of labour endemic to capitalism, are undiscovered because the technical knowledge disseminated by the school and its application to production are taken for granted. the thesis of this paper also contradicts some of the tenets of bowles and gintis' neo-marxist approach. they do not include an analysis of the formal curriculum of the school and it will be recalled that they perceive the education system as engaged chiefly in the preparation of workers for the social relations of production rather than the training of students for technical competence in the field of work. i submit, however, that the transmission of work skills is central to the role of the community college system. this training function is relevant not so much for its technical alternate routes vol. 5 1982 158 contribution to production, as for its ideological role in the reproduction between mental and manual labour. this position has a number of implications for further research. several questions arise regarding mechanisms within the community college curriculum which serve to mould students' conceptions about their role in the labour process. it is important to focus on how the knowledge presented in the community college classroom is compared to the knowledge university graduates are believed to possess. the promotional literature which the community college prepares to attract its clientele seems to convey the notion that the community college is more elementary than the university. the actual dynamics of how this view is imparted to students, however, requires examination. answers to these questions may revolve primarily around an appraisal of the overt curriculum. the problem of how constituents of the hidden curriculum interact and conform with the overt curriculum may also be relevant. in this connection, it would be appropriate to consider how the modes of social control and organizational structures within the two main branches of postsecondary education reinforce the division between mental and manual labour. in focusing on particular programs, careful attention must be given to the way in which community college curricula vary from university programs in comparable specialities. it may be that community college and university students in related fields share similar curriculum content. if so, an identification of the efforts made to legitimize these similarities will become an essential part of the investigation. an integral component 159 of the overall inquiry would be an examination of the responses of community college students to their anticipated roles in the workplace as well as their perceptions of the positions they will assume in relation to university students. more particularly, such an analysis would be remiss if it failed to probe the possible forms of resistance which community college students exhibit toward the school's assignment of their position in the labour process. the research concerns posed above coincide with many of the questions which have been generated by the "new sociology of education" and methods which have predominated in research being carried out within this perspective may be borrowed. qualitative approaches aimed at uncovering elements of the curriculum which assist in the reproduction of the division between mental and manual labour would have great utility in addressing these questions empirically. this would entail lengthy observations in classrooms in order to assess the content of the curriculum as it relates to the labour process, its mode of presentation and the student response to it. further insight could be gained through informal discussions with students, instructors and administrators. without doubt, such a research programmatic would demand tremendous resources of time and commitment from investigators. in this way, much could be learned, however, not only about the role played by the school in the reproduction of the division between mental and manual labour, but also about the wider ideological processes in which the community college is immersed. alternate routes vol. 5 1982 notes various authors point to the fact that community college students are recruited from lower income and education groups than are students in universities. in addition, the positions which community college graduates eventually occupy in the work world are inferior to those of university graduates in terms of prestige and financial reward. canadian data on the background characteristics of university and community college students show a similar trend for canada (pike, 1980:130; porter, porter and blishen, 1979; dennison et al.,1975). supplementary to the family background data, a statistics canada (clark and zsigmond, 1981) report on 1976 postsecondary graduates confirms that community college graduates command lower salaries than their university trained counterparts. it should be stated at the outset that the nature of community colleges varies by province in canada. some community colleges offer only terminal career programs (ontario) while others offer a mixture of terminal programs and programs which may be continued or transferred to studies at universites (british columbia, quebec'. at the same time, community colleges have in common a non-degree granting status. for more detailed accounts of the diversity of community colleges in canada, consult martin and mcdonell (1978:28-32) and harvey [1973:57-60). see karabel and halsey's (197") review of theoretical work in the sociology of education, where the tenets of technological functionalism and other competing theoretical perspectives in the sub-discipline are delineated . several other american educational theorists have posited similar versions of bowles and gintis' 'correspondence principle" (behn, et al. ,1976; carter, 19"6; levin, 1976). it is interesting to note that they draw attention to the fact that the carnegie commission on higher education in the united states has had a significant impact on the patterning of the community college system in the united states. their insinuation is that capital's interests have been represented in the development of policy on community college education. they also note, as has karabel (1977), that the needs of capital in the area of curricula are represented on an ongoing basis by members from local business communities on community college advisory boards. paul willis' (1977) important british study gives empirical support to this contention. 161 7. in some instances, it is difficult to separate the hidden and overt curricula, since both have the ability to impart norms and values. for example, mcdiarimid and pratt (1971) have demonstrated that the presentation of canadian history in elementary schools (which would be identified as part of the overt curriculum) has often encouraged negative values and beliefs about trade unions, racial groups, and certain political systems, etc. 8 advocates of this perspective prescribe a sociology of education which takes as problematic "what counts as educational knowledge and how it is made available" (young, 1971: 2) . although much of this work focuses on classroom knowledge as negotiable between teachers and students and has been faulted for failing to take into account the external structural constraints on the school (sharp and green, 1975 : 16 -35) , it has stimulated research in the area of curriculum. for a review of the major theoretical positions of the "new sociology of education" see hum (1976). 9 this remark must be qualified with the acknowledgement that we may question how well the education system prepares individuals. collins (1979) has argued persuasively that the education system is less efficient as a training ground for workers than on-the-job training. he contends that workers must supplement their educational training with much practical work experience before they become successful at their work. 10. braverman (1974:114) notes that the designation "separation of conception from execution" and "the separation of mental and manual labour" are roughly equivalent. however, he favours the use of the "separation of conception from execution" since it applies not only to the removal of conception (brain workl from the work of those who perform manual labour (hand work), but also to mental labour itself. 11 in making use of poulantzas' concept of the division between mental and manual labour it is not imperative to accept his theorizing on the determination of class boundaries in toto. for example, wright (1978a:53) questions the validity of using the division between mental and manual labour as the ideological determinant of class boundaries when there are many forms of ideological domination in the labour process. notwithstanding this reservation, wright (1978b : 196-197) concurs that the division is an important form ot ideological domination. 12 poulantzas suggests that it is not appropriate to think of the division between mental and manual labour in 162 terms of "clean jobs" and "dirty jobs", and reminds us that no work can be conceived of as totally devoid of a mental or intellectual component (1978:325,254). 13. see shapiro (1980) for an excellent exposition of the major insights of poulantzas on education. 14. in one of his last essays, john porter (1979:263-280) cites braverman's analysis of "the degradation of work in the twentieth century". porter noted that the education system has spawned an "elite" of highly educated experts whose university training places them in a powerful position in production. in spite of the inflated qualifications needed to procure positions under the experts, porter suggested that many of these subordinate roles involved routinized work that really required little training. while he hesitated to lay the blame on the technical division of labour unique to capitalism, porter was andamant in his assessment that our esteem for credentials represented a misplaced respect that contributed to inequality in access to material privileges and input in the shaping of future society. 15. the statistics canada report grouped all non-university postsecondary graduates under the category of "colleges" (clark and zsigmond , 1981 : 38) . included in this grouping were graduates of colleges of applied arts and sciences, community colleges, institutes of technology, and all other postsecondary institutions which do not offer degree programs (e.g. surveying, agriculture, and nursing schools). the term "college" is equivalent to the term "community college" used throughout this paper . 16. american writers have recognized other features of the community college which are inferior to the university in the united states (zwerling , 1976 ; aronowitz , 1973 : 90-91). these authors call attention to the disparity between the two types of institutions with regard to the funds at their disposal for physical and cultural resources, and point to a cultural poverty of community college campus life. 17. french (1981:87-89) gives a brief overview of canada's system for training technicians and technologists. 18. in ontario, community college instructors are required to have work experience in an area other than teaching. 19. for a more comprehensive list of similar courses of instruction available at the community college level in ontario see horizons 1981/82 (ontario ministry of colleges and universities, 1981:10-17). 163 references apple, michael, w. 1979 ideology and curriculum . london: routledge and kegan pau 1 . 1980 "the other side of the hidden curriculum: correspondence theories and the labour process." interchange , ll(3):s-22. aronowitz, stanley 197 3 false promise: the shaping of american worjcing class consciousnesti new york: mcgraw-hill book company. behn, william h. et al. 1976 "school is bad; work is worse" .martin carnoy and henry m. levin (eds) , the limits of educational reform . new york: david mckay company, inc . : 219244. bleasdale, graham 1978 "towards a political economy of capitalist educational values". randle w. nelson and david a. nock (eds), reading, writing and riches: education and the socio-economic order in north america . toronto : between the lines:ll-39. bowles, samuel and herbert gintis 197 6 schooling in capitalist america: educational reform and the contradictions of economic li f e . new york: basic books inc. braverman, harry 197 4 labour and monopoly capital: the degradation of work in the twentieth century . new york: monthly review press. carter, michael a. 1976 "contradiction and correspondence: analysis of the relation of schooling to work.", martin carnoy and henry m. levin (eds) , t he limits of educational reform . new york: david mckay company, inc . : 219244 . clark, burton r. 1962 educating the expert society . san francisco: chandler publishing company. clark, w and z. zsigmond 1981 job market reality for postsecondary graduates: employment outcome by 1978, two years after graduation"! ottawa: statistics canada . 164 clement, wallace 1981 hard rock mining: industrial relations and technological change at inco . toronto: mcclelland and stewart limited . collins, randall 197 9 the credential society: an historical sociology of education and stratification . new york: academic press. dennison, john d. et al. 197 5 the impact of community colleges: a study of the college concept in british columbia . vancouver : btc. research. french, h.w. 1981 engineering technicians: some problems of nomenclature and classification . paris :unesco . gorlick, sherry 1977 "undermining hierarchy: problems of schooling in capitalist america." monthly review 29(5): 20-36. gorz, andre 1976 "technology, technicians and class struggle." andre gorz fed), the division of labour: the labour process and class struggle in modern capitalism . sussex: the harvester press limited: 159-189. harp, john 1980 "social inequalities and the transmission of knowledge: the case against the schools." john harp and john r. hof ley (eds) , s tructured inequality in canada . scarborough, ontario: prentice-hall of canada: 219-246. harvey, edward 1974 educational systems and the labour market toronto : longman canada limited. hurn, christopher j. 1976 "recent trends in the sociology of education in britaid." harvard educational review 46(1): 105-114. 1978 the limits and possibilities of schooling . boston: allyn and bacon, inc. karabel, jerome 1977 "community colleges and social stratification: submerged class conflict in american higher education." jerome karabel and a.h. halsey eds), power and ideology in education .new york: oxford university press: 232253 . 165 karabel, jerome and a.h. halsey 1977 "educational research: a review and interpretation." jerome karabel and a.h. halsey (eds) , power and ideology in education . new york: oxford university press: 1-85. levin, henry m. 1976 "educational reform: its meaning?" martin carnoy and henry m. levin (eds) , the limits of educational reform . new york: david mckay company, inc . : 23 51 . martin, wilfred b. and allan j. macdonell 197 8 canadian education: a sociological analysis scarborough, ontario: prentice hall of canada ltd. mayes, sharon s. 1977 "the increasing stratification of higher education: ideology and consequence." the journal of educational thought 11 f 1 ) : 16-27. mcdiarmid, garnet and david pratt 1971 teaching prejudice . toronto: ontario institute for studies in education. ministry of colleges and universities 1981 horizons 1981/82 . toronto: ministry of colleges and universities . pike, robert m. 1980 "education, class, and power in canada." richard ossenberg (ed) , power and change in canada . toronto: mcclelland and stewart ltd. 1981 sociological research on higher education 1970-1980: a review of some main" themes in the english language literature . paper presented at the annual meetings of the canadian society for the study of higher education, halifax, nova scotia. pincus, fred 1978 "tracking and community colleges." randle w. nelson and david a. nock (eds), reading , writing and riches .toronto : between the lines:171-211. 1980 "the false promises of community colleges: class conflict and vocational education." harvard educational review 50 (3) : 332361 . 166 porter m.r. and j.porter and b.r.blishen 1979 does money matter? toronto: macmillan of canada . porter, john 1979 the measure of canadian society: education , equality, and opportunity"! toronto : gage publishing limited. poulantzas, nicos 1978 classes in contemporary capitalism . london: verso . shapiro, h. svi 1980 "education and the state in capitalist society: aspects of the sociology of nicos poulantzas." harvard educational review 50 (3) : 3 21 -331"! sharp, rachel and anthony green 197 5 education and social control: a study in progressive primary education . london: routledge and kegan paul. schecter, stephen 1977 "capitalism, class and educational reform in canada." leo panitch (ed) , the canadian state . toronto: university of toronto press: 373-416. white, robert 1980 "knowledge and power: determinants of educational curriculum." alternate routes 4:53-85. willis, paul 1977 learning to labour . westmead, england: saxon house. wright, erik olin 1978a class, crisis and the state . london: verso. 1978b "intellectuals and the class structure of capitalist society." pat walker (ed) , between labour and capital. montreal: black rose books: 191 -211. young, michael r.d. (ed) 1971 knowledge and control: new directions for the sociology of education" london: coll i ermacmillan publishers. zweling, l.s. 197 6 second best: the crisis of the community college . new york: mcgraw hill. indigenous takes on environmentalism: | 259 indigenous takes on environmentalism: an interview on the front lines of indigenous land defense megan kinch1 in conversation with giibwanisi, anishinaabek nation2; kaikakons, anishinaabek naiton3; sleeping grizzly, haudenosaunee nation4 background and context doing an interview with someone who is currently doing a land reclamation meant that the usual email method had to be modified a bit. as giibwanasi is currently on location at the site, answering my emailed questions would have meant typing out essays on a smartphone. so instead, after a long day chopping wood and doing work, he read my questions to himself and his friends kaikaikons and sleeping grizzly, and they answered in the form of a conversation by the fire. the oshkimaadiziig unity camp is a land occupation and cultural revitalization project: the anishinabek confederacy to invoke our nationhood (action). what follows, is a shortened and condensed version of their discussion. discussion megan kinch (mk): mainstream environmentalism has been hopelessly sidetracked into greenwashing, environmental capitalism and tokenistic gestures. when even david suzuki is writing essays about the failure of environmentalism, we know that something has gone wrong. people 1 megan kinch is a journalist and activist in toronto with the toronto media co-op and basics community news service. 2 giibwanisi, bear clan of the anishinaabek nation, and is a co-founder of the oshkimaadziig unity camp and action. 3 kaikaikons, loon clan of the anishinaabek nation, is also a co-founder of the oshkimaadziig univty camp and action. 4 sleeping grizzly, bear clan of the haudenosaunee nation and a member of the oshkimaadziig unity camp. 260 | climate change and its discontents affiliated with “environmental justice” movements in canada have been trying to address previous shortcomings by putting solidarity with indigenous people at the forefront, but it hasn’t gathered the kind of support that mainstream environmentalism used to enjoy, nor has it been able to define what exactly that solidarity means. do you see your struggle as relating to environmentalism? is there an “environmental movement” that you feel could support struggles like yours? or does a new movement have to be built from the ground up? kaikaikon: if you want to call our struggle “environmentalism” yes, sure, but at the same time we are much more than that. it’s a spiritual struggle, it’s a political struggle. [our struggle is] a different kind, we have a way of life. its environmentalism, its spiritualism, its matriarchy. environmentalism is just one aspect of it. we are so much more. its [limiting it to just environmentalism is] kind of like bastardizing who we are. giibwanasi: to answer that question i think you have to look at the medicine wheel and you have to look at the physical, the emotional, the mental, the spiritual. the land, the air, the fire, the water. it is all one. one and the same. we cannot look at it as just one aspect of, one category... kaikaikon: its not under one genre or ideology of struggle or fight, you can’t categorize our fight as anishinaabe liberation movement and resistance. even the annishinaabek indigenous resistance movement where there’s our people who have security culture and i guess warrior-ism, for lack of a better word, what we’re doing is trying to achieve every aspect of who we once were and trying to bridge the gap with trying to live in this society with using the technology of everybody who is in that medicine wheel. when you go back and classify our individual struggle as environmentalism, then we got to say no. people have their own definition of ‘environmentalism’. greenpeace has their own view of environmentalism, and they are against seal hunts, which is people’s traditional diet and right to feed themselves from the land. if you want to start utilizing who you are, there are some things our allies may not agree with. hunting, trapping. and that’s not, in their eyes, environmentalism (laughs). indigenous takes on environmentalism: | 261 sleeping grizzly: it is not really environmentalism, it’s more of us living with the land with what the land provides. but don’t take from the land more than you need. when you take from the land you have to make sure that what you’re taking, like when we want firewood or we want to build a box or a canoe or something we’re going to take from the dead. we’ll only take from the living when we need to build something with structure, something that can dry over time and provide a lot of strength. something we can manipulate to the way that we need, but not take more than we need, just take what we need. giibwanasi: i have not seen an environmental movement that could support struggles like us because, as we said before, there are so many different genres of environmental “activism”, whether its fracking or tar sands or pipeline or nuclear or ‘save the water’ or ‘save the trees’ or ‘save the air’ or anything like that. there is not a single organization that i have seen that encompasses it all. so if you want to consider anishinaabekism or haudenosaunee-ism who stands against all of these things then i think that maybe if there is one of those things out there maybe, i don’t know, i have not seen it. “idle no more” seems to be about the water and some of bill c-38 and bill c-45 but at the same time they have their own view of liberation and they’re very exclusive. so a lot of the times we were not included into their liberation agenda. because at one time they were adamantly and vehemently opposed to blockades and land reclamations and they distanced themselves from them. sleeping grizzly: there is a group down in kansas city right now that are living off of 180 acres, they are planning to build and right now gathering supplies to...live off the land and what they can grow and gather themselves. kaikaikon: look at the different camps, like the unist’ot’en camp and all these similar actions who are living off the land. under the definition of what an “environmentalist” is i’m not too sure if it is, or is not, other indigenous nations (laughs). giibwanasi: ya, i think i’d have to agree with the unist’ot’en… kaikaikon:. because, first, under our teachings it says we have to concentrate on the south, the family, community, nation, the people of our turtle island, our continent. then we start making alliances with these 262 | climate change and its discontents other folks. and i think our ideas and teachings can really benefit this person whose asking these questions, but they could learn a lot from our people. even, all these questions, if they have some humility that they can adapt and just observe. because our people have been observing for thousands of years and survived, we’re still surviving. they can just observe from the people who’ve been here first and lived through a lot. a lot of environmental disruptions and we’re still here surviving. mk: your occupation at oshkimaadiziig unity camp is on the site of a council fire. it’s been an ongoing debate on the left as to how different peoples should relate to each other in struggle. some would argue that everyone should be in the same organizations and struggle on a class basis, others that nationally oppressed peoples need their own separate organizations which should relate to others. today, there is also the theory that settler organizers need to ‘take direction’ from native organizers, but this is more useful as a guideline for settlers participating in native struggles rather than as a directive for social movements as a whole. what do you think should be the organizing relationships between native and non-native people? kaikaikon: [in] my own opinion, what we’re trying to achieve here is we’re trying to create a confederacy, we’re trying to rebuild our confederacy. we had alliances with other indigenous nations like the haudenosaunee and the cree and the wendat, so we’re trying to build or own, reassert our own laws, our trade alliances and through that came the two-row [wampam]. and the settler society, we have an agreement with them we’re trying to uphold here. i don’t want to sound racist (laughs), i have to be careful about how i answer this. but our nations have been dealing with euro-centric people for too damn long. and we need to start any kind of agreement. it comes to a point [where] we need to drop out of these treaties and even the 1764 niagara covenant chain belt and reestablish something new [with] the other people who are oppressed from all over the world, something has to come representative of the 1764 niagara chain covenant belt, but something that is more representative of the minorities and the oppressed people. and when the question is asked “non-native people’ you have to ask “what non-native people’. i think we have to have an equal relationship but it has to be with people of struggle who come from other nations. and they have to maybe start a new government. indigenous takes on environmentalism: | 263 giibwanasi: so what should be the organizing relationship? kaikaikon: until that happens all lands come back to us! (chuckles) we can establish zones like their cities and shit where they can remain but we’re still the landlords. this is kind of radical but those people they need to overthrow their friggen governments. but we need to work with these people whoever are out there to overthrow the governments and the police and the military which is a damn hard thing to do, but we need to do that. and reestablishing our governance, our agreements, our relationships. and that i believe is the other minorities who come here. they don’t even know the relationship that exists and i think we’d find common ground to unite stronger. giibwanasi: going back to the two-row wampum, it says that we’re not supposed to steer each other’s boats. but the way that i perceive things is that the canoes have been hijacked and is actually aboard the settler ship. and we are basically trying to live our canoe way of life on top of that settler ship. so, saying that i’m not supposed to steer the settler ship. well you know what, my fucking canoe is sitting in that fucking settler ship. so national liberation for native people and organizing is like saying, you know what, i don’t want to tell you how to run your own fucking ship but you’re ship and the people that run it, the captains, they are not listening to the workers or to whoever, the deckhands and whatnot. so i guess the way to answer that question is, if you are not actively trying to overthrow the captain, then i think that maybe its time that we are in a position to say, you know what, in order to save humanity, to save ourselves, save turtle island, that ya, i think at some point, because the original agreements have been so intertwined and entangled, that i think at times that native people are, do have to be in a position to tell non-native people what to do. kaikaikon: we were just talking about this last night. and i was thinking about this all day to how to write this because its been on my mind for a while, because it needs to be said without hurting peoples 264 | climate change and its discontents feelings. because it needs to be said and it needs to be brought out amongst our brothers and sisters out there who are working with these activists in the different organizations. we’ve been colonized for so long, that some of us, even on the front line struggles and even back at home in our communities have developed a kind of syndrome that we’re kind of, all these fears and intimidations and feeling inferior to white people, is something that is internal and we’re dealing with. so when we’re working with these people how they come and ‘help’ there’s little subtle ways and different ways that they make our people feel inferior. me, i feel like i’m kind of like, were dependent on their help. so no matter how they’re trying to help, its funny but, they’re still the colonists, the white people are the colonists. because they’re helping to “decolonize,” but that word “colonize” is still in there. they are ‘decolonizing,” so they’re still the indian agents running around trying to do what’s best for indians. because they’re’ the ones who think they know it all so they’re helping us. even by answering these questions, even though we use the english language and their ideology we’re using everything that’s theirs. even their marxism. somewhere there’s our own war chiefs and our own ideas that answers these questions and that we should be using. we’re still finding out ourselves, but we need to utilize other peoples, the revolutionary schools of thought, i guess, marxism? mk: do you think that that their agreements such as the dish with one spoon and the two-row wampum are relevant here? do they apply to the state or do they apply to peoples including western revolutionaries? kaikaikon: what we’re trying to accomplish here is to rebuild ourselves and rebuild our alliances with other indigenous nations. our responsibility is to our people first and to our communities and our families. so it applies to the state and it applies to them. because what you said, we can’t answer that, its up to them. its up to these newcomers to settle that and fight amongst themselves on that. because we have our own fight to do trying to be with our people who are trying to speak and represent us, who are going against these original agreements, so we’re trying to liberate ourselves from what they’re doing to us, what our chief-and-council and these peoples are doing. so we’re trying to liberate ourselves so we gotta work together with our common allies to remove this shit in our own communities. so it is relevant. indigenous takes on environmentalism: | 265 giibwanasi: personally, i think that the two-row, the two relationships between settlers and native people that the two row is, is relevant because of the entire context … its fundamental principles. and the fundamental principals is the relationship, from an indigenous perspective, with the two-row wampum with everything. with the creator, the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, the two leggeds, the four leggeds, the wingeds, the crawleds, the ones that go in the water, and i think that, ya, the founding principles of the two-row wampum, we could use those things. but at the same time, the two-row wampum was never entered into the one good mind from the settlers point of view. they did not use their one good mind to make this relationship. i think it can be applied if people come with that one good mind and they want to work together, i think that can be. but also understanding the two-row wampum with the settlers, that was made with mostly white people. and now we find that we live in a society out there where there are many people of many different colours. and if we go back to that settler ship there is class division on that settler ship. there is the captain, there was his lieutenants, there was the deckhands. there was indentured servants, and there were slaves stuffed in the back, stuffed in the bottom of those ships. so i think that the two-row wampum has to be inclusive of the other nations that are here. and i truly believe that had our people known that there were slaves stuffed into the bottom of those ships i truly believe that we probably never would have entered into those agreements, knowing how they treat other humans. because if we were to look and see those slaves, how could someone enter into one good mind with that? kaikaikon: the one dish one spoon is an agreement between indigenous nations that others right to live on a territory without interfering with each others right to eat. and to provide from those resources. gibwanasi: so basically you could apply that to organization kind of? kaikaikon: right, yes definitely. mk: to what extent do you find western philosophies of struggle – things like marxism, anarchism, social democracy – to be useful to you? i’ve seen you identify capitalism as a central force to struggle against, in addition to colonialism, does western analysis like marxism help in understanding those forces? what are the limits of these philosophies for your struggle? 266 | climate change and its discontents giibwanasi: from my own perspective, i have to be open-minded to everything, to all sorts of struggles including those mentioned above. but there are things that are useful and there are things that are not useful. i don’t ascribe to anarchism because i do not believe in disorganization. i like some of the things that are said about marxism, especially the scientific approach to understanding economy, political science, and all of that. but, at the same time, there are a lot of things that i do not agree with marxism. such as, they often omit two parts of the medicine wheel. marxism focuses on specifically ideology which is the mental, and probably the physical, like taking physical action of revolution. but they omit the emotional and the spiritual context of how we think and operate. 258 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism book review 500 years of indigenous resistance by gord hill. oakland, california: pm press, 2009. $10.00 us, paper. isbn: 978-1-60486-106-8. pages: 172. reviewed by kevin partridge1 gord hill originally published this work as part of a revolutionary indigenous newspaper in 1992 in order to provide a brief history of the colonization of the americas from 1492. it is aimed at a broad audience of people who are interested in reading a historical narrative that is often suppressed and excluded from many discussions of the colonization of the americas. it is well crafted for this purpose with its clear writing, brief length and interesting graphics by the author as well as the inclusion of some archival photographs. the arguments in the book are supported by a variety of citations and references that provide the reader with a good grasp of the field of research in which the author is locating his research. however, he does not reference many written sources and the book does not contain the sort of voluminous bibliographic information that is common to books aimed at a more academic audience. the author claims that this book is just a plain historical chronology, yet it is clearly guided by a theoretical understanding of colonization and historical development that is well developed and considerably at odds with much of history that is written from a eurocentric perspective. hill seems apologetic when he writes about his own lack of knowledge of “authentic indigenous philosophy” (p.5) but he provides a reflexive awareness of his own position as a member of the kwakiutl (kwakwaka’wakw) nation on the west coast, as well as his position as a political activist within a globalized system that continues to encroach upon indigenous lands. this is a book with a political purpose and it is useful for its qualities as a polemic and also for its straightforward explanation of the beliefs and motivations that lie behind the strong commitment shown by many people in indigenous activist communities around the globe. 1 kevin partridge is a ph.d. candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university in ottawa. book review: 500 years of indigenous resistance | 259 this book should not be seen as a corrective to the current mainstream construction of the history of the americas a sort of liberal attempt to provide a balance of viewpoints but is instead an outline of a historical narrative that is created from the experiences of people who have often been eliminated from the historical record. the author is particularly interested in challenging the argument that colonization in the americas is a process that will eventually be of benefit to the colonized as well as the colonizer. he bluntly states that the colonization process has been an “american indian holocaust” (p.6) that resulted in the deaths of millions of people and the destruction of entire nations and their respective cultures and histories. he then goes on to provide some of the stories and evidence both of this destruction and the resistance that has accompanied it from the time of the first contact with europeans to current conflicts involving indigenous peoples. since the book was originally written in the early 1990s, the conflicts he describes include the oka confrontation in quebec, the lil’wat blockade in bc and an assault on logging operations on lubicon cree land in alberta. the book is composed of fifteen very short chapters that are organized in a broadly chronological order. they begin with a brief description of the multitude of peoples, nations and languages that were spread over the americas before columbus’s ship, the santa maria, landed somewhere in the caribbean region in 1492. the four pages allotted to this era is nowhere near enough space to do justice to the variety of histories that hill is trying to cover but he does convey a sense of the cultural richness of the americas. unfortunately, as he points out, there was little understanding of this cultural wealth on the part of the europeans who quickly grasped the material opportunities to finance their voyages by seizing goods and people using both deceit and superior weapons. this exploitation was rapidly formalized by the creation of colonial administrative structures guided by the expanding economic needs of european imperial countries. hill describes almost constant warfare and exploitation of labour, land and resources since european settlers first arrived. these struggles completely alter the social landscape of north america by bringing in people from many other places in the world as well as contributing to the deaths of many millions of indigenous people, the profound alteration of social structures that survived, and the export of a huge amount and variety of resources. hill provides a number of examples such as the brutal campaign to seize gold from the americas for shipment to spain (p.14). he also argues that there is a parallel history of resistance to these 260 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism changes. he shifts his focus in the last two chapters to more specific struggles as he cites examples of confrontations at oka, oldman river and in the lil’wat nation in british columbia to show that indigenous resistance is still an active and viable force within the political landscape of canada in particular. this book was originally written as a response to the 500th anniversary of the landing of the santa maria. hill is presenting a history of resistance to this silencing of voices that is both still present and still relevant within our current political environment. he is successful in putting forward a narrative that illustrates both continuity and complexity. there is no attempt here to create a comprehensive story of the many nations that have been involved in this process and the focus of this book is primarily on canadian history. nor is he trying to argue the ‘truth’ behind the narratives. the length of the book does not allow for a great deal of discussion of the history that he presents. it appears that the point of the book, however, is not just to talk about history but to help change it. this book is successful in contributing to both the political dialogues and the struggles in which it is located. despite hill’s own doubts about his place amongst an ‘authentic’ indigenous philosophical tradition, this book shows that he has a definite and unique contribution to make to that history and this book is useful for those who are looking for alternative historical narratives and for people who may be trying to understand the motivations and understandings that lie behind apparently widely separated expressions of indigenous resistance that repeatedly crop up in the mainstream news with little explanation. this work is a valuable contribution that could be very useful for teachers, activists and others who are interested in challenging the often complacent acceptance of the colonization of the americas. symposium on brave rman between marxist orthodoxy and critical theory: comments on brave rman' s labor and monopoly capital michael burawoy one of the remarkable features of harry brave rman' s labor and monopoly capital has been its appeal to a wide range of different groups. it is used for courses in universities at both graduate and undergraduate level and in a variety of departments. it is used in community colleges, in trade union schools, in all sorts of study groups among workers and professionals. it is clearly destined to emerge as one of the giants of the marxist tradition. but it will not be confined to this tradition, since it has caught the imagination of non-marxists as much as of marxists. not surprisingly, therefore, labor and monopoly capital can be read in many different ways, and today i want to place it in the context of marxist debate. it is curious to note that widely divergent forms of marxism have embraced labor and monopoly capital as a pillar in their own tradition. in this book they have all found confirmation of their own position. in part this may reflect the fact that labor and monopoly capital is one of the first attempts to rewrite volume one of capital in the light of a century of development in both marxism and capitalism. however, an equally important reason for its appeal among divergent marxisms lies in its combination of themes from orthodox marxism with themes from critical theory. thus paul sweezy a relatively orthodox marxist can write that in terms of theory there is very little that is new in this book, while critical theorists have embraced it as a major theoretical contribution in the tradition of lukacs, adorno, horkheimer, marcuse and others. in this talk i propose to argue, like critical theorists, that the novelty of labor and monopoly capital lies in alternate routes harnessing their ideas to the understanding of monopoly capitalism through the examination of the labor process. but i shall also argue that this novelty is the very feature that poses an obstacle to braver-man's understanding of the nature of monopoly capitalism. what is this critical component in braverman? the subtitle of the book "the degradation of work in the twentieth century" indicates a critique in the obvious sense of the negative connotation of "degradation." but it involves another element, namely the notion of an alternative to the nature of work as we know it today. this refers not merely to an alternative in the past but more significantly to an alternative for the future. to critique, then, is to seek out the unrealized potential in the present and to point to the gap between what is and what could be. critique declares that what exists is not natural, inevitable or necessary but the product of very definite conditions which are not themselves immutable. thus, braverman attributes the degradation of work and the commodifi cation of life in general to the domination of capital. it is not only that work under monopoly capitalism becomes fractionalized into meaningless tasks but market forces invade all arenas of life turning relations among people into relations among things. even the family is "stripped for action in order to survive in the market society." in the remainder of this talk i shall argue that this critical component in braverman's analysis, while offering an appealing and plausible description of monopoly capitalism, only expresses rather than reveals the forces at work in an advanced capitalist society. first, his critique tends to interfere with the understanding of control characteristic of the capitalist labor process. second, it allows him to leave out of his analysis the political and ideological aspects of work. third, the form of critique allows him to ignore j symposium on braverman different forms of struggles as forces shaping the labor process. fourth, his conception of the capitalist totality prevents him from understanding how it reproduces itself. fifth, his point of critique leads him to portray socialism as a reversion to the past. sixth, and finally, braverman misses the specificity of the conditions of which labor and monopoly capital is a product, namely the specificity of monopoly capitalism in the united states. in all these respects, i shall argue, braverman 's analysis is limited by his critique but let me stress it is not critique per se but the particular critique which braverman adopts that poses as an obstacle to the understanding of monopoly capitalism. 1 . capital ist control to engage in critique is to evaluate and this involves the adoption of a standpoint, that is a point of critique. there was a time when marxists were unanimous in taking the standpoint of the proletariat. the position and interests of the proletariat provided a unique basis for understanding the capitalist totality. this optimism has lapsed as the working class of the advanced capitalist society has appeared to lose the revolutionary potential it may have had and as it has become involved in various forms of reactionary politics. critical theory has been left equivocating over its standpoint. in contrast to this studied skepticism braverman makes his point of critique unambiguously clear. it is the craft worker. moreover, it is not the craft worker dislocated from any historical context but the craft worker of early capitalism that braverman takes as a point of departure. with the rise of monopoly capitalism skill is expropriated from the craft worker and placed in the hands of the agents of capital. mental and manual labor are systematically divided or more precisely, as braverman puts it, there is a systematic separation of alternate routes conception and execution. braverman constitutes this development as the organizing principle of the labor process and social structure of monopoly capitalism. the separation of conception and execution is identified as the control peculiar to the capitalist labor process in general. however, one cannot get at what is fundamental to the capitalist labor process or capitalist control by looking at variations within capitalism as braverman does. what is fundamental to capitalist control is what all forms of capitalist control share and this can only be understood by contrast to forms of control under non-capitalist modes of production. there are a number of possibilities. one could examine the labor process under some pre-capitalist mode of production or pre-capitalist modes of production in general or one could draw upon notions of "control" or absence of control under socialism. unfortunately, but not surprisingly, our notions of socialism tend to be vague and too restricted by what we don't like about capitalism to be of much use as an analytical tool. rather 1 prefer to turn to the feudal mode of production and to begin from a conventional understanding of its labor process. while there is no time to enter into details here, by adopting feudalism as a point of departure the significant feature of capitalist control becomes the simultaneous obscuring and securing of surplus. whereas under feudalism surplus is pumped out of the direct producers through rent, is transparent and therefore has to be legitimated, under capitalism the existence of that surplus is obscured and this poses the problem of ensuring its existence. only when one has posed the question of capitalist control in such a general way can one return to the issue of the relationship of the separation of conception and execution to the capitalist labor process. we can ask, for example, about the limits on the separation 6 y symposium on braverman of conception and execution. thus, one might argue that if this separation is pushed too far then the securing of surplus becomes problematical, whereas if it is not pushed far enough the obscuring of surplus becomes problematical. in addition, the precise limits on the separation of conception and execution will themselves depend on certain historical conditions, revolving around the level of political and ideological as well as economic struggles. my first point, then, is that in taking the particular standpoint of the craft worker, braverman mistakes what is but a particular expression of the capitalist labor process for its essence. 2. the political and ideological aspects of the labor process in his concern for critique braverman quite deliberately restricts his analysis to the objective aspects of the labor process. the elimination of subjectivity is part and parcel of his critical analysis. under capitalism we lose control over the labor process, indeed over our lives in general and history is made behind our backs according to the imperatives of capital accumulation. but braverman not only speaks of control in this negative sense. he also speaks of it in the positive sense of extracting surplus labor time, compelling or persuading people to work hard enough to produce not merely the equivalent of their wage but in addition a surplus which can then be realized by the capitalist as profit. such control, however, presupposes the existence of a minimal consent to capitalist relations and this can be only understood through the study of the "subjective" components of the labor process, or what i shall call its ideological and political aspects. in other words, the very objective braverman sets for himselfto explain the generation of surplus under capitalism is incompatible with a critique that restricts the analysis of work to its "objective" component. alternate routes what, then, are the political and ideological dimensions of the labor process? again i cannot enter into details now, suffice to say that the political dimension refers to maintenance or reproduction of what i call the relations in production, that is the immediate production relations or the relations at the point of production among workers, supervisors, etc. on the shop floor. the ideological dimension refers to the production of experience, in particular the experience of the relations in production, how workers experience their position in the productive process and how their interests emerge out of the organization of work. in other words, the study of the political and ideological aspects of the labor process allows us to understand how surplus is produced through the organization of struggles and consent at the point of production. it is precisely in this area that industrial sociology sheds light on the labor process and the experience it produces. yet, braverman dismisses this excellent body of literature because it concerns itself with subjective responses to work, with modes of adaptation to the objectifying features of industrial labor. he rejects industrial sociology, therefore, because it illuminates the very processes which are crucial to the understanding of capitalist control. for it is in the attempt to cope with, to compensate for the inherent deprivation in capitalist work that laborers generate a world of their own which shapes the ideological effects of work, which explains how workers submit to or resist the separation of conception and execution on the one hand and consent to the production of surplus on the other. to dismiss industrial sociology, as braverman does in the name of his critique, is to miss the fact that it not only conceals but also expresses an underlying reality. it is for marxists to appropriate the "rational kernel" of sociology by placing it in a marxist framework. 8 symposium on braverman 3. struggles and competition it is not only that braverman gives short shrift to day to day adaptation but he also allows little room for the types of struggle which shape the movement of capital. instead capital flows from one arena to the next with its own inexorable logic and similarly the separation of conception and execution invades all aspects of social life. resistance is reduced to a mere friction a derivative and ineffectual response which does not affect the direction or pace of change. insofar as braverman does point to a motor of this movement, it is the unilateral power of the capitalist class. this would appear to rest on three assumptions. first, it presumes that the capitalist class identifies its interests as lying in the separation of conception and execution. second, it presumes that the capitalist class or its agents have the power to implement those interests, that is they have the power to enforce the separation of conception and execution against resistance from other classes. third, it presumes that the separation of conception and execution as a mode of "control" is actually in the interest of all or at least some of the fractions of the capitalist class. i find all three assumptions to be problematical. historically, there have been occasions when capitalists have not identified their interests as lying in the separation of conception and execution; they have not always had the power to expropriate skill and there have been times when such expropriation was at odds with their interests, when it created more trouble than it was worth. an alternative approach would be to look upon changes in the labor process as the outcomes of struggles between capital and labor on the one hand and competition among capitalists on the other. it is the particular constellation of struggle and competition that shapes managerial strategies and leads to the introduction of new forms of alternate routes control in the labor process. it is only in this way that we can begin to explain why taylorism or mechanization are introduced in different places at different times. moreover, such changes have had the effect of reorganizing struggle and competition and hence to further changes in the labor process. at the same time one should not make the mistake of regarding the managerial class or managerial group within a single firm as a monolithic entity. it is itself composed of different levels (shop floor, middle and top management) as well as different fractions (departments) which compete with each other with immediate effects on the organization of work. in avoiding the study of changing patterns of competition and struggle braverman has difficulty in developing an adequate notion of the periodization of the capitalist labor process. what he offers is the coincidence of the emergence of monopoly capitalism, taylorism and the scientific-technical revolution. however, it is by no means clear that they all occurred at once. rather it has to be posed as a question for historical research as to when taylorism and mechanization appeared and where and how their timing related to the rise of the large corporation. to do this it is also necessary to have an adequate picture of the labor process prior to the rise of the large corporation, that is the labor process under competitive capitalism. at best braverman presents a false comparison between monopoly capitalism as characterized by the systematic separation of conception and execution and competitive capitalism as the lost paradise of craft autonomy. obviously neither picture is adequate even as an approximation. the transition from competitive to monopoly capitalism refers to the emergence of the "monopoly" sector of the large corporations. what was the nature of the labor process during this transitional phase and to what extent was the labor process itself responsible for the 10 symposium on braverman capital and so on, that offe, habermas, o'connor, man del , castells and others find the sources of various crises. while this is no place to enter into a discussion of their studies, it is important to note that it is in the analysis of the conditions of. existence of capitalism, how it persists, how it is at all possible that braverman offers nothing and thereby gives the impression of the permanence of capitalism. the alternative to braverman's expressive totality is to examine how the different parts of a social formation are functionally interrelated to ensure its continuity over time. moreover, in pursuing such a "reproduction" analysis one can also explore the reproduction of contradictions that are inherent in the social formation. one is led to view parts not merely as expressions of a single dominant principle but, in addition, as possessing a certain coherence and logic of their own. however, just as braverman's critique, as reflected in the expressive totality, is by itself inadequate so the reproduction analysis of the structured totality is equally unsatisfactory in that it disguises itself in some neutral garb without posing the problem and potential of socialism. 5. socialism so what shall we mean by socialism? braverman's notion of socialism stems from his point of critique and therefore involves the reunification of conception and execution. although he vehemently denies it, his critique taken as it is from within capitalism leads in the direction of the resurrection of his lost paradise of the craft worker. perhaps it might have been more useful if braverman had distinguished between the reunification of conception and execution at the individual level job control and at the collective level. the latter notion is more compatible with the idea of society in which history is made consciously through a genuine collective organization 11 alternate routes of production, distribution and consumption. braver-man's somewhat limited vision of socialism is linked to his notion of technology as neutral. it is in connection with the role of forces of production in the development of capitalism and the transition to socialism that braverman rejects critical theory at its most powerful and embraces orthodoxy at its weakest. although there are places which suggest the opposite, he tends to argue that there is nothing inherent in capitalist technology and machines which prevents the realization of socialism. to the contrary, with a few exceptions such as the assembly line, advanced capitalist machines can be harnessed to relations of production under socialism. capitalist relations of production make themselves in the factory not through the imperatives of machine technology but through the organization of relations around machines. this view is at odds with a stream of thought associated with critical theory, that capitalist machines themselves embody capitalist relations of production; they themselves carry with them technical imperatives incompatible with the notion of emancipatory work. thus, for marcuse socialism must inaugurate its own technology and machinery and not import that which is most advanced under capitalism. having said that, then we can no longer assert that the major contradiction and developmental tendency of capitalism rests in the expansion of the forces of production. to the contrary under such view the forces of production rather than undermining the relations of production, reinforce those relations. in marxist literature this is now a common place observation. 6. the specificity of capitalism in the united states labor and monopoly capital is a product of a particular time and place. it reflects the very real power of capital in the united states during the third quarter of the twentieth century. but this domination 12 symposium on braverman of capital is not something to be taken as given but, as i have already suggested, its presuppositions should themselves become the object of study. indeed, the more powerful that domination appears to be, the more important it is to unmask it, to reveal its premises and to place it in its political and economic context. in other words we must examine the specificity of capitalism in the united states its origins, development and reproduction rather than projecting its attributes as the attributes of the capitalist mode of production in general. there are a number of conventional explanations for the distinctive strength of capital in the united states. the supposed absence of a feudal mode of production also meant the absence of what gramsci referred to as viscous sedimentations that might resist capitalist hegemony. the corporate liberal thesis argues for the existence of an enlightened bourgeoisie, constituted during the progressive era, which cemented the dominant classes and organized the incorporation of the working classes. other theories focus on the open frontier or the successive waves of immigrants that divided the working class into antagonistic ethnic and racial segments thus facilitating the domination of capital. here i want to suggest an alternative approach which might be of more use in understanding the specificity of the labor process in the united states. the critical factor, i would suggest, in shaping the development of the labor process in different capitalist social formations is the relative timing of unionization and mechanization. in contrast to the united states, where mechanization preceded large scale unionization, in britain mechanization could only proceed in the face of powerful resistance presented by an already organized working class. indeed, to this day workers on the shop floor are more militant and exercise a greater control over the labor process than 13 alternate routes their counterparts in the united states who never built a strong trade union movement to resist mechanization. in exploring the relative timing of unionization and mechanization one is examining the specific constellation of competition and struggle as it shapes the development of the labor process. in this way one can begin to explain variations in the labor process over time both within and between different countries. rather than attributing variations to positions on a continuum of becoming or to some spiritual lag we explore the very real political and economic forces that determine variations in the labor process and in this way gain a sense of the limits of the possible and the conditions for the transcendence of capitalism. 14 | 121 the ottawa and gatineau museum workers’ strike: precarious employmentand the public sector squeeze carlo fanelli and priscillia lefebvre1 nearly five years removed from what would later come to be known as the great recession, a large amount of critical writing has sought to show how a private sector-led economic crisis has been thoroughly displaced into the public sphere (mcnally, 2011; mcbride and whiteside, 2011; panitch et al ., 2010; fanelli et al ., 2010). having taken on private capital’s debts, supplied new subsidies and undertaken a stimulus program in order to offset the recession, the economic downturn has been redefined as one originating in overgenerous social services, an inefficient government bureaucracy, unions and just about any user or producer of public services. paradoxically, but perfectly logical in capitalist terms, the banks, corporations and capitalist classes that caused the crisis are now demanding austerity. as david camfield (2011, p. 96) has recently written: “there is evidence that governments and other public sector employees are beginning to conduct an intensified offensive against public sector unions. this offensive will likely feature not only freezes for wage and benefit costs but also other concessionary demands and job cuts, along with new efforts to restructure the public sector.” in line with camfield’s contention, in this paper we seek to add to the growing body of literature examining the changing nature and content of government political economic intervention, social welfare provision, growing attacks against labour unionism and general restructuring of the federal public service. 1  carlo fanelli is a ph.d. candidate at the department of sociology & anthropology, carleton university, with interests in critical political economy, labour studies, canadian public policy, social movements, urban sociology and education. carlo serves as editor of alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, and recently co-edited capitalism & confrontation: critical perspectives . priscillia lefebvre is a collaborative ph.d. student at the department of sociology and anthropology/institute of political economy, carleton university. the ottawa and gatineau museum workers’ strike: precarious employmentand the public sector squeeze 122 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times we overview the transition from keynesian to neoliberal public policy prescriptions, with a focus on precarious work and shifting labour market conditions. our research is empirically grounded in an analysis of striking museum workers in the ottawa and gatineau region. as will be shown, the public service alliance of canada (psac) local 70396’s efforts in achieving job security and fair wages for its members offer valuable insights from which to learn in the continued struggles against precarious work and neoliberal public policy. the psac strike illustrates how increasing trends in non-standard, temporary, and contract work are making inroads into the public sphere. we conclude with some cursory projections as to the hardening relationship between employers and employees, particularly those unionized and in the federal public service, followed by some general observations on the in/adequacy of union responses. canada’s keynesian compromise as the political economic malaise and social devastation wrought by the great depression and wwii came to an end, decades of strife had transformed the class dynamics of canadian society. describing the depression years of the 1930s, an excerpt from pierre burton’s (2001, p. 9) study of the period is quite informative: “nobody could tell exactly when it began and nobody could predict when it would end. at the outset they didn’t even call it a depression. at worst it was a recession, a brief slump, a “correction” in the market, a glitch in the rising curve of prosperity. only when the full import of those heartbreaking years sank in did it become the great depression.” as rampant financial speculation, plunging primary resources extraction and industrial production coalesced in the turmoil of the 1930s, nearly one-third of canadians were out of work and half the population had become reliant on some form of social relief. as berton (2001, p. 10) noted, “balancing the budget was more important than feeding the hungry. the bogey of deficit was enlisted to tighten the purse strings,” while “[t]he bondholders enjoyed a free ride on the backs of the people.” unfortunately, it was only with canada’s entrance into wwii that the canadian economy began to see some so-called recovery. with social turmoil mounting, the canadian state began introducing and expanding welfare provisions assuming a greater responsibility for social reproduction (mckeen and porter, 2003). indeed, the following years were an intense period of labour-capital disputes, marred by ideological, political and philosophical contestation. panitch and swartz (2003) suggest that due to swelling union membership and mass political | 123 mobilization, the 1940s represented an unparalleled shift in the balance of class forces. commonly referred to as the ‘keynesian compromise’, harvey (2005, p. 10) describes the period thus: “states actively intervened in industrial policy and moved to set standards for the social wage by constructing a variety of welfare systems (health care, education and the like)...[m]arket processes and entrepreneurial and corporate activities were surrounded by a web of social and political constraints and a regulatory environment that sometimes restrained but in other instances led the way in economic and industrial strategy. state-led planning and in some instances ownership of key sectors (coal, steel, automobiles) were not uncommon” (harvey, 2005, p. 10). this social pact formed the basis from which the canadian state enlarged and developed its active and interventionist provision of social services, while laying the groundwork for rising real wages and improved working conditions. symbolic of the newfound ‘compromise’ was privy council order 1003 which ‘recognized the rights of private sector workers across canada to organize, bargain collectively and strike... and backed these rights with sanctions against employers who refused’ (panitch and swartz, 2003, p. 3). canada’s experiment with keynesian demand-side macroeconomic policy was guided by certain key commitments: full employment; active fiscal and monetary policy; public works projects (e.g. roads, bridges, general infrastructure); progressive taxation (particularly income and corporate); universal social programs; some degree of capital controls and a commitment to domestic reinvestment (mcbride, 1997; evans and shields, 1998; burke et al ., 2000). as canadian governments and their provincial counterparts implemented–to varying degrees–the aforementioned policies, two federal programs were central to the development of canada’s welfare state: unemployment insurance (1940) and family allowances (1944). this was followed over the next two decades with the expansion of pension and health care coverage, for example, as well as the introduction and extension of federal-provincial cost-sharing arrangements and direct income transfers to individuals. in the quarter-century following the second world war, growing militancy on the part of labour unions, anti-racist and women’s’ movements radically revamped the contours of work, labour market conditions and social reproduction. what has come to be known as the standard employment relationship (ser) became the normative “white the ottawa and gatineau museum workers’ strike: precarious employmentand the public sector squeeze 124 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times male breadwinner/family wage” model upon which legislation, labour laws, public policy and union organizing strategies were based (vosko, 2006, 2007; pupo, 1997. the ser refers to a work arrangement based on a single employer, full-time, year-round employment, often under direct supervision with benefits and expectations of indefinite employment. throughout this period, inequities along the lines of race, gender, sexuality and ethnicity marred the shifting landscapes of work, with many of those deviating from the white male breadwinner model excluded from the ser (teelucksingh and galabuzi, 2005; bezanson and luxton, 2006; das gupta, 1996). as the 1960s progressed, most federal and provincial employees were finally granted the right to strike with the passage of the public service staff relations act, something most private sector workers obtained more than a decade earlier (panitch and swartz, 2003). however, just as many gained these rights, economic recession would once again put many workers, working conditions and general labour market security under duress. after three decades of uneven, though gradual improvement in the provision of social entitlements and working conditions, growing regional uncertainty and international economic turmoil would come to radically halt the expansion of canada’s social programs and public goods and works investments. as inflation and unemployment mounted, postwar keynesianism began to unravel in the 1970s “re-exposing all that had been learned about market failures and monopoly provision a century ago” (albo, 2009, p. 5). neoliberalism with canadian characteristics the 1970s would witness a significant transformation in the form and function of public policy, labour relations and social services. as the making of global capitalism stumbled amid the deep recession of the 1970s, collective efforts on the part of the capitalist classes would seek to refashion the institutional configurations and social provisions of the previous thirty years. neoliberalism emerged in this context as a means to discipline the growing power of labour militancy and return to capitalist profitability. as three decades of unprecedented economic growth came to a standstill, social expenditures increasingly came under attack as unaffordable. the 1970s saw rising unemployment and inflation, increased foreign competition, the doubling of international oil costs and rising resource prices (mcbride, 1992; carroll and shaw, 2001). contending that the keynesian welfare state cultivated dependency on the government for social security and interfered with the so-called natural machinations of the free market, | 125 emerging neoliberal models reoriented public policy toward fiscal restraint, the cultivation of a competitive business climate, enhanced capital mobility and individual responsibility. the state’s role came to be seen as ensuring the institutional preconditions for free trade, private property and “flexible” labour market conditions. neoliberal work arrangements sought to intensify the profit motive with the use of shift work, short-term contracts, workplace speed-ups, evening and overnight work, part-time labour, weekend work, rotating and split shifts, variable schedules, as well as casual and seasonal employment (shalla and clement, 2007; pupo and thomas, 2010). it was at this point, roughly in the mid-1970s, where the ser began to crumble. in its place has arisen what some have identified as atypical, non-standard, contingent and casualized forms of work, but which we prefer to characterize as “precarious” (vosko, 2006, 2007; pupo and thomas, 2010; braedley and luxton, 2006; camfield, 2011). four key indicators are often taken as measures of precarity: the degree of certainty in employment; control over the labour process (linked to the absence or presence of trade unions); the degree of regulatory protection through union representation or law (e.g. against unfair dismissal, discrimination); and income level (as even ‘secure’ jobs can be low-paying) (rogers and rogers, 1989). however, not all contract or part-time work is precarious: “sometimes it is progressive, sometimes regressive, and it can be both precarious and permanent” (clement et al., 2010, 57). as such, the concept of precarious employment remains a multidimensional and heterogeneous concept (vosko, 2006). in an effort to reduce production costs and maximize profitability, many employers have adopted a neoliberal approach to employment, which is achieved through unionbusting, the temporary and discretional use of employment, layoffs, labour intensification, the denial of benefits and retrenchment of wages. the results of which have brought median real wages to a near stand-still for more than three decades amid the growing discrepancy between the intensification of worker productivity and the compensation that follows (clement, 2007). for instance, it is estimated that real median wages in canada peaked in 1982, while productivity grew more than 35 percent between 1981-2008 (gonick, 2009; iow, 2009). businesses now openly regard workers as disposable commodities. for example, take a senior manager at at&t: “in at&t, we have to promote the whole concept of the workforce being contingent, though most of our workers are inside our walls. “jobs” are being replaced by “projects” and “fields of work” are giving rise to a society that is increasingly “jobless but not workless.”... the ottawa and gatineau museum workers’ strike: precarious employmentand the public sector squeeze 126 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times people need to look at themselves as self-employed, as vendors who come to this company to sell their skills” (cited in perelman, 2011, p. 31). as such, central to the new reality of work in the twenty-first century are insecure labour arrangements, low-pay, the absence of benefits or entitlements, and growing work-life incongruities. in this regard, central to canadian neoliberalism was a deepening integration with american economic policy; the de/ re-regulation of foreign direct investment, including a steadfast emphasis on free trade agreements, particularly with the u.s. and later latin america; corporate and personal income tax reductions; new subsidies to capital in the form of loans, grants and tax exemptions; increases in consumption taxes; public sector reform through new public management strategies; the replacement of welfare with workfare; and the movement away from universal social programs toward market-based models (broad and hunter, 2010; mcbride, 2001; evans and shields, 1998; workman, 2009; burke et al., 2000; mckeen and porter, 2003). this was joined by an increasingly authoritative turn by corresponding canadian governments, notably the liberal government of trudeau (1968-79, 1980-84) and conservative government of mulroney (1984-1993), which sought to dismantle the regulatory gains and protections afforded by keynesian-era social protections. both the trudeau and mulroney governments intensified neoliberal policy prescriptions by serving injunctions on unions, jailing prominent union leaders (notably the federal government’s showdown with the canadian union of postal workers and public service alliance of canada), freezing wages for federal workers, the increasing designation of unionized workers as “essential”, and the growing use of backto-work legislation, while laying off workers under the auspices of fiscal responsibility. for some commentators this signaled a return to a more open reliance of the state and capital on coercion to secure the subordination of labour, including the consolidation of a state of “permanent exceptionalism” (panitch and swartz, 2003, p. 25). but it was in the 1990s with the election of the chretien liberals, who “adopted the neoliberal fiscal agenda much more vigorously than mulroney” (mcbride, 2001, p. 99), that the most sustained welfare state restructuring took place. mcbride (2001) has come to describe this period, particularly the 1995 federal budget, as one when erosion ended and demolition began. the primacy of deficit reduction over social welfare coupled with inflation-targeting over full-employment, characterized this period as expenditure restraint and supply-side arguments dominated the political economic arena. a wave of privatization measures | 127 also swept over the federal and provincial landscapes as the most lucrative crown corporations were dismantled and sold off piecemeal. social services also became increasingly subject to public-private-partnership (p3) delivery models, as in health care and education (armstrong et al., 2001; fisher et al., 2006; loxley and loxley, 2010). the notion that unemployment was more a result of individual failure as opposed to market failure came to dominate public policy debates, as the principle of private responsibility over collective responsibility transformed the parameters of the welfare state. neoliberal policies also reproduced and intensified patterns of racialized and gendered labour market segmentation and inequality by ignoring socio-historical structural relations and transformations in the breadth and depth of protective regulations. for instance, as social services became ever-more market-dependant, the burden increasingly fell on historically racialized groups, women and immigrants to occupy the most precarious labour market positions (braedley and luxton, 2010; teelucksingh and galabuzi, 2005; arat-koc, 1997; bakan and stasiulus, 1997). by the mid-2000s, the neoliberal project had thoroughly remodeled the canadian welfare state. the election of conservative prime minister stephen harper in 2006 is perhaps the most comprehensive attempt to embed a particularly aggressive form of neoliberal market dogma. since his election in 2006, prime minister harper has methodically worked to entrench a market-led revamping of the federal public service. this includes: cutting federal social services programs, especially those that would fall under the auspices of the provinces; freezing federal wages; cutting the federal goods and services tax (gst) from seven to five percent; mandating provinces to consider the p3 route in order to receive federal grants; increasing defense spending by nearly 40 percent; allocating $9 billion to build new ‘super jails’; easing environmental regulations in the arctic for oil and mining companies; fast tracking development project’s in the alberta tar sands; weakening canada’s internationally admired long-form census; defunding equity seeking groups; intensifying free trade talks with the european union; and leading the largest militarization, and subsequent mass arrests, in canadian history at the june 2010 g20 summit in toronto (evans and albo, 2010; fanelli and hurl, 2010; hussey and leclerc, 2011; mcbride and whiteside, 2011). despite being found in contempt of parliament, stephen harper has been clear about his intensions “to make conservatism the natural government philosophy of the country” (whittington, 2011). moreover, although already one of the most tax-friendly regimes for corporations the ottawa and gatineau museum workers’ strike: precarious employmentand the public sector squeeze 128 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times in the world, harper’s conservatives will provide over $10 billion in corporate welfare for 2011-12. while corporate tax rates were 30 percent in 2000, they had fallen to 21 percent in 2004, 19.5 percent in 2008, 16.5 percent in 2011 and 15 percent by 2012 (ibid). in just twelve years corporate tax rates will have been cut exactly in half, with prime minister harper’s conservatives overseeing the bulk of corporate subsidies and the undermining of federal revenue streams. altogether, tax cuts enacted by the conservatives since 2006 will result in $220 billion in foregone revenue by 2013-14; that’s money that could have gone toward expanding and improving health care and education, pension plans, early learning and child care programs, tackling poverty and fighting climate change. such changes in the nature and content of public policy have had significant implications for the transformation of labour market conditions with some important differences in the public and private sectors. as stinson (2010, 94) has argued: “the key difference is that casualization in the public sector has taken place primarily through the growth of temporary full-time employment between 1997-2007, whereas in the private sector the growth in casualization has been mainly in temporary parttime work. over this period, temporary full-time work has squeezed out permanent part-time employment as the main form of casualized labour in the public sector.” given significant structural forms of discrimination, such as those historically linked to the female gender wage gap and racialized exclusions, transformations in the quality and form of work and working conditions remains important given that nearly one in four canadians, 61 percent of which are women, work in the public sphere. moreover, these transformations will also have grave implications for the strength and vitality of canada’s highly unionized public sector (75 percent), and its relationship to the shrinking union density of the private sector (19 percent) (ibid). recent scholarship regarding the growing spread of precarious work is also revealing new insights. lewchuck et al . (2011) propose that we may be in the early stages of a major shift in the interrelationship between production and social reproduction in the last century. their data suggests that men and women’s employment experiences are becoming increasingly similar, due in part to the downward convergence of wages and working conditions –i.e. those historically associated with “feminized labour”– characterized by dual precarious earner households. as they argue (lewchuck et al ., 2011, p. 94), “white male workers can no longer assume that secure labour market positions are theirs, while new opportunities for hidden forms of both gender and racial privileging/discrimination have merged in the less secure segments of the labour market, in the pay | 129 differences, constant scheduling, and rehiring/firing of temporary and contingent work.” on the whole, then, while in the preceding keynesian period the public sector often set the general standards for working conditions and wages, due in good part to unionization, under neoliberalism the weakened private sector has become the benchmark, often at the detriment of public sector workers today. as our analysis of the 2009 strike by museum workers in psac local 70396 illustrates, their struggle over decent working conditions and fair wages may be a sign of things to come as neoliberal public policy seeks to undermine free collective bargaining in a renewed age of austerity. preparing for a strike: background and context after seven months of negotiations without a contract, on september 21, 2009, 375 public service alliance of canada (psac) members with local 70396 took job action against the canadian museum of civilization corporation (cmcc), which operates both the canadian museum of civilization (cmc) and canadian museum of war (cmw). 2 psac local 70396 is separated into two main groups: (1) the floor staff, public hosts, tour guides, client services and animators, (2) and about one-third work in administration, collections and exhibition (psac, 2009a). the union is composed of approximately 60 percent women, with 5 percent from historically racialized groups, 2 percent from first nation communities, and 6 percent persons with disabilities. at the time of the strike there were only 6 permanent tour guides at both museums, while 49 positions remained temporary and part-time. with 92 percent of the voting membership choosing to exercise their right to strike, members took to the picket lines over job security, wages and contracting-out. as one of the striking workers stated, “this is a frightening time in which people who have full-time, permanent status still feel they could be laid off or replaced by a private firm at any time. it’s incredibly difficult on the psyche” (personal communication, 2009). using the recession as an excuse to freeze wages and contractout employees, the strike pitted the crown corporation against psac workers striking in the bordering cities–one in ontario and the other in 2  since its beginning in 1966, psac has grown into one of the largest labour unions in canada representing over 172,000 canadian workers, many from the federal public sector. with representation in the private sector also growing, the majority of psac members remain federal government workers in agencies such as postal communications, agriculture, customs and immigration, national defense, and heritage canada. psac also represents workers in the broader public sector including teaching and lab assistants in universities, casino workers, and employees in women’s shelters. the ottawa and gatineau museum workers’ strike: precarious employmentand the public sector squeeze 130 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times quebec–of ottawa and gatineau. central to the strike was the crown’s efforts to increase the use of contractual and temporary work, which already accounted for nearly 38 percent of the workforce. as part of maintaining this level of casual employment, the cmcc regularly terminated temporary positions days before they would reach the level at which they would become eligible for a permanent position as then stated by the collective agreement. after enforcing a three-week waiting period, the employer would unashamedly offer the former employee a new contract. the newly re-hired worker was then forced to start from the bottom of the pay scale without any seniority. where lay-offs and promotions were concerned, management possessed the power to terminate temporary contracts at their discretion thus making it impossible for casual workers to become permanent employees and union members. one such termination involved an employee who had twenty years of employment experience with the cmcc. examples are abound of workers with nearly two decades of experience still considered temporary by the corporation, and could therefore be let-go at any time. likewise, an important element of the strike was significant pay differences among workers. it was not uncommon for employees in similar positions to make anywhere from twenty to forty percent less than their colleagues working at other crown museums, despite similar levels of training, education and experience. for example, at the time of the strike a host working at the museum of war was paid an hourly wage of $13, while one at the museum of nature was paid $24 per hour, despite near equal levels of experience, training and education. similarly, in an effort to avoid providing benefits to its employees, the cmcc sought to extend benefit eligibility requirements for sick leave and vacation pay from a six month probationary period to twelve. in fighting to end the unfair treatment and casualization of labour at the museums, job security, control over the labour process and wages on par with other workers at cmcc museums was a sticking point throughout negotiations (ibid). on strike throughout the first four weeks of the strike few discussions were held between psac local 70396 and the cmcc bargaining committee. aware of the impasse, then-minister of labour rona ambrose offered to send the labour dispute to binding arbitration; however, while local 70396 was open to the idea, the cmcc refused, perhaps fearful that an arbitrator would rule in the union’s favour given precedent at other cmcc museums. seeking to avoid arbitration, and after nine weeks | 131 of refusing to meet with psac members unless their demands for job security and the end of casualization were taken off the table, the corporation finally agreed to meet with the union on november 20, 2009. however, bargaining failed to provide any concrete movement as censorship and intimidation became the preferred approach of the cmcc. for instance, psac was presented with a letter from cmcc’s legal counsel threatening that immediate action would be taken if so-called defamatory comments and photos were not deleted from a facebook page set up to provide strike support entitled “fairness and justice for museum workers.” psac responded by saying that they were not of the opinion that the material on this page was offensive or inaccurate and in turn accused the corporation of attempting to suppress the voice of the workers who were exposing the unfair work practices and experiences they had endured. maria fitzpatrick, the regional executive vice-president for the national capital region, described this attempt at censorship as “acts of desperation” and went on the say at the time that “we are appalled that a crown corporation is spending taxpayers’ money to attempt to intimidate workers into silence, rather than getting back to the bargaining table to negotiate a fair settlement” (blatt, 2009).3 nevertheless, the cmcc’s bargaining committee refused to address issues related to workplace insecurity, staffing procedure and wage disparities, using the rationale that the public service needed to be “flexible” like their private sector counterparts. private security surveillance was subcontracted by the cmcc to constantly videotape the strikers, at times from only a few feet away. also, records of employment were sent to the homes of those on strike without explanation as part of a rather bold intimidation strategy. psac did not take kindly to such tactics and indicated that their lawyers would be demanding an explanation for this offense. this proved to be the first time an employer has ever sent such documents to the homes of striking employees in the forty four years of the union’s existence. in 3  psac also presented the cmcc with a letter of their own referring to a web publication entitled “union activities counterproductive to negotiations.” in an attempt to sway public support away from the strikers, the cmcc document stated: “the public service alliance of canada and some of the strikers have taken their labour dispute from the work site to the private residences of employees of the canadian museum of civilization corporation. these employees, their spouses and children were frightened, and felt intimidated and harassed by these questionable tactics. we believe that the majority of striking staff and canadian citizens would find such activities reprehensible and not conducive to a timely resolution of the current labour dispute”. the “reprehensible” activity in question was a pancake breakfast, which psac describes as “in no way intimidating, frightening, harassing or otherwise improper or questionable.” if the corporation refused to remove the document psac was ready to pursue legal action for damages and sue for defamation on grounds of its own. the ottawa and gatineau museum workers’ strike: precarious employmentand the public sector squeeze 132 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times response, psac reassured its members that there was no legal cause for the sending out of such documents and advised them to ignore the records of employment. at the time, psac (psac, 2009b) reminded management that “section 94 of the canada labour code clearly states that no employer may terminate, layoff, discipline, transfer, suspend, intimidate, threaten or otherwise discriminate against an employee for participating in a legal strike” and threatening to do so would result in charges of unfair labour practices. yet, despite the corporation’s attempts to scare workers into concessions and forcefully impose upon them a state of permanent precarity, striking psac workers held the line. strong bonds were formed while picketing and a newfound sense of courage amongst workers left them anxious for talks to resume. throughout, strikers stressed that the dispute was not with the public, but with the cmcc. unlike the resentful memory of the ottawa public transit strike over late 2008 and early 2009, including bitter civic workers’ strikes in nearby windsor and toronto (fanelli and paulson, 2010; noonen, 2009), striking museum workers in gatineau and ottawa continued to gain public support as the strike went on. walking a picket line for weeks with no obvious end in sight can be extremely demoralizing. as anyone who has ever been on strike or been effected by a strike can attest, the financial and personal/familial strains this puts on picketers can easily fracture a common front. one useful way museum workers fought this was by putting together regular cultural events that normally would have taken place inside the museum, but holding them outside on the picket line instead. these events were open to the public and provided the workers with an opportunity to organize and work together on the picket line in a fulfilling way. the successful execution of these events, such as one honouring veterans on remembrance day (cbc news, 2009a) and picket line tea parties held in celebration of prince charles’ visit to canada (psac, 2009c) contributed in a substantial way to workers’ ability to maintain their spirits throughout the strike. the events also demonstrated to the public an effort on the part of workers to make the best out of a difficult situation while informing them of their issues. this was especially evident when the museum of civilization opened the “afghanistan: hidden treasures” exhibit and workers on the picket line created their own exhibit featuring 200 photographs of museum workers engaged in strike action entitled “striking treasures.” to quote a striking employee who worked on this project, “the purpose was to show people the real treasures of the museum… unfortunately on the sidewalk” (cbc news, 2009b). | 133 holding events such as these on the picket line made workers extremely visible to the community and showcased the skills of the striking workers and their work as valuable contributors to the community. it encouraged dialogue between the picketers and the public, providing an opportunity for workers to express their legitimate concerns and reasons for being on strike, as well as garnered positive media attention and political support. picketers were also visited by fellow artists and musicians as every bit of encouragement counted. this included the support of politicians marcel proulx (member of parliament hullaylmer, liberal party) and paul dewar (member of parliament ottawacentre, ndp), public supporters and other prominent figures such as barry blake (national councilor for the alliance of canadian cinema, television and radio artists) and douglas cardinal (architect of the cmc), which provided the workers with positive reinforcement and confidence (psac, 2009d). other unions and labour affiliates also came forward in support of psac local 70396, such as the professional institute of public service and the canadian union of public employees. at the same time, the canadian labour congress (clc) met in ottawa and agreed that the cmcc “has blatantly abandoned their responsibility by failing to negotiate a fair collective agreement” (clc, 2009). the clc also asked the canadian government, then a harper minority, for a public showing of support for the employees in their struggle by applying pressure to the cmcc, and in particular its chief executive officer victor rabinovitch, to begin a new round of talks that would put an end to the strike. cognizant that back-to-work legislation would not make it passed a conservative minority government, the harper government did not intervene. outcome negotiations with the cmcc finally resumed on december 11, 2009, but it took a meeting between victor rabinovitch, then psac president john gordon, the deputy minister of labour canada, and a senior official of the federal mediation and conciliation service to make it happen. to sum a long and bitter labour dispute, in the end some important improvements to the working conditions of psac local 70396 employees were won. four improvements were central: first, the cmcc agreed to provide full-time temporary workers with the opportunity of permanent status; second, internal applicants were granted preference to available jobs, providing they possess the necessary skills and experience; third, new language was introduced in the collective agreement that guaranthe ottawa and gatineau museum workers’ strike: precarious employmentand the public sector squeeze 134 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times tees no existing temporary position will be involuntarily eliminated as a result of the contracting out of the same position; and fourth, improvements in maternal and parental leave benefits were gained, which are now on par with the quebec insurance plan (emploi et solidarité sociale québec, 2011).4 also, gained in negotiations were salary protections for those who are reassigned to different positions. as a step toward recognizing seniority among casual employees, the cmcc offered seven newly created permanent part-time positions filled internally based on experience and years of service. after 86 days on strike, on december 15 2009, psac local 70396 workers voted to accept the tentative agreement reached with the cmcc (psac, 2009e). of course, there are other aspects of the strike that were not quite as successful. for instance, workers with psac local 70396 were unsuccessful in their quest for wage parity with museum workers at other crown corporations, such as the museum of nature. likewise, after nearly three months on strike, relations with management remained obviously strained, as do tensions between non-union and union members who crossed the picket lines. rather than resorting to unjust terminations, the cmcc now uses attrition as a way of reducing staff numbers, while in the event of layoffs employees are offered a severance package that both the employee and the union local must approve. the above aside, however, reflecting on the strike’s relative success, one striking worker mused that building solidarity among the rank-andfile of the two museums and the bargaining executive played a major role in psac’s optimism over the long haul (personal communication, 2009). tensions among the classic divide between francophone and anglophone workers were few, if any, perhaps due to the recognition that they were–as one striker remarked–“in this together.” all union communications were issued in french and english, ensuring the free flow of necessary information. regular updates were communicated to the membership by the negotiating team and the demands of the workers were presented in a clear and consistent way. feelings of camaraderie were fostered within the union throughout the negotiating process. also, important to striking workers was support from other psac locals and unions. indeed, some workers attributed the overwhelming refusal of the cmcc’s “final offer” by the membership to their new4  the quebec parental insurance plan is perhaps the strongest in the country providing paid leave for wage-earning birth or adoptive parents. benefits can be shared by parents or taken separately as maternal/paternal leave and include a 55-70% income replacement for a maximum of 18 to 37 weeks depending on the chosen option. see: http://www.rqap.gouv. qc.ca/travailleur_salarie/choix_en.asp | 135 found politicization and solidarity. in interviews conducted during and after the strike, they suggested that their resounding “no” sent a clear message to the corporation that “workers remained fiercely united, were not prepared to back down, and were to be taken seriously” (psac, 2009f; psac, 2009g). a sign of things to come even though the strike ended in what may be considered a relatively small victory with gains in the protection of employees against contracting-out and improvements to parental leave, the spectre of increased private sector penetration into the cmcc looms large. for instance, shortly after the strike the cmcc’s ceo victor rabinovitch stated that he intended to focus his energies on “attracting private sector support to supplement government funding” (cmcc, 2009). as disconcerting as such comments are, the psac local 70396 strike over the winter of 2009 is one small success in what may, unfortunately, be an increasingly aggressive federal conservative, now majority, government. workers at the national gallery of canada and museum of civilization are once again being threatened with continued cuts to heritage institutions. without a contract since june 2010, the gallery’s management has announced plans to trim its budgets by privatizing its book store and terminating nine employees. commenting on the situation, local 70397 president david bosschaart said: “we just want a fair contract that provides service pay, improved job security and some protection against inflation” (psac, 2011). since gaining a majority in the house of commons, the conservatives have been unhesitant in their quest to remake the public sector in the image of the private sector. for instance, over the next three years 6000 full-time jobs in the public service are set to be cut. national vice-president of psac, patty ducharme, commenting on the cuts, said: “they are chipping away at services they consider have no value. arts, culture, heritage, language [and the] environment…” (cobb, 2011). likewise, in an effort to further shrink public sector employment, workers are being offered buyout packages, the option of taking early retirement and, ultimately, layoffs should attrition fail to produce the desired results. indicative of this trend, from 1990 to 2009, as a percentage of the total labour force government employment experienced a decline from 21 percent to 18 percent (mcbride and whiteside, 2011). in addition to making the public sector market-dependent, the federal conservatives are flexing their majority power with the growing use of back-to-work legislation. the ottawa and gatineau museum workers’ strike: precarious employmentand the public sector squeeze 136 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times after seven months of negotiations without a contract, on june 2, 2011, nearly 50,000 workers at the canada post corporation (cpc) took job action against employer efforts intent on downgrading their wages, benefits and working conditions.5 rather than launching an allout strike, the canadian union of postal workers (cupw) decided on rotating job action, while continuing to deliver pension and social assistance cheques. canada post’s intentions were unambiguous: introduce new machinery and workplace reorganization in an effort to intensify productivity; increase the volume of mail carried by each letter carrier; cut well-paying, full-time positions; introduce more evening and overnight shift work; replace sick leave rights with an inferior short term disability plan; and, most contentiously, introduce a lower pay scale and replace the defined benefit pension plan with the unstable fluctuations of a market-dependent defined contribution plan. after twelve days of rotating job action, however, on june 14, 2011, the cpc locked out the workers. just one-day later labour minister lisa raitt tabled back-towork legislation imposing a wage scale that was lower than the cpc’s last offer (ctv news, 2011). but, as david camfield (2011b) has written, that wasn’t the worst part: “the law dictates that the new collective agreement for urban postal workers will be determined by an arbitrator appointed unilaterally by the minister of labour, using a method called final offer selection (fos). fos is uncommon in canada, and is very rare in back to work legislation. in this case, the union and the employer are each required to submit a final offer covering the many disputed issues. the arbitrator will then select one offer or the other in its entirety. in addition to allowing the conservatives to handpick whoever they want as the arbitrator, the law includes guidelines that the arbitrator must follow in choosing a settlement...this puts intense pressure on cupw officials to submit a final offer that includes concessions they would never have agreed to in bargaining, in the hope that the arbitrator will pick their offer rather than an even-worse one from the employer.” like canada post workers, on june 14, 2011, 3,800 call-centre staff and check-in workers unionized with the canadian automobile workers (caw) at air canada took job action against employer efforts to reduce 5  the impending commentary on the 2011 air canada strike and canada post lockout were written just as the strikes were coming to an end and are therefore cursory at best. | 137 wages, benefits and the quality of working conditions. central to the job action was air canada’s efforts to implement a two-tiered wage system, increase the minimum retirement age by five years and, like the cpc, impose a defined contribution pension plan over the much more secure defined benefit plan. a private company, unlike the cpc, it must be recalled that for the majority of air canada’s rank and file workers, wages had been cut and frozen in 2003 amidst bankruptcy proceedings. this has not, of course, stopped executive compensation from rising excessively. in 2010, for example, air canada’s ceo pay increased forty percent for a total compensation worth $4.5 million. nevertheless, just two hours into the strike labour minister lisa raitt, vowing not to put at risk “canada’s fragile economic recovery,” motioned that she would be tabling back-to-work legislation (kane, 2011). with the threat of backto-work legislation looming large, air canada and the caw were able to reach an agreement soon after the minster of labour tabled legislation forcing striker’s back-to-work. details of the agreement are few at the time of writing, but the contract includes a nine percent wage increase over four years, while the contentious issue of pensions will be dealt with through arbitration (murphy and godfrey, 2011). the newfound aggressiveness of the harper conservatives in employing coercive back-to-work legislation signals what is likely a disturbing precedent for future collective bargaining. the question moving forward, then, is whether or not unions, social justice and community activists can match the aggressiveness and organization of their counterparts? toward a militant, class unionism writing in an era much different than the twenty-first century, though in many ways similar, it is worthwhile recalling the words of one of the u.s.’s most celebrated labour activists who reminds us that “...the struggle in which we are engaged today is a class struggle; and labour unionism to be of any real value to the working class must be organized, not along craft lines, but along class lines” (debs, 1905, n.p.). current labour struggles under the new conservative majority of prime minister harper are about more than workers’ rights to job security, health and safety, benefits and pensions; it is also about defending public services, democratic control over resources and decision-making power, and the rights of all persons to chart out a future without the ever-present fear that capital will at any moment abandon them. in short, it is about recognizing the tory attacks as acts of class war. like debs, marx and engels recognized long ago that improvements the ottawa and gatineau museum workers’ strike: precarious employmentand the public sector squeeze 138 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times in working conditions for those organized also helped raise the basic legislative floor for others. but they also recognized that the benefits accrued through unionization and legislation would always be under attack and likely provisional. consequently, they stressed that “the unions must convince the world at large that their efforts, far from being narrow and selfish, aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions” (marx, 1866, n.p). if unions were to become a substantive force of movement–rather than reactionary, even if defensive, opportunists–this meant building unions as expressions of working class unity. all in all, for marx and engels, as for debs, if organized labour was going to have a progressive future it would need to be anchored in a politics that oriented its struggles toward the emancipation of the working class as a whole and, therewith, the abolition of class privileges. this ineradicably meant challenging the very existence and legitimacy of capitalism. while striking psac workers in local 70396 were certainly not, on the whole, anti-capitalist in their aims and efforts, important seeds were revealed in the strike toward a turn to class-struggle unionism. this included, as we outlined above, generalizing their specific qualms into broader social issues, connecting with the general public, seeking to break down the arbitrary distinction between public and private sector workers, challenging the division of labour within the employment structure, communicating with their members and the public in a clear and consistent manner, and confronting management prerogatives. as workers learned and struggled together confidence and optimism became contagious among members. indeed, while the ottawa and gatineau museum workers’ strike may be one, albeit relatively small but successful trade union struggle, it is becoming ever-more apparent that trade unions must go beyond their role as mediators between workers and management. this requires, in our view, transforming trade unionism into class-struggle unionism.6 as likewise argued by panitch and swartz (2003, 237), “union activists and leaders would need to engage directly–not just as surrogates who issue statements to support the vital issues taken up today by social movements–in many spheres of working people’s lives, from education and housing to racism and sexism, and the nature of the work they do… unions need to open themselves up to the broader community to become centres of workingclass life and ultimately vehicles through which working people develop 6  there is valuable research examining the importance of union renewal. however, just what such changes are required is a matter of continuing discussion. while we do not have the space to provide an exhaustive literature review, for strong starting points see kumar and schenk, 2006; ross, 2008; and camfield, 2011c. | 139 the capacity and confidence to lead society.” furthermore, a call to a more inclusive working class resistance model brings attention to the “false logic of competitiveness” of neoliberal capitalism as the collective fight takes place at the community level, which requires the cooperation of those who live and work in shared spaces (radice, 2010, p. 39). for this strategy to be effective, cooperative efforts must be made between unions representing working people as well as renewed union outreach to people without jobs and non-unionized labour with the goal of building class consciousness. to do so requires that unions step beyond formal membership and offer support to the broader community of working class people including the unemployed, non-unionized, migrant labour, the disabled and the poor. considering the brashness of prime minister harper’s newfound conservative majority, and the coordinated responses of the capitalist class, it is conceivable that the worst for federal public service workers (and the users of those services) is yet to come. as psac local 70396 members showed, fighting back matters. conclusion to conclude, in this paper we have sought to trace the trajectory of neoliberalism in canada, with a focus on precarious labour and public services through an analysis of the ottawa and gatineau museum workers’ strike over late 2009. we situated in historical perspective the coercive mechanisms employed by consecutive federal governments’ since the 1980s, drawing attention to the most recent maneuverings by the current government of stephen harper. as we have argued, unions and oppressed persons generally can no longer, if they ever could, put their unbridled faith in the courts, laws or governments to enforce and protect workers’ fundamental human rights. since at least the 1970s, canadians have witnessed the progressive dismantlement of keynesian-era social programs amidst an increasingly militant and recalcitrant capitalist class offensive. while psac local 70396’s struggle with the cmcc may be considered a victory, scores of losses in the decades preceding and since then mar the political landscape. the attacks against the collective bargaining rights of workers should unmistakably be understood as acts of class war. a twenty-first century unionism, then, must come to terms with an increasingly aggressive capitalist class-state nexus and the limits of unionization as an end in itself; only then may the political potential of a working class unionism rekindle the struggle for realizing a world without capitalism. the ottawa and gatineau museum workers’ strike: precarious employmentand the public sector squeeze 140 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times 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(2011, january 19). tax cuts drive harper’s rightwing agenda. toronto star, http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/ article/924121–taxcutsdrive-harper-s-rightwingagenda?bn=1 workman, t. (2009). if your in my way, i’m walking: the assault on working people since 1970. halifax, ns: fernwood. the ottawa and gatineau museum workers’ strike: precarious employmentand the public sector squeeze 146 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times problematizing the issue of cultural appropriation janice hiadki ontario institute for studies in education as a feminist cultural worker, i consider the subject of cultural appropriation a fundamental one for me to address. yet i do so hesitantly. first, appropriation continues to be a 'hot' topic in the white-dominated media, and since the discussion often focuses on the imaginative 'freedom' of whiteartists, thereis the danger ofperpetuating white concerns and obscuring h^emonic relations (hill, 1992a). second, when cultural workers from non-dominant groups argue for autonomy and self-determination, my political mstinct is to immediately support such a demand. to speak simply in agreement with and on behalf of marginalized voices can, however, be an attitude ofarrogance, and it does not help me, as a white woman, to question aspects of privilege in my own subjectivity and to challenge colonialist and hegemonic practices in the dominant culture. furthermore, un-interrogated support neither enhances my project of developing a political cultural practice focusing on transformation nor informs a politics of coalition and collaboration. third, questions about appropnation interpenetrate other complex issues that floodthe field ofcultural studies such as identity, difference, voice, representation, universality, and political correctness. none of these issues, either singly or in relationship—do they ever work singly?—are manifested intheory/practiceina simpleway. tryingto problematize appropriation feels like a formidable task; it is a highly contested, and possibly overworked terrain. in terms of my own entry into the issue, i think about what alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 complications i will forget, omit, obscure, and have time and/or space for in this paper. finally, while i am conscious oftrying to avoid closure and conclusions in this essay, i will offer critiques, suggest approaches, and inevitably finish the marks of writing on some page to come. i want and need to insert some lucidity and cogency to my wrestling with the issue of cultural appropriation as i also attempt to make space for continuous/contiguous questioning and an ongoing state of mulling and puzzlement. i want to both hold 'appropriation' still and shake it up and shake it down, avoid it and confront it, and to settle in to an opinion and to hold on to a state of ongoing revisions and shifting perspectives. it is within this arena of contradictory toisions that i begin this paper. with the above cautions, contradictions, and hesitancies shadowingmy words, i will discuss two approaches to the issue of appropriation, and thai i will consider a third theoretical position that is a more complex reading of the issue in its problematizing ofpower relations. this latter approach draws on feminist and post-structuralist theories^ and is implicated in my ongoing revisionings/reversionings ofmy position as a feminist cultural worker. the term 'appropriation' and questions of resistance before turning to viewpoints on appropriation, i will briefly address a few of the varied understandings oftheterm as it is used in cultural studies. my intent is to indicate the range and complexity ofterminology rather than to catalogue the many contexts and meanings ofappropriation. in discussing 'resistance,' i emphasize the importance ofan analysis ofpower relations and demonstrate the imbrication of resistance, subversion, and opposition with issues of appropriation and cultural politics. my focus is on cultural appropriation as it has been addressed inthepast three to four years in the context of canadian cultural production. there has been an emphasis on issues of race, rq)resentation, abonginal self-determination, and the concerns ofnon-dominant cultures whose works and artifacts are appropriated by the dominant culture. in this regard, a number of hiadki/ problematizing cultural appropriation toronto-based cultural studies publications including ftas'^', border/lines, and parallelogramme, have foregrounded the concern with cultural appropriation.^ todd (1990), for example, has described appropriation through a strat^y of opposition: the 'inversion' of cultural appropriation is cultural autonomy. her emphasis is on origins and self-determination or unmediated native cultural production. according to todd, the appropriation of native culture is an abrogation of difference and a fetishization of the 'other' such that native sources become commodities to be desired and valorized with consequences of profit and acclaim for those appropriating. similarly, browning (1992) understands appropriation as taking the experiences of 'others,' interpreting them, and materially benefiting from them. in addition to the ongoing attention to appropriation in the various cultural studies journals mentioned above, toronto-area newspapers have also focused on appropriation,^ often with a link to the political correctness debate. popular cultural studies demonstrates different usages of the term 'appropriation.' some theorists consider appropriation in the context of resistant or oppositional reading practices of audiences. according to shoue %g^ (1990: 90), this 'trend' in popular cultural studies considers "the complex relation ofaudience pleasures to dominant social structures." drawing upon brecht's work, kipnis (1993) posits a notion of "refunctioning" whereby elements from the dominant culture are appropriated and transformed. this position shares similarities with ideas of pastiche, pirating, and pilfering (berland, 1993; hartnett, 1990; willis, 1990). lipsitz (1990:99) applies bakhtin's concept ofthe dialogic and the importance of social and historical contexts to popular music and suggests that the influence of the past on current rock music is "a dialogic process, one embedded in collective history and nurtured by the ingenuity of artists interested in fashioning icons of opposition." simon and giroux (1989:228) associate empowerment and opposition with the appropriation of popular cultural forms: popular forms have to be renegotiated and represented in order to appropriate them in the service of self and social empowerment. this suggests a critical pedagogy disrupting the unity ofpopular alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 culture in order to appropriate those elemoits which enable the voice of dissait while simultaneously challenging the lived expenences and social relations of domination and exploitation. these approaches are linked by an emphasis on transformation, opposition, and resistance. this notion of 'resistance,' however, needs to be problematized and some of its suppositions require questioning.'' sholle ( 1 990) suggests that the relationship of power, knowledge and resistance is often confused in popular cultural studies. the dominant culture allows for certain forms of resistance but there are also forms that "remain uncoopted bythe hegemonic culture" or that ''authentically [emphasis added] break with the dominant culture" (sholle, 1990:96). shoue's intent is to emphasize the need for popular cultural studies to differentiate and analyze forms of resistance. while a consideration of what kinds of resistance are possible within discourses is crucial, setting up a hierarchy of resistance requires coherent and determinate definitions of resistance such that boundaries are fixed and possibilities for opposition are limited and contained. shoue's point that "the question is not whether or not there is resistance but rather what it is and when it is significant [italics added]" also depends on definition ( 1 990: 97). but what is significant? for whom? who gets to decide? what does/ might resistance look like in specific socio-historic conditions? are there, for instance, 'openings' that point to the possibility of resistance, of producing ourselves as subjects dififerently? might resistance be understood as operating on a continuum? sholle's critique of willis's and corrigan's "trivial" examples of resistance is lodged in what sholle understands as an unspecified and unproblematized notion of political transformation. willis's and corrigan's possibilities for change are read as emotional reactions to regulation rather than as rewritings of discourses. sholle critiques this work in order to bring a channelled politicization to resistance and to emphasize that shifts in discursive formations are not initiated by emotional reactions stressing an analysis of power relations for resistance is important, but dichotomizing affective response from focused resistance does not recognize the complex hiadki/ problematizing cultural appropriation interplay of emotion, sensory experience, and corporeality in subversion and opposition (giroux and simon, 1989). i agree with sholle that it is not enough to merely affirm resistance and understand it as inherently political; it must be historicized and politicized. nevertheless, i would prefer to hold on to a more open concept of what constitutes "political significance" than that found in sholle' s insistence on locating resistance within a commitment to radical democracy. in what follows i will critique two fixed and competing views on appropriation that have been at the centre of the cultural appropriation debate, and i will offer more complex and open perspectives that present the possibility of challenging the limits ofthese first two approaches. i will not address questions about appropriation by focusing on a specific cultural form. rather, i will reflect on discussions that speak to the issue as it inheres in various forms of cultural production, and i will draw on the responses of writers who, from diverse subject positions, consider appropriation. i remain aware that issues are not identical for all non-dominant groups and in all forms of cultural production. in fact, i will argue for specificity and historicization—^how cultural producers and readers are invested in a text at particular socio-historic moments. cultural appropriation: concerns about authenticity and self-determination the first view of appropriation is expressed in the following manner: if any dominantgroup 's form ofcultural production uses the 'voices ' or experiences or materials of an oppressed group, it constitutes appropriation. one ofthe difficulties ofthis view is the underlying assumption that only the oppressed have authenticity. such a position suggests that "the oppressed express a truth that will win out. . . [and] language is seen as simply representing reality rather than constructing it" (razack, 1993:61). as lather (1991:164) points out, "there i s no ' correct' line knowablethrough struggle; " the concerns and the conditions of struggle in any community are constantly shiftingand "any useful theories ofsocial change must deal with this fluidity. " alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 the meanings oftexts are lodged in specific historical contexts and cannot be transferred into generalized conclusions about oppressed peoples: "whilewe need texts that affirm marginalized subject positions, however, it is important to be constantly wary ofthe dangers offixing subject positions and meanings beyond themomentwhen they are politicallyproductive"(weedon, 1987:172). it is important to stay alert to "how our multiple identities are constructed and played out at any one time in any one context" (razack, 1993:69). another aspect ofthis view is the implied understandingthat marginalized groups will automatically speak to issues of oppression. there are two problems that this raises. the first difficulty is the danger of reducing a work "to theme, to its about-ness'' since it may be ''about racism but is not reducible to it" (srivastava, 1991 :30-3 1). the work of a cultural producer from a non-dominant group is then considered according to how that work speaks to or for the issues of that group. as weedon (1987: 168) points out, however, "the race and ethnic background of a writer does not guarantee the race politics of a text." trinh (1991 :75) also indicates that "there can hardly be such a thing as an essential inside that can be homogeneously represented by all insiders." concomitant with this view is the demand and expectation to produce work that takes up issues of oppression. in referring to film and video by people of colour,' verjee (1992:42) notes: [e]vents are so sporadic and visibility so scarce, artists of colour are received mainly as political representatives, that is, they are expected to speak for and be accountable to their communities. structural and institutional exclusion and marginalization have meant that people of colour and their work must always bear the weight and burden ofthe concerns of race and racism. the public role for artists of colour and their work carries this burden of representation regardless of audience. this burden of representation, a condition of the historical marginalization, often means that questions of representation, gender and sexuahty are brought forward in reductive ways which foreclose the possibility for cntical dialogue. hiadkj/ problematizing cultural appropriation adopting the view that appropriation occurs whenever a dominant group uses the 'voice' of an oppressed group demands a confinement to instituting a prescriptive approach with rules and guidelines. a poliang that continues a colonialist perspective is then required. prescriptions, bemg unaiforceable, do nothing to challenge systemic racism and do not guarantee opportunities for the works ofnon-dominant cultural producers to be heard. furthermore, the policing approach provides a convenient hook for white, middle-class writers to vent their outrage about censorship, shout for artists' rights, and ignore racism issues (philip, 1990a). in addition, cultural producers with various privileges of access and acclaim can conveniently ignore any critical analysis when they take on the role of ally or adopt a simplistic form of support for those marginalized peoples struggling against appropnation. this is reflected in 'offenng' a space for the 'other' to speak, or unproblematically gettmg caught up in "waves ofbenevolence" (spivak, 1990:63). trinh (1991:72) illuminates this point: this is akin to saying that a non-white view is desirable because it would help to fill m a hole that whites are now willing to leave more or less empty so as to lessen the critical pressure and to give the illusion of a certain incompleteness that needs the native's input to be more complete, but is ultimately dependent on white authority to attain any form of 'real' completion. such a 'charity' mission is still held up with much righteousness by many, and despite the many changing appearances it has taken through the years, the image of the white colomal saviour seems more pernicious than ever since it operates now via consent. furthermore, when white artists dismiss charges of appropriation by responding with an 'i'm-on-your-side' response, they conveniently ignore their place in white cultural domination. in articulating this pomt. hill (1992a: 14) refers to an artist's letter m fuse: <q» ([^ alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 andy fabo's question, "arewe reallythe enemy?" . . seems to use the position of the alternative artist to deny his legacy of white power as well. am i saying, "you are the enemy?" i don't think the issue is that simple to delineate. my point is that you are inheritors of a complex and diverse power structure that can't be undone simply because you are innocently good-intentioned. hill's comments have generated angry responses from a number of white artists who, either in hill's essay or in that of an earlier one by native artist joanne cardinal-shubert, had been challenged about their appropriation of native cultures. in the case of the artist group, fastwiirms, their response focuses on theartists' affinity with nativepolitics, particularly their respect for native spirituality and support for native sovereignty. concomitant with this position is their accusation to hill oflying; fastwiirms ( 1 992:4) calls for distinguishing "truth from lies, fact from fiction, a good argument from a bad one." hill's letter in response is important because it critiques fastwiirms on their claim to truth identification and their insistence on being able to name themselves as subjects outside of their locations and histories, that is as a "non-western culture" (hill, 1992b:5). both hill's and fastwiirm's letters address a range of issues, not all of which can be addressed here. however, i find hill's letter, with its emphasis on power relations and questions of access to resources, an important critical analysis. nevertheless, ihaveto question hill'sinsistaice on the evidence and authonty of 'experience' to argue for his onginary and unquestionable knowledge as a native person. this argument forecloses an analysis of the construction of subjectivity and an investigation ofdiscursive formations. as scott (1992:25) argues: when experience is taken as the origin ofknowledge, the vision of the individual subject...becomes the bedrock of evid^ice upon which explanation i s built. questions about the constructed nature of expenence, about how subjects are constituted as different in the first place, about how one's vision is structured—about i hiadki/ problematizing cultural appropriation language (or discourse) and history—are left aside. the evidence of experience then becomes evidence for the fact of difference, rather than a way ofexploring how difference is established, how it operates, how and in what ways it constitutes subjects who see and act in the world. in summary, fixed notions ofcommunities and a fixed understanding of oppressed/oppressor require ignoring "those with hyphenated identities and hybnd realities" (trinh, 1991:73): community, then is the product of work, or struggle; it is inherently unstable, contextual ; it has to be constantly reevaluated in relation to critical political priorities; and it is the power of interpretation, interpretation based on an attention to history, to the concrete, to what foucault has called subjugated knowledges. (martin and mohanty, 1986:210) cultural appropmation: concerns about freedom of expression a second contemporary view constructs the issue of appropriation as a plot from the camp of the politically correct. some white, male, middle-class writers, with their privileged access to different media forms and with the support of the media status quo, have been particularly vociferous in their objection to the idea of appropriation of 'voice.' in opposition to the first view, this stance is lodged in concerns about censorship and freedom of imagination. in a senes ofarticles and letters in the globe andmail about the canada council's position regarding appropriation, the newspaper has foregrounded concerns about restriction, constraint, manipulation, and what one headline for ten letters sharing similar outrage about censorship calls "frightening attack on the imagination" (globe and mail, march 28, 1992:d7). without entenngthe debate about the canada council's policies,^ <q) alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 i will nevertheless address the questions of coisorship and artistic freedom raised in this view of cultural appropnation. in writing about the appropriation of native stories, lenore keeshigtobias (1991:174) states that "white canadians cry caisorship and decry self-censorship." tnnh (1991:231) suggests: the focus in coisorship debates has repeatedly been the legal defense and protection of white male artists' privilege of exhibiting works whose explicit/implicit racial or sexist stance is stridaitly ignored. the colonialist creed "divide and conquer" will persist as long as issues of censorship, racism, and sexism continue to be treated as unrelated. philip (1990a:210) links these issues into a comprdioisive critique of how "one discourse, caisorship, becomes privileged; the other, racism, is silaiced. " when questions ofpower and privilege are ignored, racist practices are perpetuated. the debate has to move away from the individual concerns tfi^ of cultural producers who demand that they must use any expenence they choose for realizing their creative expression. instead, what is needed is an examination of the institutionalized forces and interstices of power that privilege some cultural producers at the expense of others (giroux, 1992; philip, 1990a). in consideringthe view that stridently argues for the dominant culture's right to freedom of expression, one must question who is really being 'censored.' as mentioned above, attacks levied against considerations of appropnation are often articulated as censorship coming from the 'politically correct." yet as schulman (1991:19) points out: one empowered individual's discriminatory speech can rob an entire group of people of their 'nght' to speak. by valuing absolute speech rights above civil rights, pc-trouncers are helping reseal the silence ofthose who, historically, have had the least access to speech, just as that access was being forged. . . . silencing hiadki/ problematizing cultural appropriation disenfranchised voices is the most effective way to prevent real social change. hill ( 1 992a) and keeshig-tobias (1 990) argue that a complaint by nonnatives ofcensorship fails to recognize the censorship ofnative culture that occurs as a result of native peoples' difficulty in accessing media attention as well as the ongoing representation of their cultures by non-natives. churchill (1992:41), quoting former american indian movement leader russell means, observes that what is really at stake in the appropriation of native spirituality is the very existence ofnative people. 'ripping off^ native culture is an act of "cultural goiocide." the penultimate argument for freedom of expression comes from findley (globe and mail, march 28, 1992:d7): "i imagine—^therefore! am." the unquestioned arrogance of this position from a writer with all the privileges of funding, innumerable published works, the authorization to determine cultural issues, critical acclaim, and a valorized reputation obscures an understanding of exactly whose imagination is 'free.' what is ' obvious' to philip (1 990a: 2 1 5) is clearly not apparent to thosewho argue for a non-critical praise of imagination: "to state the obvious, in a racist, sexist and classist society, the imagination, if left unexamined, can and does serve the ruling ideas of the time." maracle (1990) argues that justifying the appropriation of native stories by arguing for freedom of imagination is a racist strategy. concomitanttothe argument for unfettered imagination, free rein to any subject matter, and imagining and using the 'voice' of an 'other' regardless of the particular historical conditions of oppression and colonization, is the universalizing of knowledge. churchill (1992) points out that non-natives who usurp aspects of native spirituality for their own work often argue for their right to spiritual freedom when they are confronted with the charge of appropriation. thus, native spirituality becomes universalized such that non-natives have the right to adopt its practices and beliefs. in the context of histories whereby eurocentric culture has obliterated indigenous cultures, for (^ , alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 a white person to argue "what's yours also belongs to me" perpetuates racist and colonialist practices. in discussing the siege on native culture, both todd (1990) and kulchyski ( 1 992) analyze the intersections ofpolitics and culture. they point to some ofthe hi stone practices that have led to current cultural conflicts and particular resistances by native peoples. in traangthe history of the state definition of 'indian' in canada, kulchyski discusses how the l^slation designed to enfranchise and define canadian peoples also served to provide a space of subversion whereby native people could use the instated definition ofdifferenceto underlinetheir distinct status. kulchyski ( 1 992: 1 80) notes: "marginality became in part a position from which aboriginal culture could resist totalizing power." he also details the attack in the late 1 9th and early 20th centunes on particular native cultural practices such as the potlatch and the sundance, and describes ongoing native opposition to policies designed to silence native culture. todd ( 1 990) similarly argues that native peoples' resistance to cultural ^ll^ domination must be understood in a socio-histonc context. she links the concern with cultural appropriation to the concept of aboriginal title and suggests that for native peoples the issue is not merely a new media focus but an awareness lodged in historic colonialism. aboriginal title becomes the opening whereby negotiation "with the colonizers" is made possible, and "it asserts a reality that existed without european mediation, before native peoples were positioned as other" (todd, 1990:32). finally, this second view ofappropnation focuses on cultural producers who disregard issues of privil^e. power relations cannot be taken for granted. the privileges of access to funding, of getting work produced, and of receiving cntical attention determine how the issue of appropnation will be framed. in other words, those artists in positions ofpower vis-a-vis access will often raise issues that address the undermining of their pnvileges. schulman (1991 20) puts this point forward as a question: "how do certain pnvileges thatwe might have access to determinewhich issues we pursue, and how does this pursuit make the needs ofthose with no such access invisible?" hiadki/ probiematizing cultural appropriation spivak (1988:1 17) urges a concern for "the theory practice of pedagogic practice-theory that would allow us constructively to question privileged explanations even as explanations aregenerated." these pnvileges are rooted in an "absence ofunderstandinghow the silencing ofthemany enables the few to become the articulators and disseminators of knowledge and culture" (philip, 1990a:217). phihp also suggests that 'social responsibility' must accompany privilege such that cultural producers will take action: whether it involves a deasion not to appropnate 'voice' or it "impels them to do somethmg else, but they ought to be impelled to do something' (1990a:218). most importantly, cultural producers must recognizethat in a classist, racist, homophobic, and sexist society writing "about rather than out of another culture" (philip, 1990a:218) guarantees more access and attention for the privileged few. (re:)shirting an approach to cultural appropriation: problems and questions the two approaches to appropriation that i have pried open here are oppositional views that tend to foreclose critical interrogation. drawing on arguments from a number of sources, it is possible to suggest a cntical approach that avoids fixed responses and claims, and instead adds complexityto the issue ofappropriation by raising questions ofdifference (i e. insider/ outsider boundaries), historicization, and ways ofthinking about transforming power relations. foucault (1982:791-792) points to an understanding of power relations that underlines critical analysis, historiaty, and the possibility of social change: power relations are rooted deep in the social nexus, not reconstituted 'above' soaety as a supplementary structure whose radical effacemoit one could perhaps dream of... a society without power relations can only be an abstraction. which, be it said in passing, makes all the more politically necessary the analysis of power relations in a given society, their strength or fragility, the <q> ^^ alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 conditions which are necessary to transform some or to abolish others. for to say that there cannot be a society without power relations is not to say either that those which are established are necessary, or, in any case, that power constitutes a fatality at the heart of societies, such that it cannot be undermined. instead, i would say that the analysis, elaboration, and bringing into question ofpower relations and the 'agonism' between power relations and the intransitivity of freedom is a permanait political task inherent m all social existence. appropriation occurs within a social context that reaps rewards for some and disenfranchises others. benefits accrue to those in the dominant culture who view knowledge as universal, who ignore the painful complexities ofhegemonic relations. giroux (1992:234) has noted that it is important to mterrogate "how dominant configurations of power privilege some cultures over others, how power works to secure forms of domination that marginalize and silence subordinated groups." delpit's ( 1 988) notion ofthe rules which encode the "culture ofpower" is helpful here. for those 'outside' this field, learning the rules makes for the possibility of acquinng power. arguing for strategies of access is a recommaidation to learn rules; change rules; break rules; and create new, multiple, non-rule possibilities for change. it is also a recognition ofthe importance of analyzing forms of regulation and resistance in discursive formations. neither delpit northose theorists positing a need for a consideration ofaccess are advocating a worid where all cultural groups should learn the codes and rules of the dominant culture. rather, their point is to remain aware of, and alert to, the shifts and changes in power relations in the field of cultural politics and to ask about who gets to speak, under what conditions, and with what consequences (black and morns, 1992; fung, 1992-93; hill, 1992a; philip, 1990a).'* kulchyski (1992:177-178) illuminates this issue in his discussion of the subversive practices of native peoples: hiadki/ problematizing cultural appropriation resistance involves constructing enclaves of culture within the established order, offinding space within the interstices ofpower, ofcontrollingthe pace and nature oflinks with the dominant social organization and culture, of adapting western technology to precapitalist soaal relations, of taking the tools offered by the state and capital and using them to stroigthen rather than destroy primitive culture. an examination ofwhere concerns about 'voice' lie, andhow power and privilege are positioned to serve the 'right' ofthe dominant culture are issues that must be considered. it is imperative to ask why the 'ability' to use the 'voice' of non-dominant cultures is usually an ability of those from a dominant culture and not the reverse. it is also important to note that the ability to do so is fuelled by racist, sexist, and capitalistic practices and is accompanied by privilege: it is an ability which serves that privilege. it is, m fact, that very privil^e that is the enabling factor in the transformation ofwhat |tj|?^ is essaitially an exercise of power into a right. that right in turn becomes enshrined and privileged in the ideology servicing the soaety in general. the 'nght' to use the voice of the other has, however, been bought at great price—the silencing of the other; it is, in fact, neatly posited on that very silencmg. it is also a nght that exists without accompanying obligation, and a right without an accompanying obligation can only lead to abuse. (philip, 1990a:212) what i find useful in philip's discussion ofracism and censorship is her clarity about how a racist society serves to support individualized notions of cultural production and how racism will inevitably be reflected in cultural work (philip, 1990a; 1990b). appropriation is not about individual rights. philip wrestles with questions about whose discourse is served, and asks what, where, why, andhow "techniques and tactics ofdomination" (foucault, 1980: 102) are at work. alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 drawing upon thework of said, lather ( 1 99 1 :33) also links oppression with questions of representation: it is "the formidable difficulties of empire" that are at the root of the crisis of representation and the consequent paradoxes of producing and intimating knowledge in a post-foundational context. to challenge canons, to expose systems of power which authorize some representations while blocking others—^this has beai part of the self-proclaimed task of the uprising of the marginalized, the silenced, the ex-centrics. issues of representation require a complex analysis concomitant with questions of access and an imbncation of anti-racist issues with those of gender, sexuality, and ethniaty. all of these concerns require specificity: a consideration of their interplay at particular socio-historic momaits can suggest transformative possibilities for the future. further layeringand complications are introduced with a problematizing of notions of 'absolute reality' and an 'authentic outsider' such that a space is provided whereby rigid definitions of insider/outsider can be questioned, locations of difference can be understood as fluid rather than fixed, and definitions or categories of cultural identity can be interrogated. as trinh (1991 : 76) asserts: "t is not unitary, culture has never been monolithic, and more or less is always more or less in relation to a judging subject." a difficulty with the position that insists on all-encompassing notions of self-determination and community is its link to essentialism, identity politics based on rigid parameters, and a search for and belief in autonomy. in the call for a fixed, determined, and defined position, another 'truth' is offered up to replace other fixed approaches. there is an assumption that this position can stand autonomous from the complex imbncation of discursive formations. but any theoretical approach both produces, and is produced by, various discourses that intersect at particular historical moments. a fixed notion of community is at stake when a political space is demarcated such that any dominant group's form of cultural production that hiadki/ problematizing cultural appropriation uses the material of a non-dominant group is understood as cultural appropriation. anumber ofquestions then emerge. ifthi s response to appropnation requires a cx)nsistent and unified community 'voice,' is there any space for questioning and dissenting positions? who has the authority to name the parameters of appropnation and decide if a work 'fits' or not? are voices of disagreement silenced when, with so much at stake, a community is in struggle to challenge painful inequities in cultural areas such as education, funding, dissemination, and critical attention? are there multiple ways to make meaning m collectivity rather than merely representing unity? can contradiction, dissent, and tension enhance and create, rather than threaten political possibilities? how can political alliances be shaped that avoid a collapse into unified identity? how can coalition, collaboration, and community politics encourage multiple points of entry? while engaged in the concrete struggles of everyday life, can an approach of ongoing critical attention be emphasized such that "a single discourse does not become the locus of certainty and certification" (giroux and simon, 1989:24)? in order for communities and groups to engage in counter-hegemonic t|ff and resistant cultural practices and make claims on the economic and cultural monopolies ofthe dominant culture, the idea of 'appropriation' requires acts of definition. there is always the inherent danger, however, that parameters will be established whereby what fits or does not fit becomes determined and policed, and what is legitimate and can be promoted becomes fixed and enshrined. a helpful strategy is to adopt "a willingness to recognize that a representation may 'mean' differently in place, in moment, and in particular minds" (lubiano, 1991:159).^ an analysis of cultural appropriation needs ongoing complication, restructuring, and refocusing. in her consideration of appropriation, verjee (1992:46) argues for movement "forwardthrough critical dialogue ratherthan revertingto reductive analyses." i understand critical dialogue as that which emphasizes the interrogation of social and historic conditions and examines relationships of power and knowledge (foucault, 1980; weedon, 1987). weedon's descripalternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 tion ofa feminist post-structuralist framework is pertinent for problematizing the issue of cultural appropnation. such an approach ...addresses subjectivity, discourse and power in an attempt to show that we need not take established meanings, values and power relations for granted. it is possible to demonstrate where they come from, whose interests they support, how they maintain sovereignty and where they are susceptible to specific pressures for change. (weedon, 1987:74-75) with the above considerations in mind, how might bases of power be shifted? keeshig-tobias ( 1 990 : 1 77), for example, suggests that "there comes a time whai.all white supporters of native causes will have to stqj back...and let the real native voices be heard." remembering trinh's cautions raised around the 'authentic' subject, i question how a 'real' native 'voice' can be unproblematically identified. concomitantly, however, i am suspiaous of plunging into a wave of circular questions while avoiding actions that might aigage the possibility of transforming power relations. however, to conclude with only an open call to action here would be an inappropriate gesture. this propels me to introduce two reservations about the conceptual shifts i am attempting to map out in this paper, and i would suggest that they are related. first, while i am problematizingthe notion of cultural appropnation and reworking its theoretical frames of reference, i am also holding on to the strategic use of the term for cultural politics. appropnation has concrete matenal effects for particular groups of people engaged in cultural practices at the beginning of this paper, i mentioned that i was altering its terrain from sites of contradictory tensions, and one ofthe tensions is situated in my investmaits in both sustaimng and problematizing 'cultural appropnation ' second, although i have pointed to the importance of attending to the speafic histoncal relations, conditions, and possibilities of cultural production, i have not focused on one particular case in detail . attention to cultural appropnation in terms of one cultural text and the specific configurations of hiadki/ problematizing cultural appropriation its production and recqjtion would provide a concrete way to think through the dilemma of both problematizing and sustaining 'cultural appropriation.' in conclusion, the issue requires ongoing questions and a layered critique rather than quick-draw solutions . instead of avoiding or erasing the term 'cultural appropriation,' i choose to underline its contested meanings and provisional uses: to think of the term as "a site of permanait opainess and resignifiability" (butler, 1992: 16). impropriation "has to be kept alive as a/7ro6/e/w [italics added]" (spivak, 1990:63): as a theoretical and political problem. wrestling with the queries of this paper is not an abstract exercise. in terms of my own practices, i wonder how to establish a political subject, 'feminist cultural worker, ' that does not foreclose notions ofwhat constitutes 'feminist' and 'cultural worker.' iwanttobuildatransformative, oppositional cultural politics'*^ based on collaboration, collectivity, and community that rewrites potentialities for the future. in doing so, i want to stay open to ongoing shifts in, and challenges to, notions ofresistance, identity, difference, and coalition. if fluidity and complexity in meaning-making are erased, |||(f possibilities and potentialities for social diange and transformation will be diminished. notes 1. 1 am not suggesting that i have drawn from a singular and coherent body ofwork in these fields. both feminism and post-structurahsm are highly varied and contested terrains and their interplay is complex. but it is their interplay that interests me for thinking through questions of subjectivity, discourse, the production of knowledge, power relations, resistance, and social change. 2. fuse, in particular, has published numerous articles that either focus on, or pay some attention to, cultural appropriation. a recent issue (summer, 1993) takes cultural appropriation as its theme. 3. see, for example, conlogue (1992), godfrey (1992), and ross (1991). 4. this discussion is, of necessity, brief and it does not take into account how ae category of 'resistance' is used in analyses other than that of cultural studies, such as in feminist and (^ alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 post-structuralist theories. for the latter, see alonso (1992: 404-425), foucault (1982), game (1991). macleod (1992), mohanty (1992), and pathak and rajan (1992). an attention to resistance, however, is significant for theorizing poutical cultural practices as well as the relationship of audiences to cultural texts. 5. in his essay, fung (1992-93) discusses the problems associated with the phrase 'people of colour' and refers to a number of sources for an examination of terminology. i use the phrase here in the context of verjee's use of it. 6. for a comprehensive analysis of arts councils, see bailey (1992) who also includes letters by faith nolan, alan gotheb, marlene nourbese phihp, and anne collins. 7. a recent issue of the journal ofcommunication (1992) focuses on pohtical correctness and the impucations for communication studies. lawrence grossberg, everette dennis, and a number of other writers point out that pohtical correctness does not have a fixed, coherent or consistent interpretation and that diverse understandings and questions inform the terrain of this term. 8. paul wilhs (1990:3) suggests that non-dominant groups may also engage in resistance to strategies of access: it may be that certain kinds of symbolic creativity in the expressive and communicative activity of 'disadvantaged' groups exercise their uses and economies in precisely eluding and evading formal recognition, pubhcity and the possible control by others of their own visceral meanings. 9. as fung (1992-93:50) points out, "there is no absolute representational remedy." 10. as 1 write this, 1 feel a need to interrogate my understandings of 'transformation,' 'cultural politics,' and my engagement in a struggle for social transformation. that project and its theorization and embodiment is continual and will have to be tiie subject of other writings. references alonso, a.m. 1992 "gender, power, and historical memory: discourses of serrano resistance." in j. butler and j.w. scott (eds.) feminists theorize the pohtical. new york: routledge; 404-425. hiadki/ problematizing cultural appropriation bailey, c. 1 992 "fright the power: arts councils and the spectre ofracial equity." fuse \5 (5): 22-34. berland, j. 1993 "bodies oftheory, bodies ofpain: some silences. '' harbour. 2 (2): 14-21. black, a., and r. morris. 1992 "more back talk: race, sex, differaices and literal methods." fuse, 15(6): 18-21. browning, j. 1 992 "self-determination and cultural appropnation." fuse 1 5 (4): 3 135. butler, j. 1992 "contingent foundations: feminism and the question of 'postmodernism'." in j. butler and j.w. scott (eds.) feminists theorize the pohtical. new york: routledge; 3-21. churchill, w. ^ 1992 "colonialism, genocideandtheexpropriationoflndigenous spiritual traditions in contemporary academia." border/lines. (23): 39-4 1 . conlogue, r. 1 992 "artists must resist political pieties of left and right." the globe and mail. june 6 : c 1 3 . delpit, l.d. 1988 "the silenced dialogue: power and pedagogy in educating other people's children.'' harvardeducational review. 58(3): 280-298. fastwiirms. 1992 "letter to the editors." fuse. 15 (6): 4. foucault, m. 1980 "two lectures." in c. gordon (ed.) power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977. new york: pantheon; 78-108. foucault, m. 1982 "the subject and power." critical inquiry. (8): 777-795. alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 fung, r. 1992-93 "colounng the screen: four strategies in anti-racist film and video." parallelogramme . 18 (3): 38-53. game, a. 1 99 1 undoing the social: towards adeconstructive sociology. toronto: university of toronto press. giroux, ha. 1992 "cultural workers and the pedagogy of cultural politics: writing against the empire." in ha. giroux, border crossings: cultural workers and the politics ofeducation. new york: routledge; 230250. giroux, h.a., and r. i. simon. 1989 "schooling, popular culture, and a pedagogy of possibility." in ha. giroux and r. simon {oas.) popular culture, schooling and everyday life. toronto: oise press; 219-235. godfrey, s. ^••s 1 992 "canada council asks whose voice is it anyway?" ttie globe and^^ mail. march 21: ci, c15. grossberg, l. (ed.) 1992 "symposium: communication scholarship and political correctness." journal ofcommunication. 42 (2). hartnett, s. 1990 "cultural postmodernism and bobby mcferrin: a case study of musical production as the composition of spectacle." cultural critique. (\6):6\-s5. hill, r. 1992a "one part per million: white appropriation and native voices." fuse. 15(3): 12-22. hill, r 1 992b "response to letter to the editors." fuse 15 (6): 5-6. keeshig-tobias, l. 1990 "the magic of others," in l. scheier, s. sheard, and e. wachtel (eds.) language in her eye: views on writing and gender by hiadki/ problematizing cultural appropriation canadian women writing in english. toronto: coach house; 173177. keeshig-tobias, l. 1991 "lenore keeshig-tobias." in h. lutz, contemporary challenges: conversations with canadian native authors. saskatoon: fifth house; 79-88. kipnis, l. 1993 "repossessing popular culture." in l. kipnis, ecstasy unlimited: on sex, capital, gender, and aesthetics . minneapolis: university ofminnesota press; 14-32. kulchyski, p. 1992 "primitive subversions: totalization and resistance in native canadian politics." cultural critique. (21): 171-195. lather, p. 1991 getting smart: feminist research and pedagogy with/in the postmodern. new york: routledge. lipsitz, g. 4^ 1990 "against the wind: dialogic aspects of rock and roll." in g. lipsitz, time passages : collectivememory andamerican popular culture. minneapolis; university of minnesota press; 99-132. lubiano, w. 1991 "shuckin' offthe african-american native other: what's po-mo' got to do with it?" cultiiral critique. (18): 149-186. macleod, a.e. 1 992 "hegemonic relations and gender resistance: the new veiling as accommodating protest in cairo." signs. 17 (3): 533-557. maracle, l. 1990 "native myths: trickster alive and crowing." in l. scheier, s. sheard, and e. wachtel (eds.) language in her eye: views on writing and gender by canadian women writing in english. toronto: coach house; 182-187. alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 martin, b., and c.t. mohanty. 1986 "feminist politics: what's home go to do with it?" in t. de lauretis (ed.) feminist studies/ critical studies. bloomington: indiana university press; 191-212. mohanty, c.t. 1992 "feminist encounters: locating the politics of experience." in m. barrett and a. phillips (eds.) destabilizing theory: contemporary feminist debates . stanford, ca: stanford university press; 74-92. pathak, z., and r.s. rajan. 1992 "shahbano." in j. butler and j.w. scott (eds.) feminists theorize the political. new york: routledge; 257-279. philip, m.n. 1 990a "the disappearing debate: racism and caisorship." in l. scheier, s. sheard, and e. wachtel (eds.) language in her eye: views on writing and gender by canadian women writing in english. toronto: coach house; 209-219. ^ijs phihp, m.n. ^^ 1990b "the 6% solution." fuse. 14 (1-2): 28-29. razack, s. 1993 "story-telling for social change." genderandeducation. 5(1): 5570. ross, v 1991 "appropriation-of-voice issue 'an absurdity' author says." the globe and mail. october 21: ci. schulman, b. 1991 "feminists, political correctness, and tree' speech." sojourner: the women 's forum. 17 (2): 19-20. scott, j.w. 1992 "experience." in j. butler and j.w. scott (eds.) feminists theorize the political new york: routledge: 22-40. sholle, d 1 990 "resistance: pinningdown a wandering concept in cultural studies d\scoutse.'' journal ofurban and cultural studies. 1 (i): 87-105. hiadki/ problematizing cultural appropriation spivak, g.c. 1988 "explanation and culture: marginalia." in g.c. spivak, in other worlds: essays in cultural politics. new york: routledge; 103117. spivak, g.c. 1990 "questions ofmulti-culturalism." in g.c. spivak, the post-colonial critic: interviews, strategies, dialogues. new york: routledge; 59-66. srivastava, a. 1991 "imag(in)ing racism: south asian canadian women writers." fuse. 15 (1-2): 26-34. todd, l. 1990 "notes on appropriation." parallelogramme . 16 (1): 24-33. trinh, m.t. 1991 when the moon waxes red: representation, gender and cultural politics. new york: routledge. verjee, z. ^q) 1992 "the colours of culture: film and video by people of colour." parallelogramme. 17(4): 38-47. weedon, c. 1987 feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. oxford: basil blackwell. wiuis, p.e. 1 990 common culture: symbolic work atplay in the everyday cultures of the young. boulder, co: westview press. apitalism ature ocialism a journal of socialist ecology edited by james o'connor university of california, santa cruz cns is the only serious red-green theoretical journal in die world. it is edited by a distinguished group of scholars and scholar activists, half ofwhom are north american, the other half from a variety of countries. cns seeks to meld the traditional concerns of labor movements with the ecological struggles in particular, and demands of the new social movements in general. to this end, it publishes articles, reviews, interviews, documents, and poems that locate themselves at the site between history and nature, or society and the environment. the result is a publication that explores such topics as historical ecology, marxism and ecology, sustainable development, philosophy of nature, political economy of ecology, socialist eco-feminism, environmentalism and the state, and ecological racism. articles include: • strategies to advance labor and environmental standards: a north-south dialogue, john cauaruugh • political philosophy and environmentalism in britain, david pepper • sustainable development through the development of the non-farm sector, surul ray • ecology and the critique ofmodem society, herbert marcuse sample copies availablei subscription information issn 1045-5752, volume 5,1994(4 issues) individuals: $22.00, outside u.s.: $27.00 (sur^e mail), $37.00 (airmail) institutions: $65.00, outside u.s.: $80.00 (airmail) also available in better bookstores. guilford publications, inc. 72 spring street, new york, ny 10012, attn: joutn.ii> oopi. call tollfrcc 1-800-365-7006, 9 am to s pm est (in area codes 212, 718, 516 & 914. call 212-431-9800), fax 212-966-6708 the dominion government as gatekeeper to the canadian ethnic mosaic : the case of quebec, 1867-1885 dan glenday introduction social scientists concerned with the study of ethnic relations have made use of many concepts to describe the forms ethnic interaction have taken. in the vast american literature on the subject; assimilation, prejudice, discrimination and pluralism have had the longest history (wirth: 1956; rose: 1968; simpson and yinger: 1972). criticisms of all these approaches are bountiful, but need not concern us here since this essay will address itself to only one of these processes, namely, the dynamics of ethnic pluralism as it has historically manifested itself in canada between the two "charter groups" (for a definition of "charter group", see hughes (1952: 23)1. we begin with louis kirth's classic statement on minority aims entitled "the problem of minority groups" (1956: 237-60). wirth defined minorities as objectively occupying a disadvantageous position in society (1936: 238). their subordinate status within society translates into "their unequal access to educational opportunities and in their restricted scope of occupational and professional advancement" (1956: 258). as to their social origins, wirth noted that most minorities were indigenous or earlier arrivals to the territory than were the dominant group. through conquest the dominant group achieved its position of power in the society. in referring to canada, wirth remarked that "the earlier french settlers are a minority in relation to the more recent english migrants. in almost all colonial countries it is the "foreigners" who are dominant and the indigenous populations who are subordinate" (1956:239). therefore, any discussion of ethnic relations must begin with the differential access to power and resources as experienced by different ethnic groups within the nation-state. what is more, when analysing power relations between ethnic groups, we must also admit the significance of powerful individuals and yo m.g. smith (1965) and l. kuper and m.g. smith (1969), derek smith emphasizes "that conflict or confrontation within the plural society is between distinctly separate, culturally differentiated sections each pursuing its own institutional arrangements and, at least in the extreme limiting case, have no value consensus between them or common participation in core institutions of the society as a whole (1975: 16; emphasis added mine). the important point to note in smith's summary is the significance of internally generated forces for change. what we wish to add is any concrete situation can give rise to structural strains whose cause may be isolated in a sphere other than the economic and political. as a result, there may well be political and economic consequences to both the dominant group and subordinate minority. a word or two should be mentioned concerning our acknowledgement of the significance accorded to political and economic factors for any analysis of social change. what is more, these factors can be analytically divided into external and internal influences on the total social system. our concern for the moment though is to stress the importance of one internal factor to a rural based social system demographic change within the subordinate ethnic group. to summarize, pluralism denotes one way in which different ethnic groups have created their own sets of institutions in the face of an assymetrical allocation of resources within a particular nation. in colonial societies, the indigenous population is likely to be located in a structurally subordinate position vis-a-vis the dominat ethnic group. within the subordinate ethnic, population change can have significant repercussions for the total social system. 31 families that make up the elites within ethnic communities (schcrmerhorn : 1970; rex: 1970; blauner: 1972). further on in the article, wirth divides minority aims into four types; assimilationist , secessionist, militarist and pluralist (1956: 2451. assimilation is the aim of a minority when its members desire absorption and like treatment with the dominant ethnic group. but, in order for such a strategy to be even moderately successful, the dominant group must accept their (ie. minority) participation in the society at large. secessionist aims are characterized by wirth as the struggle for cultural and political independence from the dominant group. a minority that seeks domination over a one time dominant group is defined as militant. finally, pluralism "is the conception that variant cultures can flourish peacefully side by side in the same society" (1956: 245). the operative verb in that sentence is "can". the effectiveness of "peaceful co-existence" between dominant and subordinate ethnic "roups is contingent on numerous circumstances such as the size of the ethnic minority, the differences in race, language and/or religion between the dominant and subordinate ethnics and the nature of the social relationship between the dominants and the subordinates such as master-slave or exploiter and exploited. one must remember that the balance is precarious and can collapse at any particular moment. wirth's typology is exhaustive but does not explain under what circumstances minority aims can change. a contemporary canadian writer on the subject of ethnic pluralism, perck smith, began his investigation by cataloguing pluralism into two general types pluralism as a political theory of 'open' or democratic societies and an anthropological theory stressing culture contact and conflict. basing his analysis of conflict in plural societies on the works of furnivall ( 1942 ; 1948) . m population decrease could lead to cultural or linguistic assimilation into the dominant group. population growth would result in structural pressures toward the expansion of occupational and social service institutions within the community. population growth within the subordinate ethnic group will put pressure on the minority elites to seek ways of expanding its political, economic and social frontiers. these demands will lead to conflict between the subordinate minority and the dominant ethnic group. demands for a greater share in jobs, services or even physical space caused by population, growth will be interpreted by the dominant group as a threat to their own appropriation of these resources and services. we base this hypothesis on the assumption that at any particular historical moment, power contests are a 3cro-sum game. this essay then will be concerned primarily with the internal structural and historical factors that account for the loss of dualism in canada as a whole but resulted in the quebec provincial boundaries becoming the sole territorial and political domain within which linguistic and cultural rights for french -canadians could be effectively guaranteed. in other words, we are addressing ouselves to the processes that have led to the isolation of the province of quebec as the "patrie" for french-canadians living within confederation. what we are about to describe represents one of the necessary conditions from which an analysis of the contemporary secessionist movement in quebec can be understood. hopefully, this essay may also provide some indicators as to how plural societies can give rise to secessionist movements. 12 ethnic pluralism in quebec hubert guindon (1964;1968) argues that ethnic pluralism in quebec historically has taken the form of "self-satisfying, self-segregated institutions' in all spheres of social life except at work and in politics. yet, even in the work-world, "ethnic contact was established (only) with the introduction of industrialization" in rural quebec (1968: 56). previous to this period, which guindon benchmarks with confederation, the rural french-canadian was "busily involved in reproduction and parochial settlement (196s: 52). guindon argues that as a rural society, quebec, by the third quarter of the nineteenth century was faced with a structural crisis. "the stability of the (rural) system" had been maintained "by handing down the family farm to one inheriting son" which ne3nt that "thj system required an ever expanding geographi al base in order to absorb the suplus population" (1968: 43-44; emphasis auded mine). a rural system based on (1) a single-son farm inheritance scheme and (2) the availability of enough arable land within a given territorial unit proved to be an unstable arrangement. once arable land became a scarce resource in the equation, the traditional society was faced with an internal ly generated source of strain. unless suitable farm land outside of quebec could be found and colonized under the leadership of the traditional elites the political leaders and the roman catholic church, or new means for rural surplus population absorption found inside quebec, the system faced a structural crisis. according to guindon, by confederation the rural system was faced with surplus rural population seeking arable land (1968: 53). *3 ethnic pluralism outside quebec by accepting guindon's explanation of ethnic pluralism and the basis for structural strain in quebec society for the period leading up to confederation, we might well ask what happened to this surplus rural population since we know that the rural system 'survived' until well into the mid-twentieth century. industrialization "from above" by "foreign" capitalists has been one explanation offered to account for the source of rural surplus population abosrption. anglo-saxon industry moved into a society faced with an acute population surplus, a distinctive political and religious elite, and a developing set of institutions anchored in the rural parish . . . they could invest their capital, open industries, and be supplied with an abundant source of unskilled labour seeking employment. the managerial and technical levels were filled, with no protest, by the incoming group, who also brought along their own set of institutions servicing their own nationals . . . industry was relieving the economic burden of the demographic surplus of french-canadian rural society. the local elite's leadership was not being challenged (1968: 56-57). industrialization "from above" though did not have a sufficiently profound impact on rural quebec society until well into the second decade of the twentieth century. what happened to the surplus population in the years between confederation and the first world war? geographic expansion became the only alternative open to both the traditional elites and the young men and women seeking land on which to settle. the routes that could be taken were (1) westward into the canadian prairies, (2) south to the industrial towns in new england and the american mid-west, or (3) internally generated efforts on the part of the catholic church towards colonizing new lands in the quebec hinterland. kk quebec, the manitoba act and the l.ouis riel rebellion of is85 : ethnic marginal ity in the canadian prairies the worst option for the traditional elites (political and religious), but an excellent opportunity for the rural sons and daughters was to work in the industrial towns of new england (macdonald; 1966: 183-85). writing in 1891, p. hamon estimated that over 400,000 french canadians had become workers in american factories (1891: 173). the number of emigrants from quebec between 1875 to 1890 had tripled (1891: 174). nathan keyfitz has reported that by 1921 a conservative estimate of emigrants from quebec to the usa was 1 and 3/4 millions (kade; 1960: 136-37). we can summarize that from 1891 to 1921 over 1 1/4 million french canadians emigrated to the u.s.a. the lack of sophistication in these statistics due to the fact that neither the canadian nor the american government kept accurate emigration records still does not erase the trend that a remarkable number of french canadians left quebec during the decades from 1880 to 1920. we might conclude that many more people left during this forty year period than in the previous 120 years. this trend was also evident in english canada, especially ontario. donald creighton, quoting from the toronto mail in 1887 states that 'there is scarcely a farm house in the older provinces where there is not an empty chair for the boy in the states' (1957: 354). even though this trend can rightly be seen as a phenomena that gripped all of canada, the seriousness with which it was greeted in quebec was as a crisis of the social system. the social basis from which an important segment of the traditional elite, the roman catholic church drew its authority was located in the farming communities of rural quebec. ajiy threat to the social stability of the rural system would at the same time directly jeopardize their authority and indirectly affect the power base of *5 the political leaders. what conditions precipitated this option over emigration to manitoba or colonizing isolated regions within quebec? what forces were responsible for such a vast exodus of french canadians out of the country? in part, i am sure that the lure of a better standard of living in the united states contributed to this exodus. certainly, this ideological factor cannot be seriously treated as the necessary and sufficient condition that explains the location of frenchcanadian emigration. well-established classic sociological tradition holds that ideological and cultural formations can only be adequately understood by reference to the material structures of society. besides, the depression of the seventies and the eighties did not result in repatriation to quebec or to manitoba. what structural factors can we begin to isolate that may provide a fuller picture? we could begin by concluding that a lack of historically developed links between the quebec elites and the population towards the canadian west would have eliminated this alternative for the rural quebecers. norman macdonald has made the opposite point in that: "the lure of the west had been in the blood of the french canadians ever since the days of the fur traders, and the metis figure prominantly in its colourful history. in the hope of arresting their exodus to the u.s.a., sir john a. macdonald and george e. cartier favoured extensive settlement in the west and it has been hinted that 'the manitoba constitution was purposely made bilingual in the hope of deflecting the french canadians from the united states to the west" (1966: 189-90). the west appeared as an attractive alternative to the overpopulated parishes of rural quebec. we turn to the history of colonization in the canadian west up to confederation in order to get a clearer picture of its ethnic composition and how the settlers viewed their colonies. u6 the first settlement in the territory was the selkirk colony founded in 1818. over 2/3 of the original settlers were scottish. the remainder were french canadians. in time, the french canadians equalled the number of scottish and english settlers and "because of this ethnic mixture the colony was described as ' un petit quebec '" (wade; 1955: 393). the ethnic division of labour in the colony was divided into three tiers. the most influential group were the english who dominated both trade and government, followed by a homogeneous scottish agricultural group and the more numerous french canadian and metis groups who followed an agricultural and semi-nomadic hunting life. chester martin has observed that "the policy of building up a smaller quebec upon the bar.ks of the red river had been patiently and successfully pursued for more than fifty years" (1920: sbo) . quoting sir stafford northcote at the time of the manitoba act, creighton records that "the french are earne:tly bent upo". the establishment of a french and catholic power in the north-west to counteract the great preponderance of ontario". their purpose was to fix the character and institutions of the new province at a time when frenchspeaking roman catholics formed a large part of its population, and therefore at the nost favourable moment for preparing defences against the approaching influx of protestant, english speaking settlers " (creighton; 1969: 6; emphasis added mine) . let us take a closer look at the macdonald-cartier proposal for a bilingual manitoba. referred to by norman macdonald as "deflecting french canadians fror the united states to canada", it may be recalled that the manitoba xct ensured equality for the english and french languages in the legislature and the courts and provided for separate or confessional schools in the newl\. created province. *7 to the claim that the provisions of the manitoba act of 1870 represented the westward extension of the philosophy of "cultural compact", creighton in his important article entitled "john a. macdonald, confederation and the canadian west" (1969: 1-9), counters with the argument that the bicultural and bilingual clauses of the act which dealt with equality of the english and french languages in the legislature, courts and separate (confessional) schools, resulted from riel's "dictatorship", from the necessity of a quick settlement at red river and security for canada's continental destiny. they did not represent, he says, "the carrying out of a solemn commitment to biculturalism which had been made at confederation". they were imposed by an "exceptional and transitory" set of circumstances and not by an ideal conception of what canada should be, (1969: 6-7). what were some of the measures that macdonald and the conservative federal government took to insure that the west would never become "un petit quebec". in 1873, only three years after the manitoba act and in the same year as his french-canadian partner george e. cartier died, sir john a. macdonald introduced a bill into parliament which founded the north west mounted police. in july 1874, three hundred men set out for the northwest. the "fundamental purpose" of the police and the government officials who were soon to follow "was to ake ready the land of the west for the coming of settlers. the older order was gone forever" (creighton; 1957: 360). what was meant by "the old order"? which settlers would be enticed to coae and would be welcomed in manitoba? were the n.w.m.p. sent to manitoba simply to 'protect' the indians and metis from bootleggers or were they also sent as the extension of the federal government whose aim was to inaugurate "a new order" in which the french canadians living there would become margi-.al to the political life of the province? creighton's interpretation of macdonald's concessions to the red river rebels can be understood as a temporary hindrance to the overall policy of immigration from outsice canadian borders. an immigration policy that would emphasize the english-fact in canada, especially that part of canada west of ontario, was to be the tacit design of the canadian federal government. obviously, for such a scheae to be successful emigration from quebec to manitoba would not be encouraged. and yet there were men who could read the true intentions of the federal governeent . one such man was bishop tache. as early as 1869, this roman catholic leader of the metis and the french-canadians living in manitoba on his return to rome recorded his bitter feelings on the imminent disappearance of the french fact in the northwest and the role of the canadian government as contributing to the demise of french-canadian society in that territory west of ontario. writing to george e. cartier, he laments his having always feared the entrance of the north west in confederation, because i have always believed that the french canadian element would be sacrificed; but i tell you frankly it had never occurred to me that our rights would be so quickly and so completely forgotten (martin; 1920: 367). we turn to the colonization efforts by french canadian political and religious elites to locate french canadian settlers in manitoba. what obstacles did they face? the efforts of one man, senator girard, are instructive in this regard. in march, 1875, the federal government awarded girard as head of the colonization society of manitoba, four townships in the red river. there was, however, a major condition: within two years seventy settlers must be located ^9 on them. girard ran into trouble immediately when he attempted to relocate expatriate french canadians who had been living in new england onto this manitoba soil because "so many orangemen had settled on its reserve that in one township (alone) there was no room for anyone else, with the result that sixty french canadians repatriates were reported to have returned to new england. the society accused the orangemen of indulging in a racial and religious war, in order to disrupt its work of repatriation". no matter how many protestations were made by the society to the federal government "the orangemen were left in possession of the field" (macuonalj; 1966: 190). indications of a policy of foreign immigration into manitoba as the preferred policy can be gleaned from the account of the government and cpu's efforts to attract southeastern european to manitoba. from the year/ 1880 to 188s, the canadian government had spent thousands of dollars in vain to entice settlers from south-eastern europe to come to canada. in the spring of 18ss, agents of the canadian pacific railway in the united states discovered a hungarian nobleman named count paul de esterhazy who was more than willing to use his influence to attract his compatriots living and working in the united states to come to manitoba. most of these immigrants were under contract labour to work in the pennsyvannia coal mines. but, the u.s. had abolished contract labour in 1882 so that these immigrants could freely move, if they so desired. esterhazy believed that his countrymen would be well disposed to the idea of settling in the canadian west as farmers instead of the status of poorly paid mine workers in the united states. andrew marchbin records the first encounter between representatives from the canadian government and count esterhazy. 50 the canadian pacific railway, greatly interested in the colonization of the company's lands in the west, invited esterhazy to the dominion . . . after a personal audience with the governor-general, esterhazy made his formal request on may 9, 1885, for the formation of mi 1 itary settlements in the canadian west; settlements which would be colonized with hungarians then living in the united states, who, while being trained farmers had also had military experience and could be used in case of rebellion or invasion to defend british interests . the proposal was highly interesting to the government and especial ly to the minister of agriculture the hon. f.h. pope. the department was willing to extend some financial assistance as its officials had long been interested in finding suitable settlers for manitoba and the north west territories. (1934: 112; emphasis added mine). why would any one man make such a proposal unless he believed, especially after having spoken with the xovemor-general , that such an idea would be appealing to certain influential members of the canadian federal government? why would men within the federal government approve of such a plan unless they felt that the danger posed by french-canadians in manitoba was not only a serious internal matter but contrary to their vision of the west as a unilingual territory. had the federal government not been influenced by considerations of ethnicity and language (i.e. an english-speaking nation), the logical decision would have been to invite (and even subsidize) quebec farmers to settle the west. for what better way of appeasing the anxious red river valley french canadians than by forging a cohesive nouveau quebec, and alleviating quebec's over-populated parishes as well? the canadian government had clearly not 1 favored such a development. the first succssful settlement was called hun valley which was under the leadership of gcza de dory who "not only showed them how to break the land and level the forest but also taught them the english language" ( 1 93-t : 115). 51 the quebec reaction how did quebec view the red river rebellions and the manitoba act of 1870? laurier lapierre has succinctly captured the feeling of quebec during the years immediately following confederation when he says: "in spite of cartier's presence, french canadians had begun to experience the pangs of political and racial insecurity almost immediately after 1867. viewing with alarm the agitation (in ontario) over the granting of an unconditional amnesty to the french-speaking metis who had participated in the ricl insurrection of 18t>970, many french-canadians wondered if confederation was not already a failure. they became even more concerned when in 1871 the government of new brunswick ended government subsidies to roman catholic schools in the province. in both cases all attempts to force the federal government to redress what french canadians considered infringements on their rights failed. tartc echoes these sentiments 'l'on serait tente de croire qu'il y a une immense conspiration contre la race francaise dans la dominion'" (1962: 9] . cartier had died in 1873, the same year macdonald founded the m.w.m.p. and many french-canadians at the federal level now felt uncertain as to the degree of their political influence. such concerns were soon to lead the frenchcanadian elites to a drastic change in political allignments. the main concerns of many french canadians in both the liberal and the conservative parties prior to 1885 was to forge a co-operative effort at the federal and provincial levels in order to arrest the emigration of frenchcanadians from their parishes in quebec. as we have seen, the attempts to settle repatriated french-canadians on western soil could not be considered a success. lapierre echoes the concern of the french-canadian political elite when he remarks "only seven years after confederation (1874) , french canadian politicans of every persuasion were viewing the position of their province with dissatisfaction and alarm" (1962: 19). 52 the riel rebellion of 1885 was to seal the fate of french-canadian aspirations of westward expansion into the canadian prairies. it forecast the demise of french-canadian political influence at the federal level. the reaction in quebec was at once quick and decisive and "increased in intensity after riel was captured and french-canadians increasingly saw his fate as an indication of their own hope of national survival" (1962: 148). the federal government was now faced with the "dual .problem of choosing between the demands of quebec and those of ontario and then of reconciling quebec to its decision" (lapierre; 1962: 146). the consequences of the hanging of riel were such that "the (frenchcanadian) political leaders would not forget the limit of their power which the affair had revealed. the french-canadian ministers had not been able to influence their colleagues" (lapierre; 1962: 169). george stanley also remarks that as a result of the "crisis of 1885, the most conservative province in canada swung over to the liberal party, a position which was consolidated by the selection of a french -canadian, wilfred laurier, as leader of that party in 1887" (1960: 381). in the autumn of the same year (1887), five provincial delegations from nova scotia, new brunswick, quebec, ontario and manitoba, four of whom were liberals, met in quebec to work our proposals for increased provincial powers (creighton; 1957: 365-66). 53 conclusion the social history of ethnic pluralism in canada as it affected frenchcanadians reveals the emaciation of their society and confinement to the quebec provincial boundaries. the hypothesis explored in this essay suggests that the events leading up to the riel rebellion of 1885 represent the watershed in the westward expansionary hopes of french-canadians. we have also noted that the federal government's role can be interpreted as one of complicity in the outcome. this essay has argued that the increase in quebec's population is a singularly important factor in the relations of a subordinate ethnic group (the french) to the dominant 'charter' group (the english). whereas the quebec elites the roman catholic clergy and hierarchy in particular attempted to influence les jeunes francais to remain within the dominion and within the established french roman catholic church in manitoba, the english political elite deemed otherwise. the death of riel signalled the end of ethnic dualism, not only in manitoba, but in all the western provinces. the finality to the process came with the enactment of the manitoba school act of 1916 which established english as the sole official language and created a secular public school system for the province. only in quebec would the principle of ethnic dualism be enshrined in law and in fact. the quebec reaction to the role of the federal government in guaranteeing french-canadian rights in the nation'as a whole from confederation to the rebellion of 1885 was one of uncertainty but hope. as we have pointed out, the manitoba act of 1870 represented a temporary political compromise. the federal government had been caught off-guard and therefore had to submit to the rebels' 5^ demands until such time as it could extend and consolidate itself in the western hinterland. the cpr and nwmp represented such structural links. the only recourse left to the political and religious elites in quebec was to turn inwards. the political elite would demand greater provincial autonomy from the federal government. the claims for more provincial autonomy which it held in common with the other provinces who sought greater freedom of action gave it added strength to realize these demands. the roman catholic church also turned inward and began to sponsor colonization efforts in the hinterland regions of the province. (ryan: 1966). the internal demographic factor the surplus quebec population confronted both the dominant and minority group. the political elite of the former effectively prevented dispersion of french-canadian institutions and culture within the dominion. the latter political and religious elites have pushed respectively for increased provincial autonomy and up to the second world war fostered the migration of surplus population within quebec itself as one way of alleviating the internally generated structural crisis. the intransigence of the federal government towards a preferred british and unilingual manitoba was carried to that province with the election of thomas greenway as premier in 1888. greenway ended the use of the french language in government and stopped public support to catholic schools. t. peterson has convincingly argued that manitoba took on a decidedly british character in the period froc the riel rebellion until well into the twentieth century (1972: 69115; . as a direct consequence of these historical forces the french-canadians outside quebec would be relegated to a marginal position in the political sphere. the power of numbers and the roman catholic church as a pressure group would be the only countervailing factors that the french-canadians outside quebec could 55 count on to help preserve their cultural and linguistic rights. what is more, these historical forces set in motion a collective feeling of distrust by french-canadians within quebec towards the federal government. they also evinced the conviction that only by effectively manipulating the provincial against the federal political structures could a form of "special status' for quebec be realized. unlike the other provincial governments where the demand for increasing autonomy was rooted solely in economic motives, such a demand from quebec was also linked to cultural and linguistic survival and would be aggressively pursued throughout the twentieth century. 56 references blauner, robert creighton, donald furnivall, j.s. guindon, hubert hamon , p. hughes, everett c. lapicrre, lauricr macdonald, norman marchbin, andrew a. martin, chester morton, k.l. racial oppression in america , (new york: harper and row, 1972). dominion of the north: a i i i s tory of canada , (toronto: macmillan: 1957), new edition "john a. macdonald, confederation and the canadian west", in craig brown (ed.), minorities, schools and politics , (toronto: university of toronto press: 1969), pp. 1-9 colonial policy and practise: a comparative study of burma and netherlands india , (cambridge : at the univers i ty press, 1948). "two cultures", in r. leach, contemporary canada , (durham: duke university press: 1968), pp. 53-59. les canadiens francais de la nouvelle angleterre, xquct>cc: 1891) , volume i, pp. 7-10 as quoted in georges langlois, historic de la population canadiannefrancaise , (montreal: alberta levesque: 1934) . rhe sociological eye , (chicago: aldine atrerton, 1971). "politics, race and religion in french canada: joseph israel tarte", unpublished ph.d. dissertation, history, university of toronto, 1962. canada immigration and colonisation, 1841-1903 , (toronto: macmillan, 19t>8) . "the origins of migration from south-eastern europe to canada", canadian historica l association annual reports , 1934, pp. 110-120. "the first 'new province' of the dominion", canadian historical review , vol. i, 1920, pp. 360-380. "our 'kingdom for a horse': the railway land grant system in western canada", canadian historical association , annual reports , 1934, pp. 73-79. "manitoba schools and canadian nationality, 1890-1923", in craig brown (ed.), op. cit . , pp. 10-18. 57 peterson, t. rex, john rose, peter i . ryan, w.f. schermerhorn, r.a. simpson, george e. yinger, j. milton smith, michael g. smith, michael g. kuper, leo stanley, george f.g. wade, mason (ed.) wirth, louis "ethnic and class politics in manitoba", in martin robin (ed.). canadian provincial folitics: the party system of the ten provinces , (toronto: prenticehall, 1972) , pp. 69-115. race relations in sociological theory , (new york: schocken, 1970) the subject is race , (new york: oxford, 1968). the clergy and economic growth in quebec (1896-1914) , (quebec: university of laval, 1966) comparative ethnic relations , (new york: random house, 1970). racial and cultural minorities: an analysis of prejudice and discrimination , (new york: harper and row, 1972), 4th edition. the plural societies in british west indies , (berkeley: university of california, 1965). pluralism in africa , (berkeley: university of california, 1969). the birth of western canada , (toronto: university of toronto press: 1960) . canadian dualism . (toronto: university of toronto press, 1960). the french canadians, 1760-1945 , (toronto: macmillan, 1955). "the problem of minority groups", in l. wirth (ed.), community life and social policy: selected papers , (chicago: university of chicago press, 1956). free trade and social policy reform: the hidden dimension? «/. rachel macdonald school of social work carleton university current debates in canada about the merits or shortcomings of free trade have been framed in a number of different ways. both the canada-u. s . free trade agreement (cusfta) and the north amencan free trade agreement (nafta) have been addressed and assessed in terms of job creation or loss, the possibihty of increased environmental degradation, and the potential threats to political and cultural sovereignty. despite all the seemingly disparate claims and arguments that are made, however, the free trade debate has at its base a fight between essentially two competing visions ofthe canadian economy. on the one hand, there are those who oppose free trade and argue for a strong national industnal policy that commits the state to policies of full employment, national instruments of accumulation (i.e. crown corporations), demand-side management, and universal welfare rights. on the other hand, proponents of free trade see the proper role of state policy as promoting market innovation, enhancing structural competitiveness through supply-side intervention, and subordinating welfare policy to the demands ofthe 'free' market (see jessop, 1 993 : 9). given the contours of this debate, one ofthe more intriguing questions about the issue of free trade is how the curroit agreemaits will affect the ^ alternate routes, volumel 1, 1994 development and implementation of social welfare policy under a regime committed to the dommance of the free market. indeed, the uncertain future of canada's social programs—family allowances, old age security, public pensions. medicare, education, and social assistance—was a central concern dunngthecusftaandnafta discussions. inmy currait research, i argue that free trade has three detrimental impacts on canada's social welfare policy. first, free trade encourages a shift from 'universal' to 'selective' or 'residual' social programs, thus undermining any real social commitment to the redistribution of wealth and income. second, free trade encourages 'policy harmonization,' thus threateningto reduce canada's social programs to american and mexican levels. finally, trade agreements bind the nationstate, both directly and indirectly, from pursuing social policies that may be mterpreted as restricting access to markets or as discouraging profit-making. rec«it changes to the definition of poverty, cutbacks to medicare, and proposals aimed at replaang canada's social safety net with wage supplementprograms illustratethe degreeto which the ideological underpinnings of free trade have already dramatically altered social policy in canada. the ideology of free trade: its origins and growth the present rush toward continental 'free trade' represents the culmination of over two decades of debate on developmental strategies for the canadian economy. bnefly, the ongin ofthis debate can be traced to the economic crisis confronting all western capitalist economies in the mid 1970s. rising inflation coupled with increasing levels of unemployment produced a phenomenon of 'stagflation' that threatened to stall the growth engine of the west. in canada, as in other countries, this challenge was most commonly addressed bytwodifferentprescnptionsforthe future. one, drawing upon the tradition of keynesianism, argued that the solution to canada's economic woes lay with increased state intervention. proponents of this view argued that the state needed to play a more active role in promoting scientific research and development in order to boost a declimng manufactunng sector. this argument was advanced by a number of academics and think-tanks, such as macdonald/free trade and social policy reform the science council of canada, and taken up by elements of the left, the labour movement, and english canadian nationalists who believed that a national industrial strategy would help reduce american corporate power (brodie, 1989:176-177). a very different vision of economic development, however, was put forth by an increasingly powerful coalition of neo-liberal think-tanks and influential elements of the business community (see richardson, 1992:321322). these actors argued that the post-war policies ofkeynesian economics and welfarism had produced a mammoth and cumbersome state bureaucracy that was choking off private investment and growth. to alleviate this problem, the size and activities ofthe state needed to be scaled down and the control ofthe economy returned to the allegedly more efficient private sector. these neo-liberal economic views were translated mto electoral victones in the united states and in britain (brodie, 1 989: 177). free trade has been from the start a key component of neo-liberal economic philosophy. in fact, the idea itself stems from the work of the classical economist, david ricardo, who in the early nineteenth century ^j^ developed the 'law of comparative advantage.' briefly, ricardo believed that with free trade between nations, all countries would prosper as each began to specialize in an area of production in which it held a competitive advantage over the others . rather than tryingto produce everything for itself, the nation which is best suited to produce a certain product, because of some natural or other advantage, should specialize in the production ofthat product and export the surplus. for example, ricardo suggested that because of its climate and soil, portugal would excel at the production ofgrapes and wine. on the other hand, because ofits industrial infrastructure, britain could excel at textile manufactunng (watkins, 1992:93-94; mcgaughey, 1992:36).' according to classical liberal economists, the only way that the real 'benefits' of free trade could be realized is if the protectionist and interventionist tendencies of the state could be curtailed. that is, free trade abroad needed to be balanced by a policy oflaissez-faire economics at home. lurking inside ofarguments for free trade, as watkins ( 1 992 : 94) convinangly argues. alternate routes, volumel 1, 1994 is the ideology of the new right, an ideology that advocates deregulation, pnvatization, and cutbacks to soaal spending. the emergence and dominance of this economic vision has forced a dramatic restructunng of the canadian state and soaal policy over the past 20 years. throughout the 1970s, for example, canada pursued an aggressive nation-building approach with respect to economic and social policy. the trudeau govemmait introduced such programs as fira (foreign investmoit review agency), the national energy plan (1973), and the canadian development corporation. these programs and agencies were designed to channel national capital into canadian-owned corporations and reduce foreign control over the nation's economy (clarkson, 1991 : 107). during this penod, the state also pursued an ambitious policy aimed at strengthaiing social welfare programs; the development ofmedicare as well as progressive reforms to old age security, unemployment insurance, and the canada pension plan underlined the state's commitment to universality. however, dunngthis period of nation-building, canadian capital had been consolidating and continentalizing at a rapid pace. canadian banks, real estate corporations, and media industries were particularly successful in expanding their reach into the united states and abroad.canada's corporate powers thus had little need or patience for the 'protectionist' and 'interventionist' canadian state. instead, they wanted fewer rules and regulations so that they could further extend their reach into the global market (clarkson, 1991:115-116; richardson, 1992:316; deblock and rioux, 1993:27-28). such structural changes in canada's political economy, coupled with an aggressive lobby-campaign launched by the business council on national issues (bcni), led to the signing ofthe canada-u s . free trade agreement (cusfta) in 1987 almost immediately after the agreement's ratification, the number of plant shut-downs, layoffs, and corporate mergers rose at an alarming rate. public opinion remained firmly against the deal, yet by 1990 the conservative government was entenng yet another round of free trade negotiations, this time a tnlateral deal with mexico and the united states. i macdonald/free trade and social policy reform it is clear that free trade is about much more than trade only—it is a wide-sweepmg prescnption for the creation of a society modeled stnctly on the 'laws' of laissez-faire economics. indeed, the discourse of 'free trade,' much like the discourse of 'free markets,' is inextricably attached to a long and complex intellectual tradition of individualism, and specifically to the rights of individual investors and entrepreneurs to move their capital around as they see fit (marchak, 1 989). free trade, moreover, is clearly presented in terms of national competitive advantage, and thus draws upon vulgar chauvimsms and crude forms of patnotism. there are other deeper supporting cultural conditions to the social vision offered by proponents of free trade. free trade is a high risk economic program and is thus easily presented in masculine terms of aggression ('capturing markets') and conflict ('beating the competition'). it is also a mode of assessing odds and determining outcomes, like gambling and sport spectacles—activities that underline its masculine bias. free trade, like the vision of 'community' offered by classical economists, is the brutal world where relations of competition and domination prevail, a world in which im nations and people are in perpetual conflict and struggle with one another (see hartsock, 1983:38-40). given that free trade, as it is proposed by neo-liberal economists, represents such a sweeping social vision, it is clear that its influence will extend throughout all elements of society. in particular, the ideology of free trade threatens to drastically alter the role the canadian state plays in the economic well-being of its citizens. by submitting ourselves to the 'law' of comparative advantage, we may be unwillingly subverting the very social programs and services that canadians have fought hard to achieve. indeed, one ofthe first 'victims' of free trade may be the very notion of universality itself. alternate routes, volumel 1, 1994 free trade and 'universality': toward a poucy of residuausm? universalityhas clearly been one ofthe most cherishedprinciples in canada's modest system of social security. it is a principle that sees social welfare as a citizqiship right by which all members of the nation, regardless of income or market power, are entitled to certain goods and services such as health care and education. this vision, however, is clearly jeopardized by the ideology and practice of free trade. free trade is part of a neo-liberal package that favours principles of 'selectivity' and 'residualism' in social welfare policy. suchpnnciples affirm the centrality of the family and private institutions in aiding those who have an inadequate income. 'selective' public relief should only be the last resort after all otherpnvate avenues ofsupport have been exhausted. inthismanner, as muszynski (1992:8-9) notes, a residual approach to social policy reinforces the belief that it is the market that is responsible for allocating social rewards. the market will reward those who have the motivation and desire to work and will punish those who 'choose' to remain idle. social policy, according to advocates of this position, must reinforce the 'justice' of the market by ensuring that the recipient of social assistance is kept as motivated as possible to enter the labour market. welfare programs can secure this only if they have long qualifying periods, long waiting periods, low benefit payments, or are admimstratively stigmatizing. a commitment to 'universalism,' on the other hand, paints a very different picture of the capitalist marketplace. universal social programs represent an attempt to provide a collective response to counter what is recognized as the inherent instability ofthe marketplace. from this perspective, it is assumed that the market is not 'just,' that it necessanly creates winners and losers, and that the responsibility for those who fail in the market is something to be shared by all of society. while residualism thus defines the objective of social policy in terms of temporarily alleviating poverty, universalism sees social policy goals more broadly in terms of building a sense of community through the redistnbution of wealth and power theremacdonald/free trade and social policy reform fore, while universalism may concede that markets are important mechanisms for the allocation of wealth, other criteria such as need, rights, age, residence, and citizenship are also seen as legitimate bases for the distribution of wealth and power (muszynski, 1992:9-10). the nature of free trade agreements, however, is such that mcreasmg pressure is applied to the state to shift its social policy agenda away from universalism and toward residualism. unrestncted competitive pressures between nations force the state to protect domestic capital by lowering the 'tax burden' on businesses. government spending on universal social programs, therefore, comes to be seen as a threat to canada's ability to compete in the continental marketplace. as such, pressures are applied to revamp or cut existing social programs and replace them with policies that are more cost-efficient, that induce people back into the labour force, and that target benefits only to those 'truly' in need. these policies have been a^ressively pursued by the canadian state since the signing of cusfta and nafta. the former conservative government ended the universal family allowance program and withdrew all ^q) federal support from social housing projects. new qualifying conditions have been attached to the unemployment insurance program that seriously undermine its universal accessibility. social assistance has also been seriously eroded by limitations placed upon the amount of federal money transferred to the provinces (swanson, 1 993 : 1 2). nowhere has the shift from universalism to residualism been more apparent than in the attempts to re-define poverty to include fewer, and ostensibly 'more needy,' people. drawing upon the work of christopher sarlo, the former house of commons committee on poverty recommended that the poverty line be 're-adjusted'—in one quick stroke, the number of canadians living before the poverty line could be reduced by as much as 90 per cent (murphy, 1 993 : 19). underlyingthis desire to re-define poverty is the thinly veiled beliefthattoo many canadians who do not really require benefits are receiving social assistance. alternate routes, volumel 1, 1994 by identifying the 'deserving poor,' the state is able to justify cuts and reforms to the social welfare system, reforms that threatai the principle of universality. as such, universal social programs are being turned into selective and residual programs, all in the name of cutting govemmoit expenditures in order to lessaithe 'tax burden' of transnational businesses. free trade and social poucy harmonization: whither medicare? a related danger inherent within free trade is that competitive pressures may force canada to 'harmonize' its social policies with those ofthe united states and mexico. unrestricted freetrade may compel the canadian stateto reduce social programs in order to 'match' its policies with that ofits tradingpartners (hum, 1988:25-26; drover, 1988:49-50). in the process, social programs such as medicare may be revamped in such a way as to mirror systems south of the border. while the issue of 'policy harmonization' amongst free-trading nations remains the subject of much debate, recent evidence suggests that there is indeed a linkage between trade liberalization and social policy harmonization (see drover, 1988). under free trade agreements, nation-states struggle to create, at the very least, a 'level-playing field' so that domestic capital is not encouraged to moveto areas wherewages are lower, environmental standards less stnct, labour policies more anti-union, and taxes lower. this situation thus creates a downward pressure on social policy as a country like canada is forced to compete with the united states and mexico where programs are much more pro-business. in canada, recent changes in the health-care system reflect the real dangers of policy harmonization. since the signing of the cusfta, healthcare workers have seen an increase in layoffs, privatization, and the contracting-out of services, while the public has witnessed hospital closures, cuts in services and the elimination ofmany procedures from public health insurance plans. the federal government has slashed health-care funding in an effort to macdonald/free trade and social policy reform cut its deficit, and 'user-fees' have been introduced by several provincial governments (fuller, 1 993 : 1 61 7). policy harmonization in the area ofhealth-care means that canada may be moving to a multi-tiered american-style system in which some services will be privatized, some doctors will opt-out, and user fees will be the norm. private specialized clinics already exist in alberta and it may not be long before other provinces pursue such policies as a way of dealing with rising health-care costs. the move to a privatized, decentralized and fragmented system, moreover, will help serve the needs of large health corporations and insurance companies who favour a competitive health care 'market' in which there is room, free from 'intrusive' state management, to reap profits. in the process, however, a two-tiered medical system may soon emerge: a hollowedout publicly financed one for the poor, and a capital-rich privately controlled system for the wealthy. free trade and the future of the nation-state debates around free trade pacts have also noted that such agreements tend to undermine the sovereignty ofnations, placing political power in the hands of transnational corporations or non-elected transnational agencies controlled by corporations. with the increasing ability of capital to move from one jurisdiction to another, nation-states are more than ever pressured to appease the interests ofcorporations, often to the detriment oftheir citizens . in the age offree trade, then, the ability ofthe nation-state to pursue progressive social policies may be curtailed by the growing political and economic power of capital. consequently, when the canadian state develops social welfare policies in the future, such policies will not only have to abide by the rules set out in the text ofcusfta and nafta, but they will also have to be structured in a way that benefits and promotes capital accumulation. for canadians to become more competitive in the 'global economy,' social programs may increasingly be seen as a way to entice foreign investment. for example, recently there has been some discussion about proposals, initially tabled by <q^ alternate routes, volumel 1, 1994 the nght-wing fraser institute, for topping up welfare payments for people who want to work at low-paying jobs. while on the surface this may be seem as a modest attempt to help welfare recipients earn extra income, there may be another agenda here. such programs may also be designed to force as many people into the labour force as possible and make them work at a subsidized wage so that canadian corporations can compete with the low-wage economy ofmexico. this would seem to indicate that social programs under free trade are being designed not to reduce or end poverty, but to subsidize corporations with publicly-financed wage supplements (swanson, 1993:12). it is important to keep in mind that wage supplement schemes are not just the fancifial dreams of right-wing economists; the current government openly entertains the idea. furthermore, in the united states such a program is before congress in the form ofthe earned income tax credit bill . ifthe bill is enacted, u.s. families who receive social assistance and who seek lowwage work could earn up to an extra $3,500 a year in benefits. meanwhile, however, congress has failed to agree on an increase to the minimum wage. is this perhaps a sign that the purpose of the new tax credit legislation is to lessen the wage costs for businesses and provide them with a cheap pool of labour*;* whatever the case, replacing canada's social programs with a wage supplement program may be an example of harmonizing canadian policy with amencan policy (swanson, 1993:12-13). it is unclear how a future progressive government might be constrained by trade agreements. on one level, governments will be limited in their approach by the wntten agreement; for instance, nationalizing pharmaceutical corporations in an effort to provide all citizens with a public drug plan would no doubt be seen as an unfair trading practice subject to retaliation (see fuller, 1 993 : 1 8). on the other hand, governments will also be constrained by the market forces unleashed by the nature of free trade agreements. for example, even ifnew soaal programs are not viewed as subsidies or unfair trading practices, governments may be discouraged from pursuing such policies out of fear of interfenng in the market. raising corporate taxes to fund programs, for instance, is less an option if businesses can easily move macdonald/free trade and social policy reform from one jurisdiction to another. ttie nation-state is thus caught in a precanous and contradictory position: on the one hand, it has to cater to the needs ofcapital and create a climate conducive to profit-making, while on the other hand it must respond to the needs of its atizens who are increasingly suffenng under the vagaries of the marketplace. social policy in the age of free trade will continue to reflect this tension, espeaally as the ill effects of trade liberalization and other laissez-faire economic policies displace more and more people who then must turn to the state for services and programs. loomng to the future my currait research suggests that both cusfta and nafta have important consequences for the development and delivery of social programs in canada. free trade threatens universality, promotes policy harmonization, and favours market forces rather than state intervention, thus limiting the role that governments can play in the economy. in this context, then, free trade is really a password for economic liberalism and a social policy agenda that undermines the pnnciples of universality and atizenship nghts. while proponents of these agreements may fervently try to obscure this hidden dimension by arguing that neither cusfta nornafta threaten social programs since these items arenotpart ofthe formal documents, the reality is that free trade does pose a senous threat to canada's social safetynet. whatis urgently required, therefore, is research that begins to more fully link the ideology and practice of free trade with the current changes in soaal policy so as to expose the myths propagated by those defending trade liberalization. beyond this, however, researchers will need to think about the constitution of a 'post-free trade' world, of how global economic developm^it can be achieved in a more equitable and humane manner. finally, we must also think about the role of social welfare programs in such a world, ofhow they can be used to provide a better redistnbution of wealth and income. this will require a renewed commitment to full employmoit at decent wages and to social programs that, in the words of jean swanson (1993: 13), "will reduce poverty, not victimize the poor." alternate routes, volumel 1, 1994 notes 1, ricardo's thesis about 'comparative advantage' is much debated. however, the suggestion that free trade creates mutual benefits is not backed up by the bulk of empirical evidence. in fact, it appears that free trade tends to exacerbate dififerences between the economically dominant country and the less developed trading partner (watkins, 1992:83). 2. for example, canadian corporate investment in the united states alone grew sevenfold from 1975 to 1985 (clarkson, 1991:113). meanwhile, the concentration and conglomeration of capital in canada, after a dechne between 1969 and 1978, rose rapidly between 1978 and 1987. during this period, canadian-controlled assets of the coimtry's largest corporations increased from 43 to 50 per cent, while the foreign-controlled proportion fell from 29 to 25 per cent. by 1987, 74.5 per cent of the assets of canada's largest corporations were controlled by 17 corporations, whereas in 1978 the largest enterprises controlled 63.6 per cent of corporate assets (see richardson, 1992:311-312). references brodie, janine. 1989 "the 'free trade' election." studies in political economy. 28 (spring): 175-182. clarkson, stephen. 1991 "disjunctions: free trade and the paradox of canadian development." in d. drache and m.s. gerlter (eds.) the new era ofglobal competition: state policy andmarket power. montreal and kingston: mcgill-queen's university press; 103-126. deblock, christine, and michele rioux. 1993 "nafta: the trump card of the united states?" studies in political economy. 41 (summer): 7-44. drover, glenn. 1 988 "social policy harmonization: the canadian debate, the european and tasman experience." in g. drover (ed.) free trade andsocial policy. ottawa: canadian council on social development; 49-78. macdonald/free trade and social policy reform fuller, colleen. 1993 "a matter of life and death: nafta and medicine." canadian forum. lxxh (october): 14-19. hartsock, nancy. 1 983 money, sex andpower: towarda feministhistoricalmaterialism. boston: northeastern university press. hum, derek. 1988 "harmonization of social programs under free trade." in g. drover (ed.) free trade and social policy. ottawa: canadian council on social development; 25-48. jessop, bob. 1993 "towards a schumpeterian workfare state? preliminary remarks on post-fordist political economy." studies in political economy. 40 (spnng): 7-39. marchak, patricia m. 1989 "the ideology of free trade." canadian public policy. xv (2): 220-225. martin, richard. 1992 "canadian labour and north american miration." in s.j. randall (ed.) north america without borders? calgary: university of calgary press; 181-187. mcgraughey, william. 1992 a us-mexico-canada free trade agreement: do we just sayno ? minneapolis: thistlerose publications. murphy, jonathan. 1993 "analyzmg the poverty of christopher sarlo." perception. 17 (2): 19-21. muszynski, leon. 1 992 universahtyandselectivity: the socialandpoliticalideas, andthe policy issues . toronto: ontario premier's council on health, wellbeing, and social justice. ({^ alternate routes, volumel 1, 1994 randall, stq^hen j. 1992 "introduction." in s.j. kanda\\{ed)northamericafvithoutborders? calgary: university of calgary press; 1-6. richardson, r. jack. 1 992 "free trade: why did it happen?" canadian review ofsociology and anthropology. 29 (3): 307-328. swanson, jean. 1993 "mnistry of misery." canadian forum. lxxn (september): 9-13. watkins, mel. 1 992 madnessandruin: politics andthe economy in theneoconservative age. toronto: between the lines. <^ 'stark remnants of blackpast' *: thinking on gender, ethnicity and class in 1780s nova scotia ja mannette in the context of the first large-scale black migration to nova scotia (the 1780s or loyalist period), this paper explores the experience and structure of subordination in the black community and between the black community and the wider society. situating black experience within a hegemonic order dominated by a british male elite, the argument is that a more complete understanding of the dynamics and practices of black subordination can be achieved through investigation of the relations of dominance and subordination characteristic of the period: class, ethnic, and gender. specifically, the paper considers how racist and sexist ideologies organized land granting and punishment practices concerning the black population and the visible manifestations of racism and sexism in the phenomena of black labour and segregated community life. dans le contexte du premier grand mouvement des noirs a la nouvelle ecosse (les annees 1780 oil egalement le period des loyalistes), cette etude trace l'experience et la structure de la subordination dans la communaute noir et entre ce-derniere et la societe en generale. comprenant l'experience des noirs dans un milieu domine de l'hegemonie d'un elite m3le et anglais, on peut s'arriver a une comprehension plus complete des pratiques et methodes de la subordination des noirs en etudiant le rapport entre la dominance et la subordination, les deux etant caracteristiques de ce period-la: la classe, l'ethnicite, et la sexe. en specifique, cette etude se concerne de la maniere dont des ideologies racistes et sexistes ont gouverne les concessions de terre, les pratiques par lesquelles les noirs etaient punis, et les manifestations ouvertes du racisme et du sexisme quant aux ouvriers noirs et la segregation des communautes. introduction this paper represents a report on work in progress; namely, investigation of the impact of gender, ethnicity and class in the lives of black people in nova scotia. * the historically subordinate position of blacks within the social formation of nova scotia presents an ongoing social and sociological problem. situating black experience in the context of cultural reproduction within a hegemonic order dominated historically by a british male elite, i argue that a more complete understanding (oriented to change) of the dynamics and practices of black subordination can be achieved through investigation of the intersection of ethnic, gender, and class relations in the black community, and between the black community and the wider society. my argument can be situated broadly within the framework of marxist culturalist analysis which seeks to account for, and move beyond, the complexities and contradictions of the totality of social life in terms of the lived reality of subordinate peoples. in my emphasis on the need for gender analysis, i am following the lead of fox-genovese (1982:6-7) who argues that analysis of gender relations must emerge as a fundamental feature of social analysis. she characterizes gender relations as historically, not biologically, determined and structured in dominance which, while varying in terms of historical specificity, is reflected in all social relations. ' fox-genovese points out that social theory's response to gender analysis has been an impoverished inclusion as "other' which renders women, as historical subjects, invisible. further, she explicitly acknowledges the deficit in "women's history' of theorising about and analyses of black women (2a). i concur with fox-genovese. these problems of analysis are reflections of the difficulties of working within a dominant discourse which is ethnic and sex blind. * 103 my interest in the lives of black people in nova scotia developed while 1 was teaching (1979-1981) high school students from the black community of north preston, nova scotia. this sparked examination of the nova scotia archival sources (1981-1982), a potentially rich, though untapped, source of material concerning the contributions of black women and men to the process of class, ethnic, and gender formation in nova scotia historically. clearly, blacks were not passive in the face of their subordination. as well, their subordination reflected both class and ethnic dimensions. further, the activities of black women in their communities emerged as crucial factors in coping with, and struggling against, class and ethnic oppression. this combination of community experience and archival research forced me to challenge, and go beyond, what i found to be limited theoretical constructs concerning ethnicity, class, and gender in capitalist societies. what follows is my construction, in theoretical terms, of the lived experiences of nova scotian black people. in an attempt to capture the dynamics of class, ethnic, and gender subordination in the lives of black nova scotians, i argue the following: first, the reductionism of orthodox marxist analysis limits its ability to deal with questions of ethnicity and gender; second, we must go beyond a critique of orthodox marxism and develop a complex analysis which can capture a broader expression of class relations, is sensitive to the demands of feminist critique and seeks to overcome ethnocentric bias; third, in order to break this conceptual ground, i propose examination of the gender and ethnic relations of canadian society as they are expressed in the labour participation of nova scotian blacks. i argue that the relations of ethnic and gender dominance and subordination are socially constructed and given expression through ideology. 104 ethnicity, gender, class: the conceptual conundrum the historic centrality of the economic in the lives of nova scotian black women and men led to examination (and subsequent rejection) of orthodox marxist treatments of the factors of ethnicity and gender in class analysis. ^ the very discourse asserts that ethnicity and gender can best be situated within the (determinant) context of class relations. i reject the explicit reductionism of this position. orthodox marxist analyses of ethnicity also involve debate over the subsumption of the term "race' under the rubric "ethnicity.' the point is often made that the more visible (e.g. bio-genetic) differences among people have led to the construction of greater divisions within humanity than have such factors as language, dress, customs, etc. this seems to suggest that these latter are somehow less visible. little attention has been paid, however, to the role which ideas about difference have played in these relations (cohen, 1976), and how these ideas organize action (clarke et al , 1976). what is clear is that ethnic (and gender) relations are sometimes divisive, sometimes cohesive, and have come to be framed in relations of dominance and subordination. there are certain similarities in the way in which ethnicity and gender have developed as problematics for marxists. it has been argued that both ethnicity and gender cut across class lines and therefore confound class analysis (gabriel, 1978, armstrong and armstrong, 1983). the tendency here is often retreat to the haven of analysis "at the point of production,' which, given the private/public distinction, often "solves' the gender problem, if not the dilemma of ethnicity. elsewhere (wright, 1978, guettel, 1974, reich, 1977), ethnicity and gender have been treated as epi-phenomena and thus secondary to the real problem of class conflict. this is often 105 referred to as the "withering away' approach to ethnicity and gender subordination. a variant of this thesis is that since ethnicism and sexism are ideologies, they emerge out of a particular set of productive relations. this argument continues with the idea that ethnicism and sexism will disappear when capitalist relations are overturned by a new social order. as gabriel (1978) indicates, however, such an assessment of ethnicism is both ahistorical and reductionist. he stops short of calling it ridiculous. armstrong and armstrong (1983) suggest that such an understanding of the origins of sexism has become confused with the forms which it assumes historically. yet another line of thought (szymanski, 1976, bonacich, 1976, connelly, 1978) suggests that ethnicity and gender have become useful to dominant class interests, and, in the form of ideological constructs, ethnicism and sexism are used to drive wedges in working class unity. conversely, ethnicism and sexism are also considered to be avidly supported by workers (white men) in recognition of jeopardy to their own interests. what is not theorised is that the two apparently contradictory processes may be component parts of the operation of ethnic, class, and gender relations in capitalist society 'mannette, 1983, saunders, 1983). my argument is that we must go beyond a critique of orthodox marxist treatments of ethnic and gender questions. we must turn to the task of theoretical construction and reconstruction, to charting what a complex analysis of these social relations of difference and inequality might look like. orthodox marxist analysis reflects a kind of reductionism which seeks to explain the organization of all social phenomena in terms of a narrow economic definition of class relations. complex analysis, on the other hand, concedes that, while class relations form a fundamental social division in society, there are other social divisions, which cannot be seen simply as 106 reflections of class relations no matter how broadly understood. these social divisions (such as ethnicity and gender which are under investigation here) intersect with class relations, but are not merely an effect of them. the question of determination rests on the expression of various social constructs within a social formation at a particular social moment. an attempt to outline a theory of ethnic relations informed by feminist critique and class analysis can benefit from examination of, and selective borrowing from, the culturalist marxist perspective. within cultural studies, the emergence of culture as a problematic has resulted in an understanding of plural cultures which provide maps of meaning in the lived experiences of groups. these lived experiences intersect with, but are not determined by, class relations." such an understanding of culture yields fertile ground for the examination of an ethnic culture (that of blacks in nova scotia) and gender culture (gender relations within the segregated black communities of nova scotia). it further points to the relational nature of ethnic and gender cultures to other cultural forms (e.g. class, age) within a given social formation.' accordingly, my emphasis is on the essentially active processes of the social construction of differences and inequality known as ethnicity and gender. this construction of difference and inequality is a product of social relations within a given social formation, and is carried forward in time through ideological processes of production and reproduction, which operate through people's insertion as gendered, ethniced, classed subjects into social relations. it is in the social relations of society that subordinate groups live their subordination and respond to it. such a characterization of difference and inequality does deny the objective nature of social relations but, rather, seeks to go beyond the subjective/objective 107 dichotomy to frame analysis in terms of the complexity and dialectics of the social relations of ethnicity and gender in capitalist society. this kind of complex analysis can reveal the social construction of difference and inequality which is then accounted for by a normative concept of label, such as black and woman. further, this social construction has material and ideational reality which interact in producing social experience. ethnicity and gender, as social constructs, lie partly in the groups to whom they are attributed, and partly in the maps of meaning of those who have come to view them as different and unequal. thus, we see that the forms of ethnic and gender relations are historically specific and the products of organizational practices of thought and action situated in a social formation and its hegemonic order. ethnicity and gender are embedded in power relations: the power to define, delineate, coerce, and convince, in directing social action. the lived reality of nova scotian blacks is situated in a hegemonic order which is also expressed in ethnicity and gender. it is inadequate to refer only to hegemony centred around class relations. we must also investigate ethnic and gender hegemony and their intersections with class hegemony. further, historical analysis of black subordination in nova scotia is essential if we are to capture the processual, contradictory and period-specific nature of the relations of dominance and subordination which characterize black life. negotiation, struggle, resistance, the active processes through which black men, women and children coped with and resisted their subordination, emerge through a new and different reading of the historical accounts of the period under investigation, the 1780s." it is a difficult task to make women of subordinate groups visible, especially black women, inferior and unimportant as they were and are seen to be in the wider 108 society. also, in their own communities, the activities of black women, though recognized by black leaders (usually preacher men) as important to community survival, are infrequently recorded in the detail which has been the preserve of church men's activities. of importance is the work of light and prentice (1980) who have grappled with, and partially resolved, this problem of historical research: the most obvious difficulty in constructing a history of what women did is the bias of historians, professional and other, as to what facts or documents are worthy of preservation for posterity, and how they are to be interpreted. ^ to untangle the "mystery' of ethnic, gender and class relations in 1780s nova scotia requires (at least) two lines of analysis: first, we must outline how ethnicity and gender, as normative constructs, are socially produced and reproduced; secondly, we need to document the concrete and usually institutionalised practices involved in the production and reproduction of ethnic and gender relations. it is through examination of the lived experience of blacks that we arrive at theoretical constructions which can further the articulated interests of the black community. ^" my premise is that gender, ethnicity, and class are interconnected and determination is a question of the combination of social relations and their effects on the totality of the historical moment. in terms of ideology, i shall examine the social construction of difference which we know as ethnicity and gender. since emphasis is placed here on the production and role of ideas in expressing and maintaining ethnic and gender inequality, i shall examine the role of ideas about ethnicity and gender as determinants in organizing practices of land granting, and crime and punishment. in order to reveal the "factual' nature of the lived reality of ethnic and gender difference and inequality, i turn to two manifest forms of unequal ethnic and gender relations: black community life and black labour. 109 ethnic and gender subordination: ideology and practice kealey (1981) has asserted that it is critical to examine the social formation extant in the society in which immigration of ethnic groups occurred in order to better understand the positions they came to occupy in that society. schermerhorn (1970) maintains that the way in which a minority ethnic group enters into a society determines the kind of domination they experience. it becomes essential, then, to examine: first, the period in which immigration took place, why the group left, why they came (to nova scotia), what were their experiences there; and secondly, how they were organized into the social formation. in this article, i examine only one period of black migration to nova scotia, the 1780s or loyalist period. 1780s black loyalists from the united states approximately three thousand black loyalists came to nova scotia, as slaves and 'free men,' under the auspices of the british military following the american revolution. slaves came with their white loyalist owners, "free men' came, seeking freedom of person and free land. the free blacks were part of a larger white migration from the victorious states to britain's last remaining seaboard colony, nova scotia. a sizeable number of black men were skilled workers (e.g., carpenters, wheelwrights, pilots). for black women, the employment options appear to have been domestic work or taking in washing or sewing. men were often organized by white authorities into construction battalions for the white population. black men and women also engaged in a mixture of subsistence farming and, where available, fishing. by the mid 1780s, black men were forced out of the wage labour market in shelburne (the largest loyalist settlement) by an influx of white labourers, most of them 110 former soldiers. since black families had enormous difficulty subsisting on their small, usually barren, plots of land, they frequently either indentured themselves to, or sharecropped for, white landowners. black loyalists petitioned for removal from the province and nearly two-thirds of them left nova scotia for sierra leone in january of 1792. this exodus was financed by the british government and had the blessing of the london-based administration, if not that of the colony. ethnic and gender subordination examination of the operation of ideology in the nova scotian social formation in the 1780s, and its impact on black lives, reveals expressions and practices of gender and ethnic subordination in a class society. the specific status of blacks in 1780s nova scotia remained a problem as the term, "servant,' was frequently used in connection with blacks. this term was often used interchangeably with "slave," "servant for life,' or "free negro.' only a small minority of the blacks who came to nova scotia between 1783 and 1785 were actually slaves. nevertheless, slavery was in operation in nova scotia and widely supported until around 1800. ^ the free blacks who came to nova scotia may have indeed been legally free. however, in the minds of most white nova scotians of all classes they were associated with, and treated like, their enslaved brethren.^ blacks were economic units; they were workers. thus, free blacks came to share the status of slaves. two examples of the way in which this mind-set of difference and inferiority organized social practices can be seen in land granting and in crime and punishment. ill land grants the bureaucratic machinery in nova scotia in the 1780s was ill-equipped to deal with the great influx of loyalists which doubled the population, and brought both black and white settlers to the province following the end of the revolutionary war in 1782. the land granting system was inefficient, inadequate and class-biased. this also meant that it was colour-biased and sex-biased. in a system which had as its aim the first and largest recompense to those who had lost the most, in terms of property, the formerly propertyless blacks were low on the list of priorities. apart fronr the large loyalist landholders who quickly grabbed up the best available land, the average grant was 100 acres for each family head (male), and an additional 50 acres for each family member — wife, son, daughter, and slave (walker, 1976:19, gilroy, 1980). the gender relations of nova scotian society dictated differential and unequal treatment for women and children as they were organized into the social formation. as well, immigrants could increase their chances for property on the basis of presently held property in the form of slaves. ethnic discrimination in colonial nova scotia also operated in other ways. blacks rarely received clear title to any land and, when they did, they were allocated less acreage than white loyalists (gilroy, 1980:106-115, 43-54). their farm lots were often located so far from the town lots they were given that it was difficult to get to them, let alone develop them (walker, 1973:28). also, by the time blacks were allocated land, most of the arable acreage was occupied, and they received only what was left over. the class, ethnic and gender features of the land allocation process had particularly onerous effects on black men and women, located as they were "at the bottom' of the class, ethnic and gender hegemony of colonial nova scotia. examination of loyalist land grants demonstrates that the subordinate classes were allocated less land than the "gentry'; only 112 rarely were women allocated land if they were not attached to a (male) family head; attached women received less acreage than did their men and when title was given, it was in the family head's name. blacks, both men and women, were allocated less land than were white men and women of the subordinate classes. as well as the institutional discrimination manifested by british officials, blacks constantly suffered from fear of a return to slavery. this might arise out of their desperate need to survive, or could emerge in the following way: a last desperate move on the part of shelburne merchants to sustain their economy by making their city a free port for trade with the united states, brought the blacks' fear to a climax in that they expected their former american masters would then be able to reclaim them as slaves (walker, 1976:55). also, as grant (1980:19) indicates, if a black man were claimed as a slave by a white man, his wife and children were claimed as well. the fate of black women in colonial nova scotia appears to have been tied to that of their men, in slavery and in freedom. thus, we see that blacks were considered to be relatively unimportant in the allocation of land, given the long list of deserving white previous landowners, businessmen, and disbanded soldiers. since blacks were seen primarily as a source of labour for whites, their need for land was questionable. if they could subsist on their own land, they might not be available to work for whites. in this way we can understand the lack of clear title to land for blacks, the relatively smaller size of the lots they received and the location of black settlements situated conveniently close to white towns such as shelburne. 113 crime and punishment investigation of punishment for criminal offences in colonial nova scotia demonstrates that corporal punishments were commonplace for members of the subordinate classes. however, the data suggest two other factors: the punishments meted out to blacks were frequently more severe than those for similar crimes committed by whites and there was sex-typing of crime. for example: in guysborough county (lower sydney county) between 11 october 1785 and 8 february 1791, no white suffered corporal punishment. theft, slander, assault, 'keeping a house of ill fame', even riot was punished by fines. but when a black loyalist woman, sarah ringwood, stole some butter, she was "ordered for punishment to receive thirty nine stripes on her naked back, at the public whipping post in manchester'... (walker, 1973:101). walker (1973:101-104) further reports that both black men and women were convicted of theft and received harsher penalties than whites. however, whereas black men in halifax were hanged for crimes of rape, only black women were charged with, and punished for, "lewd and indecent behaviour'. quite apart from the class nature of criminal definition (i.e. crimes against property) and the prevailing climate cf doing violence to the body in order to regulate society and preserve class order, these examples of crime and punishment speak about ethnic and gender relations in colonial nova scotia. the ideology of inferior difference, which marked black/white relations, is given expression in the different and unequal punishments inflicted upon black men and womer. convicted of criminal acts. the law of the lash, which ordered slave/master relations, was extended to black/white punishment. just as certain work became known as black work, so certain crimes and their punishments were levelled at blacks. the court records do net tell us whether the rape victims of the black men hanged in halifax were white or black. given possible legal redress open to black women, i suspect that the rape victims were white. 1 -' it is important to note the sharp 114 divergence from the "cult of white femininity" which the whipping (and the ability to withstand such punishment) of black women represents. also, the stereotyped licentiousness of black female sexuality is reflected in charges against black women of "lewd and indecent behaviour." as well, the crimes of sexuality which are attributed to blacks demonstrate dominant gender relations: the women's crimes of lewdness are essentially passive and the men's crimes of rape are essentially active. the delineation of certain behaviours as criminal and the determination of appropriate punishments reflect dominant class, ethnic and gender relations of colonial nova scotia. this brief examination of how ideologies of difference and inequality organized land granting and punishment practices indicates how ideas about dominant and subordinate group relations express and help to maintain unequal ethnic and gender relations. in terms of gender relations, i have outlined some of the aspects of the dominant gender system in colonial nova scotia and its ability to delineate appropriate gender behaviour (e.g. the dependence of women on men for subsistence through land, and the kind of sex-specific behaviour which was defined as criminal). i have also indicated the triple burden borne by black women: as members of the subordinate classes, as members of a reviled ethnic group, and as women. what i have attempted to determine are the ways in which class, ethnicity, and gender cultures produce and reproduce practices of difference and subordination within a social formation. the "maps of meaning" which structure classed, ethniced, and gendered activities are important determinants of the fact and forms of subordination. they are, however, only part of the manifestation of the processes of dominance and subordination within a social formation. it has been argued (cassin and griffith, 1980 and saunders, 1983) that investigation of the facts and forms of various relations of dominance and subordination 115 (class, ethnic, gender) should not be centred on only ideologies and how they organize practices. attention must also be turned to the "manifest forms'* of subordination.^ to investigate the manifest forms of ethnic, class and gender subordination in colonial nova scotia, i turn to examination of black community life and black labour. black community life and black labour the processes involved in the production of difference and inequality, which we know as ethnicity, have been outlined in the contemporary period by cassin and griffith (1980). it is their contention that ethnicity, as a social construction, has been one of the fundamental organizing processes of canadian capitalist society. in the lived realities of the ethnically segregated labour force and the ethnically segregated community, ethnic difference is organized in terms of class relations. cassin and griffith also argue that the other fundamental division of capitalist society, gender, is accomplished within the structure of ethnic difference in communities and in the labour force. saunders (1983), rightly, has called for research into the "material and ideological forms" of gender dominance in capitalist societies, directing our attention to the important question of how women are organized into conditions of paid labour. following the lead of cassin, griffith and saunders, my discussion of the manifest forms of ethnicity and gender will be centred on the organization of the black community and of black labour, and gender relations within each. birchtown, the largest black loyalist community 15 in nova scotia gives us the most complete picture of black settlement in the province in the 1780s. as walker (1976:22) tells us, when they arrived in birchtown in 1783, black loyalist men were organized into construction battalions under the command of black pioneer, colonel stephen blucke, and put to work building houses, public buildings, roads and wharves for the white loyalist town of port roseway (later renamed shelburne). birchtown loyalists were listed as representing a variety of occupations, however, it was not only a lack of operating capital which prevented the rise of birchtown as "a nearly self-sufficient village" (wilson, 1976:87). the birchtowners employed their skills as labourers in nearby port roseway; they did not serve a black clientele. for port roseway/shelburne , the blacks functioned, for a time, as a "reservoir of cheap labour" (wilson, 1976:89). land grants were slow to materialise for the birchtown group and their "...promised farms ... lay unsurveyed beneath the district's "deep swamps' and impenetrable woods" (walker, 1976:23). as well, benjamin marston, deputy-mayor for the shelburne district, reported "a piece of villainy," wherebv white loyalists attempted to obtain birchtown land for themselves (in walker, 1976:23). many birchtown residents applied the wages they earned in shelburne to the purchase of land: "blucke reported that 300 were in possession of farms, which would mean that over 100 must have bought them" : . walker, 1976:23-24). the promise of free land and provisions by the crown to loyalist immigrants was not widely upheld for the birchtowners lb the business of constructing a settlement in shelburne meant that large landowners and urban employers, who were numerous in the town, often found it difficult to find workers: the existence of a large body of free blacks forced into the labour market through their lack of land or other means of support, appeared to offer a solution to the labour shortage. they had no choice but to offer their skills and muscles to the nearest employer, as prevailing opinion considered them an exploitable labour pool, in desperate supply from any other source, they were in a poor position to bargain for the bounties and privileges freely accorded to white loyalists . . . well knowing that people of their own colour would never engage with them without being paid an 117 equitable price for their labour, white employers came to depend on the cheap services of the black loyalists... (walker, 1973:70). black women were hired by white employers as domestic servants (often live-in), laundresses, and seamstresses (walker, 1976, clairmont et al , 1965, wilson, 1976, fergusson (ed.), 1971). 17 however, as wilson (1976:88-90) points out, many black women and men received no return in the form of wages or provisions for their labours. for example: phillis kizzell, eighteen-year-old wife of john worked for george patten in return for clothes, but the muster list says "(never gave her any)" john primus, was hired by dr. kendrick at 4 a month: "never paid him, lived with him a year". his wife, engaged by the doctor at 2 a month, also never received any wages. in the minds of most white colonials, blacks were merely labour which could be exploited, and discarded when it had served its purpose. once again, given the long list of those entitled to and requiring provisions, the location of blacks on the list, and the limited resources of the colonial administration, it is hardly surprising that blacks received few provisions. when they did, they often had to work to get them. this was a good way of ensuring that needed improvements, such as road-work, would be carried out. blacks had little choice but to agree to this arrangement; they could find few other ways to subsist: in london the press touted the marvels of shelburne and "birchtown' peopled by negroes from new york . . . whose labours have been found extremely useful ... in reducing the price of work. it is a common custom in this country to promise a black so much per day in the evening when his work is almost finished the white man quarrels with him and takes him to a justice of the peace who gives an order to mlct [sicj of his wages (in wilson, 1976:95). certain work came to be defined as "black work" (e.g. road work, laundressing, domestic service, faro labour, day labour). generally, black work also came to be known as inferior work, work in which whites should not engage. partly for this reason but also because blacks were widely felt to 118 be of less value than whites, they received less pay than white labourers. unable to secure an existence through agricultural prduction, blacks were "free" to sell their labour < to whites). their dependence on wage labour for their subsistence made them vulnerable to exploitation at the hands of their employers and the merchants from whom they were required to buy the foodstuffs they could not raise. also, some of the blacks who worked for whites "lived in." as such, they would receive room and board "for free," it was reasoned. this explains why blacks frequently did not receive the wages promised to them at the commencement of employment, or received less than what they had been promised. further, as we have seen, black people had little recourse in trying to extract promised wages from employers. in one instance, they received no aid from a justice of the peace; rather, the employer's position was supported. black labour was clearly exploitable to a degree that white labour was not. the taken-for-granted notion of blackness served to reproduce this situation. in this way, we see the attraction of black labourers for would-be immigrants to shelburne. the labour shortages in shelburne, however, were short-lived. again blacks suffered. disbanded soldiers swelled the ranks of the labouring population of the town: on july 26, 1784, marston wrote in his diary: "great riot today. the disbanded soldiers have risen against the free negroes to drive them out of town because they labour cheaper than they — the soldiers.' (in wilson, 1976:92). as well, by 1789, the fortunes of shelburne were on the wane; famine was widespread throughout nova scotia and the community was decimated by a smallpox epidemic. consistent with the cycle of nova scotian dependency, the wartime boom gave way to economic depression as peace resumed: unemployment wiped out the black companies of birchtown. many were forced to indenture their families and some even sold themselves as slaves. blacks died of starvation and exposure after parting with all their belongings in exchange for temporary nourishment ... only 119 those with farms or with jobs in the fisheries, and of course the indentured servants and sharecroppers, were able to make a meagre living in shelburne county (walker, 1976:52-53). the conditions of living in birchtown in 1788 are vividly detailed in this traveller's account: the place is beyond description wretched, situated on the coast in the middle of barren rocks, and partly surrounded by a thick impenetrable wood. their huts so miserable to guard against the inclemency of a nova scotia winter, and their existence almost depending on what they could lay up in summer. i think i never saw such wretchedness and poverty so perceptible in the garb and countenance of the human species as in these miserable outcasts (dyott in wilson, 1976:96). the solace of the birchtown blacks was their church. birchtown became a centre of baptist activity in the province, and the home base for baptist preacher, david george (boyd, 1976:1-8). despite the inroads which david george's baptist chapels made on church of england activity in the community, anglican hegemony was in evidence in both birchtown and in the black community in shelburne through the society for the propogation (spg), or bray associates, schools.'" some understanding of the religious and educational relations between blacks and whites in nova scotia may be gleaned from walker's (1976:67) account of black affiliation with the anglican church in halifax: though blacks were welcomed in the church and could attend services, and even take communion, they were not permitted to mingle with whites in the congregation. a special gallery was fitted in st. paul's church in 1784, to which the blacks were confined "during divine worship'. but the huge number of loyalist anglicans made too great a demand on the limited space available, and it became impossible to admit all those wishing to attend of a sunday. the blacks, therefore, were excluded, and as an alternative the rector advised them to gather in private homes and he commissioned "several capable negroes who read the instructions to the negroes and other pious books to as many of them as assemble for that purpose.' a separate school for black children was set up in halifax by the anglican affiliate, the spg. instruction, which was carried out by "capable" black men and women, seems to have been geared towards christianizing the blacks 120 and giving them a proper sense of their station in life (pratt, 1973, fleming, 1980). at digby, a black school was run by a baptist teacher and to counteract this influence in the black community, in 1785, the bray associates placed joseph leonard in charge of the black school in brindley town (walker, 1976:81-82): in accordance with the associates' wishes, "manual industry' was encouraged ana leonard's daughter instructed the girls in sewing. and in preston, blacks were considered to be part of the anglican parish: blacks constituted 25 per cent of the parish at preston, but as a church building was not even begun until 1788 and only consecrated in 1791, there was little opportunity for them to attend services. eventually they too established the practice of holding separate services in the home of catherine abernathy (walker, 1976:70). this same mrs. abernathy was put in charge of the bray school which was established for the black children of the community. it appears, however, that mrs. abernathy held her own views on religious instruction and was in conflict for a time with her bray masters. she was coerced into adopting and propagating the more rigid anglican doctrine by the withholding of her wages (walker, 1976:84). although it was desirable to be able to count the blacks as part of the anglican flock (given that the church of england was the state religion), they were barred from full participation and directed to hold separate worship. increasingly, black loyalists turned to the baptist chapels of david george. george preached to blacks and whites alike although it is clear that his adherents were predominantly black. there is some evidence, as well, that other whites tried to prevent whites attending george's services. despite the bleak production possibilities in the communities, black society in nova scotia during the period was hardly joyless and sterile. the passage of a law in shelburne "forbidding negro dances and frolics in this 121 town," besides demonstrating the mindset of the white authorities, gives the lie to assumptions about joyless black life (walker, 1973:101). the ties of love and friendship in the communities were strong (walker, 1976, fergusson, 1971). the black loyalist family was an extended kin network*" embracing many who could claim no blood or marriage ties: john clarkson also noticed the strength of family ties among the black loyalists, and pointed out that "family' went beyond the normal british definition to include godchildren or simply people from the same community. he found it curious that black parents would bring up the children of others as if they were their own, without distinction between natural children and ones thus "adopted' (in walker, 1976:85). it is fair to point out that clarkson's observations reveal his lack of acquaintance, not only with black life, but also with white british working class family relations. the fact that marriages performed by black ministers were illegal has led walker (1976:85) to refer to black marital relations as "casual." this assessment is at variance with the information walker presents on the unwillingness of black men to flee themselves and leave their wives and children at the mercy of american slave owners. as well, in clarkson's account of the 1792 sierra leone exodus, we have many cases presented in which men, women and children struggled to stay together as family units, a situation which sometimes resulted in their staying in nova scotia in spite of a desire to emigrate. the concern of black parents for their children is amply demonstrated by their support for the bray schools in their communities. note stephen 31ucke's 1787 appeal to the spg for clothing for the children at his school: ...my intrusion takes its springs from the anxiety i am under, for these poor little ones (in wilson, 1976:91). 122 we see black women and men responsible for the education of their children in the bray schools. further, it was largely through the efforts of black preachers' female kin that separate and ill-financed educational instruction was carried forward in the black communities. further, black women and men laboured for the white population and were denied their rightful recompense for labour. in addition to the family, the other institution which cemented community relations and gave a sense of collective identity to black life was the church: in a white society, from which the black loyalists were alienated by circumstances of colour and the practices of religion, only the church was black ... their chapels, therefore, took on an importance in their lives beyond a simple location for religious services. community meetings were held in the chapels and, in many ways, the community itself was defined by the chapel to which it belonged. and the leaders of those communities were the preachers (walker, 1976:79-80). the church, the organizational centre of black community life, was male-dominated. the preachers were all men. the sex-segregation in the black communities, which was imposed externally through the organization of white society, can be shown to operate internally in the communities' religious life. the role of black women in the communities seems to have been crucial, however, in terms of the day-to-day operation of education and religious-based activities. in 19th century accounts, we get a sense that the production and reproduction of black cultural life, centred as it was around religious expression, was carried forward chiefly by the women of the community, under the direction of the male ministers. it is interesting to note the position of contemporary black religious scholars on the role of the church in black communities. contrary to widely-held thought on the conservative influence of religion, the position 123 here is that the function of religion is empowering; that is, religious expression allows for the fulfillment of the human condition not solely because such transcendence is denied blacks in white society. rather, i read this argument as laying claims to the primacy of, and need for, spiritual transcendence as the first step in humanness. the potential for worldly liberation in conjunction with spiritual transcendence in the 18th century elack community in nova scotia could be seen to be realized in the community exodus to sierra leone in 1792. black people in 1780s nova scotia: some conclusions the subordinate position of black people in nova scotia in the 1780s was produced through the process of social formation along class/ethnic lines which was a feature of the hegemonic order in the province. however, the subordinate position of blacks was a segregated one in the social formation. their segregation was economic and social. in economic terms, blacks existed largely outside of the major productive activities of the province (e.g. fishing, farming, trade, personal labour relations). rather, most black women and men were subsistence farmers, day labourers, sharecroppers, indentured servants, occasional craft producers, and slaves. the social segregation of blacks was achieved through segregated religious practice and separate and inferior education. as well, the activities of blacks, and whites of both the dominant and subordinate classes, ensured the reproduction of black segregated subordination within the hegemonic order of colonial nova scotia. unable to secure an economic niche in the major productive activities of the area, black people were forced to reproduce their segregated situation economically. socially, denied full participation in bourgeois institutions (church and school), black people created and 124 maintained their own, especially in terms of religious activity. the education of black children was sporadically organized by a christian missionary society, the bray associates, thus earmarking them as in need of christianizing. this further served to segregate them from the wider society. as an ethnic group , blacks were defined by their collective identification as slaves. slaves were economic units; by definition, they were both exploitable and inferior. the practices which produced such economic status were held in place through racist ideology. some of the practices which accomplished the subordinate segregation of blacks were crime and punishment, the system of land grants, provisioning, labour relations and religious activity. these practices reflect the ethnically segregated character of work and the ethnically segregated character of settlement. in terms of gender relations , blacks were administered on the basis of the gender relations of the dominant british order. it is unclear, as lerner (1979) points out in the american context, how much of the gender relations in black communities are the residue of african tribal practices, slave experiences or the effects of the social formation into which they were organized. when they arrived in nova scotia, black men, as heads of families, were allocated land (when it was granted at all). only infrequently were black women granted land. the work they were hired to perform for white employers was sex-typed: laundry, sewing and inside work for women, construction battalions and outside labour for men. there is also some evidence that black women were promised lower wages for domestic service than were black men. if a man was claimed as a slave, so were his wife and children. thus, the reproduction of the dominant gender system was carried out in the black communities through the sex segregation and dependence of 125 women which were features of the administration of blacks. we can argue that gender relations in colonial nova scotia were fully patriarchal, in that they specified the form of relations not only between men and women, but also between nen. gender relations were also reproduced through the sex-typing of, and unequal pay for, work which black women and men were hired to do. within the black communities, the pattern of sex segregation and sex subordination is most clearly reflected in the organization of religious expression, the "key" to understanding community life. in conclusion, what i have attempted to demonstrate here is the expression of class, ethnic and gender subordination in the lives of black nova scotians in the 1780s and how we might conceptualize such subordination. moving beyond orthodox marxist treatments of ethnicity, gender and class, i have sought to construct a more complex analysis of ethnic, gender and class relations through examination of accounts of the lives of black nova scotians during the period of loyalist settlement. i have directed my research in two interconnected areas: ideology as organizing practices in ethnic and gender differences; and the concrete manifestation of ethnic and gender difference. through examination of the land grant system and of crime and punishment practices, i have suggested how ideas about ethnic and gender difference and inequality serve to accomplish practices of ethnic and gender difference and inequality. focus on the segregated ethnic community and segregated ethnic labour has suggested the interconnections between class and ethnicity in colonial nova scotia. within the context of the ideological and manifest forms of ethnic difference, i have found the social construction and reproduction of sex-segregation and sex inequality reflected in the dependence of women on men in land granting, sex-typing of crime and of work, and sex segregation and subordination in community-organized religious expression. 126 in the relative absence of a black loyalist voice i have sought to articulate one, hampered as the work is by reliance on dominant accounts of the period. nevertheless, it is these accounts, laden with prejudice, which forced a re-examination of the utility and responsibility of existing constructs of these relations of subordination. since i have taken the position that this is a work in progress, it is my plan to continue to refine my explanations of the subordination of black women and men in nova scotia. notes * the title is taken from the poem, "crazy luce", by black nova scotian poet, maxine tynes. 1. this article reflects part of the research undertaken for mannette's (1983) setting the record straight: the experience of black people in nova scotia 1780-1900. 2. social relations are processes into which we enter, the purpose of which may, or may not, be clear to us. through our activities we produce them and carry them forward in time. 3. i am using vallee's (1982:128) definition of ethnicity: ...ethnicity refers to descent from ancestors who shared a common culture or subculture manifested in distinctive ways of speaking and/or acting. this common culture may have been carried by many different kinds of groupings, such as religious, political, geographical, but in all cases the kinship networks are the crucial bearers of culture. i would add to this my understanding of ethnic groups as minorities, following himelfarb and richardson (1983:325) who say: we may define a minority as a group of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination. thus, we arrive at an understanding of ethnic groups as deriving from common ancestry, having consciousness of, and expressing group affiliation. this group affiliation renders ethnics the subject and object of differential and unequal treatment in society and serves as the focal point in coping with and resisting this inequality of condition and of experience. with some reservations, then, on the basis of the social construction of difference and inequality based on the above criteria, i would use ethnicity as a generic term which would include race. this is not to deny the differences between race and ethnic inequality, but rather to stress their similarities as social phenomena. 127 lhe way in which i see ideology operating here is as maps of meaning through which people make sense of their lives and organize their activities. these maps of meaning are constructed in and express various power relations (e.g. class, ethnicity, gender). further, the social construction of ideology gives it an unproblematic or taken-for-granted character. thus, we have a sense that ideology inserts the oppressed into relations of subordination and is not merely an external mode of thought imposed on them. in the taken-for-granted social construction of ethnic and gender difference and inequality, both the oppressed and the oppressors carry these relations forward in time through their social actions. i do not mean to suggest that the differential and unequal treatment of ethnic groups and of women is the same. there are obviously crucial differences. the point here is to demonstrate that the way in which the analysis of ethnic groups and of women has been taken up by orthodox marxists has marked similarities. following clarke et al (1976), i see culture as lived experience through which individuals make sense of their social world. thus, culture is the acting out of certain distinctive ways of thinking about the social world and it organizes social action in such a way that the culture of one group reflects the circumstances of that group and can be distinguished from the culture of another group located differentially. on the development of tools of analysis to investigate race cultures, see hall (1980). to determine the role of gender relations within a race culture, refer to carby's (1982) "agenda' for black feminism. i have chosen to explore the 1780s for the following reasons: first, this decade marks the period of the first large black migration to nova scotia; secondly, during the bicentennial celebrations of the coming of the loyalists to nova scotia, very little attention was paid to the black loyalists; thirdly, this period is one of transition in ethnic relations in nova scotia since slave relations were on the demise for a variety of reasons; as well, the influx of such numbers of blacks forced the colonial administration to deal with the ensuing problems rooted in racism. since the often illiterate subordinate women have not been able to "speak for themselves', they are revealed through historical documents such as indentures, court records, institutional records, travellers' descriptions, newspaper stories and official state records. in the case of black women in nova scotia, literate white women wrote about them. they are also made visible through arts and crafts (e.g. basket making) which have survived. it is assumed that these accounts are laden with biases (class, race, gender) of their authors. however, through them there emerges a portrait of how these women were perceived by others to have lived, thought and felt. the difficulties of making these women visible are similar to those problems of uncovering the experiences of the subordinate and often reviled ethnic group to which they belonged. 128 10. what is involved in this process is as follows. i have a responsibility to not merely add blacks to history but, rather, to rethink history in terms of the inclusion of accounts of black experience. further, i need to construct these accounts in a spirit of cultural relativity not one of ethnocentrism. thus, i am motivated to produce non-per jorative assessments of black culture. finally, my responsibility as a researcher is to the community and not only to the research process. this presents an interesting dilemma as various factions within the black community vie for the role of articulator of black life and black interests. for the researcher, often the choice of to whom or what within the community to be responsible is difficult to determine. 11. the act of emancipation of 1834 brought a final end to legalized slavery in the british empire. 12. in a slave society they took their status not from the body of loyalists to which they belonged, but from the mass of slaves whose african race they shared (walker, 1973:104). it was a question of mindset in the dominant society which enforced this taken-for-granted sense of blacks as economic units which could be exploited and for whom there was no sense of responsibility. unlike the paternalism of much of the organization of early capitalism in nova scotia, black/white labour relations reflected little "social conscience. ' 13. john clarkson's account of the rape and abuse of lydia jackson at the hands of a prominent lunenburg doctor indicates the lack of redress (legal) which black women had and the peculiar way in which the oppression of black women was carried out against their sexuality. 14. by manifest forms of ethnic subordination, cassin and griffith mean the highly visible character of the organization of ethnic inequality: the ethnic "ghetto," ethnic businesses, streaming of ethnic students in the school system, etc. 15. walker (1976:34) gives the following estimate of free black settlement in nova scotia: birchtown (1784) 1,521 individuals; brindley town (1784) 211 individuals; chedabucto (1785) 118 families or about 350 individuals; little tracadie (1787) 172 individuals, (1788) 16 families or about 50 individuals; preston (1780s) 100 families or about 300 individuals; halifax (1780s) 400 individuals; shelburne (1787) 70 families or about 200 individuals; mcnutt's island (1787) 4 families or about 12 individuals; liverpool (1787) 50 individuals; annapolis (1780s) 100 individuals; small centres (1780s) unknown. 16. the blacks of preston were also expected to "work a proportion of time on the road,' and it may have been in exchange for rations inferior to those granted to whites, as was certainly the case in halifax. codfish, molasses and hard biscuit were the principal items in the halifax loyalist diet, with occasional additions from "a very limited supply of meat.' but this was for whites only: "meal and molasses sustained the negroes' (in walker, 1976:44-45). 129 17. newman (1976:276-289) demonstrates that most black women, both slave and free, in pennsylvania in the 18th century were working as domestics in such occupations as laundresses, seamstresses, and general "housewifery." she also shows that: neither the revolution nor the gradual abolition law caused a significant change in occupations. by mid-nineteenth century there was still no meaningful change; women were effectively lodged in the same types of occupations (newman, 1976:284). 18. the black schoolmasters in each community were isaac limerick and stephen blucke, respectively (walker, 1976:80-83). 19. it seems essential that extended kin networks operated in such a way to at least facilitate the care of children and those unable to work. this is in the context of precarious conditions in family life (e.g. the return to slavery, death by disease and starvation, and the labour of women). references armstrong, pat and hugh armstrong 1983 "beyond sexless class and classless sex: towards marxist feminism" studies in political econopy , number 10 winter. bonacich, edna 1976 "advanced capitalism and black/white relations in the united states: a split labor market interpretation" american sociological review , volume 41 february. 3oyd, frank stanley jr. 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volume 41 june. vallee, frank g. 1982 "inequality and identity in multi-ethnic societies" in social issues, sociological views of canada , dennise forcese and stephen richer (editors), scarborough, ontario: prentice-hall. walker, james w. st. g. 1973 the black loyalists in nova scotia and sierra leone, ph.d. dissertation, department of history, dalhousie university, halifax. 1976 the black loyalists: the search for a promised land in nova scotia and sierra leone 1783-1870 , new york: africana publishing company. 132 wilson, ellen gibson 1976 the loyal blacks . new york: putnam's. wright, erik olin 1978 "race, class, and income inequality" american journal of sociology , volume 83 number 6. 133 silence on same-sex partner abuse catherine browning carieton university notwithstanding the efforts of lesbians and heterosexual women to date, a review of the north american body of literature on lesbian partner abuse from 1983 to 1994 reveals that awareness, analyses, and action have been inhibited by silence 1 at individual, social, and community levels. my research project will contribute evidence on how traditions of silence on lesbian partner abuse are uniquely shaped, and broaden the existing individual-social paradigm of same-sex partner abuse to include the level of lesbian communities. the decision to focus my research on individual, social, and community levels of silence was based on three considerations. first, because most factual and theoretical writing on this subject has focused on personal perceptions and institutional response to lesbian partner abuse, individual and social categories effectively captured that information. secondly, as a formerly abused lesbian i have prior knowledge of communitybased factors of silence and their effects. preliminary investigations supported my suspicions that the role of lesbian communities' silence had been underestimated, ifnot ignored, and that explanations for that silence had been largely unexplored. finally, because existing heterosexually self-referential theories of lesbian partner abuse are inadequate, i was interested in discovering whether community-based data could inform lesbian-specific theories of same-sex partner abuse. methodologically, variables of silence were extrapolated from reviews ofthe literature on heterosexual and lesbian partner abuse. in comparing the results, 'uniquely' lesbian variables emerged, suggesting that silence is 'kept' for different reasons among lesbians. these lesbian-specific variables of silence were explored in semi-structured, confidential interviews with twelve abused lesbians and one interview with a non-abused lesbian. respondents were either self-selected based on our acquaintance or my previous knowledge of their abuse or interest in the subject, or responded to advertisements distributed to women's bookstores, social service groups, gay/lesbian bars and organizations, or gay and/or lesbian newspapers. alternate routes, volume 12, 1995 alternate routes, volume12, 1995 silence and the individual as far as a framework of analysis is concerned, parallels to my conceptualization of silence at an 'individual' level are found in the social support work of nan lin (1986). according to lin (1986:20) the most intimate of three levels of social support "consists of relations among confiding partners . . . [where] the relationship tends to be binding in the sense that reciprocal and mutual exchanges are expected, and responsibility for one another's well-being is understood and shared by the partners." while "intimate and confiding relationships" (lin, 1 986:20) are common to abused heterosexual women and lesbians, the social stigma attached to relationships outside the heterosexual 'norm' suggests that the roles of partners, friends, and family in partner abuse cannot be automatically assumed to be the same. focusing research on silencing factors at an intimate or individual level enables those discoveries. at an individual level, lesbian and heterosexual women share many dimensions of silencing about partner abuse. however, at least six key areas in which individual lesbians' reality of partner abuse departs from the heterosexual norm are suggested in the same-sex literature. these include lesbians' particular isolation, shame, denial, love for their abuser, fear of abuser retaliation, and concern for children. for instance, though abused heterosexual women indicate they feel isolated as a result of their abuse, homophobia and abused lesbians' marginalization from society-at-large may lead to their greater feelings of isolation. some lesbians may experience more isolation than others: for example, women with particular fears for the effect of abusers' disclosure of their sexual orientation on job security (burstow, 1992; chicago area lesbian & gay domestic violence project, 1994; hamard, 1993; london battered women's advocacy centre, 1993; ristock, 1994; snow, 1992; task force on lesbian battering ofthe massachusetts coalition of battered women service groups, 1988). among interview respondents only one formerly 'closeted' lesbian directly linked her isolation to a "fear that the situation would blow up" in the workplace if her sexual orientation was disclosed by her abuser through "phone calls. . . around outing" (interview 4). another example of lesbians' differential isolation derives from their fears that disclosure ofthe abuse will impact negatively on existing relations with their famil les of origin, or provoke misperceptions that abuse is evidence of the 'sickness' of their sexual orientation (chicago area lesbian & gay domestic violence project, 1993; dopier, 1993; dupps, 1991; hammond, 1986; renzetti, 1992; 1989). five interview respondents stated that they deliberately did not inform their families of the origin of the abuse. to one abused lesbian "my motherwas the last person who could have done anything about it...because she's very judgemental [and] she was sort ofjudgemental of us as lesbians," (interview 12). another abused lesbian commented that her family "don't even come to grips with the fact that i am a lesbian [so] how aretheygoingto cometo grips with the fact that i'm a lesbian that was abused on top of it" (interview 1). while four other women disclosed the abuse to their families of origin, they tended to do so toward or at the end of the relationships. one recalled speaking with her mother after she had recognized that she was feeling "emotionally abused" (interview 2). another disclosed the abuse to her mother at a point of crisis when she "was really at a low ebb" (interview 8). still another abused lesbian reported that she waited "until the very end when i had a discussion with my sister" (interview 9). the potential for safe communication appears to influencewhether or not lesbians chose to disclose their abuse to their families of origin. on the one hand, where lesbians perceived their sexual orientation would be or was negatively regarded, they chose not to confide the abuse. on the other hand, where lesbians perceived that news ofthe abuse would be met critically by some family members, they selectively filtered those people out. interestingly, mothers and sisters were most often believed accepting and trustworthy. these examples highlight some of the many ways in which lesbians' individual reality of partner abuse departs from the heterosexual norm. silence and society as unique variables underlie lesbians' silence on same-sex partner abuse at an individual level, so too are lesbians particularly silenced at a social level by specific fears of institutionalized homophobia and heteiosexism in the criminal justice system, medical health profession, and shelters for abused women. what i have termed the 'social' level of analysis captures those "relationships with the larger community. . . [which] reflect integration into, or a sense ofbelongingness in, the larger social structure (lin, 1 986: 1 9). while heterosexual women and lesbians' sense of 'belonging' in the north american social structureis commonly impaired by its woman-hating or misogynist ideology, lesbians' abilityto 'belong' is particularlyconstrained byhomophobia alternate routes, volumc12, 1995 andheterosexism. research that acknowledges the differential social location ofwomen is generally important because the concept of a 'social structure' relies on the "premise that behaviours or actions are interpretable only in relation to the positions of actors in social structure" (marsden & lin, 1982:9). research that specifically acknowledges the differential social location of lesbians is especially important in illuminating previously generalized and obscured distinctions between abused heterosexual women's and lesbians' silence. for example, abused lesbians may fear that their sexual orientation, rather than the abuse, will be seen as the problem by police services (chicago area lesbian & gay domestic violence project, 1993; kalx, n.d.), the courts (chicago area lesbian & gay domestic violence project, 1993; robson, 1992), medical (london battered women's advocacy centre, 1993) and mental health professionals (breeze, 1986; chicago area lesbian & gay domestic violence project, 1993; eaton, 1994; london battered women's advocacy centre, 1993). one interview respondent generally perceived that "people don't believe us. all we need is a good man and that [abuse] will all come to an end, won't it" (interview 6). another woman explained that it's a lifestyle that's so different, so marginal, and to have the police involved i feel the need to protect my world and to try to solve it ourselves rather than having somebody else come in trying to clean up the situation. (interview 2) the same-sex literature's speculation that lesbians' fear that the abuse will not be taken seriously; that police will classify it as not serious (cecere, 1986), or as a female 'cat fight' (king, n.d.; snow, 1992); or that mental health professionals will minimize the abuse because it occurred between women (renzetti, 1993, 1992, 1989, 1988; task force ofthe massachusetts coalition of battered women service groups, 1988; waterwoman, 1992) further demonstrates how their social isolation differs from that of heterosexual women one interview respondent imagined the police "would have just laughed. i think they would have thought it was pretty funny to see two women, lesbians, fighting together" (interview 6). the two abused lesbians who had sought police assistance, however, reportedthat "the experience was very good" (interview 4) and "it was a female officer and she was fine" (interview 8). four women reported being in therapy before and during the abuse, whilefour others contacted therapists after their relationship with their abuser ended. all ofthe first group reported positive feelings about their therapeutic treatment and rapport with therapists. one woman described how through therapy i came to learn how to stand up for myselfand to defend myself and to say 'no' to that abuse. so in that sense the therapeutic side of it helped me and was a big, positive change for me. (interview 2) an unanticipated danger ofsupport, rather than a lack ofawareness was highlighted by one lesbian's comment that "just knowing i had back-up gave me a little more courage to stay when i should have had the courage to leave" (interview 9). the opinions ofabused lesbians who sought therapy after their relationship was ended were more diverse. while one woman felt that her therapist "wasn't the greatest" she also she noted that the fact that this therapist knew about her . . . [and] had worked with other lesbians that had been involved with her in a way made me feel good that i wasn't the only one that she treated that way, and in another way it was like. . she needs to be stopped. (interview 5) another woman assessed her therapist as "patient" but concluded that because of lack of awareness of lesbian partner abuse, more productive therapy has happened in [friendship] circles because i find that professionals who i've dealt with. . .don't even have as good an analysis as i do about the whole thing. (interview 3) despite some similarities between heterosexual women and lesbians' experiences of partner abuse, these examples highlight that knowledge of and sensitivity to lesbian lifestyles are especially important in abused lesbians' healing, therapy, and contact with the criminal justice system. silence and the lesbian community the task of defining 'community' is formidable. indeed, while 'community' is liberally used in documents pertaining to lesbian partner abuse, i was unable to locate a single definition of that term. although the network analysis' "psychocultural" (poplin, 1979:19) model best reflects the gay/ lesbian identity formation literature's perception of historical, normative, <e) alternate routes, volume12, 1995 lesbian 'commiinities-as-connection', it fails to take into account particular stresses and strains within those groups. as a result, i have, buildingon susan krieger's (1983) suggestion, defined lesbian communities as diverse spatial, and/or emotional affinities with other lesbians, ideologically grounded in expectations ofshared support, security, understanding, political vision, and/ or sub-cultural identities 'as a lesbian' in a homophobic social world. while lay and scholarly contributions provide some support and explanation for silence at individual and social levels, a comparable degree of insight into lesbian communities' silence is blatantly lacking. as a result, the role of lesbian communities in maintaining silence and inhibiting awareness, analyses, and action on lesbian partner abuse has been underestimated, if not ignored. further, while individual and social rationales for silence are respectively grounded in anecdotal and empirical fact, the reasons for silence in lesbian communities are pure conjecture. among these speculations, lesbians may have particular concerns for their community's external and internal image, resist challenges to their notion of a 'lesbian utopia' and their gendered analyses of partner abuse, and may be uncertain how to act on the problem of lesbian partner abuse. concern for the external solidarity ofthe community, for example, may particularly silence abused lesbians. there are two dimensions to this concern. on the one hand, lesbians may hold their communities responsible for action on ending the silence and stopping same-sex partner abuse. on the other hand, lesbians may feel responsible for protecting these communities from the heterosexual world. my discussion will focus on this second tendency. according to the same-sex literature, lesbian communities may deny or minimize partner abuse for fear of generating "politically destructive" (chicago area lesbian & gay domestic violence project, 1993:17) heterosexual criticism (battered lovers, 1986; blenham, 1991; breeze, 1986; brownworth, 1993, chicago area lesbian & gay domestic violence project, 1993; closed doors, 1987; eaton, 1994; edgington, 1989;hamard, 1993; hammond, 1986; irvine, 1984; kelly &warsnafsky, 1986; king, n.d.; london battered women's advocacy centre, 1993; morrow & hawxhurst, 1989;renzetti, 1992, 1993;ristock, 1991; task force ofthe massachusetts coalition of woman service groups, 1988; zadkine, 1987). tins criticism includes the accusation that lesbians are "sick" (closed doors, 1987:5; london battered women's advocacy centre, 1993). the same-sex literature also speculates that some lesbians may fear that knowledge of same-sex partner abuse will deter women from coming out' as lesbians (edgington, 1989). all ofthe interview respondents agreed that public knowledge of samesex partner abuse could fuel anti-lesbian sentiment. to one lesbian this awareness was clearly "a big reason why people keep quiet about what's going on" (interview 7). only onewoman felt that disclosure would wait until "heterosexuals are far more willing to be accepting of lesbians and gay men." in her opinion because of general stereotyping of lesbians by the larger society, [and] the hate that a lot of people feel for lesbians and gay men...you don't want that information in their hands because somehow you feel that it will be used even further against you because you're not really safe in a heterosexual world anyway. (interview 12) perhaps becausethey had experienced its damaging effects, most respondents opposed silence because "we're setting ourselves up playing ostriches" (interview 1). otherwomenfeltthat disclosurewas "a good tiling" (interview 5) because "certainly it will give some ofthem ammunition but (sic) i think it will also develop a kinship in others make us more human, less exotic" (interview 6). other participants reacted to the suggestion of heterosexual backlash with cynicism. onewoman commented that "they already dredge up their own goddamn ammunition," (interview 8) while another commented that "it doesn't matter what it is, it's always going to give more ammunition so what arewe supposed to do, not say anything?" (interview 1). still another lesbian felt that "we have our own ammunition too... [because] even in heterosexuals there's women beating up on women" (interview 10). lastly, while some women were concerned with heterosexual response to the reality of lesbian partner abuse, they also expressed optimism that these negative impressions could be overcome. as one woman explained i certainly say that i don't believewe should stay quiet andwehave to deal with this. the press and the media would jump on the negative stuff and that's something we'll have to fight and that's something that we'll have to educate and struggle with and make sure that's not the only perception ofwhata lesbian is. (interview 7) alternate routes, volume12, 1995 these and other community-based examples support the fact that traditions of silence on same-sex partner abuse are, to varying degrees, shaped by uniquely lesbian variables at individual, social, and community levels. furthermore, they highlight the need to broaden current individual-social paradigms of lesbian partner abuse to include the distinctive features and functions of silence at the level of lesbian communities. the process of isolating uniquely lesbian factors of silence at individual, social, and community levels represents more than the accumulation of academic 'facts' on lesbian partner abuse in canada. it also, by naming, telling, and speaking out, begins to recognize the abusive realities oflesbians who have been and continue to be silenced. notes 1. for the purposes of this project, 'silence' is defined as not naming, not telling, and not speaking of same-sex partner abuse at intersecting individual, social, and community levels. 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(july): 1 0. fljfr a critical assessment of media studies janice monti belkaoui sociological theory has played an important role in the development of mass communications studies but until recently sociologists have not shown much commitment to media-related inquiries. the dismissal of mass media studies to the marginal areas of the sociological enterprise is unfortunate. sociology can make an important contribution in the codification of empirical findings about the media within its theoretical foundations. while this strategy has been advocated by both traditional and contemporary thinkers, from max weber to robert merton, few have made serious attempts at a synthesis of theory and media research, or, more precisely, at reconciling to some degree what is said about the media with what is known about its societal impact. this paper outlines some of the reasons for this hiatus, points out the existing but largely ignored links between sociological theory and media research, and concludes with a modest suggestion for the integration of media research within the paradigms of political sociology and stratification. i. what we say: conflicting conceptions of the development of mass media studies a. the nature of the critique of media studies mass media studies were among the principal irritants precipitating c. wright mills' charge that some brands of sociological inquiry are little more than sterile exercises in abstracted empiricism. in reviewing the many critiques of mass communications studies, a perennial theme is the allegation of theoretical and conceptual immaturity. one popular form of this attack argues that media researchers, especially the. north american variety, have spent their time refining sophisticated methodologies and statistical techniques while paying scant attention to the theoretical implications of their work. one recent assessment of american studies charges that the obsession with methods is "...symptomatic of a theoretical vacuum in which the paucity of ideas is masked by a dazzling display of empirical ingenuity" (golding and murdock, 1978) . this criticism is hardly of recent vintage. exactly two decades ago, berelson delivered what was regarded by many as a eulogy for media studies, charging among other things that the field was troubled '.ot so much by its paucity of theory than by a paucity of theorists. the state of communication research, in berelson* s play on words, was "withering away" as its founding fathers, men like hovland, lasswell, lazarsfeld and lewin, moved on to other areas (berelson, 1959) . the lack of a theoretical foundation has sometimes been attributed to the pragmatic research orientations of the discipline's pioneers. major determinants for the directions pursued by these early researchers included (1) the research monies offered by the u.s.'s infant broadcasting industry to map out its existing and potential audiences and (2) the pressing war-time demand by the u.s. military for propaganda studies. the administrative needs of these sponsors did much to set the agenda for the next three decades of communication research, 95 resulting finally in a preponderance of practically-oriented manipulation, effects and personal influence studies. while these efforts contain something of a theoretical base, especially at the level of social psychology, they are most often viewed as forming part of the areas of policy analysis or political science rather than sociology proper. in general, however, studies from this first generation of media research in the social sciences were concerned with the elaboration of quantitative techniques for the measurement of effects at the expense of theoretical formulations. (an account of this period and its implications for sociology can be found in gans , 1972) . the reputation of mass media studies has been discredited by the persistent charge of theoretical vacuity. the accusation has been made with such enthusiasm and frequency that seldom is the charge itself subject to evaluation. an overview of the sociological analysis of mass media suggests that the criticism is unduly severe. the history of the sociology of media does reveal at least implicit theoretical strains. they do not emerge sequentially nor do they reveal a linear progression of development but conform more to a multiple paradigmatic view of sociology, revealing a set of contending theoretical perspectives, or, perhaps more accurately, alternative conceptual frameworks, some of which are more fruitful than others. the study of media emerges not as an atheoretical activity but perhaps as one hindered by too much of it. what follows is a brief sketch of the most prominent of these perspectives. 96 b. sociological theory in the study of mass communications 1. early sociological approaches while an extensive analysis of the press and other forms of popular media did not assume a central role in the nineteenth and early twentieth century development of sociology, the media were at least acknowledged as a peculiar feature of modern and increasingly differentiated societies. for example, the nature and power of a modern and rationalized press attracted the attention of max weber, particularly the phenomenon of an increasingly bureaucratized process of newsgathering. that the questions and research program he proposed six decades ago still constitute a relatively unexplored area is an indication of the current state of underdevelopment in media sociology. specifically, weber was concerned with what gets "publicized" and what does not, corresponding to the quite recent work on the mechanisms of gatekeeping and agenda-setting. weber's interest in media ownership and control is even more indicative of his vision, especially when viewed in relation to recent critical queries into the monopolistic tendencies of media industries and the ways this translates into legitimating systems of ideology through media content. weber's media sociology focused on the ...power relations which create publicity, particularly the conditions of economic power... how does the press get its material? what is the position of the great news bureaus and how are they internationally related to each other? what is the position of the creative journalist in this intrinsically rationalized system of the modern press? (weber in mayer, 1946) 97 the media's role in achieving and maintaining cohesion in modern complex societies was given some attention in the early years of american sociology by members of the chicago school. the press was viewed as an emerging and necessary social institution for the integration of diverse immigrant groups and rural migrants into the mainstream of urban american life. this approach introduced the now familiar notion that, in modern industrial societies, mass media provide the lost sense of community associated with less industrial, villagebased social groupings. the concern with media displayed by the chicago school sociologists was to a large extent a byproduct of their broader based inquiries in human ecology and ethnic relations in community settings. because of this primary orientation, their writings on the press ever made much impact on media research nor did they elicit much response from the north american sociological community. 2. consensus theories the emergence of functionalism as the dominant paradigm in sociology by the mid-twentieth century has important implications for this generation of mass communications research. functionalism in postwar north america became a theory cum ideology of stable and egalitarian democracy. functionalist-inspired research focused on stabilizing and integrating relationships among society's institutions. in the form of pluralism, functionalist studies analyzed mechanisms of checks and balances among contending sources of power. functionalist 98 approaches also depict mass media as an information and entertainment organ, operating independently of society's interest groups. within this general framework, mass media are said to perform certain objective and systematic socialization and integration functions for the social system. most representative of this approach is the work of c.r. wright (1960; 1975) whose influential textbook on mass communication asserts that the "...transmission of culture focuses on the communication of information values and social norms from one generation to another" (wright , 1960:16). taking his cue from merton's reformulation of functionalism as a mode of analysis and middle range theoretical strategy, wright has provided his own reformulation of a general sociological framework for the analysis of mass media. this approach is built upon the following question: what are the intended and unintended functions and dysfunctions of mass communicated surveillance, correlation, cultural transmission and entertainment for society, subgroups, the individual and the cultural system? (1960) . despite the more critical intentions of this reformulation, media researchers who have adopted this perspective continue to focus on the role of media systems in promoting integration and consensus. in these renditions, media emerge more often as agents of socialization rather than of social control (e.g., janowitz, 1952; katz, et. al ., 1973; singer, 1975; allen, 1976). although the functionalist paradigm is no longer in its ascendancy, its application to empirical media research continues to have considerable impact. one specific approach which has attracted a number of adherents is a kind of synthesis of functionalism and behaviourism, 99 the "uses and gratifications" approach (see, e.g., the blumler and katz reader, 1975) . this literature tries to specify the links among the individual, media and society. an individual, in response to his sccial environment (determined by his social position, socialization, etc.), develops certain functional requisites or needs (for information, entertainment, contact, security, etc.) which are met by different varieties of media content. this basic paradigm has given rise to an entire catalogue of social effects and individual functions in a manner similar to the earlier lasswell-lazarsfeldmerton tradition. thus mass media are shown to provide information, advice, companionship, escape, entertainment and, implicitly, a core system of values. criticisms lodged against this approach reflect those which have been directed at functionalism in generalthe "uses and gratifications" literature has added little to our existing understanding of media's impact on society or individuals. the approach can be viewed as an extreme form of psychological reductionism because of the more or less explicit assumption that the explanations of media functions for total societies can be found in uncovering their functions for individuals. the approach has attempted to redefine "social effects" by starting with a rather problematic "given" an integrated, non-stratified, homeostatic society and then proceeds to question how the media have contributed to this result. the excessively descriptive bent inherent in the functionalist tradition has led some theorists to look for more general and 100 explanatory frameworks in the fields of information and systems theory. these perspectives still retain elements of structural-functionalism in that they tend to incorporate the notion of a social system, however defined, as the level of analysis. an assumption of equilibrium among system parts is also common to both approaches. information and systems theories of communication generally have met with more favour from communications specialists who view media vehicles primarily in technological terms than from media sociologists. the principal deficiency of such perspectives from the vantage point of theoretical sociology is their lack of attention to societal impact and change. 3. conflict theories the functionalist-based consensus model of society and media views mass communications vehicles as integrative mechanisms providing functional substitutes for traditional forms of order, cohesion and community. an alternative perspective, drawn from variants of elite, marxist and critical orientations, casts the mass media in the role of legitimating agents of social control in complex industrial societies. such approaches, until recently, have had less impact than the consensus model in media sociology. at the most general level, sociological conflict approaches view the emergence and current functions of mass communications as an historical outgrowth of the structuration of economic or power relations between dominant and subordinant social groups. in pluralist accounts of the rise of modern media systems, one focal point is the autonomy of privatelyowned media industries from state and political control. in contrast, 101 the conflict approaches not only acknowledge the importance of tracing the media's formal and informal links to authority but are also more centrally concerned with investigating the media as an agency of legitimation in relation to the structure and unequal distribution of social resources. in particular, this emphasis has prompted the elite or instrumentalist perspective's concern with the ideological implications of monopoly control over media industries. putting aside for the time being the results of empirical analyses of media ownership and control, at a purely theoretical level, proponents of the instrumentalist perspective view the modern media as the major ideological apparatus in the hands of the capitalist class. in miliband's framework (1969), for example, the media take on an instrumental role in western industrial socif^y. they are characterized not only by their "bourgeois" ideology, transmitted through advertising and program content, but also by monopoly control and by collusion of state and economic interests over management's decisions. western media systems, because of their organizational peculiarities, perform a crucial ideological function in perpetuating a global capitalist system. another variant of the conflict perspective comes out of the frankfurt school's critical theory tradition. while critical sociology rejects the notion that the institutional incorporation of the working class has been accomplished, it questions the role of media content and other forms of popular culture in creating and maintaining the working class's false consciousness. in this view, workers and large segments of the middle class are merely receivers and consumers 102 of media-sanctioned ideas and material goods. the media, under the control of capitalist interests, aim for the widest common denominator and are commercial rather than public-interest oriented. these traits, according to the frankfurt school's formulation, debase the audience and lower average levels of literacy and culture (see, e.g., adorno and horkheimer, 1977). in recent years, the frankfurt school, under the direction of habermas, has embraced a "self-liberating" ideology of praxis . this literature advocates the establishment of an alternative media system, open to expression of diverse opinions and cultures and operated independently of commercial pressures. the major point of contention between the critical theorists and the functionalists is that the former argue that changes in media systems should originate with interest groups outside the industry rather than from media professionals as advocated by the pluralists who largely embrace a "free press" and social responsibility model of media organization. one variant of nee—marxist sociology which quite recently has begun to apply a "theory of ideology" to the analysis of mass media draws its "theoretical base from german idealism, structuralism and semiotics. this "cultural studies" approach, as it is termed, places media systems and content in the context of culture as a whole. the key concept "culture" is vaguely defined as the set of relationships between a society's social order and the totality of symbolic forms through which meanings are transmitted (hall, 1977). within this broad conception of culture are placed not only the media but also art, literature, religion, non-verbal and verbal 103 interpersonal communication, clothing, and other expressions of lifer style. this approach begins with the assumption that all cultural items, in the form of media content and social artifacts, contain elements of the processes and ideologies inherent in their creation, which, when apprehended by the analyst, can serve as interpretive tools. mass media artifacts are viewed as "texts" and are analyzed by "reading off" their multiple levels of social meanings and placing these meanings in the general context of societal relations and organization. these descriptions of core assumptions and appropriate methods are vexingly vague and proponents of the cultural studies approach have written little in a less idiosyncratic vocabulary which might enlighten those outside the paradigm. this kind of interpretation is based on a naive leap of faith that makes an analogy between contemporary cultural products and class structure in capitalist society. stuart hall (1977) , the principal adherent to the cultural studies approach, borrows the concept of 'hegemony' from gramsci to convey a similar argument that cultural and media products are part of the ideological superstructure resting on society's economic base. hegemony represents an artificially imposed social order based on moral and intellectual justifications diffused throughout all classes to conceal domination and shape all aspects of social life. in hall's statement, hegemony is said to exist when the ruling class not only exercises the power to coerce but also wins the consent of the other classes. thus hegemony is created and maintained through both force and consent. in a liberal capitalist 104 state, consent is usually the predominant mode of hegemonic relations but it is said to operate as well behind an "armour of coercion". hegemony is therefore not simply an outcome of economic relations but involves the organization of superstructural relations in the state and polity and, in the form of ideological influence, in the mass media. the obvious issue which this approach is attached to but never directly addresses is the conditions under which superstructural relations, especially ideological domination through the media, are determined by class relations. the various proponents of this "theory of ideology" invoke but never go beyond marx's famous dictum that "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas", never demonstrating how ideological domination by the capitalist class is created and sustained. this is not an explanation; rather it is a question to be investigated. at the empirical level, it is necessary to find evidence of how hegemoney is actually reproduced through the decisions of media personnel, through media content, and through consumer and political behaviour. interpretive analysis from cultural texts, no matter how ingenious or suggestive, are no substitute for this kind of systematic inquiry. another crucial problem in employing this approach in mass media studies is the irreconcilability of textual and empirical sociological methodologies. however tenuous one finds the above positions, they raise, in one form or another, the major issues in the contemporary critique of modern media. yet these positions do not yield much in the way of sociological insight, for devoid of an empirical base they tell us 105 nothing of the conditions under which the mass media have been organized, why the range of content offerings is so predictable, and what specific effects , if any, the media have on social structure. in isolation, without empirical substantiation, these positions have litte relevance as the foundations for an informed sociological theory of mass communications. they must be integrated into and assessed in terms of what is known about mass media in modern life. with that aim in mind, the following section will discuss the most prominent research areas in mass communications studies, the social effects tradition and the inquiries into media ownership and control, and, finally, the more recent linking of power and stratification studies with media analysis. ii . what we know; some major themes in the empirical tradition a. the context of evidence about media's societal impact the various theoretical approaches have all asserted in one form or another the power of the mass media over their audiences. the question now is whether this argument can be substantiated empirically. indeed, the findings while vast are also conflicting as a number of excellent summaries of social effects research reveals (see, e.g., mcquail, 1976; halloran, 1970; hovland, 1954; klapper, 1960). as a point of departure, it should be kept in mind that the assumption of media determinism has enjoyed a long historical primacy. long before scientific techniques were applied to questions of media's societal impact, it was generally taken as axiomatic that the emerging mass press and infant film and broadcast industries would be as 106 politically and socially powerful as any historical forms of persuasion. because of this widespread belief, the earliest research efforts on modern media's effects were formulated and conducted with high expectations of the media's impact which were not always borne out. this accounts for what mcquail observes as an evolving sequence of thinking "...in which the media have been viewed first as highly effective and irresistible, subsequently relatively powerless and latterly re-evaluated as having a. real potential for achieving effects" (mcquail, 1976:58). in fact, the post-war generation of media effects studies can be labelled the "no-effects" view. the lazarsfeld et. al. classic inquiry into the media and voting behaviour (1948) , for example, concluded that few people changed their opinions of candidates during an election and, rather than media coverage, discussion with others was the primary cause of this change. more recent studies of election campaigns are believed to confirm this view that the media, especially the press, make little impact on forming voting behaviour or instigating political change -(berelson, et. al. , 1954; lang and lang, 1959; 1968a, b) . klapper's influential summary of this first generation of effects literature modifies the finding of "no effects" to that of "partial effects", concluding that the media seldom convert or overtly manipulate audiences but certainly reinforce and confirm their existing opinions and beliefs. klapper's conclusion, while influential, has been misleadingly interpreted. reviewers have tended to overgeneralize media's indeterminancy and ignored the specific conditions 107 under which significant media effects can be isolated. in returning to this literature, it is possible to draw out a series of confirmed propositions about media effects which can lead to further inquiries. this cere body of findings, however suggestive, is in need of codification and considerable refinement. unfortunately the social effects tradition has often ignored the early foundation. consequently, contemporary research has not added neasureably to our understanding of media's societal impact. a good deal of the more recent research on press effectiveness falls within the same functionalist-behaviourist tradition discussed above and is subject to the same difficulties. the primary foci of the contemporary inquiries are personal influence and the media, political effects and the information and agenda-setting functions. although this research on press effects is extensive, some specific features of the press have been left unexplored. this approach because of its disinterest in content analysis and in questions of ownership and control largely ignores the partisan positions adopted by newspapers and broadcast stations and their impact on political behaviour. also, the role of non-news entertainment content in providing definitions of political situations has seldom been subjected to rigorous empirical scrutiny. the field seems stagnated by the narrow definition of political activity as "voting behaviour". only a few among the recent studies have examined the media's role in shaping definitions of broader political situations. al ] in all, the recent contributions to press effects research 108 seem to suggest that news media do play a significant role in shaping political behaviour. this is by no means the whole picture of media's societal impact nor does it indicate the state of effects research in general . sixty percent of all the studies dealing with media and human behaviour address the nature and effects of children's exposure to the entertainment content of television. most of these studies draw their theoretical foundations from the various modelling, social learning and interactionist perspectives. this body of literature has tried to establish a causal connection between television exposure and aggressive behaviour. taken as a whole, it is suggestive and may contribute to the erosion of the prevailing "no-effects conclusion on the issue of media and societal impact. however, the many inconsistencies in the literature cannot be overlooked. a variety of theoretical and methodological difficulties can be identified including design errors and unfounded or over-enthusiastic inferences from the individual to the societal level as well as researcher and experimenter bias. as it stands, the social effects research, whether it addresses political behaviour or the broad issues of socialization, has not resulted in an accumulation of knowledge about the societal impact of media content. the major deficiencies stem from methodological and theoretical oversights. first, the literature is flawed by a lack of clear definitions or by restricted definitions for key 109 variables. for example, political behaviour is most often conceptualized as party affiliation or voting behaviour, ignoring media portrayal of non-electoral but politically salient issues such as labour unrest, race relations, economic matters and so on. also, the research preoccupation with children and anti-social behaviour has done surprisingly little to clarify the operationalization of key terms like violent behaviour, aggression and heavy viewing. secondly, the relationship between media effects and stratification has not been adequately explored. again this is a direct result of mainstream sociology's neglect of mass communication research. further investigations are needed to determine the extent to which racial , cultural , sex and class differences are related to differences first in patterns of media exposure and second in social behavioural outcomes. another area of concern is the extent to which the socialization agents of family, school, workplace, peer groups, etc., affect the perception of media images, in news as well as entertainment content. more attention needs to be directed toward the extent of differential effectiveness of newspapers over broadcast media. finally, the social effects literature suffers from an extreme abstracted empiricism. despite the current theoretical emphasis on legitimation, integration, social control and the like in theoretical sociology, the social effects studies remain glued to the narrow concerns of voting and aggressive behaviour. the effects tradition provides us with the most striking example of the gap between theory and research in media analyses. 110 b. the context of evidence about onwership and control of media the inquiry into media ownership and control is possibly the one empirical tradition in mass media studies that is explictly related to a theoretical tradition in sociology. this tradition is within the confines of the sociology of power and stratification and tends to characterize the media's position of power in industrial societies in terms of pluralist or elite frameworks. in very recent years, a trend toward more explicitly marxist analyses can be traced (e.q., murdock and golding 1973; 1977) but relatively few empirical studies can rightly claim a marxist pedigree. when applied to mass media, the power and stratification frameworks shift the focus from the individual level of analysis of the behavioural effects tradition to a more macroscopic concern with the place of mass media in th" social structure, especially their role in the organization of social, political and economic relations. the pluralist approach posits the existence of socially responsible yet privately-owned and autonomous media industries. the argument is often suggested that the "free press" model does not imply freedom to be objective but simply freedom from any outside influence. in this most basic formulation, the model is closest to a pure laissezfaire interpretation of the function of the media. an autonomous media system sets up an open and competitive free market of ideas. the more diversity and competition among media vehicles, it is argued, the more likely the best and most accurate information and ideas will be the most widely assimilated and accepted. ill the interpretation based on elite theories rejects the pluralist assumptions of media responsibility and autonomy. instead, it posits that competing sets of elites attempt to legitimate their power through increasing concentration of control over society's major institutions, including mass media. indeed, the media are viewed as one of the most powerful tools for maintaining and legitimating the existing structure of social relations. although a problematic inferential leap is made from the analysis of elite control of media to the allegation of specific ideological consequences, the actual empirical inquiries in the elite tradition are usually concerned with the patterns of media ownership, whether economic and informal contacts link media personnel with government or other business elites (see, e.g., porter, 1965; clement, 1973; fournier, 1976; nixon, 1966; baer et. al. , 1974) . the pluralist and elite approaches have been applied to the empirical analysis of media ownership and control in several nations. much of the literature is flawed by the assumption that the organizational and economic contexts in which the media operate also imply broad ideological effects on the societal level. the empirical research reveals little relationship between concentration of ownership and media content slant, regardless of the economic and political organization of the nations under study. in the u.s., for example, the research disagrees over the extent of monopoly ownership as well as over the effect of concentration on the media professionals' social responsibility ethic. with regard to the issue of concentration, one student of this trend finds a tendency toward increasing monopolistic 112 control of the local daily press as well as increasing evidence of cross-media ownership (radio-tv-press) (nixon, 1955; nixon and hahn, 1971). little evidence is given, however, to establish the relationship between concentration and owner influence over content. in fact, one study reports little publisher interference under monopolistic conditions (bowers, 1967) . a recent report, in spite of its critical orientation, concluded that owner influence was probably more likely in small independent media since control over the content of chainowned media is usually less directly exercised (murphy, 1974) . a comprehensive review of the current state of knowledge on the relationship between concentration of ownership of american media and content finds almost no evidence of owner influence over the coverage of issues or editorial slant nor any difference between competitive and monopoloy media sectors. in fact, among the u.s. studies, the only evidence of the existence of hegemonic control is stempel's observation that residents in media monopoly towns are less well informed than residents in media competitive regions (stempel , 1973) . the canadian literature on ownership and control is also marred by the problematic inference of ideological effects through owner and managerial collusion. porter, for example, whose own theoretical position derives from both pluralist as well as elite perspectives, argues that the upper class backgrounds of the media elite provide evidence of this group's ability to use media content to legitimate existing class relations and political structures: 113 ...the unifying of value themes is achieved through the control of media of communication and therefore the structure of the ideological system becomes articulated with other systems of power. the ideological system must provide the justification for the economic system, the political system, and so forth, and this it does by attempting to show that the existing arrangements conform with the traditional value system (porter, 1965:460) . however, at the empirical level, porter's method of examining social origins of media personnel is hardly appropriate to his radical assumption of ideological hegemony. although his findings indicate largely upper class british origins of media management, ownership of the media industry is firmly in canadian hands. this leads to further conjecture: ...the absence of foreign control... would suggest that they are not sufficiently profitable to be taken over by foreign investors. it might also suggest a reluctance on the part of canadian owners to sell these properties because they are viewed, not primarily as economic instruments, but as institutions which have a public responsibility (1965:482) . in essence, porter's conclusion falls back on an assumption of autonomous and socially responsible media, which is a much different position from the one he began with. clement's attempt to update porter's analysis of canadian media and to recast it in a more explicitly critical perspective has also been only moderately successful in empirically demonstrating the relationship between media ownership and manipulation (clement, 1973). in addition, his analysis has been criticized for its naive economic determinism, its lack of fit between theory and data, and, recently, from within the critical tradition, for its inattention to non-economic, political and structural factors (see baldwin, 1977). the problematic assumptions of the ownership and 114 control literature on canada are even more suspect when juxtaposed with the results of the empirical research on political coverage by the canadian press. a content analysis of seven newspapers with highly-concentrated ownership established no hint of editorial collusion on the choice of issues, extent of coverage or editorial endorsements (wagenberg and soderlund, 1975) . although both the marxist and the elite perspectives are concerned in varying degrees with the power of the ruling elite to create and maintain ideological hegemony, the latter approach is concerned with the amalgamation and maintenance of bureaucratic power while the former is occupied with the analysis of class relations as they shape the distribution of power in all aspects of social life. when applied to mass media, the marxist, or class model, assumes that both the structure and content of the press and other media are determined by the historically-specific positions of power maintained by different classes. the media are part of the ideological superstructure which rests on the economy's material base. in modern capitalism, the media are the bourgeoisie's principal tools for hegemonic control over the working class. at the empirical level, adherents to the marxist approach do not concern themselves with the type of network analyses of media ownership which typifies the elite orientation. instead, they argue that the functions of the media are determined by the structured patterns of relations between classes rather than by individuals who occupy decisionmaking positions. because of this distinction, marxist media analyses 115 tend to avoid the problematic assumption of conspiratorial personal intervention and manipulation which detracts from even the most elegant studies in the elite tradition. the marxist model instead attempts to demonstrate media's role in creating and sustaining ideological hegemony through purely structural features. consequently, their analyses are historical and focus on horizontal and vertical integration, diversification, the nature of control and the conversion of information into a marketable commodity as well as the ideological and technological transfer from capitalist to peripheral third world countries (see, e.g., murdock and golding, 1973; 1977; golding, 1977; boyd-barrett, 1977; westergaard, 1977; janus, 1977). these pioneering works are suggestive and worthy of wider attention among sociologists operating in a critical tradition. both the social effects and the ownership and control literature, despite uneven evidence, rest on the axiomatic premise of media's broad societal impact, an assumption which has characterized the discipline since the first generation of media research. as the above overview suggests, this position has coloured not only the way in which theoretical questions are posed but also the way in which research is carried out. consequently, the accumulation of knowledge about the media's actual effects has been retarded. of course, there is probably more than some truth to the persistent belief that media programming contributes to a wide range of social behaviour in both children and adults and that the structure of media organizations influences the nature of this content. however, the methods used to investigate these concerns have not 116 proven appropriate to the task. this is precisely where the body of sociological knowledge in such relatively well-developed areas as power and stratification can be of help. ill . what lies ahead: towards a sociology of mass media mass communication, as a social institution, must be viewed in relation to what is known in sociology about the distribution of power and other social resources. in the area of social effects, for example, this strategy would round out the few exploratory attempts to trace media's treatment and impact on minorities and social classes by providing an incorporating framework from the various literatures on socialization, stratification and political behaviour. in the area of ownership and control , the task involves both theoretical and methodological effoics. the arguments that either competitive or monopoly ownership promotes consensus or favours dominant interests cannot be confirmed through the analysis of social origins or through studies of content in isolation. such arguments are based instead on a thesis of "general omission" (see breed, 1958) and would be better approached through an understanding of what is left out of mass media content as well as the economic, legal, political, technological and production constraints on media organizations in relation to the structural features of industrial market economies. analyses of the technological and organizational features of media production (donohew et. al. , 1972; janowitz, 1975; tunstall, 1971; tuchman, 1973) have a place in the general empirical tradition of the sociology of work and, indeed, remembering weber's concern with the 117 rationalization of an increasingly bureaucratic modern press, such inquiries make an important contribution to the literature on the labour process. concern with economic and non-economic structures shaping mass media is relatively undeveloped as a research area but is precipitating some theoretical interest, especially from the neo-marxist writersthis structural orientation is one of central importance to the study of canadian media because it goes beyond the analysis of the functions qua effects of media in a market economy directing needed attention to canada's international economic and political position as well as to the role of federal regulation and the question of public ownership. recent neo-marxist work on the nature of the capitalist state provides the basis for a suitable theoretical framework for such an analysis, especially discussions of the state's "mandate" to create and maintain the conditions of capital accumulation. the relevance of this orientation is in its spelling out of the state's legitimation functions through the analysis of symbols and sources of public support (see, e.g., representative readings in lindberg, et. al . , 1975) . an ideal candidate for such an inquiry is the question of jurisdiction over the cable communications system in canada. * nacro$c"6pio structural orientation would necessarily examine u.s. -canadian political and economic links as well as canadian _ federal and provincial relations and the role of federal regulatory agencies. such an approach conceptualizes the media not simply as a tool of economic and political interests but as an auxilliary of 118 either the economy or the state, depending on historically specific circumstances. in the case of canadian development, at times the economy has influenced the nature of media regulation, as in the case for the creation of the privately-owned television networks, and, at other times, the state in its political legitimacy function has intervened with clear opposition from economic interests, as in the case of establishing canadian content and ownership regulations. this type of orientation breaks out of the "media determinism" which characterizes so much of the discipline and acknowledges that the media, as "mediators", are more acted upon than they are actors. in addition, this approach by focusing on actual relations and policy decisions helps bridge the inferential gap from the structure of media to the ideological superstructure. this problem, as we have seen, flaws a great deal of the research, whether it be the behavioural approach to media's societal effects, content analysis or inquiries into the social origins and socialization of media management and personnel. the framework for the establishment of media sociology within the boundaries of the power and stratification tradition is hinted at in the work of marx, weber, and more recently, in statements by miliband, westergaard and most forcibly by murdock and golding: ...the sociological study of mass communications should not be seen as a self -contained professional specialism, and still less as one element in a grand multi-disciplinary approach to "communications", but as a part of an overall study of social and cultural reproduction which has traditionally occupied the heartland of sociological analysis. 119 in the case of advanced capitalist societies of north america and western europe with which we are specifically concerned here, this means that the sociology of mass communications should derive from, and feed into, the continuing debate on the nature and persistence of class stratification. more particularly, media sociology should address itself to the central problem of explaining how radical inequalities in the distribution of rewards come to be presented as natural and inevitable and are understood as such by those who benefit least from this distribution. in short, our argument is that media studies should be incorporated into the wider study of stratification and legitimation (murdock and golding, 1977: 12). what constitutes the basic assumptions of such an orientation and where does it lead the sociologist? the obvious point of departure is the realization that inequality in the distribution of social resources is a fundamental yet variable feature of modern societies. a media sociology would necessarily focus on the relationship between the unequal distribution of control over mass communications, at the levels of ownership and production of content, and the wider societal patterns of inequality. at the national level, this would center on the media's relationship to both the economy and the state, especially the media's functions in the market system and the process of legitimation through which structures of inequality are maintained and reproduced. at the international level, this form of media sociology would address the transfer of technology and programming between industrialized and developing countries as an indication of unequal exchange between center and periphery in a system of global stratification. 120 the advantage of this orientation lies in its attempt to link theoretically what has only been implicit in traditional approaches, the connection between media as an industry and as a transmitter of ideology. this synthesis is never achieved in the prevailing lasswellian paradigm which compartmentalizes source, channel and receiver effects. as an industry, the media in modern market systems are subject to a variety of economic, political and legal constraints, not the least of which is the maximization of profit subject to strict government regulation. as a transmitter of values, the media serve as mediators and translators among social groups as well as agents of legitimation for the existing social order. when viewed in relation to stratification and class structure, the material base and the ideological functions of the media merge. although this link between mass communications and social class has been the focus of recent inquiries, these isolated empirical findings on sex role portrayal, media use by the urban poor and ethnic stereotyping await integration into an holistic perspective. a power and stratification orientation not only shifts attention from the fruitless search after short-term media effects but directly links communications systems with' the other social institutions and agencies which channel social groups through the stratification system. this orientation calls for a new focus on the roles assumed by the family, the educational and the occupational agencies in the distribution of social knowledge and resources and the acquisition of cultural and social skills through the mass media. finally, the theoretical concern with legitimation would inevitably lead to queries of the nature of the relationship between media and the fostering or curbing of social dissent and political movements. 121 contrary to the popular verdict, mass media studies suffer neither from a paucity of theory nor from empirical overkill. they are flawed primarily because of their lack of direction and a unifying theme. thus this essay concludes with a call to bring mass media back into the mainstream of sociological inquiry. this central focus of sociology is the study of power and stratification. the specification of the nature of the link between media systems and the distribution of power and social resources may finally provide the appropriate entree for situating the study of mass communications in sociology proper. this is not a novel strategy. indeed, similar approaches are currently advocated for the incorporation of schooling research and studies of deviance. this orientation poses important yet relatively unexplored questions, the most general of which include defining media as a system of production, the analysis of its specialized occupations and internal power structure as well as its relation to class structure through its ideological and cultural functions. by focusing on these features of media in society we may at last develop a sociology of mass communications, one that provides the missing links between what we "say", in the form of our theorizing about the media, and what we "know", in the form of the enormous body of empirical findings on the nature and role of mass communication in contemporary society. department of sociology rosary college river forest, 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(ed.) , 1970 the effect *; of television. london: panther. hovland, c. 1954 "effects of the mass media of communications." in: g. lindzey (ed.) handbook of social psychology. vol. ii. cambridge, mass.: addison-wesley, 1062-1103. janowitz, m 1952 the community press in an urban setting. chicago: university of chicago press 1975 "professionals models in journalism." journalism quarterly . vol. 52, no. 4 . 618-626 124 janus, n. 1977 "research on sex roles in the mass media: toward a critical approach." the insurgent sociologist . vol. vii, no. 1 (summer) ,19-31. katz, e., m. gurevitch and h. haas 1973 "on the use of the mass media for important things." american sociological review. no. 38, 164-181. klapper, j. 1960 the effects of mass communication. n.y.: free press. lang, k. and g. lang 1959 the mass media and voting. n.y.: free press. 1968a politics and television. chicago: quadrangle books. 1968b voting and nonvoting. waltham, mass.: blaisdell publishing. lasswell, h. 1948 "the structure and function of communication in society." in: l. bryson (ed.). the communication of ideas. n.y.: harper lazarsfeld p., b. berelson and h. gaudet 1948 the people's choice. n.y.: columbia university press. lazarsfeld p. and r. merton 1948 "mass communication, popular taste and organized social action." in: l. bryson (ed.) . thp fnimmim cation of ideas. n.y.: harper. lindberg, l, a. alford, c. crouch and c. offe 1975 stress and contradiction in modern capitalism. lexington: heath. mayer, j. 1951 max weber and german politics. n.y.: faber. mccombs, m. 1967 "editorial endorsements: a study of influence." journalism quarterly, no. 44, 545-48. mcluhan, m. 1964 understanding media: the extensions of man. n.y.: mcgraw-hill. mcquail, d. 1976 review of sociological writing on the press. royal commission on the press. london: her majesty's stationery office. miliband, r. 1969 the state in capitalist society. london: quartet books. 125 mills, c. 1956 the power elite. n.y.: oxford university press. murdock, g. and p. golding 1973 "towards a political economy of mass communication." in: r. miliband and j. saville (eds.). the socialist register. london. 1977 "capitalism, communication and class relations." in: j. curran, m. gurevitch and j. woollacott (eds.). mass communication and society. london: edward arnold, 12-44. murphy, d. 1974 "the unfreedom of the local press." new society. vol. 19, no. 17. nixon, r. 1955 "trends in daily newspaper ownership since 1945." journalism quarterly . no. 32, 3-14. 1966 "trends in u.s. newspaper ownership concentration with competition." gazette. vol. xiv. no. 3, 181-93. nixon, r., and t. hahn 1971 "concentration of press ownership: a comparison of 32 countries." journalism quarterly . 48, 5-16. porter, j. 1965 the vertical mosaic . toronto: university of toronto press. 1972 "the ideological system: the mass media. in: b. singer (ed.) . communications in canadian society . toronto: copp clark, 119-162. singer, b. 1973 "mass society, mass media and the transformation of minority identity." british journal of sociologyno. 24, 140-150. stempel, g. 1973 "effects on performance of a cross-media monopoly." journalism monographs . (june) . tuchman, g. 1973 "making news by doing kork: routinizing the unexpected." american journal of sociology. vol. 79, 110-31. tunstall, j. 1971 journalists at work. london: constable. 126 kagenberg, p.., and w. soderlung 1975 "the influence of chain ownership on editorial comment in canada." journalism quarterly, no. 52, 93-98. kestergaard, j. 1977 "power, class and the media." in: j. curran, m. gurevitch and j. woollacott (eds.). mass communication and society. london: edward arnold, 95-116. williams, r. 1973 "base and superstructure in marxist cultural theory." npw t/>ft review. no. 82 (nov. -dec), 3-16. 1974 television: technology and cultural form._ london: fontana books 1977 marxism and literature. oxford: oxford university press. wright, c. 1960 "functional analysis and mass communication." public opinion quarterly. no. 24. — 1975 mass communication: a sociological perspective. n.y. : random house (2nd edition). 127 book review listen anarchist!: murray bookchin's defence of orthodoxy murray bookchin. social anarchism or lifestyle anarchism: an unbridgeable chasm. edinburgh: ak press, 1995, 86pp. jeffrey shantz unless i am gravely mistaken—as i hope i am—the revolutionary and social goals of anarchism are suffering a far-reaching erosion to a point where the word anarchy will become part of the chic bourgeois vocabulary of the coming century—naughty, rebellious, insouciant, but deliciously safe (bookchin, 1995: 3). a spectre is haunting social theory—the spectre of anarchism. anarchist politics have enjoyed, since the early 1990s, something of a renaissance. while it certainly cannot be said that all the old powers have entered into a holy alliance to exorcize this spectre, it would appear that anarchism is back on the agenda. making matters even more interesting, that which currently passes for anarchism often materializes in strange, unrecognizable forms bearing little obvious resemblance to what is traditionally known as anarchism, those historic movements against coercive authority, hierarchy and injustice in their many guises. it is precisely the novelty of contemporary anarchism which has prompted the writing of bookchin's text. penned by perhaps the most significant and widely read anarchist thinker of the post-ww ii era, social anarchism or lifestyle anarchism has exploded like a bomb amongst the anaralternate routes, volume 14, 1997 ^^ chist communities of north america, becoming one of the most controversial works in a tradition of controversial literature. more ink has been spilled responding to this slim volume than any other anarchist book in recent memory (including hakim bey's contentious temporary autonomous zone (1991)). that most of the responses have consisted of angry denunciations of bookchin, going so far as to question his character and motive, suggests that the work has struck a very raw nerve. in his introductory chapter, "a note to the reader," bookchin situates his book as a response to "the fact that anarchism stands at a turning point in its long and turbulent history" (1). for bookchin, however, this turning point is not one which promises renewal as some have celebrated. rather, anarchism now finds itself at a day of reckoning because contemporary anarchists have forsaken the revolutionary tradition of anarchism, preferring to become just another bohemian subculture with no interest in confronting the powers of state and capital. bookchin ^^ suggests that contemporary anarchism represents a fatal retreat from the social concerns (and communal politics) of classical anarchism into episodic adventurism and a decadent egoism. this unfortunate transformation threatens to make anarchism irrelevant at precisely the moment when it is most needed as a counterforce to globalization and the social dislocations engendered by neoliberal policies. through the book's two chapters, "social anarchism or lifestyle anarchism" and "the left that was: a personal reflection," bookchin offers his meditations on what has gone wrong with anarchism as he sees it and how anarchists might return to the social roots of their past glories. the book's first and principal essay "social anarchism or lifestyle anarchism" consists of an extended polemic against the main theoretical proponents of lifestyle anarchism. the essay provides a valuable survey of trends within contemporary anarchist thought. bookchin identifies four main streams of lifestyle anarchism: "individualist anarchism," "mystical or irrational ist anarchism," "anti-technologism" and "neo-primitivism." coming under particular scrutiny are the diverse works of l. susan brown (1993) (individualism), hakim bey and his notion of temporary autonomous zones (1991) (mysticism), and john zerzan ((1994), neo-primitivist theorist and author of future primitive. bookchin also manages to single out for condemnation the editors and writers of the fifth estate and anarchy magazines, the most influential anarchist periodicals (and ironically organized as collectives). this section is worthwhile reading for sociologists and social theorists seeking a basic (though by no means friendly) introduction to major debates and initiatives currently engaged within anarchist thought. those pondering the prospects for social movements in a postmodern age will find bookchin's harsh characterization of anarchy a provocative contribution to current discussions. bookchin recognizes that the history of anarchism has always expressed a tension between a personalistic commitment (emphasizing individual autonomy,) and a collectivist commitment (emphasizing social freedoms). the author illustrates that ffy with the advent of anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-communism at the turn of the twentieth century, individualist anarchism was largely marginalized amidst the emergence of mass workers' movements and the organized power of general strikes. individualist anarchism came to be seen as little more than bohemian exotica, a distinctly petty-bourgeois indulgence characteristic of liberalism rather than anarchism (7). rather than reaching a reconciliation, however, these tendencies have coexisted in constant struggle with either becoming predominant according to context or era. indeed, this tension has been celebrated by some anarchists as evidence of anarchism's pluralism, ideological tolerance and creativity (4). for bookchin, however, it is the very failure of anarchism to resolve this conflict over the relationship of the individual to the collective which has given rise to the worrisome condition in which he finds contemporary anarchism. now the individualists are back and with a vengeance which threatens to end the anarchist project. what all of the new (but definitely not improved) lifestyle anarchists have in common is that they have given up social analysis in favour of a "trendy" nihilism. in place of any analysis of alienated labour or the workings of the market, anarchists have mystified capitalism into vague abstractions such as "industrial society" or the "megamachine" in which oppression becomes an effect of a decontextualized technology. instead of traditional anarchist concerns with hierarchy, statism and the commodification of everyday life, lifestylists are preoccupied with "autonomy," "primitivism" and "personal insurrection." for lifestylists, "[h]istory and civilization consist of nothing but a descent into the inauthenticity of 'industrial society'" (50). the return to "authenticity," now anarchism's motive force, is driven by intuition and instinct rather than by analysis and reason. the turn towards the "irrational" means that anarchists have given away the tools needed to dismantle neoliberalism. this leads to bookchin's angry conclusion that lifestyle anarchism is not anff% archist at all and has no legitimate claims to the courageous heritage of the social anarchists who too often paid for their convictions and commitment to social transformation with their lives. bookchin derides the "polymorphous concepts of resistance" and "theoretical pluralism" of individualist anarchism. instead he proposes a "democratic communal ism" in which anarchism is conceived as "a majoritarian administration of the public sphere" (57). his vision of anarchy allows for the "rule" of the majority and nonconsensual decisions. this seems a step backwards for anarchist conceptions of democracy. it does not require much imagination to envision the possibly authoritarian implications of bookchin's communalism. the second essay, "the left that was: a personal reflection," consists of bookchin's nostalgic trip down memory lane to the supposed "good old days" of the political left. the reason for its inclusion along with the main essay appears to be an appeal to anarchists to give up their wayward individualist ways by following the proper path of the socialist which the essay reveals. this essay provides summary statements of leftist conceptions of internationalism, democracy and revolution which guided nineteenth and early-twentieth century resistance to capitalism and which are supposedly lacking from today's "left" (68). bookchin does not limit this discussion to anarchists, but gives significant attention to the works of marx and engels and rosa luxemburg. unfortunately, this account is quite cursory, and will be of little interest to readers with any knowledge of radical politics or history. overall, bookchin fails to understand (or to admit) the complexly nuanced relationship between individualist and socialist tendencies in anarchism, seeing an "unbridgeable chasm" rather than an unavoidable byproduct of the innovation and experimentation of actors seeking to question profoundly all established conventions. it is precisely this creative rethinking of accepted authority from which anarchism has drawn its strength and sustenance, and which has served as the source of its renown. a ^ft glance at most anarchist publications actually shows a lively and engaged mix of "individualist" and "socialist" perspectives. likewise, bookchin chooses to overlook the intermingling of lifestyle and social anarchists in action. for example, the members of the ultra-lifestylist trumbell theater complex in detroit recently affiliated to the syndicalist industrial workers of the world. furhter, one finds lifestyle concerns in the programmatic anarchism of the love and rage federation. bookchin identifies lifestylists as anti-theoretical, yet his book is entirely devoted to dissecting lifestyle theories and theorists. for someone so concerned with impacts upon activists they are noticeably absent from his discussion. bookchin is unable to provide any insights into whether or not anarchists even read hakim bey or l. susan brown. given the "letters" columns of such unrepentant lifestyle "rags" as the fifth estate and anarchy it appears that those who have read them do not much agree with them. certainly bookchin has overstated the threat. this suggests, if anything, that he is out of touch with what anarchists are actually doing. his characterization of lifestylists' commitment to imagination, desire, ecstasy and everday life as apolitical suggests that bookchin is also out of touch with the insights of recent social movements which recognize that the personal is indeed political. additionally, bookchin's claim that, during the heyday of social anarchism, individualists exercised hardly any influence, is undermined if one considers only the case of emma goldman who bookchin himself identifies as an extreme individualist, "a nietzschean" (8). for bookchin the only approved forms of social action seem to be creating organizations and developing programs. cultural activism is missing from his conception of politics. however, some of the most striking acts of lifestyle anarchism—culture jamming, video activism, micro-radiobroadcasts—are profoundly social, directed at disrupting the passifying effects of consumer society and the practices of social produc^ft tion and reproduction. furthermore, it is not even accurate to charge lifestylists with "allowing no room for social institutions, political organizations, and radical programs" (51). rather, lifestylists are concerned with developing new forms which are appropriate to the needs and wishes of contemporary actors. most anarchists are social anarchists who still believe in possibilities for social transformation. bookchin's deep nostalgia for past practices (even failed and discredited ones) again interferes with his understanding of what today's anarchists are trying to accomplish. that bookchin is out of touch with anarchist practice is perhaps most clearly reflected in his assessment that "precisely at a time when mass disillusionment with the state has reached unprecedented proportions, anarchism is in retreat" (59). he even blames this "failure of anarchism" upon "the insularity of lifestyle anarchism" (59). nothing could be further from the truth. anarchism has enjoyed a tremendous comeback recently and the creativity and vibrancy of lifestylists has contributed much to this. finally, a brief note about the style and tone of this book. it is often a chore to find the analysis amidst the invective and snarling personal attacks. in order to benefit from the book, one must read past the vitriol. similarly, bookchin throws around hazy and vague accusations referring to individualists at one moment as petty bourgeois, at others as lumpen. such a loose play of terminology renders the words meaningless beyond being arbitrarily applied epithets. indeed, the contempt with which bookchin treats the authors under consideration must make the reader wary of much of the characterizations. bookchin's book is most interesting and helpful as an introduction to some of the major currents engaged with the re-emergence of anarchist theory. it is important in bringing attention to a traditionally overlooked sector of social movement activism. in this regard, it will prove useful for students of social movements and radical politics. it will furthermore be of interest to sociologists concerned with critically rethinking individual/so^ft ciety relationships and questions of structure and agency. ironically, the lifestylist variants criticized by bookchin sound more compelling, and more liberatory, than the "orthodox anarchism" to which they are counterpoised. in the final analysis, readers interested in contemporary anarchism should pick up the fifth estate, anarchy, love and rage or the libertarian labor review. references. bey, hakim 1991 t.a.z.: the temporary autonomous zone, ontologicalanarchy , poetic terrorism. brooklyn: autonomedia. brown, l. susan. 1993 the politics of individualism: liberalism, liberal feminism and anarchism. montreal: black rose books. zerzan, john 1994 future primitive. brooklyn: autonomedia and anarchy. studies in politicaleconomy: a socialist review an interdisciplinary journal committed to the publication of original work in the various traditions of socialist political economy, contributors to spe seek to understand how political, economic and cultural processes and struggles interact to shape and reshape the conditions of people's lives. established in 1979, spe has become a major forum for people who identify with the struggles to overcome exploitation, exclusion and oppression in canada and abroad. upcomingl§§ue§ examine: the impact of changes in the nature of the workforce the state and regulation, including regulating states left theory and politics for contemporary society subscription nates: 1 year (3 issues): canadian c$40 (regular), c$20 (student, senior and unemployed), c$60 (sustaining), c$75 (institutions) foreign us$40 (regular), us$75 (institutions) 2 years (6 issues): canadian c$60 (regular), $90 (sustainer), c$120 (institutions) foreign us$60, (regular), $90 (sustainer), us$120 (institutions) spe, sr 303, carleton university, 1125 colonel by dr., ottawa, ontario, canada k1s 5b6 www.carleton.ca/spe 322 | climate change and its discontents book review what is critical social research? volume 1. by babak fozooni. england: upfront publishing ltd., 2012. $13.50 us, paper. isbn: 978-1780352794. pages: 1-198. reviewed by mahnam a. malamiry1 carleton university babak fozooni’s book provides a genuine, provocative, and insightful opportunity to have in one book a number of previously published articles in the realms of cinema and iranian social movements; the ideological politics behind encyclopedic discourses on fascism, and engels; and critical social psychology. using such shock-and-awe titles as “fuck critical psychology” and “sand-nigger psychology”, fozooni intentionally disrupts the status quo as it relates to academic thought. this book, both amusing and very serious in its critical analysis, provides the reader with an opportunity to see the potential for social science research to contribute to the emancipation of the working classes. in the preface, fozooni calls for the abolition of the university as a bourgeois institution so as to develop a new academic system that is pro-working class. his criticism of pre-modernist, modernist, and post-modernist theories is embedded within a broader marxist analytical framework. he uses a variety of critical frameworks, including theorists mikhail bakhtin and lev vygotsky (p.56, 76), karl marx (p.132) and, to a lesser extent, michel foucault (p.90). his article on “the politics and parables of encyclopedias” examines the socio-political perspectives and assumptions between the encyclopedia britannica, encyclopedia of marxism, and wikipedia. such an analysis shows how sources of knowledge can be different in their authority and legitimacy, with a surprising conclusion that britannica, due to its positivist epistemology, is the least intellectually trustworthy of the three (p.132). in further elaborating on his examination of the development of progressive social thought, fozooni looks to the cinematic works of magnus hierschfeld and abbas kiarostami. 1 mahnam a. malamiry, m.a. department of law and legal studies, carleton university. i am grateful to babak fozooni and jerusa ali for their comments and feedback on an earlier draft of this review. book review: what is critical social research? | 323 in his work titled “magnus hirschfeld’s contributions to sexual politics”, fozooni examines the pioneering work of hirschfeld on sexual politics and explores how the undermining of hirschfeld during the weimar republic by liberals and social democrats paved the way for a full-scale attack by the nazis after 1933. in a similar examination of cinema, “debunking kiarostami” provides an intimate and in-depth analysis of world-renowned iranian filmmaker abbas kiarostami. this particular text provides a valuable means of contextualizing kiarostami’s politics and philosophy, as well as demonstrating some of his limitations as a filmmaker and the liberal humanist core of his ideology (p.182). in “sand-nigger psychology: towards a critique of the iranian psy-complex”, fozooni engages with nickolas rose’s conception of the psy-complex. this complex is defined to be “a complex of discourses, practices, agents and techniques […] which [provides] the basis for the generalization and development of applied and clinical psychology” in society at large (p.44). fozooni interestingly points out the similarities between “fundamentalist” societies of the us and iran. while the u.s. is more advanced in terms of wealth and geopolitical significance than iran, the two states share similarities as they have officially sanctioned fundamentalist socio-political regimes for the governance of everyday life (p.57). such an assemblage is said to perpetuate a bourgeoisie value system upon the proletarian especially through an authoritative regime that is regulating increasing divisions between the public-private divide, and values between religion and atheism (p.58). fozooni takes an opportunity in “cognitive analytic therapy” (cat) to foreground the genuinely emancipatory vygotskyan and bakhtinian aspects of cat, especially for the working class (p.19-20). the next article shows how socio-political systems of governance dominate iranian family and women. in “iranian women and football”, fozooni explores how surplus value is extracted from the family as a means of development and application of the elite mosque-islamic regime in iran. women therefore come to labour under both cultural repression and economic exploitation (p.90). fozooni’s theoretical framework for analyses in this article is interesting as it predominantly utilizes marx, the pankhursts’ family’s political heritage and bakhtin, along with some secondary foucauldian themes designed to elaborate on the link between family and the mosque as bio-power. fozooni conceptualizes how social movements in iran engage with and resist the dominant islamic discourses of the ruling “bourgeois” elite, and in such a way are not much different than 324 | climate change and its discontents other anti-oppressive social movements around the world (b. fozooni, personal communication, april 16, 2013). fozooni’s ability for critiquing dominant, problematic academic discourses are shown in the next article. “fuck critical psychology!” shows how, as a confirmed speaker at a critical psychology conference, fozooni abruptly changes his presentation in light of his experience during the conference lambasting critical psychology for having become too complacent in the politics of its analyses. fozooni declared that critical psychology was no longer sufficiently representative of the oppressed working classes and thus insufficiently critical. he argues that so-called critical psychology actually perpetuates “bourgeois modes of organizing and communicating” (p.77). he attempts to theorize a radical ‘iranian’ critical psychology so as to challenge the existing iranian psy-complex (p.67-69). there are important methodological considerations, however, that bear further discussion. fozooni sparingly uses foucauldian biopower theory. the reason for this, in his view, is because of the shortcomings and limitations of foucauldian analyses to engage with non-western socio-political systems of governance. fozooni’s theoretical frameworks for analysis are such that they provide a means of understanding iranian social relations, an area that has been relatively under-researched in the critical social sciences. fozooni utilizes marxist and bakhtinian theory as a means of having a more nuanced socio-political analysis of iranian social movements that takes into account not just power relations in a normative, foucauldian sense, but also classist challenges that are profoundly oppressive in the “fascist oriented” islamic regime (b. fozooni, personal communication, april 29, 2013). fozooni predominantly utilizes bakhtin, vygotsky, and marx to critically engage with socio-political systems of oppression in a way that addresses foucauldian analysis’s shortcomings. foucault’s analysis misled him to believe that the islamic revolution of 1979 would be the next evolutionary step in society, as a new “political spirituality” that could be beneficial not only for the middle east but also for europe. foucault kept this belief until he realized, after the revolution, the significant levels of oppression and outright statesanctioned deaths.2 foucault’s inability to adequately engage with the socio-political context in the middle east can be the result of his theories having developed out of european historical and socio-political norms.3 2 afary, j., & anderson, k. b. 2004. the seductions of islamism: revisiting foucault and the iranian revolution. new politics 37(10) 1-10. 3 beukes, j. 2009. hamartia: foucault and iran 1978–1979 (1: introduction and texts)’. hts theological studies, 65(1) 1-15; see also nichols, r. 2010. postcolonial studies and the discourse of foucault: survey of a field of problematization. foucault studies 9 111-144. p.124 book review: what is critical social research? | 325 to transfer such a theoretical framework from its european origin into an iranian realm, without any consideration for the differences that such a transposition brings, is an ineffective means of accurately understanding how socio-political governance occurs. fozooni was aware of such foucauldian limitations in his writing, and chose to utilize more of a marxist-oriented critique in order to better understand the class struggle in iran. this book provides provocative opportunities to re-conceptualize the social sciences, psychology and cinema studies as a means of engagement with socio-political ideologies and iranian relations. the ultimate goal is to foster the development of a critical theoretical framework for alternatives to existing forms of oppression. persons interested in such themes will find this book very valuable. 310 | climate change and its discontents book review false positive: private profit in canada’s medical laboratories by ross sutherland. black point, nova scotia and winnipeg, manitoba: fernwood publishing, 2011. $17.95 cdn., paper. isbn:978-1-55266409-4. pages: 1-135. reviewed by deborah komarnisky1 carleton university ross sutherland provides an intriguing argument exploring the relationship between the use of private for-profit medical laboratories and the erosion of universal access to health care in canada. sutherland questions whether the principle of universality is still a cornerstone in canada’s health care system and whether patient care suffers due to the self-interest of private capital. this book is of interest to anyone concerned about current health care funding and the debates on the privatization of health care in canada. sutherland worked as a home care nurse in eastern ontario. he was part of a home care team that administered intravenous antibiotics to patients. sutherland had daily encounters with private for-profit medical laboratories and found troubling trends within the health care system. private and public health clinics and physicians contract medical laboratory services to private for-profit medical laboratory. the private forprofit medical laboratory receives payment for each sample it tests. tests are performed on a large scale with samples being shipped from various regions to a central location. throughout the book the author argues that private for-profit medical laboratories have infiltrated canada’s health care system. the private for-profit medical laboratories have taken over publicly funded non-profit private and public community based medical laboratories. sutherland argues that there are three main private for-profit medical laboratories, namely lifelab (formally known as mds), canadian medical laboratories (cml) and gamma-dynacare (a subsidiary of laboratory corporation of america). private non-profit medical clinics send samples for testing at what the private for-profit medical labora1 deborah komarnisky is a ma candidate at the department of law and legal studies at carleton university. book review: false positive | 311 tories deem as more affordable rates than rates charged by public nonprofit medical laboratories. blood, tissues and other biological samples are collected at local specimen centres or as sutherland labelled them as “bleeding centres.” next, samples are transported to another location for testing and analysis. once results are available, the results are transmitted to the treating physician who then review the results and transmits them to the patient with treatment options. many of the private for-profit laboratories send blood, tissue and other biological samples to a central location for testing and analysis. transporting the collected samples to a central testing and analyzing location can result in time delays in testing, analysis and, ultimately, treatment for patients. private for-profit laboratories work on volume – the testing and analysis is done at a single location so that the for-profit laboratory only has to hire limited technicians. samples from the different local specimen centres are all shipped to a single centre. the faster samples can be tested and results analyzed, the faster the private for-profit laboratory will be paid. more complicated tests or tests that are less common are not seen as profitable. this delays results and places patient care in jeopardy. sutherland frames his argument by considering the historical development of private for-profit medical laboratories in ontario and throughout canada. sutherland argues that the private for-profit medical laboratories are one trend in a greater erosion of the public non-profit medical system in canada. sutherland continues developing his argument by considering the current use of private for-profit medical laboratories. this shift is seen as indicative of a greater shift in the development of global capital markets and the rise of neo-liberalism. are private for-profit medical laboratories regulated? are private for-profit medical laboratories inspected by health canada or through each province? the development of private for-profit medical laboratories shows the evolution of the private for-profit medical care system. the democratic nature and universality of the health care system is in jeopardy. sutherland argues that the democratic health care system ensures access for all canadians and ensures services are provided universally throughout canada. access to timely medical testing is important to ensure proper medications are given to patients. improper dosage of medications or improper type of medication given to a patient can have dire, and even fatal, consequences for patients. canada’s notion of universality is successfully challenged by sutherland. sutherland also challenges whether canadians have equal access to medical care and through the use of private for-profit medical labo312 | climate change and its discontents ratories. sutherland presents the notion that a democratic public health care system ensures that testing is done in a timely fashion and patient care is of paramount importance. a question to consider is whether the health care of canadians is being compromised by the use of for-profit medical laboratories operating in conjunction with private non-profit health care clinics and public health care clinics. sutherland maintains that the exclusive use of public non-profit organizations is the best way to increase access to medical care, control costs incurred by private forprofit medical care, integrate services, improve quality of healthcare and enhance the democratic control of health care in canada. the question of whether governmental regulation of health care can monitor private for-profit laboratories must be considered when determining the direction of the future of canada’s health care system. sutherland advocates that the social principle of universality cannot be compromised by the lure of profits in health care policy and regulation in canada. sutherland suggests that that the healthcare system in canada has shifted from a democratic patient-centric system to a profit driven neo-liberal system. sutherland leaves us with the question of whether canada’s public health care system can truly be universal if private for-profit medical laboratories are operating and controlling the testing of medical samples across canada. sutherland convincingly advocates that fee-for-service for laboratory services be ended and that canada’s health care system be transformed into a fully integrated public-non-profit system guaranteeing universal access to health care for all canadians. chemins alternatif book review: wally seccombe and d.w. livingstone. "down to earth people": beyond class reductionism and postmodernism. aurora: garamond press, 2000, 134 pp. jeffrey shantz recently there has been much discussion and often acrimonious debate regarding the persistence of class, either as analytical category or as basis for identity, in the social transformations marking the contemporary era of 'postmodernity.' in down to earth people, wally seccombe and d.w. livingstone, both sociologists at the ontario institute for studies in education (oise), seek to move beyond a class centric analysis of group action while maintaining a materialist analysis. while recognizing the limitations of marxist 'class reductionism,' the authors are not prepared to say goodbye to the working class or class struggle as factors of social change as some critics of marxism have done. class is far from dead. as they note, class divisions are still deeply important for understanding contemporary societies. the authors prefer to develop a more integrative and comprehensive analysis of the (re)production of inequality. this volume itself results from two research projects carried out over more than a decade in hamilton, ontario — the "steelworker families project" and the "hamilton families project" and is a reworking of the final chapter of an earlier book based upon these lengthy studies. the authors' research involved extensive interviews, discussions and surveys providing a rich diversity of information. the book begins with a look at economic transformations of the postwar years and their attendant impacts upon working-class families. volume 16, 2000 93 alternate routes especially important was the disruptive shift from the keynesian stabilization of the 1940s1970s to neo-liberal crisis after the recession of the mid-1970s. the steel industry in ontario, like many others, has been hard hit by production changes of the last 20 years. the workforce at stelco was cut by more than half between 1981 and 1992. in 1980, the authors report, local 1005 of the united steelworkers of america was the largest union local in canada with 13205 members. by 1996 the local claimed a membership of 5195. significantly, the authors began their research with steelworkers at the main stelco plant in hamilton (hilton works) at the beginning of this process of change and were able to follow the severe impacts upon workers and their families. the second chapter provides an overview of marxist ideas of collective identity-formation as the authors set their conceptual framework. it replays the famous statement of historical materialism in the german ideology regarding the relationship between being and consciousness. while acknowledging the crucial insights of materialist analysis, especially the convergence of views among people occupying similar contextual positions and the influence of social position upon self-perception, the authors suggest a few amendments, including: causes and effects of collective consciousness are reciprocal; internal relations are as important as external conflict; the importance of accessibility beyond face-toface relations; calculative rationality is culturally specific; affilitiation has emotional as well as economic foundations; and the importance of collective memory and myth. the third chapter, comprising the largest section, includes extracts from the interviews with steelworkers in keeping with the author's view of the primacy of first-hand experience in the formation of people's perspectives. included are profiles of two working-class couples who were interviewed in 1984 and again in 1994. presented are their views on class consciousness, racial and ethnic consciousness, gender consciousness and generational perspectives. these interviews are not cause for much optimism for those seeking progressive signs, especially given the authors' identification of respondents as progressives. most interesting are the reflections on class and working life. highlighted arc changes in workplace technology, the failure of worker participation schemes, longer shifts, job insecurity, scapegoating, sexual harassment and feminism. 94 volume 16, 2000 chemins alternatif each of the interviews express fairly conservative goals of just "getting along" with the bosses. interviewees hold these views not only in regard to themselves but for other workers as in the dispproval expressed over the rights of teachers to strike. interestingly, one of the workers, who held quite negative views of management when first interviewed came to believe in the necessity of worker-management co-operation after he became active with his union. to their credit the authors attempt to understand rather than simply condemn workers' perspectives. for their part they are not at all optimistic that conflict will win out over cooperation in the long run. conservatism is also, and more forcefully, expressed in an underlying racism and a resentment of minorities which emerges in the interviews. this is reflected especially in concerns about affirmative action and in respondents' repeated references to "my country," "other people," supposed minority "crime-waves" and violence, and the notion that "canadians [?] are becoming a minority." as the authors note, none of the respondents show much familiarity or empathy with the conditions experienced by racial or ethnic minorities. there is little sense of solidarity. likewise, respondents express some resentment of feminism and recent gains made by women. as the authors note, none of this is overly surprising in the absence of a more powerful and inclusive working-class movement which might generate solidarity around re-aligned interests and provide an alternative to individualist understandings. alienation and subordination by themselves do not transform into revolutionary consciousness. overall, results of the authors' supplementary survey work suggest that people most typically hold a "mixed class consciousness," supporting capital on certain initiatives while supporting workers on others. while corporate executives show no signs of an oppositional workingclass consciousness, 10% of workers favour an oppositional capitalist consciousness suggesting, not surprisingly, that the capitalist class has a surer sense of its class interests. unfortunately, the authors further note that, for ontario as a whole, capitalist consciousness is twice as pervasive as working-class consciousness. the situation does not improve much if considering unionized workers in hamilton since they are as likely to hold mixed-class views as they are working-class positions. the authors found, interestingly, that workers view society in a tripartite manner, including bosses, workers and the unemployed against volume 16, 2000 9.5 alternate rentes whom they measure their own status and security. thus, workers tend to view themselves as stuck somewhere in the middle. (curiously, the title is taken not from a reference to the workers hut from one worker's comment that most "high class" people are "down to earth" having managed to "work their way up.") we can no longer suppose that one single identity will hecome the axis of decisive social struggle as some marxists expected although during times of conflict a particular identity may come to predominate. subjectivity and personal interests are multiply based, conflicted and often divided, as postmodernists have insisted. however, as seccombe and livingstone remind us, this does not mean that people do not strive to reconcile or integrate these different or discordant identities. the fourth chapter presents the authors' concerns with postmodern theory and their views of a possible synthesis with materialism. seccombe and livingstone view their work as part of an effort of progressive reconstruction, a contribution to a provisional alternative to both class reductionism and postmodernism. the authors refuse to accept any duality between material interest and cultural identity as has marked/ marred recent debates between marxists and postmodernists. careful not to close off channels of communication, the authors seek insights from each which may inform more effective political actions and alternatives. in this an understanding of material circumstances, of political economy, is always important. as the authors note, the "labour market flexibility" advocated by neoliberals is not a flexibility for workers, in terms of allowing them more control over their work, but a flexibility of workers, forcing them to bend to the demands of capital. labour market flexibility for capital always means less flexibility for workers. in the current era of capitalism, production has become socialized as a means of social control, as "lean production" becomes "lean living" and home and family life are forced to adapt to the rhythms, schedules and needs of work. this process has been most fully analyzed by the autonomist marxists such as antonio negri in their theoretical works on "social capital" and the "socialized worker." unfortunately seccombe and livingstone make no mention of autonomist theory in their work, an absence which leaves the analysis under-developed. as negri points out with the emergence of social capital and socialized workers there is no longer an outside to the mode of production. 96 volume 16. 2000 chemins alternatif though their study focuses upon the regularly employed working class, the authors make an important point that analyses need to pay more attention to the non-secured members of the proletariat, those who exist at the periphery of the working class. the fear and insecurity engendered by crisis capitalism is often expressed in anger and resentment of the poor and unemployed. neoliberal parties have manipulated these fears and found a receptive audience among the secured elements of the industrial working class. as the authors note in their conclusion, the distinction between a narrow oppositional consciousness and a broad transformative consciousness (which so preoccupied lenin) remains an important one. any effective resistance to neo-liberal globalization will require strong manifestations of the latter. workers need to forge alliances with the nonsecured proletariat (poor, unemployed, homeless) for there to be any serious alternative to capital. unfortunately the present work concludes that few signs of a transformative class consciousness can be found within the industrial working class of hamilton. this is perhaps reflected in the few pages which seccombe and livingstone give to a discussion of forms of struggle in the current situation. indeed, this short section reads like an attempt to give some consolation over the lack of any apparent resistance. on the whole, there is nothing overly controversial here. down to earth people provides a nice introduction to key tenets of classical marxism, debates around identity-formation, social movement development and contemporary debates in radical theory. it will be of interest to students of working-class history, social movements and political theory. volume 16, 2000 97 alternate routes work in progress the secret musical self: nostalgic reification of music according to adorno mickey vallee this article fails immediately in the following ways: (1) to contextualize adorno's theoretical interpretation of reification since its illumination by lukacs; and (2) to offer an ideological critique of adorno's blatant and sometimes humorous assaults against the various practices of music in modern society. with these failures in mind, however, this article succeeds in the following ways: (1) as a hermeneutic extraction of the concept of reification which adorno rarely makes explicit in his vast musicological writings; and (2) at contextualizing adorno's attacks against music with a more explicit historical accuracy. it is an honour to have this work published by alternate routes, for it serves as a platform for my future research into the concept of reification as it can be applied to music, and the potentials of de-reification that may exist in a musical experience. ideology the purpose of my research is to identify intersections between nostalgia as evoked by music and the process of reification according to adorno. while the subjective content of a nostalgic experience is legitimate according to one's identity and social position, the affective essence of nostalgia as evoked by music is a vehicle of reification to ideological categories of authenticity and tradition, partly responsible for the construction of modern and postmodern social realities. in the context of research i do not reconstruct the nostalgic moment through the rosetinted glasses characteristic of the state itself. rather, here i consider nostalgia as intimately connected with social and technological forces 40 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs responsible for constructing such resultant ideological categories as authenticity and tradition. accordingly, the significance of nostalgia in music as a social construction over the significance of its psychological attributes takes precedent, and the social construction of nostalgia is considered in a material context. the ideological perspective here is not intended to trivialize the necessary human aspects of nostalgia in modern society as i will demonstrate below, psychological and sociological literature argue that nostalgia is a crucial facet of human existence and memory, enabling people to face threats to the continuity of self while maintaining a consistent identity. my intention is to merely allude to the ideological aspects potentially underlying a nostalgic experience, an experience that adorno himself would have considered ideological. that nostalgia is itself such a regressive state and that music is theorized to evoke pre-linguistic signification suggests that the music industry intentionally used nostalgia as a principle compositional method in the process of commodifying music. secret selves nostalgia is an emotional state that is intertwined between emotion, memory, and identity, and is difficult to identify objectively because it is so intensively subjective. it is not a direct psychological referent to the totality of a past experience but a form of fantasizing the positive perspectives of one's self within that experience's context, an allusion to a particular time that resembles and contextualizes the self in the present. according to davis (1979: 34), nostalgia resembles the optimistic fantasy. he states: [while nostalgia resembles the optimistic fantasy] of a better time, it is a time we have already known. it reassures us of past happiness and accomplishment and, since these still remain on deposit, as it were, in the bank of our memory, it simultaneously bestows upon us a certain current worth, however much present circumstances may obscure it or make it suspect. davis argues that by semi-alienating the self from the present nostalgia guarantees the preservation of identity, enabling a person to overvolume 20, 2004 41 alternate routes come present social discontinuities with an adherence to the self s 'superior* ability to survive past experiences nostalgia, in other words, is the optimistic thread of continuity in the sewn fabric of identity. a person recognizes this alienation with optimism because overcoming past stressful situations equates a triumph of the self, which (1) guarantees the continuation of identity, and (2) allows the person to confront discontinuity so that identity may become however necessarily malleable. by focusing so strongly on the self, nostalgia becomes a necessary human function of self-individuation and a cognitive technology for qualifying the self as autonomous and unique. from this emerges what davis (1979: 43) calls the "secret self," which "gives testimony to one's prescience, to a heightened sensitivity and oneness with the deepest impulses of an age." if nostalgia guarantees the survival of the secret self, these secret selves inevitably share experiences with one another to be recontextualized as members of society in presently experienced conscious time, for it is the appreciative stance of the self in confrontation with social adversities and social relationships that will guarantee the survival and preservation of identity. the exposition to another person of the secret self occurs within what davis calls a "nostalgic memory exchange", which exposes "the wonderment of the revelation of how much more alike than different our 'secret' pasts are" so that people experience multiple shared memories "ad infinitum in paradoxical regress" (1979: 43). for the purposes here, nostalgia can be conceived of as a subjective state of awareness that appears as social relationships between people who perceive their interconnecting personal biographies as significant to the state of awareness itself. however, i argue that the nostalgic experience and exchange is a process of reification in which subjects mistake material for social relationships; this is a problematic that has thus far remained unrealized. that the nostalgic exchange is exposed once subjects have realized the base of their experiences occurs through a shared relationship with material reality suggests that such a moment of exchange is reified as a social relationship when it is actually a material one. this is the predisposition which, in my mind, justifies the industrial marxist approach of my research. 42 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs extracting reification front adorno there is perhaps nobody in the history of music studies who considered popular music as blatantly ideological as adorno or who scrutinized with such cynicism. his infamous attacks against the music industry to some may prove he knew very little about the genre, for his generalizations often appear lacking the knowledge of culturally specific improvisational and compositional methods that lend popular music its own dimensions of interest and sophistication. indeed, it would be an expected reaction of open-minded post-structuralists to dismiss adorno as exemplifying elitism, especially in statements expressing his prediction that jazz's decline in popularity will be due to "its own stupidity" (1933: 497). however, adorno's arguments become far less benign and dismissive than immediately perceived because they are legitimated by his anxiety over the perpetuation of fascism, of which he considered many forms of music to be legitimate agents of its potential facilitation. music, according to adorno (1945: 384-86), possesses the potential of perpetuating the fascist state in industrial society by adhering to four general rules: (1) that "art is essentially a force of manipulation" and follows a "set ideological pattern" ; (2) that the guaranteed consumption of standardized commodities "amounts to the line of least resistance against big business"; and (3) that the trend toward collectivism for its own sake exemplified in neo-classical composition (and likely today in postmodern musical references to 'the past') will (4) facilitate the artificial preservation of historical pre-industrial quaintness of life. in general, adorno (1941a: 440-50) regards the genre of popular as characterized by its difference from and opposition to 'serious' music because the former is standardized as a commodity whereas the latter succeeds in transcending its alienated subjectivity by challenging and expanding upon standardized musical practices; popular music is merely valued in terms of its exchange, turned into a thing. assigning music such an exchange-value (what an object's labour is worth in relation to other objects) in place of use-value (what an object's use is worth to the survival of a social group) stems from the marxist concept of material production and the rise of the commodity, for according to marx human history and consciousness is bound with its material context. indeed, according to marx himself (1887: 257), human survival relies on material offered by the earth, for even when we build a table out of wood, "the table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood"; volume 20, 2004 43 alternate routes within a capitalist context, however, the labour invested in the table's construction determines its level of value in relation to other commodities. according to marx, the commodity is a "mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men's labour appear to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as social relations, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour." in other words, the labour invested in the production of an object disappears as it is fetishized with exchange-value, commodified, and existing in social relationships of value with other commodities. as social relationships of labourers themselves are misrecognized within the relationships between things, these things in turn govern the consciousness of the labourer. as marx expands, "the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things" (1887: 258). even the labourer becomes a commodity, for it is the labour that he or she sells which is valued in relation to other commodities, rendering self-perception of value as being that of exchange. ergo, the consequence of this social process of fetishization is that of being governed by commodity with the illusion of your actions and existence resulting from free will and autonomous consciousness; the state of existence as dictated by the relations of material objects remains unrecognized, unconsciously internalized, and perceived as natural. the labourer here indeed undergoes the most dangerous aspect of capitalism, the process of reification, which governs, according to petrovic (1991: 412), "the worker's 'soul', and more broadly, human consciousness." reification, or "the act of transforming human properties, relations and actions into properties, relations and actions of man-produced things which have become independent ... of man and govern his life" (1991: 411), can be understood as the consequence of fetishizing commodities, alienating labourers from each other and from those outside their class. reification is a process that presents alienation as a natural human state while perpetuating the illusion that material relationships are actually social ones, and operate every day. according to adorno, music as a commodity is reified through the technologies that exist in everyday objects such as the phonograph and 44 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs the radio. that these objects are instilled with a magical power over people's consciousness is compelling in adorno's understanding of the phonograph record, which when drained of the illusion as a transcendent cipher of musical experience, appears as a "black pane made of composite mass which these days no longer has its honest name" as a product of human labour. the phonograph record is just one agent of musical reification, for even while it can be considered the "first of the technological artistic inventions," he states: ... it already stems from an era that cynically acknowledges the dominance of things over people through the emancipation of technology from human requirements and human needs and through the presentation of achievements whose significance is not primarily humane; instead the need is initially produced by advertisement, once the thing already exists and is spinning in its own orbit (adorno 1934: 277). the radio, meanwhile, as a commodity guarantees to facilitate the reification of musical processes as being naturally predisposed to technological dissemination, as offering a 'unique' experience to the listener, when in actuality the music is so tailored to the technological parameters of the radio that its authenticity is trivialized. for example, adorno argues (1941b: 252-61) that when a beethoven symphony is mediated through the radio it offers "optimum conditions for retrogressive tendencies in listening" by reducing the intensity, concentration, and spatial uniqueness of symphonic architecture whose purpose is to give rise to a "suspension of time-consciousness" to a trivial mechanization of "empirical time", the technical and sonoral limitations of the radio. for reification to occur, music must sound natural and unobtrusive. all technologies of its mediation, including its composition and distribution, must disappear in the act, presenting music as a natural system of sounds. the very compositional method in popular music is the basis upon which the chain of reification is initiated, according to adorno, by employing formulae that follow the listener's first experiences with music experienced in early childhood; the psychological grip of popular music thrusts the listener into a comfortable state from which escape seems both impossible and undesirable. adorno offers (1941a: 444): volume 20, 2004 45 alternate routes ... popular music is the sum total of all the conventions and material formulaism of music to which [the listener] is accustomed and which he regards as the inherent, simple language of music itself, no matter how late the development might be which produced this natural language. the listener here embodies a state of existence through popular music that appears more optimistic and fantastic than the present, which is evidenced, according to adorno, by the fact that part of popular music's minimum requirement be that it communicates through "baby talk", or "unabating repetition of some particular musical formula comparable to the attitude of a child incessantly uttering the same demand" as well as "the limitation of many melodies to very few tones, comparable to the way in which a small child speaks before he has the full alphabet at his disposal" (1941a: 450). the regression to an optimistic fantasy appears to resemble davis's discussion of nostalgia as a regression into positive perspectives of past experiences. the use of 'children's music' for adorno is an especially important manipulative tool of the music industry because it is children's music that is understood in relatively autonomous melodic units, units which stand on their own or in relation to any permutation of units within the corpus of popular music. when these units are combined, they communicate in such a manner that disallows the listener to perceive a whole musical structure, arguably a child's perspective of the world. adorno argues that inattention to the whole is indicative of the process of reification, where the listener is in fact suffering from regression unable to perceive the alienation of the units when they are entirely substitutable, appearing complex and structurally fixed. reification here, however offensive it may seem in adorno's conception, is achieved because the childlike experience seeps into the listener's unconscious, rendered undetectable in objective reality, and borne by the manufacturing process of the compositional methods of popular music (adorno 1938: 306). further, instrumentation itself is an important medium in popular music for instilling the childlike state. for example, while the abundant ubiquity which adorno sees of guitar, banjo, and accordion is evident of the simplicity required for it to be communicable (whether banjos and accordions were really as common as he claims remains uncited, which 46 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternates is a common problem in adorno's writings), simplicity further has an effect on the complex history of notation: "rationally comprehensible notes are replaced by visual directives, to some extent by musical traffic signals" which "confine themselves to the three tonic major chords and exclude any meaningful harmonic progression" (1938: 307). that music is a form of regression, that this regression is the state within which reification occurs, suggests that adorno's insights into popular music were contingent upon the intentional use of nostalgia in popular music production from the beginnings of the music industry. it should be noted that adorno does not lay any sort of blame on the listener, which may increase for some the opinion that he is patronizing. the rise of capitalist society, according to adorno, resulted largely in a re-entering of dominant beliefs and the centrality of religion was displaced by the logic of capitalism. the ability to sell and buy labour became the medium to retribution and salvation. traditionally, with religious centrality, art was a facilitator of dominant beliefs, but as it lost its religious centre, its central truth value, it was thrown into a "vacuum ready to absorb the arbitrarily superimposed doctrines of totalitarianism", which has further implications. he states: the fact that [the listener] has never been swept away emotionally by the tragic forces of [pre-commodified] music bereaves him somehow of the very life phenomenon of the humane. it is this lack of experience of the imagery of real art, partly substituted and parodied by the ready-made stereotypes of the amusement industry, which is at least one of the formative elements of that cynicism that has finally transformed the germans, beethoven's own people, into hitler's own people. standardization according to adorno, music in the industrial context induces "relaxation because it is patterned and pre-digested" which "serves within the psychological household of the masses to spare them the effort of that participation" thus "permit[ting] an escape from the boredom of mechanized labour" (adorno 1941a: 458). through such musical processes as rhythmic obedience and emotional evocation (more strongly the focus here), popular music reinforces in the former the mechanizavolume 20, 2004 47 alternate routes tion of the labour process, the essence of machinery represented through rhythmic predictability, in the latter, the point of emotional misdirection, where the anxiety over social alienation as produced by capitalist society is displaced by the emotional world uttered by the sentimental cultural expressions in industrial society. on the subject of rhythmic obedience, adorno (1941a: 461) offers this eloquent summary: the cult of the machine which is represented by unabating jazz beats involved a self-renunciation that cannot but take root in the form of a fluctuating uneasiness somewhere in the personality of the obedient. for the machine is an end in itself only under given social conditions where men are appendages of the machines on which they work. the adaptation to machine music necessarily implies a renunciation of one's own human feelings and at the same time a fetishism of the machine that its instrumental character becomes obscured thereby. while rhythmic predictability is arguably reified into a person's consciousness by the material form of muscles and movement, emotion is reified through a form of misdirected fulfillment of wishes. speculative as this may seem, historical research reveals that the music industry's success relied upon the production of sentimental ballads, whose formulaic ingredient, according to shepherd (1982), was the inclusion of a particular emotion, nostalgia. tin pan alley referred to an area of new york city between 28th street and 5 th avenue near union square which employed songwriters and music publishers in the late 19 th century disseminated popular songs on sheet music for vocal and simple instrumental arrangement. because of the intensely hot summers, tin pan alley arrangers were forced to leave open their office windows, out of which bled onto the streets the sounds of their pianos as they sat arranging, which resembled the sound of tin pans clashing together, thus the title of the era. this was a very productive business; harry van tizler, one of these arrangers, wrote 3000 songs in 1 1 years, most of them written in efficient time. charles k. harris, a native of milwaukee, in 1 892 wrote the first popular song, a ballad entitled after the ball, that could arguably be called 48 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs the first 'mass consumed' hit as it sold an astronomical 10 million copies generating $25,000 per week. following the song's initial success harris moved to new york and published compositional methods in his instructional booklet, how to write and sell a popular song, successfully epitomizing the sentimental ballad as "the staple of the popular music industry" (shepherd, 1982: 5). the proven success of the sentimental ballad, according to harris, rested on the criteria that it was written in a 'fashionable musical style' while either (a) appearing topical or (b) appealing to mass emotion, using nostalgia as its platform for emotional evocation. that nostalgia was a common technology in the fabric of american life is further exemplified in key's analysis of stephen foster's compositional methods in his sentimental ballads, which, according to key (1995: 145), achieved a "special resonance" that "beckons to our own more cynical time and becomes a valuable tool for understanding the cultural forces at work in the first century of american national identity." according to key (1995: 145), the national identity appears idealistic in the sentimental ballad. furthermore, it is interesting to note that the sentimental ballad's evocative effects appeal even to those for whom it is under scrupulous analysis. that nostalgia evokes a longing for this idealization was by no means co-incidental to the context in which the sentimental ballad was consumed; the domestic sphere, performed most often by women on the family piano who read sheet music arranged for vocal line and piano accompaniment (vallee, 2002). that sentimental ballads communicated nostalgic affect within the home embodied within consumers the synechdochal nature of both the musical form and the emotion that arose from it, that of living in the present and the past simultaneously; the textual method for ballad construction was to "offer fertile ground on which to express feelings of loss and alienation" while living in the experience of the present, allowing the listener, performer, and (however at a distance) the 'author' to experience simultaneously the "throes of nostalgia" (key, 1995: 149). this was ideal music for domestic consumption, to long for an idealized home while in the presence of the home. according to key, the musical material itself employed within the sentimental ballad had the purpose of being communicable, and therefore functioned properly only by communicating simply and effectively, contingent with adorno's argument that popular music relies on its use volume 20, 2004 49 alternate routes of 'children's musical formulae.' key argues not that the simplicity resembles children's music, but that it resembles the folk-like characteristics of nationalities representing the heterogeneity of 19 th century american heritage. for example, foster's use of step-wise melodies, pentatonic melodies, and clear phrases were symptomatic of the celtic and folk sounds of scottish and english music, suggesting that the celtic sound within the structural formations of music such as foster's would communicate to a listener with ancestry close to the 'home' that was being alluded to far away. according to key (1995: 160), alluding to the past in the context of the present has further implications in foster's use of the chorus: "[t]he last iteration of the chorus brings the past into the present and achieves a nostalgic, rather than dramatic, goal. one might look at this structure as an 'interrupted narrative' where progress is inevitably interrupted by backward glances." such regressive standardization indicates that adorno's speculations are more legitimate than they originally appear. the question of why the music industry considered nostalgia to be a profitable emotion could stand analysis in its own right: the purposeful misdirection of anxiety, the reification of the alienated state of modernism, even the legitimate exchange of musical knowledge through its material realities. however, the use of a positive emotional experience that ensures the survival of the self in an industrial context is likely what adorno would have argued as the purpose of nostalgic evocation. this form of standardization above is not so much an escape as a moment of re-energization that guarantees an optimistic outlook toward the anxieties of present day realities such as alienation and exploitation. the point of the ideological escapism suggested here as socially constructed ideas of authenticity and tradition are symptomatic of the nostalgic experience. this is exemplified in the historical preservation and quaintness of life expressed in neo-classical composition, the context of contemporary historical simulations and the anthropological preservation of musical tradition. authenticity that adorno's critical stance against popular music appears myopic is no surprise as his arguments tend to lack the empirical ground that could otherwise support them. if he seems narrowly focused on the popular music industry in isolation, it should be noted that there is very little 50 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs sacred in adorno's crosshairs which includes many forms of 'classical' music; adorno argues that classical music is equally guilty for causing the regressive state of nostalgia for the purposes of escapism into the ideology of authenticity. the main culprit of such a state, according to adorno, is neo-classicism that attempts to perpetuate illusions of community and folklife. meanwhile, it is the challenging and difficult music of schoenberg and the second viennese school that represents emancipation from the modern ideology. this music in particular subverts the hierarchical musical powers that command music of the neo-classical and popular music tradition. the individual psyche in schoenberg's music, for example, struggles against convention, is isolated, and aware of its own alienation from the mode of production whereas stravinsky attempts a temporal escape from alienation into the quaintness of the past. adorno argues that while schoenberg offers a "serious shock to the listener" in a moment of self-reflexive constitution, stravinsky exemplifies the complete opposite. he states: [stravinsky is] an exact antithesis to the master of schoenberg and his school; here the game is opposed to the absence of illusion; the seductively arbitrary change of masks, whose wearers are consequently identical but empty, is set against responsible dialectics, the substratum of which transforms itself in sudden changes (adorno, 1945: 403). objectivism and its utopian community-based alienation provides for the average listener a temporal sort of revolution that deters their actual ability to execute an emancipation, according to adorno. the people are so entertained by the music of the folk as much as by popular music that they begin to feel disdain for the intellectual, failing to challenge progressive music with ideas but instead dismissing it as nonsense, assuming in a culturally nostalgic moment that beethoven's music must have always been beautiful when in its historical context it was considered at times difficult to follow. neo-classicism stands at an idealistic distance from history, offering the listener a form of culturally dominant memory or, more properly, nostalgia. it is, according to adorno, a technological function which facilitates the notion that 'historical' music is in need of preservation, a preservation that trivializes the history and power of classical music to volume 20, 2004 51 alternate routes the status of knobs and buttons (as mentioned above). under such strict parameters, even the 'mighty' beethoven is subject to commodification: if an early beethoven piano sonata were to be played today as 'freely/ with such arbitrarily improvisational changes, for example, the changes of the basic tempi of individual movement as it was, according to contemporary reports, by beethoven himself at the piano, the apparently authentic manner of interpretation would strike the listener as contradictory to the meaning of the work in the face of the constructive unity of such movements (adorno, 1945: 415). in the 'postmodern' context the preservation of classical music history is a result of conflicting simulations of traditional life contemporaneous in a socially impossible context which manufacturers authenticity and tradition. for example, brennan (1999) argues that a "nostalgic frame of tourism" is responsible for the success of trendy music festivals who choose rustic outdoor settings as their concert venue. at the chamber music festival at washington's olympic peninsula, where the success of chamber music is dependent on the nostalgia for pre-industrial quaintness of life, conflicting narratives guide attendees through a manufactured authenticity of nostalgic experience. according to brennan (1999: 12), "nostalgia and narrative work together with idealized visions of farm life to distinguish people" and "to put some in their places while asserting the superiority of others," thereby constructing a dichotomy between the people who live off the rural land where the festival occurs and the urban people who use the environment as an escape to idealized life. indeed, the attendees, the consumers, are exposed to authentic aspects of rural life, except to the labour of manufacture that remains alienated from them. brennan (1999: 18) states: farming labor is not completely ignored at the festival, for the nostalgic idealization of a farm necessarily includes plowing, milking, and weeding. the audience never actually sees any of this activity occur on the grounds, nor does it ever occur to the extent necessary to maintain an actual 'working' farm. however, the festival's barn, pigs, donkeys, and vegetable garden all suggest that some sort of farming 52 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs takes place. but the labor required to maintain this ideal farm is left out of the nostalgic frame of tourism (emphasis added). the chamber music itself was known to have been played outdoors in such environments as the london pleasure gardens of the 17 th century for aristocratic diversion and pleasure, but on the farm chamber music offers a historical authenticity that conflicts with the reality of farm life. as brennan argues (1999: 21) "the tourist's nostalgic frame, which excludes the actual toil and dirt involved in farming, regards the farm setting as 'right' for classical music because that setting enhances the conceived timeless nature of such music, providing an escape from the noise and work of the city." the alienated nature of this context is further exemplified when local rural residents who curiously invest interest are pitied and scrutinized for lacking the 'proper social etiquette' required for the event. brennan (1999: 14) has a humorous example, where some of these locals: ...walk towards the back of the barn, where a door left unguarded by ushers allows surreptitious access to the concert. i often use it to sneak in and out during the concert. i think, "aha! they must have done this before!" i wonder if they like chamber music. the executive director of the festival, who also owns the farm and usually is onstage with his viola, stops them before they can enter. i observe as he talks to them quietly and as they turn around and walk off the property. the festival director strides towards me, shaking his head and tells me that they had no tickets and couldn't pay for them even if they had wanted to. "they're like donkeys," he says to me, looking from the animals in the pasture to the people walking out of the grounds, "human donkeys." the context is arguably reified through naturalizing traditions that contradict each other and perpetuate the only truly living tradition, that of the class system. as brennan (1999: 26) says: volume 20, 2004 53 alternate routes for many audience members, listening to chamber music in a barn on the olympic peninsula provides an escape from the noise and work of the city. many of the images constructed around the festival speak of an imagined past before one had to commute from a house in the suburbs to a nine-to-five job in an office building in the city. that nostalgia through music is a medium to the ideology of authenticity becomes even more clear upon the examination of how folklorists preserve historical traditions of pre-literate cultures who are feared to be on the brink of 'extinction/ the traditional folklorist's approach has often preserved not a history in the reconstruction of authentic music, but an interpretation of 'tradition,' something that has always been but cannot be identified by written historical record. cassia (2000) argues that as tradition is represented through the selection of texts for preservation, these texts technologize the listener to experience tradition that is, in fact, mediated by the folklorist's interpretations (interpretations, pace criticism, with best intentions). such is the case with folklorists preserving the mediterranean singing practice of ghana, traditionally a form of teasing song performed by men in duel with one another, later replaced with more westernized and passive versions on the topic of cultural history, which was inscribed by the folklorists who wanted to 'save' their tradition from industrialization. today, this calmer culturally preserved musical expression is perceived as authentic exchange of maltese culture. because folklorists considered the teaching songs of ghana as offensive against their mission to preserve cultural continuation and the harmonious survival of identity, they organized festivals in rural areas that (a) depicted the pre-industrial farm life of maltese culture, and (b) asked performers to pick musical themes out of a hat instead of improvising the usual vulgarities at one another. as cassia says, "the subjects of the songs were influenced by images the elite themselves had of the poplu (e.g., spendthrifts, henpecked husbands) according to an agenda unconsciously influenced by their perception of what would amuse the poplu as public spectacle" (2000: 290). indeed, the decision to eliminate the vulgarities from the cultural practices of a people is the decision to provide a history without consequence, guaranteeing cultural survival under superstructural supervision. tradition is, according to cassia (2000: 54 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs 291), "neither self-evident nor transparent. it needs to be identified, packaged, and made the subject of discretion and taste." if tradition and authenticity are ideological, then they are represented in material reality through reified processes, and must, by the rules of nostalgia, express an optimistic sense of the past, a history without consequence, without depravity, for the constitution and preservation of subjective and cultural identity. likewise, if 'tradition' implies continuity, and nostalgia is necessary for the preservation of identity through the subjective and social challenges of discontinuity, then nostalgia appears to be the technologizing medium of tradition. nostalgia here affirms what is natural, in other words, what is reified, and acts as an agent upon human consciousness. ideology revisited pasts are revisited daily, relived through photography, mythology, radio, in bars, at home, with strangers, media, and family. nostalgia is such an important force that it acts as a medium for entire generations to re-experience their collective pasts, and music plays an important role in embodying a person's distance from the past in a moment of positive self-reflection. but tell that to adorno. the ideological aspects of such a positive self-reflection could endure expansion and analysis by anyone interested in the social psychological aspects of nostalgia and reification. this here is merely meant as a brief illumination. it could be said that music continues today to not face up to the challenges of modern society and reification, as 'postmodern' compositions remain unchallenging to ideology making claims for hybridity, thus representing cultural and historical quaintness as ideological. for example, stocken (1989: 536-37) describes this quaintness that exists in postmodern music as motivated "not for the sake of duty to the past, or for historical research, but because in the act of performance, which necessarily exists in the present, the music is able to speak to a modern audience." this alludes to adorno's warnings against the preservation of historical quaintness for its own sake, and for the sake of a guaranteed consumption by a passive audience. as it was the modest and well-intentioned attempt in the composition of neo-classicism and in the preservation of cultural tradition, today the concerns seem to be the temporal visit to the exotic, idealized, and individualized, alluding to the conflicting simulation of tradition in a fruitless search for the authentic. volume 20, 2004 55 alternate routes to turn once again to adorno, what lies at the centre of his idealisms is that auratic art expresses not an intrinsic beauty but an unconscious playing out of social relations. what we hear as beauty is, according to adorno, in actuality kitsch, the contemporary cultural facilitator that assumes the character of a model, or a sketch. it is ideology characterized by being devoid of any kind of significant artistic power. according to adorno (1932: 442): [kitsch] is assigned the task, above all, of eliciting the impression of collective commitment by means of the preservation of old and superannuated formal types; of employing individual means of express—such as romantic harmonies and today, already, impressionist harmonies—at a moment when they have come loose from their original formal contexts and can circulate like a kind of musical small change; of utilizing melodic arcs that still bear traces of their former emotional significance conventionally, as mere phrases. a philosophy of truth lies at the centre of ideal music, expresses an awareness of its socially constituted self and the problems associated, and adorno would argue that industrial musical production is not philosophical but ideological, as it is a discursive category of entertainment. music, according to adorno, in the humanistic context, operates to its powerful potential only when associated with the expression of truth— a rational logic underlies the music of enlightenment that also underlies the positivistic quest for rationality and progress. in the industrial era, however, through mass mediated dissemination of multiple conflicting musical realities presented as authentic and traditional, the logic of musical production only benefits the preservation of commodification. music serves as an escape from, as opposed to an understanding of, social reality and is, indeed according to adorno, a force of social control it is "what makes for fascism." i hope to have conveyed that while nostalgia is a legitimate form of human experience, the music industry historically constructed emotional subjectivities with precise compositional methods: as music is theoretically a form of regression itself, its coupling with nostalgia creates a dangerous situation that alienates the listener from social realities and 56 volume 20. 2004 chemins alternatifs relations. not to make nostalgia a troubling experience for those who consider themselves outside of ideology's grasp, but perhaps now some nostalgic experiences will have greater significance. as sir paul mccartney once said, "yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away." references cited adorno, theodor (1932). "kitsch," in theodor adorno: essays on music, edited by richard leppert and translated by susan h. gillespie (2002). berkeley: university of california press, pp. 501-505. —.(1933). "farewell to jazz", in essays on music, pp. 496-500. — . (1934). "the form of the phonograph record," in essays on music, pp. 277-282 — . (1945). "what national socialism has done to the arts," in essays on music, pp. 373-390. — . (1941a). "on popular music [with the assistance of george simpson]," in essays on music, pp. 437-469. —.(1941b). "the radio symphony," in essays on music, pp. 251-270. — . (1938). "on the fetish-character in music and the regression of listening," in .essays on music, pp. 288-317. brennan, vicki l. (1999). "chamber music in the barn: tourism, nostalgia, and the reproduction of social class," in the world of music, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 11-29. cassia, paul sant (2000). "exoticising discoveries and extraordinary experiences: traditional music, modernity, and nostalgia in malta and other mediterranean societies," in ethnomusicology, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 281-301. davis, fred (1979). yearning for yesterday: a sociology of nostalgia. new york: free press. key, susan (1995). "sound and sentimentality: nostalgia in the songs of stephen foster," in american music, summer, pp. 139-160. volume 20, 2004 57 alternate routes mane, karl (1887). "the fetishism of commodities and the secret thereof," in sociological thought: beyond eurocentric theory', edited by nahla abdo (1996). toronto: canadian scholars' press, pp. 256-265. petrovic, gajo (1991). "reification," in dictionary of marxist thought, edited by tom bottomore. oxford: blackwell publishers, pp. 41 1-413. shepherd, john (1982). tin pan alley. cambridge: polity press. stocken, frederick (1989). "musical post-modernism without nostalgia," in the musical times, vol. 130, no. 1759, pp. 536-537. vallee, mickey (2002). the piano as domestic technology: an interpretive history of the canadian piano industry, ca. 1880-1920. master's research essay: canadian studies, carleton university. volume 20. 2004 276 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism book review broke but unbroken: grassroots social movements and their radical solutions to poverty by augusta dwyer. winnipeg: fernwood publishing, 2011. $19.95 cad paperback. isbn: 9781552664063. pages: 1,169. reviewed by sabrina fernandes1 in broke but unbroken, augusta dwyer uses journalistic narratives to describe and examine stories of struggle, despair and success about four social movements: the landless rural workers movement (mst) in brazil, the peasant union of indonesia (spi), the indian alliance, and argentina’s national movement of factories recovered by workers (mnfrt). the title term “broke but unbroken” provides the synthesis of what the book sets out to do: identify the intersections of hopelessness and hope where grassroots social movements concentrate their efforts on diminishing poverty in a more sustainable and effective way than governments or aid institutions. by collecting personal anecdotes and situating them in the broader social and political context of social movement struggle against capitalism and globalization within their countries, she connects the four movements as they work towards what dwyer refers as imagining grassroots solutions to their daily struggle while promoting sustainable alternatives to problems created from local and global sources as a way to fight poverty rather than simply coping with it. a major theme throughout the book is how the movements are reconfiguring the way poverty has been approached by policymakers and aid institutions. dwyer emphasizes that the tactics of grassroots social movements are often misunderstood or misrepresented because of the way western society has been shaped to think about poverty: as something so complex only elite experts from government or global institutions can manage it. in fact, grassroots tactics are perceived as out of the ordinary because they combine methods of protest and resistance with the search for and implementation of sustainable solutions. one of the 1 sabrina fernandes is currently a ph.d. candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton univeristy. her research interests include brazilian politics, development and underdevelopment, gender issues, and education. book review: broke but unbroken | 277 ways this is done is through decentralized/horizontal decision-making, to which the author credits many of the success stories experienced by the movements. for the mst, decentralized decisions have been fundamental to the maintenance of such a diverse and widespread movement. the support for organic farming, for example, is a solution from below that has enabled mst farmers to keep afloat through small-scale organic production while avoiding the replication of the unsustainable industrial agricultural system they fight against. it is “production based on our values,” one member says in reference to the rejection of chemical pesticides and fertilizers while ensuring that members can make a living from farming with fair prices and distribution of land and resources. this is also reflected in the relationship between forest dwellers and the forest in indonesia. education is explored as another common element to grassroots movements’ strategies. more often than not, research on grassroots movements highlights how “raising awareness” is a priority but only superficially explores how movements’ organizational structure and their educational strategies are deeply entrenched. dwyer corrects this gap by analysing education as a fundamental strategy of grassroots movements that truly believe in participatory democracy and autonomy. for the mst, education is such an important tool that it has established its own schools, training centres, and universities (p.18). for the spi, the alliance between students and peasants strengthened their cause. in india, former slum dwellers take the role of educators in order to help others make a living and access secure housing (p. 89). for the mnfrt, education means access to training and information so that every worker has the knowledge to run the cooperatives (p.145). the book’s narratives are well analysed in a critique of capitalism and the impact of globalization on people’s right to food, water, housing, and job security are also complemented with secondary literature. these include references made both by dwyer and by the movement members themselves demonstrating how grassroots movements perceive the merging of theory and practice to be essential for the creation of alternatives. this shows how these movements’ strengths go beyond organizational capacity; an argument she notes has been promoted in neoliberal thought to disconnect poverty alleviation from the need to actually transform political and economic systems. she challenges this view by proposing that, for example in the case of peasant movements in brazil and indonesia, “through direct action and the physical taking of land, their members are challenging the definition of empowerment 278 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism that obscures the material basis of power” (p.78). instead of promoting “empowerment” through aid, structural adjustments, and even some forms of microcredit, which the author argues do not always address the root of the problem and fail to take into account particular traits of each society and culture (p. 99), grassroots movements link it to changing mindsets, stronger class-consciousness, and the continuous flow of support that comes from community solidarity. although it is easy for the reader to get lost in the personal anecdotes of movement members, dwyer’s narrative style is effective because it brings a human face back to the understanding of social movements. by shifting power to those telling their own stories, she creates counterframes to the ones promoted by opposing politicians and mainstream media. the book shows how it is in fact the innovation behind the movements’ methods and the way they reflect the consciousness of the millions of people represented that make the movements capable of building resilience even when it is hard to develop solutions to crises. the author demonstrates this through examples of creativity, solidarity and strength when groups find themselves at a critical point; when it is sí o sí (yes or yes), as an argentine factory worker put it. the combination of inventiveness, optimism, and altruism, which dwyer successfully highlights, works because it is so novel and unusual to strategies inherent to capitalist dominance associated with conformism to systematic poverty and inequality that it shakes its structures and creates positive new ways of thinking and producing. these alternatives contrast with traditional policies and government initiatives that the movements claim have not provided a long-term solution but simply a way to “manage their poverty better” (p.99). by presenting four grassroots movements from distinct parts of the world in a unifying way, dwyer shows that, despite their many differences and peculiarities they share similar strategies, visions, and even transnational networks of support. that is mostly because they share a common enemy centered on capitalism and globalization, although it takes many shapes: agribusinesses, hydroelectric dams, mining, colonial states, corruption, perverse laws, and even conservationists. the portrayal of how movements have confronted these forces shows that, in addition to direct action and similar strategies, it may be necessary to negotiate and compromise in order to guarantee a reasonable outcome for the membership. while dwyer shows some of these movements’ successful stories, she poses the question of whether their methods can be replicated and bring about positive returns in places other than book review: broke but unbroken | 279 the countries she explores. by interweaving the stories of other, some smaller, movements, she shows that replication is possible though their success can only be sustainable when shaped towards the need of a wide membership, which emerges when the movement favours ideas from below through horizontal decision-making based on collective needs, autonomy, and the principle of solidarity within grassroots organizing (p.21). but the question remains on whether the changes are sustainable. the author argues that as long as the economic system persists in creating poverty, the poor will keep fighting. the analysis of the cooperatives in argentina demonstrates the constant struggle with cycles of poverty and inequality and how crisis tends to return and create new vulnerabilities requiring movements to maintain their search for sustainable solutions to their problems in a way that prevents community gains from becoming losses. socialism as a life-coherent society | 195 socialism as a life-coherent society jeff noonan1 all varieties of socialism share this trait in common: they are systematic alternatives to capitalism. but why should a systematic alternative to capitalism be necessary? has it not proven to be the most productive economic system in history? has it not created social conditions in which the powers of human imagination, creativity, and scientific understanding have grown to wider scope than in any previous society? has it not enabled human beings to extend their life span and live healthier and more active lives than ever before? has it not proven extraordinarily plastic, able to solve unforeseen problems in ways that its opponents continue to predict that it cannot, thus proving itself superior to any proposed alternative? these are difficult questions that anyone who claims that an alternative is necessary must take seriously. there is little use in denying that one part of honest answers to the foregoing questions is “yes.” no system has proven as productive, has enabled the development of imagination, creativity, and science to as wide a compass, cured more diseases, or proven as adaptable and protean as capitalism. however, since capitalism is not on trial here, but under analysis, more than yes or no answers are permitted. when more complex answers to the questions are proffered, the grounds supporting the need for a systematic alternative which builds upon the real achievements of capitalism become clear. notwithstanding those real achievements, an alternative is ultimately necessary because the social processes through which capitalism reproduces and develops itself are ecologically unsustainable and socially, politically, and culturally contradictory. at the root of capitalism’s unsustainable and contradictory nature is its ruling money-value system. the money-value system reduces the good 1  jeff noonan is professor and head of the department of philosophy at the university of windsor. he is the author of critical humanism and the politics of difference, democratic society and human needs, and materialist ethics and life-value (2012, forthcoming). he can be reached at: jnoonan@uwindsor.ca 196 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times across all dimensions of human life-activity to increasing the moneyvalue available for appropriation by private market agents, rendering the system blind to any harms that it imposes on natural life-support and social life-development systems which are not measurable in moneyvalue terms. beneath the apparent freedom of interest and activity enabled by capitalism lies a structure of social dependence upon possession of money-value for the satisfaction of life’s requirements. peering into this structure of dependence discloses the secret of capitalist unsustainability and contradiction: it systematically confuses life-value with money-value. life-value is that which is instrumentally or intrinsically good for living things. all life-requirement satisfiers, i.e., those resources, institutions, relationships, and practices that enable life to survive, reproduce, and develop, have instrumental life-value (mcmurtry, 1998, 164). the experiences and activities which living things are able to have and realise because life-requirements are satisfied are, in general, intrinsically lifevaluable, the substance of the good life. capitalism does indeed produce instrumental life-value and enable the expression of intrinsic life-value, but in systematically life-incoherent ways. rather than “consistently enabling ecological and human life together,” as a life-coherent society would, capitalism systematically degrades and depletes natural life-support systems at an accelerating pace, deprives those without the money to pay of the means of satisfying their natural and socio-cultural life-requirements, selects for expression and enjoyment only those experiences and activities which are money-valuable, and subjects even those experiences and activities to competitive zero sum games which ensures that the good of some people’s lives is sacrificed for the sake of the good of other people’s lives (mcmurtry, 2011, 4). a socialist alternative to capitalism is necessary because capitalism generates life-crises in the natural and socio-cultural dimensions of life-support and life-development. the warrant and value of this alternative is determined by the extent to which socialism proves capable of solving capitalist life-crises in life-coherent ways. as will become clear, conceiving socialism as a life-coherent society requires important revisions to prevailing interpretations of its traditional justificatory values. capitalist life-incoherence and traditional socialist values there is a large and growing body of socialist literature that focuses on the long-term unsustainability of capitalist society. the main conclusion of this literature is that capitalism is materially irrational because the expansion of money-value it demands contracts the natural system of life-support upon which its existence as a social system depends. as socialism as a life-coherent society | 197 meszaros argues, “the system is and must remain expansion oriented and driven by accumulation. naturally, what is at issue in this regard is not a process designed for ensuring the satisfaction of human need. rather, it is the expansion of capital as an end in itself, serving the preservation of a system which could not survive without consistently asserting its power as an extended mode of reproduction” (meszaros, 2008, 65). this system-need to expand money-capital is the driver of capitalist life-incoherence. the good of the system, ever expanding production of moneycapital, undermines, over the long term, the natural life-support system upon which the system itself depends. as kovel argues, “the [capitalist] imperative to expand continually erodes the edges of ecologies along an ever expanding perimeter, overwhelming or displacing recuperative efforts, and accelerating a cascade of destabilization” (kovel, 2007, p. 51, see also meszaros, 2008, p. 99-100, kovel and lowy, 2011). it is no good to rejoin to worries about long-term consequences that in the long term we are all dead, as keynes said, so that only short and medium term thinking in economics makes sense (keynes, 1924, p. 88). the rejoinder commits a fallacy of composition. it is true that every human individual exists for a fixed period of time, but it does not follow that the species faces the same limits. the species can reproduce itself indefinitely into the future. to the extent that economics focuses on the life of individuals as moments of the open-ended life of the species, long term, life-coherent thinking is required. however, the problem of life-incoherence has not always been recognised in the history of socialist thought. as lebowitz has recently noted, the history of socialism is riven by a tension between productvist and humanist interpretations. “rather than ... focus upon the full development of human potential, ... the dominant conception of socialism in the twentieth century tended to stress the development of the productive forces ... an important part of the socialist vision was lost—human beings at the centre” (lebowitz, 2010, 21). this tension was not invented by twentieth century socialists. it can be found in marx himself who understood the necessity of socialism as arising not from the long-term life-incoherence of capitalist productivity, but from the systematic blockage that capitalist relations of production imposed upon the ability of the productive forces to expand (marx, 1970, 21, marx and engels, 1975, 54-58). while it is true, as john bellamy foster has demonstrated, that marx did not ignore the natural foundations of human life but in fact understood labour as humanity’s metabolism with nature and criticised capitalism for imposing a “metabolic rift” between human beings 198 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times and their natural life-support system, it remains true that marx understood an essential element of socialism to be the unlocking of productive potential suppressed by capitalism (bellamy foster, 2000, p. 141-177). while the historical context in which marx wrote explains his belief that productive force expansion and socialism were essentially connected, in our changed circumstances the opposite relationship is demanded: socialism as a life-coherent society must end the hypertrophied growth of productive forces. if today the viability of the socialist project depends upon rejecting the traditional belief that socialism will be a society of unbounded productivity in favour of the suppressed alternative, socialism as a society with human needs and human capacities at the centre, we must ask in what human needs consist and to what extent and in what directions it is good to develop human capacities. if we start, as materialists must, from the natural basis of human life, then human needs originate in those non-optional physical-organic life-requirements without which biological life is impossible. so much is clear from marx in the german ideology (marx, 1975, p 37). but when we venture beyond the physical-organic bases of life the history of socialist thought loses sight of the essential connection between needs and the range of objective requirements of human life. despite marx’s understanding of real wealth as lying in human needs and capacities, he nowhere provides a criterion to distinguish between social needs which are not directly organic and consumer demands, and in some cases directly conflates needs and consumer demands. the most egregious example of this failure to rigorously distinguish real needs (objective natural and social life-requirements) from consumer demands occurs in wage labour and capital, where marx argues that a house which meets a person’s material need for shelter is enjoyed as such, so long as no one builds a bigger house next door. as soon as that happens, the owner of the smaller house now feels that his modest dwelling shows that “he has only very slight or no demands to make” (marx, 1973, p. 163). yet, this belief that one’s happiness as a human being depends upon ever higher levels of consumption, as opposed to the sufficient satisfaction of one’s real life-requirements, is just the psychology of consumer desire exploited by capitalist advertisers. as i have argued in more detail elsewhere, marx’s failure to define needs as real life-requirements blinds him to the life-destructive implications of the equation of happiness with rising levels of consumption (noonan, 2006, p. 121-130). socialism as a life-coherent society | 199 for the most part this elision has not been challenged by subsequent marxists. neither agnes heller nor ian fraser, who have provided the most detailed studies of marx’s conception of human needs, exposed this conflation of needs and consumer demands (heller, 1976; fraser, 1998). alan gilbert, who grounds his marxist theory of moral realism in human needs, likewise provides no explicit criterion by which objective human life-requirements can be rigorously distinguished from stimulated consumer demands (gilbert, 1982; gilbert, 1986). in the midst of ecological crisis today, this conceptual lacuna can no longer be accepted, as the failure to limit needs to what is universally required by human life to survive and socially develop impedes the formulation of a lifecoherent conception of socialism. sympathetic critics of my position might point to the work of marcuse or, more recently, the work of eco-socialists like joel kovel as having already filled in this lacuna. it is true that marcuse’s conception of “true” and “false” needs in one dimensional man implies that the differentia specifica of true needs is that they are objective life-requirements, but he does not state this criterion explicitly and he provides no systematic account of the limits of our needs (marcuse, 1964, p. 4-5). this failure to distinguish needs as life-requirements from consumer demands persists in the thought even of those socialists who have gone the furthest towards making the implicit life-coherence of the socialist alternative explicit. thus kovel contrasts the capitalist prioritisation of exchange value to the socialist alternative of prioritization of use-value, without noting the obvious, that there are life-destructive use-values that socialism ought not waste resources producing (kovel, 2007, p. 39). kovel does, it is true, argue that a socialist economy ought to produce only those use-values that satisfy human needs, but provides no criterion by which to distinguish need and consumer demand, and at one point conflates needs with advertising-induced addictions. “as capitalism penetrates life-worlds, it alters them in ways that foster its accumulation, chiefly by introducing a sense of dissatisfaction or lack...in this way, children develop such a craving for caffeine-laced sugar-loaded, or artificially sweetened soft drinks that it may be said that they positively need them” (kovel, 2007, p. 53). if one defines needs as life-requirements, then it can never be the case that our addictions are needs. life-requirements are not simply demands for use-values that we lack, they are our actual, positive connection to the natural field of life-support and the social field of lifedevelopment. as such they are our essential guide to the fundamentally practical question of what a life-coherent socialism must produce. if we 200 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times allow that consumer addictions are needs, then we use need in a purely descriptive sense, which then undermines the normative force of the difference between a life-requirement and consumer-demand. an analogous problem applies to the human potential or human capacities that socialism is supposed to better enable. lebowitz’ s most recent defence of socialism contends that “real wealth is the development of human capacities, the development of human potential.”(lebowitz, 2010, p. 43). stated in this unqualified way this position has no answer to the objection that capitalism has developed human potential and capacities better than any alternative, because it again lacks a criterion by which to distinguish life-valuable and life-disvaluable capacities and potentials. surely the capacities of human beings to instrumentally exploit nature have been developed under capitalism, and the potential to invent destructive weapons has been realized to an exquisite degree. are these the potentials and the capacities that lebowitz thinks socialism ought to better develop? clearly not. but when we ask “why not? we do not find the conceptual grounds for a principled answer, even though that answer is vital to explaining and defending the socialist alternative that lebowitiz is attempting to construct. the conceptual basis of that principled answer lies in the idea of life-value, to a more nuanced explanation of which i now turn. socialism, life-value, and life-coherence i noted in the introduction that life-values are either instrumental or intrinsic. instrumental life-values are defined by the range of life-requirements that a given organism must satisfy if it is to survive, develop, and express its vital capacities. human beings share with all other life-forms physical-organic requirements of survival, but our much richer cognitive, imaginative, and practical-creative capacities entail socio-cultural and temporal requirements for which we know of no real analogues in the rest of nature. the free expression and enjoyment of our capacities for social self-consciousness and intentional agency require definite forms of loving and caring interpersonal relationships, education, cultural spaces and institutions in which creative self and collective expression can be developed and enjoyed, political institutions in which collective rules of social life can be decided, opportunities for meaningful creation and contribution through productive work, and time experienced as an open matrix of possibilities for action. thus human beings share three sets of life-requirements corresponding to the three dimensions of human life: socialism as a life-coherent society | 201 physical-organic requirements of biological life, socio-cultural requirements of human life as a socially self-conscious agent, and temporal requirements of free human life. in all three cases we can apply a test to distinguish between resources, practices, relationships, and institutional structures which have instrumental life-value, and are therefore objective life-requirements, or needs, and consumer demands and preferences which may be desired, but are not life-requirements, and are therefore either of no life-value or negative life-value (life-destructive). in order to distinguish between life-requirements and consumer demands we must ask: if anyone were deprived of the given resource, relationship, practice, or institutional structure, would they suffer harm to any of their human capacities to experience the world through the senses, to feel the range of human emotions, to think and imagine, or act and create in life-valuable ways (mcmurtry, 2008, p. 164)? if deprivation causes objective harm in the form of loss of life or vital capacity, such as would ensue if one were deprived of all shelter in a cold climate, then the object, relationship, practice or institutional structure in question is a requirement of organic-social human life. if only subjective feelings of relative deprivation ensue, as in the case of marx’s man jealous of his neighbour’s house, then no life-requirement is involved, but only a consumer demand with no or negative life-value. let me give one example from each class of life-requirements to clarify my meaning. all of our sentient, cognitive, and imaginative capacities depend upon the functioning of our brains. without adequate protein, brain function is degraded, and thus so too the capacities to sense, think, and imagine. there is an objective relationship between protein intake and brain function such that objective harm in the form of degradation of the various capacities of the brain necessarily follows deprivation. it does not follow that there is only one way to satisfy this life-requirement for protein; the life requirement is not for any particular form of food but for any food that will satisfy the brain’s requirement for protein. analogous forms of harm are caused by the deprivation of socio-cultural life-requirements, although here the harm is not to the organic systems themselves but to the human forms of experience, thought, and activity they enable. adequately functioning eyes and brains can perfectly well sense the world, but it does not follow that they will see all that there is to experience. unless the person to whom the eyes and brain belong receives some degree of education and cultivation, it is quite possible for the person not to see the natural and humanly created beauty of the 202 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times world. as marx says, “the care burdened man in need has no sense for the finest play.”(marx, 1975a, p. 302). the human form of capacity expression emerges out of the biological organization of the human body, but is not reducible to it. well-functioning biological machines may be sociopathically indifferent to the others’ pain which they observe. healthy people may be illiterate, or live in social circumstances that prevent them from participating in political life, or be forced into mindless drudgery as their life’s work. in cases such as these there is no impairment of biological functioning but there certainly is harm to the human form of expression of our sentient, cognitive, imaginative, and creative capacities. i admit that verbal scepticism about socio-cultural life-requirements s possible, but that it would only prove practically convincing were the sceptic willing to deprive him or herself permanently of that which he or she claims is not a real life-requirement: loving and caring concern between people, education, political participation, intrinsically and instrumentally life-valuable and democratically governed work, and the experience of all natural and humanly created beauty. deprivation of the third class of life-requirement, the requirement of mortal beings for the experience of time as free, also causes objective harm, this time to our ability to express our life-capacities freely. by the expression “the experience of time as free” i do not mean the availability of “empty time,” time in which no external force compels us to do one thing rather than another (noonan, 2009, p. 377-393). some degree of empty time is a material condition of the experience of time as free, but the latter is not reducible to empty time. rather, it is essentially an experience of time as an open matrix of possibilities for life-valuable activity, in contrast to unfree time, the experience of time as an inescapable, externally imposed routine. as the human form of capacity expression develops out of our biological organism, so too their free realization grows out of their human form. freedom requires in addition to the satisfaction of biological and socio-cultural life-requirements some degree of free time in which the person can contemplate different possibilities for capacity expression and development and decide between them. there is thus a difference between a life rich in content of human capacity expression and a life in which this content is developed freely. someone trapped in the “rat race” of capitalism may express complex and challenging capacities in a particularly human way at work and yet feel oppressed rather than free. if money-value pressures cause these capacities to be expressed in routinized ways, then the capacities are not freely developed but coerced by the structure of work in which the person is trapped. socialism as a life-coherent society | 203 since human beings have only a finite life-span, they are harmed to the extent that their life-time is structured as a closed routine rather than an open matrix of possibilities for life-valuable activity. again, sceptical rejoinders are possible, but presuppose exactly what they deny. no one without the time to freely mull over the structure and implications of philosophical arguments makes sceptical rejoinders. hence i conclude that these three-dimensions of human life-requirement are objectively real, the material foundation of any humanly possible good life, and that anyone is harmed to the extent that they are deprived of one or more of them. capitalism is systematically harmful to people because: it degrades the natural field of life-support upon which our biological organism depends and makes the satisfaction of natural, socio-cultural, and temporal life-requirements contingent on their serving the master capitalist goal of money-value accumulation. in thus making life-requirement satisfaction contingent on the ability to pay, capitalism treats life-requirements as instruments for the expansion of money-value rather than instruments of the creation of intrinsic life-value. it thus reduces social institutions to structures of exploitation rather than life-requirement satisfaction and free life-capacity realization. finally, capitalism reifies time such that it is experienced as an oppressive structure in which human activity is systematically routinized in the service of external powers. if socialism is the solution for these harms then it must solve these problems in a life-coherent manner. what would such a solution entail? as i noted in the introductory comments, life-coherence requires enabling ecological and human life together. it might seem that the simultaneous satisfaction of these twin demands is impossible, that the good life for humans requires more and more things, such that human life can only be enabled if ecological life is damaged. in fact, the accumulation of things beyond life-requirements does not make life any better, because life is essentially creative activity, and most consumer goods are passivity-inducing, which is why shopping for them tends to be more enjoyable than possessing them (kasser, 2002, p. 85-86). thin a social activity it may be, but shopping is nevertheless a social activity. once the new gadget has been brought home, boredom with it soon ensues. the life-requirements set out above are the natural, social, and temporal conditions for the widest possible life-coherent expression of human capacities. since their satisfaction can be achieved without much of what advertisers tell us are necessities but which in reality have no committed life-function in any dimension of being humanly alive, socialist 204 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times production can enable human and ecological life together by progressively reducing the energy and resources devoted to the production of life-disvaluable commodities. as it is the wealthy societies of the global north that waste the most energy and resources in the consumption of commodities which contribute nothing to life-maintenance, development, or enjoyment, the shift in priorities of production would, while reducing the overall ecological impact of human economies, make more resources available for life-development of the global south, and still enable more active and enjoyable lives in the global north. in this way, socialism as a life-coherent society can enable human and ecological life together by limiting the output of production to that which is required by our organism and to fund the institutions, relationships and free time required to freely cultivate our capacities. to put this point another way, minimizing the energy and resources it takes to produce instrumental life-value is the condition for the maximization of intrinsic life-value over the open-ended future of the human species. intrinsic life-value, recall, is the enjoyed, life-coherent expression of freely realized life-capacities. capitalism is life incoherent in relation to the expression and enjoyment of human capacities because its ruling value system does not valorise the universal and comprehensive satisfaction of life-requirements. thus the lives of most people are dependent upon finding paid work, which in turn is not organized so as to enable the comprehensive expression and enjoyment of the fullrange of life-capacities, but to maximise profits for the firm which purchases the labour-power through which the capacities are expressed. life-capacities may be developed, but not as intrinsic life-values, but as exploitable inputs to the production of money-value. even where human capacities are developed in rich and complex ways, the ends they serve are often life-destructive. and even where the ends they serve are not life-destructive, the distribution of positions is not according to talent and aptitude, but limited by the demands of profitability, which means that people who are willing and able to contribute their talents and aptitudes to life-valuable social tasks cannot find work. traditionally, socialism has encapsulated its solution to these structural impediments to the free expression and enjoyment of capacities in slogans like “from each according to their abilities, to each according their needs” (marx, 1978, p. 531). but just as in the case of needs, which have not been consistently and coherently defined in terms of the three classes of life-requirements, so too has the question of the limits of life-valuable socialism as a life-coherent society | 205 capacity development been left unaddressed. instead of systematic interrogation of these limits we too often find socialism identified with the transcendence of all limits. lebowitz quotes marx with approval for his claim that socialism will develop “all human powers as such as ends in themselves,” without noting the obvious problem, all too clear from the history of capitalist industry, that the set of all human powers includes life-destructive powers. clearly marx and lebowitz do not mean to affirm the power to destroy, but by not tying down the human powers whose development they affirm to the required life-coherence limitation, they open themselves to objections of this sort. such critiques are not only abstract philosophical objections but also political, as in environmentalist critiques of socialism as ecologically destructive or radical feminist critiques of marxism as still rooted in masculinist psychologies of violence and conquest.(benton, 1989, p. 51-86; wittig, 1997, p. 224-225). to obviate these objections and to build political links to those who lodge them it must be made clear the ways in which the principle of life-coherence would govern the development of human capacities in a future socialist society. just as it is not the case that every use-value has instrumental life-value, so too not every expression of human capacities has intrinsic life-value. absolute intrinsic life-value attaches only to the raw capacities to sense, feel, think, imagine, and act. definite constellations of these raw capacities in concrete expressions are subject to evaluation according to the principle of life-coherence. this principle rules out forms of capacity expression which: (1) permanently degrade the natural life-support system or destroy non-human life for no higher, long-term life-serving purpose; and (2) depend necessarily on the exploitation of others’ life-requirements, such that the exploited other is prevented from expressing and enjoying his or her life-capacities as a necessary consequence of the structure of exploitation within which he or she lives. the normal expression of life-capacities under capitalism violates both of these limitations. the extent of their development is limited not by the principle of life-coherence but by the degree to which the development of any given capacity is money-valuable. even where ecodestruction is avoided, the development and expression of life-capacities cannot escape the structures of exploitative work and oppressive sociocultural institutions and ideologies that dominate life in activity in capitalist society. the life-coherent solution to these systematic problems is to create the social conditions in which human capacities are expressed and enjoyed only in those forms that enable ecological and human life 206 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times together. if that which is intrinsically valuable in its effects destroys the natural and social life-support and life-development systems upon which its very existence depends, then this conception of intrinsic value must be materially irrational. if socialism is to solve the problems of capitalism and secure the comprehensive conditions for everyone to enjoy their lives through making valuable contributions to the natural and social worlds, it must take care to specify clearly the limits that lifesupport systems and the shared life-interests of other people impose on individual goals and projects. analogous limits must govern the forms of political struggle through which socialism can be progressively built. to an explanation and defence of a life-coherent political practice i now turn in conclusion. life-coherence and political practice as lebowitz rightly argues, new societies do not “drop from the sky” or emerge “pristine and complete from the conceptions of intellectuals,” but rather “emerge within and in opposition to the existing society” (lebowitz, 2006, p. 62). his point, as i interpret it, is that the task of building socialism is not like constructing a new building from blueprints, but like an on-going project of renovating an existing building piece by piece until a different building sits on the same foundations. as he argues in relation to the emergence in venezuela of new neighbourhood-based democratic councils and workers’ co-management of enterprises, “the emergence of both these new elements is a process—a process of learning and a process of development.”(lebowitz, 2006, p. 112). they are elements of a socialist alternative developing within an existing capitalist society. building socialism is thus not a process that awaits a revolutionary break with capitalism but is itself that break which emerges within and in tension and struggle with the prevailing capitalist institutions. some socialists might vociferously object to the implications of the metaphor by noting that it claims that a new society can be built upon on the same foundations as the old. the objection can be met by pointing out that all societies have the same material foundations: the natural life-support system and human labour as “metabolic interchange” with it. nevertheless, it is true that the metaphor is meant to emphasise more than is usual the continuities that link present capitalist society to a future socialist society. socialists have paid most attention, for obvious reasons, to questions about how best to bring about fundamental social transformation: can it be achieved through reforms, or is revolution necessary? if revolution is necessary, what does revolusocialism as a life-coherent society | 207 tion mean? can it be the spontaneous product of workers’ self-activity, or does it require a vanguard party? what ought the relationship be between workers and the party, or between workers as a class and other oppressed groups whose members belong to different classes? these questions define in large part the political history of different socialist movements, and i will have something to say, in general, about them at the end. to begin, however, i want to say something about what would remain continuous between socialist and capitalist society, not for the sake of novelty, but because i think that the principle of life-coherence sheds light on this under-examined issue in a way that has important practical implications for rebuilding a democratic socialist movement. capitalism is able to reproduce itself in the short and medium term despite the manifold economic, political, social, and environmental crises it regularly generates because people believe themselves to be ultimately dependent upon access to its labour and commodity markets for their survival and development. although the ultimate foundations of human life are not markets and commodities, but natural resources and human labour, this belief is not completely mistaken. it is supported by the fact that in capitalist social reality money is required to exchange for the commodities that one’s life and development requires. so long as the belief persists that capitalist labour and commodity markets are the ultimate foundations of life and development it will appear to all who hold this belief that any attack on the existing society is an attack on the very foundations of life and life-development. by this claim i do not mean that people never fight back unless they believe that a completely different world is possible, but rather that they fight back in self-limiting ways because they cannot see any real possibility for successfully building a fundamentally different society. to take a recent case as illustration of the meaning of my claim, in june 2011 postal workers went on strike against canada post. fearing back to work legislation, they decided to engage in rotating strikes rather than an all-out nation-wide strike. in response, canada post locked them out and the conservative government then passed back to work legislation. yet, the strategy, though it ultimately proved self-undermining, is understandable, not simply as conservatism on the part of the union leadership, but as rooted in genuine fear of the consequences of all-out challenges to capitalist power in an era where a systematic alternative seems remote. as albo, gindin, and panitch argue, capitalism has consistently “compelled workers to become more dependent on the market as individuals so as to limit their ability to contest the social relations 208 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times of the capitalist market as a class” (albo, gindin, and pantich, 2010, p. 90). from the standpoint of anyone enmeshed in the daily struggle to make money in order to survive, talk of total social transformation does not sound utopian, but suicidal. hence oppositional politics, especially in wealthy societies, remains limited to promises of piecemeal reform that do not upset “the markets” for fear of compromising money-value growth upon which life and life-development appear to depend. systemic causes are never addressed, and society lurches from one crisis to the next. this fear cannot be overcome by talk of “smashing” and “destroying” capitalism that sometimes tempt socialists because people for the most part do not believe that it can be smashed or destroyed. in order to build movements broad-based and powerful enough to solve the causes of life-crises, socialists might do better to emphasise the natural and institutional continuity between capitalism and socialism. by ‘natural and institutional continuity’ i refer to the natural system of life-support that underlies any human society and supplies all the physical-organic requirements of life, and existing social institutions, relationships, and practices in so far as they actually fulfill their life-coherent function: enabling the development of human capacities through the satisfaction of life-requirements. the point of emphasising natural and institutional continuity is not to attenuate the essential opposition between capitalism and socialism, but rather to bring to light the longer and deeper history of collective labour and struggle through which social institutions have been built up from their natural bases and progressively turned from support of the particular interests of ruling classes towards universal provision of life-requirements across the three dimensions of human life. if we ground the struggle for socialism in those aspects of existing institutions which actually serve the shared life-interest, stressing always the role that struggle has played historically in extending this life-service, then the task of building socialism no longer appears as a suicidal destruction of existing means of life-support, but an organic development beyond the achieved plateaus of life-requirement satisfaction found in actually existing civil commons institutions and practices. the civil commons is mcmurtry’s term for all non-commodified social goods which enable human life to freely develop (mcmurtry, 2002, p. 117). these institutions and practices range from languages and love for children through to free education, health care, and the democratic principle that all who are subject to institutions ought to play an active role in their governance. the universality of life-requirement provision socialism as a life-coherent society | 209 that defines the civil commons contrast with privacy of monetary benefit that defines the system-value that governs institutions today. all social institutions are marked by this contradiction. people love their children, but often express this love by buying them things which they in no sense require and which contribute to inculcating the habitual equation of enjoyment with the purchase of commodities. publically funded health care in canada is a civil commons institution, but it is continually eroded at the margins by the commodified medical industry. education is a public civil commons good, but at the post-secondary level it is becoming increasingly commodified and bent to the purposes of private industry. existing political institutions are formally democratic, but determined by the master purpose of protecting the existing structure of power and ruling value system, and thus not coherently anchored in protection and satisfaction of the shared life-interest. my contention is that socialism indeed does not drop from the sky but finds its organic basis in the achieved level of civil commons development. motivating people in the struggle for socialism is thus not a task, which even socialists sometimes present it as being, of winning people to an alien ideology, but disclosing how socialist values are already embodied in the civil commons function of existing institutions which people already support, and whose erosion they lament, if not always actively resist. the politically relevant contradiction, the one that socialists ought to focus people’s attention on, is between the goodness of the civil commons function of these institutions, and the ways in which this actually existing goodness is negated to the extent that private money-value interests seize control. let me illustrate my claim through the paradigmatic example of canadian public health care. the principle if not the complete practice of public medicine in canada is “to each according to her or his need.” people might debate the cogency of this principle in the abstract, but as concretely applied to medical care, the majority of canadians consistently defend it. more importantly, by any metric one cares to choose: cost effectiveness, health outcomes, or equity of access it is demonstrably superior to commodified medicine (armstrong, armstrong, bourgeault, choniere, lexchin, mykhalovsky, peters, and white, 2004, p. 13-38). thus public medical care is a real life, if partial and imperfect, realization of the socialist principle of distribution. when it is attacked, people mobilise to defend it. what they defend it from is the core distributive principle of capitalism: to each according to his or her ability to pay, regardless of his or her own or others’ need. yet, proponents of public medical care rarely 210 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times equate it with the demonstrably superior outcomes of the socialist principle of distribution that underlies it. “socialism” is most often only mentioned by opponents who castigate it as such. defenders typically bend over backwards trying to distance their defence of public medical care from socialism, and marxists too often treat it as nothing more than a “reform” within capitalism. but this response misses a crucial opportunity to link socialism with a practice that enjoys majority support and actually works. of course it is true that a means of health care delivery is not a whole society. my point is not to claim that advanced capitalism is implicitly socialist. nor i am not arguing that the path towards socialism can be advanced by what erik olin wright calls “symbiotic” forms of social transformation (wright, 2010, p. 337-365). symbiotic forms of social transformation are processes of social change which achieve real reform for workers and other subordinate groups while at the same time solve certain problems for capitalists. universal suffrage is an example: it solved the problem of containing radical opposition to capitalism while also enabling workers to gain and use political power to advance certain other economic goals. although real reform is possible through such strategies, fundamental social change is not. eventually the logic of the existing system is going to put a stop to the evolving counter-logic of the alternative. my point is thus not that radical change can be achieved by progressive reforms extended over an open ended time frame, but rather that past social struggles have created civil commons institutions which demonstrably function according to socialist principles. this point can become the centre of political education for mass mobilization– another world is possible because elements of it are actual, and have been made so through successful struggles. the fact that these institutions work better than market alternatives provides an organic basis for socialist politics. by “organic” i mean actually existing and functioning in the present as means of life-requirement satisfaction. organic is to be contrasted with “theoretical,” i.e., abstract arguments that claim to prove that a systematic socialist alternative to capitalism is possible, but whose plausibility depends entirely upon the internal logical cogency of argument. in other words, the term is meant to stress that the struggle for socialism occurs along an historical continuum of building up civil commons institutions whose real value is the universal enabling of life-coherent capacities through comprehensive satisfaction of life-requirements. by arguing from the achieved level of civil commons development, and socialism as a life-coherent society | 211 demonstrating how this development demands collective as opposed to private appropriation of social wealth, socialists can refute the capitalist critique of socialism by embracing it. all that socialists need as an effective rejoinder is to say: yes it is socialist, and look, it actually works. conceiving of socialism as an organic development out struggles oriented by the universal goal of comprehensive satisfaction of life requirements takes us beyond sterile debates about reform or revolution. the real problem is not constructing an abstract proof that capitalism is or is not reformable, but securing public control over life-sustaining and lifedeveloping resources and institutions, and using them in life-coherent ways. the practicability of this task is proven by the existing level of civil commons development. the task of building socialism is thus a task of extending existing civil commons practices into the core economic and political systems of capitalist society. to conclude i will examine whether or not there are any existing practices which can serve as an organic basis from which to build struggles capable of transforming these core systems. it is a well-known objection to capitalist democracy that it is at best incomplete because it does not extend into economic institutions (see for example meiksins wood, 1995). one of the great achievements in the history of socialist struggle is the development of workers’ councils, novel political institutions through which the coercive economic power exercised by money-value and management as its servant over workers can be overcome. in the experience of the contemporary working class in north america and europe there appear to be no analogues of workers councils. hence the demand for workers councils would sound exactly like a demand “dropping from the sky” and be unlikely to mobilise significant numbers of people. while there are no existing analogues of institutions like workers’ councils in contemporary western capitalism, there is a civil commons institution which embodies the principle of workplace democracy. that institution is the trade union understood as a forum in which workers debate together about how best to structure their conditions of work. like other civil commons institutions under capitalism unions are imperfect expressions of the democratic principle of workers control of production because unions presuppose management as a bargaining opponent and the money-value system as the object of bargaining. nevertheless, unions are an organic basis for socialist arguments in favour of the more comprehensive democratization of work life because, when they are functioning well, they draw workers out of self-enclosed con212 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times cern for doing their job and getting paid into political debates about how work life ought to be governed and what its universal social significance is. without minimizing any of the challenges facing unions or the limitations of their current mode of operation, it remains true to say, as hilary wainwright recently has, that “unions are, in many countries, the largest, the best resourced, most stable, most institutional, and in some respects to most rooted ... movements in civil society...unions can facilitate the organization of knowledge, practical actions, expert research, and popular expression of the mass of people to defend social needs and the means of meeting them” (wainwright, 2011, p. 3). consciously turned in the direction of contesting the authority of management at work and the rule of money-value over life-requirement satisfaction, unions could function as the organic foundation for deeper struggles for the democratization, i.e., the rule of the common life-interest within, economic life generally. but is not the principle of the rule of the common life-interest the deepest justification of existing democratic institutions? the very first value affirmed by the american declaration of independence, for example, is “life.” yet we know through observation that it is not the value of life that actually rules, but the power of money. nevertheless, existing democratic institutions cannot openly reject the principle that they are designed to allow people to govern themselves in the shared life-interest, for to break openly with it would be to compromise the deepest legitimating value of liberal-democratic capitalism: freedom. thus the political institutions of existing liberal-democratic capitalism also provide an organic basis for the comprehensive life-coherent democratic institutions that socialism would require. marx himself argued that the working class must win the battle of democracy (marx and engles, 1986, p. 53; see also nimtz, 2000). today i believe that struggles need to be organized around gaining political control of existing political institutions and using them for life-valuable ends. the age of revolutionary vanguardism and the “noah complex” (the belief that nothing new can be built until the old world has been washed away) has passed (collier, 2009, p. 98). while certainly far from perfect, the examples of venezuela and bolivia provide evidence that existing parliamentary institutions need not be instruments of class power, but can be transformed from institutions of class rule to institutions of genuine lifecoherent democracy. the history of revolutionary vanguardism proves that the violent conquest of the existing ruling class does socialism as a life-coherent society | 213 not at all entail success in building a life-coherent society. the construction of a life-coherent alternative does not so much depend upon single-minded devotion to the cause—always a mindset that carries with it profound dangers—as it does learning to distinguish in every case between the life-value of a given institution and the system-value that prevents the full expression of that life-value. radical political practice today depends not so much on the invention of new institutions as the fuller realization of the life-value of the existing institution. in the case of existing political institutions the life-value is that their legitimacy enables ruling parties to use state power to implement their agenda. if this agenda is a comprehensive program of life-coherent social transformation, then its democratic legitimacy cannot be coherently contested by opponents. if its democratic legitimacy cannot be contested, then the only way in which it can be attacked is for opponents to drop all pretence to democracy and violently assert their particular interests against the universal life-interest. in doing so they deprive themselves of the legitimacy references: albo, greg, gindin, sam, and panitch, leo. 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(2010). envisaging real utopias. london: verso. 216 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times book review: revolutionary doctors | 267 book review revolutionary doctors: how venezuela and cuba are changing the world’s conception of health care by steve brouwer. new york: new york: monthly review press, 2011. $18.95 u.s., paper. isbn: 978-1-58367-239-6. pages: 1-256. reviewed by rebekah wetmore1 revolutionary doctors explores the human needs based health care model developed in cuba and how those involved are becoming protagonists of social change. beginning with cuba’s original revolutionary doctor – che guevara – readers are guided through the origins of cuban health care, how it spread to venezuela and beyond, and the counterrevolutionary response. che guevara’s vision of “combining the humanitarian mission of medicine with the creation of a just society” (p.11) is being implemented in cuba and venezuela. soon after the triumph of the cuban revolution, thousands of doctors and over a hundred medical professors left the country further weakening their inadequate medical system. the new cuban government insisted on developing universal health care through adopting a preventative based system, opening a second medical school and creating positions for recent graduates of the university of havana medical school in rural areas. health care continued to improve including through the creation of basic health teams and brigadistas sanitarias or health brigades in the end of the 1980’s. every small neighborhood has a basic health team, which includes one doctor and one nurse who live in the community. not only did this increase community coverage to 99% by 2004 but it also gave residents more of an active role in their health care. health brigades, made up of residents, assist doctors in prevention programs and public health campaigns. while cuba created universal health care domestically, they continued their commitment to internationalism. from algeria to angola and more recently haiti, cuba has sent health professionals on humanitarian missions for over five decades in response to emergencies and “long-term collaboration in developing 1 rebekah wetmore is an independent researcher and community organizer. she has an ma in sociology from acadia university in wolfville, nova scotia. 268 | great recession-proof?: shattering the myth of canadian exceptionalism another nation’s system of primary health care” or the comprehensive health plan (p.45). along with humanitarian missions, the latin american school of medicine (elam) was founded in 1998 for students from around the world to study medicine for free. in return, students promise to serve the poor of their country through preventative community health care. venezuela’s health care was in desperate need of an overhaul as “prior to 2003, there were just 1,500 doctors employed by the venezuelan government to provide primary care in a public system that had 4,400 offices called ambulatorios” (p.85). as a means to improve health care the cuba-venezuela comprehensive cooperation agreement, a precursor to the bolivarian alliance of the peoples of our americas (alba), was signed on october 30, 2000. this agreement allowed for the exchange of goods, services and experts between the two countries with oil as the largest export from venezuela and cuba offering human capital through “thousands of teachers, agronomists, technicians and other experts” (p.81). after the failed economic coup in 2002, the government consolidated control of pdvsa, the state oil company, and its revenue, which was used to increase funding for social programs such as barrio adentro to address the inadequate public health system. barrio adentro has been expanded to include four different levels from preventative primary care, diagnostic centers, updating and modernizing the public health care system through increased community involvement, improved medical technology and the construction of new hospitals, and building new specialized research hospitals for specific areas like oncology, cardiology and nephrology. similar to the cuban model, these missions mobilize community members to be active participants in their health care. if a community wants a cuban doctor they are “expected to organize a committee of ten to twenty volunteers from the community who would commit themselves to finding office spaces, providing sleep quarters, collecting furniture and simple fixtures, and feeding the medical providers” (p.84). though brouwer singles out health professionals as protagonists of social change, community members who support the health programs are also shaping the socialist project. integrating community members into the system empowers residents while giving them a direct role in shaping their health care and negating top down approaches. in terms of gender, women are becoming empowered through their involvement in health committees to increase their involvement in their communities. a main argument of revolutionary doctors – that those involved in health book review: revolutionary doctors | 269 care are becoming protagonists for socialist change can be extended to include all participants of missions or social programs in venezuela. not only are venezuelans taking an active role in their health care but also other missions including education (ribas, robinson and sucre) and local government through communal councils. both countries have made huge gains in traditional measures of health care and the social determinants of health but there are still problems internally and abroad. the united states attempts to undermine the new conception of health care through media, laws and aid to destabilizing groups. domestically, problems include inconsistent coverage in the most disadvantaged communities and the inherited inefficient bureaucracy. critics argue that cuba’s health care has suffered from a decrease in doctors as large numbers continue to go on humanitarian missions, which pays considerably more than practicing in cuba. as is set out in the agreement between cuba and venezuela and all countries with humanitarian missions, cuban doctors will leave and host countries must develop self-sufficient health care systems. a common critique is that an insufficient number of new doctors are trained and thus host countries continue to be dependent on cuban doctors. as a response to potential dependency, mission sucre, the program for free university level education, in conjunction with barrio adentro, medicinia integral communitaria, “university without walls” (p.15), and elam train new medical doctors. in the end, brouwer provides a compelling case for the needs based conception of health care, which has improved the lives of the poor around the world. his arguments are supported with the fascinating personal stories that are weaved throughout the book. from medical students studying in medicinia integral comunitaria in the small village of monte carmelo to cuban doctors’ experiences in post-earthquake haiti, there are numerous examples of seemingly ordinary people working to create a better health care system and society. these stories provide hope that there is an alternative to the profit-driven capitalist model of health care and capitalism in general. chemin alternative book review: hakim bey's millenium. brooklyn/ dublin: autonomedia/garden of delight, 1996, 102 pp. jeffrey shantz the publication, in 1985, of t.a.z.: the temporary autonomous zone, ontological anarchy, poetic terrorism signalled the arrival of peter lamborn wilson's mystic alter ego hakim bey as an important voice in the recent renewal of anarchist theory. in the years since the publication of t.a.z., bey's work proved both immensely influential and controversial. indeed, the debates it inspired in the pages of anarchy magazine and various "do-it-yourself publications within the anarchist milieu were among the most lively in decades. young anarchists took bey's call for "poetic terrorism" as inspiration for the waves of "@ -zones" (anarchist community centres) which emerged in inner-city neighbourhoods across north america in the 1990s. others, most notably murray bookchin, condemned bey for supposedly offering up apolitical "postmodern" bohemianism in the guise of anarchism. wherever one stands vis a vis bey's vision of anarchy, however, there is no question that he continues to pose a creative and intelligent challenge to traditional notions of what constitutes critical theory and radical politics at the turn of the millenium. the future of radical politics, especially the future of what used to be called the "left," remains at the forefront of concerns in bey's most recent publication, appropriately titled millenium. in this work the author despairs over the prospects for resistance to what he terms "toolate capitalism," the mono-culture of global capital. in the opening chapter, which is an interview. bey covers a broad sweep of issues ranging from the publicity surrounding his earlier publications and the place of political radicalism in media circles, to his preoccupation with "the revolutionary potential of everyday life" (7). his primary concern, expanded upon in the second and principle essay volume 15, j 999 117 alternate routes "milleniennium," rests with the possibilities for multiplying the secret or clandestine spaces in which commodification might be avoided and the creative powers of everyday life (re)affirmed. much of this book revolves around bey's view that capitalism, with the collapse and discrediting of socialism, has finally conquered the world. "capitalism is now at liberty to declare war & deal directly as enemies with all former 'alternatives' (including 'democracy')" (52). there is no longer a "third path" (or third way or third world), he argues, since the second (communism) has disappeared. this leaves us with a simple choice: "either we accept ourselves as the 'last humans', or else we accept ourselves as the opposition. (either automonotony — or autonomy)" (30). neutrality is no option. the crumbling of the berlin wall signals for bey the real end of the 20th century. the new millenium is already upon us and, moreover, it has been for almost a decade. the only way out is anarchy. according to bey, the newly enthroned "one-world" (of money and finance capital) obliterates space and presence, reducing complexity to sameness. almost everything enters into representation in the "empire of the image" (of which money is the exemplar). while, on the surface, seeming to echo neoliberal "end of history theorists" such as francis fukuyama and daniel bell, bey is not yet ready to yield to their hubris. the one world's claims are. after all, spurious. every enclosure has an outside, "not to mention a liminality around every border, an area of ambiguity" (35). it is here that the uprising, the opposition, finds its "heartland." only lived experience (desire) can present another world beyond the enclosures of money. "the 'spirituality of pleasure' lies precisely in a presence that cannot be represented without disappearing...." (32). bey rejects the bleatings of advertisers that capital can satisfy desire. instead he follows walter benjamin in arguing that capital, rather than liberating desire, only exacerbates longing as "capital liberates itself by enslaving desire" (32). against the hermetism of the one-world "risk society." its management of desire and imagination, its dread of carnality. bey advocates "a reenchantment of the forbidden" and a return to the senses (taste, touch and smell — against odourless civilization). eros must escape the enclosures or, we must rescue it! fortunately, resistance to "the market" persists in gift economies of reciprocity, mutuality and redistribution (in do-it-yourself (diy) cultures us volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative and underground economies). drawing upon the economic work of karl polanyi and the anthropology of pierre clastres, the author highlights the resistance that has met every threat of "the market's" emergence. bey looks to the "self-made aspect of the social" (diy). a spontaneous ordering of reciprocity, as expressing a "non-predatory expansiveness." a "convivial connectivity," an "eros of the social" (42-43). the one world is never alone; the archaic presence of revolution still stands as its other. bey's greatest hope for resistance (revolution) rests in the assertion of difference against capitalist hegemonism (sameness). in his view, difference is revolutionary in an age of one-world capitalist globality precisely because it disrupts the single-world, the mono-culture (25). to be revolutionary, however, particularity must not seek hegemony but must instead remain anti-hegemonistic in character. as in classical anarchism the two necessary forces of the opposition are autonomy and federation. autonomy without federation would be reaction whereas federation without autonomy would end self-determination. authentic difference is non-hegemonic and must be defended against the hegemonism of reaction (and capital). against (one world) sameness and separation — difference and presence. bey's favourite example of revolutionary difference is the zapatistas of mexico because, from his perspective, they defend their difference as mayans without asking others to become mayans. the hegemonism of the one world, however, leads bey to retreat from his earlier enthusiasm for aesthetic withdrawal ("disappearance as will to power") as a mode of resistance. in the new millenium there is only capitulation or opposition and bey is now clear that flight, far from offering an instance of resistance, is now marked primarily as an instance of capitulation. (this does not diminish the tactical importance of clandestinity, however; the secret remains revolutionary in its escape from absorption into the totality.) in the third chapter, a short essay "for and against interpretation," bey decries capital's monopoly of interpretation in the one world. this monopoly results in a "scarcity of interpretation" (60) which renders people as objects within the interpretations of (capital's) authority. not only does it mediate our material transactions. capital stands between us and awareness. everything must be mediated by money; nothing ("not even air, water, or dirt") is to be experienced outside of this mediation ("the exacerbated mediation of a power that can only grow by creating volume 15, 1999 119 alternate routes scarcity and separation," 64). against capital's monopoly bey renews classical anarchist calls for self-creativity and convivial meaning production. no interpreters (revolutionary or otherwise) — only companions in networks of reciprocity. those reading bey primarily for insights into political strategy and action against the one world will likely be most troubled by the two concluding chapters. "religion and revolution" and "note on nationalism." certainly most marxists and many anarchists will regard bey's suggestions in these chapters as anathema for radical, liberatory politics. "religion and revolution" offers an extended meditation on the relation of spirituality and resistance to capitalism. specifically. bey explores the "suppressed content" or "counter-tradition" of religious resistance, looking for points of reconciliation with contemporary political radicalism. for bey, the alliance of romantic spirituality with the emerging rationalist radicalism of the enlightenment provided the basis for a nascent left and a new alliance with religion may be needed to save the contemporary left. bey harkens back to the radicalism of the protestant sects (levellers, diggers and ranters, for example) for inspiration as well as drawing upon shamanism and afro-american syncretisms. following the revolutionary syndicalist georges sorel. he argues that any revolution requires a myth; it cannot live on "pure reason" alone. indeed, bey sees the meeting of spirituality and resistance as the very root of radicalism (even the "muted mysticism" of marx). bey issues a challenge to radicals who have too easily dismissed religion rather than addressing its lingering appeal. religion now stands along with the other "third positions" within the one world, facing the choice to capitulate or revolt (76). in place of self-satisfied denunciation. bey prefers to ask how radicals might encourage the potential for (sincere) christian radicalism. indeed, he cannot imagine how a successful mass movement against capital (a "progressive populism") could occur in the u.s. without participation of at least some of the churches. likewise, any global anti-capitalist coalition must engage islam. rather than succumb to western portrayals of islam as a fundamentalist monolith. bey prefers to reach out to its radical and egalitarian traditions. as he details at length in this essay, every religion can point to a radical tradition of some sort. still, this is unlikely to help readers swallow a stew which throws together reaction in serbia and the uprising in chiapas in the same pot of resistance to the hegemonism of the one world. 120 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative his appeal for a recuperation of nationalism, "note on nationalism," is similarly unlikely to win many converts among the traditional political left. bey calls for a new theory of "nationalism" (and capitalism and religion) as a crucial aspect of the critique of capital as a "single power in a unified world" (97). like religion, nationalism is supposedly on a collision course with capital in the one world. the nation presents a potential zone of resistance but, again, one which may take a rightist (hegemonic particularism) or a leftist (non-hegemonic particularism) course. bey takes pains to clarify that nationalism can only be supported where it does not seek power at the expense of others. this disqualifies statism for bey, as no state can ever meet this requirement. where it tends to hegemonism. nationalism must be opposed and secession, inasmuch as it is anti-hegemonic, must always be supported. "national struggles" can be considered revolutionary where they are both nonhegemonic and anti-capitalist. perhaps, in the end, this will not be so hard for some leftists (even revolutionaries) to support. after all. trotskyists have long defended movements for national liberation against the upholders of imperialism. bey finds the most (indeed the only) interesting beginning of this rethinking, once more, in the ezln in chiapas. the ezln is interesting both because it found its inspiration beyond the "internationale" (because it appeared at the same moment as the u.s.s.r. disappeared) and because it was the first revolutionary movement to define itself against "global neo-liberalism." chiapas, according to bey. is the first revolution of the new millenium. strikingly for bey, and key for his re-evaluation of politics, the ezln is a "nationalist" movement (native american) yet draws inspiration from anarcho-syndicalism and anarchist-communism. in this. bey sees connectivity with earlier (forgotten) anarchist visions (the "left volkism" of gustav landauer, the general strike of sorel and the "culture" of rudolph rocker). the result is a provocative and challenging "neo-proudhonian" rendering of the zapatista rebellion; one which, unfortunately, is not sufficiently developed in the present text. a note of hope is certainly struck: "the goal of 'neo-proudhonian' federalism" would be the recognition of freedom at every point of organization in the rhizome, no matter how small — even to a single individual, or any tiny volume 15, 1999 121 alternate routes group of 'secessionists'" (101-102). it remains for the reader of millenium to pursue bey's lead. despite his best intentions. bey's enthusiasm for revolutionary potentialities (irrespective of sources) gets in the way of a searching analysis of the political conditions which make a non-hegemonized difference possible (or which encourage instead the transformation of difference into the atavistic or xenophobic particularisms of ethnic nationalism or religious fundamentalism). for instance, his only response to ethnic cleansing and violent chauvinism is to hold out the possibility of federation and solidarity. likewise, he overstates the case that nationalism (or religion) is now opposed to capital. all said however. millenium is a compelling and challenging (though not always satisfying) work. bey is at the forefront of recent efforts to develop the political implications of the writings of french philosopher gilles deleuze and to bring the insights of these analyses to bear on socio-political practice. along with critics such as ronaldo perez and the critical art ensemble, bey has attempted a conjoining of deleuzian analysis with anarchism. one exciting outcome of his adventurous forays into theory is to reread proudhonian federalism as deleuzian rhizome. here the "nonhegemonic particularities" of federalism express a "nomadological mutuality of synergistic solidarities," the revolutionary structure of opposition to the one world (43). this is the structure of revolution and resistance in the contemporary context. for too long, perhaps, political theorists and activists have been satisfied with dated and worn categories and definitions having as their sole recommendation familiarity. certainly a critical and extensive re-thinking is overdue. some (especially marxists) will feel uneasy with bey's recommendation to "rescue" the concept of "nation" (or perhaps more troubling "volk") from the instigators of base reaction. others will relish bey's invitation "to re-read proudhon, marx, nietzsche. landauer, fourier, benjamin, bakhtin, the iww, etc. — the way the ezln re-reads zapata!" (45). while expressing a distaste for "hyper-intellectual, pyrolechnical writing" and the contemporary vogue of pessimism among cultural theorists. bey decries what he sees as a reactionary "seduction into inactivity and political despair" (13). he seeks another way, preferring an "anti122 volume 15. 1999 chemin alternative pessimistic" (though not optimistic) politics which seeks the revolutionary potential of humour. in the end, bey's discussion itself remains esoteric, of greater interest (and significance) at this point to cultural theorists than to activists seeking strategic assistance in their daily battles against the one world. his political "insights" remain largely at a level of the naive or even the ridiculous. appeals to religion and nationalism we may count among the former; suggestions that capital is most vulnerable in the realm of magic (!) belong to the latter. such effusions will surely hold greater appeal for academic thrill seekers than for revolutionaries. hakim bey has taken a worthwhile step in renewing socio-political thought by bringing the insights of deleuzian theory to social action. it appears the journey still has several more miles to go. volume 15, 1999 123 working in a warming world: | 283 working in a warming world: on climate change and union renewal with carla lipsig-mummé christina rousseau christina rousseau1 (cr): despite the changing face and composition of the labour force, the organized labour movement (i.e. unions) has grown stagnant in its responses to austerity measures against working class people, a shrinking job market, and the erosion of unions themselves. running parallel to the issue of union renewal and attacks against working class people is the issue of climate change. as your recent work suggests, climate change and union renewal are not necessarily parallel, and are, in fact, connected as a broad range of issues facing workers in canada and across the globe. can you elaborate on this connection? carla lipsig-mummé2 (clm): it seems to me not only are they not just parallel, but they feed each other and they can create each other. i saw this when i was living and working in australia, where i was a national councilor for the national tertiary education union, which are blue-collar and white-collar workers together. they bargained nationally – and we had enterprise, or workplace bargaining, as well. my state 1 christina rousseau is a union activist and phd candidate in humanities at york university. she is currently working on the first, full-length historical study of the wages for housework campaigns in italy and canada in the 1970s. her broad research interests include movement organizing, unwaged labour, and marxist-feminism. 2 carla lipsig-mummé is professor of work and labour studies at york university. currently principal investigator social science and humanities research council’s environmental cura research grant, work in a warming world, carla has also been principal investigator of a study on the state of expert knowledge about the impact of global warming on canada’s employment and work, funded by cihr, sshrc and nserc. author of more than 200 academic works in english and french, her most recent book climate@work (fernwood) was published in 2013. work in a warming world will be published in 2014 and coedited by lipsig-mummé and stephen mcbride. her current research focuses on factoring work and employment into the struggle to respond to climate change, the future of work, trade unions and the renewal of union militancy in a globalizing era, regulating professions and emerging labour relations regimes. 284 | climate change and its discontents of victoria asked me to head a committee that they were setting up on green campaigning. we had representatives from each one of the universities in victoria, and then it became a national effort, and in a very short period of time we pulled together material and the language for collective bargaining around climate change. there were basically a series of issues that emerged, and ways of bargaining as well. more than that, all the locals participated. what people were reporting back was interesting: at various universities, young people (in their early 20s) who had never come to a union meeting (and they might be science people, they might be techs, they might be grounds people because academics were not separated out) came for the environment issues and came out of a concern for environmental questions. one of the three people who put their hands up to take my place on the council when i left later became state secretary of the national tertiary – and now he is a major force in the australian council of trade unions, doing serious work for environmental change. by this i mean the unions and the corporations argue a very fine line in policy statements, as indeed do many environment groups. the policy statements usually have a target on either consumer behaviour, or on what regulations or laws we need from the government. all of this is what others can do. i’m suggesting that unions have considerable residual powers through occupational health and safety and collective bargaining that will allow them to raise issues of environmental responsibility. through their collective bargaining, for example, they can draw in people who haven’t been active before. the link between occupational health and safety and collective bargaining will mobilize people who would surprise you, and people who wouldn’t surprise you. i think that engagement with environmental responsibility is one of several sources for union renewal, mainly at the local level. this is rank and file work. it can gather, and it has to. and what could reinvigorate unions more than engagement with bargaining? we need to build from the rank and file, because that’s where we negotiate. another thing i learned from my australian experience (and i’ve seen this in germany as well) is that environmental work in a workplace sometimes begins with one or two people who are passionate in gathering others. i listened to a series of secondary and tech college teachers in southern germany talking about how they got active. one teacher had talked to their students and together they formed a group in one class, then other classes did. they started out by asking, “what are we wasting? how is our energy being used?” and they formed other clusworking in a warming world: | 285 ters – this is real rank and file work. what you can’t ever do is present it as a means to a different end, because the people who come to this really care about the environment, and they care about their unions too. there are other ways to link union renewal and climate change, which we haven’t done yet, but which we may with work in a warming world3. in a hospital you may have eleven different unions. at york university we have seven, i believe. gather a delegate from each one of those unions and call them your green stewards. or they could be your existing occupational health and safety officers. you can learn how to audit a workplace and not accept the employer’s evaluation. because if you accept the employer’s evaluation, every one of the universities is environmentally superb! and we’re not. so you gather this information, and you connect with concerned scientists and environmental lawyers, and you get the tools for auditing and drafting your proposals. but you also draw up a green plan where you develop what we need to do, what our timeframe is, what expertise is needed, etc. that idea – which could be somewhat common across workplaces and sectors – is to have a small group that’s interested in green issues. cr: there is a lot of talk about the creation of green jobs. what does this mean? clm: what’s a green job? governments look at the issue and say, “we’ll create 2 million, 3 million, 4 million jobs.” but there’s no consensual definition of green jobs. the idea of green jobs is used largely as a lure – it’s basically job creation with a trendy title. we will produce x number of jobs, and the numbers are never the same. these new green jobs are based on a series of hypotheses: if this law passes, if the shift to cleaner energy occurs within a certain amount of time, if, if. it seems to me that in defining green jobs we need to have 2 or 3 characteristics: 1) the item being produced is of environmental value to better it, and not simply keep it equal; 2) the methods of production are themselves environmentally responsible; 3) the workers have green awareness and green training. but what does it mean to say the processes 3 work in a warming world (w3) “is a 5 year research programme clustering a number of projects and grants. it is a research partnership among academics and community partners to bring work back into canadian focus in the struggle to slow global warming. the cluster of w3 projects bridge two solitudes: between environmental and labour market organizations, and between academic and practitioner research. w3 brings together more than 50 organizations and researchers in 10 universities and 4 countries.” for more information, see http://www.workinawarmingworld.yorku.ca/ 286 | climate change and its discontents of production? i argue that we need to start to use a life cycle assessment: we start with the inputs, we come to the technology we use to transport, the physical environment in which your work takes place, distribution, disposal. it’s a chain. once you do that, once you consider these factors, there are precious few green industries and green processes. the number of green jobs obviously varies. and worse than that, very few new green jobs are actually being created. in the last month, gretchen morgenson of the new york times looked at this. the united states has a series of programs to fund small and medium sized businesses to hire people who are working on environmental responsibility. she followed some of the companies and found that they took the money, but the jobs never came. we don’t have any consensus on the issue of green jobs, other than that it is a political tool. all policies, whether to create green jobs or to regulate existing jobs – are vulnerable to politics. we’re not that vulnerable yet in canada. so far, our labour relations framework has stood up better than other countries. i know the conservatives are now looking for right to work legislation, so maybe we aren’t going to hold up. but so far we do: we have contracts, we have bargaining, we have occupational health and safety laws that are independent of our contracts, etc. and can it all get wiped out? sure it can. and so can our unions. but right now we have powers we’re not using, and they just might renew us. cr: in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis and as a response to canadians demanding environmental accountability, the canadian government has promised the creation of “green” jobs. the reality in canada, however, is that resources are going to support environmentally destructive practices like fracking and the oil sands industry (not to mention the canadian government completely abandoning its kyoto commitments). it seems that people in canada are interested in green jobs – or at least in greening existing jobs. but instead resources are going to support environmentally devastating industries and practices. why is canada so stalled compared to other developed countries? how does the canadian labour movement compare with other countries in its response? clm: in canada, we’re still around 30 percent unionized – the us is around 11 percent. if i had my druthers, we wouldn’t be going workplace to workplace. but we don’t have the government in our hands. i don’t reject the ndp out of hand because having lived in australia when the conservative coalition came into power. the government at working in a warming world: | 287 the national level completely got rid of protective elements; all dues collection was by hand, you couldn’t collect it at the source any longer. the federal government said repeatedly, “our goal is for every worker to be a self-employed contractor.” union membership in australia went from 56 percent down to 21 percent. unions had no money to have offices or staff. there are a number of initiatives that are good within the union movement as a whole. but the harder issues, which happen around collective bargaining, are very rare. is there good will in the movement? absolutely (especially in british columbia). we need to get back the right to bargain in the public sector, because we almost don’t have it anymore. i’ve watched the labour movement engage in the past, and it has been very promising. it hasn’t been quick, but it’s been promising. for example, the united food and commercial workers union, organized greenhouse workers who are almost always migrants. they understand the contradictions: from field, to truck, to factories, to fork – there’s a whole political economy. i’m waiting to see not just the unions, but also the environmental movement, go beyond the proposal of policies to make the changes happen. we’ve seen a little of that, but not much – and we do have the places and the spaces to do so. there are things we can bargain, and also ways we can bargain. we developed this in australia, and it works almost everywhere: 1) what are you negotiating to demand the employer to do?; 2) what are you prepared to do jointly with the employer (create a joint commission in which you and the employer oversee a whole range of things, e.g., the heating plant, etc.; 3) what you will negotiate into your collective agreement to have the employer do for your members as citizens in civil society? free metro passes, for example. hotel workers in toronto have negotiated that for their workers; 4) we as a union are going to educate our members as part of our collective bargaining responsibility. that’s new. we take on the education. it goes through every sector, and that could be part of the green plan. these are the ways you can bargain, and they are doable. how does it compare to other countries? the european unions are way ahead. they’ve been on social partnership for years. they have a tripartite hold that works against conservative governments. for example, there was a partnership to create cleaner steel. the green workplaces project in the uk is something i would love to borrow for here. there are between 300-350 companies building relationships workplace by workplace to green, consult and negotiate. that’s a model i would like to see us get involved with. it’s workplace based, but it’s trade union congress enabled. there are lots of other examples as well. codetermi288 | climate change and its discontents nation in germany will do something like this too. codetermination gives unions enormous research capacity. board fees pay for research centers, when union members sit on company boards. the fees do not go into their pockets, but into this. european unions, when they have money – and the quebec unions do this too – put money into research so that when they go to the table or into the strike, they have backup. and we have never done that here, nor do i see the climate for it now. compared to what we do vis-à-vis the government, you might ask why canadians who are concerned about the environment continue to reelect a government which is the pariah of the western world, although it’s about to be joined by australia. cr: the reality is that people working in environmentally destructive industries like the oil and mining industries in canada are working these jobs because they earn them money. how can we get these workers to care about environmental responsibility when they have a pay cheque to think about? clm: we can ask the same question in many places. if you have chronically poor communities, in the maritimes or in the atlantic provinces for example, they’re going to migrate. i’ve been talking with a group that is looking at an alternative skills training program. my thought is that you create regional instead of provincial labour markets, because then you may at least keep them somewhere in the atlantic. well before we got into climate change, there was a skills training problem: we never solved it, and we keep asking the same questions 20 years later. there is a dilemma of personal need. i think that we often forget in universities that everybody doesn’t have the range of choices that we do. for example, if you come from an outpost, if you come from a fishing community where fish are gone, your choices are made in function of a lot of pressures. if we stay students for a long time (as i did), then you can underestimate the perception of no choice. i would only be contacting these workers through their union. coming from the outside in some industries never works. above all, we have a number of things that are not climate but that are linked and related. for example, the canadian government’s scandalous negligence: piping, or rail carrying of the oil sands, the lack of rail standards, and the dangers attached to them, etc. all kinds of people who work in those and other kinds of industries can gather around that. gathering around issues that are not climate change in the workplace, but are enviworking in a warming world: | 289 ronmental so that the links may also happen elsewhere the community. that doesn’t take you to a practice – the idea of green plans or environmentally responsible charter for workers in their workplaces. those are places that we can’t go to from the outside. in climate@work we write about what we are doing with unions and what unions are doing in the workplace4. in some ways it’s not part of our academic writing. i think when we cluster stories better that may happen. but it’s a different kind of work for us. cr: there have been a lot of grassroots responses to environmental devastation and climate change in canada. for example, the anti-fracking movement in new brunswick by mi’kmaq warriors and the elsipogtog first nations in response to shale-gas exploration in the area, recently culminating in a massive blockade and the proclamation of a massive land reclamation. this is, of course, one example of environmental activism coming from first nations and indigenous people in canada. i was recently at my union’s national convention (canadian union of public employees), where an emergency resolution was passed in support of the elsipogtog first nations. on a national level, with my union, it seems to have ended there. clm: cupe has environment committees in 130 different locals. they’re probably not doing “nothing”. cupe is very decentralized in this way. i always know that they’re doing more than what i know about. we have something called a work and climate change report, which is a compendium of worldwide research – it comes out monthly, and it’s free. it’s a straight thing. you go to it if you want to know what is happening. you don’t often find stuff about mobilization. it’s geared for what it does, which is gather people who you could otherwise never talk with and give them information and hope they use it. we work on a number of different levels and with several different goals inside this work. cr: can you talk about the connections between unions and grassroots movements? how do they compare, and how can they respond to climate change and environmental devastation in a meaningful way? clm: different ways in different parts of the country. i would say by responding to environmental degradation. given what we’re getting out of the harper government, concern about climate change has moved into 4 carla lipsig-mummé, ed. (2013). climate@work. halifax: fernwood publishing. 290 | climate change and its discontents a larger concern about the environment as a dangerous thing because of the way the government deals with it. british columbia would be far in advance of everyone else on this. british columbia will say it’s an unwritten rule that nobody goes forward anymore with an environmentally destructive plan if the first nations don’t want it. across the whole country, i don’t know what local links are made. local bargaining isn’t happening really. we’ve got examples of things included in contracts – there are clauses, and there are more than we know. but there is not awareness that there is a lot out there. we know there’s more than we know, but until we get a good search engine or even a federal system, we put it together bit by bit. what it means is, in terms of actual awareness, people pick up the spark and bring it home to their locals – and those are the things we’ll be looking at with work in a warming world with another seven years of funding. i’d like to be moving into the local work sooner than that. cr: so the work is something that is happening more at a local level than at the national level in unions? clm: when we’ve talked with people in packed rooms, few talked about what they were bargaining. they talked about what they were doing with their occupational health and safety committee, or talked about separate environment committees. but i didn’t hear about bargaining in that room. that’s the next step. in any place that it hasn’t already started, they really have to be starting from the ground. because quintessentially what we do in this country is we bargain from the local level. we can provide some of the material, the information; find out what they need to help. and it helps a lot that we have these good unions, and unions that are largely good in terms of listening to their locals and taking up the work of work in a warming world. in other words, they are taking up the work of work in a warming world and that helps too. but it’s a long way to go. cr: according to a statistics canada report from 2012, the percentage of workers in unionized positions is 31.2 percent compared to 33.8 percent in 1997. clm: how lucky we are that we only dropped 2 precent! but yes, precarious jobs are a killer in making any kind of unionized force. working in a warming world: | 291 cr: while union membership has grown in this period, there has been a greater growth of non-unionized jobs: precarious, temporary, part-time work. the major issue for a lot of these workers is job security. additionally, the public sector has largely lost the right to collective bargaining. with the impending threat of “right to work” legislation, what are we to do? how can workers be integrated into struggles not only for better, secure jobs, but also for environmental protection and opposing climate change? clm: we do things that will sound very much reformist. we ensure the government that wants to do this is not in office again. but there is a whole active and confrontational life for unions, which somehow nationally has disappeared since 2000. the canadian labour congress under bob white was extraordinarily creative in not letting these things take root. leadership, to some degree, matters. if nothing else, it matters if only in terms of despair or the willingness to fight. that willingness to fight – and i’m talking about climate bargaining at the local level and the mood of the labour movement as a whole – has been taking a giant step backwards; a step of resignation for a very long time. that needs to change. and that means getting involved with political parties that can stop the party that won’t. in other words, it needs a certain kind of reformist political action. cr: do you see a place for returning to the roots of the labour movement, which was built out of nothing, and out of militancy and illegitimacy? clm: it grew out of itself and out of the chances people took with their own lives and with the lives of others. do i see it? i haven’t seen it yet. labour as a social movement fought for the legal right to continue to represent and bargain. the price you pay to get the right to bargain is to lose the social movement. on the other hand, if we lose the right to bargain, we have to start right back again. where do i see it coming from? i see it coming from workers. fast food workers and minimum wage workers in the united states are doing quite spectacular work, and i don’t think we’re seeing that here. now we’re not talking about climate. we’re talking about the simple role of the union as defender and an advancer of social rights and social power. in other words, we’re talking about something in which climate is only a part. i haven’t seen anything here that is like what the fast food workers in the united states are doing. and it’s not just them. the day labourers are enormously 292 | climate change and its discontents organized in the united states. what we’re talking about is: does the united states of the 1930s happen again? and the answer is: lose our basic rights and there are certainly people of several generations willing to fight back. that’s politique de la pire – in other words, we will become radical if it gets a lot worse. i’m not hoping so; i’m hoping it gets better. but that’s the only place i can see it coming from. if we’re talking about union radicalism again, i think it will take us getting to a moment where we understand that we have everything and all to lose. then i have a certain amount of faith in several generations for that fight back. but that means that it needs to get desperately worse, and it’s hard to wish that. 332 | climate change and its discontents book review negotiating risk, seeking security, eroding solidarity: life and work on the border by holly gibbs, belinda leach, and charlotte a.b. yates. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing, 2012, $18.95 can, paper. isbn 978-155266-527-5. pages: 1-147. reviewed by madalena santos1 carleton university this interdisciplinary study brings together approaches from political economy and social anthropology to show how working class solidarity is intrinsically linked to but extends beyond the workplace. gibbs, leach and yates argue that in examining solidarity more attention must be paid to the interplay between class, gender and race in relation to workers’ broader community experiences and sense of security and risk as a result of labour force changes. the authors set out to demonstrate how globalization and neoliberal policies and practices have lead to structural limitations which have impeded possibilities for sustained solidarity. through interviews with mexican and canadian automotive workers in the cities of ciudad juárez, guelph, stratford, windsor and brantford, they center their research primarily on working class women’s experiences of solidarity to examine the impact of structural inequities resulting from class, gender and race divides. their decision to focus on automotive workers in canada and mexico is based on what they see as the industry’s continued importance as both “a symbol of the good life in north america” and “an exemplar of globalization.” gibbs, leach and yates explain solidarity as the capacity for collective action based on collective identities and a shared sense of belonging. using a social relations paradigm that employs the concepts of “social reproduction” and “community”, they explore changes to the foundations of solidarity. first, they look at how the conditions and structure 1 madalena santos is a phd candidate in sociology at carleton university. her research interests include methods of creative resistance against settler colonialism, anticolonial feminist theories and practices, approaches to solidarity and allyship, intersectionality, and (im)migration issues. she is currently completing her dissertation on creative palestinian resistance and solidarity narratives focusing on the boycott divestment and sanctions movement, spoken word, and theatre book review: negotiating risk, seeking security, eroding solidarity | 333 of labour markets shape work experiences, then move on to introduce the research communities in detail. they subsequently explore the gendering of solidarity through the major themes which resonated from their interviews: 1. experiences and feelings of solidarity, risk and insecurity; 2. family lives and the changing world of work; and 3. the impact of (im)mobility on solidarity and community relations. importantly, their study connects workers’ experiences of risk and security, family life, and (im)mobility to both structural political-economic changes and new management control techniques, including increased competition leading to declined wages and benefits as well as job loss; restructuring of government income support programs and privatization of social services creating barriers to health, housing, and employment security; violations of labour laws and safety practices due to inadequate regulatory scrutiny and a lack of independent unions; and gender segregated work practices such as placement of women in parts production, scarce training opportunities, sexist job advertisements and screenings for pregnancy. the authors’ convincingly argue that these policies and practices, which more adversely affect women and racialized peoples than white men, have lead to the individualizing of collective responsibility and the destruction of collective identities as well as the deterioration of community needed to uphold long-term working class solidarity. this study demonstrates how the materiality and social relations of gender, race, family and community play significant roles in the experiences of automotive industry workers. according to the authors’ interviews and analysis, women in both countries are employed in less skilled occupations in the automotive industry which places them at the bottom of the production chain and translates into lower wages, less job mobility and more insecurity. while women in canada seek the benefit of unions when they can, the data presented reveals how women in mexico tend to distrust unions which are mostly state-affiliated and have a history of collaboration with management. despite this difference, women in both countries face negative impacts as a result of the social reproduction of gender norms, including being sexualized by coworkers and in the labour movement in general. women also bear the brunt of family responsibilities in the home. the social reproduction of gender norms at the family level means that women in juárez and the ontario cities examined here play dual roles as unpaid domestic workers and paid labourers. also, the increased pressure to relocate to places of employment after plant closures or in search of work further strains workers’ sense of community. racialized workers in canada are 334 | climate change and its discontents additionally affected by a competitive industry which has created an atmosphere of “us versus them”; where top-paying jobs remain in the hands of mostly white men. in mexico, the hierarchy of race based on skin colour, linked to the legacies of colonialism, determines who gets access to which jobs. to deal with sexism, racism, and overburdening responsibilities, workers rely on individualized coping methods rather than collective solidarity. these individualized responses internalize anxiety, stress, sexism, and racism so that responsibility for institutionalized sexist, racist, and violent behaviour and practice is placed on the individual experiencing these injustices rather than on the unjust structural and societal foundations that enable these practices to continue. the claim that solidarity is “deeply gendered” is not a novel one, as rightly acknowledged in this study; however, the authors’ analysis – grounded in the experiences of workers – provides a significant contribution to understanding the ways in which solidarity is gendered and how globalization and neoliberalism impact the manner in which solidarity is actualized. in this way, this study offers critical insight into the gendered effects of neoliberal policies and practices on solidarity in other employment sectors. in comparing the similarities and differences between worker experiences in canada and mexico while recognizing the generalizability limitations of their data due to the small number of mexican workers interviewed, gibbs, leach and yates underscore the importance of class to any analysis of solidarity. the authors also make a strong case for how independent unions can help mitigate risk and security through collective action, and education concerning the impact of structural changes on their workplace thereby reducing the tendency to scapegoat individuals based on race and/or gender. substantially, their research points to the contradictory processes that exist alongside the erosion of working class solidarity revealing traditional and nontraditional practices and possibilities for solidarity which has considerable implications for the exploration of solidarity movements outside the workplace in all fields of study and political contexts. chemins alternatifs the other side of the market: social governance in neoliberal world order and the economy of passive mitigation kevin young with the widely acknowledged rise of neoliberalism, which explicitly uses market discipline to influence the social and economic decisions of states, firms and individuals, understanding the role of the market in shaping world order has become increasingly pertinent. many theorists allude to the structural importance of the discipline of the market on state policy, developmental strategies, and economic outcomes. however, the other side of the market remains neglected: the market's abilities to produce a non-disciplinary form of social governance to manage some of the very social adversities that neoliberalism stimulates. when some of the qualities of neoliberal restructuring produces a social adversity, that same process may often stimulate a new commodity relation which substitutes for the political deliberation that adversity might otherwise provoke. urban pollution has stimulated a burgeoning market for indoor air purifiers; the deterioration of access to public goods such as water utilities has meant the growth of new markets for private goods, such as bottled water; increased mental anxiety has meant new markets for pharmaceuticals and self-help literature and so on. this article argues that it is possible to envision an 'economy of passive mitigation' which substitutes for the active agency of states, institutions, and transnational classes in reproducing neoliberal world order by volume 20, 2004 149 alternate routes mitigating some of the manifestations of capitalist contradiction. as processes of intensive market expansion colonize what fernand braudel called the sphere of "material life," rather than simply abusing this sphere, an economy of passive mitigation works to mitigate the adversities that are experienced therein. the dispersion of various markets for treatment which work together to produce such an economy of passive mitigation act as substitutes for other forms of social governance under neoliberal world order. they efficiently serve to mitigate social adversities through which capitalism resolves its crisis of extended reproduction: through the intensive expansion of markets. this argument will be made in five sections. section 1 briefly reviews the ways in which many marxists understand social governance to operate under capitalism, and attempts to highlight the lack of attention paid to the role of the market in facilitating social governance. section 2 discusses how market dynamics serve to mitigate some of the manifestations of capitalist contradictions through markets for treatment. section 3 examines the ways in which markets for treatment are unique to capitalism and can be understood in terms of a general economic dynamic of the capitalist mode of production. this will highlight the existence of an economy of passive mitigation which acts as a dynamic form of social governance. section 4 uses the braudelian concept of "material life" to demonstrate how in colonizing previously uncommodified spheres of life, the economy of passive mitigation expands both in size and scope but most importantly as a form of governance. the final section discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the economy of passive mitigation as a form of social governance, and its corresponding strengths and fragility. forms ofsocial governance and the market the historical uniqueness of liberal capitalist societies stems from the division of the moment of enforcement and the moment of appropriation, such that they constitute two distinct but complementary spheres: the state and capital itself (wood, 2003a: 17-18). thus, while capitalist societies certainly share the practices of "extra-economic" coercion of many pre-capitalist societies, the burden of appropriation is usually shouldered through market forces. what this has historically meant since the emergence of capitalism in england is that while coercive power has 150 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs remained, the force of market imperatives acts as a historically unique form of coercion (wood, 2002; brenner 1977). market dependence ensures that the relative propertylessness of producers, and the competitive environment of appropriators drive the former to sell their labour on the market and the latter to engage in rigorous profit maximization strategies of various types. the separation of the moments of enforcement and appropriation produces its own unique ideological corollary: the corresponding separation of "the political" from "the economic" (wood, 2002:17-18). although such an artificial separation in popular discourse has been the locus of diverse forms of resistance to the will(s) of capitalist accumulation, the ideological milieu that flourishes as a result remains the most persistent and powerful ally of capital. as well, this separation remains the most formidable nuisance to those seeking transcendence of capitalism's contradictions. economic relationships between people are seen as contractually and voluntarily based, between free and equal autonomous individuals, rather than as relationships involving individuals and groups with asymmetrical access to both market and state power. furthermore, the fetishism of the concept of the market economy as a power-neutral terrain of mutual contract between individuals also denies the fact that the whole of social life continually becomes something over and above the individuals actively working to create it at any given time, since what each individual historically inherits is contaminated with the forms of domination of the past. boaventura de sousa santos has rightly pointed out the separation of the political from the economic has made possible: ...the naturalization of capitalist exploitation and the neutralization of the revolutionary potential of liberal politics two processes that converged to consolidate the capitalist mode of social relations (de sousa santos, 1985:306) despite the unrelentingly persistent facade that "the economy" is a separate, "non-political" sphere of social interaction, resistance to capitalism has been as old as such a conceptual separation. nevertheless, resistance to capitalism has usually not been as complete or as persistent as many have hoped. it has not produced "its own gravediggers" (marx and engels, 1998) as efficiently as many early marxist scholars predicted. volume 20, 2004 151 alternate routes this problem has been a pivotal issue for marxist scholarship for some time. overall, the general understanding of social change as influenced by "self-consciousness itself [...] changed by the relations of production men enter into independent of their will" (wright mills, 1963) has not been discarded. yet most explanations of the resilience of capitalism have emphasized the conditioning of consciousness by superstructural factors, the roles of ideology, the relative autonomy of the capitalist state, the importance of certain civilizational discourses, and the embeddedness of certain ideologies in norms and practices of daily life. the emphasis on such factors represents an important development that continues to advance a better understanding of how capitalism perpetuates itself amidst seemingly endless contradictions, crises, and opportunities for transcendence. as useful as many of these developments are, most existing scholarship that focuses on capitalist contradiction and the mechanisms of social governance suffer from a marked lack of attention paid to the role of markets and systems of economic compulsion as a way to help understand capitalist resilience. the increased exposition of the terms "market economy" and "free market" in neoliberal discourse has encouraged a proliferation of literature that brings to attention the relationship between the market and social governance. the renaissance of karl polanyi and fernand braudel are a testament to this intellectual movement (polanyi, 1957; braudel, 1977; mcquaig 2001; birchfield, 1999; burawoy, 2003; germain, 1997; helleiner, 1997). other explicitly marxist scholars, such as robert brenner and ellen meiksins wood, have elucidated the relationship between market imperatives, the historical specificity of capitalism, and its current trajectory (meiksins wood, 2002, 2003b; brenner, 2003). much of this literature is interesting and persuasive. it emphasizes the use of the market as a medium by which the dominant classes exercise their social power through reproducing a set of structural imperatives codified in law. yet it reflects a general tendency in the critical political economy literature assessing the dominance of neoliberalism which emphasizes the disruption and damage done by market forces, without recognizing the capacity for those market forces to address the problems that such disruption and damage creates. the vast majority of marxist-inspired analysis assumes that markets act as a disrupting force on social relations, and serve to undermine the legitimacy of states, or at least certain forms of state (meiksins wood, 2003a; panitch and gindin, 152 volume 20, 2004 chem ins alternatifs 2003). those who focus on the hyper-discipline of international financial markets also allude to the markets ability to invoke crises of state sovereignty and even "threaten the political and economic wealth of nations" (harmes, 2001; sinclair, 1994). ellen meiksins woods recent work on capitalist empire emphasizes that the compulsions of competition, accumulation and profit-maximization within the current capitalist empire "constantly threaten to disrupt the social order" (meiksins wood, 2003b: 16). the "ravages of the market" produce "disruptive tendencies" which must be addressed actively and consciously by states in order to prevent the political outcomes of capitalist contradictions (meiksins wood, 2003b:25). the neo-polanyianism of many other scholars within international political economy (ipe) literature also reflects this concern with the socially "disembedded" markets ability to disrupt and wreak havoc on "active society" (mcquaig, 2001; birchfield, 1999; lacher, 1999). even jiirgen habermas, through his recent intensive engagement with cosmopolitan legal theory, has made similar arguments regarding globalization trends and their effect in disintegrating and "opening" the collective "lifeworld" (habermas, 2001:82-88). yet paradoxically, at the same time that the compulsions of competition, accumulation and profit-maximization "constantly threaten to disrupt the social order," those same compulsions produce the means by which some of those problems are addressed. the composition of what is being produced, exchanged and consumed on the market is conditioned in itself by the social disruption that capitalism generates. some insightful theorists within ipe have recognized that the micro-political composition of the global polity itself is changing due to the increased penetration of the market into spheres of everyday life in liberal capitalist societies. indeed, this has been a critical point of issue within critical social theory since at least the late publication of marx's philosophical manuscripts. both stephen gill and adam harmes, for example, have alluded to the emergence of a "market civilization" whereby capitalist norms and practices are increasingly becoming culturally embedded into the structures of peoples everyday lives (gill, 1995; harmes, 1998). others within the field of ipe, such as kees van der pijl, revisit the marxian notion of the intensive expansion of capital, but continue to assume that such a process of deepening produces the "exhaustion" of the "social and natural substratum sustaining reproduction" (van der pijl, 1998:37). volume 20, 2004 153 alternate routes those theorists who put the intensive expansion of markets into the forefront of their analyses can offer a great deal to the existing ipe literature. while many are quick to reject michael hardt and antonio negri's empire thesis (see, for example, the many excellent critiques featured in balakrishnan, 2003), their insights into intensive market expansion provide some useful insights into the dynamic nature of market expansion (hardt and negri, 2000). making use of such a dispersed literature that puts intensive market expansion at the forefront of its analysis, this paper makes the argument that it is possible to envision an economic dynamic unique to capitalism, an economy of passive mitigation, which both feeds off such intensive market expansion and acts as a form of social governance in mitigating some of the manifestations of capitalist contradiction. such a phenomenon is consequential both in terms of helping to understand the way that neoliberal world order reproduces itself, and also in terms of helping to understand how such non-disciplinary forms of social governance unleashed by the market create a hidden potentiality for transformative political change. the conclusions regarding the disruptive effects of the market are not contested here. yet as the social relations of liberal capitalist societies adjust and evolve, it is necessary to develop a "constantly renewed critique of the analytical instruments designed to understand it" (meiksins wood, 1995). such a critique necessarily involves both drawing from some of the insights of scholarship emphasising intensive market expansion, and creating new conceptual categories that facilitate understanding. the hard discipline and imperatives of the market are not sufficient alone to provide a holistic understanding of the reproduction of neoliberal world order. an understanding of the ways in which markets serve to alleviate the adversities of neoliberal restructuring, and how markets expand and deepen, is needed to help explain such resilience. such a process reveals an economic dynamic which, although touched on by some, has not been successfully elaborated into a coherent theory. the remainder of this paper explains and elaborates such a theory. markets for treatment a subtle, yet increasingly important dynamic within liberal capitalist societies is the market's function as a form of non-disciplinary social 154 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs governance in which the psychological, social, and environmental adversities generated by neoliberal restructuring actually stimulate economic activity, and the growth of new markets. the reaction of people faced with situations that they feel are undesirable often creates a market opportunity for someone to supply a commodity to medicate or treat the adversity experienced. it is possible that changing relations of production, which may sharpen the effects of alienation felt by working people, may serve to make critical social theory tractable, and thus provide impetus for change through political action (which may, if effective, address the source of that alienation). 1 interestingly, however, the manifestations of peoples alienation also present opportunities for capitalists to profit from the situation; a new commodity is produced and consumed that treats the alienation experienced, which acts completely without intention in political terms as a substitute for the stimulus to political action. for instance, the drudgery of post-fordist production, the unstable nature of deregulated labour markets, and a depreciating connection to a sense of community in north american society can stimulate the markets for antidepressant drugs such as prozac. as some of the critical green political economy literature has also pointed out, even environmental devastation produces new markets for environmental cleanup, stimulates all kinds of economic activity, and contributes to the gdp (halstead and cobb, 1996:197-206). some groundbreaking work in theoretical criminology has recently explored how the perception of violent crime in many communities has created a new market for private security companies (rigakos, 2002; shearing and stenning, 1993; tinsley, 1999). the ways in which private security provisions have manifested in situations of international conflict also speaks to this issue of "disorder" creating new markets (shearer, 1998a; shearer, 1998b; shearer 2001; singer, 2001/2002; shepard, 1998; davis, 2000). the market activity in all of the above examples is not politically neutral; indeed, the changing composition of what is being produced, exchanged and consumed on the market is increasingly explicitly oriented toward treating the adversities that are themselves produced by the intensification of market imperatives that is characteristic of neoliberal world order. while a number of different examples of such market dynamics could be invoked, the market for treating mental anxiety is the most striking. whether or not the authors have made explicit connecvolume 20, 2004 155 alternate routes tions between mental depression and a marxian understanding of alienation, it is perhaps instructive that a diversity of mainstream political economy scholarship alludes to a connection between serious mental health disorders and changing relations of production. the international labour organization recently reported a rising "world epidemic" of serious mental health disorders, and linked them to increased stress in the workplace (ilo, 2000). daniel cohen's work on the "new nature of capitalism" posits mental "burnout" as a significant component of "our modern times," stating that in "todays world, it is not longer machines that break down; it is men and women" (cohen, 2003:40). one should also not forget alan greenspans comments in 1997 when he heralded the feelings of fear and insecurity of the us population and the way in which those emotions allowed for labour market tightness beyond the nairu levels (chomsky, 2000: 507). while a great deal of ink can be spilled over the particularity of the causes of this trend and its various manifestations, it is hard to deny that the pharmaceutical industry responding to a latent demand to treat peoples disorders, has had a placating effect on this development. this is evidenced in the fact that every year, 30 million us citizens take antidepressant drugs, and that in the course of the 1990s, antidepressant drug use grew by 800 percent (levine, 2002). without a doubt, these and many other disorders are not purely reducible to a single common cause, and it should also be emphasized that there are powerful discursive articulations that give added market power to large pharmaceutical interests. however, inasmuch as some pharmaceutical activity can be attributable to the problems associated with neoliberal restructuring suggested above, there is a very interesting dynamic at play. since such market activity serves a particular social governance function of treatment, (however unintended), it is possible to speak of different markets for treatment. the creation of new markets and the growth of existing markets in capitalist society can be seen as a result of the dialectical tension between certain manifestations of capitalism's contradictions and people's desire to improve their situation rather than identifying, or acting on, the source of those contradictions. the market for prozac is essentially a market for treatment, as is the burgeoning market for professional advice, self-help books, relaxation systems and so on, that are designed and marketed explicitly to help people cope. 2 the markets for water filters and indoor air purifiers to filter environ156 volume 20. 2004 chemins alternatifs mental pollution from domestic environments are other examples of such a market for treatment. but although the aforementioned examples depict a dynamic of market clearing where demand (for alleviation of some adversity) is met by the supply of a new commodity to treat such felt adversities, such a dynamic should not suggest that the effects of alienation, environmental disaster, or community insecurity are actually corrected by such a market dynamic. indeed, most often the most practical (and normatively desirable) option is not the production and consumption of new commodities, but rather political action that may address the causes of the adversity experienced. however, in the absence of popular and effective counter-hegemonic strategies, such an option remains relatively hidden from view. in such a political milieu, and because of the naturalized culture of consumerism, people look to the diverse possibilities of consumption as a way to manage many of their problems. the fact that markets for treatment only serve to be partial correctives does not mean that people will choose the optimal solution of taking political action, with all its risks and uncertainties. 3 as much of the critical literature on consumerism has pointed out, many people simply feel a "dull compulsion to consume," which can be understood as an addictive impulse (warde, 2002:19-20). a great deal of literature suggests that the culture of consumerism has caused the simple act of purchase to be symbolically loaded with abstract meaning (morris, 2001:10-1 1). looking to the market for solutions to ones sense of lack is thus understood as being embedded in the logic of consumer culture, something that many critical theorists and green political economists have pointed out is an important element of the global neoliberal advance (morris, 2001; daly and cobb, 1994: 373; klein, 2000). mark neufeld also points out that the related naturalization of the culture and practices of "possessive individualism" are integral to the intersubjectivities that sustain neoliberal reproduction on a world scale (neufeld, 2001:100-101; macpherson, 1962). the phenomenon of markets for treatment highlights an important dynamic that speaks to the way in which social governance is increasingly facilitated by the market itself. such a development indicates that attenuating the manifestations of capitalist contradictions does not have to be facilitated through the active, politically conscious direction of a capitalist state, a transnational ruling class, or a dominant hegemonic bloc neutralizing dissent through a mix of concessions and coercion. in volume 20, 2004 157 alternate routes all of the above examples, of markets for treatment, the burden of mitigation is handled primarily by market forces and little else. just as the gramscian concept of hegemony has proved a useful tool within social theory to understand how social governance is effective because it appears banal (gramsci, 1999; cox, 1996), so too can an understanding of the significance of markets for treatment be useful because of its appearance as a politically neutral dynamic. this is not to say that markets for treatment are more effective or more important than other forms of social governance that assist with the reproduction of neoliberal world order. on the contrary, such markets for treatment may be relatively minor when the total burden of social governance is considered. the point, however, is that markets for treatment act as substitutes for other forms of governance to some degree. as the next section will demonstrate, markets for treatment are held together by dynamics specific to the capitalist mode of production, and therefore, cannot be spoken of in terms of simple market activity, but rather should be understood as an economic dynamic unique to capitalism, which can be called an economy of passive mitigation. marketsfor treatment and the historical specificity ofcapitalism the pressing questions evoked by the trend of markets for treatment are why such a phenomenon is occurring and how it is related to capitalism. have markets not always existed to mitigate people's sense of alienation? the obvious and correct answer is yes. as many scholars (such as karl polanyi, fernand braudel, and ellen meiksins wood) have pointed out, markets of some form have usually been an important feature of human societies, although in significantly varying degrees of social embeddedness. one may add that historically, markets have facilitated a function not only of what an economist might call need or want satisfaction (firat and dholakia, 1998:22-23). they have also acted as outlets for the effects of alienation as those effects express themselves through consumption. the longstanding market for alcohol is one obvious example. despite the reality that markets for treatment have long been with us, there are several reasons why the extent of the role of markets in facilitating social governance is unique to capitalist societies, perhaps increasingly so as market-penetration and processes of commodification 158 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs become more intense under neoliberal world order. first, the forms of alienation that people experience in capitalist societies are often more intense and diverse than in previous epochs, and thus provide for more market niches to be filled, and more demand for treatment. secondly, only in capitalist societies is the economic perceived to be separated from the political, which may be important in allowing markets to penetrate into spheres of life without much social resistance. last, and perhaps most importantly, in contrast to non-capitalist modes of production, capitalism is distinct in that markets act not simply as a source of opportunity and discretionary interface, but rather act as an imperative. this last point deserves explicit attention. as ellen wood has succinctly pointed out: capitalism differs from other social forms because producers depend on the market for access to the means of production (unlike, for instance, peasants, who remain in direct, non-market possession of land); while appropriation cannot rely on "extra-economic powers of appropriation by means of direct coercion such as the military, political, and judicial powers that enable feudal lords to extract surplus labour from peasants but must depend on the purely economic mechanisms of the market (wood, 2002:2). since both producers and appropriators are governed by market imperatives, in capitalist societies the search for and acquisition of profits becomes the operating dynamic for economic organization, indeed for the whole society. this means that the capitalists' werewolf thirst for profit makes them eager to both revolutionize the relations of production in a way that extracts the most surplus value from labour. it also necessitates the organization of some form of countervailing mechanism to address the structural inevitability of ineffective demand problems. one way in which the problem of ineffective demand and the extended reproduction of capital latent in capitalist production is overcome is through the geographic/extensive expansion of markets. since the early 20th century, this has been a pivotal explanation for understanding capitalist "imperialism" within marxian literature. (hobson, 1978; lenin, 1939; luxemburg, 1968; brewer, 1989). volume 20, 2004 159 alternate routes a growing amount of recent marxist scholarship also refers to a process of intensive/social expansion that is related to this dynamic. both stephen gill and adam harmes, for example, have alluded to the emergence of a "market civilization" whereby capitalist norms and practices are increasingly becoming culturally embedded within the structures of peoples everyday lives (gill, 1995; harmes, 1998:113-14). michael hardt and antonio negri rightly point out that "capitals thirst must be quenched with new blood, and it must continually seek new frontiers," and that these frontiers are social and at intimate levels of human experience (hardt and negri, 2000). similarly, jason read alludes to the fact that because of capitals precarious hold on "living labor," capitalism must become increasingly "all pervasive, running through all dimensions of life" (read, 2003: 159). read argues persuasively that the real subsumption of living labour to capital has taken on a new intensity: capital no longer relies on cooperative networks of the reproduction of subjectivity that are exterior to it; instead, it directly produces and profits from the production of subjectivity... the reproduction of the worker as healthy, skilled, and docile is no longer left outside the circuits of capitalist production in the home or the state but has become directly productive for capital, paving the way for a whole new series of businesses and interests (read, 2003:158-9). similarly, hardt and negri argue that capital no longer looks outside but rather inside its domain, and its expansion is thus intensive rather than extensive (hardt and negri, 2000:271-72). whether or not one agrees with hardt and negri's overall empire thesis regarding the disappearance of modern sovereignty, the idea of the intensive expansion of capitalism is certainly a novel and important one. it is this intensive expansion that helps facilitate the role of markets as a mitigating agent which facilitates specific types of social governance. it is through such intensive market expansion that the phenomenon of markets for treatment grows, both in size and scope, and also in importance as a form of social governance. since such a dynamic grows alongside the ways that capitalist reproduction is facilitated, it is possible to characterize this as a dynamic characteristic of the capitalist economy, which can be called an economy of passive mitigation. 160 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs the abuse, and colonization, ofmaterial life existing marxist scholarship that attempts to understand the importance of the intensive expansion process has highlighted how such a process both sustains the power of capital, and eventually undermines it. trying to understand the processes of capitalist reproduction on a global scale, kees van der pijl theorizes the intensive expansion of markets, and declares that: ... in the constant quest for unpaid labour in its social stratum, and once a major deposit is found in its social sub-stratum, it seeks to raise the rate of exploitation in the actual labour process; until at some point the social and natural substratum on which capital feeds, which it penetrates and transforms, begins to show signs of exhaustion [emphasis added] (van der pijl, 1998:36). van der pijl's assertion that the process of intensive expansion leads to the eventual exhaustion of "the social and natural substratum" is important here, because it reflects a common understanding amongst marxian theorists that intensive expansion leads capitalism into new avenues of contradiction. for marx, although there was a level of the formal subordination of labour to capital, workers could still "live" between the harsh world of the formal production process and the relatively non-commodified sphere of life to recover from the effect of formal work. when this reproductive sphere becomes itself subject to the profit maximization strategies of capital, then labour is subordinated to capital even more intensely. marxists like van der pijl argue that this process leads to a scenario whereby: ... recovery/regeneration itself becomes subject to commodification and exploitation, and this leads to the eventual exhaustion of the social and natural substratum sustaining reproduction (van der pijl, 1998:37). marx's observation that the english bourgeoisie would have undermined the basis of their own wealth through the "unrestricted waste of human volume 20, 2004 161 alternate routes life"" resulting from the "unnatural extension of the working day" is relevant in this regard (de sousa santos, 1985:313). the "passion of capital for a limitless draining of labour power" was overcome by the capitalist state acting as an arbitrator to the problem of collective action faced by english capitalists, with the ten hour day legislation and the factory acts (panitch, 1977:5-6). with the intensification of economic competition and the "internationalization of the state" under conditions of neoliberal world order, the states capacity to solve such collective action problems has diminished (cox, 1987: 253-65). this is significant today because according to van der pijl, the relative increase in the powers of capital means that people are working longer hours, getting less sleep, experiencing the break-up of household bonds, and experiencing increased atomization and alienation (van der pijl, 1998:46-8). to those who focus their attention on the disruptive nature of intensive market expansion, this process leads to something akin to social disorder, which, if channelled properly, can lead to political pathways for change. the explanation for why this does not happen typically invokes the fact that the discipline of the market (which causes the social disorder) is accompanied in practice by more traditional forms of social governance, whether disciplinary (the use of physical coercion) or nondisciplinary (the use of a hegemonic strategy of consent generation coupled with real material concessions). consider, for example colin leys recent depiction of the "commercialization of everyday life," whereby he explains "little serious resistance" because of the entrenchment of "a general market-based ideology" in britain and the united states (leys, 2001:54-5). increasingly, however, the ravages of the market need not be supplemented by such traditional forms of social governance, such as that conducted by states or dominant classes. to use fernand braudel's conception of material life (braudel, 1977:6-8; braudel, 1981; braudel 1967:ix),4what many marxists claim has been as a broader conceptual tool to replace the term "the social and natural substratum sustaining reproduction." using the term material life for conceptual convenience then, what many marxists claim has been an ongoing occurrence in capitalist societies is akin to the pillaging and abuse of material life which serves to undermine social stability in capitalist societies. countervailing this assumption is a new perspective emerging in feminist sociology. what arlie russell hochschild has observed is that 162 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs in addition to simply pillaging and abusing material life, neoliberal restructuring has meant that material life is increasingly colonized by market forces. in her analysis of elaborating the pathways by which the true costs of production are shifted onto the domestic sphere, hochschild alludes to the ways in which the logic of commodification has accompanied the ways that social disruption of material life are managed. people are increasingly looking to the market as ways of resolving their problems and the market is responding. unlike van der pijl's analysis, the manner in which the colonization of material life occurs is seen to facilitate capitalism's persistence, not its social degeneration. furthermore, while other forms of social governance are important (patriarchal notions of the family, for example), increasingly, the market mechanism facilitates a social governance function. hochschild's conception of the expanding "commodity frontier" stands in strong proximity to the aforementioned dynamic of markets for treatment. primarily interested in how families in liberal capitalist societies manage changes brought on by changing relations of production, hochschild explains that: the commodity frontier, janus faced, looks out on one side to the marketplace and on the other side to the family. on the market side it is a frontier for companies as they expand the number of market niches for goods and services covering activities that, in yesteryear, formed part of unpaid family life. on the other side it is a frontier forfamilies that feel the need or desire to consume such goods and services (hochschild, 2003: 35-6). drawing on her previous work on the "time bind" (hochschild, 1997), hochschild notes that neoliberal restructuring places stress on the functioning of households, and that this process creates opportunities for new markets to produce commercial substitutes for what was previously unpaid labour by family members. in other words, material life is first abused, but then colonized by the market. observing that in the united states "the state has done nothing to ease the burden at home" (hochschild, 2003:38), hochschild notes that the market increasingly mitigates volume 20, 2004 163 alternate routes the burdens of cost-shifting onto the domestic sphere. she also points out the effectiveness of this process, at least for those who can afford it: just as the french bakery often makes better bread than mother ever did, and the cleaning service cleans the house more thoroughly, so therapists may recognize feelings more accurately, and childcare workers prove more even-tempered than parents. in a sense, capitalism isn't competing with itself, one company against another, but with the family, and particularly with the role of the wife and mother (hochschild, 2003:37). hochschild also investigates the burgeoning market for women's selfhelp books, arguing that this too can be cited as a way of understanding how in the face of a more competitive, unstable and demanding world, the mental anxiety of women is placated and mediated by certain texts produced and sold on the market (hochschild, 2003:58-72). recent literature within green political economy also alludes to a process which can be understood as the colonization of material life following abuse of that terrain. examining the contradictions of capitalism at the level of the natural environment, martin o'connor notes that the cumulative effects of capitalism's tendency for cost-shifting is likely to undermine the very conditions of production on which capitalism depends. this is seen as the "second contradiction of capitalism." attempts to improve profitability by free riding on existing extra-capitalist infrastructures (ecological, human, and social service infrastructures), o'connor argues, leads to higher costs of production for capital as a whole, thus undermining its imperatives of accumulation (o'connor, 1994:127-28). one of his insights is that the dialectical interaction between the needs of capital and the social resistance to ecological destruction ensure that the physical environment itself is thought of and treated as capital. o'connor suggests that, instead of destabilizing the legitimacy of capitalism: ... environmental crisis has given capitalism a new lease on life. now, through purporting to take a hand in the saving of the environment, capitalism invents a new legitimation for 164 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs itself: the sustainable, rational use of nature (o'connor, 1994:125-26). the insight here is that through the "capitalization of nature," the modus operandi of capital as an abstract system "undergoes a logical mutation" whereby previously uncommodified elements of nature become thought of and treated as commodities (o'connor, 1994:126). since he understands capital to be a social relation, o'connor calls the ideological process that accompanies the "capitalization of nature" the "semiotic expansion of capital" (1994:126). through such processes, he argues, capitalism overcomes its "second contradiction," at least conceptually. in this conception, the process of cost-shifting first abuses and then colonizes material life, and in doing so gives "capitalism a new lease on life." 5 since the process of managing the contradictions that may arouse collective responses against capital is one of the primary tasks of social governance under capitalism, it is, therefore, possible to claim that the colonization of material life facilitates an increasingly important social governance function. since the colonization of material life can be understood through the dynamics of the intensive expansion of markets, it also possible to see how an economy of passive mitigation grows through the very same process that capitalism resolves some of its own contradictions. social adversities, or at least what people subjectively perceive to be adversities, facilitate this growth. throughout this article, i have tried to show that an economic dynamic unique to capitalist societies, an economy of passive mitigation, acts as a partial substitute for other forms of social governance by mitigating the manifestations of certain capitalist contradictions. in the presence of the culture of consumerism and possessive individualism, and in the absence of a counter-hegemonic political engagement, people will turn to market choices as a way to solve many of the adversities arising from capitalism's manifold contradictions. this article has alluded to how the colonization of material life brought fourth by intensive market expansion represents the economy of passive mitigation at work, a dynamic which both feeds off of and purports solutions for the manifestations of capitalist contradictions. volume 20, 2004 165 alternate routes implications the implications of the existence of the economy of passive mitigation are profound, especially when one considers the fact that such a form of social governance grows alongside capitalism's tendency for intensive expansion. since the project of neoliberal restructuring is marked by an increasly intensive use of market discipline, this dynamic becomes all the more pertinent. on the one hand, the economy of passive mitigation facilitates a social governance role under conditions of neoliberalism, and in consequence relieves part of the burden from other, non-market forms of social governance, such as the organization of consent facilitated by states, institutions, or transnational classes. on the other hand, there is a greater importance placed on those complementary discourses and features of capitalist societies that provide the milieu in which the economy of passive mitigation can flourish, namely consumerism. in addition to realizing the shifts in the relative burden of the deployment of different social governance forms, it is also important to consider the relative efficiency of the economy of passive mitigation in facilitating social governance. states, hegemonic discourses and international cadre classes are important for facilitating social governance under conditions of neoliberalism, but in efficiency terms, the market mechanism is in many ways more technically adept at responding to the micro problems of a diverse population experiencing the manifestations of capitalist contradictions. because the economy of passive mitigation is based on the market mechanism, it shares all of the epistemological strengths of the market, except that the commodities produced, circulated and consumed are not politically neutral, but rather forms of treatment with politically implicative effects on the polity. friedrich hayek's critique of the knowledge problem inherent in socio-economic planning is relevant here not with regard to socio-economic planning, but at the level of social governance (hayek, 1976b: 107132). a hegemonic discourse, or a policy by an international institution aimed at ensuring social stability, is somewhat inefficient in terms of its ability to resonate with each individual targeted. indeed, the very prospects for counterhegemonic mobilization are built on the fact that some individuals and/ or groups are not animated by the hegemonic discourse as it is intended by the dominant bloc that produces it. but when social governance is facilitated by the economy of passive mitigation, the many diverse and 166 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs micro-level adversities are treated in an efficient and capillary-like fashion. the economy of passive mitigation is also limited by a number of factors, which are complementarily linked to other forms of social governance. the strength of the hegemonic discourse of possessive individualism, for example, plays a role in normalizing the practice of turning to consumption as a means of dealing with one's personal sense of alienation. it is also important to consider that economic factors, such as the expansion of personal credit, play a large role in the economy of passive mitigation being able to reach people commanding lower incomes. 6 but perhaps more interesting is the way in which the economy of passive mitigation may expand or contract as both the contradictions of capitalism are made manifest to increasing numbers of people globally at the same time that the traits of consumerism and possessive individualism are both globally spread and globally contested. while the manifestations of capitalist contradictions and the abuse of material life are felt more poignantly by growing numbers of people across the globe as neoliberalism dictates the range of social organization possible to achieve the good life, the persistent resistance to the values of consumerism and possessive individualism may prove to limit the ability for the economy of passive mitigation to expand and act as a substitute social governance form. on the other hand, the fact that a culture of possessive individualism and consumerism seems to be persistently spreading alongside neoliberal socio-economic organization throughout both the north and the south would seem to suggest that social governance could be facilitated through market dynamics at least to some impressive degree (neufeld, 2001:100-1). the fragility ofan economisticform ofsocial governance for marx, the proletariat was both the product of capitalism and its dialectical gravedigger (marx and engels, 1998:50). this paper argues that the economy of passive mitigation is also a product of capitalism; is it a gravedigger as well? since the economy of passive mitigation assists in the reproduction of neoliberal world order, it would seem that it too represents a helpful assistant to capitalism, instead of its gravedigger, and that in consequence it aids in the maintenance of neoliberal world order. however, there is also reason to believe that in certain circumstances, the opposite may be true. volume 20, 2004 167 alternate routes the fact that the economy of passive mitigation at its root rests on more purely economistic relationships between people and commodities than do other forms of social governance perhaps reveals one way in which it is comparatively fragile. forms of social governance such as hegemonic leadership or nationalist narratives are resilient due to the fact that even during periods of economic crisis, the legitimacy of production relations are not necessarily undermined. because many forms of social governance rest on changing collective intersubjectivities through discursive power, an economic crisis doesn't necessarily undermine the legitimacy of the political economy in its entirety. the glue that holds norms and practices in their previous configurations is social and intersubjective. however, unlike these forms of social governance upon which we rely, the economy of passive mitigation relies more purely on the production and consumption of commodities, and here the glue is simply a relation between a person and a commodity, and as such is vulnerable to the possibility of that relationships disruption. a consumption crisis at the national or regional level is an example of such a disruption. seen in this way, comparing the prospects for the strength of the economy of passive mitigation during a consumption crisis can be likened to the strength of military coercion when guns and tanks melt away precisely when they are needed most readily. it is also important to consider that such fragility is not only dependent on levels of income polarization, but also on the allocation of personal credit. the fact that the last number of serious crises in the global economy have not been in the realm of production but at the level of finance is implicative in this regard; the increasingly volatility of international financial markets and the frequency of currency crises, is thus another way that the economistically fragile economy of passive mitigation may be seriously fractured (bellow et. al. 2000). the question of its strength, then, is a function not only of the cultural milieu in which it thrives, but on the future prospects of the stability of the global economy. conclusion undeniably, one of the monumental strengths of neoliberalism has been its ability to deal with systems crises. while there have been many serious systems' crises in the global economy, this has not led to an identity crises in the habermasian sense (habermas, 1975, hay, 1994). one has 168 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs to marvel at the fact that after 20 years as an all-encompassing economic and social philosophy, neoliberalism has been able to deal with systems' crises by simply proscribing more neoliberalism (panitch and gindin, 2002:19)! periodic economic crisis and stagnation have been met with the prescription to liberalize markets more intensely; the environmental epidemic has been met with the prescription to make better use of market principles; public institutions starved of funds due to neoliberal policies are encouraged to make themselves more market-oriented. part of this capacity, as many ipe theorists have made clear, can be attributed to the ability of states, institutions, and classes to mobilize hegemonic discourses and practices in an effort to gain the consent of the populations adversely affected by neoliberal restructuring. the use of physical coercion is, without a doubt, also still an important feature of neoliberal world order as well. these views are very useful, yet it is also important to understand the ways in which the unleashing of market forces produces adversities which it then treats: producing a unique form of social governance that mitigates some of capitalism's contradictions. recognizing the economistic manner in which this form of social governance is facilitated, however, leads to a better understanding of both its inherent fragility and weakness and thus can assist with envisioning possible openings for change within neoliberal world order. notes 1. alienation is understood here as the marxist theory of alienation. although there is debate surrounding the definition, the one that will suffice for the purposes of this paper is alienation understood as "...the seizure of surplus value in a social process of production that alienates laborers from the product of their labor, from control over the labor process, as well as from other laboring comrades, and from the political (as well as sensual and aesthetic) potential of the human species itself (reitz, 2000:70). 2. the glaring problem in identifying which commodities' production and consumption represent a "market for treatment" is that while some commodities are explicitly produced to "help people cope," others may "help people cope" because of the symbolic meaning of the commodity itself, instead of its objective physical properties. for this reason, only commodities that are explicitly produced and consumed for the purpose of 'treatment' are used as examples here. the fact that, in reality, such a clear demarcation does not exist is one of the most significant limitations of this paper. volume 20, 2004 169 alternate routes 3. indeed, under the conditions of neoliberal world order, many formal paths of action are effectively 'blocked.' on the one hand, adaptive legislation that might help mitigate the ravages of unregulated capitalism are often deemed essentially illegal in favour of the rights of private investors, enshrined in multilateral 'trade' agreements, such as the naftas chapter 11. on the other hand, where governments do have flexibility to respond to many social adversities, the hegemonic strength of neoliberal discourse has engendered a changing conception of the proper role and function of legislation, such that active and purposeful intervention to mitigate the adversities of structural change are doomed to failure (see hayek, 1976a, 1976b). 4. the french "annals" historian fernand braudel's concept of material life is understood here as the realm of social life and of production that is distinct from formal economic processes of what braudel would understand to be the market economy and capitalism. see braudel, 1977:6-8. in some ways, the level of material life is not dissimilar to that of habermas' conception of the "lifeworld." in reference to the citation of van der pijl, the "natural and social substratum sustaining reproduction" can be included within the realm of material life since, although they are shaped and influenced by capitalism, they stand outside of it in that commodified exchange, pricing, and the functional purpose to which they serve for the participants lay outside of the sphere of capitalism. the domestic sphere of reproduction, for example, does not organize care and the reproduction of new generations for sale on the market. seen in this way, the realm of material life is the realm where polanyi's fictitious commodities are in their historical element. 5. what might be added to this analysis is that not only is material life colonized through the "capitalization of nature" but also through the manner in which people respond to environmental problems. because the "semiotic expansion of capital" allows for the representation of capitalism's environmental devastation as "manageable" through the extension of marketbased practices and modes of thought, the idea of erecting a regulatory structure that would stand in the way of capitalist rationality destroying the ecology of the planet is invalidated as a non-option. as a result, the options that individuals turn to in order to deal with the effects of environmental crisis on their mental and physical health arc based on market-choices. the wellintentioned, ecologically conscious consumer not only buys "green" toilet paper and laundry detergent, s/he also buys water filters, face masks for walking in downtown areas, and frequents health-food stores in search of cures to depleting health. / 70 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs 6. as has been discussed, the diverse markets for treatment which emerge in liberal capitalist societies play a role in mitigating some of capitalism's adverse effects, acting in turn as a substitute for other forms of governance. while this may be true, it is also true that it is often the case that those affected most adversely by capitalism's contradictions simply cannot rely on their purchasing power to consume their way into a form of "treatment." this is without a doubt an important shortcoming of the model presented in this paper. however, several factors may help to at least partially surmount such a deficiency. the first of these factors is the existence of personal credit systems in late capitalist societies. it is perhaps significant that, as juliet schor has pointed out, the culture of consumerism is reliant heavily on people's access to credit (see schor, 1998:72-74; morris, 2001: 11 and especially secareccia, 2004). the expansion of networks of popular credit allocation in late capitalist societies has meant that people can consume commodities at a rate that is only derivatively related to their real incomes. the real incomes and the stability of the latter does, of course, draw important limits on the ability to use credit as a substitute for raw purchasing power. nevertheless, credit remains a way of overcoming at least some of the limitations imposed by low incomes that would otherwise exist in the absence of credit, and in doing so absolves some of the barriers of 'markets for treatment' circulating within low-income communities. it is also perhaps significant that because of the intensity of the alienation felt by many poor people, the substitution effects within an individual or household's budget constraints can be 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"any day poorer and deeper in debt: growing household indebtedness and the plummeting savings rate in canada, an explanatory note." unpublished manuscript. ottawa: university of ottawa. seligman, martin e. 1988 "boomer blues," in psychology today (october):5055. shearing, cd., and stenning, p.c. 1983. "private security: implications for social control." in social problems.30(5): 498-505. shearer, david. 1998a. private armies and military intervention, international institutefor strategic studies adelphi paper 316. new york: oxford university press. — . 1998b. "outsourcing war." foreign policy (fall): 68-81. — . 2001. "privatizing security," the world today (august/september): 68-81. sinclair, timothy. 1994. "between state and market." policy sciences. 227466. 176 volume 20. 2004 chemins alternates singer, p.w. 2001/2002. "corporate warriors: the rise of the privatized military industry and its ramifications for international security." international security, 26 (3) (winter 2001/2002): 186-220. sheppard, simon. 1998. "foot soldiers of the new world order: the rise of the corporate military." new l eft review. 228 (march/april): 128-138. tinsley, p. 1999. "private police: a note." journal of libertarian studies. 14(1): 95-100. van der pijl, kees. 1998. transnational classes and international relations. london & new york: routledge. warde, alan. 2002. "setting the scene: changing conceptions of consumption." in the changing consumer: markets and meanings. miles, stephen, anderson, alice, and meethan, kevin (eds.). new york: routledge. wright mills, c. 1963. the marxists. new york: penguin. volume 20, 2004 177 book review: the great revenue robbery | 335 book review the great revenue robbery: how to stop the tax cut scam and save canada edited by richard swift. toronto: between the lines. 2013. $19.95 cdn, paper. isbn: 978-1-77113-103-2. pages: 1-160. reviewed by matt fodor1 one of the main challenges facing canadian progressives is changing the discourse on taxation. over the past two decades, an anti-tax ‘consensus’ has emerged in canadian politics. tax cuts have deprived governments of billions of dollars in revenue. taxes are viewed as a burden to be avoided; in other words, taxes are separated from the services they pay for. it was in this context that progressive economist hugh mackenzie called for an “adult conversation” about taxes in canada.2 the great revenue robbery, edited by richard swift for the recently formed organization canadians for tax fairness, is a welcome contribution. featuring contributions from progressive economists, journalists, activists and others, the great revenue robbery offers a concise, wellargued challenge to what has become a near-consensus in canadian politics, and makes the case for taxation as an essential component of a progressive political agenda. the book is aimed at a popular audience and is particularly useful for political activists. a key theme of the book is how the tax issue is framed, with the book’s first three chapters devoted to it. trish hennessy calls for a return to the concept of virtue in politics, noting that during the postwar years, a time of expansion of public infrastructure and the social safety net, “[i] t was commonly accepted that taxes were the price of a civilized society, but also a happier one” (p.19). diana gibson discusses the success of the conservative movement in moving the overton window – the current spectrum of mainstream policy options, noting that: “the conservative movement brought the expansionist era of liberal social democracy 1 matt fodor is a ph.d. candidate in political science at york university, toronto. his research interests include social democracy, canadian politics and comparative political economy. he is a contributor to the book tax is not a four letter word: a different take on taxes in canada, edited by alex himelfarb and jordan himelfarb (wlu press, 2013). 2 hugh mackenzie, “can we have an adult conversation about taxes?”, toronto star, october 26, 2009. 336 | climate change and its discontents to an end by being bold: by not being afraid to say things that were unpopular and by repeating them forcefully, and shamelessly” (p. 27). progressives, gibson argues, must learn from the example of the conservative movement and move the overton window leftward. swift’s own chapter provides an excellent overview of the role of the media, which overwhelmingly heeds conventional business opinion about free markets and for the most part excludes progressive perspectives, in shaping public opinion about taxation. while these chapters do raise the important point of the success of the conservative ‘counter-revolution’ and hegemony of neoliberal ideas, it does not explain why the keynesian welfare state went into crisis in the 1970s in the first place. what we now refer to as the ‘golden age’ of capitalism in the postwar period, a period characterized by high levels of economic growth where high levels of corporate profitability and very real increases in living standards, represented a unique phase of capitalist development that is unlikely to be repeated. other chapters in the book cover the topics of tax havens, corporate taxes, financial transaction taxes, ecological taxes, and taxes and cooperatives. peter gillespie’s chapter criticizes the canadian government’s lax attitude towards tax havens and the major presence of canadian banks in caribbean tax havens. jim stanford in his chapter on corporate taxes shows how corporate tax cuts since the mid-1980s have failed to deliver promised increased business investment and thus jobs and higher incomes for canadians. increases in public expenditure, stanford maintains, would have a greater impact on growth and investment than tax cuts. toby sanger’s chapter on financial transaction taxes offers a helpful and clearly-written debunking of several ‘myths’ about ftts. joe gunn in his chapter on eco-taxes makes the case for a progressive carbon tax, arguing (correctly, in my view) that carbon taxes are ultimately more effective than a cap-and-trade system (which is more subject to market fluctuations and requires the development of an emissions trading market). john restakis in his chapter on taxes and cooperatives discusses the role of the social economy in italy, spain and quebec, and calls for reform of the tax system to encourage the cooperative sector. however, a more critical assessment of what role this sector should play as opposed to government in terms of social welfare provision, for example, would have been beneficial. veteran journalist murray dobbin, who has written much on taxation and the consolidation of neoliberalism in canada, effectively reiterates the book’s key themes of changing the discourse on taxation and book review: the great revenue robbery | 337 articulating an alternative to neoliberalism. dobbin stresses the need to link tax fairness with communitarian values and a progressive values and suggests that campaigners “frame the issue as a choice two very different futures: a continuation of the dystopian low-tax, high-privateconsumption regime; the other, a return to higher taxes but also to more public goods and stronger communities” (p. 141). overall, the great revenue robbery makes a strong case for the central role of taxation in a progressive agenda, and is presented in an accessible manner. it is especially helpful in light of the retreat of canadian social democracy on the question of articulating an alternative to neoliberalism, where the ndp not only accepts but even promotes anti-tax politics. the book represents just the beginning of an adult conversation about taxes in canada. it is a call to action to challenge to speak boldly in support of the necessity of taxes as a key component of the public good and our collective capacity to shape the future, and to develop a progressive tax policy to counter growing inequality and rebuild deteriorating public services. staging and profiling: the constitution of the endometriotic subject in gynecological discourse emma whelan introduction endometriosis is defined as the presence of tissue resembling the endometrium (the lining of the uterus) outside oftht uterus, most commonly in the pelvic cavity (ccce, 1993:3) 1 . according to gynecologists, this tissue behaves like the endometrium, thickening during the menstrual cycle, then disintegrating during menstruation—except that, unlike the menstrual flow in the uterus, the blood and tissue cannot leave the body through the vagina. instead, they remain within the body and form cysts and adhesions on and around the pelvic organs, such as the ovaries, fallopian tubes, peritoneum, bowel, intestines, and bladder. the most common symptom of the disease is pelvic pain (often associated with menstruation or sexual intercourse, and frequently chronic); another, much less common symptom is infertility (barlow and glynn, 1993:775-776; lamb, 1987:279; pauerstein, 1989:133-134). in 1991, the society of obstetricians and gynecologists of canada began to plan a canadian consensus conference on endometriosis (ccce) that would review the extant medical literature and provide "a guide for patients and physicians in the current management of this condition" (ccce, 1993:2). a group of medical specialists, health economists, and representatives from the endometriosis association (a patient advocacy organization) was formed to participate in the conference. although the ccce's consensus statement begins with the claim that alternate routes, volume 14, 1997 o "endometriosis has never been well understood," the conference participants nevertheless were able to reach consensus on all conclusions regarding "the diagnosis, natural history, pathogenesis, relationship with infertility and pain, and medical and surgical management of the disease" (ibid). two of the ccce's conclusions are pertinent to this discussion: (1) the best available evidence indicates that the presence of endometriosis is not related to the age, race, social class, or personality of the patient; and (2) the standard diagnostic assessment scale for endometriosis is deeply flawed (ccce, 1993:7) two gynecological codifications are criticized in these two conclusions. the first conclusion pertains to the gynecological codification of the age, race, social class, and personality of the 'typical' endometriosis patient, which i will call the 'typical patient profile.' the second conclusion pertains to the revised american fertility society (r-afs) classification for £f% endometriosis (american fertility society, 1985:2), the diagnostic assessment scale referred to by the ccce above. these two codifications, the typical patient profile and the r-afs classification, have helped to construct and reify medical, demographic, and psychological representations of women with endometriosis. they provide particularly salient examples of the means by which professional bodies and systems of expert knowledge attempt to define subject-populations and thereby to regulate them. of course, subject-populations often resist such attempts at definition and regulation, and the deconstruction of the r-afs classification and the typical patient profile undertaken by endometriosis patient groups are examples of such resistance. this will be discussed below. as well, members of professional bodies and expert systems of knowledge are not a monolithic group. as the criticisms raised by the ccce make clear, considerable debate about the typical patient profile and the r-afs classification exist in gynecological circles, and throughout this discussion medical criticisms of the two codifications will appear. however, the codifications are deployed in many contemporary gynecology textbooks and in many recent articles in prestigious gynecology journals. it is likely, therefore, that they continue to affect the treatment and diagnosis of women with endometriosis. medical critics of the r-afs classification and the typical patient profile nevertheless accept in principle the utility of classification schemes and patient profiles. critics merely question the validity of the codifications currently in use, not their intent. thus, i would argue that the attempt to define and regulate patient populations/?^^ has gone unchallenged by gynecologists, and in that sense they are a monolithic group. it is this general acceptance within gynecology of the propriety of attempts to define and regulate patients in particular ways, rather than debates about whether the definitions themselves are scientifically accurate, that strikes me as curious. the questions which i begin to address here are: how have endometriosis patients been defined through the use of the 4fk r-afs classification and the typical patient profile? why is it deemed necessary to define patients at all, and in these particular ways? how has the use of these two codifications affected the treatment and diagnosis of patients? how do definitions of endometriosis patients constructed via these two codifications compare with the ways in which endometriosis patients are defined within patient movements? the first section of the paper examines the attempts of gynecologists to classify endometriosis patients into groups using the r-afs classification. i argue that this classification groups women into 'risk populations, defining their experience, interests and concerns in ways that often conflict with patients' self-definitions and that direct medical experts to focus on particular research topics and treatment protocols. the second section focusses on the development and deployment of the typical patient profile. this profile also constructs 'risk populations' for medical surveillance. it also discredits patients' accounts of their symptoms in two ways: first, by calling into question the mental health of women with endometriosis, thus making their reports of symptoms suspect; and second, by denying that some types of women can have endometriosis, thus making it difficult for these women to obtain accurate diagnosis and therapeutic relief from their symptoms. the third section examines the ways in which patient groups are criticizing and resisting the individualizing and dividing practices reflected in the r-afs classification and the typical patient profile, and the quite different methods they use to define endometriosis patients. the discussion is informed theoretically by the work of bruno latour on immutable mobiles (1986), robert castel on risk populations and plans of governability (1991), and michel foucaulton techniques of individualization and resistance to them (1983). this analysis forms part of a larger examination of the efforts of endometriosis patient groups to contest gynecology's construction of the disease, its treatment, and the women who suffer #f| from it. these efforts represent an attempt to reconfigure the boundaries between expert and lay knowledge. such an analysis is relevant to broader sociological questions about the power/ knowledge relation, the discursive constitution of subjectivity, and the role of social movements in resisting expert knowledges and individualization techniques. staging: the r-afs classification for endometriosis gynecologists have been attempting to classify endometriosis patients into "stages" of disease for over 75 years (groff, 1989). the explicit goal has always been to predict women's chances of getting pregnant based upon the severity of their disease. none of the staging systems have met this goal very well. they have been plagued by a host of other problems as well. they often do not use standardized or translatable terminology; they use different scales of measurement; they employ inadequate sample sizes and widely variant patient populations; and they provide inadequate systems for coding different varieties and locations of endometriosis cysts and adhesions (audebert, 1990; buttram, 1985; canisetal., 1993; groff, 1989). the failures of previous attempts at classification prompted the american fertility society, a professional organization of gynecologists, obstetricians, and reproductive endocrinologists, to convene a panel of endometriosis experts charged with developing a taxonomy for the society. this was published in 1979; the version currently in use is a modification of this system and was published six years later (american fertility society, 1985). this "revised american fertility society classification for endometriosis," or r-afs classification, is the international standard for endometriosis classification because it is relatively easy to use compared to previous systems, and because it was developed by the american fertility society, one of the most prestigious professional associations of its kind. a standardized form was developed so that patients could be staged during di&% agnostic surgery. the form directs surgeons to record and rate the location and extent of endometriotic cysts and adhesions in particular sites of a woman's body using a points system, and to classify her case as one of four stages of severity (minimal, mild, moderate, or severe) based upon her total number of points (american fertility society, 1985; canis et al., 1993:762). because gynecologists believe that endometriosis on the ovaries and fallopian tubes is most likely to cause infertility, endometriosis in these areas is accorded many points in the staging system, while endometriosis on other areas is accorded few or no points (american fertility society, 1985). the r-afs classification represented "an effort to establish and document the premise that success of surgery in the infertile female was dependent on the severity of the disease" (buttram, 1985:347). standardizing classification of endometriosis facilitates communication between clinicians regarding treatment protocols and allows for the comparison of research into the success of various therapies in treating infertility. because the form directs surgeons to examine the pelvis in a standardized way, and because it allows for the description of every case, it has virtually eliminated problems of incommensurability inherent in earlier classification systems. the scoring system is amenable to statistical analysis, so large numbers of commensurable cases can be manipulated by researchers interested in establishing correlations between stage of disease, treatment protocols, and subsequent fertility rates. the r-afs classification has been roundly criticized by many endometriosis specialists, especially regarding its ability to predict fertility outcomes (audebert, 1990; candiani, vercellini and fedele, 1990; canis et al., 1992; groff, 1989; fukaya, hoshiai and yajima, 1993; perperetal., 1995; ripps and martin, 1993). the canadian consensus conference on endometriosis refers to the r-afs system as "the worst form of classification, except for all the others," simultaneously acknowl^% edging its shortcomings and advocating its continued use (ccce, 1993:7). the r-afs classification's preferability to any other current system accounts for its continued popularity among gynecologists (ccce, 1993:7). although the american fertility society has not modified the r-afs classification for over ten years, it has promised to do so, if and when the utility of modifications in predicting fertility outcomes has been established definitively (buttram, 1985). the r-afs classification is an apt illustration of bruno latour's argument that modern scientific culture is concerned with "'holding the focus steady' on visualization and cognition" (1986:5). this is achieved through the production of immutable mobiles, "objects which have the properties of being mobile but also immutable, presentable, readable, and combinable with one another" (1986:7; emphasis in original) 2 . the r-afs classification, an "immutable" because standardized and published form of inscription, allows a surgeon's view of a woman's pelvis to be converted into paper traces during surgery. these paper traces, which are mobile in a way that a surgically visualized woman's pelvis is not, can be presented to potential allies and combined with paper traces of other pelvises to support claims to knowledge about the best way to treat infertility in women with endometriosis. latour (1986) also points to the ways in which immutable mobiles can be used to forge alliances, to overcome dissent in the scientific community, and to incorporate previous claims to knowledge. the r-afs classification drew on an existing professional network, mustering the support of a gynecological elitemembers of the american fertility society—and all those who recognize the society's expert authority. it incorporated the successes of former attempts at classification and sought to address their shortcomings, and any subsequent breakthroughs in classification undoubtedly will be incorporated into the r-afs system. it has generated thousands of combinable surgical reports, virtually eliminating incommensurability across cases, and thus can be used to lend credibility to studies making new claims dsh about how to best treat endometriosis-associated infertility. the accumulation of large numbers of r-afs stagings has been greatly assisted by the introduction of laparoscopy. this is a diagnostic and surgical technique in which a thin viewing instrument (a laparoscope) is inserted into the pelvic cavity via a small incision just below the navel. the pelvic organs can then be visualized without the necessity of large incisions (as was necessary with the older technique of laparotomy) so patients can be persuaded to undergo diagnostic surgery more easily and more often. while laparoscopy requires a general anaesthetic, the small size of incisions means that the procedure can be performed as outpatient surgery, eliminating the need for overnight hospital stays, and that recovery time is relatively short. laparoscopic surgery has made it possible to visualize thousands of women's pelvises (often repeatedly) with minimal invasiveness relative to older surgical procedures. as the surgeon peers through the laparoscope, s/he can diagnose the condition of the pelvis and can 'stage' that condition by filling out the r-afs classification form while the woman lies unconscious on the operating table. then, the r-afs form can be deposited in the case file, along with treatment plans and fertility outcomes, creating thousands of case files for the researcher, who can then correlate 'stage' of endometriosis, treatment, and fertility. this creates the possibility of defining risk populations and plans of governability (castel, 1991). by correlating r-afs stage of disease with therapeutic approach and fertility outcome, researchers can evaluate the 'risk' of infertility for the four populations corresponding to each r-afs stage, and how best to 'treat' that risk. whether or not a woman has experienced problems with infertility, her doctor may prescribe hormonal therapies or perform surgery to 'protect' her fertility, all based upon the 'risk' of infertility suggested by her r-afs staging. furthermore, non-surgical markers that would determine the ^^ severity and activity of endometriosis, for example through a blood test, are currently being investigated (audebert, 1990). such markers may eventually enable wholesale screening for various degrees of endometriosis, assignment to risk populations, and treatment—all without actually establishing the infertility of the women being screened. thus, the standardization of endometriosis classification opens up a whole realm of technological possibilities and techniques of governance. the widespread use of the r-afs classification allows for discussion of endometriosis among researchers and clinicians without direct reference to the women who suffer from it. the women who have been classified are absent from such discussion; only the paper traces of their surgical evaluation (performed while they were under general anaesthetic) remain. thus, the concerns of individual patients can be more easily ignored. needs and desires of an entire 'endometriosis population' can be constructed without any input from patients. in latour's (1986) terms, patients are made "flat," easily understandable, the complexity of their lives reduced to a stage. women can be grouped in ways that defy the diversity of their life circumstances, concerns (medical or otherwise), and desires. again, this grouping, this development of 'risk populations' lends itself to plans of governability that may run entirely contrary to the wishes of individual endometriosis patients. witness the prioritizing of concerns about infertility in the r-afs classification: the express purpose of classification is to improve the treatment of endometriosis-associated infertility. the stage of 'severity' is determined by anatomical distribution and extent of endometriotic cysts and adhesions, and is unrelated to the patient's degree of pain or other symptoms. the diagrams of staging examples provided by the american fertility society (1985) as an accompaniment to the standard classification form mainly depict endometriosis on the ovaries and fallopian tubes, where it is supposed to affect infertility. other sites at which endometriosis may be more likely to cause pain than infertility are not depicted in the diagrams or on the r-afs classification ^ft form. certain parts of women's reproductive anatomy are highlighted, worthy of notice, while others fade into obscurity. endometriosis in most of these other sites would have to be noted under "additional endometriosis" on the form, and would not be factored into staging as no points are accorded to "additional endometriosis." thus, the r-afs classification cannot be used to establish the severity of a patient's pain; consequently, researchers would find it exceedingly difficult to use it to develop new treatments for pain. the r-afs classification holds the focus steady on infertility, and pain recedes. this is despite the fact that pain is the most common symptom of endometriosis, with infertility a distant runner-up (barlow and glynn, 1993:775776; lamb, 1987:279; pauerstein, 1989:133-134). and of course, in the emphasis on infertility, we get a clear indication of gynecology's construction of the proper desires of women: having babies, not living without pain. to sum up: the r-afs classification has greatly assisted gynecological researchers in making claims to knowledge about the relation between endometriosis, infertility, and treatment, and in getting those claims to stick. whether or not those claims are 'true' and whether or not the r-afs stage accurately predicts a woman's chances of getting pregnant are matters of debate in gynecology. however, the focus on infertility at the expense of pain is rarely questioned in these debates, and this reinforces the assumption that infertility and not pain is the primary problem for women with endometriosis. 'risk populations' are defined, treatment plans and research geared toward those populations. pain becomes a matter for private discussion in the doctor's office and for an experimental, individualized approach to treatment; infertility becomes a matter for 'hard' scientific investigation and research on new treatment protocols. the rafs classification is both a symptom and a cause of this focus. the concerns of many women about pain diminish in importance. artificial groups of, in other ways, vastly different women ^» are created (the one factor uniting these women is, supposedly, their desire to maintain their fertility above all else). women are reduced to a stage, their individual characteristics and life histories obscured. their records are combined with other women's records and previously-accepted claims about endometriosis to reinforce researchers' new claims about treatment protocols, which focus on infertility in accordance with the gynecological definition of women's desires. the r-afs classification works in conjunction with the typical patient profile to psychologize and delegitimize pain and to identify fertility as the proper concern of women and their gynecologists. profiling: the typical patient profile unlike the r-afws classification, the typical patient profile has not been codified into a formal document. it exists instead in fragments, statements made in clinical practice and medical literature 3 . attempts have been made to dismantle the typical patient profile, especially by feminist health advocates (eg. ballweg, 1984; boston women's health book collective, 1992), epidemiologists (eg. houston et al., 1988; pauerstein, 1989), and some gynecologists (eg. ccce, 1993:7; kennedy, 1991). yet, elements of the profile continue to appear in contemporary gynecology textbooks and recent articles in prestigious gynecology journals, and continue to be presented by doctors in their conversations with patients (boston women's health book collective, 1992:587; halstead, pepping, and dmowski, 1989; whelan, 1994). the typical patient profile has two components: demographic and psychological. i will discuss the latter component first. /. psychological components of the typical patient profile the identification of a bi-directional causal link between women's reproductive and psychological health has a long history within medicine (see astruc, 1985 [1743]; cayleff, 1992; ehrenreich and english, 1978; moscucci, 1990; showalter, 1985; smith-rosenberg and rosenberg, 1984). in contemporary ££% gynecology, this link is still being made; women with endometrial ^"^ cysts and adhesions continue to be represented as psychologically disturbed. the typical endometriosis patient has been described as intelligent, perfectionistic, egocentric, career-oriented, over-anxious, and having a tendency to exaggerate pain without attempting to reduce or eliminate it(gomibuchi etal., 1993:724; kistner, 1968:329; treybig, 1989:10). some of the gynecologists who support the profile are considered top experts in the field, such as dr. robert kistner, one of its leading proponents and a member of the committee that developed the r-afs classification for the american fertility society. in a fascinating application of psychosomatism, he has characterized the typical endometriosis patient as "the mesomorph eccentric. . . it's that type of individual who simply has to clean out the ashtrays all the time" (cited in older, 1984:135; my emphasis). several recent articles in reputable medical journals report on research which evaluates the "neurotic," "depressive," "aggressive," and "anxious" tendencies ofwomen with endometriosis— or at least those who have chronic pain symptoms (gomibuchi etal., 1993; low, edelmann and sutton, 1993; waller and shaw, 1995; see also renaer et al., 1979). an evaluation of this research suggests three conclusions about the current thinking of gynecologists regarding pelvic pain in women with endometriosis. first, if a woman is diagnosed with endometriosis, her pain is more likely to be considered organic than the pain of a woman who has not been diagnosed with endometriosis. an undiagnosed woman's pain is more likely to be considered psychogenic. thus, if physicians cannot diagnose the cause of pain, they may be more likely to attribute it to psychological dysfunction on the part of the patient than to their own inadequacies as diagnosticians. second, the pain of women with minimal or mild endometriosis (stages i and ii of the r-afs classification) is more likely to be considered psychogenic than the pain of women ^^ with moderate or severe endometriosis (stages iii or iv). thus, the r-afs classification can have important ramifications for patients: if they have severe pain and are classified as having minimal endometriosis, their pain may be less likely to be treated seriously by their physicians. in fact, many women with endometriosis who complain of pelvic pain have been told by their doctors that they were neurotic, overreacting to pain, or uncomfortable with their femininity or sexuality, and they have often received prescriptions for tranquilizers rather than treatment for the pain (ballweg, 1992:753; demarco, 1991:18; halstead, pepping and dmowski, 1989; lauersen and deswaan, 1988:95). thus, the r-afs classification can be used to define some patients as psychologically disturbed based upon the extent of their endometriosis and the severity of their pain symptoms; in this case, the r-afs classification and the typical patient profile work together to reinforce existing assumptions about the root causes of women's pain symptoms. third, women with pelvic pain are more likely to be considered psychologically dysfunctional than women who complain of infertility. one study used infertile women as a control group in their psychological evaluation of women with minimal and mild endometriosis (waller and shaw, 1995). that is, infertile women were assumed to be psychologically normal; the study population was women with pelvic pain. the researchers assumed that pelvic pain is related to psychological dysfunction, and that infertility is a legitimate organic problem requiring gynecological treatment. of course, the r-afs classification's emphasis on the problem of infertility to the exclusion of pain suggests this as well. again, the r-afs classification and the typical patient profile work in tandem, in this case to reinforce gynecological assumptions about the proper concerns of women and the veracity of their claims about their bodily experiences. thus, the psychological component of the profile reflects two underlying assumptions in the r-afs classification. the first assumption is that gynecology should focus on the treatment of infertility, while pain should be left to psychologists. £fk as one research team put it, "patients with chronic pain. . .can be arch-manipulators" and psychologists are better trained to deal with such personalities (barlow and glynn, 1993:787). the second assumption is that the anatomic amount and distribution of disease, determined via surgery, determines symptoms. this is a claim which some gynecologists dispute, given the wide range of symptomatology in women with similar anatomical amounts and distributions of endometriosis. these critics argue that histological analysis (microscopic analysis of the activity of endometriosis tissue, such as its production of pain-producing substances) tells us more about women's symptoms than anatomic distribution and amount of disease (groff, 1989). in fact, women with anatomically minimal endometriosis often have more pain than women with anatomically severe endometriosis (ccce, 1993:7). however, gynecologists generally are more skilled at surgery than histological analysis, and treating infertility is more lucrative than treating pain; hence, the focus on surgery and 4£p infertility is hardly surprising. professional interests should not be discounted. //. demographic components of the typical patient profile the typical endometriosis patient has been described as a white, well-educated, middle-class 'career woman' in her thirties or forties who has 'delayed' 4 childbearing (american college of obstetricians and gynecologists, 1983; chalmers, 1975:1; goldman and cramer, 1990:17-18; haney, 1990:10; kistner, 1968:329; 1986:398-399; tindall, 1986:358-359; treybig, 1989: 10). this demographic profile is still frequently referred to by clinicians, the media, and gynecology texts, although research has demonstrated that women of all ages, races, and socioeconomic statuses, with and without children, have endometriosis (chatman, 1976; chatman and ward, 1982; goldstein, de cholnoky and emans, 1980; lamb, 1987, 1990). critics have argued that the patient profile is an artifact of, for example, the substandard medical treatment received by poor and young women and by women of colour, who may never get properly diagnosed (chatman, 1976:987; ballweg, 1988; breitkopf and bakoulis, 1988:51; houston et al., 1988:788; kennedy, 1991:9). the demographic component of the profile is related to the notion of risk populations which can be diagnosed and treated according to their group characteristics (castel, 1991). while epidemiologists generally reject the existing typical patient profile as artifactual, they are studying several other 'potential risk factors,' such as menstrual disorders, tampon use, smoking, family history, and immunological disorders (cramer, 1987; goldman and cramer, 1990; haney, 1990; houston etal., 1988; pauerstein, 1989). many of these factors would be amenable to screening and prevention programmes if their causal effect was definitively established (cramer, 1987)\ wholesale screening for endometriosis is not currently cost-effective or desirable because the disease can only be diagnosed surgically, but if efforts to develop a non-invasive test for the disease are successful, it may become feasible (houston etal., 1988:798). ifthese 'risk factors' are validated by these screening procedures, one's lifestyle choices (smoking, choosing tampons over sanitary napkins) could become, theoretically at least, the target of medicomoral governance projects. strategies of resistance: endometriosis patient groups bruno latour has argued that a man whose eye dominates records through which some sort of connections are established with millions of others may be said to dominate. this domination, however, is not a given but a slow construction and it can be corroded, interrupted or destroyed if the records, files and figures are immobilized, made mutable, less readable, less combinable or unclear when displayed (1986:29; emphasis in original). the ongoing efforts to improve the r-afs classification and to replace the typical patient profile with a more satisfactory set of risk factors for endometriosis have corroded the dominant codifications and will undoubtedly lead to their modification or replacement. these efforts represent attempts at inclusion: the inclusion of cases of endometriosis in women that do not fit the typical patient profile; the inclusion of new findings about the staging of endometriosis and its correlation with infertility. we see this strategy of inclusion at work in the critiques of researchers and their attempts to develop 'better' sets of risk factors and 'better' systems of classification. also, patients have contributed to the critiques of the rafs classification and the typical patient profile, but their critiques do not represent a move toward a more inclusive and totalizing gynecological knowledge. rather, they represent a strategy of resistance to forms of medical individualization. ^^ preliminary analysis of endometriosis patient groups suggests some impressions about how this strategy works, drawing upon some principles outlined by michel foucault (1983) for analyzing resistance to techniques of individualization. foucault argues that many recent social movements are "struggles which question the status of the individual... they assert the right to be different...on the other hand, they attack everything which separates the individual, breaks his links with others... and ties him to his own identity in a constraining way" (1983:212). patient groups, such as the u.s. -canada endometriosis association, local support groups, and the witsendo list server on the internet, emphasize the simultaneous variety and community of experience among women with endometriosis. women retain their personal identities and provide their own accounts of their experiences, which are not flattened to make them more combinable (latour, 1986), as with the r-afs classification. patient groups construct a web of fffc accounts that cross over at many points but retain their own trajectories. as foucault argues, these groups are not exactly for or against the "individual," but rather they are struggles against the "government of individualization". ..[they] revolve around the question: who are we? they are a refusal of these abstractions... which ignore who we are individually, and a refusal of a scientific or administrative inquisition which determines who one is (1983:212). foucault describes several "modes of objectification that transform human beings into subjects;" one of these is "dividing practices" which divide people into groups. the typical patient profile divides women into groups: women who are at risk for endometriosis and women who are not. the r-afs classification divides women with endometriosis into four stage classifications. patient groups have challenged the typical patient profile by pointing to research that women of all ages, races, and classes, with and without children, have endometriosis. they have defied the r-afs classification by emphasizing the importance of chronic pain as well as infertility, by legitimating women's claims that they experience severe pain despite minimal endometriosis, and by arguing that histological analysis may tell us more about a woman's experience of pain than anatomical analysis via surgery. patient groups include women who have the symptoms of endometriosis but have never been diagnosed, and many discussions among patients challenge the ability of the r-afs classification to explain symptoms or therapeutic outcomes. the dividing practices of gynecology are challenged in the process. foucault also emphasizes the ways in which many new social movements oppose "secrecy, deformation, and mystifying representations imposed on people" (1983:212). by providing simple explanations of the r-afs classification system, patient groups translate inaccessible medical jargon into everyday language. by emphasizing the significance of pain symptoms as ftk well as or even more than infertility, patient groups encourage women with endometriosis to contest pejorative representations of their psychological health based upon their symptoms. by publicizing and conducting research which demonstrates that all sorts of women have endometriosis, patient groups encourage women to demand definitive diagnosis, even when their demographics do not fit the typical patient profile. conclusion the r-afs classification and the typical patient profile constitute the 'endometriosis population' as primarily and properly concerned with fertility maintenance, rather than pain relief. pejorative psychological identities are assigned to women with endometriosis, especially those who suffer from chronic pain. a demographic profile of endometriosis patients is constructed, making it difficult for certain categories of women to attain accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment. the self-professed desires and concerns of individual women are obscured and a one-dimensional, unilateral gynecological description is substituted. women are grouped into 'risk populations' requiring therapeutic governance, expanding indications for medical intervention from treatment to prevention. the variety of the circumstances and symptoms of women with endometriosis recedes from focus and the 'endometriotic subject' rises to the fore. the preceding analysis has attempted to demonstrate that the r-afs classification and the typical patient profile are alive and well within gynecological discourse, not to deny that the codifications have been criticized both within and without the profession of gynecology; clearly, these codifications are controversial. the content of many of the patient and expert criticisms of the typical patient profile are strikingly similar, and both patients and experts have questioned the arbitrary staging and the prognostic utility of the r-afs classification. in the final analysis, however, experts and patient groups are pursuing £f% contradictory goals. while experts are attempting to forge ever more 'accurate,' totalizing descriptions of the endometriotic subject, endometriosis patient groups emphasize both the similarity and variety of experience and life circumstances among women with the disease. their accounts of the disease retain patient authorship and are not 'flattened' to make them more combinable; they also challenge the legitimacy of dividing practices within gynecological discourse, demystify medical jargon, and present conflicting medical accounts about what women with endometriosis are 'really' like. thus, informed patient critique becomes possible and is openly encouraged. rather than forging constraining identities and risk populations, the goal for endometriosis patient groups seems to be, as foucault (1983:216) puts it, "not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are. " notes 1. adapted from a paper presented at the graduate student work-inprogress seminar, department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university, february 7, 1997. thanks to bruce curtis, the work-inprogress seminar participants, and the alternate routes editorial collective for their helpful comments; and also to annette burfoot, roberta hamilton, david lyon, christine overall, barbara mains, mary lou ballweg, and participants in earlier focus group research for helping me think through the politics of endometriosis knowledge. 2. the notion of immutable mobiles is a core component of latour's (1986; 1987) actor-network theory, which aims to identify the local, contingent, consensus-building activities engaged in by scientists to obtain credibility for their claims. scientists accomplish this by recruiting supporters in scientific and extrascientific communities, often by 'piggybacking' their new claim onto established ones. this makes it difficult to dispute the new claim because to do so would be to take issue with an accepted stock of knowledge and all of its adherents. in order to attain widespread acceptance, a claim must be mobile; that is, it must be able to move freely between different contexts and localities. the r-afs classification, for example, has been translated into several languages and has been published as a form that can be ordered from the american fertility society. however, as claims are taken up by others, uiey may be modified. in order to maintain the recognizability of their claims across different contexts and in the hands of different users, scientists attempt to make their claims immutable. the presentation of the r-afs classification in the shape of a published form resists its substantive modification. see callon, 1986, callon and law, 1989, and ward, 1996 for applications and further development of actor-network analysis. 3. for some recent medical discussions of the typical patient profile, see american college of obstetricians and gynecologists (1983), barlow and glynn (1993:787), chalmers (1975:1), goldman and cramer (1990: 1718), gomibuchi et al. (1993:724), haney (1990:10), kistner (1986:398399), pauerstein (1989: 130-133), tindall (1986:358-359), and treybig (1989:10). 4. the term 'delayed' implies that childbearing is desirable at a young age (often explicitly stated by gynecologists), but a moral or instinctual imperative at some point in a woman's life (a more implicitly held assumption). 5. at least one of these factors (smoking) is already a focus of projects that target individuals for moral reform, although these projects so far have not added endometriosis to the long list of ills and abuses inflicted on the population by tobacco users. ^^ © references american college of obstetricians and gynecologists 1983 "important facts about endometriosis." washington, dc: american college of obstetricians and gynecologists. american fertility society 1985 "revised american fertility society classification for endometriosis: 1985," fertility and sterility . 43(3):351-352. astruc, j. 1985 [1743] a treatise on all the diseases incident to women. new york: garland. audebert, a. j. m. 1 990 "current classifications of endometriosis: practical concerns. 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" paper presented at the endometriosis association 10th anniversary conference, milwaukee, october 6th. 49k latour, b. %if 1986 "visualization and cognition: thinking with eyes and hands," knowledge and society: studies in the sociology of culture past and present. 6:1-40. lauersen, n. andc. deswaan 1988 the endometriosis answer book. new york: fawcett columbine. low, w. y., r. j. edelmann, and c. sutton 1993 "a psychological profile of endometriosis patients in comparison to patients with pelvic pain of other origins," journal ofpsychosomatic research. 37(2): 111-116. moscucci, o. 1990 the science of woman: gynaecology and gender in england, 1800-1929. cambridge: cambridge university press. older, j. 1984 endometriosis. new york: charles scribner. pauerstein, c.j. 1989 "clinical presentation and diagnosis." pp. 127-144. inr. s. schenken (ed.), endometriosis: contemporary concepts in clinical management. philadelphia: j.b. lippincott. c^ perper, m. m., c.h. nezliat, f. nezliat, c. nezliat, and h. goldstein. 1 995 " dysmenorrhea is related to the number of implants in endometriosis patients," fertility and sterility. 63(3): 500-503. renaer, m., h. vertommen, p. nijs, l. wagemans, and t. van hemelrijck. 1979 "psychological aspects of chrome pelvic pain in women," american journal of obstetrics and gynecology. 134(l):75-80. ripps, b. a. and d. c. martin 1 993 "endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain, " obstetrics and gynecology clinics of north america. 20(4):709-717. showalter, e. 1985 tfie female malady: women, madness, and english culture, 1830-1980. new york: penguin. smith-rosenberg, c. and c. rosenberg 1984 "the female animal: medical and biological views ofwoman and her role in nineteenth-century america." pp. 12-27. in judith walzer leavitt (ed.), women and health in america. madison: university of wisconsin press. tindall, v. r. 1986 jeffcoate's principles of gynecology\ 5th ed. london: butterworths. treybig, m. 1 989 " primary dysmenorrhea or endometriosis?" nurse practitioner. 14(5):8-18. waller, k. and r. w. shaw 1995 "endometriosis, pelvic pain, and psychological functioning," fertility and sterility. 63(4):796-800. ward, s. 1996 "filling the world with self-esteem: a social history of truthmaking, " canadian journal ofsociology. 2 1 ( 1): 1 -23 . reflections on the reproduction of dictatorship in iran: communication and dictatorship behncan behnia carleton university when thinking about the fall of any dictatorship, one should have no illusions that the whole system comes to an end like a bad dream with that fall. the physical existence of the system does indeed cease. but its psychological and social results live on for years, and even survive in the form of subconsciously continued behaviour. (kapuscinski, 1985:58) the protest movement against the iranian dictatorial regime began in the spring of 1977, and it gradually became a massive force that overthrew the regime in february 1979. however, soon after the revolution, the islamic faction of revolutionary forces started to repress other political and social forces. the islamic faction abrogated all freedoms and democratic rights gained during the revolution in order to build a society that was based on islamic laws and led by the clergy. a review of the analyses of the 1979 revolution reveals that scholars are divided on whether there were one or two revolutions. those who believe in one revolution (i.e. the "islamic revolution") argue that rapid modernization and westernization generated anomie and moral disintegration, and fostered the desire to return to authentic culture amongst iranians. accordingly, these scholars consider islam and clergymen as forces of revolution. scholars in favour of two revolutions (i.e. the "iranian revolution" and the "islamic revolution") argue that the shah directed repressive policies against the left and other progressive opposition, and comparatively soft policies towards the religious groups. this unevenness put the latter group far ahead in resources such as independent organizations and financial means. according to these scholars factors such as the distribution of resources, the mistakes of the liberals and the leftists, and khomeini's political ability made it possible for the islamic faction to seize political power. they consider the islamic alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 85 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 revolution as one alternative among others, rather than an inevitable outcome. however, what these scholars of iranian revolution have overlooked is the presence of a contradiction in iranian political collective action. here i refer to the fact that iranians, who during the revolution demanded freedom and democracy, supported and tolerated the growth of a dictatorship of a different form when they discovered the possibility of realizing their demands after the revolution. in this paper, the reproduction of dictatorship in iran is studied in relation to the impacts of dictatorship on the processes of political socialization and the formation of the political culture of social groups. in order to explore the impact of dictatorship, it is not enough to learn about mechanisms and apparatuses of repression or numbers of the secret police. instead, one should ask, what impact does living under constant fear of being reported, arrested, and tortured have on the processes of political socialization? what is the impact of living in a social environment where people cannot trust others in sharing their opinions? in other words, it is correct that the dictatorial state cannot produce a social order where its laws are "obeyed promptly, predictably", because its "bloody sword is utterly external to the wills and the consciousness of men (sic)" (walzer, 1970:125). however, there are differences in political socialization under dictatorial or non-dictatorial regimes. i will argue that dictatorship not only represses and censors but also educates and trains individuals. with its repression, its censorship and surveillance, dictatorship shapes and influences the social environment within which people live, interact and grow up. therefore, dictatorship is not a power "localized" in the sphere of politics (lefebvre, 1991:147). it is a power that "produces reality" (foucault, 1979:194) by influencing the structures and functions of the agencies of political socialization. this in turn conditions the formation of the political culture of members of society. in this paper, distorted communication is considered as one of the channels through which dictatorship deeply influences society. it is through communication that social groups and their identities as well as political culture are formed. dictatorship's repression of the democratic rights undermines the conditions of communication and produces distorted communication. the presence of the distorted communication, in turn, affects the structure of social relationships and institutions, the processes of coordination of action and collective identity formation of social groups, and the size and structure of social gatherings. accordingly, distorted communication may force people to develop new 86 behnia/dictolorship institutions or to modify the structure of .already existing institutions in order to sustain the processes of communication. for example, they may find trust and truth in their friendship and kinship relationships, rather than in the activities of formal organizations. following this model, i will study the iranian political system, distorted communication, and the institution of dowreh (circle) in order to illustrate political values and norms that are socialized by them. however, this is not to say that other agencies of political socialization like family, school, and mass-media are not important in these regards. historical background in 1921 reza khan, a military commandant, staged a bloodless coup. in 1926, after establishing himself as the "dominant personality" in iranian politics, made himself the iranian shah (halliday, 1979:23; wilber, 1986:125-126). in 1941 the soviet union and british armies invaded iran and reza shah, who sympathized with hitler and opposed the allies' plan of sending supplies to the russian front through iran, abdicated in favour of his son mohammad reza (halliday, 1979:24; wilber, 1986:131). after the fall of the reza shah, iranians, after almost two decades of severe repression, began to enjoy freedom of expression and organization. during the 1941-53 period the political scene of iran was dominated by the iranian communist party, the tudeh, and the secularist national front, not the islamic forces. emerging soon after the fall of the reza shah, the tudeh party had a total of 100,000 active members, a 355,000 member trade union and three cabinet ministers in 1946 (abrahamian, 1982:303). since the end of the second world war, iranians had been in favour of the nationalization of the british-owned anglo-iranian oil company (halliday, 1979:24-25). in 1951, mohammad mossadeq, the leader of the national front, became prime minister. mossadeq nationalized the oil industryas soon as he took office. this, however, put his government in conflict with the shah and the british and us governments. in september 1951, the british oil company removed all its staff, and closed down its oil installations. at the same time, the british government reinforced its naval presence, in the gulf (abrahamian, 1982:268; see also carter, 1978:59-60). on july 1952, mossadeq clashed with the shah on the nomination of the war minister. 87 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 following the shah's refusal of his nominee, mossadeq resigned and appealed directly to the public, publicly criticizing the shah for violating the constitution. following popular pressure, the shah had to ask for mossadeq's return to office (abarahamian, 1982:268-272). the first military coup against mossadeq failed and the shah escaped to rome. however, after three days, the second military coup, organized by the cia, succeeded in august 1953. after the coup, the shah abrogated all democratic rights and banned and crushed all opposition. in 1975, the secretary general of amnesty international said: "no country in the world has a worse record in human rights than iran" (halliday, 1979:85). in 1960-1963, as a result of an economic crisis, several strong protest demonstrations took place in iran. in several cases the regime used the army in order to control the situation. the regime of the shah, however, was in difficulty not only from domestic problems but also from the new us administration's pressures. as halliday (1979:26-27) writes, the kennedy administration made it be known that it would only continue to support the shah on condition that he put through a programme of reforms. a $35 million us loan was made dependent on certain policies being implemented. ..within which land reform held a specialplace. in 1963, the shah announced his "white revolution". his reforms, however, dissatisfied religious leaders, in particular, the issues of land reform and women's rights. in july 1963, for three days religious forces rioted under the leadership of khomeini. despite the presence of general discontent, the riots were restricted to a small number of towns (including qom), and few towns and workers, civil servants and students did not join them (abrahamian, 1982:425-26). it is important to note that when the islamic forces were protesting against the shah's reforms, in the iranian universities the slogan of the protestors was "yes to reforms; no to dictatorship!" the 1960-63 defeat of the opposition marked "the end of any hope that the forces released during the 1941-53 period could soon reverse the verdict of the 1953 coup" (halliday, 1979:234). in the late 1960s, different opposition groups, influenced by the cuban and vietnamese revolutions, emerged in iran and opted for armed struggle. however, by early 1976, as a result of heavy losses as well as the 88 behnia/dictdorship development of schisms among them, they failed to realize their plans to spark the popular revolution by their armed struggle and sacrifice. the 1979 revolution after the december 1973 oil price increase, iran's annual revenue quadrupled, jumping from $5 billion to $19 billion (graham, 1980:16; see also halliday, 1979:138-139). the shah predicted that by the year 2000, iran would become one of the top five world powers (nyrop, 1978:6). however, after two years, international oil demand dropped. considering that oil revenue made up 78 percent of the iranian budget the impact of such fluctuations in international demand was dramatic (graham, 1980:100). after a brief period of economic boom where "iran's gnp grew by 30.3 percent in 1973-1974 and by a further 42 percent in 19741975", there was "the economic debacle" (amir arjomand, 1986:397; see also nafisi, 1982:200, hetherington, 1982:373). iranians started to face such difficulties as a high rate of inflation and shortages of housing and commodities. housing became one of the main social problems. the annual inflation rate reached "about 30 percent" (kazemi, 1980:89). the regime blamed bazaaris for inflation, and in august 1975 started the 'anti-profiteering' and 'price war' campaign. this campaign generated more shortages, stimulated the black-market, and added the bazaaris to the malcontents (graham, 1980:96). regarding the devastating impact of this anti-profiteering campaign on the bazaar, parsa (1989:103) writes that by october 1977, approximately 109 800 tehran shopkeepers, out of a total of 200,000, had been investigated for price-controlled violations....according to the ministry of interior, 20,000 shopkeepers had been jailed by the end of 1977. by fall 1978, the nationwide total of shopkeepers in violation of the controls was 220,000. furthermore, the regime challenged the economic viability of the bazaar. state corporations were established to import and distribute basic foods, such as wheat, sugar, and meat (abrahamian, 1982:443). in 1976 it was suggested that the bazaar be demolished. these factors pushed bazaaris into the opposition. as one bazaari said, "if we would let him, the shah would destroy us" (parsa, 1989:102). the bazaar is not only a commercial centre but also a community 89 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 that "includes one, or several, mosques, public baths, the old religious schools and numerous tea houses" (graham, 1980:223). financially, the bazaar is a strong economic centre that controls the carpet trade and other major export items (e.g. nuts and dried fruits). this enables the bazaaris access to foreign exchange. in total, the bazaar accounts for two-thirds of domestic trade and accounts for at least 30 percent of all imports (graham, 1980:224). for instance, by the time of the revolution tehran's central bazaar had, close to forty thousand shops and workshops, one-half of which were located within the covered bazaar and the remainder in the immediate vicinity. shopkeepers outside the covered bazaar followed bazaari politics, even though their shops were not part of the bazaar proper. (parsa, 1989:92) bazaar mobilization has always played a crucial role in iranian political history. the financial support of the bazaar, for instance, was decisive in the victory of the 1979 revolution. the bazaar financially aided the university students and teachers as well as the striking workforces, civil servants, and oil-workers (graham, 1980:225; see also zabih, 1979:27-30). in the 1970s, the shah increased his efforts to reduce the clergy's power. in 1971, for example, the shah established 'the religious corps' that were sent into the villages as islamic preachers (wilber, 1986:178). in addition, the government increasingly took control of holy endowments (owqaf) (bill, 1982:25). in 1975 the shah decided to establish a one party political system and pressured iranians to join it. the shah said: we must straighten out iranians' ranks. to do so, we divide them into two categories: those who believe in monarchy, the constitution and the sixth bahman revolution (the shah's white revolution); and those who don't...a person who does not enter the new political party and does not believe in the three cardinal principles which i referred to, will have only two choices. ...such an individual belongs in an iranian prison, or if he desires he can leave the country tomorrow, without even paving exit fees, (cited in halliday, 1979:47) the new party, the resurgence party, with its branches in all cities and 90 behnia'dictatorship villages, became a new instrument of control in iran. despite the widespread discontent, iranians could not express their frustrations in mass protest as a result of the presence of strong repression. jimmy carter's stress on the theme of human rights during his electoral campaign, and the fact that he mentioned iran as a friend country with a bad record, worked in favour of the iranian opposition. in order to please the new president, the shah made some mild political reforms. for instance, in early 1977 a new law was passed which declared that "all political detainees had to be charged or released within twenty-four hours and that trials for political opponents were to be held by civilian rather than military courts" (parsa, 1989:108; see also graham, 1980:211; abrahamian, 1982: 500). iranian intellectuals and former opposition politicians, taking advantage of carter's human rights campaign and the shah's controlled liberalizations, started to speak up early in 1977 (abrahamian, 1982:500-510; see also zabih, 1979:49). as moghadam (1989:152) summarizes: social democratic and liberal intellectuals began to write open letters of protest and criticism. a number of associations and societies were formed and revived, such as the association of iranian jurists, the writers' society, and the national association of university teachers, which demanded improved civil and political rights, and end to censorship, and academic freedom after almost two years of mass protests, strikes and street fighting, the shah left iran, and in february 1979 the revolution succeeded. there emerged a situation where political forces were in balance. the islamic forces were divided among themselves into three factions: fundamentalists, moderate and radical. the left was strong but highly divided among themselves and included independent, pro-soviet, maoists, pro-albanian, and trotskyist groups. there were also national minorities, like kurds, turkemen and arabs, who were not shi'a muslims and demanded regional autonomy from the central government. in addition, there were liberal, social democratic, and independent organizations. 91 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 critical review of the analyses of the 1979 iranian revolution scholars of iranian revolution are divided on whether there were one or two revolutions. generally speaking, these two positions are based on two approaches, namely breakdown 1 and the resource mobilization 2 approaches. those following the breakdown approach argue that what underlaid the widespread desire for revolutionary changes was "a fundamental disorientation and anomie more than a superficial and shortrun frustration of material expectation" (amir arjomand, 1986:397). swenson (1985:124), expressing this line of analysis, suggests that the presence of rapid modernization and anomie, as well as the leadership position occupied by the islamic clergy islam and the clergy as the motivated the revolution: the persian carpet of interwoven cultural codes experienced transformation and modification under the rapid, secularist, "modernization" processes during muhammad reza shah pahlavi's regime. rapid social change is intrinsically psychologically disequilibrating: that experienced in iran... inherently implied radical alterations in 'making sense' of material ana moral value changes. this disequilibrating experience leads to a sense of incohesion, fragmentation, disintegration in the passing away of traditional ways of rendering meaning. explaining why the revolution took place in 1979 and not before, she points out that "the toll of rapid modernization had not yet been wrought upon the masses." she goes on to state that the revolution "was brought about through the mobilization of the masses at the local level by mullahs and enlightened muslim martyrs" (1985:125; see also arani, 1980: 14-15; kimmel, 1989:494). islam was "both the means and the end of this revolution" (kimmel, 1989:507; amir arjomand, 1984; skocpol, 1982:275). these authors emphasize 'rapid' modernization and westernization as the cause of the revolution. however, they do not explain why the 1925-1941 modernization by the father of the shah 3 was not more rapid and traumatic than that of 1960s-1970s. why is it that the strongly anti-clerical measures of re/a shah (192541) did not arouse any massive protest movements or concerted action by the ulama and/or the bazaaris, 92 behnia'dictatorship whereas his son's measures toward the ulama (which were. ...less extreme and less of a sudden wrench with islamic tradition) did arouse protest. (keddie, 1982:288) scholars in favour of two revolutions, using the resource mobilization approach, argue that at the time of revolution the left and other progressive forces were far behind the religious groups in terms of independent resources. 4 they do not believe that the revolution was made by islamic ideology and leaders. first of all, the clergy were late in joining the revolution. in late august 1977, when khomeini realized the lack of initiative on the part of the clerics, he issued a statement inviting them to take advantage of political reform. khomeini said: today we are faced with an opportunity [an opening] in iran and you should take advantage of it...today members of various parties find fault and voice their criticism in signed letters to the shah and the government. you should write too and a few of the learned members of the clergy should sign also. ...others have done so and we have witnessed that they have said a lot but nothing has happened to them' (cited in nomani, 1990:8-9) in addition, moghadam (1989: 152) writes that "it was not until late 1978 that the ayatollah khomeini became the undisputed leader of the revolution. even so, the islamicists saw fit to rule with the national front and other secularists, liberals, and social democrats, for the first year." thus, the revolution was not started by islamic leaders. the lack of independent resources whereby the opposition could gather and organize themselves without fear of being attacked and arrested by the police, led iranians to use mosques, funeral ceremonies and other safe institutions. for instance, in october 1977, the iranian writers' society organized a number of poetry readings. these were held at the irano-german institute in tehran in late october and attracted crowds of over 10,000 (graham, 1980:210; see also zabih, 1979:20, kamrava, 1990:87). what is significant about this event is that at the place of gathering, the irano-german institute, diplomatic immunity protected the participants. the following month, however, when the writers' society organized another poetry reading program on the tehran university' campus, participants were attacked by the police. the same phenomenon happened to bazaaris who in the initial stages of the 93 altemcte routes, volume 10, 199s uprising mobilized outside the mosque. because of represseion, and in absence of alternative channels of moilization, the bazaaris changed their position, and began to encourage the clergy to oppose the regime (parsa, 1989:95; see also zabih, 1979:31). those in favour of one revolution stress the presence of islamic demands. for instance, kimmel (1989:507) in demonstrating islam as the motive of revolution, quotes khomeini's remark: "we did not want oil. we did not want independence. we wanted islam." amir arjomand (1986:405) mentions khomeini's famous statement, "we did not make the islamic revolution so the persian melon would be cheap", in order to show that the revolution was driven by islamic motivations rather than economic ones (see also snow and marshall, 1984:139). what should be stressed is that these authors quote khomeini's remarks after seizing power, and not before. theorists in favour of two revolutions, by contrast, emphasize how khomeini's positions during and after the revolution were 180 degrees apart. during the revolution, khomeini said that under the shah regime "the individual's freedoms are eliminated, elections are prohibited, press and political parties are suppressed, agriculture is ruined" {l'unitd, 5.6.1978; see also bavat, 1983:33-34; parsa, 1989:209). khomeini accused the shah' of "condemning the working class to a life of poverty, misery and drudgery, creating shantytowns and neglecting low-income housing (abraham ian, 1991:113). therefore the reaction of a factory worker to khomeini's statement is understandable. he said: they say we have not made revolution for economic betterment! what have we made it for, then? they say, for islam! what does islam mean then? we made" it for the betterment of the conditions of our lives, (cited in bayat, 1987:48) khomeini in paris did not disclose his real agenda. for example, in a paris interview, khomeini responding to a question about "whether the islamic government means theocracy?" answered: no. we do not intend to govern. we only indicate to people objectives and vindications of islam. since the majority of iranian people arc muslim, the islamic government means the government sustained by the majority of people. (paese sera, 24.10.1978) 94 behnia/dictatorship although the above sketch of iranian revolution confirms the tworevolutions arguments, these scholars have overlooked the support and tolerance of the masses for khomeini's repressive policies after the revolution. political socialization and political culture political culture consists of political values and attitudes, as well as beliefs about forms of political interaction and political institutions. as verba (1969:513) explains, "it refers not to what is happening in the world of politics, but what people believe about those happenings." political culture shapes and influences the processes of interpretation and understanding of political life. political socialization consists of a life experience process through which members of a society acquire their political culture. political culture is formed as the result of the processes of political socialization in agencies such as school, family, workplace, mass media, political parties, voluntary associations, as well as experiences with the political system (verba, 1969:551; see also kavanagh, 1972:35). according to dowse (1986:215) there are different types of agencies in which joining them "involves the learning of skills, attitudes, and norms much more specific to the institution." following this argument, i maintain that depending upon the values and goals of the agencies there will be different political cultures. in this regard, gramsci's distinction (1989:181) between the 'corporate', 'class' and, 'hegemonic' or universal levels of consciousness is used. the corporate level refers to the moment when the members of a social group "are conscious of its unity and homogeneity, and of the need to organize it, but in the case of the wider social group this is not yet so" (gramsci, 1989:181). for example, trade unions at this stage of development tend to "articulate a 'corporate consciousness' which focuses on their shared interests, but this may co-exist with rivalry against some other group of workers" (hunt, 1990:312). the class awareness level consists of a situation where the members of a social class become conscious of their common interests "but still in the purely economic field" (gramsci, 1989:181). the hegemonic or universal moment refers to a level where a class transcends "the corporate limits of the purely economic class, and can and must become the interest of other subordinate groups too" (gramsci, 1989: 181; see also hunt, 1990:312). 95 alterndc routes, volume 10, 1993 following this distinction. i differentiate between institutions and agencies of political socialization with 'corporate' and 'universal' values and goals. depending on the type of the agencies their members are socialized with corporate or universal conceptions of democracy. a social group which is at a corporate level is engaged in articulating and defending its own corporate interest and develops a corporate rather than a universal concept of democracy. for them, democracy consists of an ensemble of rules that protect the immediate interests of that particular social group. dictatorship and communication communication has an essential role in the processes of political socialization. it is through the process of communication that individuals reach an understanding and agreement on an issue, realize their shared common interests, and coordinate their actions. the formation of collective identity and political culture of a social group is the result of the processes of communication within and between social groups and classes. dictatorship, with the suppression of democratic rights, indeed undermines the conditions of communication. habermas, in his theory of 'pragmatic universal', develops the theory of communicative action in relation to the conditions of communication, rather than to the content of communication (i.e. information) or means of communication. according to habermas there are four conditions: comprehensibility, truth, trust, and normative background which need to be fulfilled in order to have a communicative action. in a process of reaching understanding the speaker must choose a comprehensive expression so that speaker and nearer can understand one another. the speaker must have the intention of communicating a true proposition. ...so that the hearer can share the knowledge of the speaker the speaker must want to express his intentions trustfully so that the hearer can believe the utterance of the speaker (can trust). finallv, the speaker must choose an utterance that is right so that the nearer can accept the utterance and speaker and hearer can agree with one another in the utterance with respect to a recognized normative background. (habermas, 1979:2-3) as soon as one of these elements, for any reason, comes under question, the stream of communication halts and it can be interrupted or distorted 96 behnia/dictatorship in order to rectify the disturbed communication it is essential that "no external constraints" prevent "participants from assessing evidence and argument, and in which each participant has an equal and open chance of entering into discussion" (giddens, 1985:131). these conditions are not met in a dictatorial regime and the following section deals with the issue of communication under dictatorship. vertical, horizontal, and oblique voices hirschman, in his argument on the differences between democratic and non-democratic social environments, has developed two terms, 'voice' and 'exit', as means of communication between the citizens and the government, consumer and seller, employer and employee. in a democratic social environment, an unsatisfied consumer or citizen can communicate his/her feelings by voice (writing, wording, marching in the street, and so on), or by exit (changing the store, voting for another political party). in a non-democratic situation, however, one or both of these mechanisms may be absent. if there exists only one store, one employer, or one political party, then exit is impossible, making voice the only option. the worst scenario, however, is when a person can use neither of these mechanisms, as, for example, in totalitarian one-party systems, terrorist groups, and criminal gangs (hirschman, 1970:121). accordingly, in a dictatorial regime, exit and voice are absent; exit becomes 'exile', voice becomes 'silence' or 'oblique voice'. o'donnell, based on his experience in argentina, distinguishes 'vertical voice' from 'horizontal voice'. the vertical voice consists of voice that is "addressed to the 'top', by customers or citizens, toward managers or governments," but when "i am addressing others, or others are addressing me, claiming that we share some relevant characteristics, we are using horizontal voice" (o'donnell, 1986:250). what must be emphasized is the importance of the role of the horizontal voice in the formation of political culture and collective identity. in a democratic environment: we assume that we have the right to address others, without fear of sanctions, on the oasis of the belief that those others are 'like me' in some dimension that at least i consider relevant. if we actually recognize ourselves as a 'vye' (for example, as workers who have the right to unionize), we have taken a necessary, and at times sufficient, step towards the formation of a collective 97 auerrume routes. i olume 10. 1993 identity. (o'donnell 1986:250) under dictatorship, "oblique voice" or symbolic language replaces the horizontal voice, which means certain unconventional. ..ways of dressing, clapping hands with excessive enthusiasm in front of the public authorities, going to the recital of singers or musicians who were known to disagree with the regime, some quick glances in the streets and other public spaces (o'donnell, 1986261) . in summary, the argument on the voice suggests that dictatorship, while inhibiting the use of horizontal voice, encourages the use of vertical and oblique voice. the fear of using horizontal voice and the presence of mistrust lead individuals to an atomized and privatized life based on mistrust. accordingly, they approach with caution the "few remaining occasions of sociability" (o'donnell, 1986:260; see also pohtzer, 1989). the iranian political system bill defines the iranian political system as a "circular" or "web" system with the shah at the centre surrounded by an elite network. the rivalry and conflict between elites at all levels of iranian society stems from their struggle to gain greater favour with then shah (bill, 1972:40-41, 42; see also bill, 1973:141). in this political system the shah was the ultimate decision maker and the network that served as channels of access included ministers, generals, courtiers. ...relatives, personal friends, old classmates and trusted advisors. these personalities 'who circle the power of the monarch' filter and relay information and petition to the shah. thev, in turn, are surrounded by their own entourages each member of [whom] serve's as a lower level but additional channel to power. (bill, 1973:134) due to the lack of formal political institutions, members of the political network as well as their drivers, cooks, and secretaries were sought after as intermediaries between the petitioner and the power. the shah's administration was highly "centralized, totally unintcgrated, and responsive only to him" (fatcmi, 1982:49; see also halliday, 1979:54, kamrava. 1 7-23). the shah appointed "prime minister, ministers, deputy ministers, ambassadors, governors, and executives of government 98 behniadictatonkip organizations" (fatemi, 1982:51). even membership in the web system did not create security. as zonis (1971:241) comments, "when the shah reached the conclusion that a given member of the elite [was] dysfunctional, in any sense, no amount of wealth or membership [could] save the individual from dismissal, disgrace, or demotion" (see also bill, 1973:144). the iranian political system disturbed the processes of social group formation by both reinforcing vertical voice and obstructing horizontal voice. the atomization of the members of social groups was shared by all social classes. for instance, many scholars believe that the collapse of the iranian army after the departure of the shah in 1979 was due to the absence of the spirit of comradeship in the army. this occurred because the generals had to report to the shah and no general could visit tehran or meet with another general without the shah's specific permission (halliday, 1979:68; see also afshar, 1985:186-189). distorted communication in iran this section aims to illustrate the impact of dictatorship on four conditions of communication in iran. dictatorship and intelligibility: under dictatorship the intelligibility of language suffers. dictatorship, by inhibiting the use of horizontal voice, encourages the use of oblique voice or symbolic language. for instance, bill (1972:76) reporting his survey of 50 iranian poems writes that there is: an extraordinary emphasis upon such themes as 'walls', 'loneliness,' 'darkness,' 'fatigue,' and 'nothingness'. these poems deplore the situation of the iranian intellectual and obliquely criticize and condemn the existing sociopolitical system in which the intellectual is chained. accordingly, in iran such terms as "oppressiveness, darkness. ..collapse, quagmire, putrefaction, cage, bars, chain" were prohibited because they "could hide allusions to the shah's regime" (kapuscinski, 1985:44). this created paranoia among both iranians and the censors, because it became difficult to understand the real intention of a speaker or writer. 99 alternate routes. volume 10, 1993 dictatorship and trust: under dictatorship the issue of trust, as a result of the high risk, becomes the main element of communication. the presence of mistrust amongst iranians is referred to by several authors. it does not have any class boundaries and crosses all social strata. zonis (1971:268) writes that "the inability of iranians to count on, to be assured of the meaning of the behaviour of others is taught early. so are iranians taught early in life to mask their own thoughts" (see also westwood, 1965:124). the following example illustrates how deeply political repression can influence and shape everyday life and ways of seeing of members of a dictatorial society. it is about a conversation between an old man with a bad heart and a savak agent (iranian secret police) 5 at a bus stop in iran on a hot afternoon. the old man said: "it's so oppressive you can't catch your breath". "so it is," the savak agent replied immediately, edging^ closer to the winded stranger; "it's getting more and more oppressive and people are fighting for air." "too true," replied the naive old man, clapping his hand over his heart "such heavy air, so oppressive." immediately, the savak agent barked, "now you'll have a chance to regain your strength," and marched him off. the other people at the bus stop ...had been listening in dread, for they had sensed from the beginning that the feeble elderly man was committing an unpardonable error by saying "oppressive" to a stranger. experience had taught them to avoid uttering such terms as oppressiveness, darkness, burden, abyss, collapse. ...because all of them, these nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns, could hide allusions to the shah's regime. the strong presence of paranoia and suspicion is illustrated in the rest of account: for a moment a new doubt flashed through the heads of the people standing at the bus stop: what if the sick old man was a savak agent too 9 because he had criticized the regime (by using "oppressive" in conversation), he must have been free to criticize. (kapuscinski. 1985:445) 100 beknia/dictatonhip dictatorship and truth: in iran, instead of truth there existed rumour. the presence of severe censorship and control over the means of communication and information, as well as government fabrications, led iranians to distrust their mass media. in iran truth was related to trust. fatemi (1982:58) points out how rumour encouraged iranians in their struggle against the shah: the hypothesis that the shah was no longer the master of his destiny gained particular momentum in the first week of january 1979, when the leaders of the united states, britain west germany, and france attended their longscheduled summit meeting on the island of guadeloupe. according to the teheran grapevine, the participants decided, among other things, that "the shah must go." dictatorship and the normative background: the intervention of the shah in all spheres of social life, made iranians perceive him as the main enemy. in this way the sources of all social problems were reduced to the shah (westwood, 1965:134). the normative background was narrowed down to the opposition to a common enemy and iranians communicated and understood each other's grievances on this basis. this narrow normative background created what khomeini called the "unity of purpose"(khomeini, 1981:253; see also moghadam, 1987: 13). green (1982:87), for example, writes that a prominent academic and researcher at the plan and budget organization revealed in an interview during the midst of the revolution, 'i hate khomeini but if anyone says anything bad about him i get angry. why, you ask? because i hate the shah even more!' iranians believed that once they had overthrown the shah's regime all problems would be solved. as a result of the distortion of communication they did not realize that the basis of one's opposition to the shah was different from another's. as the result of the distortion of elements of communication, the processes of collective identity formation of social groups was disturbed, wherein, members of social groups did not draw their social and class boundaries by becoming aware of their identity in the processes of communication. 101 altemcte routes. volume 10. 1993 the institution of the dowreh after the coup d'etat of 1953, the suppression of political organizations and persecution of all forms of political activities led iranians interested in politics to informal, small and selected forms of group. except for a few who decided to stage organized political activities and therefore undertook the underground form of political activity, the people opted for dowreh (circle), a small social setting of trusted persons. as green (1982:43) explains, "an activity such as arguing about politics, generally a risky proposition, was often undertaken within the security of groups that were composed of old friends who had known and trusted one another for years." dowreh consists of a small number of people, from 10 to 20, who "organize about some common purpose and meet on a regular basis. dowrehs exist for card playing, poetry, music, and, of course, politics" (zonis, 1971:238). dowrehs meet monthly, weekly, or more often. the way that miller determines the number of dowreh participants indicates the informal character of this institution. the number of people is "limited to those who can stand beside a buffet dinner table or sit along the walls of a living room" (miller, 1969t64). 6 miller (1969:159), distinguishing between "dowreh" and the "system of dowreh", writes that "the dowreh is an upper class social habit, while the system refers to a particularly persian behaviour of political activity and communication." dowreh, according to miller (1969:163-164), has a "general meaning of social circle, salon or clique. it expresses the gracious manner associated both with past iranian social patterns and with attitudes acquired by those who have been educated abroad or who have lived for considerable periods in the west." writing about the dowreh system, miller (1969:159) says "in the absence of effective political parties, the dowreh system is the substitute used by iranian politicians to discuss, organize and communicate with their followers" (see also banuazizi, 1977:238). the dowreh system includes the bazaari shopkeepers, artisans and labourers who meet each other regularly in bazaar caravansaries, teahouses and restaurants that serve as the headquarters for those in a particular craft or trade. very much in the pattern of the old guilds, merchants and workers, will gather together over tea or kebab, to discuss business, exchange rumour and news and, inevitably, debate politics. (miller. 102 rehnia'dictatorship 1969:165; see also spooner, 1971:171-172; thaiss, 1971:201-202) dowreh, indeed, is a circle of homogeneous people who share similar socio-political ideas and backgrounds as well as interests and perspectives. it is not a "public" of people who are divided in their ideas on an issue, nor was it a "public sphere", namely a social realm open to all citizens "with the guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and the freedom to express and publish their opinionsabout matters of general interest" (habermas, 1974:49; see also habermas, 1989). borrowing the gramscian distinction, one can argue that dowreh system is a social setting at a corporate stage where a corporate perspective can develop. the formation of homogeneous groups that were not permitted to interact outwardly with other groups led them to develop a corporate or non-universal perspective of democracy. dowreh participants were engaged in elaborating, defining and reinforcing the immediate interests and ideas of their members rather than that of the larger or the whole society. they did not, and were not able to, develop a universal perspective as a result of the lack of communication and social struggle with other social forces. dowreh reinforces norms and values shared by its members and is a place for articulating their immediate needs. therefore, the concept of democracy that could emerge in this kind of gathering was a corporate one: democracy not as a universal value, but as a system of rules that satisfies and protects the needs of the small group. to summarize, the absence of democratic rights that guarantee the fulfilment of four conditions of communication, led iranians to seek guarantee in small, informal and selected forms of groups. however, in these groups it was the corporate rather than the universal perspective of democracy that developed. conclusion the corporate conception of democracy had played an important role in the reproduction of dictatorship in iran and the change of iranian political collective action. after the victory of the revolution, khomeini and his faction had the ability to attack one section of opposition while exempting the remainder and maintaining their support or tolerance. for instance, khomeini called for the repression of the independent press because, according to him, their critiques of the government would 103 uternate routes, volume 10, 1993 during the revolution became an obstacle to the anti-imperialist struggle. the leftist groups, stressing the difference between the bourgeois and revolutionary' democracy, did not support the protest of independent journalists. however, as soon as censorship was exercised over leftist publications, they came to recognize the government as repressive. 7 the role of corporate perspective of democracy in the process of the establishment of the new dictatorship can be summarized as follows: when the national minorities mobilized for autonomy, bazaaris did not join their struggles. students and the fedayeen were the only groups who actively supported the national minorities. when universities came under attack, bazaaris and liberal organizations approved of the assault because students had shifted to the left. ...by the time bazaaris began mobilizing and came under attack, other groups and classes had either been demobilized or did not have an interest in joining their struggles. as a result, repression against one social group or class did not invoke new protests by other groups, which might have led to the escalation of conflict and, consequently, neutralized repression. (parsa, 1989:295-296) the corporate perspective of democracy functioned in dividing the iranian political and social forces in the sense that they agreed on the suppression of other groups' rights. the corporate conception of democracy allowed khomeini's success in following his suppression of democratic institutions and rights, as well as in crushing political, religious and ethnic groups with the mass support or tolerance. notes 1. see tilly, 1975:4-6. 2. on resource mobilization theory sec among others: tilly (1978); zald (1977, 1988); turner (1987, 1992); and freeman (1979). 3. reza shah secularized the judiciary and educational system of iran that were in the hands of clergy. in addition, in the political sphere, reza shah's policies reduced the political power of traditional groups such as the clergy the percentage of clerics serving as deputies in parliament declined from 40 percent in the sixth majlcs to 30 percent in the seventh 104 behnusdictatorship majles to zero in the eleventh majles which met in 1937. at the same time, reza shah favoured greater participation by women in social life. he ordered that the chador, or traditional women's veil, be abandoned in favour of western clothing. the majles even passed a uniform dress law' instituting compulsory western dress for men (parsa, 1989:36; see also akhavi, 1980:37-55, abrahamian, 1982:140-144, carter, 1978:54). 4. moghadam (1989:153), comparing the resources, writes: "it is sufficient to note that in iran on the eve of the revolution, no liberal or left-wing parties or institutions operated legally. on the other hand, there existed a nationwide network of mosques, theological seminaries, religious shrines, charitable endowments, and religious lecture halls.... the religious thought was given predominance and allowed dissemination in a way never enjoyed by the left or even liberals. the resources that were available to the clergy had been consistently denied to the left" (see also moghadam, 1988; green, 1982:xiii; abrahamian, 1985:149-174, akhavi, 1980:129). hiro (1988:20) writes that "estimates of qualified clerics vary from 90,000 to 120,000 and there are an unknown number of unqualified village preachers, prayer leaders, theological school teachers and procession organisers." 5. in 1957, the ill-famed secret police savak (national security and information organization) was created with the help of israeli and us advisors. branches of savak were present in universities, factories, and offices. their activities were so multifarious that today "almost anyone who does voice protest about the government runs the risk of being suspected of being a savak agent" (halliday, 1979:82; see alsoabrahamian, 1982:435-37; rudolph, 1978:372). although the exact number of its personnel is not available, "informed united states government sources estimate the number of full-time personnel at 10,000. the agency is also believed to employ a large number of part-time informants... estimated... as high as 200,000" (rudolph, 1978:373). 6. the shah's regime did not tolerate formal groups and organizations. bill (1972: 47-48) writes that in "1961, for example, eight middle-class iranian friends and scholars met and formed a dowrah to discuss sociopolitical issues. they agreed upon certain areas of concern and mimeographed a confidential one-page statement presenting their mutual 105 alternate routes, lolume 10. 1993 opposition to corruption, injustice, and oppression. each member took a copy and the rest were locked away. five months later, the chief of the secret police called on one of the men and confronted him with a copy of the statement. it was one of the original eight copies. the dowrah broke up immediately. this kind of occurrence explains a great deal about the secret police and the dowrah system, but it also sheds light on one of the major reasons why social interaction in iran is extremely informal. in the episode described, there was one real element of organization and formality — the printed statement. and this was the evidence that was used to destroy the dowrah and to threaten the lives of its members." 7. the same mechanism was used in suppressing women's rights in iran. see haines and woods, 1986:43-47; sansarian, 1982:99-102; afshar soraya, 1983:157-162;tabari, 1982: 126-140; abrahamian, 1989:189-190. references translations from italian and persian sources are mine. abrahamian, ervand. 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(1978) from mobilization to revolution. addisonwesley publishing company, inc. tilly, charles, et al (1975) the rebellious century. 1830-1930. cambridge" harvard university press. 110 liehnia dictatorship turner, r. h. (1992) "collective behaviour." in e.f. borgatta and m.l. borgatta (eds.), encyclopedia ofsociology . new york: macmillan. turner, r. h., and l. m. killian. (1987) collective behaviour. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall, inc. verba sidney. (1969) "comparative political culture." in w. pye and sidney verba (eds.), political culture and political development. princeton: princeton university press. walzer, michael. (1970) "the revolutionary use of repression." in richter melvin (ed.), essavs in social and political history. cambridge: harvard university press. westwood, andrew e. (1965) "politics of mistrust in iran." a nnals of the american a cademv of political and social sciences. 538: 123-35. wilber, d. (1986) iran, past and present. princeton: princeton university press. zabih, sepehr. (1979) iran's revolutionary upheaval: an interpretative essay. san francisco: alchemy books. zald, m.n., and j.d. mccharty. (1977) "resource mobilization and social movements: a partial theory. ' american journal of sociology. 82: 1212-1241. zald m.n., j.d. mccarthy, and d. mcadam. (1988) "social movements. in n.j. smelser (ed.), handbook of sociology. london: sage publications. zonis, marvin. (1971) the political elite of iran. princeton: princeton university press. italian newspapers: paese sera (24.10.1978) lvnita' (5.6.1978) 111 carleton university sociology and anthropology work-in-progress seminar* scheduled for: friday, october 22, 1993; loeb a720 for information, write to: graduate student caucus (attention wendy larner or david hubka) department of sociology and anthropology carleton university, ottawa, ontario k1s 5b6 "formal paper presentations and discussions; tea, coffee, lunch book review: revolution at point zero | 307 book review revolution at point zero: housework, reproduction, and feminist struggle by silvia federici. oakland, california: pm press, 2012. $15.95 us, paper. isbn: 978-1-60486-333-8. pages: 1-188. reviewed by danielle dinovelli-lang1 carleton university revolution at point zero is a collection of twelve important essays (plus a preface and introduction) by the marxist-feminist political theorist silvia federici. as a collection, it is remarkable for its combination of historical breadth – the earliest essay was originally published in 1975, and the latest in 2011 – and sustained engagement with the topic of reproductive labor. reproductive labor is not just the book’s organizing theme; it emerges through the process of reading federici’s essays in sequence as the political problem that manifestly joins what would otherwise appear to be very different historical conditions of struggle, from the wages for housework campaign in the ‘70s to the anti-globalization movements of the fin de siècle. it is, as federici affirms in the preface, “the work in which the contradictions inherent in ‘alienated labor’ are most explosive, which is why it is the ground zero for revolutionary practice, even if it is not the only ground zero,” (2012, p. 2, emphasis in the original). federici’s concept of reproductive work (or labour) is maximally inclusive without ever seeming to be imprecise. it includes everything that goes into the reproduction of labour-power, that is, of human beings, from the constitutively unwaged labour of motherhood, to subsistence agriculture, to the grossly underpaid services of personal care workers. it excludes, by definition, the so-called productive labour of commodity production that generates surplus value for capital at the expense of the worker. still, because this latter expense is measured in the difference between what the working class requires to reproduce itself and what it is capable of producing, reproductive and productive labour are inextricably linked, even as they are constantly opposed by the movement of capital. this is important because it clarifies federici’s relationship to 1 danielle dinovelli-lang is an assistant professor of anthropology at carleton university in ottawa, ontario. she can be reached at danielle_dinovelli@carleton.ca mailto:danielle_dinovelli@carleton.ca 308 | climate change and its discontents orthodox marxism: while insisting that the exploitation of women, and others, cannot be understood or combated independently of the material conditions of production required and generated by global capitalism, she is equally insistent that global capitalism cannot be understood or overthrown without acknowledging the enormous surplus and critical significance generated by unpaid labour in the sphere of reproduction. it is this crucial expansion of the revolutionary dialectic to include as central those forms and aspects of life that are disingenuously externalized by capitalist production – cooking, childrearing, gardening, subsistence farming, as well as the life-giving capacities of nature itself – that enables a book whose theoretical underpinnings were born in the feminist struggles of the 1970s to feel so timely in the contemporary context of intensifying neoliberalism. armed with the understanding that reproductive work is absolutely essential to the functioning not only of capitalism but of whatever social system we may decide to put in its place, and that it is therefore revolutionary, federici is able to explain why so many contemporary anti-capitalist mobilizations … … have not been fought only or primarily by waged industrial workers, marx’s projected revolutionary subjects, but have been fought by rural, indigenous, anticolonial, antiapartheid, feminist movements. today as well, they are fought by subsistence farmers, urban squatters, as well as industrial workers in africa, india, latin america and china. most importantly, these struggles are fought by women who, against all odds, are reproducing their families regardless of the value the market places on their lives, valorizing their existence, reproducing them for their own sake, even when the capitalists declare their uselessness as labor power (p.92-93). what unites these struggles is that they are all waged not only against capitalism but also in defense of the alternative sphere of reproduction and, implicitly, a mode of production that would be subordinate to that sphere rather than the other way around. otherwise, they are all very different, and herein lies federici’s most crucial contribution to the discussion of revolutionary subjects and subjectivities, most clearly articulated in the 2008 essay, “the reproduction of labor power in the global economy and the unfinished feminist revolution,” quoted above: by dismantling marxist claims that capitalism has a progressive character (p.92) federici frees us from the expectation that the revolution must come “after” it. in the case of the five essays written during the wages for housework campaign, this means that, “you don’t need to enter a factory to be part of a working class organization” (p.38). in the case of the six antibook review: revolution at point zero | 309 globalization essays written much later, it means that the historically continuous attack on subsistence, whether this be the expropriation of peasants in europe and asia, women gardeners in africa and inner-city north america, or indigenous people everywhere, is fundamentally an attack on these subjects’ revolutionary ability “to resist a more intense exploitation,” (p.86). in other words, our capacity to resist capitalism from the outside just as much as our capacity to revolt against it from within both rely on our ability – contingent on our control of the means of subsistence in time (reproductive labor) and space (land) – to be different from it. this perspective dismantles the prevalent supposition that the anticolonial struggle for territory and workers’ struggle for higher wages are constitutively opposed. it also dispenses with the attractive illusion, made prominent by the writings of hardt and negri2, that the disappearance of autonomous localities in the face of globalization could ever engender, never mind sustain, a revolutionary uprising (federici 2012, p.142). i should add that the essays in revolution at point zero could absolutely be read independently of each other, as precise analyses of specific political situations. the essay, “on elder care work and the limits of marxism,” for instance, is a particularly compelling analysis of an under-theorized crisis of our time, while the final essay, “feminism and the politics of the common in an era of primitive accumulation,” articulates federici’s relationship to important contemporary debates about common property and neoliberalism’s new enclosures. to read them this way is to read them as a student or a scholar, which is good and valuable enough. but to read them all is to read them as a subject of history, compelled by capital and invited in solidarity, which is much better. 2 hardt, michael and antonio negri. 2004. multitude. cambridge: harvard university press; 2000. empire. cambridge: harvard university press. book review: the ecological rift | 303 book review the ecological rift: capitalism’s war on the earth by john bellamy foster, brett clark and richard york. new york: monthly review press, 2010. $17.95 u.s., paper. isbn-13: 978-1-58367-218-1. pages 1-544. the politics of climate change second edition, by anthony giddens. cambridge, london: polity press, 2011. $ 21.95 cdn., paper. isbn: 978-0-7456-5515-4. pages: 1-256 reviewed by samantha wilson1 the maintenance of an earth system in which humanity can safely exist hangs in a delicate balance. recent evidence suggests that society has exceeded the regenerative capacity of the planet by 30 percent (foster, clark and york, p.18). what’s more, if we continue down this path we risk irreversible environmental damage which stands to threaten humanity and the biodiversity of future generations. despite increasing precariousness of our social and natural environments, governments in advanced capitalist countries have yet to implement policies which adequately address the climate crisis. the harper conservatives’ cancellation of the kyoto protocol is just one example of this. this raises a few important questions: what policies can adequately address the severity of the climate crisis? what is required to bring about a more egalitarian and sustainable society? in this review i will compare and contrast two recent contributions that address the above questions: the ecological rift: capitalism’s war on the earth by john bellamy foster, brett clark and richard york, and the politics of climate change by anthony giddens. for reasons that will be explored, i contend that the arguments made by foster et al., provide not only a stronger analysis of the climate crisis but proposes stronger remedies for rectifying ongoing ecological degradation. at the core of the ecological rift is an analysis of the fundamentally antagonistic relationship between capitalism and the environment. the authors explore “various radical ecologies that challenge the treadmill of 1 samantha wilson is an independent researcher with interests in critical political economy, feminism and environmentalism. 304 | climate change and its discontents capitalist accumulation, with the object of generating a new relation to the earth” (foster, clark and york, p.8). foster et al., argue that humanity has become alienated from its natural environment. drawing on marx’s ecology, they argue that the separation of one’s inorganic from organic nature poses a serious threat to both the basis of life and society as a whole. foster, clark and york make the case that, despite the severity of the environmental crisis, mainstream social science has become all the more removed from radical, even critical approaches that might offer substantive alternatives. rather, in their view, much environmental social science is premised on what they refer to as ‘ecological modernization’. this approach champions technological fixes and market-based solutions as providing a way out of the crisis, rather than addressing the structural and systemic roots of capitalism – that is to say, unequal forces and relations of production. foster et al., stress that the ecological and social crises humanity faces are one and the same. in their view, a solution to the ecological rift will necessarily require an anti-capitalist project: one that transcends “a society based in class, inequality, and acquisition without end” (foster, clark and york, p.47). foster, clark and york argue that cut-throat competition and the quest for capital valorization necessarily exploits the natural environment resulting in the undermining of the world’s ecosystems. they counter orthodox economists which contend that market-based mechanisms, including complex financial instruments and potentially catastrophic technological fixes (e.g. nuclear power) will result in a more sustainable capitalism. rather, the authors explore various paradoxes which lie at the root of capitalist development. they illustrate this, for example, by way of a discussion of the jevons paradox. it was william stanley jevons’ contention that increased efficiency in coal use would not as had been assumed lead to decreased demand “because improvement in efficiency led to further economic expansion” (foster, clark and york, p.171). this is, of course, contradictory to the assertions of ecological modernists who champion sustainable technologies as the key to dealing with the climate crisis. and this is where the work of foster et al. contrasts most sharply with that of giddens. rather than challenge the structural and institutional shortcomings of capitalism, giddens’ so-called “realist” approach contends that we must work within the capitalist system and established institutions in hopes of alleviating climate change. in his view the primary agent of change must be the state, which would provide the legal parameters and institutional configurations through which technological advancements book review: the ecological rift | 305 and market outcomes could be based. a key theme throughout giddens’ work is the centrality of the state in mitigating climate change. giddens argues that the state must “act to counter business interests which seek to block climate change initiatives” (giddens, p.93). he proposes that the state and capital work together to promote more sustainable development. in my view, however, such a contention is not only idealistic but naïve. not only does this fail to recognize the role of the state in capitalist societies as the superintendor of capitalism but incorrectly assumes that the state’s role is to act as the neutral guarantor of the public good.2 rather, the primary role of capitalist states is to facilitate capital accumulation and to legitimize unequal class relations. thus it is difficult to envision how states might counter business interests rather than extend and deepen them, often at the expense of both the public good and environment. moreover, the politics of climate change suffers from what are irreconcilable contradictions. if it is true, as giddens argues referring to the keynesian era, that “…centralized planning of the economy, supposed to overcome the irrationalities of capitalism, proved quite unable to cope with the complexities of a developed economic system” (giddens, p.95), how is such a view reconciled with his state-centric solution to the climate crisis? like giddens’ confused understanding of the role of the state in capitalist societies, far from challenging the vested power of capital and the anti-democratic institutions through which they prowl the world looking for profit making opportunities, the prescribed solutions fall far short of what is actually needed. not only is a return to a pristine era of so-called state regulations on capital not possible but the era of neoliberalism has worked to thoroughly embed market compulsions into the overall architecture of society. indeed, throughout his analysis, giddens reveals himself to be a great apologist for the capitalist system seeking to justify a marketoriented approach to climate change rather than challenge it. giddens (p.213) contends that the only solution to the climate crisis lies in further economic growth on a large scale. but unlike foster et al., he does not envision economic development of an alternative kind, one where the means of production are held in common and ecological sustainability are placed front and centre. it is this apparent contradiction – that between capitalist development and environmental degradation – that is missing throughout the politics of climate change. in line with foster et 2 for an expansion of this argument see the important study by panitch, l. and s. gindin. (2012). the making of global capitalism: the political economy of american empire. london: verso. 306 | climate change and its discontents al., only a radical, socialist-inspired alternative to the climate crisis may offer a way out of the crisis that is capitalism. in sum, giddens’ the politics of climate change falls disappointingly in line with what foster et al., earlier referred to as the school of ‘ecological modernization’. meaningful social change will not derive from technological fixes or a cult-like belief in the infallibility of market mechanisms. giddens ignores this reality, while foster, clark and york attempt to uncover the cause of the climate crisis: capitalism. the continuation of business as usual represents a significant threat to the livelihood of future generations. as such, an alternative anti-capitalist project is of the utmost necessity. this is undoubtedly a great challenge, but it is certainly feasible as the daily struggles of countless millions around the world can attest to. neoliberalism and the attack on education | 305 neoliberalism and the attack on education: an interview with henry a. giroux heather mclean heather mclean1 (hm): in your latest book, neoliberalism’s war on higher education, you identify the broad project of neoliberalism as the key mode of governance, policy and ideology threatening public education. what are your greatest concerns? how can we fight back? henry a. giroux2 (hag): public and higher education are under siege in neoliberal societies for a number of reasons. first, they are under attack because they are public, not necessarily because they are failing. as public sites, they offer potential spaces, pedagogies, and modes of thinking that are critical, thoughtful, and, frankly, dangerous because they not only offer the conditions to inspire students to be self-reflective and critically engaged, but also energize them to connect what they learn to what it might mean to hold power accountable, address social injustices, and both imagine and struggle for a more just world. public and higher education are considered dangerous because they harbor the possibility of speaking the unspeakable, uttering critical thoughts, producing dissent, and creating students willing to hold power accountable. the apostles of neoliberalism, on the other hand, want to eliminate the critical function of public education on all levels and they are working hard to transform these institutions into disimagination factories. my biggest fear that as more and more students labour under onerous debt, subjected to a form of indentured citizenship, coupled with modes of 1  heather mclean is an urban studies post-doctoral research fellow in the geography department at the university of glasgow. inspired by feminist and queer ways of knowing, being, and making, her research examines the contradictory role of community-engaged arts practice in neoliberal urban planning regimes. 2  henry a. giroux currently holds the mcmaster university chair for scholarship in the public interest in the english and cultural studies department, and is distinguished visiting professor at ryerson university. his most recent books are neoliberalism’s war on higher education (haymarket press, 2014), and the violence of organized forgetting (city lights, 2014). he maintains a collection of his writing at www.henryagiroux.com. 306 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education education that are utterly instrumental and depoliticizing, they will become less and less interested in defining themselves as individual and social agents. inhabiting zones of hardship, suffering, exclusion, and joblessness, young people increasingly live in fear as they struggle to survive social conditions and policies more characteristic of authoritarian governments than democratic states. indeed, many young people around the globe appear to be caught in a sinister web of ethical and material poverty manufactured by a state that trades in suspicion, bigotry, state-sanctioned violence, and disposability. democracy loses its character as a disruptive element, a force of dissent, an insurrectional call for responsible change; democracy all but degenerates into an assault on the radical imagination, reconfigured as a force for whitewashing all ethical and moral considerations. what is left is a new kind of authoritarianism and depoliticized individuals increasingly subjected to regimes of greed, dispossession, fear, and surveillance that becomes normalized. these dark times that are now pushing more and more societies into a distinct form of neoliberal authoritarianism demand a new political language and strategies to match. first, educators and others need to figure out how to defend more vigorously public and higher education as a public good and democratic public sphere. given the global attack on all levels of education, it is crucial for faculty, students, and others to be able to articulate how central it is in producing the formative culture necessary to educate young people to be critical and engaged agents willing to fight to deepen and expand the promises of a substantive democracy. second, this also means addressing what the optimum conditions are for educators, artists, activists and other cultural workers to perform their work in an autonomous and critical fashion. in other words, we need to think through the conditions that make academic labour fruitful, engaging, and relevant. in addition to developing an international movement for the defense of public goods, especially public and higher education, we need to turn the growing army of temporary workers now swelling the ranks of the academy into full-time, permanent faculty. the presence of so many part-time employees is scandalous and it both weakens the power of the faculty and exploits them. the neoliberal governing model must be abolished for more democratic modes of power sharing and faculty must fight diligently for eliminating all of the corporate and other fundamentalist ideological and structural forces that prevent this from happening. neoliberalism and the attack on education | 307 third, how we view the role and purpose of education is inextricably linked to how we address young people as critical and engaged critical agents who are willing to take risks, engage in thoughtful dialogue, and address what it means to be socially responsible. students must be treated as engaged learners, critical citizens, and socially responsible agents, rather than as commodities and consumers. this suggests developing modes of pedagogy that are about the practice of freedom; that is, pedagogical practices that create the conditions for students to be selfreflective, critical, and self-conscious about their relationship with others and to know something about their relationship with the larger world. pedagogy in this sense not only provides important thoughtful and intellectual competencies; it also enables people to act effectively upon the societies in which they live. this is a pedagogy that both inspires and energizes by making knowledge meaningful in order to be both critical and transformative. finally, the attack on public and higher education must be understood as part of a systemic attack by neoliberalism on all public goods and institutions that do not serve the interests of the military-industrialsurveillance state. the attack on the social state and the rise of the punishing state go hand-in-hand with the attack on education under regimes of neoliberalism. hm: you claim that public intellectuals, academics who connect their scholarship to important public issues, play an important role in generating critical debate. can you elaborate? hag: neoliberalism is a toxin that is generating a predatory class of the walking dead who are producing what might be called dead zones of the imagination. this points to both a political and educational challenge for academics. faculty have a moral and political responsibility to connect their scholarship to those important social issues that make clear that the role of both public and higher education and pedagogy itself must be part of a broader political and moral practice that believes that issues of justice and democracy are worth fighting for in both the classroom and the larger society. the time has come for academics to develop political languages and transformative pedagogies in which critical understanding, civic values, and social responsibility – and the institutions that support them – become central to invigorating and fortifying a new era of civic imagination, a renewed sense of social agency, and an impassioned international social movement with the vision, organization, and set of strategies capable of challenging the neoliberal nightmare engulfing the planet. surely, this is one role that academics 308 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education can take on in order not only to defend the conditions of their own labour but to make clear to a wider public why education is central to the struggle for a substantive democracy. academics can play a vital role in helping broader publics recognize that the attack on higher education cannot be fully comprehended outside of the attack on the welfare state, social provisions, public servants, and democratic public spheres. nor can such attacks be understood outside of the production of the neoliberal subject, one who is atomized, unable to connect private issues to larger public considerations, while being taught to believe in a form of radical individualism that enables a fast withdrawal from the public sphere and the claims of economic and social justice. as stefan collini has argued, under the regime of neoliberalism, the “social self’ has been transformed into the “disembedded individual,” just as the notion of public and higher education as a public good are now repudiated by the privatizing and atomistic values at the heart of a hyper-market driven society. i would think that in a time of systemic violence and terror, the individualizing of the social, the militarization of everyday life, and the ever present policies of permanent warfare overtaking the globe, that faculty would do more than retreat into the cult of professionalism, the impenetrable jargon of specialization, or succumb to the seductions of corporate power. some academics such as stanley fish claim that faculty should not address important social issues in either their research or teaching. to do so is to run the risk of not only becoming incapable of defending public and higher education as a vital public sphere, but also of having no influence over the conditions of their own intellectual labour. without their intervention as public intellectuals, education defaults on its role as a democratic public sphere willing to produce an informed public, enact and sustain a culture of questioning, and enable a critical formative culture that advances not only the power of the imagination but also what kristen case calls moments of classroom grace. pedagogies of classroom grace allows students to reflect critically on commonsense understandings of the world, and begin to question, however troubling, their sense of agency, relationship to others, and their relationship to the larger world. this is a pedagogy that asks why we have wars, massive inequality, a surveillance state, the commodification of everything, and the collapse of the public into the private. this is not merely a methodical consideration but also a moral and political practice because it presupposes that the creation of critically engaged students can imagine a future in which justice, equality, freedom, and democracy neoliberalism and the attack on education | 309 matter. gayatri spivak is right in asking academics the question: “can one insist on the importance of a training in the humanities in the time of legitimized violence?” of course, this question applies to all levels of education and whatever subject is being taught. hm: in your writing, you discuss how an erosion of social responsibility, public values and community is shaping everyday life in north america. can you comment here about everyday ways to contest neoliberal hegemony? hag: one essential issue is to recognize that politics is not exclusively about economic power or what might be called the financialization of all aspects of society. it is also about culture, the politics of subjectivity, or what can be called the educative nature of politics itself. the left, for the most part, has ignored the importance of education being central to politics because it refuses to acknowledge matters concerning how rightwing formative cultures work to produce subjects that internalize their own oppression as a political issue and not merely an academic one. the issue of politics being educative, of recognizing that matters of pedagogy, subjectivity, desire, and consciousness are at the heart of political and moral concerns should not be lost on academics and students. as the late pierre bourdieu argued, it is important for all of us to recognize that the most important forms of domination are not only economic but also intellectual and pedagogical, and lie on the side of belief and persuasion. this suggests that it is crucial to recognize that academics and other cultural workers bear an enormous responsibility for challenging this form of domination. the late stuart hall’s remarks are instructive here. he recently insisted that the state of progressive thought is in jeopardy in that, as he puts it, “the left is in trouble. it’s not got any ideas, it’s not got any independent analysis of its own, and therefore it’s got no vision. it just takes the temperature…it has no sense of politics being educative, of politics changing the way people see things.”3 of course, hall is not suggesting the left has no ideas to speak of. he is suggesting that such ideas are often removed from the larger issue of what it means to address education and the production and reception of meaningful ways of thinking as a pedagogical practice that is central to politics itself. he is also saying that the left and progressives are often short of ideas that can move people. in other words, there is no sense of how to make ideas meaningful in order to make them critical and transformative. theoretically, this means that educators and others can work 3  williams, z. (2012, february 11). the saturday interview: stuart hall, the guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/feb/11/saturday-interview-stuart-hall 310 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to create public spaces where desires, subjectivities, and identities can be produced capable of fostering critical and engaged individual and social agents. such struggles demand a new notion of politics, one in which progressives work with social movements to create educational apparatuses dedicated to creating new political formations capable of challenging neoliberal notions of commonsense through a discourse of both critique and possibility. neoliberalism produces anti-public spaces that function as disimagination zones, spaces that produce forms of social and civic death. academics and others must reclaim the radical imagination by rethinking the crucial relationship among cultural institutions, power, and everyday life. given the assault on both subjectivity and popular needs, it is crucial to reinvent the meaning of democracy, create a comprehensive vision of change, and develop new political formations that are international in scope. hm: many of my peers are piecing together a living as contract faculty, researchers and part-time workers in other sectors. what are your thoughts on working towards labour equity and social justice for all university workers? can you comment on strategies for greater reciprocity and solidarity with workers in other labour networks? hag: i think working towards labour equity and social justice for all university workers is a noble and important ideal because it provides a discourse for organizing diverse groups of workers in the academy around a number of common themes. at the same time, it forces such groups to redefine the nature and purpose of education and why it is so central to any viable notion of politics and change. in addition, such struggles point to the need for academics and others to build alliances with other groups and social movements outside of the university as part of a more comprehensive struggle not just for education as a public good but for expanding and deepening the struggle for democracy itself. the left historically has been too fragmented, mired in often strangulating forms of identity politics that become zones of political purity that shut down rather than open up possibilities for new alliances and broader movements while retaining the spirit of specific struggles. particular struggles for freedom must be aligned with more general struggles so a broad based political formation can be developed to offset neoliberal hegemony and global power relations. hm: i am currently a university researcher in the uk where public research funders are pressuring academics to prove their usefulness in terms of developing partnerships with civil society groups, public-private partnerships, ‘regeneration’ initiatives and community organizations neoliberalism and the attack on education | 311 to name a few. does this emphasis on ‘impact’ undermine the work of public intellectuals? or does it open up new contradictions or spaces for critique and critical engagement? hag: i think it does both. surely, the current governments in the us, uk, and australia view such alliances as a way to consolidate corporate control over the university, faculty, the academic fields, and students. at the same time, the ideologies driving these counter-reforms can be a challenge for the misery, powerlessness, and damage they do to any democratic society and in doing so hopefully new alliances can be opened up with a range of groups that can assume a less instrumental and more democratic role in such alliances. hm: what are your thoughts on the role of artistic practice as a radical pedagogical strategy in a moment when universities, think tanks and arts institutions are caught up in the ‘buzz’ of neoliberal ‘creative city’ and ‘innovation’ regimes? hag: neoliberalism kills the radical imagination which is crucial to any real definition of creativity so central to artistic public spheres. surely, neoliberal attempts to colonize the arts and to turn them into a hegemonic pedagogical force for imposing modes of political conformity must be challenged on both political and pedagogical grounds. crucial here is the need for academics, artists, and other cultural workers to provide an alternative understanding of the potential of the arts as a radical pedagogical practice and strategy. the attempts to colonize the arts as an extension of neoliberal public pedagogy and repression testifies to how cultural apparatuses have become increasingly responsible for the darkness that surrounds us. this recognition points to more than despair, it also opens up the possibilities for new alliances with artists and other cultural workers while extending the power of radical pedagogical practices. newsforum colloquim: "zadig's method," the historical sciaices, museums and the performance of progress tony bennett, professor at griffith university (austraha) and director ofthe institute for cultural policy studies, was at carleton this spring to present a paper at a public forum sponsored by the department of sociology and anthropology, the centre for research on culture and soaety, and the school for studies in art and culture. bennett is the author of numerous books and articles inthefield ofmedia and cultural studies, indudingpopular culture: themes andissues ( 1 98 1 ), bondandbeyond: the poutical career ofa popular hero (with janet woollacott, 1987), and outside literature (1990). bainett's recent work signals a curious retreat from his earlier preoccupations with the 'gramscian' tradition in cultural studies. originally intoided to overcome the perceived impasse betweai 'culturalist' and 'structuralist' approadies in british cultural studies, the incorporation ofgramsci 's notion of 'hegemony'—a state ofmoral, cultural and political leadership that is actively won and not simply imposed upon subordinate social groups — offered the discipline a less mechanistic and monolithic view ofthe ideological domination of a ruling class or bloc. whereas structuralist formulations of ideology suggested that cultural change and political resistance were next to impossible since dommation was achieved through manipulatmg the world view ofthe masses, the concept ofhegemony stressed that in order for cultural leadership to be achieved, dominant groups must 'negotiate' or engage with opposing groups. in british cultural studies, the turn to gramsci signalled a profound shift in thinking. popular culture was no longer seen as part of some rqjressive ideological apparatus nor, alternatively, as an impulsive and <^ alternate routes, volumell, 1994 liberating expression ofthe 'people'. rather, it was viewed as contradictory and contested—it was both dominated and oppositional . the field ofpopular culture was implicated in the struggle for hegemony in so far as it remained structured by the attempt of the ruling class to secure hegemony, and by the actions of other groups to oppose that project. politically, cultural studies diampioned a transformative politics of 'counter-h^emony '—oforganizing or articulating subjects into a collective political force to challoige the dominant power bloc. developed against the backdrop ofthatcherism and its accompanying 'enterprise culture,' this political project took on an added urgency. despite bennett's pivotal contribution to this important theoretical shift, his current work argues for a move 'beyond hegemony'. for bennett, the politics of counter-h^emony is "institutionally indifferent." since all cultural practices are conceived as bound up with the struggle for h^emony, the dominant tendency has been to see cultural struggle as the same in all cases. in effect, cultural studies has paid insufficient attention to the specific sets of discursive and structural power relations that operate withm distmct cultural practices. bennett's current work on the 19th century museum is partially an attempt to work through these issues. bennett rejects the view that sees the museum simply as an ideological instrument of the ruling bloc. instead, he intends to explore in detail the specific practices, techniques, and operations ofthe museum that constitute it as a 'technology' (in foucault's sense of the term) that produces a socially coded vision ofthe past. this vision, expressed through the performative r^mes of the museum, conscripts subjects as active participants in the scientific and reformist narrative of progress. the 'zadig' that bennett refers to in his lecture is a character drawn from voltaire and later adopted by thomas huxley. zadig possessed the remarkable power of 'backtelling'—by looking at tracks left by an animal he was able to faithfully visualize and reconstruct that animal. this process of generating retrospective visions—of making the invisible visible—is mirrored in the modem scientific method where causes are inferred from effects. for bennett, the 1 9th century british museum is principally a narrative machinery for 'backtelling'. the museum makes history 'visible' through the application of certain apparatuses or sets of technologies. spatially, the museum is organized to compress time into a visible and performable 'pathway' through history. through techniques of 'typological display' in which similar artifacts from vanous time periods are presented in series from the 'simple' to the 'complex,' the museum encourages visitors to engage m an "organized walking through evolutionary time." witnessing, for example, the progression from an aboriginal throwing stickto a spear, bow and arrow, and eventually a modem gun, visitors become 'self-teaching,' actively aigaging in a progressive, civilizing, and heuristic performance. typological displays had deeper political motivations, according to bennett. showing progress as a succession of incremental improvements suggested that the rate of social change was a pre-ordained law of history. this view contrasted sharply with emerging notions of revolutionary socialism which advocated that human societies could 'jump' from one stage to another. not surprisingly, the didactic message oftypological displays were |y^ first directed at the working class at the bethel green museum in london. here, the 'technology of the series' was codified to create a progressive but conservative subject, one that recognized the 'inevitability' of gradual reform. the 1 9th century british museum, therefore, worked to reinforce other emerging social institutions. from new pedagogical techniques in education to emerging methods of clinical psychology, the era was characterized by the development of 'regimes of truth' that emphasized discipline, training, and self-improvement. increasingly, human beings were seen as creatures in need of progressive improvement and development. while any clear assessment of bennett's research is premature at this point, his work does nevertheless raise some intriguing questions about the nature of political interventions into the arena of cultural policy. the types of interventions suggested by the perspective ofhegemony have been largely discursive—i.e. restructuring representational practices in order to allow for alternate routes, volumel 1, 1994 the emergence ofan oppositional subject. the difficulty with this position, as bennett's analysis suggests, is that it fails to connect this 'counter-hegemonic' politics with the larger structural conditions that determine rqjresaitational practices in the first instance. the promise of bennett's work is that by providing an examination of the forms and relations of political conflict specific to particular cultural technologies, his analysis may in fact lead to more concrete political intervmtions that are capable ofaffectingthe actions of agaits within those technologies. david c. robinson carleton university (^ book review: taking our informants seriously david young and jean-guy goulet. being changed by crossculturalencounters : the anthropology ofextraordinary experience. peterborough: broadview press, 1994, 378 pp. derek blair carleton university for the past fifteen years or so, anthropologists have engaged in debates examining the place as well as the construction of the subject in the ethnographic project. various positions have taken guises such as postmodernism, interpretive and reflexive anthropology, and anthropological poetics. regardless ofthe outcomes ofthese debates, one can in the least acknowledge their contribution to the anthropological project; they have persuaded us to re-examine where anthropology has come from—and where it is going. the exploitative nature of field relations having been thoroughly revealed to us, we have been forced to examine our personal epistemological constructions. is this only 'navel gazing,' as some anthropologists argue (eg. polier and roseberry, 1989)? not always. nevertheless, simply cataloguing our biases (personal and epistemological) won't take us far. what we are slowly coming to terms with is that our cross cultural encounters might be tools for better understanding our own personal and cultural 'realities.' seriously entertaining the notion that self and other are two aspects of the same reality requires seriously considering what our cultural counterparts have to say. it is in this respect that young's and goulet's being changed offers an insightful perspective, one which is uncluttered by anthropological jargon, and one which refuses to be caught up in the 'post' critical debates. as a first step... anthropologists can begin to take their informants seriously and to entertain the idea that an informant's account may be more than a "text" to be analyzed. it may have something of value to contribute to our understanding of reality (young and goulet: 12). alternate routes, volumne 12, 1995 jffil alternate routes, volume 12, 1995 this edited compilation is comprised ofeleven essays which are divided into four subsections. the book attempts to do three things. first, it provides accounts ofanthropologists who havehad extraordinary experiences, or have chosen to seriously consider extraordinary accounts experienced by their informants. next, it works toward the establishment of a theoretical framework through which extraordinary experiences might be explained. finally, it explores the issue of what we are to make of extraordinary experiences. these do not neatly fit western scientific notions and therefore might readily be met with skepticism. how might they be conveyed to an audience which is predisposed to a rationalized conception of 'scientific thinking?' there is no easy answer to this question. nevertheless, we can begin this project by seriously considering the extraordinary experiences as reported by our informants. the first section: "extraordinary experience and fieldwork," includes contributions by jean-guy goulet, marie francoise guedon, and edith turner. goulet' s essay is entitled "dreams and visions in other lifeworlds" and in it he documents his experiences from fieldwork among the dene tha of northern alberta and the guajiro of south america. he begins with geertz's assertion that "we cannot live other people's lives, and it is a piece of bad faith to try," but disagrees with his stipulation that we "can but listen to what, in works, in images, in actions, [others] say about their lives" (25). can wego beyond the limitations that geertz sees for us? goulet believes that we can, that it is possible to experience the world of the cultural other to a certain degree. he recalls an experience he had while on fieldwork among the dene tha of chateh in northern alberta where he was sitting with some elders about a fire in a teepee. the smoke was becoming heavy and was irntatinghis eyes when hesuddenly found himselfstaringat a life-sized image of himself fanning the fire with his hat. a moment later in the 'real' world, a non-native arose and began blowing on the fire. at this point, he was instructed to stop this immediately, since such actions would "offend spiritual entities and induce a violent windstorm in the camp" (30). the proper way of fanning a fire was by the use of a hat or some other object. goulet explains how he envisioned the proper way of conduct among the dene tha—the proper way of fanning a fire, without having had any prior knowledge of the subject his approach to understanding foreign cosmologies entails an acknowledgment that the reality of the cultural other is nothing but a transformation of his own western reality: i understand a people among whom dreams are readily talked about and interpreted when i can relate to them in such a way that their dreams make reasonable sense to me, as mine to them, precisely because they exhibit similar contents or images, are amenable to similar kinds of interpretations, or are seen locally as consistent with the expected consequences of ritual actions ( 1 8). citing rappaport, he argues that empiricism and rationality are incompatible with many of the experiences associated with the world of visions, dreams, and religion, and that 'good ethnography' should encourage us to challenge our own rationalized assumptions. marie francoise guedon's "dene ways and the ethnographer's culture" demonstrates how she "could not learn about dene ways of life and language without [herself] growing into this learning" (41). for guedon, not only did her field experience result in personal transformation, but it also forced her to question the adequacy and cross-cultural validity of western conceptualizations. this is demonstrated in her discussion about western conceptualizations ofculture andhow these clashed with those ofthe natives . western anthropologists tend to emphasize technology and material conditions when defining a foreign culture and assessing the extent of cultural tfft change (49). for the dene, technology does not appear as a part of 'culture' (47) since what they might consider as culture is processual, and involves personal knowledge, stories, myths and dreams, and territorial locales associated with these. believingthat anthropological theory should reflect the thought world of those we study as well as our academic traditions (62), guedon concludes that "the manner in which i tell and use a story will say as much about my participation in the dene ways (my dene identity) as the story itself (61). she seems to be looking for a medium. as far as culture is concerned, she learns that it "becomes what can be transmitted through stories" (62). she likes sapir's 1 924 definition of culture "not as knowledge, nor as manner, but as life" (63). the final essay in this section is contributed by edith turner, and she tells of her extraordinary experience of witnessing the emergence of the ihamba (tooth) spirit from the body of an ill-stricken native while on fieldwork in zambia in 1 985. had she not been able to abandon her western conceptualizations, she believes that she might otherwise have seen this experience as fraud or trickery. turner does this in a manner which we have come to expect from her—with a narrative voice, arguing that what often alternate routes, volume12, 1995 appears to be shamanic trickery really is not (89). she gives examples of shamanic healing, such as that presented in the film sucking doctor, where the shaman is seen as sucking an intrusive power from various bodies. western skeptics often merely state that the object, which the shaman "sucks" into his mouth was merely secreted there prior to the healing. turner's chapter, "a visible spirit form in zambia" provides another view. she argues that an informed understanding of shamanism will easily account for these misguided perceptions and explanations. the next section of essays is entitled "modeling extraordinary experience." it contains contributions from charles laughlin, rab wilkie, and david young. laughlin' s essay is entitled "psychic energyand transpersonal experience. a biogenetic structural account of the tibetan dumo yoga practice." here, he describes how mystical and yogic traditions are based on models which involve the movement of energy in the body, and he provides a personal account ofhis experiences . these are explained in biopsychological terms (100). he advocates a transpersonal approach to understanding such mystical experiences. this approach allows for "participant comprehension," which "requires that more emphasis be placed upon participation, than upon more passive observation... participation requires 'suspension of 'br disbelief "(102). laughlin draws on gellhom's theory ofautonomic-somatic integration (1967) to explain the experiences occurring in altered states of consciousness which involve "higher experiences of psychic energy" (118). the result is an explanation ofhowtheergotropic system (which "subserves. . . the physiological components of our adaptive strategies to desirable or noxious stimuli in the environment" (118)) works with the trophotropic system ("responsible for regulating all the vegetative functions, such as reconstruction ofgrowth cells, digestion..." (1 19)) in both a complementary and antagonistic manner in order to achieve bodily homeostasis. with this, laughlin attempts to find a middle ground between emics and etics: "indeed it is my beliefthat anthropological science derives from applying etic methods and explanations of human activities to the fullest possible range of emic data" (102). young's essay "visitors in the night: a creative energy model of spontaneous visions" provides a contrast to laughlin's work. it is not as scientifically descriptive, though it posits a framework which does justice to the views ofthe cultural other without forsaking theintegrity of 'science' (see introduction) young points out that when informants report having had visions, anthropologists have in the past accepted this as data, attempting to explain it using some type ofanalytic framework in order to demonstrate how this experience fits into the greater cultural theme (167). on the other hand, when the anthropologist is subjected to such extraordinary experiences, he/ she often ends up disregarding it as inappropriate data. young describes two of his own visions, which appear to have taken forms analogous with the two belief systems most familiar to him, zen buddhism and native north american religion. here, he illustrates his three-stage creative energy model. the model should allowforthe serious consideration and explanation of extraordinary experiences that would otherwise be dubbed simply as 'unscientific' and therefore non-empirical. inanutshell, young is advocating an "as if approach to understanding our cultural others and takingwhat they have to report seriously. he argues that suspending disbelief requires adopting the attitude that extraordinary accounts heard in the field could in fact be true, should be approached "as if' they were, and are therefore worthy of serious consideration. he concludes: "it is time that we as anthropologists begin to take our informants more seriously and attempt to build models that will do justice to our own scientific world view. . . and the world view ofthose who see reality in a different way" (191). this does not mean that testable scientific hypotheses are a necessary component to scientific validity. rab wilkie's essay "spirited imagination: ways of approaching the shaman's world" deals with the question "what happens when we open ourselves to others, specifically those who are at home in a world that to us seems strange ?" (139). this is addressed through the documentation of a roundtable discussion which occurred in edmonton, alberta. two central discussions are presented: one deals with an extraordinary encounter which one ofthe discussants had experienced, the other is a reaction of the various informants to a guided visualization. reactions range from skepticism to valid acknowledgment ofthe extraordinary experiences, and the point of the essay becomes a lesson in suspending rationalized disbelief. though a guided visualization might seem contrived, it can certainly lead to the spirit world if we let it, as one ofthe discussants points out. for wilkie, anthropologists as human beings have the capacity to be changed by "opening ourselves" to new experiences, though what this 'change' constitutes depends on who we are (158). the third section of the book is entitled "taking our informants seriously," and contains essays by c. roderick wilson, lise swartz, and antonia mills. wilson is concerned for anthropologists tfiat "failing to change our normal ways ofperceiving, we see not what they, our informants alternate routes, volume12, 1995 and the peoplewework with, are seeing" ( 1 98). in his essay "seeingthey see not," he recalls his own fieldwork among the waorani in amazonian equador to demonstrate that even our perception of colour is bounded by western normalized conceptions. his title is from a biblical passage, matthew 13, and it implies that because we cannot allow ourselves new perceptions, we do not see what is before us (206). wilson gives examples which have, in fact, changed him. he is concerned "about the fact that my vision is so 'normalized' that i could not see what was literally in front ofmy face" (99) and provides suggestions, sometimes similar to young's, as to how we can avoid perceptual barriers and seriously consider non-conventional cultural assumptions and experiences. lise swaitz's eponymous essay, "being changed by cross-cultural encounters" discusses how her life at sea was changed as a result ofher work with a woods cree medicine man (211). in a narrative account of her experience on board a sailing ship, she tells of how her belief in guardian spirits and the power of a protector which she received from her cree friend, "grew to the point where [she] could not begin or end a sailing expedition without making appropriate prayers or offerings" (2 1 5). she claims this is a result of having taken seriously the advice and visions of her cree friend, whom she considers to be her informant. antonia mills discusses the possibility of believing in reincarnation in, "making a scientific investigation of ethnographic cases suggestive of reincarnation." 1 she believes that anthropologists can, in fact, make scientific investigations which will allow us to assess whether a belief in reincarnation is justified. she cites two cases of reincarnation as reported by the gitskan of british columbia, and a hindu village in etawah, india. though both cases are somewhat questionable, mills suggests that we do not cast them aside as indicating that reincarnation is an inconceivable phenomenon. as a result of these examinations and others from her fieldwork experiences, she admits that the reported cases certainly do not prove that reincarnation has taken place, but she is not satisfied with the concept of "cultural construction" (the community's desire to believe in reincarnation which often results in the "construction" of evidence to support it) as an adequate alternative explanation. establishing criteria for the assessment of whether reincarnation has in fact occurred, mills believes that current evidence suggests that reincarnation should not be dismissed. in the "conclusion" to the book, yves marion's "the experiential approach to anthropology and castaneda's ambiguous legacy" explores the issues and controversies surrounding the work of carlos castaneda and his accounts ofhis spiritual apprenticeship with a yaqui sorcerer by thename ofdon juan (23). marton deals with the controversy surroundmgcastaneda's work. he notes castaneda's questionable integrity as a social scientist, his truthfulness, and his self-mystification. but marton also argues that what castaneda was presenting in the late 1960's was a rather non-conventional ethnographic depiction. in short, castaneda's was the first extensive account of a spiritual and extraordinary account by a social scientist (273). in this sense, marton presents this work as "innovative within anthropology, both in its format. . . and in the abundance andtype ofexperiences that it reported from the field" (274). regardless of how one perceives the legacy of castaneda, marton admits that it has certainly had an impact on experiential anthropology. comment this edited compilation is a comment on western epistemological constructions (anthropology is, after all, a western phenomenon). it argues that rational boundedness has hampered the ethnographic endeavor. an emic viewpoint is often the desired goal of ethnography and tins usually requires |tt| some sort of 'suspension of disbelief,' since the experience of fieldwork often situates the anthropologist in what would appear to the western world as extraordinary circumstances. to western societies which acknowledge only one mode of reality—that based on physical concreteness, ideas such as shamanic healing, multiple levels of reality, and the senousness of the dreamworld, appear quite bizarre since our rational boundedness encourages us to question the 'truth' ofsuch ideas. to our cultural counterparts, as these essays demonstrate, these experiences are quite often ordinary. anthropologists often entertain such 'extraordinary' ideas during the moment of fieldwork, but the return to the 'commonsense reality' often means a return to rationalism. in fact, that return is where being changed begins, where "one's informants are not taken seriously" (10). this idea comes out the strongest in young and goulet's concluding essay "theoretical and methodological issues," as well as in goulet's own essay. the contributors to this volume become exemplary: they have opened themselves up to the experience and reality ofthe cultural other. the result is that they have themselves been changed, and the anthropological experience extends long beyond the fieldwork moment since they, like the mythical hero, bring a boon back from their <e) alternate routes, volume 12, 1995 journey. this boon is quite intangible and comes packaged in the form of experience—the result is the expansion ofthe perceptual lens and a validation of the cross-cultural experience. in other words, these accounts are by anthropologists who have chosen to take their informants seriously. the highlights of the volume are the essays by goulet and wilkie. goulet's essay brings to mind how western perceptions of the dreamworld contrast with those perceptions of the guajiro and dene tha. among the latter, dreams a re taken quite seriously and are given a special respect. goulet himselfwas reassured: "yes, your dreams are true!" on the other hand, in the western world, when our children awake frightened by night visitors, we comfort them with the assurance that "it wasjust a dream." thus, we deny the reality ofthe experience. wilkie's essay, on the other hand, provides the reader with an informative discussion about issues of suspending disbelief and extraordinary experience. in his conclusion, he clarifies the 'true' nature of that edmonton meeting: the "meeting purportedly recorded in the above 'transcript' is fictitious. it did take place, but only in the author's imagination" (162). in this sense, the essay itself, as well as its content, becomes a lesson in the suspension of disbelief when opening ourselves up to nonordinary, 'strange' experiences. in fact, the reading ofthe essay becomes an extraordinary experience. read this essaytwice to get the point. approaching it first as fact causes the reader to address it and its issues with a particular epistemological set. upon the knowledge that it is 'non-factual,' this epistemological set changes, and the message is different. embedded western rationalized assumptions cannot allow us to take wilkie seriously. nevertheless, anthropological studies of myth, dreams, and religion, show that truth is hardly contingent on historical fact. here, an epistemological shift means personal transformation. wilkie tells us, echoing goulet, that he cannot begin to understand extraordinary experiences and world-views without paying attention to his own ( 1 63). in other words, he brings back a piece ofthe field with him, which means suspending disbelief and acknowledging the boundedness of our cultural constructions. even if 'the field' in this case is a fictitious boardroom in edmonton. regardless, wilkie's essay provides the reader with an exercise in rationality. the essays fit tightly together and it becomes obvious that the editors went to great lengths in assuring a complementarity between them. however, there is one exception, the essay by swartz. here is a writer whose entire argument is based on her assertion that "i took my informant seriously" (226) nevertheless, it is highly questionable that russell willier, her cree friend, can under the circumstances be seen as 'her informant.' swartz's 'ethnographic description' is uncontextualized as anthropological research and comes across as an extended holiday. did she indeed take him 'seriously?' she provides two particular instances when she was given the opportunity to participate in a ceremonial ritual, involving fasting andpraying. thepotential result in the first instancewas learning ofher guardian spi rit and in the second instance her being given a protector. under both circumstances, she states that "time and circumstances did not permit this" (213-214) even though in the second case, "russell would recommend, even if this should delay my departure. ... that i participate in a four-day vision quest... where i would be given a protector" (2 14). instead, she arrangedto meet him the day before her departure so that she could obtain this protector. certainly one cannot be expected to believe that russell was taken seriously! the author's life was in danger, but "circumstances could not allow" for her to consider either his request or her own safety? beyond this, the degradation ofthe four day ritual to an adhoc meeting, is a comment regarding not only the level ofseriousness with which the other was approached, but also the amount of respect allotted to the cultural traditions of the other. for the most part, these essays provide instances where anthropologists have in the least gained greater self-understanding by opening themselves up to the world-views of those they study. thus the firework endeavor is presented as a learning experience. michael taussighas recently raised these issues in mimesis andalterity ( 1 993), where he documents how the concepts of mimesis (imitation) and alterity (otherness) play off one another in maintaining and strengthening cultural solidarities and identity. he chooses the kuna indians as his example. among the kuna, the self is understood through an examination of its alter. thus, kuna ritual and mythological incorporations of european characters and characteristics have the purpose of strengthening their identity at a personal and collective level. as an example, c. roderick wilson has affirmed that his cross-cultural experiences have strengthened his christian views, when one might certainly have expected the opposite (207). similarly, the work of young and goulet informs us that it is through accepting as valid the experiences of our cultural counterparts, that we can better understand our own conventional realities. but this will require an acknowledgment ofthe scientific limitations imposed by western rationality. being changedcan, perhaps, be considered as following in the tradition ofturner's and bruner's the anthropology ofexperience ( 1986), benson's dj) alternate routes, volume12, 1995 anthropology and literature (1993), and brady's anthropological poetics (199 1). it foregrounds the question of validity, epistemology, and experience which necessarily arise when one immerses oneself in a culture which at a surface level appears so veryforeign and extraordinary. these essays provide a comment on these issues and, uncluttered by thick description and anthropological jargon, a long overdue comment on experiential anthropology. the dialogical relationship between the cultural other and the anthropologist is enhanced by viewing each as different aspects of the same essence, the same reality. the result is one of the most informative and entertaining compilations to come about in a long while. references benson, paul, ed. 1993[1989] anthropology and literature. urbana: university of illinois press. brady, ivan, ed. 1991 anthropological poetics. maryland: rowman and littlefield. gellhorn, e. 1 967 principles ofa utonomic-somatic integrations. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. polier, nicole and william roseberry 1989 'tristes-tropes: postmodern anthropologists encounter the other and discover themselves." economy and society 18:245-264. taussig, michael 1993 mimesis and alterity. new york: routledge. turner, victor and edward bruner, eds. 1986 the anthropology ofexperience. urbana: university of illinois press. aiternate routes a journai of criticai sociai researcih editorial collective narinder brar beth cleland colleen anne dell edward micheal oliver siomonn pulla willow scobie jeffrey shantz roberta lynn sinclair digitized by the internet archive in 2011 with funding from carleton university, department of sociology & anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesc16alte aiternate routes a journai of criticai social research" volume 16, 2000 editorial policy/call for papers perspectives rory. johnstone sexual and ethnic scripts in the context of african american culture 5 mike patterson where the forest meets the highway work in progress anita seibert from matka polka to new polish woman 42 article phil robinson resisting subjection, subjected resistance: sadomasochism, feminism, moral regulation and self-formation 62 book reviews linda di luzio jeffrey shantz taking a stand: a review of nancy e. dowd's in defense of single-parent families. new york: new york university press. 1997. 200 pp. 89 wally seccombe and d.w. livingstone. "down to earth people": beyond class reductionism and postmodernism. aurora: garamond press. 2000. 134 pp. contents of past issues 93 98 alternate routes editorial policy/call for papers alternate routes (ar) is a refereed multi-disciplinary journal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university ottawa, canada, k1s 5m6, altroutes@ccs.carleton.ca. as a peer reviewed journal, ar provides a forum for debate and exchange among north american and international graduate students. we are therefore interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or co-authored with faculty), regardless of university affiliation. the editorial emphasis of the journal is on the publication of critical and provocative analyses of theoretical and substantive issues which have clear relevance to progressive political intervention. although we welcome papers on a broad range of topics, members of the editorial board work within a feminist and (post) marxist tradition. therefore, we encourage submissions which advance or challenge questions and contemporary issues raised by these two broadly defined perspectives. we also welcome commentaries and reviews of recent publications and works in progress. alternate routes is currently seeking submissions for volume 17, 2001. papers should be submitted double-spaced and in triplicate, following the american psychological association (apa) referencing system, keeping endnotes to a minimum. floppy disks formatted in wordperfect or microsoft word arc required for papers accepted for publication. back issues of alternate routes arc available at the following prices per volume: current issue (volume 16, 2000) — individuals $12.00; students/ un(der)employcd $6.00; institutions $21.50. volume 15/14 (99/97): individuals $12.00; students/un(dcr)cmploycd $4.00; institutions $12.00. all previous years: individuals $3.00; studcnts/un(dcr)cmployed $1.50; institutions $6.00 . alternate routes is indexed in sociological abstracts and the left index. the alternate routes collective greatfully acknowledge the financial assistance ol the carleton university community; the departments of sociology and anthropology and it's chair, john shepherd; the late dean of arts and social sciences, mill jones, the dean ol graduate studies and research, roger mlockley; and the vice-president of research, john apsimon. we also wish lo greatfully thank all the anonymous reviewers. volume 16, 2000 chemins auernatif perspectives sexual and ethnic scripts in the context of african american culture rory johnstone the study of north american homosexual integration within a predominately heterosexual environment is not a new endeavor. on the other hand, there has been minimal examination of the same issue when focusing on ethnic minority groups. the following discussion explores the challenges of homosexual life in the context of the "afrocentric 1 " framework. the difficulties of interlocking modern homosexuality and modern african american culture can be attributed to societal scripts 2 that dictate insular boundaries and rules based on ethnic origin and sexual orientation. these scripts are founded on widespread, narrow-minded notions of perceived truth and, consequently, prescribe the direction of cultural behaviours. society has created gay male and black male modes of behaviour while simultaneously dictating that one can be aligned exclusively but never mutually. in order to understand the lack of cohesiveness one must first investigate the scripts allied to the homosexual male and the afrocentric male. through examination of these clashed outlines it becomes apparent that aligning oneself equally with both scripts is next to impossible and any attempt to do so is, in essence, social suicide. homosexuality has existed throughout human history and therefore sexual orientation is linked to genetics and is not a script. that said, the traits that society has linked to sexual orientation is a script. society instills a notion that heterosexual males and homosexual males must act volume 16, 2000 5 alternate routes in a radically different way, but this behaviour is grounded in gender roles and not sexual orientation. it could be argued that experimentation with gentler roles is the most elementary form of societal script defiance but the rebellion has been progressively organized to form a convenient distinction between heterosexuals and homosexuals. the celebration of homosexuality through the rise of 'gay' culture has coded new conventions of behaviour for the homosexual.the shift from the 'closeted' lifestyle to the 'out of the closet' lifestyle has created a new context for gay males, where distinct cultural recognition has become crucial for social and relational life. concurrently, society creates a script for gay males that becomes the antithesis of the script for 'straight' males. more specifically, the script for gay males becomes congruent with the script for the female gender role. gay males who abide by the script tend to be bound to stereotypically effeminate social behaviour. the behaviour is recognized in the context of social situations and functionally provides a type of relation filtering. in essence, the creation of contrasting scripts is a social effort to segregate between the heterosexual and the homosexual. modern african american culture has also been written an underlying script. societal perceptions of the 'afrocentric' male are bound to traits of rebelliousness, vigor, power, athleticism and, consequently, the idyllic notion of masculinity. recalling that the script for the gay male is essentially the repelling of masculinity, it is no wonder that 'afrocentricity' and homosexuality do not have a symbiotic relationship. building on this tension, a report conducted by adams jr. and kimmel (1997) suggests that gay culture is dismissed as a "white phenomena" within the african american community. this notion may be reinforced due to the fact that gay black men are much more likely to have an interracial partner than heterosexual black men. a study by peplau et al. (1997) showed that 42% of the men involved in her research were engaged in an interracial relationship, predominately with white men. this can lead to a perception that black gay males are conforming to 'white culture' and simultaneously abandoning their 'black roots.' the danger in this theory, among other things, is the aligning of sexual orientation with 'authentic ethnicity.' wallace (1979) suggests in her book, lil<i< k macho and the myth ofthe superwoman, that the complexities of black and white sex issues are grounded in the sexual exploitation of african american slaves during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nine6 volume 16. 2000 ( 'hemins alternotif teenth centuries. wallace suggests that a black man having sex with a white man symbolically suggests inferiority and slavery. there is an entrenched perception that the black partner in an interracial relationship "reduces himself to the status of our black grandmothers who, as everyone knows, were fucked by white men all the time" (wallace, 1979: 68). prominent black leaders have also played an indirect role in this issue. malcolm x, not unlike most political dignitaries, embodies the charismatic qualities of "the patriarchal macho..." (wallace, 1979: 68). he is a role model for contemporary black males, yet his vigor, militancy, and strength are far removed from the homosexual script. his powerful and commanding leadership in the profound black liberation movement has unintentionally created the sentiment that males who repel their "masculine" traits are counterrevolutionary, regardless of their political stance. all of these elements and issues further segregate the homosexual black male and the heterosexual black community. bounded to this is the inevitable fact that social institution cohesive to gay culture, such as clubs, are generally not located in african american communities. this ultimately reinforces the segregation in terms of demographics (peplau et al. 1997). in summation, this conflicting situation between heterosexual and homosexual and, inevitably black and white, is a result of societal scripts which continue to reinforce stereotypes and ultimately distance human beings. in contemporary society, the social script defines our world and our sense of self-identity. it commands and forcefully guides our evolution into abstract categories which are in essence, the prison cells preventing our freedom. within this strata our individuality and autonomy are eliminated because we have deliberate barriers that prevent full social integration. these barriers are so entrenched in our mentality that we perceive them as irreversible fact. this discussion focused on two segregated categories: gay males and black males. it has been suggested that today's society cannot bridge the gap. one cannot be a gay black man and be treated with the legitimacy of a heterosexual black man. north american society is unable to decode both scripts at the same time; they are considered to be incompatible. abstractly, the discussion examined the dynamic and underexposed relationship between sexual orientation and ethnicity. it is apparent that society has forced many ethnic groups to be unjustly exclusive with a sexual preference. it is this authors hope that the realization of these limiting conventions will advance the awarevolumc 16, 2000 7 alternate routes ness of social scripts and the eventual abolition of them. moving into the future, there is hope that all cultural minorities of ethnicity and sexual orientation will come to the realization that they are on a congruent quest for equality and justice within society. notes 1 'afrocentric' framework is an african american term referring to culture based on the black power movement. 2 societal scripts is the concept of conventions based on ethnic, sexual and cultural stereo types that inhibit deviation from sterotypes (appiah, 1994). rcfreneces appiah, anthony, k. 1994 "identity, authenticity, survival" hi multiculturalism-the politics of recognition. princeton, new jersey: wallace, michelle. 1 ()7 black macho and the myth of the superwoman. new york: volume id. 2000 alternate routes articles biotechnology and the society-nature relation kenneth fish carleton university introduction the emergence of biotechnology as an instrument of production in an increasingly global, information-based form of capitalism is quickly rendering the 'modem" boundary between society and nature obsolete. the impetus for this emergence was the advent of recombinant dna in the early 1970s, a technique used to splice together the genetic material from dissimilar species in order that new. transgenic organisms might be 'persuaded" to produce proteins not otherwise "found" in nature. this unprecedented control over the reproductive capacities of life at the molecular level distinguishes 'new' from "old" biotechnology 1 and has allowed for the employment of living things as "self-replicating factories" (king 1997) for the production of foods, pharmaceuticals, and even building materials. 2 aimed at manipulating the reproductive capacities of living things at the molecular level, biotechnology "re-programs" the natural world so that its "design" might better serve social needs. thus, perhaps more than any other, ^technologies challenge traditional conceptions of nature, society, and what it means to be human. despite their increasing interest in biotechnology as an instrument of production political economists have paid relatively scant attention to the unique implications of the technology for the society-nature relation. they have tended to focus instead on the social relations and interests shaping the development of biotechnology and. in particular, issues surrounding its unequal distribution. this is perhaps reflective of the longstanding concern amongst political economists with dispelling the notion that technology is an autonomous, inherently progressive force of social change. and indeed, the work of yoxen (1983), kcnney (1986). and 58 volume 19, 2003 chemins altematifs krimsky (1991), among others, has gone a long way toward revealing the social relations and processes obscured by the "rhetoric of the technological sublime' (l. marx, 1964; nye, 1994) currently surrounding developments in biotechnology. nevertheless, the absence of a concern in this literature with the implications of biotechnology for the societynature relation is both theoretically and politically troubling. not only does it constitute a theoretical gap in the approach, but it also risks political irrelevance inasmuch as many of the social movements mobilizing in opposition to biotechnology are concerned with just these implications (shiva, 1995). to be sure, discussions of nature are not absent from political economy more generally. in response to concerns over environmental degradation that have arisen since the 1960s there have been a number of attempts to incorporate 'ecological* issues into the corpus of political economy. 3 the eco-marxism of o'connor (1998) and others redresses the neglect of "nature" in a discipline that has focused its critical attention, for the most part, on capitalism as a set of social relations whose internal contradictions manifest in a series of crises and eventual social transformation. central to the work of eco-marxists is the notion of a 'second contradiction of capitalism"; namely, that which exists between a relentless drive to accumulate and the 'natural" limits to this accumulation posed by the environment. relatively absent from this work, however, is a sensitivity to the role of technological change in transforming the society-nature relation. in fact, most "ecological thought" tends merely to reinscribe a modem society/nature dualism insofar as its emphasis remains on the tendency for capital accumulation to "disobey' natural laws and deny nature its 'relative autonomy" (castree, 2000). to the degree that biotechnology is considered at all here, it is primarily conceived as a 'degradation" of nature in the interests of capital accumulation. in the end, the politics implicit in an eco-marxist analysis is one focused on saving 'nature' from capitalism. how might political economy theorize the implications of biotechnology for the society-nature relation so as to foster effective biopolitical imaginaries without appealing to such 'modern' society/nature dualisms? this paper suggests the value to a political economy of biotechnology of two 'amodern" traditions in contemporary social theory. i argue that both the 'production of nature thesis' and "artifactual constructivvolume 19, 2003 59 alternate routes ism" provide useful conceptual tools for grasping the unique implications of biotechnology for the society -nature relation, and therefore have the potential to enrich a political economy of biotechnology. i deal first with the production of nature thesis, central to which is the argument that "nature" in a capitalist society, rather than violated by the drive to capital accumulation, is in fact itself increasingly produced as a commodity in the interests of accumulation. in this sense, biotechnology can be effectively conceived as the latest tool in the progressive production of nature as a commodity, one that projects the struggles and contradictions of capitalism into the very genetic structure of the world. however, while the pnt is effective in locating biotechnology within the historical development of capitalism as a mode of production, it is less effective in clarifying what is unique about biotechnology in this regard. in the second part of the paper i suggest that this limitation is reflective of a tendency to abstract from the concrete practices internal to the labour process through which the society-nature relation is constituted. in the final part of the paper i demonstrate the value of the 'artifactual constructivism" of bruno latour and donna haraway for redressing this limitation of the pnt. i conclude that both these traditions in social theory will prove indispensable to a political economy of biotechnology and a global biopolitics. biotechnology and the production ofnature thesis central to the production of nature thesis is a critique of the 'modern', dualistic assumption that the social and natural worlds are ontologically distinct. for neil smith (1984). whose uneven development is the seminal statement of the thesis, the notion that there exists a natural world independent of the forms of its social appropriation is both logically and empirically spurious (see also braun and castree 1998). on the one hand, such a position is logically contradictory insofar as "the very act of positing nature requires entering into a certain relation with naturc""( smith, 1984: 18). on the other hand, the notion of a pristine, asocial nature is everywhere empirically contradicted by the concrete lifeactivity of human beings as they strive to meet their needs through transforming the world around them. the society-nature relation is always already social, then, both in the sense that human beings can only know 'nature" through particular social categories, and in the more literal sense that human beings only ever exist in a world that is in some way shaped 60 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs by their own transformative activity. taking this critique of "modem* society-nature dualisms as a point of departure, the pnt aims at uncovering the specific socio-historical conditions under which nature is produced as a social reality. an emphasis on nature as a social product enables smith and those who have followed in this tradition to identify and theorize a specifically capitalist form of the society-nature relation. while multiple forms of social appropriation may have characterized the production of nature in pre-capitalist modes of production, with the ascendance of capitalism the production of nature as a commodity comes to dominate all others. the unprecedented penetration of the natural world by the commodity form facilitated by the technical developments spurred by inter-capitalist competition, and the spread of this process across the globe, have literally allowed capital to remake "nature" in its own image. 4 these processes of intensive and extensive commodification have in turn served to perpetuate capitalist social relations through a progressive subordination of productive activity to a system of wage-labour and exchange. and insofar as 'nature" is produced as a commodity, the society-nature relation under capitalism becomes characterized by the same fetishism that attaches itself to other products of alienated labour.-*' thus, in locating the current society-nature relation within the socio-historical conditions of the capitalist mode of production, smith uncovers an 'ideology of nature" reflective of the alienation endemic to a generalized system of commodity production. while alienation from nature is surely not specific to capitalism, the extent to which it is fostered by a system of wage-labour and exchange makes for a unique society-nature relation under capitalism. the argument that the contemporary society -nature relation is one conditioned by the ascendancy of capitalist commodity production should be particularly appealing to political economists for whom the concept of 'nature" has long remained illusive. the society/nature dualism so pervasive in "modern" thought has had a particularly strong hold on political economy. the natural world has generally been taken for granted as a collection of raw materials that, while (ab)used in different ways depending on the mode of production, is itself socially neutral. the result has been a general reluctance to enter into discussions of nature inasmuch as it has been deemed the sphere of the natural sciences. however, if nature, in both its material and discursive constitution, increasvolume 19, 2003 61 alternate routes ingly takes the fomi of a commodity, then the tools of political economy become particularly relevant to any such discussion. nature in this case, rather than external to the contradictions and struggles endemic to capitalism, is intimately bound up with them, a product of alienated labour that is increasingly revealed as such through the processes of intensive and extensive commodification. thus, the production of nature thesis opens the theoretical space for what has heretofore seemed an oxymoron a political economy of nature. 6 such theoretical space would seem especially vital if political economy is to grasp the significance of biotechnology as an instrument of production. the capacity to manipulate the reproductive capacities of living things at the molecular level, primarily through the technique of recombinant dna, has allowed for an unprecedented penetration of "nature* by the commodity form. whereas previous technologies have been used to break down and re-shape a "natural* raw material, biotechnology "programs" living things themselves in the interests of "designing" a world better suited to meet human needs. every day, species boundaries are transgressed and organisms genetically engineered to produce nature as a commodity. never has nature confronted human beings in so artifactual a form, thus revealing its status as a social product more than ever before. the production of nature thesis, with its emphasis on the process whereby nature comes to be constituted as a social reality would seem ideal for grasping the significance of these technological developments. of course these are not merely "technical" achievements, but have taken place largely within the context of an increasing subordination of science and technology to capitalist relations of production (levidow and young 1981, 1984; noble 1977, 1984), and so the biotechnological production of nature is in turn increasingly serving to perpetuate these relations. its origins in the struggle of firms to overcome the limitations of an advanced fordist form of the labour process, the intensive and extensive commodification facilitated by biotechnology is opening up new spaces for accumulation (kcnncy 1999). the potential for both the replacement of old methods of production and the creation of new. previously unimaginable products through genetic engineering techniques has given impetus to the current proliferation and growth of biotechnology firms and their intcr-linkagcs with both government and academic research facilities. the rapid emergence of this "university-industrial 62 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs complex" (kenney 1984) in biotechnology is testament to the degree to which the production of nature under capitalism is both shaped by and in turn serves to perpetuate the dominant form of properly relations. and this subordination of the biotechnological production of nature to the interests of capital accumulation is given expression in the ideology of nature dominant in western capitalist societies. while it may indeed be the case that the emergence of biotechnology reveals the social production of nature to an unprecedented degree, the alienation from this nature endemic in a system of generalized commodity production is reflected in the current desire for either a "return to" or an "escape from' nature. critics of the contemporary society-nature relation often condemn 'humanity' for their transgressions against 'nature" and see biotechnology as merely the latest tool in the assault on the natural world. on the other hand, those in favour of the technology often view it as a final leap forward in the historical struggle of 'humanity " to liberate itself from the vicissitudes of a natural existence. 7 in both cases 'nature' is conceived of as 'other" than 'humanity" rather than as itself a social product, a dualism indicative of the alienation from nature perpetuated by the process of capitalist commodity production. the production of nature thesis, however, opens up the theoretical space necessary for grasping the implications of biotechnology for the society-nature relation without relying on any such dualism. in opposition to those who would suggest that biotechnology is "liberating" human beings from nature, a logical and empirical absurdity, biotechnology can be effectively viewed as the newest tool in the capitalist production of nature as a commodity. as such, rather than transcending nature, biotechnology intensifies and extends the human relationship with the rest of nature insofar as the contradictions of the commodity form penetrate to the molecular building blocks of life and spread over the entire globe. this process is not, however, a 'transgression' of a once pristine nature; indeed, such an interpretation is not only logically and empirically problematic, but unnecessary to grasp the significance of biotechnology as an instrument of production. while it may be the case that certain constructivist tendencies in the social sciences have resulted in a reduction of nature to epiphenomenal status, the notion that nature is always already social does not necessarily imply that nature is a mere shadow of the social, a discursive or cultural construct determined by volume 19, 2003 63 alternate routes particular power configurations. the notion of "production", rather than "construction", emphasizes the degree to which nature is produced through concrete human praxis that is indeed always social, but nonetheless 'real* for all that. accepting that nature is socially produced as a commodity, therefore, by no means precludes consideration of "natural laws" or "ecological concerns"; afterall, a commodity is not only an object of social exchange, but a determinate use-value created through a "mastery" of these very iaws", albeit often without due attention to 'ecological concerns". what the pnt does preclude, however, is any attempt to distinguish "natural laws" from the social processes through which they become manifest. in short, nature is always already social, and it is only by virtue of this very fact that it can have any 'reality' for us at all. the pnt therefore demands a fundamental shift of perspective, but one that is necessary if critical biopolitics is to avoid relying on futile, and ultimately conservative, appeals to an immediate nature that somehow "exists" independently of the various historical forms of its production. while smith is sensitive to the fact that depriving nature of any distinct ontological status may appear politically debilitating to environmentalists, he effectively counters such criticism by pointing to the tacit conservativism of those critiques that promulgate a "return to nature'. such an approach inevitably involves a condemnation of productive activity per se, thereby diverting attention from the critique and possible transformation of those social relations and processes that determine the form this activity 7 takes. however, if nature is always already socially produced, then the goal of an effective environmental politics is not a 'return to nature", or even a 'liberation of nature", but the creation of a world conducive to better ways of producing nature. '"the first question, is not whether or to what extent nature is controlled,"" smith suggests, but "how we produce nature and who controls this production of nature""(1984: 63). biotechnology in this view is best conceived not as an instrument for dominating an otherwise autonomous (even relatively) nature, but as an instrument for producing nature as a commodity in the interests of capital accumulation. the pnt can infuse critical biopolitics. then, through locating the development of biotechnology and its implications for the society-nature relation within the historical development of capitalism as a mode of production. such politics would have a clear affinity with the oppositional movements currently coalescing around the globalization of capi64 volume 19, 2003 chemins attentatifs tal insofar as creating a better society-nature relation would require, rather than some kind of moratorium on biotechnology to protect nature, a fundamental transformation of the social relations and processes within which the biotechnological production of nature takes place. thus, in refusing recourse to a society/nature dualism, the pnt provides an indispensable starting point for a political economy of biotechnology and the development of a critical biopolitics. biotechnology can be effectively conceptualized as an instrument of production in a capitalist labour process that intensifies and extends the process of commodification through manipulating the genetic structure of living things, thereby perpetuating capitalist class relations and reinforcing the "ideology of nature" through the further alienation of labour from "nature". yet, while it is indeed important for a biopolitics to locate biotechnology within the relatively continuous process whereby the natural world has been penetrated by the commodity form, it is equally important to grasp the important qualitative changes that this process has undergone in recent years. in the following section i suggest that despite its strengths, the level of abstraction at which the pnt is posited serves to obscure important changes in the way nature is produced within the historical development of capitalism, the latest of which is largely an effect of the emergence of biotechnology as an instrument of production. the labour process and the practice ofproducing nature in identifying a specifically capitalist form of the society-nature relation, the pnt draws attention to the important role that the labour process plays in producing "nature". while human beings have always met their needs through transforming their world with various tools, in a capitalist mode of production this process takes a particular form by virtue of its subordination to the interests of capital accumulation. a central characteristic of this capitalist form of the labour process is a near continuous revolution of the means of production as capital, under the compulsion of inter-firm competition, seeks to intensify and extend the process of commodification. with the increasing incorporation of science and technology into the capitalist labour process conies the increased penetration of the natural world by the commodity form, a further entrenchment of capitalist social relations and an unprecedented alienation from nature. a focus on the capitalist labour process as the primary site at which the society-nature is constituted is not, therefore, reflective of a narrow ecovolume 19, 2003 65 alternate routes nomic rcductionism in the pnt. but of the very real tendency under capitalism for commodity production to dominate all other ways of relating to nature. however, while the pnt may point to the importance of the labour process in making concrete the society-nature relation under capitalism, its consideration of the labour process itself remains at a particularly high level of abstraction. for the most part, smith remains content with a rather functional view of the labour process from the 'outside'; that is, the capitalist labour process is assumed to be functional for constituting a particular society-nature relation because it is subordinated to capitalist social relations. relatively absent is any serious consideration of the concrete practices internal to the labour process through which the society-nature relation is actually constituted. this is not to say of course that the subordination of the labour process to capitalist commodity production is not a significant determinant of its form, nor is it to take away from the value of this insight for understanding the contemporary society-nature relation. it is merely to suggest that in abstracting from the concrete practices internal to the labour process, the pnt fails to adequately account for the precise means by which this relation comes to be a reality "for us'. this level of abstraction poses certain obstacles to grasping the significance of biotechnology for the society-nature relation insofar as it obscures the significant changes the labour process has undergone throughout the development of capitalism. while it is indeed the case that this labour process is subordinated to the interests of capital accumulation, and therefore shaped by a certain iogic of capitalist development", this by no means precludes the possibility of it taking distinct forms. marx (1976) was especially sensitive to the importance of qualitative changes in the labour process in his account of the transition from a system of manufacture to one of large-scale industry during his lifetime, but subsequent transitions to fordist. advanced fordist. and now post-fordist forms o^ the labour process can likewise be discerned. it seems clear that these changes in the practices through which nature is transformed to meet human needs would have had, and continue to have, significant implications for the society -nature relation, an understanding of which would be integral to the formation of an effective oppositional politics. yet. in abstracting from the practices internal to the labour process and the important changes these have undergone, the pnt must 66 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs remain content with the, albeit important, insight that capitalism produces nature as a commodity thereby perpetuating capitalist social relations. this level of abstraction is particularly debilitating for a political economy of biotechnology inasmuch as biotechnology has emerged within the context of the current shift to a post-fordist, informational form of the labour process. since the early 1970s, western capitalist economies have been undergoing a process of restructuring at the heart of which has been the development of a new form of the labour process whose focus is the storage, transmission, manipulation, and application of information. biotechnology is implicated in this "information revolution* as it has both benefited from developments in microelectronics and is in turn converging with them in the form of biochips, molecular computers and other 'bioinformatic" devices (rifkin, 1998: 175). these developments have led some to include biotechnology as itself an information technology (castells 1996; schiller 1996), and others to suggest that biotechnology is on the verge of subsuming these other technologies and serving as the technical foundation for yet another form of capitalism (rifkin 1998). as the primary site at which the production of nature takes place, grasping these changes in the labour process would seem imperative to understanding the contemporary society-nature relation. and indeed, the shift to an informational labour process has witnessed the emergence of a very different form of "nature". developments in information technologies have facilitated a fundamental change in the practices internal to the labour process through which nature is produced as a commodity. whereas in previous forms of the labour process "physical labour* was applied at the point of production in order to re-shape a material found in 'nature', productive activity in this new form of the labour process increasingly takes the form of 'mental labour" focused on the reduction and recombination of these materials in their elemental forms through the use of computer-based technologies. biotechnology is the most extreme example of this phenomenon in that it reduces living organisms to their genetic information and recombines this information to produce new organisms as commodities. thus, while as an instrument of production in a capitalist form of the labour process biotechnology certainly produces nature as a commodity, it produces a very specific kind of commodity that reflects the interests of capital in its very genetic structure. the pnt, however, in remaining at a particularly high level of volume 19, 2003 67 alternate routes abstraction, is inadequate to conceptualize these developments and their implications for the society-nature relation. and not only does the nature pole of this relation taken on a very specific form with the emergence of biotechnology as an information technology, but the society pole is transformed along with it. the transition to an informational form of the labour process has taken place largely within the context of the struggle of capital to transcend the obstacles to accumulation posed by the nation-state. information technologies are facilitating the transition to "global capitalism" insofar as they provide capitalist firms with unprecedented flexibility (hassan 1999; teeple. 2000). biotechnology figures in this process in a number of ways, a most significant of which is that it increasingly liberates commodity production from a reliance on raw materials and forms of labour that may be geographically specific. the increasing subordination of more traditional fonns of agricultural production to a transnational agro-industrial complex, for example, has to a great degree been facilitated by developments in biotechnology (kloppenberg, 1998). thus, biotechnology is not only implicated in the production of a new form of nature, but also in the production of a new form of society in which capitalist social relations have become global, subsuming an unprecedented portion of the worlds productive activity. these important changes in the societypole of the society -nature relation fly under the radar of the pnt insofar as it tends to embrace a rather monolithic conception of capitalist social relations that are merely perpetuated by the production of nature as a commodity. similarly, significant changes in the contemporary "ideology of nature" tend to be obscured by the level of abstraction at which the pnt is posited. concomitant with the shift to an information-based form of the labour process has been the emergence of a very different view of nature. whereas nature has traditionally been conceived of as an obdurate object, something to be "tamed, squeezed, molded, and shaped", more recently there has been a shift to a view of nature as a flow of information that can be stored, manipulated, and transmitted (keller. 1995; rifkin 1998). nature here is not so much an object to be subordinated to the human will, as a "program" to be "designed" so that it better serves human purposes. while this view of nature may indeed be "ideological" in the sense that it still reflects the alienation wrought by generalized commodity production, it is clearly a unique form of this ideology that expresses the contradictions of this production in new ways. 68 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs remaining at the level of an ideology of nature" reflective of the production of nature within capitalist social relations is inadequate to get at these important changes in the way nature is being experienced and perceived in the era of biotechnology; moreover, such abstraction obscures any progressive political imaginaries that may be implicit in these changing experiences and perceptions. a sensitivity to these fundamental changes to the society-nature relation and the 'ideology of nature" concomitant with the shift to an informational form of the capitalist labour process is necessary if political economy is to grasp the significance of biotechnology and contribute to an effective critical biopolitics. while locating the technology within the historical 'logic of capitalism' is an important first step toward theorizing the implications of biotechnology for the society-nature relation, it is equally important to understand this development within the context of the qualitative shift that has occurred in the capitalist labour process since the early 1970s. biotechnology is a central means of production in a novel form of the labour process through which nature is being produced as an 'information commodity', society as 'global capitalism', and nature as 'design'. a critical political economy of biotechnology must strive to understand these changes in the processes, relations and ideologies of capitalism so that it might contribute to the struggle for their transformation. of course many of these shifts are still in their nascent stages and the point here has not been to delineate them in any detail; rather, the goal has been to suggest that the level of abstraction at which the pnt is posited tends to obscure them, making it inadequate as it stands for fully grasping the unique implications of biotechnology for the society-nature relation. what is required as a supplement to the pnt is a theoretical framework that, while likewise concerned with the processes through which nature comes to be constituted as a social reality, places more emphasis on the actual practices through which the society-nature relation is achieved and maintained. in the final part of the paper i suggest the value of the tradition of artifactual constructivism in this regard. artifactual constructivism and biotechnology like the production of nature thesis, artifactual constructivism (ac) (demeritt 1998) takes as its point of departure a critique of the society/ nature dualism at the heart of modern thought. the work of bruno volume 19, 2003 69 alternate routes latour (1991) and donna haraway (1984, 1997), in subtly different but complementary ways, challenges the foundational status of "nature', focusing instead on the complex processes through which it becomes constituted as a reality. their work shares with the pnt a concern not only with understanding the ways in which nature comes to be conceived as such, but with the processes through which a "natural world* is actually produced, or "constructed", as a material object that is always "social", but nonetheless "real". indeed, central to the tradition of artifactual constructivism is a critique of these vers distinctions insofar as they are considered politically dubious and obstacles to the pursuit of 'situated' knowledge. like the pnt, artifactual constructivism demonstrates how nature is always already social by delineating the processes through which it becomes produced as both an epistemological category and an "objective reality". the two traditions differ considerably, however, in their conceptualization of these processes. while the pnt remains content with an analysis of the labour process at a particularly high level of abstraction, ac focuses on the more concrete, everyday practices through which the society-nature relation is constituted. of specific interest are the material-discursive practices of "technoscience", a term intended to convey the degree to which science, rather than a value-neutral pursuit of "truth", is itself a cultural practice located within a certain power structure and infused with particular norms, values, and interests. for haraway, the term also suggests the historical "implosion" of science and technology that has rendered traditional distinctions between science as the pursuit of disinterested knowledge, and technology as the "social" application of that knowledge, meaningless (1997: 68). the products of technoscience. rather than "natural", "objective truths" that somehow exist independently of "society" or "culture", are "hybrids", or mixtures of the ""technical, textual, organic, historical, formal, mythic, economic and political dimensions of entities, actions, and worlds.'" ac traces the complex 'networks* of technoscientific practice from which these hybrids emerge, and attempts to determine how and win certain of their characteristics come to be deemed "natural", and others "social*. this analytical focus on the material-discursive practices of technoscience is reflected in a sensitivity to the important changes in the society-nature relation that have occurred since the early 1970s. while the emphasis on commodification in the pnt tends to obscure these changes 70 volume 19. 2003 chem ins altertiatifs by reducing the production of nature to the iogic of capitalism", the notion of 'hybridization" in ac illuminates the degree to which the concept of 'nature" has become truly problematic of late. for ac, the world is and always has been composed of a complex network of humans and non-humans whose 'social' and 'natural" attributes are thoroughly 'mixed-up'; in short, we inhabit a world that is constructed through a set of material-discursive practices. the world is thus constituted by 'hybrids' and only becomes divided into 'nature" and 'society' through a process of negotiation and regulation, what latour calls 'purification'. throughout the 'modem' period the networks of humans and nonhumans were relatively limited and the process of hybridization was easily rendered invisible by the 'modern constitution'; 8 however, an unprecedented proliferation of hybrids made possible by recent technoscientific transformations in the information and biological science has increasingly revealed the futility of any attempt to draw a static, ahistorical boundary around 'nature'. everything from thinking machines, to frozen embryos, to mice designed to develop cancer challenge our conception of what counts as natural. of course science and technology have always been about 'hybridization", hence latour's argument that 'we have never been modern'; however, with the proliferation of hybrids since the early 1970s, this process has become much more explicit, refusing containment within a simple society/nature dualism. rather than merely dissolving 'nature' into a 'social' category, however, ac is sensitive to the degree to which an unprecedented proliferation of hybrids has effected a simultaneous transformation of 'society'. while the pnt does recognize the degree to which the production of nature as a commodity perpetuates capitalist social relations, these relations remain, for the most part, the 'social" context within which the production of 'nature' takes place. to use latour's language, the pnt does not fully embrace the 'second principle of symmetry', which requires that the 'social' be explained with reference to the same material-discursive practices through which 'nature' is produced. as latour suggests, a truly 'symmetrical' constructivism must strive to understand the ways in which the technoscientific construction of 'nature" is simultaneously a construction of 'society"; that 'society', rather than a foundation, is itself produced and maintained through material-discursive practice. the recent shifts in technoscience have thus rendered the notion of 'society' as problematic as that of 'nature' insofar as the proliferation of hybrids volume 19, 2003 71 alternate routes has revealed the degree to which 'society* resides in and is literally held together by "things". of course societies have always been produced through material-discursive practice; but again, with recent technoscientific transformations this has become much more explicit, further rendering a modem society /nature dualism ineffectual to grasp the societynature relation. finally, an emphasis on the discursive dimension of the practices of technoscience makes ac more sensitive than the pnt to the important changes in the way nature is being experienced and perceived with the unprecedented proliferation of hybrids. rather than assuming an 'ideology of nature" reflective of the commodification of nature within the context of capitalist social relations, ac is more concerned with the role that experiences and perceptions of nature play in determining what counts as "social" and "natural" in the first place. at the same time as the proliferation of hybrids has revealed the degree to which 'societies' and "natures", rather than ontological categories, are themselves the products of technoscientific practice, it has revealed these practices to be as much "discursive" as 'material".9 it has become increasingly apparent that developments in technoscience are to a great degree fostered by experiences, understandings, and normative claims regarding society, nature, and what it means to be human. current developments in information and biological sciences are being facilitated by a novel discourse that dissolves 'nature" and 'society' into a flow of information and foresees human beings transcending their 'natural* existence in a future without contradiction and struggle (silver 1997). an emphasis on technoscience as a set of concrete, material-discursive practices thus brings into focus important changes in nature, society' and discourse that remain relatively obscured in the pnt. when situated within the context of these shifting technoscientific practices, biotechnology takes on new significance. as a central component of these practices, biotechnology has been integral to the unprecedented proliferation of hybrids that has rendered modem conceptions of society and nature so problematic. an unprecedented manipulation of the reproductive capacities of living things at the molecular level constitutes a qualitative leap forward in the process of 'hybridization". genetically engineered organisms arc designed in their very molecular structure, thereby making any a priori attempt to identify their "natural" component, as opposed to their "social" one. futile. these organisms thus 72 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs also reveal the degree to which 'society", rather than the context within which things are produced, literally resides in, and is held together by, these "things 7 ; in short, the degree to which in producing nature we simultaneously produce ourselves. and never before has the discursive dimension of technoscientific practice been more visible than in the case of biotechnology. rather than an obdurate object standing opposed to 'society ', nature is viewed as entirely reducible to a genetic code that can be stored, manipulated, and transmitted at the whim of the molecular biologist. locating biotechnology within the technoscientific practices of hybridization thus bring to light its unique role in revealing the degree to which "society" and "nature", and the distinction between them, are products of material-discursive practice. an analytical sensitivityto role that biotechnology is playing in these current shifts in technoscientific practice raises some interesting possibilities for a biopolitics. whereas the pnt locates the potential for alternative productions of nature within a wider transformation of capitalist social relations, ac advances a more 'micro" politics of responsibility. in revealing the degree to which the boundary between society and nature is produced and maintained through the concrete, material-discursive practices of technoscience, ac suggests the potential for a more responsible, self-conscious form of these practices. of course there is no outline for a 'better" society-nature relation provided, and this lack of normative direction is a strength of the argument insofar as any such normative claims would inevitably involve an appeal to the kind of society/nature dualism that has proven so problematic. appeals to the universality of either pole of this relation to justify a particular production of the other are as politically dubious as they are logically inconsistent; they obscure the degree to which both 'society' and 'nature" are always already infused with material-discursive practice and therefore inherently political. a biopolitics, rather than focusing on keeping the two separate a futile endevour from the outset should concern itself with encouraging a more responsible, self-conscious production of hybrids. biotechnology, in facilitating an unprecedented proliferation of these hybrids, reveals the need for such a politics of responsibility more than ever before. thus, in focusing on the material-discursive practices through which the society-nature relation is constituted, ac points to biopolitical possibilities of more immediate relevance than simply "waiting for the revolution". 10 volume 19, 2003 73 alternate routes at the same time, a "politics of responsibility" is bound to appear rather thin to those confronted with the structural constraints imposed by an increasingly global, information-based form of capitalism; and indeed, the analytical approach of ac has certain limitations that must be addressed if it is to be useful for a political economy of biotechnology and a global, biopolitics. primary in this regard is ac's tendency to abstract technoscientific practice within the "lab" from wider political economic relations and processes. while it is indeed the case that changing technoscientific practices since the 1970s have had important implications for the society-nature relation, these changing practices must be located within the context of a shift to a new global, information-based form of capitalism. a driving force behind this shift has been an increased subordination of science and technology to the requirements of capital accumulation, an historical process that has received surprisingly little attention in the ac literature. a focus on the iab" as the primary site at which 'worlds are made", while effectively directing attention to the material-discursive practices through which the society-nature relation is constituted, tends to obscure the degree to which the 'lab" has itself become incorporated into the capitalist labour process. as a central component in the shift in technoscientific practices since the 1970s, the development of biotechnology has been shaped by this process of incorporation and as an instrument of production reflects the requirements of accumulation in both its form and function. the implications of biotechnology for the society-nature relation cannot be grasped independently of these developments. nevertheless, a focus on the material-discursive practices through which the society-nature relation is constituted, if conceived within the context of an increasing subordination of science and technology to the capitalist labour process, can provide for a nuanced and penetrating political economy of biotechnology that avoids recourse to a simple society/nature dualism. first, it allows for an appreciation of the unique role being played by biotechnology in producing nature as a materialdiscursive reality, while not losing sight of the process of commodification as the driving force behind its development. second, it directs attention to the ways in which biotechnology, as a central component in the shifting material-discursive practices internal to the labour process, is producing a new form of society, while still maintaining a focus on capitalism as the primary structuring dynamic of contemporary life. finally, 74 volume 19, 2003 chem ins altematifs such a focus on the material-discursive practices internal to the capitalist labour process would allow for a greater sensitivity to the more subtle changes in the way the society-nature relation is being experienced and perceived without losing sight of the wider ideological context within which these more subtle changes are occurring. in short, such an approach would enable political economy to grasp the unique implications of biotechnology for the society-nature relation within the context of capitalist development, without recourse to a simple society/nature dualism. such an approach to the political economy of biotechnology can likewise infuse a global biopolitics that, while sensitive to the unique threats of biotechnology, refuses to rely on illogical and inherently conservative appeals to a "nature" distinct from the various forms of its social appropriation. the primary threat of biotechnology lies in its unprecedented intensification and extension of the process of commodification, its role in the globalization of capitalist social relations, and in the ideological reduction of the world to a flow of information subordinated to the will of the molecular biologist. this is not of course to say that the 'environmental" threats of biotechnology are unimportant. the important point to be made, however, is that these 'environmental threats* cannot be conceived in abstraction from the current shift in the material-discursive practices through which the society-nature relation is constituted. research and development in genetic engineering is driven more by the profit motive that by any hubristic attempt by science to "dominate" or 'control" nature. while commodification may not be the only process shaping the biotechnological production of nature, the degree to which science and technological development have become subordinated to the interests of capital surely makes it the dominant one, and increasingly the only politically relevant one. a politics aimed at combating the threats posed by biotechnology, rather that protecting "nature" from biotechnology, must focus its attention on encouraging those material-discursive practices that might foster a responsible and self-conscious employment of biotechnology to produce more human(e) forms of nature and society. insofar as the social relations and processes of capitalism systematically impede the pursuit of such practices, they must be the object of critique and transformation. volume 19, 2003 75 alternate routes notes 1. notwithstanding attempts by industry and government to depict current biotechnological developments as continuous with those in the past (e.g. canadian biotechnology strategy secretariat (1998)), this distinction is well established in more critical analyses (e.g. kenney (1984)). for the remainder of the discussion here the term 'biotechnology' refers to these developments in 'new" biotechnology. 2. an illustrative example of this 'transgenic production' is the creation of spider-goat hybrids whose 'milk' contains the protein for spider silk that can be used as a stronger and lighter replacement for steel. see www.nexia.com . 3. many of these attempts can be found in the pages of the journal capitalism, nature, socialism. 4. as smith argues: "no part of the earth's surface, the atmosphere, the oceans, the geological substratum or the biological superstratum are immune from transformation by capital. in the form of a price tag, every use-value is delivered an invitation to the labor process, and capital by its nature the quintessential socialite is driven to make good on every invitation" (1984: 56). 5. hence we see the paradoxical emergence of a 'return to nature' movement at the very moment when such a 'nature' is most in doubt. see also vogel, 1988 6. macnaghten and urry (1995) have called for the development of a 'sociology of nature'. a political economy of nature would be one that while emphasizing the 'sociality of nature' emphasizes the materiality of the process of its production within the relations and processes of capitalism. 7. most of the more popular debate over biotechnology has concerned issues of food and human genetic engineering. examples of condemnation can be found in tokar (2001). praise for biotechnology, particularly as it relates to human genetic engineering, can be found m silver (1997). for an accessible and somewhat more critical discussion of the popular discourse surrounding developments in biotechnology, see rifkin (1998). 8. for an explanation of the role of the 'modern constitution' in rendering hybrids invisible, thereby allowing for their proliferation, see latour (1991). 9. this of course raises the issue of whether the distinction between the two is useful at all. i assume that haraway's use of the hyphenated 'materialdiscursive", like her many other hyphenated and 'imploded' terms, is intended as a refutation of a 'vulgar' materialism. kven a cursory glance at the "theses on feuerbach", however, would suggest that marx's materialism was always 'discursive' insofar as "the chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism is that the thing, reality, sensuousness is conceived only in the form of the object of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively"(marx 1970: 121). 76 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs 10. while an exploration of the specific 'content' of this biopolitics is beyond the scope of this discussion, democratization of technoscience policy, greater public control over the research generated in university and government labs, greater professional autonomy amongst scientists at the point of production (e.g. through unions or professional organizations), and greater cooperation between the 'developed' and 'developing' world in the development and employment of biotechnology, among others, would be key components. references braun, b. and castree, n., editors. 1998. remaking reality: nature at the millennium. london: routledge. canadian biotechnology strategy secretariat. 1998. the 1998 canadian biotechnology strategy: an ongoing renewal process. ottawa, on: industry canada. castells, m. 1996. rise ofthe network society. cambridge, ma: blackwell. castree, n. 2000. "marxism and the production of nature." capital and class 72: 5-36. demeritt, d. 1998. "science, social constructivism and nature" in remaking reality. braun, b. and castree, n, editors. 173-193. london: routledge. haraway, donna. 1984. "a manifesto for cyborgs: science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s." socialist review 18: 65-107. haraway, donna j. 1997. modest_witness0second_ahllenium.femaleman _meets_ oncomouse. new york: routledge. hassan, robert. 1999. "globalization: information technology' and culture within the space economy of late capitalism." information, communication and society i: 300-317. keller, e. 1995. reconfiguring life: metaphors of twentieth-century biology. new york: columbia university press. kenney, m. 1986. biotechnology: the university-industrial complex. new haven, ct: yale university press. kenney, m. 1999. "biotechnology and the creation of a new economic space" in private science. thackaray, a., editor. 131-143. philadelphia, pa: university of pennsylvania press. king, jonathan. 1997. "the biotechnology revolution: self-replicating factories and the ownership of life forms" in cutting edge: technology, information, capitalism, and social revolution. davis, jim, thomas hirschl and michael stack, editors. 145-156. london: verso. kloppenberg, j. 1991. first the seed: the political economy ofplant biotechnology, 1492-2000. new york: cambridge university press. krimsky, s. 1991. biotechnics and society: the rise of industrial genetics. new york: praeger. volume 19, 2003 77 alternate routes latour, b. 1991 . we have never been modem. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. levidow, les and bob young, editors. 1984. science, technology and the labour process, vol. 1. london: cse books. levidow, les and bob young, editors. 1981. science, technology arid the labour process, vol. 2. london: cse books. marx, k. 1970. "theses on feuerbach." supplementary tex in the german ideology. new york: international publishers. marx, k. 1976. capital, vol.1. london: penguin. marx, l. 1964. the machine in the garden. new york: oxford university press. macnaghten. p. and urry, j. 1995. "towards a sociology of nature." sociology 29: 203-220. noble, david. 1984. forces ofproduction: a social history ofindustrial automation. new york: knopf. noble, david. 1977. america by design: science, technology, arid the rise of corporate capitalism. new york: knopf. nye, d. 1994. american technological sublime. cambridge, ma: mit press. o'connor, j. 1998. natural causes. new york: guilford. rifkin, j. 1998. the biotech century. new york: penguin putnam. schiller, d. "from culture to information and back again: commoditization as a route to knowledge." critical studies in mass communication 11: 92-115. shiva, v. editor. 1995. biopolitics. london: zed books. silver, l. 1997. remaking eden: cloning and beyond in a brave new world. new york: avon books. smith, n. 1984. uneven development: nature, capital and the production of space. new york: basil blackwell. teeple, g. 2000. globalization and decline ofsocial reform: into the 21 st century. toronto: garamond. tokar, brian, editor. 2001. redesigning life? the worldwide challenge to genetic engineering. london: zed books. vogel, s. 1988. "marx and alienation from nature." social theory and practice 14: 367-387. yoxen, e. 1983. the gene business: who should control biotechnology. new york: harper and row. 7h volume 19, 2003 studying psychotherapeutic knowledge: notes toward a working definition of ideology* mary-anne kandrack department of sociology-anthropology carleton university in the broadest terms, my interest in psychotherapy concerns the production and circulation of knowledge and the reproduction/transformation of relations of domination and subordination. more specifically, i am currently examining the limits and possibilities of feminist therapy as a transformative politics and emancipatory intervention. the purpose of this discussion, assuming that it is in and through discourse and discursive practices that knowledge and ideology are linked, is to suggest how ideology might be defined in the development of an analytical framework for the critical exegesis of feminist therapy that is being undertaken. before proceeding, it should be noted that my attempt to ( re)conceptualize ideology is, at least in part, a response to foucault's rejection of the concept (cf., 1980: 118). this simply cannot be detailed here. suffice it to say that it is imperative to recognize power/knowledge as discursive practices that are as enabling as they are constraining (foucault, 1972, 1980; thompson, 1980) and, at the same time, to employ the concept of ideology as an analytical tool for specifying, with greater clarity and precision, the distinction between subjugation and empowerment (kress, 1985). the concept of ideology, as the literature demonstrates, is highly controversial (larrain, 1978; marx and engels, 1970; ricoeur, 1986; thompson: 1984). it is not within the scope of this discussion to provide even a cursory review of the work in this area. one significant issue concerning the concept, however, is the manner in which it has lost its critical, analytical edge inasmuch as it has been used to refer to belief systems in general with little or no reference to the critique of domination for which it was originally intended (jacoby, 1975; thompson, 1984). the result of this is that virtually everything and anything can be and has been construed as ideological thereby rendering the concept little more than a descriptive label. in short, the concept becomes an adjective with minimal , if any, analytical utility. notwithstanding the difficulties associated with efforts to theorize ideology, i take the position that such a concept is invaluable to my research to the extent that it assists in distinguishing between domination and resistance. my effort to reformulate the concept of ideology proceeds by situating it in relation to the substantive problem at hand, namely, the contemporary discourse of mental illness. therefore, it is important to consider the discursive practices/knowledges 90 characteristic of psychotherapeutic rationality in the apparatuses of subjugation, regulation and control. the rise to pre-eminence of positivistic science, for example, has been a significant concern in the history of psychiatry (brown, 1984; foucault, 1973; ingleby, 1983; scull, 1979). positivistic rationality is implicated in the knowledge(s) that construct the comprehension of socio-cultural as well as material reality (habermas, 1970). there are a number of problems with the transposition of these epistemological and methodological precepts from the natural to social worlds (ingleby, 1983; turner, 1988). habermas (1970), for example, provides a clear articulation of the implications of these developments for the 'social life world'. most notable among these is the ' ob jectif ication' of fundamentally social processes, namely, human behaviour and experience. while science and technology are referred to as ideological, the concept of ideology is never explicitly defined. his analysis is nonetheless informative although the meaning of ideology must be inferred from its usage. in an effort to reformulate the concept for the purpose of my analysis of feminist therapy, i would suggest that for habermas (1970) the concept of ideology refers precisely to the objectification of social processes for the purpose of technical manipulation and control (as opposed to practical or emancipatory aims {habermas, 1972}). habermas (1970) breaks with the orthodox marxist preoccupation with the strictly economic determination of social relations inasmuch as he suggests that science and technology constitute the contemporary system of domination and subordination which is particularly insidious because it also provides for its own legitimation. this opens a much broader space in which to examine the power/knowledge nexus (foucault, 1980) compared to that determined by economic exigencies. in short, the objectification of human subjects is in no sense determined exclusively or unproblematical ly by the economic. moreover, legitimation is itself another dimension of ideology to the extent that "relations of domination are represented as legitimate" (thompson, 1984: 131). a third dimension of ideology is the manner in which language constructs specific understandings of social life (kress, 1985). i would concur, that is, with finn's (1982) argument that ideology refers specifically to discourses that mystify the nature of social reality. more specifically, mystification refers to the presentation of "a partial truth about reality as if it were the whole truth" (finn, 1982: 41). to illustrate this, consider the notion of the 'individualization' of deviance. in this process, deviance is located inside the individual as a function of some defective organic and/or biographical process. this is only part of the story as it were, since individualization obscures the social relations/processes constitutive of and constituted by agency, deviant or otherwise. related to this is what thompson refers to as "dissimulation" in which "relations of domination. . .present 91 themselves as something other than what they are" (1980:131). for example, psychotherapeutic discursive practices are never articulated as processes of regulation and control but rather as humane treatments. lastly, finn (1982) also argues that ideology is involved not only in the mystification of social reality but also in its reif ication . this suggests that certain conceptualizations of social processes and human subjects ascribe to them fixed, immutable properties (ie., objectif ication) that circumscribe both conceptual and practical activity vis-a-vis the process/subject in question (ie., mystification). these conceptualizations become reified to the extent that they are taken to be objectively given facts revealed in and through language. this serves to obfuscate the socially constructed nature of knowing and knowledge by separating the knower from the known (finn, 1982). reification affords certain discourses and discursive practices a transhistorical and universal character thereby reproducing the power relations within which they are articulated. this is to suggest that, in the case of the individualization of deviance, efforts to account for and ameliorate deviance must conform to that which is construed as most 'reasonable' (cf., foucault, 1973), namely, those aimed at the individual. this is, admittedly, only a sketch of the contours of ideology, but it is a start. the dimensions of ideology outlined above provide a starting point for an analysis of ideology, as it is articulated in discursive practices, as discourses that reproduce rather than contest power relations (thompson, 1984: 131). what remains to be done in fleshing out the concept is to conceptualize it in relation to a broader social theory (thompson, 1984). this cannot, however, be undertaken here. by way of conclusion, it is clear that the study of the production and circulation of knowledge(s) benefits significantly from the considerations proper to post-structuralism, most notably foucault (1972; 1980), which inform my research. the present discussion in no way addresses or settles all of the problems nascent in this area of research, and in fact, may well add to them. however, i would suggest that it provides some direction in conceptualizing ideology as an analytical tool in a critical examination of disciplinary knowledges, in this case, feminist therapy . endnotes * these 'notes' are drawn from a discussion developed in my doctoral thesis, knowledge, ideology and resistance: politics and possibility in feminist therapy. 92 references brown, p. "marxism, social psychology, and the sociology of mental disorders", international journal of health serv ices, vol 14, 2, 1984: 237-264. finn, g. "women and the ideology of science", our generation , vol 15, 1, 1982: 40-50. foucault, m. the archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language, pantheon books, new york: 1972. . madness and civilization , vintage books, new york: 1973. . discipline and punish , vintage books, new york: 1979. . power /know ledge , pantheon books, new york: 1980 habermas, j. toward a rational society , beacon press, boston: 1971. ingleby, d. "mental health and social order", in: social control and the state , s. cohen: and a. scull ( eds ) , martin robertson and co., ltd., oxford, 1983: 75-105. jacoby, r. " social amnesia: a critique of contemporary psychology from adler to laing , beacon press, boston: 1975. kress, g. "ideological structures in discourse", in t.a. van dijk (ed), handbook of discourse analysis , vol 4, academic press, london, 1985: 27-42). larrain, j. the concept of ideology , hutchinson university library, london: 1978. marx, k. and f. engels. the german ideology , international publishers, new york: 1970. ricoeur, p. lectures on ideology and utopia , g. taylor (ed), columbia university press, new york: 1986. scull, a. museums of madness: the social organization of insanity in 19th century england , penguin books, london: 1979. thompson, j. studies in the theory of ideology , university of california press, berkeley: 1984. turner, b.s. medical power and social knowledge , sage publications, london: 1988. 93 overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 81 overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry: the important role of building workers in implementing climate objectives at the workplace john calvert1 abstract: there is a broad consensus among climate scientists and policy makers that reducing the ghg emissions and energy consumption of the built environment is critical to mitigating the impact of global warming. this means adopting policies that will dramatically accelerate the introduction of low carbon construction, both in new structures and in retrofitting the existing building stock. an important, but often overlooked, component of this process is how to ensure that climate objectives are properly implemented at the workplace by building trades workers. this paper argues that for this to happen, there must be major changes in how the industry is organized – changes that challenge the unregulated market with its pervasive reliance on labour sub-contracting and precarious employment and its negative impact on building standards. the industry must transform its inadequate training and apprenticeship system to give workers the additional skills needed for low carbon construction. it must reduce the loss of qualified workers and their skills, by providing greater job security and a long term career in the industry. and it must incorporate a greater role for the workforce and the unions that represent it in creating a ‘green’ construction culture at the workplace. 1 john calvert is a political scientist and associate professor in the faculty of health sciences at simon fraser university. this article is a component of a larger sshrc funded project titled work in a warming world. 82 | climate change and its discontents introduction: the significance of the construction industry in combating global warming year by year it becomes ever clearer that global warming presents the greatest challenge to the future of our species. the massive amount of scientific evidence is increasingly being reinforced by the growing number of disruptive climate events – unprecedented storms, disappearing arctic ice, receding greenland glaciers, measurable increases in sea levels and numerous other worrisome indicators. the prospect of a four degree celsius increase in global temperatures is no longer an extreme estimate – it is becoming increasingly probable by the end of the century (hansen,1988; mckibben, 1989; intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc), 2007; stern, 2006; unep, 2009; world bank, 2012; world meteorological association; 2013; iea, 2013; ipcc, 2013). in light of these developments, the need to curb and then reduce – greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions and energy consumption is now imperative. while there are many areas of our economy that require urgent attention, the built environment is, arguably, at the top of the list. buildings produce an estimated 30-35 percent of ghg emissions and account for almost 40 percent of energy use. in its 2007 examination of the building sector, the ipcc noted that: “over the whole building stock the largest portion of carbon savings by 2030 is in retrofitting existing buildings and replacing energy – using equipment due to the slow turnover of the stock.” (ipcc, 2007, p. 389). a more recent study by the international labour organization (ilo, 2012, p.127) examined the potential for ghg and energy reductions in the world’s major economies and concluded that: “of all the elements that constitute society, buildings are the biggest consumers of energy and the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. yet, the building sector also has the highest potential for improving energy efficiency and reducing emissions. many investments in resource-efficient buildings are cost effective and the large stocks of older and inefficient buildings, notably in industrialized countries, mean that placing greater emphasis on renovation could yield substantial environmental benefits.” conserving energy in the built environment involves designing and introducing new energy conservation systems in buildings under construction and retrofitting the existing building stock. as new construction represents only about 1 ½ percent of the existing stock of buildings, retrofitting existing buildings is clearly critical to achieving effective overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 83 climate change mitigation, given the relatively small share of the total building stock that new construction will represent over the next several decades (unep 2009). progress in addressing climate change in the built environment requires the transformation of canada’s building industry to give it and its workers the capacity to implement low carbon construction in all the areas in which it operates. this transformation must entail every step in the supply chain, from the decisions by those who commission and purchase construction services, through the work of architects, planners and engineers who design the buildings, to the general contractors and sub-contractors who oversee projects and, finally, to the trades and labourers who actually carry out the work on the building site.2 at each stage of this process the industry needs to implement the most effective and technologically advanced low carbon construction innovations. and all those who work in the industry must be trained and committed to the same objective. in the words of the 2007 ipcc report noted above, it will require “…very significant efforts to enhance programs and policies… well beyond what is happening today…” (ipcc, 2007, p.390) characteristics of canada’s building industry impeding the transition to low carbon construction canada’s construction industry accounted for approximately 7.4 percent of the country’s workforce at the beginning of 2013 (cansim table 282-0088). while its contribution to canada’s gdp fluctuates significantly with the ups and downs of the business cycle, it has averaged about 6 percent in recent years (canada year book, 2012). construction is almost exclusively a private sector activity, in which the economic interests of the owners and developers who commission construction services and the contractors that deliver these services shape virtually all aspects of its operation. market forces influence what gets built (or renovated), who builds it and the development priorities adopted by the industry. even where government is the purchaser of construction services, private firms carry out the actual work. admittedly, there is extensive public regulation of many aspects of construction, such as building codes that address fire safety, electrical systems, plumbing, engineering standards, structural integrity and the use of specific construction materials. there is also public oversight of 2 the terminology for describing general contractors varies somewhat in the industry. another term commonly used is prime contractor. 84 | climate change and its discontents planning and development through provincial and municipal government regulations that influence – at least to some degree what gets built and where it gets built. however, in practice, the industry exercises enormous influence over much of the public regulation that exists. moreover, the economic and political influence of the industry ensures that most regulation is ‘industry friendly’ in that it accommodates the industry’s focus on maximizing profits and minimizing regulations that would challenge this basic objective. progress towards low carbon construction and renovation has been painfully slow in canada to date. it is the contention of this paper that the explanation for this poor performance is to be found in the way the industry is currently organized. the industry’s predominantly market based approach – an approach which is strongly resistant to public planning and public regulation impedes the adoption of effective climate change measures in the built environment.3 and the industry’s influence over much of the public policy debate and related decision making further compounds this problem. for it minimizes the scope of the challenge we now face and reinforces the view that we can address climate change without major changes to the way the industry currently functions. this is not to deny that certain parts of the industry are attempting to introduce innovative greener building practices or establish more climate friendly standards through the adoption of voluntary initiatives such as leed, boma, built green, green globes, iso-14001 and passive house. but these initiatives are not mainstream and do not reflect the prevailing approach of the industry. there is an enormous gap between what needs to be done to meet the challenge of climate change and what the construction industry, as currently organized, can deliver. the determining factor in what gets built and how it gets built, or renovated, is price. climate considerations take second place. competition, based almost exclusively on low bid, results in a race to the bottom as firms strive to obtain work through cutting corners on design, materials, technology and labour. rather than upward pressure encouraging adoption of the highest environmental standards, unregulated price competition results in the opposite: pressure to adopt the minimum standards that will prove acceptable in the competitive market (barrett, 1998; bosch and phillips, 2003; prism ana3 the focus of this article is on construction in english canada. as will be noted in various parts of the text, the situation in quebec differs quite substantially from the rest of canada. many of the problems identified in the paper are far less pronounced in that province due to its much more extensive public regulation of the industry. see charest, 2003 for a good analysis of the quebec industry. overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 85 lytics, 2010). while this focus may satisfy the economic interests of the industry as presently constituted, it does not provide the basis for low carbon construction. this is compounded by the fact that most purchasers of construction services are not knowledgeable about the details of the work and are not in a position to evaluate matters such as quality of design, materials, installation methods or workmanship. too often they are not aware of the options available to reduce the carbon footprint of their buildings or the potential long term financial benefits of reduced energy use. the classic principal – agent dilemma is characteristic of much of the industry’s operation reinforced by asymmetry of information between purchaser and contractor (o’grady, 2010; hamilton-smith, 2012; bcit, 2012). additionally, where landlords do not pay the cost of heat and electricity, they often see little benefit in paying for improved energy conservation in their buildings, while tenants have no reason – or capacity to invest in improved insulation or other energy conservation initiatives in buildings they do not own and in which they may not rent long enough to reap the benefits (ipcc, 2007; unep, 2009). these factors are further impacted by the conservative, highly risk averse attitude of many in the industry. while the industry is accustomed to ongoing change as new technologies and building methods are introduced, it sees change primarily in terms of lowering the costs of meeting prevailing building standards and norms, rather than a vehicle for a major ‘green’ transformation of the industry. fundamentally new approaches, such as those entailed in much low carbon construction, can be more challenging to implement and hence raise the risk of lawsuits if purchasers are dissatisfied with the outcome (o’grady, 2010; bc construction association, 2011). in contrast, standard construction methods minimize risk and ensure predictable, that is, profitable outcomes. this conservative tendency is reinforced by a culture in english canada that strongly resists attempts by governments to introduce more directive public regulation, whether in terms of planning, design requirements, engineering standards, tougher building codes, demolition protocols, new technologies or mandated workforce training and 86 | climate change and its discontents skills qualifications.4 it is normally willing to accept such changes only where they do not impose major costs, can be introduced with minimal disruption to its activities and do not otherwise interfere with its profit maximizing objectives (bosch and phillips, 2003). much of the industry views government efforts to impose new regulatory standards as an unwarranted interference in the market. while it is not averse to government support, such as tax concessions, training subsidies, or public funding of research and technological innovation, it sees such support in terms of the government assisting it with its commercial objectives. government direction to change the way it currently operates is a different matter entirely. the industry has many characteristics that present major challenges to resolving the widely recognized weakness in its labour regime. fluctuations in the business cycle, as well as seasonal weather changes, result in a ‘boom and bust’ pattern of building activity. these changes are much more dramatic than in most other sectors of canada’s economy. the industry does not control – and often cannot easily predict these larger economic factors that affect the level of building activity. but the construction industry is strongly affected by them. this makes much construction work risky. the way the industry deals with risk is largely through sub-contracting (bosch and phillips, 2003). this practice enables developers and prime contractors to reduce their exposure to cyclical fluctuations by being able to ramp their use of sub-contractors up and down as demand fluctuates. it also enables them to reduce the risk of major capital investment in equipment and facilities being idle. for sub-contracting enables them to shift responsibility for much of this investment to smaller operators. and, because they are not employers of the workers of the sub-contractors, developers and general contractors reduce their employment obligations, shifting the costs of downturns to sub-contractors and workers.5 4 one of the most egregious examples of this is in the demolition of existing buildings. because it is normally far cheaper to bulldoze an old structure than to dismantle it so that its materials can be re-used, massive volumes of used materials end up in landfills. the industry prefers this option as it minimizes labour expenditures, which are the major cost in taking apart a building. industry influence has largely undermined efforts by municipal governments to implement effective materials recycling as this would require extensive public regulation of demolition practices and the creation of new markets for used materials. 5 in recent years there has been a great deal of interest in how global supply chains now involve extensive sub-contracting of much of the world’s manufacturing to developing countries with low wages, minimal taxes and little worker protection. but, in reality, this pattern has been part of the construction industry in canada for generations. sub-contracting is the norm with consequences that parallel what has been happening more recently in the extensive outsourcing by corporations in the developed world to sub-contractors in the developing world. overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 87 however, labour market ‘flexibility’ is achieved largely at the expense of the workers who face periodic unemployment, whether directly as employees, or indirectly as self-employed ‘owner operators’. one of the consequences of this precarious employment system is that it prevents a long term attachment to the industry. instead of a career, many workers abandon the industry during downturns to seek work in other sectors of the economy. high labour turnover means the industry loses valuable skills and squanders a significant part of its investments in training. the extensive use of sub-contracting also results in a very fragmented industry structure. while there are a number of very large contractors, especially in the industrial, commercial and institutional (ici) sector, overwhelmingly the industry is composed of very small firms or individual owner operators. fully 89 percent of employers have 20 or fewer workers and 61 percent have less than 5 workers (o’grady, 2005; hamilton-smith, 2010). extensive sub-contracting is the norm. historically, contractors have also used sub-contracting to circumvent unionization and union collective agreement obligations.6 the fragmented industry structure makes it very difficult to provide an effective training system. small contractors normally do not have the qualified journeypersons or other resources to support apprentices. as we shall discuss further in this paper, unions can address this problem through multi-employer agreements. but this is an option that most of the industry opposes. and governments have not been prepared to address this issue through establishing a much more directive approach that would require contractors to support training both financially and by accepting apprentices. given this situation, it is perhaps not surprising that canada’s construction industry has not been very successful in developing a workforce capable of achieving the scope of the transition that is now required to cope with global warming. three major barriers to industry transformation identifying all the challenges to ‘greening’ the industry is clearly a task beyond the scope of a single article. as noted, the basic organization 6 the demarcation lines between various trades is, arguably, also a contributor to industry fragmentation, as it reinforces a proprietary approach to work in which control over skill sets (and the unions representing workers with these skill sets) results in occupational silos. this can impede broader worker solidarity, as well as more effective integration of all work on a building site, particularly as there are significant differences in wages among various trades. in countries such as denmark, where the wage structure is very flat, unions have been able to overcome these divisions more effectively than in canada as demarcation issues do not impact wages significantly. 88 | climate change and its discontents of the industry, with its focus on price competition to the exclusion of other concerns – and its opposition to public regulation – lies at the root of the problem. a fundamental reorganization of the industry will be required to address these issues. assuming such a re-organization were to be implemented, the bulk of the process will draw upon the expertise of planners, architects, engineers and other professionals. it is these professionals who will be in a position to re-design the industry’s approach to implementing low carbon construction. the focus of this article is considerably narrower. it is to examine some of the key changes needed to facilitate the development of a construction labour force capable of implementing green construction at the building site. while transforming the industry will require far larger changes than those discussed in this article, a restructured industry will still require workers with the capacity and training to implement progressive climate objectives. consequently, examining the barriers that are currently impeding this from happening and outlining some of the possibilities for overcoming these barriers constitutes one – admittedly modest – component of this larger climate change project. it is possible to highlight three key barriers. the first is the impact of the underground economy in driving down standards and impeding introduction of more energy efficient building techniques. the industry’s extensive reliance on sub-contracting encourages underground activity by facilitating small-scale, ‘under the radar’ building work. government reluctance to address its negative impacts compounds the problem. the second is the inadequacy of the current training and apprenticeship system, an issue that is widely acknowledged in the industry, but which it has failed to address effectively, in part due to its fragmented structure. and the third is the widespread neglect of the potential role that workers and the unions that represent them can – and should play in the process of greening the built environment, a neglect based on a lack of interest in – or hostility to the role of organized labour in the industry by many of those advocating the ‘greening’ of the industry. the negative impact of underground construction activity canada’s underground construction economy consists of a variety of economic activities that its participants keep hidden from public view to avoid taxes, regulations and, in some cases, conceal illegal activities. its characteristics have been extensively documented in a variety of studies in recent years by both academics and government agencies (mirus, overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 89 1994; gervais, 1994; lippert and walker, 1997; barrett, 1998; giles and tedds, 2002; armstrong and o’grady, 2004; gilbert, 2010; hamiltonsmith, 2010; ontario construction secretariat, 2010; dean, 2010; terefe et. al., 2011; drummond, 2012; statistics canada, 2012). statistics canada estimated that in 2009, underground activity in the entire canadian economy amounted to $36 billion. the construction industry accounted for about 29 percent of this total. there are a number of interrelated factors that facilitate the operation of underground construction activity. one is the extensively documented practice of tax avoidance (auditor general of canada, 1999; pigeon, 2004; prism analytics, 2010a; statistics canada, 2011; 2012) employers, small contractors and self-employed workers avoid taxes either by not divulging that they are receiving income from those purchasing construction services or by disclosing only part of it. by not charging customers hst (or gst in some provinces), they gain a major cost advantage over legitimate contractors. they also reduce costs by avoiding canada pension plan (cpp) contributions, employment insurance (ei) payments, workers’ compensation premiums and other employment related deductions (armstrong and o’grady, 2004). additionally, they may not declare their work to the relevant municipal authorities, thus avoiding the costs of building permits (and the oversight of building inspectors). while workers may share in some of the immediate cost savings of underground activity because they avoid paying statutory contributions such as cpp and ei, they also lose the significant benefits that flow from these programs. because many of their customers – particularly in the residential construction and renovations sector – do not have the expertise to assess if work is being done properly, underground firms can also cut corners on materials and workmanship. aside from the negative impact on building standards and on the employment conditions of workers in this sector (whether employed, or in some cases, described, misleadingly, as self-employed ‘owner operators’), competition from underground suppliers pressures legitimate contractors to cut corners to remain competitive, including using less skilled or unskilled workers wherever feasible. it encourages deskilling rather than up skilling. these practices enable them to under-bid legitimate employers and contractors by a substantial margin – normally in the range of 20-30 percent, but in some cases as much as 50 percent (armstrong and o’grady, 2004; hamilton-smith, 2010). in an environment 90 | climate change and its discontents where price is normally the dominant factor in determining who gets work, underground operators have an enormous advantage. while the underground economy adversely affects much of the construction industry, from the perspective of this paper its impact in undermining ‘green’ construction is of particular importance. ruthless cost cutting makes it difficult to implement new green technologies or use more environmentally responsible working practices because these tend to be more expensive – at least in the short run than other options. confusion over the right technology, or standards, in the context of conflicting claims by different contractors or manufacturers, makes this even more challenging for those who purchase construction services, a problem often exacerbated by the absence of clear guidelines from government. even when low carbon innovations are commissioned by customers wishing to support good environmental practices, these may not be properly installed due to poor installer training and the absence of proper inspections (gleeson, 2010). the underground economy poses a major barrier to the development of the skills needed to implement green construction. workers get little or no formal training and only rarely are able to obtain recognized qualifications such as a journeyperson’s ticket (o’grady, 2004; hamiltonsmith, 2010). underground employers do not want to support apprentices partly because the insecurity of their contracts, partly because of the costs, partly because of the need to permit release time for classroom study and partly because of the administration associated with participating in a formal training program. many want to avoid publicly acknowledging that they even have employees, as this may raise the visibility of their construction activities not only to the apprenticeship authorities, but also to other government agencies and may expose them to unwanted inspections or tax audits. consequently, most workers in the underground sector have no pathway to formalized training, because they do not ‘exist’ from the perspective of the regulatory and training authorities. at the same time, workers are normally not in a position to invest in their own training, given their precarious job security and fluctuating incomes due to frequent lay-offs. the result is that this large segment of the industry fails to train its workforce. this failure most clearly impacts the conventional training and apprenticeship of construction workers. but it also means there is little opportunity for a large portion of construction workers to acquire the advanced skill sets that are so necessary for implementing low carbon construction. overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 91 the underground economy not only drives down standards by providing a cost advantage to contractors that work ‘under the radar’: it also pressures legitimate firms to cut corners on design, materials, equipment and staffing. it thus undermines the capacity of the industry to implement high quality construction. from the perspective of ‘greening’ the construction industry and reducing the carbon footprint of the built environment, failure to address the problems of the underground economy results in failure to implement many of the innovations necessary for the green transformation of the industry. this is particularly important because so much of the underground economy is involved in renovation, repairs and maintenance work where green retrofitting needs to be widely implemented. while some of the remedies for addressing the underground economy are well known, and while governments have taken some limited steps to deal with issue like tax evasion, overall they have not moved aggressively to implement many of the obviously relevant regulatory changes (drummond, 2012). moreover, in some provinces, such as bc, governments have actually abandoned some of the policy tools formerly used to support training and apprenticeship programs for the construction workforce. this has been done to placate industry opposition to alleged government regulatory and spending excesses. in bc, for example, the provincial government terminated the industry training and apprenticeship authority (itac), replacing it with the more narrowly focused and employer dominated bc industry training authority (ita), a decision that effectively excluded labour participation in the province’s training programs (bc federation of labour, 2012). aside from the impact of lobbying by affected developers and contractors, government reluctance to regulate the underground economy reflects a broader commitment to neoliberal principles. to a large degree, governments accept the view that the regulatory ‘cure’ – tough government measures for the problems identified in the underground economy is worse than the ‘disease’ of unregulated market functioning. despite the obvious problems, supporters of the status quo, such as the independent contractors and business association (icba) of bc, maintain that there is no pressing need to regulate it more extensively because government intervention inevitably leads to greater inefficiency and undermines economic progress.7 7 see, for example, the anti-government focus of the publications of the independent contractors and business association of bc for the most extreme version of this view. 92 | climate change and its discontents addressing the impact of the underground economy on construction standards while a fundamental restructuring of the construction industry involves much more than simply curbing the abuses of the underground economy, there is no question that this needs to be part of the process. governments have a variety of policy options to address some of its worst excesses. the key point is to recognize the need for a comprehensive approach that utilizes a wide range of these tools simultaneously and in a coordinated manner. within canada, only quebec, with its commission de la construction du québec (ccq) has adopted this wide ranging approach (charest, 2003). government options include rigorous enforcement of the existing tax laws through comprehensive auditing of contractors, including selfemployed ‘owner operators’. in addition to capturing unpaid income tax, auditors can ensure that ccp, ei and other statutory payments are also collected. both federal and provincial governments need to cooperate in this endeavour. provincial governments can provide additional resources to their workers’ compensation boards to ensure that contractors register the workers they employ and pay their assessments. they can increase the frequency of workplace inspections to curb unsafe working practices. they can also enforce employment standards and human rights codes more vigorously (prism economics, 2010). and they can increase penalties for violators to a level that acts as a real deterrent, something which quebec, uniquely, has been considerably more successful at doing. by providing significant funding to the ccq, the province claims to have recovered $1.9 billion in unpaid taxes and levies during the 1997 to 2008 period. the volume of ‘declared’ work has also increased much more rapidly than the growth of construction investment in the industry, indicating that more of the underground contractors and independent operators are now complying with the law (ccq web site, oct. 4, 2013). quebec also requires all construction workers to be registered as a condition of working in the industry and to ensure that they are enrolled in the industry’s pension and welfare plans. another approach is for governments to license all contractors working in the sector (armstrong and o’grady, 2004). currently, anyone can set up shop and provide construction services. however, there is no quality control, no protection for purchasers and no guarantee that employers are following employment standards, health and safety legislation or meeting their statutory contributions to ei, cpp and overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 93 other programs. licensing would force many underground operators to acknowledge that they are providing construction services and make tax and regulatory avoidance more difficult. it would establish a data base on which the performance of contractors could be monitored, both by public authorities (tax auditors, workers’ compensation officials, etc.) and by customers of their services (hamilton-smith, 2012). requiring employers to be members of employer associations, as in quebec, would also facilitate greater co-ordination of the sector, particularly with respect to training (charest, 2003). government procurement contracts can also level the playing field by again including fair wage requirements. quebec is now requiring that all construction workers register and provide a current resume of their training and skill sets on a government managed web site. the intention is both to enable workers to advertise their availability and to make it more difficult for workers in the underground economy to continue to operate. registration will also make it easier to address some of the other problems of the underground economy such as tax evasion as workers will have to identify themselves as working in the industry. provincial and municipal governments can also enforce building codes more rigorously – including hiring sufficient numbers of building inspectors to guarantee that the work being performed meets existing standards. one reason underground contractors continue to function is that they avoid building inspections, particularly in the residential renovations sector where work is often easy to conceal. their ability to do so is a consequence of the limited resources governments have been allocating to inspections. provinces such as bc could also expand the number of ‘compulsory’ trades and take measures to ensure that only those with the appropriate qualifications are able to perform key components of construction work (armstrong, 2008). this approach to labour regulation is standard practice in a number of european countries such as germany. more stringent licensing of the trades would also provide a major incentive for workers to take formal training or apprenticeships, given that, once completed, these qualifications would provide greater job opportunities. to address the failure of underground contractors to support training, governments can require all firms operating in the industry to contribute to the cost of training through compulsory levies such as have been implemented in some states in australia, california, numerous european countries and quebec which has a compulsory 1.5 percent of payroll levy (charest, 2003; calvert, 2011; hamilton-smith, 2012). 94 | climate change and its discontents another major policy tool is labour legislation (which will be discussed more extensively later in this paper). unionized sectors of the industry have been far more successful in achieving good training outcomes than the unorganized sectors. minimally, as in quebec, public policy should encourage, rather than limit the ability of workers to unionize. this would make a major difference in the construction industry in the rest of canada and would also make it much easier to implement an effective training and apprenticeship regime. the industry’s training challenges a second key area where the construction industry fails to meet the challenge of climate change is in training its workers. successful ‘green’ construction requires a highly trained workforce. much of the work involves very tight tolerances and careful installation of components (gleeson, 2010; goodland 2012). it also involves introducing new technologies and new building methods. in the area of retrofitting, where the largest energy savings are possible, the skilled trades must be able to implement low carbon construction in a wide variety of different building types, erected at different times with different technologies and different materials. to do this work well, the construction trades must have a comprehensive knowledge of many different building methods so that they are able to apply the most effective approach to each specific project. successful ‘green’ construction requires the development of higher skill levels and this requires a significant, ongoing, investment in workforce training. as noted earlier, canada’s construction market is characterized by a ‘boom and bust’ pattern that exaggerates the ups and downs of the business cycle and the related property market. the wide variations in demand lead to periods of intense building activity followed by periods of unemployment (bosch and phillips, 2003). the cyclical and seasonal economic forces shaping the industry make it particularly difficult to develop and maintain a qualified workforce arguably much more difficult than in most other areas of the canadian economy where more stable employment provides a stronger base for both employers and workers to invest in training, because both sides of industry can reasonably expect to accrue the benefits of this investment. the training and apprenticeship system involves a number of players. in addition to the trainees, it includes contractors who provide employment and on the job experience, training providers – predominantly public colleges and/or unions – to provide the classroom and theovercoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 95 oretical components of the trade and governments to fund and regulate the training system, usually through arm’s length agencies, although sometimes directly through ministries of education, post-secondary education or their equivalents. apprenticeship is the core approach to training construction workers. in most trades approximately eighty percent of the time is spent on the job and the remainder in formal classroom training. the periods of formal education are normally scheduled for part of each year to correspond to the increasing on-the-job experience of workers. apprentices need employment to complete their training program and graduate as qualified journeypersons. however, as noted, the industry is characterized by wide swings in employment that reflect the business cycle, seasonal factors and the state of the local property market. in some provinces this is exacerbated by boom and bust employment patterns in major infrastructure or resource projects. when the economy is booming, construction contractors are desperate for workers. when it is in recession, workers are regularly laid off for months or even years at a time (sharpe and gibson, 2005; hamilton-smith, 2010; coe, 2011). these factors lead to high labour turnover and the corresponding loss of the skills and experience that workers have acquired. rather than a national, comprehensive approach to training the construction workforce, canada has a patchwork quilt of apprenticeship and trades training arrangements, reflecting the constitutional jurisdiction of provinces/territories (sharpe and gibson, 2005; morissette, 2008; armstrong, 2008; laporte and muller, 2010). the federal government provides funding through a package of training agreements with the provinces. but outside quebec, the training system is fragmented, inadequately funded and poorly regulated, shifting most of the costs and risks to workers. instead of supporting training in low carbon construction, the current federal government’s main interest in trades training is in response to demands from the oil, gas and mining sectors. this approach ignores both the need for training in green construction methods and the much larger potential gains achievable in the built environment where reductions in ghg emissions and energy can be most effectively implemented.8 8 while provinces have made significant efforts to establish national standards that are recognized across the country through the red seal program, there are still significant variations in provincial approaches. this is highlighted by the differences in the number of designated ‘compulsory’ trades in which practitioners must have a certificate of trades’ qualification (tq) as a legal condition of performing a particular type of construction work. while some provinces have several dozen such trades others have as few as three. 96 | climate change and its discontents the volatile nature of construction means that workers take significant risks when they commit to the long term training associated with a full three to five year apprenticeship. most have no guarantee that they will obtain steady employment – employment which they need to fulfil the on-the-job component of their apprenticeship program. given that most are from working class backgrounds, they normally do not have significant financial resources to carry them over during prolonged periods of unemployment, an issue compounded by the fact that in the initial years, apprentices’ wage rates start at half or less of that of a journeyperson. absent adequate financial resources they can be – and often are forced to abandon their training program to seek work in other parts of the economy. the drop-out rate in many trades is well over half of those who commence an apprenticeship (laporte and muller, 2010; hamilton-smith, 2010; coe, 2011). the paradox is that when there is ample work, apprentices may not wish to go back to school due to the loss of income, but also because they may fear not getting work when they are finished their classroom studies each year. this means losing their investment in acquiring building skills (bosch and phillips, 2003). at the same time, the industry loses the potential benefits of future skilled workers. these problems are inherent in how the largely unregulated construction labour market functions. they pose an ongoing challenge to establishing and maintaining a qualified workforce. in practice, larger employers and/or unionized employers tend to be more supportive of the training system and their apprentices have a much higher than average completion rate. for some of these employers, the benefits of having a well trained workforce are so substantial, and the costs of poorly performed work so significant, that investment in workforce skills makes economic sense. in some sectors of the economy, such as oil, gas and other resources, profit margins are high and the pay offs from having a skilled workforce are substantial, so they support apprenticeships. in addition, where employers are party to a collective agreement, they are also likely to support training as a result of contract provisions stipulating the ratio of apprentices to journey persons and as a result of negotiated contributions to training funds – normally cents per hour to supporting apprenticeship programs (o’grady, 2005; prism, 2010) however, most construction employers are very small and do not conform to this pattern. overall, the industry’s training performance is very poor, with alarmingly high rates of non-completion. (gunderson overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 97 2010) efforts by the federal and some provincial governments to encourage more workers to take apprenticeships over the past fifteen years have largely failed (hamilton-smith, 2010). according to coe and emery (2012, p.95): “…(t)he large expansion in apprenticeship training registrations since 1991 has not produced a substantial increase in the number of persons completing apprenticeship programs in the building trades. in 2007, there were only 3900 completions of apprenticeship programs in the building trades, up only 300 from 3600 completed in 1991. moreover the ratio of completed apprenticeships to the number of individuals registered in building trades apprenticeship programs fell from 7.7 percent in 1991 to 4.9 percent in 2007.” desjardans and paquin of statistics canada carried out a detailed examination of the completion rates of the 1994 and 1995 cohorts of starting apprenticeships using canada’s registered apprentice information system (rias) ten years later. they found that the completion rates for the construction trades were, on average, much lower than for nonconstruction trades. some building trades did much better than others, with construction electricians (62 percent), plumbers (58 percent) and sheet metal workers (56 percent) doing relatively better. but others, such as steamfitter-pipefitter (38 percent) and carpenters (34 percent), did relatively poorly (desjardans and paquin, 2010).9 bc’s industry training authority (ita) noted that the completion rate for apprenticeships after 6 years in its provincial program was only 40 percent in 2011 (ita website). bc’s ita does not provide a break-down between union and nonunion apprentices. but there is evidence that the average completion rates it cites would be considerably lower if the relatively high success rates of apprenticeships with unionized employers were excluded. the bc and yukon territory building and construction trades council (bc bctc) claims that the training programs run by its member unions have a success rate averaging about 90 percent over the past 5 years (bc bctc web site). in his study of factors influencing apprenticeship completion rates, coe (2011) noted that the rate was 10 percent higher for compulsory trades and concluded that a shift towards increasing the number of compulsory trades would likely increase this rate. unions have been strong supporters of expanding the number of compulsory trades. 9 while statistics canada’s data for 2011 indicate an increase in completions to 55,422, the number of apprentices registered in the system is also up to 426,283 (cansim table 4770054). 98 | climate change and its discontents small contractors and contractors working in residential and low rise apartment construction, as well as non-union employers, have a particularly poor track record in supporting apprenticeships, while those in the underground economy provide almost no formal apprenticeship training, despite the significant size of this part of the industry (o’grady, 2010; hamilton-smith, 2012). even among larger employers, unionization is a key factor in apprenticeship. a 2013 survey by katherine jacobs (2013) of the ontario construction secretariat found that 83 percent of unionized contractors supported apprentices, compared with only 42 percent of their non-union counterparts. these problems are exacerbated by free-ridership, where employers who do not train benefit from those who do by poaching the latter’s newly qualified journeypersons (bosch and phillips, 2003). it is also exacerbated by the absence of a system with the notable exception of quebec that would require all construction employers and/or contractors to contribute to the costs of training the industry’s workforce. such arrangements are common in much of europe, california and parts of australia, to cite examples where such cost sharing is in place. one of the advantages of an industry-wide levy on employers is that having paid into it, many employers then choose to take advantage of the funds it makes available by supporting trainees or apprentices. if you are paying for training, why not take advantage of it yourself by claiming some of the available training money? greening the built environment requires enhanced training and skills while the construction industry might simply continue with its somewhat dysfunctional approach to training and apprenticeship, the problem now is that we need to ‘green’ the built environment and hence need a training system that prepares construction workers properly for this task.10 numerous studies indicate that low carbon construction requires considerably higher levels of training and skills than currently possessed by canada’s construction workforce (leeson, 2010; goodland, 2012; aitkenhead, 2012). a recent ilo (2012, p.127) study concluded that: “experience in a growing number of countries, both industrialized and developing, demonstrates that the construction of energyand 10 this is not to imply that the industry will automatically provide jobs to workers who have acquired green skills. the economics of the labour market will determine employment, absent much tougher government requirements forcing industry to adopt low carbon construction. however, if there are fundamental changes in the industry’s support for green building techniques, then a qualified workforce will be essential. overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 99 resource-efficient buildings requires competent enterprises and a skilled workforce. poorly installed equipment and materials do not yield expected gains in efficiency and emissions reduction. targeted investments in skills upgrading and certification of building firms, formalization – notably of small and medium-sized enterprises (smes) which dominate the sector – and improvements in working conditions to retain qualified workers are therefore essential components of a successful strategy.” indeed, much of the literature indicates that trades workers require significant additional training beyond what they have received in a conventional apprenticeship (goodland, 2012). the building industry’s overall lack of support – both policy and financial for a comprehensive, industry-wide training and apprenticeship system results in large segments of the workforce that lack both the basic skills and the enhanced ‘green’ skills needed to meet the challenges of implementing low carbon construction competently. while the need for a high level of skills may seem apparent in new construction, as noted earlier the need for such skills is even greater in retrofitting. new construction only accounts for about 1 ½ percent of canada’s total building stock. so the impact of low carbon construction in new building is relatively small and will take generations to have a significant impact. retrofitting the existing built environment is thus critical to implementing an effective climate change program. the existing building stock is characterized by a wide diversity of building types, materials, technologies, dates of construction, and many other factors. the approach to construction at the turn of the nineteenth century, or in the 1920s or 1930s – and many of these buildings still exist – is significantly different from that of buildings constructed in the 1980s or 1990s. each building has its own particular challenges with respect to retrofitting. there is no general ‘cookie cutter’ for much of what has to be done to reduce its carbon footprint. decisions about what needs to be done to ‘green’ the existing building stock require both an understanding of the particular attributes of individual buildings and a knowledge of the options now available to reduce energy consumption. these options must also be assessed in light of their cost effectiveness, installation complexity, skill requirements/skills availability and a variety of other factors. they require an understanding of the fundamentals of building construction and the possibilities arising from the new ‘green’ technologies, materials, and 100 | climate change and its discontents systems now available. this requires knowledge, judgement and a clear understanding of the challenges that have to be overcome.11 construction workers are constantly involved in problem solving on the work site. they normally do this without close supervision. often on smaller projects only one or two members of a trade are responsible for handling the work and they are expected to do it to on their own in a way that meets the professional standards mandated by the architects, engineers or prime contractors. while there are tasks on building sites that can be performed by workers with little or no training or skills, retrofitting does not readily fit in to this pattern. in reality every project is different and every project has its unique challenges, many of which are not predictable in advance. consequently, the trades have to be able to analyze the characteristics of a wide variety of building projects and make judgements about how best to implement the objectives of these projects in a cost effective, safe and efficient way. it is true that those further up the supply chain, and particularly architects and engineers, are positioned to make many of the ‘big picture’ decisions about the selection of appropriate technologies or changes to building design or building systems. but the practical challenges facing retrofitting are ones that must be addressed on the job site by those actually doing the work. it is they who, for the most part, are able to see the details of what is 11 the negative consequences of relying on a deregulated approach to implementing green retrofit programs were starkly illustrated in the experience of australia with its energy efficiency homes package (eehp) normally referred to as the home insulation program (hip). this was part of the federal government’s response to the 2008 global economic meltdown. this program, announced at the beginning of 2009, was part of a larger $42 billion nation building jobs plan. the insulation component was targeted to reduce energy consumption by as much as 40 percent in 2.7 million australian homes, although the number actually ended up being only a small fraction of this target. while the overall ghg reduction approach of the australian federal government to the fiscal meltdown was, arguably, far more thoughtful than what the canadian government did in its comparable, but reluctantly implemented, infrastructure program, the actual implementation of the hip was characterized by a number of major installation problems. large numbers of unskilled workers with little understanding of the potential dangers associated with electrical fires resulting from careless installation of insulation in attics were commissioned to do the bulk of the work. however, their work quickly resulted in a numerous fires, and a small number of fatal electrical accidents among the poorly trained installers. this led to a major public reaction to the program, a number of high profile government investigations at both state and federal levels and a rapid shift to other less dangerous conservation options such as heat pumps. alan hawke noted that a subsequent audit performed in queensland and cited in the commonwealth parliamentary debates revealed the following: “over 14,600 roof inspections have been undertaken, and 1000 targeted audits of electrical safety issues in queensland have also been carried out as at the end of the program. the results of roof inspections have shown significant levels of work that did not fully meet quality and safety standards (16 percent of inspections revealing quality issues and 7.6 percent of inspections revealing safety issues) (hawke, 2010, p. 55). overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 101 currently in place and it is they who are often in the best position to assess the right choices for implementing low carbon construction. introducing new materials, new technology, and new working practices is contingent on construction workers and particularly the skilled trades knowing how to install these innovations correctly. thus while the role of labour is only one component of the broader package of changes needed to ‘green’ the construction industry, it is nevertheless a critical one. and the failure to address this area significantly limits the ability of the industry to implement many of the climate innovations that architects, engineers, project managers and policy makers wish to achieve. similarly, the establishment of more stringent energy conservation requirements in building codes is contingent not only on having an effective and adequately resourced enforcement system to ensure that builders comply with these requirements, but also in having a workforce that knows what the codes require and is capable of implementing them on the building site. knowledge of building codes is a key part of building work. it requires extensive training. all of this underlines the need to strive for much higher levels of training and skills within the industry. yet, as noted, the economic characteristics of the industry make the achievement of this objective difficult. the extensive underground economy, the large number of very small employers and independent operators with no training capacity, the extensive reliance on sub-contracting which encourages use of the least qualified labour, the prioritization of low bid over quality, the difficulty in costing the long term benefits of lowering energy consumption, the split between owners and tenants which encourages the former to minimize spending on conservation and numerous other factors push the industry in the opposite direction. rather than recognizing that effective climate change programs will require a major commitment to training and upgrading the skills of the workforce and major changes to the fundamentals of how the construction industry is organized, both government and industry participants remain wedded to an unregulated market model based on narrowly conceived price competitiveness and opposition to government regulation. the role of workers and their unions in implementing green construction a third barrier to the greening of the construction industry is the limited role that building trades’ workers and their unions currently 102 | climate change and its discontents play in this process.12 outside quebec, less than a third of the industry is organized. union representation is concentrated in the ici sector and primarily with large contractors. it is also uneven, varying considerably among the trades and between the trades and semi-skilled or unskilled construction workers. although average union density in construction has remained fairly constant at just under a third of the workforce during the past fifteen years in canada, after falling significantly during the 1980s and early 1990s, this figure conceals major shifts in the pattern of unionization, with increases in quebec offsetting declines in english canada. (charest 2003, statistics canada labour force survey, table 282-0078) construction collective agreement coverage in canada 1997 – 2012 (percent of workforce) province 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009 2012 newfoundland & labrador 25.71 27.27 20.78 27.10 26.62 31.95 prince edward island 20.59 13.79 19.35 13.95 17.95 23.68 nova scotia 38.16 26.97 22.78 26.40 23.98 28.99 new brunswick 27.78 29.41 20.00 21.74 29.72 25.13 quebec 48.48 50.11 56.25 57.69 57.80 59.30 ontario 32.62 32.42 32.99 29.52 30.51 31.51 manitoba 22.56 21.47 17.34 27.83 22.48 22.22 saskatchewan 22.86 24.66 23.31 22.01 17.67 21.60 alberta 17.19 21.04 21.67 18.78 19.29 19.38 british columbia 31.31 31.77 30.51 25.02 20.35 21.89 all canada union coverage 32.39 32.53 34.19 31.67 31.23 32.76 source: statistics canada table 282-0078 labour force survey estimates 12 this section should not be misinterpreted as saying that unions in all sectors of construction are in decline. for example, unions with specific skills in certain sectors, such as ua which represents pipeline workers, enrol virtually all workers involved in laying large diameter pipelines, an economic activity that is expanding. individual unions in other sub-sectors of construction, such as the ibew in certain provinces have also maintained or increased union density in areas such as hydroelectric utilities. however, the point is that when all sectors of the industry are examined, the overall influence of unions has been weakening, at least outside quebec. overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 103 overall, the influence of the building trades unions like the larger canadian labour movement has been on the decline (charest, 2003). despite these setbacks, some unionized trades, such as the international brotherhood of electrical workers (ibew) continue to play a major role in establishing and enforcing the qualifications for their trade through its role in the national electrical trades council (netco) (macleod, 2012). construction unions in ontario have persuaded the government to give them a role as board members overseeing the construction component of the newly established college of trades. and building trade unions in certain regions, such as the greater toronto area, continue to organize significant numbers of workers in major commercial and industrial projects (although the residential sector remains largely unorganized). nevertheless, some unions continue to play a significant role in training and apprenticeship. in ontario, for example, they operate over 200 trades training facilities, normally in co-operation with unionized employers (o’grady, 2005). the building trades unions have collective agreement provisions requiring their employers to contribute part of the wage package – normally about 1 percent of payroll (in the form of a specified number of cents per hour) to training trust funds (ttfs). ttfs are jointly managed by a union and a group of contributing employers with which the union has collective agreements. they provide part, or all, of the classroom training that apprentices require, in some cases supplemented by provincial government purchases of training ‘seats’. they may also share some of the classroom training with publicly funded community colleges or purchase classroom capacity from them. in an industry characterized by numerous small employers, where few have the capacity to guarantee apprenticeships, individually, or provide the classroom component of training, the ttfs fulfil an important industry need. most apprentices work for a number of employers during their training and their union affiliation provides employment continuity during this period. because they are based in multiemployer collective agreements, ttfs tend to have stable funding over time which facilitates long term planning of courses and programs. o’grady estimates that in ontario fully 25 percent of building union members receive some training each year from ttfs. they also have an excellent track record in terms of the percentage of apprentices who actually complete their apprenticeships – a rate that is far higher than in the non-union sector (o’grady, 2005) this contrasts sharply with a number of federal and provincial government policy initiatives, such 104 | climate change and its discontents as providing training tax credits to employers, which have simply failed to achieve better apprenticeship outcomes despite large outlays of public funds on these programs (hamilton-smith, 2012). the major exception is quebec where the building trades have significantly expanded their role in training and apprenticeship, a development that reflects the provincial government’s very different approach to construction labour relations and its willingness to require employers to take more responsibility for training through its payroll levy system. the government’s 1968 legislation an act respecting labour relations, vocational training and manpower management in the construction industry (bill r-20) has encouraged collective bargaining in the construction sector and resulted in relatively high union density.13 quebec unions have been able to establish a wide network of ttfs through negotiations with unionized employers and these continue to play a central role in trades training in the province (charest, 2003; o’grady, 2005). according to the commission de la construction du quebec, its $150 million training fund supports 20,000 trainees, annually, for apprenticeship and continuing trades training. minimally, as in quebec, public policy in english canada should recognize and support a much greater role for unions in trades training. another way governments can work with unions in supporting training is through the use of project agreements such as bc’s vancouver island highway project. this was the largest construction project in western canada during the mid-1990s. the provincial government created a public corporation to act as the employer of all the construction labour on the project. it then negotiated a blanket agreement with the 13 highway construction unions which included commitments to local hire, local training and a major focus on training for members of bc’s four equity groups. in an industry in which equity group participation was about 2 percent overall, the vancouver island highway achieved equity participation of just over 20 percent of all hours worked during the 8 years of the project. union training facilities played an important role in this process (cohen and braid, 2003; calvert and redlin, 2003). 13 in the fall of 2013, new quebec legislation entitled an act to eliminate union placement and improve the operation of the construction industry established the carnet reference construction, a body that registers all construction workers covered by the r-20 law and acts as a clearing house that employers must now use when they hire workers. workers must post a resume outlining their skills and training on the carnet’s web site in order to be hired. there is considerable dissatisfaction among unions about the new limits it places on their earlier role in dispatching workers to employers. approximately 85 percent of workers were already directly hired by employers before the new law was enacted, but those who were dispatched by the unions normally went to the larger work sites. whether this new law will have a significant impact on union density is not yet clear. see: http://carnet.ccq. org/en/ overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 105 supporting a greater role for construction unions despite the evidence that unionized workplaces have a much higher success rate in apprenticeship completions and that unions have been consistent advocates of the maintenance of a high quality training system, most policy makers do not see them as major players in the green transformation of the industry. in much of the literature on greening the construction industry, unions simply do not exist. in fact, a number of provincial governments, such as bc’s, have taken steps to exclude them from provincial training authorities while enacting changes to labour codes and procurement policies designed deliberately to weaken the role of organized labour in the industry and, not insignificantly, to deny construction workers a voice in this process. similarly, outside the specific organizations that unions and unionized employers have jointly created to promote training and workplace skills, such as the national electrical trade council (netco), government policy makers and many advocates of ‘greening’ the built environment generally ignore the potential role of unions in this process. the assumption is that low carbon construction will be introduced successfully without the active involvement of workers – other than by doing what they are assigned to do.14 one reason why policy makers have not been more interested in viewing unions as major players in ‘greening’ the industry is that there has been a more general shift in canada towards a neoliberal labour relations paradigm, in which the role of all unions is marginalized. the labour climate has become increasingly hostile to unions at both federal and provincial levels, as evidenced by regressive changes to labour leg14 the federal government’s trades training initiatives have focused on providing skills for its favoured resource extraction industries where it needs the training expertise of a number of the construction unions. the goal is to get unions to address industry needs in the absence of other apprenticeship and training options the federal government might otherwise prefer. arguably, it is courting some of the major building trades unions not because it supports unionization but because it – and resource industry employers – needs them, at least for the immediate future. however, its policies are designed to enable employers, not unions or workers, to have a greater say about where public money for training will be allocated. for example, its controversial canada jobs grant program provides no new money. rather it will shift $300 million, annually, from existing canada labour market agreement training programs to its more employer-focused approach. the federal government will provide employers with up to $5,000 per trainee to be matched by an equal contribution by provinces and, in theory, employers. however, these initiatives to meet the needs of employers have not been accompanied by any policies designed to expand union representation. significantly, there is virtually no mention of unions in the federal government’s outline of its various employment and training initiatives in its canada action plan 2013 with the exception of its helmets to hardhats program for veterans (http://actionplan. gc.ca/en/initiative/canada-job-grant). 106 | climate change and its discontents islation and the increasing tendency of governments to impose back to work legislation whenever unions take strike action. in the context of an overall anti-labour shift by the current federal and most provincial governments, arguments about the potential benefits of a greater union role in training, apprenticeship and climate change initiatives go against the tide. yet the evidence is clear: a highly skilled construction workforce is now needed to implement climate objectives and unions have demonstrated that they can contribute to this process. that there is significant potential for unions to play a greater role in climate initiatives as is evidenced by a number of promising initiatives in the built environment. one example is the work of the bc insulators union which has developed a comprehensive package of new building code measures and government procurement requirements explicitly designed to significantly reduce ghg emissions and energy consumption (lee loftus, president, bc insulators, interview june 7, 2012). it has made numerous presentations to bc municipalities and to the provincial government advocating implementation of these policy changes. it has also worked closely with the bc institute of technology (bcit) in modifying the classroom training program for apprentices in the insulating trade to include new climate modules. and it has worked extensively with both the environment committee of the bc federation of labour and the bc green jobs coalition to advocate tougher climate policies. similarly, at the national level, the ibew has worked closely with industry through the netco to develop new standards and training modules for the installation of solar pv equipment and related renewable electric vehicle technology. qualified electricians can now add a certification in these areas to their trades’ qualifications (carol macleod, netco interview aug. 12, 2013; andy cleven, ibew interview july 12, 2012; macleod, 2012). the implementation of low carbon construction on the job site aligns well with the building trades unions’ goal of maintaining high standards of skills and supporting the apprenticeship and training system (lowe, 2009; loftus op. cit.; cleven, op. cit.). true, their goal of a high skill, high wage industry reflects their self-interest in maintaining, or improving, the wages of their members and reflects a desire to exercise control over the labour process. at the same time, most skilled trades take pride in the exercise of their skills and in their ability to adapt to a wide range of problem solving situations – a key feature of effective climate retrofitting. the interests of building trades unions also correspond to the need to have a more stable and permanent workforce, with a long term attachovercoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 107 ment to the industry. their members want a career, not just a job. this too, is a precondition for expanding and maintaining the knowledge base essential to implementing low carbon construction. high turnover in the industry, especially among trainees who fail to complete their apprenticeships, is not conducive to effective climate programs. but the final aspect of this is the role of unions in contributing to a change in the culture of the workplace – a culture that values work well done and takes pride in learning and exercising demanding skills (sennett, 2009). the challenge of incorporating climate issues into a stable workplace culture that already supports these values is far less than one of attempting to do so in the context of a workforce that is poorly skilled, precarious, low paid and with little or no long term attachment to the industry. conclusion this article has identified three major problems that are impeding the ability of the canadian construction industry to meet the challenge of global warming: the extensive and largely unregulated underground economy, fundamental weaknesses in the training and apprenticeship system and the failure to include workers and the unions that represent them in the process of greening the built environment. it has not claimed that these are the only, or indeed the most important, impediments.15 but it does assert that addressing these three problems is an essential part of what needs to be done. and it also recognizes that there is no single (or simple) answer to resolving these problems. rather, a combination of different policy changes is needed that, together, can fundamentally shift the focus of the industry in a more environmentally responsible direction. provincial and federal governments must take a co-ordinated approach to dealing with the underground economy. this means enforcing tax, wcb, ei, ccp and other statutory obligations. provinces and municipalities can enforce building codes vigorously and ensure that contractors meet health and safety and employment standards regulations. a comprehensive contractor licensing system, coupled with registration of workers, can also facilitate more extensive oversight of the sector, making it easier to monitor tax evasion, protect worker interests and provide more effective consumer protection. 15 thus, we have not discussed issues such as the major role that publicly funded trades training colleges can play, a greater emphasis on climate issues in the education of architects and engineers, the comprehensive ‘greening’ of municipal planning and building codes and direct government financial support for training and apprenticeships, to cite a few of the more obvious areas where major climate initiatives are also needed. 108 | climate change and its discontents governments need to require all employers, contractors and selfemployed owner operators to contribute to workforce training by paying a compulsory training levy and hosting apprentices. this will address the ‘free rider’ problem and provide funds for employers and unions who support training, eliminating one of the major financial barriers to successful apprenticeships. governments in some provinces can also expand the scope of compulsory trades to ensure that workers performing skilled jobs are actually qualified to do this work. more stringent licensing of the trades would also provide a major incentive for workers to take formal training or apprenticeships, given that, once completed, these qualifications would provide greater job opportunities (armstrong, 2008). this should be accompanied by the introduction of major ‘green’ components to the curriculum of the trades training institutions. governments can also condition their purchase of construction services by requiring contractors to employ apprentices on publicly funded projects. and they can restore, or expand, apprenticeship and training in their own operations. turning to unionization, changes to labour legislation can play a role in industry transformation by supporting, rather than undermining union representation. as the example of quebec illustrates, supportive labour law and extensive industry regulation does make a difference (charest, 2003). governments can support union training centres through training seat purchases and through dedicating payroll training levies to them. the work of some unions, such as bcs insulators and the ibew in pushing for better climate policies was noted earlier. unions outside the building trades, both nationally, and internationally, have developed policies that focus on what they describe as a just transition to a low carbon economy (sustainlabour, 2008; cep, 2009; ituc, 2013). investing in major retrofitting of the existing built environment is an extremely effective way to create employment. there is an enormous potential to create new construction jobs in energy conservation and retrofitting, given the size of the existing stock of buildings and the urgency of reducing ghg emissions and energy use.16 as was indicated at the beginning of this paper, there are a variety of other measures needed to ‘green’ the built environment in addition 16 an example of this is found in the approach of the danish construction unions to the economic crisis of 2008. recognizing that a stimulus package was needed to address the crisis, they lobbied the government (successfully) to bring forward a number of major building retrofitting programs which they argued would both create jobs and reduce the country’s carbon footprint (calvert, 2011). overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 109 to the three discussed above. clearly, effective action requires a comprehensive approach that includes a wide range of initiatives affecting many different components of construction. moreover, as noted, many of the major planning, technological and organizational changes are beyond the scope of the construction workforce itself. innovations currently being promoted by progressive climate scientists, architects, planners, engineers and developers, as well as proponents of various regulatory and building code amendments are essential to reducing canada’s ghg emissions and energy use. however, the present policy framework supports the status quo in english canada and undermines efforts in a variety of areas to restructure the construction industry. the industry is failing, by a wide margin, to achieve sufficient progress on climate issues. its commitment to free market policies effectively precludes the kinds of major policy measures now required. hostility to public regulation, failure to tackle the abuses of the underground economy and industry’s unwillingness to support fundamental changes to the current training and apprenticeship system – including a larger role for unions are all major barriers to achieving a workforce capable of implementing low carbon construction successfully. absent significant changes to the basic organization of the construction industry, it will not have the capacity to implement the kinds of climate measures that are now so urgently needed.17 references act r-20: an act respecting labour relations, vocational 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(2005).training trust funds: a review of their history, legal foundations, and implications for trade union training strategy http://www.iciconstruction.com http://www.clsrn.econ.ubc.ca/workingpapers/clsrn%20working%20paper%25 20n http://www.clsrn.econ.ubc.ca/workingpapers/clsrn%20working%20paper%25 20n http://www.ogrady.on.ca/downloads/papers/the%20underground%20economy%25 http://www.ogrady.on.ca/downloads/papers/the%20underground%20economy%25 http://www.ogrady.on.ca/downloads/papers/when%20the%25 20playing%25 20field http://www.ogrady.on.ca/downloads/papers/when%20the%25 20playing%25 20field overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 115 – final report. prism economics. (a report commissioned by the canadian labour congress). august. retrieved from: www.ogrady. on.ca/downloads/papers/ training% 20trust% 20funds.pdf o’grady, j. 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(2012). carbon management in the built environment. oxford: routledge. sennett, richard. (2009). the craftsman. london: penguin books. sharpe, andrew and james gibson. (2005, september). the apprenticeship system in canada: trends and issues. ottawa: centre for the study of living standards: csls research report 2005-04. statistics canada. (2012). revisions to its 2011 study: estimating the underground economy in canada 1992 – 2008. (eds.) terefe, b., c. barber-dueck & marie-josée lamontagne. ottawa: income and expenditure accounts division. june. retrieved from: http://www. cra-arc.gc.ca/nwsrm/fctshts/2012/m09/fs120927-eng.html stern, n. (2006). review on the economics of climate change. london: hm treasury. retrieved from: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/ http:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm thompson, d. 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(2012) greenest city 2020 action plan (2012-2013 implementation update) retrieved from www.vancouver.ca/greenestcityactionplan vilasini, n., t. r. neitzert, j. o. b rotimi & a o. windapo. (2012). a famework for sub-contractor integration in alliance contracts. international journal of construction supply chain management. 2 (1). world bank (2012, november). turn down the heat: why a 4’ world must be avoided. washington: potsdam institute for climate impact research and climate analytics. retrieved from: http://documents.worldbank. org/curated/en/2012/11/17097815/turn-down-heat-4%c2%b0c-warmerworld-must-avoided world meteorological association (2013, march). a summary of current climate change findings and figures. retrieved from: http://www. wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/factsheet/documents/climatechangeinfo sheet2013-03final.pdf http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/nwsrm/fctshts/2012/m09/fs120927-eng.html http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/nwsrm/fctshts/2012/m09/fs120927-eng.html http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm http://www.unep.org/civil_society/publications/index.asp http://www.unep.org/civil_society/publications/index.asp http://www.unep.org/sbci/pdfs/sbci-bccsummary.pdf http://www.unep.org/sbci/pdfs/sbci-bccsummary.pdf http://www.unep.org/labour_environment/pdfs/training/cc-full-en.pdf http://www.unep.org/labour_environment/pdfs/training/cc-full-en.pdf http://www.vancouver.ca/greenestcityactionplan http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/11/17097815/turn-down-heat-4%c2%b0c-warmer-world-must-avoided http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/11/17097815/turn-down-heat-4%c2%b0c-warmer-world-must-avoided http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/11/17097815/turn-down-heat-4%c2%b0c-warmer-world-must-avoided commentary: ontological gerrymandering? non-identity vs. differance adorno contra derrida wade w. deisman carleton university what the conjurers of ontological philosophizing strive, as it were, to awaken is undermined by real processes, however: by the production and reproduction of social life. the effort to justify "man" and "being" and "time" theoretically, as primal phenomena cannot stay the fate of the resurrected ideas. t. adorno, negative dialectics the system of language associated with phonetic-alphabetic writing is that within which logocentric metaphysics, determining the sense of being as presence, has been produced. this logocentrism, the epoch of full speech, has always placed in parenthesis, suspended, and suppressed for essential reasons, all free reflection on the origin and status of writing. j. derrida, of grammatology the impetus to revisit adorno today, though no longer principally historical, is at the same time, both historically informed and historically conditioned: that is, it derives from deep seated doubts about the developing disparity between the first and second generations of critical theory, it is equally the outcome of uncertainty about the totalizing tendencies associated with the contemporary 'communicative turn;' and yet, like a seedling, it springs forth finally only inthe fertileforeground ofan era that feels itselfto be fragmenting and is henceforth haunted by adorno's harrowing analyses ofthe authoritarian personality, culture industry and administered society. cursory characalternate routes, volume 12, 1995 alternate routes, volume 12, 1995 terizations of the recent renaissance with adorno in terms of a revival of interest, may belie a much more ambitious interest in revival (crook 1994; zuidervaart 1994), clearly connected to adomo's prescient anticipation of the problematics posed by postmodernism (jameson 1990) 1 and made manifest in a variety of attempts to re-deploy adorno in the contemporary context. yet, if adomo's analyses of 'fractured totalities' bears familiar and sometimes canny correspondences with foucault's focus on discontinuities and derrida's deconstruction, it is by now bromide to simply cite adomo as a proto-postmodem thinker (best and kellner, 1991:228-234). moreover, alleged affinities with derrida, however supported by some salient methodological similarities and an ostensibly parallel program for the dissolution of philosophy, are ultimately the purview ofthe pedestrian in so far as they tend to ignore and thereby undermine adomo's anti-authoritarian impulses and manifestly materialist commitments (habermas, 1993:185). indeed, although both derrida and adomo take a careful reading ofthe text as the point of departure in their critique of western philosophy, adomo's resolution of the problem of 'presence' found in husserl is clearly at odds with derrida's ^^ deconstructive turn (dews, 1987: 36-39). whereas derrida denies both the *& stability ofthehermeneutic horizon and the possibility ofanything beyond the text and therefore urges an endless unravelling of texts, adomo enacts a 'theoretically informed' reconstructive moment: one which not only links forms of philosophical thought with broader social forces, but also attempts thereby to expose the more sublime structures of reality. both thinkers brave the paradoxes and perils associated with the critique of reason, but they are not guided by consonant concerns or convictions, nor ought their approaches be seen as different answers to the same problem (habemias, 1993: 185). adomo's efforts are intended to address and come to terms with the totalizing tendencies of thought, and specifically speak to the aetiology of fascism. for him, objective knowledge of these processes is still attainable, but onlythrough a process ofrigorous reconfiguration which recontextualizes philosophical phenomena in terms of their relationship to broader social and economic relations. derrida's efforts are intended to undercut the logocentric foundations of philosophical thinking as an oppressive apparatus tout court and the process of deconstruction is, itself, seen as an act ofjustice. in what follows, i will argue byway ofexplication that cavalier compansons between these two thinkers do not endure sustained theoretical inquiry and moreover, that adomo's lasting legacy resides in his resistance both to the kinds of textually totalizing impulses ofsome post structuralism and also the kinds of theoretically totalizing tendencies sometimes implied in the current communicative emphasis of critical theory. this thesis indicates that adorno is in a middling position between the internecine schools of critical theory and poststructuralism and suggests that contemporary cultural theory might benefit from a more sustained engagement with adomo. the first phase of my argument is explicative and consists chiefly in an overview of adorno and derrida at the level of method. in the second stage i shall simply suggest something of the benefit adorno's approach brings to current debates in cultural theory and allude to some of the shortcomings associated with exhuming adorno. my comments on the future of critical theory are in closing. *** although adorno comes closest to a programmatic statement of principles at the level of method2 in his landmark negative dialectics, the overall effect of his work3 is only to emphasize the degree to which a materialist critique of philosophy effectively undercuts the distinction between theory and method. his procedure, however, is avowedly dialectical: it encompasses a negative deconstructive moment and a reconfiguring reconstructive movement, each of which also maintain their own dialectical character. in the first moment, adorno juxtaposes antithetical concepts to produce a "logic of disintegration" and thereby expose "the irreconcilability of concepts" with the reality they purportedly describe (buck-morris, 1977:63). this procedure both denies the synthetic movement in hegel and reflects the materialist contention that the contradictions between reason and reality are not ultimately reconciled by the movement of thought4 . indeed, adorno's insight into the architechnonic nature of capitalist cognition is that concepts are in a perpetual process of attempting to appropriate their 'other' but that this impulse can never culminate in a synthesis. recalling lukacs' conception of reification in order to account for the fact that philosophical concepts are seen to have a reality apart from and apriori to productive processes, adorno's analysis links the capitalist commodity structure to the abstraction of phenomena from their socio-historical roots. philosophical idealism is thus understood both as a form of consciousness which arises out ofthe conjunction of specific socio-historical conditions and as a kind of all consuming rage which seeks to reconcile reason with reality through a totalizing movement of identification (adorno, 1966) 5 . adorno's key contrariant claim is that the contradictions of capitalist society cannot be alternate routes, volume12, 1995 eradicated by "means ofthought" nor can they "within thought" itself(buckmorris 1977:61). hence, in opposition to the rage ofidealist thought, adorno asserts that there is, in principle, a non-identity between concept and reality. tins principle of non-identity forms the foundation of negative dialectics (habermas, 1989:187). adomo's approach contrasts with the more mechanical 'ideologikritik' of other members of the frankfurt school which inclined to an analysis of philosophy as an expression of superstructure. adorno calls his process "immanent critique" and uses it to unearth and identify a dialectic process at work with philosophical thought itself. while his initial intent is only to "expose the contradictions which riddle idealist categories and, following their inherent logic, push them to the point where the categories were made to self-destruct"6 , the ultimate goal of immanent critique is to transcend idealism by "leading its concepts via their own immanent logic to the point of self-liquidation" (buck-morris, 1977:70). 7 adomo's deconstructive movement is fundamentally informed by the insight that the crisis of idealism mirrors the current social order such that as "reason and reality lost touch with each other outside ofphilosophy, they lost touch within philosophy also" (buck-morris, 1977:71). hence, he argues that husserl gives birth to a phenomenology aimed at objective knowledge of things in themselves but, because this mode of reasoning is riddled with the contradictions ofcapitalistthought, he ends up in contradiction. phenomenology erroneously accepts natural phenomena as given immediately in experience but, in fact, is only able to achieve abstraction. adorno argues, in contradistinction, that objective knowledge is possible through a process of concretion which links phenomenal formsto larger totalities. objects are thus made to matenalize in a sense that surpasses identity, but only by the mediation of conceptual reflection can their relationship be understood. in order to combat the reification processes typical ofcapitalistthought, adorno deploys his own principles of "differentiation, nonidentity, and active transformation," (buck-morris, 1977:96) in an attempt to negate the hegemony ofconsciousness brought about by the mode ofeconomicproduction an analysis of the linguistic forms of idealist philosophy provides the point of departure for an exploration of their underlying connection to broader social and structural forces. here adorno is informed by a conception ofthe dialectic that surpasses the strictly hegelian sense between the particular and the universal. indeed, according to buck-morns, his supposition is that the structure of the general persists within "the very surface of the particular" (buck-morris, 1977:97). adomo's notion of the concrete particular expresses this synecdoche concept of the relationship between part/whole. his argument is thatthe imprint ofthemacrocosm can be read in the microcosmic. hence 'particulars ' contain cryptic codes, initially enigmatic, that are subject to subsequent differentiation/de-differentiation in an effort to expose their underlying structural connections. this process consists in a rigorous separation, dissection and differentiation of the forms to derive isolated elements. conceptual phenomena typically supposed as similar are emphasized as dissimilar, while phenomena typically taken as dissimilar were shown to have underlying commonalities. the latter process, which was achieved by a juxtaposition of opposites worked to reveal an inner logic of structuration at work within capitalist society, while the former, worked to expose the false connections between phenomena perpetrated by ideology. the method found application not only in natural phenomena but also in the relationship between phenomenal forms and linguistic referents, as is demonstrated in adorno's analysis of history and nature as concepts. the second phase of analysis, that of non-identification, consists of adomo's attempt to locate individual elements according to a conceptual architecture borrowed from freudian psychoanalysis and marxist theory. phenomenal forms here are not subsumed under conceptual categories but rather, the categories themselves are tailor made to fit and describe the form. in providing for such phenomenal priority, adomo is adhering to the dictates of a method which implies the reflexive connection between thought and being. conceptual categories do not identify social phenomena but merely provide for the possibility of interpretation. hence, the principle of nonidentification denotes the fact that respective phenomena provide an image of the concept, but are not identical to it. phenomena are instead understood as mimetic approximations while retaining their concrete referenial status. the dialectical method culminates in a transformative manner. the ideological or structural underpinnings ofthe phenomenal forms laid bear and situated within the context ofa larger marxist/freudian theoretic, the isolated pieces of adorno's analysis are now available for reconstruction according to the inner logic revealed in analysis. the roots of the contradiction are exposed and what appeared as one thing is discovered to be "essentially its opposite" (buck-morris, 1977:99). this transformative movement identifies the acme of the dialectical process of reconstruction in which adomo reassembles the isolated elements by mediatingthem in a way that they could become representational. the cryptic nature of the ciphers and their reconalternate routes, volume12, 1995 stitution into constellations of concepts provided by marx and freud allows for reinterpretedon and redeployment. *** from the foregoing it should already be clear that there are some obvious continuities between adomo and derrida. both insist on a rigorous reading and rereading of texts as the key to excavating their underlying structure. both are also informed by the assumption that the structure of philosophictexts, when pushed to extremes, actually culminates in contradiction. finally, both are substantially influenced by husserl in the critical development of thinking about the contradictions implied by the western philosophical project, hi derrida's case, however, the grounds for arriving at the claim for contradiction are substantially different from those arrived at by adorno. indeed, in adorno, a principle of non-identity between the concept and reality infonns his method, while derrida deploys thenotion of"differance" in his deconstruction. adorno identifies husserl's phenomenology as the apex ofidealist thought and engages in a vigorous critique ofthe transcendental associated with the epoche. derrida, however, is not entirely content to simply abandon the phenomenological commitment to a transcendental standpoint with its attendant protection from the perils of relativism and historicism(dews, 1987:5). as peter dews has convincingly argued, derrida discovers that language emerges as the "necessary condition" of all communication while writing his introduction to husserl's "origins of geometry". here it becomes clear that speech is not the expression of objects, but in fact "constitutes objects" and hence, it is speech itself which is the "concrete condition oftruth" (dews, 1987: 36). most significant to derrida, however, in husserl, is the realization that writing is the telos of speech. that is to say, that writing is the permanent form, independent of any specific subjectivity. derrida sees this finding as doubly contradictory both because writing itself is not transcendental, but rather is historical and transitory, and also, because speech as opposed to writing, is privileged as an intentional act that makes meaning present inthehusserlian schemata. this insight is into the paradoxical "status ofwriting that forms the basis of derrida's analysis ofphilosophical and literary texts"(dews, 1987: 36). the focus of deconstruction as an activity is to "discover the systematic incoherences within a text, rather than striving to reveal a unified meaning, a project referred to as deconstruction" (norris, 1987:46). deconstruction 'works to undo the idea, the ruling illusion of western metaphysics, that reason can somehow dispense with language and arrive at a pure, self authenticating truth or method' (norris, 1991 :34). though, philosophy strives to efface its textual or "written" character, the signs of that struggle are "there to be read in its blind spots or metaphor" (dews, 1987:38). deconstruction is thus an activity of reading that "remains closely tied to the texts it interrogates", and "can never be set up as a selfenclosed system of operative concepts"(norris, 1991:22). in fact, derrida more than adorno, maintains an extreme and exemplary scepticism when it comes to defining his own methodology. the "deconstructive leverage supplied by a term like writing depends on its resistance to any kind of settled or definitive meaning" (norris, 1 99 1 :54). not withstanding his own cautions about method, it is clear that derrida deploys the notion of differance to accomplish his analysis and at the same time develop an alternativeway ofproceeding. that is, anew mode ofthought that "suggests the impossibility of closing off differing and deferral of meaning and the possibility ofa potential ofan endlessness in interpretation" (norris, 1991:46). differanceas a mutablenotion derives from the saussure's description of language as a differential network wherein "there is no one to one relation between signifier and signified, the word as (spoken or written) and the concept it serves to evoke" (norris, 1 99 1 :46). derrida redeploys the distinction between parole and la langue but argues against sassaure's spoken as opposed to written priority. derrida argues that thi s is a propensity in western philosophy more generally, find in sassaure a "blindness,which does not recognize in language a speaking signifying system which exceeds all bounds of 'presence' and speech" (norris, 1 99 1 :49). derrida sees a whole metaphysics at work behind the privilege granted to speech in sassaure's methodology. as is well known in the contemporary context, derrida shows a whole plethora of dualisms which betray an implicit or explicit privileging of one term over the other. derrida formulates a specific and "shifting battery of terms which cannot be reduced to any single self-identical meaning" (dews, 1987:42) to develop a deconstructive analysis oftexts that denies this privileging even as it undercuts it. differance is perhaps the most well known of these, since it sets up a "disturbance at the level ofthe signifier (anomalous spelling) which graphically resists reduction" (norris, 1987:46). its sense remains suspended between the two french verbs "to differ" and "to defer " its derridian revolutionary significance consists in the extent to which the former is found to yield to the latter: meaning is always deferred. yet, the designation 'differance' also exceeds a solely strategic function and may identify derrida's own entrance into the metaphysical. indeed, as dews argues, the alternate routes, volume12, 1995 term 'differance' not only indicates derrida's attempt to pursue an alternative heading, it also represents 'the non-originary convergence of meaning and non-meaning that is, in fact, unthinkable' (dews 1987:5). whether and to what extent this really represents derrida's venture into the metaphysical, however, is a matter best left to another inquiry. the critical continuities and contrasts between derrida's deconstruction and the procedure of immanent critique developed by adomo can now be developed more clearly. principally there are five somewhat superficial similarities which bear observation and a number of key differences at the epistemological level which have quiet clear implications for both further study and critical theory. both thinkers are quite clearly engaged in an analysis of "apparent philosophical contraries" in an attempt to show how they implicitly or "surreptitiously depend on one another" (dews, 1 987: 48). this is evident in adorno's discussion of history/nature and subject/object. in dernda there are many examples: speech/writing and signifier/signified being principle. both thinkers are also concerned with "reversing the traditional order of these privileged dualisms is order to expose their false foundations" (dews, 1 987: 48). this characterization may be more accurate in the case of adorno, however, since he wants to reverse the order only to overturn the inequality between subject and object that is produced by bourgeois social relations. derrida, although engaged in this project, appears to see it as a stage, with the higher goal of calling into question the grounds for the distinction. adorno, in contrast, does not want to get rid ofthe subject/ object distinction but instead wants to direct attention to the fact that it is a product of a specific material conditions. both thinkers are also essentially opposed to identity based essentialism and the attempt in philosophy to transcend language and yield di rect knowledge ofthe transcendental signifier . adorno acknowledges that this goal is epitomized by hegel and derrida sees this in husserl yet again, they are different at this level as well . for adorno is quite clearly critical of identity at the epistemological level while derrida is critical of identity at the level of the subject. derrida primarily asserts an attack on the basis of knowing through subjective meaning. still, both locate the source of contradiction in western philosophy in the attempt to textually suppress or repress the meanings in an effort to produce truth claims and both insist on using the text itself as the ultimate material for analysis and disclosure, making a virtue of careful reading to discover what the text does not want to say in adorno's case, however, this technique derives from a commitment to rework and renew the categories of thought whereas in derrida it derives from a desire to show volatility of textual meaning. despite these commonalities in approach, there are significant differences between the two thinkers that have important consequences. namely, derrida's insistence on the "dissemination" of the text appears to have the "logical consequence...not [of the] volatization of meaning but its destruction" (dews, 1987:186), while adorno's approach to the relationship between facticity and concept does not end in such annihilation. meaning is achievable through analysis and reconstruction using the process of exact fantasy8 . derrida on the other hand, struggles with the impossibility of even provisional closure. adorno and derrida also differ substantially in respect to their assessment of experience. the former provides for a concept of experience that mediates between subject and object in such a way that "something" is given, but nothing is given "immediately". derrida's appeals to experience simply seem to imply "a lapse to a metaphysic of presence" (dews 1 987: 1 88). this has clear implications for the range of mobility and phenomena explored. adorno is free to analyze how material conditions work to determine and mediate experience without falling into a performative contradiction. the concomitant consequence is that derrida seems ultimately able to offer only a negative project for sociology, one which is appealing only in so far as it invites insight into the multiplicity of possible readings and contingencies implied in any reading. in contrast, adorno's approach takes us into theory as a practical activity. finally, as mentioned earlier, with derrida "thought seems more tied to a conception of consciousness" (dews, 1987:189) than with adorno's, despite the formers claims to the contrary. the basis for this allegation consists in the fact that adorno establishes a schemata of identity and nonidentity as interdependent. the supposition ofa non-identity between concept and facticity provides for an ongoing dynamic of development but is not fundamentally grounded in a correspondence between the subject and object. derrida, however ironically, appears to recapitulate the very hazard he is trying to avoid by making "differance" so preeminent as to culminate in absolute identity. it's omnipresence in the derridian scheme arguably negates its impact. there are, no doubt, other things to say about these two complex and thinkers, and much more might be made of their similarities and differences in a more expansive forum. for the present purposes, it still remains to turn alternate routes. volume12, 1995 to the question of adomo's anti-authontanan impulses and more specifically, contemporary debates about the requirements and possibilities for 'critical theory'. to revisit adomo today, in full knowledge ofthe vicissitudes that have accompanied the evolution of critical theory is to suggest not simply that something of the analytical acumen of the first generation of the frankfurt school has been lost in more recent incarnations of critical theory, but also a desire to regain it. if nothing else, the foregoing analysis has suggested that the currency of adorno's approach in the contemporary context consists at least in part in the fact that his text driven approach does not devolve into the totalizing abyss of endless analysis often identified with post-structuralism. yet, adorno's approach also seems to resist the tenor of totalizing ambitions often associated with communicative theory. the significance of this resistance becomes clear when one considers current debates about the nature and possibilities associated with the critique of reason. indeed, whereas derrida is alleged to have perpetrated a dissolution of reason by truncating the foundations for philosophical thought (habermas, 1987), habermas is frequently charged with having reinstitutedthe authoritarianism of reason by insisting on another metanarrative. both camps want to lay claim to forms of post-metaphysical thinking and both are vulnerable to critiques on the grounds of their totalizing tendencies. adomo offers a third way: one which is neither premised on the endless dissembling of the text nor the straining claims of the ideal speech situation, but on the simple claim that there is always, in principle, a non-identity between concept and reality. the importance of non-totalizing approaches to theorizing that still retain a commitment to truth claims cannot be understated, not simply because internecine struggles between postmodernists and modern perspectives are ultimately incommensurable, also because, apropos of adomo, the kinds of social, economic and political conditions that contribute to totalizing thinking and therefore an insurgence of irrationalism are equally apparent today. indeed as stephen crook notes on introducing a new collection of adomo's essays on culture. while paranoia has been consigned to the modem side of the modem/postmodern divide in at least one account, mere are grounds for regarding paranoia as linked to postmodemizing change the paranoid character of many fin de siecle concerns about health and the environment is really quite marked: our brains will turn into blancmange ifwe eat beef, power lines will give us cancer, we will be boiled by global warming or fried by ultra-violet light. of course, the age old adage holds that 'just because your paranoid it doesn't mean there are not out to get you ' and our fears may be well grounded. it is not the scientific basis ofhealth and environmental issues which is at issue here so much astheway in which they are generated byforms ofmedia coverage which might be regarded as encouraging paranoid thinking. (crook 1994:27) *** while the future of critcial theory remains uncertain, there has perhaps been too much celebration and too little debate among critical theorists about that the overall implications of the movement away from a epistemological grounding in the philosophy of the subject to one based in claims to an intersubjectively secured epistemological grounding. the totalizing tendencies associated with the communicative turn, however, are by now well known, and include not only the attempt to universalize kohlberbs theory of moral development but also the claim to an ideal speach situation. still, recent work in critical theory suggests the situation is changing even as awareness about the developing disparity between the first and second generations of critical theory continues to grow. recent work in critical theory undertake to overcome this tendency toward polarization between the first and second generations of the frankfurt school (dubiel, 1992: 5) while other works perpetrate a rigerous critique of the more grandiose claims of the theory of communicative action (mccarthy 1991: welmer 1986). behind each of these efforts there lingers adorno's silent, but nonetheless adamant lament that we ought to wonder about the dissolution ofthe subject that has come to chracterize our time, and not simply embrace it. notes 1. jameson develops a compelling critique of attempts to appropriate adorno as a contemporary proto-postmodernist. (jameson, 1990: 4-5), and the concluding sections (jameson, 1990: 1-3) of the work. 2. .although a number of works have excavated and explicated the connections between theory and method in adorno, this discussion draws heavily on susan buck morris' alternate routes, volume12, 1995 "origins of negative dialectics" which is clearly the best analysis to date on the methodological movements and theoretical influences that underlie adorno's approach. 3. on the question of an oeuvre, commentators differ. for example, the clear and pronounced continuities in adorno's work are enough to persuade jameson to propose a synchronous reading. jay, however, is content to take one essay as paradigmatic of his approach. adorno clearly saw his work as linked and continuous. however, it is unlikely that he would have been sympathetic to attempts to treat any part of his work as representative of the whole. indeed, as jameson notes (1990:5), adorno insisted in a brief exchange with benjamin that one must be thoroughly acquainted with the diversity of his work before any attempt at assessment. this might be seen as somewhat ironic, since adorno's approach to other texts is that the structure of the whole is contained in the particular. 4. buck morris states: "adomo saw no possibility of an argument coming to rest in unequivocal synthesis. he made negativity the hallmark of his dialectical procedure precisely because he believed that hegel had been wrong: reason and reality did not coincide. as with kant, adorno's antimonies remained anatomical, but this was due to the limits of reality rather than reason". 5. this discussion entitled "idealism as rage" is perhaps most informative about adorno's overall approach to philosophy. the spectre of nietzsche appears as adomo writes "the system is belly turned mind, and rage is the mark of each and every idealism it disfigures kant's humanism and refutes the aura of higher and nobler things" (adomo, 1973 : 22). 6. "it is this goal, the accomplishment of the liquidation of idealism from within, that adomo had in mind when he formulated the current demands of philosophy as necessitating a logic of disintegration" (morris: 69). 7. "the need to liquidate philosophy emerged out of the philosophical material at its present stage of development. adomo used terms of natural decay in his speech to describe idealist concepts and tenets of philosophy, treating them like material objects with a life and a death of their won, and thereby conveying there historical character and transitoriness". (morris, 70). again, this is an extensive discussion of in the first section of negative dialectics. 8. although i have not had space enough here to detail this method, i do not mean to imply that it is inconsequential in adorno's overall analysis. references adorno, theodor w. 1967 prisms. great britain: neville spearman limited. adorno, theodor w. 1973 negative dialectics. new york. 1978 minima moralia: reflections from damaged life. london: verso. 1 994 the stars down to earth and other essays on the irrational in culture. ed. and intro, by stephen crook. routledge: new york, best stephen and douglas kellner. 1 99 1 postmodern theory: critical interrogations. guildford press: new york. buck-morris, susan 1977 origins ofnegative dialectics. sussex: harvest press derrida, jacques. 1968 differance. chicago: chicago university press. 1984 writing and difference . chicago: chicago university press. dews, peter 1987 logics ofdisintegration: post-structuralist thought and the claims of critical theory. london: verso. habermas, jurgen. 1978 the philosophical discourses ofmodernity. massachusettes: m.i.t. debiel, helmut. 1992 "domination or emancipation? the debate over the heritage of critical theory". cultural-political inten'endons in the unfinished project of enlightenment. honneth et al. editors. massachusettes: mit. jameson, fredric. 1990 late marxism: adorno, or, the persistence of the dialectic. london: verso. jay, martin. 1984 adorno. cambridge: harvard university press. mccarthy, thomas. 1993 ideals and illusions: on reconstruction and deconstruction in contempoarary critical theory. massachusettes: mit. norris, christopher. 1991 deconstruction: theory and practice revised edition ny: routledge. ^) alternate routes, volume 12, 1995 tar, zoltan 1977 the frankfurt school: the critical theories ofmax horkheimer and theodor w. adorno. ny: john wiley & sons. zuidervaart, lambert. 1 994 adorno 'sa esthetic theory: the redemption ofillusion. massachusettes: mit. cheinin alternative from advocates to experts: feminist therapy with women in prison gillian balfour introduction women prisoners in canada have been considered "too few to count" or "more mad than bad" (adelberg and currie, 1987; 1993). as their numbers are relatively small in comparison to the numbers of incarcerated men, the experiences and needs of women prisoners have historically been overlooked. this changed, however, in 1988, when prisoner marlene moore hung herself in the infirmary of kingston's prison for women (at the time the only federal penitentiary in canada for women serving sentences of greater than two years). the coroner's inquest that followed became a forum for re-constructing the imagery of women in prison. the canadian association of elizabeth fry societies (caefs), an advocacy group for women in conflict with the law, became the first prison reform organization to achieve legal standing in the history of prisoner death inquests in canada. caefs believed the inquest was an important opportunity to articulate the connection between the victimization of women and their criminalization. "caefs felt a deep obligation to contribute to the public awareness of the desperate need for resources to help countless girls and women repair their damaged lives and escape the destructive cycle of abuse and imprisonment" (kershaw and lasovich, 1991). in the spring of 1989, the government of canada commissioned a task force on federally sentenced women to assess the needs of female prisoners confined to the prison for women and those under sentence in the community. the goal was to re-envision a correctional policy under the direction of a steering committee comprised of former inmates, prison officials and community groups (such as the elizabeth fry society, local sexual assault support centres and aboriginal women's groups). the task force report. creating choices volume j 5, j 999 35 alternate routes (government of canada, 1990), highlighted a prevalence of sexual and physical violence in the lives of women in prison, especially aboriginal women. the recommendations in the report called for sweeping changes, not the least of which was the closure of the prison itself and its replacement by a regionalized system of 'cottage-style campuses' and a healing lodge for aboriginal women. there was also a call for a profeminist approach to working with women in prison. mental health and vocational programming was to reflect empowerment, respect, dignity and choice (government of canada, 1990). the treatment of women in conflict with the law was to shift from a traditional punitive approach toward a woman-centered model that placed women's deviance in a context of victimization, poverty, and racism (shaw, 1990). feminist therapy remains one of the most important and unique components of this woman-centred correctional model. in 1992, i conducted a series of interviews with feminist counselors and psychologists working with federally sentenced women inside a women's prison (balfour, 1994). the intent of my research was to assess the principles and intervention strategies of feminist therapists working in a prison, as well as their understanding of why women come into conflict with the law. despite the findings of the task force that revealed women's experiences as being a constellation of poverty, racism and abuse, feminist therapists have focused almost exclusively on sexual abuse in developing their therapeutic approach. women in prison are understood to be survivors damaged by their sexual and physical abuse; women's experiences of poverty and racism are viewed largely in the context of their victimization. it is this understanding of women's lives that has guided the development of strategies for feminist therapeutic intervention with prisoners. in what follows, i provide a brief overview of the principles of feminist therapy which then serves as a context for examining the strategies and analytical frameworks used by feminist therapists in a carceral setting. the results of my research indicate there are four implications for using feminist therapy in prison. first, the feminist therapists i interviewed appear to recast women's prisons as 'healing places', thereby obscuring the deprivation of liberty that underpins the penal regime and the importance of abolition as a feminist principle (moffat, 1991; hannah-moffat, 1994; faith, 1993). i will draw from elizabeth comack's study of provincially sentenced women in manitoba wherein she argues 36 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative that, in fact, "prisoning" is part of women's abuse experiences, not separate from them (comack, 1996). second, the feminist therapists appear to minimize women's structural needs to combat poverty and racism, the importance of which has been previously recognized in feminist discourse (shaw et al, 1992). third, the feminist therapists seem to position themselves as experts on women's lives rather than as advocates. and fourth, the feminist therapists i interviewed do not appear to differentiate between the experiences of aboriginal women and non-aboriginal women when developing analytical frameworks or strategies for intervention. given that the incidence of sexual violence is highest amongst aboriginal women, i found this particularly striking. in my view, the shift towards a pro-feminist correctional model is an important one; however, as theorists and practitioners, we need to recognize the constellation of racism, poverty and abuse in the lives of women prisoners. feminist therapy: making the personal political in the early 1970's, women's experiences of rape, child abuse and battery, as well as their sexist treatment by police, hospitals and courts were brought into public view. women organized informal networks of shelters and safe houses for women in crisis and their children. shelters were run by volunteers (many themselves victims of sexual assault and battery) who provided emotional support along with emergency housing, clothing and food. within these shelters emerged a form of grassroots counseling that was built upon the experiences of the women themselves, and not upon expert knowledges such as psychology or psychiatry (rosewater and walker, 1990). this grassroots approach emphasized the importance of empowerment and consensual relationships in women's lives. women were regarded as the experts of their own experiences and were considered partners with their counselors in deciding the direction of their healing processes (greenspan, 1983). there are basic principles that underpin most feminist approaches to meeting the mental health needs of women. first, women's experiences are central to the healing process. second, groupwork is crucial for women to overcome isolation and to create supportive networks. third, the power within the counseling relationship must be shared. finally, women's behaviors are understood as forms of striving for health. feminist therapy is an "alternative to traditional therapy as it is based on a volume j 5, 1999 37 alternate routes presumption that acknowledges women's 'symptoms' are actually expressions of attempts to cope as well as they can" (mcgrath. 1992:29). problems such as substance abuse, depression, self-injury and eating disorders are understood as ways in which women resist exploitation or struggle to retain control, rather than as symptomatic of psycho-pathology (burstow, 1992). the most common strategy used by feminist counselors has been consciousness-raising groups. these groups replace traditional one-to-one therapeutic relationships and encourage women to make connections between their personal experiences, those of other women, and the social contexts of their lives (butler and wintram, 1992). consciousness-raising is a means of combining counseling with a political analysis of women's experiences (greenspan, 1983). from this recognition of 'the personal as political' comes the ability to resist sexism (burstow, 1992). the collaboration between feminist counselors and the women they assist is intended to ensure respect and mutually agreed upon goals. groupwork is an important means of achieving consensual relationships between counselors and their clients, as well as creating supportive networks amongst women. in groups, women work together to provide each other with practical solutions to problems of everyday life (brody, 1987). this approach differs from the traditional one-to-one approach where women are isolated from each other within a potentially exploitative relationship (brody, 1987; burstow, 1992; butler and wintram. 1992). groupwork is especially important for marginalized women who have a greater need for collective action and access to practical resources (kendall, 1993). given the grassroots beginnings of feminist therapy, where counselors work in partnership with women to empower them and to respect their decisions, what is the potential of feminist therapy inside a prison at present? can the principles of feminist therapy that clearly resist the principles of punishment and control, co-exist within a prison environment? if so, what are the implications of feminist therapy inside a prison for women? methodology in the summer of 1992, i conducted a qualitative study of feminist therapy with women in conflict with the law (balfour. 1994). the purpose of my study was to understand the principles, analytical frameworks and strategies of feminist therapy in general and. specifically, those of therapists 38 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative working with women in prison. the study was conducted during the implementation of the recommendations of creating choices (government of canada, 1990) and each of the therapists i interviewed was actively involved in this process. i was able to contact these women directly because of their high profile position and reputation in working with women in prison. 1 all of the women agreed to be interviewed because they believed it was important to raise awareness about feminist therapy. the study consisted of 10 open-ended interviews conducted with feminist therapists working with women in conflict with the law. four interviews were conducted with therapists working inside a women's prison. three interviews were conducted with therapists working at a shelter for battered women, and three interviews with therapists at a rape crisis centre. these interviews took place over a period of three weeks. each interview was approximately two hours in length. the interviews were structured around three general questions: (1) what are the principles of feminist therapy; (2) what are the analytical frameworks used to understand women's law breaking; and (3) what are the strategies for assisting women in prison. the interview data was analyzed using constant comparative analysis (glaser, 1992). i developed a thematic framework that captured how the feminist therapists understood women's behaviours of self-injury, addiction, violence and fraud, as well as the principles and strategies of their work with women in conflict with the law. this article focuses strictly upon the interviews conducted inside the women's prison. the questions i address, once again, are: 1) what is the potential of feminist therapy inside a prison; 2) can the principles of feminist therapy that clearly resist the principles of punishment and control co-exist within a prison environment; and 3) if so, what are the implications of feminist therapy inside a prison for women? my interview respondents included karen, a staff psychologist; anne, a substance abuse counselor; leslie, a psychologist working with women and fraud; and kim, a psychologist working with women who self-injure. 2 the feminist counselors i interviewed have developed a specialized body of knowledge and skills that integrate their separate and distinct experiences of working in psychiatric hospitals and in community-based counseling services. all of the women i interviewed stated that working with women in prison is often more difficult and complex than working volume 15, j 999 39 alternate routes in a community setting, such as a shelter or a crisis centre. this is due to what they perceive as prisoners' intensive need for counseling, the potential for violence, histories of long-standing cross-addictions, prior institutionalization, and severe personal traumas. although informal support services, such as those offered in the community, are important resources, all of the counselors i spoke with claimed that feminist therapy inside a prison must provide more sophisticated assistance. the limited notion of feminist therapy as unconditional support and validation is misleading in understanding the intensive, long-term counseling needs of some women offenders. in prison, analyses of and responses to women's behavior must move beyond unconditional validation and toward prisoners taking greater personal responsibility and therapists maintaining higher standards of professional accountability. as a result of this perspective, feminist counselors working with women in prison place greater emphasis on institutional standards of clinical training than on grassroots feminist principles. for example: sitting around and sharing the warm fuzzies for six weeks is no good and is grossly inadequate compared to what women's needs really are. from having worked in rape crisis centres i think that work of para-professional counselors, like volunteers on crisis lines who work from a feminist model providing support and validation and information is important. that's their role. but, i think unfortunately that is what has been seen to a large extent as feminist counseling. for me that type of counseling is very important and valuable, but that's very different from long term counseling (kim. quoted in balfour, 1994:71). aboriginal women want an elder to do the emotional work, as opposed to anyone else, but it is really hard to find an elder trained in psychology or social work, let alone come in on a regular basis no matter what their background is, or a woman. and then there is the problem of having her validated in the eyes of csc as a counselor (karen, quoted in balfour, 1994:73). 40 volume 15. 1999 chemin alternative understanding women in trouble traditional clinical models that used to explain criminality have focused primarily on the experiences of men (naffine, 1987; gelsthorpe and morris, 1990). instead of using these androcentric models to understand women's lives, feminist therapists utilize the psychology of women (herman, 1991; hoff, 1991) and battered women (kelly, 1988; blume, 1990) to explore women prisoners' behaviors, such as eating disorders, substance abuse, self-injury and depression (barrett and trepper, 1991; heney, 1990; slogan and leichner, 1991). the therapists 1 interviewed have developed an understanding of what brings women into conflict with the law that incorporates a clinical perspective within a feminist framework. their work is guided by feminist writings on women's mental health, as well as the psychological approaches they have studied. they state that some clinical models "tend to go hand in hand with feminist work by being down to earth and letting people do their own work" (leslie, quoted in balfour, 1994:76). i was struck by the ease with which the respondents integrated psychological theories into their work as feminist therapists. this convergence of psychology with feminist theory, in my view, produces a feminist positivism that combines the tools and legitimacy of a clinical model with the analysis of feminist theory. we certainly have gotten pretty good at a feminist analysis of what brings women into conflict with the law from a psychology perspective (karen, quoted in balfour. 1994:76 emphasis mine). throughout the interviews, counselors explained the needs and behavior of women in prison as ways of coping with the impact of sexual and physical abuse. for example, when speaking about her understanding of women who use violence, one of the counselors stated: my analysis may lead me to understand how (violent offenders) got to the point where they are buying into the male model of power; having power over someone ... physical power which is perhaps reminiscent of what their abusers did to them when the abuser had the power. what we're politically trying to say is that this is all about male viovolume 15, 1999 41 alternate routes lence, well we're talking about male violence translated into women enacting it, that's what it is. we just had to stretch the analysis a little farther [sic] (karen, quoted in balfour. 1994:76). in working with women who self-injure, karen contended that the purpose of women's behavior is to cope with or to reduce the tensions and anxieties of powerlessness in abusive situations. karen clearly saw a link between the experiences of childhood sexual abuse and self-injury: she argued that sexual abuse typically occurs in a relationship characterized by dependency and trust. children often blame themselves for the abuse to make sense of why this person would want to hurt them. this is also why women take responsibility for the actions of their abuser(s) and, in turn, blame themselves. as the abuse continues, victims perceive the inevitability of bad things happening that are beyond their control. this may lead to moments of extreme anxiety. for women in prison who have survived long-term physical and sexual abuse, certain prison conditions, such as lock downs and strip searches or confinement within isolation cells, can lead to self-injurious behavior to cope with the anxiety and tensions of imprisonment. self-injurious behaviour is, therefore, an attempt to control the timing and the extent of the anticipated pain which is seen as inevitable (karen, cited in balfour, 1994:79). all of the feminist counselors i interviewed also understood suicide as another attempt by women to regain control over their surroundings when all other means have failed to protect them from their memories of abuse. they drew a parallel between the experiences of childhood abuse and imprisonment in terms of the powerlessness of prisoners to control what happens to them. as karen explained: when you put them in situations like prisons where they feel powerless, their immediate response is going to be to change their own behavior to try and change what's happening to them. if that doesn't work they feel incredibly unsafe just like they did during the abuse. so often the only way they can get control is by having control over life and death. 42 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative so suicide may be a way of getting control and feeling safe (karen, quoted in balfour, 1994:83). leslie also argued that, for some women, committing fraud was similar to other coping strategies women used to manage their immediate sense of powerlessness and anxiety. women may have committed fraud to provide for others, to protect themselves from abandonment by loved ones, or to take care of themselves by providing things that make them feel safe and secure. leslie states: it is a coping strategy like slashing or alcohol use. we look at why a person chooses fraud as opposed to other ways. we start by framing it as a coping strategy, albeit unhealthy as it gets you into trouble with the law and ends you up in here (leslie, quoted in balfour, 1994:84). leslie believed that women who committed fraud may also suffer from dissociative disorders, such as multiple personality disorder (mpd). the phenomena of mpd and other dissociative disorders are referred to in feminist writings as 'splitting', 'fragmenting', 'numbing' or 'spacing out' (burstow, 1992). mpd is recognized as a skill that children develop from observing and surviving extreme acts of physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse (herman, 1991). this behavior enables children to control what they feel or remember. feminist therapists have long understood the role of mpd as a coping strategy for women who have experienced intensive abuse rather than as a personality disorder (burstow, 1992). while fraud offenders have presented behavior patterns indicative of mpd, sexual abuse amongst this group of offenders is lower than the rest of the prison population. according to leslie, some of her clients stated that they could not remember committing the offense and appeared unaware of the goods that they had shoplifted or purchased with bad cheques. although this is a new and important development in understanding women who commit fraud, it does not necessarily indicate the existence of mpd. nonetheless, leslie assessed each woman who entered counseling for experiences of dissociation. volume 15, j 999 43 alternate routes 1 have a few clients who are very dissociative and who are multiples, presumably from being a victim of child sexual abuse. the fraud in that case seemed to be a way making the 'alters' feel better (leslie, quoted in balfour, 1994:82). for some women, however, leslie and kim acknowledged that fraud seemed to be a truly instrumental act for financial gain, to supply a drug habit, or simply to enjoy the good life. they believed that the women sought to gain power and control of others through materialist means, as well as to bolster their own self-confidence. societal messages directed toward women as consumers often played an important role in influencing these value systems. some of them see more immediate triggers, like how to get ahead. we look a lot at societal messages that women get. we look at some realistic issues like, women and poverty, women and economics, the fact that women don't just have clearly the same access (as men) to money and power. and these women are clearly going out after money in terms of power and security (leslie, quoted in balfour, 1994:84). it is interesting to note that this materialist analysis of why women commit fraud was only mentioned as an afterthought. clearly, counselors isolated child abuse in their understanding of women's behaviors; issues of poverty and racism were obscured from view. anne, the counselor who works with women with addiction problems, consistently identified substance abuse as the women's way of coping with experiences of sexual or physical abuse. she noted that problems with addiction are very different for women than for men. anne explained that some of these gendered differences include the etiology of women's addictions, how it affects their relationships with others and the stigma attached to women addicts. she maintained that these experiences are profoundly different from men's experiences of addiction. women's lives are structured differently. for example, we know that women's partners are more likely to leave them if they have a drug problem, whereas, women are more likely 44 volume 15. 1999 chemin alternative to stay with them. so women are more inclined to have less support in their lives. women whose partners are with them are more likely to have drug problems as well (anne, quoted in balfour, 1994:85). from anne's perspective as a feminist counselor, a woman's addiction is linked with her history of victimization, as well as other mental health problems. for example, depression is commonly treated with prescription drugs which may lead to cross-addictions with alcohol. furthermore, women who are chemically dependent are often without support, as their male partners regularly leave them. in contrast, women are more likely to stay with their addicted partner. a woman's history of victimization is also important in understanding the reasons for her addiction and its severity. women who are survivors of childhood abuse tend to have an earlier age of onset of substance abuse than do those who were not abused as children (turnball and gomberg, 1995). my interview with anne supports this: with the women i see in prison, first of all they are heavy drug users, and very chronic users. usually their problems start back at a very early age. most of the women are survivors of some kind of multiple victimizations (anne, quoted in balfour, 1994:86). victims are more likely to have used more drugs from more categories of drugs. women who are classified as non-victims either use depressants or stimulants, whereas, survivors would use both (ibid). from the perspectives of all of the counselors i interviewed, experiences of childhood abuse (emotional, physical and sexual) were clearly a part of what brought women into conflict with the law. self-injury, suicide, fraud, violence, and substance abuse were all understood as coping strategies that women had developed throughout their lives to manage the lack of control, anger, and anxiety that stem from their experiences of abuse. by re-casting women's actions as health-seeking rather than volume 15, 1999 45 alternate routes pathological behavior, the feminist therapists worked towards creating alternative, less harmful coping strategies that empowered women. therapeutic approaches a prisoner's emotional crisis, such as depression and/or anxiety, is understood by the counselors i spoke with as stemming from a lack of options and information available to prisoners. therefore, they felt it was important to assist prisoners in gaining access to resources so they could take control of difficult situations. advocacy and problem solving were identified as an important part of working from a feminist perspective in the prison. leslie states: i concentrate a lot on what they can do to get their power back. i think just being in this institution women just don't have the power or control over their lives as do you or i. i think some of these situations trigger that for them. if i can give them some sense of power and control... (leslie, quoted in balfour, 1994:105). being realistic of course because there are often times no great solutions for these women. for example, if her appeal is turned down on a life sentence, be realistic about it. you have to help her find real hope. like in working with people who are suicidal in here, it's realistically hopeless. i think the important thing is to validate that it is hopeless rather than minimize it (ibid). crisis intervention involves assisting women in coping with their imprisonment as well as their individual mental health needs. the aim is to empower women by encouraging self-care strategies that are possible in a prison world of segregation cells and strip searches. as one counselor stated, this approach to working with prisoners is clearly different from the conventional correctional model, which is more punitive than empowering. where i take exceptions to traditional approaches is that they are premised on taking control away from prisoners. 46 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative "you're suicidal that means you are dangerous to yourself so we are going to put you in a safe place and strip you of everything and somehow that is going to make you feel better." it may help some people, i only work with women and survivors. what it does for them is that it makes them feel even more out of control, which makes them feel even more suicidal. probably the difference in my work when i am dealing with someone suicidal is that ultimately i may take control, but not right away. i might be forced to keep them alive (karen, quoted in balfour, 1994: 106 ). (i) one-to-one counseling one-to-one counseling was the most frequently used therapeutic approach in the prison. at the time of these interviews, the counselors i spoke with claimed that 70% of the prisoners were being seen by a therapist. in a prison setting, inmates are often mistrustful of each other and are unwilling to participate in a group counseling. prisoner concerns over the counselors' inability to provide complete confidentiality limits the counseling work to a more individualized approach similar to traditional therapeutic relationships. it is generally our view that most of the women's needs are for individual, confidential , safe, one-to-one counseling. it is preferred over groupwork because prisoners are unable to leave the group dynamic behind. living in a generalized relationship with other prisoners allows them no truly safe place (leslie, quoted in balfour, 1994:107). one-to-one counseling with women in prison includes assisting prisoners in coping with their incarceration and with problems relating to their offenses. counselors are primarily responsible for improving a woman's chance of success in the community and helping her to avoid re-offending. however, it is sometimes difficult to find the balance between a prisoner's immediate need to cope with her experiences of imprisonment and the longer-term, often unacknowledged, need to address the underlying issues that brought her into conflict with the law. as one counselor explained, she often faces having to impose boundaries on how much time she can spend addressing prison life. she argued volume 15, 1999 47 alternate routes that for some women, prison stressors become an effective means for avoiding the deeper, more painful issues of the past. we only do that (therapeutic work like dealing with abuse memories) 30-40 percent of the time and the rest of it is institutional shit. which is real for them and it is valid, and i cannot imagine dealing with it myself. on the other hand, it is really tempting to say "look i am here as a psychologist to work on your mental health, i cannot spend all my time helping you with things like the fact that your kid is in hospital in another province." but then i think that if that was my child, that would occupy my time too. so i think we run all this practical assistance so they can get to the emotional shit (leslie, quoted in balfour, 1994:108). i also feel that prison stuff is being used to avoid doing (memory) work because it is so hard to think back on the abuse. i will push women to find out why these daily hassles are becoming so overwhelming. so i make a deal that i will listen to them problem-solve and bitch, but that is not all i do. i will expect more and will be more demanding {ibid). clearly, the therapists believed that the real source of women's difficulties in prison flowed from their childhood experiences of sexual and physical abuse. in my view, therapists were setting the agenda for the women they counseled, contrary to the principles of feminist therapy. it appeared throughout my interviews that "institutional shit" was seen as a way for prisoners not to deal with memories of the past. it is here that feminist therapy appears to have shifted from advocacy to control. it should be noted, however, that some attempts at building interdependency amongst women were being made in programs such as peer support training and groupwork for women convicted of fraud. peer support training (pst) is intended to educate prisoners in how to assist each other in coping with stressful realities of prison life, such as a lock down or the loss of an appeal. the goal is very similar to that of consciousness-raising group work discussed earlier in that women provide each other with the practical means to manage their own problems 48 volume 15. 1 999 chemin alternative and gain credibility in their abilities to cope independently (pollack, 1993). as stated by one of the therapists i spoke with. it's a way of giving women more options and to me options equal control. supposedly peer support would fit if a woman was suicidal, instead of her going to 'segregation' it would be reasonable that a peer support team member could sit with her or spend the night with her (kim, quoted in balfour, 1994:103). (it) groupwork groupwork is designed to encourage women to connect their own experiences with those of other women, and to locate their experiences within the social context of women's historical lack of economic and political power (kendall, 1993). although the positive effects of groupwork are recognized by the counselors working inside the women's prison, it is a difficult program to implement because of prison protocol and security. in many instances, women are purposefully segregated from one another for a variety of reasons: security classifications, offenses committed and gang affiliations. therefore, when therapy groups are available to prisoners, they are limited in what they can accomplish. however, research indicates a high degree of satisfaction with groupwork, especially those that are inmate-driven and those that include prison staff who gain a better understanding of prisoner experiences and needs to adjust to prison life (smolick, 1992). one of the few counseling groups in the prison was for women convicted of fraud. from the perspective of the counselors, this group was possible because the women themselves were more articulate and better able to work with each other in establishing rules of confidentiality than were other offenders. the aim of the group was for women to become more aware of what puts them at risk to re-offend and a clearer sense of how to prevent that from happening in the future. these insights and new coping skills were developed through exercises such as journal writing. however, although women convicted of fraud clearly stated that their behavior was rooted in the need to feel powerful and smart, or the need to "take care of things", one of the counselors i spoke with, leslie, volume 15, 1999 49 alternate routes still worked within the analytical framework of child abuse to explain women's behavior. the bottom line is basically trying to help women decide what function fraud fills for them and help them find alternative ways to deal with whatever those thoughts and feelings are. that requires making the connection back to childhood (leslie quoted in balfour, 1994:103 emphasis mine). in my opinion, one of the most important contributions made by feminist counselors working with women in prison is their understanding of and respect for the experience of incarceration. i believe that the issue of empowerment through advocacy and support for prisoners, along with a clearer understanding of the prison experience as something to be survived, is a very significant shift in how we approach mental health programming in prisons. as stated by kathleen kendall, the prison environment can exacerbate and replicate women's traumatic experiences. prisons most often remove whatever autonomy women have left by imposing rigorous control over their day to day existence. the control exercised with prisons, coupled with arbitrary enforcement and application of rules, may replicate the powerlessness and chaotic unpredictability of abuse (1993:19.) british criminologist mary eaton (1993) describes this as being 'taken down': where one's space and time and actions are controlled and defined by others. in canada, elizabeth comack ( 1996) understands this to be the process of 'prisoning'. comack argues that prisons cannot enable women to resolve the troubles that brought them into conflict with the law. she cautions against understanding prisons as a place for women to heal, but rather to consider "imprisonment as a deepening of women's oppression" (comack. 1996:126). if women in prison are successful in resolving some of the troubles in their lives, "it is in large part in spite of, rather than because of their experience of confinement" (ibid, 1996:145). central to comack's understanding of women in prison is their shared experience of incarceration: fear, loneliness, and hopeless50 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative ness. "for many women the experience of prisoning becomes just one more thing they have to deal with in the process of overcoming the different problems, conflicts, and dilemmas they have encountered in their lives" (ibid, 1996: 140). the voices of women in comack's study of portage jail for women in manitoba, bring to light an uncomfortable dilemma: prison is the only place that many women are safe from violence and the street, and the first time many have received access to resources such as health care, education, counseling and even paid work. for some aboriginal women, coming to prison meant they were exposed to their culture for the first time. in my view, this does not mean that we as feminists need to work harder to make prisons for women more effective 'healing' places but, rather, we need to take responsibility for the conditions of women's lives outside the prison walls. the focus on prisons for women as places of healing and recovery raises some serious concerns. one of the implications of focusing on the victimization of women has been the justification of evoking a criminal justice response (incarceration) as a solution to women's troubled lives. karlene faith (1993) refers to this as the "victimization-criminalization continuum" and reminds us that feminist principles of empowerment are the "antithesis of female-victim identity" ( 1993: 108). faith states that: [a]lthough women who get into trouble with the law have higher rates of prior victimization than women at large, they constitute a very small percentage of the totals of women who have been physically, sexually, and psychologically assaulted (ibid, 1993:107). faith's work is instructive here as she locates the linkage between women's victimization and their criminalization as a social practice rooted in power relations of race and class. the 'victimization-criminalization continuum' is another face of the social control of "unruly women" (ibid, 1993). the prevalence of sexual and physical violence against women in the larger community is beginning to have a meaningful impact on how we understand men and women who come into conflict with the law. the national survey on violence against women (johnson and sacco. 1993) indicates that 35 percent of women over the age of 18 experience volume 15. 1 999 51 alternate routes some type of threat or actual violence from an intimate partner or family member. clearly women and children are at risk. although male prison populations report high rates of childhood abuse, "the incidence rates, alarmingly young ages of abuse, severity of violence used, length of abuse, multiple victimization, and the high percentage of incest survivors distinguish women prisoners from men" (karen, quoted in balfour, 1994: 85). 3 one of the counselors i spoke with clearly stated that the life histories of women in prison closely paralleled those of women in the broader community; they did not equate with the histories of men in prison. 'the experiences of rape, re-victimization, and domestic violence are a wholly female experience" (ibid). however, in my view, this perspective obscures the social context of violence against women, most notably poverty and racism. as margaret shaw (1992) points out, the gendered realities of men and women are differentiated by their vulnerability to violence. moreover, this vulnerability is contoured by child care responsibilities, economic dependency, isolation, and limited access to work experience or education. this dimension is missing from how feminist therapists working with women in prison understand the needs of their clients. within the child abuse analytical framework preferred by most of the counselors i interviewed, there was a noticeable lack of attention paid to the depth of abuse that some women prisoners have experienced. author, yvonne johnson (johnson and weibe, 1998), convicted of first degree murder for killing a man she feared had molested her child, survived unspeakable horrors as a child herself. johnson, a cree woman, connects her experiences of abuse to the cultural genocide of aboriginal peoples. the unique position of aboriginal women in our culture and within our prison system was also absent from my discussions with feminist therapists working inside the prison. conclusion the aim of this paper was to understand the principles of feminist therapy at they apply to women in prison and how feminist therapists in prison make sense of the lives of the women they seek to assist. in my view, the shift in canadian correctional policy towards a pro-feminist model presents some hopeful yet worrisome implications. the principles 52 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative of feminist therapy flow from the importance of helping women understand that the difficulties in their lives are uniquely gendered: women are at risk for poverty, isolation and violence. women's problems with addiction, anxiety and depression are all expressions of a desire to survive these social realities. women in prison, who often have survived unspeakable violence and neglect, must also survive the experience of "prisoning" (comack, 1996). the imprisonment of women can be seen as yet another dimension of women's abuse, to the extent that they are powerless to control their lives (comack. 1996). feminist therapy stresses the importance of women taking responsibility for their actions as a means of empowering women to take control of their lives. all of the therapists i spoke with had a clear understanding of the impact of imprisonment on women, and the need to provide support rather than punishment. in my view, this is the gift of feminist therapy: with its capacity to understand women's need for empowerment feminist therapy can profoundly affect correctional policy. however, the strategies of feminist therapists inside the prison force us to reconsider the cost of working within a carceral setting. as i have argued, the blurring of clinical models with feminist theory has created a discourse on women's needs that focuses almost exclusively on their victimization and recasts prisons as places of healing, rather than control. i believe that our work with women in prison must focus on the constellation of racism, poverty and violence that shapes women's lives. notes 1 . all of the participants in this study were women. 2. all of my research participants are identified here by a pseudonym to ensure their anonymity. 3. surveys of federally sentenced men have indicated that 34% of prisoners have been physically and/or sexually assaulted (dutton and hart, 1991). increasingly, violent male offenders are being characterized as a group who have experienced and witnessed episodes of family violence directed towards women, siblings and/or themselves (taylor and allsnis. 1994). volume 15, 1999 53 alternate routes references adelberg, e and c. currie (eds.) 1987 too few to count: canadian women in conflict with the law. vancouver: press gang publishers. adelberg. e and c. currie (eds.) 1993 in conflict with the law: women and the canadian criminal justice system. vancouver: press gang publishers. balfour, g 1994 a qualitative study of feminist therapy at kingston 's prison for women. unpublished master's thesis. university of ottawa. barrett. j. and t. trepper. 1991 "treating women drug abusers who were victims of childhood sexual abuse." pp. 127-146. in c. bepko (ed.). feminism and addiction. new york: hawthorne press. blume, s. 1990 secret survivors: uncovering incest and its aftereffects in women. new york: ballantyne books. brody. cm. 1987 women's therapy groups: paradigms of feminist treatment. new york: springer publishing compacy. burstow, bonnie 1992 radical feminist therapy: working in the context of violence. newbury park: sage publications. butler, s. and c. wintram. 1992 feminist groupwork. london: sage publications. comack, elizabeth 1996 women in trouble. halifax: femwood publishing. dutton. d. and hart, s.d 1991 "risk markers for family violence in a federally incarcerated population." international journal oflaw and psychiatry. 15:101-112. 54 volume 15. 1999 chetnin alternative eaton m 1993 women after prison. buckingham: open university press. faith, k 1993 unruly women: the politics of resistance and confinement. vancouver: press gang publishers. gelsthorpe, l. and a. morris. (eds.) 1990 feminist perspectives in criminology. philadelphia: open university press. glaser, b 1992 basics of grounded theory analysis: emergence vs forcing. mill valley.ca: sociology press. government of canada 1990 creating choices. ottawa: correctional services of canada. greenspan, m. 1983 a new approach to women and therapy. new york: mcgraw hill. hannah-moffat, k 1991 creating choices or repeating history: canadian female offenders and correctional reform." social justice. 18(3): 184-203. 1994 unintended consequences of feminism and prison reform." forum. 6(1):7-10. heney, j 1990 report on self-injurious behavior in the kingston prison for women. ottawa: correctional services of canada. hoff, la. 1991 battered women as survivors. london: routledge. herman, judith, l. \99ltrauma and recovery, the aftermath of violence: from domestic abuse to political terror. usa: basic books. 1993 "researching violence against women: statistics canada national survey." canadian journal of criminology, 37(3):28 1-304. volume 15, 1999 55 alternate routes johnson, y. and r. weibe 1993 a stolen life: the journey of cree woman. toronto: alfred a knopf canada. kelly, l 1988 surviving sexual violence. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. 1991 rock-a-bye baby: a death behind bars. toronto: mcclelland and stewart. kendall. k \993literature review of therapeutic services for women in prison. ottawa: correctional services of canada. mcgrath. a. 1992 "mental health services for women." healthsharing. spring/summer. naffine, n 1987female crime: the construction of women in criminology. boston: allen & unwin pollack, s. 1993 "opening a window on a very dark day: a program evaluation of the peer support team at the kingston prison for women. unpublished master's thesis. carleton university school of social work. rosewater, l. and walker, l. 1989 handbook of feminist therapy: women's issues in psychotherapy. new york: springer publishing company. 1990 survey of federally sentenced women: report on the task force on federally sentenced women on the prison survey. ottawa: ministry of solicitor general canada. user report no. 1991-4. shaw. m. with k. rodgers, l. s. thomas and l. tamarack. 1992 paying the price: federally sentenced women in context. ottawa: ministry of solicitor general, secretariat. corrections branch. slogan. g. and p. leichner 1990 "is there a relationship between sexual abuse and fating disorders. '" canadian journal of psychiatry. 3 1 .656-661 . 56 volume j 5, 1999 chemin alternative smolick, s. 1991 the family violence program. bedford hills correctional facility. new york state. taylor j. and c alksnis 1992 the impact of experiencing and witnessing family violence during childhood: child and adult behavioral outcomes. ottawa: correctional services of canada. turnball, j. and e. gomberg 1993 "structure of depression in alcoholic women." journal of studies on alcohol. 51:148-155. volume 15, 1999 57 digitized by the internet archive in 2011 with funding from carleton university, department of sociology & anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesj10alte alterna te routes a journal of critical social research presentation and editorial policy alternate routes is a refereed multi-disciplinary journal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university in ottawa. our mandate is to make alternate routes a forum for debate and exchange among graduate students throughout the country and we are therefore interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or co-authored with faculty), regardless of their university affiliation. the editorial emphasis is on the publication of critical and provocative analyses of theoretical and substantive issues which clearly have relevance for progressive political intervention. although we welcome papers on a broad range of topics, members of the editorial board work within a feminist and marxist tradition. therefore, we encourage submissions which advance or challenge questions and contemporary issues raised by these two broadly defined perspectives. we also welcome responses to and reviews of recent publications. editorial collective bente baklid, behnam behnia, colin buchanan, wendy lamer, brigitte malenfant, valerie norlen, margaret phillips, dave robinson, diane smithers, teresa van den boogaard. editorial board behnam behnia, colin buchanan, wendy larner, margaret phillips, dave robinson, diane smithers. the editors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the carleton university community: the department of sociology and anthropology and its chairperson, stephen richer; the dean of graduate studies and research, j.w. apsimon. we wish to thank all the anonymous reviewers. the board would like to extend a special note of thanks to david hubka. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research is indexed in: sociological abstracts; the left index. © 1993 alternate routes, volume 10 (date of issue: may 1993) call for papers alternate routes is seeking submissions for volume 11, 1994. we are interested in receiving interdisciplinary analyses on a wide range of theoretical and substantive issues within the social sciences. manuscripts will be anonymously reviewed by faculty members from academic institutions across the country. please use the american psychological association (apa) referencing system and keep endnotes to a minimum. papers should be submitted double-spaced and in triplicate. floppy disks formatted in wordperfect 5.1 or ascii are required for papers accepted for publication. we also welcome responses to and reviews of recent publications, book reviews, and discussions of work-in-progress. responses to this invitation to contribute should be postmarked no later than 29 october 1993 a iternate routes est a la recherche d'articles pour sa publication de 1994, numero 11. nous sommes interesses a recevoir des analyses interdisciplinaires portant sur un vaste eventail de questions theoriques et substantives propres aux sciences sociales. les manuscrits seront critiques de facon anonyme par des professeurs de diverses institutions academiques du pays. nous vous invitons a suivre le system e de reference de ramerican psychological association (apa) et a limiter la quantite des notes de fin de document autant que possible. les articles devraient etre presentes en format double interligne et en trois copies. une disquette devrait accompagner le document et contenir le texte sur logiciel wordperfect 5.1 ou en codes ascii. nous apprecierions par ailleurs recevoir des critiques des recentes publications, comptes rendus et travaux en cours. les reponscs a cette invitation devraient etre postees au plus tard ic 29 octobrc 1993 (le cachet de la poste en faisant foi). address to/envoyez a: alternate routes department of sociology and anthropology carleton university colonel by drive ottawa, ontario k1s.5b6 alterna te routes a journal of critical social research volume 10, 1993 communications and democracy introduction communications and democracy 5 interview communication, culture and power: an interview with vincent mosco papers vanda rideout telecommunication policy for whom? an analysis of recent crtc decisions 27 david c. robinson taking 'freedom of the press' seriously: critical media sociology and the challenge of democracy 57 behnam behnia reflections on the reproduction of dictatorship in iran: communication and dictatorship 85 research in brief ian chunn canons, publishers, and literary nationalism: toward a sociological perspective 113 review david s. hubka collins, richard. culture, communication and national identity: the case of canadian television. (toronto: university of toronto press, 1990) 121 newsforum seminar in canadian communication policy: publics. markets, and the state 124 introduction: communications and democracy communication studies in canada is an interdisciplinary field which encompasses diverse theoretical traditions and substantive problems. while it has drawn extensively upon traditions outside of the social sciences, historically many sociologists, such as harold innis, have made valuable contributions to communication research. current research continues to range over a wide arena, including media studies, cultural studies, political economy, policy research, and feminist studies. this particular issue of alternate routes focuses on a major theme within contemporary discussions: the issue of communication and democracy. professor vincent mosco is a sociologist who plays a leading role in canadian communication studies. in february 1993, he agreed to speak with the editorial board ofa iternate routes about his recent work. while dr. mosco's expertise is in the political economy of communications, the breadth and depth of his interests are apparent in this interview in which he explores contemporary debates over the nature of capitalist society, the relationships between cultural studies and political economy in communication studies, and the implications of globalization, deregulation, and privatization in the communication industries. mosco's discussion highlights the profound theoretical and empirical challenges that scholars of communications face in the 1990s. vanda rideout, a doctoral candidate at carleton university and a former employee of northern telecom canada ltd., focuses more specifically on recent changes in telecommunications policy. using the poulantzian notion of 'power bloc', she shows that the recent shifts in canadian telecommunications policy toward allowing more competition in key specialized services and long distance calling, works in favour of a hegemonic fraction consisting of the major financial institutions and large business users. the shift in policy means that increasing numbers of telecommunications services are no longer interpreted as requiring supervision and regulation in the public interest, but as requiring regulation to manage market forces. consequently, she argues, the public service concept of universality is threatened and the democratic process in telecommunications eroded. david robinson, also a doctoral candidate at carleton university, addresses the issue of democracy in terms of freedom of the press. his review suggests that news production studies have tended to either leave unelaborated a practical strategy for the development of a socialist and democratic news media, or have proposed state administered solutions to offset market censorship. recognizing the abuses of state control, however. robinson proposes that socialists need to reconsider the democratic claims of writers like tonnies, dewey, and habermas and begin to think about ways of extending public communications systems beyond the state and the market. behnam behnia. a doctoral student from carleton university, studies the impact of dictatorship on the conditions of communication. he considers the following question: why did iranians, who during the 1979 revolution demanded freedom and democracy, support the growth of another kind of dictatorship'.' he suggests that dictatorship, by abolishing democratic rights, undermines the conditions of communication. this, in turn, influences the institutions and social relationships through which members socially interact. in iran 'distorted communication' led iranians to form small, informal selective groups. in these groups the corporate rather than the universal perspective of democracy was likely to develop. democracy came to consist of an ensemble of rules that protected the immediate interests of that particular group. corporate democracy among iranians, behnia argues, is one of the factors that led to the establishment of the new dictatorship. communication, culture and power: an interview with vincent mosco vincent mosco is one of the foremost communication scholars specializing in the area of political economy. he is professor in the school of journalism and mass communication at carleton university and holds a research position with the program on information resources policy at harvard where in 1975 he received the ph.d. in sociology. professor mosco is the author of three books and editor or coeditor of seven books on the political economy of the mass media, broadcasting and telecommunication policy, the social impacts of computers and information technology, and popular culture. his most recent are the political economy of information (edited with janet wasko, university of wisconsin press, 1988), the pay-per society (ablex and garamond, 1989), democratic communications in the information age (edited with janet wasko, ablex and garamond, 1992), and illuminating the blindspots: essays honoring dallas smythe (edited with janet wasko and manjunath pendakur, ablex, 1993). he has also published over sixty scholarly articles, reports and book chapters. professor mosco is a founding member of the union for democratic communication and is currently president of the political economy section of the international association for mass communication research and a member of the editorial boards of academic journals in canada, the u.s., england, and spain. his current research projects include the political economy of communication, a book that addresses the theoretical foundations of the field and its relationship to economics, policy studies, and cultural studies; and an analysis of spatial and temporal transformations brought about by the application of computer communication in business and government. a iternate routes: one of the more interesting aspects of your recent work has been your attempt to 'demystify' terms like 'post-industrial society' and the 'information age'. instead you propose that a much more apt description of contemporary social formations is the 'pay-per society'. what exactly do you intend to capture with this phrase? how does it differ from the 'information age' or 'post-industrial society'? vincent mosco: as a bit of background, i'm a sociologist with a strong interest in communication. one of the things i've tried to do over the alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 alternate routes, volume 10. 1993 years is to give communication studies a stronger theoretical grounding. the field has tended to draw more from psychology and some elements of pluralist political science, a far from rigorous treatment. what i like about communication studies is that it raises questions that are central to the political economy of our culture as it is constituted and changing. my work tries to construct an analysis that is central to both the state of our theoretical understanding and to practical consciousness and common sense. my last book, the pay-per society, provided a touchstone notion for understanding the transformations that communication and information technology are bringing about in a colloquial expression that i seem to hear more and more in common discourse: references to 'pay-per-view' television, 'pay-per-call' in the telephone business, 'pay-per-keystroke' in the workplace. advertisers refer to 'pay-per-body' when they deliver audiences to those who pay the bill. my goal was to develop a critique of what had become standard conceptions of postindustrialism and the information age by concentrating on this notion of 'pay-per'. the idea itself refers more analytically to the ability of the new technologies to measure and to monitor information transactions and to package and repackage communication and information products on a scale heretofore considered at least difficult if not impossible. for example, the commercial television broadcasting industry was originally based on delivering audiences to advertisers. today it is based on a pay-per-month charge with cable television, pay-per-channel with specialty channels and is now moving toward a full pay-per-view system. in my thinking, this is a deepening and extension of the commodification of information, communication, and of the audiences that attend to programs. this lies at the heart of developments in the area that are not captured by notions like 'information age' and 'postindustrialism'. after all, what do we mean by 'the information age"? does it mean that wc have more information than ever before? well, one might debate that, particularly when faced with the question, "who is 'we'" ? yes, some have more, but some have less. similar problems arise with 'post-industrialism'. i was a student of daniel bell, so i'm intimately familiar with this notion. in fact, he sparked my interest in looking at the communication and information technologies but when you examine critically the empirical work that mosco/interview led to the notion of post-industrialism, you realize how wanting the term is. for example, the major piece of research that led to the general use of the term 'post-industrialism' was a doctoral thesis completed at stanford university by mark porat on the information economy. what he did was amass data on occupational shifts in american society. he looked at the growth of what he referred to as an 'information sector'. however, when you look in detail at the actual occupations that comprise that sector you find lumped together in the same category the chief executive officers of transnational businesses and check-out counter clerks! both are called 'knowledge-workers' or information workers. it seems to me that a term used to capture such fundamentally different power relations is of limited value. consequently, it is more important to focus on the ways in which the new technologies influence the shape and the direction of capitalism. we need to look at how the technologies deepen and extend social relations organized largely around commodification and control. this process is what i see constituting a 'pay-per society'. ar: another descriptive phrase that has emerged in communications studies and other disciplines of late is 'post-fordism', a term associated with a very diverse range of work. it loosely represents the view put forth by lash and urry (1987), piore and sabel (1984), the french 'regulation school', and others that a new 'regime of accumulation' has emerged, one radically different from the standardized mass production characteristic of fordism. the globalization of capital, a disaggregation of the mass consumer market into segmented niches, a decentralization and automation of the workplace, and a shift from industrial production toward service industries are, it is claimed, moving us into a decentralized, diversified, and differentiated social universe. post-fordist societies are more open, fluid, pluralistic and fragmented. in the case of the film industry, for example, christopherson and storper (1989) have argued that the major studios are no longer the giant vertically integrated oligopolies of hollywood's golden age; today, they are characterized by product differentiation, vertical disintegration, and flexible specialization. similar arguments have been made about the broadcasting and publishing industries. however, this seems to run counter to some of your observations about the increasing concentration of corporate power and the homogenization of cultural production. how do you assess postalternate routes, volume 10, 1993 fordism? does it, in your mind, represent an adequate account of the forces shaping the contemporary cultural industries? or is it just another version of the post-industrial society thesis? vm: you are right to suggest that there is a vast literature in the area broadlv defined as post-fordism. there are also many differences within that literature. with that said, my reading of post-fordism is that it has tended to focus on an element of capitalism that no one appreciated more than marx: capitalism is remarkably dynamic, constantly transforming itself to advance accumulation, its fundamental raison d'etre. my sense is that there is a tendency within this point of view to hold onto one element of the dynamic — the tendency to deconstitution, deconcentration, and diversification. i don't want to suggest simplistic dichotomies or promote mechanistic thinking, but there is a tendency to save for the background tendencies to concentration, transnationalization, and a deepening of the accumulation process through the growth of a more controlled international division of labour, that leaves the postfordist view wanting. when you look specifically at the media industry, the christopherson and storper example is a good one. they suggest, and quite rightfully, that the media business, specifically the film industry, is very much bound up with dynamic processes of capitalism that so interested marx. but they tend to focus on one major element, finding in the growth of independent production companies evidence of a deconcentration of power. by doing this, they miss several fundamental points. first, one can't understand the movie business within capitalism without seeing how that industry is bound up with and intimately linked to other elements of the cultural industries. warner is part of time-warner, mca is part of matsushita, columbia is part of the sony empire. these reflect a deepening concentration across a range of media businesses. a second thing they miss is that the film industry is based not simply on the production of movies, but on their distribution. distribution is absolutely critical because it not only gets films into theatres but is responsible for finding financing and arranging marketing. independent producers aren't capable of doing this. they depend on the majors to place their films into theatres. marketing can now take upwards of thirty percent of the production costs of a film and even more 10 mosco/interview in the case of certain blockbusters. if anything, distribution has become more and more concentrated. that's especially the case here in canada where canadian-owned companies are kept out of theatres. finally, they ignore the ways that the growth of the independents contribute to the power of the majors. essentially, the independents provide a way to externalize risk. production is the most difficult dimension of the film industry — it is the most labour-intensive and the most risky. of course it is important to recognize that there is a constant restructuring of industries like the film business. and the concentration model doesn't always work as well as it does in the media industries. christopherson and storper have chosen perhaps the most difficult case to establish the notion of deconcentration. they could go to other industries that post-fordist theorists tend to be more fond of — the automotive industry for example, where independent suppliers have some clout. the key point here is to recognize that a great deal of variability, of concentration and diversification, exist side-by-side which any model that would seek to understand the development of capitalism has to take into account. when i look at developments in the media business, it is hard for me to avoid seeing the growth of concentration at a global level within an overall framework that allows for tendencies to diversification and independence as well. now, does this constitute post-fordism? postindustrialism? plain old capitalism? a new form of capitalism? these are important questions that media scholars need to address. one way to do so is within the tradition of political economy that approaches the social totality dialectically by taking into account a range of conflicting and competing forces. ar. the issue of post-fordism, of course, has also been highlighted by another tradition within communication studies: cultural studies. postfordism is used by the so-called "new times" group associated with stuart hall (1989) and other authors once affiliated with mwxism today. angela mcrobbie (1992) has employed some aspects of it in her discussion of cultural studies and "post-marxism". within this tradition, post-fordism is employed to advance the idea that these alleged structural changes aren't just economic, that there is a certain cultural shift occurring as well. post-fordist societies, it is claimed, are much more discursive in nature. social conflicts are organized less around the 11 alternate routes. volume 10, 1993 struggles of capital and labour than around the struggle over signification and representation. unlike some political economic approaches, cultural studies is more concerned with questions of subjectivity, audiences, and local resistance. in your book, the pay-per society, you suggest that cultural studies and political economy would benefit by a closer collaboration. but i'm wondering, given this particular paradigm that contemporary' cultural studies seems to be working with, what would that collaboration look like, and where would you start? indeed, is it possible? vm: it's interesting that you raise the question because it's something i'm working on right now in a book on the political economy of communications. one of the chapters will deal explicitly with challenges on the borders of the political economy of communication. as i see it, there are two substantive intellectual challenges for this perspective. on the one hand, there's cultural studies, and i think you've outlined the challenge well. on the other side, there is a broadly defined domain of policy studies that comprises a great deal of communication research. but it has tended to be ignored in the dichotomization of the field into political economy and cultural studies. i think this misses a development of enormous importance — a conservative wing of policy studies, so-called 'public choice theory', or 'positive political economy'. it has captured the imagination of the economics profession, of government policy makers around the world, and in fact has produced several nobel laureates in economics over the past few years. we in sociology and communication studies cannot at all ignore this enormous challenge partly because thinkers from that perspective are going back to the tradition of smithian classical economics to extend that conceptual apparatus to domains normally taken up by sociology. this includes the study of the family, of sexuality, and of social relations generally. consequently we can't afford to overlook that domain. but you asked about cultural studies, so let me address that challenge. i think it's important to recognize the contribution that cultural studies has made. let me address how it's influencing my current thinking. first off, i think it has made an important contribution to cpistemology. there has been a tendency within political economy to adopt cpistemologics based on causal determination that are being considered excessively rigid by physicists, chemists and biologists and i 12 mosco/intervlew think ought to be considered so by the social sciences. cultural studies has helped us to think about and develop non-essentialist epistemologies -broadly inclusive notions that examine the social whole through the eyes of mutual constitution rather than causal determination. i think this is a significant turn of thinking that is quite useful. secondly, students of cultural studies have helped us to understand that culture is the product of the common sense, day-to-day practices of all people. the term 'popular culture' doesn't capture this well, but it has helped us to see that all social practices embody a cultural dimension. we ought not to privilege elite practices as constituting some special domain of culture separate from the practices of so-called ordinary people. thirdly, i think cultural studies has sensitized us to social relations and social divisions organized around gender and race, relations that at times are congruent with, and at other times clash with, class divisions. the latter have tended to occupy the central space in political economic analysis. in the case of gender, for example, i think cultural studies has taken a lead in, and presented us with the challenge of, addressing patriarchy within a class analysis. with that said, i think one of the leading analysts in cultural studies, michel pecheux, put it best when he argued that we need not replace the "narcissism of structure" with the "narcissism of the subject". it is ironic that in a discipline that would adopt non-essentialist epistemologies, there is a tendency to take an essentialist and deterministic vision of the subject — the 'subject' above everything else. my understanding is that cultural studies is a viewpoint that suggests that there are no longer meta-narratives, or privileged discourses. well, if that's the case, how can one see the subject as the essential key to social understanding? there is also a tendency within cultural studies to a simplistic reading of economics. political economy is a field that ranges widely over disciplinary and social space. it is very complex and highly nuanced, with a wide range of clashing views. i think one way to build and reinforce the bridge between cultural studies and political economy is for people on both sides to pay more careful attention to each other's disciplines. students of cultural studies need to develop a more nuanced reading of political economy rather than see it simply as economistic and deterministic. finally, i think cultural studies could pay more attention to its 13 alternate routes. volume 10, 1993 own accessibility. again, i think it's ironic for a discipline, built upon the notion that we all produce culture and that culture ought to be accessible to all, to offer work that is so dense as to be largely inaccessible in most of its presentations to most of the producers of culture. my sense is that it's essential for us to develop a dialogue between those who concentrate on the political economic approach and those who take a more culturalist understanding. we are both dealing with central elements of the social whole. ar: is there any particular empirical work you could point to that satisfactorily embodies both culturalist and political economic approaches 9 vm. one touchstone for me is david harvey's condition of postmodernity. he's among the few who have addressed intelligently the transformations taking place in the global political economy. he combines an understanding of technology, particularly computer communication technologies, with a grasp of wider social totalities and a knowledge of developments in culture. i look to his effort to bridge post-fordist and postmodernist thinking as a model. there are, i think, affinities between the structure of global banking — what marx initially referred to as the ability of capital to annihilate space with time — and developments in architecture, popular music, and the like. one of our major challenges is to identify precisely what some of those affinities are while at the same time recognizing the differences and disjunctions. harvey begins to move us in this direction. a model of another sort is offered by daniel bell in the cultural contradictions of capitalism . he sees a fundamental ^junction between the rationalizing tendencies in the global political economy and what he refers to as hedonistic and irrational tendencies in the global culture. one doesn't necessarily have to accept that analysis to look at it for models of how institutional structures and streams of intellectual discourse can relate to one another. so, although we may consider ourselves political economists, we can't avoid looking at systems of thought, values and cultural practices. ar it's interesting that harvey's book hasn't been taken up very seriously within cultural studies for example, in the recent collection. 14 mosco/interview cultural studies, one person who mentions it is angela mcrobbie (1992) who simply characterizes it in passing as yet one more example of 'bad totalization'. vm\ i'm aware of the criticism of totalizing discourses of all sorts, and it's warranted when it is directed at a form of rarefied systems thinking that some sociology has fallen prey to over the years, beginning with parsonian functionalism. but, and this is a major 'but', as a student of computer communications and mass media i see forms of integration that are so enormously powerful that it makes a sustained, comprehensive, if not totalizing analysis absolutely essential. let me point to exemplars of this for a moment. i want to focus on the field of computer communications. at the level of the product of computer communications — call it data, information, or 'communication' — we see forms of integration that involve turning content into a commodity. now, to avoid charges of totalization, i'm not suggesting that it is only a commodity, that it is not subjectively experienced as discourse in a wide range of forms. but what appears to me central to understanding both the institutional development of computer communications and its expression, is the development of whole new forms of turning use value in information and communications into exchange value. there is integration around the notion of commodification, of making the product of communication and culture a marketable commodity. we see this everywhere in the transformation of public discourse into marketable products. at the same time, we see forms of institutional integration. when i began working as a student in the field of sociology and communication, it was much easier to understand who the key players were. they were broadcasting companies, film companies and perhaps telephone companies. things have changed in fundamental ways so that major producers of communication and information include banks, insurance companies, retail outlets, etc. citicorp is one of the largest producers of video in the world. it also happens to be one of the largest banks. what we're experiencing is an enormous institutional integration around communication and information. at a third level, there is an integration across industries. we used to comfortably make a distinction between broadcasting, film, telecommunication and the information industry. however, when we see at&t, for example, reconstructing itself from a telephone company into 15 utemate routes. volume 10, 1993 an information-provider, a video company, and a cable television firm, the distinction that neatly divided this arena into industry segments no longer holds. globally, we see an increasingly integrated electronic services industry. finally, there's integration within technology. we're involved in a linguistic transformation from technologies organized around analog principles that essentially correspond to human voice, to technologies organized around digital principles, a common language that derives from computer technology and the development of systems of software. there are, of course, exceptions, but we're seeing incredible integration around the commodity, the institution, the arena, and the technology. so, i tend to resist yielding to those who would simply avoid notions like totality and integration. anyone serious about a dialectical analysis recognizes the importance of the 'local', whether this is understood in a social structural or a cultural sense, as a source of difference, of resistance. but the local appears to me, as a result of developments in communications, to be increasingly well-integrated within a wider social totality. a r : related to this global integration of communications systems, the crtc recently decided to allow competition in long distance services. subsequently, at&t has made incursions into the canadian market by way of unitel, and bell canada has applied to the crtc to raise local rates by sixty percent. deregulation, you have argued, can be directly related to the canada-us. free trade agreement. perhaps you could explain this connection, especially in the context of the proposed north american free trade agreement. how will nafta affect the communications and cultural industries in canada, the u.s., and mexico? vm . one element is the integration of the global telecommunication industry. this is a result of both the generalized stagnation in capitalist economies and the turn to neo-conservative governments that have restructured social and institutional relations to get the growth engine going again. in essence, i see this as a transition in — to use a increasingly popular expression — a 'regime of accumulation'. the previous regime was organized around forms of monopolistic regulation based on notions of information as a public good. it also entailed the development of national instruments of accumulation like bell canada, and the commitment to support a full-time, skilled labour force. today, 16 mosco/interview we see a transition from this regime to one organized around advancing information as a commodity. regulation in the broadly defined public interest is redefined to meet the needs of business users of communication by managing competition in their interests. it involves supporting the transformation of labour within this new regime by promoting policies that would advance part-time, deskilled labour as an instrument to advance accumulation. decisions at the crtc, in essence, have been trying to advance the latter and to introduce forms of competition that expand choice principally for large business users. there are a number of levers that the state has been using to advance this new regime. crtc policy has been one of them. federal legislation has been another. trade agreements constitute a third. the canada-us. agreement touched on a number of important areas of telecommunication. for one, it legitimized the deregulation of what are called 'enhanced telecommunications services'. the distinction in the business is between 'basic' and 'enhanced' services. basic service constitutes the ordinary use of the telephone — voice communication. enhanced services take up all the other uses: data transmission, electronic mail, etc. that sector is growing. it still comprises a relatively small amount of the entire telecom business, but it's the growth sector. broadly speaking, the goal is to deregulate the sector so that business users get to decide policy about enhanced services. what they need is the maximum amount of bandwidth in communication channels at the lowest price and with the greatest security controls. taking enhanced services out of the hands of a national regulator and placing their jurisdiction in an international regulatory apparatus largely controlled by transnational business makes it more likely that nations will harmonize policies and regulations around the enhanced services in the interests of transnational business. at the same time, the canada-us. agreement restricted a practice that has been central to the development of canadian communication and information industries: the establishment of crown corporations or national monopolies. it essentially makes it impossible for a nation to live within the agreement and at the same time produce a new national entity to advance a particular sector of communication development. for example, if we wanted to create a 21st century version of the cbc — a national, public computer communication institution that would provide end-to-end services for households irrespective of their ability to 17 alternate routes, \olume 10, 1993 pay — the canada-us. agreement would make it impossible to do so without abrogating the deal. furthermore, much has been made of the so-called 'cultural exemption' in the canada-us. agreement. indeed, one clause in the agreement notes that culture is exempt. the very next clause, however, provides what many perceive to be an important loophole. it essentially says that either party can take measures of 'equivalent commercial effect' against the other if it feels that the other party is restricting trade in the cultural industries. that doesn't strike me as a terribly potent cultural exemption. more generally, the fta is an effort to harmonize global policies and generate a model for transnational business control of the growing electronic services sector. the next step, of course, is to incorporate mexico. there are also moves at the gatt and in other bodies to do the same. the oecd has been advancing these policies for years. though the movement is not entirely without resistance, there have certainly been strong tendencies toward building a transnational information and electronic services order. essentially, nafta extends the principles of the canada-u.s. deal to incorporate mexico. all of this is situated within the context of the liberalization and privatization of telecommunications systems. there are very significant consequences at stake. given an integrated view of the political economy of information, we recognize that more is at stake than simply the local issue of who controls telecommunication. the issue here, more broadly, is building what dan schiller refers to as a 'global grid' or global information communication 'highway 1 , and determining who has access to it. who controls it, what are prices charged for the use of it, and who benefits from it? one of the reasons why i have close affinities to a more geographically-oriented school of thought that people like harvey and others are developing, is that when you look at communication information, you see a redrawing of the global map, reconstituting what they refer to as 'the space of flows' — the flows of communication and information. by overcoming what would be considered 'traditional' boundaries drawn along national, ethnic and other lines, these information flows arc being reconstituted around clear, unimpeded links of capital. and nafta is a step in that direction, one piece in the puzzle. ar. we've seen in other countries — great britain, the united states and new zealand — that deregulation means customers tend to pay more mosco/interview for the same level of service or less. in such cases, universal access to telecommunications systems has been undermined. you've already mentioned that 'deregulation' is in fact a shift in the site of managed regulation from the nation-state to transnational corporations. in this sense, isn't 'deregulation' a bit of a misnomer? vm: deregulation is a myth. it's a euphemism. one would think that it would mean less regulation but it doesn't. wherever policies advancing deregulation have been put into place, more regulation has resulted: britain, japan, the u.s. and now canada. in fact, the crtc expects to increase its staff to enhance its ability to deregulate! when we step back from that euphemism we realize that regulation is a general societal process embodied in different forms, including regulating in the broadly defined 'public interest' and regulating in order to manage what's called 'competition'. there's another myth or euphemism: that policies are advancing competition. what governments are doing is instituting duopoly and cartel-like arrangements, permitting one or another firm to enter the market in order to prod a dominant provider (like at&t, or bell, or british telecom) to transform itself along business lines. this is another euphemism for the ability to serve the demands of large business users: banks, insurance companies, and other heavy users of electronic services. yet another euphemism is that of 'cost-based pricing'. costing in any industry is an arcane and very complex 'non-science'. it's particularly interesting in the telecommunication world, partly because this has been an industry very much open to political contestation. it's one in which unions have been strong in defending both their jobs and the maintenance of universal service, and one in which consumer organizations have registered strong social pressures over the years. costing has always been politicized. it's also particularly interesting in telecommunication because the notion of the telephone call is wrapped in mythology. that is, the distinction we make between 'local' and 'long-distance' is a subjective construct that grows out of social practice, political pressure, and class struggle. one can look at the history of telecommunication and the shifting definitions of the price of service along these lines. when i hear people talk about the need to move from public pricing to cost-based pricing, i recognize another myth in the making. it implies that long-distance charges have for years subsidized local rates and in order to achieve economic efficiency we 19 a itemize routes, volume 10, 1993 have to unbundle that subsidy and distinguish explicitly local from long distance, thereby ensuring economic efficiency. that, of course, is all predicated on knowing precisely what makes up the cost of a local and a long distance call. that itself is a process of social construction and social contestation. anthony oettinger who has written on this and intervened in policy processes over the years, refers to cost regulation as a 'fairy tale' that is reinvented over time to reflect the balance of political forces in the industry. essentially we're reinventing the myth today to advance the interests of large business users. the argument is that the local end of the telecommunications systems doesn't bear its share of the costs, and we reinvent the definitions and methods of the costing process so that we can, in essence, redistribute income. by making the local customer bear more and more of the price of telecommunication, we engage in that conservative shibboleth of social engineering. the u.s. has put this in place in a vast multi-billion dollar redistribution of income from the telecommunication 'have-nots' to the 'haves'. everyone makes local calls, but lower income users tend to be much more dependent on the local use of the telephone. eighty percent of long distance calls are made by twenty percent of customers. those customers include you and me, but in the main they're concentrated among businesses that move vast amounts of voice, data, and video communication around the world. the notion of cost-based pricing, then, legitimizes a vast redistribution of income. in essence, then, 'deregulation' is really both a redistribution of political power and a redistribution of income among customers. we've seen the consequences of this. in the united states, the price of local telephone calls has increased one hundred to two hundred percent over the last seven or eight years, depending on the jurisdiction. similar results are observed in britain, in japan, and with bell's proposal for rate hikes in major markets in canada, we are seeing the consequences of the application of this principle here. this threatens both traditional notions of universalism, where every household has a telephone, and new definitions of universalism that wc may want to develop for a post-telephone era. the united states has been able to maintain a level of household penetration of the telephone over ninety percent, only by instituting a national welfare program. for the first time in american history, each of the fifty u.s. states has a form 20 mosco/intervlew of what industry people like to refer to as 'targeted subsidies', another euphemism for a 'telephone welfare system'. this program includes a means test, an administrative bureaucracy, and a policing system — all of the constituents of a social welfare apparatus. what was considered a right of citizenship, the telephone, now becomes something that the poor can only acquire after a visit to a welfare office or the social assistance division of a telecommunications company. it's a patchwork of fifty different systems in different states; so you may be eligible in south carolina but not in oregon. ironically, under right-wing regimes, we see the re-institution of what neoconservatives themselves considered to be failed welfare programs. i think there are very important lessons here for canada. there's a challenge for those of us who support the public interest and universality to think about alternatives to traditional ways of making policy in this area. ar: in terms of making policy, opposition to these recent developments seem to have accepted a rigid and, as you suggest, perhaps dubious dichotomy between regulation (state solutions) and deregulation (market solutions). do you think this way of thinking represents an adequate oppositional strategy? or is there a need to develop conceptual frameworks that move beyond this dichotomy and begin to re-think how a democratic communications system could be organized? vm: first, i think it's very important to acknowledge the gains that we have made from state policies. i realize it's not fashionable to praise state intervention. but nevertheless, we enjoy a public education system, a public health system, and a universal telecommunication and public service television system. granted, there are enormous faults with all of them. however, they provide a measure of benefit to a wide population, a benefit that is there partly because social movements organized around state intervention pressured the state to protect the public interest. i think it's absolutely essential for us to acknowledge that and to continue to see state intervention, for all it's complexity and range of positive and negative consequences, as one means of realizing widespread social gain. however, it is not the only instrument. one of the challenges we face in democratizing systems of communication and information is to reflect on what citizenship means in this set of social practices we call communication. we criticize neo-classical economics for reducing needs 21 \ltemate routes. volume 10, 1993 to wants and citizens to consumers. i think we're correct in doing so. but we have to direct our attention to what the needs are and what citizenship requires. we've barely begun that debate and discussion. there are models for this. there is a social policy literature having to do with needs for housing, food, and other 'essentials'. we need to begin to take up the issue of 'need' in communication and information services. this is far from frivolous; it's not simply a question of how many sitcoms everyone has a right to watch at night, but rather what our access to vital communication and information services will be like in the future. many people will be left essentially communication-illiterate if information is put on a pay-per basis. one of our jobs as intellectuals is to think about and propose what constitutes packages of information services as instruments to build citizenship. sociology over the years has been very slow to take up these issues. it's very important to place citizenship at the centre of sociological questions. let's look at what constitutes universality in the area of telecommunications. traditionally we've defined it as a telephone in even household. that kind of technicist definition needs to be discarded. universality can be constituted through a range of technological means, but we have to ask some questions: what are those means and what are the range of services that different technologies can provide. we need to organize universality around needs, with an eye not to the consumer who participates in exchange value, but to -the citizen. as your question suggests, we need to move beyond looking at the state as sole locus of decision-making and of social intervention on behalf of the public interest. in this country there is a strong tradition of both statist and non-statist activity in this area. we've built a state broadcasting system that is the envy of many nations. at the same, as marc raboy has noted, investing in state broadcasting has shortchanged opportunities to develop a more broadly based social broadcasting system organized around communities and social movements. consequently, community radio in the united states is much more advanced than it is in canada because there isn't a tradition of state broadcasting against which community radio has to compete. on the other hand, trade unions in the area of communication and telecommunication have been stronger in canada than they have been elsewhere. i don't know if there's another example of a union quite like 22 mosco/interview the telephone workers union in british columbia. in her book that long distance feeling, elaine bernard chronicles how this union took over the vancouver telephone system to show that a strike could involve more than simply shutting down a service. she describes how workers took control and ran it themselves. i think there are alternative models here for achieving the public interest outside of simply marching down to the crtc. ar: but the increased corporate presence in public spaces doesn't auger very well for the issue of citizenship and democracy. as you've shown in your work, democracy is not just having access to technology, but also involves having spaces in which you can participate in a public form of communication. and corporations are increasingly taking over that public space, from the classrooms and lecture halls to museums and public gatherings. vm: absolutely. ar: but where does that leave us as researchers? how do we address these issues? in essence, i'd like to know where you think communications research should go in the future? vm: i think it's a good question to ask because we haven't spent much time talking about communication as a discipline. one of the things that i've tried to do over the years is to draw out the strong political economytradition within communication scholarship, something that has, in my view, received remarkably little attention. there are exceptions of course. i think particularly of the contribution of a canadian who died just a few months ago, dallas smythe. his book dependency road and his other writings in the field established an important political economy base in communication research. one of the things that communication research needs to do is to situate itself more explicitly within major theoretical debates taking place in sociology, political science and economics. it is in a good position to do so because the substance of the discipline is something that is being talked about across a wide range of other disciplines. what communications as a discipline needs to do is insert itself more explicitly, as a community of scholars and as a discourse community, in this wider intellectual milieu. 23 auemime routes, volume 10, 199j there is increasing likelihood that it will do that. the north american critical scholars in the field have developed the union for democratic communication, which, for the last ten years, has organized academics, students and media practitioners to present a critical voice. media practitioners specifically have organized independent forms of political agitation. i think of paper tiger television, an independent production and distribution company and south end press, a community collective press in the u.s., that have involved more of a consciously constructed social intervention. we have to recognize ourselves as critical scholars committed to praxis; to see ourselves as organic intellectuals, not as academic careerists. if we are true to our 'gramsci-ite' views, then we recognize that in our practice, we are not involved in simply establishing a discipline, but in transforming the world. and doing that involves stepping outside of our disciplinary boundaries to take on the role of public intellectual and political activist. over the years, i have tried to reflect that range. at the moment i'm committed to research that will secure a more widely accepted place for the political economy of communication. at the same time, i'm committed to political activism. communication offers a wide number of opportunities in that domain — that's one of its real strengths. one can think about conceptualizing the political economy of communication and, at the same time work with trade unions and social movement organizations to create a democratic* alternative to established communication systems. a r : thank you. references aksoy, asu and kevin robins. (1991) "hollywood for the 21" century: global competition for critical mass in image markets". centre "for urban and regional development studies, university of new castle-upon-tyne, april. christopherson, s., and m. storper. (1989) "the effects of flexible specialisation on industrial politics and the labour market: the motion picture industry." industrial and labour relations review . 42 (3): 331-347. hall, stuart, and martin jacques, (eds.) (1989) new times: the changing face of politics in the 199u's. london: lawrence and wishart. 24 mosco/interview harvey, david. (1989) the condition of postmodernity. oxford: blackwell. lash, s., and j. urry. (1987) the end of organized capitalism. cambridge: polity press. mcrobbie, angela. (1992) "post-marxism and cultural studies: a post-script." in l. grossberg. c. nelson, and p. treichler (ed.) cultural studies. new york: routledge; 719-730. mosco, vincent. (1989) the pay-per society: computers and communication in the information age. toronto: garamond. piore, m and c. sabel. (1984) the second industrial divide: possibilities for prosperity. new york: basic books smythe, dallas w. (1981) dependency road: capitalism, communication, consciousness, ana canada norwood, n.j. : ablex. wasko, janet and vincent mosco. (eds.) (1992) democratic communication in the information society. toronto: garamond. wasko, janet, vincent mosco, and manjunath pendakur. (eds.) (1993) illuminating the blindspots: essays honouring dallas smythe. norwood, n.j.: ablex. 25 a socialist ffmw a canadian scholarly journal providing detailed analyses of current issues and informed commentary on topics in canadian and international politicaleconomy. current: david rayside & evert lindquist on aids activism and the state in canada; heather jon maroney on the "demographic crisis" in quebec; david robertson jim rinehart & chris huxley on japanese management in a unionized canadian auto plant; rudolf meidner on the rise and fall of the swedish model; colin gordon on health care reform in the united states; alan ernst on free trade and the cd. howe institute. forthcoming: bob jessop on the schumpeterian workfare state; george ross on maastricht; christian deblock & michele rioux on nafta; jerry white on the nursing crisis; lorna weir on the "newness" of new social movements; kari dehli on ontario labour market policy; frank pearce on corporate rationality as corporate crime; liora salter on progressive spaces in the knowledge business; rinaldo walcott on the toronto race "riot". a complete list of back issues is available on request. write today. rates: 1 year (3 issues) $15.00 students, seniors and unemployed; $24.00 regular; $35.00 sustaining; $48.00 institutions. 2 years (6 issues) $40.00 regular; $90.00 insitutions. subscription orders from outside canada payable in u.s. funds only. studies in political economy: a socialist review p.o. box 4729, station e, ottawa, ontario canada k1s 5h9(613) 788-2600 x6625 fax (613) 788-3676 aronowitz, stanlezy & henry a. giroux. postmodern education: politics , culture and social criticism, minneapolis, minnesota: university of minnesota press, 1991, $20.50 paperback. the current fascination with discourse theory has left many advocates of social change apologizing for "grand narratives" while the american right has appropriated much of their radical critique of public education. stanley aronowitz and henry giroux's postmodern education takes aim at both the morally indignant "crisis of excellence" that is dictating educational policy and also at the potential intellectual opposition to this onslaught. they use the language of postmodernism to give a new shine to critical pedagogy in an attempt to reintroduce these timely concerns to an audience that has dismissed anything remotely "marxist" at a stroke in order to frolic in its simulacra. giroux was a secondary school teacher and aronowitz once worked in a steel mill: they know that most students and workers cannot afford to celebrate the death of history. there is no panic schoolmarm here, no spectacle, no obscure jargon let loose to play in the footnotes. yet, even as they "refuse to reduce social structures to discourse" (p. 160) in their examination of the transcendental notions that inform much of postmodernist discourse, aronowitz and giroux create an excellent comprehensive introduction to postmodernism. before examining postmodern education, readers versed in cultural theory might benefit by consulting a renowned educational journal (kappan is popular among school teachers). since humanism is still in vogue with "progressive" educators, aronowitz and giroux are cautious in their exploration of postmodernism. the valorization of the everyday, for instance, is emphasized not to encourage individual sel f -discovery but instead to define and legitimate the specific struggles of marginalized students. a parallel criticism of prevalent theoretical inclinations posits that "the political economy of the sign does not displace political economy" (p. 116); turning postmodernism on itself, the authors alternately praise or condemn this ouroborous in their quest to empower teachers and students for the creation of "democratic public spheres" (p. 89). the book begins by contrasting progressive and postmodern ("postmodern" as critical theory in this instance) approaches to social change by analyzing bennet's drug and education offensives. "textual authority, culture and the politics of literacy" politicizes the theories of bloom and hirsch in a critical investigation of knowledge and power. "postmodernism and the discourse of educational criticism" provides an excellent introduction to postmodernism, noting in particular how rorty's and baudri 1 lard ' s directions hinder the creation of a critical pedagogy . 80 aware that curriculum "functions to name and privilege particular histories and experiences" (p. 96), giroux continues in the fourth chapter to examine the role of teachers as transformative public intellectuals. foucault's notion of countermemory is used in "border pedagogy in the age of postmodernism" to explore how students can understand and struggle for the possibility of social transformation. cultural studies is criticized for its ahistorical turn in chapter six while "working class displacements and postmodern reflections" examines the myth of the disappearance of the working class. the conclusion's warning that "an apolitical postmodernism articulates perhaps unwittingly with a right-wing political agenda" (p. 190) and plea to go beyond "a politics of discourse and difference" (p. 192) exemplify the authors' struggle with the liberating and reactionary potential of postmodernism. it is unfortunate that this significant analysis of contemporary education must manipulate -and in turn become a critique of -postmodernism so that critical thought and social responsibility somehow become "modernist ideals" (p. 57) and "postmodernism points to solidarity, community, and compassion as essential aspects of how we develop and understand the capacities we have for experiencing the world" (p. 117). nevertheless, refusing to abandon history, aronowitz and giroux broach their emancipatory "postmodernism" not only as an alternative to the ahistorical carnival of "the postmodernism", but also, above all, as a strategy to establish a critical theory and practice of education. reviewed by: george a. fogarasi faculty of education university of ottawa 81 alternate routes a journal of critical social research presentation and editorial policy alternate routes is a refereed multi-disciplinaryjournal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university. the journal provides an important forum for the presentation of graduate research and discussion from across the field of critical social inquiry. the editorial collective is interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or co-written with faculty). the editorial emphasis is on the publication of critical and provocative analyses of both theoretical and substantive issues which clearly have relevance for progressive political intervention. to date, the main focus has been on debates within feminism, marxism, and cultural studies and we welcome papers which challenge or advance questions and issues raised by these broadly defined perspectives. we also encourage responses to and reviews of recent publications. editorial collective nicole bennett, colin buchanan, jody frederick, neil gerlach, kirsten mcallister, dominique masson, rodneynelson, joel reimer, dave robinson. editorial board colin buchanan, neil gerlach, dominique masson, dave robinson. layout and design nicole bennett. the editors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the carleton university community: the department of sociology and anthropology and its chair, flo andrews; the dean of social sciences, marilyn marshall; the dean of graduate studies and research, j.w. apsimon. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research is indexed in sociological abstracts; the left index. © 1994 alternate routes (date of issue: june, 1994) call for student papers alternate routes is seeking submissions for volume 1 2, 1 995 . the editorial collective is interested in papers that address current theoretical and substantive issues within the social sciences. manuscripts will be anonymously reviewed by faculty members from academic institutions across the country. please use the american psychological association (apa) referencing system and keep endnotes to a minimum. papers should be submitted doublespaced and in tnplicate. floppy disks formatted in wordperfect 5.1 or microsoft word are required for papers accepted for publication. we also welcome responses to recoit publications, book reviews and discussions of work in progress. responses to this invitation to contnbute should be postmarked no later than october 1, 1994. alternate routes est a la recherche d'articles pour sa publication de 1995. nous sommes interesses a recevoir des analyses interdisciplinaires portant sur un vaste eventail de questions theoriques et substantives propres aux sciences sociales. les manuscrits seront cntiques de fa9on anonyme par des professeurs de diverses institutions academiques du pays. nous vous invitons a suivre le systeme de reference de famerican psychological association (apa) et a limiter la quantite des notes defin de document autant quepossible. les articles devraient etre presentes en format double interligne et &\ trois copies line disquette devrait accompagner le document et contenir le texte sur logiciel wordperfect 5. 1 ou microsoft word. nous apprecienons par ailleurs des critiques des recentes publications, comptes rendus et travaux en cours. les reponses a cette invitation devraioit etre postees au plus tard le 1 octobre 1994 (le cachet de la poste en faisant foi). address to/envoyez a: alternate routes department of sociology and anthropology carleton university colonel by drive ottawa, ontario canada k1s5b6 alternate routes a journal of critical social research volume 11, 1994 introduction 1 papers joel reimer future probabilities for a somali nation state: development and governance 5 si transken dwarfed wolves stealing scraps from our masters' tables: women's groups and the funding process 31 francois huot myths on the left: the narrative and discursive practices of the afl-cio news 65 janice hladki problematizing the issue of cultural appropriation 95 research in brief david skinner and david c. robinson re-thinking cultural policy: critical approaches in the era of pnvatization 121 je rachel macdonald free trade and social policy reform: the hidden dimension'!' ... 133 newsforum 147 critical reviewers the alternate routes editorial board would like to thank the following individuals who reviewed manuscripts for the past two issues. o caroline andrew paul attallah valda blundell jacques chevalier daniel dos santos chris doman charles gordon john harp alan hunt despina doupoulou jared keil fuat keyman joe mayoni william g. millward stephen mcdowell vincent mosco alison pedlar george pollard pauline rankin rob shields john siglar derek smith loma weir i i introduction ^hlishing alternate routes is no easy task. members of the editorial collective and board are volunteers who receive no compensation and little formal recognition for their work. every year there is the inevitable scramble to balance ourown full-time pursuits withthe strains ofeditorial meetings and the pressures of publication deadlines. once one volume is issued, we immediately b^in the arduous process over again. and all along, there is the constant struggle to maintain the financial support and subscriber base we need in order to keep our journal a viable enterprise. faced with such headaches, many may wonder whether all the trouble is worth it. i think i speak for all members of the editorial collective when i say that we would have it no other way. despite the problems we face, we are all deeply committed to this project. we believe that alternate routes is a vitally important journal. it is one of the few spaces in the academic world reserved exclusively for quality graduate student work. it is also one of the few publications in which scholars can present critical and progressive social research. the papers collected in the current volume represent our ongoing commitment to publish original and provocative research. joel reimer, a doctoral candidate with the sociology and anthropology department at carleton university, provides a detailed and timely analysis of the complex forces and structures at play in somalia. his principle argument is that one ofthe underlying causes of state disint^ration in somalia was the imposition of a western-style state structure in the post-colonial era. reimer's analysis thus raises some unsettling questions about practices of development and peacekeeping in the 'new world order.' si transken is a feminist therapist, social worker, and activist. she is currently completingher ph.din sociology at the university oftoronto. her paper addresses a central dilemma facing front-line community organizaalternate routes, volumel 1, 1994 tions—how does state funding of these organizations affect their abiuty to make positive interventions in the hves of socially disadvantaged groups? drawing upon the seniinal work ofdorothy smith, transken reveals how the funding process adversely affected a women's ethnocultural organization with which she was involved. her work should encourage more research into how the demands of funding agencies impact upon the goals and internal workings of women's groups. francois huot, a doctoral candidate with the communication department of the university of massachusetts at amherst, provides an intnguing semiotic analysis of the amencan labour publication, the afl-cio news. finding inspiration within the pioneenng work of roland barthes, huot argues that ideological practices are not limited to 'right-wing' mainstream discourses, but arepresent on the 'left' as well. the narrative and discursive structure oitheafl-cio news, he suggests, is such that prevailing relations of power are disseminated, maintained, and reproduced. janice hladki is a cultural worker and ph.d student in cultural studies and feminism at the ontario institute for studies in education. she is active in theatre, film, and the performing arts. her paper examines the complex issue of 'cultural appropriation. ' she reviews current debates about whether mainstream artists from the dominant culture should be allowed to 'speak' for non-dominant cultures. does this practice ofcultural appropnation represent a form of 'cultural exploitation,' or is it simply a form of free artistic expression'^ hladki argues that neither view is completely justified and she instead proposes a feminist and post-structuralist re-working of the issue of appropnation. both pieces of work presented as 'research in progress' address the issue ofstate policy in a global economy david skinner and david robinson argue for the need to 're-think' traditional approaches employed in the study of cultural policies, particulady in an era dominated by profound technological, economic, political and social changes. j. rachel macdonald provides an insightful and thought-provoking analysis of how the ideology and practice of free trade has influenced current changes to canada's social safety net. introduction as a last word, i would liketo takethe opportunityto thank an individual who has worked tirelessly to support alternate routes from the very beginning. our departmental assistant, eva hegmann, has been an invaluable asset. thanks to her remarkable efforts, we continueto enjoy regular financial support from the department of sociology and anthropology. eva has also campaigned on our behalf during the recent round of office reshuffling to &^sureihdx alternate routes continues to have office space. she has patiently taken the time to answer our questions, provide advice, and listen to our complaints. without her. alternate routes would remain only a fanciful whim. d.c. robinson ottawa, canada spring, 1994 i jc/^-''"-'lj56sparks^^^ j"^' onawa, ontario kip 5b1 canada (613)2346827 my contribution $_ i postdated cheques are ticlcotie) is enclosed. registration number 006 4758 09 10 name: address: ipieasc pnnt arv3 >nd<:ate apt ho and posui cooe) it pays ... . i to pay attention to local expertise. use listens to local solutions and solves local problems. support use development programs in africa and asia. usc'^ canada unitarian service committee of canada future probabilities for a somali nation state: development and governance joel reimer carleton university introduction somalia's state structure disintegrated in early 1991. this can partly be attributed to danism, or at least to hostility between specific somali clans. however, clan relations in somalia are inextncably linked to histonc context which cannot be ignored. clan hostilities are part of somali cultural history. the eruption of an apparently clan based civil war in somalia in the 1990s is at least partly dueto historically generated clan relations, but is inseparable from the history of successive somali state governments promoting, in their rhetoric, somali homogeneity as inconsistent with clan membership or affiliation. i begin my analysis with an investigation of the idea of somali homogeneity through an examination of the clan structure. inter-clan relations within somalia will be examined to highlight the integral place these relations have in somali social organization. clan affiliations, more than any other feature of somali social organization, play a significant role in determinmg soaal status, access to resources, and the perception of individual and group interests. an examination of clan affiliations provides a picture of somalia as a loose confederation of clans, often with divergent interests, a view which counters the picture of a homogeneous society. alternate routes, volumell, 1994 alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 the examination of somali clan structure is followed by an analysis of the structure and function ofthe somali state immediately after independence in 1960 and of the succeeding government in 1969 of siad barre. this analysis provides msight into the role of the state in somalia and the interaction of clan organization within the state structure itself. in the final analysis, the somali state is shown to have acted more as a veneer of unified purpose and identity, while dominant clan groups suppressed diverging views and interests through the use of a variety oftechnologies of domination.^ the current state of social disintegration is presented as evidence for these conclusions. it is the purpose ofthis paper to analyze the underlying causes of state disintegration in somalia, and to suggest that a major element in this disintegration was the external imposition of a western style state structure m the post-colonial era. this implies a historical examination of the administration ofthe country and its 'statization, ' which further requires an analysis of the history of government in somalia, and of those who were governing. i proceed to an analysis ofthe influence ofinternational development on the government of somalia. this involves an examination ofboth the interest of the somali government in maintaimng its own security, and the interests of western management of somalia through development. practices of development which used technologies of government in the interests of the west, and not in the interests of somalis or the somali government, contnbuted to the disintegration of the state. present international involvement in peacekeeping and humanitarian aidto somalia appear geared to the 'normalization' of society, and the setting up of a new state. somali people themselves appear desirous of a new state structure (togane, 1 993:3). the reorganization of somalia into one or more states is important, since without a recognized state, the west, through the united nations (un) will not recognize somali sovereignty. unless somalia regains its identity as a member state through a legitimate government, it remains ineligibile for un sponsored national reconstruction projects (notes on ergada conference proceedings, ottawa, june 25, 1993). this in itself reimer/ future probabilities for a somali nation state does not speak to the absolute necessity for the re-estabhshment of a somah state. however, it is the position of this paper that third world populations are inextricably integrated within a global political and economic system of management, administration, and government. thus, the disintegration and destabilization of somalia also has implications for the secunty ofthe region and the wider political and economic field. a state structure is required not simply for the administration of some types of development funding, but for the wider discursive practice of global political and economic management and governance. my analysis is facilitated by the use of the concepts of field, interests, and relations of domination from bourdieu (1977:183ff) and theories of governance from foucault (gordon, 1 99 1 : 1 9-2 1 ). fields are constituted by sets of negotiated discursive practices and by the material and symbolic profits or stakes which can be gained from practices. interests of agents within a field ofpractice can be understood as targets or 'objects' ofpractice with regard to the profits to be gained in the field. agents withm a field have individual interests which are misrecognized and mystified, and which determine their participation in the field in pursuit ofthe profits to be gained. thefield ofinternational development is presented in this paper as comprised by a project of governance, articulated to other discursive practices of political and economic management, comprised in a foucaultian construction of governance as conducting the conduct of others. the state in the somali context functioned historically as a vehicle for the domination of somalis, but failed in the longterm to administer or manage the population. at present, the military presence in somalia is attempting a similar practice of management and control. it is the view of this paper that many somalis recognize the un military administration of somalia as a practice of domination similar to that of the siad barre government which preceded it and not as a practice of liberation. alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 the myth of homogeneity somalia is commonly thought of as a nation comprised of one of the largest singlehomogeneous ethnic and cultural blocs in afnca (i.m. lewis, 1988:1). about 90 percent of the somali population is ethnic somali—^people of african and arab descent. somalis speak a single language (with dialect vanations) and uniformly practice sunni islamic religion (miller, 1982:4). successive somali governments since 1 960 have tried with varying degrees of success, and always only temporarily, to mobilize the population using a campaign of 'pan-somalism" which emphasizes the separation of somalis from other afncans (adam, 1983:32; davidson, 1975:27). one can make the case for a unified somali identity when discussing somali relations with other peoples, but clan and lineage organization is the basic internal principle of organization within somali society (lewis, 1 984: 1 59). clans represent economic and political security in an individual 's attachmait to kinsmen (laitin and samatar, 1987:45). modem bonds of citizenship have not replaced older bonds and networks of cooperation thirty years after somali independence and the constitution of somalia as a nation state (casanelli, 1982:260). prior to the creation of a western-style state, somalia was characterized by an absence of state institutions, an absence of institutionalized authority roles, and a lack of formal political offices. the closest thing to institutional government in pre-colonial somali history were clan sultans and religious men (sheikhs), who operated by charisma and influence rather than coercive and legislative authonty (laitin and samatar, 1987:42). clans developed their own alliances with other clans, and somali politics have traditionally run along clan lines. the predominant historical occupation, nomadic pastoralism, militated against both the development of stable territonal groups and against the formation of state-like political, economic, and administrative institutions (a.i. samatar, 1989:26). clans form a lineage derived socio-economic organizational framework witliin somali society, which is legitimated by islamic religious belief and tradition tlie notion of shared religious heritage and common history is reimer/ future probabilities for a somali nation state encapsulated in the genealogies of the cornucopia of somali clans and lineages (casanelli, 1982: 129). islamic heritage prompts the formulation in popular belief of clan genealogies tracing somali roots to arab ancestry (laitin and samatar, 1987:44). these genealogies maintam every somali's place in the social system (casanelh, 1982:129). divisions of tribal and general differences result from differences in perceived descent from the prophet mohamed on the part ofthe two major lineage groups, the samaale and the sab (lewis, 1980b:251). this differentiation carries over to differences between clans within the two major groups . the local security system for livestock traders was based on lineage political structure, andwas developed to safeguard the movements of pastoralists between pasture and water, and to market (samatar, abdi ismail, 1987:359). each clan thus comprised a lineage-based independent polity which interacted with others to further its own needs or interests . more than this, clan affiliation comprises a network of affection and loyalty which is analogous to a close family, and ties to one's lineage and clan and its history are strongly felt. hostility between clans and lineages has normally been such that despite common language and culture, religion is the only permanent factor upon which somali society can depend to establish any sort of unity (lewis, 1973:347). inter-clan hostility, as well as hostilities between somalis and their non-muslim neighbours was not anomalous to the "habitually warring" pastoral nomads (lewis, 1980a:34). the traditional picture of somalia is predominantly one ofa nation ofloosely connected nomadic pastoralists . the culture itself centres around this mode of production and the corresponding societal institutions that support it, notably the clan system and islam. politics in somalia are tied to kin obligation and reliant on client relationships. this is partially based on clan loyalties, partially on reciprocal economicties between clans (miller, 1982:16). clan affihation plays a major role in somali politics over and above religious and regional differences (laitin and samatar, 1987:155). thus, pan-somalism, as the ideology of homogeneity was called, promoted the interests of the dominant clans as alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 synonymous with somali interests and sought to repress the hi stone existence or interests ofother clans. consequently, the somali state dismtegrated as the government lost popular support, the economy deteriorated, development funding stopped, and clan militias became more heavily armed. histoncally, clans have defended their own interests against other clans. the socially structured situations, or fields (see bourdieu, 1977:76), within which somalis' interests have histoncally been defined have made this necessarily part of somali social relations. this is especially the case when a major part of the field of practice is constituted by the need to counter the interests ofwhat are perceived to be rival clans and their interests in the same field. successive somali governments have been perceived by somalis as promoting a small number of clans' interests. the selective promotion of interests in bourdieu's definition, represents domination as the appropriation of the mechamsms indispensable to the fionctioning of the field of practice, and consequqitlytheappropriation ofsymbolicand material profits (bourdieu, 1977:183-4). domination and the somali state somali state politics were, to a large extent, connected to clan politics . within the somali state there was continuing domination of clan membership on every level of political decision making (haakonsen, 1984:58). political parties, which first b^an to form in the 1950s, were clan based—for example, the somaliland national society (ishaaq) and the united somali party (dir and darood) (lapidus, 1988:860). politics in somalia are tied to kin obligation and reliant on client relationships clan affiliation plays a major role in somali politics over and above religious and regional differences (laitin and samatar, 1987:155). appointments, coalitions, thedistnbution of civil service posts, allocation of natural resources, and access to economic opportunities have rested historically almost entirely on kinship affiliation (laitin and samatar, 1987: 155). political power and government continued to be deeply associated with clan affiliation throughout the 1970s and 1980s even with the increasing reimer/ future probabilities for a somali nation state urbanization of the somali population. urbanization did not radically diminish clan feeling orthepowerofclan affiliation in somali society. in fact, clan feeling mtensified in urban politics. politicians exploited kinship loyalties to prolong and maximize political careers. this manifested itself in the form of patronage job appointments, contracts, and cash payments for support. ethnic support in somalia has been the key to political success. concomitantly it became advantageous for the state to distribute scarce natural resources through the clan structure. as a result, urban somali politics witnessed an alarming resurgence ofintra/inter-clan conflicts (laitin and samatar, 1987:46). examples ofthis can be drawn from the experiences of successive governments of the somali republic since independence in 1960. the parhamentary model ofthe somali republic in 1960 was fashioned after an italian system, reconstructed after twenty years of fascist rule (davidson, 1975:25-26). however, the somali manifestation of this parliamentary model reproduced the problems ofpatronage, and the exploitation of voting power for sectional or personal gain (davidson, 1 975:26). a powerstruggleb^an shortly after independence in 1 960, evidenced bythe fragmentation of political leadership, each of which resorted to the backing of their own clans and lineages—^the clan became the means to power within the state (sheck and mohamoud "ashur," 1978:152). the state democracy was reduced, in essence, to the machinery of parhamentary representation (davidson, 1975:26). the somali clan self-rule system, in which clans and clan alliances operated, adapted into a party system. political parties began to represent clan interests and alliance interests. this further resulted in parliamentary conflict over sectional advancements (davidson, 1975:26). as a result, the government could not reinforce even a minimal pan-somalism, but broke down into clan based interest groups (davidson, 1975:27). in october of 1969, somali army general mohamed siad barre took power in a coup and established the somali democratic republic. the new alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 government idealized the 'revolution' as having been against european models of government, but also against aspects of somali structure and custom that proved throughout pre-colonial history to be handicaps to progress (davidson, 1975:29). old values that were inconsistent with the direction of change were to be abolished (siad barre, 1974). ostensibly, the major target of this ideal was tribalism/clanism. siad barrels new 'scientific socialist' government was determined to liquidate the "malicious system of tnbalism in every form and every other phenomena in bad practice in state activities" (sheck and mohamoud " ashur," 1 978: 1 54155). corruption and tnbalism were presented as having derailed the first independent somali government leaving behind a system where "educated people" remained at the bottom and "worthless people" were at the top (siad barre, 1974:58). this situation was blamed for the destruction of pan-somalism. siad barre promoted an expliat policy of egalitanan modernization, which subscribed to the ideal of nomadic equality. somali government rationalization for this policy was that it would unify the population under a banner of pan-somalism (davidson, 1975:29-30). it was hoped that a new somalism would anse and that people would forget previous clan ties in favour of a new spint the goal of pan-somalism at the expense of clan affiliation was not achieved for several reasons. the first reason was that the siad barre coup itselfwas enabled by a set of clan alliances. the siad barre coup shifted power from the northern majerteen clan and its affiliate clans who had been in power from 1 9601 969 to southern clans (schraeder, 1986:647). this resulted in the stacking of important government positions with individuals of said barre's clan groupings (schraeder, 1986:647). consequently, political tensions were reproduced along a new axis between clans from the formerly british northern and central regions, and the formerly italian southern regions (schraeder, 1986:647). siad barre's regime continued to rule from a clan supported power base. three clan groups were of special prominence in siad barre's governreimer/ future probabilities for a somali nation state ment, a formation that was unofficially called the mod. configuration. 'm.o.d.' corresponded to the three major clan groups that formed the top of the political power structure. these were the marehan (darood): the president's patrilineage; ogacien: siad barre's mother's clan; and dhiilbahante. siad barre's chief son-in-law's lineage. siad barre acknowledged vital maternal links in the ogaden region through which he was able to exercise control over somali external relations with ethiopia. the m.o.d. manifested itself in the 'marehanizing' of the foreign service and govemmoit bureaucracies (sheik-abdi, 1 98 1 : 166), as well as the disintegration of the ruling junta into clan groupings, and the tribalization of the military (samatar and samatar, 1987:684). additionally, the construction of the power structure in this manner reproduced political fnction between northern and southern parts of the country (lewis, 1988:222). in 1 976, the government changed to a civilian single party government. this merely created a widely representative setting for the m.o.d. power bloc. all the members ofthe former supreme revolutionary counal and 19 new members (most, but not all, military personnel) formed the new central committee this was seen as a sign that siad barre was not interested in modifying his version of benign despotic paternalism but rather in giving his authority greater legitimacy (lewis, 1988:223). it also provided a means for consolidating control of the population and mechanisms of government. this did not take place in an absence of resistance. several guerrilla resistance groups fought against government forces. like the government, resistance groups had specific clan affiliations. the somali national movement (snm) was formed primarily by people from northern lineages and was dominated by members ofishaaq clans (samatar, ahmed 1,1 988: 141). the siad barre government was overthrown in early 1991 by the forces of the united somali congress (usc). the usc whose name is misleading, has come under cnticism from somali academics as a party connected to the hawiye clans, and once again not representative of somalis as a whole. the number of factions rivaling for power in somalia in the 1 990s is evidence supporting this assessment. alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 the history of somah state politics is one of a shifting 'field ofplay' in whichthepolitics ofclan interests were transformed into a state organization. the creation of the state did not change the interests of individuals and clan groups, except to enlarge the stakes. the field "calls forth and gives life to a specific form of interest... as tacit recognition of the stakes of the game" (bourdieu, 1992: 1 17). the specific interest and practice in the field varies according to the position occupied, be it dominant or subordinate (bourdieu, 1992: 1 17), somali states have acted within a transformed field of practice according to culturally and socially defined interests produced by histoncally delimited fields. these fields of practice have at their root a cultural history of clan relations, which make certain modes of thought appear necessary, inevitable, and desirable. siad barre was not merely a despot, and the government he overthrew was not merely corrupt. within somali society, the field as setup bythewest began to operate accordingto somali 'rules ofplay' and somalis demonstrated a practical mastery of these 'rules.' political turmoil was a 'stake' in which actors were interested, intrinsically tied to the field of practice, because the game to be played in the field was imposed from outside and never fully internalized. somali interest and investment was bom out of a transformed field of practice and a histoncal system of dispositions adjusted to the practice proposed by the field. this implies a sense ofthe practices the field proposes and ofthe stakes involved, an mclination and an ability to act (bourdieu, 1992: 1 18). the implications of this is that somali political disunity and clan hostility is not exclusively to blame for the current situation. a major part of the difficulty is that somalis suddenly found themselves living in a nationstate, and not just a terntory, and politics was suddenly a new game, on a new field, with new rules the field ofpractice was given to somalia, but somalis were abandoned to adjust historic interests to the new field. under siad barre, the somali government stated as one of its main goals the development ofthe somali nation. the siad barre government was at one level charactenzed by its attempts to develop somalia. siad barre cultivated and retained a popular image of a modest man of the people (l.m. lewis, reimer/ future probabilities for a somali nation state 1988:211). a literacy campaign and a rural development program were instituted. the literacy campaign, as well as ofifiaal government opposition to ethiopian rule of the ogaden territory stimulated nationalist sentiment in somalia and for a time bolstered the popularity of the government (i.m. lewis, 1988:236). the somali government mobilized to aid and resettle drought stricken nomads in 1974-5 famine, with the help of massive inputs ofintemational aid and relieffunds (i.m. lewis, 1988:218). whilethe famine relief helped again to generate popular support for the government, it also helped to forward two of siad barre's long term development plans: resettlement of nomads, and detribalization (lm. lewis, 1988:218). deeper analysis suggests that siad barre's interest in development stemmed largely from the underlying goals ofmaintaining and increasing the administration and management of somalia by his government. it provided a means for the undermining ofclan affiliations and identities which were the source ofmuch ofthe internal political opposition to his regime. nomads were resettled in agricultural or fishing cooperatives among people of unrelated clans synthetically creating communities of somalis which were not based on clan identity. additionally, the settlement of a large proportion of the predominantly nomadic and dispersed population allowed for increased government administrative control over this population (schraeder, 1986:648). the siad barre government was unable to maintain thi s level ofsupport from and control over the population in the long term. this is due to a variety of factors. the preeminent place ofthe pastoral way of life in somali culture mediated against permanent settlement, especially in combination with a somah cultural disdain for farming and fishing (haakonsen, 1984:109; sheck and mohamoud "ashur," 1978: 156). clan feeling also played a role in that farming and fishinghistoricallywere occupations oflower status clans in the social structure. somali herders did not identify themselves with the new forms of life, preferring instead to return to camel and cattle herding as soon as it became possible. in the end, the government found itself unable to complete the process of fusing forms of settled life and their associated alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 matenal, social, and cultural 'profits' with somali individual and clan identities (see rose, 1992:32). finally, the ogaden war (1977-78) left a catastrophic political and economic aftermath. the economy, put under strain by a massive refugee influx, coupled with a the disenchantment of the population because of somalia's defeat, left a series of clan alliances and antagomsms in the place ofthe 1 970s buoyant nationalism and stripped siad barre ofwhat popularity he had retained (i.m. lewis, 1988:260-261). western intervention: development as governance development in thecommon sense view is a practice ofeconomic and political improvement and transformation of other, 'less-developed' areas. historically, its moral rationality, its justification, has been constructed in terms of a mission of 'civilization' (pearce, 1988: 165). the discourse ofdevelopment contained an inherent, absolute need for civilization and progress (pearce, 1988:124; schaar, 1979:68). development is better defined as a form ofgovernment or administration—a practice of management, a set of political rationalities and practices for conducting the conduct of other nations.development as a locus of governing is not concerned with the legitimacy ofthe practice ofgovernment in which it is involved, but rather with a form ofsecunty: the preservation and enhancement of a certain global level of existence and through this, the endurance of its field ofgovernment over a prolonged penod oftime (gordon, 1 99 1 : 1 9). secunty as conceptualized here embraces the future well being of a field of governance and as such encompasses prosperity, abundance, equality, and freedom which are necessary conditions of this security (gordon, 1 99 1 : 1 9). a founding pnnciple of development is that economic and political development of marginal regions is a necessary condition of global secunty, the development of the capacity to preserve and enhance a certain global level of existence (c.f. gordon., 1991:19). this is simultaneously coupled in development discourses with an assumption that lessreimer/ future probabilities for a somali nation state developed countnes desire and should desire development (shils, 1968:7-9; cochrane, 1971:34). the siad barre government had been mterested in development primarily because it enabled the extension of government throughout the population, while furthering political interests of dominant groups. the interest was the security of the nation, deeply associated with siad barre' s clan affiliations, and therefore the prosperity (economic, political, social etc.) of the state. however, aspirations for development lead to increasing amounts of foreign assistance. duringthe 1974-5 drought/famine and especially after the dismissal of soviet advisory personnel from somalia in 1977, somalia came to be increasingly dependent on international development, aid funding, and personnel to further its programmes and plans to improve the performance and develop the national economy. dependence on foreign development assistance brought with it increased scrutiny and monitoring of somalia by development agencies and brokers, and a concomitant decrease m local control over somalia's economic and political affairs. western economists and social scientists continueto carry out a specific role in liberal development enterprises, notably that ofproposing constraints on third world states in various attempts to force conformity to western development models (cochrane, 1971:23). such constraints include imf prescriptions for currency devaluation and imposed conditions on how third world governments are allowed to spend their money. the emf and western banks control the process of development, partly by making any assistance contingent on third world governments adopting policies that further specific development strategies supported by the emf (frank, 1981:132). because development and underdevelopment are products of the same histoncal process, the country to be developed must first be made to accept itself as, and then to operate as being 'underdeveloped' (frank, 1975:17). this necessarily implies a discursive practice through which 'underdevelopment' is created in the third world. 'underdevelopment' is misrecognized as due to the survival ofarchaic institutions or the existence of capital shortages alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 in 'less-developed' regions, but is actually generated by the same historical processes that generated economic development (frank, 1966:23). those being developed are subject to domination by the west which accumulates knowledge about the other and can then exercisepower over the known region (foucault, 1980:69). a managenal critenon is set up by the discourse through which the conduct of the country being developed is conducted (foucault, 1980:68). development takes into account all processes related to the population of the country being developed, as discussed in foucault's definition of the economy (foucault, 1991:100). the knowledge of the west engaging in development discursively relocates the country being developed within a field of relationships in which it becomes an object upon which intervention is possible (procacci, 1991 : 157). this necessarily implies a state ofgovernment in foucault's definition, and therefore the justification of secunty, since development involves interventions which function to assure the endurance (security) of social and economic processes. '' secunty is the necessary requisite of the exercise of power and a pnnciple of political practice (gordon, 1991 :20). in the case of international development, the concern is not with the security of individual nations being developed, but rather the secunty of the political-economic system managed by watchdog orgamzations like the imf. however, countnes being developed are not oniy sitbject tothe management ofdevelopment forces. they come to act as authors and subjects oftheir own conduct (donald, 1992:14). government as implied in development is not merely the way in which the conduct of developing countries might be directed, but also practices which are calculated to act upon the possibilities of action of developing countnes (in donald, 1992: 14). development makes the exercise of managing power unnecessary as developing countnes make the effects and constraints of power play on themselves, becoming the principle of their own subjection (foucault, 1979202). for example, somalia desired development notably to extend mechanisms of government over the population of the nation and to improve the secunty of the state. in applying for international development assistance. rejmer/ future probabilities for a somali nation state somalia became the object of political and economic intervaitions, but also the subject of its own development practice, necessarily tied to the practice of international development agents. somalia made development plans for itself, but the imf and world bank demand to see development plans before any assistance will be given (w.a. lewis, 1983:274). the issue was not whether somalia should be developed, but whether it would conform to practices calculated to contribute to some form of global prosperity and through prosperity, the security ofthe global system—an issue ofgovernment and not altruism. the imf encourages the development of "areas ofcomparative advantage" (laitin and samatar, 1987:126). during the tenure of the siad barre government ( 1 969-90), the imf's stated aim was to transform somalia into an exporter ofprimary and plantation products to the industrial world (laitin and samatar, 1987:126). these aims are reflected in the somali govemmait's development plans of the 1980s. somalia became involved in the international development 'game' because of specific interests in the field. it entered as a free player in that it ^^ had a knowledge of the field, an apprehension of the 'rules,' and a sense of the stakes or profits to be made within the field. the dominating players were the imf and western development interests who control the various resources and capital being 'played' for. development for somalia meant following the standard imf package ofcurrency devaluation, spending cuts, discontinuation of subsidies to social programs, privatization of state enterpnses, and reduced wages. major international development brokers, such as the imf were mainly interested in stabilizing somalia, economically and politically, and making somali economic and political systems accommodating to the west, an interest also inherent in siad barre's construction ofa state and emphasis on development (mller, 1982:14). the price for pursuing the stakes ofthe international development field was implicit and complicit agreement by the somali government that somalia was an underdeveloped country. the stakes became objectified, mediated by objective, institutionalized mechamsms, ensuring "the reproduction of the alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 structure of the distnbution of the [social and economic] capital" which reproduces the relations of domination (bourdieu, 1977:184). relations of domination in development practice are set up "in pure objectivity between institutions," which is to say between socially recognized qualifications and defined positions and thus through the social mechanisms which guarantee the qualifications and positions and their distribution between individuals and mstitutions in a field of practice (bourdieu, 1977: 187-188). what bourdieu refers to as the "misrecognition" of the relations of domination as a relationship between two reasonably equal parties results in a complicity on thepart ofthe dominated in their own domination, the dispositions or interests which incline them to complicity being themselves the effect of domination (wacquant, 1992:24). once somalia had 'agreed' it was underdeveloped and had balance of paymaits difficulties, lack of economic growth, rapid inflation, and other 'normal' traits of underdeveloped countries, the government could not 'unaccept' the situation. in 1981, somalia turned to the imf and world bank for assistance and formed agreements which were to relieve economic pressures stemming from arrears on the payment of interest on its foreign debt (gray, 1989:132). the agreement involved devaluation of the somali shilling and a decrease in state economic involvement in return for emf approval of several large scale usaid and worid bank economic projects which were designed to generate hard currency (laitin and samatar, 1 984:7 1 ). somalia was also granted credit facilities ofus$ 1 50 million between the years 1 98 1 -87 which contnbuted to a high enough level of imports to keep the urban population content for this penod and protected siad barre's popularity and tenure, at least in the mogadishu area. in 1987, sharp devaluation ofthe somali shilling resulted in an equally sharp increase in the price of imported consumer goods and a corresponding increase in domestic unrest the cause was an expenmental "two-tier" foreign exchange rate set up under imf conditions. the rise in prices and unrest resulted in the government discontinuing the "two-tier" rate and reimer/ future probabilities for a somali nation state returning to a fixed exchange rate of 1 ooshillings=us$ 1 (gray, 1 989: 132). somalia also failed to meet required payments on its foreign debt. because of this, somalia was declared meligible to use the general resources of the imf, and due to the imf classification of somalia as 'noncooperative' any large scale development organizations affiliated with the imf such as usaid, world bank, cida, and the un also refused to participate in bilateral development programs. somalia had demonstrated that it understood the field, and its position in the field, and expressed interest in the profits to be gained, but ultimately had refused to pursue its interests in the proper way, essentially attempting to win without playing by the rules. somalia was still seen as disadvantaged, underdeveloped, but had demonstrated an unwillingness to enter into the practices that went with the field, and as a result became further marginalized. in a post-cold war era however, such marginalization did not present a danger or challenge to an incorporating and universal program of government. somalia's non-cooperativeness could be ignored provided that somalia itself could remain out of sight (see rose, 1992:39). "on the margins of a form of civilization seen as ^j^ self-sustaining, the marginal can be exposed to the harsh exigencies of fate, can be consigned to control by the forces of law and order, or can act as the useful objects of improving charity" (rose, 1992:39). charity, which somalia did receive in the form of food and other humamtanan aid, remains in development discourse as an act ofchoice in which ncher countnes choose to improve themselves by their participation in practices to help those less fortunate than themselves (see rose, 1992:39). in the end, somalia has not remained in a 'swept under the carpet' state. civil war,thedisintegi"ation of civil society, and famine due to the use offood as a political weapon have made somalia too visible to ignore. additionally, theproximity of somalia to kenya, a nation with large international interests, coupled with the influx into kenya of large numbers of somali refugees, is likely to have contributed to a sense of necessity for western intervention in somalia before somali problems became regional problems, and then global problems. it seems highly coincidental that american troops, moving to ® alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 peacekeqjing duty in somalia, were present and purposefully obvious in nairobi at the time of koiya's federal election in december 1992. in any event, in trying to curb a global problem before it occurred, the west has constituted somalia as a global problem, left now to the forces ofglobal law and order. but what now? the siad barre govemmait was finally unable to maintain effective political control ofthe country. involvem^it in the ogadai war, which had originally contnbuted to national solidanty, ended with increased unrest as somalis from vanous clans came to believe that siad barre had acted out of personal clan interests at the expanse of the others. regulatory practices by the imf and developmait brokers contributed to the disintegration ofthe somali state through imposmgconstramtsthat raised inflation, made goods less available, and consequaitly resulted in more repressive exercise of power by the govemmoit to retain control. curroitly, the west is involved in peacekeqjing in somalia, a practice assoaated with regulating conduct through use of military force, consigned to control by the forces ofglobal law and order in a practice ofnormalization of soaety(seerose, 1992:39). peacekeeping is also viewed as a mechanism of western control, which has contnbuted to the polanzation ofthe conflict, rather than to its aid. the focus of attention and attacks on mohamed farah aideed and select other clan leaders gaierates a system of shifting alliances between the clans who support aideed against the un and clans who oppose aideed in a situation where 'the aiemy ofmy enemy is my fn^id. ' in this case, the field is somali, the rules are somali, the interests and stakes are somali, and the un is trying to define new boundaries on the field, as siad barre attempted to do before them. thereislittlesomali interest in 'orderfor order's sake,' nor for a new repressive government under a un flag. if development is to be done in somalia, somalia must have a state or similar structure since development is contingent on an agreement between developing states and development institutions and developed states through reimer/ future probabilities for a somali nation state development brokers. a transitional un trusteeship followed by elections and the setting up of a new government is likely to result in chaos, with the winner forming a government, and opposition forming almost immediately to denounce the new government as illegitimate (notes on ergada meetings, ottawa, june, 1993). a simple western style trusteeship is unlikely to fare well in somalia because ofthe importance ofthe clan and lineage in the somali mode of life. one's lineage in somali society constitutes an individual's identity. it is one's family in a very real sense, operating as it does to promote the interests of its members, assure their material, political, and economic security. the somali clan also operates as a welfare system. one cannot simplywork around clans, ignore them, or dissolve them. to do so amounts to destroying a society in orderto improve its condition. unless thenew state structure incorporates the somali clan structure in a manner that allows egalitarian access to the stakes—social, political, and material profits to be gained—^the situation of civil disintegration will be reproduced. a new state organization for somalia requires that it be constructed out ofa somali set ofperceptions, dispositions, f^ practices, and mechanisms oforgamzation in orderto contributeto somaua's own security as defined by this analysis. the formation of a state remains in somali interests. a state, or similarly recogmzable institution, is necessary since development requires a relationship ofa developing state with western states and institutions through development brokers. beyond this, within the political and economic global system ofgovernance, the disintegration ofsomali society represents a threat to the prosperity and security of not only somalia, but also to the region and consequently to global governance. somalia's situation is constructed as a problem, and as such requires interventions and solutions. the discourse of development and governance not only define the problem, but also the range of appropriate and possible solutions to the problems. state formation and int^ration remains a discursively constructed interest, not only of development agents, but also of the third world. alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 the current troid is still toward political and economic normalization through administration. peacekeeping forms another locus of government despite the record of development in somalia. the present economic and political situation in somalia suggests that while the era ofdevelopment may be all but over in the country, with the end of the cold war and the reconstitution ofideologies ofglobal security, a transformation ofthe process may result in a process ofmanagement that includes economic management as a core ingredient, but as a part of a more overtly comprehensive process of global pacification and security. in fact, relations of ruling appear to necessitate themselves in reference to previous failings or imperfections. development has formed a locus of govemmentality in an array ofpractices and strategies constituted as a never ending process of perfection. development has failed to regulate and perfectly govern somalia. this does not generate a necessity to reject development as a project of governance, but rather is fundamental to the project of government. the shortcomings of previous strategies of development, as conditioned by discursive relations of ruling, reproduces developmait in a perpetual quest for the perfection of govemmentality. to put it simply, governance always fails, and failure is an incitement to further governance.'' development has always fallen short of achieving its goals, and this incites new strategies for development. it is here we see further evidence for development as part of a project ofgovernment. a purely altruistic or commercial motivation for development would not continue to incite development. the agencies and individuals interested in development would have cut their losses and given up. govemmentality continues to hold the stakes high, suggesting that the stakes are attainable, and ever more within reach. but it is a misrecognition that serves to reproduce not only the political rationalities and practices of developmoit, but also the possibility for the reproduction of failure and thus the necessity for new technologies and strategies of govemance. development and peacekeeping are not done for altruistic purposes, nor for simple reasons ofeconomic opportunism and exploitation ofless powerful reimer/ future probabilities for a somali nation state countries by the powerful. moral justifications for managing practices are tied to the necessities ofgovernment in a system ofdiscursive practices which require global secunty. this is a situation within which one cannot ask "should development be done." development is only one of a system of technologies ofgovernment. the practice ofgovernment continues, and will continue, because it is necessary to the maintenance of security and order. somalia may get a new state organization which incorporates and listens to the various interests ofthe majority ofthe clans. short of a major redistribution ofsocial, economic, and political capital within the global fields ofpower relations however, it is unlikely that somalia will escape forces ofdomination and government. notes 1. by 'interests' i mean the perceived "forthcoming reahties" that actors pursue sensitized and mobilized by their identities and afoliations (bourdieu, 1977:76; wacquant 1992:26). 2. foucault. cited in gordon (1991:19). 3. foucault. lecture, college de france, 5 april, 1979 in gordon 1991:19. 4. this is alan hunt's (1993) interpretation of rose and miller's (1992) theorization of govemance as a congenitally failing operation. the world is not so much conceived as govemed, but rather is characterized by the 'wiu to govern,' a continual interest in 'doing better next time.' references adam, hussein m. 1983 "language, national consciousness, and identity: the somali experience. 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" in colin m. tumbull {od.) africa and change . new york: alfred a. knopf, 310-353. 1980a "introduction." in i.m. lewis (ed.) islam in tropical africa. london: intemational african institute; 1-98. 1980b "conformity and contrast in somali islam." in i.m. lewis (ed.) islam in tropical africa. london: intemational african institute; 240-252. alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 1984 "sufism in somaliland: a study in tribal islam." in akbar s. ahmed and david m. hart (eds.) islam in tribal societies. london: routledge and kegan paul; 127-168. 1 988 a modem history of somalia: nation and state in the horn of africa. london: westview press. lewis, w. arthur. 1983 "aspects of economic development." research in economic anthropology, v. 5: 257-310. miller, norman n. 1982 "the other somalia." horn ofafrica. 5(3):3-19. pearce, roy harvey. 1 988 savagism and civilization: a study ofthe indian and the american mind. berkeley: university of california press. procacci, giovanna. 1991 "social economy and the government of poverty." in graham burchell, colin gordon, and peter miller (eds.) the foucaidt effect: studies in governmentality. chicago: university of chicago press; 151-168. rose, nikolas. 1992 "disadvantage and power in the post-weifare state". paper prepared for a workshop on disadvantage and power organized by the finnish network for research on disadvantage and poverty. samatar, abdi and a i. samatar. 1987 "the matenal roots of the suspended afncan state: arguments from somalia.' journal ofmodern african studies . 25(4)669-690. samatar, abdi ismail 1987 "merchant capital, international livestock trade, and pastoral development in somalia." canadian journal of african studies. 21(3):355-374. reimer/ future probabilities for a somali nation state 1989 the state and rural transformation in northern somaha 18841986. madison: university of wisconsin press. samatar, ahmed i. 1 988 socialist somalia: rhetoric and reality. london: zed books. schaar, stewart. 1979 "onentalismattheserviceof imperialism. "/?aceart^c/as5. 21(1): 67-80. schraeder, peter j. 1986 "involuntary migration: the politics of resettlement." journal of modem african studies. 24(4):64 1-662. sheck, mohamed aden; ahmed mohamed mohamoud "ashur". 1 978 "socialist oriented developmentthe somali experience." in mai palmberg(ed. )/'ro6/e/w5 ofsocialistorientation inafrica. uppsala: the scandinavian institute ofafrican studies. sheik-abdi, abdi. 1981 "ideology and leadership in somalia . " journal ofmodem african studies. 19(1):163-172. shils, edward. 1 968 political development in the new states. the hague: mouton. siad barre, maj. gen. muhammad. 1974 my country and my people: selected speeches of jaale major generalmohamed siad barre... 1969-1974. mogadishu: ministry of information and national guidance. togane, mohamoud. 1993 "introduction." in the state in the somali context. consultation proceedings of the canadian somali peace and consultation committee (ergada), february 19-20, 1993. p. 3 wacquant, loic j.d. 1992 "toward a soaal praxaeology: the structureand logic ofbourdieu's sociology." in p. bourdieu and loic wacquant (eds.) /!« invitation to reflexive sociology . chicago: universityofchicago press; 1-59. canadian scholars' press inc. canadian scholars' press is offering a 10% discount on these selected titles to subscribers of studies in political economy feminism in action: studies in political economy m. patricia connelly and pat armstrong, editors isbn 1-55130-012-5 price: s23.95 342 pages production, space, identity: political economy faces the 21st century janejenson, rianne mahon and manfred bienefeld, editors isbn 1-55130-024-9 price; s24.95 400 pages swedish social democracy: a model in transition wallace clement and rianne mahon, editors isbn 1-55130-043-5 price: s37.50 408 pages r' n order form canadian scholars' press inc. 180 bloor street west, suite 402 toronto, ontario m5s2v6 phone: 416-929-cspi (2774); fax: 416-929-1926 title quantity price toul feminism in action $23:95 s21.55 production, space, identity 52+95 $22.45 swedish social democracy $9?:5e $33.75 shipping oinadian and us. sul»cril>er please pay s3.50 for ihc firel ixxjk and $1.00 for eacli addilional txwk for shipping and handling. overseas subscnt>ers please pay $8.00 {vs.) per lx»k for shipping and handling. 7% gst total canadian subscribers please pay in canadian dollars; u.s. and overseas subscribers please pay in u.s. dollars (u.s. and overseas subscribers please disregard the gst). name: phone: ( ) address: city/province: postal code: d cheque enclosed cd mastercard exp. date |_ d visa exp. date _ printed in caruda :_l i language, power, and politics: revisiting the symbolic challenge of movements 1 dominique masson carleton university there certainly has been a sea change in social movement theory since mccarthy and zald (1977) bluntly dismissed the symbolic dimension ofmovement activity from the establishment ofthe resource mobilization (rm) paradigm reducing movements' symbolic constructs to grievances and treating these as only marginal components ofcollective action has become indefensible today. 'neo' resource mobilizationists, new social movement (nsm) theorists and political scientists all converge now to give greater weight to movements' subjective constructions in theorizing social movement activity. internal controversies and debates spawned by an increased recognition of the limitations oftherm model2 have led theorists to reappraise the role ofsolidarities, movement goals and cognitive frameworks in movement mobilization. the emergence of the new social movements approach as a contending paradigm in the field, granting a central status to the cultural and the symbolic (see cohen, 1983, 1985; laclau and mouffe, 1985; touraine, 1988; melucci, 1989) has redirected attentiontoward the production by movements of 'alternative meanings,' such as new identities, cultural innovations, and oppositional discourses. political scientists, for their part, have noticeably shifted their treatment of symbolic issues away from 'the history of ideas' and into the terms of representational, democratic, and identity politics (see for example young, 1990; jenson, 1989, 1993; dalton and kuechler, 1990). as questions previously subsumed under the o alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 appellation of 'ideology' and relegated to a secondary plane of explanation have come to the forefront, scholars in social movements studies are insistently called on to paymore attention to the symbolic dimension of collective action. yet, for all the talk about discursive hegemonies and identities, interpretive frames and other "fightin' words" (johnston, 1 992), social movement theory has tended to by-pass the analysis ofthe specifics ofmovements meanings—or, paraphrasing stain (1992:96), the social semiotics ofprotest. also crucially lacking is a clearunderstanding ofhowthese symbolic constructs operate within the social struggles in which movements are engaged. how are we to describe movements' symbolic constructions and how are we to trace the processes through which they are produced and changed historically(escobar andalvarez, 1992:6)? and maybe more importantly, how are we to analyse their workings and consequences in a field of power relations and struggles? these are all questions that ought to be asked ifwe are ^^ to understand, as is increasingly contended, 'the symbolic" as an intrinsic dimension ofthe exercise ofpower, and ofstruggle over power (alvarez and escobar, 1992; slater, 1994;jenson, 1989; melucci, 1989). dissatisfaction with the sparse theoretical and methodological apparatuses available to pursue this inquiry has sent social movement scholars in search ofmore precise, or more adequate frameworks. recent suggestions include drawing from ethnography and ethnosemiotics (escobar, 1992;starn, 1992), sociology ofeveryday life (escobar, 1992), postmodern andpoststructuralist analyses of discourses and subjectivities (slater, 1994; starn, 1992), ethnomethodology and american sociolinguistics (johnston, 1991, 1992;donati, 1992;larana, 1994). thepresent article is part of this quest. it endeavors to contribute to the current re-evaluation of the role played by interpretations and representations in movement activity, strategy, and politics by bringing to bear on social movement theory some propositions developed within a european tradition 3 oflanguage studies, and massort/ language, power and politics in particular by scholars identified with critical perspectives on language and discourse. ifwe are, as i will argue, to take the notion ofthe symbolic challenge ofmovements seriously, we have to revisit this challenge not only as a truly political struggle, but as a political struggle of a special sort. that is, as one which is fought, characteristically, over the modalities in which power relations are embedded and enacted through social systems of signs and meanings. to do so, we have to understand why the specifics of the language in which movement representations are couched should be considered, what exactly is at stake in the 'symbolic struggles, in which movements are involved, and how this goes beyond contests over 'meanings,' 'naming,' and 'framing.' some of the answers to these questions can be found in social movement theory's attempts to deal with movements' symbolic activity. the most influential frameworks from a nsm perspective are those ofmelucci (1989) and laclau and mouffe (1985). in rm theory, the 'collective action frames' approach ^^ prevails and is responsible for a fast growing body of literature. a critical assessment ofthese frameworks is the object ofthe first section ofthis article. the second section explores some ofthe avenues through which european approaches to language and discourse can help further our understanding of language as a distinct level ofanalysis. language, it will be argued, operates as a power-laden mode of action that has direct consequences for social relations and for movement politics. this article advocates the need for a more linguisticallysensitive, empirically-grounded, and politically-oriented analysis than has heretofore been the case in social movement studies. in doing so, it echoes the voices that currently call for a closer and rigorous scrutiny of the role of 'the symbolic' in movements' practices and struggles. alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 symbolic challenge and symbolic politics in social movement theory challenging codes, challenging power: alberto melucci we owe to melucci the first formulation of "the symbolic challenge" of movements. melucci' s notion of symbolic challenge is linked to his conception ofpower in today's societies. melucci (1989:45) argues that we live in "complex societies" characterized by a heightened capacity to produce signs and social meanings. complex societies are also characterized by a pronounced social differentiation that sets greater needs for integration and control. integration and control are exerted through signs and meanings, as these are expressed, according to melucci, in the form of societal norms, standardized codes, and offormalframeworks ofadministrative and technological knowledge. indeed melucci's argument (1989:76-77) goes further: power in complex societies is "signs," power is transformed and ^^ concealed within sets of signs that codify and regulate social relations. actors mobilize to regain hold of the meanings and conditions oftheir action against complex societies' always expanding and increasingly anonymous forms of power. individuals and groups mount what is termed by melucci a symbolic challenge to the dominant codes, norms, identities and other "sets of signs" that regulate social life. this symbolic challenge encompasses two main aspects. the first is the production of alternative frameworks ofknowledge and meaning in the process of collective action. the second is the experimentation ofnew ways of living and new forms of relationships in the daily practice of movements' "submerged networks." moreover, the very existence of the movements is considered a symbolic confrontation with the technological rationality ofthe system(melucci, 1 989: 60). this because movements themselves become "signs": the irving proo£ so to speak, that social change and alternative interpretamasson/ language, power and politics tions of society are possible. by throwing into light the arbitrariness ofcomplex societies' cultural modes of regulation, movements' symbolic challenge renders visible the power inscribed in these (melucci, 1989:7677). melucci' s fundamental contribution lies precisely in this notion that signs and social meanings are part ofthe ways power is exerted and, consequently, are also part ofthe ways power can be, and is contested. signs, meanings and power are, it is suggested, intimately intertwined. in melucci' s argument, the symbolic ceases to be merely a portrait, a mirror of the social order to become impheated in society's very ordering. movements' attempts at reinterpreting and challenging dominant "codes" by proposing "a different way ofperceiving and naming the world" (melucci, 1989:75) are to be considered, in this sense, attempts at altering not only the "symbolic" order of society, but the social order itself although very insightful, melucci' s conception of movements' symbolic challenge is problematic, however, regarding ^^ the interface of 'signs' and power, of the symbolic and the political. three important problems can be underlined. firstly, as bartholomew and mayer (1992) have remarked, melucci's notion ofpower is too unspecified. crucially missing is an understanding ofthe grounding ofmovements' symbolic challenge in the fractured field ofunequalpower relationsbetween people and groups ofpeople. how particular hierarchies and forms ofpower relations operate—and are contested — via signs and meanings lingers as the theoretical and empirical question to be answered. secondly, the symbolic challenge ofmovements has to be reinstated within a broader vision of the political. melucci's too narrowunderstanding ofpolitics as state-based and his erroneous view of collective action as located mostly outside politics have been criticized as unduly bounding movements to culturalvenues and to civil society issues. finally, another important problem is that movements' symbolic challenges remain enacted in an essentially expressive manner. the existence of movements and the © alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 experiential "practice [of] the alternative meanings of everyday life" (melucci, 1989:71) are limited to signal ("announce," "publicize") an opposition which, within an immanent and disembodied version ofpower relations, is never otherwise played out. in contrast, i contend that as a challenge to power relations, the symbolic dimension of movement activity should rather be analyzed as an intrinsic part ofmovement politics. that is, as part ofthe struggles overpower in which concrete actors are engaged in the variety of social sites where unequal power relations are at play. in addition, i suggest that understanding movements' symbolic challenge as being—partly 4—a 'politics of signs and meanings' directs us towards the semiotic 5 aspects ofthis challenge. one of the main avenues to reconceptualizing and to investigating 'the symbolic challenge of movements' is, i will argue, to analyse this challenge as a struggle whose domain is linguistic and discursive practices, and whose stake is the power relations built into them laclau and mouffe's discursive politics: the symbolic as contingent in this perspective, laclau and mouffe's (1985) conception of "struggles for hegemony" throws more light on the notion of movements' symbolic challenge in terms of discursive politics. the authors strongly assert the political character of symbolic struggles. laclau and mouffe draw on postmodern claims that place "discourse" at the origin ofthe constitution ofthe subjects, objects, and relationships ofthe social. struggles over discourse, or more largely over the definition ofthe meanings we attach to lived social relations, thus occupy the very center of social conflictuality. laclau and mouffe argue that social relations ofpower have no set meanings outside ofthe discourses that enable us to make sense ofthem social antagonisms, they contend, are polysemic. they can bear as many different significations (i.e., meanings) as there are discourses to constitute them whatever significations masson/ language, power and politics do get fixed are so within discursive struggles forhegemony. that is, within struggles for the political imposition of constructed significations. the authors firmly state that neither the collective identities of the political subjects, nor their projects, issues or interests are pre-given. rather, these are all contingent: they are not determined in advance by the social structure, but they vary as a result ofthe discursive struggles for the hegemonic fixation of social meanings. this fixation is always partial and tentative. concretely, the attempts to "effect closure" on significations is realized, according to laclau and mouffe, through a process of"articulation." in this process, dissimilar elements are linked through discursive strategies that establish among themwhat the authors call "chains ofequivalence." through these chains some discursive elements become substituable. they are also placed in a relation of difference or opposition with regard to other discursive chains. it is through such mechanisms, laclau andmouffe argue (1985:6265), that identities such as "the people," or "the working-class" ^^ have become tentatively fixed among the various and intersecting subject positions that are occupied simultaneously by any individual. similar sequencing operations offer the potential to transfer, or to "displace" meanings made historically available, they argue, by the liberal-democratic discourse to new areas whichthey re-signify andpoliticize (laclau andmouffe, 1985: 154171). the notions of hegemonic struggle, articulations and discursive "chains ofequivalences" can be useful, as the authors suggest, in tracing the constitution ofcoalitional politics and the emergence ofnew issues. more importantly maybe, laclau and mouffe' s claim about the contingency of symbolic constructions should be taken on board by social movement studies. it is worth underlining that, despite its definitively poststructuralist flavor, the view that identities, interests, and political projects are contingent rather than ascribed is also compatible with more fluid versions of contemporary marxism in this case, the notion that there exist alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 structural limits to discursive constructions is to be retained. such limits include the weight ofthe past, the balance offerees, and the nature ofthe unequal relations ofpower at play (jenson, 1989:75). to these i would add: the availability of existing meanings to signify and re-signify, which is also constrained, and constraining. the combination of these factors have as a result that not all discursive constructions are possible. acknowledging the contingent character ofthe symbolic dimension of collective action has important implications. the definition of identities—the 'self-naming' of movements—is increasingly acquiring an explanatory status in social movement theory (see melucci, 1989; mcclurg-mueller, 1992; buechler, 1993; jenson, 1993). yet, if the lived experiences ofthe social subjects are criss-crossed by different types ofpower relations, the identity ofa political actor—a movement—cannot be seen as following directly from the social structure. heterogeneous, rather than unified subjects become politically assembled under ^fr the label ofa movement' sname. peasant movements for example, starn (1992:93) argues, are not a "cut-and-dried affair of class mobilization." rather, who qualifies as "peasant" in a given peasant movement varies and shifts according to an internal process of political hegemony6 where "negotiation, choice, and imposition" are intertwined (starn, 1992:96). seemingly similar political identities—such as 'native peoples,' 'women,' or even 'workers'—are not dennedthe same way in different times and places, and within movements. criterias for inclusion and exclusion differ. we need to know the more precise terms under which a movements' 'name' is defined and the meanings attached to it ifidentities are to be in any way explanatory of movements' goals, strategies, access to the political opportunity structure, and the like. in this perspective, it also has to be stressed that the construction of interests and political projects cannot be seen as flowing directly from the choice of an identity, or a name. if movements indeed construct claims and interests "in accordance masson/ language, power and politics with the logic of [their] name," as jenson (1993:343) contends, this very 'logic" is itself discursively and diversely constructed. contemporary feminist works, for instance, have clearly asserted the diversity of 'women's' experiences. this diversity translates into diverse logics, thus giving rise to the political expression of widely diverse 'women's interests' 7 within largely heterogeneous, fragmented, and multi-form 'women's movements.' moreover, as laclau and moufte (1985 : 168-169) point out, interests and projects are susceptible to being articulated within and to widely different discourses, with divergent or even contradictory implications in terms of the direction of struggles. as contingency and multiplicity ofpossible discursive articulations combine, movement politics acquire a more ambiguous outlook. most movement initiatives, starn (1992:95) aptly remarks, "defy neat categorization as hegemonic or counterhegemonic." the meaning of "democratic struggles" fluctuates in the context of complex, historically specific imaginaries and is contested amid contending discourses (slater, 1994). contingency means that ^) movements' symbolic dimension bears no external guarantees. a closer examination of movements' discursive constructions is thus in order. yet, laclau and mouffe's framework is not readily applicable to the task. relying heavily on some ofthe recent developments in postmodern and poststructuralist theory, laclau and mouffe's proposition suffers from similar ailments, in particular a too abstract approach to 'discourse' (poynton, 1993). consequently their work has been conducive only to an impressionistic view ofthe way different discourses and meanings jostle, merge, yield or win, in the "struggles for hegemony." unspecified and detached from the concrete modalities through which they are socially realized, discourses in this version appear utterly disembodied from the materiality of the linguistic means that express them they are also delinked from the institutional locations and the social activity that permit their existence and that found their effectrvity. despite the acknowlalternate routes, volume 13, 1996 edgment that discourses find their realization, in great part, through language, detailed accounts ofactual processes ofmeaning-construction in linguistic forms are eschewed by laclau and mouffe. therefore, they do not have much to offer, beyond "chains ofequivalence" set at the level ofthe overarching themes of"equality," "difference," 'justice" and 'liberty," to probe into the specifics of the partial fixation of social meanings. furthermore, the notion that the positions, relations and other regularities ofmeanings constituting discourses need to be actively enacted to take effect is lost from sight. discourses are not omnipotent nor agentless. rather, they draw their authority and social efficacy only from the repeated utterance or performance oftheir elements by people speaking from particular socioenunciative positions or institutions inscribed within a field of power relations. the argument that the subjects are also 'constituted in/by discourses' should not detract from concerns for agency and its exercise. this involves analysing the level ofthe ^^ written and spoken symbolic production by and through which concrete agents reproduce, struggle over and alter the terms of discourses in specific institutional, political and strategic contexts. resource mobilization theory and the framing of collective action the reappraisal of the importance of social meanings under the labels of "social constructivism" or of a re-vamped "new social psychology" approach has led a whole body ofrm scholars to stress the role of social movement organizations (smos) in appropriating cultural symbols and in constructing schematas of interpretation in a way that can be made relevant for the mobilization of people, opinion, and resources. sparked by snow et al.'s (1986) reformulation of goffman's concept of "frame" the recent works on framing share the assumption that meanings are constructed (tarrow, 1994: 1 19). not only do people behave in accordance with a perceived reality but these perceptions are the masson/ language, power and politics locus ofa variety ofinterpretations. proposing selective interpretations of social reality and gaining support for these then becomes a crucial task for movement organizations (see also klandermans, 1988, 1989). collective action frames are complex ensembles of constructed meanings assigned to events, individual and collective experiences, and social situations. they are generally seen to include problem identification and system attributions, the definition of solutions and strategies, as well as a rationale for participation (benford, 1993:199). mccarthy's (1994) "drunk driving frame" and "autosafety frame" are closer to the understanding offrames as ensembles of 'problem attribution/solution identification' templates. other versions of 'frames' have more affinity with the loose utilisation ofthe term "discourse": either pointing to distinctive ways ofusing language (of saying things) from particular socio-enunciative positions (radical feminist frame and student left frame inmcadam, 1994), or to styles and rules for making claims appropriate to particular institutional ^^ sites (equal opportunity frame and rights frame in tarrow, 1994). making smo's frames congruent with prospective participants' (or interlocutors') frames is the object ofdeliberate "frame alignment" efforts by movement organizations. these attempts may even go as far as transfonning significantly the initial frame in the course of collective action (snow and al, 1986). the relational character of framing activity has to be underscored here. the positionality ofthe actor (the frame producer) and of the target audience (be it supporters or state agencies) and the immediate context oftheir interaction all play a role in constraining or foregrounding specific elements ofthe symbolic repertoire ofprotest that can be drawn upon (see tarrow, 1994). although frames are constructed at the organizational level, they can also be diffused within and among movements, in the latter case constituting a "master frame" that makes sense of reality and organizes collective action for a whole generation of activists alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 (tarrow, 1994; mcadam, 1994). the main interest of the current work on 'frames' and 'framing' resides in its constructivist perspective, and more precisely on its concern for the strategic dimension ofmeaningmaking practices at the meso-level ofmovement organizations. deliberate and sometimes shrewd crafting ofsymbolic constructs to "resonate" with an audience is indeed an integral part of smo's action (see benford, 1993:202), as the case of greenpeace's watery-eyed baby seals eloquently illustrates. the purposeful 'framing' ofprogressive projects within the—usually much less progressive — 'language offunding agencies,' a familiar practice within quebec popular movement organizations, is another example ofobvious manipulation ofmessages for strategic ends. these types of strategic issues in symbolic politics nsm-related works typically do not address. empirical studies offrames, however, are too often diverted towards, and reduced to a strictly rhetorical view ofmovement ^fi meanings. the focus rests on the persuasive communication techniques" whereby coldly calculating movement "entrepreneurs" (tarrow, 1994) design or manipulate (donati, 1992; benford, 1987) symbols, metaphors and interpretive frames as "tools for detaching people from their habitual passivity" and for ''transforming quiescence into collective action" (tarrow, 1992: 191). frames then appear as customized, highly negotiable products, launched on a free-market ofideas to attract reluctant individuals. yet, if frames indeed display rhetorical and negotiable aspects, framing practices are also shaped by the wider social processes, structures, and relations of power from which they participate. and this occurs in ways that more often than not remain opaque to movement activists. the hegemony of dominant ways of signifying social relations, for example, or the prevalence of certain institutional discourses (i.e., the discourse ofrights—see tarrow, 1994: 129-130), or movements' symbolic constructions of a higher order such as movement identities (the masson/ language, power and politics 'logic of the name') should all be brought to bear in explaining why certain frames are adopted, why they 'resonate' or not, succeed or not, or why they are produced at all. the framing literature also tends to focus on mobilizational imperatives to the detriment of movements' social attempts at socio-political change as these are fought for in the arenas ofthe state and civil society. the political success ofthe 'reframing,' within the canadian women's movement, ofthe abortion issue in terms of "women's freedom of choice" rather than as "free abortion on demand" makes a case for the relevance of a strategic-instrumental analysis ofprotest meanings (see brodie, gavignan and jenson, 1992). in this example as in others however, it must also be stressed that the institutionalization of particular claims and ways of framing claims has very real, material consequences, as mayer suggests (1991:469). the consequences of specific framings have to be assessed as part of a more politically-oriented analysis of frames. this would require furthering tarrow's hint (1992:196) about "ac^^ tionable symbols" and mcadam, mccarthy and zald's acknowledgement (1988:727-728) that "meanings are acted upon" in ways that have implications for movement action, the political system, and the daily life of people. also required would be a detailed, discursive analysis of the language of frames—and of "counterframes." such an analysis is still an exception in the field (c.f, johnston, 1991). rm scholars' treatment of frames too often limits itselfto identifying 'frames' without exposing much oftheir content or the implication oftheir institutionalization. language-as-action: a sociolingtjistic contribution as we can appreciate from the previous section, the three main frameworks developed within social movement theory for grappling with the symbolic dimension ofmovement activity all take as their starting point the assumption that meanings are socially alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 constructed and the object of contention. they also all throw light, albeit differently, on the stakes ofmovements' struggles in the field of social significations. at issue through movement actors' contests over "culture" and cultural symbols are, following melucci's insight, the modalities and directions in which power is exercised, and the very constitution of the social order. laclau and mouffe's important contribution points more directly to the centrality of the discursive realm and ofstruggles over discursive articulations in constructing not only "social meanings," but social reality itself. hegemonic and 'oppositional' definitions of social antagonisms, collective identities, and political projects, in particular, thus become problematized as highly contingent. finally, resource mobilization's work on ''framing" focuses on the strategic-instrumental use ofmeaning construction by movement organizations, and briefly hints at the link between 'meanings' and action. ^^ furthering these frameworks, i have argued in various ways, requires a closer examination of the specifics of the symbolic politics in whichmovements are involved. more specifically, i have suggested that such an endeavour calls for an inquiry into the language8 in which particular forms ofpower are coded, inscribed—tentatively fixed—and contested in the variety of social sites where power relations are at play. ttus inquiry is imperative not only to account for the variability, ambiguity, and open-endedness of the ways movement politics develop and unfold, but because language itself possesses its own effectiveness within social relations and, thus, "merits its own level of analysis" (weir, 1995:52). the theoretical propositions on which are premissed critical approaches to discourse analysis, among which can be included the influential views offrench social theorists bourdieu (1991) and foucault (1984) 9 , stress the particular "effectiveness" of language. in this they can contribute, as i will try now to show, to ground more solidly and to advance some ofthe main theoretimasson/ language, power and politics cal issues raised so far, to a different extent, by social movement theorists. ttiese issues can be summed up as: the link between language and power, the constitutive dimension of meaning construction, and the consequential character of language for movements' political action. drawing on critical approaches to discourse analysis, i will present a conception oflanguage as a mode ofaction in its double dimension oflinguistic practice (the practice ofmaking meaning through 'texts' 10 ) and of discursive practice (the enunciation of these texts as a social 'event'). first, i will propose that we see language as a material mediation, embedding and enacting social relations ofpower, and whereby what we call 'social reality' is — partially, at the very least 11—constituted, reconstituted, and potentially altered. second, i will suggest to further the notion of languageas-action as it can be brought to bear on movement politics, underlining some ofthe ways in which political actors' discursive practices "do things with language," in particular through the power of "performatives" and the "actionable" q) character ofauthorized language. finally, building onfoucauldian insights, i will argue that language-as-action isbounded by social "effects ofclosure," limiting the possibilities to signify and to act on social reality. itiis closure is an important part of what is contested through movements' linguistic and discursive practices. language: from 'representing' to 'making' the world constructed meanings and interpretations do not hover above people in an ethereal world of ideas, as classical or idealistic versionswould have it. nor are they encap sulated in the cognitive structures of the mind (lemke, 1990:192-194) as many rm theorists suggest. rather, as critical discourse analysts claim, they exist in the material form ofsemiotic practices, one ofthese being language use in the form ofwritten and spoken utterances. language is not a clear window on the world, but a material mediation through which 'reality' is socially constituted and alternate routes, volume 1 3, 1 996 enacted. standing between human beings and the world, language mediates in two ways: it refracts and it signifies. meanings constructed in language refract social reality rather (or more) than they reflect or mirror it. language is a complex and dynamic system ofmeaning-making resources. as a consequence, language is inherently polysemic (volosinov, 1973; bourdieu, 1991; fairclough, 1992). much like a prism refracts daylight in different colors and directions, language has the potential to deploy a diversity of significations about social situations, groups ofpeople, or social relations. there is no one possible meaning for each and every ofthese but many—something which laclau and mouffe have also pointed out, aswe have seen. language is understood as "refracting"not only in the sense that it allows the production ofa variety ofsignifications, but also in the sense that this variety is linked to the existence ofdifferent enunciative positions—there is no view from no where. these positions are taken up by concrete actors within a field of jt% conflictuality and unequal power relations. language is also conceived as a mediation because it signifies social reality. language doesnot merelyrefer (fairclough, 1992:42) to a world that would 'make sense' de facto, bearing significations that only have to be "dressed in signs" (paraphrasingfoucault, 1984:124)tobemadeinteh'igible. rather, language is a social practice ofconstructing meaning fortius world. giving this assumption its full weight implies that in 'signifying the world' not only do people construct meaning, but construct social reality itself 12 both melucci and laclau and mouffe have argued, albeit in different terms, such a symbolic constitution of the social order. in the same vein, critical discourse analysts contend that constructing meaning for the world is also organizing and ordering this world (mishler, 1991: 105-1 06; maingueneau, 1991:196). text-internal forms and meanings assign and assert asymmetrical positions between language participants. they define categories and classifications schemes, identities and relationships, the masson/ language, power and politics actions and processes that are under the control ofthe agents or that are done to/imposed on them, delimiting the fields and the objects to which their interaction conventionally applies (fowler, 1991; halliday, 1989; fairclough, 1992). in so 'ordering the world,' actors actively build power structures and power relations through codes of signs (fowler, 1991; fairclough, 1992). the profound heterogeneity and the power dynamics of social life imply that there are always different ways and possibilities to signify. yet, the power to impose "what is to be counted as real and true" (yeatman, 1990:155) is unequally distributed amongpeople and groups ofpeople, and only certain significations are given broad legitimacy, and accede to dominance. language then appears as a meaning-making and reality-creating social practice that is intrinsically non-neutral, and laced with power relations. cd analysts argue that speaking and writing practices not only embed but also enact social relations ofpower. it is the active enactment of linguistic practices—the frequent speaking and writing—that allows categories, identities, ^p relations, processes, etc. constructed in language tobe objectified, legitimated, and naturalized as part ofthe social world (fowler, 1991:82, 94). the mundane, day-to-day, repetitive practice of language participates in the constant making and remaking of social 'reality' (fairclough, 1993:139). linguistic practices play an important role in organizing and sustaining social structure (fairclough, 1992:58). language then becomes site and stake in a struggle that aims to unmake and alter the symbolic constructions that embed, enact, and reproduce dominant power relations. 'doing things' with language implicated in the making of social reality and its ordering, language is further conceptualized by critical discourse analysts as a mode ofaction on this reality. to advance our understanding of language-as-action, we need to refer to language use and to struggles involving language not only in terms of contention alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 among different sets oflinguistic practices (ofpower-laden, textinternal meanings), but as discursive practices. discursive practices—the actual saying or writing oftexts by social agents—do not only 'speak of (i.e., express) or enact particular sets of textual meanings. they 'speak from' (from a particular position) and they 'speak to' (to a particular audience), within institutional and social sites located in space and time: they are acts of language. they are events occurring in contexts and doing something in these contexts, with consequences for movement politics, wider socio-political processes, and power relations. one the one hand, this entails analyzing movements' texts as strategically produced within specific relational contexts, that is: as attempts to realize certain ends. for example, as resource mobilization scholars have aptly noted, for mobilizing people's participation or institutional support around particular issues. on the other hand, besides the manifest intent, or the action immediately effected by the discursive practice itself the analyst should ^^ consider more broadly what is being accomplished through a particular act of language. the notion of the performativity of political speech, as developed by bourdieu, and a focus on the actioriability ofauthorized language help to highlight some other important ways in which political actors "do things with language." the conception oftheperformativity oflanguage originates from speech acts theory (van dijk, 1985a). in the founding work ofaustin ( 1 962), performatives are understood in linguistic terms as utterances that effect what they enunciate through the very act of enunciating (fowler, 1991:87-88). moving beyond austin, french social theorist bourdieu advocates the grounding ofperformatrvity in social and political struggles. political performatives are "statements which seek to bring about what they state" (bourdieu, 1991:225). they are utterances that aspire to bring into existence that which they enunciate. performatives are central elements in the struggle to bring into existence, or force out of existence elements of social reality. these attempts to masson/ language, power and politics institute social reality, or deinstitute what is instituted, are inseparable from struggles "to make and unmake groups," to impose as legitimate a vision or a revision ofthe divisions ofthe social world (bourdieu, 1991:221). the expression of collective identities by movements, in particular, can be analysed in this light as discursive practices that do a certain number ofthings. first, the enunciation ofmovement identities is a performative act that brings into existence the actor of politics — "that who represents." at the same time, these enunciations participate in the creation ofthe very subject who, it is claimed, "is supposed to be represented" (hark, 1994:3), as the pronouncement ofan identity performatively states the precedence ofa specific subject position over many. the enunciation of collective identities by movement actors also works towards de-instituting already instituted categories and the social hierarchies they express and enact. simultaneously, movements' representations operate to re-institute identity categories "under new terms" (those of a reappropriated, positive identity—young, ^% 1990:159-161), giving them new saliency. from 'indians' to 'first nations,' from 'homosexuals' to 'lesbians and gays,' social groups are made and unmade through movement performatives and political actors are established. as a result, the balance of power ofthe social hierarchies these identities index is defacto altered. by directly linking performatives to political struggle, bourdieu more explicitly than most theorists oflanguage, shifts the location ofthe "power ofspeech" fromlanguage to the agents oflanguage. the constitutive properties oflanguage, the effectiveness ofperformatives (or of any other linguistic feature) are not to be derived from linguistic constructions alone, nor fromthe sole communication skills ofthe speakers. rather, the power of language is a form ofdelegated power. it is a power bestowed on speech either by the authority of a social institution, or the authority of the group ('those who are represented') which authorizes certain sets oflinguistic practices by authorizing itself alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 to use them (bourdieu, 1992:109,129). another way in which language functions as a mode of action is through its actionability. linguistic practices are indexical of social action. not only do they point to certain types of actions in given contexts (lemke, 1990:189), but the social meanings encoded in language are acted upon. this actionability is not a property oflanguage in itself^ but a property "authorized" by institutions and groups. the way identities, relationships and categories ofthe social are denned in language matters: it makes a difference for the type and direction ofpeople's action—or inaction (purvis and hunt, 1993:474; bourdieu, 1982:127-128). more fundamentally, the war of interpretations in which movements are engaged can be viewed as battles over the power to establish authoritative definitions that imply "actsand interventions" (fraser, 1989: 166). walker's analysis ofthe discursive struggle around the issue of wife-battering in canada is instructive in this regard: © as "women's movement activists struggled with professionals for control over the terms in which the issue was to be recognized and acted upon," [...] "the struggle [became] one of contestation over whose knowledge will define the situation, who is to be held to blame, and what kind of action will be taken by whom:' (walker, 1990:18). (my emphasis) defining the issue as "domestic dispute" locates the problem within the criminal code and the purview ofits law enforcement agencies, whereas 'tamilyviolence" channels invervention within the practices ofsocial work professionals (walker, 1990;11, 14). by contrast, 'svife-battering" refers to canadianwomen's groups' struggle for feminist services and for social solutions countering male violence. ifthe constitutive character oflanguage is the object ofthe struggles for the fixation ofsocial meanings in which movements engage, it is not only from the more abstract point of view of masson/ language, power and politics embeddingnew identities, relations and representations in 'norms and codes,' policies and programs, or in the 'democratic project.' the discursive practices of the actors also generate and enable (weir, 1993:242)—or conversely, foreclose and preempt—social action. the legitimation, if not the institutionalization, of specific actionable meanings has consequences for the subsequent pursuit ofmovement politics—as well as for the daily life ofpeople (as the example from walker also suggests). language as a bounded mode of action as a social mode of action, language typically operates within parameters that pose limits to the possibilities to signify and to resignify. the limits placed on 'what can be said' are also limits on 'what can be done' by social agents engaged in social struggle. the bounded nature of linguistic and discursive practices is another important feature of language as a dimension of the exercise o£ and struggle over power. movements' efforts to (re)constitute social reality and to impose new actionable meang§± ings run against and have to breakthrough these limits, or 'effects of closure,' embedded in language-in-use. a first series of effects of closure are the limits placed on speech before speech can be there, limits that preempt the alternative to be expressed. i£ to paraphrasefoucault (1984: 127), discourse, or language, is a violence we do to things/to the world, the ways we arrest the flux ofsocial reality potentially also arrest our possibilities of knowing and acting on the world within certaintypes ofpatterns. more specifically, these limits take place at the level ofthe doxa. that is, at the level ofthe classification schemes, categories, relationships, etc., that are the most entrenched in what we call 'common sense.' widespread and largely accepted, elements ofthe doxa usually go unquestioned (maingueneau, 199 1:247-248; angenot, 1989:14, 160). women organization's counter discourse production, with its explicit objective of "changing the mentalities" (masson and tremblay, 1993: 177), is aimed atthe doxa. their speech repositions 'women' alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 as subjects and agents ofnon-habitual socialprocesses andinnew relationships with the other actors and objects ofthese processes. these enunciations are attempts to re-open what it is possible to say about women and what it is possible for women to do. the expression ofthe unexpressed is also foreclosed by the existing range ofmeanings socially available to signify the world. some "ways ofbeing cannot be spoken because the people who live them have no language for them" (cain, 1994:84), and cannot be acted upon in socially transformative ways until people do have a language forthem a 'labour ofenunciation" (b ourdieu, 199 1 : 129) has to occur in relation to this emergent speech. under women's movements efforts, for example, the unease, the shame, the unspeakability of certain social situations have been (re)interpreted and (re)named. the new terms of "'sexism,' 'sexualharassment,' 'marital, date and acquaintance rape,' 'labor force sex-segregation,' 'the double shift,' and 'wife-battery'" have contributed to remake, fraser argues, "entire regions of social discourse" (1992:179). proposing new categories, new meanings to reinterpret the group's experience of the social world, as well as bringing into existence some of the ineffable (bourdieu, 1991:129), some of the unthinkable (cain, 1994) components of the experience of lived social relations, movements constitute a new actionable knowledge in the form ofnew sets of meanings that are made available as basis for political action. effects ofclosure not only operate on 'speech before speech can be there,' but also on the 'speech that is.' discourses limit both linguistic practices (the textual meanings that can be enunciated) and discursive practices as events (whether andhow these events can occur). there are two main avenues through which 'discourse' is usually acknowledged as effecting closure. the first one stresses the regularities—or fixations—of meanings in the linguistic practices associated with particular socio-enunciative positions that are also positions in a field ofpower. in this sense, 'discourse' is usually understood as sets of conventionalized masson/ language, power and politics fixations that bound institutionally positioned speakers to particular ways of signifying. discourses define, describe and delimit what it is possible to say and not to say (and by extension—what it is possible to do and not to do) with respect to the area ofconcern of that institution, whether marginally or centrally. [...] organise and give structure to the manner in which a particular topic, object, process is to be talked about. [...jprovide descriptions, rules, permissions and prohibitions of social and individual actions. (kress cited in yeatman, 1990:164). discourses constrain what can be said and what can be done by given institutional actors. discourses also impose authorized 'ways oftalking' about areas ofknowledge or social practice on the broader institutional sites where they are hegemonic, and on the other actors wishing to intervene on these sites. a second way in which discourses effect closure is through what foucault identifies as their "external conditions ofpossibility" (1984:127). that is, through the rules of the discursive economies that bound thevery enunciation ofdiscourses. by this, foucault points to the implicit inscriptions ofpower that make it possible or impossible for particular statements or meaningmaking practices to occur at all in, or from, specific institutional positions. in this perspective, he sums up an ensemble of"procedures of exclusion" through which not only the objects of discourse ('what can be talked about'), but also the site, the circumstances and ways of speech, as well the speaking subject her/himself are limited, rarefied, foreclosed. women's movement organizations in canada, for instance, venture since the 1980s on the terrain ofeconomic policy. their discursive interventions re-encode in gender terms the objects of conventional economic discourse such as free-trade or the deficit. we can see from brodie's account (1994:30) that women organizations have been denied so far the status of legitimate i^p c) alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 speakers on the institutional (state) sites where economic policy is discussed. their alternative discourse is dismissed and its implications therefore preempted. the respective range oflegitimate 'women issues' and of appropriate 'economic issues' remains curtailed as well. the effective closure ofthis site on the speaker, its speech and the potential actionability ofthe latter is undeniably an expression and an effect ofthe exercise ofrelations ofpower. effects of closure on the speech 'to be' and on the speech 'that is' appear as much an important part ofwhat is at stake in social movements' struggles on the terrain ofthe symbolic than the meanings themselves. among the things that oppositional social actors 'do with language' are discursive practices that attempt, and sometimes succeed, in opening up the fields and the sites of meaning-making production, liquefying closure and setting up new parameters for further political action. conclusion the recent interest for the symbolic dimension of collective action, and for its intertwining with questions of strategy and politics is among the most interesting developments in social movement theory today. yet, as a fair number of scholars have remarked, the field remains ill-equipped to fully appreciate the role played by symbolic constructs in movement activity. it is my contention that the pursuit ofthis inquiry requires moving away from resource mobilizations' understanding of symbolic constructions as simple rhetorical 'tools' in the hands ofmovement activists and their opponents. the relationship between 'the symbolic' and power is more intimate, and its reaches have further implications in terms ofsocial life and social structure. as underscored by melucci and explored in a more detailed manner by laclau and mouffe, the symbolic is more adequately conceptualized as an intrinsic dimension ofthe exercise ofpower, and of the political struggles over the power to constitute social reality. in this light, a promising avenue for social movement theory masson/ language, power and politics is, i suggest, to engage more extensivelywith the theorizing (and, eventually, the methodologies 13 ) that critical approaches to the study oflanguage and discourse have to offer. this engagement produces a revision of social movement research orientations in particular directions. namely, it stresses the need for a politicallyoriented analysis of movement meaning-making practices that pays attention to the specificity ofthe language in which movements' meanings and struggles over meanings are couched. this is not promoting the return to a classical, fine-grained analysis of political ideologies. nor does it amount to considering movements' struggles as a textual "contest betweencompetingtropes"14 or, in a postmodern fashion, as the disembodied confrontation of contending discourses. rather, it proposes to understand the ways in which language and discourses are implicated and put to work, as agent-driven modes of action, in political projects of dominance and change. the action perspective i am arguing for directs the attention towards analysing the linguistic and discursive practices of conq) crete actors interacting within a political field, and the consequences ofthese practices for continuity and change within wider social processes. there are two distinct, although related, components to this proposition. first, it advocates a detailed form-and-meaning analysis of movements' linguistic practices. in this chapter, ihave repeatedly made a case for the analysis of the particulars of movements' representations. i have underlined the contingency ofmovement identities and interests, the variability and ambiguity of movement projects and politics, and the relational and consequential character of frames. if language is, furthermore, theorized as a constitutive, performative and actionable mode of action, then the examination ofthe linguistic specificity ofmovement meanings cannot be avoided. what social movement research needs is not so much a "descent into discourse" than a linguisticallysensitive analysis of real instances ofpeople saying and writing things (fairclough, 1992:57) in the course of collective action. alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 second, integral to this proposition is the recognition that text-internal analysis ofmeanings is not enough. acts oflanguage occur in specific historical, socio-political, and strategic contexts, and do something in these contexts. textual meanings have to be located within the "context of situation" (halliday, 1989) and discursive constraints that bound their production and their enunciation. they must be situated within the political field and the institutional sites where they get played out as the discursive practices of movement actors interacting and struggling with other actors, and examined in their outcomes and consequences in terms ofsubsequent political, institutional, and social action 15 . in addition, discursive practices have to be inscribed in the socially and historically located strategies and projects of the social subjects that produce them (maingueneau, 1991). finally, these practices cannot be treated in isolation from the larger social processesthey contribute to realize, or to alter (threadgold, 1989:103). qk placing the emphasis on a linguisticallysensitive, politically-oriented approach to movements' symbolic production would certainly enable a more in-depth, sharpened analysis of specific discursive struggles overmeanings, namings, and framings. more fundamentally, however, and as i have tried to make clear in this article, a focus on the language/power relationship opens new grounds for our understanding ofthe symbolic challenge of movements, and broadens the scope of our inquiry into the role played by 'the symbolic' in the unfolding ofmovement politics. notes 1. this article is the revised version of a chapter to be published in william k. carroll (ed.) organizing dissent (2nd ed.). i would like to thank lorna weir, heather jon maroney, bill carroll, antje wiener, and one anonymous referee for their critical and insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. 2. for a brief history of rmts turn towards issues of meaning construction see donati (1992: 136-137), or benford (1993:197-199). for a more in-depth questioning of the rational choice assumptions at the hearth of masson/ language, power and politics the rm model see mcclurg mueller (1992), and ferree (1992). 3. the field of sociolinguistics divides into two very different theoretical strands (for an introduction see van dijk, 1985a, 1985b). the "angloamerican" position is influenced by the ethnography of speaking and by micro-interactionist traditions. the "european" (or "continental") tradition owes more to its engagement with early semiotics, structuralism, marxism and poststructuralism. 4. the other route indicated by melucci under the concept of movements' symbolic challenge is the inquiry into the new "ways of life" and "cultural models" developed by oppositional movements. versions of this line of inquiry have been proposed by escobar (1992) and starn (1992). 5. semiotic systems include linguistic as well as non-linguistic systems of signs (such as dress codes, visual symbols, and non-verbal expressions). for an accessible introduction to social semiotics and the study of semiotic practices, see lemke (1990). 6. the idea that movement identities, interests, and political projects are the object of a process of political hegemony that occurs "internally," amid the heterogeneous subjects and organizations that compose a movement i derive from michaud (1992: 212-213). 7. the challenge from poststructuralism and from the non-western feminist critique has made it impossible to speak of "women," or "women's interests" in universalizing terms. on these questions see in particular riley (1988), mohanty (1992), nicholson (1994), pringle and watson (1990). 8. despite much variation in the use of the term 'discourse' nowadays, this notion, as used by critical discourse analysts as well as in laclau and mouffe (1985) is not synonymous with 'language.' rather, discourses are expressed through linguistic means—this among other mechanisms. discourses are, more fundamentally, sets ofrules bounding meaning-making practices, as we will see later in this section. 9. the schools of critical linguistics (fairclough, 1992; fowler, 1991), systemic functional grammar (halliday, 1989; weir, 1995), social semiotics (threadgold, 1989), and the french school of discourse analysis (see overview in maingueneau, 1991), are usually identified with 'critical discourse analysis' (cda). reference to earlier theorizing by bourdieu, and by foucault (first published in french in the 1970s and 1980s) is a feature of many of these works. for a mapping of cda's orientations and a brief overview of the different schools, see van dijk ^> alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 (1993:249-251). 10. my use of the term 'text' in these pages is limited to its commonsense acceptation and includes written and spoken linguistic production. 11. on this issue, see note 12. 12. the respective weight of language, or discourse, and of "nondiscursive" practices in constituting social reality is currently the object of heated debates. postmodern attempts to present all-encompassing versions of "discourse" as the source of the social (as, for example, in laclau and mouffe's version) are resisted by most critical discourse analysts. their position rather acknowledges that there is a dynamic, dialectical relationship between non-discursive and discursive practices, between lived existence and what can be captured by language and discourse. on this last point see in particular cain (1994). 13. an overview of the methodological apparatus available for doing linguistically-based discourse analysis can be found in maingueneau (1991). good examples of empirical works using these methods include fowler (1991), fairclough (1993), van dijk (1993), and weir (1995). 14. a position attributed by tarrow to deconstructionists (tarrow,@ 1994:119-121). 15. see walker (1990) for a good example of this type of work. references alvarez, sonia e. and arturo escobar 1992 "conclusion: theoretical and political horizons of change in contemporary latin american social movements." pp. 317329. in arturo escobar and sonia e. alvarez (eds), the making ofsocial movements in latin america. 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'archive. paris: hachette. masson, dominique et pierre-andre tremblay 1993 "mouvement des femmes et developpement local." revue canadienne des sciences regionales/canadian journal of regional science. 16(2): 165-1 83. ^1 alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 mayer, margit 1991 "social movement research in the united states. a european perspective." international journal ofpolitics, culture, and society. 4(4): 45 9-480. mcadam, doug 1994 "culture and social movements." pp. 36-57. in enrique larana, hank johnston, and joseph r. gusfield (eds.), new social movements. from ideology to identity. philadelphia: temple university press. mcadam, doug, mccarthy, john d. and mayer n. zald 1988 "social movements," in neil smelser (ed.) handbook of sociology. beverly hills, ca.: sage. mccarthy, john d. 1994 "activists, authorities, and media framing of drunk driving." pp. 133-167. in enrique larana, hank johnston, and joseph r. gusfield (eds.), new social movements. from ideology to identity. 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" journal ofnarrative and life history. 1(2/3): 101-108. massort/ language, power and politics mohanty, chandra talpade 1992 'teminist encounters: locating the politics of experience." pp. 74-92. in michele barrett and anne phillips (eds.), destabilizing theory. contemporary feminist debates. stanford, ca. : stanford university press. nicholson, linda 1994 "interpreting gender." signs. 20(1): 79-105. poynton, cate 1993 "grammar, language and the social: poststructuralism and systemic-functional linguistics." social semiotics. 3(1): 1-21. pringle, rosemary and sophie watson 1990 'tathers, brothers, mates: the fraternal state in australia." pp. 229-243. in sophie watson (ed.), playing the state—australian feminist interventions. london: verso. purvis, trevor and alan hunt 1993 "discourse, ideology, discourse, ideology, discourse, ideology..." the british journal ofsociology. 44(3): 473-499. riley, denise 1988 "am i that name? " feminism and the category of "women " in history. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. ^^ slater, david 1994 "power and social movements in the other occident: latin america in an international context." latin american perspectives. 21(2): 11-37. snow, david a., e.b. rochford jr., s.k. worden, r.d. benford 1986 "frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation."american sociological review. 51:464481. starn, orin 1992 '"i dreamed of foxes and hawks': reflections on peasant protest, new social movements and the rondas campesinas of northern peru." pp. 89-1 1 1. in arturo escobar and sonia e. alvarez (eds.), the making ofsocial movements in latin america. identity, strategy, and democracy. boulder, co.: westview press. tarrow, sydney 1992 "mentalities, political cultures, and collective action frames: constructing meanings through action." pp. 174-202. in aldon d. morris and carol mcclurg mueller (eds.), frontiers in social movement theory. new haven: yale university press. alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 1994 'training collective action." in power in movement. social movements, collective action and politics. cambridge: cambridge university press. threadgold, terry 1989 'talking about genre: ideologies and incompatible discourses." cultural studies. 3(1): 101-127. touraine, alain 1988 return ofthe actor. social theory in postindustrial society. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. van dijk, teun a. 1985a "introduction: discourse analysis as a new cross-discipline." pp. 1-10. in van dijk, t.a. (ed), handbook ofdiscourse analysis. volume 1: disciplines ofdiscourse . london: academic press. 1985b "introduction: dialogue as discourse and interaction." pp. 11 1. in van dijk, t.a. (ed.), handbook ofdiscourse analysis. volume 3: discourse and dialogue. london: academic press. 1993 "principles of critical discourse analysis." discourse and society. 4(2): 249-283. volosinov, v.n. 1973 marxism and the philosophy oflanguage [1929]. new york and london: seminar press. walker, gillian a. 1990 family violence and the women s movement: the conceptual politics ofstruggle. toronto: university of toronto press. weir, lorna 1993 'the wanderings of the linguistic turn in anglophone historical writing." journal ofhistorical sociology. 6(2): 227245. 1995 "pc then and now. resignifying political correctness." pp.5187. in stephen richer and lorna weir (eds.), beyond political correctness. toward the inclusive university. toronto: university of toronto press. yeatman, anna 1990 bureaucrats, technocrats, femocrats. essays on the contemporary australian state. sydney: allen & unwin. young, iris marion 1990 justice and the politics ofdifference . princeton, new jersey: princeton university press. digitized by the internet archive in 2011 with funding from carleton university, department of sociology & anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesc20alte alternate routes a journal of critical social research editors amanda mccarthy siomonn pulla andrea sharkey alternate routes a journal of critical social research volume 20, 2004 editorial policy/call for papers 4 perspectives paula godoy-paiz 'canada's troubled troops': the construction of post-traumatic stress disorder and its uses by the canadian armed forces 6 anne herro the united nations and international conflict resolution 24 work in progress mickey vallee the secret musical self: nostalgic reification of music according to adorno 40 articles hilary goldstein tuning in to democracy: community radio, free speech and the democratic promise. . . .59 nadine j. quehl queering 'madness': possibilities of performativity theory 107 alternate routes riaz tejani the vanishing point: humanity, vision, and value theory in the age of economic globalization 132 kevin young book review linda s. joffe the other side of the market: social governance in neoliberal world order and the economy of passive mitigation. . 149 kirp, david l. 2003. shakespeare, einstein, and the bottom line: the marketing ofhigher education cambridge: harvard up. isbn: 067401 1465. 336 pages 178 contents ofpast issues 1 82 i olume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs editorial policy/call for papers alternate routes (ar) is a refereed multi-disciplinary journal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university ottawa, canada, k1s 5b6, altroutes@lists.carleton. ca. as a peer reviewed journal, ar provides a forum for debate and exchange among north american and international graduate students. we are interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or coauthored with faculty), regardless of university affiliation. the editorial emphasis of the journal is on the publication of critical and provocative analyses of theoretical and substantive issues. we welcome papers on a broad range of topics and encourage submissions which advance or challenge theoretical questions and contemporary issues. we also welcome commentaries and reviews of recent publications, works in progress and personal perspectives. alternate routes is currently seeking submissions for volume 21, 2005. papers should be submitted double-spaced and in triplicate, following the american psychological association (apa) referencing system, keeping endnotes to a minimum. please see our website for a style-guide. back issues of alternate routes are available at the following prices per volume: current issue (volume 20, 2004) individuals $12.00; students/ un(der)employed $6.00; institutions $21.50. volume 16/15 (99/97): individuals $12.00; students/ un(der)employed $4.00; institutions $12.00. all previous years: individuals s3. 00; students/un(der)employed $1.50; institutions $6.00. alternate routes is indexed in sociological abstracts and the left index. the alternate routes collective gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the carleton university community; the departments of sociology and anthropology and its chair; the dean of arts and social sciences; the dean of graduate studies and research; and the vice-president of research. we also wish to gratefully thank all of the anonymous reviewers and kathryn atkinson for her wonderful new logo and cover design. volume 20, 2004 alternate routes perspectives 'canada's troubled troops': the construction of posttraumatic stress disorder and its uses by the canadian armed forces paula godoy-paiz since the late 1990s, there have been a number of news stories in canada with headlines like "casualties of peace" and "from national hero to park bench drunk,'" reporting on the prevalence of mental illness, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) among canadian armed forces personnel. in january of 1997 canada's department of national defence carried out an epidemiological survey of canadians who had served in the gulf war to establish the overall health status of gulf war personnel as well as the incidence of any symptoms of illness among them. the results indicated that among other health problems, canadian soldiers who had served in the gulf war were suffering from ptsd (veterans affairs canada, 2002). subsequently, there has been an increasing amount of discussion within the military and in the media about the incidence of ptsd among canadian soldiers. in this analysis, i examine the construction of ptsd and how the disorder is being drawn upon by members of the canadian armed forces. i begin by first examining what exactly it is that ptsd refers to through tracing the development of the disorder. particular attention is directed towards the differing accounts of the origins of ptsd offered by judith herman ( 1 992) and allan young ( 1 995). i then examine a number of news stories of canadian soldiers suffering from ptsd that have appeared in canadian news. i argue, drawing on allan young (1995), that rather than representing a timeless and universal disorder, ptsd is a recent social construction that emerged following a political struggle by psychiatric workers and activists advocating for recognition and benefits on 6 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs behalf of large numbers of vietnam war veterans who were suffering from undiagnosed psychological effects of war-related trauma. moreover, being a social construct, ptsd serves to reinforce and advance particular beliefs and ideologies within society. for instance, the discourse of victimhood and 'the troubled troop' facilitated by ptsd works to reinforce the image of the 'good', 'caring' peacekeeper and canada as a similarly 'good' and 'caring' nation. therefore, while the disorder may be empirically experienced by many, it nevertheless represents a social construct that makes certain discourses possible, such as the discourse of victimhood, while foreclosing the possibility of others, like that of canadian soldiers as perpetrators. the 'discovery' or construction ofptsd? the literature on the origins of ptsd can be divided into two camps. in the first, it is believed that the disorder is timeless and universal and that there have always been persons suffering from it. in the second, however, ptsd is seen as a social construct emerging at a particular point in time and it is espoused that while there have always been people suffering as a result of difficult experiences, they were not prior to the 1980s suffering from ptsd. the first position is articulated by judith herman (1992) in her book trauma and recovery and the second is found in allan young's (1995) the harmony ofillusions. herman's position is that in 1980, for the first time, the characteristic syndrome of psychological trauma became a 'real' diagnosis as the american psychiatric association included in its official manual of mental disorders a new category, called 'post-traumatic stress disorder' (1992:28). herman argues that while the disorder became a 'real' diagnosis in 1980, it had always 'been there'. herman's position is evidenced in statements such as, "[t]he clinical features of this disorder were congruent with the traumatic neurosis that kardiner had outlined forty years before. thus the syndrome of psychological trauma, periodically forgotten and periodically rediscovered through the past century, finally attained formal recognition within the diagnostic canon" (herman, 1992:28.). herman maintains, therefore, that the social and political context of the late 1970s and early 1980s facilitated the emergence of ptsd as part of official psychiatric nosology, but the disorder itself existed before then. volume 20, 2004 7 alternate routes most of what has been written about traumatic memory and ptsd over the last twenty years or so has discussed these developments from the viewpoint of researchers and clinicians, such as herman, who are convinced it is timeless (young, 1995:5). young (1995) argues that this position is based on a chronicle of events that are as follows. the position that sees ptsd as timeless begins with the premise that although there is a "lack of historical and theoretical continuity" in the evolution of psychiatric knowledge of ptsd, the disorder itself has been around from the earliest of times. one of the first physicians to discuss the syndrome was john erichsen, who identified it during the 1860s while examining victims of railway accidents. erichsen attributed the syndrome, which he called "railway spine", to neurological mechanisms defined unclearly. later, charcot, janet, and freud concluded, on the basis of clinical evidence, that the syndrome could also be produced by a psychological trauma. during world war i, the disorder's typical 'cause' shifted from railway spine (erichsen) and hysteria (charcot, janet, freud) to the battlefield, where large numbers of soldiers were diagnosed with 'shell shock.' according to young, exponents of this position then point out that interest in the syndrome declined after world war i but revived during the 1940s, when the american abram kardiner, codified its criterial features and correctly identified its delayed and chronic forms. despite kardiner's achievement, however, the psychiatric establishment ignored the classification. finally, it is maintained by exponents of the position of ptsd as timeless, the diagnosis achieved general acceptance only in 1980, when ptsd was included in the official psychiatric nosology following a political struggle of psychiatric workers and activists on behalf of the large number of vietnam war veterans. in other words, it was during this period that the disorder, that had always existed, was 'discovered' and became an official diagnosis. having traced the reasoning behind the position, which treats ptsd as timeless (and hence merely 'discovered' in the late 1970s/early 1980s), young argues that the disorder was actually created during this time. in the harmony ofillusions: inventing post-traumatic stress disorder allan young (1995) argues against the generally accepted picture of pstd discussed above. young argues that the generally accepted picture of ptsd and the traumatic memory that underlies it is mistaken. "the disorder is not timeless, nor does it possess an intrinsic unity. rather it is glued together by the practices, technologies and narratives 8 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs with which it is diagnosed, studied, treated, and represented and by the various interests, institutions and moral arguments that mobilized these efforts and resources" (young, 1995:5). young argues that although it is true that as far back as one can go, there have been people tormented and incapacitated by memories of sad and horrific occurrences, ptsd is a fairly recent creation. to demonstrate this, young traces the construction and development of ptsd as a psychiatric diagnostic category. this is not to say that young argues the disorder is not "real". he concedes that the reality of ptsd is confirmed by the empirical experiences of many people. he states, however, that his job as an ethnographer of ptsd is not to deny its reality but to explain how it and its traumatic memory have been made real (young, 1995:6). in examining the development of the current trauma discourse, young locates its origins in the late nineteenth century when the term 'trauma', then used only in reference to physical wounds, was extended to also refer to psychic wounds. until the nineteenth century, young argues, the term "trauma" referred specifically to physical injuries; however, trauma was subsequently extended to include psychogenic ailments through an analogy that connected the newly discovered effects of surgical shock to effects that could be produced via "nervous" shock (ibid). through this analogy there emerged what young terms an "affect logic", whose starting point is the experience offear, conceived as memory, both individual and collective, of traumatic pain. the now more familiar version of traumatic memory, the notion of thoughts and images located in the mind, therefore, was born in the closing decades of the century, "when this analogy and its distinctive affect logic were conjoined with the practices and proofs of clinical hypnosis" (ibid.). young argues that these proofs, which culminate in the clinical narratives of janet and freud, "point to the existence of parallel domains of psychic lifethe conscious mind and the subconscious (janet) or the unconscious (freud)thereby making it possible to say and show that the mind keeps (traumatic) secrets from itself (ibid.). young maintains, therefore, that the traumatic memory emerges at the end of the nineteenth century, at the intersection of two evolving fields of medical knowledge: "knowledge of how trauma affects the nervous system and, through it, the rest of the body, and knowledge of how pathogenic secrets impact on the mental life of their owners" (young, 1995:39). young argues, however, volume 20, 2004 9 alternate routes that although the traumatic memory emerges at the end of the nineteenth century, it attracts little attention at this time. the neglect of traumatic memory, however, ends with world war i (young, 1995:40-41; leys, 1996). a half-century after erichsen published his first book on railway accidents, physicians serving in the royal army medical corps (ramc), like their counterparts in the other combatant armies, were witnesses to an epidemic of traumatic paralyses. by the end of the war, 80,000 cases of shell shock had been treated in ramc medical units and 30,000 troops diagnosed with nervous trauma had been evacuated to british hospitals. after the war, 200,000 ex-servicemen received pensions for nervous disorders (stone, 1988:249 in young, 1995:41-42). during this period the work of w.h.r. rivers, an ethnographer and a temporary captain of the royal army medical corps, serving as a psychiatrists at the craiglockhart military hospital, becomes significant because of his engagement with war neuroses (young, 1995:42). according to young, rivers had the opportunity to observe a variety of psychiatric casualties and his articles on the psychogenic origins of war neuroses were widely read. young argues that once the traumatic memory was born, however, it would take a further step for it to become ptsd. dsm iii & ptsd's inclusion into official psychiatric nosology having traced the development of the traumatic memory, young examines how it was ultimately transformed into ptsd. he points out that it was in the diagnostic and statistical manual ofmental disorders ofthe american psychiatric association (dsm iii) published in 1980, that ptsd became part of official psychiatric nosology. although, he argues, it was nominally just another edition of the manual, dsm-iii was fundamentally different from the preceding volumes, both in its positivism and in its authority (young, 1995:7). the first edition of the manual included a similar diagnosis, "gross stress reaction," defined as a "psychoneurotic disorder originating in an experience of intolerable stress" (young, 1995:107). unlike ptsd, however, gross stress reaction was treated as a transient response, and its symptomatology was vague and consistent with dsm-fs system of classification. moreover, the following edition (dms ii) dropped this diagnosis altogether. the closest that dsm ii came to ptsd was "transient situational disturbances" and it was thought that if the patient had good adaptive capacities, his symp10 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs toms would usually recede as stress diminished. if, however, the symptoms persisted after the stress was removed, the diagnosis of another mental disorder was indicated (young, 1995:107). the disorders found in the first and second editions of the manual thus contrasted with the current understanding of ptsd, which not only includes 'transitory experiences', but also long term experiences of 'trauma' as a result of exposure to difficult situations. the adoption of the dsm-iii was part of a large transformation in psychiatric knowledge making that had begun in the 1950s (young, 1995:7). according to young, "[t]hese changes profoundly altered clinical practice in the united states and prepared the way for a new science of psychiatry based on research technologies adopted from medicine (experimentation), epidemiology (biostatistics) and clinical psychology (psychometrics)" (young, 1995:7.). with the publication of the dms iii, ptsd is established as an official diagnosis and its defining characteristics are outlined as follows: (a) an individual experienced "a recognizable stressor that would evoke significant symptoms of distress in almost anyone,". (b) the traumatic event is re-experienced through i.) recurrent, intrusive memories and distressful recollections of the event; ii) recurrent distressful dreams of the event; iii) sudden acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring. (c) there is a numbing of responsiveness to the external world, or reduced involvement in it as evidenced by at least one of the following; i) markedly diminished interest in one or more significant activities; ii) feelings of detachment or estrangement from others; iii) constricted affect. (d) at least two of the following symptoms were not present before the trauma: i) hyperalertness or exaggerated startle response; ii) sleep disturbance; iii) guilt about surviving when others have not, or guilt about behavior required for survival; iv) memory impairment or trouble concentrating; v) avoidance of activities that arouse the recollection of the traumatic event; vi) intensification of symptoms after being exposed to events that symbolize or resemble the traumatic event (young, 1995:1 17). in the course of the aforementioned developments, "the traumatic memory, up to this point a clinically marginal and heterogeneous phenomenon, was transformed into a standard and obligatory classification, post-traumatic stress disorder" (young, 1995:7). young maintains throughout his book that one of the most notable and significant features of ptsd, is that it is a disease of time. in other volume 20, 2004 11 alternate routes words, the distinctive pathology of ptsd is that it permits the past (in the form of the memory) to relive itself in the present (in the form of intrusive images and thoughts and in the patient's compulsion to replay old events). young argues that "the space occupied by ptsd in the dsm-iii classificatory system depends on this temporal casual relation: etiological event —> "symptoms" (young, 1995:7). without it, young argues, ptsd's symptoms are indistinguishable from syndromes that belong to various other classifications for there are numerous clinical cases that resemble ptsd in every respect except that time runs in the wrong direction, that is, form the present back into the past. he also points out that the characteristic of time running in one direction (from past to present), has practical implications also, since it is the basis on which ptsd qualifies a "service-connected" disability (a precondition for getting access to treatment and compensation) within the veterans administration medical system. i come back to the issues of time and the practical applications of the disorder when examining ptsd among canadian soldiers. stories of 'troubled troops '; ptsd among canadian armed forces personnel since the late 1990s there has been a push from within the canadian military calling attention towards the incidence of ptsd among its members. the veterans affairs canada website, for instance, is filled with stories and information regarding ptsd and the 'large' numbers it affects. veterans affairs canada has posted information about ptsd, from what the characteristics of the disorder are, to its effects on individuals and their families, treatment, and 'reducing the shame' often attached to the disorder. accompanying the push has also been an increase in news stories covering the issue. an article appearing in the cbc news-the magazine in december 1999, had the headline "casualties of peace." the title of the article sets the tone of the entire piece, evoking the sentiment that it is the canadian soldiers who are suffering the costs of canada's involvement in 'peace.' the introduction to the article reads: this is an unsettling look behind canada's face abroad the peacekeepers we send into some of the world's troubled spots. now it seems many of them are coming home highly 12 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs troubled themselves. recently, a canadian forces inquiry put an official stamp on what many soldiers have long known to be true. that long after our troops have left the fighting, the killing, the humanitarian disasters behind, they are still waging private battles; battles with the memories of all they have seen and experienced. (piercey, 1999) the article goes on to describe the life and experiences of armed forces member master corporal steve atkins whose first assignment was croatia who had to leave his wife and three-day old son behind. the article discusses the level of conflict in croatia and states that, when atkins came back, he was no longer sure he still loved the military life, but kept the doubts to himself. atkins is quoted as stating, "i knew that when i got back from croatia in '93 that i was different; that something had changed, i was much more cynical, much more emotionally detached." the article discusses other assignments atkins would subsequently be given, among them his assignment to bosnia. upon leaving for bosnia he took many pictures of his children, and his wife would send him drawings his children had made. moreover, the article reads, "even the mementoes of his family's love did not shield him against the evil of bosnia". atkins states that "it's almost impossible to explain to somebody who hasn't been in a theatre like that to really, i think, get someone to comprehend what that place was like." the piece also discusses the story of brent ratzloff who served in bosnia as a military police officer and whose tasks included identifying bodies buried in mass graves. the reporter states that now ratzloff, " spends his time painting and making crafts to help pass the time, and as therapy of his post traumatic stress disorder." ratzloff states, "i still get flashbacks and stuff, but i stay in the house mostly now. i don't much like to go around a lot of other people. i prefer to stay here. it's safe." the news feature also contains various pictures of both atkins and ratzloff looking 'distressed'. the article concludes with a discussion of how the military is trying to help soldiers like atkins and ratzloff, and mentions the opening of a center in edmonton among one of the five across canada employing psychologists and social workers to help soldiers "come to terms with their emotions." on february 6, 2002 a couple of similar articles appeared in the globe and mail newspaper, which too discussed the issue of ptsd volume 20, 2004 13 alternate routes among canadian soldiers. the first of the two pieces, written by daniel leblanc, summarizes a statement by the minister of defence art eggleton regarding "the stigma surrounding shell shock, which is often dismissed in the military as an unmanly and wimpy condition" . the article opens with a brief explanation of what ptsd refers to and states that ptsd is thought to affect up to 20 percent of canadian soldiers who are sent on foreign missions. in response, eggleton is quoted as having stated that the health and well-being of troops was his foremost concern and that there was a "need to effect a cultural change to eliminate the stigma associated with ptsd, or any type of mental injury". the article also contains excerpts from an interview with lieutenant-general christian couture who stated that the key to reducing the stigma associated with ptsd is to keep telling soldiers that "ptsd is as real an injury as a broken leg". the article concludes with military ombudsman andre marin saying that the armed forces are heading for crisis unless quick action is taken to address the disorder. the second article on ptsd appearing in the globe and mail on february 6 th 2002, is different from the first in the sense that rather than discuss the phenomenon of ptsd among canadian soldiers in general, it examines the story of one soldier. the story very much echoes the sentiments evoked in the cbc news-the magazine piece discussed above. it is a story of a canadian soldier serving in uganda in 1996 and coming home "psychologically scared". the article's author, jill mahoney states that during his deployment to uganda, canadian soldier christian mceachmern, "could do nothing but watch as a woman was raped outside his compound". during the same deployment, mahoney states that mceachmern saw a man beaten to death and his disfigured body dragged away: when he returned to his edmonton base before christmas that year, his unit was not debriefed on the horrors they had witnessed in africa. the infantry soldier first suffered nightmares, depression and bouts of crying after. [...] soon after the deployment, mr. mceachmern developed more severe signs of posttraumatic stress disorder, including nausea, severe chest pain and night sweats" (mahoney, 2002:a6). 14 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs it is undeniable that the experiences of canadian armed forces personnel include horrific occurrences that would produce some sort of effect in most people. like young (1995), i do not dispute that the soldiers indeed suffer as a result of the stressful events they have lived through and experienced. in fact, i concede that their experiences and emotions are quite 'real'. what i am interested in, however, are the broader implications of the application of ptsd to canadian soldiers. i am particularly interested, as the following section illustrates, in the discourses ptsd enables, the ideologies it supports and to what ends these discourses and ideologies are used. ptsd & the discourse of victimhood one of the discourses made possible by ptsd is that of victimhood. in the introduction to trauma and recovery, judith herman ( 1 992) indicates that her book is about commonalities between rape survivors and combat veterans, between battered women and political prisoners and between survivors of vast concentration camps "created by tyrants who rule nations and the survivors of small, hidden concentration camps created by tyrants who rule their homes" (1992:3). herman establishes and underscores the commonalities in the experiences of those who may be diagnosed with ptsd. in emphasizing similarities, however, she fails to point out that the sufferers' experiences of ptsd may also be different. at issue is not so much that herman argues that there are commonalities between different groups of people (there may well be), but that she does not acknowledge that there could also be deep points of difference between, say a battered woman and a combat veteran. moreover, even the experiences of two combat veterans may be quite varied as well. the first issue raised by placing various groups of people into one category is perhaps the more obvious. the diagnosis of ptsd takes a wide range of social experiences and reduces them to a set of 'measurable' characteristics found among individuals. according to bracken (1998:38), the current discourse on trauma has systematically sidelined [the] social dimension of suffering, promotes a strongly individualistic focus, "presenting trauma as something that happens inside individual minds." the second issue raised by subsuming the suffering of rape survivors, combat veterans, battered woman, and political prisoners into one category is perhaps less obvious, and one i draw out in this analysis. namely, in placing a number of groups into one category (i.e. sufferers volume 20, 2004 15 alternate routes of ptsd), the distinction between victim and perpetrator is elided. moreover, the perpetrator seems to disappear, as the various sufferers of ptsd become 'victims'. one of the issues that stands out from herman's book as well as the news stories and articles on ptsd in newspapers and on the veterans affairs website is how ptsd opens up a space for a discourse in which the soldier is discussed solely as a victim; a 'kind', 'gentle' and 'caring' soul whose only flaw is 'caring and fighting for his country'. again, i do not dispute that to a certain extent, the soldiers are 'victims' and do suffer, but i am interested in the ideologies fed by the discourse of victimhood. one of the important questions raised by the language of victimhood made possible by ptsd is the question of why the military, the media and individual soldiers (who presumably would want to uphold an image of 'heroic' canadian soldiers) have latched onto a construct that opens up space for a discourse of weakness and victimhood. the answer lies in the fact that in the case of the canadian armed forces, who pride themselves and are praised for being 'peacekeepers', ptsd works to further the image of the canadian soldier as 'heroic', 'caring' and 'sensitive'. while on the surface the images of the 'heroic' soldier and the 'troubled troop' may appear to be opposed to one another, the 'troubled troop' language made possible by ptsd actually serves to strengthen the discourse of the canadian soldier as a 'good hero' and by extension canada as a 'good' country. 'real' or not, ptsd, like any other disease category, is a social construction and as such is a depository for particular ideologies and discourses. it also, in turn, opens space for particular claims to be made and discourses to be advanced and utilized to support particular agendas. for individual soldiers, ptsd allows them to make particular claims about their life and invest their worlds with particular meanings. as hacking (1996) and young (1995; 1996) point out, ptsd allows for moral claims to be made about the soul. in tracing the development of the 'science of memory' to its beginnings in the late 19 th century through the work of ribot, charcot, janet, and freud and ian hacking sheds light on how we have come to the assumption that memory is knowable and highlights how this knowledge has become highly politically charged. drawing on michel foucault's notions of "anatomo-politics" and "biopolitics". hacking argues that the sciences of the memory have produced 16 volume 20, 2004 chemins altematifs a third realm of power: "memoro-politics" in which assertions about the memory take on a moral and political quality and constitute claims about the soul. at the core of the "memoro-politics", then, is the idea that what has been forgotten is what forms our character, our soul. like hacking, allan young (1996) examines how ptsd accommodates for moral claims over identity and the soul by looking at the two senses of trauma it relies on. young points out that the most common answer found in psychiatric literature is that the two senses of "trauma" (bodily and mental) are linked by analogy; he argues, however, that this account is incomplete for two reasons. first, the initial transfer occurred between two kinds of bodily mechanisms; surgical and nervous shock (not between bodily and mental traumas). second, young argues, "the historical relation between these bodily mechanisms is genealogical rather than analogical" (1996:89). in advancing his arguments, young shows that there are actually two different meanings of trauma in psychiatry; one produced by analogy and the other by genealogy. the former produces traumatic memory consisting of images, emotions, sensations, and "words located in psychological space" (1996:89). the latter produces a kind of memory rooted in neuroanatomy, physiology, and evolutionary history. young argues that both senses of traumatic memory are currently present in psychiatry and demonstrates this by discussing ptsd. he states that the dsm-iii, in outlining the central criteria of ptsd, makes the distinction between the mental memory and bodily memory of trauma. young argues that bodily memory gets traumatic time to run in one direction and it is at this point, that he sees bodily memory entering hacking's memoro-politics thus allowing for moral claims and presentations of the self and soul. looking at the experiences of individual soldiers through the lenses of hacking and young one could argue that ptsd allows the soldiers to make moral claims to 'goodness'. the articles on canadian soldiers i have examined also contain information on the motivation of the men for joining the army. these reasons are either that the soldier came from a military family and wanted to follow in the tracks of their grand/fathers or they had a 'rough' upbringing and saw the military as their only 'way out'. the articles describe a sense the soldiers had of 'making a difference' and 'a contribution to their country'. the articles then describe their lives after their missions; often being at home and feeling 'useless'. again, their suffering is probably quite real, but on another level, the disvolume 20, 2004 17 alternate routes order is appealing because of the moral claims it makes possible. as i outlined above, young argues that ptsd is a disease of time, that it gets time to run in one direction—from past to present (traumatic event? symptoms). time running in one direction permits soldiers to link their current symptoms and situations to their lives in the military in a way that any other diagnosis would not. the unidirectionality of time in ptsd enables the soldiers to keep alive their stories of 'military life' and reaffirm an identity they had hoped to gain from joining the military in the first place: an 'outstanding', 'good' person making a 'difference' in their country. in examining the case of depression, dwight fee (2000) argues that it is often a discursive project; a reflexive process of self-definition and identity construction, an active, interpretive process of culturally informed self-communication. i would argue that ptsd, while empirically experienced by many, is also a discursive project and process of self-definition and identity construction. based on his ethnographic research among vietnam war veterans and institutions in the united states catering to them, young found that the direction of time (past? present) is the basis on which ptsd qualifies a "service-connected" disability within the veterans administration medical system. young found that a service-connected designation is a precondition for getting access to treatment and compensation. in the case of canada, because it has been quite recently that ptsd among soldiers has received attention, the issue of compensation remains fuzzy. it will be interesting to see how compensation and benefits will be dealt with in canada however, it seems likely that the direction time runs in will also be central. it is not only at the level of individual soldiers that ptsd opens space for particular discourses or works to advance particular ideologies and agendas. i have discussed the language of victimhood enabled by ptsd, however, there is one consequence of this i have not yet mentioned; in focusing on the 'suffering' of canadian soldiers, attention is deflected from the suffering created by canadian soldiers (which is incidentally quite convenient for the canadian military). in light of the of the news articles and stories of canadian soldiers suffering from ptsd which i have examined in this paper, it is quite interesting to examine and juxtapose a report prepared by sherene razack (2000) documenting the practices of canadian soldiers in somalia. razack offers insight into a side of the peacekeepers' activities not offered by the news reports or articles m volume 20. 2004 chemins alternatifs off the veterans affairs website. in the report entitled from the "clean snows o/petawawa ": the violence ofcanadian peacekeepers in somalia, razack (2000) exposes the gruesome acts of violence, including soldiers firing into a crowd gathered at a bailey bridge, the severe beatings of prisoners, children bound and held overnight, and the torture and killing of somalis perpetrated by canadian soldiers in somalia while on a 'peacekeeping' mission in late 1992 and early 1993. while the articles i examined in the previous section emphasized the resultant suffering of canadian soldiers from the horrific atrocities they 'witnessed', razack examines the atrocities perpetrated by them. razack discusses how, from the "clean snows" of the petawawa military base in ontario, canada sent troops to perform peacekeeping duties in somalia late in 1992. razack (2000:127) argued, however, that the troops returned six months later with blood on their hands, pointing out that, on march 30, 1993 newspaper headlines announced that a somali prisoner had been shot by members of the same regiment. she stated: in january 1995, videos were shown on national television showing canadian soldiers engaging in a number of degrading, violent, and racist acts during numerous initiation rites. moreover, photographs and videos also emerged of soldiers posing with bound somalis, many ofwhom were children. a few weeks later, the minister of national defense announced the disbandment of the canadian airborne regiment, and on march 20, 1995, the government also announced the creation of a commission of inquiry into the deployment of canadian armed forces to somalia (2000:127.). from this sequence of events, razack notes that the public was left with intensely disturbing visual images of torture and degradation, documented instances of the army's chain of command encouraging the torture at worst and turning a blind eye to it at best, and disturbing official attempts to destroy or suppress important documents relating to events (2000: 1 28). she argues that: the somalia affair, as it was called, simultaneously ruptured and confirmed central aspects of the canadian national narrative. canadians who knew themselves offivolume 20, 2004 19 alternate routes daily as peacekeepers of the world, as non-racist, and as non-involved in conquest and other imperial acts confronted in a dramatic way the possibility that the reality was otherwise. while the trophy photos, videos, and soldiers' previous involvement in racist organizations, as well as the actual deaths of somalis, suggested that racism and violence were endemic, the official story of a nation of peacekeepers and a nation relatively free of racism prevailed. to date, we still do not know exactly what came forth from the "clean snows of petawawa" (razack, 2000:128). one of the central issues taken up by razack in her examination of the violent practices of canadian soldiers in somalia, is how despite the fact that the images of canadian soldiers engaging in violent and degrading acts against somalis went against the dominant image of the 'good peacekeeper', the violence visited on somali bodies disappeared from canadian national and legal consciousness. razack argues that, "peacekeeping as a national vocation, and as the dream of middle power that exists next door to the united states, neatly enables canada to tell a story of national goodness and to mark itself as distinct from the united states. peacekeeping makes it possible to proclaim a history of "doing good" and "maintaining order among the fractious nations and peoples of the 'world' (granatstein, 1992:224 and 231 in razack, 2000:134). razack's main contention is that "canadian atrocities in somalia disappeared into the national mythology of 'clean snows' and innocent peacekeepers—noble intermediaries between the superpowers" (2000:134.). razack argues that as a national mythology taught to children and often featured in the media, the narrative of canadian peacekeepers as 'disinterested' and 'innocent' blocks accountability for the violence in somalia, just as it blocks accountability for racist violence within canada (2000:134-135). the image of the 'troubled troop' suffering from ptsd thus works to advance the narrative of canadian soldiers as 'good', the 'casualties of peace' (i.e. the ones who suffer the consequences of canada's 'peacekeeping'). in opening up this discourse, ptsd deflects attention from any wrongdoings committed by canadian soldiers. razack argues that the image of the peacekeeper as 'good,' 'kind' and 'innocent' is intimately linked to a process of nation building in canada. she states that peacekeeping as national vocation enables the 20 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs narrative that a nation 'so gentle' could not possibly have participated in the acts of violence reported in the media. moreover, this "refusal to accept responsibility grows out of another national mythology, one that is related in critical ways to the peacekeeper narrative: the notion that canada is a kinder, gentler place than the united states" (razack, 2000:135). ptsd makes these claims easier as it draws our attention to the suffering of canadian soldiers rather than the suffering they have caused. so while ptsd may be a term applied to a set of empirical experiences, it is also a social construct that feeds and reinforces particular ideologies and has applications beyond the label given to a particular set of symptoms. for instance, the popularity of ptsd not only comes at a time in which the image of the 'good peacekeeper' is being questioned by some, it also comes at a time in which the military is pushing the federal government for additional resources complaining of a lack of personnel and equipment. ptsd, therefore, is not only being employed to uphold a particular image of canada and its soldiers, but also to lobby for increased funding. conclusion in this analysis i have examined the construction of ptsd and the various ways it is being drawn upon by individual soldiers, the canadian military, and the media. i examined what exactly is meant by ptsd through tracing its development and drawing attention to the differing accounts offered by herman (1992) and young (1995). i argued that rather than being a timeless disorder and merely representing a label applied to a defined series of symptoms, ptsd is a social construct facilitating particular discourses while foreclosing the possibility of others. drawing on canadian news stories and the work of sherene razack (2000), i demonstrated that ptsd creates a discourse of victimhood. moreover, the image of the 'victim' and the 'troubled troop' facilitated by ptsd works to reinforce the image of the 'good', 'caring' peacekeeper and canada as a similarly 'good' and 'caring' nation while working to deflect attention from suffering and violence perpetrated by canada and its soldiers. volume 20, 2004 21 alternate routes references cited bracken, p. 1998. "hidden agendas: deconstructing post traumatic stress disorder." in patrick j. bracken and celia petty (eds.) rethinking the trauma of war. new york: free association books. fee, d. 2000. "the project of pathology: reflexivity and depression in elizabeth wurtzel's prozac nation." in pathology and the postmodern: mental illness as discourse and experience. pp. 74-99. london: sage. hacking, i. 1996. "memory sciences, memory politics." in paul antze and michael lambek (eds.) tense past: cultural essays in trauma and memory. pp. 67-87. new york: routledge. herman, j. 1992. trauma and recovery. new york: basic books. leys, r. 1996. "traumatic cures: shell shock, janet, and the question of memory." in paul antze and michael lambek (eds.) tense past: cultural essays in trauma and memory. pp. 103-145. new york: routledge. piercey, j. 1999. casualties of peace. in cbc newsthe magazine (dec). (http://www.cbc.ca/national/magazine/ptsd/) razack, s. 2000. "from the "clean snows of petawawa": the violence of canadian peacekeepers in somalia". feminism and law workshop series (no.l 1). toronto: faculty of law, university of toronto. the globe and mail. 2002. "shell shock to be given a priority." 6 february, a6. the globe and mail. 2002. "former soldier struggled alone with nightmares, depression." 6 february, a6. the national post. 2000. "from national hero to park bench drunk." 28 october. veterans affairs canada. 2002. "ptsd: a framework for hope and healing." veteran affairs canada site, (http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm/salute/ 22 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs summer2002/ptsd_framework) young, a. 1995. the harmony of illusions: inventing post-traumatic stress disorder. princeton: princeton university press. young, a. 1996. "bodily memory and traumatic memory." in paul antze and michael lambek (eds.) tense past: cultural essays in trauma and memory. pp.89102. new york: routledge. volume 20, 2004 23 “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 11 "war on terror" via a "war of words": fear, loathing and name-calling in hollywood's wars in afghanistan and iraq anjali pandey1 9-11 and the war on terror the causal connection between the september 11, 2001 attacks and the war in afghanistan and iraq was strategically and carefully construed on the part of the bush administration—providing a perfect political alibi for the subsequent u. s. military invasion and occupation of these two sovereign nations. former president bush is famously remembered for declaring: “we wage a war to save civilization itself. we did not seek it. but we will fight it” (excerpts, 2001, p. 6). across the atlantic, tony blair’s matching war cry was: “to safeguard peace, we have to fight” (cowell, 2001, p. 6) also chronicled is the anglo-american alliance formed to combat the global “war on terror” (hoge, 2001) with britain vowing to stand “shoulder to shoulder with the us” (ford, 2001, p. 7) defending itself against what president bush called “acts of unimaginable horror” (excerpts, 2001, p. 6), and his british ally called “the worst terrorist outrage” (cowell, 2001, p. 6). a decade later, the wars still rage both on the ground and on the silver screens of hollywood. the overt attacks on the people and places in these two war-zones have had a noticeable ripple affect domestically in terms of ‘reported’ public sentiments and reactions. most are aware for example of the firestorm of fear-driving attempts in the recent, highly publicized church-sponsored koran-burning event. equally prominent is the inflammatory reaction from some new yorkers to the building of a mosque near ground zero. adams (2010, p.5) reports on these events: 1 anjali pandey is professor of applied linguistics at salisbury university (maryland, u.s.a) with a doctorate from the university of illinois. her research encompasses issues of linguistic disempowerment in film with a forthcoming book entitled: manufacturing linguistic insecurity. she can be reached at: axpandey@salisbury.edu 12 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times the florida pastor [terry jones] who inflamed the debate over construction of an islamic center near ground zero in manhattan faded from public view, but anger simmered during a weekend marked by a memorial for 9/11 victims and dueling protests near the site of the proposed project. how has such a fear of the ‘other’ occurred? can films produced in the decade since 9/11 be implicated in such reactions? outlining the research focus while in any analysis of film, the context of filmmaking is as pertinent to the analysis as the content of the film per se, the scope of the current paper impels a particular focus on filmic content—in particular, linguistic choices. the analysis aims to spotlight how the context of two real wars finds linguistic encoding, and ultimately, mimetic (audience) approval or disapproval in and through filmic content. downing (1980) compellingly argues that the power of film lies in its seeming capacity “to shape public feeling while appearing only to express it.” it is this duality of rendition and representation that the current paper aims to understand. after all, the exploitation of media content in the service of state-driven agenda is not new (moritz, 2005). strategies of euphemism and mystification in the media marketing of the vietnam war for example have been well chronicled particularly from a linguistic point of view (bolinger, 1980, p. 132; hughes, 1988, p. 220-220). similar research has looked at world war ii language. of particular interest has been the manner in which the nazi propaganda of gleichschatung—“putting everyone in the same gear”— (ehlich, 1989) was prominently and successfully accomplished via meticulous linguistic manipulations—in particular, via strategies of “lexical hardening” (ehlich,1989); micro linguistic manipulations of emotion-inducing language steeped in cultural connotation and stereotype in a bid to both co-opt and mobilize german workingclasses in the nazi propaganda-machine’s attempt at conflating antisemitism with nationalistic ideology (ehlich, 1989). consequently, while filmic analysis can benefit from a macroanalysis of the context of filmic production (miller et al., 2005), a micro-analysis of textual renditions in particular films (bleichenbacher, 2008) provides yet another manner to investigate the ideological role of film in the 21st century. the current paper is focused on how consent is manufactured in and through film. linguistic data col“war on terror” via a “war of words” | 13 lected and coded from a randomly viewed list of over 40 film titles— all produced in the decade after september 11, 2001 (henceforth, 9/11)— underscores a number of key research questions. firstly, how do these post-9/11 filmic productions represent the peoples, places, styles, rituals and names—in short, the culture of arab and muslim peoples in afghanistan and iraq—two countries experiencing u.s. military presence. secondly, what are the specific verbal (linguistic) and visual (semiotic) strategies employed by such post 9/11 films to stereotype the ‘enemy’ and in effect “other” them? thirdly, what might the ideological affects of these linguistic renditions have on audiences domestically as well as abroad, who are currently part of the so-called ‘global war on terror’. finally, what function could the ‘othering’ of the enemy in and through film serve both rhetorically and politically? filmic evidence from over 40 titles coded in the decade after the events of 9/11 reveal the workings of verbal and visual namecalling strategies which resonate with and reproduce anglo-american phobias about arab and muslim people. furthermore, these linguistic devices occur in the form of two consistent linguistic strategies. firstly, via seemingly peripheral linguistic comments conflated against powerful visual reminders, numerous films in the data set reveal the workings of the device of cinematic reminiscing— defined in this paper as linguistic reminders of 9/11 which subversively as they historically “sign-post” audience-awareness about a nation’s trajectory towards and engagement in war. additionally, via a strategy of cinematic acquiescing, another device employed in several films, we see overt encodings of disparagement—systematic dysphemia, and name-calling of the peoples and places encapsulated in the war-zones in a bid to gain public consent for these militaristic invasions. ultimately, it is argued, the complementary workings of cinematic reminiscing and acquiescing in 21st century films released in a post-9/11 decade reflect at the very same time as they reinforce a classic “orientalist” (said, 1980) othering of the constructed enemy. why this treatment of the enemy? could it be that this othering—evoked in and through “a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the islamic world is presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression” (said, 1980)? could it also be possible that in instigating a ‘fear’ of arab and muslim peoples domestically, public policy regarding this geopolitical space goes unquestioned? 14 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times war in films vs. films in war the explicit propagandist role of film in the recent ‘war on terror’ has been chronicled by numerous scholars (kellner, 2010; prince, 2009; boggs and pollard, 2005; valantin, 2005; suid, 2002; shaheen, 2001). film scholars such as moritz (2005) recount how a mere two months after the september 11th attacks “bush’s advisor karl rove invited a crew of hand-picked directors and producers to exchange ideas. the topic: possible hollywood contributions to the war against terrorists” (p. 120) — a move which ushered in a new era in filmmaking—what moritz (2005) aptly labels, “militainment” (120). such facts underscore commonly held perceptions—namely, that “movies are undoubtedly a powerful means of direct influence” (p. 124) particularly for “the target groups of 14-29 year old males” (thomsen, 2005, p. 12)—a target audience who we are apprised are “conditioned to permanent aggressive militarism” in lieu of diplomacy (thomsen, 2005, p. 12), and coincidentally also the age group which signs up for soldiering. for most theorists, this marriage of media, ideology and profitmaking trends both prior to and post 9/11 continues—particularly in a culture industry premised on “business as usual” (thomsen 2005, p. 27). valantin (2005) chronicles at length the seeming synergy between filmmaking and governmental directive, or rather, imagery in the service of acceptability in and through what he describes as “national security cinema” (p. ix)—an explicit manufacturing of mimetic consent for the american war machine. this ‘reading’ of film’s recent role has also been reiterated by boggs and pollard (2007) who examine at length the manner in which the culture industry legitimizes war in and through filmic content which skillfully as it subversively skews audience orientations towards a predominantly nativistic, hyperpatriotic “spectacularization” or “chauvinistic patriotism” (thomsen, 2005, p.160) of war imagery in a post-9/11 america. the continued use of film imagery for the glorification and legitimation of us corporate interests lends credence to the claim that “in hollywood, profit and patriotism seem to be marching forward harmoniously in step.” (moritz, 2005, p. 125). reiterating this analysis, suid (2002) examines the glamorization of war in film as serving more of a psychoanalytic function—what he labels to be “an escapist entertainment that appeals to viewers’ most basic, most primal instincts.” (p. 3-4). while for most, it is the analysis of images or the political orientation of filmic content which is the subject of analysis, this paper examines the linguistic manner in which either consent or dissent for war is “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 15 construed. the constructivist function of film—using “language and images… and other media creating fragments of reality consciousness in our mind” (thomsen, 2005, p. 9) has been reiterated by a number of scholars (mcdonald and wasko, 2008). after all, “in the age of moving images” writes thomsen (2005) “the film industry is deeply involved in the creation of a set of collective mind patterns from the very beginning” ( 9)—a concern to which we now turn. the film corpus in the current study analysis of linguistic data in the current film corpus reveals two strategies of microlinguistic action at work. firstly, we see numerous examples of the manner in which seemingly innocuous ‘dialoging’ in films function in an intertextual capacity—an appropriation and incorporation of post-9/11 sentiment. in such instances, “war-onterror” parlance forms part of the linguistic mis-en-scene of dialog exchanges in films—even in films thematically removed or unrelated to these wars. such commonsensical contextualizations of film as post-9/11 creations abound in and through a strategy of cinematic reminiscences, a clever filmic strategy which works in a contextual capacity—setting the film in a historical period—as a post 9/11 film, while also serving as a subliminal reminder of america under attack, with a concomitant need for ‘self-preservation’. several films in the data corpus fall in this category. the second strategy of cinematic acquiescence examines films whose thematic focus is primarily the ‘war on terror’ and its aftermath. in such cases, linguistic evidence goes beyond reminiscing about 9/11, to functioning in an overt ideological role—one of manipulating audience opinion towards mostly consent towards these wars—rarely do we see dissent against these wars in films. in such cases, we see an overt ‘othering’ of reel enemies in filmic wars in a bid to effectuate and legitimize mimetic (audience) approval for ‘real’ enemies in actual ground wars. in the interests of space, narrative details surrounding films are kept to a minimum. an exhaustive filmography is provided at the end of the paper for readers interested in the titles covered. the current study spans linguistic data culled from films spanning approximately a decade (2001-2010). this period encompasses the historically relevant decade after the events of 9/11— a type of “terrorism which changed the nature of war” (thomsen, 2005, p. 19). why such a corpus? to borrow the astute wording of one of the reviewers of the 16 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times current paper,2 the filmic corpus spanning this decade while united in terms of temporal space and thematic focus, differs in filmic genre and semiotic treatment of the wars. so, while all the films from which data is utilized are in fact, post 9/11 filmic productions featuring references to 9/11 and its aftermath—the so-called “war on terror”— they are also artistic creations which attempt to render geopolitical representations of muslim/arab peoples and places via different filmic genres. as the excerpts below demonstrate, films in this period range in a continua of different genre-types ranging from fictionalized film genres at the one end of the continuum such as: superbad (teenage comedy); eagle eye (science fiction); a mighty heart (thriller drama); stoploss (realist war drama); this is england (historical drama) to on the other end of the continuum— realist docu-dramas such as where in the world is osama bin laden? –even including a blended genre of realist fiction such as the hurtlocker. these are a few titles from the litany of examples under scrutiny in the current paper. furthermore, while seemingly randomized, examples in the current study exemplify two broad filmic strategies at work: films which utilize the events of 9/11 to situate and explicate upon the unfolding action in the form of implied backgrounding or context-building strategies; and secondly, films which engage in an overt foregrounding of the ‘war on terror’ as spotlighted thematic content. in the former instance, seemingly tangential linguistic allusions are evoked and invoked in the unfolding action in the form of cinematic reminiscences —reminders of september 11 and its aftermath. in such examples, manifold linguistic comments abound in the filmic scripts in reference to 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’. a complementary strategy used in a plethora of films involves using the events and aftermath of 9/11 as spotlighted content in a bid to induce cinematic acquiescence—namecalling strategies meant to ‘other’ the enemy. such filmic detailing of cinematic wars is rendered across a number of filmic genres via dialogic strategies which implicitly as they explicitly manufacture consent and acquiescence for the current ground wars raging outside the theater experience. film scholar lacy (2003) argues that “cinema is a space involved in the process of actively forgetting and actively producing history” (p. 1). data analyses in this paper point to post-9/11 filmic productions as doing much more. this decade of filmic produc2  the author would sincerely like to thank all three reviewers: drs. t. mirrlees, g. rigakos and p. lefebvre respectively for their meticulous and useful suggestions in refining the original argument of this paper. “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 17 tion simultaneously engages in a re-remembering and a re-producing of history—the outcomes of which are explored in the conclusion. film as both a reflector and shaper of public opinion emerges not from viewing a few samples of representations from a number of isolated films per se, but rather is most potent when we examine the corpus as a whole—in tandem—as a sample of production over a decade. after all, most moviephiles see not one, not two, but several films (epstein, 2009). in line with such a context, filmic evidence is worthy of examination for “every linguistic interaction however personal and insignificant it may appear, bears the social structure that it both expresses and helps to reproduce.” (mesthrie et al., 2009, p. 335). since the focus in the current paper is on the how of consent manufacturing, filmic clips are organized around the taxonomy of linguistic strategy adopted rather than chronologically presented—thus traversing a multiplicity of genre types. to rephrase, the discussion of films in this analysis is presented not chronologically but in terms of taxonomy—in particular, via the type of dysphemistic strategy being employed. locating hollywood a distinction between “hollywood” as a place versus hollywood as a culture industry is made in this paper. the analysis utilizes the word ‘hollywood’ in the economic sense in which current parlance employs the term— a metonymic location of a culture industry. this media conglomeration— situated within a ‘borderless’ and globally expansive world (miller et al 20005; macdonald and wasko 2008; pandey 2013) lacks a geographical location per se. hollywood in this sense, both serves at the very same time as it culls global talent via the strategy of what cowen (2002) defines as “cinematic clustering” (p. 87) which at its best entails “the strategic use of cinematic talent from around the world” in a bid to “strengthen the market position” (p. 87) of hollywood-produced films. with the fluid and seemingly “flat world” (friedman, 2005) dissolution of national boundaries emerging in the 21st century we are increasingly witnessing what wasser (2005) calls the “transcendent power of hollywood”. in a sense then, it is becoming much harder to ‘locate’ where hollywood really is. in a poignant sentence opening his essay on the “transnationalization of hollywood,” wasser (2005) goes as far as claiming that “hollywood is booming while the american film industry weakens” (p. 63). recent film scholars (macdonald and wasko, 2008; pandey 2010; pandey 2013), have increasingly chronicled how globalization forces in the 21st century have created globally-spanning 18 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times blockbusters with directorial and aesthetic talent garnered from multiple continents both in a bid to expand the “dream factory’s” reach (tyrell, 1999) while at the same time quell competition from national cinema endeavors (miller et al. 2005). so, while some of the data in the current paper is elicited from films which have obvious roots in british filmmaking, the transnational nature of hollywood in terms of both production and distributions channels (epstein, 2009) prompts the use of the term, “hollywood” as a generic, metonymic term for films produced in english for broad mass appeal, and maximum market-output both domestically and abroad (epstein 2009). important to emphasize is that the films produced in the decade after 9/11 are not homogenous in their representations of the wars. however, there is no doubt that in the market-oriented nature of the film industry, it is ticket-sales which constitute a common denominator (epstein, 2009). thus, most of the films in the corpus are big budget films with mass audience exposure. looking at examples: cinematic reminiscing for many, the consistent allusions to the 2001 attacks in a plethora of movies comes as no surprise. linguistic comments about the 9/11 attacks, and the subsequent london bombings, form a consistent verbal detail in hollywood movies of the past decade—even movies with themes unrelated to the war such as sugar—a film whose primary focus is: the transnational capitalist baseball industry. sugar uses a filmic strategy of “staged authenticity” (thomsen, 2005, p. 18) to underscore its docu-drama filmic style. the film is quick to tell audiences of a son ‘in iraq’—a fact unsurprising considering moritz’s (2005) report that since the attacks, the government has sought ways of deploying the entertainment industry in the war against terrorism. the consequence: a consistent presence of the aftermath of 9/11 in the visio-verbal syntax of post-9/11 films. as films are a conflation of imagery and language, visio-syntax refers to the orchestrated manner in which post 9/11 filmic productions index allusions and remembrances to 9/11 in and through both visual imagery (montage) and verbal detail (dialoging). often, the verbalizations of the attacks are overt as in the film, reign over me, a movie which overtly explores the theme of loss as a consequence of 9/11. in the film, a grieving widow tells audiences: “then those monsters flew over here from across the world”. the use of the term “monster” for the hijackers is both a reminder of what happened as well as a commentary on the need for ‘self-preservation’. the use of “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 19 the events of 9/11 to introduce both character and plot is another comment strategy seen at work in the science fiction film knowing, which examines a child’s supernatural powers in predicting an impending natural disaster. in knowing, the toll of terrorism is stated in numeric terms. details of lives lost is presented as a cipher which only the child can decode. consequently, via dialog inclusions sporadically included in the film, audiences are constantly reminded of the “2,996’ lives lost”. a myriad of such verbal reminders abound in the post 9/11 decade— often in the form of seemingly incidental details. consider the film vantage point which tracks the assassination plot of a world leader in a bid to proffer a commentary about global terrorism. in vantage point via a powerful strategy of cinematic ‘replay,’ audiences are voyeuristically and verbally reminded of the death toll as a consequence of terrorism not just domestically, but internationally. on numerous occasions in the viewing of the film, we are told that “since 9/11, more than 4,500 people have been killed in the rising tide of global terror.” terror we can argue through such a strategy is no longer local, but global. a similar strategy of cinematic reminiscing takes center-stage in the film remember me—a 2010 drama which explores the psychological trauma of loss on those left behind. the film culminates with the events of 9/11 metaphorically filmed through the windows of the now defunct world trade center. in an attempt to foreshadow the impending action, a professor is shown in the opening scenes of the film, remember me, launching a lecture delivered to a group of attentive students seated in an amphitheater with the following opening: “in the wake of recent terrorist attacks, do you think there’s a place for a discussion about ethics when we are talking about the root causes of terrorism?” cinematic reminiscing is not always verbal. it is sometimes visually plotted as in the opening and culminating scene bookmarking the stone merchant, a film which uses the events of 9/11 to examine how terrorists plan and execute their destruction. in this 2006 film starring harvey keitel, there is a careful spotlighting of a historicity of islamic domination with its parallel in modern times—what said (1980) so poignantly describes to be an islamic threat of a: “resurgent atavism, which suggests not only the menace of a return to the middle ages but the destruction of the democratic order in the western world.” this ‘fear’ is carefully rendered for audiences to see in the form of the following still (see, below). here, we see the chalk etchings of a university professor, himself an amputee, and victim of an islamist terrorist bomb attack in nairobi. the teacher draws a graph on the board for all stu20 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times dents in his class after he testily responds to a student’s objection that “not all muslims are terrorists” with the curt response: “but, almost all terrorists are muslims.” the following still forms the last lingering close-up scene in the film. as an aside, both the stone merchant, and remember me use the powerful trope of ‘teaching’ to evoke their speech acts of cinematic reminiscing. still excerpted from: djaoui, a. et al (producers); martinelli r. (director). march 2006. the stone merchant. usa: monarch home video. while one may quibble with the politics underpinning filmic representations, and posit the convincing argument that not all of hollywood’s 9/11 portrayals are homogenous, what is crucial is that this strategy of cinematic reminiscing is used with consistency. consequently, even in left-leaning films such as rendition—a film which explored the ‘hyper-control’ exerted by the cia in the bush administration particularly in its treatment of foreign captured insurgents jailed in the infamous guantanamo bay prison, we see overt inclusions to 9/11. in rendition, the allusions are semiotically rendered in the form of cinematic re-simulation as in the chilling reminder which opens the film. still excerpted from: golin, s. et al. (producers); hood g. (director). october 2007. rendition. usa: new line cinema. there is no doubt that the attacks have left “people resentful, hurting and looking for someone to blame” (allan and burridge, 2006, p. 10) with no easier target than the people and places encapsulated in the two war zones seen as the source of the attack by the bush administra“war on terror” via a “war of words” | 21 tion. this mimetic angst (audience fear) is voyeuristically captured and commented upon in several movies. in the film, reign over me, a movie focused on the trauma of loss suffered as a consequence of 9/11, audience members watch as the actors themselves watch a television screen posting new threats: still excerpted from: binder, j and m. rotenger (producers); bender, m. (director). march 2007. reign over me. usa: columbia pictures. still excerpted from: binder, j and m. rotenger (producers); bender, m. (director). march 2007. reign over me. usa: columbia pictures. the above visuals show the dual workings of cinematic reminiscing both as a contextual and filmic strategy. so, while the film does draw audience attention to “the united states heading towards a big-brotheris-watching-you society of continuous and networked surveillance” (thomsen, 2005, p. 16), this cinematic spotlighting also manages to reflect fear at the very same time as it sustains it. this device is used with generous abundance in the film incendiary— a film exploring a similar theme of grief and guilt which the london mass-transit bombings have had on the families of both victim and assailant. thus, across the atlantic, the london bombings see visual and verbal memorialization in the film, incendiary—accomplished via a lingering shot on the following filmic still which both condones the utility of mass surveillance at the very same time as it insidiously assures audiences of a ‘free press’ doing its job. 22 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times still excerpted from: paterson, a et al. (producers); maguire, m. (director). october 2009. incendiary. uk: image entertainment. locating reasons and locating the wars for audiences subjected to films in the decade after 9/11, it is filmic causation for the ground wars which see overt verbalization. consider the film the kingdom, a cinematic foray into the fbi’s role in investigating a bombing attack in a riyadh-based foreign workers compound. in, the kingdom, jennifer garner’s character is quick to warn a child (of all people) about “all the bad people out there who plan, organize, train, brainwash, and preach extreme violence,” concluding: “these are the men we are fighting”—a message which locates the reason for war in overt terms for both child and viewing audience alike. again, even in pacifist-focused films, the causation of war sees center-stage. in the film, lions for lambs, we see an intellectual analysis of the politics of war-mongering. this cinematic feat is accomplished via a juxtapositioning of the consequences of elite orders meted out by politicians, and their effects on ground soldiers—another polemic analysis of the cause of war in afghanistan. in lions for lambs, a commanding officer tells soldiers: “al qaeda and the taliban have been whittled down to small wolf-packs,” adding, “we’ve successfully pounded the enemy into something much smaller.” several films choose to utilize filmic close-up shots of the warzones made especially visually prominent in lions for lambs. here, both wars are fore fronted via a camera pan of the map location of the wars. consequently, war-parlance works in an intertextual capacity—there seems to be both an appropriation and incorporation of war parlance stated in “commonsensical” terms (fairclough, 1989)—in the role of mise-en-scene construction. “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 23 still excerpted from: redford, r. et al. (producers); redford r. (director). november 2007. lions for lambs. usa: mgm. what then follows is clever strategy to connect the two wars in the mind of audiences evoked via a deictic declarative: “they’re allowing wahhabi insurgents to hike from iraq to afghanistan”—said with a careful pontification of location for viewing audiences. for many viewers, the two wars seem indelibly connected. while it is matter of debate as to whether the film sought to spotlight this connection in a bid to garner dissent, it seems clear that for many—a decade after the invasions—that the lack of any real weapons of mass destruction—not terrorism, the ‘supposed’ cause of war in iraq, has been relegated to the dustbin of historical amnesia. still excerpted from: redford, r. et al. (producers); redford r. (director). november 2007. lions for lambs. usa: mgm. a “dramaturgical and aesthetic shift” (thomsen, 2005, p. 18) identified in post 9/11 film-making has been the use of “the cross-referentiality and intertwinement of different media” (thomsen, 2005, p. 18) in filmmaking in a bid to instigate a sense of authenticity in films replicating our media-obsessed world. we witness the use of this strategy for example, in the science fiction thriller, the invasion, a suspense film which uses the context of terrorism to locate an epidemic of somnambulance triggered by extraterrestrial fungi. in a bid to highlight the tactics used by what are labeled ‘the insurgents’ the film uses interruptive voice-overs. consequently, in the invasion, a radio reports the following 24 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times grim details as nicole kidman’s character eats breakfast: “hundreds were killed in the bloodiest attack in iraq since the start of the occupation.” the voice-over proffers minute details in the form of: “a mixture of toxic chemicals was strapped to suicide bombers.” we see a similar verbal focus on suicide bombers in lions for lambs where tom cruise’s character argues for a need for the wars saying: “they butcher the people who helped us, who voted.” cinematic reminiscing also occurs in visual terms. consider a powerful scene taken from the widely successful film charlie wilson’s war, a grand, hollywood production of selective history, and “post-cold war triumphalism” (chalmers, 2010, p. 1) which subversively as it overtly condones the ‘arming’ of nations—in this case—afghanistan—in the cold-war period. entertaining as charlie wilson’s war was to watch, the film failed to make any overt links to the mujahedeen of yore and their causal links to the taliban to today. it is also rumored that “the film’s happy ending came about because tom hanks, “just can’t deal with this 9/11 thing,” according to melissa roddy, a los angeles filmmaker with inside information on the production of the film” (chalmers, 2010, p. 90). sometimes, the prod is visual as in the still from charlie wilson’s war where the semiotically significant crescent moon is juxtaposed against a silhouette of the mujjahadeen. still excerpted from: hanks, t. et al. (producers); nichols, m. (director). december 2007. charlie wilson’s war. usa: universal pictures. theoretical model: dysphemia and critical discourse analysis the current paper presents a taxonomy of name-calling strategies directed at the people and places, in both wars. evidence demonstrates the consistent use of dysphemic language—name-calling—uttered on the silver screens of hollywood at the people, places and practices— linguistic and cultural—construed as iraq and afghanistan. the paper lends credence to the claim that “language is used as a weapon against enemies, and as a release valve when we are angry, frustrated “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 25 or hurt” (allan and burridge, 2006, p. 2)—both strategies currently at work in the silver-screen wars raging also for a decade. the theoretical framework utilizes taxonomies of dysphemia as outlined by allan and burridge (2006) who define dysphemia as “speaking offensively”; a verbal practice which entails use of “taboo language” (p. 31) such as “curses, name-calling, and any sort of derogatory comments directed towards others in order to insult or wound them.” nuessel (2008) has used the term “ethnophaulism” (p. 29) to describe words used to “deprecate and disparage a group of people.” in the extensive taxonomy proffered by allan and burridge (2006), the following seven classifications of epithets are identified all of which are heard in the verbal and visual syntax of films pertaining to the wars in the post 9/11 decade examined in this paper. the insults and maledictions (allan and burridge, 2006, p. 79-85) include: comparisons of people with animals; slurs derived from tabooed bodily organs/ effluvia; dysphemistic epithets picking on physical characteristics treated as abnormalities (i.e., clothing practices); imprecations involving mental subnormality/derangement, and stereotyping ( karim, 1997); and finally, insults which allan and burridge (2006) label “-ist-dysphemisms (racist, sexist and ethnic slurs) on the target’s character” (p. 85). these linguistic strategies encode word-manufacturing strategies—labeled as morpho-semantic strategies since they involve unique morphological and semantic processes (o’grady et al., 2010). evident in the analysis of such name-calling is the use of innovative morpho-semantic strategies including but not limited to: blended morphemes; the use of innovative compounding strategies as well as the use of borrowed pro-clitic forms (o’ grady et al ., 2010). the analysis is framed within current approaches to critical discourse analysis (fairclough, 1992) in which “the intricate relationships between text, talk, social cognition, power, society and culture” (van dijk, 1993, p. 253) are examined, and some recent societal effects examined. while critics of critical discourse analysis are quick to point out its potentially reductionist methodology—in particular, its “too strong a focus on the grammatical effects of texts” (blommaert, 2005, p. 35), and a concomitant lack of historicity, the current paper argues that the microanalysis of text in and thorough a focus on the now—a synchronous analysis of textuality in current media such as film— permits for an alternate means to comprehend how the diachronicity of context— history— sees interpellation and intertextualization in and through popular media such as film. after all, language is “a reality-creating 26 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times social practice” (fowler, 1985, p. 62). in film, as we shall see, linguistic inclusions strategically as they systematically “constrain content in a bid to favor certain interpretations” (fairclough, 1989, p.52). name–calling through morphemic strategies: seeking cinematic acquiescence one highly negative appellation apparent in the film corpus involves the innovative use of compounding of a historically charged racial slur (essed, 1997) matched with a geographic marker in the form of the endocentric compound “sand nigger”, whose use in the movie crossing over occurs as an incorporated form (o’grady et . al., 2010, p. 142). in the film crossing over, we are exposed to the bureaucracy surrounding illegal immigration into the united states, and presented with parallel stories of illegal immigrants trying to work in the united states under the real threat of deportation. the threat of terrorist illegals also forms a backdrop of the unfolding action. in the film, a group of teenagers jeer at a fellow muslim student dropped off at school by her cab-driving father with the imprecation: “it’s the sand-nigger express”. that this malediction is hurled out by africanamericans successfully deletes the historical accretion of insult encoded in this taboo term (asim, 2007). still excerpted from: kramer, w and marshall,w. (producers); kramer, w. (director). february 2009. crossing over. usa: the weinstein company “pronouns, names and address forms are particularly clear and well defined sub-systems of language that reveal asymmetries of power” (mesthrie et al ., 2009, p. 312). this same power which accrues from naming the ‘other’ sees reoccurrence in several films in the post 9/11 decade. consider for example, the political drama the walker—a film which examines capitol politics in the form of a high suspense thriller involving murder. the walker manages to hurl out similar insults. this same appellation—matched with visual violence is witnessed by audiences in a scene in which the epithet is hurled out at knife-point to a “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 27 by-standing arab extra. here, as in several examples in the data corpus, verbal violence is synchronized with visual violence making the insult doubly-intimidating. still excerpted from: nayar, d. (producer); schrader, p. (director). november 2007. the walker. usa: kintop pictures. the use of the eponym ‘haji’ as a form of insult is another fashionable epithet in current hollywood—confirming allan and burridge’s (2006) claim that insults function in an “us vs. them situation” (p. 49). the original semantic meaning of the term “haji” refers to “the holiness of one who has made a pilgrimage to mecca” (mesthrie et al ., 2009, p. 326). in current hollywood productions however, the term has gone through a process of relexification (halliday, 1978, p. 175)—a pejorization of the term to the point of encoding an entirely irreverent meaning which even audiences unfamiliar with the term soon internalize through repeated exposures to this word. we see multiple tokens in the data corpus of this strategy. consider for example, the visualization and verbalization of the term even in a left-leaning film such as war inc .—a movie which attempts a political satirization of the war in iraq (a box office flop). in the film, john cusack in the role of a contractor, with the clever eponym, brand hauser, attempts to unravel the economic underbelly of the war in iraq in a fictionalized country called turaqistan. no other imprecation seems more used than ‘haji’ whose variable spelling is consistently conflated with other dysphemistic terms of high semantic import. in war inc., the imprecation is foregrounded against a tapestry of tolerance. while this powerful image conflates the two conflicting positions on the war, the camera’s angle—a foregrounding of the insult, against an imperative for tolerance, lends enough conviction to the argument that the image functions subversively—as an overt attack against an “oppressive” climate of political correctness (lakoff, 2000). the image further confirms essed’s (1997) claim of “the contradiction between the normative rejection of racial slurs and the lived reality in which tolerance of racism prevails” (143-144). it is a matter of debate whether the 28 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times film merely attempts to spotlight the ‘militaristic racism’ in a bid to condone dissent. what is fascinating however is that in the construction of the image –the dysphemia is foregrounded rather than backgrounded. could this image be one of those dual semiotic creations which shape public opinion while only merely appearing to express it, and already referred to at the outset of the paper? still excerpted from: cusack, j. et al (producers); seftel, j. (director). may 2008. war inc., usa: first look studios. the theme of the war in iraq and its after-effects on soldiers suffering the consequences of trauma forms the subject matter of stop-loss, a film which uses this invective with generous abandon. in this gritty movie, the ‘realism’ of the war in iraq is captured on screen via the incessant use of ‘haji’ as in: “i got two hajis right across the street”; or when a soldier confesses: “i’m tired of going and killing a haji in his kitchen and his bedroom.” still excerpted from: goodman, g. and s. rudin (producers); pierce, k. (director). march 2008. stop-loss usa: mtv films/ paramount. one could argue it is perhaps easier to kill a haji (a thing) than an afghani or iraqi (a person) for actor and audience-members alike. while some may argue that the mere use of the term ‘haji’ as a decontextualized term is not sufficient evidence of its use as a dysphemic inventive particularly since in realism-oriented films such as stoploss, language is not ‘cleaned-up’ or sanitized to match audience sensibilities, but rather, reflects the reality of ‘real war’ where soldiers “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 29 are not exactly nice to each other (which would be a mystification of war), there is sufficient evidence in stop-loss to point to the term being used in a dual capacity—to reflect as well as sustain an ‘othering’. consider for example, the manner in which visual evidence is carefully conflated in this film. we see a careful match of a badly disfigured face of an american soldier as a consequence of an ied which we are told is exploded by a ‘haji’. this cost of war in stop-loss is viscerally showcased in the close-up of a badly burned soldier who refers to the cause of his injuries—the infamous ieds as: “the hajis new bombs” (see still below). the shock of his disfigured face mitigates the semantic import of his own name-calling. no complementary images of burned iraqi victims of war for example, are spotlighted in the film. still excerpted from: goodman, g. and s. rudin (producers); pierce, k. (director). march 2008. stop-loss usa: mtv films/ paramount. so, in reflecting current war-parlance, the silver-screen also provides viewing audiences with an inventory of invectives for the wars. in the oscar-nominated movie, in the valley of elah, a film which confronts the lies, racism, hate and animalistic output of militarism— albeit in the most subtle of terms, we also encounter the use of this invective. we are witness to a returning war veteran, and criminal, coldly remarking to a baffled investigator played by charlize theron: “we arrested some hajji who was wounded” continuing with “and the haji screamed. . .” the specific conflation of the term ‘haji’ with the murdering veteran has to be read differently here than in the film stop-loss. here, the invective functions in the capacity of exposure—a cinematic attempt at highlighting troop bigotry towards the ‘enemy’. there is an overt depersonalization of the enemy confirming that “flippancy toward what is feared is a means of coming to terms with fear by downgrading it” (allan and burridge, 2006, p. 40)—in this case a semantic move on the part of the soldier from animism to animalism. 30 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times still excerpted from: haggis, p. and hayward, b. (producers); haggis, p. (director). september 2007. in the valley of elah. usa: warner independent pictures. in, the green zone, another film which attempts a questioning of the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ alibi used by the bush administration in its invasion of iraq, we see the use of the invective in a similar vein. in the film, audiences are exposed to the rampant ‘othering’ given free rein in the military. thus, in green zone, a soldier is filmed using this term of disparagement for all iraqi nationals, as when he informs his commanding officer—played by matt damon—with: “this hajji says he needs to talk to you about something” a similar venting of anger sees reoccurrence in the same film, when a bystanding guard superciliously asks of matt damon’s translator, “what’s up with the hajji?”—a careful inclusion of the label used on the part of the directors in both these films to encode the attitude of most of the troops towards the ‘enemy’. in these two films, the invective is used sparingly and critically—with none of the lead characters using the terms, and instead, watching in astonishment its use. see for example, the facial expression on charlize theron’s character in the still below excerpted from the valley of elah . still excerpted from: haggis, p. and hayward, b. (producers); haggis, p. (director). september 2007. in the valley of elah. usa: warner independent pictures. the invective haji is conflated not just with verbal attack, but with visual violence as in the following scene from stop-loss where a marine who has lost a platoon member hurls out the invective—con“war on terror” via a “war of words” | 31 firming that slurs can be both “directly and indirectly intimidating” (essed, 1997, p. 142). the camera seems sympathetic to the plight of the soldier—who only seems to be interested in ‘rescuing’ his platoon-mates—using whatever means necessary to gather intelligence as to their whereabouts in a carefully construed ‘an all-is-fair in-loveand-war’ type of scene. still excerpted from: goodman, g. and s. rudin (producers); pierce, k. (director). march 2008. stop-loss usa: mtv films/ paramount. the seemingly ‘innate’ propensity for violence of the constructed ‘enemy’ is filmic fodder in many an acclaimed film. consider for example the macabre content contained in the 2010 academy winner, the hurtlocker—a film which meticulously chronicles the bravery of bomb dismantlers in the iraq war. in one scene, we are given the grisly details of dismantling a bomb stuffed in a cadaver packed with explosives—‘a body bomb’. the question is does this cinematic concoction successfully utilize fetishization, and the dismemberment of iraqi society in the service of triumphalism and militarism? one has to watch the dvd commentary to find out that the contraption of the ‘body bomb’ was a creative concoction devised on the part of kathryn bigelow’s filmic team. in the dvd commentary bigelow claims that “this prosthetic is a heavily loaded symbolic moment…the idea of a bomb put inside the body of the iraqi people.” most audiences will unlikely get this fictional symbolism ‘seeing’ instead the gruesome ‘reality’ of a cadaver strapped with real bombs—a macabre indictment against a people who will stop at nothing—who this film seems to insinuate –seem maliciously keen on using their dead to create more dead. after all, the hurtlocker was touted as a film based on true soldier accounts. the lingering still on a “butcher shop” which opens the action of the hurtlocker— a film which swept the stage at the academy awards— is proof enough of the point-of view being proffered in the film. we have three occurrences of this dysphemic term used to describe civilian iraqis. consider the still below with its verbalization: 32 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times still excerpted from: bigelow k. et al. (producers); bigelow, k. (director) june 2009, the hurt locker. usa: universal studios. in other examples, a soldier remarks: “the nine is now pressing into the haji’s forehead” with a much more disparaging comment uttered by another soldier who proclaims in exasperation: “you’ve got two infantry platoons behind you whose job it is to go haji hunting.” the conflation of hunting ‘hajis’ and militaristic fighting is not lost on viewers. afterall, for most, it is the hunter’s prowess that is spotlighted—and not his/her kill. haji with other dysphemic terms occurs in harsh times—a film which examines the psychosis of a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. in the film, an unstable war veteran unleashes anger and guilt in a cathartic tirade and metonymic claim: “you know what they were—they were fuckin’ hajjis, terrorists, the bad guys.” still excerpted from: ayer, d. and sperling a. (producers); ayer, d. (director). november 2006. harsh times. usa: mgm. a similar semantic juxtapositioning occurs in stop-loss where a bereaving father is given license to vent via a compounded invective: “i’d go back tomorrow to get that haji bastard that killed preacher.” “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 33 still excerpted from: goodman, g. and s. rudin (producers); pierce, k. (director). march 2008. stop-loss usa: mtv films/ paramount. place names: a cline of negativity the most obvious output of war depictions on the silver screen involve novel morphophonemic blending and clipping strategies involving the suffix “istan” used to insult the geographic space encapsulated in the war zones. in harsh times, an afghan war veteran smugly calls the country: “trashcanistan.” still excerpted from: ayer, d. and sperling a. (producers); ayer, d. (director). november 2006. harsh times. usa: mgm. in an article written soon after the 9-11 attacks titled: “clan of stans” shen (2001) defined “istan” of persian etymology as ‘place of’ (p. 12), and then proceeded to examine the semantic roots of seven place names/ countries utilizing this morphemic suffix. this insult of place also sees occurrence in films attempting a more serious investigation of the wars in the form of docu-dramas such as where in the world is osama bin laden? this film attempts a critique of the state-run machinery set up in the service of ‘the hunt for osama bin laden.’ surprisingly we find this multimorphemic blend being used for ‘comedic’ effect as in the following nonsensical agglutinative form which opens the film. narrated in his voice, morgan spurlock speculates on his plan of action with: “was i supposed to go look for him in afghanibaluchapakiwaziristan?” he asks? the inevitable effect is one of ‘othering’ the entire region—a ‘foreignization’ that many a mainstream 34 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times viewer perceives this geographic space to be. after all, in a close-up shot as seen below, audiences are subjected to the word photographed against a backdrop of the entire map of the region. still excerpted from: spurlock, m (producer); spurlock, m (director). april 2008. where in the world is osama bin laden? usa: weinstein company. the use of ‘–istan’ as a means to denigrate is consistent—there is even a 2009 release called absurdistan. sometimes the insult is extreme as in war stories—a film which attempts to explore the global spread of terrorism in this geopolitical space as it tracks the lives of two reporters. in the film, uzbekistan is conflated with ‘whore’. eager to underscore the chaos of the region, the same blending strategy occurs in, lions for lambs as “trash-gani.” still excerpted from: redford, r. et al. (producers); redford r. (director). november 2007. lions for lambs. usa: mgm. the cline of insult while more subtle, but perhaps as derogatory, progresses to metonymy—where “the part stands for the whole” (sebeok, 1994) in the film, charlie wilson’s war where tom hanks’ character eagerly solicits support for a plan to arm the mujahedeen in a ‘faraway’ place in the form of: “it’s in a pile of rocks called afghanistan.” “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 35 still excerpted from: hanks, t. et al. (producers); nichols, m. (director). december 2007. charlie wilson’s war. usa: universal pictures. the choice of label in in the valley of elah, slides further down the cline of negativity when an irate father calls afghanistan “a shithole”—a term used with generous abundance in the film, brothers. this latter film attempts to explore the psychological toll of trauma on returning soldiers and their families. the effect of place on the psyche of both viewer and soldier alike is most vividly vocalized in the 2010 academy award winner, the hurtlocker where audience members hear soldier comments in the form of: “let’s get out of this fucking desert”; “i fucking hate this place”; followed by a sarcastic rejoinder in the form of “you don’t like waiting around in this beautiful neighborhood?” –uttered at the very same time as the camera carefully pans across a garbage-strewn street. as an aside, one has to hear the director commentary by kathyrn bigelow fourteen minutes into the film [in the dvd] to find out that this scene was cinematically created—a mis-en-scene whose workings she explains at length as: “it was a pretty clean street—yeah we brought in quite a lot of garbage. i remember personally picking up the garbage and scattering it around as i remember it…” why such a detailing of place one wonders especially for a film shot in jordon instead of the real iraq? why such a careful attempt at rendering a sense of place? this cline of labeling confirms allan and burridge’s (2006) finding that: “terms of pejorization” (p. 54) often range in “scale with fear, abhorrence, loathing, and contempt at the one end, and nothing worse than low social esteem at the other” (p. 54). with such consistent and predictable verbal and visual bombardment in current film, it becomes easy to see just what little effort it takes to rile citizens over koran-burning or mosque building in the ‘homeland’. could the cognitive effects of such filmic labeling be having their desired social effect on viewing audiences? 36 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times still excerpted from: haggis, p. and hayward, b. (producers); haggis, p. (director). september 2007. in the valley of elah. usa: warner independent pictures. the use of the suffix “istan” as a ‘trendy’ form of insult finds reoccurrence in lakeview terrace—a psychological thriller of a cop-turnedrogue. in the film, a deranged police officer played by samuel jackson hurls out the morphemic backformation: “you a euro-mexi-japa-chinestani or what?” again, while such wordage functions to reflect current war parlance, its effect on sustaining such prejudices cannot be discounted. for most audiences, the label is cathartic—a reflection of the frustration of many. still excerpted from: lassiter, j and w. smith (producers); labute, n. (director). september 2008. lakeview terrace. usa: screen gems. it is not just afghanistan that bears the brunt of insult but also iraq. in, stop loss an officer takes great care to describe the country for audiences saying: “sand, fleas, flies, heat, boredom or you get shot at or blown up,” he sardonically tells the camera—ending with “that’s pretty much it.” iraq as a term for insult finds allusion even in films unrelated to the theme of war. consider the film the departed, another academy-award winner focused on the irish mob workings post-civil rights, but whose 9-11 contextual adaptation sees overt spotlighting. denigration of iraq occurs in the form of a similie in the oscar-winner the departed where inspector dignam, played by mark walberg, calls the boston police unit a “shithole” with “more leaks that the iraqi navy.” “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 37 it is perhaps this ‘disgust’ of place that brad pitt’s character in the film babel—a movie focused on the interconnectivity of violence on three continents seems keen on exposing. in babel, an irate tourist in an unnamed middle-eastern country vents his geographical frustration with the following dysphemic diatribe: “this is your fucked-up country!” for viewing audiences, could such insult terms serve cathartic as well as subversive roles. the question is could these consistent insults possibly shape and re-shape fear, attitudes and feelings about people in faraway places? name-calling of people and cultural practices: name-calling is rampant in the imprecations used to describe the clothing of individuals in the war zones evoked via novel compounding strategies. consider for example the film, body of lies, a high-octane spy thriller which attempts to examine the global tentacles of terrorism presented from the point-of view of a cia officer played by leonardo dicaprio. in, body of lies, a middle-eastern contact appropriates a co-opted invective to describe the government as: a “towel-head monarchy.” the use of “towel head” as an invective is spotlighted in films which seek to question the fallout from 9/11 on arab american citizens. thus, in the film american east whose focus is just this, a restaurant proprietor confesses: “the rednecks yell: towel-head at me also.” it is not just customs but clothing preferences which are the subject of overt attack in several post-9/11 filmic productions. the deprecation of clothing sees overt attack in the film crossing over—a movie explicitly focused on border security in a post-9/11 america. in the film, an insult is levied out at a young muslim girl when two schoolmates use the epithet to dually jeer and taunt her appearance and religion with: “rag-head chick can hide her face and nobody even know she butt-ugly.” this confirms nuessel’s (2008) finding: “ethnopaulisms are pejorative names or designations for people who belong to an ethnic group and they are usually based on several observable phenomena including skin color, clothing customs, culturally determined eating and drinking practices and other aspects commonly associated with a particular group” (p. 29-30). 38 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times still excerpted from: kramer, w and marshall, w. (producers); kramer, w. (director). february 2009. crossing over. usa: the weinstein company for critics who argue that such cinematic insulting exists merely to reflect current temperaments of a nation at war—a reflection of islamophobia for instance—consider the manner in which antiislamic sentiment is deftly woven into the filmic content of this film. in the same movie, audiences are privy to the grisly details of an ‘honor killing’ of an iranian girl murdered by her brother. how can audiences not leave the theater wondering about the mores of these screen-constructed ‘enemies’. across the atlantic, we see the use of historical dramas with ‘timely’ showcasings of a post-globalization britain unwilling to accept its multicultural diversity. in the acclaimed film, this is england, history is anachronistically rendered via a focus on present-day concerns—the attitude of some britishers to muslim immigrants. so, while the film is not about terrorism per se, its thematic treatment of anti-muslim sentiment makes its release anything but coincidental particularly in a culture making industry such as filmmaking in which it is ticket sales which drive production content (epstein, 2009). thus, this is england, a film about a gang of 1980’s pre-teen and teen skinheads becomes historically relevant to a 21st century english society still ‘reeling’ from its own bout of domestic terrorism. how else can one explain the consistent focus on muslim discrimination in the film—a discrimination which overtly reflects at the very same time as it subversively asserts its bigotry. islamophobic invectives see reoccurrence in the form of diminutive eponyms for a pair of young muslim boys wearing traditional skull-caps—seen in the film this is england, where they are pejoratively called “fucking tweedledum and tweedledee” by an angry british gang. “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 39 still excerpted from: herbert, m (producer); meadows, s. (director). april 2007. this is england. uk: film4 names: spotlighting pejorization it is not just the cultural routines of clothing, but naming practices which see attack in a plethora of films produces in this decade. screentime is often used to ‘comment’ on names from these war zones. consider the vigilante film domino which uses the unlikely plot of a trio of bounty hunters to offer commentary on a post 9/11 america. the film opens with a voice-over by keira knightley’s character who introduces audiences to their driver— shown ravenously devouring meat. “that’s our driver alf. he’s from afghanistan” she tells audiences, and then hastens to add: “he once ate a cat. we can’t understand how to pronounce his fuckin’ name, so we just call him the cat-eating alien.” allan and burridge (2006) claim “an assault on one’s name is treated as comparable with, or even worse than, an assault on one’s body” (p. 125). perhaps the most ‘innocuous’ of insult-levying occurs in the genre of comedy where all seems to be fair in the art of making audiences laugh. consider the following insult in the teenage-comedy, superbad, where the pejorization of muslim names forms the subject of protracted debate and ridicule. this direct assault on names occurs in, superbad alongside other morphemes of dysphemia: fogell: they let you pick any name when you get down there seth: and you landed on mclovin? fogell: yeah, it was between that or mohammed. seth: why the fuck would it be between that or mohammed? why not just pick a common name of a normal person? the dyad demonstrates the power of film in establishing ‘normative’ versus unmarked naming trends. few will miss the correlation of ‘nonnormalcy’ with muslim names. what better way to ‘other’ than to denormalize? this spotlighting of non-normativeness is commented upon 40 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times even in films whose thematic focus is the middle east. thus, middleeastern names are presented as marked forms on both a sociolinguistic and semantic level in the film, body of lies, where via a strategy of pretend misunderstanding, the movie reiterates the seeming complexity and ‘otherness’ of these ‘arab-sounding’ names which ‘inherently’ warrant confusion. this theme of ‘foreignization’ is played out in the following dyad: ed: thank you. you have done an incredible job developing this guy karoobi—katoomi hani: karami. ed: karami [irritated]. how does one remember these ‘similar’ sounding names audiences are likely to ponder? the dual reality of both reflecting as well as sustaining insult comes in syrianna—a left-leaning film which attempts to demonstrate the bigotry of state officials keen on pillaging the middle-east at any cost. in the film, the titular forms of address of the middle east are the butt of insult. we see a pejorative dimunitization and insult of a titular address form — a dyad in which ‘emir’ is substituted for an insult. board-head: so, i want to talk about the gulf and how a goddamn emir…. what is an emir anyway? member: king. it’s a king. board head: a king. well, how some podunk king tossed you out on your ass. the lack of any real need for this dialog leaves one wondering whether in reflecting prejudice, films successfully manage to sustain such attitudes. it is not just clothing, but also the culinary traditions of the arab world which form food for insult in a plethora of post 9/11 films. consider the off-handed remark in the bizarre comedy: you don’t mess with the zohan—a film which attempts to examine post 9/11 ethnic tensions among multicultural residents in new york city. in the film, an imprecation is levied out in the form of an innocuous comment on hummus as: “it’s a very tasty, diarrhea like substance.” this same pseudo qualification occurs in war inc., when john cussack’s character invites a fellow journalist out for tea with: “would you like to go out for a cup of tea? i hear they make it great here, cardamom mace—the good kind?” with “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 41 a people ‘prone’ to violence, this qualification of edible mace in its contrast with explosive mace is anything but coincidental. after all, in film where every milli-second of action is a product of careful orchestration (epstein, 2009) nothing is accidental. still excerpted from: cusack, j. et al (producers); seftel, j. (director). may 2008. war. inc., usa: first look studios. sometimes the denigration is matched with harsher semantic pejoratives. consider for example, the overt denigration of the cuisine of pakistanis as the subject of insult in the coprolalia-rich dialogue of the award-winning film, this is england where bigoted, skin-head gangsters harass a group of pakistani boys with: “now run home ‘cause mommy’s cooking curry. go on.” later in the film, there is an all-out affront on a pakistani proprietor with a machete matched with the following verbal assault: “i will slay you now where you fucking stand, you fucking paki cunt. and clean the place up. it fucking stinks of curry. fucking stinks! reeks of the fucking shit!” name-calling of language: linguicism it is not just the physicality of place that bears the burden of cinematic name-calling, but also the linguistic practices contained in the war zones. the role of hollywood in sustaining attitudes towards people (bogle, 1991) and languages is well chronicled (lippi-green, 1997; pandey 2001; bleichenbacher 2008). note for example the ‘ancillary’ comments made about arabic in the film traitor, which examines the counter-intelligence enterprise in a post 9-11 world keen on dismantling global terrorist cells. in traitor, linguicism (phillipson, 1992) against arabic emerges in the following dialog between two fbi agents in which there is a clever conflation of arabic with jihad. officer 2: claims he’s been selected to become shahid. officer 1: you picking up a little arabic? officer 2: ah! just your basic “jihady” 42 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times the synchronization of arabic with jihad (war) is again anything but innocuous. similar ‘peripheral’ comments occur in several post 9/11 films. take note for example of the following utterance in the film lions for lambs where a young recruit asks of his superior: “so, jihadi and wahhabi terrorists are moving through shiite territory sir?” most audiences may not catch the conflation of terrorist activity: ‘jihadi’ (warring) with an entire sect of the muslim faith ‘wahhabi’ (religion) in the uncontested interrogative. even ‘independent’ (thomsen and krewani, 2005) movies with seemingly liberal political agendas seem eager to define the personality type of middle–easterners. consider the following extraneous filmic detail introduced as an ‘innocuous’ toast in the oscar-nominated film, rachel getting married. once again, a family drama centered on the difficulty of homecoming as experienced by a recovering addict forms the thematic focus of the film while still manages to insert its own ‘liberal’ dose of denigration of middle easterners. here, via the use of an interruptive, overlapping conversational turn (coates, 1994) highlighting the name: ‘mahmood’ in the dialog, audiences are subjected to a semantic stereotype framed as a conversational claim which denies at the very same time that it asserts the stereotype: toaster: so, anyway, when the cab-driver finally caught up with us, she talked him down from his middle-eastern fury and like… [] rachel: [] mahmood! such a nice man! [sarcastically] toaster: in like, um pretend arabic, farsi, urdu, i don’t know… rachel’s inability—her non desire to distinguish between these languages goes uncontested—another example of foreignization at work. the reassertion of the stereotype of “muslim rage” (lewis, 1990, p. 47) coded as “middle-eastern fury” confirms that “these stereotypes and semantic scripts function as part of a collective cultural memory” (karim, 1997, p. 153) and sees a sourcing in films. overt statements about arabic abound in several movies. the conflation of arabic with terrorism forms the opening sequence of the blockbuster, eagle eye for example. in this action-packed film which zooms in on a fantastical u.s governmental take-over by rouge agents, the threat of terrorism is ever present. in the opening of the film, audiences are carefully apprised of the following details: “four males, one of them is speaking in a rashkani dialect consistent with our intel on alkhoei.” the use of the suffix “-ani” as well as the proclitic marker “al” make the allusion to ‘afghani’ and al qaeda sufficiently clear. a similar “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 43 conflation of arabic as a language of terrorist activity emerges in the kingdom, where arabic is simultaneously heard as a visual of a man with mutilated fingers shakes the hero’s hand, confirming karim’s (1997) observation of “thematic clusters” (p. 157) with “entrenched images of muslims as innately prone to violence” (p. 165). still excerpted from: mann, m and s. stuber (producers); berg. p. (director). october 2007. the kingdom. usa: universal pictures. it is this seeming attention to ancillary content, but gruesome content nonetheless, presented within the context of biographically inspired truthbased film which is perhaps most powerful in its effect on audiences. one such film, is the academy-award nominated film, a mighty heart. the film chronicles the disappearance of journalist daniel pearle in pakistan. here, actress angelina jolie, playing the wife of the slain journalist takes great care to identify the language of the perpetrators of the heinous crime. she tells mortified audiences in monotonic detail the following: “they found danny’s body cut into 10 pieces. […] then one day, probably february first, three men who spoke arabic were brought to the compound.” it is this very palpable ‘fear’ of the other which is the subject of cinematic comment in the film babel, where a ‘frightened’ tourist informs fellow travelers with the following warning: “in egypt, in a town like this they slit 30 german tourists’ throats. they might do the same to us.” such verbal and visual indexing of violence confirms karim’s (1997) assertion of the persistence of “core images that can be efficiently manipulated to influence public opinion, especially when strong action is to be taken against nations whose populations are primarily muslim” (p. 155). arabic as a language of jihad is reinforced in body of lies, via a carefully construed but concocted suicide mission which is orchestrated entirely in arabic and carefully translated on screen in real time for audiences to see —indeed confirming the stereotype that muslims “revel in acts of terrorism” (karim, 1997, p. 157). with such overt spotlighting of language, why would audience members want to learn arabic? 44 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times animal imprecations the term ‘camel’ as a cultural marker and denigrator of the middle east is another common insult form. in the highly acclaimed film, happy go lucky, a psychological drama which cinematically juxtapositions normalcy against rage in a post-london bombings england, we are privy to the pent-up frustrations of a xenophobe who is given free license to utter the following racialized rant. in his role as a driving instructor, he testily yells out: come on! drive the car. you’re not driving a camel. okay? this is not a bazaar. we have rules in this country. we have regulations and you keep to them! the conflation of camels with lawlessness is not lost on audiences able to pick up on other semantic links to the middle east in the form of “bazaar”. so, while the victim of the insult is never within the view of the camera, this covert yet potent insult’s intent remains overtly obvious to viewers. a similar allusion to camels for insult occurs in the departed, where inspector dignam reports on the danger of missing computer processors to a laughing audience with: “these are the kind they put into computers that could put a cruise missile up the ass of a camel.” once again, the allusion to a medieval technology-culture geopolitically sign-posted by the give-away “camel” makes it clear to audiences who the target of the insult really is. animalistic denigration occurs in superbad in angry overtones. an angry adolescent yells: “these fucking terrorists multiply like bunnies.” why is film so keen on spotlighting this anger? while most audiences may explain this seemingly peripheral comment, as a joke, it confirms said’s (1980) prediction of a generation ago, namely: “so far as the united states seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that muslims and arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential terrorists.” “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 45 still excerpted from: apatow, j. et al. (producers); mottola, g. (director) august 2007. superbad. usa: columbia pictures. in this is england, animal imprecations occur in the form of diminutives matched to a series of stringed invectives in the form of: “look at these little, fucking sewer rats”—an insult yelled by an irate skin-head (another spotlighted angry person!) at the very same time that the camera positions the muslim boys at the feet of the gangsters in the form of a deep-scope shot. still excerpted from: herbert, m (producer); meadows, s. (director). april 2007. this is england. uk: film4 the eye of the camera semiotically as it hierarchically positions westerners vs. arabs in this concocted world of hate. this trope of asymmetry encapsulated in a majority of films produced in this post 9/11 decade is worth spotlighting. again, we see film functioning in the dual capacity of reflecting while it sustains the very asymmetry it attempts to spotlight. such duality of filmic imprecation sees occurrence in comedic films such as soulmen—a film which explores the reuniting of two estranged friends. again in and through peripheral comments arabs become the victim of angry insult (anger again). on-screen verbalizations of dysphemia occur in this film as a tirade from an irate employee by the name of hinds played by samuel jackson who provoked to anger by a bigoted middle-eastern boss yells out the following outburst: 46 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times you know there was a time, i would have knocked your teeth down your throat for saying shit like that to me. but i’m a changed man. now i could’a called you a unibrow-shaving, pilaf-eating, greasy-ass, goat fucker, but i didn’t, did i? because i didn’t want to hurt your feelings, and i didn’t want to piss you off. again, verbal and visual violence are conflated. also semantically significant is the manner in which the dysphemism is framed—as a possibility rather than an actuality—in a sense, it is an insult which is denied at the very same time that it is asserted—a brilliant strategy of hollywood’s doublespeak. still excerpted from: friendly, d. t et al. (producers); lee, m.d. (director). november 2008. soul men. usa: mgm. post-london bombings: the cinematic aftermath cinematic acquiescence for group insult is often framed in films attempting to spotlight the theme of ethnic ‘warfare’ in a post globalization multicultural metropolis—the subject of scrutiny of the film rocknrolla. in this film, the sociological analysis unfolds in the form of multicultural gang warfare in 21st century london. this same screen-anger as seen in countless other excerpts sees verbalization in the dysphemic rich film called rocknrolla where a bigoted crook is given free cinematic license to bully and insult. in one scene, he manages to match verbal threats with violence by threatening a banker of pakistani origins with: “don’t you ever swear at me, you yellow puddle of immigrant piss. . .” (see, still below). “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 47 still excerpted from: clarkhall, s. et al. (producers); ritchie, g. (director). september 2008. rocknrolla. usa: warner bros. we have already examined several examples of such xenophobic hate encoded in the film aptly titled: this is england, where a temporally adapted (post-london terrorist sentiment) finds angry verbalization. in one scene in this is england a bigoted gang-member openly vents his frustration against pakistani immigrants. it might be noted as an aside that the film uses 20 tokens of the dysphemic outburst “fuckin paki”— often hurled out by a child, and in the company of other explosive invectives such as: “filthy paki bastard” (see, still below) still excerpted from: herbert, m (producer); meadows, s. (director). april 2007. this is england. uk: film4 in the visual below, anger is conflated with a weapon of violence, when a machete-wielding, gang-leader threatens a pakistani shopkeeper with: “i will slay you now where you fucking stand, you fucking paki cunt.” in their thoroughly comprehensive taxonomy of strategies of name-calling, allan and burridge (2006) state “it is generally accepted that ‘cunt’ is the most tabooed word in english” (p. 52). again, the release of a film focused on a 1980s, neo-nazi gangster group sees ‘timely’ applicability in present-day britain—a timing of filmic production which is anything but coincidental in an industry where profit margins remain wedded to audience tastes in very real terms (epstein, 2009). 48 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times still excerpted from: herbert, m (producer); meadows, s. (director). april 2007. this is england. uk: film4 semantic stereotyping: terrorists ultimately, it is the conflation of arab peoples with terrorists that sees dizzying occurrence either as an implied act (seen in previous examples), or used as a direct linguistic insult. since the wars are causally linked to the 9/11 attacks in the mind of most, the predominant form of name-calling ‘on-screen’ pertains to the revival of the word: ‘terrorist’ consistently used as a metonym/semantic stereotype (karim, 1997). the conflation of ‘terrorist’ with the people encapsulated in the two wars occurs even in moves unrelated to the thematic issue of war. consider the following offhanded comment made in rush hour 3—a martial arts comedy which manages to conflate iranians with terrorism—confirming nuessel’s (2008) claim that “ethnophaulisms are metonyms, i.e., a particular physical trait or a behavior pattern stand for an entire ethnic group.” (p. 30), and often form “the basis of stereotyping” (30). in rush hour 3, the following uncontested claim occurs: captain: last week you put 6 iranians in jail for a week. carter: you and i both know them iranians was terrorists. captain: they were scientists at ucla! carter: big deal! ‘cause they cure cancer in rats that doesn’t mean they won’t blow shit up! “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 49 still excerpted from: birnbaum, r. et al. (producers); ratner, b. (director). august 2007. rush hour 3. usa: new line cinema. while most audiences ‘laugh off’ this ridiculous assertion, the ‘terrorist’ fear remains uncontested. a similar phobia forms the opening claim uttered by a cia officer in body of lies. he is heard saying: ‘listen to me! i am not getting my head cut off on the internet? if something happens, shoot me!’ while in the film, brothers, a whimpering hostagesoldier, vocalizes his fear with: “are they going to cut our heads off?” this same obsession with terrorism occurs in the oscar-nominated film, frozen river, a film which uses the post 9/11 world of american immigration to concoct a story of human trafficking across a canadian border evoked in the form of an unlikely partnership forged between a mohawk and caucasian single-mother team trying to eek out an existence. in one scene in the film, ray, the caucasian-american heroine cautions her mohawk partner as they get ready to smuggle a pakistani couple with: “i just hope these aren’t the ones who blow themselves and everyone else up.” having second thoughts, she tosses what she deems to be a suspicions bag out her car window saying: “nuclear power, poison gas! who knows what they might have in there. i’m not gonna be responsible for that.” we see several of such overt ethnopaulisms in current movies. consider for example, the abundance of insult levied out in the film, from paris with love—a big-budget blockbuster starring john travolta in the role of a cia operative on the hunt for global terrorist cells. in the film, the conflation of crime with ethnic group is overt. in one scene, a cia operative inquires of john travolta’s character, “what am i looking for?” as he peers out a pair of binoculars. he is given the following shocking description: “you’re looking for a pakistani with a big bag of coke or a raghead pushing a wheel cart filled with cash.” a few minutes later, 50 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times at the sound of a knock on the door, travolta’s character announces to audiences: “it’s probably that pakistani pimp. kill the fucker!” a few scenes later at a dinner party, in the same film— from paris with love— the following conversation transpires: girlfriend: and what type of people did you kill today, james? james: the usual. bad guys. charlie: bad guys? baddest-ass, suicide vested, cold-hearted pakistani motherfuckers this side of karachi. no… well seriously i mean we took down a whole terrorist cell today. the use of five invectives concatenatively structured in the dyad above serves as a final example of the working of cinematic acquiescence. after all, why wouldn’t one want to exterminate a terrorist cell with suicide vested terrorists—a scene carefully rendered as an act of self – defense. perhaps the same kind of self-defense argument underpinning the two ground wars in the mind of most? concluding remarks: the analysis above raises some final questions. firstly, how exactly do we analyze the consistent name-calling levied out on the silver screen against the people and places in the current wars in afghanistan and iraq. what are the implications of these “labels of primary potency that act like shrieking sirens, deafening us to all finer discriminations that we might otherwise perceive” (karim, 1997, p. 155). thomsen (2005) alludes to the powerful role of film in shaping perceptions saying: “in the age of moving images, the film industry is deeply involved in the creation of a set of collective mind patterns from the very beginning” (p. 9). do such invectives have an effect on audiences? what is the implication of this asymmetrical portrayal of the ‘other’, and finally, how is power in the hegemonic sense evoked via “the internalization of the norms and values implied by the prevailing discourses within a social order” (mesthrie, et al 2009, p. 316). we cursorily examine these effects on three journalistic outputs. why journalists? perhaps because they are often supposed to stand in diametric contrast to state-sanctioned hegemony. said (1980) is quoted for claiming that: “very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of arab-moslem life has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the arab world.” one recent case may serve as appropriate evidence. consider the esteemed journalist juan “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 51 williams’ infamous commentary on the famed fox tv channel: when i get on the plane, i got to tell you, if i see people who are in muslim garb and i think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as muslims, i get worried. i get nervous. (stelter, 2010, p. 1) this comment cost williams his job at national public radio at the very same time that it landed him a “three-year contract worth nearly $2 million in total” (stelter, 2010, p. 10) with the right-wing news channel, fox news. so while, the press debates whether juan williams had the right to voice his internal fears in a public sphere, the real question worth asking is: how did the erudite juan williams internalize such fears? thomsen and krewani (2005) allude to film’s role in the internalization of attitudes claiming: “we owe much of our interior landscapes to the visions, the characters, and the stories of that most characteristic ingredient of american culture” (p. 8). there is sufficient evidence in the data-analysis presented of the subversive role played by the film industry which reflects at the very same time as it sustains consenting attitudes about the people and places encapsulated in the wars—in some cases reflecting as well as endorsing the continued necessity for the two wars. the juxtaposition of the verbal violence of name-calling presented against a cinematic backdrop of visual violence it is argued serves a key mimetic function—one of filmic catharsis. after all, allan and burridge (2006) claim “there is no doubt, we are living in times of high anxiety” (p. 105). name-calling in hollywood serves a key socio-semiotic function: it provides an inventory of invectives in current war parlance while at the same time permits a viewing citizenry with free license to define and describe a faraway enemy—perhaps in the entertainment industry’s bid to gain continued public approval for the wars. this paper has demonstrated the how of othering—in particular, how innovative, wordmanufacturing processes in cinematic wars serve to manufacture consent for real ground wars. in effect, perjorization precedes dehumanization in its trajectory towards exploitation. so, while the strategies of cinematic reminiscing and acquiescing seem to reflect at the very same time as they sustain the othering of the people, places and cultures encapsulated in the war-zones of iraq and afghanistan, audiences subjected to a decade of such linguistic bombardment are less likely to ask for clarification on the real question namely, the cause of these wars. 52 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times in the machinery of war, film serves as a powerful conduit in the manufacture of consent. the construction of ‘suitable enemies’ on reel screens subconsciously if not consciously we could argue sanctions real killings of real ‘enemies’ on the ground. after all, the lack of any sustained public or institutional outcry—particularly journalistic, against a war founded on concocted causation—‘weapons of mass destruction’—in the invasion and subsequent occupation of iraq for example, lends support to the claim that filmic ‘othering’ can indeed inoculate viewers into asking for accountability in the decisions to war—i.e. why stage fake reasons for a war? instead, the causation of war continues to be shrouded behind current cinema’s fog of reel enemies, and in its incessant focus on the effects of war on u.s. troops—not iraqi or afghani citizens for instance. perhaps the most potent output of cinematic creations rests on the effects that such portrayals have on a broad sociological level. consider for instance the largely unopposed acquiescence of the state’s expanded military incursions both domestically and abroad. such a ‘spotlighting’ of the ‘war on terror’ either via the indirect strategies of linguistic reminiscing or via direct thematic focus in the form of cinematic acquiescing, guarantees unqualified institutionalized license for militaristic expansion at the very same time as it grants permission for an equally expanded machinery of national security operation. consider for example, the fear-mongering which hayworth (2006) appeals to in a bid to conflate a rightward shift in immigration policies in the post 9/11 decade. in the preface to his book, journalist sean hannity, is quick to inform readers of the impending ‘doom’ of illegal immigration cautioning readers with the following ‘frightening’ scenario: …unless we act soon, we could be facing another catastrophe on the order of september 11. by allowing people to cross our borders unchecked, we invite a security risk into our homeland. there is no way of knowing if any—or how many terrorists have already slipped across our border. (p. ix-x) others seem eager to market the fear of 9/11 for expanded global control. in his uniquely titled publication, schmoozing with terrorists, journalist klein (2007), utilizes a chronoscope of edited interviews with what he calls “jihad-urging sheiks” (p. xv) to call for an expansion of the war on terror, or what he calls “the war against america” on a global scale (p. xvi). for him “global jihad” is on the rise because, “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 53 we have failed to carry out a coherent policy against terror. we have failed to understand global terror and how to annihilate it. as a result, the terrorists are much stronger today than before september 11, when our war on terror began. (p. xviii). for journalists, such as klein (2006) the war on terror is not just political, but rhetorical namely: a “war for our existence” (p. 191). a final point concerns the one missing piece: the financial burden of these wars. rarely do films focus on the financial cost of these two wars—a financial drain described most aptly by chalmers (2010) as “running up the imperial tab” (p. 2) at the generous rate of “an estimated trillion dollars a year spent on the defense establishment” (p. 8). in 2009, the cost was at “30 billion per annum to maintain the war in afghanistan alone” (chalmers, 2010, p. 8). so, while the wars rage on the ground, hollywood seems to be doing its part of selling public policy by waging its own verbal battle on the silver screen, and in viewers’ minds—in and through its war of words. it is against such a backdrop of rhetorical contest that post-9/11 films i the last decade engage in their own trademark procedures of systemic ‘forgetting’ in a bid to spotlight a strategic ‘re-remembering’ of 9/11 and the continued need for war. references adams, russell, (2010). “tensions still on boil in mosque fight.” the wall street journal, eptember 13, p. a.5. allan, keith and kate burridge, 2006. forbidden words: taboo and the censoring of language, cambridge: cambridge university press. asim, jabari, 2007. the n word: who can say it, who shouldn’t and why, new york: houghton mifflin and company. bleichenbacher, lukas, 2008. multilingualism in the movies: hollywood characters and their language choices, tübingen: franke verlag publishing company. blommaert, j. 2005. discourse . cambridge: cambridge university press. bolinger, d. 1980. language: the loaded weapon. new york: longman. bogle, donald, 1991. toms, coons, mulattoes, mammies, and bucks: an interpretive history of blacks in american films, new york: continuum. chalmers, j. 2010. dismantling the empire: america’s last hope . new york: metropolitan books/ henry holt. coates, j. “no gap, lots of overlap: turn taking patters in the talk of women friends,” in d. graddol, j. maybin and b. stierer (eds), researching language and literacy in social context. clevedon: multilingual matters, pp. 177-192. 54 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times cowell, alan, 2001. “a nation challenged,” new york times, october 8, p. b1: 6. cowen, tyler. 2002. creative destruction. princeton: princeton university press. downing, j. 1980. the media machine. london: pluto press. ehlich, k. 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(pp. 9-27). stuttgart: edition axel menges/university of siegen. tyrrell, h. 1999. “bollywood versus hollywood: battle of the dream factories.” eds. tracey skelton and tim allen. (pp. 260-273). cultural and global change. new york: routledge. van dijk, t.a. 1993. elite discourse and racism, newbury park, california: sage publications. wasser, f. (2005). the transnationalization of hollywood. in c. w. thomsen and a. krewani (eds.), hollywood: recent developments. (pp. 63-70). stuttgart: edition axel menges/university of siegen. filmography apatow, j. et al . (producers); mottola, g. (director) august 2007. superbad . usa: columbia pictures. ayer, d. and sperling a. (producers); ayer, d. (director). november 2006. harsh times. usa: mgm. besson, l and osborne, i. (producers); morel, p. (director). february 2010 . from paris with love . usa: lionsgate. bevan et al . (producers); greengrass, p. (director). march 2010. the green zone. usa: universal pictures. bigelow k. et al . (producers); bigelow, k. (director) june 2009, the hurt locker. usa: universal studios. binder, j and m. rotenger (producers); bender, m. (director). march 2007. reign over me. usa: columbia pictures. birnbaum, r. et al . (producers); ratner, b. (director). august 2007. rush hour 3 . usa: new line cinema. black, t. et al . (producers); proyas, a. (director). march 2009. knowing . usa: summit entertainment. boden, a et al . (producers); a. bowden and r. fleck (directors). april 2009. sugar. usa: sony picture classics. channing-williams, s. (producer); leigh, m. (director). april 2008. happygo-lucky. uk: momentum pictures. cheadle, d. et al . (producers); nachmanoff, j. (director). august 2008. traitor . usa: overture films. clark-hall, s. et al. (producers); ritchie, g. (director). september 2008. rocknrolla . usa: warner bros. cusack, j. et al (producers); seftel, j. (director). may 2008. war . inc ., usa: first look studios. “war on terror” via a “war of words” | 57 deluca, m. et al. (producers); sheridan, j. (director). december 2009. brothers. usa: lionsgate. demme, j. et al (producers); demme, j. (director). october 2008. rachel getting married. usa: sony pictures. djaoui, a. et al (producers); martinelli r. (director). march 2006. the stone merchant. usa: monarch home video. fishcher, p. (producer); singer r. (director). march 2003. war stories. usa: nbc films. friendly, d. t et al. (producers); lee, m.d. (director). november 2008. soul men . usa: mgm. golin, s. et al. (producers); hood g. (director). october 2007. rendition . usa: newline cinema. golin, s. et al (producers); iñárritu, g.a (director). october 2006. babel . usa: paramount pictures. goodman, g. and s. rudin (producers); pierce, k. (director). march 2008. stop-loss usa: mtv films/ paramount. hadida, s. and scott, t. (producers); scott t. ( director). october 2005. domino . usa: newline cinema. haggis, p. and hayward, b. (producers); haggis, p. (director). september 2007. in the valley of elah. usa: warner independent pictures. hanks, t. et al (producers); nichols, m. (director). december 2007. charlie wilson’s war. usa: universal pictures. herbert, m (producer); meadows, s. (director). april 2007. this is england. uk: film4 kramer, w and marshall, w. (producers); kramer, w. (director). february 2009. crossing over. usa: the weinstein company lassiter, j and w. smith (producers); labute, n. (director). september 2008. lakeview terrace. usa: screen gems. mann, m and s. stuber (producers); berg. p. (director). october 2007. the kingdom. usa: universal pictures. moritz, n. h (producer); travis, p. (director).february 2008. vantage point. usa: columbia pictures. nayar, d. (producer); schrader, p. (director). november 2007. the walker . usa: kintop pictures. nozik, m. et al. (producers); gaghan, p (director). november 2005. syriana . usa: warner bros. osborne, n. et al (producers); coulter, a. (director). march 2010. remember me? usa: summit entertainment. paterson, a et al. (producers); maguire, m. (director). october 2009. incendiary. uk: image entertainment. 58 | uniting struggles: critical social research in critical times pitt, b. et al (producers) winterbottom, m. (director) june 2007. a mighty heart. usa: paramount vantage. pitt, b. et al. (producers); scorsese, m. (director). september 2006. the departed. usa: warner bros. rae, h. and hourihan, c. (producers); hunt, c. (director). august 2008. frozen river . usa: sony pictures classics. redford, r. et al. (producers); redford r. (director). november 2007. lions for lambs. usa: mgm. sandler, a et al. (producers); dugan, d. (director). june 2006. you don’t mess with the zohan . usa: columbia pictures. scott, r. and de line, d. (producers); ridley, s. (director). october 2008. body of lies. usa: warner bros pictures. silver, j. (producer); hirschbiegel, o. et al (directors). august 2007. the invasion. usa: warner bros pictures. singh, a. et al (producers); issawi h. (director). october 2007. american east . usa: distant horizons. chemins alternates articles bodying black goddesses :the duty of representation across time and cultures 1 terry mp^provost conscious states exemplify a perpetual becoming, and the continuous prolongation ofthe past into the present —philip turetzky( 1998: 201) certain contemporary portrayals of black female deities which visually magnify the naked body conjure images of black women from the trans-atlantic period. they connect the now to the colonial nineteenth and twentieth century during which a profusion of stereotypes of blacks were disseminated in a variety of media. they also demonstrate howderogatory images of black women, which i shall call archetypal representations of alterity, have ambiguously transformed. these depictions have proven contentious when decyphered by different viewers. and that they are re-appropriated through generations and across cultures has only compounded today's problem of black female stereotyping. critical assessment of spectatorial response is significant to such representations once they are made public; for what is said against or in support of an image, especially if polemic, reveals the divergent political perspectives of gender and race as they relate to responsible art-making. though having one's work diffused in media or in a particular venue is a privilege, the duty that comes with it is often overlooked—the duty of accountability, bell hooks urges that: committed cultural critics—whether white or black, scholars or artists—can produce work that opposes structures of domination, that presents possibilities for a transformed future by willingly interrogating their own work on aesthetic and political grounds. this interrogation itself volume is, 2001 71 alternate routes becomes an act of critical intervention, fostering a fundamental attitude of vigilance rather than denial. (1990: 55) working through the stages of duty implies that an artist is introspecting, becoming more seeing or sensitised to the pivotal issues of representation. the autodidactic process is a topic beyond the scope of this paper. but as respumhgn^c genres of race and gender indicates, remembering black women "stnstories and the complex histories of their bodies during the trans-atlantic era is also taken as a serious duty by many. in this paper. i aim to explore certain processes of stereotyping that create contextual ambiguity, and to rethink representation as a subjectmatter relevant to duty. some historical aspects of slavery and corporeal practices are threaded into the analysis, binding certain moments of the present to the past. i examine several portrayals of dark goddesses and their hypercorporealisation in image, with the purpose of kindling an open-ended discussion concerning the complexities of artist rights to represent others, and the responses of the subcultural groups dissonantly mirrored in image. i use various textual and visual sources, and compare depictions by artists of different backgrounds and periods, to show the shared perception of the black female body in the western imaginary. i use a few canadian images as a base, to problematise the commonplace assumption of canada being less affected by racial stereotypes than europe and the usa. bodying subjectivity: hypercorporealisation and race inasmuch as an image may be classified as good or bad (gilman 1985: 1 7). in today's vocabulary, stereotype usually means a pejorative characterisation of an individual or group. a stereotype is an image that has surpassed the phase of archetypal blueprinting to recur frequently in ordinary culture. it is part of the everyday, a convention recognised immediately or subliminally. but certain scholars consider the methodology of stereotypes complicit in normalising how these images are redefined across time. . . . the exclusive preoccupation with images, whether positive or negative, can lead to a kind of essentialism, as less subtle critics reduce a complex variety of portrayals to a 72 volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifi limited set of reified formulae. such criticism is procrustean: the critic forces diverse fictive characters into preestablished categories. behind every black child performer the critic discerns a "pickaninny": behind every sexually attractive actor a "buck"; behind every corpulent or nurturing black female a "mammy." such reductionist simplifications run the risk of reproducing the very racial essentigtob they were designed to combat. (shohat and stam 1994: 199) evidently, my analysis is not above criticism. perhaps it. too. will perpetuate the cycle of how stereotypes are treated. doubtless, it plays an inculpable hand in exploiting the bodies of black women, for i have reprinted some of the very images that have incited controversial dialogues. and whilst my discussion may appear theoretical, my motive stems, not out of theory, but from knowing that, within actual encounters, race-gender stereotypes seen in media are projected onto others in ways that constrain or oppress their experiences of being. these exchanges necessitate individual agency, thus underscoring the power of the social conditioning of stereotypes and their influence on people's notions and behaviour toward those considered different in a particular culture. many scholars assert that stereotypes are images that disparagingly essentialise specific groups. robbin legere henderson says a stereotype "is an attempt to depersonalize individuals and thereby deny them the rights and dignity which our society professes to accord everyone"(1989: 6). jan nederveen pieterse claims: "stereotypes are based on simplification and generalization, or the denial of individuality. . . . they tend to function as self-fulfilling prophecies. the targets of stereotyping are manoeuvred into certain roles, so that a vicious circle develops, in which social reality seems to endorse the stereotype" (1992: 1 1 ). in the same vein. patricia hill collins sees a correlation between stereotypes and their impact in real life on the person or group stereotyped. she calls stereotypes controlling images "designed to make racism, sexism, and poverty appear to be natural, normal, and an inevitable part of everyday life"(1991: 68). stereotypes therefore incite dynamics that. volume 18, 2001 73 alternate routes through individual or group interaction, have profound social consequences in reality. in peau noire, masques blancs of 1952, frantz fanon discusses his own experiences as a black martiniquais in postwar france (zolberg 1970: 121 ). he discerned that, in a predominantly white culture, a black person acquires identity by white hegemonic patterns and practices of socialisation, whiph are mainly established from pigment and body differences. in the context of race. blackness is a "malediction corporelle." as fanon says, derived from "l'autre. le blanc, qui m'avait tisse de mille details, anecdotes, recits" (1952: 92). : the body begins as a corporeal schema, existing in a specific time and space: but the signifier of black skin changes the experiences of the body in that spatiotemporality. fanon calls this conversion a racial epidermal schema (un schema epidermique racial) in which white ideologies and projections of blackness circulate as cultural signs that alienate and debase black subjects (1952:92). these signs are internalised by members of a given culture, which includes black individuals who perennially see self reflected in society as stereotypes of the abnormal, the oversexed and the subhuman. speaking in first person. fanon states: l'evidence etait la. implacable. ma noirceur etait la. dense et indiscutable. elle me tourmentait. elle me pourchassait. minquietait. nfexasperait. les negres sont des sauvages. abrutis. des analphabetes. mais moi. je savais que dans mon cas ces propositions etaient fausses. ii y avait un mythe du negre qu'il fallait demolir coute que coute (1952: 96). 3 the presence of these epidermally accentuated stereotypes in culture create an ambiguous, antagonistic context for social interaction. insofar as the black person may feel dread, belittlement. self-aversion and alienation at the sight of these images. white individuals socialised by the myths of blackness will profess to embrace black altenty by interacting with black persons as they do with the stereotypes. this point fanon clearly underlines with his mimicking of a frenchman who claimed to know black identities by the derogatory paradigms mainstreamed: 74 volume 18, 2002 chemins a iternatifs "voyez-vous, monsieur, je suis fun des plus negrophiles de lyon" (1952: 96). 4 in this light. white perceptions of blackness as they manifest in stereotypes appear psychically masmbatory. gratifying either phantasy or phobia for the white collective imaginary. myriad images of dark goddesses also appear cognitively onanistic in how they present black womanhood to the public eye: for they reduce black female .subjectivity to epidermal body and sensual/sexual commodity.5 this limited bodying of subject is signified by nakedness, soma and black skin—elements that visually dictate a hyper, or scopically heightened, corporeality in which the body, gendered and racialised. dominates in representation: hence the term hypercorporealisation. moreover, the constancy of this coding of black women's bodies has become, through time, integral to western ideological rituals of knowing and recognising. honn bhabha says that these two processes are intrinsic to the sociopolitical function of the stereotype: ". . . the stereotype is a form of knowledge and identification that vascilates between what is always 'in place", already known and something . . . that must be anxiously repeated. . ." (1994: 66). bhabha also relates the stereotype to the concept of ambivalence in which attraction and repulsion co-exist as well as mimicry and mockery of the coloniser-colonised (ashcroft. griffiths. tiffin 2000: 12-13). bhabha continues: ". . . it is the force of ambivalence that gives the colonial stereotype its currency" (1994: 66). within the practice of being "ahvays-already subjects'" who are conventionally known and identified (althusser 1994: 130). in the past, the black female was generally recognised as spectacle, and the person observing positioned as a white usually male usually heterosexual spectator. in the contemporary, most of these dynamics still apply. through a white spectatorship tinged by voyeurism and curiosity, the black female re-becomes peculiar sexualised spectacle. with the images of darkskinned goddesses, the gaze formulated by the artist that interpellates the spectator is one through which the represented subject turns into a deformed exaggerated organism, artistically paint-brushed with an anatomy that carnalises person through magnification. indeed, race has played a more crucial role since the 1800s in how bodies have been perceived in the western imaginary, hierarchised in political and scientific discourse, interpreted in reality, and represented in material culture. i say "more crucial" in the afore sentence because volume 18, 2001 75 alternate routes slavery', begun in the new world during the 1400s with the european enslavement of indigenous peoples." grew into a racialised system of oppression that, by the nineteenth century, was advancing industrialisation and modernity in the west. black slavery was increasingly founded on exploitive gender relations and ethnic-racial differentiation which produced various labour and working classes in north america and the caribbean colonies. albert boime asserts that: "the african slave trade, beginning in the midfifteenth century and continuing for the next four hundred years, was one of the most important phenomenons in the history of the modern world, and no single human being attempting to make a verbal or visual statement about it could be free from bias" (1990: xiii). furthermore, the black and white racialisation of the female body in the 1800s differed in semiotic currencies. this differentiation unveils an asymmetrical relatedness in how corporeality was depicted and collectively comprehended. this racial interdependence reflected both institutional practices in slavocracies that measured privilege by skin colour and ideology (roberts 1994: 4-6). whereas the female figure racialised as black stood for excess, disease, deviancy and unrestrained lasciviousness (gilman 1985: 89). the virtuous female body raced as white took on a tapering shape that signified containment, ethereality, morality, femininity and a spiritualised delicacy. this latter body type, of slim lines and contours, has become the widely diffused norm in western media. but not all white female bodies were considered virtuous. those exemplifying traits outside of the prescribed racial conventions were also stereotyped as transgressive bodies with negrified proclivities (rhodes 1994:65)." in the immediate aftermath of abolition, stereotypes were instrumental in impeding the socioeconomic mobility of blacks who were still being portrayed as slow-witted slaves, servants and entertainers (archerstraw 2000: 12. 38). that these images have circulated for centuries indicates a high degree of cultural absorption. traces of the interdependence of black and white bodily opposites from the colonial era can still be seen in certain contemporary canadian representations. the naked nude made in 1982 by maritime-based hilda woolnough. the triptych another spring contains a centre panel of a monstrous goddess, entitled 76 volume 18, :<»>: ( 'hemins alternatifi venus (fig.l). 8 woolnough had begun her "venus series'" in 1978, reproducing goddess images as far back as the venus of willendorf of 30. 000 bc (murray 1989/1990). but this panel was conceived as a response to alessandro botticelli's birth of venus c. 1484-86 (fig.3) (tippett 1993: 165). in which the main character, a slim curvaceous white deity, floats shoreward on a shell. so light is her body that she moves with the wind, personified to the left by the god zephyrus (white 1989: 141 ). conflicting views have been given about the botticellian goddess. rose-marie and rainer hagen claim the allegory in "this pagan scene" is fashioned by a praxitelean technique of which all anatomical parts are rendered to classical perfection (2001: 160). they call venus a "nude" that emblematises "the incarnation of sinful lust" and a "naked female body" (hagen 2001: 159). certain theorists, however, carefully distinguish naked from nude. edward lucie-smith says: "venus is nude and. for all the modesty of her gesture, quite evidently unashamed of her nudity. ... if an erotic element is present it is deliberately refined and etherealised. . . botticelli simultaneously accepts the nude as a subject and spiritualizes it" (1995: 47). david wilkins and bernard schultz state that: "her pose is based on ancient sculptures, but she is hardly sculptural. the elegance of the figure is set off by the intertwining patterns of venus' s hair" (1990: 252-253). these descriptions convey a consensus: venus is sculpted, ethereal, a perfect nude. she shows no signs of indecorousness. this being the important aesthetic nuance. nakedness signifies a pornographic, immoral, crude body devoid of cultivation. nudity, however, is exalted in western art. john berger explains that: "the nude in european oil painting is usually presented as an admirable expression of the european humanist spirit" (1972: 62). yet an incongruity exists in how nudes were/are produced. berger elaborates: "the contradiction can be stated simply. on the one hand the individualism of the artist, the thinker, the patron, the owner: on the other hand, the person who is the object of their activities—the woman treated as a thing or an abstraction" (1972:62). whereas berger locates nakedness outside of representation. lynda nead questions whether the nude can be pristinely divided from the naked, since both are of the same source—a physical body. considering that nakedness can indeed be replicated, the artist's rendering of body volume 18. 2001 77 alternate routes figure 1: venus c. 1982, middle panel of another spring, hilda woolnough. becomes the device that collapses or separates out the nude from the naked. says nead: "there can be no naked 'other* to the nude, for the body is always already in representation. and since there is no recourse to a semiotically innocent or unmediated body, we must be content to investigate the diverse ways in which women's bodies are represented and to promote new bodily images and identities'' (1992: 16). nead's insight implicitly draws the artist's agency into the picture of production, representation and accountability. the innovation of "new bodily images and identities" is thus left upon the artist to create in a manner that overturns old meanings, visual codes and conventions. however. woolnough attempted to promote a new image that would critique male-derived standards of female beauty and disrupt the male heterosexual voyeuristic gaze which traditionally objectifies and sexualises the female body for its own pleasure. but that the allegory is dark, masked and picasso-like puts the image into a category in which the racialised female body becomes engraved with 'primitivist' aesthetics. avis lang rosenberg found that the work had "echoes of picasso's demoiselles d'avignon" (1982: 1 1 ) and that it evoked the grotesque: 78 volume 18. 2002 chemins alternatifs the females in woolnouglr s drawings have long been anything but vapid: squat, black, bulging, threatening, crouching, seething, massive, hypnotic. for the present occasion she turned to paint, a more fitting medium in which to issue a rejoinder to the european past. unlovely faces grimacing with wisdom, huge bodies with jutting breasts, gigantic grasping hands, and ponderous feet crowd the shallow spaces in the manner of a bas-relief. . . a savage and stoical venus presides, more palaeolithic or pre-columbian than renaissance, her horny toenails and damp, smoky crotch her marks of pride and power, not shame. (1982: 11) figure 2: lives oflizzie. triptych c.1990. katrina thorsen. seemingly. woolnough's deity was to be desexualised in its visual register. but the contextual focus on the "damp, smoky crotch" resexualises the image. the pudenda is what validates the goddess's "power and pride." not only are the theme and aesthetics at odds with each other: this contextualisation is an old colonial formula used today to reduce black women to stereotypes of the bestially hypersexed. maria tippett volume 18, 2001 79 alternate routes noted this discrepancy and wrote in by a lady: celebrating three centuries of art by ( anadian women that: countering the ways in which male artists depict women for the pleasure of the male viewer, woolnough presented what she described as 'a squatting, smelly-toed, and masked venus.' the chunky, grotesque figure of the central panel of her triptych arouses no sexual desire but mocks the smallbreasted sylph-like figures that dance across botticelli's famous work. . . woolnough has exchanged one stereotype for another. venus' ripe breasts, her exposed genitalia, her fetish-like stance indicate her connection to the earth, fertility and regeneration, the very stereotype of culuiral oppression that feminists were determined to change. (1993: 165) through woolnough's rendering, the goddess becomes hypercoporealised. her large body seeming cramped in the small quarters of the panel. she sits facing front, boldly spreading apart her legs to the spectator to reveal her loins. the gesture appears obscene, but the allegory's solemn expression recodes the pose as matter-of-fact. the signs constructing body produce an aesthetic ambiguity through which venus is visually articulated as a naked nude. also, that the allegory's genitalia is covered with pubic hairs signifies a truer-to-life representation of a vagina, one that is naked; for a nude would display—if not hidden as in birth of venus—a stylised genitalia, depilated and labially abstracted to signify an abstinent spiritualised body. the massive torso and the face assimilating the african mask script the "primitive" allegory as a nude from a morbid dream. thus, the explication and the corporeal aesthetics work together to produce contexmal ambiguity. primitivism and dark-skinned archetypes: from colonialism to modernity primitivism came into prominence during the enlightenment, with the onslaught of european expansion (jahoda 1999: xv-xvi). colonial dominance facilitated the western appropriation of other cultures europe considered less developed than itself, and provided europeans with ample subjects to illustrate, study and later with the invention of the camera. 80 volume 18, 2002 c 'hemins alternatifs photograph pornographically under the guise of anthropology (rhodes 1994: 7; said 1994; ewing 1994: 12-14). pnmitivist ideologies defined blacks and numerous indigenous peoples as noble savages, which signified animal, instinctual, salacious heathens, racially and morally inferior to white europeans (jahoda 1999: 20-21). . . . the enlightenment's declaration of itself as "the age of reason" was predicated upon precisely the assumption that reason could historically only come to maturity in modern europe, while the inhabitants of areas outside of europe, who were considered to be of non-european racial and cultural origins, were consistently described and theorized as rationally inferior and savage. (eze 1997: 4) figure 3: birth of venus c. 1484-86. alessandro botticelli. skin colour thus became a highly condensed signifier in the transatlantic context, determining beauty, morality, sociopolitical privilege, and religious identity. one christian justification for black slavery was that black skin was a "mark of misfortune, and physical labour the penalty for rebellion against god. . . the black was a noble savage fallen from grace" (russell 1983: 55). the turn of the nineteenth century saw the abolitionist movement gaining international momentum; but stronger still was the backlash of slavocrats protecting their "property" interests. enlightenment ideologies of the noble savage begun to surface in propavolume 18, 2001 81 alternate routes ganda images that used the black female body as a corporeal site of ambiguity to quell the conflict between slaveowners and abolitionists. the voyage ofthe sable venus (fig.4) was such an image. fashioned after botticelli's birth of venus. w. grainger's engraving figure 4: voyage of the sable venus c.1801, w.grainger. the voyage ofthe sable venus was published alongside "sable venus. an ode" in bryan edwards' the history. civil and commercial, ofthe british colonies in the west indies of 1793. though a replica of botticelli's renaissance image, the blackness of the female allegory changes the visual and political delivery of the theme. in the trans-atlantic period, it created an archetypal image of alterity with polysemous meanings. compared to botticelli's nymph, the excessive muscularity of the near-naked black goddess is reminiscent of a well-trained athlete or of a servant whose body has grown accustomed to hard labour. this allegory also stands afloat on a shell, her shoulders framed by white putti who accentuate her sable skin. the blackness of epiderma emphasises her muscularity: it dominates the image, becoming the platform on which christianity and vulgar eroticism fuse (provost 2000: 86). the allegory's body simultaneously represents purchasable sexuality and female 82 volume 18. 2002 chemins alternatifs enslavement to slavocrats. christian salvation and physical freedom to slaves and abolitionists alike. numerous contemporary scholars have examined this image and the societal climate from which it emerged. most agree the ode and the engraving only romanticise the brutal context of black female enslavement (honour 1989: 33; dyer 1997: 153; russell 1983: 55). one scholar stated that, with slavery so popular an international practice in the 1 700s. in reality. sable venus would not "have been holding the reins to her own destiny" as she does in grainger's image (schiebinger 1993: 129). further reinforcing the derogatory stereotyping of black women were the transactions around the black female body in slavery which bestialised and demeaned individuals: the exchange of money for person as chattel: bodily exposure on auction blocks in america and at vaudevilles or balls in europe (hooks 1992: 62: gilman 1985: 88: white 1985: 29-30); and the forced sexual exploitation which caused black females whether prepubescent. teenaged or adult—to be perceived as immoral disease-ridden commodities of prostitution (gilman 1985: 85; nederveen pieterse 1992: 183; rodes 1994: 90-91 ).the franco-british colonies, with their discriminatory institutions, had a part in forcing black females to play out the negative stereotypes as normative realities. before the abolitionist law of 1833 (prevost 1991: 231-232), upper and lower canada were also implicated, thriving as slave societies. white women slavocrats of montreal's bourgeoisie did as they wished with their pawnee and black female slaves, putting them up for sale and advertising them as chattel in various newspapers (provost 2000/2001: 88; trudel 1960). other white women slavocrats in west indian colonies were pimps to their black female slaves: "indeed, white women deemed 'respectable' owned and mongered coloured and black prostitutes in port towns" (green 1976: 21 ). it is in this international context of bodies being traded and supra-exploited that ideologies of the black female disposition as prurient were diffused cross-culturally (edmondson 1976:6). the stereotype of the black venus especially oppressed one young khoisan woman named saartjie baartman (1790-1815). through coerced performance and display, she became a live stereotype known as the hottentot venus. from the dutch-colonised south-african cape. baartman was brought to europe in 1810 to be lewdly exhibited at circuses and in museums (gould 1985: 293). initially in the charge of volume 18, 2001 83 alternate routes henry caezar. in europe she was later given to an animal keeper called reaux and displayed publicly, sometimes at entry prices competitive to those of exhibited animals (sharpley-whiting 1999). at these events, she was indignantly offered candy to sing and to jump, like an animal rewarded to do tricks (racinet 1888). from the court transcripts of an inquiry launched in november 1810 and instigated by outraged spectators, it is suspected that the animal keeper brutalised baartman into giving a testimony that masked the abuses she suffered (maseko life and times 1998: chamley 2000: 41). she testified to being happy in europe and well-treated (edwards and walvin 1983: 171-182). but she was apparently forced into prostitution. when she died in december 1815. georges cuvier immediately dissected her, focusing on the structure of her sex and reproductive organs in his monograph. her genitalia were cut out by cuvier. jarred, shelved and re-exhibited at musee de thornine for almost two centuries. the cause of baartman's death was an inflammatory disease which some relate to syphilis, a disease she most likely contracted as a slave/servant prostitute (gould 1985: 294). baartman was alienated and debased in a predominantly white colonial europe that, in spite of promoting christian morality, nonetheless condoned slavery and the sexually mortifying exploitation of black people. contemporary journalists across the globe have been closely tracking baartman's repatriation to south africa in the millennium. their reports confirm that she was indeed implicated in prostitution ("bring back"). one account from 2000 stated that, historically, "anthropologists argued. . . she had been a prostitute specializing in sodomy." and that she was nicknamed "fat bum" (webster 26). a 2002 news clip revealed that she died "in paris as an impoverished prostitute" (butcher 2002: a-15). finally, an update in essence. june 2002. stated that: "she died poor and diseased in 1815" (saunders 30). baartman's coercion into prostitution demonstrates how this particular kind of violence was made to appear as a normative choice of lifestyle for black women. from the anglophone literary camp, novels and autobiographies likewise mention stereotypes of black females as bestially oversexed and diseased, though from different perspectives. african-american ex-slave harriet jacobs (1813-1897) wrote in her autobiography of 1861 that: "women are considered of no value, unless they continually increase their owner's stock. they are put on a par with animals" <4 c )). jacob 84 volume is. 2002 chemins alternatifs refers here to the forced reproduction black female slaves were subjected to as "breeders," a violence against person sanctioned in the colonial context. sixteen years earlier, in his life narrative, former slave, abolitionist, and civil rights activist frederick douglass (1 81 8-1 895 ) 9 wrote about a woman named caroline purchased by mr. covery, a white slavemaster, for the specific role of breeder: mr. covey bought her from mr. thomas lowe, about six miles from st. michael's. she was a large able-bodied woman about twenty years old. . . . after buying her. he hired a married man of mr. samuel harrison, to live with him one year; and him he used to fasten up with her every night! the result was, that, at the end of the year, the miserable woman gave birth to twins. at this result, mr. covey seemed to be highly pleased. . . . the children were regarded as being quite an addition to his wealth. (1845: 37) decades later, in the renowned lady chatterley's lover published 1928. english writer d.h. lawrence had one of his main characters say: "i thought there was no real sex left: never a woman who'd really 'come' naturally with a man: except black women, and somehow, well, we're white men: and they're a bit like mud" (212). the speaking protagonist is mellors, a game keeper of the lower classes who has a liaison with lady chatterley. the dialogue portrays black women as salacious and ugly, their complexion resembling "mud" in the eyes of "white men" who will all the same have sex with them. black women are worded as carnal bodies, their promiscuity, ability to "really 'come' naturally." and unsightliness presented as attributes inherent to black womanhood. published around the same period as lawrence's novel was frank harris's autobiography. it logs his expeditions in europe and north america and his sexual escapades from boyto manhood. a literary critic who was part of oscar wilde's circle, harris described the individuals he met on his journeys. one was of a seventeen year old english mariner: "william ponsonby was not a bad sort, but he talked of nothing but girls from morning till night and insisted that negresses were better volume 18, 2001 85 alternate routes than white girls: they were far more passionate, he said" (61). in another passage. harris stated that ponosby . . . went on to tell me about one of his colleagues. john lawrence, who got black pox, as he called syphilis, caught from a negress. "he didn't notice it for three months," ponsonby went on, "and it got into his system; his nose got bad and he was invalided home, poor devil. those black girls are foul," he continued; they're dirty devils." his mttish sorrows didn't interest me much, for i had made up my mind never at any time to go with any prostitute. (1922-1927: 62) the main aspects conflated here are that black pox or syphilis is a negress' disease and that black women "are foul." as harris mused to himself, prostitutes to be avoided. such discourses of the black female body were prevalent in different western cultures throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century, helping to anchor the negative stereotypes of black women as pathological and genital-centric in the western imaginary. picasso's les demoiselles d 'avignon of 1907 (fig.5) carried these paradigms into modernity, preserving them by a cubist style. some of the literature treating this artwork when it begun to be exhibited publicly in the early 1900s called it "le bordel d'avignon" or "les filles d'avignon" (rubin 1994: 18). le bordel means "the whorehouse:" and jiiles alludes to prostitutes, as does avignon. william ruben asserts that: "brothels were apparently not uncommon on streets named after avignon in . . . large european towns. other examples include rome . . . when andare agli avignonesi' seems to have been a slang locution for "going to the brothel'. . ." (1994: 19). the image displays five female nudes crammed into a space with no clear horizon line. the cubist technique violently renders the allegories' bodies into thick chunky limbs with sharp unflattering angles that articulate pnmitivism (foster 1993: 74-76). three of the five faces are disfigured by dark colours or by african masks which represent syphilis (rubin 1994:116). the painting is 86 volume 18, 2002 chemins alternates said to have been motivated by picasso's exposure to african masks, but also by his visits to prison hospitals and his observations of syphilitic inmates; some had noses eaten away by the illness (rubin 1994: 130131). rubin underlines that syphilis was the scare in the early 1900s. until treatment was discovered: "lest we forget, syphilis was still very much a fatal disease at the time picasso painted demoiselles" (1994: 57). les demoiselles d'avignon is therefore loaded with gendered and racial connotations about the black female body as primitive, prostitutional and diseased. figure 5: les demoiselles d 'avignon, c. 1907. pablo picasso. by producing a counter-representation of botticelli's image in a primitivist style. woolnough created a grotesque deity whose contextualisation and rendering resemble the problematic paradigms of black women naturalised in the racially discriminatory colonial context. other canadian female artists have created similar images of dark goddesses which have sparked controversy. volume is, 2001 *~ alternate routes another canadian-made triptych: mother africa katarina thorsen's triptych lives oflizzie c.1990 was displayed during january and february of 1991, and once again in an april 1991 vancouver exhibition at fifty-six gallery. thorsen's section, entitled "] love titty." venerated, as she explained. black women as mothers (rosenberg 1991: d-7: wilson 1991: b-10). although meant as an homage to black maternity, the images flanking the centre panel eroticises the black female body. the middle image magnifies the head of a black woman framed by curvilinear graphics. but the one to the left shows a model only wearing a turban, her torso and full breasts bare, dominating the main perspective. the other to the right reveals a naked black woman giving birth, her face stretched into an expression of ecstasy, her legs parted in labour. this last panel is the one most reprinted in art texts (fig. 2). similar to woolnough's venus, thorsen's model is grotesquely magnified: her legs and genitalia frontally open to the spectator. this turns the witnessing of birth into a semi-voyeursitic activity. the corpulent body becomes, in a way. desecrated by the scopophilia that promptly directs the gaze to the female sex. as a consequence, the labouring mother turns into an object of visceral genitalic curiosity. in the 1990 publication artropolis 90: lineages and linkages, thorsen said: "lives of lizzie is my personal celebration of the goddess-mother africa" (qtd. in rosenberg and varney 106). she went on to explain that: my paintings are not an apology from a white person. why do i. a middle-class white mother of two, always paint pregnant black women with large breasts? my initial response is that i like to promote my daughter's african heritage so that she may grow up self-confident and complete. but it has become much more than that. it's become a personal focus—a ritual celebration of goddess, the creator, and a deliberate spiritual, mental and physical act to keep in touch with the truth, the beauty, and the genetics of all species, (qtd. in rosenberg and varney 1990: 106) 88 volume 18, 2002 chemins a iternatifs though the parent of a child of "african heritage," as she claims, thorsen's statement is problematic for what it implies—that seeing images of "black women with large breasts'" will help girls of "african heritage" to "grow up self-confident and complete. " her identity as "a middle-class white mother" whose "personal focus" is celebrating birth and spirituality, but through the medium of black women's bodies, further complicates matters. in her exhibition review, ann rosenberg referred to thorsen's goddesses as "jive-talking mamas" (1991: d-7), asserting that, for spectators, thorsen's identity was crucial to unravelling the context of the images: "the opening was attended by many women who were already irritated by the invitation image. some became more annoyed when they saw the interpretations of black women's sexuality and motherliness for the first time and discovered they were created by a white woman" (1991: d-7). rosenberg recognised the complexity and magnitude the triptych represented. yet her approach in the review was to favour the artist's right to free expression rather than to tackle the more perplexing issues of race-gender representation: ". . . thorsen is being roasted for expression her joy in her own biology and that, it seems to me, is highly unfair" (1991 : d-7). another review indicated that thorsen was not deterred from making art. given that "the harsh criticism comes from a 'minority'" (saenger 1991 : 50). but some of the "harsh criticism" also came from non-minorities who thought her focus on birth processes essentialist: "i reject completely the idea that women's experience and reality can be depicted at all by reducing it to body parts, and reproductive and sexual functions, with no political context whatsoever. . ." (comment book 1991). and having seen another of thorsen's exhibitions which carried the same pieces, one gallery visitor wrote in the guest book: "i am a white male, and i don't go around painting black males' penises. if i did, i sure as hek wouldn't put it on display" (guest book 1991). what exactly was the clash in perspectives that created the polemic? still too fresh in the black imaginary are the historical conditions of black women's bodies during the trans-atlantic slave trade—a history volume 18, 2001 89 alternate routes of utter trauma and mortification to the body that inescapably dialogues with contemporary depictions of black female corporeality. one gallery visitor wrote to thorsen in the 1991 comment book: "paint your own tits." and after attending the exhibition. janisse browning wrote: the artist. . . exoticises black women in paintings with erect, larger-than-life breasts, sometimes with splayed open vaginas that invite the gaze of onlookers. her representations. . . magnify the sexual prowess of black women. such images construct and reinforce dangerous stereotypes that already exist in many white people's imaginations. after expressing my disdain to the artist and her supporters at an opening last april. i realised how concretely power relations are reproduced in image-making. (1992: 33) browning's perspective reverts to the psychovisual i/eye of certain spectators whose gaze accesses the historical knowledge of the colonial ideologies and stereotypes that tyrannised black women's realities. this psychovisual i/eye permits spectators to read aesthetics in multiple and critically conflicting ways. for instance, a viewer may be seduced by the veneer of a representation, but concurrently revolted by the messages symbolically articulated in the content. browning further admitted that her reading of thorsen's goddesses occurred through the historical knowledge of black women as fetishised bodies since slavery (1991: 15). making parallels between the practices of representation in the colonial past and the neocolonial present, she claimed that: "people of european descent in north america have continually interpreted, reinterpreted, represented and mis-represented people of african descent—in their education systems, in media and advertising, and. yes, in their art" (1991: 15). thus the historical memory of black women's corporeal mortification was one significant factor thorsen's works appear to have reinscribed through ignorance. also, for many. black slavery seems not a thing of the past, but a horrific practice just abolished yesterday. another factor overlooked was the history of white projections onto black persons and their experiences, and the sociopolitical repercussions of these 90 volume 18, 2002 ( 'hem ins alternatifs projections over time. such a dynamic reverts, once more, to using stereotypes—and not actual people—as the models for social interaction. this was clearly underscored in a viewer's response to thorsen: i think the paintings are beautiful—but it's this seductive quality that i find disturbing. people see the beauty, but also forget about the stereotypes they can reinforce in some people's minds. if i saw these paintings in the black museum my grandfather and mother founded, perhaps my reaction would be different. but—of course—we're in vancouver, where people like myself are a minority. and when "others" see people like me, they unfortunately tend to associate us with the representation they've been exposed to. (guest book 1991) surfacing, therefore, from the exhibition was the mix-up between thorsen's hypercorporealised manner of revering mother africa, certain viewers' knowledge of the historical realities of the bodily abuse and exploitation of black women in cultures ruled by white slavocracies, but more crucially the continuance of white projections of stereotypical representations onto black realities. blackness and nakedness, as they entered the west and gained new definitions that justified colonisation and slavery compete with the context thorsen strives to establish. the reductive corporeal stereotypes of blacks diffused in the aftermath of slavery and in current times, also disrupt the forum of thorsen's exhibiton. some thought the goddess triptych positive and "spunky" (rosenberg 1991: d-10); but to others. lives of lizzie conjured colonial aesthetics that glorified in its evocation the real-life sexual denigration of black women during the trans-atlantic period. moreover, as apolitical feminine art, the triptych was considered by numerous viewers as a lauding of this problematic history in the contemporary, divorced from historical memory, from the critical remembering of the slavocratic rituals that consistently presented black persons as animalised bodies, and from political conscience. volume is, 2001 91 alternate routes the duty of representation: last remarks although innocently conceived, within a larger sociohistorical framework, the triptychs continue the legacy of white reinscriptions and psychically onanistic perceptions of black female alterity as essentially dark, carnal, sexual bodies. furthermore, the making of such works denotes ownership (another controversial issue manifesting as cultural appropriation): for the artist comes to own the alterity of phantasy or phobia by shaping it. defining it. and bringing it to life in material mediums. this aspect is raised by peter wilson whose review stated that: thorsen had painted the images. they were hers. and while it was true she had to accept the fact that they hurt, upset and angered some people—there was no requirement for her to justify or to recant or to go back to the studio and start creating approved, politically-correct images. in a free society that's all you get when it comes to art—the right to protest and the hope that someone will listen to that protest. (1991: b-10) this privileged space of making, defining, and naming relates to hegemonic systems of power (foucault 1966). which certain artists choose to be unconcerned about. to trouble with how these structures locate them, and facilitate their power to fashion and concoct, is seen as political selfwork too crippling to the creative process. 1 ' says carrie jane singleton: the social and political advantages of being "white" are clear. race privilege allows whites to choose to hear or not to hear what others say. and further, whites choose to respond or not to respond. the power of being white is the power to decide, to be self-defining and therefore, to define others. (1989: 14). 92 volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifs ignoring the channels of privilege, particularly as they interweave with individual agency, is to volitively turn a blind eye on one's duty and on the asymmetries in western culture that permit problematic images of black females to be re-disseminated and projected onto black experiences in reality through small singular acts. the examples presented here have shown that the problem of white ideologies of blackness cut across time and geography, being both a national and international conundrum, affecting both history and the contemporary, collective racial perceptions and racialised realities. white definitions of black bodies and of black ways of being—i.e., oversexed, diseased, subhuman, inferior— continue to be mass-produced in images and re-internalised in popular culture. these reductive colonial stereotypes have become the ones most familiar to the neocolonial mainstream. and it is through these stereotypes that white hegemony claims to be negrophilic, embracing blackness, yet in a superficial manner that allows black subjects to be re-othered and exoticised. the recurrence of these hypercorporealised images of the black female body in western media indicates how seriously the artist takes the duty of representing alterity. even more, in a western democracy where one can choose to ignore criticism, change comes slowly. for centuries, the west has inscribed and devoured sexualised images of black female corporeality. it is in this cycle of occidental time and space that stereotypes of female blackness are epochally turned over, remade from good to bad by white hegemony, redefined from positive to negative to positive again and so forth, a cycle which reveals that the problem of how black females are bodily represented, especially under the guise of "goddess," is far from being resolved. notes 1. acknowledgements. i wish to thank jennifer besse for references, as well as katie and dave p. for bits of information that have enriched my analysis. a special thanks to sarah greig for her time and feedback on the sections regarding artists and duty. also a thanks to tony bardach who generously shared his archives with me. 2. english translation: "... the other, the white man who had woven me out of a thousand details, anecdotes, stories" (markmann 1967: 111). 3. english translation: "the evidence was there, unalterable. my blackness was there, dark and unarguable. and it tormented me, pursued me. disturbed me. volume is, 2001 93 alternate routes angered me. negroes arc savages, brutes, illiterates. but in my own case, i knew that these statements were false. there was a myth of the negro that had to be destroyed at all costs" (markmann 1967: 1 17). 4. english translation: "i want you to understand, sir, i am one of the best friends the negro has in lyon" (markmann 1967: 117). 5. for a discussion on the commodification of the black body in contemporary ads. sec anoop nayak, '"frozen bodies: disclosing whiteness in haagen-dazs advertising." body & society 3.3 (sept. 1997): 51-71. 6. see bartolome de las casas, the devastation of the indies: a brief account, trans. herma briffault. 1552. rpt. (baltimore: johns hopkins up, 1992) 7. see also whitney chadwick, "fetishizing fashion/fetishizing culture: man ray's noire et blanche" regarding the white model kiki in paris during the 1920s. oxford art journal 18.2 (1995): 9-10. 8. the aesthetics of woolnough's goddess resembles that of francis picabia's in fenune a vidole c. 1940-43. see the painting in sara cochran's groundbreaking essay "la peinture de francis picabia pendant la seconde guerre mondiale/francis picabia's wartime paintings" art press 222(mars 1997):49. 9. see "the abolitionist," imp:-' algcn.convslavc 1 .html and "biographical sketches." http://womhist.binghamton.edu/malesupp/bio.htm. on the invitation was a pair of breasts, vivisected and printed beside the title "i love titty": a celebration of the female breasts as lifeforce and sexual focus. tony bardarch's archives. 10. on his website, "on cultural appropriation," ron stacey claimed that: '"artists in their works mustn't concern themselves with boundaries of convention, racism, sexism, religion, chauvinism etc., except perhaps to expose the human vagaries involved therein. to do so is to he not an artist, but a propagandist." this passage reads as the depoliticisation of an artist's responsibility to work through complex issues. sec his full essay at http: w \\ \\ aahc.com/lotos/forum/approp.htm. refrences althusscr. i ouis. "ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes toward an investigation)." mapping ideology. ed. slavoj zizek. london: verso, 1994: 100-140 archer-straw. petrine. negrophilia: avant-garde paris and black culture in the 1920s. new york: 1 fames & hudson. 2000. 94 volume is. 2002 chemins alternates ashcroft, bill, gareth griffiths and helen tiffin. post-colonial studies: the key concepts. london: routledge. 2000. berger, john. ways ofseeing. [london]: british broadcasting corporation and penguin books, 1972. bhabha, homi k. location ofculture. new york: routledge. 1994. boime, albert. art ofexclusion: representing blacks in the nineteenth century. washington: smithsonian institution p, 1990. browning. janisse. "self-determination and cultural appropriation." fuse (spring 1992): 31-35. . "toying with black women's bodies." kinesis. may 1991. 15. butcher, tim. "hottentot venus is heading home." the gazette, montreal. 25 april 2002: a15. casas, bartolome de las. devastation of the indies: a brie/account. trans. hermabriffault. 1552. baltimore: johns hopkins up, 1992. chadwick, whitney. "fetishizing fashion/fetishizing culture: man ray's noire et blanche."' oxford art journal 18.2 (1995): 3-17. chamley, santorri. "all because of a pair of african buttocks." new african (september 2000): 41-42. collins, patricia hill. black feminist thought: knowledge. consciousness, the politics ofempowerment. new york: routledge, 1991. cochran, sara. "la peinture de francis picabia pendant la seconde guerre mondiale/francis picabia's wartime paintings." art press 222 (mars 1997): 47-52. douglass, frederick. narrative ofthe life of frederick douglass. 1845. mineola, ny: dover publications inc., 1995. dyer, richard. wlute. new york: routledge. 1997. edmondson, locksley. "trans-atlantic slavery and the internationalization of race." cq/caribbean quarterly 22.1 (march 1976): 5-25. edwards, bryan. the histoiy, civil and commercial, ofthe british colonies in the west indies. dublin: luke white, 1793. edwards paul and james walvin. black personalities in the era of the slave trade. baton rouge: louisiana state up, 1983. ewing, william a. the body: photographs of the human form. london: thames and hudson, 1994. eze, emmanuel chukwudi, ed. race and the enlightenment: a reader. oxford: blackwell, 1997. fanon, frantz. black skin, white masks. trans. by charles lam markmann. new york: grove p. 1967. peau noire, masques blancs. paris: editions du seuil. 1952. foster, hal. "'primitive' scenes." critical inquiry 20 (autumn 1993 ): 69-102. foucault. michel. les mots et les choses. [paris]: editions gallimard. 1966. volume 18, 2001 95 alternate routes oilman, sander i.. difference and pathology: stereotypes of sexuality, race, andmadness. ithaca: cornell up, 1985. gould. stephen jay. the flamingo 's smile: reflections in natural history. new york: w.w. norton and company. 1985. green, william a. british slave emancipation: hie sugar colonies and the great experiment 1 8301*65. oxford: oxford up, 1985. hagen. rose-marie and rainer. 15 century paintings. [icons] koln: taschen, 2001. harris, frank. my life and loves. 1922-1927. new york: grove p, 1991. henderson. robbin legere. "prisons of image." prisoners ofimage: ethnic and gender stereotypes. new york: alternative museum, 19n9. 6-10. honour, hugh. the image of the black in western art. iv. 1 cambridge, ma: harvard up. 1989. hooks, bell. black looks: race and representation. boston: south end p, 1992. hooks, bell. yearning: race. gender and cultural politics. toronto: between the lines. 1990. jacobs, harriet a. incidents in the life of a slave girl. 1861. ed. jean fagan yellin.cambridge, ma: harvard up, 1987. jahoda, gustav. images of savages: ancient roots of modern prejudice in western culture. london: routledge. 1999. lawrence, d.h. lady chatterley's lover. 1925. london: penguin books, 1961. lucie-smith. edward. sexuality in western an. new york: thames & hudson, 1995. maseko, zola, dir. life and times ofsara baartman: tjte hottentot venus. new york: first run/icarus films. 1998. murray, joan. hilda woolnough: eishtales [exhibition pamphlet]: 1989/1990. nayak, anoop. "frozen bodies: disclosing whiteness in hiiagen-dazs advertising." body & society 3.3 (september 1997): 51-71. nead. lynda. the female nude: art. obscenity and sexuality. london: routledge. 1992. nederveen pieterse, jan. white on black: images of africa and blacks in western popular culture. new haven: yale up, 1992. prevost, robert montreal . . . la folle emreprise. [montreal]: i es editions internationales alain stanke. 1991. provost. ierry. "the politics o\~ i equalising recall: women in canadian feminist historiograph )y." tessera 29 (winter 2000 2001 1: 82-89. "profiles of the black venus: tracing the black female body in western art and culture from baartman to campbell." diss. concordia u, 2001. racinet, auguste. le costume historique. paris: firmin-didot, 1888. rhodes, colin primitivism and modern art. 1 ondon: i hames and hudson. 1994 96 volume 18, 2002 chen i ins alternates roberts, diane. the myth oj aunt jemima: representations of race and region. new york: routledge. 1994. rosenberg. ann. "images of changing speeds and bare essentials." vancouver sun (13 april 1991): d-7. . "reealling indignities with humour, not rage." vancouver sun (27 october 1990): d10. rosenberg, ann and ed yerney, eds. artropolis 90: lineages and linkages. vancouver: a.t. eight artropolis society. 1990. rosenberg, avis lang. mirrorings: women artists of the atlantic provinces. halifax: art gallery, mount saint vincent u. 1982. rubin. william stanley. "the genesis of les demoiselles d'avignon." studies in modern art 3: les demoiselles d'avignon. new york: museum of modern art, 1994. 13-144. russell, horace. "the emergence of the christian black: the making of a stereotype." jamaicza journal 16.1 (february 1983): 51-58. said. edward w. orientalism. 1978. new york: yintage, 1994. saunders. nicole. "it's about time: black yenus goes home." essence 33.2 (june 2002): 30. schiebinger, londa. nature's body: gender in the making o) modern science. boston: beacon p, 1993. sharpley-whiting, t. denean. black venus: sexualized savages, primal fears. and primitive narratives in french. durham: duke up, 1999. shohat, ella and robert stam. unthinking eurocentrism: multiculturalism and the media. new york: routledge, 1994. singleton, carrie jane. "race and gender in feminist theory." sage vi. 1 (summer 1989): 12-17. tippett. maria. by a lady: celebrating three centuries ofart by canadian women. middlesex: penguin books, 1993. trudel, marcel. l 'esclavage an canada francais: histoire et conditions de fesclavage. laval: les presses universitaires laval, 1960. turetzky, philip. time. london: routledge, 1998. webster, paul. "france keeps a hold on black venus." the observer [london] (2 april 2000): 26. white, deborah gray. ar'n't i a woman* female slaves in the plantation south. new york: w.w. norton & company. 1985. white, john. "the early renaissance in italy." history ofwestern art. ed. denise hooker. [toronto]: boxtree limited. 1989. 118-145. wilkins. david g. and bernard schultz. art past, art present. new york: harry n. abrams, 1990. wilson. peter. "debate rages over politically correct [mages versus artist's rights." vancouver sun (30 april 1991): b-10. volume is. 2t)()l 97 alternate routes zolberg, aristide r. "frantz fanon." the new left: six critical essays. ed. maurice cranston. toronto: bodley head, 1970. 1 19-136. if ebsites " abolitionist." hup: aiucn.com slave i .html . "biographical sketches." hup: •womhist.binuhamton.edu maiesupp bio,him . "bring back the hottentot venus." rpt. the weekly mail and guardian. 15 june 1995. http://web.sii.apc.org/wmail/issues/950615/wm95061s-12.html. stacey, ron."on cultural appropriation." lit tp : ' -avw \v . aabc .c i>m lot os t'orum ' approp.htm . figures fig.l. venus c. 1 982. centre panel of triptych another spring (after botticelli s primavera) c. 1982. hilda woolnough. acrylic on masonite. 121.9 x 61 cm. private collection. rpt. from maria tippett. by a lady: celebrating tliree centuries of art by canadian women middlesex: penguin books, 1993. 165. fig. 2. end panel of triptych lives oflizzie c.1990. katarina thorsen. mixedmedia on canvas. 48 x 108 in. private collection. rpt. from archie graham. "busting at the seams in passionate protest." vancouver sun (20 october 1990): d-10. fig. 3. birth of venus c. 1484-86. painting by alessandro botticelli. tempera on canvas. 5'9" x 9'2". uffizi gallery, florence. rpt. from denise hooker, ed. history of western art. toronto: boxtree ltd., 1989. 140. fig 4. vovage of the sable venus c.1801. engraving by w. grainger. [replicated after a painting made 1763]. rpt. from hugh honour. the image of the black in westernart. iv. 1 cambridge, ma: harvard up, 1989. 34. fig. 5. les demoiselles d 'avignon c. 1907. painting by pablo picasso. oil on canvas. 96 x 92 in. collection. museum of modern art, new york. rpt from william stanley rubin. "the genesis ofl.es demoiselles d'avignon." studies in modern art 3: les demoiselles d'avignon. new york: museum of modern art. 1994. 99. museological a rt hives/documentation centres artexte. montreal. quebec. i.e mediatheque. montreal, quebec. i ony bardach's archives guesl book. |no title given] 8 january 4 february 1991. fifty-six gallery. vancouver, bc. v,s volume 18. 2002 chemins alternatifs comment book. katarina thorsen "a celebration of the female breast as lifeforce and sexual focus." n-27 april 1991. fifty-six gallery, vancouver, bc. saenger, ellen. "keeping abreast of the times." columbia report. 13 may 1991.49-50. volume is. 2001 99 book reviews parker, r.g. bodies, pleasures and passions : sexual culture in contemporary brazil, boston: beacon press, 1991. richard parker's first book keeps the attention of readers interested in sexual culture and gender studies. the author, trained as an anthropologist, has published many articles about the social construction of gay identity in brazil, and recently evaluated the impact of aids policies on the sexual behaviour of brazilians. bodies, pleasures and passions originates from his doctoral dissertation. his main argument is that brazilian sexuality is a social construction influenced by a unique historical condition. he also emphasized that the experience of sexual life in different settings is shaped as much by the cultural context as by the physiology of the species. in the opening chapters, the author traces a portrait of the history of brazil and how slavery influenced relations between men and women. the author believes that the miscegenation that occurs between the colonizers, slaves and the indigenous population had an impact on the sexual culture of brazilians. his analysis relies mostly on the controversial works of gilberto freyre that depict a patriarchal social order in the 19 t " century. by analyzing sexual practices in contemporary brazil, parker, influenced by structuralism, explores the "ideology of the erotic" by scrutinizing the linguistic code that delimits the boundaries of sexual conduct. what can astonish readers is the extensive variations in the brazilian sexual code. for instance in north america one drop of homosexuality de-masculinizes a man, while in brazil the scenario appears to be different. same-sex activities are tolerated and even encouraged as far as the hierarchical social order remains. the author suggests that the "real" man is the active partner and consequently will not be condemned by society, while the passive one receives a derogatory label. nevertheless the scheme of a patriarchal and sexist society persists despite the resurgence of feminist movements; women endure oppression and discrimination both in rural and urban areas. the sexual roles are clearly defined as active/passive whether it is an heterosexual or homosexual encounter. also, according to parker's investigation bisexuality is widespread in brazil. this supports one aspect of the machismo ideology that implies that a man can have numerous encounters with both women and men. the presentation of the author is clear and he enhances his "propos" with extracts from thirty-one informants interviewed. my main criticism relies on two essential aspects that are underestimated in parker's study. firstly he does not make a clear differentiation on the sexual meanings between social class and "milieu". only in the conclusion parker specified that his study focuses on sexual culture in urban brazil and not all brazil. i 78 believe that a sharper analysis would enrich the debate. i also feel uncomfortable by the assumption of the author that the sexual linguistic code is singular to brazil. some of the vocables used in english and french have a similar connotation. in conclusion bodies, pleasures and passions is well documented with an extensive bibliography. for scholars pursuing fieldwork abroad, the appendix on his notes in the field are particularly useful. parker's book will delight people who believe that sexuality does rely solely on biology and physiological processes, but like many aspects of life is socially constructed and encompasses a political component. reviewed by: michael turcotte department of sociology and anthropology carleton university 79 alternate routes articles the hidden curriculum in schools: implications for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth 1 gerald walton since the inception of public schools, curriculum has been a source of ongoing debate and disagreement. educational bureaucrats, school board administrators, principals, vice principals, teachers, parents, community organizations, and even students weigh in on discussions about what students should learn in class, how learning is best facilitated, and how to measure and evaluate such learning. textbooks, teaching practice, projects, homework, examinations, report cards, and the like, are the purview of the formal curriculum. however, students learn in ways that lie beyond the boundaries of the formal curriculum through what is known as the hidden curriculum (jackson, 1968). the hidden curriculum as a theoretical construct is conceptually problematic. as does the "formal" curriculum, the hidden curriculum defies definitional consensus. nevertheless, the hidden curriculum will refer here to student learning that takes place within the perimeter of a school that is not recorded or reflected within the official curriculum. theorists are not unanimous about the effects of the hidden curriculum on students and on teaching practice. the phrase "the hidden curriculum" explicates its defining characteristic, namely, that it is hidden. unlike the official curriculum, the hidden curriculum does not make reference to tangible, constituent materials and outcomes measurable though standardized procedures or established protocols. by comparison, the hidden curriculum is a concept that seems ambiguous. some 1 .gerald walton is a phd candidate at queen's university and will defend his dissertation in 2006. 18 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs curricular theorists, such as lakomski (1988) even deny its existence as a definably empirical phenomenon. unlike lakomski, i argue that the hidden curriculum becomes evident when seen through a critical lens, specifically one that explores the nature of power and privilege in education and harmful implications for disadvantaged students. informally, students learn about values and norms of their particular school culture through peer socialization and interactions with school authorities. such learning is as important as the formal curriculum (macdonald, 1988). the socialization of students to gender roles, work ethics, and social attitudes towards others, for example, are facets of the hidden curriculum (henson, 1995). for educational theorist peter mclaren (2003), curriculum represents not only programs of study, but also "the introduction to a particular form of life; [which] serves in part to prepare students for dominant and subordinate positions in the existing capitalist society" (p. 211 12). curriculum as a cultural mechanism is thus hegemonic in how it serves dominant interests not through sheer repression of the underprivileged, but through social practices that are normalized over time and mask the ways in which the disadvantaged participate in their own oppression. the hidden curriculum is thus a mechanism by which social and cultural norms are replicated and regulated. for students who are marginalized through constructs of identity such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, class, physical and mental ability, and sexuality, the effects of the hidden curriculum can render their school lives particularly challenging to negotiate and even to survive. in this paper, i focus on the hidden curriculum as a regulator of gender and sexual orientation in schools. gender schemas and the concomitant assumption of heterosexuality, for instance, are enforced and reinforced, thus excluding and marginalizing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (lgbtq) students. gender and sexuality are thus constructs supported by hegemony and ideology. lgbtq students transgress dominant expectations of gender and sexuality that are especially salient in schools. my examination of the hidden curriculum as a concept explores implications for lgbtq students and their families and how exposure of the hidden curriculum can advance social justice in schools particularly in the areas of gender and sexuality diversity. volume 21, 2005 19 alternate routes identification and briefhistory ofthe hidden curriculum throughout the last several decades, theorists concerned with the hidden curriculum have contributed a diversity of perspectives on the notion of unofficial learning. one such theorist was philip jackson. when he coined the term in 1968 (p. 33), he argued that schools are responsible for two curricula, one "official" and the other "hidden." the official curriculum, according to jackson, places academic demands upon students while the hidden curriculum concerns the unwritten institutional demands for conformity. jackson was not the first to theorize about the ways in which educational experiences of students reflect learning that is not planned through the administration of formal curricula. in 1918, for instance, franklin bobbitt proposed that students should be groomed to assume the affairs of adulthood through their educational experiences (jackson, 1998). in bobbitt's view, such educational experiences include those that take place out-of-school and beyond classroom lessons. his conception of the hidden curriculum implies that assorted modes of learning take place within the sphere of curriculum, including as jackson ( 1 998) puts it "in school / out of school, [and] directed / undirected" experiences (p. 8). similarly, john dewey (1916) included learning experiences that are achieved in ways additional to standard school subjects. an exclusive focus on academic skills, he insisted, is narrow (p. 417). "the . . . danger," he argued, "[is] that the material of formal instruction will be merely the subject matter of the schools, isolated from the subject matter of life-experience" (p. 10). both bobbitt and dewey were educational reformists who proposed that previously-established educational emphasis on rote learning and object lessons did not reflect the complexities and needs of modern life (kliebard, 1975). even though early curricular theorists did not articulate out-of-school / undirected learning as "hidden," they share with jackson a concern for the need to expand the notion of student learning beyond formalized curricula. such a perspective, grounded in humanism, calls attention to in jackson's (1998) words a "curriculum of life" (p. 8). to include out-of-school experiences within the domain of education seems to place greater responsibility to instill good citizenship and moral character in students on school administration and teachers than on parents. bobbitt, dewey, and other curricular theorists of the early 1900s, 20 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs advocated educational reforms that addressed the needs of society at that time. outcomes of such broadly-defined notions of curriculum were intended to remedy the deficiencies of society, to which individual parents usually could not attend. hence, reformists such as bobbitt and dewey cast their focus upon positive outcomes of learning. in their view, the development of students into productive citizens of democratic societies is one such positive outcome. by investing in the educational needs and experiences of students, it was argued that society would ultimately benefit from molding students into capable citizens who would take up the democratically-responsible task of participating in all aspects of society. similar arguments are currently made in support of 'social responsibility', a widely used phrase among today's educators and administrators. an educational paradigm that emphasizes social, civil, and ethical concerns and attitudes as important contributions to society, in addition to academic knowledge and skills, has waxed and waned throughout the twentieth century (cuban, 1990; lewis, et al., 1995; battistich, et al., 1999). paradigmatic shifts aside, it was curriculum theorists of the 1960s who drew attention away from positive aspects of curriculum reform and educational experience and onto negative consequences of school attendance (jackson, 1968). evidently, educational institutions were not exempt from the criticism of political activists during a decade rife with civil revolt. for educational theorists such as michael apple (1975), schools reflect and perpetuate dominant societal ideologies "implicitly but effectively" (p. 96) through the hidden curriculum. one consequence is that students tend to become quiescent within school environments which exhibit macro-economic relations analogous to those between employers and workers (apple, 1996) and which reproduce and reinforce social stratification along lines of gender (best, 1983), class (freire, 1968), and racialized category (anyon, 1988). the implication of political theorists such as apple is that the hidden curriculum is comprised of unofficial expectations, unofficial learning outcomes, and / or implicit messages as products of school administrators and teachers. however, students themselves, as well as school officials, contribute to the hidden curriculum. quiescence to dominant interests is not merely submission, but a complex outcome of power relations that channel particular issues to be addressed and shape the volume 21, 2005 21 alternate routes needs of the relatively powerless (gaventa, 1980, lukes, 2005). "generalized discontent [may be] present," gaventa observes, "but lies hidden and contained" (p. 252). in the case of schools, the hidden curriculum on gender and sexuality thus has increasingly gained prominence in public discourse fueled by challenge from educational critics such as mclaren (2003), apple (1996), and pinar (1995), as well as from students who do not conform to normalized constructs of gender and sexuality. the notion that both students and educators "hide" an unofficial curriculum raises a flashpoint of debate, namely, whether the hidden curriculum is motivated by intent. in the next section, i explore this issue and then turn attention to research on sexuality in schools as a case in point. the issue ofintent portelli (1993) argues that, "something does not necessarily need to be hidden intentionally in order to be a hidden curriculum" (p. 349). conversely, webster's collegiate dictionary (1991) lists synonyms for the word, "hidden" such as "concealed," "unexplained," and "undisclosed." these are all action words. to conceal, to not explain, or to not disclose suggests that choices are made or not made. it is significant that these terms imply intent, unlike closely related words such as "unknown," "unspecified," and "unacknowledged." the negative effects of schooling discussed by apple (1975) and pinar (1995), among others, are not necessarily the result of unfortunate circumstances, accidents, unforeseen complications of learning environments, or lack of awareness among teachers and administrators. such factors can and do result in unpleasant outcomes for students. sometimes, teachers ignore their students and deny their requests; they may even scold a student, usually when she or he has violated the expectations of appropriate classroom behaviour rather than when she or he has failed to demonstrate certain academic skills (jackson, 1968). sometimes students may feel disappointed because of a failing grade or anxious or angry for having to patiently wait their turn. such everyday experiences in the lives of students might be painful, tedious, or difficult to tolerate but to describe them as harmful may be overstating the matter, at least in most situations. harm, as i mean it, refers to injury or damage to a student's self-concept, pride, or self-esteem, the effects of which can be substantial and long-term. the very qualifiers "substantial" and "long-term" are inter22 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs pretive and thus provide fodder for quibbles. rather than spark a semantic debate about those terms, i instead conceptualize the term "harm" in contrast to more common circumstances of "pain." whereas pain can result from particular incidents, harm suggests injury sustained by some students as an effect of social and political relations of a school culture and organization. the former suggests the idiosyncratic; the latter suggests the systemic. both are linked to relations of power. describing harm as i have done assists in differentiating systemic subjugation from everyday incidents that may inspire anger, frustration, sadness, or embarrassment for a student. however, such a description does not shed light on a more fundamental controversy about the hidden curriculum, namely, whether its effects both positive and negative are the outcome of intentional decisions of, and actions taken by, school administrators and teachers. a central problem with the question, "are the effects of the hidden curriculum intentional?" is the very asking of it. its mere articulation is potentially inflammatory to educators who love to teach and who strive to enable their young charges to think critically, communicate effectively, and adopt practices of good citizenship. 2 apart from potentially defensive reactions from some teachers and school administrators, harm, as i have described above, can and does result from school experiences. macdonald and colberg macdonald (1988) provide commentary on the hidden curriculum that hints at potential and intentional harm of students. in their view, the hidden curriculum reflects the dominant value orientation evident in the "rules and policies, the management techniques in classrooms, and the building of attitudes through the activities and relationships of the school" (p. 483). similarly, apple (1979) describes the hidden curriculum as, "the tacit teaching to students of norms, values, and dispositions that goes on simply by their living in and coping with the institutional expectations and routines of schools" (p. 14). the hidden curriculum is a venue through which relations of power are exercised. the phrase "tacit teaching" is stronger language than the comparatively benign "undirected" or "outof-school" experiences to which bobbitt and dewey focused their attention. if apple's description indicates a somewhat insidious or pernicious side of education, pinar (1995) explicates the point in his claim that, "the hidden curriculum is the ideological and subliminal message presented within the overt curriculum . . ." (p. 27). pinar does not mince words; his argument that ideology and subliminal messages are "presented" implies volume 21, 2005 23 alternate routes that particular sorts of messages are covertly but intentionally disseminated to students. to conceptualize power as one-directional, however, considers neither how discourse shapes the ways in which some issues and participants are brought into decision-making processes while others are not; nor how those outside of the decision-making process acquiesce to oppression (gaventa, 1980; lukes, 2005). power, thus, is multi-dimensional. in addition and specific to schools, positing the actions taken by school administrators and teachers through power as either intentional or unintentional sets up a false dichotomy. feasibly, the dissemination of certain messages may be intended but the consequences of those messages may be unintended. empirical verification of intentions is one of the thorny controversies of the hidden curriculum. lakomski (1988) argues that intentions cannot be reliably observed; they can only be attributed. the problem, as lakomski sees it, is that connecting intentions correctly with particular behaviours is inferential rather than observable. lakomski seems to address only methodological issues, in which case, she may be correct in her discussion about the problematic nature of intentions that she believes underlie the hidden curriculum. however, to focus on the hidden curriculum only as methodologically confused is to ignore the ways in which informal learning is also conceptual in addition to empirical. gordon (1988) provides a rebuttal to lakomski 's dismissal of the hidden curriculum by arguing that, "she fails to prove her case that intentions are problematic, but at best shows that identifying them is difficult" (p. 467). in spite of the contributions to the notion of the hidden curriculum provided by lakomski (1988) and gordon (1988), focus on the intended / unintended dichotomy may be a red herring. theoretical discussions and conceptual clarifications are academically interesting and may contribute to understandings of the development of school culture. however, as far as school practice is concerned, such discussions may be politically toothless if one's goal is to foster social justice in educational settings. focusing on the effects of the hidden curriculum and contextualizing them within a context of power relations, rather than on its conceptual distinctions, may illuminate preventions and remediations of the harm that some students, such as lgbtq ones, incur within school environments. 24 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs sexuality education in schools sex education reflects a history since the nineteenth century that is rife with controversy, rancor, and political extremes (rury, 1992). 3 in its formal curricular incarnation, sex education tends to focus on the mechanics of sex and related health issues (haffner, 1992; epstein and johnson, 1994). my specific interest is not on what is actually taught but rather on what is typically left out of sex education curricula. highlighting issues that are usually excluded from curriculum brings into focus the ways in which assumptions, stereotypes, and prejudices tend to be reflected covertly in formal sex education curricula (sapon-shevin and goodman, 1992). it is significant that such teaching is typically labeled as "sex education" rather than as "sexuality education." whereas the former evokes usual notions about heterosexual sexuality and invalidates homosexuality through silence or denigration, the latter implies acknowledgement of the plurality of human sexuality. sexuality is a way of being in the world, an identity and positionality rather than merely a series of socially acceptable versus unacceptable acts. whether or not such plurality is discussed openly in the context of 'sex education' classes is doubtful in most classes (shurberg klein, 1992). current discourse on 'diversity' thus is limited to that which is deemed the least politically volatile, thereby excluding gender and sexual orientation diversity. a focus on topics that are left out of sex education curricula result from the hidden curriculum, in which case the "intentions" debate (discussed earlier) would again come to the fore. the issue of teaching and learning about sexuality has recently inspired some rather contentious debates in educational practice. educational critics such as mckay (1998) and sears (1992) each advocate broadening classroom discussion to sexuality as diverse experiences that reflect complex social and health issues. mckay and sears also encourage sex educators to recognize their audience as heterogeneous regarding gender and sexuality. for several decades, feminist researchers have described the ways in which girls and boys tend to be socialized to heterosexuality through the promotion of usual gender scripts of femininity for girls and masculinity for boys (adams, 1997). socialization experiences in schools tend to perpetuate these gendered scripts (mckay, 1998; sapon-shevin and goodman, 1992). such scripts have strong influence upon one's gender identity and expression (devor, 1989), interpersonal relationships volume 21, 2005 25 alternate routes including spouse and family (vanevery, 1996), and choices concerning work and career (adams, 1997). similarly, the work of a minority of educators, including some feminists, highlights the ways in which heterosexuality is covertly (epstein and johnson, 1994; redman, 1994) and overtly (mckay, 1998) normalized and regulated in society, including schools. heterosexism refers to the presumption of heterosexuality that is encoded in language, in daily interactions among people, and in institutional policies and practices (epstein and johnson, 1994). in this sense, heterosexuality is unambiguous, ubiquitous, and appears as a "natural" and "normal" state. the very categories of "natural" and "normal" are constituted from political, social, and historical conditions and reinforced through social and institutional norms. whereas heterosexism tends to be silent, unmarked and presumed, homophobia, according to epstein and johnson, refers to, "active and explicit attacks on lesbians and gays, often fuelled by unacknowledged motives and / or panic" (p. 197). 4 pervasive attitudes that gays and lesbians should keep their sexuality and sexual orientation identity a private matter and away from public visibility arise from heterosexist assumptions and homophobic attitudes (adams, 1997; epstein and johnson, 1994). the legalization of same-sex marriage in canada in 2005 after many years of legislative struggle was a major step towards acquiring legal equality of lesbians and gays with the heterosexual majority. however, the degree to which such measures enhance social equality remains to be seen. legal measures that legitimize gay or lesbian relationships are recent and the ripples are yet to be felt in all realms of canadian society. meanwhile, schools remain sites of salient heteronormativity. it is within schools that heterosexual pairings are encouraged and validated, and where discussion about sexuality tends to be limited to a heterosexual context of sexual mechanics and sexuality transmitted diseases. schools are also venues where gay and lesbian couples are covertly excluded from school social functions such as dances and where curricular resources for lgbtq students, and those interested in lgbt-related issues, are usually nonexistent (epstein and johnson, 1994). the implicit "rule" that students should be heterosexual and are to conduct themselves as such in school environments becomes glaringly obvious when some students adopt expressions of gender non-conformity or "come out" as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. other students tend to harass such non26 volume 21. 2005 chemins alternatifs conforming students (o' conor, 1994; gibson, 1994) while teachers and administrators often marginalize and ignore them (massachusetts governor's commission on gay and lesbian youth, 1994). in any case, it is these students, rather than systemic exclusion, that are typically the focus of what is considered to be the problem and the source of amelioration. significantly, it is the very negative reactions to students who do not conform to dominant schemas of gender and sexuality that undermine the pervasive assumption of heterosexuality as "natural" and "normal." the continual bolstering of heterosexuality through a variety of regulatory mechanisms belies its status as natural and normal. notwithstanding canada's recent revision of the marriage act that specifies "two persons" rather than "one man and one woman," most legal systems of the world reward heterosexual marriage, deny equal rights to gay and lesbians, and even criminalize homosexuality. powerful also are religious doctrines that condemn and demonize homosexuality, and social conventions that impair the social visibility of gays and lesbians. in short, heterosexuality is an institution (rich, 1993), though rarely acknowledged as such, which is strengthened by legal, religious, and social privilege. the educational realm is not exempt from such explicit and implicit social dynamics. it is precisely the hegemony of heterosexuality, rather than heterosexuality itself, that is the concern of many social activists including those in education. organizing human relations along lines of (hetero)sexuality is a significant, though not impervious, force. such relations are fostered in ways that are often unintended, which clearly indicates the degree to which heteronormativity is enacted in society and in schools. lack of intent, however, does not curb the consequent harm that some students sustain. consider, for example, a teacher's lack of awareness about gay and lesbian history. lacking such knowledge may result in the unintentional exclusion of gay and lesbian history from discussions about nazism during world war ii. it is rarely mentioned in classroom discussions that gays and lesbians were a group targeted for persecution along with jews, gypsies, among others (plant, 1987). in the arts and humanities, teachers may not be aware that some key writers and artists such as james baldwin, cole porter, walt whitman, michelangelo, tennessee williams, gore vidal, virginia woolf, e.m. forster, allen ginsberg, gertrude volume 21, 2005 27 alternate routes stein, timothy findlay, and leonardo de vinci, were homosexual. thus, gay and lesbian history, unlike the histories of other targeted groups, has two unique qualities. one is that gay and lesbian history is usually taken to be non-existent, and therefore not "taken" at all. the other is that discussion about gay and lesbian history in classrooms is rife with stigmatization. teachers are often afraid of being perceived as, or being out as, gay or lesbian because of potential job loss or harassment (epstein and johnson, 1994). 5 regardless of such consequences, acquiescence to prevailing norms contributes to social invisibility of gays and lesbians and deters gender and sexual orientation diversity. cultures in schools reflect larger society. in the absence of gender and sexual orientation diversity, students are left to contend with the hegemony of heterosexuality and dominant scripts of gender. school cultures of heterosexuality, to the exclusion of other positionalities, remain entrenched. in addition, homophobic bullying continues to go unchallenged even as generic safe schools programs and policies proliferate (walton, 2004). within curriculum, even when teachers are aware of gay and lesbian history, as most are in the case of oscar wilde, they will tend to avoid and disregard discussion of how sexuality informs their work (mclaren, 1995). gay and lesbian historical invisibility in education is one facet of a general climate of gay and lesbian invisibility in society. lgbtq youth, typically alienated from school culture, tend to be doubly marginalized as a result of such curricular blinders. perpetrating harm based on unacknowledged assumptions or lack of information is to be expected though by no means excused; all individuals incorporate ways of thinking and acting that are normalized through social norms, values, and expectations. on the other hand, some actions and decisions taken by teachers and school administrators extend privileges to (ostensibly) straight students at the expense of lgbtq students (uribe and harbeck, 1992). for example, it is not uncommon for teachers and / or school administrators to fail to intervene in cases of harassment and bullying of students who are presumed to be, or identify as, gay and lesbian. it is usual that human sexuality is not represented as diverse and to not address issues related to such diversity. it is commonplace in schools to deny equality of opportunity for visibility, social integration, and access to resources for lgbtq students. it is frequent that student-led 28 volume 21. 2005 chemins alternatifs gay-straight alliances (gsas) and plays that feature gay or lesbian issues and characters are disallowed.6 it is occasional that books that present diversity of family configurations, including those with glbt members, are prohibited from school classrooms, famously exemplified by the surrey school district in british columbia. in 1997, trustees in that district banned from use in classrooms three picture books that feature same-sex parents among other configurations of family, thus denying students with age appropriate educational resources on lgbtq families. in 2005, the supreme court of canada ruled that religious imperatives must not overrule curriculum that reflects diversity of communities and that the surrey board must "reconsider" their decision (carter, 2004). in 2005, the board also cancelled performances of the laramie project, a play based on the 1998 murder of matthew shepard, a gay college student from laramie wyoming. conservative and religious organizations championed the actions of the surrey school board. the opinion that schools are not appropriate venues for discussion about (homo)sexuality is widespread. many people, some educators included, believe that students, especially those in elementary school, are "innocent" and therefore are unaware of the existence of gays and lesbians much less of homosexuality (epstein and johnson, 1994). documentary films such as it's elementary: talking about gay issues in school (chasnoff and cohen, 1996) indicate otherwise. in the film, young children talk about their awareness that some people are "gay." according to the filmmakers, such awareness is in spite of lack of discussion on the topic in the classroom. most children probably do not (nor should they) have an awareness of specific sexual activities, regardless of whether they are classified as "homo" or "hetero." however, most children have probably heard the words "gay" and "lesbian" from television and print media. in the schoolyard, at home, and in the media, pejorative descriptors are heard routinely, such as "homo," "fag," "dyke," and "queer." sexuality education resources such as // s elementary specifically address this form of violence in order to facilitate safer school environments for all students. other districts have taken measures to address homophobia in schools, particularly in the areas of curriculum and policy. the toronto district school board, for instance, implemented the triangle program, which is designed to meet the social and educational needs of lgbt volume 21, 2005 29 alternate routes youth. it is the only such program in canada (toronto district school board, 2003). the greater victoria school district (gvsd, 2005) has recently adopted policy and education on lgbt issues and safety in the district through an advisory committee, which includes representatives from the district and the wider community. at the forefront of advocacy for lgbt friendly schools, the gay and lesbian educators of british columbia (gale bc, 2005), provides educational resources for educators, parents, and students. policy and curriculum are strategic areas to focus efforts to promote social justice in schools. the triangle program, too, has key benefits, specifically in creating safer learning environments for lgbt students who otherwise would likely have dropped out of school. however, the contradiction is that these students are separated from the larger toronto student body and thus, diversity is compromised and the hidden curriculum, at least as it regulates gender and sexual orientation diversity, remains in tact. the initiatives outlined here are controversial. whether in curriculum or policy, measures to represent lgbt people in educational contexts inspires bigotry in the guise of "concern." many conservative parents, educational activists, and religious organizations endorse, for instance, "keeping homosexuality out of schools" for the good of all students. such activism tends to arise from beliefs in emotional dysfunction, spiritual poverty, and / or mental illness as etiologies of homosexuality (haldeman, 1991; herman, 1997), which contrast research that demonstrates otherwise (gonsiorek, 1991). furthermore, negative perceptions of homosexuality even ones in the guise of "science" are plagued by dogma, negative stereotypes, and bigotry. nevertheless, many parents, teachers, and school administrators continue to cling to such empirically unfounded beliefs. it seems paradoxical that, on one hand, lgbtq students tend to be marginalized and harassed in school, and, on the other hand, gay and lesbian activists have made gains in social and legal equality with heterosexuals. rates of alienation, depression, and suicidal ideation oflgbtq students are disproportionate to those of their straight counterparts (hershbergcr and d'augelli, 1995). however, the groundswell of social movements and backlash is fueled by power. in spite of achievements in legal equality of lesbians and gays with straights, homosexuality continues to be stigmatized in many arenas of public life, including schools. 30 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs moreover, a focus on intent is somewhat beside the point and certainly does not contribute to equity and social justice for lgbtq students. harm is manifest regardless of intent. towards exposure one of the problems with the hidden curriculum, as i have pointed out, is the very word "hidden." it provokes debates about whether aspects of informal curricula are intended or not intended. such debates are useful for illuminating the ways in which some agendas are indeed hidden from overt articulation for particular political reasons but they can also arrest movement beyond discussion. rather than focusing on whether certain aspects of informal curriculum are deliberately hidden from students, it seems more critical to promote measures to remedy systemic harm of school environments. haffner (1992) and portelli (1993) each advocate exposure of the hidden curriculum. it is difficult to imagine a situation where there are no hidden agendas and no unwritten rules of conduct particularly concerning sexuality and gender roles. exposure is meant as relative rather than as all-or-nothing legalism. ironically, anti-gay measures such as banning books that feature gay and lesbian characters and prohibiting gsas expose previously hidden agendas of perpetuating heteronormativity at the expense of lgbtq students, those with gay or lesbian family members, and those who ally themselves with gays and lesbians at their schools. activists who have supported anti-lgbtq measures in schools have perhaps unwittingly accelerated the work of other activists who promote equity and social justice for all students including those who need or would like access to lgbtq-positive resources, regardless of the reason. the very access or denial of resources for lgbtq students, as well as for their supporters, leads to a more fundamental question, namely, who has the right to determine how children will be educated and by what means? no single group, whether educators, parents, or students, can claim exclusive authority on this issue. theoretically, all citizens of democratic societies can participate in the functioning of educational institutions, particularly publicly-funded ones. the world of grade school education is thus contested ground indeed. nevertheless, the availability of such resources in schools does not prevent parents to volume 21, 2005 31 alternate routes inculcate, as they deem appropriate, particular values to their children. availability also does not "expose" their children to homosexuality, as some parents fear, nor does it prevent parents from teaching particular values and norms to their children. although members of some parents' groups accuse gay and lesbian educational activists of promoting such a "hidden" agenda, it is, in fact, heteronormativity that tends to be "hidden" within most school cultures and school policies. many parents and educators, especially those with conservative religious beliefs, have lobbied school boards to reform education to reflect the "three rs" (battistich et al., 1999). this approach, which emphasizes only academic skills and knowledge, demonstrates a limited understanding of the reality of schools, particularly regarding the hidden curriculum. in spite of romanticized notions, schooling has never been only about academics (battistich et al., 1999). many such recent educational reformists presume that the three rs is a traditional and successful approach that has since been buried under agendas of other educational activists. the moral and political battle over sexuality education regarding formal and informal curriculum is not one in which students are mere passive victims of the adult establishment. many students challenge discriminatory school policies and resist oppressive school cultures. examples of such student activism against school authority and cultural codes are many. students in canada and the united states, for instance, have formed gsas even when prohibited by their school district from doing so. some gay and lesbian students have taken same-sex partners to school proms, as marc hall did in 2002 after winning a lawsuit against his school board for refusing his request to bring his male partner as his prom date. students such as jamie nabozny (boland, 1996), azmi jubran (matas, 2002), and david knight (malarek, 2002) have each filed lawsuits against teachers, school administrators, and school boards for not providing adequate protections against homophobic harassment and violence. these students and others have used personal, social, and legal resources to challenge heteronormativity and homophobic violence in schools to make school cultures more inclusive and safer, particularly concerning lgbtq students and families. these students have contrib32 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs uted to exposure of the hidden curriculum though they may not describe their actions as doing so. resistance among students against gender and sexuality norms that are promoted and regulated in schools through the hidden curriculum need not be overt. hebdige (1979) describes hegemony not at a constant but rather as a moving equilibrium, a set of relational forces that must be "won, reproduced, sustained" (p. 16). although he was referring to youth culture in general rather than specifically to lgbtq students, hebdige's conception of hegemony describes well the relational dynamics between school officials and students concerning "hidden" curricula that perpetuate and reinforce unwritten values, norms, and rules of a school to which students are expected to comply. when students confound heteronormativity and homophobia in schools, they expose particular dimensions of the hidden curriculum. similarly and paradoxically when school authorities and parents attempt to reinforce values and norms of dominant paradigms of gender, sexuality, and family through educational policy and curriculum at the exclusion of some students, they, too, expose the hidden curriculum. exposing and confronting these dimensions of the hidden curriculum promotes social justice for lgbtq students and their supporters through policies and cultures of caring, respect, equity, and safety in schools. indeed, fostering such cultures is ethically necessary and the responsibility of educators and administrators for the benefit of all students. endnotes 1. the author would like to thank the social sciences and humanities research council of canada and the ontario ministry of training, colleges, and universities for generous support of his doctoral research. 2. it is not the case that potentially inflammatory questions should not be asked. rather, the asking of such questions needs to be done strategically rather than haphazardly. 3. in some ways, the history of sex education reflects similar controversies as other fields of study in schools. within science, for example, the theory of evolution continues to inspire passionate debates about the origins of material and human existence that are, at times, underscored by religious beliefs if not fervor. 4. i would argue that homophobia is a much more complex phenomena than epstein and johnson (1994) indicate. it can be active and explicit but it can volume 21, 2005 33 alternate routes also be covert and implicit and therefore more insidious and pervasive than overt attacks. 5. epstein and johnson (1994) point out that most gay and lesbian teachers are "paranoid" (p. 224) about being "outed" for fear of losing their jobs. i would add that all teachers, not just gay and lesbian ones, have the same concern. (the film, it 's elementary: talking about gay issues in school (chasnoff and cohen, 1996) explores the ways in which straight teachers are comparatively exempt from such anxieties). 6. gsas are school-based organizations that promote education on, and provide support for, gay and lesbian students, straight allies, and other students (such as those who are transgender and self-defined as queer). references adams, m. (1997). the trouble with normal: postwar youth and the making of heterosexuality. toronto, on: university of toronto. anyon, j. (1988). schools as agencies of social legitimation. in william f. pinar (ed.), contemporary curriculum discourses (pp. 175 200). scottsdale, az: gorsuch scarisbrick. apple, m. w. (1975). the hidden curriculum and the nature of conflict. in william f. pinar (ed.), curriculum theorizing: the reconceptualists (pp. 95 119). berkeley, ca: mccutchan. — . (1979). ideology and curriculum. boston, ma: routledge & kegan. — . 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(1975). persistent curriculum issues in historical perspective. in william f. pinar (ed.), curriculum theorizing: the reconceptualists (pp. 39 50). berkeley, ca: mccutchan. lakomski, g. (1988). witches, weather gods, and phlogiston: the demise of the hidden curriculum. curriculum inquiry, 18 (4), 451 463. 36 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs lewis, c. c; schaps, e.; and watson, m. (1995). beyond the pendulum: creating challenging and caring schools. phi delta kappan, 76, 547 555. lukes, s. (2005). power: a radical view, 2 nd ed. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. macdonald, j. b. (1988). curriculum, consciousness, and social change. in william f. pinar (ed.), contemporary curriculum discourses (pp. 156 174). scottsdale, az: gorsuch scarisbrick. macdonald, j.; and colberg macdonald, s. (1988). gender, values, and curriculum. in william f. pinar (ed.), contemporary curriculum discourses, (pp. 476 485). scottsdale, az: gorsuch scarisbrick. malarek, v. (2002, june 3). ontario teens suing school board over bullying. globe and mail, p. a4. massachusetts governor's commission on gay and lesbian youth. (1994). making schools safe for gay and lesbian youth: breaking the silence in schools and in families. in gary remafedi (ed.), death by denial: studies ofsuicide in gay and lesbian teenagers (pp. 151 205). boston, ma: alyson. matas, r. (2002, april 10). bc ruling on bullying sets precedent. the globe and mail, pp. a7. mckay, a. (1998). sexual ideology and schooling: towards democratic sexuality education. toronto, on: althouse. mclaren, p. (1995). moral panic, schooling, and gay identity: critical pedagogy and the politics of resistance. in gerald unks (ed.), the gay teen: educational practice and theoryfor lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents (pp. 105 123). new york, ny: routledge. — . (2003). life in schools: an introduction to critical pedagogy in thefoundations ofeducation, 4 ed. boston, ma: allyn and bacon. o'conor, a. (1995). who gets called queer in school? lesbian, gay, and bisexual teenagers, homophobia, and high school. in gerald unks (ed.), the gay teen: educational practice and theory for lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents (pp. 95-101). new york, ny: routledge. volume 21, 2005 37 alternate routes pinar, w. f.; reynolds, w. m.; slattery, p.; and taubman, p. m. (1995). understanding curriculum: an introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. new york, ny: peter lang. plant, r. (1987). the pink triangle: the nazi war against homosexuals. edinburgh, scotland: mainstream. portelli, j. p. (1993). exposing the hidden curriculum. curriculum studies, 25 (4), 343 358. redman, p. (1994). shifting ground: rethinking sexuality education. in debbie epstein (ed.), challenging lesbian and gay inequalities in education (pp. 131 151). buckingham, uk: open university. rich, a. (1993). compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence. in laurel richardson and verta taylor (eds.), feministfrontiers iii (pp. 158 179). new york, ny: mcgraw-hill. rury, j. (1992). passions and power: sexuality, sex equity, and education in historical perspective. in susan shurberg klein (ed.), sex equity and sexuality in education (pp. 35 54). new york, ny: state university ofnew york. sapon-shevin, m. and goodman, j. (1992). learning to be the opposite sex: sexuality education and sexual scripting in early adolescence. in james t. sears (ed.), sexuality and the curriculum: the politics andpractices ofsexuality education (pp. 89 105). new york, ny: teachers college. sears, j. t (1992). dilemmas and possibilities of sexuality education. in james t. sears (ed.), sexuality and the curriculum: the politics and practices ofsexuality education (pp. 7 33). new york, ny: teachers college. shurberg klein, s. (1992). sex equity and sexuality in education: breaking the barriers. in susan shurberg klein (ed.), sex equity and sexuality in education (pp. 3-18). new york, ny: state university ofnew york. toronto district school board. (2001). welcome to the triangle program. http://schools.tdsb.on.ca/triangle/index.html last accessed 21 sept 2005. uribe, v. and harbeck, k. m. (1992). addressing the needs of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth: the origins of project 10 and school-based intervention. in 38 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs karen m. harbeck (ed.), coming out of the classroom closet: gay and lesbian students, teachers, and curricula (pp. 9 28). new york, ny: harrington park. vanevery, j. (1996). heterosexuality and domestic life. in diane richardson (ed.), theorising heterosexuality: telling it straight (pp. 39 54). buckingham, uk: open university. walton, g. (2004). bullying and homophobia in canadian schools: the politics of policies, programs, and educational leadership. journal of gay and lesbian issues in education, 1 (4), 23-36. volume 21, 2005 39 alh unite routes work in progress from matka polka to new polish woman anita seibert introduction this article aims to provide a brief analysis of the main issues related to the socio-cultural status of polish women, both prior to and after 198°. it identifies three dominant models of womanhood, which have been promoted in poland throughout its more recent history: matka polka (mother poland), the communist woman, and the contemporary woman of post 1989 poland. each of those models has been created at a different point of time, but all three co-exist in contemporary poland. it is believed that the discussion of the models of womanhood existing in contemporary poland will bring the reader closer to an understanding of the specific cultural environment in which contemporary polish women negotiate their identity, while at the same time avoiding some of the difficulties encountered by western academics studying polish women. the article is based on research conducted by the author in poland between may and september 1995. the data has been gathered using multiple research methods 1 . it involved 31 formal open-ended interviews with women residing in two regions of poland: krakow and silesia, and numerous informal interviews with both women and men including members of the general public, academics and activists addressing women's issues, members of the government and the church. it also involved analysis of the contents of several popular magazines aimed at women published between may and september 1995, such as an analysis of variety of secondary polish sources including statistical data and gender focused literature. 42 volume 16, 2000 chemins altemat if the women who participated in formal interviews were recruited predominantly through personal contacts. after the interview they were asked to introduce the researcher to other potential interviewees. this snowball technique proved to be very successful and resulted in numerous women introducing their relatives, neighbours, co-workers and employees. due to the nature of the recruitment technique, specific care was taken to include a cross-section of women, representing a variety of socio-economic and age groups. the youngest participant was eighteen years old and the oldest was in her late sixties. the majority of women were married and had children. the use of personal contacts rather than a more random way of recruitment was chosen as appropriate as it was believed that women would be reluctant to participate in interviews conducted by a person who was not known to them. this article is a work in progress. it reflects the stage of research i was at when the data was collected in 1995. since this time, my work has progressed and changed. however, this article clearly reflects the foundation of my continuing research. social position of polish women theoretical approach. the changes of 1989 led to a great increase in the level of interest in the position of women in contemporary poland by western feminists. western feminist discourse2 , however, encountered significant problems when attempting to analyse the position of polish women. this can be partially explained by the fact that until the collapse of the eastern block women's studies were not recognised in poland as a separate area of research (pakszys, 1992:119). during the communist period the government had absolute control over the subject matter of research and nature of any resulting publications. the primary role of publications produced prior to 1989 such as zolkiewska's 'women in poland 1945 1955' (1955); 'poland, facts and figures' (1962), and 'women in socialist countries' (1976) was to glorify the role of the communist state in 'liberating' women. feminist research was not encouraged as the existence of any form of sex discrimination was denied by government agencies (royer, 1992:100; posadskaya, 1993:7). in the 1970s the polish government became more tolerant and an increasing number of academics (predominantly sociologists) chose women as subjects of their research. pakszys identifies three main areas of gender research which existed in poland during this period: statisticalvolume 16, 2000 43 alternate routt's demographic studies, socio-economic works analysing women's labour distribution, and finally political analyses addressing the issue of equality of the sexes and the position of polish women from an international perspective (pakszys 1992:120). despite relaxation of the communist state control over academia, researchers were still largely unable to be critical of the impact of the communist system on women's lives. in 1975, warzywoda-kruszynska pointed out that despite the mass entry o\' women into employment and education, women were still not equal to men. sokoknvska (1976) addressed the 'double burden' experienced by polish women, which involved combining domestic responsibilities with paid employment. both authors however, emphasised that the case of poland showed how much can be done for women through official structures such as law, education and employment opportunities. they argued that the responsibility for the still existing inequality between the sexes did not lie with the government but with the traditional attitude held towards women, which remained dominant in society (warzywoda-kruszynska, 1975:136; sokoiowska, 1976:277). prior to 1989 a number of articles by polish academics addressing gender issues in poland appeared in western publications. holzer and wasilewska-trenker (1985) attempted to analyse the relationship between women's economic activity and fertility. they argued that women are simultaneously expected to work outside the home and perform the majority of domestic duties. furthermore, they pointed out that the main factor causing the increase in women's participation in paid employment was the national demand for an expanded labour force. but similar to their colleagues publishing in poland, the authors simply described the lives of women in communist poland, and did not provide any critical analysis of the relationship between poland's political system and the social position of women. however, polish academics, who offered assistance to western writers critically addressing this issue, had to remain anonymous (koski, 1977:70). in 1989, the fall of the communist regime resulted in an explosion of polish academic publication addressing women's issues. some of the leaders of polish feminists such as siemienska, titkow and sokolowska' had addressed women's issues prior to 1989, but now their research became unrestrained by political forces. however, possibly due to the language barrier, as most of the works hail been published in polish, the 44 volume 16, 2000 chemins alternatif polish and western analysis of the situation of polish women remained parallel rather then interactive. in the early 1990s numerous western authors expressed a belief that the political changes of 1989 did not benefit women. catalyst (1990) argued that changes in europe had no room for women. duchen (1992), watson (1993), and kiss (1991) noted that women participated in the 'velvet revolution' but then disappeared from the negotiating tables and the political elites of former eastern bloc countries. it was argued that economic nationalism combined with the political power of the church resulted in women losing limited but still useful gains made under the old regime. increasing unemployment and reduced childcare services caused women to lose their jobs (sheridan, 1992:93; einhom, 1991:22; einhorn, 1993:85; pine, 1992:72). their reproductive rights were also threatened by restrictions on abortion and a war against contraception launched by the catholic church and other conservative organizations (funk, 1993; watson, 1993; davin, 1992; einhorn, 1993:74). this negative attitude was not necessarily fully shared by women from the eastern bloc themselves. paradoxically while high levels of female employment in eastern europe was seen in the west as evidence of their emancipation (marx-ferree, 1993; haug, 1991), many women experienced combining paid work with domestic responsibilities as a double burden. as a result, some central and eastern european women still resent western feminists for their naive acceptance of marxist ideologies (royer, 1992:101). while western feminists saw the involvement of women in paid employment and their official (sometimes very tokenistic) involvement in governance as synonymous with equality, they ignored the fact that this was not achieved through questioning gender relations or the concept of gender itself. the 'equality' of sexes was only addressed through encouraging women to work outside the home, and was motivated by the economic needs of the state (walczewska, 2000). gender relations within the private sphere were not questioned, and the 'equality' of women and men was declared with little consideration of the fact that women not only still did the majority of the domestic work and chidrearing, but also continued to be restrained by rigid cultural and social nouns (ciechomska, 1996). so while many western feminists expressed concern over the negative impact of the 1989 changes on the lives of women, they largely volume 16, 2000 45 alternate routes ignored the fact that communism was oppressive to women in different, hut certainly no less significant ways than capitalism. economic crises and political oppression resulting from the soviet dictatorship led to various difficulties which women experienced in their everyday lives (manny, 1982:18). this, combined with the patriarchal nature of society, had dramatic consequences. this is not to say that there is no common ground between western and eastern women's feminism. patriarchal discourses are problematic in both cases. however as ang, a feminist writer of chinese decent, points out "not all women share the same experiences of 'being a woman', nor is shared gender enough to guarantee a commonality in social positioning" (1995: 58) or, one might add, social analysis. it could also be argued that as far as academic discourse is concerned, the 1989 revolution and subsequent interest in the position of women in central and eastern europe could not have happened at a more convenient time. caine points out that "the current moment in feminist thought and scholarship is very much one of reflection and revision" (caine, 1995:1). this revision could create avenues for more flexible readings of the position of women in poland, allowing for the understanding that what could be seen to be quite oppressive for western women is not necessarily equally oppressive for women in poland, and what is liberating for women in the west may not be seen as liberating in poland. looking at the different models of womanhood promoted in contemporary poland can be one of such readings. the dominant models of womanhood and social position of women. the three models of womanhood, matka polka, communist woman and the contemporary woman, have been chosen for discussion in this paper as they all play a significant role in the everyday lives of polish women. matka polka, communist woman and contemporary woman are all terms frequently mentioned in everyday conversations by politicians and church leaders, as well as being referred to in the polish media. matka polka every polish person is familiar with the expression matka polka: the most idealised model of polish womanhood, one deeply rooted in polish tradition and culture. although it would be difficult to date the birth of this term, it probably emerged around the time of the first partition o\' 46 volume 16, 2000 chemins alternatif poland in 1772. in that year the state of poland disappeared from the map of europe soon after and did not re-emerge until the end of the first world war. in most partitioned sections of the country, polish language was often banned, and polish tradition and culture could not be cultivated in the public sphere. as a result, the polish family became a bastion of polish national identity (sokotowska, 1975:72). and since the men were commonly imprisoned, exiled or executed, it was primarily polish women who were responsible for sustaining polish national identity (sokotowska, 1975:72; sokotowska, 1977; siemienska, 1985). women also had to insure the day-to-day survival of their families by running family businesses or farms (titkow 1993:253). the specific conditions prevailing in partitioned poland gave women great political significance, autonomy and power in their families as well as in the broader society (sokotowska, 1975:72). this autonomy and power was however limited in numerous ways. it was reserved only for women living out traditional women's roles: only women who were mothers, grand-mothers, or potential mothers (virgin maidens) were seen as deserving the name and the role of matka polka. the actions of women were subordinate to the interests of their homeland and family. a woman who attempted to fit the role model of matka polka had to posses all the qualities of catholic womanhood. polish society at the time perceived the notions of patriotism and catholicism as one. matka polka would usually wear a cross symbolising the fact that she was married to her husband, the nation and the church (reading, 1992:21). she was expected to remain faithful to her absent or dead husband. she was to be totally disinterested in any issues associated with more personal self-fulfilments. she was only permitted to fulfil herself through motherhood, religion and patriotic activity. even love for her husband was not based on passion, but rather on duty and social norms: she married him, had his children, and therefore she loved him. matka polka was portrayed in polish art 4 and literature as a sombre woman dressed in black, surrounded by her many children and grandchildren. the black dress symbolises not only the mourning for husbands, sons and brothers who met their death fighting for their motherland, but also the mourning for the loss of independent poland (reading, 1992:21). the model of matka polka partially lost its significance during the communist era, as it was not fully suitable for the political agenda of the volume 16, 2000 47 alternate routes time. however, since 1989, once again it has been strongly promoted. the current nationalistic climate in poland, promoting a return to 'traditional polish values' (that is values which supposedly existed in poland before the communist era), strongly contributes to the popularity of this model. the catholic church, which in poland has always been a highly political institution, is one of the strong advocates of matka polka 5 . the term matka polka is used by the church to describe the most desirable position of women in society (kowalewska, 1995:1; nowakowska, 1995: 1). the campaign against abortion and contraception is just one of the methods used by the church to insure that every polish woman has little chance not to become a matka polka. it would be unjust not to point out that the position of matka polka gives women access to some power and integrity. the social position of the mother in prc-communist poland often gave women much authority in their own families and broader society. in contemporary poland it is the women of the family who play a central role in cultivating and controlling family, religious and social traditions. they are the ones who offer moral and often financial support for their children and grandchildren (komorowska, 1976:156). in a country, where great emphasis is placed on tradition and family values, this gives women-mothers significant authority and integrity. although, equally today as in the past patriarchal society promises women power and social respect only if they choose to live their lives as non-sexual virgin mothers. the communist woman at first glance the communist woman appears to be an exact opposite of matka polka. matka polka was ruled by national and catholic values, while the communist woman was ruled by the values of internationalism and communism. the imagery that is associated with these two role models has also been quite different. dressed in black and surrounded by her children matka polka was usually portrayed in the environment of her rural home. in contrast, the communist woman was dressed in overalls, her children were in government-run childcare, and if she was not driving a tractor it was only because she was working at the building site. in reality the model of the communist woman was very complex. it varied in different regions of poland, and throughout the years it 48 volume 16, 2000 chemins alternatif changed according to the needs of the state. the bureaucracy of the ruling united workers party reinforced patriarchy in the public sphere, while in the private sphere patriarchy was perpetuated by the catholic church (bishop, 1990:16). it could be argued that the communist woman was as far, if not further away, from emancipation than matka polka. the image of the communist woman promoted during the communist era showed women as workers, toiling alongside men for their communist homeland. between the years 1945 to 1954 the polish economy experienced labour shortages and women were encouraged to work outside the home (plakwicz 1992:80). posters showing women driving tractors and tramcars were used to encourage women to participate in non-traditional paid employment (plakwicz, 1992:80). the state provided women with services such as childcare, and medical services, including free abortions. the provision of these services did not aim to improve the living conditions of polish women, but rather, to insure that women were available as workers. in the late sixties and early seventies the model of the communist woman was transformed. in this period fertility rates dropped and the government introduced pro-natalist policies in response (holzer and wasilewska-trenker, 1985:122). women were given an opportunity to have extended childcare leave6 , there was funding cuts to family planning clinics and organizations, and restrictions were placed on abortions. free abortion had been available in poland since 1957 (matuchniakkrasuska 1995:189), but women were far from being in control of their lives in terms of reproduction and sexuality as accessibility of contraception and family planning services very was limited (duchen, 1992:4). in fact abortion was one of the main methods of birth control available (jankowska 1991:178). discussion of sexuality and eroticism was considered embarrassing, even vulgar, and there was a great deal of ignorance about sexual issues (german, 1991; jankowska 1991). although equality between the sexes was guaranteed by the polish constitution, this constitutional guarantee did not alter the traditional perception of women's role in society. in her 1955 book titled "women in poland 1945-1955," zotkiewska (1955:40) attempted to illustrate the 'equality' of women in poland. the book was illustrated with numerous photographs. one group of photographs with the caption "in schools with various specialisations they prepare themselves for work in profesvolume 16, 2000 49 alternate routes sions chosen according to their personal interests", 7 showed young women cooking, ironing and nursing. their personal interests appeared to be limited to traditional female professions. traditional understandings of what constitutes 'feminine' values and attributes were also unchallenged. the caption under a photograph of female doctors read "more and more women become doctors. compassion together with hard work can be well applied in that profession" (zolkiewska, 1955:135). numerous photographs in zotkiewska's book were dedicated to highlighting the high standard of living enjoyed in the people's poland. in the photographs, women were cleaning their state supplied apartments, cooking, serving men and children at the table, making clothes and walking children to state-run kindergartens. the sexual division of domestic labour was never questioned; men were only seen sitting looking proudly at their wives, whose domestic work became much more efficient and pleasant due to the services and equipment provided by the state. as a result of the political agenda, the economic situation and the main social value system, women in poland were forced into a "doubleburden" situation where they were expected to be workers, as well mothers and wives. they were not alone with their experiences of the patriarchal communist state. with the exception of brief episodes when the equality of women was seriously addressed, such as in the early days after the revolution in the soviet union, this trend was universal throughout the eastern block. 8 russian and european socialists did not challenge the fundamental social stereotypes of male and female roles. most of them did not believe that men should participate in housework, rather they believed that women should enter political and economic work through the help of communal services (mutton 1991:71). the new woman women in post 1989 poland both models matka polka and the communist woman developed in poland before the 1989 transformation. with the advent of democracy a new role model started to be promoted. the complexity of the new woman is well represented in women's magazines available in contemporary poland. many characteristics o\' llns model are carbon copies n\' the images of western women. this is 50 volume 16, 2000 chemins alternatif partially caused by the fact that numerous magazines such as vogue and cosmopolitan are simply polish version of magazines developed for western readers. according to women's magazines, contemporary polish women are sexually liberated. a model of family where the husband is the first and only sexual partner of the woman, and marriage is an unbreakable union, is not the one emphasised by the magazines (laciak, 1995:233). paradoxically, women's magazines still portray men as being the most important aspect of women's lives, regardless if it is as husband, fiance or lover (laciak, 1995:240). since 1989 the image of the business woman and professional women started to appear in women's magazines as well as in other popular media (dukaczewska, 1995:213). the image of the professional woman is often disliked in poland on the basis that this is not an 'appropriate' role for women who should place priority on the family and home. a professional career should not jeopardise their domestic responsibilities (dukaczewska, 1995:228). to illustrate, this attitude is reflected in an article about the first polish war reporter maria wiernikowska, published in twej styl'. in this article, the author emphasises that although wiernikowska has achieved a lot in her professional life, her private life is extremely important to her: she is constantly looking for true love (stanislawczyk, 1995:11). stories of wiernikowska's encounters with death in the trouble spots of the world are intertwined with confessions of her love for her son (who, as it is pointed out was not planned, but now is very much loved) and regrets that currently there is no man in her life. similarly, in the photos used in the article, wiernikowska is presented as a reporter, but also (and perhaps most of all) a mother having breakfast with her son and their pet dog. it is emphasised that "maria in every private conversation behaves like a journalist. in every relationship she wants to be the dominant one. as a result she looses as a woman" (stanislawczyk, 1995:10). wiernikowska's interest in her appearance is also highlighted. it is emphasised that when she goes to the war zones she takes a sleeping bag, knife, radio and an eye liner and that she was upset that she did not take powder to chechnya because her nose was red when she was shown on television (stanislawczyk, 1995:10). the most commonly promoted model of woman is that of the 'superwoman' who manages to combine her paid employment with domestic responsibilities, marriage with sexual liberation, and finds time and volume 16, 2000 51 alternate routes energy to be youthful and beautiful. this image ignores the realities of life for women in poland. negotiating identity in contemporary poland the co-existence of the three models of womanhood results in women having to constantly negotiate between them. while constructing their self-identity women interact with the models as active agents adapting some of their characteristics while rejecting others, rather then simply accepting complete models presented to them. this negotiation is not always a free process. it is constrained by the pressure exerted on women by the powerful catholic church, as well as numerous conservative political parties. the education system also contributes to the promotion of traditional role models of women as is evident in the curriculum for most primary schools (gollinkowa, 1995; morciniec 1995, domanski 1995). universities also perpetuate these traditional gender roles (walczewska, 2000). despite this, many contemporary polish women associate matka polka with an image of an overworked mother of many children, caught between her unattractive job and equally unattractive domestic responsibilities, who does not have time for any form of self-realisation: most of the women that had been interviewed as a part of this research, for example, rejected the image of matka polka, seeing it to be unattractive, undesirable, and oppressive. "a stupid goose with a wooden spoon stirring soup and surrounded by crying children" (basia, interview, 1995). "a woman who takes care of house and a child, a woman who doesn't work. matka polka for me is equivalent to a woman who is chained to the sink" (krysia, interview 1995). some women were also aware that the term matka polka was often used in specific political context 52 volume 16. 2000 chemins altirnatif "this term was used during elections few years ago, our president (lech walesa)9 said matka polka. well, every mother is a mother to me this description polka is strange" (ewa, interview 1995). this does not mean that women do not fit this model to some extent. the image of matka polka is very strong in the consciousness of the polish nation and therefore the traditional model of the woman-mother is promoted in poland alongside more liberated images (laciak, 1995:237). it finds its reflection in the way women live their lives, even if women themselves do not desire to or believe that they fulfil this image. marriage is still a highly regarded institution, promoted by the catholic church in particular and society in general. in a study conducted by demoscop in 1996, in which people were asked about their opinion about de-facto couples, 34% or respondents believed that de-facto couples should definitely get married, 42% percent believed that they should get married, while only 3% believed that marriage was not necessary (naj, 1997:8). polish women marry relatively earlier than women in the western world and divorce is not very popular, with polish divorce rate being two times lower than the european union average (biolik, 1994:6). traditionally having children is perceived as a main aim of marriage (adamski, 1976). women who choose to remain single are commonly viewed with disapproval and suspicion by those in their immediate environment (bishop 1990:30; kofta & domagalik, 1997; ciechomska, 1996) which often leads to being pressured to marry by their families. 10 having children is one of the most important if not the essential aspect of marriage. polish figures for extra-nuptial births are three times lower than those in the eu (biolik, 1994:6-7). many women believe that children are the most important aspect of a married life. any deviations from this behaviour can result in feelings of guilt. "i'm not a mother who sacrifices everything for her children, no, not at all. i believe that children are needed, that they make a marriage fuller, a marriage without children would be strange. also children bind us even stronger. but i volume 16, 2000 53 alternate routes look at things more from the point of view of the marriage. yes, sometimes i even blame myself that i spent too little time with them" (anna, interview, 1995). it would seem that in post 1989 poland, the model of the communist woman as a whole has been rejected, but women still use some elements of the latter for their self-identity. in general, polish women believe that they have to work outside the home, and if they do not, they see themselves to be doing "nothing". interestingly, despite the fact that since the 1950s the role of women as worker was promoted in poland, most women are still performing low paying jobs in feminised sectors of the labour market, such as administration and unskilled positions (janicka, 1995:104). furthermore since 1989, women have been increasing pushed out of the labour market (walczewska, 2000; janicka, 1995: reszke 1995). at the same time, increasing numbers of women are becoming small business owners (walczewska, 2000; dukaczewska, 1995). this trend is often seen as a measure taken to avoid possible unemployment, but a study conducted by lisowska (1996) indicated that many women started their own businesses to prove their abilities to husbands and family. conclusion the purpose of this article was to outline models of womanhood existing in contemporary poland, and the way in which women adapt those models. despite their significance, the 1989 changes did not completely transform the lives of polish women. the economy, the political structure or even the constitution of the country can be changed almost overnight, but values, beliefs and social attitudes need more time to be changed. ten years after the collapse of eastern block the process is still continuing. notes 1. for the detailed description of feminist multiple research methods sec reinharz(1992). 2. when referring to 'western feminism' it is not intended to imply that it is a homogenous discourse. as it is difficult to identify all the different variations of 54 volume 16. 2001) chemins alternatif western feminism in this short paper, in most cases a general reference to 'western feminism' has to be made. 3. see bibliography for specific references. 4. see for example images in okon, (1992) 5.the polish catholic church is one of the most, if not the most, influential institution in contemporary poland. historically it was always powerful, and during the solidarity era it gained even stronger support via its association with the solidarity movement and its role in defending the democratic rights of polish citizens. after the 1989 transition the church became an official political body, involved in all aspects of polish life. the power of the church is supported by its extreme wealth. its popularity has diminished since 1989, but despite this it still exerts substantial influence upon all aspects of peoples lives, from politics to sexual issues. 6. until the 1970s women had the right to three months paid maternity leave. in the 1970s' this was extended to six months and additional unpaid leave could be taken until the child's third birthday (einhorn 1993). 7. quotes marked with asterisk were translated by anita seibert form polish original. 8. for a discussion of the experiments with communist class struggles within the household that took place in the soviet union in the 1920s see resnick and wolff (1996). for an analysis of the difficulties women faced immediately after the soviet revolution announced them to be equal with men (the soviets however, did not question the many fundamental problems experienced by soviet women at that time), see hutton 1991 9.lech walesa has been one of the most vigilant advocates of traditional roles for women, and one of the most active opponents of abortion and birth control. 10. for example on the discussion list "gender", the only polish language feminist email discussion group, in year 2000 alone there has been several debates sparked by group members seeking advice on how should they react to the pressure to marry exercised on them by their families. volume 16, 2000 55 alternate routes references adamski, f. 1976 "model concepts of marriage in poland." polish sociological bulletin. 3: pp. 51-60 aug, i. 1995 "i'm a feminist but... 'other' women and postnational feminism." pp. 57 73. in b. caine and r. pringle (eds), transitions. new australian feminism. st leonards: allen & unwin. biolik, j. 1994 rodzina polska na tie rodzin uni europejskiej. katowice: regionalne biuro statystyczne. bishop, b. s. 1990 "from women's rights to feminist politics: the developing struggle for women's liberation in poland." monthly review. 46(6): 15-34. catalyst. 1990 "the wall still to fall." catalyst. july/september: 14 16 caine, b. 1995 "women's studies, feminist traditions and the problem of history." pp 1 14. in b. caine and r. pringle, (eds). transitions. new australian feminism. st leonards: allen & unwin. ciechomska, m. 1996 od matryjarchatu do feminismu. poznan: brama. czyozwska, z. 1979 "women in peoples poland in council for mutual fconomic assistance secretariat." pp. 51-55. in council for mutual economic assistance, women in socialist society. moscow: council for mutual fconomic assistance. davin. d. 1992 "popular policy reform. soviet union, fastern europe and china." pp. 79 104. in s. rai, h. pilkington and a. phizacklca, (eds.) women in the face of change london routledge. v, volume 16, 2000 chemins attentat if domanski, h. 1995 "rownouprawnienie. stereotyp tradycyjnego podziaki rol." pp. 65 87. in a. titkow and h. doma ski, (cds.) co to znaczy bye kobieta w polsce. warszawa: panstwowa akadcmia nauk, instytut filozofii i socjologii. duchen, c. 1992 "a continent in transition. issues for women in europe in the 1990s." women's studies international forum. 15(1): 1-5. dukaczewska, a. 1995 "kobiety interesu" pp. 213 232. in titkow, a and domalski, h. (eds.), co to znaczy bye kobieta w polsce. warszawa: panstwowa akademia nauk, instytut filozofii i socjologii. einhorn, b. 1991 "where have all the women gone. women and women's movement in east central europe." feminist review. winter: 16-39. einhorn, b. 1993 cinderella goes to market. london: verso. funk, n. 1993 "introduction." pp. 1 14. in funk, n. and muller, m. (eds.) gender politics and post-communism. london: routledge. german, l. 1991 "this isn't the vatican." socialist review. 146:24 golnikowa, a. 1995 "utrwalanie tradycyjnych rol pkiowych przez szkole." pelnym glosem. 3:3-8. haug, f. 1991 "the end of socialism in europe: new challenge for socialist feminism?" feminist review. winter: 36-48. holzer, j. z & wasilewska-trenker, h. 1985 "poland." pp. 129 165. in bodrova, v. and anker, v. (eds). working women in socialist countries. geneva: international labour office. volume 16, 2000 57 alternate routes mutton, m. 1901 "voices of struggle: soviet women in the 1920s." feminist issues. 11(2): 64-80 janicka, k. 1995 "kobicty i mezczyzni w strukturze spokczno-zawodowej. podobienstwa i rozniee" pp. 89 117. in a. titkow and h. domalski (eds.), co to znaczy bye kobieta w polsce. warszawa: panstwowa akademia nauk, instytut filozofii i socjologii. jankowska, h. 1991 "abortion, church and politics in poland." feminist review. 39, winter: 174181. kiss, y. 1991 "the second 'no' : women in hungary." feminist review. 39, winter: 49 -57. kofta, k. and domagalik. m. 1997 llarpie, piranie, anioly. warszawa: wydawnictwo w.a.b. komorowska, j. 1976 "tradycja rodzinna w duzveh miastach." kultura i spokczenstw. 20(4): 147175. koski, b. 1977 "the situation of women in poland." critique. summer: 69 93. kowalcwska, e. (ed.) 1995 "raport polskich kobiet." warszawa: polish federation of pro-life movements. lisowska, e. 1996 "women business proprietors in poland." polish studies occasional papers. 3. naaak, b. 1995 wzor osobowy wspokzcsncj polki." pp. 233 244. in a. titkow and ii domanski (eds.),co to znaczy bye kobieta w polsce warszawa: panstwowa akademia nauk, instytut filozofii i socjologii. 58 volume 16. 2(x)() chemins attentat if manny, l. 1982 "old repressions, new emigres." leveller magazine. may: 18-20. marx ferree, m. 1993 "the rise and fall of 'mommy polities': feminism and unification in (east) germany." feminist studies. 19(1): 89-1 15. matuchniak-krususka, a. 1995 "czym byla dyskusja o aborcji" pp. 189 212. in a. titkow and h. domalski. (eds.). co to znaczy bye kobieta w polsce warszawa: panstvvowa akademia nauk, instytut filozofii i socjologii. morciniec, j. 1995 "skad sie biora zadowolone nievvolnice albo czeo uczy elementarz." petnym glosem. 3: 9 19. naj. 1997 "razemalebezobreczek." naj. 4:10-11. nowakowska, e. 1995 "damski boks." polityka. 260895:5 okon, w. 1992 alegorie narodowe. wroclaw: wydawnictwo universytetu wrocfciwskiego. pakszys, e. 1992 "the state of researches on polish women in the last two decades." journal of women's history. 3(3): 118 123. pine, f. 1992 "women in rural poland." pp. 57 75. in s. rai, h. pilkington and a. phizacklea, (eds.) women in the face of change. london:. routledge, plakwicz, j. 1992 "between the church and the state: polish women's experience." pp. 75 96. in corrin, c. (ed), supper women and the double burden. london: scarlet press. polonia publishing house. 1962 poland facts and figures warszawa: polonia publishing mouse. volume 16, 2000 59 a hemate routes posadskaya, a. 1993 "self-portrait of russian feminist." new i-eft review. 195: 3 19. reading, a. 1992 polish women, solidarity and feminism hompshirc: maemillan. reinharz, s 1992 feminist methods in social research. new york: oxford university press. reszke, i. 1995 "bczrobocie kobiet stereotypy i rcalia." pp. 189 212. in a. titkow and h. domanski (eds.), co to znaczy bye kobieta w polsce. warszawa: panstwowa akadcmia nauk, instytut filozofii i socjologii. roycr, m. 1992 "women in changing europe." australian feminist studies. 15. autumn: 99-103 sheridan, s. 1995 "reading the women's weekly: feminism, femininity and popular culture." pp. 88 101. in b. caine and r. pringle (eds), transitions. new australian feminism. st leonards: allen & unwin. siemienska, r. 1986 "women and social movements in poland." women and politics 6(4), 5 35 1990 plec, zawod, polityka, kobiety w zyciu publicznym w polsce. warszawa: instytut socjologi, uniwcrsytcr warszawski. 1994 "women in time of systemic changes in poland." journal of women's history. 5(3): 70 89. 1994 "the contemporary dilemma of the polish family and its genealogy." the european journal of women's studies. 1 : 207 224. sokolowska, m. i ()76 "the role and status of women in poland" studies in comparative international development. 10(3): 71 87. (,() volume 16, 2000 chemins alterant if 1976 "obraz kobiety w swiadomosci wspokzesnego spoleczenstwa polskiego." kultura i spokczentwo. 20(3): 269 277. 1976 "the woman image in the awareness of contemporary polish society." the polish sociological bulletin. 3: 41 50. 1977 "women's experiences under socialism." pp. 349 381. in zollingergiele, j. and chapman-smok, a. (eds.) women's roles and status in eight countries. new york: john wiley & sons. stanislawczyk, b. 1995 "maria wiernikowska i'm looking for love." twoj styl. 8(61): 8 12. titkow, a. 1993 "political changes in poland: cause, modifier or barrier to gender equality?" pp. 253 256. in n. funk and m. muller (eds.), gender politics and postcommunism. new york: roulledge. 1995 " kobiety pod presja? proces ksztakowania sie tozszamosci." pp. 9 39 in a. titkow and h. domanski, h. (eds), co to znaczy bye kobieta w polsce. warszawa: panstwowa akademia nauk, instytut filozofii i socjologii. walczewska, s. 2000 damy, rycerze i feministki. krakow: wydawnictwo efka. warzywoda-kruszynska, w. 1975 "emancypacja kobiet w polsce." kultura i spoleczenstwo. 19(4): 124 138. watson, p. 1993 'the rise of masculinity in eastern europe. "new left review. 198: 71 83. zolkiewska, w. 1955 kobieta w polsce 1945-1955 warszawa: wydawnictwo "polonia". volume 16, 2000 61 alternate routes a journal of critical social research editors amanda mccarthy siomonn pulla andrea sharkey digitized by the internet archive in 2011 with funding from carleton university, department of sociology & anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesc19alte alternate routes a journal of critical social research volume 19, 2003 editorial policy/call for papers 4 perspective brian p. miller talk of inventing tradition: sketching limitations of anthropological concepts of culture 5 work in progress anna arnone being eritrean in milan 20 articles kenneth fish biotechnology and the society-nature relation 58 fiona martin the changing configurations of inequality in post-industrialsociety:volunteeringasacasestudy 79* robyn smith the possibility of pleasure: foucaulfs philosophy of the subject and the logic of an appeal to aesthetics 109 errata and contents ofpast issues 123 . uternate routes editorial policy/call for papers alternate routes (.ir) is a refereed multi-disciplinary journal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university ottawa, canada, k1s 5b6, altroutes@lists.carleton.ca. as a peer reviewed journal, .4r provides a forum for debate and exchange among north american and international graduate students. we are interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or coauthored with faculty), regardless of university affiliation. the editorial emphasis of the journal is on the publication of critical and provocative analyses of theoretical and substantive issues. we welcome papers on a broad range of topics and encourage submissions which advance or challenge theoretical questions and contemporary issues. we also welcome commentaries and reviews of recent publications, works in progress and personal perspectives. alternate routes is currently seeking submissions for volume 20, 2004. papers should be submitted double-spaced and in triplicate, following the american psychological association (apa) referencing system, keeping endnotes to a minimum. please see our website for a style-guide. back issues of alternate routes are available at the following prices per volume: current issue (volume 19, 2003) individuals $12.00; students/ un(der)employed $6.00; institutions $21.50. volume 16/15 (99/97): individuals $12.00; students/ un(der)employed $4.00; institutions $12.00. all previous years: individuals $3.00; students/un(der)employed $1.50; institutions $6.00 . . litemate routes is indexed in sociological abstracts and the left index. the alternate routes collective gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the carleton university community; the departments of sociology and anthropology and its chair, the dean of arts and social sciences, the dean of graduate studies and research, and the vice-president of research. we also wish to gratefully thank all of the anonymous reviewers. volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs perspective talk of inventing tradition: sketching limitations of anthropological concepts of culture brian p. miller university of manchester introduction: on a cultural approach as an adolescent, 'culture' was always something to possess. together, my family could walk out the door, hop in the pontiac or buick, and drive off to experience culture. we could visit the cultural center the museum, the theatre, the cinema, the art gallery; we could tour a cultural site a historic mansion, a battlefield, a realistically reconstructed colonial, or native settlement; we could even attend a cultural event the st. patrick's day, or july fourth parade, the greek or german festival. my family could venture anywhere but home to find culture. it was out in society and absent hi the neighborhood. the artist's object, the symphony performance, even the refined dinner experience was a means to ascertain the culture just downtown a few minutes drive. culture found its way into my life through the relocation of my body to designated areas where culture was contained, erected, even illustrated, for my gaze and absorption, rearranging my perceptions and awareness, and readying me for a specific kind of experience. naive at best, simple at least, culture was materialistic and experienced in certain interactions with others. holy describes these elements of "high culture'' as ways in which shared meanings help to make sense of a world that constantly changes 1 . never did it occur to me that culture might be an omnipresent force, a fluid, ebbing movement of perceptions and definitions, a point of contention, even argument... politically, a tool for negotiation, a system of reinvention or a shifting, limited concept of differentiation... a context for understanding. numerous travels, global encounters, and, not the least, several years of academic anthropology have razed these adolescent definitions, or maybe just reconstructed volume 19, 2003 5 alternate routes them. this paper focuses on the various dimensions and contentions the concept of culture brings to anthropology. the term is a functional and constructive idiom of language, not limited to academic departments in the social sciences of the western hemisphere. people give culture meaning through how they use and refer to it. ambiguity surrounds the margins of the culture concept and anthropology debates these notions as a matter of practice. as an element of the human being's social atmosphere, culture now lacks clarity even within the discipline of anthropology, having undergone a critical rethinking in the last twenty-five years. in attempting to reconcile the notion of culture and its multitude of meanings, its outline is less clear. the effervescence of the presence and significance of culture in the academy does not negate but diminishes embarrassment for my former notions when popular discourse still clings to similar, material definitions as those i once used. understanding culture as a mode of interpretation and representation depends on context, conversation, and the audience of these two elements. it is not beyond an individual to watch a film where men perform "the monkey chant" in a jungle in southeast asia and gain insight into another culture, see that as something distinct from their own. the frontiers of understanding create boundaries for the knowing of the idea itself, though not rigid. the word culture is supposed to have perimeters; it functions with difference in mind. limiting anthropology perhaps the suggestion that the identity of culture lie in the material aspects of my hometown was not entirely naive; rather, the context of using the term culture to construct this meaning limited other possibilities. the materialist definition was a valid description. in culture in practice, marshall sahlins illustrates, with slight disdain for this value, "for too many, 'culture' still has this predominantly aesthetic or intellectual signification (2000:16).*' his obvious point states that culture is more than the epitomized material expressions of society more than the museums and intellectualized. institutionalized, elitist version. it comes from anthropological frameworks and not the day-to-day, popular, lived conception that he acknowledges. even in contemporary discussions of culture, especially regarding authentic and invented traditions, the characteristics of a web of meanings arc made obvious. illustrative, and interesting through reference to site-specific rituals. 6 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs craft, language, and other, outwardly visible aesthetic products; expressive culture helps to differentiate. it is easy to glean from sahlins* words here that anthropology has its own model and use for culture that it tends to continually try to renegotiate. yet anthropology, and in particular its hallmark methodology of ethnography, has played a part in western intellectualism by reinforcing modernist ideas about what gets identified as a cultural item. what is worth consideration are the limitations of the anthropological treatment of the culture concept. the definitions and uses anthropology gives to the idea fluctuate too much, hovering just above comprehension, offering the inadequate guarantee of a definitive way to talk about the essence of culture. employing the idea of culture as a way to delineate differences between groups of people does not allow room in an academic discourse for those groups to alter their own identity'. a discursive fence prevents them from getting on with the process of sustaining and formulating meaning in their lives, bartering knowledge of the world with those who they see as lying beyond an imagined boundary. the very tension of continually calling to question and the redrawing of lines has been the subject of poignant investigations seen recently in the works of writing culture (clifford and marcus, 1986) and recapturing anthropology (fox, 1991), as well as postmodernist, and afterological 2 thought. though distinct approaches, their questions are real and warranted. anthropologists have exerted in fact, an entire discipline and discourse found over the central idea that culture (or something dubbed as culture) is alive between, among, and through people. what is being asked is whether culture does have substance and how it is and can be defined and by whom? is culture, as an empirical model, valuable? is the "very emphasis on 'culture' ... a betrayal" and misnomer for the complexities of human communication and behavior (ingold, 1996:119)? anthropology, from its conception and as a vehicle for study and debate, is so wrapped up in the project of modernity, that its constant self-critique, internal uncertainty, moral consciousness, and historical change, embody the modernist spirit of progress: teardown the old, build the new, rejoice, remit, renew. nevertheless, these conventions are dependent on the morality of each era and anthropology is constantly at arms with itself in the face of changing concerns and timely issues. negotiations of culture not only appear to occur in the global world of struggling, sentient, social forces but are also a mechanism of volume 19, 2003 7 alternate routes the intellectual direction of the anthropological approach to understanding: to create a perception of meaning within human worlds. returning to marshal sahlins', i had a chuckle reading "two or three things i know about culture' 7 when he wrote: it is possible to conclude from several decades of disciplinary self-reflection that anthropology doesn't exist, since if it isn't sociology, it's humanities. alternatively, it is reassuring to know that anthropologists are able to share with the peoples they study the ability to construct ethnic differences by developing epitomizing contrasts of selected cultural values (sahlins, 1999:400). i wish to make clear that this was an eighteen page, "anthropological" paper in an "anthropological" journal. anthropology does exist, just not as he had construed. sahlins' demonstration of displacement summarizes the condition anthropology realizes itself in today questioning its past, reassessing and evaluating its impressions and descriptions. the human being, as a mode of representation, no longer holds authority in the realm of science. even anthropology has begun questioning the validity of scientific truth, its offerings to the human world, and its relationship to upholding the foundations of a problematic, colossal hegemony. a new anthropologists' creed might be offered, "i am not an instrument of objective measurement." leaving the domain and genre of enlightened, empirical inquiry, sahlins evokes a movement towards a discipline grounded in moral ingenuity. the inability to poise and sidle itself firmly in an academic category, wavering in empirical sensibility, reflects silent incongruities as well as resonating modernist elements of disconnection. anthropology's self-prescribed role as purveyor of truth in western society has changed: its legitimacy, debunked. linked admittedly and forthrightly to a colonial project of domination since at least the late 19th century, anthropologists have run headfirst into a quagmire of morality and sclf-awarcncss. stimulating concerns of its effectiveness. in an idealistic. western democratic sense of freedom and humanity meaning, making way for the right of all humans to make their own decisions and choices, to live without oppression and violence from others anthropology has become highly critical and sensitive to its role in politics and as an author of knowledge. 8 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs conceivably, a residual guilt coats a professional conscience focused, in the last twenty or more years, on post colonialist (or late-imperialist, or high-imperialist) underpinnings. as a focus of debate, anthropology's own internal strife has muddled its definitions and reality of culture. maybe this social and scholastic climate of over sensitivity to the contemporary world condition of globalization, the capitalist world market, hyper-cautious political positioning, and the introduction of western philosophical ideals into every niche of human communities around the globe have deconstructed an anthropological understanding of itself and simultaneously dug a moat, an unapproachable bastion, with anthropology in the center. its own constructed tradition has marginalized its selfworth, making it difficult to approach and to venture out into new understanding. in a gesture to support marshal sahlins, for i find agreement in much of his writing, he does correspond to the idea of ideological and practical toil. "modern anthropology still struggles with what had seemed like enlightenment to the philosophers of the eighteenth century but turned out to be a parochial self-consciousness of european expansion and the mission civilisatrice'' (sahlins, 2000:501). civilization simply referred to the society in which the philosophers of that time lived; civilization was a concept and model, hierarchical to barbarism, a stage beyond savage primitivism to which, paraphrasing kant, sahlins (2000) writes, progress and reason would overcome. returning, however, to another point about marshall sahilns" statement from "two or three things," his comments allows, for no apparent reason, for anthropology to shake hands with itself for having the ability to make similar distinctions based on research in some locale that categorizes others through quintessential characteristics of difference. but at this stage in departure, making distinctions about the "world out there" and "other" people seems a universal characteristic of the human experience. the brain of an individual inherently creates differences of self and not-self and this procedure is played out on a grand scale in the social world of humans. this faculty does not confer, outside of situated knowledge, a truth about where lines ought to be drawn, or who is to decide what prevails as a boundary. the discipline of anthropology is consciously entwined with political manoeuvres and negotiations, but why should anthropology be a better judge or negotiator of culture? one answer is that in a western society-, it is the institutional intellectuals volume 19, 2003 9 alternate routes who produce identities for its constituents. this "position" that, in general: . . . the anthropologist's intervention will be meaningful in terms of [resolving culture conflict and dynamics of domination]" or that s/he "can judge what is beneficial or 'environmentally sound' and what is not." based on familiarity with the location and knowledge of cultural values, is taken for granted (escobar, 1995:669). this perspective seems positioned in a western notion of power (though, also, a particular kind of negotiation). "anthropologists need to be aware of the different ways and the different social and political contexts in which anthropological ideas and concepts are used by nonanthropologists" (ahmed and shore, 1995:31). as i was saying, the guggenheim is as much a cultural characteristic as the theory of commodity culture. it represents specific aspects of, in this case, art, architecture, and aesthetics of the twentieth century. the commodity, culture, is traded between forces. culture then, implied from sahlins" nod, is essentially the process of a group of people agreeing on shared similarities while creating differentiation from another group who is involved in an analogous practice. yet it also encompasses the manifested, even physical, symbols of which these groups identify with. both institute differences, enduring or not. " take i: make of it whatyou will" eric wolf (1994) asserts, en route towards considering the nature of culture as a global positioning device: culture... has a societal background, and that background has implications for how we conceptualize and use [it]. i think of ideas as "takes' on the phenomena of this world and as instructions about how to combine these takes to ascertain their connections or. contrariwise, to hold them as apart, to beware of asserting linkages as false. i also think that particular takes arc prompted by background conditions and limited by these conditions (1994:2). 10 volume 19,2003 chemins alternatifs it is important to point out that wolfs paper talks about what the concept, culture, allows us to think and how it allows us to think. without trying to be redundant, or simple, realizing that culture takes on different meanings within different social contexts is a critical link to understanding the limitations that talking about culture runs into. it is an illusion to see the term as possessing universality. many "takes" differ from the obstinacy of anthropological "takes.'' anthropology has developed its own history' of the world, including the writing of the history of the present. this conceit, somewhat radically, imposed itself on the western world with its refined order of facts and findings. lingering within this paradigm, discursive anthropology in the twenty-first century tends to ignore its own placement in the fashioned epoch and its constructed, ideological networks that are themselves "passing through a phase in global history." (ahmed and shore, 1995:32). grimshaw and hart decide that "established forms [of modern anthropology], both concepts and practices, no longer seem adequate for engaging with the shifting complexity' of contemporary society' (grimshaw and hart, 1995:60)." when the paradigmatic grounds for the relationship between inquiry and understanding have been excavated, anthropology cannot continue producing the kind of knowledge to which it is accustomed. its correlation to enlightened, modern motifs and motives prohibit talking about human communities without implying progressive social models and cultural distancing through a silent, hierarchical self-image. moreover, anthropology's inherent reticence questions its own values. it is the modern lament, evident in sahlins' statement about anthropology's "parochial self-consciousness." in a perceptual world of categorized knowledge and institutionalized intellectualism, the broadening, fantastic world of western european imperialism around the globe, principally, its encounters with "new" peoples, lead the way for the emergence of an understanding of these experiences through a logical system of symbols by which to order their lives. anthropology introduced new meanings to new experiences through the fabric of science, a means familiar to its own, native social production of knowledge. when anthropologists begin asking themselves, "who belongs to culture, and to whom does a 'culture' belong? who can-and ought to study and preserve it" (jackson, 1995:17), they realize the schism, often overlooked in anthropological research. jackson suggests that culture is volume 19, 2003 11 . [iternate routes "something dynamic, something that people use to adapt to changing social conditions and as something that is adapted in turn [here] we have a more serviceable sense of how culture operates over time, particularly in situations demanding rapid change (jackson, 1995:18). in this definition, reliant on the context of communities of people struggling for identity and differentiation from each other, culture rests at the margins of daily, social existence where negotiations of a political nature are more alive than the perpetuation of a status quo (unless, of course, the struggle is the status quo). jackson gives the impression that culture is a collective will and momentum. here, there is a type of cultural understanding that is relevant to the use of the term in a socially expressive context: people outwardly contesting their identity. however, in the status quo a certain mechanics of perpetuating and living out differences is a daily activity. culture becomes functional, malleable, and manipulative. this may only be true in part because when culture is debated in this manner what is occurring is an expressiveness of particular circumstances. cultural systems become more apparent when conceived of in relation to another, when they disclose "their properties by the way they respond to diverse circumstances, organizing those circumstances in specific forms and, in the event, changing their forms in specific ways (sahlins, 2000:499)." what is being alluded to is the utilization of existing cultural characteristics, mostly epitomized, to reconstruct identity in the face of changing social contexts and conditions: inventing culture. okay, so i brought it out in the open. the very mention of the idea that culture is "contrived"" gets eyes rolling and deep sighs among anthropologists. what makes culture authentic? what does it mean to invent a culture? in addition, what tradition is not? globalization, through the imposition of a world economic system, has made these questions highly volatile. anthropologists have been discussing them for nearly half a century in various forms. culture has taken on new meanings as people wrestle with ways to retain identity and value in the context of rapid social bombardment and change. nevertheless, can we say this is a modem phenomenon? recently, these issues and the writing on them have had to do with the after effects of colonial encounters and the ways in which other cultures (other than the ones the anthropologists represented) adapted, or incorporated, or handled the new experiences introduced by the "west." 12 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs these societies, often perceived of as in need of civilization, proceeded to redefine themselves under the newly revamped conditions of their lives. marshall sahlins remarks about existing academic interpretations of the traditional culture myth that it is itself situated: too many anthropologists say that the so-called traditions the people are flaunting are not much more than serviceable huinbuggery. they are 'invented traditions", fabricated with an eye politic to the present situation. signs of a supposed indigeny and antiquity, the stories actually owe their substance as well as their existence to the western capitalist cultures they would thus defy (1999:402). as much as they would like to concede, the culture to which the anthropologists are linked have fashioned their own traditions in direct relation to these pretentious beliefs, and thus distinctiveness, through their own form of "serviceable humbuggery." saying that there is such a thing as an invented tradition is itself an invented tradition. it is a method of differentiation. anthropology and western society owe as much to the primitive world for giving them a sense of identity as the natives do to europeans for teaching them about their own noble savagism. the academy claimed legitimacy in declaring and measuring authenticity in the name of scientific evidence, in the name of its encounter and influence on the people. europeans never dreamt that the native had had an impact on their way of thinking. "western social science consistently repositions itself as the originary point of comparative and generalizing theory" (moore, 1996:3). talk of inventing a tradition. 3 inventiveness on the part of the "native" was rationalized by declaring that the absorption of europeanisms, be it goods, or religion, or the reconfiguration of local customs, was indication of inauthentic culture. this perspective harks back to a predominant, underlying premise of modem progressive thought that alleged what was not western was not civilized and thus timeless, inert, and in need of transformation. simple dictionary definitions clarifying the term, invent, state that to do so is "to devise by thinking; to produce for the first time through the use of the imagination or of ingenious thinking and experiment" (merriam-webster online). learning to adapt and respond is not only a characteristic of the individual but volume 19, 2003 13 alternate routes of a body of individuals, living together through similar perceptions. inventiveness is a built-in instrument for cultural liveliness. ding an sich (the thing itself) anthropologists in the contemporary scene investigate similar ideas about social ingenuity on the global stage. as the global village develops and various cultures concede to a world economic market, anthropologists have been addressing the notion of homogeneity et al. global hegemony. this is the assertion that there subsists a common structure and vocabulary, or knowledge that all peoples (cultures) will understand and make meaningful their participation in this macro-network. this seems somewhat bleak. the argument against such plans demonstrates a connective, working, symbiotic relationship between the local and the global where invention is necessary' because the source and motivation for cultural distinctiveness is cradled in shared diversity. communities are using symbolic characteristics to formulate their identity, to specify what is particular about their culture. a central property of capitalist democracy is the flourishing of variety and endless image making. the twentieth century has seen this process repeatedly with flourishing nationalist movements across the globe. essentially, what is most valuable within a common social perception is being heralded as quintessential to that order creating subtle differences between communities. the concept of culture is a positional tool. here, the association with one or another cultures is significant in that cohesiveness is formed in a way particular to the human capacity for order. i think an important factor in considering any discussion of the use of culture is, as stated earlier, how culture provides us with the ability to have meaningful lives. tim ingold, in his 1996 edited volume. key debates in anthropology, documents a deliberation on just that topic. i will not reiterate what the debate, "human worlds are culturally constructed." says and decides, but i would like to state that the debate centered on the human being's facility to experience and perceive the world out there. reflection of the social and cultural as a natural, instinctive, inherent (call it what you like) ability of the human species is often glossed over in understanding social and cultural order and definitions. our ability to apply meaning to an objectified experience of the world too often elevates these systems to practices beyond what we deem as natural. a constructed world is solely within the human realm 14 volume 19, 2003 chetnins alteniatifs of perception. it is how we think of our engagement with what we call an environment. when roland littlewood explains that to believe that culture is not a constructed event "is to suggest that we can really experience the world out there as it is," he offers only part of the equation (1996: 122). he attends that we are the creators of the blocks with which we assemble our perceptual and real worlds, and "we determine our experience of it, our human world (122)." he is implying that culture is the only way we come to understand the world. his implications, though, lack an actual material reality. the part he has right is that human experience allows us to create (or think we create) meanings, such as what is cultural, to live out and to receive back from through interaction. the event is not so much a construction as it is a simultaneous creation and exhibition of the encounter with a projected significance of the world out there, as it is. "truth is the confirmation of appearance to reality (whitehead, 1933: 241).*' in this sense, people live out their lives in the world with an "irreducibly cultural character" because this experience of culture shapes the capacity to understand (james, 1996: 105). i do not see the dichotomy, or reciprocity, that tim ingold derives of the difference between living in a culturally constructed world and in a world where we humans are simply engaged. i see the lived experience as a unity of both, a dependence on both because people are able to disengage from their perceived worlds, and through the process of perception, the perceiver (the product) unites with this world through the capacity to formulate significance within it. perception, then, is more than a mode of engagement; it creates meaning that conceives an image of the world for the perceiver. perception is the world out there and within. in the end, what both sides of the debate were arguing for is the magnitude that culture, not as a word but as an idea, has on the contexts of human life, both as a perception and as an interpreter of perception. culture is a means of engagement and reflection with ourselves in the world. conclusion: res cogitans; res extensa each endeavor to understand humankind works with a set of characteristic ideas that orient its inquiries and justify its volume 19, 2003 15 alternate routes existence, and for anthropology ideas about. . .culture. . .have played that guiding and legitimizing role (wolf, 1994:1). i have not endeavored to dilute the potency of the culture concept; i wanted to highlight that there are limitations on anthropological capacities for understandings of it. my reminiscence of childhood perceptions is what got the wheels rolling on how culture is not just anthropology's contribution. the concept was not only physically manifest in my geographv but it was the "expressive and customary means by which [my social constructs were] maintained" (sahlins, 2000:15). in western society (and plausibly others), despite resistance to this reality, culture still relates to these customary artifacts similar to those found in the societies that anthropologist study. "cultures are not static," jackson purports, they appropriate the possibility culture affords, and are not "homogeneous systems on which change is imposed. rather, cultures are systems whose very foundations are characterized by dynamism, negotiation, and contestation" (jackson, 1995:20). the networked brain of anthropology has propagated perceptions that are familiar to it. culture concepts are strong and embedded in discourse and meaning. theory and discipline fill the synapses, allowing a reexperiencing of the anthropological, as if there is an embodied response to approaching the world through its practice. postmodernists would clap their hands at me for saying anthropology seems to be in a state of fragmentation. however, i am suggesting that anthropology is on a threshold, only frozen there, confused and too self-conscious to begin a new approach to a world that has out grown its vision. appadurai offers his views on new understanding and approaches in referring to a "global cthnoscape" (1991). in the new design, anthropologists must admit the "dilemmas of perspective and representation" and the effects this plays on representation while also focusing on the historical problems of the twenty-first century (1991:191). he concludes, saying, "...it seems advisable to treat the present historical moment and use our understanding of it to illuminate and guide the formulation of historical problems (1991:208)." appadurai is calling for a type of objectivity that aims at the depiction of critical and moral issues among ever increasing, transnational identities. the subject of culture needs addressing, when and 16 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs where people are confronting differences on their own terms and not those envisioned by the anthropologist. anthropology is about representing notions of the time, specifically, with clear contexts and boundaries in mind. anthropology of "ethnoscapes" reflects this thought. this is the culture it comes out of and culture is the context that creates meaning. it represents the objectives, morality, and politics of its time. still, culture is not an exclusive circumstance to anthropology, not anymore. anthropology as a disciplined way of creating meaning in the world needs to rediscover value in its process while realizing that culture, in its various contexts, is itself about assigning values. "anthropology has been predicated on maintaining clear boundaries between self and other," (escobar, 1992:381) and for myself, these boundaries are what make anthropology a worthwhile exploration; they make anthropology a significant device to negotiate and discover shared understandings. what coexists with this significance is setting out "to question the productivity of the culture concept" in evensituation (escobar, 1992:381). difference exists; culture is one way it can and "essentialized descriptions are not the platonic fantasies of anthropologists alone; they are general cultural conditions of human perception and communication" (sahlins, 2000:499). the traditions of anthropology are in the throes of new experience. the devices by which people and anthropologists gauge the acceptability of change are no longer capable of explaining and ordering the perceived world out there. 4 it may be optimistic, but it is time to move ahead and invent some new traditions. "so prettysooneveryone will havea culture; only theanthropologists will doubt it"5 notes l.ladislav holy, (1996: 12.) 2. sahlins refers to brightman (1995): "afterology:' 'two or three things i know about culture." journal of the royal anthropological institute 5 (3): 399-421. 3.marshall sahlins (1999). "two or three things i know about culture." journal of the royal anthropological institute 5 (3): 399-421. volume 19, 2003 17 alternate routes 4. regarding sahlins' remark referencing lamont lindstrom (1982:316-29) in culture in practice (2000). new york: zone books. 5. marshall sahlins (1999). "two or three things i know about culture." journal of the royal anthropological institute 5 (3): 399-421. references ahmed, akbar s. and shore, cns n. (eds). 1995. the future ofanthropology: its relevance to the contemporary world. london; athlone. berman, marshall. 1982. all that is solid melts into air: the experience of modernity.new york: penguin books clifford, j. and marcus, g (eds). 1986. writing culture: the poetics arid politics ofethnography. berkley: university of california press. crick, m. 1989. "representations of international tourism in the social sciences: sun, sex, sights, savings and servility." annual review ofanthropology 18:307-333. escobar, arturo. 1991. "'anthropology and the development encounter: the making and marketing of development anthropology." american ethnologist 18: 658-679. escobar, arturo. 1993. "the limits of reflexivity: politics in anthropology's post-writing culture era." journal ofanthropological research 49 (4): 377-392. kosko, bart. 1993. fuzzy thinking: the new science offuzzy logic. london; flamingo. ingold, tim (ed). 1996. key debates in anthropology. london and new york; routledge: 99-146. jackson, jean. 1995. "culture, genuine and spurious: the politics of indianness in the vaupes, colombia." american ethnologist 22: 3-27. james, wendy 1996. "human worlds are culturally constructed: for the motion," in t. ingold (ed) key debates in anthropology. london and new york; routledge. marcus, george. 1994. "after the critique of ethnography: faith, hope, and charity, but the greatest of these is charity," in assessing cultural anthropology (ed) r borofsky; new york: mcgraw-hill. marcus, g. and fischer, m. 1986. anthropology as cultural critique. chicago: university of chicago press. merriam-webster online dictionary; http://www.m-w.com moore, henrietta. 1994. a passion for difference. cambridge: polity press. moore. henrietta (ed). 1996. the future ofanthropological knowledge. london: routledge. katch . john. 2001 a t ser s guide to the brain new york. pantheon books sahlins, marshall. 2000. culture in practice: selected essays. new york; is volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs zone books. sahlins, marshall. 1999. "two or three things i know about culture." journal ofthe royal anthropological institute 5 (3): 399-421. ulin, robert. 1991 . "critical anthropology twenty years later: modernism and postmodernism in anthropology." critique ofanthropology 11 (1): 63-90. whitehead, alfred north. 1933. adventures ofideas. london; collier macmillan. wilk, richard. 1995. "learning to be local in belize: global systems of common difference," in miller, d. (ed), worlds apart: modernity through the prism ofthe local. london: routledge. wolf, eric. 1994. "perilous ideas: race, culture, people." current anthropology 35 (1): 1-12. volume 19, 2003 19 urban space in perspective | 253 urban space in perspective: an interview with matthew gandy aaron henry aaron henry1 (ah): you have suggested that the process of urbanization is too complex to be captured by a narrow theoretical framework. instead, you have utilized an interdisciplinary perspective that combines a number of fields. can you expand on the analytics you use to put these fields in conversation with one another? matthew gandy2 (mg): the challenge of interdisciplinarity is one of the intellectual driving forces behind my work. but interdisciplinarity presents us with a profound paradox. on the one hand, as andrew barry and other scholars have shown, the movement towards greater interdisciplinarity reflects an emerging emphasis by governments and funding agencies on making scientific research more “useful” and responsive to the needs of a wider spectrum of so-called “stakeholders”. on the other hand, however, the types of research questions we need to pose in order to make sense of urban space necessarily entail the use of more than one discipline, and may extend to radically distinct bodies of knowledge. the field of interdisciplinary research is often conceptualized as an interaction between the social and natural sciences, a dialogue that is most frequently invoked in relation to urban environmental challenges. 1 aaron henry is a phd candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university. his research is focused on the hudson bay company and the formation of colonial registers of territory as a technology of primitive accumulation. other research interests include: state formation, natural history as a conduct of social-spatial inspection, and late nineteenth century projects of pacification. 2 matthew gandy is professor of geography at university college london. his book concrete and clay: reworking nature in new york city (mit press, 2002) was co-winner of the 2003 spiro kostof award for the book within the previous two years “that has made the greatest contribution to our understanding of urbanism and its relationship with architecture.” he is currently completing three book manuscripts: the fabric of space: water, modernity, and the urban imagination (mit press), moth (reaktion animal series), and a co-edited collection the acoustic city (jovis). since 2013 he has been co-editor of the international journal of urban and regional research. 254 | climate change and its discontents yet these earlier attempts at interdisciplinarity, that we could extend to the appropriation of ecological metaphors by the chicago school of sociology, have almost invariably proved unsatisfactory. a typical outcome has been an unreflective extension of one epistemological approach into an unrelated domain or the misapplication of scientific metaphors (a trend observable in more pretentious forms of architectural discourse). so how should we do interdisciplinary work? i would suggest that a first step must be to take seriously the work of different disciplines to understand better their specific agendas, methodologies, and expository strategies. if i draw on art history to analyze cultural representations of cities i want to be sure that i understand the types of key debates in pages of journals such as october that clearly speak to my concerns. equally, if i want to include epidemiological aspects to urban landscapes or appreciate the wider scientific context for protecting urban bio-diversity i need to examine those fields carefully before attempting to combine aspects of the bio-physical sciences with a historically and geographically nuanced approach to the analysis of the production of urban space. the example of art history is significant since the widely held conception of interdisciplinary work as an intellectual pivot between the natural and social sciences can effectively exclude the humanities and a whole raft of critical insights. it is better, i think, to conceive of interdisciplinarity as a triangulation between the social sciences, the natural sciences, and the humanities. i have used this “triangulation” in my recent research on gilles clement’s design for parc henri matisse in lille in response to recent debates about the “rewilding” of urban space and new approaches to urban design. in this context i have been reflecting on the status of an artificially created “urban island” in relation to its ecological dynamics, symbolic significance, and wider connections to urban land speculation. like much of my work the starting point was serendipitous (in this case a chance visit to an exhibition in montreal) and evolved gradually through a process of close engagement with specific sites. ah: you have focused on the technological mastery of water and malaria and its relation to the constitution of urban space in lagos, nigeria. how does linking ecological and epidemiological projects to the formation of urban space allow us to resituate the colonial dimensions of capital accumulation? urban space in perspective | 255 mg: i think a starting point here is to acknowledge that any urban project is simultaneously an environmental project. the transformation of urban space entails a complex set of ecological and epidemiological effects ranging from new types of metabolic interactions with the human body to the destruction and creation of distinctive types of ecological assemblages. in the case of colonial egypt, for example, timothy mitchell shows how the imposition of a particular conception of technocratic modernity, exemplified by large-scale irrigation, generated a public health crisis through the spread of malaria. in my own work on lagos i have been interested in the way new insights into the epidemiology of malaria emerging in the late nineteenth century became incorporated into a form of “scientific racism” that fed into governmental concerns with residential segregation and essentialist understandings of cultural difference. the persistence of malaria in lagos through both the colonial and post-colonial era has occurred in spite of attempts to drain swamps and alter the “disease topography” of the city and its surroundings. in my recent writing on lagos i show how the first serious attempt to control malaria occurred for geo-political reasons during the second world war. the apapa air base near lagos served as the main staging post for british troops in north africa but because of extensive illness that interfered with military operations a vast swamp drainage programme was initiated in the 1940s that also helped to protect the city of lagos itself. by the late 1950s nigeria was a focus for public health optimism about the eradication of malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases through a kind of science-led technocratic modernity but in subsequent decades many of these assumptions behind global health policy have unraveled. with the effective collapse of the nigerian economy in the 1980s and infrastructure planning in disarray it has been possible for malaria and other infectious diseases to become more prevalent in urban areas. the history of malaria, through both the colonial and post-colonial era, serves a poignant indicator for wider tensions and contradictions underlying the development of lagos and its changing socio-ecological dynamics. ah: in a recent talk entitled “mosquitoes, modernity and post-colonial lagos” you suggested lagos may be thought of as “a partial modernity”, “or as a space outside or in distinction of modernity”. arguably, this assessment places modernity on one side as the instrumental rationalization of social, political and ecological processes and the chaos of failed or non-existent attempts to rationalize social life on the other. yet the western imaginary of the city seems increasingly preoccupied by 256 | climate change and its discontents ‘failure’ and ‘chaos’ (e.g. feral cities, the failed city, militarized cities and urban-centered catastrophe). does this perhaps complicate the ‘north’ and ‘global south’s’ ‘custody’ agreement on modernity? mg: the term “partial modernity”, which i used at my public lecture in newcastle, denoted the failure of a particular model of technocratic modernity exported from europe. it is important to recognize that modernity is not a singular teleological process but an array of simultaneous, overlapping, and sometimes contradictory developments. to think of modernity as a multiplicity of forms helps to de-centre urban discourse and avoid manichean distinctions that fail to recognize the global interconnectedness of urban space. ah: you have historicized urban space from the nineteenth century ‘bacteriological city’ to contemporary urban spaces constituted through ‘municipal managerialism’. how, if at all, have environmental concerns shaped the constitution of urban space? has the recent focus on green cities/technologies disrupted spaces of municipal managerialism or served as a means to further mobilize these processes? mg: it is certainly the case that histories of engineering, planning or other professional fields tend to overstate their influence over the urban process. the classic critique here is christine m. boyer’s book dreaming the rational city where she re-interprets the practice of planning within a broader historical and political context. boyer’s account is especially helpful in thinking through the dissolution of the “public interest” as a self-evident or unproblematic focus for professional discourses. the identification of various periodizations can be helpful, certainly in a heuristic sense, but i think terms such as the “bacteriological city” or “municipal managerialism” need to be used in combination with a broader explanatory framework. there is a tendency in much historiographic research to look for patterns, phases, and distinctions that can sometimes obscure interconnected and overlapping sets of developments. i think it is more interesting to reflect on how conceptual terms such as “modernity” have been used in practice rather than worry too much about semantic distinctions. the recent upsurge of “green urbanism” or “ecological urbanism” is a case in point. the speculative dynamics of contemporary urbanization have cannibalized any available vocabulary to provide an ecological veneer to the oxymoronic dimensions to sustainability. the tragedy for municipal managerialism has been the brutal divestment of the public urban space in perspective | 257 realm and the shattering of links between environmental policy and the democratic arena. the possibilities for strategic thinking that might have been achieved via the relative autonomy of the state and its cadre of technical experts has been so extensively circumscribed that the very idea of “public policy” now lies in a zone of conceptual limbo. where does expertise now lie in relation to urban and environmental policy making? in the case of london the disbandment of the city’s regional government in 1986, followed by the re-introduction of a weaker successor authority in 2000, has involved a process of dismemberment and scattering of public sector expertise. in fields such as bio-diversity, for example, london now lacks dedicated scientific personnel, systematic data collection, or a coherent strategy for the future. interestingly, in other cities such as berlin, we can observe how failed privatizations have opened up the possibility for essential services such as water and other utilities to be taken back into public ownership. perhaps what is most critical here is the political need to dispel the deleterious neoliberal mantra of only one pathway and enable an informed citizenry to wrestle back control of urban space. ah: in concrete and clay: reworking nature in new york city, you discuss the environmental politics in new york city around waste management. what does the political scale of the city offer environmental politics, is it an expedient scale for radical political action? mg: i have also been reflecting on this question of scale. i think perhaps there are two dimensions here. first, the scale of urbanization itself and the “ecological frontiers” and “operational landscapes” engendered by the process of urbanization. we can usefully return to henri lefebvre’s distinction between cities and urbanization as is currently underway in the “planetary urbanization” project developed by neil brenner and christian schmid. second, there are the various spaces within which political action and public deliberation can take place. the emergence of a digital public realm is producing new types of intersections and alliances between material locales and different bodies of knowledge. at the same time, however, the massive increase in global inequalities and the etiolated “post-political” characteristics of much policy discourse generates new tensions exemplified by the rise of xenophobia, anti-political movements, and a pervasive sense of confusion and disorientation fostered by corporate-owned media networks and what we might term the “culture industry” in its broadest sense. recent grassroots insurgencies 258 | climate change and its discontents such as the occupy movement have been highly significant in terms of highlighting injustices and attracting global attention but they do not yet offer a coherent political strategy. ah: the ‘spatial-turn’ has brought critical geography to the fore as an important set of analytics. what do you think critical geography can do to help unpack ongoing strategies and projects of austerity in urban spaces? mg: a key aspect of the “spatial turn” is a cross-fertilization of ideas since the 1990s that forms part of the impetus towards more interdisciplinary modes of scholarship that i alluded to earlier in this interview. the term “critical geography”, however, is not as straightforward as it might appear since its use does not so much denote the radical neo-marxian insights of the 1970s and 1980s but to some degree their relative displacement by other approaches in the 1990s that have been loosely grouped under the umbrella of postmodernism. in contrast, i am interested in thinking through critical geography as a radical synthesis between the neo-marxian heritage of radical geography and more recent insights from feminism, queer theory, post-colonial studies and other fields. the just space network in london, involving many of my colleagues at university college london, is a clear example of how critical geography can enrich the public sphere and contribute towards the articulation of alternative strategies for cities. if we want to challenge “austerity urbanism” we need to draw on all the intellectual resources at our disposal. can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 181 can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? big copper versus a small city and the urban environment in a b.c. interior community terry kading and elisabeth bass1 abstract: the citizens of the city of kamloops have found themselves at the centre of a controversial debate over the implications of a bizarre foreign-domestic investment proposal the establishment of a huge open-pit copper and gold mine that extends within the municipal boundaries proximate to the main residential area of this regional centre of 85,000+ citizens. it is our contention that the extent to which this mining proposal has been able to proceed reveals the lengths to which environmental and community concerns have to be minimized by all levels of government to maintain a growth strategy based on low-taxes, balanced budgets and a reliance on private investment, particularly in response to the 2008 global financial crisis. this is not a mining proposal in which a community will emerge in response to the investment with the ability to determine the appropriate distance from the mining activity, but a situation where the mining activity will be imposed upon a substantial population with undetermined environmental and health implications that may have dire implications for the livability and economic future of the residents of this city. the case of kamloops raises the question of whether or not municipalities in canada have any status or protection against aggressive corporate investment decisions with dramatic health and economic affects, for as both the opponents and the mining industry have observed, “[if ] the project is approved it would set a canada-wide precedent” (kapa, 2013; rees, 2013). 1 terry kading is associate professor of political science in the department of philosophy, history and politics at thompson rivers university. elisabeth bass is an undergraduate researcher and work-study student in political science at thompson rivers university. we would like to thank derek cook, lecturer in political science at thompson rivers university, for organizing the community forums that contributed to this article, and the reviewers for their constructive advice. 182 | climate change and its discontents introduction: the ajax mine proposal in a radical neo-liberal environment the ajax mine project will encompass more than 2500 hectares of land, and will be located partially within the city of kamloops, british columbia (city of kamloops, 2013). within city limits will be located the tailings storage facility, process water pond, processing plant, the north waste rock management facility and the ore stockpiles (see map – appendix 1). a small canadian mining firm, abacus mining and exploration co., acquired the rights to the abandoned afton mine site south of kamloops, b.c., and after completing successful tests for copper and gold partnered with mining giant kghm to advance the project (abacus, 2013). located well outside of city limits, and of limited scope and success, the afton mine had encompassed 161 hectares and operated on and off from 1989 until 1997. the ajax project has an expected mine life of 23 years, mining approximately 22 mt of ore a year, where 17 mt of ore was mined at afton over the entire eight year period. thus, the scope and impact of the ajax proposal represents a significant intrusion into this urban centre in which the authority of the local government carries little weight as to the placement of facilities and evaluations of the proposed mining activity. this analysis draws on a critical geographical perspective on neoliberalism to situate theoretically the ajax mine proposal, highlight the path-dependent character of this proposal as part of the neo-liberal reform project, and the “strategic role of cities in the contemporary remaking of political-economic space” (brenner & theodore, 2002, 349). as a distinctive case of “actually existing neo-liberalism” within the broader process of neoliberalization adopted by province of british columbia, the proposal exemplifies the main methodological premises of this perspective: the unstable historical geographies of capitalism, where “the creative destruction of capitalist territorial organization is always unpredictable and deeply contested” and “capital’s relentless quest to open up fresh spaces for accumulation is inherently speculative, occurring through “chance discoveries” and “provisional compromises in the wake of intense sociopolitical struggles”; and the uneven geographical development and the regulation of uneven geographical development that has both fostered a local context amenable to such a controversial proposal and forged the opposition arising from “compensatory regional policies.” most evident is the mining proposal as an example of evolving geographies of state regulation where during periods of crisis the “resultant ‘search for a new institutional fix’ generally entails the partial dismantling or reworking of inherited institutional landscapes in order to can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 183 ‘open up space’ for the deployment and institutionalization of new regulatory strategies” (brenner & theodore, 2002, 355-356). the uniqueness of this project, which also highlights its audacious character, is that while urban spaces in b.c. are subject to the “devolution of new tasks,” “contracting out of services,” “expansion of community-based and private approaches to social service provision,” “emergency shelters” for the homeless and other “creative moments of neoliberal localization,” (brenner & theodore, 2002, 369-372), the proposal is less about revamping the regulatory environment than attempting to utilize existing environmental assessment criteria that was never intended for an open-pit mine within an urban setting. the unwillingness of federal and provincial officials to acknowledge this feature and stop the proposal from advancing stems from the urgency of “growth restoration and budgetary constraint” arising out of the 2008 crisis, in which expanded resource extraction has become a federal and provincial priority (peck, theodore & brenner, 2012, 265). our examination of this mining proposal also supports and expands on the critical analysis of nathan young on the remaking of rural geographies in b.c. arising from the adoption of radical neo-liberalism at the provincial level (young, 2008). young documents the effects in small communities from neo-liberal restructuring in the provincial government and the forestry industry, and the initiatives to address decline and dislocation through “guided entrepreneurialism” and local “independence.” in contrast, our analysis focuses on one of the small cities that have been a net beneficiary from this provincial restructuring, emerging as a “regional centre” providing a range of government services previously available through smaller communities. despite this enhanced status, kamloops remains subject to the “freeing” of corporate actors “to manipulate the spaces of resource production in order to gain efficiencies that are deemed crucial to (global) market competitiveness” (young, 2008, 2). for kghm the placement of the ajax project has many advantages over developing a mine in more remote areas. by locating major mining facilities within city limits there is easy access to an established transportation, water, and electrical network, significantly reducing the time and costs of developing a fully functioning mine site. in addition, there is a large local workforce and mining service providers due to the proximity of the city to two other established mine sites – highland copper and new gold (kghm, 2013). from a resource investment perspective the location is optimal, but within the city this project has fostered deep divisions driven by competing economic, health and environmental fears. 184 | climate change and its discontents on the one side are the supporters of the project, where insecurities generated by the local fallout from the 2008 economic crisis have reinforced the position that the city is in no position to be rejecting a major investment and employment opportunity. the opponents of the project highlight that the environmental costs are not only related to health concerns, but will destroy a number of economic opportunities and dramatically reverse local efforts to diversify against a long-standing weakness of resource dependence. perhaps what is most surprising is an announcement of a billion dollar+ investment commitment in mining at the height of the global financial crisis, an unprecedented context in the history of the resource sector in b.c. unlike previous recession experiences, the 2008 global financial crisis has served to significantly revive rather than undermine the prospects for mining in british columbia, as global prices for a variety of base metals have remained consistently high due to demand from asian markets (particularly china). this has allowed what was a largely moribund industry to offer itself up as a “recession proof” revenue option with high paying jobs, and the ability to address the declining employment opportunities in the forestry sector of the interior and north of b.c. (gratton, 2010; brino, 2013). it is only the ironic persistence of this external demand and price for copper at the height of a major global downturn that explains the unwillingness of the provincial government and the main opposition to reject outright ajax as inappropriate as proposed. accelerated resource extraction is viewed as the basis of a secure financial future that may revive interior economies. thus, short-term electoral calculations, an entrenched bias favoring corporate interests and an inability to accept and promote an alternative development strategy accounts for the silence by the two main political parties (the liberal party of b.c. and the new democratic party of b.c.) as they have become entrapped in the “benefits” of a neo-liberal resource growth agenda. the roots of this “consensus” lay in the decisive defeat of the ndp government by the liberal party under gordon campbell in 2001. the provincial context and the mining revival despite the image of british columbia as largely a resource-based economy dominated by forestry, fishing, and mining, the reality is that by the end of the 20th century, in terms of gdp by industry and number of employees, these sectors had faded in significance. these trends would continue under the liberal government such that by 2007-08 agriculture, forestry and fishing would contribute only 3% to provincial gdp, and less can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 185 than 3% from mining, oil and gas (brownsey, howlett & newman, 2010, 22-23). employment in forestry, fishing, mining and oil and gas combined would decline from 2.6% of the total workforce in 1998 to 1.9% in 2008. over this ten year period the largest employment gains would be seen in transportation (+25,000), education services (+40,000), retail and wholesale trade (+50,000), healthcare (+45,000), professional, scientific and technical services (+40,000), finance and real estate (+35,000) and construction (+100,000). given these trends in employment and contribution to the overall provincial economy, the ajax project is neither significant nor necessary. rather, the ajax project, as part of a larger revival in mining investment, serves to address a political problem created by the effort to maintain a very low corporate and personal tax environment yet generate employment opportunities in the interior. the vast majority of employment growth in services, transportation, construction, and finance has benefitted the lower mainland and southern victoria island region (in and around vancouver and victoria) while most other regions have remained dependent on the declining prospects in the resource sector, notably forestry. this “interior-southern coast” divide would be significantly exacerbated by both the aggressive change in the provincial regulatory framework under the liberal government after 2001, which led to substantial job losses in the forestry industry, and the financial outlay to host the 2010 winter olympic games which favoured the vancouver region. the 2008 financial crisis further pushed the provincial government’s interest in fomenting resource extraction as declining revenues from other sectors has made the royalties from resources extremely attractive to fund a significant number of costly services e.g. healthcare, while attempting to maintain a very low tax environment. coming into the 21st century, though, b.c. was an anomalous context with a higher tax and regulatory regime in place relative to neighbouring jurisdictions, and where perceived low levels of economic growth (versus the national level), private sector investment, and business confidence fuelled a broader societal discontent (and a sense that many were leaving for better employment opportunities in other provinces). the 2001 provincial election was a powerful rejection of the prevailing regulatory model endorsed by the new democratic party, with the liberal party of b.c. garnering 58% of the vote and 77 of 79 seats in the provincial legislature. through the 1990s the new democratic government had enhanced the broad regulatory structure that had developed in b.c. with respect to the business sector and resource industries (brownsey and howlett, 2001, 318 & 323). this regulatory context placed 186 | climate change and its discontents significant requirements on large industries to meet environmental, labour and safety standards, and in the important resource sectors i.e. mining and forestry, to provide employment opportunities to those communities proximate to these resource extraction activities (kukucha, 2005, 220-222; young, 2008, 8-10). this latter feature attempted to ensure that the benefits of these activities were distributed throughout the province. comprised of a social-democratic ideology that favoured the rights of organized labour, workers, and the lower classes, government policies further ensured that a broad range of public services in education, healthcare, social assistance, and regulatory functions, were distributed throughout communities in the province, irrespective of size. the liberal government would quickly initiate the types of changes seen as necessary to bring the province in line with other jurisdictions, establishing a pro-business investment environment with profound implications for small communities and the environment. the liberal government signaled the shift in ideological priorities by cutting tax rates, terminating various government positions, privatizing some government agencies, contracting out government services, and allowing various government entities to raise prices on services (fuller, 2001, 1; fuller & stephens, 2002, 4-7; klein, 2002, 1-8). the broadest attack was on the larger regulatory edifice that was seen as deterring private sector investment and preventing b.c. from being seen as “competitive” with other jurisdictions. this was most evident as the government established a specific minister of deregulation, which decreed that all ministries must cut regulations by one-third, irrespective of content (fuller, 2001, 1). these dramatic reductions in government conditions and oversight would extend to the resource sector, where extraction and processing would no longer be tied to the benefit of local communities. by reducing conditions on resource extraction the expectation was that corporate investment would generate the economic prosperity in the hinterland to secure the rural vote (brownsey, howlett and newman, 2010, 25-26). this “rationalization” in the resource sector would allow for much greater private sector latitude in extraction, transport and processing as corporations desired more flexibility to respond to global market conditions. at another level the liberal government began regional centralization in a range of government services and programs (education, healthcare, legal services, administrative) such that certain regional centres would become the main conduits of essential government services, compelling residents of smaller centres to travel or relocate for access to these can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 187 services (lee, murray and parfitt, 2005; young, 2008, 24). for instance, some 176 schools had been closed by 2009, with the prospect that another 60 were threatened with closure, the majority being in remote areas with declining overall populations (bctf, 2013). within regions, one would see population increases in certain small cities, while surrounding towns and small centres would be confronted with precipitous declines in population due to lost employment in the forestry sector or government services and agencies, often where the government had been either the number one or number two employer. for instance, while kamloops grew by 4% from 2001 to 2006, surrounding small towns had population declines that varied from the 2% range to up to 26% plus (ubcm, 2013). centralization of government services and rationalization in the resource sector generated quite contradictory outcomes, with the future uncertain for many smaller communities. at a provincial level economic growth rates rose, unemployment rates fell, and government revenues increased overall, appearing to vindicate the aggressive policy changes of the liberal government in attracting private sector investment (mcmartin, 2009). these changes, though, would take place at the expense of the broader distribution of high wage jobs that had maintained many small towns and communities in the past. these inequities extended to the regional level as prosperity or “boom times” in some areas were contrasted with economic decline and dislocation in others. by 2008 some 20,000+ jobs had been lost in the forestry industry alone, a loss of over 25% of the workforce in this sector even before the 2008 financial crisis (hoberg, 2010, 332-333; united steel workers, 2008). while forestry exports would begin to stabilize by expanding sales to asian markets, in terms of employment prospects and government revenues, forestry continued to fade in significance, replaced by opportunities in the energy sector. by this time the significance of the energy sector had become apparent, such that from 2001 on government revenues from this sector consistently surpassed forestry, and by 2008 were more than double that of forestry – accounting for 6-7% of all government revenues. investment in natural gas alone had gone from $1.8 billion in 2001 to $7.1 billion by 2008, and by 2013 the liberal government had made the revenue prospects from exporting liquefied natural gas (lng) the centre piece of its reelection campaign as the means to finance government services well into the century (government of bc, 2013). mining activity did not figure as a resource priority for the liberal government until the 2008 financial crisis, and only after 188 | climate change and its discontents it became apparent that base metals appeared to be increasing in royalty contributions to government revenues (schrier, 2011). with declining provincial growth rates more attention was focused on the prospects for mining, particularly as a means to boost investment and employment in the interior where the effects of the financial crisis were being more immediately felt. mining also had the advantage over energy of matching more closely the areas most affected by the fallout in the forestry sector in the southern and central interior, whereas the potential from oil and gas activity is largely concentrated in the remote northeast of the province. unlike the oil and gas sector, though, the numerous proposals that have emerged for mineral development have generated far more environmental scrutiny given their proximity to established communities (in which the ajax proposal is the most extreme in this regard). it is also this accelerated provincial government interest in mineral extraction that has raised questions and suspicions as to the rigor of the provincial environmental review process. what stands out in this regard is the taseko mines limited gold and copper project near william’s lake, which upon submitting its proposal to the province for environmental assessment in 2009 quickly received approval at the provincial level, but failed to receive federal approval due to the multiple deficiencies that were found in the company’s environmental impact statement (mining watch, 2012). to this day this project remains stalled at the federal level. the priority given to accelerated resource extraction with questionable environmental oversight by the provincial government confirms the aggressive quality of the neo-liberal process in b.c., the failed efforts at “guided entrepreneurialism” and compensatory strategies for many communities, and the limits of a low tax environment in funding the necessary services for the province. however, the regional support for these varied extraction initiatives and related infrastructure projects as the “only way” to reverse the fortunes of numerous small communities in the interior has generated a broader liberal-ndp “consensus” on the merits of resource extraction. this has allowed for a new stage of “creative destruction” fraught with contestation (harper, 2013). within this political space, where the liberal government is committed to opening eight new mines by 2015, the measure of how aggressive and contested this stage has become is exemplified by the ajax proposal and the recent experience of the residents of kamloops. can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 189 the local context of insecurity and uncertainty in multiple ways the city of kamloops has been a net beneficiary of the provincial process of centralization as government services became concentrated in this regional centre e.g. provincial lottery, healthcare services, and education, leading to a marked diversification in services, employment and the image of the city. due to the recent diversification away from a long history of resource-dependence at the local level the ajax project has generated differing and complex levels of insecurity and uncertainty as to the effects of this project on the municipality. in addition, and despite the increased expansion and diversification in occupations over time, for decades the region has had to confront a persistently high unemployment rate (until of late). this has fostered a local political culture more receptive to controversial investment initiatives such as ajax. this 1981 to 2001 phase was in marked contrast to the post-war period of unparalleled local growth and prosperity. by the late 1970s this interior centre in british columbia had experienced over twenty years of population growth on the order of seven percent a year, establishing a pattern seen as continuing well into the future. over this period the population had grown from 20,000 to 50,000 and the likelihood of having to address a population in the 80-100,000 range appeared imminent, perhaps by the early to mid-1980s (city of kamloops, 1974, 21; department, 1980, 11). based on the prospects for megadevelopments in energy, mining and forestry individuals were drawn to the area to the opportunities in these primary sectors and related public and private services (development, 1998, 3). the economic recession that began to hit kamloops (and the b.c. interior generally) in late 1981 was an unexpected shock in both depth and duration, and a communityaltering event regarding urban development. by late 1981 the city was mired in mass layoffs and cutbacks, labour strikes and a steep economic decline as a result of depression-era prices on the global market for these resource sectors, leading to the “the dubious distinction of having the highest unemployment rate in the nation” (mcrae, 1983, a1). with the termination of projects and related investment, unemployment hovered from 18% to 28% during the mid-1980s and a steady outflow from kamloops ensued. by the late 1980s city officials recognized that the city had few prospects due to its resource dependence (city of kamloops, 1989, 40-41). the early 1990s saw a brief revival in economic activity but by the mid-1990s stagnation had returned, such that by late in 1999 it was noted that “[t]alk of a community in economic distress has been a primary 190 | climate change and its discontents theme leading to this year’s municipal election in kamloops”(muir, 1999, b1). candidates for mayor were in agreement that kamloops needed an “anything goes” attitude to be competitive with other urban centres for tax revenues and jobs, one candidate noting “[w]e should never be in a position as a city – unless it’s a nuclear reactor – to have to say no to development” (fortems, 1999, a5). at this point, the ajax project would have been a welcome blessing to this distressed community. into the 21st century, growth prospects for the city appeared minimal. the emergence of big box retailers had increased the regional profile of the city, but with a 12%+ unemployment rate, a declining forestry industry and news that the highland valley copper mine may end operations due to low prices generated local fears of continued decline. a gradual turnaround would be marked by the appearance of a major call centre, convergys, which would quickly grow to over 1500s employees, making it the largest private sector employer in the city. pollard note (currency) and northern trailer would establish manufacturing facilities, a local brewery would emerge, and as metal prices rose new gold would begin developing an abandoned gold mine outside of town and highland copper would expand facilities into processing. along with the expansion of the sun peaks ski resort came the creation of other golf course, conference and resort facilities in and around the city, suggesting that kamloops was replicating the “tourist – retirement” dynamic of neighboring kelowna. these diverse initiatives would be supported by a significant increase in provincial spending in healthcare and education, such that the province would be the dominant employer fueling an institutional, commercial and residential construction boom not seen since the late 1970s. by 2010 there had been such a notable change in the fortunes of the city and in the employment profile (see table below), that local concerns over the forestry industry had evaporated, replaced by a focus on expanding opportunities from the university (with a new law school), health services, transportation (air, rail, trucking), retail services, real estate, tourism and retirees. can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 191 kamloops job profile (2000 and 2013)* top 10 employers: employer (2000) employees employer (2013) employees school district 73 1486 interior health authority 2921 royal inland hospital 1446 school district 73 1872 weyerhauser canada 920 thompson rivers university 1780 university college 800 highland valley mine 1256 city of kamloops 650 city of kamloops 713 overlander extended care 450 northern trailer (horizon north) 582 highland valley mine 449 new gold inc. 475 mcdonald restaurants (5) 315 domtar (formerly weyerhauser) 430 canada safeway 306 bc lottery corporation 424 bc lottery corporation 295 cn 320 * 2000 data from mackinnon and nelson, 39; 2013 data from venture kamloops the local effects of the 2008 financial crisis would be most evident in the private sector dynamic that had emerged. convergys would quickly slide in employment and close down in the face of a high canadian currency and broader corporate restraint for their services, along with pollard note. weyerhauser (now domtar) pulp and wood operations would continue to decline in employment (falling below the 430 employees listed above). tobiano, a major golf resort and housing development would go into receivership before completing its plans, and within the city the massive mission hill condominium project would go into bankruptcy as a half completed project. these trends served to heighten employment insecurities as the unemployment rate went from a low of 3.9% (2006) to 8.3% (2008), and 9.1% in 2010 (venture kamloops, 2013). this context allowed the ajax project (with 400 potential positions) to resonate with some local residents, commercial suppliers and trades people – with legitimate concerns regarding the vulnerability of the “new economy” that had emerged, in light of no provincial level commitment to support the diversification – “green economy” trends in place. for both the liberals and the ndp there was a consensus on “fiscal prudence,” “low taxes” (with marginal increases on higher incomes), and expanding resource development. the re-elected liberals placed 192 | climate change and its discontents more emphasis on “balanced budgets,” “debt reduction” and the expansion of government services tied to royalties from aggressive resource extraction, while the ndp only countered with some reservations over the rigor of the existing provincial environmental assessment process. as the two provincial ridings that divide the city of kamloops are comprised of numerous small rural communities awaiting the benefits of a resource revival, and unaffected directly by the proposal, the liberal and ndp candidates in the two local ridings did not contest the appropriateness of an open-pit mine in an urban centre. this created the political space for the ajax project to be left largely unquestioned by the two main parties and local candidates in deference to the existing review process. this silence has allowed kghm to advance the mining project in the face of mounting local opposition and a debatable environmental assessment process being applied to an urban centre. the local opposition those opposed to the ajax mine proposal emphasize the extent to which an open-pit mine is wholly inappropriate for an urban context and the evident lack of adequate assessment criteria in place to even evaluate such a proposal. the opposition to the ajax project is comprised of the kamloops area preservation association (kapa), physicians for a healthy environment (fortems, 2013), kamloops mothers for clean air (kmca, 2013), and two (of nine) city councilors. of these the kamloops area preservation association (kapa) is the most visible, “a group of people brought together by their concern over the proposal to permit the development of a huge, open pit mine far too close to the city … its members include local ranchers, physicians, former mine employees, and residents of knutsford and kamloops.” (kapa, 2013). as they highlight “[w]e are not opposed to mining, but we are opposed to the location of the ajax mine.” those opposed to the ajax mine are concerned that the proximity of the mine is going to pose a threat to the environment, a threat to personal health, and a threat to the considerable efforts to overcome an old and unstable resource-based economy and “industrial” image. the ajax mine would be located on the high ground overlooking kamloops, knutsford, and the ranch-land on the southern perimeter of the proposed mine. if the project is approved it would set a canadawide precedent. up-wind of the city, less than one kilometre from a residential area, and only 2 kilometres from an elementary school, the can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 193 proposed mine would pose a serious threat to the health and well-being of residents, both within and outside the city …. the real estate value of homes located so close to the mine would plummet. the impact of noise, vibration (from blasting), dust and light pollution would irrevocably change the entire character of kamloops, and particularly of the aberdeen, pineview and sahali areas. the dust would easily be carried by the prevailing southwest wind over the entire city. if dust and noise from the mine create significant impacts in the city of kamloops, the population of kamloops could decline as retired people, students, migratory workers, sports tournament participants and tourists move away or avoid the city. selected secondary economic impacts could be substantial. (kapa, 2013) these potential detrimental effects have raised significant concerns for kamloops city council, having devoted considerable time, planning and resources to an alternate vision for the city since 2003. the city of kamloops has three community plans established through broad community consultation that are counter to the impact of the ajax mine: the principles enshrined in the kamplan (the official community plan), the aberdeen plan and the sustainability plan (city of kamloops, 2013). in fulfillment of these plans, the city has taken on considerable debt to finance the expansion of parks, paths, and large recreational and leisure facilities to rebrand the city as a centre of “health and sport” in attracting residents and investment (and from which it has received glowing reviews). the sustainability plan was created to address at the local level issues including water consumption (which had previously been the highest per capita in canada), developing transportation infrastructure to serve a growing population in challenging topography, reducing solid waste to increase the life of the landfill, building on the reputation as canada’s tournament capital (which creates approximately $12 million a year in local economic spinoff), and improving air quality (in recognition of the compromised air shed already in place at certain times of the year). the sustainability plan outlines four phases to balance social, economic, and environmental welfare. sensitive areas and environmental curriculum have been reviewed, and the city has planned land-use and parks, and strategized for community wellness and recycling expansion. future plans suggest a high tech/green industry attraction strategy, a carbon off-set strategy, an air shed plan, and an alternate source study. coun194 | climate change and its discontents cillor donovan cavers, one of only two councillors with a position on the proposal, states that the city will have no chance of meeting these sustainability initiatives once the mine is operational (bass, 2012-13). consultation on the aberdeen area plan was initiated in 2004 to prepare for the tremendous growth expected within the southwest sector and to identify and protect environmentally sensitive sections which were already experiencing groundwater and slope stability issues (city of kamloops, 2008). forty eight percent of the city’s growth is expected for this area and considerable economic commitment has already been invested to create the infrastructure to accommodate this growth. although the impact of the mine will be evident for the entire city of kamloops, the aberdeen growth boundary will only be 310m away from the strategic stockpile and low grade ore stockpile, the closest home within 1400m, the elementary school less than 2000m away and the explosives storage facility less than 4000m from the elementary school. it is already known that the mine will use as much water and electricity as the entire city of kamloops and burn 91,000 litres of diesel per day over the 23 year expected life of the mine (kapa, 2013). although a complete list of chemicals used in the operation of the mine is unknown residents can expect blasting, crushing, concentrating, high powered lighting 24/7, uncomfortable levels of noise, vibration and dust, and a tailings pile so large as to permanently change the topography (reducing exposure to sunlight). the city recognized the looming threat and forwarded to the b.c. environmental assessment office (eao) an eleven page letter of inquiry in 2011, to which kghm was expected to reply. a series of community forums held in the fall and winter of 2012-13 allowed those concerned to review both sides of the argument (bass, 2012-13). norman thompson, for kghm, stated that many members of his organization were long-term residents of kamloops and that the best interests of the community were a priority for their project, however during the question period thompson was unable to answer many questions to the satisfaction of the audience (bass, 2012-13). scott bailey, executive project director of the bc environmental assessment office (eao), presented the process that will consider the ajax proposal, stating that this is a way to identify and evaluate effects of proposed projects and attempt to find ways to mitigate the impacts. in the case of ajax, the proponent kghm, was required to develop a community consultation plan to address the public on issues relevant to the environment, health, and the social and economic effects on the community. public input rounds are to be open for participation during various stages can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 195 of the assessment, and a community advisory group, which bailey mediates, had been established (bass, 2012-13). the eao welcomes kamloops city council to participate in the process, and although they recognize the limited ability of municipal leaders to actually make decisions, they will be listened to and considered. while bailey affirmed that the eao recognizes the uniqueness of the ajax case, short -comings of standards were later made evident by the community advisory group when it was found that kghm may not even have to address the local health effects in its environmental assessment. “they were meant to provide community input during the environmental-assessment process for the proposed ajax copper and gold mine. but, after 15 months of meetings, members of a government-appointed community-advisory group are calling for a complete revamp of the way mines are approved in b.c. “the environmental process is not set up to deal with a mine that’s going to be placed inside a city … and those flaws in the process are glaring” said dr. twila burgman …. “one of the big concerns of kamloopsians is our health, and if that’s not being addressed properly, you can imagine the other concerns we have that are also not being addressed properly.” (klassen, 2013, p. 1) thus, while the eao had initially satisfied some concerns regarding the process, it would become increasingly evident that requests by the community advisory group and city council for urban appropriate assessment criteria and findings would be repeatedly rejected. during the series of community forums there were unexpected indications of a significant negative growth effect due to the ajax mine. an in-house survey of kamloops doctors showed that 70 percent of respondents would definitely or probably not have come to kamloops if the ajax mine was operational (young, 2013). of the152 (of 207) who responded, 105 said that they would not have considered kamloops to practice if ajax had been in place, and 54 stated that they would likely leave kamloops if the project is approved. eighty four percent were concerned about potential health impacts of the ajax mine on kamloops residents. where an estimated 15,000 people already are without a family doctor in kamloops, dr. derek plausins stated that “community leaders do need to know this issue does exist and the social impact is not one to be underestimated. the reality is kamloops has to compete with other communities to recruit doctors. unfortunately this is going to be another hurdle.” the results of the survey have served to highlight both 196 | climate change and its discontents the potential negative effects to health from the mine and the economic impact. as a regional trauma centre already confronting a major shortage in doctors, a further decrease in medical professionals would affect not only kamloops but the entire region. councillor tina lange, who views the mine as a threat to the reputation of kamloops, has emphasized that health care is the number one service that people need and is requesting council confer with health professionals for more information and send a letter to the eao asking for the survey results to be weighted in their reports (bass, 2012-13). however, the role and status of city council in the process overseen by the eao remains uncertain. as the city awaits the completion and submission of an environmental assessment by kghm, the local concerns and divisions escalate. the local newspapers have had almost daily citizen editorials on the ajax project – the majority vehemently opposed on health and environmental grounds. community events with kghm sponsorship have been met with threats of boycotts, and city council has been repeatedly pushed to debate petitions for and against the project. riding-by-riding results of a recent poll in kamloops revealed 43% in favour / 32% opposed (north thompson), and 42% in favour / 36% opposed (south thompson), with about 25% undecided in both ridings (fortems, 2013). during the provincial election the legitimacy of the provincial assessment process was further brought into question as the local ndp candidate for south thompson broke ranks and advocated for an independent federal review of the ajax project after door-to-door canvassing revealed the extent of the fears of local residents most affected by the proposal. through press coverage, editorials, community forums, petitions, and polls, the fears over the environment, health implications, and the potential loss of professionals and the local image have created a context of anxious limbo. pictures in the local paper of vast dust clouds emanating from the highland copper mine on windy days have supported the likelihood of significant increases in particulate throughout the valley from ajax mining activity. other emerging issues include concerns over residential ground stability related to continuous blasting, the proximity of waste storage facilities, and the effects on property values and future residential developments. this anxiety has been imparted largely by kghm in a “relentless quest” to be granted approval by meeting the minimum regulatory requirements stemming from the continuing “open-mindedness” of provincial and federal officials regarding their proposal. can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 197 the corporate response the trepidation that has gripped the city has only been exacerbated by kghm. suspicion was inculcated from the beginning with the kghm proposal in 2010, when the company website stated that the project was to be located 10km south of the city. only local sleuthing revealed the extent of the placement within city limits, thus establishing early signs of deception for some citizens. expected to address air quality, water quality, noise and vibration, and human health and ecological risks, there were initial indications of a priority on the views of local authorities. in the face of mounting opposition kghm has adopted an uncompromising position as to the placement and scope of the project while being ill-prepared to address critical health, environmental, and liveability questions. the corporate response has been to increasingly direct their focus at the provincial level, an arena more disposed to a narrow economic case for advancing this project. by the fall of 2012, the retiring local mla and minister of state for mining, kevin krueger, released a surprising critique in an open letter directed to kghm, confirming the extent of local fears and the suspicions of the opposition. dear ajax, here’s the thing. you really need to start answering some questions publicly, through respected, independent experts, on a range of key questions. i was pleased to hear mr. thompson say in local media that you are fully aware that your mining proposal cheek-by-jowl with some of kamloops’ newest residential developments requires a far higher standard than any other in canada (my paraphrase). it does. i have heard from anxious constituents in droves for many months. good citizens who have been pouring their volunteer time into your “consultations” protest to me that you are burying them in paper, tread milling the process, stonewalling and attempting to put the onus on government. if that is your approach, you will run out of resources long before you have any hope of building a mine …. let’s end the uncertainty, fear, anxiety and acrimony. very fine citizens of kamloops, including a number of highly-prized specialist doctors, are seriously considering moving elsewhere because of the present uncertainties. we don’t want that to happen. (krueger, 2012) krueger called on kghm to spend the money necessary to address all local concerns in order to acquire “social licence,” and warned that 198 | climate change and its discontents unless his suggestions were followed “i have a strong premonition we’ll be wishing you farewell, some time in the future.” rather than heed the advice of the local mla, kghm sought to refurbish its local reputation in the community by changing the messenger, but not the message. kamloops’ highly respected rcmp superintendent, yves lacasse, resigned his position to join the ajax team in early 2013. however, local expectations that lacasse would provide an account of how kghm was willing to address local concerns would be quickly dashed. with the notable increase in organized criticism, and as the tangible negative effects of the ajax proposal became evident, kghm revised the terms of consultation – retreating to the narrowest procedural requirements to advance the project “as is.” initially under abacus it was emphasized that “if any one of the levels of government says no, this project will not go ahead,” including kamloops city council and the thompson-nicola regional district. later, through local newspaper ads, kghm emphasized that the provincial and federal ministers “have the final say on whether or not our project is approved” and “[t] hat means the mines proponents would go ahead with the project with provincial and federal approval even if city council officially opposes it, kghm ajax spokesman yves lacasse confirmed” (klassen, 1). this rigid tone would be carried into kghm’s long-awaited response to city council’s request for more information as “kamloops city council sounded off about a letter from kghm ajax meant to answer questions asked of the proponent two years ago, calling the responses a range of things from less than useless to shallow to a poor excuse. essentially the only thing council did not call it was informative” (stahn, 2013). “coun. nelly dever, noted kghm continues to use other mines as examples as to why ajax will work in kamloops, but refuse to give related information or studies. “when ever we’ve asked for comparative information, they’ve been very reluctant to give that information because according to the answers we’ve received all the mines are different, all mines are independent, are specific to climate, topography.” dever said this is a “poor excuse, whenever we ask a question, and they feel they have their backs up against the wall, they use the reasoning we’ve done it with these other mines before. we should be able to get that information.” (stahn, 2013) instead of addressing concerns the kghm response only aggravated fears, as in the letter to council “the company says they have no plan to can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 199 go beyond the existing footprint, yet literature for investors had previously mentioned future mineral claims and expansion. if you’re telling your investors that you plan to expand – then you plan to expand” noted councilor tina lange. the whole context of this response was not helped by kghm. spokesperson yves lacasse emphasized on submitting the letter that environmental and health questions will be addressed in the company assessment, not in the response to council, and that “quality of life is subjective and a study will only be considered once the mine is in operation” (stahn, 2013). a later request by concerned citizens and city council that kghm complete a “full-blast test” to determine local effects was rejected by kghm as too expensive and not required as part of the assessment process, but kghm did acknowledge that residents will be able to feel the blasting (youds, 2013). a request by the community advisory group for a full-blast test was turned down by the eao, even though geotechnical consultants had reported to the eao the possibility of not just blast vibrations, but “sonic booms” strong enough to shake houses and break windows more than 10km from the proposed mine site (klassen, 2013). frustrated by the intransigence of kghm and the eao, the mayor of kamloops met directly with the federal and provincial ministers to request a full-blast test but received no guarantees (klassen). shortly after this kghm announced that it was considering revising the placement of the controversial structures within city limits, but only because new core samples revealed the potential for developing a much larger mine site. and thus, the anticipated environmental assessment by kghm for the fall of 2013 has been postponed until “at least” 2014 (paillard, 2013). it is apparent that kghm, despite affirming the unique qualities of its proposal, has no intention of making any meaningful or conciliatory gestures to allay the multiple fears and concerns expressed at the local level. meanwhile, kghm site tours and community information sessions continue (with no study results) even though the placement, overall size and impact of the proposed mine and facilities have become even more elusive. the kghm strategy attests to the corporate resolve to force open “new spaces of accumulation” through “chance discoveries” by meeting only minimal standards of regulatory compliance however ill-suited these are for the urban environment they intend to enter. to this end federal and provincial officials have been complicit in encouraging this position by deferring to the existing provincial process in an effort to accelerate resource extraction across the province. 200 | climate change and its discontents conclusion the gravity and the implications of the ajax mine proposal are distinctive versus the quite common disputes over development initiatives in urban centres. city council and community groups remain uncertain as to their role and the weight of their input in the final decision. there is a lack of clarity over the standards and conditions kghm is expected to meet at the provincial or federal levels, and no regard for the established land-use, community or sustainability plans of the city. ‘informal recognition’ of the uniqueness of this proposal by the eao or kghm has not been sufficient to dampen the health or environmental concerns of citizens, or prevent institutions and processes from declining in repute. increasingly it appears the burden of “research” has fallen to the local level, as kghm, despite “expertise” in this area, refuse to provide information regarding health and environmental impacts from other operations, nor has the province been forthcoming as to the potential effects based on data from other mines. the imposition of this project to the potential detriment of the local economy, and the possibility that local citizens may be subject to “constant and involuntary exposure” to contaminants from the mine, strikes many as just wrong, irrespective of the support for the project. the fact that the ajax proposal has proceeded as far as it has represents just how removed canadian authorities are from intuitively acknowledging and enforcing any meaningful precautionary principle that anticipates the negative effects of resource extraction, and why approval of the ajax mine would be precedent setting for corporate investment. that a city with a highly diversified economy, an already compromised air shed, and sustainability plans in place would be considered an investment opportunity for an open-pit mine within city limits, speaks to the entrenched deference to corporate priorities. the project serves no critical employment or revenue needs at the local or provincial levels with some 30+ mining proposals under review, several within the kamloops region, and a local unemployment rate of 5.3% (venture kamloops, 2013). due to the unwillingness of federal and provincial authorities to recognize firm health and environmental standards for urban centres, and the inability to realize the link between these standards and the creation of new economic opportunities, the ajax proposal has been allowed to generate considerable local fear and anxiety for tens of thousands of residents. in the end the “precedent” established by approval of the ajax proposal may prove to be just too controversial for provincial and federal can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 201 authorities, or the requirements on kghm for approval may be too onerous and costly. there is also the very real possibility that declining copper and gold prices, due to slower growth in china and increased supply from mines being developed around the globe at this time, may reduce the corporate commitment to this project. nevertheless, the mere fact that this project has been entertained as “feasible” has established a local context of uncertainty that may continue for many years even if the likely “conditional approval” were established. in that time, the cost to the city in reputation and lost economic opportunities due to reservations over the potential effects of the ajax mine by retirees, students, professionals, tourists, existing residents and other investors may be incalculable. 202 | climate change and its discontents appendix 1 kapa. 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(2001) british columbia: politics in a post-staples political economy. in keith brownsey and michael howlett (eds.) the provincial state in canada (pp. 309-334). peterborough: broadview press. brownsey, keith, michael howlett & joshua newman. (2010). from forestry to film: the changing political economy of british columbia. in m. howlett, d. pilon and t. summerville (eds.), british columbia: politics and government (pp.15-29). toronto: edmond montgomery publications. city of kamloops. (2008). aberdeen area plan. kamloops: city of kamloops. from http://www.city.kamloops.bc.ca/communityplanning/aberdeen. shtml city of kamloops (1974, june). kamplan: survey and analysis. kamloops: city of kamloops. city of kamloops. (1989, may). kamplan 1989: situation audit. kamloops. kamloops: city of kamloops. city of kamloops. (2013). proposed ajax mine. from http://www.kamloops. ca/ajax/land-ajaxmine.shtml city of kamloops. 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(2013, april 18). more support ajax than don’t. the daily news. from http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/20130418/ kamloops0101/130419826/-1/kamloops/more-support-ajax-thandont fuller, sylvia. (2001). “restructuring government in bc.” bc commentary: a quarterly review of provincial and economic trends. 4(4), 1-2. fuller, sylvia and lindsay stephens. (2002). cost shift. vancouver: canadian centre for policy alternatives. government of bc. (2013). lng – liquefied natural gas: a strategy for bc’s newest industry. victoria: ministry of energy and mines. from http:// www.gov.bc.ca/ener/popt/down/liquefied_natural_gas_strategy.pdf gratton, pierre. (2008). mining industry in bc: key issues and trends -presentation to bc construction roundtable from http://www.mining. bc.ca/presentations?page=1 gratton, pierre. (2010). the renaissance of mining in british columbia keynote address, vancouver board of trade business luncheon, bc mining week 2010 from http://www.mining.bc.ca/speeches harper, margo. (2013, september 21). coal mining protest in b.c. set to erupt. globe and mail. p. a8. hewlett, jason. (2013, august 1). no guarantee on mine blast: milobar delivers ajax worries to b.c. ministers. the daily news. pp. a1-a2. hoberg, george. (2010). bringing the market back in: bc natural resource policies during the campbell years. in m. howlett, d. pilon and t. summerville (eds.), british columbia: politics and government (pp. 331352). toronto: edmond montgomery publications. kapa – kamloops area preservation association. (2013). stop ajax mine. from www.stopajaxmine.ca/about-kapa kghm international. (2013). kghm international ajax project – project information centre from www.ajaxmine.ca/documents.html klassen, andrea. (2013, april 23). advisory group wants federal review on ajax. kamloops this week. pp. a1 klassen, andrea. (2013, april 2). ajax: city opposition not applicable. kamloops this week. pp. a1. klassen, andrea. (2013, july 30). city’s ajax report lands with a boom. air blasts could shake houses, break windows, consultants says. kamloops this week. pp. a1 & a7. http://www.mining.bc.ca/presentations?page=1 http://www.mining.bc.ca/presentations?page=1 http://www.mining.bc.ca/speeches can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 205 klassen, andrea. (2013, august 1). ajax rejects calls for blast test. kamloops this week. pp. a1. klein, seth. (2002). reckless and unnecessary. vancouver: canadian centre for policy alternatives. kmca – kamloops mothers for clean air. (2013). from www. kamloopsmomsforcleanair.com koopmans, robert. (2013, january 31). lacasse hopes to bridge ajax divide. the daily news.from http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/20130131/ kamloops0101/130139970/-1/kamloops/lacasse-hopes-to-bridgeajax-divide krueger, kevin. (2012, october 29). an open letter to ajax. the daily news. from http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/20121029/ kamloops0303/121029866/-1/kamloops/an-open-letter-to-ajaxmine kukucha, christopher. (2005). lawyers, trees and money: british columbia forest policy and the convergence of international and domestic trade considerations. canadian public administration. 48(4),506-527. lee, marc, and stuart murray, ben parfitt. (2005). bc’s regional divide: how tax and spending policies affect bc communities. vancouver: canadian centre for policy alternatives. mackinnon, robert and ross nelson. (2005). urban and economic change in kamloops: postindustrial adjustments in a staples economy. in w. f. garrett-petts (ed.). the small cities book: on the future of small cities (pp. 23-48). vancouver: new star books. mcmartin, will. (2009, april 23). bc’s economy: whose was best? the tyee. from www.thetyee.ca/views/2009/04/23/bcecon mcrae, allen. (1983, february 4). jobless rate still high. the kamloops news. pp. a1. mining watch. (2012, december 11). taseko gets an incomplete: 50 substantial deficiencies found in environmental impact statement. from http:// www.miningwatch.ca/blog/taseko-gets-incomplete-50-substantialdeficiencies muir, jennifer. (1999, november 18). a big box story: is the retail invasion hurting other businesses? kamloops daily news. pp. b1. paillard, sylvie. (2013, august 3). kghm changes ajax scope. the daily news. pp. a1-a2. peck, jamie, nik theodore; and neil brenner. (2012). neoliberalism resurgent? market rule after the great recession. south atlantic quarterly. 111(2) 265-288. rees, simon. (2012, august 23). kamloops development project to set environmental precedent. from www.miningweekly.com/ article/kamloops-development-project-to-set-environmentalstandard-2012-08-23 206 | climate change and its discontents schrier, dan. (2011, may 11). bc’s mining sector digging up more export dollars. bc stats – analytical reports. from www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/ publications/analyticalreports.aspx?subject=mining stahn, jennifer. (2013, may 3). kghm ends 104 weeks of waiting (sort of). infotel. from http://infotel.ca/newsitem/kghm-ends-104-weeks-ofwaiting-%28sort-of%29/it1759 stahn, jennifer. (2013, may 8). kghm response to ajax questions offer little information. infotel. from http://infotel.ca/newsitem/shallow-letter-asmall-step-not-enough/it1827 ubcm. (2013). 2006 census information for b.c. municipalities. from www. civicinfo.bc.ca/81_ver2.asp united steel workers. (2008). campell’s legacy of mismanagement. from usw2009.ca.ca/docs/forestry%2010%20point.pdf venture kamloops. (2013). community facts. from http://www. venturekamloops.com/communityfacts.htm venture kamloops. (2013). labour force. from http://venturekamloops.com/ labour.htm youds, mike. (2013, july 29). ajax urged to conduct full-test blast. the daily news. pp. a1-a2. young, michele. (2013, november 20). doctors down on ajax, survey suggests. the daily news. from http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/ article/20121120/kamloops0101/121119876/-1/kamloops/doctorsdown-on-ajax-survey-suggests young, nathan. (2008). radical neoliberalism in british columbia: remaking rural geographies. canadian journal of sociology. 33(1). 1-36. taking treedom of the press' seriously: critical media sociology and the challenge of democracy 1 david c. robinson carleton university media sociology and the troblem' of democracy the free press is the omnipresent open eye of the spirit of the people, the embodied confidence of a people in itself, the articulate bond that ties the individual to the state and the world, the incorporated culture which transfigures material struggles into intellectual struggles and realizes its raw material shape. it is the rutnless confession of a people to itself, and it is well known that the power of confession is redeeming. the free press is the intellectual mirror in which a people sees itself, and self-viewing is the first condition of wisdom. karl marx 2 freedom of the press is a sham as long as the best printing plants and huge stocks of paper are in the hands of capitalists. v.i. lenin 3 by proposing that 'freedom of the press 1 needs to be taken seriously, i want to suggest that many media sociologists — and particularly those working within critical and marxist traditions — can be charged with failing to think through, in any sustained manner, the democratic claims of liberal media theory. as lenin's polemical comments reveal, there has been an all too common tendency to sweep aside liberal theories of 'freedom of the press' without adequately addressing the substance of such claims. consequently, critical media sociology has been crippled by its inability to elaborate a strategy for the development of a socialist and democratic press. failing to take freedom of the press seriously raises a fundamental question: is the current theoretical framework of media studies capable of confronting the problem of how to construct a democratic press? such a question has been made all the more pertinent given the collapse of communism in eastern europe. the failure of 'actually existing' socialism and the virtual overnight monopolization of press markets in those nations has lent added force to voices in the west advocating neo-liberal reforms of the public media. centuries old arguments defining 'freedom of the press' solely in terms of private alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 57 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 competition have made a successful return. neo-liberals have launched a series of attacks against state regulation and public broadcasting by arguing that unfettered market competition is the key condition of media freedom: it keeps prices low, it forces suppliers to take risks, it guarantees access to the marketplace of ideas, and it allows consumers to decide for themselves what products will be produced (see owen 1975:26-27). given the recent erosion of many public channels of communication and their subsequent domination by market forces, there is a pressing need to re-examine debates surrounding 'freedom of the press'. in this paper, i will argue that while critical studies of news production — radical elite theory, organizational studies, and the marxist political economy tradition — can provide one with the conceptual tools required to successfully deconstruct neo-liberal claims, they fail to arm one with the necessary instruments to reconstruct a practical alternative to existing patterns of news production. given the failure and abuses of state-administered socialism, socialists need to take 'freedom of the press' seriously, to radically reconsider what marx recognized as the positive claims of liberal free press theory. to this end, i propose to advance the research project begun by marxist critiques of news production by wedding them to a tradition of democratic thought in order to produce a third position — a radical democratic theory. a radical democratic theory of news production will emphasize that the unfettered competition of media producers ultimately restricts freedom by generating barriers to entry, restricting diversity, and converting public information into private commodities. however, it will depart from the critical paradigm of media studies by questioning its monolithic portrait of the media and by challenging its traditional reliance upon state-centred reform. drawing principally upon the democratic theory of habermas, i will argue that the news media need to be reconstructed as a participatory and decentralized public sphere in which private citizens can gather to debate issues of public concern, monitor state authority, and expose private power (habermas, 1979:198). the claims of liberal media theory historically, the origins of liberal media theory in the west can be traced to the early struggles waged by the ascending bourgeoisie against the censoring authority of absolutist states. the 18th century formation of 58 robinson/freedom of the press a press critical of government and the ruling aristocracy already contained the seeds of what has come to be its widely accepted role in democratic society — as a watchdog on the affairs of government and as an independent organ of public debate (mill, 1972:78-79). it was argued by many early reformers that both the independence of the press from the state and its role as a facilitator of public discussion could best be achieved by subjecting it to the impersonal and self-regulating forces of market competition. indeed, the absence of any extra-economic agency in the transactions that took place in the 'marketplace of ideas' guaranteed that the press would be free from any kind of state coercion. further, the economic power of each individual consumer and producer, it was alleged, was subordinate to anonymous laws of exchange; this would preclude one individual from unduly influencing the market and restricting the free and open flow of public communications (habermas, 1989:79; wuliger, 1991:153). market competition would guarantee that decentralized individual decisionmaking involving only the calculus of personal gain would decide what messages would be produced and what messages would survive in the open market (owen, 1975:26-27). in rallying against the very real abuses of state censorship, however, market liberals were subsequently blinded to the possibility that non-state power structures could intervene in the process of public debate, thus limiting access to the market (curran, 1991:29, garnham, 1990:1718). the possibilityof the self-censorship of media producers, for example, was occluded. 4 furthermore, while it is assumed that democratic access is unproblematic under competitive conditions, history has revealed that unfettered market competition tends to raise production costs, constructing a formidable barrier to potential producers (keane, 1989:39). as for the cost of entry as a consumer, and the discrimination against those with low incomes, market liberals are silent. while more recently developed neo-liberal media theories put a contemporary inflection on the issue of freedom of the press by attacking modern public service broadcasting and state regulation, they nevertheless share the limitations of their predecessors. if the issue is whether or not the laws of the market can ensure democratic access to the channels of public communication, then both the liberal and neo-liberal defense of unfettered competition remain unconvincing. while neo-liberals argue that the market is efficient and promotes diversity, free competition has only eroded competition, discouraging potential producers, and 59 xuernate routes, volume 10, 1993 encouraging mergers and takeovers that have culminated in the rise of multinational media conglomerates (bagdikian, 1985, 1990; curran, 1977; keane, 1990; murdock, 1982, 1990; schiller, 1989). as further evidence that the market fails to encourage competition, one need only examine the old soviet bloc states in which state monopolies have been quickly replaced by private monopolies (sparks, 1992). the general weakness of market liberal approaches, therefore, has been their failure to conceptualize how market pressures restrict access to the media and undermine the spirit of universality implicit within the claims of 'freedom of the press'. in reacting so strongly against the threat of state power, liberal media theories tend to mask over those non-state power structures (e.g. capitalism, patriarchy) that can just as easily censor public expression. consequently, this lacunae represents the point of entry for critical studies of news production. radical elite theory-: economic power and the management of news for radical elite theorists, democratic access to the media is undermined by the unequal power relations that permeate a class-divided society. the control and ownership of the media by wealthy owners from the privileged class means that editorial policy will be dictated by individuals "whose ideological dispositions run from soundly conservative to utterly reactionary," (miliband, 1973:204). ownership grants media elites the power to manufacture and disseminate class propaganda; they can function as "mind managers" (schiller, 1973) and generate ideologies themselves, or they can act as "gatekeepers", selecting and screening ideas and opinions (clement, 1975:282). through the appointment of personnel, and the establishment of specific editorial policies, the media elite manage the production of news in ways that favour dominant class interests (bagdikian, 1985:104-106). this understanding of the 'gatekeeper' significantly alters and radicalizes earlier definitions of the term. whereas white's (1950:386) classic study concluded that what was accepted or rejected by one news gatekeeper (a wire editor) was highly subjective, radical elite theories propose that the process of news selection and rejection is more a function of the gatekeeper's position within the objective conditions of a class structured society for example. clement's detailed survey of the bibliographic data of the executives and directors of canada's largest media conglomerates 60 robinson/freedom of the press reveals that members of this group overwhelmingly come from privileged backgrounds and have close links with other economic elites. because media elites are inextricably tied into such power relations, clement concludes that they are favourable to capitalist ideology and manage the flow of news by filtering out alternative views and opinions: "the mass media in canada are class institutions run by, for and in the interest of the upper class" (1975:341). against the backcloth of economic power, "the free expression of ideas and opinions mainly means the free expression of ideas and opinions which are helpful to the prevailing system of power and privilege" (miliband, 1973: 197). the suggestion that owners directly influence the editorial content of the news media has been widely debated and criticized. in his work, black (1982: 1 14) argues that direct editorial intervention is rare. indeed, the ideas and opinions of owners often take a back seat to the financial imperatives of economic survival (hartley, 1982:48). hackett (1986:144), schudson (1989), and schlesinger et. al. (1983:163) point out that there is a relative diversity of opinion within the media and messages that are seemingly in contrast to dominant ideological positions do appear. while radical elite theorists may not deny this, they nevertheless run the risk of overstating the homogeneity of dominant interests and the internal consistency of dominant discourses (curran, 1991:36). further, there is a tendency to overplay the extent of ideological domination of subordinate classes; in the radical elite model, the media audience is often portrayed as a passive and malleable mass open to direct ideological indoctrination. however, this tends to ignore how readers and spectators make meaning, how they 'decode' the news (schlesinger, 1989:301; hackett, 1986:146; morley, 1980; hall, 1980). finally, hall et. al. (1978) suggest that, contrary to radical elite assumptions, journalists are not subjected to overt managerial control. rather, news workers maintain a measure of 'relative autonomy', allowing them to shape a news story in ways that might not please upper management. hence, the ideological role of the media "cannot be simply attributed. ..to the fact that the media are in large part capitalist-owned..., since this would be to ignore the day-to-day 'relative' autonomy of the journalist and news producers from direct economic control" (1978: 57). radical elite theories have thus received a number of potentially disabling blows. however, in many instances the critique of this work tends to bend the stick too far in the other direction, overplaying the 'relative autonomy' of journalists and the resistant readings of audiences. 61 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 in such cases, the crucial issue of the relationship between ownership, access, and news content is simply skirted. yet, the rise of a new generation of interventionist owners such as rupert murdoch, conrad black, and the late robert maxwell, reveals that media elites can exercise some degree of authority over their respective organizations. when murdoch purchased the sunday times in 1981, for example, he placed pressure on senior editors to move the politics of the paper to the right. faced with such intrusive management, more than one hundred 'relatively autonomous' journalists either left the newspaper in protest or were fired (curran, 1990:132). while the sunday times example may be an extreme case, it does point to the fact that media elites can and in some cases do exert powerful pressures on the news production process. radical elite theorists, therefore, do not necessarily deny that journalists enjoy a degree of professional autonomy, but they argue that on balance the ideological interests of those who own and manage the media are served. even if radical elite theorists tend to overstate the magnitude and frequency of managerial intervention and ideological control, they are nevertheless correct to emphasize that the right of ownership carries with it a significant degree of power to shape the nature of public discourse. the study of news organizations: the social construction of reality radical elite theories attempt to discount the liberal claim that market competition guarantees a diverse and democratic flow of news and information by pointing to the unequal distribution of power within a class-based society. organizational studies of the news media, on the other hand, challenge liberal media theory by shifting the focus of analysis away from elite manipulation of the news and toward the institutional settings and work practices of the journalists who selectively define, determine, and shape the world's events (molotch and lester, 1974; tuchman, 1978: 179). questions of access to the media and of the relationship between media production and ideological reproduction are rcconceptualized, not as a process of direct intervention, but as a consequence of the routine tasks of news production itself (chibnall. 1977; clarke, 1987; ericson ct. al., 1987; schlesingcr, 1977). however, this theoretical advance is accomplished with an added risk. by focusing the analysis upon the internal workings of media institutions, there is the danger of underplay ing the broader social-economic context within which news practices arc undertaken (bruck, 1981:13). 62 robinson/freedom of the press organizational studies, on the whole, conclude that the primary factor affecting who and what will be given access to the media stems from the institutional needs of the media industry. for example, tuchman's (1978: 21) study of the seemingly chaotic newsroom environment concludes that time and budgetary constraints force journalists to cast a 'news net 1 over the social world. how far the net is flung, when it is flung, and how tight the mesh is woven will determine which events and issues will be covered. because of the constant pressure of meeting deadlines and budgets, journalists are encouraged to cast their net in the direction of 'legitimate' institutions and official sources who conduct 'routinized events' such as organized press conferences and public speeches (tuchman, 1978:93-95; epstein, 1973:32). fishman (1978, 1980), gans (1979: 284), and molotch and lester (1974:107) conclude that this dependency upon institutional sources leads journalists to view the world as bureaucratically structured, a process reflected in the division of labour into institutional 'news beats' (e.g. city hall, police, courts). such a dependency grants privileged access to social elites and means that anything that is outside or in violation of bureaucratic procedures is a 'non-event' (fishman, 1980:84). consequently, there is the danger that bureaucratic elites can manage the media for their own institutional needs (ericson et. al., 1989; schlesinger, 1990). hence, the implication of this research is that groups and social movements that espouse oppositional politics are forced to compete for media attention with well established and well financed bureaucracies. in order to enter the public sphere, therefore, counter-hegemonic groups are tacitly encouraged to alter their organizational structure to conform to the bureaucratic standards demanded by news gatherers (gitlin, 1980:242-244). as a result, social movements are in danger of being absorbed by or, alternatively, expelled from the dominant knowledge structure of society. furthermore, such constraints as time, technology, and money help determine not just what gets reported, but also how it is reported and framed. as tuchman (1972:662) argues, the very nature of 'objective' and 'balanced' reporting results from journalists' attempts to minimize risks imposed by deadlines, libel suits, and supervisors' reprimands. the professional code of objectivity, in turn, limits access to the media in two ways. first, 'impartial' and 'balanced' reporting requires journalists to juxtapose contrasting views and conclude that the truth lies somewhere 63 alternate routes. volume 10, 1993 in the middle (epstein, 1973:67, 168-169). however, this discourse of consensus tends to mask over the fundamental divisions within the social world (clarke, 1987:628). hence, counter-hegemonic social actors who want to publicly question the nature of this consensus may find their arguments muted by the professional mandate to present the news in a balanced and consensual form. second, 'objectivity' restricts access by allowing media organizations to secure and maintain their monopoly positions (soloski, 1989:214). if the news were presented in an overtly political manner, then the market would be ripe for competition. by reporting the news objectively, however, reader loyalty is not made a function of the ideological stance of the newspaper. despite their general strengths in detailing the institutional and professional practices that limit democratic access to the news media, one problem nevertheless plagues many of these studies, namely a kind of 'organizational determinism'. for example, while epstein (1973) and tuchman (1972, 1978) provide a detailed and convincing list of the economic and political constraints that affect the production of news, there is little attempt to trace these factors to their origins. the strongest studies in this tradition are those that stress that the organizational needs of media industries do not spring up spontaneously and independently, but are themselves determined and conditioned by a larger frame of analysis — the sets of social relations that figure in capitalist society and that extend through and shape the media organization in the first instance (clarke, 1987:39-40; schlesinger, 1977). while time, technology, money, and professional codes of journalism undoubtedly exert a considerable influence upon the production of news, it is important to recognize another level of pressures and limits, those derived from market relations. the marxist political economy tradition: the market as censor radical political economists, by focusing upon the structural logic of capitalist production, have raised three interrelated objections to the universalist claims of liberal media theory: 1) the logic of competition fosters the growth of monopolies, raising costs and discouraging potential producers; 2) as an advertising driven industry, only those media that can deliver attractive audiences to advertisers will survive and, thus, not all citizens will be served by the media; and 3) advertising-financing encourages a separation between information-rich and information-poor media products that exacerbates class differences. hence, unlike radical 64 robinson/freedom of the press elite theories which tend to focus their analysis on who controls the media, the neo-marxist political economic tradition concentrates more on how the underlying forces of a capitalist economic system structure both the operations and outputs of media organizations (murdock, 1980:38; murdock, 1982:124; garnham, 1986b). 5 historically, the promise of universal access to the marketplace of ideas has been circumvented by the ever increasing concentration of media ownership which has drastically reduced the number of outlets necessary for the dissemination of a diverse set of views and opinions (royal commission on newspapers, 1981:119-121). more recently, the success of neo-liberal initiatives in persuading governments to privatize public communication networks and to deregulate other parts of the industry have only excerbated the trend toward greater monopolization and conglomeration. during the late 1980s, for example, a wave of corporate deals culminated in ge's acquisition of nbc, sony's takeover of cbs, and the merger of time inc. and warner brothers (murdock, 1990:1; kellner, 1990:66). this feature of the communications industries, according to neomarxist political economists, is not simply indicative of a 'failure' in the market, as liberals would have it (see owen, 1975:27). rather, it is endemic to the competitive market system itself. there is a structural tendency embedded within marketplace competition that drives producers to lower their operating costs. one of the principle ways in which this is accomplished is through a shift to greater economies of scale in production. however, this strategy raises the cost of entry to the market and discourages potential producers (keane, 1991:80; curran 1977, 1978; schiller, 1989:36). 6 in short, there appears to be a structural contradiction between freedom of expression and unlimited freedom of the market. it is thus doubtful that a communications system dominated by private ownership and market competition can secure the diversity of news and debate required for the development of an informed citizenry and an effective democratic process (murdock, 1990:4; picard, 1985:132133). beyond the issues of media concentration and corporate power, political economists stress that an analysis of the specific nature of commodity production within the media industry reveals that dependency upon advertising revenue factors in a whole complex set of pressures which shape the production of news. smythe's work suggests that the real commodity produced by the news media is not a television program 65 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 or a newspaper item, but an audience that is sold to advertisers (1977, 1981:16, 23-39). the non-advertising content of the media is a 'free lunch' designed to attract specific audiences so that advertisers may be able to reach them with their messages. the 'free lunch' precludes the existence of oppositional voices in the media since advertisers demand content that will "cultivate a mood conducive to favorable reaction to the advertisers' explicit and implicit messages," (1981:38). the media act as a 'hegemonic filter', screening in the values of the capitalist system and screening out unwanted ideas, not by way of an elite gatekeeper, but as a function of the imperatives of commodity production — the need to produce audiences to sell to advertisers. while smythe's argument has sparked a great deal of controversy, 7 it nevertheless raises a number of key questions about how the economic logic of news production undermines the principle of democratic access. that is, one of the consequences of the media's dependency upon advertising revenue is that those products that cannot gather audiences that advertisers find attractive will simply not survive. the demise of the radical working class press in britain, for example, has been directly attributed to the inability of such newspapers to lower cover prices by increasing advertising space (curran, 1977, 1979, 1980). advertisers, in their quest to reach 'up-market' audiences, have historically exerted a powerful pressure on the radical press to redefine its target audience and moderate its editorial stance (curran, 1977:219; schudson, 1978:25). even today, wary of losing audiences and advertising revenue, the news media come to occupy a kind of ideological 'middle-ground' and package their 'free lunch' accordingly (gruneau and hackett, 1990:291). in the process, significant social interests are simply not represented. advertising pressure is also exacerbating recent trends toward market segmentation that are generating a 'two-tiered' press system. in many western nations, markets are sharply divided between a popular tabloid press that is comprised primarily of 'light' entertainment stories, and an elite quality press that features 'serious' matters of finance and politics (curran et. al., 1980; ericson et. al., 1991:42; sparks, 1988, 1991, 1992). in order to understand this phenomenon, one must keep in mind that an advertising-financed press system channels marketing strategies in two possible directions, toward capturing a large and heterogeneous audience, or a small but wealthy audience that advertisers find highly attractive. for example, the british tabloid the sun charges advertisers 66 robinson/freedom of the press $us 52,000 to reach an audience of 10,220,000. in order to reach the 694,000 readers of the financial times, however, advertisers are willing to pay $us 45,600 (sparks, 1992: 39). proportionally, advertisers are prepared to invest far more to reach the educated and wealthy readers of the financial times; this suggests that elite social groups are 'overrepresented' in the media market. therefore, given that papers with smaller circulations and elite readers can earn advertising revenue very close to those with large mass audiences, no real incentives exist for the quality press to extend its readership beyond its small market. the market for news and information, as driven by the demands of advertisers, is thus becoming highly fragmented and is further widening the gap between those who are 'information-rich' and those who are 'information-poor'. the new 'quality' press, with the majority of its space devoted to public policy issues, is highly inaccessible. its textual density and significantly higher cover price effectively exclude those consumers who lack the educational, cultural, and financial capital necessary to digest the material. 8 contrary to liberal press theory, marketplace competition cannot live up to its claims of universal access. structural imperatives of private competition and advertiser-financing necessarily create a situation in which access for both producers and consumers of information is restricted. a tost-bourgeois' public sphere: a radical democratic response the lamentable but inevitable conclusion that must be drawn from research over the past couple of decades is that the communications media have failed democracv. peter golding (1990:100) from the review of the literature, it is clear that a number of institutional factors continue to militate against the full realization of 'freedom of the press'. the private ownership and growing concentration of the media industries are granting more power to corporations and elites while public channels of communication are steadily weakened (melody, 1990; schiller, 1989). market imperatives that have conditioned particular organizational practices have led journalists to adopt news gathering routines and professional ideologies that work against the dissemination of oppositional ideas and opinions. further, the structural logic of a competitive market system leads to increased costs of entry and monopolization, thus reducing diversity. as the news media have come 67 alterncte routes, volume 10, 1993 to rely more and more upon advertising, popular radical views have been forced out of the market. finally, advertising imperatives have led to a class-based segmentation of the press which is further accelerating the gap between the information-rich and the information-poor, a phenomenon that is occurring throughout the communications industry (murdock and golding, 1989). taken together, these arguments suggest that there is good reason to be concerned about 'freedom of the press' today. however, the great limitation of the critical work surveyed above is the inability to investigate the relationship between the media and democracy beyond the critique of existing models of private ownership. in many cases, the media is constructed as a giant monolith of the ruling class or as a rigid ideological state apparatus impervious to reform of any kind short of a revolutionary transformation of society. in other work, a faith in state-administered remedies fails to move the analysis beyond the state/market dichotomy initiated by liberal media theory (garnham, 1986a:39-41). however, state collectivist solutions have often in practice led to direct control of the media (as in the former ussr), or to the indirect state pressures exercised in liberal democracies. in the latter instance, governments can exert a powerful influence over the media through appointments, funding, the granting of state advertising contracts, 'information control', and the establishment of policy guidelines (curran, 1991:47; keane, 1991:103; murdock and golding, 1989:189; herman and chomsky, 1988:24). the real challenge facing media sociology, therefore, is one of reforming the manner in which news and information is produced so as to avoid the dangers of both state and non-state censorship. to this end, habermas' research into the nature of the public sphere — the realm in which citizens can develop and express their political will — has provoked a great deal of recent interest within media studies. according to habermas (1979, 1989), a 'bourgeois public sphere' emerged in western europe in the late eighteenth century as the ascending middle classes struggled against the powers of the absolutist state. in the process, a new social space developed between the state and civil society. unlike the 'representative public sphere' of the feudal period within which rulers merely displayed their power before the people, the bourgeois public sphere was one within which private citizens could gather to debate and discuss issues about the exercise of power in coffee houses, salons, reading clubs, and most notably in the press. 68 robinson/freedom of the press individuals could become informed and express opinions about the activities of government. while habermas stresses the positive qualities of the early public sphere — its claims of equality, universalism, and rationalism — he also admits that such claims were hollow, for only the educated male property-owners of the day were ever granted access (habermas, 1989:109-110). nevertheless, habermas emphasizes that the ideal of the bourgeois public sphere is important to retain, especially in contemporary societies in which there has been a dramatic 'refeudalization' of the public sphere. echoing earlier critiques of the 'culture industry' (horkheimer and adorno, 1972), habermas argues that the emergence of the mass media and the public relations industry has transformed a culture-debating public into a culture-consuming public (habermas, 1989:160-161). public policy decisions are now made in secret between the state and large bureaucratic interest groups (political parties, lobby groups, 'thinktanks') and then 'sold' to citizens by way of the mass media and the persuasive techniques of advertising. the public's role in debating the allocation of resources and the regulation of social relations has been superseded by profoundly anti-democratic institutions. in this regard, habermas' work bears a close resemblance to the democratic themes first expressed by tonnies (1955:255-256) and dewey (1946/1927:117-121). all three authors point to the eclipse of active public participation in a bureaucratically administered society. witnessing the rise in prominence of 'public opinion', for example, tonnies feared that both the state and powerful private interest groups would try, by nefarious means, to shape the public will for their own gain (1955:256). recognizing the same tendency in american society, dewey argued that only the public education of all citizens and the free flow of communication could lead to the recovery of public life (1927: 166). in advancing the work of these authors, i do not mean to suggest that it is unproblematic. habermas has been criticized — rightly, in my view — for his pessimistic portrayal of 'mass' society, his romantic conception of the bourgeois public sphere, the complete omission of alternative 'plebian' public spheres, and his unqualified acceptance of rational speech over and above all other forms of communication (keane, 1984:90-93, 179; curran, 1991:42; scannell, 1989). likewise, dewey's assertion that the free flow of communication alone is enough to guarantee the formation of a democratic public tends to gloss over the existence of a whole series of inegalitarian social relations (patriarchy, 69 alternate routes. volume 10. 1993 wage-labour) that require democratic reform as well. nevertheless, i think that the democratic thought of these writers, with its participatory and communicative emphasis, provides some of the groundwork necessary for constructing a 'post-bourgeois' public sphere when it is wedded to elements of the marxist critique of the production of news. in order to extend media access to citizens who have been excluded, there is a need to reconceptualize communication systems, and the news media in particular, in ways that continue to challenge liberal media theory and yet recognize the limitations of the marxist and neomarxist critique. a radical democratic theory, therefore, should not view the media solely as the independent watchdog of the state nor as the rigid ideological apparatus of late capitalism. rather, the media need to be conceptualized as the potential public space in which freely communicating citizens discuss, protest, and debate issues relating to the allocation of economic, political, and cultural resources. consequently, a truly democratic media system must seek to represent all significant interests in society. this can be accomplished through the recognition and progressive reformation of those institutional configurations that inhibit full public participation: ownership and media concentration; organizational constraints and journalistic practices; the structural imperatives of advertising-financed media production; and the class segmentation of audiences. ownership and concentration. the right of private ownership carries with it a considerable degree of power over the channels of public communication and the machinery of social representation. likewise, the ever increasing concentration of news media outlets raises real fears that a large number of public interests are not being served. because there are many different and conflicting ways in which meaning about the world can be constructed, who gets represented, what gets left out, and how people, things and events are signified are profoundly important. however, the current structure of media ownership prevents different kinds of social groupings and representations from entering into the production of news. proponents of market-led approaches have, of course, not been silent on this issue. there is a wide-spread recognition that the news media have or may become, unwittingly or otherwise, tools of powerful political and corporate interests. such fears of press 'accountability' have sparked a series of public commissions and inquiries into the structure of 70 robinson/freedom of the press media ownership and control. in canada, for example, the kent commission was established in 1980 in the wake of the simultaneous closing of the ottawa journal and the winnipeg tribune, a move many saw as evidence that 'freedom of the press' was being undermined by market forces. however, no doubt because of the deeply embedded liberal belief in a press 'free' from government regulation, the kent commission's recommendation that a formal regulatory agency, the press rights panel, be established was rejected in the face of protests from the media (dornan, 1991:174-75). instead, news organizations which had not already done so, agreed to regulate themselves by setting up 'independent' press councils and including regular columns in their publications in which readers' representatives could address complaints and monitor reportage. more recently, news media organizations have offered readers and spectators editorial 'talk-back' telephone lines, allowing audiences to register their views or complaints. while press councils, readers' representatives, and talk-back lines are vitally important avenues whereby citizens may have their complaints and views heard and followed through, alone they do not sufficiently address the underlying issue of the hierarchy of power reproduced in the media. as dornan (1991:179) notes, for example, a press council adjudicates only on whether the news media has 'played by the rules' and is therefore not in a position to question whether the rules themselves are suspect. as such, 'marginal' or 'fringe' groups who say they are systematically excluded from the media will find their complaints falling on deaf ears so long as their exclusion is based upon the accepted structure of media ownership and the routine practices of journalism. before advocating state regulation, however, media researchers must also be aware of the limitations of traditional state-collectivist approaches to the problems posed by private ownership and concentration. the persistent danger, even in a democratic society, is that state-funded media systems could become too vulnerable to state interference (as was the case with the thatcher government's relationship with the bbc), or too paternalistic and rigid, impenetrable to the needs and demands of the people. a radical democratic theory should begin to think seriously about alternative and innovative arrangements of ownership. this could be accomplished by studying the possibility and feasibility of workercontrolled news collectives and community run news services. similarly, research could draw upon the swedish case, for instance, in which 71 alternate routes, i'olume 10, j 993 independent and representative press councils mete out start-up funds and subsidies to support a wide range of newspapers (gustafsson, 1980). in the large electronic and print news media, co-operative ownership arrangements are less likely. however, media researchers need to more fully explore the possibility that independence from market censorship could be achieved through innovative forms of public ownership. raymond williams (1961:344-345) has suggested, for example, that state ownership be counter-balanced by placing production decisions firmly in the hands of media workers themselves, free from the dictates of upper management and government appointees. at the very least, we need to think about enacting provisions to provide public broadcasting systems such as the bbc and the cbc with greater autonomy from the state. this is made all the more important given the recent criticisms levelled against public broadcasting by state representatives. for example, american senator robert dole recently proposed an amendment to the public broadcasting act that, if enacted, would cut-back federal funding of the public broadcasting system unless pbs affiliates produced more 'balanced' programming. in canada, the right-wing economist john crispo was appointed to the board of governors of the cbc, and has used his position to criticize public broadcasting and advance his own neo-liberal views. to confront such challenges, media sociologists need to think of ways of entrenching and safeguarding the autonomy of public broadcasting systems. for example, is it feasible to have government appointments replaced by elections? could we conceive of a specific funding arrangement that is constitutionally guaranteed so that no financial threat could be made against the public networks? organizational constraints and journalistic practices: the study of news organizations details how journalists come to rely upon elite sources and bureaucratic institutions for 'factual' information. hence, the fear is that resource-rich elite institutions could successfully initiate news 'campaigns' to win public support for their goals (drier, 1982). an investigation into the possibility of co-operative ownership of newspapers might signal one avenue through which those opinions that have been marginalized from the mainstream media may reach a larger audience and contribute to a more diverse public debate. while new communications technologies have been used primarily for private gain, innovations in desktop publishing and satellite transmission, if made publicly accessible. 72 robinson/freedom of the press hold out the promise of lowering the cost of entryfor new small-scale producers. as enzensberger (1974) has noted, media technologies make possible the mass participation in social life, but their current application undermines this goal. researchers, therefore, need to explore the new technologies of communication with the aim of altering their social application to serve the democratic needs and aspirations of citizens. coupled with these areas of investigation, researchers need to consider the possibility of developing new journalistic practices that may enrich the diversity of news and information. while it is true that journalists face overwhelming professional and legal constraints, it may nevertheless be possible that media workers themselves begin to challenge traditional patterns of news presentation. codes of balance and objectivity, which often work against counter-hegemonic groups, may be replaced with more investigative, self-reflexive, and critical forms of journalism. further, media sociologists need to emphasize that institutions that have not traditionally been open to public supervision and accountability, such as certain departments of the state and almost all private businesses — and including quite centrally the media itself — need to be the focus of renewed public scrutiny. in terms of the media, reader's representatives and self-regulatory bodies are not enough to secure an accountable press. media sociologists need to recognize the value of those civil society organizations that are concerned with the media's accountability', such as the feminist collective mediawatch and the american-based fairness and accuracy in reporting (fair). closer collaboration with these groups will enable a greater sharing of ideas and research, and alert academics to recent developments in alternative media. researchers must also not ignore right-wing critics of the media, such as the fraser institute and accuracy in media (aim). these groups must be engaged in public debate so that questions of the media's accountability receive a much more widespread hearing than is currently the case. in this way, 'publicity' can be re-invested with its original critical intention — the exposure of power and domination before the public (habermas, 1989:195). advertising-financing. while market liberals claim that unfettered media competition renders the consumer sovereign, the advertising-driven structure of the industry simply does not bear this argument out. the readers and viewers of the news do not decide what 73 alternate routes, volume 10, 199i ideas and opinions will survive in the market, because they are not the consumers. rather, it is the advertisers whose demands are sovereign because thev purchase the audience-commodity produced by the media (picard, 1985:135). advertising needs, therefore, can work to exclude a wide range of views and opinions from the media. however, the elimination of advertising as demanded by some media critics is simply not a practical or even a desirable alternative. instead of promoting advertising bans, radical democratic research needs to think about the possibility and practicality of press subsidies to offset the lack of advertising revenue. class segmentation: while habermas argues that the bourgeois public sphere was eclipsed by the development of mass politics and public administration, the rise of a 'serious' international press and the expansion of high-cost specialized information services lends credence to the argument that a supranational private sphere is taking shape (sparks, 1991:69; garnham, 1990:104-105). this process mirrors the contemporary globalization of world financial markets. readers in new york, tokyo, london, and toronto have access to the wall street journal and the financial times, newspapers that engage in the kind of rational and critical debate privileged by habermas. but like the early bourgeois 'public' sphere, access is limited. only educated and wealthy english-speaking people can participate. if equal access to the sources of public information, as well as equal opportunity to participate in public debates, lies at the heart of the democratic process, then this new transnational private sphere represents a growing threat to the abilities of citizens to participate in a democratic polity. to offset this tendency, researchers need to think about the development of a 'quality' or 'serious' press accessible to a much broader segment of the population, a radical press that critically addresses issues of public concern. to counter arguments that there is simply no market for such a newspaper, it should be recalled that the death of the early radical press and the subsequent decline in public debate in popular newspapers was not a function of consumer taste, but of advertising demands. there is good reason to believe that a mass quality newspaper modelled after the nineteenth century british radical press (curran, 1977), publicly subsidized and maintained, would find a significant audience. such an audience, moreover, would represent the first semblance of a post-bourgeois public sphere in which both the power of 74 robinson/freedom of the press the state and the power of private capital could be held up to public scrutiny. a democratic media system, therefore, must do more than simply represent the current 'balance' of forces in society. it must actively compensate those subordinate social groups who lack the necessary financial, technical, and cultural resources to engage in public debate. access can be better guaranteed, however, only if imbalances in social, economic, and political power can be corrected. i have made a number of tentative proposals for future research aimed at developing and expanding a decentralized, participatory, and accountable public news media. such a project, i strongly believe, is made ever more urgent given the rapid erosion of a public sector of communications, the growing power of transnational capital, and the increasingly secretive operations of 'democratic' governments. media sociologists need to take 'freedom of the press' seriously, but not in its liberal guise. instead, there is a need to propose alternative formations that will better reflect the rights and needs of citizens to be heard, to be informed, and to engage in a "democratic culture of critical discourse" (elliott, 1982:243). notes 1. for helpful commentaries on an earlier version of this paper, i wish to thank wallace clement, chris dornan, and john harp. however, the usual disclaimers apply. 2. cited in owen (1975:33). 3. cited in picard (1985:131). 4. john stuart mill (1972:78-113) did of course worry about the possibility of non-state censorship, but not that of media producers or market imperatives. on the contrary, he feared the tyranny of public opinion, the possibility that the passionate' and irrational' views of the masses could silence the voices of the minority, understood principally as the privileged classes. faced with the dilemma that in the competitive marketplace of ideas it is not necessarily truth that survives in the court of public opinion, mill supported the formation of a kind of pouvoirs intermediaires, representative officials who could purify and rationally sift 75 alternate routes. volume 10, 1993 through the passions of the people as expressed in public opinion. educated and powerful citizens would form an elite public whose rational and critical debate would guide public discussion. this level of debate, according to mill, would best be directed by a free and open exchange of communication in a competitive marketplace of ideas. hence, mill never doubted the market's role in securing democratic freedoms such as liberty of the press, and as such he failed to see the contradiction between capitalist relations of production and the democratic ideal of equal access to the marketplace of ideas in which individual self-development could be achieved (habermas, 1989:136-137; macpherson, 1977:61-62; schwarzlose, 1989:8-9). 5. many studies, of course, draw upon insights offered by both radical elite and political economic (e.g. bagdikian, 1985; herman and chomsky, 1988). my point is not that these two traditions are incompatible, but rather that they represent two tendencies within media studies. radical elite theory is more concerned with questions of agency' (how do owners exert control), while political economic studies focus more on structural' concerns (see murdock, 1982). 6. in 1855, for example, it required a capital investment of 4,000 british pounds to launch the daily telegraph. in 1870 the daily chronicle was re-established at a cost of 150,000 pounds. to found the tribune in 1906-8, 300,000 pounds had to be invested and by the 1920's lord beaverbrook needed 2 million pounds to purchase the sunday express (curran, 1977:214). 7. see, for example, the so-called blindspot debate' in murdock (1978), livant (1979), and garnham (1986). 8. in terms of cost alone, the quality' press quite clearly discriminates against low income consumers. in ottawa, one copy of the financial times of canada sells for $1.00. an issue of the popular tabloid, ottawa sun, sells for only $0.35. assuming that one purchased these papers over the course of a year, the difference in price would be quite substantial. 76 robinson/freedom of the press references bagdikian, ben h. 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(1961) the long revolution. new york: columbia university press. 83 subscribe d^vet^"6 wo'ld ° islamic literature. periodica islamica is an international contents journal. in its quarterly issues it reproduces i tables of contents from a wide variety of serials, periodicals and other recurring publications r : worldwide. these primary publications are selected for indexing by periodica islamica on the basis \ of their significance for religious, cultural, socioeconomic and political affairs of the muslim world. periodica islamica is the premiere source of reference for all multi-disciplinary discourses on the world of islam. browsing through any issue of periodica islamica is like visiting your library 100 times over. four times a year, in a highly compact format, it delivers indispensable information on a broad spectrum of disciplines explicitly or implicitly related to islamic issues. if you want to know the muslim world better, you need to know periodica islamica better. periodica islamica edilnr4i chief dr.munawaraanees consulting editor bzafarabbas mabkim«,.,w>i....t, rtf periodica islamica, berita publishing, 22 jalan liku. 59100 kuala lumpur, malaysia. subscription order form annual subscription rates: individual us$35.00 institution us$70.00 address: city(+ postal code): ^]bank draft/international money order in uss unesco coupons i expiration date signature nnnn-nnnn-nnnn-nnnn by phone ^ 1 mail to place your order immediately. to fax your order, complete this order mail this completed order form to tetephone(+60-3) 282-5286 form and send to (+60-3) 282-1605 periodica islamica subscribers in malaysia may payan equivalentamount in ringgit (ms) at the prevailing exchange ra te. 978-1-926958-01-9 171 book review in and out of crisis: the global financial meltdown and left alternatives, by greg albo, sam gindin and leo panitch. oakland, california: spectre pm press, 2010. $13.95 u.s., paper. isbn: 978-1-60486-212-6. pages: 1-140. reviewed by carlo fanelli1 in and out of crisis is a thought provoking, accessible and politically engaging contribution to debates on the origin, severity and historical significance of the so-called “great recession”. furthermore, as the subtitle the global financial meltdown and left alternatives suggests, albo and authors provide an unapologetically socialist analysis of what to do about it. albo, gindin and panitch remind the reader that the classical meaning of crisis is turning point, to which they ask: has the crisis marked a turning point in the balance of class power and the organization of the state? or can the political alliances and power structures that have dominated the last four decades be reconstituted in what so clearly has been a monumental crisis? for the authors, the short answer to the first question is no and, for the second, yes. this book departs from the tendency of writers (both from the left and right) to view the current responses to crisis as somehow marking a return to keynesianism, or in terms of states versus markets, finance versus industry. instead, rather than lay emphasis on the economic determinations of the crisis, the authors (p.10) seek to politicize and get at the social roots of the problem by moving beyond limited technical or policy solutions to capitalist crises by instead placing democratic and social rights at the centre of their analysis. as they state (p.122): “the interpretation in this book is quite distinct”. 1 carlo fanelli is a ph.d candidate in the department of sociology & anthropology with a concentration in political economy. he can be reached at cfanelli@connect.carleton.ca in and out of crisis: the global financial meltdown and left alternatives 172 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research fortunately, the authors have preemptively summarized the outline of the book (p.25): ‘chapter one explores whether or not we are currently witnessing the end of neoliberalism; chapter two engages in current debates regarding the nature of capitalist crises, and the relationship between the state, finance and production in a neoliberal era; chapter three traces the historical process through which, over a century punctuated by previous cries, the american state and finance developed in tandem, and came to play a new kind of imperial role at the centre of global capitalism; chapter four traces the development of the crisis that began in 2007 and explains the active role of the american state, both under bush and obama, in containing the crisis in ways that reproduced the structures of class inequality and power domestically and internationally; chapter five analyses how the relationship between industry and finance played itself out in the auto sector, bringing to the fore the full class dimensions of the crisis; chapter six reflects on the impasse of the north american labour movement and the implications for the north american left; and chapter seven tries to think creatively about alternatives, not least in terms of how advancing the case for democratic economic planning, including the nationalization of the banks and auto industry, must become integrated with demands for immediate reforms.’ if the reader does not have the time for chapters one through seven, chapter eight’s ten theses on the crisis succinctly summarizes the gist of their arguments. for the purpose of this review, however, i would like to provide a glimpse of what makes in and out of crisis’ analysis distinct. or, in other words, what are likely to be the major points of contention stemming from their investigation. first, contrary to authors that claim that the new deal was an attempt to impose greater ‘regulation’ or ‘controls’ upon capital, albo et al argue that following the great depression of the 1930s, private banking institutions had been nurtured back to health in the post-war decades and then unleashed in the explosion of global innovations that have defined the neoliberal era. and that, despite the meltdown, (p.17) “[t]he conditions that kept neoliberal policies in play for so long have not been exhausted or undone by the crisis.” second, taking aim at a broad spectrum of liberal, keynesian, minskian and orthodox marxist views that posit the end of the american imperium, a return to greater “regulation” or the stagnation tendencies of “mature” capitalist economies (such as robert brenner and the monthly review school for instance), albo and 173 authors argue that, if anything, the crisis has reconfirmed the world’s dependence on the american state and financial system as capital everywhere ran to the safe haven of the us treasury bond. as opposed to the end of american hegemony or the birth of a multi-polar world, the resolution of this international crisis has rested fundamentally on the actions of the us state in leading a more or less coordinated response, and in the process integrating the g20 members into the us’s informal empire in what has been an extraordinarily dynamic period of capitalism. third, albo, gindin and panitch provide a unique examination of the relationship between states and markets, industry and finance and, therein, the class relations that underpin them. rater than viewing ‘financialization’ as narrowly superstructural, parasitic or speculative, or as a result of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, they situate finance-led neoliberalism in historical terms in the sense that financial volatility actually becomes a developmental feature of neoliberalism that reinforces, rather than undermines the central position of financial interests in capitalist power structures. in their view, neoliberalism is understood as a (p.28) “particular form of class rule and state power that intensifies competitive imperatives for both firms and workers, increases dependence on the market in daily life and reinforces the dominant hierarchies of the world market, with the us at its apex.” fourth, the authors claim (p.91) that a new historical project must be placed on the agenda. in order to do this, the left must come to the bitter realization that the forms of protest, means of organizing and daily practices of activism, most visible in the anti-globalization movements and world social forums, just aren’t working anymore. this means soberly reflecting on the impasse of the north american labour movement, in addition to the successful “disorganization” (on the part of capital) of old working class institutions (labour parties, cooperatives, benefit societies) that has been central to neoliberalism and which threatens to become a historic class defeat. throughout the book, albo et al raise the question as to whether or not the left can develop the confidence to think as big and radical as “they”—the ruling class—are doing in terms of both how workers see the future and what needs to be done to build the capacities to get there. “the way forward”, they argue (p.114) however, “is not to take one step first and another more radical step later, but to find ways of integrating both the immediate demands and the goal of systemic change into the building of new political capacities.” as they remind (p.128), ‘democracy is not just a form of government but a kind of society’, which unavoidably remains fractional and incomplete within capitalism. a few questions, however, may beg further unpacking. in light of the shifting composition of the working class and the role of women’s reproductive labour, how would the expansion of collective social services such as in health care and in and out of crisis: the global financial meltdown and left alternatives 174 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research education, for instance, impact women’s paid and unpaid life experiences given their position in the labour market as a whole and concentration in specific sectors? given the legacy of defeats and setbacks over the period of neoliberalism, how may unions—many trapped in erstwhile social-democratic parties and the constraints of formal union structures—find some basis of unity that could help shape collective struggles in working-class communities and connect the linkages between the employed and unemployed, and those denied a chance to work? what kinds of fresh organizational structures and emergent forms of activism throughout north america and abroad carry potential? on the whole, in and out of crisis is all but certain to have a broad appeal to researchers and academics, as well as students and lay persons alike. the era of neoliberalism—that is, capitalist militancy, is by no means over. in fact, it seems to be gaining new momentum the world over. albo, gindin and panitch, in their short but no less provocative book, do much to not only shed light on what led to the enduring socio-economic and political uncertainty, but provide a much needed analysis on what may need to be done in order to avoid such relapses in the future. whole book pdf alternate routes a journal of critical social research presentation and editorial policy alternate routes is a refereed multi-disciplinary journal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university in ottawa, canada. our mandate is to make alternate routes a forum for debate and exchange among graduate students throughout the country. we are therefore interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or co-authored with faculty), regardless of their university affiliation. the editorial emphasis is on the publication of critical and provocative analyses of theoretical and substantive issues which clearly have relevance for progressive political intervention. although we welcome papers on a broad range of topics, members of the editorial board work within a feminist and marxist tradition. therefore, we encourage submissions which advance or challenge questions and contemporary issues raised by these two broadly defined perspectives. we also welcome commentaries and reviews of recent publications. editorial board nicole bennett, narinder brar, colleen anne dell, christine gervais, dominique masson, chris powell, jeffrey shantz, roberta lynn sinclair, antonio sorge, andreas tomaszewski the editors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the carleton university community: the department of sociology and anthropology and its chair, jacques chevalier; the deans of arts and social science, g.s. adam and bill jones; the dean of graduate studies and research, roger blockley. we also wish to thank all the anonymous reviewers. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research is indexed in: sociological abstracts; the left index. ® 1997 alternate routes call for student papers alternate routes is seeking submissions for volume 15, 1998. the editorial collective is interested in papers that address current theoretical and substantive issues within the social sciences. manuscripts will be anonymously reviewed by faculty members from academic institutions across the country. please use the american psychological association (apa) referencing system and keep endnotes to a minimum. papers should be submitted double-spaced and in triplicate. floppy disks formatted in wordperfect or microsoft word are required for papers accepted for publication. we also welcome responses to recent publications, book reviews and discussions of work in progress. alternate routes est a la recherche d 'articles pour sa publication de 1998. nous sommes interesses a recevoir des analyses interdisciplinaires portant sur un vaste eventail de questions theoriques et substantives propres aux sciences sociales. les manuscrits seront critiques de facon anonyme par des professeurs de diverses institutions academiques du pays. nous vous invitons a suivre le systeme de reference de 1 'american psychological association (apa) et a limiter la quantite des notes de fin de document autant que possible. les articles devraient etre presenters en format double interligne et en trois copies. une disquette devrait accompagner le document et contenir le texte sur logiciel wordperfect ou microsoft word. nous apprecierions par ailleurs des critiques des recentes publications, comptes rendus et travaux en cours. address to/envoyez a: alternate routes department of sociology and anthropology carleton university colonel by drive ottawa, ontario canada k1s5b6 alternate routes a journal of critical social research volume 14, 1997 ' : '.'•". '".. introduction l papers lisa drouillard miami's little havana a nation in exile ... 3 nicole bennett global village chic: "multicultural fashion" and the commodification of pluralism 21 work in progress emma whelan staging and profiling: the constitution of the endometriotic subject in gynecological discourse 45 book reviews jeffrey shantz listen anarchist! murray bookchin's defence of orthodoxy: social anarchism or lifestyle anarchism by murray bookchin antonio sorge nationalism by ernest gel 1 ner 69 77 digitized by the internet archive in 2011 with funding from carleton university, department of sociology & anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesj14alte introduction: context, content and meaning in interdisciplinary perspectives the articles in this volume of alternate routes all examine and assess phenomena located within larger structures of meaning which are either politically or socially encompassing. they aptly illustrate how identity politics, artistic expression, and medical categories are elaborated within contexts defined by extant social or political discourses which play an integral role in the mediation of the very form and content of these foci of analysis. additionally, these articles take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of social phenomena, paying no more than nominal heed to the traditional divisions between the social science disciplines. rather, they cross-cut these divisions, and locate their essence in the view that any phenomenon can be more appropriately accessible to understanding and its complexities better appreciated if not approached from within rigid disciplinary boundaries. in her article, drouillard examines the processes of ethnic identity creation within the cuban exile community in miami. the difficulties of being caught between "two worlds"—cuban and american—generate an hybridised miami-cuban identity, where the articulation and production of nationalist discourse is contextual ised within a setting which challenges successful integration into us society. central to her thesis is a recognition of the symbols representing the shared sacrifices of this "imagined community." bennett deals with the reproduction of particular strands of current ethnic and racial discourse in the modern fashion industry. she considers the way in which artistic expression, in her case fashion, can be given to producing stereotypical images of non-western peoples and commoditising their cultural products in ways that do little to promote greater cross-cultural understanding or appreciation. in the final piece, a work-inprogress, whelan examines the role of expert knowledge in the "constitution of subjectivity" through a case study of the gynecological disease of endometriosis. medical codifications of this disease, she suggests, construct an "endometriotic subject" which causes research and treatment protocols to be framed in ways which can obscure patients' expressed concerns and experiences of the disease. she demonstrates, however, that patient organizations are challenging these official categorisations, and raise the possibility of resistance to them. each of these contributions, to reiterate, approach their topic from an interdisciplinary perspective which takes cognizance of the encompassing structures and contexts of meaning. it is anticipated that the scope of this contextual and interdisciplinary approach may provide material for consideration in social science research, and that this consideration may also lead to such research or an appreciation of research thus conducted. miami's little havana a nation in exile lisa drouillard even a cursory analysis of the political discourse of miami's cuban-american enclave is likely to jar one's understanding of what constitutes local politics and what lies within the realm of international affairs. beyond the perennial focus of miami's public officials on events outside of their borders, residents and visitors display a confusion over the location and relevance of national boundaries. american tourists sense they have entered into a foreign land when visiting south florida, cuban immigrants living elsewhere "return" to miami to feel at home in havana, and travelers leaving the city may pass billboards reading: "now re-entering the united states of america" (rieff, 1987:29). when residents refer to miami as a 'truly international city' or the 'capital of latin america', they make reference to many of the structural characteristics that have led a number of academic analyses to categorize miami as a new 'global city', comparable in character and function with new york or london. underlying the analysis that follows is the contention that miami's cuban enclave has not contributed merely to the international flavor of the locale but has engaged in a process of 'nation-building' within the city. the article borrows from contemporary studies of nationalism which describe the nation as a "community imagined through the artifacts of collective sacrifice" (balakrishnan, 1995:65). benedict anderson's (1991) conceptualization of the emergence of the nation and the spread of nationalist ideology has had a profound impact on the study of these phenomena. while anderson's work has not escaped criticism, he has been widely acknowledged for having constructed a hypothesis which effecalternate routes, volume 14, 1997 tively relieves the tension between the "primordial" versus the "instrumental" definitions of the nation. 1 by defining national identity as a perceived membership in an imagined political community, anderson's work has initiated a more flexible application of the concept of nationalism which seems both appropriate and necessary in an era when nationalist loyalties are increasingly fragmented by the related processes of economic globalization and expanded autonomy of global cities in their interaction with the global economy. anderson's more recent work on the emergence and spread of long-distance nationalist movements has noted that the hybridity of national cultures evident in contemporary movements of "long-distance nationalism" does not differentiate these movements significantly from more conventional histories of national creation. anderson points to several problematic features of these new forms of nationalism where participants are relieved of the demand for any commitment to any ultimate patriotic sacrifice, such as responding to a call to arms (anderson, 1994:327). this article will examine the pertinence of anderson's depiction of nationalist movements as "projects for coming home from exile, for the resolution of hybridity" and will emphasize the significance of military involvement in the creation of an imagined nation (anderson, 1994:319). the case study will examine the discourse and activities of the dominant convention of cuban-american nationalists and also the manner in which nationalist culture is reproduced in urban politics and the cultural landscape of miami. the community has distinguished itself politically by its tenacious attachment to a hyphenated national identity and by the involvement of many of its members in american foreign policy initiatives. here the creative tension between perceived "primordial" characteristics of national culture and the pragmatic adaptation by the cubans to their place in political geography has developed little havana's hybrid national character. above and beyond the aspirations of many miami cubans for the establishment of their sovereign control over their homeland, members of the community have created, as much as maintained, the political, cultural and economic status of a nation in exile, awaiting not for the chance to rebuild cuba, but to replace it. migration, communication and sacrifice anderson's work has focused on two significant factors which have generated nationalism that are closely linked to the broader dynamics in the rise of capitalism: mass communications and migration (1992:7). while his study of nation-building in immagined communities (1991) focuses mainly on institutions of nationalism that were established in tandem with the development of industrial capitalism in the 19th century, communication/translation and displacement/exile remain as central features in the development of post-industrial nodes of production and management as well. anderson identifies similarities in the processes of nation-building in different historical contexts and has proposed that the establishment of a common identity and sense of place involves either actual or imagined returns from exile. the cuban enclave shares with the early american colonies a project of re-shaping the space where they have landed in the image of a place they remember. exiles do not merely share an identity or destiny by virtue of a common birthplace, but also by their collective memories of being torn from it and through their efforts to (re-)create a new york or little havana. an understanding of the commonalties between cuban miami's nationalist projects and the dynamics that shaped earlier constructions of other imagined communities helps to explain the cohesiveness and trust which makes the enclave a powerful political and cultural force in the region. struggles over language are important processes among the conditions of reception that help to solidify the formation of collective identity in immigrant communities. while the use of a common language may not be a sufficient condition for the establishment of institutions of loyalty and trust within a group of immigrants, the imposition of an official language of state on an immigrant group can sharply delineate the boundaries of a lingusitic community. the sense of exile is often strongest among young bilinguals, as anderson (1994:319) has noted, who are educated in a language other than their mother tongue and can thus recognize the manner in which their own language is devalued by the state and the majority population. reclaiming the vernacular becomes a significant component of the struggle for recognition of a national identity. while many immigrants may create a shared identity under conditions of alienation from both the host society and the sending nation, there is considerable skepticism over the extent to which the fraternal bonds of nationalism as a cultural system are sufficient to command fatal patriotic sacrifices. gopal balakrishnan (1995:66), and john breuilly (1985:73) have each noted that the focus on the cultural and linguistic components of nationalism in anderson's work is at odds with one of his cen^% tral organizing questions in imagined communities. what makes it possible, anderson asks, "for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings?" (anderson, 1991:7) balakrishnan contributes an analysis of the experience of war as a significant force which calls up national imaginings which are generally dormant in everyday life: the purity and fatality of national imaginings do not arise spontaneously from the social organization of vernacular language, but through the risks of membership in a 'community of life and death'. [the nation] speaks the voice of fate when it speaks in one voice, and this is usually and most pointedly in times of war (balakrishnan, 1995:68) while contemporary 'long-distance nationalists', as anderson notes (1992:13), are unaccountable for their political actions militarily, the miami case provides evidence that the discourse of military valour is still a central animator of national imaginings. miami's cenotaph for the soldiers lost at the bay of pigs serves as the nationalist symbol around which cuban immigrants of varying political persuasions can recognise their common struggles and objectives. in the miami context then, balakrishnan's (1995:65) reformulation of the definition of the nation as "a community imagined through the artefacts of collective sacrifice" seems very apt. a refugee showcase the cuban population in miami is comprised of individuals from all classes, races and political leanings with diversity of experiences in both cuba and the united states. among the first wave of exiles (1959-62) the vast majority of the emigres either held direct political ties to the batista government or were beholden to a political and economic system that would collapse entirely with the withdrawal of american capital (pedraza, 1992:237). throughout the decade that followed, the exodus remained largely middle and upper-middle class. however as each year passed, it grew to represent the diversity of the cuban population. by the time of the arrival of the mariel boatlift in 1980, the makeup of the exodus had changed so dramatically that the new entrants were almost unrecognizable as cubans to many members of the enclave. "there were not that many blacks in cuba," was an often heard remark in 1980, "these are angolans" (de los angeles torres, 1990:33) 2 . indeed, given the differences in national cultures and personal experiences between these groups of immigrants, the mariel itos could just as well have arrived from a different continent. despite the growing heterogeneity in the emigre population, however, the discourse of exile unity has been asserted with greater force with each passing decade and each new wave of emigres. the initial decision of the eisenhower government to welcome the first wave of cuban immigrants to south florida was ostensibly based on a calculation of humanitarian concerns, the propaganda value of a mass exodus from cuba, and the possibility of employing exile forces to overthrow the revolution (masudpiloto, 1996:33). between 1959 and 1962, a population of over 153,000 immigrants emigrated to the miami region, draining skilled workers and professionals from the cuban labour market, and thrusting the resort town into the space of both cold war politics and another country's national struggles (azicri, 1982:56). given the emigre's symbolic importance, the cuban "exile colony" received a level of specialized care and a command of resources unparalleled in the history of u.s. immigration (azicri, 1982: 59; mohl, 1986:8). at an estimated cost of around one billion dollars, the cuban refugee program invested in housing, healthcare facilities, education, and job placement (including assistance in the translation of job skills and professional qualifications) (masud-piloto, 1996:49; pedraza-bailey, 1985:47). this obliging treatment provided the emigres with the financial, technical and human capital they would need both to succeed ^% economically and to re-establish many institutions of cuban culture in a new locale. not surprisingly, the program led to a significant increase in immigration. it also shaped the establishment of a set of political and socioeconomic interests in the cuban community that were very different both from those of other u.s. minority groups and from the local population (azicri, 1982:59). a significant component of the cuban refugee program was the resettlement of thousands of emigres across the country to prevent an unmanageable concentration of refugees in miami. this settlement policy had an enormous impact on the cultural and political construction of miami as a cuban space given that the program effectively "exiled" thousands of cubans from an imagined homeland in miami (allman, 1987:294; portes and stepick, 1993: 104). only a decade after the costly resettlement project, thousands of cubans had started to return to miami to vacation, to conduct business, and ultimately to resettle. 3 many returning cubans have expressed sentiments of homecoming emerging out of this last migration: from the moment i arrived, i knew i had returned to the cuba that my parents had always described to me as a kid growing up in los angeles... and miami is the only place where the cuba they loved and taught me to love still exists (dario moreno, cited in rieff, 1993:134) by 1980, the return of exiles from the north came to surpass both the flow of immigrants involved in the mariel boatlifts from cuba and the influx of haitian refugees (allman, 1987:324). as cuban families gained the financial independence to decline the foster care provided by the state, many returned to a place that had been transformed by visions of a cuban home similar to those they may have harboured through their winters in milwaukee or new jersey. the engagement of thousands of cuban exiles in america's cold war struggles served to consolidate the position of miami as the space of an exiled cuban nation. the manner in which the exiles were recruited and organized in their participation in the bay of pigs invasion reinforced the community's sense of exceptional ism and historic purpose. when the kennedy administration chose to employ a strategy of facilitating an insurrection within the island assisted by the landing of cuban exile forces, the operation was framed in the discourse of national self-determination (forment, 1989:56). the dismal failure of the invasion created a number of significant cultural and political by-products which helped to solidify the unity of the cuban enclave: it shattered the hopes of an imminent return for the exiles; it provided the cubans with a history of military valor and a monument to their national martyrs; it created a profound distrust of the commitment of the american government to the cuban exile's nationalist cause and illuminated the rifts between cuban and american interests; and lastly, it necessitated subsequent long-range programs to involve the exile community in © american military initiatives in order to maintain control over further independent attempts at insurrection that would inevitably ensue (didion, 1987:19; masud-piloto, 1996:48). throughout the next three decades the "exile colony" was used as a pool of agents in sabotage initiatives and military campaigns across the caribbean basin and central america, and in the establishment of the country's second largest cia station at the university of miami (grosfoguel, 1993: 159). this development eased the absorption of the cubans into the local labour market and heightened the militarism of the little havana discourse. with an estimated 12,000 cubans on its official payroll by the early 1960s, the cia became one of florida's largest employers (stepick, 1992:41). despite the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars into anti-castro military initiatives, the need to establish the impression that the u.s. was not involved in the exile group's operations encouraged the appropriation of these battles by the cuban community. the attempt to tf!% distance the american government publicly from their military struggles contributed to the sense of betrayal already present in the exile community. the federal government's long-term investments in the enclave easily surpassed expenditures of any other immigrant settlement policy. the budget for the cuban refugee program exceeded that of the entire alliance for progress initiatives and has been touted as the american's most successful "international development programs"(grosfoguel, 1993:161; stepick, 1992:40). assistance to the nationalist movement's military and political struggles has also been extraordinary. nonetheless, the discourse of american betrayal has remained a powerful unifying force within the exile community. language and difference in the local arena the cuban's sense of alienation from the host society and government has been evident in the relations between the enclave and the non-hispanic population of miami as well as on the national level. the open hostility towards the cubans from some segments of the miami population has contributed to the community's sense of exceptional ism and has encouraged the articulation of a distinct platform of national interests. miami's anglo community initially extended a cautious welcome to the emigres arriving in the early 1960s. hoever, miami residents soon became overwhelmed by the flow of immigrants, and many residents resented being saddled with a crisis created in another country (garcia, 1996: 19). when federal aid began to pour in, many residents were both grateful for the relief but were dismayed by the lavish treatment of the emigres, particularly in the face of the poor conditions evident in miami's black neighbourhoods. from these early stages onward, both anglo and african-american communities expressed resentment for the cubans who were at once too successful, too independent, yet too great a drain on the public purse (rieff, 1987:71). this hostile response to the cuban presence has often provided the cubans with evidence that they are a persecuted £tk minority group forced to struggle for respect and representation (croucher, 1994:195). in response to the latinization in miami after the mariel boatlifts, the city's english-speaking community lashed out in a direct attempt to re-establish the americanness of their own space. since 1973 dade county had been declared officially bilingual and offered a variety of public services in both spanish and english. in 1980 the crisis of the marielitos strained relations between the cubans and the anglo population culminating in a citizen-generated initiative to prohibit "the expenditure of county funds for the purpose of utilizing any other language than english, or promoting any other culture than that of the united states (stack and warren, 1990:16)." while the anti-bilingual ordinance had little substantive impact on the availability of services, the political battles that it incited helped to cement cubanamerican solidarity. the overwhelming support of the anglo community for the ordinance strengthened the perception that the cubans were not being afforded a voice in their community proportionate to their contributions to its development. it also compelled the miami cubans to make minority status part of their reactive ethnic discourse from this point onward (baloyra, 1991: 131 ;croucher, 1994: 195) 4 . exile leaders did not merely claim they had a right to express themselves in their own tongue, but asserted the dominance of the spanish language in the locale. frank soler, the first editor of el herald remarked after the anti-bilingual ordinance was passed: "oh well, we'll just have to go back to using one language. spanish, i mean. (rieff, 1987:36)." both the generous reception initially provided to the cubans by the federal government and heightened sense of difference from miami natives, allowed many cubans to wait out the first two decades of the exile as though they were merely caught at the airport fighting for a speedy return home. policies such as the anti-bilingual ordinance inspired collective indignance within pk the enclave, and encouraged many members to unpack their political bags and to stake out their own political territory. mas communication during the late 1970s a staunchly conservative political establishment in little havana gained both influence and a greater command over political and economic resources. in the early 1980s miami millionaire jorge mas canosa secured the support of the cuban community's business elite and that of the federal government for the establishment of a powerful exile lobby group, the cuban american national foundation (canf). in barely a decade, the foundation succeeded in raising the profile of little havana politics from talk radio terrorism and community center rhetoric to the un human rights commission and the society of international business fellows. chairman jorge mas initiated and administered america's media war on cuba for close to a decade by securing the federal funds to establish radio marti and tv marti. these media have been used to break castro's "information monopoly" by providing a mixed broadcast of american baseball scores, mas canosa's campaign speeches for his leadership in the new cuba, and stories providing "alternative views of the country's own condition" (spicer nichols, 84:35; 90:30). canf has also displayed a disturbing power to limit the freedom of expression and communication of cubans on both sides of the florida straits. journalist maria de los angeles torres has claimed that "with a phonecall, mas apparently can get the state department to deny visas to cubans from the island, as he did with the world-renowned dance band orquesta aragon when it was invited to chicago in 1988(90:35)." the work of organizations like canf have not merely brought exile politics into a the purview of a higher geographic scale of political governance, they have also altered the significance of spatial boundaries and the historical timeline of the american, cuban-american and cuban nations within the discourse and imagination of the exile. by moving beyond (though €s% never abandoning) localized rhetoric and bullying, into the realm of direct interface with international powerbrokers outside the united states, canf has shaped the exiles' image of their own power and place and has made the prospect of return seem more immanent and possible. radio and tv marti were no mere "broadcasts to nowhere" as policy critics have called them (kornbluh and elliston, 1994: 194). for the national projects of the exile, the millions of dollars spent to establish and maintain this media provided the symbols of an imagined audience living in step with the exile just an am radio-wave away. figures such as mas canosa, whose rhetoric has so often been legitimized by its translation into u.s. foreign and domestic policy, have come to hold the power to confirm the exile's interpretation of regional geography. when asked by the newspaper el pais in spain whether he believed americans would take over cuba if castro fell, mas replied "that's bull— . they haven't even been able to take over miami! (chardy, 94: ib)" miami's soldiers the contemporary images and realities of little havana's unified right-wing political agenda is in part the product of successive struggles between these different political factions in the cuban community. the ability of miami's ultra-conservative political groups to claim the martyrs of the bay of pigs invasion as their brethren remains a powerful political tool. contemporary nationalist groups consistently recall the collective sacrifices of the enclave's military history both to make claims on the loyalty of co-nationals in miami and to assert the right to dictate the political and economic treatment of cuba in the international realm. carlos forment (1989) has examined the construction of the national martyr in miami throughout the early history of florida's cuban enclave. the study demonstrates how compet£f% ing anti-castro movements created the ideational and material preconditions for the rise of the enclave as a "moral community" rather than a mere ethnic economy (forment, 1989:60). forment's analysis traces the history of the ascendance of the exiles' conservative political organizations in the wake of the failed bay of pigs invasion and the subsequent vilification of the kennedy administration and notes how these events catalyzed a discourse of ethnic communitarianism that promulgated a distrust of americans and other outsiders (forment, 89:64). he relates this history to the contemporary economic success of the cuban enclave, noting the following correlation: if the enclave entrepreneur can today invoke collective claims in order to legitimize his patriarchal system of capital-labor relations and contribute to group cohesion it is because the militants and terrorists had earlier inculcated the community with these same notions (forment, 1989:73). forment's analysis invokes the intensity and violence manifested in the definition of the cuban-american nationalist identity. the struggles of competing claims on moral authority and legitimate representation of this ethnic community have been played out not only in the realm of discourse the circulation of words but also in battles claiming human lives. from the onset of the exile, nationalist rhetoric has been made credible by this immediate foreground of violent experience within the enclave. as the cuban emigres became citizens of the united states, many began to use their political and economic resources as americans to advance their projects for returning from exile. by the early 1980s the attempts to overthrow the castro regime through assassination attempts or hit-and-run attacks on the cuban coastline had largely ended. the heroes of the enclave's armed struggles generally remained as the leaders of the new national projects, though both their tactics and the objects of their political messages had changed dramatically. as the significance of the cuban voting block and economic clout grew, the symbols tffr of the exile experience, the fervor of anti-castroism, and the militant commitment to shaping the future of cuba became powerful means for municipal and state politicians to mobilize the support of the powerful enclave (mohl, 86:8, stack and warren, 1990:16). the imprint of cuban-american militarism is evident in the electorate's avid concern with each candidate's involvement in the bay of pigs invasion, the veterans of which still hold an important qualification for holding public office in miami in the 1990s. limited, strategic assimilation revisiting anderson's conception of the creative strengths of hybrid identities as catalysts of nationalist movements, we can note that the most intense manifestations of a nationalist identity were most evident in miami politics after a period of adjustment and formal assimilation (not to mention accumulation) and in the wake of a massive influx of exiles. contrary to the general assumption that "the decision to become an american citizen is an important indicator of assimilation" (boswell and curtis, 1984: 173), it has been evident that cuban-americans have applied the power of their american citizenship to strengthen their nationalist, anti-communist voice. engagement in municipal and state politics has merely provided another forum for the emigres continued preoccupation with the political status of their homeland (perez, 1990:5) little havana's nationalist imagination has been combined with the strength and autonomy of the cuban economic enclave to provide the city with an international image as the "latin american capital of the united states" and, within the u.s., the distinction of being the "only american city with its own foreign policy" (mohl, 1986: 1 1). the symbols of cuban-american national imagination have figured prominently in miami politics over the last decade. the eventual policy outcome of the exiles' political power has been an overwhelming attention to symbolic expressions of anti-comtfs munism and support for initiatives (mohl, 1986:8). a poignant example of the nature of cuban bearing on local politics was the hostile reception encountered by nelson mandela during his visit to miami in june of 1990. in view of mandela's expressed gratitude to fidel castro and other communist leaders, neither the miami, nor the dade county mayor saw it fit to give the anc leader any official recognition or key to the city (croucher, 1994:190). in fact, a number of resolutions passed by the miami city council could have officially classified mandela as persona non grata in the city. both class and political power structures have mediated the clash of primordial sentiments between distinct ethnic groups in miami city politics. the success of the cuban community's invented ethnicity in the mandela incident when compared to respect for black political recognition, attests to the fact that differences in political and economic power must be taken into account in any analysis of the social construction of ethnicity (croucher, 1994:197). conclusion: staking out space the miami case contrasts with anderson's examination of longdistance nationalism in that it is unlike ethnic communities which merely export their influence or political candidates to directly to their country of origin. the miami cubans have truly succeeded in creating a "nation in exile" engaged not merely in inter-ethnic conflicts, but in nationalist confrontations with world leaders. it has asserted power through the creation of an immigrant nation in which interacts with international actors on its own turf and seeks to build an economic future for cuba on its entrepreneurial and political successes. the enclave has constructed its cultural, political and economic institutions upon a foundation of generous state support, the cuban community has succeeded in reconstructing the social landscape of an imagined nation to the extent that natives of miami seem like the aliens in the new space. anderson's work has rightly emphasized the importance of ^_^ the experience of exile and the struggles for control over com%i0 munication and translation in both colonial nation-building and contemporary national imagination in immigrant communities. with regard to the author's studies of long-distance nationalism, however, the miami cubans provide evidence that projects of nation-building in among immigrants may share more with traditional nationalist movements than anderson has discussed. the cultural and political value of the little havana national cenotaph supports the contention of scholars such as balakrishnan that the discourse of military valour and the shared history of collective sacrifice are critical pillars upon which nationalist movements among immigrant communities are built. the attachment to places recreated in the image of an imagined homeland and the political appropriation of those spaces are also projects which little havana's nationalists share with those of earlier nationalist movements. an examination of the cultural (re)-territorialization of cuban spaces in the city and the development of strong capabilities for political and economic control over cuban-miami territory allows us a bettert understanding of the dynamics that have shaped the choices of many immigrants to maintain or develop a stronger patriotic loyalty to the -cuban portion of their hyphenated national identity. notes 1. breuilly (1985:75) has noted a common tension between those who see nationalism as "the product of an underlying national reality" or a cultural community, and others who regard the nation as a myth employed as an instrument for political associations. 2. in a similar spirit, a cuban american city official in miami also noted that "the marielitos are mostly black and mulattos of a colour i never saw or believed existed in cuba" (portes and stepick, 1993:21). 3. by 1978 an estimated 40% of the cubans living in miami had moved there from another part of the country (portes and stepick, 1993: 104). 4. organizations that would become very powerful cuban-american political lobby groups such as the cuban american national foundation £{% (canf) and the spanish-american league against discrimination ^^ (salad) were born in part out of the mobilization against the language ordinance (stack and warren, 1992: 177). references aguirre, b.e. 1976 "the differential migration of the cuban social races." latin american research review. 1 1( 1): 103-124 allman, t.d. 1987 miami: city of the future. atlantic monthly press. anderson, benedict 1991 imagined communities . london : verso . 1992 "the new world disorder." new left review. 194(2); 3-13. 1994 "exodus," critical enquiry. 20(1): 314-327. azicri, m. 1 98 1 "the politics of exile: trends and dynamic of political change among cuban americans," cuban studies. 1 1: 57-69. balakrishnan, gopal 1995 "the national imagination," new left review. 211: 57-69. baloyra, enrique 1991 "the cuban american community and u.s. domestic politics. " pp. 129-135 in tulcliin and hernadez (eds.) cuba and the united states. boulder, colorado: lynne rieimer publishers. 1982 "making waves: a view of the cuban community in the united states," cuban studies. 12: 75-79. boswell, thomas 1993 "the cuban-american homeland in miami," journal of cultural geography. 13(2): 133-148. boswell, thomas and james r. curtis 1986 t\\e cuban american experience. totowa, nj: rowman and allanhead publishers. brenner, philip and saul landau 1990 "enemy of convenience: the united states vs. cuba, " nacla report on the americas. 24(3): 12-26. breuilly, john 1985 "reflections on nationalism, " philosophy ofthe social sciences. 5(1) 65-75. croucher, sheila 1994 "mandela in miami, " journal ofdeveloping societies. 10: 186mv% 202. ^** 1996 "urban ethnic politics in the post-modern city: comparing miami and toronto, " space and polity. 1(1): 9-35. de los angeles torres, maria 1990 "will miami fall next? " nacla report on the americas. 24(3): 29-39. didion, joan 1987 miami. new york: simon and schuster. duany, jorge 1993 "neither golden exile nor dirty worm," cuban studies. 23: 167183. eliston, jon 1995 "the myth of the miami monolith," nacla report on the americas. 29(2): 40-41. fonzi, gaeton 1993 "who is jorge mas canosa?" esquire. 10: 186-202. ©i fornient, carlos 1989 "political practice and the rise of an ethnic enclave," tlieory and society. 8(1): 47'-81 garcia, cristina 1996 havana usa. los angeles: university of california press. grenier, guillermo and alex stepick (eds.) 1992 miami now! immigration, ethnicity and social change. miami: university press of florida. grosfoguel, ramon 1 995 "global logics in the caribbean city system: the case of miami," pp. 156-170 in p.knox and p.j.taylor (eds.) world cities in a world system. london: cambridge university press. kornbluh, peter 1995 "cuba no mas," trie nation. may 29. kornbluh, peter and jon eliston 1994 "will congress kill tv marti?" trie nation. august 22. mohl, raymond the politics of ethnicity in contemporary miami," migration worlda4(3):l-13. pedraza-bailey, s. 1 982 "cubans and mexicans in the united states, " cuban studies. ll(2):79-97. perez, lisandro 1 990 "the 1 990s: cuban miami at a crossroads, " cuban studies. 20(1): 3-11. perez firmat, gustavo 1994 life on the hyphen: in search of cuban america. austin: university of texas press. poyo, geraldo 1991 "the cuban experience in the united states: migration, community, identity," cuban studies. 21(1): 19-36 rieff, david 1987 going to miami. new york: little brown and co. spicer nichols, john 1 990 " broadcast wars, " nacla report on the americas. 24(3): 30-33 . stack, john and christopher warren 1990 "ethnicity and the politics of symbolism in miami's cuban community," cuban studies. 20(1): 11-29. 170 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign: an assessment from a social movement unionism perspective caitlin hewitt-white1 abstract: in the past decade, social movement unionism (smu), also referred to as social justice unionism, has garnered a lot of attention from labour activists and scholars. the recent experience of the chicago teachers’ union has especially invigorated this conversation. the ctu made unprecedented gains in mobilizing with parents in the campaign to tie an imposed extended school day to increased resources and staffing, and in the campaign against school closures. this paper aims to contribute to this conversation by highlighting how two key aspects of smu member control and non-economistic goals shared with the public – offer powerful possibilities for resisting neoliberal attacks on education workers. to this end, i reconstruct and assess the 2012 campaign of the ontario secondary school teachers’ federation (osstf) against the ontario government’s anti-labour bill 115, with an eye to member involvement and the union’s relationship to the public. osstf’s top-down concessionary approach is at odds with union committees, policies, and autonomous rank-and-file activities that are oriented towards social justice and anti-neoliberalism. to strengthen the social-justice oriented currents within osstf, leaders and members would need to need to reconsider its internal democratic structures and how it builds coalitions with groups outside of the union. keywords: ontario secondary school teachers’ federation, education, neoliberalism, social movement unionism 1  caitlin hewitt-white is a secondary school teacher in toronto, member of the ontario secondary school teachers’ federation, and m.a. student in social justice education at the ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto. the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 171 introduction in the past decade, social movement unionism (smu), also referred to as social justice unionism, has garnered a lot of attention from labour activists and scholars (camfield, 2007; fletcher & gapasin, 2008; gall, 2009; fletcher, 2011; ross, 2012; ross & savage, 2012; weiner, 2012). the recent experience of the chicago teachers’ union has especially invigorated this conversation. the ctu made unprecedented gains in mobilizing with parents in the campaign to tie an imposed extended school day to increased resources and staffing, with the campaign against school closures (moran, 2012; uetricht, 2012). this paper aims to contribute to this conversation by highlighting how two key aspects of smu – member control and non-economistic goals shared with the public – offer powerful possibilities for resisting neoliberal attacks on education workers. to this end, i reconstruct and assess the 2012 campaign of the ontario secondary school teachers’ federation (osstf) against the ontario government’s anti-labour bill 115, with an eye to the role of members, parents, and a social justice agenda in the fight-back strategy. the union’s eventual concessions, and its confusing strike strategy, compromised both member morale and public perception of osstf’s sincerity as a union that fights for the common good. this paper offers a sketch of neoliberalism in ontario’s education system, an overview of social movement unionism, a brief reconstruction of bill 115 and osstf’s response to it. i also look at examples of osstf member dissent and the problems with internal democratic practice at their root. this dissent, in my view, indicates that members want osstf to embrace deeper member engagement: a hallmark of social movement unionism. i will refer to cases of unions that have developed deeper member engagement in tandem with deeper public engagement, in the process of reframing union struggles around the shared interest of preserving public education. osstf provincial leadership’s approach to resisting bill 115 was centred on an understanding of osstf members as passive recipients of knowledge and strategy crafted by the leadership. the internal democratic structure of osstf theoretically allows for member engagement from the bottom up, but in practice, leaders have low expectations of members’ willingness to mobilize. in its campaign against bill 115, osstf consistently opted for business-union tactics, leaving member knowledge and power untapped. this resulted in important moments of dissonance between members and leaders. furthermore, the anti-bill 172 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education 115 campaign did not incorporate education workers’ relationships with students and the public. while it would be remiss to conclude that better member involvement and public buy-in would have necessarily resulted in a better contract, unions that have built both types of involvement have enjoyed gains in contracts and in popular support. while this paper highlights deficiencies in osstf’s 2012-2013 strategy and identifies business union practices that blocked full member engagement, osstf’s structures and practices cannot be accurately reduced to a simplistic model: either one of social justice movement unionism or of gompersian business unionism. as a province-wide organization covering thirty-five geographical districts and one hundred and forty bargaining units – each with its own local executive, school delegates, and committees of member activists – the degrees of local member involvement, public involvement, and social justice activism are diverse. organizational documents can provide a picture of the institution “in theory”, but say little of what unfolds on the ground locally. the present study offers a glimpse at practice through texts produced by dissenting members, in the hopes that these marginal voices can shed light on grassroots experience. within union committees and in osstf policy, there exist a range of progressive positions on access to quality education for students affected by class, race, gender, and sexual inequality; inequalities which have been taken up, exacerbated, and rearticulated by neoliberalism.2 i consider such positions to be in the interest of social justice, as they attempt to repair social inequality. furthermore, osstf has policy statements against neoliberal educational practices like privatization and standardized testing.3 but these commitments to social justice and against neoliberalism were not evident when the union had the opportunity to respond to neoliberalism in the form of bill 115. in other words, osstf’s response insufficiently drew on the organization’s pre-existing social justice values. 2  particularly noteworthy are the following osstf policies: policy 8.9.4.5 opposes the streaming of “working class and immigrant students” into “lower levels of academic instruction”; a number of policies under “aboriginal education” (8.21) asserts the need for aboriginal knowledge to be incorporated throughout the curriculum; 8.15, “anti-racism and anti-discrimination”, has a number of policies aimed at protecting students and osstf members from discrimination, including discrimination based on gender expression; and 12.14 states that osstf is opposed to all forms of racial profiling (osstf 2013a). 3  osstf’s policy 11.8.1 is in favour of abolishing the ministry of education office that administers ontario’s standardized tests (osstf 2013a, 27) and policy 2.1.6 states that standardized tests should not be used to evaluate teachers. furthermore, no less than thirteen policies under section 8.2 state that the osstf is opposed to privatization, outsourcing, and commercialization in the education sector, in addition to policy 6.1.4. the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 173 to prove these claims i rely on archival research: publicly-available osstf documents including bargaining bulletins, annual action plans, and annual standing committee reports from the years 2011 to 2014. in constructing a critical lens to use in document analysis, and to attend to the gaps between history on paper and history as rank and filers experienced it, i referred to my own notes and observations from the strike as an osstf member, and to publicly-available documents produced by dissident members including the group rank-and-file education workers of toronto (rewt), of which i was a member in late 2012 and early 2013. neoliberalism in education although the neoliberal project of “privatization, deregulation, casualization of the workforce” and “deunionization” (fletcher and gapasin, 2008, 9) is global in reach, neoliberal reforms to the ontario education system have not come about easily. in part, this is due to steady opposition from public education workers’ unions. compared to reports about the dismantling of entire school districts in american cities and their reconstituted patchwork of privately-run charter schools and eviscerated public schools4, neoliberalism in the ontario school system seems fairly benign. but neoliberal practices can be seen in both well-developed and embryonic forms in ontario’s system. bill 115 is an example of the latter. neoliberal reforms to the ontario education system started to emerge in earnest in the 1980s, intensified at a rapid pace in the 1990s, and were somewhat mitigated by union-government collaboration in the 2000s. introduced in 2012, the liberal government’s bill 115 sought to reduce teacher salaries, sick days, and retirement gratuities, while leaving intact relatively decent features of the school system, like class size caps, a clever strategy that made use of the public’s perception of teachers as well-off and spoiled. at the heart of bill 115 was the attempt to set a precedent for the disempowerment of education worker unions, which are uniquely positioned as the defenders of a common good that is both necessary and burdensome for neoliberal capitalism. when considered as part of the global neoliberal project, education can be seen as a way to reproduce workers who are subservient to the state and capital. education gives individuals the skills needed for producing commodities, as hopkins and wallerstein (1977, 128) describe in their account of global commodity 4  see, for instance, the schooling situation in philadelphia, recently described by distefano (6 may, 2014). 174 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education chains. from this perspective, students and the education they receive are worth as much as the labour the students will eventually contribute to commodity chains. students with basic math and literacy skills are the products of the labour process of teachers. like social workers and other public sector workers, teachers’ work is driven by quality service rather than quantity of product. quality public education, then, can be seen as an expenditure that is simultaneously necessary for reproducing the labour force as well as a burdensome expenditure. as lois weiner (2012, 6) puts it: “since most jobs being created require no more than an eighth-grade education (think of walmart’s “associates”), only a handful of people need to acquire the sophisticated thinking skills to manage and control the world’s productive resources...therefore, a well-educated (and well-paid) teaching force, it is argued by elites establishing educational policy, is a waste of scarce public money.” in the global economy, curriculum that covers liberal arts and critical thinking can be sacrificed for concrete skills-based learning delivered by educators controlled by excessive managerial oversight. however, studies in resistant teacher practices point to the transformative potential and semi-autonomous character of education; the process of teaching and learning cannot be reduced to its economic role in keeping the system going.5 seen from a profit-making perspective, education is unwieldy, costly, essential, and a potential source of private wealth. public sector unions are obstacles to the process of dismantling public school systems. in so doing, they also block the opening up of education to privatization; they stand in the way of transforming the education sector into a source of private wealth. neoliberal imperatives help create chaos in a public system by making schools, jobs, and programs all insecure by being subjected to constant evaluation and elimination. in the context of stagnant wages and increased costs of living, submitting education to marketized control – making funding contingent on student achievement and teacher performance funding, or forcing school boards to balance budgets – turns schools into spaces of competition and scarcity. in this precarious and insecure environment, teachers and students become more easily disciplined, and made increasingly willing and able to be part of a precarious, flexible and submissive workforce. as is generally the case in jurisdictions where labour rights exist, when 5  see, for instance, brogan, 2014. the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 175 ontario governments have not achieved their desired changes to public sector spending through collective bargaining, they have forced these changes through legislative attacks on labour rights, such as bill 115. in his 1999 study retooling the mind factory, alan sears discusses the reorganization of the public sector in ontario along the lines of lean production; a project he calls the “lean state”, to mimic the profitability of the private sector. in ontario’s education system, this process began with state-commissioned educational policy papers in the 1980s that recommended curriculum compression for students and work intensification for teachers. these papers threatened to bring neoliberalism into the classroom by proposing that the government link curriculum with measurable outcomes and accountability (hanson, 2013, 149). under the new democratic party provincial government from 1990 to 1995, teachers’ wages were cut through unpaid furlough days (hanson, 2013, 300). in 1995, many of the recommendations from the 1980s became reality when progressive conservative mike harris was elected as ontario’s premier. the harris era saw dramatic changes to the nature of ontario’s primary and secondary curriculum, funding, and laws governing teachers’ unions. these changes brought technocratic discourses of markets and efficiency to bear on education, and created a public climate hostile to teachers. prominent features of ontario students’ contemporary experience come from that era. for instance, the grades 3, 6 and 10 standardized tests, the four-year high school curriculum (as opposed to the five years that existed previously), and a heavy emphasis on job readiness across the curriculum. legislation removed principals and vice-principals from the teachers’ unions and amalgamated school boards. local taxes no longer fund education; instead, the provincial government both raises and directs education funding. school boards no longer have local financial autonomy. the new funding formula, still operative today, allocates money based on number of students instead of per school. in effect, this has forced boards to balance budgets year after year through job and program reductions. the liberal party came to power in 2003 and has enjoyed financial and moral support from education workers’ unions. although it has occasionally increased education funding for the purposes of keeping class sizes “down” (though never as small as teachers would prefer), it has not reversed harris’ neoliberal reforms. successive liberal governments have not scrapped the harris-era funding formula, so that school boards remain underfunded, and job and program reductions continue. one effect of downsizing and underfunding in a context of increasingly 176 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education complex student needs is the neoliberal hallmark of work intensification. education workers undertake more and more job tasks without equivalent training or compensation to do so well. faced with declining enrolment in addition to the harris-era funding formula, boards are certainly laying off education workers (rushowy, 2013), but union-driven placement procedures still protect staff with seniority, and retain and gradually re-place laid off staff for up to a year. this could be described as a type of managed precarity that affects increasing numbers of permanent teachers. meanwhile, the number of newly certified unemployed teachers expands while the possibility that they get hired into permanent jobs dwindles. although ontario schools boards have not been selling off schools or programs to private service providers to the extent that school authorities in the u.s. have, discourses of declining student achievement have contributed to perceived need for low-cost programs like teach for canada to “rescue” racialized and poor students from a public system in crisis (choise, 2013). bill 115 went after the salaries and benefits of teachers – a far less disturbing spectre than wholesale school closures and layoffs – but it sought these cuts via the imposition of unconstitutional changes to the collective bargaining process. bill 115, discussed below, should be understood as a step towards disabling unions’ already limited control over education funding and working conditions, and this step is essential to opening the door to well-organized precarity and privatization in the public sector. social movement unionism a growing literature contends that social movement unionism is a powerful model for resisting these neoliberal attacks on public sector unions and on public services (camfield, 2007; fletcher, 2011; weiner, 2012). camfield specifically delineates the three types of social unions, and this delineation is also used by bill fletcher jr. (2011): social unions, mobilization unions, and social movement unions, each of which involve member involvement and the involvement of non-union members in setting unions’ agendas and designing campaigns. rooted in an economism that takes workers’ workplace-based interests as its starting point, business unions are not critical of status quo social relations and they focus on providing service to members through grievances and contract enforcement. often understood as corporatelike organizations, they pride themselves on being a respectable and pragmatic (if not non-partisan) partner of industry and the state. their main interest is to defend the workplace interests of their members (e.g. the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 177 wages and working conditions), hence the emphasis on staff providing service to members. in contrast, social unions do not necessarily abandon more traditional and business-union mechanisms for defending workers’ workplace interests (ross, 2012), but they are additionally motivated by the interests of its members as citizens. social unions mount campaigns based on noneconomistic interests in ways that emphasize that their members share interests with non-union members, and that show that the public stands to benefit from gains made by the union. they see inequality within and beyond the workplace and, as such, are more critical of current social relations (camfield, 2007; ross, 2012). this orientation means that social unions understand their members as sharing a range of workplace and non-workplace interests, such as quality public education or health care, with the working class in general. the example of osstf’s practice supports ross’ claim that unions do not normally adhere to only one model of unionism. through its focus on servicing members, maintaining contracts, and collaborating with the employer, osstf engages in business union practices; through its coalitional work with larger labour bodies like the ontario federation of labour and the canadian labour congress, its internal democratic structure that theoretically enables member involvement, and its (albeit limited) support for non-economistic campaigns and movements, osstf engages in social unionism practices. activists and leaders in osstf can avail themselves of a rich literature on the transformation of unions from outdated corporate entities that earn the resentment of the unorganized, to vibrant working-class organizations that can mobilize beyond their traditional membership base in the interests in social justice. social movement unionism, as articulated through the work of activist-scholars like lois weiner and jane mcalevey, positions members as the key to unions as vehicles for social justice. weiner (2012, 24-28, 38) emphasizes the necessary work of relationship-building with education workers across different job classes, many of whom have far less income and protections than teachers, and with parents. mcalevey’s recent book (2012) documents contract victories won through the whole-worker approach to organizing. this approach collapses the false dichotomy between union members and community members so that a union member’s interest extends beyond her immediate economic interests in good wages and working conditions, to include her wider interest in, for instance, affordable housing or quality public healthcare. in this model, union organizers depend on 178 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education members as organizers and tap the power of worker knowledge before and during bargaining through constant surveying, petitioning, open meetings, and open bargaining. mcalevey’s work makes clear that the involvement of members and that of the public go hand in hand: it is through rank-and-file knowledge that deeper coalitions with the public can be formed; it is through sensitivity to public interests that unions can take on campaigns that are more likely to be relevant to society as a whole. amanda tattersall (2009) has written about the case of the new south wales teachers’ federation taking a substantial risk when it convened extensive public inquiries into education as a precursor to establishing bargaining demands. a major parents’ organization was equal partner in the coalition and insisted that salaries not be made an issue at the beginning of the process, but by the end of months of televised town-hall meetings, parent representatives decided they wanted teachers’ salary increases to be one of their demands in improving public education. parents came to see salary increases as essential to qualitative improvements in public education. a case that brings together a startling degree of involvement of members with that of the public comes from st. paul, minnesota, where the teachers’ union first opened up the bargaining process to rank and file members, and then to parents and the public. members, parents, and the public sit in the bargaining room during talks, participate in caucuses with the union’s negotiators, and sometimes address the audience on issues like class sizes or resources. in preparation for their most recent round of bargaining, the union formed their demands from member surveys as well as from parent “study groups” (faber 2013). mccartin (2013, 60) sees the key to public sector union survival, first, as the ability to redefine the common good along lines that resonate with private sector workers and, second, as the willingness to put the common good at the centre union campaigns, including contract campaigns. in addition to the case of the chicago teachers’ union, he cites the example of the oregon’s service employees international union (seiu) local 503 which, as part of their 2013 bargaining campaign called “in it together”, demanded a cap on post-secondary tuition and “renegotiation of predatory interest rate swaps.” it is no coincidence that education unions that engage members to an extraordinary degree also engage parents; the two depend on and strengthen each other. the fact that osstf member survey results from 2009 indicated that members wanted a better partnership with the public the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 179 and with parents casts a tragic shadow on the missed opportunities of the bill 115 campaign to engage union members, parents, and students. osstf lacks the type of longer-term relationship building with parent and community organizations that can foster genuine public understanding and support for contract demands. the longer-term effects of mobilization, such as member education, empowerment, and transformation into member-organizers, can only make the union a more powerful threat to neoliberal forces, whether it be in the context of shared issues like healthcare or workplace issues like a fight for a good contract. bill 115 and osstf’s response osstf’s history dates back to 1919, and is punctuated by moments of radical action including the successful 1920 campaign for equal pay for women teachers, an illegal walkout in 1973 that secured teachers’ right to strike, and participation from 1995 to 1998 in various actions against mike harris’ attacks on the poor, workers, and public services. whereas the osstf had traditionally supported the ndp, it shifted to “strategic voting” in the 2000s, a strategy that translated into support for the liberals. in preparation for the 2003 provincial election, unions launched an anti-conservative campaign called the working families coalition which called on voters to vote for any party but conservative (savage, 2012, 80). the liberals were voted into power in 2003, 2007 and 2011. throughout this period, osstf positioned itself as a “partner” with the government under the premiership of dalton mcguinty, known as the “education premier”. it also made more contributions to liberal election campaigns than it did to those of the ndp (cooke, 2013). although local osstf districts and school boards did experience intermittent bargaining battles, osstf as a provincial organization did not undertake major strike activity in this period. additionally in the 2000s, the tradition of osstf provincial bargaining emerged, in which the provincial government and the osstf provincial team start talks months about education funding before local bargaining begins. local autonomy has been preserved only for negotiating working conditions.6 the era of labour peace came to an end in early 2012 when mcguinty announced that he would cut public sector salaries in a move towards balancing the provincial budget (mills, 2012). in february, the province released its commissioned drummond report which outlined cuts to public programs and services. the report 6  the most recent iteration of “two-tiered bargaining” (hanson, 2013, 107) is bill 122, passed in early april, 2014 (see brown, 2014). 180 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education informed the subsequent 2012 ontario budget’s $500 million cuts to education funding through wage restraints on education workers. the government warned it would enforce these cuts through legislation if the education unions did not accept them. osstf thus went into organizing mode; by april 16 its legal team had drafted a constitutional challenge (coran, 16 april, 2012). in the months that followed, provincial-level talks crumbled between the government and all affected education unions save for the ontario english catholic teachers’ association (oecta). in july, oecta signed a memorandum of understanding (mou) with the government, which included a two year wage freeze, frozen salary grid movement for teachers who have been teaching less than ten years, a fifty percent sick day cut, and abolishing the sick day bank (oecta, 2012). in order to bring osstf and other education worker unions in line with the oecta mou, minister of education laurel broten introduced the cynically-named putting students first act, bill 115, to legislature in august. passed on september 11, bill 115 imposed terms and conditions on osstf members identical to those in the oecta mou by stipulating that any collective agreement the local bargaining units and local employers came up with could not be substantially different from the oecta mou and would be subject to modifications and approval by the minister. bill 115 also gave education unions the deadline of december 31 by which they had to bargain identical agreements or have them imposed. during the period of time in which bill 115 was in effect, from september 2012 to january 2013, collective bargaining effectively no longer existed for education workers’ unions because they were hamstrung by austerity parameters and the minister’s discretion over the contents of the agreements. osstf’s anti-bill 115 campaign began with mcguinty’s announcement that he would seek education sector cuts, and was characterized throughout by an emphasis on the government’s “unacceptable” and “unprecedented attack on members’ rights” and labour rights in general, rather than on the economic losses teachers would suffer, or on the effect of the bill on the quality of education (mills, 2012). at this point, osstf was not alone in opposing the impending attack on the public sector. on april 21, osstf bussed members from across ontario to participate in the ontario federation of labour’s day of action against the cuts. ken coran’s speech at that rally emphasized the non-economic element of teachers’ opposition to austerity: the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 181 “and when you respect something, that means you value it, you appreciate it, and you listen to it. the recent actions from this government show exactly the opposite. there is not respect... we’re here today to change that, to show this government that they better start respecting the power of the people.” (osstf/feeso stands strong, 2012) coran here is mourning the abrupt unilateral withdrawal of the government from what had been perceived as a respectful partnership, and he invokes popular power, something that veers away from business unionism and gestures towards the broader non-economistic outlook of social movement unionism. yet it gradually became known to osstf members that coran had made this speech only days after offering a major concession to the government on april 18, 2012, without member consent or prior knowledge. the offer appears to have been an attempt to appease the government because the main component of the offer was a 0 percent wage increase for two years. in a bargaining bulletin dated april 23, 2012, osstf’s provincial office outlined the offer and called it an “equitable and manageable wage freeze” (coran, 23 april 2012). although this bargaining bulletin was available online, many members found out about the offer through an osstf advertisement in the toronto star in late may that announced the proposal underneath the headline “we’re doing our part to ensure stability in public education...now it’s the government’s turn” (“we’re doing our part”, 2012). osstf made this offer in exchange for nothing, it presumed this would be enough to convince the government to not pursue legislation to enforce the cuts. the union signalled to the government that it was willing to start from a weak, concessionary position; it accepted the neoliberal narrative of there being no alternative but to find savings by cutting “costs”. early on, osstf communicated with its members by issuing bargaining bulletins that outlined the impact of the impending crisis and the likelihood of a strike vote after the contracts expired on august 31. at its disposal in crafting a bargaining and fight-back strategy were the results of local negotiating surveys from early 2012 as well as decisions taken at a provincial gathering of local presidents. these methods of communication and collaboration between leaders and members will be discussed more fully below. noteworthy here is that communicating with and building support among parents, students, and wider communities was not as visible, beyond the issuing of press releases. this was 182 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education evident when the elementary teachers federation of ontario (etfo), canadian union of public employees (cupe), and osstf held a joint rally on august 28 at the provincial legislature drew thousands, and few in the crowd were not union members. after having cancelled an earlier scheduled strike vote (osstf district 13, 2012)7, osstf finally held a successful strike vote in its locals in late september. in october, osstf and other education worker unions filed a court challenge on the grounds that bill 115 is unconstitutional8, and teachers in etfo and osstf voluntarily withdrew their supervision of extracurricular activities. the following month, osstf initiated a limited two month strike during which teachers continued reporting for work but did not complete attendance or administrative duties, and formally stopped supervising extracurricular activities (coran, 25 october, 2012). public interest in the conflict ramped up: call-in radio shows, news segments, and social media buzzed with stories from parents frustrated with the extracurricular boycott. starting on december 10th, osstf members took the further step of entering their worksites only fifteen minutes before the beginning of the school day and leaving fifteen minutes after its end (nesbitt, 2012). this selective strike occurred while local osstf bargaining teams, under the direction of osstf’s provincial bargaining team, tried to come up with local agreements with school boards that would satisfy the minister of education’s strict criteria. many found osstf’s willingness to negotiate under conditions it was publicly protesting to be confusing. when members of seven local bargaining units were asked to vote on tentative agreements, only two, york and upper grand, voted in favour (pecoskie, 2012). upper grand osstf had three local executive members quit in protest of provincial office interference in the local democratic process (shuttleworth, 2012). the osstf provincial leadership took the “no” votes as a sign they were on the wrong track, and they called off all further local bargaining (osstf, 28 november, 2012). it is possible that this dissonance between members and leaders could have been prevented by involving members in the process of setting priorities and crafting strategy well before bargaining had begun. osstf protested in other ways, but at no time significantly included in their actions people who stand to benefit the most from strong labour 7  an osstf member’s account of ken coran’s demise claims that “he even, at the request of andrea horwath, called off strike votes 2 days before the k-w [kingston-waterloo] election as it was perceived that the publicity surrounding such votes would damage the chances of the ndp candidate” (heffernan, 2013). 8  to date, this court challenge is still in process (côté, 2013). the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 183 rights of the sort osstf claimed to stand for. parents, students, and nonosstf workers were noticeably absent at osstf protests at liberal mpp offices throughout the fall. this is in contrast to the extensive community and labour collaboration that osstf and other unions undertook during the days of action against harris; workers allied with church groups, anti-poverty organizations, social services organizations, and unemployed people hit by social assistance cuts to mount city-wide strikes across the province (labotz, 2011). the equivalent to this in the bill 115 case would have been collaboration with parent groups, youth, and other labour organizations. not only had there been a historical precedent of working with non-union members on a shared campaign against a government’s neoliberal assault, but there were also opportunities for collaboration: in late september and in december, high school students autonomously organized high school walkouts. the media reported that the walkouts were against the teachers’ extracurricular boycott, but also against bill 115 (sweetman, 2012). notably, education worker unions did not support the student actions. furthermore, osstf did not engage parents beyond printing a leaflet aimed at the general public; this was not accompanied by any plan for how to distribute the leaflets.9 meanwhile, osstf’s allies in the elementary teachers’ federation of ontario staged one-day rotating walkouts across the province. although cupe, the union representing education support staff, threatened a one-day walkout should agreements be imposed after december 31, they did not engage in any job action. osstf members and other observers complained about this lack of coordinated strategy between unions (kanter, 2013). a public opinion poll showed that many ontarians thought that the anti-bill 115 strategy of limited strike, combined with narrowly conceived protests and ongoing local bargaining, was ineffective and confusing (benzie, 2012). osstf generated the most controversy in its decision to cut extracurricular activities. capitulation to the government’s austerity agenda began in earnest in late december as the deadline for “substantially identical” agreements approached. cupe negotiated their own mou with the government on december 31 which members ratified by mid-january. because bill 115 declared strike activity after december 31 illegal, osstf provincial office told members to resume all normal duties, yet many continued 9  the pamphlet featured a photograph of predominantly white students and a white teacher. after teachers expressed criticism that this was not an accurate portrayal of ontario’s diverse student population, in december osstf released a version with a different photograph portraying a more accurately diverse group of students. 184 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to voluntarily boycott extracurriculars. etfo had been planning a full walkout on january 11, and osstf followed suit. but to the bewilderment of education workers who wanted cross-union coordination, the latter planned their walkout for january 16. the ontario labour relations board (olrb) ruled the walkout illegal and both unions called off their planned actions. on january 23, laurel broten took any remaining steam out of the anti-bill 115 movement by repealing the bill, declaring that it had accomplished what it had set out to do, by virtue of forcing unions to come up with their own concessionary mous or by having imposed them as of january 1. the terrain shifted again days later. because dalton mcguinty had resigned amid scandal in october, the post of premier had remained empty until the liberal party leadership convention in late january. while osstf, other unions, and various anti-poverty groups protested outside the convention, party delegates inside elected kathleen wynne. she promised to repair the government’s relationship with teachers but refused to rip up any forced concessionary contracts (“ontario’s premier-designate”, 2013). regardless, osstf went ahead and resumed negotiations with the new government, with liz sandals as minister of education. in late february, osstf recommended that teachers end their extracurricular boycott as it was ready to engage in discussions with the province again, even as etfo did not end theirs until a month later (alphonso, 2013). in april, a majority of members voted in favour of a tentative agreement in the midst of rank and file “vote no” campaign (rewt, 2013). the agreement solidified a loss of nine out of twenty sick days and the sick day bank, a 97-day freeze for newer teachers still moving through the salary grid, and guaranteed “savings” to the province through a voluntary unpaid leave scheme combined with mandatory unpaid professional development days (alphonso, 2013). the osstf’s relationship with the liberal party of ontario from the spring throughout the fall of 2012 has been described as an aberration from a longer pattern of financial and political support (cooke, 2013). in addition to public statements declaring disappointment and a sense of betrayal, the aberration also took the form of the osstf throwing its organizational resources behind ndp candidate catherine fife’s provincial by-election campaign in the riding of kitchener-waterloo. fife won, decisively putting the ruling liberals into a minority position in legislature, though this did not stop bill 115 from passing on september 11. despite its support for the ndp in kitchener-waterloo and its public rhetoric, osstf demonstrated a reluctance to truly the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 185 upset its relationship with the liberals. when news of mcguinty’s resignation broke in mid-october, the union even issued a bizarre press release congratulating him on his term in office and wishing him well (osstf, 16 oct, 2012). murray cooke (2013) observed: “some activists have feared that the unions are merely waiting for an opportunity to patch up their differences rather than fight against bill 115.” these fears were correct. in late january 2013, the press exposed $30,000 in donations from the toronto local of osstf district 12 to four liberal candidates running in the leadership race (toronto star, 4 feb, 2013). having started with the extracurricular ban, the public image of osstf leadership as “uncaring” towards students became entrenched. commented a toronto star editorial: “when teachers appeal for public support by denouncing the liberals and bill 115 as an affront to democracy, let’s remember that their toronto local is playing an old-fashioned political game. now that we know how generous the union was with liberal candidates, including those who were in cabinet when bill 115 was passed, it’s even more of a pity that they can’t extend a similar kindness to students.” (toronto teachers’ union plays, 2013) more public embarrassment arose when, having retired from his position as osstf president, ken coran agreed to run (unsuccessfully, in the end) as a liberal candidate in the august 2013 by-election in the riding of london west (taylor, 2013). although he was roundly shamed by unionists and the left for this move, it lent credence to long-standing doubts about the sincerity of osstf’s commitment to fighting bill 115. the union’s commitment to respectability and electoral politics overshadowed its commitment to resisting the government’s attack.10 throughout the bill 115 period, by rhetorically focusing on the antidemocratic nature of the government’s agenda, the union put itself in a better position than it would have if it had emphasized material losses, given that teachers’ decent salaries and benefits are regularly derided in the media as exorbitant. each of the education unions attempted to use the rights framework to argue that other workers could end up suffering from austerity-by-legislation’s downward pressure on wages and labour rights. the narrative of “if they can do this to us, then they will do this 10  in the 2014 provincial elections, the teachers’ unions again implicitly supported the liberal party by directing union members to vote strategically (for anyone but the conservatives). some went further. unsurprisingly, the osstf district 12 (toronto) executive explicitly asked its members to vote for liberal candidates. 186 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to you” indicated a sense of social justice and a transcendence of narrow economic interests. however, osstf’s attempt at a non-economistic orientation was more rhetorical than real: it did not translate into actions on the ground that were broadly inclusive of workers other than unionized education workers. the rhetoric was also more militant than the union’s actions: in its initial concessionary wage freeze offer, its unpopular tentative agreements bargained during the bill 115 period, and its inability to severe its ties to the liberal party, osstf accepted imposed conditions of austerity and pursued “respectability” even as it claimed to oppose the government’s machinations. the union continued to attempt to reassure members that the pending constitutional challenge still held promise, which was the same advice given to the union by the government throughout the bill 115 period: take the fight to the courts and leave the kids out of it. as was abundantly clear in the unions’ acceptance of the olrb ruling, the rights framework depends on legal institutions for enforcement and takes the struggle out of the realm of public protest and into the courts. in other words, the rights framework has a deep demobilizing affect. additionally, the case of teachers in british colombia11, in which the b.c. government blatantly ignored the courts’ ruling in the teachers’ favour against the government’s abrogation of collective bargaining rights, demonstrates the unreliability of pro-labour court decisions. while a position of “rights for all” is better than a position of “rights for us”, any rights-based approach might not be as convincing as one that shows that degraded labour rights compromises the common good of quality education. for instance, ending collective bargaining rights would take teachers’ front-line knowledge out of the decision-making process over what students and schools need. mccartin (2013, 59) observes: “while such rights-based arguments resonate well among many union members, they translate poorly to the vast majority of unorganized workers... these arguments can also at times seem blind to the realities faced by the vast majority of private sector workers who currently lack a realistic prospect of improving their own lot through unionization. such workers doubt that the benefits gained by someone else’s union will ever trickle down to them.” 11  the court ruled in 2011 that the b.c. government’s 2002 legislated removal of class sizes and composition from collective bargaining amounted to a breach of constitutional labour rights (podaski, 2014). the recent b.c. teachers’ strike (settled in september 2014) hinged on class composition. the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 187 member dissent and participation there is no doubt that osstf provincial and local leaders wanted the best deal for their members, and because of the dire situation they were aiming for as few losses as possible. but the task of deciding that the goal was to minimize losses rather than defend the status quo or seek gains, and then the task of deciding how to minimize losses, was monopolized by provincial leaders. one could argue that union leaders and their staff are best situated to take on the hard decisions that rank and file members lack the skills or interest to do themselves. the assumption about members in such a model is not only that they are disengaged, but also that they are comfortable with being disengaged. osstf’s resistance to bill 115 might have drawn on the expertise of lawyers and staff, but it lacked member involvement which resulted in some of osstf’s moves being criticized by members on the grounds that they did not represent what members wanted and that they had conceded too much. members communicated their dissent through a variety of texts, from petitions to articles, usually posted online. here i highlight a few examples of these texts and i look at underlying union practices that enabled the neglect of member concerns. two petitions to the osstf provincial executive (pe) circulated in the winter of 2012, calling on them to increase member input into provincial strategy, and taking issue with their concessionary position. the first, signed by 500, came within the same week that bill 115 imposed the parameters of the mou on all education workers that had not come up with agreements, and that laurel broten repealed bill 115.12 it stated: “what we, the members of the osstf, need from our union is a strategy of education, ongoing democratic input, and mobilization of our membership and our surrounding communities” (adopt a real strategy, 2013). the second petition to provincial executive received 122 signatures and took aim at the recent announcement that talks with the government were in progress. a signatory explained her reasons for signing the petition as follows: “before our pe can speak on behalf of members they must survey them. the rank and file do not feel their voice is heard. there needs to be a formal and regular vehicle for promoting communication up from the members to executive (as well as improved communication from pe). do not say pe speaks for members when they have never asked them directly how they feel about issues.” (push the pause button, 2013). 12  the author of this paper participated in writing this petition. 188 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the union’s decision to resume talks with the new government of kathleen wynne generated member criticism. in response to the union’s late february announcement that it had resumed talks with the government, teacher jim springer stated in an open letter to the provincial executive: “in short, it is painfully clear that our leadership has accepted the most significant strips to our collective agreements in decades and is no longer prepared to fight against the almost certainly permanent loss of significant benefits accumulated over many years of hard fought negotiations.” (stringer, 2013). an ottawa teacher published an article online in early march, similarly dismayed at the resumption of talks, and addressed the osstf decision to resume extracurriculars even though etfo continued their ban: “here’s a thought: how about the leaders of osstf and etfo sit down with each other and come up with a collective, cooperative, collaborative, and united course of action?.” (kanter, 2013). kanter wrote that he had abandoned his initial draft that had asked the provincial executive to resign, and stated: “what i ask instead is that you... survey the membership on the issue. are we willing to accept the strips? if not, are we prepared to stand firm until we achieve a satisfactory resolution. i am confident that you will be surprised by the strength of the resolve of the membership.” (stringer, 2013). these comments directly challenge the union’s low expectations of members’ militancy. criticism, debate, and dissent within unions is par for the course, but when a union is in bargaining, the strength of their position requires member buy-in of the sort that comes from sustained member involvement from the beginning. there is no evidence that osstf leaders sought out and processed rank-and-file member input in a systematic, province-wide manner. in contrast to member initiative and power at the heart of social movement unionism, osstf’s response to bill 115 suggests that osstf leaders view the members’ role in the union as primarily supportive of their union leaders, a view that aligns osstf with the tradition of business unionism. what internal structures exist in osstf, and how did they contribute to the dissonance between members and leaders? both communication (conveying information) and consultation (incorporating member feedback) in the period under study relied on osstf’s internal democratic structure. in theory, this structure facilitates member engagement from the bottom up, but in practice, a laissez-faire approach to member engagement means that the bottom-up potential of the structure is under-utilized. while communication is no substitute for collaborative discussion, it is essential for organizational cohesion and rank-and-file morale. the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 189 members’ knowledge of the volatile situation before, during, and after the strike came from provincial office, either directly, or through local executives. osstf’s provincial office primarily used online bargaining bulletins to communicate with its members, but the distribution of these bulletins was organized in a hierarchical, trickle-down fashion: the provincial office posted the bulletins on their website and then it was up to local districts to notify their members via email of the website link to check for updates. there was no way to check that the members at the worksites actually read the information. these bulletins were later supplemented with confidential negotiations updates emailed from local offices directly to members, sometimes containing text written by osstf provincial. if rank and file members did not take individual initiative to follow these bulletins and updates, they could receive information from their branch president.13 however, the activity of branch presidents is voluntary, and not monitored or ensured. it is unsurprising that many members only heard about the offered wage freeze of april 2012 through the media. osstf’s consultation with members for the purpose of developing bargaining and strike strategies was almost non-existent, and where it did exist, it assumed the same laissez-faire, voluntary character as its communication methods: members were welcome to be as uninformed and uninvolved as they wished. in addition to analysis of political and economic forces, osstf leaders based their strategy on negotiating surveys, and meetings with local leaders (coran, 2012a). as is the case in many unions, the bargaining issues on osstf’s local bargaining surveys from 2012 were preselected, and members were asked to simply rank them. this diverges from the more intensive member-surveying methods used in social movement unions in which union representatives present surveys to members in one-one conversations or small meetings, allowing the feedback to take on an open-ended, qualitative, and collaborative character. in 2012, osstf member surveys were then fed into conceptual briefs. before the union’s negotiators head into local bargaining, branch presidents at local council meetings approve the conceptual brief. an equivalent process occurs at the provincial level. however, conceptual briefs are vague and do not indicate priorities. after councils vote on these conceptual briefs, osstf bargaining becomes a confidential process without any transparency or accountability mechanism. because there are no publicly available documents from osstf that show the results of bargaining surveys, it is unclear 13  a branch president in osstf is the equivalent of a shop steward. 190 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education what percentage of the membership completed them, and it is unclear how the conceptual briefs compare to the raw data. it is also unclear to what (if any) extent members had indicated prior to the strike that a 0 percent wage increase, or any of the other conditions arrived at in the final osstf mou of april 2013, was acceptable to them. the internal democratic structure of osstf underlies the problems that arose with communication and collaboration with members in regards to bill 115. structurally speaking, osstf branch presidents and the members at their worksites can be as uninformed and unengaged with the process as they want. theoretically, rank-and-file members can communicate their concerns to branch presidents who then bring these concerns, in the form of motions or questions to the local executive, to district or bargaining unit council meetings. and theoretically, branch presidents attend district council meetings to hear updates from their district executive about what they had been told by provincial office, and then pass this information to members at the worksite. however, to date, there is no widely-adopted mechanism to ensure that branch presidents attend district council meetings or that they report back to their membership. additionally, district and bargaining unit meetings tend to be weighed down with informational updates from executives at the expense of healthy debate and decision-making by delegates. these factors meant that strategy-making ultimately rested in the hands of provincial office, at times in consultation with a provincial council made up of local presidents. this process assumes that local presidents accurately understand their local members’ desires, and possess the will to represent them at the provincial level. but just as there is no standard practice to ensure that branch presidents bring forward concerns from the worksite, there is none to ensure that local presidents bring forward concerns from their district. there are few ways to ensure fair representation of rank and file concerns beyond the stock belief that if members do not approve of their representatives’ actions, they will vote accordingly during internal elections; a belief that has been contested by a range of accounts of internal union clientalism, repression of dissenting members, and “grooming” of loyal supporters.14 strike votes and ratification votes are two measures of member consent to provincial strategy. that the strike vote of november 2012 resulted in a positive majority indicates that members consented to the strategy of a strike, yet this does not shed light on member approval of 14  for example, see d’arcy martin’s discussion of vertical union cultures (1995), and weiner’s work more generally. the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 191 other elements of the fight-back campaign such as the protests at mpp offices and the refusal to walk out. strike votes cannot substitute for consultation with members for the purpose of creating a strategy; it is rather a measure of consent after the fact, as is the ratification vote. the agreement reached between the ontario government and osstf provincial in april 2013 received an 84 percent ratification vote in favour of the agreement. however, official communications from osstf do not reveal what percentage of members actually cast ballots in either the ratification vote, or the earlier strike vote. while the present study can only gesture to potential areas for further research into osstf rank and file participation in and consent to executive decision-making, broad rank and file concerns are identifiable in ephemeral grassroots publications produced by osstf members. these concerns indicate a criticism of the types of activities in osstf that are aligned with the hierarchical organizational structure of business unionism, and indicate a desire for the type of strong internal democracy and member control at the heart of social movement unionism. the conflict between members and leaders over strategy points to a disunity that weakens osstf’s ability to take on a legislative neoliberal attack on the grounds that it affects all workers. if the fight against bill 115 symbolized osstf’s commitment to labour rights for all and a social justice orientation that extends beyond the immediate economic concerns of its members, then bargaining agreements within the parameters of bill 115 (even after it was repealed) signal an inability to follow through on these commitments. furthermore, osstf’s claim to take on a fight for the labour rights of all ontarians is seriously undermined by osstf members’ insistence that osstf did not even fairly represent its own members. beyond symbolic implications, osstf also set a material precedent: it proved that a government could effectively get a union to consent to and participate in austerity measures against its own workforce. conclusion in terms of the member control and public involvement that are key aspects social movement unions, osstf’s campaign against bill 115 and its associated bargaining were clearly wanting. however, the same is not necessarily true of osstf as an entire province-wide organization, because it is constituted of multiple spaces driven by genuine social justice goals and member activism. osstf has numerous provincial committees composed of provincial executive 192 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education liaisons, provincial staff members, local leaders, and rank-and-file members, which are oriented towards movements for social justice. for example, in recent years the provincial osstf first nations, métis and indigenous provincial committee has supported the idle no more campaign for indigenous sovereignty (osstf, 2014a), and the provincial osstf human rights committee has directly linked the struggles of migrant and precarious workers to education workers’ struggle for labour rights (osstf, 2014b). it is often committees and rank and file delegates who bring motions to osstf’s annual convention that result in social justice-oriented policy positions. for these reasons, the case of osstf supports stephanie ross’ claim that business unionism and social unionism (what i call social movement unionism) contain “elements [that] came together in particular historical and institutional contexts but are not inevitably tied to one another” (2012, 45). it is possible for some business unionism tactics, such as a strong focus on bargaining, to co-exist with and bolster a union’s social justice agenda. however, in the case of osstf’s campaign against bill 115, osstf’s use of the business unionism tactics – prioritizing collaboration with the employer while keeping members out of strategizing and negotiating – undermined osstf’s agenda to preserve public education as a common good. in addition to greater member involvement and buy-in, osstf would have benefitted from greater public buy-in to the union’s goals. public buy-in was not impossible, given osstf members’ unique position as workers whose labour arguably enhances the greater social good, given the correlation between better working conditions and better learning conditions, and given osstf members’ social justice activism inside and outside of the union. public buy-in could have been secured through tactics such as rotating one-day strikes, which could have had less impact on student life than an extracurricular boycott. instead, the withdrawal of extracurriculars seemed uncoordinated and indefinite to the public, and was easily manipulated by media and politicians to stir up anti-teacher sentiment. the narrow interest of mounting resistance to the government while avoiding the possible fines associated with full walkouts trumped the importance of the relationship between education workers, students, and parents. often, contemporary unions are accused of too narrowly focusing on the economic interests of its members to be capable of acting in the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 193 concert with equality-seeking groups outside of the union. this can be seen as a part of a broader problem of union sectionalism: unions have become progressively smaller bubbles of a progressively smaller range of privileges.15 today’s north american unions usually do not represent the most precarious, the least paid, and the most vulnerable layers of the workforce. in order to maintain relevance, numbers, and bargaining power, unions must address the fact that many of their members are much more privileged than the members of the public from whom they request support. both social movement union literature and osstf member accounts indicate that parent engagement in the agenda of education workers’ unions is key to bridging the gap between bargaining and social justice, between the traditionally economistic interests of unions and the non-economistic interests of the public (of which union members are a part). the potential for the anti-bill 115 campaign to be member-driven are deeply connected to members’ own communities. this top-down approach was at odds with union committees, policies, and autonomous rank-and-file activities (like the various “vote no” campaigns) that are oriented towards social justice, union democracy, and anti-neoliberalism. to strengthen the social-justice oriented currents within osstf, leaders and members would need to transform its internal democratic practises so that members are expected and enabled to become more active in the union. only then can member-driven relationships with the public and broader social movements move to the centre of union culture. without this member-driven social justice orientation, osstf’s bargaining strategy has ultimately set a precedent of union defeat in the face of a government’s legislative neoliberal attack. acknowledgements the author would like to thank mary-lu brennan and scott burgess of the osstf library and archives for their assistance in accessing archival records, luis filipe for sharing his copy of the april 2012 toronto star advertisement, sam gindin, herman rosenfeld, and greg flemming for providing feedback, and especially rhiannon maton for her invaluable collaboration on an earlier version of this paper presented at the alternate routes conference in april 2013. 15  see rose, 2009 for a discussion of union density in canada. 194 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education references alphonso, c. 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[paid advertisement]. a23. approaches and responses to climate change: | 119 approaches and responses to climate change: challenges for the pantanal and the upper paraguay river basin antonio augusto rossotto ioris1 abstract: anthropogenic climate change is expected to have serious socioecological consequences around the globe, in particular for wetland areas. that is the case of the pantanal, a large tropical wetland located in the upper paraguay river basin (uprb), in the centre of south america, where a range of responses are being devised to cope with the negative impacts of climate change. after a review of the most common approaches discussed in the literature, the results of an empirical study conducted in brazil, bolivia and paraguay are presented. the research attested that most responses have so far evolved around the principles of systematic adaptation (e.g. technology amelioration) and climate scepticism (e.g. postponement of responses) and, more recently, under the influence of marketisation measures (e.g. carbon trading). however, there is also growing enthusiasm, particularly in bolivia, for the inclusion of initiatives associated with the architecture of entitlements (e.g. improved access to resources) and climate justice (e.g. compensation for the negative impacts of conventional development). two important factors that seem to undermine the efficacy of the responses to climate change in the region: the hegemonic influence of the agribusiness sector and the relatively low importance of the uprb for national and trilateral environmental policy-making. 1 antonio a.r. ioris is a human geography lecturer at the university of edinburgh. he can be reached at a.ioris@ed.ac.uk. this research was supported by the brazilian research council (cnpq) through the sinergia project coordinated by the pantanal research centre (cpp); ioris was directly responsible for its sub-project 3.1 ‘politico-institutional vulnerabilities to climate change’. the author wishes to thank dr. carlos padovani (embrapa-pantanal) for allowing the reproduction of the river basin image (figure 1), three anonymous referees for their helpful comments on a previous version of this paper, ms. isabel kirsten for her dedicated assistance during the research project, prof. pierre girard (cpp and ufmt, cuiabá) for the opportunity to take part in the sinergia project and, in particular, the many stakeholders in brazil, bolivia and paraguay who kindly agreed to take part in the interviews. 120 | climate change and its discontents anthropogenic climate change represents one of the most challenging, complex and contested problems faced by the international community today. the contemporary concerns about human made climate change also offer a unique entry point into the preparedness of public and private responses to global environmental problems. for instance, the multilateral negotiations on the united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc) reflect the failures of technical assessments, the intricacy of international relations and the shortcomings of conventional environmental management. particularly the embeddedness of the carbon economy in contemporary society means that the climate change controversy is at once a problem of environment, economy and human rights (haines & reichman, 2008). the global interlinkages of the climate mean that no region in the planet is likely to be spared of the consequences of anthropogenic global warming, even areas that are located relatively distant from the main economic and industrial centres, such as the south american pantanal. the pantanal is a large floodplain wetland in the centre of the upper paraguay river basin (uprb), which has a total area of around 360,000 km2 (see figure 1). the pantanal spreads for about 140,000 km2 is shared between brazil (80 percent of the pantanal area), bolivia (19 percent) and paraguay (1 percent). the rainy season in the region begins between september and december, increases between january and march, and then promotes a flood wave movement from the north through the south pantanal that inundates as much as 70 percent of the floodplain until july (hamilton et al., 2002). significant portions of the pantanal floodplain are submerged from four to eight months each year by water depths from a few centimetres to more than two meters (pcbap, 1997). the pantanal functions as a large reservoir that stores water from the surrounding plateaus during the rainy season and then delivers it slowly to the lower sections of the paraguay river. as a result, any significant change in the rainfall pattern is likely to have major impacts on the local ecology and socioeconomic relations. approaches and responses to climate change: | 121 figure 1 the upper paraguay river basin (uprb) and the location of the pantanal wetland at the 8th intecol (international wetlands conference), which was held in the pantanal region in july 2008 – more exactly, in the city of cuiabá – it became clear that, although wetlands (including marshes, peat bogs, swamps, river deltas, mangroves, tundra, lagoons and river floodplains) only cover a relatively small percentage of the planet’s surface, they actually contain a large proportion of the world’s carbon stored in terrestrial soil reservoirs (kayranli et al., 2010). that means a major contribution regarding the balance of greenhouse gases (ghgs) in the atmosphere and underscores the importance of wetland conser122 | climate change and its discontents vation. beyond carbon storage, wetlands provide a range of environmental services, including water filtration and storage, erosion control, buffer against flooding, nutrient recycling, biodiversity maintenance, and nursery for fisheries. in the same event, the pantanal has been recognised as one of the most important tropical wetlands in the world and it had been officially designated a biosphere reserve by unesco in 2000. the local ecosystems comprise a complex biodiversity mosaic with influences from the amazon, cerrado and chaco biomes (pcbap, 1997). nonetheless, the pantanal is also one of the most threatened socioecological systems in the planet, especially due to pollution, loss of biodiversity, high sedimentation, modification of natural cycles, large-scale projects, the lack of conservation units and the impacts of anthropogenic climate change (swarts, 2000).the tension between available resources and economic growth has resulted in recurrent calls for ecological protection and the conservation of ecological systems (ioris, 2004), but there are major disagreements about the most adequate environmental management and regional development policies (neves, 2009). the majority of the economic pressures and development conflicts have occurred in the brazilian section of the pantanal region, where the ecosystems have been impacted by uncontrolled urban and agroindustrial expansion in the surrounding plateaus, as well as to the intensification of agriculture production, tourism and recreation activities, and the use of agrochemicals within the floodplain itself (alho et al ., 1988). native vegetation has been increasingly removed to make space for artificial pastures, which occurred together with other problems such as illegal hunting, unsustainable tourism and the use of fire as an (unlawful) land management technique. due to the introduction of exotic pastures, the pantanal floodplain has lost already 17 percent of its original vegetation (harris et al., 2005) and between 2002 and 2008 the rate of deforestation (713 km2/year) was proportionally higher than in the amazon region (statistics from deter/inpe, published by brasil, 2010). in addition, around 115 new hydropower schemes are under construction or being planned in the brazilian side of the uprb, though the local and the cumulative impacts of such structures are still not properly understood. however, there are some preliminary evidences of serious disruption caused by the operation of hydropower dams (zeilhofer & moura, 2009). all those pressures lead junk & cunha (2005, p. 392) to declare the pantanal at a crossroads, in the sense that “increasing economic and political pressure requires fundamental decisions to be made in the near future.” approaches and responses to climate change: | 123 the above challenges have been magnified by the likelihood of disturbances in the regional climate due to global warming. the scientific community has actually identified a series of potential consequences that are going to follow climate change in south america, which includes the salinisation and desertification of agriculture land, the savanisation of forested areas and a reduced availability of water (ipcc, 2007). marengo et al. (2010) produced future scenarios of climatic change with the use of three regional climate models (hadrm3p, eta ccs and regcm3) and indicate a trend of reduction in precipitation (according to one model) and high probability of increase in temperature through the whole year (according to the three models) in the central region of brazil. marengo et al. (2012) have also estimated likely changes to the la plata river basin (which contains the uprb) between 2011-2040 and an increase of 1.8oc in the annual temperature (1.2oc in the summer and 1.8oc in the winter) and a reduction in annual rainfall of 2.1 percent (-0.7 percent in the summer and -11.9 percent in the winter, which is the dry season). however, these results seem to contradict the tendency of higher flows in the paraguay basin since the 1970s (collischonn et al., 2001), and the expected increase in soil erosion in some areas of the pantanal due to rainfall changes (querner et al., 2005). more important than the disagreement among hydrologists and climatologists about the course of environmental impacts, climate change is expected to aggravate existing shortcomings in the access, use and conservation of natural resources, as well as to further challenge the already hesitant environmental policies and regulatory enforcement in the three countries. to understand these even more perverse consequences of climate change, it is important to briefly revisit recent economic development and the evolving relations of production in the region (barkin, 2009). the conversion of the uplands into large plantation farms in the brazilian section of the uprb commenced in the 1960s with the expansion of the agriculture frontier, which was fuelled by heavy subsidies and federal government investments in technology and infrastructure (railways, roads and grain storage capacity). government agencies were responsible for providing credit, conducting agronomic research and disseminating technologies through rural extension. large landowners were the main beneficiaries of economic development, at the expense of the demands of low-income, disenfranchised social groups (ioris, 2012). such an expansionist process continued in the following decades, but since the neoliberal reforms of the brazilian state in the 1990s it observed a more market-oriented approach and the consolidation of the agribusi124 | climate change and its discontents ness sector in the plateaus that surround the pantanal. the growth of agribusiness has reinforced a dualistic model of development that favours plantation farmers and modern cattle ranchers and discriminates against the majority of the rural and urban population (rossetto, 2004). the adoption of capital intensive agriculture in recent years never affected the overarching pattern of inequality, but has merely led to the fragmentation of the old farms and the reconcentration of land in the hands of newcomers (araújo, 2006). what is important for the purpose of this paper is that, without fundamental reforms in the structure of production and without more inclusive public policies, there is a serious risk that the impending consequences of climate change will unevenly affect different social groups, both aggravating the hardship already experienced by low-income sectors and siphoning the results of adaptation and mitigation measures to those who benefit more from current economic trends. in order to go beyond narrow development and conservation debates, it is necessary to account for a range of highly politicised issues at the intersection between interpersonal relations and socioeconomic pressures (ioris, 2013). whenever the responses to climate change are formulated according to the demands of agribusiness and other hegemonic sectors, these may help to mitigate climate change at the regional scale, but are also expected to produce socioeconomic distortions and result in additional socioecological risks. for instance, deprived communities are more likely to live in unsafe areas along the river courses, have more difficulty to adapt to a changing environment and fewer opportunities to influence governmental decisions (even when formal channels of consultation and participation exist, such as catchment committees and park advisory councils). despite the obvious complexity of climate change issues, so far most of the public debate in the region has remained too focused on the physical consequences of climatic alterations and has dedicated less attention to the underlying social inequalities that magnify negative impacts and prevent the formulation of fair mitigation measures. official publications in particular tend to concentrate on legal, administrative and technological issues, but fail to acknowledge the profound, politicised interconnections between development pressures and socionatural relations (e.g. in paraguay by the secretariat of the environment [seam], n/d, and in brazil by the strategic issues nucleus [nae], 2005). ostrom (2012) observes that the conventional explanation of the sources of climate change is largely confined to the uncontrolled outcomes of economic development, lack of scientific information and approaches and responses to climate change: | 125 an inadequate environmental regulation, but without sufficiently addressing the also important socio-political and institutional issues. following her advice, this paper aims to review, from a critical social sciences perspective, the pillars of main responses to climate change and the concrete experience in the uprb. the next pages will contend that most of the current approaches have combined, not always in a coherent fashion, different elements of the international policy framework. the different responses identified through the research reflect contrasting rationalities of environmental conservation, social inclusion and the mitigation of climatic risks. our discussion is based on research carried out in 2010-2012, which included 45 interviews with government officials (8 interviews), civil society representatives (12), academics (10) and business sectors (15), as well as the analysis of policies and documentation and the attendance of public events, meetings and workshops. interviews were transcribed, coded and analysed in portuguese and spanish and only the extracts reproduced in this paper were translated into english. before examining the achievements and weaknesses of the various responses to climate change – to be honest, still in an embryonic stage of development in the uprb – a review of ideal-type approaches or paradigms within contemporary climate debates will be first introduced. approaches and responses to climate change because of the number of sectors and issues involved, the policy arrangements developed for dealing with climate change in any country are prone to be complex and multifaceted. normally, the approaches of governments and civil society organisations combine a range of interpretations of climate change scenarios, which are influenced by the specific socio-political and ecological circumstances. therefore, a clear appreciation of interactions, uncertainty and contested knowledge, as well as the interdependency among diverse and unequal interests, is required (fish et al., 2010). policy responses are not restricted to the economic and legal domains, but represent adjustments in a range of social institutions. institutions are here understood as legislation, norms, cognitive frames and meaning systems that guide human action and structure social interactions (hall & soskice, 1996). in sociological terms, institutions are “the formative products of an amalgamation of factors, just as they themselves can and do influence such factors” (thynne, 2008, p. 239). institutional responses must be seen as norms that shape action, frame identities, affect the realisation of problems and influence decisions 126 | climate change and its discontents and solutions. such responses are not purely rational or technical, but include a range of actions that are culturally determined and constantly renegotiated between groups of interest. in the context of the climate change debate, o’riordan & jordan (1999) describe institutions as the multitude of means for holding society together. the rationale behind the different reactions to the threats of climate change are both informed by the institutional arrangements and materialised through modifications in social institutions. therefore, institutional responses go beyond the simple dichotomy between ‘adaptation’ and ‘mitigation’, but it is necessary to consider the wider variety of interpretations and reactions to climate change (füssel & klein, 2006). the first approach to be mentioned is the scepticism about the origins and possible consequences of climatic change as discussed under the unfccc. on the one hand, the intergovernmental panel on climate change [ipcc] and other international organisations have presented compelling data, within the margin of errors of the established scientific methods that indicate the existence of anthropogenic causes behind contemporary climate change. for instance, hydrological changes seem unequivocal, as well as the reduction in glaciers and in the rate of snow cover due to human-made global warming (as included in the ipcc’s fifth assessment report published in 2013). on the other hand, despite of such mounting scientific evidence and concerted international efforts, there is still significant scepticism, particularly among radical right-wing political groups, about the actual causes of climatic change. climate scepticism refers to a sense of climate ‘denialism’ or ‘contrarianism’ that has recently been very much in the media spotlight, especially because of the unauthorised publication, november 2009, of emails exchanged between scientists that exposed their doubts climate change evidence (nerlich, 2010). sceptics argue that it is not possible to demonstrate, beyond doubt, that the progressive warming of the planet does not have natural causes (poortinga et al., 2011). in practice, climate scepticism has been a convenient and prominent institutional response to the climate change demands. this argument has been particularly useful for lobbyists representing the interests of those sectors that are directly responsible for large emissions of ghgs (e.g. oil industry, timber producers, energy generation, etc.), particularly after the 2008 global financial crisis that has put extra pressure on tight national budgets. it is important to realise that, although the number of sceptical scientists and opinion-makers is small, their presence in the international discussion gives a misleading impression that the debate is evenly split between approaches and responses to climate change: | 127 those that believe and those that dispute the anthropogenic causes of climatic change. the perverse result is that climate sceptics have had a growing influence on governments unwilling to spend resources and political capital on the adjustments required to cope with climate change. the second approach discussed here includes measures associated with market or market-like transactions. in order to achieve the stabilisation of ghg concentrations, economists have recommended the allocation of appropriate emission reduction responsibilities among nations or administrative units that should be implemented through market-based mechanisms (jepma & munasinghe, 1998). such an approach is based on the claims that a global optimisation of ghg emissions can only secure techno-economic efficiency through market or market-like transactions (bührs, 2010). in theory, the abatement of emissions must be pursued up to the level where the margin benefit of reducing emissions of ghgs by one additional unit is equal to the marginal cost of curbing such emissions (davoudpour & ahadi, 2006). this sort of institutional response – that constitutes a main inspiration for public policies and is indeed the main driver of the climate change diplomacy nowadays – is directly influenced by the application of the neoclassical economic theory to the study of environmental degradation (ioris, 2010). according to environmental economists, monetary valuation can guide the choice among numerous potential methods of improving the quantity and the reliability of environmental management. for instance, global wetlands are redefined as providers of ecosystem services, which can be quantified in monetary terms at as much as us$ 20,000 per hectare (keddy et al., 2009). however, it must also be observed that the reduction of wider socioeconomic and environmental processes to a set of independent utility functions has become an important source of criticism levied against environmental economists. anthoff & tol (2010) specifically argue that the standard calculation of the costs of emissions and impacts is inadequate, because it presumes a global welfare function that ignores the differences between poor and rich countries. these authors recommend that the national government should value impacts in other regions of the world when computing a social cost of carbon that could be used in domestic cost benefit analysis. this sort of methodological adjustment, nonetheless, still fails to remove the reductionist basis of environmental economics. methodologies adopted by environmental economists tend to restrict the reaction to climate change to the narrow determination of economic costs, benefits and effects. economic-centred measures fall short of addressing the mounting conflicts and negative impacts associated with the emission of ghgs, as 128 | climate change and its discontents well as the recognition of differential responsibilities. bromley (1991) submits that, instead of focusing on the economic use of resources only, the solution to environmental problems requires first of all the determination of collective standards of performance that can reward individual initiative, experimentation and efficiency, as discussed next. another common response – third in our list – that has attracted great attention is systematic adaptation based on ’experimentation‘, that is, through a constant reassessment of initiatives and results (arvai et al., 2006). systematic adaptation, at the regional and global scales, is posited as an interactive process that aims to transform social relations by creating new knowledge, networks and partnership among interdependent actors. it is described as essentially a form of learning-by-doing, a mechanism by which responses are negotiated, implemented and jointly evaluated by those involved. the process is often initiated as a result of several factors, such as a perceived environmental threat or crisis (e.g. climate change), a new regulatory demand or the availability of financial incentives. at this point, stakeholders begin to appreciate their interdependence, the need to act together and the importance of redesigning social institutions (gupta et al ., 2010). subsequently, the participating organisations focus on desirable future conditions as well as the underlying values, beliefs and principles that will guide them towards their joint ambitions and aspirations. this tends to be followed by a structuring phase in which specific goals and objectives are established, programmes of activities are designed, and roles and responsibilities are assigned to the various participating organisations and groups (glaas et al., 2010). systematic adaptation (or adaptive management) is essentially part of the broader agenda of environmental governance that permeates contemporary policy-making (mitchell & breen, 2007). governance represents a means of describing and analysing new regulatory arrangements and institutional configurations whereby roles and responsibilities for governing are shared among state-based entities and actors operating beyond the boundaries of formal government. governance, instead of conventional government, is described as the pursuit of more flexible strategies and mechanisms of public administration to accomplish policy goals, realise values and manage environmental risks and impacts (howlett and rayner, 2006). it includes different ‘modes of governance’ aiming at raising awareness, influencing personal and group behaviour and involving social actors in decision-making (treib et al., 2007). conventional distinctions and boundaries that previously defined statemarket-civil society relations have become blurred as different combiapproaches and responses to climate change: | 129 nations of actors have become engaged in the pursue of environmental governance and, ultimately, adaptive management (dengler, 2007; engle and lemos, 2010). huitema et al. (2009) even recommend that the theory of adaptive management can be even reconceptualised as ‘adaptive comanagement’, which is based on collaboration in a polycentric governance system. notwithstanding the appealing discourse, the argument of adaptive management (and the related endorsement of environmental governance type of solutions) has the serious weakness of diluting the accountability for the causes of climatic change and the uneven distribution of impacts. for instance, government initiatives in the uk have stimulated a further set of actions at other scales in public agencies, regulatory agencies and regional government (and the devolved administrations), though with little real evidence of climate change adaptation initiatives trickling down to local government level (tompkins et al., 2010). that has seriously undermined the ability of systematic adaptation to face the challenging and contested nature of climate change challenges, which gives room for the next two institutional responses. the fourth main paradigm to be analysed is the architecture of entitlements. most of the responses formulated today by governments and multilateral organisations have tried to overcome climate change scepticism, but have been largely trapped in the narrow debate between, on the one side, a management discourse based on a technocratic worldview and neo-malthusian prejudices against poor populations, and, on the other side, a populist argument portraying local actors as the victims of external interventions (who should be somehow incorporated into the formulation of mitigation approaches) but without much consideration of the historical inequalities in the access to resources (adger et al., 2001). therefore, adger & kelly (1999) suggest that responses to climate change should follow the lens of entitlements, an approach based on the argument that deprived conditions, such as famine, are caused by the lack of access to food rather than a lack of food availability (sen, 1981). the line of reasoning is that the extent to which groups and communities are entitled to use resources determines their ability to cope with and adapt to climatic stress. consequently, the focus should shift towards the determination of entitlements and obligations among the parties involved in the use and conservation of natural resources. this fourth approach brings attention to how entitlements are defined and contested, and also the wider political and socioeconomic aspects of environmental management. “the factors which deter130 | climate change and its discontents mine levels of social vulnerability define how the pattern of access to resources is constructed; this construction can be termed the ‘architecture of entitlements’” (adger and kelly, 1999, p. 256). instead of the exogenous preferences and costless social contracting claimed by neoclassical environmental economists, the institutional structure of entitlements (i.e. property or liabilities) directly influences the nature of the bargaining process between two or more parties. in spite of the more comprehensive understanding of the climate change dilemmas, the formulation of responses based on the theory of entitlements seems still to miss the deeper connections between local exchanges and globalised scales of interaction. devereux (2001) directly condemns the architecture of entitlements approach for its methodological individualism and its privileging of economic aspects above socio-political determinants. without recognising such associations between local and global politics, there is the risk of atomistic and technocratic solutions that normally end up falling under the hegemonic influence of environmental economics and environmental governance. finally, this schematic review needs to include a fifth institutional response to the threats of climate change that is more closely associated with grassroots activists and the campaigners of environmental justice. the emerging climate justice movement focuses on the politicised interactions between climate change threats and the erosion of social and economic rights. haines & reichman (2008) argue that fair approaches to climate change require understanding the strengths and limitations of conventional environmental policy-making. for those authors it is necessary to tease apart the intricacies of international law and governance to find ways to turn economic, legal, and cultural norms toward creating climate justice. the basic claim is that the creation and funding of international institutions for adaptation or mitigation to climate change inescapably involve questions of justice (harris and symons, 2010). because of the perceived discrimination and injustices that are maintained or aggravated by the responses to climate change, the global movement on climate justice has criticised the ineffectiveness of top-down responses, as well as the new spaces for capital accumulation created by the expansion of ‘green capitalism’, that is, the accumulation of capital that benefits from the environmental crisis itself (dawson, 2010). the fairness element of the fifth area of institutional response implies that climate change should be related, in a transformative way, with the problems of poverty and marginalisation in the south and overconsumption and fuel dependence in the north. according to such line approaches and responses to climate change: | 131 of argument, the lack of effective responses to the risks posed by climate change grew almost inevitably from global inequalities, which has perpetuated highly inconsistent ways of thinking and dealing with shared risks (parks and roberts, 2010). consequently, it is contended by climate justice authors that the reaction to anthropogenic global warming should target human welfare rather than provide compensation to states (seen as the primary responsible for unchecked ghg emissions) and should be funded through measures that impose similar emission costs on affluent people in both developed and developing countries. also inequalities within the same groups reinforce the importance of finding common ground between the development and climate justice agendas, as well as to reconcile the conflicting messages and objectives of civil society (parks and roberts, 2010). the above overview of the five main approaches or institutional responses to the challenges related to climate change – see table 1 – will now inform our examination of the institutional context in the three countries that contain the uprb and the pantanal in south america. table 1: approaches to climate change: a schematic overview of the bibliography approach or institutional response main reasoning claims and approaches examples of responses and policy implications climate scepticism denial of the anthropogenic causes of climate change major scientific uncertainty remaining and the disproportionate cost of precautionary measures no change in existing environmental and economic policies; ’wait and see’; maintain carbon intensive economic development marketisation measures neoclassical economics principles; solutions through the market assessment of the monetary value of ecosystem services and the costs of ghg reduction market-based responses; carbon trading and carbon taxes; adoption of schemes such as redd and other forms of payment for ecosystem services systematic adaptation continuous revaluation of initiatives and technologies search for better environmental governance and technological improvements interactive responses; tentative initiatives and heuristic examination of results; constant adjustments and improvements 132 | climate change and its discontents architecture of entitlements equity between countries, groups and individuals acknowledgement of the social construction of resource scarcity and vulnerability clarification of entitlements and obligations of all parties involved in terms of access to natural resources and the distribution of impacts climate justice criticism of unfair production and distribution patterns denunciation of the exploitation of society and the rest of nature struggle for a compensation for past and present inequalities; fulfilment of the demands of the more vulnerable social groups assessing approaches to climate change in the uprb the preceding review of the literature on the approaches and responses to the risks posed by anthropogenic climate change should help to understand the socio-political context and the institutional dilemmas currently affecting the management of the uprb and the pantanal region. our analysis should first recognise that the uprb does not figure very high in the list of climate change priorities of brazil, bolivia or paraguay. on the contrary, in those three countries scientists and policymakers have mostly concentrated their attention to other biomes (such as the amazon, the andes and the chaco, respectively). as observed in some of our interviews: “as a matter of fact, there is no specific legislation for the uprb [concerning climate change], because the priority has been the amazon. most national policies are focused on monitoring and deforestation, which means that there are no local policies [for the uprb] either.” (environmental regulator, brazil, jul 2011) “i think that the main obstacle is the lack of financial resources, but also the difficulty to establish alliances with other organisations due to the bureaucracy that characterises public agencies. also there are no clear guidelines to inform the cooperation between organisations and how these can help the implementation of existing policies.” (ecologist, bolivia, sep 2011) it means that the institutional framework for dealing with climate change in the pantanal region are mainly the residue of the public policies primarily intended for some other geographical areas in the three countries. that situation represents a considerable ‘policy-making gap’ approaches and responses to climate change: | 133 that, in the end, has tended to undermine the advance of climate change policies within each country and between countries. the marginalisation of the region in the structures of policy-making also brings us a particular analytical difficulty, given that the current research had to deal with subtle evidences and limited information likewise, it is also important to acknowledge the existence of strong elements of climate scepticism in the region, which still permeate many development strategies of governments and the stronger socioeconomic sectors. although the ecological value of the pantanal wetlands and its surrounding plateaus are mentioned in official discourses and corporate publications, there has been significant hesitation to effectively tackle the prospects of climate change in the uprb. that is clearly demonstrated by the delay to organise formal state regulation and to engage civil society in the aspects of the public debate that are specific relevant for coping with climate change risks. after recognising the secondary importance of the region for national policy-making purposes and the persistence of climate change scepticism, it should be possible to analyse the institutional responses actually considered for the uprb. referring back to the literature review in the preceding pages, we can verify that the climate change action in the three countries has been essentially a hybrid combination of different approaches (hence the importance of the description of those five approaches). we can start our examination with brazil, the country that includes most of the pantanal and the uprb territory. it is worth remembering, at least in symbolic terms, that the signature of the climate change convention happened in brazil during the united nations conference on environment and development, which took place in rio de janeiro in 1992. two years later, in 1994, the convention was ratified by the brazilian congress and allowed its implementation by the national state. because of its federal configuration, the reactions to climate change had to be shared between the central government and the state (provincial) administrations, as well as by thousands of municipal authorities (cole, 2009). the two states that contain the brazilian section of the river basin (mato grosso and mato grosso do sul) have followed the example of the national government and instituted a preliminary structure of policy-making for dealing with climate change, although the approval of state legislation has proven controversial. for instance, mato grosso has a climate change forum since 2009, but the activities have produced limited results and serious disagreements led to the departure of some key organisations from the forum (such as the amazon environmental 134 | climate change and its discontents research institute, ipam, in june 2010, which published an ‘open letter’ denouncing the hesitation to effectively face up to the challenges related to climate change in mato grosso). based on our interviews and on the analysis of the documentation, it was possible to ascertain that most of the institutional responses formulated in the brazilian section of the uprb seem to gravitate around systematic adaptation measures, particularly related to new agriculture production technologies and the expansion of hydropower energy. probably the most relevant element of adaptive management is the improvement of agriculture practices as a strategy to reduce ghg emissions. techniques such as no-tillage, crop rotation and perennial crops have the potential to store more carbon in the soil and help to mitigate the risks of climate change; at the same time, those practices can also contribute to conserve soil and water resources at the catchment level (tollefson, 2010). in mato grosso do sul, a new law passed in 2010 (no. 3,951) introduced green certification of products as means to induce carbon capture in the soil through new agriculture practices. also in 2010, the federal government launched the programme ‘low carbon agriculture’ (abc), which provides financial incentives for the adoption of techniques such as no-tillage, reforestation and cattle-cropforest integration. because of the scale of the agribusiness sector, both mato grosso and mato grosso do sul are important areas for the abc programme and farmers in those states have expressed their satisfaction with the funds already made available by the national government (valor econômico, 2011). similar reductions in terms of ghg emissions are supposed to be obtained from the operation of additional hydropower plants in the uprb (although in this case localised impacts are typically associated with the construction and operation of hydroelectric schemes). historically, most of the electricity generation in brazil has come from hydropower plants, but until lately the uprb had not been a priority area for the construction of energy schemes (ioris, 2012). in addition to those initiatives, the last decade, there has been a concerted emphasis in translating environmental economic principles into policy-making in brazil. the main goal is to assess the monetary value of the impacts of climate change and formulate financial incentives to reduce the emission of ghgs. that follows what was described above as ‘marketisation measures’, that is, the application of solutions to environmental problems to foster economic rationality and promote management efficiency. in december 2009 a new legislation was passed in the country instituting the national policy on climate change, which approaches and responses to climate change: | 135 included, among many other clauses, the creation of the ‘brazilian emission reduction market’ (mbre). this initiative is aimed to manage carbon emission trade in the country and is supposed to operate through the normal stock market channels. likewise, the national climate change fund (fnmc) was also established in 2009 to raise funds to be applied in the concession of loans and in the financial support (non-reimbursable) to projects aimed at climate change mitigation and adaptation. the pursuit of economic instruments became the new face of the policy-making related to climate change in brazil. for instance, viglizzo & frank (2006) calculate that the ecosystem services in pantanal has the highest gross annual value of ecosystem services in the plata basin (us$ 5,726.9/ha/ year), which would serve as justification for the conversion of such services into monetary payments to those involved in their conservation. initiatives related to emission trading have increasingly encouraged the production of biofuel, such as ethanol and biodiesel, in the agriculture areas the surround the pantanal. an association of the biofuel producers of mato grosso do sul, known as biosul, was already organised to represent the sector at the local and national levels. despite the technological advances achieved under institutional responses that follow the rationale of systematic adaptation and marketisation, it is also important to observe the narrowness of those initiatives, especially in terms of the unevenness of the actual beneficiaries. considering together, the above institutional responses to climate change in brazil can be blamed for having followed the same pattern of public subsidies being channelled to the stronger and better organised economic sectors, at the expense of more inclusive and publicly accessible strategies. not surprisingly, both systematic adaptation and marketisation measures were repeatedly criticised in our interviews with by brazilian academics and ngo activists. the main criticism is that technological improvements alone are likely to reinforce the same pattern of socioeconomic inequalities and concentrated land tenure, which in itself constitutes a serious contradiction in policies that are supposed to deal with a universal problem (i.e. the effects of climate change). in addition, there are serious suspicions of corruption related to the granting of environmental licences to new hydropower schemes, which motivated the creation of a parliamentary enquire commission in the state assembly of mato grosso in march 2011. as pointed out in one interview, the consequences of climate change in the region are becoming increasingly evident (although that is yet difficult to demonstrate with the scant climatological data available), but it has mainly penalised the less well off in society: 136 | climate change and its discontents “the most vulnerable populations in the uprb, like fishermen and collectors are already suffering the negative impacts of climatic changes. extreme events, such as years with serious droughts and also floods have really impacted the life of local communities, particularly in terms of their infrastructure and social organisation.” (member of a local ngo, brazil, jun 2011) if in brazilian the institutional responses to climate change have largely operated within a technocratic and business-friendly framework, the comparable initiatives in bolivia have followed a different pattern under the government of president evo morales. until his election in 2005, bolivia used to adhere to the recommendations of the mainstream climate change community, essentially in favour of mitigation measures influenced by the principles of environmental economics. similarly to the brazilian experience in the period, the 1990s were a decade of intense institutional reform in bolivia, which attempted to restructure the economy along neoliberal lines. even a few months before the unexpected electoral result, the previous national government passed a hydrocarbon law and other pieces of legislation aimed to regulate the activity of national and international private operators, mainly interested in exploring the abundant gas reserves of bolivia. with the victory of morales, however, bolivia took a more independent, and confrontational, attitude regarding the implementation of the climate change convention. the main tone of the institutional responses to climate change under morales has been the affirmation of the architecture of the entitlements, but in a way that realign that architecture to better distribute resource entitlements amongst the population according to climate justice concerns. in the last few years, the government has passed a series of laws that established large reserve areas for the settlement of indigenous groups and poor peasants, which contradicts the interests of agribusiness and other dominant economic groups. furthermore, bolivia has become a vocal opponent of the dominant framework for climate change negotiations, as its diplomatic interventions have constantly denounced mainstream climate change negotiations as neocolonial practices (de angelis, 2011). in the end, the institutional responses advanced by the bolivian government have increasingly incorporated elements of climate justice. for example, at the climate change summit in 2009, the bolivian government joined a coalition of smaller state and non-state actors that push for main concessions from the central economic countries. morales approaches and responses to climate change: | 137 went to cop-15 in copenhagen and proposed that northern capitalist economies should fund mitigation and adaptation mechanisms in other countries to pay for their “ecological debt with future generations and the rest of the world” (published at www.presidencia.gob.bo/discursos. php). bolivia declined to endorse the final agreement and called for an alternative summit “to defend mother earth, which is under attack from the irrational politics of industrialisation of the developed nations.” that was named the world people’s conference on climate change and the rights of mother earth, which took place in cochabamba in april 2010 and was attended by around thirty thousand activists from dozens of countries. at the end of the conference, the “agreement of peoples” on earth day was signed, which exhorted the major powers to join the kyoto protocol, called for a global referendum on climate change and pushed for the creation of an international climate change court. later in the same year, morales was one of the most critical voices during the cop-16 in mexico, when bolivia was the only country that refused to sign the cancun accord and denounced its vagueness. the result is that the bolivian government has raised a distinct voice in the international arena and galvanised the dissatisfaction of traditionally marginalised groups not only in south america, but also around the world. morales derives legitimacy for his autonomous stance on climate change partly from his recent re-election in 2009 and partly from the input of the bolivian platform against climate change, a network of over 180 organised groups. the change of discourse by the national government under morales has had repercussions for the mobilisation and intervention of civil society organisations, which have directly called for a combination of alternative technologies and the fulfilment of civil rights (e.g. centre of investigation and peasantry promotion [cipca], 2009). interestingly, despite its confrontational policy, the bolivian government has also paradoxically welcomed initiatives more closely associated with the creation of carbon markets and other forms of payments for ecosystem services. in particular, bolivia is one of the priority countries for the implementation of redd, the un programme on the reduction of emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries. the signature of an agreement with redd by the morales government in september 2010 – it is a pilot project which aims to strengthen institutional capacities and test the redd framework; the project involves us$ 4.7 million in financing and support from the world bank and german international cooperation – was inescapably seen by many climate justice activists as a form of political betrayal to the very political platforms 138 | climate change and its discontents advanced by morales (benton-connell, 2011). such institutional complexity and apparent inconsistency of the bolivian responses to climate change was mentioned in an interview: “the main obstacle for dealing with climate change is still the lack of political will, and the harmful influence of the business sector. there are strong economic interests involved in this whole debate.” (environmental ngo activist, bolivia, sep 2011). the situation of paraguay is at an intermediate position between the approaches taken by brazil and bolivia in recent years (and probably closer to marketisation measures than climate justice). paraguay translated the climate change convention into national legislation in 1993 and in the year 2000 a regulatory system was introduced under the coordination of seam. also in 2000 a national ghg inventory was published and identified the main emission sectors (despite the limited amount of data available). although the pantanal wetland only occupies a small percentage of the country, most of its economic activity depends heavily on navigation along the paraguay river and the impacts of climate change are likely to pose a significant threat to the operation of international waterways (what was mentioned in various interviews and seems to be one of the main areas of concern among paraguayans). despite those serious consequences of climate change, in practical terms, the institutional framework developed so far in paraguay has proven very feeble and inadequate to deal with major politico-economic pressures that insist on the maintenance of conventional forms of production and natural resource exploitation. at the same time that various initiatives have been advanced in terms of alternative agriculture, forestry and energy technologies (programa de las naciones unidas para el desarrollo [pnud], 2007), the agribusiness sector continues to expand due to the rising prices of agriculture commodities in global markets. furthermore, the country has most of its electric energy generated from hydropower (i.e. the massive itaipu dam on the border with brazil), but the demand for oil and the high rates of deforestation remain a serious challenge in terms of ghg emission reduction. the institutional contradictions of the climate change responses formulated in paraguay are demonstrated in the following statement: “there is a need to revise and consolidate the institutional approaches in the whole river basin [i.e. uprb]. there is an agency responsible for approaches and responses to climate change: | 139 climate change in paraguay, but the dissemination of information is very poor. (...) the large agribusiness firms are able to use new technologies that help them to cope with climate change, but the small farmers don’t have any access.” (academic, paraguay, sep 2011). it is relevant to mention also that the treaty which established mercosul (or mercosur) was signed in asuncion, paraguay, in 1991. mercosul is the new economic block between south american countries that intended to eliminate tariff and non-tariff restrictions on imports. the agreement included a series of legal instruments on environmental regulation and policy-making, which have the primary goal of harmonising environmental legislation. one of its administrative units is the common market group (gmc), which passed resolutions on various environmental matters (for example, the resolution 9/91 on gas emissions and acceptable levels of pollution). negotiation between member states on environmental issues have in fact represented an important element of the cross-country cooperation, but have also revealed the weaknesses of the mercosul environmental policies (morosini, 2010). in addition to the domestic difficulties to coordinate the different levels of government and engage the non-governmental sectors in a sustainable management of the pantanal region, the achievement of genuine trans-boundary integration has also proved very problematic. despite a reiterated commitment for cooperation at the high level of south american geopolitics, on the ground there have been frequent clashes between nation states, such as the increase in the price of the natural gas exported from bolivia to brazil (through pipelines that cross the pantanal). likewise, changes in land use impact the river flow regime and has harmful consequences for paraguay, located downstream of brazil and bolivia. international negotiators insist on a convergence of institutional responses, but in practice economic disputes and a weak civil society seem to largely undermine the efforts of dealing with climate change in the region. conclusion this brief assessment on the responses to climate change risks in the uprb shows the fragility of the institutional framework that currently deals with the conservation and sustainable use of the pantanal wetland and its surrounding, upland areas. the timid measures taken so far to deal with the consequences of climate change have clearly reflected 140 | climate change and its discontents hegemonic economic and political influences in the three countries that share the river basin, especially form the agribusiness sector. it is possible to verify that most government initiatives in brazil and paraguay have combined systematic adaptation (particularly in terms of technology amelioration) and, more recently, the influence of marketisation approaches (e.g. carbon trading and redd). the bolivian government has tried to implement a more autonomous and critical programme of measures associated with climate justice, but the experience has not prevented the adhesion to mainstream initiatives such as the redd project. in addition, the uprb continues to occupy only a secondary position in the national climate change priorities of the three countries and local political leaders have been unable to influence the formulation of legislation and policies. this situation represents not only a significant obstacle for doing social sciences research on climate change responses, but the slow implementation of those measures in the region also suggests that the pantanal wetland and the uprb remain relatively marginalised in the formulation of environmental policies and even in the environmental diplomacy between brazil, bolivia and paraguay. the threats of climate change for the uprb have failed to capture the imagination of most environmental policy-maker and politicians, while the mobilisation of the private sector has also been reluctant or opportunistic. the demand for energy, natural resources and commodity production represent major pressure over biological processes and have been pursued with little consideration of the needs of the lowincome population and the opinion of grassroots groups. the regional experience is a case in point of the inherent limitations of the institutional reforms and the contradictory influences of neoclassical economics on the ongoing reorganisation of the environmental sector. instead of promoting a genuine change in public policies, the new approaches have largely preserved the hegemonic interests of landowners, industrialists, construction companies and real estate investors, at the expense of the majority of the population and the recovery of ecological systems. the crux of the matter has been the persistent inability of governments and of the representative of the hegemonic sectors to formulate more inclusive and sound climate change policies. centralised, conventional approaches have ultimately perpetuated a situation of high socio-ecological vulnerability and institutional unpreparedness to cope with climate change. the more recent attitude of the bolivian government has represented a contrasting voice in the international arena, but the same government has also accepted other mainstream mechanisms that are based on the approaches and responses to climate change: | 141 monetisation of costs and benefits. at the same time, formal public participation forums created in the brazilian section of the uprb have been a little more than a formality and have not avoided internal political friction. the climate change debate in paraguay is still in its infancy, despite the risks posed to the navigation and socio-economy, and the country has systematically lagged behind the developments in the other two upstream nations. taking together the current situation in the three countries, it is possible to identify only modest sings of institutional improvement in the uprb region and many questions are left unanswered. the perverse irony is that climate change in the uprb seems still a 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(2009). hydrological changes in the northern pantanal caused by the manso dam: impact analysis and suggestions for mitigation. ecological engineering, 35(1), 105-117. 146 | climate change and its discontents brazilian dystopia | 147 brazilian dystopia: development and climate change mitigation garry potter1, jun mian chen2, nazar hilal3 abstract: the amazonian rainforest is an area of particular ecological importance to the world. and it is mainly its deforestation, rather than the usual combination of the carbonized energy and transport economic sectors, which make brazil the world’s fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases. brazil, with its political and diplomatic alliances with russia, india, china and south africa also occupies a prominent position in the complex negotiations with developed countries over the manner in which the “right to development” is defined and understood on the one hand, and then, on the other, balanced with ecological concerns. there are many such concerns but the focus of this article is climate change mitigation. the “dystopia thesis” concludes that humanity faces a plethora of imminent inter-related crises in complex feedback loops. it also concludes that these problems cannot be solved, or even sufficiently ameliorated, from within the context of capitalist reform, or at least not so as to avoid suffering on a colossal scale. this extremely broad, abstract theoretical conclusion, is examined empirically in this article in the particular case of the relationship between the brazilian economy and the development of the amazon on the one hand, and climate change mitigation efforts on the other. the examination provides further evidence for the dystopia thesis’s most pessimistic conclusions. for our own well being, indeed our very survival, we must protect the amazonian rainforest; but we are not going to be able to do so with mechanisms functioning within the context of the present world political economy. 1 garry potter is associate professor of sociology at wilfrid laurier university. he is the author of several books including dystopia: what is to be done? as well as filmmaker of the documentary by the same name. more recently he has made another documentary film: whispers of revolution, available for viewing online at www.whisperofrevolution.org 2 jun mian chen is a master’s student at the department of sociology, wilfred laurier university. 3 nazar hilal is a master’s student at the department of sociology, wilfred laurier university. http://www.whisperofrevolution.org 148 | climate change and its discontents introduction “there are no environmental solutions to environmental problems, only social, economic and political ones.” charles secret, friends of the earth this article will examine climate change with a focus on brazil, deploying a framework we call the “dystopia thesis.” climate change is, of course, not only brazil’s problem but the world’s. the dystopia thesis predicts a dystopian future for humanity, with many different forms, shades and degrees of horror among the possible futures. perhaps the worst of these possibilities is a global eco-catastrophe, arising from runaway global warming beyond the point wherein checking it is still a possibility. this is a global problem but brazil will play a key role: either in climate change exacerbation or its mitigation. the general argument of what we are calling “the dystopia thesis” will be summarized in the first section of the article but the principal focus will be upon how it applies to brazil. there are a number of reasons for this. the dystopia thesis identifies a great many currently existing ills, as well as offering predictions. brazil is afflicted by many of them. world socio-economic inequality is a key feature of the dystopia thesis and in the brazilian case it is simultaneously a causal force and a humanly suffered result. brazil wishes to economically develop; one could say that brazil needs to economically develop, if only to mitigate some of the suffering accompanying the poverty of a sizable portion of its population (21.4 percent of its population lives below the poverty line and 4.2 percent are below the “extreme poverty line” according to the cia world factbook, 2013). but economic development and the exploitation of natural resources frequently comes into conflict with both local and global ecological imperatives, with global climate change being the most serious of these. this is true everywhere but it is particularly important because of the key role the amazon rain forest plays in the world’s eco-system. the second section of this article thus explains the ecological importance of the amazonian rain forest and the absolute necessity of its preservation. the third section of the article looks at the economic side of dystopia as manifest in the brazilian case. it considers both some of the realities of development and the “right to development” discourse of many developing nations, including brazil. brazil’s poor need the benefits of development; they need better health care and education to name but two. the rights of individuals to such can thus be argued as a nation’s brazilian dystopia | 149 “right to development”, as conflicts with the necessity to preserve the rainforest are diplomatically negotiated with the richer countries of the north. we examine this discourse and the realities of global capitalism that underlie it. the latter ensure, first of all, that virtually unbridled exploitation of the forest does take place. secondly, such structural realities ensure that the benefits of such development do not usually extend to the poor. and thirdly, that a more farsighted care and management of resources does not take place. in essence, there are structural causal forces producing amazonian dystopia. the next sections of the article deal with the drivers of rainforest destruction and the failures of capitalist solutions to these problems. the fourth section looks at the forest industry’s ecologically sustainable forestry practices certification programs and their failures. the fifth section looks at an even more powerful driver of destruction than forestry: the cattle industry. this section includes an examination of the way the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge in relation to this industry is given a dystopian twist. this article is in many senses a particularized application of the broader focus of what has been called “the dystopia thesis.” this argument has been articulated by one of the co-authors of this article elsewhere (potter, 2009, 2010a), including in the pages of this journal (potter, 2012). however, for the benefit of most readers who are probably unfamiliar with this argument, the first section here provides a synopsis. the dystopia thesis “if a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.” thomas hardy the dystopia thesis asserts that our collective human future will be one of poverty, disease and eco-nightmare: it will be an extreme dystopian reality beyond the imaginations of the writers of fiction. this is because the realities of the scope of human suffering are more than any single mind can grasp. dystopia is already here for perhaps as many as a billion people. it is here in the form of poverty in the extremes of famine and untreated treatable disease, infant and child mortality and in the incredible pain behind the disturbing statistics. it is here in the form of poorly paid dangerous and/or degrading work, including work done by children. it is here in all the various forms of pollution and is on track for getting worse. it is already here in war and terror and torture. 150 | climate change and its discontents but just as we can see various forms of pollution getting worse, dystopia is still just emerging. we can see it in the growing numbers of unemployed and the alienated under-employed. we can see the inevitable financial crises coming and going while the cutbacks in governmental (virtually every developed countries government) welfare programs and spending on health and education continue unabated. we can see the effects of global climate change beginning to emerge in unusual weather patterns and the increased frequency of hurricanes, droughts and floods. we can see the beginnings of resource shortages where water is beginning to rival oil as a pressurizing factor in the lead up to wars. on the other hand, we have had to live with some risks for such a long time that we have grown accustomed to them; we have begun to believe they are no longer with us. but the probabilities of nuclear war, for example, have increased rather than decreased. a constant in all of this is extreme socio-economic inequality. all the above problems are set in a context of structural causality. the world socio-economic political system directly or indirectly causes these problems or exacerbates them or prevents a serious viable long term solution to them being seriously attempted. structural causality is why the dystopia thesis repudiates any notion of “capitalism with a human face.” unemployment and social inequality, for example, are not contingent features of capitalism. they are intrinsic to it. unemployment rates may vary over time and from one country to another. they may rise or fall in relation to particular governmental policies. but the existence of unemployment is structurally built into the system; the existence of social inequality, and therefore poverty, is structurally built into the system. the developing nations’ need for their populations to have access to healthy diets, clean water, proper medical care and disease prevention, education and so on, their need for people to have the freedom to live happy fulfilled lives, will not become available through the current system’s developmental practices. they develop not only in such a way as to have devastating environmental impacts but so as to ensure inequality and injustice are maintained. humanity’s desire for social justice is linked in a complex but necessary way to our collective need to protect the environment. in this regard, the dystopia thesis broadly shares the marxist perspectives upon ecology of such writers as john bellamy foster and saral sarkar.4 it shares foster’s view that there is no third option; humanity faces 4 see for example foster, john bellamy. (2011). capitalism and degrowth: an impossibility theorem, monthly review, 62(8), 28-33, and saral sarkar. (1999). eco-socialism or eco-capitalism? a critical analysis of humanity’s fundamental choices. london: zed books. http://monthlyreview.org/author/johnbellamyfoster http://monthlyreview.org/2011/01/01/capitalism-and-degrowth-an-impossibility-theorem http://monthlyreview.org/2011/01/01/capitalism-and-degrowth-an-impossibility-theorem http://monthlyreview.org/archives/2011/volume-62-issue-08-january-2011 brazilian dystopia | 151 a choice; it is either eco-socialism or barbarism. or in our language here: eco-socialism or dystopia. but though foster is correct that continual economic growth is necessary to capitalism we would disagree with foster, at least in part, with regards to potential for different kinds of growth in alternative systems. the dystopia thesis, with its very pessimism, posits as a potentiality its dialectical opposite: a different kind of development, one in harmony with, rather than against, nature. of course, there are resource shortages and other ecological limits to growth but the plunder of finite resources is not the only sort of development possible. the dystopia thesis also rules out any sort of kovelian conclusion (kovel, 2002) positing socialism as inevitable because of eco-crisis. the only thing that is inevitable is crisis, both economic and ecological. the two are inextricable. perhaps facing the imminent realities of horror might wake up sufficient numbers of people to act and stave them off. but not only are there no guarantees of socialist revolution but the probabilities of such are looking exceedingly unlikely. still, such hope as there is, begins with an unflinching look at the harsh realities of our collective prospects. it is difficult to perceive such realities when the utopian visions of an enlightened eco-capitalism are constantly being presented to us. the market itself, it is alleged, can save nature. we merely need “the creation of markets for the exchange of ‘ecosystem services’ in the form of payments for ecosystem services (pes)” (sullivan, 2009, p.19). pes is “an incentive-based, voluntary, and conditional conservation approach” that is intended to be “a more equitable alternative to regulation, by explicitly compensating landholders’ opportunity costs” (börner et al., 2010, p.1280). but the “payments for the environmental services produced by nature’s labour do not go to the environment itself, but to whoever is able to capture this newly priced value” (sullivan, 2009, p.20). the dystopia thesis is in agreement with those who argue that “any approach that simply encourages the market to put a price on the environment is inadequate as a response to environmental problems since this does not sufficiently orient business or society in general towards the environmental issue that we face” (beder, 2006b, referenced in andrews et al., 2010, p.616). carbon trading is a case in point. it is a key capitalist policy instrument to reduce global warming (leimbach, 2003, p.1033). actually, it has become a common practice which countries utilize so that their obligations under the kyoto protocol are met (zhang et al., 2011, p.128). but this is merely an accounting solution (and usually a crooked one at that). it is simply paying for the right to pollute with the emissions put on someone else’s books. it has 152 | climate change and its discontents been shown to be wholly ineffectual in actually reducing overall emissions. in fact, some would go so far as to assert that contradictory to its intended aim, carbon emissions trading “is to promote global greenhouse gas emissions” (ibid.). for example, if a company’s emission of co2 is under its limit, there is a temptation to sell the remaining limit in exchange for a profit (ibid.). in the view of the global alliance of indigenous peoples and local communities (noredd, dec.13, 2011), the recently negotiated market mechanism reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (redd) is likely to result in “the biggest land grab of all time.” capitalism distorts human efforts to deal with problems, ultimately reducing all to the making of profits. a further aspect of the dystopia thesis is the theory of structural mystification (potter, 2010b). the relationship between knowledge and power is such that the institutional production and dissemination of knowledge produces its dialectical opposite: structural mystification. structural mystification is the obfuscation of the production of knowledge and the restriction and/or prevention of its dissemination. thus, for example, knowledges concerning climate change are produced and have a limited dissemination. a consolidation of such knowledge is continually challenged by a combination of real scientific endeavor illustrating the complexity of the subject matters on the one hand and media promulgated disinformation on the other, including, most importantly, the facts concerning the scientific community’s consensus on the issue. all of these points, outlined above and made elsewhere about the dystopia thesis, are made in a more specifically focused form in this article. the dystopia thesis does not forecast any particular doom to accompany its gloom; there are many forms of possible future barbarism and nightmare. but this article focuses upon only one of these possibilities. it focuses upon the probabilities of the very life being choked out of us in a climate change disaster. climate change has many different facets and causal feeds into it but none are more important than damage to “the lungs of the world”, the amazonian rainforest of brazil. global warming and the ecological imperative to save the rainforest “a nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.” franklin d. roosevelt brazilian dystopia | 153 the amazon rainforest in brazil is the only one of its kind; there are no other tropical forests left in the world that are comparable to its size, structure, and biodiversity. through the photosynthesis of its millions of plants and trees the amazonian rainforest absorbs a huge amount of carbon dioxide (co2) from the atmosphere and releases oxygen into the air. it is thus often claimed to be “gaia’s lungs”, a metaphor personifying the world’s most natural and efficient filtration system of excess co2 (laurance, 1999, p. 96). indeed, the lungs of the world have been, for the past few decades, inhaling earth’s increasingly excess amounts of co2, principally attributed to the burning of fossil fuels by humans (ibid.). there is, thus, a growing consensus in the scientific community of the vital role of the brazilian amazon in containing what would otherwise be a damaging excess amount of co2 in the very atmosphere which we all depend upon for our survival and well-being (d’oliveira et al., 2011, p. 1490). the amazon rainforest also provides a second ecological service, to both the local population and to the rest of the world, with its repository of carbon in both biomass and soils, thereby reducing the effects of global warming (fearnside, 2012, p. 71). the rainforest has taken in huge amounts of carbon stocks and much of this is contained in the trees. the practice of deforestation, mainly for pasture conversions and agricultural purposes (see section five) releases absorbed co2 back into the atmosphere. while logging and forest fires emit co2, deforestation remains the leading source of emissions in brazil (ibid.). when deforested, the stocked co2 is released back into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases (ghgs), in the form of co2 and methane (ibid.). the turbulent spew of co2 in the aftermath of deforestation causes an ecological devastation upon the climate. fearnside (1996, p.21) emphasizes that: “[d]eforestation in brazil already makes a significant contribution to the global load of greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions, and complete or nearly complete replacement of brazil’s amazon forest by pasture would both contribute to global warming and greatly reduce evapotranspiration in the region.” as well, gerwing (2002, p.139) stresses that brazil’s, “local phenomenon of forest degradation could have global consequences to the extent that logging and fire reduce forest biomass and liberate previously sequestered carbon.” since tropical forests stock anywhere between 20-100 times more carbon per unit area than agricultural lands, the burning of tropical rainforests thus accounts for approximately 25 percent of the total global co2 emissions (brady, 1996, p. 5). 154 | climate change and its discontents other assessments claim 15-35 percent of global co2 emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (mazzei, sist, ruschel, putz, marco, pena & ferreira, 2010, p. 367). more recent estimates suggest that deforestation accounts for 10-15 percent of global co2 emissions; perhaps this lower figure is a result of a reduction of deforestation in recent years through enforcing land-use regulations (tollefson, 2013), but it should be emphasized that all of these estimates are just that: estimates. the soil also has an important ecological role to play in the global carbon cycle, not only because it represents a storage medium for co2, but that the soil itself actually contains more carbon than biomass (jassal, 2005, p.177). the soil accumulates carbon from the atmosphere, which is transferred to the soil by plants through processes such as litterfall or root turnover, where the co2 becomes part of the organic matter of the soil (nitschelm et al., 1997, p.411, p.415). aerts et al. (1992, p.187) found that root turnover contributes a significant amount of litter production in an ecosystem. elevated levels of co2 not only leads to an increase in biomass by speeding up the rate of photosynthesis but it also stimulates root growth, resulting in longer plant roots at a faster rate of growth (rogers et al., 1996, p.230, p.240). roots are able to transfer co2 to soils at a greater radius and at a faster rate. soil respiration is linked to root activity, as well as microbial activity in the decomposition of organic material (søe et al., 2004, p.86). furthermore, higher levels of co2 have a stronger effect on root biomass than on leaf biomass (ibid., p.91). studies have found that soil respiration increases under elevated co2, which in turn is due to the increase of plant biomass production under it (ibid. p.91; nitschelm et al., 1997, p.415). these findings indicate that soils are a very important sink for co2. but when forests with a large stock of carbon are replaced by cattle pastures, they lose that carbon (davidson et al., 2012, p.326). the amazon rainforest is precipitously being cleared for cattle pastures and agricultural ends, which have a ruthlessly destructive impact on the forest’s rich biodiversity (fearnside et al., 2009, p.1968). fearnside (1995, p.53) notes that “[t]he great majority of deforestation in brazilian amazonia is followed by conversion of land to cattle pasture, either immediately or after 1-2 years of use under annual crops.” in fact, more than 60 percent of deforested land ends up as cattle pasture (butler, 2012). brazilian dystopia | 155 figure 1 butler, r. (2013) http://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_destruction.html the conversion of the amazon rainforest to cattle pastures obviously negatively alters the biodiversity by drastically reducing the number of plants and animal species to a homogeneous existence (rodrigues et al., 2013, p.988). but more surprisingly fearnside (2001) argues that the deforestation of the amazon forest actually yields very little economic benefit because the deforested areas that become cattle pasture have low productivity (p.173). the amazon cattle ranchers use the deforested land wastefully in terms of animals per hectare, yielding a low level of investment per hectare (ibid., p.6). cattle are rarely fed with energy-rich grains and protein; and fertilizers and the use of legumes are seldom used to improve pastures (boucher, 2011, p.7). as a result, weed invasions tend to degrade many of the cattle pastures (smith et al., 1998, p.9). in addition, employment levels in ranching are low and ownership is highly concentrated in a select few (ibid.). even so, cattle remain an attractive option in the amazon rainforest because developers can http://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_destruction.html 156 | climate change and its discontents gain entitlement to the land that is cleared (butler, 2012). some data indicates that agriculture and pasture made up over 80 percent of what drove deforestation in south america from 1990-2000 (ibid.). we further analyze this issue in section four of this article. besides clearing vast amounts of forest space for cattle pastures and agricultural purposes, much deforestation is to produce lumber for building construction worldwide and for luxury furniture. fearnside (1995, p.61) maintains that: “...the value of amazonian forests for ‘ecological’ uses such as biodiversity maintenance, carbon storage and water vapor supply overshadows by far both current and potential revenue from both timber and nonwood products.” the veracity or not of this assertion, however, is dependent upon effective international agreements and the willingness of developed countries to pay to protect a crucial global resource. we analyze the international situation and the north versus south tensions and contradictions in this regard in section three of this article. while road paving is among the economic activities that simulates deforestation (davidson et al., 2012, p.323), a key driver of deforestation comes from private investors who seek to maximize profits by supplying timber, soybeans, and beef to both global and national markets (celentano et al., 2011, p.850). thus, deforestation is largely attributed to the high demand for logs, sawn wood, and furniture in both the domestic and international markets. timber extraction has become a major economic activity in the amazon forest, especially in the last two decades (smith et al., 1998, p.17). this is in part because the stability of the market for logs, sawn wood and furniture is higher than that for fruits and nuts (ibid.). deforestation of the amazon forest is thus a consequence of global economic forces (butler, 2009). this point is further argued and analyzed in section four. forestry and wood harvests can be conducted in a variety of ways. clear cutting is economically the cheapest but it is also the most ecologically damaging and wasteful. there are thus environmentalist pressures to engage in more ecologically balanced and responsible forestry practices. there are actually many certification programs to show the developed countries’ ecologically conscious consumers that their luxury furniture or flooring purchase comes not from irresponsible amazonian destruction but from careful, ecologically managed forestry harvest. secbrazilian dystopia | 157 tion four of this paper examines this apparent positive step to protect the world’s forests and the amazonian forest in more detail. in particular it examines its failures and the reasons for them. there are many such capitalist reformist environmental solutions. the amazon rainforest could financially benefit brazil through the sale of environmental services at the same time as it mitigates against global warming (fearnside, 2012, p.71). fearnside (ibid) explains that, “[e]nvironmental services in the amazon rainforest are of global importance and can form the basis for substantial monetary flows to brazil.” fearnside’s view, however, we would argue is utopian. projects intended to reward the environmental services (i.e. the storage of carbon) of brazil’s amazon rainforest are increasing but their effectiveness in achieving what they are intended to do is doubtful. for example, brazil has created the amazon fund, with the intention to decelerate deforestation by promoting sustainable economic alternatives to cattle ranching and farming (ribeiro, 2012). brazil’s amazon fund functions by receiving donations from voluntary countries, such as norway and germany (fearnside, 2012, p.77). a key factor in this, as in many such projects, is their voluntary nature. in practice, the ineffectiveness of the project discouraged potential donors from contributing (ribeiro, 2012). there is also the redd plan, whose limitations we discussed earlier. other efforts include the rainforest conservation fund (rcf), which has helped to create a 960,000-acre reserve in the peruvian amazon in february of 2012 (enviroadmin, 2012). this is undoubtedly a positive development; but it is by no means adequate to the scale of the problem. deforestation is sure to cause irreversible damage to not only the amazon forest itself, but also to cause an important loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, and crucially, climate change. sustainable utilization of the forest is thus essential. agro-forestry provides some hope as a way of combining development and environmental protection. it is, potentially at least, a sustainable system of growing trees and crops at the same time. commercial agro-forestry, from plantations of bananas, oranges, and papayas to cashews, plays a somewhat effective role in slowing deforestation (smith et al., 1998, p. 7). however, agro-forestry is rarely performed on ranches (ibid., p.9) and, as we mentioned above, and will detail in section five, ranching is the most significant driver of deforestation. though it is practicable to boost agro-forestry on small-scale ranches, by fencing off pasture for the allowance of fruit trees to grow, there are constraints to agroforestry (ibid., p.12). inadequate market information, weak farmers’ 158 | climate change and its discontents associations, and a poor agro-industrial infrastructure are the main socio-economic constraints upon making agro-forestry a widespread viable sustainable management of the forest (ibid.). a survey conducted by smith et al. (1998) found nonetheless, that “a substantial proportion of farmers are incorporating timber species in their agro-forestry systems” (p.17). this indicates that, despite the constraints upon agro-forestry, some farmers are doing what they can do to sustain the forests. we are faced with an ecological imperative to save what is left of the amazon rainforest through sustainable methods like agro-forestry; otherwise there will be nothing to save humanity from global warming. there are small signs of hope. we can see from figure 2 below that some of the practices to decelerate deforestation have had some effect and we can also find some hope in brazil’s projections for a further deceleration. figure 2 butler, r. (2008). http://news.mongabay.com/2008/1212-amazon_targets.html http://news.mongabay.com/2008/1212-amazon_targets.html brazilian dystopia | 159 developmental necessities: people and capital “the poor complain, they always do but that’s just idle chatter. our system brings rewards to all, at least, to all who matter.” gerald helliener the divide between developed and developing countries in relation to the issue of climate change mitigation is categorized by the annex i/non-annex i division in the united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc) (heyward, 2007, p.519). according to the unfccc, annex i nations are industrialized countries with highincome economies, mainly those who were members of the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd) in 1992, plus some few other countries with economies in a transitional state. the annex ii category consists of the countries that are developing. this category is further split into two sub-categories. one group includes the developing countries that are most vulnerable to climate change; these are countries with low-lying coastal areas and those that are prone to desertification and drought. the second group includes countries that rely heavily upon income from fossil fuels and are vulnerable to the potential economic impacts of climate change (ufccc, 2013). the growing demand for an equal and unconditional right to development among the developing countries is on the rise (sengupta, 2002, p.841-842). this demand has been emphasized as one of the basic human rights for all countries, so as to meet their basic needs by increasing productivity and economic opportunities. this is a simple proposition but it has profound implications. the slogan “right to development” contains problematic aspects for the distribution of benefits and entitlements (lofquist, 2011). as we shall later argue, the slogan and surrounding discourse has significant implications for global ecology, as well as economy. the “right to development” lacks consensus among countries because the discourse is all about sustaining self-interests. the problematic of distribution represents the contradiction between ecological limitations to development on the one hand, and the basic capitalist concept of “never-ending improvement” on the other. this argument in practice, however, manifests itself somewhat differently. it pits the developing countries’ needs for fundamental improvements to living standards against the unlimited further development of the already developed countries. 160 | climate change and its discontents a fundamental feature of capitalism is the endless need for growth. beyond this worldwide systemic necessity, however, is a more basic physical reality of human needs. this is manifest in a discourse of rights and entitlements, with developing nations understandably pushing for achievements with respect to adequate living standards. an “adequate living standard” is defined by the universal declaration of human rights (udhr) as “the least amount of satisfaction of subsistence rights that are sufficient food and nutrition, clothing, housing and care when required” (alfredsson & eide, 1999, p.523). but as lars lofquist explains, “this does not imply that we must reject a right to a certain minimum level of well-being; it just means that this right cannot include claims for never-ending improvement” (lofquist, 2011, p.251). climate change is not only an environmental problem, it is also a developmental dilemma. its effects, as well as any efforts aimed at mitigation, will significantly impinge on developing countries with economies primarily based on natural resources such as agriculture and forestry. climate change causes more damage to those who are already vulnerable and is therefore likely to further exacerbate poverty and human deprivation. the various negotiated protocols and agreements between nations are intended to reduce the effects of greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions. they are attempts to preserve and save future life from devastating consequences. but the negotiations and agreements are also about the preservation of individual nations’ economic interests and balancing conflicts of interest with others. of course, imbalances in global power relations come to the fore here. there are, of course, alliances based upon commonalities of interest. brazil for example, is a member of one of the leading groups in this debate, the so called bric nations (brazil, russia, india and china), later forming an even stronger alliance of shared interests and diplomatic strategy (basic is the acronym for them) when russia was dropped in favour of south africa. climate change, it is argued by some, should be addressed as ‘everyday behaviors’ (hochstetler and viola, 2012, p.753) in which the right to development becomes a common and equal right but at the same time entails responsibility. the challenge for achieving climate change mitigation agreements lies in how to equally protect the right to development, while at the same time creating a binding plan to de-carbonize economic activities. consequently, the debate of how best to address the issue is inevitably plagued by differences of national interests and of just what constitutes the right to development (baer et al., 2008). brazilian dystopia | 161 in theory, there were many opportunities for cooperation between developed and developing countries in implementing the right to development within the normative and institutional framework of the united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc) and its kyoto protocol. the kyoto protocol set targets for ghg emissions reductions for industrialized countries (annex i countries) and also created the clean development mechanism (cdm). the cdm is unique in light of its two-fold objective: mitigating climate change and contributing to sustainable development (baer et al., 2008, p.80-85). recently, the cdm has aided in promoting sustainable energy projects (lee et al., 2013). but as argued earlier, it is a capitalist solution to a problem not solvable within the structural constraints of a world capitalist political economy. the cdm has an accreditation system of defined certified emission reduction (cer) credits. these are units of carbon dioxide reduction equivalent to one ton. the reduction of emissions in the developing countries and the accumulation of these cer credits can then be sold and used by industrialized countries to meet some of their emission targets as set by the kyoto protocol (ufccc-cmd, 2013). to qualify for the cer credits project, developers must demonstrate the reduction in emissions that they implemented, compared to what would have occurred without these implementations (the guardian, 2011). the cdm is the principle diplomatically negotiated way discovered so far, of balancing the various different interests of developed and developing nations with regard to climate change mitigation and development. it embodies the alleged possibility of sufficient reform and diplomacy to solve one of the world’s most serious and pressing issues; its principles with regard to climate change mitigation are the very embodiment of hope for salvation through capitalist reform and self-regulation. in europe the cdm has been used with the creation of a mandatory trading scheme, called the eu emissions trading scheme (ets), which allows companies to buy cer credits to contribute to their own emission reduction goals (ibid.). therefore, the cdm, and its cer accreditation system in conjunction with the ets, would seem to have the potential for reducing emissions in the european nations at the same time as contributing to sustainable development in developing countries, and in particular fast growing countries such as brazil. except that it is isn’t working! pielke (2013) argues that the ets has thus far failed pretty much entirely in its de-carbonization goals for europe. the cdm might have been more effective in countries like brazil if the cdm and its cer system had included forest conservation and 162 | climate change and its discontents measures to avoid deforestation to its protocol. however, the kyoto protocol excluded them from the cdm permit for a variety of political and practical reasons (laurance, 2007, p.20-21). most significantly, for the possibility of it really succeeding in its purpose, it would have needed to be a binding agreement rather than voluntary in terms of compliance. but the cdm is not a binding policy and, of course, it includes loopholes that discourage companies and countries from abiding by it. the phrase “of course” in that last sentence signifies a dystopia thesis perspective upon this. the argument is that the really serious issues affecting humanity cannot be properly dealt with in the context of our existing political economy. contesting forces of national and corporate self-interest dictate what finally gets agreed upon and acted upon in the global community. so, most countries end up with ineffectual voluntary policies that determine their “everyday behaviors” in the efforts to address climate change. brazil, for example, has pledged to reduce the ghg emissions between 36.1 percent and 38.9 percent by 2020 (de motta, 2012). this is an admirable target. but it is also an unrealistic target. brazil is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, along with china and india. according to the united nations development program document, “the unprecedented rise of the south”, brazil is raising its living standards by expanding international relationships and anti-poverty programmes that are emulated worldwide” (undp, 2013). this is good. yet by contrast, with respect to climate change, brazil is the world’s fourth largest ghg emitter. most of brazil’s ghg emissions derive from agriculture, land-use change and forest management (roman, 2010, p.1). moreover, in international negotiations as stated earlier, brazil occupies a distinct position as an active member representing the “south” and is a major actor within the coalition of the (basic) countries. the basic agreement included a possible walk-out of negotiations if their common basic minimum position was not met by the developed nations (hochstetler & viola, 2012, p.755-756). brazil’s climate agenda has evolved around three issues: “stressing every country’s sovereign right to development; opposing any suggestion that the amazon rainforest be put under international control for its protection; and emphasizing the industrialized countries’ historical responsibility and obligation to compensate for their emissions to date” (roman, 2010, p.1). while this is fine on one level, and from our perspective of international fairness, quite reasonable, it has nonetheless produced an ecology destroying stalemate with the developed world, not brazilian dystopia | 163 all of which were even kyoto signatories and most of which have failed to meet their own emission reduction targets. the brazilian case of an emerging economy shows climate change policies characterized by contradictions. such contradictions include the preservation of national interests and the implementation of unbinding and voluntary policies. the right to development has been manipulated as a means to an end by both developed and developing countries alike. the ultimate goal for all these countries is to maximize their production and economic opportunities well beyond the level of an adequate living standard. the “right to development” discourse has simply been exploited as an ideological tool of self-interested justification. if the dystopia thesis generally is correct, then it could not be otherwise, in brazil or anywhere else. the fundamental structural features of the global political economy not only condition economic decisions but also frame the discourse in which policies and values are diplomatically debated and agreed upon. there is thus from a long term environmental perspective, a wholly inadequate set of policies with built-in loopholes. the collective failure to properly act upon what is ecologically necessary for humanity’s long term well-being is, for the near future at least, virtually guaranteed. the failures of market solutions: forest certification programs “one of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions and not by their results.” milton friedman there is worldwide awareness and concern for the preservation of the amazonian rainforest, just as there is a global demand for the products of its resource harvesting. the brazilian population has its own surprisingly high public awareness of ecological issues generally and climate change in particular (pew research, 2010). there is thus pressure from both within and outside brazil for protective measures. there is government legislation, driven both by international pressure and domestic motivation. the greatest weakness of these environmentally protective laws is the issue of compliance and enforcement. a great deal is left up to the voluntary efforts of corporations and citizenry. there are voluntary international targets for emission levels with respect to climate 164 | climate change and its discontents change on the one hand, and local legislative measures and international codes of forestry management on the other. it is the latter that we shall discuss in this section as their failures illustrate perfectly the dystopian contradictions preventing real solutions to real, and recognized, serious problems, upon whose solution the future of humanity and a healthy global ecosphere depend. the problem is that the most serious strategies attempted to remedy ecological/economic issues are such that the hoped for solutions derive from the very same mechanisms that caused and are causing the problems in the first place. the strategies are all market driven and/or dependent upon a kind of consumer voluntarism. one might think that a code of ecologically sound principles to guide forestry practices could do nothing but good. but as it turns out the story is far more complicated. there are a plethora of local and international inspection and sanctioning bodies with respect to forestry. that is actually part of the problem itself: different bodies, different regulations, different credentialization and certification practices. internationally, more than thirty different such certification systems exist (http://www.accreditation-services.com/archives/certification_ bodies). however, we shall focus on only one of these bodies the forest stewardship council (fsc) as it embodies all the dilemmas of market driven solutions to issues affecting the global commons. the fsc program the following is from the website of a hardwood flooring company (tulip floors, 2011) located in berkeley, california: “despite the well publicized reports of clear-cutting of tropical and oldgrowth forests, it has taken a long time for government and industry bodies to coalesce around a common certification system. part of the difficulty has originated with the timber industry itself, which has spent enormous resources propping up its own weak “certification” bodies. in the tropics, government bans against illegal logging are weakly enforced, with enormous corruption allowing illegal loggers to act with impunity. fortunately, the last decade has seen fsc certification come to the forefront as the most trusted and widely accepted independent certification system in the world. the forest stewardship council (fsc) is headquartered in bonn, germany, and is an international non-profit organization that sets environmental and social standards of forest management.” brazilian dystopia | 165 the flooring company identifies more than one of the global problems we are aware of: corruption, weakly enforced legislation, the timber industry’s own “weak” certification bodies and, of course, the crucial importance of ecologically sound forest management. this, they correctly imply, is absolutely necessary for any brazilian (and world!) climate change mitigation efforts. why does the company forefront such concerns so prominently on its website? certainly most hardwood flooring companies do not. we may speculate upon the green political leanings of the company’s ownership and management. they may well have quite altruistic intentions. however, such intentions can fit well with the bottom line in a capitalist economy. there is a niche market for ecologically sustainable products. consumers aware of the ecological importance of the amazonian rainforest and other fragile forests eco-systems, are willing to pay more for a trusted certification that the products they buy have been produced in environmentally sound ways. what possibly could be wrong with that? isn’t that exactly what will solve the amazonian (and other) logging operation deforestation problems? well, it is certainly the most popular pseudo-solution offered us by the corporate powers that rule the world. the very existence of a ‘niche market’ presumes the existence of a wider market place from which the niche market is differentiated. so if there are good “environmental and social standards of forest management”, certified as such by the fsc as is the wood flooring of tulip floors quoted above, then it follows that there are uncertified wood products for sale elsewhere and that many or most of these products are a result of ecologically unsustainable practices. as stated earlier, there are more than thirty certification organizations with no agreed upon common levels of certification or standards of practice. perhaps, more importantly, over 90 percent of the world’s forests have no certification process at all. in brazil, where the fsc is the biggest forest management certification agency, only 1.4 percent of its forests are fsc certified. further, as asserted in the usda report wood market update (2006) “...it is only an estimated 2% of the tropical wood produced in brazil that is derived from certified forests.” the report goes on to say that: “some estimates show that over 40% of brazil’s tropical wood production comes from illegal logging”. so, ecologically unsound practices are rampant and climate change be damned. why is this so? the situation expresses the essence of alleged market driven solutions to global problems: individual consumer choices will solve collective problems with collective costs. if you want to have a 166 | climate change and its discontents conscience, a concern for the collective, you have to pay for it. so, for example, in addition to those consumers willing to pay more for “fair trade” coffee (coffee production, of course, being another of brazil’s concerns) there are far more people unaware of the problem that the “fair trade” products address and/or more people who are unwilling to pay that little bit extra as a partial solution to a social justice issue. it is the same with ecology. some people are just going to choose the cheaper hardwood flooring (or furniture or any forest product) over the bragging rights that they personally are not contributing to ecological harm. individual consumer choices, in theory, could be the driver to solve the problems if everybody made the eco-ethically responsible choices. but in a world riven with inequality, desperation and media conditioned greed, it seems more than unlikely that everyone will. further, the dystopia thesis would argue that even if consumers came together in some amazing unanimity of environmentalist ethos, environmental harm, while perhaps being significantly reduced, would, nonetheless, continue to take place. why is this so? well, let’s look at the brazilian case of forestry. let’s look at the fsc more closely. in the first place, it is not a direct inspection agency itself. it does not employ agents in the field. rather it certifies the certifiers, those who actually (or perhaps only allegedly) examine the practices of the forestry companies. the fsc does not have just one level of certification – ecologically sound practices or not. rather, it has a plethora of different certifications and certifiers. in part this is because of the complexity and scale of its worldwide operations; in part this is because of a grindingly slow bureaucracy. but it is also because the logging companies themselves have a significant position upon the fsc board! it is not at all surprising that abuses occur. it is interesting that a non-profit organization dedicated to ecological concerns such as the fsc has spawned another non-profit organization dedicated to watching and reporting on it! the organization fsc watch alleges that clear-cutting and harvesting of old growth trees can occur even if a wood product is fsc certified. their allegations are numerous and seem pretty well founded as well.5 the existence of such watchdogs is a ray of hope in the dystopian gloom of probabilities. it works toward the stripping away many of the illusions generated by the many selfpolicing, niche market driven solutions to deep ecological problems. notwithstanding such hopes, the dystopia thesis posits a level of contradiction and complexity to the issues such that knowledge dissemination, 5 for a us example see: fsc watch, 2008. brazilian dystopia | 167 and the failures of political will, have their own dystopia force of causality. the next section will examine this argument through the example of the brazilian beef export industry. knowledge, dystopia and brazilian beef export “where’s the beef?” walter f. mondale 1984 democratic presidential nomination campaign slogan “it’s the economy, stupid.” former u.s. president bill clinton 1992 campaign slogan brazil was the world’s largest beef producer and exporter until only recently being overtaken by the u.s (rapoza, 2011). the united states’ overtaking of brazil in this economic sector was largely due to a weakened dollar; and the fact is, that brazil has been the most significant producer and exporter of beef for quite some time. this, however, is not a very well-known fact to the environmentally concerned public, who understandably instead, focus their gaze upon deforestation because of logging. but brazil’s beef production and export sector not only has even more serious ecological consequences than does forestry but it illustrates very well one of the aspects of the dystopia thesis to do with knowledge, which we will look at in the latter part of this section. cattle produce co2 and methane gas as natural animal functions. they thus contribute to the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. but how much of a contribution do they make? the first and most obvious statement to make with respect to this, is that the more cattle that are raised, the greater is this contribution. a less obvious factor is that in contemporary livestock management the cattle are kept in relatively small areas proportional to their numbers; this leads to concentrated emissions of methane gas. these methane emissions, per mole, have a global warming potential of 3.7 times that of carbon dioxide (lashof & ahuja, 1992). also contemporary practices frequently involve over-grazing with serious unintended consequences. o v e r g r a z i n g leads to the hardening and erosion of the surface soil which not only makes the soil infertile and repellent of the precipitation that normally replenishes the groundwater, but it also releases the sequestered carbon into the atmosphere and destroys the soil’s capability of absorbing 168 | climate change and its discontents carbon. it is a rarely mentioned fact that soil is the biggest terrestrial reservoir and sequesterer of carbon. soil organic carbon has a potential rate of sequestration of up to 3 billion tons of carbon per year (fairlie, 2012, p.1).finally, it must be observed that brazil’s cattle raising and beef export industry has expanded dramatically in recent years (see figures 3 and 4 below) and thus is another significant brazilian factor that is increasingly contributing to global climate change. figure 3 source: fao, 2013 brazilian dystopia | 169 figure 4 source: fao, 2013 further as we can see from figure 5 below, the expansion of ranching is the significant driver of deforestation. figure 5 butler, r (2013) http://rainforests.mongbay.com/deforestation_drivers.html 170 | climate change and its discontents the key economic concept pertaining to the north-south divide in terms of standards of living, development and ecology is that of production for export. human beings are eating more beef than they used to; and perhaps that is true to some degree for brazil as well. as brazil develops, and its beef production is, of course, a part of that development, their standard of living increases and increased meat protein in people’s diets usually goes along with that. but brazilian cattle ranching and beef production, and most importantly, its relatively recent huge expansion, is export driven. one could say (though, of course, with some qualification) that the north-south divide with respect to brazilian beef, is that it is produced in the south but consumed in the north. it is, thus, certainly not only brazilians that benefit from brazilian development. they are a part of a global economy of unequal exchange. and in beef production, just as in the forestry industry, there are serious ecological consequences, including the focus of this article, emissions and climate change. a key component of the ecological situation is that forestry and logging combine in their environmental impact. land is deforested to enable the expansion of cattle ranching. so, there is a double impact, so to speak; gas emissions from the increased numbers of cattle themselves, and from the deforestation that indirectly arises from the expansion of the beef production industry. this is where the dystopia thesis’s assertions about knowledge come in. the dystopia thesis argues that knowledge and production are dialectically interrelated with the obfuscation of knowledge production and the restriction of its dissemination with an accompaniment of confusion, mystification and failures of understanding. as said earlier, the label given by the dystopia thesis to the dialectical opposite of knowledge production is “structural mystification” (potter, 2010b). the complexities of the relationships between knowledge production, knowledge consolidation, knowledge dissemination and the generation of mystification as are promulgated in this abstract theoretical articulation are, in part, illustrated concretely in the empirical brazilian case. omission of the effects of land use changes in estimates of life-cycle greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions can lead to serious underestimates. this is particularly true for cattle raising. but changes in land usage may or may not be included in estimates of so-called “carbon footprints.” carbon footprint is a term that the educated layperson interested in environmental matters is quite familiar with. but few are aware its calculation is not standardized and thus may be subject to both legitimate scientific disputation on the one brazilian dystopia | 171 hand, and that more crassly motivated on the other (wiedmann & minx, 2007; east, 2008; finkbeiner, 2009; peters, 2010; pandey et al., 2011). scientific misunderstandings, or arguable errors over methodologies, or more fundamental debates, are not very well intellectually appreciated by the public. the public very largely has the mistaken belief that science is principally about certainties; when, of course, checking and re-checking measurements, questioning methods of measurement and critical inquiry and debate are much more its hallmarks. but knowledges need consolidation amongst the scientific specialist community before they can be publicly consolidated as knowledges and harnessed to a political will on a related issue. by consolidation, we mean, generally accepted. for example, while there is scientific consensus about climate change generally and its anthropomorphic origins, public consensus about the issue is still far away. this is not only because of the media misrepresentation of the status of scientific debate and its over-representation of the climate change deniers, a condition that much has been written about even by journalists, but because of the legitimate debates of specialism’s (climate change, as we know, encompasses many different issues in many different disciplinary specialism’s) about details. this leaves the public somewhat confused, and ripe as it were, for misdirection, as this too is misrepresented in the media. thus, we have the brazilian situation where land use changes driven by the economic imperatives of meat export may or may not have a critical indicator with respect to their effects upon climate change taken into account. but yet this indicator is crucial. cederberg et al. (2011, p.1773) argue: “the carbon footprint of beef produced on newly deforested land is estimated at more than 700 kg co2-equivalents per kg carcass weight if direct land use emissions are annualized over 20 years. this is orders of magnitude larger than the figure for beef production on established pasture on non-deforested land.” they further (ibid.) argue that: “while brazilian beef exports have originated mainly from areas outside the lar, i.e. from regions not subject to recent deforestation, we argue that increased production for export has been the key driver of the pasture expansion and deforestation in the lar during the past decade 172 | climate change and its discontents and this should be reflected in the carbon footprint attributed to beef exports. we conclude that carbon footprint standards must include the more extended effects of land use changes to avoid giving misleading information to policy makers, retailers, and consumers.” but misleading information in this, as in many cases, is the norm rather than the exception. the reason for this is apparent if we consider the brazilian situation elucidated above. it derives from an apparently reasonable compartmentalization of facts and empirical data. but holistic analysis is really required here (and, of course, in many similar situations). the production increase in beef for export has obviously been an economic driver in pasture expansion (not the only one, but the most important one in this context) and hence in deforestation. what is crucially being obscured by the lack of a holistic understanding is actually the dominant feature of causality with regard to cattle ranching and deforestation. the world geo-political economy is actually the causal force leading to the double negative environmental impact of brazilian beef production and export, and of the developed world’s consumption. if one follows the logic of this case through, it seems to be the case that in the north-south debate concerning who should foot the bill for the trade-offs between development and environmental protection, the north, far from being generously indulgent by being willing to allow some compensation for southern climate change mitigation, along with some latitude to southern economic development, is actually wanting further southern subsidy for their own rather glutinous consumption. conclusion “an alarmist is defined as a person who alarms others needlessly. yelling “fire!” in a crowded theatre when there is no such fire is clearly alarmist. pointing out an actual plume of smoke is not.” anonymous ambassador pablo salon, one of the bolivian hosts of the 30,000strong world people’s conference on climate change and the rights of mother earth in cochabamba, presented a six step path to move forward from the current climate talks deadlock (pwccc.wordpress.com, 2011): brazilian dystopia | 173 1. agreement on the size of the gap (12-14 gigatonnes of c02e) 2. recognize that developed countries will need to take a larger share of the reduction. 3. agree on parameters for sharing the burden, based on historical responsibility and capacity of the parties. 4. have developed countries’ emissions peak immediately. 5. represent every countries’ target in terms of gigatonnes, defined as reductions from domestic emission levels and without the use of ‘offsets’. 6. agreement on legal actions for parties that do not fulfill their obligations under the kyoto protocol (for a second commitment period) and under the convention. the dystopia thesis would be clearly understood by many who attended the cochabamba conference. the six points outlined here by solon show a clear way we can embrace a dystopian view, and come up with a meaningful political response. something like these six steps is crucial for the welfare of the planet. many people recognize this. but the steps have not been taken and show absolutely no signs that they are going to be. the dystopia thesis is alarming in its degree of pessimism concerning humanity’s future. it provides, among other things, a very long and varied global list of problems and future crises. it is not, however, the large number of such, or indeed, even the severity and seriousness of any single one of them, which is most alarming. in this regard, the focus of this article, global warming, must rank up there in contention for the top position of the most worrisome danger humanity is facing. no, what is most alarming is not the potential harm (our self-elimination as a species?) but rather the prognosis for possible avoidance. the worst outcomes, whether with respect to global warming or any of the other dystopian projections into the future, cannot be avoided without fundamental change to the world socio-economic political system. global warming is by definition a global problem. its effects will ultimately be effects that are felt by everyone. however, they will arrive differentially. for example, many small island nations may well literally be under water before the populations of the developed world experience much more than ‘weird’ weather patterns, occasional mild inconvenience at home and the more frequent witnessing of multi-variable catastrophes afflicting others – hurricanes, floods, droughts, etc. – unless they happen to have the misfortune to be one of the others in question. further, global 174 | climate change and its discontents warming, while on one level can be understood as having global causation, on another, its causality is highly differentiated between parts of the world as well. the developed nations have and continue to have the greatest contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. there are a number of forests in the world, all of which are important. but as we emphasized in section two of this article, the amazonian rainforest has a particularly crucial role in maintaining the earth’s climate equilibrium. brazil’s deforestation thus is far from simply being a brazilian problem, and as we argued, cannot have an isolated brazilian solution. both brazil’s population and its government have a degree of environmental awareness and concern. but however environmentally progressive a government brazil elects in the future, it will not be sufficiently so, that it will produce, all on its own, the legislative and enforcement measures to effectively protect the amazon. the “right to development” is not merely a discourse; it is a very real human need and driven by poverty and suffering as well as capitalist greed. and this is the truly alarming dystopian problem that we can see in brazil’s particular case, as well as globally. brazil is situated in a global political economy that not only drives development but drives it in such a way so as to not address the problems of the poor and also to not address the problems of the environment. it is not the argument of this article that the predictions of the dystopia thesis are our inevitable future, just our probable future. no, we believe it is 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(2011). research on china’s power sector carbon emissions trading mechanism. energy procedia, 12, 127-132. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/26/clean-development-mechanism http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/26/clean-development-mechanism http://www.tulipfloors.com/sustainability/fsc_certified http://www.tulipfloors.com/sustainability/fsc_certified http://unfccc.int/parties_and_observers/items/2704.php http://unfccc.int/parties_and_observers/items/2704.php http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=a/res/41/128&lang=e&are http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=a/res/41/128&lang=e&are http://issuu.com/undp/docs/hdr_2013_en?mode=window http://www.fas.usda.gov/ffpd/newsroom/wood market update.pdf http://www.fas.usda.gov/ffpd/newsroom/wood market update.pdf chemins alternates horkheimer and adorno go to japan ai vachon some time ago, before i moved to japan for three years, i saw a picture that stuck in my mind and stayed with me through my travels, and has since grown, for me, to encapsulate modern japanese culture and the direction of globalising technological change and identity consumption. the image was of a bulldozer, busy at work in tokyo bay with seagulls everywhere, crushing a seemingly endless mountain of electronic goods: tvs, vcrs, microwave ovens and stereos ripped apart and crushed in a violent creation of the new tokyo waterfront. it was a powerful image of nature and land, torn apart and reassembled as consumer goods, mechanised-electronic products, consumed and disposed of, to be reconstituted as new industrial nature, building on the cities that spawned them. in a country with less than 20% flat land, sustaining over 120 million people and the world's second most productive economy, the need for more space seemed obvious, and the picture confirmed the image i had of japan as a hyper-modern, technologically advanced country of sophisticated electronic goods and computer gadgets. though somewhat twisted, it seemed paradoxically, to affirm the other image of japan in the popular consciousness, of a sustainable, holistic society. even manufactured electronic goods were recycled, turned back into nature and made to serve the ongoing progression of social invention and life. the picture provided a snapshot of a hyper-consumptive japanese society, hard to accurately convey or imagine in spite of our own wildly unsustainable consumptive habits; and in so doing, offered a heightened, amplified look at the emerging patterns of global consumption. it spoke of a culture celebrated with images of natural harmony and simplicity, of delicate flower arrangements and bonsai trees, bamboo groves and vermilion gates, given way to computerized toilets that automatically test blood-sugar levels and nutritional balance, communicating with the volume 17 2001 43 alternate routes fridge and recommending this week's supermarket list. once renown for full-moon gazing and cherry-blossom viewing parties, japan had transformed itself into the hyperconsumptive society defined by industry and government promises of conflict-free post-industrial/information-age affluence and media exhortations to buy the latest in identity-consumption. the bulldozed waterfront of 'post-industrial' goods demonstrated the incessant circulation of material wealth in the form of consumer goods, especially high-tech electronic goods, but also japanese culture and identity. the zero-defect and 'just-in-time' production techniques that had propelled japan to the top ranks of the international industrial hierarchy and lodged japanese company names like sony, mitsubishi and toshiba into popular global consciousness, had grown to define japan to the world and to themselves. although i didn't realize it at the time, in retrospect i'm quite certain, that in the background of the photo, almost hidden along the waterfront and seagulls, i could just make out horkheimer and adorno, strolling hand-in-hand, with the most peculiar look on their faces. how did a people internationally celebrated for their harmonious balance with nature; boasting an animistic religion that recognized gods in rivers, mountains and trees; worshipped their ancestors and land as sacred and alive; and sustained itself and a vibrant and sophisticated culture on the bounty of their seas, soy and rice-fields, grow to suffocate fertile wetlands and fishing-grounds under mountains of toxic electronic gadgetry and the best of last-year's consumptive needs? where once they witnessed gods, today not one unregulated' river remains on the main island. not one! damned, diverted and cemented over, choked by sewage and industrial-agricultural runoff, the rivers run down fabricated shorelines and extended industrial parks of crushed over electronic appliances (mccormack, 46). its brand-image of zen spiritual harmony and simplicity eagerly bought and sold around the world, japan now madly rushes in a headlong pursuit of conspicuous consumption and waste. vcblen traced the development of consumption as a means of advertising communal worth and reputability. he suggested that the more one could consume/waste, the more worthy they were seen to be. but, one didn't simply consume and waste anything, for anyone could and had always done that. the task was to consume/waste in the most conspicu44 volume 17,2001 chemins alternatifs ous way possible. in a competitive society of limited resources, one must consume and waste as conspicuously as possible the most extravagant and desired goods; and in so doing, affirm one's worth and desirability (veblen, 62). as debord (1977) asserted, being had been reduced to having, which in turn had been reduced to showing. what better way to show than through the ceremonial destruction/waste of your economic prowess. the result is a ceremony of consumption, in which all familial, communal and religious ceremony has been folded into displays of precoded consumption/waste. while veblen and debord were commenting on 'western' societies their insights certainly hold true for japan, where every occasion necessitates the socially-scripted exchange of gifts, the ceremonial commodities of communal rite. visiting someone's home, having someone visit you, meeting someone for the first time, starting a job, finishing a job, going on a work trip, going on a holiday, going to a wedding, or even getting married. all these ceremonies necessitate the purchasing and giving of gifts, whose worth is determined not by their utility but by the department store they are purchased from and their adherence to codified tradition. going to hiroshima? must bring back these cinnamon flavored treats. going to kyoto? well, it will have to be some traditional leaf tea. off to northern japan? don't forget to bring back a kokeshii doll. local and national culture and production is transformed into a social ceremony of consumption and waste, differentiated and defined by prepackaged goods. all of this provides a ceremony of initiation, signifying belonging to a particular social class and community through the purchasing and giving of gifts. though japan is very proud of its 'middlemass' society in which everyone from garbage collectors to doctors can rest assured that they have achieved the promised affluence and happiness of massive industrial production, a present wrapped in mitsukoshi department store paper still says something vastly different about the gift and the person giving it than one wrapped by daei or seibu. but how else is one to signify their communal belonging, position and worth? as veblen (1977: 72) pointed out, the act of consumption/ waste to advertise oneself is particularly strong in urban settings. japan is very, very urban. with over 50% of the japanese population and most industrial and information-age production crowding the sprawling megalopolises of tokyo and osaka, japan's gnp per km2 is well over four times that of the much larger us. even more so for level land (bennett volume 17 2001 45 alternate routes and levine, 456). japan has concentrated its economic and political might on sprawling urban labyrinths that define and dominate the political, economic, cultural and geographic landscape of japan. i'm sure everyone has seen the pictures of japanese workers being crammed into subways by white gloved staff. as the megalopolises grow, and overtake the once fecund rice fields, workers are forced to travel further and further into the cities, spending up to three or four hours a day on subway trains, which authorities recently boasted to run only around 175% or 150% of full-capacity during peak hours. the concentrated politicaleconomic might exhorts citizen-consumers to "buy japanese," for "japan is # 1"; and the piles of gadgets grow along with the waterfront, and tokyo and osaka merge into a single productive/consumptive complex connected by shinkansen bullet trains, high-tech tunnels and arching bridges of concrete and fibre optics. how is one to know and judge the character and worth of anyone, when thrown into such close proximity and the maddening crush of speed and stress? advertisement. conspicuous consumption takes the place of actually knowing our neighbours, becoming the preferred way to judge worth and respectability. accordingly, how one looks, how one presents themselves, the brand of clothing, the culture and education exhibited in formal speech, all become ways of judging and classifying each other. how do you give your meishi (business cards)? how do you receive it? one hand or two? how long do you hold it? what do you say? do you put it into an expensive 'coach' holder or stick in your back pocket? these things say volumes about the cultural and economic capital of which bordieu (1986) speaks. still, how is one to know the proper codes of consumption/waste/display? veblen points to an 'upwards emulation' as providing the codes of inclusion (veblen, 1977: 70). we compare and compete with our peers in unceasing attempts to consume like our socio-economic superiors with the upper-class' conspicuous consumption as the ultimate model of worthiness. as horkheimer and adorno (1994) pointed out, it is the culture industry that provides this image of how our peers and superiors are consuming. not as consumption per se, but as life, blurring the lines between advertised image and 'reality,' until the distinction becomes meaningless. as highlighted by bordieu (1986: 55), consumption is a life-style expressing economic and cultural capital. it is weber's 'stylization of life'; it is debord's spectacle, both cause and effect, a model of 46 volume 17.2001 chemins alternates what is and what should be, totally inseparable from the 'real' as it creates and is created by the 'real.' how we consume becomes the means of socioeconomic advertisement, classification of culture, education, family and worth. more than that, it becomes who we are. the consumer as artist: creating and exhibiting the self. in japan, as here, the sporty person wears north face and drives a suv; the business man wears the most expensive, dull suits, the upperclass housewife practices ikebana and tea ceremony, always smiling behind her hand; the office clerk goes out for karaoke and spends her bonus on new clothes and hello kitty paraphernalia. the good students are neat, tidy and polite, their mothers hovering over them as they struggle from elementary school to get into the right junior-high, that is affiliated with the right highschool which will ensure their passage into the appropriate university and thus a good job in a good company, with a wife and a home to match. the art of emulating each other in pursuit of the manufactured ideals of the entertainment industry results in a coming together of economic and cultural consumption to create and display the self within pre-scripted lines, running harder and faster on the treadmill of consumption, justifying more and more needs to be forever produced, consumed, wasted, and formed into landfills. i guess it could be said, as it is said in japan, that at least this provides a place for everyone. everyone knows who and what they are and how they fit into the famed 'middle-mass' social whole. but of course, it also becomes a tool of exclusion, of policing and persecuting those that deviate. the need to emulate makes conspicuous consumption a relation of control. one must consume to the full expectations of their class— and for maximum show, lest they be left behind and cast out, the greatest fear of all. in japan, it is common wisdom that the most sorrowful person is one without family, community and/or belonging. to be outside of the system is to be dead. this means consuming and advertising enough, but never too much. everyone has their place, their line not to be crossed. like bordieu's (1986: 378-382) working classes that know to be 'realistic,' and not to 'put on airs', in japan 'the nail that stands out gets hammered.' while reassured that all japanese are enjoying the bounty of the 'middle-mass' (shhhh! -no one say class), they are regulated and differentiated by ceremonial waste and identity consumption. powerful social stability is maintained, justifying large disparities in consumptive abilities and cultural belonging. volume 17 2001 47 alternate routes so what does all this amount to? both japan and the 'western' world have a culture industry that both creates and is a product of a consumptive/waste ideology that determines and enforces social expectations and valuations of conspicuous consumption, within which are created prepackaged personalities to fulfil the consumptive needs of niche marketing, pushing technological and productive capacities ever further in the converting of nature into culture, appliances and waterfront. the need to assert individuality, as dictated by social peers and tv, have us demand more and more differentiated and advanced products in pursuit of the self, always expecting but never achieving, the satisfaction advertisements lead us to believe we will attain. as soon as we 'just do it' and satisfy one need, there is immediately another to coax us on, convincing us that this is 'the real thing.' this is most glaringly demonstrated in the computer industry today, where politicians and business leaders alike inform us that if only we were more technologically advanced, bought more computers, did away with more liberal arts, spent more time on-line, produced more software, pursued economic rationalization and corporate restructuring more aggressively, all while social spending is cutback, all our problems would be solved as technology marched on, bringing promised affluence, identity and happiness in its wake. technology — development consumption on a global scale — all dictated by a seemingly inherent evolutionary force. but, as horkheimer and adorno (1994: 121) told us, "[a] technological rationale is the rationale of domination itself." the most startling aspect of this ideology of autonomous scientific advancement and consumptive utopias, is that the constant, insatiable need to consume absorbs any increase in the efficiency borne of mass production or technological gains. in spite of corporate and government promises since the 60s, with the greater, rationalized production of more 'advanced' and 'efficient' stuff, people don't work less, they just need and consume more and more, to no end. so we work longer and harder, to keep pace with the technological advances that were promised to set us free. nowhere is this more true than in japan, where everyone can see the torrents of drab, stony-faced workers streaming end mass across tokyo intersections bathed in flashing neon and giant flat-screen tvs glaring down from office building walls, urging them to push faster and harder for the promises of the information economy. this is evidenced by the not uncommon practice of karoshi: working oneself to death. 48 volume 17,2001 chemins alternatifs while the image of japanese corporate warriors sacrificing themselves to the company is something of a cliche borne of cheesy wwii movies with crazed pilots yelling "banzai" and dive-bombing american ships, the reality is no less bizarre. the normally implacable conservative government has been forced (by a series of successful litigation launched by surviving families threatening corporate backers) to initiate a government task-force to investigate karoshi. however in the cult of speed, production and selfless sacrifice, the head of the agency investigating these unsustainable job pressures worked himself to death. banzai! so in japan, we witness this manic obsession with acquiring the newest version of the most technologically advanced, timesaving, personality-defining cell-phone, stereo, car televisions and gpss, flooding the garbage with last year's trends. last year's identity-defining products slavishly pursued to the detriment of health and community, are today thrown into the garbage. on garbage night you can walk around residential neighborhoods and find everything you need to furnish an apartment. in fact, this is exactly what a lot of foreigners do, especially in the big cities. but when i mentioned this to a young, hip and seemingly progressive japanese friend who had travelled extensively abroad, he looked as though i had admitted to being an axe-murderer. "da-me! you mustn't do that!" last year's brand-name appliances, made in japan or at least by japanese companies, are thrown out not, because they don't work, but because their value in fostering social cohesion and differentiation is spent. they are good for nothing but landfill. to suggest otherwise is to threaten the base of production, identity and culture; to be a nail sticking out. let's say, the ecological state of affairs gets to you. certainly it does get to many japanese, who can boast a rich tradition of socio-environmental movements that would put many smug 'eco-friendly' canadians to shame. you don't want to contribute to the growing landfill sites of discarded appliances that are recreating tokyo bay. surely you can do something about it. in spite of all the above, you don't have to buy a new car every two years. do you? well, it would seem that the tv sets are stacked against you for two reasons: the passivity of consumptive society and the co-option of dissident choice. the passive nature of a consumptive society was most clearly laidout by horkheimer and adorno (1994) who saw a consumptive 'culture' volume 17 2001 49 alternate routes that required no thought, imagination or input — rather than engagement, just absorption, conditioning passivity and alienation — what fukutake tadashi (1981: 101) saw as making "a nation of a hundred million idiots." for every need there is a ready-made formula of mass-produced commodities, requiring no thought, effort or involvement. it is as unsatisfying and alienating as it is deadening, leaving the consumer empty and craving for more consumption in the hope of fulfillment, enmeshing them in a neverending maze that dissipates any resistance which they might have been capable of. as stated by horkheimer and adorno (1994:141), "[w]hat is decisive today is the necessity inherent in the system not to leave the customer alone, not for a moment to allow him any suspicion that resistance is possible." this is most easily portrayed through professional sports (the opiate of middle-america). sports provide an idealized model of the self as rich, beautiful, athletic and powerful. fans consume this image in order to associate themselves with the athletes, but in so doing become even more aware of the divisions separating themselves from their idealized athlete/selves. they only have to see a hulking football player or a graceful ice dancer to realize the painful chasm between the real and ideal. they have become alienated from the product, and from themselves, only to be placated with greater consumption as manic fans. everyone has probably seen the image of japanese baseball fans, in team/company colors, jersey, hatband, banners and blow-horns, chanting and clapping in total unison, becoming louder and faster until the cheer and the individualities of the crowd break down into a single cultish collapse-union. sport exemplifies the cult of consumption, in which culture, consumption/waste and the self is brought together into a package of orgiastic alienation and passivity. that being said, there still seems to be a lot of rage out there; not only in japan but in canada as well. people are not happy, or at least some aren't, and there doesn't seem to be anything passive about them. what happens when you see those bulldozers, crushing last year's vcrs to make tomorrow's harbor fronts and you decide to remain impassive? consumptive society has an uncanny way of co-opting dissent to further the cycle of production, consumption and waste. it could even be said that the global, corporate giants of 'post-industrial' capitalism need dissent; they need activists to highlight new avenues of differentiation and growth, pushing through reforms for greater rationalization, control 50 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternates and profit. this is further evidenced in the commodification of the history and symbols of dissent, producing a scripted personality for those who would 'rebel'. you want to be an enviro-rebel? here, buy this che tshirt, or this rage cd, and this 'green' laundry detergent. and along the way, our 'dissent' helps create the conditions needed for the greater rationalization and commodification of nature in the name of sustainability. this dynamic can be witnessed with anti-consumption, envirominded protest-advocacy groups like adbusters. campaigning against 'corporate rule,' adbusters helps disseminate information and stoke the flames of 'people power': individual choice combatting conspicuous consumption. and, they get their message across through the selling of their product: dissent, through catchy slogans and sound-bites that require little thought from the consumers. "the big question." "economic progress is killing the planet." "every time there is a car accident, the gdp goes up." "buy nothing day," "tv turnoff day," "think global, act local," they even have a contest for products that will help raise environmental awareness (adbusters, www.adbusters.org). one of their calls for action is to take back the media, horkheimer and adorno's dreaded culture industry. they proclaim, "the media is you," calling on people, with cameras, tape and video recorders in hand to record and spread information through personal computers, fax machines, modems, webpages, e-zines, to raise money to produce uncommercials to buy air time on the major networks and usher in a "new culture of protest." this is all done with a new language, new codes and new costumes. just open your brain and internalize this, and as long as you can buy the latest in gadgets and have plenty of time, you can be an enviro-dissenter too. along the way, 'sustainability' mouthpieces provide the pressure for more efficient, differentiated production of more of the same. pushing for 'green alternatives,' environmentalists help spawn new technologies, new industries, new products, and greater profits. old inefficient technologies must be phased out, with new products brought in with mass consumer support, cultivated by green-branding: environment friendly, dolphin-friendly, recyclable, energy-savers. if it isn't bad enough having our protest pre-scripted and co-opted, environmentalism also emerges as a new type of disciplining, with new laws, regulations and societal norms brought together under the banner of sustainability. govemmentality, with its messy packaging of classvolume 17 2001 51 alternate routes conflict and mechanisms of power makes way for earth-saving environmentality. the environment must become subject to the most 'rational' exploitation possible. ecological space must be scientifically investigated, rationally controlled, protected, managed and exploited to its fullest potential, through new technologies and mass-production/ consumption (luke, 1998). we as consumers must therefore support this to help 'save' the 'environment,' one landfill at a time. the result, as we can see in japan, is that we have to get rid of these old refrigerators for more efficient ones. instead of one big inefficient water heater, lets have a small one for each tap. new windows will have to be put in to save electricity. maybe a whole new house would be better, so we tear them down every 20 years. in japan they do; families submitting to 'mortgage-hell' to purchase a tiny piece of land and 'rabbithutch' home to be soon torn down as worthless and embarrassing. in the office and in the home, everything is in a flux of destruction and consumptive (un)creation. along with yesterday's furnishings and kitchen appliances, all our old word processors and out-of date computers have to be replaced with the newest and fastest available, so we can make the most of ecofriendly information-industries, and take part in the 'anticonsumer revolution'. the garbage piles get bigger and more of tokyo-harbour is remade with the 'recycled' goods of a 'post-industrial' age. i return to that image of the bulldozer creating new space, land andnature, with last year's electronic identities, and ironically note that i think horkheimer and adorno would appreciate. just before i left japan, i was in tokyo and went out to the new tokyo bay, which today is entirely reconstructed— it's a huge tourist attraction connected to tokyo by computerized sky-trains that whisk young couples and new families out of the crush of urban life and into the relaxation and space of nature. the landfill site, filled with the discarded identities manufactured by the culture industry and our need to emulate and advertise our worth, has become parkland, with sculpted rolling hills, a beach and boardwalk and space to unwind and relax. and the centerpiece that brings people out, is this massive, architecturally awe-inspiring television studio, for which you can buy tickets to walk in and marvel at its cathedral-like dimensions and effect, looking into the studios where your favorite shows and commercials are made. so this industrial space, called forth by the discarded 'needs' of conspicuous consumption manufactured by the culture/ advertising industry, has become the home and showpiece of the very 52 volume 17. 2001 chemins alternatifs industry that spawned overproduction/consumption, which necessitating the site to begin with. the zen circle is complete. inside the studio-cathedral, in the ground-floor atrium, is a model of the 'reclaimed' tokyo bay for all to see and wonder at how this lockean wasteland has been made into something so beautiful and worthwhile. and the crowning jewel of this development, not yet complete when i was there, eagerly pointed to with models and a video presentation, was to be placed at the point of the harbor, for all to see and bask in the glory of, as it welcomed, unprejudiced, the boatloads of foreign currencies, the statue of liberty. references adbusters: the media foundation www site: http://www.adbusters.org bennet, john w. and solomon b. levine. 1976 "industrialization and social deprivation: welfare, environment, and the postindustrial society in japan" hugh patrick ed. japanese industrialization and its social consequences. berkeley: u of california press. 439-492. bordieu, pierre. 1986. distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste. trans. r. nice. cambridge ma: harvard university press. debord, guy. 1977. society of the spectacle. trans. of la societe du spectacle. detroit: black and red. fukutake tadashi. 1981. japanese society today. second edition. tokyo: university of tokyo press. horkheimer, m. and t. adorno. 1994. dialectic of enlightenment. trans. j. chumming. new york: continuum,. luke, timothy. 1998. "the (un)wise (ab)use of nature: environmentalism as globalising consumerism." alternatives. 23: 175-212. mccormack, gavan. 1996. the emptiness of japanese affluence. armand, ny: m.e. sharpe inc. veblen, thirsting. 1953. the theory of the leisure class: an economic study of institutions. new york, ny: macmillan. volume 17 2001 53 alternate routes a journal of critical social research editorial collective amanda mccarthy siomonn pulla jeffrey shantz digitized by the internet archive in 2011 with funding from carleton university, department of sociology & anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesc17alte alternate routes a journal of critical social research volume 17, 2001 editorial policy/call for paper 4 perspectives mike patterson millenialism and y2k 5 lukasz nalaskowski why communism lacked "information flow": a theoretical analysis 3 1 al vachon horkheimer and adorno go to japan 44 article george s. yacoubian jr. and blake j. urbach disproportional involvement in the use of crack and powder cocaine:findings from the arresteedrug abuse monitoring (adam) program 55 book review jeffshantz a structured anarchism by john griffin 71 contents ofpast issues 74 alternate routes editorial policy/call for papers alternate routes (ar) is a referecd multi-disciplinary journal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university ottawa, canada, k1s 5b6, altroutes@lists.carleton.ca. as a peer reviewed journal, ar provides a forum for debate and exchange among north american and international graduate students. we arc interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or coauthored with faculty), regardless of university affiliation. the editorial emphasis of the journal is on the publication of critical and provocative analyses of theoretical and substantive issues. we welcome papers on a broad range of topics and encourage submissions which advance or challenge theoretical questions and contemporary issues. we also welcome commentaries and reviews of recent publications, works in progress and personal perspectives. alternate routes is currently seeking submissions for volume 18, 2002. papers should be submitted double-spaced and in triplicate, following the american psychological association (apa) referencing system, keeping endnotes to a minimum. please sec our website for a style-guide. back issues of alternate routes are available at the following prices per volume: current issue (volume 17, 2000) — individuals $12.00; students/ un(der)employed $6.00; institutions $21.50. volume 16/15 (99/97): individuals $12.00; students/ un(der)cmployed $4.00; institutions $12.00. all previous years: individuals $3.00; students/un(der)employed $1.50; institutions $6.00 . alternate routes is indexed in sociological abstracts and the left index. the alternate routes collective gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the carleton university community; the departments of sociology and anthropology and it's chair; the dean of arts and social sciences; the dean of graduate studies and research; and the vice-president of research. we also wish to gratefully thank all the anonymous reviewers. volume 17,2001 chemins alter natifs perspectives millennialism and y2k cultures mike patterson abstract this paper explores responses to the year 2000, particularly the y2k computer bug. it consists of participatory action fieldwork and some short interviews on the subject of y2k. the results are a bricolage of interviews with rural and urban peoples living with different perspectives of the urban mainstream it (information technology) culture, and supporting theory, along with my comments and quotes from specialists on the y2k. the paper shows how peoples' expectations of the y2k are informed by their experience, and also how they will be affected by y2k, in one way or another, no matter where they live. theory ofmy methodology i am intrigued at that place where people (native/non-native) meet technology, as in the title to a previous paper, 'where the forest meets the highway, 1 to see how information technology and people now feed off and into each other. wanting to do some more field work, i thought of looking at local people and the y2k. i live above a pizza shop in a huge old boarding house (formerly foster's boarding house, ca. 1860?) by the tracks in valley, ontario, a town of about 30-40 minutes drive south of ottawa, with some people i know well. their stories of the ice storm of 97 1 began to blend in with ideas and stories about the coming y2k. i began with a fundamental question: does one's closeness to the land (and winter) make one more vulnerable to the vagaries of it such as y2k? or is the y2k really an urban yuppie phenomenon? volume 17 2001 5 alternate routes i used informal interviews as a type of theoretical sampling where "the analyst jointly collects, codes, and analyzes his data and decides what data to collect next and where (and when) to find them," a process of data collection 'controlled by the emerging theory' (glaser and strauss 1967: 45). i ended up with 'slices of data,' in an open inquiry with 'no limits to the techniques of data collection' (i also use newspapers and tv in an attempt at triangulation, see albas and albas 1998: 133), resulting in 'a variety of slices of data that would be bewildering if we wished to evaluate them as accurate evidence for verifications, but are useful in generating theory as this variety "is highly beneficial, because it yields more information on categories than any one mode of knowing (technique of collection)" (glaser and strauss 1967: 65-66). i also used this participant action research as a learning tool for my own techniques in sociology. this paper therefore, is also an autobiographical narrative, based on notes that include everything in my 'field,' including influences of professors, classmates and friends.charmaz and mitchell argue that, beyond discourse: ...there is also merit in audible authorship. we speak of the writer's voice from the standpoint of ethnographers committed to the vocation of using all we can of our imperfect human capacities to experience and communicate something of others' lives. we go and see and sometimes join; we ask and listen, wonder and write, and tell our stories, not necessarily in that order. we believe that these simple acts of outward inquiry and inward reflection together with effort and creativity will give us something to say worth of sharing. we do not pretend that our stories report autonomous truths, but neither do we share the cynic's nihilism that ethnography is a biased irrelevancy. we hold a modest faith in middle ground (charmaz and mitchell 1997: 194). charmaz and mitchell (1997: 212-213; see also charmaz and mitchell, 1998) maintain that "we do ourselves and our disciplines no service by only telling half-tales, by only reporting finished analyses in temperate voice, by suppressing wonder or perplexity or dread." clarity and truth are more likely found in 'ethnography, (where) the emergent self is 6 volume 17,2001 chemins alternatifs acculturated; it learns the limits of its own power' in a reflexive way this paper is a process, akin to what mills describes: by keeping an adequate file and thus developing self-reflective habits, you learn how to keep your inner world awake. whenever you feel strongly about events or ideas you must try not to let them pass from your mind, but instead to formulate them for your files and in so doing draw out their implications, show yourself either how foolish these feelings are, or how they might be articulated into productive shape... to maintain a file is to engage in the controlled experience (1959: 197). these then, are some of my stories with commentary. fieldnotes are in italics; names and place-names are inventions of mine: early on in my study, prof. mop asked me: 'let me see ifi've got this straight... you study the people you live with?' (this because of my last comp in which my situation and locale figured into my bricolage). i suggest that i could be a real fly on the wall above and behind the pizza shop, where people talk about all manner of things including, as of the fall of99, the y2k. to survivors ofthe ice storm in january last year, the y2k takes on a special meaning. i mention the recentflood ofmedia coverage ofy2k, including one u.s. commercial called red alert, which advises people to take part in seminars to learn how to hoardfood, build shelters, protect oneself against vigilantes, and boycott the banking system. prof. ziggy says 'why don 't you tie that into the american white survivalist movement?' which seems to get everybody excited, and is certainly a tie-in for the y2k and millennialism in general. back in valley i ask zeke if he would be my primary informant and assist in the project, and he agrees, conditional upon him seeing (vetting) and participating in the text. he wants to record everything, set up a cafe in the back with microphones and invite people in. i say no, we aren't volume 17 2001 7 alternate routes allowed to use microphones or video. disappointed, he protests that it doesn 't say so in the course outline. in the end i make a casefor thefly-on-the-wall, low-tech approach. i soon found that living with people and practicing sociology at the same time were not only less than scientific but also hazardous. soon after recruiting zeke for the study, i talked to his wife: / ask zeke's wife irene, who was the first to suggest a parallel between the ice storm and y2k to me, and who initiated the idea of a local study on this for academe, if she would also like to participate in the project. 'no way' she says, 'leave me out of it. ' i say ok but that i will be 'missing some great quotes,' to which she doesn't reply. people in the house have been watching the clinton thing day and nightfor weeks now on msnbc. it is always on in the pizza shop. i like the theme music. . . before dropping out ofthe project, irene angrily did say one thing while watching the senate hearings: 'before you talk about the y2k why don 't youfind out how they can do this to a president. . . they can do this to us. . . soon they'll have a big chip to do it all. ' zeke and irene's ideas differed as to the value of my study and ways to approach it (if at all), and i was suddenly in a situation where 'the differential social power between researchers and their subjects' problematic in ethnography became an arbiting factor in our complex social relationships, as i could not be 'studying down 1 (adler and adler 1997: 38) friends i had known for 25 years. as with adler and adler in their study with neighborhood children, where they found the primary researcher/ subject differential to be their parental authority, i found my 'subjects' constantly questioning me on my methods, validity of my research and what impact it might have on them. i quickly realized that if i was to get an idea of the y2k, and not succumb to an intensely revealing area of study involving personal relationships, landlord/tenant issues, and moral and ethical questions involved in ethnography in general, i would have to expand my area of research beyond the pizza shop and the house, and learn to keep quiet about it. 2 there was also a problem in that my inforx volume 17,2001 chemins alternates mants had had a previous research problem with my university, resulting in unhappy experiences for some of their children. this and other politically charged issues led me to realize i had to try to 'sustain and negotiate a nonpartisan identity 1 in a politicized setting, as both my status as student and the larger implications of y2k were seen as political, and i soon found there was no 'middle ground' (grills 1998: 78) and it would be best to retreat out into the field. i wrote the following in my notes: / have expanded the scope ofmy fieldwork, partly because ofthe problematic nature ofliving and researching in a family home/work environment. i did not intend on researching the people i was living with, rather i thought to engage in the y2k project through them, but i see now that any research within such a closed environment tends to take the whole environment into account, i.e. a particular research into attitudes on y2k, done in afamily environment, cannot become less than research into thefamily as a whole with its attendant rewards and jeopardies for the researched and researcher. in the end, i found a great deal of information did come through the house and the pizza shop, once i had taken my focus off of it. the land as prophylacticfor yuppie y2k fever? i was soon after given the opportunity to do a survey at a high tech firm regarding their thoughts on the impact of the y2k. of the 30 or so employees i emailed, only 2 answered. one response was joking, the other came from the company's ceo: my concern on y2k readiness is the 9th day of the 9th month 1999. apparently several 00s have to turn over at that time and this could be a preview ofthings to come. my view ofwhat the millennium bug will unveil is a massive loss of data with small repercussions on the day-to-day operation of technology assisted devices. the value of the volume 17 2001 9 alternate routes data will determine the degree ofseverity in all y2k situations. i believe that large corporations such as banks, government and consumer-dependant firms will have their act together but face dangers in their suppliers not being compliant. this could cause a slow down within distribution channels and impact on economic growth in the short term. most ofall, i see a lot ofvaluable time lost dealing with y2k issues, today and leading up to jan. j year 2000. but i can't see planes, trains and automobiles falling out of the sky unless a huge tornado rampages throughout the globe. this was my first response from the urban world on y2k, and it showed a real fear of loss (data, time, economic growth) that is institutional rather than personal. granted the respondent was a ceo, but how much of his perception of life as business or economy also inform his fellow workers? my next reaction came in the countryside: around noon i went to northville and dropped in to o'brien's general store. i noticed the book about the ice storm prominently displayed for sale. i asked a woman behind the counter, one ofthe owners in her early 40s, what she though might happen next jan. with the y2k. would it be anything like the ice storm, i asked. she looked surprised (i don't think she had thought about it) and said 'i don't know. . . ' and started to back away. i pointed to the cash register and asked ifshe thought that would work next january. she said 7 don't know' again and appeared a little embarrassed; i noticed that others in the store (a farmer and two younger clerks) pretended not to hear. i went on to say that i was doing a study for carleton in sociology, and she began backing away as ifi was about to rob the store. she looked shocked and taken aback. i said i was ttying to get people's ideas on the y2k, to which she replied 'we'll just have to wait and see, ' and beat a hasty retreat. aside from her telling reaction to myself being a sociologist (which is common i suppose), her reaction seemed to me to be indifferent to the 10 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternatifs y2k, as if it were something beyond her ken. at the same time, she did not seem troubled by it so much as an undercover sociologist in her store. i decided then that disclosure was not necessary in this study, and would certainly prove counterproductive in such short exchanges. her casual attitude toward the y2k, however, proved to be a theme in the countryside. i have collected some 35 slices of data like the ones above so far. twenty were rural responses, 12 were urban and several were unknown (i.e. via the internet). the rural and urban responses showed big differences from the start (see two slices above). in zeke's case, there is an understanding of both rural and global (urban) perspectives. roads are snowed in around here, can 't go to class at carleton, so talk with zeke. he points to y2k as another manufactured crisis (like the oil crisis ofthe late 70s) designed to consolidate power for the powers that be. media fed mass hysteria to mold the masses. another millennialist shift in power as the public becomes more aligned on the 'issue. ' this opinion from the country reflects the city that zeke and irene fled 20 years ago. how much of the y2k is manufactured, a product of media and over-information, something that gets to the heart of urban yuppie culture but misses the countryside? newspapers and tv report daily on the y2k; pullout supplements on the issue are common. but do they inform, or just compound speculation? are readers/viewers excited by learning more about y2k, or by the excitement of the phenomenon itself as it races across their screens? there are hundreds of y2k websites on the net, and the largest, www.y2ktoday.com, carries some 500 new stories each day. in canada, the millennium report is posted at www.2000cdn.com, with 350 links to y2k sites. these are things that would seem to separate the computer literate urban yuppie and the rural dweller. 3 baudrillard writes that "fascination is not dependent on meaning. it is proportional to the disaffection of meaning. it is obtained by neutralizing the message in favor of the medium" (in the shadow of the silent majorities). the media is something which... neutralizes meaning through an excess of diffusion. for example, the media multiply events, 'pushing' the meaning events no longer have their own space-time; they are volume 17 2001 u alternate routes immediately captured in universal diffusion, and there they lose their meanings, they lose their references and their time-space so that they are neutralized. it all goes too quickly and too far, so that (sequences, events, messages) don't have time to return and reflect on themselves, hence to acquire a meaning (gane 1993: 84). this could be a description of the highly media-led war in kosovo, where control and release of images is a corporate strategy on both sides, also of the tumble of information on y2k, now growing at an exponential rate. i think the media obsession with y2k can be seen in baudrillard's 'fascination': fascination, in my opinion, is what attaches itselfto what is disappearing. it is the disappearance of things that fascinates us. and for me the media are a place of disappearance. it is just as interesting as a place ofproduction or a place of apparition. it is a place of disappearance; it is a place where meaning disappears, where significance, the message, the referent disappear, it is a way ofmaking things circulate so quickly that they are made to disappear. and it fascinates us like a black hole (gane 1993: 85). one could also say that there is a circularity of information imposed by journalism itself, an illusion of truth. as bordieu points out, "no one reads as many newspapers as journalists... to know what to say, one must know what everyone else has said... this sort of game of mirrors reflecting one another produces a formidable effect of mental closure" (1996: 24) which tends more and more to reflect the journalistically produced direction of a story, which is altered by chance data such as great pictures, or good soundbytes. 4 this is where the original topic (say y2k) is also 'made to disappear 1 into a circular system of media production. in the media and in cyberspace, the entire planet is evolving together, changing and problematizing exponentially as the 'globalization of risk' described by giddens, continues as "the expanding number of contingent events which affect everyone or at least large numbers of people on the planet are made possible through cybercommunications" (1990: 124). at the same time, 'in the tyranny of the here and now' due to media and convergences and expansion of the arts, "a large part of north american society now lives exclusively in the present tense... (and) the vast 12 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternates expansion of the arts (and information) has made consensus much harder to achieve. it's not that we know so much more; it's that what each of us knows is different" (fulford 1998: d8, d10). the contrast in urban and rural perception, between the forest (in this case the weather) and the highway can again be seen in two customers who entered the pizza shop: the pizza shop is one big oven with a small counter and ancient diner seats, with old notes and posters on the walls and plate glass windows looking north at thefarm over the tracks... i met one customer, a commuterfrom ottawa who didn't feel like talking about y2k but wanted to get home and eat his pizza. icy roads all the way here. y2k meant nothing to him. another customer who works at canadian geographic, described the y2k as a vast expanse of little grains ofsand on the beach, each part ofthe whole and connected like our computer networks, and in the year 2000 a huge tidal wave hits the beach and washes everything away. two more rural responses: / asked a woman at the store down the road what she thought about y2k. t don 't know, ' she laughed. 'half the people don't care about it and half or them are scared to death. ' i asked her if the interac would be still up, because nobody carries cash any more, and would the banks be working at all. 'i don 't know, ' she said. 'maybe we '11 go back to the barter system. ' freezing rain, schools are closed. zeke, who used to drive the buses back when things were run by small local companies (not the big outfit that has all the business now) complains that things haven't been the same since the ice storm. they have cancelled school 3 times this year because of weather. 'they're wusses,' he says. 'it used to be the schools that called the shots, now it's the bus company. they know they can get the kids to school, hut they're afraid they can't get volume 17 2001 13 alternate routes them home. it's different since the ice storm. they're afraid they'll get sued ifsomething happens. . . ' that afternoon i pick up a 15 year old kid hitchhiking back to valley in the sleeting rain. 'like the ice storm' he says as he gets in. 'don 't like to walk in this. ijust live over the tracks. ' 7 live over the pizza shop, ' i say. after a pause i say: 'damn good pizza. ' 'yeah, ' he says. after a minute, he says, 'he gives you a lot. ' i then ask him what he thinks will happen in the year 2000, will the computers fail, will it be like the ice storm? he smiles: 'lots ofpeople talking about that. i don 't know. some people say it could be the end ofthe world. ' i say i don v think so and he agrees. i let him offat his home, a yellow clapboard house by the tracks. sometimes people here describe the ice storm as having been a great experience. it brought the community together, made people appreciative of their neighbours, and also brought work to the area which is continuing today. it's not that people in the country are ignorant of computers or the possibilities of y2k, these things are in the media every day, and in the local papers. 5 it is more, i think, that they have a community and the land to depend upon, whereas the urban yuppies do not. most people around here say they will be prepared for y2k, but not because of y2k; they are prepared every winter anyway, whatever happens. at the hardware store i ask the manager if he'll still be in business january i. 'they're supposed to have it allfigured out, ' he says, gesturing at his terminal at the cash. 'asfor my personal opinion. . . ' and he leaves it hanging. i ask him what he's doing personally, will he put all his money in a sock? he smiles. 'no, but i've got lots offirewood. i'll take out enough money and get enough food for a couple of weeks. . . ' i ask him what he thinks the problem might be. 14 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternates 'the hydro, ' he says, 'just like with the ice storm. they say they're ready, but. . . ' and he trails offagain. i get the impression he is always ready. i meet a contractor who built his own house by the river. heated by 2 wood stoves, he survived the ice storm justfine. his power stayed on most of the time and things were not uncomfortable. in passing he mentions that for that y2k thing next year, though, i'm going to get a generator. . . ' another impression from the city conveys a sense of helplessness. despite his preparedness, this person could still be stuck in a dangerous situation: bell canada just called to sell me some services. i asked mr. raj what he thought about y2k. 'you know we have a newsletter that says that everything seems to be under control, they have checked and rechecked the system. they say everything will be ok, but you know, in the world ofmen and mice. . . on april 9 and oct. 9 there will be trouble... (i correct him on the latter date)' i ask him about himself: 'myfamily, we are going to keep some cash, some groceies, some bottled water, i live on the 27th floor ofa building, you know if something goes wrong at midnight, i like to be ready... you can't go out to get milk if the elevators aren't running...' i buy a monthly answering service. as for myself, i am dependent upon computers for my livelihood. y2k makes our vulnerability (those who live and breathe their computers) apparent, as do the following questions about the world wide web: the frailty ofthese computer systems is becoming more and more apparent. zeke pointed out recently that the website supporting the mars probe took a record number of hits, a volume 17 2001 15 alternate routes number that astonished the net counters. that was some 5 years ago; the latest adventure with an on-line auction by victoria's secret catalogue drew so many hits that the auction nearly crashed. with his hand zeke showed the whole web shaking. 'that's right, ' i said, 'the system was never designedfor this many users, and this isjust the beginning. ' 'it 's the engineers, ' said zeke. 'like with the y2k. ' the engineers of this ubiquitous personal and global tool can barely see beyond their noses. how fragile is the internet? how many users can it support? how many hits at a time can be supported at any one site? ifyou were giving away bill and monica oval office videos, with music by elton john, could any site support the traffic? could the net collapse? the internet collapsing, the y2k meltdown, are, like a stock market dive, results of systems we have created but cannot control. another monied urban perspective, from the u.s.: karl dropped in this am. a ukrainian in his 40s on disability pension, he has been travelling across the states documenting fundamentalism and christian churches. told me that when in florida, 'you wouldn't believe all the scare about y2k. all the radio stations, all the talk shows, are talking disaster. the people in palm beach, retired jewish new yorkers, are talking about taking their money out starting in july, forget about december. . . 'the stock market is going to take a fall. the u.s. dollar is artificially inflated because all these third world countries want itfor security... but the u.s. doesn't produce anything anymore. . . 'that's the problem with y2k, the suppliers are all offshore and who knows about their computers? car parts come from mexico, most steel and aluminum is imported from brazil. all the resources and products we need come from ( hina or korea or japan... 16 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternatifs 'so people want security, and that means gold or real estate or cash. the u.s. is now printing money overtime to meet the demand, because only 15% of u.s. dollars in circulation are real, the rest is on paper or plastic. they have to keep printing money because if someone can't get their money out ofthe bank, there will be a real panic. 'it's a panic situation, it's dangerous. " virtual myth theory our cyberdependence is real in the sense that whatever happens in the y2k, the reactions have already begun in the cities, the stock market, the banks. urban culture is the victim of giddens' 'time-space distanciation' that accounts for the above panic. as baudrillard puts it, "for technology as a whole, we could say what mcluhan says about the mass media: the medium becomes the message. technology itself becomes the message; it doesn't push things forward or transform the world, it becomes the world" (gane 1993:44). giddens discusses how "coordination across time (through time zones) is the basis of the control of space," that space today being disassociated from actual 'place' by relations fostered "locationally distant from any given situation of face-to-face interaction it is truly cyberspace. in conditions of modernity (and in the it age), place becomes increasingly phantasmagoric: that is to say, locales are thoroughly penetrated by and shaped in terms of social instances quite distant from them" (1990: 18-19). if the coordinations across time performed by the net are the 'basis for control' of cyberspace, are we controlling the technology or is it creating itself, as with y2k and its attendant industry? this is an urban question. the two most significant elements producing the erratic character of modernity are the "unintended consequences and the reflexivity or circularity of social knowledge" (giddens 1990: 152-53) that we see in information technology. we are faced by y2k, and more importantly its attendant effects, partly because, as giddens (1990: 152-53) explains, in conditions of modernity, the social (and it) world can never form a stable environment in terms of the input of volume 17 2001 17 alternate routes new knowledge about its character and functioning. new knowledge (concepts, theories, findings) does not simply render the social world more transparent, but alters its nature, spinning it off in novel directions. the impact of this phenomena is fundamental to the juggernaut-like quality of modernity and affects socialized nature as well as social institutions themselves. for although knowledge about the natural world does not affect the world in a direct way, the circularity of social knowledge incorporates elements of nature via the technological components of abstract systems' (it and y2k). carleton professor tom darby, a political philosopher, sees the y2k as pointing to "fundamental truths about western man at the end of the millennium," in that "what we're seeing is the result of our ignorance of who we really are, and the problematic nature of our relationship with technology.'" edward tanner of princeton describes this interrelationship as a 'revenge effect,' in which "technological solutions almost invariably breed more technological problems... technological systems have become incredibly complex. the components in any system have multiple links that can affect each other in ways that are almost impossible to foresee" (sibley 1997: b1-b2). baudrillard sees the problem of this technological world this way: with information technology, for example, there is an effect of the realization of the world. the world, which from the dawn of time has been myth, fantasy, fable, becomes realized through technology. this materialism seems to me to be a catastrophe in the etymological sense of the term. it is a sort of death, where everything takes on a garb of reality. you can imagine a point where all the thoughts waiting to be thought will be immediately realizable by means of a computer. i am not condemning technology, it's fascinating, it can produce marvelous special effects. but with this faculty of giving reality to the world, then the possible, the imaginary, the illusory all disappear. now, the illusory is 18 volume 17, 200 1 chemins altematifs perhaps vital. a world without illusory effects will be completely obscene, material, exact, perfect (gane 1993: 44). to those dependent upon computers, and those who know about computer systems and the y2k, the problems listed above are things to worry about. the man responsible for the $200 million y2k repair job at the canadian imperial bank of commerce, joe boivin (anon. 1999: 10), sees worldwide disaster in these circular abstract systems: we have a global threat here... if you look at infrastructure failures within many of the developing nations, who are hard-pressed today with all kinds of other natural disasters and financial crises, there's a very high probability that, never mind how well we do in canada and the u.s., other countries are going to take a big hit." boivin believes that y2k constitutes more of a common enemy to humanity than any space invasion science fiction dreamed up. he advocates the immediate creation of globally coordinated task forces in order to sustain delivery of power, water, food and necessities in every country. boivin sees a possible silver lining in y2k's dark cloud. because of population pressure and the destruction of natural resources, he contends, humanity faces a stronger mandate for cooperation than ever before in history. maybe the year 2000 is an opportunity, possibly the last chance we have to grab (y2k) as the common enemy and put aside previous differences... i believe much of this is very much focused on survival of the species. much as i agree of his assessment with the impact ofy2k in third world (or those in third world conditions in canada, such as many first nations communities), only one of my sources mentioned the global and human disaster implications of y2k. most responses and media reports are concerned with coping, rather than survival, at one level or another. in a recent survey of 417 ottawa-hull residents by the corporate research group, 84% were aware of the problem, but 42% say they have volume 17 2001 19 alternate routes not received enough information about it (implying that 58% feel they have? information overload?). it shows that almost half intend to take a lot of money out of the bank, a third will buy survival items such as batteries and canned food. the research firm's president feels the public has not been given enough assurances that things will function, as he expects they will. still: "i have a 100-acre farm in carp and i'm probably taking it more serious than most people. i have three woodstoves, two fireplaces and a huge root cellar. next month, i'm getting a generator" (guly 1999: b8, also see field note above). a previous poll conducted by pollara across canada shows over 1/3 of respondents expect jan. 1 2000 to be "an extraordinary day marked by crises." while 67% claimed to understand the bug (and 27% not to), the survey suggests that "despite these figures, some observers doubt that the average person really comprehends the millennium bug, spawning exaggerated fears based on breathless speculation about widespread disaster" (bronskill 1999: a3). i can't imagine that news that canadian armed forces will be prepared for disaster deployment, with an almost $400 million budget and 60,000 troops committed (as opposed to 16,000 for the ice storm), is having a reassuring effect on the public (if the government is ready why call up 'the biggest peacetime deployment of troops in history?') (may 1999: a8)." in a contradictory poll, industry canada showed that 75% of canadians were aware of the bug, but thought it was mostly harmless, and some 80% believed that business and the federal government will be able to deal with the problem' (pugliese 1998: a3). without access to the questions involved, i could suggest that these varying results could be due to fluctuating public reactions to the y2k, based partly on the timing of the polls and partly on the ever-changing, conflicting sea of information. / ask my nephew, a programmer and web design and production person, constantly dealing with it and pcproblems at the office, what he thinks about the y2k. 'fuck off is his exasperated response. 7 in the country these speculations do not arise, they are not relevant. a sense of community and cooperation, and common sense, seem to be panaceas for a dependence on the net and computers: 20 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternatifs yesterday at reenie's cafe frank observed that the u.s. is sending experts over to russia to help them with their nuclear arsenal's y2kpreparedness. 'that's good, ' i said, glad to hear that at least that might be taken care of. eeyore, sitting at the end of the bar, wondered aloud if the ice machines would break down. he is holding a large coke with extra ice, and has a huge glass oficewater beside him. he needs copiousfluids to cope with the drugs prescribed to him. frank says: 'you don 't have to worry eeyore, it's going to be in january, there'll be lots of ice outside until february march...' eeyore brightens up at the thought, i mention he could go out on his back balcony and chip some ice off the railing. i also had a chance to join some internet chat rooms, and prompted or followed some y2k discussions. the participants were mainly young people, looking to talk about anything. the edited excerpt below shows, perhaps, a common feeling among this group, that y2k is almost trivial: taz-devil > well don 't get me started on y2k joelr25 > y2k is nothing to worry about kitzo > y2k is ajoke taz-devil > why you say thatjoel greg99 > y2k is nice kitzo > i like it joelr25 > ifyour computer is set ,what makes you think the gov. can'tfix the prob? taz-devil > well there computer are loox bigger that your's joelr25 > my v.c.r can handle 2000 taz-devil > andpower plants kitzo > just dont go to work onjan 1 kitzo > stay home watch football kitzo > ifyou can mike-like gi> exactly kitz:) volume 17 2001 21 alternate routes taz-devil > with no power how are you going to watch tv greg99 > i need y2k taz-devil > duh mike-like gi> grab a beer watch some games.... kitzo > get batteriesfor it taz-devil > no madder ifyou pc is y2k ready or not the power goes offwhat good did it do to be y2k ready taz-devil > the world will stop taz-devil > no train planes bill the cat> that is why i am selling cat powered treadmills that will generate enough electricity to run your computers... just slap the cat on the treadmill and put some turpentine on its butt and you will have tons of electricity.... taz-devil > how much bill the cat at home in the country, the upside of y2k was brought home in february. the woman living next door was featured on the front page of a local newspaper, because she received a traffic ticket in the mail and the payment date somehow jumped 100 years ahead due to a y2k computer glitch. the ontario government sent out hundreds of fines for traffic offences that, "according to the government, will occur nearly 100 years in the future" (****** 1999: a 1). while fixing their computers for y2k, the government did a production run of new tickets and nobody noticed the glitch. my neighbor received formal notice of an overdue fine and was threatened with license suspension, wage garnishment and liens against her property as of sept. 26, 2097. "the funniest thing about it all," she says, "is that i'd already paid the ticket last year" (ibid). 'there is an upside to this thing,' says zeke. i agree. the potential chaos revealed by the possibility ofa y2k meltdown, its enactment and affirmation long before the event, our dependence on our created systems rather than the land, has created for us a humorously precarious situation, at least those ofus who are prepared. 22 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternatifs some conclusions • i think we can see that y2k is many things, including a different reality to rural and urban dwellers, and a composite abstract or virtual global reality that encloses them, and a manufactured media craze. it is a global and local concern, as with latour's argument that "even a longer network remains local at all points," in that "it may be that the telephone has spread everywhere, but we still know that we can die right next to a phone line if we aren't plugged in. . . in the case of technological networks, we have no difficulty reconciling their local aspect and their global dimension" (1997: 117). so there are links between the 'high theory' of giddens and baudrillard, for example, with the phenomenon of y2k as experienced by different people. • urban professionals in the cities have the most to fear about y2k (not just physically, but in terms of perceived economic damage). people who live on the land, particularly those who survived 1998's ice storm, seem more prepared and less concerned. this can also bee seen as a class issue, at least in that there is an economic and status advantage to living in the city, overall. • the data suggests to me that people in the third world and in third world conditions (such as many aboriginal people in first nations communities in canada, and weaker elements, such as the disabled and elderly) are most likely to be subject to infrastructure failure and danger (they cannot stockpile and need their abstractly generated income). these people are most vulnerable to the real systemic or administrative breakdowns y2k may bring, unlike either city or rural dwellers i interviewed, who all live in the privileged ottawa valley. this should be a focus for further research this summer. volume 17 2001 23 alternate routes • most participants do not seem to really fear y2k, but nonetheless are taking precautions in their own ways. survivalism is a related theme, but might be better tied into the overall millennium theme and its many other subgroups. among the people i smdied and saw represented in the media, few seemed to really be alarmed by the coming y2k. extreme measures, such as the man who is promoting a bunker and the calgary woman who is hoarding and stockpiling, are rare so far (at least in the media) but will certainly increase as the year progresses. how do these actions reflect millennialism in general, however, and how many can really, specifically, be attributed to y2k itself? • in defence of my triangulation approach, integrating personal comments, slices of field data, newspapers, contemporary thinkers and theorists and the like, i think that i have managed to present a good picture of the many factors that are feeding, and playing off of, the idea of and reality of the y2k millennium bug. i, like most of my rural informants at least, can not say that i know what will happen, only that everyone seems to be taking some precautionary measures, based on their class, location and occupation. i appreciate that the results are hard to judge. 'as personal writing becomes more common among social scientists, researchers will need to develop new avenues of criticism and praise for such work. one element in this new evaluative understanding might be a clearer sense of how to combine 'scientific' with 'literary' standards, without mystifying the latter' (devault 1997:224). • this is, i think, in line with what glaser and strauss say about a reader's judging the credibility of theory (and the effectiveness of sociological writings, which become 'grounded theory'): "first of all, if a reader becomes sufficiently caught up in the description so that he feels vicariously that he is also in the field, then it is more likely to be kindly disposed toward the researcher's theory than if the description seems flat or unconvincing," also judged are 24 volume 17,2001 chemins a itema tifs "how the researcher came to his conclusions" and the use of "multiple comparison groups" to make the "credibility of the theory considerably greater" (1967: 230-231). • although i had a rough start working with my friends, i think in the end i managed to avoid the 'hawthorn effect' — allowing our procedures to affect the behavior of the subjects being studied (albas and albas 1998: 125), by keeping my note taking to myself (alone in my room) and learning to stop self-disclosing to everyone i met. • i think that my sociology here has been partly autobiographical, and that is intrinsic to the way that this project evolved. as mykhalovsky says: "to characterize autobiographical sociology as self-indulgent is also to make claims about the nature of its content. just as the charge collapses the text's author and reader into one, it posits the writer's self as the text's object. this is a reductive practice." more positively, there is "truth in the use of self-involvement as a metaphor for describing the object relations of autobiographical sociology. to name my self as the content of autobiography is one way to describe its specificity; its distinction from work in which the self of the writer is not deemed worthy of inquiry," and further, "to write individual experience is, at the same time, to write social experience" (see mills the sociological imagination where he states that 'private troubles become public problems). the approach i have used "points to the fallacy of self/other, individual/social dichotomies and replaces them with 'notions of simultaneity: how particular experiences both constitute and are constituted by social relations which transcend a given (research) particularity" (mykhalovsky 1997: 239-240). volume 17 2001 25 alternate routes notes 1. the ice storm occurred in january throughout eastern ontario and parts of quebec and the u.s. freezing rain and record low temperatures left thousands of people without power or water, some for two weeks or more. utility companies from across north america and the canadian armed forces were called in to help deal with the damage, which included downed power lines and a loss of some 40% of the softwood trees in the region from ice damage. 2. i had already been advised that "it would be a good thing to consider the ethical and reflexive implications involved in this type of data collection i.e. how might your closeness not just physical affect your data collection" and bias my research. in the end i decided that would be a study in itself (see field note above). 3. urban and rural people seem to come together however, in the more extreme survivalist movements coming along. although beyond the scope of this paper, there is a growing number of advocates of survivalism and disaster preparedness in the face of y2k. bruce beach, a retired computer science teacher, has converted a 10,000 square foot bunker (made of buried school buses) near toronto and is inviting 500 people, via the web, to join him. fred walter, who works at a computer firm near waterloo, has bought a hobby farm specifically to survive the y2k. in the u.s., there are reports that manufacturers of freeze-dried food have been cleaned out of their stocks, a rush that is now hitting canada. in calgary, one woman cleaned out one of the city's largest army surplus stores of all its canadian forces rations (lindgren, and pugliese 1998: a3). harvest foodworks of toledo, ontario has begun receiving hundreds of requests for its dehydrated entrees, mainly via the internet from the u.s. (odd lots in the financial post 6/4/99: c8) 4. bordieu points to the small differences that occur between networks and newspapers as stories evolve; the task of journalists is to 'scoop' each other or enhance the others latest scoop, 'differences (that) completely bypass the average viewer, who could percieve them only by looking at several networks at the same time. but these differences, which go completely unnoticed by viewers, turn out to be very important to producers, who think that they are not only seen but (that they) boost ratings. here is the hidden god of this (media) universe which governs conduct and conscience. (1996: 25) 5. as reported in a local paper, front page: at a chamber of commerce meeting, people were told that y2k failures could start with the beginning of 26 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternatifs the new fiscal year in canada, japan and new york state on apr. 1, followed by the new year in the remaining 49 u.s. states starting july 1 (requiring systems to make fiscal projections into 2000). also, on aug. 22, the calendar of global positioning satellites roll over and may cause problems, on sept. 9 the computer clocks will roll to 9/9/99 which could be confused with 9999 (code to terminate a program), and on oct. 1 the u.s. federal government begins its new fiscal year. dec. 3 1 seems a long ways away. 6. at the meeting people were advised not to panic but to make sure their personal and business systems were set up for y2k, and also make contingency plans should suppliers and other services fail. (nicol, p.h. 1999. 'y2k failures could start this april' in the ****** advance, feb. 3: 1). 7. i had to consciously resist incorporating the disaster literature into this paper, something prof. ziggy had suggested. studying how people 'interact, cooperate, form groups etc. when faced with disasters... how people tend to prepare for possible disaster when they think it will appear, what discourse emerges... 1 using survivalist and disaster literature as a comparison base seems natural, but from the beginning i have been unsure whether we are looking at a disaster, or even the preparations for one (i am not sure that the survivalists stocking up on food above are representative of my sample) and also i preferred this time to look at ways in which it, the y2k (and its culture) is being created and its larger implications for the people in this study. i have touched on survivalism and the coming year 2000; the topic is now a growth industry (see hyatt, michael, y2k: the day the world shut down; grant, r. jeffrey, the millennium meltdown; the y2k citizen's action guide (by utne reader); weber, eugen, apocalypses: prophecies, cults and millennialist beliefs through the ages; heard, alex, apocalypse pretty soon: travels in end-time america; keller, catherine, apocalypse now and then: a feminist guide to the end of the world; etc.). 8. i have been in touch with two programmers, steve and gordie wong. they are having trouble with y2k and other problems at their website. i say to zeke 'two wongs can't make it right,' to which he replies, 'no, that's racist. it's two whites can't make a wong.' volume 17 2001 27 alternate routes bibliography adler, patricia a. and adlcr, peter. 1997. 'parent-as-researcherthe politics of researching in personal life' in hertz, rossana (ed.). rejlexivity and voice: 2144. albas, dan and albas, cheryl. 1998. 'experience, methodological observation and theory' in grills, scott. doing ethnographic research: 121-142. anon. 1999. 'sounding a wakeup call' in the ottawa sun 20/3/99: 10; also at www.canoe.ca/ottawasun/home.html. bordieu, pierre. 1996. on television. new york: the new press. bronskill, jim. 1999. 'many predict y2k doom' in the ottawa citizen 2/1/99: a3. charmaz, kathy and mitchell, richard g. jr. 1997. the myth of silent authorship' in hertz, rosanna (ed.) rejlexivity and voice: 193-215. corbett, ron. 1999. 'y2k bug: the first hit' in the ottawa citizen 12/2/99: al devault, marjorie l. 1997. "personal writing in social research" in hertz, rosanna (ed.) rejlexivity and voice: 216-228. fulford, robert. 1998. 'the tyranny of the here and now: will history, culture survive gen-x?' in the ottawa citizen 15/2/98: d9-d10 (also at winter 97 issue of queen's quarterly: http:winfo.queens.ca/quarterly gane, mike. 1993. baudrillard live selected interviews. london: routledge. giddens, anthony. 1990. the consequences ofmodernity. stanford: stanford u press. glascr, barney g. and strauss, anselm l. 1967. the discovery of grounded theory. chicago: aldine publishing. grills, scott. 1998. doing ethnographic research. thousand oaks: sage. 1998. 'on being nonpartisan in partisan settings' in grills, scott. doing ethnographic research: 76-93. guly, christopher. 1999. 'half of area residents will stock up for y2k, research poll shows' in the ottawa citizen 261 \ 199: b8. hertz, rossana (ed.). 1997. rejlexivity and voice. thousand oaks: sage publications. mills, c. wright. 1959. the sociological imagination. new york: grove press. latour, bruno. 1998. we have never been modern. cambridge: harvard university press. lindgren, april. 1998. 'millennial fears drive survivalist underground' in the ottawa citizen 21/12/98: a3. may, kathryn. 1999. 'forces prepare for nationwide y2k deployment' in the ottawa citizen 16/1/99: a8. 28 volume 17,2001 chemins alternatifs mykhalovsky, eric. 1997. 'reconsidering "table talk" critical thoughts on the relationship between sociology, autobiography and self-indulgence' in hertz, rosanna (ed.) reflexivity and voice: 229-25 1 . pugliese, david. 1998. 'y2k fuels rations rush' in the ottawa citizen 21/12/98: a3 sibley, robert. 1997. 'high-tech revenge' in the ottawa citizen 12/1297: bl tenner, edward. 1996. why things bite back: technology and the revenge of unintended consequences. volume 17 2001 29 book review: resistance behind bars | 319 book review resistance behind bars: the struggles of incarcerated women second edition, by victoria law. oakland, california: pm press, 2012. reviewed by rebecca jaremko bromwich1 carleton university victoria law’s book resistance behind bars: the struggles of incarcerated women is an account of the agency of women prisoners in the united states produced by an abolitionist scholar. resistance behind bars compellingly challenges and goes a distance to remedy the frequent failures of prior studies to document or theorize the agencies and resistances of incarcerated women. the information offered in the book about the agency of woman prisoners is valuable in that it provides a window into the under-studied and woefully under-appreciated agency of women prisoners. with sensitivity to issues of race and class, the text documents individual resistance and collective organizing by women in the united states. the book discusses problems faced by women in prison such as sexual abuse, isolation from families and especially children and a lack of opportunities for work and education. the text then uniquely discusses active steps women in prison take to challenge and change their conditions, from the formation by women in prison of peer education groups, the clandestine making of arrangements for children to visit mothers to prison rebellions and uses of the media by woman prisoners in raising public awareness about their lives. probably the best thing about this book is that it is such an accessible read. the narrative is personal and engaging in its presentation of thorough research. as such it is likely to be accessible to – and read by – woman prisoners themselves as well as people not specifically trained in law, criminology or any related academic discipline. clearly, the introduction from the second edition indicates that this has already begun to happen. providing for these women a context, community and history for their own struggles is invaluable. the great strength of the 1 rebecca jaremko bromwich is a phd candidate at the department of law and legal studies, carleton university. she has a b.a. (hon.) in social/ cultural anthropology from the university of calgary, an ll.b. and an ll.m. from queen’s and a graduate certificate in women’s, gender and sexuality studies from the university of cincinnati. 320 | climate change and its discontents book is the distance it goes to develop for women prisoners “a commonly known history of resistance” (p.6). the most obvious limitation of this book is its implicit american imperial hegemony. the subtitle of the book is the struggles of incarcerated women but there is no reference anywhere to women outside of the united states. the book only discusses conditions in certain states and makes at best passing reference to the possibility that a world outside the us even exists. i find this particularly jarring as a canadian reader given that much of the research presented comes from new york state and michigan, which of course border on canada. beyond the obvious geographical concerns here, a bigger danger of the book is that in seeking to present the struggles of incarcerated women as a unified resistance against an implicitly unitary prison industrial complex, it may miss the complexities and particularity of individual circumstances even within the systems it does describe. further, the very same things that are valuable about the book are also problematic when other audiences are considered. law’s overarching goal in her writing is to advocate for the abolition of prisons. law writes that she is working towards the “dismantling rather than reform of the prison system.” (p.ii) the passion and clear political commitment of the text that make it appealing for prisoners and advocates make it less likely to be read by policy-makers. unfortunately, the expressed political commitment of the text makes it unlikely to be taken seriously, by many whose work impacts significantly on the day-to-day lives of women in prison. corrections officers, prison psychologists, police, social workers, lawyers and students in those fields, whose present and future agencies have an effect on the day to day lives of woman prisoners – and whose actions can help humanize their conditions – are unlikely to read this book. this is not to say that the book falls short of its goals. law says she is not advocating for “humanized prisons.” it is therefore no criticism of the work’s quality that the book certainly will not achieve that. i worry though that, instead of “galvanizing outside support for their struggles” (p.17), this text may help galvanize discursive forces that see incarcerated women as dangerous, incorrigible and in need of containment. that the expressed ambit of the book not to advocate for prison reform is vexing for those of us who see the amelioration of conditions for women in prisons through systemic change as one part of a broader solution of reduced incarceration rates, social change and, yes, prison reform. this is therefore a troublesome and potentially alienating book for those who work in the prison industrial complex and strive to do book review: resistance behind bars | 321 what they can as agents within that system. resistance, after all, is possible and takes place within a range of social positions. just as the lives of women incarcerated in the prison system are complex and particular, so too are the agencies of those working within the walls. it would be interesting to develop a companion volume to this text that documents the struggles of those agents in the justice system working in solidarity with prisoners, albeit on the other side of the bars, to improve conditions inside. this book, therefore, achieves well, with the limitation of its american-centrism, its objective of building a discourse about the agency of women in prison. it tells stories about the actions and negotiations of power by people whose lives are woefully under-studied and represented. the book, read by woman prisoners, is no doubt a source of inspiration and encouragement. read by students and scholars, it can complicate over simplistic understandings of women in prison as victims or villains alone. as such, it makes an important contribution to study of women in prison. unfortunately, in my view, this contribution is limited in that rather than sparking a new conversation, it adds fuel to a polarized discourse. in our contemporary neoliberal climate, the political proponents, builders and beneficiaries of the prison-industrial complex are arguably in fact energized by precisely the kind of radical opposition by prison abolitionists offered by this book. victoria law succeeds elegantly in making her intended contribution to this discussion and the book is of great potential use for women in prisons themselves, but in my view this is not the primary sort of conversation canadian policy-makers, and the public in general, need. 322 | climate change and its discontents book review what is critical social research? volume 1. by babak fozooni. england: upfront publishing ltd., 2012. $13.50 us, paper. isbn: 978-1780352794. pages: 1-198. reviewed by mahnam a. malamiry1 carleton university babak fozooni’s book provides a genuine, provocative, and insightful opportunity to have in one book a number of previously published articles in the realms of cinema and iranian social movements; the ideological politics behind encyclopedic discourses on fascism, and engels; and critical social psychology. using such shock-and-awe titles as “fuck critical psychology” and “sand-nigger psychology”, fozooni intentionally disrupts the status quo as it relates to academic thought. this book, both amusing and very serious in its critical analysis, provides the reader with an opportunity to see the potential for social science research to contribute to the emancipation of the working classes. in the preface, fozooni calls for the abolition of the university as a bourgeois institution so as to develop a new academic system that is pro-working class. his criticism of pre-modernist, modernist, and post-modernist theories is embedded within a broader marxist analytical framework. he uses a variety of critical frameworks, including theorists mikhail bakhtin and lev vygotsky (p.56, 76), karl marx (p.132) and, to a lesser extent, michel foucault (p.90). his article on “the politics and parables of encyclopedias” examines the socio-political perspectives and assumptions between the encyclopedia britannica, encyclopedia of marxism, and wikipedia. such an analysis shows how sources of knowledge can be different in their authority and legitimacy, with a surprising conclusion that britannica, due to its positivist epistemology, is the least intellectually trustworthy of the three (p.132). in further elaborating on his examination of the development of progressive social thought, fozooni looks to the cinematic works of magnus hierschfeld and abbas kiarostami. 1 mahnam a. malamiry, m.a. department of law and legal studies, carleton university. i am grateful to babak fozooni and jerusa ali for their comments and feedback on an earlier draft of this review. chemins a itema tifs book review a structured anarchism by john griffin. london: freedom press, n.d., 37 pp. reviewed by jeff shantz john griffin's short book from the venerable freedom press, a structured anarchism, represents an attempt to address perceived shortcomings of anarchist analysis with regard to matters of sociology, psychology and economics which the author finds to be generally "weak and unsystematic" (5). in reading the text it is clear that of these concerns griffin is most interested in questions of economy, devoting all but three of the nine chapters to questions of production, exchange and capitalist organization. the author's stated intention is to sharpen anarchist analysis in light of its current position as "sole bearer of a useful critique of all authoritarian and exploitative societies" (5) given the recent troubles of world communism and marxist theory. underlying griffin's discussion is a debate between collectivist (proudhonian small market economics, consumption related to work) and communist (kropotkinian non-waged, money-less relations) perspectives. while preferring collectivist alternative economics in the present, since he sees this as more readily attainable, griffin seems to recognize that widespread social improvement is impossible without the overthrow of capitalism. unfortunately, a turn in griffin's analysis relating to his sociological understanding leads him away from offering many insights into how this overthrow might be effected, or even how capitalism operates. griffin's attention to such seemingly academic matters as sociology and psychology is interesting especially since the author is not an academic, a fact which may explain the clarity of his writing. the idea of discussing anarchism in relation to sociological theory is a compelling one, especially given the usually overlooked historical engagements between anarchists and the "founders" of sociology, notably karl marx, emile durkeim and max weber. certainly, both the anarchists and the early sociologists were responding, in different ways, to the same changing conditions being ushered in by industrial capitalism in 19th century europe. moreover, the founders of sociology and anarchists were volume 17 2001 71 alternate routes directly engaged with one another, often in pitched battles. (one story i've heard tells of the anarchists of the munich soviet of 1919 chasing weber out of town before he could give a speech.) unfortunately, rather than exploring the engagement between anarchists and sociologists and the debates between them (which along with anarchist theory have been written out of sociological history), griffin wastes this chapter on a rather unconvincing criticism of marx's analysis of class. griffin argues for the abandonment of "working class" as a core theoretical concept given the difficulties of definition in the current context. griffin goes so far (too far) as to call class a "chimera" (10). he suggests strangely that an analysis of class "inevitably distracts attention from the core concern of all anarchists, namely the authority and power which sustains those who rule" (11). while not all power flows from class in our society, still it remains one of the principle relations underpinning rulership, as recent protests against the wto, world bank and imf remind us. in place of an analysis of class, which he regards as nebulous, griffin prefers the bourgeois sociology of durkheim which turns from class to the truly nebulous notion of community. in fact, in place of the more precise discussions around class and its changing character, griffin substitutes more oblique notions of "community harmony." elsewhere he makes the dubious suggestions that anarchists shift attention to the "psychology which gives rise to" power (36) since the "real revolution lies with the individual." anarchy as pop psychology or advertising. griffin's analysis of the market and money as aspects of unconscious drives and authoritarian compulsions, rather than as outcomes of real practices of accumulation and competitive social relations is neither convincing nor particularly insightful in terms of helping us to overcome those relations. asking capitalists to be nicer will not turn the trick. his discussion presents money as simply a convenient medium of exchange rather than a complex relation with respect to social labor and he seems to buy the hype that markets are self-regulated by supply and demand. as a result he cannot see beyond a petty bourgeois version of anarchist society with money as the primary means to ensure work and relate consumption to work done. the rest of griffin's socioeconomic discussion consists of constructing his argument for collectivist economics, weighing its benefits against capitalism and identifying the problems it poses. here griffin drifts 72 volume 17. 2001 chemins alternates down the path of alternative economics, and like many proponents of lets, barter and "green production" substitutes his abiding enthusiasm for an analysis of how capitalism must impede and "co-opt" such projects. overcoming capitalism is not simply a matter of good intentions and lovely schemes. despite the problems of analysis, there are within the text sections which will interest readers. these include the organization of communes in spain between 1936-1939, the mondragon cooperatives in spain and the scott bader commonwealth in england. syndicalists will be quite familiar with these efforts, and highly critical of the latter two especially, but griffin provides a serviceable introduction for the unfamiliar. a secondary emphasis in griffin's work concerns the social psychological mechanisms by which state and capital instill authoritarian cultural values. griffin draws upon the work of non-anarchists wilhelm reich and erich fromm. while providing a useful synopsis of the psychoanalysts' main ideas, this section does not provide a satisfactory accounting of authoritarianism. the freudian emphasis on the subconscious is accorded too great a place in the discussion while analysis of social structures and relations (which were crucial both for reich and fromm) are downplayed. likewise, in seeking to overcome authoritarianism, griffin implores us to "look within ourselves," (14) which is certainly part of a response but as the sixties old new agers showed is no solution. notions that the destruction of the environment, economic exploitation and social crises result from some "mindless drive," (31) or represent "an expression of the thought patterns of the powerful" (32) are of little analytic value. some of this reads like a "self-help" book and griffin's suggestion that anarchists "consult an analyst" (15), a rather authoritarian role itself, completely turned me off. in the end, however, i can agree with griffin that the lived experience of oppression is more important in the formation of authoritarian drives than is media propaganda. i just wish he had paid it more attention in his analysis. griffin's attempt to deal seriously with the difficult questions around social organization, workers' control and non-capitalist exchange is welcome. unfortunately his analysis is so weakened by his insufficient understanding of class and capitalist social relations that the work ultimately fails in its stated goal of developing a strong, systematic anarchist understanding of sociology and economics. volume 17 2001 73 alternate routes a critical review editorial board: marybelle myers, brian mckee, christine vincent, mary frankoff, nancy gnaedinger. alternate routes is a multi-disciplinary journal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university in ottawa. it is not, however, restricted to work from students at carleton. we are interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or co-authored with faculty) in any university. editorial emphasis is on provocative analysis of contemporary issues and we particularly welcome papers dealing with debates within canadian society. we also welcome critical responses to articles published and we occasionally publish review articles of important works. two copies of your typewritten manuscript should be sent to: alternate routes, department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university, ottawa, ontario, k1s 5b6 the editors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the carleton university community: the department of sociology and anthropology and its chairperson, john harp and the dean of social sciences, dennis forcese. subscriptions : individuals and institutions: $4.50 make cheques payable to alternate routes . copyright 1985 alternate routes printed in canada vevkat10u tlvc* special -l*,*ue otf ' alternate route.*' i* dedicated to frank 'jatlec mho, de.*pite itc* recent retirement, li stilz very much a part o{> the sociology and anthropology department at carleton university. frank'* ready acce.**ibility , hi* ^r^endtine** and inaighl^ul guidance ha* always ensured hi* popularity among both student* and faculty at zanx.ex.on and the othei unlvers-ltle* , both at home and abroad, whe^re he hat, taught during hi* long career. more tiian mo*t othe.r*, frank ha* contributed to the development ofa the social sca-enll&ic analysis o& ethnicity in canada. the ^ield o^ ethnic studies, a* indeed the discipline.* o^ sociology and anthropology en tki* country, owe a debt to pro^e**or frank vatlee. the publication o& thl* special i**ue presents an appropriate occasion ^or tho*e. ofa u* who have benefitted ^rom ivis experience to acknowledge this debt and to say quite dimply, thanki &or everything. the editor*. carleton university ottawa, ontario offers programs of study leading to the master's degree in • anthropology • geography • international affairs • public administration • social work • soviet and east european studies • canadian studies • management studies and to the master's and ph.d. degrees in • economics • political science • psychology • sociology generous support is available to qualified candidates. further information may be obtained from the graduate studies and research office, 15th floor, arts tower, carleton university, ottawa, ontario k1s 5b6. biographical sketches stephen blight graduated in 1983 from the university of waterloo, and is currently completing his m.a. in geography at carleton university. his primary interest is in problems of african development. gillian creese received her b.a. (sociology) from simon fraser university in 1978 and her m.a. from queen's university in 1981. she is now a ph.d. candidate in sociology at carleton university. her dissertation deals with race and gender segmentation within the british columbia working class. henri lustiger-thaler was born in paris, france. he received an undergraduate degree at concordia university. his master's degree was completed at carleton university. now a doctoral candidate in the department de sociologie at the universite de montreal, his research concerns the development of 'worker cooperatives' and their production relationship to the large labour movement within varied international comparative contexts. he has recently been invited to submit a paper to the 4th international conference on the economics of self-management in liege, belgium. j. a. mannette is a ph.d. student in sociology at carleton university, ottawa. she has been a teacher for eleven years, seven of them in the public school system of nova scotia. her experiences, teaching black nova scotians and living as a white nova scotian woman, sparked the research interests reflected in this paper. her degrees include b.a. (english and french), dalhousie university, 1973, b.ed. (french and english), dalhousie university, 1974, m.ed. (educational psychology), mount saint vincent university, 1981, m.a. (sociology), carleton university, 1983. david schulze is a recent graduate of the honours program in history at mcgill university. he is presently working on a master's thesis at mcgill on rural society in post-war alberta. digitized by the internet archive in 2011 with funding from carleton university, department of sociology & anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesc07alte a critical review vol. 7, 1984 contents gillian creese immigration policies and the creation of an 1 ethnically segmented working class in british columbia, 1880-1923 * stephen blight nationalism and ideology 35 henri lustiger-thaler nationalism and class: a case application 61 j.a. mannette 'stark remnants of blackpasf : 102 thinking on gender, ethnicity and class in 1780s nova scotia david schulze rural manufacture in lower canada: 134 understanding seigneurial privilege and the transition in the countryside jesse russell commentary 168 immigration policies and the creation of an ethnically segmented working class in british columbia, 1880-1923 l gillian creese this paper examines the role of canadian immigration policies in the creation of an ethnically segmented working class in pre-second world war british columbia. existing research on the british columbian working class has documented the radical nature of (white) working class trade union and socialist organization, while at the same time identifying anti-asian racism as a major feature of organized (white) working class activity in the province. the formation of an ethnically segmented working class occurred through a complex and reciprocal process of ethnic segmentation within the labour market and the political and ideological practices of the working class. in british columbia, i argue, state immigration policies played a crucial role in this process by according asian immigrants, in contrast to european and american immigrants, an inferior political status as "non-settlers' within canada, reinforcing their marginal economic position within the labour market and placing asian workers in a position of economic and political inferiority vis-a-vis other workers in the province. in this context, immigration policies became a focus of class conflict in british columbia, and working class organization and consciousness developed in an ethnically segmented and racist form. cette etude traite du rdle des politiques canadiennes d'immigration dans la creation d'une classe ouvriere divisee, de point de vue ethnique, en factions, dans la colombie britannique avant la deuxieme guerre mondiale. d'ici, la recherche sur la classe ouvriere de la colombie britannique met en point la nature radicals de l'organisation (blanche) ouvriere socialiste et syndicaliste , tout en identifiant le racisme pratique contre les asiatiques comme un aspect integral de l'activite de la classe ouvriere (blanche) dans le province. la formation d'une classe ouvriere factionalisee de point de vue ethnique, s'est arrivee comme la suite d'un processus complexe et reciproque de la division ethnique dans la demande pour ouvriers et des pratiques politiques et ideologiques de la classe ouvriere. en colombie britannique, les politiques de l'etat quant a l'immigration ont joue un r61e central dans ce processus en donnant aux immigres asiatiques (comme contrast a ce qu'ont recu leurs confreres europeens et americains) un status inferieur en politiques au canada comme "non-immigrants, non-citoyens" . ceci a renforce leur position precaire quant a la demande pour labeur et a rendu plus inferieure la position economique et politique des ouvriere asiatiques, comparee a celle des autres ouvriers dans la province. dans ce contexte, les politiques d'immigration sont devenues le centre de conflit entre les classes en colombie britannique et l'organisation et la conscience ouvriere sont devenues racistes et factionalisms de point de vue ethnique. introduction in contrast to marxian assumptions that industrial capitalism would create a homogeneous and politically unified working class, developments throughout the capitalist world are characterized by cleavages of skill, ethnicity, and gender within the working class. this paper forms part of ongoing research into the articulation of class and ethnic relations in the practices of the british columbia working class prior to the second world war, when a relatively radical and class conscious tradition of labour organization encompassed a virulent form of anti-asian agitation. * the presence of profound ethnic cleavages within an otherwise class conscious labour movement raises questions about the articulation of class and ethnicity in the "making' of an ethnically segmented working class. a useful way to address the articulation of class and ethnic relations is through an historical analysis of the "making' of the working class and ethnic communities in the province, both as structural conditions of social relations of production and as cultural practices and institutions consciously created to cope with, mediate, ana alter relations of class oppression and ethnic subordination. although such a task is beyond the scope of this paper, ^ i shall focus on one aspect of the "making' of an ethnically segmented working class in british columbia through a discussion of canadian immigration policies and class conflict over the issue of asian immigration. ethnic relations of inequality have formed a constitutive part of the development of the working class throughout canada but the effect has not necessarily been divisive. as both avery (1979) and pentland (1981) point out, under some circumstances, ethnic solidarity has been known to strengthen working class consciousness and labour militancy. instances of ethnic conflict or solidarity withing the working class, therefore, can only 2 be understood within historically specific circumstances. in british columbia, i shall argue, state immigration policies and capitalist employment practices provided the context within which an ethnically segmented working class formed at the economic level of a segmented labour market and at the political and ideological levels of class practices. the canadian state accorded asian immigrants, in contrast to european and american immigrants, an inferior political status as ~non-settlers' within canada, reinforcing their marginal economic position within the labour market and placing asian workers in a position of economic and political inferiority vis-a-vis other workers. in this context, immigration policies became a focus of class conflict in british columbia, and working class organization and consciousness developed in an ethnically fragmented and racist form. capitalism, immigration, and ethnic segmentation immigration policies have had a major impact on the formation of the working class in canada as a result of the nation-state's history as a colonial-settler society. as h. clare pentland writes (1981), immigrants formed the raw material for the formation of a capitalist labour market in canada beginning in the middle of the 19th century. thus canadian immigration policies and practices occurred in the context of the labour requirements of capitalist economic development as well as within the british colonial heritage embedded in economic, political, and ideological structures. these two sets of historical processes, capitalism and 3ritish colonialism, have formed the focus of two different approaches to the analysis of canadian immigration policy, both of which are inadequate explanations if isolated from a complex historical analysis of canadian society. 3 writers such as john porter ( 1965; 1979) , anthony richmond (1970 ; 1978), and david hughes and evelyn kallen (1974), identify the link between state immigration policies and ethnic inequality within the class structure as a political process with power monopolized by the british charter group after the conquest of the french and native peoples and the institutionalization of british racial attitudes into immigration policies. as hughes and kallen write (112): as the dominant group, english canadians have, from the beginning, exercised control of immigration policies, responsible for determining which ethnic groups would be allowed into canada, where they would settle, what jobs they could assume, and what ranking and social position would be accorded them within the existing system of ethnic stratification. while it would be wrong to dismiss the importance of british racism and status group politics as an ideological underpinning of canadian immigration policies, it would be equally incorrect to accept an essentially idealist explanation of ethnic inequality and racism in canada. the fundamental character of the canadian state is that it is a capitalist, not simply a british, state in which capitalist social relations form the context of state policies and the class relations into which immigrants are socially organized, and, indeed, where state policies can become an object of class struggle as occurred over the issue of asian immigration. a marxist analysis of state immigration policies focuses on capitalist class relations and the processes of accumulation. it has become common in recent years to link canadian immigration policies with the legitimation of exploitative capitalist practices in the search for profit (see basran, 1983; bernier, 1979; cappon, 1975 and li and bolaria, 1979). like most marxist theorists of race and ethnicity, these authors adopt an economistic understanding of material social relations and an interventionist theory of the state in which capital dictates immigration policies and racist ideologies. in consequence, ethnic phenomena are reduced to capitalist epiphenomena. ethnic oppression and racism, including racist immigration policies, are viewed as the direct outcome of capitalist attempts to divide the mutual interests of the working class and to prevent the development of class solidarity and effective working class struggle through the super-exploitation of migrant and non-european immigrant workers (see also castles and kosack, 1972; gorz, 1970; leggett, 1968; oppenheimer, 1974; reich, 1971, 1981 and szymanski, 1976). the functional nature of ethnic conflict and racism for capitalist accumulation is, of course, not quite so simple. as erik olin wright has arguad (1978:1390): "capitalism simultaneously undermines and reproduces racism." the processes of accumulation tend to undermine ethnic differences in the reduction of all labour costs, but the capitalist class attempts to reinforce ethnic divisions within the working class in order to reproduce its dominant class position politically. in spite of this theoretical refinement, wright also treats ethnicity as the direct effect of capitalist employment practices, thus as necessarily secondary to class relations. while not wishing to lend credence to idealist arguments about the " primordial ties' of ethnicity, it is important to recognize that ethnic practices are not purely ideological, false consciousness, nor in any way epiphenomenal to material social relations within capitalist societies. although marxist theorists posit the salience of racist ideas and practices within the history of european colonialism and uneven capitalist development (following the work of oliver cox, 1959), there is a failure to recognize that, through these processes, ethnic relations of inequality have become a constitutive part of capitalist social relations in most capitalist societies and as such have real consequences at the level of political class organization. 5 in british columbia, the dominant (white male) fraction of the working class played an active role in the subordination of asian workers in the workplace and throughout civil society as part of its conflict over wages and working conditions in the province. this cannot be explained solely by reference to the actions of the capitalist class since the working class is active in its own "making' at the political and ideological levels. edna bonacich's model of an ethnically split labour market (1972, 1980) directly challenges the notion that racism within the working class is the creation of the capitalist class and places labour competition at the centre of the creation of an ethnically segmented labour market. according to bonacich, the logic of capitalist accumulation seeks to drive down the price of labour and an ethnically split labour market results from the differential resources available to dearer and cheaper groups of workers in the struggle to improve wages and working conditions. although employers do find ethnic cleavages functional for maintaining domination, bonacich argues (1972:553): ...the prejudices of business do not determine the price of labor, darker skinned or culturally different persons being paid less because of them. rather, business tries to pay as little as possible for labor, regardless of ethnicity, and is held in check by the resources and motives of labor groups. since these often vary by ethnicity, it is common to find ethnically split labor markets. while it is important to examine the relations between class fractions as part of the process of ethnic segmentation, bonacich over-emphasises the role of intra-class conflict while under-emphasising the importance of the conflict between capital and labour and, perhaps most importantly, fails to present an historical account of the emergence in the first place of dearer and cheaper groups of wage labour. bonacich's model does, however, identify the importance of differential political and economic resources as a key feature of intraand inter-class conflict. other segmented labour market theorists adopt a more historical and structural account of the formation of ethnically segmented labour markets. edwards (1979) and gordon, edwards and reich (1982) argue that segmented labour markets emerge in the historical context of capitalist development with the formation of separate monopoly and competitive sectors, differential strategies of control in the workplace, changes in productive technology, and, although under-emphasised by these writers, the differential effects of working class struggle across economic sectors. while class struggle within the workplace is taken into account, albeit to a fairly limited extent, these authors ignore the role of the state in creating segmented labour markets (through differential immigration policies, extension of the political franchise, civil rights, etc.), and the repercussions of class struggle within state policies. as burawoy (1976) has argued, however, the marginal status of migrant workers and, i would add, asian workers in british columbia, is maintained largely by their relations with the state, since the absence of legal, political, and civil rights distinguishes asian non-settlers from white settlers and is reflected in the former's role in the labour market and in their exclusion from working class political organization. this leads us to consider capitalist development and employment practices, state policies, and, particularly, immigration policies and the field of intraand inter-class struggle emerging in the context of these social relations, as crucial elements in the creation of an ethnically segmented working class in british columbia. asian immigration and employment in british columbia the demand for large quantities of cheap wage labour in british columbia began with the construction of the canadian pacific railway in the early 7 1880s and lasted, apart from a recessionary period following the completion of the railway, through the first decade of the twentieth century (see mcdonald, 1981). while skilled labour had to be imported from industrialized countries (such as northern europe or the united states), unskilled labour could be imported more cheaply from peasant societies. unskilled labour migrated from ireland to central canada in the mid nineteenth century and from the peasant economies of southern, eastern, and central europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see pentland, 1981). in british columbia, skilled labour was overwhelmingly of british origin. the demand for cheap unskilled labour coincided with the ready availability of cheap peasant labour from china, where economic, social and cultural conditions in the middle of the nineteenth century made emigration in search of wage labour a viable option for poor male peasants. similar conditions provided a cheap source of labour from japan beginning in the 1880s and from india around the turn of the twentieth century. between 1881 and 1884, the canadian pacific railway imported 15,000 indentured chinese labourers to construct the british columbia section of the railway (see royal commission, 1855:v). approximately four thousand chinese were already in the province (most following the gold rush from california to the fraser river) but, given the extreme shortage of labour, there was little political agitation against the chinese prior to railway construction and the subsequent industrialization of the province (see munro, 1971). indeed, in the 1860s, victoria newspapers praised the arrival of the industrious chinese who filled a demand for domestic and other unskilled labour, although the latter's lifestyle was a constant source of derision (see li, 1979:323 and ward, 1978:26-27). the provincial legislature disenfranchised the chinese and barred them from employment on public works projects in the 1870s and 8 tried, unsuccessfully, to impose special taxes on chinese immigrants (see cheng, 1931; munro, 1971 and ward, 1978). although assumptions about the inferiority of chinese workers, vis-a-vis immigrants of european origin, were expressed from the earliest period of contact with chinese in the province, agitation to restrict or exclude chinese immigrants was not widespread prior to the 1880s. over 9,000 chinese immigrants remained in the province after railway construction ended, labouring in the mines, on farms, on the railway, in sawmills, in salmon canning and as domestic servants (see royal commission, 1885:viii;363-365). at the same time, the railway brought increased immigration from europe, the united states and central canada, resulting in direct competition between unskilled white labourers and chinese labourers (see campbell, 1923; cheng, 1931; royal commission, 1885 ; and royal commission, 1902). ^ over 11,000 white immigrants migrated to british columbia in the 18 months between june of 1883 and november 1884 (see royal commission, 1885:xlix). although it is unknown what proportion of these immigrants were unskilled workers or, even, how many remained in the province, this massive increase in manpower, coinciding with the winding down of railway construction, resulted in considerable unemployment among white and chinese labourers, competition for jobs, and anti-chinese agitation amongst workers and provincial politicians, all of which factors were instrumental in the creation of the first royal commission on chinese immigration in 1885. competition between white and chinese workers was a direct result of capitalist employment practices with chinese (and later japanese and east indian) workers earning from one-third to one-half less than unskilled white workers (see li , 1979:326-327 ;ward, 1978: 17 ;royal commission , 1885 and royal commission, 1902) . the ability to acquire chinese workers at such low rates 9 of pay was premised on the historically lower subsistence level of asian peasants in comparison to europeans, the fact that the reproduction costs of chinese labour were borne in china rather than in canada, the system of contract labour to hire chinese workers and, equally as important, the political inferiority accorded asian immigrants by canadian immigration policies. by the late nineteenth century, white working class trade union and political activity was an additional factor in the relative cheapness of asian labour in the province." an ethnically split labour market was already being formed at the time of the 1885 royal commission on chinese immigration. skilled labour was monopolized by whites and wages earned by skilled workers ranged from $3.50 to $4.50 per day, depending upon the nature of the skilled work (lxx-lxxi). both whites and chinese performed unskilled work, but with different rates of pay for the same or similar work. in the mining industry, chinese labourers earned between $1 and si. 25 per day, while white labourers earned 32 or more (xvi). chinese cannery workers earned between s25 and $35 per month, while whites earned between $30 and $40 (xxv). chinese labourers in road construction earned between $15 and $20 per month in comparison to $40 paid to whites (xl). and general labourers earned $1.25 per day if chinese and between s2 and $2.50 if white (lxxi). the labour market was not only ethnically split in terms of wages, it was also ethnically segmented within the workplace. while white workers were hired as individuals, with few exceptions (e.g. robert dunsmuir's mines), chinese workers were hired under contract to a single chinese labour contractor who mediated language barriers, disciplined the workers, retained a portion of the wage and other essentials at a profit, an arrangement that "necessarily leaves the men a good deal at the mercy of this foreman" (royal commission, 1885:81). -10 by the time of the 1902 royal commission on chinese and japanese immigration, wage differentials had become entrenched and some successful agitation by white workers had narrowed asian employment areas, most notably in the areas of road construction, railway employment and underground in the mines. there were approximately 16,000 chinese and 6,000 japanese in the provincial labour market in 1902 (see royal commission, 1902 :7-8, 328, 403) .8 official records of east indian immigration were not kept until 1904 (see cheng, 1931 : 138) but, in 1902, the number of east indians in british columbia were so few that their presence was not noted in the evidence or the report of 1902. the major areas of chinese employment in 1902 were mining, the lumber industry, salmon canning, market gardening, domestic service, and laundry and tailoring businesses. a small number of chinese in market gardening, laundry and tailoring were petty bourgeois merchants renting farm land or business premises and employing their countrymen but the vast majority of the chinese engaged in these industries were employees (see royal commission, 1902 : 1-279 and cheng, 1931 : 194 ) . with the exception of work in the canning industry, where chinese performed semi-skilled job functions and were considered irreplaceable prior to the introduction of mechanization, chinese labourers were unskilled and all were seasonally transient in the provincial resource economy. the majority of japanese in the province were engaged as fishermen. japanese fishermen during this period cannot, however, be considered independent commodity producers, given that they fished under the "attached system' and were tied to the packing companies owning the boats and equipment used by the fishermen (see knight and koizumi, 1976). japanese wage labourers were also employed as unskilled workers in the lumber industry and, to a lesser extent, in mining (see royal commission, 1902 : 340-397 ) . wage differentials between asians and white wage labourers had changed little since the 1880s. due to the later entry of the japanese into the provincial labour market, they competed with the chinese for jobs in lumbering and, to a lesser extent, in mining, often accepting lower wages than the chinese. the major difference in wages, however, remained between white and asian workers in general. in the sawmills, chinese labour earned between si and s1.50 per day, the japanese earned between 90 cents and $1.25, while unskilled white wages started at $2 and went up to $4.50 per day for skilled white labour (royal commission, 1902 : 101-124,360-365) . wages were similar in the logging camps, where japanese workers averaged si per day, chinese workers $1.25, and whites from $2.25 to $3.75 (101-124). in the mining industries, chinese labourers earned between si and si. 50 per day, unskilled white labour earned between $2.50 and $3.00, while white miners earned between s3 and $5 per day (72-96). few japanese were employed in mining, but evidence is cited of japanese miner's helpers earning 90 cents a day (372). white boys received higher or equivalent wages than asians in the mines, averaging sl.50 a day as helpers (372). another aajor area of chinese employment was salmon canning, where wages were high but work lasted only six or seven weeks. the chinese averaged $25 to 330 per month, but could earn up to $75, while whites earned an average of $75 to s80 and sometimes as much as s100 a month during the canning season. semi-skilled chinese can makers earned between $50 and $60 per month during the height of the fishing season. in the canning industry the chinese were in competition with native women and boys for employment while white men served as foremen (135-164). chinese domestics earned between s 10 and $30 per month with private families and from $25 to $45 in hotels. in contrast, white girls received between s 1 2 and $15 per month and were generally 12 considered unreliable (167-171). in market gardening, laundry and tailoring businesses, chinese workers were employed by chinese merchants in competition with white businesses employing white workers. by the turn of the century market gardening was dominated by the chinese, with chinese labourers earning $18 to $19 per month plus board. on white-owned farms, chinese labourers earned $20 to $25 per month (without board) and whites earned $30 to $40 (55-65). the chinese also dominated the laundry business, with wages between $8 and $18 per month plus board. automated steam laundries run by whites competed with chinese, labour-intensive laundries, paying their employees between $10 and $15 a week for white' men, and between $4 and $7.50 a week for white girls and women (175). chinese tailors earned from $25 to $35 a month, while white men earned $12 per week and white women earned $6 per week. for the most part, chinese tailors hired chinese employees and white tailors hired white employees (177). the major japanese employer was the fishing industry, with nearly 4,000 japanese fishermen in 1901 (355). fishing was the only area where remuneration was the same for asian and white workers, since the price for fish did not vary between the different ethnic groups. this apparent equality was tempered by gear and area restrictions on japanese fishermen that did not apply to white and native fishermen (see knight and koizumi ,1976) , and the contract system of employment. the japanese did not own the boats and equipment used in fishing, as white and native fishermen usually did, so the japanese were tied to an agreement with specific fish packing companies and received only a share of the fish profits. moreover, while packing companies dealt with white and native fishermen as individuals, japanese fishermen were under contract to a japanese labour contractor, a system which lowered the wages of individual workers (340-357). the japanese had begun to dominate the boat building industry by the turn of the century. in boat building plants owned and run by whites, white labour earned between s3 and $4 per day for skilled labour and from $1.25 to $2.50 for boys doing the unskilled labour. the wages for japanese workers in japanese-owned boat building operations are unknown, but since the japanese undersold white boat builders by more than fifty per cent ($60 for a japanese built boat compared to $150 for a white built boat), wages must have been comparable with or below those paid to white boys (387-359). by the mid 1920s, a shift was occurring in the occupational distribution and the class structure of the asian communities. although an estimated eighty per cent of the over 40,000 chinese and nearly 10,000 japanese workers in 3ritish columbia continued to labour for wages, by the middle of the 1920s a significant minority of the chinese and the japanese had moved into the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie (see cheng,1931 and creese, 1984) . more chinese became involved in truck farming, small restaurants, laundries and grocery stores. a significant number of japanese became independent commodity producers in fruit and berry farming in the okanagan and fraser valley, while others became retail merchants (see adachi,1976; cheng, 1931 and roy, 1980). this movement into commerce was directly related to successful white working class agitation to limit japanese involvement in the fishing industry. the federal government halved the number of japanese fishing licences in the early 1920s and attempted to further limit chinese and japanese employment in mining, railways, and public works projects. the result was that mining was no longer a major employer for the chinese and although over 1,000 japanese remained fishermen (most of whom now owned their own boats and equipment), this was only one-quarter of those previously engaged as fishermen (see cheng, 1931 : 163-197 ) . the lumber industry, however. remained an important source of employment for all asians, absorbing one-fifth of chinese labourers, one-third of japanese labourers and a full nine-tenths of the approximately 1,000 east indians in the provincial labour market in the mid 1920s (see cheng, 1931 : 1 57 , 166 , 197 ). 9 the growth of ethnic businesses not only changed the structure of the chinese and japanese communities but it meant that a growing number of asian workers were now employed on farms and in businesses owned by other members of their ethnic communities, creating a labour market which was more clearly ethnically segmented than previously. immigration policies and class conflict the canadian government never considered asians suitable settlers for canada, although it did recognize the short term advantages of plentiful cheap labour to build a sound western economy. as avery and neary (1977) point out, the federal government approached asian immigration differently than it did european and american immigration: "no agents were commissioned, no promotional literature was distributed and no plans were made for the agricultural settlement of orientals" (24-25). in a settler colony, where all non-british immigrants were accorded some form of inferior "entrance status' (see porter , 1965) , asians shared the unique distinction of a "non-settler' status accorded by the canadian government. the non-settler status of asians is clearly expressed in the report of the 1885 royal commission on chinese immigration and, more virulently, in the report of the 1902 royal commission on chinese and japanese immigration. in 1885, the chinese were referred to, quite positively, as "living machines" (70) who had advanced the development of british columbia by fifty years through their labour on the canadian pacific railway (78). they were 15 not, however, desirable as settlers because they were perceived to be inferior to europeans. the whole issue of chinese immigration was evaluated on the basis of whether their positive economic role had other negative effects within the province: the question was not, should chinese immigration be encouraged, but should the coming of the chinese into the country be prevented. had it been injurious or not? (i) the conclusion reached by the commission was that chinese immigration had not been injurious to the province since claims about their hazard to health and their disreputable lifestyle were greatly exaggerated and, most important, because the chinese did not compete with permanent settlers for employment: the evidence and the official returns show that this chinese competition is not with skilled labour or with agricultural settlers, or persons intending to become permanent residents in the country, but fwith) migratory transitory labourers, who may or may not become settlers, dependent upon ulterior circumstances, (lxxi-lxxii) while white labourers might be considered non-settlers due to "ulterior circumstances,' the chinese were considered non-settlers simply on the basis of their racial origin. chinese workers were not perceived as a threat to the development of the white community in the province as long as they competed only with white migrants and not with permanent settlers . employers who gave evidence praised chinese labour for its industriousness , dependability, cheapness, sobriety and docility, in comparison to the militancy, union organizing, strikes in pursuit of higher wages and the 'blue monday' syndrome prevalent among many white workers. with only one exception, employers and managers appreciated the presence of chinese labour but did not endorse their permanent settlement nor support their being granted the political rights of citizenship. 10 the general consensus was that the immigration of chinese should be regulated to ensure that no more came to the province than were necessary for the economy. there was a clear division of opinion, however, between employers of labour and the views of the working class who considered the chinese a direct threat to their livelihoods and sought the exclusion of asians from the province. as one witness stated: my experience is that the general agitation is from those who are dependent on their labour, but as soon as they get a piece of land and want it improved, or become employers themselves, they then are the first to employ the chinese (103). working class organization against the chinese first occurred in victoria and the vancouver island coal mining districts where competition with the chinese began in the late 1870s. the workingman's protective association was formed in victoria in 1878 to provide the "mutual protection of the working class of b.c. against the great influx of chinese; to use all legitimate means for the suppression of their immigration; to assist each other in the obtaining of employment; and to devise means for the amelioration of the condition of the working class of this province in general" (quoted in phillips, 1967 :9) . in the vancouver island coal mines, anti-chinese labour demands first emerged in 1883 as a safety issue following claims that the chinese failure to understand english caused mining accidents but, after the repeated use of chinese strikebreakers in the dunsmuir mines, a general demand for the exclusion of the chinese became a standard feature of coal miner's labour strategy (see phillips , 1967 and morton, 1974 ) . in the mid-1880s, demands for the exclusion of the chinese formed a major platform for the organizing drive of the knights of labour and contributed to its success in the province (see phillips , 1967 and ward, 1978). in its submission to the 1885 royal commission, the knights of labour vigourously condemned the effect that cheap chinese labour was having on white workers in what would become the standard trade union criticism of chinese immigration: 17 ch.nese labour is confessedly of a low, degraded, and servile type, the inevitable result of whose employment in competition with free white labour is to lower and degrade the latter without any appreciable elevation of the former. their standard of living is reduced to the lowest possible point, and, being without family ties, or any of those institutions which are essential to the existence and progress of our civilization, they are enabled to not only live but to grow rich on wages far below the lowest minimum at which we can possibly exist. they are thus fitted to become all too dangerous competitors in the labour market, while their docile servility, the natural outcome of centuries of grinding poverty and humble submission to a most oppressive system oi government, renders them doubly dangerous as the willing tools whereby grasping and tyrannical employers grind down all labour to the lowest living point. it is for this latter reason, chiefly, that we object to the chinese, not altogether because they accept lower wages (156). the outcome of this royal commission was the imposition of a $50 head tax on all chinese labourers coming to canada, excluding chinese students, merchants, and diplomats (see cheng, 1931 and ward, 1978). as the japanese began to immigrate to british columbia in the late 1880s and early 1890s, the white working class began to include the japanese in its anti-asian agitation. by the 1890s, the white working class had broadened its anti-asian activities from individual job sites to the political sphere by running labour representatives in the provincial and federal elections. in 1898, five labour representatives were elected to the legislature where thev managed to enact legislation banning asians from underground employment in the mines (see phillips, 1967 and schwantes, 1979) . with 16,000 chinese and 6,000 japanese in the labour market at the turn of the twentieth century, labour conflict and working class political pressure led the federal government to raise th« chinese head tax to s 1 00 and to establish another royal commission into the issue of asian immigration in 1902. the outcome of the 1902 royal commission on chinese and japanese immigration was the raising of the chinese head tax to $500 in 1903 and the endorsement of japanese immigration restriction ''see cheng, 1931 and royal commission, 1902). 18 compared with the 1885 royal commission, the 1902 commission was decidedly hostile in tone. it more clearly distinguishes the "nonassimilable' asians from the "actual settlers' in the province, considered "permanent citizens' simply on the basis of their european origin. it is worth quoting at some length from the conclusions of the 1902 royal commission to illustrate the view of asians that was encompassed in the discriminatory immigration policies and racist laws of the canadian state (at the federal and provincial levels): if the end to be sought is the building up of the nation, and not the exploitation of these resources, the one vital interest to be secured above all others is an immigration of settlers of whom we may hope to make canadians, in the highest and best sense of that word... how far do the chinese of the labour or coolie class approach to this standard? they come from southern china, drawn from the poorer classes, reared in poverty where a few cents a day represent the earnings which must suffice for a family; accustomed to crowd together in small tenements or huts, close, unhealthy and filthy; with customs, habits and modes of life fixed and unalterable, resulting from an ancient and effete civilization, with no desire to conform to western ideas. they form, on their arrival, a community within a community, separate and apart, a foreign substance within, but not of our body politic, with no love for our laws and institutions; a people that will not assimilate or become an integral part of our race and nation. with their habits of overcrowding, and an utter disregard of all sanitarv laws, thev are a continual menace to health. from a moral and social point of view, living as they do without home life, schools or churches, and so nearly approaching a servile class, their effect upon the rest of the community is bad. they pay no fair proportion of the taxes of the country. they keep out immigrants who would become permanent citizens, and create conditions inimical to labour and dangerous to the industrial peace of the community where they come. they spend little of their earnings in the country and trade chiefly with their own people. they fill the places that ought to be occupied by permanent citizens, many of whom leave the country on their account. they are unfit for full citizenship, and are permitted to take no part in municipal or provincial government. upon this point there was entire unanimity. they are not and will not become citizens in any sense of the term as we understand it. they are so nearly allied to a servile class that they are obnoxious to a free community and dangerous to the state (277-278). (a)ll that has been said in this regard with reference to the chinese applies with equal, if not greater force, to the japanese. the consensus of opinion of the people of british columbia is that they do not and cannot assimilate with white people, and that while in some respects they are less undesirable than the chinese, in that 19 thcv adopt more readily our habits of life and spend more of their earnings in the country, yet in all that goes to make for the permanent settlement of the country they are quite as serious a menace as the chinese and keener competitors against the working man, and as they have more energy, push and independence, more dangerous in this regard than the chinese (397). working class views concerning asian immigration had remained much the same as those articulated by the knights of labour in 1885. by the turn of the twentieth century, however, labour was better organized in trade unions and, politically, had achieved some success in electing labour candidates to the provincial legislature. the white working class was, then, in a stronger position to affect immigration policies regarding asians. the major distinction between the findings of the 1885 and 1902 royal commissions, however, was the general consensus among employers that there was already an abundant supply of asians in the province to fulfil the needs of cheap labour and that their immigration ought now to be drastically reduced. two things should be noted about the restriction of chinese (and later japanese) immigrants. first, it was asian labourers rather than all asians who were restricted and taxed. immigration restrictions did not apply to merchants lalthough these were rather narrowly defined), students or diplomats (see cheng, 1931). second, the massive expansion of an unskilled labour force was beginning to slow down by the turn of the twentieth century, thus the more drastic restrictions on asian immigration, which began in 1902 and culminated in the mid 1920s, coincided with a change in the needs of the labour market (see mcdonald, 1981). restrictions on japanese immigration were not long in coming. 11 riots against asian immigration, sparked by rumours of the imminent arrival of thousands of japanese and east indian immigrants in vancouver during september of 1907, helped convince the japanese government to voluntarily 20 restrict the emigration oi japanese labourers to canada. in 1908, a "gentlemen's agreement' to limit the emigration of labourers to canada to 400 per year was reached with japan. this agreement did, however, allow the wives and children of japanese in canada to emigrate without restriction, giving rise to the picture-bride system" of japanese marriages with the result that families soon became a common feature of japanese community life in british columbia (see adachi , 1976:85-92 and cheng, 1931 : 126-132) . east indian immigration was halted in 1908, after about 5,000 had arrived (since 1904), with special legislation requiring potential immigrants to arrive in canada by continuous journey from their country of origin (see cheng, 1931 : 139 ) . since there were no direct shipping routes from india to canada, further immigration effectively ceased after a few attempts to circumvent the legislation (.see ward, 1978). in the context of economic depression and unemployment following demobilization, the campaign to end asian immigration grew again after the first world war. organized labour was joined by soldiers and merchant groups in the formation of the asiatic exclusion league in 1921 (see phillips, 1967 :88 ) . the spread of asian economic competition into sectors of the petty bourgeoisie had a correspcnding effect on broadening anti-asian agitation. as patricia roy writes: before world war i labour organizations were in the forefront of anti-asian agitation; by the 1920s and 1930s, farmers and retail merchants were often the most prominent objectors to the presence of asians, their lower standard of living, and willingness to work longer and harder for lower returns than white men (1980:168). in response to the political agitation of white workers and merchants within british columbia, the chinese immigration act was passed in 1923, ending the further immigration of chinese labourers; the "gentlemen's agreement' was amended in 1923 to limit the emigration of japanese labourers to canada to 21 150 a year, and the picture-bride system of japanese marriage*, was abolished in 1928 (see cheng, 1931). discussion asian immigrants were accorded an inferior ~non-settler ' status within canadian civil society, denied the political franchise at all levels oi government and legally or institutionally barred from some sectors of employment. state policies thus contributed to the asians' marginal economic status within the labour market. immigration policies and capitalist emplovment practices were initially premised on the national and peasant origin of asian immigrants with an historically low subsistence level resulting in cheap wage labour and legitimized through the racist ideologies of british colonialism. in order to maintain the marginal economic role of asians as cheap wage labour in the long term, however, maintenance of their second-class immigration status and lack of political rights was essential. asian workers were placed in a position of economic and political inferiority vis-a-vis white workers, such that the resources utilized by white workers organizing for better wages, working conditions, job security, socialist politics and changes in asian immigration policies were largely absent for asian workers. peter li (1979) has argued that the n&n-citizen status of the chinese (and, by analogy, japanese and east indians) was a solution to capital's problem of maintaining "the marginal status of a group whose labour was necessary for economic expansion" (324). while there is no doubt that maintaining economic marginality was an effect of subordinate political status for asian workers, we should not assume an identity of cause and effect. state policies were indeed defined within the context of capitalist social relations. immigration policies were specifically defined within the 22 context of labour market requirements and it is precisely for this reason that immigration policies became a focus of class conflict in british columbia. the denial of the political franchise and the right to work in certain sectors of the economy, combined with the progressively more stringent restrictions and taxes on asian immigration, occurred through pressure by the working class and small businessmen rather than at the behest of capitalists in british columbia, in spite of the fact that these political restrictions might be in the long term interests of capital. although political divisions over the issue of asian immigration were clearly drawn on the basis of class, there was considerable agreement about the undesirability of asians as permanent settlers based on assumptions about the latter's inferiority. assumptions about chinese (and later japanese and east indian) inferiority legitimized claims about their nonassimilability . furthermore, as chan (1983) argues, the absence of women and children within the chinese (the east indian and early japanese) communities was considered proof that asians had no intention to settle permanently within the country. the denial of political rights was premised on the non-settler status of asians that was in turn premised on these assumptions about their nonassimilability and inferiority. when the japanese began to bring wives to, and raise families in, british columbia, assumptions about their nonassimilability did not change, however, and political rights continued to be denied regardless of citizen status. we must, therefore, consider the material context within which racist attitudes toward asians were produced and perpetuated and the role that sate-accorded political inferiority played in this process. ward (1978) argues that racist stereotypes about the chinese were the product of european (particularly british) concepts about the "chinese 23 character' and california 'sinophobia' brought to british columbia by the miners following the fraser river gold rush in the 1860s (4-14). ward does not, however, root the salience of these stereotypes within tne context of the social relations of chinese contact under conditions of european colonialism in asia and in north america. the role of the chinese, and other asians, in the development of north america was to provide an extremely cheap, unskilled, male labour force. assumptions about the inferiority and nonassimilability of asians that emerged during the colonial period were reaffirmed in british columbia by the presence of asian workers at the bottom of the class structure in economic and cultural ghettoes, a situation which legitimized and generated racial stereotypes. the social organization of asian peasants into the lowest ranks of the working class was the product of two factors: i) the cheapness of asian labour (premised on the historically lower subsistence levels of asian peasants in comparison to europeans, the contract labour system, labour reproduction costs borne in asia rather than in canada, political inferiority accorded by the canadian state, and white working class organization excluding asian labour) and ii) the presence of racial hostility (formed under the conditions of british colonialism and uneven capitalist development) which facilitated the fornation of cohesive ethnic communities as acts of inclusion for economic links, mutual aid and sociability, and as acts of exclusion against a racist dominant society. within the context of the economic and political inferiority of asian workers, the white working class marshalled its superior economic and political resources in the labour market and in the political arena for protection against cheaper asian labour as part of the general struggle against capitalist employment practices in the province. white working class labour organization was two-pronged, seeking protection from cheap labour 24 competition and strikebreaking by excluding asians, while at the same time seeking to raise its standard of living and job security through collective bargaining rights that would weaken the power of capitalists in the province. exclusionary rather than inclusionary labour organization was not the automatic outcome of wage differentials in an ethnically split labour market; it emerged in the context of the inferior political status of the cheaper labour group within civil society (with the denial of political rights and citizen or settler status). asian workers lacked the necessary resources to combat employment practices and state policies that maintained their marginality. although racist attitudes about the inferiority of asians are not irrelevant to anti-asian labour organization, the salience of these racist ideologies and practices should be understood within the context of productive social relations in the province that ghettoized asians economically, politically, and culturally. paul phillips has argued that the presence of cheaper asian labour in british columbia "stimulated labour political organization, militancy and class conflict" among white workers as immigration became a class issue in the province (1967:163). the radical nature of trade union and political organization in british columbia during this period is well documented by phillips and others, but, as working class consciousness formed and directed political and trade union actions, it took an ethnically fragmented form. the history of militant working class action in the province is the history of white male workers and much of it was explicitly racist (and sexist)^ in content. white working class practices directed against asian workers did not, however, represent a lack of class consciousness. class conscious practices took an ethnically fragmented form in the context of ethnic relations of inequality, as a constitutive part of capitalist social 25 relations in british columbia. working class anti-asian agitation had the contradictory effect of both strengthening and weakening the position of white labour. while it bolstered labour militancy and the economic and political position of white workers in the long-term, it worked against labour by contributing to the oevelopment and entrenchment of an ethnically segmented labour market. exclusionary, rather thai; inclusionary , labour organization weakened the strength of labour as a whole (including asians). i do not wish to suggest that asian workers were absent from labour struggles in the province, but, rather, that they were much less frequently involved in labour organization and strikes than white workers and that this organization also took place in ethnically segmented forms. chinese workers in victoria were involved in a strike as early as 1877, although no details of the strike are recorded (see royal commission, 1885 :lxi ) . chinese cannery workers struck in 1881, and japanese fishermen were involved in a series of strikes beginning in 1893, and again in 1900, 1901, and 1904 (see knight and koizumi ,1976: 105-107) . in all of these strikes, asian, native and white workers were organized within separate bodies and the absence of unified labour organization allowed employers to exploit ethnic divisions to break the strikes. asian workers possessed fewer economic and political resources than white workers to successfully engage in labour struggles, particularly when much white labour organization included anti-asian demands. ethnic community organization provided asian workers with the solidarity that working class organization did not, such as providing organs of political expression in canada, links for jobs through ethnic labour contractors and employers, a supply of cheap loyal labour for petty bourgeois ethnic enterprises (and perhaps for upward mobility after the first world war),*-' social services unavailable from the dominant community and an integrative 26 social and cultural context which was particularly important in the absence of families for all but the japanese after 1908. in turn, ethnic community solidarity contributed to the absence of labour militancy among asian workers, since they usually worked under ethnic labour contractors or, increasingly after 1920, for ethnic employers. in contrast to white workers' labour militancy, asian workers were relatively docile employees.^ indeed, these are not unrelated responses, as the various fractions of the working class ^handle' their experiences in an ethnically segmented labour market within a racist capitalist society. questions about the primacy of class or ethnic cleavages in british columbia (or elsewhere) are misplaced. ethnic conflict was not, as ward argues (1978,1980), an outcome of the "social psychology of race relations" that relegated class conflict to a secondary role within british columbia. nor was it, as warburton argues (1981), simply a reflection of class cleavages. ethnic relations of inequality were, and are, a constitutive part of capitalist social relations within british columbia. the articulation of class and ethnic relations can only be assessed through an historical analysis of the field of social relations in that province. working class practices were situated within capitalist social relations which were explicitly racist in form, generating an ethnically segmented labour market and a politically and ideologicallv ethnically segmented working class. conclusions the formation of an ethnically segmented working class in british columbia occurred through a complex and reciprocal process of ethnic segmentation within the labour market and the political and ideological practices of the working class. differential capitalist employment practices 27 were essential for the formation of a segmented labour market, but employment practices occurred in the broader context of social relations in the province. the historical conditions of labour migration, uneven capitalist development, canadian immigration policies and other racist laws, the exclusionary practices of the white working class, the formation of ghettoizec ethnic communities, and racist ideologies generated by and legitimating these practices, contributed to and were facilitated by the creation and maintenance of an ethnically segmented labour market in the province. state immigration policies played a crucial role in the creation of an ethnically segmented working class, economically, politically, and ideologically, becoming a forum of class struggle in british columbia. political and ideological ethnic segmentation occurred not as the automatic outcome of wage differences between dearer white and cheaper asian workers, but ir. the context of the inferior political status accorded asians by the canadian state that made the possibilities of successful labour militancy such more likely for whites than for asians, and which legitimated the white workers' exclusion of a group already defined as inferior by the state. asian immigration became a major organizing focus for white workers in british colum'uia, fostering class consciousness and political intervention. the focus of the political intervention, and much of the labour organization within the workplace, was anti-asian in content, yet was contextualized , :uite consciously, in terms of the struggle between capital and labour in the province. given the social organization of "non-citizen' asians into the lowest sectors of the working class, the political organization and consciousness of that class was ethnically fragmented and racist in form. 28 notes 1. i would like to thank don black, wallace clement, dennis olsen , daiva stasiulis and frank vallee for providing valuable comments and criticisms on the work in progress that has contributed to this paper. 2. for discussions of working class radicalism in british columbia see tercuson (1977), pentland (1979), phillips (1967,1973), mccormack (1977) and schwantes (1979). for discussions of anti-asian racism within the working class see pentland (1979), phillips (1967,1981), roy (1976,1980) and ward (1978,1980). 3. this paper forms part of ongoing research for my dissertation, "working class politics, racism and sexism: the development of a segmented working class in british columbia, 1880-1939," at carleton university. 4. i would like to thank daiva stasiulis for this formulation of the weaknesses in bonacich's model of an ethnically split labour market. 5. throughout this paper i have used the term "white' in preference to "euro-canadians' in order to stress the importance of the visual racial distinctions in the intra-working class conflict in british columbia. "ethnicity' is used as the generic term for relations of domination and subordination between groups defined socially as sharing a common ancestry based on perceived biological (racial) and/or cultural criteria (see cox, 1959 ;bonacich, 1972, 1980 ;hughes and kallen,1974 and kallen, 1982 ) . 6. the conditions which produced the chinese as a low wage labour group also apply to japanese and east indian workers in british columbia. 7. in his vancouver island coal mines, robert dunsmuir employed several hundred chinese manual workers whom he hired and paid as individual workers. this is the only instance of large-scale chinese employment that was not carried out under contract to a chinese labour contractor reported in the 1885 report of the royal commission on chinese immigration (128-129). 8. although the 1901 census lists 14,885 chinese and 4,597 japanese in british columbia tsee ward , 1978 : 170-171 ) , the royal commission on chinese and japanese immigration in 1902 estimated that there were 16,000 chinese and 6,000 japanese in the province. 9. there are less than 100 "other asians' recorded in british columbia in the 1901 census. although the precise number of east indians is not known prior to keeping official immigration records in 1904, over 5,000 east indians arrived in british columbia in the four years following. many either moved on to the united states or returned to india because, by 1911, the census records just over 2,000 east indians in the province. by the 1920s, only approximately 1,000 east indian workers remain in british columbia (see cheng, 1931 : 138 ;ward , 1978: 170-171 ) . 10. mine owner robert dunsmuir is the only employer interviewed by the royal commission who advocated granting the chinese the political franchise and full citizenship rights under the assumption that this would put an end to the anti-chinese agitation of white workers (royal commission, 1885) . 29 " 11. the "problem' of japanese immigration was dealt with more diplomatically than chinese immigration because japan was a world military and trading power with whom it was important to maintain cordial relations. china, of course, was divided and weak under colonial rule (see adachi,1976 and lyman, 1968). 12. recent research in british columbia has pointed out the sex-blind nature of traditional labour history and has begun to document the cexist nature of trade union activity within the working class (see campbell ,1979 , 1980 ; rosenthal, 1979 and bernard , 1982 ) . 13. bonacich and modell (1980) document the role economic factors played in forming and maintaining ethnic solidarity in american japanese communities. their work suggests several lines of investigation that could be followed in british columbia, particularly the relationship between the use of cheap asian labour and the success of ethnic business enterprises, and the relationship between "middlemen minorities' and the dominant society. li (1979) suggests that there is a direct link between the formation of ethnic businesses and institutional racism as well. k . more research needs to be done concerning the specific conditions which generated asian labour militancy and docility, exclusionary white labour struggles and inclusionary joint action by whites and asian workers. this paper constitutes a general outline of the economic and political context within which class action took place and the broad trends of working class action as white workers played an active role in the economic and political subordination of ethnic workers. references adachi , ken 1976 the enemy that sever was: a history of the japanese canadians . toronto: mcclelland and stewart. avery, donald 1979 'dangerous foreigners' european immigrant workers and labour radicalism in canada, 1396-1932 . toronto: mcclelland and stewart. avery, donald and peter neary 1977 "laurier, borden and a white british columbia," journal of canadian studies , 12 (4):24-34. basran, gurcharn s. 1983 "canadian immigration policy and theories of racism," in peter s. li and b. singh bolaria (eds.), racial minorities in multicultural canaaa . toronto: garamond press:3-13. bercuson, d.j. 1977 "labour radicalism and the western industrial frontier : 1897-1919. *' canadian historical review , vol. 58, no. 2:154-175. bernard, elaine 1982 the long distance feeling: a history of the telecommunications workers' union . vancouver: new star 3ooks. bernier, bernard 1979 "classes sociales et idsologie raciste dans les colonies de peuplement," in danielle juteau lee (ed.), frontieres ethn^ques en devenir . ottawa: university of ottawa press. bonacich, edna 1972 "a theory of ethnic antagonism: the split labor market," american socioiogical review , 37 (october ): 547-559 . 1973 "a theory of middlemen minorities," american sociological review , 38:583-594. 1980 "class approaches to ethnicity and race," insurgent sociologist , 10, no. 2 (fall):9-21. bonacich, edna and john :iodell 1980 the economic basis of ethnic solidarity: small business in the japanese american community . berkeley: university of california press. burawoy, m. 1976 "the functions and reproduction of migrant labor: comparative material from southern africa and the united states," american journal of sociology , 81:1050-1087. campbell, marie 1979 "unlocking women's experience: a method for using historical sources," our generation , 13 (3):11-15. 1980 "sexism in british columbia trade unions, 1900-1920" in barbara latham and cathy kerr (eds.), in her own right: selected essays on women's history in b.c. victoria: camosun college. campbell, persia crawford 1923 chinese coolie emigration to countries within the british empire . new york: negro universities press, reprint 1969. canada, the government of 1885 report of the royal commission on chinese immigration . sessional papers no. 54a. ottawa: king's printers. 1902 report of the royal commission on chinese and japanese immigration . sessional paper no. 54. ottawa: king's printers. cappon, paul 1975 "the green paper: immigration as a tool of profit," canadian ethnic studies , 7(l):50-54. castles, stephen and godula kosack 1972 "the function of labour immigration in western european capitalism," new left review , 73. 31 chan, anthony b. 1983 gold mountain . vancouver: new star books. cheng, tien-fang 1931 oriental immigration to canada . shanghai: the commercial press ltd. cox, oliver c. 1959 caste, class and race . new york: monthly review press. creese, gillian 1984 "class, ethnicity and conflict: the case of chinese and japanese immigrants in british columbia, 1880-1923" in r. warburton and d. coburn (eds.), economy and society in british columbia . 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(eds.), modernization and the canadian state . toronto: the mcmillan co. of canada ltd. rosenthal, star 1979 "union maids: organized women workers in vancouver, 1900-1915," b.c. studies , al (spring) : 36-55. roy, patricia e. 1976 "the oriental ^menace' in british columbia" in j. friesen and h.k. ralston (eds.), historical essays on british columbia . toronto: mcclelland 6. stewart. 1980 "british columbia's fear of asians, 1900-1950," histoire sociale/social history , 13 (25) : 161-172. schwantes, carlos a. 1979 radical heritage: labour, socialism and reform in washington and british columbia, 1885-1917 . seattle: university of washington press. szytnanski, albert 1976 "racism and sexism as functional substitutes in the labour market," sociological quarterly , 17:65-73. war bur ton, rennie 1981 "race and class in british columbia: a comment," b.c. studies , 49 (spring) :79-85. ward, w. peter 1978 white canada forever: popular attitudes and public policy toward orientals in british columbia . montreal: mcgill-queen 's press. 1980 "class and race in the social structure of british columbia, 1870-1939," b.c. studies , 45:17-35. wright, erik olin 1978 "race, class, and income inequality," american journal of sociology , 83 (6): 1368-1397. 34 digitized by the internet archive in 2011 with funding from carleton university, department of sociology & anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesc18alte alternate routes a journal of critical social research editors amanda mccarthy siomonn pulla alternate routes a journal of critical social research volume 18, 2002 editorial policy/call for paper 4 perspectives mike patterson walking the dog: an urban ethnography of owners and their dogs 5 articles terrym provost bodying black goddesses:the duty of representation across time and cultures 71 janet e. gwilliam dangerous customs: censorship in risk society 100 contents ofpast issues 127 alternate routes editorial policy/call for papers alternate routes [ar) is a refereed multi-disciplinary journal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university ottawa, canada, k1s 5b6, altroutesa/ lists.carleton.ca. as a peer reviewed journal, ar provides a forum for debate and exchange among north american and international graduate students. we are interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or coauthored with faculty), regardless of university affiliation. the editorial emphasis of the journal is on the publication of critical and provocative analyses of theoretical and substantive issues. we welcome papers on a broad range of topics and encourage submissions which advance or challenge theoretical questions and contemporary issues. we also welcome commentaries and reviews of recent publications, works in progress and personal perspectives. alternate routes is currently seeking submissions for volume 19, 20c»papers should be submitted double-spaced and in triplicate, following the american psychological association (apa) referencing system, keeping endnotes to a minimum. please see our website for a style-guide. back issues o\~ alternate routes are available at the following prices per volume: current issue (volume 18, 2000) individuals s12.00; students i jn(der (employed $6.00; institutions $21.50. volume 16/15 (99/97): individuals $12.00; students/un(der (employed $4.00; institutions $12.00. all previous years: individuals $3.00; students/1 underemployed $1 .50; institutions $6.00 . alternate routes is indexed in sociological abstracts and the lett index. i he alternate routes collective gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance ol the carleton university community; the departments of sociology ami anthropology and it's (hair, the dean of arts and social sciences: the dean of graduate studies and research: and the vice-president of research. we also wish to gratefully thank all the anonymous reviewers. volume is. 2002 chemins alternatifs perspective walking the dog 1 : an urban ethnography of owners and their dogs in the glebe (where can 'lassie' 'go?' territoriality and contested spaces) mike patterson this paper examines the ways in which dogs and their owners interact in the glebe, a small upscale neighborhood in the centre of ottawa. using participant observation and autoethnography. the paper documents my arrival with my dog in this new neighborhood, and our adventures good and bad. issues such as contested use of territory, along with an examination of stratified layers of legislation and local, more personal views on dogs, are combined to provide a picture of a society in transition and partition, particularly with regards to public land and park use. competing interest groups include cyclists, young families, seniors and those who believe dogs should be neither seen nor heard. the paper shows that dogs are 'lightning rods' for different levels of public opinion, which are manifestly concerned with animals but latently more involved with human socialization, with governance of the neighborhood, and with allocation of natural resources in the area. theories informing this study i have heard there is a way of keeping your relationship with your dog. spit in his mouth and he will always be faithful to you" (peltier 1988: 12) i used informal interviews, material culture (newspapers and magazines), and subjective experience and observation as a type of theoretical sampling where "the analyst jointly collects, codes, and analyzes his data and decides what data to collect next and where (and when) to find them, "process of data collection controlled by the emerging theory" (glaser and strauss 1967: 45). i ended up with "slices of data." in an open volume is, 2001 5 alternate routes inquiry aspiring to "no limits to the techniques of data collection' (i also use newspapers and the current dog literature to help with 'triangulation* in this study (albas and albas 1998: 133)). resulting in "a variety of slices of data that would be bewildering if we wished to evaluate them as accurate evidence for verifications," but are useful in generating theory as this variety "is highly beneficial, because it yields more information on categories than any one mode of knowing (technique of collection)" (glaser and strauss 1967: 65-66). i also used this participant action research as a learning tool for my own techniques in sociology. this paper, then, becomes also an autobiographical narrative, 2 based on notes that include everything in my "field." including influences of colleagues, friends, family and neighbors. charmaz and mitchell argue that, beyond discourse.: ...there is also merit in audible authorship. we speak of the writer's voice from the standpoint of ethnographers committed to the vocation of using all we can of our imperfect human capacities to experience and communicate something of others' lives. we go and see and sometimes join: we ask and listen, wonder and write, and tell our stories, not necessarily in that order. we believe that these simple acts of outward inquiry and inward reflection together with effort and creativity will give us something to say worth of sharing. we do not pretend that our stories report autonomous truths, but neither do we share the cynic's nihilism that ethnography is a biased irrelevancy. we hold a modest faith in middle ground (charmaz and mitchell 1997: 194). they maintain that "we do ourselves and our disciplines no service by only telling half-tales, by only reporting finished analyses in temperate voice, by suppressing wonder or perplexity or dread" clarity and truth are more likely found in "ethnography, (where) the emergent self is acculturated: it learns the limits of its own power" in a reflexive way (charmaz and mitchell 1997: 212-213, also see 1998) this is. i think, in line with what glaser and strauss say about a reader's judging the credibility of theory (and the effectiveness of sociological writings): "first of all. if a reader becomes sufficiently caught up in the 6 volume 18, 2002 ('hem ins alternatifs description so that he feels vicariously that he is also in the field, then it is more likely to be kindly disposed toward the researcher's theory than if the description seems flat or unconvincing," also judged are "how the researcher came to his conclusions" and the use of "multiple comparison groups" to make the "credibility of the theory considerably greater" 0967:230-231). it is surely not pure science, but as cassel says: "atoms do not read scientific papers and change their behavior accordingly. on the other hand, a social scientist's theories about the world can make a difference to the very nature of social life itself ( 1 993 : 35 ). this is also akin to the methodology of robert e. park: park was impressed by the number of examples where social sciences owed some of their most profound insights to persons whose knowledge was based more on a broad and intimate acquaintance with people and their actions than on the methodically structured investigations of a systematic science. in such cases, "ideas" may emerge from saturated experience (lindner 1990: 38). this work is urban anthropology in the chicago school sense, a critical ethnography borne of a method of direct observation and the epistemology of realism. lindner points out that the "chicago sociologists' original position (also) concealed a critical potential with respect to the social circumstances being investigated" (1990: 65). this potential can be seen in the "image of a sociologist as poet, someone who is concerned with atmospheric content and, as a literary person, someone who is concerned about reporting and not putting things right... in a culture distorted by norms ("the distortion of reality through normative preconceptions"), it is the empathy, intuition and sensitivity of the poetic person which can successfully break through the ossified fields of conventional thought" (1990: 204 itals. mine). finally, this work owes a debt to the pioneering research of clinton sanders. he acquired two newfoundland puppies in 1988 after the death of his previous dog. and. "as he was spending massive amounts of time with his new companions, he decided to examine systematically the interactional process in which he was deeply involved" (arluke and sanders 1996:20). volume 18, 2001 7 alternate routes narrative, data and analysis introduction i moved back to the glebe to finish my ph.d. in sociology at carleton university, after 15 years having last lived there. it reminds me of lower westmount and the west end in montreal, places where i grew up. it is a leafy, treed part of town with slow streets and a mix of people, from yuppies to empty-nesters and dinks (double income, no kids), to the many students and faculty from carleton university to local family people from several generations ago. descendants of early ottawa settlers and people from before. ; i brought peaches, a dog i've had since she was five weeks old. she's a three-year-old siberian husky 'border collie/wolf(?) mix who needs to run. she has lived on the road, in the bush and in the country most of her life, although when she was very young we4 lived in overbrook below vanier. i like to be able to walk in peace, participate in the green spaces around me (like my dog); i now know that while trying this on a daily basis, every space in the neighborhood becomes contested. "" after having lived in the country with dogs as a boy and adult. i w ent without a pet for many years in the city. i got peaches because i was thinking of getting a dog. and some friends of mine were having puppies at the same time. i thought she would be good for me. 6 1 also thought she would help expand my social circle, which she still does. 7 she still is the subject of conversation all over the neighborhood, from the corner store to the park, and particularly with the immediate neighbors, where some of the best and worst of our relations became somehow invested in the dog. s she is still a people magnet anywhere we go. which used to include everything to classes at the university (she enjoyed quantitative methods because of a low-key instructor; contemporary theory sent her spinning in circles), to the many parks around the city, stores, pubs, and social gatherings of all types and places including parties and powwows. in my old neighborhood. peaches at four months soon became a source of trouble when spring arrived, as some people objected to her romping around as we went down our dead-end street. we had started in winter, the streets were empty, snow covered and quiet, and i let her run along as i walked to the store. summer brought people out on their porches, suddenly alive on the street again. a new lebanese family at the corner came out in numbers (a number of young lads with stones in fi volume 18, 2002 chemim alternatifi their hands on a hot july day) to accuse peaches of defiling their lawn, as i waved white plastic bags in self-defense: someone with a small engine repair shop in his garage on the opposite corner came out and smashed a chair against his balcony to warn me of the consequences should peaches come on his property: the people upstairs called the police because my dog was not on a leash. i decided after many happy years there to move and try something else. first we set out for wide open spaces, and for the bush. we soon found that life on the road was even more tricky. in going across canada, we found that most campgrounds are suspicious of dogs and do not encourage them, let alone let them run. stops at the parks around the great lakes down logging roads were better. living in the country wasn't easy or ideal either, with regard to dogs, and we spent a winter in the rural ottawa valley. most dogs in the neighborhood roamed unsupervised across the roads and fields, in and out of back yards. although i had been careful not to allow peaches to get pregnant, it was a stray hound from across the tracks that found her out back one night in an unguarded moment. and although the puppies were cute and bright, i had to have her fixed afterwards because the hounds would not stay away otherwise. my landlord complained that he had never seen so much dog slut around his property: half the strays in the county wanted to mark it after peaches arrived. it was a bit of a mess in the spring. and so i thought the glebe, a more civilized place with parks known to be dog-friendly, might be a compromise solution. perhaps because the glebe seems to smile on dogs, we hoped to find here a combination of urban and rural spaces and attitudes, something much more relaxed than the troubled streets of vanier or the roaming and packing behavior of country dogs. spring may and june were our first exploratory months in the glebe and at first, it seemed we had found the optimum combination of attitude and spaces for dogs. as we became more familiar, it became apparent that what appeared to be a 'free' park or area to a neophyte was in fact a highly contested space, involving neighbors with conflicting ideas of the priorities of these parks. 9 there are many parks within walking distance of our volume 18, 2001 9 alternate routes home, some with posted times for dogs, such as central park (patterson creek), some owned by the national capital commission. 1 " only one that is informally designated "kids and families only." some include bike trails and rivers, where dogs run free anytime; there are many trails around landsdowne park, where dogs can unofficially run when there are no crowds. almost immediately i found that cyclists complain about the dogs, dog owners complain about the cyclists, people with young children complain about both, picnickers try to maintain the integrity of their territory, and joggers compete with cyclists and dogs for space in most of these parks. at the same time dogs seemed to be welcomed all up and down bank st.. on both sides, from lansdowne park to the queensway. there are bowls of water left out for passing dogs by the shop owners on hot days. even some of the panhandlers sitting on the sidewalk have dogs (and there are sometimes two every block now, as opposed to none 15 years ago). when i go in the smoke shop with peaches, they give her a cookie over the counter first thing. she now leaps for the counter every time we walk in. at another store, a woman came out to tell me i didn't have to tie my dog outside, that she was welcome to come in, it was air conditioned. she now jumps up on everyone"s counter, looking for cookies. i should restrain her perhaps but most people are quite happy to have a dog jump up and say hello. many apologize to her for not having anything for her. dogs are also welcome in some local pubs. at one place, at a semiprivate birthday party, there were dozens of partygoers, balloons, streamers, a blues band, and four dogs. the staff had bought kibbles 'n bits and cookies so the dogs could share in the party. after getting to know each other, they tore all around the bar all night. casual customers came wandering in, looking like they had never seen anything like it. the dogs were like the kids at a wedding party, running inside, outside, after each other, sitting on the benches by the wall, jumping up on the tables out back. a yappy terrier kept up an annoying bark, but someone remarked that he was "barking in time with the music." in one dog park", a woman told me that this area reminds her of francewhere she is from, in that everyone has at least one dog. we talked about pablo picasso and his great love of dogs; the fact that he in volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifi would give dogs to his friends as gifts so that there would always be a dog where he was visiting. "the french are crazy about their dogs and bring them everywhere." she said. "even in britain, but not so much, you can't bring them in the restaurants" (see appendix a. also 4/12/99: a17). she has been coming to the park with her dogs for many years and said she has never seen any trouble, but she is not happy about the signs going up recently, which prohibit dogs during certain hours during the summer. as it turns out. the new rules are a sign of things to come, as this summer was unique in its attention to dogs, and dog controls, in the city. another early informant, a university professor who owns a house backing on one of the parks. 12 gave an example of how things can get out of hand, and dogs can get a bad name. she told me about her dog buster, who in most ways is obedient but has one problem. when he was three months old we were in the park, and there was a workman there with a sandwich, a salami sandwich, in his hand and buster jumped up and grabbed it. he's been imprinted: now whenever anyone brings any food out he goes for it. last year i was walking him at the arboretum and there were four middle aged women there, with canvases and easels, having a picnic. buster ran over and grabbed a sandwich and ran off. at first they were upset but then thought it a little funny, until it came out that the sandwich belonged to this diabetic woman who needed her special diet. as we were talking buster ran through and grabbed another sandw ich. this time they were not laughing and started saying "control your dog" (i couldn't) and i was trying to get him when buster came tearing through and took the third sandwich. at this point their eyes were red with rage and they were yelling at me and i'm thinking "pick up your damn sandwiches don't leave them on the ground" but then i finally got buster to come over and took hnn away. when we were alone my anger came out and i started yelling at him "don't you ever do anything like that to me again' when a man stopped to accuse me of abusing my dog... i finally got home and thought of going to the bagel volume 18, 2001 11 alternate routes shop to get those poor women some more sandwiches, but i just couldn't go back there... as she was telling me this, a young family sat down at the other end of the park and began unpacking a picnic. buster immediately started drifting in their direction but his owner got him back and put him in the house, just to be safe. 1 soon began hearing complaints myself, when walking with the dog. hans is a contractor in his 50s who bought a house in the middle of the glebe. he has no pets: he says he thinks there are more dog owners per capita in the glebe than anywhere in the world. 12 his wife is worried about the black lab next door at the frat house, says the dog is "crazy"and has bitten people. carl covered his front lawn with a garden, as "it's the only way to keep the dogs off." and he is tired of having to pick up after people's pets. his favorite new addition is the short, bristly ragosa roses that hug the sidewalk, like "natural barbed wire." another informant. buddy, lives on the east side of the glebe, near a busy late-night corner. his dog, which he had owned for 15 years and traveled the country with, died last year. his dog had hitched trains with him. stopped intruders, been shot by crazy neighbors, stared down cougars, had died without much pain, and now sits on buddy's mantle in an urn. buddy saved a tomcat during the ice storm and that's his only pet now. he's upset at people who don't pick up after their dogs. one night he was sitting on his porch when a dog came along and squatted down, owner standing behind. "the cat tore into him and started scratching him up... the dog took off so fast he didn't finish his shit... the owner yelled at me: 'hey. your cat attacked my dog' and i said. i don't see you holding any baggie in your hand pal. keep your dog off my lawn and piss off. and he did." buddy has been known to come down from his porch at night to punch the lights out of rowdy passing drunks and assorted punks, and the dog owner got out of there fast enough. buddy is also about six foot two with a healthy swagger. a sign on his lawn declares it to be a 'crap-free zone.' 13 12 volume 18. 2002 chemins alternatifs i could begin to see that the mix of city and parks, which i thought would be ideal for me and the dog. could prove more contested than i had imagined. summer some people insist that dogs should be leashed or always 'under control.' but things today in the year 2000 in the glebe are under control, at least as compared to this letter to the editor from 100 years ago. may 29, 1900, in support of the enforcement of a tax on dog owners. it shows (along with other letters over the past 100 years published by the citizen as a millennium feature) that dogs have always been a concern in the cities. a resident of busy lower town (at that time the glebe was still a rural shire), the complainant wrote that his neighborhood "is fairly polluted with yelping, barking, howling and fighting mongrels of no breed in particular." he asks: "what right has a man to keep an unclean, noisy and often dangerous animal on the street, impeding travel, defiling lawns, flowers, door-steps in fact everything in sight. would such nuisances be endured from human beings? yet the depredations committed by those dogs are more unspeakable than anything a human being could do." he goes on to argue that "dogs are unnecessary in a city where police protection is paid for and furnished" and concludes that "if people are bound to make themselves disagreeable in a community, let them pay for it, make the tax prohibitive..." (6/9/99: b5). 14 i found that dogs have now been banned at our department at carleton university. no dogs in the loeb building allowed at all, according to decree engineered in part, i suspect, by a past functionary who is averse to dogs. it didn't help that i showed up with peaches in his office. his body stiffened like a board and he squeaked in a strangled voice "keep that dog away, i can't have dogs around, it gets in the air..." it's true that the air quality and ventilation in the deparmient is less than desirable, but there is more to it than that. there is a history of people bringing their dogs there. and i imagine there have been other complaints. for the first winter (peaches was born dec. 1 . 1 got her at five weeks, just in time for winter classes) i took my dog to class and everywhere else, in my pocket and later my jacket inside, with a bag of toys, balls and paper towels. she peed on the grad coordinator's floor, and took a dump at the polisci department (which some people agreed was a politivolume 18, 2001 13 alternate routes cal act), but generally was pretty good in class (she enjoyed quantitative methods because the speaker was slow paced and quiet; she hated contemporary theory because the arguments and debates charged the room and she couldn't relax, nor could anyone). i take it as partly our fault that the loeb building has formally barred dogs. ,:> mike's place, the grad pub. also barred dogs soon after i got peaches (1 had looked forward to joining a tradition of owners with their dogs there), because the muslim students who now use nearby porter hall as their prayer room objected to dogs being in the bar. walking the dog around carleton. i see these and other new canadians looking at her with fear, something i never saw before. to us. it is a loss of freedom. i talked to a handler from the canadian guide dogs for the blind. he parked his van all summer across the street from us, using the leafy shade to cool the dogs in the truck as they walk and train two at a time. he told me they chose this spot for its mix of side-streets and bank st., for its "lines" or straight sidewalks with clear intersections stretching over many blocks. they are from manotick. which makes the glebe handy, and having been training dogs in the city for nine years. they have many walking sites. i ask him which is the favorite. "the glebe." he says. "it has the right mix and the people are aware of us. they try to help out. sometimes by moving their dogs out of the way. which is not what we want (for training purposes). the dogs here are quiet, the streets are a good mix of trees and city..." the worst area?" around parkdale market, although it's been getting better the past few years. you get more aggressive people and dogs there, the big four: pit bulls, rottweilers, shepherds. dobermans." "the people there are aware of us, but sometimes their dogs are too aggressive." eventually dogs are taken downtown as well. around bank and gloucester, there are no parks, few trees, lots of asphalt and cars. "the people there don't have pets really. and they don't seem to see us. it's as if we weren't there." he tells me that increasingly, they are running into situations in public places like malls, where "people just don't expect to see a dog there. and it freaks them out. we have to leave." i ask him what kind of people, and he answers, after a moment. "asians. muslims, other, uh. new canadians." 14 volume 18. 2002 chemins alternatifs last winter, a chain of convenience marts narrowly missed being sued after a blind man and his guide dog were refused entrance by an employee for religious reasons. we leave off wondering where legislation, human rights and the new canadians will affect things. will dogs have to stay in their apartments? as the summer wore on i found more and more restrictions. the newspapers were full of disputes about dogs. i read in early july that montreal was considering a bylaw to classify dog pee as pollution so owners would be charged with polluting on their daily rounds. another dog owner commented: "wow, i didn't think that montreal was that uptight. so perhaps they'll outlaw pigeons, squirrels, and maybe they'll do something about their rats, too. i can see a big market for flushable indoor facilities for dogs and cats (thereby contributing to the water shortage) and for professional animal potty trainers" (this bylaw was scrapped, see 16/7/99). a siege mentality seems to exist at the dog park. ten years ago there were no dogs allowed, then dogs were allowed freely, then some neighbors complained about that (to the point of dropping little red flags wherever they saw dog droppings) and now new regulations, created at a series of town hall meetings, prohibit dogs during the day, to 7 pm. over the past weeks i have let peaches run during unauthorized times, usually when there is nobody around. i have been in the park at odd times i guess (ca 1pm and 1 1pm), because the park is often empty. usually you can see a small parade headed down the street at 6:45 toward the park, people and their dogs. at about 8 pm the park is flooded with dogs and owners. there are 15-20 dogs (and their respective owners) at the height of the rush, crowding packs of romping dogs and cliques of owners crowded between the trees and the water. the crowd tends to form a large circle, discussing daycare, teachers, kids' school, and talking with and about their dogs. on nights near the full moon, from the distance, it looks like an occult ceremony, with dogs. one night a freelance journalist for c.ioh hopped off his bike and started filming the dogs in the fading light. he explained he was doing a feature on the new summer dog debate at the arboretum, also kanata. he showed me his video of dogs running around having fun. in and out of the water. he has lived in vancouver. winnipeg. montreal, toronto and elsewhere. he said ottawa has the most liberal dog bylaws in the country. volume 18, 2001 15 alternate routes it's only a few dogs that are problems and they would still be around, leash laws or no. 1 say. while observing a dog run out of the park after a cyclist, barking at him and chasing him down the road. another night in early august at 7 pm 1 was the first in the park, followed by a man loping along with a player's light cigarette tin in his hand, preceded by a puppy spaniel, light brown. ,(1 his last spaniel died last christmas, he told me, and he just got the new puppy yesterday. scamp is 12 weeks old with long coltish legs that seem to make it impossible to stand, so he just flops around joyfully. cal has been coming here ten years. always has a bag of cookies with him and extra baggies. "back then they used to hit me with $48 fines all the time. no dogs allowed in the park. leash or no leash. one bylaw guy came up. he was a big guy. and sits down with me to give me a warning about my dog. sat down right here on this bench where we're sitting now. . . "teams of them would come down and give tickets, look for licenses." he was at the meetings last year. "it was neighbor against neighbor. the things people said about each other, they were at each other's throats. all because of a dog park. this park is perfect for dogs, you can see from end to end, you have the water on one side (which was an argument at the meetings: "is the water and inlet part of the park?" of course it is. especially in winter!) and a fence on the other, only one way in and out..." he points out a house across from the park, one that others have mentioned to me. as being the home of the primary complainant in the recent battles. "she must have nothing better to do. she calls the police if there's a dog off leash at five minutes to seven. what can they do? they have to come down..." he hasn't got any tickets under the new regime, but then again. scamp just arrived today. there is a nice walking circle from my house, along the north side of landsdowne park, through the fenced in dog run by the baseball field, and up into the glebe east, then back through central and patterson parks. despite the throngs of people at the exhibition in august, the greenspaces are relatively clear of people, so the dog can run through (or 16 volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifs around) the accumulating layers of pizza boxes and pop cans left by the tourists (geeks) and the beer bottles and sardine cans left by the carnies. we walk further north along o'connor. i let peaches go at central park, and one day a woman in a lime green pantsuit came walking down the hill from one of the mansions on the avenue. her dog was off the leash also. "look at that sign!" she called out to me a couple of times. sure enough there was a new set of posted hours for the dogs in the park. no dogs off leash from noon to 4 pm. "i've been living here 40 years." she said, adding. "i was a little child when i moved here." "it doesn't seem possible" i ventured. "this is my park. we own it. leased it to the city for 99 years. jim (watson, ottawa mayor) promised me this wouldn't happen. he's going to get a call from me. maybe we'll just take the park back and develop it. "all our dogs around here always ran around. never used leashes." i asked her who is responsible, who has been complaining. "not dr. (soandso) over there across the park, not judge (soandso) over there, not jim over there or frank or any one of the old neighbors. it's the yuppies." a new house owner joined us. a man in his 50s with an old collie. "it's the whole city," he said, "not just the glebe." "anyway, i'm going to call jim. they'd better take these signs down. they say they need the park free of dogs for the seniors. well i'm a senior enough and my dog can do what she wants in my own back yard, and if i forget to pick up once in a while so what?" i say i'll be seeing her later. "if not, you'll hear from me. i'm a bitch." this discord seemed to be extending to the dogs. peaches was getting into more and more scrapes. one day a terrier mix, 18 rex, ran yapping across the street to run after peaches while we were playing ball at the park. after a while his owner came over. by this time the rex had run peaches ragged and she was holding him down for relief, panting. he started snarling and snapping at her so she bit him and squished him a little harder. i called her off. the terrier started yapping in peaches' ear with a piercing, highpitched stabbing sound. volume 18, 2001 17 alternate routes "stop it. stop it." yelled the owner. "god i hate that sound" she said. peaches had another run-in with rex the terrier on another day. after a minute or so of initial peace, with both off their leash. rex leapt up and tried to take a tear out of peaches' throat. luckily, her thick fur prevented that and in a second she was on the little dog. holding him down, while he furiously barked and snapped at her. 1 pulled her off, she was upset and in shock at the sudden, vicious attack. before coming to the glebe with its dog parks. peaches had never been in a dog fight. since we arrived, she has been attacked by a pit bull, a black longhaired dog. and another young female husky, although it's hard to say who started that one. it seems that every time we go to the park, there is potential for contested territory. 18 many dogs are familiar to each other, but every day we meet more and more new ones, a dog society in transition. i think they are all insecure and defensive (meaning more likely to fight) because they have no sense of home territory. unlike dogs in the country, which relate to and defend their territory through displays and arrangements, these dogs have no territory to call their own. 19 everything is up for grabs. there is also the instinctual behavior involved whenever dogs meet, often beyond the ken of their city owners: it is not simple experience that teaches an animal territorial boundaries which he will cross at his peril. eskimo dogs in east greenland live in packs, each pack defending rigorously a social territory... immature males wander about, violating boundaries and continually taking severe punishment in consequence. yet they seem unable to learn, despite the most bitter experience, where to go and where not to. then, however, they mature sexually and immediately learn all boundaries... first copulation, first territorial defense, and first avoidance of the next pack's territory" all occur rapidly in sequence (ardrey 1970: 25). the confusion of behaviors, human and animal, instinctual and arbitrated, and politicized, can be seen in los angeles: "welcome to los angeles. city of dog parks, where they'll eat you up and spit you out and eat you up again. (or. as my favorite line from the bible. proverbs is volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifs 26:11, puts it: 'as a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.') nothing divides neighbor against neighbor, celebrity against celebrity, like the dog park issue. celebrity dog trainer matthew margolis suggests that we might not be doing our dogs any favors: "i don't love 'em," margolis says of dog parks. "there's a lot of dog fights, a lot of diseases. even if your dog is vaccinated, how do you know all the other dogs are? it's more for the people than the dogs"" {salon magazine, see appendix b. itals. mine). 2 " one neighbor takes her walks to the dog park religiously, she meets different people at different times. separated with young kids, she meets with the many other parents in various circumstances to talk about schools, kids, and i don't know what else (i am not privy to these circles). 21 early on. my neighbor regarded peaches and me with suspicion and not a little animosity. when we first approached her to talk about this project, she said "i don't want to hear about it" and walked away. 22 when her dog jumped at peaches trying to get her going, she used her husky snarl in response... "we'd better keep them apart then' said my neighbor. i'm not convinced she was talking entirely about the dogs. 23 most people i talk to are aware i am doing research on dogs. "no matter how neutrally they are perceived, most fieldworkers are never completely accepted by their subjects. short of conducting covert fieldwork where their research identities are unknown, ethnographers become "marginal natives." part member, part guest... (rather than becoming) a fly on the wall (researchers should) carefully monitor how participants come to regard us" (arluke and sanders 1996: 23). the dog park, the neighborhood and this project all involve what goffman calls "temporary tenancy," of "territories of the self." that is. to be involved "measured in seconds, minutes or hours, informally exerted, raising constant questions as to when the claim begins and when it terminates* r (1971:29). another night at the bar. a small dog jumped up at peaches. she took a fast snarl at her and then they both settled down. a waitress referred to her as being "aggressive." i later heard that other people had made various complaints about my dog and certain staff had formed particular pro and con attitudes. 24 i think we had been too frequent visitors over the summer. i was told later that one patron was complaining because peaches made his dog volume 18.2001 19 alternate routes "uncomfortable." another that she was "always there." another that she was bothering diners (she does have a tendency to stare). in public pursuit of our study on dogs, we had become obvious and ubiquitous." i later learned that peaches had been barred. 2(a the owner regretfully informed me that it was said she had become "too territorial." 2 this bar is similar to al's bar described by gusfield as a "creator of intimacy." with alcohol as "dissolving reserve between strangers." he notes that self-expressiveness is quicker to reach action and display than in soberer places. "it is a place where friendliness can be fostered: it is also a place where hostility and antipathy are closer to expression. both help and abuse are there as tangible possibilities" (1996:140). a dog amplifies these possibilities: "it is often noted how quickly humans can feel and show strong emotions for new animals they encounter, and that these feelings are sometimes as intense if not stronger than those felt for humans" ( arluke and sanders 1996: 27). people had competed for peaches' attention at this place since she was five weeks old. engaging her in all sorts of games (she is very playful): but when she barked at a waitress (in defiance of a no-barking rule) i knew her time there was almost done. later, after she was barred. i tried tying her outside, but people would not leave her alone, so she resorted to barking then nipping at the worst ones. it took me some time to work her out of that reaction: she was not used to being tied on a short lead and it (they) scared her. 2 * one night was particularly ghastly as people streamed back from the ex down bank st. i looked out the window and there was a woman looming out of the night in the reflected lights of the bar. holding a large purple heartshaped balloon in one hand and a child in the other, yelling and waving the balloon. i went outside and her husband was there threatening to call the police, a kid in a stroller was crying, they had obviously been through a big day. peaches had grabbed the kid's hand, not hurt him, when the group had stopped and surrounded her. i talked to peaches and the boy. who was less upset than his parents, who were verging on hysteria. after suitable warnings, apologies, admonishments and the like, they continued the long hike back to their car. later, tied outside the grocery store, she was harassed by buddy, of the "crap-free zone." it was dusk, she was watching some parcels, and i observed from the cash as buddy came along from the bar with his girl20 volume 18. 2002 chemins alternatifs friend, and bent over to pet the dog. he started by patting her head. then, looking up at his girlfriend, he took her head in both his hands and rubbed around, giving her a good workout behind the ears. i almost ran out to tell him to stop, but then he let go. he then reached down again to grab her head, and she bit him. no blood, no marks, just a warning. "your dog bit me!" he yelled as i came out of the store. i told him he was being too aggressive, and that he was drunk. to correct her fear of being leashed i spent several months after that tying her at various places with myself nearby, able to talk and maintain eye contact with peaches, then i removed myself more and more from the situations. also, i tried getting more people to pet her while holding her on a short lead. all of these exercises work best after she has had a good run and is not too excitable. still. i wish i could advise people, who take our dogs to be their own, that one should not approach strange dogs tied anywhere, let alone on the street. it seems the people who cannot resist this are the ones who know little or nothing about dogs (in other incidents, this was the case). i remember some fifteen years ago david the baker, who had a husky with one green and one blue eye, quite purebred, that he would tie outside his shop in ottawa south in the winter, on a short chain near a doghouse under a tree. i had seen the dog a number of times and always admired it and one day, with some apprehension, i approached it as it was lying there. it didn't move, nor growl, just lay there with its blue/ green eyes staring straight into mine as i leaned over to pat it on the head with my glove. with an unconcerned motion, the dog raised its head and clamped its jaws down tight on the inside of my glove, where the thumb and first finger meet, not touching the skin. it kept surveying me calmly as i tried to get my hand out of the glove (impossible, he had my hand locked inside the glove) and so i slowly lifted him until he was almost off the ground, thinking he would let go. not a chance. he just kept looking at me. until david saw what was going on and came out of the shop. "let him go" he said, and the dog dropped to the ground, sat and continued to eye me. i went inside and got some bread. peaches' mother trixie. also a husky, was another who didn't bark. she would bite, but not hurt people. i have since learned this oral communication is a husky trait. when trixie's puppies were a few weeks old. a neighbor and his daughter came to see them. despite warnings not to get too close, the man got on all fours and crawled toward the puppies. volume ix, 2001 21 alternate routes tnxie stayed very close to him. "don't worry i know all about dogs. i'm an expert on wolves" he said as his daughter picked up one of the tiny puppies and promptly dropped it on the floor. before the pup had a chance to yelp. trixie had clamped her jaws over the father's face, covering it. for a day or two he had the imprints of four large canines on his face, but no damage done. "she bit me!" he yelled, but then he took two of the puppies later on. just as our social situations were going through transitions at the bar and the dog park, the dog days had truly arrived that july in the press; dogs were a hot item for discourse. one leading item was a cover story in the atlantic monthly ("why your dog pretends to like you") which argued (using canine genetics) that dogs are "social parasites." that we are up against an "evolutionary sharpshooter" who has learned to exploit our hospitality with a complicated mix of dominance and submission, purely instinctual behavior inherited from the wolf: "we are primed to seize on what are. in truth, fundamental, programmed behaviors in dogs and read into them extravagant tales of love and fidelity. often dogs need do no more than be their simple selves to amaze and beguile us so." the author pointed to the unnaturalness of the urban milieu as a big cause for problems with dogs, such as "barrier frustration" among sled dogs and other running breeds which do not get enough exercise, resulting in destructive behavior, and "yuppy-puppy syndrome" in which working young couples buy dogs and leave them alone all day. 29 he also showed how selective breeding, through "obsessive preoccupation with physical appearance and breed definitions" has served to create a more aggressive animal that is also prone to a host of unique ailments (budiansky 1999)."' the story resulted in a flood of letters to the ottawa ( 'itizen over two weeks and was the subject of two columns. two letters were attributed to a family pet. all of the letters decried the argument that dogs were acting solely out of instincts for self-preservation, and gave examples of dog rescues, selflessness (altruism?), and real affection and emotion. people's affection for their pets became more apparent in reaction to this article. ;i of the 169 items referring to dogs in the citizen in the six months from september to february (found in addendum newspapers a coded index and cited such as | 1 9/99 al )). 66 or almost half argued for more freedom for dogs, and 35 were generally favorable information volume 18, 2002 chemins attentat its pieces, and six told stories of dog heroism. some 45 items called for more laws or confinement for dogs, so almost two-thirds were in support of 'doggie rights.' as columnist john robson put it: "as pavlov showed, any argument that animals are machines applies to people too. and frankly i'm more certain your dog loves you than your wife does" (23/7/99: a15). later, this affection came out in another newspaper debate, where a front cover feature focused on the debate between catholics, who do not believe that dogs go to heaven, and anglicans, who have recently stated that they do. one anglican minister argued that since dogs can't sin (no free will ) they must be allowed into heaven, also: "mean dogs that attack people also warrant a place in heaven, because such behavior is often the result of poor training, or reflects a personality trait of the dog's owner" (3/10/99: al. also see appendix c). fall the last long weekend day we went to the arboretum. two young women and an older man were talking near the 'dog beach' while their dogs ran around. we started talking about dog issues and the dogs ran in and out of the water, across the bike path to the benches where we were, and back again. one of the women said that cyclists don't slow down at this spot, a turn on the path, as they should. i noted a couple of cyclists zip through, ignoring the dogs. she was quite upset at the fishermen who leave line and hooks along the shoreline. "hooks this big!" she said, indicating a large jig. "a dog got cut last year!" i often take my dog fishing, but i didn't mention it. as we were talking more dog owners approached, mainly young carleton students apparently. within 10 minutes there were 15-20 dogs at the spot. one group of six or so ran in and out of the water along the path while another group tore around the park benches in circles: a pair of jack russell terriers start digging a hole. we stood away from the melee while a couple of owners attempted to call their dogs or impose order. they soon give up and we watched in amazement as the packs of dogs tore around this small space, in between, over and under everything. volume is, 2001 23 alternate routes several groups of cyclist ventured through, stopping and starting, smiling at the scene. an older pair of cyclists stopped, as had several other non-dog owners, just to watch. after about five minutes the owners started to call their dogs away and drift off. a couple of determined and serious (stupid?) cyclists zipped through the dogs, eyes straight ahead, as if to avert hitting a wandering dog through sheer willpower. this day they survived. next day at the same spot, cyclists (on this first work day of the week) zipped around the corner with abandon. i had to jump across the path at one point to make sure peaches wouldn't cross: the cyclists were now seemingly oblivious to her presence. there is a bike trail in vanier where we used to live, and peaches had been hit there once (see appendix d). we decided not to push our luck near the bike trails any further. dogs are a focal point in the competition for space and resources in the area. fishermen, cyclists, families with kids, women painting in the park. 31 in late october the ncc announced an information session for dog owners, to announce new leash laws and controls on all of its lands. including much space in and near the glebe, spaces such as bruce pit in nepean. the arboretum. gatineau park and beyond. the plan called for fenced-in runs for dogs, financed and maintained by subscribing dog owners, with no dogs allowed off-leash in other areas. ?: i attended the meeting, along with some 1,000 other dog owners, to witness the hijacking of the meeting by owners led by the national capital coalition for people and dogs, (www.sympatico.ca/nccpd) greeting everyone at the front doors with petitions and buttons calling for dog freedom ("let's walk it out").' 3 many owners got up to speak for themselves and their dogs during the evening, and ncc spokespeople sitting at information tables were flummoxed. i was so enthused with the turnout that i invoked the freedom of lassie and accused the ncc of nazism in their desire to segregate and partition lands that were mixed use (see newspapers, a coded index from late oct. /early nov. for more comments from participants). the next day my picture was prominently displayed in the citizen: i got many congratulatory comments from neighbors and professors at school, from people in the park and on the street. i wished they had used a better picture: i also wondered if i was 24 volume 18, 2002 chemins a iternatifs overstepping the bounds of participant/action research. 33 (see 23/109923/1199) the national capital coalition for people and dogs declared ncc's planned 3-5-acre fenced runs were too small and inappropriate. coalition founder candice o'connell said: "if they want to take dog walking and throw it into that level where everybody is standing around having a cup of coffee and watching their dogs run around, that's not the basis of recreational dog walking." in his column. john robson noted "the growing uproar over the ncc's incomprehensible decision to ban dogs from its parks is a classic example (of how to politicize the previously non-political): about onethird of households in the region have dogs; people with dogs are the main users of those parks: dogs unlike people absolutely must have access to open semi-wild spaces for their mental and physical health; people have lived with dogs since the dawn of time; so some bureaucrats decided in effect to ban them" (and so a political backlash ensued) (5/11/ 99 a 18). in its report on the important issues of 1999 on the letters page, the citizen stated that "dogs in the parks" was the eighth most important issue, with 78 out of a total of 5,200 letters (29/12/99: a15). 34 candice 0"connell, chairperson. national capital commission for people and dogs, pointed out in a letter to the citizen that "the struggle between outdoor enthusiasts has been escalating for some time. it is clearly a sign of an increasing trend to seek greater physical health through outdoor activity, and a diminishing availability of recreational green space." (21/2/00: b5) peaches and i had witnessed the escalation of territorial gripes and wars, from the personal encounters in the parks and streets of the glebe, to a regional level where the contest was to be at least partially decided for us. 3> this macro contest, involving an appointed and anonymous council with an eye to increasing property values and a public outcry in the media, was putting a severe pinch in our ability to wander about the neighborhood, and run where we found the spaces. as one of my ph.d. advisors (all three are dog owners) who has moved from here to the country commented, when i told him of the meeting, and the resultant flood of press calling for freedom for dogs: "good. we really enjoyed having an ncc field nearby for dog running. wouldn't have obeyed the rules in any case." volume 18, 2001 25 alternate routes i think, as a dog walker, it is virtually impossible to obey all the rules in every space we traverse, and traverse them we must. winter peaches got in a fight at the park in december and ended up with a bleeding right front paw (cut between the pads). it was my fault. i was not paying enough attention. a kid about eight was playing in the snow with his lab mix. a young one, and at one point sat down in the snow and hugged the dog with both arms. like most dogs, he didn't like that and growled. peaches went over to see what was happening and very quickly the lab attacked. i realize now that he was probably thinking of the kid sitting eye level with peaches as she came over. they both went up snarling on their hind legs and snapped their way toward me (peaches was retreating, backing toward me) and i yelled out a few "heys" and held my hands flat over them, trying to get peaches by the collar and pull her away. the lab had that "i'm about to lose it" look in his eye and was not listening, and peaches was getting ready to take him on for real when i managed to grab her and pull her away. the lab backed off and i threw the leash on her and held her back. the kid apologized (he was not much concerned, had this happened before?). at one moment when the two were just about to get serious i realized that this could be one of those dog fights you can't stop from happening. at the same time, the huge crowd of tobogganing kids and their parents on the nearby hill had stopped everything to listen and watch. the snarls were really quite scary. they recently put up a sign at that end with a no-dogs designation, mostly to keep the pee off their toboggan runs i guess but after yesterday, i expect they will be talking about the threat of dog attacks and fights. i wondered while this was going on: "why did you guys have to pick this moment, in the middle of a busy holiday afternoon, a dozen nervous parents watching, to do this?" a friend of mine from the country, who has two dogs, commented on my worries via e-mail, and made a salient point regarding recent controversies around dogs. could dogs be being used as scapegoats in an increasingly violent and unpredictable society?: don't you think it's odd that our society is straining to become more tolerant and accepting of bizarre human 26 volume 18, 2002 ( fiemins alternants behavior, at the same time we become less tolerant of normal things such as pets and so on? people get warped out of shape if they see a pussy cat strolling about, a dog kicking up its heels in a public park, or goose poop by the river bank. i once heard an old lady declare "we are at the mercy of canadian wildlife!" she was referring to goose poop. i think the geese might have a different take on who's doing the suffering. anyways, dogs will be dogs, and as you say, the lab was just doing his job, nervous about peaches being close to his kid. this is what dogs do, obey the instinct to protect. good thing you were there to break it up. peaches never fought before in the country or the city. the cause of her trouble might be that dogs downtown are too many, too crowded in these dog parks, and unsure of whose territory is whose. owners do not know how to 'handle' them. everyone's dog has attacked or been attacked around here; it just goes on and on. i think these city dogs have lots of space, but no territory, so they are victims of urban anomie (normlessness) and stress. 3 "' we began staying away from the dog parks, finding new routes through the neighborhood. in the cold days and nights there were fewer people and distractions (such as cats and squirrels) so i trained her to listen to me, off-leash, as we walked the streets and ducked through the alleys. the early conviviality of the dog park experience had yielded to too many problems. there were sheets of ice all around the city, in january, not much fun walking. but we started to find our own territories, out of the way places and corners of parks where i could throw her kong (a bouncy, indestructible dog toy) for exercise. where we were out exploring together, breaking various city and regional bylaws as we walked, marking territory. as my friend from the country commented via e-mail: i'm sure you are right about dogs in the city. dogs need territory. i take mine every day back across the fields and into the bush, to check their territory. they like to show me all the things that are new since the day before, this is wildly exciting to them. buster is more enthusiastic about it than harpo, maybe because he never had a "real" territory before, having been a town dog. he fetches me and drags volume 1 8, 200 j 27 alternate routes me off in the direction of his latest discovery. i learn all sorts of things with these dogs, and it gives them such pleasure that i participate. we had learned to stay away from partially frozen waters on the rideau canal and river. a fellow student went through the ice on the rideau river trying to pull out his dalmatian. it went under the ice going after ducks; he went after it and had to be pulled out by the fire department, and just in time after 10 minutes in the water. in the country, my friend reported that "buster went through the ice back at the beaver pond yesterday. couldn't get out and the water is deep enough to drown in. i was able to reach his collar and give a tug. that was enough to get him over and up onto dry land. he thought this was great fun. big adventure, leaping up and down at me with joy... what a dope." i found in the winter isolation we could create our own routes, and concentrate on working together. while working with the idea of socialization in parks, streets, bars and shops all summer, we had lost the mutual focus we had had in the country. i realized that the human sociability (and conflicts) of the dog parks and the streets had taken precedence over our dog-human communication. 36 if dogs are "thoughtful, or minded social actors." 37 how is the ethnologist to study them? one technique would be to "learn how to take the role ofthe animal-other and communicate effectively in the appropriate idiom" also to maintain a "continuous sympathetic observation' of the animal in as natural conditions as possible. to some degree, one must transfer oneself into the animal's situation and inwardly partake in its behavior" (lawtence 1989: 118. itals. mine). i think we are both happier walking alone together. i think peaches taught me that. i have noticed that a few others in the glebe, people who spend a lot of time with their dogs, do the same. we don't often stop to talk: it's a walk somewhere we are after. spring again almost daily i began noticing a young asian woman headed towards the dog park, first with two dogs then often with three or more, sometimes just one. all times of the day. she walks past my place, with combinations such as a small terrier, large poodle and a german shepherd. yes28 volume 18. 2002 chemins alternates terday on bank st. i saw a young asian man with three dogs pulling him along, again a mixed bag of breeds. all winter long i had seen the notices for dog-walking services at the dog parks. these must be the pros. i just heard about the first ticket of the season at the dog park. a woman who regularly walks her dog home off-leash, who lives about half a block from the park, was ticketed si 15 by police in a cruiser. apparently, they had been parked there waiting for her and were acting on a complaint. my informant suggests it is the same woman across the street from the park that has been complaining over the years. this complainant fits the profile described by alison leigh ingram. using a survey, she assessed the reactions of people to various types of conflict in a number of urban and suburban u.s. communities. conflict situations included neighborhood children trampling a garden, chores left undone, borrowed property not returned, burglary, and noise or intrusion by neighbor's pets, particularly dogs. conflicts with pets were most likely to be "endured," and not subjected informal conflict resolution, as were most of the other conflicts. while the majority of people apparently chose to endure a problem with dogs rather than confront people, in situations where chores were left undone, tools unreturned or gardens trampled, people were most likely to confront or inform the transgressor. pointedly, in the case of roaming dogs or burglary, however, the majority of people chose to inform-on, not inform, the transgressor, so their "endurance" had a price (1995: 140, 149, also see appendix e). 38 the german shepherd across the street, who is kept penned in the back yard but for his daily walk to the dog park at 7 pm, lunged at peaches from halfway across the street, snarling, the other day. barrier frustration. the owner, a young guy, looked embarrassed. another shepherd we hadn't seen before came over our last time at the dog park. he looked old and a little chewed up. the owner was holding what looked like a muzzle or harness; we steered around them. it occurs to me that the dog park is the only socialization for many of the dogs there. in the back yard all day. one frantic run in the evening. i stopped recording field notes when i had reached "saturation" this spring, when i realized that "everything one sees and hears has been encountered before" and additional data was merely adding bulk rather volume 18, 2001 29 alternate routes than finding cases that altered the patterns i had observed (arluke and sanders 1996: 38. also glaser and strauss 1967). we haven't been to a dog park in months. peaches' kong was lost on the roof of a commercial building nearby (where there is a great parking lot for play) and so we use tennis balls and sticks, and walk down bank st.. through the alleys and the parks, at odd hours, without a leash. she knows her routine is to find things, and mine is to throw them. we are working together. peaches rarely thinks to take time for other dogs, or even cats or squirrels, as long as i keep her focused with a focused banter and directions. i look ahead as we roam, checking for obstacles. i am her seeing-eye person. conclusions and theoretical wrapup inherent to the claim of the ethnographer as to how understanding is generated from data is a coolness toward summaries, conclusions and propositions as doing irreparable violence to the complexity of the subject. discussions of method and theory are then not an adequate substitute for reading the study (gusfield 1996: 109). dogs make people more visible and approachable, and they are also social units in their own right. they also, partly because of that very fact, mediate and redefine their familiars' daily social interactions. territory becomes more obviously contested when a dog enters the picture. often the areas of home and public territories are not always clearly differentiated from a dog's point of view, so what may be defined and used as a public place by people may be defined and used as a home territory dogs. territory always involves or at least implies acts of aggression and/ or defense. dog parks allow for dog interaction and socialization, which is good, but they also are places where dogs can get into territorial disputes and where (largely new) owners sometimes visit with out-ofcontrol dogs. puppies are also vulnerable to disease. territory exists on many levels in the dog park. there is the primal 30 volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifs interaction of the dogs, mixed with the politics and personalities of the owners, city bylaws enforceable by police, annoyed neighbors, prevailing public opinions. in public places such as stores, streets, bars and universities, other levels of territory come in to play i.e. more city or regional bylaws, the attitude of an owner towards dogs, administration, ethnic and religious attitudes. at any time a dog and its owner can become engaged at any or all of these levels. if a dog is offending someone in some way, they are less likely to take it up with the owner than to complain to authorities such as landlords, neighborhood circles, or police, in order to effect a resolution. we have found that resorting to dog parks for exercise and socialization at appointed hours often results in more confusion and conflict than play. to walk and run in the glebe on our own routes (territory), it is almost impossible not to break some bylaw on a regular basis. there is also always the risk of one's dog offending, scaring or bothering someone; the reverse is also true. my dog has nipped people in self-defense. in the end, my dog and i became much closer as a result of this study, but the learning experiences we endured in the interest of this project, some of them traumatic, brings ethical questions into consideration. nonetheless, these are experiences we can use: "involvement in the creative social process of participant observation has the potential of providing researchers with self-understanding and a repertoire of social skills which will prove to be invaluable and personally enriching long after they have left the field" (sanders 1980: 169). this paper has been a process, akin to what mills describes: by keeping an adequate file and thus developing self-reflective habits, you learn how to keep your inner world awake. whenever you feel strongly about events or ideas you must try not to let them pass from your mind, but instead to forvolume 18, 2001 31 alternate routes mulate them for your files and in so doing draw out their implications, show yourself either how foolish these feelings are. or how they might be articulated into productive shape... to maintain a file is to engage in the controlled experience (1959: 197). in using a triangulation approach, integrating personal comments, slices of field data, newspapers, contemporary thinkers and theorists and the like. i appreciate that the results of this file are hard to judge scientifically, nonetheless a picture of dog life in the glebe emerges. "as personal writing becomes more common among social scientists, researchers will need to develop new avenues of criticism and praise for such work. one element in this new evaluative understanding might be a clearer sense of how to combine 'scientific' with 'literary' standards, without mystifying the latter" (devault 1997: 224). this aligns with what glaser and strauss say about a reader's judging the credibility of theory (and the effectiveness of sociological writings, which become "grounded theory"): "first of all. if a reader becomes sufficiently caught up in the description so that he feels vicariously that he is also in the field, then it is more likely to be kindly disposed toward the researcher's theory than if the description seems flat or unconvincing." also judged are "how the researcher came to his conclusions" and the use of "multiple comparison groups" to make the "credibility of the theory considerably greater" (1967: 230-231). my sociology here has been partly autobiographical, and that is intrinsic to the way that this project evolved. as mykhalovsky says: "to characterize autobiographical sociology as self-indulgent is also to make claims about the nature of its content. just as the charge collapses the text's author and reader into one. it posits the writer's self as the text's object. this is a reductive practice..." more positively, there is "truth in the use of self-involvement as a metaphor for describing the object relations of autobiographical sociology. to name my self as the content of autobiography is one way to describe its specificity: its distinction from work in which the self of the writer is not deemed worthy of inquiry," and further, "to write individual experience is. at the same time, to write social experience" (in line with mills' the sociological imagination in which he states that "private troubles become public problems" |. volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifs as gusfield points out: critics of fieldwork of this kind frequently point to its imprecision and selectivity of data... the observer attends only to some and not to all that occurs. is record of observations is itself selective because he only places into notes that which is seen as pertinent or "interesting." and that is limited by the intervening screen of memory... but social research is seldom able to achieve ideal conditions. costs must be adjudged against benefits, (and) the goals or results of social research must also be seen as distinctive and different from those of research on natural and nonhuman subjects (gusfield 1996: 106). at the very least, ethnographic data "shows that it is possible to develop a plausible and empirically grounded interpretation of a phenomena which is at variance with some other, often conventionally held, system of interpretation. in this fashion it demonstrates that the other interpretation need not be an exclusively and necessarily "true" account. such falsifiability is... one of the major ways in which knowledge is developed... ethnography creates new images of social life and thereby forces the reader to recognize the rules of behavior which are taken for granted and the alternative possibilities available" (gusfield 1996: 109^further: fieldworkers. in fact, may far outstrip quantitative researchers when it comes to studying emotionally charged or highly sensitive issues, as those in human-animal interaction often are. quantitative methods using fixed and highly structured questions to survey large numbers of respondents may at best just skim the surface of meaning and at worst highly distort it (arluke and sanders 1996:36). volume 18, 2001 u alternate routes lyman argues for symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology in his "sociology of the absurd." stating that "the world is essentially without meaning... (and) all systems of belief, including that of the conventional sociologists, are arbitrary... the problems previously supposed to be those of the sociologist are in fact the everyday problems of the ordinary man. (who) must carve out meanings in a world that is meaningless" relying on "intentionality, consciousness and subjective meaning" (1970: 1-2). and whatever meaning may be gleaned, "symbolic interactionists have long argued that all meaning is a product of social interaction rather than a quality inherent in the objects themselves" (arluke and sanders 1996:9). the approach i have used also "points to the fallacy of self/other. individual/social dichotomies and replaces them with "notions of simultaneity: how particular experiences both constitute and are constituted by social relations which transcend a given (research) particularity" (mykhalovsky 1997:239-240). howard becker talks about tricks in perspective, such as imagining the impossible to be true, then looking to for examples in the field, part of a bag of tricks for "expanding and complicating your theory of the world" such as: "the opposite is true, too" (for a completely different attitude towards dogs, see appendix f) and "you don't have to prove anything" (1989: 489). notes 1 . i am conscious of the equivocal nature of this phrase, but choose it in defense of my position that "everything is data" at least potentially (karen march et. al.). and therefore a task as mundane as walking the dog (or what critics eall "hanging around" in the field) can be made into the object of study and research. in likening the sociologist to a hustler, robert prus explains: "since professional hustlers think of hustling as a long-term activity, they tend to look for hustling opportunities in almost all settings they encounter (much like the symbolic interactionist ). card and dice hustlers, for example, do not particularly care whether the event they are going to work is a community picnic, an undertakers" convention, a turkey shoot, a benefit dinner, or a policeman's retirement party. much more important is whether they can locate the event and successfully involve the participants in a gambling event... if researchers build their projects around existing contacts (or activities that build contacts, such as 34 volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifs dog walking), they, like the hustlers, can often expedite the process" (1980: 134) (comments mine). 2. or autoethnography, when incorporating "systematic examination of personal experiences, emotions and interpretations" (sanders 1993: 208). also see denzin 1 989. 3. this would be algonquin, odawa, iroquois and other ancient people, going back some 10.000 years. 4. by using the term "we," the animal-human dyad is constructed as a "single acting unit" (arluke and sanders 1996: 73). also, as will later be seen, "the meanings of animals re not fixed because they are social constructions. how we think about animals, as well as ourselves, is bound to change as society itself changes" (1996: 191). 5. "public territories are those areas where the individual has freedom of access, but not necessarily of action, by virtue of his claim to citizenship... since the rights of discrepant groups to use these territories as citizens sometimes contradicts the privileges accorded them as persons, such territories are not infrequently the testing grounds of challenges to authority... public territories are thus ambiguous with respect to accorded freedoms. first, the official rights of access may be regularly violated by local custom. second, status discrepancy may modify activity and entrance rights." further confusion arises in "home territories" such as clubs and bars, where "regular participants have a relative freedom of behavior and a sense of intimacy and control over the area," but the areas of home and public territories "are not always clearly differentiated in the social world and what may be defined and used as a public place by some may be defined and used as a home territory by others" (lyman 1970: 91-92). hence contested. 6. the effect of pet ownership on people's health has been shown to be a positive one in most studies. siegel worked with multiple regression of demographic, health, life events, pet ownership and other variables for 938 medicare patients in the u.s., and showed that "these data show quite clearly that pets in particular dogs can influence physician utilization among the elderly. pet owners visited the doctor less than non-owners... and pets seemed to buffer people against the impact of stressful life events." dog owners "spent more time with their pets... felt more attached... were more likely to cite security as a benefit... dogs more than other pets met their owners' needs for companionship and attachment" (1993: 165). vormbrock and grossberg demonstrated that touching and petting a dog, as opposed to speaking to it, significantly lowers blood pressure rates ( 1988: 509). walsh and merton found that training dogs significantly lowered depression and raised self-esteem among a population of women prisoners ( 1994). volume 18, 2001 35 alternate routes 7. does can he a social aid: this is confirmed by a study in which subjects rated photographs oi' people with and without dogs, results of which "indicate that people appear happier, safer, and make a better 'picture' when seen with a dog." also they are seen to be "more relaxed" (rossbach and wilson 1992: 40). further, a recent study by june mcnicholas in the british journal oj psychology slnn\s that dogs are a "wonderful social ice-breaker." a woman followed on her daily routine for five days had three conversations when without a dog, and 65 when accompanied. even shabbily dressed experimenters with vicious looking dogs had "improved social interaction." ( 15/2/00: b4). robins et al showed that dogs breach the "civil inattention" normally expressed between strangers (gofrman 1963: 84); further that societies of dog owners are formed. their "westside park" is similar to the glebe dog parks in that dog owners form an "ongoing public collectivity," create boundaries for the drafting of newmembers (such as the limiting of early conversations to dog matters) and so on. (1991). 8. in regarding animals, arluke and sanders show how a dog's identity is mutually constructed among the owner, dog, and others (a discursive production of selves): "typically, those who live with companion animals routinely define them as minded actors, as virtual persons... they typically are socially incorporated as members of the family... it is through ongoing interactional experience with the dog that the owner learns to "read" gaze, vocalizations, body expressions and other communicative acts." going further, "through the process of speaking for the dog," the owner "actively constructs both for him or her-self and others the identity of the animal" ( 1996: 65-67). 9. i admit to a certain nostalgic sentiment toward the way things 'used to be' when i was a kid with my dog in the city and country. perhaps it was my youth, but also different times, as maria battiata describes: "some tectonic plate had shifted in the culture from my childhood in the 60s and 70s, when responsible canine management still consisted mostly of opening the back door and letting the dog out... by the mid-90s, leash laws and clean-up-after-your-dog-laws had been joined by no-dogs-on-the-beach laws, and keep-your-dog-out-of-my-park laws, even proposals for banning entire breeds of dog... (and) had not the tenor of this conversation changed as well, from pleasant suggestion to indignant demand? from 'responsible dog owners clean up after their pets' to 'don't i vi n rhink of letting your dog squat here' (31 7 99). 10. the ncc is a semi-autonomous regional body with jurisdiction over hundreds of acres ofgreenspace in ottawa-hull. its federally appointed officers arc net answerable to local, provincial or regional authorities, they make their own rules. as will be seen, their attempt to impose new regulations on dog owners in ottawa resulted in a severe backlash 36 volume 18, 2002 ( lieinins alternates 11. lands designated as dog parks are a recent phenomenon. "the first organized struggle for a formal dog park in the united states came in 1985. . . in berkeley (calif.) as competition for local space was intensifying" (31/7/99). 12. as a supervisor on this paper and also a local dog owner, this professor was what johnson calls an "inside dopester." who is "a person who expresses an interest in directing the substantive concerns of a research project. to put it differently, he is the one with his own ideas about what the researcher should study" ( 1975: 122). in this case, our interests in freedom for dogs coincided, and my informant was able to provide me with many good leads for interviews and events. 13. in ottawa overall, john robson estimates that some 33% of households have dogs, meaning there are at least 300,000 dogs in the city (5/1 1/99: a 18). that figure would seem to be higher in the glebe: of the 14 apartments in my building, three have dogs for a total of five and people sometimes babysit other dogs. the two houses directly opposite my apartment have dogs; the woman two doors down the street has a dog, as does our neighbor on the other side of and behind the building. in eighteen households, there are ten dogs, or over 50% of households have dogs. this is closer to a 1988 national survey by the veterinary medical association which shows that almost 40% of american households include an average of 1.5 dogs (sanders 1993: 209). in the u.k. and northern ireland, the number is around 25% (wells et al 1997: 45). based on a number of studies, siegel estimates that "one third to one half of all households in the english speaking world have pets" such as dogs and cats ( 1993: 157). 14. in paris, where the city's 200,000 dogs deposit 16 tonnes of waste daily, largely on city streets and sidewalks, some 12,000 is cleaned up by 70 contracted workers on scooters. nonetheless, 650 people per year are admitted to hospital after slipping on dog excrement on the sidewalk. parisians are known to be dog lovers but are notoriously lazy about picking up; a harris poll shows that 94% of parisians polled found dog waste to be the most offensive type of public litter ( 10/11/99: a15). washington post reporter mary battista, who compiled a four-page feature on dogs for the ottawa citizen, estimates that "the average dog produces about 140 grams oi' excrement a day. there are about 28,000 dogs in the city of ottawa alone, producing 3,920 kilograms (daily)" or roughly the equivalent weight of two large cars (31/7/99). 15. this 1900 letter is from a time of transition, when working dogs were do longer needed and the concept of "pets" had not yet arrived in the cities. in a marxist analysis. phineas points out that dogs as domestic pets, as opposed to working animals kept along with farm animals in the 19 century cities, were a post-wwi phenomenon among the lower and middle classes. "the nonutilitarian pet is something of an unknown for nineteenth-century society" although cities were "full of wandering animals." as the extended family volume 18. 2001 37 alternate routes collapsed in the industrial cities, servanthood declined, births became more limited leading to the nuclear family, dogs became "docile and undemanding... subordinate family members" to compensate and also add social cachet ( 1973: 339-340). as the history of pets became "the history of middle-class standards for pets." it came to be that the "award-winning animal was not the natural animal, but a cosmeticized creature whose main virtue was complete docility" (342). 16. when recounting some of these stories recently to a colleague, one who has no pets, he remarked that i had a lot of nerve to be "imposing" peaches on people and the public. i hadn't thought of it that way. i just wanted to bring her along and most people enjoyed that, but i must admit that some people do find her presence an imposition, or a territorial intrusion. 1 7. i smoke, as does this owner, and probably my dog is exposed to too much of it. the effects of owners' smoking (and other licit consumption, such as alcohol) on dogs has not been studied. in a 1995 health canada survey of smoking and non-smoking women in university some respondents "equated smoking in the home with child abuse, and one even mentioned animal abuse, if pets were forced to live with smokers" (kellner 1999: 5). in. although breeds such as the pit bull and rottweiler account for a large number of serious dog attacks. terrier types account for almost a third of all dog attacks (see budiansky 1999). there are many statistics on dog bites, but none are conclusive. most fail to take into account relative numbers of breeds in the dog population (pit bulls are a small but growing percentaqge. terriers are common). in his 1985 study of dog bites in dallas, wright showed that the most common dog bites are inflicted by "owned, male dogs that bit victims that were male. 20 years of age or younger, and acquainted with but not living in the same household as the dog" ( 1990: 1 13). owned dogs were more likely to bite, and cause serious harm, than strays. most dog attacks/bites occur in late may and early june (ibid, ottawa cilizen reports), partly i think because dogs and people are meeting again after a period of long confinement and separation (territorial bounds must be redefined). dogs most at risk to attack arc those that are normally kept chained or confined and not properly socialized or exercised. another survey show that in texas in 1996. 56% of serious dog attacks were by mastiff breeds such as pit bulls, which is a very high number considering that mastiffs make up a small percentage of the total dog population. b, (' 19. for both animals and people. robert ardrcy observes that "the disposition to possess a territory is innate the command to defend it is also innate. but its position and borders will be learned" (1970: 24). it is in the learning that conflict occurs. also, perhaps, at least for people. "we are antagonistic beings, despite all social necessity..." (despite a biological right of privacy); "why do we enter crowds the mere advantageously to resent them, gather in cities the ?d volume 18. 2002 chemins alternants more richly to possess neighbors to complain about?" (1970: 162-163) is it partly because, as ardrey argues in the case of human warlike behavior. "the territorial imperative is as blind as a cave fish, as consuming as a furnace, and it commands beyond logic, opposes all reason, suborns all moralities, strives for no goal more sublime than survival" (236). 20. in his examinations of "human ecology" and the city as a natural phenomenon. park argues that social stability is determined "largely by physical distances" and by people being "rooted in the soil." a reference 1 think of every time i am in my garden. while some, such as property owners, are rooted in the glebe, the mobility of many other people in the area makes for constant change (1952: 120). 21. regarding the "community" or "society" of dog owners, more from the same article: "the roots of all this go back around 10 years, when the first los angeles dog park formed at the top of laurel canyon. many people in the hollywood crowd live here, and celebrities quickly chose sides. the late anthony perkins complained that his wife and children were afraid to use the park because of the dogs. artist david hockney, whose much-painted dachshund, stanley, used the laurel canyon park to exercise, defended the right of dogs to run free. "whenever i run into david hockney," mike woo. then a los angeles city councilman, remarked wearily to me in the early days of the laurel canyon leash-free zone, "all i want to do is talk about art. and all he wants to do is talk about the dog park." the star-studded status of the laurel canyon park is not lost on those in less rarefied sections of town. "i don't take chopper here anymore," said one of my silverlake neighbors, an actress, about her boxer. "over at laurel canyon ... well, you just meet a better class of dog." silverlake, being silverlake, does attract its share of weirdos." in the glebe also, certain people seem to prefer certain parks, perhaps partially for the human social circles involved. 22. gusfield notes that "common territory" is necessary to "communal sentiment," to the extent that it is "an essential condition for community" and is often coterminous as in "the local community"" (gusfield 1975: 32). as a single male and an avowed researcher, new to the territory, i am not part of this "community" in the park. 23. most people i talked to were enthusiastic about this project. this neighbor regarded me as a threat. as sanders says, "the presentation of oneself as nonthreatening is of central importance for the field worker. additionally, the researcher is well advised to adopt a relatively naive manner... (which) allows the researcher to legitimately ask questions about taken-for-granted features oi" the setting and the interaction which takes place therein... ( but | presenting oneself as an acceptable incompetent because increasingly problematic as the researcher spends more time in the field and becomes identified as someone volume 18, 2001 39 alternate routes who knows the ropes" (sanders 1980: 164). the more i "legitimately" asked questions or made comments regarding dogs or the park, the more my neighbor became hostile. 24. "social risks may arise wherever there is an encounter... encounters are morally serious occasions fraught with great risks where one puts on the line a public face... while the interactants are aware that each is putting on a public face, they will look for clues to glean some "real self presumably lurking beneath the mask... encounters are hazardous because of the ever present possibility that identity and status will be disconfirmed or damaged by behavior" (lyman 1970: 146-47). the risk here would perhaps be brought about obtrusion, "the capacity oi~ a claimant to press territorial demands into a wider sphere than others feel is his due" (goffman 1971: 51 ). 25. the resultant discussions amongst staff did nothing to help the situation, in that rather than confront issues and resolve them they escalated things through what goffman calls the "treatment of the absent," where "in service trades... customers who are treated respectfully during the performance are often ridiculed, gossiped about, caricatured, cursed and criticized... plans may be worked out for "selling" them, or employing "angles" against them, or pacifying them. . . secret derogation seems much more common than secret praise, perhaps because such derogation serves to maintain the solidarity of the team, demonstrating mutual regard at the expense of those absent and compensating, perhaps, for the loss of self-respect that may occur when the audience must be accorded accommodative face-to-face treatment ( 1958:108-109). in the case o\~ dogs, as alison ingram demonstrated, people are more likely to complain to authorities about dog behavior than confront the owner (see ingram in last spriny section). 25. smaller communities tend toward more "intimate and personal associations." park pointed out in his 1916 study "the city" that in urban environments "the individual'^ status is determined (more by) fashion and "front." and the art oi' life is largely reduced to skating on thin surfaces and a scrupulous study of style and manners" ( 1952: 47). similarly, "goffman's social actor, like machiavelli"s prince, lives externally. he engages in a daily round of impression management, presenting himself to advantage when he is able. rescuing what he can from a bad show. his everyday life consists of interaction rituals... saving his own and someone clses"s face... in general being continuously alive to the requirements of behavior in public places" il yman 1970: 20). one of those requirements. 1 think, is a lower profile than the one we had been keeping, as both patron and researcher. 26. as ( nisticld \'oum\ in his study of four bars, "there was both interaction between legal and social controls and observance of social controls with indifference to law" with regards to drinking and driving, but the same can be 40 volume 18. 2002 chemim alternatifs said of this bar and its pro-dog policy ( 1996: 166). this helps make the idea of a dog being barred from its' 'local' somewhat less absurd. 27. "control of territory is a major source of identity, and among persons and groups in status transition (which is endemic in a pluralistic society such as the glebe) the territorial imperative may be uppermost in their minds" (lyman 1970: 219). "public territories are... ambiguous with respect to accorded freedoms. first, the official rights of access may be regularly violated by local custom. second, status discrepancy may modify activity and entrance rights." further confusion arises in "home territories" such as clubs and bars, where "regular participants have a relative freedom of behavior and a sense of intimacy and control over the area." but the areas of home and public territories "are not always clearly differentiated in the social world and what may be defined and used as a public place by some may be defined and used as a home territory by others" (lyman 1970: 91-92). 28. dr. michael fox. veterinarian and senior scholar of bioethics with the humane society of the u.s.: "my voice as a veterinarian and a behaviorist is that dogs on the leash tend to be more aggressive because they feel more vulnerable when they're constrained and they are protective when they're attached to their owners" (4/11/99: al >. 29. i think this is one of the worst causes of misbehavior in dogs. as rogue primate author john livingston argues, "there are those who will leave their dogs alone, chained in a backyard or garage or shut in a basement all day long. and then expect them to behave like gentlefolk. but dogs, like us, are social beings, and solitary confinement is just about the worst thing that can befall us. we go stir-crazy. then, anything can happen." (29/1/00: a 19-20) 30. english mastiffs were bred in the 1 700s as an "agent of social control" and kept chained during the days, to be released at night to attack poachers. like the rottweiler, a descendant of roman mastiffs trained in germany as personal attack dogs for farmers and merchants carrying money from market, it was bred to be a fearsome and deadly attack dog (lilly 1997: 133). there is a rich history in the use and breeding of dogs for social control, in everything from war to slavery to police work and private protection, beyond the ken of this work. it is worth noting though that fears for individual safety today that result in "informal responses to crime" such as house alarms and gun ownership "have long shaped the parameters that define the custodial and protective expectations people have of dogs" (1997: 132); and so there is acceptance and even encouragement of ownership of aggressive breeds. 31. sanders points out that "animal companions (are) far more than objects. they (are) minded, creative, empathetic, and responsive. the animal-human relationships they share is authentically social" (1993: 212). further, "pets (particularly dogs) can he emotional substitutes for significant others like volume 18, 2001 41 alternate routes spouses, romantic partners and children," and single, divorced, childless and remarried people are most likely to "attribute human qualities to their pets" (albert 1987: 22). wells et al point out a gender difference in the attitudes towards animals in northern ireland: women are described as having more "moralistic" attitudes towards animals (against exploitation, humanistic and sentimental) while men are characterized as more "utilitarian' and "dominionistic" (practical functions, dominance in sporting or competitive events) (1997: 46). 32. marv battiata traces this through "rapidly developing suburbs around major cities" in the 70s, with shrinking land and increased auto traffic making it inhospitable for dogs, to echo boomers "filling the parks with strollers and toddlers once again" in the 90s. at the same time, larger dogs, the canine equivalent of suvs. became more popular and "so the dogs were getting bigger and everything else was shrinking time, green space. in those conditions, marginal dog behavior became intolerable. jumping up on strangers, knocking over toddlers, sullying the sidewalk all of those behaviors once treated with a measure of forbearance suddenly were not." or. as j.r. ackerley. author or mv dog tulip put it: "like the smoker, the dog owner in the late 1990s is a presumed scofflaw, guilty until proven otherwise, a self-indulgent creature whose expensive little habit carries health risks that pose an economic burden to the rest of society. . . a loose dog. once as unremarkable as a loose cat. is now an emergency" (31/7/99). 33. although the ncc declared it was acting on an escalating number o\' complaints (their figures show a rise from 100 to 600 yearly from 1994 to 1999), critics claim that the commission may be acting a) to regulate and stabilize lands it may be thinking of selling and b) to force owners to assume liability for "public liability and property damage insurance coverage" including dog run signage specifying "that owners take full liability for any personal injury, death or property damage caused by their dog" (ncc 1999). 34. battiata sees increasing dog regulation and parks as inevitable, designed with "private initiative, public resources and compromise all the way around," noting that "the struyidc to establish a dog park can strengthen as well as divide a community, and the benefits can ripple tar beyond the park's confines'' (31 9). 35. "from the outset, the observer should carefully monitor his or her subjective experience in the field. feelings of discomfort, threat, and self-consciousness arc important data, as they are recognized, analyzed and recorded in the researcher's held notes. 1 h is data allows the investigator to keep track of research bias and changes in the ways he or she is perceived by various interaetants... (and) also provide a foundation for understanding the discomfort normally experienced by other actors m the scitmsj" (sanders 1980: 168). 4: volume 18, 2002 chemins alternants further. "researchers acquire the richest data by examining their own experiences, seeing how others react to their in-the-field performances, and attending to the changes in their self concepts as the investigation proceeds" (arluke and sanders 1996: 25-26). 36. the ncc had underestimated people's affection for their dogs, as was shown in the reaction to the atlantic monthly article, and their desire to exercise and socialize them as part of their family. a january 2000 american animal hospital association survey of 1,200 pet owners in canada and u.s. showed that 72% of people greet pet before mate when arriving home; 31% state that their pet understands them better than mate; 84% call themselves their pet's "mom" or "dad;" 65% have sung and danced with or for their pets; 46% allow their pet to sleep in their bed most of the time. owners take their pets to the vet twice as often as they visit doctors. 98% celebrate christmas with their pet, but only 2% hannukah. 23% dress their animal up on halloween. 65% throw birthday parties for their pets and when giving gifts to their pets, 43% wrap them. 51% of dog owners have just one dog, and 28% have two. compared to cat owners, 33% who have at least three cats and 1 1% have at least five. (9/1/ 00: a5) 37. the glebe is not unlike other communities in this of course. park described two communities in an urban region in 1919, one well-off and one a slum, where "the laws which prevail are not a communal product, and there is no organized public opinion which supports and contributes to their enforcement." like the glebe, he describes this region of "different classes and kinds of people" as in transition: "everywhere the old order is passing, but the new order has not arrived. everything is loose and free, and everything is problematic" (1952:88-89). 38. in iroquois culture, around mid-february, a midwinter ceremony is held to cure the sicknesses of the winter and welcome in the strength of spring. tooker (1985) describes the attendant white dog ceremony from years ago where a white dog is imbued with all the fears and hopes of the community, then thrown into the fire. this is an extreme example of the dog-human closeness, a direct link, evoked when the situation becomes trying or dangerous. so-called "cabin fever" kicks in at this time of year also, and there is no reason to believe that dogs do not suffer from it as well. 39. "in contrast to conventional positivistic assumptions about the interactional abilities and emotional experience ofnonnhuman animals, there is considerable evidence that dogs and other animals with whom humans routinely interact do at least possess a rudimentary ability to "take the role of the other;" and they behave in ways that are purposefully intended to shape interactions to accomplish their defined goals or communicate an understanding of their associates' subjective experience" (arluke and sanders 1996: 44-45). volume 18, 2()() j 43 alternate routes 40. this goes well beyond the traditional concept of dogs' abilities. as mead explained... "the dog cannot give to himself that stimulus that somebody else gives to him. lie can respond to it he cannot himself take a hand, so to speak, in conditioning his own reflexes" (1962: ion). most people would disagree. according to a study on anthropomorphism by eddy et. al.. who found that when asked to rate 30 animals' cognitive abilities, according to questions such as whether "you feel the animal could trick another animal into going to a place where he/she knows food isn't in order to get the food itself or "the degree to which you feel the animal experiences the world in a way that is similar to the way you experience (it)," rated from one to 10. dogs placed 6.6 on the index, slightly lower than chimps and gorillas in the 7 range, and not far behind humans at 9.7. by comparison, cats were rated 6.1, pigs and cows at 3.6, canaries and crocodiles at 2.6, and worms and cockroaches at 1. ( 1993: 92-93) 41. in her conclusion, the author tells of being intimidated by a neighbor's dog. leading to fences being erected and right-of-way disputes. she had tried "informal mediation" with the neighbor and the landlord (who was also his neighbor's father) and thought she had been successful, using a tried and tested sociological technique. after a few more encounters though, she was asked to move out. "conflict management, in my study, did not prove to be a simple matter of practicing moral minimalism and hoping somehow everything would work itself out. instead, people seem to be willing to use various tactics, searching the range of possibilities until they arrive at an action that brings the conflict situation to a workable solution..." given her own later data showing that direct conflict was the least preferable way of dealing with dog problems among her respondents, the author could have foreseen that after numerous complaints on her part, her landlord would solve the conflict using "permanent avoidance" and serve her with an eviction notice ( 1995: 169-170). perhaps, like the woman across from our dog park, she should have called the police instead. references adler, patricia a. and adler. peter. 1997. "parent-as-researcher: the politics o\' researching in personal life" in hertz, rossana (ed.). re/1exivinand voice: 21-44. albas. dan and albas. cheryl. 1998. "experience, methodological observation and theory" in grills. scott. doing ethnographic research: 121-142. albert. alexa and bulcroft, kris. 1 9<s7. "pets and urban life" in anthrozoos 1 1 : 9-25. ardrey. robert. 1970. the territorial imperative. new york: athenum arlukc. arnold, and sanders. clinton r. 1996. regarding animals. temple university press meeker. iis. 1989. " i ricks of the trade" in studies in symbolic interaction 10: 481-490. 44 volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifs budiansky, stephen. "the truth about dogs" in atlantic monthly july 1999: 39-53. charmaz, kathy and mitchell, richard g. jr. 1997. "the myth of silent authorship" in hertz, rosanna (ed. ) reflexivity and voice: 193-215. davies, bronwyn and harre, rom. 1990. "positioning the discursive production of selves" in journalfor the tlieoty ofsocial behaviour 20/1 : 43-63. denzin, norman k. and lincoln, yvonna s. 1994. "entering the field of qualitative research" in the handbook ofqualitative research: 1-17. denzin, norman k. (ed.). 1994. handbook of qualitative research. thousand oaks, calif: sage press. denzin, norman k.. 1989. interpretive interactionism. newbury park, calif.: sage press. diamond, beverley and witmer, robert (eds.). 1994. canadian music issues ofhegemony and identity. toronto: canadian scholars press. devault, marjorie l. 1997. "personal writing in social research" in hertz, rosanna (ed. ) reflexivity and voice: 216-228. eddy, timothy j. with gordon g. gallup jr. and daniel j. povinelli. 1993. "attribution of cognitive states to animals: anthropomorphism in comparative perspective" in journal ofsocial issues 49/ 1:87-101. glaser, barney g. and anselm l. strauss. 1967. the discovery of grounded theory. chicago: aldine publishing. goffman, erving. 1971. relations in public: microstudies of the public order. new york: basic books. goffman, erving. 1958. the presentation ofthe self in everyday life. university of edinburgh press. grass, gunter. 1999. "to be continued..." in the ottawa citizen 9/12/99: a10. grills, scott. 1998. doing ethnographic research. thousand oaks: sage. 1998. "on being nonpartisan in partisan settings" in grills, scott. doing ethnographic research. thousand oaks: sage. guba, egon g. and lincoln, yvonna s. 1994. "competing paradigms in qualitative research" in the handbook ofqualitative research: 1051 1 7 gubrium, jaber. 1988. analyzing field reality. london: sage publications. gubrium, jaber f. and holstein, james a. 1997. the new language ofqualitative method. new york: oxford university press. guiness, alec. 1999. a positively final appearance a journal. 1996-1998. london: harrish hamilton ltd. gusfield, joseph r. 1996. contested meanings the construction ofalcohol problems. madison: u of wisconson press. . 1975. community a critical response. oxford: basil blackwell. herndon, marcia. 1982. native american music. darby, pennsylvania: norwood editions. volume 18, 2001 45 alternate routes hertz, rossana (ed.). 1997. reflexivity and voice. thousand oaks: sage publications. homans, george. 1904. "bringing men back in' in the american sociological review 29/6: 809-818. ingram. alvson leigh. 1995. barking dogs. bothersome neighbors, and trampled gardens land other serious conflict situations): how people respond to nuisances and conflicts at home. ph.d. dissertation. washington state university. johnson. john m. 1975. doing field research. new york: the free press. ftarp, david a. 1980. "observing behavior in public places: problems and strategies" in shaffir. william b. et. al. fieldwork experience qualitative approaches to social research: 82-98. kellner. florence. 1999. "the smoking self: views o\ young women's tobacco use by users, hornier users and non-users." paper presented in may 1999 at the qualitative analysis conference, fredericton nb. latour. bruno. 1996. arams or the love oftechnology. cambridge: harvard u press. 1993 we have never been modern. cambridge: harvard u press. laughlin. charles d. 1992. "fuzziness and phenomenology in ethnological research: insights from fuzzy sets theory" in qualitative analysis conference proceedings 2, may 22-25, carleton university: 1-48 lawrence, elizabeth. 1989. "wild birds: therapeutic encounters and human meanings" in anthrozoos 3: 111-118. lilly. j robert; pnckett, michael b. 1997. "social control and dogs: a soeiohistorical analysis" in crime and delinquency 43/2: 123-147 lindner, rolf. 1990. the reportage of urban culture: robert park and the chicago school. cambridge university press. i yman, stanfrod m. and scott. marvin b. 1970. a sociology of the absurd. new york: meredith corporation. mead. george herbert. 1962. mind, self and society. chicago: u of chicago press. mills. c. wright. 1959. the sociological imagination. new york: grove press. mitchell. robert w; thompson, nicholas s. 1990. "the effects of familiarity on dog-human play" in anthrozoos '4 1: 24-43. mykhalovsky, inc. 1997. "reconsidering "table lalk" critical thoughts on the relationship between sociology. autobiography and self-indulgence" in hertz, rosanna (ed.) reflexivity and voice: 229-251. ncc 1999. proposed ncc domestic animal regulation and dog run facilities study executive summary. press release kit november 1999. patterson. michael. 1996. native music in canada: through the seven tires carleton 1 1 ma thesis. 46 volume 18, 2002 chemins alternates park. robert e. 1952. human communities the city and human ecology. glencoe: the free press. park, robert e. with ernest w burgess and r. d. mckenzie. 1925. the city. chicago: u of chicago press. peltier, wilfred. 1988. "thinking the world in to being: storytelling in native society." ma research essay for the school of canadian studies, carleton u. phineas. charles. "household pets and urban alienation' in journal of social history 7/3: 338-343. prus, robert. 1980. "sociologist as hustler: the dynamics of acquiring information' in shaffir, william b. with robert a. stebbins and allan turowetz. 1 980. fieldwork experience qualitative approaches to social research: 1 32144. —talk at the qac on interactionist ethnography with sharpened poststructural tools including increased awareness of subtexts, expressions of power secreted in the research, primacy of the text or event over the subject; the resulting prioritizing of concerns of the researcher over the concerns and claims subject of the subject runs counter to traditional interactionist ethnography and intersubjectivity (dilthey, mead. blumer), however. robins, douglas m. with clinton r. sanders and spencer e. cahill. 1991. "dogs and their people: pet -facilitated interaction in a public setting" in journal of contemporary ethnography 20/ 1 : 3-25 rossbach, kelly ann and john p. wilson. 1992. "does a dog"s presence make a person appear more likable?: two studies" in anihrozoos 5/1: 40-5 1 . sanders, clintonn r. 1993. understanding dogs: caretakers" attributes of mindedness in canine-human relationships" in journal of contemporary ethnography 22/2: 205-225 sanders, clinton r. 1980. "rope burns: impediments to the achievement o\~ basic comfort early in the field research experience" in shaffir, william b. with robert a. stebbins and allan turowetz. 1980. fieldwork experience qualitative approaches to social research: 158-183. shaffir, william b. with robert a. stebbins and allan turowetz. 1980. fieldwork experience qualitative approaches to social research. new york: st. martin's press. siegel, judith m. 1993. "companion animals: in sickness and in health" in the journal ofsocial issues 49/ 1 , spring: 157-1 67. tenner, edward. 1996. why things bite back: technology and the revenge of unintended c 'onsequeiu es . tooker, elisabeth (ed.). 1985. an iroquois source book. volume 2: calendric rituals. new york and london: garland publishing. yormbrock. julia k and john m. cirossherg. 1988. "cardiovascular effects o[~ human-pet dog interactions" in journal ofbehavioral medicine 1 1 5: 509-517. volume is, 2001 47 alternate routes walsh. paul g; and peter g mertin. 1994. "the training of pets as therapy dogs in a women's prison: a pilot study" in anthrozoos 112: 124-128. wells. deborah 1.. and peter g. pepper. 1997 "pet ownership and adults" views on the use of animals" in society & animals 5/1 : 45-63. wright, john c". 1 990. "reported dog bites: are owned and stray dogs different?" in anthrozoos all: 113-119. xewspapers a coded index i his data list is in chronological order, covering six months from september 1999 to february 2000. all clippings are from the ottawa citizen which i read daily, unless noted otherwise. i estimate that these references represent 75%80% of all references in that paper over the months. there are some 60 clippings noted, with 169 articles and letters related to dogs. of these, 66 argue for more freedom for dogs, 45 for increased controls. 35 provide general information. 10 are stories about animal abuse, seven are dog bite reports and six are dog rescue stories. index ("ode: a, reports of abuse by familiars; b, dog attack stories; c, arguments for legal controls or territorial containment of dogs; f, movements and arguments for increased freedom for dogs, lifting o\~ restrictions; i, informational or "human' interest stories; s, dog rescue stories. note: routine adoption notices by the ottawa-carleton humane society were not catalogued. 12/7/99: d5 two letters asking that dogs be allowed to continue to run free at bruce pit. ff 13/7/99: d5 two letters calling for leash-free zone in atboretum and other areas. ii 14/7/99: c2 article on dog bylaws. i 15/7/99: d5 six letters on both sides, regarding leash laws. c, f 1 5 7/99: a3 two articles arguing for better integration of dogs into community through more green spaces for animals and city planning that takes dogs into account. toronto considering creating more leash-free areas. f 16 7/99: din mayor of montreal announces that plans to "regulate where dogs can urinate" have been scrapped. city council had voted to prohibit dogs from urinating on private property. f 19 7 99: 1)6 letter calling for freedom for dogs at bruce pit. f 23 7 99: f5 three letters supporting dog freedom. on<: pointing out that dog owners are reliable "neighborhood watch" in places such as bruce pit. letter from a dog in rebuttal to the atlantic monthly article, claiming to love his family. f ff 23 7/99: al^ column by john robson m rebuttal to the atlantic monthly article, claiming that there is cooperation and mutual emotion between joys and 48 volume 1 8, 2002 chemim alternatifi owners: "as pavlov showed, any argument that animals are machines applies to people too, and frankly i'm more certain your dog loves you than your wife does." f 26/7/99: b5 two letters in rebuttal to the atlantic monthly article, citing minded, concerned behavior and rescues by dogs. f, s 27/7/99: d3 a muslim shopkeeper who refused entry to a blind man's dog is charged under the ontario blind persons" rights act. f 27/7/99: d5 six letters arguing for freedom for dogs, one complaining about loose dogs chasing deer. 5 f. c 28/7/99: 4 ottawa sun reports dog attacks cat and man. recent "vicious" dog attacks: june 4, 8 1999; june 1. may 29, may 19 1998; may 27 1997. c 30/7/99: b2 letter attributed to a dog in rebuttal to the atlantic monthly article. letter arguing that dog owners are more responsible than in the past. f 31/7/99 b2-b4 four page feature on dogs, dog parks, current troubles in ottawa. i 31/7/99: b2 national post story on washington dcs first daycare centre for dogs. i 7/8/99: b8 letter in rebuttal to the atlantic monthly article. i 7/8/99: b8 letter in rebuttal to the atlantic monthly article, stating that dogs are not pets, they are our "owner-managers" and train us to do their bidding. written by an admiring union executive. i 7/8/99: kl article about woman who has started dog-biscuit baking business. i 10/8/99 ? letter by dog and cat owner in chelsea arguing that with retractable leashes now available, no domestic animals should be allowed to run loose in the city or the country. argues for legal accountability for dog owners and mandatory pet training. c 10/8/99 ? national post story on dog prostheses for neutered pets (neuticles) and many other pet indulgences in the u.s. i 17/8/99 a3 "dog lovers abuse accused" in cobourg dog-dragging story (see below). a 17/8/99: f3 sony pet robot dog sells 5,000 units in u.s. and japan in two days at uss2,500 each. most successful new product launch in sony history. astro is his name-o. i 17/8/99: 16 ottawa sun describes how a man in cobourg ontario, who dragged his dog behind his truck, is confronted by an angry mob outside the courthouse where he was charged. the community has raised s52, 000 towards vet bills. a 17/8/99: al national post describes how dog found amongst a group of chinese illegal migrants creates lineups for its adoption while public opinion insists the migrants be sent home. i 18/8/99 ? dog found amongst a group of chinese illegal migrants creates lineups for its adoption while public opinion insists the migrants be sent home. i volume 18, 2001 49 alternate routes 23 8 99 b3 marlon c'owpland buys fourth dog, a "fierce, four-year old rottweiler" for "protection." i 25 n 99 bl national post report on the new legal phenomenon in the u.s of "joint pet custody" for separated couples. i 31 8 w: al 1 bruce pit in nepean mentioned as nuisance spot with too many free dogs. nc'c says it has received complaints, ("andice o'connell organizes 250 owners to gather and prepare a pro-dog strategy for the fall. f 6 ') 99: b5: reprint of 1900 letter. "down on dogs." a resident of lower town, the complainant writes that his neighborhood "is fairly polluted with yelping, barking, howling and fighting mongrels of no breed in particular." he asks: "what right has a man to keep an unclean, noisy and often dangerous animal on the street, impeding travel, defiling lawns, flowers, door-steps in fact everything in sight. would such nuisances be endured from human beings'.' yet the depredations committed by those dogs are more unspeakable than anything a human being could do." he goes on to argue that "dogs are unnecessary in a city where police protection is paid for and furnished" and concludes that "if people are bound to make themselves disagreeable in a community, let them pay for it. make the tax prohibitive. . . ( and ) why not have dog trappers like other large cities?" c 9 ') 99: ("5 reprint of 1903 letter penned by "an old dog" complaining about the imposition of a s2 yearly dog tax by the city. f 13/9/99 b5 reprint of 1910 letter complaining about packs of roving dogs in downtown ottawa. "a lady and two little children crossing metcalfe street at waverley were saved, through what seemed to the onlookers to be a miracle, from being knocked down by a horse goaded into a furious pace by the onslaught o\" five collies, a setter, two fox terriers and several others of the dogs infesting that neighborhood." second letter from the writer, who does not give his name, in fear o\' the many reprisals from dog owners he received with his last letter. c 14 9/99: f7 a pensioner who must euthanize her poodle o\' 18 years receives ever 300 calls of offers to help with the costs. i 28 9 1 >'j: d5 fetter from 1916 in which writers complain about treatment of horses and dogs in ottawa, in particular the common practice of hitching dogs to carts and having them pull "ignorant and thoughtless bens" around the streets. "often times it is only a small spaniel, and the boy is 15 or 16 years oi' age. . . fame horses and harnessed dogs seem to be more peculiar to ottawa than to any other city of my experience." 1 3 10 99: al feature on the debate between catholics, who do not believe that dogs go to heaven, and anglicans, who have recently stated that they do. also a review of books on the subject such as mary buddemeyer"s will i sec fido in heaven? anglican rev. bill prentice argues that since dogs can't sm mo free 50 volume 18. 2002 c 'hemim alternates will) they must be allowed into heaven, also: "mean dogs that attack people also warrant a place in heaven, because such behavior is often the result of poor training, or reflects a personality trait of the dog"s owner." rev. deacon holds a "blessing of the animals" at the humane society. also see 12/10/99, 22/1/00. 1 4/10/99 bl feature on the blessing of animals at the feast of st. francis of assisi. i 8/10/99: 13 notice in the glebe report by columnist clyde sanger that "rafiki intends to celebrate his 13 birthday in his accustomed manner, by inviting all other jack russell terriers in the neighborhood and beyond to a party in brown's inlet, for games and a character contest. due to the absurdely stringent regulations and heavy fines put upon unleashed dogs in brown's inlet until october 31, he is planning the party for saturday, november 6. at 4 p.m." f 12/10/99: a17 arguments for and against dogs going to heaven, in response to an anglican minister's assertion that they do. three letters. one argues that the beaver, endowed with reason and the possibility of cultural evolution, as described by writers in the 1800s, would be a likelier candidate. i 16/10/99 b2: feature about a woman from edmonton crossing canada on her buckboard, pulled by six huskys. left with a quarter in her pocket after a fight with her boyfriend. she was in kakabeka falls near north bay, headed for newfoundland. f 23/10/99 al: ncc announces "plans to transform the dog's breakfast of leash laws on its lands into a single menu of rules to cover all its properties." calling for leashes on all land and trails, exclusion of dogs from picnic areas, beaches, campsites etc., and the creation of "special fenced-in areas" for dogs, financed and maintained by the dog owners. c 28/10/99: dsreprint on 1939 letter: the writer is distressed that a fox terrier is listed as part of a lot in a bailiffs sale. if the dog was seized along with the owner"s belongings, it should be returned. f 31/10/99: al above the fold color picture of a dog barking at a sony aibo robot dog. cost: s3,500 i 31/10/99: a9 article on dog "perceptiveness," a kind of telepathy described by scientist rupert sheldrake. i 31/10/99: c6 letter from cyclist recently attacked by roaming rottweiler in rockcliffe park, who gets no sympathy from the dog's owner. has been attacked 4-5 times cycling on city paths by different types of dogs. hopes police will act. c 2/1 1/99: al 7 two letters in support of free dogs, one backing the ncc. f f, c 2/11/99: d3 national capital coalition for people and dogs declares ncc's planned 3-5-acre fenced runs are too small and inappropriate. candice o'connell says "if they want to take dog walking and throw it into that level where everybody is standing around having a cup of coffee and watching their dogs volume 18, 2001 5/ alternate routes run around, that's not the basis of recreational dog walking." a florida consultant, who runs a dog park in coral springs, says that fenced-in dog parks, with varied recreational areas (open space, "discovery zone" with tunnels and jumps, park benches for "reading" etc.) are a good idea. also humane society announces 167 dog adoptions during adopt-s-dog month in october. f, c 3 1 1/99: ci "dog owners hijack ncc dog meeting" as 1,000 people in ottawa show up to protest the ncc rules. 30 owners get up to give impromtu speeches. comments from owners include mine: "i walk my dog all around the glebe. i take her down to brown's inlet and let her go. this is nazism. that sounds extreme but 1 can see they're trying to corral people into a u.s. system of segregation. the trend in the u.s. is for common dog places where they put fences between dogs and people. do you remember lassie'.' if lassie had been caged up little limmie wouldn't have been rescued." one of my key informants: "i run with my dog through the arboretum. i put him on a leash and get there and then let him off. i'm out by 7 a.m. it would be cruel to me and my dog to put him on a leash." one owner from russia bought a house near bruce pit so her dog could run free: "when i see a dog walking on a leash. i feel not safe. i'm afraid of dogs on a leash; it means the dog's not obedient." a retired woman who enjoys dog walking says: "dog walkers do a great deal for our neighborhood. we keep the parks clean and safe. my dog and i, we both run free." fffff 4 1 1 '99: al dr. michael fox, veterinarian and senior scholar of bioethics with the humane society of the u.s. states that dogs need to run and be with each other off leash. he notes an ideal park in washington where dogs run free, mixed with cyclists and kids, self-policed by the owners. "my voice as a veterinarian and a behaviorist is that dogs on the leash tend to be more aggressive because they feel more vulnerable when they're constrained and they are protective when they're attached to their owners." f 4/1 1/99: dl ncc dog forum in hull attracts only 40 people. in most quebec parks, dogs are not allowed at all and leashes are required everywhere else. si> the public may even gain some ground with the new laws. c 4/1 1/99: al 7 five letters against ncc. two in support. cc. fffff 5/11/99: a1s columnist john robson: "the growing uproar over the ncc's incomprehensible decision to ban dogs from its parks is a classic example (o\~ how to politicize the previously non-political): about one-third of households in the region have dogs; people with dogs are the main users o\~ those parks; dogs unlike people absolutely must have access to open semi-wild spaces for their mental and physical health; people have lived with dogs since the dawn of time; so some bureaucrats decided in effect to ban them." f 5/11/99 14 columnist randall dcnlcy argues that "real dogs" should be kept out of cities. c 52 volume 18. 2002 chemim alternatifs 7/1 1/99: c2 letter advocating large fees for dog ownership, in the thousands of dollars, on the reasoning that if one can't afford the fee. one can't afford to be a responsible dog owner. c 8/11/99: b12 feature about a golden retriever credited with helping a patient recover from heart surgery. s 10/11/99: a15 national post story on parisians' love for and indulgence of dogs, problem being there are few parks for them to use so the city contracts 70 people on scooters to pick up dog deposits on city streets and sidewalks. some 650 parisians are hospitalized after slipping on dog excrement each year; the city's 200,000 dogs deposit 16 tonnes of waste daily, of which the city cleans 12,000. i 21/1 1/99: a17. reprint of 1959 letter: "i hope that i will see the day coming when no one will be allowed to keep a dog, since according to my observation many dog owners care more for a dog than for helping one of their less fortunate fellow men in distress." c 23/1 1/99: 4,000 dog owners sign petition by nccpd calling for moratorium on ncc proposals; humane society joins call. f 24/1 1/99 ci : columnist dave brown takes up the case of man whose dog was killed by two pitbulls. argues for stricter controls and fines. c 25/1 1/99: c10 rockliffe residents question ncc stats on dog incidents, say the figures are vague, flawed and do not apply to them. f 29/1 1/99: a5 girl mauled to death by roving dogs in garden river aha.; story special to the citizen. b 2/12/99: a5 justice minister anne mclellan announces tough new laws on animal abuse. says she receives more than 100 calls a week about animal abuse, it is "one of the top three concerns among canadians." a, f 4/12/99: a17 letter from emigrants from britain who decry lack of freedom for their dogs here. "our vision of canadians had always been of rugged outdoor people at one with animals and nature, not a people afraid to walk in the park in case they might get bitten by a pooch, or, even more terrifying, step in a piece of dog poop... if you continue to restrict one of the simplest pleasures of life from a large segment of the population because of the phobia of a few, some of that population might just take their skills, their hard-earned money and their dogs and move elsewhere." see 28/12/99. f 14/12/99: e5 reprint of a letter from 1979: owners should be held responsible for stray dogs killing deer. c 28/12/99: a17 letter from dog owner who is leaving the city due to threats of ncc leash laws, "and taking my tax money with me." f 29/12/99: a15 report on important issues of 1999 in letters. of 5.200 letters printed, "dogs in the parks" was the number eight issue with 7n (the top three were kosovo, tax breaks and alexandre yashin and the senators). i volume 18, 2001 53 alternate routes 1 1 00: d4 feature writer janice kennedy describes her regular walks through rideau hall and the governor general's properties and others with her dog, apparently unleashed. f 9/1/00: a5 american animal hospital association survey of 1.200 pet owners in canada and u.s. 72% greet pet before mate when arriving home: 31% state their pet understands them better than mate; 84% call themselves their pet's "mom" or "dad;" 65% have sung and danced with or for their pets; 46% allow their pet to sleep in their bed most of the time. owners take their pets to the vet twice as often as they visit doctors. 98% celebrate christmas with their pet. but only 2% hannukah. 23% dress their animal up on halloween. 65% throw birthday parties for their pets and when giving gifts to their pets, 43% wrap them. 51% of dog owners have just one dog, and 28% have two, compared to cat owners. }?% who have at least three cats and 1 1% have at least five. i 12/1/00: al tantaur. a mastiff, attacked an elderly man recently as was widely reported in the press. tantaur"s history revealed in court (attacks on 2 people and one dog); verdict of euthanasia seems unlikely as it is very rarely ordered. c 13 1/00: dl interview with man attacked by tantaur he says putting the dog down is only option. owner says dog is her "lifeline to the world" c. f 17/1/00: b5 ten letters about tantaur. 5 of support and 5 condemning the dog and owner. "mastiffs are a 2,000 year old breed that has been selectively bred to launch unprovoked attacks on any size victim... they are appropriate for hunting down escaped criminals, military service and search and rescue. they are not appropriate as domestic pets." also: "english mastiffs are wonderful dogs. . . who knows whether these mistakes were provoked. . . there are other options for controlling these animals." 5 c, 5 f 20/1/00: dl breeder claims tantaur's pain from hip dysplasia caused attack. 5 letters in support of the dog. 3 urging he be put down. strong support for mastiff types, emphasis on training. c, f 22 1 '00: ln religious experts answer the question "do animals have souls' 1 " jewish and balia'i say no. anglicans equivocate. unitarians say yes. i 24 1 00: b5 fetter arguing that fighting dogs should be kept away from public and children, i.e. rottweiler, chow chow. pitbull and other mastiff types. in lexas in 1996. 56% of serious dog attacks were by mastiff breeds such as the above, which is a very high number considering that mastiffs make up a small percentage of the total dog population. b. c 28/1/00: ci judge's decision ordering tantaur be put down, based on repealed failures of the owner to keep him under control. b. c 2 l j i 00: a19-20 rogue primate author john i ivingston says that tantaur was acting rightly, in that "almost all so-called aggressivness in animals is defensive" and that the dog did not maul his victim, further that socialization is only possible in public and "1 here arc those who will leave their dogs alone, chained .u volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatift in a backyard or garage or shut in a basement all day long, and then expect them to behave like gentlefolk. but dogs, like us, are social beings, and solitary confinement is just about the worst thing that can befall us. we go stir-crazy. then, anything can happen." on a20. u of alberta research lab to stop using live dogs. f 31/1/00: b3 local article on dogs being used for emotional and physical therapy in hospitals. f, i 4/2/00: a10 national post. iqaluit council factions argue about dog controls in the town. sled dogs have killed a child. dog owners argue they must be with people to be socialized, others want the dogs moved out of town. b, c, f 6/2/00: a3 owner collapses in snow, dog gets help. s 6/2/00: ah) terrier attacked and killed by pit bull. b 15/2/00: b4 national post. study by june mcnicholas of the university of warwick in british journal of psychology shows that dogs are a "wonderful social ice-breaker." a woman followed on her daily routine for five days had three conversations when without a dog, and 65 when accompanied. even shabbily dressed experimenters with vicious looking dogs had "improved social interaction." f, i 15/2/00: el rockcliff city council to take motion to formally denounce ncc leash rules, allow dogs to run free. f 20/2/00: 13 ottawa sunday sun advertises a dog for adoption, a 55-lb. 2-yearold husky mix, with the caveat: "but be warned. aero does not like cats or people in uniform." c 21/2/00: al four cats in rockliffe killed by roaming husky malamute from manor park, most recent is the second loss for owner. calls to put the dog down. shadow"s owner claims thousands of dollars in training and vet costs. police are drafting warning letter. b. c 21/2/00: b5 letter from candice 0"connell. chairperson, national capital commission for people and dogs. "the struggle between outdoor enthusiasts has been escalating for some time. it is clearly a sign of an increasing trend to seek greater physical health through outdoor activity, and a diminishing availability of recreational green space." all park users should be responsible. dogs are not out of control, complainants are exaggerating, "leashing dogs often increases the risk of aggression... because of fear and the inability to flee (known as barrier frustration syndrome)." f 22/2/00: e3 cult of fitness for dogs and owners, daycare and fitness centres, trainers in california. i 23/2/00: d5 eleven letters re shadow the "rockliffe cat-killer." all c. 24/2/00: ci lawyer for tantaur starts defence fund for appeal. f volume is, 2001 55 alternate routes 24/2/00: an aliy zirkle oftwo rivers. alaska becomes the first woman to win the yukon quest international dog sled race, with a time of 1 1 days and 23 hours. i 25 2 00: a2 ottawa citizen given media award by humane society tor help clearing adoption backlog over the summer. i, s 25 2 00: in california animal behaviorist claims that "baby talk" is good for pets, that people instinctively use baby talk with animals because they are more attentive, physically available and "in tune to non-verbal behavior." i 26 2 00: c'l five dead dogs are found placed along the road on terry fox drive in aylmer. close to where a woman's body was discovered this summer. a 2" 2 00: a6 animal rights become subject at u.s. law schools, particularly with regard to bioengineering. steven wise, author of rattling the cage, has pioneered "malpractice cases where pets have been killed accidentally by veterinarians so he can establish precedents for awards based on the emotional distress of the animals' 'human companions.'" was hired by harvard for its first course in the field. i 27/2/00: a4 london on humane society seizes 29 maltreated german shepherds. a 27/2/00: c5 report that the dogs by the road had been starved, then strangled or poisoned. a 27/2/00: d5? rewrite of post article from 15 2. f. i 5 3 00: a3 story about stray dogs mistakenly winding up in research labs. stats from humane society: in 1999. 3,281 dogs taken in (2.4n2 strays and79n owner-relinquished); 49% claimed, 31% adopted out and 20% euthanized. of 6,556 cats taken in, only 4% were reclaimed. 41% adopted and 46% euthanized. a.i 6 3 00: ('14 dog saves life by activating phone. s ; oi): a3 purina hall offame awards in toronto, two dogs and a cat inducted tor saving peoples. fixes. s ( ) 3 00: a6 feature picture of puppies. f, i 9 3 00: a13 six dogs in vienna to be dna tested to see which one killed a woman last year. b. (' 9 3 00: f3 problems with dogs are the fault of the owners (neglect, cleaning up) not the dogs, letter states. f 10 3 00: 12 columnist dave brown cautions about bringing new babies into a house where dog has not been "trained" to accept it. and story about a couple who spent si.200 on an operation for their clou who died anyway; while sitting in the waiting room they see an dog magazine featuring a picture of them and their dog. which they "took to be a sign' that there is a "dog afterlife." ('. i i 1 3o0: 110 police still searching for man who threw dog into traffic in california. a volume 18, 2002 chemins altematifs 14/3/00: d2 injured puppy finds new home. a 14/3/00: d3 deranged woman throws two dogs to their death from 9 th floor balcony on bank st. and riverside. a 14/3/00: d5 most dog owners responsible, letter argues. f 15/3/00: c3 woman with barking dogs pays s 1,200 in fines rather than go to jail. complains she has been driven from the city by unjust laws: "i mean a dog will bark, it's a dog. . ." her dogs barked at every passerby, she now lives inn the country. f 15/3/00: c4 article by volunteer dog walker for humane society, extolling "the priceless pleasure of walking a dog" (on leash). c, i 15/3/00: c6 national post story on four online pet stores vying for ipo money and market dominance: petopia.com, petsmart.com, pets.com and petstore,com. i appendix a more on the british perspective: in his most recent memoir at age 85, alec guiness describes a day spent buying fish at the nursery and pet shop to replenish the village pond, including koi carp and sturgeon. the sturgeon reminds him of one of his dogs, "long, thin and sharp-nosed." he goes on: "we have had flora for six months; she is now a year old and has settled firmly in our heart, and also in the heart of dido our border terrier, who adores her. even michaelmas the cat, not a great dog fancier, is content to curl down at her side. god knows what breed she is. a sort of lurcher i suppose, as her mother was a border collie and dad, we surmise, was probably a whippet ... it is rash at our age to have such wildly active creature streaking between us, rummaging in wastepaper baskets, stealing hairbrushes, making off with the toilet roll in a puppyish way, but it is proving healthy, i think, to be looking after something so excitingly young, so full of curiosity and life. i am afraid we cast sentimental or forgiving eyes at her each hour of the day. she has brought also a new lease on life to dido, now 10 years old. but has added, i fear, a year or so to japheth (labrador type) who is 1 1. he is almost saintly but has reached the age of quietly grumbling at the younger generation" (guiness 1999). after reading this, another informant from britain emailed me the following on jim 2. 2000: "the attitude to animals in england is very different from here. there you can take your dog on trains, buses, and even to the local pub. there, no-one would dare to suggest that a cat should spend its entire life locked in someone's house! when i was in art school in london, for extra cash. i used to babysit the landlady's spoiled corgi. (i didn't much care for the dog initially, but she took a shine to me, and i guess she just grew on me) the landlady was an eccentric italian countess who like to travel, but the dog could not stay alone, or in kennels. that volume 18, 2001 57 alternate routes dog belle came with me everywhere, to the greengrocer's, and the butcher who saved scraps for her. and even to classes with me. different worlds." appendix b city of broad pooper-scoopers the great dog park debate is convulsing los angeles. excerpted from salon magazine 16/7/99 at: hup: ww w. salon.com media'' 1 k ) k )'s i.'l 3pmedia2.html by catherine seipp i i live in los angeles, land of riots, earthquakes, fires, mudslides, carjackings, o.j. and deal memos. a town called "this town." where you'll never eat lunch again. a vast, glittering metropolis of broken dreams, where they"ll eat you up and spit you out. but my hometown is more than that. these days it's also a land of endless, heated arguments about whether dogs should be allowed to run off-leash to romp and sniff each other"s genitals in fenced-off expanses of municipally sanctioned lawn. welcome to los angeles, city of dog parks, where they"ll eat you up and spit you out and eat you up again. (or, as my favorite line from the bible. proverbs 26:1 1, puts it: "as a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.") nothing divides neighbor against neighbor, celebrity against celebrity, like the dog park issue. on the extreme pro side are people who avoid eye contact with humans but greet each dog by chummy nickname: "here come the slimers!" one man shouts jovially at my local dog park in silverlake. whenever he spies a familiar pair of drooling great danes. on the extreme con side are those so offended by this sort of thing that they lose sight of the laws of physics in their predictions of canine-induced catastrophe. several silverlake residents insist that dog urine will somehow run uphill for dozens of yards, continue its gravity-defying trickle over a massive berm oi' earth and contaminate the reservoir. celebrity dog trainer matthew margolis sides with the cons. margolis not only trains celebrities" dogs (madonna"s pit bull, whoopi goldberg"s rhodesian ridgebacks. goldie hawn's jack russell terrier, to name just a lew | but is something of a celebrity himself, with more than a do/en books and videos about dog training to his name, a regular spot on "good morning america" as resident pet expert and an upcoming pbs series in april called "woof: it's a dog"s life." "i don't love "em." margolis says of dog parks. " i here"s a lot of dog fights, a lot »>f diseases. even if your dog is vaccinated, how do you know all the other dogs are'.' it's more for the people than the dogs." i actually bad a few questions about this, since the only reason i take my own dog to the dog park is that it sends her (not me, you can be sure) into paroxysms 58 volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifs of joy. however, i"ve known celebrity dog trainer matthew margolis long enough to realize that in the boolean, yes-or-no logic of dog-training there is no room for discussion. you"re allowed on the furniture or you"re not; you agree with him or you don't. and any hint that maybe you don't 100 percent at all times just means a big yank on the choke chain until you see things his way. margolis is such a trainer-to-the-core (more than a quarter-century in the business), that establishing dominance — the basis of all dog work is second nature to him in any interaction, human or canine. a few years ago, i interviewed him about his new business of importing trained protection dogs from germany, called schutzhunds, for rich clients fearful of life in los angeles and willing to pay up to si 0,000 a pop for a canine security guard. but, i couldn't help wondering, what if a carjacker just comes up to your car and shoots the dog? "no, no, no, no, no!" margolis said, in the firm voice used with a puppy about to pee on the rug. "there"s not a guy in the world who"s going to go up to a car with a dog in it. we"re not talking about the brinks job here; we"re talking about slimeballs." but wouldn't it be boring for the dog to be cooped up in the car all day while its owner goes in errands? "you"re worried about the dog, and i'm worried about your life!" but "sweetheart, sweetheart! six of my clients have been raped!" anyway, speaking of random urban violence, not even the occasional gang shooting at silverlake park gets locals worked up the way the leash-free zone there does. it's like this all over town. my friend prudence, a director's wife, recently had a run-in at the incipient dog park forming near her home in beachwood canyon. a pair of dog owners for some reason denounced her as a "driedup, frustrated old maid" when she asked if they could please remove their dog from the picnic table -an odd insult, considering she had her two small children in tow, thus the request to remove the dog from the eating area. "it's not that i don't like dogs," prudence explained to me later. "i just don't approve of anything with less than two layers of fabric covering its anus." the roots of all this go back around 10 years, when the first los angeles dog park formed at the top of laurel canyon. many people in the hollywood crowd live here, and celebrities quickly chose sides. the late anthony perkins complained that his wife and children were afraid to use the park because of the dogs. artist david hockney, whose much-painted dachshund, stanley, used the laurel canyon park to exercise, defended the right of dogs to run free. "whenever i rim into david hockney," mike woo. then a los angeles city councilman, remarked wearilv to me in the early days of the laurel canyon volume is, 2001 59 alternate routt's leash-free zone, "all i want to do is talk about art. and all he wants to do is talk about the dog park." the star-studded status of the laurel canyon park is not lost on those in less rarefied sections oftown. "i don't take ("hopper here anymore," said one ofmy silverlake neighbors, an actress, about her boxer. "over at laurel canyon ... well, you just meet a better class of dog." silverlake, being silverlake, does attract its share of weirdos. the other day. for instance. i realized that the extremely long-legged, skulking dog loping submissively away from the other dogs, who kept harassing it with "you"re weird!" type barks, was actually a wolf. what sort of idiot would keep a pet wolf in the first place, let alone allow it to run free in public? the sort o\' idiot who, as it turned out, goes to the park sans shoes and shirt and with his hair in long. nature boy locks. luckily, it was a very nice, polite wolf thus the rather sheepish loping — but still. i was enjoying this my-dog"s-better-than-your-dog feeling of superiority when it occurred to me that perhaps it was time to take my own dog, linda, to meet celebrity dog trainer matthew margolis. linda is a medium-sized, black and white dog. about 18 months old. with a shaggy beard and mustache distinctive of her large tribe of "terrier x" (which is what the animal shelter, where i found her at the age of 3 months, had on the cage label). all in all, a very clever and wonderful dog. as good as — no, better than! any movie star"s dog. among her many positive qualities: 1 . she is completely housebroken. 2. she quickly learned how to use the dog door and so what if the cat figured out how to use it some three weeks earlier? 3. she is very good at obeying the command "stay!" when i thread the no-pull halter through the no-pull collar never mind that the whole contraption is necessary because her furious pulling at the leash was damaging her trachea. 4. she hardly ever steals food anymore. ok, she will jump up on the table when i'm not looking and drink from my forgotten mug of coffee, and once she combined this with a cigarette butt she found in the garden, enveloping me in a rather nostalgic, shadcs-of-i ouella parsons scent as she took her usual hying leap onto my lap ... but at least she waits now till breakfast is over! 5. she lumps up on visitors somewhat less than she used to. but when we entered margolis" office in west los angeles. linda began shaking -something she had never done before, not even at the vef's. it was very strange. what was she thinking -the jig is up? only, as it turned out. for me "how do you discipline this dog'.'" margolis asked. 'sometimes i yell. "no!" hut she doesn't listen ..." 1 began. 60 volume is. 2002 chemins alternates "never yell at your dog!" he said. he quickly put her through some paees, the famous margolis personality test. "never even raise your voice to a dog like this!" he added. "this is a submissive dog!" "but at home she seems pretty feisty ..." i began. "ok. well, you know what? if you were so good at this, you"d have the catherine seipp dog training school. the catherine seipp yelling-at-the-dog dog training business. but you don't. one of the problems here is you"re the classic dog owner: "but-but-but-but-but!" "he"s a good dog, but!" do you feed your dog from the table?" "uh..." "yes. you do. you spoil your dog. and you"re the worst type of dog owner there is. because you"re in denial: "but officer, my son couldn't have committed that murder — he gets a"s in english!"" he dropped to the floor and began a torrent of high-pitched baby talk to linda, who stopped shaking and apparently entered some sort of hypnotic trance, miraculously obeying every single command margolis gave her. "well," i sighed, tail between my legs, "can we say hello to ulli before we go?" margolis" own schutzhund. an enormous german shepherd, came out from behind his owner"s desk and sniffed us politely. i was hoping that ulli would show some sign of imperfection, like when he"d jumped up and put his paws on my shoulders in greeting the last time i"d seen him — not the best dog manners, needless to say. "you know," i reminded margolis, "he did jump on me before." "well. i should hope so." he replied suavely. "nobody"s perfect." an answer for everything! well, that"s why margolis is top dog, of course. and i'm in denial and full of arguments, like the dog who returneth to his vomit, etc. in other words, just a mutt. salon | jan. 30, 1998 appendix c all pets go to heaven excerpted from salon magazine 16/799 at: hup: -www.salon.com 'people teaturc 1 9^9-(j7-u9 pel heaven index.hum "they laughed," she says. "but later, the same people were sitting in here crying. you don't know how you're going to feel until it happens to you." by kathy dobie july 9. 1999 | when kathleen leone and her husband raymond first opened their funeral home in the carroll gardens section of brooklyn. kathleen could volume 18. 2001 61 alternate routes hear the neighbors outside on the street laughing at the sign: "all pets go to heaven pet funeral home." kathleen and raymond grew up in this neighborhood and for 21 years they've operated a funeral home for humans, but still their neighbors laughed or came inside just to gawk when they opened the new establishment. people with pets, even. one can imagine kathleen sitting patiently through it all. like a mother waiting for her hyperactive kids to wind themselves down. she's been working in the death industry for two decades now. her feelings aren't so easily bruised. "they laughed." she says mildly. "but then, later. i had these same people sitting in here crying. you don't know how you're going to feel until it happens to you." all pets go to heaven has been in operation for two years now and it seems very much part of the neighborhood. the leones describe it as an "all service" pet funeral home, providing burials and cremations, both private and communal, wakes in the victorian viewing room, online counseling for the griefstricken, memorial cards and plaques, embalming and even freeze-dried taxidermy. it's housed in a large, handsome brownstone on a street of brownstones. raymond's parents own the building and his brother lives upstairs. brown awnings shade the windows and are stamped with the silhouettes of rabbits and frogs. even though every year more and more hip young manhattanites are moving into carroll gardens, it still feels like a working-class italian neighborhood. there are religious shrines in some of the front yards and small markets run by fathers and their sons. and there's the pet funeral home. as soon as i stepped into the viewing parlor and saw the small, powder-blue coffin for the small male dog or cat, i knew i was among people who weren't afraid of family feeling. "i just had a wake for a rottweiler, day before yesterday." kathleen tells me. "he"s being buried this morning. his owner's a single woman. she's burying him with a blanket she crocheted when she was a girl that was supposed to be for her first child. but she never married, never had any children. the dog was her son." kathleen's the mother of three girls and very pregnant with the fourth. she has short blond hair, a strong face and brown eyes that look tired this particular morning, only a couple of weeks away from her due date. she's a registered nurse, and before she and raymond opened up all pets. kathleen was a nursing supervisor in a long-term care facility for the elderly. her daughters are named after her and raymond's mothers and grandmothers. she describes herself as "old-fashioned" and says that their clients are just "regular joes that come in oil the street." we talk at kathleen's desk, in the middle room of the funeral home. in the front is the viewing parlor, where rows of chairs face the little blue coffin and a statue of st. 1 rancis of assisi. in the room behind us. there's a wide selection of urns 62 volume 18, 2002 chemins altenia tijs displayed on shelves. some are shaped like dogs; some look like pretty eookie tins and are stamped with kittens" faces or flowers. the engravable urns are the most popular, according to kathleen. they come in dark and light woods, white or gray granite and white marble, and are engraved with the deceased pet's name. the dates of birth and death and a photograph are applied to the front — the smaller ones cost $125. "in the past there were no options for people [whose pets have died]," kathleen says. "just our being here raises a question in people's minds — oh, what am i going to do when my pet dies?" the options she and her husband provide raise more questions: burial or cremation? would i visit a grave': 1 do i need them nearer to me? on the mantelpiece? if i give a wake, who would come? and should i have a religious service or just read a poem'? you to think — if not about what you want to do for your pet when it dies then about animals and where they fit into our lives, and about the rituals we have around death and the ways we circumscribe love. the rottweiler was the biggest animal that has been brought to the funeral home so far — 52 inches long, running the entire length of kathleen's freezer. he was only 6 years old when he passed away. "his owner was in shock," kathleen says. " she thought maybe he got depressed when her mother got sick and that killed him." the smallest animal was a goldfish named poppy. his owner wanted him cremated. "i tried to convince her just to bury it," kathleen says. "i said, you're not going to get hardly anything back, if you get the flick of an ash — and that's about what she got back — but she wanted that. i gave her the urn because it was ridiculous not to. firing up the cremator costs the same amount of money whether it's a cat or a goldfish." kathleen had a goldfish herself at one time, and though she was sorry to see it pass on, she couldn't grieve for the fish like she would a dog or a cat. "but you know what? someone could say, "how can you feel that for a cat'?" i think it's about security and love. that goldfish'.'' that was what she had to come home to at night " when i ask kathleen what's the most unusual request she's ever gotten in the pet funeral business, she says, "i don't find anything to be unusual. everything is individual, so it's not unusual." for a moment she seems to regard me almost warily, but it's not the look of a wounded person; it's sharper, more measuring than that. "your customers seem to be mostly women," i say to her. and she says quickly, almost sternly, no, not really, it's women and men, gay and straight, young and old. we get them all. she's cremated two pythons for two different customers. cato and bruno. bruno's the one she remembers because he was beautiful and big. about 150 volume 18, 2001 63 alternate routes pounds. the owner was a bouncer in a manhattan club. he told kathleen that he had his apartment climati/ed for the snake. he opted for cremation and a roman urn. "actually i was surprised i didn't hear from him afterward," kathleen says, since the more grief-stricken clients often feel the need to stay in touch for a while and the bouncer was pretty shaken up. "but he had his friends," she remembers. "they came with him. i mean, he didn't have a viewing or anything, but his friends all came with him when he brought the python in and when he picked up the cremains, they all came with him again. so he had a good support system there." it's always easiest for kathleen when the clients want to tell her everything about the pet, especially if they choose to have a wake. then she can spend those two hours talking to them about their animal and not just coming in and out of the room, asking if they're all right and if they want some water. "most of my people will bring photo albums and share the pictures of their pets with me, tell me about the one funny incident, the one bad incident you know, talk about the guilt of how they feel when they yelled at him," she says. "and i'll take them through what i need to do at that point to help them get over those guilty feelings." she sees no difference between the human and the pet funeral business — mourning is mourning, she says. "right now, i have a man whose pet is still living. his wife passed away within the last few months. she's out in st. charles cemetery and he said he wasn't prepared for her death, and now the dog he's had for 14 years is pretty much ... on her last leg and he wants to be prepared. "he doesn't want the same thing to happen to him, you know the emotions — as when his wife passed away." she continues. "he wants to be prepared, so i've been talking to him on the phone throughout this week, two, three days a week. fie wants to bury [the dog] out at the cemetery, which isvery close to st. charles, so this way he could do two visits in one day." kathleen didn't grow up with animals. just one family dog, she says, and her sister got to have a turtle, a very small turtle, because "we didn't have the space. my mother worked full time, my father worked full time and there was a big stress on education, that was your first priority." her husband. raymond, was the one with the zoo in the backyard. "pigs. cows, snakes, everything," she laughs. "believe it or not. when i first met him. they had pheasants hying m their house, they had goats in the backyard. they used to run pony rides in the neighborhood." "so iln you love animals more now. 1 mean, working in this business'.'" 1 ask her '"i notice them more." she says, sounding careful again. well, has running this business changed you?" 64 volume 18, 2002 client ins alternatifs "not really," she replies. for a minute i think she's just determined to make sure 1 find nothing strange or unusual about the pet funeral business, but maybe she's just telling me the truth. "i used to be a regular joe. working x to 4, monday through friday, and now i work by appointment when it's convenient for my clients," she explains. "otherwise i'm really doing basically the same thing i was doing before — i'm serving the public and i'm providing a service that's necessary. i come from a family of doctors and nurses, so we're all community service. " finally, i get her to admit to one difference when i ask her if she ever gets her heart broken on this job. "yes, that's part of the business," she says. "i mean some people can detach themselves. i found that i was able to do it better — function in the role of a nurse than i can function in the role of a funeral manager. "as a nurse, my specialty was geriatrics and i felt that, all right, they had lived a very fulfilling life and they're here now, they're in a long-term care facility and i'm doing whatever i can to make the best of the rest of their life. i made every day fun. i made sure recreation was scheduled; i ran parties, dancing, singing, art. i really investigated their lifestyles." kathleen continues, "so if they were just some antisocial people, they like to have their cup of tea and their crossword puzzle, like my mother, then i made sure that was maintained. i never forced them to do anything. "so i felt satisfied, but here you don't have the time. i try to get as much information as possible but i don't have a lot of time, fhere i had years, you know? here i don't. i have a very small window to work with." on my last visit to the funeral home, i have the odd desire to ask kathleen for a job. she has to take maternity leave, doesn't she? but i never get up the nerve. i feel incredibly peaceful sitting at her desk in the funeral parlor while she tells me the story of a young man named elvis who had a wake for his cat. though no one in his family could understand. "i felt so bad for him, he broke down in pieces." she says. "he was a real bruiser, someone you would think wouldn't shed one tear and i had to scrape him off the floor." his mother looked appalled: his girlfriend rolled her eyes. kathleen sat with him, speaking to him about his cat. she paid no attention to the nonbelievers in the room. "i'm not going to leave the person who's come to me out in the cold," she says. elvis still calls her from time to time, though now it's every few months, instead of every week, so kathleen knows he's worked through his grief; he's feeling better. and my feelings about kathleen have changed also. at first. i saw her as a brave defender of a misunderstood, even ridiculed love -"how can you be so upset for a dog?" but finally, i could see that in defending and protecting these volume 18, 2001 65 alternate routes loves, she was protecting love itself, in whatever form it takes — "crying for a hamster, for god's sakes!" oh. the extravagant heart! salon.com | july 9. 1999 appendix d from an e-mail to an advisor, who had some trouble with an unstable person while walking the dog: it reminds me of a time two summers ago when i was with peaches at rideau river park near the tennis club in overbrook. she ran across the path and took out a cyclist. ran right through his front wheel and bent it. she got up immediately; thought it was a game and wanted to go again. the cyclist, a guy about 25, was groaning flat on his back on the asphalt path. 1 ic said his hip was hurt. "why don't you control your dog" he complained, groaning. to my mind he had been speeding along but had plenty of time to see her, it looked to me like he had driven straight into her without trying to avoid her, but i only said i would help him fix his bike etc. we hobbled over to my place and i saw his front wheel was bent. he was very upset as he used his bike for school, work etc. he told me. he wanted to call his mother and go to the hospital, told me his father was a cop. i drove him to the mont fort hospital. on the way he told me how he could easily sue me but wouldn't, i was a nice guy etc. i left him there (i did believe his moaning was getting a little histrionic) and took the bike to foster's for repairs. techies there told me the bike should not have been on the road, the brake pads were shot. "1 ic couldn't have stopped if he had wanted to" they said. we fixed the bent front wheel and i picked up buddy back at the hospital. they had given him 2 prescriptions for painkillers, but apparently nothing was broken. as night was falling we went to the pharmacy and 1 paid for his pills ($60) and drove him home with his bike. turns out he was living in an old senior's residence (251 donald my mother used to live there) that had been turned into a low-income mixed building, with his mother. after reminding me again how lucky 1 was he didn't sue me or get his father and the police invoked, he let me go. main months later a cop showed up at my door. "do you know so and so? he says you have his bicycle, we have him in the back of the car " 6 6 volume 18. 2002 chemins a iterna fits sure enough there was buddy under the full moon, yelling out the back of the cruiser that i was a thief and he was going to sue me. i told the officer the story, showed him receipts and parts from foster's (i had been suspicious enough to keep these, fortunately) and invited him in to look for the bike if he wanted. i explained i had not seen buddy or his bike since that day. he looked like i had given him a piece of a puzzle. "thanks," he said. "i don't need to look for the bike. we've known this guy for a while... he's not right..." as the cop went back to his car. buddy started yelling again about suing me. then the back window closed and the cruiser headed off to the station, i believe. appendix e e-mail from an emigrant to bc. september 20. 99. in chilliwack. almost every household seems to have a dog. in the reservations, they wander about pack-like but in my neighbourhood there is a covert dog disliker. under the local ordinance, you get to make two anonymous complaints. after that, you must bring a by-law infraction charge and unmask yourself in court as a witness. not surprisingly, not very many people choose to go to court. after their two anonymous complaints, they sometimes take to poison pen letters, xeroxes of letters to the editor of the local papers decrying the barking dog situation, that sort of thing. dorine's sister is plagued by these billet doux in the mail, probably from their next door neighbour. it being mild most of the year, most people leave their dogs outside all the time, either chained up or fenced in. this provides collective protection against thieves, prowlers and wandering drunks all of which are common. the dogs provoke each other to support barking. we have the misfortune of living next to one of these inveterate hair-trigger barkers, a wolf-shepherd cross. the owners do have an electric collar but they are often so drunk or drugged up they fail to recharge the collar battery. the woman grew up on a wandering dog style reserve and the guy is an unemployed jerk with tourettes syndrome given to barking himself. they moved in last fall after the little old lady who previously owned it had to go into an old folks' home because "i wake up at nights sometimes in a pool of blood". we receive complaint citations because of the new couple"s dog. i tried keeping ours inside but the anonymous complainer can't tell the difference between dog voices. we had to go next door once at 3 am to get the howling stopped ourselves. we now find air conditioner hum to be more effective. at 3 am the lady was doped up (because "i fell downstairs and hurt my leg") and didn't even notice the wolflike howling. their latest solution is to get a companion dog. a fold face sharpei. she told me that somebody at her work had bought two so that her son could volume 18, 2001 67 alternate routes pick the one he liked and then gave the surplus reject away. unfortunately farley, though quiet himself, has not quieted the big fellow noticeably. i must add that the first visit from the animal control officer cost me $65 in dog licenses i would have otherwise avoided. i suspect the odd guy who lives across the street to be the complainer. i le is a pension drunk who now lives alone and is trying to sell his house. the woman who lived there (played bingo and drank too) moved out last spring for reasons unknown. lie owns two pickup trucks (one with camper van), a car and a motorscooter. but no dog. only an annoying water fountain which is turned on from april to november when it is disassembled and disappears. probably somebody told him a long time ago not to drink antifreeze and doesn't trust himself to have it in the fountain so it could go year round. might be compelled some night when awakened by dogs to go out and start lapping up the dancing waters. appendix f man bites dog excerpted from salon magazine 16/7/99 at: hup: wvvw. salon.convw lust featuret-'^n -id 2nieau.jrc.lnml by rolf potts | "what is this we're eating?" i asked my korean friend jemin. i had just helped him edit a research paper for an international architecture conference, and dinner was his way of saying thanks. we were eating a thick stew of green onions, sesame leaves, shredded ginger, crushed red peppers, fermented soybean paste and a very dark, tender meat. it tasted great, 'it's bokk-um," he replied. "duh." i said. bokk-um is a general korean word for pan-broiled food. "what kind ofbokk-um?" jemin began to giggle. "mung-mung tang" any person with a basic understanding of korean knows that tang means stew. however, only those who have spent time around korean children know what mung-mung means. having tutored my share of kids during my two-year teaching stint in korea, i knew that mung-mung means "bow-wow." as in the sound a dog makes. in terms of middle american taboos, eating a dog ranks right up there with practicing polygamy, exploiting child labor and smoking crack even die-hard american beefeaters consider eating dog meat to be an unspeakable deviance. after all. dogs have personality, loyalty and charm. cows, on the other hand, arc ambivalent, dimwitted and bad at catching frisbees. in korea, dog meal stew (known commonly as boshin-tang. or "health-enhancement stew" i is believed to be an energy-restoring health food, and main' men 68 volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifs swear by its power to increase sexual potency — a korean folk version of viagra, if you will. despite its allure, dog meat stew is technically illegal. the korean government banned its sale and consumption just before the 198k seoul olympics, in hopes of avoiding negative international publicity. while reference to the dish was erased from restaurant menus across korea, the dish itself never disappeared from restaurant kitchens. ten years after the official prohibition of dog meat in korea, approximately 20,000 restaurants nationwide still serve dog meat, according to the south china morning post. although the ban has been enforced in a handful of highly publicized instances over the years perhaps most famously in 1992, when a ship carrying 13.9 tons of dog meat from el salvador was turned away by customs officials in pusan — no serious legal action has been incurred since 1996, when a man charged with selling $500,000 worth of dog meat to restaurants was acquitted on the grounds that his product was sanitary, edible and popular. but the question remains: why is eating dog meat so popular in korea, while the very thought of such a practice provokes revulsion in the united states? i began asking this question almost as soon as i arrived in korea, and the most common answer i received was that koreans eat only ddong-gae (literally, "shit dogs") -semiferal mutts that are not fed by caring owners, but survive on garbage and feces. in other words, koreans consider pet dogs different from food dogs in the same way that americans distinguish corydoras from canned tuna. even domestic dogs in korea have never really been considered pets in the sentimentalized lassie/rin tin tin sense of the word. to this day, many older koreans raised on the ideal of duty to family are as put off by the american love of dogs as americans are put off by koreans" taste for dog meat. why, they wonder, do americans gladly spend hours teaching their dogs to do silly tricks, yet consider it an act of extreme generosity and sacrifice to go to the care home and chat with their grandmother once a week? historically, both old world and new world cultures used dogs as a source of food when it became scarce. the korean practice of eating dog meat is said to have originated in the stone age, when (as in manchuria) dog meat was a staple during the cold winter months. as korea developed into an agricultural country, dogs continued to be regarded more as barnyard animals than pets and since dogs were much less useful in the rice fields than oxen, they were ultimately regarded as a handy source of meat. wall paintings in a fourth-century koguryo kingdom tomb depict dogs being slaughtered along with pigs and sheep. the sino-korean character for "fair and proper" (yeon) literally translates into "as cooked dog meat is delicious." ancient korean medical texts point out the dietary similarities between dogs and humans, and recommend dog meat to fortify the spirit, warm the body and aid recovery from illness. volume 18, 2001 69 alternate routes interestingly, these ancient texts make no mention of the virility-enhancing qualities of dog meat. and using dog meat stew as an aphrodisiac is generally considered a 20th-century fad. it's especially popular during sambok, a 30-day period on the lunar calendar when the summer heat is believed to deplete one"s sexual energy. during this time of year (usually july or august), back-alley boshin-tang restaurants in korea are usually packed with loud groups of men. the macho, backslapping. joke-filled mood of such gatherings can be compared to that of american men visiting hooters on payday. it was under this guise of male bonding that jemin tried to salvage the situation when he revealed to me that i was eating dog meat stew. "boshin-tang is a very useful food," he said, striking a mock superman pose. "all of your girlfriends will be very happy." "i doubt that." i said. "in america i once had a girlfriend who insisted that dogs are more trustworthy than men." "that's just evolution." he said. "trust is a trick that dogs play. they don't want you to know how delicious they are." jemin's nonchalant attitude bothered me. but i wasn't sure what to say. since coming to asia, i had been adventurous with food — i"d eaten whale, silkworm larvae and deer antlers so i couldn't exactly moralize over the ethics of eating dog meat stew. instead, i decided to simply make jemin understand the american side of the issue. citing evidence ranging from drug-sniffing german shepherds to seeing-eye dogs to " america"s funniest home videos," i lectured him for 10 minutes on what sets dogs apart from livestock. by the time jemin admitted i had a point, 1 was on my second helping of boshin-tang. salon | oct. 28, 1998 70 volume is. 2002 book review richard collins, culture, communication and national identity: the case of canadian television. (toronto: university of toronto press, 1990). collins' trans-atlantic perspective lends some valuable insights to academic and policy debates on the importance of domestic cultural industries. his continentalist position is clear: though "both communications and the state have been central to canada's continuing process of nation-building and self-assertion" (5), an out-dated nationalism must give way to the fact of a "weak linkage between national sentiment — generally strongly held — and low consumption of canadian production in what is widely held to be the most important of the cultural industries: television" (339). the book begins with an historical survey of canadian broadcasting policies. finding that these are nationalist-oriented policies, which presume to strengthen national identity by supporting nationalist cultural industries, collins proceeds to critique the notion and practice of nationalism, both theoretically and within the concrete canadian context. he criticizes dominant assumptions of dependency and national identity as they have been applied to issues of canadian regionalism and continentalism. collins argues finally that the canadian intelligentsia and other elites assume wrongly the precepts of media imperialism, misunderstand the link between the state and symbolic culture, and perpetuate a false sense of nationalism. collins identifies a central, long-standing objective of canadian broadcasting policy to strengthen cultural identity. included in the recommendations of the 1957 fowler commission report, this objective persists up to the 1988 house of commons standing committee on cultural communication report, which states that "broadcasting policy is canada's premiere cultural policy" (43). these cultural goals have, however, been blocked by the impossibility of reconciling a majoritarian nationalist vocation with a minoritarian public service (334-35). while the minoritarian goal is to canada's credit, the nationalist goal is not necessary, and is based on a false premise (140). alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 121 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 collins argues that central to the variants of nationalism is the view that they serve the objective of obtaining and using state power. to this end, nationalist ideology attempts to enforce a congruence of political will, economic activity and cultural identity. the ideological project is, for collins however, an outdated one which denies a fact of the contemporary world economic order: nation-states are no longer selfsufficient and are becoming unstoppable, integrated and interdependent. the force of this inevitable process of interdependence is the world economy itself — something which canadians could not and should not attempt to influence (xi). collins objects to the "anterior values of national canadian-ness" as if these values never existed, but are rather imagined by the canadian nationalist who is "hostile to the united states, capitalism, television, modernity, and rational thought" (121). the few espousing the rhetoric of canadian nationalism are merely those who stand in the way of the inevitable world of international competition (xvi, 28, 349). among these sorts is the canadian intelligentsia. they must back down from a position of false authority and give up the practice of dictating the canadian consumption of foreign culture. they must give up aspirations to control cultural production for their own selfish gains (339) and accept a new world order of cultural and economic interdependence. collins makes repeated reference to the emerging european common market, and predicts that it will face a cultural internationalization similar to canada's (ix, xiii, 5, 337). collins, however, avoids the conclusion that the future interdependent europe is less an acceptance of a new world order, than it is a fear for the survival of independent european states, given a growing threat of american economic expansion (hence, 'fortress europe'). suggesting that canadians should not similarly resist this same threat, amounts to a failure to distinguish between 'united against' and 'dependent upon', while calling them both 'interdependent'. the future interdependence of europe is, for collins, one in which the increasing demands of broadcast programs are "of interest to different language and cultural communities" (337). collins argues that canada's bilingual and multicultural broadcast system provides a perfect laboratory to develop new products for the coming european market though claiming that this opportunity is undermined by nationalist broadcasting goals (336), he docs not offer a clear explanation. if these goals are to oppose american broadcast culture, arc they not also to oppose a narrow cultural and linguistic autarky? is it not the nationalist policv goal of providing a multi-cultural, bilingual and canadian 122 iluhka book review alternative to american broadcasts which has created this bold new model and 'testing ground' for europe? canada's option in the new european cultural market was only afforded by the symbolic cultural sovereignty which collins suggests canadians give up. in overview, collins' rejection of canadian nationalism (or assumptions thereof) is the basis of his rejection of policy objectives to support cultural identity through a national broadcasting system. not only is this offered as an academic advancement that is proof that the state and culture must be separated (326-29), but also as support for the current european and north american continentalist agendas. the value of collins' argument depends upon whether one accepts that canadian communications policies in support of cultural identity are necessary. that this debate in canada will not be resolved soon is bitterly acknowledged by collins who, in the final analysis, admits the shortcomings of his 'martian view' of canada. david s. hubka carleton university 123 rethinking precarity and capitalism | 247 rethinking precarity and capitalism: an interview with charlie post jordy cummings1 (jc): the theme of this year’s alternate routes is the “paradox of low-wage, no-wage work”, and there is a great deal of analysis of an allegedly new historical subject, “the precariat”. what do you make of this “paradox”? is capitalism really that different in 2015 than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago? charlie post2 (cp): capitalism is certainly different today than it was during the so-called “golden age” of 1945-1975. during those years, “full-employment” – unemployment below the “frictional” rate of 3-4 percent, the dominance of full-time work with unemployment insurance, health care, pensions and the like (provided by the state, private employers, or some combination) – was the norm. this “full-employment” model also included some measure of job security – either legal or contractual protections from arbitrary dismissal, etc. the “golden age” was, in my opinion, exceptional in the history of capitalism. it was the product of a combination of a long period of rising profitability (1933-1966) and a militant labor movement across the industrialized world. workers had threatened the foundations of capitalist rule (france and spain in the mid-1930s, france and italy immediately after world war ii, france in 1968, portugal 1974-1975) or severely disrupted capitalist accumulation in mass strike waves in the mid-1930s, immediate post-war years and again between 1965-1975. capital was forced to make major concessions to labor. the “full-employment” model and the expansive welfare state were the most important gains, giving workers unprecedented security of employment. however, the “golden age” was not typical of the history of capitalism. piketty, in his greatly overrated capital in the 21st century, has demonstrated that the very slight decline in income and wealth inequality in this period was a short-interruption of capitalism’s historic tendency to increase inequality. not only was the period exceptional for small decreases in inequality, but in the “full-employment” regime. the period since the mid-1970s – with the growth of part-time (but still mostly 1 jordy cummings is a phd candidate in political science at york university. he has published in redwedge, socialist studies and socialism&democracy. 2 charlie post is professor of sociology at the borough of manhattan community college-city university of new york. he is author of the american road to capitalism: studies in class-structure, economic development and political conflict, 1620-1877. 248 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages long-term) jobs, less job security and greater consequences of unemployment because of the dismantling of social welfare – is actually a return to the capitalist norm. if you look at the advanced capitalist societies before 1945, they all experienced lots of part-time work and lots of insecure employment – and guaranteed health care, pensions and the like were enjoyed by a distinct minority of the working class. even the most “privileged” workers – the skilled ‘labor aristocrats’ of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – experienced prolonged bouts of unemployment. jc: in a june essay for viewpoint magazine, aaron benanav3 wrote that in response to the rise of this theorization, some, you in particular are “seeking to defend a more or less classical orientation, [and] have sought to deny that any such radical recomposition of the working class has taken place.” he seems to, by implication, be suggesting a sort of nonworkplace oriented model of organizing, not dissimilar, some might argue, to how some labour leaders want to appear to be helping precariously employed service and other unskilled workers without actually organizing them. do you have anything you’d like to say about the benanav piece? cp: i will reserve my empirical criticisms of benanav’s use of data for my reply in viewpoint. to me it is unclear what benanav is advocating for strategically. he caricatures my strategic position. i do not advocate a return to the sorts of working class political parties (mass socialdemocratic/popular frontist-reformist, “communist”) and trade unions (dominated by the officialdom and committed to capitalist state regulated union recognition mechanisms, routine collective bargaining, reliance on the grievance procedure ) that characterized the “golden age.” benanav uses the term “fordism,” which is either associated with the problematic “regulationist school” or is, as simon clarke has argued, without analytic value. however, i do argue that strong workplace organization, based in key manufacturing and logistics/transport industries, is absolutely necessary if we want to rebuild working class power. so will some sort of political organization that gives expression to a new workers’ movement (recognizing, in the light of the experience of the italian prc and syriza, the problems such parties will inevitably face if electorally successful). however, i think that workplace organization, in particular, will only be rebuilt through a rejection of the current norms of “trade union legality.” the industrial unions were organized in the 1930s through direct action 3 benanav, a. (2015, june 15). precarity rising. viewpoint magazine, https://viewpointmag.com/2015/06/15/precarity-rising rethinking precarity and capitalism | 249 (strikes, sit-downs, etc.), rather than state sponsored ‘recognition’ elections. union power rested on strong organizations of shop stewards who lead brief short strikes and slow-downs over workplace grievances. this is the only road to the revival of workers powers today. the strategy of non-workplace organizing – at best workers’ centers of low-wage workers based in their neighborhoods; at worst, the seiu’s new attempts to convince employers that concessionary contracts with unions will help be more profitable than non-union firms – is a dead end. neither an emphasis on low-wage workers alone – especially those with the least social power – nor offers of “labor peace” will rebuild the labor movement. only a strategy based on identifying which groups of workers actually have the ability to disrupt accumulation – and on the exercise of that social power will lead to a new workers’ movement. i believe this strategy is applicable to the so-called “service sector” – in particular organizing the giant transnationals like wal-mart or mcdonalds. organizing store-by-store, relying on ‘moral power’ and symbolic disruptions will not organize this sector. only by organizing “up the supply chain” – among better-paid, more stably employed warehouse and logistic workers – will unions be able to wield sufficient social power to organize the industry as a whole. jc: you have long been critical of the so-called “labour aristocracy” thesis, that, to put it simply, workers in ‘advanced capitalist countries’ are not prone to militancy due to their being beneficiaries of ‘superexploitation’. do you see a relationship between the “precariat” line and the “labour aristocracy” line? cp: absolutely! both disparage the strategic importance of fullemployed, relatively well-paid workers in industry and transport-logistics. both fetishize low-wage workers with little social power. both appeal to elitist tendencies on the left and in the labor movement – either labor bureaucrats or leftists influenced by stalinism and/or social-democracy who believe that workers need to follow their ‘enlightened’ leadership. these sorts of folks are worried that better paid, more socially powerful workers will actually want to run their own organizations. workers with little social power tend to be much more reliant on their ‘leaders’ and their attempts to leverage influence with politicians and employers through symbolic actions. jc: among others, you have argued that there is growing potential working class power within the logistics sector. can you expand upon this? cp: the centrality of the logistics center is rooted in the spread of what kim moody and others call “lean production.” lean production was a very successful drive to raise the rate of surplus-value through a hyper250 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages taylorist division and simplification of tasks, massive speed-up, use of non-union workers (“out-sourcing”) and more contingent workers. along with these measures to increase the rate of exploitation, “just-in-time” inventory systems reduced the costs of capital and raised profitability. by eliminating large inventories of spare parts in manufacturing – or inventories of merchandise in retail – firms saved on building warehouse space and on the interest they paid while parts or merchandise remained unused or unsold. “just-in-time” inventory is actually a return to the norms in many industries before the organization of industrial unions in the 1930s and 1940s. what the auto industry used to call “hand-to-mouth” inventory systems proved to be highly vulnerable to disruption by small groups of workers, especially those who would stay at their work-stations and stop working (“sit-downs”). “hand-to-mouth” was abandoned because workers were willing to take advantage of their potential social power. with the smashing of the conventional union movement over the past forty years, capital has felt confident about returning to this system. however, it recreates potential bottlenecks and points of pressure for workers. when strategically placed workers act on their renewed power the results are quite amazing. in 1995, workers at a gm plant in flint, michigan that produced all the brake-assemblies for gm cars and light trucks in north america struck against forced overtime. within a week, they had shut down approximately 24 or 26 gm factories in the us, canada and mexico. gm gave in and suspended forced overtime in flint. more recently, port truck drivers (“truckeros”) on the west coast docks – mostly latinos classified as ‘independent contractors’ – struck, shutting down some of the largest ports on the continent (long beach, ca) and winning recognition as employees with the right to collective bargaining. the spread of just-in-time inventory systems to retail and fast food in north america also gives workers tremendous potential power. unfortunately, few unions involved in the attempts to organize workers in these industries (seiu, ufcw) have focussed on warehouse and logistic workers. instead, they engage in flashy acts of “symbolic” disruption – one-day strikes by minorities of workers at a single store – that are incapable of changing the relationship of forces and compelling capital to grant union recognition. only the small united electrical workers (ue) has chosen to focus on logistical and warehouse workers. jc: as well, you have been skeptical of claims regarding the centrality of the service sector. can you say a bit more about this? cp: i come from a political and intellectual tradition that has long been suspicious about claims that the industrial working class – workers rethinking precarity and capitalism | 251 in manufacturing, transport-logistics, telecommunications, etc. – no longer matters to the revival of socialist politics. all of the data indicates that industrial output, adjusted for inflation, has risen as both an absolute magnitude and a percentage of gross national product since the early 1980s – surpassing levels at the end of the last long boom. clearly, the percentage of industrial workers has fallen – as it has since the 1890s as a result of mechanization and a rising rate of surplus-value. put simply, the potential social power of industrial workers has probably increased in the neoliberal era. the notion of ‘immaterial labor’ is a hot mess. it confuses highly material labor – work in the telecommunications industry creating and maintaining the infrastructure for computerization – with forms of mental labor – designing machinery and work-systems. while the former is central, the latter workers are unlikely to be in the lead of a new workers’ movement. jc: like many of us, you are active in your union, as an academic worker. i would say that probably the majority of socialists in academia are precariously employed – at least by my own observation. my point in raising this is my contention that the reason that “precariousness” is such a ‘hot topic’ is that it has been theorized by often precariously employed academics. do you have any thoughts on this? what is the role of the academic labour movement and how can more solidarity develop between the tenured and untenured? cp: the growing experience of real precarity is quite marked among academics, and may help partially explain the popularity of the notion of the “precariat” among graduate students and young professors. however, we should not lose track of how labor bureaucrats and their intellectual supporters promote the notion. blaming “precarity,” “deindustrializationglobalization” and other “sociological” factors for the decline of the labor movement does two things for the labor officialdom. first, it lets them off the hook – their dead-end strategies are no longer responsible for the decline of organized labor. second, low-paid and precarious workers appear as “low hanging fruit” – workers who can easily be recruited into powerless unions, but who can pay dues. in terms of academic labor’s strategic place – i am skeptical. while i have been very active in my faculty union for over twenty years, i do not think that academic labor will be an important element in transforming the labor movement. i reject the essentially elitist notion (that leaders of my union are very fond of) that “academic labor” brings “big ideas” to the labor movement. actually, the greatest source of radical ideas in the labor movement has been skilled industrial workers – few of whom were college educated, no less college professors. i do, however, think is it crucial for 252 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages radicals in the academy to be engaged in workplace organizing. whatever social power academics have will only be realized through collective action at the workplace. i think the key to developing solidarity between different segments of the academic workforce is convincing the more ‘privileged’ faculty that their conditions of work are directly tied to those of less secure faculty. put simply, the more part-time and untenured faculty universities and colleges can hire, the greater the ability of managers to lower the salaries, increase the workloads, etc. of full-time faculty. if we can convince full-time and tenured faculty of this, solidarity may well increase. jc: you have called yourself a “capital-centric” marxist, in the tradition of robert brenner and ellen meiksins wood. does this account of the historical development of capitalist social property relations have any influence on your analysis of the prospects for the working class movement in 2015? cp: yes, in two ways. first, brenner and wood have been among the most important left intellectuals defending the centrality of workers and workplace organization to the survival (or revival) of the socialist project. brenner’s work on social-democracy/reformism is especially valuable in understanding the strategic and tactical limits of the labor officialdom. second, i have used “capital-centric” marxist, rather than “political marxist” (at least most of the time), to broaden the tradition. brenner and wood have demonstrated that only with the emergence of social property relations where exploiters and exploited must reproduce themselves through market competition do we see the dynamic of productive specialization, technical innovation and accumulation – the operation of the law of value. others, in particular anwar shaikh and his students, have done the heavy lifting in analyzing the dynamics of established capitalism – accumulation, competition, and crisis. the work of one of shaikh’s students, howard botwinick, on capitalist competition, capital mobility and differentiation within the working class is central to my analysis of the roots of the crisis of organized labor. the reissuing of his book, persistent inequalities as part of the historical materialism book series in 2016 – and its appearance as an affordable paperback in 2017 – is extremely important in disseminating these ideas to a broader intellectual and activist milieu. chemins alternatifs the possibility of pleasure: foucault's philosophy of the subject and the logic of an appeal to aesthetics robyn smith carleton university some of the most common complaints against foucault's work are that he does not provide a philosophy of the subject and that (or, and so) he provides neither any normative grounds upon which to judge regimes of power nor alternative themes or ideals to the domination that he diagnoses. however, i argue that it is precisely because of foucault* s philosophy of the subject that he cannot suggest prescriptive action against the domination that he diagnoses. 1 because of foucault's philosophy of the subject he must allow for a greater human autonomy than what would allow him to prescribe action against the domination that he diagnoses. further, and following this, i argue that foucaurfs philosophy of the subject makes aesthetics the most logical place for him to look for experiences of freedom while respecting human autonomy without having to appeal to normative rhetoric or the logic of any particular discourse or form of subjection. 2 foucault's analysis of autonomous fields of discourse and his analysis of modem subjects constituted along the axis of a truth, an ethic and power are mutually re-enforcing to his philosophy of the subject. i will show how this conies about through a consideration of the analytics of finitude. the subject ofknowledge foucault' s analysis of the analytic of finitude can be found in tlie order of tilings (1973). foucault argues that it is along the lines of the analytic of fmitude that modem subjects3 are constituted. i argue that his adherence to the analytic of finitude as the framework for modem thought and the constitution of modem subjects enables foucault to develop a philosophy of modem subjects as constituted along the axis of power, ethics and truth. according to foucault, modem subjects develop with twentivolume 19, 2003 109 alternate routes eth century western thought's attempt to develop "a philosophical foundation for the possibilities of knowledge" (foucault, 1973: 335). for foucault. subjects and subjectivities are only one mode of selfconsciousness but it is the mode particular to knowledge. because he is dealing, in t/ie order of tilings, with possible foundations of knowledge and establishes that this is where modem subjects arises, he is dealing with possibilities for founding subjects and subjectivities: "the subject of foucauldian history is a subject of knowledge" (schwartz, 1998: 20). it is therefore, perfectly appropriate that we look here for foucault's philosophy of the subject. further, it is in part because of its relationship to knowledge that foucault's philosophy of the subject is so amenable to aesthetics as a means of freedom. both the analytics of finitude and aesthetics of existence require moments of 'problematizatioir, that is, they both require moments when humans reflect upon their current situation and in so doing are transformed into subjects of knowledge (schwartz, 1998: 21). i will go through a summary of the analytic of finitude and then show where i think this analytics of finitude means, for foucault, that modem subjects are subjects of power, ethics and truth. in the last part of the essay i will take up the congruence of aesthetics to foucault's philosophy of the subject. the analytic of finitude: life, labour and language condition their chvn possibilities foucault shows that the analytic of finitude emerges with the study of man's mode of being, the human sciences of economics, philology and biology. the analytic of finitude is a newly emergent relationship between being and representation in the human sciences, as distinct from classical discourse, in which being and representation were found in a common locus, that of god. what characterizes this difference is that in the analytic of finitude, the line between the representation of objects, and the objects of the human sciences ceased to be transparent. for example, in the factual knowledge of biology we learn of the limitations imposed upon us by our having lived on the planet as animals already. in the factual knowledge of linguistic we learn of the limitations imposed upon what we can say today because of what humans have said already. what wc can uncover in the human sciences are the limits imposed upon our lives. within the analytics of finitude positivity bring us to our fac110 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs tual limitations. the particular relationship between being and representation is mediated by each of their conditions of possibility. now life, labour and language belong to an order of things with laws interior to themselves. in the development of modern human sciences it was required of life, labour and language that they should themselves define the conditions of their possibilities. representations were no longer the primitive seat of the truth of living beings. from now on there is an interior "mechanism ' in languages which determines not only each one's individuality but also its resemblances to the others: it is this mechanism, the bearer of identity and difference, the sign of adjacency, the mark of kinship, that is now to become the basis for history. (foucault, 1973: 236) again, for example, in the natural sciences we find organic structures conditioning that which appears in nature. this is both a move to interiority and exteriority of representations. what is represented now is something internal to and conditioning the representation. simultaneously, "the very being of that which is represented is not going to fall outside representation itself" (foucault, 1973: 240). when one represents something to oneself, in these human sciences, it is only the appearance to that individual of the internal order of life, language, or labour. what appears in a representation is the external relation of that internal order with the human knower. i anticipate myself only slightly to note that what conditions these external relationships are modern subjects" limitations, which have just been uncovered. life, labour and language in this moment abandon what had been their natural site of representation and "withdraw into the depths of things and roll up upon themselves in accordance with the laws of life, production, and language"" (foucault, 1973: 313). now objects of investigation appear as they do because of processes interior to themselves. life, labour and language reach back into laws interior to themselves for their own development. foucault argues chat in this movement the objects of the modern human sciences are folding up on themselves, reaching into themselves to develop again out of their being, and so hollowing out a space within themselves. where god had been present in the shared locus and direct link between being and representation, we volume 19, 2003 111 alternate routes see living beings taking themselves for their own conditions of possibilities. and again, this forming of a circular link characterizes the objects of the human sciences. man as knowing subject and known object arrives via his limitations immediately foucault tells us that man arises within the hollow formed by this circular link (foucault. 1973: 313). the circular link found within the objects of the human sciences is designated as the space of man. indeed, man is required in these hollows within life, labour and language because it is he who speaks, labours and lives as an animal. man, as an object of knowledge, therefore is given as the source of the depths of life, labour and language. when representations in language no longer are transparent, this is because man has spoken before. when man's biology is conditioned by an organic structure then this is because man has evolved. and so man is given this imperious place within the order of things, as the source of conditions making representations possible but this place is not without its ambiguity. as we saw above, positivity in the human sciences bring man to his factual limitations. all these contents that his knowledge reveals to him as exterior to himself, and older than his own birth, anticipate him, overhang him with all their solidity, and traverse him as though he were merely an object of nature, a face doomed to be erased in the course of history. (foucault, 1973: 313) so just as man takes up the all-important central locus of life, labour and language, the same thought insists on revealing man's limitations. man as a knowing subject also arises in the space hollowed out as life, labour and language condition themselves. the knowledge arises that when man represents something, he is ordering it. in this he is a sovereign. however, that order is conditioned by something beyond his representations. in this he is an enslaved sovereign. his representations are not transparent but have limitations imposed upon them. "for modem thought, the positivity of life, of production and labour provides a foundation for the limited character of knowledge" (foucault, 1973: 316-17). now it appears that the way man knows the world immediately imposes limitations on the possibilities of what he can know, of what he can 112 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs think. what he sees is not a pure truth. rather, he sees himself ordering the world, he sees himself seeing; he is the observed spectator (foucault, 1973:312). put differently, the very internal laws of life, labour and language within man determine the external relations that man has with his life, labour and language, which are representations. the quest of knowledge then is for the conditions, or limitations, within man, of the representations available to him. the questfor impossibility in this quest of knowledge, when facing the conditions within that make representations available to them, subjects are also always made aware of what these conditions make impossible. the study of man's fmitude thus always points to the infinity of what is impossible, that which we cannot say, do or think at the moment. "we perceive the fmitude and limits they impose, we sense, as thought on their blank reverse sides, all that they make impossible" (foucault, 1973: 314). also, because man sees his thought as limited and because he sees this limitation against a back-drop of what could be otherwise, the quest of thought is not only for the grounds of representation but also for the extent of their validity. further, because what is required is knowledge of the conditions for man's knowledge, that knowledge is perfectible. the search for the conditions of man's knowledge provides man with the justification to claim perfectible knowledge. finitude provides itself a positive foundation for the possibility of knowledge by referring to itself ceaselessly, "from the positivity of the contents to the limitations of knowledge, and from the limited positivity of knowledge to the limited knowledge of the contents" (foucault, 1973: 317). the limitations of man's knowledge are the grounds for man's knowledge. modem thought and modem man as an object and as a subject of knowledge are all, therefore, characterized by this analytic of fmitude. the analytic of finitude as a philosophy ofmodern subjects having briefly outlined the analytic of finitude i want to show how i see the axis of truth and ethics, in foucault's philosophy of the subject as deriving from an analysis of the analytic of finitude. i will consider the power of foucault's subject shortly when i discuss the analytic of disvolume 19, 2003 113 alternate routes course. in the ceaseless referral of finitude to itself we see a subject emerge that must have the characteristics of a truth, "a set of relations to modes of interpretation of one's relations to self and others" and an ethic, "a set of relations to oneself and one's capacities" (patton, 1998: 69). modem subjects require both a truth and an ethic because of their factual limitations as revealed to them in the analytic of finitude. the subject is no longer transparent; one must necessarily relate to oneself. "subjects appear to require this self-attachment, this process by which one becomes attached to one's own subjecthood" (butler, 2001: 17). further, one must necessarily relate to the understandings of oneself and others as finite. nor are modern subjects, as the object of thought transparent. a relationship is thereby needed between the finitude of man as an object of study and the finitude of the man as the subject of knowledge. one is never alone in this, one relates to oneself and interprets one's relations to oneself along the lines established within a contemporary community. "but for foucault, it is clear that one attaches to oneself through a norm, and so self-attachment is socially mediated; it is no immediate and transparent relation to the self (butler, 2001: 17). we must bear in mind that the attachments and relations that modem subjects establish with themselves arise as a mode of self-consciousness particular to the possibilities for founding knowledge. human subjects require a truth and an ethic because their finitude is the source of all possible knowledge, particularly as this lends modem subjects the justifiable claim to perfectible knowledge. as their finitude becomes the source of all possible know ledge for modem subjects there is established a relation to their capacities, at least their capacity to know. it also immediately establishes a relation to how modem subjects think about the interpretations of themselves as factually limited knowers. the finitude of the modem knowing subject is the source, not the impossibility of all knowledge. that in itself is a mode of relating to interpretations of our capacities. further, the knowing subject then seeks to ground their knowledge, a further relation to interpretations of relations to capacities. i have teased these threads out to make my point that it is in the analytic of finitude that foucault finds the modem subject as one with a truth and an ethic. however, i do not understand the process to be layered or temporal as the presentation here might suggest. rather. 1 prefer the notion of "ceaseless referral" to capture the sense of the process. 114 volume 19, 2003 chemins alterriatifs the analytic ofdiscourse to analyse discourse foucault undertakes two strategies with regard to the analytic of finitude; he pins all his empirical findings to the structure of the analytic of finitude, which he has diagnosed; and he brackets off the first order experience of the phenomenologists in order that he might pin the empirical discourses he studies to the framework of the analytic of finitude, waking us from our anthropological slumber. performing the second phenomenological bracketing is his assurance that he is not entering into normative debates within the discourses he analyses nor is he taking seriously any common-sense or everyday understanding of those involved with the discourse. foucault claims that he does not need to share the beliefs of those who take these serious speech acts seriously in order to locate them among all the things that are said and written. he can count on the seriousness of those involved in the actual discourse to select, and thus limit, what is taken seriously at any given period, and to defend it, criticize it, and comment upon it. (dreyfus and rabinow, 1984: 52) the two strategies, of pinning all his findings to the analytic of finitude and of performing the second phenomenological bracketing, are mutually re-enforcing. in applying the workings of serious discursive practices to an analytic of finitude he shows not only that discursive practices are self-supporting but also that their seriousness is grounded not in truth, but a modem framework of thought. in avoiding all interpretation but tracking the changes within discursive statements, foucault can see the field of historical knowledge as a self-supporting, self-regulating field with ties to and supports with nondiscursive elements in society, which set the conditions for existence of serious discursive statements. transformations within discursive fields take place regulated by the rule-governed system4 of that discursive field and then whether or not a discursive statement is taken up within society will depend upon, to put it bluntly, how it might be used. discourses then are "finite and contingent yet subject to their own rules for rarefaction"' much like the self-supporting finitude of the human sciences (dreyfus and rabinow, 1984: 91). this allows foucault to outline an volume 19, 2003 115 alternate routes analytic of discursive formations, rather than enter into any normative analysis of the discursive statements that he studies. one can equally substitute "discourse" for 'man" in foucaults account of the analytic of finitudc: "at the foundation of all the empirical positivities. and of even thing that can indicate itself as a concrete limitation of [discourses] existence, we discover a finitude . . . the limitation is expressed not as a limitation imposed upon [discourse] from the outside, but as a fundamental finitude which rests on nothing but its own existence as fact, and opens upon the positivity of all concrete limitations. (dreyfus and rabinow. 1984: 92) when the discursive field is self-supporting and autonomous then foucault is able to show how power attaches to different serious discursive statements and enables their truth effects. in a society such as ours-or in any society, come to thatmultiple relations of power traverse, characterize and constitute the social body; they are indissociable from a discourse of truth, and they can neither be established nor function unless a true discourse is produced, accumulated, put into circulation, and set to work. (foucault, 2003: 24). this brings us to the third aspect of modern subjects, '"a body that is trained or cultivated in certain ways (subject to "power")" (patton, 1998: 69). a subject, for foucault, must have a body trained or cultivated in certain ways because of his analysis of discourse. he does not take seriously the logic, the sense or the normative debates of discourses. he therefore can argue that human subjects embody these discourses only because they can be trained or cultivated in certain ways, not because these ways are more or less human. to argue that these discourses, and their rationalities cross the bodies of human subjects. foucault must posit a subject capable of taking up and embodying these rationalities. for example, in history ofsexuality, vol. i, the body is the target of discourses of sexuality. rather than become embroiled in a debate over, say, whether sexuality is repressed in our society, foucault is able to see how power uses truth and truth uses power to constitute a subject of sexuality. and this then requires a body with a specific capability in relation to power. the body of modem subjects therefore must have the capacity to conduct, or transfer power in various manifestations. for it seems to j 16 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs me that not only the subject but the body itself is being redefined, such that the body is not a substance, not a thing, not a set of drives, not a cauldron of resistance impulse, but precisely the site of transfer for power itself. power happens to this body, but this body is also the occasion in which something unpredictable happens to power; it is one site of its redirection, profusion and transvaluation. (butler, 2001: 11) my understanding of this is that the bodies of modem subjects have a sort of enzymatic capacity for power. that is, they can take up various but not all forms of power and they transform, through their interactions with that power, both the power and the body. using this enzymatic metaphor helps us to understand that the activation of the materiality of institutions and bodies is key to strategies of power. if truth and power are carrying one another and the body is transferring the strategy of power through it, then power acts on our bodies through the foundation of ourselves as subjects of power, ethics and truth. power acts upon the body, very specifically, in the very formulation of bodily passion in its self-persistence and knowability, the very modes by which we seize upon or release a fundamental sense of identity. (butler, 2001: 19) ethics and truth in foucault's subject, as founded in the analytic of finitude, condition the possibilities of enzymatic reactions possible within any one individual subject. foucault's subject is not one ofprescriptive measures given the philosophy of the subject that i have outlined above, it would be absurd for foucault to then begin to set out normative ideals and alternative prescriptions to instances of domination. this would be reasonable for a philosophy based on a subject constituted in what can be described as logical norms. but foucault's philosophy of the subject derives from his studious avoidance of normative debates of logical sense of truth claims. in doing so, he has given us a diagnosis of that which makes possible the domination of modem subjects. were he not to address himself to the subject he has described, but focus on some normative debate or logical norm, he would not be addressing the possibility for domination. foucault requires a means by which to separate volume 19, 2003 117 alternate routes knowledge/power in its pervasiveness. foucault then must point to a freedom that can follow the lines of the three axis of modem subjectivities, which he has analyzed. the autonomy and attitude ofmodern subjects for foucault a certain economy of power, ethics and truth always constitute modem subjects. he suggests changes in these axis in order to enhance human capacities without concomitant increases in power. "how can the growth of capabilities be disconnected from the intensification of power relations?" (foucault, 1997: 317). this, apparently, would require that we adjudicate between arrangements of these axis and power. however, as i argued above, foucault does not have the means at his disposal to adjudicate between forms of power that involve domination and those that do not, or between better and worse forms of domination or power. foucault does have, however, the means at his disposal to respect human autonomy while conjuring a subject that has capacities necessary to an experience of freedom. i argue that the philosophy of the subject i have described from vie order of tilings, can be found in a much later work by foucault, "what is enlightenment?'' in which he sets out to characterize the autonomy of modem subjects, an attitude of modernity and to look for possibilities, within this attitude, for experiences of freedom. in "what is enlightenment?" (1993) foucault describes modernity as involving a "self-critical attitude towards our present forms of social being" (patton, 1998: 70). in his description of this attitude we can see the ceaseless referral of the analytic of finitude. modem subjects come up against their limitations, and subject these limitations to a critical examination of their conditions and in doing so become aware of what is made impossible by these limitations. foucault is explicit in stating that such critical engagement with ourselves requires interrogation of three axis: knowledge, ethics and power (foucault, 1997: 318). criticism along these lines is done at the limits of our selves, the conditions of our possibility. in this work individuals examine the modes and techniques, the manner by which they arc subjects of modernity. the work is done to the ends of human autonomy. modem subjects apply themselves to their present to the ends of "modifying the pre-existing relation linking, will, authority, and the use of reason (foucault. 1997: 305). and in this way. modem subjects might recognize the 118 volume 19, 2003 chemins altematifs modes, techniques and manner in which they are governed in what they are, do. think and desire. and. as with the ceaseless referral of the analytic of finitude, this process brings us to the impossible. modem subjects recognize in that which they are currently that which is contingent and "the possibility of no longer being, doing or thinking what we are. do. or think" (foucault, 1997: 315-316). therefore, this is the work of criticism, "the undefined work of freedom" (foucault, 1997: 316) and "the handbook of reason" (foucault, 1997: 308). the work is the work of enlightenment and is done to the ends of human autonomy and freedom. i shall thus characterize the philosophical ethos appropriate to the critical ontology of ourselves as a historico-practical test of the limits we may go beyond, and thus as work carried out by ourselves upon ourselves as free beings. (foucault, 1997:316) in recognizing themselves within the historico-practical limits of their possibility, modern subjects display a "will to 'heroize* the present" (foucault, 1997: 310). this is a conscious grasping of the epic^ in the form of the present moment. modern subjects, in their autonomy might grasp the contingency* of their present. the high value of the present is indissociable from a desperate eagerness to imagine it. to imagine it otherwise than it is and to transform it not by destroying it but by grasping it in what it is. (foucault 1997: 311) therefore, and significantly, we see that the attitude of modernity, made possible by 7 the axis of truth, ethic and power, is one not only of recognition but also one of distinction. foucault' s subject cuts a distinguishing figure. both the recognition and the distinction of our present bring consciousness that things might be otherwise. clearly, however, foucault cannot count on this consciousness that things might be otherwise to guarantee that things will be otherwise. the majority of his work points to domination of subjects constituted in this fashion. foucault therefore needs to find a process for these axis of truth, volume 19, 2003 119 alternate routes ethics and power and capacities of autonomy and distinction by which and within which human subject may become free from domination. returning to aesthetics aesthetics is the logical place for foucault to look for freedom for a subject constituted as the one he has analysed, in part because aesthetics are a logical place to look for freedom for a subject of knowledge. in moments of aesthetic experience there are moments very similar to those moments of problematization. therefore, aesthetic experiences are processes that are suitable to transform a subject of knowledge. problematization has three intertwining moments. these are "stepping back from, reflecting upon, and thematizing difficulties] in the games of truth" (schwartz, 1998: 21). this will to distinction, the will to theroize the present that we saw above, is similar again to the moment of practical tension in problematization. the aestheticization of modern life therefore feeds back into itself and makes problematizations possible. this would indicate then that simply in the ceaseless referral of finitude to itself modem subjects experience aesthetic moments. this is not quite accurate however and the difference relates to what i mentioned in the previous paragraph that foucault must find a process whereby truth can be separated from power. for the aesthetic to provide moments when truth can be separated from power, this sensitivity to distinction and difference in form must be cultivated. a capacity to distinguish forms is central to aesthetic experience. for example, one must have silence for there to be music. "a genuinely aestheticized culture would be sensitive to differences and exclusions not only in relation to the forms of art and design, but equally in daily life and in facing social ways of life" (welsch, 1996: 1 8). and so it is precisely this aspect of the aesthetic character of modem subjects that will disturb the smooth operation of the norms and normalizing practices to which subjects refer in the ceaseless referral of the analytic of finitude. for foucault, then, the development of the aesthetic will allow modem subjects to cultivate sensitivity to difference in principle. moments of aesthetics experience are experiences of a particular order, they are cultivated sensitivity yet arc enabled by the axis and capacities of modem subjects as foucault sees them. in moments of aesthetic experience the axis of modem subjects come together in such a 120 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs way that have a sensual experience of freedom. this is what makes aesthetics the most effective place for foucault to turn for a solution to the pervasiveness of power/knowledge. moments of aesthetics experience are moments when the body of modem subjects is not a transfer point of power. this appeal to sense is logical insofar as foucault has argued for a subject whose body is a transfer point of power. any appeal for practices of freedom foucault makes must, necessarily, have a sensual aspect, because the body of modern subjects has the capacity to act as a transfer point of power. aesthetics then, for foucault, is a chance to see truth, to work up to truths, for ourselves as modern subjects, that are untied from power. it is an opportunity to experience the possibilities for truths, which do not provide legitimation to power and domination as it crosses our bodies. to conclude: a note on pleasure traditionally, in aesthetics, moments of aesthetic experience, this experience of freedom is marked by pleasure. this is not to say that every pleasurable experience is an experience of freedom. the freeing transformation of the aesthetic does not just occur to us as we go about our lives as modern subjects. i made this clear in the previous paragraph. the aesthetic moment is one that must be cultivated. it is a moment that is arrived at through attention to the aesthetic. and this is why foucault draws aesthetics to our attention. in "what is enlightenment?" foucault is arguing that we have the capacities with which to cultivate our freedom. significantly, given foucault* s philosophy of the subject, the cultivation of freedom is necessarily experienced as pleasurable. notes 1 . i acknowledge the huge debate in the literature concerning this issue and the work that has been done to sort out, in foucaulfs work, questions of subject, subjectivity, and capacities. however, this paper does not stem from an engagement with those debates, but rather, a close reading of the order of things . 2. although foucault makes much of his efforts to avoid appeals to common sense and to bracket off the sense individuals make of their social situation, he appeals, in his aesthetics of existence, to a sensual experience to bring human subjects to an experience of freedom. this may appear at first sight to be volume 19, 2003 121 alternate routes paradoxical or even irreconcilable. i, however, argue that it is not because of his philosophy of the subject. 3. throughout the text of the order of things foucault discusses the emergence of man, as the object of human sciences. i have kept this language myself to refer to the object of human sciences, as it was. however, when discussing foucault's philosophy of the subject that derives from his study of the human sciences and their object, i've changed the language. this is for two reasons. the first, of course, is to try to account for the fact that it was not only men that emerged with man, but women also. the second is that later in the paper i will want to refer to modern subjects more generally and i want to avoid confusion. i argue that i am justified in such a move by arguing that the mode of self-consciousness particular to knowledge is of subjects with subjectivities, and that this is indeed, the particular mode foucault was studying in the order of things . 4. the debates around structuralism and whether or what kind of structuralism foucault employs is beyond the scope of this paper. my point here is that foucault analyses discursive formations as self-supporting and self-regulating. 5. i conceive of this heroization or presentation of the epic of the present by thinking of it as a valorization of the significance of all that the present is, given all that it might have been. references butler, j. "the body and power, revisited" radical philosophy 1 14(1):9-19. drevfus, m. and rabinow, h. michel foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics . chicago: university of chicago press, 1984. foucault, m. the order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences . new york: vintage books, 1973. foucault, m. "the subject and power" in michel foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics . h.l. dreyfus and p. rabinow (eds.) chicago: university of chicago press, 1984. foucault, m. " what is enlightenment" in ethics: subjectivity and truth . paul rabinow (ed.) new york: the new press, 1997. foucault, m. society must be defended . new york: picador, 2003. patton, p. "foucault's subject of power" in the later foucault . jeremy moss (ed.) london: sage, 1998. schwartz, m. "critical reproblematization: foucault and the task of modern philosophy" radical philosophy 91(3): 19-31. welsch,w. " aestheticization processes: phenomena, distinctions and prospects" tjte^rx>_cjiltuie_imd_sj2ciety_ 13(1): 1-24. 122 volume 19, 2003 chemins altematifs errata vol 18, 2002 terr}m. provost and ternmarie provost should read terry provost. provost notes: note 9: see '"the abolitionist;* http://afgen.com/slavel.html and "biographical sketches,** http://vvomhist.binghamton.edu/malesupp/bio.htm note 10: on the invitation was a pair of breasts, vivisected and printed beside the title "i love titty**: a celebration of the female breasts as lifeforce and sexual focus. tony bardarclvs archives. note 11: on his website, ""on cultural appropriation,*" ron stacey claimed that: ""artists in their works mustn't concern themselves with boundaries of convention, racism, sexism, religion, chauvinism etc., except perhaps to expose the human vagaries involved therein. to do so is to be not an artists, but a propagandist.** this passage reads as the depoliticisation of an artist's responsibility to work through complex issues. see his full essay at http://www.aabc.com/lotos/forum/ approp.htm . provost references: edmondson, locksley. "trans-atlantic slavery and the internationalization of race." cq/caribbean quarterly 22.1 (march 1976) 5-25. p91 last paragraph: a comma should be placed between ""blacks'" and "diffused". contents of past issues volume 18, 2002 mike patterson, walking the dog: an urban ethnography ofowner and their dogs: terry provost, bodying black goddesses :t1ie ditty ofreprevolume 19, 2003 123 428 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education book review out of left field: social inequality and sports by gamel abdel-shehid and nathan kalman-lamb. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing, 2011. $19.95 can, paper. isbn: 978-155266-439-1. pages: 1-135. reviewed by christine pich1 out of left field provides an engaging and clearly written text with the double aim of introducing a sociological perspective towards understanding high-performance sports and emphasizing the usefulness of critical theory in doing so. being an introductory text, critical theory is defined in a straightforward manner as encompassing “a basic assumption: the world we live in is fundamentally unequal” (6), with inequality conceptualized as the enjoyment of privileges for certain groups of people “at the expense of others who are marginalized and whose marginalization those privileges rely” (2). the central argument of the book that “in a capitalist society […] sport as spectacle serves to further the interests of capital” (9) – is made with respect to a marxist theoretical approach where it emphasizes the centrality of economic inequality and situates social inequalities in broader historical processes of capitalism and colonialism. however, it further challenges the reader to consider the continuous production and reproduction of interconnected forms of inequality (e.g., ‘race’, gender, sexuality), and how these are not homogenous sites of oppression. in drawing upon primary and secondary scholarly literature, the authors discuss an array of theoretical ideas including those of michel foucault, benedict andersen, and bell hooks, and develop their argument by tying their discussion back to the necessity of considering economic factors, such as commercialization and profit motives, towards understanding high-performance sports. the book is organized into three main parts with the first looking at the nature of sports, the second considering the influence of inequalities upon identity in sports, and the third exploring sports’ impact on broader societal views and beliefs. as noted, the focus is specifically on ‘high-performance sport’, which is defined as “elite, often professional 1  christine pich is a phd candidate in sociology at carleton university. her research interests are in the sociology of knowledge and ignorance, work, and health. book review : out of left field | 429 sport” (5), with examples including team-based sports, individual athletes, and periodic large-scale events such as the olympics. the rationale for this selection is based upon the strong influence that this level of sports has upon sports more generally, as it constitutes an aspirational model through which sports are constructed and played. each chapter addresses a different sociological aspect of understanding sport, with a fairly comprehensive scope that covers areas such as normative masculinity, film, imperialism, and spectacle. in connection with its stated aims, a particular strength of the book is its overall organization, as it is formatted in a way to clearly introduce core ideas from various critical theoretical approaches and identify social problems related to sports. the authors are cognizant of not taking academic ideas for granted. rather they succinctly define the meaning of key concerns (such as the importance of social context in reading theoretical literature) and concepts (e.g., feminism, ideology, modernity). all key terms are bolded within the text, with a glossary of these terms being included at the end of the book. the chapters are also clearly designated and discussed, with each chapter engaging with a few core ideas from a short list of selected authors. in considering the introductory format of this book, however, one key tension was that in arguing for a structural approach, the authors could have been more explicit in acknowledging other frameworks (e.g., post-structuralism) and debates (e.g., structure and agency) as a way to clearly present these ideas to the reader and to strengthen their own argument around the important impacts of broader societal forces. the book contributes to sociological literature in two central ways. first, the authors acknowledge that marxist discussion towards sports has been quite critical – for instance, by dismissing it as a spectacle – and while the authors encourage such critical analysis, they also argue that sports has the potential to be a site of transformation where it could encompass leisure, pleasure, and social cohesion. that is to say, they argue that sports are not in themselves the problem; what is of concern is how sports are undertaken and the purposes they serve in capitalist societies. second, by engaging with an array of literature the authors add multi-dimensionality to their discussion by considering not only how various identity-based inequalities interact with economic inequalities, but also by emphasizing the significance of what non-western and multinational perspectives may reveal. for example, in drawing upon the work of eduardo galeano, who wrote about sports in the context of imperialism in latin america, the authors highlight how people may 430 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education turn to sports to find pleasure and resistance in otherwise repressive environments. while the intention of the book is to provide a foundational level text, some points nevertheless require a slightly more nuanced analysis. for instance, in arguing for the usefulness of a marxist lens towards understanding the exploitation and commodification of the labour of professional athletes, they present the example of team owners in the national basketball association (nba) extracting surplus value from the labour of their players, even if the player is getting paid multi-millions of dollars per year. to be sure, the authors do make many convincing points, including how the players are working for the benefit of the owners, how many athletes are not paid such high amounts, and how some athletes have the benefit of a celebrity status that other workers do not. however, there is a lack of sufficient discussion about further qualitative distinctions and theoretical complexities in using similar concepts to understand the labour of high-performance athletes and that of workers who are employed in more traditional fields, such as manufacturing or service. for example, do we require more of a multi-pronged analysis in order to better understand the inequalities experienced not only between athletes and workers, but also between differently positioned athletes? although the authors acknowledge that economic inequalities have lessened in recent decades for some athletes due to higher salaries, there was a lack of clarity surrounding the theoretical implications of this for a class analysis. overall the accessible style and tone of this book, with clearly presented key concepts and theoretical ideas, as well as its engagement with relevant issues from high-performance sports, provides a useful text for introductory level undergraduate courses in sociology, sociology of sport, and sociological theory. digitized by the internet archive in 2011 with funding from carleton university, department of sociology & anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesc15alte alternate routes a jourinal of critjcal ancj social research editorial collective anna blaszczynska stephen j. boulet narinder brar colleen anne dell edward micheal oliver tracey prentice siomonn pulla jeffery shantz roberta lynn sinclair antonio sorge kevin dahlke www.carleton.ca/aiternateroutes aiterinate routes a journai of critjcai anc) sociai research volume 15, 1999 editorial policy/call for papers articles christopher powell crisis of co-optation: human rights social movements and global politics 54 gillian balfour from advocates to experts: feminist therapy with women in prison roberta lynn sinclair hegemonic masculinity, male peer support and sexual aggression: future research directions 35 58 colleen anne dell the 'premeditated' creation of the 'violent' female offender in canada 83 book review jeffrey shantz hakim bey's millenium 117 contents ofrecent issues 124 alternate routes editorial policy/call for papers alternate routes is a refereed multi-disciplinary journal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university ottawa, canada, k1s 5b6, altroutes@ccs.carleton.ca . alternate routes, a peer reviewed journal, provides a forum for debate and exchange among north american and international graduate students. we are therefore interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or co-authored with faculty), regardless of (their) university affiliation. the editorial emphasis of the journal is on the publication of critical and provocative analyses of theoretical and substantive issues which have clear relevance to progressive political intervention. although we welcome papers on a broad range of topics, members of the editorial board work within a feminist and (post) marxist tradition. therefore, we encourage submissions which advance or challenge questions and contemporary issues raised by these two broadly defined perspectives. we also welcome commentaries and reviews of recent publications and works in progress. alternate routes is currently seeking submissions for volume 16, 2000. papers should be submitted double-spaced and in triplicate, following the american psychological association (apa) referencing system, keeping endnotes to a minimum. floppy disks formatted in wordperfect or microsoft word are required for papers accepted for publication. back issues of alternate routes are available at the following prices per volume: current issue (volume 15, 1999) individuals $12.00; students/ un(der)employed $6.00; institutions $21.50. volume j3/14 (96/97): individuals $12.00; students/un(der)employed $4.00; institutions $12.00. all previous years: individuals $3.00; students/un(der)employed $1.50; institutions $6.00 . alternate routes is indexed in sociological abstracts and the left index. the alternate routes collective greatfully acknowledge the financial assistance of the carleton university community; the departments of sociology and anthropology and it's former acting chair, john devries; the dean of arts and social sciences, bill jones; the dean of graduate studies and research, roger blockley; and the vice-president of research, john apsimon. we also wish to greatfully thank all the anonymous reviewers. volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative crisis of co-optation: human rights social movements and global politics christopher powell global politics includes both international and transnational processes of political interaction. 'international' processes involve interactions that take place within the formally recognized channels of state politics. visits by heads of state, signing of treaties and trade agreements, diplomatic negotiations and the proceedings of intergovernmental organizations such as the united nations, are all examples of international processes. 'transnational' processes occur when non-state actors, resources, and communication flow across state borders to create networked structures of power that are analytically distinct from the state system itself. patterns of trade and investment, the dissemination channels of global media, and interacting networks of social movement activists are all examples of transnational flows. the distinction is an analytic one: analysis in terms of formal state structures, or analysis in terms of other structural configurations. most transnational action is also international in a formal sense, with the exception of illegal activities (e.g. smuggling, prohibited communications). also, states themselves are capable of acting transnationally. therefore, following on these definitions, this paper investigates the impacts on human rights movements of specifically transnational political processes. social movement theorists have used the concept of transnational social movement organizations (tsmos) to study these effects. social movements have effectively created new political structures in the global arena by forming transnational organizations and networks of organizations. tsmos have been able to access the immense resources of the state system through a variety of techniques, enabling them to foster a global human rights culture. social movement theorists volume 15, 1999 5 alternate routes have ventured to declare that a global civil society is emerging. civil society constitutes the realm of politics which is beyond the immediate threat of coercion, where state and non-state actors alike can dispute the legitimacy of various practices of power. proponents of the civil society hypothesis argue that sovereignty is leaking away from the state. this approach is useful, but it does not provide an account of the limits to tsmo politics. highly successful in obtaining formal recognition of human rights norms by states, tsmos have not been able to enforce those norms reliably. case studies show how transnational and local actors can cooperate to make substantial impacts on particularly vulnerable states, but these cases remain exceptional. critics have argued that social movement theory is uncritical in its use of statist conceptual categories and that it lacks a theory of state power or a strategy for confronting the state. to assess the validity of these objections, i explore critical approaches to a theory of the state, asking whether the state system as such is essentially inimical to human rights struggles. the superficial answer is yes; states that are powerful in the global arena are frequently involved in supporting despotic regimes or even destabilizing relatively democratic ones. these actions appear to be partly a result of cold war security concerns, but they are also a result of the link in most parts of the world between the state system and capitalism. powerful states, especially superpowers, are capable of acting transnationally — that is, directing the use of force outside their own territorial boundaries to create global power structures that do not register on formal political maps. a systematic relationship exists between the needs of capital investors and the limits of state willingness to support human rights. despite these limits however, opportunity for change exists, mainly because neither states nor 'civil society' are homogeneous entities. human rights movements can make progress by taking advantage of the contradictions within the stale system, capitalism, the media, and the ngo community itself. based on this analysis, i argue that the transnational human rights movement will face a crisis in the near future. the danger in this crisis is that the movement could reach a permanent impasse in its search for an effective enforcement mechanism; human rights discourse could be appropriated and tsmos themselves co-opted to service the legitimating needs of global power arrangements that pay only lip service to human rights. alternatively, stales could abandon human rights commit6 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative ments altogether. the opportunity, however, is that global and local human rights movements could reinforce each other, strengthening the movement as a whole and enabling a global human rights culture to solidify. the term 'human rights' covers wide ground; contemporary human rights theory can be organized into three generations (weston, 1989: 1718). in practice, the most prominent organizations in the human rights movement, such as amnesty international and the human rights watch groups, generally focus on first generation rights, that is civil and political rights. articles 2-21 of the universal declaration of human rights provide the generally accepted summary of these. they include rights to freedom of speech, thought, belief, creed, association, movement, democratic participation, and freedom from discrimination — rights that are necessary components of liberal democracy. they also include: ... the right to life, liberty, and the security of the person; freedom from slavery or involuntary servitude; freedom from torture and from cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile; the right to fair and public trial .... (weston, 1989: 17) these rights are sometimes described as 'negative rights' because they are mainly constructed as 'freedoms from' various forms of interference with or discrimination against the free and equal individual. second generation rights are economic, social, and cultural in nature; they are more often constructed as 'freedoms to' or 'positive rights'. examples include the right to a sufficient standard of living for self and family, the right to free choice of employment, the right to trade unionism, and the right to participate in the cultural life of one's community. third generation rights, also 'positive' in character, are called solidarity rights and apply to groups; examples include the right to self-determination, the right to economic and social development, the right to peace, and the right to a healthy environment. in this paper, i will focus primarily on first generation rights when speaking of 'human rights'. this is partly because first-generation rights are a significant focus for human rights movement activity and partly because these rights raise interesting questions regarding the nature of volume 15, 1999 7 alternate routes state power and the doctrine of sovereignty. one major focus of first generation civil and political rights is limiting the state's right to use force or direct violence against its subjects. this is reflected in the practice of human rights advocacy organizations, which expend much of their energies combatting unethical uses of violence, generally by state actors. protections against arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and execution, therefore, have far greater implications than ordinary ethical prohibitions; they effect a shift in the fundamental balance of power between states and individuals. enlightenment doctrines of natural law, upon which human rights theory is based, were constructed in opposition to the absolute sovereignty and hence, the unlimited power implied by the "divine right of kings" (weston, 1989: 13). human rights discourse attempts to take away from states the power to define what is a legitimate use of force and to construct a moral authority that supersedes state power. it does not necessarily follow, however, that human rights are incompatible with sovereignty altogether. as i will later argue, questions about the extent to which sovereignty is being reconfigured or compromised are important to assessing the impacts of human rights movements. human rights in practice (social movements) the study of transnational social movement organizations (tsmos) is an attempt to address a major lacuna in international relations discourse, namely, the realm of politics which belongs neither to the state nor to the economy. fundamental to this conception is the division of politics into three levels: local, state and transnational (smith, 1995: 189). given this division, the question is: who acts in the transnational arena? traditional realist and neo-realist theory defines states as the only significant political actors on the world stage and also under-emphasizes the complexity of politics within state boundaries. interdependency theory gives more credence to the functioning of non-state systems, particularly the economic system, while functionalist theories give a role to non-governmental organizations (ngos) 1 but stop short of analysing their complexities (smith et al 1994: 122-123). in sum, international relations theory is generally state-centric and cannot account for the various contestations of stale power by non-state actors which are international in scope. to fill this gap, the study of social movements, as developed by charles tilly (1984), is incorporated into international 8 volume 15, j 999 chemin alternative relations studies. social movements are presented as "sustained interactions between changing sets of challengers and authorities" of which the chief actors are presumed to be social movement organizations (smos) (smith et al. 1994: 123). 2 smos are transnational if their membership, funding sources, and/or their political activity systematically cross state boundaries. social movements have evolved in response to the changing nature of state power, creating new organizational forms to react against and to interface with new power structures. hence, ... as parties, unions, and other associations 'specializing in the struggle for power' grew in importance, so did 'parallel streams of people' who organized to raise 'sustained, selfconscious challengelsl to existing, [national] authorities'. (smith etal. 1994: 124) correspondingly, transnational social movements and transnational forms of social movement organizations have emerged in response to the growth of the international system, particularly the increasing importance of intergovernmental organizations (igos). according to smith and pagnucco (1999), however, most research on social movements has generally been limited to three ways in which movements have an international or transnational aspect: the diffusion of ideas, strategies and knowledge from one national setting to another; the mobilization of public bystanders in foreign countries; and the transnationally coordinated action of national movements, all triggered by common trends. in the case of all three strategies, social movements remain 'prisoners of the state,' constrained to act exclusively in response and relation to the nation-state or to other actors within it. smith argues that rather than remaining prisoners of the state, social movements are 'fugitives from the state,' breaking outside its boundaries, creating spaces outside the state system that may be marginal and transient but that do provide a basis for independent action (smith and pagnucco, 1999: 1-2). one way of creating such space is to form transnational alliances of domestic organizations. another is to create organizations which themselves are transnational, by having members in and/or operating in more than one country. the networks which these strategies create not only diffuse information globally but also enable the coordination of tactics. volume 15, 1999 9 alternate routes the cultivation of expertise, and the concerted and strategic use of resources on a global scale. these alliances and organizations can then pursue two broad strategies: waging 'diplomatic guerrilla warfare' on states, and penetrating or influencing intergovernmental organizations. diplomatic guerrilla warfare exploits the decentred nature of the nation-state system as a whole, creating a space that is perpetually outside any particular nation-state. amnesty international, for example, exploits this tactic par excellence by engaging in letter-writing campaigns addressed directly to governments engaged in human rights abuses. states are acted on by individuals who are protected from retaliation; the institution of sovereignty generally is used to systematically impinge on the sovereignty of particular states. human rights organizations are therefore engaged in a project of governance 'from below.' they seek to regulate the behaviour of states in accordance with the formal codes of human rights ideology (epitomized in the united nations declaration on human rights). their primary tool is surveillance and disclosure, making public what was erstwhile the 'private' business of states. however, disclosure is ineffective if it does not lead to some kind of penalty. it is the need for this power of penalty that leads human rights organizations to go knocking on the doors of igos. influencing the policies of intergovernmental organizations (igos) is the second major tactic open to tsmos. smith and pagnucco argue that igos represent a political space independent from nation-states (smith and pagnucco, 1999: 3-4). even though igos are created and funded by states, they operate at 'arms-length' from their founders and enjoy a significant degree of autonomy. furthermore, the set of nationstates that sponsor an igo may not be unified in their interests on any given issue; even within individual nation-states this unity may not exist. this situation makes it easier for the igo to behave autonomously and also to respond to the lobbying of non-state actors. finally, participating in the creation of an issue-oriented igo entails some commitment to that issue. although this commitment is largely symbolic, governments can be publicly reminded or embarrassed into keeping their word. igos can therefore actually influence state behaviour through their policy statements and through their role in the enactment of international charters and treaties. igos are in turn open to influence from tsmos both because of their basic commitment to an issue, whether genuine or merely formal. 10 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative and also because tsmos are an invaluable source of information necessary to the functioning of many igo mandates. for example, the united nations human rights commission relies heavily on the work of amnesty international, along with that of other transnational human rights organizations that extensively monitor human rights abuses. this gives these tsmos leverage in setting the igo agendas. tsmos are also able to gain headway because of the nature of their mandate: they focus on a single issue area, they possess a neutrality that comes from faithfulness to principle and they have an intense commitment to their issue areas. as clark points out, "amnesty international's staff size and budget now stack up favourably against the proportion of united nations resources dedicated to human rights concerns" (1995: 517). in addition, tsmos are sometimes able to rally domestic public opinion in a number of countries through the actions of their transnational membership. state governments are unable to constrain the actions of igos because they primarily deal in information, something that states are increasingly powerless to control. what do these tactics look like when put into practice? there is no simple a priori standard for evaluating the impacts of transnational human rights activism; the effects of such activism tend to be subtle and bound up with the particular opportunities and limitations of social movement politics. two examples help illustrate these openings and limits. the efforts of women's human rights advocates at the second world conference on human rights at vienna, 1993, and at the fourth world conference on women in beijing, 1995, met with considerable success in two areas: 'mainstreaming' the question of women's human rights within human rights discourse generally and in extending feminism beyond its western origins to incorporate diverse cultural perspectives without losing its basic normative foundations (desai, 1996: 112-115). important as these successes were in terms of discourses and alliance, participants in the process recognized that states could still not be held accountable for the violence they commit or permit against women. until accountability mechanisms could be found and implemented, it was expected that successes in international and igo fora were likely to have a marginal impact on nation-state behaviour (desai, 1996: 1 16). a more direct impact was registered by actors involved with the argentinean human rights movement under the proceso dictatorship (1976-1983). in this situation, human rights activists moved outside state volume 15, 1999 11 alternate routes structures, mobilizing public bystanders and making use of transnational alliance networks and tsmos in their efforts to oppose the proceso regime's harsh repression. according to alison brysk, this combination of local and transnational actors was able to take advantage of existing international human rights norms in order to delegitimate the regime in international fora, restricting the diplomatic and economic mobility of the regime and even substantially affecting us policy, causing it to suspend all military aid to the argentinean government (brysk, 1993: 269). at the same time, international resources helped keep the human rights movement operational in argentina, and international scrutiny helped keep particular human rights leaders alive. overall, these agitations helped catalyse the end of the military regime and the transition to formal democracy. the argentinean success must be qualified in several respects, however. the transnational alliances broke down once the official transition to democracy was effected, leaving the domestic movement too weak to ensure that human rights offenders would be punished. more importantly, the movement met with the success it did only because of a favourable conjunction of factors. one important consideration was that argentinean human rights activists belonged to the local elite: although dissidents were persecuted and politically powerless, they were mostly urban, literate, and middle class. on this basis, the transnational alliances available to argentine attorneys are not matched by the options of guatemalan indian peasants. (brysk, 1993: 281) the proceso regime had politically marginalised "not only workers and farmers, but also ... landed oligarchs, business people, industrialists, and intellectuals" (cockroft. 1989: 515). as well, the united states' temporary break with its long tradition of supporting coercive rule in argentina may have been partially the result of ngo activism (brysk, 1993: 268) but is likely to have also been influenced by argentina's growing commercial ties to the soviet union (cockroft, 1989: 515). it is therefore questionable whether the argentinean case is likely to be paradigmatic of increasing numbers of tsmo successes in the human rights field. both of these case studies underscore the limits of tsmo politics 12 volume 15. 1999 chemin alternative and, consequently, problematise the importance of any emerging 'global civil society.' impacts on global politics the 'global civil society' hypothesis what have been the impacts of the human rights movement on global politics? tsmo theorists have tended to argue that social movement organizations, through their success in institutionalizing themselves and their concerns, have created something new: a global civil society. transnational social movement organizations, in the human rights and other movements, challenge and complement nation-states (and igos) but nearly always act in counterpoint to them (clark, 1995: 507). tsmos play a critical, activist role, pushing states by feeding information into dissemination channels and by creating and distributing human rights instruments. they represent "grassroots interest carried to the international level," and are "new international actors that represent non-state interests" (clark, 1995: 509, emphasis added). in short, they represent an emerging global civil society. like human rights, civil society is an old concept which has recently been given fresh meaning. a roughly literal translation of the roman societas civilis, the term was used until the eighteenth century to designate political society in general, the sphere in which the politically active citizen operates. hegel narrowed its meaning to exclude the state and the family, and marx often used it to refer to the economic activities of capitalists, but its current usage owes the most to antonio gramsci (kumaj, 1994: 75-76). gramsci conceived of civil society as the arena in which politics operates through hegemony rather than through direct force. hegemony is the deliberate organization of the "spontaneous" consent given by the great mass of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group: this consent is "historically" caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production (gramsci, 1971: 12). in other words, hegemony is the mobilization (or manufacture) of consent to serve the interests of the ruling class. volume 15, 1999 i j alternate routes the importance of civil society to social movements is that, by its non-coercive nature, it is open to the mobilization of counter-hegemony. the idea of counter-hegemony has emerged as a theoretical response to the limits of class-based struggles for state power, those prescribed by the "classical marxist political narrative" (carrol, 1992: 11). that narrative leaves little room for any kind of politics other than a revolutionary seizing of state mechanisms in the name of the working class. in gramsci's analysis, however, the successful overthrow of the russian state by bolshevik forces was possible only because "in russia the state was everything; civil society was primordial and gelatinous." the same strategy would not work in the west, where state and civil society existed in their 'proper relation' so that even when the state itself was attacked, the social order would remain stable because of the legitimating mechanisms of civil society (gramsci 1971: 238) 3 . consequently, a new kind of political strategy is required: instead of conquering the mechanisms of the state, political challengers must storm and occupy the 'trench-systems' of hegemony itself. the emergence of civil society and hegemonic power also therefore marks the emergence of counter-hegemony as the key strategy for political change 4 . by describing the necessary shift to the politics of hegemony and counter-hegemony, gramsci argues that the struggle to directly control state power must give way to the struggle to define the terms of legitimacy of that power. focussing on civil society necessarily draws our attention away from state structures themselves and onto structures, networks, identities and allegiances which are formed by non-state actors. hegemony theory directs us away from the exercise of formal authority backed by the state's near-monopoly on force and towards the strategies and tactics used in the struggle to define the terms of consent by which formal authority is exercised. the question is, do these concepts apply to global politics? at first glance, the answer is yes. social movements such as the environmental, development, indigenous, and human rights movements, are bringing about ... the emergence of a parallel arrangement of political interaction, one that does not take anarchy or self-help as central organizing principles, but is focused on the self-conscious constructions of networks of knowledge and action, by 14 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative. decentered, local actors, that cross the reified boundaries of space as if they were not there (lipschutz, 1992: 390). these non-state actor networks create communities and ethical frameworks which react against "the fictions of the nation-state system" (lipschutz, 1992: 398). lipschutz argues that this civil society performs three functions: it causes sovereignty to leak away from the state level to both the transnational level and various sub-state actors, creating a world similar to pre-westphalian europe 5 in which the state is only one actor among many; it picks up the task of addressing various social welfare functions that state governments are increasingly unwilling or unable to fulfill; and it allows for "a form of large scale resistance to the gramscian hegemony of the current international system" (lipschutz, 1992: 399). he emphasizes the danger and opportunity inherent in such a transformation. on one hand, the new post-westphalian order could degenerate into a world as violent and fractious as pre-westphalian europe. on the other hand, however, there is the opportunity for a reconstructed, more democratic world politics in which force and authority are made to service, rather than impede, the interests of non-elites. assessing the global civil society hypothesis the power of the global civil society hypothesis is that it seems lo describe a real shift in the content of global politics. in inside/outside: international relations and political theory, rob walker (1993) argues that 'international relations' has historically been regarded as outside of political or ethical critique because of the hobbesian myth of anarchy among states. especially in its dominant (neo)realist forms, international relations theory has proceeded according to systematic misreadings of hobbes and of machiavelli which exaggerate the amorality of the prince and the leviathan and downplay their accounts of community involving both rulers and ruled. the state system, according to international relations theory, is not a community but an anarchic collection of anomic power-seekers; in the absence of a global leviathan, the very survival of every nation-state is threatened by the existence of the others. politics, as a necessarily ethical enterprise, exists within nation-states but not between them; between states there are only 'relations.' thi> doctrine has been used to keep citizens out of global politics and to position the geopolitical machinations of great powers somehow beyond ethvolume 15, 1999 15 alternate routes ical critique. recently, stanley hoffmann and other 'liberal-utilitarians' have declared a resurgence of interest in the intersection between ethics and international relations (walker, 1993: 50). counter to this. walker problematises the notion that 'international relations' and 'ethics' are separate enough to 'intersect,' and argues instead that the state system is a political community; the legitimation of the state system, and of internal 'relations' within the system has always rested on ethical assumptions and generated ethically intenlioned normative imperatives. it is tempting to conclude that the emergence of global civil society has revealed this situation for what it is, that social movements have prompted both the 'liberal-utilitarians' and walker's response to them, highlighting the political/ethical nature of state practices through their own injection of grassroots-driven politics into global arenas. however, walker reveals a problem implicit in the language of the 'global,' 'national' and 'local.' talking about state and international 'levels' which social movements have 'entered' concedes that states have somehow created new spaces, arranged in a hierarchical order: the substate space of local administrations, the state-space of national governments and the supra-state space of international relations. in one sense this is appropriate because states are such a significant focus of power that their structures must necessarily be reckoned with by social movement actors. in another, it is dangerous. to employ a 'levels of analysis' schema is to accept without comment the nation-state's aggrandizing claims to sovereignty, which locate the state as the ultimate political actor in a given geographical territory and accepts the analytical terms in which state actors prefer to frame politics. states themselves could be conceived of as 'movements,' but statist theory prefers to represent them as stable and inescapable structures. social movement actors may not accept this reification but social movement theory and global civil society discourse tend towards doing so. as a result. [a] merely contingent point of transitions, transgressions, comings and goings is rendered as an ontological absolute. [...] as a specifically liberal account of a world of individuals, states, and anarchies, it renders all other political categories of class, race, gender, capitalism, modernity, and so on entirely superfluous (walker. 1994: 671, emphasis original). 16 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative one effect of this is that the substantive programs of social movements become less important to analysts than the ability of tsmos to successfully interact with state and intergovernmental structures. within this an analytical framework, for example, the "co-optation and deradicalization" (rucht, 1999: 19) of social movement actors observed by some authors is not surprising, since the actors focussed on by the framework are those that are most intimately related to state structures and hence most likely to 'deradicalize.' a more radical critique of civil society theory refuses to make any separation between state and civil society: to do so is a fatal concession to the state system and to the specifically capitalist social order which that system protects. mooers and sears assert that [t]o classify the state as either the passive or active partner in its relations with civil society is to opt for liberal rather than marxist state theory. it is to split in two what is a single set of social relations (1992: 57). the problem with liberal theory is that it falsely assumes that liberalism can be separated from capitalism and neglects the important role that force plays in the maintenance of liberal democracy6 itself. this argument directly attacks the logic of the human rights movement, not just in terms of its influence on global politics, but in terms of its basic assumptions regarding the efficacy of rights-based strategies. 'juridic freedom and equality, 1 along with citizenship and citizenship rights, are the products of capitalist social relations and are essential to the maintenance of the systematic inequality that is class rule. 'first generation' civil and political rights are antithetical to 'second generation' economic and social rights because the capitalist's right to private property systematically overrides the worker's right to a decent standard of living. not only that, but it is only by continual mobilization of the means of force truit the capitalist system remains intact. the need to maintain capitalism by force means that the civil liberties of workers are expendable whenever capitalist property relations are threatened. force emerges in struggles between capitalists and workers; in liberal democracies both groups are equal in rights, and, in marx's words, 'between equal rights, force decides.' by neglecting the slate and neglecting capital, social movevolume j 5, j 999 17 alternate routes ment theory "will fail in its own terms ... all social movements come up against the state, and those that have no strategy for confronting the state lend to be incorporated or defeated" (mooers and sears, 1992: 68). how valid are these criticisms? does social movement theory lack a strategy for confronting the state? are social movements doomed to cooptation and defeat? to answer these questions we have to move beyond the discussion of social movement organizations themselves and situate social movements in the context they operate in. this involves exploring the dynamics of power in the state system itself. sovereignty in practice (states) lipshutz (1992) gives the following account of the origin of contemporary sovereignty: prior to the peace of westphalia and the end of the thirty years war (1648), the catholic church was the supreme sovereign and states were local power-holders without ultimate authority even within their own territories. the treaty of westphalia did away with the political supremacy of the church and institutionalized the territoriallybased nation-states. this created the contemporary patchwork of formally equal, mutually exclusive, local sovereignties. lipshutz agrees with walker that territorial sovereignly did not create a global anarchy, but a "global political system operating under universally shared norms " (1992: 405). this raises the very interesting question of what those norms are. is the sovereignty of states really equal and sacrosanct? does state discourse extend beyond statism into other areas of political life economic relations, for example? does the state system set any a prion limits on the expansion of human rights discourses? one major shortcoming of tsmo theory, and social movement theory generally, is that it doesn't articulate any theory of state power to complement its theory of social movement power. this is an unfortunate omission, since the meaning of social movements' visible successes varies considerably depending on what kind of forces they are up against. the key question is whether threats to human rights originate only within states themselves, or are fostered by the international state system as a whole. brysk's ( 1993) analysis of argentina under the proceso dictatorship illustrates this problem. she examines the international system mainly in terms of its role in "amplifying the impact of domestic social movements on social change" (brysk. 1993: 259). however, she also mentions the interesting and shifting role that the united states. argenih volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative tina's acknowledged patron, played with regards to human rights struggles. although "the united states under carter was the foreign government that played the most active role in pressing for human rights reform in argentina," the us had also "helped to nurture and inspire the argentine dictatorship." throughout an "escalating 20-year trend of military intervention" argentina received substantial military aid and training, including counterinsurgency models, from the united states (brysk, 1993: 267). igo institutions also played their part in fostering human rights violations in argentina: the state continued to receive funds, with an improved credit rating, from the world bank, the international monetary fund and the inter-american development bank, after the 1976 military junta (chomsky and herman, 1979: 270). latin american case studies, particularly from the 1970s and 1980s, tend to support the link which mooers and sears (1992) suggest between the enforcement of capitalism and the violation of human rights. perhaps the most prominent of these cases is the united states support for the nicaraguan contra rebels. the contras committed serious and widespread human rights abuses, while the nicaraguan regime was relatively democratic (cockroft, 1989: 51-52, 185-187). american intervention in nicaragua so deeply contravened international norms that the us was actually convicted by the international court of justice in the hague for violating nicaraguan sovereignty. however, the nicaraguan example illustrates an important point — that not only social movements but states themselves can act transnationally. great powers can intervene in the 'internal' affairs of sovereign nation-states, either overtly where the necessary conditions of legitimacy exist, or covertly where they do not. this intervention can range from the provision of military aid and 'special advisors' to a repressive state, as the us did in proceso argentina, through the nicaraguan case of covert support for insurgency movements, to direct invasions such as the undeclared soviet and american wars in afghanistan and vietnam respectively. conventional explanations for such transnational activities of states have centred on the cold war, envisioned as either an ideological or strategic struggle between the soviet union and the united slates. such an interpretation would lead us to expect that with the end of the cold war, powerful nation-states could feel less threatened, state transnationalism would subside, and the role of international forces in encouraging human rights abuses will decrease. volume 15, 1999 19 alternate routes however, noam chomsky (1992) argues that the cold war was neither an ideological or strategic conflict between two superpowers, the united states and soviet russia, but was and continues to be a mainly one-sided effort to maintain a us-controlled world order, against which russia was the prime holdout. first envisioned during the second world war, when us planners realized that their nation was on the verge of becoming the first truly global power, this order was directly linked to capitalism and directly inimical to the sovereignty of third world' stales: the general framework of world order was to be a form of liberal internationalism guaranteeing the needs of us investors. ... the conflict between us policy and independent third world development was deeply rooted in the structure of the world system. the persistent resort to violence to bar nationalist threats is a natural concomitant of these commitments (chomsky, 1992: 57). hurrel and woods (1995) make a similar, if less radical, assessment of the impact of capital interests on the state system. they discuss globalization, the "process of increasing interdependence and global enmeshment which occurs as money, people, images, values, and ideas flow ever more swiftly and smoothly across national boundaries" (hurrel and woods, 1995: 447). one important aspect of globalization has been the increased permeability of state boundaries to global flows of capital investment, and hence the decreasing ability of individual states to resist being incorporated into the marketplace of global finance. globalization has historically been an uneven process that politically strong states have the power to shape and politically weak states experience as something imposed on them from without. the way in which globalization unfolds, and the priorities with which it pursues certain liberalization projects (e.g. liberal economics) at the neglect or expense of others (e.g. liberal democracy) is determined in the interests of the established power-holders in the world system. the globalization of liberal economic norms has done little to further liberal political values regarding political participation and human rights. for these authors, "transnational civil society is itself an arena of power" and one that contains the 20 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative inequalities, power interests and illiberal tendencies of the global order generally (hurrell and woods, 1995: 467). contradictions in global politics my analysis so far has generally treated the various actors and entities in question as if each were a completely unified phenomenon with no internal divisions or contradictions. this is partly the result of needing to use broad categorical concepts to talk about highly complex phenomena and it is also a product of the particular discourses being evaluated. tsmo theory, by definition, takes organizations as its basic point of reference, and although smith and others highlight the role that internal contradictions within igos and within states can play in enhancing tsmo influence, they do not explore the distinctions between the formal structure of political authority and the concrete relationships of power and allegiance. moreover, to make my points about transnationally mobilized coercive power, i have treated 'the state system' and 'global capitalism' as if they were homogenous and uni-directional forces. if this were so, the 'war of position' described by gramsci would be over, or at least doomed to failure; fortunately, even the most powerful organized systems are full of countercurrents and contradictory tendencies. the following selection explores some of those contradictions in order to give a sense of the potential for change in global politics. sikkink (1993, 1996) avoids organization-based analyses and focuses on 'international issue-networks'. issue-networks are composed of smos, transnational or otherwise 7 , along with parts of regional and global igos and also private foundations (who make significant funding contributions to issue struggles). issue-networks are defined by the interaction of their members and by their basis in shared value systems; this distinguishes them from epistemic communities, based on shared causal ideas, or organized interest groups, based on instrumental goals (sikkink, 1993: 412). one merit of the issue-network approach is that it allows for the recognition that neither smo communities nor igos are unitary actors. it also emphasizes the importance of channels of communication and of gatekeepers and open doors as structures of opportunity for human rights lobbying. sikkink notes that government policy bodies provide "arenas and points of leverage" for changing state policy, and notes that state structures (such as embassies) can be used to advantage volume 15, 1999 21 alternate routes even when their relationship with smos is "not congenial" (sikkink, 1993: 422). sikkink (1993) points out that sovereignty has never been absolute either in discourse or in practice; international charters such as the peace of westphalia and the treaty of augsburg have always set limits on the power of states over their subjects, as have movements such as the antislavery campaign of the nineteenth century. sovereignty is not a 'thing' but a set of norms and practices, reinforced by both state and non-state actors, which seems real because of the scale of its power. what is new about human rights movements is that they have significantly extended the range of issues that are considered to be 'above' sovereignty. the human rights issue does not presage an alternative to sovereignty, but it suggests a future model in which understandings of sovereignty are modified in relation to specific issues that are deemed of sufficient importance to the international community to limit the scope of sovereign authority (sikkink, 1993:415). social movements have not caused a 'leaking away' of power so much as an alteration in the way it is exercised, or at least in the discourses that legitimate its exercise. although state actors continue to resist being governed by human rights agendas, they have been forced to move 'from denial to lip service.' the move from denial to lip service creates a new arena in which hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces clash: that of information. the clash over information is illustrated in the struggles to publicize the el mozote massacre. in early december, 1981, el salvadorian army soldiers commanded by colonel domingo monterrosa systematically massacred the inhabitants of the village of el mozote and surrounding hamlets, with a death total of at least 800 in the space of a few days, ostensibly in an attempt to eliminate the basis for fmln insurgency in the morazan province (danner, 1993). because this occurred precisely at a time when the u.s. congress was required to approve new packages of financial and military support for the el salvadoran government, the reagan administration was eager to suppress news of the massacre. aryeh neier. director of americas watch at the time, later commented: "what the reagan administration did was embrace the principle of 22 volume j 5. j 999 chemin alternative human rights and then conduct warfare over the facts" (danner, 1993: 116). the ensuing struggle to define the truth regarding the massacre illustrates how multiple and opposing networks can be present within state structures. tom farer describes how the american state department constructed a 'plausible denial' of the existence of the el mozote massacre at a time when congress was discussing the possibility of curtailing military aid to el salvador. state department officials had been informed of the massacre at the time by sources other than the fmln, and the department sent officials to the area to investigate these claims. despite not being allowed to visit the massacre site, these investigators produced substantial indirect corroborating evidence of the massacre and included it in their report to the department. the facts were progressively suppressed and eliminated, however, as the report moved through departmental channels, culminating in a denial by the department and by the american president that the massacre had ever taken place (danner, 1993: 106-112). the mass media, as well, contains both foes and allies for the human rights movement. for example, the el mozote massacre was reported as fact in the new york times but denied outright in the wall street journal (danner, 1993: 120-121). the ngo community itself also contains voices that speak for established power relations, as well as those voices that speak against it. again in relation to american policy towards central america in the 1980s, laura macdonald has found that "although many ngos were extremely critical of us foreign policy, other ngos were used as tools of that policy" (macdonald, 1994: 281). synthesis where does this leave us, regarding the global civil society hypothesis? it is possible that civil society theory is more useful as a motivating metaphor, a tool to highlight the reasons and the opportunities for engaging in the politics of change, than as a literal description of structural dynamics. it certainly seems as if rumours of the death of sovereignty are greatly exaggerated. social movement successes require a fundamental reassessment of international relations theory, but the human rights movement has not yet found the enforcement mechanisms it needs to systematically alter state behaviours. i propose a few conclusions regarding the utility of the 'global civil society hypothesis' and tsmo volume 15, 1999 23 alternate routes theory generally: these analyses tell us much about the evolving organizational and political dynamics of human rights social movements and convey justified optimism regarding the continued political importance of tsmo actors in human rights politics. but they give misleading impressions about the various systems — especially the state system which these actors interface with. they substantially overstate the impact of tsmos on the practices of states with regard to the use of force and on the institution of sovereignty itself. the achievements of tsmos remain at the level of the formal and discursive. this may set the stage for radical structural change, but that change has yet to occur. social movement theory, whether based around tsmos or otherwise, needs to acknowledge the importance of the transnational movements of state-organized force to the understanding of human rights dilemmas; social movement actors themselves have demonstrated such an understanding for some time. theorists also need to resist the temptation 10 incorporate movement activities into the already existing categories of international relations theory if they wish to contribute to movemenis' counter-hegemonic potential. one way to do this, the way that i have sketched out in this paper, is not to turn away from the state or deemphasize it but to subject it to a renewed critical scrutiny, to critiques which foreground power and inequality. crisis that being said, our original question remains: how successful have human rights movements been? i suggest that the human rights movement is approaching a crisis. to be in crisis is to have reached a point where danger and opportunity are present in the same moment, in the same circumstances, in the same set of choices. because our descriptions of crisis tend to emphasize the danger, this one can be labelled the "crisis of co-optation." the danger is twofold, or rather has two aspects: movement organizations, through their very success in interfacing with stale and intergovernmental structures, are in danger of being co-opted and drained of much of their efficacy; human rights discourse, through its very success in being formally incorporated into statist ideology, is in danger of being used to legitimize an emerging global order which places actual human rights concerns very low on its agenda. the opportunity, however, must not be overlooked: human rights activists a e poised to take advantage of globalized political processes to make major 24 volume 15, i99>> chemin alternative advances in the worldwide struggle for civil liberties and to substantially curb the power of the states to use force on their 'own' subjects. there are three main scenarios possible. the first is a reversal of the current trend. formal and symbolic commitments to rights could turn out to be too costly, too embarrassing for states to continue to maintain. this could happen if economic or strategic interests conflict too drastically with human rights mandates, relative to the legitimacy gains of affiliation with rights ideology. in this scenario, rights would then be swept quietly under the rug. national leaders would mention human rights less and less often in their televised speeches, national representatives would attend fewer and fewer human rights conventions, provide less support to human rights ngos, and sign mia-like treaties which make commitment to rights less and less feasible. without continued pressure from human rights advocates, both institutional and grassroots, this backsliding remains an open possibility. judging by the criticisms which wang dan's release drew from domestic and international human rights organizations, there seems little likelihood that social movements will be voluntarily co-opted. human rights discourse, however, can be co-opted by powerful actors who are eager to legitimate themselves. if they have not already, social movement actors will soon find themselves in a struggle to control the use, and consequently the meaning, of human rights discourses. the normative content of human rights has already been codified, in the u.n. declaration and other international accords, but the criteria of successful change or substantial commitment is constantly negotiated among actors from states, corporations, mass media, and social movements themselves. the second scenario is therefore an ossification of the status quo, that powerful states could continue to espouse a human rights rhetoric while making substantive human rights interventions only when it suits them to do so; that is, only when the discourse of human rights provides an effective justification for practices of sanction or intervention which are necessitated by commercial or strategic interests. in this scenario, human rights discourse insinuates itself into global governance practices like a climbing trellis vine, providing decorative cover without affecting their basic structure more than marginally. human rights concerns continue to be given lip service, and to inform numerous igo committee reports, but the search for enforcement mechanisms is stalled. the primary danger of the 'co-opotation' crisis is that human rights movements volume 15, 1999 25 alternate routes could plateau indefinitely at their present level of symbolic success and end up having only contributed to the symbolic order of a refashioned and 'globalized' system of domination. of course, this option assumes that domestic human rights struggles continue to be stalemated, which is not inevitable. the third option, and the one that motivates activists, is a gradual ratcheting upwards of commitment to human rights. domestic and transnational movement actors complement each others' efforts: the more individual states concede to pressure for symbolic and substantive commitments to human rights, the more that human rights discourse becomes institutionalized in global politics. as human rights discourse becomes institutionalized globally, individual states can in turn be subjected to greater pressure to make substantive rights commitments. local and transnational social movement networks could reinforce each other to spread a global culture of human rights and institutionalize the governance of those rights at both local and global levels. this hope is, of course, precisely what motivates activists to construct transnational networks in the first place, and to risk compromise by interfacing with states. conclusion in this paper i have tried to map out the ways in which human rights movements and state power impact on each other. social movement activists have been extraordinarily successfully in establishing human rights discourse as a legitimating framework which, in theory, should limit state force and protect the freedoms of the sovereign individual. tsmos have institutionalized themselves as permanent actors on the global political scene, interfacing with the state system directly via igos and treaty-making, and indirectly through a variety of pressure techniques. tsmo theory takes conventional international relations theory a step away from its complete reliance on state-centric categories and describes the formal significance of social movement politics, but it does not provide an effective assessment of the future of human rights politics. the present trend toward the global institutionalization of human rights norms cannot continue unless movements find ways to translate symbolic successes into reliable mechanisms for enforcing their agendas; if and when this occurs it will mark a qualitative shift in development of the stale system. the notion of 'global civil society' gives us 26 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative some sense of the importance of the shift that has already occurred: global politics is no longer the sole province of states; social movements engage in practices which dispute the hegemony of dominant orders. but the continued role of violence in global politics and, hence, the continued need of many people for the most basic human rights protections, indicates that a 'global civil society' conceptualization does not capture the whole picture. states themselves, especially superpowers, can act transnationally as well as internationally, evading their own formal boundaries to exercise force 'at a distance.' the transnational activities of states can range from providing military aid (either covertly or openly) either to other states or to insurrectionary forces, through various smallscale actions to large and regionally devastating invasions in support of puppet regimes. this transnational use of state power forces us to question the real meaning of sovereignty. exploring the relationship between the state system and capitalism also destabilizes the rigid state/non-stale dichotomy of conventional international relations theory. the collaboration of powerful states with the wants of capitalist investors has contributed to human rights abuse in many instances and helps account for the reluctance of states to make more substantial commitments to rights enforcement. the 'state system' is not a homogeneous force, however, and global politics is best conceived as a complex network of actors whose patterns of collaboration and conflict do not always match their institutional affiliation. human rights movements can find allies and foes alike in states, igos, news-media, among the various mechanisms of capitalism, and in the broader social movement community itself. in this global arena, movements are approaching a new phase of challenge: the struggle lo retain control over their own discourses and prevent them from being coopted. this 'crisis of co-optation' marks a certain coming-of-age for movements as a political force, and in one respect the notion of civil society is apt; counter-hegemonic politics ... is concentrated, difficult, and requires exceptional qualities of patience and inventiveness. in politics, the siege is a reciprocal one, despite all appearances, and the mere fact that the ruler has to muster all his resources demonstrates how seriously he takes his adversary (gramsci, 1971: 239). volume 15, 1999 27 alternate routes by bringing to light and demystifying the workings of state power, theorists can support social movement actors in the 'warfare over the facts' and over standards are being conducted in public arenas. in addition, there is another service academics can perform which may be of greater long-term value: a well-developed critical theory of how power is structured in the global arena can provide essential landmarks for social movement actors, as they navigate the narrow border between engagement and collaboration in a world where allies and adversaries often wear the same colours. 8 notes 1. to clarify this terminology, it should be noted that smos and tsmos are ngos, but not vice-versa. social movement organizations, both national and transnational, are generally one subset of non-governmental organizations. 2. this definition, of course, is broad enough to include intra-elite conflicts, such as 'sustained challenges' between business and government where these occur. 3. a more detailed description of this process would run as follows: the emergence of civil society and the politics of hegemony represents a historical transformation in the nature of power struggles. prior to this transformation, politics resembles a 'war of maneuver' in which fundamental power structures are directly and openly contested; the opposed forces are competing to occupy strategic positions. gramsci, writing in the early 1930s, believed that the last historical occurrence of war of maneuver was the october revolution (gramsci, 1979: 235); since mat time, conflicts that could be called 'wars of maneuver' have exploded around the world, including the second world war, the decolonization of india and africa, numerous successful and unsuccessful revolutions in latin america and southeast asia, and many protracted and bitter civil wars (many of these, not coincidentally, have been the site of intense human rights abuse). when, however, war of maneuver has exhausted itself ('for one reason or another'), then the struggle changes into a kind of political siege warfare: the 'war of position' which is fought through ideological means and in which the dominant power struggles to make its hegemony absolute and permanent (gramsci. 1971: 238-9). thus the emergence of civil society means that conflict has entered its culminating stage. 2h volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative 4. the fact that gramsci was a committed socialist and, between 1924 and his 1928 arrest, was the general secretary of the communist party in italy makes for an interesting aside, one that cannot be fitted into the main thread of my argument but which helps to flesh out the context of contemporary debates around civil society. the political struggle which he envisioned was that between capitalism and the revolutionary potential of the proletariat, the counter-hegemonic struggle he described was that for the world-historic socialist revolution. yet his theory represents a major break with the orthodox marxism of his day, which focused on revolution by coup d'etat (to oversimplify the case), or what laclau and mouffe have called the 'jacobin imaginary.' this conjures up an almost romantic image: the lifetime socialist, jailed by fascists and speeding towards his premature death, turns away from orthodox revolutionary strategy and ventures into a daring engagement with politics within the capitalist state. several important contemporary socialist thinkers seem to have found this image appealing enough to emulate. although their move is perhaps less daring, 'democratic socialists' like laclau and mouffe or 'post-marxists' like carl boggs have used gramscian thought to make important contributions to social movement theory (contributions unfortunately not explored in this essay). for laclau and mouffe, counter-hegemony means not only the rejection of the hegemonic power of the capitalist class, but also the domination of left politics by orthodox marxism: what is now in crisis is a whole conception of socialism which rests upon the ontological centrality of the working class, upon the role of revolution, with capital 'r', as the founding moment in the transition from one type of society to another, and upon the illusory prospect of a perfectly unitary and homogeneous collective will that will render pointless the moment of politics. the plural and multifarious character of contemporary social struggles has finally dissolved the last foundation for that political imaginary. (laclau and mouffe, 1985: 2). in the preface to social movements and political power, carl boggs echot's these sentiments, underscoring the "failure of even a reconstituted marxism io produce a viable transformative strategy in the west" (boggs. 1986: x). the failure of democracy within eastern european communism, along with the failure of western working classes to achieve class consciousness, have fueled a renewed enthusiasm for the gramscian alternative within marxism, and hence to a 'radical' politics of civil society. this development has allowed for a pluralist 'left' theory in which identities based on class, race, gender, sexuality. volume 15, 1999 29 alternate routes and so on are all acceptable bases for politics. it remains to be seen whether this new 'counter hegemony' will produce radical transformations, or whether it will disolve into a market-based consumerist play with signs of selfhood (as some critics suggest). but it is unclear at best whether struggles for basic civil liberties belong to the 'new social movements' described by laclau and mouffe or boggs. so these interesting considerations remain tangential to our main in\estigation. 5. the significance of westphalia for lipshutz's argument will be discussed further below. 6. the link between capitalism and force is not exclusive; i.e. it does not imply that socialist states do not also violate human rights. 7. sikkink does not use the term smos and does not often refer to 'social movements,' but discusses issue-oriented ngos, a category which is equivalent to the smo terminology of smith et. al. 8. the author would like to thank melanie white for invaluable assistance in the development of this article. references boggs, carl. 1986 social movements and political power, emerging forms of radicalism in the west. philadelphia: temple university press. broder, john m. 1998 "release just a small step. us aides say." the new york times international. monday. april 20, p. a6. brysk, alison. 1993 "from above and below: social movements, the international system, and human rights in argentina." comparative political studies. 26(3):25 l>285. 30 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative carroll, william k. 1992 "social movements and counter-hegemony in a canadian context." in william carroll (ed). organizing dissent: contemporary social movements in theory and practice. toronto: garamond press. chomsky, noam. 1992 deterring democracy. new york: hill and wang. chomsky, noam, and edward s. herman. 1979 the political economy of human rights volume i: the washington connection and third world fascism. montreal: black rose books. clark, ann marie. 1995 "non-governmental organizations and their influence on international society." journal of international affairs. 48(2): 507-525. cockroft, james. 1989 neighbors in turmoil: latin america. new york: harper and rowe. danner, mark. 1993. "the truth of el mozote." the new yorker. (december 6): 50-133. desai, manisha. 1996 "from vienna to beijing: women's human rights activism and the human rights community." new political science. 35(spring): 107-1 19. eckholm, erik. 1998 "as top dissident lands in us, china is hoping to score points." the new york times international. monday. april 20, pp. al. a6. gramsci, antonio. 1971 selections from the prison notebooks. new york: international publishers. volume 15, 1999 31 alternate routes hunt, alan. 1990 "rights and social movements: counter-hegemonic strategies. "journal oflaw and society. 17(3): 309-328. hurrell. andrew and ngaire woods. 1995 "globalization and inequality." millennium: journal of international studies. 24(3): 447-470. kumar. krishan. 1994 "civil society." in outhwaite, william, and tom bottomore, (eds). the blackwell dictionary of twentieth century social thought.. oxford: blackwell publishers. laclau, ernesto, and chantal mouffe. 1985 hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics. new york: verso. lipshutz, ronnie d. 1992 "reconstructing world politics: the emergence of global civil society." millennium: journal of international studies. 21(3): 389-420. macdonald. laura. 1994 "globalising civil society: interpreting international ngos in central america." millennium: journal of international studies. 23(2): 267-285. mickleburgh. rod. 1998 "prominent chinese dissident exiled to united states." the globe and mail. monday, april 20. pp. al. a7. mooers, colin, and alan sears. 1992 "the new social movements and the withering away of state theory." in william carroll ed. organizing dissent: contemporary social movements in theory and practice. toronto: garamond press. 32 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative rucht, dieter. 1999 "the transnationalization of social movements: trends, causes. problems." in donatella delia porta, hanspeter kriesi, and dieter rucht (eds). social movements in a globalizing world. new york: st. martin's press. sikkink, kathryn a. 1993 "human rights, principles issue-networks, and sovereignty in latin america." international organization. 47(3): 41 1-441. 1996 "nongovernmental organizations, democracy, and human rights in latin america." in tom farer(ed). beyond sovereignty: collectively defending democracy in latin america. baltimore: john hopkins press. smith, jackie. 1995 "transnational political processes and the human rights movement." research in social movements, conflict and change. 18: 185-219. smith. jackie, and ron pagnucco. 1999 "global strategies of social protest: transnational social movement organizations in world politics." in donatella delia porta. hanspeter kriesi, and dieter rucht eds. social movements in a globalizing world. new york: st. martin's press. smith, jackie, ron pagnucco, and winnie romeril. 1994 "transnational social movement organizations in the global political arena." voluntas. 5(2): 121-154. tilly, charles. 1984 "social movements and national politics." in c. bright and s. harding eds. statemaking and social movements: essays in theory and history. ann arbor: university of michigan press. walker. r.b.j. 1993 inside/outside: international relations as political theory. cambridge: cambridge university press. volume 15, 1999 33 alternate routes 1994 "social movements/world politics." millennium: journal of international studies. 23(3): 669-700. weston. burns h. 1989 "human rights." in w. burns, and claude r. p. (eds). human rights and the world community: issues and action. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania. 34 volume 15, 1999 © red quill books ltd. 2013 ottawa www.redquillbooks.com isbn 978-1-926958-24-8 printed on acid-free paper. the paper used in this book incorporates post-consumer waste and has not been sourced from endangered old growth forests, forests of exceptional conservation value or the amazon basin. red quill books subscribes to a one-book-at-a-time manufacturing process that substantially lessens supply chain waste, reduces greenhouse emissions, and conserves valuable natural resources. includes bibliographical references. “alternate routes” issn 1923-7081 (online) issn 0702-8865 (print) red quill books is an alternative publishing house. proceeds from the sale of this book will support future critical scholarship. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research volume 25, 2014 editors: carlo fanelli and bryan evans interventions editor: jordy cummings book 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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 ryan katz-rosene gendered emissions: counting greenhouse gas emissions by gender and why it matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 marjorie griffin cohen overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 john calvert approaches and responses to climate change: challenges for the pantanal and the upper paraguay river basin . . . . . . 119 antonio augusto rosotto ioris brazilian dystopia: development and climate change mitigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 garry potter, jun mian chen and nazar hilal can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? big copper versus a small city and the urban environment in a b.c. interior community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 terry kading and elisabeth bass ‘greening work’ in lean times: the amalgamated transit union and public transit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 jeffrey carey and steven tufts 6 | climate change and its discontents interventions the contradictions of localism: an interview with greg sharzer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 jordy cummings urban space in perspective: an interview with matthew gandy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 aaron henry indigenous takes on environmentalism: an interview on the front lines of indigenous land defense . . . . . . . . . . . 259 megan kinch the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally: an interview with greg albo and jerome klassen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 jordy cummings working in a warming world: on climate change and union renewal with carla lipsig-mummé . . . . . . . . . . . 283 christina rousseau climate change and socialism: an interview with john bellamy foster. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 steve da silva reviews john bellamy foster, brett clark and richard york. the ecological rift capitalism’s war on the earth; anthony giddens. the politics of climate change . . . . . . . . . . . 303 samantha wilson silvia federici. revolution at point zero: housework, reproduction, and feminist struggle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 danielle dinovelli-lang ross sutherland. false positive: private profit in canada’s medical laboratories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 deborah komarnisky ernesto che guevara. el diario del che en bolivia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 gabrielle etcheverry victoria law and china martens. don’t leave your friends behind: concrete ways to support families in social justice movements and communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 kevin partridge victoria law. resistance behind bars: the struggles of incarcerated women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 rebecca jaremko bromwich babak fozooni. what is critical social research? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 mahnam a. malamiry harry e. vanden and marc becker. josé carlos mariátegui: an anthology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 matthew hawkins c.l.r. james. a new notion: two works by c.l.r. james . . . . . . . . . 329 paul whiteley holly gibbs, belinda leach, and charlotte a.b. yates. negotiating risk, seeking security, eroding solidarity: life and work on the border . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332 madalena santos richard swift. the great revenue robbery: how to stop the tax cut scam and save canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 matt fodor 8 | climate change and its discontents editorial introduction: climate change and its discontents | 9 editorial introduction climate change and its discontents carlo fanelli1 and bryan evans2 in “capitalism, the climate crisis and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’”, ryan katz-rosene explains how the material and subjective systems governing transport infrastructure are ecologically unsustainable and largely undemocratic. rather than challenging market forces, the canadian state has played a central role in deepening and extending these practices. in his view, confronting these challenges requires a genuinely democratic, anti-capitalist politics aimed at transforming state power across all scales of public administration. next, marjorie griffin cohen shows why counting “gendered emissions” matters. while many of the gendered analyses exploring climate change focus on the implications for women and their work in the global south, less attention has been devoted to exploring how climate change differentially effects women in the north. cohen’s analysis breaks new ground in understanding how paid and unpaid labour as well as consumption issues vary by gender in the developed world, and explains why knowing the gendered distinctions in ghg emissions can inform radical ways to think about public policy and its relation to climate change. moving forward, in “overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry” john calvert argues that reducing ghg emissions and energy consumption of the built environment is central to mitigating climate change. he explores how building trades workers can adopt low carbon construction policies. to do this, he argues, means challenging the pervasive use of sub-contracting and precarious employment, as well as largely unregulated construction markets. a ‘green’ construction culture, boosted by enhanced training and apprenticeship programs and improved job security through unionization, could go a long way in implementing climate objectives at the workplace. the following article by antonio augusto rosotto ioris, “approaches and responses to climate change: challenges for the pantanal and the upper paraguay river basin”, draws on original empirical research that explores a range 1 carlo fanelli is an instructor and sshrc post-doctoral research fellow at the department of politics and public administration, ryerson university. thanks are due to the social sciences and humanities research council for their financial support. 2 bryan evans is associate professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university and a member of the yeates school of graduate studies. 10 | climate change and its discontents of responses that are being developed in order to cope with the negative impacts of climate change. loris shows how the influence of the agribusiness sector, coupled with few national and trilateral environmental policies, have focused on principles of systematic adaptation, climate skepticism and/or marketization. in “brazilian dystopia: development and climate change mitigation”, potter et al., stress the ecological importance of the amazonian rainforest to the rest of the world. they argue that deforestation, rather than the carbonized energy and transport sectors, disproportionately accounts for brazil’s ghg emissions. they explore the “dystopia thesis” concretizing their arguments through an examination of the complex relationships between the brazilian economy and practices aimed at mitigating climate change. kading and bass ask “can you build an openpit mine in an urban centre?” they explore how residents of the city of kamloops found themselves at the centre of a controversial debate over a foreign-domestic investment proposal: the establishment of an openpit copper and gold mine in a b.c. interior community. they argue that environmental and community concerns have been overshadowed by the rhetoric of job creation, low taxes, balanced budgets and economic growth at all costs. should this proposal go unchallenged, they argue, it could set a canada-wide precedent with dire implications for the livability, economic future and democracy for residents of kamloops and beyond. the final article by jeffrey carey and steven tufts, “‘greening work’ in lean times: the amalgamated transit union and public transit”, explores the trialectic relationship between capital, labour and nature in canada’s public transit unions. they review union documents and canadian newspapers finding that the state uses the environment as a wedge issue in its ‘war of position’ with unions: workers’ strike actions are characterized as harmful to the environment and community. their article concludes with an examination of a recent campaign strategy by toronto’s atu local 113 wherein they call for more community based approaches to resistance. our interventions section brings together leading thinkers and community organizers in the pursuit of ecological, political, economic and social justice. starting us off, jordy cummings interviews greg sharzer, author of no local, on the issue of localism. their discussion explores the limitations of ethical shopping, community initiatives like gardens and farmers’ markets and local economic development. sharzer suggests that these initiatives will not change the world, but that challenging market priorities will. next, aaron henry and matthew gandy discuss editorial introduction: climate change and its discontents | 11 new critical methodological tools with which scholars and activists can get a handle on the conjuncture, encompassing a range of issues connected with gandy’s theory of ‘partial modernity’. following this up, megan kinch delves into conversation with indigenous anishinaabe and haudenosaunee land defenders, exploring land occupation, cultural revitalization, and their perspectives on both marxism and environmentalism in what follows, christina rousseau discusses the impact of climate change on labour markets with carla lipsig-mumme, incorporating a discussion of her most recent work titled work in a warming world. the following interview with empire’s ally editors greg albo and jerome klassen discusses a range of issues surrounding canadian imperialism in general and the war in afghanistan in particular. in their discussion with jordy cummings, albo and klassen challenge the humanitarian aspects of the afghanistan war, drawing attention to the ecological, social and political consequences of war without end. the section is capped with an interview between john bellamy foster, editor of monthly review, and steve da silva. they discuss the frightening prospects that we face as a species, incorporating discussions of recent ipcc reports as well as foster’s highly original reading of marx and engels’ writings on nature and the metabolic rift. concluding alternate routes’ thirty-seventh year of publication and twenty-fifth issue are eleven reviews examining everything from climate change to progressive taxation, healthcare, revolutionary social and political thought and cross-border solidarity. we would like to thank all contributors for working under extremely tight publishing deadlines, carefully addressing reviewers’ concerns and contributing their time and energy to put together this volume. special thanks are also due to our editorial advisory board, as well as a number of external reviewers, who graciously volunteered their time and expertise to see this project through. this collection would not have been possible without your steadfast support. the concerns raised in this issue cross-cut racial, ethnic, gender and class lines; the actions or inactions taken to mitigate and adapt to climate change will effect all living systems on earth now and well into the future. in 2000, perry anderson remarked: “the only starting-point for a realistic left today is a lucid registration of historical defeat. capital has comprehensively beaten back all threats to its rule, the bases of whose power – above all, the pressures of competition – were persistently under-estimated by the socialist movement...for the left, the lesson of 12 | climate change and its discontents the past century is one taught by marx. its first task is to attend to the actual development of capitalism as a complex machinery of production and profit, in constant motion.”3 fourteen years later anderson’s words are perhaps more revealing now than when they were first written. we hope that the contributions in this volume, along with those of socialists, feminists, anti-racists, indigenous communities and ecologicallyinspired authors and activists from around the world, assist readers in interpreting the consequences of climate change and inspire them to do something about it. 3 anderson, p. (2000). renewals. new left review, http://newleftreview.org/ii/1/perry-andersonrenewals http://newleftreview.org/ii/1/perry-anderson-renewals http://newleftreview.org/ii/1/perry-anderson-renewals recomposing the casual class in precarious times | 253 recomposing the casual class in precarious times brett caraway1 the new york times magazine recently featured an article provocatively titled “the creative apocalypse that wasn’t” (johnson, 2015) in which the author surveyed statistical data from the u.s. labor department and the u.s. economic census to arrive at a somewhat upbeat assessment of the economic well-being of the creative economy. the article suggests that the recording industry’s recent shortfalls in album sales is negated in part by new revenue streams from live performance; hollywood’s abandonment of mid-budget films in favor of formulaic blockbusters and endless parades of sequels is made more palatable by the release of more eclectic films by independent production companies; the emergence of blockbuster economics in e-book publishing is made more palatable by niche markets supported by indie bookstores. in other words, our collective anxieties about the economic impact of recent technological developments in the creative economy are unwarranted because “…there are now more ways to buy creative work, thanks to the proliferation of content-delivery platforms” (para. 28). likewise, “...just as there are more avenues for consumers to pay for creative work, there are more ways to be compensated for making that work” (para. 29). the author concludes that the recent restructuring of production, distribution, and consumption has not significantly impacted the prospects of earning a livelihood within the creative industries. simply put, consumers can now choose from a larger selection of creative works than ever before and that means more people are getting paid to do what they love. in general terms the creative industry is analogous to the sector known as the information and cultural industries as defined by the north american industry classification system (naics). developed by the u.s. office of management and budget (omb), naics is a hierarchical classification system of industry sectors, subsectors, and groups. naics is also the departmental standard for statistics canada and industry canada. according to industry canada (n.d.), the 1 brett caraway is an assistant professor at the university of toronto in the institute of communication, culture, information, and technology at utm and in the faculty of information at st. george. his research focuses on the intersections between law, economics, and technological development. 254 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages information and cultural industries (naics 51): “…comprises establishments primarily engaged in producing and distributing…information and cultural products. establishments providing the means to transmit or distribute theses products or providing access to equipment and expertise for processing data are also included. the unique characteristics of information and cultural products, and of the processes involved in their production and distribution, distinguish this sector from the goods-producing and services-producing sectors. the value of these products lies in their information, educational, cultural or entertainment content, not in the format in which they are distributed (para. 1).” the emphasis on the immateriality of cultural and informational artifacts in this definition minimalizes the materiality of a number of the subsectors that comprise this sector. subsectors in the naics 51 category include the publishing industry, the motion picture and sound recording industry, broadcasting, telecommunications, data processing and hosting, and other information services (telephony, cable and satellite television, internet service providers, telecommunications reselling). the information and cultural industries may themselves be considered as a subset of the information and communications technologies (ict) sector. in addition to information and cultural industries (naics 51), industry canada also includes portions of manufacturing (naics 31-33), wholesale trade (naics 41), professional, scientific and technical services (naics 54), and other services excluding public administration (naics 81) in its definition of the ict sector. according to industry canada (2014), revenues in the canadian ict sector grew from $133.4 billion in 2007 to $159.9 billion in 2013, an increase of 19.8%. the ict sector accounted for 4.4% of canadian gdp in 2013, or $69.5 billion. canadian ict workers are also highly educated –47.2% have a university degree as compared with the national average of 27.4%. employment in the ict sector increased by 0.9% in 2013, amounting to 3% of national employment. the average income of ict workers in 2013 was $69,876 – 48% higher than the national average. even the lowest paid workers in the ict sector – workers in the electronics components industry – had annual incomes 9.8% higher than the national average. the assessments offered by industry canada seem to align well with the sentiments expressed in the afore-mentioned nyt magazine article. however, numbers like these can be misleading. unless incomes are recomposing the casual class in precarious times | 255 symmetrically distributed among ict workers, the mean values used by industry canada may not be representative of the true center. that is to say the average value may be significantly influenced by outlying values. similarly, yearly industry revenues and contributions to gdp tell us very little about the financial status of ict workers. highly educated workers may be shouldered with high levels of debt that adversely affect discretionary income. and gdp as a measure of economic activity is not a true measure of living standards. income distribution, product quality, composition of economic output, environmental degradation, and leisure time are all criteria for assessing standards of living that fall outside of ict contributions to gdp. the nyt magazine’s analysis of the economic well-being of workers in the creative industries was subjected to a biting critique by the future of music coalition (2015), a u.s. based nonprofit organization working to ensure that artists are fairly compensated for their work. the article was faulted for not recognizing the limitations of the data used in the analysis. in response to the claim that there was a 15% rise between 1999 and 2014 in the number of people with music as their primary occupation (music directors and composers), the future of music coalition (2015) noted that the u.s. department of labor reclassified a significant number of primary and secondary music teachers into this category. when this reclassification is controlled for, there appears to be a drop of 11% in the number of people identifying music as their primary occupation. the nyt magazine article also claimed that there was a 60% increase in the average income of music directors and composers, but the future of music coalition (2015) again noted that 55% of the individuals in this category are elementary and secondary school music teachers. the rebuttal goes on to critique the nyt magazine for relying on gross revenue numbers in a manner similar to industry canada’s summary of the ict sector. ultimately, neither the article nor industry canada’s assessment speak to the economic well-being of workers in the ict sector. precarious labor for some time now there has been a global concern with the rise of so-called non-standard work. during the latter half of the 20th century, many workers in the industrialized west labored under a set of conditions known as the standard employment relationship. this designated fulltime work, regularized work hours, employment at the employer’s facilities, lifelong employment with a single firm, standards for workplace safety, and benefits like pensions and unemployment insurance (fudge & owens, 2006). in recent years there has been a rise in casual employment 256 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages in which employees have no reasonable expectation of steady employment. today, full time public sector workers are the most likely to enjoy standard employment status. the general security of public sector employment stems from the fact that these jobs are typically found in larger institutions with greater transparency and standardization in employment practices. they also benefit from higher levels of unionization and the higher wages, pensions, and benefits that accrue to unionized workers – though public sector jobs are increasingly under attack. conversely, a substantial number of contemporary private sector jobs offer less security, irregular scheduling, fewer benefits, less on-the-job safety, and less pay. workers in these jobs often include those with high school educations, women, and migrant workers. some of the industries with the highest levels of insecurity include food services, agriculture, building support services, and retail sales. in the early 2000s activist groups in italy began mobilizing against deregulated labor flexibility under the mantra of precarious labor (mattoni, 2008). these mobilizations sought to push back against the capitalist rhetoric of flexible work by drawing attention to the damaging effects of precarious employment. in 2011 economist guy standing published his book the precariat: the new dangerous class in which he argues that globalization has caused employers to replace permanent jobs with contract and temp work. hence, increasing numbers of workers find themselves employed in jobs with higher rates of turnover, short contracts, and lower rates of unionization. standing (2011) asserts that these workers, many of whom are educated young people and immigrants, constitute an emerging social class distinct from the working class. closer to home the united way and mcmaster university have partnered to study precarious labor in the area stretching from hamilton to toronto. the research partnership has produced two studies to date on the greater toronto-hamilton area (gtha). according to a toronto star article (mojtehedzadeh, 2015), the project “…expand[s] on statistics canada data, which only measures temporary employment and selfemployment rather than other measures of precarious work such as uncertain work schedules and irregular earnings” (para. 27). the research defines precarious employment to “…[include] people in temp and contract work, along with those with uncertain work schedules, irregular earnings, inconsistent hours of work or jobs without benefits. it counts some self-employed people as precarious, only if they have irregular, unpredictable work” (grant, 2015). the researchers (lewchuk, et al., 2015) found that about 44% of workers aged 25 to 65 are working in jobs characterized by some degree of precarity. furthermore, the researchers recomposing the casual class in precarious times | 257 determined that workers in the most precarious forms of work (temporary and contract work, and own-account self-employment) account for about 20% of the workforce – an increase of nearly 60% since 1989. authors like standing (2011) and hardt & negri (2009) offer descriptions of trends in precarious employment that are premised in part on the belief that recent technological developments in the field of communications constitute a moment of discontinuity in the history of capitalist accumulation. this assumption has been challenged by doogan (2009, 6) who argues that the emphasis on international trade and investment, and recent technological developments: “…privileges discontinuity and it ‘over determines’ the role of technological change. in stressing the significance of global flows of finance, and the integration of capital beyond the national economy, it greatly exaggerates the mobility propensity of non-finance capital and neglects the continuing significance of the role of the state in the workings of the market economy.” in fact, doogan (2009, 4) utilizes worker survey data from north america and europe to argue, “…that job stability has not declined and that long-term employment has increased in many sectors of the advanced economies.” he continues (206): “a left wing mindset that sees only temporariness and contingency in new employment patterns is blind to the basic proposition that capital needs labour. despite all the rhetoric of foreign competition and threats to relocate and outsource, employers generally prioritize the recruitment and retention of labour. otherwise it would be difficult to explain the international evidence of job stability and rising long-term employment.” doogan’s work has been faulted for not providing a deeper analysis of some areas where there exists genuinely high levels of non-permanent contract employment (kimber, 2009). nevertheless, this debate begs the question: how widespread is precarious employment in the ict sector? recall that industry canada (2014) asserts that ict workers enjoy an average income 48% higher than the average canadian worker. and unlike workers in food services, agriculture, and retail sales, 47.2% of workers in canada’s ict sector have university degrees—27.4% higher than the national average (industry canada, 2014). yet a growing body of literature seems to indicate that ict workers are not immune to the spread of precarious employment. huws (2003) coined the term cybertariat over a decade ago in her seminal analysis of how icts were transforming the labor process. huws demonstrated how icts were implicated in deepening the social divisions of labor along race and gender lines while considering what this meant for those individuals and collectivities working to resist such transformations. in effect, huws’s 258 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages (1999) work rejects the utopian rhetoric surrounding icts “…to try to make visible the material components of this virtual world…” (127). in a similar vein, brophy and de peuter (2014) take a materialist approach to the analysis of the global supply chain of mobile communication technologies. the authors describe a circuit of exploitation in the production, distribution, and consumption of mobile technologies consisting of six analytically discrete moments: 1) the extraction of raw materials; 2) the manufacture of mobile devices; 3) the design of mobile apps; 4) the use of mobile technologies for work; 5) call center and support services; and 6) disassembly in the disposal of throwaway mobile technologies. at each moment in the circuit of exploitation, whether by the barrel of a gun, irregular hours, or unsafe working conditions, the authors find that conditions of precarity prevail. in a like manner, dyer-witheford (2015) provides a far-reaching analysis of the complex circuits of labor in the global supply chain of icts and the role that precarity plays within the circuits. dyer-witheford argues that the decomposition of the global working class has produced a stark division between upwardly mobile professionals on the one hand and precarious workers on the other. moreover, the intensification in the division of labor facilitated by the widespread adoption of information technologies has resulted in substantial challenges for cooperation among the various sections of the cybertariat. cultural workers organize (culturalworkersorganize.org) is a research project that explores precarious employment among contract workers, interns, the selfemployed, free-lancers, and part-time workers in the information and cultural industries. the project subjects the utopian rhetoric of the creative economy to critical analysis while contributing to the efforts of flexworkers to organize and adapt to the increasing prevalence of precarious employment. one of the projects researchers, greig de peuter (2011), acknowledges the linguistic and political functions of terms like cybertariat and precarity in stating, “troubling the fantasy that the merger of free trade and icts is equalizing the planetary economic playing field, the cybertariat confronts icts as levers of precarization within a familiar but mutating global division of labor whose wage logic is racing downward” (420). as with doogan’s (2009) criticisms, there is a sense here that there is nothing new under the sun. it is with this sentiment in mind that i consider how precarious employment fits within the historical trajectory of capitalist accumulation and where we might go from here. recomposing the casual class in precarious times | 259 circuits of struggle activists and scholars have gone to great pains to draw our attention to the emergence of precarious employment over the last several decades. the lack of security among precarious workers has contributed to rising income inequality and social unrest in many oecd countries (law commission of ontario, 2012). the intensified effects of global competition in the networked information economy have led many firms to increasingly rely on flexible and on-demand workers. apologists assert that many workers value this flexibility because it offers them greater personal autonomy. yet the discursive space opened up by precarity has to a large degree displaced flexible employment in the popular lexicon. accordingly, there has been a growing awareness of the plight of workers unwillingly forced into conditions of precarity. i would like to move the discourse one step further by suggesting that precarious employment itself persists in a state of instability owing to its inability to resolve the class antagonisms whence it came. a useful lens for understanding the rise of precarious employment is marx’s (1992) metaphor of circuits to describe the contingent reproduction of capitalist social relations on an expanded scale. marx’s (1904) basic premise was that these social relations were only possible through a unity of production and consumption, each occurring as a separate analytical moment in the circuit of capital. or as marx states “…every single sale or purchase stands as an independent isolated act, whose supplemental act may be separated from it in time and place” (117). thus marx (1978) explains that the reproduction of capitalist social relations is subject to repeated disturbances and interruptions. marx (1992) represented this contingent process of accumulation in his circuit of capital: lp / m—c.…p….c’—m’ \ mp in the above diagram, m is the money that capitalists spend to buy the commodities of labor power lp (ability and willingness to work) and means of production mp (tools and raw materials). these commodities are purchased from other capitalists before being combined in the process of production p to produce new commodities c’ whose value and price are greater than the initial investment. if the circuit is completed successfully, the capitalist will sell the new commodities for m’, at which point the 260 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages circuit begins again on an expanded scale. therefore the object is not the simple realization of profit through the sale of commodities, but the expanded reproduction of the class relation. as marx (1990) argued, capitalism did not invent surplus labor. rather it invented the limitless imposition of work – so long as the circuit continues uninterrupted. as we can see from the circuit above, waged workers sell their capacity and consent to work (lp) which capital then uses in the production (p) of commodities (c’). however, if workers are successful in their attempts to drive up wages, the amount of unwaged work in production decreases. thus the dueling dynamics of market competition and working class struggle have produced a long history of class decomposition and recomposition as capital explores new ways of increasing unpaid work. as harvey (2005, 168) comments: “employers have historically used differentiations within the labour pool to divide and rule. segmented labour markets then arise and distinctions of race, ethnicity, gender, and religion are frequently used…in ways that redound to the employers’ advantage. conversely, workers may use the social networks in which they are embedded to gain privileged access to certain lines of employment. they typically seek to monopolize skills and, through collective action and the creation of appropriate institutions, seek to regulate the labour market to protect their interests.” in the wake of the great depression, keynesian economic policy emerged to facilitate greater levels of employment, investment, and economic output in the hopes of allaying the most contentious sections of the working class. according to cleaver (2005), keynesian monetary policy was directed at “…the financing of accumulation through low interest rates, the achievement of full employment and the management of the price level” while keynesian fiscal policy was meant to “…encourage accumulation through the expansion of federal government expenditures, the limitation of taxation and deficit financing when necessary” (6). these policies sought to bind the success of working class struggle for higher wages to higher rates of productivity. as cleaver (2005) notes, “at the margin, monetary and fiscal policy in the aggregate could increase the flow of money to generate a little inflation to keep real wages in line with productivity growth, or reduce the flow to raise unemployment and slow the growth of nominal wages to the same purpose” (7). the subsequent collapse of the keynesian program stemmed in part from working class recomposition and wage push inflation. in the latter half of the 20th recomposing the casual class in precarious times | 261 century both waged and unwaged workers leveraged the welfare state’s social safety net to subvert the wage hierarchy by softening the impact of exclusion from the standard employment relationship. workers secured higher wages and greater access to consumer credit. these developments, when coupled with declining rates of productivity, sent inflation through the roof as the keynesian project could no longer control prices or effectively command labor via orderly accumulation. thus the capitalist response to the crisis of the keynesian state was to undermine real wages by removing income subsidies, lowering nominal wage growth, and raising unemployment and underemployment. the dual edged sword of economic liberalization cleaved government spending and tax revenues while anointing deregulation, privatization and global trade to the highest rungs of the capitalist pantheon of ideas. it is in this context that precarious employment emerged as one of austerity’s most useful accomplices. nonetheless, another potential crisis looms as firms thus far have failed to redirect adequate investment back into sectors capable of generating the sustained and stable rates of accumulation seen during the keynesian period. in effect, investment has followed the path of least resistance away from sites of working class struggle and toward speculative investments made possible by recent financial deregulation. cleaver (2005) confirms the potential for crisis, “this re-emergence in the late 20th century of the very fetishistic pursuit of money to the neglect of the management of class relations has undoubtedly hindered the resolution of the crisis of those relations which capital has sought for the last twenty years” (16). consequently we may understand precarious employment not only as the most recent moment in a long history of class struggle, but also as an obstacle or interruption in the capitalist quest for a stable program of accumulation. alternatives it has long been argued that working class struggle does not inevitably lead to revolution or even revolutionary consciousness. moreover, there is a sense that workers in the global ict supply chain are simultaneously interdependent and isolated. traditional labor organizations have largely failed to mitigate the spread precarious employment in any number of industries, including the ict sector. it would appear that new forms of organization are required. as ness argues (2014, 1): “existing labor unions have proved incapable of mobilizing rankand-file militancy to resist the ongoing deterioration in workplace 262 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages conditions and the systematic erosion of workers’ power. as capitalism pushes ever harder to reverse the labor gains established in the early to mid-twentieth century, workers are developing new forms of antibureaucratic and anticapitalist forms of syndicalist, council communist, and autonomist worker representation, rooted in the self-activity and democratic impulses of members and committed to developing egalitarian organizations in place of traditional union bureaucracies. in turn, these new forms of representation, which are gaining currency throughout the world, are expanding the democratic capacity of workers to advance their own economic, political, and social interests without external intermediaries.” in cities across north america workers in precarious employment have come together to form workers’ centers to improve working conditions and forge alliances with social justice organizations. for example, in toronto the workers’ action centre functions as both an advocacy and support group and as a resource center for precarious workers (watson, 2014). additionally, cohen and de peuter (2015, 305) from the aforementioned cultural workers organize project, have researched workers’ centers within the information and cultural industries: “across europe and north america, cultural workers are responding to similarly strained conditions by experimenting with organizational forms and collective activities.” the authors go on to propose three conceptual lenses for further research on worker resistance in cultural labor. first, they point to the practice of mutual aid, or providing support and infrastructure to independent work. while acknowledging that it is structurally challenging to organize creative workers, the authors point to a number of organizations that have provided health benefits and insurance to creative workers outside of the standard employment relationship. second, the authors assert that workers’ centers have produced quality policy proposals aimed at mitigating the worst aspects of precarious employment. again, they point to a number of workers’ organizations that have circulated a variety of policy proposals including basic guaranteed minimum incomes for creative workers and legal recourse to collect unpaid wages. and third, the authors advise counter-interpellation as a means of “…building alternate vocabularies to define cultural labour that resist dominant ideological codes attached to visions of, for example, ‘creatives’ and ‘free agents’” (306). cohen and de peuter state, “if interpellation designates the process through which ideology hails recomposing the casual class in precarious times | 263 individuals to inhabit a subject-position simpatico with the priorities of the dominant order, counter-interpellation encompasses practices through which workers and their associations challenge prevailing interpellative devices and adopt alternate identifications” (312). it is this last analytical lens that i find the most intriguing. as mentioned previously, the notion of precarity was introduced as a challenge to the capitalist rhetoric of flexible work by transforming shared grievances into a resource for raising awareness and mobilizing around the realities of precarious employment. tokumitsu’s (2014) incisive critique of the do what you love, love what you do mantra is an example of an effective counter-interpellation of precarity. when viewed through the lens of precarious employment, it becomes clear how business interests use the seemingly innocuous refrain to leverage creative workers’ passions against their own self-interest. in my own work (caraway, 2015) on networked social movements, i have documented how members of workers’ associations use social media platforms to share their personal experiences, creating a sense of group identity and collective understanding of shared social injustices. as bennett and segerberg (2012, 742) argue, these personalized action frames can serve as the basis for mobilization: “in this network mode, political demands and grievances are often shared in very personalized accounts that travel over social networking platforms, email lists, and online coordinating platforms. for example, the easily personalized action frame ‘we are the 99 per cent’ that emerged from the us occupy protests in 2011 quickly traveled the world via personal stories and images shared on social networks such as tumblr, twitter, and facebook.” of course some have been dismissive of the relative significance of online social practices in class struggle and social movements. there is a genuine feeling that these practices are no substitute for the tried and true approach of boots on the ground. indeed, many scholars doing research at the intersection of communication technology and social movements assess the significance of icts based solely on the movement’s success in realizing particular goals. however, if we consider the use of icts for purposes of counter-interpellation, recruitment, and mobilization, might there be something significant going on? after all, how does one measure the shifting landscape of institutional discourse and social interaction? would we not do well to remember marx and engels’s (1976) exhortation, “now and then the workers are victorious, but 264 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages only for a time. the real fruit of their battle lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers” (493). inasmuch as icts are implicated in their own circuits of exploitation – like some high tech ouroboros – they are also part and parcel of the efforts to resist exploitation and precarity. references bennett, w. l., & segerberg, a. (2012). the logic of connective action: digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. information, communication & society, 15(5), 739-768. brophy, e. & de peuter, g. (2014). labours of mobility: communicative capitalism and the smartphone cybertariat. in theories of the mobile internet: materialities and imaginaries, eds. herman, a., hadlaw, j. and swiss, t, (pp.60-84). new york: routledge. caraway, b. (2015). our walmart: a case study of connective action. information, communication & society. doi: 10.1080/1369118x.2015.1064464 cleaver, h. (2005). the subversion of money-as-command in the current crisis. https://libcom.org/library/subversion-money-as-commandcurrent-crisis-cleaver de peuter, g. (2011). creative economy and labor precarity: a contested convergence. journal of communication inquiry, 35(4), 417-425. de peuter, g. and cohen, n. s. (2015). emerging labour politics in creative industries. in routledge companion to the cultural industries, eds. oakley, k. and o’connor, j. (pp. 305-318). new york, routledge. doogan, j. (2009). new capitalism?: the transformation of work. cambridge: polity. dyer-witheford, n. (2015). cyber-proletariat: global labour in the digital vortex. london: pluto press. fudge, j. & owens, r. (2006). precarious work, women, and the new economy. oxford: hart publishing ltd. recomposing the casual class in precarious times | 265 future of music coalition. (2015). the data journalism that wasn’t. https://futureofmusic.org/blog/2015/08/21/data-journalism-wasnt grant, t. (2015). ‘precarious employment’ still rising in toronto, hamilton. the globe and mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/reporton-business/economy/jobs/article24531959.ece hardt, m. & negri, a. (2009). commonwealth. cambridge: belknap press. harvey, d. (2005). a brief history of neoliberalism. oxford: oxford university press. huws, u. (1999). material world: the myth of the weightless economy. socialist register, 35, 29-55. industry canada (n.d.) canadian industry statistics: information and cultural industries (naics 51). https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/scr/sbms/sbb/cis/definition.html?code=51 industry canada. (2014). information and communication technologies (ict): canadian ict sector profile. https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/icttic.nsf/eng/h_it07229.html johnson, s. (2015, august 19). the creative apocalypse that wasn’t. new york times magazine, retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/magazine/the-creativeapocalypse-that-wasnt.html kimber, c. (2009). precarious reflections. international socialism, 123. http://isj.org.uk/precarious-reflections/ law commission of ontario. (2012). vulnerable workers and precarious work. toronto, lco. http://www.lco-cdo.org/vulnerable-workersfinal-report.pdf lewchuk, w., laflèche, m., procyk, s., cook, c., dyson, d., goldbring, l., lior, k., meisner, a., shields, j., tambureno, a., & viducis, p. (2015). the precarity penalty: the impact of employment precarity on individuals, households and communities—and what to do about it. hamilton: united way-mcmaster university. 266 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages marx, k. and engels, f. (1976). manifesto of the communist party. karl marx frederick engels collected works: volume 6. new york: international publishers. marx, k. (1904). a contribution to the critique of political economy. chicago: charles h. kerr & company. marx, k. (1978). crisis theory. in r. c. tucker (ed.), the marx-engels reader (pp. 443–465). new york: w. w. norton & company. marx, k. (1990). capital: a critique of political economy (vol. 1). london: penguin. marx, k. (1992). capital: a critique of political economy (vol. 2). london: penguin. mattoni, a. (2008). icts in national and transnational mobilizations. triplec, 6(2), 105-124. mojtehedzadeh, s. (2015). precarious work is now the new norm, united way report says. the toronto star. http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/05/21/precarious-work-is-nowthe-new-norm-united-way-report-says.html ness, i. (2014). new forms of worker organization: the syndicalist and autonomist restoration of class-struggle unionism. oakland: pm press. standing, g. (2011). the precariat: the new dangerous class. london: bloomsbury. tokumitsu, m. (2014). in the name of love. jacobin magazine. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/in-the-name-of-love watson, h.g. (2014). organizing precarious workers: workers’ centres open their doors. rabble.ca. http://rabble.ca/news/2014/05/organizing-precarious-workersworkers-centres-open-their-doors free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 101 free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: the bologna process in turkey simten coşar1 and hakan ergül2 abstract: this article focuses on the neoliberalization of higher education in turkey. our analysis is based on the historico-political dynamics of the stateacademy-free market nexus in post-1980s turkey. the paper relies on two layers of analysis. first, we focus on the regulatory mechanisms that have eased the neoliberalization of higher education. we analyze the legal regulations, and mainly the law on higher education and related amendments that have been carried out to restructure the higher education system. the second layer of our analysis concerns academia itself and how the neoliberalization process has been perceived, internalized or opposed from within academia via ethnographic data gathering techniques (e.g. participant observations, in-depth interviews and field notes). here, we focus on those academics who have been actively involved in the implementation of the bologna process in the universities of turkey. relying on field data, we argue that the bologna process is the most recent example of neoliberalizing education in turkey that has included authoritarianism as an important asset and that has further fragmented academic work through both the internalization of neoliberal thought and alienation. keywords: turkey, universities, academia, neoliberalization, bologna process 1  simten coşar (simcosar@gmail.com) is professor of political science in the faculty of communication at hacettepe university in ankara, turkey. her areas of research include feminism, political thought and political parties in turkey. she is co-editor (with gamze yücesan-özdemir) of silent violence: neoliberalism, islamist politics and the akp years in turkey published by red quill books. 2  hakan ergül (hkergul@gmail.com) is associate professor of communication studies in the faculty of communication at hacettepe university in ankara, turkey, and visiting researcher at jacques berque center for studies in social sciences and humanities in rabat, morocco. 102 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education introduction this article aims at a critical analysis of the neoliberal reorganization of higher education in turkey. it focuses on governmental practices and legal instruments that reorganize higher education, while at the same time bringing in field data related to the unfolding of the neoliberalization process from the accounts of the academics themselves. our analysis is built on the historico-political dynamics of the state-academy-free market nexus in post-1980s turkey. the period is especially important for understanding the present era since the institutional makeup and political frame for today’s educational policies were introduced in the 1980s. post-1980s turkey is characterized by the mark of the 1980 coup d’état and the following three-year long military regime (1980-1983), which is known to be the most violent of the three coup d’états in the country’s political history. the previous two took place in 1960 and 1971. the neoliberalization process was initiated almost simultaneously with the most recent coup d’état. the january 24, 1980 stabilization package is exemplary (seven months before the coup occurred) because it symbolized the start of turkey’s integration with the neoliberal world economic order.3 the first among the economic packages that would unfold in the course of turkey’s neoliberalization, the package hinted at the priorities of the new regime: stability and consensus in politics – that is to say, no structural opposition. it endorsed export-oriented policies, as opposed to the import substitution industrialization (isi) model of the previous two decades, and promoted foreign investment, in tandem with the emphasis on privatizing state-owned enterprises. over the course of the 1980s, these three priorities coalesced and, at times, fluctuated as governments’ searched for popular support. 2001, however, was a turning point as the economic crisis cemented neoliberal orthodoxy. while serving as vice-president for the world bank (wb), kemal derviş was unilaterally appointed to cabinet in order to implement policies that would ease the recession. derviş’s economic program was retained by the justice and development party (adalet ve kalkınma partisi, akp), which came to power 2002.4 3  january 24 decisions symbolize a turning point in turkey integration into the capitalist world system. the decisions were supported by the imf and world bank. in the aftermath of the decisions turkey signed a three-year long standy agreement with the imf. 4  we refer to neoliberalism as the reordering of the socio-political sphere in accordance with the prerequisites of the post-fordist accumulation regime that is characterized by the preference for transnational commercial activity over production, and private investment at the expense of public investment (harvey, 2005; 2003). in this sense, neoliberalism is also an ideological project intent on justifying this reordering of civil society. free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 103 there are two contesting views as to the last decade of turkey under the akp’s rule. the first is based on the assumption that the akp’s terms in office signify a new era in the political history of the country due to the party’s islamist origins and policy preferences. the second is based on the assumption that the akp years in turkey signify the closing of a period marked by the consolidation and crisis phase of neoliberalism. our approach is informed by the latter argument (coşar&yücesan-özdemir, 2012). the article is built on two layers of analysis. first, we focus on the regulatory mechanisms that have facilitated the neoliberalization of higher education. we analyze mainly the law on higher education (lhe) and related amendments that have been devised to restructure the higher education system. the second layer concerns how academia has been involved in and affected by neoliberal transformations in the universities. in our view, the bologna process (bp) is the most recent policy example of the state’s quest to implement neoliberal reforms. in order to ascertain academics’ reception of, positioning toward and involvement in the bp, we draw on multi-sited ethnographic research, including participant observation in everyday settings of the universities, interviews and field notes. it is our contention that academics have by and large been systematically excluded from policymaking decisions over the last three decades in this article, we mainly focus on the data we derive from the semi-structured in-depth interviews. the interviews serve to explore the views and the first hand experiences of the academics responsible for the implementation of the bp action plans endorsed by their universities. here, our aim is not only to enrich our analysis with emic perspective regarding the meaning the academics make of their own experiences related to the bp, but also to give them voice as they have been systematically excluded from policy making processes during the last three decades. in this we join couldry (2014, 114) who reminds that “[t]here is no short-cut to understanding neoliberalism’s consequences for the people’s daily conditions of voice without listening to the stories people tell us about their lives.” our field research covers fifteen public and foundation/private universities, which were selected as a result of their historical, social, academic and regional significance in turkey.5 our discussion in the second half of 5  according to the council of higher education “[t]here are two types of universities in turkey, namely state and non-profit foundation universities” (higher education system in turkey http://www.yok.gov.tr/documents/10348274/10733291/tr’de+yükseköğretim+sistemi2. pdf ). this official discourse limits universities to “state” instead of “public” and does not point out to the commercial motivation behind the foundation universities. indeed, since the introduction of the first foundation university in 1984, the higher education area has attracted considerable attention, transforming the field of education into a profitable and competitive business. 104 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the article relies on an analysis of selected interviews, addressing interrelated issues such as the participants’ a) level of knowledge concerning the global/regional vision, educational policies and historical milestones of the bp; b) personal experiences during the implementation of the bp in their organizations; c) level of awareness about the criticisms of the bp and organized anti-bp movements in and outside turkey; and d) personal views concerning the role of higher education and university in society. participants are drawn from different academic and administrative positions, working for different public and foundation universities (hacettepe university, başkent university and ted university). the literature on the neoliberalization of higher education in general and the bp in turkey in particular has so far tended to unfold along three axes. first, there is a descriptive and sometimes affirmative literature (reinalda, 2011; yağcı, 2010; dikkaya&özyakışır, 2006; kwiek, 2001). second, there is a newly-emerging literature, which considers the transformations in academic knowledge production and definitions of science (gibbons, et.al., 1994; hessels&van lante, 2008). the third category offers a critical perspective, which considers the ways intersecting axes of oppression (e.g. race, class, gender) are further reinforced through the implementation of neoliberal policy objectives (giroux, 2014; soydan&abali, 2014; brown&carasso, 2013; i̇nal&akkaymak, 2012; ercan&korkusuz-kurt, 2012; stech, 2011; fejes, 2008; lorenz, 2006; özbudun&demirer, 2006; hill, 2005; olssen&peters, 2005; slaughter&rhoades, 2004; peters, 2002). this article builds on the third axis by contributing to existing debates concerning the bp in turkey. while there are examples for integrating the academics’ voices into the studies on the topics worldwide, though not many, (knuuttila, 2013; shapin, 2008; slaughter&leslie, 1997) in the turkish context one cannot observe a study that combines historical perspective with the voices from the field. the article is composed of three parts. in the first part we offer a critical reading of the legal regulations concerning higher education in post-1980 turkey. the second part is reserved for the data, collected from the field. in the final part we discuss the current state of academia in the midst of the neoliberal crisis and the possibilities that it offers for resistance to the neoliberal structuration. we argue that the bp represents the fine-tuning between neoliberal educational policies and statist authoritarianism in the turkish context as portrayed not only in institutionallegal terms, but also in the accounts of the academics themselves. the dominant discourse in the educational sphere supports our argument: it free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 105 is possible to observe repeated emphasis on notions associated with the bp in general. for example, there is constant reference to employability, lifelong learning and stakeholders’ weight in the educational design. here, employability points to the dismissal with the right to work; lifelong learner signifies a parallel tendency to subordinate the principle of the right to lifelong employment. and finally, stakeholders’ imply students-as-consumers and market forces. historical backdrop to the de/ re-politicization of the university the higher education system in turkey has been going through intensive restructuring since the early 2000s. the roots of this restructuring should be traced in the overall socio-political restructuring process in the post-1980 period. the importance of higher education for the restructuring process is hinted at the lhe, which defined the council of higher education (yükseköğretim kurulu, yök) as a constitutional organ in 1981, when turkey was still ruled by a military regime.6 in the official discourse, the council was justified on the grounds that the increase in the number of university students called for a standardized educational policy and administration. it was also claimed that a central body to oversee the university life in its totality would preempt the politicization of the university students and academics that marked the 1960s and 1970s (tarihçe, n.d.) thus, the official justification for the institutionalization of a centralized university structure was mainly based on the incapacity of the previous higher education system to offer solid grounds for coordination among different higher education institutions and to ensure a viable system of instruction due to high politicization. this, in turn, hampered the prospects for university autonomy. university autonomy has been a persistent issue throughout the republican era. the 1961 constitution is important for it represents the first instance when universities were considered as constitutional organs and granted constitutional guarantee for autonomy. the 1970s, on the other hand, witnessed restrictions in terms of academic freedom. the justification was that the constitution provided the grounds for extensive liberties leading to over-politicization among academic personnel and students, which was deemed to hamper routine university education. thus, the 1971 amendments contained measures such as giving 6  a higher education council had already been established in 1973, within the scope of the law on universities (no. 1750) to ensure state control over the universities (dölen, 2010,114-115). 106 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the council of ministers the authority to seize administrative power in the universities, and to dismiss academic personnel, as well as bringing in the council of higher education and university supervisory board, which might be considered as the precedent of the yök. though university autonomy was not eliminated with these amendments, it would not be inapt to point at the continuity between the 1971 measures and the overall restructuring process in the 1980s (dölen, 2010). in the larger picture, it can be argued that yök was designed to work in line with the coup spirit: instituting the structural prerequisites for the smooth working of neoliberal transformation in turkey. this meant authoritarian measures for ensuring depoliticization among the populace, tuned with conservative cultural priorities. during the military regime the political opposition of the 1970s was silenced through bans on political parties, on the leaders and members of the political parties of the previous decade to participate in politics, and the wide scale arrests and imprisonments of the political activists from the left and the right. the dominant discourse of the period labeled any kind of political activism that carried the potential of opposition to the to-be-initiated neoliberal structuration, as marginal and/or extreme (read as threat to national security). while the political ground was secured vis-à-vis any socio-political opposition through the narrowing down of the political space, subsequent legal measures were enacted to prepare the legal framework for the new regime. in a nutshell, the military regime set the background to the initiation of neoliberal sociopolitical ordering, thus pointing the way to a synthesis between the national security discourse and democracy, understood in terms of free market economics. the most persistent assets in this synthesis have so far been a turkish-islamic synthesis – as the dominant form of turkish nationalism in the post-1980 period – and the valorization of private initiative, free market individualism, as the sine-qua-non for liberty.7 all these assets can be observed in the current state discourse on higher education; thus, the repoliticization of the university. in other words, the universities are expected to stay within the boundaries of a conservative-nationalist discourse that is fine-tuned by neoliberal capitalism. here, repoliticization also involves the state and its related institutions, acting as monitoring agencies over the universities. 7  turkish-islamic synthesis, developed by nationalist intellectuals in the early 1970s, and later appropriated by the ruling military cadres in the early 1980s, is based on the contention that “the best fit religion for the character and nature of the turks is islam. the turks could not survive with other religions, those who tried, lost their identities” (güvenç et.al., 1991, 50, quoted in coşar, 2011, 166). for a detailed analysis of the restructuring of the educational sphere along turkish-islamic priorities see kaplan, 2006. free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 107 nationalism, colored with statism, has been a common asset in higher education legislation. examples in this respect can be observed in the lhe, especially through the articles related to the aims and principles of higher education: “educating the students as citizens who are committed to atatürkist nationalism … who embrace the national, moral, human, spiritual and cultural values of the turkish nation and who feel honored and happy for being turk[s], who prioritize common benefit over individual benefit and who are filled with the love for the family, country and nation, who are aware of and habituate their duties and responsibilities toward the …state … [and who work for] …the turkish state with its indivisible integrity with the land and the nation… to [make it] a constructive, creative and noble partner to the contemporary civilization…” (article 4, law no. 2547) this article sits in the same row with the priorities of critical thinking, scientific outlook and scientific research and accumulation of knowledge (article 5, law no. 2547). the coexistence of contradictory aims aside, the law also aims guaranteeing statist loyalties among the students and the academics, by including acting against the state interests into the list of deeds requiring disciplinary action (yükseköğretim kurumları, yönetici, öğretim elemanı ve memurları disiplin yönetmeliği, 1982; 2014). such a contradictory juxtaposition of core values of the modern (european) university and the nationalist motifs within the same educational outlook leads to overemphasis on the latter at the expense of freedom of expression, democracy and human rights. it also delineates the discord with the principles of the bp, as envisaged in the communiqué of the bp 2020-conference (2009), accepted by 46 countries, including turkey: “the aim is to ensure that higher education institutions have the necessary resources to continue to fulfill their full range of purposes such as preparing students for life as active citizens in a democratic society … the necessary ongoing reform of higher education systems and policies will continue to be firmly embedded in the european values of institutional autonomy, academic freedom and social equity and will require full participation of students and staff.” in line with its authoritarian nature, the law also foresees the risk of “blocking the instruction” as a disciplinary deed, which in the recent 108 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education governmental discourse has been posed as a warning against oppositional academics, especially with respect to their active involvement, mainly through unions, in opposing the akp government. a similar style of warning can be observed in the yök president gökhan çetinsaya’s statements in the midst of gezi resistance that started at the end of may 2013 in i̇stanbul and spread throughout turkey, which turned into wide-scale and mass-based opposition first against police violence and subsequently against the government. briefly, while çetinsaya emphasized the need for scientific responsibility rather than “daily comments” on socio-political developments, at the same time he indirectly labeled the academics supporting the resistance and displaying critical stances toward the government for tending to (the discourse of) violence: “first of all i shall note that the notions of university and violence can never coexist. in democratic and academic traditions everyone is free to express her/his opinions. but this freedom shall not go hand in hand with violence and nobody shall support violence. those demands, which contain and which praise violence do not accord with the boundaries of academic freedom. the academics shall not approach the spheres of tension – in social, cultural, political issues – with partisanship. in this [gezi] process we tried to preempt the blocking of education-instruction on the campuses.” (interview with çetinsaya, 2013).8 when one considers yök’s structure and related legislation this perception of oppositional academics is not surprising. although the legislation persisted throughout the decades under different governments from various political orientations, there have been certain amendments to the lhe. however, as i̇nsel (2003) notes, despite more than thirty changes in the law over the same period, its essence has been kept intact. this can be observed in the resonance between the military discourse and yök’s disciplinary practices. at the symbolic level the resonance has been functional in the justification of the yök as a necessity for preempting the politicization of the universities, with negative reference to the 1970s.9 at the policy level it was reflected in 8  here we should note that when the quotation is read in its constative form it tells little more than the yök president’s denial of violence. but when it is contextualized it is revealed that the president is referring to the academics, involved in and/or sympathetic to gezi resistance as perpetrators of violence. 9  the 1980 coup d’état has been justified by the same style, which contained the claim that the intervention was meant to give an end to the civil strife and political violence in the country due to the incapacity of the civilian bodies to govern. free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 109 the organization of yök’s structure as well as the “top-down, stage by stage authoritarian institutionalization of the higher educational structure” (i̇nsel, 2003, 76). today, it is possible to note the continuity in this militaristic style in fulfilling the to-dos and/or getting things done in the adjustment of the university structure to the bp, as devised by the yök. alongside with the statist-nationalist authoritarian tunes in the lhe, it has been presented as a remedy to the rather scattered, inefficient working of the higher education system. while this style of justification hints at another feature of the yök system – the valorization of free market mentality in the sphere of education – it has so far served as a rationale for dissolving the autonomous structure of the universities. briefly, autonomy of the universities had long occupied the agenda of the governments in turkey since the 1940s. the decisive turn came with the 1961 constitution.10 according to article 120 of the 1961 constitution the universities were recognized as “…public corporate entities with administrative and financial autonomy…” (dölen, 2010, 112). yet the notion of autonomy was not formed with reference to academic freedom as a priority. on the contrary, while the academics were guaranteed job security by the constitution via the provision that “the university bodies, staff and assistants cannot be dismissed from duty by the authorities outside the university” (dölen, 2010, 112), the law on universities (no. 115, october 28, 1960) was preceded by the law on liquidation (no. 114, october 27, 1960), which formed the legal basis for the dismissal of 147 academics from their posts in the universities (dölen, 2010, 189-190). the 1971 military intervention by memorandum was, on the other hand, proclaimed to aim at correcting the 1961 constitution so as to fit it to the socio-political dynamics in the country. the basic rationale of the military cadres was that the constitution was too permissive for turkey. the formula for the enactment of constitutional amendments was devised as forming “supra-parties governments.”11 between 1971 and 1973 turkey was ruled by four such governments, which passed laws that seriously curtailed the constitutional guarantees for basic rights and liberties (aydın&taşkın, 2014, 223-228). in parallel to the rationale that the 1961 constitution brought in too much liberty to turkey, article 120 of the constitution that concerned the universities was amended. briefly, the 1971 amendments (law no. 1488) enabled “the council of ministers 10  1961 constitution was devised and enacted immediately after the first military coup d’état that turkey had experienced in 1960. 11  here, by “supra-parties governments” aydın and taşkın point at the coup discourse emphasizing the need for forming governments, which supposedly have no connections with the existing political parties (i.e. technocratic rule). 110 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to suspend the university bodies and the academic personnel in case the liberties of the students and the right to education are endangered” (dölen, 2010, 114). yet, the decisive cut would be introduced by the lhe of 1981. the post-1980 military regime followed the traditional pattern: the law was shelved until the dismissal of selected academics was managed. in this case martial law (no. 1402) was put into effect in order to curb the university structures from the opponents, and mainly the leftists (dölen, 2010, 194). the law was enacted afterwards, in a rather neutralized political milieu. unlike the 1971 amendments, the law contained no concern, provision, and/or article that opted for academic freedom and university autonomy: internal functioning of the universities was tied to the state organs; the election of the presidents, the deans, and the appointment of the department chairpersons were determined by the yök. likewise, financial autonomy no longer meant the independence of the universities in deciding on the allocation of the state funds, which they received as public institutions within the frame of the right to education. actually, the issue of university autonomy would arise merely with respect to the initiation of private education, and would take on a different meaning in terms of financial independence. önal (2012, 131) notes that the introduction of a tuition system to higher education and providing the constitutional grounds for private education can be considered as the initial measures for the later dominance of a neoliberal frame in defining academic freedom. private education at the higher education level was not constitutionally recognized until 1982. article 130 of the 1982 constitution recognized the right of the foundations to “establish higher education institutions on the condition that they do not seek profit” (türkiye cumhuriyeti anayasası, 1982. the initiation of private education marked the reflection of the neoliberal structuration process in the educational sphere.12 private higher education at the university level was managed through the foundation system.13 this enabled the emerging private universities to escape from the financial burdens of corporate establishment and functioning, since they have been considered as non-profit institutions, and more importantly to receive financial assistance from the 12  the first foundation university (bilkent university, in ankara, turkey was founded in 1984, two years after the military cadres handed over governmental power to civilian political parties. 13  according to the related constitutional article (article 43), “[i]nstitutions of higher education under the supervision and control of the state, can be established by foundations … provided that they do not pursue lucrative aims” (önal, 2012, 131). free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 111 state budget. more specifically, foundation universities, due to their non-profit institutional status are considered as legal public entities, they have the right to fix their tuition fees on their own; they receive financial support from the state; they have the right to dispose statecontrolled lands; they enjoy the same right to tax exemption with the public universities (soydan&abali, 2014, 380; lhe, 1982; vakıf yükseköğretim kurumları yönetmenliği, 2005). the number of foundation universities rapidly increased in the coming decades, reaching sixty-five, compared to one-hundred and four public universities as of march 2014. the neoliberalization process involved transformation on the plans about the structure, instruction/education and the academic profile in the universities. it can be argued that despite a brief period of autonomous university practice turkey’s higher education system has worked through centralized oversight throughout the republican era. by the turn in the 1980s the oversight was maintained through the lhe and the yök. yök’s function has so far been twofold. first, it ensures administrative control over the universities so as to preempt the emergence and/or effectiveness of oppositional political groups among the students and the faculty. second, through the discourse on the need for standardization in scientific production, increasing the quality of education and the efficiency in academic work, it manages the infiltration of free market mentality into the university campuses. the disciplinary regulations for higher education institutions are instrumental to carry out such a task. the regulations are designed so as to depoliticize academic life, hinder political and/or social activism of the students and academics (most directly, unionization and strikes on campuses), with the disciplinary penalty of suspension from public service for the academics, and suspension from higher education for the students (yükseköğretim kurumları, yönetici, öğretim elemanı ve memurları disiplin yönetmeliği, 1982; 2014). all these developments cannot be understood merely in terms of the political milieu of the 1980s. neither one can satisfy with the analysis of the related legislation. for a more comprehensive analysis, one needs to inquire about the shifting dynamics of the neoliberalization process in turkey throughout the three decades, which extend beyond the scope of this article. yet we believe that the bp, which was added to turkey’s neoliberal (education) agenda more recently, offers a snapshot in seeing the basics of neoliberalization in the educational sphere. 112 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the bp experience in turkey the bp was first initiated as an attempt to ameliorate the deteriorating higher educational system, which included increasing expenses and low employment rates of university graduates in western europe in the late 1990s. the first step was the sorbonne declaration (1998), emphasizing the need for a pan-european coordination for higher education, to be followed by the bologna declaration (1999), aiming for a european higher education area (ehea). the socio-political background to these declarations was shaped by the “shift in the structure of the international education market along neoliberal ideas” (rienalda, 2011). the recurrent topics of concern in the related meetings, agreements, declarations are “citizens’ mobility,” “employability” (of the graduates), and economic utility (of higher education). the measures, adopted for standardizing higher education brought in a discursive set comprised of an emphasis on flexibility in teaching, flexibility in employment, measurability of the quality of the curriculum and accountability towards the stakeholders. in the bp frame flexibility in teaching is supposed to be achieved through lifelong learning (güllüpınar and gökalp, 2014), while flexibility in employment is supposed to rely on performance in terms of learning outcomes. however, it would not be apt to call the bp as essentially a neoliberal project (reinalda, 2011). rather it involved the reformation of the higher education system in european countries, without leading to a “single bologna model” (yağcı, 2010, 588). yet since it evolved within the neoliberal international context and proceeded to extend beyond the boundaries of european union (eu), including such countries as turkey, armenia, azerbaijan, and kazakhstan, neoliberal socio-political priorities eventually penetrated into the higher educational reform. in this respect, the bp represents the shifts and relocations in the worldwide accumulation regime in the context of higher education systems. as hartmann (2008, 217) argues, “what takes shape is a transatlantic norm-setting process,” signifying the flux in the centre of the global neoliberal order. in parallel, it would not be apt to argue that the bp in turkey points at the hidden agenda of the global imperial actors and thus the government to impose neoliberal educational structure. rather it is an integral part of the neoliberal order of things. turkey has been in the bp since 2001 within the context of its candidacy to the eu membership. the yök made it compulsory for the universities to take measures for the adjustment of the higher education system to the european credit transfer system (ects) (özgün, 2011). free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 113 yök has assumed the pivotal role in the adjustment process both as a supervision and coordination agent. it continues with its authoritarian style in getting things done, especially in the case of those universities, which are reluctant to consent to the process. in the process, the universities started (willingly or just technically, or both) to adjust their curricula to the ects. this process of a centralized body imposing a certain standardized scheme on the universities evolves through the yök’s extensive authorities over the universities, the most conspicuous one being the allotment of academic cadres. in line with this extensive authority, according to our field notes and the interview data, the bp in turkey has so far been working regardless of the opposition that the academics might (or actually) raise against the related measures: the strategy of putting the required amendments as just technical issues on the one hand, and pointing at the risk that relations with the yök might (and most probably would) get tense on the other hand, exemplifies forging consent through authoritarian measures. besides, the curricular adjustment also carries in itself a teaching and education mentality that is based on free market rationality. in this respect, the university-industry relation emerges as the key ingredient in yök’s discursive practices. thus, the adoption to the ects is directly linked to a utilitarian approach, which calls for the assessment of the value of the knowledge produced and/or transmitted in terms of the utility it raises in the free market (yükseköğretim kurulu, 2010). the most recent development in this regard is the new draft law on yök, which contains measures that would open academic work to the evaluation of the industry and government. briefly, the draft law proposes the involvement of the ministry of science, industry and technology for approving academic research abroad (10 maddede yeni yök yasası, 2014).14 in this 14  university-industry relation has been a long-standing priority of the neoliberal policymakers in the educational sphere. in this respect, the law on the development of technology zones (date: june 26, 2011; no.: 4691), which forms the basis of the technoparks to be founded in the universities is telling. according to article 1 of the law the aim is “to produce technological knowledge, ensure innovation in the product and production methods, increase the quality or standard of the products, increase efficiency, decrease production costs, commercialize technological knowledge, support technology-intensive production and entrepreneurship, ensure the adjustment of small and medium-scaled enterprises to new and advanced technologies, creating investment opportunities in technology-intensive spheres in accordance with the decisions of the science and technology higher council, creating job opportunities to the qualified researchers, contributing to technology transfer and ensuring the technological infrastructure that would accelerate the flow of foreign capital to the country, which would offer high/advanced technology by enabling cooperation among the universities, research institutions and sectors of production in order to realize an internationally competitive and export-oriented industrial structure” (teknoloji bölgeleri geliştirme kanunu, 2001). (see polat, 2013,170-171). 114 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education respect, the adjustment to the bp criteria works as a technical tool for the standardization of higher education. briefly, hartman’s point noted above regarding the bp as a “transatlantic norm-setting process”, hints at the use of the bp in the unfolding of the neoliberalization of education. the formula seems quite functional: authoritarian means at home, liberal claims abroad. the utilitarian approach is further revealed in the discursive strategies employed during the adjustment process. here, the manipulation of the principles of academic freedom, flexibility in teaching, student-centered instruction and autonomy in the courses is exemplary. terms and concepts that are put in frequent use in the justification of the bp by the council are helpful in understanding this manipulation: the terms shareholder/stakeholder, competition-quality and strategy are directly linked to the corporate discourse so as to lay the grounds for the designing of the courses according to free market dynamics and for opening the university education to corporate control. terms like autonomy, accountability, transparency, quality, learning-centered education, flexibility in learning and lifelong learning are mainly presented as democratic and egalitarian credentials. however, autonomy is considered as the ability of the universities to raise their own financial resources and the “strategy” to do so is already spelled out: making the industry a shareholder/stakeholder on the campuses. academic autonomy as such, does not relate to academic freedom in terms of academics’ freedom of expression, research and teaching. accountability and transparency are understood as making the universities open to outside control; “outside” meaning the free market forces. quality is understood as the quantification of the teaching process, calculated in terms of students’ performances in the courses.15 learning-centered education is presented as student-centered teaching, with a nod to democratic education philosophy; yet it ultimately connotes the compatibility between the teaching/learning (“learning outcomes”) and free market demands. flexibility in learning is advertised as crosscutting the strict disciplinary boundaries, and offering the grounds for multi-disciplinarity. in parallel, lifelong learning is presented as a means to keep the individuals sociable and “employable” throughout their 15  the emphasis on quantification is most manifest in the guidelines for adjusting the course outlines to (what are deemed to be) the bologna standards. in the guidelines that concern specifically the “learning outcomes” it is recommended to refrain from using such verbs as “knowing, understanding, getting acquainted with, being subject to, being informed about” since they are considered “ambiguous.” these terms are considered to fail to meet “measurability, observability and assessibility” of what the students learn for the market (yükseköğretim kurulu, 2010, 28-29). free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 115 lives (meb, 2009, 30). both end up with referring to strategies for not educating but training the students into flexible labor force, making them employable, and not offering the grounds for employment (güllüpınar and gökalp, 2014). also in this context not knowledge but information is considered as a yardstick for the social value of individuals. here, the key term turns out to be measurability, in terms of cost-benefit analysis, on the basis of free-market demands. neoliberalization through cooptation: academia and the bp the emphasis on measurability parallels the technicalization of the bp. while the yök presents the bp as a means for the improvement of higher education it does not get into dialogue with the universities, rather it declares the to-dos as technical matters. the same style can also be observed in the accounts of the academic personnel who are in charge of the coordination of the bp. in our research we were especially attentive to avoiding the risk of falling into the technicalities in order not to diverge our attention from the academics’ immediate experiences. as noted at the outset, we conducted interviews in order to achieve the academics experiences regarding the bp, and make their concerns heard since the academics’ freedom of expression has been under increasing pressure during the last years. a most commonly used technique for such a dual purpose are semi-structured in-depth interviews (hennink, hutter and bailey, 2011, 109). as a “knowledge-producing conversation” (hesse-biber and leavy, 2006, 128), it seeks to understand the meaning of respondent’s experience from her/his point of view without imposition (spradley, 1979, 34); encouraging participants to tell their stories, with their own words and from their own perspective (holstein and gubrium, 2003); and penetrating “the defenses people put up to prevent their hidden beliefs from coming to light – defenses that they frequently are not conscious of” (berger, 1998, 55). the preliminary interview data encourages us to argue that the academics who are actively involved in the adjustment to the bp in the universities display limited awareness as to the historico-political dynamics of the process. when inquired about the fundamental drives promoting the process they respond with the standard bp designers’ and yök’s formula. accordingly, the bp is adopted “in order to encourage the mobility of academics, students and the personnel in europe.” for example, dr. defne,16 senior expert in educational measurement and 16  we use pseudonyms when referring to the interviewees. 116 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education evaluation, currently serving as a dean in one of the private universities responded to our question regarding the dominant conceptualization of higher education, university and knowledge production in the bp as follows: “well, i don’t think the bp suggests anything new on that...all it says is ‘i want to expand the [ehea]…and for this, i want to introduce certain standards for accreditation procedures.’ the bp doesn’t intervene in universities’ internal policies…” (interview with dr. defne, 2014). this particular reply, ignoring the neoliberal background of the bp, its variation in different eu countries, and its implementation in turkey through yök’s dictates matches the definition on the council’s official webpage (bologna process in turkey), thus reducing the process into a set of technical measures, while carefully disguising its free market dimension. aside from bypassing, there are instances when the academics themselves naturalize the authoritarian, top-down running of the bp. as dr. erol (interview with dr. erol, 2014), vice-dean in charge of academic curricula and the bp in a foundation university, notes: “bp is an obligation for us…imposed by the yök. there are sanctions, certain official directives and instructions. everybody must follow. we are talking about yök, the superior institution…nobody has such luxury to say ‘we do not subscribe to this idea.’” the self-surrender that is well-tuned in this account also hints at the permeation of neoliberal approach as the raison d’être of the university-knowledge-academic responsibility nexus – that is, getting things done in order to keep your place in the university sector. dr. deniz, who has been responsible for the implementation of the bp in a public university for seven years on the other hand, underlines the authoritarian-cumtechnical working of the bp with a totally different concern, and thus in a totally different style (interview with dr. deniz, 2014): “the unit in charge of the bp [in the university] regularly informs us about the procedures or deadlines via official announcements…with a very hierarchical, very patriarchal language…as if someone gives you an order [in the army]…‘those teams in charge of bp: you are requested to finish this and that by the deadline mentioned...’” actually, all of these remarks give hints about the passivity, read in terms of the dismissal with autonomy and critical thinking, on the side of the universities.17 while dr. erol’s stance and similar stances might be considered as examples of the colonization of the academics’ imagination by the neoliberal educational policy preferences, it seems that others who are more critical 17  an interview with dr. sevgi, a member of an educational commission in charge of the implementation of the bp in a public university, also demonstrates that even those rare voices, relatively critical and active, raised during the regular internal bp meetings, are not heard by the university’s advistory bodies (interview with dr. sevgi, 2014). free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 117 about the process lack the means to challenge the process:18 “i think none of us was sufficiently informed about or aware of the bigger picture when we started to implement the system. the yök dictated us: ‘here is the calendar you must follow… you are obliged to adjust your system by the deadline” (interview with dr. deniz, 2014). so, as dr. defne notes (interview with dr. defne, 2014):“i do not think the academics were given any chance to discuss the bp before it started to be implemented in turkey. the process first arrived as something technical…we found ourselves in an incredibly heavy, bureaucratic burden of…adjusting the entire curricula to the new accreditation system until the deadlines. we didn’t even know why we were doing this at the time…and honestly speaking i think this is still the case today.” this top-down mentality is certainly prone to questioning not only by the outwardly critical academics but also by the more neutral ones too. as the bologna coordinator in her university who started the interview with her plain remark that the bp neither imposes sanctions nor dictates a new definition for academic activities, dr. defne, as the interview proceeded, revealed her suspicion about the effects of the process as “taking away the university from its authentic spirit; jeopardizing the basic values…such as freedom of allocating sufficient time, sufficient effort to your academic work; freedom of thought…” (interview with dr. defne, 2014). these quotations can be linked to what we noted as the overwhelming technicality in the discourse that surrounds the bp in turkey, disguising the neoliberal-authoritarian synthesis in related educational policies. the dominance of technicality is also revealed in dr. deniz’s accounts. as one of the most well-informed and critical participants, she cannot escape from locating the cumbersome nature of bureaucratic details into the center of her account. yet she, at the same time, acknowledges the alienating function of the contradiction between what she observes and thinks, and what she does (interview with dr. deniz, 2014): “i find the bp’s imagination of higher education and university environment quite problematic since the beginning. but then, for years, it’s…me who has been officially responsible…in our faculty, monitoring things that are completely against my understanding….such a schizophrenic way of existence…i have never been able to raise my 18  similar tendencies can be observed in the eu countries. reinalda (2011, p.4) notes that “despite the fact that teachers and staff have to implement the changes set in motion in their disciplines … the initiating ministers of education did not invite any professional or other organization of university staff to consultative membership.” 118 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education voice during the meetings once, and say something like ‘that is all ridiculous’…my thoughts, ideas, criticisms, political stance…all are parenthesized during such meetings.” one might expect that such a critical stance, though silenced, calls for counter movements to the transformation process, as evidenced not only in europe but also in the latin american context against the “tuning project” (aboites, 2010). yet none of the participants are informed about the global counter movements, or as we observed in some cases, they are reluctant to share their personal opinions. dr. erol, in parallel to his approach to the whole transformation process and the council’s role in it “googled” the words “bologna process, student protest” on his office pc, and then continued: “what do these people complain about? cultural corruption? imperialist influence? these are completely meaningless. it’s the eu who is giving you [the students, protesting] the money, not us…” (interview with dr. erol, 2014).19 besides, it would be apt to note that the trade unions in the education sector have not yet taken the bp on their agendas as a particular issue. they have rather treated it through general opposition against neoliberalization, and thus have not developed specific strategies in order to counter the policies implemented gradually at each and every stage of the process. conclusion although the rhetorical packaging behind the neoliberal discourse manipulates respecting democratic values and diversity of voices and thoughts, the last decade of higher education in turkey demonstrates that it operates through a collective performance of illusion of democracy and power of autocracy that values only the voices of the market, whereas the main voices and subjects in academia are keenly excluded. this is in line with couldry’s (2014, 135) assertion that dominant discourses of neoliberalism, under the disguise of seemingly democratic values such as individual’s/consumer’s freedom of choice, does not value voice; in fact, it “denies the voice”. looking at the last thirty years 19  this rather rough rationalization can be considered as a neoliberal mark on the academic mind, which rhoades and slaughter (2004, 37) name as “academic capitalism.” although coined specifically with reference to the “marketization” of higher education in the us the term recalls what can be read in-between the lines of the documents on the bp in turkey: “strategic decisions about the development, investment in and delivery of curriculum are being increasingly driven by short-term market considerations and made outside the purview of shared governance” (ibid., 47); hence the dominance of utilitarian mentality. free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 119 of neoliberal policies in britain, couldry, who, together with mcrobbie, had once announced “the death of the idea of the university” (2010), argues that “neoliberal democracy” is an oxymoron, responsible for the “social recession” that preceded the economic recession (2014, 2).20 by this, couldry implies that the neoliberal mentality, working through the illusion of liberty and estimating all facets and the purpose of life in economic terms creates social decay. academia is by no means immune to such social crises and recessions. as the rich critical literature testifies, through the policies promoting market-oriented solutions for persisting educational problems, positioning the academics as self-absorbed competitors instead of public intellectuals, and replacing academic/ social values with commercial ones, neoliberalism has transformed not only the core of higher education around the world, but perhaps more significantly “how we think and what we do as teachers and learners” (robertson, 2007, 11, italics in original). the state control over the universities in post-1980 turkey has worked in a similar way. all the policies that have been gradually implemented throughout the three decades targeted the “subversive [nature of] the social and intellectual role of the university” (chomsky quoted in grioux, 2006, 65-66) and pacifying the “engaged public intellectual [who] must function within institutions, in part, as an exile, ‘whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma…to refuse to be easily co-opted by governments or corporations”’ (said, quoted in grioux, 2006, 73). the bp can be considered as an example of this pacifying strategy.21 it is initiated, controlled and manipulated by the yök as the sole authority; the universities are forced directly or indirectly to adjust to the educational models, devised within the bp frame. and as the interview data suggest, academics –irrespective of their position vis-à-vis the bp – consider the recent transformations as another top-down intervention into the field of higher education. they tend to see the to-dos as part of their professional and administrative duties, willingly or not, but certainly with a high sense of responsibility to follow the instructions given by the university board or the yök; respect the deadlines 20  couldry and mcrobbie’s critical essay addresses the browne report, defining the higher education as a market where the services (education) are merely determined by student choice, and introducing “a system for distributing resources based on individual market choice’ in order to “somehow generate the system that society needs” (2010, 3). couldry borrows the concept “social recession” from lawson (2007) who sees the free-marketization of every aspect of life as the source of major social crises in contemporary capitalist societies: “neoliberalism promised a utopia but has failed to deliver (…) working harder to keep up on the treadmill of the learn-to-earn consumer society is deepening our social recession.” 21  on the pacification process in post-1980 turkey see, özcan (2014). 120 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education announced in a dutiful manner; and continue their everyday academic practices under given conditions.22 perhaps the active involvement of academia awaits the finalization of the free-marketization of higher education – that is to say, the liquidation of critical academic groups, and the consolidation of the new specialist and technician 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(1981). retrieved january 5, 2014, from http:// mevzuat.basbakanlik.gov.tr/metin.aspx?mevzuatkod=1.5.2547&mevz uatiliski=0&sourcexmlsearch= yükseköğretim kurumları, yönetici, öğretim elemanı ve memurları disiplin yönetmeliği (1982). retrieved january 5, 2014, from http://www.yok.gov.tr/web/guest/icerik/-/ journal_content/56_instance_rehf8bisfyrx/10279/17706 yükseköğretim kurumları, yönetici, öğretim elemanı ve memurları disiplin yönetmeliği (2014). retrieved january 10, 2014, from http:// www.resmigazete.gov.tr/eskiler/2014/01/20140129-34.htm alternate routes hegemonic masculinity, male peer support and sexual aggression: future research directions roberta lynn sinclair youth: they all can't wail until the next time we hop in bed. they love hearing about that shit. i mean, that's where i get half my ideas. interviewer: your ideas'? youth: yeah. the fake-raping shit. my buddies told me about that. and spanking. i mean, we rent s&m pornos sometimes. they show pretty much everything group sex, leather, chains, violence, but you can always tell that those bitches love it and beg for more. so i guess you could say that my friends are cheering me on. inteniewer: cheering you on? youth: yeah. sometimes i think they like it more than i do. they want me to film a fake-rape sometime... lnler\'iewer: how does it make you feel, telling your friends about your sex life? youth:(si\ence) pretty good i guess. they think i've got balls (silence). inteniewer: is that a good feeling for a guy or a not so good feeling? youth: good, i guess. i think they look up to me for that shit. (totten, 1996:108) the context of the above conversation was a study investigating marginal male youth 1 and girlfriend abuse 2 . the excerpt illustrates many of the themes that will be discussed in the following paper, including achieving masculinity through the sexual exploitation of women, the importance of heterosexuality to masculinity, and male peer-support of sexually aggressive behavior. 58 volume 15, j 999 chetnin alternative the sociology of masculinities has recently emerged as an avenue to examine how gender is "accomplished" in social life, introducing the existence of various conceptions of masculinities. ths paper explores how belief in ''hegemonic masculinity' 3 can lead to the development of sexually coercive masculinities. taking the male college group as an example of a "hypererotic" subculture 4 . it will be shown that some men demonstrate their commitment to hegemonic masculinity through heterosexual conquest. in some circumstances this can lead to sexual violence against women. sexual assault is multidimensional in nature: the victims of sexual assault include people who are married, single, widowed, and dating (e.g., allison and wrightsman, 1993; stets and straus, 1989); definitions of sexually coercive acts are broad ranging (e.g., dekeseredy and hinch, 1991; schwartz, 1997); the effects of sexual assault (arata and burkhart, 1996; koss, 1985) vary as much as the characteristics of the perpetrators (e.g., malamuth and dean, 1991; rapaport and posey, 1991). due to these factors, sexual assault theory and empirical research femains to be underdeveloped. this is not meant to suggest that sexual assault has not been the focus of several investigations, but rather that completed research suggests certain trends: rates of sexual assault (e.g., dekeseredy and kelly, 1993); police/societal reaction to victim (e.g., koss, 1988; schwartz and pitts, 1997); and offender characteristics (e.g.. scully, 1990). the development of an integrated theoretical approach that considers the importance of social factors in the encouragement and legitimization of woman abuse is needed. an emerging theoretical area in the area of sexually aggressive behaviours is the study of male peer support5 . central to this theory is the concept that a rape-prone ft society supports the abuse of women through upholding the hegemonic masculinity ideology of female subordination. male peer support research, which has primarily concentrated on college students, has shown that there is a connection between male peer support, hegemonic masculinity and sexual assault 7 . this body of research suggests that the pro-abusive ideology supported by some male peers exists prior to college entrance, therefore indicating a need to study adolescents. in the following paper, the connection between hegemonic masculinity, male peer support and sexual assault will be briefly presented. drawvolume 15. 1999 59 alternate routes ing upon research conducted on college students, the critique of existing studies indicate a research gap in the area of canadian adolescents and sexual assault. the primary goal of this paper is namely to encourage studies that theoretically and empirically investigate how hegemonic masculinity, male peer support and sexual aggression interconnect among adolescents. theory needs to be developed that takes into consideration the life situations of adolescents. directions for future research include the development and testing of a theoretical model that integrates routine activities and male peer support theories. the suggested model incorporates familial influence, primarily parental supervision, and male peer support theory in the study of sexually aggressive behaviour among adolescents. the final section of this paper provides some suggestions on how to conduct such research. rates of sexual assault: the canadian college experience it is difficult to estimate the number of women sexually assaulted on canadian college campuses per year. this problem is not unique to college populations but rather is characteristic of sexual assault rates in general (e.g., koss, 1993). listed below are just a few of the difficulties that can arise when attempting to estimate how many women are sexually assaulted. • high unreported rate (bohmer and parrot, 1993; dekeseredy and hinch, 1991) • only those reports that are termed "founded" by police are included in official statistics (kanin, 1984) • the use of inconsistent definitions in sexual assault research (dekeseredy and hinch, 1991; ward et al., 1991) • women are often asked if they have been a victim which assumes that they label their experience as rape which some do not (koss, 1988) regardless of these obstacles, it is important to strive to obtain an accurate rate of sexual assault on the canadian college campus. table 1 (reprinted from dekeseredy 1997) summarizes canadian university/college sexual abuse dating surveys. the discrepancies in the 60 volume j 5, 1999 chemin alternative rates reported in dekeseredy (1988) and barnes et al. (1991) in comparison to the other three studies can be partially attributed to a methodological difference: both studies relied on single-item measures (see the "measures of abuse" category on table 1). as dekeseredy states ,l [s]uch an approach exacerbates the problem of under-reporting because one question cannot cover the full range of unwanted, demeaning, and brutal sexual acts" (1997:47). the latter three studies employ the sexual experiences survey (ses) (koss et al., 1987) resulting in higher levels of incidence and prevalence rates partly because of their broad definition of sexual abuse and their use of multiple measures (more questions). the studies noted in table 1 are local, small-scale surveys and therefore do not provide us with a national estimate of sexual assault on the university/college campus8 . the canadian national survey (1992) sought to fill this gap by gathering information on 3,142 university/college students across canada. results indicated that 28% of the females stated they had been sexually assaulted in the past year, and 11% of males indicate that they had sexually victimized a female dating partner in the past year (dekeseredy and kelly, 1993). although only limited canadian studies have been completed on the rate of sexual assault on university/college campuses, there have been significant studies completed on sexual assault in general. these findings, as well as preliminary studies focusing on campus assault, combine to indicate that sexual assault on the university/college campus exists and, just as important, is an area in need of further research. after having established that sexual assault is a reality on canadian university/college campuses, the following section illustrates potential linkages between hegemonic masculinity, male peer support, and sexual assault. the sociology of masculinities theories discussing the role norms inherent in masculinity and femininty have, historically, relied on the biological differences between men and women. however, this dichotomous ideology created through primary reliance on biology does not allow for the study of differences that exist among men. challenges to the presuppositions of traditional political and social theories by feminists have lead to a discussion of masculinity as a research topic (morgan, 1992). volume 15, j999 61 alternate routes 1 s 04) c a u a b 3 = u b 3 "a a 1> u "o c-s y a -a g x s "5 st is ! 11 73 » isjej.c fl 11 ~ r u w ij u -c fl j '*" 1 ? i 3 1 b 3 3 j jc 3 t* i 9 b c c 9 > "3 g £ e tc ii 73 "s 5 -g >> 3 t, y s *3 — ii ii c c £ 9 a -o c 3 "j hi <— — c = fl li f 35 1 i -3 5 3 c i s ,"" "3 = g 5 s c e a om b = j e ji j jd j 5 = 7. c "3 u c g = * fl c >, i 9 ec so c > 2 "3 '7 £ 3 it # 3 sc * -a g c 1 3 ' 4j * p c 3 * e s * 3 y -3 g c e^ 11 si a o x >> w ! «£9 k. fl -3 "3 s 3 1) c ? « s a c y e£ m e 1 'c i 3 e a k ii 3 •ii e k » -3 = i * s ? 5. g c .ac • t» z £ -5 ^ ^ z < b a * £ ta u b >-* fl v5 on (<0 ^ «j *"* = e w uu u 1 | *l o s x > uy > y -3 3 un -3 >» fl . g g g i i s ^ c 3 c " »/ -a "3 n 3 £ 1 1 1 s< m cn -i i^2 s s s 1 1 . \ 1 | 1 5 £ k :i 1 :! 1 j'i :11 i'im e s e £ e s e = e s'> -= 2 -a 2 "3 .2 -3 .2 3 2 fl — fl 3 a 2 \r. c y §y §y §y 5^ j c e a c " c u -3 fl y 3 ^ 3 ^ 03: j!i "3 ll c 3 b. u |l — li jfl u 3 fl ^ s -3 "3 fl 3 >, e 3 "j, c 11 e 2 fl 3 .3 * x z "-. £ »*l -3 ** e 1 h r"-' ^ 5c~ \1 <~i > ^ ~ " 7 — vh 1-8 5 i § i g fl to 'g c i i c e a a la 73 3 2 3 |> > 01 i 3 on o e a ail 3 < z) z 8 c 3> _ ». f y 3-3 5 3c a e _ v. x o ci 01 d r-i c as c fl cd si o 62 v'o/uwic /5, 7999 chemin alternative as connell has indicated, role norms are social facts shaped by agents of socialization (1995:23). therefore the role that social relations and interactions play in the development of masculinity and femininty must be acknowledged. the sociology of masculinities attempts to understand the construction of masculinity in everyday life, acknowledging both the importance of economic and institutional structures, and the significance of different masculinities (connell, 1995:35). the theoretical starting point of the sociology of masculinities is that gender is not fixed but is ever changing. gender is constructed in interaction and continues to be reconstructed in social practice, hence "[t]hese relationships are constructed through practices that exclude and include, that intimidate, exploit, and so on" (connell, 1995:37). the sociology of masculinities recognizes that men are positioned differently in society and that they share the construction of masculinities peculiar to their position in society (messerschmidt, 1993). therefore, masculinity is a way of 'doing gender' in a culturally specific way. to illustrate, totten (1996) contends that marginal male youth with limited opportunities attempt to declare their masculinity through the degradation of homosexuality, including physical violence — "gay bashing.' 1 messerschmidt refers to this as situated accomplishment: "the activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions, attitudes, and activities appropriate to one's sex category" (1993:79). in light of this, we 'do' gender in situational ways. our actions are constructed in relation to how they might be interpreted by others in particular social situations. it is of utmost importance that others attribute the correct sex category to us as this is an indication of how successful we are in demonstrating our masculinity or femininity. in this sense, masculinity (as the focus of this paper) is never static but is ever changing, continually being constructed and reconstructed. men take an active role in this process as they monitor and adapt their own gendered conduct. however, these self-regulation practices do not play themselves out in isolation but rather are influenced by ideals that society has deemed 'normal' by social structural constraints.the dominant form of masculinity in north america has been coined the "hegemonic masculinity" (connell, 1995). hegemonic masculinity is the idealized form of masculinity in a given historical setting. it "embodies a culturally accepted strategy" (connell, 1995:77), therefore "[t]he interplay between different forms of masculinity are often defined through volume 15, 1999 63 alternate routes participation in the paid labour market, the subordination of women, and normative heterosexuality" (messerschmidt, 1993). further, hegemonic masculinity often encourages the sexual domination of women by men, supports the objectification of women as sexual beings, and supports mens uncontrollable [h]eterosexuality. it is according to these relations that hierarchies of masculinities are constructed and reconstructed. in north american society, marital-reproductive heterosexuals are at the top of the masculinities hierarchy followed by others such as gay men, lesbians, prostitutes, and the like. heterosexuality is deemed normative and therefore becomes a fundamental indication of one's maleness. the "normative heterosexuality 11 that is deemed appropriate by society is carefully defined. in north american society, it is commonly characterized by an unsatiable and uncontrollable sexual appetite for women. according to the ideology of normative heterosexuality, men are expected to be "ready" to perform sexually at any given time, and are to experience high levels of sexual activity. the dominant masculine ideology holds heterosexual performance as a strong indicator of one's identity as a man. this can, in some cases, lead to sexually aggressive behaviour as men try to achieve the often unattainable standards of sexuality dictated as their "right." this will be further explored in the following section. hegemonic masculinity, male peer support, and the "crime ofsex" as discussed previously, men "do" masculinity according to the social structure in which they define themselves. young men experience their everyday world from a specific position in society and construct their ideals of hegemonic masculinity in accordance to this position. male university/college students often construct their masculinity according to their peer groups, therefore the role that male peer groups play in a young man's development is very important. similar to adult men, young men use the resources at their disposal to communicate gender to others. men apply the ideals of hegemonic masculinity to situations that face them and pursue a strategy of action. in some instances the primary resource available to accomplish gender (masculinity) is crime 9 . university/college males often do not have many resources available to prove their position in the hierarchy of masculinities. for example, many are not active participants of the labor force, nor ate many the "breadwinners" in their respective families. one option available to them 64 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative is to prove their manhood through heterosexuality and the subordination of women. and as schwartz and dekeseredy's (1997) work illustrates, this resource can be presented to them before entering university/college and may be legitimized by male peer groups. youth groups allow for the construction of various masculinities that in turn are associated with various forms of crime, one form being sexual assault. in some all-male peer groups, the goal of achieving hegemonic masculinity is shared and heterosexuality determines the 'succes' of the young man's masculinity. sexual aggression allows for male youth to prove their power and dominance over women as well as to 'satisfy' their 'natural' insatiable sexual appetite. through the crime of gang rape and individual sexual coercion, males humiliate and devalue females while simultaneously strengthening their image of masculine power within their peer group. by adhering to the hegemonic masculinity promoted by society, heterosexual intercourse is the dominant measure of one's identity as a male; by not partaking in this activity they are severely threatening their masculinity. in this sense, gang rape can serve as a resource for those males who do not have other resources through which to demonstrate their maleness. one's own self-worth is strengthened through the degradation of another, in this case a woman/women. the experience of group rape becomes a resource for accomplishing gender and for constructing a particular type of masculinity publicly. the influence of the male peer group, however, often goes beyond providing a forum in which to accomplish their masculinity. in many cases, all-male peer groups legitimize and justify sexual aggression. one of the first sociologists to examine the effect of reference groups on sexual aggression was eugene kanin (1957). sporadic research since then has established that there is a relationship between male peer support and sexually aggressive behaviour 10 the findings from this body of research have generated an interest in the study of university/college fraternities as an example of an all-male peer group. a number of such studies, primarily american, have suggested that fraternity members are more apt to be sexually aggressive than nonmembers (e.g., boeringer. 1996; sanday, 1990). however, when other factors, such as alcohol use. are brought into the equation, the statistical significance between fraternity membership and sexual assault is often weakened, if not eliminated" it has been suggested that fraternities volume 15, 1999 65 alternate routes should not be the sole focus but rather should be regarded as one example of an all-male peer group similar to other male groups such as athletic teams (sanday, 1990; schwartz and dekeseredy, 1997). the link to sexual assault may lie in the ideals that these all-male groups provide, such as a narrow conception of masculinity (belief in the hegemonic masculinity), the concept of group secrecy (support and secrecy of the sexually assaultive behaviour), and the sexual objectification of women (schwartz and dekeseredy, 1997). future research needs to examine other male peer groups to determine the role they play in the support of abusive behaviour. researchers must be hesitant to focus on fraternities and/or organized sports teams. male peer groups can take many forms and can include a wide variety of situations. for example, men living together in a boarding house atmosphere would more than qualify as an example of an 'unorganized' male peer group. these types of male peer groups may prove to be more damaging than 'organized' male groups as they are not tied to the university/ college like many fraternities/sports teams are. therefore formal control, via university/college administration, over these groups would be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. future research needs to address existing unorganized male groups and determine the dynamics of these types of groups in terms of pro-abuse beliefs. this will help researchers to better understand how these groups work, which is necessary in order to understand better how to combat their pro-abuse beliefs. important in the study of male peer-support and sexual aggression is the role that this support can play in the justification of sexual violence. the process of disavowing one's deviant behavior and presenting it as normal encompasses a vocabulary of motive (mills, 1940) that, in this case, allows the rapist to view his aggressive behavior as "normal." this system helps men to identify women as legitimate objects of abuse. once these beliefs have become internalized, rapists do not believe that their behavior is deviant, as the behavior is acceptable to the group. in a study of convicted male adult rapists, scully (1990) found that common justifications were: women mean yes when they say no, women eventually relax and enjoy it, and "nice girls" dortt get raped. in kanin ( 1985). 86 percent of the rapists believed that rape could be justified under certain circumstances, compared to only 19 percent of the control group. the rapists qualified their sexually aggressive behavior by blaming the victim, for example , "although it was probably rape in the legal sense. 66 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative the fault for the incident resided with the female because of her sexual conduct" (1984:96). an example of how some male peer groups justify their abusive behaviour is provided by sanday (1990). in her research, fraternity brothers discuss women who have the reputation of being 'sleazy' as 'scantily' dressed, wears lots of make-up, and looks like she is 'ready for action' (31). these women are further labeled as sluts, cheap, or as fair game. by appearing sexually receptive (through dress and physical appearance) she "wants it, is asking for it, is setting herself up, is looking to get fucked, and is sending off signals" (sanday, 1990:31). the brothers feel justified in the use of sexual aggression with these 'types' of women as the blame lies in the woman's behaviour as dictated through "the rules"of their particular all-male peer group. however, how this process of justification takes place (whether it is verbalized, or simply "understood") and whether the "group" is responsible for instilling this attitude has yet to be adequately researched. future research must determine what role the group plays in the justification and legitimization of woman abuse. the above excerpts taken from sanday (1990) suggest that in some fraternities these justifications and 'deserving victims' ideologies are discussed quite openly by the fraternity 'brothers.' the following questions need to be addressed in future research: does the same process occur in unorganized groups of men? are the justifications verbalized to group members in some way, or are they unstated yet understood assertions? kanin's (1967) finding indicating that aggressive respondents tend to associate with friends that encourage them to become sexually involved has been supported by other studies (e.g.. alder, 1985; kanin, 1985 ). however, it has not yet been determined whether men who are already sexually aggressive seek membership in groups that promote pro-abuse ideals, or whether group membership itself initiates this ideology. the groups may provide an outlet for the already abusive men to exercise their "right" to abuse women. it is important to understand whether the group or the abusive behaviour comes first, as this relationship will shape policy implications and methods to deal with this problem. for example, if it is the groups that are instilling these behaviours, education programs and harsher penalties may be focused on these groups. if the group serves as a forum within which this behaviour is exerted, then the members of such groups must be reached earlier and educated on the consequences of woman abuse. volume 15, 1999 67 alternate routes several studies have found that the rapist's sexually aggressive behaviour was not acquired in university/college, suggesting that these males manifested sexual aggressiveness in high school (dekeseredy and schwartz, 1994 12 ; kanin 1967, 1985). kanin's theory (1967) asserts that by the time men reach university/college they may have already been trained in high school to treat women as sexual objects to be used to satisfy their needs. therefore men may simply choose groups with similar beliefs and training. for example, those men who join fraternities that support the sexual exploitation of women may already believe in their 'right' to exploit females. however, these same men may not join an official fraternity, but may alternatively seek to associate with a group of men who share similar beliefs. "the orientation to sexually exploit was acquired at a previous period high school or perhaps earlier and the choice of sympathetic membership groups at university/college largely represents a selective attempt to sustain and receive support for the earlier acquired values" (kanin, 1967:501, original emphasis). this indicates that sexually aggressive males may gravitate to groups whose values are compatible with their own. new groups were also formed to "serve to embellish old values, provide new vocabularies of motive, modify old norms, and provide new norms" (kanin, 1967:501). the brief review of existing research on male peer support presented in this paper demonstrates that a relationship between sexual aggression and male peer support does exist. findings also suggest that the ideals supportive of sexually aggressive behaviour may be in place prior to university/college entry. these findings raise some questions that need to be answered in future research. the next phase of research must focus on high school students in an attempt to discern how pro-abuse beliefs are formed and how male peer support dynamics play themselves out in adolescents' lives. research needs to address the following questions: does the male peer group play a similar role in adolescents as it does in university/college students? are there other factors that are more apt to be tied to the development of adolescent pro-abusive personalities, such as familial experience? and. are these beliefs being formed during the adolescent phase, or do the peer groups at this age play an ancillary role whereby they merely reinforce already instilled abusive ideologies? 6h volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative future research directions limited canadian research addressing the role of the male peer group in high school students and sexual assault has been completed. as sexual coercion researchers interested in the dynamics of male youth and sexual assault, the research agenda is twofold: i) to determine the extent of adolescents victimized by male sexual aggression, and ii) theoretical developments must be made in order to better reflect adolescent experience with sexual aggression. (i) rates ofsexual assault among canadian high school students acknowledging that sexual assault among adolescents does not begin in university/college, some small-scale surveys with high school students have been conducted in canada. table 2, reprinted from dekeseredy and schwartz (1994), provides a summary of the findings from these studies. although these studies offer valuable insight into adolescent dating and woman abuse, the usefulness of their data is limited. in mercer's (1988) study, the three forms of abuse investigated (sexual, physical, and verbal) were not mutually exclusive. therefore, in terms of the amount of sexual violence that adolescents use/experience, this study does not offer many concrete findings. forty-seven percent of the sample reported that they had been involved in a date rape or knew of someone who had been. this is an interesting finding, but without knowing what percent actually experienced date rape, it offers little tangible information. a limitation of both the jaffe et al. (1992) study and sudermann and jaffe (1993) study stems from the restriction that the researchers were not allowed to directly ask whether the respondent had been a victim or a perpetrator in the incident 13 respondents were asked only to state whether they had "experienced" abuse. the second limitation, shared by all three studies, is that they are local, small-scale surveys, therefore they do not address the national rate of sexual assault among adolescents the need to establish a nayional estimate of canaidan high school sexual aggression in dating relationships was heeded by dekeseredy and shwartz (1994). these researchers could address this gap by drawing on information obtained in the canadian national survey (1992). in this survey, respondents were questioned about their experiences with violence in their high school dating relationships. in respect to sexual violevolume 15, 1999 69 alternate routes — 1) a c k > u 3 dc a o oc gfl x: dc £ c .2 c u b 3 j3 e ca e o a 70 y x , , '3 x n. u -o "8 y. >. u xj > c t3 ~ c c or x!a * <u a 8 # c 5 c 'y. 3 3 x 5 3 e 0) u b u 8. 3x 73 3 1 x 4) o •s x a — . x x u 73 x! 73x "8 y. if. 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"8 3 75x -s "o u 8. >>x e s s u u 2 **" cj o, <*1 1 11 5j > ty. v 3jx i o & u u e 3 c 00 d x c "6 x u a u e 81 y 2 8 > •a c a cj e o x c *— " > r3 u u ty. 73 ux q u y \0 x « o § x b > x 3x 1 o 75 u en 75 c c c p c g a e e 2 1 -a 1j c u 09u 11— 4) o ty u 31 ob u •y -j 5 5 1) 3 73 u £ 3 '5 w t? 3 a 00 — • o" c oo .£ ac oo .2 o" b _1> 7i x _u at q. cj e 3 u w: f3 e i3 v. sampl descri tion oc •a c r3 x a e 1 ^x c c 3 c/: 5 v-» c -a o^ c x 3 e 1x o e 3 e c >>.2 men — s u o y. o y; -§ .9 y x c o "8 § -c o o o * j= 8 2 £ bo x j c "d j x j c rf j x -t x u t o -c o ty. ri o -c a c c c3 s £ e 73 "9 "9 3 c oo a e l. 3 o u 5 r»i 1s a — £a o s "3 5 : i •j . ^. •s. t? u s o <*« -n o a yx m s. a b >* 3 b c o u s v u =f t3 £ o (3 *^ ^ >n na b < o o n e 1 iy. c •• u 3 -jx ep u w>/m#«« /5. 7999 chemin alternative nee 3.3 percent of men stated that they had used physical force to make their partners engage in sexual activities. as would be expected, the women estimated a higher percent of sexual violence (22.8%). however, these findings are based on retrospective responses and are. therefore, susceptible to the common memory problems that characterize social science research, such as selective memory, loss of memory and manipulation of memory. the above studies are also limited as they lack a qualitative component. in-depth interviews with respondents on sensitive issues (such as sexual assault) are invaluable when attempting to obtain representative estimates. open-ended questions in an interview setting allows the researcher to probe and helps to limit any concerns with definitions that arise. to reiterate, there continues to be a need to conduct studies that attempt to discern the rate of adolescent sexual violence. the first step in theorizing and confronting sexual violence among adolescents is the determination of how many adolescent males are sexually aggressive. the rate of adolescent sexual violence can be obtained through the use of both small-scale and national surveys that ask high school students direct questions about their experiences with sexual assault, both as victims and as perpetrators. national surveys will enhance the understanding of class and ethnic experiences which can be misrepresented in small surveys. these surveys, complimented with in-depth interviews, will provide more accurate rates of sexual assault among adolescents. thereafter, research can be conducted to allow us to better understand the dynamics of male peer support and sexually abusive adolescents. the findings suggested from research on university/college students and sexual assault provide validation for this research; there is substantial evidence that suggests that sexually abusive university/college males arrive at university/college with their pro-abuse ideologies intact. it must be determined if and how these ideologies are adopted in adolescence. (ii) theoretical development men who sexually assault do not operate in a vacuum: indeed many of the values and beliefs they express are micro social expressions of broader social forces. the male peer support model was first proposed by shwartz and dekeseredy (1997) as an attempt to investigate how social interactions with male peers are associated with various forms of volume 15, j 999 71 alternate routes female victimization in dating relationships. the model, which focused primarily on individual factors, was expanded by dekeseredy and schwartz (1993) to include broader societal forces. the original model, however, has only been tested on university/college students and the modified model has not been tested in its entirety. as the noted research gap pertains to adolescent experiences with sexual aggression, the male peer support model must be modified to better reflect an adolescent's world. as illustrated previously, adolescent rates of sexual abuse are lower than university/college student rates. this does not merely suggest that fewer males have sexually aggressive beliefs, but rather, may reflect limited opportunities to act out their pro-abusive beliefs. i suggest the need to integrate the routines activities theory with male peer support theory. routine activities theory suggests that the amount and location of crime are affected by three factors: the presence of likely offenders, the absence of capable guardians, and the availability of suitable targets (cohen and felson, 1979). as schwartz and pitts (1995) discuss, the first condition, presence of likely offenders, has been established in light of the rates of sexual assault among adolescents. the second condition, absence of capable guardians, can be related to adolescent sexual assault in the following manner. if there is high parental supervision there may be less time for group affiliation and for dating. if a youth does not date a lot, then he may be less likely to engage in sexual coercion. also group affiliation may be lower as they may have less time to associate with peers due to high parental supervision. if there is minimal parental supervision, the adolescent may date more and have more time to "hang out" with friends. this could indicate increased opportunity to engage in sexual assault. the third condition, the availability of suitable targets concerns the way in which certain types of women are seen as legitimate targets (e.g., fair game, deserving victims, etc.) of sexually aggressive behaviour. integration of this theory will enhance our understanding of adolescent sexual assault. totten's (1996) research on adolescents suggests the need to determine the role of the family of origin in the socialization of male youth. the rationale for integrating familial experience is obvious, as the familial influence is apt to be greater among adolescents than among university/college students. many adolescents still live at home and are possibly dependent on the support of their respective families. important 72 volume j 5, j 999 chemin alternative to future research is the amount of parental supervision a family offers a male youth. current feminist literature states that there are different types of patriarchy that influence masculinities 14 familial patriarchy refers to male dominance at the domestic level (dekeseredy and kelly, 1993). research by smith (1990) has shown that "men who espouse the ideology of familial patriarchy are more likely to beat their wives than men who do not adhere to such an ideology" (dekeseredy and kelly, 1993:27). future research must seek to determine if a similar connection between adherence to traditional stereotypes (familial patriarchy) and sexual violence exists between male youths and their female intimates. preliminary evidence for the association of familial patriarchy has been provided by totten (1996). his research suggests that the adherence to familial patriarchal beliefs by the participants were grounded in their families of origin, which were characterized by rigid gender roles. mercer states: adolescence is clearly not a period when young people reject the traditional gender roles for which they have been groomed. it is characteristically a time when they act them out sometimes to their worst extremes (1988:16). also integrated into the theoretical model must be how belief in hegemonic masculinity intersects with sexually aggressive behavior, male peer support and adolescent males. several authors have suggested that many of the ideals stressed by hegemonic masculinity lead to the development of rape-prone societies 15 . hegemonic masculinity stresses heterosexuality, the sexual subordination of women, and the sexual objectification of women. research has suggested that university/college students who adhere to these beliefs are more apt to be sexually aggressive (e.g., sanday, 1990). we must investigate how the ideals of hegemonic masculinity play themselves out in adolescent males. of interest must be the way in which adolescent's seek to achieve hegemonic masculinity. several research studies have established that membership in allmale groups provide abusive men with support for their abusive behaviour. dekeseredy and schwartz (1997) state that men who receive volume 15, 1999 73 alternate routes encouragement and support for pro-abusive behavior from their peer groups are more apt to abuse women. research needs to study the effect that such membership has on the development of sexually coercive attitudes and behaviours at the adolescent level. the following suggestions are presented as potential target areas for future research within the area of hegemonic masculinity, male peer support and sexual aggression: research energies must be focused on adolescent males in an attempt to test a theoretical model that includes the above mentioned dynamics; rich empirical interview data must be conducted to compliment national surveys on young people's experiences of male sexual aggression; there is a need to broaden our focus by including respondents of various ethnic race backgrounds as the university/college based research completed thus far concentrates on a select group of individuals who have the opportunity to attend university/college; and, longitudinal studies with a variety of youth, at both the national and the local level, will provide rich data on the development of peer groups, the rates of sexual violence, and the role these peer groups play in the development of sexually aggressive behaviours. conclusion this paper provided a brief summary of the literature on hegemonic masculinity, male peer support and sexual aggression. it is quite evident that sexual aggression among university/college students and high school students is a reality in canada. future research needs to focus on understanding how the adolescent experience shapes or relates to the university/college experience. the link between hegemonic masculinity, male peer support, and sexual assault has thus far been discussed in respect to university/college samples. the majority of the studies completed in this area of research (focusing on samples of university/college students) conclude that association with pro-abuse male peer groups 74 volume 15. 1999 chemin alternative encourages and legitimize already existing sexually aggressive ideologies. this has resulted in a call for a research focus on adolescents. first, an accurate estimate of sexual aggression among adolescents must be determined, and second, theoretical advances must be made through the integration of routine activities theory and male peer support theory. future research must strive to understand the connection between hegemonic masculinity, male peer support and sexual assault. this suggests a need to focus on society as a rape-supportive one and the need to look closely at the messages provided to young men in terms of sexuality and power. if the messages we are providing support the dominant form of masculinity (heterosexuality, subordination of women, and the sexual objectification of women) then perhaps young men are not guilty of rape, but rather, guilty of sex as we have defined it according to our present definition of hegemonic masculinity. notes 1 . totten defines marginal male youth as the following : these youth have poor relations with their families, have been abused by care givers and have witnessed abuse in their homes. these youth receive little or no financial support from their families. many live away from home in young offender facilities, group homes, rooming houses/apartments, and shelters. those who live at home spend little time there; thus parental control is minimal. almost all have come from lower income neighborhoods and have dropped out or are failing school. their parents receive social assistance, unemployment insurance, disability pensions, or work in low-paying service sector jobs (totten, 1996: 10). 2. girlfriend abuse included male-to-female physical, sexual, and psychological assaults in dating relationships. 3. bob connell ( 1995) is noted for setting the vocabulary for the study of masculinities and suggests that there is usually one dominant form of masculinity. referred to as the hegemonic masculinity, in a given society. in north american societies, the dominant form of masculinity is one that stresses dominance, aggression, financial success, physical and sexual prowess, etc.. subordinated or oppositional masculinities arise when men do not/cannot live up to the ideals volume 15, 1999 75 a iremate routes promoted by hegemonic masculinity. he defines hegemonic masculinity as the ascendancy of a certain form of masculinity over others. it should be noted that hegemonic masculinity is also defined as being above all forms of femininity. 4. kanin ( 1984, 1985) defines a hypererotic subculture as one that adheres to exaggerated levels of sexual aspiration, emphasizes high levels of sexual activity, and values sexual prowess. 5. male peer support refers to attachment to male peers and the resources that those males provide that encourage and legitimate the abuse of women. 6. buchwald, flethcher and roth define 'a rape-prone society' as one that accepts sexual violence and the fear of violence as the norm. a society that, knowingly or not, perpetuates models of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality that foster aggression, violence, and fear ( 1993:v, original emphasis). 7. see dekeseredy (1988); kanin (1967, 1985); sanday (1990); schwartz and dekeseredy (1997); and totten (1996). 8. for a detailed examination of the methodological limitations of these studies see dekeseredy (1997). 9. crime is one form of social practice that can be invoked as a resource for accomplishing masculinity when other resources are not available. for further discussion on crime as a resource, see messerschmidt (1993). 10. see ageton (1983); alder (1985); dekeseredy (1988); and dekeseredy and schwartz (1994). 1 1. see koss and cleveland iii (1996) and schwartz and nogrady (1996). for a detailed discussion on the importance of alcohol use/abuse as an intervening factor in fraternity members and sexual assault see schwartz and dekeseredy (1997). 12. kanin (1967) found that 62% of the self-reported sexually aggressive university/college males engaged in such activities in high school, whereas only 15.7% of the non-aggressive university/college males reported engaging in sexually aggressive activities in high school. dekeseredy and schwartz (1994) found that 22.8% female university/college students stated they had experienced male sexual aggression at the high school level, and 3.3% of the males reported engaging in sexually aggressive behavior at the highs school level. 76 volume 15. 1999 chemin alternative 13. this restriction was placed on the researchers by school board officials. restrictions such as these and the general lack, of co-operation researchers are met with when attempting to study sexual aggression in high school populations indicate potential reasons as to why this area continues to be under-researched. restraints such as these have caused researchers to alter their methodologies, resulting in somewhat problematic findings, as discussed in this section . 14. see dekeseredy and schwartz (1993); miller (1994); and smith (1990). 15. see sanday (1990); schwartz and dekeseredy (1997); and scully (1983). references aizenman, m., and kelley. g. 1988 the incidence of violence and acquaintance rape in dating relationships among college men and women." journal of college student development. 29:305-311. ageton, s. 1983 sexual assault among adolescents. toronto: lexington books. alder. c. 1985 "an exploration of self-reported sexually aggressive behavior." crime and delinquency. 3 1(2):306-33 1 . allison, j. a., and wrightsman. l.s. 1993 rape: the misunderstood crime. newbury park. ca: sage. arata. c. and burkhart. b. 1996 "post-traumatic stress disorder among college student victims of acquaintance assault." in e.s. byers and l.f. 0*sullivan eds. sexual coercion in dat ing relationships. new york: the haworth press, inc. barnes. g.. greenwood. l.. and sommer, r. 1991 "courtship violence in a canadian sample of male college students." family relations. 40:37-44. volume j 5, j 999 77 alternate routes berger. m.. wallis. b., and watson. s. 1995 constructing masculinity. new york: routledge, inc. boeringer, sb. 1996 "influences of fraternity membership, athletics, and male living arrangements on sexual aggression." violence against women. 2(2): 134-147. bohmer. c, and parrot, a. 1993 sexual assault on campus: the problem and the solution. toronto: maxwell macmillan canada. cohen, l.e., and felson. m. 1979. "social changes and crime rate trends: a routine activities approach." american sociological review. 44:588-608. connell, r.w. 1987 gender and power. oxford: polity press. 1995 masculinities. berkeley and los angeles: university of california press. dekeseredy, w. 1988 woman abuse in dating relationships. toronto: canadian scholar's press. 1997 "measuring sexual abuse in canadian university/college dating relationships: the contribution of a national representative sample survey." in m. schwartz ed. researching sexual violence against women. thousand oaks. ca: sage publications. inc. dekeseredy. w.. and hinch, r. 1991. woman abuse: sociological perspectives. toronto: thompson. dekeseredy, w.. and kelly, k. 1993 "the incidence and prevalence of women abuse in canadian university and college dating relationships." canadian journal of sociology. 18(2): 137159. dekeseredy. w., and schwartz. m. 1993 "male peer support and woman abuse: an expansion of dekeseredy 's model." sociological spectrum. 13:393-4 1 3. 7h volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative 1994 "locating a history of some canadian woman abuse in elementary and high school dating relationships." humanity and society. 18(3):49-63. jaffe, p., suderman, m., reitzel, d., and killip, s. 1992 "an evaluation of a secondary school primary prevention program on violence in intimate relationships." violence and victims, 7: 129-146. kanin, e. 1957 "male aggression in dating-courtship relations." american journal of sociology. 63:197-204. 1967 "reference groups and sex conduct norm violations." the sociological quarterly. 8:495-504. 1984 "date rape: unofficial criminals and victims." victimology: an international journal. 9(1):95-108. 1985 "date rapists: differential sexual socialization and relative deprivation." archives ofsexual behaviour. 14(3):2 19-231. koss, m. 1985 "the hidden rape victim: personality, attitudinal, and situational characteristics." psychology of women quarterly. 9:193-212. 1988 "hidden rape: sexual aggression and victimization in a national sample of students in higher education." in a. burgess ed. rape and sexual assault: vol. 2, new york: garland. 1993 "detecting the scope of rape: a review of prevalence research methods." journal of interpersonal violence. 8(2): 198222. koss, m., and cleveland iii, h. 1996 "athletic participation, fraternity membership, and date rape: the question remains — self-selection or different causal prcesses?" violence against women. 2(2): 180190. volume 15, 1999 79 alternate routes koss, m., gidycz, c, and wisniewski, w. 1987 "the scope of rape: incidence and prevalence of sexual aggression and victimization in a national sample of higher edtion students." journal of consulting and clinical psychology. 55: 1 621 70. mackinnon. k. 1983 "feminism. marxism, methods and the state: toward feminist jurisprudence." the journal of women in culture and society. 8(4):635-658. malamuth. n.. and dean, k. 1991 "attraction to sexual aggression." in a. parrot and l. bechhofer eds. acquaintance rape: the hidden crime. new york: john wiley and sons. martin. p.y., and hummer. r.a. 1989 "fraternities and rape on campus." gender and socety. 3(4):457-473. mercer, s. 1988 "not a pretty picture: an exploratory study of violence against women in high school dating relationships." resources for feminist research. 17:15-23. messerschmidt, j. 1993 masculinities and crime: critique and reconceptualization of theory. lanham, md: rowman and littlefield. miller. s. 1994 "expanding the houndaries: toward a more inclusive and integrated study of intimate violence." violence and victims. 9(2): 183194. mills. c. w. 1940 "situated actions and vocabulary of motive." american sociological review. 5:904-913. morgan. d.h.j. 1992 discovering men. london: routledge. rapport, k., and posey, c. 1991 "sexually coercive college males." in a. parrot and l. bechhofer eds. acquaintance rape: the hidden crime. new york: john wiley and sons. ho volume 15, /999 chemin alternative sanday, p.g. 1990 fraternity gang rape: sex, brotherhood, and privilege on campus. new york: new york university press. 1996 "rape-prone versus rape-free campus cultures." violence against women. 2(2): 191 -208. schwartz, m. 1996 "the study of masculinities and crime." the criminologist. 21(1 ):4. 1997 researching sexual violence against women. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications, inc. schwartz, m. and dekeseredy, w. 1997 sexual assault on the college campus: the role of male peer support . california: sage publications, inc. schwartz, m., and nogrady, c. 1996 "fraternity membership, rape myths, and sexual aggression on a college campus." violence against women. 2(2):148162. schwartz, m., and pitts, v. 1995 "exploring a feminist routine activities approach to explain-ing sexual assault." justice quarterly: academy of criminal justice sciences. 12( 1 ):9-3 1 . schwendinger, h., and schwendinger, j. 1985 adolescent subcultures and delinquency. new york: praeger publishers. scully. d. 1990 understanding sexual violence: a study of convicted rapists. boston: unwin hyman, inc. smith, m. 1990 "patriarchal ideology and wife beating: a test of a feminist hypothesis." violence and victims. 6(4):257-273. volume 15, 1999 81 alternate routes stets, j., and straus. m. 1989 "the marriage license as a hitting license: a comparison of assaults in dating, cohabiting, and married couples." in m. pirog-good and j. stets eds. violence in dating relationships: emerging social issues. new york: praeger publishers. totten, m. 1996 power for the powerless: girlfriend abuse by marginal male youth. ph.d. thesis. carleion university. ward. s.. k.. cohen. e.. white. s. and williams. k. 1991 "acquaintance rape and the college social scene." family relations. 40:65-71. h2 volume 15. 1999 alternate routes a journal of critical social research presentation and editorial policy alternate routes is a refereed multi-disciplinary journal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university in ottawa, canada. our mandate is to make alternate routes a forum for debate and exchange among graduate students throughout the country and beyond. we are therefore interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or coauthored with faculty), regardless of their university affiliation. the editorial emphasis is on the publication of critical and provocative analyses of theoretical and substantive issues which clearly have relevance for progressive political intervention. although we welcome papers on a broad range oftopics, members ofthe editorial board work within a feminist and marxist tradition. therefore, we encourage submissions which advance or challenge questions and contemporary issues raised by these two broadly defined perspectives. we also welcome commentaries and reviews of recent publications. editorial board nicole bennett, wade deisman, christine gervais, valerie howe, dominique masson, anna paletta, alan stanbridge, oscar wolfman the editors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the carleton university community: the department of sociology and anthropology and its chairperson, flo andrews; the dean of social science, tom wilkinson; the dean ofgraduate studies and research, j.w. apsimon. we also wish to thank all the anonymous reviewers. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research is indexed in: sociological abstracts; the left index. © 1996 alternate routes (date of issue: december, 1996) o call for student papers alternate routes is seeking submissions for volume 14, 1997. the editorial collective is interested in papers that address current theoretical and substantive issues within the social sciences. manuscripts will be anonymously reviewed by faculty members from academic institutions across the country. please use the american psychological association (apa) referencing system and keep endnotes to a minimum. papers should be submitted double-spaced and in triplicate. floppy disks formatted inwordperfect or microsoftword are required for papers accepted for publication. we also welcome responses to recent publications, book reviews and discussions of work in progress. responses to this invitation to contribute should bepostmarked no later than february 30, 1997 alternate routes est a la recherche d'articles pour sonnumerode 1997. nous sollicitons des articles theoriques et/ou empiriques, d'origines disciplinaires variees et portant sur des sujets d'actualite en sciences sociales. les manuscrits seront evalues de facon anonyme par des membres du corps professoral de diverses universites canadiennes. les textes presentes doivent se conformer au systeme de reference de 1'association americaine de psychologie (apa). veuillez soumettre trois copies de votre manuscrit (a double-interligne) et limiter le nombre de notes au minimum. la version finale du manuscrit devra nous parvenir sur disque en version wordperfect 5.1 ou microsoft word. nous publions aussi des notes de recherche et des recensions. les reponses a cet appel d'articles devraient etre postees au plus tard le 30 fevrier 1997 (le cachet de la poste en faisant foi). address to/envoyez a: alternate routes department of sociology and anthropology carleton university colonel by drive ottawa, ontario canada k1s 5b6 alternate routes a journal of critical social research volume 1 3, 1 996 introduction 1 articles sheryl n. hamilton "creative and cultural expression " but not art: multiculturalism arts funding as cultural management 3 andrew reddick property rights and communication 23 dominique masson language, power, and politics: revisiting the symbolic challenge ofmovements 67 work-in-progress oscar wolfman homophobia in/as education 101 joseph m. hermer please, bears don 't talk! the smokey bear performance rules 119 o introduction four years to the next millenium and "deficit reduction" has become the buzzword at all levels ofgovernance, from national and multinational fora to municipalities and universities. the overwhelming prevalence and apparent acceptance of these priorities reduce the space for critical analyses. alternate routes resolutely remains a support of the shrinking realm of thought which reaches beyond the over-arching neo-liberal paradigm we do so, in part, by making room for analyses which call attention to, and contest the prevailing winds of policies which seem determined to strip our social and crvilnetworks oftheirs sociality and their civility. the articles in volume 13 of alternate routes reveal the prevalence ofdiscourse and social construction in the designation of everything from new forms of property to individual and collective serves as late capitalism discloses its active cultural role. as dorothy smith says, the current concern with discourse, communication, and designation does not come from nowhere it is consonant with the great up swelling ofmediated communication telling us always what and why we are. sheryl n. hamilton examines how state policies on art and multiculturahsm constitute and manage canada's 'high' symbolic order. she suggeststhat the art supportedbymumculturalism programs is not so much about artistic creativityper se as much as it is about managing the display, or spectacle, of a particular construction of 'canada's ethnic diversity.' andrew reddick's article unveils the interests and the privatization and commodificationbehind the euphoricallytouted achievement of the "information superhighway." the author argues for the need to contest privatization and press democratic access and intervention before the highway becomes a prohibitively expensive toll road for the few. dominique masson's essay on the symbolic dimension of social movements suggests that there is a need to develop a more adequate understanding both ofthe processesby which collective alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 actors construct a shared horizon ofmeaning and ofthe role that shared symbolic resources play in facilitating and legitimating action. finally, the last two pieces are drawn from a work-inprogress seminar held at carleton university in the fall of 1995. oscar wolfman focuses on homophobia as expressed or experienced within the ontario highschool system his research demonstrates that even though policy statements provide official recognition of diversity, homophobia is reproduced in a number ofways including being taught by teachers, who both role model heterosexist behaviors and tacitly sanction heterosexist norms through the 'erasure of homosexuality.' in his piece, joseph hermer examines moral regulators through a case study of "the smokey bear rules," a set ofguidelines given to park performers directing them on how to act when in the smokey persona. hermer analyzes the smokey rules as one example ofthe many governance texts which serve to order and regulate park experiences, creating parks as sites of "regulated wilderness." together these discussions stimulate consideration of the multi-faced and yet limiting nature of official representations of everything from sexuality and ethnicity to wilderness. in so doing they highlight the importance of symbolic representations of phenomena as diverse as social movements and technology. as we put the final touches on volume 13 of alternate routes, the collective would like to publicly thankdavid robinson for his work over the years. more than anyone, it was david who was the driving force behind the journal, especially over the past two years when he was acting editor for volumes 1 1 and 12. his hard work and dedication both to progressive political action and to the pursuit ofacademic excellence are reflected in the volumes which he edited. we wish him well and thank him for his past labours and continuing support. in all modesty, he asks that we also thank all those who work with him on past volumes, as well as those who supported the journal in other ways. creative and cultural expression" but not art: multiculturalism arts funding as cultural management sheryl n. hamilton concordia university introduction multiculturalism arts funding sits, somewhat uncomfortably, at the intersection of a number of sometimes contradictory, but singularly canadian, discourses—discourses of canadian cultural identity and multiculturalism. first, the discourse ofcanadian cultural identity, resting upon the mythic narratives of the quest for community and the defence of sovereignty work to generate a need for the state to intervene in the ongoing production, reproduction, and protection of "canadian culture." second, canada's "multicultural nature" relies upon a different mythic narrative of sovereignty, that of the threat from within. this combines with the cultural identity myth to create the need for the state to intervene in the management ofcultural plurality. l these discourses combine to render the measure of success of canadian multiculturahsm arts funding, not aesthetic achievement, but rather, instrumental self-justification. the specific policy objectives and performance ofthe creative and cultural expression program of the heritage cultures and languages section of the citizens' participation and multiculturahsm sector in the department of canadian heritage are situated and interrogated as a case study within this particular discursive matrix. although the stated objectives of this arts funding program are directed at the production of artistic creations, this alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 paper suggests that multiculturalism arts funding functions discursively to support and generate, not "art," but rather a set of traces by which the canadian government can "count ethnicity," rendering it visible in a manageable form to simultaneously produce and prove canada's multicultural nature. raymond breton suggests that the state has a role to playnot only in managing the economic system of a nation, but also its symbolic order (breton, 1984:127). he recognizes that the canadian state has always played an active role in constructing the symbolic order, and while that role may have changed over time, the state has never absented itself (breton, 1984:138). i suggest that breton' s notion ofthe symbolic order can be usefully read as operating at two levels. first, the canadian government has, from its inception, intervened in the production ofcanada's cultural or symbolic realm; from arts funding boards to tariffs on american magazines to creating institutions like the nfb, the canadian government has clearly viewed the symbolic as one of its proper realms of intervention and operation. breton is correct in his suggestion that the canadian state has never absented itself from the symbolic order. in fact, canadians have become quite accustomed to this intervention, and have come perhaps even to expect it. what i want to explore in this analysis is how that intervention is both produced and legitimated, using a specific instance of multiculturahsm arts policy. to do this, i read the symbolic order in a second way, as social discourse, and suggest that it is to the level ofdiscourse that one must look to understand the function, role, and meanings of multiculturahsm arts policy. 2 arts policy: community and sovereignty the discursive production ofcanadian cultural identity manifests in the long-familiar concerns over cultural colonization by our powerful neighbour to the south, concerns that there would be no canadian culture without government support, concernsto maintain the high quality ofcanadian cultural production (necessarily hamilton/multiculturalism arts funding non-commercial)—these fundamentally canadian "worries"work together to create and legitimate a need for state intervention into the cultural realm i suggest that the discourse of canadian cultural identity relies on needs generated from two primary mythic narratives, discursive notions which have served to structure social relations. these two mythic structures are the search for community, that never ending quest to identify and name a canadian unity, and the defence ofcanadian cultural sovereignty against external threats, primarily located in the united states. these mythic narratives are reproduced in a variety of institutional sites and are well-known to most canadians; a few examples should suffice. the search for community is manifest in the assumed connectionbetween the support and development of canadian art and the corresponding result of a unified national identity. for example, an arts policy paper prepared for the current liberal government asserts a connection between the funding of the arts and the bolstering of canadian national identity: "thus a government policy that promotes the arts and whose primary goal is cultural, by familiarizing individuals with all the characteristics of their own society, can help strengthen their sense of belonging and of cultural identity" (lemieux, 1994:2). a cultural activist writes: "the notion that shared cultural expression is the key to nation building is a long-standing one and one that is widely accepted" (spensley, nd: 1). a necessary corollary to finding our own community is its defence against the threat posed by other stronger communities. the mythic narrative ofcultural sovereignty asserts that we must be ever vigilant in defending our fledgling identity. this discourse, too, is produced and reproduced in a number of institutional sites. for example, the task force on funding ofthe arts invokes a language ofwar and sovereignty: ... the arts he at the heart of the cultural sovereignty battle. the spirit of a nation is expressed through the creative act, and the arts, by definition, are the focus of alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 that activity. but there is little to be gained in protecting our cultural industries ifourworks ofart are moribund, or if a weakened arts infrastructure cannot supply the necessary talent and creative product. the arts are to cultural industries what research and development are to industry as a whole. both sets of activities are essential to a country's development as a nation among its peers, in short, to the establishment of its sovereignty. (task force on funding ofthe arts, 1986:26) arts policy highlights the connectedness ofthese two myths: all cultural policy is an expression of government willingness to adopt and implement a set of coherent principles, objectives and means to protect and foster a country's cultural expression. the arts are the very foundation of such expression. at a time when countries are becoming increasingly interdependent economically and politically, promoting cultural expression by means ofa coherent cultural policy for the arts if a valuable way to emphasize and define what distinguishes one country from another. canada has considerable challenges in this regard. its vast territory and small population make it difficult to produce, exchange, disseminate and communicate works of art, while its economic fragility threatens the very existence ofartistic production. canada must also contend with the constant cultural presence of the united states in this country and influence of this presence onthe culturalidentity ofcanadians. (lemieux, 1994:1) these mythic narratives work to generate a need, a need to produce and protect canadian cultural identity at all times. the very construction of this need offers the canadian state as the body most suited to its address. this is made clear in policy documentation: hamilton/multiculturalism arts funding a country must be in control of its cultural destiny ifit is to have a policy for the promotion of the arts: a country can be said to be culturally sovereign when it has the power to make its own decisions on its cultural future and the mechanisms for doing so; that is, when it enjoys the necessary freedom to permit cultural creativity and distribution, preservation and accessibility of its cultural production across its territory. this power includes the ability to adopt statutes andpolicies to create institutions and programs that will support all these activities. the omnipresent u.s. culture threatens canadians' cultural identity and it is essential that we exercise sovereignty in this area ifwe are to survive as a distinct group with its own flourishing culture. (lemieux, 1994:2) thus, because ofthe nature ofthe problem, the canadian state is the proper "manager" of canadian cultural identity. it is not only in the area ofarts and cultural policy, however, where the discourses oforganic community and sovereignty play themselves out as rationales for the canadian state's intervention into the symbolic order, but also in the institutional locale of multiculturahsm policy. mljlticulturalism policy: the threat from within it has been suggested that "multiculturahsm" can be interpreted in four distinct ways: as empirical fact, as a set of cultural ideals, as policy, and as a process by which ethnic minorities achieve certain goals (fleras, 1993:3). while all accurate, these characterizations do not go far enough to capture the discursive operation of multiculturahsm in canada. mclellan and richmond come closer with their suggestion that multiculturahsm ". . . can best be understood as a charter myth, an artificial creation that has restructured historical as well as existing social relations" alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 (mclellan and richmond, 1994:679). following mclellan and richmond, i suggest that multiculturahsm, like canadian cultural identity, operates through a variety of mythic narratives which generate a need, a need which is filled, in this case, by the canadian government's intervention to manage cultural pluralism denise helly defines cultural plurality as the presence in a society of persons belonging to a variety of social and cultural backgrounds (helly, 1993: 15). canada, from its very inception, has been an ethnically and culturally pluralist nation. plurality may result from immigration, from the constitution of national territory through appropriation from indigenous cultures, or in the case of canada, both. writing generally about culturally pluralist states, helly suggests that "... government involvement in policies concerning cultural plurality is directed towards two domains—the behaviour of immigrant populations considered deviant, marginal or conjqictual...and the particular forms of inegalitarian treatmentbythenatrvepopulation'' (helly, 1993: 16). deviance, marginauty, conflict, inequity—all potential risks to the stability ofthe liberal state. thus, helly identifies the first myth at work in the discourse of multiculturahsm, a form of cultural sovereignty again, but in response to a risk from within. certainly the language ofmulticulturahsm policy in canada is not phrased in the language ofhelly's first domain, namely the control of immigrant populations, but in the language of the latter, the management of the behaviour of the "native population" towards immigrant populations. for example, early critics ofmulticulturahsm policy claimed that its primary, but unstated, purpose was to disempower quebec nationalism in the statement announcing multiculturahsm policy made by then prime minister, pierre trudeau, on october 8, 1971, the risk clearly emanates from the possibility ofreduced "choice" on the part of immigrants due to the native population: ... i wish to emphasize the view ofthe government that hamilton/multiculturalism arts funding a policy of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework is basically the conscious support of individual freedom ofchoice. we are free to be ourselves. but this cannot be left to chance. it must be fostered and pursued actively. iffreedom of choice is in danger for some ethnic groups, it is in danger for us all. it is the policy ofthis government to eliminate any such danger and to "safeguard" this freedom (trudeau in secretary of state, nd:46) the multiculturalism act (1988), itself^ states: 3 (1) it is hereby declared to be the policy of the government of canada to... (c) promote the full and equitable participation ofindividuals and communities ofall origins in the continuing evolution and shaping ofall aspects ofcanadian society and assist them in the elimination of any barrier to such participation in fact, risk arising from the incoming population is clearly rejected: (g) promote the understanding and creativity that arises fromthe interaction between individuals and communities ofdifferent origins. multiculturalism policy operates, discursively, to address the need to manage the "mainstream"population to ensure equity for all in a culturally pluralist population. analystshave also observed, however, that multiculturahsm policy is directed at the first domain ofhelly's analysis, namely, risk to the state arising from the immigrant population. augie fleras, for example, has suggested that multiculturahsm policy functions to manage diversity (fleras, 1993:2). fleras, in his defence ofmulticulturahsmpohcy, suggests: "instead of nationbuilding,' the goals of multiculturahsm are firmly fixed on alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 depoliticizing ethnicity as a collective phenomenon" (fleras, 1993:6). difference is managed through the replacing of collective with individual rights, as the former are a threat to state sovereignty. "the focus ofmulticulturalism is on managing these differences in a way that enhances the unity, identity, and integrity of canada as a sovereign state" (fleras, 1993:15). while the policy may function to "manage difference," this intervention is also anchored in the charter myth of canadian cultural identity, in this instance functioning to legitimate intervention into, not the artistic realm, but cultural plurality. the mythic narratives ofcanadian cultural identityremain unchanged: the quest for organic community, this time composed of unity through diversity, and the defence ofcanadian sovereignty, with cultural pluralism as a uniquely canadian 'sveapon. " again, these discourses serve to make cultural plurality a proper domain of management for the canadian state. fleras' analysis offers apt examples: "canada resembles a ^fr handful of modern nations-state (sic) in the vanguard for constructing a coherent and secular society, without necessarily abandoning all vestiges ofdiversity" (fleras, 1993:2). he further suggests, 'multiculturalism enhances a collective consciousness of ourselves as a tolerant and enlightened diversity" (fleras, 1993:6). this organic community is also always a "managed" community. mclellan and richmond suggest: "the canadian example ofmulticulturahsm, with its motto of unity in diversity,' can be seen as an attempt to structure a collective identity, or national consciousness. . . " (mclellan and richmond, 1 994 :67 1 ). the canadian multiculturalism act states: 3(1) it is hereby declared to be the policy of the government of canada to (b) recognize and promote the understanding that multiculturahsm is a fundamental characteristic ofthe canadian heritage and identity and that it provides an invaluable rehamilton/multiculturalism arts funding source in the shaping of canada's future; these dual aspects of simultaneously organic and managed community are illustrated by the remarks offormer minister of multiculturalism and citizenship, jerry weiner, when he suggests: when the canadian multiculturalism act was passed into law in 1988, it established that our multicultural diversity is a fundamental characteristic ofour society, an essential part of what it means to be canadian, (emphasis added; weiner in multiculturahsm and citizenship canada, 1990:i) the existence ofcanada as a culturally pluralist nation does not "establish" that this is integral to our national identity, rather this must be accomplished through a primary technology ofthe state, legislation. fleras makes express the sovereign implications of this distinct canadian identity generated by our multicultural society: #j| "... one could argue how our commitment to multiculturahsm (within a bilingual framework) is the definitive characteristic that distinguishes canada from the united states" (fleras, 1993:6). thus, our multicultural identity, as evidenced through state policy, becomes an element in our armour ofcultural sovereignty. while i am not disputing the accuracy of these writers' claims, i am attempting to highlight their discursive operation. i suggest that the role of multiculturahsm as one of the hallmark discourses ofcanadian cultural identity is both a product o£ and productive o£ the canadian state's role in the management of culture. one of the ways in which these mythic narratives of canadian cultural sovereignty, both fromwithout and within, and organic community, come into effectivity is through the policy process. this process is located within, and constrained by, these narratives of legitimation through which the state justifies its intervention in civil society. i want to explore this process through a very unique and problematic government program, the alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 multicultural arts funding component of the department of canadian heritage. my analysis suggests that what is funded under this program is not artists, nor even art, but rather, "pieces of multicultural art" which function as spectacles of identity, embedded in a process ofcultural objectification, which simultaneously work to fix both cultural pluralism and cultural production as instrumentahties of the canadian state, as manageable realms and realms properly managed. creative and cultural expression but not art? justin lewis defines art as, "a cultural practice that involves the creation of a specific and definable object....the function ofthat object is as a self-conscious, personal, or collective expression of something" (lewis, 1990: 5). 3 lewis goes on to note, however, that when it comes to the funding of art, the more significant question is how a society defines artistic value (lewis, 1990:6). the value of a work of art is not intrinsic to the artistic object £f% itself, but is found in the set of social judgements made by those in positions to evaluate it. therefore, the value of "multicultural art" is not inherent to the artistic products, themselves, but is embedded in the evaluation process. how is multicultural art identified and valued? established in the 1991 restructuring of the then department of multiculturalism and citizenship canada, the creative and cultural expression program(cce) ofthe heritage cultures and languages branch (hcl) ofthe citizen's participation and multiculturausm sector ofthe department ofcanadian heritage offers project funding in the areas ofwriting and publishing, arts and arts administration training, film and video production, and performing and visual arts through its grants programs. grants are provided to support the creative expression of "artists from diverse ethnocultural or aboriginal backgrounds" (canadian heritage, 1994:1). the stated objectives of the cce component are: hamilton/multiculturalism arts funding to promote greater opportunity within and equal access to canada's arts and cultural institutions for artists from diverse cultural backgrounds to encourage and foster support for the development of the creative arts as a vehicle for the expression of heritage cultures in canada and as a creative expression ofcanadian multiculturalism to support and promote writing and publishing, performing arts, visual arts, audio-visual and film projects that reflect and/or foster appreciation of the cultural diversity of canadian society. (multiculturalismand citizenship canada, 1991:1) therefore, the stated objectives of funding the creative and cultural expression of artists from diverse cultural backgrounds isto improve their institutional access, to bolster multiculturalism, and to support projects that reflect or foster an appreciation of canadian cultural diversity. this policy restsupon three problematic assumptions. first, ^9 art is reduced to an instrumentahty ofthe policy process. this is most clear in the second objective — "to encourage and foster support for the development ofthe creative arts as a vehicle for the expression of heritage cultures in canada and as a creative expression ofcanadian multiculturausm" art is conceived as a 'vehicle" for multiculturahsm (policy). in this respect, funding is directed towards art objects and arts structures, rather than towards artists. the overall objective isnot to fund quality art, but rather to promote multiculturahsm as a part ofcanadian artistic and cultural life and to foster appreciation of cultural diversity. the individual art project identified as worthy of funding is merely an instrument in, and of, this process. second, i suggest that the interaction between the requirement that only artists who are from "diverse ethnocultural or aboriginal backgrounds" and the third objective of the cce program imposes a functional test ofvalue on artistic creation. alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 individual artistic projects are funded on the basis ofwhetherthey "reflect and/or foster appreciation of the cultural diversity of canadian society. " these work together to suggest that not all art produced by "artists of diverse ethnocultural or aboriginal backgrounds" would necessarily meet this standard. second, and more significantly, it reminds us that the criteria for art produced by these artists is not artistic merit or aesthetic value, but whether the art serves the policy function prescribed in the objectives. finally, and related to the other two assumptions, the cce objectives and the program as a whole assume that there is, and should be, a distinction between art which reflects and develops canadian cultural diversity and that which does not, namely, between "multicultural art" and "art." some adininistrative practices within the program also support these assumptions. unlike the canada council and provincial arts boards, the cce program is not at arm' s length from the government, and the final approval for all grants rests with the minister of canadian heritage. ^) although a peer review process is used, jury members are aware that they are making recommendations only. they are always also aware of the policy objectives of the program when evaluating individual applications, and are not therefore, evaluating projects solely on "artistic merit.'* 4 i suggest that the three assumptions and the institutional practices in support ofthem work to produce a result that what is funded by this arts funding program is not, in fact, art, but something else. peter li has recently argued cogently that multiculturalism arts policy continues to be problematic, resulting in a bifurcation of the art world and the reinforcement of dominant cultural hegemony. li states: ... the arts belong to a cultural domain which is subjected to the influence ofthe state. as a major patron of arts and culture, the state provides the financial support and infrastructural conditions for the development and maintenance of dominant arts. in a hamilton/multiculturalism arts funding multicultural society like canada, the state also maintains a separate policy toward the promotion and preservation ofminority cultures and arts. in so doing, the canadian state, through its role as the major sponsor and patron of arts and minority cultures, creates the unequal infrastructural conditions which are conducive to developing two types of art and culture. in this sense, dominant arts and subordinate minority cultures are at least partly perpetuated by state intervention. (li, 1994:366-7) while li's arguments are persuasive, i suggest that his analysis replicates the assumptions underpinning the objectives of the cce program first, li assumes that the purpose of the cce program is to fund multicultural art according to a differential, but nonetheless, aesthetic standard. for example, he writes: "since 1971, canada has maintained a federal multicultural policy to assist and promote the art and culture of visible minorities" (li, 1994:376). his (arguably valid) complaint is with €0 the separateness of the program through which minority art is funded (li, 1994:377). he does not consider the possibility that the objective is not "to assist and promote the art and culture of visible minorities," but rather to fund art and cultural objects, produced by visible minorities, providing they function to illustrate and foster the cultural diversity of canada. in short, li is assuming that first and foremost the program functions to fund art. second, li's linking of aesthetic standards to cultural hegemony tends towards an instrumentahty also reflected in the program while he correctly suggests "... cultural domination involves not only imposing the aesthetic standards ofthe dominant group, but also creating the institutional framework for reproducing minority art, culture and heritage in forms and manners that are consistent with maintaining the hegemony ofthe dominant group" (li, 1994:369), the use of hegemony theory alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 tends to reproduce the demarcation between art produced by ""ethnic" artists and that produced by "mainstream" artists. it relies upon a fixed notion ofidentity and an instrumental relation between ethnicity and artistic expression. li suggests that when artists of colour produce art that is reflective of the dominant aesthetic, they have clearly been hegemonized (li, 1994:370, 382). i suggest the problem is not necessarily in a multiplicity of aesthetics, but rather with the discursive production of "multicultural art" — "multicultural art," which is, i suggest, a very different notion than the art ofartists ofcolour—as a clearly identifiable object which can be identified, evaluated, and funded. li's analysis, while useful and cogent, starts from the assumption that the cce program has as its primary objective and function to fund artistic creation. i suggest that the curious combination of assumptions, objectives, and practices work to produce and support something very different than artistic creation. i argue that situated as it is at the intersection ofdiscourses ^^ of arts policy and of multiculturahsm that the cce program in fact constitutes a means by which cultural pluralism is fixed, identified, counted, and used to simultaneously demonstrate the need for, and success o£ multiculturahsm policy. in its task of managing ethnic diversity, the state faces the dilemma of objectifying or concretizing ethnicity. in fact, the production of "statistics" on ethnicity is provided for in the canadian multiculturahsm act: 3(2) it is further declared to be the policy of the government ofcanada that all federal institutions shall (d) collect statistical data in order to enable the development ofpolicies, programs and practices that are sensitive and responsive to the multicultural reality of canada... notwithstanding the above provisions, numerous scholars have noted the problems associated with the accurate reporting of hamilton/multiculturalism arts funding ethnicity in statistics given the fluid nature of personal identity. there is no consensus about how best to identify ethnicity, either among policy-makers or academics (mclellan and richmond, 1994:673). one ofthe ways through which ethnicity is manifest, however, is through culture. ... what distinguishes each nation or ethnic group is its culture, whichprovides the "content" ofgroup identity and individuality. and ifculture is pressed into service to distinguish one bounded collectivity from another, it too mustbe bounded: that is, culture mustbe analyzable and identifiable, such and such a trait' belonging to this nation or originating in that region. (handler, 1988:1516) others, too, recognize that culture is notoriously difficult to measure, but that it reproduces itself symbolically, in the creation ofart (li, 1994:367; blau, 1994:7-8). art, then, can be seen as a trait of culture and of ethnicity. within this context of attempting to measure ethnicity, products of cultural expression become what mclellan and richmond refer to as"spectaclesto symbolize identity" (mclellan andrichmond, 1994:673). they assert that culturebecomes a set of"... objects to be scrutinized, identified, revitalized and consumed in a process that handler... calls 'cultural objectification"' (mclellan and richmond, 1994:674). drawing upon anthropological work in appropriating cultural objectification, handler is attempting to encapsulate the process of viewing culture as an object, or thing, naturally composed ofcertain identifiable traits (handler, 1988:14). i would add to mclellan and richmond's list above that cultural objects can also be counted as proofof ethnicity. in this way, identity can be fixed. representation can be owned, located, quantified, and reproduced in bounded terms. although his specific example is quebec's winter carnival, handler's point © © alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 applies to multiculturalism arts policy, when he suggests that cultural objects ... are as much socialscientific as nationalistic, for they are researched—and often organized and legitimated — by professional social scientists or by amateur scholars who take the work ofprofessionals as their model. and politicians and governments intent on "nation building" routinely draw on scientific, objectifying analyses ofnational culture, either because they believe in them or because they understand the legitimating value of "an appeal to social scientific expertise." (handler, 1988:14) mclellan and richmond apply handler's analysis directly to multiculturalism policy and argue that, "cultural objectification, as a self-conscious representation of authenticity, distinguishes the ethnic and/or religious group, providing the content' for group identification and analysis as a component ofthe diversity that is conceptualized as multiculturahsm" (mclellan and richmond, 1994:674). multiculturahsm policy relies upon cultural objectification to function. one of the most dramatic indicators of this process of cultural objectification can be found in two recent promotional showpieces ofthe work ofthe cce program: a comprehensive catalogue offunded film and video projects and a comprehensive bibliography of all funded writing and publishing projects (multiculturahsm and citizenship canada, 1993a, 1993b). these glossy catalogues are basically "lists" ofthe achievements ofthe program they are indexed by ethnocultural group, in addition to title, author, and subject and each project is described briefly. these catalogues bear witness to the success ofthe program, but also, at the same time, the need for the program and for multiculturahsm policy. in the collections, individual projects are removed from their literary or artistic context, and become spectacles of identity, which through the process of cultural hamilton/multiculturalism arts funding objectification, trace cultural pluralism as material traces ofthe diversity ofcanadian society and culture, these catalogues simultaneously reinforce the ongoing need for state management ofthe cultural realm and act as a quantitative measure ofthe success of that management. conclusion multicultural art, to receive funding under the cce program, must first and foremost function to reflect and foster an appreciation ofthe cultural diversity ofcanadian society. this has nothing necessarily to do with an art object's value as art, but has everything to do with managing culture, both in the sense ofarts and cultural production and in the sense ofthe culturally pluralistic nature ofcanadian society. i do not mean to suggest through my argument that an impressive range ofdiverse, daring, and high quality art is not being produced through the funding initiatives ofthe cce program; in fact, it is. i am suggesting, however, that any success in this regard is ancillary to the discursive processes &% at work in the primary policy objectives. the cce program serves as an example ofhow the canadian state intervenes to manage both cultural production and cultural pluralism; this management being simultaneously made necessary by, and legitimized through, the mythic narratives of the quest for canadian community and the defence ofcanadian cultural sovereignty, both fromwithout and within. these mythic narratives are reproduced in the three assumptions reflected in the cce program—that art can and should function as a technology ofthe state's management ofculture; that "multicultural art" should be valued according to how effectively it functions as an instrument of creating canadian cultural identity and defending canadian sovereignty; and finally that "multicultural art" is something otherthan "art. "withinthecce program, multicultural art functions discursively not as art, but rather as a technology of the canadian state in its ongoing management of canadian culture. ^^ alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 notes 1. 1 am not asserting any claims as to the truth or falsity of these rhetorics, myths, and discourses, rather i am concerned with their effectivity. 2. my analysis is indebted to the work of martin allor and michelle gagnon in l 'etat de culture: genealogie discursive des politiques culturelles quebecoises (1994) and their suggestion of a framework for the application of a foucauldian notion of social discourse to the realm of cultural policy. 3. while certainly not daring, i am treating this definition, for the purposes of this article, as adequate. 4. the analysis of the administrative practices is grounded in my experience in administering the arts apprenticeship program of cce from 1994-1995. references allor, m. and m. gagnon 1994 l etat de culture: genealogie discursive des politiques culturelles quebecoises. montreal: groupe de recherche sur la citoyennete culturelle. blau, rm. 1994 'the paradox of multiculturalism" unpublished paper. breton, r. 1984 'the production and allocation of symbolic resources: an analysis of the linguistic and ethnocultural fields in canada." review ofcanadian sociology and anthropology . 21(2): 123144. canadian heritage 1994 arts apprenticeship: criteria. ottawa: department of canadian heritage. department of the secretary of state no date multiculturalism and the government ofcanada. ottawa: minister of supply and services canada. fleras, a. 1993 "multiculturalism and society-building: blending what is necessary, fair and just, and workable in canada's postmulticultural society," unpublished paper. hamilton/multiculturalism arts funding handler, r. 1988 nationalism and the politics ofculture in quebec. madison, wis. : the university of wisconsin press. helly, d. 1993 'the political regulation of cultural plurality: foundations and principles." canadian ethnic studies. xxv(2): 15-35. lemieux, r 1993 the arts and canada 's cultural policy. ottawa: research branch, library of parliament. lewis, j. 1990 art, culture and enterprise: the politics ofart and the cultural industries. new york and london: routledge. li, ps. 1994 "a world apart: the multicultural world of visible minorities and the art world of canada." canadian review ofsociology and anthropology. 3 1(4): 365-391. mclellan, j. and a. h. richmond 1994 "multiculturalism in crisis: a postmodern perspective on canada." ethnic and racial studies. 17(4): 662-683. multiculturalism and citizenship canada %jj no date multiculturalism: what is it really about? ottawa: minister of supply and services canada. 1990 the canadian multiculturalism act: a guidefor canadians. ottawa: minister of supply and services canada. 1991 heritage cultures and languages program—creative and cultural expression: guidefor applicants. ottawa: programs branch, multiculturalism and citizenship canada. 1993a sharing our citizenship: multiculturalism and citizenship canada the department and its programs. ottawa: minister of supply and services canada. 1993b recent publications supported by multiculturalism and citizenship canada. ottawa: multiculturalism and citizenship canada. 1993c film, video and audio projects supported by multiculturalism and citizenship canada. ottawa: multiculturalism and citizenship canada. secretary of state no date multiculturalism and the government ofcanada. ottawa: minister of supply and services canada. alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 spensley, p. no date "multiculturalism on stage: reinforcing separateness?" unpublished paper. task force on funding of the arts 1 986 funding ofthe arts in canada to the year 2000: the report of the task force on funding ofthe arts. ottawa: minister of supply and services canada. ^9% research notes la folie au declin du moyen-age paul labelle department of sociology-anthropology carleton university le texte qui suit est un extrait d'une these qui examine 1 'emergence du concept de la maladie mentale dans 1 'occident moderne. comme etape preliminaire a cette emergence, il situe, decrit et explique les changements qui se sont operes dans la pratique discursive deployee par l'ordre ecclesiastique sur la deviance en general et la folie en particulier, pendant la fin du moyen age. de meme , les consequences decisives de ces changements sur la folie sont explorees. dans 1 'europe, jusqu'au 14ieme siecle, a l'interieur de la pratique discursive exercee par le clerge sur la deviance en generale et la folie en particulier, on tend a associer la cause de la folie plutot chez dieu. par contre, lors de la naissance du capitalisme et de 1 'emergence de la science comme forme de connaissance , le clerge incorpore un nouvel element dans sa pratique discursive sur la deviance. ce nouvel element est la sorcellerie. l'inclusion de ce theme dans le savoir clerical de la deviance influencera, de facon decisive, la perception occidentale de la folie a la fin du moyen age et a la renaissance. de nouveaux liens s ' etabl issent entre la folie, la sorcellerie et le diable. a cette epoque, la cause de la folie devient plus largement associee au diable et a la sorcellerie, plutot qu'a dieu. dans 1 'esprit occidental a la fin du moyen age, les sorcieres et les sorciers souillent la terre par milliers. d'apres le juge bourgognais boguet , ceux-ci sont au nombre de 1,800,000' . troisechelles, vivant a 1 ' epoque de charles ix, etablit le nombre de sorciers contaminant la france a.u nombre de 300,000 (certains etablissent ce chi.ffre a 30,000)*. en accusant certains fous d'etre des sorciers 1 , un lien entre la folie et la sorcellerie dans le discours clerical commence a s'etablir . signes de folie et signes de sorcellerie commencent a se confpndre, on inclut la paleur, la «laideur», la malproprete corporelle, le gout pour la sol itud« sorcel des idiots, des delirants et des hysteriques' . on inclut egalement des empoisonneurs, des infanticides et des bestiaires parmi les sorciers' . ude et la conduite bizarre parmi les indices de la sllerie . parmi ceux qu'on accuse de s.orcel 1 erie , on trouve mais, la folie et la sorcellerie ne sont pas. synonymes . on cite la sorcellerie comme une des causes de la folie tandis que la folie ne se trouve pas parmi les causes de la sorcellerie. les 82 sorcieres, au contraire des fous, ne perdent pas necessairement 1 'esprit. les clercs expliquent la sorcellerie par un "pacte" etablit entre le diable et la sorciere , ou cette derniere se met au service du premier. selon 1 ' ordre ecclesiastique, le fait que c'est la sorciere de son propre gre qui etabli un pacte avec satan, la rend responsable pour sa condition. elle doit done souffrir les consequences de son peche contre la chretiente. les sorts qu'on reserve aux sorcieres sont aussi drastiques qu'ils sont severes. par exemple, on leur rase le pubis, avant qu'elles paraissent devant les juges, afin qu'il soit impossible pour le diable de se cacher sur leur corps . une fois trouvees coupable de sorcellerie, on brule leur corps, afin que leur ame puisse s'echapper de 1' emprise de satan. en expliquant la sorcellerie par la possession demoniaque, une confusion dans le discours clerical entre la sorcellerie et la folie peut s'installer. la folie a la possession comme une de ses causes alors que la sorcellerie est uniquement causee par la possession. un lien intime se developpe entre folie et sorcellerie puisque les deux "etats d'etre" peuvent survenir grace au meme phenomene: la possession. comme consequence de ce nouveau lien entre folie et sorcellerie, plusieurs fous serpnt persecutes pour le crime de sorcellerie a la fin du moyen age . souvent , a cette epoque, folie et sorcellerie subissent le meme sort. cette association entre la folie et la sorcellerie apparait seulement a la fin du moyen age. de plus, elle n'emerge pas, en premier lieu du moins, chez les clercs. avant cette periode, 1 'ordre ecclesiastique nie 1 'existence des sorcieres et de la sorcellerie, alors qu'il croit dans l'existence des demons et dans la possession demoniaque 1 . le theme de sorcellerie emerge plutot chez les laiques vers la fin du moyen age. selon george rosen , pendant la periode carolingienne, on considere la sorcellerie comme une offense seculiere. a cette epoque, la sorcellerie est exclue des offenses possibles contre l'eglise, puisqu'on souligne qu'elle cause du dommage seulement a la propriete et au corps, et non a l'ame. on laisse done les proces de sorcellerie aux mains des tribunaux laiques. avec la montee des proces de sorcellerie, les cours seculieres deviennent de plus en plus puissantes. selon roland villeneuve: "des le debut du xlvieme siecle les juges seculiers s' ef f orcerent de remplacer 1 ' of f icialite. en 1390 le parlement de paris decida que la connaissance des crimes d'heresies et de sorcellerie relevait des tribunaux laics, et d'eux seuls ." au haut moyen age, l'eglise tolere ceux et celles qui se disent sorciers, puisqu'elle ne croit pas dans la sorcellerie. par contre, la croyance par les masses populaires dans l'existence de la sorcellerie, produit une «fissure» dans l'hegemonie 83 ecclesiastique a 1 'egard de 1 'explication de la deviance. des lors, une association entre la folie, la possession demoniaque, la sorcellerie et l'heresie s'etablit dans le savoir clerical a partir du 14ieme siecle. par exemple, la faculte de theologie de paris, en 1398, donne une preuve qui demontre que la sorcellerie inclut un pacte avec le demon et qu'elle est necessairement heretique . on commence a utiliser le pouvoir inquisitionnel pour contrer cette montee de la sorcellerie . ainsi , l'ordre ecclesiastique arrache des mains des juges seculiers le droit de definir et de juger la sorcellerie, en convertissant cette derniere en une heresie qu'on doit combattre en utilisant 1 ' inquisition . c'est surtout a partir de 1487 que la chasse aux sorcieres prend de l'ampleur et qu'elle vient a occuper une place preponderante dans 1 ' agenda du clerge. c'est a cette date que le "malleus maleficarum" (traduit en frangais, ce titre signifie le "marteau des sorcieres") est publie pour la premiere fois. l'impact de ce manuel sur le monde chretien impressionne . zilboorg estime qu'entre 1487 et 1669 le "malleus" est edite 10 fois et qu'entre 1669 et 1769, le "marteau des sorcieres" passe a travers neuf editions nouvelles . le "malleus mai lef icarum" , ecrit par deux freres dominicains jacob sprenger et heinrich kramerressemble a un livre de recettes que le clerge doit suivre dans les cas de sorcellerie. le "malleus" est divise en trois parties . la premiere partie donne les trois elements qui permettent 1 'existence de la sorcellerie. ceux-ci sont le diable, la sorciere et la permission de dieu. la deuxieme partie du manuel touche les methodes par lesquelles la sorcellerie fonctionne et les outils dont on dispose pour la combattre. finalement, la troisieme partie traite des procedures legales qu'il faut entreprendre dans les tribunaux ecclesiastiques et seculiers, lors des proces legaux entrepris contre les sorcieres. l' approbation par le pape innocent viii, par la faculte de theologie de cologne et par le roi maximilien amplifie 1 'impulsion que la chasse aux sorcieres recoit lors de 1 'apparition du "marteau des sorcieres". en plus de repondre aux demandes du peuple, la chasse au sorcieres regoit 1 ' approbation officielle des administrateurs et des intel lectuels du monde chretien, de meme que celle d'un leader du monde laique. on pergoit maintenant la sorcellerie comme une realite en soi , qui devient fermement ancree dans 1 'esprit de ceux vivant a la fin du moyen age. la publication du malleus, 1 ' approbation du clerge et d'un roi laique, combinees avec les desirs d'un peuple qui ressent la fin du monde s'approcher, donnent un elan a une chasse aux sorcieres qui atteint son sommet du 16ieme au 17ieme siecles 2 , et qui laissera des traces jusqu'au 19ieme siecle. pendant cette periode, grace au nouveaux liens entre la folie, la possession et la sorcellerie, on evoque de plus en plus le diable comme source de folie. 84 l'ordre ecclesiastique construit plusieurs hypotheses pour expliquer comment satan prend possession de ses victimes. on croit qu'il peut s'infiltrer dans 1 ' individu par voie orale, pendant que ce dernier consomme sa nourriture ou meme pendant qu'il respire^ . la sanction, donnee a ces hypotheses, par le pape george le grand, nous indique la validite qu'elles recoivent a l'epoque . une autre theorie stipule que le diable peut s'inserer dans sa victime lorsqu'elle sommeille . les medecins de 1' epoque, dont la plupart possedent une instruction qui inclut les canons religieux de l'epoque, expliquent la folie en se basant sur le meme savoir. lorsqu'un medecin distingue de l'epoque -john langetrouve des clous, des aiguilles et des couteaux dans les corps des pos-sedes qu'il examine apres leur mort, il voit dans ces objets la confirmation de 1 'existence d'une maladie surnaturel le. selon lui, c'est satan qui depose de tels objets dans le corps . le clinicien jean fernel qualifie la lycanthropie comme une entite clinique, causee par le demon . d'autres medecins tels qu'ambroise pare 28 et leloyer 2 ' croient dans la possession demoniaque. ce dernier pense que le diable penetre le corps de 1' individu a travers un organe defectueux . ces explications trouvent leur validite grace a certains cas ou les theories demonologiques semblent etre confirmees par des demonstrations empiriques. d' apres alexander et selesnick, il existe des cas ou des personnes, "atteintes de troubles affectifs graves, etaient particulierement sensibles a la suggestion qu'elles donnaient asile a des diables et a des demons, et el les avouaient cohabiter avec le demon". le contenu meme des delires de certains fous semble donner une validite aux theories ecclesiastiques . comme exemple, citons un cas en angleterre au 14ieme siecle, ou une femme, du nom de margery of kemp, souffre parfois de frenesie et de delires. selon cette femme et divers membres du clerge anglais et de 1 ' aristocratie anglaise, ces delires constituent en fait des visions saintes qui proviennent de dieu 15 pour le pretre et en general pour tous les gens de l'epoque, ou le surnaturel et 1 'experience mythique constituent des elements essentiels de la vie, une predisposition sociale dans la croyance des dires des fous existe. par exemple, selon bartholomaeus anglicus, un theologien dominicain, les possedes ne perdent aucunement le pouvoir de la raison et leurs declarations doivent etre prises aux serieux par les tribunaux . selon l'ordre ecclesiastique, les hallucinations auditives et visuelles vecues par certains fous servent d' indicateurs , non pas de leur perte de la raison, mais de leur pacte avec le diable . ces hallucinations, interpretees a l'interieur d'une pratique discursive specifique (c.a d.-celle du clerge), confirment 1 'existence du surnaturel et du mysticisme, et contribuent, en meme temps, au maintien du pouvoir que le clerge possede sur le savoir medieval. 85 a la fin du moyen age, ce glissement, vers les themes plus macabres du discours, que l'ordre ecclesiastique entreprend sur la deviance en general et la folie en particulier, est symptomatique d ' un phenomene plus large. ce phenomene constitue 1 ' ecroul ement de la societe feodale dans son ensemble . l'ancienne infrastructure feodale commence a ceder a un nouvel ordre economique: celui du capitalisme. des nouvelles formes de connaissance apparaissent , tels que la proliferation des sectes religieuses paiennes au 13ieme siecle . pendant le meme siecle, roger bacon preconise la creation du savoir, non d'apres les ecrits saints, mais d'apres la methode experimentale . l'eglise reagit envers ce premier bris dans son monopole sur le savoir en instituant 1 ' inquisition, des le 13ieme siecle . dorenavant , le clerge inclut tout savoir, tels que le paganisme, la science et la sorcellerie, qu'il considere comme dangereux parmi les heresies. la chasse aux sorcieres et le developpement de la demonologie sont des elements importants de cette reaction du clerge face a 1 ' ecroulement de la societe qui permet son existence. dans une societe a imaginaire religieux, 1 ' explication de tout phenomene tend a etre religieux. lorsque cette societe s'ecroule, elle peut seulement trouver une explication pour cet effondrement dans les elements qui constituent son imaginaire social. une societe ne peut pas expliquer les phenomenes selon des termes qu'elle ne peut pas concevoir. le clerge peut seulement expliquer le deperissement de sa societe selon le savoir qu'il genere a l'interieur de 1 'imaginaire de son epoque . l'ordre ecclesiastique perd son pouvoir avec le declin de la societe feodale. cette perte et ce declin sont percus comme des maux par les clercs et par les membres de la societe feodale. dans l'europe du moyen age, on associe le mal avec satan puisque ce dernier represente tout ce qui est maudit dans le monde . l'europe feodale explique done son effondrement en l'associant avec satan et trouve des elements, dans 1 ' environnement physique et social, qui representent satan. le comportement deviant de certains fous les rend vulnerables a des interpretations demonologiques de leur malaise. a la fin du moyen age, les europeens voient en ces gens des representants de* satan et projettent leur anxiete sur eux. on enferme, on torture et on brule ceux qu ' on accuse de possession et de sorcellerie. consequemment , la folie subit souvent le meme sort, a cause de son association avec la possession dans le discours clerical. pendant que la chasse aux sorcieres atteint son apogee lors des 16ieme et 17ieme siecles, un contre-courant religieux qui conteste l'autorite de l'eglise catholique romaine, prend naissance et se propage surtout dans les nouveaux etats de l'europe du nord. ce mouvement, connu sous le nom de la reforme protestante, brise une fois pour toute l'hegemonie detenue par l'eglise catholique en occident. les consequences de ce mouvement, accouplees avec le developpement du capitalisme et de la methode experimentale, a une epoque ou on commence a valoriser une nouvel le application de la raison humaine, donneront une impulsion a un processus qui changera 86 def initivement la perception que 1 'occident possede envers la folie. ce processus aboutira, au 19ieme siecle, a la consolidation de 1 ' expl ication medicale et scientifique de la folie. endnotes 1. zilboorg, g., a history of medical psychology , w.w. norton & company inc., new york, 1941, p. 162. 2.idem. 3.ibid, p. 153 graham t., medieval minds: mental health in the middle ages , george allen & unwin ltd, london, 1967, pp. 78-79. 4.a l'epoque, on accuse plus les femmes que les hommes de la sorcel lerie . 5.quelques-uns de ces indices correspondent a des symptomes et a des traits associes a plusieures maladies mentales modernes. 6.villeneuve, r., l'univers diabolique . editions du jour, montreal, 1972, p. 305. 7 . idem. 8.idem. 9.schoeneman, t. j., "the role of mental illness in the european witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries: an assessment, journal of the history of the behavioural sciences , 13(4), 1977, p. 341. 10.conrad, p., shneider, j.w., deviance and medicalization , the c.v. mosby company, st. louis, 1980, p. 42. 11.alexander et selesnick, the history of psychiatry , george allen and unwin ltd., london, 1967, p. 85. 12.nous disons plusieurs puisqu'il est evident qu'on ne classifie pas tous les fous farmi les sorciers. par contre, a la fin du moyen age, il existe une tendance a vouloir expliquer la folie par des theories demonologiques . 13.kirsch, i., "demonology and the rise of science: an example of the misperception of historical data," journal of the history of the behabioural sciences (2), 1978, p. 152. 14.kroll, j., "a reappraisal of psychiatry in the middle ages," archives of general psychiatry 29, 1973, p. 79 rosen, g., madness in society . harper & row, new york, 1969, p. 8. 87 15.villeneuve, r., op.cit., p. 302. 16.kirsch, i., op.cit., p. 154. 17.l ' inquisition est une institution etablie par l'eglise, au 13ieme siecle, afin de combattre la montee des heresies. le clerge definit l'heresie comme toute connaissance qui tente de supplanter celles de l'eglise chretienne. comme on peut prevoir, les heresies, selon le discours clerical, sont d'origine demoniaque et elles doivent alors etre persecutees . en designant la sorcellerie comme une heresie, la foliesimulacre de la sorcelleriesera elle aussi persecutee . 18.l'ordre ecclesiastique, tout en demeurant l'autorite sur la sorcellerie, permet au cours civils d'entamer des proces de sorcel 1 erie . 19.zilboorg, g., op.cit., p. 152. 20.graham, t., op.cit., p. 79. 21.zilboorg, g., op.cit., p. 151 graham, t., op.cit., pp. 77-78. 22.schoenaman, t., op.cit., p. 346. 23.white, a., a history of the warfare of science with theology in chistendom vol ii, george braziller, new york, 1955, p. 120. 24.idem. 25.idem. 26.zilboorg, g., op. cit . ,p. 166 . 27.ibid, p. 167. 28.ackernecht, e., a short history of psychiatry , hafner publishing company, new york, p. 19. 29.zilboorg, g., op.cit., p. 169. 30.idem. 31.alexander, f.g., selesnick, s.t., op.cit., p. 85. 3 2.neaman, j., suggestion of the devil: insanity in the middle ages and the twentieth centiry octagon books, new york, 1978, pp. 122-126. 33.zilboorg, g., op.cit., p. 172. 88 34, ibid, pp. 157-15* 35.zilboorg, g., op.cit., p. 153 kroll, j., op.cit., p. 280. 36.kirsch, i., op.cit., p. 153. 37.idem. 38.idem. 89 alternate routes the gramsci-foucault nexus and environmental sociology mark c.j. stoddart abstract a theoretical engagement with the "gramsci-foucault nexus" is useful for bringing together key concepts from environmental realism and environmental constructionism, which is one of the central theoretical tensions of environmental sociology. this theoretical lens is grounded in an essentially critical orientation, but also takes postmodernism seriously. the gramsci-foucault nexus provides an overarching theoretical framework that enables us to inhabit environmental sociology's irritable tension between environmental realism and environmental constructivism. it sensitizes us to the intersection of culture and political economy. it also draws our attention to the intimate connection between the operation of social power at "micro" and "macro" dimensions. the result is a critical theory that is better equipped to comprehend the subtleties and complexities of environmental conflict in contemporary capitalist societies. introduction 1 the sub-discipline of environmental sociology is a relative newcomer to the academic field. from its emergence in the 1970s, environmental sociology has been distinct in its willingness to take seriously the relationship between society and the physical environment (dunlap and catton, 1979). during the development of environmental sociology, key research areas have included: the social dimensions of environmental conflict, land use planning, environmental risk, and environmentalism as a social movement (dunlap and catton, 1979). one of the major theoretical divisions that has emerged within environmental sociology since 40 volume 21. 2005 chemins alternatifs its inception is the split between environmental "realism" and environmental "constructivism" (buttel, 1996; lidskog, 2001). the former focuses on the "material-ecological" substructure of environmental conflict (buttel, 1996: 62). from this perspective, "the environment" is a real entity that places limits on human economic activity. environmental science is able to define these limits and provide guidance for solving environmental problems. environmental sociology done from such a standpoint tends to focus on political and economic barriers to environmental sustainability. by contrast, environmental constructivism represents a "cultural invasion of environmental sociology," influenced by postmodernism and cultural studies (74). here, "the environment" and environmental problems are viewed as social constructions. as such, we can conceive of a multiplicity of "environments," rather than a singular "environment." environmental sociology from this perspective focuses more on the discursive processes that define and contest "environmental problems." lidskog attempts to bridge the divide between these two sub-disciplines through a "stratified ontology." this position asserts that there are analytically distinct and autonomous "levels" of social reality (lidskog, 2001 : 126). from this position, we can recognize that "there is no doubt that nature matters for society" (128). at the same time, we can recognize that all environmental knowledge is inevitably filtered through "human interpretation and articulation" (129). this brings us to an environmental sociology that asserts that the "social reality" of environmental problems is both "discursively and materially constituted" (125). taking lidskog's ontological position as a starting point, i would like to focus on the tension between the "political ecology" orientation of environmental realism and the "cultural" focus of environmental constructivism. stuart hall argues that theoretical movement occurs through living within and wresting with "irritable tensions," such as the divide between environmental realism and environmental constructivism (hall, 1992). a theoretical framework derived from the intersection of the work of antonio gramsci (1891-1937) and michel foucault (1926-1984) may be useful for bridging the different foci of these two approaches to environmental sociology. it may help us creating space for movement while living with this particular irritable tension. volume 21, 2005 41 alternate routes a theoretical lens constructed at the "gramsci-foucault nexus" enables us to connect the cultural, economic and political dimensions of environmental conflict. gramsci's theoretical work, centred on the notion of hegemony, examines how cultural processes are intimately related, but not reducible, to systems of economic and political power (gramsci, 1971; femia, 1981). carroll and ratner have argued that the gramscian concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony provide an innovative "middle ground" position for critical theory (carroll and ratner, 1994). it avoids both the "class reductionism" associated with much critical theory and the "fragmentary relativism" that characterizes much postmodernist work (carroll and ratner, 1994: 7). my use of gramscian theory will be linked to the theoretical work of michel foucault. i believe that foucault's work is essentially compatible with a gramscian orientation. foucault's notions of power/knowledge and discourse provide useful tools for analyzing the mechanisms for reproducing hegemony at specific social-historical sites (foucault, 1980b). the notion of a gramsci-foucault nexus is not entirely novel. both authors are well known throughout the social sciences and have spawned their own intellectual traditions. furthermore, we may look to the work of paul routledge and stephen gill for earlier attempts to map out this theoretical terrain. routledge has attempted to apply the intersection of foucauldian and gramscian theory to social movements research. he argues that foucault's conception of power, while offering insight, is "too amorphous" (routledge, 1996: 511). he writes that power "has both macro and micro dimensions local resistances tend to privilege the subject while macro processes (e.g. imperialism) tend to be manipulated by states and this difference is not given due consideration by foucault" (511). elsewhere, gill draws on the intersection of foucault and gramsci to analyze neoliberal ideology within processes of globalization. he writes: "despite the foucauldian preoccupation with the problematic of power/knowledge as localized and institutionalized by discourse, with localized resistance . . . there is ... no adequate link between macro and micro-structures of power" (gill, 1995: 403). both of these authors attempt to bridge foucauldian concepts with a gramscian framework as a means to ground foucault's model of power/knowledge in a model of political life which has a more adequate grasp of economic and political structure (gill, 1995; routledge, 1996). 42 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs routledge and gill draw on the gramsci-foucault nexus as a means to live within the tension between the politically engaged standpoint of critical theory and the attention to discourse of poststructuralism. this theoretical lens is essentially critical, but also appreciates the subtlety and fluidity of the social world as it is described in poststructuralist theory. from this point of departure, i will extend the work of routledge and gill by arguing that this theoretical lens may be brought into environmental sociology as a means of adding depth and complexity to the study of environmental conflict. the gramsci-foucault nexus provides an overarching theoretical framework that enables us to inhabit one of environmental sociology's irritable tensions between environmental realism and environmental constructivism. political ecology and environmental constructivism political ecology is rooted in the marxian theoretical tradition and locates environmental conflict within a broader understanding of social inequality. here, the dependence of capital on the colonization and depletion of natural ecosystems is seen as a theoretical blind spot in sociology. where the "cultural" realm is discussed, it tends to be simplified and constructed in terms of a dominant ideology. reading this work through the gramsci-foucault nexus may add depth and complexity to the analysis. allan schnaiberg's work in environmental sociology provides several useful key concepts, such as the "treadmill of production," "managed scarcity," and "ecological synthesis" (schnaiberg, 1980; gould et al, 1993; gould et al, 1995; schnaiberg, 2002; buttel, 2003). schnaiberg defines the "treadmill of production" as the ensemble of social groups who have a stake in the ongoing depletion of natural resources which underlies capitalist production. while capital obviously benefits from the smooth working of the treadmill, through the accumulation of profit, other groups benefit as well. workers are integrated into the treadmill, both as wage earners and as consumers of the goods and services provided by capital. likewise, the state is integrated into the treadmill because it is dependent upon the continued good-will of capital and because it must maintain the consent of the governed. however, as the treadmill comes up against ecological limits to production, there are two choices available to society: managed scarcity or ecological synthesis. managed scarcity involves making the minimum volume 21, 2005 43 alternate routes change necessary to mitigate against environmental problems while preserving the integrity of the treadmill. under managed scarcity, environmental health and pollution are allocated according to existing structures of economic power. by contrast, ecological synthesis involves a radical re-orientation of the treadmill according to environmental and social justice values (schnaiberg, 1980; gould et al, 1993). john bellamy foster also demonstrates a political ecology perspective. like schnaiberg, foster is concerned with themes such as: the inherent incompatibility of capitalism and ecological sustainability; the critique of "sustainable development" as an eco-capitalist ideology; and the need to link environmentalism and social justice (foster, 2002). in his analysis of the conflict over the old-growth forests of the american pacific northwest, foster concludes that capital and the state have worked to split labour and environmentalists by mobilizing a dominant ideology of "trees versus jobs" (foster, 1991; foster, 1993). this dominant ideology conflates the interests of labour and the interests of capital, thereby enhancing the strength of capital in the conflict over control of forest resources. for foster, it is imperative that environmentalists challenge this dominant ideology. he writes: "an ecological movement that stands for the earth alone and ignores class and other social inequalities will succeed at best in displacing environmental problems, meanwhile reinforcing the dominant relations of power in global capitalism" (foster, 1993: 12). finally, alexander simon also looks at the ways in which a "dominant ideology" has been used by forestry capital in rural british columbia to divide labour and environmentalists (simon, 1998). this has been accomplished through the creation of an ideological dichotomy between "the rural working class, which has direct, practical knowledge of the environment and the urban, middle class environmentalists who do not directly engage in material interchanges with nature, and therefore have flawed ideas regarding forestry issues" (simon, 1998: 24). as simon notes, "while it is apparent that not all workers and rural residents are so easily duped by corporate propaganda, these tactics constitute a major barrier to an effective labor-environmentalist alliance" (36). while the political ecology perspective is useful, it is also problematic in that it often fails to provide sufficient attention to the cultural realm of environmental conflict and the ways in which "the environment" is constructed through social interaction. for example, while 44 volume 21. 2005 chemins alternatifs schnaiberg perceives the mass media and consumerist advertising as a "barrier" to environmental consciousness and "consumer autonomy," the importance of cultural facets of environmental politics are given very limited attention within his work (schnaiberg, 1980: 179; also see hannigan, 1995). likewise, where gould, weinberg and schnaiberg discuss the increasingly global reach of the treadmill, they neglect the corollary emergence of a "sustainable development" discourse that legitimizes the spread of an ecologically-destructive political economy (gould et al, 1995). also, while foster and simon both turn their attention to the "cultural" realm of ideology, this analysis relies upon an untenable "dominant ideology" perspective. that is, cultural constructions take on the appearance of reified entities; we lose an appreciation for the social processes through which culture (and "nature") is created, maintained and challenged. foster writes, "from an ecosocialist perspective there is no difficulty in seeing that the rapid destruction of the old growth forest is not about owls vs. jobs but ecosystems vs. profits" (foster, 1993: 41). however, there is little exploration of the cultural processes that lead the "owls vs. jobs" discourse to become hegemonic, while the "ecosystems vs. profits" discourse remains marginalized. drawing upon the intersecting concepts of hegemony and power/knowledge, we could problematize the actual communicative processes through which the interests of capital are articulated with the interests of labour. we would see how social conflict over the control of natural resources is intimately related to cultural conflict over the social meaning of "environmental problems." where there has been a more satisfying move towards an integration of political economy and cultural analysis is in the "new political ecology" of escobar, peluso and others. this body of work focuses on "environmental struggles as both material and symbolic discursive practices as embodying power relations" (goldman and schurman, 2000). or, as peluso puts it, new political ecology looks to "conjunctures or convergences of culture, power, and political economy as analytical starting points" (peluso and watts, 2001: 25). for example, one of the main themes in this work is the ways in which the globalization of capitalist relations of production and consumption has been linked to dominant discourse of "sustainable development" that works to re-colonize the global south as an object of environmental management (escobar, volume 21, 2005 45 alternate routes 1992; escobar, 1995; guha, 2000; peluso, 1992; peluso and watts, 2001; sachs, 1993; sklair, 2001). as escobar writes: sustainable development is the last attempt to articulate modernity and capitalism before the advent of cyberculture. the resignification of nature as environment; the reinscription of the earth into capital via the gaze of science; the reinterpretation of poverty as effect of destroyed environment; and the new lease on management and planning as arbiters between people and nature, all of these are effects of the discursive construction of sustainable development (escobar, 1995: 202). in examining how the ''hegemony of globalism" is accomplished through a sustainable development discourse, this new political ecology approaches the intersection of culture and social structure from a political economy standpoint. if political ecology tends to foreground the political economy of environmental conflict, environmental constructivism takes a more postmodern view of the society-environment relationship. here, the "cultural" realm of environmental conflict tends to be privileged over an analysis that locates environmental conflict within the political economy of a society. in an ideal-typical form, environmental constructivism is concerned with the "ideas of society . . . [that] have been reproduced, legitimated or transformed through appeals to nature and the environment" (lidskog, 2001: 118). in general, this theoretical orientation is "agnostic . . . concerning the validity of the ecological threats that natural scientists, politicians and the media create and distribute" (119). like the "radical pluralism" critiqued by carroll and ratner, environmental constructivism can lose sight of the economic and political structures that help shape environmental conflict, as it focuses on the world of discourse (carroll and ratner, 1994). one of the major arguments of environmental constructivism is that ecological science cannot be taken as an unproblematic description of reality. instead, environmental problems and the "environment" itself ~ arc constructed by a broad range of social actors that includes scientists, activists, politicians and writers. while something of the natural 46 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs environment lies beyond the horizon of the social, once it is brought into the realm of public debate, it is inevitably translated into a social construction (macnaghten and urry, 1998). from this perspective, the forests which are the subject of forest policy debate are essentially social entities. as macnaghten and urry write, "there is no nature simply waiting to be conserved, but, rather all forms of its conservation entail judgments as to what indeed is nature" (macnaghten and urry, 1998: 23). john hannigan's work is concerned with the ways in which environmental problems are socially constructed through the claims-making activity of environmental activists (hannigan, 1995). hannigan offers a model for the successful construction of an "environmental problem." for example, environmental claims-makers must invoke scientific authority to legitimize their claims. there must also be environmental spokespeople who can translate scientific knowledge into public common sense. finally, environmental claims-makers must be able to reach the public through the media. through public claims-making, environmental activists work to construct a social reality about the environment and our relationship with it. the mass media are a key site where environmental claims-makers try to convince the public that an environmental problem is "novel and important" (hannigan, 1995: 55). catriona sandilands also provides a more constructionist approach to theorizing the environment-society relationship. in the good natured feminist: ecofeminism and the quest for democracy, sandilands explores issues of identity construction, authenticity and political representation in ecological and ecofeminist politics. she espouses an ecological politics which eschews essentialism and universalism in favour of the particular (sandilands, 1999). sandilands also problematizes the notion of authenticity: the claim to be able to speak on behalf of "nature." as she notes, the "nature" produced by environmentalists or environmental scientists is inherently social; it is transformed in its translation into discourse (sandilands, 1995). the question of how to engage in a politics of environmental protection that recognizes the socially-constructed nature of "nature" is addressed by sandilands. through the notion of "wild justice," sandilands offers a conceptual frame for recognizing that there is a value of nature as subject, beyond social discourse, while simultaneously recognizing that any particular representation of nature is a social construction volume 21, 2005 47 alternate routes (sandilands, 1994). as sandilands writes, there is an "aspect of nature that cannot be apprehended in political discourse," something that is inevitably beyond the horizon of the social (sandilands, 1994: 168). through the concept of wild justice, sandilands illuminates a potential solution to the problem of trying to authentically represent "nature" within the political realm. she writes: by conceptualizing the domination of nature as a hierarchical process of oppression, nature becomes a social problem, linked to and interstructured with other forms of oppression. the liberation of nature is thus only attainable through struggles for social justice (169). in sandilands' formulation, environmental politics should move towards the elaboration of a democratic, intersubjective nature, which still recognizes the existence of something fundamentally beyond the horizon of the social. thus, despite their different orientations, political ecology and environmental constructivism may both lead to a model of environmental politics which articulates ecological concerns with a politics of social justice. while environmental constructivism's analysis of the cultural dimension of environmental conflict is a necessary corrective to the cultural blind spot in political ecology, this perspective often lacks a connection with questions of economic and political power. the large discrepancies in social power between environmental claims-makers and the corporate and state actors in environmental conflict are rarely problematized. while environmental constructivism avoids the simplicity of a "dominant ideology" approach, it tends to overlook the processes through which the cultural construction of environmental problems is linked with political and economic structures of power. political ecology and environmental constructivism each offer an intriguing perspective on the questions of environmental conflict and the environment-society relationship. political ecology is valuable in that it locates environmental conflict within a network of social and economic power. it illuminates the connections between environmental issues and questions of social justice. at the same time, environmental constructivism's emphasis on the essentially social character of environmental conflict is an important theoretical contribution. in the following section, i 48 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs will outline a theoretical lens constructed at the gramsci-foucault nexus, which may provide a framework for bringing together key concepts from both sides of this theoretical divide. the gramsci-foucault nexus is a valuable tool for dealing with this theoretical tension through "a genuinely dialogically critical engagement" (hall, 1992: 291) the gramsci-foucault nexus in the previous section, i have outlined the division between a more "critical" political ecology perspective and a more "postmodern" environmental constructivist perspective in environmental sociology. in this section, i will construct a theoretical lens from the intersection of gramscian and foucauldian theory which is essentially critical, but which also takes postmodernism seriously. the result is a critical theory that is equipped to comprehend the subtlety and complexity of environmental conflict in a modern capitalist society. the work of antonio gramsci and his successors forms the foundation for this theoretical lens. through the notions of hegemony and counter-hegemony, gramscian theory provides a framework for analyzing the connections between culture, economy and political conflict (gramsci, 1971). as such, it provides a conceptual frame that can be used to draw on the strengths of both political ecology and environmental constructivism. for gramsci, hegemony is a form of social control grounded in the consent and willing participation of the governed; it is an alternative to coercion as a means of governing a society. hegemony is distinctly not synonymous with a dominant ideology (grossberg, 1996). instead, it may be understood as a set of core values that are integrated into everyday life. hegemony is produced through the state, but also through the organizations of "civil society," such as the mass media, or religious and educational institutions (femia, 1981: 24). while hegemony tends to reflect the interests of elite groups, it must be consciously maintained and constantly negotiated. as it is forged, it must also account for the needs of subaltern groups (hall, 1996). as hall writes, while "the ideological field is always . . . articulated to different social and political positions, its shape and structure do not precisely mirror . . . the class structure of society" (hall, 1996: 434). hegemony is also a "cultural" form of social control that is intimately linked with the political economy of society. as williams writes, hegemony is a "specific economic, political, and cultural system"; it places volume 21, 2005 49 alternate routes "pressures and limits" on our understanding of the social world (williams, 1977: 110). while all social actors can contribute to the formation of a hegemonic order, there are meaningful differences in political-economic power that privilege certain actors in the cultural production of hegemony. as williams observes, "to say that 'men' define and shape their whole lives is true only in abstraction. in any actual society there are specific inequalities in means and therefore in capacity to realize this process" (williams, 1977: 108). by recognizing the economic factors that limit participation in the creation of hegemony, gramsci theorizes the connections between the culture-formation of a society and politicaleconomic power. the notion of hegemony addresses the failure of revolutionary class consciousness to emerge in industrial societies. for gramsci, critical consciousness does not spontaneously emerge from the experience of labour exploitation. rather, critical consciousness must be actively developed in opposition to a hegemonic order (williams, 1977). this leads us to gramsci's inter-related notions of subalternity, the "organic intellectual," and counter-hegemony. in gramsci's usage, subaltern groups consist of those who are subordinated in the process of capitalist production. in this sense, the marxian working class is the archetypal subaltern group. however, the notion of subalternity has been extended by others to include the multiplicity of social identities that demarcate a subordinate position within the hierarchies of political, economic, or cultural power (cf. hall, 1996). for example, subalternity can be read through the lens of gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. according to gramsci, the critical consciousness of subaltern groups must be actively produced. this is where the "organic intellectual" fits in. while "traditional intellectuals," who are found in positions of privilege, generally act to reproduce hegemony, organic intellectuals can emerge from within subaltern groups (gramsci, 1971). they are critical intellectuals, whose lived experience within a subaltern group leads them to critique the dominant hegemony. while everyone has the potential to become an organic intellectual, not everyone fulfills this social role (gramsci, 1971: 9). organic intellectuals are the nuclei around which counter-hegemonic discourses emerge. as hall writes, "the organic intellectual cannot absolve himself or herself from the responsibility of transmitting those ideas, that knowledge, through the intellec50 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs tual function, to those who do not belong, professionally, in the intellectual class" (hall, 1992: 281). stuart hall's concept of "articulation" provides an important addition to the gramscian theoretical framework. the notion of articulation focuses on the social process whereby discourses are joined with each other; as well as with historically specific political and economic practices (grossberg, 1996; rupert, 2000). the concept of articulation is defined by hall as follows: an articulation is . . . the form of the connection that can make a unity of two different elements, under certain conditions. it is a linkage which is not necessary, determined, absolute and essential for all time. ... the so-called "unity" of a discourse is really the articulation of different, distinct elements which can be re-articulated in different ways . . . the "unity" which matters is a linkage between that articulated discourse and the social forces with which it can, under certain historical conditions, but need not necessarily, be connected (hall qtd grossberg, 1996: 53). as an illustrative example, rupert uses the concept of articulation to examine how anti-globalization discourse has been linked with both progressive, leftist political movements, as well as with a right-wing political agenda (rupert, 2000). in his analysis, we see how the counterhegemonic critique of globalization can be articulated with demands for social justice and environmental sustainability. alternately, it can be articulated with a nationalist and religious fundamentalist political agenda. through the key concept of articulation, we see how hegemonic values are linked to political and economic structures in specific historical-social locations. articulation helps us map the points of convergence between culture, economy and politics. finally, laurie adkin provides a useful illustration of a gramscian environmental sociology. adkin argues that there is "not one 'environmentalism' but many," which can either be articulated with hegemonic or counter-hegemonic political projects (adkin, 1992: 135). adkin has examined both the diversity of canadian environmentalism, as well as the broader discourse of "sustainable development" (adkin, 1992; adkin, 2000). through this research, she has demonstrated how envivolume21,2005 51 alternate routes ronmentalism may either be contained, through articulation with an ecocapitalist project; or how it may be mobilized as part of a broader counter-hegemonic movement. for adkin, the "apolitical" environmental discourse adapted by many social movement actors can lead to a sort of "passive revolution." in gramscian theory, the trap of "passive revolution" is described as the failure "to alter hegemonic constraints" by engaging in a politics geared towards "limited reforms" (carroll and ratner, 1999: 31). in adkin's view, the radical democratic potential of ecology has frequently been contained within the structures of a capitalist economy. writing about the "sustainable development" project, adkin observes: many environmentalists have been persuaded that market mechanisms offer the only achievable gains for environmental objectives. there has been a trend towards ... the adoption of an environmental management approach linked to technological modernization . . . and divorced from transformative social projects (adkin, 2000: 64). by contrast, adkin argues that environmental discourse and politics should be articulated with other social movements in a broader counterhegemonic movement. gramscian theory provides a good model for understanding how hegemony is constructed, maintained, challenged and transformed. it gives a useful account of how elite values are disseminated and integrated, without relying on a crude "dominant ideology" perspective. however, i believe that this model can be enriched by incorporating insights from michel foucault about the relationship between power and knowledge. foucauldian theory enables us to better understand how hegemony is produced at a specific site of social interaction. thus, i would like to bring foucault's theory of power/knowledge into dialogue with gramscian theory. foucault's model of power points to an understanding of power as a process, rather than as a property, or an object. in this model, power is not a zero sum game. individuals are embedded within networks of power. they simultaneously wield power and are governed by it in their relationships with others. according to foucault, power "is never localized here or there, never in anybody's hands, never appropriated as a 52 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs commodity or piece of wealth. power is employed and exercised through a net-like organization" (foucault, 1980b: 98). from this understanding of power, it follows that an analysis of power must concern itself with the processes through which power is exercised. as foucault writes: if power is properly speaking the way in which relations of forces are deployed and given concrete expression, rather than analyzing it in terms of cession, contract or alienation, or functionally in terms of its maintenance of the relations of production, should we not analyze it primarily in terms of struggle, conflict and war! (foucault, 1980b: 90). in this formulation, discursive strategies of power are not translated wholesale by dominant groups into social practice (gordon, 1980). just as hegemony is never a finished project, so too are strategies of power contested and re-shaped as they are applied in real social relations. building upon this model of power, foucault introduces the concept of power/knowledge: the notion that power is intimately linked with discourse. gordon writes that discourses are marked by "immanent principles of regularity, they are also bound by regulations enforced through social practices of appropriation, control and policing" (gordon, 1980: 245). the regulation of discourse deals with who is allowed to speak on a given topic and which knowledges are subjugated in the production of "truth" (foucault, 1980b: 81-82). discourses are vehicles, or sites, of social power. as foucault notes, "relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse. there can be no possible exercise ofpower without a certain economy of discourses" (foucault, 1980b: 93). if discourses are sites for the exercise of social power, then the production of discourse may also constrain and challenge the exercise of power. networks of power/knowledge are also sites of resistance, where "truth" is produced and contested by oppositional groups as well as elites. the result, as gordon writes, is that "discourse is a political commodity" (gordon, 1980: 245). foucault's understanding of discourse, power and knowledge leads to the post-structural destabilization of "truth." from this perspective, truth becomes a social construct, built from a network of dominant discourses. volume 21, 2005 53 alternate routes as foucault writes: "each society has its regime of truth, its 'general polities' of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true" (foucault, 1980a: 131). from a foucauldian perspective, the research task cannot be to evaluate discourse as "true" or "false," as all discourses are socially constructed. rather, we can see only how discourses are mobilized in the exercise of social power. finally, a foucauldian orientation to environmental sociology has been employed by several authors. for example, timothy luke has drawn heavily upon foucault's concept of "governmentality" in developing his own analysis "environmentality" (foucault, 1991; luke, 1999a; luke, 1999b; luke, 2002). here, the government of ecological populations is accomplished through a politics of "eco-managerialism," which takes as its guiding mission the "redefining and then administering the earth as 'natural resources'" (luke, 1999a: 104). here, the government and environmental science work to transform non-human nature into the "terrestrial infrastructure for global capital" (106). the concept of governmentality has also been taken up by matthews in his analysis of the "turbot war" conflict between canada and spain in 1995 (matthews, 1996). mathews concludes that the canadian state used discourses of ecological risk and species preservation to provide moral grounding to a legally questionable action: the seizure of a spanish fishing ship outside of its national jurisdiction. thus, ecological discourse is mobilized to legitimize the state's governmentality over fish populations. foucault's notion of biopower has also been adapted for environmental sociology (foucault, 1978). essentially, biopower refers to the power of the state to regulate and govern entire populations. as foucault writes, biopower is concerned with "the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and the adjustment of the phenomena of population to economic processes"; as such the emergence of biopower was "an indispensable element in the development of capitalism" (foucault, 1978: 140-141). rutherford has argued that the notion of biopower can usefully be extended into the realm of the ecological, where natural "populations" were defined, through scientific systems of power/knowledge, as a species body that could be subject to processes of governmentality (rutherford, 1999; also sec rutherford, 1994). there arc both points of intersection and points of tension involved in bringing gramscian and foucauldian theory together. here, i will turn 54 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs to critiques of foucault which justify the subordination of foucauldian key concepts within a broadly gramscian theoretical lens. in nancy fraser's critique of foucault, she problematizes foucault's "bracketing" of epistemological and normative frameworks in his analysis of power/ knowledge (fraser, 1 989). 2 for fraser, there is a tension in foucault's work between claims to normative agnosticism, and a style of writing that is obviously engaged and critical. for her, this tension is unresolved in foucault's own work, leading to vagueness. thus, fraser illuminates one of the points of tension between foucault and gramsci. foucault's refusal to apply moral evaluation to the production of discourse or the exercise of power is inconsistent with gramscian theory's commitment to a critical and politically engaged research stance. from a foucauldian perspective, we cannot evaluate whether or not a given discourse is "true" or "false." the evaluation of "truth" is outside the realm of debate, once we accept that the "truth" of a discourse is not an objective fact, but rather the result of the exercise of social power. bringing foucault into dialogue with gramscian theory may be one way to circumvent foucault's moral agnosticism, while acknowledging the tenuous character of "truth." like fraser, hall argues that foucault's key concepts of discourse, power/knowledge and discipline are incompatible with an "apolitical" stance that rejects the notion of ideology (grossberg, 1996). as hall writes, "what foucault would talk about is the setting in place, through the institutionalization of a discursive regime, of a number of competing regimes of truth and, within these regimes, the operation of power" (hall qtd grossberg, 1996: 48). for hall, this is quite consistent with gramsci's notion of hegemony, despite foucault's reluctance to use the term "ideology." hall continues, arguing, "i don't see how you can retain the notion of 'resistance,' as he does, without facing questions about the constitution of dominance in ideology" (48). for hall, we can comprehend foucault's notion of power/knowledge as something similar to gramsci 's model of "hegemony." by integrating the most useful key concepts from foucault into a broadly gramscian framework, we move towards a resolution of this ambiguity in foucauldian theory. another point of criticism raised by hall deals with foucault's exclusive focus on discourse as a field of inquiry. hall argues that "the fully discursive position is a reductionism upward, rather than a reductionism downward, as economism was" (hall qtd grossberg, 1996: 57). here, volume 21, 2005 55 alternate routes bringing foucault into dialogue with gramsci is also useful, as gramscian theory retains a focus on "the way in which ideological/cultural/discursive practices continue to exist within the determining lines of force of material relations, and the expropriation of nature" (57). thus, while foucaulfs model of power/knowledge may be a useful analytical tool for examining how power is produced, exercised and challenged in a specific research site, gramscian theory draws our attention to the need to link the politics of discourse with political and economic relationships in the world beyond the text. in a similar vein, carroll and ratner note that the post-structural erasure of a sense of structural or "extra-discursive" ~ boundaries to social behaviour is problematic (carroll and ratner, 1994). by locating the foucauldian key concepts of power/ knowledge and discourse within a broadly gramscian analytical framework, we can more usefully account for the ways in which discourse is articulated with political and economic conflict outside the realm of the textual. finally, carroll and ratner note that there is a profound difference between the gramscian notion of counter-hegemony and the model of "anti-hegemony" that is implicit in foucauldian theory (carroll and ratner, 1994). as they write, the form of resistance espoused by foucault is "not counter-hegemonic in the sense of aspiring to build consensus around an emancipatory project; it is a/7//-hegemonic in the sense of opposing attempts to construct a general interest of whatever kind" (carroll and ratner, 1994: 13). here, gramsci's notion of counter-hegemony is more useful if we wish to adopt a critical research stance, which is aligned with a movement for social change. despite the points of tension between gramscian and foucauldian theory, there is also a degree of convergence, which makes a dialogue between their respective bodies of work interesting and useful. foucault's notion of power/knowledge is a useful addition to the gramscian framework in that it reinforces the notion that "hegemony" is not an object that is wielded by one class over another. 3 rather, it may be viewed as a macro-social description of a multitude of social processes, many of which occur on a micro-social level. hegemony may be read as a short-hand for the repeated exercise of ideological power across a vast number of social sites. this conception of power draws attention to the need to research the localized sites where hegemony is exercised. while gramsci offers the conceptual tools for a larger-scale explanation of 56 volume 21. 2005 chemins alternatifs hegemony, foucault offers the analytical tools for examining the production of hegemony at the local level. conclusion a theoretical lens constructed at the "gramsci-foucault nexus" enables us to connect the cultural, economic and political dimensions of environmental conflict. gramsci's theoretical work, centred on the notion of hegemony, examines how cultural processes are intimately related, but not reducible, to systems of economic and political power. at the same time, i believe that an engagement with foucauldian theory can enrich an essentially gramscian orientation. foucault's notions of power/knowledge and discourse provide useful tools for analyzing the mechanisms for reproducing hegemony at specific social-historical sites. this gramsci-foucault nexus is essentially critical, but also appreciates the subtlety and fluidity of the social world as it is described in postmodern theory. the gramsci-foucault nexus provides an overarching theoretical framework that can help us bridge the political ecology-environmental constructivism dichotomy in environmental sociology. it sensitizes us to the intersection of culture and political economy. it also draws our attention to the intimate connection between the operation of social power at "micro" and "macro" dimensions. as such, this theoretical lens may add depth and complexity to the study of environmentalism and environmental conflict. it is a potentially valuable tool for inhabiting the irritable tension between environmental realism and environmental constructivism. though it cannot completely resolve this tension, it does allow us to create movement within this tension. endnotes 1. 1 would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance ofmy thesis supervisor and committee: dr. william k. carroll, dr. martha mcmahon, dr. jeremy wilson and dr. michael m'gonigle. in addition, i would like to thank dr. r. alan hedley, dr. alison thomas and dr. susan boyd for their input during the development of this project. 2. the problematic relationship between foucauldian epistemology and environmental politics is discussed by darier (1999), quigley (1999) and chaloupka (2002). volume 21, 2005 57 alternate routes 3. this is not an error made by gramsci, or by the other "gramscian" theorists discussed here. however, as hall notes, this misuse of "hegemony" is quite common (grossberg 1996, 59). references adkin, laurie e. 1992. 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"eco-managerialism: environmental studies as a power/knowledge formation." pp. 103-120 in living with nature: environmental politics as cultural discourse, edited by f. fischer and m. a. hajer. new york: oxford university press. — . 1999b. "environmentality as green governmentality." pp. 121-151 in discourses ofthe environment, edited by e. darier. oxford, uk: blackwell. — . 2002. "the practices of adaptive and collaborative environmental management: a critique." capitalism, nature, socialism 13:1-22. macnaghten, p. and j. urry. 1998. contested natures. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. matthews, david ralph. 1996. "mere anarchy? canada's 'turbot war' as the moral regulation of nature." canadian journal ofsociology 21 :505-522. peluso, n. l. 1992. rich forests, poor people: resource control and resistance in java. berkeley, ca, university of california press. peluso, n. l. and m. watts (2001). violent environments. pp. 3-38 in violent environments, edited by n. l. peluso and m. watts. ithica & london, cornell university press. quigley, peter. 1999. "nature as dangerous space." pp. 181-202 in discourses ofthe environment, edited by e. darier. oxford, uk: blackwell. routledge, paul. 1996. "critical geopolitics and terrains of resistance." political geography 15:509-351. rupert, mark. 2000. ideologies of globalization: contending visions ofa new world order. london & new york: routledge. rutherford, paul. 1994. "the administration of life: ecological discourse as 'intellectual machinery of government'." australian journal ofcommunication 21:40-55. — . 1999. "the entry of life into history"." pp. 37-62 in discourses of the environment, edited by e. darier. oxford, uk: blackwell. volume 21, 2005 61 alternate routes sachs, w. 1993. global ecology and the shadow of development. pp. 3-21 in global ecology: a new arena of political conflict, edited by w. sachs. london & new jersey, zed books. sandilands, catriona. 1994. "political animals: the paradox of ecofeminist politics." trumpeter 11 (4): 11:167-172. — . 1995. "from natural identity to radical democracy." environmental ethics 17:75-91. — . 1999. "sex at the limits." pp. 79-94 in discourses of the environment, edited by e. darier. oxford, uk: blackwell. schnaiberg, allan. 1980. the environment: from surplus to scarcity. new york & oxford: oxford university press. — . (2002). "reflections on my 25 years before the mast of the environment and technology section." organization & environment 15 (1):30-41. simon, alexander. 1998. "backlash! corporate front groups and the struggle for sustainable forestry in british columbia." capitalism, nature, socialism 9:3-36. sklair, l. 2001. the transnational capitalist class. oxford, uk, blackwell. williams, raymond. 1977. marxism and literature. new york: oxford university press. 62 volume 21, 2005 book review: reconsidering knowledge | 431 book review reconsidering knowledge: feminism and the academy edited by meg luxton and mary jane mossman. halifax & winnipeg: fernwood publishing, 2012. $29.95 can, paper. isbn: 978-1-552266476-6. pages: 1-168. reviewed by jordan fairbairn1 in 2009, a group of feminist academics at york university participated in a lecture series revisiting key themes from the canadian research institute for the advancement of women (criaw)’s 1984 collection knowledge reconsidered: a feminist overview. the lectures were held with the aim of “refocusing the lens on feminist knowledge in the academy” (15). this book is the literary product of these lectures. the seven substantive chapters in the book deal with one or more of three central themes: 1) the importance of feminist knowledge production; 2) challenges posed by neoliberal approaches to education and university corporatization; and 3) feminist scholarship as a form of activism and/or resistance to the increasingly corporate university environment. as a whole, this is a collection rich in reflexive analysis of how knowledge production shapes, and is shaped by, the environment in which it occurs. in chapter one, meg luxton explores the transformative nature of feminist scholarship on the academy while effectively demonstrating through the discussion of gendered distribution of elite research positions in canada that academia is not exempt from patterns of inequality. in chapter two, m. jacqui alexander and chandra talpade mohanty further explore the politics of knowledge construction by mapping transnational feminism throughout women’s studies and lgbtt/queer studies syllabi in u.s. colleges and universities. the author’s conceptual use of cartographies to map histories and geographies of power is a significant contribution, as is their challenge to the academic/activist divide so often employed in academic discourse (see eschle and maiguashca, 2006). chapter three shifts from feminist knowledge in the academy to a focus on sexuality research in a global context. here, elisabeth young-bruehl 1  jordan fairbairn (jordan.fairbairn@carleton.ca) is a phd candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university. her research explores the relationship between social media and violence against women prevention, feminism, and public sociology. 432 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education reminds that in exploring the politics of knowledge construction it is important to explore not only what knowledge is created, but also what terms or concepts remain absent. to this end, young-bruehl provides the example of “childism” to illustrate the conceptual absence of terms to speak of groups that disproportionately inflict harm on children (e.g. child pornographers, child sex traffickers, armies recruiting child soldiers). while the argument that there is increased global tolerance for multisexuality (sexual identities outside binary understandings of sex and gender) is convincing, the implication that this will naturally lead to an understanding of sexual minorities as “different but equal” (73) is less so given the lack of historical evidence of this occurring. part two of reconsidering knowledge shifts from exploring feminism and knowledge production to consider current neoliberal influences on the university and the implications for its role in knowledge production. in chapter four, margaret thornton unpacks the concept of “neoliberalism” and focuses on three central phases in the university’s evolution (modernization, feminization, corporatization). thornton argues that we have entered a period of focus on a “new knowledge” economy, which has enabled “the remasculization of the economy behind a façade of rationality, neutrality, and technocratic knowledge” (77). while overall a convincing chapter and important contribution, considering the focus on the book (feminism and the academy), i found more explanation of feminization and remasculization to be needed, in particular a more clear distinction between remasculization and neoliberalism. in chapter five, janice newson situates neoliberalism within the university “on-theground” through an analysis of how universities have responded to policy changes that “promote the corporatized trajectory” (98). a significant contribution of this chapter is its resistance to the notion that neoliberalism simply “happened” to universities, absent of any agency of the actors within. instead, newson argues for complex (and reflexive) analysis, provocatively suggesting that we consider the academic attitudes and practices that have allowed, and may even be implicated in “the shift of the university towards more commercially oriented endeavours” (97). although further unpacking is needed around how to separate attitudes and practices from their institutional context, i found the author’s detailed use of historical explanation of policy development as a multi-faceted process convincing as an initial argument for reflexivity. in the final section of this collection, chapters six and seven illustrate the research richness that comes from applying feminist lenses to cultural histories. in her discussion of bluestockings and goddesses, ann shteir book review: reconsidering knowledge | 433 draws from mythology and iconography to challenge feminists to “take the past more seriously” (130) when pursuing present-day scholarship and activism. in particular, shteir identifies new technologies and digitized materials as tools to opening up new (or freshly revisited) research avenues. in reconsidering the past through feminist praxis, shteir summarizes a core idea of this collection: that we must remember that “scholarship is activism too, and we should be making it work for us” (147). in the concluding chapter, lorraine code moves themes of reflexivity, feminist praxis, and the politics of knowledge production back on front stage by analyzing the work of eminent marine biologist rachel carson (1907-1964) in “unsettling” key tenets of scientific knowledge and practice in the twentieth century. overall, reconsidering knowledge does important work through connecting core themes of social inequality, transformative knowledge, and the role and purpose of feminism and the university in our current social world. despite the eclectic mixture of chapter subject matter, the revisiting and resurfacing of feminist praxis and reflexive knowledge production as core themes holds this book together well; part of its success may, therefore, lie in highlighting that these important strands of debate transcend perceived boundaries of subject matter. yet given the vastness of feminism as a theoretical orientation, and the absence of explicit discussions and definitions of feminism in many chapters, an editorial introduction and conclusion would have been helpful to bring together the contributors’ various theoretical lenses as well as to increase accessibility of the text more broadly. nonetheless, this collection is a valuable read, not only for those committed to feminism and its role and relationship in the academy, but also for scholars and students concerned more broadly with the expansion of neoliberalism in universities and the politics of knowledge production. while reconsidering knowledge provides plenty of reasons to be concerned about entrenched resistance to feminist research and activism, it remains optimistic and steadfast about feminism’s transformative potential and critical importance in scholarship and activism, or, perhaps more accurately, scholarship-as-activism. references eschle, catherine and bice maiguashca. (2006). bridging the academic/ activist divide: feminist activism and the teaching of global politics. millennium-journal of international studies, 35 (1), 119-137. reintroducing politics: recent developments in feminist theories of the state dominique masson carleton university my research draws on recent developments in feminist theories of the state to underscore the necessity to ' reintroduce politics ' in feminist analyses of the interrelation between gender, women's movements, and states. this argument stems from my concerns forthe contemporary quebecois women's movement and for its relationship to the canadian and quebecois states, as well as from my profound dissatisfaction, as a feminist activist and as an intellectual, with the pessimistic, disempowering and theoretically problematic accounts that the now 'classical' feminist theories of the state have offered. i begin by recallingwhat i think arethe main problems ofthe classical feminist frameworks as they have been highlighted by what is currently called 'the new feminist scholarship on the state.' then, i sketch the three main avenues by which the 'moment of politics' can and should be reintroduced into the analysis . these avenues can be summed up as follows : ( 1 ) reasserting the possibility of politics by taking seriously the notion of conflict and political struggle; (2) shifting the focus to women's agency and to women's agents as the actors ofpolitics; (3) 'getting into the black box' to understand how the politics of the state work within specific state-sytems. what i call 'the classical feminist frameworks' for theorizing the state are exemplified in theworks ofburstyn(1983), mcintosh (1978), mackinnon (1983) and eisenstein (1981). these accounts ofthe interaction between the western liberal state and gender relations of power still inform, even if in a refined manner, much of the current feminist work on the welfare state and social policy (mckeen 1993). the core insight of the early socialist and radical works on the 'patriarchal,' or 'capitalist and patriarchal' character of the state was to identify the state and state politics as gendered. there is unquestionably a gender dynamic present in the workings of the contempoalternate routes, volume 12, 1995 cd •flft alternate routes, volume12, 1995 rary state, and the classical frameworks rightly point to the state's role in institutionalizing and reproducing gender domination. yet, there are also major problems in theway these stories ofthe interconnection between gender relations and 'the state' are told. the structural-functional bias bequeathed on socialist and radical feminist conceptions of the welfare state and of patriarchy by a particular version of marxism 1 poses important limits to our understanding of the relationship between gender, the women's movement, the state, and social change. in these conceptions, structures or social relations ofpower are seen from a one-sided perspective as largely stable arrangements of exploitation and domination. fully-formed, easily grasped and pre-existing 'needs' or 'dominant interests' are inscribed in the structures of capitalism and patriarchy and which directly inform and impel state intervention (this with or without adding in the play of 'structural contradictions,' or some kind of 'relative autonomy'). state action itself is viewed as always, either immediately or ultimately, functional for domination. responses by states to women's demands, be they funding childcare facilities, implementing pay equity programs, or recognizing abortion rights, are then interpreted at best as concessions, or "as compromising short-term concerns in the service of broader, long-term goals, such as normalizing the system and stabilizing power relations," (rhodes 1994: 1185)that only recompose masculine and/ or capitalist domination under a renewed guise. short ofrevoluti on, these formulations leave very little space forwomen and the women' s movement to make meaningful gains or to realize significant social change within andthroughthe state. yet, women's movements from the turn of the century to the present have pressed their demands on states and have obtained reforms that have undoubtedly had an impact on the way gender relations are lived and, most importantly, have inscribed women's participation in the very "making" ofwestern welfare state forms. 2 accounting for women's effective agency in "shaping the state" is, as yeatman points out, an element that seriously complicates our understanding ofthe "patriarchal character" of the state (1990: 144). furthermore, classical accounts have tended to postulate a more or less automatic correspondence between social determinants, seen in terms of overarching structures, and a gendered, oppressive or regulationist state intervention. •' yet, thejob of relating 'gendered effects' to 'gender structure' becomes painstakingly hard, and sometimes uselessly reductionist, when confronted wi til the evidence ofthe variability with which concrete states have historically handled gender relations and translated them into policies. as jenson (1986:22) notes: the states may or may not have assumed that women provide free labour in the family. they may or may have not have di scouraged women's work outside the home. they may or may not have tried to establish equality between female and male workers. they may or may not have encouraged childbearing in a way that would subordinate women to men, to the state, or to both. increasingly, empirical studies indicate that 'the state' does not occupy "a clear-cut and fixed place in the structure of gender or in the field of sexual politics" (franzway, court & connell 1989: 41), and this seems to hold in comparative perspective as well as internally, within states. ' how are we to interpret this? recent developments in feminist theories of the state propose that the kind of state and ofgender politics we have at a given time depends perhaps less on the presence of 'structures of power,' and possibly more on the play of 'politics of power.' in short, what has been missing all along is 'the stuff of polities': i.e., the mediation of power structures introduced by conflicts, alliances and compromises between real actors outside and within the 'black fill box' ofthe state, a mediation that gives backtothepostulated correspondence of the previous "input-output" model the problematic, contingent, variable and unpredictable quality that the recent historical and comparative empirical works reveal. what then are the avenues by which this 'moment of politics' can be reintroduced in a feminist analysis ofthe state? 5 first, 'reintroducing politics' means reasserting the 'possibility of polities'—that is, positing against one-sided views of 'structures' the possibility that political and social struggles not only exist, but make a difference. this can be done only by abandoning one-sided views, with their focus on domination, rule, and regulation, for two-sided ones in which rule and conflict, as well as structure and agency are constitutive of each other, and where the action of social agents, not of reified structures, comes to the forefront. in relation to gender, for example, working with the concept of 'gender relations of power' may be preferable to an orthodox reference to patriarchy (plagued by systemic, universalizing, and static undertones). thinking in terms of relations ofpower helps shift the focus from the analysis ofthe mechanisms of domination to the exploration ofthe tensions that are inherent in the notion ofpower as a social relation and as a balance of forces. alternate routes, volume12, 1995 thus, this involves exploring the capacity of subjects to act as social agents in not only reproducing, but also in contesting and altering this balance in the always concrete and specificforms of discourses and practices into which power relations are enacted and institutionalized. the state, then, rather than being seen as an entity or a device of structural domination takes on the character of these ongoing tensions. this is what is meant by current formulations that propose to see states, their institutional features and their policies as historical constructions: as products of specific, variable, openended and unevenly deployed social struggles. finally, rather than being preempted from the start as an ever elusive goal, the prospects of realizing 'meaningful social change for women within or through the state' can then be seen as residing precisely in these specific, variable, and open-ended possibilities of altering the balance ofpower in favor ofwomen in concrete power arrangements. secondly, 'reintroducing politics' implies rescuing from structural oblivion the actors of politics, thus shifting attention towards agency and the action of social agents—because agency only exists as it is embodied in people and in collectivities of people. new developments in feminist theory and feminist theories of the state, however, force us to a revision of the way we mp understand the women's movement as a political actor and as a particular form ofcollective agency. the challenge from poststructuralism and from the non-western feminist critique makes it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to speak of "women's interests" in "objective" and/or universalizing terms, or to see "the women's movement" as a unitary actor. the diversity of women's experiences, linked to the intertwining and cross-cutting effects of historically and spatially specific power relations of gender, class, and race (among others) in real life situations cannot but translate into a heterogeneous and fragmented women's movement. the unity ofthis movement, rather than being pre-given, is much more aptly to be conceptualized, in laclau and mouffe's (1985) terms, as a hegemonic (or counterhegemonic) political project (i.e., it has to be constructed). 6 in its dealings with the state, the women's movement thus speaks with a diversity of voices. the versions of "women's interests" and the claims articulated and put forward vary not only in space and time but also among the organizations of national movements. this reflects the subjective construction of these "interests" on the basis (but not the transparency) of the social placings, experiences and representations of gender of their membership, and is further mediated by what is subjectively perceived by the organizational actors as desirable, acceptable, and feasible as political strategies in a given context (masson 1994b). it should be noted that it is only unevenlythatthese organizations challengetheexistinggender order. moreover, their capacity to exert agency is also uneven, and the diverse voices are not represented with the same weight within the movement. as michaud (1992) argues, some voices are more central in the constitution of this "feminist counter-hegemony," whereas others are pushed, or remain in the margins. then there is the question of who—which actor or actors of the movement—gets to legitimately 'represent women' (and wliich women), a question that further problematizes the notion of "women's demands to the state." my point is that there are a series of subjective, as well as political, mediations between the more abstract 'gender relations of power' and the reality of women's encounter with the state. judging, for example, that a particular policy does not represent "what women wanted" may betoo simple an account of the process through which states respond to multiply voiced, historically specific, and already highly mediated women's claims. this is especially the case when diversity might very well mean, as pringle and watson suggest (1990: 239) that "no one policy will be a gain for all women." 7 the third avenue for 'reintroducing politics' is to bring the state itself "back in" by unpacking the black box of 'the state' to understand the concreteways in which the politics ofgender are played out within the politics of the state. the institutional, political, and bureaucratic characteristics of particular state-systems as historical productions and fields of ongoing struggles become central in this proposition: what kind of state [of welfare state, of bureaucracy, of gender regime or gender politics] we have depends on who was mobilized in social struggle, what strategies were deployed, and who won. 8 (franzway, court & connell, 1989:35) social struggles are not fought only outside the state (and nor are they only about the state, for the matter), but within the state as well because of the resources and ofthe constitutive capacity over social relations ofpower that the state concentrates. that's what "feminism in practice" has seen in the state that makes it worthwhile encountering (connell, 1990: 518). it would be a mistake, however, to see this encounter as being solely with the state, or with state actors: it is an encounter within the arenas ofthe state with other political actors that articulate other sets of interests and carry with them particular <2) <5> alternate routes, volume 12, 1995 assumptions about gender relations (and race, and class). how conflicts, alliances, strategies and compromises materialize over specific policies and programs within particular state-systems constitutes a level ofmediation that makes a difference in the outcomes: it makes a difference, for example, between passing an "equal rights" amendment or not, criminalizing abortion or not, and so on. in addition, these outcomes alter the conditions for further contestations, possibly giving rise to "unintended consequences"9 that may help or hinder subsequent efforts at social change in the field of gender politics. the other major element we see from unpacking the black box is that gender politics, within the politics ofthe state-system, not only pertain to how the game offormal politics is played, but to how the game itself is framed by the institutional and bureaucratic reality of particular state-systems. what the legitimate actors are, what counts as legitimate gender issues, what the institutional channels for their treatment are, andhow they areto be dealt with in political and bureaucratic terms are all part of how state-systems are gendered in ways that crystallize certain power arrangements and pose very concrete obstacles to women's organizations' social change efforts. yet, it cannot be overemphasized that these features of state-systems are no less historical than the rest: that they carry possibilities for change as well as barriers or constraints to change, that they are objects ofcontention, that they are changing and can be changed. in short, people and their politics mediate between social structures (relations of power, and so on) and state intervention in a way that makes contingent, variable, and open-ended outcomes possible. that should be the core of our feminist analyses of the state, and should buttress our strategymaking. broad, sweeping generalizations about "the patriarchal" or "the capitalist state" might be easier to come with, but are unduly disempowering for feminist activists and overly myopic for feminist academics. it may be a truism to recall that reality is complex, but i insist that we ought to render justice to this complexity. notes 1. many authors have pointed to the structuralist bias and to the functionalism inherent in these arguments. on classical feminist theories of the state see piven (1984: 16), franzway, court and connell (1989: 20, 23), gordon (1990: 179-180), watson (1990: 6), jen son (1986: 10-13); on marxism see jessop (1990) and mclennan (1984). 2. feminist works on the making of welfare states have highlighted the participation of women social reformers and women's movements in the constitution of welfare policies and programs. see for example andrew (1984), gordon (1990), brenner & laslett (1991), jenson (1986, 1987, 1989), skocpol (1992). 3. i am indebted for this argument to jessop (1990: 80). 4. the recognition of the existence of contradictory policies and positions in the field of gender and sexual politics at the level of particular state-systems is not new. the internal disunity of the state is argued in particular in franzway, court and connell (1989), pringle and watson (1990), watson (1990). 5. the refraining i am advocating here owes much to what has been called 'the new feminist scholarship on the state,' and in particular to the recent works of fraser (1989), jenson (1986, 1987, 1989) and skocpol (1992) on north america and europe: and of australians pringle and watson (1990), watson (1990), franzway, court and connell (1989), connell (1990) and yeatman (1990). 6. the recognition and dilemma of diversity lies at the core of the debate between the proponents of a strategy based on "the politics of difference" (young 1990) versus the possibilities of more inclusive politics. 7. this should be kept in mind while analysing state intervention in the field of gender. 8. the reference to the welfare state, to the bureaucracy, and to the state's connections with gender relations is from franzway, court and connell (1989: 35). the notion of gender regime is from connell (1990). 9. see skocpol (1985) on the notion of "unintended consequences" of state action. see mckeen (1994) for an exemple of possibilities opened in terms of unintended consequences in the eec policies. references andrew, caroline. 1 984 "women and the welfare state," canadian journal ofpolitical science, 17(4)667-683. brenner, joanna and barbara laslett. 1 99 1 "gender, social reproduction, and women self-organization: considering the u.s. welfare state," gender & society. 5(3) 31 1-333. burstyn, varda. 1983 "masculine dominance and the state." the socialist register. 1 983: 4589. <b> alternate routes, volume12, 1995 connell, r.w. 1990 'the state, gender, and sexual politics." theory and society. 19: 507-544. eisenstein, zillah 1981 'the capitalist patriarchal state and the politics of liberal feminism," chapter 10, in the radical future of liberal feminism. new york: longman. 220-253. franzway, suzanne, dianne court, and r.w. connell. 1 989 staking a claim. feminism, bureaucracy and the state. sydney: allen & unwin fraser, nancy. 1989 unruly practices: power, discourse, and gender in contemporary social theory. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. gordon, linda. 1990 'the welfare state: towards a socialist-feminist perspective." thesocialist register. 1990: 171-200. jenson, jane. 1986 "gender and reproduction: or, babies and the state." studies in political economy. 20: 9-47. 1987 "both friend and foe: women and state welfare," in renate bridenthal, di) claudia koonz & susan stuard (eds.) becoming visible. women in european history. 535-556. 1989 "paradigms and political discourse: protective legislation in france and the united states." canadian journal ofpolitical science. 22(2): 235258. jessop, bob. 1990 state theory. putting the capitalist state in its place. polity press. laclau, ernesto and chantal mouffe. 1985 hegemonyand socialist strategy. towardsa radicaldemocratic politics. london verso. mackinnon, catherine a. 1983 "feminism, marxism, method, and the state: toward a feminist jurisprudence." signs. 8(4): 635-658. masson, dominique. 1994a feminist theories of the state: recent developments and lineaments of a framework comprehensive paper. department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university. 1994b "s'organiser pour s'auto-developper. organisations de femmes et developpement au saguenay-lac-saint-jean " in labrecque, marie-france (ed.) l 'egalite devant soi. sexes, rapports sociaux el developpement international. ottawa: crdi. 64-85. mcintosh, mary. 1978 'the state and the oppression of women," in annette kuhn and annemarie wolpe (eds.) feminism and materialism. london: routledge and kegan paul. 254-289. mckeen, wendy. 1993 feminist welfare state theory: an assessment of new directions and visions. comprehensive paper, department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university. 1994 "theradical potential oftheeuropean community'sequality legislation." studies in political economy. 43: 1 17-136. mclennan, gregor 1984 "capitalist state or democratic polity? recent developments in marxist and pluralist theory." in gregor mclennan, david held and stuart hall (eds.) the idea of the modern state. milton keynes: open university press. 80-109. michaud, jacinthe. 1992 'the welfare state and the problem of counterhegemonic responses within the women's movement." in carroll, william k. i ed. )organizing |ffi dissent. contemporary social movements in theory and practice. toronto: garamond press. 200-214. pringle, rosemary and sophie watson. 1990 "fathers, brothers, mates: the fraternal state in australia." in sophie watson (ed.) playing the state australian feminist interventions. london: verso. 229-243. rhode, deborah l. 1994 "feminism and the state." harvard law review, 107(6): 1 181-1208. skocpol, theda. 1985 "bringing the state back in: strategies of analysis in current research." in evans, peter, d. rueschemeyer and t. skocpol, bringing the state back in. new york: cambridge university press. 3-37. 1 992 protecting soldiers and mothers. the political origins ofsocial policy in the united states. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. watson, sophie. 1990 'the state of play." in sophie watson (ed.) playing the state. a ustralian feminist interventions. london: verso. 3-20. alternate routes, volume12, 1995 yeatman, anna 1990 bureaucrats, technocrats, femocrats. essays on the contemporary australian state. sydney: allen & unwin. young, iris marion. 1990 justice and the politics ofdifference . princeton, new jersey: princeton university press. 156-191. {2> 12 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages introduction: raising wages stephanie luce1 nick hanauer is a venture capitalist and a tech-billionaire, based in seattle, washington. in june 2015, mr. hanauer traveled to new york city to testify in favor of the state raising wages to $15 per hour for fast good workers. when asked why he made the effort to make the trip, hanauer proclaimed, “this is the issue of our times.” his argument is that if employers don’t significantly raise wages, we will continue to be plagued by growing inequality, and there won’t be enough consumers to buy u.s. products. hanauer also warns that unless wages are raised, political instability is likely. he writes, “…if we adjust our policies in the way that, say, franklin d. roosevelt did during the great depression – so that we help the 99 percent and preempt the revolutionaries and crazies, the ones with the pitchforks – that will be the best thing possible for us rich folks, too. it’s not just that we’ll escape with our lives; it’s that we’ll most certainly get even richer” (hanauer, 2014). this story highlights the extraordinary moment for the movement to raise wages. a growing number of voices, some from very unexpected places, are highlighting the ways in which persistent inequality is bad for the economy – not just low-wage workers and their families. in just a short while we have seen the mainstream in the economics discipline and policy arena shift from a neoliberal view to a version of keynesianism. whereas 20, or even 10 years ago, we heard that raising wages would lead to job loss and inflation, today, tech billionaires to the international monetary fund are worried about low wages and the impact of growing inequality on the macro-economy. the demand for a “living wage” is at least as old as capitalism itself, but the modern movement to pass city and state living wage and minimum wage legislation has been underway in the u.s. for the past 20 years. activists in canada, the uk, australia, new zealand, japan, among other places have also engaged in related efforts to raise wages. in 1. stephanie luce is professor of labor studies at the murphy institute, city university of new york. she is the author of fighting for a living wage, and labor movements: global perspectives and co-author of the living wage: building a fair economy, and the measure of fairness. this article is based on her talk at the 2015 phyllis clarke memorial lecture, and as part of alternate routes’ 2015 conference keynote address at ryerson university. the presentation is available at http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/pages/view/labour%20pains introduction: raising wages | 13 this paper i will discuss the context for the current wave of wage campaigns, including the common arguments some economists and policymakers have used to explain low wages and inequality. i will then review the various kinds of wage campaigns, their similarities and differences. i then evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these efforts to improve wage standards. inequality, poverty and policy inequality is on the rise, reaching historic levels in many wealthy countries. but it is also an increasing problem in many global south countries. in rich and poor countries we see growth in wages and wealth at the top of the distribution and little, or at least less, at the bottom. in some countries, among some segments of the labor force, we have even seen wages fall in real terms. this persistent and growing inequality within and between countries is evidence that many tenets of the neoliberal vision are flawed. in fact it is possible to have growing gdp alongside stagnant wages and even persistent poverty. even where large numbers of people are moving out of poverty, such as in china, there is still be growing inequality. for a while, many economists and policymakers explained the growing inequality was a consequence of changing technology, globalization, and “skill mismatch” (workers failing to learn new skills required to obtain science, technology, engineering and math jobs). but this explanation does not hold up under close scrutiny and while it may explain some of the inequality it fails to explain it all. in recent years, analysts have pointed to other factors, including institutional factors (everything from weak labor laws to trade agreements), to the decline in union density. in early 2015, the international monetary fund released a report stating that they too had been wrong to keep arguing that globalization and technology were the main drivers of inequality, and their new research showed that the decline in union power was a significant factor (jaumotte and buitron, 2015). inequality does not have to necessarily imply low wages but in most cases, they go together. in fact, some might argue that low wages are not just a coincidence but integral to a highly unequal society. high-income workers demand services that employ low-wage workers, such as restaurants, tourism, retail, and personal services. and even those that are considered “middle class” may in fact depend on the existence of low wage service workers to make their own work/life balances possible. for example, it would be impossible for many middle class women to participate fully in the labor market if they did not have access to 14 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages affordable childcare. of course, this does not necessarily require these kinds of jobs to be low wage: in fact, there are higher wage child care and retail and restaurant jobs in some countries. but particularly in the u.s., and in many countries, these are mostly low wage. low wages are also one of the fundamental planks of neoliberalism. the theory rests in part on the notion of freeing up investors to engage in economic activity with little restriction. this is one way to create a “friendly business climate” and attract and retain capital. this involves deregulating (or reregulating) labor markets, keeping wages low, and shifting the risks and costs of the employment relationship from the employer to the employee. some common methods for this include the move to “just-in-time” scheduling where employers put employees on oncall shifts. workers may be hired on “zero-hours contracts” with no guaranteed work at all, or on contracts with few stable secure hours. instead they must call the employer the night before, or morning of, a scheduled shift to see if they are needed. or, they may come into work but be sent home early if the work is slow. in these cases, workers are not paid for the time they wait, or the time that they had kept free for work. this practice is common in low-wage service work, such as retail and food service. but it is also found in higher-wage jobs and professional occupations, such as adjunct faculty. employers in the high-tech, legal, and health care have moved toward hiring workers on a part-time basis, or contracts of limited duration – or even classifying them as independent contractors rather than employees. this allows them to evade a host of labor and employment laws, and it also allows them to reduce the commitment to regular hours and salaries. if there is any uncertainty due to poor weather, low sales, low enrollment, slack markets, the employee now bears the burden. low wages and inequality are not just a problem for low wage workers. the evidence is mounting that these are also a problem for the macro-economy. workers need income to engage in consumer spending. inequality and poverty are potential causes for social unrest and labor strife. commentators from thomas piketty to pope francis are highlighting these problems. the fight to raise wages in response to growing inequality is the move to raise wages for the lowest-paid workers. the u.s. established a federal minimum wage as part of the fair labor standards act in 1938. this set an hourly wage but did not base it on a formula or methodology, and did not include any provisions for increasing the wage level as the cost of living rose. not all workers are covered by the minimum wage, and some tipped workers are introduction: raising wages | 15 covered by a much lower minimum wage. states can set their own minimum wages at or above the federal level. some states also allow cities or counties to set their own wages, but that right is uneven and contested (for example, the state of louisiana took away that right from cities in 2002 after the city of new orleans passed its own citywide minimum wage). states can also expand the number of workers covered by the minimum wage in the state. seven states have eliminated the lower wage for tipped workers – meaning that tipped workers are entitled to the same state minimum wage as other covered workers. in addition to minimum wage laws, over 130 cities and counties across the country passed “living wage” laws in the past 20 years. these vary somewhat, but typically apply to firms that hold service contracts with the city or receive economic development subsidies. some also apply to firms that operate on city-owned property. for example, the mcdonald’s in the los angeles airport has been required to pay a living wage to its employees under the los angeles living wage ordinance since 1997. for much of the 1990s and early 2000s activists built broad labor-community coalitions to push their cities and states to pass living wage ordinances and raise state minimum wages. eventually the federal government raised the minimum wage in 1998, and then again in 2006. but since it was not raised by much and not indexed to inflation it was not long before the rate was low again. activists continued to push for higher wages and more expansive coverage. but by 2008, and in the years immediately following the “great recession” it appeared the movement had run its course. a new york city coalition was attempting to expand the city living wage ordinance to mandate that firms receiving economic development subsidies would be required to pay their employees $10 per hour. but the democratic speaker of the council refused to even let the issue come up for a vote, fearing that such a bill would be bad on the business climate. by 2010, all signs suggested that the living wage movement was over. the movement rebuilds in september 2011 occupy wall street came on the scene, capturing the public attention in a way that earlier, similar protests did not. somehow, the concept of the 99% and the 1% caught on and media mentions of inequality skyrocketed (milkman, luce and lewis, 2013). within a few months the new york city council scheduled a hearing on the living wage bill, and passed in soon after. and while the occupy movement was soon kicked out of parks and lost momentum, its impact was not lost on activists from various sectors who were inspired to take bigger risks and make bolder demands. in the spring and summer of 2012, 16 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages workers at warehouses servicing walmart in illinois and california went on strike against poor working conditions. they won some of their demands. in november 2012, the united food and commercial workers called for strikes at walmart stores on “black friday,” the shopping day held the day after the american thanksgiving. some workers, and community allies, joined in at rallies at walmart stores around the country. earlier in the month, that same november 2012, the service employees international union, along with some community organizations, helped fast food workers engage in a one-day strike in new york city. the workers demanded $15 per hour and a union. soon, the strikes spread to more cities. by 2014 there were strikes in over 190 cities. in the context of occupy and strikes, a labor-community coalition in the small town of sea-tac, washington decided to put an initiative on the ballot to establish a citywide minimum wage of $15 per hour. the measure won. at the same time, an openly socialist candidate ran for and won a seat on the city council in seattle, washington, and soon that city passed a $15 minimum wage as well (phased in over several years). by mid-2015, the wage movement in the united states had blossomed. whereas only three cities had citywide minimum wage laws in 2011, over 30 cities had passed citywide or significantly increased their wage in 2012-2015, including san francisco, california and emeryville, california all setting wages of $15 or more. a dozen more campaigns are underway. in addition 14 states raised their wage in 2014, including four republican dominated states where voters passed ballot initiatives to raise and index the wage. as of 2015, 29 states plus the district of colombia have state rates above the federal. the call for a $15 hour wage is remarkable, given that this occurred while the federal minimum wage is $7.25, and not long after the democratic new york city council would not even consider a $10 living wage for economic development recipients. there are different stories behind how the $15 amount was chosen, but according to fast food organizers, there was a meeting of fast food workers to establish demands. the workers thought the $10 living wage rate was too low, but the $20 rate would be hard to win, so they settled on $15. there is no magic formula or methodology behind it but somehow the number stuck, helping to launch a national “fight for fifteen” movement. explaining the upsurge it is not possible to explain the reasons why the current wage movement is having such success, but i offer a few hypotheses. as mentioned above, occupy wall street helped galvanize and sharpen public introduction: raising wages | 17 outrage about rising inequality and the weak economy. but it also helped unions and community organizations see that it might be worth taking a bold risk. rather than spending resources hiring public relations strategists, conducting polls with voters, and testing slogans, the occupy movement launched a campaign with no demands, no clear strategy, and no focus group testing. veteran organizers took note. second, the wave of strikes at walmart warehouses, black friday, and fast food restaurants brought increased public attention to the issue of low wages and inequality. the organizations involved in the strikes had also participated in occupy to some extent, in some cases advising occupy activists on strategy. unions have a lot of restrictions on their ability to strike: most unions agree to a no-strike clause during the life of their contract. they also are subject to labor laws that govern what counts as a legitimate strike and what does not. workers without unions have, in many ways, more rights than unionized workers, in that the labor laws are not nearly as strict. for example, workers without a union have the right to strike and get their job back if they are fired. as long as they are engaging in concerted activity they have the protection of the law. if mcdonalds workers and walmart employees were unionized most likely they could not have launched the strike wave that they did – or if they did, they would risk penalties. it also appears to have brought some pressure on the companies. there is no hard data on what the companies lost in terms of sales or profits due to the strike, or what they estimated the impact on their brand. but starting in 2014, a number of major companies announced that they would raise their internal starting wage. by mid-2015, approximately a dozen companies – including the gap, walmart, target, ikea, starbucks, and mcdonald’s – all committed to raising wages. this unusual move suggests the companies were feeling some pressure to raise wages. the pressure may have come externally from strikes or public opinion. it might also have been coming internally, from a growing sense that low wages could have negative direct and indirect impacts for employers. analysts showed that higher wages could lead to lower turnover and absenteeism, and higher productivity, saving companies hundreds of thousands, or millions, per year. for example, one writer estimates that costco spends about $244 million per year on turnover, or $3,628 per worker, whereas sam’s club spends $612 million, or $5,274 per employee (cascio, 2006). in addition, the upsurge happened at a time when an increasingly number of mainstream voices has begun to highlight the problems with inequality and poverty, as mentioned above. this all seems to have 18 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages coalesced in an opening for wage campaigns to take off. at the same time, issues related to low-wage work and inequality are on the agenda in many other countries. minimum wage and living wage campaigns are underway in dozens of places, and a few countries, such as germany, have recently established minimum wage laws for the first time ever to attempt to address the problem of the growing low-wage workforce (luce, 2015). higher wages as a solution? the growing movement to raise wages is exciting, and encouraging as a potential source of resistance to growing inequality and the downward trend in the standard of living in many rich countries. however, higher wage floors are not a solution on their own. many workers in low-wage jobs are in precarious employment: little or no job security, few and fluctuating hours of work. even with a large hourly raise they may still be in poverty if they don’t have enough hours of work. of course, higher wages do not help those without jobs, either because they cannot find work or because they dropped out of the labor market altogether. other workers face other problems at work: of too many hours (forced overtime), harassment, no paid leave, no benefits, no chance for promotion. the higher wages movement alone will not solve these. for these reasons, workers also need unions to enforce the legislation they win, and to address other problems on the job. fortunately, many of the campaigns for higher wages are being supported by, or even run by, unions. it has been much easier to win higher wages through legislation than to unionize so there is a big challenge to make this goal a reality. even though the gap and mcdonalds and walmart have increased their internal base wage slightly, the significant gains have come through legislation. when workers lose the power to win by withholding labor, they may need to increasingly resort to political leverage: forcing politicians rather than employers to make changes. but at places without any democratic representation, such as universities, even higher wages have been hard to win. at least in the u.s., the “living wage” campaigns have had a much higher success rate in cities than on campuses. the minimum wage and living wage efforts have also been most successful at the municipal level, where citizens have more power vis-a-vis business. once you go to the state level, and federal level, politics is driven much more heavily by money and worker movements are relatively worse off. the higher wages movement can also be problematic where it divides the “deserving poor” from the “non-deserving poor.” voters consistently support higher wages when they are put on the ballot. but voters, and legislators, also tend to approve measures that further criminalize introduction: raising wages | 19 poverty, such as anti-panhandling laws. to the extent that we support living wage campaigns in a way that rewards “hard working citizens” while punishing others, we damage the potential to build broader, more inclusive and impactful movements. another interesting fact about the trend in the movement in the u.s. is the impact of the strikes. there is no way to prove this but it seems unlikely we would have witnessed such a strong resurgence of the movement, and such a significant jump in wage levels, without fast food and walmart strikes. the strikes have likely influenced stores to raise their base wage, and influenced local politicians to raise minimum wages. but the strikes have not resulted in unions. it seems that even using a traditional labor strategy – the strike – is not enough leverage yet to win union recognition. it also seems clear that companies would rather raise their wages than allow a union. a higher wage may have benefits – such as reduced turnover and lower absenteeism; it also means more money in the pockets of low-wage workers who also overlap with the customer base. and a higher wage does not cede power in the way a union does. but without a union, workers will still have many problems on the job, and little job security. for this and other reasons, the efforts to raise wages must be paired with a broader policy and political agenda, which includes unionization, but also includes measures aimed at addressing the needs of the unemployed. one possible solution is the basic income grant, which has been tested in pats of namibia, india, canada and brazil, and in other forms elsewhere, including a new experiment in the netherlands (luckerson, 2015). other solutions include reducing the workweek to spread work among more people, which could improve conditions for those with too few hours of work, as well as those forced to work too many hours (messenger and ghosheh, 2013). the movement for raising wages can be a foundation for building broad coalitions, as the idea is consistently popular among voters. at the same time, activists should be aware of the limitations of wage standards as a solution in itself, and instead use the campaigns as a way to build bigger movements with more expansive demands. 20 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages references cascio, wayne f. (2006). the high cost of low wages. harvard business review. https://hbr.org/2006/12/the-high-cost-of-low-wages hanauer, nick. (2014). the pitchforks are coming: for us plutocrats. politico magazine. july/august. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-arecoming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html jaumotte, florence and carolina osorio buitron, (2015). power from the people. finance and development. 52(1), 29-31. luce, stephanie. (2015). “$15 per hour or bust: an appraisal of the higher wages movement.” new labor forum. 24, 72-79. luckerson, victor. (2015, june 26). “this dutch city plans to give residents a universal ‘basic income’.” time. http://time.com/3938210/dutch-basic-income messenger, jon carleton and naj ghosheh, editors. (2013). work sharing during the great recession: new developments and beyond. london: edward elgar publishing. milkman, ruth, stephanie luce and penny lewis. (2013). changing the subject: a bottom up account of occupy wall street in new york city. new york: the murphy institute/cuny. articles 22 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the corporate corruption of academic research | 23 the corporate corruption of academic research jamie brownlee1 abstract: in canada, and elsewhere, universities are becoming increasingly corporatized. this paper explores one aspect of the corporatization process: how university research has been transformed. i provide a detailed analysis of how corporate influence has corrupted academic research, from the selection of research topics, to research secrecy, through to how conflicts of interest and research bias influence the collection and release of information. as part of my analysis, i include an in-depth case study of biomedical research and academic medicine to show how the corporatization of higher education has led to systematic research bias and compromised the values that have historically defined scientific research. for universities and the medical profession, corporatization has produced a crisis of credibility in the published literature and tarnished the academy as a source of disinterested knowledge. for the public, the consequences run much deeper. i conclude by locating the corruption of academic research in the fundamental antagonism between corporate and academic institutions. keywords: corporatization, conflicts of interest, research bias, biomedical research, academic medicine introduction supporters of the corporatization of higher education present the benefits of university-industry research ties in clear, decisive terms. these purported benefits include financial support for universities, commercially valuable product development, faculty access to research and development opportunities, enhanced technological innovation and scientific progress. some even claim that industry funding and public-private partnerships enhance customary measures 1  jamie brownlee (jamie.brownlee@carleton.ca) teaches in the department of law and legal studies, carleton university. he is the author of ruling canada: corporate cohesion and democracy. 24 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education of academic quality, such as publication productivity (crespo and dridi, 2007). in contrast, i argue that the corporatization of academic research has not been beneficial for universities or for society. on the contrary, it has reduced researchers’ ability to pursue independent lines of scholarship, compromised the values and practices that have historically defined scientific and other academic research, and tarnished the university as a site of unbiased inquiry. using this position as a starting point, this paper explores how university research has been transformed – and the public interest threatened – by the corporatization process. i provide a detailed analysis, including an in-depth case study of academic medicine, of how corporate influence has, in effect, corrupted academic research, from the selection of research topics, to research secrecy, through to how conflicts of interest and research bias influence the collection and release of information. i conclude by locating the corruption of academic research in the fundamental antagonism between corporate and academic institutions, while advancing the need for radical changes to the corporate-academic research interface. selection of research topics corporate influence crosses all aspects of the academic research process, including at the outset with the selection of research topics and projects. rather than setting their own research agendas in response to social needs, academics are increasingly joining with partners from the private sector to define their research priorities. as a result, the basis for deciding what knowledge is worth pursuing is defined more and more by the criteria of corporate demand. many areas of university research have been affected by this shift. in agricultural research, for example, the influence of agrochemical companies has moved research agendas in the direction of resource intensive production technologies, genetic engineering and chemical-based pest and weed control. in the latter case, hundreds of millions of dollars are being allocated to the development of new toxic pesticides in university labs, while the study of biological control – the discipline of controlling agriculture pests through means other than pesticides – has all but disappeared. likewise, because of their dependence on industry funding, the research of most weed scientists centres on chemical herbicides rather than alternative forms of management like biological the corporate corruption of academic research | 25 control and crop rotation strategies.2 according to john mcmurtry (2009, 17), independent agricultural research in areas such as “integrated pest management, organic farming for productive efficiency, management-intensive grazing, small-scale producer cooperatives, alternatives to factory-processed livestock and avoidance of ecological contamination by genetically-engineered commodities” have been “silently selected out” of universities because corporations are not interested in funding them. the same is true in many areas of health research. in recent years, far more resources have been put into investigating the cellular/genetic basis for cancer than into environmental factors, which are now widely recognized to be key determining factors. not only are corporations unwilling to fund research into the linkages between cancers and industrial toxins, they have also made a concerted effort to suppress academic research that demonstrates any kind of causal relationship. in the same way, corporate and government funding programs have worked to redirect cancer research from causes to cures (thompson, 2008). it is often claimed that without the money and support of large corporations, universities would lack the capacity (and the incentive) to produce new life-saving drugs, medicines and therapies. the reality, however, is quite different. corporate influence has diverted academic attention away from vaccine research and diseases that affect the world’s poor (e.g., malaria, schistosomiasis, tuberculosis and dengue fever). in fact, a recent study of the top 54 canadian and us research universities found that less than 3 percent of research funding is devoted to diseases that affect the world’s poorest people. the report also notes that more than a billion people currently suffer from “neglected diseases,” or diseases that are “rarely researched by the private sector because most of those affected are too poor to provide a market for new drugs” (universities allied for essential medicines, 2013, para. 8). for commercial reasons, the vast majority of research investments by the pharmaceutical industry (and increasingly universities) focus on what are called “lifestyle drugs” – highprofit treatments for obesity, baldness, wrinkles and sexual dysfunction. of course, the impact of corporatization on academic research agendas is not limited to the sciences. in her work, laureen snider (2000; 2003) has documented a precipitous decline in social science research on corporate crime in canada and elsewhere. she attributes this decline 2  nearly two decades ago in toxic deception, dan fagin and marianne lavell (1996, 52) quoted the former president of the weed science society of american as stating: “if you don’t have any research [funding] other than what’s coming from the ag[ro] companies, you’re going to be doing research on agricultural chemicals. that’s the hard, cold, fact.” 26 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to the unwillingness of private sponsors and governments to fund this type of research, and to political pressures both inside and outside of the academy. in some ways, academics may be viewed as victims in this process. university researchers are under intense pressure to secure outside funding and many would be unable to continue their research programs without such support. a recent survey by researchers at the ontario institute for studies in education, for example, found that three quarters of canadian academics said that pressures to raise external funds had increased since their first appointment (tamburri, 2012). furthermore, the distinction between research choices made out of scholarly interest and those made because of funding availability is not an easy one to draw. many academics believe they are engaging with particular topics out of their own free choice when in reality they are often “adjusting their curiosities” to match the interests of available sponsors. according to jeff schmidt (2000), many funders are aware that they can arouse the necessary interest in academic circles without formally dictating research priorities. on the other hand, academics are also active participants in the selection of their areas of research. the fact that so many of them acquiesce to (or embrace) corporate lines of research suggests a high level of conscious complicity. as claire polster (2000, 30) explains, many canadian scholars freely admit to doing “whatever it takes” to strengthen their granting performance, including “switching their research topics to well-funded areas in which they often have lesser expertise.” in sum, although corporate-university ties may reduce the ability of some academics to engage in alternative or critical research agendas, the selection of research topics are moral and political choices that cannot simply be blamed on financial necessity or the demands of funders. research secrecy universities have traditionally been an important source of the knowledge commons, which jennifer sumner (2008, 193) defines as “cooperative human constructions that protect and/or enable universal access to the life good of knowledge … this knowledge is shared, not privatized, packaged, priced, and profited from.” similarly, david bollier (2002) describes the academy as a “gift economy.” the gift economy of academia presumes that research and scholarly resources are produced in accordance with publicly articulated purposes, and supported by the free production and circulation of the corporate corruption of academic research | 27 knowledge, both within and outside of the university. for bollier, gift economies are “potent systems for eliciting and developing behaviors that the market cannot,” such as honesty, information sharing and mutual collaboration (30). in their seminal work on the scientific enterprise, robert merton (1973) and michael polanyi (1969) reached similar conclusions about the nature of academic research. both argued that the products of research should be open and shared and that researchers should be primarily disinterested or motivated by a commitment to advance knowledge rather than personal or financial gain. these are not simply proscriptions for the way academics ought to behave; rather, the open and disinterested nature of academic inquiry is precisely what makes it so innovative. as jennifer washburn (2005, 195) explains, the system “does a remarkably good job of speeding the creation of new discoveries, hastening public disclosure, and enabling peers to evaluate and replicate new research findings to ensure their accuracy – all of which helps to broaden the stock of reliable public knowledge that is available for future research and innovation.” these concepts – of knowledge commons and gift economies – are idealized terms. research secrecy has always had a place in academia, as some professors have always been reluctant to share ideas out of fear that they will be appropriated by others. nonetheless this practice runs counter to academic ideals and has increased under corporatization.3 one of the ways that corporatization has fostered academic secrecy is through the creation of a more competitive, utilitarian and performance-based research culture. for example, as publication productivity becomes more important for academic appointment and promotion there are fewer incentives for collaboration and knowledge sharing among researchers. the same is true for graduate students, whose phd experiences increasingly resemble competitive self-marketing marathons. and, as noted above, greater pressures has been placed on faculty to obtain external grants, which has helped to transform the university from a knowledge sharing institution to a site of competitive fundraisers. as polster (2007, 610) discovered in her research, the importance placed on grant acquisition “is reducing some colleagues’ willingness to support one another in a variety of ways, such as reading or discussing research 3  some have been particularly critical of academics who keep research findings secret. “like a lie,” writes robert wolff (1969, 129), “the commitment to secrecy sunders the moral bond between the members of the university.” a person who keeps their research secret “is no more capable of entering genuinely into the public discourse of the university than is an fbi agent posing as a student radical.” 28 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education proposals and papers. it is also taking a toll on academic collegialism and morale.”4 polster also found that there is a growing tendency for canadian academics to avoid scientific conferences for fear of disclosing valuable information and, when they do attend, these “private academics” often refuse to provide details of their research or engage in discussions that might compromise funding or commercial interests (polster, 2000). in addition to these pressures, corporate funding and public-private partnerships contribute to research secrecy more directly, including through non-disclosure and intellectual property (ip) agreements. whereas academic secrecy is often a short-term expedient to ensure publication, commercial secrecy via ip arrangements can be a lengthy process that remains in place for as long as proprietors deem it to be in their interest. in some cases, contractual arrangements can force academics to transfer the results of their research to the firms who paid for it. in others, the publication of findings may be delayed until a corporate sponsor obtains a patent on its ip. selective disclosure and withholding of data may also occur if the research results are potentially damaging to the corporate bottom line. efforts to maintain research secrecy by certain industries, such as the pharmaceutical industry, are especially harmful, with some companies using “gag orders, appealing to trade secrets, concealing [drug risks] behind a veil of attorney-client privilege, settling legal actions out of court to hide data and documents, [and] stalking and harassing academic critics” (healy, 2012, 119). a recent example of how corporate influence leads to research secrecy involved the oil giant british petroleum (bp). in the first few months after the gulf oil disaster in 2010, bp enlisted academic scientists into exclusive research and consulting contracts that were replete with secrecy clauses and barred them from making their findings public (lea, 2010). not only was bp attempting to subvert the scientific process, but it was putting measures in place to ensure it would control academic data and evidence about the disaster. this example, and others like it, demonstrates how corporate-university alliances have the potential to stifle research in the public interest. of course, it is not just the proprietary control of capital that is responsible for ip-related secrecy in higher education. it has also resulted from the autonomous initiatives and commitments of academic actors. for much of the twentieth century, academics (and universities) did not consider research-related ip as an opportunity for economic enrichment. 4  this increased emphasis on “performance” and competition in university research has been well documented at some institutions, such as the university of ottawa, where reduced collegiality was identified as one of the most noticeable consequences (chan and fisher, 2008). the corporate corruption of academic research | 29 in fact, limiting scholarly or public access by commercializing research results was regarded as a suspect practice, or worse.5 however, these ideas about the role of ip in higher education have since largely been abandoned. under corporatization, “academic capitalists” within the university have become far more aggressive about pursuing the material benefits of knowledge production, including by embracing ip agreements (slaughter and rhoades, 2004). this trend highlights the active, sometimes leading, role that professors and administrators can play in corporatizing university research. although the extent of research secrecy in canada is not well documented, this topic has been explored extensively in the us. to summarize the literature, us research suggests that researchers with industry support are more likely to (i) report that “trade secrets” resulted from their research (information kept secret to protect its proprietary value); (ii) be denied the information/data necessary to publish their results; (iii) delay publication of their research; and (iv) deny other academics access to their data and research findings (krimsky, 2003; washburn, 2005). research also suggests that graduate students may be especially vulnerable to secrecy agreements because they rely on the prompt publication of their findings in order to secure funding or employment, yet they are often prevented from publishing in a timely fashion or even from completing their projects. in one harvard study, researchers found that 88 percent of life sciences companies reported that their university contracts required graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to keep information confidential (blumenthal, causino, campbell, and louis, 1996). a more recent investigation of graduate students and postdoctoral holders in computer science, chemical engineering and the life sciences found that one in four had been denied information relevant to their research, and this was especially prevalent in research groups with links to industry (holden, 2006). to summarize, research secrecy is incompatible with academic values and has negative implications for researchers, universities and the 5  many renowned university inventors who were formally entitled to patent royalties, for example, did their best to avoid personal remuneration, preferring to channel the obligatory profits back into their laboratories. others resisted patenting altogether. for instance, when jonas salk discovered the polio vaccine in 1954 (an invention clearly worth millions), he did not patent the vaccine because he believed that no individual should own or profit from discoveries made about the natural world. similarly, stanley cohen and herbert boyer, who discovered the gene-splicing technique in 1973, resisted patenting because they recognized that their discovery depended upon the freely available work of other scientists. in short, the prevailing academic view was that knowledge should be placed in the public domain without proprietary restrictions. 30 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education public at large. within the academy, secrecy disrupts collegial relationships, reduces knowledge sharing and promotes waste as researchers needlessly duplicate work that was not made freely available. secrecy also restricts the course of knowledge production because scientific progress depends on researchers building on the findings of others. ip protections such as patents, for example, are highly protectionist and tend to stifle innovation by restricting the diffusion of knowledge both to and from universities (murray and stern, 2007; rosell and agrawal, 2009). according to mike lazaridis (2004, 2), former president and co-ceo of research in motion, “patenting is an inherently secretive process requiring its proponents to withdraw from the very processes that expand and transfer knowledge in a research university – open disclosure, peer review, and publication in scientific journals.” most importantly, research secrecy inhibits the amount of knowledge that is available in the public domain, including in areas such as food production and medicine. jennifer washburn (2005) has reported that roughly one quarter of patented inventions in agricultural biotechnology – which have been tied up under restrictive commercial agreements – originated in public institutions at public expense. the same is true of many medicines (e.g., aids drugs) and even human genes, which have been patented and exclusively licensed to biopharmaceutical companies (e.g., the gene responsible for hereditary breast cancer). as universities and academics are increasingly guided by market logic, research secrecy will continue to present a serious threat to the public interest. conflicts of interest and research bias the corporatization of the academy has brought about other changes in the university research process, including conflicts of interest and research bias. in general, a conflict of interest occurs when a person is inclined or obliged to pursue interests that compete with one another in a fundamental way. more specifically for the purposes here, conflict of interest situations are those in which financial or other personal considerations may compromise a researcher’s professional judgement in considering or reporting research results. an obvious group who are affected by conflicts of interest are senior academic economists in the us (and elsewhere) who occupy lucrative and high ranking positions in governments and/or major financial institutions. as charles ferguson (2010) observes, “the economics profession – in economics departments, and in business, public policy, and law schools – has become so compromised by conflicts of interest that it now functions almost as a support the corporate corruption of academic research | 31 group for financial services and other industries whose profits depend heavily on government policy.” ferguson adds that the build-up to the 2008 financial crisis “runs straight through the economics discipline” (para. 12). what is particularly noteworthy about academic conflicts of interests is that they are rarely disclosed. for example, one study examining 62,000 articles in 210 scientific journals found that only one half of one percent included relevant information about authors’ researchrelated financial ties, even though all of the journals formally required such disclosure (king, 1999). conflicts of interest may be especially damaging for universities; short of outright fraud, nothing is as threatening to the integrity of the university than the perception that it has been bought off. there is no shortage of scholars who, by virtue of their corporate and other connections, are affected by conflicts of interests. one of the main consequences of this conflict is the resulting research bias. in some cases, research bias results from direct corporate censorship or academic corruption. for example, one study of university-industry engineering research centres in the us found that 35 percent allowed corporations to delete information from papers prior to publication (washburn, 2005). likewise, a small minority of academics have deliberately falsified results to produce findings that accord with their interests or those of their sponsor. however, a much more prescient cause of research bias is the unconscious effect of financial benefit or career advancement. the logic is simple: researchers with a vested interest in reaching a particular conclusion will tend to weigh arguments and evidence in a biased fashion. the mechanisms though which this occurs are varied and subtle, including how questions are framed, how studies are designed, how contrary interpretations are emphasized and how conclusions are worded. complicating matters is that the vast majority of academics perceive themselves to be objective and impartial, and corporate sponsors often recognize the importance of encouraging researchers to “feel” impartial (freudenburg, 2005). in any event, a substantial body of empirical evidence indicates that even if corporate sponsors allow researchers free reign over the research process – which they often do not – projects financed by big business are far more likely to reach conclusions that support the interests of their sponsor. many areas of academic research have been affected by research bias. one of the most obvious examples is food and nutrition. researcher marion nestle (2007) has documented the extensive network through 32 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education which food companies sponsor nutrition research, nutrition conferences, food and nutrition journals and the activities of professional societies. as a result, research findings in this area often favour the interests of their sponsors. in fact, nestle argues that sponsorship almost invariably predicts the results of research into specific foods or nutrients. similarly, lesser, ebbeling, goozner, wypij, and ludwig (2007) looked at studies on the relationship between soft drinks and childhood obesity. they found that while independent studies almost always find an association between habitual consumption of soft drinks and obesity, industrysponsored studies rarely do. tobacco research offers another example of how industry funding distorts the research process. one study found that 94 percent of articles that had authors who were affiliated with the tobacco industry concluded that second hand smoke was not harmful. in contrast, only 13 percent of articles where the authors had no tobacco ties reached the same conclusion (barnes and bero, 1998). when the researchers ran a multivariate regression controlling for other variables (article quality, peer review status, article topic and year of publication), having an author with a tobacco-company affiliation was the only variable associated with the conclusion that second-hand smoke is not harmful. the basic strategy of the tobacco industry has been to use university scientists to make the dangers of cigarettes appear controversial. these companies depend on the fact that observers tend to associate academic research with independence and impartiality. of course, this is not only true of tobacco companies; “decency by association” is one of the reasons why most corporations that produce harmful products or engage in destructive practices actively seek academic partnerships. in the area of climate science, for instance, this is precisely why “academics”, and not the president of imperial oil, are chosen to deliver the message that global warming is not occurring” (gutstein, 2009, 305). the ability of the tobacco industry to downplay the risks of tobacco consumption partly resided in the extensive network of ties it had created with medical researchers (cohen, 2008; kaufman et al., 2004). although these relationships have dissipated in recent years, the same cannot be said about the relationship between academic medicine and the pharmaceutical industry. more than any other area of academic research, conflicts of interest in biomedicine are threatening the health and well-being of people around the world. the corporate corruption of academic research | 33 big pharma, biotechnology and the perversion of academic medicine historically, medical schools and researchers advanced medical science (and built their reputations) by maintaining clear boundaries between the academy and industry. in the area of pharmaceuticals, academic distrust of business ran especially high (atkinson-grosjean and fairly, 2009). in canada, this changed in the late 1980s when government support for medical research declined and medical schools embraced the pharmaceutical industry as a way to maintain a stable influx of new funds. these efforts were facilitated in 1992 by the creation of the council for biomedical and health research, which brought together the association of canadian medical colleges (representing 16 university faculties of medicine), the canadian federation of biological societies and the health research foundation of the pharmaceutical manufacturers’ association to generate public support for drug-related research. at the same time, the field of biotechnology expanded in canadian universities and set the stage for widespread commercial involvement in biomedicine. over the past few decades, the life sciences – mostly represented by biotechnology – has accounted for a disproportionate share of canadian universities’ commercial output (niosi, 2006). today, the association between big pharma, medical science and university facilities and researchers is well established. drug companies spend billions each year wooing physicians (more than they spend on consumer advertising or research) in order to generate support for their products, align medical research with corporate interests, and amass a network of well-respected consultants and lobbyists. according to one estimate, 94 percent of psychiatrists-in-training have accepted gifts from pharmaceutical firms by their third year (ferrie, 2013). further, canadian medical researcher joel lexchin (2010) notes that drug companies in canada spend between $2.4 and $4.8 billion annually pushing their drugs to doctors. these figures are not surprising, considering that doctors have sole prescription power over some 20,000 pharmaceutical drugs that generate hundreds of millions of prescriptions every year. according to psychiatrist david healy (2012, 8-9), the industry monitors the prescribing habits of doctors in the western world, and data on who prescribes what is used by corporations to shape their marketing strategies. the fact that drugs are made available on a prescriptiononly basis has put a “relatively small group of people with no training in or awareness of marketing techniques – doctors – in the gun sights 34 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education of the most sophisticated marketing machinery on the planet.”6 the pharmaceutical industry also provides hundreds of millions of dollars in financial subsidies to medical journals via the purchase of advertisements, special supplements and reprints, and it spends billions more on continuing medical education (cme) programs. the proportion of cme programs that are funded by industry has climbed steadily in recent years (elliot, 2010). sales and marketing divisions dominate corporate decision-making around the distribution of cme money because the primary goal of these “public service” programs is to push new drugs (ridgeway, 2010). through these marketing and outreach efforts, corporations have infiltrated medical schools. in the us, for example, one survey found that nearly two thirds of department heads at medical schools and teaching hospitals had financial or other ties to industry (mangan, 2007). according to the new england journal of medicine, a national sample of over 3,100 us physicians revealed that 94 percent were involved with drug companies and 28 percent were paid consultants for the industry (campbell et al., 2007). a further set of connections involves the millions of clinical trials for drugs and other medical treatments that are conducted in academic medical centres around the world. industry funds approximately 70 percent of all clinical trials and 70 percent of these are run by contract research organizations that produce data that is wholly owned by their sponsors (sismondo, 2009a). although clinical trials are ostensibly “research” activities, a large proportion amount to marketing exercises and commercial product testing. remarkably, even members of institutional review boards and committees, whose job it is to “police the researchers” and protect human participants in medical trials, have extensive conflicts of interest because of their relationships with the drug industry (brainard, 2006; campbell et al., 2003). a recent study of 288 panel members responsible for clinical practice guidelines in canada and the us found that over half of these individuals had financial conflicts of interest (neuman, korenstein, ross and keyhani, 2011). as this cursory review makes clear, a myriad of potential conflicts and inherent tensions are involved in the relationship between corporations, the medical profession and biomedical researchers. in fact, medical journal editors now frequently complain that they can no 6  for example, healy notes that marketers have learned to distinguish between “high-flyers,” “sceptical experimenters,” “rule-bound” and “silent majority” doctors (55). each of these groups is targeted differently by marketers in an effort to direct the prescribing habits of physicians. the corporate corruption of academic research | 35 longer find academic experts without conflicts of interest.7 the most common conflicts are financial in nature; these range from the provision of “hands-off” corporate sponsorships to situations where researchers hold a personal financial stake in their research outcomes. the latter case is especially troublesome, yet surprisingly common. in his seminal study, sheldon krimsky and his colleagues (1996) looked at the industry connections of the authors of 789 scientific papers published by 1,105 researchers in 14 major life science and biomedical journals. the study found that 34 percent of the articles (267) had at least one lead author with a financial interest in the outcome of the research (not one article disclosed this interest).8 moreover, the 34 percent figure likely underrepresented the actual level of conflict of interest because the researchers were unable to account for certain variables, such as authors who received consulting fees from companies involved in commercial applications of their work. shortly after the release of krimsky’s findings, the leading life sciences journal nature published a statement in which it acknowledged that financial conflicts of interests were common in biomedical research, but asserted that this was of little consequence. according to the journal, krimsky’s study provided no evidence that the “undeclared interests led to any fraud, deception or bias in presentation, and until there is evidence that there are serious risks of such malpractice, this journal will persist in its stubborn belief that research as we publish it is indeed research, not business” (avoid financial ‘correctness,’ p. 469). since nature’s aggressive rejoinder, an abundance of evidence has been accumulated supporting the hypothesis that corporate funding and conflicts of interest are associated with research bias in the medical field. this pattern holds not only for research where investigators have a personal stake in the outcome, but for industry-sponsored studies more broadly. for example, mildred cho and lisa bero (1996) found that 98 percent of drug studies funded by pharmaceutical companies reached 7  ellen schrecker (2010) recounts an incident where the new england journal of medicine decided to ban authors with a financial interest in any company (or its competitor) that made a product discussed in the author’s work. it eventually had to add the word “significant” because the editors could find only one submission over the previous two years that complied with the requirement. likewise, the canadian medical association journal attempted to implement a similar conflict of interest policy but the editors could not find enough qualified researchers that did not have ties to drug companies. for additional examples, see washburn (2005: chapter 5, note 9). 8  “financial interest” in this study included (i) serving on a scientific advisory board of a biotechnology company that develops products in the area related to the scientist’s research; (ii) holding a position as an officer, director or major shareholder in a company whose products are related to the scientist’s research; and/or (iii) possessing a patent or a patent application closely related to the scientist’s work. 36 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education favourable conclusions about drug safety and efficacy, compared with 79 percent of studies not funded by industry. another investigation found that studies of cancer drugs funded by drug companies were nearly eight times less likely to reach unfavourable conclusions compared with similar studies funded by non-profit organizations (friedberg, saffran, stinson, nelson and bennett, 1999). similarly, medical researchers in toronto reported a strong association between purported drug safety and financial conflicts of interest (stelfox, chua, o’rourke and detsky, 1998). more specifically, they found that 96 percent of authors whose findings supported the safety of a particular class of drugs had a financial relationship with the drug manufacturers, compared with 60 percent of “neutral” authors and 37 percent of authors who were critical of the drugs’ safety. more recently, several meta-analyses of the biomedical literature have provided compelling evidence about the linkages between industry funding and research bias. the first by justin bekelman, yan li and cary gross (2003), looked at research published over a twenty-three year period on the extent, impact and management of conflicts of interest in biomedical research. they found a strong and consistent correlation between industry sponsorship (mainly, but not all pharmaceutical) and pro-industry conclusions. in a similar review, lexchin, bero, djulbegovic and clark (2003) found that studies funded by pharmaceutical companies were far more likely to have outcomes favouring their sponsors than studies sponsored by other organizations, and that “systematic bias” favours products that are made by companies funding university research. some years later, sergio sismondo (2008) found that 17 out of 19 studies investigating the effects of drug company sponsorships showed an association (usually a strong association) between industry sponsorship and pro-industry conclusions.9 taken together, these studies illustrate the impact of corporate power in academic medicine and the important differences between publicly funded versus privately funded research. it should be noted that in addition to research bias, outright research fraud is also on the rise. one recent review of survey research on scientific misconduct found that falsifying data is far more common than 9  within this larger review, sismondo (2008) reports that of 100 articles published in the pulmonary/allergy literature, 98 percent of articles sponsored by drug companies reported findings that were favourable to the drug being studied (compared with 32 percent of other articles). moreover, in a sample of 542 articles on clinical trials in psychiatry, 78 percent of sponsored studies favoured the sponsor’s drug versus only 48 percent of those without industry sponsorship. the corporate corruption of academic research | 37 previously estimated, and that this form of misconduct is reported most frequently in the case of medical and pharmacological research (fanelli, 2009). approximately one third of respondents in the study admitted to some form of questionable research practice, such as altering the research design, methodology or results in response to pressures from funders. more evidence of biomedical fraud came to light in 2012, when a team of 100 scientists tried to replicate the results of 53 of the most widely cited cancer research papers. this effort resulted in only six research studies being validated, while the rest could not be replicated. many of the studies were apparently bogus (sharav, 2014). “shockingly,” writes medical journalist helke ferrie (2013, 284), “this was not pharma-generated junk science, but came from university researchers who misled companies wanting to use their research for new cancer drugs. indeed, there is no honour among thieves.” these studies of research fraud support the growing consensus that big pharma funding and partnerships in academic medicine is distorting scientific evidence to promote commercial interests. corporate funding and conflicts of interest help to explain the preponderance of research bias in academic medicine, but it is not the whole story. under corporatization, academics are increasingly ceding control over every stage of the clinical research process. ghost-writing and ghost-management within the biomedical literature, corporate employees routinely write “academic” papers that emerge from corporate-sponsored research. this practice – often referred to as “ghost-writing” – generally works as follows: when research results are ready to be written up, a corporation’s marketing department will contract with medical writers from a public relations or “medical communications” firm to produce a manuscript. after several drafts have been completed, the manuscript is then inspected by the company’s marketing and legal departments for approval. it is usually around this time that an academic “author” will inspect and sign off on the article. when the article subsequently appears in a pre-selected journal, the ghost-writer(s) either disappears or is subtly acknowledged as providing some form of editorial assistance. frequently, the academic who assumes authorship will not have had access to the data on which the study is based and, in some cases, is simply paid to have his or her name appear on the publication. the compensation rates for professors who participate in ghost-writing generally range from $1,000 to $2,500 per article; however, payments 38 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education can be as high as $10,000, especially if the writer presents the findings at conferences or in medical education lectures (elliot, 2010; krimsky, 2003). meanwhile, professional ghost-writers are often paid between $10,000 and $20,000 per article and have annual salaries that can exceed $100,000 (mirowski and van horn, 2005; schafer, 2004). how prevalent is ghost-writing in the medical literature? given the inherent secrecy of the process, firm data are not available. evidence suggests, however, that the practice is commonplace, and even extends to medical textbook publishing (e.g., basken, 2009; lacasse and leo, 2010; wilson, 2010). in fact, according to one study, the majority of articles on lucrative pharmaceutical drugs in leading medical journals are likely to be wholly or partially ghostwritten (healy and cattell, 2003). it is important to note that many ghost-writing campaigns are launched (or continue) after evidence of dangerous or deadly drug side effects are produced. examples include wyeth (now part of pfizer) and the hormone replacement drugs prempro and premarin (breast cancer, heart disease, stroke); eli lilly and the antipsychotic drug zyprexa (obesity and diabetes); and glaxosmithklein and the antidepressant paxil (suicidal ideation in children) (elliot, 2010). healy has even suggested that in some areas – such as on-patent drugs and the safety/effectiveness of antidepressants for children – virtually all of the published literature includes material that is authored by medical writers or pharmaceutical company personnel (fine, 2009; healy, 2008; 2012). it follows that studies of antidepressants in children “offer the greatest known divide in medicine between what published reports in the scientific literature say on the one side and what the raw data in fact show” (healy, 2012, 149). as healy documents, what the studies say is that these drugs are remarkably safe and effective. in contrast, the data show that children are killing themselves at a much higher rate while they are on some of these drugs. for years, psychiatric drugs prescribed to children and adolescents have been associated with a long and adverse list of physical and emotional effects (whitaker, 2010). if medications that carry a high risk of disability and death in children are considered fair game for this kind of corporate-academic fakery, it would appear that there are few, if any, limits. as disturbing as these practices are, ghost-writing is only one part of an increasingly sophisticated system of “ghost-management” in medical research (sismondo, 2007; 2009b). ghost-management refers to the broader phenomenon whereby drug companies and their agents direct and shape the entire research process, from funding and design to publication and promotion. this process often begins before the onset of the the corporate corruption of academic research | 39 research trials when company officials, in consultation with “publication planning” companies, shape the research design. the corporations participating in these networks sometimes manipulate trial design in ways that escape detection by peer review processes, including by conducting a trial drug against a treatment known to be inferior, excluding placebo responders, and testing a drug against too low a dose from a competitor’s drug (smith, 2005). many companies also conduct multicentre trials and artificially select for results that are favourable to their interests. in fact, 30 to 40 percent of clinical trials are never reported on because they fail to produce the “correct” results (healy, 2012; kirsch, 2010). before and during the trials, the corporate network will select target journals and audiences, anticipate peer-review criticism and identify which academics (ideally key “opinion leaders”) are going to be included as authors. some of these opinion leaders – who are often considered the most distinguished in the field – are creations of the pharmaceutical industry. in part, this is because they are repeatedly selected for ghost authorship, meaning their names may appear on 800 to a 1000 articles (healy, 2012). in addition to these recruitment efforts, industry can also fund their research and travel, make them investigators on clinical trials, put them on scientific programs, and arrange for them to present at continuing medical education events (elliot, 2010). it is especially important for publication planners to get involved early if “there is a need to create a market or to create an understanding of unmet need,” otherwise known as “disease mongering” or “selling sickness” (sismondo, 2009b, 177). a well ghost-managed publication may also include the targeting of conferences and professional meetings where results can be advertised, and the development of other communication opportunities such as “symposia and round-tables, journal supplements, advisory board meetings, slide programs, formulary kits, and more” (sismondo, 2009b, 176). the size of the publication planning industry continues to grow. over 50 different agencies now openly advertise publication planning services, and many of them boast of having hundreds of employees who handle hundreds of manuscripts each year. in fact, the industry is large enough that two international associations of publication planners exist to organize seminars and meetings (the international society of medical planning professionals, and the international publication planning association). according to sismondo (2009b, 172), up to 40 percent of “important journal reports of clinical trials of new drugs (and, more anecdotally, perhaps a higher percentage of meeting presentations on clinical 40 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education trials) are ghost-managed through to publication.” as a result, not only are most published reports of clinical trials likely to be ghostwritten in some way, but roughly a quarter of published trials are altered so that a negative result for a drug will have been transformed into evidence that the drug is effective and safe (healy, 2012). the large number of medical writing and medical education and communication firms, whose tasks are generally limited to ghost-writing and preparing presentations, may be viewed as adjuncts to the more sophisticated work of publication planners. medical journals should not be seen as dupes in this process, as many editors have extensive dealings with medical writers and publication planners and are fully aware of the process. ghost-management and publication planning have as a primary goal the extraction of monetary value from scientific research. needless to say, they amplify research bias because commercial interests are involved at virtually every stage of the research process. these practices should not be seen as a breakdown of ethical standards or editorial oversight; on the contrary, this is a well-organized industry that forms an integral part of the corporate production of knowledge. assessing the impact the corporatization of academic medicine has had a profound impact on researchers, universities and the public. for researchers, it has reduced their ability to pursue independent lines of scholarship, increased restrictions on academic freedom and, in some instances, resulted in severe consequences for scholars who defy this corporate-university complex. the high profile cases of nancy olivieri and david healy in canada, the details of which have been amply documented elsewhere, are cases in point.10 for universities and the medical profession, it has produced an unprecedented crisis of credibility in the published literature and severely tarnished the academy as a source of unbiased research. the public impact, however, goes much deeper. for one, underwriting the 10  for firsthand accounts, see olivieri (2000) and healy (2008). for useful overviews, see schafer (2004) and woodhouse (2009: chapter 3). what was most disturbing about the two cases was not the behaviour of the drug companies but the behaviour of the university. when olivieri and healy were removed from their positions at the university of toronto, university and hospital officials failed to recognize – or, at least, failed to acknowledge – that their actions represented outrageous violations of academic freedom. the treatment of olivieri was especially heinous. professor margaret somerville, founding director of the faculty of law’s centre for medicine, ethics and law at mcgill university, has stated that the olivieri case “reads like a horror story on the involvement of corporations in universitybased research” (as cited in woodhouse, 2009, 109). both cases would eventually become flashpoints for larger political debates about whistle-blowers and the influence of corporate money in academic medicine. the corporate corruption of academic research | 41 costs of drug research is a costly venture. canadian taxpayers pay most of the costs of discovering and developing new drugs, and they pay again as consumers for mass marketed treatments that offer little or no benefit. evidence from france and canada suggests that no more than 15 percent of new drugs represent any significant therapeutic advantage over those that already exist (lexchin, 2010). likewise, some widely used drugs such as antidepressants have been shown to be only marginally more effective than placebos (kirsch, 2010). there are also severe risks associated with corporatized medical research. not only are violations of human research protection rules on the rise, but there is reason to believe that adverse trial events are increasingly treated as “confidential commercial information” and never made public (washburn, 2005). as well, the many drug scandals that have erupted in recent years illustrate the human toll that can result from corporate sponsorships, compromised clinical trials, research bias and data suppression. in the case of vioxx, for example, millions of people took the drug before it was exposed as causing a serious risk of heart attack and stroke, a fact that was known to academic and corporate researchers but explained away and eventually suppressed (schafer, 2008). one estimate suggests that half a million premature deaths in the us alone may have been caused by vioxx use (cockburn, 2012). compromised research and publishing practices also explain, in part, why hundreds of thousands of americans die each year from “correctly” prescribed drugs (starfield, 2000). using data from the canadian medical association, ferrie (2009) asserts that the comparable figure for canada is at least 23,000 annually, which represents only the incidence of reported deaths. moreover, the number of adults and children disabled by mental illness continues to rise, with some researchers concluding that pharmaceutical drugs are fuelling, rather than alleviating, the epidemic of mental illness (whitaker, 2010). with approximately 20 percent of the north american population currently consuming pharmaceutical drugs for anxiety, depression, and other ailments, and with pharmaceuticals and medicine accounting for the largest number of industry-sponsored research contracts in canadian universities, these issues could not be more pressing (council of canadian academies, 2012). while there has been some effort to address these problems on the part of medical schools and journals in recent years, most research universities and medical centres remain heavily integrated with and influenced by the pharmaceutical industrial complex. there is also increasing corporate and government pressure to reduce regulations 42 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education on drug research and eliminate independent watchdog groups.11 in the corporatized university, marketing and profit continue to replace science as heavily compromised research infiltrates the peer-reviewed literature and the “knowledge” base of physicians. conclusion: the need for radical solutions critics of the corporatization of higher education generally share the baseline assumption with those who support corporatization, which is that there is no alternative. given that they see at least some degree of market restructuring is inevitable, the goal is ostensibly to “make peace” with the market while preserving academic values and some semblance of collegial governance. former harvard university president derrick bok (2003, 176), for example, notes that corporate involvement in university research may warrant radical action, but the only viable response at this point is to “tighten up the rules to limit the damage.” these critics, who often include university administrators and faculty organizations, accept corporatization as a given and focus on adapting to market forces, balancing these forces with the public interest, and finding ways to reconcile commercial and academic values. it follows that they generally advocate targeted reforms or regulatory strategies to address the problems of corporatized research. reformist approaches call for clear rules and guidelines to “manage” the conflicts of interest inherent in corporate-university alliances and to “regulate” the contracts between researchers and business firms. in contrast, i would argue that the corrupting influences in academic research today are located in a fundamental antagonism between corporate and academic institutions. corporate-university conflict is exemplified by the differences between academic and industrial science. the ideals of academic research centre on disinterested inquiry and knowledge sharing, whereas industrial science tends to be motivated by financial gain and encourages research secrecy. likewise, academic research 11  in 2011, for example, the harper government put the interests of industry ahead of patient safety when the canadian institutes of health research eliminated its internationally praised transparency requirement for full public disclosure of trial drug results. the policy, which was just three months old when it was scrapped, required scientists funded by the agency to reveal all their raw data to the public, regardless of what they chose to publish. more recently in 2013, the internationally acclaimed therapeutics initiative (ti) based out of the university of british columbia had all of its funding suspended by the bc government under pressure from big pharma. ti had been conducting independent, evidence-based drug reviews for the bc government since the 1990s. it has been reported, for example, that ti’s work indirectly saved an estimated 500 lives in the province with its independent assessment of the drug vioxx (canadian health coalition, 2011). the corporate corruption of academic research | 43 relies on peer review and the replicability of results, whereas industrial research does not involve the same verification process. moreover, the goal of academic research is to advance public knowledge, whereas industrial research aims to produce proprietary knowledge or a product that succeeds in the marketplace. in the area of scientific research at least, the cultures and practices of these two institutional spheres are fundamentally, and irreconcilably, opposed. and, interestingly, neither institution has yet to succeed when they step outside of their respective basic functions: corporations are poor performers when it comes to knowledge sharing and research integrity, and universities are equally inept when it comes to venture capitalism and generating revenue from commercialized research. this incompatibility explains why corporate involvement in university research has had such a corrosive and corrupting impact. in the words of david healy (2012, 116-117), “insofar as commerce depends on secrecy and acquisitive self-interest rather than free communication of data and other findings, business will inevitably be as inimical to science as the catholic church once was to galileo.” in my view, these deeply-rooted institutional differences suggest that reformist approaches will not and cannot address the problems facing higher education research, and that more radical approaches are necessary. in his work, arthur schafer (2004; 2008) notes that corporateuniversity partnerships are almost “preordained” to produce research findings that favour the interests of business, meaning that the proprietary interests of corporations routinely win out and any attempt to regulate or manage conflicts of interest are destined to be ineffective. building on schafer’s analysis, i would argue that a more effective, long-term solution for addressing these problems would be an outright prohibition on corporate research funding, at least in those disciplines where the potential for harm is high. while critics of this strategy may claim that denying corporate funding on moral grounds is a slippery slope that violates academic freedom and aggravates the funding crisis in higher education, so long as faculty are not prohibited from (or penalized for) speaking, writing, teaching or researching about a particular topic, restricting a funding source does not violate academic freedom. as krimsky (2008, 94) explains, academic freedom “is not extinguished in the case that a university community takes responsible and transparent collective action, following accepted governance procedures that prohibit certain funding from entering the university.” the suggestion to prohibit corporate funding is not to suggest that other kinds of sponsored research funding never result in problems, or 44 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education that all corporate money is detrimental. the influx of private funding for applied research has, in some instances, accelerated scientific progress to an extent that would not have been possible without such support. but the harms that result from corporate involvement far outweigh the benefits. in addition, when the actual financial costs of participating in corporate research alliances are taken into account, the monetary implications of cutting these ties for universities is far less than is commonly assumed. to participate in corporate research partnerships, universities must spend significant funds to attract sponsors, build labs, purchase equipment, and support a growing number of administrators and other specialists to help broker and negotiate complex agreements. while a detailed exploration of this issue is well beyond the scope of this paper, it is worth noting that there has been some movement toward going beyond simply managing or regulating corporate-academic relationships. some medical schools have restricted ties between drug companies and physicians, and have eliminated industry support for continuing medical education. medical journals have also made some progress. the journal open medicine, for example, was formed in 2007 by former editors of the canadian medical association journal who resigned from their positions in part due to corporate threats to their editorial autonomy. the journal publishes its material freely online, has completely banned all pharmaceutical and medical device advertising, and has strict rules to prevent ghost-writing (willinsky, murray, kendall and palepu, 2007). similarly, in 2009 a collection of editors from the world’s leading medical journals openly called for “a complete ban on pharmaceutical and medical device industry funding” to professional medical associations. drawing attention to the corrosive influence of corporate funding on medical science, these experts argued that “fundamental reforms” were required within medical organizations and academic medical centres in order to protect scientific integrity, patients and “the public’s trust” (rothman et al., 2009, 1368-1372). all of these initiatives point to a growing recognition that academic medicine can and should “divest” from the pharmaceutical industry entirely, and that more radical solutions to the problems associated with the corporatization of university research are required. the corporate corruption of academic research | 45 references atkinson-grosjean, j., and fairly, c. 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(2009). selling out: academic freedom and the corporate market. montreal: mcgill-queen’s university press. book review: a new notion | 329 book review a new notion: two works by c.l.r. james by c.l.r. james, edited and with an introduction by noel ignatiev. oakland, california: pm press, 2010. $17.95 u.s., paper. isbn 978-155266-391-2. pages: 1-155. reviewed by paul whiteley1 queen’s university born in trinidad, living most of his life in the united states and in england, and an influence to marxist and post-colonial theorists alike, c.l.r. james (1901-1981) remains one of the most inspirational activist scholars of the 20th century. and also one of the least frequently read. noel ignatiev has brought together as a new notion two of james’s postwar pieces written while he was active on the american left. “the invading socialist society” (1947) is titled after a felicitous phrase of friederich engels’ socialism: utopian and scientific, and is orientated above all to workers’ struggle towards socialism. “any cook can govern” (1956) takes its inspiration and title from lenin, and originated as a pamphlet written after james was driven out of the united states by mccarthy-era persecution and state militancy. grateful as one may be to see these pieces in print, there are issues to be raised with aspects of this publication. “the invading socialist society”, by far the longer text, is credited to james and raya dunayevskaya. but grace lee boggs, the third principal of the johnson-forest tendency (the marxist-humanist splinter the text represents) is not listed even though her name (or pseudonym) was included as an author in a variety of previous editions. what is more, noel ignatiev’s introduction presents both pieces only in the context of james’s life and trajectory, which removes “the invading socialist society” from the dynamic and collaborative environment of the tendency in which it was produced. even the picture on the book’s cover represents the author more as aging inspiration to postcolonial cultural studies, rather than the much younger writer of these political pieces. 1 paul whiteley is a phd candidate at the department of geography, queen’s university. he completed his master’s in political economy at carleton university, exploring the connections between harold innis and contemporary post-humanist approaches. 330 | climate change and its discontents granted, this slim paperback is not intended as a definitive scholarly publication, but ignatiev’s edition could have served its audience better by providing some additional background. contemporary readers of “the invading socialist society” may not be aware of max shachtman – the leader of the u.s. “workers party” who developed the interpretation of the soviet union as a “bureaucratic collectivist” society – or that “germain” was the early pen name for marxist economist ernest mandel. in 1946 mandel was made the youngest member of the secretariat of the “fourth international” and, as an orthodox trotskyite, he defended the conception of the soviet union as a “degenerate worker’s state.” presenting the competing “state capitalist” interpretation, james, boggs, and dunayevskaya critique both mandel’s bias to defend of the ussr, in spite of its shortcomings, and shachtman’s tendency to endorse bourgeois democracy based on his conviction that the soviet union is the “greater evil.” encountering these texts, the reader should not expect c.l.r. james as the ruminating commentator of beyond a boundary or the energetic historian of black jacobins. a new notion presents james as polemicist, pamphleteer and above all as one believing centrally in the power of revolutionary workers: with the world socialist revolution the history of humanity will begin. and that is precisely what is already shaking the world. vast millions of men are not thinking or acting as in the old days. they are flexing themselves for a leap that has become imperative for them – the leap from the realm of capitalist necessity into the realm of social freedom. this today is revolutionary politics (p. 36). james, boggs, and dunayevskaya believed in the 1940s and 50s that workers, rather than being pawns of the capitalist system or dupes of party or trade union bureaucrats, were already engaged in the historical process of shedding their chains, equally engaged against american or soviet imperialism. they saw the potential of american blueand white-collar workers alongside those in the soviet bloc and in colonial or post-colonial settings; a striking aspect of the johnson-forest tendency was its active engagement in issues of race and gender (they were also interested in decolonization, a theme which sits at the margins of tiss). in spite of the extensive references to lenin and trotsky, the reader will find their situational analyses cited in such a way as to undermine the conception of the “vanguard party” – in one striking passage, they assert that the fourth international “is far too much governed by the false idea of lenin in what is to be done that the party brings socialist consciousness book review: a new notion | 331 to the masses from the outside” (p. 101). this willingness to critique not only the monstrosity of the stalinist experiment but also the limitations of lenin’s and trotsky’s analysis, shows the crucial role of the johnsonforest tendency in opening up alternative paths for marxist analysis and action in the mid-20th century. meanwhile, “every cook can govern” is a pamphlet which represents aspects of an important turn in james’s thought. in addressing the example of athenian democracy, he contends that direct democracy in ancient greece was instituted on the basis of popular organizing, maintained by careful institutional measures, and depended less on the institution of slavery and more on a robust, egalitarian conception of citizenship. for james, this example demonstrates that the possibility of self-management for ordinary working people – this ties together his interest in grassroots organization on the shop floor with immanent developments in the ex-colonies under a robust understanding of democracy. from a 21st century standpoint, it may seem obvious that the soviet union of the 1940s was an imperialist power, and that the alienation of workers and oppression of nationalities in eastern europe could equal their equivalents under western capitalism. however, the johnsonforest tendency continues to inspire analyses of state capitalism. it recognized the importance of gendered and racialized struggles, valorized the creative power of labour, and celebrated the capacities of workers for self-determination and self-management. in spite of the limitations of a new notion as a publication, its release must still be welcomed as a contribution to the continuing presentation of activist theory, in particular that of c.l.r. james, to new generations. chemins alternatifs queering 'madness': possibilities of performativity theory nadine j. quehl 'performance,' whatever else one may say about it, is, "an essentially contested concept" (gallie 1964, cited in carlson 1996:1). performance theory, consequently, is contested in that there are many different approaches to performance and performativity, making an attempt to understand this theory/philosophy somewhat bewildering. thomas csordas (1997:158) offers a helpful account of the three schools of thought on performance in anthropology, which he suggests constitute an "adequate" theory of performance, when synthesized. leaving aside the question of whether there are, in fact, only three approaches to 'performance,' and what such an over-simplification might mean for an understanding of this complex theory, the schools include the cultural performance approach of interpretive anthropology, the performancecentred approach stemming from sociolinguistics and folklore, and the performative utterance approach taken from the philosophy of language (csordas 1997:158-9). this essay will focus on the last of these approaches as it has been developed by judith butler, and the way csordas has included performance as 'act' into his 'synthetic theory of performance.' subsequently, i explore how one might apply this theoretical approach to the study of mental illness. origins ofperformativity theory: the "ugly word" in "performative utterances," austin (1961:220) assures us, "you are more than entitled not to know what the word 'performative' means. it is a new word and an ugly word, and perhaps it does not mean anything very much." yet we must reject this entitlement and investigate the 'ugly word' since the theory of performance i am tracing begins with his notion of performative utterance. austin (1961:222) explains that someone who makes an 'illocutionary' utterance, "is doing something rather volume 20, 2004 107 alternate routes than merely saying something." he gives various examples including the response, 'i do' in a marriage ceremony, saying 'i apologize,' christening a ship and making a bet: "in saying what i do, i actually perform that action" (austin 1961:222). 'perlocutionary' speech acts, on the other hand, lead to certain effects that are not the same as the speech act, itself (butler 1997:3). austin also draws attention to the infelicity, which occurs when a performative is unsatisfactory, as well as the forces of utterances. in addition to austin's speech act theory, performativity theory emerged out of anti-structuralist critiques made by followers of practice anthropology, difference feminism and resistance studies (morris 1995:571). butler also follows foucault, as her analyses are genealogical, tracing the processes that construct identity, and the subject itself, in language and discourse (salih 2002:10). this foucauldian approach is evident in butler's (1990:23) questions concerning identity. she states: to what extent do regulatory practices of gender formation and division constitute identity, the internal coherence of the subject, indeed, the self-identical status of the person? to what extent is 'identity' a normative ideal rather than a descriptive feature of experience? and how do the regulatory practices that govern gender also govern culturally intelligible notions of identity? a partial answer to these questions can be found in excitable speech, where butler (1997:159) cites bourdieu to suggest that the performative should be re-thought as an act that official language-users perform to initiate already authorized effects, and, "precisely as social ritual, as one of the very 'modalities of practices [that] are powerful and hard to resist precisely because they are silent and insidious, insistent and insinuating.'" while butler (1999:122) recognizes the importance of bourdieu's work, she critiques his analysis of performative speech acts; he assumes that the subject uttering the performative is fixed on a map of social power, and the performative will be felicitous only if the subject is authorized to make the performative work by her position on the 'map.' this is simply not the way that the 'social magic' of the performative is animated, according to butler. not only does bourdieu fail to realize that 10h volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs social positions are also performatively constructed, but he fails to understand that a subject's social abjection is performatively instigated from various locales that are not always 'official' discourse (butler 1999:122). moreover, by insisting that performatives will work to the extent that subjects are authorized to perform speech acts, bourdieu unintentionally blocks the possibility of agency that comes from the margins of power (butler 1997:156). butler (1999:123) argues that it is "precisely the expropriability of the dominant, 'authorized' discourse that constitutes one potential site of its subversive resignification." butler and performative power butler develops her theory of performativity in gender trouble where she insists that gender is not something one is, but something one does: "gender proves to be performative that is constituting the identity it is purported to be. . ..gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to pre-exist the deed" (butler 1990:25). this statement reveals an essential difference between performance and performativity: the former assumes a pre-existing subject, while the latter contests the very idea of a subject (butler 1990:33). butler effectively points out that since gender identities are constituted by language, there is no gender identity that precedes language. in fact, sex is performative; when a doctor pronounces, 'it's a boy/girl!,' he is not simply describing what she sees, but is assigning a sex/gender to a body that can have no existence outside of discourse. the doctor's performative utterance brings us to a discussion of 'interpellation,' by which butler means the way subject positions are conferred and assumed through 'hailing:' "to be hailed or addressed by a social interpellation is to be constituted discursively and socially at once. being called a 'girl' from the inception of existence is a way in which the girl becomes transitively 'girled' over time" (butler 1999:120). performatives, then, are both generative and dissimulating, as they compel particular behaviours by obscuring the fact that no natural sex to which gender can refer exists (morris 1995:573). so this 'girl,' once interpellated, is compelled to 'cite' the norm to maintain her status as a subject: "femininity is the forcible citation of a norm" (butler 1993:232). butler follows derrida in his use of 'citation' to refer to the ways in which ontological norms are used, forcibly or not, in discourse (salih 2002:90). 'citational grafting' occurs when one places signs between quotation volume 20, 2004 109 alternate routes marks, cites, grafts and reiterates them in ways that diverge from the speaker's or writer's intent (derrida 1972 cited in salih 2002:91). subversive practices occur when gender performatives are 'cited,' or grafted into other contexts: "the contentious practices of 'queerness' ... exemplify the political enactment of performativity as citationality" (butler 1993:21). returning to butler's insistance that the expropriability of the dominant discourse constitutes a possible site of its subversive resignification, let us explore further how this may occur. using althusser's classic example of the policeman's call, 'hey, you there!' which leads to one's subjectification upon turning around, butler notes that such an interpellation can be an infelicity. for example, the performative may not effectively enact what it names, as the subject may respond to the law in such a way as to undermine it. indeed, the law itself gives us the conditions for its subversion; when hailed, there is more than one way of 'turning around' and recognizing oneself (butler 1993:122). using spivak's concept of "an enabling violation," butler (1999:122-3) explains that the subject who opposes its construction gains agency by being involved in the power structures it seeks to oppose. or as she puts it in excitable speech: the terms by which we are hailed are rarely the ones we choose ... but these terms we never really choose are the occasion for something we might still call agency, the repetition of an originary subordination for another purpose, one whose future is partially open (butler 1997:38). this possibility of resistance is highlighted in " performativity 's social magic," where butler (1999:123-4) wonders whether using a performative 'improperly' can produce the effect of authority, and whether this misappropriation could expose dominant forms of authority and the exclusions by which they continue. in less abstract terms, she asks, what is the performative power of calling for the end to racism when the "we" who call have been disenfranchised from making such a call? what is the performative power of appropriating the terms by which one has been abused to rid the term of negative associations, or derive affirmation from that degradation, such as revaluing the category 'queer?' (butler 1999:123). the appropriated terms, however, cannot take on rigid 110 volume 20, 2004 chem ins ahematif s meanings, as the possibility of subversion lies in unstable identities and misrecognition. we should not try to solve the crisis of identity politics by focusing on who has power to define identity; rather, we must "proliferate and intensify this crisis" and "affirm identity categories as a site of inevitable rifting" (butler 1990:121, cited in carlson 1996:183). such ambivalence and ambiguity is a hallmark of resistant performance, where identities become markers in an ironic play with the goal of questioning representation itself, and asking what is at stake in the performance of identity. in the slippage between claiming an identity and questioning the cultural assumptions that legitimate that position, alternate possibilities for identity positions outside the "authenticated" ones, can be found (carlson 1996:183). this doubleness of performativity is described well by jackson's (1989:2) understanding of 'lived experience,' which, involves, "both the 'rage for order' and the impulse that drives us to unsettle or confound the fixed order of things ...accommodates our shifting sense of ourselves as subjects and as objects, as acting upon and being acted upon by the world, of living with and without certainty..." so when butler (1999:125) makes the disconcerting statement that "the performative is not merely an act used by a pregiven subject, but is one of the powerful and insidious ways in which subjects are called into social being..." we must not despair. for social performatives are also an important part of the political contestation and reformulation of subjects. performativity a la csordas like butler, csordas draws on speech act theory, although as we have noted, performance as 'act' constitutes only one part of his tripartite theory of performance. in the sacred self, csordas (1994:48) makes clear his understanding of performative utterances, when he explains that, "the prayer of command is a performative act in the strict austinian sense, an utterance in which a demon is, 'in the name of jesus,' commanded to depart. in theory, the 'saying' is the 'doing'..." in practice, however, despite the fact that demons cannot refuse the command since they are under the authority of the divinity, the performative is not always successful, particularly if the minister lacks confidence or experience. further, the performative's failure may point to the absence of spirits, and the presence of psychiatric disorder (csordas 1994:174). finding support for levin's (1987, cited in csordas 1994:272) argument that narcisvolume 20, 2004 111 alternate routes sism, schizophrenia and depression are not limited to psychiatric disorders, but are ontological facets of our society, csordas cites the charismatics' view of demonic origins in psychiatric disorder, cosmology and the self. one of the conclusions drawn is that demonology and deliverance are resources against the forces of nihilism the nothingness of the self (csordas 1994:272). these points will be addressed later as they have potential significance for treatment options of individuals with 'mental illnesses.' csordas' (1994:45) use of performativity is unique in that he also applies the austinian formula to nonverbal acts, such as 'laying on of hands' and 'resting in the spirit,' which are two of many ways of doing things crucial to the healing process. similarly, in language, charisma and creativity, he argues that the applause of loud praise actually creates charisma (csordas 1997: 145). furthermore, csordas (1997:162) argues for an expansion of the idea of the performative act to include the performance of metaphor. one way to understand the performance of metaphor is to look at another key idea: the vocabulary of motives. this term refers to a group of words with specialized meaning, which rely on one another to complete their meaning, are constantly circulated in genres of ritual language, and are strategies for action as well as inducements to action (csordas 1997:194). returning to the idea of metaphor, "through performance the motives are metaphorically predicated onto selves" (fernandez 1974, cited in csordas 1997:196). building on earlier studies that showed how performance of metaphors effects a qualitative transformation from lack of identity to specificity, csordas (1997:221) demonstrates how metaphors can be cycled back into performance with new implications for understanding motives, which creates the possibility of new metaphors. ultimately, like butler, csordas understands the performative as a social ritual, albeit one of a very different nature: the performative utterances that make up charismatic ritual language creatively transform the 'self into the 'sacred self (csordas 1997:178) while csordas (1994:276) demonstrates that healing is the creation of this sacred self, his approach is similar to butler's in that he stresses the ambiguous and elusive nature of the self: "there is no such 'thing' as the self. there are only self processes, and these are orientational processes." like butler and foucault, csordas aims to trace the processes of orientation and engagement in which people become subjectified. while butler 112 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs (1999:115) calls bourdieu's distinction between the social and the linguistic into question because performativity can be thought of as an embodied activity, csordas (1997:236) goes further in emphasizing the embodied nature of language. indeed, following merleau-ponty, csordas (1994:4) grounds culture and the self in 'embodiment.' similarly, he stresses the embodied 'otherness' of language, which creates a sense of sacred otherness, in that discourse is experienced as originating outside its speakers and giving a special message to its listeners (csordas 1997:234). applications ofperformativity theory: queering 'mental illness? ' turning from how performativity has been understood by butler and csordas, we will now reflect on how one might apply this theoretical approach to the study of 'mental illness,' or the experiences of those diagnosed with 'mental disorders.' 1 while this project may initially seem like a misguided leap, other researchers have found that butler's notions of performativity can be applied fruitfully to issues of race, as well as gender. butler (1997), too, writes of "hate speech" in terms of racism, as well as homophobic utterances. so it follows, that when one is called 'psycho,' 'schizo,' 'mental,' or 'crazy,' the utterance is performative in that one is subjectified in turning around. butler indicates, however, that there are multiple modes of 'turning around,' when one is hailed in such a way. for example, at a 1997 british conference workshop on 'positive aspects of madness' 2 a man was asked what he would do if someone called him a 'nutter.' on video camera, he replied, "i'd thank them for noticing. i am different. i'm proud of my differences they're part of me" (sayce 2000:29). such a response lends support to sayce's (2000:132-3) comment that "one can be 'disabled' and positively different exactly as one can be 'mad and proud.'" this revaluing of madness recalls the reclaiming of 'black,' 'queer' and 'cripple' by other social movements. and as butler (1997:158) reminds us, there is performative power in the appropriation of the very terms by which one has been abused. conversely, the notion that one can be both 'mad' and 'proud,' needs further consideration in light of dumont's (1983:260, cited in corin 1990:183) insistence that, "if the advocates for the difference call together for it equality and recognition, they call for the impossible." dumont is referring to the ambiguvolume 20, 2004 113 alternate routes ous nature of 'individuality,' which signals both the promotion of selfrealization and a uniform notion of what individuals should be; hence, 'identity,' 'individuality' and 'equality' are closely connected, resulting in the subordination of differences (corin 1990:183). corin (1990:183) notes that a tolerant attitude acknowledges differences and accepts or transcends them, but the attitude of north americans toward marginality is 'indifference,' which sees little value in differences. still, butler's work has been very influential in queer theory, and it may be possible to 'queer' mental illness. according to halperin (1995:62), "queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. there is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. it is an identity without an essence." queer theorists, including butler, affirm the indeterminacy of all gendered/sexed identities, and point to the subversive possibilities in destabilizing and misrecognizing identities; it is somewhat paradoxical then, that a similar performative power can be found in what can be described as an 'antiqueer' or 'normalizing' strategy. for example, schneider (2001) notes that a number of her informants stressed the 'normalness' of schizophrenia itself, and not only does such normalizing talk help individuals to create a more positive personal identity, but it also contributes to the definition and re-definition of the boundaries and meanings of the very categories of mental disorders. while butler would likely eschew such a strategy of normalization, it is significant that its effects are similar to those that butler promotes, in that 'schizophrenia' becomes an identity category marked by 'inevitable rifting,' as the boundaries are continually redefined. a few of my informants, including dee, 3 who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, queered or revalued 'mental illness' by insisting that it was not 'illness.' dee stated: i just have faith that it's going to come to light that there's a lot more happening in mental illness than it just being an illness. really, it could be part of a sixth sense that's not developed in... an understanding environment, and some day it will come to light that it's a very valuable part of the evolution of humankind. 114 volume 20, 2004 chemins altematifs and during a group interview, dee told us about a physics professor who has bipolar affective disorder. when he was manic his students wrote down his ideas, and found that twenty percent of them were intelligent and opened a new area to explore in physics. it is likely that she was referring to scott starson who was also featured in a recent article entitled, "brilliant man in an asylum fights doctors to top court" (makin 2003). this physics expert has been in penetanguishene mental health centre, located in penetang ontario, canada, for the past four years, and insists that he would rather be locked up for life than be medicated to 'improve' his life. the supreme court will decide this year whether psychiatrists can forcibly medicate starson, who insists, "here, i'm basically dealing with the bottom of your species ... your species deals with force so much. force is not the way science operates. and the worst religion on the planet is psychiatry" (cited in makin 2003). a revaluation of mental illness, is evident in starson's bitter comment during one of his hearings: "being 'normal' would be worse than death for me, because i have always considered normal to be a term so boring it would be like death" (cited in makin 2003). however, there are problems inherent in his attempt to 'turn around' in a subversive way, including the following catch-22: "if he admits to a serious illness, it opens him to being treated against his will. but if he denies it, psychiatrists can conclude that he lacks insight and forcibly treat him" (makin 2003). such a dilemma raises the question of how much agency those diagnosed with mental disorders really have to appropriate the terms by which they have been abused, as they are often positioned outside the domain of 'speakability.' starson is a physics expert with many endorsements of his abilities by other physicists, including the dean of physics at stanford university, who considers his ideas to be ahead of his time. most people affected by mental illness lack such illustrious careers, and would not likely have gotten as far as starson in his efforts to cause 'mad trouble,' to paraphrase butler. for example, the following "normalizing" strategy had the effect of causing rifts in identity: i personally think everybody has bipolar illness: some are in the middle with their chemistry, some definitely get blue, short term, some get happier than others. but in our case, we're more bipolar is or 2s or 3s, which is just a different range of it. but i think we're just a bag of water and chemisvolume 20, 2004 115 alternate routes try, eh ...and i think it's within the human range. and i think we've been given labels to all these things ... however, when his psychiatrist believed that lyle was manic, he hospitalized him against his will. two other psychiatrists assessed lyle and agreed that he was having an illness episode, leaving him to empathize with nathaniel lee: "they called me mad, and i called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me" (cited in whitaker 2002:21 1). "making it crazy: " performativity as theatrical performativity theory can also be used to address the illocutionary force of the utterance, "you have schizophrenia," made by a psychiatrist. in the interpellation, the doctor is assigning a 'disorder' to a mind that cannot exist outside of discourse. to paraphrase butler (1990:25), "there is no crazy identity behind the expressions of 'madness;' that identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results." this notion is explored by estroff, who examines the ways of 'making it crazy' in a wisconsin community treatment program. by 'making it crazy' estroff (1981:38) is referring to the fact that because clients are diagnosed and viewed as 'crazy,' they also make or produce craziness. on another level, 'making it crazy' refers to how clients' identities as 'crazy' people are the means by which they 'make it,' or survive. in other words, once hailed into being as one who is 'crazy,' one must cite the 'norm' of craziness to maintain one's status as a subject, albeit a subject who is crazy. finally, 'making it crazy,' refers to treatment: "certain processes and factors, while intending alleviation of psychiatric disorders and suffering, may perversely be stabilizing, maintaining, and perpetuating them" (estroff 1981:39). a butlerian approach would have emphasized that performative utterances can create, as well as maintain mental illnesses. still, estroff s work, which is rooted in a symbolic interactionist framework, has much resonance with performativity theory, which emerged later. for example, she points out that clients suffer, but are also capable of manipulating and maneuvering, evident in the notion that prolonging craziness could qualify clients for permanent, guaranteed income (estroff 1981:229). in a sense, once the performative utterance, 'you are schizophrenic,' is uttered, one is subjectified into this identity, but one can respond in various ways: one can 'make it crazy,' and 116 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs receive benefits by performing craziness, or one can 'make it without craziness,' which calls into question the idea that mental illness is the forcible citation of the 'norm.' estroff s main emphasis is not the illocutionary force of utterances, but by highlighting how and why craziness and normalness are performed, her work coincides with butler's (1990:xxv) theory. according to estroff (1981:229): [this theory] waffles between understanding performativity as linguistic and casting it as theatrical... the two are invariably related ... a reconsideration of the speech act as an instance of power invariably draws attention to both its theatrical and linguistic dimensions. another example of the way performativity has been used to study mental illness, can be found in orr's (2000) research. while she had experienced panic disorder in the past, she was not suffering from the disorder when she 'performed' her fieldwork, as a research participant in a clinical trial comparing xanax and another drug for the treatment of panic disorder and depression. leaving aside the ethical questions about such a deceptive approach, orr's research constitutes a unique application of performativity theory. while she had not yet read butler's (1990) explanations of how performative, repetitive, bodily acts constitute the gendered body, before 'performing' her fieldwork, orr (2000:58) notes that butler's writings gave theoretical grounding to her theatricalization of the panicked body. the following understanding of how performativity can be applied to issues of mental illness is informative. orr states: gender is not the only perhaps not even the most transgressive-social identity to engage in 'cross-dressing.' the healthy body in 'drag,' impersonating the drama of embodied dis-ease, has been historically perceived as a subterranean threat to both the epistemology of medicine and the social ethic of productivity (orr 2000:58). the 'sick body,' real or performed, was perceived as a possible resistance to the performance of one's social role; however, by funneling that 'deviance' into the performative constraints of the 'sick role,' sickness also worked as social control. volume 20, 2004 117 alternate routes the attempt to perform the "revenge of the sick role" involves the wish to disrupt the workings of the dominant mental orders not by resisting the hailed identity, but by rehearsing it with a vengeance, and staging it against its rites of containment. by gaining access as a healthy body/ mind to the realm of medicalized and individualized 'cure' through performance of dis-eased submission, the sick role may incite the contagion of social dis-ease (orr 2000:56-7). butler's (1990:271, cited in orr 2000:58) project intersects with this "revenge of the sick role:" "if the ground of. ..identity is the stylized repetition of acts through time... then the possibilities of. ..transformation are to be found ... in a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style." for example, this citation of norms to undermine their essences can be readily seen in 'drag' performances. orr's performance recalls an earlier one by rosenhan (1973:251) and seven other 'sane' people, who approached twelve different psychiatric hospitals. the only symptom of abnormality performed prior to admission, was the hearing of voices that said 'empty,' 'hollow' and 'thud.' nevertheless, all 'pseudo-patients' were admitted and eleven were diagnosed with schizophrenia and one was diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder. their next task was to get out of the hospitals, and all were very motivated to do so; even though they were there as participant observers, and felt that they did 'not belong,' the researchers found themselves caught up in the process of depersonalization, which rosenhan (1973:256) suggests results from the ambivalent attitudes of fear of the mentally ill, and benevolence, in addition to the hierarchical structure of the hospitals. the illocutionary force of diagnoses is evident in the fact that while all twelve people behaved 'normally,' it took them an average of nineteen days to get out of the hospitals, with the longest hospital stay being fifty-two days (rosenhan 1973:252). while many of the 'real' patients voiced opinions that the pseudo-patients were journalists, or 'checking up' on the hospitals, the staff continued to believe that the pseudo-patients were severely mentally ill. even when released, they were labeled, "in remission," leaving rosenhan (1973:257) to conclude, "we now know that we cannot distinguish insanity from sanity." psychiatry and other vocabularies ofmotives while csordas' work initially appears limited because of his failure to deal with issues of power, there are important conceptual tools that can i ix volume 20. 2004 chemins alternatifs be gleaned from his use of performance theory. for example, his 'vocabulary of motives,' can be usefully applied to issues of mental illness. recalling the meaning of this term as a group of words with specialized meaning, which rely on one another to complete their meaning, are constantly circulated in genres of ritual language, and are strategies for action as well as inducements to action (csordas 1997:194), one can suggest that psychiatry itself is merely another vocabulary of motives. one could even compare csordas' (1997:169) major genres of charismatic ritual language to parallel genres in the psychiatric realm. for example, 'sharing' is comparable to what is sometimes known as 'group therapy,' while 'teaching' is similar to the 'life skills' courses offered to psychiatric patients. 'prayer,' then, could parallel the genre of 'confession,' otherwise known as psychotherapy that occurs with psychiatrists. there is potential for the performative power of 'prayers of command' to be used in treatment, as the successful casting out of a 'demon' could prevent fossilizing the disorder in the individual through the stigmatizing diagnostic label. levin's (1987, cited in csordas 1994:272) argument that narcissism, schizophrenia and depression are not limited to psychiatric disorders, but are ontological facets of our society, give support to an option that would ground such disorders in the social instead of the individual. 'prophecy' can refer to the diagnosis the prediction that one is 'bipolar,' for example, and that one will never be 'cured,' but will always need 'meds.' orr (2000:63-4) has an interesting understanding of how pills assume the role of prophecy in a "strange teleological spectacle," in which they are used to, "give visibility to a particular cluster of symptoms which disappear after pharmaceutical treatment, and then to confirm the validity of a diagnostic category (based on . . . that symptomcluster) by 'predicting' the effectiveness of that drug in treating that diagnosis." another vocabulary of motives may be found in the speech of those diagnosed with mental disorders. as estroff (1981) found, groups of words with specialized meaning were found in the domains of subsistence, medication and the division between 'normies' and 'crazies.' yet another vocabulary of motives may exist in the 'voices' that 'crazies' hear. the illocutionary force of these 'voices' is unquestionable, and powerfully clear in the following description of "the affliction of martin," which is believed to be demon-possession or mental illness. when volume 20, 2004 119 alternate routes martin's healer followed god's instruction to 'confront' the evil spirit to discover its identity, "it reacted violently with the telepathic message that it was going to 'knock martin out.' peggy tried to get him to sit down, but suddenly he fainted" (csordas 1992:130). csordas' (1997:234) notion of the embodied 'otherness' of language, which creates a sense of sacred otherness, in that discourse is experienced as originating outside its speakers and giving a special message to its listeners, is also relevant. the 'voices' heard by some of those diagnosed with mental disorders are experienced as originating from without, and the special messages are often strategies for action and inducements to action. csordas' (1997:221) notion of metaphors being cycled back into performance with new implications for understanding motives, creating the possibility of new metaphors, is relevant to the way some theorists are examining conditions like 'depression' and 'self-mutilation.' the cycling of metaphors back into performance is explicit in the following speculation: "can the cultural production and reproduction of the idea 'cutting' play a role in how it becomes a possible action?" (fee 2000:75). fee (2000:85) argues that 'depression' is a similarly reflexive process of identity construction, as expert knowledges are now social objects taken up as what people recognize as depression. once restricted to psychiatrists, discourses of depression are now widely available in magazines, self-help books, television shows, films, radio, the internet, and more. this cultural metaphor, then, cannot avoid being cycled back into performance: "depression... is one of many 'psychological commodities' now available for reflexive consumption.... depression is something taken up as an object of self-understanding and decision-making" (fee 2000:88). however, with this process come new implications for understanding motives, as depression also constitutes a site of selfproduction. the more we talk about (and are told) what depression is and how it affects our lives, and the more we 'perform' these metaphors, the more we add to what fee (2000:76) calls its "discursive life," and consequently, its 'performative life.' in doing so, we may also confuse normative medicalized and clinical understandings. the illocutionary force of utterances is clear in karp's (1996 cited in fee 2000:90) explanation that the feelings, perceptions, and patterns of depression are indeed real, but they, "arise and become real because they are derived to a significant extent from someone named depressed, and 120 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs thus from someone occupying a socio-cultural position." however, the interpellation can be infelicitous, as those diagnosed with 'depression,' may feel the need to continually cite the 'norm' of depression: [i] spent so much time trying to convince people that i really am depressed, that i really can't cope...now that it's finally true, i don't want to admit it... not so long ago... i was a little girl trying out a new persona, trying on morbid depression ... now here i am, the real thing (wurtzel 1995:232, cited in fee 2000:82). this statement also underscores the threatrical nature of performativity, which is even more explicit when wurtzel (1995:326, cited in fee 2000:84) explains how she had constructed a melodramatic identity: "it had, at times, all the selling points of madness, all the aspects of performance art." the problem, however, was that once she had produced this particular self, she was afraid to let go of her depression, thinking that it constituted her entire self, and not knowing how (or even who) she would survive as her "normal self (wurtzel 1995:327, cited in fee 2000:84). wurtzel' s experience with mental illness differs from that of many others who attempt to 'pass for normal,' to avoid stigmatization. the following statement by user/survivor4 leader, joe rogers (cited in sayce 2000:26) at a 1996 public demonstration, gives a sense of how people diagnosed with mental disorders have been closeted, metaphorically and literally: "twenty years ago we wouldn't have come out on the streets because we were afraid. we've been hidden away in closets and attics... well, we're not going to be locked away any more... we're going to stand up and demand our rights as citizens." while some user/ survivors find 'coming out' liberating, others face stigmatization by friends, family, co-workers and employers. on the other hand, attempting to 'pass for normal' is also a challenge if one takes psychiatric medications that cause visible side-effects. there are a number of ways that the survivor movement has attempted to 'queer' mental illness. for example, the chair of survivors speak out signed his letters, 'glad to be mad,' and this was taken up in 1998 as a slogan and linked to the notion that the user movement could volume 20, 2004 121 alternate routes become britain's next movement for civil rights (sayce 2000:31). buttons on sale at the 1995 conference of the national association of rights protection and advocacy (narpa) read, 'you bet i'm non-compliant and inappropriate/ and 'go manage your own case and get off mine,' reflecting one of the aims of the conference: to put an end to forced psychiatric treatment (sayce 2000:116). an interesting example of performative power occurred when user/survivors in philadelphia pushed for a decently resourced, single-stream-funded, managed care service for mental health, and when it was threatened, they protested in the capital building: "the governor's 'i shall have order' statements were met each time by the response 'we shall have disorder', until the user/survivor organization won its case" (cited in sayce 2000:141). just as heterosexuality requires homosexuality, and 'whiteness' requires 'blackness,' to constitute their coherence and confirm their boundaries, reason requires madness. however, reason or normalcy can be destabilized through queering, just as heterosexuality and 'whiteness' can be destabilized: "queering is what upsets and exposes passing; it is the act by which the racially and sexually repressive surface of conversation is exploded, by rage, by sexuality, by the insistence on color (butler 1993:177). one example of how 'normalcy' has been destabilized is found in the aidan shingler's unusual art, which is inspired by his experiences of madness. beneath water-filled wine glasses set on a picture of the globe, shingler (1996 cited in sayce 2000:216) writes, "i believed that the moon was directly controlling my mind ... the moon affects the oceans... and human beings are composed of 80% water. therefore my deduction was that the moon affects mind and body. during this phase i drank enormous quantities of water." viewers are drawn into the strange logic, and 'mad' thinking seems plausible, everyday, yet jarring to socalled 'common sense' (sayce 2000:216). interpellation sans speakers and problems and possibilities of performativity i have examined how one may be hailed as mentally ill, by 'hate speech' or the diagnostic discourse of psychiatrists. butler (1997:34) notes that the interpellative name can also come about without a speaker, for example, on medical records. a few of my informants had not experienced the illocutionary force of the utterance, 'you are schizophrenic,' from their nurse or doctor. however, the interpellative name did arrive, as william 122 volume 20, 2004 chemins ahernatifs explains, when, "the nurses put a brochure in my bag that said, 'face it, you have schizophrenia.'" similarly, rebecca recalled with some indignation, that a psychiatrist gave her a sealed envelope to give to her family doctor; rebecca and her mother opened the letter, which stated that she has schizophrenia. butler (1997:34) explains that in such cases, the disciplinary diffusion of sovereign power produces a field of discursive power that works without a subject, but still constitutes the subject. the subjects in question, those labeled 'mentally ill' and divested of numerous rights and privileges because of this interpellation, must be kept in mind when deciding how or even whether or not to use performativity theory to understand them. what are the implications, moral and otherwise, of suggesting that depression, or any mental disorder for that matter, is 'performative?' while the ethical implications of this approach to mental illness must be considered further, it is also necessary to reflect on the ethical implications of the way mental illness has traditionally been medicalized, individualized, pathologized, and stigmatized, as well as the ways in which the sick role is perpetuated in our society. it is also necessary to explore how performativity is applicable to this field since it is a framework that has already been taken up by some advocacy groups and consumer/survivor groups, in order to revalue differences in a more positive light. a recent article in the new york times stated that a new type of disabilities movement is arising where those, "who deviate from the shrinking subset of neurologically 'normal' want tolerance, not just of their diagnoses, but of their behavioral quirks. they say brain differences, like body differences, should be embraced, and argue for an acceptance of 'neurodiversity' (harmon 2004). those who argue that their condition includes heightened creativity refer to those who have socalled 'normal' brains as 'neurotypicals.' similarly, antze (1999:35) demonstrates how some websites for those who are affected by dissociative identity disorder stress that their condition is not a disorder at all, but another way of being human, and use phrases such as 'multiple household' and 'gift of plurality' to underline their claim to normalcy. the following statement illuminates the presence and the potential of performativity theory: multiple personality disorder arrived on the scene bearing a new identity for precisely those patients whose personal experience of selfhood was most diffuse and fragmented . . . volume 20, 2004 123 alternate routes gave them an identity based on their trouble with identity. but in doing so it opened a new site for dissociative mimesis, for a theater of identity that has led to troubling questions about the diagnosis itself. (antze 1999:36) a final example that tries to cause 'mad trouble' is the 'hearing voices network,' whose members attempt to validate and normalize the voices they hear, which they view as a site for spiritual development (blackman 2000:63). by viewing 'voice-hearing' as a normal variant of behaviour, members are able to adopt different relations to their voices leading to different ways of thinking and acting. blackman's (2000:71) concern with "the ways in which new forms of subjectivity are being created in the gaps, contradictions and silences which surround the fiction of autonomous self-hood," echoes the above comments by antze, and give a sense of the positive potential of performativity. my explication of these various groups is not intended to suggest that there is no risk of harm in applying performativity theory to mental illness indeed, such ethical implications must be assessed on an individual basis. rather than being a radical approach, however, performativity theory is already being taken up by a number of groups, and as such, warrants critical examination. returning to the question of the possibilities of performativity theory, butler suggests that subversive possibilities are found in unstable identities and misrecognition, leading one to wonder how easy it is to destabilize or misrecognize the stigmatized identities that seem to accompany the myriad of diagnoses outlined in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (2000). further, some have argued that butler's notions of the performative subject and parodic subversion would not produce the 'rifts' she hopes for; by relieving the pressure of exclusion, performativity may, "short circuit the forces that create new identities" (digeser 1994:671). and what of those individuals who have found solace in the stable identity of 'schizophrenia,' for example, those who can now claim that their condition is no fault of their own, because it is biochemical in nature, akin to having cancer. for example, andrew seemed to find comfort in the way psychiatrists had explained the nature of his condition, which he reiterated during our interview: 124 volume 20, 2004 chemins altematifs like they say, a disorder of the brain problem with some of the chemicals in the brain which affect your thinking... a physical thing there's something wrong with my brain the chemicals don't quite work right... don't know what caused it... it could have happened to anybody... such statements lend support to criticisms of butler's performativity theory that suggest that by stripping the notions of gender and sex (and in this case, mental disorders) of any essential content, an important source of unity for marginalized groups is also eliminated (digeser 1994:668). it is important to remember that misrecognition and destabilizing identity categories can occur without the explicit attempt to subvert or 'queer' the norm. indeed, as schneider (2001) has pointed out, by emphasizing the normalness of their conditions, people with schizophrenia are using a normalizing strategy, but in doing so, they also contribute to the redefinition of the boundaries of schizophrenia, itself. whether we can even speak of the 'illocutionary force' of the 'madwoman's' speech is questionable, if it is "impossible speech," as butler (1997:133) has called the words of the 'psychotic,' which are produced by the rules that oversee the field of speakability. still, there seems to be potential in the use of performativity, since a performance approach to sickness can foreground the sickening social order, while still paying attention to individual distress (lock 1993:143). an example that reflects this potentiality is orr's (2000:58) 'performance,' instigated not by her individual symptoms, but by her feeling that psychiatric discourse has abdicated the difficult job of curing, in order to chase after pharmaceutical effects. by unmasking this sickening microcosm of the social order, she was able, to a certain extent, to incite social dis-ease (orr 2000:57). there is also potential for performativity theory to be applied to mental disorders, such as 'dissociative identity disorder' (did) and 'borderline personality disorder' (bpd), both of which rest on the assumption that the 'normal' self is a unified, coherent and singular being. butler, however, has successfully deconstructed the notion of a 'self existing prior to the discursive effects of interpellation. since individuals diagnosed with did and bpd already have identities that can be characterized as 'inevitably rifting,' this 'abnormality' in the medical realm may constitute an advantage in the performative sphere. butler (cited in salih volume 20, 2004 125 alternate routes 2002:135) explains that, "the ambivalent self marked by loss is tenuous at best, but agency lies in giving up any claim to coherence or self-identity by submitting to interpellation and subversively w/srecognizing the terms by which we are hailed." agency, or as butler puts it, "something we might still call agency," may be more available to those who already lack a coherent self-identity. in contrast, it could be argued that the intense ambivalence and powerlessness following child abuse experienced by many individuals diagnosed did and bpd would paralyze these individuals rather than making them agentic. indeed, it is crucial to include the daily realities or 'lived experience' of those diagnosed with serious mental disorders, so as to avoid romanticizing either the experience of mental illness, or the value of performative approaches. however, ambivalence is also the hallmark of resistant performance, and butler (1997:156) insists that the possibility of agency comes from the margins of power, as well as locating the possibility of subversion in such unstable identities. such agency is clearly evident in the groups studied by antze (1999), noted above. few comments are required on the potential use of performativity theory in terms of 'gender identity disorders,' as butler has so thoroughly detailed the performative nature of both gender and sex. of the attempt to apply performativity theory to the study of mental illness, we could say what austin (1961:239) has said about his analysis of performative utterances: and is it complicated? well, it is complicated a bit; but life and truth and things do tend to be complicated. it's not things, it's philosophers that are simple. you will have heard it said, i expect that over-simplification is the occupational disease of philosophers, and in a way one might agree with that. but for the sneaking suspicion that it's their occupation. performativity is complex, and in applying such a framework to issues of mental illness, the complications multiply. and while i am not convinced that anthropologists suffer from the same occupational disease, (and butler certainly cannot be accused of over-simplification), this essay is clearly one example, as i have had to over-simplify the theories of both csordas and butler, in order to understand how the originary 126 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs subordinating performatives of 'madness' may be repeated, "for another purpose, one whose future is partially open" (butler 1997:38). while there are risks inherent in this repetition, there is also what butler (1997:161) calls, "the political promise of the performative," and the task of this politics is as follows: "to compel the terms of modernity to embrace those they have traditionally excluded, and to know that such an embrace cannot be easy; it would wrack and unsettle the polity that makes such an embrace." in moving toward this future that cannot be anticipated, we also move into what foucault has called, 'a politics of discomfort.' foucault's argument is ethical, as he claims that we have a moral duty to attempt to exceed the identity labels that have been applied to us. in terms of mental illness, it seems that there has been some movement in this direction, as users are articulating a model of 'social inclusion' that rejects the notion of 'fitting in' and acceptance based on ability to 'pass' as 'normal.' rather, 'madness' and other facets of mental illness are to be included as an experience that is part of our society; people who have these experiences are to be valued, and the contribution madness can bring is to be recognized (sayce 2000:31). still, this vision of the future is haunted by dumont's warning that those who advocate for the difference who also call for it identity and recognition, call for the impossible. if we can remember butler's (1997:87) point, though, that there is a disjuncture between utterance and meaning, and this is the condition of possibility of repeating the performative while simultaneously reformulating it, there is hope (as well as anxiety) that 'madness' can be 'queered.' this can occur through both linguistic and theatrical approaches, including novel ways of 'turning around,' citational grafting, new metaphors that are cycled back into performance, new vocabularies of motives, and even 'normalization' strategies that can cause rifts in identity categories. it will be interesting to follow starson's 'mad trouble' and see what results. while his mother hopes that the courts will decide to medicate her son, as he has no 'insight' into his condition, her next words of exasperation can be read in another way, one in which possibilities of performative power are rich: "he can rationalize anything. he always insists that he isn't crazy you are" (makin 2003). volume 20, 2004 127 alternate routes notes 1. for the purposes of this paper, i follow the definition of 'mental disorder' as outlined in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsmiv-tr) (2000:xxi). it sates: "a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning) or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom." accordingly, 'mental illness,' refers to the experiences of those affected by mental disorders. 2. 'madness' is the colloquial term for 'psychosis.' in the dsm-iv-tr (2000:297-298) 'psychotic' refers to the presence of particular symptoms: "in schizophrenia, schizophreniform disorder, schizoaffective disorder, and brief psychotic disorder, ... delusions, any prominent hallucinations, disorganized speech, or disorganized or catatonic behavior. in psychotic disorder due to a general medical condition and in substance-induced psychotic disorder, psychotic refers to delusions or only those hallucinations that are not accompanied by insight... in delusional disorder and shared psychotic disorder, psychotic is equivalent to delusional." it is also important to note that psychotic features can occur in major depressive disorder and bipolar disorders (dsm-iv-tr 2000:371, 383). 3. dee, and later in the paper, lyle, william, rebecca and andrew, are pseudonyms of 5 of the individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar affective disorder whom i interviewed during my fieldwork in 2001 for my master's thesis, "meanings in 'madness:' a phenomenological study of mental illness and spirituality." 4. "user/survivors" or "consumer/survivors" are individuals who have had psychiatric treatment and spoken out about the abuses of the system and mobilized to make changes so that others will not have to endure similar experiences; 'survivor' refers to the fact that they 'survived' psychiatric treatment, often including involuntary hospitalization (davidson 2003:37). references cited american psychiatric association. 2000. (dsm-iv-tr) diagnostic and statistcal manual ofmentaldisorders. 4 edition. text revision. washington: american psychiatric association. 12h volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs antze, paul. 1999. dissociative mimesis: multiple personality as cultural commentary. poiesis: a journal ofthe arts and communication. 1 :30-36. austin, j.l. 1970. "performative utterances" in philosophical papers. urmson, j.o. and g.j. warnock, editors. pp. 220-239.oxford: clarendon press. blackman, lisa. 2000. ethics, embodiment and the voice-hearing experience. theory, culture & society. 17(5):55-74. butler, judith. 1990. gender trouble: feminism and the subversion ofidentity. new york: routledge. —.1993. bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of "sex". new york: routledge. —.1997. excitable speech: a politics of the performative. new york: routledge. —.1999. "performativity's social magic" in bourdieu: a critical reader, shusterman, richard, editor. pp.1 13-128. london: blackwell. carlson, marvin. 1996. performance: a critical introduction. new york: routledge. corin, ellen e. 1990. "facts and meaning in psychiatry: an anthropological approach to the lifeworld of schizophrenics" culture, medicine and psychiatry. (14):153-188. csordas, thomas j. 1992. "the affliction of martin: religious, clinical and phenomenological meaning in a case of demonic oppression" in ethnopsychiatry: the cultural construction of professional and folk psychiatries, gaines, atwood d., editor. pp. 125-170. new york: state university of new york press. —.1994. the sacred self: a cultural phenomenology ofcharismatic healing. berkeley: university of california press. —.1997. language, charisma, and creativity: the ritual life ofa religious movement. berkeley: university of california press. volume 20, 2004 129 alternate routes davidson, larry. 2003. living outside mental illness: qualitative studies of recovery in schizophrenia. new york: new york university press. digeser, peter. 1994. " performativity trouble: postmodern feminism and essential subjects" political research quarterly. (47):655-673. estroff, sue. 1981. making it crazy: an ethnography of psychiatric clients in an american community. los angeles: university of california press. estroff, sue, william s. lachicotte, linda c. lllingworth, and anna johnston. 1991."'everybody's got a little mental illness:' accounts of illness and self among people with severe persistent mental illnesses" medical anthropology quarterly. 5(4):33 1-369. fee, dwight. 2000. "the project of pathology: reflexivity and depression in elizabeth wurtzel's prozac nation" in pathology and the postmodern: mental illness as discourse and experience, fee, dwight, editor. pp.74-99. london: sage publications, ltd halperin, david m. 1995. "the queer politics of michel foucault" in saint=foucault: towards a gay hagiography, halperin, david m., editor. pp. 15125. new york: oxford university press. harmon, amy. "neurodiversity forever: the disability movement turns to brains" the new york times. jackson, michael. 1989. paths toward a clearing: radical empiricism and ethnographic inquiry. bloomington: indiana university press. lock, margaret. 1993. "cultivating the body: anthropology and epistemologies of bodily practice and knowledge" annual review of anthropology. (22):133-155. makin, kirk. (justice reporter) monday, may 5, 2003. "brilliant man in an asylum fights doctors to top court" the globe and mail. a3. morris, rosalind c. 1995. "all made up: performance theory and the new anthropology of sex and gender" annual review of anthropology. (24):56792. 130 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs orr, jackie. 2000. "performing methods: history, hysteria, and the new science of psychiatry" in pathology and the postmodern: mental illness as discourse and experience, fee, dwight, editor. pp.49-73. london: sage publications, ltd. rosenhan, d.l. 1973. "on being sane in insane places" science. (179): 250258. salih, sara. 2002. judith butler. new york: routledge. sayce, liz. 2000. from psychiatric patient to citizen: overcoming discrimination and social exclusion. new york: st. martin's press, inc. schneider, barbara. 2001. "narratives of schizophrenia: constructing a positive identity" conference proceedings: society for disabilit}' studies 14 annual conference (june 20-23, 2001). pp. 38-57. whitaker, robert. 2002. mad in america: bad science, bad medicine, and the enduring mistreatment of the mentally iii. cambridge: perseus publishing. volume 20, 2004 131 digitized by the internet archive in 2011 with funding from carleton university, department of sociology & anthropology http://www.archive.org/details/alternateroutesj12alte alternate routes a journal of critical social research presentation and editorial policy alternate routes is a refereed multi-disciplinary journal published annually by graduate students in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university in ottawa, canada. our mandate is to make alternate routes a forum for debate and exchange amonggraduate students throughout the country. we are therefore interested in receiving papers written by graduate students (or co-authored with faculty), regardless oftheir university affiliation. the editorial emphasis is on the publication of critical and provocative analyses of theoretical and substantive issues which clearly have relevance for progressive political intervention. although we welcome papers on a broad range of topics, members ofthe editorial board work within a feminist and marxist tradition. therefore, we encourage submissions which advance or challenge questions and contemporary issues raised by these two broadly defined perspectives. we also welcome commentaries and reviews of recent publications. editorial board nicole bennett, neil gerlach, valerie howe, dominique masson, david robinson, alan stanbridge, daniel warshaw. the editors gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the carleton university community: the department of sociology and anthropology and its chairperson, flo andrews; the dean of social sciences, t. p. wilkinson; the dean of graduate studies and research, j.w. apsimon. we also wish to thank all the anonymous reviewers. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research is indexed in: sociological abstracts; the left index. © 1995 alternate routes (date of issue: july, 1995) call for student papers alternate routes is seeking submissions for volume 13, 1996. the editorial collective is interested in papers that address current theoretical and substantive issues within the social sciences. manuscripts will be anonymously reviewed by faculty members from academic institutions across the country. please use the american psychological association (apa) referencing system and keep endnotes to a minimum. papers should be submitted doublespaced and in triplicate. floppy disks formatted in wordperfect or microsoft word are required for papers accepted for publication. we also welcome responses to recent publications, book reviews and discussions of work in progress. responses to this invitation to contribute should be postmarked no later than october 1, 1995 alternate routes est a la recherche d'articles pour sa publication de 1996. nous sommes interesses a recevoir des analyses interdisciplinaires portant sur un vaste eventail de questions theoriques et substantives propres aux sciences sociales. les manuscrits seront critiques de facon anonyme par des professeurs dedi verses institutions academiques dupays. nous vous invitons a suivre le systeme de reference de 1' american psychological association (apa) et a limiter la quantitedes notes definde document autant que possible. les articles devraient etre presentes en format double interligne et en trois copies une disquette devrait accompagner le document et contenir le texte sur logiciel wordperfect ou microsoft word. nous apprecierions par ailleurs des critiques des recentes publications, comptes rendus et travaux en cours. les reponses a cette invitation devraient etre postees au plus tard le 1 octobre 1 995 (le cachet de la poste en faisant foi). address to/envoyez a: alternate routes department of sociology and anthropology carleton university colonel by drive ottawa, ontario canada alternate routes a journal of critical social research volume 12, 1995 introduction 1 papers haniid abdollahyan capital accumulation, technology transfer and the peripherilization of sharecropping agriculture in iran 3 susan dodd restitching reality: how tncs evade accountability for industrial disasters 23 todd dufresne anthropology and the invention of deconstruction: a brief survey 63 commentary wade deisman ontological gerrymandering? non-identity vs . differance, adorno contra derrida 81 feminist workshop catherine browning silence on same-sex partner abuse 95 diane enns the body deferred: reconsidering feminist approaches to embodiment 1 07 dominique masson reintroducing politics: recent developments in feminist theories of the state 1 15 book review derek blair taking our informants seriously being changed by cross-cultural encounters: the anthropology ofextraordinary experience. david young and jean-guy goulet 125 © a marxist triquarterly of theory, politics, and the everyday range we are accepting articles for the first volume of red orange that are of sustained length, as well as briefer writings to form a dossier which will deal with developments in popular consciousness and mass culture. suggested topics include... the fin-de-siecle: review of current discussions and critical contrasts with the turn of the 19th into the 20th century. fin-de-siecle post-ality, especially f.-de-s. postmodernism and f.-dc-s. postcolonialism "crime" / "health care" late capitalist culture ^cultural critique post-marxism, the new social movements, multiculturalism & identity politics today "ecopolitics" / " 'free trade' & the new world order cyncicism, alienation, rebellion, & the socalled 'x' generation social impact of new computer, electronic, & information technologies labor conditions, divisions, struggles imperialism today, especially imperialist exploitation, conquest, rivalry, and war beginning may 1995 volume 1, numbers 1-3 ...will investigate "late capitalism at the finde-siecle" with a goal of contributing to the positive development of revolutionary marxist knowledges of contemporary capitalist economics, politics, society and culture. robert a. nowlan r()bm (cbiefeditor) cymh]h (managing editor) sam barry, jennifer cotter, terri ginsberg, mark wood, & bob young (associate editors) the triquarterly will seek to produce work that is engaged in systematic investigation and explanation, utilizing these concepts: class, class conflict & struggle, ( lass consciouness, history, materiality, mode of production, forces & relations of production, labor, proletariat, revolution, socialism, communism, dialectics, ideology, theory, critique. write for subscription info, and send submissions & inquiriers to p.o. box 1055, tempe,az 85280-1055. l2l rcymbala @mailbox.syr.edu (e-mail, ftp). editor's introduction this issue of alternate routes appears at a time marked by a continuing rightward drift within north american politics. backed by recent electoral successes, the self-proclaimed 'revolutionaries' ofthe right are busily setting about to dismantle what little remains ofthe post-war consensus. they have zealously begun their project of "re-inventing" government by slashing welfare rates to pay for upper class tax breaks, repealingemployment and pay equity programs, attacking immigration and refugee policies, and abandoning the social programs and services that were designed, albeit imperfectly, to nevertheless increase the equality of opportunity amongst all citizens. the sheer scope of this recent ideological and intellectual assault has successfully drowned out many progressive voices. and as the emerging regime of privatization and deregulation gains greater hold, the few public spaces currently available for those of us committed to an alternative social vision will continue to shrink. that is why it is important for us to maintainaltemate routes as a forum in which critical scholars can present research and engage in debate that is both challenging and politically motivating. i think all the essays collected here fulfill that mandate. hamid abdollayan, a ph.d. student in sociology at carleton university, asks why underdevelopment remained a problem in iran after the economy moved from pre-capitalist to capitalist production. he concludes that chronic underdevelopment persisted in iran because of the new dominance of international capital and the subsequent penpheralization of the rural economy. susan dodd, a doctoral candidate at york university, details how transnational corporations have successfully evaded legal accountability for their negligent actions. examining the cases of the union carbide gas leak in bhopal, india and the sinking of the ocean ranger oil rig off the coast of newfoundland, dodd proposes a number of concrete actions states can take to better police corporate behaviour. todd dufresne, a graduate student at york university, surveys the appropriation (or lack thereof) of jacques dernda's deconstruction by anthropologists. dufresne argues that a better appreciation ofdernda's work can help anthropologists overcome some of the persistent debates appearing within the "invention of culture" literature alternate routes, volume12, 1995 in his commentary piece, however, wade deisman shows less enthusiasm with derrida's work. by comparing and contrasting derrida's deconstruction with theodor adorno's concept of "negative dialectics," deisman concludes that the latter's work is more valuable as he avoids the "abyss of endless analysis" associated with post-structuralism. finally, three brief articles drawn together from a work-in-progress seminar held at carleton university last year provide key insights into contemporary debates within critical feminist theory. catherine browning's article surveys the difficult issue of same-sex partner abuse and details the special problems confronted by abused lesbians. diane enns provides an insightful overview of recent feminist debates on the "body," and dominique masson challenges us to re-think traditional feminist conceptions of the "state." dc. robinson june, 1995 ottawa capital accumulation, technology transfer and the peripherilization of sharecropping agriculture in iran hamid abdollahyan carleton university changes in the chronic patterns of capital flow from the rural economy of iran in the traditional (pre 1950s) and capitalist (post 1950s) eras is the central focus of this paper. 1 i will develop the argument that chronic underdevelopment in rural areas of iran prior to the 1 950s can be attributed to the dominance of absentee landlords who transferred rural capital into the urban economy, rather than to the structural characteristics of rural economies in general. 2 the structural incapacities of rural economies to engage in the development process was an assumption that was incorporated into the iranian state's development planning by giving priority to land reform programs. as it was assumed that the rural economy was structurally incapable ofdevelopment due to the prevalence of low-productive practices, the only solution to low productivity, and consequentially, to underdevelopment, was seen to be an often radical transformation of the structure of agricultural production (e.g. kazemian, 1968, ajami, 1976: 131-7; baldwin, 1967:70). this paper will argue that chronic underdevelopment persisted well into the late 1970s because the conditions of capital accumulation that existed prior to land reform remained intact: not still, however, in the form of traditional landlord-merchant relations, but rather as an extension ofmodem international capital. two socio-economic p rocesses have cont r i buted to the 1ow p roducti vity and underdevelopment of rural iran: a) the dominance of merchant capital on the iranian economy prior to the 1950s and its affect on the rural economy through landlord-merchant relations; and b) the dominance of international capital and the peripherilization of the rural economy in the post1 950s period. the first process that affected capital accumulation in the rural alternate routes, volumne 12, 1995 o alternate routes, volume12, 1995 economy prior to world war ii can be identified within the social relations of agricultural production. the domination of absentee landlords and their close relations with the urban merchant class caused a shift of capital from the rural to the urban sphere. in the second process, it was the development of dependent capitalism in iran and the priorities of international capital that affected capital accumulation in rural iran (e.g. foran, 1993 and clawson, i980). 1 these two processes of loss of capital in rural iran will be briefly discussed in this paper in order to: (i) examine the question oflow productivity in the pre-capitalist agriculture of iran: this is a question that has been answered in the development literature by examining the inability of agricultural production for mass production (as described by todaro, 1989); (ii) examinenew forms of capital loss in the post-land-reform period ofrural iran; and (iii) finally, to indicate that the underdevelopment of agriculture in the pre-capitalist era should be assessed by a reference to rural-urban exploitative relations in the pre-land-reform period. similarly, the continuity of agricultural underdevelopment in the post-land-reform era should be viewed via a reference to the process of dependent capitalism in the same period. agricultural production and the problem of capital accumulation prior to 1960 the 1950s mark a critical transitional period in the socio-economic formations of iran, because not only did it coincide with the changes ofthe post-war international division of labour that would redefine the position of iran in the world economy, but also it was the period of a coup and the transformation of power the internal consolidation of the shah's power and his new close relations with the u.s. affected the objectives and direction of post-war development processes (katouzian, 1981) it was not until the beginning of the 1 960s however that these changes really began to redirect socio-economic formations in iran. it is because ofthe significance of this time period that an analytical distinction is made between the post 1 950s in general, or the period after 1 960 in particular, and the period before the 1950s. agricultural production in iranpriorto i960 was dominated by the precapitalist mode of production known as'sharecropping. ' under this system, absentee landlords contributed to the production process by leasing their land and, sometimes, other means ofproduction to peasants and then appropriated surplus product the surplus was appropriated either as rent or as a share of abdollahayan/ sharecropping in iran the product (amid, 1990:47; hooglund, 1 982: 1 1 ; vali, 1980:23, 32-49). at the same time, the rural dominant classes (i.e the absentee landlords) were themselves subject to domination by merchant capital for two reasons. first, the merchants were becoming a new force in agricultural production and were gaining control over the land (lambton, 1 969 : 262-263 ; hoogl und, 1982:12). perhaps it was because ofthe effects of the changing structure of the landed property class that a great number of landowners lived in urban areas and were often involved in other economic activities there (amid, 1990:9; hooglund, 1982: 12). second, the merchants were dominant over the market in which the agricultural product had to be marketed (vali, 1980:36). the dominance of merchant capital, therefore, meant that the contributions of absentee landlords were directed more toward the urban economy than toward agriculture. this landlord-merchant dominance has had repercussions on the land concentration and exploitation of the peasant labourers in iran. kautsky (1980) argues that 'land,' one of the fixed means of production, can not be exploited for generating more than a specific amount of surplus product unless it is enlarged through land accumulation (see also newby, 1978; najmabadi, 1987:143). but this is not the case with 'labour' or other qualitative and variable means of production. sodagar ( 1990: 112) describes the process ofthe transformation of labour into value as a primary characteristic of the capitalist mode of production. if the creation of surplus in the production process happens as a result of the undervaluation or the exploitation of labour this could be true of a pre-capitalist mode (see vali, 1980:13). for example, in the sharecropping system five factors of production, i.e., land, water, oxen, seed and labour are combined to organize production. at harvesting time, when the division of the product is carried out, each factor's contribution to the production process is evaluated evenly regardless ofthe fact that most ofthe time labour's actual contribution might vary (e.g. najmabadi, 1987; vali, 1980:32-38). historically, the dominant classes of iranian peasantry accumulated land and left the peasants dependent on land and land-use rights (lambton, 1969:261-262; hooglund, 1982:10-35). hooglund (1982: 12) points out that in the twentieth century the large landowners who constituted only 2 per cent of all landowners controlled 55 per cent of all cultivated land. 1 as a result, the concentration of land and consequent competition (hooglund, 1982: 1 1) overland-use rights (i.e. 'nasaq') reinforced a particular type of communal alternate routes, volume12, 1995 organization of production known as 'buneh' or sharecropping (hooglund, 1 982:23). 5 in the sharecropping system of production, the need of the dominant classes for extraction oftheprofit from the production process was met through exploitation ofthe labourer (as opposed to land). in other words, in this system the varying labour input was evaluated the same as the fixed land and water input into the production process. but as lambton( 1969:295296) indicates, without the labour input the land would not have been productive. therefore, regardless of the amount of labour that the labourer embedded into the production process, the land, water and the labourer were allocated the same share from the product. there is also much evidence that indicates that the labourer could not even get the same share as the landowner received, because; various subterfuges were devised which effectively permitted landlords to keep up to three-quarters of the entire harvest by the twentieth century (hooglund, 1982: 1 1). hooglund argues that these conditions worsened in the twentieth century as a result ofgreater concentration of landownership and an increase in the rural population he concludes that "[t]he peasants' economic dependence facilitated their political acquiescence to a highly disadvantageous agricultural regime," (hooglund, 1 982: 1 1 ). thus, the peasant did not gain the full value of his or her labour because of the dominance of the landlord over the production process. most of the time the nasaq-holder's right (i.e. land-use right) to cultivation, which was attached to the landowner's land drove him to engage in a contract with the landowner, who controlled land and water. the labourer never calculated how much labour he or she had to invest in the production process. it is inferred that regardless of the extent of labour that the labourer (peasant) put into the pi oduction process it transpired that he or she won only a fifth or less share of the product. 6 the reason for this calculation and the undervaluation of labour power was that labour was contrasted with land in other words, while land was a fixed and objective factor which could be presented as the object of ownership, labour was a varying factor that could only be identified when it was attached to the labourer and to 'land ' therefore, the labourer could not make a visible and measurable factor out of his or her labour in order to compete with the landlords who owned land and water the invisibility of labour in relation to land and water gave a secondary significance to the role of labour power in the production process abdollahayan/ sharecropping in iran this secondary role of labour power was combined with its need (i.e., the labourer's need) for subsistence and put the labourer in the position where he or she was seen as an individual who was obliged by need to use the land even under these conditions (see also vali, 1980:32-38). in iran ideological rhetoric surrounding the peasant's participation in the production process suggested to the peasant that he or she was not being exploited, but rather was fortunate for being able to work on the land. being able to participate in the production process was considered a privilege since the peasants did not own the land and not many peasants had the chance to work on the land. hooglund (1982:22) indicates that about 60 percent ofthe rural population were the sharecroppers (i.e. nasaq-holders) in addition to another 40 per cent of the households which constituted the landless labourers: while peasants thus constituted an absolute majority of all villagers, it is reasonable to assume, given the size of the population without cultivation rights, that possession of 'nasaq' was a valuable asset. thus, the ownership of land and water and the abundance of labour power (in relation to the available land) brought the landowners such power that they were ableto impose their terms on the labourers. usually the process ended in the peasants receiving an unequal share that would keep them at the subsistence level (hooglund, 1982:25-28). their economic status placed them where they could not make ends meet and had to turn to the moneylenders or the landlords (amid, 1990:42-47; najmabadi, 1987:54-57; vali, 1980:32-38). the landlords, however, received sometimes four-fifths of the product as their share and had the opportunity to accumulate wealth and power as the elites of the village (hooglund, 1982:26). the position of landlords and peasants outlined above leads to the conclusion that the realization of surplus product became possible after the following relations were met: 1 ) the existence of power differentials over the production process that derived from the land-ownership status; and, 2) the reproduction of the sharecropping system of production and its relations of production that guaranteed the dependency ofthe peasants on production and the dominance ofthe landlords. the question that remains is what happens to the surplus product and how does it contribute to the reproduction of the system? alternate routes, volume12, 1995 from the late nineteenth century to the beginning of the land reform programs in 1%2, the surplus product was marketed through landlordmerchant relations ' tliis linkage between the pre-capitalist mode of production and merchant capital had two effects on the rural and urban economies. on the one hand, it further contributed to the concentration of land in the hands ofa few landlords (amid, 1 990:28-33 ) because land accumulation was historically the only way by which the peasantry was dispossessed and became dependent on its labour power. further, the exploitation of the agricultural labourer was facilitated by the dispossession of the peasants from the land. once the collective labour power of the peasants was linked together and once the labour power was undervalued through factor-evaluation, 8 then the generation of surplus product became inevitable. hence, the concentration of land and the exploitation of peasants' labour became the necessary condition for the realization of surplus product. in other words, in order for the surplus to be produced and appropriated by the landlords and be marketed by the merchants, more land had to be accumulated. on the other hand, landlord-merchant relations also facilitated the concentration ofmerchant capital in the urban areas, which contributed to the failure of the development of the means of production and the productive forces in the rural economy (vali, 1980:32-49). amid (1990:9) notes that absentee-landlordism and the fact that many landlords were involved in the economic activities of the cities (i.e., in cooperation with the merchants), resulted in a lack of capital and investment in the rural economy (see also hooglund, 1982:12) tliis had serious consequences for the rural economy. while more than 65 per cent ofthe population of iran in the 1 960s lived in rural areas (amid, 1990:4), the productivity of the rural economy was so low it caused severe poverty and undevelopment (ibid:44-48). a number of theoretical approaches have sought to further understand thesituation. marxists assumed that traditional agriculture failed to approach the qualities of the development of a higher stage of feudalism 9 (there is still controversy over the nature of pre-capitalist formations in many third world countries including iran) '" this stage was considered to be a necessary stage for the total transformation of feudalism to capitalism in which the development ofproductive forces was crystallised in the conflict between new classes which were not historically present in the former modes of production (nakhaie, 1986 78-84) abdollahayan/ sharecropping in iran the developmental! st view, on the other hand, equated a development of social and economic structures and an upgrade in living standards with the level of production (see todaro, 1989; jenkins 1987). this development would occur primarily in industry and also in agriculture with the intensive application of modern technology (jenkins, 1987; kazemian, 1968:12-15; najmabadi, 1976:105). tofigh (1976:57-67), for example, compares economic growth to level of urbanization, the growth of the labour force, the growth of gnp and the growth of agricultural production which by any means can be put into one sentence, i.e., the growth of production in agriculture and in industry. these two different views (i.e., marxist and developmentalist) nevertheless share the assumption that the penetration of the pre-capitalist modes of production was an historical consideration that originated, in one way or another, from the differential levels of progress between the capitalist and pre-capitalist modes of production. in other words, there was a gap between two different modes of production whose conception was based on 1 ) a lack oftechnological advancement, and, 2) the presence oflow productivity on the part of pre-capitalist modes of production. in free trade theories of development, for example, it was a necessity for the pre-capitalist economies to be penetrated by the senders of high technology (e.g. see jenkins," 1 987 and todaro, 1989). these theorists even suggested that not only should the third world states not resist the effects of this penetration, but rather should cooperate so that the proper transfer of technological progress might be facilitated (see todaro, 1989; jenkins, 1987). 12 basing their critiques on the assumptions of the lack oftechnological capabilities and the existence of low productivity, the two approaches came to the same conclusion: the necessity of transformation by external forces. 13 in fact, it was not the existence of low productivity in agriculture that rationalized thepenetration ofthethird world economies. marxists and nonmarxist researchers neglected the fact that low productivity in pre-capitalist sharecropping in iran was caused by the process of capital outflow from the rural economy and the accumulation of capital in the urban economy." accordingly, it is wrong to assess the efficiency of iranian sharecropping on the basis of low productivity, because this low productivity was not a consequence of the practice of sharecropping. in short, the low productivity of agriculture was not a structural problem embedded within the rural economy. as noted earlier, in the period before the 1 950s, the surplus product of agricultural production in iran was extracted from the rural economy and alternate routes, volume12, 1995 was transformed into mercliant capital ." hence, this part ofthe surplus could not contribute to increased agricultural production. thus, the low-productivity assumption based on historical evidence is unsupported on the grounds that it was not a consequence of production process, but rather it was a result of outward capital flow. the outflow of capital took place where the agricultural commodity had to be marketed under landlord-merchant relations. as a result ofthe transformation of agricultural products into merchant capital, investment in and the development of agricultural technology was limited (amid, 1990; vali, 1 980:32-49). it is for this reason that attributing the low-productivity to the embedded factors within the production process, without referring to the larger context of rural-urban relations, is flawed disregarding these exploitative relations between the urban and rural economies of the p re-world-war ii era, the development literature blamed the structure ofthe rural economy for the failure ofthe national economies of the third world (see todaro, 1989). the problem of low socio-economic standards that existed in the rural economy was well noted in this literature. they also identified the inability of the rural economy to improve the peasants' socio-economic standards. these facts, however, were theoretically misunderstood. the exploitative relations between rural and urban economies existed where merchant capital was imposing its own terms on agricultural production. l6 it was an indication ofthe dominance ofmerchants who were thus able to determine the level of capital accumulation in the rural economy (see najmabadi, 1987:44). this is a unique situation where merchant capital controlled accumulation in the rural economy without exerting actual political power, as opposed to the typical landlords elsewhere whose presence in the rural economy was known by their economic and political power (hooglund, 1982). what has been the import ofthis misplacement of low productivity and low living standards on understanding of the post1950s socio-economic development of [ran? one concrete effect was that the government of iran deemed necessary the transformation (i.e. capitalist penetration) of agriculture as a prerequisite for the elimination of low-productivity and low living standards (see kazemian, 1968). the development literature of the 1950s which suggested that a penetration of iranian pre-capitalist agriculture by the capitalist economies was a necessity (see kazemian, 1 968) was based on a flawed understanding abdollahayan/ sharecropping in iran of the situation. 17 it was this misinterpretation of the rural economy that led both state officials and scholars to conclude that capitalist penetration was a necessity. the historical consequence ofthis was the development of dependent capitalism and the emergence of a dependent bourgeoisie in iran. post-war development also highlighted the fact that only the patterns of capital loss from various sectors of the economy changed in other words, a new socio-economic underdevelopment took place that did not alter the conditions (i.e., loss of capital) under which the destruction of the former agricultural-based economy was considered a necessity the new patterns only differed in that the rural and the urban economic development processes were even more closely integrated. this was because the forms of capital appropriation from the rural economy had expanded to an appropriation of capital from the national economy in which a distinction between the rural and the urban economies hardly existed capital movement, technological change, and new modes of capital outflow there is considerable evidence which documents the growth of manufacturing products and rise in gnp in iran in the 1970s (see najmabadi, l c)76) %j^ compared to the previous periods, a different type of capital accumulation was occurring and the economy was functioning in an environment completely different from the earlier one—i.e., under the direct domination of merchant capital. but, many of the same sources also indicate much higher inflation rates, unemployment, and unequal distribution of incomes in the post-penetration era (looney, 1975:3 and 1 982:3-5). ik we have already seen that the assumption of agricultural inefficiency was put forward by the post world war ii development literature, where it was assumed that the successor of the traditional agriculture would improve rural conditions (todaro, 1989:62-78). but, as looney (1982) indicates, it was not necessarily the case, at least not in iran, and certainly not in the instances of income distribution and unemployment. the gap between rural and urban income groups widened (mohtadi, 1986; looney, 1982:247) and unemployment, especially in the modem sectors, increased (looney, 1982:3-5). this is contradictory to the development objectives of the post-world war two period and should be addressed. the inconsistency between the assumption of agricultural inefficiency and the historical evidence can be addressed as a reflection of inconsistency o alternate routes, volume12, 1995 in the practices based on the flawed premises of post-war development literature the post-war development process in iran indicates that the problem of agricultural inefficiency had not been conceptualized properly. that is, as the development plans, inspired by the assumption of the inefficiency of the pre-capitalist mode were implemented, the economy developed new problems which were not supposed to exist. there is, then, a link between improper conceptualization of inefficiency in the pre-capitalist modes, the qualities of the post-war development process (i.e. choosing import-substitution industrialization and land reform policies) and the emergence of these new problems. how can these new problems be conceptualized? one possible answer is that since the 1950s, the economy has been transformed into a dependent capitalist economy and centre-periphery relations have developed (or were reinforced) between iran and the capitalist economies. i situate myself in this theoretical framework where the post-war inefficiencies in the economies of the third world are addressed by a reference to the exploitative relations between these economies and the capitalist countries (e.g. described by turner, 1984: 13-14; foran, 1993). there are two points that should be made here in order to shed more light on the theoretical position of the debate as follows: 1 ) the post world war ii development literature lacked originality in the sense that it was based on a flawed conception of the historical phase with which some of the ldcs were dealing. 2) they reflected the requirements of a new phase of capitalist development which was based on the extraction of profit from foreign countries by the capitalist countries. having clarified the theoretical position of the debate, it is necessary to further explore the new forms of capital outflow from the unified national economy of the 1970s. 1 '' a review of how pre-capitalist agriculture was treated in the development literature (including marxist and non-marxist) reveals the shortcomings ofthe current studies. 2 'the majority ofthese studies deal with pre-capitalist agricultural production as a transitional stage in the history of socio-economic progress (described by vali, 1980:37). nakhaie ( 1 986:4), for example, tends to contribute to the orthodox marxist discourse and attributes feudalism to thepre-capitalist relations of agricultural producabdollahayan/ sharecropping in iran tion in iran. and he looks at the current changes (i.e. from 1960 on) as a transitory period that failed to replace feudalism. consequently, from this point of view, the changes that occurred in the 1960s and 70s (i.e. land reform and the modernization of iranian industry) were those historically lacking the typical characteristics of a post-feudal society because they deviated from the historical process of development. 21 this stream of thought assumed that this happened because the latest structures of agricultural production (prior to land reform) lacked the characteristics compatible with a feudal-based society. the iranian agrarian case did not reach the mature level of feudalism and was, instead, penetrated by international capitalism. this meant that the external factors (as opposed to internal forces) contributed to change in the pre-capitalist mode of production. this approach identified a lack of the developed productive forces prior to the implementation of land reform in iran. it was considered the missing factor that contributed to the establishment of dependent capitalism in iran. because ofthis loss, the development ofcapitalism (similar to that which occurred in the european context) with an involvement of the iranian national bourgeoisie was out ofthe question. 22 but, this premise of orthodox marxism (i.e. transitory character ofpeasant economies) has been challenged by taylor (1979) who believed in the persistence of agricultural-based economies. it is worth mentioning that marx's accounts of the historical transition of agricultural production leads to a logical consequence which is the disappearance of the peasantry as capitalist development affects the process of production (newby, 1978). but the capitalist development at the world scale, as taylor (1979) indicates, has reinforced many features of the agricultural production-based economies through the articulation of socioeconomic structures in peripheral areas. this is in contrast to orthodox marxism's account for a total transition to capitalism. following this challenge, one can suggest that it was not even the lack of a national bourgeoisie that contributed to the socio-economic deficiencies. rather, it was the formation and the existence of a dependent bourgeoisiethat played a determining role in these socio-economic changes (i.e., underdevelopment or any other version ofbackwardness). the formation of a dependent bourgeoisie should, therefore, be given more theoretical credit than the lack of a national bourgeoisie. by putting thispremise first, one will beabletopay attention to the external processes, i.e. capitalist development and the penetration of less developed countries (ldcs)that resulted in the forma© © alternate routes, volume12, 1995 tion of a dependent bourgeoisie (e.g. described in turner, 21 1984: 13; foran, 1 993). this would also help one to base a theoretical debate on the existence of a dependent bourgeoisie and not on the lack of a national bourgeoisie. moreover, as indicated above, looking for the formation of a national bourgeoisie may lead to a misinterpretation of the structure of the rural economy these debates are provoked by the assumption of a unilinear process of change and transitory character ofpeasant economies that orthodox marxists support. it is thus possible to put aside the assumption of transition and look for the processes that affected production and accumulation in rural iran. one of these processes is the new form of capital extraction. tliis is, then, a contribution to the dependency discourse that focuses on structural underdevelopment and examines the differential levels of capital accumulation in 'centre' and 'satellite' economies. 2 '1 the post-land reform agricultural formations can be excluded from the earlier formations on the grounds that they were constructed as a result ofthe import of foreign capital (clawson, 1980:143-171). to the extent that these formations contribute to the outflow of capital (or redirection of capital accumulation), they will be appropriate tools for our understanding of the current socio-economic structures. in other words, there is no necessity to rely on the transitory assumption that necessitates historical analysis of the changes in different modes. as already noted, the transitory assumption has theoretical limitations. a reliance on the structural analysis of capital accumulation, however, would be more appropriate especially in the case of iran because, it does not have to solve the theoretical dead-end that orthodox marxists encountered when they suggested that the pre-capitalist mode in iran was a feudal mode. the transitory characteristic of agriculture in the historical progress of societies has been examined by lahsaeizadeh ( 1 984) with a reference to the articulation ofthe different modes ofproduction. lahsaeizadeh (1984) refers to the socio-economic structures of rural iran as the pre-capitalist mode of production that is being articulated through the effects of capitalist penetration in his work, the transition is not the major theme but the pre-capitalist mode is considered unable to remain stationary and eventually will change he allocated a chapter of his ph.d dissertation to account for the effects of transitory agriculture (lahsaeizadeh, 1984:3 14-346) again, he has taken for granted that progressive capitalist enterprises would wipe out the remaining old forms of non-capitalist production although he accounts for the persistabdollahayan/ sharecropping in iran ence of a pre-capitalist mode ofproduction, lie contributes to the idea that the persistence ofthe pre-capitalist structures only postpones the total transformation of agrarian structures. in other words, the transition of these structures will eventually happen. despite this difference between his work and the work of orthodox marxists (i.e. his emphasis on the reproduction of pre-capitalist structures after the penetration), he appears similar to the latter when he promotes his argument based on the assumption that the pre-capitalist agriculture in iran will be replaced by capitalist enterprises (lahsaeizadeh, 1 984: 5, 435-462). turner ( 1 984) has also studied pre-capitalist agricultural production in iran. his work remains in agreement with the theoretical position of weber (turner, 1984:153-186). once again, the pre-capitalist agricultural production in iran is identified in his work as the feudalist mode of production (turner, 1 984: 172). hedevelops his criticisms ofthe orientalist approach of the development literature. in so doing, he situates himself among those who not only disagree with the stationary notion of the socio-economic structures ofthe east, but rather assume that the east has been as dynamic as the west thus, his agenda for studying the east has been to identify the dynamics of change from agriculture to a more complicated socio-economic structure (turner, 1984:1-15). although he is unwilling to repeat the same unilinear assumption of historical processes of change, turner attributes the feudalist mode of production to the iranian peasantry when he examines them. therefore, the notion of progress once again is encapsulated in the definition of agriculture as a system of retarded production which eventually evolves into a progressive one. the transitory premise in the developmentalist (described by todaro, 1989) and in the marxist discourses can be criticized here based on the question ofwhy agricultural production has to betaken as the transitory stage ofprogress. it is not a question ofthe validity ofthis consideration, but rather the methodological effects of this consideration i would consider the iranian case of agrarian structure as one which could have developed the means of production but was interrupted by two different socio-economic processes in two different historical periods. while i categorize these two processes under 'pre-capitalist relations of production' and 'dependent capitalism ' i would argue that the latter need not necessarily have been a successor ofthe former international capital acted as a catalyst to facilitate the transformation of agricultural production. the credit should, therefore, be given to the require© o alternate routes, volume12, 1995 ments of international capital that reinforced the transformation of agriculture in iran. a shift from reliance on agricultural production (until 1950s) to the industrial production (in 60s and early 70s) and from diversified production (from the i960 to 1973 oil boom) to the production of oil, provide us with some clues about: i ) the formation of counter-productive forces, i.e. dependent bourgeoisie, their function in the process of circulation of capital (i.e. import activities) that led to the outflow ofcapital from the national economy; 2) subjugation of national economic forces to the international capitalist enterp rises, and, 3) the course of change from production to consumption in the late 70s as the consequence of the two former processes. 25 these observations seem to support world system theories that interpret the social formations of the ldcs as those manipulated by the international forces. but, i would also suggest that these theories too (e.g. as described in todaro, 1989; turner, 1984; taylor, 1979), put much emphasis on the importance of external forces. in order to contribute to these discussions, an application of the internationalization of capital approach would be more appropriate. such a position would not only consider the external forces that are involved in the internal formations of the ldcs, but also the movement of capital conclusion historical specificities of pre-capitalist iranian agricultural production make it difficult to theorize in accord with the existing traditional marxist and nonmarxist perspectives the significant patterns of the outflow of capital that were hidden within the complexity of different modes of production have not been dealt with by these theories. within these modes of production exist the dominance of merchant capital that contributed to the peripherilization ofthe pre-capitalist mode of production. the emphasis rather has been put on outlining the obstacles that agricultural production has encountered historically in the process of transformation into a more socio-economically developed formation the post-transformation agricultural production ofthe 1960s and the 70s, however, indicated that the new patterns were not necessarily compatible with those which the traditional marxists or nonmarxist state planners expected to happen the development of dependent capitalism and the peripherilization of agricultural production continued to abdollahayan/ sharecropping in iran be the major pattern of the development process under the dominance of international capital. the most significant conclusion to the above is that two types of structural underdevelopment have occurred in iran in two entirely different historical contexts. the outflow of surplus product under merchant-landlord relations was the major tendency in the pre-capitalist structural underdevelopment of the rural economy, then the dominance of international capital and various forms of capital loss contributed to a new type of the structural underdevelopment of rural iran. in other words, the traditional mode of rural peripherilization was changed as a result of the development plans of the 1960s and developed into a new type of peripherilization and underdevelopment of agricultural production. notes 1. i would like to thank bruce mcfarlane, jacques chevalier and allen steeves who gave me helpful criticism on au earlier version of the paper. 2. this assumption of the causal nature of structural characteristics can be observed in examples of both marxist and non-marxist theories -e.g. as described by todaro, 1989. 3. clawson explains the general laws of motion of capital winch does not necessarily study %]j rural economy separately. nevertheless, his ideas support the point about the effects of international capital on internal, including rural, formation. 4. more details on the concentration of land is presented by halliday (1979) and amid (1990). 5. communal, as opposed to individual and household independent producers, implied a situation in which the peasant did not own the land but his previous land-use practices gave him the right to work on the land with others with the same status. each of these working groups were called 'bun eh' or 'sahra' and these peasants were called nasaq-holders' (hooglund, 1981). working in these groups did not guarantee the use of land for the next year; it depended on the landlord's decision (lambton, 1969:295-305). most of the time the decisions concerning production were also made by the landlords. the important fact is that the peasants were bound to the production process through their dependence on landuse rights. 6. for more information about the arrangement on the distribution of produce see hooglund, 1982, nakhaie, 1986, lahsaeizadeh, 1984, lambton 1955. 7. vali (1980:36, 43) describes the situation of the market but very loosely as he argues that the merchants were functioning as a middleman or agent of the landlords. nevertheless, he indicates that the relations between the two linked the production to the market. o alternate routes, volume12, 1995 8. in the sharecropping system, five factors were combined in order to get production under way. these factors were as follows: land, labour, water, seed and oxen. 9. nakhaie (1986:78) maintains that one of the obstacles to the development of a capitalist mode in iran (in earlier periods) has been the incomplete private ownership of land. 10. it may be said that they assumed that the existence of a conflict between classes in the feudalist mode was a prerequisite for the transformation from a feudalist mode to a capitalist mode. or, some even deny that there has been a feudalist mode, for example, in iran (ashraf, 1978). this is the reason marxists can not envisage the transformation of agricultural production without it having passed through that level. 11. see descriptions of jenkins (1987) about pro-transnational corporations (tnc) approaches. 12. jenkins (1987:22) explains how pro-tnc theorists developed the idea that state intervention with tnc operations in the host countries can be a detriment to the development process. 13. in the iranian case, the marxist approach did not take the penetration as a necessity, but rather, they suggested the idea of a spontaneous transformation of agriculture that was facilitated by the penetration of the iranian economy (see nakhaie, 1986 and ashraf, 1978 for more details). ashraf ( 1978: 31 1) appears more firm than others on the issue of forceful transformation as he quotes marx, although he (ibid) later indicates that the penetration did not create a western typical bourgeoisie in iran. 14. the free trade theorists for example, took for granted the backwardness of agriculture in relation to the urban economy. they did not consider that, in iran for instance, the surplus product was appropriated by the absentee landlords and was transferred to cities (see todaro, 1989 for more details on the assumptions of development literature about agricultural production in the third world). this was a fact that contributed to backwardness in agriculture. 15. i have already argued that the surplus product was transferred by the landlords to the urban economy since many of the large landowners were absentee (hooglund, 1982:14), they tended to invest their capital in economic activities other than agriculture, i.e. mostly trade activities (e.g. amid, 1990). 16. najmabadi (1987:44) explains that from the early 19th century, the merchants got involved in agricultural production through buying land. she agrees with gilbar (1987:312365) that the merchants' interests contributed to a shift in cultivation patterns which encouraged the production of certain crops such as opium, tobacco, cotton, dried fruits and spices the influence of the merchants in agriculture has remained throughout the twentieth century in iran 17. see ka/omian, 1908 for the details on the necessity of transforming iranian agrarian structures considered by the state. this was an idea that was sponsored by the local and abdollahayan/ sharecropping in iran international developuientalists at that time and was supported by the american agencies for the development of the middle eastern countries. 18. see also looney (1977a and 1977b) for more information about the post1950s economic conditions of iran. 19. 'unified economy' refers to a situation where the process of capitalist penetration integrates the rural and urban economies. in this situation, rural and urban economies would be identified with the national economy that dominates both and determines the direction of capital accumulation at local levels. 20. in the following argument, we will see that these studies discarded the notion of structural underdevelopment of the 1970s economy. because they were more concerned with the transition of pre-capitalist mode to a capitalist mode than they were about the structural underdevelopment. it was because of this that they only critically examined the failure of capitalism in iran, and the development of dependent capitalism and the outflow of capital were given secondary consideration. 21. nakhaie (1986) bases his theoretical debate on the logical appearance of capitalism that should have happened right after the disappearance of feudalism in ban. modernization of iran, however, did not reflect the characteristics of typical capitalism. therefore, he concludes, the historical socio-economic development in ban deviated from its line and fell into a new phase i.e. dependent capitalism. 22. ashraf (1978) explains tins in terms of the obstacles that prevented the growth of a wtl national bourgeoisie. 23. turner (1984:13) presents a combination of both the external and internal factors involved in the socio-economic formations. 24. this is a combination of what frank (1975 and 1981) and foran (1993) present in dealing with, especially, the problems of underdevelopment and the post-world-war-two crisis of the third world. 25. the role of oil in this change is of some importance, but we will not discuss it in detail here. references ajami, ismail 1976 agricultural and rural development in iran, in jane w. jacqz, iran: past. present and future, new york: aspen institute for humanistic studies. amid, mohammad j. 1990 agriculture, poverty and reform in iran, london: routledge. alternate routes, volumel2, 1995 ashraf, ahmad 1978 historical obstacles to the development of a bourgeoisie in iran, in m. a. cook (ed). studies in the economic history ofthe middle hast; from the rise of islam to the present day, oxford: oxford university press. baldwin, george b 1 967 planning and development in iran, baltimore: the johns hopkins press. clawson, patrick 1980 "capital accumulation and in iran," in peter nore and terisa turner (ed), oh and class struggle, london: zed press. foran, john 1993 fragile resistance: social 'transformation in iran from 1500 to the revolution, boulder: westview press. frank, andre guilder 1981 crisis: in the third world, new york: holmes and meier publishers. 1975 on capitalist underdevelopment, bombay: oxford university press. gilbar, g 1978 "persian agriculture in the late qajar period, 1860-1906: some economic and social aspects/' asian and african studies, 12, no. 3:312-365. halliday, fred, 1979 iran: dictatorship and development, harmondwirth: penguin books. hayami, yujiro 1981 i understanding village ( 'ommunity and the direction ojagrarian change in asia, delhi: hindustan publishing corporation. hooglund, e 1982 land and revolution in iran, 1 9601 9x0, austin: university of texas press, pp. 3-35. hooglund, eric j. 1 98 1 "rural socio-economic organization in transition: the case of'boneus'" in b'onine, michael e., and nikki keddie, modern iran: the dialectics oft 'ommunity and ( 'hange. albany: state university ofnew york press. jenkins, rhys 1987 transnational ( 'orporalionsand i neven development london: methuen katouzian, m h 1981 the political economy of modern iran: despotism and pseudomodernism, 1926-1979, london: the macmillan press ltd abdollahayan/ sharecropping in iran kautsky, karl 1980 'the agrarian question," translated by jams banaji, in frederick h. buttal and howard newby (ed), the rural sociology of advanced societies, london: croon helm. kazemian, gholam h. 1968 impact ofu.s. technicalaid on the rural development ofiran, brooklyn ny.: theo. gaiis' sons inc. lahsaeizadeh, abdolali 1984 the effect of 1962 iranian land reform on rural class structure, unpublished ph.d. dissertation, michigan: michigan state university press. lambton, ann k.s. 1969 the persian land reform 1962-1966, oxford: claredon press. looney, robert e. 1 982 economic origins ofthe iranian revolution, new york: pergamon press. looney, robert e. 1977(a) a development strategyfor iran through the 1980s, new york: praeger publishers. looney, robert e. ^^ 1977(b) iran at the end ofthe century, toronto: lexington books. qp looney, robert e. 1975 income distribution policies and economic growth in semi-industrialized countries: a comparative study of iran, mexico. brazil, and south korea, new york: praeger publishers. mohtadi, hamid 1986 rural stratification, rural to urban migration, and urban inequality: evidence from iran, world development journal, vol. 14, no. 6, pp.713-725. najmabadi, afsaneh 1987 land reform and social change in iran, salt lake city: university of utah press. najmabadi, f. 1976 "strategies of industrial development in iran," in jane w. jacqz iran: past, present and future, new york: aspen institute for humanistic studies. alternate routes, volume12, 1995 nakhaie, mohammad reza 1986 development of capitalism in ivan, unpublished ph.d. dissertation, waterloo: university of waterloo. newby, howard (ed.) 1 978 international perspectives in rural sociology, hichester: john wiley and sons. sodagar, m. 1990 )'he development of( 'apita/ist relations in iran (the period of expansion; 1963-/979), (roshd-e ravabet-e sarmayeh-dari dar iran (marhale-e gostaresh) 1342-57, tehran: sho-leh andisheh publishers. taylor, john g 1 979 from modernization to modes of production:/] ( 'riticpie ofthe sociology ofdevelopment and underdevelopment, atlantic highlands. humanities press todaro, michael p. 1989 economic development in the 'third world, fourth edition, new york: longman turner, b 07h 1 984 ( apitalism and ( 'lass in the ,\ fiddle east; theories ofsocial ( 'hange and economic development, london: heinmann educational books. vali, abbas 1 980 'the character of the organization of production in iranian agriculture, 1891-1925", in bielefelder studien (et al), georg stauth (ed), iran: precapitalist)!, capitalism and revolution, saardrucken: verlag breitenbach publishers. property rights and communication andrew reddick carleton university introduction1 inthe current federal neo-policy and neo-regulation process in the communications sector2 , euphemistically referred to as the information highway, the development, rules ofgovernance and terms ofaccess to information and communication networks are being framed by the preferences for, and extension o£ private property rules and practices. these policies and practises erode and undermine the democratic common property right ofaccess to information and knowledge. 3 canadians' right ofaccess willbe undennined in a market approach due to lack of sufficient financial resources and the availability of affordable, quality service featuring diversity of content. a "have and have not" bifurcation in canada based on such factors as income, education, and geographic location willbecome exacerbated in communication and information. the ramifications of this policy change extend beyond the currentnarrow debates emanating fromgovernment and industry leaders about the use, ownership or, ostensibly, the wealth generating or emancipatory potentials ofthe technologies. interestingly, such prophetic claims are even being made by those on different sides of this issue. some public interests attribute an empowerment of public rights through the new technologies. this tendency of limiting public discussion and analysis to the potentialities of technology obscures and dismisses the broader issues relating to social and economic justice. the two dominant views emerging from these technological detenrrinist perspectives are that such omnipotent technology will lead us either to l?fr alternate routes, volume 13, 1 996 alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 some utopian economic or to social/cultural panacea. technologies are not drivers ofchange, but tools subject to political, economic and social forces and decision making. what is significant in the current changes is that the stakes involve not so much the technologies, but information. this is a resource of the mind, language and humanity. information is the stuff of understanding, communication, creativity and change. but how do we think about information? questions of its control raise structural issues, but the more fundamental issues of availability, diversity, quality and need, necessary for a level of 'natural' human existence, can broaden debate to the universal dimension and importance of the resource. in a broaderpolitical economic context, information isbeing subjected to a process of privatization and commercialisation, particularly in those aspects of life which until now have been unquestionably considered public. this deepening and extension ofprivate property market relations is a broad assault upon the ^^ previously non-commodified public and private (individual) activities, space, relations and lives ofpeople and society. so what is the problem? why should this concern us? quite simply, with the destruction and transformation of public information and public space, the basis of democracy, of economic and social justice, is threatened (schiller, 1986:39). this paper considers these issues in four parts. the first section offers a way oftheorizing or thinking about information as a property right in the context ofthe role ofthe state and our communication system the next two sections consider how this is being played out as process and practice in canadian policy making and communication industry restructuring. these sections also analyse the class dimensions of this change, and the actors and social claims being made in this struggle. this includes an analysis of the strategies being used by different class actors and agents within the core state policy making apparatus. the concluding section revisits these core themes and considers the potential for the realization ofthe 'market' or 'democratic' goals reddick/ property rights and communication in the emerging information society. information before considering the changes in canadian information and communication policy, it is useful to define what is meant by information, its role, and the claims which have come to be made on it in a capitalist liberal democratic market society (cms). much ofhow we think about information is defined by how we think about society, our view of society and people's place in it. the difficulty in defining information lies in attempting to separate what it is or where we find it, from what one does with it or what it should be used for. this difficulty is more clouded as one tries to abstract 'information' fromthe context ofthe political economic relations of the society in which we live. within the structural context of our society, information is often posited in terms of spheres, for example the social sphere, the education sphere, the market sphere, and so forth. while this helps us in clarifying our views of society, it risks artificially polarizing or #g| drawing lines between what are more aptly described as interdependent or mutually influencing processes and activities (resnick and wolfe, 1 987). 4we can eachbe economic, political, social and cultural actors in separate processes and activities and in various combinations or degrees. the point is that, at times, with some of these there is a preponderance ofone type of activity or process over the others—more social than economic, or more cultural than social, let us say. in thinking about society this way, there are a number of ways ofthinking about a 'public' as opposed to a 'market' view of information—what it is, what it should be, or how it is used. herb schiller, who has long argued for the protection ofinformation rights, sees information as central to the development of a democratic society. as schiller writes, information serves to facilitate democratic decision making, assists in citizen participation in government, alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 and contributes to the search for roughly egalitarian measures in the economy at large (1991:42). in this view, of information as a social good, a democratic resource, benefits the lives ofindividuals, and through its collective use, the overall governance of society. indirectly, or as a subsequent step through its use, information provides economic benefits by providing people with the means and ability to participate and benefit from direct economic exchange. as well, information allows people to participate in a host of other activities, which by their very nature, provide the 'economic sector' with an 'informated subject'. by 'informated subject' i mean individuals who, through their ability to access and benefit from information (literacy, education, experience, etc.), are able to contribute to the general economic, social and culturalproduction ofsociety. theyhave a demand for the information and other products of society arising from their participation (zuboff^ 1988:9-10). 5 g) michael apple, borrowing from pierre bourdieu, differentiates information as symbolic capital from information as financial capital. on the one hand, information as financial capital is useful only in the sense that it can be valuated as a physical commodity, its value is defined by its exchange (sale) value and time value (generally short term). on the other hand, apple appeals to the more abstract and 'public' nature of information when he describes it as also symbolic capital (apple, 1991:25). simply put, thisvalue is cultural in the sense that it is a lived, every day resource. it is accessible, usable, and readily exchangeable for its own sake and not based on a commodity transaction. through this, the developmental qualities of information arise. the underlying theme of such views, is that information is first, diverse, broad, dynamic—a product ofhumanity and interaction—ideas in substance. secondly, perhaps most importantly in terms ofpractise, and the battlefront in current policy making, information is a public resource that allows for the achievement reddick/ property rights and communication of some 'end' goals. in a democratic view, these goals allow people to learn, express, exchange and interact in social and cultural ways for the sake ofpersonal well being, development and understanding. it is that which contributes to being a citizen and to the maximization ofone's individual utilities and abilities. this is a view of society that includes commerce rather than the inverse, a commercial market system that includes society. the corollary to this is that individuals are then able to participate in society and benefit from this. whether a capitalist market society or some other form, in this view people can participate in activities and social relations which allow for 'production' that reproduces one's self and society. in our liberal democratic capitalist market society this should include, and gfve some balance to, the two sets of property rights; the 'democratic' — civil, social, political rights and activities—and 'liberal'—economic activities. an imbalancebetween the 'liberal' and 'democratic', whereby the liberal (market, economic) is given too much weight erodes dffi an economic justice perspective underlying the democratic view whereby social norms and ethical values prevail over impersonal market values (clement, 1988: 14). in the hierarchy ofindividual rights, civil and political rights can be satisfied on an individual basis, though there is a collective purpose to these. however, social and economic rights, which now increasingly rely on the ability of individuals to access and use modern communications and information to be fully realized, need collective property rights to fully develop and be realized (clement, 1988: 14). this isthe basis ofthe current contradiction within capitalism such that the imbalance favours individual private property. however, to achieve these democratic goals in a complex modern society at either an individual or collective level is near impossible without those institutions, practices or processes generallythought ofas the 'public sphere'. this, in addition to the 'market sphere or sector', is the other halfofthe front in the battle to detennine what it is and what information ought to be. alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 habermas has characterized the social sphere or process as "the realm of social life where public opinion can be formed. access is guaranteed to all citizens .... citizens behave as a public body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion", in other words freedom of association and expression (1974:49-55). the institutions we associate with these processes can be informal or formal. these include schools, libraries, cultural organizations, or more informal means of interaction, such as local groups. however, and this takes us back to the nexus of the conflict in communication policy, the means required to do this in a collective way in a complex society are the various physical communication media, technologies and institutions. these would include traditional media—the text, the newspaper, magazine, newsletter, public meeting, radio, television, and the new media, computer-based networks and similar technologies. democratic rights, information as property £f% in a liberal democratic capitalist market society some amount ofinformation will invariably be a commodity—a liberal market valued resource. information will also be a democratically valued resource, a common public good. how should we argue for and defend the democratic aspect ofinformation? this could be done in many ways, such as using political or social rights arguments. in a market society, an appropriate case can be made through an argument based on property. our society values property over all else, and defines the right ofproperty as an individual right. in the current policy debate over information; the rights to it, its use and access, can usefully be grounded in a theory ofproperty that underpins our liberal democratic market society. using property rights as an entry point for analysis permits a discussion of democratic objectives as well as providing the means to reveal and explore the inherent contradictions in the current market centred debate over information, and the possible resolutions of this debate. these possible resolutions can have democratic or anti-demoreddick/ property rights and communication cratic consequences. the work of c.b. macpherson (1973,1978,1985) is useful for this analysis because it helps us position information as a fundamentalhuman right and a property right. thiswork also sets out the role ofthe state and the tensions and contradictions arising in a capitalist market society (cms) in the articulation and achievement ofsuch property rights. the challenge is to achieve some mitigation between an individual right to private property (market valuation) and an individual right to common (public) property (democratic valuation) as it relates to information. in the first, the right exists to exclude others from access unless certain economic terms are met. in the second, the right is to not be excluded from the use or benefit of something, though some limits over collective access may exist. these limits generally ensure measures of equality. the stakes are high in current policy making as radical neoliberal ideology drives its agenda across a broad sweep of state responsibilities and initiatives (clark, 199 1). 6 the contemporary ^^ debate about communication and information policy has become limited to a religious-like mantra from the proponents of the liberal market place. this mantra of competition, privatization, and deregulation argues for a rigid ideological adherence to social relations exclusively based on individual private property relations. entrenchment of such a view in policy would reduce society to that which is only peopled by economic producers and consumers. this agenda is a crude narrowing from a view of society, of 'mankind' and social practise, though not in any way in equilibria, that included that of the citizen in democracy. instead, an economic vision is propagated that takes the form of a religion because it claims to be the inevitable result ofhigher, more powerful forces than individuals or society; a god or gods — the market, technology, globalization. this view imposes closure on other views and alternative ways of seeing and doing. it advocates conformity and impotence. this tension between market freedom and the need to set ^^ alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 limits to achieve democratic, common freedom and opportunity is summarized by macpherson in the following statement: when the individual property right is written into law as an individual right to the exclusive use and disposal of parcels of the resources provided by nature and parcels ofthe capital created by past work on them, and when it is combined with the liberal system ofmarket incentives and rights of free contract, it leads to and supports a concentration ofownership and a system of power relations between individuals and classes which negates the ethical goal of free and independent, individual development (1978:199-200). in communication, this liberal market narrowing occurs with the unequal relations involving exclusive control over, the creation o£ the terms of access to, and use o£ information. this includes the shaping andvaluating ofinformation and knowledge andhow its worth (economic or other) is determined. the current policy and market trends are an intensification ofthe process raymond williams identified as a 'selective tradition' whereby someone's vision of legitimate knowledge, information and culture "enfranchises one group's cultural capital at the expense of another" (williams, in apple and christian-smith, 1991:1). currently, the trend isto the privatization ofinformation, the materialization ofmformation into a thing that can be commodified, and the institutionalization of these inherently unequal classbased relations (legal, economic, political). people, in this liberal market view, are seen as 'market man', a maximum utilizer of resources and capacities. this model ofsociety features competing individuals—consumers and appropriators (extractors) — where the accumulation of property, in this case information, is an end in itself. developmental possibilities for other objectives (e.g., social, cultural, political, common capital) are excluded in this view. interestingly, in the liberal market view this accumulation for selfgain is equated to at its most fundamental level with reddick/ property rights and communication the end goal offreedom. this goal is shared with the democratic purpose ofproperty, which the individual property right presupposes. however, by privileging private individual over collective individual rights, it negates the achievement ofa broader sense of freedom (macpherson, 1973:82-86; 1978:46-47). applying macpherson' s ideas to information, and the political relations of this property, one way of viewing the current contestation over communication policy making is over the morality of different property claims. in other words, contestation over what information and the terms of its creation and access are, and ought to be. the underlying right is not contested by liberal or democratic proponents in this debate. but the contradiction arises when the set of economic claims (private ownership) are posed against democratic claims (not to be excluded, common property). historically in canadian communication policy making, there has been agency or mutual determination in this debate over goals and practises. overtime, this has resulted in a mix of economic and social policies designed to q) mitigate or balance such claims, e.g., the development ofpublic broadcasting, or provincially and privately owned telecommunication networks, canadian content, obligation to serve. still, these remain inherently contradictory claims in a capitalist market system (macpherson, 1978:3,5; 1985:84). this battle over democratic and liberal ideals is being played out in many sectors ofwhich communication and information is only one. others include welfare state institutions and practises, education, health, transportation and finance. the state's role is central in these changes. only the state can make policy and manage national economic, political and social relations. moreover, while individuals may have the rights of property, it is the state that creates or changes these rights and establishes the institutions (e.g., law) that protects these rights, sets limits on them, and authorizes or enables their articulation in social relations. the state is the terrain of contestation over claims and the resulting output is policy in the broadest sense. although this alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 contestation has always been unequally weighted or tilted in favour ofthe economic or capitalist class, the policy goals ofneoliberals will further erode the democratic potential and practices in communications by limiting the state's role and ability to seek some balance or mitigation between these claims. the view ofthese neo-liberal proponents is that the state's role must be minimal—for the protection and stabilization of markets and individual economic liberty. this liberty takes the form ofboth producer rights and consumer rights (whereby those with the most ability to pay have access, as opposed to participatory democracy whereby all citizens rather than consumers have the right of access in order to realize personal benefits in some measure of equality). this static liberal view of 'mankind' and society sees social purpose and social relations as extractive (selfinterest and gain). in the discourse ofthe day, the 'market' and 'competition', normally thought ofas 'means' to an end, become 'ends' in themselves. any social, cultural, political or other 0f% collective democratic purpose is discounted or marginalized. in the final analysis, this view reduces information to a commodity to be accumulated or exchanged for capital. as a consequence, social relations involving information are not to be developmental and shared whereby individuals could equally have access to personally benefit, grow and develop (macpherson, 1985:5758). information, opportunity and crisis ifnot technological or other determinisms, then what are the key factors behind the marketization ofpublic information? information has always been important as part ofthe economic and social capital of society. what is different in the current era ofcompetition is the strategic purpose ascribed to information by decision makers in society, and in particular members of the dominant capital class, including the state. at the heart ofthe matter is the potential and the increasing ability to extend the control, production and use ofinformation as an industrial sector in its own right. reddick/ property rights and communication two decades ago, the 'information economy' was seen by liberal theorists as a logical extension of industrialism (bell, 1973). more recently, it has come to be defined as the necessary strategy to escape a crisis of our capitalist market society. the value, strategically or economically, ofinformation has always existed in human relations. harold tunis (1951) in his various writings, has emphasized the importance of a balance between monopolization or control ofinformation and its decentralization and accessibility. for innis, the bias ofcommunication meant that at certain historic junctures the strategic choice, design and use of certain technologies biased power and social relations in society. the inequalities of such monopolization in modern society, in this view, are intertwined with the way western society has made a religion of science and the rnachine. innis states, "industrialism implies technology and the cutting of time into precise fragments suited to the needs ofthe engineer and the accountant" (innis, 195 1: 140). in this statement, innis characterizes the essence ofthe information age, the commodification ^pl oftime and its disjuncture fromlong term thinking, continuity and broader social purpose. in an industrialized or post-industrial society, one that is linked by mass communication, whether text, electronic or other form, the measurement and commodification of time also includes the destruction and repackaging oftime's content, and this content is information. modern communication, on this basis, emphasizes individualism over collectivism, instability and change over stability and permanence, and competition over participation (innis, 1951:80-81). in the 1960s, proponents of an 'information society' or economy touted this as a goal that was a natural extension and growth ofa market society. theorists such as daniel bell (1973), an early apostle ofthe post-industrial society, saw information as the valued industry ofthe future. in keeping with a liberal market view, this extension of the market would result in efficiency, productivity and growth benefitting all. the information society, first seen as an evolutionary expecalternate routes, volume 13, 1996 tation, has since become an ideological imperative considered by decision makers as necessary for systemic survival in the face of economic crisis. the crisis has variably been described as one of production or overproduction, too much low cost foreign competition, under consumption, falling rate of profit, and so forth. responses have resulted in the restructuring ofpolicy, economic and social relations and institutions, leading to mass unemployment, a reduction in support for human services, and unqualified faith in an idealized notion of competition. state policy has favoured redistribution benefitting the market at the expense of the citizenry, with a rather specific effort of narrowing and redefining traditionally deor uncommodified aspects oflife. for the market, this has meant less government control and oversight of corporate behaviour, a declining quality of work, and the removal of the traditional policy barriers which make market practises publicly accountable. essential to the policy of escape from crisis (also euphemistically referred to as restructuring) is ^^ the pursuit for more competition, the creation of an idealized market utopia, and a focus on the development ofan information industry (webster and robins, 1986:319; schiller, 1986:30). this is done while social and cultural activities which meet individual needs but have no direct relation to commerce are ignored. they have not, nor can theyhave by their very definition, commodity value in and of themselves in order to accomplish their intended purpose. any attempt to privilege the economic or commodity criteria as more important, or better able to deliver the service, means that only the most profitable rather than the most necessary or useful service is available. but these changes are not some instrumentally foreordained set ofpractises and conclusions. change involves social struggle and competing claims. this holds true with information and technology and for the broader social and economic policies and practises of society. competing claims by social actors, though often made within a set ofunequal power relations, none-the-less shape final policy outcomes and social practises. agency, which reddick/ property rights and communication is the effectiveness of resistance or initiative by social actors, whether from within the dominant class against others in this class, or arising from those in the subordinate classes, mutually influence results (foucault, 1972: 162-163). the current changes in canadian capitalism are being led as much from within by fractions of the capitalist class as from external outside forces. such change approximates gramsci's notion ofreform from within or a passive revolution (1971: 1 06107). as argued by michel foucault, the success of this 'reformed' hegemony, its permanence, requires its pervasion into the conscious and subconscious levels ofsociety andthe citizenry. hegemony is society's social glue of understanding and world view. the complexity of modern society relies on the use of technology and, increasingly, the control of information "to pervade the whole ofthe social body" (foucault, 1972:156). the existing class-based ownership and power relations of media/ information ownership backed by state complicity puts democratic claims at a particular disadvantage in the current period of ^^ change. the claims made by dominant class actors to support or validate these inequalities are expressed in a waywhich ostensibly appeals to shared democratic ideals, but in reality cannot deliver because they are based on economic criteria alone. this ideology has power through its social dominance. it attempts to frame discourse and seeks to control opinion and ideas, to define the acceptable parameters of discussion, and the possible. its goal is to define howwe are to see and value society and, as part ofthis, information and knowledge. information is, therefore, not inherentlyjust, equal or democratic. it must be constructed and shaped by social relations. for it to be democratic (in access, diversity, and use value) it must be defined as such, and the claims seeking this must be broadly recognized (social consciousness), accepted (political) and institutionalized (law and practise) (foucault, 1972: 162). the prospect for achieving this broader democratic view in the current struggle over our changing hegemony as it relates to information seems thin. alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 policy, discourse and social reality this section considers the shifts in federal policy in canada necessary to accommodate the process of information commodification and marketization, and the strategies employed by the market, as well as the responses of social actors. in so doing, it highlights the class dimension of the dominant actors within and outside the state, and the social relations which are emerging in our 'information society'. neither the state, dominant or subordinate social classes are homogenous in their ideologies, values or practises in the relations involving the competing claims of rights, strategies or objectives in the changes relating to information and the communication sector. there is no homogeneity in the views of actors within each ofthe government, market or public sectors. agents with differing views ofsociety, characterized by opposing liberal and democratic objectives, exist within groups in each sector. competition for dominance (policy and practise) of ideas is g) ongoing between agents within each sector and between sectors. but these are not simple 'pluralistic' relations. domination by elites based on different types ofpower (e.g., economic, political) is also inherent in each of these groups and sectors, though particularly so with industry and the state. this domination is based on both the class and power positions ofmembers. this is clearer and more established in state and capitalist class components than social groups. while social groups (e.g., low-income, seniors, cultural organizations, etc.) are class-based, they tend to see themselves more in terms of special or group interests (jenson, 1989:83). in policy making, the world view is more conducive of, and an acquiescence to, a pluralistic view of social interaction and representation. as a result this masks the underlying structural inequalities and limits the public's ability to achieve substantive change. this difference allows discursive and ideological appeals by the state, in an attempt to justify and achieve public consensus on policy and reddick/ property rights and communication values, to be phrased as being in the interest ofthe citizenry. this occurs in particular where these pronouncements tend to appeal to democratic objectives while masking structural changes benefitting individual private property practises. the discourse of the dominant class also conceals the inherent economic (power) inequalities of this agenda. while appealing to the values of participatory democracy or a broad notion of community and shared values/benefits, in practise what is being promoted is a system of consumer or dollar democracy. dollar democracy, based on one's ability to pay, becomes the ticket to individual participation and equity. the antithesis, participatory democracy, in its broadest sense, is the ability to have equal access to, and equally share in, the cumulative social and capital production ofsociety. in the market place, this democratic 'end' and purpose for social and economic restructuring, exists in name only. it becomes a justification for change but with no real prospect of delivery due to the underlying inequalities and structural limitations of class-based economic relations. ^^ the main armaments used by government and industry to date to create acceptance by the public of these changes are propaganda and policy/regulatory changes. using government jargon, the 'optics' ofthe message for change focus on claims of the socially and economicallyliberating benefits ofan information society. this justificatory strategy is shared by market players. government alone, but in close consultation/negotiation with the dominant market actors, has also, and continues to, rewrite policy and regulation necessary to reconstruct and lay the foundations for structural changes to permit the privatization and commodification of information. the concordance of ideological views between decision makers in government and dominant information industry actors is reflected in formal policies, public and private sectors documents, and studies which serve as justificatory devices to affect public opinion in support of such change. as well, special initiatives are undertaken, such as public hearings, e.g., informaalternate routes, volume 13, 1996 tion highway advisory council (mac), canadian radio-television telecommunications commission (crtc). these formal and informal hearings are used by government to create the appearance of inclusion and to dispel opposition. with few exceptions, the resulting policy outputs are only partially shaped but not changed in any substantive way by public claims. the shared government and industry ideology proscribes the reliance on market forces to achieve economic, social and cultural goals orbetterment. perhaps one ofthe most damaging examples ofthis ideological shift, given its broad impact on structuring the framework ofthe information society, was the writing ofthe 1993 telecommunications act. the act contains the contradictory objectives: "to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the social and economic fabric of canada" (sect. 7. a.); "be affordable and accessible to all canadians" (sect.7.b.); respond to the "economic and social requirements ofusers"(sect. 7.h.); and, in a shift to a method instead of an end, "to foster increased reliance on ^^ market forces for the provision oftelecommunications services" (sect. is.). in practise, this 'method' section has become the overriding context andraison d'etre used by the canadian radiotelevision and telecommunication commission (crtc) and policy branches in industry canada for setting the framework for policy decisions, while other sections are considered subordinate or irrelevant. this approach is not unique to canada. in the u.s., the government has ordained that "the information highway is to be built, owned and operated by the private sector" (mcchesney, 1995:7). in reflecting on these changes in the u.s., mcchesney observes that their communication policy "was written by and for business in the u.s. and is one ofthe most corrupt pieces of legislation in u.s. history" (1995:8). mcchesney argues this is corrupt not only due to the back room dealing making between government decision makers and corporate lobbyists, but also because, as has become the model in canada, social issues are relegated to a caretaking item to be dealt with after a commercial reddick/ property rights and communication system is in place. in canada, a plethora ofgovernment decisions, documents and studies similarly promote this way of seeing technology, information and the presumed benefits for society. in its decision on restructuring the telephone and cable industries in canada (the main players in our information society) the crtc saw telecommunications as "a tool for information management and a productivity enhancer for business" (crtc, 1994a: 1). two ofthe core objectives for the crtc in their decision were universal access and to "encourage development and widespread availability of new technology and innovative services to respond to the needs ofbusiness and residence consumers" (1994a: 2). in this narrow view ofa society populated by producers and buyers, lost are the notions ofaffordability and access to other forms ofnot-commercial content by citizens and the use ofthis for other not-for-profit purposes. similarly, the introduction ofthe final report ofthe federal government's information highway advisory council (ihac) ^^ clearly sets the benchmarks for the new social reality in stating, in the new information economy, success will be determined by the market place, not by government the private sector should build and operate the information highway" (ihac, 1995:x). the governments' role is relegated to that of referee and the setting ofground rules. private property as the heart ofcurrent social change is also exemplified by proposed changes to copyright law with respect to information. copyright determines the ownership of a commodity as well as its terms of access. at its core, the creation of an information market relies on this form ofproperty creation and legal protection. the federal government's ihac report on copyright determines that "copyright and the development of appropriate mechanisms are fundamental to the creation of a content market place to give the information highway its raison alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 d'etre" ( ngl nordicity group ltd., 1995, :71). even the terms ofreference and the fifteen issues identified for analysis by the ihac were cast using a market framework valuation. the issues were: 1. timing and financing 2. competition and regulation 3. canadian ownership and control 4. standards 5. government co-ordination 6. copyright and intellectual property 7. culture and content 8. information controls 9. government programs and services 10. privacy and security 11. research and development 12. growth and competitiveness 13. universal access 14. consumer awareness and learning 15. government operations (ihac, 1995:v,vi). ^^ of these, issues 7—culture and content and 13—universal access would suggest some reprieve for social and cultural concerns. however, a closer reading shows that culture and content issues were largely approached from the perspective of copyright (getting paid for products) and the international marketing ofcanadian cultural products. this trade viewundermines the non-economic valuation ofculture in canada, as exemplified, for example, by the cultural exemption secured under the north american free trade agreement. universal access is defined as an objective where government should only intervene ifmarket failure occurs (ehac, 1995:121,169). the common property right of access particularly in terms of social and cultural infrastructure is thereby dismissed. it is also government confirming industry's ability to develop, own, and control access to information within the broad policies of neo-regulation, privatization and commercialization that is essential to a commitment by industry to invest in, and reddick/ property rights and communication expand, this market. that government is compliant in this, often with little or no empirical economic or social research and justificatory evidence to support claims for the need of such change, is not always enough for industry. industry players have produced reams of studies, reports and analyses which promote these same objectives. however, they package these with threats of capital withdrawal, hold-back or under investment in an attempt to keep government decisionmakers on course. government is warned that if it doesn't tow the line the information highway will not be built, jobs will be not created, and canada will not be competitive and grow economically (ccta, 1994). 7 key industry actors also propose a managerial or corporatist approach to policy making and market development, which excludes other stakeholders and leaves only industry and government as partners. the industry role is seen as planning, designing, owning, developing and operating networks and services. evaluation ofinvestment and development is to be based on economic variables alone. 'success' is to meet the test ofthe market place, ^^ where only that which is profitable is available. in this view, the role ofgovernment policy is to pursue initiatives which favour a market driven agenda and competitive market place. however, the removal ofgovernment oversight from the market structure means that concentration of ownership and market power increases. as such, competition becomes a euphemism for increased dominance and a redividing of the existing, and new, market pie by a few large players. those who currently dominate will continue to do so only with fewer barriers and restrictions, particularly with their expansion of market activities to previously uncommodified areas. public regulation is diminished as market regulation replaces it. in future, this means that with our public networks there will be much less public involvement in oversight and decision making. in turn, this may reduce their ability to meet the full range ofthe public's economic and noneconomic needs and to even address the failures ofthe provision of such services. alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 to address the concerns ofthe public at large, and in part to counter public interest group detractors, the agenda of self interest is subsumed by appeals to 'increased choice', consumer 'needs' response, the 'empowerment' of consumers to communicate, and the protection and enhancement of 'culture'. that all this is increasingly denned in narrow market terms, a choice between commodities, means that social and cultural content valuated only by the profitability ofits production is obfuscated. this rhetoric suggests that only an inherently efficient market is able to achieve economic, social and cultural objectives. however, the inability ofmarket forces to address or provide for not-for-profit national or local political, social, cultural communication and information or even for that matter, economic management, is ignored byboth government decision makers and industry. tipping the balance from a predominance of public regulation to that of market regulation, begs the question, is industry really prepared for this role? does it have the ability to ^% undertake these social and cultural duties and responsibilities? given the imperative ofeconomic goals and methods, one would think not (see, for example, stentor: 1993). 8 industry actors also raise the spectre that outside forces create an inevitable need for this particular type of change. technological advancement, globalization, convergence, ostensibly all beyond the control ofhuman kind or their governments, have lead to a crisis in the traditional way that society operates. the only solution in this market view ofhuman kind and society is to redefine traditional social relations and decommodified activities and resources, which were built and perpetuated by social, cultural and political policy goals, to an economically denned approach. stentor telecom policy's report, "culture and the information highway" elucidates about this view, the policy measures that have bolstered the broadcasting and cable industries; enabling them to carry out their social and cultural objectives, may not be sustainreddick/ property rights and communication able in a free-trade environment. in response, these measures may have to give way to a more competitive model for the domestic market (ellis, 1994:2). class there is a class dimension associated with the congruence between government and industry decision makers. non-class issues are also involved in policy making, with this representation largely taking the form ofnew issue-based interest groups. this class matrix can be distinguished using criteria of political and economic power; a private property (market approach) as opposed to social values and a common property (mixed approach) predisposition; and position and importance in relation to others in the policy and regulatory processes. dominant class fractions include members ofthe information industry and inner circle decision makers in government. these interests favour the pro-market agenda (private property). another part of the matrix is an information petit bourgeoisie, g^ professionals working within the various information industry sectors, which tend to have split loyalties between selfinterested private property (labour relations and as producers) and the broader social and cultural (non-commodity) processes and relations. there is also a set of subordinate class actors. traditional players in the policy process, consisting of unions and public interest groups, are generally driven by issues relating to economic and social justice (inequalities). issue or ostensibly non-class interest groups are also involved in the policy process. one form, usually single issue oriented, has historically pursued social or cultural rights, for example information content. a new type of group, exhibiting post-modern values relating to individual differences and pluralistic notions ofcommunities, tends to focus on alternative socio-political processes. within the structure of government, and in particular the departments charged with policy making on these issues (indusalternate routes, volume 13, 1996 try, heritage, finance, treasury board, justice) there are competing visionsbetween individuals, managers and sector branches on policy. these competing views are often underpinned with implicitly conflicting values about individual and collective property rights. however, in terms of final policy decision making, these power relations are unequal. certain managers and sectors within the departments, an inner circle, (usually policy and regulatory branches) have the greatest influence and power over policy outcomes. this is usually in concert, but at times can be in conflict, with their political masters. with the current pro-market agenda there is a particular concordance of views between industry, these inner circle bureaucrats and the dominant politicians (e.g., cabinet ministers). interestingly, the schismbetween the views ofthese elites in government and many of their employees or colleagues closely resembles the schism in society at large between the expectations and values of the public and the elite decision makers of both ^^ government and the market. the public tends to seek a much more balanced set of social relations in general and information policy specifically than these elites. recent studies have shown a growing class-based polarization over economic and social objectives between elites and the public at large. a recent report by ekos research associates argues that there is "relative discontent with the narrow and unsuccessful pursuit ofprosperity and competitiveness", a market agenda, and that this '^neo-conservatrve agenda still seems to be a powerful force in the elite world of government and business" ( 1 995a: 20). in a comparison oftwenty two values of elites/decision makers and the public, elites were most concerned with economic issues such as competitiveness, prosperity, rriinimal government and the like. the public's concerns were largely the inverse, focusing on collective and social values, including freedom, environment, health and equality (1995a: 12). with regard to information, recent surveys by ekos (1995b) and compas (1995) on canadian culture and information content (television, films, books, music, etc.) showed a reddick/ property rights and communication strong preference by the public for a diversity ofcontent to meet social and cultural needs in addition to economic 'choice' options and, a desire for government intervention through policy and program support to meet these needs. 9 however, these views receive little play in current policy making. the potential for a more equitable balance in policy making is further aggravated by the revolving door of employment between the senior levels ofgovernment and industry. the little lag time between assuming responsibilities from one employer to the next, and the fact that many ofthese elites move from a senior policy position in one sector, to a comparable position in the other, reinforces the shared ideology of these interests. for example, since the federal government shifted to a pro-market, neo-regulatory regime, seven senior individuals responsible for defining and implementing this government policy have since taken up the following private sector positions: 10 vice president regulation, canadian cable television association #^ president alliance communications vice president regulatory affairs, stentor telecom policy inc. vice president multimedia, bell canada vice president bell mobility vice president unitel communications president canadian cable television association individuals from a number of government departments have moved to an industry player that is directly affected by (and often benefits from) the changes in regulation and policies. similarly, those in senior levels ofindustry also move into senior policy or management positions in key communication policy setting departments. those representing the publicview are often excluded from this type ofaccess to this inner circle. however, to counter the public 'flak' that tends to arise about insider decision making, both the crtc and the federal government have undertaken public consultative initiatives—ostensibly pluralistic proceedalternate routes, volume 13, 1996 ings which give equal time and opportunity for all players, including the public, to affect policy. the unequal resources the dominant corporations bring to these venues, and the weight attached by government to their representations as compared to public efforts, maintains rather than mediates the unequal power relations in policy making. the recent ihac is instructive on the class dimension of this issue. as shown in chart one, of the tiiirty one ihac council members, twenty represented the market whereas six represented the public interest. twenty one ofthese participants (information industry, cable, telephone, commercial content, and finance) represented dominant companies in the information field. with the recent industry restructuring, take-overs and the like, these companies also exhibit an increasing level of economic interdependency and cross-ownership relations. three public institutional representatives on the ihac straddled the public interest and market agendas. these three (education, health, library) # ft increasingly rely on the market for the provision and delivery of their services. ofthe six representing the public, one ofthese, the consumers association of canada (1995), tended to represent the views ofbusiness by presuming that open competition would provide maximum consumer choice and that this would eventually result in social and cultural goals being achieved after a new market regime had been established. 11 also disturbing about the ihac process was that many ofthe council members had little formal training or broad experience in the areas of communication, policy and information. much ofthe first halfoftheir tenure was spent being briefed on the basics of policy and practises in these areas. moreover, no small amount of time was spent by members representing specific industry's and companies fighting to protect their own interests. 12 chart one: ihac council membership information technology industry 9 cable television industry 3 reddick/ property rights and communication telephone industry 6 commercial content industry 2 finance industry 1 public interest organizations 6 public institutions 3 labour 1 chair 1 the inner circle of companies which consistently lobby policy makers behind the scenes and are represented in majorpolicy fora including crtc hearings is relatively small. they include the following: chart two: regulatory intervenors alberta government telephone allarcom (pay-tv) * canadian association of broadcasters canadian business telecommunication alliance * canadian cable television association * canadian daily newspapers association canadian federation of ind. business %jtf canadian independent telephone association canadian satellite communication inc. canadian satellite users association competitive telecommunication assoc. director of competition, competition bureau northwestel inc. * quebec-tel government of saskatchewan sprint canada stentor telecom policy inc. * unitel communications * rogers cable * shaw cable * western international communications * information technology association of canada those who were also represented on the ihac directly or indirectly are asterisked. 13 in comparison, the public interest groupswho most consistently participate include the federation nationale du alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 consommateurs du quebec, the national anti-poverty organization, the public interest advocacy centre, the consumers' association of canada (national and provincial), the telecommunications workers union and the communication, energy and paper workers union of canada. this corporate representation in these policy/regulatory activities also correlates with their respective positions ofdominance in the information industries in canada. through takeovers, mergers and alliances this industry is extremely concentrated and largely controlled by these interests. for example, in television, five companies reached 62 per cent of all canadian viewers in 1993 (including allarcom, eaton's, asper). ten companies in this sector received 90 per cent of all revenues. in cable, three companies (roger's, videotron, shaw) controlled 56 per cent of the market in 1994. in radio, ten companies controlled 55 per cent of all revenues (including allarcom, roger's, shaw). in magazine publishing, 12 companies control ^^ 5 2 per cent ofcirculation. in book publishing in 1992 twenty one of370 firms (6 per cent) controlled 5 1 per cent oftotal sales. with barriers between these traditional sectors removed by policy, the race now for these players is entry and dominance of the electronic market place for existing products and the extension ofthe market into private (home) and other traditionally non-market social and cultural activities and institutions (winter and hassanpour, 1994:10-17). the canadian cable television association has defined these new market opportunities as the 'unclaimed territory' (ccta, 1994:3,6). these types ofservices include electronically based information services, distance education, health, libraries, home shopping, e-mail, government information, games and entertainment, among others. this territory has been described as 'unclaimed' for two reasons. first, none of the existing companies have finished developing the networks and applications necessary to produce and distribute these products and the consumer market is still being developed. secondly, none ofthe reddick/ property rights and communication existing companies have achieved market dominance in these services. most ofthese commodities are intended to be accessed by individuals from the home. public claims, class and interest groups in addition to this agency in the dominant class fraction, subordinate class agency occurs both in more traditionally class-based group andnew interest group forms. this agency is both reactive and oppositional (progressive) in relation to the unequal economic and political power of the domination information class. with both these segments of the subordinate class, the goal is shared; a struggle against these inequalities. however, the traditional groups, who tend to have developed some degree ofclass consciousness, react to economic inequalities (e.g., pricing, affordability). those in the newer segment in contrast, have formed as interest groups and are less class aware, but argue for a more democratic structure and practise for an information society, a community or communities view, than do the tradi^^ tional groups. while the traditional groups recognize the class nature of social relations, they have tended not to attempt to change them or offer a different vision for social relations, so much as argue for welfarist forms of redistribution to ensure access. many in the new interest groups, in fact, argue implicitly for greater social control over decision making in the development and access to information networks and resources. it also is not coincidental that the new interest groups formed largely over concern about broad 'information content' issues, whereas the traditionalgroups formed over narrower economic issues relating to access to basic public communication infrastructure, or around narrower cultural content (e.g., broadcast policy). both segments are elite led and have only recently started working together in coalitions around common policy goals. in the current policy changes, which are driven by a more entrenched bilateral governmentindustry corporatism, both types ofgroups are required to adopt alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 new approaches in influencing policy making thanhave been used in the past. this means they must pursue more aggressive behind the scenes lobbying in addition to formal, public interventions. the traditional groups have generally taken one of two forms. one group, class-based, have represented low income or disadvantaged canadians. other interest-based groups have represented canadians in general on the basis ofshared culturalneed, and regional disparities and claims. the first group includes the: national anti-poverty organization; telecommunications workers union; federation nationales des consommateurs du quebec (fnacq); public interest advocacy centre; ontario federation of labour; british columbia public interest advocacy centre; communication, energy and paper workers union of canada. the claims made by these groups concern issues ofaffordability, ^^ availability and access to basic media (e.g., networks, books, etc.). the second grouping tends to focus on a specific need or issue important to a constituency, such as canadian content or technical requirement. members of this grouping include the: canadian association of the deaf; the friends of canadian broadcasting; television northern canada; the canadian conference of the arts; consumers association of canada; canadian national institute for the blind; a common thread linking both types ofgroups is that their claims on policy are centred around the public nature ofcommunication and the need for canadians to have access to be able to participate in society. the dominant class sees information and communication as a strategic investment to develop innovative and widespread uses (widely distributed, and sold and resold) of new information based commodityproducts. the traditional public interest groups reddick/ property rights and communication see a duality to these services however. on the one hand, there exists a commercial component, as argued by the information companies. but at the same time, these groups argue that there is a public utility or public goods function. as such, access and use are "necessary for economic, social and cultural development, participation and integration for society at large" (reddick, 1995:32). these groups argue that the current policy trend will create a society ofinformation "have and have nots" based on the ability to pay, particularly given the need for companies to recover massive proposed investments. for example, the phone and telephone companies alone are planning investments ofup to $15 billion just for network upgrading. the new interest groups have been formed by academic and professional elites who are generally associated with institutions involved with information and knowledge. these groups and their members (usually other elites or similar professional organizations rather than the general public) tend to be either early adopters ofnew technologies, orhave been pushed into informa^^ tion societypractises by their employers, or those financing them; often provincial governments. for example, most provincial governments have developed strategies ofelectronic information production, distribution and exchange of government services, education, library and health services. the new interest groups would include: the coalition for public information; the ontario library association; the canadian library association; the canadian teachers federation; provincial privacy and information commissioners; telecommunities canada (freenets); information highway working group; public information highway advisory council. some ofthese groups have been in existence for some time, such as the library associations. they and the others are considered 'new' because of their recent interest and activities involving alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 broad communication policy because that their previous or other activities or mandates were much less or not at all concerned with communications. the claims ofthese groups focus less on economic issues of access or ownership in the industry, and instead, involve the need forpublic space, in addition to commercial space, in an information society and a diversity of information (social, cultural, political), in addition to commercial commodities. interestingly, some also promote the development of a highly connected, high capacity 'information system' to all individuals, often embracing similar emancipatory utopian expectations to that ofthe market proponents of the information highway (coalition for public information, 1995:1,2,4,5). some of these claims seem to be made without a clear understanding by some of these actors of the economic costs associated with such objectives or the proclivity ofthe market to actually invest or provide service to market segments (low &% income) or areas (rural) which offer little return on investment. nonetheless, the claims these groups do make are a recognition that economic imperatives are an assault on 'public' information and the traditional public sphere. they also recognize that the market can not or will not meet these social, cultural and political needs. some groups, by uncritically embracing and promoting the mythical and utopian possibilities ofthe information society risk imdennining the potential that they will achieve their end goals. as a result there is a shared discourse with economic actors that new technology can 'decentralize' society, link everybody, 'empower' citizens and groups, create electronic communities and so forth. but they lose sight of the fact that these occur within a wider, centralized and integrated privately financed and owned structure. economic criteria still define what is a justified investment, what can be 'economically' provided. the increasing private control over information also sets the limits and terms of this decentralization which are not equal or designed for social reddick/ property rights and communication ends. the risk ofa market driven approach is that electronic grids and information products and services will not be emancipatory. moreover, public space and information resources will not be broadened and reflect social diversity, instead these become narrowed, eroded and filtered as they are commodified. gorz calls this emergingnetwork infrastructure, one that extends to the private and leisure activities of the home, "the glue of serial impotence" (gorz, in webster and robins, 1986:322). in this view, people become a mass of linked, impotent consumers. these groups need to better define, articulate, develop strategies for, and adhere to their goals and ideas to avoid becoming complicit by default with the market agenda (webster and robins, 1986:321-23). other actors involved in these policy debates, which have had a fairly consistent level ofrepresentation are self employed professionals—an information petit bourgeoisie. these actors tend to have two major economic interests influencing their objectives in addition to cultural and social concerns. on the one ^^ hand, they have a stake or claim on information content or products as labourers on behalfofcorporate producers. this set ofrelations they share in common with an increasing number of members ofthe subordinate class who are becoming information workers or where traditional work is being affected by the increased use ofinformation technology in the production process. as well, many also have a claim as owners (producers) of information products. these are producers of information and information based works for both social/cultural (use) value, but also as much, ifnot more so, for their commodity/exchange value. this means that at times, there can be concordance or discordance with other public interest groups depending upon the particular policy issue at hand. groups representing these actors at policy fora include: the society of composers, authors and music publishers in canada; association of canadian television and radio artists alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 (actra); the independent film and video alliance; the writers union of canada. the general public interest is represented in varying degrees by this constellation ofunions and public interest groups, but often the public is not fully aware of the substantive policy and structural changes being implemented until these have already occurred. one can speculate on the reasons for this, but they probably include: failure ofcommunication by their group representatives; low levels ofinterest; complexity ofthe issues; lack of availability ofuseful/informative information; under reporting or biased press coverage; and inattention by politicians, among others. in addition to these barriers, much ofthe decision making occurs behind the scenes, through lobbying, private studies, consultations with experts and dominant actors (capitalist class and subordinate class interest groups) both in private and in controlled access fora. 49| recently, a number ofthe traditional andnew public interest groups have started working in broader alliances. for example, the coalition people for affordable telephone service (pats) was formed by over 60 organizations representing 10 milhon canadians (piac, 1995: 1). this is not a formal organization but a number of groups who share a common interest around one issue—telephone service. being a single issue coalition, it has been relatively easy for the group to achieve consensus over common objectives on policy. the objectives deal with the availability and aftordability of basic telephone service. another public coalition, the alliance for a connected canada (acc), was formed to deal with both basic technical access, information content and employment issues (brehl, 1 995 :b3 ). this coalition links traditional and new public interest groups on a cross-sectoral basis as a tactic to strategically give these interests more political clout on policy decision makers. strategically, the acc is also a means to create a democratic process for forming consensus and action around core issues. in reddick/ property rights and communication particular, they are focusing on inequalities relating to access (affordability), content development and diversity (non-commercial social, political and cultural needs) and quality and abundant levels of employment. the strategists of this alliance are largely academics or experts in the field of communications mirroring gramsci's conception ofcounter-organic intellectuals. they are attempting to create an oppositional (ideological) praxis to counter the attempted hegemonic shift desired by the dominant 'information' class. this is very much a response to the classbased, market inequalities of the information society which are emerging out ofpre-existing class-based structural inequalities. members ofthis alliance bythe summer of 1996 included the public interestadvocacy centre, the telecornmunicationsworkers union, the communication, electrical and paperworkers union, the council ofcanadians, telecommunities canada, the coalition for public information, the federation nationales des associations des consommateurs du quebec (fnacq), the national library of canada, the information highway working ^k group, the mcluhan program in culture and technology, the canadian library association, the canadian teachers federation, the assembly of first nations, and the association pour pavancement des sciences et des techniques de la documentation (asted). groups such as piac and the twu also represent traditional class-based groups such as low income canadians and telecommunication workers. the cross-sectoral nature of this coalitionwas a strategic choice on the part ofthese groups, in part to counter government's current strategy of categorizing particular consumer groups in the pejorative as 'special interests'. forming a broader constituency has generated some concern and attention by policy makers because as a coalition these groups have much more political clout and media impact. this concern has arisen because the group is politicizing policy awareness and extending debate to include a broader set of'ordinary' canadians through their representative organizations who have not been alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 centrally involved in information or communicationpolicy (brehl, 1995:b3). government managerialism and policy the federal government's strategy in policymaking and approach and response to public interest groups and the information class is based on the managerial or corporatist model. the corporatist strategy with respect to the 'public' generally takes two forms. on the one hand, as discussed above, many groups or interests are included in the traditional 'pluralist' policy fora. while this affords some influence on policy by the public, such processes have little real impact on policy. instead, these processes tend to neutralize public opposition by permitting this form ofexpression and interaction. for those groups who exhibit more political eflfectivity on issues—more of a challenge to the ideology and agenda ofgovernment and its corporate allies—these groups are either marginalized or brought into the corporatist arrangement djffr under terms set by government. this is not to say that they are equal partners in some tripartite managerial set ofrelations. even if this were so, the relations themselves would still be undemocratic by the wider exclusion of individual participation by the public and the other representative groups. instead, these 'included' groups are more like 'junior partners' with no real ability to change the overall policy agenda. if it were a baseball game, these groups have moved from the bleachers to the dug-out, but they still aren't on the field or calling the shots to the real players. occasionally, minor policy or regulatory concessions are made to continue their participation or appease substantive opposition which generates around specific policy issues. for example, the federal government recently ordered massive telephone rate increases. in an attempt to dispel opposition from public interest groups, the government promised to establish through regulation a lifeline program and similar affordability options for low income canadians (brehl and mccarthy, 1995:b1). there is however, a price to be paid by groups to be included reddick/ property rights and communication closer to the centre of this form ofback room decision making. these groups must devise a strategy to achieve some of their goals within the rules and discourse set by government. current policy frames issues in the context of an 'information market place'. for example, industry canada told one of the groups mentioned above that with respect to 'consumer policy': globalization and technological change have changed the dynamic ofthe market place. this market place is increasingly consumer driven. consumer power and judgement, consumer acceptance ofproducts and feedback dictate to companies now. consumers have a stake and role in the economy. in thisnew economywe want nimble producers and, as well, we need nimble consumers. the focus of industry canada is on the market place now. the challenge is to get this framework right. we need an efficient, competitive market and as a result we will end up with quality products and consumer choice. the premise forthispolicy is to make gr sure that the market works. the new consumer policy paradigm is that the government will intervene as an exception not as the rule where there is market failure. the goal is to get the market and competition working right. 14 the inclusion of public interests, organizations or academics is based on their limiting their criticism ofgovernment policy to the details of its implementation, instead ofthe overall policy direction at large. groups are also required to adopt some of the discourse of this policy agenda—essentially agreeing to a narrowing ofdebate to conform to the economic imperatives underlying policy. for example, industry canada has dictated that the new discourse with respect to the public or consumer is that citizens are now only consumers operating in an information market place. interest groups are expected to adopt this stipulated discourse and policy agenda. to be critical or oppositional alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 risks marginalization or exclusion. the words 'class', 'have and have nots', 'vulnerable consumer', 'poor' and the like are to be replaced by the generic catch allterm, marketfailure. in thisview, the devil is not the overall policy or ideology, but in the details of its implementation and practise. 'dysfunction' becomes an aberration in the ideal market, where there are no losers. 15 the potential for co-opting and neutralizing the most effective public interests through such a process is great, particularly where any substantial part of a group's funding comes from government. dominelh and hoogvelt, writing on how the u.k. government hasrefined a similar strategy, remindus offoucault's warnings ofthe dangers ofconforming to the duality ofdiscourse and practise. foucault says that through both, the individual and the group gradually become drawn into a new world of lived experience that gradually detaches them from their own critical consciousness, ideology or value commitments (m. foucault, in© dominelh and hoogvelt, 1995 : 20). where public interest groups or experts produce information/ research for government as part ofthese relations, dominelh and hoogvelt have labelled this structural relationship and power over, by government, to public agency as 'contract government'. this is the corporatist state's response to the "differing goals of agents from the policy goals of government" (dominelh and hoogvelt, 1995: 10). the authors describe this as a key component in the process of commodification and marketization of information and knowledge. in this process, "the tool for controlling manual workers is being used as an instrument for reorganizing mental labour" (dominelh and hoogvelt, 1995:11). with commodification, the product of this labour, information, is commodified. this strategy is based on making "the agents interests the same as government, structuring, monitoring, and controlling each stage of the information/research process" (dominelh and hoogvelt, 1995: 1 1). i would also add, it controls reddick/ property rights and communication the degree of access the groups have to decision makers and the weight given to their views on policy. conclusion recent surveys suggest that for the majority of canadians there may not be strong demand for new information commodities. statistics canada analysis on the income ofcanadians has found that there has been a consistent decline in income levels and disposable income over the past several years. with persistent public and private sector employment cuts, the scarcity ofnew 'good' jobs, and the tendencyfornewjobsto be in the lowerwage service industries, this trend is not expected to change for some time (statistics canada, 1993). this means that it is unlikely that there will be strong mass demand for the very commodities that industry is relying on to build the information society. affordability and class challenges to participation in an information society are also supported by a recent study conducted by ekos research associates. in constructing a model or ^^ typology of the socio-economic grouping of canadians, this study, rethinking government, found that 41 per cent ofcanadians were "economically distressed" and another 16 per cent forming part of the middle class were "economically insecure" (1995a: 90-95). of the remainder, 24 per cent of canadians formed the "secure" middle class and 1 9 per cent belonged to the '^insiders". the insider or high social class represents upwardly mobile, high income canadians. this group correlates with the initial target market identified by information companies for their new information products—the communication intensive household. there is less certainty about the economic ability ofthe 40 per cent ofcanadians in the middle class and, in particular, the 4 1 per cent in the lower social class to fully participate in this society beyond a rriinimal level. what this means is that in the emerging class-based information society, many canadians who lack sufficient economic resources or live in areas ofcanada where it is not economically alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 viable or profitable enough to provide service, will be largely excluded from participating in economic, social and cultural information resources. the 'have and have not' bifurcation in canada based on such factors as income, education, geographic location and so forth, will also exist in communication and information. this outcome is not inevitable, however. participation by the public in policy making can have some affect on the development of our communication/information society. as well, the above trends also mean that a fundamental contradiction is emerging whereby a required mass of individuals with sufficient disposable income necessary for the successful development of an information society as envisioned by itsproponents maynot be realized. if so, what will develop in its place? will this meet the varied needs ofsociety or be a limited service only available to an information caste? current government policy making and market decision ^^ making over the development and availability of information resources amounts to little more than ideology on the part of government that an information market place will exorcise us from economic stagnation, and on the part of dominant companies that they will realize private gain. the current economicallybased 'inquisition' of our long developed social and cultural policies and practises are an assault on our moral, ethical and democratic goals. this is all done in the name of a new market doctrine. this market-like religion conveys a powerlessness about ourselves as individuals, as a broader citizenry, and our democratic national institutions and polity. the god of the market is not new. in greek mythology he was called hermes or mercury. the greeks mainly knewhim as the 'god ofcommerce and the market', but he was also called the 'master thief (hamilton, 1942:34). 16 ifthe information society is to be democratic, that of'for the people', then limits must exist on the processes ofcommodification and marketization. as macpherson argues above, property rights reddick/ property rights and communication must balance social interests and permit mil individual development and participation in social, cultural and economic processes and activities in society. these must be valuated based on their own criteria (morality, ethics, economicjustice) not by economic essentialism alone. the fundamental democratic individual property right to freedom ofwhich macpherson speaks must include the right not be excluded from participation and access to communication and diverse information resources. information and knowledge in the broadest sense must be recognized as fundamental to being human, for existence as social beings, and to being democratic as a society. these goals also require that the public be more included in the decision making process about the development and availability of these resources and services.. those alone vested through enfranchisement with the right and responsibility of governing should guide debate and decision making. at issue is whether we are to be a society within 'commerce' or whether 'commerce' should be subsumed within society. ^?fc notes 1. for helpful commentaries on an earlier version of this paper, i wish to thank wallace clement, john harp, vanda rideout and michael janigan. 2. the federal communication sector includes broadcasting, telecommunications, intellectual property and copyright, national libraries, data protection, privacy, access to information, trade and competition policy. 3. in this paper the term information includes knowledge. 4. see resnick, s. and wolfe, r. 1987 class and knowledge. chicago: university of chicago press, pp. 2,3,5,24,52 for a discussion on the process of over determination or social interdependency. 5. zuboffhas written about using information technology to informate individuals. in other words, the use of technology to create new information and, at the same time, increase the skill and knowledge levels of individuals as workers and citizens. see zuboff, s. 1988 in the age of the smart machine. new york: basic books, inc., pp. 9-10. 6. neo-liberal is defined as a current mix of contemporary liberal and ^& alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 conservative ideologies which together advocate reduced state power and a lesser role for government in society, and an increased reliance on market forces, competition and individualism. see for example, b. clark, 1991 political economy: a comparative approach. new york: praeger, pp. 83,97, 119. 7. see for instance the submission by the canadian cable television association to order-in-council p.c. 1994-1689. 8. see for example, 'the information highway: canada's road to economic and social renewal, a vision statement", stentor telecom policy inc., oct. 1993. 9. "canadians' attitudes toward broadcast issues", compas survey, sept. 1995; "staging the future", ekos research associates inc. for human resources development canada, january, 1995b. 10. most of these came from the crtc. 11. see for example, the consumer association of canada submission to public notice crtc 1994-130 for comments on order-in-council p.c. 1994-1689. 12. the author was a policy advisor in industry canada during this period and interacted with the council on a number of occasions on policy matters. 13. see for example the list of parties for such hearings as crtc 1994130 (1994b); telecom decision crtc 92-12 (1992); telecom decision crtc 94-19 (1994a); telecom decision crtc 95-21 (1995). 14. the author was a participant at this meeting representing a public interest group in december, 1995. 15. the author was a participant at this meeting representing a public interest group, november, 1995. 16. it is interesting to note that the dominant telephone companies in canada call their national lobbying group stentor telecom policy inc.. in greek mythology, stentor was a herald with a powerful voice who died after losing a shouting contest with hermes (collins, 1994: 1133). references apple, m. 1991 'the culture and commerce of the textbook". in m. apple and l. christian-smith) (eds.) the politics ofthe textbook. london: routledge. reddick/ property rights and communication apple, m. & christian-smith, l. 1991 the politics ofthe textbook. london: routledge. bell, d. 1973 the coming ofa post-industrial society: a venture in social forecasting. harmondsworth: penguin, peregrine books. brehl, r. 1995 "new telecommunications alliance targets affordability." toronto star. november 8: b3. brehl, r. & mccarthy, s. 1995 "bell told to ease burden on the poor", toronto star. november 4: bl. canada 1993 telecommunications act. canadian cable television association (ccta) 1994a submission to order-in-council p.c. 1994-1689. 1994b annual report. canadian radio-television and telecommunications commission 1992 telecom decision 92-12. competition in the provision of public long distance voice telephone services and related resale and sharing issues. \£/ 1994a telecom decision 1994-19. review ofregulatory framework. 1994b public notice crtc 1994-130. list of parties. 1995 telecom decision 95-21. implementation ofregulatory framework. clark, r. 1991 political economy: a comparative approach. new york: praeger. clement, w. 1988 the challenge ofclass analysis. ottawa: carleton university press. coalition for public information 1995 "future knowledge". march. collins 1994 collins english dictionary and thesaurus. aylesbury: harper collins publishers. compas 1995 canadians attitudes toward broadcast issues, for the friends of canadian broadcasting. september. alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 consumers association of canada 1995 submission to public notice crtc 19940130 for comments on order-in-council pc. 1994-1689. dominelli, l. & hoogvelt, a. 1995 "globalization, contract government and the taylorization of intellectual labour in academia". unpublished. ekos research associates inc. 1995a rethinking government '94. 1995b staging the future. for human resources development canada, january. ellis, d. 1994 culture and the information highway. for stentor telecom policy inc., september. foucault, m. 1972 'the eye of power". in power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings. new york: pantheon books. gramsci, a. 1971/1989 selectionsfrom the prison notebooks. edited and translated by q. hoare and g. nowell-smith, new york: interna{£% tional publishers habermas, j. 1974 'the public sphere: an encyclopedia article". in new german critique, vol. 3, fall. hamilton, e. 1942 mythology. boston. little, brown and company. information highway advisory council 1995 connection community content: final report of the information highway advisory council. minister of supply and services canada. innis, h. 195 1/1991 the bias ofcommunication. toronto: university of toronto press. jenson, j. 1989 "different but not exceptional: canada's permeable fordism." canadian revue ofsociology and anthropology. vol. 26, no. 1, 1989. macpherson, c.b. 1973 democratic theory: essays in retrieval. oxford: clarendon press. reddick/ property rights and communication 1978 property: mainstream and critical positions. toronto: university of toronto press. 1985 the rise and fall ofeconomic justice: and other essays. oxford: oxford university press. mcchesney, r. 1995 'the internet and u.s. communication policy making in historical and critical perspective". unpublished. ngl nordicity group ltd. 1995 study on new media and copyright. for the information highway advisory council. june 30. public interest advocacy centre 1995 hotwire. march. reddick, a. 1995 the information superhighway: will some canadians be left on the side ofthe road? . for the public interest advocacy centre. september. resnick, s. & wolfe, r. 1987 class and knowledge . chicago: university of chicago press. schiller, h. 1986 information and the crisis economy. oxford: oxford univer\£7 sity press. 1991 "public information goes corporate." library journal. october. statistics canada 1993 income distribution by size in canada. stentor telecom policy inc. 1993 the information highway: canada 's road to economic and social renewal, a vision statement. october. webster, r. & robins, k. 1986 information technology: a luddite analysis. norwood: ablex publishing corporation. winter, j. & hassanpour, a. 1994 "building babel." canadian forurn. jan/feb. zuboff, s. 1988 in the age ofthe smart machine. new york: basic books, inc.. alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 red orange issn 1082-4715 may 1996 volume 1 number 1 (321pp) ...revolutionary investigations of contemporary capitalist economics, politics, society, culture. a marxist journal of theory, excerpts found at http :// politics, and the everyday web.syr.edu /-rcymbala / ro.html are from essays in number 1: . . . of revolutionary journals and intellectuals, the proletariat and the petit-bourgeoisie. . . red theory: burning out of the posttheoretical haze the lost revolutionary knowledges in post-al feminism: postmodernism, capitalism, and red feminism literary/cultural studies & the crisis of liberalism in the u.s. cybertheory as post-ideological: a critique — a left dossier dematerializing the material: (post)modern cultural studies and the politics of experience radical political praxis within the late capitalist academy accepting submissions for issues: open focus introduction to red orange, part 2 after postmodernism: liberalism in crisis cynicism, alienation, and fin-de-siecle capitalism work that is engaged in systematic investigation and explanation emphasizing concepts of class, class conflict & struggle, class consciousness, mode of production, forces & relations of production, labor, proletariat, revolution, socialism, communism, dialectics, ideology, theory, & critique. $15/2 issues individuals, $30/2 institutions $7 + postage sample send submissions, inquiries, & volunteer introduction letters to: p.o. box 1055, tempe, az 85280-1055 anthropology and the invention of deconstruction: a brief survey todd dufresne, york university the crucial step—which is simultaneously ethical and theoretical—is that of remaining true to the implications of our assumptions of culture. roy wagner, the invention of culture since the mid-1980s, anthropologists have more aggressively articulated their unique place in the burgeoning field of "postmodern" discourses. ' in turn, the disciplinary subject of anthropology has increasingly become its own analytic object sous rature, under erasure. yet despite this autodeconstruction, or perhaps because of it, there has been surprisingly little examination of deconstruction by anthropologists. equally striking and no less surprising, at least from an "outsider's" perspective, is the fact that jacques derrida's name and work rarely appears in the anthropological literature concerned with the deconstruction of culture. it is not, of course, that derrida is the signified truth of deconstruction. but as the thinker who coined the word and applied it most widely, one would expect to find his name scattered across the literature. 2 however, anthropologists tend to cite each other as their own sources on deconstruction, an incestuous practice where inadequate readings find the currency they do not deserve. it is not my intent to provide a definitive account of deconstruction and its relationship to anthropology, even assuming that werepossible, but simply to incite debate on a topic that deserves more careful consideration. in what follows, i will underscore and briefly survey some of the places where deconstruction is directly or indirectly addressed by anthropologists, with particular emphasis on the "invention of culture" literature; critically evaluate this work, noting how and where i think it succeeds and/or fails; indicate where a better appreciation of derrida's work can help resolve some hesitations about the deconstruction of culture; and finally, delimit the alternate routes, volume 12, 1995 alternate routes, volume 1 2, 1995 politics of disciplinarity and what i am calling the anthropological invention of deconstruction. contrary to popular opinion, the deconstruction of metaphysics (or "logocentrism" and its offshoots) is not just the reversal or displacement of binaries, but is also the double affirmation ("yes, yes") of that oppositional structure(cf dufresne 1993). "inorderforthe'yes,yes'totakeplaceonboth sides," dernda suggests, "it must occur in two languages at once... [t]here has to be a babelian situation" (1985:125). perhaps more than anyone, anthropologists are keenly aware of the "babelian" task of translation that defines ethnographic work. in the invention of culture, roy wagner thus writes: the only way a researcher could possibly go about the job of creating a relation between such entities [i.e., cultures] would be to simultaneously know both of them... thus gradually, in the course of fieldwork, he himself [sic] becomes the link between cultures through his living in both of them... "culture" in this sense draws an invisible equal sign between the knower (who comes to know himself) and the known (who are a community of knowers). (1981:4) for derrida, affirmation can be understood in this way as the simultaneity of a "relation between such entities;" indeed, affirmation is possible only when sufficient attention is paidto that x which makes and unmakes the 'no-man'sland' between languages, logics, cultures, and so on. derrida famously calls this x differance (among many other things) and argues that it is not a word, concept, name, or method (1973: 130; 1989:4). in dissemination he writes: "it is the 'between,' whether it names fusion or separation, that thus carries all the force of the operation" (1981:220). for his part, wagner not only points out that anthropologists must "become the link between cultures" if they are to span the cultural divide, but that the "strangeness" and "inbetween" character of the anthropologist is culture, and that culture is invention (1981:10,35). for this reason we can see how the "in-between" space ofcultural invention resonates with the "between" space ofdeconstructive differance. despite these connections that crystallize with wagner, a rigorous understanding ofaffi i mation and differance is precisely what is missing from most accounts of deconstruction in anthropology today. for if it were, scholars would at least hesitate before they pronounced deconstruction a dufresne/anthropology and deconstruct/on nihilistic project of debunking. but this is certainly the impression one gets from even the most cursory examination ofdeconstruction as it appears in the anthropological literature. for example, jocelyn linnekin writes: taking in multiple, contingent points of view is sometimes referred to as "decentering" and is a kindred project to "deconstruction," the undermining and "destabilization" ofdominant, authoritative categories and assumptions. (1991a:3) although this definition is partly true, derrida argues that it is just not good enough to undermine categories in a first phase ofdeconstruction: "to remain in this phase," he states, "is still to operate ofand from within the deconstructed system" (1981a:42). rather, a second, affirmative, or "proper" phase (margolis 1985: 150) of deconstruction must be attempted at the same time, a phase that acknowledges the necessity of analytic constructions even as we destabilizethem. consequently, derrida very clearly states that deconstruction "goes through some radical questioning, but is not questioning in the final analysis" (1987:20). to the extent that critics (as well as many supporters) still fail to comprehend derrida's affirmative "double science" (dernda 1981a:41), deconstruction risks being read as a wholly negative operation. for instance, €£r it is often understood in the same narrow way that steven tyler reads "postmodernism"—namely, as part of "the congeries of negativities that end the modern epoch" (1987:3). this is unfortunate, since tyler's often flamboyant characterization ofthis "end" is less appropriate for derrida than, say, for jean baudrillard, where indeed "the prison [house of language] has become an amusement park, an autopoetic hall of mirrors" (tyler 1987:5); or where, following michael taussig, the signifier is not simply open, but empty (1992:79). it is only by completely ignoring the affirmative phase of deconstruction, by mistaking derrida for baudrillard, that tyler invents a derrida whoproposeswhathecryptically calls "a downward, decompositional movement toward the dark, erergic, pathematic, passionate realm of the moonlike aleatory consciousness," (1987:49); or again, a derrida who advocates "a decompositional, downward movement that... is universalized in the unconscious itself (1987:56). tyler's engagement with derrida's work is admittedly interesting, but mainly because it is so provocatively idiosyncratic and defiant. at times one gets the impression that he is gleefully playing a game of intellectual oneupmanship with derrida, perhaps trying to raise him from the abyssal depths alternate routes, volume12, 1995 of "the unconscious itself;" a place, incidentally, far from dernda's way of thinking. as a result, his chapter on derrida in the unspeakable often gets bogged down in exactly the sort of scholarly pyrotechnics that characterize the worst excesses of deconstructive work—and which sometimes gets dignified with the title of "literary." 3 his quite peculiar (mis)reading of derrida is captured by the following passage, where he suggests that: derrida disconnects the sign from the substance. . . and we are left with a ceaseless shifting ofsigns without substance or form whose name is language and whose text is the last metaphysical survivor. one could say that the object ofpostmodernism is to write the last chapter which would be the final slaying of the metaphysical beast, the deconstruction and overcoming oflanguage, but tins we cannot do so long as we write alphabetically. we can only overcome language be means of a writing that is not analytic. (1987:26) in fact, derrida treats this "ceaseless shifting of signs" as unavoidable, what he calls the "necessity of an interminable analysis" (1981a:42). now, this necessity refers to the first, negative, or "shallow" phase of deconstruction that we have already encountered: the ceaseless overturning of binaries. while tyler correctly recognizes this first phase, he fails to "develop," as gasche puts it, "a sense ofwhat deconstruction is to achieve" ( 1 987:3 ; 1 986). consequently, it becomes easy to see why tyler thinks of dernda's deconstruction as a purely negative, "downward" operation. like tyler, derrida also wants to produce a writing that is "not analytic" or metaphysical . yet in no way does he advocate, as tyler suggests, the supposed end or "slaying" of that "metaphysical beast." similarly, derrida does not struggle "to escape from the net of the alpha-matrix," as tyler puts it (1987:37; 1992). on the contrary, derrida argues that deconstruction "is not an exit, it cannot be compared to a passage beyond or a lapsing, even to a 'liquidation'" (1991:97). he instead argues that metaphysical structures (i.e. institutions or conventions) must be affirmed even in their displacement—perhaps especially so—since without them there would be no possibility for deconstruction or the systems of representation, communication, translation, and so on, upon which everything feeds. derrida does dufresne/anthropology and deconstruct/on not, in other words, declarethe apocalyptic end ofall things in the endless play with texts. as wagner (1981:51) recognizes: [w]ithout the conventional distinctions that orient the actor in his [sic] world, that tell him who he is and what he may do and so give his acts a conventional masking and a conventional motivation, invention would be impossible. for similar reasons, many conclude mat deconstructon is a 'parasitical' practice that always requires a constructed host (cf. rorty 1982: 108; caputo 1989:24). tyler's thinking about deconstructon provides a helpful foil against which i have situated derrida's work. but, leavingaside tyler's criticism that derrida "misconstrues" and "errs" at every other turn, there remains the arguably more serious charge that derrida the textualist "evades responsibility in the manner ofa bureaucrat" (tyler, 1987:46). for while tyler takes this charge in yet another idiosyncratic direction—one in which derrida becomes an "arch-conservative" and "crypto-positivist"—his particular view ofderrida as irresponsible and apolitical has great currency in anthropology. this view stems, no doubt, from criticisms already popularized by such writers as michel foucault, edward said, and terry eagleton. as well, it may be the result ofdeconstruction's close affiliation with the politically ambivalent and compromised works of friedrich nietzsche, martin heidegger, and paul de man. amonganthropologists, however, thetroublingpolitics ofdeconstruction have surfaced more insistently around allan hanson's (198 c >) controversial analysis of maori culture in "the making of the maori." hanson demonstrates that the ancient tales told by the maori about their origins were influenced by contact with europeans long ago; that, in effect, the history of the maori was "always already" contaminated by an outside influence. consequently, the presumed authenticity oftheir history (as unique, singular, internal) was questioned, and in its place was left a colourful quilt-work implicating both maori and european in the joint venture of cultural construction. hanson's article could not have appeared at a more volatile time. the maori werethen attempting togain certain rights (and property) that had been systematically denied them by the ruling government. some critics thus argued that hanson had unethically sided with thegovernment who could now use his arguments to dismiss maori claims as "merely" invented ones. alternate routes, volumel 2, 1995 "the tender point," linnekin submits, "appears to be the analytic deconstruction of authenticity when applied to cultural representations asserted by indigenous people," (1991a:446). elsewhere she adds: the criticisms that some anthropologists have levelled at hanson's article point inevitably to the conclusion that deconstruction is politically correct when it is applied to colonial concepts, narrative, and representations, but is politically incorrect when applied to discourse authored by indigenous people. whether the theory of culture construction makes for better explanations is thus subordinated to the political issue of whose discourse is being decentered (linnekin, 1991b:8) hanson's deconstruction, however, does not simplytarget "discourse authored by indigenous people," but also (and simultaneously) the analytic categories which make and unmake such exclusionary and violent designations as, for example, "indigenous people." in this respect hanson follows derrida, but also linnekin and richard handler. handler (1988: 195) argues that "if the processes of displaying, framing, interpreting culture are themselves part of culture, they cannot be bounded and controlled in the same moment in which they bound and control whatever it i s that they constitute as a cultural obj ect . " although handler disavows any connection with deconstruction,'' his point is well-taken and relevant here. deconstruction does not accept as unproblematic any ideal, original, deep structure somehow 'set apart' as an analytic category (i.e., 'culture'), first, because this ideal is itself a product (or representation) of metaphysical speculation, and second, because language itself cannot be thought outside this fabricated structure. there is, therefore, no exit, (dis)solution, moral imperative or injunction that would make this complicity between our language and its world vanish "for what such simplistic injunctions [to the contrary] overlook," taussig (1992:52) argues, "is precisely our profound entanglement and indeed self-constituting implication in that screen of interpretation." in other words, since "it is becoming clear that anthropologists too are inventors of culture" (hanson 1989:890), we must realize that "they are never in a neutral relationship to the society of which they purport to convey a measure of understanding" (fabian 1990:xv). handler has summarized this point: [ajnthropologists construct the 'cultures' they study in similar fashion [as nationalists], by describing the cultural substance or dufresne/anthropology and deconstruct/on social facts that will establish the existence of the cultures they enclose within the cover of their monographs. (1986:4) having recognized the complicity inherent to any ethnographic (or communicative) practice, some postmodern anthropologists have begun, as taussig urges, "the long overdue task ofrefunctioning anthropology as a first world pursuit" (1992:5 1). yet taussig, may not appreciate the extent to which an anthropology turned on its head still "operates from within the deconstructed system. "it is not sufficient to "commence the long overdue discovering ofthe new world in place of its invention" (1992:52). rather it is the status of authenticity itselfthat is under erasure andnotjust its contested designation(s). as kenneth little rightly suggests, a "parodic anthropology" cannot advocate a "simple reversal" ofopposition, but must perform "an inversion ofthis dyad that dissolves an 'original' binary identity" (1991a:87). in a commonly misunderstood passage, derrida rejects the possibility of moving outside metaphysics, claiming instead that "there is nothing outside the text" (1976:1 58). 5 his point is not quite as non-sensical as it has often been made to appear. actually, wagner makes a similar point when he argues that "our symbols do not relate to an external 'reality' at all; at most they refer to other symbolizations, which we perceive as reality" (1981 :42). 6 in hanson's terms, both derrida and wagner are arguing that "cultural inventions acquire authenticity in the eyes ofmembers of society because the invention ofculture is no extraordinary occurrence but an activity ofthe same sort as the normal, everyday process of social life" (1989:899). in other words, there is nothing outside that everyday process which might guarantee the truth of authenticity. as a result, since everything m-the-world is constructed or invented, and therefore inherently textual or re-presented, linnekin is right when she insists that "authenticity in this light is a red herring" ( 1 99 la:5). as little thus argues, we have to analyze our role in the reproduction of "the romantic rhetoric we share with the subjects of our analysis... [w]e need a deconstructive analysis of the everyday world that questions our/their commonsense categories as we/they describe them" (1991b:251). if, then, deconstruction is "global" (linnekin, 1991 a:9), it is only because there is nothing outside the text, "globe," or context (wagner 1981:37) that could categorically resist this deconstructive force. this is because the imagined "real" cultural differences between us and them, self and other, analyst and analyzed—although politically powerful (taussig alternate routes, volume12, 1995 1992: 1 13)—are "always in the position of the signified (derrida 1976:73, his emphasis). for the death of god first announced (or recognized) by nietzsche also implicated the death of universal truth, of a singular reality structured around an ultimate signified (or master narrative). consequently, and as taussig suggests, this "delineates that reality as masked and inherently deceptive, real and unreal at one and the same time—in short a thoroughly nervous nervous system" (1992:1 13). it delineates, that is, something like little's "funny edge of tilings," (1991 a:87) or derrida's "double chiasmatic invagination ofedges," ( 1 992 :238) both ofwhich necessitatethe deconstructive "double science" oftaussig's "ordered disorder, the exception andthe rule" (1992:2). for this edge marks the boundary of a differance that exceeds law, order, and system—even as it concedes its complicit power (taussig 1992:115). taussig puts it this way: [t]he crucial point is that this is not so much a system as a nervous system. as such it resists structuralist machinery... if only because the system is composed ofand requires copies that are not copies. there is a fateful power for deceit and confusion at the heart of mimesis, and yet mimesis lies at the heart of the world. (1992:174) in passing, it is worth notingthat taussig's "nervous system"—a benjaminian "chronic state ofemergency" that evokes a "positionless position" (1992:1 3) — is not unlike derrida's "double science" with its equally nervous and contaminating "law ofthe law" ( 1 992 :22 1-52). and both, to which we could add little's "double movement" (1 99 la:77), are not entirely unconnected to johannes fabian's performative etlinography in power and performance— at least to the limited extent that none ofthese operations can "be pinned down as a position for or against the powers that be" (fabian 1990:263). in each case, the "funny" edge of deconstructive differance radically confounds the logical law of non-contradiction, a law which conditions the separation between the west and its invented rest. consequently, the "producers of invention are often outsiders (including anthropologists) and insiders" (hanson 1989:899; cf. clifford 1986b. 19). in fact, as timothy mitchell demonstrates, it is often impossible to tell the difference between inside and outside: where eveiything occurs as a trace ofwhat precedes and follows it, nothing i s determined as the original nothing stands apart from dufresne/anthropology and deconstruct/on what resembles or differs, as the simple, self-identical original, the way a real world is thought to stand outside the exhibition. there is no hierarchical order of the imitator and the imitated... everything both imitates and is imitated. (1988:61; cf clifford 1986a:118) given this derridean insight, we can no longer claim that this world—the socalled "first"—is really first or even second, any more than we can privilege, as linnekin finally does, the "ontological status" of some chronologically prior world(1991a:910). more precisely, we can and sometimes do privilege such status, but only by re-investing our faith in some metaphysical community (as in rorty) that is originary, natural, and above all practical. in its most extreme expression, this can even delude us into thinking—as it does dorinne kondo (1990:302-4)—that deconstructon can help us regain the "nodal points" of our lost humanistic past. yet the return to onto(theo)logy never entails a deconstructive stance, but always a p re-judicial or even ethnocentric one. 7 it is easy to fall back into metaphysical language at certain critical junctures. for example, both taussig and mitchell maintain the myth not of the privileged west, but of the rest as a natural, even unconscious, site of montaged distractedness (taussig 1992:44) and proto-deconstructive sensibility (mitchell 1988: 146-54). here truth is merelymoved offshore, like illicit income, at a safe and seductive distance in the realm of the other. kondo, little, and fabian falter in similar ways: kondo by privileging the japanese language over english as that which more closely approximates the truth of multiple, shifting, crafted subjectivity (1990:26-33); little by privileging the process and "pragmatics of a dialogue" over and above meaning and theory (1991b:90); and fabian by privileging the hard "reality" of a "political praxis" (1990: 18). 8 interestingly, fabian does not follow through with the more radical implications of his move from "informative to performative" ethnography (1990:18), in part because he implicitly rejects both mitchell's "world-asexhibition" and derrida's "nothing outside the text" (and its corresponding expression in wagner's work). indeed, fabian contradicts himself. he attempts, for instance, to reject the idea that everything is performance (1990:13) while still claiming that: "there was no stage that would have signalled that the action takes place in a world apart from ' real life, ' no curtain enforcing that separation, not even a clear distinction between actors and alternate routes, ,olume12, 1995 audience" (1990:258). similarly, he rejects the idea that there is a "preexisting text" ( 1 990:266) to the performance even while admitting that there is an "omnipresent intelligence network in which every citizen ofthe country is caught" (1990:288, 264). yet, in dernda's language, it is this very "network" which operates as an "origin which is non-originary" (1981:221), a textualnetworkthat conditions thepower and peifonnance. so, perfonnativity is not at all reducible to the presence of voice, praxis, or metaphysical "coevalness" that we find in fabian and others. the crux of the problem is not just that deconstruction can appear politically incorrect and must, therefore, be rejected or limited somehow, but that the realm of the 'political' has not yet been sufficiently deconstructed. despite the sort of theoretical sophistication that characterizes much recent anthropology, politics' remains a taboo subject, if not an essentialist category. the importance of this point cannot be underestimated, since it lies at the heart ofthe current misreading of deconstruction in anthropology and beyond. in a convincing essay on deconstruction and politics, bill readings demonstrates that "the force of deconstruction is the extent to which it forces a rethinking oftheterms ofthe political" (1 989:225). "this is why," geoffrey bennington suggests, "it has been possible to believe that deconstruction was incapable of thinking the political and the social, and that it was far too political to be an honest philosophy" (1993:238). far from suggesting the apolitical naivety or political nastiness of deconstruction, we begin to encounter here the broad shape of a deconstructive responsibility—one that tyler and many others miss or regard as a late appendage of dernda's work (rabinow 1986:242). in an interview with jean-luc nancy, derrida states that: this deconstruction (we should once again remind those who do not want to read) is neither negative nor nihilistic; it is not even a pious nihilism, as i have heard said. a concept (that is to say also an experience) of responsibility comes at this price. we have not finished paying for it. iamtalkingaboutaresponsibilitythatisnot deaf to the injunction to thought. as you said one day, there is a duty in deconstruction. there has to be, if there is such a thing as duty. i believe there is no responsibility, no ethico-political decision, that must not pass through the proofs ofthe incalculable or the undecidable [i e , difference]. otherwise everything would dufresne/anthropology and deconstruction be reducible to a calculation, program, causality, and, at best, "hypothetical imperative." (1991:107-8) or again, in what is perhaps the clearest response to his critics, dernda states: "as i have often had to insist, [deconstruction] is not a discursive or theoretical affair, but a practico-political one, and it is always produced within the structures (somewhat quickly and summarily) said to be institutional" (1987a:508). such responsibility is not reducible to a singular project, position, perspective, or politics, 9 but always to an affirmation of the effects of dijferance that live on through multiplication (as repetition, mimesis, iteration) beyond the control of institutionalized reason. as taussig puts it: what we do with that radical uncertainty is the measure not only ofour ability to resist the appeal for closure, but also of our ability to prise open history's closure with the lever of its utterly terrible incompleteness. (1992:161) moreover, this ability (or response-ability) is not really in keeping with the sort of belated (though half-hearted) apology for the unforeseen effect of deconstruction that we later find with hanson (1991 :450). in this context we need to recall, as fabian remarks, that "anything may become a pretext [for repression]. oppressive powers have ways to make any show fit to wear," (1990:xv). by affirming the unavoidable rupture of reason in the confusion of exception and rule, subject and object, anthropology and other, a deconstructive "responsibility" never demands the establishment of any particular/7o//y/c5 ofdeconstruction—which, in any case, would at that point cease to be deconstructive—but only the displacement and affirmation of what passes as politics, law, order, structure, and so on. and this hanson did very well, if responsibly. what many anthropologists often try to limit, avoid, or reject in their partial use of, or reference to, deconstruction is precisely their responsibility to that which is impossible to the system of institutionalized reason. in other words, some cannot issue the affirmative "yes, yes" to that very nervous conjunction of self and its repressed others. and thus they do not, in turn, seriously problematize the closed discipline that is 'anthropology.' on the contrary, a very narrow conception of what passes for anthropology is typically spared, exempt from its own timely deconstruction and erasure indeed, it is the self-preservative politics ofanthropology which demand the alternate routes, volume12, 1995 invention ofa tamed, disciplined, andjoumalisticconception ofdeconstruct! on; a politics or pre-judice that works in advanceto disarm the kind ofcareful selfanalysis that upsets traditional boundaries and convictions. all of this is made perfectly clear in the aftermath of hanson's maori article, especially where hanson reminds us that the systematic misunderstanding of'his deconstructive article was not really propelled by the popular press, as some suggest, but by moonlighting academics in their journalistic mode as critical reviewers (1991 :449-50). it was not, then, "just a matter of arcane discourse escaping the confines of the academy, where it [was] misunderstood by the general public" (1991:449). hanson's article (which appeared in a scholarlyjournal) was rather misconstrued by anthropologists who used the occasion to further their own political agenda against the deconstruction of culture literature. and thus we have to ask: who is to 'blame' for the subsequent fiasco, and what were the issues at stake in its sensational representation in newspapers? what these critics fail to appreciate is the extent to which hanson's deconstruction exposed a rich process of cultural construction that implicates both sides of the debate and, in effect, all claims to a privileged position based on primal authenticity. and even though neither side can assume the position of truth, it does not follow from hanson's article that the maori do not deserve concessions from the government. if anything, what hanson implicitly calls for is a dialogue that recognizes the complicit mutuality (or, if you prefer, impossibility) of their respective "positions." if the maori case demonstrates the unfortunate and sometimes tragic effects of what handler calls the nationalism of the discipline of anthropology, it also exposes its more comical side as well—as in h. b. levine's earnest reductio ad absurdum that, i think radically missed its intended target. in the wake of the hanson controversy, levine states incredulously that "it seems possibleto now draw thepuzzling conclusion that anthropology is inventing, not only maori culture, but the backlash itself ( 1 99 1 446). far from exposing the invention of culture literature as absurd, levine unwittingly captures the absurd truth of his own position as defender of the faith, protector of disciplinarity. for what levine, the unsuspecting straight-man in this story, fails to recognize is exactly the "puzzling" truth of anthropology as a kind of ideology of course, not everyone can nor will get the joke; as nietzsche liked to say, we need ears to hear such things. perhaps, though, that levine and some others fail to hear the joke only confirms that they are lost deep within the belly of the metaphysical beast they call 'anthropology.' dufresne/anthropology and deconstruct/on but i am certainly not suggesting that ideology is tied to anthropology alone. for clearly such ideology pervades the entire university structure — and largely for the same reasons . it needs to be stressed, though, that we have not therefore come to the 'end' of anthropology or the university, any more than we have magically reached the 'end' ofhistory—whatever these ends are supposed to mean. as george marcus puts it, "we're not talking about the breakup of anthropology, but the reconception of its central concepts" (in wilford 1990:c12). i have argued that this will require, as derrida puts it, the "double responsibility" (1987:18) of displacing and affirming institutional boundaries—a task "that does not," again following marcus, "just leave everything in ruins." in this essay i have suggested that derrida 's brand ofdeconstruction has often been misread as a negative operation without any real appreciation of its "affirmative" phase. armed with this important point, i turned to wagner's and tyler's work against which i compared and contrasted aspects of derrida's work. i then explored some areas in the invention of culture literature that has directly or indirectly applied deconstructive insights. although uniquely sophisticated in its approach to invention in (or as) culture, this literature was unable to reconcile what it takes to be the negative politics of its own deconstructive impulse. i proposed, however, that it is not the "politics of deconstruction" that must be addressed by anthropology today, buttheessentialist category ofpolitics that makes and unmakes its own boundaries as a discipline. the pre-judicial resistance to deconstruction is read in this light as a political manoeuvre to save the discipline so conceived from erasure. by turning to hanson's article, i placed the "politics of anthropology" in relief and argued for a deconstructive 'responsibility' that thinks through these deep problems which, alas, will not disappear overnight. finally, though, my attempt here was not meant as a comprehensive survey of either anthropology or deconstruction, but as a brief survey, if feeble gesture, towards this worthwhile project. notes 1. acknowledgements. i would like to recognize the participants of kenneth little's 1993 graduate seminar in symbolic anthropology, york university, toronto, for their patient interest in, and encouragement for, this project. special thanks are owing to ken little, roy wagner, richard handler, and clara sacchetti for their generous comments and critical suggestions. thanks also to anonymous reviewers at alternate routes a version of this paper was read at the canadian anthropological society (casca) in vancouver, 1994. © alternate routes, volume12, 1995 2. paul rabinow ( 1988:355-64) mentions that michel foucault and michel de certeau are missing from the now canonical work of postmodern anthropology, anthropology as cultural critique, by marcus and fischer. as the editor of a "theme issue" in the journal cultural anthropology (at a time when marcus presided as the general editor), rabinow explicitly dedicated the issue to the memory of the two overlooked french thinkers. in this way, rabinow has marcus make indirect though quite public amends for his oversight. rabinow does not seem to mind, however, that derrida's name is also registered only in passing in that book, or that de certeau alone (of these three) is at least included in its bibliography. 3. in an unpublished essay delivered at a recent meeting of the american anthropological association (aaa), tyler (1992) discusses the "literariness" of experimental writing, unpacking its political challenge to representation as well as its "urge to clean up and purify society" by controlling representation (11-14). but once again it is hard to orient oneself to tyler's bizarre and haphazard thinking which must itself, surely, be experimental. also, part of his critique of derrida is implicitly repeated here as he claims that we still invest too much in "the book" and its textuality. but here, as in the unspeakable, his utopic vision of an oral/pictorial world is not only familiar (havelock, ong, mcluhan, etc.), and unconvincing. 4. in a personal communication with the author. 5. in the original french, "d n'y a pas de hors-texte," more literally translated as "there is no outside-the-text." 6. interested readers might tie these threads to the "irrealism" of nelson goodman in ways of worldmaking ( 1978) and elsewhere. 7. linnekin gets herself into more trouble by introducing efficacy into the equation: "whether global deconstruction at some point ceases to be a theoretical advance also remains open to debate" (1991:9). the notion of "some point" is arbitrary and so is the idea of "theoretical advance," thus the "open" debate begins to sound suspiciously closed. like the object of its analysis, it seems that the subject of anthropology must protect itself from the erasure of deconstruction. hence the authority of anthropology is called upon to adjudicate the open point of any future advance (or retreat). 8. on realism fabian later writes: "in my view, moving in several directions at once is the only realistic way to deal with the complex context from which le pouvoir se mange entier emerged (even though to invoke realism is certain to rub deconstructivists [sic] the wrong way)" (1990:263) he's right for here truth is maintained in the reality of a multiple world; thus the task is to find the pieces of truth that make up the whole, inter-disciplinary truth. but the essence of logocentrism is hardly questioned here, only the game plan. 9. in their influential essay "the postmodernist turn in anthropology: cautions from a feminist perspective," frances e. mascia-lees, patricia sharpe, and colleen ballehno cohen argue that "postmodern theorizing can bo understood as socially constructed itself... [and] may work to preserve the privileged position of western white males" (1989:16). in turn they argue that "feminist theoiy differs from postmodernism in that it acknowledges dufresne/anthropology and deconstruct/on its grounding in politics" (1989:20). yet it is exactly the dogma of a politics, especially one based on the assumption of a singular feminist perspective and a universal conception of "woman," that deconstruction at least tries to problematize. in other woids, it seems to me that the authors here are insensitive to the play of differ-once that characterizes derrida's work. failing this "responsibility," they simply reverse accepted positions, remain within the strict economy of oppression, and worst of all, become its ideological advocates. if so, this is surely not a very thoughtful solution to some very difficult problems. references bennington, geoffrey and jacques derrida. 1993 jacques derrida. chicago: university of chicago press. caputo, john. 1989 "mysticism and transgression: derrida and meister eckhart." in h. silverman (ed.) derrida and deconstruction. new york: routledge; 2439. clifford, james. 1 986a "on ethnographic allegory." in j. clifford and g. marcus (eds.) writing culture: the poetics and politics ofethnography. berkeley: university of california press; 981 2 1 . 1986b "introduction." in j. clifford and g. marcus (eds.) writing culture: the ^"^ poetics and politics ofethnography. berkeley: university of california press; 1-26. derrida, jacques. 1992 'the law of genre." in d. attridge (ed.)acts ofliterature. new york: routledge; 221-52. 1991 "'eating well', or the calculation of the subject: an interview with jacques derrida. " in e cadava et. al . (eds. ) who comes after the subject? new york: routledge, 96-1 19. 1989 "how to avoid speaking: denials." in s. budick andw iser languages of the unsayable: the play of negativity in literature and literary theory. new york: columbia university press; ch. 3 1987 "jacques derrida." in i. salusinsky (ed.) criticism and society. new york: methuen; 8-24. 1987a the post card: from socrates to freud and beyond, a. bass (trans.). chicago: university of chicago press. 1985 the ear of the other: otobiography, transference. translation, p. kamufandc. mcdonald (trans). lincoln: university ofnebraska press. 1981 dissemination, b. johnson (trans). chicago: university of chicago press. © alternate routes, volume 12, 1995 1981a positions, a. bass (trans). chicago: university of chicago press. 1976 gfgrammatology,g. spivak (trans). baltimore: johns hopkins university press. 1973 "differance." in speech and phenomena, d. allison (trans). evanston: northwestern university press; 129-60. dufresne, todd. 1993 "derrida, jarry, nietzsche: introducing a deconstructive pataphysics." re.post. 1: 26-33. fabian, johannes. 1990 power and performance: ethnographic explorations through the proverbial wisdom and theatre in shamha, zaire. madison: university of wisconsin press gasche, rodolphe. 1987 "infrastructures and systematicity." in j. sallis reconstruction and philosophy. chicago: university of chicago press; 3-20. 1986 the tain of the mirror: derrida and the philosophy of reflection. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. goodman, nelson. 1978 ways of worldmaking. indianapolis: hackett. handler, richard. 1 988 nationalism andthe politicsofculture . madison: university ofwisconsin press. 1986 "authenticity." a nthropology today. 1: 3-4. hanson, allan. 1991 "reply to langdon, levine, and linnekin." american anthropologist. 93(2): 449-50. 1989 'the making of the maori: cultural invention and its logic." american anthropologist. 91(4): 890-902. kondo, dorinne k. 1 990 crafting selves: power, gender, and discourse ofidentity in a japanese workplace. chicago: university of chicago press. levine, h. b. 1991 "comment on hanson's 'the making of the maori.'" american anthropologist. 93(2): 444-46. linnekin, jocelyn. 1991a "culture/kastom/tradition: theory and politics in cultural representation. presented at the association for social anthropology: 114 (ms'i dufresne/anthropology and deconstruct/on 1991b "cultural invention and the dilemma of authenticity." american anthropologist. 93(2): 446-49. little, kenneth. 1991a "a mutual parody of meaning in a circus clown and ethnographic discourse." culture. xi(l-2): 77-92. 1991b 'the rhetoric of romance and the simulation of tradition in circus clown performance." semiotico. 85-3/4:227-55. margolis, joseph. 1 985 'the mystery of the mystery of the text." in h. silverman and d. ihde hermeneutics and deconstruction. new york: suny press. mascia-lees, frances e. et. al. 1989 'the postmodernist turn in anthropology: cautions from a feminist perspective." signs. l(15):7-33. mitchell, timothy. 1988 colonizing egypt. los angeles: university of california press. readings, bill. 1989 'the deconstruction of politics." in l. waters and w godzich (eds.) readingdeman reading. minneapolis: university ofminneapolis press; 223-43. taussig, michael. 1992 the nervous system. new york: routledge. tyler, steven a. 1992 'the middle voice: the influence of postmodernism on empirical research in anthropology." unpublished ms. 1987 the unspeakable: discourse, dialogue, andrhetoric in the postmodern world. madison: university of wisconsin press. rabinow, paul. 1988 "beyond ethnography: anthropology as nominalism." cultural anthropology. 3(4): 355-64. 1986 "representations are social facts." in j. clifford and g marcus writing culture: the poetics and politics ofethnography. berkeley: university of california press. rorty, richard. 1982 consequences ofpragmatism. minneapolis: university of minneapolis press. wagner, roy. 1981 the invention ofculture. chicago: university of chicago press. wilford, john noble. 1990 "anthropology seen as father of maori lore." the sew york times. tuesday, february 20: c1,c12. chemins alternatifs racial origins of civic nationalisms: exploring race creation in australia and canada oren howlett nationalism is an ideology. it claims to know when a nation exists, who belongs to it, and who does not, and why. it advocates the creation of an individual state as a nation's natural right, a precondition for realization of its fullest potential. nationalism invents a group of people who recognize in each other a shared community of culture, history, and future expectation. (senese, 2000) nationalism in any guise creates confusion, not clarity; anxiety, not tranquility. (senese, 2000, 125) the quotations above demonstrate the complexity of nationalism. in her essay entitled, "weeds in the garden of civic nationalism", senese (2000) considers the major 'weed in the garden' of canadian civic nationalism to be the ethnic nationalism of french canadians (113). however, her discussion of civic nationalism is incomplete. in identifying who belongs to the nation, she fails to notice the exclusion of "the other" that inhabits the same territory as english and french canadians and their civic or ethnic nationalisms: aboriginal peoples and "race" minorities. as a result, this omission demands greater exploration. the history of aboriginal oppression and colonization in settler societies and their future nation-states is relatively well known and documented (broome, 1994; dickason, 2002; mcmillan et ai, 2004; mulvaney, 1989). this essay, however, focuses on the experiences of national volume 21, 2005 63 alternate routes exclusion through the creation of "race" suffered by visible "race" minorities in two such settler society nation-states: australia and canada. in presenting an analysis of "race" creation in canadian and australian civic nationalisms, i hope to provide another layer to the existing work that explores the relationship between "race" and nationalism, incorporating the exclusion of "race" minorities from the benefits of civic nationalism into these discourses. in so doing, i wish to show the false nature of the dichotomy between the ideal civic nationalism and the "backwards" or "primitive" ethnic nationalisms. as a consequence, this paper argues that civic nationalisms, which have always existed in australia and canada, were, and continue to be, based on "race" and racist images of who belongs (white english-speaking australians and canadians) and who does not (non-whites). hence, i contend that race creation is and has been central to civic nationalism's exclusions, making nothing more than a variation of ethnic nationalism with ethnic roots. to achieve the stated goals, i investigate the history of "race" creation in both australia and canada through a survey of scholarship on nationalism and "race" in canada and australia. first, i examine the creation of "race" in the nation. i then demonstrate the construction of the state in keeping with the imagined canadian and australian nations. this process, enabled through policies of nation-building, is based on whites-only nationalism in both countries. following this, i present an overview of the recent attempts to deconstruct canada and australia's whites-only nationalism with replacement policies of multiculturalism. i suggest, however, that these policies which were meant to include all within the nation actually serve to further alienate, manage, and de-politicize non-white groups. finally, i end this article with a discussion of the possibility of "de-rac(e)-ing" the nation and achieving a truly civic nationalism. before beginning this study, concepts must be defined and the limitations on the scope of the paper must be considered. firstly, the study is limited to the settler societies of australia and canada. these societies provide an excellent opportunity for the exploration of "race" creation in the early development of settler nationalisms. moreover, these two countries provide historical trajectories that are very similar and complementary for a comparative examination of nationalism and "race". yet, at the same time, nuanced differences provide an interesting comparison 64 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs for analysis. in completing this comparative study, i follow in the steps of many scholars who have used similar comparative frameworks between settler societies and their resulting nation-states (albinski, 1973; alexander & galligan, 1992; berry et ai, 1985; blee, 2001; crabbe & australian and new zealand association for canadian studies., 1983; macdonagh etal, 1988). i have also limited my study to the exclusion of "race" minority canadians and australians. therefore, french canadians in the canadian case will not be considered in this study. moreover, i will not include aboriginal peoples in my definition of "race" minority or nonwhite canadian and australian groups. while i acknowledge the racialization of aboriginal peoples in both countries, there are reasons for this exclusion. first, the aboriginal peoples of both countries have a different history of oppression internal colonialism. 1 as the original inhabitants of this land, their oppression created the base upon which the exclusion of other visible minorities was built (vickers, 2000, 145). moreover, aboriginal peoples have themselves long disputed and resisted their inclusion under the rubric of multicultural policies and discourses, claiming that they are not just another ethnic or "race" minority. from an aboriginal point of view, they are instead the rightful inhabitants of lands appropriated by canadians and australians. in addition, "race" minorities also benefit from aboriginal land losses through the colonial processes of internal colonization further differentiating their experiences of oppression (vickers, 2000, 145). finally, the problematic term of "race" must also be discussed. to this point, "race" has been enclosed in quotations. 2 this is done to recognize the social construction of the term. as simms notes, "[t]he scientific basis of such identification is largely suspect, but the concept of 'race' is socially accepted" (1993, 334). as this study illustrates, the concept of "race" is generally defined by the historically dominant group of society. stasiulis and williams (1992) illustrate that the dominant group has the political power to decide who is racialized and who is not. thus, "race" has different meanings depending upon the national context and the dominant group(s) in society. for simplicity and ease of language, i will use the term "non-whites" as synonymous with canadians and australians of visible "race" minority status, such as non-white landed immigrants and visible minorities. 3 volume 21, 2005 65 alternate routes the narrow focus of this terminology reflects the construction and reconstruction of non-white citizens in political and social discourses and acknowledges the replacement of "race" by ethnic diversity in both nation-states. as a result, it is hard to find a single term that remains constant throughout the literature examined. with this framework, i hope to provide clarity and understanding to abstract and subjective terminology. imagining nation and the creation ofrace the origins of race creation in canada and australia can be found in the history of racialism (betts, 1988; castles et al, 1992; kane, 1997; london, 1970; markus, 1994; marx, 1998; vickers, 2000). vickers finds that political regimes in both countries were built on values of race hierarchy and ideals of racialism. racialism consists of three ideas: 1) humans are divided into races; 2) human capabilities are determined by race; and 3) one race can rule over another race because of their superiority (2000, 2). in his discussion of the united states, south africa, and brazil, anthony marx observes the following of racialism's condoned white superiority: the colo[u]r line was seen as having been drawn by god or biology. slavery, proscriptions against miscegenation, colonialism, imperialism, manifest destiny, racially exclusive forms of citizenship or nationalism, exploitation were all justified by whites as preordained in nature. such racism became a mode of thought endemic in western civilization, buttressed by eugenics, social darwinism, and explicitly racist theories such as those of count gobineau. primordialism serving the interests of whites made the domination of darker peoples seem inescapable. (1998, 3) the idea of racial domination and superiority reflected upon by anthony marx has far reaching implications in both australia and canada. values of racialism were central to the creation of race and settlement in both canada and australia. these racialist values permitted the racialization and internal colonization of aboriginal peoples of canada 66 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs and australia. moreover, they provided the context for the creation of race regimes in both countries, which would shape future imaginings of the nation and its accompanying sovereign state. as vickers shows, internal colonialism underwent an important shift from colonial power in a sovereign regime to ordinary state enforcement in a governmental system based on racialist values (vickers, 2000, 42). this new governmental regime needed to be harnessed to a nation. to do this, the imaginations of the forefathers of both australia and canada were necessary to carry out the work of mediation in creating their nations. benedict anderson (1991) in his seminal work, imagined communities, defines the nation as an imagined political community (6). this definition accurately describes both the australian and canadian situations. the british soldiers and governors of both countries had the important task of imagining and defining the future of their lands. in doing so, they created nations in which they would feel at home. their nation model, therefore, was based upon their british experience, in keeping with anderson's assertion that "[n]o nation imagines itself as coterminous with mankind" (anderson, 1991, 7). thus, the founders of canada and australia created an ideal australian and canadian according to their previous white british experiences. the main marker of the racial ideals for both countries was race. for example, one need only examine the debates of early canadian elites to see their imagining of the canadian nation and community. strong-boag (1998) provides an example of the race-based sentiments which shaped the imagined canadian identity. based on racialist principles, canada was to be "a northern country inhabited by the descendants of northern races" (strong-boag et al., 1998, 8). as a result, canadians were clearly imagined to be anglo-saxon descendants of british origin, white in race and superior to the aboriginals who were seen as savages with no history. these themes of race and britishness are entrenched within australian identity and its nation as well. at the time of federation, kane observes that australian identity consisted of 'whiteness', 'britishness', and australianness which served to protect its security and assert dominion over the land (1997, 121-122). with australia amongst the asiatic countries and in a black man's world, we see the creation of a colonial nationalism built to defend a vulnerable colony. thus, austravolume 21, 2005 67 alternate routes lia, in the middle of these two threats, created a colonial nationalism and australian citizen to keep them at bay and arms length from the nation. clearly evident in both countries are patterns of race creation, based on racialist values, which created ideal images of white australian and canadian races, societies and countries. the process of race creation in the national imaginings of both canada and australia support anthony marx's assertion that race was purposely chosen as the defining feature of colonial nation (1998: 23). in canada and australia, the imagined nations, like the states they supported, were built upon race regimes that were imbued with these racist ideologies, widely held at the time and so deemed "rational and scientific". through the joining of an imagined nation with a state supported by a governmental race regime, the pieces of the puzzle were set in place for the rise of canadian and australian nation-states. wliites-only nationalism and building the nation-state before continuing our analysis of race creation in australia and canada, it is important to note that while the nation and state have been separated for discussion in this study, the state-run processes of national imagination and state reinforcement of that nation occur simultaneously. at this juncture, it is useful to turn to the work of margaret canovan (1996) who posits that "nationhood is a mediating phenomenon" (69). she continues that "nationhood is hard to define not because it is confused or nonsensical, but because it is extremely subtle, and moreover, because an element of myth is essential to it" (canovan, 1996, 69). as a result, it is difficult to determine which one of the state-run national imagination or the state reinforcement of that nation is leading the other at a given point in a country's historical formation or reconstruction. hence, the relationship between the nation and the state that is captured in the term "nation-state" is this meditation process between the constructed and imagined. this relationship is fluid, constantly evolving, and one of interdependence between these two entities. both vickers and anthony marx use the concept of whites-only nationalism to characterize nationalisms driven by racialist values. while discussing different countries, the nationalisms of both canada and australia can be considered whites-only because of their imagined qualities, which exclude non-white "races" from the nation-state, as citizens but not as denizens, such as the case of indentured labourers and 68 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs race minority workers in both countries. as noted above, the work of mediation can sustain and perpetuate these inherent contradictions within the nation-state and in keeping with its nationalism. in addition, nationalism is, in fact, both a political and cultural phenomenon, characterized by the articulation of the nation through political discourses and practices (jenkins & sofos, 1996, 12). this process, in short, elevates the nation to the status of political subject (jenkins & sofos, 1996, 12). here it is useful to think of this political subject as a collective 'we.' conovan elaborates on this usage below: what nationhood does is to constitute a collective political subject a 'we' with the capacity to act collectively over long periods of time. in doing so, it acts as a reservoir of political power, providing a strikingly effective solution to the most fundamental of political problems. (1996, 72) the process of nation building, however, driven by whites-only nationalism, is essential in this complex puzzle of relationships among nationalism, the nation, and the state. through nation-building, governmental regimes are able to build nation-states that reinforce the race solidarity engendered by nationalism and harness its power and strength to maintain legitimacy and ruling power. as anthony marx argues: nationhood was institutionalized on the basis of race.... state-imposed exclusion of a specified internal group, used to reinforce the allegiance and unity of a core constituency, may be a more pervasive pattern. indeed nation-states have often been based on such exclusion, not only according to race, but also ethnicity, class, and other cleavages. (1998, 25) thus, anthony marx helps us understand why racial solidarity was maintained in both nations through the nation building process of immigration, building upon the race regime of internal colonialism created for aboriginal peoples in canada and australia. in canada and australia, state-implemented policies developed around the imagined nation. furthermore, state-elites sought to create the state in its image embedding the existing race regimes into the volume 21, 2005 69 alternate routes administration of the nation-state. one of the clearest examples of such policies are immigration laws to both countries, which excluded nonwhites as citizens or even completely. not only did immigration affect the admission of labour to both nation-states, it also provided the opportunity for further government control and management of the population through the granting or denying of citizenship. as anthony marx observes, citizenship is key to the processes of exclusion and race creation (1998, 5). in post-confederation canada, the early years of nation-building gave rise to an overtly and unapologetically racist immigration policy. politicians of the day actively sought to create policies that restricted immigration from undesirable countries to maintain the homogeneity of the canadian race. stasiulis and williams (1992) illuminate the mediation necessary in creating the racial hierarchy of suitable candidates for entry and citizenship in canada. this ideological work contained all viewpoints, both explicitly racist and exclusive, and moderate and inclusive. despite the efforts of a few liberal minded parliamentarians, however, early post-confederation immigration overwhelmingly came from britain to the almost complete exclusion of non-whites (wayland, 1997, 36). canada's hard labour was performed by the few immigrants from central and western europe and china admitted to the country. this early pattern of immigration began to shift as pools of immigrants dried up (fleras & elliot, 1992; mackey, 1999; simms, 1993; stasiulis & jhappan, 1995; vickers, 2000; wayland, 1997). canadian immigration policies, however, remained exclusionary, clinging to notions of racialism, and the image of a land of a "northern race". in contrast, australia reinforced and justified racist immigration policies through a narrative of unity and cohesion of white australians. here, the entry of inferior non-whites was thought to threaten the development of the australian nation-state and the equality needed for its success (castles et al., 1992; kane, 1997; london, 1970; markus, 1994; vickers, 2000). as a result, the need to create and maintain a homogeneous white australian society was supported at any cost until the early 1970s (vickers, 2000, 87). the prior experiences of using indentured chinese workers to replace convict, and gold diggers helped support this belief and early leaders, whether motivated by fear, nationalism, humanitarianism, racial superiority, or all three, almost unanimously supported protection of the white australia policy (london, 1970, 13). 70 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs in summary, to support whites-only nationalism, both the canadian and australian nation-states implemented racist immigration policies. these policies were justified in different ways. in canada, arguments of environmental relativism and equal or suitable races were used to argue the superiority of the canadian northern and europeans races and create a hierarchy of suitable races, immigrants, and citizens, to the exclusion of those with darker skin pigmentation, who were thought too morally and physically inferior. in contrast, australians used unity, equality, and the quest for a democratic state to justify their overtly racist white australia policy. thus, through the maintenance of a white homogeneous society and complete exclusion of new non-white immigrants, they were able to avoid social cleavages while also protecting their nation-state from the threat of flooding by non-white immigrants such as the "yellow peril" of the nearby asian countries, who would then undercut wages with their inexpensive labour and contribute to the degradation of australian society. deconstruction of whites-only nationalism: building a landfor all to this point, i have explored the creation of race in canada and australia. i have looked at the racialist principles that underlie the race regimes eventually set up in each country. i also introduced the concept of whites-only nationalism that was in use at the time of the founding of both nation-states. for simplicity, i broke down the nation-state by looking first at the imagining of the nation and then at the construction of the state according to the imagined whites-only nationalism via immigration and citizenship-granting policies. hence, by the mid 1950s, both canada and australia were fully-fledged nation-states driven by visions which excluded and oppressed minorities because of their race. although race is no longer a justifiable reason for exclusion or discrimination, the concept continues to permeate our society and affect the lived experience of many within both countries. what has happened to the old race regimes, however, if race is no longer "politically correct"? as jill vickers notes, the state race regimes, on which whites-only nationalisms in canada and australia are built, currently are undergoing legislative deconstruction by policy makers (vickers, 2000, 97). consistent with sylvia walby's (1997) rounds of restructuring 4 , the deconstruction of whites-only nationalism is hindered by two "sedimentary" factors. first, new pieces of legislation that attempt to deconstruct race volume 21, 2005 71 alternate routes regimes are implemented alongside others which maintain internal colonialism, such as the indian act in canada (vickers, 2000, 98). second, the democratic political system, which in practice has represented only the white citizens in both canadian and australia, creates an expectation for white citizens that this will continue (vickers, 2000, 98). as a result, dismantling race regimes has proved very difficult. largely, the deconstruction of the old race regime has occurred in both nation-states at the level of legislative change, in the form of amended immigration laws. yet, efforts to right past wrongs through legislative change have given rise to a new race regime: democratic racism. democratic racism, like the older race regimes, is characterized by the continued disadvantaging of certain racial groups and the privileging of others. it differs because it brings together the values of democratic equality and racism (vickers, 2000, 99). thus, in terms of race, this new regime fits the pattern of the previous system of race creation by maintaining the status quo. while anti-racist and affirmative action legislation has been put in place, the implementation of multiculturalism in both countries will form the focus ofmy discussion. australian and canadian governments have touted multiculturalism as a solution to the problem of diversity created by new immigration laws allowing non-white immigration. the canadian government first introduced the policy of multiculturalism in the late 1960s. it later became entrenched in the charter of rights and freedoms in 1982. in australia, the policy was adopted and adapted by politicians in the 1970s, based on the canadian model. thus, the race regimes in both countries shifted from different forms of non-white immigrant exclusion to the management of diversity through multiculturalism. that multiculturalism manages cultural diversity in canada has been noted by canadian scholars (bissoondath, 1993; day, 2000; mackey, 1999; simms, 1993; vickers, 2000). diversity, lauded under multicultural policies, constructs white english canadian identity as the norm around which other identities are grouped (mackey, 1999, 5) and allows white canadian to retain their individuality while homogenizing the "other" (eisenberg, 1998, 39-40). yet, discussions of canadian identity never fully acknowledge this fact or that multiculturalism perpetuates english canadian dominance and cultural superiority (eisenberg, 1998, 49-50). this trend reinforces the majority's power to construct the iden72 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs tities of racial and ethnic communities within "their" canadian nationstate. a similar trend is evident in australia. it is not, however, framed in exactly the same manner. australian multiculturalism policy evolved from a guiding principle, implemented in an effort to break with an assimilationist past, to being tied directly to specific government policies and programs (jupp, 1997, 134). this then redefined multiculturalism and moved it from an ideology which allowed the preservationof ethnic identities to a tolerance of ethnicity within an overarching australian identity and allegiance (jupp, 1997, 136). this notion of tolerance enabled by multiculturalism is explored by gassan hage (1998) who argues that the "good" multicultural nationalism, as opposed to racist "white" australian nationalism, is actually a manifestation of a white fantasy like that of the racist "white" australian nationalists. like canadian scholars, he feels that multiculturalism does nothing to change white-centred conceptions or imaginings of the nation (hage, 1998, 23). in fact, both multiculturalists and anti-racists, who vilify racists, are clinging to the same white fantasy, only in a more sophisticated form (hage, 1998, 23). thus, while tolerance gives the impression of freedom, it actually serves to control the tolerated and manage their identity (hage, 1998, 89). thus, multiculturalism, as implemented in both canada and australia, provides an interesting study of policy makers' attempts to deconstruct whites-only nationalism. these case studies highlight the key to a race regime based democratic racism: the power of the majority is assumed normal and legitimate. this is the basis, however, of democracywhich further complicates the dilemma of deconstruction. thus, through the management of cultural diversity, cohesion is sought and enforced by the state through construction of "the other" based on liberal and enlightened values of equality, which only includes the "others" if they are safe for assimilation. meanwhile, both the dominance of the racially homogeneous majority and the oppression of others due to their ethnic diversity are ignored. this new tolerant nationalism is based on the ideal of civic nationalism and is thus constructed as open and equal to all without racial or ethnic foundations. this is clearly not the case, however. in both australia and canada, the state legislated a civic nation through legislative reform, but the nation remained locked in past imaginings of great white races. volume 21, 2005 73 alternate routes the uneven reconstruction of the nation-state perpetuates the exclusion experienced by some non-white citizens and contributes to the democratic racist regime of both countries. in short, the deconstruction of both australia and canada's race regimes is incomplete. conceptions of race disappear from the lexicons of legislators and are replaced by words, such as diversity and ethnicity; however race continues to play a major role in the nation-state and contributes energy to the newly constructed race regime even if it is unspoken. de-rac(e)ing the nation: building a truly civic nationalism when i began this race analysis of canadian and australian nationalism i set out to: 1) explore how nation-states create race, 2) show that civic nationalism can have racial and settler foundations upon which nation-states are built and reconstructed through national mediation and rounds of restructuring, and 3) show the implications of these race regimes and nationalisms on non-white citizens in both countries. i have argued that nation-states, like canada and australia, created race through a dual process of imagining the nation and creating the state through nation building. these processes occur simultaneously, through mediation between the elite parliamentarians of each society, and may occur at different rates and trajectories. this is seen in both canada and australia where state deconstruction of racist race regimes has given rise to new race regimes. here, we can see that day's assertion that current policy is a reproduction of the history of diversity though proliferation and adaptation is true for both canada and australia (day, 2000, 207). while his framework focuses solely on canada, multiculturalism can more generally be seen as a reproduction of past failed attempts at achieving unity among ethnic groups and solving the "problem" of diversity . multiculturalism, however, reveals a more insidious truth surrounding civic nationalism. in the present rhetoric espoused by liberal theorists, civic nationalism is the "good" nationalism, devoid of ties to ethnicity, yet based on values of liberal equality and democracy. in contrast, this race analysis has shown that present constructions of civic nationalism in both countries were indeed based upon racial foundations of whiteness and the ethnic exclusions of "others" in both canada and australia. these foundations allowed for the internal colonization and racialization of aboriginal peoples in canada and blacks in australia 74 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs and gave rise to secondary race regimes of exclusion based upon race. even in the reconstruction of both canadian and australian nationstates, their civic nationalisms remained tied to ideals of a white citizenry and proceeded to manage, dominate, de-politicize, and silence the voice of non-white citizens. this process manifests itself in policy such as multiculturalism and second-class citizenship for non-whites (abulaban, 1998; bissoondath, 1993, 1994; jupp, 1997; senese, 2000; vickers, 2000). the implications of these findings might also reveal interestingly similar in trends in other countries with morally upstanding civic nationalisms. what is distinct in the case of white setter societies, like canada and australia, is the work of mediation, which was based upon european racial orders (stasiulis & williams, 1992, 5). within canadian and australian contexts, non-whites are currently caught in a complex situation. while their chosen home welcomes them, they are continuously held at an arm's length by the elites in the same countries that celebrate the diversity to which they contribute as the key to their upstanding and civilized society. this contradiction, in the end, results in second-class treatment, citizenship, and feelings of exclusion which are not rectified by any nationalism currently in place. what can be done to correct this paradoxical situation? in posing this question, i assume that there is a possibility of a truly civic nationalism. it might be more realistic, however, to adopt a spectrum from which to gauge the process of progression. hence, it might be helpful to borrow tim nieguth's (1997) conception of civic and ethnic nationalism as ideal type models. 5 as such, attaining either a fully civic or a fully ethnic nationalism would be difficult. as a result, canada and australia, from the evidence presented here, fall between these two models, as do many other countries. thus, the challenge becomes one of attempting to attain a nationalism that approximates civic nationalism as much as possible. yet, in order to achieve this goal, i believe that we must return to the state of national imagining. for as the canadian experience illustrates, elite driven re-imaginings of nation result in a nation-state that does not shift the foundations of the whiteness that remains at the centre of nation. instead, power must be radically shifted and new discourses and groups given room to share in the benefits of this new nation, state, and nationalism. it is just not enough to implement new legislation and enact new politicise of tolerance or even acceptance. in this renewed space of volume 21, 2005 75 alternate routes imagining, negotiations, similar to those carried out by the founders of both countries, will be necessary. this round of imagining, however, would be inclusive and based upon the groundwork provided by a multicultural liberal politics that exists in both countries and creates room for the formerly identified "other" to tell their truth and contribute their reality to the imagining of a new nation. this is probably the hardest route to travel as it requires an acknowledgment of the past and the rejection of delusional structures and legislative solutions that mediate and support conflicting realities and mythologies. the process was begun in australia as the country sought to resituate an australian identity linked to asia within a globalizing world (hudson & stokes, 1997). even within this failed endeavour, however, the concept of race was absent. its inclusion could have allowed for a full re-imagining or restructuring of the nation with inclusion of all australians regardless of race. this is especially true when one considers the break with britishness advocated by government and repositioning of australian identity within an asian context. this transition could then have been supported by the state through new nationbuilding policies to reinforce this new global positioning and australian identity. in canada, the same opportunity is currently available to legislators. the current shifts in government and political thought, regarding democratic deficits, accountability, political institutions, and political participation, provides an opportune time for canadians to address inequality and injustices entrenched in the canadian system brought about by the new race regime. yet again, the focus is solely on the state and rightsbased initiatives rather than inclusive national imaginings or a reconstruction of the complete nation-state, leaving issues of race completely invisible. these changes clearly require brave leadership that is truly committed to these the ideals of civic nationalism and to de-race-ing exclusionist visions of the nation from our collective memories. the changes also require full participation by all citizens in the process of imagining the nation, in keeping with notions of extensive or inclusive democracy. this, however, is not a task that can be carried out alone by one portion of the population, as has happened in the past. a first important step is for all levels of governance to acknowledge the current shortcomings of the state in granting equal rights to all citizens and truly acknowledge the 76 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs causes for these inequalities. from this point, we might be able to build canadian and australian nation-states and nationalisms that are truly civic. endnotes 1 . the process of dispossession or the forcible removal of aboriginal peoples from their lands and their confinement on small reserves of missions controlled by the state. 2. from this point forward, i will not enclose the term "race" in quotations. while i acknowledge that race is a social construct, i feel race is also a lived experience that negates the social imaginings or construction of race. thus, the quotation marks used by many authors in the field to denote the social construction of race and problematize the term will not be used in this paper. in moving away from this trend, i hope not to reify race, but to give credence and legitimization to the lived experiences of those who confront race and racialization daily. 3. this category includes refugees, landed immigrants, and their children. the terminology is also inclusive of canadians and australians who have skin pigmentation other than white. as a result, this definition excludes white racialized minorities and long term residents of both countries, who again are subject to different effects from the above mentioned policies of cultural management and "race" creation. in excluding white racialized minorities, i, in no way, contend that all landed immigrants are non-white. for the purposes of this analysis, however, i believe it is important to make this distinction to witness how the creation of race differentially affects these visible "race" minorities in both canada and australia and the promise their inclusion holds. 4. walby describes rounds of restructuring as a useful way of "carrying the notion of change built upon foundations which remain, and that layer upon layer of change can take place, each of which leaves its sediment which significantly affects future practices" in the process of nation-formation (1997, 190). 5. nieguth (1997) provides categories of ethnic and civic nationalism. ethnic nationalism is defined as "having a common character and a common culture...possessing a shared genetic connection, such that most members take themselves to be genetically similar and/or related to most other members of the group" (cited: 24). civic nationalism "emphasizes the constructed nature of society in general and nations in particular; any cohesion and sense of belonging is rooted not in quasi-natural kinship ties, but in political arrangements which accommodate different cultural and ethnic groups" (nieguth 1997: 24). volume 21, 2005 77 alternate routes references abu-laban, y. 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(1988). ideology and immigration: australia 1967 to 1987. melbourne: melbourne university press. bissoondath, n. (1993). a question of belonging: multiculturalism and citizenship. in w. kaplan (ed.), belonging: the meaning and future of canadian citizenship (pp. 368-387). montreal: mcgill-queen's university press. bissoondath, n. (1994). selling illusions: the cult ofmulticulturalism in canada. toronto: penguin books. blee, k. m. (2001). feminism and antiracism: international strugglesfor justice. new york: new york university press. broome, r. (1994). aboriginal australians: black responses to white dominance, 1788-1994 (2nd ed.). st leonards, nsw, australia: allen & unwin. canovan, m. (1996). nationhood and political theory. vermont: edward elgar publishing company. 78 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs castles, s., kalantzis, m., cope, b., & morrissey, m. (1992). mistaken identity: multiculturalism and the demise of nationalism in australia. sydney: pluto press. crabbe, p., & australian and new zealand association for canadian studies. (1983). theory and practice in comparative studies: canada, australia and new zealand: papers from the first conference of the australian and new zealand association for canadian studies held at macquarie university, sydney, august 1982. north ryde, new south wales: australian and new zealand association for canadian studies. day, r. j. f. (2000). multiculturalism and the history of canadian diversity. toronto: university of toronto press. dickason, o. p. (2002). canada's first nations: a history offounding peoples from earliest times (3rd ed.). don mills, ont.: oxford university press. eisenberg, a. (1998). domination and political representation in canada. in v. strong-boag, s. grace, a. eisenberg & j. anderson (eds.), painting the maple: essays on race, gender and the construction of canada (pp. 37-52). vancouver: ubc press. fleras, a., & elliot, j. l. (1992). multiculturalism in canada: the challenge of diversity. scarborough: nelson canada. hage, g. (1998). white nation: fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society. sydney: pluto press. hudson, w., & stokes, g. (1997). australia and asia: place, determinism and national identities. in g stokes (ed.), the politics ofidentity in australia (pp. 145-157). new york: cambridge university press. jenkins, b., & sofos, s. a. (eds.). (1996). national identity in contemporary europe. london: routledge. jupp, j. (1997). immigration and national identity: multiculturalism. in g stokes (ed.), the politics ofnational identity in australia (pp. 132-144). new york: cambridge university press. volume 21, 2005 79 alternate routes kane, j. (1997). racialism and democracy: the legacy of white australia. in g stokes (ed.), the politics ofidentity in australia (pp. 117-131). new york: cambridge university press. london, h. i. (1970). non-wliite immigration and the white australia policy. new york: new york university press. macdonagh, o., eddy, j. a., & schreuder, d. m. (1988). the rise of colonial nationalism: australia, new zealand, canada and south africa first assert their nationalities, 1880-1914. sydney: allen and unwin. mackey, e. (1999). the house of difference: cultural politics and national identity in canada. new york: routledge. markus, a. (1994). australian race relations. st leonards: allen & unwin pty ltd. marx, a. (1998). making ofrace and nation: a comparison of south africa, the united states, and brazil. new york: cambridge university press. mcmillan, a. d., yellowhorn, e., & mcmillan, a. d. (2004). first peoples in canada (3rd updated and rev. ed.). vancouver: douglas & mclntyre. mulvaney, d. j. (1989). encounters in place: outsiders and aboriginal australians, 1606-1985. st. lucia, qld., aust.: university of queensland press. nieguth, t. (1997). ethnic, civic, conformistic? english canadian concepts of the nation in perspective. unpublished m.a thesis, magisterarbeit der universitat augsburg, augsburg. senese, p. m. (2000). weeds in the garden of civic nationalism. in m. d. behiels & m. martel (eds.), nation, ideas, identities: essays in honour of ramsay cook (pp. 1 13-129). toronto: oxford university press. simms, g. p. (1993). racism as a barrier to canadian citizenship. in w. kaplan (ed.), belonging: the meaning and future of canadian citizenship (pp. 332348). montreal: queen's-mcgill university press. stasiulis, d., & jhappan, r. (1995). the fractious politics of a settler society. in n. yuva-davis & d. stasiulis (eds.), unsettling settler societies: articulations of gender, race, etnicity, and class (pp. 95-131). london: sage. 80 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs stasiulis, d., & williams, g. (april 1992). mapping racial/ethnic hierarchy in the canadian social formation, 1860-1914: an examination of selected federal policy debates. paper presented at the congress of the social sciences and humanities canadian association of political science, ottawa. strong-boag, v., grace, s., eisenberg, a., & anderson, j. (1998). introduction. in v. strong-boag, s. grace, a. eisenberg & j. anderson (eds.), painting the maple: essays on race, gender and the construction of canada (pp. 1-24). vancouver: ubc press. vickers, j. (2000). the politics of "race": canada, australia and the united states. ottawa: the golden dog press. walby, s. (1997). gender transformations. new york: routledge. wayland, s. (1997). immigration, multiculturalism and national identity in canada. international journal on group rights, 5, 33-58 volume 21, 2005 81 beyond the fur trade: the rise and fall of the eskimo 1 co-operative marybelle myer& this paper is a case study of post world war two state intervention in the canadian arctic and the birth of the eskimo co-operative movement . the argument is that the native co-operative is in the process of becoming a marginalized institution in the face of the development of a corporate structure consequent upon settlement of land claims. specific reference is made to arctic quebec where aboriginal title has been settled although, it is argued, a similar process is occurring across the arctic. cet article analyse i' intervention etatique d' apres-guerre dans i ' arctique canadien et la naissance du mouvement cooperatif inuit. ii y est soutenu que la cooperatif indigene devient une institution marginale face au developpement d'une structure corporative suite au riglement des litiges sur les terres. bien que ce processus se produise dans tout i'arctique, c'est surtout sur i 'arctique quebecois , oil des accords sur les possessions aborigines ont ete conclus , que porte cet expose. alternate routes vol. 5 1982 28 successive waves of outsiders have wrought great changes in the canadian inuit economy. few analyses exist, however, of events after the fur trade which has been of almost no significance since the middle of this century. the focus of this paper will be on the period of state intervention after the second world war, a period marked by the rise of state-initiated native co-operatives and the recent development of a corporate structure. although i refer specifically to arctic quebec, where aboriginal title has been settled, most inuit have passed through the same historical periods to find themselves in a common predicament. in less than one hundred years, the subsistence economy, in which production was mainly (but not exclusively) for use, has been transformed to one involving a mix of subsistence hunting and gathering, simple commodity production, some permanent, but mostly casual, labour and relief and transfer payments. although there were specific regional differences, the native economy may be organised into five overlapping socio-economic periods: (1) the subsistence economy which was based on hunting and gathering and lasted until the latter part of the nineteenth century (2) the fur trade and mission era in which trapping for exchange was added to subsistence hunting and gathering and which declined in importance in mid-twentieth century (3) the development of a state structure after world war ii with trapping and subsistence activities being supplemented by wage labour and government transfer payments and relief (4) the development of native enterprise in the form, mainly, of co-operatives which expanded commodity production and opportunities for wage labour and also succeeded in forging links of ethnic solidarity among 29 inuit and (5) the development of a corporate structure which resulted from the birth of eskimo politics in the ?0's and which has fostered the rise of an indigeneous elite. the development of a state structure prior to the second world war, state interest in the north focussed on the land (mapping and some communications facilities) while the people and administrative functions were handled by what came to be referred to as a "triumvirate," consisting of missionary, trader and policeman. looking after the education and health of the natives, the missionaries functioned as agents of the state. in addition to their own pursuits, the traders "took care" of the economic well-being of the people, buying furs and extending credit (a form of welfare) when hunting was poor. the police, present in the interests of sovereignty, performed administrative functions for the state (rea, 1968:52). post world war ii state involvement was drastically cahnged and the three often-cited reasons for this are: (1) a perceived need to expand sovereignty over canada's northern territories (2) a growing awareness of the resource potential of the area and (3) an appreciation of the plight of the natives many of whom were, literally, starving to death (rea, 1968:55). the department of indian affairs and natural resources was set up in 1953 and, as the title implies, its role may be broken down into the functions of legitimation and accumulation. "indian affairs," which included those of inuit, were dealt with by the extension to the north of health alternate routes vol. 5 1982 30 and welfare programmes in place in southern canada (legitimation) and the continued presence of the rcmp who ensured, for instance, that children attended school through the judicious withholding of social assistance (coercion). the "natural resources" mandate of the department was fulfilled through state investment in social capital overhead facilities (transportation, electricity), a move which provided access to resources and was, therefore, directly beneficial to private enterprise. the state also undertook to stimulate local economies through the exploitation of renewable resources and the creation of wage labour for natives. one explicit, if inconsistently adhered to, ambition was to encourage assimilation of the native population into the western wage economy and lifestyle. gordon robertson had this to say about the state's plans for the natives in a 1960 speech to the institute of public administration of canada: the plan for educating the native both academically and vocationally, is a good one but should not be rushed. in time, this will permit the assimilation of the native into our society and also assist industry and government by establishing a pool of trained personnel who are familiar with the north (371). in spite of the fact that the native people were few in numbers, dispersed across 40 per cent of the canadian land mass, unskilled and virtually all unable to speak either of canada's official languages, they were to be put on hold as a reserve army to be called up when all other alternatives had been put to work. the provision of new services to the north meant the building of schools, nursing stations, administrative offices 31 and housing for imported personnel. these were usually constructed at the site of the trading posts in spite of the fact that their locations had been chosen to satisfy the demands of the fur trade (access to ports, for instance) and were not necessarily suitable to support large colonies of people. there are now 22,300 inuit living in approximately 50 towns across the arctic, most of them comprised of no more than a few hundred people. they are too large for their population to be supported from the land and too small and scattered to permit the development of viable local economies or extensive internal exchange. movement of inuit from the camps into the new administrative centres, mainly voluntary but in some cases coerced, began in the mid 50 's and, in some areas, was not completed until the mid 60's. the acculturation process was, of course, greatly accelerated in towns. earlier contact, with trader or missionary, had been on a one-to-one basis and although biased, at least occurred at a pace more or less governed by inuit who decided when they would go into the post to trade and who were, in many cases, unable to speak directly to the whites. change which had been gradual and relatively non-disruptive under the fur trade was now greatly accelerated and resulted, predictably, in considerable social disorganization. the first effect to be noted was the deterioration of formerly self-reliant people into dependent people. the lifestyle demanded by town living depended heavily upon outside institutions. although they were the numerical majority, inuit townsmen were an effective minority. they had once patterned alternate routes vol. 5 1982 32 their own lives according to a biologically determined rhythm -a time for catching caribou and a time for making clothes -but town life was decisively patterned by outsiders who had direct access to outside support systems. planes and ships began coming into isolated northern villages on a more or less regular, though infrequent, schedule but nothing they contained (mail, foodstuffs, equipment) was addressed to inuit. their cargo was the "property" of the white residents who administered it, at their discretion, to the "community." actually, there was very little feeling of community among the inuit who were family oriented and lacked a strong ethnic identity. simard (1972:18 et al., esp. vallee, 1967) observes that inuit did not adjust easily to life in the new urban centres but tended to resist integration through adherence to their old camp identities. apart from the social disorganization attendant upon town living, the development of the people as consumers and their deterioration as producers was almost immediately evident. firearms had, by now, virtually replaced harpoons and spears and the most significant material changes which occurred were the move from skin tents and snowhouses into wooden houses and the shift in dependence from country food to preserved food. the trading posts expanded their stocks of imported goods in order to provide for new needs which were generated from necessity (as an alternative food and clothing source) and from emulation of the transient white population. increasing reliance upon imported consumer goods led, inevitably, to the loss of formerly necessary hunting and handicraft skills which had been 33 passed, in apprentice fashion, through generations of their ancestors. for the first time, inuit became large-scale consumers and occasional producers, providing for themselves through a combination of hunting and trapping (for use and exchange) , some handicraft production, wage labour and social assistance. the latter was the solution most often resorted to as game in the immediate area was used up and the town population continued to swell through migration from camps and improved health care. native enterprise: the co-operative movement potentially profitable, non-renewable resource exploitation was left in the domain of private enterprise while attempts were made to establish native enterprise in the form of co-ops based on commercial fishing, handicraft programmes and, in some cases, retail stores. a great deal was expected of these co-operative ventures. as arbess (1966:47) says, "the official policy was that the eskimo people should, with all deliberate haste, have control over these organizations in all of their aspects, and should regain their self-sufficiency." statements to this effect, and there were many, should not, however, be taken too literally. "self sufficiency" was used rather ambiguously to mean that natives should exploit renewable resources more vigorously than formerly in order to generate a profit which would eliminate the need of government funding. they were, it might be added, expected to do this with little hope of generating internal exchange and in the face of a massive deficit of social capital overhead facilities. alternate routes vol. 5 1982 34 canada's position vis a vis northern development has always been marked by considerable ambiguity and it may be speculated that the co-operative form of business was considered the ideal development tool because it enabled the natives, hence, the state, to keep one foot in both worlds. americans had forthrightly declared that the traditional culture must be suppressed in the interests of assimilating alaskan natives. the danes took the opposite, but equally unambiguous, stance that greenlanders , being inferior, could never be assimilated and should, therefore, be helped to become better eskimos. canadians, however, have waffled somewhere in between, believing on the one hand that the culture was doomed and the people must be assimilated and, on the other, that they should be helped to live off the land in ways which would not cause undue violence to the traditional culture and the noble savage concept. co-operatives, capitalizing on traditional activities and values, were a felicitous form, accommodating canadian ambiguity by both "modernizing" inuit and enabling them to retain reassuring roots in the past. as louis tapardjuk, president of canadian arctic co-operatives federation limited, sums up, "we're all aware that the co-op is the best vehicle for joining the two activities of culture and money" ( proceedings , 1980:14). organization and economic impact of co-operatives the first eskimo co-operative, based on commercial fishing, was set up in 1959 on the initiative of the federal government. there are now 38active eskimo co-ops across the arctic, affiliated 4 through two federations. ten arctic quebec co-operatives 35 (including one mixed indian and eskimo) are members of the montreal based la federation des cooperatives du nouveau-quebec , while the northwest territories' co-operatives are members of canadian arctic co-operatives federation limited, based in yellowknife. the quebec movement has no links to the powerful desjardins co-operative organization but the northwest territories' movement has established some links with the western canada co-operative movement. combined membership figures (for the northwest territories and quebec) are not readily available but it may be safely assumed that virtually all of the inuit population is involved in one way or another with their local co-operative. membership lists are, in any case, often not current and some people use the co-operative and consider themselves members without actually signing up. more revealing than compilations of book memberships is the support given co-operatives in terms of local purchasing. the pattern for 1976 in northern quebec may be seen in illustration one. since the hudson's bay company (hbc) and the co-operative compete for local business in almost every northern village, a meaningful way of evaluating support for the co-op would be through a comparison of the money spent at each place. the fifty-fifty split shown in the diagram below is so neat that it is immediately suspect. the hudson's bay company has consistently refused to make its numbers available although beaulieu claims to have confidential information supporting this division which, coincidentally or not, has been the working hypothesis of arctic quebec co-op management for the past several years. alternate routes vol. 5 1982 36 % ho u .— 1 v ** ,£. in u <u > ^3 «-> tt m u 11 i la o 1 8 v* «-> o v w 3 ^ d. «o o 3 %* rtt3 c 37 the competition between the hudson's bay company and the co-operatives is complicated. although co-ops are native-owned and have taken both official and unofficial steps to hinder the hudson's bay company from operating in competition with them, most inuit continue to support the "company," their loyalty stemming from their appreciation of its having been around when times were rough to avert famine and death. some inuit are also coming to realize the benefits of having more than one source of consumer goods and, especially, more than one outlet for their carving production. only committed native co-operators now talk about removing the hbc from the north. others complain that co-op prices are higher than the company's, and their merchandise inferior. some threaten to sell all of their carvings to the hbc if they do not get the price they want from the co-op. there is, of course, more information to be gleaned from the diagram above, although space permits only a few further comments. the tertiary sector is, as we might expect, dominated by the state which provides 75 per cent of revenue, in the form of salaries (34 per cent) and transfer payments (41 per cent). the co-operative and the hudson's bay company each account for so per cent of non-state revenue. actual payouts by the co-ops increased from $1.3 million in 1976 to $3.1 million in 1979 and although it is not known, definitely, how this increase compares with increases in payouts from state and private enterprise, it may be that the relative percentages have shifted considerably since the federal government has withdrawn many of its northern operations (in quebec) and a new native-owned alternate routes vol. 5 1982 38 employer, makivik corporation, has come on the scene. in any case, the amount spent on salaries by the co-operatives cannot be correlated, in terms of jobs provided, with that spent by other organizations, especially the state, since the co-ops have historically paid lower salaries than the competition. to be meaningful, information on wage and salary payouts needs to be supplemented with the numbers of jobs provided by the various agencies, with account being taken of the fact that a large percentage of co-op payouts would be for cottage industry g production of handicrafts. at the time of vallee's work, the state was the largest employer in terms of jobs but treude (1972:23) claimed that, in 1971, co-ops provided 280 permanent jobs, "making them the largest employer in the canadian arctic." i would estimate that there are now 500 full time jobs provided in the whole arctic co-op system. unfortunately, the information needed to make a comparison with other organizations is not available, although a 1979 publication from the two arctic federations maintains that co-ops continue to be "the largest employer of native labour in the arctic" ( facts s figures , 1980). state assistance to eskimo co-operatives in spite of co-op disclaimers, it is commonly believed that there is an over-reliance by co-operatives on state assistance. vallee (1967:27,44) for instance, downplayed the povungnituk co-op's claims to have pulled itself up by its own "bootstraps" (paraphrased) , suggesting that this was mere propaganda designed to encourage people to support the co-operative. although it had a definite promotional value, it was also the 39 serious intention and, for a while, the achievement, of arctic quebec co-operatives to "do it on their own." in fact, it was state policy that they should since, as i have mentioned, state-initiated projects were expected to become self supporting as quickly as possible. in the beginning, state-owned buildings and equipment were provided. state assistance also took the form of technical and financial field personnel to train native co-op staffs. since the income of inuit (who were mainly supported by welfare at the time) meant that it was impossible for them to raise sufficient working capital through the sale of shares or through 9application to private financial institutions, an eskimo loan fund (elf) was set up by the state in 1953 "to make low cost loans to individual inuks or to groups for starting small businesses and exploiting local resources" (undated hand-out) . treude (1972:5) reports that the maximum loan available from this fund in 1972 was $50,000, payable over ten years at 5 per cent. in 1975, elf ceased to offer subsidised interest and went to the full market rate and there is now no ceiling on the amount of individual loans. although the history of state financial intervention is interesting and illustrative, i will merely touch on a fewhighlights here. combined federal and provincial support to arctic quebec co-operatives from 1963 to 1978 inclusive was $7,242,000, of which the federal government provided 42 per cent and the provincial government 58 per cent. most of quebec's input (73 per cent) was, however, in the form of loans, while the federal government input was mainly (69 per alternate routes vol. 5 1982 40 cent) in the form of grants. there was, however, no federal assistance provided in '64 and '65, a mere $10,000 in '66 and nothing in '67 and '68. this reflected a basic disagreement between co-op personnel and government project officers as to how co-op affairs should be run. the federal government was persuaded to resume assistance in 1969 and, in 1976, federal inputs took a giant leap, from a $150,000 loan the year before (to stave off bankruptcy), to $646,500. this was the beginning of a five year plan to rationalize state financing of arctic co-operatives. now in its final year, the plan resulted from a study done by the federal government's bureau of management consultants (bmc) who concluded that state intervention was necessary; for, as a result of growth and a continuing inability to raise private funds, the co-ops were desperately in need of working capital. the bmc group recommended a self -development programme to be funded by a mix of contributions and loans, with the idea, of course, that, at the end of the five year period, the co-operatives would indeed be self sufficient. in the early 70's, the affiliated arctic quebec co-ops had boasted of diminishing government support and increasing self-suf f iciencv. figures compiled by the author at the time demonstrated that, in four years, the ratio of state to co-op support had been reversed. in 1967, the state provided 61 per cent of the co-ops' funding requirements and, in 1970, only 34 per cent. if these figures were updated, it would be seen that, because of the bmc programme, the trend has again reversed, although not approaching anywhere near its 1967 disproport ion . 41 much more work needs to be done to assess the significance of state assistance to native co-ops, especially on a comparative basis since it must be recognized that there is still a relative lack of social capital facilities in the north where "the normal superstructure that undergirds business ventures in the south is almost entirely absent" (phalen, 1974:1). services are more expensive in the north than in the south and stores must be resupplied by expensive air freight or once yearly marine transportation. this means financing huge inventories of bulky staples (flour, sugar, tinned goods) and equipment (canoes, motors, ski-doos) which are ordered for a year ahead and have to be paid for in advance of sales. any comparison should also take into account the fact that the state has, over a ten year period (1970 to 1980), provided $27.1 million to various organizations involved in northern land claims research, but only $9 million over a twenty year period (1960-1980) to all the arctic co-operatives. this amount should also be evaluated in light of the federal government's budget for 1980-81 northern spending of $856 million. co-operative activities co-operative activities fall into two categories: (1) those involving the provision of goods and services locally and (2) those involving production for export. in the first group are included retail stores, oil and gas sales and delivery, restaurant and hotel operations, recreation facilities (movies and poolrooms), the sale of country food, and construction programmes. the second group comprises the production of alternate routes vol. 5 1982 42 furs for export, commercial fishing, the collection (and formerly cleaning) of eiderdown, tourist programmes and arts and crafts production. expansion in the first area is limited because of the small and scattered market which prohibits internal exchange and the lack of linkage between production and consumption. commercial production is for export, except in the case of country food which accounts for only a small percentage of total local sales. as far as expansion in the second area goes, although ongoing efforts are expended to develop exportable products, most have failed because of the high cost of production anywhere in the north. many things have been suggested and tried (and are being suggested again) : food processing, component assembly, saw mills, logging operations, tanneries and, even, the manufacture of ivory surgical pins for orthopedic use! ruffing (n.d:36) makes the point (with reference to the navajo nation) that north american natives cannot compete with "asian sweatshops" and "are one of the latest victims of the new international division of labour." the manager of the quebec federation puts it more simply: "anything you can do in the north, you can do cheaper somewhere else" (murdoch , april, 1981). in spite of the co-operatives' efforts to diversify, most revenue continues to be derived from consumer, rather than producer, activities. beaulieu (1980:42) estimated that, in 1977-78, 76 per cent of the total business done by northern quebec co-ops resulted from consumer activities, while only 24 per cent came from production. the most successful area 43 of production is handicraft which has taken over from fur as the significant trading commodity. the problem is not, either, simply one of capital. the news has not been good even when relatively large amounts of state money have been available, as it has been for projects sponsored by the government of the northwest territories. garment manufacture at inuvik has been subsidized for years and although the producing facility is capable of expansion, the market appears not to be. the other factor is, quoting berger (1977:11:39) "the wishes of the native people themselves." the people complain of being relegated to marginal status and say that they are not content to be shunted into yet more handicraft projects. they recognize that arts and crafts programmes will never be sufficient to bridge the gap between development and underdevelopment. as the white manager of the west baffin eskimo co-operative (cape dorset) said at a meeting held to discuss eskimo art: due to the government's failure to develop alternative industry in the north, there is an inordinate pressure on talent in the north to make up for the lack of development. craft projects seem to be considered the magic solution to everything (ryan, in minutes , 1978:48). it is not surprising that arctic co-operatives are popularly identified with the arts and crafts programmes since this is virtually the only significant area of production and surpluses from carving and printmaking provide support for non-productive 1 2 and non-profitable projects. the arts and crafts programmes, carving especially, have been expected to carry the whole burden of northern development for inuit. art as commodity the carving programme is the major single source of alternate routes vol. 5 1982 44 personal income for inuit. in arctic quebec, for instance, out of the $3.1 million paid out by co-ops in 1979, $1,419,000 or 45.7 per cent of this was used to purchase carvings from the local population. the purchase of other crafts would bring this figure closer to $1.5 million, a figure which would have been higher in the northwest territories, an estimated $2.5 or $3 million. until recently, the global significance of income from art programmes could have been determined by meshing purchase figures for the hbc and the co-ops. northern purchasing by private entrepreneurs has, however, escalated considerably in the past few years, making such a computation more elusive. although carvings had been a trading commodity for ten years before the first co-op was incorporated in 1959, it was the co-operatives which organized their large-scale production and distribution as well as assuming some of the development functions formerly exercised by the federal government. before the co-ops were organized, the hudson's bay company was the main purchaser and, before that, purchasing was organized by the canadian guild of crafts (montreal), the institution responsible for introducing the first inuit art to the canadian public. the initial hope of both whites and inuit was that carving would provide an alternative to dependence upon trapping. it succeeded in this to a remarkable degree. as johnny pov, an inuk from povungnituk, said: "carvings rescued all the people from the wretched situation they were in. if they had to rely only on the trading of fox skins, they would undoubtedly still be poor today"! in myers, 1977a:n.p). for the first time, inuit were 45 freed from eternal dependence upon luck and could expect, more or less by their own efforts, to be able to secure a reasonably steady supply of food. the significant thing was that they could do this without major social disruption. they could carve and still structure their own time. they could work at home or on the land. they could obtain their own raw materials, utilizing traditional relations of production. they did not need to go to school to learn a new skill or to speak another language in order to make their living. they could teach their children. from the beginning, there has been a direct relation of carving to consumption. inuit were not attempting to get rich but to satisfy immediate needs. peter murdoch, manager of the hudson's bay company in povungnituk in 1955, observed that an inuk, needing tea in the morning, would make a carving, sell it to the company and buy some tea. he might repeat this performance in the afternoon when he discovered he needed some lard or flour (myers, 1977b:13). brody (1975:173) also remarked that when a carver needed $30, he made a $30 carving. this still tends to be the pattern, with some carvers making very large sculptures for which they might receive $1,000 to $6,000, in order to obtain some expensive equipment such as a ski-doo or boat. peak purchase times for carving coincide with peak buying times -just before christmas and just before sealift in late summer. although there is great inequity in the volume of goods exported and the volume of goods imported, because of the high prices obtained for even trivial carvings, the transfer of alternate routes vol. 5 1982 46 value perpetrated through their exchange may not be as glaring as that occasioned by the fur trade. ruffing (n.d:29) talks about the transfer of value that takes place fthrough unequal exchange) when navajo hand-made products are exchanged for machine-made products. it is interesting to note that some native carvers, quite unversed in economic theory, have wondered why "toys sold in the co-op store, that are made in a few minutes on a machine and break in a few days cost as much as (they) get for a carving that took three hours to make by hand and will last forever." although eskimo carvers can, on an average, make $20 to $30 for a few hours' work and, unlike their southern counterparts, do not bear any of the expense or risk of selling their own productions, they must provide their own tools and gather their own materials. inuit consider this to be the most onerous part of the work of carving since it means, for instance, buying gas at more than $3 per gallon and travelling many miles by land or water, to hack soapstone out of the frozen ground. this becomes a family task although the extra labour is not taken into account when the carving is finally bought. since the income from carving does not provide for all of a carver's expenses, he must cover a part of his cost of reproduction through the utilization of his own and his family's labour to provide country food to take up the slack between what he earns and what he needs. due to the institution of a a sophisticated marketing strategy, eskimo art has been a significant commercial success, commanding prices far above that generally obtained for handicrafts. although the rate of growth has slowed down since 47 the boom in the early 70's, sales are holding. there is, however, a fear on the part of those involved that the market will disappear or continue to dwindle when what is urgently needed is expansion to take care of an inventory problem which has been nagging for several years but took on acute proportions in 1979. in general, there have been problems with over-production, quality and pricing, the predictable results of a non-selective buying policy. problems within the co-operative movement although the movement in quebec succeeded beyond anyone's expectations and was presented in the 1975 bmc report as a model of what should have been done all across the arctic, it has been bedevilled by several internal problems and conflicts: north-south trading lines, the emphasis on consumer rather than producer activities, the lack of infrastructure and working capital, the assymetrical relations of whites and natives and, perhaps most critical, the lack of member support. the latter is a universal problem of co-ops and is particularly telling in times of crisis. a. a. macdonald, from the coady international institute, attended the third conference of arctic co-operatives in 1980 and in his speech to delegates identified the "unrealistic expectations of members and disloyalty in times of crisis" as one of the factors preventing the farmers' and fishermen's co-ops in nova scotia from fully succeeding in their aspirations ( proceedings , 1980:10) unlike the situation in which discontented producers organize to further common interests, inuit co-ops were formed alternate routes vol. 5 1982 48 on behalf of the people. they were deliberately introduced by federal government agents as a mechanism of development. in many cases, due to the difficulty of explaining business concepts to non-english speaking inuit whose vocabulary, in any case, did not lend itself to economic explanations, co-ops were implemented before the people really understood their operation and implications. it took only a few appeals to their desire to regain self sufficiency (what vallee, 1967:42 calls"ideological calls to action") and the promise of lower prices for consumer goods and cash returns at the end of the year to convince people to join. in any case, in quebec, only twelve people were needed to start a co-operative and, in the northwest territories, only five (treude, 1972:6). the attitude of government project officers charged with setting up native co-operatives was thafthey would learn by doing" and the consequence of this was, of course, a lack of support when things were not going well, although a nucleus of committed inuit supporters did develop and joined white promoters in spreading the message. although they had a definite ideological appeal, the co-ops' enticement of members on the basis of promises they have been mostly unable to keep, has been a source of much discontent. as raymond ningeacheak (from coral harbour) said at the third co-operative conference ( proceedings , 1980:8): in the beginning of the co-op movement, the people were told quite clearly that there would be dividends from the operation of the co-operatives to benefit their members. this was one of the major points that was being circulated in the beginning of the co-op movement. unfortunately, it was given too much prominence and many people expected too much from 49 this point and not enough from the act of co-operation and common effort that would result from the co-operatives (as translated at the meeting) the hudson"s bay company, with greater purchasing power, has historically undercut co-op selling prices and cash dividends have not generally been forthcoming from the co-ops due to the inability of most to generate surpluses and their need to 14 retain them when they do. lack of membership support may reflect a deeper, structural problem, the effects of which, i would suggest, are now being felt in earnest. i am referring to the inherent contradiction in an institution purporting to uphold tradition (non-capitalist practices) while promoting change (in the direction of industrialization). grounded in tradition, co-ops were, and still try to be, committed to making decisions in "the eskimo way" but, at the same time, they have been obliged to link inuit into an external market which dictates its own terms. inuit consider, for example, that anyone, regardless of talent, has the right to earn his living from carving if he so chooses. the co-operatives support them in this attitude by buying anything from everyone. the market , however, places a premium on talent and this has led to inequalities in volume and prices on sales through the co-operative. there is, of course, no option for the co-ops but to take cognisance of the discrimination exercised by the market, if they want to stay in business, that is. the same process is at work in all areas of co-op activity. a business vocabulary in inuttitut had to be alternate routes vol. 5 1982 so developed and this had the double effect of preserving the purity of the language and modernizing it. basic business concepts and practices (profit-making, budgeting, cash accounting etc) had to be taught; workshop activities introduced; a nine to five workday instituted. by making employees out of some inuit and bosses/managers/directors out of others, the co-op has also succeeded in bringing about changes in leadership criteria. sorting inuit into better and best carvers and businessmen, the new criteria of selection makes it possible for younger men to attain authority over older men and, as arbess (1966:47) points out, the nature of the authority also changed since that "expected by the co-operative ... resided not in an individual but in his position." yet another acculturat ing effect of the co-ops proceeded from their efforts to integrate people into the community, "cutting across kinship barriers and religion and creating a solidarity" (treude, 1972:7). although the co-op has gone a long way towards cultural accommodation, it has always been hard-pressed to juggle prerogatives and there is evidence of a growing tendency to put the priorities of the system ahead of the needs or wishes of the people. when the carving market levelled off, for instance, efforts (in quebec) were directed at increasing the consumption level and profitability of goods sold from co-op retail stores in order to generate the profits necessary to keep the system growing. co-operative philosophy, however, is that the system exists to serve its members, "a true co-operative excluding any provision for profitmaking in the general si sense of the term" and being concerned, on the contrary, with "providing goods and services to members at cost"(braid, 1962:21). the decline of the co-operative even though the eskimo co-operative, a bastardized form of state property, was not internally generated, as collective institutions, all co-ops have the potential of assuming a dynamic of their own and of achieving unintended or intended political consequences. the prairie grain growers' co-operative, for instance, became the basis for populist political organization, whereas the maritime co-operative movement did not achieve broad-based political support. the northern co-operatives transformed the economic and social life of inuit and sparked a movement with strong nationalistic overtones. in arctic quebec, particularly, the co-ops functioned as "underground governments" (thomas sulluk, igalaaq , september, 1980). co-ops in northern quebec have always had a stronger ideological content than those in the northwest territories, the result of an informal movement headed by andre' steinman, the roman catholic missionary in povungnituk for many years, and p.e. murdoch, manager of the povungnituk hudson's bay company in the mid 50 's and general manager of the quebec federation since its incorporation in 1967. murdoch and steinman sold the co-operative as an evolutionary form, the natural successor to camp organization and the logical vehicle to bring inuit into a state of equal participation in the modern world. the frequently remarked evangelical flavour of alternate routes vol. 5 1982 52 the quebec movement is due, no doubt, to the involvement of the missionary and the ongoing appeals made to traditional values (see vallee, 1967:43). it is also due to the success of the co-op in povungnituk where people, once poorest among the poor, now have one of the highest standards of living in the canadian arctic. inuit from this community travelled all over arctic quebec to talk up co-ops, promoting them as a way for the people to catch up with the twentieth century and, at the same time, to regain their self sufficiency. this was a message that had great emotional appeal for people just beginning to realize and regret its loss. the co-operatives failed, however, to legitimate their power. until recently, the co-op was the only organized voice inuit had but it was treated as spokesman only reluctantly by the state who, beginning in the early 70's, began sponsoring local community councils as representatives of the people. these councils were a feeble concession to political power. under the guidance of government field staff, they talked about garbage disposal and loose dogs but had nothing to say on the larger issues of game management, education, land and resource use or local government. it was, for instance, the co-operatives which first pushed the issue of self-determination. in arctic quebec, the community councils and the co-operatives, at the latter's instigation, joined to petition the provincial government for regional government status in 1971. they succeeded in stimulating debate and attracting media and official attention to the cause of inuit self-determination but, although a bill was drafted (and translated), it was never s3 presented to quebec's national assembly. the regional government proposal failed because of federal government opposition, provincial government inactivity and inuit indecisiveness . the federal government's initial reaction was to urge inuit to join the provincial indian brotherhood, a move that would have been welcomed by quebec indians (then pressing their own territorial claims within quebec) since inclusion of inuit would have extended their claim to include most of quebec's territory. at the same time, the quebec government was pressing its territorial claims against the federal government. in 1962, jean lesage had announced quebec's intention of assuming what were then federal responsibilities in its northern regions and, by the late 60 's, the province was actively negotiating a take-over from the federal government. the federal attitude was that the transfer would be accomplished when the province was able to provide the services and the people ready to receive them. this meant that, for several years, duplicate federal services and staff were in place in arctic quebec (a provincial and a federal school, for instance), creating overlap and dissension. it was probably more than enough to make claims of yet another minority group seeking status most unwelcome. the failure of inuit to unite on the issue has been cited by co-op advisors as the factor most responsible for failure of the regional government movement. there were, i think, two reasons for this. in the first place, as williamson (1977:175) says, inuit "had always identified with family" and lacked "a real ethnic identity." in the second place, although alternate routes vol. s 1982 54 they were attracted by the idea of "being in charge" (for a change) , they were unable to conceive of themselves as actually being responsible for carrying on. although they were ideologically prepared, they lacked the security which comes from experience and economic stability. uneasy in towns which had a history of only ten to twenty years and possessing only weak links (through the federation) to outside support systems, inuit were afraid of losing the state services they had grown to rely on. they said they needed more time to talk about it and to arrive at a consensus (the traditional mode of decision-making) but there was no time. predictably, land and energy concerns forced the issue. the contemporary scene: development of a corporate structure eskimo politics was born in the 70 's when land claims were assuming some urgency and when the first generation of town born and bred inuit was approaching manhood. political and cultural organizations proliferated across the arctic at this time, often with overlapping membership as well as aims because of the small population they served. inuit tapirisat of canada was founded in 1972. in that year also, given that quebec inuit had refused to join the indian association, the federal government set up the northern quebec inuit association (nqia) . while arctic quebec inuit were still trying to make up their minds whether to continue lobbying for regional government status or to go along with the government's proposal to set up "their own," inuit, association, the decision was made for them. like the co-operative, nqia was 55 put into place, presumably with the idea that, once again, inuit would learn by doing. the state funded a willing group of inuit and nqia was a fait accompli with headquarters, operating funds and a mission: settlement of inuit aboriginal title in quebec. in 1975, nqia signed the james bay and northern quebec (jbnq) agreement, the first significant treaty ever signed by canadian inuit. prompted by quebec's intrusion into its northern territories to mount the james bay hydro-electric project, it is now law although it remains a source of great controversy among arctic quebec inuit. the 1977 referendum was 95 per cent in favour of the agreement but 34 per cent of the population abstained from voting in order to demonstrate their opposition to it ( gazette , november 17, 1980). three communities (povungnituk, ivujivik and sugluk) , comprising one third of the population, have formed a dissident association, inuit tungavinga nunami (known as itn) which continues to oppose the agreement, claiming that the powers of attorney which enabled nqia to negotiate on their behalf had been falsely represnted to them. they believed that they were merely empowering nqia to provide inuit assistance to quebec cree in their fight to halt construction of the james bay dam when they were, in fact, empowering nqia to negotiate settlement of their aboriginal title. the agreement is complex but, essentially, northern quebec inuit renounced claims to the land in return for $90 million which is to be distributed under the aegis of makivik corporation, established in 1978 as a non-profit alternate routee vol. 5 1982 56 channel to receive the compensation money and to create profit-making subsidiaries to benefit all of arctic quebec. there is growing disenchantment with the agreement and the president of makivik (and chief signatory to the agreement) has publicly announced his dissatisfaction with it. meanwhile, the itn position is that inuit are the rightful owners of the land and that they must have a government "that can make laws, be self-supporting financially, raise taxes and claim royalties from any activities in its territory" (sivouac , in proceedings , 1980:21). they continue to refuse services set up with agreement money, going so far as to boycott the schools until an arrangment was made directly with the provincial government, allowing them to by-pass makivik 's school board (kativik). although it has been the cause of some dissension within the co-operative movement, itn has been supported by federation staff who are, of course, sympathetic to its aims. itn does not have a lot of money available to fight the agreement but is attempting to raise funds to take its case to court. in the meantime, the defiance of its members continues to be signalled by a sign at the povungnituk airstrip which reads, in four languages, "welcome to the territory which has not been ceded, in spite of the james bay agreement." organization and activities of makivik corporation all arctic quebec inuit are shareholders in makivik whose publicised mandate is to develop profit-making enterprises for inuit and to protect their interests as an ethnic group 57 (makivik corporation , n.d: 12). in other words, makivik is attempting, as are many third world countries, to secure development without westernization, in spite of the obvious fact that, as was pointed out in an official statement from inuit tapirisat : corporations are profit-making, thus forcing natives into non-native aspirations. there is only one real option in the corporate structure: make money or be a failure. there is virtually no aspect of the conceptual framework of a corporation that has a counterpart in native culture (the alaska native claims settlement, 1974:28-29) although it is too early to assess the kind of form makivik will ultimately assume, some initial trends may be noted: (1) a focus on large-scale, capital-intensive enterprise which employs a greater proportion of whites than natives (in part, to avoid problems with organized labour). although capitalintensive enterprise may mean a higher return to capital than is possible otherwise, in a situation of labour surplus, the only justification for choosing capital over labour intensive enterprise is the re-investment of capital gains to create more jobs (ruffing, n.d:41). makivik does not, however, appear to be making money. it has publicly announced operating losses on several of its ventures and its construction and fishing subsidiaries were recently terminated. (2) makivik has considerable access to government and to private loan money, the former in amounts not often available to co-ops and the latter, never available. (3) although there is not enough evidence to judge the merits alternate routes vol. 5 1982 £8 of their claim, the co-op people insist that, in many cases, makivik operations conflict and, in others, compete, with co-op programmes. one thing which is evident is that makivik is hiring away co-op personnel through the double attraction of higher wages and more prestige. although it must be assumed that dissatisfaction with the co-operative is also a factor here, the co-op is now in the position of being left with what has been described as "left-overs." the rise of makivik has meant a diminished role for co-ops which are now considered to be "guardians of the old way" while makivik (the name means "advancement") is in the forefront of development. (4) one of the most significant features of the makivik phenomenon is, i believe, the exacerbation of hitherto incipient class cleavages, with the emergence of a group of natives who, combining political and economic power, have achieved unprecedented mobility. described as the first eskimo millionaires, they present a "successful" image through the chartering of planes for international travel, their working relationship with lawyers and other white professionals and, generally, dressing and living in high style. the native corporate elite does not, as inuit have always done, deal with subordinates (civil servants and field personnel) but has access to the top financial and political echelon (bank presidents and cabinet ministers). they have clout with the mandarinate, although not as much as they would like. they were invited, for intance, to the constitutional conferences, but as s9 observers rather than participants. although it is beyond the scope of this paper to argue the point, the makivik group is wielding class-based power and authority, reserving decision-making and the lion's share of benefits for themselves and contributing to the marginal ization of the general population. conclusion it appears that makivik represents a move into full-scale capitalism which will mean, inevitably, marginal status for co-operatives. in the struggle to reproduce itself, the co-op has attempted to secure legitimation through ideological appeals to the "eskimo way." this is mainly an unsuccessful strategy for, while the past continues to exert an emotional tug on all inuit, there is, on the part of many, if not most, a desire for "progress." peter usher expresses some surprise that the native people show few signs of trying to negotiate a different, a non-western, lifestyle for themselves: "how come they didn't do something different?" apart from the fact that the tail seldom wags the dog, the answer has to be sought, i think, in the kinds of options and models available to them. we should not assume, in any case, that they share our self-critical attitude towards western civilization. usher's position is, i believe, rather idealistic (he admits as much) and the statement of girvan (1973:26) relevant: "it may all," or, at least, to a large extent, "depend upon the level of consumption to which a grup should aspire." this is not a psychologizing, reductionist explanation; for, aspirations alternate routes vol. 5 1982 60 are part of the ideological baggage. it is, after all, in the nature of contact that one group will be dominated politically, economically and ideologically. native aspirations as well as the native economy have been undergoing changes since the days of the whalers and there is no reason to assume that the process will stop here, which seems to be what berger (1977) and usher are recommending. some of their recommendations are, in fact, disconcertingly reminiscent of earlier state policies which aimed to improve, but, at the same time, to preserve the purity of eskimo life. with obvious input from usher, berger (1977:11: 39) recommends the development of two parallel economies in the north, industrialization and a native economy based on more vigorous exploitation of renewable resources: processing and manufacture of locally produced commodities could add significantly to employment and income. the chief opportunities in this direction appear to be fur tanning, garment manufacture, food processing, marine oil processing, saw milling, log and lumber construction, handicrafts and similar cottage industries, and tourism. 17 what this prescription amounts to is a way of ensuring that natives will never interfere with progress in the dominant sector. they are suggesting, really, the re-invention of the co-operative, ignoring the twenty year experiment which has been in progress across the arctic and the forces which led to the creation of makivik. they also ignore the limited possibilities for internal exchange and the fact that profits are in the non-renewable resource sector which gets priority in terms of social capital facilities. most of all, they ignore "the wishes of the people themselves ."some of whom are 61 demanding "progress" as measured against the western model. we may idealire a subsistence simple commodity producing/welfare lifestyle but there is little evidence to suggest that the native people want this or, even, will accept it for very much longer. the berger report is replete with statements to the effect that people want to hunt and trap as they always did. they also want jobs and we should not assume that, given a choice, they would opt for the "traditional" way of life over wage labour and the kind of social structure that goes 18with it. at the very least, one must acknowledge a complexity of interests among native groups which, in spite of increasing evidence to the contrary, continue to be treated as homogeneous. charlie watt, president of makivik, speaks for a large faction when he asks: "do they want us to become antiques?" ( igalaaq , may, 1980). it is a rhetorical question, mirroring the same sort of sentiment expressed by james wah-shee (in pimlott et al., 1972:125): the oil and gas companies are doing exploratory work in the north and in the process doing some damage to the way of life of the native peoples... i don't think we are against northern development .. .what we are saying is that these changes need to be controlled for the betterment of the people who live north of 60', not for the big corporations who control the economy of canada. we realize that we have an abundance of natural resources in the north; we would like to share those resources, but we don't like to see them all shipped down south. the big question to be asked is whether development corporations, owned and managed in theory by native people and, in reality by a powerful group in concert with the state, can reverse underdevelopment. it seems to me that the answer lies in the manner in which capital is obtained. there are not many sources. alternate routes vol. 5 1982 62 it may be generated internally but the barriers to this are obvious. it may be obtained from the state which, although certainly capable of creating an artificial economy, does not have a good record. we have seen the kind of help it has given native enterprise, enough to cripple, not develop, the co-ops and enough to allow makivik to hang itself. the third source, and the only source which is compatible with some measure of autonomy, is taxes and royalties (which imply a political mandate). the co-op wanted this and the dissident group, itn, continues to hope for it. makivik, however, refused compensation in the form of royalties because it "thought they wouldn't amount to very much" (watt, in proceedings , 1980:57). the conclusion has to be that makivik, more state-owned than the co-operatives and serving the interests of an indigeneous elite, is unlikely to reverse the tide of underdevelopment. the state, it seems, succeeded in creating the spokesman it needed, so that the universe could continue to unfold as it should. notes although some native groups have expressed a desire to be called "inuit" rather than "eskimo," i have used the term interchangeably. i claim as my authority for doing so, several arctic quebec inuit who inform me that it matters more how they are treated than what they are called. besides, the topic demands at least the occasional use of the older term. the word "eskimo' is incorporated into the official names of some co-ops and "eskimo art, "has become a household word, carrying connotations not communicated by "inuit art." i assure anyone who might be offended by this usage that no derogation is intended. 63 2. there was some trading for specialities (soapstone for making lamps, polar bear skins etc) but, since my interest here is on post-contact developments, i am deliberately glossing over the complexities of the pre-contact lifestyle. 3. in recent years, some groups have either moved or expressed an intention to move back to their old camping sites. 4. there are also several indian co-operatives in the arctic, some of which are affiliated with the eskimo co-ops. in the interests of clarity, however, i will ignore them in this discussion. 5. the quebec federation, managed by people without a co-op background, unamicably severed relations with the desjardins movement in 1970. federation personnel in the northwest territories tend, however, to be professional "co-operators." 6. over the years, numerous petitions have been sent to government and informal campaigns mounted to stop people buying and selling at the hudson's bay company. 7. co-op wages are geared to a standard of living consistent with the inuit culture but not competitive, although the gap is narrowing under pressure from the population. 8. in 1979, arctic quebec co-ops paid out app . $1.5 million for the purchase of arts and crafts. 9. this is still more or less the case. with only a few exceptions, banks refuse to make major loans to native co-ops unless backed by a government guarantee. 10. the information which follows is based, primarily, upon data contained in beaulieu, 1980:44. 11. since this paper was written, a significant event has taken place. the quebec federation now owns the pipe lines, tank farms and oil and gas products in four northern quebec communities with the co-ops in those communities acting as distributors. these operations are expected to generate a healthy cash flow. 12. their non-offensive nature makes them doubly attractive. d.g. smith (1975:34) makes the point that whites selectively reinforce certain aspects of native culture, i.e., "decorative handicrafts, story-telling and dancing, which do not conflict with western values (nor compete with western products!). 13. this point was raised to the author at a meeting with carvers in wakeham bay, february 25, 1979. alternate routes vol. s 1982 64 14. when profits are made, a non-discretionary allocation of net operating surplus is made to a general reserve fund (to provide financial stability) and, on the recommendation of the delegates, the annual general meeting distributes the balance in one or a combination of three ways: (1) declaration of a patronage cash dividend (2) payment of a patronage share dividend or (3) retention of earnings to invest in development and to finance growing assets. 15. in an unpublished paper entitled "from talking chiefs to a native corporate elite," i have attempted to trace the birth of a class system among the inuit. the argument is that the makivik group actually form a native bourgeoisie. 16. from notes taken at a seminar given by peter usher at carleton university, january, 1981. 17. it will be remarked that all of these are activities which co-ops have tried and, for the most part, been forced to abandon. handicrafts and, to a lesser extent, tourism have proven to be the only practical ventures. i realise, of course, that the berger report is more of a political document than anything else. nonetheless, it has had considerable influence for which its authors must be held accountable. 18. it is interesting that the income security programme set up by the james bay agreement and which pays hunters to live on the land to hunt, has brought the response from some natives, not on the programme, that they will not hunt unless they, too, are paid for it (murdoch, private communication, september, 1981). references arbess, saul e. 1966 "social change and the eskimo co-operative at george river, quebec." ottawa: northern co-ordination and research centre. beaulieu, denis 1980 le nouveau -quebec cooperat if . quebec: g"ouvernement du quebec, ministere des consommateurs , cooperatives et institutions financieres (in french) . berger, thomas 1977 northern frontier : northern homeland , volumes i and ii. ottawa: supply and services canada. 65 braid, a.f. 1962 "the role of co-operatives in social and economic planning." co-operative digest , vol. 5, no. 4 (winterj"! brody, hugh 1975 the people ' s land , eskimo and whites in the eastern arctic . middlesex : penguin books ltd. facts 5 figures 1980 booklet published by the canadian arctic co-operatives' federation limited and la federation des cooperatives du nouveauquebec . gazette 1980 montreal, november 17. girvan, norman 1973 "the development of dependency economics in the caribbean and latin america: review and comparison." social and economic studies , vol. 22, no. 1 . igalaaq 1980 ottawa: nortext, september and may issues. makivik corporation n.d. hand-out from makivik corporation minutes 1978 of a meeting on eskimo art, held at the airport-hilton hotel in montreal. myers, marybelle 1977a (ed) davidialuk . montreal: la federation des cooperatives du nouveau-quebec . 1977b "the people of povungnituk, independent through a common effort," in jean blodgett (ed) povungnituk . winnipeg: the winnipeg art gallery. 1981 "from talking chiefs to a native corporate elite," unpublished paper, carleton university. murdoch, p.e.m. 1981 personal communications in april and september. phalen, terry 1974 "an appraisal of co-operative development in arctic canada," unpublished report to the canadian arctic co-operatives federation limited, yellowknife. 66 pimlott, douglas h., vincient, kitson m. , mcknight .christine e. feds) 1972 arctic alternatives . ottawa: canadian arct ic resources committee . proceedings 1980 the third arctic co-operative conference, george river, april. rea, k.j. 1968 the political economy of the canadian north toronto : university of toronto press. robertson, gordon i960 "administration for development in northern canada: the growth and evolution of government." canadian publ ic administration , vol. ill, no. 1 (december) . ruffing, lorraine turner n.d. "the navajo nation: a history of dependence and underdevelopment," publisher unknown. simard, jean-jacques 1972 "la revolution congelee," unpublished essay, laval university. smith, derek g. 1975 natives and outsiders : plural ism in the mackenzie river delta , northwest territories . ottawa : indian and northern affairs. the alaska native claims settlement: a report on a trip to alaska by representatives of the itc 1974 ottawa: inuit tapirisat of canada treude, e. 1972 "genossenschaften in der kanadischen arktis," polarforschung , xlii, nr. 2 (1972), s. 138-150. (translation used) vallee, frank g. 1967 povungnetuk and its cooperative : a case study in community change , ottawa : northern coordination and research centre. williamson, robert g. 1977 the boothia peninsula people : social organizat ion~in spence bay , n. w.t . , unpublished study for the settlement council of spence bay and the polar gas project. neoliberal standardization and its discontents | 327 neoliberal standardization and its discontents: an interview with diane ravitch christopher bailey chris bailey1 (cb): you have worked in the u.s. department of education in various capacities since 1991. what attracted you to that institution? and what were some of your impressions of the education policies produced by that organization? diane ravitch2 (dr): i worked in the u.s. department of education from mid-1991 to january 1993. i was invited to be assistant secretary for education research by lamar alexander, who was secretary of education for president george h.w. bush. i accepted his invitation because i was excited by the opportunity to learn about federal policy and congress. during the time i was there, we pushed for voluntary national standards. we encouraged their creation by funding professional organizations of teachers and scholars. standards were produced, but they didn’t have much traction at the time because of the huge furor over the history standards. cb: what was the rationale behind your initial support for the no child left behind (nclb) policy under g.w. bush, and why did you eventually leave your position in the u.s. department of education to become one of the more vocal critics of neoliberal education reform in the usa? 1  chris bailey is a phd candidate at the department of political science and member of the global labour research centre at york university. his doctoral research is a comparison of neoliberal restructuring of k-12 public education in ontario and british columbia as well as teachers’ union struggles against neoliberal restructuring in both provinces. 2  diane ravitch is research professor of education at new york university and a historian of education. from 1991 to 1993, she was assistant secretary of education and counsellor to secretary of education lamar alexander in the administration of president george h.w. bush. she was responsible for the office of educational research and improvement in the u.s. department of education. as assistant secretary, she led the federal effort to promote the creation of voluntary state and national academic standards. 328 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education dr: i left the u.s. department of education when the first bush administration ended. i spent three years at the brookings institution, where i wrote a book about national standards, then went to new york university in 1995, where i have been ever since. during the 1990s and early 2000s, i was part of three conservative think tanks – the manhattan institute, the thomas b. fordham institute, and the koret task force at the hoover institution. i was deeply engaged with the last two, and became convinced over time that no child left behind was a failure. i also became convinced that charter schools had become a vehicle for privatization. i became increasingly alienated from the other board members and eventually became a full-fledged critic of these policies. i wrote a book about it called the death and life of the great american school system, which came out in 2010; i began researching and writing it in 2006 or 2007. cb: what are the origins of the movement to privatize public education in the u.s.? are there any important similarities or differences between bush’s nclb and the race to the top (rttt) initiative under obama? how is public education currently funded under these programs? dr: the privatization movement began with economist milton friedman’s proposal for vouchers in 1955. vouchers were a favorite cause of the far-right fringe for many years. however, the public never voted for vouchers, largely because of opposition to funding religious schools. in the early 1990s, the rightwing turned to charters as its substitute for vouchers. both were a way of promoting the transfer of public funds to private hands. the charter movement began with liberal support, especially from the clinton administration. they were seen as innovative. but the right cheered them and eventually became their strongest supporters. there is not much difference between nclb and rttt. they both promote high-stakes testing and privately managed charters. rttt is actually worse, however, because it was sponsored by a democratic president, our first black president, who showed a strong preference for charters, not public schools. this gave cover to democrats in many states to support the neoliberal agenda. rttt also insisted upon the evaluation of teachers by the test scores of their students. secretary of education duncan punished states that did not accept this strategy, even though it mislabelled teachers, demoralized teachers, and has not worked anywhere it has been applied. duncan also heavily promoted the common core standards and funded tests for these standards. they neoliberal standardization and its discontents | 329 have been highly controversial, having attracted opposition from the right and the left, and from teachers. cb: can you signal some of the key features of the neoliberal education reform movement in the u.s.? how does this movement serve to undermine public education? dr: the key features of neoliberal education reform are 1) a heavy reliance on standardized testing; 2) a willingness to eliminate collective bargaining and tenure; 3) a hostility to public education as such; 4) a preference for privately managed charter schools; 5) support for attacks on the teaching profession, including hostility to tenure and professionalism; 6) support for alternate routes into teaching like teach for america, whose recruits have only five weeks of training and typically leave after 2-3 years in the classroom.this movement clearly will undermine public education by taking funding from public schools to support privately managed schools and cyber schools, as well as harming teacher professionalism. cb: lois wiener and michael apple consider the current movement to privatize public education in the u.s. to be a part of a wider international neoliberal movement to restructure public education into a profit-oriented model. how would you characterize the charter/voucher school movement within the u.s.? what are the global implications of this reform movement? dr: i don’t know whether the movement in the u.s. is international in scope. it might be. but i have no doubt that the driving force behind it is to transition to a profit-making model. this has occurred in many of our states, where for-profit organizations and individuals are siphoning off millions of dollars from public schools. in many places, public schools are starved of resources, stripped of programs, while charter schools have small classes and all the programs that were eliminated in public schools. the cybercharters are especially profitable but the quality of education provided by computer is very poor. nonetheless, these companies (like k12 inc.) are profitable. cb: an essential part of the education reform movements’ rhetoric has been the demonization of the public education system and teachers’ unions. is there any merit to these accusations? why do you think teachers’ unions are being blamed? dr: there is no merit to the accusations made about either public education or the unions. these accusations are part of the neoliberal effort to destroy public education and to leave teachers powerless. 330 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education cb: in past articles you’ve suggested several education reforms to combat chronic problems within public education in the u.s. how can we fight racial segregation and class stratification via progressive education reform? do reforms need to extend beyond curriculum and classroom conditions? would this also require progressive reforms to healthcare and welfare? dr: the leadership to end racial segregation must come from the federal government and state governments. there will be no progressive reforms without progressive leadership. unfortunately, our current leadership is entirely neoliberal, not only in the federal government but in usually progressive states like new york and connecticut, whose governors are indistinguishable from conservative republicans on education issues. our secretary of education arne duncan bemoans racial segregation, yet hails charter schools that are completely segregated without seeing any contradiction. i have often wondered why he didn’t take the $5 billion devoted to race to the top and award it to districts that promoted desegregation. as i wrote in my last book reign of error: the hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to america’s public schools, true reform must involve not only the schools but government and social policy. that is not happening, but i think it must happen. cb: in light of some recent examples of fight back against the education reform movement by teachers unions, students and community members in chicago, l.a. and wisconsin, what are your thoughts regarding the viability of mounting popular challenges to the charter/ voucher movement? dr: i see a growing movement against high stakes testing and privatization. the two are intertwined. the common core is at the heart of the neoliberal agenda because it raises standards so high that it generates failure. the tests have passing marks so high that they are designed to fail most students. i believe the standards and tests were designed to generate failure, thereby encouraging people to seek alternatives to the public schools. at the same time, the common core creates huge profits for the testing industry and the tech industry, because all testing must be done online, requiring the expenditure of billions of dollars on bandwidth and new tablets and computers. parents and educators are waking up to the destructive wrecking ball aimed at their children, their schools, and their communities. there are more parents opting out, more teachers and administrators speaking out. i believe that this movement will grow and that neoliberal advocates will neoliberal standardization and its discontents | 331 be exposed for what they are: a tiny elite seeking to privatize our schools and profit from them. everything they have promoted as “reform” has failed. you can’t fail your way to success. cb: given the vast amount of corporate funding and resources behind the charter/voucher movement, what are some concrete strategies that supporters of public education could employ to fight back? dr: the corporate and philanthropic funding is huge, but the numbers of those pushing neoliberalism are small. if we are still a democracy, and i believe and hope we are, those fighting this agenda must organize and educate the public. that is what we are best at: public education. if parents, teachers, and activists grow their movement, they – we – will win. our numbers are vast. their numbers are puny. i have often thought that if they called a meeting of all the so-called reformers, they might convene 25,000 people, maybe less – and most of them would be employees of the movement itself. we have millions of teachers and administrators, and tens of millions of parents. our great strength are students and parents. they can speak out and no one can fire them. they work for our movement without being paid because they work from conviction, not with hope of profit. conviction will triumph because we will outlive them and outlast them. if their profits dry up, they will go away. we will not. do efforts to mitigate gentrification work? evidence from washington, dc carolyn gallaher1 introduction we don’t usually think of austerity2 as something that happens in booming cities. this is true even for cities like washington, d.c., that have recent experience with formal austerity. although washington, d.c., was placed in federal receivership in 1995 and stayed there for six years, it is now more likely to appear on internet lists like “america’s coolest cities” (carlyle 2014), “the most walkable urban metro areas” (leinberger and lynch 2014), and the “most expensive us cities for renters” (avakian 2016). as the latter list suggests, however, recovery often creates a new type of austerity3 for poor and working class people. instead of formal austerity (imposed in d.c.’s case by congress), today’s austerity is more informal, often the result of cities’ decisions to foster development at all costs. in d.c. this austerity among riches is most 1 carolyn gallaher is associate professor in the school of international service at american university. email: caroleg@american.edu 2 the dictionary defines austerity as “a situation in which there is not much money and it is spent only on things that are necessary.” in the context of governance, austerity usually refers to a package of policies and laws that govern how budget deficits will be trimmed and services will be prioritized. austerity can be imposed by outsiders or willingly adopted by insiders. in dc austerity was externally imposed by congress. indeed, congress (with the president’s approval) decided to put the city into receivership despite opposition from its mayor, city council, and a majority of its citizens. 3 austerity can also be a side effect of policies unrelated to budget cutting. when dc was released from congressional authority in 2001, for example, the city’s government adopted a number of policies designed to attract new residents into the city in an effort to grow the city’s tax base. most of these programs involved long-term investments. however, the city’s efforts to attract new residents coincided with the housing bubble and an influx of cash from the federal government’s post-9/11 terrorism-related spending. the result was not just an increased tax base, but intense gentrification. although the city’s leaders did not plan for gentrification, at least in the early years, they can be faulted for ignoring the consequences of it in later years. 248 | austerity urbanism and the social economy notable in the housing market. although the average income for the city’s poorest residents fell between 2007 and 2014, the city’s housing costs continue to rise (tuth 2016). in 2016, the median home price in the district was over half a million dollars ($534,900), while the median rent was $2,220 for a 1-bedroom apartment and $3,140 for a 2-bedroom (woo 2016). a key question that bedevils gentrification scholars is how to stop or at least mitigate gentrification so that it does not lead to the displacement of in situ residents. most scholars have advocated for measures that help people step outside of, or work against, the market principles that sustain gentrification. these measures include limited equity co-operatives, organized squatting, and community land trusts, among others (huron 2012; defilippis 2004; martinez 2009; springer 2016). in this paper i look at a market-oriented solution to displacement, a one of a kind statute in washington d.c., called the tenant opportunity to purchase act (topa). topa stipulates that if a landlord signs a contract to sell a residential apartment building, tenants have the right to refuse the sale and to purchase the building instead for the contracted sale price. the goal of the statute is to mitigate displacement by giving tenants economic leverage during periods of gentrification (eisen 1993). although right-to-buy programs are usually defined as neoliberal and thus viewed with suspicion by critical scholars, i argue here that topa is better seen as an assemblage of keynesian, social justice and neoliberal imperatives. as such, activists and advocates in the city have been able to use a market-oriented solution to non-market ends. as i explain in the conclusion, though topa is unique to d.c., it provides lessons for how critical scholars might approach urban policies that are ideologically imperfect but helpful to vulnerable populations nonetheless. indeed, in a strategic sense supporting policies that are “less than perfect” but “good enough” signals the importance of achieving smaller ‘wins’. thwarting or limiting the worst of neoliberal urbanism may not amount do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 249 to final victory, but it does deliver tangible benefits to its victims nonetheless. why d.c. enacted topa topa was crafted in 1980 in response to a wave of gentrification just outside the city’s downtown core. as property values increased, landlords began selling their apartment buildings to developers interested in converting them into condominiums. condos were a relatively new form of housing at the time – the federal housing administration only began insuring mortgages for individual units inside of multifamily buildings in 1961 – but, they quickly became an ideal investment vehicle in cities, where land available for horizontal development is relatively scarce (stray-gundersen 1981; lassner 2009, 2012). not surprisingly, the boom in conversions resulted in high and concentrated levels of displacement. the city’s paper of record, the washington post, covered the conversions extensively, paying special attention to displaced renters (robinson 1980; weiser 1980). housing advocates also chimed in, asking the city to step in to protect elderly tenants and other vulnerable residents, many of whom had lived in their apartments for decades. in response, the city council issued a temporary condo conversion moratorium in 1979 (richburg 1980). a local business group sued the city, however, arguing that the measure was unconstitutional because the city had used its emergency powers to introduce the bill.4 the court ruled in the plaintiff’s favor, so the city council went back to the legislative drawing board (whitaker and camp 1979). 4 in 1973 congress passed the district of colombia home rule act, which gave the city the power to elect its own mayor and city council. the act came with restrictions, however. congress can veto legislation passed by the city council and approved by the mayor. although the home rule act allows the city council to pass legislation without congressional approval for legislation meant to handle emergency situations, a business group challenged the city’s interpretation of conversion displacement as an emergency. 250 | austerity urbanism and the social economy in june of 1980 the council voted on a new legislative solution to conversion-related displacement – the rental housing and conversion sale act (rhcsa).5 once the mayor signed the bill, it was submitted for review to the u.s. house of representatives committee on the district of colombia.6 although the committee’s chairman, charlie wilson (dtx), was opposed to the bill (ostensibly on free market grounds7), he was unable to rally sufficient support to veto it. as a result, rhcsa became law in september of the same year. rhcsa includes two parts – the conversion of rental housing to condominium or cooperative (crhcc) and the tenants opportunity to purchase act (topa). the first part – crhcc – states that a property owner may only convert a rental accommodation to condominium with the permission of a majority of its leaseholders (50% plus 1 of total units). the owner must hold a formal election and report the results to the city agency in charge of administering the program. the second part of the bill – topa – gives tenants’ associations the right to refuse a contracted sale of their apartment building and to purchase the building instead for the contracted sale price. the tenants may then decide if they want to convert to a co-op or condominium or keep their building rental. how it operates readers may wonder how tenants can afford to buy an entire apartment building on their own. indeed, many of the city’s tenants have 5 rental housing conversion and sale act of 1980, tenant opportunity to purchas act, d.c. code §42-3404.02. 6 as i note in footnote 3, congress has the power to veto legislation passed by the d.c. city council and signed by its mayor. today the u.s. house of representatives’ oversight and government reform committee is charged with reviewing district legislation. 7 because topa was a one of a kind bill, there was little evidence from other cities that critics could use to justify their opposition to the bill. as a result, the bill’s opponents resorted to a ‘guilt by association’ tactic, equating the bill with the city’s rent control statute, which was unpopular in real estate development circles. for more detail on the congressional review of the topa statute, see my review (gallaher 20016) or the transcript of the hearing cited in the bibliography. do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 251 low or moderate incomes. and even in relatively well-off buildings, tenants’ associations rarely have existing bank accounts or credit reports that would allow them to qualify for private loans. the topa statute accounts for tenants’ uneven footing in the market by allowing tenants’ associations the right to either sell or assign their topa rights to a third party that can help tenants with financing. by practice, third parties are usually developers. in mixed income buildings tenants often work with for-profit developers, while tenants in low income buildings are more likely to work with non-profit developers. the city also offers financial assistance for low income tenants going through the topa process, including bridge loans to help tenants’ associations cover acquisition costs while long-term financing and grants are arranged to help individual tenants pay closing costs on their units. because tenants can choose who, if anyone, to assign their right of first refusal to, they can also negotiate with multiple developers before choosing a partner. during this phase tenants’ primary concern is usually to keep their housing costs affordable and/or stable. in buildings where tenants want to convert to a condominium or co-op, this means negotiating for so called ‘insider prices’ for tenants who want to purchase their units. insider prices are usually below market, although the degree to which they are below market can vary (gallaher 2016). tenants’ associations that plan to keep their buildings’ rental also want to keep their housing costs stable. although the city’s rent control statute should theoretically prevent against steep rent hikes8, the statute does provide five categories9 under which landlords may petition to raise rents above 8 every may washington dc uses a “rent control cpi” (consumer price index) to establish the maximum annual rental increase per year. between 2010 and 2016 the rent control cpi has ranged from 0% (2016) to 3.6% (2012). for historical comparisons since 2012 please see the following factsheet from the city’s office of the tenant advocate: http://ota.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ota/release_content/attachments/2016%20his tory_of_ss%20cola%20vs%20rhc_cpi_ota.pdf 9 dc allows landlords to petition to raise rents beyond the state caps for 5 reasons: hardship, capital improvements, services and facilities, substantial rehabilitation, and voluntary agreement. for more detail see the following factsheet from the city’s office of 252 | austerity urbanism and the social economy http://ota.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ota/release_content/attachments/2016%20history_of_ss%20cola%20vs%20rhc_cpi_ota.pdf http://ota.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ota/release_content/attachments/2016%20history_of_ss%20cola%20vs%20rhc_cpi_ota.pdf permitted amounts. tenants associations can, therefore, demand that potential partners agree to forgo petition requests before striking a deal. tenants in both scenarios also negotiate for improvements to their buildings, many of which have been subject to disinvestment. tenants can ask for structural improvements, such as new windows (to block traffic noise and retain heat), central heating and cooling (to replace outdated radiators and window ac units), and repairs to roofs, foundations and joists. tenants can also ask for amenities such as fresh paint, new landscaping, updated furniture for common areas, and rooftop decks. developers also negotiate for things. non-profit developers, for example, do not need to make a profit, but they do need to break even for a partnership to work. so, they may negotiate to do repairs over a longer time frame, or to forgo amenities. non-profits who want to help tenants become homeowners can also require that tenants take steps to ready themselves for homeownership before agreeing to partner with a tenants’ association. for-profit developers, by contrast, have a more singular goal – making a profit. as such, they usually request the right to offer tenants so called buyouts – a payment given to a tenant in exchange for agreeing to waive her right to stay put. in buildings converting to condominium or co-operatives, developers can sell bought out units at market rates.10 in buildings staying rental, bought out units should be shielded from steep increases because of the city’s rent control statute. however, if developers believe rent control caps will not produce sufficient profit, they can negotiate for the right to submit one of the petition requests discussed above. in recent years developers have negotiated for the right to submit “voluntary agreement” petitions. unlike other petition categories that require developers to show the need for substantial (and the tenant advocate: http://ota.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dhcd/publication/attachments/rentcontrolfa ctsheet2013.pdf 10 although developers usually want to sell as many units as possible at market rates, dc’s booming housing market means they can still make handy profits when agreeing to discounted units for tenants staying put. do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 253 http://ota.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dhcd/publication/attachments/rentcontrolfactsheet2013.pdf http://ota.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dhcd/publication/attachments/rentcontrolfactsheet2013.pdf costly) repairs, vas allow landlords to raise rents above the cap if 70% or more of their tenants agree to the increase. under normal circumstances, tenants will reject vas, but the calculus often changes in buildings where tenants are trying to use their topa rights. indeed, tenants who need third party financing will consider vas if the potential partner promises to only raise rents to market rates in units that are bought out. as one local journalist (depillis 2012) explained, in situ tenants often agree to vas because they “raise rents on future tenants, who aren’t around yet to protest.” does topa work? although topa has been in place for 40 years, we do not know the extent to which it has mitigated displacement. a primary reason is the city’s failure to track the program.11 the city does not, for example, collect data on how many tenants’ associations invoke their topa rights. nor does it track how many associations choose to convert versus remain rental. without these numbers, it is difficult to measure how many tenants have used topa to stay put in temporal or spatial terms (e.g. during the real estate boom or in a particular neighborhood). d.c. think tanks have tried to fill in these data gaps by looking at tenants’ associations that receive city assistance to buy their buildings (reed 11 the city recently announced that it is building a database to track tenants’ associations going through the topa process. why it has taken over 35 years to do so is a matter of debate. one explanation is that the failure to collect data on the process is consistent with how the city’s bureaucracy was run at the time. fisher (2011) argues, for example, that city leaders used to treat the bureaucracy as an “employer of last resort,” so professional standards were in short supply. another explanation is that the city saw topa as a private rather than public solution. that is, the city saw its contribution as providing a right to its citizens rather than a durable good or service that could be tracked. politics provides a third explanation. critics contend that the city agency in charge of topa oversight has long been beholden to developers. during the height of the real estate boom ne city councilmember described the agency as “fully captured” by special interests (grim 2006). 254 | austerity urbanism and the social economy 2013).12 while tracking how well low income tenants use topa is important – after all, these are the very tenants the statute was designed to help – it gives us only a partial picture. specifically, we need to know how well topa works in mixed income buildings, where tenants have economically varied interests that could make consensus difficult to reach. a second problem is that there is no clear baseline for measuring the success of right-to-buy schemes. although advocates often see purchase as an indicator of success, the experience of tenants who purchased their homes when margaret thatcher privatized britain’s public housing suggests home ownership can create as many problems as it solves (forrest and murie 1990; beckett 2015). indeed, britain’s council housing stock was in such poor shape that many buyers could not afford the cost of repairs and upkeep after purchase. there is also no established purchase rate above which a program is considered successful and below which it is seen to have failed. there is likewise no agreement on how to evaluate buyouts in the context of right-to-buy programs. some advocates see buyouts as a necessary evil, as a way to encourage private investment in an aging housing stock, while others see buyouts as contributing to gentrification because they can lead to higher than normal rent increases (see depillis 2012, for a summary of the debate). given the lack of both quantitative data on topa and established benchmarks for measuring it, i decided to make a qualitative assessment of topa in my new book, the politics of staying put: condo conversion and tenant right-to-buy in washington dc (gallaher 2016). i began by developing a representative sample of seven buildings that went through the topa process after 2000 (roughly, the start of the housing boom in the u.s.). these buildings were selected to represent the social and economic diversity of the city as well as differences in building size. i then contacted the tenants’ associations in each building to find 12 because these tenants’ associations receive city money, there is a paper trail that researchers can consult to piece together what they did with their topa rights (convert or stay rental) and whether they were successful (e.g. loan paid in full). do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 255 out how the topa process unfolded in each. with information gleaned from these interviews i was able to make four estimates for each building: the percentage of tenants who stayed put, the percentage of tenants who took buyouts, the percentage of units that were subject to price increases (the sum of bought out units plus units vacant at the time of conversion), and an estimate of the affordability of units that were subject to price increases post-topa. my goal was two-fold: to see how many tenants stayed put through topa and to track the affordability of bought out units going forward. my findings indicate that topa’s results are mixed. on average, tenants in 50.01% of sample units were able to stay put using topa. the people who stayed put were also able to stay put as both new homeowners and renters. that is, they were not forced to become owners in order to stay put. in fact, 3 of the 7 sample buildings used topa to stay rental and a fourth negotiated to convert only a small number of units to condominium. however, the housing costs in the units subject to price increases were uniformly unaffordable after topa. in buildings that converted to condo, the income threshold necessary to afford a condo was between 4.7 and 6.5 times the 2010 poverty threshold for a single person household ($10,956). in buildings staying rental, the income threshold necessary to afford new rents was between 6.8 and 11.8 times greater than the same threshold. evaluating topa as i note in the previous section, evaluating topa with empirical data is difficult because there are no agreed upon metrics on which to base the evaluation. this leaves us with theoretical categories such as neoliberal, keynesian, and social justice. although these categories are descriptive inasmuch as they indicate what sorts of solutions are typical to each, they are also ideological. they point to underlying assumptions about what the relationship between the state and its citizens should be. in the context of housing, for example, neoliberals believe that the market is best equipped to meet demand for 256 | austerity urbanism and the social economy housing. they argue that state involvement in the market produces inefficiencies and socially undesirable outcomes. by contrast, keynesians sees a role for the state in ensuring (via subsidies and/or regulation) that private capital is invested in housing for the municipal workforce. keynesians also support public investments in housing for vulnerable citizens (e.g. the disabled, the poor, etc.). for their part, social justice advocates believe in both a “just distribution” and one that is “justly arrived at” (harvey 1973: 9). in the context of housing social justice requires that investments are distributed across municipal space and for all income groups within it. in the critical gentrification literature, neoliberal programs are usually regarded as inferior to programs guided by either keynesian or social justice imperatives (defilippis 2004; slater 2006). in particular, critics contend that by turning housing into a commodity – something not just bought and sold, but speculated on – neoliberal policy has contributed to rising housing costs. although rising costs have affected housing costs at all price points, low and moderate income families have had the most difficulty adapting to higher housing costs because their wages have been stagnant, or in some cases declined, since the great recession. critics also argue that the emphasis on ownership in neoliberal ideology means that renting has come to be regarded in moral terms, as inferior to owning, and those who rent as suspect and unworthy of public assistance (blomley 2005, 2008). in many ways topa is classically neoliberal. it was offered after a decidedly social justice approach to the problem of conversion-related displacement – a moratorium – was rejected in court. topa also works solidly within neoliberal precepts. first and foremost, it gives tenants a chance to become owners – arguably one of neoliberalism’s most sacred designations. the role of developers in making tenant ownership possible also means that tenants must work within and often succumb to market demands, not the least of which is ensuring that developers make a sufficient profit. the amount of profit deemed necessary can, of course, vary by developer, but it is worth noting that the growing role of do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 257 international investors in d.c.’s real estate market has put upward pressure on what is considered an acceptable profit (depillis 2012). given these problems, it would be easy to reject topa out of hand, as yet another neoliberal solution that purports to help tenants even as it hurts them. there are, however, reasons for resisting such an interpretation. my evidence suggests that topa is better regarded as an assemblage of neoliberal, keynesian, and social justice imperatives. two elements of the statute are especially illustrative. first, though topa gives tenants the right to buy, the right is not given to individual tenants but to the tenant collective (i.e. the tenants’ association). the focus on the collective is antithetical to the emphasis on the individual in neoliberal ideology. indeed, the basis for both social justice organizing, and the keynesian distribution of resources has long been the collective, whether organized by identity, occupation, or need. in the context of topa, the focus on the collective is especially important in mixed income buildings where low income tenants and middle and upper income tenants may have different interests. if the city allowed individual tenants, or a small group of tenants to refuse a sale, for example, it would be possible for wealthy tenants, who are often better situated to take advantage of their rights, to work with a developer to refuse a sale and then convert to condo even if a majority of fellow tenants were unable to afford their units. the first part of rhcsa – crhcc – also lends to the collective ethos by stipulating that even if tenants buy their building through the topa process, they cannot convert it to condominium or cooperative without at least 50% (+1) of units agreeing to conversion. second, by allowing tenants to assign their rights to a third party, topa gives tenants bargaining power they can use to determine the outcome of their building’s topa process. while tenants can become owners, they are not forced to use ownership to stay put. this is no mean feat given the perils that can attend home ownership for low income people. in my sample, the preference for remaining rental was much stronger than i had anticipated, with 4 of 7 buildings choosing to remain fully or largely rental. topa’s categorical fuzziness – its assembled 258 | austerity urbanism and the social economy nature – has theoretical and political implications. theoretically, the topa statute suggests that assisting low income people does not always have to occur on pure ideological terrain. specifically, keynesian and social justice imperatives can work through neoliberal structures, producing outcomes that are to varying degrees antithetical to neoliberalism. politically, this recognition means that the neoliberal elements of topa cannot be grounds for refusing its potential. i will admit that this was a hard admission for me to make. when i was writing my book, i struggled to see past the problems the neoliberal elements of topa caused, even though i knew many tenants were able to use topa to stay put. in many ways i continue to struggle with topa’s weaknesses. as i was writing this paper, for example, a new journal article, “fuck neoliberalism,” came across my research feed. the essay, by simon springer (2016), made me laugh (such a rare and wonderful thing for an academic paper) and feel energized (yelling “fuck off” to someone or something that richly deserves it is really liberating). springer’s approach also seemed potentially relevant to evaluating topa. the “politics of refusal” beneath springer’s holler back – the idea, as he argues, that we can fuck neoliberalism “by doing things outside its reach” – suggested that maybe the topa statute is a poor solution for neoliberal victims, if not part of the problem. indeed, springer specifically calls out scholars like david harvey for both insisting on a role for the state and “dismiss[ing] non-hierarchical organization and horizontal politics as greasing the rails for an assured neoliberal future” (2016: 287). once my euphoria wore off, though, the idea of rejecting or abandoning topa seemed unwise. gentrification in washington, d.c. has been rapid. only twenty years ago the city was experiencing its fifth decade of population loss, confronting high crime and disinvestment, and struggling to make ends meet with a declining tax base – the latter leaving little to remedy the former (gillette 2006). the city was also watching its hard earned autonomy get stripped away by an do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 259 unsympathetic congress. this context helps explain why city leaders did little to stop gentrification when it arrived, and in some cases tacitly supported it. the city’s changing fortunes are seen as a guarantor of autonomy, as a bulwark against another round of congressional meddling. in this regard, springer’s assessment of the state is fair. d.c. has become part of the problem. by encouraging gentrification, the city has hurt its most vulnerable residents. unfortunately, efforts to step outside of neoliberalism in the city have not produced measurable gains. in fact, the only thing that has actually stopped (some) displacement is the city’s topa statute. none of this is to suggest, of course, that topa is perfect or only needs minor tweaks. topa cannot, for example, build affordable housing or ensure that landlords don’t find unethical ways to push tenants out of their apartments (e.g. by refusing to make repairs, threatening to shut off services, or using petty rules infractions to force evictions). however, because topa contains elements that work at cross-purposes to neoliberalism, it can be used to help tenants in nonneoliberal ways. my research on topa points to two improvements that should be made to the statute. in my book, for example, i argue that the city should rewrite the rent control statute to prohibit the use of vas in buildings going through the topa process. the ability of tenants to keep their buildings rental through topa is one of the statute’s most important mechanisms. if vas were prohibited, rents in these buildings would be kept at below market rates. at the very least, the city’s two main statutes for helping low income tenants (topa and rent control) should not undermine one another. second, i argue that the city should reserve rights to a portion of bought out units in every topa building. this would allow the city to use these units for low income residents, without the economic burdens involved in purchasing and maintaining entire buildings. again, contra to springer (2016), i see an important role for the state in providing low income housing. d.c.’s low income citizens are desperate for affordable housing, and the market has proven unwilling to meet the demand. in fact, it has not even been able to preserve the 260 | austerity urbanism and the social economy affordable units that do exist. between 2012 and 2014, for example, nearly half of the city’s private affordable housing units vanished, subject to demolition, rent hikes, and the like (rivers 2015). small scale efforts to step outside the market, like organized squatting by homeless people, simply cannot compete in this context. none of the ‘fixes’ i have outlined here will solve all of topa’s problems, but they can help. and, in the spirit of those who want to be done with neoliberalism and the austerity it imposes on society’s most vulnerable, these fixes can and should happen alongside of the horizontal, outside the neoliberal box efforts that springer (2016) calls for in his article. references beckett, a. (2015, august 26). the right to buy: the housing crisis that thatcher built. the guardian. https://www.theguardian.com carlyle, e. (2014, august 6). washington, d.c., tops forbes 2014 list of america's coolest cities. forbes. http://www.forbes.com defilippis, j. (2004). unmaking goliath: community control in the face of global capital. new york: routledge. depillis, l. (2012, april 18). uip rising. washington city paper. http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com depillis, l. (2012, april 19). column outtakes: who should rent control protect? washington city paper. http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com eisen, r.c. (1993). rental housing conversion and sale act: a practitioner’s roadmap to tenants ownership. district of columbia law review 2(1): 91-112. forrest, r. & murie, a. (1990). selling the welfare state: the privatization of council housing. london: routledge. gallaher, c. (2016). the politics of staying put: condo conversion and tenant right-to-buy in washington dc. philadelphia: temple university press. do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 261 gillette, h. (2006). between justice and beauty: race, planning, and the failure of urban policy in washington dc. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. grim, r. (2006, june 30). dcra: defending the city’s ruling aristocracy. http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com harvey, d. (1973). social justice and the city. baltimore: johns hopkins university press. huron, a. (2012). the work of the urban commons: limited-equity cooperatives in washington dc (unpublished ph.d. dissertation). city university of new york. lasner, m. (2012). high life: condo living in the suburban century. new haven, ct: yale university press. lasner, m. (2009). own-your-owns, co-ops, town houses: hybrid housing types and the new urban form in postwar southern california. journal of the society of architectural historians 68(3): 387-403. leinberger, c & lynch, p. (2014). foot traffic ahead: ranking walkable urbanism in america’s largest metros, 2016. washington dc: the center for real estate and urban analysis, george washington university school of business. martinez, m. (2009). the squatters' movement: urban counter-culture and alter-globalization dynamics. southern european society and politics 12(3): 379-398. reed, j. (2013, september 24). dc’s first right purchase program helps to preserve affordable housing and is one of dc’s key antidisplacement tools. washington d.c.: fiscal policy institute. http://www.dcfpi.org richburg, k. (1980, july 30). city council in final-day spurt approves restrictions on condominium conversions. the washington post, pp. c1. rivers, w. (2015, march 12). going, going, gone: dc’s vanishing affordable housing. washington d.c.: dc fiscal policy institute. http://www.dcfpi.org 262 | austerity urbanism and the social economy robinson, t. (1980, february 29). halt condo conversion notices, four apartment owners ordered. the washington post, pp. b2. slater, t. (2006). the eviction of critical perspectives from gentrification research. international journal of urban and regional research 30(4): 737-757. springer, s. (2016). fuck neoliberalism. acme: an international journal for critical geographies, 15(2): 285-292 stray-gundersen, k. (1981). regulatory responses to the condominium conversion process. washington university law review 59(1): 513-534. tuths, p. (2016). a city breaking apart: the incomes of dc’s poorest residents are falling, while economic growth is benefiting better-off residents. washington d.c.: d.c. fiscal policy institute. http://www.dcfpi.org weiser, b. (1980, december 12). court rejects apartments’ conversion. the washington post, pp. b3. whitaker, j. & camp, p. (1979, october 20). city’s emergency condominium law overturned. washington post, pp. b1. woo, j. (2016, august 8). august 2016 national apartment list rent report. https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/nationalrent-data/ do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 263 dwarfed wolves stealing scraps from our masters' tables: women's groups and the funding process si transken university of toronto the social organization of textual reality at 'women across cultures' much has been wntten in the recent past exploring and documenting the expenences of women working with women's organizations and women's causes (adamson, 1988; gnffiths, 1993; lannello, 1992; ng, 1988; pal, 1993; remington, 1991; ristock, 1990; ristock, 1991; vickerset. al, 1993; walker, 1990). feminists ofmanypersuasions and ideologies agree that there is an enormous amount of work that must still be done before canadian society has changed to the extent that women will authentically experience equal access to resources, choices, and opportunities (anderson, 1992; backhouse and flaherty, 1992; canadian women 's studies, 1989; macedavillanueva, 1990). what do the funding processes mean to these orgamzations attempting to empower women both within the walls of the feminist organization and within society? o alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 this article explores how funds are brought into small grass-roots women's organizations and what the funding processes do to the women's relationships with the flinders, with each other, with their original goals and with the internal workings ofthe organization.^ my beliefis that theprocesses which occur in one organization are occurring in many small womoi's organizations in canada today. this is an exploratory paper preparing the foundation for an institutional ethnography of a feminist social service agaicy. funding realities in women's organizations shape who enters, who stays, what they do while inside, how they engage with each other, and when they leave. funding defines the limits of what is possible in relation to supports such as childcare beingprovided during events, transportation being offered to women, and educational materials being made available in more than one language. funders establishwage hierarchies that shapehowwomen interact with each other. for example, one funder will allocate twenty dollars an hour for one woman's wages while another fiinder will allocate only seven ^^ dollars an hour. women who workm the front lines oforganizations that are attempting to resist women's oppression are often poorly paid (if paid at all), have no benefit packages, have crowded and sparsely-resourced working environments, are hired only part-time or on contract, and are expected to accomplish goddess-likefeats and deeds. all ofthewomenwho are involved with womencentred non-profit groups or agencies are affected in many ways by the funding realities ofthe agency. the stressful and unattractive features ofthe work environment are largely a consequence ofthe funding process. most of these organizations rely on money from government sources (sarick, 1992; walker, 1991:5) or from organizations which are government 'wannabes' such as trillium or the united way. these funders irregularly throw us (or benevolently allow us to steal) scraps from their tables. we are like dwarfed wolves, sometimes barking, sometimes cringing, sometimes biting, but always watching the masters for cues. i transken/ women's groups and the funding process this paper describes the funding process in one organization, women ethnicity crossing (wec),^ as it has evolved overthe past five years. wec, accordingto its mission statement, "exists to enhance the hves and expand the options of immigrant, first nations, and visible minonty women." since i was one of its founding members, i can describe its evolution over time. originally we were a small group ofwomoi with a vague and fuzzy vision. now we are erratically evolving into an organization that produces specific facts and quantifiable 'programs.' we have a budget of approximately one hundred thousand dollars yearly and help create employment (part-time, contract, and/or full-time) for approximately fivewomen per year. hundreds of people are touched by this organization through conferences or direct counselling and escorting. others aretouched by our publicpresentations and seminars, or through our advocacy and community work. this 'agency' is housed in a room measuring twenty feet by twelve feet in which one can find a coffee pot, two computers, a photocopy machine, one phone line, and the manywomaiwho week byweek and hour by hour makewec a living entity. my framework for analyzing the agency i wish to discuss in this paper f^jj^ has been informed by many authors (adamson, 1 988; ng, 1 988; remington, 1991;ristock, 1990; ristock, 1991; walker, 1990). these authors' descnptions ofwomen's challenges and expenences of resistance within an organizational context give some focus to the funding process. i believe that, as activists, there is more we need to examine and more information we must share regarding the funding process. i believe that through documenting and sharing this knowledge we can become more effective activists. simultaneously, i suspect that some of us have hesitated to document and promote our 'insider's knowledge' for fear of backlash from flinders. dorothy smith's (1990a, 1990b, 1992a, 1992b) methodology will assistmy attempt to understand and describe theway i have experienced and participated in the funding process and its consequences for wec my reflections on the funding process have been built up over an eight year period. preceding wec, i was involved with another womai's organialternate routes, volume 11, 1994 zation in northern ontario. in this organization, at various times over a four year period, i was assigned the task of 'fund-raiser,' 'membership coordinator,' 'project supervisor,' and 'president.' in retrospect, the funding process and consequences at this women's centre were very similar to those i am witnessing and reading about elsewhere. more recently i have been involved with wec where, over a five year penod, i have alternatively been the 'co-ordinator,' 'chairperson of the research committee,' 'intern supervisor,' and 'board member at large.' during my eight years of experience with these two organizations (almost exclusively as a volunteer), i have attended approximately eighty face-to-face meetings with representatives of different funding sources. i have been a participant in over ninety-six board or 'collective' meetings. i have spent hundreds of additional hours reading the documents produced by these women's organizations as well as those produced by the many potential and actual funding representatives. hundreds of hours have been invested in reading formal academic papers regarding socialism, feminism, community organization, racism, funding, the state, and public administration. these sources of information have simultaneously filtered through the formal and informal discussions i have had with my kindred activists. these expenences constitute the 'raw data' on which i construct this paper. ^ smith (1 990a, 1 990b) has a complex and subtle way of re-examining how we descnbe and think about the world, and a paper ofthis length cannot do justice to the nchness of her work. smith (1990a:61-80) describes the process through which knowledge becomes objectified and how 'facts' come to be different from women's actual lived expenence. smith suggests there are six components to this process (smith, 1990a:73) these parts of the process overlap, intermingle and collectively form a loop in which we can become bound up in a taken-for-granted way. there is the "lived actuality" which is reshaped dunng the "social organization of the production of the factual account." "lived actuality" is our everyday spontaneously experienced and most authentic or uncensored perceptions and thoughts. a "factual account" is constructed and read by an audience and, through convention. transken/ women's groups and the funding process assumed to be "what actually happened or what is." the "reading/hearing" ofthe factual account is shaped by "the social organization ofthe reading of the factual account." in other words, understanding is separated into our everyday experiential understanding and the understanding that becomes formalized, documented and validated as 'knowledge.' for example, when we read something in a newspaper article there are certain unchallenged practices we casually engage in unless we have been explicitly trained to do otherwise. we have been trained, for example, to believe what is said in newspapers. we have been trained, or our minds have been 'formatted,' to slip information into certain categories. these cat^ories have been created and maintained by dominant groups in society. on a day-to-day basis people become participants in the process of creating and maintaining that dominance. for example, more credibility is usually given to information presented in a newspaper article than to a woman 'gossiping' about what she saw while she was on her way to get her hair done. in this paper i describe each ofthese parts of smith's model to the extent that they relate to government funding ofa grassroots ethnocultural minority f^j^ womai's coitre in northern ontario. each component (lived reality, the social organization of the production of the factual account, the factual account, the social organization ofthe reading ofthe factual account and what actually happened or what is) are somewhat tangled together; they are not distinctly sq^arate and linear and, therefore, it is difficult to talk about them in discreet and consistent ways as they relate to wec. atwec we have received fundingfrom nine different sources since the organization was founded in 1988. our initial funding came from canada employment and immigration and our second (second both in sequence and in amount of funding) primary source of funding was the secretary of state. some sources have funded us repeatedly (canada employment and immigration and secretary of state multicultural division, citizenship). this means we often have more problems, but also more safety nets than the one-funder organization ng studied in 1988. the schedules, expectations and consequences of being funded by each specific ftinding source are somewhat alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 different, but there are also patterns that are shared in thewayfunders interact with small funding reapients likewec and in theway funding recipients like wec come to interact with funders. funding processes shape who we are as an organization, what we can do, and who we may become. most insidiously, funding processes influaice how we (as staff, activists or clients) come to define ourselves and how we interact with each other within the agency of wec. we often feel and think that these funders or potential funders are our masters and that we must cater to their every whim and demand. ' these fiinding masters seem to us as distant and uninterested. they appear to speak an alien language. these masters demand that we travel to their terntory, exhaust ourselves to catch their interest with innovative magic tncks, and learn to speak their language of 'bureaucratese.' organizations like wec compete with other women's organizations and charitable groups for scraps from the masters' tables. funding representatives and their trail of colourful pamphlets frequently remind us that there is a finite amount of money available within any geographical area, in each yearly budget, or for a specific issue. when an organization like wec has many masters it can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. lived reality a multitude ofwomen face a variety ofproblems and discomforts on a dayto-day basis. these are experienced by women as somewhat random—their causes, sources and consequences appear unrelated. canada's ethnocultural minority women and/or working-class women, because of socially created barners which stigmatizethem as 'ethnocultural minorities' or 'poor women,' face more irntants on a day-to-day basis than their white anglophone canadian-bom middle-class sisters.' wec is a group ofwomen in northern ontano who "exist to enhance the lives and expand the options of immigrant, first nations and visible minoritywomen" this mandate is a quotation from our legal mission statement which we had to construct so that we could become incorporated, apply for government funds, and exist as an organiza1 j transken/ women's groups and the funding process tion. this was explained to us in some of our first meetings with women who had worked for the federal government as project officers. during our evolution, wec activists have interpreted our mission statement very broadly, openly and creatively. our mission statement's practical applications are always in flux. most of wec's women's daily-life problems are not caused by women's unplanned choices, aversion to hard work or sacrifice, or absence of ambitions. these are the causes of women's problems in the world-view usually presented by funders. in contrast, we believe that women's problems are caused by the social structures and social relationships in which women live: patriarchy, capitalism, racism, and centralism. women's activities can become distorted and unbalanced becausethey have their access to resources and opportunities regularly blocked. this 'blockage,' moreover, is intrinsic tothewaythe social world is run. our day-to-day lack ofaccess is a necessary prerequisite for someone else's day-to-day opportunity and privilege. women's common daily problems are generally loose, sloppy, leaky, and vaguely defined. women, for example, do not walk in to wec and immediately announce, in the language ofthe funders, that their "problem is that they are long-term employment disadvantaged affirmative action appropriate women" who require "marketable skills training and employment readiness preparation to integrate fully into canadian society." problems become defined and imagined in these bureaucratic formats (categorized and fragmented) as a result of the fianders' interactions (pamphlets, reports, cheques, phone-calls, memos, etc.) with our organization's staff and volunteers. this is a detailed and ongoing process that involves active and interactive participants. this process is seen as normal and is unchallenged and taken-for-granted by most participants. in contrast to a bureaucratically structured label for her or for her problems, a women walking intowec may say she feels upset today because her rent payment is due, or simply that she is tired and wants to sit down and have a coffee. further discussion and contemplation may find that a long sequence of events, decisions, people, and meanings have brought her to this alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 moment of 'feelmg upset/ some of the underlying causes may go back generations and involve larger issues of immigration policy, educational opportunities, and inheritance laws and practices. only one part of the feelings she expresses is related to the fact that she needs money to make the world stop bothenng her and to access the things she must have on a daily basis to survive and be comfortable. somehow this visitor (and all the other women who interact with wec) must have her "lived actuality" translated by wec staff and volunteers into "factual accounts." her complicated, intense and contradiction-laden life must be reduced to a few paragraphs or a couple of numbers. a limited number of 'presenting problems' must be identified and documented. this woman must be made into a 'client' ratherthan a peer or an equal and dynamic participant in the process of survival and resistance. no funders allocate money simply to help vaguely unhappy women become vividly happy women. from the funder's perspective, a woman walking into wec should become "a client from one of our three target groups," and there must be a documented measurable problem that is definitively solved in measurable ways if our funders are to have their uneasiness subside. (and remember if their uneasiness does not subside we are sent away from the masters' tables with no scraps.) these "factual accounts" involve social organization. such knowledge must be produced so thatwec can continue receiving money for rent, staffs wages, the phone bill and for resources and supplies. we require office space and at least at least one staff so that we can effectively visit, share, talk, feel understand and care about each other. our "lived reality" has to be made into a factual account that fiinders recognize. what is the process involved in the production of the factual account? how do we make our many and far away blind masters see us? transken/ women's groups and the funding process the social organization of tbo: production of the factual account every year governmental and non-governmental funding sources create a multitude of pamphlets that can be defined as 'texts. ' pamphlets can be thought of as textual accounts that 'stand in' for the work of government employees. in smith's method for exploring and understanding the world around us texts: ...are analyzed to display what the subject knows how to do as reader and what the subject knows how to do in reading, andm so doingalso displays theorganizing capacity ofthetext, its capacity to operate as a constituent of social relations (smith, 1990b:5). the flinders mail pamphlets and request forms to various non-profit organizations yearly, explaining potentially applicable programs, resources and services. sometimes wec women find pamphlets and request forms at other agencies, at conferences and rallies, or through friends. on other occasions, one funding agency's representative or project officer will give us the pamphlet of another agency in what we often perceive as a bid to be rid of us. for example, a woman's problems will sometimes be defined as a provincial responsibility by a federally funded organization and a provincially fionded organization may define a woman's problems as a federal responsibility. each ofthesepamphlets andforms are passed around from hand to hand by the volunteers and staff in the organization. individual women may offer some interpretation of what these documents mean. women who handle the documents attempt to connect that speafic pamphlet and request form with 'gossip' she may possess regarding other organizations and what they are applying for this year. such information is picked up at parties, rallies and gatherings, the news, or from discussions with project officers (note 'project officers' are not called 'funding facilitators') in previous years. the documents may be compared with last year's documents. each woman attempts to answer the question, "what does the funder specifically want to hear and i alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 can we legally say what they want to hear so we can get some money?" at a more sophisticated level, we could say that these women are engaged in the process of organizing the production of a factual account. as part ofthis process ofproducing a factual account, a pamphlet and funding request form with some of its cumulative 'gossip' floats around the office. eventually the pamphlet and request form lands on one person's mail shelf. this person may never before have interacted with potential flinders. she may never before have been involved in these types of formal bureaucratic activities. wec's philosophy is that all women should have opportunities to develop their skills in all spheres of the organization's work. by involving herself in applying for money, a woman may feel like she is accepting an enormous and frightening responsibility. every time i have consulted to apply for a grant i have felt somewhat like a midget warrior chasing a goliath. sometimes the person in charge of the pamphlet is someone who has done other funding requests for wec or for other organizations. occasionally this is a person who has two or three funding proposals in process at the same time. as a result of the available woman-power at wec, this woman is likely to be alone for most ofthe duration oftheprocess. this can eventually lead to the resentment or, alternatively, the adoration of the other wec activists. this person frequently finds both positive and negative feelings become directed toward her. the woman in charge of the pamphlet, rather than the actual potential funder, often becomes the target ofwec women's most intense emotions and scrutiny. frequently she is silently judged on the cash success or failure ofherwork, rather than the energy output and personal nsks she has taken dunngthe sequence of discovery and negotiation. many times i have witnessed people displaying and projecting strong emotions on the bearer ofgood or bad news about funding. these disruptive dynamics can come about because not all women understand all the parts of the process. the person in charge ofthe pamphlet is frequently the co-ordinator (she may have been the one to initially receive the pamphlet and decide that it was a 'go'). she may also be a board member. what every her title, she will transken/ women's groups and the funding process probably make a phone call to the office from which that the pamphlet emerged (employment and immigration canada, secretary of state, citizenship, ontario women's directorate, northern mines and development, etc.). more questions will be asked. clarification regarding our 'appropriateness' forthis funding will be sought. this is a verytime consumingand energy draining process. it is my belief, and the belief of many of wec's funding activists, that this is not accidentally designed this way. only the tenacious survive this stage of the process. eventuallythewoman in charge ofthepamphlet might ascertain thatthe program advertised is not applicabletowec . it may be that we have already missed the deadline to apply (application intake deadlines sometimes arbitrarily change from year to year). deadlines are an interesting component of this process because the pamphlets are usually issued only after the funder's policies, agendas, priorities and plans for the new fiscal year are known. ^ whatever criteria existed last year do not necessarily exist this year. once the funder has decided on this year's criteria, the pamphlets are then issued and the requests must be completed usually within a month or two ^j|p of the printing of pamphlets. this means little lead time is allocated to organizations like wec. we often find out a funding possibility exists only one or two weeks before the deadline for submissions, frigid and short time frames have consequences for the organization and its activists. also, tight time frames encourage women to work as solo individuals in the process because waiting until the next monthly meeting ofthe collective group ofwec activists could mean missingthe funder's designated deadline. individual work often means that women feel they should get all the recognition when or ifthe money does arrive, and it means women who do not succeed in securing fundingmay feel that they are personal failures and could have done more. further, less knowledge about the funding application process is shared when women work in isolation. these processes can sometimes serve to decrease the group's feelings ofharmony and solidarity. while contemplatingthe consequences ofdeadlines and time sequencmg, it is important to remember that almost all women in charge ofpamphlets and alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 funding applications are volunteers who hold down full-time jobs, raise children, take night classes, have households to run, and are often unfamiliar with the funding process. expecting women to organize a whole proposal over the course ofa week, or even a few weeks, is imposing very high and often unrealistic expectations. the complexity ofwomen's personal lives is erased from the process. there are complications other than tight time frames. when a new pamphlet has been received and someone attempts to follow up its implications for wec, it is possible they will discover that because we are already receiving one type of funding we are ineligible for another. it is often discovered that because we have received a particular type of funding in the past, we will not be 'appropnate' for a potential program this year. for example, our experience with local representatives ofthe secretary of state suggests that they prefer that we define ourselves as offeringprograms either for 'women' or 'multicultural' people. we are not supposed to receive funding in any given fiscal year for responding to both women's and multicultural people's needs. given our mission statement and what we do in practice, this is an oddity around which we have felt compelled to navigate. this type of funding suggests that we must 'splinter' women's identities. the wec volunteer trying to decode and assess the meaning of the pamphlet (remember these pamphlets are active texts that 'stand in' for the funders) may find that we can apply for a certain program but that far too much work is required and not enough woman power available. sometimes the perceived gain forwec isfaroutweighedbythepotential output ofeffort. for example, dozois ofhours ofapplication and documentation work as well as time setting up a program may be required to receive only five hundred dollars. it is often discovered that the programs or resources advertised in the pamphlet are actually a 'sham.' a woman in charge of a pamphlet can find out that the money being offered must be matched with equal dollars—dollars which we are 'magically' supposed to generate from membership donations or raise from the community! for example, five thousand dollars might be transken/ women's groups and the funding process available for computer purchases ow/jiffive thousand dollars are first raised from our clients, the community and volunteers. to raise money means that we are somewhat obliged to engage in activities like fees for services, bake sales, beauty make-over days, fashion shows and dances. it is obvious how these activities have the potential to reshape activist's attitudes and feelings. if these dead-end outcomes are identified, the pamphlet and funding request form are then filed or thrown away and forgotten. ifwe 'do not fit' the flinder's desires, we almost always forget about the application rather than challenge why the funder's program does not suit us. if the potential funder's program is a 'sham,' we rarely challenge why it is being advertised and promoted. if the program is a mandatory community fund matching program, we sometimes blame ourselves and ponder why we have not been more successful in our community fund-raising efforts and in our efforts to extract fees from our clients. if we do challenge the process, we inevitably do so only internally (withinwec over coffee and closed meetings) as an intellectual exercise. we are usually afraid to use the media, to phone politicians, or to challenge the process in more overt and radical ways. we are afraid to make our distant masters angry with us. we have been well trained to take the responsibilities for our 'failure' in a world where the rules ofthe game have been made up by white men who are largely untouched by issues like child-care, poverty, violence, sexual assaults, unemployment, racism, or isolation. most of us have learned to be polite, silent and grateful. the pamphlets set out most of the limits we must maintain. project officers set out additional limits. project officers will say things like "your application was a good first attempt and if you resubmit next year with the appropriate changes (or additions or information) we will give your request serious consideration," or "there were too many requests ahead of yours this time." these responses lead us to feel that ifwe are 'good and patient girls' nice things might happen to us in the future. if it does seem that we might be eligible for some funding, the agency contact person will continue brain-storming to assess how wec might alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 present itself to meet the cntena of the potential funder. we will make ourselves fit and/or appearto fit the funder 's cnteria. much discussion might take place amongwec women over meetings, lunches and mid-night phone calls . informants from other organizations may be enlisted to share whatever knowledge they have about this fiinding source. people will go to lunch together and talk—like sharing 'dirty' secrets. we do not ask why accessing public funds to address women's day-to-day discomforts should make us feel like we are stealing scraps from the master's tables. we do not openly challenge why we must do hundreds of hours of volunteer work to prepare ourselves to ask for fijnds to provide safety, security, comfort, and basic life resources to ordinary women. wec has to prove its worth and establish its identity to the representatives ofany potential funding body. all new organizations have to go through this stage but wec is particularly disadvantaged because of its philosophy, legal mission statement, and the group ofwomen that are drawn to it. wec has had to prove its worth over and over again to the same funders. the first stages of communication are very difficult with some funders because they do not see racism, sexism or classism as real issues in canadian society. some of these funders will not even meet with us until we have sent them huge envelopes filled with documents. some funders will not even mail out application request forms until we have sent them what they define as appropnate documentation. wec documents will be pulled from the files and photocopied to prepare for the next stage in the application process. almost all funders want to see our constitution, by-laws, finanaal statements, projected budget, and relevant job descriptions. frequently fionders want the resumes of all board and staff members. in my eight years of expenence, i have never witnessed or heard about a project officer volunteenngto send their resumes to us. neither have i witnessed, nor heard about, a women's organization representative demanding to see a funder's resume. funders will require support letters from agencies which are defined as 'relevant' (i.e. defined as relevant through the possibility of sharing clients, transken/ women's groups and the funding process previously addressing these concerns, etc.). funders decide who is relevant and not relevant in terms of letters of support. usually the funder requests letters of support from agencies which might in fact be competitors for the scraps from the master's table. it is against these competitor agency's own best financial interests to support our request. all these documents and interactions help constitute the practices involved in creating "the factual account." these practices are the same for agenaes wanting government or government 'wannabe' (united way, trillium, etc.) flinds. none of the funders have to prove themselves to us. they never have to prove their nght to interrogate us.^ these forms and processes are designed extra-locally by white, middleclass, university-educated, canadian-bom men. they are administered locally almost exclusively by white, middle-class, canadian-bom, universityeducated women. only once have i interacted with a local funder who was not white and middle-class. the form's designers and administrators always have some background in book-keeping or accounting. wec's staff, clients, and volunteers are largely immigrant, first nations and visible minority, working-class, high-school or college-educated women. wec's women almost never have any previous exposure to formal book-keeping or accounting knowledge. forms are designed for administrative convemence, for computer compatibility, or other reasons that have nothing to do with the real living struggling women who must fill them in at wec . these differences in class, ethnic, and educational background are not explicitly recognized bythe funders' insidiously dictated process but have an implicit consequence for wec. we must play by their rules and fill in the blanks they constructed without consultation. i have had many discussions with women while these forms were filled. if wec women were designing these forms they would be much simpler, easier to understand, include more qualitative data, and would be designed with the assumption that we are trustworthy beings authentically doing everything we can to help other women with their messy and 'ordinary' dayto-day problems. funder's forms assume we are not doing the work we alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 promisewe will, that what we are doing is not work, or that it is not something that should be done. if wec women were designing the forms, we would assume that if last year a number ofwomen wanted to talk about incest, rape, violaice, poverty, unemployment, etc., there would also be women this year with the same concerns. if wec women were designing the forms, there might be one form for all the flinders that was done once yearly and updated what we wanted to do next year. funders change their priorities and issues year to year. in the flinders' realities there has been the 'year ofthe disabled, ' the 'year ofthe first nations woman,' the 'year against wife assault,' etc. when wec representatives attemptto explain that thereisno such thing as a problem-of-the-year because a 'problem' does not last only a year, we are not understood. whenweexpress these ideas, the project officers may respond by saying that another flinder must pay for any further work that needs to be done on that soaal problem, that all that can be done has now already been done, or that another agency is doing that work. sometimes the responsibility will be turned around and projected onto us; why werewe unsuccessful in solving that problem last year when we were paidforsolvingit'j' wec women's definition of reality—^theproblems andthe needs of women, what has happened in the past and what should happen in the future—is thereby defined as 'invalid. ' policy is constructed elsewhere by statistiaans and accountants in ottawa and toronto who define what is knowledge and what is worth recognizing and rewarding. wec women who have been the contact person for funding proposals have often commented to me that they felt like they were being judged by project officers as being guilty ofa cnme ofwhich they never knew they were accused or guilty. although he does not profess to be describing the funding request process, the feelings ofinexplicable guilt and negativejudgement are well descnbed by kafka in his haunting and surrealistic book 77?^ trial. in one passage from the trial, the accused descnbes the system's whimsical contortions and the helplessness ofthe victim. the accused is thinking about her situation:** transken/ women's groups and the funding process itwas all very regrettable, but notwholly withoutjustification. k. must remember that the proceedings were not public; they could certainly, ifthe court considered it necessary, become public, but the law did not prescribe that they must be made public. naturally, therefore, the legal records of the case, and above all the actual charge-sheets, were inaccessible to the accused and her counsel, consequently one did not know in general, or at least did not know with any precision, what charges to meet in the first plea; accordingly it could be only bypure chance that it contained really relevant matter. one could draw up genuinely effective and convincing pleas only later on, when the separate charges and the evidence on which they were based emerged more definitely or could be guessed at from the interrogations.(kafka, 1968, 115) an example of these whimsical contortions expected from the flinders can be found in the funder's desire that different forms be filled with detailed quantitative data. their forms focus on financial accountability and on documenting how women's problems can be segmented and time-tracked. the forms come to be experienced by wec women and project officers as having a life of their own. they come to be extensions of a master's body, somewhat like fingers groping out in the dark to touch us, explore our contours, understand us and reshape us. the factual account factual accounts which produce the image (mirage) offinancial accountability, problem segmentation, time-tracking, and professionalism must be constructed for potential flinders if wec wants to be recognized. wec's constitution, by-laws, financial statements, budget projections, minutes of meetings, etc., are added to the actual grant proposal form and the memos from the local project officer with the support letters from other agencies in the community. the wec contact person will be kept very uneasy and busy collecting, creating and refining documents. this cumulative pile of docu& alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 maits forms the factual account of who wec is and what wec does. this final 'kit' is assessed and assembled with the local project officer. the editing and amending of 'facts' may go on for months. in the end, the request form and supporting documents are 'submitted' to the granting agency. months may go by before an answer is received from our seemingly unknowable masters who are geographically and philosophically far away. sometimes the answer that evaitually trickles down to the wec represaitative is that some vital piece of information is missing and that if it is produced the application will then be reconsidered. however, the request for missing information is routinely unmanageable. for example, if a ftinder asked, "what percentage ofthewomen clients seen in the past two years have been full status first nations women?", we would not be able to provide an answer. we do not ask that kind of information during intake or at any other point in our interactions with each other. "full status first nations" is a l^al concept with no real practical meaning for us. sometimes the application is rejected somewhere between our community, toronto, or ottawa. a vague and coded explanation from a master or a master's helper explains the reason for rejection. rejections have come to us with statements like "this project has inadequate community support." we are not allowed to know those who were contacted in the community and do not support us. the voices that are defined as 'credible' to assess our application do not necessarily include first nations unemployed cleaning ladies or illiterate italian immigrant bake store clerks. the women who are activists at wec are not necessanly defined by project officers or administrators as credible sources of 'support' because they are 'biased.' peoplewho do not use our services or who are not familiar with our organization are defined as 'credible professionals' with a knowledgeable opinion. the social organization of the reading of the factual account the social organization of reading the factual accounts takes place during different stages of grant proposal applications. the womai at wec have transken/ women's groups and the funding process discovered and stored knowledge about how pamphlets are meant to be read, what should or should not be written into applications, and what should or should not be said during interviews with project officers. for example, a wec co-ordinator toldme that a year after the oka crisis a project officertold her to downplaythe fact thatwec has first nations women mentionedm our literature and mission statement. to have emphasized first nations women's significance in our organization would have deprived us of funding during that intake period. wec women know to never use words and phrases like 'patriarchy,' 'socialist,' 'feminist,' and 'exploitation of women.' instead we used words and phrases like 'unassertive women,' 'women with low self-esteem,' 'low income women,' 'concerned about women,' and 'underdeveloped skills of women. ' as a consequence ofour interactions with representatives offunding sources and through reading the material supplied by funding sources, we have developed a loosely shared body of knowledge which has taught us to openly place the blame on our women participants/clients for their problems . by doing so, we can sell the work of 'fixing' them to different representatives of the federal and provincial government. we can turn them into 'pieces' or 'projects . ' wec becomes represented as a factory in which activists and staff can do 'piece work' on an assembly line. we may be gradually seduced and colluded into blaming the victim. sometimes, some of us come to believe the 'truths' and 'facts' theyhave indoctrinated us to produce. in this process, the relations of ruling are obscured. instead of being the revolutionaries we originally dreamed ofbecoming, we are in danger ofbecomingpolite and busy agents of the state. project officers know (in a rough and transitional way) what is expected of them by their supervisors and by the signing authonties in ottawa or toronto. wec's money is not decisively allocated locally. each level of administration, from northern ontario to ottawa and back, has a common language. each square on each form has an almost consensually recognized meaning and expected response. the parameters are almost always defined, understood and unquestioned. atwec we learned to put our desires into the alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 language of these funding masters or they simply will not be aware that we exist or that there are problems to which they must allocate resources. we sometimes ask them for money to use in our process ofactively resisting their authority; if this is made too clear, they will obviously not want to fund our work.^ "what actually happenedavhat is" when wec was created in 1 988, a group ofwomen came together to brainstorm about what we thought were the issues and problems confronting ethnocultural minority women in our community. we were all immigrant, visible minority, first nations, feminists, and/or working-class women with a spontaneous and passionate desire to bnng about some changes in our lives and the lives of the women who were our fnends and neiglibours. i never missed a meeting because they were exciting and stimulating. as far as the founding mothers ofwec knew in 1988, there were no hard 'facts' in our community. there were anecdotal pieces of information, personal testimonies, and the impressions of the activists. some statistics from canada employment and hnmigration about how many women might be defined as belongingto this or that ethnocultural group were also available. finally, there was some histoncal documentation about which groups of women came to this geographical area dunng which years and why. for the five years thatwec has been in operation, it has increasinglybecome a centre in which knowledge about "what actually happened/what is" is created. wec is in the process of initiating and solidifying a certain knowledge of 'reality' that will be the base from which other organizations, activists, individuals, researchers, and funders will begin their work. almost all the women who founded wec in 1 988 have moved away or moved on. as a consequence of the stresses and strains on their lives, they have usually been unable to regularly vol unteer withwec . newwomen have come forward who have not shared the same vivid vision. they have arrived and been introduced to our activities through government produced texts and through the literature we have produced at wec their initiation has given them the versions of reality transken/ women's groups and the funding process that the funders receive—^the versions of reality that the flinders want us to create. new volunteers are vulnerableto believingthat this version is the only 'truth,' when in fact it has been created for an external and unsympathetic viewer. wec, it might be said, is now increasingly expanding into the business of fact production. thetextuallyproduced and socially organized 'facts' are assumed to be the same as what really happens in the day-to-day lives ofwomen who visit and work atwec . the many mid-term and final project reports produced for funders supports this continuing telling ofthe story. only one version ofthe story seems possible to each funder. for example, canada employment and immigration can only absorb a story about how women were "employment disadvantaged" before they interacted with wec "fully employed or unemployed" when then concluded theirtime with wec. canada employment and immigration forms are unable to absorb a story that involves rape, incest or anything else that has, in their boundaries of the story, nothing to do with employment issues. only one version of one story will be absorbed, recognized and ^p responded to by each funder. no schema exists for multiple and changing possibilities. eventually the schema that funders and wec women use may become identical. some of wec's activists not only come to know and reproduce the funder 's story about "what actually happened/what is," but we often come to believe that it is our "lived actuality." for example, in the recent past one of our funders provided thirty thousand dollars to organize a two-part conference about "anti-racism and women working in coalition." this project became the whole agency's priority. thirtythousand dollars is an enormous amount ofmoney for us (our yearly budget has been between thirty-thousand and one-hundred thousand dollars). no paid staff exist for counselling women. no paid staff exist for advocating on behalfofand escortingwomen to access social services. these activities must be done by volunteers. when the agency was approached to organize the conference, all our volunteers were assigned to the task. less collective and individual energy was invested in actually encouraging. alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 counselling and escorting women. theflinder underfunded us to produce the conferoice. not enough wages were allocated to organize what we were coerced into saying we would. volunteers were pulled in to accomplish the goal we contracted to finish. had we not organized this conference we would not have had rent money or a telephone. we had no choice. to remain financially viable, we must exist with at least one master asking us to fill in the blanks and squares that he has decided need to be filled. for a time—and without any of us explicitly discussing it—it became a 'fact' among the women at wec that we should all pull together to get the conference organized. it became a 'fact' that we did not have time for volunteers to do research, counselling, escorting, because they should be working on the conference. this fact comes to be understood, unchallenged, andtaken-for-granted. thefunders, throughtheir infiltration ofour collective mind with their priorities, their definitions of success, of what is work, and what are thep roblems ofethnocultural minoritywomen in our community are have implicated us in the production of 'facts.' these 'facts' often come to be what women at wec know, act in response to, struggle with, and impose on each other. smith ( 1 990) also plays with imagery ofwolves and their subsistence. smith's image ofwolves and caribou seems to fitmy experience as an activist at wec who tried to understand how we participate in knowing, producing and accepting 'facts': facts mediate relations not only between knower and known but among knowers and the object known in common. notice, next time you see that movie of wolves hunting canbou, how they attend to one another through the medium of their object. each is onented to that caribou and through that to each other. thus they coordinate the hunt. a fact is such an object; it is the caribou that coordinates the activities of members of a discourse, a bureaucracy, a management, a profession. a fact is construed to be external to the particular subjectivities of the knowers. it is the same for anyone, external to anyone, and unlike the real caribou transken/ women's groups and the funding process and the real wolves, is fixed, devoid of perspective, in the same relation to anyone. it coordinates the activities of anyone who is positioned to read and has mastered the interpretive procedures it intends and relies on. (smith, 1990:69) smith explains the dynamics through which knowledge becomes objectified and how 'facts' come to be different from our lived experience. smith's proposed dynamics are clearly relevant to an understanding of the funding process at wec. wec activists might be likened to the wolves. the caribou might be seen as the facts (facts related to accessing the money we need to continue our work or something like the work we originally wanted to do). these facts also organize our project officers and each of the administrators above them (our distant disinterested masters). smith's six components that comprise the social organization of the textual reality intermingle and tangle. an ideological loop is created that can be breached at any point, but rarely in day-to-day practice. there is the authentic actuality which is gradually rearranged during the social organization ofthe production ofthe factual account. a factual account is read by an audience (in the context ofwec the audience is constituted by the funding agency's representatives, wec volunteers and staff, clients and peer organization's representatives, project officers, etc.) and assumed to be what actually happened or what is. the factual account becomes a taken-forgranted and shared definition ofreality . the reading and hearing ofthe factual account has been shaped by the surrounding social organization. we (the funding representatives, wec staffand activists) are continually implicated participants in this ongoing process. there are no tyrants or conspiracies, although it has felt like this to me when i sat across from a project officer who explained why wec could not be fijnded orwhen i received a rejection letter from a potential funding source. these processes and dynamics are aspects of modem, textually mediated, large organizations and state practices. wec's volunteers and participants experience many of the same conflicts and contradictions as volunteers and 0^ alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 partiapants in hundreds of other small govemmoit funded organizations across canada. in the first years of wec's existence, we continually met in ad hoc spontaneously arranged groups and asked each other, 'what do you want to dotoday?', 'what arewe here for?', 'what shouldwe do next?', 'howdoyou feep', 'what hurts you and what can i do right here and nght now to make you feel better?' now, we have titles (such as 'staff versus 'board,' 'presid«it' versus 'member-at-large,' etc.) and usually meet in previously scheduled meetings where we create agendas and ask each other different questions. we ask, 'what do the funders want us to do today?,' 'what has each funder scheduled for us and what are the target dates? ', 'what report or proposal must be written next?', 'what are the funders granting priority to this year? ' , 'how much money dowehave in our general account? ' and 'what will our next fund-raising event be?' in addition to asking different questions, we no longer have much time to even ask questions. the women are often aware of the tensions and the contradictions, but they proceed because there is little time for reflection, and it seems that everyone else is proceeding. the pace has be«i set. none ofthe funders are ke«i on funding 'consciousness raising sessions for board members so that they can resist all levels of oppressions. ' in summary, i have explored parts of the process of the government funding of a grassroots ethnocultural minority women's c«itre in northern ontano. the wom«i from wec have now successfully negotiated project fundmg from five differait federal and provincial sources. among government sources, we have received financial support from (in order of largest contnbutions) canada employment and immigration, the secretary of state multicultural division, the secretary of state women's division, citizaiship (provincial), and northern mines and development. we also receive funds from trillium, the united way, oxfam, nevada sales, bingos, membership fees, and through community fund-raising activities (t-shirt sales, craft sales, and other events). united way and tnllium are government 'wannabes. ' their forms and funding processes are experienced transken/ women's groups and the funding process by small agaicies like wec as often being more extensive, intnasive, and controlling than government funding bodies. trillium, united way and oxfam seem to expect us to rely enormously on volunteers and expect us to keep statistics and extensive documentation of our activities. these are the same expectations that government project officers demand. in return, these government 'wannabes' might allocate as little as five hundred to a thousand dollars to per year. most years, they have had no funds to offer us because they have not reached their year's target or because we had not existed long enough for them to consider us. trillium, united way, and oxfam application processes and nevada and bingo licensing processes are all adapted and shaped by the funding processes offederal and provincial governments either directly or indirectly. government 'wannabes' seem to have become part of the participants m creating and recreating a takoi-for-granted reality. the forms for these different funding processes, the mid-year reports, the accounting procedures that are expected, the legal documenting ofhow funds are spent, and theways in which face-to-face mid-term and final assessment meetings are conducted ^^ emerge from and reflect the standards set by provincial and federal government fiinding sources. atwec we are fortunate thatwe have evolved into an organization that can raise a small portion of its resources through non-government sources. these other funding sources allow us to exist. i would like to be able to say that because we do raise some non-government controlled money we do not have our every movement controlled by one or another master. i am unsure that this is the case. i believe that we use our community raised funds to subsidize the work that government masters originally underfund us to do. we use these 'discretionary funds' to patch the day-to-day holes and gaps in our activities and programs that the federal and provincial governments refuse to recognize or fund. women atwec can only rarely escapethe masters' scrutiny and return to being the people we originally wanted to be. our masters are gradually making us into dwarfed and crippled wolves, andwe are gradually organizing alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 ourselves to fit around the movements ofthe caribou herd. we are becoming acadental (from our perspective) representatives of the state. this process was documented by ng (1988) in her observations of an state-funded organization designed to address immigrant women's employmait needs. evaitually, the organization changed its focus and addressed the needs of employers and canada employment and immigration. ng says: as a result of its funding arrangement, the employment agaicy now altered into a sub-contractual relationship with the state. the funding protocol was such that the agency had to produce a 'product' for the state in return for funding. the nature and parameter ofthis 'product' was defined by a legal contract, signed by a board of directors, who were legally accountable to the state and the 'public' for the agency's financial welfare. as such, they became the internal rqjresaitatives ofthe state within the agaicy. (ng, 1988:12) regrettably ng's fatalistic summary ofthe patterns she witnessed seem to be beginning to play themselves out at wec. walker (1990) presents her analysis of the battered women's shelter movement with a similarly disenchanted and disaichanting tone. she describes how the funding process, the documentation process, and the resulting 'professionalization' contributed to the de-radicalization of the battered women's movement. this paper has attempted to explain how funding shapes who we are, what we can do, and who we may become at wec from my perspective as a fascinated witness. in the way wec womai playing out the consequoices of funding, we are not unique. the daily acts, steps, discussions, documaitation, and resource allocations that govemmoit and govemmoit 'wannabe' representatives demand help define how we at wec come to see ourselves. external funding realities are coming to define how we interact with each other (staff/board/partiapant/client) within the organization. it seems to me that we have come to believe that these funders or potential flinders are our transken/ women's groups and the funding process masters. we have cometo believe thatwe must caterto all oftheir overtly and covertly declared desires and demands. we have, and have had, many seemingly distant, disinterested and foreign-tongued masters . they want us to put our requests into their formats, visitthem in their territory, tire ourselves with obscuretricks for their benefit, and learn to speak their language. when an organization like wec has many masters it can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. it is an advantage in that we can continue to exist because one or another master throws us scraps. it is a disadvantage because each of these masters reinforce each other's demands and expectations. alternatively, if we had only one master we would have to be more obedient and we would be more vulnerable. it is a disadvantage to have many masters because we always have to be vigilant about incurring one master's anger for having been too attendant to another's desires. having many masters also complicates our lives and our work because there are more documents to produce, competing demands to cater to, and many more meetings to att^d. in some ways, it does not matter how many masters we have because they are all training us in the same way—^teaching us to cringe and whimper or to march obediently leashed at their sides. i resist concluding this paper on too cynical a note in spite ofwhat ng, walker, smith and others make visible. maybe i am resisting out of some pollyanna-type learning disability. i do not think of myself as a zombie-like agent of the state who is energetically participating in the oppression of women. wec, by existing at all, is a manifestation ofresistance. as our legal mission statement says, we are "enhancing the lives and expanding the options of immigrant, visible minority and first nations women." even if the "enhancement and expansion" is minor and incremental, it is nevertheless an accomplishment. whatever space and resources we do wrestle from government flinders and government 'wannabes' is that much less space or resources that conservative forces get to keep and utilize. whatever we can do in a day-to-day way that helps some women feel more comfortable in the world is worth doing. some of us have our consciousness raised, in spite of alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 forces that would block that, and we share those special moments of insight and solidanty. some of us gam the knowledge and leave wec and apply it elsewhere. some of us come to reflect on why the flinders structure their relationships with us as they do. my thoughts on this are that women could form a powerful coalition (especially feminist organizations that explicitly work on anti-racist issues), but by dividing us through the fundingprocess flinders can conquer us, exhaust us, and can confuse us. at wec we have been unsuccessful in finding alternative sources of funding that would have 'revolutionarypotential.' wehave turned to raisingflinds through bake sales, fashion shows and beauty make-over days. these events have drawn surpnsingly large numbers ofwomen to our doors, but they have also had an impact on our identity as a group. in these times when government funding is becoming harder and harder to access, will wec become freer and freer as it receives less? no, i do not believe we will become freer and bolder with less government support because the pool ofwomen supporters is too few in this geographic community. there are simply not enough ethnocultural minoritywomen with large sums ofcash and timeto devote towec to nourish us adequately. there are not enough white anglophone canadian-bom women who feel that racism is 'their' issue. their resources are more likely to be committed to other 'sister' organizations. men have not come forward in large enough numbers to volunteer their resources. less govemmmt funding brings wec closer to closing its doors. lorde (1984:1 12) states: ...survival is not an academic skill. it is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a worid in which we can all flourish... this idea is a key theme at wec. we are learning to make our differences into strengths and we are learning to insist that we be recognized and validated. lorde (1982: 1 12) continues by saying: transken/ women's groups and the funding process . . .the masters tools will never dismantle the master's house. they may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bnng about genuine change. and this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support. unfortunately, it seems that at this time wec must look to the many servants and representatives of the master and masters themselves for support. we can strive to maintain and reinvigorate our consciousness ofthe process we are engaged in so that we may remain alert for opportumties to resist and to take more of our fair share. we can work harder to insure that each woman who comes into the organization is taught how to critically evaluate that in which she is oigaged. this seems to be our only terrain of battle over which we can have the possibility of control. gradually we are discovering alternative ways to survive financially, but at this, our five year anniversary, we must sometimes settle for just scraps. even in attempting to get the most scraps possible and to use them as effectively as possible, i feel we are trying to be brave wolves. if we were less brave we could settle for nothing and this nothingness would make our masters too comfortable. notes 1. this paper is only an exploratory work-in-progress. my doctoral thesis, wliich builds on this paper, involves semi-structured interviews with thirty women who have been activists in wec. a central theme of my thesis is the multiple and layered meaning of funding (how women reast and conform to the e?q)ectations of funders). 2. this is a pseudonym. 3. in the thesis i will do a much more extenave analysis of documents. here i am only presenting my subjective experiences of the whole process. my approach, which developed while being a student of dorothy smith in 1992, is that we must always begin our research process &om where we actxially hve, breathe and act in the world. this paper was written for her class and her comments and insights, which are now assimilated into this paper, are gratefully appreciated. alternate routes, volume 1 1, 1994 4. 1 recognize that some women may feel uncomfortable with a white anglophone canadian bom woman using the word 'master' in this way. i have chosen to use this word because it was chosen for the title of the session (leameds, 1993, women's studies) for which this paper was originally adapted, because it is a word that seems to 'fit' the e?q)erience we have at wec, and because i use it in the way audre lorde (1984) does. 5. what 1 am attempting to point out here is that there is nothing intrinsically wrong, different or inadequate about women who find these labels imposed on them. these are women who are as inteuigent, as hard-working, as creative and educated as middle-class women and/or white anglophone canadian-bom women (who would not utihze wec's services). however, the former have not had the privileges of accessing social resources and opportimities. sometimes women who are disadvantaged are portrayed by flinders and social service agencies as having some obvious intrinsic flaw or inadequacy. 6. financial years are different for different representatives of the government. for example, canada employment and iimnigration accepts applications for funding in december, considers them in january but does not actually allocate funds until february. the secretary of state accepts apphcations in january but does not allocate funds until april. the secretary of state will not accept an appucation until the previously funded projects have had their final reports accepted. therefore, between the spending of the last dollar from the last project and the receipt of the first dollar for the next year's project, there wiq usually be a time lag of about three months if all has been done efficiently and appropriately. wec's financial year begins on april 1. citizenship accepts funding proposals four times a year and seems to be organized on a first come first serve basis. northern mines and development accepts proposals at any time but first the proposal must have been rejected by all other possible sources. so, for example, if wec wanted to buy a computer first we have to have asked secretary of state, united way, and other sources (who these 'other sources' are is defined by northem mines and development). 7. one of wec's previous co-ordinator's, teena lacoste, commented on this passage in the following way: "an argument could be made to turn the tables here. why not have the potential funders interrogated? why not say to them 'we have this program we want to nm. we have been looking for a potential funder. we will entertain the possibihty of considering your funding. but before we can determine whether it is desirable to us to have you as a funder we want to know what your vision is. what are your goals? ultimately we at wec have a sacred responsibiuty to our women and only the most accountable funder can be associated with the work we do.' we should turn exclusivity on its ear." transken/ women's groups and the funding process 8. here i have taken tiie liberty of changing the gender of the accused. 9. for example, over the years we have participated in demonstrations like road blocks, sit-ins, and letter writing campaigns against secretary of state and canada employment and immigration while our rent and wages were being paid by them. references adamson, n. et. al. 1988 feminists organizing for change: the contemporary women 's movement in canada. toronto: oxford university press. anderson, doris. 1991 772^ unfinished revolution: the status of women in twelve countries. toronto: doubleday canada limited. backhouse, c. and d. h. flaherty. 1 992 challenging times: the women 's movement in canada and the united states . montreal and kingston: mcgill-queen's university press. canadian women 's studies. 1 989 summer/fall, special issue on first nations women. vol . 1 0, no. 2/3. ontario: york university. government statisticians' collective. 1979 "how official statistics are produced: views from the inside." gnflfiths, n. e. s. 1993 the splendid vision: centennial history ofthe national council of women of canada. ottawa: carleton university press. lannello, kathleen p. 1992 decisions without hierarchy: feminist interventions in organization theory and practice. new york: routledge. kafka, franz. 1968 the trial. new york: schocken books. lorde, audre. 1 984 sister outsider: essays and speeches by a udre lorde . new york: the crossing press. ^ alternate routes, volume 11, 1994 maceda-villanueva, manon. 1990 focus on immigrant women: a study of immigrant women's needs and programs in the ocasi network. ontario: ontario women's directorate. ng, roxana. 1988 the poutics of community services: immigrant women, class and state. toronto: garamond press. remington, judy. 1991 77?^ need to thrive: women 's organizations in the twin cities. minnesota: the minnesota women's press. ri stock, janice. 1990 "canadian feminist social service collectives: caring and contradictions." bridges of power: women's multicultural alliances. philadelphia: new society publishers. ristock, janice. 1991 "feminist collectives: the struggles and contradictions in our quest for a uniquely feminist structure." women and social change: feminist activism in canada. ed. j. d. wine and j. l. ristock. toronto: james lorimer and co. sarick, lila. 1992 "women's centers get emergency funds: ontario undecided on steady financing." globe and mail. may 29, 1992. p. a6. smith, dorothy. 1990a the conceptual practices of power: a feminist sociology of knowledge. toronto: the university of toronto press. smith, dorothy. 1 990b texts, facts, and femininity: exploring the relations ofruling. london and new york: routledge. smith, dorothy. 1992a "sociology from women's experience: a reaffirmation." sociological theory. vol. 10, no. 1. transken/ women's groups and the funding process smith, dorothy. 1 992b "whistlingwomen : reflections on rage and rationality. " fragile truths: twenty-five years of sociology and anthropology in canada. ed. w. k. carroll, l. christiansen-ruflfman, r. f. currie and d. harrison. ottawa: carleton university press. schwartzman, helen b. 1 993 ethnography in organizations . newbury park: sage publications . vickers j., p. ranking and c. appelle. 1993 politics as if women mattered: a political analysis of the national action committee on the status of women. toronto: university of toronto press. walker, gillian a. 1990 family violence and the women's movement: the conceptual politics ofstruggle . toronto: university of toronto press. special canadian journal of communication volume 19 issues 3/4 fall 1994 cultural development in an open economy double issue introduction stuart mcfadyen, ivo gueorguiev, colin hoskins, and adam finn an orienting conceptual framework to cultural development in an open economy rowland lorimer and nancy duxbury the environment in which cultural industries operate and some implications colin hoskins, stuart mcfadyen, and adam finn trading in information:the roles oftechnologyand language richard collins international regimes for trade, copyright and investment in films and television keith acheson and christopher maule cultural development in an op)en economy: state of the question and prosp>ects for quebec roger de la garde and gaetan tremblay cultural development and the open economy: a democratic issue and a challenge to public policy marc raboy, ivan bernier, florian sauvaceau, and dave atkinson the role of aboriginal and other cultural minorities in cultural development fil fraser audiences for cultural industries: a review of recent research, models, and sources liss jeffrey cultural industries policy: objectives, formulation, and evaluation paul audley marketing and business strategy considerations for firms in the cultural industries adam finn, stuart mcfadyen, and colin hoskins conclusionsand recommendations colin hoskins,stuart mcfadyen, and adam finn alternate routes the united nations and international conflict resolution anne herro there is something very sad about what happened to the united nations' transitional authority in cambodia (untac), 1992-1993. the initial elation which sprung from untac s success in enabling the majority of eligible cambodians-almost five million people-to vote for the first time in history gave hope to other contemporary, multidimensional peacekeeping missions. 2 no more than five years after the mission withdrew, however, untac's vision of establishing a "system of liberal democracy, on the basis of pluralism" was dispelled with the 1997 coup. here, hun sen's cambodian people's party (cpp) announced to the world that the un's so-called triumph had, in fact, failed to achieve the lasting and progressive democracy it had hoped for. 1 the central focus of this analysis is to establish to what extent the mandate, resources and political will of the cambodian factions as well as the members of the un, influenced untac's ability to achieve peace with justice. these three focal points divide the paper. inevitably they intersect, weaving a fluid discussion of the ways in which they effect the measure of success throughout the entire rumination. untac's major failures include its inability to maintain a cease-fire; canton and disarm the main factions' armed forces; and achieve control over the civil administration. this led to a breakdown of law, order and political neutrality and finally progressive democracy. untac saw success in key operational components of the electoral process and the repatriation of refugees. these successful elements will be acknowledged although not examined at length. suggested improvements which may have prevented the disintegration of untac's efforts to fulfil their mandate will be offered, including recommendation for future un peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuliding operations. 24 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs political will paris agreement: was there really an agreement? one cannot sufficiently examine untac's inability to maintain a ceasefire or achieve lasting political pluralism without firstly analysing the paris agreement on which the mandate was based. it is necessary to look at the extent to which the political will of the feuding parties existed beyond the pressure imposed on them by their benefactors. this issue of consent, or lack thereof, may be the key to the ultimate success of a second-generation peacekeeping operation. after almost 20 years of civil war with the vietnamese backed cambodian people's party and the chinese backed khmer rouge (kr), not to mention other rival factions, the traditional patrons lost their momentum to continue to fuel the cambodian political struggle after the cold war ended. 3 this instigated international efforts to reach a peace agreement which the warring factions could not oppose. this semi-coercive approach to administering a peace treaty may shed some light onto the incomplete reconciliation which saw the participants breaching the agreements. it suggests that the problem of power-sharing was merely mitigated by the un rather than resolved. it thus seems that it is necessary for the un to find other strategies to gain indigenous consent for their mission in order to truly engender stable political solidarity. a suggested alternative will be explored under the "mandate" section. level ofenforcement verses political will the un seriously addressing the way in which the negotiations of the paris agreement were conducted may have led to them reevaluate the level of force which was to be stipulated in untac's mandate. in other words, if there was a strong suspicion that the parties were pressured by their patrons into agreeing to the treaty then the mandate would require greater powers to ensure the compliance of the signatory parties more than perhaps multi-dimensional pkos had been given hitherto. untac's mandate fell under chapter vi of the un charter which dictates that un forces can only fire in self-defence. of course a pure chapter vii mandate would be too severe for the cambodian climate as the situation was not an imminent threat to international peace and security. however, in response to the challenges untac faced in keeping the peace between rival factions, some demanded a need for greater military volume 20, 2004 25 alternate routes capabilities. this struggle to keep the peace exposes the dangerous assumption which the un made on basing its mandate on the trust of the parties' desire for peace. it also highlights the need for the un to build as many avenues to peace as the parties will tolerate to avoid the failure of an entire mission due to their non-compliance. looking at this issue from a different viewpoint, one detects that the paris agreement did indeed provide untac with the broad legal authority to enforce its mandate, stating the un would be given "all powers necessary to ensure the implementation of the agreements."4 doyle criticised untac for lacking the political will to enforce the mandate and has been said to have acted too cautiously in the way it responds to "spoilers".5 he stated: we don't have the will to apply the peace accords. this absence of firmness with the khmer rouge was a sort of signal for the other parties who saw there the proof of untac's weakness towards the group that from the start eschewed all cooperation. 6 it has been argued that the un's reluctance to introduce an element of enforcement into the mandate can be traced back to the fear of repeating the missions in the congo and namibia, where peace enforcement resulted in serious political costs. 7 based on this premise, it seems that un member states would only endorse further enforcement capabilities if their vital national interests were at stake, as the risks are significantly higher with such peace operations. late deployment diluted the will offactions late deployment was a major component contributing to the breakdown of the cease-fire between the kr and cpp. delays in deployment resulted in the evolution of the situation from one of motivated signatories, to one of despondency. the kr and cpp's loss of will to uphold a neutral political environment arguably prevented untac from holding free and fair elections. 26 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs the gap between the signing of the paris agreement and the deployment of the majority of untac's units was nine months. 8 the brahimi report states: the first six to 12 weeks following a cease-fire or peace accords are often the most critical ones for establishing both a stable and credible new operation. opportunities lost during that period are hard to regain. the panel recommends that the united nations define "rapid and effective deployment capacity" as the ability to fully deploy traditional peacekeeping operations within thirty days of the adoption of a security council resolution establishing such an operation, and within ninety days in the case of a complex operation. 9 this questions the extent of un bureaucracy which seemed to have caused a breakdown in communication between the headquarters in new york and the united nations advanced mission in cambodia. the latter would most likely have been relaying the urgency of a rapid deployment back to new york, yet this message was either not received by the relevant personnel or simply ignored due to the absence of will or resources. it invites us to consider the difficulty the un faces in mobilising its members states' resources. it also asks why the mobilisation of at least untac's military and police contingency were not being prepared for a prompt deployment at the final stages of the paris agreement. the un should have understood the extent to which the signing of the accords was a radical political step for the cambodian factions and thus should have stressed the urgency for a rapid deployment. election: the "make or break" of the operation as the election was the major determining factor of the measure of success of untac and the "focal point of the comprehensive settlement" as stated by the secretary-general, boutros boutros-ghali, the un's commitment to executing them effectively and ensuring they were adequately resourced was their top priority. indeed the secretary general's special representative, yasushi akashi, acknowledged the un's own investment in the operation saying "i cannot afford not to succeed." 10 as volume 20, 2004 27 alternate routes such, untac installed more than 1,400 fixed polling stations; had 50,000 cambodians trained and 1000 international polling officers." this was the first time in history cambodians were given the opportunity to vote for their future. viewed in this light, it was a notable un feat in enabling the cambodian people to participate in a "quasi-democratic" procedure even if it did not create lasting change. perhaps untac's gift to the cambodians was showing them the un's vision of positive peace based on international standards. therefore, the ordinary cambodian became aware of the potential for plural, democratic governance for his / her country. elections do not mean peace with justice the extent to which the elections were indeed free and fair is an issue of contention. the campaign was marred by violence and the cpp did undoubtedly enjoy an unfair advantage as it used state resources for its campaign. 12 it can be argued that this opportunity for the cambodians to demand accountability from their leaders was futile. this is because funcinpec (the french acronym for national united front for an independent, neutral, peaceful and cooperative cambodia), the party that was legitimately elected by the cambodian people to form a coalition government was overthrown by the cpp in 1997. however untac can take credit for a number of successes of the electoral component of the mission which made it a resounding technical success. they can be praised for ensuring key operational components of the process ran smoothly such as registering voters, secret ballots and protecting the polling sites. 13 further, untac managed to advertise the election beyond phnom penh and into the more isolated districts. 14 therefore they were able to directly communicate their message to the cambodian people without tainting their desired image of impartiality by using government resources. the element which enabled the success of this component of the pko was that they did not have to rely on the consent of the rival faction which is an important element of any un pko as will be discussed further herein. although a free and fair election was undoubtedly an important step in the democratising process of cambodia, the importance placed on this element of the mandate seemed far too parochial to engender political reconciliation. the need for untac to extend its tenure, which the 2h volume 20. 2004 chemins alternates cambodian populous desired in order to monitor the newly formed coalition government between cpp and funcinpec is even further highlighted by examining cambodia's lack of experience with this sort of participatory government. 15 elections, regardless of whether they are free and fair, would certainly not change the nature of cambodia's socio-political problems which are entrenched in centuries of intolerance of political opponents. the un's strategy on conducting elections and withdrawing thereafter seemed inappropriate for such a complex climate. it seems rather shortsighted of the un to assume that cpp/funonpec partnership would cooperatively merge their agendas and use the interest of the cambodian people as their compass. if untac had actually remained within the country after handing authority over to the cpp and funcinpec, the 1997 hun sen coup may not have occurred. therefore, if this meticulous management of the election had been combined with: an early deployment; the political will to use all available measures to enforce the mandate; better equipped civilian police and a un installed judicial system as well as an extended peacebuilding mission, it would have been more likely that untac would ensure lasting positive peace. mandate needs of the waringfactions it is worth considering the extent to which the parties' needs were actually met in the paris agreement which may explain why untac 's mandate was not respected. the satisfaction of parties' needs is essential in establishing a lasting conflict resolution. john burton, one of the pioneers of this theory, says: from the perception of conflict studies, the important observation is that the needs will be pursued by all means available. in ontological terms, the individual is conditioned by biology, or by a primordial influence, to pursue them. it follows that unless satisfied within the norms of society, they will lead to behaviour that is outside the legal norms of society. 16 volume 20, 2004 29 alternate routes perhaps an interests-based approach where the parties pursue innovative solutions that address the underlying issues of the conflict may be more helpful than the power-based approach employed in the accords. 17 the outcome of the power-based approach saw that the khmer rouge lost on most levels. this made life very difficult for untac as the kr refused to disarm in protest to cpp's military wing remaining active. 18 this attempted exclusion of the kr would have undoubtedly had something to do with its history of genocide under pol pot. however the tragic past must be put aside in order to create the possibility of political settlement. as untac could not coerce the kr to disarm, it had no choice but to continue with the election despite the absence of political neutrality and negative peace. in shifting conflict resolution approaches, the outcome of the agreement may have been to canton and disarm all factions including the cpp and install a un defence forces. this would have undoubtedly been a desired outcome for the kr and would have seen the un acting in a truly impartial manner in addressing the needs of all participants in the conflict. what did the cambodian 's actually want? the essence ofuntac 's mandate may have been very different had the un conducted a fact-finding mission prior to the paris accords. the framework of this mission would go beyond the strictures boutros boutros-ghali placed on his description in the agenda for peace to an examination of how the people of cambodia actually envisaged their government. the un may have, in fact, discovered an avid desire to restore a monarchy with prince sihanouk, who the people saw as the "father of all khmers" and the "god-king," 19 as the sovereign king, as the will of the populous. this hypothesis is justified in recognising that there has never been a compromise or reconciliation between parties in conflict in cambodia. 20 therefore, the whole concept of a democracy and political tolerance ignores the traditional rules of cambodian culture which is based on a client-patron relationship and favours a monarchical leadership. this challenges the pluralist democratic template the un applies to most failed states of the universally ideal political system. the idea of restoring a monarchy may not be a feasible outcome as the cambodian constitution, on which the paris accords were based, stipulates that the king shall reign but not rule. moreover, it is unlikely the cpp 30 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs would have ceded power to a king. 21 however, the recognition of the cambodians' trust in and loyalty to prince sihanouk, may have changed the element of its mandate in relation to the supreme national council (snc) to which the prince was inextricably linked. that is, the existing mandate avoided any obligation on untac's part to consult with the council regarding the electoral process. 22 granted the snc was a rather fractured and impotent body, however, the un could have acted as a mentor or appointed a representative from an ngo to assist in forming a cohesive unit. therefore, it seems essential that the un, when embarking on a pko, addresses the needs of the parties as well as the desires of the populous—after all, the charter does begin "we the peoples of the united nations...." refugee repatriation: who takes the credit? interestingly, the paradox of un mandates lies in the reality that the planners must assume that the parties will not be able to uphold their commitment in the field and thus engineer a mandate which contains goals that require as little involvement/consent of the waring factions as possible. 23 to their credit, the planners of untac's mandate were able to recognise this and attempted to conduct the pko accordingly. the un's relatively successful effort to introduce positive peace was evident with its repatriation program. the united nations high commission for refugees (unhcr) managed the repatriation component of the mission, which perhaps says more about its capabilities as a self-sufficient and highly effective un agency rather than its function as an arm of untac's operation. in other words, the unhcr would have carried out a successful assignment-provided untac's mandate allowed for it-regardless of the cohesive make-up of the pko. it resulted in more than 370,000 refugees being peacefully repatriated from camps in thailand. 24 it has been noted that the separate status of unhcr from untac may have caused the cambodians to view the refugee effort as more impartial than other untac activities. 25 nevertheless, the repatriation process was, to some degree, a collaborative effort between untac and the unhcr. this feat cannot be ignored as an important validation of untac's desired peace process. volume 20, 2004 31 alternate routes civilian police component—the mandate rendered them impotent it was extremely difficult for the civilian police component (civpol) to ensure a neutral political environment at the time of the election while working within the "existing administrative structure" as dictated by their mandate. untac simply could not rely on the support of the cpp's courts, prisons, and police to protect human rights and maintain political neutrality. 26 the need for an independent judicial framework was an essential factor to enable untac to fulfil the civil component of its mandate. civpol could also not rely on untac's military component for, as already established, they lacked enforcement capabilities. it seems that the only way to keep the peace and effectively prosecute human rights violators rested on this enforcement potential. of course, if untac's heightened power to enforce had, in fact, been one of the conditions of the paris agreement, the key parties may not have signed; although this seems unlikely considering the pressure that was placed upon them by powerful international actors. there is also the idea that even if untac were authorised to impose punitive measures against a dissident faction, there would be no side that was unequivocally right. we can see this mistake in the un's experiences in somalia and bosnia. 27 perhaps if the mandate were more flexible in that it was given enforcement potential after the elections were held to maintain cooperation of the coalition government, it may have in turn prevented the 1997 coup. however, there is the issue of infringing on the sovereignty of cambodia by changing the mandate mid-way would have inevitably perturbed some of the parties and further inflamed the situation. on the other hand, however, in an agenda for peace, boutros-ghali wrote: "the time of absolute sovereignty ...has passed; its theory was never matched by reality". 28 considering this statement of authority, it gives the possibility of a flexible mandate in this context more weight. resources civpol deprived ofneeded resources a vacuum of essential resources became apparent when examining civpol as well as the senior management personnel within untac. civpol's task of motivating the cpp's police into working towards the un's mission was largely unsuccessful as the police were mostly politi32 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs cally tied to hun sen's government. 29 ideas to overcome these sorts of issues surrounding upholding the law in pkos can be found in the brahimi report. it is recommended that there are on-call civilian police in sufficient numbers to prevent situations like in cambodia where the police were too few and insufficiently skilled to adequately perform their duty. 30 the idea of creating an on-call repertoire ofun personnel from a variety of backgrounds, almost like a "peacekeeping package" would be a valid solution in addressing the issue of the quantity and quality of personnel that untac and other un missions have had to face. however, the issue of resources is an inevitable obstruction which often hinders such much needed reforms. senior management leave much to be desired it has been argued that untac's staff were neither sufficiently trained nor experienced to fulfil the responsibilities in the mandate. 31 key decision makers who were skilled in specific areas were also lacking which is an enigma considering the highly specialised professionals who are associated with non-government organisations which the un could potentially seconde. the problem with un personnel, within civpol specifically, is not unlike the current problem the un operation is facing in iraq. in this case, the un was recently criticised for employing incompetent staff who where partially blamed for the breakdown in security which allowed the bombing of the un headquarters in bagdad. 32 further, the un's administrative culture does not seem to value the need for culturally sensitive personnel which would have arguably helped prevent untac's failure to establish a "neutral political environment" and perhaps resulted in them persuading the local police to assist them fulfil their mission. judicial system mark plunkett, untac's special prosecutor, asserted that untac, indeed all un post-conflict peacebuliding missions, require a 'justice package' (perhaps this could be part of the 'peacekeeping package'?) in order to maintain lasting peace with justice. it was extremely difficult for untac to uphold law and order, which is essential for a neutral environment and a truly free and fair election when the cambodian criminal law under the cpp was seriously deficient and there was an volume 20, 2004 33 alternate routes absence of functioning courts. notwithstanding these shortcomings, it is important to recognise that untac's mandate for rehabilitation was limited to short term assistance, leaving the rebuilding of cambodia to the next government. 33 it seems almost absurd to expect untac to impose punitive action on human rights perpetrators when the current cambodian judicial system was so inept. indeed it seemed unlikely that the new coalition government, over which the cpp enjoyed significant influence, would transform the justice system to one of international standards after untac's withdrawal. plunkett's justice package includes prosecutorial, police and judicial capacities among other useful assets. 34 the former australian minister for foreign affairs gareth evans stated: the building of a functioning criminal justice system is a particularly crucial priority if the gains of a peace keeping operation are to be consolidated and a relapse into conflict is avoided. basic as all these requirements may be, no viable government or social order can be built without them, and there will be situations where only the authority of the un is capable of delivering them. 35 in order to achieve public security during and after untac's tenure, the current eroded cambodian judicial system should not have been relied on. alas, in an international environment where the political will of the un member states largely determine the extent ofun involvement, such a vision would arguably not be realised in countries outside of europe where the powerful members have stakes invested. the un's negligence in addressing this aspect of the operation seriously impacted on civpol's ability to fulfil its duties. this failure, like most of untac's, can be attributed to the un's insufficient inexperience in peacebuilding missions and its lack of resources and political will. why are un resources always an issue? although it is easy to criticise the un for its poor planning, delayed deployment and inadequate civpol, we must consider the complex factors preventing it from achieving the ideal mission. due to the reality thai the need for pkos is increasing, the costs are now met by a standard 34 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs compulsory payment from member states under article 1 7 of the un charter. nevertheless, members often fail to pay in full or on time which increases the resources burden in operations. 36 as there is no un army or police force, the un is reliant on its member states to contribute forces to each operation. considering that during the early 1990s there were demands on the international community to provide assistance in conflict ridden countries such as somalia, angola and the former yugoslavia, 37 traditional contributors found their strategic interests and resources were being siphoned by such demands and, therefore, were less likely to prioritise untac's requests. in fact, the secretary-general at the time, boutros boutros-ghali defined this as a crisis of "overcredibilty", where the security council committed to increasingly multifaceted missions with little concern for budget constraints. 37 also, due to the fact that second generation peacekeeping is unique to each conflict, there is no formula the un employs, making "trial and error" a common strategy for pkos which often results in resources being wasted. to address the issue of financing pkos, incentive schemes such as interest rewards for early payments have been put forth; although it seems that this would only entice poorer countries. their failure to uphold their financial contribution is not the main problem here. therefore it seems wise to enforce punitive measures on those states that violate the legal obligation of article 17, which would have the greatest impact on permanent five members (p-5) of the security council who do not fulfil their obligation. this would mean the strict enforcement of article 1 9 which prevents members from voting in the general assembly should they fail to meet payment unless this failure is "beyond the control of the member." alternative suggestions have been made to address the ubiquitous problem of funding for operations such as a tax on international currency exchange38 or taxing arms exports. these may or may not work, but what is clear, however, is that other avenues of guaranteeing resources and financial contributions are essential to ensure more peace operations are conducted and those to which the un has already committed have the funds and materiel to engender a successful mission. volume 20, 2004 35 alternate routes conclusion the paris accords eventually rolled out into untac's mandate, stressing the lack of political will of the rival parties and un members and the scarcity of resources and lack of adequate planning, as contributing to this pko's failure to achieve lasting peace with justice. this discussion recognises that untac was one of the un's first multidimensional pkos and that the notion of peacebuilding was a relatively novel concept. as such, untac seemed incapable of looking beyond its successful electoral performance towards a genuine concern for maintaining positive peace after their withdrawal. indeed, they failed to enforce the cease-fire and, henceforth, conduct a free and fair election. it seems that this failure was not necessarily due to the absence of military leverage in the mandate but rather the un's lack of political will, more specifically that of the p-5, to apply the peace accords and enforce the mandate. the un's failure to sufficiently analyse the extent to which a pluralist democratic government was foreign to the cambodians removed the necessity to conduct a long-term peacebuliding mission which may have ensured the lasting positive peace the cambodians were expecting. untac did manage, however, to build positive peace which did not rely on the consent of the rival factions in repatriating a significant number of refugees from thailand. this was an important validation of untac's desired peace process. the mission saw severe shortcomings within civpol, the absence of highly skilled personnel and an inadequate judicial system which resulted in a breakdown of law and order. this prompted the suggestion of establishing an on-call 'peacekeeping package' which would have helped ensure lasting democracy and the respect of human rights during and perhaps after the mission withdrew. this reform would be resourced by member states' financial contributions. they would be responding to new incentives and punitive measures introduced to guarantee their compliance. such major un reforms would curb the current interest-based contributions of member states towards a more equal distribution of assistance and resources. this is a utopian vision unless the p-5 recognises the importance of all stages of peace operations, that is, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuliding and the need to devote the same attention to each segment, regardless of the location of the conflict, in order to achieve peace with justice. 36 volume 20. 2004 chemins alternatifs notes 1. doyle, m.w. un peacekeeping in cambodia: untac's civil mandate (usa: lynne rienner publishers, 1995) pp. 34. 2. doyle, pp. 68. 3. doyle, pp. 31. 4. ryan, s. united nations peacekeeping: a matter of principles in woodhouse, t. & ramsbottam, o. (eds). peacekeeping and conflict resolution (london/portland, oregon: frank cass) pp. 40. 5. doyle, pp. 67. this quote was made in 1993 by gerard porcell, chief of untac's civil administration component. doyle, pp. 67. 6. doyle, pp. 85. 7. doyle, pp. 59. 8. united nations (2000) "executive summary" in report of the panel on united nations peace operation (brahimi report), a/55/305, new york: united nations, 21 august 2000. pp xi. 9. doyle, pp. 52 & 83. 10. brown, f. cambodia 's rocky venture in democracy in kumar, k (ed) post elections, democratization and international assistance (london: lynne rienner publishers, 1998) pp. 94. 1 1. doyle, m. authority and elections in johnstone, i, doyle, m, orr, r (eds) keeping the peace (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1997) pp. 152 12. doyle, pp 55-56. 13. ibid. 14. smith, h (ed) international peacekeeping: building on the cambodian experience (canberra: australian defence studies centre, 1994) pp 165 15. burton, j. human needs theory in conflict: resolution and provention. pp 37. 15. burton, j. conflict: resolution and prevention: resolution and prevention. new york: st martinis press, 1990. pp 37. 16. sanson, a & bremerton, d. "conflict resolution: theoretical and practical issues" in christies, d.j., wagner, r. v. & winter, d.d. peace, conflict, and violence: peace psychology for the 21st century. (upper saddler river, nj: prentice hall, 2001) pp 196. 17. smith, pp. 164. 18. leifer, m. & berdal, m. cambodia in mayall, j (ed) the new interventionism: 1991-1994 (.cambridge: cambridge university press, 1996) pp. 37. 19. brown, pp. 98. 20. suntharaligam, n. cambodian settlement agreement in doyle, johnson & orr. pp. 103. 21. suntharaligam. pp 92. volume 20, 2004 37 alternate routes 22. doyle, m, orr, r strategies for peace: conclusions and lessons in doyle, johnson & orr. chapter in 15 in keeping the peace effectively presents this argument. 23. doyle, pp. 33. 24. heininger, j. peacekeeping in transition: the united nations in cambodia (new york: 20th century fund press, 1994) pp 39. 25. doyle, pp 49. 26. mellor, w.j.a. command and control ofun operations in smith. pp 162. 27. kams, m.p. & mingst, k.a. peacekeeping and the changing roles of the united nations: four dilemmas in thakur, r. & schnabel, a. united nations peacekeeping operation: ad hoc missions, permanent engagement (tokyo: united nations university press) pp. 223. 28. brown, pp. 104. 29. brahimi report pp. xii. 30. sanderson, j.m. (lieutenant) untac: successes and failures in smith. pp. 19. 31. guardian weekly security lapses blamed for un bomb october 23 2003 : http://www.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,2763, 1 069009,00.html. 32. doyle, pp. 49-50. 33. plunkett, m. establishment of the rule oflaw in smith. pp 71-78. 34. plunkett, m. establishment of (he rule oflaw in smith. pp 75. 35. boreham, k. financing peacekeeping operations in smith. pp. 177. 36. sanderson, j. the cambodian experience: a success story still? in thakur, r. & schnabel, a. united nations peacekeeping operations: ad hoc missions, permanent engagement (tokyo: united nations university press) pp. 160. 37. doyle. pp 60-61. 38. zittel, b.e. the brahimi report at a glance in journal of international affairs, 55:2, spring 2002. pp. 425. references cited burton, j (1990). conflict: resolution and prevention: resolution and prevention. new york: st. martin's press. christies, d.j., wagner, r. v. & winter, d.d. (2001) peace, conflict, and violence: peace psychology for the 21st century. nj: prentice hall. doyle, m.w (1995). un peacekeeping in cambodia: untac's civil mandate. bouldcr:lynnc rienner publishers. 38 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs campbell, d. (2003, october 23). security lapses blamed for un bomb the guardian unlimited. date retrieved: 2003, october 23. http://www.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,2763, 1069009.00.html. heininger, j. (1994). peacekeeping in transition: the united nations in cambodia. newyork: 20th century fund press. johnstone, i., doyle, m. & orr, r (eds.) (1997). keeping the peace. cambridge: cambridge university press. kumar, k. (ed.) (1998). post elections, democratization and international assistance. london: lynne rienner publishers. leifer, m. & berdal, m. cambodia (n.d.) in mayall, j (ed.). (1996) the new interventionism: 1991-1994 (pp. 36). cambridge: cambridge university press. smith, h. (ed.) (1994). international peacekeeping: building on the cambodian experience. canberra: australian defense studies centre. thakur, r. & schnabel, a. united nations peacekeeping operation: ad hoc missions, permanent engagement (n.d.). tokyo: united nations university press. united nations executive summary in report of the panel on united nations peace operation (brahimi report). (2000, august 21). a/55/305, new york: united nations. woodhouse, t. & ramsbottam, o. (eds.). (2000). peacekeeping and conflict resolution london; portland, oregon: frank cass. zittel, b.e. the brahimi report at a glance (2002). journal of international affairs, 55:2, spring 2002. 425 volume 20, 2004 39 capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 33 capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’: theoretical interventions in ecological political economy ryan katz-rosene1 abstract: this paper approaches the intertwining crises of capitalism and climate change from an ecological political economy (epe) perspective in order to highlight the fundamentally unsustainable character of canada’s contemporary relations of mobility and the possibilities for socio-ecological change. an important component of the nation’s broader social relations, the ‘relations of mobility’ refer to the material and subjective systems governing how canadian transport infrastructure is produced and how and why people and things move from one place to another. unfortunately, the capitalist state has played a pivotal role in structuring these relations and as such it has little interest in significantly changing them. this highlights the need for a genuinely democratic, anti-capitalist politics aimed at obtaining power at the level of the ‘state’ – municipally, provincially, and federally – in order to change the relations of mobility for the better. this paper thus has three objectives falling under the rubric of epe: first, it demonstrates how canada’s contemporary relations of mobility negatively impact the natural environment. second, it historicizes the unsustainable origins of such relations within canada’s political economic structure, showing how the neoliberal capitalist state in particular is ‘uninterested’, ‘unwilling’ or ‘incapable’ of altering them. finally, it makes a normative argument for the mobilization of a democratic, anti-capitalist politics as a means of confronting the unsustainable character of canada’s present relations of mobility and social relations more broadly. 1 ryan katz-rosene is a phd candidate in the department of geography and environmental studies with a specialization in political economy at carleton university, as well as a board member of the environmental studies association of canada. his current research focuses on the ecological political economy of high-speed rail development in canada. the author would like to thank reviewers for their comments and suggestions. in addition, thanks are due to the social sciences and humanities research council of canada for the financial support which made this research possible. 34 | climate change and its discontents introduction given the concurrent and interrelated crises of global capitalism and climate change, canada’s contemporary ‘relations of mobility’ – a component of the nation’s broader social relations – are unequivocally unsustainable. this is to say that the material and subjective systems governing how canadian transport infrastructure is produced and how and why people and things move from one place to another will not be able to continue in their present form for much longer. change is required to avoid serious social and ecological upheaval. the instability of both domestic and global energy markets in recent years has manifested in rising costs for basic human needs like food, home heating, and transportation. the problems associated with anthropogenic climate change are all the more challenging for communities already threatened by rising living costs, as they become additionally vulnerable to the wrath of a planet attempting to recalibrate the biogeochemical cycles being altered by human activities. add to this the growing disparity in wealth and power and the culture of austerity brought about from years of neoliberal capitalism, and the perversity of our present reality becomes frighteningly clear: this situation cannot go on. unfortunately, the capitalist state has played a pivotal role in structuring these relations, and has little interest in significantly changing them. this highlights the need for a genuinely democratic, anti-capitalist politics aimed at obtaining power at the level of state governance – in municipalities, provincial governments and federally – in order to change the relations of mobility for the better. with this in mind, this paper makes three interventions to the study of ecological political economy (epe): first, it demonstrates how canada’s contemporary relations of mobility, as embodied within a complex web of social and politico-economic practices relating to transportation and conditioned by global capitalist productive processes, negatively impact the natural environment. second, it attempts to situate the unsustainable origins of such relations within canada’s political economic structure by historicizing them alongside the development of both the keynesian and subsequent neoliberal periods, showing how both of these iterations of capitalism brought about socio-ecological degradation. the paper goes on to examine how present neoliberal forms of the state in particular tend to be either uninterested, unwilling or incapable of altering the relations of mobility for the sake of ameliorating society-nature interactions. finally, i draw some normative conclusions for epe about the need to mobilize a democratic anti-capitalist politics as a means to concapitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 35 front the unsustainable nature of canada’s present relations of mobility (and social relations more broadly). arguably, a nuanced understanding of the socio-ecological implications of a market-based transport sector could play an important role in generating new political expressions in canada, advocating a shift toward critical epe ideals – such as the decommodification of transport services, or the re-empowerment of public ownership within the transport and related sectors – as a means of addressing the twin crises of capitalism and climate change. canada’s relations of mobility and the environment the canadian transportation sector has an enormous environmental impact, which, by extension, affects human wellbeing. in this sense, such impacts are ‘socio-ecological’ (castree, 2001). in ‘downstream’ service provision alone, the transportation of freight and passengers is responsible for 27 percent of canada’s emissions of greenhouse gases (ghgs). that percentage is in fact immeasurably larger when the ‘upstream’ production supply chain of transport vehicles and related ‘accessories’ (such as fuel and infrastructure) are also included. as environment canada (2010) has noted, one of the main reasons why canada’s ghg emissions grew by 24 percent between 1990 and 2008 – when, according to original kyoto protocol commitments made by the federal state they should have decreased by 5 percent – is that there has been a large increase in the number of motor vehicles, in particular sport utility vehicles and heavy transport trucks. it is no wonder then that the sector, a voracious consumer of fossil fuels, is responsible for nearly a third of the country’s energy consumption. unfortunately, despite the existence of low carbon transport technologies more than 99 percent of the energy used in canadian transport is derived from oil, a non-renewable resource whose production and use places a severe toll on the environment and the earth’s climate (national energy board, 2009). in addition to being a large contributor to climate change and the decline of non-renewable energy resources, the transportation of goods and people is also one of the largest sources of air pollution in canada, leading to related problems such as acid rain, smog, and respiratory health problems (environment canada, 2004). the heavy reliance on motor vehicles in canada’s urban areas is also largely responsible for traffic congestion and the high costs of building and maintaining roads (turcotte, 2008). canada now holds the unenviable distinction of playing host to north america’s busiest highway – the part of highway 401 which stretches across the greater toronto area – traversed by over half a million vehicles every day (thün 36 | climate change and its discontents and velikov, 2008). these are just some of the socio-ecological impacts of transportation that have been documented by governmental agencies and transport analysts, mostly relating to the overuse of the dominant petroleum based modes – automobiles and airplanes. less understood is the way that high rates of mobility and related production processes (including the construction of highways and road infrastructure) exacerbate the contamination and depletion of fresh water, the destruction of wildlife habitat and migration routes, the erosion and degradation of arable land, and so on. these often-overlooked impacts are important, as cumulatively such problems can undermine the ecological foundation of social life. in light of the dire state of 21st century society-nature relations and of the negative contribution of canada’s existing transportation practices, a rather obvious course of action is required: canada must reduce its overall use of private automobiles, airplanes, and heavy-duty transport trucks (the three biggest culprits in terms of per capita use of petroleum), while building capacity for urban mass transit, more efficient inter-city passenger rail, and electric rail for freight shipping. less obvious is how to make this happen in a just, equitable and efficient manner. the task at hand is further complicated by the broader context of global capitalism and economic interdependency in which canada’s energy and transport sectors are situated. the economic and legal ties canada shares with its trading partners places external limitations upon the likelihood and possibilities of political economic change. nevertheless, a good place to start domestically is to use the powers of the state to support more ecologically friendly transport modes and discourage the use of less ecologically sensitive modes. investing in public transit and more efficient transport technologies is essential in order to provide canadians with affordable, energy efficient transport alternatives, but it alone is not enough. the harsh reality is that it is the very social relations which define mobility practices that are unsustainable (not to mention highly unequal2) in the first place. as such, the introduction of new energy-efficient transport vehicles on their own will fail to address these socio-ecological problems unless paired with hard cap restrictions on unsustainable transport practices or major changes to our collective social behaviour (which suggests changes to our political economic structure). this is why the state and various scales of 2 put simply, the rich can and do travel much more than the poor. affluent families in canada have much higher access to the means of mobility, while lower income families pay a higher proportion of household revenue on transportation. in effect, the market imposes a de facto restriction of access to mobility upon lower income families and individuals. statistically, the prototypical high-use car driver in canada is male, between the ages of 45 and 54, and lives in a low-density suburban neighbourhood. there is a clear relationship between the indicators of gender, race and class, and access to mobility (turcotte, 2008). capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 37 government will inevitably need to get involved and mobilize the range of tools at their disposal. the difficulty lies in transforming awareness of this problem into action towards social change, and more importantly, ensuring that such action occurs in a just, democratic manner while guaranteeing a decent quality of life for all canadians. neoliberalism, environmental common sense and the transport sector to trace the origins of unsustainability within canada’s relations of mobility one must delve into the material and subjective structures of the nation’s political economy. the neoliberal turn in canada and corresponding understandings of society-nature relations have reshaped the country’s transport sector and reconstituted the scope of what is perceived of as ‘feasible’ governmental recourse to reform mobility relations or reduce fossil fuel consumption. in part this is due to the emergence in recent decades of a neoliberal variant of what can be called ‘environmental common sense’. neoliberal beliefs on the merits of private property rights, market competition and free trade have played a crucial role in shaping how canadian policy-makers confront socio-ecological problems. as mccarthy and prudham (2004, p. 275) have written, “neoliberalism and modern environmentalism have together emerged as the most serious political and ideological foundations of post-fordist social regulation.” while this relationship has given rise to an extensive literature on ‘neoliberal nature’ – that is, the way nature has fared under the intensification of market relations (see bakker, 2009; or heynen, mccarthy, prudham, and robbins, 2007)”number-of-pages”:”298”,”source”:”catalogue.library.carleton. ca library catalog”,”event-place”:”london ; new york”,”isbn”:”9780 415771481”,”call-number”:”hc21 .n43 2007”,”shorttitle”:”neoliberal environments”,”editor”:[{“family”:”heynen”,”given”:”nik”},{“family ”:”mccarthy”,”given”:”james”},{“family”:”prudham”,”given”:”scott ”},{“family”:”robbins”,”given”:”paul”}],”issued”:{“date-parts”:[[“200 7”]]}},”prefix”:”or”}],”schema”:”https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json”} – very little attention has actually been paid to the ways that popular environmentalist beliefs amongst the polity and within civil society are pervaded by neoliberal logic as well, and the processes involved in this formation. the existence in canada of what bakker (2009) calls ‘green neoliberalism’ or what albo (2007) calls ‘market ecology’ has thus brought ideological limitations to the types of policies, programs and actions that can ‘fea38 | climate change and its discontents sibly’ be taken by neoliberal authorities at various scales of government to confront socio-ecological problems. due to prevailing neoliberal common sense ‘wisdom(s)’, the ‘selfregulating market’ is not only seen as a democratic arbiter of prices, it is also interpreted as a social tool to address environmental problems such as resource scarcity and pollution. a poignant example is the belief that the best way to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide is to create a market for the gas, which would theoretically enable private firms to profit from improving their greenhouse gas intensity. within neoliberal conceptions of environmental common sense, the idea of the state imposing fixed limitations on resource use or pollution by firmly restricting usage or by setting pre-determined prices in order to influence citizen or corporate behaviour is often considered anathema to the current suite of policies. there are exceptions to this rule, but as demonstrated below this phenomenon is particularly pervasive within the canadian transportation sector. neoliberal common sense was subsumed into canadian transport policy throughout the late 1980s and 1990s. strongly held beliefs in the benefits of privatizing formerly state-owned transport corporations and ‘opening’ the sector to the market are showcased in a 1995 compilation of essays on canadian surface transportation published by the fraser institute. within, the editor (palda, 1995, p. xi) writes the following: “transportation policy is a unique topic among academics. unlike experts who debate welfare, education, and the debt, transport researchers seem to have a united outlook: the best prescription for the transport industry is fewer regulations, lower subsidies, and less government ownership.” certainly not all transport researchers are as unified as palda suggests, but the majority of commentators, influenced by the new neoliberal common sense, have indeed advocated a market path. most importantly, those in political power have tended to share this viewpoint. as the federal government expressed in a policy paper regarding sustainable transportation, “the government of canada believes that the transportation system of tomorrow should remain largely marketdriven” (transport canada, 2003, p. 6). for decision-makers, this means ensuring a largely ‘deregulated’ and privatized transport sector, wherein state authorities use a minimal amount of influence to guarantee competition between privately owned firms vying for clients and a share of the mobility market. it means catering to those modes that are furthest capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 39 from state control (i.e. automobiles, airplanes, freight trucking), where questions of access, distribution and usage are most often determined by the wealth of producers and consumers, supply and demand. further, neoliberal common sense compels authorities at various scales of government to pursue the sale of assets from the public sector to the private sector, supposedly as a means of fostering growth and reducing state spending, thereby tackling deficits and the debt (cameron, 1997). this contradictory common sense wisdom has found expression throughout the neoliberal world, not just canada. as docherty, shaw and gather (2004, p. 258) have plainly put it: “[during the 1980s and 90s] transport was profoundly affected by the desire to reduce state involvement in the planning and delivery of public services. state provision of transport services was reduced in favour of the market, competition restrictions were reduced or removed altogether, and the procurement and financing of infrastructure became more dependent on the private sector as governments sought to reduce their spending and debt liabilities.” these authors, however, argue that the transport sector has seen some level of retrenchment in recent years. they point to scholars charlton and gibb as perhaps the first to note the mediated nature of transport neoliberalization. as the latter have written, “[despite the] undeniable prominence of liberalised transport systems, there is an apparent contradiction between the broad policy support for deregulation and privatization and the continued, and even enhanced, regulatory environment affecting many transport systems” (charlton and gibb, 1998). nevertheless, the contradictory relationship between the professed theory of neoliberalism and the material actions of the state in practice (regulation, policy, security, etc.) does not necessarily suggest any scaling back of neoliberalism. as neo-polanyist hannes lacher has pointed out, the pursuit of an orthodox form of market liberalism is practically impossible without creating widespread social and environmental havoc (lacher, 2011), and with this in mind, the neoliberal state must engage in some basic forms of regulation and policy setting in order to set out a basic framework for capital accumulation and to secure private property rights. it is thus inevitable that transport neoliberalization would be accompanied by new regulatory frameworks that guarantee the sector’s role in growing domestic product. 40 | climate change and its discontents regulation as a framework for capital accumulation to further flush out these different types of regulation, let us consider the example of the canadian freight trucking industry. it would be inaccurate to describe this industry as ‘deregulated’. the opposite is true – in literal terms it is highly regulated: the provinces regulate truck weights, dimensions, and even speeds indirectly through the control of highways and roads; the federal government regulates safety practices of the trucking industry through the motor vehicle safety act and closely oversees crossborder flows of freight. nevertheless, this “patchwork quilt of regulations across the country”, as the canadian trucking alliance calls it (canada transportation act review panel, 2001), is better interpreted as a set of ‘rules’ to outline a framework of optimal efficiency, competition and profitability. despite this ‘regulatory framework’, the trucking industry does exist in a highly neoliberalized setting: all trucking firms are private and compete for a share of the market with other private firms; these private firms are allowed to set their own rates and prices without government interference; foreign capital is welcome to invest in the industry; further, the industry plays an essential role in reinforcing existing systems of free trade with the rest of north america. from a neoliberal standpoint, the provincial and federal governments have no interest in imposing ‘hard cap’ regulations that genuinely intervene in the freight trucking market, nor are they willing to restrict the role of the sector in facilitating capital accumulation – as doing so would severely hamper a key component of canada’s economic growth engine. as one government report acknowledges, the commercial trucking industry produces revenues in the area of $20 billion annually – 40 percent of the transportation component of canada’s gdp (ibid.). it is in this light that ‘soft’ regulations – such as those described above – are actually required in a neoliberal political economy in order to set up a framework for capital accumulation. in fact, the canadian trucking alliance has lobbied for more comprehensive regulations, precisely because it believes the present lack of a definitive framework of rules “hampers trucking industry productivity, competitiveness and profitability, and impedes optimization of the industry’s safety and environmental performance.” (ibid.). as the example shows, a neoliberal environmental common sense has delimited the scope of possible interventions that can be taken by state institutions: ‘soft’ regulations are allowable, if not necessary, while radical forms of state intervention (such as the nationalization of the entire industry or specific firms, capping firms’ usage of fossil fuels, setting shipping prices, etc.), are simply not considered ‘feasible’. and yet, thinking capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 41 socio-ecologically, the latter interventions are the types of regulations needed to confront the damaging contribution of the trucking industry to fossil fuel use and anthropogenic climate change. the janus-faced character of regulation in the canadian transport industry (and the problematic nature of these terms in general) has been identified by keil and young (2008, p.743), who note with irony how “since the 1980s the federal government, which has constitutional authority over transportation, has moved generally towards deregulation while remaining strategically interventionist.” on the one hand, the state has moved towards privatizing former crown corporations involved in transportation and transferring ownership of the major airports in the country to private (albeit non-profit) agencies, while on the other hand the state has continued to play a regulatory role in terms of securitizing (in the case of airports) and expanding (in the case of highways) transport infrastructure. again, these so-called ‘market interventions’ have actually helped to set up a framework for accumulation, further reified the federal state’s primary interest in economic growth, and guaranteed its role as an enabler of entrepreneurial activity. de facto privatization and capital accumulation the neoliberalization of canada’s transport sector is perhaps most noticeable in successive waves of privatization. privatization has not only transformed the role of the state from ‘provider’ (of goods and services) to ‘enabler’ (of competition, consumerism, productivity, efficiency, etc.), it has also worked at limiting the capacity of the federal state to use publicly owned assets as policy tools. neoliberal common sense has not only advocated the privatization of transport service providers such as canadian national railways and air canada; it has also aimed at privatizing former public manufacturers such as ontario bus industries and canadair, as well as former public enterprises involved in the provision of transport accessories and infrastructure (such as petro canada, a producer of the fuels required by transport vehicles – see table 1). interestingly, although many privatizations occurred during the neoliberal era, there were in fact two prior historical moments during the keynesian period that helped pave the way for privatization within and across various inter-regional transport modes. the first occurred in 1957, when a newly formed conservative government “expressed itself in favour of competition, and allowed canadian pacific airlines to break the transcontinental monopoly” hitherto held by the crown-owned trans-canada 42 | climate change and its discontents airlines (ashley and smails, 1965, p. 259). the second moment is marked by a similar phenomenon with respect to freight, which came about through the 1967 national transportation act (the first act of this kind in canada). table 1: transport-related crown corporations: a history of privatization and commercialization name of corporation brief history of ownership status in 2013 transport service provision trans-canada air lines/ air canada founded in 1937, and given a monopoly over trans-continental services; privatized in 1988. private corporation canadian national railways incorporated through a parliamentary act in 1919, taking over an agglomeration of formerly public and private railways. privatized in 1995. private corporation via rail officially incorporated as a crown corporation in 1978 after cn began to rid itself of passenger rail. now operates like a commercial enterprise. federal crown corporation (commercialized) canadian national (west indies) steamships company a passenger steamship company founded in 1928, owned by the canadian national railway company, and dissolved in 1958. obsolete northern transportation company became crown company in 1944 through expropriation. purchased in 1985 by the inuvialuit and nunasi corporations. private aboriginal owned company metrolinx/go transit go transit started in 1967 as regional inter-city service. merged with metrolinx in 2009. board is directed by both public and private sector. provincial crown corporation (commercialized) transport vehicle and craft production canadair founded in 1944 to manufacture aircraft; nationalized in 1976; privatized in 1986. obsolete canadian government maritime marine limited incorporated in 1918 to build and operate merchant marine ships. purchased in 1936 by three private british companies. obsolete ontario bus industries/ orion international formed by the ontario government in 1975; privatized in 1993. private corporation transport accessory provision and management petro-canada founded as crown corporation in 1975; privatized in 1991. bought by suncor in 2009. private corporation st. lawrence seaway authority / st. lawrence seaway mgnt corporation established as crown corporation in 1954 to plan, construct, and operate seaway. re-established as a non-profit in 1998. crown corporation capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 43 as gratwick (2001, p. 3) notes, the act “introduced the idea of competition between the modes as the cornerstone of the new (or more correctly, the first) clearly enunciated transport policy, together with a multimodal regulatory commission that would apply the new policy consistently across the whole transport spectrum.” these two moments in federal transportation policy are pivotal in the way they secured the rights of private enterprises to compete with nationally owned corporations. internationally, as a result of the neoliberal turn in the 1980s in great britain and the u.s. at the hands of thatcher and reagan, new global norms were developed in which it was believed that entire sectors of industrialized economies – in particular the transportation and energy sectors – would be best off in the hands of private enterprises (harvey, 2005). by the time brian mulroney’s progressive conservatives came to power in canada in 1984, the groundwork had already been laid for the wholesale neoliberalization of the transport (and related) sectors. there are two main ways in which forcing canadian crown corporations into competition with the private sector during the keynesian era sowed the seeds of neoliberalization and limited the capacity of the state. first, although the ownership of some transport firms remained in the hands of the state, those firms were now operating within an open market; they had to compete with private firms for customers; they had to focus their efforts on ensuring profitability (as opposed to serving the public); and they had to match their private competitors in ‘contributing’ to growth in domestic product. as such, they could no longer be used as policy tools to shape citizen behaviour (rather, they in turn were influenced by new market relations where supply and demand reigned supreme). second, once a crown corporation lost its monopoly over a subsector, it was only a matter of time before private lobbying emerged calling for the sale of said crown assets, now easily justified on the premise that public subsidies were being ‘unfairly’ allocated to some firms while their competitors were left without public funding. at this time a rhetoric of government’s role in ‘maintaining a level playing field’ for competing firms became commonplace.3 in some cases, privatization took place in spirit if not in law – a phenomenon referred to as ‘commercialization’ or ‘privatization by stealth’ (whiteside, 2012). this outcome (in which a public enterprise 3 for example, a 1998 parliamentary review on passenger rail services in canada strongly recommends “that the government ensure that, with regard to competition in the passenger rail sector, no undue hardship be placed on the private passenger rail operator by a passenger rail subsidy, thus ensuring a level playing field” (house of commons standing committee on transport, 1998). 44 | climate change and its discontents is forced to behave like a private corporation due to the neoliberalization of the sector at large) is exemplified today by via rail – canada’s last remaining crown corporation involved in national-level passenger transportation. as the company notes on its website, over the last two decades via has “focused on reducing overhead, administrative and operating costs, while improving the quality of service to attract more customers and increase revenues” (via rail, 2011). this is a mandate mired in neoliberal rationality that prioritizes profit and competitiveness over serving the public interest. via’s managers consider those who ride the train as ‘customers’, not the citizen ‘owners’ that a truly democratic conception of the public sector would imply. via was founded in 1977 as a concession to canadian national and canadian pacific, as the latter corporations had no interest in owning passenger rail services facing decreasing profitability in the face of growing automobile and air travel. to this day via remains a fledgling, undercapitalized crown corporation forced to rent track time from the (now private) rail freight companies. without any considerable government support, it must compete in the free market against other modes of intercity passenger transport which (thanks to the present artificially low price of fossil fuels) are cheaper, faster, and more convenient. important to note here is the way that the neoliberalization of the inter-city passenger transport sector has reconstituted the way the canadian state views this particular crown corporation. despite having a relative modal monopoly in passenger rail, the canadian government shows no interest in using via as a tool to get passengers out of automobiles and airplanes, even though via has itself identified a role it could play in transporting passengers more efficiently (via rail, 2007). following a neoliberalized environmental common sense, the federal government believes that via’s role as an ecologically-friendly mode should depend on its corporate ability to compete with the other modes, that its role as a provider of more energy efficient inter-city travel should be decided by questions of competitive pricing and consumer choice. even though the inter-city passenger transport industry is mediated by ‘soft’ regulations as well as some remaining subsidies and even in a limited sense ownership, the sector nevertheless exists in a neoliberalized setting where the primary motivation is to contribute to growth in domestic product through the generation of profit. again, from a socioecological viewpoint, this is bad news as this fuel-efficient passenger mode is underutilized while more profitable (and polluting) modes continue to see growth. capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 45 a similar situation (in which the control of publicly owned transport enterprises is constrained by the neoliberal setting in which said enterprises are situated) can be witnessed at the municipal scale. most canadian cities still own systems of public transit. however, under the existing relations of mobility, public transit must compete against privately owned automobiles. neoliberal common sense often leads citizens, urban planners, city councilors, regional newspapers, business improvement associations, etc., to protect the rights of private, individual commuters in automobiles from ‘unnecessary infringements’ upon their mobility. policies aiming to make public transit and alternative transportation more attractive to commuters which might have the consequent effect of making automobile transportation more costly or inconvenient (or which require an increase in the rate of municipal taxes) are met with a tirade of criticisms about governmental infringements on consumer freedoms. in ottawa, for example, the city’s recent proposal to build a dedicated bike lane on one cross-town street prompted an influx of criticisms regarding the supposed negative effect the bike lane would have on available parking spaces, and thus the profitability of local businesses which rely on automobile patrons (cbc news, 2011a). in another example, ottawa’s public transit service recently announced a major overhaul of its services, not for the purpose of increasing service hours (in fact, it significantly reduced them), but rather because it needed to ‘optimize costly inefficiencies’ by cutting $22 million from its annual budget (in order for the city to avoid imposing a 5 percent municipal tax hike). neoliberal common sense made the former option an obvious choice for local officials (cbc news, 2011b). as the examples indicate, despite public ownership of the transit system, municipal governments typically hesitate to enact policies which might inconvenience automobile commuters or result in an increase of public spending, or require an increase in the municipal tax rate; such ‘hard cap’ regulations would supposedly hamper the localized processes of capital accumulation. this puzzle revolving around the centrality of automobility in canada’s contemporary relations of mobility leaves those concerned about the socio-ecological impacts of urban transportation in a tough situation: if restricting unsustainable forms of mobility is not ‘feasible’ under neoliberalism, how will such impacts ever be tackled given the present political economic setting? 46 | climate change and its discontents on environmental political economy in these final pages i draw some conclusions about the need to transcend existing mobility relations by mobilizing an anti-capitalist politics at the level of the state. all three scales of political governance in the canadian federal system – municipalities, provinces, and the federal government – play a role in structuring transport regulations and as such play a role in (re)producing canadian mobility relations. such relations have undergone significant change during the neoliberal period; such state entities no longer have the willingness, interest or capacity to genuinely alter the relations of mobility for the sake of the public good. this is not to suggest that the state has weakened its grasp on power, but rather that the powers of the state have been reconstituted; state intervention has largely been limited at an ideological level while its ultimate legal claim and sovereignty remains largely intact (see held, 1999 for a discussion on state transformation). from the above analysis it would seem that neoliberal states are largely incapable of genuinely altering existing relations of mobility. i briefly summarize three ways in which this is the case. primary interest in capital accumulation a comparison of keynesian and neoliberal political economies highlights the extent to which the capitalist state, in its present form, tends to prioritize economic growth above all else. interestingly, the histories of capitalism, fossil fuel consumption, and economic growth are closely intertwined (huber, 2008; mckibben, 2007). the combustion of fossil fuels has provided the foundation for high rates of production and consumption, leading to a cycle of capital accumulation which in turn has had drastic socio-ecological consequences. it was, however, during the keynesian era that these relations began to intensify to such a degree that the ways in which people transported themselves and their goods became fundamentally unsustainable. in the post-war years, a ‘treadmill of production’ emerged in which the imperative for growth fed an ongoing process requiring an ever-increasing supply of ‘goods’, which in turn required more inputs of raw materials, chemicals and energy resources (gould, pellow, and schnaiberg, 2008). this further intensified the relations of mobility, fueled by a seemingly endless supply of cheap crude oil. in short, this political economic system saw incredible growth in the socio-ecological impacts of transportation, perhaps most notably during the ‘great acceleration’ of anthropogenic climate change which occurred in the post-war fordist decades (steffen, crutzen, and mcneill, 2007). capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 47 despite this, it is worth considering the extent to which the keynesian state was more willing than the subsequent neoliberal state to pursue broad societal goals that mediated the impacts of growth. arguably, this stemmed from the way in which the keynesian state had a more reflexive ontology of the market. to be sure, the keynesian political economy was firmly capitalist – and yet, the existence of welfare-statist common sense at the time allowed for some venues of restrictive intervention. for example, in canada this was a time of increased centralization and planning, expansion of the public service and spending, widespread government intervention in market processes (including even determining ‘made in canada’ prices for the oil sector and rail freight shipping), as well as the nationalization of enterprises into crown corporations. while this political economic model undoubtedly contributed to socio-ecological problems, it nevertheless presented some limited opportunities for state agencies to prioritize collective goals over economic growth. unfortunately, reducing the use of fossil fuels and restricting mobility were not political priorities at the time; in fact, these were both seen as positive developments contributing to a higher quality of life. arguably, one main contributing factor to a higher willingness to prioritize collective goals over capital accumulation during this period was the existence of a different political economic ideology, where market capitalism was ontologically understood as a force that could bring about a better quality of life, but which nevertheless had to be ‘controlled’ so as to prevent its worst and most insidious effects. in the neoliberal era that cautionary view of relentless growth has dissipated. today the leading ideology always prioritizes capital accumulation over collective goals, because capital accumulation has itself become the means to the end. neoliberal states may have a willingness to reduce the socio-ecological impacts of transportation, but this is continually trumped by an unwillingness to intervene in the processes of economic growth. thus, there is something to be gained from trying to disarticulate the progressive elements of the keynesian political economy (the state’s increased capacities to pursue public policy and control markets), from the negative reactionary elements inherent to that system (the socio-ecological damage wrought by the capitalist mode of production). the myth of non-intervention and deregulation as the examples explored above suggest, there is an important distinction between two types of state ‘intervention’ in market processes. the ‘soft’ forms of regulation described above work at liberating the 48 | climate change and its discontents processes of capital accumulation by setting the ‘rules of the game’; they are not ‘hard cap’ regulatory interventions that limit capitalist relations of production. the notion that the capitalist state is ‘non-interventionist’, or that it has an interest in ‘deregulating’ sectors is a myth (a concept miliband identified long ago, see miliband, 1969) – but it is important to recognize the form of intervention and regulations that are being employed. the neoliberal turn in canada has worked at limiting the interest of federal, provincial and municipal governments to implement ‘hard cap’ regulations in the transportation sector (policies that restrict the most wasteful forms of mobility). put differently, the historical experiences of neoliberalization in canada (across various jurisdictional scales) have tended to diminish the willingness of various levels of government to use transportation policy and regulation as tools to confront socioecological problems by restricting unsustainable mobility practices. however, such restrictions are required if the canadian polity has any hope of addressing the severe socio-ecological impacts of transportation. the loss of assets and ownership throughout the neoliberal era the logic of privatization has been pursued as a solution to public debt problems, with the irony of shortterm capitalization juxtaposed with long-term asset value loss being lost on policy-makers.4 as cameron (1997) has written, the privatization of public assets is akin to an absurd situation in which a homeowner sells their house in order to afford mortgage payments. despite the absurdity of privatization at this level of theoretical abstraction, it has found salience in contemporary common sense, and most of canada’s transport related crown corporations have either been sold, commercialized or dismantled altogether. a key problem, as cameron’s analogy implies, is that in selling these assets the public has lost a considerable amount of control, not only over the corporations in question, but across the whole sector. it is worth considering the increased capacity that the state would have in confronting existing relations of mobility if it had maintained ownership throughout the transport sector. if the sector was still publicly owned, governmental agencies (at multiple scales of jurisdiction) would have the ability to coordinate inter-modal shift, moving passengers and goods from more polluting modes to more efficient ones, without having to worry about guaranteeing the rights of private firms to compete on a ‘level playing field’. 4 in a recent example, finance minister jim flaherty announced that “there are some opportunities for some privatization of businesses that one questions why the government is in them anymore… so we’ll look at those and i expect that in the next year we’ll be able to make some announcements” (cbc news, 2010). capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 49 democratic institutions would make transport planning and management decisions based on the needs of citizens, not the private interests of profitdriven firms. yet this is not the case, and presently the private sector is known to lobby government against environmental action whenever its ability to profit is put at risk (mcgregor, 2010). working towards an anti-capitalist politics environmental implications have rarely been prioritized within canadian political economic debates about the transport sector, whether relating to questions of production, ownership, use, or service allocation. this is a problem – the prevailing view of socio-ecological impacts as mere ‘externalities’ is dangerous, as it fails to consider the dialectical relationship between forms of human organization (modes of production) and the experience of the ‘natural world’. as argued above, neoliberalization in canada has worked at limiting the capacity of various levels of government to truly regulate markets if such interventions restrict the processes of capital accumulation. herein lies an integral problem of ecological political economy: without relying on restrictive policies aiming to influence citizen or corporate behaviour, how are governments possibly going to enforce much needed changes in social relations (which we know are responsible for causing socio-ecological problems)? of all the transport examples showcased above – in the freight trucking industry, inter-city passenger rail, and even localized public transit – government institutions are compelled to rely upon the market as a tool to address social policy, because setting a framework for accumulation has become the very purpose of regulation under neoliberalism. to deal with this puzzle, epe must work towards the articulation of ‘good sense’ conceptions of regulation and policy by recognizing the inbuilt structural flaws of neoliberal capitalism. while neoliberalized environmental common sense finds surface level ‘solutions’ to ecological problems within existing systems of production, good sense environmentalism calls the very mode of production into question as the source of the problem. the task of a critical epe is thus to challenge and question existing structures of political economy and normalized solutions to socio-environmental problems, in part by interrogating the structural and social origins of such problems. as explained above, the keynesian era saw incredible growth in the socio-ecological impacts of transportation, but it also provided a more 50 | climate change and its discontents reflexive ontology of capitalism, which in turn afforded the state some additional capacities to restrict capital accumulation when the public interest was at stake. this is by no means a call for a return to a keynesian political economy. rather, the claim here is that there may be lessons to learn from the relative capacities, strengths and weaknesses of state entities facing different political economic contexts. arguably, canadian municipal, provincial and federal governments would have a higher capacity to deal with the socio-ecological impacts of transportation if a) they had wide-ranging ownership and control over the sector; and b) the prevailing conceptions of environmental common sense considered ‘hard cap’ regulations a valid method of influencing the behavior and actions of citizens (as opposed to neoliberal common sense, which relies upon market fundamentalist notions of self-regulating, rational utility maximizing consumers). theoretically, these two factors could furnish in the state a willingness to intervene in market processes for the purposes of socio-ecological protection. yet such ideas are unlikely to be entertained without the mobilization of an anti-capitalist politics. good sense conceptions of epe have a role to play in advocating new forms of state capacity. in a recent interview, leo panitch characterized the type of mobilization required in such anti-capitalist political formations: “[we need] organizations that are prepared, not just to make proposals to the state, but to risk going into the state. maybe at first at the municipal level… we need to be prepared to say – ‘look, we will at some point be putting the question of state power on our strategic agenda’” (as quoted in lewis, 2011). such movements would do well to consider the socio-ecological implications of neoliberalism and recognize how socio-ecological problems are in fact best addressed by changing social relations. this can be done by more closely managing, coordinating, and in some cases restricting the processes of production and consumption. to offer a few examples drawing from the discussion above and delving into the realm of the ‘ideal’, states (municipalities in particular) should take bolder steps in restricting the excessive use of single-occupancy vehicles; major expansions to public transit systems certainly help, but the problem in full will not be addressed without more active interventionist steps to actually manage transport demand in urban areas (winters, 2000). similarly, the nationalization, centralization, integration, and de-commoditization of transport services within provincial and federal states would go a long way towards furnishing these state authorities with the interest, willingness and capacity to implement more sustainable public transport practices while restricting wasteful capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 51 behaviours by private firms and individuals. for instance, such structural changes would enable the introduction of electrified inter-city rail infrastructure (for both passengers and freight) without raising the ire of the fossil fuel, automobile and airline lobbies, as the latter subsectors would be integrated into the state-owned transport-energy complex. but there is also room to think outside the box in terms of altering broader social relations which compel us to travel in the first place: this could include work-from-home legislation which offers no-unnecessarycommuting rights to workers (to save on unnecessary work trips across town during rush hour); new suburban rezoning laws which forbid the development of sprawling residential neighbourhoods that are fundamentally dependent on the services, resources and employment opportunities found elsewhere; public education and public health campaigns which foster new subjectivities about the merits of alternative forms of transportation, etc. the lack of state capacity, as explained above, exists largely at an ideological level – at the level of common sense. there is no doubt that radical ideas of nationalizing (or reclaiming public ownership over) various firms within and across the transport modes, increasing the willingness to intervene in market processes, decommodifying public services, and ditching economic growth as the foremost political priority all run counter to contemporary neoliberal common sense beliefs. yet as argued above, movement in this direction would significantly enhance the capacity of governmental institutions to implement the programming and policies needed to engender truly sustainable relations of mobility in canada. 52 | climate change and its discontents references albo, g. 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(2000). transportation demand management. transportation in the new millenium. climate change and socialism | 293 climate change and socialism: an interview with john bellamy foster steve da silva steve da silva1 (sd): over the last decade you have emerged as a leading thinker in synthesizing radical ecology with the marxist tradition. from marx’s ecology (2000) to the ecological rift (2010) and everything in between, you’ve carried out the much needed intellectual work of recovering the overlooked ecological content of marx’s original thought, presenting us with a side of marx that many marxists may have not been aware of. you have also developed a 21st century dialectical materialism, particularly as it pertains to ecology and the unprecedented ecological crises that confront our species and earth. could you briefly summarize the ecological crises that we confront, perhaps by explaining the concept of the “metabolic rift” and the various “planetary boundaries” that capitalism threatens to surpass or has already surpassed? john bellamy foster2 (jbf): scientists led by johan rockström of the stockholm resilience center now refer to nine “planetary boundaries” defined by the holocene geological epoch in which civilization arose. these nine boundaries, all of which we have crossed or are in the process of crossing, relate to: climate change, ocean acidification, the destruction 1 steve da silva is former phd student who studied political economy and canadian history in the social and political thought program at york university. da silva is a former editor of basics community news service, with which he remains people’s journalist; an anti-imperialist activist within cupe local 3903, its first nations solidarity working group, and within the canadian chapter of the international league of people’s struggles; and a young father within a fledgling community parenting movement and its associated parenting coops. 2 john bellamy foster is editor of monthly review and a professor of sociology at the university of oregon. he is the author of marx’s ecology (2000), the ecological rift (2010, with brett clark and richard york); and what every environmentalist needs to know about capitalism (2011, with fred magdoff) all published by monthly review press. these texts and his frequent contributions to monthly review have made foster one of the leading marxist ecologists today, bridging the critique of capitalist political economy with a materialist understanding of the ecological crisis and the increasingly urgent argument for a revolution in social relations. 294 | climate change and its discontents of the ozone layer, the loss of biological diversity (or species extinction), the disruption of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, the loss of land cover, the loss of fresh water, aerosol loading, and chemical pollution. we can see this as the development of various rifts in the biogeochemical cycles governing the earth system. the notion of a rift in the metabolism between nature and society (or in the universal metabolism of nature) goes back to marx’s capital, where he constructed a theory of how the labour and production process under capitalism, which he defined as the metabolic interaction between human beings and nature, was disrupted by capitalist agriculture through the shipment of soil nutrients in the form of food and fiber to the cities where they could no longer be returned to the soil, and where they contributed to urban pollution. marx’s approach here, in which he introduced the concept of social metabolism and connected this to the earth metabolism anticipated the structure of all subsequent ecological systems theory and our understanding of ecological crisis. it is basically in such terms that science has come to understand our present global ecological predicament. sd: a high-level climate change report came out in september 2013 from the united national intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc). what do you make of the findings in this report? is the sense of urgency reflected in your work to be found there? are the predictions and estimates your are framing in your work validated, downplayed, or challenged in this new ipcc report? jbf: it think that the most important development in the new ipcc report as compared with previous ones is the establishment of a carbon budget based on the trillionth metric ton of actual carbon emissions, which marks the point of irreversible climate change associated with a 2° celsius increase in average global warming. in monthly review we have been basing our analysis of the planetary emergency for the last three years on the carbon budget associated with the trillionth ton, using the same data. so this fits with how we have framed the problem in line with the scientific literature. at current rates of emission the carbon budget will be exhausted (the trillionth ton will be reached) somewhere around 2040 – so the urgency of finding a way of drastically reducing carbon emissions is very great. it is clear, especially given the short time span, that this cannot be accomplished by technological means alone, but will require conservation, changes in social relations, and the selfmobilization of the population. kevin anderson at the tyndall institute climate change and socialism | 295 for climate research says we need a moratorium on economic growth, something hard to think of in a capitalist society. certainly, we need a revolution in our social priorities. sd: i am curious if you have a sense of who has been more receptive to your work: radical environmentalists or marxists, socialists, communists? have you found it easier for radical environmentalists to embrace a dialectical materialist analysis and its historical socialist and communist conclusions, or for socialists and communists to apprehend the gravity of the ecological crisis and reorient their programs, strategic orientations, and concrete organizing accordingly? also, do you think the chasm between class struggle militants and environmentalists is narrowing? jbf: there has been a broad receptivity of all of these groups to the interpretation offered in my marx’s ecology and paul burkett’s marx and nature, and to what has come to be known as the theory of metabolic rift, drawn from marx. the biggest remaining hurdle for marxists has to do with the issue of the “dialectics of nature,” of which there is a longstanding criticism within western marxism. it was argued, following lukács’ history and class consciousness, that the dialectic applied only to society, not to nature – a position that led western marxists largely to ignore natural science and external (non-human) nature. lukács in his later work offered a way out of this dilemma, arguing that the key to a qualified, materialist dialectics of nature was to be found by following marx’s stress on the labor process as the metabolic interaction between nature and society. thus marx’s concept of social metabolism is now recognized to be of fundamental ontological, epistemological, and ecological significance, promising a wider critical synthesis within marxian theory. i have discussed this recently at a talk i have given in stockholm on october 20, and this will be published in more complete form in the december 2013 issue of monthly review under the title “marx and the rift in the universal metabolism of nature.” sd: environmentalists and leftists aside, have you observed a shift in consciousness concerning ecological crises in recent years amongst people more broadly? here in canada, there has certainly been a growing awareness of the destruction wrought by alberta’s tar sands. this is translating into popular resistance that cuts across and bridges, uniting indigenous and non-indigenous people, which is a very posi296 | climate change and its discontents tive development. from hurricanes katrina and sandy to fracking, i’m wondering if you can describe the pulse of people’s consciousness in the united states concerning ecological issues? or, do the existing rising environmental currents reside within a nimby-istic framework? jbf: i wrote an article entitled “the fossil fuels war” in the september 2013 monthly review that dealt with these issues. there are a lot of environmental activists who understand the necessity of blocking tar sands and other unconventional fossil fuels if we are going to have a chance of avoiding breaking the carbon budget. if we were to use all of the tarsands oil in alberta we would cross the point of irreversibility creating devastating conditions beyond our control. as a result there is a fierce battle taking place across north america to oppose the keystone xl pipeline. in canada, the resistance is being led by idle no more, arising out of the indigenous communities, around which a larger alliance has developed. this is not simply a “not in my backyard” or nimby movement, but a real revolt – though one that has huge obstacles in front of it. people are already physically opposing the keystone xl pipeline in its critical southern leg. sd: from the bolivarian revolution in latin america to the arab spring, have you any sense of the extent to which the mass movements and popular uprisings sweeping the world in recent years are developing a consciousness of “the ecological rift.” jbf: there are some indications of this. i believe that la via campesina, the international peasant’s movement, has embraced the concept of the metabolic rift in some of their work. the vice president of bolivia, álvaro garcía linera, has drawn on marx’s metabolism concept in his discussion of ecological issues. marx’s notion of social metabolism has played a big role in intellectual discussions and movement activities in venezuela and brazil, mainly through the influence of istván mészáros’s work. samir amin has been emphasizing marx’s distinction between wealth and value as part of an ecological argument that he has been advancing within the world forum for alternatives, based in senegal. in china the metabolic rift concept is now central to discussions of ecological marxism. how much these ideas have actually filtered down within the movements globally i don’t really know. but the kind of theory we are talking about, which aims at a more synthetic view of material-ecological conditions, erasing the traditional distinctions between workplace and climate change and socialism | 297 environment, for example, is itself a reflection in part of the dire conditions we face and the convergence of economic and ecological crises in our time. the fact that marx’s classical ecological critique is being rediscovered in this context does not alter the fact that the motivation for such analysis arises from the planetary emergency of our time, in which all that is solid in the material existence itself is seemingly melting away and people are at last forced to come face to face with the dire consequences and the contradictions of a whole epoch. it is hardly surprising that we are now seeing what may be the emergence of a new environmental working class worldwide, reminiscent of the early industrial revolution, where the struggles were equally based in factories and communities; and that this is part of what has contributed to the growing unrest in emerging economies such as egypt, brazil, turkey, and china. sd: the argument has been put forward in the new volume catastrophism (2013) by sasha lilley and others that ‘catastrophist’ discourses are more harming than they are helping the left. certainly, the themes of the end times and apocalyptic scenarios are ubiquitous in the cultural apparatus of capitalist-imperialist north america – from the apocalypse genre in hollywood to the increasingly dominant conspiracy theories being propagated by rightwing libertarianism – which suggests the use of catastrophist discourses as a reactionary ideological form. as dialectical materialists, how should we cut through the consciousness of defeatism, apathy, and helplessness that catastrophism takes issue with without downplaying the actual ecological crises on the horizon? also, though you seem to have been spared the ‘catastrophist’ label in lilley et al., there seems to be an implicit critique of your form of presentation in their work. what do you make of their presentation of ‘catastrophism’ and their argument that catastrophe-mongering on the left is a dead end strategy? jbf: the right introduced the term “catastrophism” to attack the environmental movement and the scientific community. there is no such thing as catastrophism anywhere on the left, since this would be a contradiction in terms. the slogan of the green left in australia is “system change, not climate change.” it is the global scientific consensus that tells us that we are headed towards catastrophic developments on a planetary level if we don’t alter our relations with nature. to deny this is to deny science itself, and reality as we know it. to argue, as the world 298 | climate change and its discontents scientific community does, that we are facing a certain planetary disaster if we continue along the lines of business as usual, is merely to insist that the latter must change. the small number of individuals on the left who have been saying lately that we have to avoid any kind of environmental “catastrophism” seem mostly to be people who are beginning to take the environmental problem seriously for the first time, and yet who are still reluctant to acknowledge the severity of the crisis – or for some reason would rather deny it. so their first reaction is to say that it is all exaggerated – or, alternatively, that telling people the truth in this area should be avoided, since they will then simply freeze and be unable to act. but what is really making it difficult for the population to act in response to this crisis is not the immobilizing force of so-called “catastrophism,” as has been lately suggested, but rather the power structure of capitalism itself, which is currently blocking at every level and by every means possible the necessary radical shift to a sustainable society. i know of only one case on the left where i myself have been accused of falling prey to a mindless “catastrophism” and that is in an article, entitled “transcending the metabolic rift,” that my friend jason moore wrote in the january 2011 issue of the journal of peasant studies, where he wrote: “a theory of capitalism that identifies the convergence of rapidly explosive contradictions need not succumb to catastrophism. (a world that runs like a red thread through foster’s work.)” i was quite bemused by this because i knew of no occasion over the years where i had used the word “catastrophism” – except of course to deny it recently in the face of such criticisms. in this sense i would draw a sharp line between talking about likely catastrophes if society continues to follow a certain course – when the object is to change it – and what is being called “catastrophism,” or a position that vacates all hope. i think it is incontrovertible that for the first time in human history, beginning in 1945 with hiroshima, and since then with the disruption of the biogeochemical cycles of the earth, humanity has created the conditions for its own potential annihilation as a species – and certainly the destruction of civilization as we know it. this conclusion is one of the most startling discoveries of modern science. nothing could be more opposed to historical materialism than to deny such conditions. sd: the perennial challenge of socialist/communist strategy has always been to identify concrete struggles around which people can be rallied around on a progressive basis that moves them in the direction of confronting the broader social contradictions that make up capitalist-impeclimate change and socialism | 299 rialism. the challenge of rallying around “the ecological rift” seems to be the equally remote and seemingly intangible threat it poses. the incrementally minute changes year-over-year just don’t seem to convey the truly catastrophic consequences of moving beyond the “tipping points”. where do you see the points of intervention being taken up or that have yet to be utilized for generating a stronger ecological consciousness? jbf: i don’t think it is remote at all. this ecological rift is everywhere apparent today. extreme weather events which science has traced to climate change are occurring all over the globe now. water shortages, crop failures, destruction of forests, loss of biological diversity, global land grabs, are becoming ubiquitous realities. at the same time the system is searching more rapaciously for fossil fuels, leading to fracking, ultradeep-sea oil drilling, exploitation of tar sands oil, etc. people’s lives are being affected in dire ways, and countless numbers of people across the globe are engaged in struggle. my argument is that the material conditions of the globe and the world economy are being undermined across the board creating the conditions for the emergence of an environmental working class and a broader, co-revolutionary struggle. the struggle is taking more rebellious forms, as one would expect, in the global south, but it must be universalized everywhere on the planet if we are to succeed. marx’s concept of the metabolic rift is useful in this context because it helps us understand how this crisis is structurally related to capitalism itself. sd: my final question concerns the capacity of generalized international monopoly capitalism to meet the looming crises in a manner than strengthens its system. you address the rise in the exploitation of unconventional oil sources in monthly review november 2013, a course of action that is hurling us even more rapidly off the “carbon cliff” and that is ultimately unsustainable. but what about nuclear energy? capitalism can’t escape the second law of thermodynamics, which states that energy in the universe proceeds in one direction from low to high entropy, but it does seem intent on trying to tap energy sources at a whole new level. what are the possibilities and risks associated with nuclear? is this the site of capitalism’s next “technological fix”? jbf: nuclear energy has been promoted by some climate scientists as a partial solution to the carbon problem. in the past i have called all attempts to go in this direction a faustian bargain. to go in this direction 300 | climate change and its discontents would be to seal our doom. one is reminded of the sign at the entrance to hell in dante’s inferno: “abandon every hope, ye who enter here.” but in truth nuclear energy is not really on the table anymore where carbon emissions are concerned. it takes a long time to build and put into operation new nuclear power plants, they are notoriously expensive, and they raise all sorts of security issues. can one really imagine the global expansion tenfold of nuclear power throughout the world? the simple truth is that there is simply not enough time to go in that direction, if we are trying to avoid breaking the carbon budget. the only real answers are alternative, non-carbon, energies coupled with conservation on a huge scale, requiring the transformation of social relations. of course, capitalism is not going to go in this direction. its last-ditch attempt at a “technological fix” is more likely to proceed along planetary geoengineering lines. one is reminded that marx and engels in the communist manifesto invoked the sorcerer’s apprentice when addressing capitalism. for those with any sanity left the only answer to our problems lies in an ecological and social revolution on a global scale. humanity as a whole has to reenter history once again. chemins alternatif book reviews taking a stand: a review of nancy e. dowel's in defense of single-parent families. new york: new york university press, 1997. 200 pp. linda di luzio in defense of single-parent families is yet another contribution to the growing body of knowledge on single-headed households. the number of lone-parent families may be on the rise, however, a remarkably consistent view of single-parent families as 'problem families' continues to dominate the literature. researchers have, for the most part, painted a gloomy picture of single-parent families by focusing on the negative repercussions of such family structures. poverty, family breakdown, juvenile delinquency, and crime are among some of the social malaise frequently attributed to lone-parent families. moreover, given that the overwhelming majority of single parents are 'mothers', women have inevitably become the targets of blame for the emergence of such social ills. consequently, in employing a major part of their efforts at discrediting single-parent families, researchers have scarcely acknowledged the value of single parenting. nancy e. dowd, an american law professor and single mother (by choice), has recognized the need for feminist research in this area and, as a result, has taken on the challenge of moving considerably beyond the commonplace assumption that single-parent families are dysfunctional because of inherent fatal flaws in their structure. as revealed by the title of her book, dowd delivers a poignant defense of single-parent families by claiming that all families, regardless of their 'form', face significant conflicts vis-a-vis work and family responsibilities. as a matter of fact, the author ventures to say that many dual-parent families in reality operate as single-parent care-giving households. in defense of single-parent volume 16, 2000 89 alternate routes families thus asks us to ponder the ultimate purpose of the 'family', and as a result, place value not on one family form (e.g., the nuclear family) at the expense of other forms, but rather recognize the merits of all types of families. dowd develops a very powerful and provocative argument in defense of lone-parent families by, first, exposing the many myths and misconceptions surrounding this particular type of family and, second, juxtaposing these myths against the realities of what we 'know' about singleparent families. she then demonstrates how these myths are incorporated in the legal system which, in a catch-22 fashion, further stigmatizes loneparent families. in the first part of the book, the author addresses some of the more common assumptions held in society about single-parent families — namely, that (1) single parents cause poverty; (2) children need a mother and a father for healthy development; and (3) single parents are sinful and immoral. she then goes on to successfully convince her readers that these undeniably powerful beliefs about single-parent families are not only manifestly false but detrimental to both the single parents (usually women) who are stigmatized as a result of their status, and the children who are unfairly penalized for what society views as their parents' mistakes. what makes this book particularly strong is the author's use of sociological research in dispelling some of the misconceptions about singleparent families. dowd argues that the problems incurred by single-parents do not stem from their decision to 'purposely' deviate from the revered two-parent heterosexual family, but rather are the result of structural mechanisms deeply embedded in society. the plight of single parents, therefore, is largely attributable to systemic problems such as: gender discrimination in wage rates, continuing sex segregation in jobs, structural constraints against combining work and family in much of the wage labor market, and an unwillingness to mandate child support or provide meaningful family support outside patriarchal structures (27). while this may in fact be true, dowd clearly points out that it is the prevailing myths about lone-parent families that continue to inform and justify the punitive social and legal policies aimed at such family types. 90 volume 16, 2000 chemins allernatif if good use of sociological research makes the book strong, what makes it particularly interesting to read is the way the author combines the sociological literature with an insightful legal analysis of lone-parent families. in the second part of the book, the author maps out the context of work and family and illustrates how through the divorce, employment, and welfare structures firmly in place the law condemns rather than supports both divorced and never-married single-parent families, contributing to the impoverishment and further somatization of these families. dowd convincingly argues that the legal rhetoric of "equality and choice" makes family 'form' the scapegoat for economic inequality and oppression and thus conveniently ignores the structural problems which operate in a context of gender, race, and class inequality. in particular, the law ignores the limited choices for constructing work and family relationships. those limited choices contribute to the creation of poverty and its associated ills. in this way, the law stigmatizes single parents by the structure and goals of family, employment and welfare law (54). moreover, in her discussion of how the law punishes single-parent families, dowd tugs at our heartstrings by bringing to light the fact that those who are most affected by the existing legal structures of divorce, employment, and welfare are the blameless children who are raised within such families. hence, for the sake of the children, future generations, and all of humanity, the author pleads with us to recognize singleparent families as "families of worth and value" and "demonstrate not only that stigma has no basis and only does harm, but also that singleparent families have unique characteristics, positive attributes which can contribute to all families" (102). to not do so is to bring about what the author refers to as "social suicide" (xv). this commendable book concludes with the author's recommendations for drafting a policy of support for single-parent families. believing that single-parent families of any kind deserve to be valued and supported affirmatively and believing that policy should be attentive to gender, race, and class differences, dowd essentially brings forth four recommendations: (1) a system of economic support which most closely adopts for all single parents the model of social security benefits for volume 16, 2000 91 alternate routes widows and widowers; (2) a call for support of care-giving work, both by empowering sole or primary care-givers and by providing necessary support economic and social for primary care-givers regardless of family form; (3) a restructuring of the workplace for all parents to the extent that parents are expected to engage in wage work; and (4) replacing welfare with universal family support. in order to ensure the implementation of the aforementioned recommendations, dowd goes so far as to sketch, in the last chapter of her book, "how one might reconceive constitutional doctrine to ideologically support single-parent families, and to enshrine that value so strongly that policies which stigmatize would be constitutionally invalid" (147). although skeptical that any of these recommendations will be implemented given the current political climate, dowd nonetheless alludes to them in the hope that they may fall on the ears of those in a position to effect change. one would be hard-pressed to find fault with this book. without a doubt, in defense of single-parent families deserves to be on every policy-maker's bookshelf. however, what this book lacks, and what i believe is crucial in an analysis of single-parent households, is attention to 'voice'. single parents need to be heard. the levels of stress experienced by single parents and their methods and chances of success in dealing with them, for instance, are among some of the issues that can and should be addressed in face-to-face interviews with single parents. if we are to aid lone-parent families through social policy, we must provide single parents with an opportunity to share their sentiments. in every other way, this book is important because it deals with both short-and long-term issues confronting single-parent families. 92 volume 16, 2000 the university in the city: the campus as a space of dependence and engagement in the age of austerity kafui attoh,1 don mitchell,2 and lynn a. staeheli3 “… [a] schoolmaster is a productive labourer, when, in addition to belaboring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. that the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of a sausage factory, does not alter the relation.” karl marx 1867 introduction as critiques of the corporate university abound, marx’s equation of schools with sausage factories has never seemed more apt (bousquet 2008; nelson 1997; newfield 2004, 2011; washburn 2006; fabricant and brier 2016). corporate methods of managing academic labor and measuring institutional “through-put” – whether in the form of publications, patents, corporate partnerships, or student-commodities themselves – are by now commonplace. observing these trends well before the current round of intense, global higher-education restructuring sparked by the 2008 economic crisis, the geographer neil smith (2000) asked his readers to think seriously about “who rules the sausage factory” – and who should. the privatization of education at every level, smith observed, was turning many a teacher and professor into exactly the kind of “productive laborer,” marx warned about. but this need not be the case: there was, he argued, a fight to be had and we had better fight it. of course, many of us have been fighting – and often 1 kafui attoh is assistant professor of urban studies, joseph s. murphy institute, cuny. email: kafui.attoh@mail.cuny.edu 2 don mitchell is professor of cultural geography, department of social and economic geography, uppsala university. email: dmmitc01@maxwell.syr.edu 3 lynn staeheli is professor of geography and sgd director, school of geography and development, university of arizona. email: lstaeheli@email.arizona.edu 264 | austerity urbanism and the social economy mailto:dmmitc01@maxwell.syr.edu mailto:lstaeheli@email.arizona.edu alongside politicized students well aware of their status as branded “sausages.” and yet privatization and corporatization continue apace. indeed, the conditions under which academics work as “productive labor” has grown increasingly alarming, especially as university administrators claim their institutions must face up to the new realities of “austerity.”4 faculty members and their departments must, as administrators invariably put it, learn to do more with less. simultaneously, ever-more instrumentalized forms of knowledge production assume pride of place in the imaginations of trustees and chancellors alike, as branding becomes central to university missions, and as franchising (especially in china and the middle east) seems a logical way to “compete” in what is imagined to be a global higher education marketplace.5 given all this, for those of us who work in them, or who study in them, universities can feel an awful lot like a sausage factory – or, perhaps, even the supermarkets that sell the sausages (elite whole foods, plebian walmart, and the whole range in between). yet for even the most cynical observers, the university is more than a sausage factory. not only are universities places that can facilitate real learning, they are also institutions positioned, even now, to promote the public good, to expose social injustice and even promote social struggle, to train civically-minded citizens, and to produce knowledge aimed at advancing public wellbeing. the campus can provide a space for experimentation and activism, and from which the world can be engaged. for many faculty and students, it is precisely for these reasons that universities remain – despite their increasing corporatization – essential tools in constructing a more just society. if that’s the case, then 4 which somehow never slows the construction of new gyms, stadiums, luxurious dining halls, on-campus multiplexes, and – in icy climates – heated sidewalks. 5 the necessity of competition for high-fee-paying out-of-state and foreign students is a logical result of the decades-old assault by legislators on public university budgets. for private universities, as tuition skyrockets (to pay for the heated sidewalks) and as another kind of competition – for a “diverse” student body – intensifies and thus requires significant subsidies for some students, increasing foreign student numbers is likewise a necessity. the university in the city | 265 it is worth examining just what kind of a “space for engagement” the neoliberal university campus is, and perhaps can be. i some years ago, political geographer kevin cox (1998) sought to distinguish between what he called “spaces of dependence” and “spaces of engagement.” he argued that certain spaces – a city neighborhood, for example – were spaces of dependence in the sense that they provided a localized congeries of social relation upon which we come “to depend for the realization of essential interests” and which “define place specific conditions for our sense of well-being.” it is easy to see how, in their development as a specifically modern institution in the 19th and 20th centuries, universities became spaces of dependence, performing a set of functions (in cox’s words) “for which there is no substitute elsewhere” (1998: 2). they developed preeminently as “nation-building” institutions, charged with developing, instilling, and reproducing a national culture (including national predominance in the sciences); many (especially public colleges and universities) were charged with developing the practical knowledge – cocooned within the liberal arts – for supporting the burgeoning agricultural and industrial economy; and they were charged with cultivating the managerial and professional classes suitable for running that economy (reading 1996). they had an essential role to play in supporting both localized and national-scale capital accumulation, but were not usually themselves directly sites of it. the economy, as well as the polity, depended on the university, in just this sense. at the same time, they were also spaces of dependence in that they were community centers. in small towns and cities alike, they were places for music, art, public lectures, adult learning, and, of course, sports. not infrequently they were where community life was centered. even at private universities, campuses were often considered community, public spaces. as large (sometimes the largest) employers, they were places upon which local economies often depended. and both directly 266 | austerity urbanism and the social economy and indirectly they were supported by public funding precisely because they were depended on for all these functions. as early as world war ii, however, some of these aspects of the university’s raison d’etre began to erode. in the west (if not so much in newly-independent countries) “nation-building” lost some of its political urgency (especially as the pace of globalization quickened after the 1970s economic crises), undermining a key rationale for the liberal arts. the democratization of the university delivered another blow as students (and eventually faculty) questioned all manner of canonical learning and its relevance to newly diverse student bodies. simultaneously, the sort of practical training that “land-grant” universities in the u.s. and their global equivalents (like britain’s polytechnics) had excelled at (agricultural specialists, mechanical engineers, etc.) began to seem outmoded.6 universities were facing a crisis of legitimacy. they also faced an economic crisis. as the social-democratic compromises of the postwar era have been blown apart, mindless “austerity,” has emerged to fill the void. indeed, “austerity” is perhaps all that is left of a neoliberalism that – bereft of any remaining justification – is what neil smith once described as “dominant but dead” (smith 2008: 155).7 in this context, universities have realized they are a quite different kind of space of dependence. if communities are dependent on them, they are themselves decreasingly dependent on skeptical legislators, and increasingly dependent on students able to pony up large tuition payments, as well as on the good will of corporate and individual donors. the embrace of corporatization, privatization, the globalization of the higher education “market,” and the instrumentalization of knowledge by administrators, politicians, bureaucrats, and not a few faculty members, 6 in the u.s. the 1862 morrill land grant act authorized the selling of federal land to finance state universities and colleges; “land-grant” universities were mandated to support agricultural development in their states. 7 at the dawn of the 2008 economic crisis, neil smith (2008) was already arguing that neoliberalism was “dominant but dead.” the ensuing years have proved him correct. neoliberalism is now bereft of its guiding ideology; all it can now muster is a weak faith in “austerity” (in public budgets), without even by now even trying to justify that faith. the university in the city | 267 is thus symptomatic of the university’s lost legitimacy, its unclear role in restructured capitalist economies, and the rapid shift from state-funding to tuitionand donation-based budgets. in this landscape, becoming a site for capital accumulation (not just a site for the support of it) has – in the eyes of many – not only lent the university a new legitimacy but has opened up potential new revenue streams.8 the much-hyped moocs (massive open online courses) and new, perhaps innovative partnerships, like that between starbucks and arizona state university, are evidence of the shifting sands of dependence that mark the university and its place in wider society (adams 2014).9 so too is the increasing competition for research dollars that faces every research-oriented campus, the rise of a star-system for faculty (and its adjunct, the sinking of adjuncts into penury), the pandering for corporate contracts and willingness to undertake proprietary research, and the ever-expanding, ever-more global search for fee-paying students. in many instances, increasing competition among and within universities has been precisely the goal for policymakers and trustees, perhaps most clearly exemplified in the uk by the introduction of the research assessment exercise (now the research excellence framework 2014) and the transfer of higher education oversight and funding to the department of business innovation and skills. such shifts in the conditions of dependence are quite evident on university campuses themselves. as universities devote more money and 8 many universities are, for example, creating their own in-house venture funds to “incentivize” directly commercially-applicable research that they can benefit from. they are also encouraging, and being encouraged, to allow corporations to locate on campus for significant tax breaks as long as they hire a few interns and plow a bit of their profit back into the universities’ budgets. for one example see: don mitchell (2011) “the entrepreneurial university and its discontents: or, why the university is no longer a public space (if it ever was)” 9 if moocs are the “disrupters” their cheerleaders claim they are, then one thing they will disrupt will be the cultural function of the university as a campus – as a place for the gathering of students and communities alike. 268 | austerity urbanism and the social economy space to securing or shoring up “market share,” new fitness centers, climbing walls, library coffee-shops, resort-like swimming lagoons, stadiums and training complexes, and palatial dorms sprout like mushrooms (often funded through complex borrowing and bond schemes) (freedman 2014). universities now sponsor (with planning as well as money) the wholesale redevelopment of surrounding commercial districts to assure pleasing and presumably safer edges to their campuses, and just as frequently create their own police forces to patrol them. the transformation of the university in the post-national, neoliberal era has meant the transformation of the campus itself. as a space of dependence, in other words, the university is now a quite different place than it used to be even as tree-lined malls and grassy quads are preserved as key selling points. ii but what about the university, and especially the campus, as a “space of engagement”? as kevin cox wrote, “people, firms, state agencies, etc. organize in order to secure the conditions for the continued existence of their spaces of dependence but in doing so they have to engage with other centers of social power: local government, the national press, perhaps the international press, for example. in doing so they construct a different form of space … a space of engagement” (cox 1998: 2). attempts to reconstruct the university’s legitimacy as well as to rebuild a secure financial foundation have entailed remaking campuses into new kinds of spaces of engagement, as much of the above discussion has indicated.10 yet it is worth thinking about this literally – about just what kind of “space of engagement,” the university campus is. 10 the line between dependence and engagement is blurry. one could interpret a university concert series, for example, as either or both. it helps make the university a space of dependence (in the first sense above) by creating an essential campus-based good perhaps not available elsewhere in town. but it is also a means to draw onto campus external publics, to position a university as a cultural good within a larger state bringing to it either prestige or legislative goodwill, and to engage in a larger world of the arts, breaking down a parochialism that might undermine relations of dependence. the university in the city | 269 campuses have long been places within which students, faculty, and others organize and engage with external worlds near and far. agricultural extension services, university-sponsored settlement houses and urban missions, and laboratory schools represent examples from earlier eras. the development of schools of citizenship and public policy, like schools of education, was rooted in a pragmatic politics of outreach, of social reformation from within the campus. and campuses provide space (and gather together people) for political organization. after all, as a denver student activist put it in an interview with us in 2010, “you have thousands of people all in one place with not a lot to do, and that tends to lend itself well to activism.” this is not an inconsiderable purpose for the university – a central way in which it is a space of engagement – and it is perhaps something that sets itself apart, at least a bit, from other “sausage factories.” to give a paradigmatic example: the berkeley free speech movement of 1964 was, among many other things, a fight over how students should or could engage with political movements and social upheavals in the bay area and beyond. as university of california president clark kerr emblematically put: “a few of the ‘non-conformists’ have another kind of revolt [than one against the university] in mind. they seek instead to turn the university, on the latin american or japanese models, into fortresses from which they can sally forth with impunity to make their attacks on society” (draper 1966: 266). for student activists, the campus was a place for organizing from which they could then strike out into the world. if, however, the waning of sixties activism and the neoliberalization of the university led to a generation (or two) of political quiescence, the question of controlling student (and faculty) politics on campus never disappeared. indeed, it burst into a new visibility in the wake of the economic crisis, the official austerity response, and the (worldwide) student organizing these spawned. the crisis and response certainly seemed to crystalize the question of controlling student and 270 | austerity urbanism and the social economy faculty protest, and thus the nature of the campus as a space of engagement in many administrators’ minds. for example, in october 2010, we found ourselves in the oakland office of a lawyer representing faculty unions in a number of california community college districts. to spark the conversation, the lawyer showed us a large stack of documents that he explained were resolutions pushed by the community college league of california and being passed by districts up and down the state which redefined college campuses as “non-public forums.” in legal-speak, this means that these campuses were being turned into a kind of property on which, though it was publicly-owned, there was no a priori right to protest. one of the resolutions, he noted, while pulling a file from atop the stack, was for the peralta community college district covering berkeley and oakland.11 the proximate cause of the district board’s consideration of the resolution was the appearance at laney college of a militant antiabortion group whose march through campus upset a number of faculty and students. the district now planned to create “free speech zones” outside which leafletting, speechmaking, and protesting would be banned. this was, the lawyer argued, “inconsistent” with the goals of higher education, since, he noted, colleges and universities had “long been recognized as … marketplaces of ideas.” for him, the “educational environment [was] supposed to be a place where people talk, and think, and confront ideas,” and not a place where such ideas were confined to some remote “speaker’s corner.” the resolution facing the peralta district was especially extreme in that it included a provision permanently banning individuals from political activity on district campuses after violating the free speech policies just once. as a veteran of the free speech movement, the lawyer was genuinely perplexed by this statewide effort to restrict the speech and political activities of students on community college campuses, given their important role in educating working class and 11 the peralta district is perhaps most famous for being home to merritt college where the black panthers was founded. the university in the city | 271 immigrant students. and he was perplexed as to why this push was happening then, and offered two theories as to what was at stake. one theory saw the push for free speech zones as a response to predicted student unrest over austerity. he argued that administrators “were sold on doing this because they feared students would be protesting … the coming budget cuts and increases in tuition that were recognized a couple of years ago.” his second theory saw the push for free speech zones as related to the corporatization of higher education. “it is very interesting that that [the speech zone controversy] has erupted at this time. one might say it’s because of all the conflict in society, that there are people in administration who prefer a more orderly campus, a more businesslike campus. of course, colleges are not businesses. a lot of people don’t want to hear that, but they’re not. they’re educational institutions, and you can’t decide if they’re profitable just by the amount of dollars that they earn in a particular year. these policies that we have here are really very important. even if they’re unconstitutional, they’re sending a message to people” (interview with authors, october 11, 2010). the people the message was being sent to, he implied, were not only on the peralta campuses, but also on the nearby uc berkeley campus. or perhaps, the message to the peralta district was received from berkeley. in 2009, berkeley students staged a series of mass protests and building occupations to protest soaring tuition costs and to demand greater state funding. these protests were linked to earlier (2007) and subsequent (2010) protests contesting uc berkeley’s decision to team up with british petroleum to construct a new building for mostly proprietary research. for the oakland attorney, the sudden wave of campus resolutions restricting free speech was hardly a coincidence. free speech zones and other efforts to limit campus activism were appearing at exactly the moment when student dissent was most needed and precisely when the corporate assault on universities seemed primed to speed up. 272 | austerity urbanism and the social economy of course, for even some of the most apolitical observers, free speech zones are dangerous because they undermine the idea of college campuses as a “marketplace of ideas” – a space of engagement in that sense. for progressive observers like the lawyer, however, they were dangerous because they threatened a more radical potential of universities, which persists even despite their rapid restructuring as a space of dependence – a potential for a form of radical community engagement. iii to see what this might mean, we travelled to scotland, where in 2011 student activists had taken over the hetherington building on the glasgow university campus. the “free hetherington” movement was one of many “anti-cuts” actions that swept britain beginning in 2010 (of which university occupations were just one part). over the course of the hetherington occupation, the building became central to communitybased political organizing as well as the site of an alternative university that boasted free lectures, workshops and classes. although the space remained relatively free of the sort of sectarian power struggles that marked other occupations around the uk, it was not an entirely comfortable space (for some – especially female activists – it could be quite intimidating). and yet few could deny that the free hetherington movement had created a space on the glasgow university campus – a classic “university on a hill” – that was uniquely open to the wider community. from within occupied hetherington, students worked hard to link up with – and invite in – other local struggles, like ongoing actions against police brutality in working class and immigrant neighborhoods and campaigns against displacement from redevelopment associated with the upcoming 2014 commonwealth games. free hetherington was a space of engagement: by creating a space on campus in which students, faculty, and community members could meet and collaborate, and learn from one another, free hetherington offered a notable example of what might be understood as the university in the city | 273 radical community engagement. by turning hetherington into an incubator for local political organizing, this was a form of engagement that, in fact, questioned the traditional boundaries of the university itself, which is not necessarily a new project (there is a long history of free universities, of course), but one that takes on added salience as the whole question of the university – its status as a space of dependence – has been reopened by the legitimacy and economic crises that now beset it. “community engagement” usually has far less radical connotations.12 in fact, it is often a way of corralling political passions and making them “productive.” more typical than free hetheringtontype engagement on campuses are the community engagement initiatives at places like glasgow caledonian university (gcu) and salford university in manchester, both former polytechnics. gcu sponsors an impressive array of community engagement initiatives ranging from public forums and community volunteer days to initiatives like the caledonian club (a mentorship program that connects students with primary school children in underserved communities) and working with mohammad yunis to develop microloan programs for nearby housing estates. such initiatives are designed to open the campus to outside publics as well as push students off campus to engage the world beyond its borders. for gcu administrators, such efforts have an economic logic: “in order to survive,” an official told us, gcu had to differentiate itself from its competitors. community engagement was a marketing device that allowed gcu to stand out in the competitive market for higher education. at salford, community engagement was increasingly incorporated into the university’s “brand,” administrators told us. administrators positioned community engagement as a vital resource the university could offer students to build their resumes as they confront a highly competitive job market. according to the community engagement officer, enrolling at salford would allow students to burnish their cvs with marketable skills, learned through community engagement 12 for a typical discussion see kingma 2011 274 | austerity urbanism and the social economy incentivized by course credit. that this sort of engagement was highly instrumentalized was not lost on students. as a student at nearby university of manchester commented in relation to its university leadership program: “they find a project, they drive you to the project, and there are people who tell you what to do on a project, and you do what they tell you. and then they put you on a bus and take you back home.” sometimes these efforts are nakedly self-interested. as the community engagement officer at salford told us, the university had to sponsor programs in surrounding communities because those communities were beset by “wicked problems” and if these problems were not addressed then the campus would be perceived as unsafe and salford would have more trouble attracting fee-paying international students. the contradictions that arise, and the university’s confusion over how to manage them, are readily apparent on campus. at salford we were repeatedly told about how the university was building bridges to surrounding (mostly working class) neighborhoods. administrators positioned the campus itself as a community asset. yet every entrance is marked by big, permanent signs declaring, in all caps, the campus of salford university – a public university – to be private property. and waving from standards along many of the walks were banners announcing not salford’s “excellence” or celebrating its diverse student body, but reminding students to “keep all valuables out of sight,” and that “1 in 10 students will become a victim of crime.” conclusion whatever the contradictions, community engagement programs like those at gcu and salford which seek to integrate campuses and surrounding neighborhoods in new ways (as part of an exercise in brand differentiation) both affirm the sausage factory-like reality of contemporary higher education (a particular brand of university churning out a particular brand of student) and the fact that universities are and always must be more than mere factories: they remain, as they the university in the city | 275 were in the nation-building era, institutions of citizen-formation, even under conditions of neoliberalization and financial austerity. community engagement gcu and salford-style seeks to create citizens geared for a neoliberal world, turning students (and for that matter faculty) into “academic entrepreneurs,” as one prominent analysis of community engagement approvingly calls them (kingma 2011). to the degree that community engagement initiatives hew to what is essentially a corporate ethos, there is a very real danger they will serve the same function as free speech zones – namely to redirect political involvement away from potentially radical engagement into safer, officially sanctioned channels. against this, occupations like free hetherington are hardly surprising; they mark an active resistance to engagement shaped from above and emptied of oppositional force. they mark out one end of what remaking the campus as a space of engagement might look like at its best, and it is a prospect, obviously, that many trustees, administrators, and corporate sponsors do not find attractive. at the other end of the spectrum, officially-sanctioned community engagement might end up helping prove clark kerr right. writing before the free speech movement, he argued that the new university – the “multiversity” – was charged with producing “new men,” who would be the managers of a world that was significantly postpolitical, where revolts would only ever be “little bureaucratic revolts that can be handled piecemeal” (kerr et al. 1960, 295; draper 1964; kerr 2001[1963]). changed conditions of dependence and experiments with new forms of engagement would remake the campus as a space of containment, a space (potentially) as carefully controlled as the shop floor of a sausage factory. for neil smith, implicit in his question, “who rules the sausage factory?” was the belief that universities – as institutions and as cityspaces – were worth fighting for. as the neoliberalization of the university continues apace, the prospects seem stark. at the bleeding edge of that neoliberalism, we find not only an ever-expanding army of austerity’s adjuncts, but an increasingly indebted student body worried 276 | austerity urbanism and the social economy about its future (for which instrumental versions of community engagement thus make eminent sense). simultaneously, the instrumentalization of research is entrenched through audits like the ref and legislative demands that research pay immediate dividends, and through funding secured by (now university-sponsored) venture capital. to put it in marxist terms, university labor is becoming more like typically capitalist abstract labor, valuable only to the degree it produces readily measured surplus value. such trends make the fight for the university – the fight to rule the sausage factory – all the more important. there are, in fact, some reasons to be optimistic that the fight is hardly over despite all the depressing news. it is increasingly clear, for example, that those currently charged with administering the university – trustees, presidents, higher education consultants – have little idea how to manage the contradictions and competing pressures corporatization, neoliberalism, and austerity have wrought. how else does one square the desperate rush towards online classes and the use of adjuncts with the simultaneous emphasis on “student experience”? similarly, how does one reconcile the persistent emphasis on critical thinking – however diffuse a concept – with the turn towards “learning outcomes” and other instrumental modes of knowledge transfer? in this context, the university is up for grabs. the kind of space of engagement it is going to be is hardly settled; the sort of space of dependence it is, is in flux. another way of phrasing marx’s pithy comment equating schoolhouses with sausage factories is to ask: just what kind of use value is the university? is it something like a public forum (as the oakland lawyer suggests), something like a space for community struggle and development (as with free hetherington), or a training ground (as with instrumentalized versions of community engagement)? is it a place for critical inquiry, or only for research directly relevant to “stakeholders” like corporations, donors, foundations, or militaries? or more accurately, what ought the balance between these be? within the city, what kind of space of dependence and what sort of space for engagement can the university be imagined to be? these are far from settled questions. the university in the city | 277 of course the struggle for the university will necessarily involve much more than reclaiming the campus for politics or reimagining community engagement. of course, neither the campus nor community engagement initiatives are neutral or disconnected from the broader forces of neoliberalization, corporatization and austerity, shaping the contemporary capitalist city. in this regard, it is worth remembering, and worth fighting to preserve, the fact that universities are not – or not only – sausage factories. they are, necessarily, spaces deeply dependent on their surroundings, which in turn depend on them, and they are, crucially, spaces of intense engagement, the contours of which are never fully decided, but always a scene of ongoing debate and struggle. references adams, s. (2014, june 16). starbucks announces it will give free education to thousands of workers. forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/16/starbucksannounces-it-will-give-a-free-college-education-to-thousandsof-workers/#7d59d2906e20 bousquet, m. (2008). how the university works. new york: new york university press. cox, k. (1998). spaces of dependence, spaces of engagement and the politics of scale, or: looking for local politics. political geography, 17(1), 1-23. draper, h. (1966). berkeley: the new student revolt. new york: grove press. draper, h. (1964). the mind of clark kerr. berkeley: independent socialists club, http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt009n973m/. fabricant, m and brier, s. (2016). austerity blues: fighting for the soul of public higher education. baltimore, ma: johns hopkins press. freedman, j. (2014, march 19). the hidden college problem, when universities not just students, take on debt, forbes. 278 | austerity urbanism and the social economy kerr, c; dunlop, j; harbison, f and myers, c. (1960). industrialization and industrial man. cambridge: harvard university press. kerr, c. (2001[1963]). the uses of the university. cambridge: cambridge university press. kingman, b. (2011). academic entrepreneurship and community engagement: scholarship in action and the syracuse miracle. ithaca: cornell university press. marx, k. (1979 [1867]). capital: a critique of political economy, volume 1. new york: international publishers company. mitchell, d. (2011). the entrepreneurial university and its discontents: or, why the university is no longer a public space (if it ever was). in zelizer, b., ed., making the university matter (pp. 154161). london: routledge. nelson, c. (1997). manifesto of a tenured radical. new york: new york university press. newfield, c. (2004). ivy and industry: business and the making of the american university, 1880-1980. durham, nc: duke university press. newfield, c. (2011). unmaking the public university: the forty-year assault on the middle class. cambridge: harvard university press. readings, b. (1996). the university in ruins. cambridge: harvard university press. smith, n. (2000). afterword: who rules the sausage factory? antipode, 32(3), 330-339. smith, n. (2008). comment: neo-liberalism – dominant but dead. focaal, 51,155-157. washburn, j. (2006). university, inc.: the corporate corruption of higher education. cambridge: basic books. the university in the city | 279 alternate routes book review kirp, david l. (2003) shakespeare, einstein, and the bottom line: the marketing of higher education cambridge: harvard up. isbn: 0674011465. 336 pages. linda s. joffe as the twenty-first century begins to bloom, perhaps no entity will metamorphose as much as higher education—and economic factors are clearly a major force driving these changes. the higher education act (set for renewal this year) allocated over $52 billion for 2002. the higher education complex, as a whole, expended well over $200 billion—that's roughly the gdp of the governor of california arnold schwarzenegger's native austria. what makes this topic of further import is it affects every one of us. we are students, parents or children of students, educators, taxpayers, and the recipients of university-led innovations. still, it is sometimes difficult to weave academia into our day-to-day lives, but david l. kirp comes to the rescue. his latest book, shakespeare, einstein, and the bottom line: the marketing ofhigher education, hit the bookshelves in november, and it's a must read for anyone who cares about education (who doesn't fit into this category?). while it would be impossible for anyone to write a 300-page treatise exploring the entirety of higher education economics, kirp does a remarkable job of synthesizing the information we ought to know. his prose is entertaining and scholarly (a rare combination). his writing style seamlessly integrates the opinions of derek bok (president of harvard university for a generation and a prolific author) and leslie nielsen (star of the naked gun series and a prolific comedian). kirp considers m.i.t. and devry university, research scientists and community college instructors. / 7h volume 20, 2004 chemins ahernatifs education specialists and average americans all will find much to contemplate, as well as a chuckle or two with titles like: "the new u," "the british are coming and going," and, my personal favorite, "kafka was an optimist." kirp never loses sight of his purpose—the economics of education—and he is extraordinarily balanced in his depictions. when he says "for better and for worse," you can count on realistic portrayals. as he reminds the reader in his introduction, "[i]t is important not to romanticize academe, not to slip into nostalgia for a time that really never was. dollars have always greased the wheels of american higher education." kirp focuses on four central areas of the academics-economics interplay: students as customers, administrative accounting, distance learning, and education as a profit-making venture. kirp's inclusion of economist arthur okun's warning, "there is a place for the market, but the market must be kept in its place," foreshadows the chapters' difficult questions of an ideal (or, at least, tolerable balance). in our capitalistic culture of "the customer is always right," referring to students as customers is a frightening proposal for many educators. kirp reminds us that a university education implies a student is "an acolyte whose preferences are to be formed, not a consumer whose preferences are to be satisfied." this is not a "storybook idea, but the university at its truest and best." kirp carefully includes little known—and quite telling—success stories as well as skeletons in the closet. for example, how many of us would know that when university of chicago partnered with unext.com, the latter's ceo was a trustee at the former? i'm not an expert in ethics, but this smells of major impropriety to me. on the other hand, kirp alerts us to the plight of a chicago physicist whose labs "were 'state, of the art, 1948,'" and reminds us that universities cannot survive without the infusion of money. in part ii, "management 101," kirp tackles administrators. even in this venue, kirp never forgets the world outside the ivory tower. he reminds the reader that, after the attacks on the world trade center towers, new york law school "became a place for firefighters and police officers to recover between shifts... for two weeks it was shuttered, and when it reopened, there wasn't even the illusion of normality.... some students in the evening division did daytime duty as firefighters and cops; one of them lost thirty-four co-workers." dean richard matasar volume 20, 2004 179 alternate routes stood compassionately at the helm. kirp also imparts matasar's theory of law school: "'commercialism is here, now, and it is not going away.... we are a business, deal with it.'" more importantly, part ii considers the ramifications of "outsourcing" and its partner, "revenue center management" (rcm). kirp's examples quickly transform me to my undergraduate days, and i contemplate (less than fondly) the cafeterias and bookstore. when i left university of florida in 1983, we were reveling in the newly installed salad bar that replaced, to some degree, the uninspired but always greasy gray grub that replaced our previous connection with food—home cooking. today, food courts abound and subway, boston market, and burger king (this generation's version of home cooking) are responsible for students' meals. memories ofmy college bookstore prompt images of milelong lines and surly service from employees who knew they were "the only game in town." today, barnes & noble staff working in campus locations are required to provide the same level of customer service as they do in the chic gallery mall location. residence halls, health care, maintenance, and a myriad of other services have followed suit. thus, the theory goes, students enjoy customer-level quality, the franchises make money, and the university can concentrate on academics. all that glitters is not gold, though, and outsourcing and rcm do, indeed, seep into the classroom. reliance on adjunct faculty is one example of outsourcing; and rcm, kirp believes, has led to "academically dubious behavior." as one example, he offers a blurb from an ad at usc proclaiming: "'tired of reading shakespeare? kill off your [general education] requirement, sit back and eat popcorn, and watch it being performed.'" as kirp reminds us, general education courses "enroll many students and are taught by adjunct instructors, [consequently] they are money machines." whether they add to the public good—requiring a socially effective, civic-minded, literate community—is another story. the remaining chapters in shakespeare, einstein, and the bottom line are equally balanced and relevant. in fact, the only chapter with which i have mixed feelings is the one addressing for-profit universities. in my opinion, kirp is too fair to an industry that can cause tremendous hazard to its students, taxpayers, and society in general (but that is addressed in my own book). still, kirp is among the most passionate writers today. his law degree (and subsequent volunteer work for the aclu), his journalism background (illustrated in his ever objective 180 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternates reporting), and his thirty year tenure at the goldman school of public policy, university of california-berkeley blend into another (his fourteenth) remarkable book. this one ends with the following query: "[the university] might conceivably evolve into just another business, the metaphor of the higher education 'industry' brought to life in a holding company that could be called universitas, inc. if there is a less dystopian future, one that revives the soul of this old institution, who is to advance it—and if not now, then when?" we all must advance it, and i suggest we begin by reading shakespeare, einstein, and the bottom line. now. volume 20, 2004 181 316 | climate change and its discontents book review don’t leave your friends behind: concrete ways to support families in social justice movements and communities by victoria law, china martens (eds.). oakland, california: pm press, 2012. $17.95 us, paper. isbn: 978-1-60486-396-3. pages: 1-234. reviewed by kevin partridge1 carleton university don’t leave your friends behind is a book that arises from the practices of anti-oppression activists largely based in the united states. the contributors to this book are arguing that parents and children need to be central to movements for social change and not relegated to the periphery. it is focused on experiences of inclusion and exclusion of families from activist practices. these practices rallies, marches, protests are often understood to be the activities of primarily young, ablebodied and economically independent individuals who have time and flexibility to attend and organize such events. this book offers thoughts and stories from people who are trying to create more inclusive spaces within an economic and social system they oppose as well as within the movements that are aligned with their opposition. raising children is posited as a necessary foundation for social change and a valuable source of energy and inspiration for organizations that advocate for this change. the social reproduction that occurs through the act of bringing new people into the world and socializing them as they mature is seen here as an inherently political act. the authors put forward different methods for including children and their caregivers within groups that advocate for social change. the editors of this book intend that it be used as a resource for people within activist communities and particularly for those who are intent on creating non-hierarchical structures they hope can and will supplant the 1 kevin partridge is a phd candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university. his doctoral research focuses on alternative constructions of genders and masculinities. he completed his master of arts at simon fraser university exploring women in the vancouver punk scene of the 1980s. he can be reached at kevin.partridge@ carleton.ca mailto:kevin.partridge@carleton.ca mailto:kevin.partridge@carleton.ca book review: don’t leave your friends behind | 317 dominant structures, both economic and social, that they identify as the root cause of oppression. one of the primary means of oppression they oppose is to exclude people who are identified as ‘lesser’ or ‘othered’ by characteristics such as ability, appearance, wealth and age. they identify children and their caregivers as being a group that is not only excluded from positions of self-determination by dominant social forces but also within movements that do progressive work. they are concerned about the absence of spaces for children and the problems of providing childcare amongst social justice groups. changes must be made to allow both parents and children to be a part of the political work around which these groups are organized. this book also serves as a reflection and expression of the many challenges of the ‘behind-the-protests’ work of political organizing amongst and inside activist communities. it covers a broad range of different groups with over fifty short essays written by a variety of activists mostly based in the us, with a few additional voices from canada and the uk. the different narratives are organized in seven chapters. the editors of the book arrange the chapters so that they progress from descriptions of the many problems that people encounter when they are involved in social justice groups towards possible solutions to these problems. this allows the book to provide an outline of a broadly unifying project that can be applied in many different spaces. this structure is designed to motivate readers to look towards solutions that include as many activists as possible rather than dwell on differences and difficulties. each chapter features a number of independent essays that differ in style, focus and even language. one chapter on transformative justice and childcare is presented in a graphic narrative form. several chapters contain a mix of english and spanish that reflects the specific and dominant us context of much of the book. the benefit of this format is that there are likely to be specific chapters that appeal to many potential readers of the book. this matches the intent of the editors that the book be useful to diverse people who can pick out certain contributions that are helpful in their specific situations and ignore or browse those that are not relevant. the drawback to this format is that the book does not have a clear overall analysis or argument. consequently, although the editors have tried to slot these various works into a broader schema, there is a great deal of crossover, complexity and even contradictions between the various pieces. given the variety of political analyses referenced within the book, it is not a surprise that it is difficult to discern any broad conclusions. the book could have greatly benefited from some editorial material that added a greater 318 | climate change and its discontents understanding of the context of the many disparate chapters. it seems to offer an implicit critique of certain social justice ‘movements’ without much analysis of why these problems exist and how they connect to the broader struggles in which they are located. while all the authors may be able to agree on the importance of an idea such as ‘inclusivity’, their experiences and analyses of exclusion and ideas for being inclusive vary considerably. this may be because there is a larger political focus on creating a community of diversity but this is not made very explicit within the book. some of individual authors advocate anarchist, vegan, christian, and/or feminist analyses that can all make interesting contributions to political thought but the book as a whole does not convey a cohesive political critique. readers who are not already engaged with these discussions and debates might find this lack of cohesion makes the book difficult to read as there are only a few framing remarks throughout the book. however, this format is helpful in showcasing many disparate approaches to social activism around children. for instance, there are chapters on schooling that advocate avoiding the public school system and others that describe different ways to navigate and advocate within public schools and in the interests of children and their caregivers. it is an excellent resource for those who may not have personal access to such a vibrant and wideranging political conversation and offers social researchers a set of intriguing and useful primary documents created by activists who are grappling with practical and specific aspects of organizing and building solidarity. this book allows access to debates that help shape the many different forms of social justice organizations and fuel the creative process that is required to positively resist oppression and fight for social change. canons, publishers, and literary nationalism: toward a sociological perspective ian chunn canadian centre for studies in publishing departm ent of comm unication simon fraser university "our age has been canon-minded," remarks hugh kenner (1984), and the following notes are intended to participate in what dermot mccarthy (1991) has called canadian literature's "founding monomania," its nationalistic premises. studies of canons and canon-formation have been something of a growth industry in academia for over a decade, with most of the action taking place in the humanities. the publisher's role has never been adequately stressed, however, and it is toward correcting that omission that the present study has been undertaken. the locus classicus for an overview of the topic is the pair of issues of critical inquiry later issued from the university of chicago press as canons (1984). the essays contained therein are rife with definitions of the key concept, one of the most appealing of which is kernan's: "to mean (roughly) an enduring exemplary collection of books, buildings and paintings authorized in some way for contemplation, admiration, interpretation, and the determination of value," (1984:177). his interest is in music, where of course the term 'canon' carries a pun, but which is instructive to consider in comparison to literature, if only to see how much as a given we accept the centrality of certain 'classical' composers. we, in the twentieth-century, have cultivated nineteenthcentury 'masterpieces': the idea of a canon had taken hold powerfully during the nineteenth century.... beethoven always stayed at dead center., members of non-teutonic nations grew increasingly restive over the difficulty of gaining places for their heroes. for from hoffman's time on, the ideology which nurtured that growth included a strong component of nationalism along with historicism [and] organicism — a concept applied not only to individual artistic structures but also to the canon itself. (kernan, 1984:184) alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 113 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 the contested nature of the canon is a function of its concern with values, which are always radically contingent and the product of the dynamics of an economic system (herrnstein smith, 1984:15). every literary work is the product of: a complex evaluative feedback loop that embraces not only the ever-shifting economy of the artist's own interests and resources. ..[but] also. ..all the other diverse forms of evaluation by which the work will be subsequently marked and its value reproduced and transmitted; that is, the innumerable implicit acts of evaluation performed by those who. as may happen, publish the work, purchase, preserve, display, quote, cite, translate, perform, allude to, and imitate it. ..and also such activities as the awarding of literary prizes, the commissioning and publishing of articles about certain works, the compiling of anthologies, the writing of introductions, the construction of departmental curricula, and the drawing up of class reading lists. (herrnstein smith, 1984:29) herrnstein smith makes it clear that canon-formation is very much a social process, and chandler (1984) suggests this invites a historicizing approach. to counteract this tendency, he supplies some of raymond williams' thoughts on 'tradition', claiming that mutatis mutandis, the same might be said of the canon. we tend to see tradition: not as an active and continuous selection and reselection, which even at its latest point in time is always a specific set of choices, but now more conveniently as an object, a projected realitv, with which we have come to terms on its terms, even though these terms are always and must be valuations, the selections and omissions, of other men [sic]. (chandler, 1984:197) a deep-rooted tradition in the west is that of the judeo-christian bible, which the distance of time and popular unfamiliarity have homogenized into an unexamined monolith. yet it may be seen as a paradigm of the questions of canon-formation and the promulgation of canonical texts, in that its writings may have been evaluated not according to 'literary criteria' but according to power criteria (bruns, 1984:78). tracing the outlines of what may be considered an early form of nationalism, bruns develops the conflict that existed between the priests and the prophets. bruns cites ellis rifkin on why deuteronomy was promulgated as an authoritative text: "so long as the prophets had the freedom to speak out in yahweh's name, no institution was safe, and 114 chunn/canons no authority, other than prophecy, sacrosanct," (bruns, 1984:79). in response to this situation, the priests of the second temple founded a theocracy which resolved the crisis of yahwism by placing its authority in a book (bruns, 1984:80). prophets were now limited; only from the authority of the pentateuch could they speak. another 'national' literature was formed a few hundred years later in augustan rome. the imperial capital attracted talents such as ovid, horace, propertius, and the immediately-canonized virgil. these authors encompassed all varieties of poetic mode, and their literature drew its basic impetus from another culture: they blended greek elements with their roman themes in what seems to have been "a deliberate attempt to create a roman national literature to rival the artistic monuments of classical and archaic greece," (zetzel, 1984:113,107). one of the most successful models was virgil's epic about the trojan founder of rome, aeneas: [0]ne work that has always been considered canonical. ..is virgil's aeneid. it is canonical in that it has been, since the poet's death in 19 b.c., a school text and thus a part of the literary vocabulary of all educated people; it is canonical, in t.s. eliot's refined and delicate definition of the 'classic', in exhibiting an extraordinary range of sympathies and sensibilities in a pure and elegant diction; and it is canonical in what might be called the ancient sense (although the word 'canonical' was not applied to literature until the eighteenth century), as an epic poem of broad scale and heroic subject, the highest ana most important of all literary genres. (zetzel, 1984:107) by the eighteenth century, vernacular literature in english "had accumulated enough history to be thought about historically," (kenner, 1984:364). thomas warton's history of english poetry, and samuel johnson's lives of english poets served patriotic and political needs, establishing a specifically national rather than global canon of 'classics', and defining the superiority of the national character (chandler, 1984:202). it is true that richard mulcaster had argued as early as 1582 that english had become acceptable as a 'literary' language because its grammar had by then been extensively studied. his elementary coincided with the spirit of elizabethan nationalism, and its thesis would have suited those keen on increasing the english military and political presence in europe (court, 1992:12). english as a language was also 115 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 finding a "doctrinal centre of authority" among dissenters. however, what finally produced the official recognition of english literature in the universities was the belief, promoted first by adam smith, that the study of the english language and its literature could be treated as an academic discipline, rather than as a simple exercise in the selective reading ofgreat literary' works of the british past. ...smith believed english literary study was ideally suited to meet the challenges of industrialism and the increasing political influence of a rising commercial bourgeoisie. (court, 1992:13). the written word had greater persuasive power in the industrial age, and industrialists conceived of literary education as a form of assimilation into an all-encompassing national identity. in fact, this literary nationalism was perceived as an opportunity for the reconciliation of all social classes (court, 1992:40). another society keen to reconcile classes in a professed democracy was the breakaway republic, the united states of america. eighteenth century anthologies there fostered a literary nationalism, motivated by a desire "to build america's sense of identity by gathering an independent national literature to match and strengthen the country's newly achieved political independence. ...the term 'american literature', rarely used before the 1780s, became commonplace after the 1783 treaty of paris," (golding, 1984:281). in the nineteenth century, literary nationalism became even more programmatic, with american critics calling for a national literature and praising it wholesale. eager to convince british skeptics that an american poetry was developing, anthologists presented it in its historical range and claimed for it a moral advantage, superior to perceived european decadence (golding, 1984:281). during the 1820s, a significant expansion of poetry writing was precipitated by this widespread literary nationalism, but by the end of the century, with the country's sense of political and literary accomplishment established, supportive anthologies documenting "the unique national characteristics and moral purity of american verse" were no longer needed (golding, 1984:294). american literature was no longer "english literature that happened to get written somewhere else," fkcnncr, 1984:370). indeed, american literature flourished in the twentieth century, and while modern american poetry has devolved largely to the university 116 chunn/canons presses and the academy, contemporary american fiction has achieved recognition through profitability and the book market (ohmann, 1984:378). characterized as "a nearly closed circle of marketing and consumption," (ohmann, 1984:380) the path to pre-canonical status for a novel may be sketched out as follows: it was selected, in turn, by an agent, an editor, a publicity department, a review editor (especially the one at the sunday new york times), the new york metropolitan book buyers whose patronage was necessary to commercial success, critics writing for gatekeeper intellectual journals, academic critics, and college teachers. (ohmann, 1984:385) by contrast, the situation in canada is a good deal simpler (mathews, 1991:155). commercial success is not required (e.g. as for me and my house), nor is best-sellerdom (e.g. the mountain and the valley). an elite group of trend-setting journals need not single out the work. it is the end of the process that is most important, and that is "the simultaneous embracing of the work by the classroom and the academic journal," (mathews, 1991:155). while those who control the u.s. scene may seem small in number, in canada it amounts to little more than university teachers of english who profess some degree of interest in canadian literature. the marginal position of such a discipline would hardly have surprised matthew arnold who scoffed, "imagine the face of philip or alexander at hearing of a primer of macedonian literature: are we to have a primer of canadian literature too, and a primer of australian?" (cited in surette, 1991:21). nevertheless, we have moved a great distance from arnold's position, and today it is quite legitimate to consider canadian literature and to ask about forces involved in determining its canon. ideally such an examination would involve an analysis of market forces, of the publishing and bookselling industries, of government attempts to patronize a national literature and its supporters, and of the dissemination of literary value in newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, and books (lecker, 1991:4). my current research concentrates on one aspect of the publishing industry, literary' publishing, and its interaction with governments, to clarify the canon-forming process in english canada. even though the process of canon-formation in canadian literature may have largely taken place since the late 1960s (scobie, 117 alternate routes, lolume 10, 1993 1991:57), it is nevertheless the case that almost as soon as english canadians began writing, they began to try to define canadian literature (bennett, 1991:131). once again, poetry anthologies prove an enlightening source of commentary. in 1864, eh. dewart claimed that "a national literature is an essential element in the formation of a national character. it is not merely the record of a country's mental progress: it is the expression of its intellectual life, the bond of national unity, and the guide of national energy," (cited in mccarthy, 1991:33). by 1889, wd. lighthall had noticed a new "tone of exultation and confidence which the singers have assumed since confederation," (cited in mccarthy, 1991:35) and by the mid-1920s logan and french perceived "how, gradually, (canadian writers) expressed in literature the slowly emerging consciousness of a national spirit and a national destiny in the dominion," (mccarthy, 1991:38). the national imagination coincides with the nationalist spirit, and cultural nationalism stands as the subtext of canadian literary history. lome pierce of the ryerson press echoes dewart's observation concerning literature and national unity: "'the true source of our national greatness' will not be understood until french and english authors share equally in any attempt to trace the evolution of our national spirit," (cited in mccarthy, 1991:44). in truth, a sense of frustration at having to share the canadian literary world with a large population group who wrote in another language was one of the few common grounds between french and english critics when they discussed the idea of a national literature (macdonald, 1992:100). canon-formation is an intrinsically conservative process (scobie, 1991 :57), and the tendency to resist change is greatest in national canons, as they function to define a national literature in turn tied to the sense of nationhood. national identity, the growth of which seems to have been the 'plot' of canada's national history, has been a crucial feature through the nation-building era experienced since the nineteenth century (bennett, 1991:134): while expressions of concern about the need for a canon are a tradition in canada the number of people who have been involved with its creation and preservation has been relatively small. defining the canon has been of real importance to canadian writers, and to a few academics, journalists, and publishers. however, the growth of governmental interests in the development and maintenance of canadian culture, an interest that has been translated into funding for the arts, has made the 118 chunn canons canon an important institution. the expansion of the canada council and provincial arts councils, and the commercialization of things 'canadian' as socially valuable have all given new and more general immediacy to the questions of what the what the important works in our literature are and by what standards we make judgements ...with the expansion of the university system during the 1960s and with the expansion of the study of canadian literature within the universities that took place at the same time, canadian writing has assumed a new role in the marketplace. (bennett, 1991:147) the elucidation of the publisher's role in these developments will help us understand the dynamics of cultural production in a country where such activity has traditionally been marginalized. references bennett, donna. (1991) "conflicted vision: a consideration of canon and genre in english-canadian literature." in lecker (ed.) canadian canons: essays in literary value. toronto: university of toronto press; 131-49. bruns, gerald l. (1984) "canon and power in the hebrew scriptures." in von hallberg (ed.) canons. chicago: university of chicago press; 65-83. chandler james. (1984) "the pope controversy: romantic poetics and the english canon." in von hallberg (ed.) canons. chicago: university of chicago press; 197-225. court, franklin e. (1992) institutionalizing english literature: the culture and politics of literary study, 1750-1900. stanford: stanford university press. golding, alan c. (1984) "a history of american poetry anthologies." in von hallberg (ed.) canons. chicago: university of chicago press; 279-307. herrnstein smith, barbara. (1984) "contingencies of value." in von hallberg (ed.) canons. chicago: university ofchicago press; 5-40. 119 alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 kenner, hugh. (1984} "the making of the modernist canon." in von hallberg (ed.) canons. chicago: university of chicago press; 36375. kernan joseph. (1984) "a few canonic variations." in von hallberg (ed.) lemons. chicago: university of chicago press; 177-95. lecker, robert, (ed.) (1991) canadian canons: essays in literary value. toronto: university of toronto press. mathews lawrence. (1991) "calgary, canonization and class: deciphering list b." in lecker (ed.) canadian canons: essays in literary value. toronto: university of toronto press; 150-66. mccarthy, dermot. (1991) "early canadian literary histories and the function of a canon." in lecker (ed.) canadian canons: essays in literary value. toronto: university of toronto press; 30-45. macdonald. mary lu. (1992) literature and society in the canadas, 1817-1850. queenston, ont: edwin mellen press. ohmann, richard. (1984) "the shaping of a canon: u.s. fiction, 1960-75. in von hallberg (ed.) canons. chicago: university of chicago press; 377-401. scobie, stephen. (1991) "leonard cohen, phyllis webb, and the end(s) of modernism." in lecker (edj canadian canons: essays in literary value. toronto: university of toronto press; 57-70. surette, leon. (1991) "creating the canadian canon." in lecker (ed.) canadian canons: essays in literary value. toronto: university of toronto press; 17-29. von hallberg, robert, (ed.) (1984) canons. chicago: university of chicago press. zetzel, james e.g. (1984) "recreating the canon: augustian poetry and the alexandrian past." in von hallberg (ed.) canons. chicago: university of chicago press; 197-229. 120 finally the right to strike | 213 finally the right to strike: but what about organizing? patricia mcdermott1 abstract: the saskatchewan federation of labour decision from the supreme court of canada (january, 2015) is a landmark case in that, after a twenty-eight year judicial lead-up, it finally confirms the right to strike as guaranteed by the charter’s section 2(d) freedom of association. the decision found the provincial government’s unilateral authority over designating essential services during a work stoppage to be unconstitutional. the decision is indeed a victory for unions that goes far beyond the particular issues in the case and will have ramifications for years to come. this paper presents a preliminary look at the decision and discusses four interrelated areas of labour law that will be affected. the downside of this decision, however, is the finding that amendments to saskatchewan’s labour relations act that are designed to make organizing more difficult, are constitutional. this decision continues a trend in labour legislation that will undoubtedly help undermine the much needed organizing in saskatchewan in the face of declining union density, particularly for the fast growing cadres of precarious workers who need unions. this aspect of the decision, which represents the loss of a rare opportunity for the court to support organizing, will also be discussed briefly. keywords: right to strike; freedom of association; charter rights; essential services; back-to-work legislation the supreme court of canada’s (scc) saskatchewan federation of labour (sfl) decision has been touted in the media as “a stunning victory” (fine, g & m, 2015) for unions and their supporters, a description that is indeed justified. the purpose of this paper is to provide a preliminary look at this decision in which the court has finally accepted the right to strike as constitutionally protected by the charter. the legal impact of sfl on four interrelated areas of labour law will be explored: the designation of work as ‘essential’; assessing whether legislation can clear the section 1 (s.1) test of a justified limit to a constitutionally 1 patricia mcdermott is associate professor in the department of social science and the school of gender studies at york university. she would like to thank the reviewers for their helpful comments. 214 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages protected right; the issue of what constitutes a strike; and, perhaps most importantly, back to work and strike prohibition legislation. the evolving case law on s.2(d) in the industrial relations arena concerns the rights of union members with regard to the primary goals of their association: forming and joining unions, engaging in collective bargaining, and the focus here, striking. the facts of sfl involve the saskatchewan government’s legislation prohibiting certain government workers, deemed as ‘essential’, from striking. the decision represents the final shift in the scc’s twenty-eight year jurisprudential journey with regard to the right to strike. in 1987 the scc held that s.2(d) only protected rights for individuals and now sfl has finally affirmed it protects collective rights as well. as we shall see, however, although sfl is a ‘victory’ and indeed a ‘stunning’ one, it does come with another message that the court is not ready to move towards an equally important goal of helping to facilitate the much needed movement of people into unions. the decision will undoubtedly encourage ever more restrictions in the area of organizing as other provincial governments continue this decades old trend (bartkiw, 2009/10; 2008). the trade union amendement act (tuaa) will also be briefly discussed, a ruling that certainly dampens the celebrations for sfl for those interested in increasing the rate of unionization. in sfl the scc states that unions must have the right to negotiate the designation of which workers are considered “essential” and therefore required to work during a strike. if negotiations break down over this issue, the decision stresses that there has to be a fair, alternate dispute resolution process that can meet the tests involved in clearing the charter’s s.1 requirements, namely that a restriction on a right must be “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society” – a topic to which we will return shortly. sfl’s position on the right to strike goes far beyond the issue of essential services and, as noted, finds a charter guaranteed right to strike within the context of collective bargaining. in december 2007, the newly elected conservative government, the saskatchewan party, introduced two pieces of legislation: the public service essential services act (psesa) and the trade union amendment act (tuaa). both statutes became law on may 14, 2008. we will first explore the outcome in psesa since it is with regard to this act that the saskatchewan federation of labour was successful. sfl was a much-monitored case as it made its way up the hierarchy of canada’s court system. there were fifteen appellants along with the major litigant, the saskatchewan federation of labour, twenty-seven interveners that included six attorney generals and twenty-one union affiliates. finally the right to strike | 215 the public service essential services act the purpose of the psesa was to fill what the scc described as a “gap” in the law in that prior to the introduction of this act “strikes where regulated on an ad hoc basis” (para 52). although the court notes a socalled “gap” in the law, in fact the province’s policy represented a decision to allow an “unfettered strike” regime that permitted unions and employers to negotiate the parameters of their strikes and lockouts, rather than a “controlled strike” model in which government intervention becomes the norm (adell, 2013). a number of prominent strikes provided the rationale for the newly elected government in saskatchewan introducing this legislation, namely the 1999 province-wide strike by 8,400 members of the nurses union and a protracted strike in 2001 by health care workers. in the winter of december 2006/07 a third strike involving highway workers, snowplow operators, and correctional officers, the court noted, “sparked concerns about public safety” (para 6). the government decided there was need for a mechanism that would help designate which employees are doing “essential” work and thus required to continue working while their co-workers are permitted to go on strike. on the question of the constitutionality of the psesa, the trial judge ruled that given the scc’s recent interpretation of the scope of s.2(d) in two cases bc health services (2007) and fraser (2011), “the right to strike is a fundamental freedom protected by s.2(d) of the charter” (para 18) and further that the prohibition on this right contained in the psesa “substantially interfered” with the rights of the affected employees (para 19). his reasoning was: the government of saskatchewan failed to engage in meaningful consultation or negotiation with respect to essential services; good-faith negotiations are not possible when “one side has the capacity to impose an agreement”; the definitions of essential services and public employers are both “overbroad”; and, finally when compared to analogous legislation in other jurisdictions, the psesa is uniquely restrictive and devoid of both review mechanisms and alternate means of addressing workplace issues – such as binding arbitration (para 19). the saskatchewan court of appeal unanimously found the psesa to be constitutional and concluded that “[w]hile the court’s freedom of association jurisprudence has evolved in recent years, it has not shifted far enough, or clearly enough, to warrant a ruling by this court that the right to strike is protected by s. 2(d) of the charter” (para 23). justice rosalie abella writing for the 5-2 majority of the scc stated “i agree with the trial judge”, not the court of appeal: “… the right of employees to 2 unless otherwise indicated all para (paragraph) references refer to the sfl decision of the scc. 216 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages strike is vital to protecting the meaningful process of collective bargaining within s. 2(d).” as the trial judge observed, without the right to strike, “a constitutionalized right to bargain collectively is meaningless” (para 24). abella further finds that within the context of its role in the collective bargaining process “the strike is unique and fundamental” (para 52). following the then chief justice dickson’s minority opinion in alberta reference (1987), which she comments “has recently proven to be a magnetic guide” (para 63), she notes that dickson’s challenge to the majority’s ruling that constitutional protection only applies to individuals, was the starting point for the judicial evolution towards the “more generous approach” in sfl (para 33). dickson argued that “the very nature of a strike, and its raison d’etre, is to influence the employer by joint action which would be ineffective if it were carried out by an individual.” effective constitutional protection of employees in the collective bargaining process requires…“protection of their freedom to withdraw collectively their services, subject to s.1 of the charter” (para 49 & 59). alberta reference is one of a the original so-called “labour trilogy”, a set of 1987 scc decisions, including rwdsu v saskatchewan a case involving back to work legislation in the dairy sector, and psac v canada, which involved a challenge to the federal government’s imposition of wage restraint legislation. these three cases found that s.2(d) contained neither a right to bargaining collectively nor a right to strike.3 bernard adell, proposed another “labour triolgy”, consisting of: dunmore (2001), health services (2007) and fraser (2011) – the three decisions that were relied upon in sfl to shift the jurisprudence toward the final ruling on s.2(d) (adell, 2013, 415). indeed many observers now refer to the three january 2015 decisions, meredith, mounted police, and sfl as the ‘latest trilogy’ that has, after twenty-eight years, established a clear charter guarantee of a right to strike. robert j. sharpe and kent roach (2013, 193-204), panitch and swartz (2003,51-83), and paul cavalluzzo (faraday, et. al., 2012) provide excellent overviews of the jurisprudence leading up to sfl, a full survey of which is beyond the scope of this paper. as we shall see, the issues in the four areas of labour law that will be significantly impacted by this decision are quite closely interrelated and have been isolated for the purpose of exploring the particular issue under discussion. 3 the ‘labour trilogy’ generated a great deal of legal analysis. see harry arthurs, paul cavalluzzo, geoffrey england, and judy fudge in queen’s law journal, 13 (1988). finally the right to strike | 217 the definition of an essential service the psesa mandates that a public employer and the union are to negotiate an “essential services agreement” to govern how public services are to be maintained in the event of a work stoppage. if negotiations break down the public employer has the authority “to unilaterally designate, by ‘notice’, which public services it considers to be essential” along with the classifications of employees required to continue working during a strike, including the names and number of employees in each classification (para 11). a key factor in sfl is the fact that the psesa contains, as noted, a very broad definition of “essential services”, namely those whose work is necessary to enable the public employer to prevent: danger to life, health or safely; the destruction or serious deterioration of machinery, equipment, or premises; serious environmental damage; and disruption of the courts (para 9). in addition to the provincial government as employer, the statute covers all broader public sector employers including all crown corporations, health service agencies, both provincial universities and the saskatchewan polytechnic, and all municipalities (para10). the scc found, again in agreement with the trial judge, that this coverage is far too broad and questioned whether, for example, a university or a polytechnic college, and every crown corporation, including the liquor control board, engages in work that should be considered ‘genuinely’ essential. the trial judge thus proposed the much narrower definition commonly accepted in international law, and now definitively endorsed by the scc: the jurisprudence under ilo convention no.87, the icsecr (sic) and the iccpr has been consistent… each of these instruments has been interpreted as enshrining the right to strike, and their respective supervisory bodies have insisted that the right to strike may be restricted or prohibited: (a) in the public service only for the public servants exercising authority in the name of the state; (b) in essential services in the strict sense of the term (that is, services the interruption of which would endanger the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population) (emphasis added); or (c) in the event of an acute national emergency and for a limited period of time (para 86). 218 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages this definition represents a significant shift in the court’s approach to “what is an essential service” in that it conclusively makes canada a jurisdiction that accepts the international definition endorsed by the ilo. this move towards employing international standards was encouraged when the majority in b.c. health (2007) stated that: “…the charter should be presumed to provide at least as great a level of protection as is found in the international human rights documents that canada has ratified.” (para 70). the court’s assertion that the international definition of essential services should be used was an issue raised not just in alberta reference (1987) but in another ‘labour trilogy’ decision, rwdsu v. saskatchewan (1987), which contains a significant debate between chief justice dickson and justice wilson that will undoubtedly continue to be helpful for the ongoing discussions concerning what constitutes an essential service. since this decision involved both legislation that temporarily prohibited strikes, as well as the “demonstrably justified” limit under s.1, it could be discussed in the two sections below on these topics, however here we want to highlight its contribution to the issue of what constitutes an essential service. although dickson and wilson agreed that s.2(d) protected the right to strike, they disagreed on whether the legislation could be saved by the s.1 review. perhaps wilson’s dissent in rwdsu will prove to be as ‘magnetic’ a guide as dickson’s minority opinion in alberta reference (1987) was for sfl? dickson argued that a ban on strikes could be justified if the potential economic harm to a third party was “so massive and immediate and very focused in its intensity” while wilson viewed this reliance on economic harm to overreach the consensus in international law on the limits to the right to strike. she noted that the objective of the impugned legislation was to protect dairy farmers from economic harm and then cites dickson himself in alberta reference (1987) pointing out that he supported the use of the international standard for a strike as repeatedly set out by the committee on freedom of association (cfa) of the ilo. she continues that dickson was now sanctioning: “…the abrogation of the freedom to strike when the economic interests of a particular group are threatened. the implications of this for the collective bargaining process are extremely far-reaching since some measure of damage to the economic interests of the parties and the public is an inevitable concomitant (of) every work stoppage. indeed, the effectiveness of this negotiating tool depends on it (para 51).” finally the right to strike | 219 wilson further notes that although she agrees that economic regulation is a significant tool for governments, if it is to be done at the expense of our fundamental freedoms, “then it must, in my view, be done in response to a serious threat to the well-being of the body politic or a substantial segment of it”, again referring to the internationally accepted definition of an essential service (para 56, rwdsu v saskatchewan). she argues that the evidence regarding the harm to dairy farmers falls far short of establishing economic harm of the nature needed for it to come within the ilo’s definition. she is prescient in pointing out that legislative definitions of what constitutes an essential service “have gradually expanded to cover fire-fighters, and police and more recently the media, teachers” and so on, and asks whether this expansion of the definition of “essential” is “the route through which increasing government intervention in labour disputes is to be justified?” (rwdsu para 54-58). she further argues that she is not convinced that the “provision of milk” is an essential service. “milk is undoubtedly an important food product but there may be other food products which are an adequate substitute” and finally that it is possible, that “milk would be imported from outside the province to supply the saskatchewan consumer” (rwdsu para 71). after sfl the court will have to assess whether work is ‘genuinely’ essential and not a matter of inconvenience, a strategy designed to weaken the union’s bargaining strength, or as wilson suggests, the route for government to intervene in labour disputes. sfl also raises a relatively new issue in the canadian industrial relations setting – whether workers that are designated as ‘essential’ should also have to do non-essential work when carrying out their duties during a work stoppage (para 13). as part of the psesa scheme the saskatchewan labour relations board was given jurisdiction to review the number of employees required to work in a particular classification, but had no authority to review whether any service is ‘genuinely essential’, whether specific employees are being reasonably selected, or whether they are doing a job that is entirely or only partly “essential” (para 13). these questions will have to be addressed in any existing or future legislation of this nature. the acceptance of the international standard of what constitutes an “essential service” represents one aspect of sfl that will have a lasting impact on labour law, and hopefully labour legislation, now that it has been so definitively endorsed by the supreme court. k.d. ewing’s recent discussion of the sfl reminds us of canada’s extremely poor record in the eyes of the international labour organization’s (ilo) supervisory bodies particularly the committee on freedom of association (cfa). he notes 220 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages that canada has more cfa complaints launched against it than any other g7 country, which is “even more notable” since it is the country with the smallest population. there have been 98 cfa complaints against canada for issues that include an array of alleged violations of international standards to which it is a signatory. one prominent criticism of canada by the cfa is the banning of strikes in services that are not essential, such as education, ferry services, postal services, air travel, and so on. (ewing, 2015, 546) panitch and swartz also noted canada’s poor record in their from content to coercion and argued that since the canadian state’s “shift towards legislative interventions against labour rights” in the 1970s, canada accounted for 33% of all complaints before the cfa from 1974-91, a sharp rise from the 1954-73 period in which canada only accounted for only 4% of all complaints. (2003, 54) they also commented that: “...ilo decisions have generally been ignored by canadian governments, a sorry testament to the degree of dissonance between canada’s formal adherence to international declarations on labour rights and their actual embodiment in the practices of the canadian state” (2003, 58). meeting the section one challenge a further criticism by the international labour law community has been imposing legislation that either prohibits strikes or orders strikers back to work in services that are truly essential, without an appropriate alternative dispute mechanism to replace the removal of the right to strike precisely the case in sfl (ewing, 2015, 546-47). the necessity of honouring international legal standards to which canada is a signatory, was raised by dickson’s dissent in the alberta reference (1987). meeting the requirements of s.1 would essentially involve providing an alternate, fair, and independent method of dispute resolution for those denied their constitutional right to strike. as abella points out, sfl did not engage in a s.1 analysis since the full ban on striking in itself rendered the psesa to be “substantially interfering” with the guarantee of freedom of association. she does note, however, that when essential services legislation provides for such a mechanism “it would more likely be justified under s.1 of the charter” and further that “in my view the failure of any such mechanism in the psesa is what ultimately renders its constitutionality impermissible” (para 25, emphasis added). one of the clear impacts of sfl on future litigation will be to move the focus to s.1. governments both as employers and legislators will have to meet the onus of ensuring that these alternate methods, primarily systems of compulsory interest arbitration, will be implemented in such a finally the right to strike | 221 manner that they will be found to be in compliance with the standards set for s.1 not always an easy task. the first question that must be answered under the oakes test (1986) that sets out how the scc implements s.1, is whether the purpose of the legislation or provision is “pressing and substantial.” if it is found to be, then the court or tribunal will consider the next question whether the reason for overriding a constitutional freedom is “proportional” and “rationally connected” to the pressing and substantial purpose. in other words whether the legislation/provision is “minimally impairing” or could the objective of the legislation be achieved with less restriction on guaranteed rights or does it “overreach.” it is also noted in sfl that alternate dispute resolution mechanisms have not been considered “as sensitive to the associational interests of employees as the traditional strike/lock-out mechanism” (para 60 citing dickson in rwdsu v. saskatchewan, pp. 476-77) and such imposed settlements decrease the effectiveness of the collective bargaining process over time since they do not tend to be regarded as accepted by employees when compared to those that are collectively bargained (para 60 citing adell, grant and ponak, 2001). further there is also the belief that strikes are essentially good for democracy. pierre verge, for example, has argued that the right to strike is fundamentally important to “collective autonomy … and the democratic vitality of society as a whole” (cited in translation, adell, 2013, 414). indeed the theme of democracy runs throughout sfl particularly with regard to the assessment of s.1 solutions for denying the charter right to strike in that these must be “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” jamie cameron has argued that despite the court having been “notoriously rigid” about the oakes test and its “status as a universal standard of reasonable limits”, it has been “applied flexibly from case to case and guarantee to guarantee.” she suggests that the court should develop “customized standards” such as ones that would apply a specific test to determine whether a restriction on the right to strike is justified. (cameron, 2019/10, 310-11) wilson’s dissent in another labour trilogy decision, psac v. canada (1987), will hopefully offer another guide on the issue of meeting the s.1 challenge. this case involved the implementation of the wage restraint legislation by the federal government. wilson points out that, on the government’s own admission, the legislation had no direct effect on or causal link to inflation, but was passed “to persuade the general public to enter voluntarily into employment agreements” that provided for a wage increase no more than 6% in the first year and 5% in the second. she argues that the legislation, although its purpose was to induce ‘voluntary’ 222 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages compliance, did so by ‘mandatory’ measures that not only removed the employees’ potential to voluntarily comply, but violated their fundamental rights (para 61-62) by imposing restrictions. she stresses that the oakes test requires that legislation must be “carefully designed to achieve the objective in question” and concludes that the legislative measures it used were “arbitrary and unfair in that they were imposed upon a captive constituency”, were not “expected to have any direct effect on inflation”, and could not “constitute an example of voluntary compliance” (para 6667). what is a strike? the question of “what is a strike” could also become a key issue in the aftermath of sfl. in referring to a number of constitutions, including those of france, italy, portugal, south africa and spain, all of which abella notes contain a right to strike although not primarily within the strict context of collective bargaining that the scc clearly has in mind in sfl. however, the strong language supporting the right to strike could also be seen to protect political strikes more typical in europe. in canada rallies and marches such as events like the “days of protest” in opposition to ontario’s conservative government in the late1990s raise questions about what is an “illegal strike” (an untimely, ie. mid-term cessation of work) rather than what is a strike. labour lawyer paul cavalluzo has argued however, the wager model must be seen as a “whole package” that has been long accepted as effective in canada. he warns against tampering with the system for such objectives as parlaying the protected right to strike from the workplace into the political arena (cavalluzzo, 2015). the question of what will be considered a strike when further judicial treatment of this issue unfolds, as brian langille argues, will be far from an easy task. he notes that there is a mistaken assumption in canadian labour law that there is an objective definition of the right to strike, namely “any concerted cessation of work”. he maintains that the definition is overbroad and a narrower, subjective definition based on the reason/s for the work stoppage must be found. (langille,2009/10, 355-56) the collective refusal to do overtime or calling in sick, a slowdown or speed-up, and so on, have all been treated as ‘illegal strikes’ by labour boards and courts if done in an ‘untimely’ manner, namely during the life of a collective agreement. langille points out that there are many concerted cessations of work, however, that are not strikes, such as a group of employees ‘playing hooky’ to go and see a baseball game – done with no intent to pressure their employer to reach an agreement or for any finally the right to strike | 223 immediate workplace matter (361). langille also raises the concern about what the right to strike will mean for those excluded from the statutory schemes set out in labour legislation. there is indeed an accepted common law right to strike, yet there is no protection against an employer’s retaliation of dismissal for those who have taken strike action. employees covered by labour legislation are protected by a further set of employee rights, such as unfair labour practices and the right to retain their status as employees while on strike and thus have the right to their job back within certain time parameters. there are also statutory duties imposed on employers who must refrain from interfering with a right to strike (368-69). although those outside the statutory protection will not be able to look to any rules on striking, they, however, do not have all the restrictions the wager scheme imposes. they will be able to strike for recognition and engage in collective work cessations. with these seeming ‘advantages’ will come much uncharted territory such as will they need to take a strike vote, engage in conciliation? will their collective agreements set in place by a successful strike be binding, as so on? as langille comments that for courts to undertake such explorations will be “to enter a world without end.” (371) prohibiting strikes and back-to-work legislation back to work legislation has been described as an “immensely intolerant and uniquely canadian” practice. (ewing, 2015, 546). there has been a long-standing domestic critique of this practice (panitch & swartz: 2003, 3rd ed.). as touched upon earlier, there has been a running dispute between the ilo’s committee on freedom of association (cfa) and the ontario government about the use of back to work legislation particularly in the educational sector which, the cfa repeatedly points out is not an essential service “as normatively determined by the ilo supervisory bodies.” in 2004 the cfa commented in one of its decisions concerning a teachers’ strike that although it “recognizes that unfortunate consequences may flow from a strike in an non-essential service”, these do not warrant intervention in the right to strike until these become so serious “as to endanger the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population.” (caf, 2004, para 505, cited in ewing, 2015, 547). again this stresses the importance of moving to the internationally accepted definition of essential services, as has been discussed, since it is only in essential services that back to work legislation and an outright ban on strikes is appropriate if s.1 requirements are to be satisfied. 224 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the cfa has pointed out that the province’s repeated recourse to back-to-work legislation has been used in an “inpatient and disproportional” manner at early stages of a dispute. for example, in the case of a bc ferry dispute, (again not an essential service) the cfa argued that back-to-work legislation was employed “as a first rather than a last resort” during a legal strike “that had barely lasted 48 hours”. the committee pointed out the repeated use of this type of legislation in the ontario educational sector, four times from 1998 to 2011, creating a situation where teachers “theoretically have a legal right which, in practice however, is taken away from them when they exercise it.” (ewing, 2015, 547-48) in recent years the federal conservatives have repeatedly implemented back-to-work legislation in, for example, both air canada and canada post and legal challenges pending will likely now have successful results for the unions. statutes such as the protecting air service act (2012), designed primarily to prevent strikes, will have to be revised. governments will now have to be very careful about how they draft no-strike provisions and alternate dispute resolution mechanisms such as binding interest arbitration in the light of the heightened scrutiny in s.1 reviews. since the introduction of saskatchewan’s psesa in 2007 the federal government and other provinces have continued the long-term trend of introducing and/or modifying their essential service legislation. for example, nova scotia amended their trade union act to replace the right to strike for firefighters and police officers with interest arbitration. nova scotia’s recent (2014) essential health and community services act mandates “a binding method of resolving the issues in dispute” between the parties (s.15). similarly manitoba passed a relatively recent (2011) essential services act that specifies which public sector employees must continue to work during a strike and includes a broad array of services that the government considers essential – without regard to the internationally accepted definition of an essential service. quebec, p.e.i., alberta, new brunswick, newfoundland and labrador, ontario, the northwest territories, and nunavut all have public service legislation which contain various restrictions on the right to strike that will have to be reviewed. it is interesting to note that the conservative federal government amended a number of statutory provisions in several acts including the public service labour relations act (pslra) as part of its bill c-4, economic action plan act (2013). in the “frequently asked questions” document outlining the changes, the q & a section announces that going forward “the employer has the exclusive right to determine which services finally the right to strike | 225 are essential for the safety or security of the public” and further that “employees occupying positions designated essential are required to report to work during a strike.” question # 7 of this document asks: “why is the designation of essential services now exclusively determined by the employer?” – the answer – “the employer is in the best position to determine the number of employees required to maintain delivery of essential services within its organizations” (emphasis added). with such a unilateral scheme in place, there is no doubt that the federal government’s pslra will be one of the first statutes on the chopping block once the many legal ripples from sfl start to roll out. now that the right to strike has become a guaranteed freedom under the charter, it will hopefully be far more difficult to prevent workers from exercising this right. as suggested much current legislation will have to be revised or face judicial challenge that will hopefully be more rigorous than in the past forty years. panitch and swartz, well over a decade ago, noted canadian legislatures’ and the courts’ lack of respect and compliance with international law and asked whether governments “could hardly ignore so readily” the freedom of association in the charter? now that finally, after twenty-eight years, the right to strike is actually ‘enshrined’ in the charter, a question that still remains (2003:58). the trade union amendment act, 2008: what about organizing? sfl has a lot to say about power inequalities in the workplace, and by extension, in society. in addressing her colleagues in dissent in sfl, wagner and rothstein, abella argues that they essentially ignore “the fundamental power imbalance which the entire history of the modern industrial relations has been scrupulously devoted to rectifying” (para 56). she then points out that the scc has “long recognized the deep inequalities” that characterize relations between employers and employees and again refers to dickson in alberta reference who comments “throughout history, workers have associated to overcome their vulnerability as individuals to the strength of their employers.” (para 55 citing p. 368). mounted police, also stresses that the goal of s.2(d) protection is to empower “vulnerable groups” and “help them work to right imbalances in society. it protects marginalized groups and makes possible a more equal society” (para 53). mounted police also notes: “individual employees typically lack the power to bargain and pursue workplace goals with their more powerful employers. only by banning together in collective bargaining associations, thus strengthening their bargaining power with the employer, can they meaningfully pursue their workplace 226 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages goals (para 55).” with all this focus on vulnerable and powerless groups it is unfortunate that the scc did not take the opportunity to comment more fully on the necessity of preserving clauses in the saskatchewan labour relations act that have the potential to offer clear workplace protection to one of the most disadvantaged groups in society today precarious workers. this outcome, it has to be said, came after the appellants’ essentially declined to fully argue the case after clear defeats at both the trial and court of appeal. whatever the reason, it is unfortunate since the opportunity to hear the scc on this crucial issue comes so rarely. the part of sfl decision that was not successful was the finding that the trade union amendment act (tuaa) is constitutional. this statute represents a serious loss for the trade union movement in saskatchewan at a time when unionization could benefit so many low-waged workers. in finding that the tuaa did not breach s. 2(d) the trial judge acknowledged that the changes to the certification process had the effect of reducing the success rate of union applications for certification yet he argued that s. 2(d) does not require legislation that “ensures unions succeed easily in their efforts to be certified”, but it “precludes the enactment of legislation that interferes with the freely expressed wishes of employees in the exercise of their s. 2(d) rights” (para 22 – emphasis added). tuaa was clearly designed to make it more difficult to organize unions and introduced more “restrictive requirements” for certification. first it requires the “written support”, (signed union cards), increase from 25% to 45% before a certification vote can take place; it reduces the time for union organizers to collect cards from six months to three; and eliminates the automatic certification that used to be available when over 50% of employees signed union cards indeed a feature that has always had a positive impact on the certification process for unions wherever it has been part of the industrial relations regime. in addition, the discretion that the labour board had to decide whether a representation vote was needed, was also eliminated (para 14) and a vote is now mandatory. the act also decreased the level of “advanced written support” required for decertification from 50% plus one, to 45% and the period within which the written support for decertification has to be submitted is reduced from six to three months – amendments that make decertification faster and easier. the most significant amendment, and certainly a serious barrier for those interested in promoting unionization, is the employers’ new right to communicate “facts and its opinions to its employees” during an organizing drive. this practice will no longer be considered an unfair introduction: raising wages | 227 labour practice and will only be reviewable by the labour board if the communication is done in a manner that “does not infringe on the ability of the employees to engage their collective bargaining rights in accordance with their freely expressed wishes” (para 101). this qualification presents a new terrain for union organizers and labour lawyers to sort out, without reference to a comprehensive jurisprudence from the labour board, when this activity can be considered an unfair labour practice (para 22). the saskatchewan court of appeal unanimously found that the tuaa did not violate s.2(d) of the charter, and the scc’s majority also agreed that the act “does not substantially interfere with the freedom to freely create or join associations” (para 100). abella points out the trial judge’s conclusion was partly based on a review of comparable labour relations schemes and found that the right to organize was not substantially interfered with when the tuaa is compared to other labour legislation in canada (para 100). legislation, it has to be noted, that has been seriously undermined for at least three decades by neoliberal governments whose goal has been decreasing the rate of unionization. the majority in sfl also agreed with the trial judge that permitting an employer to communicate “facts and opinions” to its employees is constitutional. it is important to point out that the trial judge’s reasoning around this issue was that such a finding “is consistent with the employers’ freedom of expression under s. 2 (b) of the charter” (para 21). balancing an employer’s freedom of expression against the freedom of association of hundreds of workers in a potential bargaining unit is for many an extremely unfortunate feature of charter litigation. seeing the “corporation as person” with essentially an individual’s rights, has long been critiqued by social justice advocates as one of the fundamental flaws with our common law system as a whole (bakan, 2000). the result of this amendment will undoubtedly see employers bombarding workers with their “opinions” about how they will go bankrupt and everyone will lose their jobs if a union is certified. the outcome of this all too typical behaviour on the part of employers will be more lengthy and costly litigation and as the certification process drags on, enthusiasm for the new union will tend to wane. sid ryan, president of the ontario federation of labour and presenter at ontario’s 2015 review of both the employment standards act (esa) and the ontario labour relations act (olra) commented that the shift from a regime of card based organizing drives and automatic certification to one that mandates a vote gives employers “more opportunity to target organizers.” he also cited a survey of managers in canadian workplaces where union drives have occurred that found: “94 228 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages per cent had used anti-union tactics and 12 per cent admitted to using what they believed to be illegal practices to stop the union.” (toronto star, june 15, 2015). the six changes in saskatchewan’s tuaa will make it considerably more difficult to organize vulnerable workers and could likely, as mentioned earlier, set a new low standard for labour codes across the country. as neoliberal governments slowly but surely chip away at the ability to organize, the industrial relations landscape will have an ever more restrictive framework within which to meet the challenge of organizing the unorganized. when does making the certification process so difficult that it “substantially interferes” with organizing unions? what threshold must be crossed before the court recognizes that restrictions placed on unions are seriously hindering organizing drives to the extent that people are being effectively denied their right to be represented by a bargaining agent and thus unable to exercise all the rights now confirmed by s.2(d)? the protected right to strike, after all, comes with being in a union in the first place, and government assistance with certification was part of the wagner model compromise. if unionization is made more difficult it could mean many will not be able to access the “self-fulfillment and the collective realization of human goals, consistent with democratic values” now assumedly even more clearly promised by s.2(d) (para 30). in the review of ontario’s esa and olra noted above, the hearings have revealed a serious and growing lack of compliance on the part of employers with regard to even the most minimum employment standards the esa offers. this is partly due to the rapid growth of low-waged, parttime work in the past decade that makes monitoring workplaces an overwhelming task, particularly with cut-backs that have reduced the number of compliance officers. one clear solution for vulnerable workers would be to increase the rate of unionization among this group and rely on unions to ensure at least minimum standards are met. as sheila block, a senior economist at the canadian centre for policy alternatives comments from her study done for the centre that the share of ontario workers who make minimum wage is now five times higher than in 1997. she suggests that the ontario government “has to look at how (to) increase access to union membership for low-wage precarious workers” and notes that “having a trade union right in your workplace is really a very effective way to ensure that your rights are enforced” (toronto star, 2015). as noted, the adoption of the wagner act model of industrial relations from the us in 1935 has been recognized as a ‘compromise’ since the limitation on the right to strike during the life of an agreement is tempered with the right to enforce the terms of the agreement through introduction: raising wages | 229 grievance arbitration (para 44). the wagner model is also seen to have solved the need for recognition strikes by implementing a government run union certification process, along with enforcing ‘closed shop’ and automatic dues check-off provisions. see fudge and tucker for a comprehensive discussion of the history of the right to strike in canada in which we are reminded that “when legislatures restricted the freedom to strike they also gave the workers something in exchange.” yet, as pointed out, in the past three decades since the expansion of collective bargaining under the charter one or more of the freedoms to form and join unions, collectively bargain, and strike “have increasingly been suspended or limited, without giving them any compensating rights” as in sfl (2009/10, 352-53; see also panitch and swartz, 2003). it can be argued that the certification process, since it is part of the compromise regime under the wagner model, should be protected and encouraged and indeed labour boards should function to facilitate organizing. in fact they should ‘make it easy’ in the words of the trial judge, for unions to promote access to such important fundamental charter rights. what lies ahead? what lies ahead is surely litigation, litigation and more litigation. we have briefly touched on only four areas in which sfl will have a major impact on the law. what about injunctions against striking? or limitations placed on the scope of remedies an arbitrator can consider – such as no monetary items? how about restrictions on picketing and the right of unions to their s.2(b) right to ‘express’ their demands to the public in the hopes of gaining support for their cause? does sfl modify the law on secondary picketing (adell, 2003)? must an appeal process be included in ‘binding arbitration’ since it is replacing a constitutional right? and on and on. unfortunately there is little hope of avoiding extensive litigation now that the array of charter rights for unions under 2(d) seem almost fully in place. the hope is likely that after a certain point the need for turning to the courts will diminish, however, this is likely wishful thinking. in commenting on the court’s description of the strike as an “affirmation of the dignity and autonomy of employees in their working lives” (para 54) charles smith, who has written extensively on unions and the charter has noted: “to my knowledge, never before in its history has the scc shown such sympathy for the collective actions of workers to further workplace democracy” (2015, 5). perhaps this is also a victory in sfl – the clear, definitive and quite inspirational words throughout the decision about correcting power imbalances and supporting the right of 230 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages people to come together to pursue their workplace rights. such words, coming from the highest court in the land, would likely be impressive and persuasive in organizing drives for nervous and reticent potential members who are worried about their employers’ reactions if they sign on with the union. references adell, b. grant, m. and a. ponak. (2001). strikes in essential services. kingston: irc press. adell, b. (2003). secondary picketing after ‘pepsi-cola’: what’s clear and what isn’t. c.l.e. l.j., 10,135-159. adell, b. (2013). regulating strikes in essential (and other) services after the “new trilogy”. c.l.e. l.j., 17, 413-447. bakan, j. (2003). corporation: the pathological pursuit of profit and power. toronto: penguin. bartkiw, t. j. (2010). proceed with caution, or stop wherever possible? ongoing paradoxes, in legalized labour politics, c.l.e.l.j., 15 (1), 77-100. bartkiw, t.j. (2008). manufacturing dissent? labour law and union organizing in the province of ontario. canadian public policy, 34(1), 111-131. cameron, j. (2009-10). the labour trilogy’s last rites: ‘b.c. health’ and a constitutional right to strike. c.l.e.l.j., 15(1), 297-313. canada. (2013). bill c-4, economic action plan 2013 act. in “frequently asked questions.” http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/p-33.3/ cavalluzzo, p. (2015, april 24). the impact of saskatchewan federation of labour on future constitutional challenges, queen’s university’s law in the contemporary workplace symposium on saskatchewan federation of labour case. introduction: raising wages | 231 ewing, k.d. (2015).“the lady doth protest too much, me thinks:” the right to strike, international standards and the supreme court of canada. c.l.e.l.j., 18, 517-534. ewing, k.d. (2013). myth and reality of the right to strike as a ‘fundamental labour right’. international journal of comparative labour and industrial relations, 29(2), 145-166. faraday, f and e. tucker. (2014). “who owns charter values? a mobilizing strategy for the labour movement.” in matthew behrens ed., union matters: advancing democracy, economic equality, and social justice (pp.125-138). toronto, between the lines press. faraday, f. j. fudge and e. tucker, eds. (2012). constitutional labour rights in canada: farm workers and the fraser case. toronto: irwin law. fine, s. (2015). court protects public sector workers’ right to strike. globe & mail, january 31, a14. fudge, j. and e. tucker. (2010). the freedom to strike, in canada: a brief legal history. c.l.e.l.j., 15(1), 333-53. hepple, b. (2009/10). the right to strike in an international context. c.l.e.l.j., 15, 133-146. langille, b. (2010). what is a strike? c.l.e.l.j., 15(1), 355-374 langille, b. (2009-10). why are canadian judges drafting labour codes – and constitutionalizing the wager act model? c.l.e.l.j.,15(1), 101-129. panitch, l. and d. swartz. (2003). from consent to coercion, 3rd edition. toronto: garamond press. servais, j.m. (2009/10). ilo law and the right to strike. c.l.e.l.j., 15(1), 147-168 sharpe, r.j. and k. roach. (2013). the charter of rights and freedoms, 5th edition. toronto: irwin law. 232 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages smith, c. 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(2015, june 17). lessons on precarious work from across the city. section gt, 2. cases cited dunmore v. ontario (attorney general), 2001 scc 94, [2001] 3 s.c.r. 1016. health services and support – facilities subsector bargaining assn. v. british columbia, 2007, scc 27, [2007] 2 s.c.r. 391. meredith, 2015, scc. mounted police association of ontario v. canada (attorney general), 2015 scc 1. ontario, (attorney general) v. fraser, 2011 scc 20, [2011] 2 s.c.r. 3. psac v. canada, [1987] 1 s.c.r. 424. re service employees’ international union, local 204 and broadway manor nursing home (1983), 4 d.l.r. (4th) 231. r v. oakes, [1986] 1 scr 103. introduction: raising wages | 233 reference re public service employees relations act (alberta), [1987] 1 s.c.r 313 [alberta reference]. rwdsu v. saskatchewan, [1987] 1 s.c.r. 460 [dairy workers]. saskatchewan federation of labour v. saskatchewan, 2015 scc 4. alternate routes loanwords and code-switching: distinguishing between language contact phenomena in ch'ol sarah ashley kistler 1 abstract language contact phenomena, including loanwords and code-switching, have been the subject of numerous recent studies in sociolinguistics. loanwords are words borrowed from one language for use in another, while code-switching occurs when speakers mix lexical or grammatical elements from two or more languages in a single speech act. although numerous studies extensively examine both linguistic phenomena, the boundary between them remains unclear, leaving one to question how to distinguish loanwords from code-switching. using data from ch'ol, a mayan language spoken by more than 100,000 individuals in southeastern mexico, this paper clearly identifies the characteristics of loanwords and code-switching and outlines the differences between them. this paper argues that on the most basic level, one can distinguish loanwords and code-switching on the basis of assimilation: loanwords demonstrate phonological, morphophonemic, or lexical integration, while codeswitched words and phrases do not. secondary criteria for identifying loanwords include the use of words by speakers of varying levels of bilingualism as well as the absence of native equivalents for specific words. code-switching is practiced only by bilingual ch'ols. through its analysis, this paper argues that code-switching may be indicative of emerging changes in a speaker's cultural and linguistic identity. 1 .sarah ashley kistler (ma) is currently a phd candidate at florida state university. 82 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs introduction this paper examines language contact phenomena in ch'ol, a mayan language of southeastern mexico, focusing specifically on lexical borrowing and code-switching. while loanwords and code-switching have been discussed by many scholars (weinreich, 1953; thomason and kaufman, 1988; romaine, 1995; myers-scotton, 1982, 1993; myersscotton and boloyai, 2001; muysken 1995, 2000; poplack 1980), the differences between them have not been clearly defined and the boundary between loanwords and code-switching remains unclear. what is a loanword, and how does it become a loanword? what is code-switching, and when does it occur? i focus on the factors that distinguish loanwords from code-switching, identifying the characteristics of each, and outlining the differences between them. the data for this study come from nine migration stories and life histories collected from ch'ol speakers in the states of chiapas and campeche, mexico. i combine existing definitions of loanwords and code-switching to explain spanish interference in ch'ol, and to argue that loanwords of spanish origin can be distinguished from code-switching on the basis of assimilation. loanwords have been assimilated into the ch'ol lexicon, while code-switched words and phrases have not. this assimilation manifests itself in the incorporation of many loans in the native phonological and lexical systems and in the widespread usage of loaned words throughout the speech of all ch'ol speakers. loanwords become "native" terms, and may be recognized as such by native ch'ol speakers. i examine both how and why words of spanish origin become incorporated into the native ch'ol lexicon, as this is necessary to distinguish loanwords from code-switching. i propose that loanwords begin as a form of intrasentential code-switching, and become loanwords once they are adopted by all ch'ol speakers, including monolingual ch'ol speakers. code-switched words and phrases, on the other hand, are used exclusively by ch'ol bilinguals. as a result, i argue that code-switching depends on a speaker's level of bilingualism, as only ch'ol bilinguals code-switch. code-switching is influenced by the degree of outside contact a speaker has experienced, and may represent emerging changes in a speaker's linguistic and cultural identity. language contact the effects of language contact, including bilingualism, lexical borrowing, and language interference, have been the focus of extensive volume 21, 2005 83 alternate routes research in the field of sociolinguistics. cultural and linguistic changes occur when languages come into contact with one another and remain in contact for extended periods of time. the degree of contact-induced change that a language experiences is relative to the intensity of the contact situation (thomason and kaufman, 1988:67). contact situations lasting for long periods of time are likely to induce change because of a speech community's continuous exposure to a foreign language. language contact may also lead to the emergence of dominant and subordinate languages, which correspond to the establishment of politically dominant and subordinate groups. in situations of contact, each language obtains its own value, though speakers usually regard the dominant language as prestigious and associate it with a higher social value. while both languages influence each other in any situation of contact, the dominant language frequently exhibits stronger influence over the subordinate language, a situation that leads to increased bilingualism in the dominant language among the subordinate population, as well as in linguistic changes in the subordinate language itself (thomason and kaufman, 1988:67). these changes first manifest themselves in lexical borrowing, followed later by structural borrowing. thomason and kaufman (1988:80) note that amerindian languages demonstrate a high degree of lexical borrowing as well as some structural borrowing. situations of language contact often lead to bilingualism as a result of the need to communicate across languages. bilingualism gives speakers resources that are not available to monolingual speakers, resources with which they are able to construct socially meaningful verbal interactions. understanding both the bilingual community and the bilingual individual is essential when considering the connection between bilingualism and language contact. societal bilingualism occurs when the general population of a community is bilingual in the same two languages (baetens beardsmore, 1986:4), and is created by the linguistic forces acting on the community as a whole, including the political, economic, social, and cultural relationships between the languages. individual bilingualism differs from societal bilingualism in that the individual's entire speech community is not necessarily bilingual. in situations of language contact, bilingual individuals possess personal motivations for becoming bilingual, and may act as mediators or translators between language groups in order to gain personal status (baetens beardsmore, 1986:4). 84 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs in his classic work on language contact, weinreich (1953) relates the way in which speakers learn languages to bilingualism, defining coordinate and compound bilingualism. coordinate bilingualism occurs when a speaker learns each language in a separate environment, thereby distinguishing between them cognitively, and maintaining each language as separate from the other (weinreich, 1953:9-1 1). in compound bilingualism, a speaker learns both languages simultaneously, and uses them in the same contexts. since they are interdependent, these languages become cognitively intermixed, and the speaker has difficulty distinguishing between them. the distinction between these two forms of bilingualism elucidates not only how bilinguals manage language, but also the interaction between languages that can result in language interference. scholars have used the term "language interference" to refer to the influence of one language on another in situations of language contact (weinreich, 1953; diebold, 1961), as well as to refer specifically to code-switching among bilingual speakers (weinreich, 1953; romaine, 1995). in its general application, language interference is "those instances of deviation from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language, i.e., as a result of language contact" (weinreich, 1953:1). types of general language interference include lexical borrowing, or "loanwords", structural and grammatical borrowing, phonological assimilation, and code-switching (thomason and kaufman, 1988; weinreich, 1953; romaine, 1995; muysken 2000). in this study, i focus on lexical borrowing and code-switching, and touch indirectly on phonological assimilation as it relates to loanwords. "borrowing" refers to a process in which one language acquires some lexical or structural property from another language (verbeeck, 1998:22). integration, or borrowing, is "the incorporation of foreign features into a group's native language by speakers of that language: the native language is maintained but is changed by the addition of the incorporated features" (thomason and kaufman, 1988:37). lexical borrowing involves the adoption of words from one language by another language. these words thus become loanwords, and they thereby extend the vocabulary of the adopted language (muysken 2000:69-70). although content words are among the first words that a language adopts as loanwords (thomason and kaufman, 1988:74), brody (1987:507) volume 21, 2005 85 alternate routes documents the widespread usage in mayan languages of function words borrowed from spanish, including conjunctions and adverbs, particles, intcrrogatives, and hesitation markers. as they become incorporated into new lexicons, loanwords often undergo phonological, morphological, and grammatical changes, as well as some changes in meaning, thereby demonstrating assimilation into the borrowing language's system. motivations for lexical borrowing are dependent on contact situations. words may be initially borrowed for prestige reasons, so that a speaker may demonstrate some knowledge of, or competence in, the dominant language. though the notion of language prestige is problematic, i use this term to refer to a language that is associated with high social value within a particular speech community. speakers hope to increase their personal social statuses by using the politically and/or socially dominant language during contact with outgroup members. amerindian languages also adopt loanwords for items and concepts introduced to indigenous groups by the spanish, as verbeeck (1998:31) demonstrates for mopan maya. brown (1994:96-97) presents a list of 77 words for introduced items that have been adopted by indigenous languages throughout the new world, including the words for "apple," "cheese," and "mule." in addition to loanwords, language interference also manifests itself through code-switching, or the mixing of codes or languages. gumperz (1982:59) defines code-switching as "the juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical systems or sub-systems". code-switching often involves changes in grammar as well as lexicon (muysken 2000:70), and exists in several different forms: intersentential, intrasentential, and tag-switching. macswan (1999:109-113) documents the frequent use of intersentential switching, which typically occurs at sentence or clause boundaries in amerindian languages, like nahuatl. intrasentential switching includes the mixing of codes within a clause, for example, when a sentence is interspersed with words from another language (romaine, 1995:122-123). often, speakers interject single words or word phrases from one language in the speech of another language. tag switching refers to the insertion of tag phrases from one language in another. 86 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs speakers must possess a certain degree of proficiency in more than one language in order to code-switch, since code-switching involves the insertion of appropriate words or phrases from a second language (muysken 2000; poplack 1980:615). muysken (2000:2) argues that speakers who code-switch in daily speech are most often proficient bilinguals who demonstrate fluency in two or more languages. as a result of this proficiency, speakers incorporate both lexical and grammatical elements from each language in their speech. the extensive body of literature on code-switching explores these elements, analyzing when and how speakers code-switch during specific discourse events. reviewing the work of numerous earlier scholars, muysken (1995, 2000) examines the lexical and grammatical components of code-switching, stating that three distinct processes explain the types of language interference that manifest themselves in different speech events: insertion, alternation, and congruent lexicalization. practicing "insertion," speakers sometimes insert a word or entire lexical phrase from one language into the structure of another (muysken 2000:3). in other code-switching events, speakers practice "alternation," by mixing one language's lexicon and grammatical structure with those of another (muysken 2000:4). when alternating between languages, speakers only switch codes a point in a sentence where the "juxtaposition of lj and l2 elements does not violate a surface syntactic rule of either language" (poplack 1980:581). poplack (1980) explores this phenomenon, presenting the equivalence constraint model of code-switching, stating that individuals switch between languages only at points in which the switch can maintain the grammaticality of both languages and fits in the structures of both languages involved. as a result, speakers mix codes without violating the grammatical rules of either language. in other speech situations, speakers engage in "congruent lexicalization" when they merge words from distinct languages into a new, shared grammatical structure, emerging from the interaction of two distinct grammatical systems, as muysken (2000:19) describes for media quechua speakers in ecuador. these studies significantly advance our understanding of code-switching by examining the linguistic factors that govern code-switching speech events. within the extensive body of literature on code-switching, numerous scholars also focus on the social phenomena that influence a speaker's volume 21, 2005 87 alternate routes use of code-switching, examining why speakers code-switch in specific speech events. although code-switching sometimes occurs as the unconscious and natural result of language interaction, numerous studies suggest that bilingual individuals often practice code-switching in order to demonstrate personal relationships, rights, and obligations during a single speech event. participants as well as the social context, such as location or type of event, govern each speech event (bauman and sherzer, 1975:163). in situational switching, the alternation of languages is dependent on components of the speech event, including topic, participants, or setting (baetens beardsmore, 1986:49). a change in the components of the speech event often triggers a switch in codes. situational switching is also occurs because certain topics lend themselves to the use of one language over another. code-switching also depends on the social relationships between speakers as often, it allows speakers to ally themselves with the members of one or more linguistic groups, showing solidarity and negotiating relationships (myers-scotton, 1982). the rational choice model of code-switching, proposed by myers-scotton and bolonyai (2001:5), states that code-switching serves as a direct and conscious response to society and social interaction. this model argues that "assumptions of preferences and intentions, and operates on perceived opportunities" motivates speakers to code-switch (myers-scotton and bolonyai, 2001 : 5). in other words, individuals code-switch as a result of perceived opportunities to enhance status, to forge new relationships, or to strengthen existing relationships. the switch between codes, or the choice of one code over another, may also depend on the degree of social intimacy that speakers have with one another or the level of formality associated with the speech event, as rubin (1968) demonstrates in the alternation between guarani and spanish in paraguay. in other instances, code-switching gives speakers the "flexibility of expression" needed to overcome the difficulties of sentence-planning by allowing them to use resources from more than one language (myers-scotton and bolonyai, 2001:5). speakers also use code-switching to create privacy or social distance. the speaker may use a switch in codes to create social distance from outgroup members and distinguish himself by speaking a language that others do not understand, as dozicr (1956:150) documents for the tewa of new mexico. the choice of one code over another may give the 88 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs speaker privacy in public settings. he may switch codes in order to speak more freely and to ensure the privacy of his conversation. in other instances, a speaker may choose one code over another in situations in which that language is dominant and is considered to be prestigious. the desire to elevate one's status may motivate a speaker to code-switch in order to demonstrate knowledge of the dominant language in contact situations. since the contact period, spanish has served as the dominant language of latin america, and as a result, indigenous peoples throughout the region have considered it to be a powerful code worthy of emulation and use in situations of contact with non-indigenous groups or individuals (brody, 1987:509; verbeeck, 1998:16). the desire to demonstrate ethnic and linguistic identity also motivate the use of code-switching in bilingual speakers. in its most basic sense, ethnic identity is based on cultural criteria that differentiate one group of people from others (barth, 1969:11). linguistic identity is linked to a speaker's ethnicity, and refers to the symbols and speech conventions that are characteristic of a particular group (gumperz, 1982:6). by using these symbols, a speaker signals his membership in a particular cultural or social group (torras and garafanga, 2002:545). linguistic changes often indicate changes in one's linguistic identity, since the use of language, or of different codes, may act as a linguistic boundary that separates one group of speakers from others (urciuoli, 1995:538-539). this boundary often shapes the linguistic identity of bilingual speakers, separating them from monolingual speakers, as bailey (2000:563) suggests is the case for dominican-american spanish-english bilinguals. by using language to mark one's ethnic identity, speakers may act as agents of social change, and use their behavior in order to shape, define, and create social realities. a large part of the research on language interference has focused on distinguishing loanwords from code-switching. haugen (1956) first proposed a distinction between lexical integration (lexical borrowing) and interference (code-switching), terms that were later adopted by other scholars in their discussions of language contact phenomena (thomason and kaufman, 1988; romaine, 1995; verbeeck, 1998). according to his model, loanwords vary from code-switching on the basis of integration: lexical borrowings became "integrated" in native lexical systems while code-switched words did not. integrated words often demonstrated phonological, morphological, and syntactic changes. myers-scotton volume 21, 2005 89 alternate routes (1993:165), however, argues against these ideas and suggests that the primary criterion that should be used in separating the two is frequency of occurrence; any word that appears at least three times in a corpus of data is a loanword (myers-scotton, 1993:207). both of these suggestions are included in poplack and sankoff's model, which argues that loanwords can also be characterized by ''native-synonym displacement," or the displacement of a native term by a loan, and "acceptability," or the recognition by native speakers that a word is an acceptable and integrated part of the native lexicon (1984:103-104). muysken's (1995, 2000) definitions of alternation and congruent lexicalization also aid in establishing the differences between loanwords from code-switching, as these processes serve as important criteria for separating the two language contact phenomena. for example, since alternation and congruent lexicalization occur as the result of interference on a grammatical level, they indicate that a speaker is code-switching, as they mark a speaker's use of two or more languages. as a result, when linguistic analysis reveals these processes at work in a particular speech act, one can identify the presence of foreign words as codeswitching, rather than lexical borrowings. however, this distinction is not as clear in the process of insertion, which deals with intrasentential switches, when speakers insert a single word or phrase of words into the given structure of another language. since this process occurs at a lexical rather than grammatical level, it can be indicative of both lexical borrowings and code-switches (muysken 1995:180). as a result, the notion of insertion further blurs the line between loanwords and code-switching, by ignoring the social phenomena that shape these linguistic practices. in recent publications, numerous scholars comment that the boundary between these language contact phenomena remains unclear despite this extensive body of literature. torres (2002:78) documents this problem in her analysis of bilingual discourse markers in puerto rican spanish. torres concludes that it is difficult to determine whether discourse markers act as loans or as code-switching in the speech of puerto rican bilinguals. in discussing the integration of certain loanwords in other languages, muysken (2000:71) emphasizes the difficulty of distinguishing loans from code-switching, stating that "we really have no criteria to determine whether it [a word] is code-mixing or borrowing." when i first began my research on ch'ol, i also experienced this confusion, find90 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs ing difficulty in separating loanwords from code-switching. the question remains: how does one determine if a non-native word is a loan or if it represents code-switching? i argue that in order to separate lexical borrowings from code-switches and clarify the distinction between them, one must not analyze only the linguistic elements of code-switching and borrowing, as muysken (1995, 2000) does, but rather consider both the social as well as linguistic factors that influence these language contact phenomena. data and methodology my research is part of a growing corpus of knowledge in the field of sociolinguistics, more specifically in the ethnography of speaking (hymes, 1962; bauman and sherzer, 1974), since i focus on the variables associated with certain speech acts and events. the data for this study were collected during the summers of 2001 and 2002, as part of a larger project studying the ch'ol diaspora in the states of chiapas and campeche, mexico (hopkins, 2002). i gathered data through ethnographic research and recorded interviews that enabled me to analyze language interference, both generally and specifically, in the speech of a diverse sample of ch'ol speakers. the interviews were generally conducted in ch'ol, and extensive spanish influence was noted throughout. a part of the greater ch'olan language family (kaufman 1976), ch'ol is spoken widely throughout the states of chiapas and campeche, mexico, by more than 100,000 speakers (hopkins, 1995:61). the majority of the ch'ol population is concentrated in chiapas, in the large highland towns of tila, tumbala, and sabanilla, an area that has been considered the ch'ol homeland since spanish contact in the mid-sixteenth century (hopkins, 1995:63). the municipios, or ''counties" of salto de agua and palenque in the chiapas lowlands are also home to many ch'ol settlements. although the ch'ols have been in close contact with spanish language and culture since the colonial period, they have remained both culturally and linguistically strong. a large percentage of the ch'ol population is still monolingual, especially in tila and tumbala, where ch'ol is the dominant language and many ladinos (the local term for non-indigenous individuals) learn ch'ol in order to communicate. in tumbala, ch'ol children attend bilingual schools where they are taught in both ch'ol and spanish. ch'ol is spoken during community meetings in both the ejidos and the highland centers, and the mayors volume 21, 2005 91 alternate routes (and most other officials) of both tila and tumbala are native ch'ol speakers. speakers also use ch'ol in meetings with the instituto national indigena, the national indigenous institute, or "ini," the agency created by the mexican government to protect and promote indigenous rights. ch'ols put great emphasis on the ability to speak well, paying great respect to the verbal arts, including the ability to tell folktales (hopkins, 1995:66). this respect extends to ch'ols bilingual or multilingual in spanish or other mayan languages, such as tzotzil or tzeltal, also spoken in highland chiapas (kathryn josserand, personal communication). during the past twenty-five years, several thousand ch'ol speakers have left chiapas, migrating to new areas where they have resettled. today, over two-dozen ch'ol communities have been established in the xpujil region of the state of campeche, mexico, in the newly formed municipio of calakmul. the increasing land shortage experienced in chiapas motivated these migrations, which were also facilitated by the ejido system, implemented following the mexican revolution (hopkins, 1985:4). in the ejido system, land is awarded to a specified number of heads of families, who collectively hold the rights to the land. until recently, this land could not be bought or sold, and the ejido system requires that the rights to land may only be passed down to one child (hopkins, 1 995:64). the fact that many ch'ols do not inherit ejido lands has forced them to relocate, since they are subsistence farmers that rely on the land in order to support themselves. research on ch'ol and other mayan languages has revealed the existence of many distinct genres of speech (bricker, 1974; gossen, 1974, 1999). this paper's focus on migration narratives and life histories proves interesting for exploring the distinction between loanwords and code-switching. in contrast to other genres of ch'ol speech, such as folktales (alejos garcia, 1988; whittaker and warkentin, 1965), political discourse (alejos garcia, 1994), ritual language (perez chacon, 1988), jokes, and prayers (meneses, 1986), migration narratives and life histories reveal personal information about speakers' lives. hopkins and josserand (1990) and altman (1996) have described variations in the structure and use of ch'ol associated with different genres of speech. the analysis of language integration and interference that i present in this paper is based exclusively on ch'ol migration narratives and life 92 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs histories, and should be considered representative only of this specific genre of speech. ch'ol migration narratives begin with what hopkins (2002) calls "an emerging migration mythology" that tells of a land shortage and of a difficult journey to find new land. speakers relate the challenges faced in establishing new communities and in settling new areas. they often discuss their childhood as well as their adult lives, and comment on education, family, religion, and involvement in the government and in governmental affairs. events are not necessarily presented chronologically in the narratives, though these narratives typically end when speakers finish presenting the details of their current living situation. we collected the migration narratives and life histories of nine ch'ol speakers in an interview format in which speakers were asked to recount their own personal histories as well as the histories of their families and their towns. most of the speakers that we interviewed were ch'ol-spanish bilinguals, though the narrative of one monolingual ch'ol speaker was recorded. we recorded all but one of the interviews in the informants' homes in a familial setting; often, family members were present. one interview was recorded in the informant's office in a private room, with only the informant herself and the researchers present. when possible, we recorded interviews using a standard tape recorder, a dat recorder, and a digital video recorder. while one member of our research team was a spanish-ch'ol bilingual, the rest of us were spanish-english bilinguals who possess varied levels of ability in ch'ol. the sample of ch'ol speakers i use in this study is varied in terms of geographical region, age, ethnicity, and bilingual ability. i include speakers from both highland and lowland chiapas in the sample, as well as speakers from the new ch'ol communities in campeche. speakers' ages ranged from 25 to 65 years old, and both men and women were interviewed. both ch'ol and ladino bilinguals, as well as a ch'ol monolingual, were recorded in order to investigate the connection between ethnicity and degree of language interference. table 1 presents a list of the speakers with their demographic information. this table is arranged according to the speaker's bilingual ability. i first present the monolingual informant, followed by the ch'ol spanish-bilinguals who are ethnically ch'ol. finally, i list the bilingual ladinos included in this sample. volume 21, 2005 93 alternate routes table 1: demographic characteristics ofch 'ol informants no. initials sex age location i jtl f 40 la cascada, chiapas 2 msg f 25 chichonal, campeche 3 msm m 60 chichonal, campeche 4 amt m 65 arroyo negro, campeche 5 rlv m 65 la cascada, chiapas 6 agv m 35 justo sierra, campeche 7 jpm f 24 tumbala, chiapas ash f 55 tumbala, chiapas 9 acg m 65 palenque, chiapas personal information monolingual ch'ol married to ch'ol bilingual ch'ol married to ch'ol politically active learned languages simultaneously bilingual ch'ol married to ch'ol bilingual ch'ol married to ch'ol politically active bilingual ch'ol married to ladina community founder bilingual ch'ol married to ch'ol politically active bilingual ch'ol frequent contact w/ ladino culture learned languages simultaneously bilingual ladina married to ch'ol learned languages simultaneously bilingual ladino married to ladina learned languages simultaneously in an attempt to determine how one can distinguish loanwords from code-switching, i listened carefully to each narrative, noting every instance of spanish interference, including both single words and phrases. i conducted a simple statistical analysis of the number of span94 volume 21. 2005 chemins alternatifs ish-derived words in relation to the number of total words in each narrative to gauge the extent of general language integration and interference present in each sample of ch'ol speech. i then grouped all the instances of each word to determine the contexts in which they were used and to see if their usage was widespread. spanish words used across geographical regions as well as by speakers of varied bilingual ability were then analyzed for phonological assimilation and were classified according to semantic domain. my next step was to determine if these words had ch'ol equivalents. i also used the diccionario ch 'ol-espanol (aulie and aulie, 1978) and sdkldji 'b ty 'an ch 'ol, a monolingual ch'ol dictionary (montejo lopez, ruben lopez et al., 2001), to determine what words of spanish origin were considered to be "normal" ch'ol vocabulary. i compiled a list of assimilated loans, or loans demonstrating the use of ch'ol phonology, widespread usage, and, often, the absence of ch'ol equivalents, from the data collected from both the narratives and the dictionaries. i compared over 200 assimilated words to the other words of spanish origin not included in the list to identify the characteristics that make them distinct, and to determine ways in which lexical borrowings are distinct from code-switching. numerous examples of both intrasentential and intersentential code-switching occurred in these narratives, though i focus on mostly on insertions, or intrasentential switching in this analysis, as they are the most relevant to the question of distinguishing loanwords from code-switching. analysis the number of words of spanish origin present in the migration narratives provides an estimate of general language interference in ch'ol speech. nine speakers were included in my overall study, but only the narratives of speakers 1-5 and speaker 9 could be included in this calculation because the other interviews had not been fully transcribed. as a result, the sample used for this calculation includes one monolingual ch'ol, four ch'ol bilinguals, and one bilingual ladino. nevertheless, although i include only one monolingual ch'ol and one bilingual ladino in my formal analysis due to the limitations of the speech samples we collected in the field, my informal observations of other monolingual ch'ols and bilingual ladinos while in mexico support the results of my analysis. 1 volume 21, 2005 95 alternate routes language interference in ch'ol discourse •average (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (9) mono ch'ol bilingual chom bilingual ladino speaker # the overall percentage of spanish-derived words in this ch'ol sample was 19%. ch'ol bilinguals exhibited between 23% and 27% interference, a figure above the average. the ch'ol monolingual interviewed exhibited only 10% interference, while the bilingual ladino demonstrated 16%, both figures under the 19% average (table 2). the high percentage of interference in the speech of ch'ol bilinguals reflects more extensive contact with ladino and mexican national culture; bilingual ch'ols also engage in more code-switching behavior than monolingual ch'ols and bilingual ladinos, a phenomenon i will discuss in greater detail in the following section. phonological and lexical assimilation ofloans words of spanish origin used in ch'ol usually demonstrate assimilation to ch'ol phonological patterns. the absence of specific phonemes in ch'ol that are present in spanish causes certain borrowed words to undergo phonological change during the process of integration into ch'ol lexicon. words that exhibit assimilation may be considered integrated loanwords when they show a regular shift from the spanish phonological system to the ch'ol phonological system, thereby indicating that they have become part of the "native" lexicon. the words i have 96 volume 21. 2005 chemins alternatifs identified as loanwords show a regular shift from the spanish phonological system to ch'ol phonology in the speech of all speakers. for example, in ch'ol, the spanish phoneme hi regularly changes to /p/ or /hw/2 (koob, 1979: 113). the spanish word /finka/ 'farm', becomes /pinka/ in ch'ol, and /kafe/ 'coffee', becomes /kahwe/. the spanish /g/ often devoices, and becomes /k/ or is replaced by /w/ during the process of assimilation (koob, 1979:113), as seen in changes from the spanish / ganar/ to the ch'ol /kanar/ 'to earn', /iglesia/ to /klesia/ 'church', and / amigo/ to /amiwo/ 'friend'. other changes are seen in the reduction of spanish /bw/ to /w/ in borrowed words like /weno/(</bweno/) 'good', and in the change from spanish 161 to ch'ol /r/ or iii (koob 1979: 1 14) in /karena/(</kadena/), 'chain', and /pale/(</padre/) 'father'. in general, vowels remain the same in borrowed words, though a shift from spanish iqi to ch'ol iwl following /r/ (koob, 1979:1 13) can be seen in the assimilation of spanish words like /puro/ 'pure', / aros/ 'rice', and /litro/ 'liter', to /puru/, /'arus/, and /litru/. considering the age of spanish-derived words used in ch'ol is also useful in identifying a word as a loanword. loans adopted during the spanish-contact period reflect colonial spanish pronunciation, thereby signaling their early incorporation into ch'ol lexicon. at the time of contact, the spanish orthographic <11>, now /y/, was pronounced as palatalized /p7 (canfield, 1962:70). this phenomenon is demonstrated by the ch'ol word /kucilu/ 'knife', now /kuciyo/ in modern spanish. canfield (1962:72) also states that the modern spanish phoneme /x/3 , now a voiceless velar fricative, was pronounced as isl in all dialects of sixteenth century spanish. this observation may be evidence for the early incorporation of words like /'alasas/ from /naransas/ 'oranges', /kasa/ from /kasa/ 'box', and /sapom/ from /sabon/ 'soap'. colonial spanish retroflex isi may also be replaced by is/, as seen in /borsa/, derived from /bolsa/ 'bag', and in avakasv, derived from /bakas/ 'cows'.4 another important phonological difference that must be noted is that during the contact period, the aspirated ihl, which has dropped out of modern spanish, was still pronounced (canfield, 1962:73). this idea that explains the fact that ihl is still pronounced as a voiceless vocoid in the ch'ol form of /haca/, now spanish /aca/, or 'axe'. borrowed spanish words also assimilate to ch'ol morphology and word structure during the process of integration, becoming more like volume 21, 2005 97 alternate routes ch'ol words and less like their original spanish forms. ch'ol word roots most often take the shape of cvc. few consonant clusters exist, and certain clusters are not tolerated in ch'ol. borrowed spanish words that have become integrated loanwords assimilate, dropping non-ch'ol characteristics during the process of integration into the ch'ol lexicon. for example, in ch'ol, the spanish word /alkalde/ 'mayor', has become / ahkal/, /kristiano/ 'christian' has become /kistyano/, and /ermano/ 'brother', has become /eran/, each word losing one of its consonant clusters. in doing so, each word has adapted to a form that is more typical of ch'ol. these changes, as well as the phonological changes mentioned above, represent linguistic syncretism. loanwords are thus merged with the native phonological system and native lexicon, and for this reason, are often not identified as distinct or different from native words by the speakers of that language. ch'ol speakers may not recognize spanish loanwords as having spanish origin; instead, they may consider these words to be ch'ol words as a result of their assimilation and integration into the native ch'ol lexicon. loanwords also contrast with code-switching based on the fact that they are used by speakers with different degrees of bilingualism, thereby demonstrating widespread use. i grouped the words of spanish origin used in ch'ol according semantic domains that i selected in order to analyze the frequency with which words of spanish origin are used as well as to look at the meanings of borrowed words. i organized these words into thirteen domains: kin terms, numbers and measurements, government, education, religion, plants, animals, other introduced items, domestic life, function words, discourse markers, adjectives, and verbs. words of spanish origin from each of these domains are used by many ch'ol speakers, regardless of their bilingual ability. their usage is widespread, and they are used by monolingual ch'ol speakers as well as by bilingual ch'ols and bilingual ladinos during many different speech events. the adoption of these words is motivated by specific social and cultural factors, including the introduction of new items into ch'ol life. identifying the reasons why specific words or classes of words are borrowed into ch'ol further clarifies the criteria for distinguishing loanwords from code-switching (table 3). 98 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs table 3: selected loanwords used by all ch 'ol speakers ch'ol spanish english ajkal alcalde mayor amiwo amigo friend anka aunque although dia dia day ejido ejido ejido eran hermano brother kaxlan castellano spanish kawayu caballo horse kasa kaja box ke que that kistyano cristiano christian klesia iglesia church ko como like/how kuchilu cuchillo knife kumarej comadre comadre kumparee compadre compadre maestru maestro maestro mama mama mother ora ahora now pasyo falso false pensalin pensar to think/to be sad peru pero but pinca finca farm porke porque because/why pos pues well puru puro pure solo solo only tose entonses then tyempo tiempo time wakax vacas cows wen bien fine/good yorajlel hora hour many function words and discourse markers as well as words used in everyday domestic life can be identified as loanwords based on the fact that they are used by all ch'ol speakers, regardless of bilingual ability. volume 21, 2005 99 alternate routes twenty-four function words of spanish origin, including /peru/ 'but', / porkc/ 'because', /ke/ 'that', /por/ 'by', /kyen/ 'who', /donde/ 'where' and several variations of /komo/ 'how', are used regularly throughout ch'ol speech. seven discourse markers, including /entonse/ 'therefore' or 'then', /este/ 'urn', and /weno/ 'well', also demonstrated widespread usage. the fact that these words are used repeatedly by different speakers in different speech events, and that they are used by monolingual ch'ols with limited knowledge of spanish demonstrates their incorporation into the ch'ol lexicon as integrated loanwords. words pertaining to domestic life may have initially been incorporated into ch'ol since they are common words that speakers use frequently in daily speech. if speakers initially borrowed words for prestige reasons to demonstrate knowledge of and competence in the dominant language, spanish, words used in daily life may have been among the first words borrowed. in this sample, i observed 22 words of spanish origin for household items, common everyday objects, and essential elements of ch'ol life, including /limetyon/(</limeton/) 'large jug', /latyu(</plato/) 5 'plate', kusina(</kosina/) 'kitchen', /rebus/(</ reboso/) 'shawl', /hente(</xente/) 'people', /awada/(</awada/) 'water hole'. their prominence and regular usage throughout spanish discourse enables speakers to become familiar with them, which allows these words to be easily adopted from spanish. these words often act as synonyms for existing native words, and sometimes exhibit slightly altered meanings from their native equivalents. the regular use ofcommon verbs and adjectives in spanish discourse may cause these words to become loanwords. i identify these words as loanwords based on the fact that they occur regularly throughout the speech of ch'ol speakers and are used by monolingual as well by bilingual speakers. these words appear in all contexts, when speakers address daily life, family life, or their personal histories. these words also may have become integrated as loanwords originally as a result of speakers' desire to demonstrate their ability to speak spanish, the dominant language and thereby enhance personal status. among the adjectives are /wen/ 'well' or 'fine', derived from the spanish /byen/, /payso/ 'false', from the spanish /falso/, /todo/ 'all', /solo/ 'only', and /malo/ 'bad'. ten common verbs, including /solisitar/ 'to request', /kanar/ 'to earn', /sufrir/ 'to surfer', and /mantener/ 'to maintain', are also loan100 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs words. when borrowed, however, these many verbs do not appear alone, but rather are used with auxiliary verbs, as seen in the following example from speaker 4. tza kaj ksolisitarin klum.... tza' kaj-0 k-solisitar-in k-lum... com vin-b3 al-vtr-suf ls-n i began to solicit my land. . . many of these verbs, including /pensalin/, from the spanish /pensar/ and /solisitarin/ from the spanish /solisitar/ demonstrate regular morphophonemic integration in ch'ol discourse, as they take the /-in/ verbal ending used by derived intransitive verbs in ch'ol. /pensarin/ exhibits complete integration into ch'ol lexicon as it takes on a new meaning in ch'ol. in spanish, /pensar/ means 'to think' while in ch'ol it means 'to be sad' (aulie and aulie, 1978:92). words that have no native equivalents can also be identified as loanwords as opposed to code-switching if they demonstrate widespread usage and are used by speakers with varying degrees of bilingualism. these words usually correspond to the introduction of new items of material culture, ideologies, or rituals and religious beliefs, and become loanwords as a result of the absence of native terms for these items. like function words and discourse markers, these words of spanish origin are used by all ch'ol speakers, regardless of their bilingual ability. eight of the thirteen identified domains include words for new items that were introduced into ch'ol culture through spanish contact, and for this reason, are words that have no ch'ol equivalents. kin terms and numerical terminology have become loanwords because the introduction of these new linguistic terms corresponds to a shift in these systems. since spanish kin and numerical systems were introduced during the contact period and indigenous peoples throughout the region acculturated to these new and dominant systems (hopkins, 1988:104), their corresponding linguistic terms were adopted by ch'ols at this early date, becoming integrated into the native lexicon. the shift from the traditional ch'ol kin system to a system more like that used by the spanish (hopkins, 1988:104; hopkins, 1995:64) is reflected linguistically in the adoption of sixteen kin terms, including blood kin, (/mama/ 'mama', /papa/ 'papa', /eran/ 'brother', /ermana/ 'sister') and "fictional" volume 21, 2005 101 alternate routes kin (/komare/ 'godmother', /kompare/ 'godfather'), as well as friendship (/amiwo/). contact with ladino culture also resulted in the change from a traditional vigesimal numerical system to the spanish decimal system. spanish numbers terms have replaced the native ch'ol number terms: during my research, i noted that many speakers cannot count above ten in ch'ol and that they almost exclusively use spanish numbers when speaking. i also observed 12 borrowed words referring to units of time and measurements, including /anyo/ 'year', /dia/ 'day', /yorahlel/ 'hour', /tyempo/ 'time', /litru/ 'liter', /lewa/ 'league', and /kilometru/ 'kilometer'. the adoption of these terms corresponded to the shift from the traditional maya calendric system to the gregorian calendar and european conceptions of time, also introduced throughout the maya region during the contact period. the spanish and ladino governments also imposed new systems of education, government, and religion on ch'ol speakers, and as a result, spanish terms have been adopted and integrated into ch'ol lexicon in order to refer to these systems. these systems themselves, as well as the ideologies behind them, were introduced to ch'ol life through contact with ladino culture. i observed seven loaned education terms in my sample. since the children of most ch'ol towns attend government-run schools, words of spanish origin, like /maestro/ 'teacher', /estudiar/ 'to study', /eskwela/ 'school', and /profesor/ 'professor', are an essential part of ch'ol vocabulary. among the 19 terms for governmental offices, positions, and land distribution used in my sample are /presidente/ 'president', /hwes/ 'judge', /munisipio/ 'county', /kolonia/ 'colony', /ehido/ 'ejido', and /ofisina/ 'office', all concepts that were introduced to the ch'ols by the mexican government. the introduction of christianity, primarily the catholicism of the colonial period, led to the integration of new spanish religious terminology into the ch'ol lexicon. i noted the use of 16 religious terms in my sample, many of which refer to catholic practices and beliefs, including /kostumbre/ 'custom', /rus/ 'cross', / cspiritu/ 'spirit', /resal/ 'to pray', and /birhen/ 'virgin'. contact with the spanish also introduced to ch'ol daily life plants and animals not native to the new world, as well new material items and technologies. continued contact with ladino and mexican national culture has brought new technologies like electricity to ch'ol communities. eight plant terms, five animal terms, and 1 5 words for other introduced items were regularly used in this sample. all of these words are loan102 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs words that represent items introduced by spanish contact. no native terms exist for these items. plant names include /alasas/ 'oranges', /arus/ 'rice', /kahpe/ 'coffee', and /limon/ 'lemon', all old world plants, while the introduced animal names are /kayo/ 'rooster', /kayina/ 'hen', /kawayu/ 'horse', and /poyo/ 'chicken'. loaned terms for other introduced items and technologies include /macity/ 'machete', /sapom/ 'soap', / kumple'anyo/ 'birthday', /kas/ 'gas', and /lus/ 'electricity'. my analysis of language contact phenomena in ch'ol also reveals the emergence of a new semantic domain of spanish words, "progress words", which ch'ol bilinguals use throughout their migration narratives. this domain includes words that refer to the ideology of technological development, advancement, and progress that has come from contact with the mexican government and governmental programs. progress words presently occupy a liminal position in ch'ol discourse, as they no longer occur merely as the result of code-switching, but have yet to become a fully integrated part of the ch'ol lexicon. this lack of integration manifests itself in the fact that only politically active bilingual ch'ols use progress words, as monolingual speakers have not yet adopted these words as a part of their daily discourse. through this analysis, i have identified four words used throughout migration narratives that belong to this domain: /lograr/ 'to achieve', / mehoramiento/ 'improvement', /progresa/ 'progress', and /ini/, the acronym for the instituto nacional indigena. the first three words refer to the ideology of progress that contact with governmental agencies that promote technological development and advancement has introduced to ch'ol life. ini is the governmental agency with which politically active ch'ols have the most contact and which represents indigenous interests to the national government. since native ch'ol equivalents for these terms do not exist, i suggest that in migration narratives, ch'ol speakers use progress words as loans. however, because monolingual speakers do not yet use them, one cannot classify progress words as fully integrated loans. as a result, i argue these words actually represent a bridge between loanwords and code-switching. i propose that the increased importance of these words in ch'ol life and their increased usage in ch'ol discourse over time may result in the future total integration of these words as loanwords. volume 21, 2005 103 alternate routes loanwords vs. code-snitching: identifying code-switched words and phrases by analyzing examples of code-switching and considering the speaker's bilingual ability, one can further identify the important differences between loanwords and code-switching. code-switched words and phrases do not demonstrate assimilation or integration into the native phonological system; instead, they maintain their original phonology. ch'ol speakers pronounce these words as they should be pronounced according to spanish phonology, thereby marking a switch in codes. code-switched words have not been syncretized linguistically, and they can be separated from the native lexicon and identified as distinct by the speakers themselves. a speaker's bilingual ability strongly influences his use of codeswitching. bilingual speakers often code-switch when speaking to other bilinguals, or when the speech event requires them to demonstrate their bilingualism. this phenomenon can be explained by the fact that in order to code-switch, a speaker must be proficient in two or more languages. in this sample, only bilingual ch'ols code-switched; monolingual ch'ols and bilingual ladinos did not code-switch. being proficient in both spanish and ch'ol allows bilingual ch'ols to code-switch regularly and easily. the result of their frequent and intense contact with mexican and ladino culture is that these speakers can express themselves freely and comfortably in both spanish and ch'ol. if these speakers have learned spanish and ch'ol simultaneously, or grew up speaking both languages, they may not make clear, cognitive distinctions between them, according to weinreich's definition of compound bilingualism (1953:9-11). monolingual ch'ols and bilingual ladinos did not code-switch in their migration narratives. monolingual ch'ol speakers have limited knowledge of spanish and are not likely to code-switch. spanish influence on their speech manifests itself exclusively in the use of loanwords. speaker 1, the monolingual speaker included in this sample, experienced significantly less general spanish interference than other speakers, exhibiting no code-switching and using only integrated loanwords. bilingual ladinos also did not code-switch. though they used integrated loanwords, code-switched words and phrases were not used in their narratives. since ch'ol is a second language for many ladinos, they experience coordinate bilingualism, as defined by weinreich (1953:9-11), and 104 volume 21. 2005 chemins alternatifs for this reason, maintain both languages as separate from one another, making a clear distinction between them. the fact that bilingual ladinos rarely code-switched may also be explained by considering prestige as a motivation for code-switching. if ch'ol-spanish code-switching is motivated by the desire to demonstrate proficiency in spanish, the socially dominant language, in order to gain social status and prestige, it is logical to assume that bilinguals that are native spanish speakers would not experience the same need to code-switch as bilingual ch'ols. unlike loanwords, code-switched words do not demonstrate widespread usage and often have native ch'ol equivalents. code-switched words and phrases are not used by ch'ol monolinguals, and occur infrequently in the speech of bilingual ladinos. code-switched words are used on an individual basis in specific contexts. the use of codeswitched words and phrases is not regular, and each usage is dependent on the speaker's preferences within that speech event or act. codeswitched words do not appear consistently in the speech of many ch'ols, and are used exclusively in the speech of ch'ol bilinguals. there is no specific pattern of usage that can be identified for individual spanish words. code-switched words and phrases in spanish are often intermixed in the discourse of ch'ol bilinguals, a flexibility of expression that allow speakers to communicate better. code-switching may also occur as interference, as the result of the cognitive interference of the two languages in bilinguals. ch'ol bilinguals often alternate freely between codes, as seen in the following example, where speaker 5, a ch'ol bilingual, code-switches, using non-assimilated spanish words throughout his ch'ol speech. to represent the change in codes, i have marked the spanish phrases in italics, while the ch'ol phrases are in regular print: lo que masjodido, cholero papa, cholero mania; eso, lo ke masjodido, cholero papa, cholero mama; 'eso, lo que masjodido, cholero papa, cholero mama; 'eso, what s morefucked up, hisfather [is a] ch 'ol speaker, his mother [is a] ch 'ol speaker, 'eso, muku ti chol yotot, cholc hach, aha. ejke medio ma 'is tonto abla, 'eso mu-ku-0 t y i chol y-otyoty, chole hach, 'aha. es ke medio ma 'is tonto abla, 'eso inc-vtr-b3 loc n 3s-n, n-dicc adj, part. es ke medio ma 'is tonto abla, that isx they speak ch'ol at home, just ch'ol. uhuh. (he) speaks really brokenly,(hc) volume 21, 2005 105 alternate routes solo chc bahchc isi, isi cabron de. como se llama el, mario de roselita, este. solo chc' bahchc isi, isi cabron de. como se llama el, mario de roselita, este^ adv adv-b3 adv part, part cabron de, como se llama el, mario de roselita, este. just talks like that, that asshole, what's his name, mario de roselita, that ona these code-switched words and phrases do not demonstrate regular or widespread usage in ch'ol discourse. they are used exclusively in the speech of this particular speaker and in this particular speech event based on the speaker's personal choices and to allow him to communicate more effectively or more rapidly. unlike loaned words, code-switched words and phrases frequently have native equivalents. though the speaker may know the ch'ol term, he chooses instead to use the spanish word in the context of ch'ol discourse and following ch'ol grammar. when the speaker uses a word in one language or the other, he indicates a linguistic preference for the word of one language over that of the other during a particular speech event. for example, though the ch'ol word for shoe is /sanabal/ or / patz'/, speaker 5 uses the spanish word /sapato/: este...m\k mahlel t y i cholel, manik zapato, kok. este. . . mi k-mahlel t y i cholel, manik sapato, kok. este... inc al-vin-inc loc n, neg sapato, n well. . . i went to the cornfield, without shoes, on foot. the use of most spanish words that have ch'ol equivalents should be considered code-switching, with the exception of function words and words pertaining to daily and domestic life, as i have just discussed, since these words represent a switch from the lexicon of one language to that of another. discussion on the most basic level, inserted code-switched words and phrases are distinguished from loanwords on the basis of assimilation: codeswitched words and phrases do not demonstrate significant phonological or morphophonemic assimilation or widespread usage by speakers with varying levels of bilingualism. loanwords rarely have native equivalents, and often are terms that refer to technologies or items of material culture that were introduced to ch'ol life through contact with spanish 106 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs culture. although they both occur through the process of insertion (muysken 2000), code-switched words and phrases, contrary to loanwords, demonstrate no phonological assimilation and integration into the native ch'ol lexicon, and are used almost exclusively by bilingual ch'ols. having established that loanwords become integrated parts of native lexicons, i argue that lexical borrowing in ch'ol is the direct result of intense and prolonged contact with the spanish language since the colonial period, and with both local ladino culture and the national culture promoted by the mexican government. the introduction ofnew items of material culture and new ideologies during the contact period and throughout mexican history has influenced the ch'ols both culturally and linguistically, since the incorporation of new items in ch'ol life creates a need for new vocabulary. i suggest that other loans, such as function words, discourse markers, and other domestic terms, may have been initially used during the contact period as intrasentential code-switching to enhance speaker's personal status by demonstrating knowledge of the dominant language, spanish. i propose that all loanwords begin as a form of intrasentential codeswitching. this phenomenon is noted in the use of spanish "progress words." these words are presently in a liminal state; although they have begun to be incorporated into ch'ol as they are regularly used by ch'ol bilinguals, they have not yet become fully integrated loanwords, since they are used exclusively by bilingual speakers and have not yet been adopted by monolingual ch'ols. over time, however, as their use becomes more widespread, they will become an integrated part of the ch'ol lexicon. monolingual speakers will learn them and use them as a result of their increasing importance in ch'ol life and their frequent occurrence in the speech of bilinguals. it has been proposed that loaned words always first occur as insertions, learned by bilingual speakers who then teach them to monolingual speakers (poplack and sankoff, 1984:101; fries and pike, 1949:39). borrowed words are transmitted when a bilingual speaker uses them in conversation with a monolingual speaker. the monolingual speaker may then adopt these innovations, and begin to use them himself. i suggest that it is at the moment that monolingual speakers begin using borrowed words that they become loanwords and demonstrate lexical integration. phonological assimilation and the shift from spanish phovolume 21, 2005 107 alternate routes nology to ch'ol phonology correspond to the integration of these words into ch'ol lexicon, and this occurs when monolinguals begin to use these words, since monolingual speakers are not able to imitate the spanish pronunciation of borrowed words as well as bilinguals. it is also during this process of integration and assimilation that loanwords transform to become "native" terms, losing cultural and linguistic associations with their original languages and thereby demonstrating linguistic syncretism. at this point, loanwords are no longer spanish words, but rather become ch'ol terms, and are recognized as such by ch'ol speakers. as myers-scotton (1982) suggests, code-switching may be situationally motivated, depending on the participants involved in the speech event as well as on the context of the speech event itself. ch'ol-spanish code-switching may be a conscious and rational choice that speakers make when speaking to other bilinguals in order to demonstrate linguistic solidarity (myers-scotton and bolonyai, 2001:5). the extent of code-switching that one engages in may also be motivated by the speech event itself. at community events where ch'ols promote their ch'ol identity, they may be less likely to code-switch than they would be in meetings with governmental agencies, or when talking with bilingual friends and family members. this phenomenon is explained by considering the value associated with speaking spanish, the socially dominant language. ch'ols may be more likely to code-switch in situations of contact with representatives of the mexican government or with other native spanish speakers in order to gain status from their use of spanish. the use of code-switching in this sample may also be dependent on the context in which these narratives were recorded. since these narratives were given in a formal interview setting, they represent elicited, and not natural, speech (labov, 1972). the formal nature of the interview setting and the presence of "outgroup" members during the speech event may have influenced the use of code-switching in these narratives, and for this reason, the use of code-switching in this sample may not be reflective of natural speech. speakers may exhibit less code-switching in natural speech or when speaking to ch'ols or other "ingroup" members. this problem may be overcome by using exclusively in-group interviewers during future ficldwork. i also propose that the high degree of code-switching used by the bilingual speakers in this sample is directly related to the topics they were asked to discuss. since speakers were asked to tell about their own 108 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs lives, the fact that they have had extensive contact with spanish language and ladino cultural institutions motivated them to use more spanish when presenting their life histories. i do not suggest that this action was a conscious choice by the speakers, but that the subject matter of the narratives lends itself to frequent code-switching between ch'ol and spanish. a speaker's tendency to code-switch is strongly influenced by the extent and intensity of his contact with the spanish language and with both local ladino and mexican national culture. though all of the ch'ol bilinguals included in this sample code-switched, the individuals who code-switched more frequently have experienced more contact with ladino culture, or the culture of mestizo populations living in large towns or small cities, or national culture, the culture promoted by the national government, code-switched more frequently. ch'ol speakers experiencing little outside contact code-switched less frequently than those who have had prolonged contact with spanish and ladino or national culture. frequent and intense contact with ladino and national culture not only increases the speaker's exposure to bilingualism, but also causes the speaker to need to use spanish more regularly and in more situational contexts. contrary to the ch'ol bilinguals, both bilingual ladinos interviewed demonstrated little code-switching. this phenomenon may be explained by the fact that ladinos are not motivated by the prestige associated with spanish, the dominant language. future research on the use of code-switching in bilingual ladinos, however, may further illuminate this issue and provide more viable explanations for the absence of codeswitching in the discourse of these individuals. two of the six ch'ol bilinguals included in my study exhibited significantly more code-switching in their migration narratives than the other speakers, demonstrating markedly higher degrees of language interference. their life histories reveal that these speakers have had extensive contact with both ladino and national culture, and as a result, have had more experience speaking spanish than other ch'ol bilinguals. i argue that the high levels of code-switching used by these individuals may represent emerging changes in their cultural and linguistic identity. speaker 5, a 65 year-old man from the ejido of la cascada, chiapas, used assimilated loans more frequently than other speakers, and relied heavily on the use of function words and discourse markers borrowed from spanish. while he did know ch'ol numbers, he did not use them volume 21, 2005 109 alternate routes except when specifically asked to count in ch'ol. this speaker manifested numerous instances of both intersentential and intrasentential code-switching in his speech. in addition to interjecting spanish words in ch'ol speech, this speaker often switched codes in mid-sentence, mixing spanish and ch'ol without any clear indication that he was switching from one language to the other, an action that may indicate that the switch was not always a conscious choice. one must consider why speaker 5 code-switched more frequently than others. his heavy use of code-switching may be explained by the fact that though he lives in a predominantly ch'ol ejido, he is currently married to a ladina woman who did not speak ch'ol when they met. she speaks ch'ol now, but does not speak it with the proficiency of a native. most of his children and grandchildren do not speak fluent ch'ol, and as a result, this speaker must use spanish to communicate with the majority of his own family. i suggest that his use of code-switching is more than mere habit, but reflects changes in his self-perception and linguistic identity, as his life has been strongly molded by ladino culture. speaker 7 also code-switched more frequently than other speakers throughout her narrative. this speaker, a 24 year-old woman who currently resides in the town of tumbala in the chiapas highlands, has had extensive contact with ladino and national culture throughout her life. both intersentential and intrasentential switching were used in her narrative. this speaker used intrasentental switching to fill in words that she did not know in ch'ol. one interesting aspect of this speaker's codeswitching behavior is seen in reported speech. throughout her narrative, she reported the speech of others. while reported quotations represent the actual speech act they are relating, they are not necessarily exact representations of the actual utterances of the act, as koven (2001:517) and many others have pointed out. even though the phrases this speaker quoted may have been spoken originally in ch'ol, she always switched to spanish when reproducing them. this action may indicate that the speaker does not make a conscious distinction between spanish and ch'ol when relaying the speech of others, or that she is not aware of the language in which the original utterance was made. though speaker 7 was born in emiliano zapata, a small ch'ol ejido near tumbala, she has not lived a "traditional" ch'ol life. at ten years old, she left home to go to school in tila, the other large ch'ol town in the chiapas highlands. after finishing preparatoha (the equivalent of ho volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs high school) there, she returned briefly to tumbala before moving to san cristobal de las casas, the large ladino regional center for highland chiapas, where she lived and studied for several years. since san cristobal is a spanish-speaking town, speaker 7 had considerable exposure to both the spanish language and ladino culture. this speaker has now returned to tumbala, where she works as the personal secretary of the presidente municipal, the mayor. although tumbala is a ch'ol town, her work with the government gives her regular exposure to national culture. in recent years, she has written several poems, four of which were published in the 1999 book, palabra conjurada, or conjured word (lopez k'ana et al., 1999). the poems in this book are published in ch'ol and spanish, though they follow spanish poetic norms rather than traditional ch'ol discourse structure. this speaker also told me that she writes her poems in spanish first, and later translates them to ch'ol. the extensive contact that both speaker 5 and speaker 7 have had with ladino and national culture has influenced both their ethnic and linguistic identities. though speaker 5 ethnically identifies himself as a ch'ol, his linguistic identity is strongly affected by the fact that he speaks spanish regularly with members of his family, many of who do not speak ch'ol. for this reason, spanish has become a part of his daily life, as has ladino culture, since his wife is ladina. his free alternation between both spanish and ch'ol demonstrates that these factors have strongly affected this speaker. he has experienced changes to his linguistic identity, and no longer identifies himself as solely a ch'ol speaker. speaker 7 has also been affected by intensive contact with ladino and national culture, experiencing changes to both her ethnic and linguistic identity. her work with the government and the fact that she lived and studied in san cristobal, a non-indigenous town populated mostly by ladinos and a center of ladino culture, have created changes in both her cultural and linguistic identity. both national and ladino culture as well as the spanish language have become defining aspects of this speaker's life, and her frequent use of code-switching indicates that her linguistic identity is constructed through knowledge of both spanish and ch'ol. i suggest that for these two speakers, the high levels of codeswitching may be indicative of an emerging dual ethnic and linguistic identity, constructed of elements from both ch'ol and local ladino culture. since i base these arguments on the preliminary analysis of a limited data sample, i will conduct additional research on language contact volume 21, 2005 111 alternate routes through extensive interviews on language choice in order to determine speakers' attitudes towards ch'ol and spanish during future extended fieldwork in this region. conclusions two types of language interference, loanwords and code-switching, have recently been the subject of considerable discussion and research as the result of increased interest in bilingualism. the exact distinction between loanwords and code-switching, however, has remained undefined. my preliminary analysis of lexical borrowing and language interference in ch'ol has provided insights into the differences between loanwords and code-switching. intensive language contact between spanish and ch'ol has led to extensive influence on ch'ol. this influence manifests itself in both lexical borrowing and code-switching. lexical borrowing is present in the speech of all ch'ol speakers because many spanish loanwords have become integrated into the ch'ol lexicon. code-switching, however, occurs only in the speech of ch'ol bilinguals. the study of linguistic integration and language interference in ch'ol suggests that the key to separating loanwords from code-switching is understanding the process of linguistic assimilation that occurs as the result of language contact. integration, or lexical borrowing, refers to spanish words that have been borrowed by ch'ol, and that have become assimilated into the ch'ol lexicon, as demonstrated through their incorporation into the native phonological system and their widespread usage throughout the speech of both monolingual and bilingual ch'ols. most loanwords of spanish origin are words that have no ch'ol translations; those with ch'ol equivalents were initially adopted to gain status and prestige, and have become integrated over time as synonyms or with slightly altered meanings or functions, as is the case with the spanish verb pensar, which takes on a new meaning in ch'ol. i propose that all assimilated loanwords were first used in ch'ol in intrasentential codeswitching, and that over time, they were adopted into the ch'ol lexicon because of their utility and frequent use in daily life. during the process of integration, loanwords become ch'ol terms, and are no longer identified by speakers as spanish words. code-switching is dependent on the bilingual ability of the speaker and is marked by the absence of phonological and lexical assimilation. code-switching includes words and phrases that have not become native 112 volume 21, 2005 chemins alternatifs items, and represents a more or less conscious switch from one language to another, dependent on situational context. ch'ols who have experienced the most frequent and most intense contact with both national and ladino culture and the spanish language exhibit the highest degree of code-switching. two ch'ol bilinguals exhibited higher degrees of codeswitching than the other ch'ol bilinguals, a phenomenon that is explained by the fact that, individually, they have had higher degrees of exposure to both national and ladino culture throughout their lives. these individuals switched freely between spanish and ch'ol when telling their life histories. analysis of code-switching in these individuals suggests an emerging dual cultural and linguistic identity, composed of elements of both ch'ol and national culture. i suggest that the use of code-switching in ch'ol is inextricably related to degree of contact with the spanish language and with ladino and national culture. future studies of code-switching should focus on determining the relationship between code-switching and identity, and how code-switching reflects changes in a speaker's ethnic and linguistic identities. distinguishing lexical integration from code-switching in the speech of bilingual speakers will allow us to continue exploring the relationship between language and culture and to determine the extent to which situations of language and culture contact influence native peoples, not only in mesoamerica, but across the world. acknowledgements i would like to thank kathryn josserand, nicholas hopkins, michael uzendoski, and shonna trinch for their guidance and insight. i would also like to thank the foundation for the advancement of mesoamerican studies (famsi) for their support during the summer of 2002. endnotes 1 . since the data sample we collected in mexico was limited as a result of the short duration of our field stay, i will further examine language interference and language contact phenomena in the speech of ch'ol monolinguals during future linguistic fieldwork in this region. 2. in ch'ol, /h/ represents a voiceless vocoid (koob 1979:54). volume 21, 2005 113 alternate routes 3. used to represent the orthographic / following barrutia and schwegler's (1994) model. 4. many early spanish loans were integrated into ch'ol in their plural form. for example the word /baka/ 'cow' was loaned as the plural /wakas/. 5. the shift from l\l to palatalized /ty/ occurs exclusively in ch'ol. since it is not present in other ch'olan languages, it is regarded as a late innovation that entered ch'ol after the end of the classic maya period. today, this innovation has been dropped from the pronunciation of new ch'ol words. for this reason, l\l often assimilates to /t y/ in early loans, while recent loans do not demonstrate assimilation to /ty/ and use ixl. references alejos garcia, j. 1989. wajalix bd t'an. mexico: universidad 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"language and borders." annual review ofanthropology 24:525-546. verbeeck, l. 1998. linguistic acculturation in mopan maya. newcastle: lincoln europa. weinreich, u. 1953. languages in contact: findings and problems. new york: publications of the linguistic circle ofnew york. whittaker, a. and v. warkentin. 1965. choi texts on the supernatural. norman: university of oklahoma press. 118 volume 21, 2005 312 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the new brutalism in higher education henry a. giroux1 abstract: in spite of its broad-based, even global, recognition, higher education in the united states is currently being targeted by a diverse number of rightwing forces, which have highjacked political power and have waged a focused campaign to undermine the principles of academic freedom, sacrifice critical pedagogical practice in the name of economic growth, and dismantle the university as a bastion of autonomy, independent thought, and uncorrupted inquiry. the article argues that under the material and affective assaults of neoliberalism, higher education across the globe is experiencing an unprecedented attack on its role as a democratic public sphere. at stake in this struggle is a concerted attempt by right-wing extremists and corporate interests to strip the professoriate of any authority, render critical pedagogy as merely an instrumental task, eliminate tenure as a protection for teacher authority, define students as consumers, produce a form of indebted citizenship, and remove critical reason from any vestige of civic courage, engaged citizenship, and social responsibility. the article offers both a critique and some suggestions about how such an attack can be collectively resisted, especially by those of us working in the universities. keywords: higher education, neoliberalism, united states, academic freedom, critical pedagogy across the globe, a new historical conjuncture is emerging in which the attacks on higher education as a democratic institution and on dissident public voices in general--whether journalists, whistleblowers, or academics – are intensifying with sobering consequences. the attempts to punish prominent academics such as ward churchill and steven salaita and others are matched by an equally vicious assault on whistleblowers 1  henry a. giroux currently holds the mcmaster university chair for scholarship in the public interest in the english and cultural studies department, and is distinguished visiting professor at ryerson university. his most recent books are neoliberalism’s war on higher education (haymarket press, 2014), and the violence of organized forgetting (city lights, 2014). he maintains a collection of his writing at www.henryagiroux.com. the new brutalism in higher education | 313 such as chelsea manning, jeremy hammond, edward snowden, as well as on journalists such as james risen.2 under the aegis of the national surveillance-security-secrecy state, it becomes difficult to separate the war on whistleblowers and journalists from the war on higher education – the institutions responsible for safeguarding and sustaining critical theory and engaged citizenship.3 marina warner has rightly called these assaults on higher education, “the new brutalism in academia” (warner, 2014). it may be worse than she suggests. in fact, the right-wing defense of the neoliberal dismantling of the university as a site of critical inquiry in many countries is more brazen and arrogant than anything we have seen in the past and its presence is now felt in a diverse number of repressive regimes. for instance, the authoritarian nature of neoliberalism and its threat to higher education as a democratic public spheres was on full display recently when the multi-millionaire and beijing-appointed leader of hong kong, leung chunying, told pro-democracy protesters that “allowing his successors to be chosen in open elections based on who won the greatest number of votes was unacceptable in part because it risked giving poorer residents a dominant voice in politics” (bradsher and buckley, 2014). offering an unyielding defense for china’s authoritarian political system, he argued that any candidate that might succeed him “must be screened by a ‘broadly representative’ nominating committee, which would insulate hong kong’s next chief executive from popular pressure to create social provisions and allow the government to implement more business-friendly policies to address economic” issues (ibid). this is not just an attack on political liberty but also an attack on dissent, critical education, and public institutions that might exercise a democratizing influence on the nation. in this case the autonomy of institutions such as higher education are threatened as much by corporate interests as by the repressive policies and practices of the state. 2  for the war on academics see giroux, 2007; 2014. for an analysis of the war on journalists, see radack, 2012 3  there is nothing new about the squashing of dissent in the united states and the complicity of liberals in such acts of repression. while i have not focused on this history, it is well to remember that the suppression of dissent is not a recent phenomenon. the sordid attacks against scott nearing, paul sweezy, paul piccone, and dozens of leftists who were fired just before and after world war ii, including the sixties, represents a glaring indictment of a history that is being repeated. as a number of intellectuals such as robert lynd, i.f. stone and others have pointed out, it is hard to overlook the morally and politically poisonous role that liberals such as schlesinger, reuther, almost the entire group of “new york intellectuals,” as well as most universities, unions and liberal organizations, played in suppressing dissent in a wide variety of fields. 314 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the hidden notion of politics that fuels this market-driven ideology also informs a more western-style form of neoliberalism in which the autonomy of democratizing institutions are under assault not only by the state but also by the ultra-rich, bankers, hedge fund managers, and the corporate elite. in this case, corporate sovereignty has replaced traditional state modes of governance and can be seen in attempts by powerful corporate elites to both undermine the common good and dismantle higher education’s democratizing influence on american society. as the south african nobel prize winner in literature, jm coetzee, points out, the new power elite “reconceive of themselves as managers of national economies” who want to turn universities into training schools equipping young people with the skills required by a modern economy” (coetzee, 2013). viewed as a private investment rather than a public good, universities are now construed as spaces where students are valued as human capital, courses are determined by consumer demand, and governance is based on the walmart model of labor relations. for coetzee, this attack on higher education, which is not only ideological but also increasingly relies on the repressive, militaristic arm of the punishing state, is a response to the democratization and opening up of universities to a more multiracial, diverse, and empowered spectrum of working and middle-class students that reached a highpoint in the 1960s all across the globe. in the last forty years, the assault on the university as a center of critique and democratization has intensified, just as the reach of this assault has expanded to include intellectuals, campus protesters, an expanding number of minority students, and the critical formative cultures that provide the foundation for a substantive democracy.4 in the united states and england, in particular, the ideal of the university as vital public good no longer fits into a revamped discourse of progress, largely defined in terms of economic growth. under the onslaught of a merciless and savage financialization of society that has spread since the 1970s, the concept of social progress has all but disappeared amid the ideological onslaught of a crude market-driven fundamentalism that promises instant gratification, consumption, and immediate financial gain. if dissident intellectuals were the subject of right wing attacks in the past, the range and extent of the attack on higher education has widened and become more insidious. as ellen schrecker (2010, 3) succinctly notes: 4  for an excellent analysis of the conservative reaction to the growing democratization of the university from the sixties on, see newfield, 2008. the new brutalism in higher education | 315 “today the entire enterprise of higher education, not just its dissident professors, is under attack, both internally and externally. the financial challenges are obvious, as are the political ones. less obvious, however, are the structural changes that have transformed the very nature of american higher education. in reacting to the economic insecurities of the past forty years, the nation’s colleges and universities have adopted corporate practices that degrade undergraduate instruction, marginalize faculty members, and threaten the very mission of the academy as an institution devoted to the common good.” memories of the university as a citadel of democratic learning have been replaced by a university eager to define itself largely in as an adjunct of corporate power. civic freedom has been reduced to the notion of consumption, education has been reduced to a form of training, and agency has been narrowed to the consumer logic of choice legitimated by a narrow belief in defining one’s goals almost entirely around selfinterests rather than shared responsibilities of democratic sociability. education is increasingly reduced to a form of instrumental rationality that kills the imagination, and exorcises any attempt to connect pedagogy to the goal of educating students to be thoughtful, civically courageous, politically engaged, and complex critical thinkers. coetzee’s defense of education provides an important referent for those of us who believe that the university is nothing if it is not a public trust and social good; that is, a critical institution infused with the promise of cultivating intellectual insight, the civic imagination, inquisitiveness, risk-taking, social responsibility, and the struggle for justice. rather than defining the mission of the university in terms that mimic markets based ideologies, modes of governance, and neoliberal policies, the questions that should be asked at this crucial time in american history concern how the mission of the university might be better understood with respect to both developing and safeguarding the interests of young people at a time of violence and war, the rise of a rampant anti-intellectualism, the emerging specter of authoritarianism, and the threat of nuclear and ecological devastation. what might it mean to define the university as a public good and democratic public sphere rather than as an institution that has aligned itself with market values and is more attentive to market fluctuations and investor interests than educating students to be critically engaged citizens? or, as zygmunt bauman and leonidas donskis (2013, 139) write: “how will we form the next generation of…intellectuals and politicians if young people will never have an opportunity to experience what a non-vulgar, non-pragmatic, non-instrumentalized university is 316 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education like?” even worse, how can students become critically engaged agents if they constantly subjected to the effective spaces of neoliberalism which promote a immobilizing hedonism, suffocating narcissism, culture of glitter, the endless commodification of everything, and a tawdry privatization. under neoliberalism’s regime of affective and ideological management, youth are inducted into the cultures of wall street, silicon valley, and the idiocy of celebrity culture where all the young men and women wear what richard rodriquez (2014) calls “an astonishing vacancy.” what role will higher education play in fighting against the disavowal of democratic and egalitarian impulses and the denegration of public values, goods, and the promises of a radical democracy? with the advance of a savage form of casino capitalism and its dreamworlds of consumption, privatization, and deregulation, not only are democratic values and social protections at risk, but also the civic and formative cultures that make such values and protections intelligible and consequential to a sustainable democratic society. as public spheres, once enlivened by broad engagements with common concerns, are being transformed into “spectacular spaces of consumption” and financial looting, the flight from mutual obligations and social responsibilities strengthens and has resulted not only in a devaluing of public life and the common good, but also in a crisis of the radical imagination, especially in terms of rethinking the purpose, meaning, and value of politics itself (kurlantzick, 2013). moreover, not only have academic fields become financialized but so has time and space. students now labor under time constraints marked by the speeding up of time to pay off debts, the choosing of spaces and spheres of labor that offer quick returns – all done in the name of an indentured form of citizenship predicated on consuming and going into debt. and the consequences far exceed the more volatile examples of the violence waged by police on student protesters. another index of such a crisis, as mike davis point out, is that we live in an era in which there is a super saturation of corruption, cruelty, and violence” that fails any longer to outrage or even interest” (cited in fisher, 2009, 11). moral outrage has been replaced by the shouting and screaming that is symptomatic of talk radio and television shows whose purpose is to replace critical dialogue with a cartoonish spectacle in which evidence and argument dissolve in opinions expressed in deafening volume. this type of celebrated illiteracy finds its counterpart in university commencement speeches often delivered by business icons such as bill gates, or more problematically, celebrities who confirm the new brutalism in higher education | 317 the triumph of anti-intellectualism consumerism over thoughtfulness, social responsibility, and the ethical imagination. rarely are students in such commencements exposed to writers, journalists, artists, and other cultural workers who believe in the public good, fight against injustices, and dare at the risk of their jobs, and sometimes their lives, to hold power accountable. needless to say, the crisis of higher education is about much more than a crisis of funding, an assault on dissent, the emergence of a deep-seated anti-intellectualism, or its service to the financial elite, it is also about a crisis of memory, agency, and politics. what mike davis is suggesting is that politics has been emptied out of its political, moral, and ethical registers – stripped down to a machine of social and political death for whom the cultivation of the imagination is a hindrance. commerce is the heartbeat of social relations, and the only mode of governance that matters is one that mimics wall street. we live in the age of a new brutalism marked not simply by an indifference to multiple social problems, but also defined by a kind of mad delight in the spectacle and exercise of violence, permanent war, militarism, and cruelty. america is sullied by a brutalism that is perfectly consistent with a new kind of barbaric power, one that puts millions of people in prison, subjects an entire generation to a form of indentured citizenship, and strips people of the material and symbolic resources they need to exercise their capacity to live with dignity and justice. academics who speak out against corruption and injustice are often censored and sometimes lose their jobs, proving that dissent has become a dangerous activity. at the same time, the obama administration criminalizes public servants who expose unethical behavior, the violation of civil liberties, and corruption. one egregious and symptomatic case reported by morris berman took place in 2011 when “environmental activist tim dechristopher was sentenced to two years in prison for his repeated declaration that environmental protection required civil, i.e., nonviolent disobedience” (berman, 2012). as berman points out, one wonders if the judge that sentenced dechristropher to prison “would also have put rosa parks and mahatma gandhi in jail, had he been around their lifetimes” (ibid). if democratic political life is emptied out by the rise of the national security apparatus, the increasing criminalization of dissent, and the ongoing militarization of everyday life, it is equally devalued and threatened by modes of public pedagogy, circulating in fox news, for example, that trade in lies, ignorance, and a full-fledged attack on reason and critical thought. 318 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education in this instance, the new barbarism produces and sanctions a civic illiteracy and retrograde consumer consciousness in which students are taught to mimic the economic success of alleged “brands” such as the reality tv star, kim kardashian. her celebrity is promoted around a kind of idiocy, as exemplified in the publicity surrounding the publication of her new book, selfish, the unique selling feature of which is that it contains 2,000 selfies. the challenge for higher education in this debacle goes beyond refusing to produce modes of agency that embrace this kind of deadly anti-intellectualism and rabid individualism, but to enable students to critically interrogate what stands for public engagement, and how this debased mode of being in the world gains prominence in the public sphere. more importantly, what obligation does a university have to teach students to judge the character of their society not by the lives of celebrities, new technologies, or the endless production of needless consumer goods, but by its intellect, reason, compassion for the poor, social investment in young people, and its willingness to provide economic support and social provisions for all, including those marginalized by race, class, gender, and sexual orientation? how we treat those considered vulnerable says much more about the state of a democratic society and the institutions that support it than how we treat the rich, celebrities, and those who either trivialize democracy or intentionally undermine it for their own benefit. there is no way to escape the relationship between education and power, pedagogy and social justice, knowledge and the production of the ethical and civic imagination. these neoliberal agendas have sought ways to mystify and undermine these connections. as the corporatization of higher education intensifies, there is little talk in this view of higher education about the history and value of shared governance between faculty and administrators, nor of educating students as critical citizens rather than potential employees of walmart. there are few attempts to affirm faculty as scholars and public intellectuals who have a measure of autonomy and power. instead, faculty members are defined less as intellectuals than as technicians and grant writers or they are punished for raising their voices against various injustices. students fare no better in this debased form of education and are treated as either clients, consumers, or as restless children in need of high-energy entertainment—as was made clear in the 2012 penn state scandal and the ever increasing football scandals at major universities, where testosterone fuelled entertainment is given a higher priority than the new brutalism in higher education | 319 substantive teaching and learning – to say nothing of student safety and protection. precious resources are now wasted by universities intent on building football stadiums, student dorms that mimic resort hotels, and other amenities that signal the disneyification of higher education for students and the walmartification of labor relations for faculty. for instance, high point university seeks to attract students with its first-run movie theater, ever present ice cream trucks, a steakhouse, outdoor hot tubs, and dorms with plasma-screen tvs” (matlack, 2012). such modes of education do not foster a sense of organized responsibility fundamental to a democracy. instead, they encourage what might be called a sense of organized irresponsibility – a practice that underlies the economic darwinism and civic corruption at the heart of a debased politics of consumption, finance, and privatization. when one combines the university as a disneyfied entertainment center with labor practices that degrade and exploit faculty the result is what terry eagleton recently calls the “death of universities as centers of critique” (eagleton, 2010). governance under higher education is being stripped of any viable democratic vision. in the united states, college presidents pride themselves on defining their role almost entirely in a vocabulary that mimics the language of wall street and hedge fund managers. with few exceptions, they are praised as fund raisers but rarely acknowledged for the quality of their ideas. moreover, trustees have not only assumed more power in higher education, but are largely drawn from the ranks of business, and, yet as in the steven salaita case, are making judgments about faculty that they are unqualified to make. for those of us who believe that education is more than an extension of the business world marked by a new brutalism, it is crucial to address a number of issues that connect the university to the larger society while stressing the educative nature of politics as part of a broader effort to create a critical culture, supportive institutions, and a collective movement that supports the connection between critique and action and redefines agency in the service of the practice of freedom and justice. let me mention just a few. first, educators can address and make clear the relationship between the attack on the social state and the transformation of higher education into an adjunct of corporate power. the attack on higher education cannot be understood outside of the attack on the welfare state, social provisions, public servants, and democratic public spheres. nor can it be understood outside of the production of the neoliberal subject, one who 320 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education is atomized, unable to connect private issues to larger public considerations, and is taught to believe in a form of radical individualism that enables a fast withdrawal from the public sphere and the claims of economic and social justice. as stefan collini has argued, under the regime of neoliberalism, the “social self’ has been transformed into the “disembedded individual,” just as the notion of the university as a public good is now repudiated by the privatizing and atomistic values at the heart of a hyper-market driven society.5 clearly, in any democratic society, education should be viewed as a right, not an entitlement. this suggests a reordering of state and federal priorities to make that happen. much needed revenue can be raised by putting into play even a limited number of reform policies in which, for instance, the upper 10 percent and corporations would be forced to pay a fair share of their taxes; a tax could also be placed on trade transactions; and tax loopholes for the wealthy would be eliminated. it is well known that the low tax rate given to corporations is a major scandal. for instance, and this is only one egregious example, the bank of america paid no taxes in 2010 and “got $1.9 billion tax refund from the irs, even though it made $4.4 billion in profits” (snyder, 2013). in addition, academics can join with students, public schools teachers, unions, and others to bring attention to wasteful military spending that if eliminated could provide the funds for a free public higher education for every qualified young person in the country. brown university’s watson institute for international studies has done extensive research on military spending and the costs of war and states that as a result of the iraqi war alone “american taxpayers will ultimately spend roughly $2.2 trillion on the war, but because the u.s. government borrowed to finance the conflict, interest payments through the year 2053 means that the total bill could reach nearly $4 trillion” (armbruster, 2013; watson institute, 2013). while there is growing public concern over rising tuition rates along with the crushing debt students are incurring, there is little public outrage from academics over the billions of dollars wasted on a massive and wasteful military budget and arms industry. as rabbi michael lerner of tikkun has pointed out, democracy needs a marshall plan in which funding is sufficient to make all levels of education free, while also providing enough social support to eliminate poverty, hunger, inadequate health care, and the destruction of the environment.6 there 5  these two terms are taken from collini, 2014, 1-2. 6  for tikkun’s marshall plan, see http://spiritualprogressives.org/newsite/?page_id=114 the new brutalism in higher education | 321 is nothing utopian about the demand to redirect money away from the military, powerful corporations, and the upper 1 percent. second, addressing these tasks demands a sustained critique of the transformation of a market economy into a market society along with a clear analysis of the damage it has caused both at home and abroad. power, particularly the power of the largest corporations, has become more unaccountable and “the subtlety of illegitimate power makes it hard to identify” (george, 2014). the greatest threat posed by authoritarian politics is that it makes power invisible and hence defines itself in universal and commonsense terms, as if it is beyond critique and dissent. moreover, disposability has become the new measure of a savage form of casino capitalism in which the only value that matters is exchange value. compassion, social responsibility, and justice are relegated to the dustbin of an older modernity that now is viewed as either quaint or a grim reminder of a socialist past. this suggests, as angela davis, michelle alexander, and others have argued that there is a need for academics and young people to become part of a broader social movement aimed at dismantling the repressive institutions that make up the punishing state. the most egregious example of which is the prison-industrial complex, which drains billions of dollars in funds to put people in jail when such resources could be used to fund public and higher education. as ferguson makes painfully clear, the police have become militarized, armed with weapons from the battlefields of iraq and afghanistan (balko, 2013; nelson, 2010). the united states prison system locks up more people than any other country in the world, and the vast majority of them are people of color (alexander, 2010). moreover, public schools are increasingly modeled after prisons and are implementing policies in which children are arrested for throwing peanuts at a school bus or violating a dress code (giroux, 2012). the punishing state is a dire threat to both public and higher education and democracy itself. the american public does not need more prisons; it needs more schools, accessible, low cost health services, and a living wage for all workers. this type of analysis suggests that progressives and others need a more comprehensive understanding of how politics and power are interrelated, of how different registers of oppression mutually inform each other and can be better understood in terms of their connections and deeply historical and social relations. this suggests that educators and other progressives need to develop a more comprehensive view of society and the mutually informing registers of politics, oppression, and political struggle. there is a noble and informing example of this type of analysis in the work of 322 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education theorists such as stanley aronowitz, angela davis, and the late martin luther king, jr., who drew connections between militarism, racism and capitalism as part of is call not for reform but for a radical restructuring of american society. third, academics, artists, journalists and other young people need to connect the rise of subaltern, part-time labor – or what we might call the walmart model of model of wealth and labor relations – in both the university and the larger society to the massive inequality in wealth and income that now corrupts every aspect of american politics and society. no democracy can survive the kind of inequality in which “the 400 richest people…have as much wealth as 154 million americans combined, that’s 50 percent of the entire country [while] the top economic 1 percent of the u.s. population now has a record 40 percent of all wealth and more wealth than 90 percent of the population combined” (degraw, 2011). senator bernie sanders (2014) provides a startling statistical map of the massive inequality at work in the united states. in a speech to the u.s. senate, he states: “today…the top 1% owns 38% of the financial wealth of america, 38%. and i wonder how many americans know how much the bottom 60% own. they want people to think about it. top 1% own 38% of the wealth. what do the bottom 60% own? the answer is all of 2.3%. top 1% owns 38% of the financial wealth. the bottom 60% owns 2.3%. madam president, there is one family in this country, the walton family, the owners of wal-mart, who are now worth as a family $148 billion. that is more wealth than the bottom 40% of american society. one family owns more wealth than the bottom 40% of american society...that’s distribution of wealth. that’s what we own. in terms of income, what we made last year, the latest information that we have in terms of distribution of income is that from 2009-2012, 95% of all new income earned in this country went to the top 1%. have you all got that? 95% of all new income went to the top 1%, which tells us that when we talk about economic growth, which is 2%, 3%, 4%,whatever it is, that really doesn’t mean all that much because almost all of the new income generated in that growth has gone to the very, very, very wealthiest people in this country.” democracy in the united states is has been hijacked by a freefloating class of ultra-rich and corporate powerbrokers and transformed into an oligarchy “where power is effectively wielded by a small number the new brutalism in higher education | 323 of individuals” (mckay, 2014). at least, this is the conclusion of a recent princeton university study, and at the risk of being charged with hyperbole, the report may be much too moderate in its conclusions. fourth, academics need to fight for the rights of students to get a free education, be given a formidable and critical education not dominated by corporate values, and to have a say in the shaping of their education and what it means to expand and deepen the practice of freedom and democracy. many countries such as germany, france, denmark, cuba, and brazil post-secondary education is free because these countries view education not as a private right but as a public good. yet, in some of the most advanced countries in the world such as the united states and canada, young people, especially from low income groups are being systemically excluded from access to higher education and, in part, this is because they are left out of the social contract and the discourse of democracy. they are the new disposables who lack jobs, a decent education, hope, and any semblance of a life better than that of their parents. they are a reminder of how finance capital has abandoned any viable vision of a better future for young people. youth have become a liability in the world of high finance, a world that refuses to view them as important social investments. and the consequences are terrifying. as jennifer m. silva points out in her brilliant book, coming up short, coming of age for young people “is not just being delayed but fundamentally dismantled by drastic economic restructure, profound cultural transformations, and deepening social inequality” (silva, 2013, 10) the futures of young people are being refigured or reimagined in ways that both punish and depoliticize them. silva writes that many young people are turning away from politics, focusing instead on the purely personal and emotional vocabularies of self-help and emotional self-management. as she (ibid) puts it: “…this emerging working-class adult self is characterized by low expectations of work, wariness toward romantic commitment, widespread distrust of social institutions, profound isolation from others, and an overriding focus on their emotions and psychic health…. [they] are working hard to remake dignity and meaning out of emotional self-management and willful psychic transformation.” finally, though far from complete, there is a need to oppose the ongoing shift in power relations between faculty and the managerial class. too many faculty are now removed from the governing structure 324 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education of higher education and as a result have been abandoned to the misery of impoverished wages, excessive classes, no health care, and few, if any, social benefits. as political scientist benjamin ginsburg points out, administrators and their staffs now outnumber full time faculty accounting for two-thirds of the increase in higher education costs in the past 20 years. this is shameful and is not merely an education issue but a deeply political matter, one that must address how neoliberal ideology and policy has imposed on higher education an anti-democratic governing structure. we may live in the shadow of the authoritarian corporate state, but the future is still open. the time has come to develop a political language in which civic values and social responsibility—and the institutions, tactics, and long-term commitments that support them – become central to invigorating and fortifying a new era of civic engagement, a renewed sense of social agency, and an impassioned international social movement with the vision, organization, and set of strategies capable of challenging the neoliberal nightmare that now haunts the globe and empties out the meaning of politics and democracy. references alexander, m. (2010). the new jim crow. new york: the new press. armbruster, b. (2014, march 14). study: iraq war cost u.s. $2.2 trillion, claimed nearly 200,000 lives. thinkprogress, http://thinkprogress.org/ security/2013/03/14/1721961/study-iraq-war-cost-2-triillion/ balko, r. (2000). rise of the warrior cop: the militarization of america’s police forces. new york: public affairs. bauman, z. and l. donskis. (2013). moral blindness: the loss of sensitivity in liquid modernity. cambridge, uk: polity press. berman, m. slouching towards nuremberg. counterpunch http://www. counterpunch.org/2012/07/25/slouching-towards-nuremberg/ bradsher, k. and c. buckley. (2014, october 20). hong kong leader reaffirms tough stance on elections and economic discontent. new york times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/world/asia/leungchun-ying-hong-kong-chinaprotests.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=h omepage&version=hpsumsmallm edia& module=first-columnregion&region=top-news&wt.nav=top-news coetzee, j.m. (2013, november 1). universities head for extinction. mail & guardian, http://mg.co.za/ article/2013-11-01-universities-head-for-extinction the new brutalism in higher education | 325 collini, s. (2014, february 5). response to book review symposium: stefan collini, what are universities for, sociology, http://soc.sagepub.com/ content/early/2014/02/14/0038038513518852 degraw, d. (2011, august 11). meet the global financial elites controlling $46 trillion in wealth. alternet, http://www.alternet.org/story/151999/ meet_the_global_financial_elites_controlling _$46_ trillion_in_wealth eagleton, t. (2010, december 17). the death of universities. the guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/ death-universities-malaise-tuition-fees fisher, m. (2009). capitalist realism. washington, usa: zero books, 2009. george, s. (2014, february). state of corporations: the rise of illegitimate power and the threat to democracy. transnational institute and occupy. com, state of power 2014: exposing the davos class, http://www.tni.org/ sites/www.tni.org/files/download/state_of_power-6feb14.pdf giroux, a.h. (2007). the university in chains: confronting the militaryindustrial-academic complex. new york: paradigm. -----(2012). youth in a suspect society. new york: palgrave. -----(2014). neoliberalism’s war on higher education. chicago: haymarket. greenwald, g. (2014). no place to hide. new york: signal. kurlantzick, j. (2013). democracy in retreat. new haven: yale university press. matlack, c. (2012, april 19). bubble u.: high point university. bloomberg business week, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-19/ bubble-u-dot-high-point-university mckay, t. (2014, april 16). princeton concludes what kind of government america really has, and it’s not a democracy,” popular resistance, http://www.policymic.com/articles/87719/princeton-concludes-whatkind-of-government-america-really-has-and-it-s-not-a-democracy nelson, j., ed. (2000). police brutality. new york: norton. newfield, c. (2008). unmaking the public university: the forty-year assault on the middle class. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. radack, j. (2012, april 9). obama targets journalists. salon, http:// www.salon.com/2012/04/09/journalists_casualties_in_the_war_on_ whistleb lowers/ sanders, b. (2014, april 1). a threat to american democracy. rsn, http://readersupportednews.org/ opinion2/277-75/22830-focus-a-threat-to-american-democracy schrecker, e. (2010). the lost soul of higher education. new york, n.y.: the new press. silva, m.j. (2013). coming up short: working-class adulthood in age of uncertainty. new york: oxford university press. 326 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education snyder, m. (2013, february 19). you won’t believe who is getting away with paying zero taxes while the middle class gets hammered. infowars.com, http://www.infowars.com/abolish-the-income-tax-youwont-believe-who-is-getting-away-with-paying-zero-taxes-while-themiddle-class-gets-hammered/ tikkun. (n.d.) global marshall plan, http://spiritualprogressives.org/ newsite/?page_id=114 warner, m. (2014, september 11). dairy. the london review of books, 36:17, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n17/marina-warner/diary watson institute. (2013, march 14). costs of war project, iraq war: 190,000 lives, $2.2 trillion, http://news.brown.edu/articles/2013/03/warcosts chemins aliernatif where the forest meets the highway 1 mike patterson introduction how something as elemental as music and cerebral as computers can be combined was part of the focus of my ma thesis on native music in canada (the coming together of "two worlds" for native people, and the weaving together of two worldviews on many levels [patterson, 1996]). now i am extending that and making it more personal: how to reconcile what we see and feel in these canadian spaces (our home, and native land) with information technology (it). in june, 1998 a show arrived at ottawa's saw gallery, created by iroquois artists exploring and using it. the show visited those areas "at the edge of the woods: along the highway" and also "the notion of four states of awareness in iroquoian culture, representing the progression from the edge of the woods, to the clearing around a village, the village itself and the inside of a longhouse" (marple, 1998: 14). two exhibits struck me: one, an installation consisting of lodgepoles forming a tipi, with a computer where the fire would be, displaying a video of a fire; and the other an interactive web project that allowed people to remotely and virtually contribute beads toward the making of an electronic wampum belt (www.albany.net/~printup). both suggested cultural interaction alive on many levels, reaching into the past and future, trying to find ways of reconciling the meeting of two distinct worldviews that, in iroquoian culture at least, were supposed to stay apart (the two-row wampum belt, presented by the iroquois to the english over three hundred years ago, shows two canoes going parallel, on the river, together but not to meet). i wanted to explore these convergences in the field myself. i traveled across canada two summers ago, from ottawa through the southern prairies to medicine hat, then back through the northern yellowhead highway through lake manitoba and lake winnipeg. across the top of volume 16, 2000 9 alternate routes superior twice, in an 82 corolla wagon with a canoe, tent, clog, laptop and cellphone. i wanted to be where the forest meets the highway. i was traveling and living in the bush, campgrounds, provincial parks, reserves and near towns, under the stars for over four months. being a webmaster at the time, posting stories daily to a high tech trade paper (silicon valley north; www.silvan.com), i also had to be up on the net at least once a day. some of my notes from these travels are presented below {in italics) with the other components of this essay; i take my model from latour's aramis, or the love of technology, my token companion across canada as i tried to go to the place where two worlds meet: and i'd actually like to do a book in which there's no metalanguage, no master discourse, where you wouldn't know which is strongest, the sociological theory or the documents or the interviews or the literature or the fiction, where all these genres or regimes would be at the same level, each one interpreting the others without anybody being able to say which is judging what (latour, 1996: 298). this paper will look primarily at two things: theory and discourse on the global implications of information technology, and ethnographic and other local data related to peoples' use of computers, the internet and so on, particularly as related to native (and first nations) people in canada. 2 it is located in major theoretical traditions at two levels: the macro, which is largely supported by thoughts and philosophies of french writers such as baudrillard, bordieu, foucault, latour, scrres et. al. and the work of futurists such as giddens, mcluhan, beck, david hlkins and william gibson; and a micro approach involving diverse qualitative methods including ethnography, autocthnography, participant observation and other techniques (adler, albas and albas, castaneda, denzin, glasei and strauss, grills, kirby and mckenna). my journal notes and narrative arc in italics. it) volume 10. 2000 chemins altemat if cybertribalism and the powers that be graburn's theory of assimilation and accommodation (1989, one of many theories on native survival still under debate) shows that native people are most likely to survive culturally by finding "traditional" ways of using new technology and countering larger social forces; it could be that with it and native people, electronic assimilation coexists with ethnic separation and distinct worldviews. this is a subject of this exploration, the two-edged sword. today in canada an era of limited political autonomy has occurred and there is strong movement toward self-determination, healing and expression of native perspectives. the colonial assimilation and extermination policies carried out against natives of north america for the last 500 years have not worked. to the contrary, natives in canada and elsewhere are surviving and thriving, 3 and a strong movement toward self-determination has begun (fleras and elliott, 1992; frideres, 1998; mercredi, 1993). this is also part of the trend toward distinct and free cybercommunities on the internet. first nations and other users of the net have at least two out of three of foucault's "three great variables," there being "territory, communication and speed" (1984: 244). it was the technology of the horse that enabled the plains indians to become the finest survivors, and light cavalry, of their day and place. vattimo sees that the present possible "end of colonialism, freeing ethnic voices, and the emergence of mass media, stimulating cultural relativity, has created an irreversibly pluralist situation" (lyon, 1994: 76). an example is natives in chiapas, mexico who used the net to publicize their plight several years ago. like the horse, it may be the tool to allow native expression; but like a trojan horse, it also suggests assimilation. jon pierce tells a story from the keewatin, of the white men (kuallunik) who were camped in a raging snowstorm, a whiteout, in the middle of the tundra: you couldn't see two feet in front of your face. then out of nowhere, these inuit pulled into camp on their skidoos. they just wanted to check to see the visitors were ok. 'how did you find us in this storm,' they asked, marveling at the inuit abilities on the land. one guy grinned and pulled a volume 16, 2000 ii alternate routes gps (satellite-driven global positioning system) from inside his parka. but the skidoo has contributed to the erosion of traditional ways (for instance, the use and socialization of sled dogs, dependence on gasoline and attendant kuallunik values) and the gps does away with the need to read the sky and the land for directions, that is part of a relationship with the land. it could also be that the monopolization of it by giants like microsoft will lead to even further stratification between the rich and poor, between the white upper class and the native third world, and between urban and "res" natives, and young and old. the new stratification system of the knowledge economy shows that information manipulation skills (it savvy) is what counts, not far removed from the point, made by many including foucault and bordieu, that knowledge equals power in any social formation. the knowledge economy means that knowledge is increasingly commodified within a market-led world, managerial solutions are sought to contemporary dilemmas. traditional knowledge no longer works as such; it is an object now digitized. in kurt vonnegut's player piano of 1952, the third industrial revolution is presented in an anti-utopian portrait. the first industrial revolution devalued physical labor, the second devalued routine and menial work, and the third has devalued human thinking through the use of computers. perhaps zbignieuw brzezinski's term "techtronic society" is more applicable than post-industrial; the computer is the central symbol and analytical engine of change described by daniel bell, change in which we have moved to a service society dominated by the rapid growth of professional and technical employment and the explosive convergence of the computer with telecommunications. most recently bill joy, a pioneer at sun microsystems, worries that technologies may collectively create "self-replicating" machines and processes (nanotechnology, genetic technology) by the time computers are "a million more times more powerful" in 2030 (pugliese, 2000). bully sainte-marie says that "real indian people are rising to the potential of the (computer) technology, in school and out. we were born foi tins moment and we are solidly behind our pathfinders" (1998 see appendix a). can cultures survive when the hegemonic power of the /: volume 16, 2000 chemins alternatif computer also extends to language, as an english linear (binary) medium in an increasingly english world? for example, with only 3,000 mohawk speakers left in a population of 10.000,4 the challenge is to find ways to preserve the language in an increasingly intrusive computer culture. i will explore some good and bad potentials in the following sections. time and space on the net information technology has increasing power over the future of groups such as first nations divorced from the institutions and agencies of government. information technology in and of itself is an agent of change. foucault's description of hegemony in terms of seemingly normal practices (such as patriarchy) could be applied to it, and his argument that these phenomena are beyond the capacity of the dominant group (state, multinational corporation) to manage certainly held true in cyberspace, until recently. the net grew from military to academic communicatons, from free discourse via freenets and lists to wild west gambling and porn shows, a real free-for-all, but now corporate phenomena such as knowledge economy, e-commerce, business-to-business (b2b) and dot-com commercial culture are prevailing. space and time and are being rearranged by globalization and technology, leaving behind those who traditionally take their time from the natural world (place). with it and the net, place and its historicity has largely been surpassed by the real-time time of telecom. at the same time, new cybercommunities of interest groups, institutions, corporations like disney and msnbc are all creating a new space for people: cyberspace. how does this new space relate to natural locales? / moved inside from the camp just before thanksgiving, with some friends and their kids who live in southern ontario. it is a huge draughty old house near (practically on) the train tracks, with a tv constantly running in every room, tied together by the satellite selector on the roof. msnbc (and its website www.msnbc.com) floored me with the sheer power of its functionality. in early november i watched as the viewers' votes came in via the net, deciding (in part at least) whether the republicans should impeach willie the twister. this is tv with feedback at last. the set is designed volume 16, 2000 13 alternate routes to look like a virtual room; as the camera pans, it looks as if the talking heads are in a holodeck in cyberspace. as we sat by the fire that winter, they started polling people by the millions ... today with globalization and telecom, this new space is prevailing, and "traffics in the contemporaneous and the simultaneous, in synchronic rather than diachronic time ... we are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed" (kumar, 1995: 146-147). this world is on the net, and it has just arrived: mosaic, the first successful graphic browser, was introduced in january, 1993, and there were some 50 web servers at the time. 5 a year later, there were 5,000 and 100,000 the year after that. today, experts are predicting a billion users on the net by 2005. on the net, "the separate stories which are displayed along side one another express orderings of consequentially typical of a time-space environment from which the hold of place has largely evaporated." this doesn't take us toward global unity; postmodern accounts of communications technologies frequently focus on "dispersal and fragmentation," for baudrillard this new world of the "pure simulacra, of models, codes and digitality" means the passing of modernity "when history can no longer be seen as unilinear; it is just the past from a series of different viewpoints" (lyon, 1994: 48-49). as we are locked into time together on the net (the "tyranny of the here and now" [fulford, 1998|), the it conventions of measuring and meeting digital time globally become that much more different than that of native people, who traditionally reckon time from the space around them, the earth and the stars. the unnatural and arbitrary timing systems of high tech and infotech arc removed from the thirteen moons of twenty-eight days each, with twelve months of ii regular lengths, and natural observable phenomena like the seasons'' are contrasted by the artificial idea of hours, minutes and weeks (and now down to seconds and fractions thereof on the net). native identity, knowledge and time is also centered on place. giddens observes that "all pre-modern societies always linked time with place," and "no one could tell the time of day without reference to other 14 volume 16, 2000 chemins altematif socio-spatial markers" and a world where 'when' was almost universally connected with 'where' or identified by regular natural occurrences" (1990: 17). odawa elder wilf peltier said: my people never knew or had any position in life except the face of the earth — stretching away from them in all directions forever. and they lived there laterally — on one level with each other and all things. they looked up only to trees and eagles ... by reading our own footprints we could always tell where we had come from. in fact, we had no future. in our language, the closest word we had to future was sort of an arc or circle. our going was part of the arc of a circle. so was our coming (pelletier (wawashkesh): 11). the use of clocks and now the net have introduced and reified the idea of "empty time" (a time without reference to the natural world or place), and the "uniformity of measurement by the mechanical clock" has led to "the social organization of time" and also space (giddens, 1990: 18). again, a conflict with "indian time" which emphasizes the seasons, family and community7 (see table 1). giddens discusses how "coordination across time (through time zones) is the basis of the control of space," that space today is being disassociated from actual "place" by relations fostered "locationally distant from any given situation of face-to-face interaction. in conditions of modernity, place becomes increasingly phantasmagoric: that is to say, locales are thoroughly penetrated by and shaped in terms of social instances quite distant from them" (1990: 18-19). soon after setting up my camp at the powwow grounds neatottawa in the early summer, i was sitting by the fire watching the stars when my cell phone rang (or rather buzzed, or rumbled). i was reminded of that tv show where there was a fancy dancer talking to his broker on his cellphone standing outside the circle at the powwow, when he suddenly broke off "gotta go, they're playing my song." volume 16, 2000 15 alternate routes it is a reflexive modernization, knowledge tumbling together at a rapid rate. or almost at the same time and place: if history was an obsession of the nineteenth century and time and traditions predominated, now the focus is on space, meaning the entire planet together, evolving, changing and problcmatizing exponentially as the globalization ot risk described by beck and giddens continues with "the expanding number of contingent events which affect everyone or at least large numbers of people on the planet" is made possible through cybercommunications (1990: 124). due to instant media and dot-com convergences and expansion of the internet, "a large part of north american society now lives exclusively in the present tense — (and) the vast expansion of the arts (and information) has made consensus much harder to achieve. it's not that we know so much more; it's that what each of us knows is different" (fulford, 1998: d8, d10). / was two days west of ottawa, north of lake superior, when i managed to get through to the net. in the long stretch past wawa and marathon, i found a campground at upsala that would let me plug in my laptop. "but it won't work, " the lady in the store said, "because we don't have any internet here. " it worked long distance all right, and i got my work done, sitting behind the ice cream counter in a lawn chair with my laptop on my lap. the farmers coming into the cafe looked at me like some new kind of threatening animal. "the school is talking about getting the internet for the kids," she later told me, "but a lot ofpeople don't like it. " the two most significant elements producing the erratic character of today's it world are the "unintended consequences and the reflexivity or circularity of social knowledge" (giddens 1990: 152-53) that we see in the knowledge economy. i think the people of upsala know that. giddens goes en to say that: in conditions of modernity, the social world can never form a stable environment in terms of the input of new knowledge about its character and functioning. new knowledge (concepts, theories, findings) does nol simply render the 16 volume 16, 2000 chemins alternut if social world more transparent, but alters its nature, spinning it off in novel directions. the impact of this phenomena is fundamental to the juggernaut-like quality of modernity and affects socialized nature as well as social institutions themselves. for although knowledge about the natural world does not affect the world in a direct way, the circularity of social knowledge incorporates elements of nature via the technological components of abstract systems (it) (1990: 152-53). this is part of the phenomenon of globalization. it is more than a diffusion of western institutions across the world, in which other cultures are crushed. "globalization, which is a process of uneven development that fragments as it coordinates, introduces new forms of world interdependence, in which, once again, there are no others. these create novel forms of risk and danger at the same time as they promote far-reaching possibilities of global security (beyond the nation-state) — we are speaking here of emergent forms of world interdependence and planetary consciousness" (giddens, 1990: 175). david elkins also argues that it and the globalized world will not foster homogeneity, but rather that "technology is empowering. we're not forced to be what we were before in terms of our identities because we're no longer bound by the restrictions of distance in the way we once were." elkins sees an "unbundling" of the power of nation-states in favor of "non-territorial organizations and identities" through the net, creating "a century of individualism in which multiple loyalties and identities enhance personal freedom because they are based on membership in communities of your own choosing." he goes on to say that "the more extensive the globalization, and by definition the wider the awareness of diverse communities available, the greater the support an individual's community of choice can offer to that uniqueness" (sibley, 1998: d8d9). these last two views seem to bode well for first nations, but giddens also admits that "communities" and "traditions" are themselves at risk here: he argues that technology and "time-space distanciation" operate to divorce us from our traditions as writing (and the internet) "expands the level of time-space distanciation and creates a perspective of past, present and future in which the reflexive appropriation of knowlvolume 16, 2000 17 alternate routes edge can be set off from designated tradition," or knowledge is becoming "disimbedded" from traditions of locale (1990: 37). it, the new knowledge economy and the internet are all children of what giddens calls the three "dominant sources of the dynamism of modernity:" 1) time-space distanciation, which allows for "precise temporal and spatial zoning" and the creation of new groups such as cybercommunities;" 2) "discmbedding mechanisms" that "lift out social activity from localized contexts, reorganizing social relations across large space-time distances" (and i would argue that microsoft is doing that); and "the reflexive appropriation of knowledge," where "the production of systematic knowledge about social life becomes integral to system reproduction (the knowledge economy and it), rolling social life away from the fixities of tradition" (1990: 53). at kin coulee park in medicine flat, after pulling off the highway and visiting the "world's largest teepee," a huge steel tubular construction beckoning across the plain on the way into the hat, i arrived from the flats of saskatchewan, parked my car and lookedfor power. i had been on the road across the country for two weeks. cellphone and laptop powered through electrical inversion from the cigarette lighter all through southern saskatchewan and before that over the great lakes north of superior. looking for ranger stations, parks, campgrounds, gas stations, anyplace to plug in and do the day's work. technology vs tradition the information highway is criss-crossing the earth, and i am roadkill by the ditch (iroquois artist william powless in marple 1998). in the consumer age, in a splintered world bereft of organized opposition to corporate control (rather legions of special interest groups), we are as modern as ever. from fordism to it and its post-fordist implications, we are still bathed in rationalism. and the net may be a new "superpanopticon" of consumerism and social control, "more insidious to the is volume 16, 2000 chemins attentat if extent that it is not understood" (lyon 1994: 47). the "rationalized bureaucracy" (weber) that manipulates media and culture can be identified (at least by its components such as microsoft, nortel, government, ibm or pepsi), and as long as technocratic rationality rules as a systemic feature of it (and how could it not), any exchange among communities is filtered through the it bureaucracy, and through the nature of the tools themselves. native awareness (and fear) of nature is transformed by it to threats and dangers emanating from the reflexivity of technology and the web. this is more assimilationist than accommodating. on the one hand we have the monopolist agenda of multinational big business, creators of the technology. on the other hand we have what an advisor at the assembly of first nations called "cyberpeasants," anticipating the day when everyone will have the technology — but not the control of it. first nations are in search of survival through net alliances; as are new interest and lobby groups. the promising anarchy of the internet is inviting to these communities, but we have to remember that the infrastructure and tools supporting it are in the hands of monopolists. if everyone has a watch capable of computing like a pentium and communicating via satellite, how might the balance of power change, if at all? won't a kid on the reserve still be living near a communal outhouse at the corner? / found rabbit blanket lake by the top of superior on the way back. no cell phones, no phones, just radio phones. rabbit blanket lake, provincial campground. petroglyphs nearby. buy a photo, go hiking, see the scary spirit of the water. "how big are they?" one camper asked at the office. "about this big" i said, indicating a big whitefish. "hmtnh, " he said, nodding. "wow. " he then looked at me suspiciously and the girl behind the counter got uncomfortable as i explained that the people who put those pictures there were still around. next morning a camp ranger let me get through on his radio phone, miles to the local transmitter, to a satellite station, and i posted the daily. they said it wasn't possible; you had to dial and then pop the nobs on the phone; can't get through with your digital codes; but we made it work, between the digital codes and the hammering volume 16, 2000 19 alter utile routes an the knobs. his father was a developer at northern telecom, he told me, hut he had been taken up by the woods as a youth and followed the road offorestry, forest management, the forest. he was the most welcoming of all the troublesome logins i had had so far... he liked my toshiba, and the woods, and the place we were at... no problem making them work together... half the native population in canada today is youth under the age of 25 (royal commission on aboriginal people, frideres); it is important in terms of both economic survival (in the knowledge economy) and communications and cultural support (schoolnet, language and cultural chat groups and resources, the native web [see www.carleton.ca/~mpatters/moccasin.htm for a gateway], academic resources and authors). in 1998, national chief of the afn phil fontaine remarked that our future is very much tied to the computer and the youth are making the adjustment —they're also creating content that expresses their culture and future. we're really leapfrogging decades of development (by) putting these services into communities that in the past have only had one phone. (it) opens opportunities for expression and communication among groups across the country and outside the country (in s/ick, 1998). "leapfrogging decades" is an interesting phrase, and quite true. who, and what, will be left behind in this rapid game? in july 2000, at a convention in lansdowne park, matthew coon-come succeeded fontaine as leader. at the three-day gathering, the cattle castle housed a handful of traditional vendors beside a trade show with some fifty booths, including 20 dot-com, wcb-driven native businesses and services, from banking (www.manynations.com) to communications (indbusiness.net) to promotional caps and t-shirts (www.mohawkpromotions.com). two people were selling hand-made moccasins, dozens of young natives were selling their websites. donald tapscott says that "for the first time in history, children arc more comfortable, knowledgeable, and literate than their parents about an innovation (it) central to society" ( 1998: 1 ). this must be even more 20 volume 16. 2000 chemins attentat if so in native communities. particularly as those communities are built on family and extended family, and the computer has already begun to show its downside in terms of family and socialization. experts are noticing that toddlers with computers are becoming hooked on the quick reaction time of the machines, that the "instant gratification" of children's software is creating aggressive behavior with a low threshold for frustration (black 1998). children are being born with the technology and thus assimilate it; adults can only hope to accommodate. since the kids are the authority, family members must begin to "respect each other for what their authorities actually are. this creates more of a peer dynamic within families" (tapscott, 1998: 37). how does it erode the youths' respect for traditional ways however, when given the power of the net over youth (and vice versa)? innovations such as the printing press, radio and tv are "unidirectional and controlled by adults" whereas the "new media is interactive, malleable, and distributed in control ... (and) children are taking control of critical elements of a communications revolution" (1998: 26). the youth-elder power base is shifting. as i walked around the wikwemikong powwow in late july, kids from toddlers to youth filled the circle, dancing in outfits tied to generations of knowledge. just that week, chief peggy pitawanakwat opened the wassa abin youth centre, equipped with 24 new computers and satellite internet access. mp mike brown declared that the community now had ready access to "wall street or harvard university" through the new site (www.wiky.net) (denengelsman 1998). years later, when i checked the website, it was gone. "n-geners ... find power on the internet because it depends on a distributed, or shared, delivery system" (unlike the media), and "this distributed, or shared power is at the heart of the culture of interaction" (tapscott, 1998: 79). foucault presciently talked about the "web of power," stemming from the "incitement to discourse" about a subject, leading to "increased knowledge on that subject, which leads to power. power comes from any person who starts a discussion, the discussion forms a web outward to the discussion group, weaves its way out from there to other conversations, and sometimes even returns along the same volume 16, 2000 21 alternate homes or new paths to where it started" (1998: 79). usenet e-mail groups, websites, and chat groups all have these qualities. global change is scouring the face of the planet, but we have lived with it long enough to know that it is not going to scrub away the 5,000 languages on the globe. the particular is just as tenacious and resourceful as the global. we seem to be retribalizing: the more globalism makes our consumption patterns converge, the more insistently we defend the particularities of national differences which remain. and sometimes we defend our differences and our identity with global tools on the internet, using software provided by such avatars of globalism as bill gates (ignatieff, 1998: d10). now that we have seen some of the ways in which the forest meets the highway, it is time to look at methods for further research. methods truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint— it is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements — it is linked in a circular relation (reflexive) with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extends it. a "regime" of truth (foucault, 1984: 72,74). this document is a "messy text" involving "hypermedia" — in its web form (denzin, 1994), with non-sequential, non-linear sidctrips, perspectives and voices. this is a mode <a representation that allows the viewer a window into the issues; it is also a hricolagc, using academic, wilderness survival, people and computer (it) skills for its realization (the bricoleur "is a kind of do-it-yourself person" (levi-strauss, 1966: 17) who 22 volume 16, 2000 ( hemins alternatif creates a "pieced together, close-knit (woven?) set of practices that provide solutions to a prohlem in a concrete situation" (dcnzin, 1994: 2). it is also aligned to mills' guidelines for sociological work, in which he suggests that we rearrange our files "to invite imagination" by "mixing up their contents" and re-sorting them with "an attitude of playfulness;" that we consider the extremes in cases, with a "variety of viewpoints;" and also see through "inverting your sense of proportion," making the smallest instance grand and asking what the consequences might be (mills, 1959: 212, 214-215). while he suggested techniques for enhancing creativity and changing perspectives, in the end his finished product was always very tightly argued, very modern and positivist. i think though modern in intent, my work is post-positivist in method, removed i hope from the following debate: "post-modernity is expressed in the language of 'discourses' and 'voices' rather than of falsifiable propositions." the "critical culture of post-modernity creates new spaces and opportunities (in academia); the debates become proof of its existence." this "new reality" becomes the "contentious centre of struggles for cultural power and control" (kumar, 1995: 183-184). texts are open devices filled with contradiction and many voices, and agreement on meaning is only possible within "interpretive communities." this is another type of fragmentation and is the pluralism in post-modernism in the absence of any "totalizing" force. kumar argues that this will lead us toward a "radical individualism, not easily indistinguishable from the individualism of the contemporary radical right" (1995: 129-132). beyond the seeming paralysis of post-modernism, "post-positivism relies on multiple methods as a way of capturing as much of reality as possible" (denzin, 1994: 5), and also "qualitative research is inherently multimethod in focus. however, the use of multiple methods, and triangulation, reflects an attempt to secure an in-depth understanding of the phenomena in question," and "the qualitative researcher-as-bricoleur uses the tools of his or her methodological trade, deploying whatever strategies, methods or materials are at hand" (denzin, 1994: 2) this is also in line with mills: who says that the sociological imagination ... in considerable part consists of the capacity to shift from one perspective to another, and in the process to build up an adequate view of a total society volume 16, 2000 23 alternate routes and of its components ... its essence is the combination of ideas that no one expected were combinable .... there is a playfulness of mind back of such combining as well as a truly fierce drive to make sense of the world (1959: 211). / was at south bay mouth (not to be confused with the anishnabe community of south bay), at the tip of manitoulin waiting for the ferry to tobermory and the bruce peninsula. i stopped at a diner that advertised whitefish and chips, and sure enough, there was an ojibwe woman there just getting startedfor the afternoon. i asked if i could plug in; her son the younger thought it was a neat idea but said "ask my dad. " the older son sat smoking cigarettes looking out the window at the cars headedfor the ferry. i asked their dad if it would be ok for me to tap into his phone line and get to my office. he said allright, come back in the morning. i got takeout whitefish and relaxed at my camp. the next morning, the younger son looked upset and the older had gone off to the powwow; after breakfast dad told me that he had laid awake all night and thought and now feared that i might use my computer and internet to get into his bank account and take everything he hadfrom his interne and the rest; he asked if i could prove otherwise. not being able to, i nodded to his wife and youngest son and headed to the esso fishing stop down the road. the owner there, at a busy shopping spot, let me plug in. when i told him about my trouble up the road, he said: "if you can get to my bank account, please put some money in. " as a post-positivist practitioner of "blurred genres," i could use naturalism, ethnometh, postpositivism, feminism, "ethnic paradigms," etc. etc., giving ample opportunity to follow gccrt/.'s admonition to drop the "old functional, positivist, behavioral, totalizing approaches to the human disciplines" in favor of the new "more pluralistic, interpretive, open-ended perspective." of course now we are ten years or so into a "ci isis of representation" following from the above (denzin 1994: 9-10). the "double crisis" consists of the fact that "lived experience" becomes "created in the social text written by the researcher" (represen24 volume 16, 2000 chemins altematif tational crisis); and so in the ensuing "legitimation crisis," we ask "how are qualitative studies to be evaluated in the poststructural moment?" (1994: 11). appreciating the questions of this sociological mid-life crisis, i have to agree that "those who think about it don't do it and those who don't think about it do it" (karen march, 1999). the purpose of my inquiry, in terms of critical theory, is "the critique and transformation of . . . structures that constrain and exploit humankind, by engagement in confrontation, even conflict. the criteria for progress is that over time, restitution and emancipation should occur and persist" (guba and lincoln 1994: 113). the quality or goodness of the inquiry is judged by "the extent to which the inquiry acts to erode ignorance and misapprehensions, and the extent to which it provides a stimulus to action, that is, to the transformation of the existing structure" and the inquirer's voice "is that of the transformational intellectual who has expanded consciousness and so is in a position to confront ignorance and misapprehensions" (1994: 114-115). kirby and mckenna's four tasks involved in research from the margins (in my case the bush and cyberspace) are unmasking or questioning knowledge that currently exists; creating knowledge from the basic understanding that social reality is constructed differently by the status quo and those in the margins; affirming the social reality of those in the margins, remaining faithful to their experience and not exploiting it; sharing and reconstructing knowledge, creating knowledge for change, combining knowledge with action (kirby 1989: 97). / had a dream many winters ago when i came over a hill and saw a gathering of people on a village green; picnic tables, songs being sung, people coming and going and such. a hundred years ago. i walked into that crowd which became thicker and thicker and pushed me through the front door of an old clapboard house. in the parlor, the big room, everyone became very much darker and someone rushed up and ran an eagle feather, a spotted eagle feather, through my hair. i then rushed out, was blown out of the room, and flew. a relativist process volume 16, 2000 25 alternate rentes in fall 1998 as i was walking through the 7th floor halls at loch (where sociology/anthropology debates its nexus) with wilf peltier, who was elder-in-residence at carleton at the tune, he remarked at all the students and their backpacks full of books rushing around. many of them were coming to him for help. "that's the trouble with these people," he said. "they're carrying their brains around on their backs. " classical sociology, primarily a description of structure and/or process, and its schools "can comment on what (subjects) say because it possesses metalanguage, while they have only language ('forgive them father, for they know not what they do')," but "you can study anything with classical sociology anything except the sciences and technologies, anything except projects. they go too fast. they become too soft or too hard" (latour, 1996: 199). relativist sociology however "has no fixed reference frames, and consequently no metalanguage. it expects the actors to understand what they are and what it is. it does not know what society is composed of, and that is why it goes off to learn what they are and what it is . . . and that is why it goes off to learn from others, from those who are constructing society. it adds its own interpretations to those of the actors whose fate it shares, often less felicitously than they." moreover, "without any knowledge other than what it gets from (its subjects), it is free at least from the crushing responsibility of being more scientific than the actors. no guilty conscience, no epistemology encumber it, and thus no jargon. for relativist sociology, indeed, everything is grace" (latour, 1996: 200). in we were never modern, latour argues that we are in a unique position of being able to borrow the best from three distinct ages in making our social descriptions. in his "pinal examinations" for the current age he suggests we retain things such as "long networks" and "experimentation" from the moderns, the "non-separability of things and signs" and "multiplication of nonhumans" from the prcmodcrns (or native perspective) and "reflexivity" from the post-moderns, among other things. all of these are present in the study of the growing circle that is it. ideas to be rejected according to latour are the "clandistincness" and "universality and rationality" of the moderns, the "ethnocentrism" and "limits on .v, volume 16, 2000 chemins alternatif scale" of the premoderns and the postmodern "belief in modernism" (which was never achieved as it failed), and "critical deconstrnction" as opposed to the more useful "constructionism" or description of process (1993: 135). approaches towards conclusions the speculative and exploratory character of this work can be seen as a learning process. hunter s. thompson says that "one of the few ways i can be almost certain i'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it," but beyond that, as he describes with his research on the hell's angels and as i am finding in cyberspace, "this subject was so strange that for the first time in any kind of journalism, i could have the kind of fun with writing that i had had in the past with fiction... i could have the same kind of involvement with what i was writing about, because there were characters so weird that i couldn't make them up... in a way it was like having a novel handed to you with the characters already developed" (thompson, 1990: 109). and it is true that good sociology should read like a story. this is a type of ethnography, and it is not much of a stretch from mainstream misapprehensions regarding hell's angels to those regarding the native people of turtle island. or toward it. some of the "already developed" characters i work with are at the assembly of first nations, others are at places like maniwaki and kahnawake, mountain and smith's falls and ottawa. their "wierdness" lies in the fact that they are much less and much more than a product of mainstream western urban society. yet the subject is strange, where the forest meets the highway, a place where cyberspace brings space and time whirling together, western and native worldviews into sharp perspective and contrast. / got an urge to start nailing up some blankets last night, over these northern windows, but remembered in time that the things most feared around here go bump in the night. i can cptietly rage to the wind out my eastern door at night of course, which is quite nice, and have not yet felt the urge (like one old man once did) to start bellowing out into the night: "yes, i am the old elder man now, here i am!!" good voltime 16, 2000 27 alternate routes thing i don't hove my drum with me that thing would shake this house more than any train. a central question is: i low does one's closeness to the land make one more or less vulnerable to the vagaries of it? in aid of an answer, the "actors" are people who live in the country and in the bush as well as the city, also technologies from trucks to satellites, also the land itself. one method of capturing these with a type of theoretical sampling where "the analyst jointly collects, codes, and analyzes his data and decides what data to collect next and where (and when) to find them," a process of data collection "controlled by the emerging theory" (glaser and strauss, 1967: 45). we end up with "slices of data," in an open inquiry with "no limits to the techniques of data collection;" while accommodating the "diverse structural conditions" of each group (or actors) being studied, the result being "a variety of slices of data that would be bewildering if we wished to evaluate them as accurate evidence for verifications," but are useful in generating theory as this variety "is highly beneficial, because it yields more information on categories than any one mode of knowing (technique of collection)" (1967: 65-66). there is also room for arriving at a grounded theory presented not as a "well-codified set of propositions" but rather a "running theoretical discussion, using conceptual categories and their properties" and the "logico-deductive" process (1967: 31). by what criteria can such work be judged? in her groundbreaking hook the second self computers and the human spirit, mit's sherry tinkle produced a largely ethnographic document, with informal interviews, to answer the question of "not what will the computer be in the future, but instead, what will we be like? what kind of people are we becoming?" (1985: 13). beyond that, we can ask: what can answers to such speculative questions mean? but i believe this study makes the reader consider new possibilities, and effects, of this evolving technology. it is emerging research, akin to what kirby describes: "emergent research" or "research from the margins is a method in process; it is continually unfolding. as people use it, what they discover in the process ahottt the process contributes to what we know ..." (kirby, 1989: 32, itals mine) 2s volume 16. 2000 chemins attentat if iii late summer 2000 at the karsli-masson gallery at city hall in ottawa, it seemed that this study had come full circle. another exhibit of two worlds, where the forest meets the highway. urban myths: aboriginal artists in the city brought me back home, with claude latour's reclaimed telephone pole as a lodge pole (called "i finally got my tree back"), surrounded by ron noganosh's "alien," a wood-sprite made of roots, sticks, feathers and computer parts, and barry ace's ojibwe beaded vest, with a beaded, printed circuit board on the back. all about communications, technology, traditions and their weavings. it is not pure science, but as cassel says: "atoms do not read scientific papers and change their behavior accordingly. on the other hand, a social scientist's theories about the world can make a difference to the very nature of social life itself (1993: 35). upon seeing my stop james bay ii tshirt, a british expatriate started a rant, describing the vast workings of the facilities at james bay i where he had been, the huge impression of the vast science and technology of the dynamos and reser\>oirs, and the endless 900 mile road carved through the empty bush, ending at "an 1800s frontier town" he exulted. he likened his experience to being an j 800s british explorer going into the jungle ("not that it was really like a jungle"); he wanted to ride the highway on a motorcycle as a challenge akin to that taken on by british mountaineers. where the highway beats the forest . . . or in the case of james bay ii, where the forest flees the highway... no a guy you want to bring to the powwow, for sure . . . in my 1996 thesis regarding native music and the seventh fire prophecy, i tried to show how an anishnabe prophecy showed the destiny of the four races coming together rapidly, and now that can be seen in the collision of natives and it. my work was a critical history, thick description and ethnography lauded at the school of canadian studies and at the school for studies in arts and culture at carleton; i thought at the time that my job was to "get the word out." i was later accused of volume 16, 2000 29 alternate routes being a messianic millenialist by my peers in sociology who saw no science in what i was doing. today i have gone to the critical, fuzzy front-end of thesis development; foucault describes "work (taking) place between unfinished abutments and anticipatory strings of dots... open up a space of research, try it out, and then if it doesn't work, try again somewhere else" (1991: 7374). mills says that: the classic social analyst has avoided any rigid set of procedures; he has sought to develop and to use in his work the sociological imagination. repelled by the association and disassociation of concepts, he has used more elaborated terms only when he has good reason to believe that by their use he enlarges the scope of his sensibilities, the precision of his references, the depth of his reasoning. he has not been inhibited by method and technique; the classic way has been the way of an intellectual craftsman (1959: 120) most importantly, "if a reader becomes sufficiently caught up in the description so that he feels vicariously that he is also in the field, then it is more likely to be kindly disposed toward the researcher's theory than if the description seems flat or unconvincing" (1967: 230-231). i have used some descriptions to show the reader, i hope, some places where the forest meets the highway, and where theory might meet method, where groups such as natives on the rez and dairy farmers on the (native) land, city dwellers and country dwellers, baby boomers and n-cienrs, the near and the distanced, become potentially comparable in the face of it. like mills, howard becker talks about using tricks in perspective, such as imagining the impossible to be true, then looking for examples in the field; pail of a bag of tricks for "expanding and complicating your theory of the world" such as: "the opposite is true, too" and "you don't have to prove anything" (1989: 489). it is true, as an advisor admonished me, that this is not so much a thesis as it is a quest. «> volume 16, 2000 chemins alternalif u '3 £ x: c u s u & ^~ a p r~" 3 1) a o _ n h 3 3 c u £> o m•n ° o 71 3 c td .5 > a. e o t3 o q. rj > •a q. -e u <u . z> 5 2 p % 5 o | o 3 o e .2 e 2 ° c c g 3 u c 00 u x: -a t1 t3 73 't: 00 §° o c § h o 5 a oa 73 j e o o b u c o u xj c >> 11 e c c 2 00 b x) w 5j 00 > u •a g — v j uj o v 5 # ±£ u i s 1 ^ o <u s s <o a isu e 3 c o e u a> £; uj o e o o i < h 3 u. | z o £ 1 8 u 73 3 q. « d urt u o cl h3 »*r3 1 a ^ o <u b 3 o/j t3 •a s s 3 x: 6 u u c ou "u c o e oou q. e o a a c u 2a 3 o i '5. *r3 o o oj ° x; a. 3 1 s£ > 3 •a o a. a o o 00 ^. ?f•3 ? 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'3 00 13 e o u 3 oo 5 .c' i 1 .c u 5 c pl, "3 3 'c 5. j > oh si u 3 •a ju s o 1 o •5 a o o a c vi "3 = 9i § 3 1) 55 b e u q 0jj c o 13 t3 e xi u o u 3 >, v 3 1 8 u 1 c -a c o 13 <2 •xi 4> o si b 1 2 c g 5 a 1 o > o o o qj •5 o >, o c e on r) o c u e on v 9 .s o t3 u 5 3 v o c o <u e o u > > o 1 § c o— 3 n t3 2 -cu c u 3 is n 5 tj > 5 c a. w) •d y 3 oj ex 1 > o 3 q e o u 13 a: 3 s si uu < c (j o on b _o yi u xi 8 1> o. 3 5 "h o u 3 — u | £ v e " .3 o u x' > ="3 c o .c' n '5 s 9o a •a o u 13 >> o 3 o 2 s ; -i s o 55 cl o 73 2 ;c a. 2 % i; x> 2 o c <2 x:' ^j e t o o 3 g s« a. ii a o 1 3 -5 6 s 3 xi 4j q. 8 ij c 5< s si uo q o 7 5 1 13 £ =1 -• -j n 5 l^/«ffie /6. 2000 chemins attentat if appendix a: buffy sainte-marie on an airplane, my powerbook is singing to me in lakota, while the words to the song appear onscreen in both lakota and english. in the canadian rockies, indians carrying portable computers trudge through a herd of elk and into the banff center for the arts where the "drumbeats to drumbytes" thinktank confronts the reality of online life as it affects native artists. a week later in bismarck, north dakota, the american indian higher education consortium votes "yes" to v-sat technology that will facilitate distance learning in and out of various indian communities and 30 indian colleges. across canada, thousands of first nations children network their observations and life experiences into mainstream education, as the cradleboard teaching project/kids from kanata partnership provides both native content and connectivity to schools as far away as hawaii and baffin island. i make a commercial record in a tipi on the saskatchewan plains, and cbc television films the event for international broadcast. navajo e-mail markets crafts to 40 foreign countries. a six-foot high painting of indian elders graces the front office of the american indian college fund in washington, d.c.: it's digital and it's indian made. the digital scene in indian country at the moment is a microcosm of the way it is most everywhere else, with people at various stages of expertise and enthusiasm going through the big shift. issues of sovereignty are often the first to come up among native intellectuals, and the spectre of digital colonialism frightens some and challenges others. questions of control and ownership arise of course, as they do in the mainstream, but with perhaps a sharper edge, given the facts of native american history. indian educators, artists, elders, women, tribal leaders and business people have plenty on our minds when it comes to counterbalancing past misinterpretations with positive realities, and past exploitations with future opportunities. the reality of the situation is that we're not all dead and stuffed in some museum with the dinosaurs: we are here in this digital age. we have led the pack in a couple of areas (digital music and online art). although our potential at the moment exceeds the extensiveness of our community computer usage, our projects are already bearing fruit, we expect to prosper and to contribute, and we will defend our data. volume 16, 2000 33 alternate routes among indian people online as elsewhere, we continue to observe the usual gangs of unknowledgcable non-indian and/or "i-was-anindian-in-my-last-life" opportunists and exploiters, who now are upgrading their acts, trying to take advantage of rumored tax breaks and other scams in the cyber-sector of indian country; but we are pretty much used to this "vapor-speak" phenomenon, having lived with it lo these past 500 years. "beware of white man bearing good ideas and grant proposals" is a tacet refrain we laugh about over the phone. however, i am glad to report that usually this observation does not interfere with honest deals among knowledgeable people of different races; and personally i do believe that we're smart enough to know who our friends are; and they come in all colors. sometimes i am asked, where did all the brain and fire of the sixties american indian activism go? in my observation, in canada we went into every field; but in the united states, where things were far more dangerous, those of us who were not killed, imprisoned, put out of business or otherwise sacrificed to the uranium industry, went into education. if i have a message in this scant overview, it is this: real indian people are rising to the potential of the technology, in school and out. we were born for this moment and we are solidly behind our pathfinders. from buffy sainte-marie's cyberskins at http://www.aloha.net/~bsm/ cybersk.htm notes 1 . this essay also available www.carleton.ca/~mpatters/soc.html 2. f-'irst nations is a political construction, and a native answer to the canadian political system, that exists more as an abstraction than reality. the assembly of first nations represents "status indians;" i will use the term native to refer to all people who arc descendants of or related to the original inhabitants of turtle island (north america). today this includes full-bloods, mixed-bloods, status, non-status, inuit, metis and distant relations. descendants of the original people here do not have a common name, as there arc diverse histories and origin stories. people in the united slates still often prefer to use the term "indians," although this reference is now in disrepute in canada. "native" had become the preferred term here in the pmos, but there arc now (governmental and other) advocates tor the use ol the terms "aboriginal," " indigenous," "pirst nations" and even "firsl people" people. <4 volume 16, 2000 chemins alter natif 3. based on work by william robertson and henry f. dobyns, sioui says that the native population in north america dwindled from 18 million in 1497 to some 250 300, 000 by 1900, largely through starvation and imported diseases, not warfare (sioui 1992: 3). the population now, counting mixed-blood people, could be over 5 million. in canada the native population is now around 3.5% of the total population and is estimated to reach almost 4% or approaching 1.5 million by 2001 (frideres 2000). these figures take into account status and nonstatus "indians," inuit and metis. from 1981 to 1991 the status indian and limit populations increased one-third while non-status natives almost doubled their numbers. "the overall aboriginal population is growing very fast... and (status indians and inuit) will continue to have higher growth rates than the canadian population for several decades (1993: 129). other estimates of overall native population range from two to four million, taking into account all of the "distant relations" from early french, irish, scottish and native meetings. 4."mohawk [moh] 3,000 total speakers out of 10,000 population including usa (1977 sil); 1,667 speakers in usa (1990 census). all iroquoian mother tongue speakers in canada 6,075 (1981 census). southwestern quebec, southern ontario. iroquoian, northern iroquoian, five nations, mohawkoneida. most speakers are middle-aged or over. in some areas younger ones may speak the language. 75% to 100% literate. grammar, dictionaries. bible portions 1787-1991." (ethnologue at http://www.sil.org/cthnologue/countries/ cana.html#moh). there is a very strong emphasis on language at mohawk schools these days, from kahnawake and kahnasetake to six nations. 5. the first browser was www devised by tim berners-lee, the second was lynx developed by lou montoulli at u of kansas. the "father of the internet" vint cerf developed an internet protocol (tcp/ip) in 1974 (see http:// apcmag.com/profiles/213a_lce.htm). for earlier events in the 60s, sec http:// surfsites.com/internet_uistory/. 6. iroquois moons include the green corn, strawberries, midwinter and the grandmother brings fertility to women. anishnabek moons include the little bears, crusted snow, strawberry and wild rice. norman rosenthal, a researcher on seasonal affective disorder (sad) which is a depression brought about by the lack of daylight in winter, says that modern medical practitioners are beginning to re-discover the effects of the seasons (natural time) on people. for instance the observance of christmas and hanukkah is seasonal; a gathering at midwinter in the tradition of the ancient romans (saturnalia) and also native midwinter gatherings. "while older civilizations all viewed time as cyclical, a volume 16, 2000 35 alternate routes linear view of time has dominated (non-native perspectives) since the 17th century, which is more in keeping with ideas about human progress" (robin 1995: al). "unlike the future orientation of the 'great religions' tribal ideology emphasized that everything was good in its natural form and should stay that way. for untold centuries the present was experienced as a continuation of the past, a perpetuation of the sacrcdncss of life in all its manifestations" (brasser 1987: 122). 7. so-called "indian time" is sometimes used as a reference to "indifference to promptness," but actually it "is based on an understanding of time which is often linked at the tribal level to language and structure." on an individual basis, it is "a need not to be filled with activity... indian people know how to sit still and enjoy things, how to look even when there is nothing to see. indians feel no compulsion to fill time with words. words should not be substituted for meaning." when words are used in ceremony or storytelling, "all time is fused into one, with no past, present and future. the same may be said of the dance at powwows." this view of time is also linked to the individual freedom of native people, allowing for as much free time as possible for creation and realization of one's own potential, which is then shared with the group as part of each individual's "autonomy and responsibility" (young 1981: 345-346). references becker, h. s. 1989 "tricks of the trade" in studies in symbolicinteraction. 10: 481-490. black, shannon 1998 'software may inhibit development of toddlers, experts warn" in the ottawa citizen. 2/9/98: a6. brasser, ted j. 1987 "by the power of their dreams: artistic traditions of the northern plains" in the spirit sings. toronto: glenbow museum/mcclelland and stewart: 93131. burchell g. ct al (eds.) 1991 the foucaull effect: studies in governmentality. chicago: u of chicago press. cassell, philip 1993 the giddens reader. stanford: stanford university press. «> volume 16, 2000 chemins alternatif de kerckhove, derrick 1998 connected intelligence: the arrival of the web society can be found in the features section of the mainstay web site at www.niainstaymktg.com. denengelsman, donna 1998 "wassa abin youth centre joins the web!" in the manitoulin exposito. 29/ 7/98: 20. dcnzin, norman k. and lincoln, yvonna s. 1994 "entering the field of qualitative research" in the handbook of qualitative research. 1-17. denzin, norman k. (ed.) 1994 handbook of qualitative research. thousand oaks, calif.: sage press. diamond, beverley and winner, robert (eds.) 1994 canadian music issues of hegemony and identity. toronto: canadian scholars press. elkins, david 1995 beyond sovereignity: territory and political economy in the twenty-first century. toronto: u of t press. fay, brian 1990 "critical realism?" in journal for the theory of social behaviour. 20/1: 32-41. fleras, augie and elliott, jean leonard 1992 the nations within aboriginal-state relations in canada, the united states and new zealand. toronto: oxford university press. foucault, michel 1984 " 'truth and power,' 'space, knowledge, and power' and 'right of death and power over life' " in rabinow, paul (ed.) 77i<? foucault reader: 51-75, 239-255 and 258-272. 1991 "governmentality" and "questions of method" in burchell et al eds. the foucault effect: 87-104 and 73-86. volume 16, 2000 37 alternate routes fridcrcs, james s. 1998 native peoples in canada — contemporary conflicts. scarborough: prenlicc hall. i "ill ford, robert 1998 "the tyranny of the here and now: will history, culture survive gen-x?" in the ottawa citizen 15/2/98: d9-d10 (also at winter 97 issue of queen's quarterly: http:winfo.queens.ca/quarterly) giddens, anthony 1990 the consequences of modernity. stanford: stanford u press. glaser, barney g. and strauss, ansclm l. 1967 the discovery of grounded theory. chicago: aldinc publishing. guba, egon g. and lincoln, yvonna s. 1994 "competing paradigms in qualitative research" in the handbook of qualitative research: 1051 17. gubrium, jabcr p. and holstcin, james a. 1997 the new language of qualitative method. new york: oxford university press. graburn, nelson h. ii. 1989 "the fourth world and fourth world art" in in the shadow of the sun. edited by the canadian museum of civilization: 1-25. igatieff, michael 1998 "the decline and fall of the public intellectual" in the ottawa citizen. 15/ 2/98: d9-d10. isaac, jeffrey c. 1990 "realism and reality: some realistic considerations" in journal for the theory of social behaviour. 20/1 ; 1-31. kirby, sandra and kate mckcnna 1989 experience, research, social change: methods from the margins. toronto: garamond puss 18 volume 16, 2000 chemins alternatif kumar, krishan 1995 from post-industrial to post-modern society. cambridge: blackwcll publishers. lalour, bruno \996aramis or the love oftechnology. cambridge: harvard u press. 1993 we have never been modern. cambridge: harvard u press. levi-strauss, c. 1966 the savage mind. chicago: u of chicago press. lotrigner, sylvere (ed.) foucault live (interviews, 1966-84). new york: semiotext(e), columbia u. lyon, david 1994 postmodernity. buckingham: open university press. mander, jerry 1991 in the absence of the sacred: the failure of technology and the sun'ival of the indian nations. san francisco: sierra club books marple, chad 1998 "first people's show on the road" in the ottawa x press. 25/6/98: 14. mercredi, ovide (with mary ellen turpel) 1993 in the rapids navigating the future of first nations. toronto: penguin books. mills, c.wright 1959 the sociological imagination. new york: grove press. osborne, ralph (ed.) 1972 who is the chairman of this meeting: a collection of essays. toronto: neewin pub. co. patterson, michael 1996 native music in canada — through the seven fires. carleton university ma thesis. (also at www.carlclon.ca/~mpatters/soc.html) volume 16, 2000 39 alternate routes (peltier) pelletier, wilfred (wawashkesh) 1972 "dumb indian" in who is the chairman of this meeting: a collection of essays. ralph osborne, ed: 1-20. rabinow, paul (ed i 1984 the foucault reader. new york: pantheon books. robin. laura 1995 "shedding light on winter" in the ottawa citizen. 2/12/95: a1-a2. sahlins, marshall 1972 stone age economics. chicago: aldine-athcrton press. sainlc-marie, buffy 1998 "cyberskins" at http://www.alolia.net/~bsni/cybersk.htin. serres, michel 1990 the natural contract. ann arbour: u of michigan press. sibley, robert 1997 "birth of a cyhcr-nation" in the ottawa citizen. 12/1097: d8-d9. sioui, georges. e. 1992 for an amerindian autohistory an essay on the foundations ofa social ethic. montreal and kingston: mcciill-qucen's university press. szick, stephanie 1998 "schoolnet remains vital tool for first nations" in silicon valley north. january 1998: 29. tanner, a. (ed.) 1983 i he politics of indianness. st. john's: memorial university of newfoundland, institute of social and economic research. tapscott, don 1998 crowing up digital — the rise of the net generation. new york: mcgraw-hill. also sec www.growingupdigital com thompson, dr. hunter s i •)')() songs of the doomed more notes on the death of the american dream (gonzo papers vol. 3). new york: summit books. 40 volume 16, 2000 chemins altemat if turkle, sherry 1984 the second self computers and the human spirit. new york: simon and schuster. young, gloria a. 1981 "powwow power: perspectives on historic and contemporary intertribalism." ph.d. diss. indiana university. young man, alfred 1994 "the metaphysics of american indian art" in canadian music issues of hegemony and identity. diamond and witmer, eds: 383-404. volume 16, 2000 41 homophobia in/as education oscar wolfman carleton university relationships ofpower/knowledge are developed and practised through constructions ofidentity, working on and through the body, with certain attributes privileged and imbued with power, while others are made 'abnormal.' "normalization" is a dividing practice which compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, and excludes, not only punishing the "bad," but rewardingthe "good"; disciplining, ratherthan repressing. through normalization, people are disciplined into "proper" gendered and sexualized subjects, that is a "normal" heterosexuality and a "deviant" homosexuality (foucault, 1979:180; 184; 1978:94). heterosexuality is constructed as essential, the basis of intersexual relations, and the basis of reproduction and society, although heterosexuality is an achievement of culture, not its precondition (prentice, 1994: 10; warner, 1993:xxi). by subordinating the feminine, and by associating homosexuality with effeminacy (whyte, 1993:29), heterosexual masculinity is normalized as a dominant power. this subordination is deployed through discursive practices which construct 'truths' about sex, gender, and sexuality as '(un)natural,' '(im)moral,' and '(un)healthy,' and are embodied in 'tradition,' 'history,' 'common sense,' and 'facts.' homophobia encompasses the dividing practices which subordinate bodies based on sexual orientation, (reproducing a "moral panic" about homo/bisexuality which supports the gender-roles privileging heterosexual males (dollimore, 1986:9) within modern canadian society. 1 as education is connected to forms ofdomination and subordination in society (apple, 1989:1), my analysis examines whether the alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 educational institution is a site where normative sexuality is both (reproduced and challenged. if there is no homophobia in education, bi/homosexuality will receive an equivalent representation as heterosexuality in educational practices, and all sexualized students will have similar experiences. ifhomophobia is used in education, then only certain forms ofsexuality willbe (reproduced as normative. as part of this wide area of research, this work focuses on the experiences ofhomosexual males in high school. the high school level was selected for this study because high school students are at the ages ofpuberty and dating—ages where sex and sexuality dominate their attention— and because the 1992 study by masters, johnson, and kolodny reported that the most frequent attackers in lesbigay-bashing are adolescent males, attributing this violence to a rite of masculinity (elia, 1993:178). from this it is apparent that for adolescents, homophobia is a component in their understanding of identities. education in canada is under provincialjurisdiction, and so my analysis focuses on education in ontario. using the ottawa school board (obe) as a sample site, itjuxtaposesthe discourses of official educational policies and curricula (of the ontario ministry ofeducation—hereafterome—and the obe) with the lived experiences of(a purposive sample) ofseven homo/bisexual high school students from the ottawa board. the experiences of these students are not solely based on belonging to one subordinated community, but are based on individuals as composites of several fractured identities connected to several groups. in relation to this study, the respondents are subordinate not only as bi/homosexuals but, among other social constructs, as "youth." adolescence is a cultural construction presented as essential: universal and biological, which negates that it changes, if measurements ofpuberty are considered, depending on periods of history, geography (both national and urban/rural) and class (based on nutrition and work) (irvine, 1994:7;mitterauer, 1992:25; 12; 32). as the ideology ofthis society is white and european, so too is that which is defined as "appropriate" gender behaviour wolfman/homophobia in/as education (monteiro and fuqua, 1995: 163), 2 which further complicates what andwho is erased or constructed in sexual education. there is little incentive for students of sexually or "racially" subordinated group s to study a curriculum in which they are not included (sears, 1995:150;werner, 1995:130;dei, 1994:291) or in which hierarchies are constructed, in part, through stereotypes about sexuality (belyea and dubinsky, 1994:27), and this is compoundedby sex, class, and ability(ward and taylor, 1 994: 5 1 ), so that sexual education in schools contributes not only to the construction of youths, but to youths' embodying the values, if not the characteristics, ofthe dominant group (irvine, 1994:7) — including adult and "white." some of the work done in the area of homosexuality and education include that ofhetrick and martin (1987; 1988), uribe and harbeck (1992), and watney (1991) on anti-homophobic education; tehjohann and pierce (1993) on student experiences with homophobia in education; sears (1992) on teacher and guidance councillor education on homo/bisexuality; whatley cfcs (1992) on representations of sexuality in sexual education textbooks. in canada, adams (1994), campey et al. (1994), and lenskji (1994) have examined the history of sexual education in ontario and at the toronto board of education; and frank (1994) and khayatt (1992) have researched the deployment of sexual education through the experiences of students. despite these few but important articles, there has been a dearth of sociological research in the area of homophobia in education, particularly in canada, which my work addresses. my research is unique in focusing on both policies and experiences at the secondary school level in ontario, and in documenting how students actively mediate the structures and curricula of homophobia in education. there is no accurate rate ofhomosexuality because there is no exact definition, means ofmeasurement, or means ofsample selection, as surveys recording a wide range in the percentage of homosexuals in the same societies have demonstrated (hamer alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 and copeland, 1994: 102; 99). furthermore, as one can "pass" as heterosexual, the closet ensures that all surveys and censuses will be statistically inaccurate. this project is not concerned with establishing the normalcy of any sexual orientation through the legitimating power of numbers, or of establishing the "fact" of sexualities as essential. this is, partially, due to my interpretation ofdemocracy as "equal rights for all," regardless of percentage in the population, as opposed to the interpretation of democracy as supporting the "rights ofthe majority." consequently, a qualitative, rather than quantitative, methodology has been selected to address my concern with how those who are identified as homosexual, regardless of their frequency in the population, perceive and respond to homophobia. i am also aware ofmy own subjectivity: in what i hear and focus on and what i ignore; inmy relations with the respondents as 'researcher"; and in my situation vis a vis the topic. as the policies around sexualities and homophobia are in flux, only the most recent documents on these issues were studied, in order to explore how they are currently presented. every recent ome guideline that had any information or discussion on sexual orientation or homophobia was examined, and local newspapers were searched for any announcement from the ministry of education on the topic. as provincial jurisdictions overlap with, and respond to, federal policies, attention was also paid to the policies and legislations of other provincial departments and to the federal government. all obe curricula pertaining to health, sexuality, social issues, physical education, and family studies were studied. reports and policies of the school board that are available to the public were also studied. my research at the boardwas supplemented by discussions, mostlyby telephone, with teachers, committee members, administrators, and trustees of the ottawa board. the population of this study was self-selected, and were obtained through several sources. the majority of respondents wolfman/homophobia in/as education were obtained at the gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth group of pink triangle services, a community organization for the lesbigay community, although the questionnaire was also distributed at the ottawa-carleton youth services bureau, and at lesbigay groups at carleton university, the university of ottawa, and algonquin college. as well, an announcement about my study was advertised in the algo news, a periodical for the ottawacarleton lesbigay community, in the two summer issues of 1995. my study was also posted on the gay, lesbian, and bisexual, the youth, and the feminist newsgroups on the internet. no limit was set on the number ofrespondents, as there was a desire to garner the greatest range of experiences, and because there was a desire to avoid selecting an "authentic" or "representative" voice, which would trap the research in essentialism (martin, 1988:15). a formal questionnaire was used to ensure that participants could all respond to the same areas of inquiry, although the questions maintained an open-endedness that allowed individuals 4ffi to focus or expand on areas that had more relevance for them because this project aimed to record the experiences of bi/ homosexuals with homophobia, there was a need to contact both those in and out of the closet. it was assumed that those participants who responded via the lesbigay youth groups or the community paper would be those who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual—ifnot, necessarily, at school. to reach those who would not read or appear at a site that would reveal their sexual orientation, the internet was selected as a research medium the results of my present findings are not generalizable. however, ifmy work corroborates that of other research in this field, it may support arguments for the pervasiveness of homophobia in education, and encourage future study ofa more generalizable nature. fundamental to this thesis is an understanding of sexuality alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 and its construction. i have based my understanding on michel foucault's works on power/knowledge through anatoma-power and discourse (particularly 1978, 1979, and 1991), and supplemented it in the areas of agency and resistance (gramsci, 1988; richer, 1990). centering on foucault's concepts of "dividing practices" and "normalization," i have incorporated queer theory into this analysis (britzman, 1995; warner, 1993; sedgwick, 1990). queer theories not only investigate how '^normal" is established, but questionthe concept of 4normalcy."they decentre and resist "the regimes of the normal" so as to expand the parameters ofknowledge—to make theory queer—and, subsequently, action. rather than seeing the effects ofnormalization as the sites of violence, the process of normalization, in itseh; is understood to be a form ofviolence (warner, 1993:xxvi). queer theory is not based on sexual orientation or identity politics, nor does it impose a queer (read: lesbigay) space within a heteronormative culture, which could only validate a heterofffi sexual dominance or '^normalize" a queerness. queer theory defines itselfagainst the normal, not the heterosexual (ibidixxvi), making a space for all identities within a queer culture, queering identity. masculinity allocates social roles and spaces based on sex and reproduction (whyte, 1993:30), and dominates through institutionswhich are male-defined and male-dominated (connell, 1993 : 602). in the [traditionally] homosocial world ofmale work and war, homosexuality intersects power and gender through homophobia (sedgwick, 1990:2-3), but this central position of homophobia does not mean that homosexuals have a central position: the importance ofhomosexuality is proportionate to its negation and marginality (dollimore, 1986:5). in the deployment of a heteronormativity, two overlapping and contradictory strategies of homophobia predominate: with one, homosexuality must be denied, silenced, forgotten in the margins; with the other, homosexuality must be acknowledged, discussed, used to enforce and restate the dominant. in regard to wolfman/homophobia in/as education the first strategy, there is the "closet," which eve kosofsky sedgwick calls "the defining structure ofgay oppression in this century" (1990:71). the closet is a place for denying sexuality, for the silencing ofidentity. the closet is always on the margins. however, the closet also signifies the withholding ofinformation and the power which that entails, for ignorance and silence are as powerful as knowledge (ibid:4), because ignorance is not oppositional to knowledge, but is an effect ofknowledge: its limit (britzman, 1995:154). in the analysis ofhomophobia in education, the silences must be deconstructed as well as the discourses: what is silenced? how is silence defined? who is silenced, and is silence the same for the different groups involved? is sexuality silenced or ignored? the second strategy involves discussing the "unmentionable." educational, medical, psychological, and criminal justice, among other institutions, create discourses about sex, making people more aware of it, and inciting more discussion of it (foucault, 1978:30-31). discourses need to be unravelled in order to examine how they support one another, and to locate the social institutions that entitle them in regard to the discourses and silences on sexual orientation, four guidelines of the ontario ministry of education are salient. in family studies: intermediate and senior divisions and oac, 1987, "diversity" is mentioned in the "definition offamily studies," yet homosexuality is omitted in the examples ofdiversity, in the units on parenting, and in the units on 'tamilies in canadian society" (ome, 1987a:4-5; 62-66; 90-100). hie manual on education about aids, 1987, represents homosexuals as closeted, deceitful, isolated, incapable ofmaintaining relationships, and as a threat to heterosexuals (ome, 1987b:c37; d30). theantiracismandethnoculturalequity inschoolboards: guidelinesfor policy development and implementation, 1993, acknowledges that racism is compounded by mscriminations alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 towards gender, disabilities, and sexual orientation, and may be applied both directly and systematically (ome, 1993:5; 42-43). it recognizes that homosexuals may be a target ofviolence yet, unlike their policies towards race, gender, and disabilities, it does not try to rectify the causes ofhomophobia. the recent violence-free schools policy, 1994, comes closest to rectifying the problems of systematic homophobia. in it, the ministry states that discrimination, including homophobia, is unacceptable, and that school boards must state this in their code ofbehaviour; that the curriculum "must be free ofbias and must reflect the diverse groups that compose society" (ome, 1994:18-19). schools and school boards, according to this document, must report violent or hate-motivated incidents to the police (ibid:20). this appears as an excellent initial step. however, "must" and "should" are not used interchangeably, and attention should be paid to the selection ofthese words. homophobia is not to be tolerated, and violent incidents gk must be reported, but school boards should address the causes of homophobia, should'find links within the community, and should provide the staffand administration with the knowledge and skills required to identify and eliminate cuscrimination based on sexual orientation (ibid: 18; 20-22). "should" does not require school boards that are homophobic to remove the systematic element of their violence, only to respond to direct violence. these policies and guidelines are mediated by the ottawa board ofeducation in one oftheir policy manuals, two curricula units, and one report. in towards ahealthy sexuality, grade 10: a sexuality unit for grade ten students, 1990, homosexuality and bisexuality are only discussed as "high risk groups" for aids (obe, 1990:36). in health education curriculum, grades 9 and 10, 1982, homosexuality is only in the unit on "psychological and physiological changes at puberty," where it is pathologized and seen as a "phase," and a more detailed discussion ofhomosexuality is omitted because it is not yet completely understood. the guidewolfman/homophobia in/as education line assumes that they know everything about hetero sexuality, that all the students are heterosexuals, and that tolerance, not equality, is required. in the remainder ofthe curriculum, love and dating are discussed only in reference to heterosexuals (obe, 1982). homosexuals have sex; heterosexuals share love. as with the ministry guidelines, homosexuality is discussed exclusively in the "health" and 'tamily studies" curricula. by erasure, it is the silenced subject ofthe other areas of education. code 930, the board's "anti-racism and ethno-cultural equity policy," is based on the ministry guideline. in it, they replace the ministry's term "sexual orientation" with "lifestyle" (obe, 1993:2). finally, the report no. 94-110from the administration to the ottawa board ofeducation, re: programs, policies, and curriculum that address issues of homophobia and sexual orientation was written in 1994 as a response to reports and inquiries by several groups about homophobia in the schools and the high risk of suicide among homosexual teenagers (obe, dffi 1994:1-2). after studying the issues, it recommended that the curricula does not need to be changed, and that only staff development programs dealing with sexuality should be initiated (ibid:2-5). notwithstanding official policies against homophobia, all the respondents in my study perceived their high schools as homophobic. two respondents came "out" only after graduating; one respondent changed schools frequently, in order to prevent his sexuality from becoming known; another dropped out of school because of the "constant stress" caused by homophobic students. homophobia was experienced verbally, through comments by students and, occasionally, by teachers, and through the silences by teachers and administrators regarding reports of homophobia. it was experienced physically, in attacks—or in witnessing other students attacked, which reinforced their fears of coming out; and through graffiti and vandalism it was also alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 experienced through the internalization of stereotypes about deviants; through the fear that coming out would result in violence and ostracism; and through the beliefthat theywere "the only one" in their school. all seven respondents admitted that, at some point in their high school life, they acted homophobic as a way to appear heterosexual. although homophobic attacks must be reported to the police, the ottawa police have received only one report of homophobia from the region's high schools (ottawa bias crimes unit; 1995). the discrepancybetweenthe examplesofhomophobia reported by the respondents and the dearth ofincidents reported to the police may have to do with who creates the discourse and defines an action as homophobic. one of the respondents reported that homophobic incidents in his school are "swept under the rug," while another reported that homophobic violence would be considered as 'just a violence problem, not connected to anything." none ofthe respondents were aware ofthe ministry policy. the fact that these students are unaware that they are protected exemplifieshow official discourses can be silenced for the benefit ofthe dominant. sexuality is officially included in only two subjects of the high school curricula, it was not always discussed in those classes whereas it appeared in other areas of education. four of the respondents claimed that homosexuality was included in the health component of their physical education classes, but all claimed that it was quickly dismissed or joked about by the teachers. in 'tamily studies," homosexuality was discussed, not because it was in the curriculum, but because ofthe recent media attention on same-sex legislation, or because lesbigay students in the classes instigated discussions or requested information on the topic. four respondents mentioned homosexuality being discussed in english classes. this may reflect the attitudes of the individual teachers, as homosexuality is not a required element of any english curriculum. other subjectswhere respondents claimed wolfman/homophobia in/as education homosexuality was mentioned were: drama, geography, and science, and law. the inclusion ofhomosexuality, for the majority ofthese students, was by their own initiative, through using the flexibility of "independent study" projects to introduce lesbigay topics and issues into the curricula. sexuality is also taught, unofficially, through the assumption that the teachers are role-models. teachers announce and promote their heteronormativity through wedding rings and asides about their personal lives. respondents were asked ifthey knew any teacher(s) at their school who were out. only two respondents knew teachers who were open about their homosexuality. however, four respondents claimed they discovered teachers in bars or at lesbigay events, or found out about teachers aftertheygraduated. the students felt thisreinforcedhomophobia: that closeted teachers promoted a shameful identity. 3 many of the respondents found strategies to resist homophobia. there was active resistance, such as reporting homophobia to the administration and to the local media, introffil ducing lesbigay content into their work, attending school dances in same-sex couples, wearing "gay pride" clothing and insignias; and there was passive resistance, such as not declaring one's sexuality, or changing schools. resistance was both individual, such as those who, as the only person out in their school, hoped to be role-models for other students; and collective, such as attempting to form lesbigay groups within the schools. resistance often took several forms simultaneously, even when contradictory. to conclude, homophobia is deployed through the erasure ofhomosexualityfromthe bulk ofthe curricula ; from the assump tion that teachers and students are heterosexual; through the discourses ofthe abnormal and the pathological; in the structures of an institution that do not provide job protection or spousal benefits for homosexual teachers. homophobia is in policies that allow a lack of resources and expertise to justify inaction; that prohibit homophobic violence with "musts," but tolerate it with alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 "shoulds." it is counted in the police reports on homophobia in the high schools (one), and these pages of daily encounters. it is heard in the differences between the official pronouncements of "tolerance," "diversity," and 'violence-free schools," and the lived experiencesofhomosexualstudentswho areperipheralized, disciplined, erased, and taught to stay, silenced, within the closets. homophobia is resisted by those students who refuse the closets and their silencing. each ofthe seven students interviewed had created a space of resistance, figuratively and literally. resistance also comes from teachers who come out to their students, and in teachers and administrators, both lesbigay and straight, who create spaces for lesbigay-positive components in their curricula, and who challenge homophobia. while official policies may claim to promote the diversity of students and to combat homophobia, they continue to represent homosexuals as the problem which is solved, not through diverflft sit>', but through normalization, or erasure. notes 1. the term "homosexual" is the prevalent term used in this study as it is the most frequent term used in the "official" discourses. its use draws attention to the scientific typologies which instill "truth" into bodies. "lesbian", "gay", and "bisexual" (and their collective abbreviation as "lesbigay") will refer to homosexuals and bisexuals who identify themselves as "out" and as part of homo/bisexual communities. 2.this compounds "race" with sex, as western culture's mind/body dualism attributes mind, reason, and civilization with men; and body, emotion, and nature with women (prentice, 1994:5). 3. teachers at the obe are not protected against discrimination based on "sexual orientation" in their policy manual (obe, 1985: 1)), nor are they protected by their union (telephone interview, union representative, ontario secondary school teachers' federation, november, 1994). wo/1'man/homophobia in/as education references adams, mary louise. 1994 "sex at the board or keeping children from sexual knowledge," in sex in schools: canadian education and sexual regulation, pp.60-81. susan prentice, ed. toronto: our schools/ our selves educational foundation. apple, michael w. 1989 "critical introduction: ideology and the state in educational policy," in the state and educational policy, pp. 1-20. roger dale. toronto: oise. belyea, susan, and karen dubinsky. 1994 '"don't judge us too quick': writing about teenage girls and sex," in our schools/ our selves:36 (october), pp. 19-43. britzman, deborah p. 1995 "is there a queer pedagogy? or stop reading straight," in educational theory:45(2). pp. 15 1-1 65. campey, john, tim mccaskell, john miller, and vanessa russell. 1994 "opening the classroom closet: dealing with sexual orientation at the toronto board of education," in sex in schools: canadian education and sexual regulation, pp. 82100. susan prentice, ed. toronto: our schools/ our selves educational foundation. connell,r.w. 1993 'the big picture. masculinities in recent world history," in theory and society.22. pp.597-623. dececco, john p. 1982 "definition and meaning of sexual orientation," in journal of homosexuality. 6a. pp.5 1-67. 1984 bashers, baiters, and bigots: homophobia in american society. new york: harrington park. dececco and john p. elia. 1993 "a critique and synthesis of biological essentialism and social constructionist views of sexuality and gender,: in journal of homosexuality:24:3/4. pp. 1-39. dei, george j. sefa. 1994 "reflections of an anti-racist pedagogue," in the sociology of education in canada, pp. 290-3 10. lornaerwin and david maclennan, eds. toronto: copp clark longman. <ffi (f£s alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 dollimore, jonathan. 1986 "homophobia and sexual difference," in oxford literary review.&a-l. pp.511. eli a, john p. 1993 "homophobia in the high school: a problem in need of a resolution," in the high school journ al:october/november 1993, december/january 1994. pp. 177-185. foucault, michel. 1990 the history ofsexuality: volume one: an introduction. new york: vintage. 1979 discipline and punish: the birth ofthe prison. new york: vintage. 1991 "politics and the study of discourse," in 777<? foucault effect: studies in governmental rationality, pp. 53-72. graham burchell, colin gordon, and peter miller, eds. chicago: university of chicago. frank, blye. 1994 "queer selves/queer in schools: young men and sexualities," in sex in schools: canadian education and sexual regulation. pp.44-59. susan prentice, ed. toronto: our schools/ our selves educational foundation. gramsci, antonio. 1988 a gramsci reader: selected writings 1916-1935. david forgacs, ed. london: lawrence and wishart. hamar, dean, and peter copeland. 1994 77*2 science ofdesire: the search for the gay gene and the biology ofbehaviour. new york: simon and schuster. hetrick, emery s., and a. damien martin. 1987 "developmental issues and their resolution for gay and lesbian adolescents," in journal ofhomosexuality: 14: 1/2. pp.25-43. 1988 'the stigmatization of the gay and lesbian adolescent," in journal ofhomosexuality: 15: 1/2. pp. 163-1 83. irvine, janice m. 1994 "cultural differences and adolescent sexualities," in sexual cultures and the construction ofadolescent identities, pp. 328. janice m. irvine, ed. philadelphia: temple university. wolfman/homophobia in/as education kinsman, gary. 1994 "constructing sexual problems: 'these things may lead to the tragedy of our species,'" in power and resistance: critical thinking about canadian social issues, pp. 165188. les samuelson, ed. halifax: fernwood. khayatt, didi. 1992 surviving school as a lesbian, (unpublished paper) toronto: glendon college, york university. lenskji, helen. 1994 "going too far? sexual orientation[s] in the sex education curriculum," in sociology ofeducation in canada, pp. 27 8289. lorna erwin and david maclennan, eds. toronto: copp clark longman. martin, biddy. 1988 "feminism, criticism, and foucault," in feminism and foucault. pp. 3-19. irene diamond and lee quinby, eds. boston: northeastern university. mitterauer, michael. 1992 a history of youth. oxford: blackwell. monteiro, kenneth p., and vincent fuqua. tffo 1995 "african-american gay youth: one form of manhood," in tfie gay teen: educational practices and theoryfor lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents, pp. 159-187. gerald unks, ed. new york: routledge. ontario ministry of education and training. 1 987a family studies: intermediate and senior divisions and oa c 1987b education about aids. 1993 antiracism and ethnocultural equity in school boards: guidelinesfor policy development and implimentation, 1993. 1994 violence-free schools policy. ottawa board of education. 1982 health education curriculum, grades 9 and 10. cd08-82-e. 1985 policy manual, code 31 0: personal/ sexual harassment policy and redress procedure 1990 towards a healthy sexuality, grade 10: a sexuality unitfor grade 10 students. cd42-90-e. 1993 policy manual. 1994 report n. 94-1 10from the administration to the ottawa board ofeducation, re: programs, policies, and curriculum that addresses issues ofhomophobia and sexual orientation. iffi alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 prentice, susan. 1994 "introduction," in sex in schools: canadian education and sexual regulation, pp. 1-1 8. susan prentice, ed. toronto: our schools/ our selves educational foundation. richer, stephen. 1990 "sociology and pedagogy: some reflections," in canadian journal ofeducation: 1 5;1. pp.91-99. sears, james t. 1992 "educators, homosexuality, and homosexual students: are personal feelings related to professional beliefs?" in journal of homosexuality:22:3/4. pp.29-79. 1995 "black-gay or gay-black? choosing identities and identifying choices," in the gay teen: educational practice and theory for lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents, pp. 135-157. gerald unks, ed. new york: routledge. sedgwick, eve kosofsky. 1990 epistemology ofthe closet. berkeley: university of california. telljohann, susan k., and james h. price. 1993 "a qualitative examination of adolescent homosexual's life experiences: ramifications for secondary school personnel," in journal ofhomosexuality:26a. pp.41-56. uribe, virginia, and karen m. harbeck. 1992 "addressing the needs of lesbian, gay and bisexual youth: the origins of project 10 and school-board intervention," in journal ofhomosexuality:22;3/4. pp.9-28. ward, janie victoria, and jill mclean taylor. 1994 "sexuality education for immigrant and minority students: developing a culturally appropriate curriculum," in sexual cultures and the construction ofadolescent identities, pp. 5168. janice m. irvine, ed. philadelphia. temple university. warner, michael. 1993 "introduction," in fear ofa queer planet. pp.:vii-xxxi. michael warner, ed. minneapolis: university of minnesota. watney, simon. 1991 "school's out," in inside /out: lesbian and gay theories. pp. 3 87-401. diane fuss, ed. new york: routledge. wolfman/homophobia in/as education werner, walter. 1995 "persistent curriculum issues," in social change and education in canada. (third edition) pp. 126-136. ratna ghosh and douglas ray, eds. toronto: harcourt brace. whatley, mariamne h. 1992 "images of gays and lesbians in sexuality and health textbooks," in journal ofhomosexuality:22:3/4. pp. 197-211. whyte, donald. 1993 'the homosocial factor in male violence and masculine subjectivity," in men 's studies review:9:\. pp.27-31. cfp (fa alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 studies in political economy i a socialist review i sr303, carleton university, 1125 colonel by dr. ottawa, ontario, canada k1s 5b6 available now in spe 51 special issue: intersections of race, class and gender gillian creese & daiva stasiulis intersections: an introduction; radha jhappan race and gender essentialism; jo-anne fiske aboriginal women and the discourses of nationhood; gillian creese & laurie peterson racializing chinese canadians; tarda dasgupta racism in nursing; deborah stienstra prostitution and international law; wenona giles & valerie preston immigrant women homeworkers. subscription rates: 1 year (3 issues): canadian c$35 (regular), c$20 (student, senior and unemployed), c$60 (sustaining), c$75 (institutions) outside canada uss35 (regular), uss75 (institutions) joint subscription/membership in association d'economie politique c$73 (regular), c$38 (student), c$105 (institutions). 2 years (6 issues): canadian cs60 (regular), c$125 (institutions); outside canada us$60 (regular), us$125 (institutions). back issues are available at the following prices: current year (last three issues) individuals c$11.50 plus .50 postage per copy; institutions c$20.00 plus .50 postage per copy. previous years individuals c$4.00 plus .50 postage per copy; institutions c$15.00 plus .50 postage per copy. for orders from outside canada, remit full amount in us funds. book review: the obama syndrome | 335 the obama syndrome: surrender at home, war abroad by tariq ali. new york, ny: verso, 2010. $16.95 u.s., hardcover. isbn: 978-1-84467-449-7. pages: 1-156. reviewed by dax d’orazio1 with another american election looming, the effort to define barack obama’s presidential legacy will officially commence. after two consecutive terms and a series of major legislative initiatives ranging from health care reform to the iranian nuclear deal, there will be no shortage of political accounting attempting to reconcile obama’s campaign words and his elected deeds. political author and analyst tariq ali’s the obama syndrome is what he calls ‘a ‘preliminary report on the first 1,000 days of the obama presidency’ (ix). although certainly limited temporally, it is a worthwhile refresher for those looking to review what will soon become the obama legacy. further, it provides some particularly insightful commentary in the context of hilary clinton becoming the democratic presidential candidate, an establishment politician with far less convincing progressive credentials than obama (especially concerning foreign policy). voters looking for more potent progressive reforms will again confront the dilemma of whether the ‘lesser of two evils’ approach to a two party system can ever meaningfully deliver. for those who have followed american politics closely – including critical commentary on issues such as foreign policy, wall street and health care – ali’s preliminary appraisal may not be a revelation. nonetheless, for those seeking a relatively accessible post-mortem of ‘obamamania’ and the accompanying disillusionment of the left following the rollback of campaign promises, the obama syndrome is concise and incisive. one key point overshadows much of ali’s book: the policies pursued by the obama administration are not solely idealism constrained by the realities of american politics and an intransigent republican party. in many cases, obama’s policies reflect an ingratiation of status quo structures and institutions. ali convincingly diagnoses an acute defeatist element to the administration’s consensus driven approach in which the compromises and appeasements came one after another. he aptly 1 dax d’orazio is a phd student in the department of political science at the university of alberta. his primary research interest is academic freedom in the context of the israel-palestine conflict. he can be reached at dorazio@ualberta.ca 336 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages describes obama as “prone to use mass indifference as an excuse for his own opportunism” (88). in other words, obama willingly truncated his momentum and political capital in favour of a more cautionary and consensual approach. nowhere is this more conspicuously exhibited than the capitulation on health care policy, due largely to a failure to confront the oligopoly of private insurers that have resulted in exceedingly high per capita health care costs (94-96). the first chapter is a retrospective of the election process itself and delves into some of the mischaracterized details of obama’s past. pointing to specific examples of obama on the campaign trail – including the distancing of reverend jeremiah wright as well as obama’s sloganeering, lavish corporate donations, and admiring references to ronald reagan – ali argues that progressive observers should have been more cautious. yet, the massive mobilization of youth (across race and class) who genuinely believed that obama could retreat the american empire and take head on ‘democracy inc.’ cannot be faulted. as ali puts it, “their enthusiasm was infectious” (6). ali seems to believe that obama was electable precisely because he did not constitute an existential threat to established order and, therefore, his presidential prerequisites included assuaging power blocs that ‘hope’ and ‘change’ would eventually meet reality. for proof one need look no further than the lion’s share of total campaign donations obama garnered from the country’s largest corporations (32). perhaps the most poignant analysis inhabits the second chapter, an assessment of the foreign policy record of the obama administration. considering the history of american intervention in the middle east, the author dedicates a significant portion of this section dissecting american policy in the region. according to ali, “[t]here was no fundamental break in foreign policy” from his predecessors (38). in iran, iraq, afghanistan, and palestine, obama failed to drastically alter a longstanding american predilection towards intervention and its attendant regional instability. ali closes by refocusing his scope domestically and taking aim at some of the missed opportunities including health care reform and the economic crisis of 2008. ali contends that the latter’s fallout was entrusted to a cadre of predictable advisers (even respected keynesians were shunned with a wink to wall street) who set out to ‘re-regulate’ a financial system that simply required some occasional tailoring. although beyond the immediate scope of ali’s assessments, his book also evokes much wider political questions, including political strategy, electoral politics and the paradox of progressive incrementalism. for example, is it ethical to support liberal political projects that can, in some cases, deliver upon book review: the obama syndrome | 337 their incrementalist credentials? or, is it incumbent upon those seeking radical change to insist that american democrats, for example, vigorously mobilize and educate for reforms like health care and immigration? more importantly, how can social movements translate grassroots support into political capital without compromising their vision and integrity? ali’s argument does somewhat falter, but not due to a lack of evidence. the main setback is its polemical nature that fails to consider how american policy might be different with obama’s rivals in the white house, democrat or republican. yet, there is still a redeeming quality to ali’s writing in that he mainly attempts to reconcile the public preelection euphoria with obama’s actual policy record while in office. although it is fair to say that many of the left exhibited cautious optimism, the brilliant marketing of obama’s campaign trail in tandem with his courtship of the american press solidified a genuine feeling that ‘change’ need not necessarily be a vacuous or rhetorical ploy. obama’s progressive credentials (either real or imagined) allowed him to uniquely garner unqualified support from wide swaths of the left, even amid policy that could easily be mistaken for bush era bellicosity. nonetheless, as time has passed, obama appears more as an adept politician always striving for coveted consensus, eschewing confrontation and constantly offering apologetics for american exceptionalism. ali captures this well. while reading this book you get the distinct sense that the original sin of obama’s presidency is that it offered this misguided optimism, at least partially obscured by the elation of genuine progressives. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review making peace with the earth, by vandana shiva. winnipeg, manitoba: fernwood publishing, 2013. $ 24.95 can, paper. isbn: 978-1-55266-566-4. pages: 1-267. reviewed by christoph neusiedl1 in april 2017, a demonstration of some 40 farmers from the indian state of tamil nadu grabbed nation-wide attention: by putting live mice in their mouths, flogging themselves, stripping naked, carrying with them skulls of farmers who committed suicide, and threatening to drink their own urine, the drastic protest was intended to highlight the never-ending plight of india’s farmers, due to which about 300,000 of them have committed suicide over the past 20 years (lakshmana, 2017). in the state of maharashtra alone, an average of seven farmers committed suicide every single day between january and april 2017 (kakodkar, 2017). vandana shiva’s making peace with the earth shows how the mass-suicide of indian farmers is one of the many terrifying outcomes of what she calls a global war against the earth. this war is fought, as shiva explains, by multinational corporations (mncs) and nation-states as their faithful vassals: “governments mutate from welfare states to corporate states as they deregulate corporations and over-regulate citizens (...). the enlargement of ‘free-market democracy’ becomes a war against earth democracy” (21). throughout the book and with a focus on india, shiva explores the different yet interrelated wars being fought against the earth, the means of war applied by mncs and the indian state, and the human and non-human costs of it. we learn how ‘land wars’ displace millions of people and devastate the environment in order to make room for special economic zones (sezs), mega-development projects, and the large-scale exploitation of natural resources; how ‘water wars’ based on the increasing privatisation of water services and assets exclude a huge part of the population from access to safe drinking water as well as to water needed for irrigation; how ‘forest wars’ replace an abundancy of native tree families by monoculture plantations, in the process destroying local livelihoods and the ecosystems on which they are based; or how ‘seed wars’ lead to an ever-increasing dependency on highly expensive, and highly damaging, chemical inputs that in turn result in degraded soils and health risks on the one hand, and indebtedness and suicides of farmers on the other. the chapter on ‘seed wars’ in particular manages to explain a highly complex, technical set of issues around genetically modified organisms, biodiversity and intellectual property rights in an easily understandable and comprehensible way, a testimony of shiva’s long-term research and activism in this field. the emphasis on themes of land, water, climate and seed conflicts then clearly links shiva’s most recent publication with earlier books such as soil not oil: environmental justice in an age of climate crisis (2008), earth democracy: justice, sustainability and peace (2005), and water wars: privatization, pollution and profit (2002). what all of shiva’s work also has in common is an analytical focus on the role of the nation-state and mncs from an eco-feminist perspective which sees the transformation of capitalist structures of domination as ultimate goal (curran, 2007, 118). 1 christoph neusiedl is a phd student at the department of asian and international studies (ais), city university of hong kong. email: cneusiedl2-c@my.cityu.edu.hk www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research based on this framework, making peace with the earth provides a vivid and descriptive account of the politics and concrete impact of what carroll and jarvis (2015) call ‘deep marketisation,’ the latest phase of neoliberalism which is characterised by “an aggressive proprivate sector agenda that seeks to rapidly extend market exchange and social relations using means that work on, through, and around the state” (295). the state here no longer is the focal point and implementer of ‘development,’, but a facilitator and accelerator of ‘development,’ the achievement of which is being ‘outsourced’ to the globalised private sector. this “corporatecentric” (shiva, 18) world demands that “local communities and the country should both give up their sovereign rights for the benefit of global free trade” (40). one of the examples shiva provides for this is the indian state’s massive support for sezs in order to promote exports and attract foreign direct investment. this is being achieved by employing ‘means of war’ such as handing out massive tax breaks, deregulating employment and labour laws, and seizing land for the private sector (33). as shiva explains, these means of war “dispossess farmers and peasants and destroy agriculture, in favour of privileged corporate enclaves, which pay no taxes but burden the entire society with increased fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions” (35). this is typical for deep marketisation projects based on the rule of the ‘free market’ which subjects all social relations to the price form at the expense of any forms of social protection, including access to the commons and public goods (da costa and mcmichael, 2007). ironically, of course, such market processes are everything but free the ‘free market democracy’ is, as shiva shows, accompanied by an excessive force of violence employed by both the indian state, through police, military and paramilitary units, and by mncs themselves through local goons and private armies tolerated by, and sometimes even collaborating with, the state. dinerstein (2015) describes this as the ‘political construction of hopelessness,’ a key instrument of deep marketisation, which systematically uses violence, fear and frustration to oppress resistance and realise the stateand elite-favoured form of economic and social transformation, forcefully constructed as being without any alternative. in this vein, shiva argues that what we can observe in the war against the earth and resistance against it is actually a war between two worldviews the onslaught against the earth and its (non-elite, ‘poor’, ‘native’, ‘lower-caste’, minority…) inhabitants is embedded within a dualist cartesian system that puts humans above nature and thus justifies the subordination and exploitation of nature. what is required then is “a shift in our worldview (…),” (shiva, 265), however it remains rather vague how this shift can materialise itself and what it concretely entails. the movements and resistance against processes of deep marketisation which shiva describes in her book under the label of ‘earth democracy’ then are based on a worldview and a politics that includes “all life on earth and all humans who are being excluded by so-called ‘free market democracy’ based on corporate rule and corporate greed” (shiva, 20). however, while shiva provides numerous examples of resistance, such as the early chipko movement to save forests, the niyamgiri hills movement against mining of bauxite, or the anti-posco movement to prevent a south-korean steel plant joint venture, she avoids delving into details, which is also one of the biggest weaknesses of her work. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research while ‘earth democracy’ is always being highlighted as a reaction against the threats emanating from the state and mncs, it is often unclear what concrete actions, strategies and tactics earth democracy entails and how it is internally organised, as well as how its impact can be maximised. all the different movements featured in the book are portrayed in a rather homogeneous way, despite their rather different backgrounds and membership base. questions of power are almost completely left out, for instance when it comes to strategies of leadership and equal participation within the movements featured, or the rights of women and other minorities. at times, shiva also tends to portray small-holder and indigenous farmers as rather passive victims of the state and mncs that can easily escape their situation by listening to the ‘vanguard’ of enlightened scholars, activists and ngos which, not least, include her own organisation navdanya that is prominently featured throughout the book. additionally, while shiva takes great effort to make the case for the ‘environmentalism of the poor,’ she glosses over the fact that, at times, environmental conservation and economic interests are indeed in conflict with each other, which can for instance be seen in the aftermath of the chipko movement (see mitra, 1993). another aspect that can be seen critically is shiva’s exclusive, class-based focus on the state and mncs, which tends to assign the state a redemptive role once it is ‘freed’ from the dictates of national elites, the private sector and institutions such as the world bank which impose their (neoliberal) demands on the state. thus, once liberated from these constraints, the state is seen as rather unproblematic institution that protects empowered local communities (shiva, 26). as can be seen in making peace with the earth, such an attachment at class analysis eschews important questions of hierarchy and domination outside capitalist structures and overlooks other important sites of struggle. except for these shortcomings, vandana shiva’s book provides a useful entry-point for readers who want to learn more about the impact of globalisation and contemporary development policy on marginalised people and the environment, especially within an indian context but also beyond. together with books such as naomi klein’s this changes everything: capitalism vs the climate (2014), it is an essential read for both lay persons as well as undergraduate students and anyone interested in issues of development, climate change and the environment in order to understand and realise the scale of contemporary social, economic and environmental problems and the challenges we face and need to tackle in the future, considering the effects of both increasing climate change and an expansion of neoliberal market rule across the globe. references carroll, t., and d. jarvis. (2015) the new politics of development: citizens, civil society, and the evolution of neoliberal development policy. globalizations. 12 (3), 281–304. curran, g. (2007). 21st century dissent: anarchism, anti-globalization and environmentalism. new york: palgrave macmillan. da costa, d., and p. mcmichael. (2007). “the poverty of the global order.” globalizations. 4 (4), 588-602. dinerstein, a.c. (2015). the politics of autonomy in latin america: the art of organising hope. new york: palgrave macmillan. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 4 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research kakodkari, p. (2017). 852 farmer suicides in four months in maharashtra [online]. available from: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/852-farmer-suicides-in-four-monthsin-mah/articleshow/58723266.cms [accessed 25 may 2017]. klein, n. (2014). this changes everything: capitalism vs the climate. new york: simon & schuster. lakshmana, k. (2017). in tamil nadu, debt more than drought is driving farmers to commit suicide [online]. available from: http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/in-tamil-nadudebt-more-than-drought-is-driving-farmers-to-commit-suicide/storyga2wv9kvf3nkg8nfetkjij.html [accessed 25 may 2017]. mitra, a. (1993). chipko: an unfinished mission [online]. available from: http://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/chipko-an-unfinished-mission-30883 [accessed 23 may 2017]. shiva, v. (2008). soil not oil: environmental justice in a time of climate crisis. cambridge, mass: south end press. shiva, v. (2005). earth democracy: justice, sustainability, and peace. cambridge, ma: south end press. shiva, v. (2002). water wars: privatization, pollution and profit. cambridge, ma: south end press. alternate routes dangerous customs: censorship in risk society janet e. gwilliam the term 'risk' acts rather to reintroduce judicial discretion into the adjudication of harm. while actual harm requires empirical proof, virtually anything can be considered under the category of 'risk' 'risk ofharm', then, is wonderfully useful phrase not so much because it uses actuarial language to conceal moralism-as a certain school of critical legal studies would argue-but precisely because it is so capacious -mariana valverde, (1999). over the last century, those wielding the power to censor in canada have been shrouded in a cloud of secrecy (ryder, 1999). the single largest bureaucratic entity behind censorship was, and continues to be. the canada customs and revenue agency (customs). currently. customs is authorized under customs tariff code 9956 (a) to detain, open, and prohibit any shipment of publications or portion thereof that they deem 'obscene' under s. 163 (8) of the canadian criminal code. it is no small matter that in the course of conducting this researching 1 was unable to find any documents detailing customs" policy and procedure on censorship, nor any systematic research on customs as a bureaucracy either internal or external. 2 in short, very little is known about canada customs outside of those in the institution itself. in 1994. parts of this cloud were lifted by the lawsuit brought against canada customs by little sister's art and book emporium heard by justice smith in the bc supreme court. little sister's, vancouver's only gay and lesbian bookstore, has been under constant scrutiny by customs since their opening ten years earlier and in that period, had 261 titles detained at the border, many more than once.' 1 for a small, independent bookstore this process of constant detainment and censorship would amount in certain bankruptcy. it can cost an importer up to $20,000 to have a single shipment released by customs (fuller and blackley. 1995: 5). despite these obstacles and others. 4 the little sis100 volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifs ter's legal team and staff made customs' accountable for their discriminatory policies and procedures through a two month legal battle. in this article. i use canada's contemporary obscenity law and customs' practices as a frame through which to analyze the recent ascendancy of 'risk' discourse in crime and 'harm' prevention strategies focusing specifically on censorship. i argue that censorship, as a method of social control, has increasingly become governed by a discourse of risk in language (law) and application (customs). the article is comprised of three sections: the first will address the major theoretical components of 'risk' society (beck. 1992) and "policing the risk society' (encson and haggerty. 1996). the second section is an overview of canada customs procedures, those which were brought to light in little sister's and the emergence of the 'risk of harm' discourse as embedded in canadian obscenity law. the third section is a discussion of the effects of this emergence of a 'risk' discourse on censorship with specific focus on the case of r. v. scythes and little sister's book and art emporium: further i outline the central importance of 'expertise' in adjudicating 'risk'. my central argument is that 'risk of harm' discourse serves to obfuscate the moral and legal construction of 'dangerousness' with respect to 'homosexuality' and the ideological consequences of censorship-as-risk management within neo-liberalism. 'post-criminal'?: the proliferation of theoretical and practical 'risks' heavily influenced by the work of michel foucault. the ascendancy of risk discourses has been marked in both socio-legal and criminological literatures. previously, risk calculations were used primarily for insurance purposes (see burchell et al.. 1991 ). we protect ourselves with life insurance, our property with fire and flood insurance, and our cars with auto insurance. furthermore, not only do we protect ourselves from unforeseen natural accidents, we are also protected from the dangers others pose to us. jonathan simon argues that with the increase in risk management strategies such as insurance, we enter into many different types of relationships with others, many we are not even aware of. he provides the example of driving on a freeway. sitting in your car. you have your own thoughts, listen to a certain, genre of music and yet you are connected to everyone else on that freeway because of the potential danger you pose to one another ( simon. 1 987: 87). volume 18, 2001 101 alternate routes his is an excellent example of more 'traditional 1 analyses of risk management or 'harm" prevention. indeed, ulrich beck's foundational work. risk society has prompted a veritable explosion of literature on risk discourse from 'mad-cow disease' (smart, 1999) to policing work and information systems (ericson & haggerty, 1996). 'risk', beck argues, is the most pronounced mark of modernity, one which is pivotal to our understanding of the 'post-industrial' society. risk is generally understood as an external danger or threat of harm from another person (ericson & haggerty, 1996) as well as 'manufactured' (giddens. 1994) by the same techno-scientific apparatus designed to reduce our 'risk of harm'. indeed, the foundational components of risk theory rest on the argument that human intervention by scientific communities, particularly in the western world, has exponentially increased the risks and dangers we may encounter on a daily basis. there has also been an increase in risk analyses in the discussion of crime, power, actuarial justice, and the state (see castel, 1991; doyle and lacombe. 2000; ericson & haggerty, 1996; o'malley. 1992; simon, 1987 &1999; valverde, 1999). the prominence of risk theories within criminology and socio-legal studies is in great part due to the importance and influence of french social theorist. michel foucault. in both discipline and punish and history of sexuality: an introduction, foucault maps out both the 'objectivizing' and 'subjectivizing' elements of regulation vis-a-vis the body (lacombe. 1996). in discipline and punish. foucault traces the development of the modern prison and the techniques of surveillance used to control the inmate population. his description of jeremy bentham's panopticon is perhaps most widely associated with this work and operates as a metaphor through which foucault demonstrates how discipline is a modern form of wielding power in the forms of punishment, regulation, and normalization. the techniques of power which foucault outlines are instrumentally used to regulate and survey various bodies: prisoners, school children, and factory workers. foucault also demonstrates, through an analysis of the evolution of the modem prison, the connection of penality with the rise of 'the disciplines'. in this sense power, as viewed by foucault as a series of practices and techniques, is productive as well as repressive. much of his lens focuses on the interconnections between power and knowledge, thus the opportunity to label, categorize, and analyze those incarcerated lead to the strengthening of penological discourses. as 102 volume 18, 2002 chemim alternatifs foucault writes, "in fact, power produces; it produces reality: it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. the individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production" (1977: 194). similarly, doyle and lacombe argue that, "according to risk society theorists, risk rationality and the emergent regimes of social protection it assumes, are predicated on identifying 'future" criminals and penalizing them for 'who they are' not for 'what' they have done" (2000: 188). in his discussion of 'bio-power' in the history ofsexuality, foucault describes the gathering of statistics by governments to manage and control populations. foucault argues that these mechanisms of social control were not established to directly repress individuals, as largely described by the techniques outlined in discipline and punish. instead, the deployment of 'bio-politics' was a productive use of power, a way through which the bourgeoisie could maximize life. foucault writes. the old power of death that symbolized sovereign power was now carefully supplanted by the administration of bodies and that calculated management of life. during the classical period, there was a rapid development of various disciplines there was also the emergence, in the field of political practices, and economic observation, of the problems of birthrate, longevity, public health, housing, and migration. hence there was an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations, marking the beginning of an era of "bio-power^ 1978: 139). thus, the collection of great quantities of numbers on a given population, from births to marriage, what is commonly thought of as 'vital statistics', became intimately tied to the regulation of bodies, vis-a-vis sexuality and penality. we see the modern-day incarnation of these statistics used for both insurance purposes, within the canadian criminal justice system and. virtually every other social institution from health care to state welfare agencies. with the advent of computerized statistical profiling, the ability to track, monitor, and analyze data sets on highly-specific sub-populations has become routine. pat o'malley writes. volume 18, 2on j 103 alternate route* although developed earlier (insurance strategies go back to the emergence of modern capitalism) they have been employed predominantly in the twentieth century, in which the population has been extensively pacified by the operation of the disciplines and by the improvement in living and working conditions associated with the development of industrial capitalism. ...under such conditions, risk-based technology which is more tolerant of individual deviance and less overt and coercive in its interventions may operate effectively (1992:254). perhaps the most striking shift in the use of 'actuarial' or risk-based technologies is the lack of focus on the criminal as subject. previously, the major focus of criminological literatures and the criminal justice system had been general and specific deterrence and the rehabilitation of the offender. with the rising cost of police forces and prisons, and faced with an overburdened judicial system, the criminological emphasis is increasingly placed on risk management strategies such as 'target-hardening', harm prevention, and risk profiling of suspects. as stanley cohen comments, "no one is interested in inner thoughts.. .'the game is up' for all policies directed to the criminal as an individual, either in terms of detection or causation" (cited in o'malley, 1992: 253). thus, in the name of 'efficiency', general crime deterrence is replaced with risk management. o'malley and others (see simon. 1987 & 1988) have traced this marked shift towards a discourse of efficiency and cost cutting to emergent neo-liberal economics and political strategies in the western world. this type of cost-benefit analysis is intimately tied to the modern rationality of 'risk society' and can also be connected to the bureaucratization of everyday life. jonathan simon writes. while the disciplinary regime attempts to alter individual behaviour and motivation, the actuarial regime alters the phvsical and social structures within which individuals behave. the movement from normalization (closing the gap between distribution and norm) to accommodation (responding to variations in distributions) increases the effectiveness o\' power because changing people is difficult and expensive (emphasis added, 1988: 773). lm volume 18, 2002 chemins alternates not only is changing individuals expensive, it has proven to be timeconsuming and relatively ineffective. many criminology and socio-legal theorists agree that changing crime prevention strategies more often than not adds further layers of social control (cohen. 1985; snider. 1994). thus, actuarial strategies have greater predictive value as they calculate uncertainty at the level of aggregates and not individual offenders. the more data that is collected on a population, the greater the ability to calculate, based on various 'risk factors', what areas of crime control need strengthening. as jonathan simon notes, this collection of information is not intended to create a picture of one's 'identity' (1987: 63). in fact, within a risk regime, the exact opposite occurs; an individual's identity is fragmented within risk categories, from race to gender to bank balance. as innocuously as this often occurs, risk profiling and risk management strategies are increasingly used as the modus operandi of postmodern social control. in his article, "the emergence of risk society: insurance, law and the state", simon argues that the mechanisms of risk as social control operate in two distinct ways. first, actuarial practices ensure that a person's access to certain opportunities and commodities is controlled. secondly, people will change their behaviour accordingly in order to gain access (1987: 76). just as with benthanfs panopticon, we often internalize these mechanisms of social control and thus become self-controlling and self-monitoring. individuals monitor their driving habits, credit card spending, loan re-payments, and area in which they live in order to appear as a 'good credit risk'. moreover, these risk classification are stratified along race, class, and gender lines although they are presented as neutral, benign calculations of chance and probability. "social relations that are constituted by risk practices bring people together on the basis of "objective" social markers. think about how we 'belong' to our insurance companies, our credit-card companies, and increasingly our jobs as well" (ibid: 78). in "risk, power and crime prevention", omalley makes a similar argument with respect to the development of risk management strategies and crime prevention. his primary focus is on "situational crime prevention" or "target hardening" which can be viewed as "quintessentially actuarial" (1992: 262). this type of crime control strategy relies on the basics of risk management strategies. primarily, it is interested in the volume ix, 2001 105 alternate routes spatial and temporal, not the individual offender. determining causation is not a priority, nor is the reform of offenders (ibid: 262). he argues that despite claims that more traditional criminological approaches have 'failed' to stem the tide of rising crime rates/ risk management strategies such as situational crime prevention are politically and ideologically expedient for the neo-liberal economic policies of right-wing conservatives. cmalley writes. i believe that the broader political and ideological effects of situational crime prevention reveal that its attractions to economic rationalists, neo-conservative and new right programs provide such an answer (although not unrelated attractions to police forces are also significant). the primary attractions. i will argue, link directly with core ideological assumptions of the new right, and through these with the two directions of population management increasing punitiveness with respect to offenders, and with respect to victims, the displacement of socialized risk management with privatized prudentialism (1992: 263). thus o'malley makes a critical argument not only about the privatization of security provision but also, the diminishing focus on structural explanations of crime which typically identify race, class, and gender as key factors. once the socio-structural elements of criminality such as poverty, racism, and hegemonic masculinity are constructed as no longer "effective' or worthwhile explanations of crime control or prevention, the responsibility for crime is shifted solely onto the individual criminal as a rational, calculating actor within risk discourse (o'malley. 1992). these structural factors are increasingly viewed as simply part of one's 'risk profile' and not determinative of behaviour or circumstance. furthermore, a key component of this trend towards risk management strategies as crime control is evidenced in the shifting role of police forces and the emergence of privatized security costs. alarms for homes and cars, security teams for office buildings, and the rise in the discourse of 'personal safety' measures have all combined to reduce some of the financial burden placed on the state for crime control. as cmalley notes. 106 volume is. 2i)02 chemim alternants in the privatization of the actuarial techniques are the same notions of individual responsibility and rational choice that are present in the justification for expanding punitiveness. reliance on the state, even for protection against crime, is not the be encouraged. quite literally therefore it represents the expression in one field of the new right ideal of the strong state and the free market, combining to provide crime control in a period when the threat of crime generated by the right's own market oriented practices can be expected to increase (1992: 269). 6 the work of richard ericson and kevin haggerty. policing the risk society, is perhaps the most comprehensive analysis of the shifting role of police in canada. through research on police forces in vancouver, they argue that police work is determined by the requirements for knowledge in our risk society, and is driven less and less by the traditional notions of crime fighting. security, surveillance, and risk management are the police's new mandates according to ericson and haggerty as they write, "we contend further that the role of the police as risk communicators in the service of external institutions changes the way in which the police provide security to individuals, organization, and institutions" (1996: 18). as risk communicators, the police not only must fulfill the requirements of their own internal risk management strategies, but the requirements of other outside bureaucratic institutions as well. ericson and haggerty claim that it is through the structuring of risk communication that police work is defined and circumscribed. therefore, format becomes crucial within risk policing as formatting dictates the ways in which knowledge and experience will become 'reality'. with the advent of increasingly sophisticated computerized technology, this type of information management and dissemination becomes routinized. furthermore, these authors claim that such computerization and mechanization decreases the autonomy and discretion of front-line police officers, turning them into little more than paper-pushers largely controlled by upper management in a large bureaucratic organization. ericson and haggerty write. volume ix. 2001 107 alternate routes policing, like the knowledge-based occupations it intersects with in other risk institutions, is subject to intensive 'mformating' (translating events and objectives into visible information via formats) and 'automating' or 'fordization* (machine appropriation of human skills and labour). again, the goal is the simplification of choices in the face of a kaleidoscope of possible interpretations and courses of action 'taylorization' (1996: 36). indeed, it is this 'taylorization 1 or 'panoptic sorting 1 that is the hallmark of policing in the risk society (ibid: 40). these authors argue that the processes of organizing, classifying, and surveying populations are for the purposes of their more efficient management and are not predicated on a certain political or moral agenda. they argue that questions of fault and blame are subsumed under the desire to 'tame chance' thus, risk bears a 'utilitarian morality' (ibid: 39). one of the most recent developments in this area has been the expansion of risk management discourse and practices into both civil and criminal law (ericson and haggerty, 1996: 51 ). these authors argue that in terms of criminal law. often police work is most effective in collecting risk data for outside agencies such as insurance companies. they write, "the police are part of this compliance-law enforcement order. the police not only broker risk knowledge to insurance companies but also function as co-promoters of insurance coverage schemes. they are an integral component of crime risk management strategies'' , (ibid: 51). what is perhaps of greater significance to this analysis however is the utilization of risk management strategies within civil law processes. these authors claim that the adjudication ofjustice has become far more about the distribution of various risks (ibid: 51). ericson and haggerty argue. in all areas of civil law. risk distribution and indemnification are matters of right, and risk is further legalized judges are the engineers of actuarial justice, fitting the parties into generic categories of actors and deciding which party is in a better position to maintain loss prevention and bear the cost of any losses or harms suffered ( 1996: 51). ins volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifs indeed, they claim that higher levels of surveillance and intrusive police tactics evident in our risk society are increasingly legitimized by the legal system through a risk logic. they claim that due process is slowly being eroded and that, "in canada the law of search and seizure strongly favours the police, to the point where it is only the incompetent police officer who cannot prove the legality of a search (ibid: 64). thus, as o'malley argues, the necessity for crime control measures is increasingly dislocated from the issues of constitutionally protected individual rights and basic notions of social justice (1992: 265). the internal surveillance needs of the police force and criminal justice system are made grounds for decreased civil liberties in the interests of risk management. 'queer' customs: or, risky business the purpose of the foregoing discussion of risk management and risk policing is to establish a theoretical lens through which to analyze the contemporary policies and practices of canada customs as dictated by the canadian criminal code and related jurisprudence regarding 'obscenity'. the vast majority of the literature regarding custom's censorship practices has been concerned with the underlying or tiidden" moral regulation agenda of state censorship (see cossman et al., 1997; ryder, 1999). for example, brenda cossman argues that the objectives of existing obscenity law, as enshrined in the precedent-setting 1992 butler decision, are the same as before only couched in different language. these objectives take as their aim the legal regulation of sexual morality and sexual representations particularly those targeted at sexual minorities (cossman, 1997: 107). these authors see state censorship practices as intimately connected to the power of knowledge legitimization and delegitimization. particularly regarding the representations of gays and lesbians. the purpose of this section is to provide an overview of the jurisprudence of obscenity law and discuss how the new *risk of harm' test as established in the 1992 supreme court butler decision has effected a shift at the level of customs policies in the form of censorship-as-risk management. as i hope will become apparent, the moral and legal regulation of sexual 'others" has not ceased, it has merely moved towards a risk logic in form (law) and function (customs). before discussing the policies and practices of canada customs, it is important to outline the criminal code provisions and related statutes volume 18, 2001 109 alternate routes regarding 'obscenity' as these decisions provide the official legal framework for customs' policies and procedures. in 1992. the case of donald butler, the manager of an adult video store in winnipeg, was heard before the supreme court of canada. r. v. butler was the first case to challenge the constitutionality of the obscenity provisions in the criminal code, section 163 (8). butler, convicted of possessing and selling "obscenity", appealed the lower court decision under the charter section 2 (b), the freedom of expression clause. butler lost his appeal in the supreme court as after hearing all the evidence, the justices felt that the existing obscenity law was "demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society". the right to censor such pornographic material deemed "obscene" therefore did not infringe on his constitutionally protected right of freedom of expression. the decision in butler is unique for several reasons 7 not the least of which is the 'feminist' claims that were heard through the intervention of the women's legal education and action fund (leaf). leaf argued that pornography was a real danger to women as it degrades and portrays women as sexually subservient to men. moreover they argued that as such, the distribution of pornography must be stopped as it posed a threat to women's full equality under section 1 5 of the charter. in an apparent move to incorporate these claims, the supreme court justices included another test for determining if material is obscene. the 'risk of harm' test, first introduced in the 1992 decision, is the final adjudication of obscenity after the 'artistic merit' test 8 and the 'community standards' test. 9 justice sopinka . writing for all nine justices, outlines the test as follows. the court must determine as best they can what the community would tolerate others being exposed to on the basis of the degree of harm that may flow form such exposure. harm in this context means that it predisposes persons to act in an antisocial manner, in other words, a manner which society formerly recognizes as incompatible with its proper functioning. the stronger the inference of the risk of harm, the lesser the likelihood of tolerance. the portrayal of sex with violence will almost always constituted the undue exploitation of sex. explicit sex which is degrading or i ut volume j8. 2002 chemins alternatifi dehumanizing may be undue if the risk ofharm is substantial (emphasis added). 1() thus, it is the job of the canadian judiciary not only to determine what is "degrading and dehumanizing" to the point of posing a "substantial risk of harm'", but they must also determine which materials have literary or artistic merit. by purportedly shifting away from overt moralism and towards a risk-based 'harm' argument, the supreme court in effect appears to be incorporating the language of anti-pornography feminism as represented by leaf. mariana valverde argues, through an analysis of obscenity and indecency law. that the although the 'risk of harm" test has shifted the justification for obscenity law. its application at the lower court and bureaucratic levels is very much open to conflicting and myriad interpretations. she writes, "it has been largely forgotten that 'harm" can mean many things and that harm-based governance can have very different rationales and produce different effects.. ..harm reduction sometimes amounts to nothing but a new regime for forms of moral authoritarianism, insofar as the authorities retain both the right to define what is harmful and the right to prioritize risks"' (1999: 187). indeed, religious conservatives have argued for decades that pornography is harmful because it promotes the moral degeneracy of the nation. anti-pornography feminists on both sides of the border argued that pornography is harmful to women because it promotes misogyny, discrimination, and violence against women. recently in the case of child pornographer robin sharpe. the 'risk of harm" argument was used to censor depictions/descriptions of youth sexuality and intergenerational sex on the grounds that it contributes to pedophilia and the sexual abuse of children (doyle and lacombe. 2000). n thus, the adjudication of 'harm' is particularly subjective and open to contesting views depending on the materials in question. what little sister's counsel did so effectively throughout the two month trial in 1994 was demonstrate the high level of customs surveillance the store was under. 12 fuller and blackley write, "the vast majority of customs detentions are for suspected obscenity. the bureaucracy estimates that 90 percent of ottawa-level appeals involve obscenity: the other 1 percent involve suspected hate literature" ( 1 995: 119). as such. volume 18. 2001 111 alternate routes customs officials are bound by not only the criminal code provisions but the butler decision as well. their determinations are made on a purportedly systematic basis with the help of what is known as memorandum d9-1-1. this document was created after the butler decision in order to translate the supreme court's 'tests' for obscenity into operational customs procedures. the following is the in brief statement of memo d91-1: the importation of material that depicts or describes anal penetration or anal intercourse in and of itself is not a ground for prohibition. however, such material will be prohibited if it includes other areas prohibited in memorandum d9-1-1 such as violence, degradation, or dehumanization. descriptions or depictions of violent, degrading or dehumanizing sexual acts, whether or not they involve anal penetration will continue to be prohibited. the key factor to be taken into account is whether the nature of the sexual act described or depicted is violent, degrading or dehumanizing (cited in fuller and blackley, 1995. p. 187). therefore, it is the job of customs officers to determine whether or not a piece of work falls into any of the classifications listed in memo d9-1-1. if an importer such as little sister's has an item detained at a point of entry they are sent a "k27 form" detailing the reasons for the detainment. a customs officer's determination must fall within a certain set of proscribed categories including: a) sex with violence b) sex with degradation c) sexual assault d) sex with bondage/external control e) sex with juveniles f) incest g) bestiality h) necrophilia i) hate propaganda/ treason or sedition. if a company attempted to import materials deemed 'obscene* in the past. customs will 'flag' them in their computerized technical reference system (trs). a large database containing information on any and all canadian importers. if the trs database runs a search for a title that has already been detained or banned, the book will be detained again. the testimony of top customs' officials such as john shearer and linda murphy indicated that importers known to receive problematic (i.e. potentially obscene) materials were subjected to 'heightened surveillance". john shearer. director of the tariff programs division, testified 112 volume is. 2002 chemins alternates that. "it is the normal practice of our law enforcement approach, if there is an indication of an importer who has a history of.. ..(offending) some provision of the law. indeed, those kinds of lookouts are put out at the discretion of the people involved in putting them in place. ..that was a local discretionary lookout" (cited in fuller and blackley. 1995: 135). shearer's testimony is in reference to the fact that customs officials in vancouver had been specifically instructed to make little sister's what is known as a 'lookout*. furthermore, those who ship to little sister's and other gay and lesbian bookstores such as inland press are also routinely flagged in the trs as "hot indicators", meaning that shipments made from these companies are more likely to be scrutinized ( ibid: 1 35 ). cornne bird, a customs inspector from fort erie testified that. "a lookout is normally more of a high risk. ...a lookout is. ..pretty much a mandatory examination. a 'hot indicator* is an indicator put into our computer system that triggers a message to the customs inspector about the importer" (cited in fuller and blackley. 1995: 135). thus, within a this system of risk management, gay and lesbian bookstores such as little sister's are targeted as more 'dangerous*, represented by customs as having a higher likelihood of importing 'obscene* materials. the discourse of risk was also reinscribed within both r. v. scythes and little sister 's through the use of expert testimony. as doyle and lacombe (2000) argue, "'socially-accredited experts* play a crucial role in diagnosing and finding a cure for the object of moral panic. while the work done by experts seems 'neutral' and 'objective' because it takes place within 'legitimate' institutions, it nonetheless serves to augment social anxiety and hostility** (p. 194). as the next section demonstrates however, the type of expertise presented is largely determinative of which claims are 'heard* in law and the institutional legitimacy to which doyle and lacombe refer is not conferred equally with respect to all expert witnesses. in both of the cases discussed, 'risk of harm* centered on the legal status of gay and lesbian s & m representations. as will be shown, this issue is inextricably tied to a much older moralistic notion of homosexuality as dangerous, sinful, and wrong. the experts who challenged such 'risk of harm* arguments were not able to successfully challenge justice smith's interpretation of pornography as potentially 'harmful'. volume 1h. 2001 113 a ifemale routes 'proofofharm ': the role ofexperts despite the obvious subjectivity and level of judicial discretion involved in each one of the three tests for obscenity outlined in butler, as well as their use at the level of canada customs, the 'risk of harm" test is presented as an objective, verifiable decision-making tool. as valverde describes, the relative efficacy of this test is that unlike in tort law. the actual harm flowing from pornography does not need to be determined (1999: 190). in fact, it is only the risk of harm that need be present, and crown prosecutors and judges who have utilized butler do not need scientifically 'proven' studies to determine even risk. valverde writes, "now. in other areas of risk assessment scales have been developed to provide more or less quantified measure of "risk, but in the case of sexual immorality it would seem that judicial intuition, backed by 'public opinion', is sufficient** (ibid: 190). valverde argues that 'risk of harm* in this context does not follow a clear actuarial logic. she writes that the discursive efficacy of using risk rather than 'actual* harm as justification for censorship serves to maintain judicial discretion, not to "function as an actuarial category 1 * (1999: 190). her argument is based on the fact that although such 'scientific* studies on the purported 'effects' of pornography consumption do exist, they were not admitted into evidence in butler as expert testimony. although i agree that maintaining judicial discretion was a key component of butler. i think her dismissal of the use of 'scientific* expertise is premature for three reasons. first, at no point before or after butler has the loss of judicial discretion with respect to obscenity law been at stake and second, the 'scientific* studies which were not entered into evidence in that trial have been marshaled in every censorship case since to 'prove* the substantial risk of harm argument. third, despite the contestation around such studies and the fact that little consensus exists within the literature, their constructed reliability is weighted very heavily by the courts as evidenced by their use in every subsequent censorship ruling (see gwilliam. 2000: ross. 1997: segal. 1993: valverde. 1996). in fact, it seems as though the canadian judiciary is rather intent on determining the risk of harm flowing from not only heterosexual pornography, as was the case in butler, but more particularly, from gay and lesbian materials. adjudicating whether or not these materials will predispose people to "act in an antisocial manner" may not need exact probability calculations: nevertheless, risk in this context is arguably 114 volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifi part of a justificatory scheme which targets 'homosexuality as the real bogeyman' (giese cited in doyle and lacombe. 2000: 191). in two of the most prominent post-butler censorship cases. r. v. scythes and little sister s et al. v. minister ofjustice et ah, the same psychologist. dr. neil malamuth. was called upon to give 'expert* testimony as to the deleterious attitudinal effects of exposure to pornography. in the case of r. v. scythes (1993), dr. malamuth 's experimental data and research findings, based upon heterosexual subjects, were deemed so conclusive that they could be generalized from a heterosexual context to a lesbian one. in fact, on the stand dr. malamuth was allowed to opine as to the potentially harmful effects of a lesbian s &m (sado-masochism) magazine, the 'obscene' bad attitude, on the gay and lesbian community. utilizing the findings of neil malamuth. judge paris decided that not only was sexual orientation irrelevant to the case, so was gender. paris writes. this type of material 1 " would apparently fail the community's standards test not because it offends against morals but because it is perceived by public opinion to be harmful to society particularly to women if i replaced the aggressor in this article with a man there would be very few people in the community who would not recognize the potential for harm. the fact that the aggressor is a female is irrelevant because the potential for harm remains (emphasis added). 14 thus, the lesbian subject becomes asexual and genderless , rationalized by the judiciary into almost non-existence. malcolm feeley and jonathan simon argue that within an actuarial logic, "they (individuals) remain, but increasingly they are grasped not as coherent subjects, whether understood as moral, psychological or economic agents, but as members of particular subpopulations and the intersection of various categorical indicators" (1999: 178). in r. v. scythes, the crown attempted to construct a picture of a lesbian s & m underworld which was potentially dangerous and in need of identification and management. the argument was not overtly made in moralistic language against lesbians per se instead, the purported 'violence' depicted in the 'obscene' material was thought to present a risk of harm to the entire population, regardless of sexual orientation or sexual practice. volume 18, 2001 115 alternate routes the ruling in r. v. scythes has been heavily criticized in the critical legal theory and feminist anti-censorship literatures as blatantly heterosexist and homophobic, clearly showing the deleterious impact of butler on gay and lesbian sexual representations (see cossman et al., 1997). it is apparent that the targeting of gay and lesbian bookstores began long before the butler decision however, my main argument is that butler and the subsequent ruling in r. v. scythes, altered and subsequently strengthened the rationale utilized by canada customs to detain and censor shipments to little sister's. as didi herman writes, "perhaps one could argue instead that butler provided customs officials, police, and judges with a new rationale to continue old practices" (1996: 158). throughout this article 1 have claimed that this 'new rationale' consists of an increase in the use of 'risk management' at the discursive level. as i will show, the rhetoric of risk works to conceal the moralism contained in censorship practices in little sister's, social scientific experts such as carol vance. gary kinsman, and becki ross were not able to couch their arguments in science or statistics, and all three made counter-hegemonic claims about the production and consumption of gay and lesbian pornography, particularly in the context of s &m. 1:> these experts argued that despite the 'common sense' logic enshrined in butler, the same 'risk of harm' was not present with gay and lesbian pornography. this 'common sense' operates around the idea that pornography is an evil to be controlled by canadian obscenity law and by extension, canada customs. this evil manifests in contemporary obscenity law through the discourse of 'risk of harm' as enshrined in butler. it was in challenging the equation of 'harm' with gay and lesbian pornography, particularly with respect to s/m materials, that several key social experts for little sister's had difficulty. writing about becki ross' testimony. fuller and blackley state: after the bad attitude (r. v. scythes) case. ross had observed that the word lesbian had been mentioned probably no more than five times throughout the trial. she was evidently determined not to be silenced a second time. yet courtrooms tend to smother certain messages, such as the small matter of sexual pleasure as a value in its own right. 116 volume 18. 2002 chemins alternatifs for the government, the little sister's trial was about obscenity and control, not bodies and pleasure. even joe arvay, in his effort to prove that sexually explicit materials were a form of meaningful speech, concentrated on legal arguments, steering clear of desire (1995: 100. my emphasis). indeed, the legal contest centered around the adjudication of particular social scientific 'facts 1 ; only those facts which pertained directly to a 'harm' analysis were considered useful. those social experts who specifically rejected this discourse of harm, such as becki ross and gary kinsman, lost ground because they were not able scientifically verify that no harm flows from exposure to this type of material. as in r. v. scythes, the type of social scientific evidence privileged was quasi laboratory research done by psychologists neil malamuth and william marshall. however, to adjudicate obscenity on the basis of a 'risk of harm' test is problematic, for several reasons presented (but not heard) by several of the social experts testifying on behalf of little sister's. both gary kinsman and becki ross rejected the claim that gay and lesbian s & m pornography is the representation of violence, degradation, dehumanization. and humiliation. their socio-cultural research indicates that s & m tropes and norms are far more complicated than 'simulated violence", and that consent is the foundation of s & m relationships. but. as carol smart writes, "legal arguments...that present simple, certain and authoritative pictures of social reality are likely to be privileged within legal discourse" (1989: 71 ). the crown effectively neutralized the impact of this testimony by construing their expertise as argument/activism and not as fact or science. as heard by justice smith, this failure was critical. he writes. considerable evidence and argument was directed to the topic of homosexual sado-masochism. the plaintiffs established that sado-masochism is a theatrical, ritualistic practice in which consent of the participants is inherent. although they conceded that consent is not necessarily always present. customs officers routinely prohibit depicvolume 18, 2001 117 alternate routes tions and descriptions of sado-masochistic practices on the grounds they involve either explicit sex with violence or sex without violence that subjects persons to degrading or dehumanizing treatment. 16 thus, unable to prove that no harm exists, or that consent is always present, the assumption of harm prevailed in this trial. it would be very difficult for any social scientist, however 'empirical' his or her science, to argue that no harm could ever result from homosexual or heterosexual pornography. such a conclusion is simply not knowable from any knowledge perspective. two other components of testimony by key social experts were 'smothered' throughout utile sister ".v. these relate to the heterosexism and homophobia enshrined in the butler decision and the moralism. or 'sexual subtext', which is covered by the 'risk of harm' discourse (cossman. 1997). the plaintiffs utilized witnesses such as ross and kinsman to contextualize and historicize the differences and importance of sexual representations to gays and lesbians in canada. this was an attempt to distinguish this material from the heterosexual standards set in butler. the 'risk of harm' test is predicated on an understanding of heterosexual pornography as 'degrading and dehumanizing' to women as a group, which was leaf's position when it intervened in butler. as mariana valverde writes, "after all, even if canadians cannot agree on moral and cultural values, surely they can agree that whatever causes harm is bad. and that harm minimization and harm reduction are more legitimate rationales for social and legal intervention than either the will to discipline or the desire to uphold sovereignty" (1999: 187). both ross and kinsman argued that this analysis, predicated on heterosexual relationships with unequal gender power relations, could not. and should not. be superimposed onto gay and lesbian relationships which are characterized by gender equality} 1 counsel for little sister's further argued that the crown had failed to meet its burden of proof regarding the connection between obscenity and 'harm' vis-a-vis gay and lesbian pornography, as the materials in question in butler only pertained to heterosexual audiences and not to gays and lesbians. quoting the decision in a', v. hurler. justice smith rejected this argument, saying that some of the materials seized from butler's store included 'depictions of homosexual pracus volume 18, 2002 ( 'hemins alternatifi tices\ he further notes that the plaintiffs conceded that some homosexual materials may be deemed obscene within the legal definition contained in butler}* understanding censorship in "risk society' the question of harm addressed by the judiciary in both r. v. scythes and little sister's is tied to the idea of a moralistic 'community standard. 1 a standard which is resoundingly heterosexual and conservative. justice smith ruled that the material in little sister 's could not be distinguished from heterosexual pornography as that would violate the community standards test which is another part of the ruling in butler. justice smith writes, "that test does not permit of the proposition that material that would otherwise be obscene is not obscene if it is produced for a homosexual audience." 19 thus. joe arvay's submission that butler be distinguished in this instance was not accepted. this relates to the second element of the ross/kinsman analysis which was not 'heard* in law. namely the heterosexism and homophobia implicit in this argument of 'risk of harm', which manifests once again in justice smith's discussion of 'community standard of tolerance*. this test, re-affirmed in butler, is based on the assumption that a member of the canadian judiciary is able to determine whether certain materials violate the community standards test. this assumption, in turn, is that, "sex is bad (sex negativity), sex is biological (sex essentialism), there is one way to have sex (sex monism), and sexual hierarchy (some sex is better than others)" (cossman. 1997: 107). further, the fight to contextualize gay and lesbian pornography, thus distinguishing it from heterosexual materials, was not successful because the canadian judiciary is already working from a view that says pornography is inherently bad. as brenda cossman argues. neither the discursive framework of the butler test, nor the dominant sexual morality within which this test is applied, is neutral on the question of sexual orientation. ..it is a sexual morality in which some courts are willing to state that gay and lesbian sexuality is not in and of itself obscene. ...there is still a conservative sexual morality informed by the assumption of sexual hierarchy, in which some sex is volume ix, 2001 119 alternate routes better than others. ...lesbian and gay sex continues to run a much higher risk of being pushed back across the dividing line between good sex. back from its tenuous legitimacy, into its all-too-familiar condemnation as bad sex (ibid: p. 141). thus, although justice smith's ruling does not see gay and lesbian pornography as defacto obscene, the assumptions which underpin his arguments, and his marginalization of certain types of expert evidence, speak to the fact that obscenity law in canada continues to perpetuate various sexual hierarchies. these hierarchies are at the heart of 'risk' adjudication with respect to censorship. since butler in 1992. the use of 'risk' has been leveled not at all materials deemed potentially 'dangerous', but those materials which represent the practices and desires of sexual 'others'. the historical conflation of 'homosexuality' with 'sin', 'perversion', immorality', 'moral degeneracy' and 'social impurity' is not lost within a rationalized risk discourse. in fact, the logic of risk serves to reinforce the idea that gay and lesbian bookstores (and by extension their customers) are 'dangerous', not because they import criminal (obscene) materials, but because of who they are: i.e. the category 'gay' and 'lesbian' (or bisexual, transgendered. sado-masochist. man-boy lover) makes one a potential societal 'risk'. it seems as though the argument of pornography = harm to women <in butlerian fashion) has not substantially enabled a reformulation of what materials pose a 'threat' to the normative sociosexual order. the 'risk of harm' analysis does nothing more than target those identified as sexual minorities whose 'risk profile' (be it named this way or not) has traditionally come to the attention of institutionalized bodies of authority: medicine, science, psychiatry, police, government, religion, etc. justice smith decides finally, after ten years of waiting for a trial and two years of waiting for a decision. justice smith of the b.c. supreme court rendered his verdict in 1996. justice smith attempted to reach a compromise that would do justice to little sister's plight without striking down the sections of the customs tariff that arvay had argued against justice smith found that little sister's had indeed suffered undue discrimination and heightened 120 volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifs targeting at the hands of canada customs, but that this targeting was due to the erroneous workings of customs. he ruled that little sister's constitutional rights to equality, under section 15 of the charter, had not been violated. finally, he ordered the federal government to pay little sister's legal costs and directed customs to internally re-organize their policies and procedures to more adequately prepare customs officers to make 'obscenity' determinations. to back this up he issued an injunction, "restraining customs officials from subjecting little sister's to a policy of heightened scrutiny at the vancouver mail centre 'until the federal crown satisfies this court that the discretion of customs officers in that office is guided by appropriate standards'" (cossman & ryder, 1996: 105). although thankful to have their costs covered and their struggle vindicated by a member of the canadian judiciary, the little sister's team was unsatisfied with this decision and therefore decided to appeal to the supreme court of canada in 1999. finally, on 16 march 2000, the little sister's case was heard in the supreme court. little sister's was supported by intervenor factums from the women's legal education and action fund (leaf), pen canada, and equality for gays and lesbians everywhere (egale). their counsel joe arvay presented many of the same arguments as in 1994 and essentially asked the supreme court justices not to 'trust' canada customs to fix their own problems, as the detentions and targeting of little sister's had continued relatively unabated since justice smith's ruling in 1996. the crown's arguments were almost entirely limited to refuting the necessity for striking down the impugned legislation, stipulating that although little sister's s. 2(b) rights were violated, the existing system was the least restrictive means of regulating the importation of 'obscenity'. their decision was rendered on 15 december, 2000 and justice binnie. writing for the majority states, "the interpretation given to s. 163 (8) of the criminal code in butler does not discriminate against the gay and lesbian community. the national community standard of tolerance relates to harm, not taste, and is restricted to conduct which society formally recognizes as incompatible with its proper functioning". little sister's appeal was held in part as the majority ruled that the 'reverse onus' of the system of prior restraint could not be constitutionally justified. thus, canada customs is now required to prove that the volume 18, 2001 121 alternate routes materials they detain are in fact 'obscene' under s. 163 (8) of the criminal code and butler and they must now do so within thirty days or else release the materials to the importer. however, as persky and dixon argue, "if the court partially allowed the bookstore's appeal, it was the smallest part of the appeal. the main thrust of the bookstore's bid to overturn the law that made censorship at the border possible was rejected. further (supreme court) justice ian binnie's majority decision also rejected most of the arguments about obscenity that underpinned the little sister's efforts to dismantle the censorship regime" (2001: 182). conclusion in this paper. i have attempted to sketch censorship practices in canada as understood within the theoretical framework of the 'risk society'. the driving force behind such an argument lies in the fact that 'risk' determinations are not benignly made; they have both ideological bases and consequences for the populations so targeted. understanding censorship within this framework challenges the argument continually made by many anti-pornography feminists that it is not the decision in butler that is problematic, it is only the erroneous application of the law that must be rectified. clearly the experiences of gay and lesbian bookstores across canada attest to the fact that this is not the case. the canadian judiciary's continual reliance on the 'risk of harm' test, as it relates to 'community standards of tolerance', merely serves to reinforce the idea that is it acceptable to use a heterosexual standard in law. it is no more apparent that in the little sister's case that in order to understand the moralism which 'risk' so neatly obfuscates, we must go back and challenge the homophobic and heterosexist bases upon which contemporary obscenity law is based. notes 1 . 1 am particularly indebted to the work of doyle and i acombe on risk and the case ofrobin sharpe. 2. janci is a l'hd candidate in the department of sociology at simon fraser i fniversity in british columbia. v i lie must comprehensive work i have round to date is bruce ryder ( 1999), "undercover censorship: exploring the history of the regulation of publications in canada". even this article however is nol a detailed analysis ol 122 volume 18. 2002 chemins alternatifs customs as an institution or their inner-workings but an historical analysis of the legal underpinnings of this hidden history. 4. judgment of smith j., little sister's book and art emporium v. canada (minister ofjustice) [ 1 996] b.c. j. no. 71. 5. the bookstore was bombed twice in the period between 19n4 and 1990 as well. 6. it should be noted that this is the public perception of rising crime rates. in fact, crime rates in north america, for all types of crimes, have been steadily decreasing in the 1990s and continue to drop (roberts, 2000, p. 6). 7. despite increasing social, political, and economic inequalities, particularly in the united states, punitiveness is on the increase with prison expansions and higher sentencing rates however, crime rates are falling (see roberts, 2000). 8. for a detailed analysis of these issues see lacombe ( 1994) and cossman et al. (1997). 9. this is also know as the "'internal necessities" test wherein a publisher or writer/artist can petition the court to reconsider materials which are argued to have artistic or literary value. if the court decides that the predominant characteristic of the work is the "undue exploitation of sex" despite its literary or artistic context, it will be deemed obscene. bruce ryder ( 1999) writes that in the 1962 ruling in r. v. brodie, the majority took the aesthetic approach in freeing lady chatterley's lover and concluded, "the serious minded author must have freedom in the production of a work of genuine artistic and literary merit" (p. 142). 10. the "community standards test" is perhaps the most well-known form of judicial reasoning vis-a-vis purported obscenity. sopinka j. writing for the majority states, "this test is concerned not with what canadians would not tolerate being exposed to themselves, but with what they would not tolerate other canadians being exposed to" (r. v. butler, [1992] s.c.r. no. 452) 11. r v. butler, [1992] s.c.r. no. 452. 12. although i have chosen not to discuss issues of pedophilia/child pornography, the discursive construction of homosexual as child molesters and peddlers of child pornography also played a role in little sisters. for an excellent discussion of the robin sharpe case and the making of the "kiddie pom' law, see doyle and lacombe (2000) and persky and dixon (2001 ). 13. although i have only discusses the plight of little sister's thus far. it is important to note that there are seven major bookstores across canada that specifically cater to queer communities. each of them has had a comparable or higher level of targeting since their various openings and these include glad day bookstore in toronto and l'adrongyny in montreal. volume 18, 2001 123 alternate routes 14. the material in question is a story written by lesbian s/m fiction author irish thomas called "wunna my fantasies" published in the lesbian erotic fiction magazine bad attitude in 1992. 15. decision of paris prow div. j., r. v. scythes, ( 1993] o.j. no. 537. 16. the legitimacy of the expert witness in this case was inextricably linked to their ability to work within a 'scientific' discursive framework. as beck (1992). giddens (1994) and smart (1999) have discussed in the context of 'risk', science is part of the modern epistemic project which sees "truth' verified through legitimized science. for an in-depth analysis of the role of social scientific expertise in law see, janet e. gwilliam (2001), ma thesis (unpublished). queen's university. the truth, ivjiole truth and nothing but the truth: censorship, sexuality and the politics ofexpertise. 1 7. decision of justice smith, para 224, my emphasis. in. this docs not. however, mean that gay and lesbian relationships are not affected by race, class, ethnicity, or ability disability inequalities. 19. para 187 20. para 190 references beck. ulrich ( 1992). risk society: towards a new modernity. london: sage publications. burchell. brian (ed.) ( 1991 ). the foucauh effect: studies in governmentality. london: harvester wheatsheaf press. castel, robert (1991). "from dangerousness to risk" in. brian burchell (ed.), the foucault effect: studies in governmentality. london: harvester wheatsheaf press: 281-297. cohen. stanley ( 1985). visions oj social control. new york: oxford university press. (ossman. brenda (1997). "the sexual subtext oi~ butler: feminist fashion or morality in drag'.'" in. brenda ('ossman. shannon bell. i.ise gottell & becki ross, bad attitude s on trial: pornography, feminism, and the butler decision. toronto: university of toronto press: 105-145. (ossman, brenda. shannon bell. i.ise (iotell & becki ross. bad attitude s on trial: tomography. feminism, and the butler decision. i oronto: university of i oronto press. doyle. fcegan and dany i acombe (2000). "scapegoat in risk society. the ( .isc of pedophile child pomographer robin sharpe". studies in law. politics and society, 20: 183-206. ericson, richard cv. kevin llaggerty (1996). policing the risk society. toronto i iniversity of i oronto press. 124 volume is. :<><>: chemins a itenia tits feeley and simon (1999), "actuarial justice: the emerging new criminal law", in nelken (ed.). the futures of criminology. london: sage publications: 173-200. foucault, michel ( 1977). discipline and punish: the birth ofthe prison. new york: vintage press. (1978). the history ofsexuality, volume i: an introduction. new york: vintage books fuller, janine and stuart blackely (1995). restricted entry: censorship on trial. vancouver: press gang publishers. giddens, anthony (1994). reflexive modernization: politics, traditions and aesthetics in the modem social order. cambridge: polity press. gwilliam, janet e. (2000). "censorship, sexuality and the possibilities of legal reform: or, can we 'queer' the canadian charter" 1 } canadian woman studies, 20, (2): 70-77. herman, didi (1996), "law and morality re-visited: the politics of sadomasochistic porn/practice". studies in law, politics and society, 15: 147-166. lacombe, dany ( 1994). blue politics: pornography and the law in the age of feminism. toronto: university of toronto press. -( 1996). "reforming foucault: a critique of the social control thesis. british journal ofsociology, 47. (2): 332-352. ctmalley, pat ( 1992 ), "risk, power and crime prevention". economy and society, 21, (3): 252-273. persky, stan and john dixon (2001 ). on kiddie porn: sexual representation and the robin sharpe case. vancouver: new star books. roberts, julian (2000), "introduction" in, j. roberts (ed.). criminal justice in canada. toronto: harcourt brace: 3-21. ross, becki l. ( 1997), "'it's merely designed for sexual arousal': interrogating the indefensibility of lesbian smut" in, brenda cossman, shannon bell, lise gotell & becki ross, bad attitude/s on trial: feminism, pornography and the butler decision. toronto: university of toronto press: 40-72. ryder, bruce (1999). "undercover censorship: exploring the history of the regulation of publications in canada" in. peterson and hutchinson (eds. ). interpreting censorship in canada. toronto: university of toronto press: 129156. segal, lynne ( 1993 ). "does pornography cause violence? the search for evidence" in. gibson and gibson (eds.), dirty looks: women. pornography and power. london: british film institute publishing: 5-21. simon, jonathan (1987). "the emergence of a risk society: insurance. law, and the state". socialist review, 17: 61-89. ( 1988). "the ideological effects of actuarial practices". law and society review, 22. (4): 771-799. volume is, 2001 125 alternate routes smart, barry ( 1999). facing modernity: ambivalence, reflexivity and morality. london: sage publications. smart. carol ( 1989 ). feminism and the power ofthe law. london: routledge. snider, l.aureen ( 1994). "feminism, punishment and the potential of empowerment". canadian journal oflaw and society. 9, ( 1 ): 75-105. yalverde. mariana ( 1996). "social facticity and law: a social expert's eyewitness account of l aw" . social and legal studies, 5,(2): 20 1-217. ( 1999a). 'the harms of sex and the risks of breasts: obscenity and indecency in canadian law". social and legal studies, 8, (2): 181-197. 126 volume 18, 2002 chemins alternatifs articles tuning in to democracy: community radio, free speech and the democratic promise hilary goldstein the historical record is rife with demonstrations of abuses that arise when governments and leaders exploit information and communication channels. the excesses and horrors of the 20th century have revealed how press systems have been utilized to spread dangerous propaganda, instigate conflict, and promote the abuse of human rights. history has witnessed governments manipulating information to control the awareness of their citizens, imposing restrictions on diversity and choice, and effectively closing avenues for citizens to seek redress or air grievances. guarding against such offenses, at the very least, requires a democratic understanding of free speech and press, a dedicated civic journalistic body, and a public service oriented media system. it would logically follow that countries that endorse the value of democratic governance regard information and communication as essential human rights to be protected and upheld. given this understanding, what does it mean when in one of the most authoritarian and repressive regimes, a small independent press promoting democracy could—with difficulty—survive and flourish, and in the alleged democratic leader of the world, a major independent outlet promoting free speech, expression, and diversity was almost crushed? what does this say about the connections between democracy, free speech, and communication? analyzing the experiences of two media outlets within two contradicting social systems illuminates a definite break between the theories and ideals of democracy and the reality of their application in the real volume 20, 2004 59 alternate routes world. one story centers around pacifica foundation—america's first listener-supported, non-commercial radio network—devoted to exercising free speech and representing diverse and dissenting viewpoints. the foundation began as one station in california, formed in the late 1940s, to provide a contrast to the rising commercialism of mainstream radio and to promote pacifism. it grew into a network of stations that would become the model for alternative, community-based radio dedicated to democratic and participatory notions of media and communication. providing a relevant counterpoint is the story of b92, a serbian radio station (named for its frequency position) that has endured legal repression, state censorship, and outright attacks for trying to maintain an unbiased source of accurate news in an otherwise completely state-controlled media environment. in the midst of a repressive atmosphere, b92's radical, pro-free speech stance transformed the station into a symbol of the potential for a democratic society. although these two stations exist within completely different contexts and have encountered different obstacles, many of the underlying issues they both faced are identical. occupying this common ground is the realization that the relationship between citizens and governments continually proves to be the decisive factor in the existence and maintenance of a democratic culture. for democracy to survive, it must not be left to the devices of governments, but requires the vigilance of citizens to give rights their weight and substance. unfortunately, too much of history demonstrates that our rights to free speech and expression are only powerful when they are being fought for. in fact, a closer examination of practical examples of media systems and governmental functioning throughout the 20th century reveal how truly vulnerable and tenuous our hold on democracy is. the price ofspeech a wealth of scholarly research and critique has focused on how communication contributes to democracy both from the standpoint of individual access to free speech rights, and in terms of the role that journalism and media systems play in the public discourse. 1 the emphasis on journalism and media systems centers on the need for journalistic integrity to analyze and critique the decisions and policies of the government and other power elites within society and to provide a forum for communication 60 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs and discussion among a nation's citizens. "democracy," as robert mcchesney notes, "requires a media system that provides people with a wide range of opinion and analysis and debate on important issues, reflects the diversity of citizens and promotes public accountability of the powers-that-be and the powers-that-want-to-be" (mcchesney, 1998). essential components of a democratic media include journalistic integrity, the journalist as 'watchdog' 2 of the political and economic elite, and the necessity of an independent press not beholden to this elite group to dictate content (curran, 1996:84). spaces for community input in the making of media messages form another important—if often overlooked—aspect to democratic communication systems. patrick watson of the cbc, canada's public broadcasting system, notes, "people who equate democracy with the electoral process are missing about 90 per cent of what democracy is all about. it is really about empowering citizens. and that, in turn, is linked to finding ways to express ourselves and to see ourselves as part of a community"(policy options/options politiques, 1995:32). interestingly, these specific requirements are more often presented as utopian goals than practical realities, even in the most democratically organized countries. an equal, if not more significant, body of media research and critique has focused on investigating the constraints preventing media from fulfilling its role as promoter and supporter of democracy. there is no shortage of academics and critics that have observed and analyzed these obstacles, underscoring media's frequent use as a tool of social control; its connection and dependence on commercially-based funding; its configuration as a system that usually operates in a unidirectional format with little space for community input; and how it is often wielded as a tool to repress dissent and control social life (former, 1993:46-47). the most definitive examples of media's power are those that demonstrate what happens when media is used to serve the interests of those in power, in blatant disregard for the human rights and dignity of the population as a whole. media and power marc raboy's unesco report on public broadcasting noted, "in many parts of the world, the problem is still one of totalitarianism and the equation of the public interest with the particular interests of the nation state" (raboy, 1997:78). politically, media provides powerful interests a volume 20, 2004 61 alternate routes potent vehicle to impart controlled information and spread propaganda to shape public opinion. dissent is stifled, diversity is sacrificed to bolster conformity and national unity, and lies persist to control public perceptions. for example, no one would argue that the press systems within the state-communist structures of the ussr, eastern europe or china were or are open or free. 3 censorship and self-censorship have dominated the region's media. information has been tightly controlled; the leadership, not the population, dictating government policy. but, one cannot deny that these repressive purposes are not limited to authoritarian regimes (schramm, 1956:105-46). noam chomsky and edward herman argue "it is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent" (chomsky and herman, 1988:1). in this sense, the united states is just as guilty. propaganda plays a prominent role in the us where it is used to filter news and even report false information for strategic purposes, applied to marginalize dissent, and shaped to serve the needs and agendas of government and dominant private interests. media in the united states the trajectory of media development in the us, especially electronic media forms, has placed media control squarely in corporate hands. it's a configuration that traces back to the introduction of advertising revenue as the main source of media funding, resulting in the commercial-based media system that dominates the american broadcast industry today.4 advertising age, a media industry magazine, published the net advertising revenues (which generates the main source of income) of the top 100 media firms worldwide. the top five: time warner, comcast corp., viacom, walt disney co., and nbc universal (general electric co.) each showed 2003 revenues toping 50 billion (advertising age magazine, 2003). it is an ironic situation considering that, "the press as envisioned by its american founders—paine, franklin, jefferson—was the antithesis of the modern corporation. it was individualistic, rebellious, idiosyncratic, and ferociously opinionated. it was expected to poke, pester, and prod powerful institutions" (matic, 1999). instead, a media system run by corporations, dependent on consumption, tends to swing focus away from the issues and concerns that might work to counter the underpin62 volume 20. 2004 chemins alternatifs nings of such a system, such as media activists, political dissenters, lowincome and other marginalized populations. political candidates must purchase slots of expensive broadcast time to air their platforms to the american public (mcchesney, 2003:18). potential candidates, unable to secure the million-dollar price tag simply cannot compete. 5 and media corporations also wield substantial power over elected officials. for example, between 1993 and mid-2000, media corporations gave upwards of $75 million dollars in campaign contributions to politicians in both political parties, providing these companies with the leverage to push for policy decisions like profitable tax cuts and favorable media ownership rulings (center for public integrity, 2000). it is questionable how this media configuration can foster industry diversity, democratic participation, or an open debate over the issues. it is unclear how this system works to ensure that the needs and interests of these low-income and marginalized groups are included in the agenda. in a market-based environment, the crucial question becomes how and where first amendment freedoms protected. according to the first amendment of the us constitution, expression is supposed to be free and uncensored, but because broadcast frequencies were deemed a scarce resource, broadcasters would have to bear certain responsibilities inconsistent with first amendment provisions. through the communications act of 1934, congress created the federal radio commission, which later became the federal communication commission (fcc), to regulate frequencies. this would serve to prevent overcrowding of the limited space on the electronic spectrum and the intentional and unintentional jamming of other's use of the airwaves. the airwaves would belong to the people but would be leased to private companies for periods of time provided that local stations serve, "the public interest, convenience, and necessity" (mcchesney, 1993:245). the term 'public interest' has always remained undefined though, and the legislation that gave rise to this amorphous concept offered no accompanying guidelines to measure it (krattenmaker and powe, 1994:34).6 difficult to define, it is also difficult to enforce, leaving the system open to potential exploitation. recognizing the danger of complete corporate control of the airwaves prompted the government to create an alternative, non-commercial broadcasting system to serve the public interest over commercial and political agendas. volume 20, 2004 63 alternate routes enter the public broadcasting system: federally created to provide a forum for debate and controversy, to grant a voice to groups that are otherwise ignored or marginalized, and represent the true diversity of the american nation. a democratic purpose, indeed. but, critics argue that constant political interference, a highly centralized and conservative organizational structure, and an over-dependence on corporate financial support have only undermined this mission. in failing to create a stable and sustaining funding source for public broadcasting, programs are increasingly underwritten by corporate sponsors, contributing to the increasing commercialism of this purportedly non-commercial system. these sponsors are able to control content by threatening to withhold financial support if a station airs material that damages their public image. the fact that the president appoints cpb members solidifies unavoidable political influence (barsamian, 2001:10-24). and provisions for diversity and emphasis on chronically underrepresented groups like minorities and the poor do not exist in a substantial way, limiting the extent of community participation or coverage (tracey, 1997:119). without adequate funding or regulatory protections, public broadcasting has been increasingly limited in the range of programming it could provide and therefore its potential impact has never been realized. public broadcasting in a post-communist environment despite the limitations of the public broadcasting system, the us government has at least demonstrated some intent to provide democratic communication systems. when critiquing the pros and cons of public broadcasting, one must recognize, "in eastern europe, in most of africa, and in much of the rest of the 'transitional' world, public service broadcasting is a distant ideal, not a working reality" (raboy, 1997:78). the fall of the berlin wall and the toppling of dictatorships throughout europe ushered in profound changes and an open orientation towards democratic principles throughout the region. but for european countries transitioning from centralized structures to more socially pluralist constructions, democratizing the media has been a challenging process. as hard as it is for those in control to relinquish their share of power, it is equally difficult for a population, long denied rights and freedoms, to claim and exercise these rights or trust that they will be supported and upheld by a formerly repressive leadership. 64 volume 20. 2004 chemins alternatifs karol jakubowicz argues "in a demoralized, deeply suspicious and skeptical society, where there is no accepted definition of the public interest, no ideal of public service, no trust in public regulation of social life and in the institutions called upon to develop and enforce such regulation... the conditions for the emergence of public service broadcasting can hardly be said to exist" (jakubowicz, 1997:125). it's a chicken and egg argument: media is necessary to promote democracy but requires an already stable democratic society to operate successfully. jasminka udovicki asserts that in yugoslavia and serbia, although the country made initial efforts towards introducing some progressive press policies, the government still tried to maintain ideological control over political information. she argues that, nationalism, strongly promoted and manipulated by slobodon milosevic's regime, effectively blocked progressive social and political change and halted any real steps towards instituting more democratic laws and policies (udovicki, 1997:6). alternative broadcasting to introduce new social values, to carry through a progressive agenda of change, and break through the status quo, requires access to the news agenda. where in the former yugoslavia, the government's attempts to control political information and debate limited the potential for oppositional concepts to be introduced to the mass public. news broadcasts contained no position other than that of the government. whether struggling against government-controlled information or corporate dominance, both countries' media systems provided little room for people with alternative viewpoints to participate in the public dialogue, to influence the public agenda, and to realize their right to communicate. but beyond the mainstream channels, other alternate and communitybased media forms exist to break and bend these boundaries. clemencia rodriguez offers, "even if the information and communication channels are left untouched, even if the mainstream media structure is left unaltered, citizens' media are rupturing pre-established power structures, opening spaces that allow for new social identities and new cultural definitions, and, in a word, generating power on the side of the subordinate" (rodriguez, 2001:160). although corporate media news outlets and restrictive authoritarian governments may limit the range of perspectives and issues covered, citizens are not necessarily isolated from other potential sources of information and perceptions (darnofsky, 1995: 223volume 20, 2004 65 alternate routes 232). just because people live in a totalitarian regime, does not mean they are unaware of the forces of control around them. it does not mean that they are unable to create or contribute to alternative understandings of their social situation, even if such understandings are difficult to build and maintain. likewise, not all americans take "all the news that's fit to print" in the new york times as gospel, and often seek out other information and alternative ways of knowing and understanding. in peter lewis' study of alternative/community media, he found that most alternative media projects exist to promote the values of free speech and expression and work to actualize democratic media (lewis, 1984:1). the true character of democracy and democratic media in serbia did rise in large measure through the contribution of local, community, and alternative media outlets. 7 these media groups educated the citizens of an alternative societal structure, awakened them to new rights and liberties, and invited them to play a role in the shaping of their own government (kazmir, 2001:5-38). in serbia, radio b92 was one of the only broadcast outlets bold enough to criticize the government, constantly directing attention towards critics and dissenters who were otherwise ignored by the state-run news programs. against brutal force and incredible odds, b92 became a center of cultural and artistic experimentation and political awakening that was able—for a time—to grow almost as strong as the state media machine. by promoting free speech and the principles of democratic governance, b92 was instrumental in introducing these concepts to communities that had no access to information outside of the standard state channels. alternative media have also played an essential role in the united states, by helping to raise awareness of causes from civil rights, to free speech, to the acceptance of gay and lesbian life-styles. john downing, in his extensive research of american alternative media projects, found that alternative media promote community involvement in media making and expand the range of information and dialogue available. they tend to be more inclusive of voices and opinions of those usually not represented on the corporate channels and the issues that never seem to make the mainstream agendas (downing, 1984:1-54). for example, dissent against the vietnam war was initially construed as unpatriotic and not considered a thoughtful critique against government policy. the pacifica foundation was for many years, the only place where this dissent was addressed and voiced. pacifica's coverage provided the ground66 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs work for the anti-war movement to grow and eventually break through into more mainstream coverage. always solidly promoting free speech rights, pacifica stood up against government repression, and in doing so helped to discredit that repression. b92 and pacifica were able to offer an alternative to corporate or state-controlled information and contribute to democratic communication by providing a space for dissent and a critique of powerful societal forces, whether governmental or corporate. in doing so, they promoted one of the most important concepts inherent in understanding the value of democratic rights and freedoms. namely, it is vital to protect dissent because democracy is not necessarily about every person having the exact same opinion or vision. democracy involves the ability to listen and appreciate even the most unpopular viewpoints because they can open the dialogue to expand understanding and help to envision new possibilities. the serbian context: radio b92 serbia's main media sources were traditionally government run and operated. with information so heavily controlled and filtered through the eyes of the state, civic journalism projects had little space to grow, thrive, or reach a widespread audience. what is so remarkable about the story of radio b92 is how a small alternative outlet could rise to stand up and challenge such decisive controls and restraints, and not only survive, but succeed. a brief examination of the development of belgrade's radio b92 station provides a true testament to the persuasive strength of the democratic promise. yugoslavia 's transition b92's existence actually traces back to yugolsavia's distinct history and policy development under the guidance of josip broz tito during his 40year tenure in office. yugoslavia was a country structured into six federal republics: serbia, croatia, bosnia and herzegovina, macedonia, montenegro, and slovenia with two autonomous provinces, kosovo and vojvodina. within these republics, yugoslavia's extremely diverse population consisted of five main ethnic groups, three major religions, and four dominant languages that have tenuously co-existed throughout the volume 20, 2004 67 alternate routes country's existence (splichal, 1992:200). when he entered office, tito initially sought to align the country with the soviet bloc, to obtain economic and political support for his country. as part of this plan, tito organized the country as a bureaucratically centralized state under a communist philosophy. communism had broad appeal, was inclusive of all nationalities, and therefore served to quell the historic ethnic and religious rivalries that had caused past internal warfare and conflict over disputed territories (bennett, 1995:53). but when the economy languished, tito was more than willing to introduce some democratic reforms to appeal to the growing profusion of western aid aimed at stemming the spread of communism throughout europe. transferring some authority and economic power from the state to the various republics, tito began allowing room for the sanctioned rise of independent, self managed media groups and progressive media laws that elevated the concepts of free press and expression to the level of constitutional status (robinson, 1977:18, 41-43). but despite these democratic initiatives, "the government and political parties still tend[ed] to reproduce the old form of hegemony based on the new, but still exclusive political and nationalistic ideology" (splichal, 1992:200). the state interfered in the organization of broadcast media, from controlling who could obtain a broadcast license to trying to maintain influence over political news content. the center could not hold one federal economy gave way to eight separate but regionally centralized ones, but increasing decentralization only served to splinter both economic and political power. efforts to manage an economy from the center while ensuring flexibility to the changing demands of the market, proved futile. ideas of autonomy and self-determination among the republics began to take concrete shape, threatening the cohesion of the federation as a whole. nationalistic and ethnic pride surged, paving the way for the cultural clashes and warfare that would consume the territory for much of the 1990s. in the various republics, people began to identify themselves by ethnic category, as croats or serbs or slovenes, instead of yugoslavian (tepavac, 1997:72). the dramatic pulls between democratization and authoritarianism could not be sustained. as the berlin wall's fall toppled, and commu68 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs nist governments fell throughout eastern europe, the yugoslavian federation dissolved as the clash between calls for greater democratic governance and more consolidated nationalistic controls could not be resolved among the republics. capitalizing on the wave of nationalistic fervor, slobodan milosevic took control of serbia by promoting a strong rhetoric of serbian pride while taking aggressive control of political power and the most important media sources. the media had always been a political tool, but milosevic utilized its potential in true opportunistic fashion. clearly understanding the power of the visual medium, milosevic catalyzed support for his political campaign by promoting fear of other republics and systematically excluding domestic opposition from media coverage (gordy, 1999:71). it was into this environment that a group of students and media activists launched a bold experiment in democratic media. b92 was the first, and for many years, the only independent radio station in serbia. it began in belgrade in 1989 as a student-run, experimental station, granted an initial 15-day license through a connection with the local chapter of the youth communist league (collin, 2001:21). in the beginning it served as a cultural showcase of alternative popular culture and news to counter the bland mainstream music and controlled information that dominated the airwaves. it was a bastion of noisy rock and sub-cultural posturing, operating as a refuge for the different and unpopular within society; the world not seen on the state-run channels. envisioning its potential, editor-in-chief veran matic, sought to center its mission on the principles in the universal declaration of human rights, specifically those rights that spoke to freedom of expression, press and personal liberties; rights that were steadily being crushed in milosevic's regime. though not aligned to any particular party or platform, matic believed that if b92 was to serve as a genuine alternative it would have to be completely radical. the station began this track by giving voice to the growing urban resistance against milosevic. in december 1990, as milosevic was confirmed as the president of serbia in the first multi-party elections in the republics, he began to establish his regime by imposing strict hold over the society from educational institutions to the courts to the media system (bennett, 1995:121). students, angered over the almost complete exclusion of the opposition party in the state-controlled news, exploded in protest on march 9, 1991. demands for democratic media formed their rallying cry. while armed volume 20, 2004 69 alternate routes forces ruthlessly suppressed the protests, the state media pronounced demonstrators destructive and overtly violent. b92 was the only news outlet besides the independent television station studio b that covered the events. as a result, the government shut them both down. only allowed back on the air under the proviso that there would be no news coverage, b92 became increasingly creative, using music to replace words. songs like public enemy's "fight the power" and "white riot" by the clash purveyed the messages of protest and dissent to the listening audience (collin, 2001:28). within a day, b92 resumed operation, with a renewed strength and altered mission. aggressive alternative b92 defied government warning and threats of station closures to broadcast the 'real' news, and in doing so became the "center of a social movement: anti-war, anti-nationalism; pro-democracy, pro-human rights" (collin, 2001:56). when fighting broke out in bosnia in 1992 and the state-media ignored it, b92 told the stories and dragged the conflict into people's living rooms, at the constant threat of closure and attack by state police. after the dayton peace accords—signed in 1995 to end the fighting in bosnia—milosevic declared himself the purveyor of peace and savior of the serb nation. meanwhile he set about to disqualify the 'democratic' elections that gave a majority of votes to the party of his opposition (bennett, 1995:208). the democratic promise touted by the government was exposed as a facade prompting over 200,000 citizens to take to the streets to demand the validity of their votes. when the state-media downplayed the protests, b92 aired the voices and noise of the demonstrations. b92 began to openly promote ideals of economic reform and ethnic cooperation and kept lines open to the international community. one listener describing the time said, "we stopped traveling—we stopped living, actually—so the only contact we had with the outside world was through b92"(collin, 2001:104). as the regime clamped down hard on society, b92's impact began to spread beyond its fashionable urban liberal audience to become the source of information for all those opposed to milosevic. milosevic did not take such open signs of dissent lightly, and attacked b92 repeatedly, arresting and fining journalists, jamming radio signals, and shutting down the station. to counter the attacks, b92 again 70 volume 20, 2004 chemins altematifs devised creatively innovative tactics. though milosevic had set out to restrict internet access to the country, b92 set up an internet site and connection through the assistance of xs4all, a free speech web portal in amsterdam (pantic, 2001:203). though the internet had minimal impact in the country, it proved a crucial strategy to raise awareness in the international community. b92 soon became the focus of protests and demonstrations, not only with belgrade citizens demanding the return of their trusted media source, but from international media and human rights organizations as well. but b92 found a way to reach domestic and rural territories as well. when shut down, b92 rerouted their broadcasts through the web. the bbc would download the files and rebroadcast the programs, via radio, back into serbia. the growing international focus and pressure ultimately forced milosevic to allow b92 to return to the air. inspired to extend the reach of the broadcasts in a more sustained way, b92 combined efforts with seven other stations across serbia to expand the reach of programs and broadcasts across the entire territory. this collaboration became the association of independent electronic media (anem). re-transmitting programs through bbc world service, anem could cover 70% of the country, even connecting with stations in kosovo and montenegro, and "...inspired hopes that a coalition of independent broadcasters could seriously rival the previously unchallenged supremacy of the state media" (collin, 2001:143). the association created the opportunity for collaboration and program sharing between stations, gave broadcasters the ability to counter misinformation in other parts of the country, and reached a much wider constituency then their frequency limits would otherwise allow. 1999 saw an escalation in fighting in the territory from multiple ends. milosevic sent troops in to invade kosovo while the nato bombing campaign started its assault on the region, going so far as to violate international law and bomb serbia's state media tower. on the first day nato bombing strikes began, policemen attempted to silence b92's broadcasts. they went so far as to actually seize the b92 studio, taking over b92's frequency and station identification and installing a pro-government staff that mimicked b92's style to a tee. to the casual listener, nothing had changed in the format or tone of the programs, except for the fact that the station was suddenly broadcasting state propaganda instead of critiques of the system (collin, 2001:153). b92's staff finally volume 20, 2004 71 alternate routes got back on the air months later, broadcasting as b2-92, utilizing channel space borrowed from the independent tv station studio b (committee to protect journalists, 1999). the station quickly rose to third most popular news station in the city, garnering around 1.5 to 2 million listeners. anem was a vital component in expanding b92's audience share, and for the first time, independent media successfully and directly competed with state radio. the puppet b92 quickly slid down the ranks before dropping out completely (collin, 2001:182). but it was only in october of 2000, when milosevic abdicated his rule, that b92 could finally reclaim its original station and frequency (committee to protect journalists, 2000). a progressive solution milosevic left a failing economy, a war-torn landscape, and tens of thousands of displaced citizens in his wake. the struggle to build the foundation of a new society requires a strong media system, but serbia lacked the leadership necessary to monitor its progress. many media companies throughout the former yugoslavia were torn by contradictory impulses. they hoped to reorient their organizations and adapt their systems to market forces while developing a new regulatory broadcast legislation to undo the damage of the previous regime. the goal of this legislation was to transform radio-television serbia (rts), the state-run media, into a public service broadcaster and establish a broadcasting agency to regulate the communications industry. despite the initial enthusiasm over the project, the legislation garnered criticism from media organizations wanting more democratic provisions, and political groups wanting to maintain a more centralized media system. with much political haranguing, the finalized legislation did not pass until two years after the fall of milosevic (international federation of journalists, 2002). the language of the legislation shows a dedication to upholding some ideals of a public broadcasting system. in the new serbian broadcast law, community input is relatively limited but the emphasis on independent productions and the requirements that broadcasters serve the needs and interests of minority groups within society, demonstrates positive acknowledgment of the need for pluralistic programming (b92 online b92.net, 2002). the language of free speech permeates throughout the legislation, as does the recognition that the independence of public media outlets is necessary to guarantee of the overall development of 72 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs democracy and social harmony. the law goes on to prohibit censorship, call for principles of impartiality and fairness in political information and require that broadcasters give free and balanced time to candidates without discrimination. it also maintains non-discriminatory and transparent procedures for issuing broadcast licenses. in a clear departure from the american model, serbian broadcasters are required to pay a fee for the right to broadcast. this fee is justified by the understanding that broadcasters benefit from the use of the airwaves, and should therefore help to provide for their maintenance. as added incentive, broadcasters pay reduced fees if their programming provides a public service. public broadcasting is additionally sustained through a mandatory fee on owners of television and radio receivers. the public is required to pay for media, which is not necessarily in accordance with the goals of universal accessibility, but not too far from proposals that media funding be included into government tax laws as a public service. there are specific controls to prohibit media concentration including limits on the number of media outlets one person or company can own. where in the us a broadcaster can own up to 8 radio stations in a single market, in serbia the limit is one television and radio outlet per area, with percentage limits on control and market share of other media in the same area. hesitant victory despite its progressive language, the unfortunate fact is that implementation of the serbian broadcast law is behind schedule and not being followed with open disclosure of activities or full adherence to the new rules. in 2004, debates are still raging, especially over the appointment of the broadcast agency members, who will be responsible for ensuring the independence of the public broadcasting system (beta news agency, 2004). these delays and problems only serve to question how committed serbia is to rectifying the legacy of milosevic's media control. serbian authorities seem unwilling to break old practices having taken only modest departures from the former regime's policies of media control. in a joint statement by anem, media organizations throughout yugoslavia held that, "neither the political nor the social elite displays a sufficient grasp of the independent position of media and the importance of this position for the success of social reform and the pursuit of the public interest"(b92 online -b92.net, 2002). ultimately—though it presents volume 20, 2004 73 alternate routes well on paper— it will be a matter of time before we can consider with any validity, whether the serbian broadcast law is or will be able to contribute to a more democratic communications system and thereby support the establishment of a democratic government and a culture of rights. the american context: the pacifica foundation while the obstacles facing b92 were easily recognizable and overt, those plaguing pacifica were more puzzling and complex because they dealt with assumed a priori american rights—including access to certain freedoms and liberties—that are broadly assumed to exist without question. pacifica's story reveals the failures of the american public broadcasting system and the limits of the us's commercial media environment that have narrowed avenues for oppositional movements and alternative perspectives to seek representation and redress. though it formed before the advent of the pbs system, the pacifica foundation has always stood as the 'other' model of public broadcasting, an alternative more closely aligned with the spirit contained in pbs's founding documents. the nation's first listener-supported and only non-commercial radio network, the pacifica foundation, founded in 1949 in berkeley, california, was devoted to representing diverse and dissenting viewpoints. the original inspiration for the station was to create the antithesis of the free market model of communications increasingly dominating the airwaves. more specifically, pacifica operated under a philosophy of broadcast communication committed to first amendment freedoms, a quakerinspired pacifism and an effort to provide a true voice for the people (downing, 2001:325). pacifica's articles of incorporation contain the mission: "...to promote the full distribution of public information; to obtain access to sources of news not commonly brought together in the same medium; and to employ such varied sources in the public presentation of accurate, objective, comprehensive news of all matters affecting the community" (koch, 1968:1). the pacifica foundation actually began as one station, kpfa, taking its place on the newly emerging fm frequency. eventually pacifica would grow to a network, five stations strong, with 800,000 listeners, serving as the largest media outlet on the left, and setting the benchmark for public-service radio (dinges, 2003). pacifica's development as a community radio station was not an instantaneous inspiration, but actu74 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs ally a progressive ladder of experiments. though adhering to first amendment rights would always be the underlying theme, pacifica struggled both internally and externally to find its orientation. pacifica's founder lewis hill, felt the motivation for radio should be enlightenment and objective information without the influence of a profit or power motive. he applied this value system not only to content and programming but also to the structure of the organization. he created a radical internal structure by dismantling traditional formations of staff hierarchy, allowing those who did the broadcasting to make the policy decisions. pacifica's self-perpetuating board members were initially drawn from station workers (koch, 1968:1 1-12). though kpfa's programs developed with creativity and innovative style, internally there were major problems. funding would always remain the network's achilles heel. in arguably his most revolutionary move, hill rejected an ad-based funding stream as well as the prospect of government money in order to prevent the influence of the political and economic elite. but pacifica still required money to function. hill finally decided to follow gandhi's philosophy, which holds that public institutions should be voluntarily supported by those who benefit from the offered services. listener donations became a major income source. foundations like the ford foundation, which saw pacifica's potential to speak to issues and areas not addressed by other media, provided another significant funding stream (downing, 2001:328). initially, programming was intended to support the politics of pacifism through a town hall type format. in reality, the station served more as a culture of refuge, a safe haven to protect those with controversial ideas and the most unpopular views. despite the all-inclusive approach, relations among programmers were not always harmonious. there was always a crisis over personality or ideology or the direction and mission of the station. combined with the constant budgetary shortcomings and growing popularity of television that caused an initial downturn in the fm market, pacifica was a hotbed of pressure and emotion. plagued by these persistent problems as well as personal troubles, lewis hill committed suicide in 1957. ironically, his death came just before the fm market rebounded and kpfa was awarded the george foster peabody award for public service, radio's highest award. two years later two new stations were added to the pacifica network, kpfk in los angeles and wbai in new york, fulfilling hill's ambitious visions for the future volume 20, 2004 75 alternate routes expansion of the foundation into larger and more diverse communities (koch, 1968:14). first amendment radio in the 1960s, infused with the energy of berkeley's burgeoning student activism and the free speech movement (fsm), kpfa became a clearinghouse of grassroots activist voices promoting democracy and populism and scrutiny of the status quo. in 1962, wbai aired an interview with a whistle blowing fbi agent, the first broadcast attack and critique of the fbi and director herbert hoover. though the story became a major topic in the mainstream news, pacifica would bear the brunt of government retaliation. the senate internal security subcommittee (siss) immediately set out to investigate pacifica for possible communist affiliations. in broadcasting the subsequent hearings, pacifica played a major role in publicizing the real intent of siss and the house committee on un-american activities (huac) to a wider audience. it helped unmask mccarthy's crusade for what it was; an attempt to undermine and discredit liberals and radicals more than stem the "red tide" (koch, 1968:14). surviving these government attacks facilitated a shift in pacifica's direction. before his death, hill had felt that freedom and individual rights were the secondary mission of the foundation, and that peaceable communication among humans was of paramount importance. forced to fight for their constitutional rights, the board shifted this order, and in doing so, the pacifica foundation invented what was to become the basis of alternative radio-aka first amendment radio (lasar, 1999:165). the concerns with balanced programming were overshadowed by what was considered a growing need to supply what was lacking in commercial broadcasting. they wanted pacifica to present information that couldn't be found in other sources, most specifically the voices of dissent. this was not because they necessarily agreed with these voices, but because no one else would allow them a fair platform. this new mission would allow the stations to explore more aggressive critiques of social, economic, and political aspects of public life. pacifica opened the door to allow new categories of marginalized voices and burgeoning social movements an avenue of expression, including racial minorities, the gay and lesbian movement, and women's liberation movement, among others. it was a courageous and bold step. pacifica 76 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs would be among the first to air anti-vietnam war voices. chris koch from wbai became the first american to cover the war from hanoi. pacifica broadcast a live interview with che guevara before his assassination. pacifica claimed to be the only news organization willing to broadcast seymour hersh's story of the my lai massacre (lasar, 1999:220). competition in a changing context the 70s welcomed two more stations into the fold, kpft in houston, texas and wpfw in washington d.c. (wpfw was notable in that it was meant to establish a black voice in a majority black city). it also welcomed in a new debate about the mission of the network, its ultimate purpose. mike shuster, a pacifica reporter in this period noted, "pacifica was great in the early seventies, but when the war ended in 1975, and even before when the antiwar movement petered out, pacifica began to grope for what to do. that was when the splinter programming came in" (dinges, 2000:5). the numerous social movements in the 1970s made for an increasingly fragmented sphere of issues and influence. to keep in line with the times, the foundation's spokespersons shifted the mission once again, redefining pacifica as 'community radio,' where community was not confined to a local geography, but to a diverse array of interest groups, cultural constituencies, and political activists (lasar, 2003:68). pacifica's emphasis on diversity continued to provide an outlet for community groups and voices still marginalized in the mainstream. at the same time, the varied mix of programming tended to appeal to increasingly selective audiences, which actually worked to fragment its base of progressive listeners, rather then bind them together. this broad orientation led to worries that pacifica would just become a soap box stand for any person or position to air their grievances and travails, but not connected to a broader picture of social change or civic engagement. during this third phase, the structure of the communications system and industry was also undergoing major changes, both weakening pacifica's potential influence as well as reinforcing its importance in the world of community media. congress introduced the public broadcasting system and the national public radio (npr) service in the late 1970s, supported by federal funding. all at once, pacifica no longer held the franchise on public-service radio (lasar, 2003:64). npr created a volume 20, 2004 77 alternate routes nation-wide noncommercial programming style that appealed to a listening base confused by the increasingly patchwork nature of pacifica's community focus. facing competition from npr's more even and centralized programming, pacifica would eventually have to receive funding from cpb, though many within the foundation would balk at the concession (dinges, 2000:5-1 1). the entrance of cable and satellite systems in the 1980s and the exponential increase in channel choice also resulted in increasingly segmented audiences. the new abundance of choice led the government to question the viability of public broadcasting because the scarcity rationale no longer applied to the broadcast space (krattenmaker and powe, 1994:217-218). seeking to quantify impact, audience numbers began to prove the significance of public broadcasting. in the mid-80s, npr produced a report, the audience-building task force report, which called for public radio stations to build audiences by professionalizing formats (goodman, 2003). cpb began to gradually increase audience requirements for public radio stations to receive funding, resulting in the channeling of federal dollars towards the larger stations. smaller stations, most specifically those serving minority and rural communities, were increasingly swallowed up by the bigger players (dunaway, 2002:67). it would soon become almost impossible to create more listener-supposed radio stations in an urban region (lasar, 2003:64). audience share had never constituted a central concern at pacifica, but now it stood as the critical measure of pacifica's impact and relevance. the most immediate effect of pressures for audience and financial independence translated into the hardening of formats into proven money-makers to appeal to educated, suburban, and middle-class listeners with future donation potential (barsamian, 2001:27-35). in the face of declining government funding, many community broadcasters would resort to introducing more corporate underwriting and replacing niche programs with more mainstreamed fare, like npr news programs. the problem with npr is that it is an expensive resource that doesn't provide the representation or diversity one would expect from a non-commercial and alternative media source. the cost to air npr news programs runs upwards of $50,000 a year, a prohibitive expense for many low-budget community stations even despite high audience demand (goodman, 2000). fairness and accuracy in reporting (fair) conducted a report on urban public radio stations and npr programs and discovered trends 78 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs similar to corporate station formats. the fair study found that host and news anchors were primarily white (87%) and male (69%), and did not reflect the diversity of the metropolitan areas the stations serve (rendall and creeley, 2002). in contrast, pacifica offered news and public affairs programs and satellite distribution services at a much lower cost. a growing number of community and grassroots radio stations turned to pacifica as a more affordable alternative. in doing so, they bolstered the impact of pacifica programming by broadcasting its shows to a larger audience (dinges, 2000:10). pacifica remained a vibrant media source because it was one of the few major venues open to community-based broadcasting. but in this kind of environment with the shift in public radio programming priorities, there grew a scarcity of space to provide for the influx of alternative and minority, cultural and political groups wanting airspace, especially those with smaller overall constituencies. trying to appease all sides led to internal tensions and power struggles among pacifica' s programmers because no one wanted to lose time for their own broadcasts. to contain the mounting problem, pacifica tried to centralize its organizational structure. while many felt that this was a step back from an ideological commitment to a democratic configuration, it allowed the station to try some innovative experiments, including the creation of nation-wide programs. in the rush for audience share, the hope was that this new program venture would compete with npr and attract more listeners. one such program, democracy now!, a nationally-based, independent public affairs and news program, spearheaded by amy goodman, quickly became one of the most popular, respected, and recognized programs on the network (lasar, 2003:65). "the project resulted in the most dramatic increase in audience in pacifica radio history, expanding its potential audience to 25 million households" (democracy now—democracynow.org). at the same time, the new centralized orientation would ultimately set the stage for the most severe dilemmas to affect the station. the politics ofderegulation during this time, changes in the larger united states media environment applied another set of pressures onto pacifica and other community broadcasters. despite the government sponsoring the development of public radio, new legislative developments would relax requirements for commercial broadcasters to program in the "public interest." one major volume 20, 2004 79 alternate routes loss was the fairness doctrine; a fcc legislation that had stood as the cornerstone of public interest broadcasting. this legislation encapsulated a journalistic, ethical code of balanced and objective information to guide decision-making. in many ways, it stood, "as a symbol of what americans hope for (and many demand from) the broadcast industry: neutral, detached presentation of significant public issues," that would educate and enlighten the population without manipulating voter decisions or values (krattenmaker and powe, 1994:239). as with the public interest concept, the fairness doctrine was left open to broad interpretation and application, which had actually provided a powerful tool for organizations to obtain media access. for many years the legislation was employed by environmental and health groups, among others, to "ensure voters had the information they needed to make informed decisions at the ballot box" (krinsky, 1994). in 1987, congress and the senate had actually voted to make the doctrine law, which would legally require the fcc to make sure media groups were in compliance with the legislation. but in a 1987 court case, meredith corp. v. fcc, the courts declared that enforcement of the fairness doctrine was subject to the fcc's discretion. months later, the congressional vote was vetoed by president reagan, part of a long line of antiregulation actions during his presidency. these events ultimately gave the fcc the power to dissolve the doctrine, which it did later that same year (encyclopedia of television). the passage of the telecommunications act of 1996 (also known as the telecom act) solidified the trend to dismantle programming in the public interest while profoundly changing the shape of the media landscape. this landmark antitrust legislation, ironically, opened the doors for corporate broadcast outlets to rapidly consolidate their share of the media market under the impetus that competition provides the best incentive to offer the widest range of fare. in 1983, ben bagdikian, author of the media monopoly, wrote that american media production was dominated by fifty companies whose control extends across the board from television and film to newspapers, magazines and book publishing. while his prognosis was dim for the future of communication access, he was criticized for not having faith in the free market system to provide numerous alternatives. with every following edition though, the number shrank, bottoming out at a mere five companies dominating the mediascape by his latest edition, released in 2004 (bagdikian, 2000:viii). 80 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs despite the variety of media types and outlets available to citizens and consumers, this consolidated ownership only provides the illusion of choice, diversity, and competition. the most powerful rationale behind the removal of the fairness doctrine and the introduction of the telecom act was the addition of new media forms, namely cable in the 1980s and the internet in the 1990s, which brought an exponential explosion of new media outlets and venues to the scene. the argument held that the sheer amount of media channels now available allows citizens infinite access to a diversity of media and therefore government intervention in the market is no longer warranted. the scarcity rationale that inspired the legislation in the first place seemed to no longer apply. but many channels don't translate into more diversity. contrary to popular opinion, the internet is plagued with the same staggering consolidation by the same media conglomerates that control information offline. according to nielson/netratings—the self-professed global industry standard for internet audience analysis—over 90% of americans use the following search engines to maneuver through the internet; google, yahoo, msn, aol, which are owned, operated by, or maintain close partnerships with one or more of the top five media organizations (sullivan, 2004). according to hindeman and cukier's studies of internet usage patterns, "relying on links and search engines, most people are directed to a few very successful sites; the rest remain invisible to the majority of users"(hindman and cukier, 2004). though the internet does provide important access to information and innovative ways for activists to organize and communicate, the question is whether the internet can break through the dominance of the corporate mediated websites to alter way the majority of americans access news. the elimination of public interest requirements is the most fundamental problem in the current us media system. 'public interest' was important enough that it was listed over 100 times in the communications act of 1934. now these requirements hardly exist, resulting in a marked decrease in program standards. even some commercial broadcasters agree. according to barry diller, creator of fox broadcasting and former head of media giants including paramount and abc entertainment, "if we had said in this communications act of96 that we would actually impose real public service obligations on broadcasters and not tossed them out, much of this consolidation would have (still) volume 20, 2004 81 alternate routes happened, but it would have allowed other voices to come in. the public service quotient gave some sense of responsibility at least to remind broadcasters that the airwaves still belong to the public. there was some measure of balance involved" (movers, 2003). without even the semblance of required standards, public affairs programming is on the decline and information and news content is increasingly combined with entertainment that spotlights sensationalism over the ongoing issues that more materially affect the way people live. corporate dominance over media outlets has not only affected content but has lead to the increasing restriction of citizens' access to radio broadcast space. virtually every local radio market is dominated by only a handful of firms. the largest four firms in most small markets control 90 percent of market share or more. one company, clear channel, offers the most extreme case of consolidation. after the 1996 telecom act, the company's ownership of stations grew from 40 radio stations to 1,240. potential competitors don't even control a fourth of this number (toomey, 2003). interestingly, a new york times study found that in this same period, the listenership for community and public radio had been growing at a remarkable rate from less than 10 million in 1985 to almost 20 million in 1995 (dunaway, 2002:65). this study provides clear evidence; as consolidation and commercialism grows unbridled, people want an alternative. pacifica's national board claimed that in this rapidly changing media environment it was necessary to appeal to a broader audience and to become more profitable in order to better demonstrate pacifica's relevance. they wanted to get rid of the checkerboard programming and focus more on national programs that would air on affiliate stations and bolster pacific's overall audience share. the more traditional and longtime supporters of the network contended that this new strategy could only work at the expense of pacifica's mission, its programming mandate, and the integrity of the network. they claimed that it would only contribute to the increasing containment of the airwaves (dinges, 2000:6). despite their stated intentions, the board ultimately employed tactics that triggered a crisis, and almost destroyed the network in the process. 82 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs crisis on the dial the crisis began when the pacifica foundation board began to systematically remove democratic processes from the organizational structure, creating a more board-centralized power dynamic. the board dismantled the local advisory boards that had previously served as the major vehicle for community feedback and participation. they also withheld the minutes from board meetings, which violated pacifica' s policies, as well as the dictates of the 1934 communications act. on march 31 st , 1999, the foundation's executive director, fired kpfa's long-time general manager without notice or community consultation. this action was swift and shocking and prompted immediate protest. a number of coalitions all representing various constituencies formed to organize demonstrations and file various lawsuits against the foundation for breach of its mission. with names like save pacifica and committee for a democratic pacifica, outraged listeners projected the general sentiment of pacifica as a sinking ship. they contended "democracy is more than a word you put on a mass mailing to get someone to send you a cheque" (lasar, 1999:1). these board actions proved to be a stark contradiction to the pacifica's founding principles. dennis bernstein, a long time broadcaster for pacifica news network described the board's tactics as more closely resembling a corporate takeover. the board hired lawyers experienced in fighting unions, security firms specializing in 'hostile terminations' and a pr firm to handle public reception of the changes. bernstein asserted that the government also played a role in that these actions, "took place with the connivance of the government's corporation for public broadcasting, which worked closely with the top pacifica management and encouraged the move away from local oversight" (bernstein, 2000). the board countered the protest with claims that their aim was to bring more diversity to the network and to better allocate pacifica's already scare resources, a factor that they felt justified the rapid turnover of staff and program content. but this explanation seemed to contradict their actions including purging the stations of representatives of people of color, including the head of kpfa's third world department. when a memo detailing plans to sell kpfa or wbai was accidentally intercepted, it left no doubt in many minds that diversity was not the only motivation for the many changes. the memo insinuated that the pacifica volume 20, 2004 83 alternate routes board intended to sell either of the stations, worth upwards of $50 and $80 million respectively, at the time, in order to endow the foundation and to help deal with financial and budgetary shortcomings (dinges, 2000:3). though the board denied any serious consideration of the proposal, the leak led to a quick loss of credibility for the network. concerned with rising tensions within the station, the board hired armed security guards to patrol the offices and called in union busting firms to fragment the network of employees and volunteers at the various stations. they also maintained a gag rule to prevent staff from discussing the policy issues over the air. those staff unwilling to leave their audience in the dark found their programs shut off. over 1 00 staff at the smaller stations, kpfk, kpft, and wbfn were fired for violating the rule despite the fact that the issue was a major topic in large papers like the los angeles times and washington post (buffa, 2002). an on-air confrontation between armed guards and a talk show host, who openly defied the gag rule, broadcast the conflict to a wide audience and prompted a new round of listener protests. the board used the display to justify shutting down all broadcasting, boarding up the kpfa studios, and suspending the staff without pay. the lockout lasted three weeks until a mass demonstration of over 10,000 forced the board to relent (solomon, 2002). it was the largest mass demonstration in berkeley since the vietnam war, and one of the first major demonstrations demanding the preservation of a free speech media outlet. protest and demonstrations also grew within the pacifica network. stringers for pacifica news network, another pacifica banner public affairs program, began to boycott their own programs to protest the management-generated censorship. taking advantage of the growing internet revolution, they created free speech radio news, an alternative news webcast that would connect a network of community radio stations to fill the "urgent, unmet demand for a wider range of alternative media choices than those offered by an increasingly bureaucratized pacifica foundation" (solomon, 2002). other programs would follow suit. in december 2000, the pacifica board took another round of decisive action, this time against new york's station, wbai, in what was to become know as the christmas coup. three veteran staff received word that they were fired, without cause or previous notice, including juan gonzalez, co-host of democracy now', the most popular show on the pacifica network. feeling that 84 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs the environment at wbai was no longer safe, amy goodman moved the operations off site. though democracy now\ continued producing daily shows, pacifica no longer aired them, suspending the staff without pay (barsamian, 2001:77-78). the loss ofdemocracy now!, the staff purges, and listener protests proved to be the final straw, prompting affiliate community radio subscribers to break their connection and withhold subscription fees to the foundation. in april 2001, pacifica dissenters formed wbai in exile (wbix.orgj, a web-based version of many of wbai's most popular shows that had been removed from the airwaves (lasar, 1999:6). but ultimately, the intensive protest and lawsuits filed by listeners and advisory boards finally and successfully settled. in december of 2001, the board bucked under the pressure and national focus and resigned their positions. but, the initial triumph was quickly dampened when news surfaced that pacifica was on the brink of financial ruin (buffa, 2002). an audit revealed that the national board had been spending excessive amounts of money to clamp down on the network. auditors found huge sums spent on public relations firms, security patrols, and over $200,000 in unpaid banking fees, revealing multiple levels of fiscal mismanagement. the legal battles alone racked up fees totaling $1.4 million. by the conclusion of the crisis, the network's debt had racked up to a total of $5 million, networks with grassroots media were shaken, and the future of the pacifica foundation was uncertain (douglas, 2002). having won the most pressing battles though, listeners and staff forged ahead with a renewed vigor. a new interim governing body formed which included members of the old majority, members elected through local advisory boards, and five dissidents. this interim board immediately set to reinstate fired employees and institute new by-laws requiring listener elections of local advisory boards at all of the stations. they ordered all five stations to spend two hours per week with programs directly covering the governance and by-law changes (save pacifica savepacifica.net, 2002). after heated negotiations, mainly focusing on costs, democracy now! eventually came back to pacifica. the affiliate stations have also started to re-connect to the station, hopefully to begin rebuilding a more stable and widespread audience. these events have led many media activists in the united states to claim the victory at pacifica as a victory volume 20, 2004 85 alternate routes for a progressive media movement. but, as david adelson, chair of kpfk's local advisory board aptly noted, "if we just treat winning pacifica as the endpoint, it's a loss. reclaiming pacifica has got to be used as a driving wedge for the fight to win more democratic media" (buffa, 2002). the crisis has passed, but a closer inspection reveals that the root problems remain. the non-commercial broadcasting domain is full of thousands of radio programmers and community groups who urgently need more space for their visions and work. at the same time, there are thousands of commercial stations owned by just a handful of corporations. and these corporations actively work to keep community radio programs from draining their audience share and their access to potential consumers. this leaves the community stations in a race against one another, struggling to prove their relevance and to compete for a limited supply of funds. representation and diversity is sacrificed, as the stations increasingly seem to resemble one another by buying into the same national programs in the hopes of building stable audiences. although audience share is an important factor in determining relevance, this standard is not necessarily indicative of radio's potential reach. it is important to recognize that not all media must be large and overwhelming to provide an impact and that homogeneity does not provide appropriate space for dialogue and debate. today pacifica remains alone in a hostile and prohibitive media environment, still retaining the pressure of being one of the few wide-reaching venues for progressive and alternative voices, underserved communities, and fringe identities. lasar rightly offers that what occurred at pacifica cannot be dismissed as an internal squabble within the left. "the conditions that precipitate this conflict 20 years of systematic hacking away at the public sector have created a tense, overcrowded non-commercial domain that cannot be micro-managed without causing havoc" (lasar, 1999:7). unfortunately this broader connection has yet to be made by the majority of media activists, or even many programmers within the pacifica foundation itself. there is still the question of pacifica's ability to incorporate both the input of community voices and the need to restore and enhance the relevance of pacifica's overall programming. given the near close demise of the network, finding the answers is an urgent necessity, especially considering that pacifica has a potential audience share that almost matches 86 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs npr's. the issue is not whether the network should appeal to a wide core of listeners or continue to narrowcast programming towards a small core of supporters. the question is how to balance both agendas without losing sight of the greater need for democratic media. the medium and the message in july of 1999, radio b92 and anem sent a message of solidarity to radio kpfa in berkeley, and wbai in new york. it stated: the similarity of the media situation in our two nations, which differ in many things, demonstrates that the character of media repression is virtually the same under openly totalitarian dictatorships as it is under democratic systems which are increasingly influenced by conservative structures (free b92 and anem, 1999). despite the differences in their social and political environments the similarities between the pacifica foundation and radio b92 are remarkable. both are community radio stations dedicated to the principles of free speech and expression as essential human rights. both understand that the protection of these rights cannot be sustained or maintained by dependence on market forces that see audiences as consumers or politicians who seek to control information to achieve certain political ends. they both sought to expand the reach of an alternative base of communication, while building networks that would transcend their own geographic locations. in doing so, both contributed to movements to democratize communication within their respective countries. both also survived attacks from their respective governments who used legislative tools and legal means attempting to discredit their media organizations. both were shut out of their own studios and had powerful forces trying to dictate the scope of their programming. and when attacked, both attracted huge demonstrations of support from their own communities, revealing the effectiveness of their programming and demonstrating the desire for alternative voices in the media landscape. media and democracy even with these many similarities, the differences between the stations are still glaring. where b92 is the ultimate tale of the underdog rising volume 20, 2004 87 alternate routes against an uncompromising obstacle, pacifica's story raises puzzling questions about the extent of free speech within an already democratic society. but it is precisely because the b92 case study stands as such an extraordinary counterpoint to the pacifica story, that it is ultimately able to provide significant insight towards understanding the greater environment of the united states' media infrastructure. initially, pre-milosevic leaders introduced certain progressive policies to serbia. they instituted a self-managed media system to facilitate the country's proposed shift towards a more socialist-democratic orientation. but in yugoslavia, in the wake of a political culture that worked to centralize control of information, this transition would have to be more than a process of changing laws. a democratic society is not established only through the adoption of certain values, but also depends on how these ideals intersect with a country's historical and cultural traditions. for a citizenry long denied the ability to speak their own views, critique the workings of their government, or live outside certain prescribed codes of accepted conduct, true democratic transformation requires a complex shift in social understanding. one must first develop openness to a wide range of political thought, and cultivate some measure of trust in the process of democratic governance. in controlling the extent of political communication, the yugoslavian and serbian governments effectively denied political debate, and in suppressing a pluralism of ideas they reduced the legitimacy of the democratic model. for milosevic to have claimed the existence of some kind of democratic structure is laughable. the events that occurred in serbia counter every facet of democratic communication, and in doing so highlights all the more forcibly, the importance of having independent voices. but the inevitable question remains: how could so many of these repressive constraints also occur within the pacifica foundation, in a country where democracy is assumed to be more than words on a document encased in glass? why would it be so difficult to sustain a community-based media outlet in a country where free speech is protected, promoted, and celebrated? the ultimate crisis that threatened pacifica's survival can be dismissed as an internally based problem; a division between the ideological commitments of the staff and the management of an organization. but this explanation misses a very large portion of the equation. a glimpse of the surrounding economic, political, and 88 volume 20, 2004 chemins altematifs social spheres emphasizes the corporate media environment and the dissolution of broadcast regulations as having a direct impact on pacifica's trajectory. over the last twenty years, the u. s. government aggressively limited citizens' access to the airwaves. as lasar argued, "the systematic assault on public and locally accessible noncommercial media in the united states has left pacifica isolated. the network shoulders the burden of being too many things to too many people, within the context of too little space."(lasar 2003:66-67). but instead of directing efforts to address government media policy and to invigorate and strengthen an alternative, noncommercial, broadcasting sector, "the network's leadership had clearly chosen to capitalize on its possession of the last big signal, noncommercial, independent airspace in america" (lasar, 1999:2). the result has been a tense, heated, and overcrowded media system, where any attempts to shift programming could be construed as an ideological attack. in some ways this situation mirrors the ethnic squabbles that erupted in serbia. during tito's reign, ethnic groups lived together peaceably, side by side. when filled with fear, prompted by factors such as an aggressive use of propaganda and societal cohesion manipulated by the political leadership, harmonious ties were broken. it is in this context that the internal conflicts should also be addressed. pacifica's struggle illustrates the problems that will always exist in trying to find common ground and harmony among people with conflicting ideological commitments. what pacifica should have done, was focus attention on problems in the overarching media environment; the containment of the airwaves, the endless pursuit and competition for an ever-larger audience. instead, the leadership internalized the struggle and thus made no strides towards a larger project of media democratization. in the process, pacifica lost sight of the mission that made the network of stations such an important and unique part of the media landscape. rule by the people if one important difference can be highlighted between these two case studies, it is the fact that in serbia, the people knew, and have always known that their government controls information. milosevic's reign is less a story of a man publicly supported and advocated by the people, and more a public situation of habit and/or apathy. "deprived of alternavolume 20, 2004 89 alternate routes tives, people opposed to the regime are condemned to political resignation and escape into private life, while the lack of enthusiasm of regime supporters hardly matters"(gordy, 1999:22). though democratization was the rallying cry of post-communist development throughout eastern europe, it seemed less important to the majority of serbians. for example it was hard to convince the population of the value and power of a citizen electorate. for most serbians, voting did not mean choosing leadership or affecting government decisions, considering the futility of past election attempts. true societal transformation would require more than the seemingly superficial symbols of democratic governance. an important factor in the relationship between democracy and free speech is the desire and willingness of citizens to play their role in society and not acquiesce to the interests of powerful forces. in the culture ofpower in serbia, eric gordy found that, "those people inclined to be satisfied with the information readily available to them from regimecontrolled sources do not have the motivation to seek other sources or to be bothered by questions of objectivity or balance. such effort likely interferes with the comfort they achieve by trusting, or pretending to trust, that they are already adequately informed" (gordy, 1999:97). this was especially true for older, rural, and less educated serbians who formed the majority of support for milosevic's regime. it is not strange that under these circumstances that the force behind radio b92 and other alternative outlets was a discontent but educated youth, not as willing to live under the same restrictions as their parents (collin, 2001: 200). for those seeking for better information, who wanted to debate the issues to search for options, independent alternative media provided a sense of connection to a much larger community. the regime was most successful at establishing its control in the rural areas, precisely because there it was easier to suppress alternative sources of information and prevent people from gaining an understanding of realities external to serbia. but such intense government control only last so long. faced with severe economic hardship, the visible effects of the war and the eventual bombing of their cities, dissent grew among the serbian population. the more that milosevic's democratic promises fell flat, people who had once discounted b92 now turned to it as their trusted source of information. and anem's efforts broadcast b92 to a larger constituency was an influential factor in spreading alter90 volume 20. 2004 chemins alternatifs native information to areas previously only served by regime media (gordy, 1999:206). in the united states, although the media system has been steadily reduced to a shadow of a democratic one, most americans would believe their media is free and that their first amendment freedoms are strong and protected. it may be easy to say the american public is naive, but such a simplistic answer ignores a complex set of contributing factors, for instance, the weakening of journalistic integrity in us media. news and public affairs programming has declined only to be replaced by an influx of sensationalistic news and entertainment-based fare. the absence of public interest requirements has left little space or incentive for diverse programming. news stations are increasingly reliant on government sources for news with reporting taking place more in press pools or with 'embedded journalists' than in actual on the spot reporting (darnofsky, 1995:228). the civic project ofjournalism is losing ground. powerful forces-both political and economic-are increasingly controlling information, as strongly as any propaganda issued out of serbia. it is perhaps ironic, that considering the history of the media structure within yugoslavia, and serbia in particular, that the current broadcasting legislation adopted post-milosevic, contains more safeguards and protections of free speech, expression, and diversity than the american system, at least rhetorically. in addition to the shortcomings of the media industry are the systematic ways that civic engagement in politics and participation in public dialogue have become relegated to the sidelines. avenues for citizen input have eroded, and people tend to feel resigned to the culture at hand, comfortable enough in america's high standard of living to not readily oppose fundamental flaws in the way society has come to be run. dismal voting rates within the united states speak to a high degree of citizen apathy. people are consumed with the burdens and struggles of daily life, which can seem far removed from the larger ideological principles of media consolidation. robert hackett finds, "given marketing and cultural pressures towards social fragmentation, many consumers want fewer voices and less complexity in their daily media fare, not more. many consumers also identify with the branded images, products, programs, and celebrities that constitute the corporate mediascape" (hackett, 2001). given the popularity of mainstream media and the amount of channels and choices that now exist, it becomes difficult to volume 20, 2004 91 alternate routes convince someone to question the familiarity and viability of nbc or cnn. but studies show that as citizens become more aware of these issues they overwhelmingly tend to disagree with media consolidation and view it in a negative light. the telecom act and the more recent 2003 fcc regulation reviews occurred with few if any kind of public forums or debates of the issues, with little word from congress, and understandably even less coverage in the news media. in february 2003, the project for excellence in journalism found that 72% of americans had heard absolutely nothing about the fcc's plans to further deregulate already controversial media ownership rules (schmeizer, 2003). but by july of 2003, a pew research center for people and the press report found that nearly half the american public knew about the issue, and of that number, a marked 70% had a negative opinion of the proposed changes (pew research center, 2003). this increase in public awareness can be attributed to the education efforts of a variety of organizations. now back on the pacifica airwaves, amy goodman, has been consistently providing strong political commentary on the dangers of consolidation in her democracy now! program. organizations like moveon.org, a community of activists who work to energize democratic participation by collectively determining their issue priorities, have placed media reform at the top of their agenda. to many people's surprise, even historically conservative groups like the national rifle association (nra), have become media activists. both moveon and the nra collected hundreds of thousands of signatures on petitions demanding that the fcc keep the ownership rules intact. another public-interest group, common cause, launched a $250,000 advertising campaign against the fcc's proposed changes, placing ads in the new york times and washington post to raise public awareness (ahrens, 2003, a01). these efforts helped contribute to the unprecedented congressional rejection of the proposed changes, which was followed by rejections in the senate and a us appeals court in june of 2004 (squeo and flint, 2004, a3). but the fight is not yet over as the fcc is working to redraft a new version of the legislation and will continue pushing for their proposed changes. these examples illustrate that the commitment to the principles of free speech does in fact exist. but it is important to realize that it is mainly during strained and oppressive times that rights and freedoms 92 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs take on their greatest significance. robert hackett aptly notes "demands for participatory communication are historically more frequent in times of revolutionary upheaval when people's stories, actions, and protests are prominent in public communication" (hackett, 2001). it is therefore not surprising that both pacifica and b92 could design their most robust ideological commitments in the face of repressive forces. likewise the recent surge of interest in media reform is closely connected to the local and global turmoil since the attack of september 1 1, 2001, the ongoing war the us has waged against iraq, and the dampening of domestic civil rights under the guise of security concerns. in the wake of september 11 th , we witnessed broadcast and cable news audiences jump to record highs not seen since the first gulf war (kovach, 2002). we saw audiences reach out for pacifica, npr, and other public radio outlets in search of accurate and reliable information. during this crisis, and in response to tangible threats from both terrorists and the state, the need for journalists to resume their role as purveyors of news and the public interest became stronger than it had been in decades. but we also witnessed the government openly telling journalists not to ask certain questions, not to challenge government policy, and to follow the government's lead in deciding when and where to broadcast certain information. we saw the patriot act pass through congressional review with little debate, even though the legislation blatantly attacks basic civil rights. we have seen incredible censorship aimed mainly against people critiquing the government's reaction to the campaign against afghanistan, and later iraq. in this charged climate, dissent and critique have been punished rather than protected, precisely at a time when we need to truly question the motives and judgments of our leaders. in this repressive environment, pacifica and other alternative media organizations have stepped up to the challenge of maintaining a space for dissent, allowing the disagreements, debates, and the claims of the anti-war movement to break though to the mainstream in a more substantial way. these media groups have analyzed the actions of our leadership and asked the critical questions while the mainstream media acquiesced to the government line. and as the war progressed without an end in sight and the death toll of iraqi civilians and us soldiers climbed, these media groups helped to give voice to the dissent and disapproval that was increasingly expanding beyond traditional activist circles. they volume 20, 2004 93 alternate routes helped fuel the growing discontent with the mainstream media coverage of the issues. lessons learned that alternative media exist to provide this service is an essential factor and warrants preserving independent voices in the media landscape. an important lesson from pacifica's history though, is that efforts to preserve space for these independent media outlets cannot remain too narrow in focus or we risk losing the momentum that could bring a larger media reform struggle to the next level. in the case of kpfa, though protestors came out to support the station, in numbers not amassed since the demonstrations against the vietnam war, the root of the problem was not being addressed. listeners spent endless effort and energy to protect a somewhat fringe alternative media outlet, while corporate consolidation continued its profound altering of the media landscape. today, the growing attention and frustration over the shortcomings of the media industry could set the perfect stage upon which to really build a large-scale media reform movement in the us. the recent triumph in the battle against the fcc, and the variety of organizations stepping into the fight are important components. they are joining long-running media watchdog organizations like fair and the institute for public accuracy, and advocacy groups like the center for digital democracy and the media alliance project, to name a few, who have been out at the forefront of media activism. but the real obstacle to building this movement is that there is not enough substantial coordination and collaboration between these groups to make media reform a national agenda priority. these groups need to abandon diverse agendas and competition over funding and join together in the struggle for a common goal that can reach american citizens everywhere. and the way to do that is to present the issue in a way that everyday people can understand and relate to it. robert mcchesney and john nichols believe a real movement can only form if media activists, "reach out to and involve organized groups that currently are not very active in media reform, but are seriously hampered by the current media system... organized labor, teachers, librarians, civil libertarians, artists, religious dominations, and civil rights groups" (mcchesney and nichols, 2002:2). the movement needs to connect with people to the extent that they can understand how media reform affects their daily lives, on par with other civil rights and free94 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs doms such as voting. at least for the time being, there is ample upheaval in america's political system to direct people's attention towards these important issues. whether a movement will be able to grow and sustain itself beyond the country's current state of instability, remains to be seen. the challenge is for a media reform movement to translate that growing awareness and discontent into positive momentum for change. if we really want to talk about the relationship between free speech and democracy, perhaps apathy is the biggest threat; a significant component being the failure of citizens to truly understand and appreciate the underlying principles of free speech as essential human rights. if media outlets are to promote democratic communication, it cannot be only in times of turmoil. it is in the quiet moments, when people are less apt to pay attention and question the workings of powerful groups, that these rights must also be fought for. the cases of b92 and pacifica provide important lessons for ensuring a strong press able to preserve and support the public interest. b92 reveals that the government cannot be too involved with the media industry, especially in terms of guiding and influencing political content. the potentials for abuse are many. as in serbia, if journalists are prevented from carrying out their watchdog duties, they are rendered incapable of contributing to the formation or legitimacy of a democratic culture. broadcasters cannot serve the public interest if they are utterly dependent on the government to guide their path and provide the parameters for what is suitable for discussion. american news media, on the other hand, are clearly dominated more by what sells than what is in the interest of the public. too much substance is sacrificed to appeal to corporate interests, and then citizens are rendered unable to make truly informed decisions. the need for public interest programming is vital enough to require that the government not step too far away from regulating and controlling media. but the most fundamental lesson from both cases is that democratic media requires decisive controls that cannot be left to the devices of political and economic elites to protect its functioning in moments of political quiet. in order to guarantee a powerful and functioning democratic media system it is vital to reinvigorate the concepts of public interest and public service by bringing back useful measurements like those found in the fairness doctrine. it is necessary to create concrete policy to guard against media monopolization while creating higher standards for public accountability of media organizations. attention must be focused on balvolume 20, 2004 95 alternate routes ancing the financial sustainability of non-commercial media enterprises with the need to maintain a level of diversity and competition in a market environment. media organizations need to operate according to practices that are fair, non-discriminatory, transparent, and open to public input and consultation. and democratic media requires a critical journalistic body to examine, analyze, and question the policies of the government, to guard against the dangerous effects of rumor, gossip, and propaganda, and to not sacrifice this duty for fear of being labeled unpatriotic. at the same time, it is too easy to lay the burden of responsibility on mass media for the democratic well being of a nation's citizens. ultimately it was through the sustained protest of pacifica's listeners — through the people themselves standing up and demanding rights and responsibilities—that a true representation of dissent could be demonstrated and lead to change. an essential component of democracy is an active citizenship. this requires that people be continually reminded of what the principles of free speech really entail, not the expression of coinciding opinions, but the protection of even the most minority viewpoint. citizens need to understand that critique and debate enhance our understanding of issues rather than hinder or manipulate public opinion. we must maintain the right to petition our own government when we disagree with its policies. we must re-exert our position and power as citizens, because democracy is ultimately rule by the people for the people. we must acknowledge that pacifica and b92 and other alternative and noncommercial stations are vital to maintaining a space for dissent, a place for community input, and a forum for dialogue. but we must also recognize that the battles for these stations are only the first steps. the task of building a viable reform movement still lies ahead. if these stories teach us anything it is that this movement is critical to ensure the continued presence of democracy and to sustain people's access to their share of rights and privileges. notes l.mcquail, (1987), chomsky and hermann (1988), mcchesney (1993, 1998, 2003), atkinson (1997), curran and gureritch (1996) are a few notable scholars in the field of media studies. 96 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternates 2. james curran's "watchdog" function of media forms the "key element of the ideology that legitimates the printed press" in both the us and the u.k. by exposing wrongs, analyzing actions, and questioning policies, journalists apply pressure and provide information to ensure the exercise ofjustice and to prevent the misuse and imbalance of power whether political or economic (curran,1996). 3. according to wilbur schramm's communist press theory, communist mass media functions specifically to mobilize, proselytize, indoctrinate, and persuade the public toward the purposes of the government (schramm, 1956). 4. robert mcchesney notes, "it was only in the late 1920s that capitalists began to sense that through network operation and commercial advertising, radio broadcasting could generate substantial profits"(mcchesney, 1997). 5. mcchesney found that an astounding 90% of campaign contributions toward elections are made by the wealthiest 1% of americans (mcchesney, 2003). 6. in a famous speech, fcc commisioner michael powell noted his own confusion with the concept when he "waited for a visit from the angel of the public interest" which never appeared. he likened the concept to modern art in that its meaning rests on the eye of the beholder, which he claimed was not a sound foundation for determining a legal standard (powell, 1998). 7. in velimir curgus kazimir's documentation of the citizen resistance in serbia, he notes that media forms promoting democratic concepts of rights and information equality would lay the groundwork for introducing a new reality. 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(3/28/03) robinson, gertrude. 1977. tito's maverick media: the politics of mass communication in yugoslavia. chicago: university of illinois press. rodriguez, clemencia. 2001. fissures in the mediascape: an international study of citizens ' media. new jersey: hampton press inc. ryan, charlotte. 1991. prime time activism: media strategies for grassroots organizing. boston: south end press. schmeizer, paul. 2003. "the death of local news" alternet.org. www.alternet.org/story.html?storyid= 15718 (4/28/03) schramm, wilbur. 1956. "the soviet communist theory of the press" in eds. fred siebcrt, schramm, et al. four theories of the press: the authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility, and soviet communist concepts of what the press should be and do. urbana: university of illinois press. serbian parliament, law. 2002. "serbian broadcast law." passed 18 july 2002. signed by serbian president milutinovic. www.b92.net/doc/download/ b_law.doc. 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"summary of findings: strong opposition to media cross-ownership emerges." survey reports. pew research centerfor the people and the press. http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?reportid=l 88. washington dc. (9/8/04). tepavac, mirko. 1997. "tito: 1945-1980." burn this house: the making and unmaking of yugoslavia. udovicki, jasminka and james ridgeway, editors. durham: duke university press. "the future of the cbc. an interview with patrick watson." 1994. policy options/options politiques. vol. 15, no. 1. canada. toomey, jenny. 2003. "empire of the air." the nation. january, 2003. new york. tracey, michael. 1997. "united states: pbs and the limitations of a mainstream alternative" public service broadcasting: the challenges of the twenty-first century unesco reports and papers on mass communications, no. 111. atkinson, dave and marc raboy, editors. paris, unesco publishing. udovicki, jasminka. 1997. "introduction" burn this house: the making and unmaking of yugoslavia. udovicki, jasminka and james ridgeway, editors. durham: duke university press. united nations. 1950. universal declaration of human rights. new york: united nations. volume 20, 2004 105 alternate routes "yugoslavia 2000: country report europe and central asia 2000." 2000. committee to protect journalists, www.cpj.org. 2000. www.cpj.org/attacks00/ europeoo/yugoslavia.html. (2/6/03) zivkovic, branislav. 1997. "sebian law on teleommunication & b92's commentary."592.we/.http://mmc.et.tudelft.nl/~sii/b92net/b92/daily/specialreports/ mediawatch/law/n.../newlawl.html. (3/1 1/03) i06 volume 20, 2004 gendered emissions | 55 gendered emissions: counting greenhouse gas emissions by gender and why it matters marjorie griffin cohen1 abstract: in recent years, as a result of women’s concerted efforts, more attention has been paid to gendered distinctions related to climate change. most of this literature focuses on the implications for women and their work in developing nations. in contrast, the gendered discussion that is focused on developed countries tends to be more concentrated on the distinctions in attitudes toward climate change and the implications this has for public policy initiatives. while this is an important step toward understanding the gendered distinctions at the household level, still relatively unexplored are the implications of the gendered distinctions in contributions toward greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions. this paper will focus on gendered distinctions relating to climate change for both paid and unpaid labour, as well as consumption issues in developed nations. specifically it attempts to measure the greenhouse gas emissions by gender through work and the aspects of consumption that can be separated by gender. it then attempts to understand the significance of this in relation to both climate justice issues and public policy strategies to mitigate climate change. the paper will argue that knowing the gendered distinctions in ghg emissions can be informative for creating ideas about green jobs and a green economy that could provide a radical way to think about public policy and climate change. 1 marjorie griffin cohen is an economist and professor of political science and gender, sexuality and women’s studies at simon fraser university. her research focuses on energy, labour, political economy, and gender issues. she has been on the board of directors of bc hydro, bc power exchange, and newgrade energy in saskatchewan. she was one of the founders of the canadian centre for policy alternatives – bc and is currently on its board. this study is part of the work in a warming world project (w3). the author appreciates the financial support received for this project through a social sciences and humanities research council community-university research alliance (sshrc-cura) research grant. w3 is a five-year research project to address the challenge of climate change for canadian employment and work with carla lipsig-mumme at york university as the principal investigator. an earlier version of this paper appeared on the w3 website. the author would also like to thank the following for their research assistance on this project: heather whiteside, matt pelling, and greg o’brien. 56 | climate change and its discontents introduction both climate disasters and incremental climate changes have an enormous impact on the way people live and work and these physical changes are not confined to the most marginal areas of the world’s surface, but impinge upon the developed world as well. it is also fairly clear that public policy to deal with climate change in too many places is woefully inadequate to deal with the magnitude of the problem (victor, 2011).2 public policy to deal with climate change has gendered implications both for its effectiveness in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and for what it means for different aspects of work, play and consumption. feminists have not ignored the gendered effects of climate change but, unsurprisingly, gender issues have a fairly low profile in policy discussions. at the international level there is discussion of procedural justice, as more recognition is given to the need for a variety of interests to be part of the discussion and decision making process (ipcc, 2007; agarwal, b., 2001). but any formal way to facilitate procedural justice has been absent from most concrete policy making (klinsky and dowlatabadi, 2009; dankelman, 2002). even popular sector movements that recognize the need for inclusivity in the discussion of alternatives tend to ignore women and the distinctions by gender (riddell, 2011; stahl, rees and byers, 2011). this void is explained by some as a result of several things: one relates to the need to focus on “universal” issues, given limited resources, and the other stresses the prominence of technology and science solutions in policy discussions, as opposed to the ‘soft’ policies that look at social differences, particularly as they relate to incomes and opportunities (lambrou and piana, 2006). these are the kinds of factors that frequently inhibit a gender analysis of any social issues, but climate change has a specific disadvantage that contributes to the gender blindness that occurs in research and policy, particularly in developed nations. this is the lack of visibility of gendered environmental differences or injustices and a lack of imagination about how a gender analysis could be applied in research. gender issues are more visible in developing countries or among aboriginal societies and the literature about the effects of climate change and gender related to these areas constitutes the bulk of the information available on gender and 2 canada reduced its ghg emissions between 2007 and 2010, but much of this can be attributed to the decreased production associated with the economic recession, although the shift away from using coal from electricity production in some provinces also contributed to the improvement. but, the long-term trajectory shows the pattern of reduction is not expected to continue to decline (environment canada, 2011; 2013). gendered emissions | 57 climate change.3 because of the less developed nature of the economies, and the close proximity women have to agriculture and the resource sectors, climate change’s effect on women’s work in these countries is visible and dramatic (brownhill, 2007; agarwal, 2001; beaumier and ford, 2010; nelson and stathers, 2009). the issue of invisibility of gender issues for such a long time in the climate-justice literature and action in developed countries is also explained by some as a result of the dominance of males in the environmental movement’s senior posts and the general gender blindness of the movement (buckingham and kulcar, 2009, p. 673). the actions of the state on environmental issues are conditioned by the ways it is contested by activist organizations and the kinds of issues they highlight. the fact that these organizations usually are male dominant means that gendered issues are not explored in either identifying environmental justice issues, or in seeking policy solutions. as most groups dealing with inequality know, identifying the distinctions of experience itself is crucial for being included in policy discussions. but when the differential experiences are less visible through being diffuse as a community or income group, unpacking the implications is not straightforward. while academics are increasingly interested in environmental injustices, particularly as they relate to public policy, they tend to focus on inequalities in income and/or race and neglect gender (buckingham and kulcur, 2009). the most common understanding of environmental justice as it applies to individuals is exemplified in the definition used by the us environmental protection agency: “environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” (http://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/). for the most part gender (and age and disability) issues have been subsumed under class or income issues with the assumption that women’s issues will be covered under the treatment of low-income and poverty groups. many of the methods that have been used to talk about gender and climate change tend to conflate the material related to developing nations with conditions associated with developed nations. while some studies are careful with regard to how examples are being used in specific references, there is an assumption (based primarily on experiences in developing regions) that in general, women are more vulnerable to climate change than men, have fewer resources to deal with it, and have 3 for a bibliography related to gender and climate change see whiteside and cohen, 2012. http://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/ 58 | climate change and its discontents greater work burdens as a result (haight and valley, 2010; johnssonlatham, 2007, bjonberg and hansson, 2013). the primary method that is used to span the national divides is the assumption that since everywhere women on average are poorer than men in general, they will, as a result, be disproportionately disadvantaged by climate change. while it is true that women in developed nations have lower incomes on average than men, gender distinctions are not confined to income distribution alone, but also relate to the entire gendered experiences of our societies. one particular gap in knowledge pertains the relationship between climate change and gender in developed nations. the intention in this study is to try to understand how men and women contribute to climate change through both work and consumption. the first part of the paper will specifically examine the gendered nature of paid work-related contributions to climate change by quantifying emissions associated with major ghg emitters in canada. it will also discuss the gendered nature of consumption as it relates to work with a particular focus on the problems of unpacking gendered work/consumption within the household. one area of work/consumption that is easily quantifiable by gender is consumption related to vehicle transportation, one of the major sources of ghg emissions in canada. the findings will then be analyzed in light of two categories of understandings of their significance. one will be how the gendered distinctions in ghg emissions through work and consumption can be understood in relation to climate justice. the other will be an exploration of the significance of gender in expanding our ideas about both green jobs and a green economy. effects of work on climate change almost nothing has been written about the impact of work in developed nations on climate change with distinctions made by the gendered nature of paid work. most of the interest in work has been on creating “green jobs,” as a positive way of ensuring that government programs to reduce ghg emissions do not result in actions that increase unemployment rates.4 the assumption is that with correctly designed policy, jobs can be created that have a low impact on the environment and that are well paid (lee and carlaw, 2010). this argument has been advanced to counteract the slow move of many developed nations to enact effective legislation to reduce ghg emissions. north american governments’ rationale for inaction either 4 for example, blue/green canada, the alliance between environmentalists, civil society, and trade unions describes on its website its work to “advocate for working people and the environment by promoting solutions to environmental issues that have positive employment and economic impacts.” (http://bluegreencanada.ca/). gendered emissions | 59 explicitly stated, or at least implied, is that unless all countries in the world adopt similar climate change policies, those countries that do so will be punished with poorer economic performance and rising unemployment rates as corporations readjust their production process to those jurisdictions that have no or few restrictions on emissions. this is the argument that canada uses, for example, for not highly regulating the emissions from the tar sands in alberta (clarke, 2008) and why the us government did not sign on to the kyoto agreement (biermann and brohm, 2005). in broad terms some jobs are dirty jobs that add a great deal to ghg emissions, while others have a more benign effect on the economy. this can be calculated in a variety of ways, with different types of measures of damage. while studies that look at these measures tend to talk in very broad terms, and not with reference to who does what type of jobs, it is possible to get an idea of where gender distinctions occur. while there are methodological (and justice) problems associated with attributing ghg emissions to specific groups of labour, counting something seems to be the primary way that gender issues get noticed. in virtually anything related to distributional impacts (such as wage inequality, occupational distribution, poverty levels) calculating gender differences is the major way to have an issue recognized as significant. in the case of labour and ghg emission policies, bringing the gendered dimension into the discussion necessitates showing both the unequal contributions by gender and the gendered nature of mitigation or adaptation policies. the method i have used for calculating gendered ghg emissions through work is to use the known major contributors to ghg emissions in a variety of different ways. the two most important contributors are through the industrial output by sector and the numbers of hours at work. in dealing with these issues, i first examine the major sectors of the economy in canada that contribute to ghg emissions and, through a simple weighting of the gendered composition of the labour force in that sector, calculate the gendered contribution in each sector. paid employment: ghg emissions by industrial sector the energy sector is the biggest source of ghg emissions, accounting for 81 percent of the total in canada. it should be noted that this includes all energy and heat generation and consumption in households, business, and transportation (environment canada, 2011). the rest of the ghg comes primarily from the agricultural sector (8 percent) and the industrial process sector (8 percent). 60 | climate change and its discontents energy production itself (from electricity, and oil and gas) accounts for 37 percent of total ghg emissions. while electricity production in canada is largely hydro based and accounts for only 16 percent of total ghg emissions, this country is the source of a particularly dirty form of oil that is derived from the tar sands in alberta. production in the oil and gas sector alone accounts for 21 percent of total ghg emissions. below is an example of the gender breakdown of those employed in the energy sector compared to the gender breakdown in the labour force as a whole. table i. labour characteristics of the energy sector – canada (% of total employed) cdn. labour force oil & gas electricity men 52% 72% 75% women 48% 28% 25% source: statistics canada, labour force survey, 2007. in what follows i calculate the gendered distinctions in production of ghg emissions by focusing on the categories of industrial production, transportation, and residential contributions to ghg. industrial production accounts for 66 percent (455,000 mt) of the total, transportation 28 percent (195,000 mt) and residential use 6 percent (41,000 mt). these calculations come from the national inventory report 1990-2011 prepared by environment canada. table ii shows the major sources of ghg emissions by industry in canada. transportation, the largest single sector contributing to ghg emissions, is omitted from this table. it will be dealt with in the subsequent section because the method used for calculating the gender share in transportation is slightly different from that used below.5 as table ii shows, industrial production in canada is highly gendered with females dominant in industries that have lower ghg emissions than those dominated by males. so, for example, the commercial and institutional industries account for only 4 percent of total industrial ghg emissions and are sectors that are dominated by females. the 5 the calculations of the gendered share, (e.g. female share) of ghg emissions from major industrial emitters (ghg female major industrials = ghgfmi) is as follows: ghgfmi = i1-12(f1-12). i1 = ghg emissions from electricity and heat generation; i2 = fossil fuel production and refining; i3 = mining and oil and gas extraction; i4-8 = manufacturing heavy emitters (iron, steel, and non-metals; chemical; paper and pulp; cement; other manufacturing); i9 = construction ; i10 = commercial & institutional; i11 = agriculture; i12 = waste; f1-12 = % of women working in these industrial sectors. gendered emissions | 61 industries with the highest ghg emissions are the energy sector whose gender breakdown was presented in table i, and agriculture where women comprise 30 percent of the labour force. within manufacturing and industrial processes males again dominate in most of the heavy emitters (iron, steel and metal production), cement and mineral products, and ‘other’ sectors. the only sector in this category with high emissions and where women’s employment is a large proportion of the total is the chemical sector where women account 41 percent of the labour force. altogether the gendered breakdown of ghg emissions in the manufacturing and industrial processes is highly skewed. the male share of ghg emissions in the industrial and manufacturing sector is 76 percent and the female share is 24 percent. table ii. gender share (%) of ghg emissions by industry canada 2010 in megatons (mt) ghg categories to ta l g hg em is si on s in m t % o f to ta l la bo ur f or ce fe m al e % o f to ta l l ab ou r in in du st ry m al e % o f to ta l l ab ou r in in du st ry fe m al e em is si on s in m t m al e em is si on s in m t ghg emissions total mt 692,000 major industrials electricity and heat 101,000 15% 24% 76% 24,240 76,760 fossil fuel production 53,000 8% 10% 90% 5,300 47,700 mining, oil and gas1 96,800 14% 18% 82% 17,424 79,376 mfg industries and industrial processes2 93,100 13% 28% 72% 26,068 67,032 iron and steel 22,890 3% 11% 88% 2,518 20,143 chemical 16,500 2% 41% 59% 6,765 9,735 pulp and paper 6,460 1% 23% 77% 1,486 4,974 cement, lime, mineral 12,070 2% 8% 92% 966 11,104 other manufacturing 35,700 5% 28% 72% 9,996 25,704 construction 1,490 0% 11% 89% 164 1,326 commercial and institutional 28,400 4% 56% 44% 15,904 12,486 agriculture 59,260 8% 30% 70% 16,800 39,200 waste 22,000 3% 19% 81% 1,480 17,820 total major industrial emitters 455,050 65% 24% 76% 111,058 343,992 1mining, oil and gas extraction and fugitive sources 2 mfg. industries and industrial processes are combined 62 | climate change and its discontents sources: environment canada, national inventory report 1990-2010 table a12–2 canada’s 1990–2010 ghg emissions by sector; statistics canada, labour force survey, table 282-0008; naics; custom data for labour force survey 2012 transportation generally when issues of consumption are examined, the main focus tends to be on gender differences with regard to transportation, primarily because this form of consumption looms so large in ghg emissions. in canada, transportation accounts for about 28 percent of total ghg emissions, the single largest category, and within this group road transportation accounts for 69 percent of total emissions for all transportation (or 19 percent of total ghg emission).6 in the us men are more likely than women to drive long distances to work7: about 3.5 million people have a travel time of four hours per day and two-thirds of these are men. in sweden it is estimated that men account for at least about 75 per cent of all driving, expressed as person kilometers. about 6.9 million cars are registered in the country, of which women own only 1.7, or 25 percent, and women represent about twothirds of all households where no one has a driving license (johnssonlatham, 2007 p. 53). my calculations for canada show clearly that males dominate in the number of miles driven and account for most of the vehicle emissions. as can be seen from table iii, females account for about 34 percent of the miles driven and almost all of these occur in passenger vehicles. passenger vehicles emit fewer ghgs than do trucks, especially very big trucks, which are almost exclusively driven by males. in calculating women’s proportion of the driving by vehicle type (table iii), and applying that to the emissions by vehicle type (table iv), it is possible to show that women as a group contribute about 11 percent of ghg emissions from driving vehicles. i have calculated this in the following way: ghgtf = v1 (f1) +v2 (f2) + v3(f3). ghgft = ghg emissions for female vehicle owers; v1 = ghg emissions from vehicles up to 4.5 tonnes; v2 = trucks 4.5 – 14.9 tonnes; v3 = trucks over 15 tonnes. f1,2,3 = % of women driving each class of vehicle. 6 calculated from environment canada 2011, table s-1. 7 it should be noted that information available is not consistent across countries. in canada the information about vehicle use is available by vehicle type and mileage, but not by the division between work and other activities. gendered emissions | 63 table iii vehicle-kilometers by gender, canada 2009 (million km) type of vehicle total males females females % total, all vehicles 332432 236908 95524 29% vehicles up to 4.5 tonnes 302959 208083 94877 31% trucks 4.5 tonnes to 14.9 tonnes 8242 8153 89 1% trucks 15 tonnes and over 21231 20673 558 3% table iv. gender share of ghg emissions for road transportation total ghg mt female% miles male % miles f ghg m ghg vehicles up to 4.5 tonnes *** 41,701 31 69 12927 28774 trucks 4.5 tonnes to 14.9 tonnes **** 44,890 1 99 449 44407 trucks 15 tonnes and over ***** 47,110 3 97 1413 45697 all road vehicles 133,701* 14,789 118,878 % total vehicle emissions 11% 89% note: the total for emissions from vehicle type differs slightly from the total ghg from road transportation on table s-5. source: calculated from table a12–2 canada’s 1990–2010 ghg emissions by sector, national industry report; data by gender calculated from table 405-0073 canadian vehicle survey 64 | climate change and its discontents graph i visually shows the large discrepency in the gender of vehicles driven and the ghg associated with these vehicles. graph ii shows the total proportion of ghg emissions by gender in canada graph i sources: canada’s ghg emissions 1990-2010, table s-2, gendered emissions | 65 graph ii calculated from table a12–2 canada’s 1990–2010 ghg emissions by sector, national industry report; data by gender calculated from table 405-0073 canadian vehicle survey the gender breakdown is also available for domestic civil aviation, but not for railways, navigation and other forms of transportation. the total ghg emission from civil aviation is 6,200 mt. according to the commercial aircraft travel survey of residents of canada 2010, females account for 54 percent of air travel and men 45 percent. through air travel then, women would be responsible for 3,370 mt and males 2,829 megatons. (statistics canada, travel survey 2010) 66 | climate change and its discontents household gender/work and consumption-related issues one major difficulty in discussing the gendered distinctions in the impact of work on the climate is the problem of separating the act of consumption from activities that constitute work. consumption is integral to concepts of work (such as gasoline consumption) and is especially relevant in places like the household. dealing with what constitutes work within the household is a conceptual problem that separates it from work that is marketized. certain kinds of household related consumption have gendered patterns that relate to the work roles within or for the household. in this paper i am primarily concerned with the gendered division of labour within the household because it has important implications for public policy responses to climate change. in broad sweeps the literature tends to find that virtually everywhere throughout the world males account for greater consumption and greater carbon dioxide emissions than females (johnsson-latham, 2007). this consumption pattern is primarily associated with greater mobility for a larger proportion of men. analysis of gendered consumption in sweden, for example, shows that males’ consumption of transport is double that of females. other areas where male consumption is higher than females in sweden is in dining out, alcohol and tobacco consumption, and leisure activities related to sports. the areas where female consumption is greater than males is in household related consumption, where women make the majority of purchases for consumer goods, clothing and shoes, health and medical care, and books, newspapers and media (see appendix i). the swedish study does not show the energy content of the gendered consumption baskets, so for areas other than transport, the ghg emissions impact of consumption by gender is not clear. getting a clear picture of gendered consumption in the household is not straightforward. in canada there is no attempt to understand these distinctions by statistics canada, our major data collection body. in the us there is an interest in the subject, but the lack of data that includes observations of consumption for men and women separately does not permit understanding of spending by gender in households with both males and females. in one attempt to get at this issue the us consumer expenditure survey examines gender differences between single men and single women. because the survey does not collect data on which member of households consisting of both men and women purchased an item, this is the only data so far to show gender differences in household gendered emissions | 67 spending. of course, the spending patterns of single men and women may be very different from households where joint decisions are made (shipp, 1987). class or income level is the issue that is usually found to affect the level of consumption in any country (oecd, 2008). the more wealthy the country, the higher the level of consumption, and within countries the wealthier the household, the higher the consumption level. measures of consumption for climate change purposes usually invoke the ‘carbon footprint,’ a measurement of quantities of carbon dioxide emissions associated with an activity (kitzes and wackernagel, 2009).8 sweden, for example, has a considerably higher level of energy consumption than the eu average, with the average swedish consumer driving a more energy intensive car, living in more space, and eating more meat than other eu citizens (johnsson-latham, 2007, p. 38). similarly, the average person in the us consumes a great deal more than most people in the world and those in canada have among the highest per capita energy consumption.9 in canada the high energy use is usually explained by the cold climate and massive size of the country. within nations, consumption usually is correlated with income levels, which in turn can be associated with marital status and paid employment by gender (mckenzie, messinsger and smith, 2008). however, information on this varies from country to country. a netherlands study shows that two-income families, or families where women have paying jobs, tend to have higher consumption levels as a result of higher incomes and the increased time pressures from having both paid and unpaid work. the two-income household uses more energy than a household where either the female partner did not work or a woman was living alone (clancy and roehi, 2003). a uk study showed somewhat different results. as elsewhere, energy and transport are the biggest contributors to the ‘footprint’ of households. rural and adult households with few members had significantly larger energy use than did urban/suburban households and households with many members. the direct household energy use relates to heating, 8 the carbon footprint is a component of the ecological footprint. the ecological footprint is a concept in resource accounting that measures how much productive land and sea is used, either by an individual, nation, or type of activity, and relates this to the total available. according to william rees, ‘a complete eco footprint analysis would quantify the total ecosystem area that the population effectively ‘appropriates’ to meet its final demand for economic goods and services.” (rees 2006). 9 the us and canada are among the highest energy users in the world. according to world bank statistics canada used 7,243 kg of oil equivalents per person in 2012 and the us used 6,793. (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/eg.use.pcap.kg.oe) 68 | climate change and its discontents cooking, fueling cars, but also considered was the indirect energy use in consumption associated with production, processing, and distribution of food. this study also found that a higher household income affects energy use, most notably for travel (caird and roy, 2006). in canada, evidence shows that the ecological footprint of high-income households is substantially greater than other households and that with the exception of expenditures on food, consumption in every category increases steadily as incomes increase (mackenzie, messinger and smith, 2008). at least one study in the us, however, finds little evidence to indicate differences between male and female-headed households, and in countries where more equal economic conditions exist, women tend to adopt male-type lifestyles and consumption patterns (lambrou and piana, 2006). in lieu of a method for calculating the gendered nature of ghg within a household i have divided these equally so that females and males each account for 50 percent of the residential ghg emissions, or 20,500 mt. gender totals and shares by aggregating the ghg emissions by gender from three main categories, industrial sectors, transportation, and residential use, one is able to arrive at an approximate sense of the gendered nature of ghg emissions in canada. table v. ghg emissions by gender in canada categories total ghg emissions female ghg male ghg industrial 455,050 111,058 343,992 transportation road 133,701 14,789 118,878 air 6,200 3,370 2,829 residential 41,000 20,500 20,500 total 635,951 149,717 486,199 share 23.5% 76.5% *note: the total ghg emissions in canada = 692,000. i have only included categories in my total where it was possible to ascertain gender differences. so, for example, i did not include transportation other than road and air. gendered emissions | 69 discussion the major question is whether knowing the gendered contributions to climate change matters in any way. there are several ways to examine the significance in this sense, but i will focus on three issues that may be significant. one relates to issues of climate justice, where it is often understood that those responsible for ghg emissions have a greater responsibility and thus greater obligations than those who do not. the second framework relates to public policy initiatives to reduce ghg. knowing the gendered impact of these policies can be important for climate justice. the third major framework that ultimately may be most significant relates to climate change initiatives that are broader than those currently envisioned. as you will see as the discussion proceeds, my sense is that the climate justice implications are less significant than what the implications of gendered distinctions in ghg emissions can indicate about the economy itself. i hope to show that expanding the notions of what constitutes a ‘green job’ or a ‘green economy’ can be accelerated if issues of gender are taken into account. this could ultimately be crucial for moving toward a cleaner, fairer economy altogether. climate justice academic discussions of climate change and issues of ethics focus almost exclusively on distributive and procedural justice as it pertains to climate reduction policy of nations (e.g. klinsky and dowlatabadi, 2009; posner and sunstein, 2008; adger, 2006).10 some international groups have posited principles for climate justice that go beyond ethical issues between nations and recognize the significance of identifying certain identifiable populations as crucial for consideration in public policy issues. the environmental justice movement in the us, for example, cites ten principles for climate justice policies in the us and specifically mentions “low-income workers, people of color, indigenous peoples,” and future generations. it also calls for community participation in decisions related to climate change (environmental justice movement, n.d.). the bali principles of climate justice has a more extensive list of twenty principles and includes various types of justice that focus on the poor, women, rural, and indigenous peoples (international climate justice network, 2002). 10 distributive justice refers to the ways that both the burden of climate change and its solutions are ethically part of public policy. procedural justice refers to the inclusion of all who are affected by climate change in designing public policy to deal with it. 70 | climate change and its discontents one academic study that is useful for dealing with the applied ethics involved in climate policy is by sonja klinsky and hadi dowlatabadi (2009). in this review of the literature on climate change justice, five basic principles emerge as a guide to the ethics of climate change policy. these are as follows: • causal responsibility (polluter pays) • preferential treatment based on need (related to both the ability to pay for emission reductions and to recover from climate change impacts with a focus on the most vulnerable) • equal entitlements (to protection from climate impacts) • equal burdens (to climate policy costs). the assumption is that all people have equal moral responsibility and there is no reason why some should have a heavier burden than others. • procedural justice (i.e., representation by all who have a stake in the outcomes of climate policy) clearly, some of these principles can be at odds with others: causal responsibility is at odds with the equal burden principle and equal entitlements can be at odds with preferential treatment. these are the types of ethical issues that are common in discussions about crafting public policy and have been addressed in various types of human rights legislation. i will focus my analysis on causal responsibility and what this might mean for certain kinds of policy initiatives. the main point of causal responsibility is that “the mismatch between beneficiaries of fossil energy and victims of climate impacts gives the beneficiaries special obligations” (klinsky and dowlatabadi, 2009, p. 90). normally this is associated with the pain experienced in less developed nations and the benefits conferred upon developed nations. the climate justice message is that it is not justifiable that those who have benefited and those who have not benefited bear equal obligations. however, the idea of identifying who is responsible for climate change is problematic, particularly when people individually benefit from increased ghg emissions in different ways, either through their work, consumption, or profits. the major problem with assigning a gendered position to causal responsibility is that the beneficiaries, by gender, are not easily determined. while males benefit, often because of higher rates of employment and wages when working in ‘dirty industries,’ our economic reality is that what is produced is diffuse throughout the population and often is gendered emissions | 71 essential to maintain life or a standard of living. also, men and women live together and share material goods within the household. while this may not be equal sharing, as discussed above, until consumption patterns reveal that males do consume in ways that are more detrimental to the environment than females, for most purposes the assumption of equal benefit from male employment in ‘dirty industries’ makes sense. because the household is shared space, assigning gendered weight for consumption intensity is problematic. so while males may have a larger carbon footprint because they drive more and further, with more gas-guzzling machines, the social gendered nature of the division of labour, rather than consumption decisions, largely conditions these work-related aspects of consumption. all consumption practices are embedded in a social context and households are collective entities where some consumption practices do relate to individual preference, but most household consumption decisions relate to collective use and are subject to the usual processes of organizing household behaviour. the structural nature of the economy greatly affects how closely households shape their consumption patterns according to income distribution, employment levels, and the gendered division of labour (schultz and steib, 2009). the important point to be taken from this is that gendered consumption intensity may in some respects reflect individual choices, but for the most part is shaped by larger economic and social issues. this does not, however, mean that the impact on public policy decisions relating to household consumption will not have significant gendered impacts. some public policy considerations having different information about the gendered nature of climate change issues could be very important for understanding the impact of various types of public policy designed to reduce ghg emissions. i will use as examples two of the most frequently used policy instruments that are designed to change people’s behaviour in order to reduce ghg emissions. these are time-of-use electricity metering and carbon-taxes on gasoline. because of the gendered division of labour and different consumption habits, the respective policies may have different impacts. smart meters and time-of-use electricity policy time of use electricity metering is gaining popularity, particularly in jurisdictions that rely on fossil fuel for electricity generation. in order to save the electricity company expensive building for new generation, 72 | climate change and its discontents several different types of strategies are used to reduce energy use. one important one that would smooth out energy use (to avoid building for peak periods) is to encourage people to reduce their household concentration of energy use at specific times (e.g. from 7-9 a.m. and from 5-10 p.m.) to other times of the day. usually this is done by providing reduced rates for off-peak periods. the impact this could have on certain types of household labour could be substantial. the most often cited example of how this could reduce a household’s electricity bill would be by shifting activities like laundry to late-night hours when the demand for electricity drops dramatically. many new daily housework and caring responsibilities are incurred through public policy on climate change without any understanding of what this means for work within the household. as one analyst has noted, “with the rise of public campaigns for environmental awareness, those who manage households...are expected to be more diligent in adopting time consuming green practices like recycling and precycling” (macgregor, 2006, p.69). all of these issues become even more significant in a neoliberal climate where appropriate public services are being reduced without new ones being created to meet the additional needs of families at a time when two incomes are the norm. this is not to imply that government environmental policy should not apply to the realm of the household, but that there needs to be an increased understanding of the work burdens these changes imply. the method to be used here would be time/use studies of gendered work within the household. with knowledge of these gendered impacts different kinds of public policy initiatives might be considered. what i have in mind are policies related to paid work that affect the gendered division of labour within the home. it has long been recognized that the higher demands of male work-force participation by hours worked have contributed to a negative effect on contributions to household labour. the policy implications, then, would not only have environmental, but also market oriented as well as social implications. reducing hours of work, hourly productivity and the employment to population ratio is thought to be a solution to the environmental problem posed by long hours of work (hayden and standra, 2009, p. 592). reduction of hours of work through productivity gains would shift remuneration to ‘time affluence’ and could have a marked impact on household workloads by gender. so far, the examination of household behaviour seems to be of interest to climate change researchers less because of the justice issues involved than because of the ways different consumer behaviours can gendered emissions | 73 be affected by public policy. public policy makers or analysts are interested in knowing what affects people’s attitudes and decisions and how households respond to environmental policies (oecd, 2008). so, while certain kinds of policies, such as user charges for waste disposal, can be identified as being regressive with poorer households assuming a greater proportional impact of the policy, little is known about the increase in household work and who does it when policy initiatives result in more work intensive processes. carbon taxes the literature on the effects of carbon taxes tends to focus on differential impacts based on class. a carbon tax is a tax on the purchase of fuels, including gasoline, diesel, natural gas, and coal – all fuels emitting carbon. in the body of literature on this subject, households are treated as undifferentiated units and gender distinctions are not usually considered (metcalf, 2008). the usual interest is whether the poor are unjustly treated through a disproportional tax burden. when this is understood, there are attempts to encourage the government to design the tax to correct the regressive nature of its incidence (lee and carlaw, 2010). one exception in the approach in the academic literature is the work done by nathalie chalifour. her study examines carbon taxes as they were instituted in two provinces in canada, namely british columbia and quebec. in b.c., the government sought popular approval by making the carbon tax ‘revenue neutral,’ meaning that it was not going to be instituted as a tax gatherer, but rather was designed to change consumer behaviour. this meant that many tax reductions and rebates were a feature of the design as were the promises for using any surplus revenues. chalifour uses the causal responsibility principle of social justice as her framework for understanding gender distinctions: “just as it would be inequitable to expect the same level of emissions reductions from countries that have contributed little to creating the climate change problem, it would be inequitable to design policy responses to climate change that place a greater burden on women than on men” (chalifour, 2010, p. 186). she also makes the point that any analysis of environmental tax policy must include an examination of not only the tax but also of any complementary policies (that is, income tax deductions) and decisions pertaining to the use of the revenue generated by the tax. the “purpose of this goal is to ensure, at a minimum, that inequality between women and men is not perpetuated by the policy and, ideally, to seek out carbon tax policies that are capable of promoting gender equality” 74 | climate change and its discontents (chalifour, 2010, p. 191). chalifour’s conclusion is that women are disproportionately affected because they are, on average, poorer than men and, therefore, pay a great proportion of their income on the tax than would men. this may well be the case and is an important contribution to the understanding of the complexities of climate change policy. my intention is to build on this approach by urging greater research into gendered distinctions in both the contribution to climate change and the impact of public policy to either mitigate or adapt to climate change. so, for example, if we assume that the household is shared space with equal responsibilities for climate change, the impact of a carbon tax on individuals by gender may be on vehicle drivers. if this is true (and it is by no means certain), the heaviest impact would be on males who drive considerably more than females. figuring out who, in this case, would be most affected by gender is complex and new ways of looking at disparities besides income distribution need to be considered. so, for example, information about the incidence of the tax would also benefit from clear understandings pertaining to the kinds of households (male headed or female headed, age of person within the household, etc.) and energy use. wider implications for green jobs and a green economy ultimately, knowing the gender contribution to ghg emissions lends weight to the argument that including gender considerations in public policy decisions about climate change could be a significant dynamic for a very different policy approach to the economy. currently most ideas about ‘green jobs’ and a ‘green economy’ focus fairly narrowly on reducing the ghg emissions from the dirtiest industries. this includes substantial subsidies to ‘dirty industries’ in order to ‘green’ them and creating entirely new industries in the energy sector to displace the reliance on fossil fuels. when gender issues are considered at all in this framework, it is on how to get women into the typically male-dominated jobs in these sectors. in the instances when training for ‘green jobs’ occur, for example, this is usually in the building trades, transportation, or in the energy sector. the push, then, is to include women in the training initiatives that are normally the purview of men with the hope that ultimately women will receive jobs through green initiatives in this sector. what tends to be ignored is the daunting task of not only training, but getting women accepted in non-traditional jobs in skilled trades (mcfarland, 2013). the struggendered emissions | 75 gles with this over the years has been the object of much feminist activity and while there are significant initiatives from time to time, the over-all tendency is for little to change (cohen, 2003). within the new ‘green’ industries that are created (such as wind, solar, bio-mass) the overwhelming tendency is for the labour distribution by gender to continue the same pattern as in the energy industry at large (cohen and calvert, 2013). the initiatives related to continue to dominate the discussion of ‘green jobs,’ but there is increasingly an interest in expanding the concept so that a wider range of occupations can be included in policy initiatives. often this is referred to as ‘greening jobs,’ and includes ideas about how all existing jobs can be less environmentally damaging (lipsig-mumme, 2013). this is a considerable shift from the current way of treating employment that is not only environmentally damaging, but also largely segregated by gender. in addition, there are beginning to be some serious discussions, even in more traditional arenas like the un, for a more expansive concept of a ‘green economy’ as a way of rethinking traditional ideas about how economies are structured and oriented primarily toward economic growth. the united nations environment programme has gone so far as to state (in its green economy initiative, 2011) that there is ‘disillusionment with our prevailing economic paradigm,’ and the sense that the economic and ecological crisis can be overcome by fostering a green economy. in many respects it may appear utopian to envision an economy that is light on the environment, but is able to provide the crucial materials and services that people need. clearly moving in this direction would be almost impossible with the vested interests of the current economic structures so firmly in place. but if governments could be convinced that promoting areas where there are real needs, primarily among the caring sector, and reducing all of the government support that goes toward the energy and material goods sectors, the beginnings of a shift in economic emphasis could occur. my main point in this regard is that by making caring work more visible by recognizing its significance to the general economic health of a nation, a shift in the structure of an economy could begin to occur. identifying sectors of the economy that are already ‘green,’ that is, sectors where women are concentrated, and giving jobs in these sectors as much prominence in the discussion of what is ‘green’ would be a first step in rethinking economic priorities. 76 | climate change and its discontents conclusion there are gendered differences in the work associated with climate change. men, as a group, are more involved with work that contributes to ghg emissions than are women. this is evident by their direct work in industries that are identified as the major sources of ghg emissions in canada. it is also evident by the much greater contribution of males to ghg emissions through vehicle use. less clear is the division of responsibility for ghg emissions from labour within the household. this paper argued that until significant time/use studies within the household associated with ghg emissions is undertaken, the assumption of shared responsibility for this source of emissions needs to be taken. this does not mean, however, that labour within the household is unaffected by public policy related to ghg emissions. public policies frequently impose increased labour burdens on households, that without appropriate offsets could have significantly unequal impacts by gender. but the most significant implications of understanding gender contributions to ghg emissions will be the shifts that could occur in dealing with issues of climate change. while the production of clean energy and energy efficiency and the reduction in emissions from ‘dirty industries’ and vehicle use are all clearly essential, more attention must be given to boosting those areas of the economy that are inherently less damaging to it, but provide essential human needs. such a shift would have the most positive gender implications. appendix i consumption expenditure in swedish krona/capita 2004 type male female men’s consumption as a share of women’s eating out 2 010 1 370 3/2 alcohol 360 160 2.5/1 tobacco 620 380 2/1 consumer goods 190 820 1/4 (incl. hygiene) 40 800 1/20 household services 620 1 220 1/2 clothing and shoes 3 010 4720 2/3 health and medical care 1 470 2450 2/3 transport 1 350 740 3/2 gendered emissions | 77 -of which car repairs and maintenance 670 380 2/1 leisure-time activities 2 800 2 650 1/1 of which sport 1 350 970 3/2 books, newspapers, tv licence 430 690 2/3 source: johnsson-latham, 2007, p. 39. references adger, w. neil, ed. 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(2011). achieving climate justice: a framework for action in a climate of chaos. vancouver: canadian centre for policy alternatives statistics canada. 2010. labour force historical review 2009 (table 028). ottawa: statistics canada (cat. no. 71f0004xvb) statistics canada 2009. canadian vehicle survey: annual. (cat. no. 53-223-x) ottawa: statistics canada. statistics canada 2011. women in canada: a gender-based statistical report. cat. no. 89-503-xwe. ottawa: statistics canada. stevens, c. (2009). green jobs and women workers: employment, equity, equality. madrid: international labour foundation for sustainable development. victor, d. (2011). global warming gridlock: creating more effective strategies for protecting the planet. cambridge: cambridge university press. whiteside, heather and marjorie griffin cohen. (2012). gender and climate change bibliography (1990-2011), http://warming.apps01.yorku.ca/ wp-content/uploads/gender-and-climate-change-bibliography.pdf world bank. energy use (kg of oil equivalent per capita). http://data.worldbank. org/indicator/eg.use.pcap.kg.oe http://warming.apps01.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/gender-and-climate-change-bibliography.pdf http://warming.apps01.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/gender-and-climate-change-bibliography.pdf alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review gramsci on tahrir: revolution and counter revolution in egypt by brecht de smet. london: pluto press, 2016. $34.00 u.s., paper. isbn: 978 0 7453 3557 5. pages: 1 264. egypt: contested revolution by philip marfleet. london: pluto press, 2016. $28.00 u.s., paper. isbn: 978 0 7453 3551 3. pages: 1 251. reviewed by sara farhan1 the intense political and social convulsions in the middle east, specifically the tahrir demonstrations throughout 2011 and 2013 ignited academic debates with equal fervour. yet, the current political calamities negated optimistic predictions. it is not surprising that a plethora of manuscripts on the egyptian experience clung-on awkwardly to the ‘arab spring’ events and flood publishing houses and western media with optimistic theories in an effort to comprehend the events transpiring in egypt. yet, when reflecting on the two-year anniversary of the tahrir demonstrations, joel beinin claimed in a jadaliyya article that “the january 25 revolution is not over. rather, it has yet to occur” (beinin, 2013). even recently, when examining the social, political, and economic atmosphere, little has changed in post mubarak egypt. as such, philip marfleet’s egypt: revolution contested and brecht de smet’s gramsci on tahrir: revolution and counter revolution in egypt are rare balanced studies within a flooded scholarship depicted egypt’s social movements in either a hopelessly optimistic light or as a pessimistic warning of a grim future. like beinin, de smet and marfleet contend that the tahrir demonstrations are components of a long negotiation process involving many social and political strata, a moment in egypt’s revolutionary history, and is still underway. in gramsci on tahrir, de smet employs gramscian theoretical framework to the 2011 and 2013 tahrir demonstrations and their aftermath. composed of two sections, gramsci on tahrir’s first segment is devoted to the contextualisation of ‘passive revolution,’ ‘hegemony,’ and ‘caesarism’ concepts. the work then employs these frameworks to the developments of the social unrest in egypt, arguing that passive revolution has been evident throughout the country’s history. the work is unique in that very few have attempted to apply gramscian caecerism to contemporary events in general, yet the social uprising of the middle east. the author omits important moments in the egypt’s history to fit the framework and concepts of the work, however. de smet falls short when considering the agency and conflicting goals of actors involved in the various negotiations throughout egypt’s nation-building process. the egyptian workers’ experience is one of social unrest and mass mobilisations. as such the tahrir demonstrations, however, are multifaceted and complex. these pressures were also lessons from which elites learnt to adapt, develop preventions models, and absorb potential opposition when it cannot be resisted, ignored, or negotiated with. de smet traces social convulsions and the process of hegemony making and cementing to the interwar period when factories sprouted across urban centres permanently changing the social, cultural, political, and of course economic composition of egyptians. 1 department of history, york university. email: sfarhan@yorku.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research while de smet reflects on the history of hegemonies, passive revolutions, and caeserisms; philip marfleet’s egypt: revolution contested focuses on the on-going process of social movements. noting that accounts on what unfolded in egypt fail to “predict a swift end to the protests,” marfleet asks: why did egypt’s social uprisings transpire in the patterns we witnessed? for well over two years’ mass demonstrations impacted all aspects of egypt’s society. egypt “was in a state of ferment as the mass of people sought solutions to their predicaments and greater control over their lives” (marfleet, 2016, 14). in studying the events beginning in 2011 marfleet contextualises the narratives of the demonstrations. he identifies key players, stakeholders, critical moments, and the broader implications of the mass demonstrations. mafleet provides a detailed socio-economic composition of the demonstrators. he argues that the social movements have great implications that will continue to shape egypt’s political and socio-economic future. relying on existing historiography on revolutionary egypt as well as journalistic accounts and interviews with demonstrators and activists, marfleet pens the accounts of the diverse composition of the movements. egypt considers how contending classes and political currents have addressed demands for radical social and political transformation and how they have prepared to face the struggles to come. egypt contains valuable anthropological and sociological information that will be referenced in upcoming narratives on mass demonstrations in egypt. in three segments, marfleet begins with making revolution, a four chaptered examination of the space, actors, and composition of the demonstrations. he then summarises relevant moments in egypt’s history in a two chaptered segment titled, the past in the present. in this segment he emphasises certain continuities that are often contested amongst the academic community, such as the free officers movement and the muslim brotherhood’s rise to influence. his final, and most important segment, counter-revolution is a four chaptered discussion of the mursi experience, the muslim brotherhood’s socio-economic composition, the lead-up to the 2013 coup, and the final outcome of the ‘counter-revolution’. marfleet provides a postscript in which he reaffirms his initial assertions that sisi’s visions for egypt is a departure from the revolutionary narrative of tahrir’s demonstrators. considering the changing and competing visions of egypt’s future, marfleet would have only benefitted from rienhart kosselleck’s (1981) “historicity and the planes of modernity” as his main theoretical framework. de smet and marfleet’s arguments reaffirm one-another on the one-hand and contradict each other on the other. they hastily compartmentalise the history of the egyptian experience. as such, marfleet’s attempt to understand whether the social uprising was revolutionary at all, is answered by de smet when the latter argues that the country is well accustom to mass demonstrations, but it is the means and techniques in which the existing elite absorb these shocks that is of dire importance and in deed of examination. failing to historicise these important events ignores the continuities and discontinuities in egypt’s history. therefore, marfleet’s work must be supplemented with a historical study in order to accentuate its strengths. incorporating a trans-regional analysis and comparative scope would have only strengthened de smet’s and marfleet’s arguments. for example, the increasing influence of the islamic phenomenon in egypt had been catapulted by key figures within the muslim brotherhood www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research who were members of the elite and therefore had relative influence within that particular strata, thus access to state level ideological engines without dislodging the incumbent ruler. (bayat, 1998). despite the muslim brotherhoods temporary leverage, it is necessary for the academic community to reflect on the islamic connotations of the mass movements in juxtaposition to the secular undertones of the tahrir demonstrations. unfortunately, with the rise of “islamism in tunisia and egypt, enduring civil war in libya and syria, an aborted insurrection in bahrain, etc.,” academics and scholarly commentators voiced concerns that “the region’s ‘spring’ was degenerating into an authoritarian ‘winter’” (de smet, 2016, 73). these manifestations, however, highlight the heterogeneity of the mass demonstrations. local level actors upheld various and often competing visions of what their future looked like. several conversations with egyptian diaspora disclosed to this writer the degree of agency exercised by the demonstrators. many were bribed with basic necessities such as food and daily allowances should they attend popular demonstrations that chanted muslim brotherhood slogans on the one-hand or military sponsorship on the other. (s. farhan, personal communication, november12, 2015). local level agencies and motives behind tahrir square participation were neither homogenous nor unison. both marfleet and de smet undermine local level actors’ agency in these demonstrations. further, in asserting that the revolution is an on-going process, marfleet challenges de smet’s caecerism framework. marfleet underscores the roles of principal players and their changing relationships and interaction with each other as a useful tool for not only examining patterns of trajectory of the demonstrations, but also as means of predicting their outcome. while the two authors’ competing examinations reveal that events are still transpiring and continue to shape egypt, the region, and the global south, their failure to historicise the events as part of not only egyptians’ struggle but regional unveil a narrow scope of conceptualising the tahrir demonstrations. these events did not occur in a vacuum. yet, de smet’s caeserist egypt underscores the strength of existing elites and the cementation of the hegemonies through their ability to absorb opposition and normalise social convulsions, while marfleet negates the end of the tahrir’s revolutionary movement. egypt revives the tahrir demonstrations from its premature end at the pens of many academics and journalists. marfleet, instead, outlines the testimonies of engaged actors who believe that the revolution is underway and its affects are still taking place in egypt. these two works agree that due to numerous social movements and organic crises in egypt’s history, strong hegemonies employ passive revolutions in their effort to reproduce conditions of production. while marfleet demonstrates that military interference was supported and viewed as a continuation of the revolution, or a “second revolution” (marfleet, 2016, 202). de smet contends that “[r]evolutions remained unfinished, or were smothered in the violence of counter-revolution” (de smet, 2016, 73). as such, strong hegemonies are more likely to absorb opposition. in this manner, as marfleet’s revolutionary egypt continues to unfold, de smet’s caecerist egypt’s strong hegemonies are undergoing lengthy negotiation processes. this is noted in how quickly some key players in the movements were to turn to existing political parties as a viable alternate for the existing nizam. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 4 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the authors conclude that it is difficult to assess the origins and composition of the egyptian movements but it is easier to predict and interpret the counter-revolution and the resilience of the old regime (marfleet, 2016, xiii; de smet, 2016, 224) yet, despite the authors’ attempt to historicise these movements, they miss a critical element of the history of social unrest in egypt. egyptian demonstrations cannot be isolated from regional events. the tahrir demonstrations are components of a historical moment that began following the 2003 american incursion into iraq. this incident highlighted deeply seeded issues within the arab-unity rhetoric and strengthened existing social movements in which various political actors and stakeholders hastened to align themselves with the demonstrators so as to secure an influential position when the dust settles. indeed, the “muslim brotherhood…. secular liberals, nationals, and communists, and their relationships with the armed forces” must be considered when assessing the social movements of 2011 as well as the 2013 coup (marfleet, 2016, xv). gramsci on tahrir’s conclusions heed warnings to egyptians who are still struggling for change: that unless they form a cohesive oppositional barrier, utter collapse is eminent. the demonstrative resilience of egypt’s elite and the normalisation of mass demonstrations can be interpreted as the manifestation of de smet’s prediction. marfleet’s and de smet’s contributions add to the historiography of social movements and demonstrations in egypt specifically. welcomed additions to a course on contemporary egypt, gramsci on tahrir provides both, a detailed expansion of theoretical marxist theories and historical context to the contemporary events while egypt reveals that the tahrir movements were the beginning of a revolutionary process that is still underway. these two manuscripts pair well with zachery lockman’s and joel beinin’s workers of the nile for an upper undergraduate level or graduate seminar on the contemporary egyptian worker’s experience. ultimately, de smet and marfleet encourage the academic community to continue the debate on the tahrir demonstrations. references: bayat, asef. (1998). revolution without movement, movement without revolution: comparing islamic activism in iran and egypt. comparative studies in society and history 40(1), 136 – 169. beinin, joel. was there a january 25 revolution? jadaliyya, january 25, 2013. farhan,s. (november 12, 2015). personal interview with former residents of sudan nest and ramlet boulak, two large slums on the outskirts of cairo. koselleck, reinhart. (1981). futures past: on the semantics of historical time. new york: columbia press. 46 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages exploitation, stagnant wages and underemployment in advanced capitalism: a canadian perspective d.w. livingstone1 abstract: in the current context of heightened worker productivity, stagnant wages and increasing exploitation, underemployment of wellqualified workers is also increasing. basic features of underemployment include time-based, skill-based and intensity of effort. recent empirical estimates of these features of underemployment in canada are summarized. prospects for reducing current levels of underemployment are also briefly considered. keywords: underemployment; time-based underemployment; skillbased underemployment; intensity of work effort introduction a clear pattern has been widely documented since the 1970s. the real wages of workers, and especially of those employed in creating private goods commodities, have stagnated since the 1970s, while labour productivity in terms of the goods produced per hour has continued to increase significantly. this is true both in advanced capitalist economies generally and canada particularly (e.g. carchedi, 2011; lieberman, 2014; office of the parliamentary budget officer, 2014). in other words, workers are doing more work for less pay, while private capital increases its profitability – a condition of increasing exploitation. since the 1970s, this “innermost secret” of capitalism has become increasingly evident. the central driving force is the extraction of surplus labour from hired workers who combine their labour power with more automated technologies to produce more competitively priced commodities for more profitable sales. corporate capitalists and capital-aligned state agencies have crafted a new regime of accumulation with more stringent limits on workers’ rights and social benefits, and fewer limits on capital, commonly known as “neoliberalism” (see gindin, 2015). workers have diminished bargaining powers, with decline of unions and growth of reserve armies of labour. the most evident consequences of this new regime for working people are 1 d.w. livingstone is canada research chair in lifelong learning and work and professor emeritus in the department of social justice education at the ontario institute for studies in education at the university of toronto. exploitation,stagnantwagesandunderemploymentinadvancedcapitalism:acanadianperspective|47 stagnant wages, increasing debt loads to try to make ends meet, precarious employment and chronic unemployment. in this piece, i want to underline another pervasive aspect of this new regime that is often overlooked: underemployment. underemployment (also known as: “underutilization”, “overeducation”, “over-qualification” or much of the “education-jobs gap”) generically refers to the less than optimal use of labour potential. however, agreement on appropriate uses of labour and extent of utilization is problematic in all class-based societies. in advanced capitalist societies, most paid labour is related to the production and sale of goods and service commodities. from private employers’ standpoint, labour utilization, is efficient application of workers’ capacities to ensure the greatest number of units produced and sold in a given time, thereby enabling maximum profits. from hired workers’ standpoints, appropriate utilization may involve spending sufficient time and care to ensure high quality and social usefulness of finished units, as well as adequate monetary benefits and recuperation to enable maintenance of continuing good quality of work. most of the literature on underemployment ignores this difference. but it is implicit in discussions that argue that connections between knowledge and work are mediated by negotiating powers of those in different social groups (e.g. grugulis, 2003). with greater power comes greater influence over what is deemed to count as valuable labour and the extent to which its use is recognized and rewarded. workers with little workplace power may be relegated to ‘getting a little of our own back’ by withholding some skill or effort (e.g. hamper, 1991). effective labour utilization from the employer’s perspective may equate to being used up and excreted as waste from workers’ standpoints (yates, 2011). diverse theoretical perspectives have been used to explain relations between labour capacity and employers’ job requirements, including classical economic theory, human capital theory, segmented labour market theories and credentialism.2 i use a historical materialist theory positing that inter-firm competition, conflicts between employers and employees over working conditions, and technological innovation all provoke incessant shifts in the number of enterprises, employees, and types of jobs available. through technological innovation and workers’ learning on the job, increased efficiency leads either to expanded production or to unemployment of excess workers, in either case modifying 2 for fuller discussions of theories of mismatches between workers’ competencies and labour market needs, see desjardins and rubenson (2011), livingstone (2009), mckee-ryan and harvey (2011). 48 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the overall demand for labour. popular demand for general education and specialized training increases cumulatively as people seek more knowledge, different specific skills and added credentials in order to live and qualify for jobs in such a changing economy. in advanced capitalist countries, mismatches are inevitable between employers’ aggregate demand and requirements for employees on the one hand, and the aggregate supply and qualifications of job seekers on the other. with liberal democratic state regimes that still proclaim the right to equal educational opportunity and widespread public access to knowledge through such means as the internet, the predicted tendency is for the supply of qualified job seekers to exceed the demand for most jobs-a growing reserve army of qualified labour available for increasing exploitation by capital in the absence of greater collective organization of working people. this paper identifies a few basic conceptual dimensions of underemployment, briefly summarizes empirical research on patterns of underemployment, and more briefly discusses current prospects for underemployment and possible alternatives for reducing it.3 basic dimensions of underemployment three basic dimensions of underemployment can be distinguished: time, skill and intensity of effort. the underemployment of potential labour time is the most evident dimension. the amount of time people are gainfully employed may vary from zero to virtually all their waking hours. the most evident time-based aspect of underemployment is official unemployment including those without paid jobs who are actively looking for employment. but less official forms of unemployment include various discouraged workers and others such as prisoners and retired people who want paid work but are restricted from the labour market. in addition, there are those in involuntarily reduced employment, people holding temporary, part-time jobs but who want more employment. skill -based underemployment refer to the surplus capacities, skills, education, or knowledge that workers bring to the job, in comparison with what is needed for the job. there is much dispute over the notions of skills, relevant education, and knowledge. numerous ways of conceiving dimensions of the gap between employed workers’ capabilities and the requirements of their jobs have been suggested (e.g., kalleberg, 2008; mckee-ryan and harvey, 2011). three relatively straightforward aspects of the skill gap between workers’ capacities and their job requirements are 3 parts of this paper have been adapted from livingstone (forthcoming 2016) and livingstone (forthcoming 2018). for fuller development, see livingstone (2009). exploitation,stagnantwagesandunderemploymentinadvancedcapitalism:acanadianperspective|49 widely recognized: • entry credential gap between the training credentials that job entrants bring and those required by employers; • performance gap between the performance capability of workers and the performance level actually required to do the job; • subjective gap between job holders’ personal assessments of their capabilities and their perceived job requirements. with regard to intensity of effort, those who begin a job become more efficient as they gain experience needed to perform it (pankhurst and livingstone, 2006). the level of production of goods and services in a given time will be closely related to the intensity of effort given by experienced workers. employers’ imperative is to ensure that workers maintain or increase their intensity of effort to continue to produce more goods and services in that time. workers’ overriding objective is to ensure they provide sufficient effort to keep the job without exhausting themselves and losing it. underemployment of effort by workers is a continual threat to employers’ profitability; supplying adequate effort but not becoming over-employed to the extent they threaten their subsistence is the continual challenge for workers. consider these three dimensions together. for employers, having an ample supply of qualified workers to employ for varying amounts of time and skill use with high intensity of effort is central to profit maximization. for workers, being fully employed in a job that allows them to use their accomplished skills without exhausting efforts is the optimal condition. so, underemployment is a highly contradictory phenomenon. without pretending to resolve the contradiction between standpoints of capital and labour, we will look briefly at empirical patterns and then, more briefly, at prospects/alternatives. empirical patterns time-based underemployment. in global capitalism today, the vast majority of the labour force is located in developing and underdeveloped countries. as a result of agricultural enclosures and limited urban industrialization, there are now massively more adult people in these countries without any meaningful employment or only involuntary parttime jobs than the numbers with full-time paid employment, a burgeoning “relative surplus population” (neilson and stubbs, 2011). in advanced capitalist countries, official unemployment rates of those actively seeking employment, the long-term unemployed, discouraged workers and involuntary part-time employed all have been increasing secularly to the 50 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages point that chronic structural unemployment and involuntary underemployment are becoming widely recognized as major social problems (e.g. oecd, 2014). in canada, current estimates put official unemployment at around 7 percent of the eligible labour force, involuntary part-timers at around 5 percent, and discouraged workers (including many not actively searching but who want to work) at up to similar magnitudes (oecd, 2014; jackson, 2010). so, up to 20 percent of the potential canadian labour force could now be underemployed on the time dimension, a very substantial proportion and a growing trend in recent decades. skill-based underemployment. if the focus is limited to the employed labour force, a primary issue is the extent to which workers are able to use their skills in their jobs. leaving aside the issue of different conceptions and measures of “skill”,4 a series of canadian national surveys in 1998, 2004 and 2010 using self-report measures, found that credential overqualification for job entry increased from 27 percent to 31 percent , while under-qualification dropped from 22 percent to 18 percent during this period. the same series of surveys, found that the over-qualification for performance requirements remained at about 28 percent through this period, while the proportion under-qualified dropped from 20 percent to 15 percent. thirdly, this series found subjective feelings of overqualification increasing from 22 percent to 30 percent over this period while subjective under-qualification remained at around 5 percent (livingstone, 2012; 2013). if these three measures are combined, by 2010 a small majority of the employed canadian labour force reported experiencing one or more of these forms of skill-based underemployment. while few other studies have considered such combined effects, there are now many others that have found similar magnitudes of specific aspects of underemployment (see livingstone forthcoming, 2016). the basic conclusion is that skill-based underemployment is being experienced by a large and growing portion of the employed labour force in canada and throughout the advanced capitalist world. underemployment of effort. the weight of evidence suggests that the intensity of effort required of many employees has been increasing in recent decades. average wages have generally been stagnant over this period while productivity rates have increased significantly (carchedi, 2011). many workers have taken on heavier workloads without comparable compensation. for example, in the u.s. the proportion of salaried workers entitled to receive overtime pay for their effort dropped 4 illustrations of the effects of different measures of skill on underemployment measures may be found in livingstone (forthcoming, 2016). exploitation,stagnantwagesandunderemploymentinadvancedcapitalism:acanadianperspective|51 by about three-quarters in the 1979-2014 period (eisenberry, 2015). increasing numbers of workers have been doing more work for less pay. there is widespread evidence of intensification and few signs of underemployment of effort. in sum, both time-based and skill-based aspects of underemployment are found to be very substantial and growing in recent times, while evidence of underemployment of effort is becoming rarer and rarer. prospects/alternatives time and skill-based underemployment are now persisting for the potential labour force of advanced capitalist economies through different phases of business cycles. whatever measures of skill are used, it is also clear that: (1) workers’ knowledge and extent of learning activities now increasingly exceed the narrow formal requirements of existing jobs; (2) such underemployment also applies to computer skills in purported ‘knowledge economies’; and (3) higher and sometimes extreme levels of such underemployment occur among youths, recent immigrants, people of colour, and disabled people. workers have also been found to continually reformulate their knowledge to ‘micro-modify’ their jobs. a growing corpus of workplace learning studies indicate that workers’ rich array of learning activities increasingly exceed current actual job requirements and that people generally are already intently engaged in an ‘educational arms race’ for credentials (livingstone, 2009). these findings should raise serious doubts about the wisdom of policy responses to time and skill-based underemployment that continue to be preoccupied with education and training solutions to economic problems. advocates of both human capital theory and a knowledge-based economy persist in asserting educational investment, increasingly funded by students themselves, is the answer. indeed, from employers’ standpoint, a surplus of skills may continue to be both a short-term and long-term benefit. dominant discourse still insists that more training and more information about available (and generally diminishing) qualified jobs is the basic solution to time and skill-based underemployment. the fact that an oversupply of qualified workers is now essential to maintain levels of exploitation and reproduction of advanced capitalism is rarely hinted at. education provisions can always been improved, as well as more equitable guidance services for transitions between school and paid work. but effective policies for reducing time and skill-based underemployment are more likely to come from the adoption by employers of job designs and organizational practices that permit workers to more fully use existing 52 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages skills (e.g. warhurst and findlay, 2012), as well as from public policies that facilitate the redistribution of paid work time, wider recognition of workers’ prior learning, incentives for workplace democratization and creation of sustainable green jobs (livingstone, 2009). gaining more knowledge to cope with our environment is the most inherently human activity and virtually always valuable. it is only in the narrow sense of qualifications in excess of what employers require for specific jobs that the concept of ‘over-education’ is intelligible as wasted investment. on the other hand, the notion of ‘over-employment’ is rarely heard; it is absurd from employers’ standpoint which is committed to maximizing the profit-generating efforts of employees. to some employees, this notion is intelligible as intensification of work, or exploitation. wider recognition of such exploitation among employees is a precondition of movement toward alternative forms of production based on economic democracy, sustainable relations with our environment and decent, fulfilling jobs. the increasingly pervasive condition of underemployment within capitalism also provides more highly qualified workers with opportunity to recognize levels of exploitation they share with less qualified workers (livingstone and scholtz forthcoming, 2016). so, it is just possible that underemployment will also provide more potential time for many workers to engage in collective movements to create such alternative forms of production (e.g. baiman et al., 2011; gindin, 2015). references baiman, r., barclay, b., hollander, s., kurban, h., persky, j., redmond, e., & rothenberg, m. (2011). a permanent jobs program for the us: economic restructuring to meet human needs. review of black political economy,1-13, doi:10.1007/s12114-011-9118-y. carchedi, g. (2011). ‘behind and beyond the crisis’. international socialism: a quarterly review of socialist theory. http://isj.org.uk/behind-and-beyond-the-crisis eisenberry, r. (2015). the number of salaried workers guaranteed overtime pay has plummeted since 1979. economic policy institute. http://www.epi.org/publication/the-number-of-salaried-workersguaranteed-overtime-pay-has-plummeted-since-1979 exploitation,stagnantwagesandunderemploymentinadvancedcapitalism:acanadianperspective|53 gindin, s. (2015). global issues: bringing class back in. socialist interventions pamphlet series. http://www.socialistproject.ca/documents/globalissues.php grugulis, i. (2003). putting skills to work: learning and employment at the start of the century. human resource management journal, 13(2), 3-12. hamper, b. (1991). rivethead: tales from the assembly line. new york: warner books. jackson, a. (2010). work and labour in canada: critical issues. toronto: scholar’s press, 2nd edition. kalleberg, a. (2008). the mismatched worker: when people don’t fit their jobs. academy of management perspectives, 22(1), 24-40. lieberman, d. (2014). “re-examination of productivity and wages”. alternate insight. http://www.alternativeinsight.com/reexamination_of_productivity_and_wages.html livingstone, d.w. (ed.). (2009). education and jobs: exploring the gaps. toronto: university of toronto press. livingstone, d.w. (2012). “probing the icebergs of adult learning: comparative findings and implications of the 1998, 2004 and 2010 canadian surveys of formal and informal learning practices”. canadian journal for the study of adult education. 25, 1 (november), 47-71. livingstone, d.w. (2013). “skill utilization for sustainable economies: the illusion of an optimal skills mix”. keynote address to international conference on “the optimal skill mix for a modern economy”, marbach castle, lake constance, germany, september 12. livingstone, d.w. (forthcoming 2016). “skill underutilization”. in j. buchanan, d. finegold, k. mayhew and c. warhurst (eds). oxford handbook of skills and training. oxford: oxford university press. 54 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages livingstone, d.w. (forthcoming 2018). “underemployment in advanced capitalism: patterns and prospects”. in p. albanese and l tepperman (eds.). reading sociology. toronto: oxford university press. livingstone, d.w. and a. scholtz. (forthcoming 2016). “reconnecting class and production relations in an advanced capitalist ‘knowledge economy’: changing class structure and class consciousness”. capital & class. mckee-ryan, f., & harvey, j. (2011). “i have a job, but ...”: a review of underemployment. journal of management, 37(4), 962-996. neilson, d. and t. stubbs. (2011). ‘relative surplus population and uneven development in the neoliberal era: theory and empirical application’. capital & class. 35(3) 435–453. oecd (2014). preventing unemployment and underemployment from becoming structural. paris: oecd. report prepared for the g20 labour and employment ministerial meeting, melbourne, australia, 10-11 september. office of the parliamentary budget officer. (2014). labour market assessment 2014. ottawa, canada, march 25. www.pbo.dpb.gc.ca pankhurst, k.v. and d.w. livingstone. (2006). the labour process: individual learning, work and productivity. studies in continuing education. 28, 1 (march), 1-16. warhurst, c. and p. findlay. (2012). more effective skills utilisation: shifting the terrain of skills policy in scotland. cardiff: school of social sciences, cardiff university. skope research paper no. 107, january. www.skope.ox.ac.uk yates, m. (2011). the human-as-waste, the labor theory of value and disposability in contemporary capitalism. antipode, 43(5), 16791695. living on the margins: economic security among senior immigrants in canada nancy mandell,1 larry lam,2 jana borras3 and janice phonepraseuth4 abstract: the percentage of the elderly poor has begun to rise in canada, with single elderly women with limited familial supports and immigrants representing the most vulnerable. rising poverty is associated with shorter average life spans, and greater risk of illness and disability, more family stress and greater physical, psychological and social illness. the accumulation of poor health, lack of housing, rising unemployment, and lack of family care providers creates a series of interconnected issues requiring a new policy dialogue be opened up about understanding and resisting the variegated forms of inequality in later life. keywords: economic security; seniors; immigrants; canada; inequality introduction an aging population and high levels of income inequality in canada have given rise to conflicting accounts of the economic status of canada’s older population. on the one hand, there are, what banting and myles (2016, 511) refer to as “income inequality deniers” who document an overall rise in income growth across the country, which they see as benefitting canadians in their 1 nancy mandell is professor of sociology at york university. email: mandell@yorku.ca 2 larry lam is associate professor of sociology at york university: email: larrylam@yorku.ca 3 jana borras recently completed her master’s degree in the department of sociology at york university: email: jborras@yorku.ca 4 janice phonepraseuth recently completed her master’s degree in the department of sociology at york university: email: jphone77@yorku.ca 38 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice senior years.5 this view says that many older canadians, those ages 65 and up, are doing ‘relatively well’ in retirement as they have access to government income supports and have been able to accumulate sufficient resources and savings over their lifetime to allow them economic self-sufficiency (grant, 2016). on the other hand, there are those who dismiss this view, noting that the percentage of seniors living in low-income households has increased from 12 percent in 2005 to 14.5 percent in 2016 (grant, 2016). proponents of this view argue that rising income inequality threatens the economic well-being of older canadians and forces seniors in low or near-low income to be vigilant in managing and resolving economic insecurity. immigrant households tend to be clustered either at the high or at the low ends of the overall wealth distribution (morisette and zhang, 2006; zhang, 2013). for senior immigrants, income divergence tends to be most distinct among recent immigrants, disabled immigrants, older immigrants who arrived as seniors, and female migrants who live alone (dalgleish, 2008; preston, kim, mandell et al., 2013).6 in attempting to explain these gaps in income divergence, studies have found that the accumulation of economic, social, and/or cultural disadvantages over time, makes some senior immigrant individuals and groups more vulnerable later in life than other senior immigrant individuals and groups (preston, kim, mandell et al., 2014, 2013; rowe and kahn, 1987, 1997, 1998). informed by grant (2016), zhang (2013), preston, kim, mandell et al (2014, 2013), dalgleish (2008), and rowe and khan (1998), the main purpose of this paper is to explore older immigrants’ perceptions of their economic security and vulnerability within a canadian context. framed within cumulative inequality theory and a life course perspective, we draw on in-depth interviews with 31 ethnically diverse senior immigrants to explore how early and enduring exposure to opportunities and inequities either reduces or magnifies migrant exposure to economic security or insecurity. our purpose is to explore their definitions of economic security, their ideas of what they require in order to feel 5 we use the term “senior” in lieu of “older adult” in accordance with the terminology used by statistics canada. 6 the foreign-born population (or immigrant population) is defined in the 2016 census as persons who are, or who have been, landed immigrants or permanent residents in canada. such persons have been granted the right to live in canada permanently by immigration authorities. immigrants who have obtained canadian citizenship by naturalization are included in this group, see www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/171025/dq171025b-eng.htm living on the margins | 39 http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/171025/dq171025b-eng.htm economically secure, and their interpretations of how past experiences have contributed to their economic situations as older immigrants in canada. rather than using a narrow, strictly economic definition of economic security, we broaden the concept to one that captures all the ways that individuals and households cover essential needs of food, shelter, clothing, and hygiene, both sustainably and with dignity (irrc, 2015). this approach follows from tsoukalas and mackenzie (2003, 3) who see economic security as individuals and families having “an assured and stable standard of living that provides individuals and families with a level of resources and benefits necessary to participate economically, politically, socially, culturally, and with dignity in their community’s activities…”. despite methodological disagreement on definitions and measures, economic security is rooted in a belief that economic uncertainty leaves individuals worse off and living in fear of large economic losses, especially when few safeguards exit (hackier, huber, rehm et al., 2014, 67). paths to economic (in)security: cumulative inequality over the life course cumulative inequality theory, applied in conjunction with a life course perspective, allows us to reveal how early and enduring exposure to opportunities and inequities allows some immigrant individuals and groups to accumulate either economic, social and cultural advantages or disadvantages. exposure to security risks over a lifetime makes some senior immigrants more vulnerable later in life while others experience more economic stability and security (rowe and kahn, 1998, 1997, 1987). by conceptually linking structure and agency, social structure and individual action, cumulative inequality theory reveals how actions taken over a lifetime shape economic security in later life and how these actions emerge from a specific structural and cultural context. individual “choices” are thus understood as “logical” within situations from which they both emerged and, in turn, are constituted (mandell, wilson, and duffy, 2008). life course trajectories vary along intersecting lines of gender, race, age and immigration status when these factors are taken into account, systemic economic insecurity becomes visible due largely to structural barriers encountered early and repeatedly throughout the life course. these barriers have a cumulative effect that results in certain groups of senior immigrantswomen, the disabled, racialized, recent and sponsored seniorsare more likely to face economic marginalization in later life. while many studies examine the 40 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice economic and social differences between seniors and non-seniors, few studies investigate the disparities that exist among seniors (preston, kim, mandell et al., 2014, 2013). the migration process forces immigrants of all ages to experience a decline in their economic well-being early in the migration process (fuller, 2015). immigrants confront challenges to achieving economic security, including finding decent and stable employment and building sustainable and secure families. recent immigrants experience difficulties finding sufficient money to pay for the high cost of housing, food, transportation, health and medical care, as well as securing child and possibly elder care, strains household resources. if these necessities are not adequately addressed during the early settlement period, these barriers may be compounded during the life course (dalgleish, 2008). if, on the other hand, security challenges are overcome, may be able to build a strong economic foundation, which allows them, over time, to gather assets such as houses, pensions and private investments (fuller, 2015; dalgleish, 2008). before the 1980s, immigrants who arrived in canada experienced a transitional period of low income but then, over the medium to long-term, tended to outperform the canadian-born (turcotte and schellenberg, 2007). however, between the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, evidence began to emerge that this traditional pattern of economic integration was collapsing. despite higher skill and education levels than previous cohorts upon entry, immigrants were remaining in low-income for longer periods of time and were more likely to age into low-income (pendakur and pendakur, 2011; ruddick, 2003). the deterioration in immigrant earnings is attributed to three main factors: the declining value employees award to foreign labour market experiences that occurs almost exclusively among immigrants from nonwestern regions including eastern europe, africa and asia; the weakening of french and english language skills associated with shifts away from traditional european countries for sources of immigrants; and the broader trend of deteriorating entry level wages also experienced by young canadian-born workers (pendakur and pendakur, 2011; creese, 2007; galabuzi, 2006). racialization shapes the economic security of senior immigrants (preston et al., 2014, 2013). as creese (2007), galabuzi (2006), palameta (2004), pendakur and pendakur (2002) state, visible minorities, both canadian and immigrant, face workplace discrimination that reduces their earnings and subsequent retirement incomes. kaida and boyd (2011) point out that racial living on the margins | 41 inequality in the labour market leads to racial income inequality in later life by reducing access to retirement incomes, including old age security (oas), government income supplement and allowance (gis/allowance), canada and quebec pension plan (c/qpp), personal savings, and occupational pensions (kaida and boyd, 2011, 84). racialized immigrants are particularly susceptible to experiencing employment precarity and low-income (fuller, 2015; galabuzi, 2006). nakhaie (2006) draws from the 2001 census to explore the earnings of thirty-one ethnoracial groups in canada and found that native-born visible minorities and immigrants, despite their high level of education, received lower income compared to their british counterparts. aydemir and skuterud (2008) explore the wage differentials among immigrants and find that more immigrants than canadian-born are concentrated in low-paying establishments and that these immigrants tend to come from non-traditional source regions (eastern europe, africa, asia), earn lower wages compared to the canadian-born or immigrants from traditional source regions (north or south america, the caribbean, north, west or southern europe) (347-348). grant and nadin (2007) explore the downward occupational mobility experienced by immigrants from asia and africa who are experiencing credentialing problems in canada and finds that the process of “deskilling” results in “negative emotions” such as “discouragement, sadness, stress, as well as anger, bitterness and resentment” (grant and nadin, 2007, 158). category of immigration (skilled applicant, family class, refugee and so on) and age at arrival remain important forecasters of economic security in later life. colleen dempsey’s (2005) research into these two predictors highlights two intersecting elements: the type of job an immigrant has while in residence in canada, but also the length of time they are employed in canada. skilled principal applicants (spa) have the highest incidence of employment earnings, report the highest annual incomes, and rely far less on income from noncontributory income sources than any other immigrant category. they are more likely than other categories of immigrants to work past age 60 and to defer government benefits. skilled spouses and dependents also had a higher incidence of employment earnings than all elderly immigrants overall, the lowest incidence of oas and the second lowest incidence of gis/allowance. other economic immigrants had the second highest incidence of investment income, a higher incidence of private market income, a high incidence of oas and the 42 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice lowest incidence of gis/allowance of all immigrant categories reference needed for last half of this paragraph. in contrast, immigrants who arrived in mid-life or late-life, what dempsey calls ‘short-term’ immigrants, rely less on retirement income than recent senior immigrants but more so than long-term seniors. they have had a relatively short period of time in the canadian labour market, will be eligible for some c/qpp benefits upon retirement, be eligible for partial oas benefits at age 65 and may have some equity in houses and private savings. recent senior migrants will have none, if any, of the above: they will not have had canadian employment and hence no c/qpp benefits, no partial oas for the first ten years of residence in canada, very few savings, and likely little home equity. they most likely remain dependent financially on their sponsors. those who came to join family or entered as refugees have found their earnings recovery to be minimal (burstein and biles, 2003, 14). even senior immigrants who have lived in canada for over thirty years find later life presents financial challenges. due to difficulties integrating fully into the canadian labour market during their adult working years (fuller, 2015; marier and skinner, 2007), many reach their senior years with insufficient accumulation of pension assets acquired through c/qpp or through private pensions (mandell, king, preston, kim et al., 2015). immigrant status also shapes economic security in later life. recent immigrants7, those who have come to canada within the past five years, experience more economic insecurity in later life than those who have “aged in place” (elgersma, 2010; marier and skinner, 2007). they are experiencing lower rates of employment and living on the margin of skilled labour for longer periods of time after their arrival than cohorts who landed between 1961 and 1991 (green et al., 2016; ruddick, 2003). and even though, relatively speaking, recent immigrants were doing better financially by 2010 compared to the past thirty years, the rate of low-income for recent immigrants was 2.5 times higher than the rate for the canadian-born (statistics canada, 2014). they are less likely to have accumulated government income supports or personal savings in later life as they too often find themselves employed in low paying, precarious work, leaving them unable to save for retirement (palameta, 2004). of all recent 7 recent immigrants (also known as newcomers) refers to landed immigrants who came to canada up to five years prior to a given census year. for the purpose of this paper, recent immigrants are defined as those who are landed immigrants for at least ten years, see www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-sa/97-562/note-eng.cfm living on the margins | 43 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-sa/97-562/note-eng.cfm immigrants, sponsored seniors are the most economically vulnerable. they are less likely to qualify for any of the government income support plans, such as c/qpp, gis/allowance, or oas (elgersma, 2010; williams, 2003). gender remains a significant structuring feature for immigrants’ life experiences. despite gains in income security for most canadian seniors, systematic disparities persist for women who are unattached, as they have the lowest income, assets and net worth of any group in canada (grant, 2016; williams, 2003). denton and boos (2007, 105) point out that divorced, separated, or widowed senior women have very low levels of wealth versus married women due to their employment in a highly gendered segregated labour market and their disrupted careers, marked by multiple entrances and exits from employment due to child and elder care responsibilities. disabled women are particularly at risk of experiencing economic hardship in later life as a result of being employed for fewer hours and having lower earnings (galarneau and radulescu, 2009). using a cumulative inequality and life course perspective, we explore the interplay of gender, race, age and immigrant status in shaping the economic security of older immigrants. in the following sections, we capture senior immigrants’ experiences over their life courses as they attempt to gain economic security. data and methods dataset: to explore the meaning of different lived experiences of elderly migrants who self-define as living in situations of economic vulnerability (see preston et al., 2014, 2013), this paper draws upon data that was collected as part of a larger qualitative-based study.8 through individual interviews, the study 8 this paper draws upon data from a 3-year sshrc-funded project titled, ‘worked to death’: gendered-racialized dimensions of economic security for later-life canadians, which examines economic security among canadian seniors. first, we used 2006 census data to map high, medium and low economic security among seniors in different regions and ethnicities in canada second, we held 13 focus groups with 110 participants from different ethno-linguistic immigrant groups: asian (china, vietnam, korea), south asian (india, sri lanka, pakistan), west asian (iran), caribbean (jamaica, dominica), south american (colombia, uruguay, peru) and european (russia, italy, ukraine). third, we held in-depth interviews with 31 individuals (2 or more from each focus group). the goal of the study was to shed light on strategies in which senior immigrants 44 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice learned about older migrants’ (in their own languages) shared life experiences, which they felt had contributed to their economic conditions. specifically, participants told stories about living under straightened economic conditions, which leaves them feeling vulnerable day-to-day and fearful of the future. for the purposes of this paper, only the data from individual interviews (n=31) were analyzed. data gathering: a total of 31 in-depth interviews were conducted from april 2012 to february 2014, each lasting from one to two hours. individual interviews were important for obtaining a detailed understanding of migrants’ subjective perceptions of their migration decisions, their employment options, and the role played by larger social structural forces, such as gender and race, in shaping their later life circumstances. participants were also given a brief demographic questionnaire prior to the individual interviews. the questionnaire asked about age, gender, marital status, number of adult children, number of grandchildren, highest education completed, employment status, immigration class, year of landing, town/city and province of landing, any government assistance received, and other sources of income. the demographic questionnaire also asked participants to list all sources of income including: government income sources (oas, c/qpp, gis); private pensions; pensions from abroad; and savings (for example, rrsp, housing and other assets). description of the sample: the 31 interview participants are described as follows: gender: 18 were female and 13 were male. age: during the interview, 9 participants were aged 64 and younger; 17 participants were aged 65 and 74; 3 participants were aged 75 and older. family status: 21 were married and 10 were separated, divorced, or widowed; 20 had grandchildren; 25 lived with their family members. education: out of the 31 interviewees, 5 were high-school graduates and 3 received less than high school education. employment status: during the time of the interview, 21 individuals were retired, 4 were unemployed, 5 were still employed (italian male #7, 2 caribbean-dominican females [#14, #15], vietnamese female #18, caribbean-dominican male #17). migration status: slightly more than half of the participants were sponsored, with the next largest groups being those who entered under the skilled worker class and those who arrived as refugees. the majority of individuals in the jamaican engage in the areas of work, family and caring in order to guarantee their economic security. living on the margins | 45 group entered under the skilled worker class, while most of participants in the russian, dominican, and filipino groups were sponsored by family. length of time in canada: the majority of participants were established residents who had lived in canada for more than ten years. most participants landed in canada before 1999, with only 7 who arrived in the 2000s. the russian-speaking group was unique in that it consisted mostly of recent immigrants who had arrived within the past ten years. conversely, jamaican, chinese, dominican, italian, and punjabi/urdu groups had no participants who arrived in the last ten years. as a result of this demographic, most of the individual interview sample were immigrants who had lived in canada for ten years or longer. we categorized the 21 participants receiving oas and/or q/cpp as secure and the 10 participants receiving gis and/or odsp (ontario disability savings plan) as insecure. those who are receiving gis are classified as insecure because they do not meet the maximum annual income threshold. table 1: demographic profile of individual participants in our sample, we had two groups of older immigrants: those who self-define as insecure and those who self-define as secure. the former group resides in lowincome while the latter group dwells in near low-income. yet both groups feel economically vulnerable and all but a few acknowledge that they have few buffers to protect them against economic risk. running across most of our migrant sample was the theme of constant struggles to overcome systemic barriers in income, employment and housing in order to achieve even a modest level of economic security. 46 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice table 2: government support breakdown and security se c u r e o a s/c pp g is o d sp o ther (n o governm ent support) t o t a l r e c e iv in g 28 7 2 1 spanish fem ale (#1) spanish fem ale (#1) v ietnam ese fem ale (#17) r ussian fem ale (#21) spanish m ale (#2) italian fem ale (#6) k orean fem ale (#28) tam il m ale (#3) v ietnam ese m ale (#8) tam il fem ale (#4) punjabi-u rdu m ale (#26) v ietnam ese fem ale (#5) punjabi-u rdu fem ale (#27) italian fem ale (#6) k orean m ale (#29) italian m ale (#7) filipino fem ale (#30) v ietnam ese m ale (#8) c aribbean-d om inican m ale (#9) c hinese fem ale (#10) c hinese fem ale (#11) iranian m ale (#12) iranian fem ale (#13) c aribbean-d om inican fem ale (#14) c aribbean-d om inican fem ale (#15) jam aican fem ale (#16) c aribbean-d om inican fem ale (#18) italian fem ale (#19) punjabi-u rdu m ale (#20) r ussian m ale (#22) jam aican m ale (#23) h ispanic m ale (#24) h ispanic fem ale (#25) punjabi-u rdu m ale (#26) punjabi-u rdu fem ale (#27) k orean m ale (#29) filipino fem ale (#30) filipino m ale (#31) pa r t ic ipa n t s r e c e iv in g in se c u r e living on the margins | 47 data analysis: we first created economic profiles for each of the 31 interview participants in order to allow us to capture their experiences of living in situations of economic constraint or insecurity. then we more closely examined these economic profiles to see how participants characterized their economic security, what economic risks and challenges they highlighted and how they spoke about the ways these challenges shaped their decision-making in the areas of employment, housing and building families and connecting with and communities. from these profiles, three broad themes emerged: senior immigrants’ self-reports of their economic (in)security, called “security accounts”; senior immigrants’ descriptions of how they manage to live in situations of economic insecurity, labeled “living on the margins”; and an outline of conditions that accentuate economic risk in later life, entitled “the most vulnerable senior immigrants”. security accounts we asked our participants to describe their economic security. while the majority (twenty-one) replied that they felt ‘fairly secure’ or ‘pretty secure’, a small number (ten) of our participants emphatically said they felt ‘completely insecure’. distinguishing between the secure and insecure group was done on the basis of two factors: their self-reports and their reports on what government income supports (oas, gis, c/qpp) and private savings and pensions they received. since the majority of our participants have aged in place (been in the country for more than thirty years) and been employed in the labour market, most are eligible to receive both oas, cpp and possibly have had the opportunity to accumulate a house, some savings (rrsp) and private pensions. of the thirty-one participants, twenty-eight were receiving government income supports and seven were also receiving gis (government income support), designed to augment income for those who rank below the low-income cut off. twenty-one of the twenty-eight participants ranked themselves as secure while the seven receiving gis ranked themselves as insecure. a further three participants also described themselves as insecure. of these three, two were disabled and one had no government support at all. but regardless of whether they ranked and/or self-reported as secure or insecure, we were struck by the ways in which security stories were told. twentyeight of the thirty-one participants said “we have enough money for living, survival” (vietnamese female #17) but overall, their government income supports were seen as insufficient. many expressed considerable apprehension 48 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice and unease about living into old age with what they receive. as one dominican female disclosed, “i worry that i won’t have enough money. i just worry. i really do” (dominican female #18). given this pervasive narrative of anxiety, we examined how participants talked about what insecurity means on a day-to-day basis and how they live with these feelings of trepidation. shildrick and macdonald cite three common narratives in ‘poverty talk’ among british working-class individuals: they normalize everyday hardship, compare themselves to those who they see as being worse off and they emphasize their ability to cope (shildrick and macdonald, 2013, 289). both our secure and insecure participants invoked similar accounts when asked how secure they felt as seniors. after having answered whether or not they felt economically secure, both insecure and secure participants immediately moved the conversation to a discussion of their ability to ‘manage’ their hardships. economic situations were described as ‘tight’ but participants emphasized their ability to ‘get by’ and ‘cope’, thus normalizing their situations (ibid, 289). as one of our spanish female seniors reported, “i only live off the cheque that the government gives me. with the little money i receive, i make ends meet” (spanish female #1). both secure and insecure older immigrants also compared their situations with those they describe as worse off: “everybody needs money. but there are a lot of people worse off than i am” explained one caribbeandominican female who has lived in canada for over forty years (caribbean female #14). older immigrants are grateful for the income support they do receive, comparing themselves with their unfortunate american counterparts: “just compare with the usa. people there do have the senior allowance but they do not have health insurance. for example, at your age, if you do not go to work and do not pay for health insurance, if you are sick, you will have a lot of difficulty going to the hospital. three-four years ago, my wife had cancer. if we were living the uas unless you are very very poor, the government would not cover for you. the doctors also told us that we were lucky to live here so that you got covered” (vietnamese male #8). even with government income supports, the majority of older immigrants in canada often find themselves economically stretched. living on the margins | 49 living on the margins despite emphasizing their coping abilities, both secure and insecure participants talked about how little money they actually had and how it virtually ran out by the end of the month. even those with government income supports found themselves with little to spend on food never mind luxuries citing limited incomes and high housing costs. a senior filipino who has worked and lived in canada for over 20 years (landed in 1994), explains how little disposable income she has at the end of the month and how she relies on her credit cards to tide her over: “no, (the only money we receive is) just the pensions. that’s why you can just imagine how with less than, just around $2000.00, our pension for the two of us, you pay utilities, you pay the mortgage, you pay the insurance. that’s why i have to maintain a credit card so that if we don’t have food i just go to the grocery and use my card. but i have to limit because i have to budget the money but sometimes you know there are emergencies that you need some extra money” (filipino female, #30). toronto’s daily bread food bank reports that while the share of seniors at food banks remains smaller than other groups, their numbers jumped by twentyseven percent in 2016, an increase they see as partially attributable to the rising cost of housing and food (daily bread food bank, 2017). for the slightly more than six percent (6.3%) of households assisted by food banks, a pension is reported as their primary source of income (pegg, 2010, 4). even though most low-income seniors qualify for the federal guaranteed income supplement (gis), which augments their incomes and helps them afford groceries and medicine, some do not know they qualify and others already thought they were receiving it (pegg, 2010, 1). not only is food insecurity a rising problem among senior immigrants but often housing remains inadequate. eking out a living on the margins frequently involves putting up with substandard housing. even those who report having pensions find they are barely able to afford housing and cannot afford to even consider entering subsidized senior living. an hispanic female describes their financial struggles to remain adequately housed: 50 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice “i hope to find a better residence, because we live in my daughter’s basement which is comfortable but since my husband got cancer, he says he feels the cold in the basement, that it is dark, he finds many problems with it so i hope to find something better. and something to be affordable and we have car, burial insurance, medical costs. residences for the elderly should be more affordable it is always so expensive. because between both of us we have $2074.00 in pension but the rent is very expensive like $800.00 a month. an accessible rent should be $400.00 a month” (hispanic female #25). current housing eligibility rules and waiting lists means that they may never receive rent-geared to income units. in addition, many immigrant seniors struggle to pay for medical and dental bills. research reveals that nearly twothirds of seniors on public drug programs have claims for five or more drugs from different drug classes, and nearly one-quarter have claims for ten or more. more than half of seniors on public drug programs regularly use prescription drugs to treat two or more chronic conditions, such as high blood pressure and heart failure (canadian institute for health information, 2011, ix). older migrants with no drug plans find the cost of drugs prohibitive. our questions about medical, eye and dental costs brought forth numerous comments about not being able to afford prescription drugs and not being able to afford eye glasses or dental work. as a korean female told us, “i was diabetic. i had to buy medicine for my diabetes and it costs hundreds of dollars for several months”, expenses she could barely afford. other seniors complain about how government income support does not cover aids, dentistry services, glasses or for medical aids such as walkers and scooters. worrying about the challenge of in meeting housing, food, transportation, and medical and dental expenses leaves many immigrant seniors feeling deeply anxious and frightened of the future. as a chinese female who receives a government income pension told us, “where am i going to get the money? i would think that and get very scared, right? however, one day at a time, but try to be happy as i could” (chinese female #11). given how stretched immigrant seniors find themselves when trying to pay for basic living expenses, few have discretionary money for recreation, living on the margins | 51 holidays, or entertainment. participants express a reluctance to ask adult children for financial support. the same participant who expressed fear for the future, relies completely on government support and a small registered retirement savings plan (rrsp), but does not depend on her adult children nor do they depend on her: “i don’t depend on my children because i’ve always been independent person. i see how a lot of children will not give money to their mothers or to others. if they don’t take our money, fortunate enough” (chinese female #11). recent sponsored seniors are more likely than immigrants who have aged in place to live in extended households.9 overall, thirteen percent of senior immigrant women and a little more than two (2.3%) percent of senior immigrant men live with relatives. of those who have arrived since 2000, forty percent of older immigrant females and a little more than nine percent (9.5%) of older immigrant males live with relatives (milan, wong and vézina, 2014). within the group of older immigrants living with relatives, some find they have to request spending money, or what they call ‘pocket money’, from their adult children. our participants described being in this situation as resulting in feelings of shame and low self-worth. most are very aware of how financially strained their adult children are and try to keep their requests to a minimum. when asked if she relies on her adult children for money, a vietnamese female explains:“no, not in our situation. (but) i know a lot of situations like that. sometimes the children do not give enough money. but my children know their responsibilities. i just want to work to have extra spending” (vietnamese female #5). when extra spending money is found, among certain ethno-racial groups, the men tend to control how it is spent. a tamil senior tells us that traditional gender patterns of men controlling household money is common in sri lanka but that she really expected the pattern to be different in canada. instead, she has found: 9 sponsorship was extended to twenty years. to sponsor a parent or grandparent, applicants have to meet certain income requirements, support that person and their dependents financially for a period of three to twenty years, see http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/sponsor/pgp-apply-who.asp 52 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice “because i see couples here. the man has the … is the person with the wallet in his `hand. the woman is who is asking. i have seen it. doesn’t mean she is not spending it. she has to ask for spending money. she don’t have the freedom. you see in our country, we fought for the freedom. but i see here also, the same thing happens” (tamil female #4). gender continues to shape spending patterns in many households, leaving older female immigrants vulnerable. the most vulnerable senior immigrants in reviewing the accounts of older immigrants’ experiences in the areas of employment, housing, family and community, we found a number of factors that increase their economic vulnerability: belonging to a visible minority group; being disabled; being economically unattached; being a recent migrant; and migrating as a senior. being exposed to one or more of these risk factors increased individuals’ perceptions of vulnerability, regardless of age at arrival, length of time in canada, or immigrant status. even those immigrants whom we least expected to describe chronic vulnerabilities – those who came at a young age or came as skilled principal applicantsnonetheless told stories of deprivation and exclusion. in some cases, their accounts explicitly identified structural barriers to inclusion, while in other cases interpretations were more ambiguous. visible minority immigrants recount numerous examples of racialization in schooling, employment, and everyday encounters racialization took different forms from overt discrimination in workplaces to covert discrimination on the basis of language and communication. difficulties in conversing with persons in authority were a common problem, leading to ongoing negative encounters. but as this iranian male states, recent immigrants face so many different hurdles when they first arrive that overt racism takes a back seat to simply managing their lives: “immigration is very difficult. we didn’t know any english when we first arrived. shopping, seeing the doctor, daily activities were challenging for us since we couldn’t communicate in english. we kept looking for someone who knows farsi so he/she can translate for us. we also faced discriminations. living on the margins | 53 however, we had so much to deal with at the time, that is issue didn’t seem important enough for us”. (iranian male, #11) not being fluent in english left many immigrants feeling degraded. as this spanish female explains, “people humiliate you wherever you go. it is very difficult to communicate. you have to bother your friends to accompany you to the doctor, the hospital…” (spanish female #1). she describes her ongoing struggle with the daily embarrassments and micro-degradations, which made her question whether to remain in the country: “…without english i could not communicate with the boss, the work mates. they were very racist people or when they disciplined me or humiliated me. they looked at me in a bad way. seniority people pushed me around which make me think about coming back or staying here” (spanish female #1). racial profiling was described as commonplace in everyday interactions with canadian-born. a jamaican male described going to school and learning that black people were called “chocolate” (#23) while one jamaican female recalls being introduced to a neighbour who on hearing of her country of origin, exclaimed that “jamaica is where ganja is from”. again, she says that as a recent immigrant she was “so naïve…that that sort of comment just went over her head” (jamaican female #16). it is only upon reflection that she realizes how stereotypical and commonplace racist comments were. profiling was backed up with overt discrimination in the workplace. eight participants, identified as visible minority, explicitly stated in the interviews that they had at least one story of workplace discrimination. a vietnamese female (#17) talked about her employment in a hotel with black, asian and white people as being rife with racism. she describes asians as experiencing the most racism but remaining quiet when bullied while blacks she admired for being “always stronger” (vietnamese female #17). migration researchers attribute income inequality to racism (preston et al., 2013; pendakur and pendakur, 2011; creese, 2007; palameta, 2004) but interestingly, even though most of the participants described racist encounters and stereotypical profiling, few identified their race as a factor impeding their employment. when directly asked if they had experienced racism, most deflected the question and provided vague answers. yet when asked to tell their employment or schooling histories, they volunteered stories of discrimination. how do we explain these seeming inconsistencies? 54 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice reay (2005) says that ordinary brits have accepted and acknowledged the script of racism and sexism within education, but that class has never been part of the agenda. in fact, she states that most people avowedly deny class, especially their own, even though they can identify class practices (university aspirations, linguistic styles) among ordinary working ‘blokes’ and upper class ‘posh’ kids (reay, 2005, 915). but our participants’ accounts made us wonder how widespread it is to ‘accept and acknowledge’ race. simultaneously recounting racism while pushing it away as a structural barrier seems to be conceptually similar to denying the existence of class while providing numerous conversational references to its everyday existence. the push to occupy a ‘middling’ ground as classless, raceless canadians allows immigrants to largely deny the structural underpinnings of racial inequality, which they are virtually powerless to alter, and instead focus on areas where they can claim individual agency and control (irwin, 2016). while reluctant to recognize race as a structural barrier in education, employment and housing, senior disabled immigrants openly acknowledged and spoke about the barriers they had encountered as disabled people. while we had only two out of thirty-one immigrants who identified as disabled, both these participants openly stated their disabilities without being prompted and revealed the obstacles they had come upon. one vietnamese female (#17) talked explicitly about how her medication for her mental health issues had made her more cautious in expressing her opinions or seeking advice. the other disabled participant, a spanish male, described how his leg injury meant he could no longer work at his former job and how he had been unable to find another job. his workplace disability provides him with a limited monthly pension which he says ‘helps me’ but overall ‘life is much more expensive here” (spanish male #2). being unattached and living alone increases the likelihood of living in poverty and having poor mental health. since more seniors tend to be women than men, senior women are particularly vulnerable to economic insecurity. unattached older individuals and disabled persons together represent less than thirty percent of the population but more than sixty percent of the poor (green, riddell and st.-hilaire, 2016, 19). recent census data (statistics canada, 2017) reports that poverty is rising among unattached seniors. among senior families, those where the highest income earner was 65 or older, the median after-tax income was $52,300 versus $76,900 for non-senior families. for the unattached, median after-tax income was $27,300 in 2012 while for unattached seniors the rate was $25,000. for seniors living in an economic family (with two or more living on the margins | 55 persons who live in the same dwelling and are related to each other through blood, marriage, common-law, adoption or a foster relationship), the incidence of low income was 6.2% while for seniors living alone, the rate was 28.5% (statistics canada, 2012a; statistics canada, 2012b). not only does living alone significantly increase vulnerability to poverty, it also has implications for health and well-being. racialized women with fewer economic resources are more prone to illness (mandell, wilson, and duffy, 2008). our participants who lived alone frequently mentioned loneliness, isolation, and having no one to reach out to in times of need. when compounded with employment, housing and financial issues, unattached living becomes especially burdensome. as one iranian female notes, moving to canada as a mid-life adult, with a low-income job, and living alone has proven to be a triple whammy leading to social isolation, poor mental health and depression. “living alone in a foreign country is really hard. i left iran in 1988 when i was 47 years old. i wasn’t young enough for a new beginning. i was starting to feel depressed after a while since i was so lonely. there were not many iranian people or iranian grocery stores in my area. … i cried all the time. my social worker told me that i can apply for disability benefits. i didn’t know what that was. i applied for the disability benefit. i got an apartment and only one-third of my income went for rent. i couldn’t even (afford) bus tickets before i started to receive disability benefits. i really liked to find a job to make more money but i couldn't” (iranian female, #13). social support provided by neighbours, friends and faith groups become crucial for many senior immigrants who often find themselves geographically isolated and socially secluded. ethno-racial community centres promote social cohesion for senior immigrants because they offer affordable, reliable and regular physical, social and cultural activities for seniors (qadeer, 2004). knowing they can rely on a community significantly alleviates social isolation as well as offering a source of information about a variety of different topics, such as government income support, medical and dental aid, transportation and housing (weerasinghe, 2010). as one urdu punjabi female told us: “i do many activities (at the community centre). since i live alone, i do the cooking and other chores. i come to the community centre once or twice a week. the most 56 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice important activity is saying prayers thrice a day. i have a circle of friends and i talk to my friends regularly…it’s not easy to live alone when children are living independently” (urdu/punjabi female #27). when we asked our participants to suggest two or three things that would make their current economic security better, less expensive housing, higher government income supports, subsidized transportation, and medicines were most frequently mentioned. as one iranian male stated: “increasing old age security allowance by government and giving more discount to seniors in their basic expenses such as housing, food, transportation and medication. …we need more stable income, to have money for when i get older and weaker, to be able to afford the services that i need” (iranian male #12). some participants stated that the non-governmental centres they frequent ought to receive more government support in order to increase the vital services they provide for seniors. this finding is perhaps partially explained because we recruited our sample through senior community centres. but still, we were surprised by the extent to which many of our participants relied on faith centres, social services, and ethnic-specific groups for social support, networking, financial advice, caregiving, and service information. the literature tends to emphasize government immigration and settlement services and often neglects to acknowledge the role social organizations in keeping older migrants socially, culturally and economically integrated. this is an understudied area requiring more research. discussion our study reveals issues of social inclusion and exclusion among both adequately secure and insecure older immigrants as they describe how intersecting systems of gender, class and ethno-racial inequality exacerbate senior insecurity. one way to explore patterns of equality and inequality that shape the experiences of older people is to listen to their life stories of how they have negotiated and managed structural barriers they have encountered in attempting to secure decent work and build stable families. sarah irwin (2016) highlights the significance of understanding lay perceptions of inequality and social structure in this era of rising income inequality. by asking older immigrants to characterize their immigrant experiences of vulnerability and to identify barriers or supports they have encountered in employment and in building families and communities, we are contributing to the literature on subjective perceptions of economic risks and living on the margins | 57 vulnerabilities. we found that even though most of our participants saw themselves as adequately secure, when we probed for details of their everyday security struggles, we heard stories of very circumscribed lives and deep anxiety about their financial futures. senior immigrants clearly identified the intersecting factors that they experienced earlier in their lives which have affected their economic vulnerability in later life: challenges to securing stable and decent employment, the impediments caused by inadequate fluency in either english or french, the lack of affordable housing, and the long-term disadvantages to achieving economic security when foreign credentials remain unrecognized. if left unaddressed, these challenges will continue to pile up over time, leading to increased numbers of older immigrants facing sustained economic vulnerability in later life. senior immigrant women and men experience aging differently because the interaction of gender, race and migration produces different life course experiences in employment and care work. in addition, for both senior immigrant men and women, immigrant status and time of arrival in canada shapes access to government income supports, employee pensions, and private savings and investments. racialization had a profoundly negative impact on the lives of many senior immigrant women and men. both family supports, and community programs play an essential role in buffering discrimination and advancing immigrant integration. despite facing considerable challenges in securing decent employment, finding affordable housing, building families and taking care of their dependents, senior immigrants display remarkable resilience. conclusion what would make it possible for more senior immigrants to achieve economic security in their later years? while the poor may not be getting poorer, the new inequality is creating security inequality through income polarization, which in turn generates strains in the middle of the income distribution, especially among the lower-middle class (banting and myles, 2017, 515). with declining prosperity and the increasing length of time it is taking migrants to reach a stable and secure economic basis, there is now growing concern that intergenerational mobility may also be affected. low and middle-class families not only face a lack of progress for themselves but also fear for the future prosperity of their children and grandchildren (green et al., 2016, 14). 58 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice in the midst of this polarization, we claim that our generous government income support system has lifted seniors out of poverty and generated economic security for older canadians. the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd) country comparison data suggests canada has one of the lower poverty rates among those aged 65 and older in oecd countries (oecd, 2015). but, when compared with european countries, canada’s system appears meagre as it targets benefits mostly to the poorly paid in order to alleviate extreme poverty (denton, feaver, and spencer, 2005). state initiatives have yet to provide income policies that address the economic strains being felt by canadians in the middle and bottom thirds of the income distribution (banting and myles, 2017, 522). the state policy changes we have seen so far appear to be increasing senior economic insecurity, not alleviating it. the federal government plans to enhance its cpp offering beginning in 2019, which will have the net effect of disqualifying approximately 243,000 low income canadians from receiving gis. gis benefits are based on incomes and single seniors who earn more than $17,688 annually are not eligible to receive gis benefits. by paying higher cpp benefits through their working years, canadians will receive more generous cpp benefits in retirement. using a phased in process, the maximum cpp benefit will rise from $13,110 to nearly $20,000. but according to richard shillington, “people who already have low income will have an even lower disposable income while working and the beneficiary of that saving will primarily be the federal government in reduced gis spending” (curry, 2017).10 talking about senior poverty, and especially lowand near-low-income among older immigrants, remains unfashionable in canada (shildrick and macdonald, 2013). reports confirm that society is substantially less equitable, less inclusive and less fair that it was three decades ago (green et al., 2017, 24). the poverty rate has remained more or less constant at about thirteen percent for the past two decades (514). almost all the income gains in canada between 1982 and 2010 have gone to the top one percent (lemieux and riddell, 2017, 513). within this context, canada faces a growing senior population, an increasing number of whom may age into economic vulnerability. we need to 10 for january to march 2017, the maximum combined payment from oas plus gis is $1,442.62 ($578.53 oas + $864.09 gis) per month, for a single person. this maximum is reached if there is no income other than oas and gis. living on the margins | 59 ask ourselves what the short and long-term consequences will be for a society when inequality continues to grow leaving a large majority of canadians “unequal to the end” (abramson 2016). a neoliberal emphasis on “successful aging”, apparently achieved when individuals make healthy lifestyle choices, erases class, gender and racial inequalities among seniors (katz and calasanti 2015). instead, we need more studies that focus on how the accumulation of life course experiences stratifies later life according to material and social resources (abramson, 2016, 68). it is only by grappling with intersecting and complicated patterns of inequality structuring later life that we will advance policy solutions aimed at alleviating senior immigrant economic insecurity. references abramson, c. m. 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(2003). the wealth position of immigrant families in canada (catalogue no. 11foo19mie-no. 197). retrieved from: https://goo.gl/nkjyfd 64 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice “you got to make the numbers work”: negotiating managerial reforms in the provision of employment support service debbie laliberte rudman,1 rebecca m. aldrich,2 john grundy,3 melanie stone,4 suzanne huot,5 and awish aslam6 abstract: neoliberal activation logic has intensified in the employment services sector, accompanied by austerity measures and new public management (npm). we report findings from the canadian site of a collaborative ethnographic study addressing the negotiation of longterm unemployment, specifically focusing on local-scale implications of administrative reforms to employment service delivery. informed by street-level bureaucracy and governmentality, we demonstrate how the articulation of managerialism in activation-focused employment services and the emphasis on ‘making the numbers work’ results in a series of inter-related effects, including: work intensification; reconfiguration of key relationships; and heightened insecurity. simultaneously, frontline staff engage in forms of service provision unaccounted for under official metrics, but central to their perceptions of service users’ needs. our analysis confirms the necessity of ethnographic approaches to documenting street level enactment of, and resistance to, neoliberal governmentalities. 1 debbie laliberte rudman is an associate professor, school of occupational therapy and graduate program in health and rehabilitation sciences, university of western ontario. email: drudman@uwo.ca 2 rebecca aldrich is an assistant professor, department of occupational science and occupational therapy, saint louis university. email: raldrich@slu.edu 3 john grundy is a postdoctoral fellow, department of political science, york university. email: grundy@yorku.ca 4 melanie stone is a phd candidate, women’s studies and feminist research, university of western ontario. email: mstone33@uwo.ca 5 suzanne huot is an adjunct professor, school of occupational therapy, university of western ontario. email: shuot2@uwo.ca 6 awish aslam is a phd student, department of sociology, university of western ontario. email: aaslam5@uwo.ca “you got to make the numbers work" | 47 mailto:drudman@uwo.ca javascript:main.compose('new',%20't=raldrich@slu.edu') mailto:mstone33@uwo.ca mailto:shuot2@uwo.ca mailto:aaslam5@uwo.ca keywords: neoliberalism; precarity; activation; governmentality; austerity introduction labour market policy in canada has undergone profound reforms over the past several decades. federal and provincial governments have embraced the activation framework of labour market policy, which entails disciplinary approaches to the unemployed. in the name of removing work-disincentives, and buttressed by a parallel rise in austerity measures, activating reforms emphasize limiting unemployed individuals’ access to income security programs such as employment insurance (ei) and enforcing their entry into paid employment through the adoption of rapid re-employment or ‘work-first’ employment service delivery models. within service provision, there is an emphasis on interventions that enhance individuals’ employability and job-seeking efforts through changing client behaviours and attitudes (grundy 2015a; porter 2015). such ‘work-first’ models are bolstered through the use of techniques of new public management (npm) in service delivery, including the extensive use of performance-based contracting of service providers and outcomes-based accountability measures. policy makers promote these techniques as maximizing the efficiency of client reemployment and achieving greater value for money. yet, as a growing body of critical social policy scholarship demonstrates, the adoption of npm, as well as activation measures, can also be viewed as attempts to discipline managers, service providers, and clients’ conduct in ways consistent with neoliberal rationalities (brodkin 2011; soss et al. 2011). reporting findings from a broader ethnographic study of employment service provision and long-term unemployment in canada and the united states, and drawing on street-level bureaucracy and governmentality literatures, this article examines the consequences of 48 | austerity urbanism and the social economy npm as a concealed track of welfare reform (brodkin 2013) for service providers and service users. building on recent scholarship that emphasizes the need to study what actually happens when governmentality practices ‘hit the ground’ or the ‘street level’ (brady 2011; lipsky 1980/2010), our central claim is that the articulation of managerialism in employment service delivery, and the heightened pressure on staff to ‘make the numbers work’, results in series of interrelated effects. these effects include work intensification for service providers; reconfiguration of the relation between service providers, funders, and clients; and heightened insecurity for service providers and service users. we also highlight instances of resistance and subversion that demonstrate the ways service delivery staff seek to work around or, at times, push back against narrow quantitative measures of service delivery, often assuming the risk of undertaking unaccounted work and pursuing invisible outcomes in the process. following brodkin (2011), we contend that these combined effects of activation measures and npm are often not made visible through dominant ways of studying service delivery, such as examining legislation and administrative documents or tracking official metrics, but instead require investigating policy in action within the contexts of service delivery and everyday lives. theoretically, we demonstrate how employing an ethnographic approach to examining governmentality, combined with a sensitivity to street level practices, enables moving beyond linear, all-pervading assertions regarding the effects of neoliberal governance toward more complex understandings of how activation and npm measures are negotiated in everyday practices. background and theoretical framework among many member nations of the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd) employment policies and services have been significantly reconfigured according to the paradigm of neoliberal activation, and in many countries this reconfiguration has intensified since the 2008 recession (boland 2015; evans & albo 2010; “you got to make the numbers work" | 49 porter 2015; soss et al. 2011). activation policy has redefined the problem of unemployment. while for much of the post-war period, policy makers conceived of unemployment primarily as an economic problem to be addressed through macroeconomic policy promoting full employment, contemporary ‘activating’ approaches to unemployment place much more emphasis on modifying the behaviour and attitudes of unemployed individuals. within an activation paradigm, unemployment is essentially a problem of the unemployed, one to be resolved through interventions that ‘activate’ and ‘responsibilize’ unemployed individuals (grundy 2015a; ilcan 2009). activation approaches are purported to transform passive unemployment into active job-seeking, discursively locating the factors causing unemployment within the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of individuals (boland 2015). in turn, those experiencing unemployment are increasingly expected to demonstrate responsible citizenship through engaging in a range of activities such as resume writing, interviews, and networking, which are held out as ways to enhance and market the self within the labour market. in addition, engagement in expected activities is often a condition of benefit receipt and/or maintenance of benefit eligibility. there is also an emphasis on finding the ‘quickest route to work’ and being open to the broadest range of employment opportunities possible, with increasingly less consideration of work precarity, under-employment, or wage replacement (boland 2015; porter 2015). overall, activation-based approaches, consistent with neoliberal rationalities, individualize the problems of and solutions for unemployment, privileging measures aimed at transforming citizens ‘at risk’ of state dependency into selfreliant, responsible, and productive citizens (schram et al. 2010). labour market policy in canada has undergone profound reforms over the past several decades that have sought to activate the unemployed and re-shape service delivery models in ways that emphasize individual responsibility (grundy 2015b; porter 2015). moreover, individualization and the focus on rapid re-employment have been exacerbated and shaped in more disciplinary ways within a broader 50 | austerity urbanism and the social economy ‘austerity’ response (evans & albo 2010; ilcan 2009; soss et al. 2011). as porter (2015) demonstrates, changes to employment insurance implemented in 2012, including alterations to the definition of suitable employment and measures that promote acceptance of precarious lowwage work, enact an austerity approach “aggressively moving to create conditions that would ensure a sizable low wage labour pool” (porter 2015; 38; see also grundy & laliberte rudman 2016). the rise of neoliberal activation in labour market policies and austerity approaches has also been accompanied by the incorporation of npm principles and practices purported to optimize the performance, efficiency, and effectiveness of employment services (brodkin 2015; grundy 2015a). driven by overarching goals of ‘doing more, with less’ and re-making public bureaucracy in the image of the private sector (baines et al. 2004), npm focuses on the incorporation of market-based, competition-driven tactics to manage public services, such as using performance systems that monitor outcomes and emphasize accountability, establishing benchmarking systems, and employing competitive contracting mechanisms (pollit & bouckaert 2011; soss et al. 2011). with the incorporation of npm by the federal liberal government in canada accelerating in the 1990s, the implementation of npm has involved a shift away from process or input measures in the employment services sector towards quantitative outcomes measurement (grundy 2015a; ilcan 2009). in an increasingly decentralized policy environment (ilcan 2009), npm has been drawn upon as a mechanism to delineate what activities and outcomes ‘count’ in the employment services sector; steer discretion in service provision processes; and optimize the fit of higher-level system goals with what occurs in street-level practices (brodkin 2011; schram et al. 2010). drawing upon a governmentality perspective, within this study we conceptualize npm and the performance management techniques it promotes as “neoliberal systems for disciplining service providers” (soss et al. 2009; i205). as such, we frame managerial reforms in the employment services sector as techniques of governance aimed at “you got to make the numbers work" | 51 shaping the conduct of service providers at a distance in an increasingly decentralized system. these techniques attempt to establish a ‘chain of discipline’ inter-linking various levels of government, service organizations, front line staff, and clients, through which a responsibilizing ethos emphasizing self-government is promoted, shaped, and monitored. such techniques do not necessarily require various actors to accept or take up a neoliberal worldview or rationality. rather, they operate by organizing fields of practice, for example, via establishing outcomes to be achieved and reported and backed up by rewards and penalties, in ways that shape decision-making and self-discipline (llcan 2009; schram et al. 2010). however, research has challenged the assumption that npm strategies achieve their intended effects unproblematically. according to soss et al. (2011), attempts at discipline through npm cannot be assumed to be easily achieved given that “disciplinary power of the npm (new public management) shapes consciousness and behaviour in ways that are deep and far reaching yet also fractured, inconsistent and incomplete” (i205). ethnographies of neoliberal governmentalities further highlight the importance of attending to failures and contradictions that become visible when such strategies unfold in service provision spaces (brady 2011, 2014). moreover, research that has expanded on lipsky’s seminal work on street-level bureaucracy points to the importance of better understanding the “ways in which discretion interacts with managerial reforms and what that means for production of policy in everyday organizational life” (brodkin 2011: i255). thus, in this study we also draw upon lipksy’s work, particularly as it has been taken up by contemporary scholars who use it to frame policy implementation as involving “complex interaction between reflexive subjects involved in multiple relations of power and objective factors that present both opportunities for and constraints on action” (prior & barnes 2011: 268). in our research, we aim to demonstrate how service provision organizations and front-line service providers negotiate the effects of npm in their everyday practices and discretionary capacities. based on 52 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the data analysed below, we offer a critique of npm’s premises and promises by pointing to the contradictions, tensions, and ‘unintended’ implications that arise in its application (brady 2011; brodkin 2011). methodology findings presented in this article are drawn from a collaborative cross-site ethnography (lassiter 2005; lassiter & campbell 2010) being conducted in ontario, canada and missouri, u.s.a. that is funded by the canadian social sciences and humanities research council. ethics approval for this study was received from universities in both study sites. this study focuses on illuminating the boundaries and possibilities for service provision and the individual negotiation of long-term unemployment in everyday life, as shaped through contemporary policy and employment service provision approaches. in this article, we draw upon data from the canadian site that focused on service provision processes and practices. in the canadian site, the sample for this particular phase of the study consisted of 12 participants (10 female, 2 male) associated with four employment service provision organizations. ten participants provided direct services to clients, while 2 had shifted into managerial positions. in contrast to their counterparts from the u.s.a. study site, these service providers spoke at length about the effects of activation and austerity reforms on their everyday work practices. in particular, the canadian service providers described actively negotiating performance management initiatives that shaped possibilities and boundaries for service delivery. we collected data with these participants over a five-month period via one to two audio-recorded semi-structured qualitative interviews and one to four workplace observation sessions per participant. observations explored various aspects of service provision including individual meetings with clients, educational workshops for clients, and team case conferences. data were recorded in written and/or audio-recorded field notes. in addition, we held a site-specific focus group at the end of individual data collection efforts to discuss preliminary analytical findings with a sub“you got to make the numbers work" | 53 group of five service providers. following verbatim transcription of interview audio recordings, we used open coding, focused coding, and critical discourse analysis (cheek 2004; laliberte rudman 2013) to achieve a complex understanding of the data. analytical findings: the negotiation and implications of managerial reforms this study’s findings are interpreted in the context of changes to labour market policy in canada. austerity measures and policies have long been a driver of managerial reforms to employment service delivery in canada. during the 1990s, the canadian federal government significantly reduced public sector spending and simultaneously transferred increasing responsibility for employment support services to provinces via labour market partnerships (ilcan 2009). in the mid-1990s, extensive budget cuts to human resources development canada, the federal department then responsible for delivering employment services, fueled the contracting out of service delivery to non-profit and some forprofit agencies (grundy 2015a; ilcan 2009). at the same time, the federal government implemented a performance measurement regime known as the ‘results-based accountability framework’ for employment service delivery, which held service providers accountable for the number of clients returned to work, and the amount of savings to the employment insurance (ei) fund as a result of employment service provision. there was widespread acknowledgement that these performance measures led to systemic pressure among providers to offer short-term, work-first services to those most job-ready, while further limiting services for nonei eligible clients (grundy 2015b). the federal government began to transfer employment service delivery to the provinces in 1996. yet, it was not until 2007 that ontario assumed control of the bulk of labour market programming following the signing of a labour market development agreement that entailed the transfer of federal staff and resources to the province. a subsequent canada-ontario labour market agreement (2008-2014) provided 54 | austerity urbanism and the social economy additional federal funds for services directed at those ineligible for eifunded training, including immigrants, social assistance recipients, and the long-term unemployed (ilcan 2009; wood 2015). within ontario, the provincial employment service was branded as employment ontario (eo), intended as a comprehensive suite of employment supports including employment assistance services, labour market information, and job referral as well as training and apprenticeship programs. eo emphasizes a one-stop model with services delivered through 171 service providers located at over 300 sites (ministry of training, colleges and universities 2015). extending the use of competitive contracting established by the federal government, the ministry of training, colleges and universities (mtcu), renamed the ministry of advanced education and skills development (maesd) in summer 2016, contracts for eo services mainly with non-profit agencies but also with publically and privately funded post-secondary institutions (eo 2011). consistent with a npm emphasis on promoting accountability and ensuring efficiency through benchmarks and delineated quantifiable outcomes, since 2010 the mtcu/maesd has monitored the performance of agencies through the eo information system – case management systems (cams). this system was designed as a mechanism to systematize how service providers across the province initiate, design, and enact services with clients. through its on-line platform, cams establishes, tracks, and reports predetermined, quantifiable outcomes (employment, training/education, or other) at 3, 6 and 12-month time points for each ‘assisted service unit’ or client opened, commensurate with a ‘quickest route to work’ approach. data that service providers are required to input through the system are used to track individual and organizational level performance, and are drawn upon to manage and organize the delivery and contracting of eo services (employment ontario information system – cams, 2014). in its 2014/15 ‘results-based plan briefing book’, the performance measurement target set by the mtcu for eo was that “79 percent of employment service program clients will obtain employment or go on to “you got to make the numbers work" | 55 further education/training” (13). the condition of the ontario labour market poses additional challenges for service providers. a lasting effect of the great recession has been a persistent spike in long-term unemployment. in ontario, during april 2016, 20 percent of the unemployed were long-term unemployed (unemployed for 27 weeks or more), whereas during april 2008 this figure was 13 percent (maesd 2016). beyond long-term unemployment, there are numerous indicators that precarious employment is spreading in the province’s labour market. the share of employees in ontario earning the minimum wage has increased from 2.4 to 11.9 percent between 1997 and 2014 (block 2015: 2). the portion of ontario employees earning within $4 of the minimum wage, that is, lowwage workers, also increased during this time, from 19.8 percent of ontario employees to 29.4 percent. as well, six in ten minimum wage earners and four in ten low-wage workers experienced unpredictable and erratic hours of work. the share of ontario employees working less than 40 hours a week is also increasing: in 1997 it was 42.5 and in 2014 it stood at 50.5, representing a 19 percent increase (block 2015: 5). the greater prevalence of long-term unemployment and precarious employment makes the attainment of stable, high quality employment increasingly more difficult. shifting to data collected in our study, service providers (identified below using pseudonyms) fore-fronted discussion of changes in the nature of their work related to the specific implementation of the cams system; policy, funding, and labour market conditions; and a more general push towards an outcome-based system in which they felt increasingly pressured to ‘make the numbers work’ for individual and organizational performance metrics. although they acknowledged the importance of tracking outcomes, service providers raised concerns about the implications of increased emphases on narrowly-defined predetermined outcomes, work intensification related to the demands for tracking and reporting, and changed relationships within the sector. as well, service providers framed npm initiatives as setting boundaries on 56 | austerity urbanism and the social economy their abilities to support clients’ well-being and employability. in contradiction to the ultimate intended outcomes of enhanced employability or employment, service providers articulated that meeting demands to make their numbers work enhanced both their own precarity and that of their clients. although service provides described how they complied with accountability measures, they also resisted their narrowing effects at times, raising concerns regarding how various types of outcomes they valued and needed to prioritize in their work with clients were made ‘invisible’ within existing metrics and framing themselves as obliged to engage in unaccounted work to support clients. below, we illustrate these concerns and discuss them in relation to npm as a technology of government, which is negotiated by service providers within employment service provision. making the numbers work npm measures aim to shape service providers’ discretionary practices through delineating what activities count as performance and what outcomes are valued and rewarded (brodkin 2011). service providers described experiencing a pervasive pressure to ‘make the numbers work’ within the overall movement towards outcomes-based funding and contracting of services in the sector. as stated by nicole, “going back to the ministry, across the provincial government, everything is moving to outcomes based programming. and that’s not going to change.” similarly, courtney indicated, “there’s so much more expectation from the funder as far as accountability, right. how we’re spending the money. and trying to prove our worth and that we are doing our jobs, and by trying to provide those statistics to the funder to provide that. so there’s been so much of that since eo came into play.” this pressure to meet outcome expectations was further enhanced by the use of an approach in which service providers not only needed to show positive numbers but had to show continuous improvement: “you got to make the numbers work" | 57 “the thing with the policy is the ministry doesn’t typically care what you are doing well, they want to know how you are going to improve the things that you are not doing well. so, because we are in a continuous improvement model you must always be continuously improving. every quarter we have to report how we are doing well in our numbers or not” (kevin). given the disciplinary function of npm (schram et al. 2010), service providers found themselves having to work with their numbers in ways that allowed for the demands of funders to be met because “you can’t argue with the funder, the funder is who pays us” (kevin). however, in their efforts to make the numbers work, service providers often subverted the intent of the system through re-arranging reporting to meet system expectations, while at the same time obscuring work that was not expected or that defied the ‘work first’ orientation. for example, kevin shared how he managed his monthly case closings in ways that made the numbers work from the ministry’s perspective, but at the same time resisted the ministry’s demands in ways that protected himself and his organization: “am i closing the ones [referring to cases] that are bad outcomes?...no, i’m gonna wait until next month when i have a little more because i’m only allowed a couple bad outcomes a month. right? so i push the ones that don’t need to be closed this month...the numbers will work for the ministry, no matter what.” similarly, kate shared that she and her colleagues always found a way to meet the funder’s expectations: “i would say sometimes those parameters that are set by our funders are challenging so, but, you know, we always make a way to turn it into a success no matter how we have to work to get that done.” pointing to tensions, service providers described experiencing ethical conflicts associated with ‘playing’ the numbers, but experienced such actions as necessary given the need to ensure their own jobs and the 58 | austerity urbanism and the social economy survival of the organizations they worked for. these sentiments are expressed in the following two quotes: “the writing was on the wall that it was becoming a much more outcomes based [system]. just the accountability of these agencies that you have to show and prove what it is that you are doing with the funding dollars. but there are games that are played with that, right? that is the frustrating part ethically, if you are going to follow the rules compared to others that don’t…you got to make the numbers work” (courtney). “the whole ticky box thing. it’s like, am i meeting the criteria? am i meeting so many clients? am i getting so many open files? are there so many closed files? what is the outcome of that particular client?...and, of course, it almost seems mechanical where we have taken out the need of the client and we’re just kinda jumping through hoops so to speak, and that pulls on me sometimes” (kate). thus, ‘making the numbers work’ did not reflect an unproblematic compliance with outcomes measures established via the cams system, but also involved subverting the system in ways that allowed the appearance of meeting required metrics. although service providers addressed the importance of tracking outcomes and tried to do so in ways that met system expectations, they pointed to associated work intensification as well as tensions created through the narrow definition of success in npm measures. work intensification service providers’ efforts to make the numbers work were associated with work intensification tied to caseload volumes, expected timelines, and inter-related tracking and documentation requirements. for example, in order to meet performance benchmarks, such as 20 successful outcomes and 20 intakes each month, service providers took “you got to make the numbers work" | 59 on large caseloads that allowed them to make their individual numbers work: “it’s a really busy place…we’re looking to close – we want results for 20, and we want intake for 20, so we all sit around 80 to 100 clients. that’s manageable. it’s busy” (emily). while sometimes described as manageable, increasing caseloads were also described as leading service providers away from a desired case management, client-centred approach towards crisis management. combined with enhanced administrative burden tied to documentation requirements, service providers experienced increasing caseloads but decreasing client contact time: “carrying a case load of 80 people is not my ideal world…it’s really just putting out little fires. i can never really get ahead of my caseload” (kevin). “a large part of our job now is paperwork, whereas somebody else used to do that before computers came on our desk. we were much more directly counsellors then than we are now” (emily). another aspect connected to work intensification was the way in which the three-month time frame for outcome measurement set pressures to work intensively and quickly with clients, even if such an approach was seen as unrealistic for a client or not achievable within current labour market conditions: “so the expectation is, under cams, they come in, and they’re out in three months. and it just keeps rolling….but the reality is, if you don’t cycle through people quickly, you cannot meet your metrics” (dwight). “well, they want us to open and close the file…the shortest is three months. we can keep it open longer, but we have to justify reasons why we are. overall, it sorta goes against their research if they’re saying six to eight months to become re-employed in a recessive market, and so the expectations there, i think, are unrealistic” (emily). 60 | austerity urbanism and the social economy overall, service providers described having to do more work within a shorter time frame and connected work intensification and the broader influence of npm to undesired changed relations in the sector at several levels. changed nature of relations service providers talked about the changed nature of relationships at several levels, including with clients, with other organizations, and with the ministry. in relation to clients, many service providers emphasized how important it was to employ a client-centred approach to counselling, in which they took the time to understand each client’s perspective and needs in an individualized and holistic manner. however, they found that enacting this type of approach to counselling became increasingly challenging within current policies and systems. sarah stated, “as a counselor, we need to be counselling, not only [getting people] employed…honestly, we are getting sometimes very frustrated when we hear clients [talk about challenges].” according to schram et al. (2010), npm practices extend beyond making agents accountable to reconstituting agency. such reconstitution was apparent in how service providers discussed changed communication practices with clients. for example, in attempting to negotiate large caseloads and documentation requirements, service providers noted the lack of time to build a relationship through multiple in-person meetings. instead, service providers resorted to relying heavily on virtual modes of communication with clients even though they found such modes insufficient to meaningfully connect with clients: “our caseloads are so high for the work that we do, [so] that [we] do a lot on email now. so i can talk a little bit on email, but it’s not the same as having them with me for an hour and it being a personal conversation…so we’re finding that the amount of people we’re seeing limits the amount of work we can do on those levels” (emily). “you got to make the numbers work" | 61 “i’m doing much more mass communication…we don’t have time to build the relationship…i communicate through social media, text, or email” (dwight). service providers also highlighted other barriers to establishing meaningful relationships with clients, including a de-personalized approach stemming from the need to categorize or “cookie-cutter” (courtney) clients and “call a person a unit” (kevin). in addition, service providers discussed the challenge of constantly balancing the expectations and needs of funders and those of clients: “is it you meeting the numbers, or the client? we need to focus on the individual. we need to focus on the support we give. we don’t need to be thinking in the amount of administrative jobs we need to do, because it’s a lot. be careful with this…use the data, but don’t pressure people with the data. our mission is to give support and to produce results for the individuals and not for the government” (teresa). “it’s important that they understand that i actually care about what’s going on with them, and this is not me just putting a notch on a piece of paper, you know, the whole ticky boxes that we have to put in place. sometimes it can be a little bit overwhelming, and i don’t wanna lose my client focus. that’s extremely important to me…so i make sure that i take the time to let them know that you’re not just a number to me” (kate). nicole, who had previously provided front-line services to clients and now carried out middle management activities, pointed to ways that human resources had been shifted towards administrative tasks and away from direct client service, further creating a barrier to establishing effective relationships: “and that [referring to documentation requirements of cams] is why so much human resources have been taken away from client facing activity, is because of the cams system”. with respect to relations amongst organizations, consistent with npm 62 | austerity urbanism and the social economy principles, service providers noted how time-bound contract funding in the employment service sector had fostered increasing pressure to compete amongst non-profit organizations in the sector: “the other thing is not being able easily to collaborate with other partners. like the funders have set it up kind like a survival of the fittest type scenario where you have to fight with each other over your clients” (kevin). in the same way service providers discussed trying to maintain positive relationships with clients in the face of de-personalizing systems and increasing work intensification, they also talked about how they attempted to maintain collaborative relationships with other organizations to meet clients’ needs, even if this meant they might take a ‘hit’ on their personal numbers: “i have friends over at all the other agencies. so if i think they’re going to be better served at x [another employment support services provider], i call my friend…we have an informal network that we use quite regularly. everything is statistically driven; everything is outcome driven. so i just need to realize that out of my 20 for the month, i have four that are negative” (dwight). nicole also addressed changed relationships with the mtcu. she indicated that although the ministry, as the primary funder of service, was talking a language of ‘partnership’, it had been increasingly unresponsive to the perspectives or input of employment support service organizations: “the ministry does not partner with us on anything...they don’t do things with us. it’s gone, there’s no partnership whatsoever with the funder.” as in their attempts to make numbers work, service providers positioned themselves as in between the demands of the ministry and the needs of clients. they struggled with the implications of meeting accountability demands of the ministry for the relationships they could maintain with clients and other organizations. within these struggles, a complex mix of compliance, subversion and resistance is revealed. the “you got to make the numbers work" | 63 findings demonstrate that npm sometimes re-shaped their practice, as in shifting to virtual modes of communication, and sometimes was defied through actions such as collaborating with another organization to meet a client’s needs, the latter of which could have negative implications for a service provider’s performance assessment. heightened insecurity for service providers and clients at the same time that service providers discussed ways they continued to push forward in providing services and working towards outcomes they viewed as important, they emphasized that doing so was increasingly challenging given a heightened sense of their own precarity. demonstrating the disciplinary potential of npm, service providers experienced boundaries on their exercise of discretion given that their own work security was connected to meeting funders’ outcome expectations (schram et al. 2010). speaking to the conditions of their own work, they described experiencing on-going stress associated with having to ensure their own survival and that of their organizations through their numbers. natalie, who shared that “in the last five years, i’ve been laid off twice”, emphasized the on-going stress she experienced related to meeting the ministry’s definition of success: “i’ve already been laid off from an organization once because we lost a contract. and this could be the same with this program…if it’s not successful in the eyes of the ministry, then there could be another program that’s lost. so the pressure is on.” teresa also spoke to the on-going stress experienced in relation to meeting performance metrics, indicating that this made it challenging to focus on a client’s needs: “well, at some point, even if you keep your mind on the client, you are in the stress of the organization for being targets. so that is stressful. sometimes, worrisome because you can lose your job. and that is the reality we 64 | austerity urbanism and the social economy face every day…i would like to have less pressure for the numbers really.” this sense of on-going precarity ultimately disciplined service providers to make the numbers work, not only for their own survival but also for that of their organizations: “okay, so our funding is based on if we hit our targets. so, we have monthly and yearly targets that we have to hit, which would be people that are, files that are employed or close…in training…if we didn’t, if we all just kind didn’t close that the files that we had to…our funding could not be given to us…our center would close” (hillary). critics of activation-based approaches that emphasize the quickest route to work have argued that people are unlikely to have sufficient time to find a job in the area they were trained or to upgrade their skills, leading to a situation in which persons experiencing cyclical unemployment are increasingly pushed into the low-wage precarious labour force (porter, 2015). our informants also pointed to ways that the current system, with its use of time limits, prioritization of obtaining work as a successful outcome, and limited space for the provision of comprehensive employment support services, not only shaped precarity for themselves but also for clients. kevin discussed how a ‘work first’ approach often meant clients were not matched with appropriate jobs: “they are looking to get people in and out as quickly as they can, which they should and i agree. i think that there are a lot of people who are not taking the right job fit because of the pressure to get them working right away” (kevin). emily and sarah emphasized the frustration that resulted from narrowly defining success as a ‘survival’ or temporary job and the potential cycle of precarious employment and unemployment that could evolve: “you got to make the numbers work" | 65 “so the ministry sees them working in a survival [job] and the file is close because they’re working. so although the ministry see it as a success…it’s not the intent when they came in and sat down with me” (emily). “then, after a few months, they will contact us when they lose a temporary job to look for another job. so for me, as a person, i don’t like to put that ticky point. why? because i want to help them to be in a stable career not only temporary” (sarah). dwight connected the ministry’s use of short frames and focus on narrow outcomes to shaping a cycle of precarious employment for clients. he stated that “the timeframes attached to funding influence directly, affect how services are delivered as the entire process… is outcome based”, such that, “the problem i have on a personal level is i’ve opened the same client multiple times within 12 months. they go to precarious employment, temporary job, come back in three months. i get them to access another temporary job.” although these numbers could be tracked in the current system as indicative of multiple successes in relation to attaining an employment outcome, service providers pointed to enhanced precarity for clients. subversion and resistance within service provision: ‘invisible’ outcomes and unaccounted work to summarize findings presented thus far, service providers discussed the pressure to ‘make the numbers work’ to meet the expectations of the ministry. service providers discussed being aware of ways npm measures were being enacted so as to shape their conduct. yet they also described how they did not always comply with the narrow vision of organizational activity embedded in the performance measurement system. as noted above, they discussed playing with the numbers in ways that simultaneously met the ministry’s metrics while subverting its demands for timely reporting so as to extend service provision for clients and avoid the implications of reporting ‘negative’ 66 | austerity urbanism and the social economy outcomes. they also discussed how they tried to establish individualized relationships with clients and collaborative relationships with other service organizations despite the barriers established by the setup of the system. in addition, service providers emphasized how they attempted to circumvent the shaping of services through npm measures through working towards outcomes and enacting services not mandated nor counted in the cams, that is, toward outcomes beyond, as one participant put it, “they have a job or they’re in training for a job” (kevin). such forms of service delivery are important to highlight because they demonstrate how techniques of neoliberal governmentality, such as performance measurement, are not unproblematically deployed across social and organizational settings. service providers were overtly critical of the many boundaries on service provision being shaped through the current eo model. in particular, they pointed to ways that current policies and accountability mechanisms meant that the needs of persons experiencing long-term unemployment or facing complex challenges to employment were often not adequately addressed. for example, kevin and emily were critical of the disincentives built into the system associated with providing longterm services to clients, “employment ontario really doesn’t have any additional supports to help people move (out) of long [term unemployment]...our points system is what marks…how well we do…if we take more than 90 days on particular item, actually hurts us...so, i guess just the way it was rated, like funded, kind of dictates that and long term really isn’t supported in that capacity.” (kevin) “the people who really, regardless of how nice their resume looks or the interview skills look, they’re just not bought in, they don’t believe, they’ve given up…or there’s addictions, there’s things that we need to be working on with them and having them involved in before we ever open the file here because as we open a “you got to make the numbers work" | 67 file here, the ministry needs to see action, and those aren’t even counted. it’s a referral out, but it’s a lost stat” (emily). megan emphasized that the focus on ‘work first’ meant that she could not provide adequate pre-employment skills training that some clients required: “but that pre life skills training, personal counseling is something that, i think, is really lacking here. and if we had that, then people could move forward to employment…but these are barriers that really need to be addressed.” it was therefore clear that service providers, and sometimes the organizations they worked for, held more complex understandings of the pathways to employment and client success than the practices and outcomes codified via cams, resulting in challenges and tensions at the level of service delivery. for example, megan discussed particular challenges providing services to clients who were recent immigrants and whose paths to employment tended to be lengthy due to numerous barriers: “we get outcomes for in training or education or employed, so our numbers have to reflect that and it can be challenging”. natalie discussed tensions that arose for her when working with clients who faced barriers and could not directly move forward to the ministry’s outcomes, emphasizing she resisted the pressure to ‘push’ clients too early into a service even when this could have a negative impact on her own numbers: “the challenge i have is when things are out of my control, because i have stats i have to reach…when things are out of my control for whatever reason, it’s just not the right time for the plan or the barriers…they come back and have mental health issues, or drug addictions, alcohol addictions…so that’s, like it’s a person i’ve lost so it’s a stat that has gone, so i might explain myself. i am there for the client and i understand 68 | austerity urbanism and the social economy that i have stats too, but i won’t just push somebody into a work experience when it’s not the right thing for them.” thus, at the same time as describing the disciplinary effects of npm on their behaviours (soss et al. 2011) such that they were constrained in their ability to provide what they perceived to be essential services, service providers also described moving forward in achieving outcomes that remained unaccounted for given their understandings of clients’ needs and the values they held as service providers. a common concern expressed by service providers was that officially measured outcomes, that is, training, education or employed, were too narrow to capture many of the outcomes that providers did achieve with clients. activities such as linking clients with personal counselling, getting a bus pass for clients, or securing housing, were often recognized as essential “baby steps” (courtney), necessary to ensure wellbeing and a stable foundation prior to addressing employment, education or training but rendered invisible through performance management mechanisms: “the organization wants a solid number, so like, employed, or, in training. so, they’re not going to go, ‘yay? you went and registered for a course’, or, ‘you went and grabbed your bus pass’, or ‘oh, you were able to move forward and…get more secure housing.’ it doesn’t really – they don’t measure the little steps” (hillary). “sometimes when you're working with people that you're referring out to addictions counseling…to support groups… you see changes in them, that's incredible to me as a counselor, a success on a level that's not even coded. it’s considered a soft skill, so they wanna know are you working or are you in school” (emily). indeed, almost all service providers described work that they did that was essential but not counted in the metrics of the current system. such work “you got to make the numbers work" | 69 was often framed as subversive, that is, as intentionally occurring out of view of the ministry metrics and, in many cases, as not accounted for in considering a service provider’s work or quality of performance. for example, hillary discussed how she continued to remain in touch with clients and “support them all the way through” even when the client case was officially closed in the ministry system: “it’s closed. it’s not open sort of in the ministry eyes. it’s a closed file, but i mean, i assist so many people that aren’t officially registered.” natalie discussed working with her clients, who were mostly youth, on many “soft skills” that were necessary for them to move forward, acknowledging that this work was not counted or recognized: “there are so many steps that the youth make…but it doesn’t fit with the ticky boxes. so it’s not recognized by management. so you just have to find a way to push that to one side.” nicole shared how service providers developed their own outcomes, which they celebrated collectively and which continued to motivate them in their work: “i think it’s really important that we have our own measures to satisfy those other needs. and we do. we celebrate, like if a client can’t get out of bed and get into the office to attend a workshop, and they overcome that hurdle, we do celebrate those things….that’s what fills our gas tanks…the bottom line is i don’t get warm and fuzzy because i met my numbers, i get teary eyes when i see something amazing happen for a client.” while staff used their discretion to provide services based on their values and beliefs regarding best practices and their perceptions of clients’ needs, such workarounds were not without personal or professional costs to staff, costs which are undoubtedly exacerbated by their own labour market and organizational insecurities. as explained by dwight, “i have seen my team members bend over backwards taking their own time, their own personal energies.” working towards outcomes not valued in the system but valued by service providers and clients required personal investment: “and at the pace we’re going…you’ve got to be really 70 | austerity urbanism and the social economy invested and wanting to help. our caseloads are way too high for the amount of work we do.” thus, as responsibilities and accountabilities are downloaded to the level of service provision, service providers are acutely aware of the costs of discretion, particularly forms of discretion that resist and subvert the aims and rules of npm measures. in turn, these costs, such as work intensification that involves not only ‘visible’ work expected within the system but ‘invisible’ work that resists the limits of the system, may set boundaries on the extent to which service providers can incur the risks associated with such actions. discussion and conclusion the integration of npm into the employment services sector has been one means to establish ‘governing at a distance’ through a chain of disciplinary relationships running from the provincial government, to organizations dependent on government contracts, to frontline workers and to clients (schram et al. 2011; soss et al. 2011). within the context of this study, performance monitoring through cams attempts to enlist organizations and service providers in enacting a management culture in which pre-determined outcomes are tracked to reward or rebuke service providers on the basis of their performance. as recent ethnographies of neoliberal governmentality in employment service delivery demonstrate, however, technologies such as performance measurement do not completely determine what service providers do, given their many contradictions and inconsistencies (brady 2011; huot 2013; soss et al 2011). moving beyond textual based methods that often result in an account of the coherence and disciplinary effects of various forms of power, ethnographies of governmentality can capture the complex ways power operates including resistance, evasions and unintended effects of governmental techniques (brady 2011). through examining how service providers understand, enact, and negotiate npm within the contemporary policy, funding and labour market conditions in ontario, canada, this study highlights both the disciplinary effects and cracks associated with the interweaving of activation, austerity, and npm. “you got to make the numbers work" | 71 pointing out such cracks serves to reveal not only problematic ‘facts’, but also opens up the possibility “for doing things differently” (mcdonald & martson 2005:379). in many ways, this study’s findings support critical scholarship on npm that has suggested a tendency of performance management to prompt organizations, and front-line service providers, to make the numbers work in ways that may actually be contradictory to intended processes (grundy 2015a; soss et al. 2011). these findings illustrate how the articulation of managerialism in activation-based employment support services can lead to an emphasis on ‘making the numbers work’, such that service providers are disciplined to account for system-defined outcomes. however, given the narrow definition of successful outcomes, service providers simultaneously manage the numbers and exercise discretion so that they can achieve other outcomes that are preparatory for system-defined outcomes and are needed by clients in the complexity of everyday life. as the sector has become increasingly de-centralized (ilcan 2009), npm has been implemented in ways that download costs and insecurities to street level organizations and their employees (baines et al. 2014; phillips & levasseur 2004). in this study, the costs and insecurities have been work intensification, barriers to establishing collaborative relationships, engagement in unaccounted work to achieve outcomes not visible in performance metrics, a pervasive sense of precarity for service providers, and an uneasiness about perpetuating precarity for clients. the implementation of npm within the employment service sector has been purported as a means to enhance service delivery outcomes through promoting efficiencies, enhancing accountability, and ensuring a ‘work first’ orientation (brodkin 2015). however, highlighting how such measures can work against providing equitable, quality service, service providers underlined the ways in which the existing metrics and reporting demands set boundaries on who was served and what types of services could be provided. in particular, service providers’ descriptions of their daily negotiations at the street-level raise concerns regarding how 72 | austerity urbanism and the social economy such dynamics make it increasingly hard, as well as risky to service providers, to meet the needs of clients facing complex challenges such as long-term unemployment. at the same time, the 2012 ei reforms have further limited protections for persons experiencing labour market insecurities and have promoted the creation of a low-wage labour pool (grundy & laliberte rudman 2016; porter 2015), increasing entrenchment of particular types of workers in precarious labour. addressing these contradictory effects arising out of the misfit between client needs and the organization of services and income security is essential to promote systems that enable service providers to respond more effectively to the heterogeneous nature of persons experiencing unemployment, many of whom are not ‘work or training ready’ given their life circumstances and conditions. these findings also highlight the importance of going beyond an overall valuing of numerical performance targets to critical considerations of what ‘outcomes’ come to be valued and counted and who has a say in defining outcomes (brodkin 2011; grundy 2015a). although service providers did not negate the importance of outcomes related to education, training and return to employment, the findings demonstrate concerns regarding the limits of such outcomes. for example, setting such outcomes within a time-limited service frame appeared to promote a ‘work first’ orientation, even when this was associated with perpetuating a cycle of low-wage, precarious work. as well, it also promoted unaccounted work addressing a series of other outcomes viewed as successes by service providers, such as securing transportation or acquiring needed food and housing resources. without acknowledgement of the importance of such outcomes, and the work that is required to attain them, the needs of particular client groups may become increasingly marginalized and invisible and the working lives of service providers may increasingly be characterized by ethical conflict, stress and frustration. as argued by phillips and levasseur (2004), it is of concern that increasing pressures to conform to particular processes and outcomes implemented through npm accountability frameworks can “you got to make the numbers work" | 73 promote “thinking small and inside the box” (458) in ways that stifle risk taking and innovation in service delivery. moreover, service providers’ experiences of precarity, work intensification, and tensions between what they can do and what they think and feel they should do raise concerns about the effects of such work on service providers’ well-being and tenure in the employment support services sector (eikenberry & kluver 2004; curtis 2006). as brodie (2008) reminds us, “[p]reviously cultivated identities, political consensus, and cultural ideals...constitute obstacles to the promotion of a new governing order, and its particular way of representing and intervening” (148). drawing together governmentality and street-level bureaucracy literatures, this article examined both the implementation of, and resistance to, npm in employment service provision. the findings support an understanding of service providers as ‘situated agents’ who act in contexts shaped by npm as reflexive actors who interpret a range of structural, interactional and personal factors (prior & barnes 2001). in this study, service providers did express that npm strategies had set the rules of the game (brodkin 2011), but they simultaneously enacted discretion in ways that sometimes worked around, subverted and resisted such rules in creative and often hidden ways. positioning themselves as intimately experiencing and negotiating the clash of clients’ social needs and system pressures and boundaries on a daily basis (schram et al. 2010), these service providers described challenges that evolved out of having to work in a business model while valuing their work as counsellors. work-arounds often occurred when service providers experienced ethical tensions, or tensions between their own beliefs about service provision and their assessments of clients’ needs with the forms of service provision valued and accounted for within the systems in which they worked. however, while exercising discretion and engaging in workarounds that subverted limits in service, service providers often had to do so at a personal cost, such as doing work that was not accounted for, putting their own numbers ‘at risk’, enhancing work intensification, or 74 | austerity urbanism and the social economy drawing on their own personal time and resources to support clients. ultimately, within the context of a system guided by a logic of activation and imbued with npm, service provider discretion was limited by a sense of the precarity of their own jobs as well as the precarity of the organizations they worked through. as such, although the findings show moments of resistance and subversion, they also show the disciplinary power of npm upon service providers. theoretically, these findings point to the need for further studies that attend to how service level discretion happens within contexts of new managerialism as a means to expand upon lipksy’s original work that occurred in a historically different managerial context (ellis 2011). the implications of managerial reforms as a part of activationbased employment services have remained largely opaque to researchers because they cannot be apprehended through traditional sources of information such as formal policies, expenditure data, or outcome measures (brodkin, 2011). revealing such implications requires extending upon governmentality-informed textual analysis to examining how policies and techniques are experienced and negotiated in action (brady 2011; grundy 2015a; mcdonald & marston 2005). this study supports the contention that employing critical ethnography at the level of service provision is a fruitful way forward to illuminate the implications, and limitations, of the intersections of activation, austerity and npm. as one example, the findings support questioning the sustainability of systems shaped through npm and an activation logic which provoke mistrust and uncertainty as opposed to collaboration and shared responsibility, and which require service providers to transgress in order to ensure clients have access to foundational resources (phillips & levasseur 2004). in turn, there is a need for further attention to, and dialogue about, the types of partnership and management models that can support positive, collaborative relationships at various levels and more sustainable approaches to addressing accountability (baines et al. 2014; phillips & levasseur 2004). as such, further ethnographic studies of street-level organizations can add to a counter history of activation “you got to make the numbers work" | 75 (grundy 2015b) and thereby provide a “foundation for developing alternatives to it” (brodkin 2011: i.253). references baines, d., campey, j., cunningham, i. & shields, j. (2014). not profiting from precarity: the work of non-profit service delivery and the creation of precariousness. just labour: a canadian journal of work and society, 22, 74-93. block, s. (2015). a higher standard: the case for holding low-wage employers in ontario to a higher standard. policy alternatives, www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publication s/ontario%20office/2015/06/higher_standard.pdf boland. t. (2015). seeking a role: disciplining job seekers as actors in the labour market. work, employment and society, 1-18. brady, m. (2011). researching governmentalities through ethnography: the case of australian welfare reforms and programs for single parents. critical policy studies, 5(3), 264-282. brady, m. (2014). ethnographies of neoliberal govermentalities: from the neoliberal apparatus to neoliberalism and governmental assemblages. foucault studies, 18, 11-33. brodie, j. (2008). we are all equal now: contemporary gender politics in canada. feminist theory, 9(2), 145-164. brodkin, e.z. (2011). policy work: street-level organizations under new managerialism. journal of public administration, 21, i253-i277. brodkin, e.z. (2013). street-level organizations and the welfare state. in e.z. brodkin & g. marston, eds., work and the welfare state: street-level organizations and workfare policies. washington, d.c.: georgetown university press. cheek, j. (2004). at the margins? discourse analysis and qualitative research. qualitative health research. 14(8), 1140–1150. 76 | austerity urbanism and the social economy curtis, k.a. (2006). the impact of welfare state restructuring on the nonprofit and voluntary sector in canada and the us. toronto: ontario network of employment skills training projects. eikenberry, k. and kluver, j. (2004). the marketization of the nonprofit sector: civil society at risk? public administration review, 64 (2), 132-140. ellis, k. (2011). ‘street level bureaucracy’ revisited: the changing face of front-line discretion in adult social care in england. social policy & administration, 45(3), 221-244. employment ontario (2011). ministry of training, colleges and universities. employment and training division. www.tcet.com/assets/pdf/nrc/employment/1-2611/eo%20mtcu.pdf employment ontario information system – case management system (eois-cams). (2014). www.tcu.gov.on.ca/eng/eopg/eotransformation/eoiscams_training.html evans, b. & albo, g. (2010). permanent austerity: the politics of the canadian exit strategy from fiscal stimulus. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 7-28. farias, l. & laliberte rudman, d. (2014). a critical interpretive synthesis of the uptake of critical perspectives in occupational science. journal of occupational science, 23(1), 33-50. grundy, j. (2015a), performance measurement in canadian employment service delivery, 1996–2000, canadian public administration, 58 (1), 161–82. grundy, j. (2015b), statistical profiling of the unemployed, studies in political economy, 96, autumn, 48–68. grundy, j. & laliberte rudman, d. (2016). deciphering deservedness: canadian employment insurance reforms in historical “you got to make the numbers work" | 77 perspective. social policy & adminstration, doi: 10.1111/spol.12230 huot, s. (2013). francophone immigrant integration and neoliberal governance: the paradoxical role of community organizations. journal of occupational science, 20(4), 326-341. ilcan, s. (2009). privatizing responsibility: public sector reform under neoliberal government. canadian review of sociology, 46(3), 207-234. laliberte rudman, d. (2013). critical discourse analysis: adding a political dimension to inquiry. in m.p. cutchin & v.a. dickie,eds., transactional perspectives on occupation (pp.169181). new york: springer lassiter, l. e. (2005). the chicago guide to collaborative ethnography. chicago, il: university of chicago press. lassiter, l. e., & campbell, e. (2010). what will we have ethnography do? qualitative inquiry. 16(9), 757-767. lipsky, m. (1980/2010). street-level bureaucracy: dilemmas of the individual in public services. new york: russell sage foundation. mcdonald, c. & martson, g. (2005). workfare as welfare: governing unemployment in the advance liberal state. critical social policy, 25(3), 374-401. ministry of advanced education and skills development (maesd) (2016). ontario labour market statistics for april 2016.www.tcu.gov.on.ca/eng/labourmarket/currenttrends/ docs/monthly/201604.html ministry of training, colleges and universities. (2015). results-based plan briefing book, 2014-15. issn #17187095.www.tcu.gov.on.ca/eng/about/annualreport/2015rbp_en.p df phillips, s. & levasseur. k. (2004). the snakes and ladders of accountability: contradictions between contracting and collaboration for canada’s voluntary sector. canadian public administration, 47(4), 451-474. 78 | austerity urbanism and the social economy pollitt, c., & bouckaert, g. (2011). public management reform: a comparative analysis-new public management, governance, and the neo-weberian state. oxford university press. porter, a. austerity, social program restructuring, and the erosion of democracy: examining the 2012 employment insurance reforms. canadian review of social policy. 2015, 71 ( spring), 21-52. prior, d. & barnes, m. (2011). subverting social policy on the front line: agencies of resistance in the delivery of services. social policy & administration, 45(3), 264-279. schram, s.f., soss, j., houser, l., & fording, r.c. (2010). the third level of us welfare reform: governmentality under neoliberal paternalism. citizenship studies, 14(6), 739-754. soss, j., fording, r.c., & schram, s.f. (2011). disciplining the poor: neoliberal paternalism and the persistent power of race. chicago: university of chicago press. wood, d. (2015). hollowing out the middle, recasting federal workforce development programs under the harper government. policy alternatives, www.policyalternatives.ca/harper_record_20082015/11-harperrecord-wood.pdf “you got to make the numbers work" | 79 alternate routes the vanishing point: humanity, vision, and value theory in the age of economic globalization riaz tejani theorists of value in the marxian tradition have placed heavy emphasis on the metaphor of 'vision.' vision is the sensory experience that allows things to be converted into objects, collected items to be read as texts, and putative structures to be read as such by way of heuristic representation. additionally, vision allows nature to be converted into capital, exchange to be seen as participating in an 'economy', and representations of that economy to be read (i.e. per cultural studies) as 'texts'. the pursuit of vision as the inaugural metaphor in many "scattered speculations" on capital have, however, only partially completed the task of a marxian critique of modern social relations. to terminate at the conclusion that capital operates on a particular mode of looking and that it is the reproduction of this kind of vision that ideology keeps as its raison d'etre, is to neglect one remaining implication: to fail to envision the economy in the manner that allows its reproduction is to fall outside of 'society ' and thus humanity itself in this paper i capitulate three examples in which marxian theorists indulge the specular component of value theory. subsequently, i engage several authors who have illuminated the question of the production and reproduction of notions of value, notions that are in their different ways equated with culture, ideology, myth, or desire. finally, my discussion makes recourse to the 'crisis of value' as experienced at the global level. while economic globalization certainly does not instigate this crisis, it is one very important dimension of it. therefore, the kind of crisis wrought by capital encounters with various forms of local culture illustrates potential outcomes of the failure to 132 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs envision value according to standards necessary for capital's own reproduction. in sum, i wish to argue that the failure to espy value in accordance with the reproductive tenets of capital renders actors (who cannot then be called human subjects) beyond the pale of humanity. that is, to fail to adequately value is to fail to be subjectivized. it is not that value exists a forteriori in pristine form to be recognized by those prescient enough to be deemed human. it is that value becomes legible from very narrow subject positions, and thus the reproduction of value is inextricable from the reproduction of subjects. the import of vision is central to castree's (1997) argument about a possible "third way" between hard-line marxists' emphasis on systematic political economy and so-called postmodern marxists' emphasis on overdetermination and difference within any putatively closed system. castree's third way is to look at heterogeneity within value theory through a kind of incision made by spivak. the latter moves to view all economic representation as text, and thus as available to multiple readings (castree, 1997: 69). through the incision this makes on the surface of all value renderings, castree argues that the potential to envision value multiply is the basis for a synthesized modern/postmodern marxism. he states: this "envisioning of the economy" through value is, i argue, an essential epistemological move because it reaffirms vision as a key faculty for marxist economic theory at a time when the right has so effectively hidden the exploitative and despotic social relations of global capitalism from view. if marxism is to reclaim reality from the right then it must, i suggest, use this visualizing "power" of theory to show critically that the world is structured in this way rather than that (1997: 48). by taking on the question of value, castree tells us theorists can delineate by way of economy an entire cosmology that allows something to qualify as real or not. the very constructedness of reality is betrayed accordingly by the question of value. and, no doubt, the neo-liberal policies of those responsible for architecting globalized "free-markets" do indeed conceal the contradictions latent in the mode of production they volume 20, 2004 133 alternate routes seek to disseminate; a change in vantage is also a change in perception and thus castree is right in suggesting that the specular is the level on which to begin to unmask those contradictions. one problem with this argument, however, is its neglect to account for its own timing. what about the current moment makes such an argument possible? while several of the so-called postmodern marxists would likely say that the kernels of a postmodernist position can be located in marx's more humanist writings such as the economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844, there remains the fact that its elaboration did await some very fundamental changes in both the material and ideological arrangements of capitalist production. the most obvious implication of this caveat is that the historical inability for the "visualizing power" to curb or alter the progression to further stages in capital might be related to the consequences such re-envisioning would bring to its agents. castree's argument neglects to consider the ramifications of alternative visions; these might include social marginalization, politicolegal persecution, and gross violations of so-called human rights. the modern and the postmodern, then, may not be so easily reconciled. it is only relatively recently and specific culturally (even still rarely on that account) that one can find in broad daylight politico-economic dissent, by which i mean overt challenges to the organization of social reality. and it is likewise possible that the key concept of heterogeneity in postmodern theory is merely a multiplication of the existing subject positions (i.e. technologies of multiple selves in fashion, cyberspace, etc.) that have fostered the rise, spread, and evolution of capital social arrangements. i am not convinced, therefore, that the heterogeneity of value opened up with recourse to the specular provides a workable "third way" if by that we mean anything other than a reformist conciliation. additionally, though perhaps more capriciously, is the possibility that castree is able to commit such an elision because he rests too heavily on a red herring. by relying upon spivak, the most vociferous of speaking subalterns, he may transmit the impression that the subaltern is well disposed to offer a re-envisioning of value. without a doubt, certain subalterns are accordingly well endowed. these include most obviously the intellectual circle of the "subaltern studies collective" including guha, chatterjee, and others. but—and this is what makes their positions dubious ones from the start—the relatively powerless in whose name they attempt not to speak but to theorize are as powerless to cor134 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs roborate their spokes-intellectuals as they are to refute them. the subaltern, then, is not just a voiceless mass of third world subjects; it is a category partially reified by the efforts of those who theorize their condition. castree may be right in pointing toward the margins for a fresh look at the question of value, but he may not have found the margins he was looking for in the work of spivak. speaking in the name of the margins, subaltern studies has the outcome therefore of difference, of differing that which it means to represent (see derrida). a look at what i am calling the "real" margins—real perhaps in the sense that their inhabitants do not have the symbolic power of a spivak, guha, or chatterjee—may reveal actors with their own dissident notions of value and who are circumscribed outside the social field of a global system that entertains some but not all discussions on the notion of value (see lacan). what i am calling here the "guru-ification" of the apparent margins, the ascription of almost shaman-like prescience to the subaltern, may be counterproductive. a second issue with respect to vision in the functioning of capital was anticipated above in castree' s use of spivak on text. the representation of economy in textual and graphic form was central to the development of the capital system. this point is not my own, but rather comes from the interesting work of buck-morss (1995). representations of the capital economy passed through several phases including the 'physiocratic' in which the economy is depicted as an organic body that demands the same kind of homeostatic flows as a human or animal body (1995: 443-4). a product of these efforts was the representational form of economic maps or pictures. the importance of mapping lay in its effort to envision the economy as though from the outside looking down on, or in on it. buck-morss explains: because the economy is not found as an empirical object among other worldly things, in order for it to be "seen" by the human perceptual apparatus it has to undergo a process crucial for science, of representational mapping. this is doubling, but with a difference; the map shifts the point of view so that viewers can see the whole as if from the outside, in a way that allows them, from a specific position inside, to find their bearings. navigational maps were protovolume 20, 2004 135 alternate routes typical; mapping the economy was an outgrowth of this technique (1995: 440). this effort to depict an economy in graphic form better allowed for both its assessment and manipulation. representation of a supposed system (i.e. discourse) is, foucault reminds us, precursor to its domination. thus, the discourse employed by liberal economists in the capital system including such representational techniques were crucial to their ability to subordinate entire classes below the property-interested bourgeoisie. for this reason, the attention buck-morss directs to the representation of capital is crucial. nevertheless, representation of the whole system 'as if from without is not unique to the physiocrats and actually underpins much of social theory. levi-strauss' representative models of kinship, myth, and exchange, were at the foundation of structural anthropology and have been criticized by bourdieu (1977) for depicting systems objectively as if they were wholly apparent to the actors participating in them at the time of their participation. likewise, decades earlier, marx in capital introduced a structuralism whereby the economic subject could envision him/herself in a total system of sociality premised upon the arrangements of production. prior to that intervention the economic subject was simply one that, by its own labor or using the labor of others, produced. after capital the economic subject is envisioned to be one that reaps the material/social rewards of production—generally not the laborer her/ himself. however, the contradiction entailed by the non-producer serving as the subject of economy was also the target of a critical assertion that reality had become inverted, that the worker was in fact the real economic-historical subject. thus, the ability to envision the economy as a closed whole from without was central to the ideological struggles over material conditions. the plane on which the marx-inspired struggle began was indeed the specular; it was an all-new structural map of what capital looked like from outside in order to give agency to those caught on the inside. finally, in order for capital to convert raw material into use-values, it had to approach its material as in the first place "raw". it had to envision nature as an object contrary to the pre-modern visions of nature as subject alongside man. berger's (1980) text "why look at animals?" 136 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs describes the evolution of humankind's approach to the animal world (which we, significantly, sometimes call a "kingdom"). whereas in premodern times humans could as likely be the object of the animal's gaze as the subject gazing upon it, the advancement of biological sciences relieved the animal of its ability to look back upon humans and thus, depicted in art and in literature of the day, the animal is relegated to the "wilderness" further and further from everyday human practice (1980: 15). this distanciation of animals into the wild does not correspond to humankind's organic evolution out of a state of nature. rather, as culture becomes further rationalized, so too does a notion of nature as distinguishable from the domain of humans. thus, and berger makes this clear, "nature is also a value concept" (1980: 15). it is viewed as much through the prism of cultural institutions as society itself is. indeed, anthropologists such as mary douglas (1984) have made a strong case that in so-called primitive cosmologies there can be found symmetries in the way the social and the natural worlds are envisioned. thusly, indigenous tribes were found to metaphorize social hybridity (neither in group nor out group = pangolin) with hybridity found in the animal world around them, thus ascribing similar characteristics to transients of both spheres. with the development of western science premised upon cartesian rationalism that cleaved mind (culture) from body (nature), animals come to be objects of the latter order viewed by the former. in this way animals become materials for production in the twofold sense that they are both tools of operation and they are the crude matter on which production operates. berger writes, "in the first stages of the industrial revolution, animals were used as machines. as also were children. later, in the so-called post-industrial societies, they are treated as raw material. animals required for food are processed like manufactured commodities" (1980: 11). the way in which human beings looked upon nature, with a greater degree of scientism after the european enlightenment, allowed nature to be objectified in a way that represents a distinct rupture from any previous modes of production. but this shift is not as straightforward as i have so far recounted. in theory, the circumscription of "society" surrounded by a ring of objectified, raw nature should give rise to a universal notion of humanity: 'all that which is not animal, plant, or elemental, is human'. instead of this conclusion, the obj edification of nature is accompanied by two developments in the realm of human social relations one of which berger menvolume 20, 2004 137 alternate routes tions, the other he does not. the first is the rationalized obj edification of human labor. this development, often attributed to taylor's influential "time-motion studies", reduced the human body to a mechanical, productive instrument in the labor process. this reduction of the animal, which has a theoretical as well as economic history, is part of the same process as that by which men have been reduced to isolated productive and consuming units. indeed, during this period an approach to animals often prefigured an approach to man (1980: 1 1). this reduction of the human to machine in the labor process effectively divided the human population of modern societies into at least two categories that can both be placed under the heading "class" . one class, the proletariat, plays its role in the production process by reducing its movements, its bodily technique, to the bare minimum required to procure the commodity. the other, the owning bourgeoisie, is freed, i am suggesting, from physical production to pursue whatever body techniques its "culture" deems necessary and politic. historians of culture have portrayed the ramifications of this division, one of which is the rise of the "moral panic". in cases where the laboring class appears to engage in bodily movements that far exceed the normative minimum needed for optimum production—i am thinking for instance of swing, jazz, rock and roll, and hip hop dancing all of which arose first in the working class african-american population and were only later co-opted to the mainstream—a moral panic ensues and the bourgeois right swings in to descry the irrational behavior of its impecunious counterpart. meanwhile, the popularity of "charm schools" after the cold war in which bourgeois youth women were educated in the vestigial tradition of "manners" did not seek to minimize bodily movements at all. they rather had to rehabilitate behavioral patterns that american industrial society had already been forgetting—ostensibly for their futility. the hiatus between the moral panic arising from the excessive movements of one segment of the population on the one hand, and the intense efforts to rehabilitate baroque patterns of behavior for another segment on the other, is one 138 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs ramification of the shifting vision of the labor-yielding human body as an instrument in the production process. a second ramification of the obj edification of nature is more directly related to anthropology. the enumeration of surviving "archaic" societies (i.e. ones not yet colonized by the logics of capital or socialism) allowed administrators of the colonies and postcolonies to deem those societies as closer to nature and thus further from culture. i capitalize 'nature' and 'culture' here because from the vantage of an administrator in the modern era there would be only one nature and thus only one culture—the culture of the metropole. objectifying nature as the raw material of production, the logic of capital would more likely place societies 'closer in nature to nature' in the category of raw materials. in other words, and to take a less-than-hypothetical example, the indigenes of the amazonian rain forest might be considered by a lumber or mining firm as but another "natural" obstacle to the extraction of wealth from the feral environment. if the former example of movement and repression could be considered the embodiment of class, the one i mean to emphasize here is the embodiment of race. to be racialized in this sense, following the implication of berger's chapter, is to be placed on a continuum between culture and nature. members of both the working class and racialized groups had to be envisioned, objectified as such, and berger's chapter indicates that the beginnings of this process may have roots in the distanciation of humankind from animals. the preceding sections of this paper have explained that 1) the economy must be envisioned, 2) that this vision comes to be represented in the form of maps 'as if from the outside, and 3) that ways of looking allow both nature to be utilized as material for production, and groups of people to be excised from culture and relegated to a position close to nature. all three of these points suggest plainly that to be a subject of the capital economy is to be able to envision it properly. to envision it "properly" is not, in fact, to view it as the authors above have; they are themselves critics who, by pointing to specularity, mean to emphasize "social constructedness". rather, "properly." envisioning capital means not envisioning it at all, at least not in any way reflexive enough to tell the subject he/she is doing a specific job of looking. the subject is not to know that if he or she is a subject, it is only because of the commensurability between his or her way of looking and the capital system before his or her eyes. in this regard, it would seem volume 20, 2004 139 alternate routes that vision is merely a metaphor for the successful end result of ideological formation. but with reference to the empirical observation of nature, as well as the cartographic enterprise of the physiocrats, the above discussion shows the literal salience of vision in the articulation of value. ideology does not offer one the faculty of seeing, but rather conceals that act insofar as it is done properly. vision is not a subsidiary result of ideology, but that subjective act which ideology seeks to mask as objective. indeed, as althusser writes, "ideology has no history" (1971: 159). the affinity between a subject's way of looking and the object he or she gazes upon is thus beyond the scope of history, culture, sociality. how does this occur? several theorists provide answers. althusser himself draws attention to so-called isas, ideological state apparatuses which amount to social institutions such as the church, schools, and media, which serve to transmit "proper" visions of political-economy to supplicants in the form of culture. the isas are engaged in, put crudely, the reproduction of the conditions of production. they pass on the ruling ideology to subjects-in-formation using both the carrot and the stick — ideology and repression. althusser comments: ... it is essential to say that for their part the ideological state apparatuses function massively and predominantly by ideology, but they also function secondarily by repression, even if ultimately, but only ultimately, this is very attenuated and concealed, even symbolic. (there is no such thing as a purely ideological apparatus.) thus schools and churches use suitable methods of punishment, expulsion, selection, etc., to 'discipline' not only their shepherds, but also their flocks. the same is true of the family... .the same is true of the cultural is apparatus (censorship, among other things), etc (1971: 145). the pedagogical work of the isas is never completed. as althusser writes, even the shepherds are in need of constant discipline. by constantly forming subjects who are never fully formed, the apparatuses of ideology also ensure that their order cannot be upended. this ongoing process althusser calls interpellation. interpellation, as its etymology suggests, quite literally means the act of calling upon (1971: 1 74). but, it is the calling upon of subjects who do not come into existence until the 140 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs moment of their being called upon. hence the subject of the capital economy, the producer understood as either laborer or owner of the means of production, only exists as that subject from the moment he/she buys into the ideology that affirms his/her place in it. as it happens, the moment of "buying in" occurs very early on: from birth individuals are trained, educated, in the correct modes of recognizing value, recognizing abjection, etc. in the bourdieuvian sense, this amounts to the transmission/uptake of "social capital" (1977). in terms more familiar to this discussion, it amounts to an education in the proper ways of envisioning value. for instance, the instillation of "good taste" in a young west african woman, which might include an education on the fineries of luxury items such as champagne or gemstones, is also the instillation of value or "good values". she is from then on interpellated as a bourgeois subject not on arrival in the metropole france, but from the very beginning in the postcolony itself. it is precisely on these lines that colonialist ideology and bourgeois ideology overlap and often slip in and out of one another. ideology and the social apparatuses that transmit it to subjects always in formation are one manifestation of the reproduction of production. a second example is the commodity form itself. the product of capital, it has been argued, is not use-values, but rather surplus-value. usevalues have come and gone under other modalities of production, but under capital the extraction of surplus from the gross outcome of exchange means that something more than the production of use-value is required to ensure the ongoing growth of the system. commodity aesthetics, the term coined by haug (1986), are an answer to this problem. they correspond, not to actual use-values, but to the representation of use-values which is something quite different. by shifting the representation of a particular use-value, advertisers are able to multiply the markets available to consume their products. moreover, by altering the perceptions of use-value among potential consumers, advertisers also alter the material desires of the consuming population. this manipulation may or may not change any material objects, but it does change the "means of valorization" (1986: 15). says haug (1986: 16): from out of the contradictions of use-value and exchangevalue thus distributed between individuals, there appears a tendency time and again to modify the commodity-body. volume 20, 2004 141 alternate routes i.e. its use form. henceforth in all commodity production a double reality is produced: first the use-value; second and more important the appearance ofuse-value. this double reality makes it possible to manipulate the needs of a consuming population. through the technique of shifting representations of use-value, a process that evolves with the emergence of new media forms (see graham, 2002), consumer needs can be portrayed as better served by certain products over others. this gives the consumer a sense that one product may be able to satisfy his/her wants better than an identical one. notice, therefore, the duality to this manipulation. from a "reap' need, a fabricated one is created. haug states: manipulation could only be effective if it 'somehow' latched on to the objective interests of those being manipulated. 'the masses', i maintained, 'are being manipulated while pursuing their interests. manipulative phenomena, therefore, still speak the language of real needs that are now estranged and distorted beyond recognition. (1986: 6) haug's criticism here presupposes the existence of "real" needs, and then proceeds to account for the fabrication of illusory need. in the latter effort, his work is no doubt seminal. the difference between a use-value and the representation of use-value opens up, like spivak's textualization of economic forms, the possibility for critique on the basis of heterglossia. nevertheless, the first portion of his effort, the positing of pristine need prior to interruption by a "culture industry", does not sit well with other theorists of consumption. namely, baudrillard is against the notion of any 'real' need and insists rather on the ongoing emptiness of object desire. writing on galbraith, he criticizes the rationalism behind such statements as 'needs are in reality the fruits of production' (1998: 74). man, writes baudrillard, is not a rational economic actor; his economic activity is mediated by the unconscious. as such, need does not spring from the production process, it springs from the depths of the human psyche. baudrillard (1998:7677) stated: 142 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs ...outside the field of its objective function, where it is irreplaceable, outside the field of its denotation, the object becomes substitutable in a more or less unlimited way within the field of connotations, where it assumes signvalue. thus the washing machine serves as an appliance and acts as an element of prestige, comfort, etc. it is strictly this latter field that is the field of consumption. all kinds of other objects may be substituted here for the washing machine as signifying element. in the logic of signs, as in that of symbols, objects are no longer linked in any sense to a definite function or need. precisely because they are responding here to something different, which is either social logic or the logic of desire, for which they function as a shifting and unconscious field of signification. the substitutability of object for need means that desire is never satisfied. this introduces a problem in the argument that any "real" need can be posited. it also contributes to the point i am raising in this section: the reproduction of production is not only crucial to the progression of capital, it is crucial to the subjectivization of the individual. if the link between need and object can be so arbitrary as baudrillard suggests (arbitrary like the sign itself), then the fixation of certain objects to certain needs must be the result of a profound pedagogy generally invisible to the eye of the consumer-subject. ideology, says althusser, has no history. so too, then, is the object's need-satisfying capability without history. or rather, its history is concealed from view. again, the gravity of the specular. the bildung that forms the consuming subject is an education not only in proper ways of seeing, but also in the proper ways of not seeing. given the work required in the production of the economic subject, it would seem likely that cosmologies of value that oppose the logic of late capital would come under pressure from the broadening influence of global capital. however, there is some disagreement as to the outcome of conflict in the realm of value theory. yang (2000) contends with what she calls a "eurocentric" critique of global capital that considers it a kind of behemoth that arrives in new cultural spaces and destroys indigenous economy as well as community social relations. "i will suggest here," yang states, "that capitalism can be altered, subverted, or appropriated volume 20, 2004 143 alternate routes by, made to accommodate to, and even itself absorb preexisting socioeconomic forms" (2000: 481). this argument is one of "economic hybridity", the idea that systems as disparate as market economy and "ritual expenditure"—which yang describes is the case of wenzhou province china—can form a dialectical third and sustain an altogether distinct form of economy. she states: rather than the unidirectional penetration of global capitalism, what has been unfolding in post-mao rural wenzhou is a new phase of economic hybridization in which an interrupted native tradition of household and market economy and the introduction of overseas capitalism have released the forces of a ritual economy which had been curtailed and almost abolished in the maoist era. in this new hybrid one can faintly detect a logic of peasant economy, inflecting the market economy with its distinctive voice and standpoint and helping to unmask and undermine the larger economy's hegemonic principles (2001 : 486). according to this argument the opposition between two modes of valuation, one premised upon the exchangeability of goods in a market, the other premised upon the ritual destruction of goods in ceremony, are in the end not contradictory but complementary. for yang, the conflict over value gives rise to a hybridized notion of value that allows the subject of wenzhou culture to coexist as a capital economy subject. but, just how generalizable is this conclusion? is there no instance in which the influx of capital logic to non-western spaces yields conflict that is not so easily reconciled? the case of wenzhou china has its own specifics that make it especially suited for fusion with the market economy. in india, by contrast, despite the longstanding effort to liberalize the economy, the influence of capital has been markedly destructive. several south asian public intellectuals have commented on the toll wrought by western economy on the indian population. the environmental activists vendana shiva 144 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs explains, for instance, that starvation is the result of market arrangements on the subcontinent. starting with globalization and trade liberalization pressures, india has been prevented from allowing food to reach its people. the government expenditure involved in moving grain around the country from areas that produce lots to areas that don't produce as much has been treated as a subsidy that must go. unfortunately, as a result of this, government expenditure has decreased because the world bank, that miraculously made 250 million indians disappear from being poor and devised a whole new poverty line by creating a new calculus that made poverty disappear, even though it hadn't, changed the universal right to access to food into a targeted scheme (2001). the question regarding access to food is, of course, whether it is or is not a universal right. while it cannot be argued that the "indian subjectivity" is one that views access to food a universal right—indeed there is no such subjectivity except as a form nationalist ideology—it is true that the privatization of crucial food stockpiles was a result of world bank policy. here, the opposition emerges between western schemes for regulating economic exchange, and the local need for subsistence that demands exchange be treated differently; the poor and starving, after all, are not in a position to enter a bidding war over subsistence resources. a second impact of the western economic system on india is the abatement of diversity in the marketplace. patenting schemes described by shiva and her counterpart arundathi roy have taken relatively simple, agricultural products and turned them into corporate intellectual property. in a country as populous as india, monopolizing a natural resource holds potentially lucrative power. but it is also a cooptation of local culture: there is such grandeur in india and so much beauty. i don't know whether they can kill it. i want to think they can't. i don't think there is anything as beautiful as a sari. volume 20, 2004 145 alternate routes can you kill it? can you corporatize a sari? why should multinationals be allowed to come in and try to patent basmati rice? people prefer to eat roti and idlis and dosas rather than mcdonald's burgers. just before i came to the u.s., i went to a market in delhi. there was a whole plate of dal, lentils. tears came to my eyes. today, that's all it takes to make you cry, to look at all the kinds of dal and rice that there are, and to think that they don't want this to exist (roy, 2003). this process whereby western companies have patented third world resources is confronted by the activism of people like shiva and roy. but, it is related more generally to the encounter between two or more cosmologies of value. the corporate interests enter with their own notions of value that say a natural resource—seeds, water, mineral—can be made into private property and sold back to the people who depend on them. the local cosmology is one that sees the value of these resources in precisely their common, public nature. while i have done no original ethnographic work to support the last statement, it is one that has been written of in the context of many indigenous cultural struggles across the world. in many cases, the inability of indigenous peoples (here i am lumping indians with indigenes but with awareness) to value their resources in accordance with the logic of capital has led to the dehumanization of those peoples. american indians, to take one more example, experienced expulsion from their native lands on the basis that they could not convert that land into viable, surplus wealth. finally, in the late 20 th century, once first nations realized casino gaming could provide them with a last ditch source of income, much of the north american majority was perturbed by the sight of these ex-humans making a late entry into the "great equalizer" of market economics. the crisis of value on the global scale results—and this is a historically longstanding process—in the dehumanization of local populations unable to adhere to the cosmology of value required for the reproduction of capital. thus a turn to reconcile modern with postmodern marxism by considering the subaltern must realize that the erasure of most subalterns, save for the few (call them hybrid 'subaltern-elites') who are able to at least negotiate western value systems, precludes them from ever speaking on the matter. thus, value does not correspond to a substance 146 volume 20, 2004 chemins alternatifs or a product. it is a positioning of the subject. the subject, in turn, is brought into existence through the education in and recognition of specific modes of value. the individual who ceases or fails to recognize value where it lies in specific contexts—though the context of capital is growing less and less specific—also ceases or fails to be a human unless that context can sustain radical dissent from its predicative culture. such a conclusion has stark implications for the study of human rights: how we even understand the term "human" is tied to a whole string of other issues. the economy then, as mauss once so presciently suggested, is indeed a total system. it forms the basis on which humanity itself stands to gaze upon all its others. references cited baudrillard, jean.(1998) the consumer society: myths and structures. london: sage. berger, john. (1980) about looking. new york: pantheon books. bourdieu, pierre. (1977) outline of a theory of practice, trans. richard nice, new york cambridge university press. buck-morss, susan. (1995) "envisioning capital: political economy on display," critical inquiry, winter, vol. 21, no. 2. castree, noel. (1997) "invisible leviathan: speculations on marx, spivak, and the question of value," rethinking marxism, vol. 9, no. 2. douglas, mary. (2002) purity and danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo, new york: routledge. graham, phil. (2002) "hypercapitalism: language, new media and social perceptions of value," discourse and society, vol. 13(2), 227-249. haug, w. f. (1986) critique of commodity aesthetics: appearance, sexuality, and advertising in capitalist society, trans. robert bock, minneapolis: university of minnesota press. roy, arundhati. (2001) "arundhati roy: the progressive interview," the progressive, april 2001. volume 20, 2004 147 alternate routes shiva, vendana. (1993) "monocultures of the mind: biodiversity, biotechnology and agriculture" third world network, united kingdom: penang and zed press. yang, mayfair mei-hui. (2000) "putting global capitalism in its place: economic hybridity, bataille, and ritual expenditure," current anthropology, vol. 41, no. 4, aug. 2000. 14x volume 20, 2004 art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 279 art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics rebecca garrett1 and liza kim jackson2 precaria we are aware of recent contributions to an ongoing conversation about the politics of precarity that arise from the intensifying devaluation of the labour of cultural workers: aruna d’souza’s dying of exposure, yasmin nair’s scabs: academics and others who write for free, and barbara ehrenreich’s in america, only the rich can afford to write about poverty. each of these authors comment on the increasing lack of job security and pay for their work as writers, and point out that only people with other income sources can really afford to write for free. a similar situation exists for other cultural workers, including artists such as ourselves. our involvement in this discussion took a turn with an invitation to participate in mayworks3 windsor in 2012, where we presented a performative relational video screening workshop called homunculus: occupy y/our life. we continued the conversation in 2013 with a subsequent work: abundant future: interactive performative art philosophy embodied value debate exchange. both projects ran up against and tangled with labour, value, art, embodiment, academic politics, and our precarity as artists within a neoliberal economy. artists have always lived in the land of precaria. however, in the 1970’s a generation of canadian artists fought for and won respect for artist’s work and recognition for the necessity to remunerate artist’s labour. while this did not impact all of the art world, gains were achieved 1 rebecca garrett is a toronto based artist whose community based video projects and experimental videos and installations have been exhibited and/or screened at numerous venues in canada and abroad. garrett’s use of media is situation specific and she has worked collaboratively and/or collectively with a number of groups and individuals in canada, usa, zimbabwe and kenya. 2 liza kim jackson is a community artist and phd candidate at york university in environmental studies. she researches social praxis art as a method to resist and survive gentrification and broader issues of poverty, homelessness and violence under capitalist colonialism. 3 mayworks festival of working people and the arts is a multi-disciplinary arts festival that celebrates working class culture. “founded in 1986 by the labour arts media committee of the toronto and york region labour council, mayworks is canada’s largest and oldest labour arts festival.” (mayworks, n.d.). 280 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages in key sectors of government and labour.4 canada was the first country to instigate artists’ exhibition fees and to make the fair payment of artists’ labour a funding requirement. has neoliberalism threatened these gains? our experience with mayworks would suggest that it has. mayworks, as a labour arts festival, “was built on the premise that workers and artists share a common struggle for decent wages, healthy working conditions and a living culture... mayworks festival is fully committed to paying artists’ fees.” (mayworks, n.d.). and so we just assumed that we would receive artists’ fees. however, the response to our eleventh hour query regarding payment tells a now familiar story about the erosion of these kinds of gains: “sorry, i meant to discuss this with you but in the excitement it slipped my mind. mayworks here runs strictly on volunteer labour. what little money the committee raises goes to advertising. but i meant to tell you to list your expenses (the car, materials, cake and whatnot) and i’ll reimburse you, and i’ll extract the $ from the committee at a later date. hope that’s ok.”5 these are the strange economics that occur in the context of relations of respect, solidarity, mutual support, and the desire to collaborate and share knowledge between the mayworks representative and us, the artists. suddenly these relations shift into something that at the same time leads us dangerously close to a charitable volunteerism we had not agreed to. this situation brings up a pile of uncomfortable questions that need to remain unasked in order for this cultural economy to sustain itself. art garrett and jackson share settler ancestry, and within a wider social and national context, the advantages and privileges of material accumulation at the expense of the indigenous peoples and their resources locally and globally, and the cultural legacy of the 1950’s postwar economy. we have also shared experiences of precarity/scarcity from an early age. we both received art educations that were structured through european power, and aspects of both of our work have been formed in reaction to that history. working within and outside the art world/institutions/economies, we recognize the importance of a broader creative sociality and output than what is generally termed the contemporary art 4 in 1976, due to canadian artists’ representation/le front des artistes canadiens (carfac) activism, canada became the first country to pay exhibition fees to artists, adopting it as a funding requirement for public galleries by the canada council. in 1988, carfac’s lobbying resulted in the federal copyright act amendment. the act recognized artists as the primary producers of culture, and gives artists legal entitlement to exhibition and other fees (carfac, n.d.). 5 correspondence between jeff noonan and rebecca garrett, 2012. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 281 world and the valorized forms that art takes within the capitalist paradigm. we feel that our position as both privileged and at the same time experiencing class (and other) oppressions complicates our relationship to the question of precarity. art is completely and thoroughly contentious. art is embodied, phenomenological and intersubjective. it registers across the senses and can include the subjective and the particular, the historically specific, in relation to the world. despite the assertion that the meaning of a work of art resides autonomously in the art object, art, like everything else, is always relational in its production, its operations and its value within the world/context in which it is accorded meaning. art is embedded in cultural, class, geographical, material and embodied networks. in the contextual specificities of life, art has the potential to reveal, expose, challenge and engage y represent, and at the same time, can hold contradiction without forcing or demanding a resolution. we are artists and women who perform work. we perform in urban social settings. we perform again in the toronto academic and/or art worlds. we each have our own individual practices as well as our collaborative work together and with other diverse communities. in our practices we generally do not take public space without those with whom we work present. in this text, we are speaking to our experiences as individual artists engaged in a multiplicity of practices on the specific issue of artists and precarious labour. every day we grapple with the problem of how our bodies, labour and creative desires are understood, involved and impacted on living within neoliberal capitalism. our work is about realizing forms of “community”: not utopic community, but necessary community – communities as recognition of interdependent embodiments. these are communities of endurance and resistance to poverty, colonialism, prison, homelessness, gentrification and police violence. like many others in precaria, we inhabit and work between many different worlds, doing what we need to do to get by, following parallel and interweaving paths, patching together sustenance and budgets. we work from locations that are frequently outside dominant economies, institutions and art streams, continually negotiating the terms of engagement, knowledge, and value. in a neoliberal climate of devalorized labour, our labour power and our bodies are taken for granted and exploited, often in gendered ways that we object to. we very often work for free as artists in communities because some things that are necessary for our survival, and that we care about, are not considered value producing within capitalism. 282 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages dark light under austerity, we document increases in police and security guard violence – the policing of property and rhetoric of ‘safety’ in increasingly corporatized and bourgeoisified public spaces experienced by our colleagues on a daily basis. mbembe (2003) articulates necropolitics as a zone of death, or living death, created by economic and political dispossession and social abandonment. necropolitics is defined by mcintyre and nast (2011, 1472) as: “racialized hyper-exploitation determined via a calculus of death.” not all bodies are treated the same. while normative bourgeois bodies (who perform whiteness and extend themselves through space transnationally via gentrification, accumulation by dispossession and war) are supported and their lives extended, poor, marginalized and othered bodies (most often a complex of racialized, gendered, disabled, indigenous, trans, queer) are seen as a threat, as well as resource, to bourgeois cultural, economic and political dominance. in a situation where the social safety net is continually cut back, austerity provides a weapon against the peoples’ communities on the ground. as elizabeth povinelli (2011, 22) says: "new source: dark light video still, 2013. mashed economies and monday art group, featuring hazel bell koski. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 283 semi-public and secret ways of making die have their counterpart in market disciplines. any form of life that is not organized on the basis of market values is characterized as a potential security risk." in the context of economic and state attacks we are forced to rely more and more on each other in order to survive, and so the problem of equitable relations becomes integral to our art making practice. we work with video in urban communities where people are largely excluded from the labour market and where informal economic exchanges and social reproduction comprise much of the labour performed. the emphasis of these projects is on embodied, local and lived experience: knowledge that is produced by and within communities. the conditions of work are the contingent situations of communities trying to enact democratic participation and self-representation with scant resources and while under attack. our practices aim to reflect the knowledge of community members back to the community in a way that produces agency and ownership of the modes of representation. this is especially important in these spaces because marginalized folks are subject to forms of symbolic violence in the way they are represented (or discounted) by media, academics and artists, who either ignore the multiple structural reasons for poverty and oppression or fetishize and romanticize the victim and their circumstances. in either case, a distance from messy engagements is maintained. we do this work politically to cultivate just and equitable exchange relations, a redistributive ethos within fluxing privilege/oppression positionalities, an alternate symbolic economy that extends into highly significant material concerns. veneer “historically the suffering of artists is as interesting as their work. apparently, the public likes its artists to be poor. history bears this out. there is even a thirst for the suffering artist as a kind of product in and of itself. the musical rent springs to mind but there have always been media glamorizations of the artist in the garret. the sufferings of artists whether physical or mental, have always been marketable” (miller, 2006, 125-6). artists are the least paid of the so-called professions and generally live under the poverty line. artists dangle between self-employment, casual contract work, artists’ grants, and the very remote possibility of success on the art market (a star system that promotes exceptionalism). the fact is that artists must work for free in order to pay their dues, never 284 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages knowing if they will ever be able to make a living. this is the norm and what most in the art world believe will produce the most excellence in the field. in this way the art world works in sync with the structures of neoliberal late capitalist power and under a condition of extreme surplus value extraction. artists don’t just exist within neoliberal economics. in the european tradition, a certain mythology of the artist is put to work propping up the iconic bourgeois hero who today morphs into the ideal neoliberal subject: the autonomous individual whose independence, desire for liberty, flexible life of self-expression and consumption, personal success and lack of accountability, cannot be tamed by a trade union. in short, the ultimate self-exploiting individual whose personal fulfillment takes priority over social responsibility. actual living artists are increasingly joined by working people whose labour value has been restructured and devalued by neoliberal economics: sessionals, contract and part time workers in all sectors, as well as fully employed people who are forced to work unpaid overtime. and now everyone is expected to bring their creativity to work for minimum insecure wages. art mirrors, or expresses in a concentrated form, the unfair conditions of capitalism in the neoliberal era. even when artists make it into that elite class of those who do manage to sell their work, problems of market exploitation arise. unlike with the commodity form where labour is consigned to the hidden abode, with art, both the art object and the artist are fetishized on the market. the artist’s brand name continues to add surplus value to the art, while the artist does not receive any percentage of future sales or exhibits of their work. as goldberg (2014, n.p.) notes: “the seemingly unstoppable u.s. [art] market grew at a rate of 10% year-on-year to a total of $21.1 billion in sales. this is mostly thanks to its business-friendly regulatory environment, reasonable tax rates for buyers, tax advantages for sellers, favourable trade regulations, and first-sale doctrine – meaning artists cannot control or profit from subsequent sales.” the mythical persona of the art star and their signature is the integral structuring component of the art economy. we observe the art market operating when well known american artist richard prince recently appropriated another (female) artist’s instagram photos, and created prints which he put his name on and sold for $90,000. instead of suing prince, the artists’ response was to sell her original prints of the same work online for $90 each in order to devalue the status or value of “his” works on the market. art works are bundled into portfolios and traded as futures. as max haiven (2011) notes, fictitious capital has an investment in maintaining art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 285 relations and systems of value and controlling the future in order to protect investments. collectors pay large sums for prince’s work with the expectation that it will increase in value. in order to protect the value of their investment, they must also defend the value system out of which the art object was created, namely, that of the bourgeois male subject who feels entitled to appropriate young women’s cultural production. the use value of the art object, the socially relevant meaning in its form, is a veneer over its fetish form. the art object doubles as an investment receipt, a form of private property purchased by an investor, a bond that is backed by the symbolic and cultural value system of hierarchized capitalist relations. when art enters the marketplace its transformative potential is extinguished. artists are imbricated in other markets too: in the gentrification of neighbourhoods that they are then priced out of to make room for condo lofts for the service workers to the global city elites. globalizing/gentrifying cities such as toronto work with corporations to host spectacularized festivals that take advantage of artists who are desperate for exposure in order to entertain the city’s cosmopolites and boost the city’s symbolic capital as a centre for culture. heather mclean (2010, 7) writes: “before we race out to pound the pavement to save festivals promising ‘world class’ artists, red carpet openings, and overall ‘revitalization’ with culture, we need to stop and think about the causalities of corporate friendly arts policies that are being framed as the ‘progressive’ and only option. the ‘restructured’ ago workers and underfunded grassroots arts spaces are solemn reminders that ‘creative cities’ policies have been a vehicle for accumulation by cultural entrepreneurs and for advertising by major corporations, but no answer for a democratic and inclusive arts policy...they promote neoliberal artistic competition and economic development at the expense of under-funded, often unpaid workers and artists as well as residents displaced by the steady advance of gentrification promoted by the ‘creative cities’ policy agenda.” there’s nothing like “slumming” it with some weekend drunks and starving artists, many from really oppressed communities, to make one feel culturally in touch – or maybe you’re doing research for your next ad campaign. there’s a neoliberal aesthetic of the art spectacle that has big funding, government and corporate, that supports jet setting large-scale art projects that can also be read as both anti-social and un-ecological. in 286 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages practice, these capital motivated cultural tours are often sites of macroviolence performed against individual women's bodies, as is the case in other problematic spaces such as sports, extractive industries and war zones. unless we understand and critique art as imbricated in the totality of cultural/economic relations we cannot understand its potential as a radical form. cages on october 4-5, 2014 a group of people set out to intersect the mass spectacle of nuit blanche in various locations in downtown toronto with a guerrilla mobile projection. test#1:cages was a project by media activists, and individuals who were arrested during the g20 in 2010. test#1:cages linked the policing of the g20 to ongoing everyday violence perpetrated against vulnerable communities by the state security apparatus. footage taken by the police of the inside of the temporary cells or cages was acquired using a two year freedom of information process during the making of the film what world do you live in? which documented the illegal incarceration of gabriel jacobs, one of the many innocent citizens source: test#1: cages: the site of the arrest of gabriel jacobs, the test#collective, october 4, 2014. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 287 arrested. test#1:cages moved across multiple locations where violations occurred, jogging public memory of events that have been erased or forgotten, giving witness to violent police tactics and a concerted effort to violate the civil rights of dissenting citizens. the video projections incorporated images and testimony of the assault, mass arrest and brutal incarceration of citizens during the largest mass arrests in canadian history. labour “we offer an experiment in systems of art-exchange that do not emphasize financial capital, but rather celebrate abundance and connection. we believe that art is not a commodity for speculation but rather a fundamental part of the commons, inherited and shared by all.” (occupy museums, 2012, n.p.) the necessity to sell y/our labour to survive is taken for granted. the violent histories of colonization and the privatization of land that created these conditions are remembered only vaguely. we are given money in exchange for our alienation. and what of money? this form of measurement that abstracts and forces equivalences, values and devalues our exchange relations with increasing arbitrariness. are wages ever an adequate measures of our life energies and labour investments? the bottom line is that being forced to sell ones’ labour to survive, whether it is art labour or flipping burgers, is a violence period. we agree that the concept of labour needs to be extended well beyond the paid employment that someone might offer us (ferguson, 2008; gibson-graham, 2008; kuokkanen, 2011) (which might also be something quite different than what our communities actually need, or what we are inspired to do or contribute), to everything we do in life to sustain communities. a de-alienated labour relates to desire and the things that people have to offer, and what they want to do in the world. as max haiven (2011) points out, culture and economics are both also spheres of imagination, belief, values and ethics. we want to see labour as the essential creative moment: economy as in weaving a social fabric, an interdependent drive to create, share and exist. we can’t live on a reductive view of economics as capitalist exchange, it does not satisfy, it does not feed or give enough. at the edge of capitalism, in its cracks and crevices, at home after work, among friends and community members, unpaid labour is performed. alongside historical forms of gendered social reproduction labour, housework and childrearing, is everything else that we need to live, or the most important things, or the things that actually 288 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages give us pleasure that we love to do. the incredible output of artists fits in with this understanding of social reproduction labour as an unpaid form that both supports capitalism and is a basis for resistance, of imagined new worlds. this is where we are now. not only do we often do this work for free, in many instances we actually pay to do this work. yup, that’s what we said. we redistribute the dollars that come into our possession towards community resistance. in the film beauty and truth, alice walker states: “activism is the rent i pay for living on the planet.” this is a different kind of exchange that’s more important to us than the possibility of our individual monetary advancement into the middle class. escaping into privilege might always be an option for some of us, but it also feels true that the more we participate in community cultural economics of informal exchange the farther we move from this possibility. we conceptualize “just relations” as a critique of systemic privilege within capitalist colonialism. there is no correct position: it’s a practice, a concept, a tradition of engagement; it’s an ethic. just relations are not defined in a normative, legalistic sense: resistance to hierarchization of embodiments takes place both in response to powerful economic and political structures and as they manifest within our struggnles. we place ourselves within a history of liberation thought and practice. our own genealogies include working out of traditions of participatory engaged direct cinema, community arts, and our long time involvement in overlapping liberation movements and decolonizing struggles, including: afrikan decolonizing struggles, palestinian resistance, indigenous rights, prison abolition, punk anarchist feminism, disability activism, liberation theology, anti-imperialist, anti-apartheid, anti-poverty, housing, and squatting movements. as people with working class experience we have occasionally engaged in the union movement; however, we mostly identify and draw from our association with more informal sectors. many of these movements include groups that have been on the forefront of organizing with women, queer, working class, poor and disabled folks within larger community identifications. we primarily draw inspiration from those in low income communities with whom we work. in our experience, there is an ethic and culture of sharing that we step into and take direction from – it’s not a big deal – it’s just getting by. during a community meeting in a social housing complex a neighbour pokes her head in the door to check that everyone has enough to eat since it is a week before cheque day and she is concerned that people don’t have enough money to buy food. this is also a critique that models on a local and interpersonal scale what needs to art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 289 happen on a global economic scale. we regard this redistributive aspect of our work to have political import, as prefigurative of alternative economies. in contrast to the neoliberal belief in the central competitiveness of humans, it is our belief that human society has always been inherently cooperative in order to survive and thrive (alfred, 2005; anzaldúa, 1987; kuokkanen, 2011; la duke, 2005; lappé, 2011; mann, 2005; marx, 1988; mohanty, 2010; roy, 2011; shiva, 1992; simpson, 2004). exchange the performative workshop abundant future (2013) was held at cool hand of a girl in toronto. abundant future was an effort to engage questions and extend a conversation concerning artists’ labour and value that arose at the mayworks windsor 2012 performance, homunculus: occupy y/our body. source: abundant future: interactive performative art philosophy embodied value debate exchange. mashed economies. 290 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages an excerpt from the performance script reads: we have chosen a selection of organs to represent our will or volition or passion or investment of caring deeply. we are trying to understand our embodiment within capitalism and to questions about relations between theory, embodiment and social practice. this is deeply personal and at the same time inherently social. these organs function as symbolic metaphors at the same time as they are filtering out toxins, pumping our blood, letting us breathe. our organs can be seen as media membranes of exchange with the environment. list: heart, brain, lungs, adrenal glands, kidneys, liver, phallus, ovaries… these organ presented here as cakes represent for us the conflicted conditions in which our bodies exist in trying to nourish ourselves in a society with heavily industrialized food production. we recognize the material implications of words. we recognize the material. there are aspects of the body that cannot be spoken. we make material forms to be able to voice things that we can't say with words. once we began investing in the stories of our own organs, they quickly led us to stories that we encountered through the news media. we relate to all these stories, our own and those of others, as metaphor or dilemma. we respond to these stories from another location in a landscape of uneven development by which our bodies are differentially supported/disciplined and yet our organs are connected across space through economy. the body asserts itself in living. does the body speak through living? we are now going to create an opportunity for exchange by auctioning off the organ cakes. these cakes took approximately 10 hours each of our labour power, and about $60 in raw materials. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 291 the audience can bid with any kind of currency. it can be money, labour power, an in kind exchange, an object, art work...whatever is considered fair or affordable. source: abundant future: interactive performative art philosophy embodied value debate exchange: vegan, gluten free brain cake exchanged for labour power. 292 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages what world? “bourgeois subjects, the new citizens of the nation-state, knew themselves as respectable and civilized largely through a spatial separation from those deemed to be degenerate and uncivilized. degenerate spaces (slums, colonies) and the bodies of prostitutes were known as zones of disorder, filth and immorality. the inhabitants of such zones were invariably racialized, evacuated from the category human, and denied the equality so fundamental to liberal states.” (razack, 2000, 116-117). we are always thinking about the spaces that we come from, spaces that are down a gravel road or the side of a field, alleyways that people don’t see, the corners of parks and abandoned industry. if you walked through the city and then talked about your trip, you wouldn't include any of these spaces. spaces beyond the law and beyond regulation where women always get fucked over. spaces of police violence, of informality, of homelessness and rough living which are also spaces of refuge, wild urban nature, community and queerness. interconnected social and geographic spaces that mirror society’s indifference and are regarded as waste, as potential, as “terra nullius” – as prior to and in need of bourgeois development. source: what world do you live in? community video by rebecca garrett and the sanctuary community, 90 min, 2014. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 293 the work we do in these social spaces (and more interconnected public spaces such as shelters, drop-ins and city parks) has difficulty registering in the larger world for a number of reasons. there is a persistent tendency to see the work we do in such spaces as volunteer or charitable labour. that definition just doesn't fit, and the moral ladenness of the category offends. in fact, it is a term that covers over and keeps at a safe distance the reality and the challenge of the possibility of working radically across difference. what is the value of art made by, with and for communities of endurance and resistance? the collective output of the communities in which we work produces its own aesthetic, language and knowledge form that speaks to the conditions of social abandonment under which we create. we re-create the community in every instance, through the very complex labour we perform. ideas, activities, material engagements and exchanges, connections with others, daily life chatter, knowledge, gesture, nurturing – all these things are taking place as praxis. reducing this complex to a reading of the discrete art object is not adequate. the reproduction and cultural labour of mending and tending the social fabric under conditions of necropolitics is devalorized in the art, activist and academic worlds. people don't want to have to actually encounter and engage oppression up close on the daily life street level. because the art world (and academia) is dominated by conceptual aesthetics, the embodied and experiential knowledge and creativity of the rest are negated. the farther one travels away from the contemporary art/academic/activist discourse (towards those abandoned, neglected social spaces) the more illegible the work becomes, and the more illegible you become to those who are distributing the money, the more vulnerable you become to neoliberalism. the segregation of activism, art and academia from community is unforgivable. we need a radical redistributive cultural economics to support all the labour that people do, artists and non-arts identified folks alike. a redistribution that doesn’t depend on over work, overproduction and overconsumption. a redistribution that is ecological and considers embodied difference. such redistribution must occur through public mechanisms that recognize the inherent sociality of the economy, and not through private or corporate avenues that maintain those hierarchies by which capitalists have gained their monetary and political power. we don’t know if the state can be transformed, but we do know that change necessarily happens from the community up. 294 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages disclaimer we believe that it is important to talk about the economics under which we work including that we are writing this piece for free. we are assuming that you, dear reader, may in some way also be implicated in and benefitting from the vast institutional economy of which this journal is surely a part. we would like you to consider the value of this writing within an institutional economy and look at it upside the economies of art we have presented. as d’aruna asks: is your ability to write and publish for free based on your privilege as a paid academic? can this writing be transformative within the contradictory context in which we work? “if you can’t see unpaid writing as part of the neoliberal machinery of affective exploitation, you should stop writing about its evils. nothing, nothing that you ever write for free, about the problems of our time, including relentless war, the exploitation of workers, queer or trans politics, the banking system, or the prison industrial complex will ever be valid, until you confront your own role as a source: what world do you live in? community video by rebecca garrett and the sanctuary community, 90 min, 2014. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 295 neoliberal. until then, you're just another hypocrite…and just another scab.” (nair, 2014) nair offers a critique of people who can afford to write or make art for free. ehrenreich points out that those who could be writing about poverty and social justice issues because they know them first hand, can’t afford to write because they are busting their asses at low wage jobs. and so we appear to have a situation where the whole epistemological layer of lived experience is being evacuated from the discourse, before it properly arrives; and where activist writing (and the same can be said for art) slides into neoliberal muck. nair and d'aruna talk about their oppression in relation to privilege and ehrenreich discusses her position as privileged in relation to those with more dire class oppression. this discussion reflects a competitive and comparative regard of privileges as a logic of neoliberalism that obscures the issue of just relations that requires us to work according to a redistributive ethic in a larger economic context. we are proposing a different future. nair is right that under capitalism, complicity with veneer politics is our condition. however, working and making art is also part of our resistance struggle, part of our survival, and thus we can’t go on strike or stage a refusal. where do we sit as artists, and here as authors, in this complex of relationality to precarious labour, paid and not? this is the contradiction. 296 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages source: abundant future: interactive performative art philosophy embodied value debate exchange. mashed economies, 2012. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 297 references alfred, t. and corntassel, j. 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(2010). cartographies of knowledge and power: transnational feminism as radical praxis. in richa nagar and amanda swarr, eds., critical collaborations: transnational feminist practice (pp. 23-45). new york: suny press. nair, y. (2014). scabs, academics and others who write free. yasminnair.net, http://www.yasminnair.net/content/scabs-academicsand-others-who-write-free art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 299 nair, y. (2009). make art! change the world! starve!: the fallacy of art as social justice – part i. jasminnair.net, http://www.yasminnair.net/content/make-art-change-world-starvefallacy-art-social-justice-–-part-i occupy museums. (2012). open call: free art for fair exchange at the 2012 armoury show. new york. http://occupymuseums.org/index.php/actions/36-open-call-armory povinelli, e. (2011). economies of abandonment; social belonging and endurance in late liberalism. durham/london: duke university press. razack, s. (2000). gendered racial violence and spatialized justice: the murder of pamela george. canadian journal of law and society/revue canadienne droit et société, 15 (2), 91-130. roy, a. (2011). listening to grasshoppers: field notes on democracy. new delhi: penguin. shiva, v. 1(992). women's indigenous knowledge and biodiversity conservation. india international centre quarterly, 19 (1-2), 205214. simpson, l. r. (2004). anticolonial strategies for the recovery and maintenance of indigenous knowledge. the american indian quarterly, 28(3&4), 373-384. test #1 collective. (2014, october). test#1: cages, nuit blanche. toronto. https://vimeo.com/112074117 332 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education beyond education, brains and hard work: the aspirations and career trajectory of two black young men carl e. james1 abstract: it is commonly accepted that through education, intellectual ability, and hard work, individuals will attain the education and careers to which they aspire. with reference to this neoliberal ethos, i use case studies of two african canadian young men from the same stigmatized neighbourhood to examine their social, educational and occupational experiences, aspirations and achievements. the findings indicate that while equally ambitious, determined and university educated, one of the young men successfully attained his career goal immediately after graduating from university while the other still waits to achieve the same more than two years after graduation. keywords: education, neoliberalism, african canadians, neibourhood stigma, agency, structure introduction a 2011 edition of forbes magazine featured an article by gene marks (2011), “if i were a poor black kid,” in which he referenced president obama’s “excellent speech” a week earlier about the possibilities of social mobility for working class people in america. marks argues that “everyone in this country has a chance to succeed,” and prospects are not “impossible for those kids from the inner city.” he continues to say that “it takes brains. it takes hard work. it takes a little luck. and a little help from others. it takes the ability and the know-how to use the resources that are available. like technology….” (ibid). like marks and many 1  carl e. james is the director of the york centre for education and community. he also teaches in the faculty of education and in the graduate programs in sociology and social work. beyond education, brains and hard work | 333 other americans (see the feedback that his article generated2), canadians too have long pondered why “poor black kids” do not take advantage of the educational opportunities and the technological resources available to them. the idea that equality of opportunity exists, and that all black youth have to do is to use their “brains,” work hard, and access necessary resources is premised on individualism, competition, personal responsibility, free choice, accountability, exercise of agency, resiliency, and strategic aspirations – all of which constitute a neoliberal ethos (porfilio & malott, 2008; braedley & luxton, 2010). influenced by this ethos, particularly through their schooling, black youth and their parents come to expect that the educational, social and material successes they seek will be realized. but the path to such realization is contingent on many social, institutional and structural factors beyond an individual’s control. in fact, in the case of young black men, the neoliberal “success formula” is remarkably precarious when we take into account how race, class and gender operate in their lives. in this article, i reference the experiences of two 29-year old african-canadian young men, kobe and trevor (pseudonyms), to show how neoliberal discursive rationalities operated in their social, educational, career and aspirational trajectories. while they have grown up in the same media-branded “troubled” toronto community, and would appear to have made “all the right moves” in terms of their efforts to attain their career aspirations and become full participating and productive citizens, their achievements are asymmetrically different. i argue that this difference cannot be explained simply by intellectual ability, level of education attained, or professional qualification, but by (probably more importantly) the complex ways in which the opportunities are afforded by the educational and occupational structures to which they had access. in proceeding, i review the principles of neoliberalism, and using critical race theory (crt) as a rejoinder, discuss the ways in which neoliberalism obscures the effects of race, class and gender on the lives of racialized members of society. before discussing the findings, i present the methodology followed by a brief description of the neighbourhood in which the participants grew up. 2  see responses to article by c. emdin (2011, december 20), five lessons from the ‘if i were a poor black kid’ debate, huffington post; i. gandy (2011, december 14), ‘if i were a poor black kid’: really, forbes? the root; l. peiztmann, (2011, december 13), if i were a middle aged white man. huffington post; and touré (2011, december 15) 334 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education theoretical considerations: neoliberalism and critical race theory (crt) there is a generally accepted notion that individuals can attain the education they desire (as education is free), make choices, freely pursue employment opportunities, become wealthy, and take responsibility for their lives in ways that they see fit. the prevailing neoliberal ethos which informs this common-sense notion also holds that competition is an important “social good” and the “least restrictive way” of addressing and re-distributing inequitable resources (braedley and luxton, 2010, 8). principally, neoliberalism is “a transnational political project” (wacquant, 2008) that is premised on the principles of a market economy in which individuals are free to pursue wealth without the constraints a welfare state often imposes (braedley and luxton, 2010; wacquant, 2008). in such context, individuals and families are tasked with taking responsibility for their own care and social outcomes (braedley and luxton, 2010, 15). but in a context of structural inequity, the resources and opportunities to which individuals have access, and concomitantly their freedom and choices, are inevitably structured by the economic and social conditions over which they have little or no control (braedley and luxton, 2010; porfilio and malott, 2008; tabb, 2003). the sustained attempts by neoliberal advocates “to promote competition, choice, entrepreneurship, and individualism” constitute what connel (2010, 26-27) calls a “sociocultural logic” that offers formerly excluded individuals access to opportunities without changing the existing “systems of inequality or the ideologies that sustain them” (35). in canada where there is an official multiculturalism policy (1971) and legislation (1988) which purport to promote “inclusive citizenship” and guarantee “value and dignity of all canadian citizens regardless of their racial and ethnic origins, their language or religious affiliation,” minority group members continue to experience educational, social, civic and economic marginalization and exclusion (basu, 2011, 1308; see also reitz et al., 2009). understandably so, since the multicultural claim of recognizing “cultural groups” (i.e. minorities) is up against the hegemonic neoliberal ideology of individualism and competition) which places responsibility for their circumstances on individuals. as a consequence, individuals attribute their social or economic circumstances to poor choices they have made, rather than to the limited, problematic or bad choices available to them. according to luxton (2010, 172), liberalism’s “perverse form of individualism – an obstinate and persistent belief beyond education, brains and hard work | 335 that blames the victim by privatizing social problems”– immobilized individuals as they became resigned to the inevitability of their situation and a failure to see that they are both formed by and subjected to the prevailing values and practices of the economic, social and political structures. in their examination of how youth are incorporated into “a global, neoliberal economic system,” sukarieh and tannock (2008, 304) argue that today’s youth are caught in a capitalist system which has led to the growth of large populations of unemployed, working class, poor and racialized youth, typically residing in urban settings, with worldviews, identities, and ways of life that are oppositional or peripheral to the existing social order. in this regard, educators and other youth service workers set about to make these youth “fit functionally” into society socializing them into a culture of responsibility and entrepreneurship premised on white middle-class “standardized and universalized notions” of youth development. they learn, then, that if they cannot make it in the existing employment market it is because they, “lack the skills of employability, and you should work on yourself more in order to better make it in the system” (sukarieh and tannock 2008, 309). they also come to know of the “ever-increasing educational requirements for jobs” which as bills and brown (2011, 2) contend, amounts to a practice of “credential inflation.”3 within this neoliberal paradigm, racialized youth must wrestle with the dynamic and complex aspects of racism – a structural barrier to which critical race theorists (crt) draw attention. critical race theory is particularly useful here to understand how youth of colour fare in neoliberal contexts. by situating the experiences of people of colour at its centre, it highlights how seemingly race-neutral and colour-blind practices and policies disproportionately affect minorities (aylward, 1999, 34). according to howard (2008, 73), crt holds that peoples’ experiences and opportunities are significantly shaped by their race, and that “any attempt to eradicate racial inequalities has to be centered on the socio-historical legacy of racism” which also means challenging the prevailing ideas of meritocracy, fairness, and objectivity that maintains the discriminatory and exclusionary practices in society (see also charles, 2011; gillborn, 2008; stovall, 2008; trevino, harris and wallace, 2011). 3  bills and brown (2011, 1) define credentialism as the “extent to which societies allocate individuals to slots in the occupational hierarchy on the basis of the educational qualifications that the candidates present at the point of hire.” 336 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the “inextricable layers of racialized subordination” (howard, 2008, 73) based on gender, social class and generational status play a significant role in determining the opportunities young people will have, the neighbourhoods in which they live, the schools they can attend, and the educational resources to which they will have access (james, 2012). participating in the inequitable education system tends to be difficult for students who do not possess or have access to the normalized middle-class “cultural capital,” which in yosso’s (2005, 76) words, is “an accumulation of specific forms of knowledge, skills and abilities that are valued by privileged groups in society.” nevertheless, as yosso argues, youth of colour utilize (77) “community cultural wealth” – i.e. “an array of knowledge, skills, abilities and contacts… to survive and resist macro and micro-forms of oppression” – which enables them “to dream of possibilities beyond their present circumstances,” even without the “objective means” to attain their educational, occupational or social goals (78). for young black males, the resources and supports from their community are crucial to their journey through life; for as walcott (2009, 75) asserts, “under the contemporary regime of the global terms of neoliberal economy and by extension... its culturally rhetorical disciplinary apparatus”, black masculinity is always constructed as deficient. as a counter to this hegemonic cultural message of neoliberalism, black males have to operate on a framework of masculinity that enables them to hold on to their “hopes and dreams for the future” sustained through aspirational capital, navigational skills, familial supports and community validation, whereby they are able to, in yosso’s words (2005, 77), “challenge (resist) oppressive conditions.” research method kobe and trevor were first interviewed for two different qualitative research studies i conducted with toronto youth over a ten-year period. i took a constructionist approach to the studies in that i used the interviews (each of about 1-1/2 to 2 hours) as opportunities to have participants engage in a process of meaning-making or “sense-making work” (roulston, 2007, 16). as such, i was not a neutral observer simply trying to access and then represent certain truths about the participants (stephenson, 2005). to this end, the audio-typed interviews were unstructured, hence enabling me to engage with the experiences and realities of kobe and trevor. in fact, as critical race theorists encourage, research with racialized participants should take an approach that captures their beyond education, brains and hard work | 337 stories and counter-stories in ways that incorporate their perspectives on their lives noting how they cope with and respond to their social, educational and material conditions (fernandez, 2002; moore, henfield and owens, 2008). in this regard, the case study approach with its detailed examination of a particular issue, incident or individual, not only serves to recognize and address the issues of participants’ lives, it also enables a range of broad understandings that might otherwise be missed (creswell, 1994). notwithstanding its lack of generalizability, scholars assert that case studies can be used “to illuminate the nuanced complexity of social life in a variety of contexts” (singer and buford may, 2010, 305; see also lichtman, 2013; stake, 2000). the study in which kobe participated was conducted with twentytwo young men and women between the ages of eighteen and twentyfive who grew up in a marginalized toronto neighbourhood. this study explored the raced experiences of african canadian university students of caribbean origin, their educational and career aspirations, and their perceptions of their occupational opportunities and outcomes. participants were first interviewed in 2001 or 2002; follow-up interviews were conducted in 2006 with ten of the original respondents, and kobe was again interviewed in 2011 for this article. first interviewed in 2002 during his third year of university, kobe, then twenty-two years-old, was one of about three participants who were born in the caribbean – in his case, jamaica. he stood out initially from the other research participants, not only in his display of self-confidence, tenacity, high achievement, and the ways in which he engaged with his schooling (his teachers specifically) but also his ambivalent relationship with the community. he recognized that being from that community could be a liability, hence he would distance himself; but at the same time, he used that liability as a motivation to for his aspirations. the study in which trevor participated was first conducted in 2006, and was designed specifically to study the athletic motivations, experiences and aspirations of black/african canadian male basketball players between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight who were living in metropolitan toronto. this study sought to answer the question: was playing on their high school basketball team a liability or an asset for black student-athletes? trevor was one of twelve participants in this study and the only one that grew up in the same neighbourhood as kobe. trevor was initially interviewed in 2006 at the age of twenty-five during the fourth year of his university program; and again in 2011 for this article. in the initial interview with trevor, i observed a strong tie to the 338 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education community that was unlike that of kobe; hence my curiosity to explore their similarities and differences in terms of their educational and career paths and ambitions, and the role of the community in their lives. while similar in many ways, such as having grown up in the same stigmatized toronto neighbourhood, there are important differences that make this exploration of their lives of compelling interest – specifically, the ways in which they were supported by the educational system and its educators, and the privileging of particular educational and occupational interests over others. in the follow-up interviews with kobe and trevor, i asked about their educational achievements and occupational situation to date noting their optimism and satisfaction with how they approached the goals they had set for themselves. kobe and trevor, like the other participants in the studies i conducted, represent a growing group of second-generation and generation-and-ahalf black/african-caribbean-canadian youth for whom the immigrantdrive and expectations of their parents have served to motivate them to do well educationally in order to be socially and economically successful. in fact, canadian studies of black university students (gosine, 2008; james and taylor, 2008) show that their educational aspirations were motivated by their sense of obligation to their immigrant parents and their desire to “give back” to their (black) community. and although aware of the structural realities of racism and other related barriers, they maintained that with their individual efforts and willpower, and on the basis of merit “education had worked, was working, and would continue to work for them” (james and taylor, 2008, 585). gosine (2010, 9) contends that such logic is informed by the larger society’s neoliberal ethos of meritocracy and individualism, and “the belief that racism can be overcome by way of academic and occupational attainment, hard work, determination, and black solidarity.” in the following section, i discuss the neighbourhood in which kobe and trevor grew up and then go on to examine their career trajectory noting the similarities and differences in their strategies, their familial support, and their achievements to date. the neighbourhood kobe and trevor lived and attended school in one of toronto’s “priority areas” characterized by high rates of poverty, low-income earners, public housing tenants, and high proportion of immigrants and racialized population (hulchanski, 2007; james, 2012; stapleton, murphy and xing, 2012). established during the 1960s, the community is commonly referred to as an “urban” or “inner city” neighbourhood. but beyond education, brains and hard work | 339 keil and young’s (2011, 1) term “in-between” seems more fitting, in that it is an urban space “coached between the glamour zones of the downtown neighbourhoods and the exploding single-family home suburbs and exurbs…; an area that oscillates “between unwelcome notoriety (for poverty and crime) and outright invisibility.” about eighty thousand people live in this high-density neighbourhood with a large cluster of high-rise apartment buildings and townhouses. characteristic of what myles and hou (2004, 31) term a “low-income immigrant enclave”, it is home to a broad representation of canada’s diverse ethno-racial population. black/african canadians – most of them born in canada to caribbean parents – make up the largest (about twenty percent) racial minority group (the next largest is south asians – a two percent difference), but the largest racial group is whites with nearly thirty percent of the population. it also has “one of the highest proportions of youth, sole-supported families, refugees and immigrants…of any community in toronto” (james, 2012a, 54). schooling issues (such as low educational achievements, high drop-out rates, and absenteeism) and social issues (such as drugs, gangs, and violence) draw wide-spread attention from educators, governments, police, and the media (ezeonu, 2008; lawson 2013). many of residents have a strong sense of loyalty, responsibility and commitment to the place they consider home. but some residents, weary of the marginalization, stigmatization and racialization, choose to leave the neighbourhood – oftentimes move to the suburbs – seeking safety, comfort and better schooling conditions for themselves and/or children. these residents, many of them first generation canadians construct going to live in the suburbs as a marker of upward social mobility (james, 2012a; myles and hou, 2004). family, community and school at the age of twelve, kobe immigrated to canada from rural jamaica with his older sister to join his single mother who had already been living in toronto for six years. he recalled that while he was “excited” about leaving jamaica because of the changes that would come to his life, he was nevertheless “indifferent” about what to expect. about two years after settling in toronto, his family moved to a rented apartment in the neighbourhood that kobe would call home for the next ten years. trevor, on the other hand, was born in that neighbourhood to a single mother who had also grown up in that neighbourhood. he lived with his mother, grandmother and uncle (a police officer). trevor’s mother 340 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education had immigrated as a teenager to canada from london, england with her mother and brother. both young men grew up with their working mothers – kobe’s mother worked as a legal secretary, and trevor’s mother as a nurse – who had concerns about raising their sons in the neighbourhood. so the message the sons received from their parents about the neighbourhood was one of risk and danger – a place from which they should move as soon as possible. this rendering of the neighbourhood was somewhat consistent with that of the media and other canadians. it is therefore understandable that kobe would, at that time, avoid interactions with peers in the neighbourhood outside of school since he did not want “to get in trouble because of its reputation.” he also stated: “i went to school, went to track, and went home and did my homework….i had no friends in the area….i didn’t really, i guess, associate with a lot of people from the area outside of school.” but for trevor growing up in the neighbourhood “was a blessing.” as he explained: “growing up in [the neighbourhood] helped me by allowing me to see and feel what it was like to live in a community which did not have the best reputation. i think it helped make me a critical thinker based on the fact that i was able to experience the positive things that the community had to offer rather than just hear about the negative.” in keeping with their determination to leave the “bad neighbourhood” for the sake of their children, especially sons, the families did move from the neighbourhood. kobe moved about two miles away during his second year in university; and trevor moved to the outer suburbs at the end of grade 7. as trevor reported, his mother did not want him to “fall into the stereotype” or “become a statistic” – a reference to gang violence, shootings, and police targeting of black youth in the neighbourhood (ezeonu, 2008; lawson 2013). however, trevor was allowed to complete middle school in the neighbourhood – a request he had made to his mother because, as he said, “i didn’t think i would be comfortable going to a new school for just one year.” this enabled trevor to spend “a lot of time” in his old neighbourhood; hence was able to maintain his friendships. but trevor’s transfer to high school in the new suburban neighbourhood to which he had moved with his mother, was not a welcoming experience for him. he referred to his early experience in his high school as “a culture shock” which was, in part, due to the fact that it was not a “multicultural” neighbourhood like the one he left – residents in his new beyond education, brains and hard work | 341 neighbourhood were “either white or asians.” in reflecting on his experience in his new school, trevor said: “i had a hard time adjusting to the new environment and fitting in with the rest of the students. i felt that i was completely different from everyone else. it seemed that the students and teachers knew about me and where i came from before i was formally introduced to any of them. i felt as if they already had their prejudgments about me before they even got to know me.” and in our most recent interview, trevor noted: “it seemed that they thought i should be a certain way because of where i grew up. they were expecting to see this thug or from what some people said, ‘someone more black’.” trevor recalled that there were “approximately ten black students in the entire school” when he was in grade 9. while he moved in a different academic circle, he ‘bonded’ with them because they were having “the same feelings” about the school. that bonding was also facilitated by their involvement in the school’s sports teams. in fact, as trevor said, “all of the black students in the school were on the sports team, whether it was basketball, volleyball, or track and field”4 and some of them were in special education classes “for behavioural or academic reasons” – classes in which black students tend to be over-represented (see toronto district school board, 2010). further, the recognition and related supports that trevor and his black peers received from their teachers for their athletic prowess were not the same in their academic programs. in fact, as trevor observed, among his peers, “academics became secondary to athletics, and the black students relied more on their athletic ability than on their academic ability.” that many of the black students were to be found on athletic teams is likely a reflection of sports being used as an intervention and pre-emptive strategy – serving as a form of social control and regulation which has become, as spaaij (2009, 247) would argue, “a substantial aspect of the neoliberal repertoire.” for his part, complying with his mother’s desire for him “to have access to the best education” – hence their move to the suburb – trevor resisted the effort of his coaches and peers to sell him 4  trevor also added: “it seemed as though a black student was always the star of the sports teams – usually basketball or track and field.” 342 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education on the benefits of athletics as a route toward his educational and career goals. he explained: “i remember my basketball coach insisting that we make a videotape to send to schools in the states in hopes that i would receive a scholarship to play basketball at an american university. he also took it upon himself to give me a basketball rim to put up at my house so that i could practice. my mom was offended by this gesture, because she probably felt that me being a black student, he should have been encouraging me more with academics instead of sports.” like with trevor, sports played a role in helping kobe negotiate and navigate his schooling environment, and to acculturate to life in canada. during his first year in high school, kobe was invited by his gym teacher to try out for the track team – something he gladly did with the knowledge that his school has a reputation for producing students who won athletic scholarships to u.s. universities. kobe did become a member of his school’s track team, and he valued the opportunities that his athletic abilities and skills provided, but he had no interest in trying for an athletic scholarship.5 what he expected from his schooling – essentially from his teachers and coach – was support in his academic work. and as a child with an immigrant mother who had limited understanding of the educational system, it was to his teachers kobe looked for and received help in navigating the school system. this is not to say that his mother did not do her part; she provided, according to kobe, “a lot of the basic principles of the hard work ethic” required to get through school. in his initial interview, he also credited “the principles i learned in jamaica” for how he was able to apply himself to his schooling and education. unlike trevor, kobe was able to identify “good’ teachers with whom he could relate effectively, and who worked to address his needs and interests. aside from his caribbean-born teachers with whom he “had a good rapport” (given that they were able to understand and appreciate his situation as an immigrant youth from the region), kobe credited one teacher, “who is actually…a white teacher,” for his generosity and support. kobe felt that this teacher genuinely cared about him, saw him for who he was, and went out of his way to help kobe. in expressing his appreciation for this teacher, kobe mentioned that even though he 5  in reflecting on the plausibility of u.s athletic scholarships, kobe reasoned that the larger population of black people in the united states makes possible “more opportunities for… black students.” and he added, “while there is discrimination, i think that there [the u.s.] is better, in terms of community trying to help people that are black.” beyond education, brains and hard work | 343 was “the pickiest teacher [he] ever had,” he learned from this teacher “the skills to see my mistakes and that i had the ability to correct them.” not underestimating “the socioeconomic conditions” of the neighbourhood, and believing that teachers were influenced by media and other negative representations of the neighbourhood – and by extension the students – kobe did what he could to show that he was “someone who is pretty smart,” and had the “personal drive,” and “family support” to do well. ostensibly, in such a context – an “urban” school with mainly disadvantaged racialized students, many of them black – being seen as “a black male who had potential” meant that teachers were willing to go out of their way to help. indeed, as kobe reported, he went from a student with “a very indifferent attitude” toward school to a scholarship student because his teachers saw “promise.” he recalled that teachers encouraged him to take advanced-level courses (as opposed to generallevel courses) which prepared him for university. even though, as kobe suggested that schools such as his were more likely to get “bad teachers” – because only certain “type of teachers want to go there” – there were the few committed teachers who turned out to be “amazing” because “they care about students” and they recognized the social and cultural capital that the students brought to their education (milner, 2010; moore, henfield and owens, 2008). interestingly, in reflecting on the idea that “bad schools get bad teachers,” kobe made reference to his experience in university with students from the suburban area where trevor attended school. kobe surmised that the students who attended school in urban areas did better educationally because they had a “better” system of education. but trevor, a student who, like kobe, was a black male with potential and was receiving the necessary family support, missed out on having similar caring teachers to support him in his academic endeavours. that the most significant help trevor received from his coach was a basketball net and the opportunity to make videos to solicit athletic scholarships, suggests that his coach, who was also his teacher, was unable to look past his 6-feet, physically-fit appearance; in other words, a basketball player who would bring him and the school accolades – to see a student with academic potential and promise. it might be said, then, that for black students, and males in particular, attending an “urban” racially diverse school with committed and aware teachers is likely to lead to better educational experiences compared to attending middle class suburban schools with uninformed and uncommitted teachers. the situation is even more problematic for black male students like 344 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education trevor whose bodies are persistently read in relation to the reputation or stigma of their former “urban” neighbourhood – in essence, a racialization process in which they are defined as underachievers, troublemakers and athletes (james, 2012) and unable to change. how kobe and trevor construct their aspirations and worked to attain them is taken up in the following section. career aspirations, employment opportunities, and achievements kobe recalled that upon entering high school, he expressed interest in becoming a lawyer. he attributed this career goal to his exposure to lawyers and legal education through his mother who “went back to school” to become a legal secretary. he admitted that he did not know what career his mother wished for him, but he understood that while she had the attitude: “do whatever you want to do,” she expected him “to go to school, do your homework, do well” and then go to university. kobe understood that if he were to fulfill his mother’s expectations, he needed to stay focused on his work, have a career goal, avoid distractions (he did this by isolating himself from his neighbourhood peers), and establish himself as a model student (counter to the stereotype of black males in the community) who would gain and retain the support of his teachers because they recognized his academic potential. many of the black students, especially males like kobe, were encouraged by their teachers to become role models for other students, and to this end, were often guided to become teachers and return to work in the community. this expectation to return to work in the community is part of neoliberal thinking of teachers’ approach to working with these black students. it served to re-inscribe the notion that the social welfare of the community rests on them, and as individuals they were responsible and expected to do something about the conditions in the neighbourhood. one consequence of this expectation is that it could limit young people’s aspirations and their possibilities; but fortunately for kobe, this was not the case. at no time during any of the three interviews did kobe say that he was becoming a lawyer so that he could return to work in the community. and he never entertained the idea of becoming a teacher. in fact, in his most recent interview (2011), kobe declared that he was “careful not to take on the responsibility of a saviour.” so even though during his undergraduate years, he accepted invitations from his former teachers to give presentations to students (in other words, be a role model), he did beyond education, brains and hard work | 345 so out of a sense of good civic responsibility and not because he was, as he put it, “taking on the mantel of saving lives.” having had what might be described as a successful high school experience, kobe entered university on a scholarship and pursued a four-year degree in business administration. upon graduation, he worked for one year in marketing, before returning to the same university to pursue his law degree concurrently with a master’s degree in business administration. during his seven years of university, kobe supplemented his scholarships, with financial assistance from his mother, his student bursary, and his part-time weekend and summer jobs. and he was a recipient of a number of corporate philanthropic support, including a summer job with a marketing firm that turned into the full-time employment for one year after his business degree. the connection to the marketing firm was secured by a service organization dedicated to preparing and placing “underserved youth,” particularly youth of colour, in business or professional organizations and corporations. as resident of an “underserved” or disadvantaged neighbourhood, kobe was an ideal recruit for the corporate world as a lawyer – the kind of black male youth who embodied the neoliberal ethos of individualism, hard work, and entrepreneurship (braedley and luxton, 2010). put another way, kobe was someone whom one might say had a knapsack of disadvantages but through his abilities, skills and efforts (individualism) was able to surmount the disadvantages thereby showing that career ambitions can be realized. since he had moved, trevor was unable to benefit from his residential address as kobe did, even though like kobe, trevor had similar disadvantages and high aspirations. in fact early in his life, trevor aspired to become a police officer, but given his interest in sports, his friendship with athletic peers, and encouragement from his coach, when time came to apply to university, he thought of entering a program related to sport. he gained entry to kinesiology at the same university as kobe. but after one year in that program, he transferred to sociology because he “was not doing very well in kine.” at that time trevor planned to complete his honours degree in sociology and then apply to the police force. but in his final year of university, he was encouraged by his mother and others to pursue teaching. he applied to education faculties and was accepted a year after graduation. during the in-between year, trevor worked as a waiter at a restaurant (where he had worked part-time while attending university) so that he “could pay off his student loan.” he graduated with his teaching degree, applied to school boards around toronto, but 346 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education was unsuccessful in getting a job. in the summer following his graduation, trevor worked as a youth worker in his old neighbourhood and at the restaurant on the weekends. unable to obtain a teaching job in toronto, and encouraged by friends, who had taught in london, england, to do the same, trevor decided to take a chance and migrated to london in 2009. his decision to go there was made easy as he was also a british citizen since his mother was born there. in many ways, london turned out to be a productive move for trevor in terms of his personal and professional growth. as he stated: “teaching in london seemed to be an easier process than teaching in toronto. there were less hoops to jump through and i found work almost instantly.” in fact, after two weeks in london, trevor found a job at an alternative school “located in a lower socio-economic community” (similar to the one in which he grew up) where he worked for two years. he taught special needs students6 with whom he was able to build relationships and helped them, not only in their education, but also with their social and emotional issues. according to trevor teaching in london “was extremely challenging and difficult, but rewarding at the same time.” he explained that the rewards came from seeing students go from “selling drugs, fighting, or just negativity in general…to applying to different colleges, or finding an apprenticeship. the difficulty came from seeing some students sent to prison, a mental hospital, or just give up on their future in general.” trevor returned to toronto in summer 2011, hopeful that with his experience and biography he would be able to get a teaching job, especially having heard about the need for black male teachers to work in toronto and surrounding area schools. but six months after returning, he was still unemployed despite his many applications to teaching jobs at the four school boards in the greater toronto area. running out of money7, trevor has had to consider his options which were to apply for jobs as a youth worker or return to his job at the restaurant. but as he suggested, “once you have made a certain amount of money or have been doing a certain type of work, you become accustomed to it. [hence] i find it extremely difficult to go back to a part-time job or a service job. to me it feels like a step backwards and i am trying to move forward.” on this basis, trevor returned to his earlier career interest which was policing noting that “my uncle 6  these were students who were “excluded from mainstream schools due to their behaviour, lack of attendance, or special needs.” 7 trevor said that he did manage to save a significant amount of money from working in london, and living with his parents was helping with his financial situation. beyond education, brains and hard work | 347 was a major influence in me deciding to get into policing when i was younger…i have always looked up to him and thought that joining the police force would be a natural progression.” in moving forward, trevor applied to police forces in the greater toronto area – as he said, “the ones that are hiring.” it is interesting that trevor remained interested in becoming a police officer, given that he grew up with neighbourhood peers who had always accused the police of racial profiling which has contributed to police-youth-community relationship filled with tension and conflict (chapman-nyaho, james and kwan-lafond, 2012; ezeonu, 2008). yet, evidently influenced more by his uncle than his friends, trevor remained convinced that there are opportunities and possibilities for him as a police officer. in the meantime, while waiting to hear about his application to become a police officer (which he did not get), he worked part-time as a youth worker and afterwards as a full-time city transit driver. in many ways, trevor could be said to have the same determination and level of motivation to attain his career goal as kobe. but unlike kobe, he has not been fortunate enough (or has not been at the right place at the right time) to receive the necessary institutional help.8 nevertheless, well-schooled in the neoliberal ethos of individualism, personal responsibility, and rules of competition, trevor continued to pursue his career goal believing that it is up to him to do everything possible to succeed even though his many attempts – the numerous applications and job interviews – have been unproductive to date. in trying to understand his failures, and admitting frustration, trevor directed his attention to “the process” in which he engaged – with which he had to cope (luxton, 2010) – rather than the opportunity structures he has been up against. as he said: “some of my frustrations come with the process and time it takes to find a job/career that you want….working in england for two years, and having a teaching degree, i believe i have jumped through enough hoops that the process should be somewhat easier.” clearly, the difference between kobe and trevor obtaining their respective career goals cannot be attributed only to their individual efforts, abilities and commitment. 8 while kobe might have had the social and educational support of his friends, trevor did not. in fact, their friendship groups were quite different. kobe reported that all of his close friends have “at least two degrees.” and trevor, in suggesting that the move from his neighborhood might have been “a good idea,” went on to say that a number of the people with whom he grew up and “called friends… have become victims of murder or have had someone in their family murdered, and others… have fallen into life of crime….” 348 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education conclusion: beyond education, brains and hard work apart from their personal efforts and attributes, kobe’s and trevor’s path toward their career goals have been shaped by how effectively they were able to navigate the layered multifaceted structures of inequity which sustain the hegemonic ideology and common-sense rhetoric of neoliberalism, as well as the confounding obstacles. on the one hand, their imagination and acceptance that success in the competitive labour market is dependent on “the rational choices they make and their own skilled and diligent work” (luxton, 2010, 180) seem to have inspired their consistent efforts and tenacity. but on the other hand, these qualities alone proved insufficient (at least for trevor) without the support and sponsorship of individuals and institutions. in effect, kobe, trevor and their parents – encouraged by teachers and coaches – dutifully worked with the idea that education is largely (if not singularly) what it takes for them to succeed in society. this would appear to be the case, if kobe is used as an example of someone whose education and intellectual ability enabled him to become the corporate lawyer he is today working between toronto and new york city. but his relationship with caring teachers and coaches, and the supports he received from them, as well as from charitable service organizations, cannot be underestimated. indeed, these resources all played significant roles in helping kobe to navigate the educational and employment structures and become a role model and example for others to follow. as such, kobe became evidence that one can escape the conditions in which he grew up. trevor, on the other hand, was left to find his way on his own with whatever supports his family members were able to provide. trevor’s move to the suburbs for better schooling and education did not occur as his mother expected (deluca and rosenblatt, 2010). ironically, having left his neighbourhood might have contributed to trevor’s loss of educational, social and other opportunities to which black youth living in “troubled” neighbourhoods” might have access. in other words, trevor might have lost his “at risk” status – a social capital that might have served in building relationships with educators and human service personnel who are interested in ‘helping’ black young men with potential to escape their delinquency-producing neighbourhoods. neither kobe9 nor trevor eschewed the significance of education as a means to attain their career goals – neither did they challenge the idea that it was up to them to work hard toward this end. but they 9  in all of the interviews i have conducted with kobe he admitted to being highly influenced by capitalism. beyond education, brains and hard work | 349 recognized that what they have achieved to date, or what anyone is able to achieve, is not totally of their own making. in fact, when asked what they thought of the notion that a person can become whatever he wants to be, kobe submitted: “life is much too unkind for that. you control maybe ten percent; fifty to sixty percent depends on winning the birth lottery. while there is no guarantee, you’re well on your way....this is the reality of life. watch the interview process and see who gets hired.” kobe concluded by saying that for someone like him “the climb is a lot steeper.” similarly, while saying “if someone works hard at what they want to become in life eventually it may come true,” trevor went on to suggest – probably hinting at his coping mechanism: “what should be said is that even if you work hard and do everything the way you are supposed to do it, your end result may not be exactly what you expected and your end goal may not happen when you expect it to happen. there are other factors that come into play when trying to become someone or entering into a certain career – factors such as location (the area where you have always wanted to work is not hiring for the career you are interested in); [and] competition for the career you’re looking into is high. although you may be the most qualified for the position, i am a firm believer in the idea that it’s who you know that really gets you into a career rather than what you know.” the stories of kobe and trevor illustrate how individual agency is mediated by social, economic and educational structures. if youth like them are to maintain confidence in the potential and possibilities of education, then educators and others of us working with youth need to help them read, understand, and in turn successfully, navigate and negotiate the societal structures. they need to know how factors outside of their control – many of which cannot be anticipated – affect their life goals. whereas the rational success formula and seductive reasoning of neoliberalism lays out a seemingly reasonable path to success, the reality is, it is primarily individuals who have access to and are conversant with ‘mainstream’ social and cultural capital who will ultimately realize their high aspirations through hard work, determination and brains. 350 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education references aylward, c.a. 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(2005). whose culture has capital? a critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. race, ethnicity and education, 8(1), 69-91. please, bears don't talk! the smokey bear performance rules 1 joe hermer carleton university ifyou go down to the woods today you're in for a big surprise ifyou go down to the woods today you'd better go in disguise the teddy bear pic-nic song i in an age ofwidespread environmental destruction and toxification, how is the 'official' version of nature constructed within the boundaries of north american recreational parks? to ask this question is also to struggle with a remarkable paradox: that the very parks where we try to 'get back to nature,' the very places where we look to experience a permissive freedom from the regimen of urban life, are some of the most harshly regulated, intensely ordered spaces in the public sphere, a paradox expressed in the apparent oxymoron ofa regulatedwilderness. for it seems increasingly true that the regulated wilderness ofnorth american parks is representative ofthe very oppressive features ofurban life fromwhich people, quite ironically, look to parks as an escape. in this briefpaper, i would like to specifically examine one wellknown agent ofthe moral order ofpark governance, smokey bear. however, let me first provide a thumbnail sketch of the larger research effort from which i have drawn smokey as such a vrvid example. as a contribution to the sociology of governance,2 my alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 ©) alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 research efforts examine how competing regulatory regimes work to constitute and police themoral order ofthe public sphere. a major branch of this project is an examination of the governance texts of major park jurisdictions in north america. park governance texts consist ofpark legislation, field and standing orders, officer training guidelines, public relations material, occurrence, injury and fatality statistics and descriptions. these governance texts constitute the political-juridical intent to govern park jurisdictions. in examining these texts, i am interested in the textual constructions that constitute the discursive intent of park institutions, and the possibilities ofordering that this intent generates. also, let me be clear about what i mean by park, a difficult little word to conceptualize. when i talk about a park, i am generally referring to an outdoor landscape open to the public for both day and night visitation (i.e. camping), in the charge of formal provincial or state government under a dual mandate of i ffi both preservation and recreation of natural and cultural resources. i begin by providing a brief historical account of smokey bear, which i have drawn from stephen pyne' s ( 1 982) wonderful social history, fire in america. n in july, 1942, united states secretary ofagriculture claude r rickard announced in a radio broadcast that the control and prevention of forest fires is a first line defensejob on the home front. . .we cannot forget. . .that the british royal air force found it worthwhile to start great fires in the forests ofgermany. every fire in our fields or forests this year is an enemy fire, (cited in pyne, 1982:176) while the connection between forest fire prevention and national defense had for some time become popular in the public mindset hermer/smokey bear performance rules with slogans such as "careless matches aid the axis" and '"your match, their secret weapon," this moral campaign lacked its own unique symbol (pyne, 1982: 176). in 1944 the wartime ad council and the co-operative forest fire prevention campaign, with the help ofan advertising consultant, came up with the idea of using a bear, after considering other animals, including squirrels and monkeys (pyne, 1982:176). the artist contracted to create smokey was instructed by forest service and war council bureaucrats that this bear should wear "a campaign hat," should have "an appealing expression" with "a knowledgable but quizzical look" and should not look like "the bear that symbolized russia" (pyne, 1982:176). the first poster ofthis uniformed bear was issued in 1945, named after a famous new york city fireman, "smokey joe" martin (pyne, 1982: 176). however, it wasin 1950 when a real bear became the ultimate referent for the poster: an abandoned bear cub, saved by a ranger from a forest fire, became '"little smokey" and was delivered into legendhood to washington national zoo (pyne, 1982: 177). at the height ofhis popular(g) ity in the mid 1960s, smokey was polled as being the most recognizable figure in american life, and the smokey bear act was passed by congress to protect him from "commercial exploitation" (pyne, 1982: 177). despite efforts at providing the famous caged bear with a mate named goldie, smokey left no offspring and died in zoo captivity in 1977 (pyne, 1982:177). by then, smokey had become one ofthe most popular exports ofamerican consumer culture, wherehispersonawas exportedto canada, mexico and turkey. smokey was even introduced by missionaries to the jungle of the belgian congo, where children were reported by a forest service publication to be "intensely interested in the bear that wore a hat and wondered if all animals in america wore hats" (pyne, 1982: 179-180). m what role does this american symbol of patriotism and moral fortitude currently play in the regulation ofnorth american park alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 space? every summer smokey bear costumes are dispatched in crates across north america to parks to be animated in "visitor service" and "nature interpretation" programs. and it is this contemporary presence ofsmokeywhich i would like to turn our attention to by examining the most notable governance text "guidelines for the use ofthe smokey costume" (ministry of natural resources [mnr], 1994) a list ofrules that accompanied the smokey bear costume on his tour through ontario provincial parks in the summer of 1994. these "smokey bear rules" which park staff are expected to follow when suited up in the smokey costume, nicely illustrate the important distinction made by h.l.a. hart between primary and secondary rules, between rules that order regulatory objects, and rules that regulate the agents of regulation (hart, 1961). the secondary "smokey rules"have three main prescriptive themes: to regulate the character of the person wearing the costume; to order the performance that smokey carries out; and cfc to prescribe the role of an assistant present to maintain this performance. the wearer of the smokey costume, who should tc be tall" (mnr, 1994:2) is expected to behave in a manner that does not soil the image of smokey. the wearer is warned, apparently without irony, of '*no alcohol or cigarettes during smokey performances" (mnr, 1994:3). the rules go on to suggest that smokey should "be alive, [vigorous, alert and remember, you are presenting one of the greatest of all symbols. you are a celebrity, a star. act like one, don't destroy the image" (mnr, 1994:3). the rules then move to prescribe how smokey should perform as a forest fire prevention celebrity. smokey's entrance should be in mil costume—no half dressed bears are allowed — and is warned not to "appear before your cue" (mnr, 1994:2), a perfect reminder of the dramaturgical nature of smokey's presentation. the wearer should "know the route you are going to take so smokey looks alert, not lost," and he should move hermer/smokey bear performance rules about "carefully as not to upset children" (mnr, 1994:3). smokey is urged not to "stand with your hands at your side" but rather "hold them up and move them about. [w]ave to people" (mnr, 1994:3). in a tone that suggests the wearer might somehow be losing his human sense, the rule writer suggests that "[a] handshake is a useful device for activity" (mnr, 1994:3). with the character ofthe wearer secure, and his movements prescribed, the role ofan assistant is emphasized. smokey should always be accompanied by an assistant, one that will 'let smokey lead" and "keep crowds fromhim.,they tend to maul his suit." in a regulated wilderness it is the friendly bear who is in danger of being mauled (mnr, 1994:2). most importantly, "an assistant should do all the talking. it is best to keep smokey silent. this helps preventhimfrom saying anything "dumb" and preserves his image as a bear. bears don't talk" (mnr, 1994:2). iv this anthropomorphic performance constructs smokey with an ifft unassailable moral character, which ismade even more admirable in the figure of a civilized bear. he is the perfect authority to communicate the risk ofboth human and non-human worlds: he is rendered inhuman by his inability to speak; rendered unwild by his adoption ofthe niceties ofhuman interaction. smokey is an epitome of moderation, he is punctual, polite, nicely groomed, good with children: a picture ofselfcontrol and personal responsibility. in fact, one could hardly think ofa more offensive figure than the anti-image of these secondary rules: a rude, slothful, badly dressed bear, drinking and smoking, stumbling lost without human assistance, scaring children with his attempt at human speech. smokey' s character, which is used to invoke the dangers of carelessness, promotes a central characteristic ofpark order: the promotion of self-regulation. self-regulation utilizes a shifting public/private distinction that makes possible "action at a distance" where regulatory agents can make "the absent present" alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 (latour, 1986). 3 the promotion of self governance is vividly illustrated in smokey's slogan, which dates back to 1947, "remember, only you can prevent forest fires," which was often accompanied by a picture of smokey standing against a shovel, pointing uncle sam like at the implied reader. smokey's slogan is strikingly similar to another warning central to the regulation of leisure, "only you can stop drinking and driving." and like discourses of alcohol regulation, fire itself is removed from embodying the object of regulation: smokey is not so much concerned with actually regulating fire as he is in ordering the behaviour ofpeople, just as impaired driving crusaders focus on the evil character ofthe drunk driver. 4 this environment ofself-regulation, communicated through the stoic character ofsmokey, promotes a climate ofsurveillance where individuals are encouraged to self-police themselves as well as the 'strangers' around them this risk based surveillance is most vividly expressed in the presence ofneighbourhood watch type programs which are popular in many parks. often, "park watch" programs utilize their own animal mascots, some of whom look like they could have been rejects from the original smokey campaign; for example, maryland state parks utilizes "mcgruftthe crime dog" to encourage visitors to participate in "park watch" and "take a more active role in protecting personal property and preserving the park" (undated, maryland forest, park and wildlife service). the dual emphasis here that invokes both environmental preservation and personal protection is especially notable in park jurisdictions: the binding together of personal and environmental risk, where one works both to secure the self and save the environment, provides for a powerful moral emphasis. v while smokey was one ofthe most successful symbols to have emerged out ofthe propaganda rooms ofworld war two, he can be seen today as a more subtle agent ofanother moral campaign hermer/smokey bear performance rules ofindustrial north america: the ordering and manufacturing of the experience ofnature and wilderness. the characterofsmokey, animated through public appearances ordered by secondary rules, promotes a surveillance based environment of risk that creates a self-regulating landscape of moral purity. smokey performances are a vivid contribution to the order of the regulated wilderness that represents nature as a perfectly ordered, sanitized landscape where risk is constantly evoked through moralizing discourses of self-regulation. indeed, as a civilized "celebrity" of the wilderness, smokey stands as a disturbing image ofa degraded, emasculated 'dancing bear' oflate industrial society, ordered to perform for park tourists, subjected to an image ofnature congruent with the values of consumerism and practises of environmental exploitation. notes 1. as adapted from a presentation at the graduate student work in progress seminar, department of sociology and anthropology, carleton tfbfr university, ottawa, canada, october 26, 1995. 2. for an introduction to the sociology of governance see hunt and wickham(1994). 3. the governance technology of "action at a distance" is exemplified in the use of "official graffiti" (hermer and hunt, 1996) such as the "no loitering" or "stay on the path" signs. such explicit inscriptions evoke absent experts and officials and construct regulatory targets as selfregulating objects who are at risk. 4. the emphasis on forest fire prevention that smokey promotes in park settings is strongly overstated. recreationalists cause relatively few fires, and the ones they do ignite burn relatively little area—lightening strikes are the main culprit of forest fires. for example, between 1978 and 1987, in all provinces, recreationalists (both park and non-park) were reported to have caused 17% of all fires, which accounted for 2% of the total areas burned (see higgins and ramsey (1991:9)). references hart, h.l.a. 1961 the concept oflaw. oxford: ciaredon press. fffi alternate routes, volume 13, 1996 hermer, joe and hunt, alan. 1996 "official graffiti of the everyday" forthcoming in law and society review. higgins, d. g., ramsey, d.g. 1991 canadian forest fire statistics, 1988-1990. supply and services canada. information report n.pi-x-107e/f. hunt, alan and wickham gary. 1 994 foucault and law: towards a sociology oflaw as governance. london: pluto. latour, bruno 1986 "visualization and cognition:thinking with eyes and hands" pp. 1-40. in h.kuklick and e. long (ed.) knowledge and society:studies in the sociology ofculture past and present. greenwood, conn.: j.a. i. press. 1-40. maryland forest, park and wildlife service undated "park watch—maryland state parks" handout. received by author under cover of correspondence from lt. christopher bushman, august 30, 1994. ministry of natural resources [mnr] 1994 "guidelines for the use of the smokey costume" with cover letter by jeff antoszek, fire technician. 4 pages. pyne, stephen j. 1 982 fire in america:a cultural history of wildland and rural fire. princeton, new jersey: princeton university press. 74 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? critical theory on policy movement in the context of contemporary reform in mexico paul bocking1 abstract: both the fields of critical human geography and comparative education have developed substantial thinking on the spread of neoliberal public policy across national and subnational boundaries. key means for explaining policy transfer include external advocacy from powerful transnational authorities such as the world bank and the oecd, ideological influence in the form of think tanks, and domestic structuralinstitutional pressures in the form of the interests of national business elites. the relative strength of opposition groups such as teachers’ unions and pro-public education organizations is a significant counterbalancing factor. in this paper i investigate the relative weight of each factor behind education policy development in the context of mexico’s contemporary adoption of neoliberal ‘education quality’ reform. i focus on the so-called ‘alliance for quality education’ enacted in 2008 under the 2006-2012 calderon administration, subsequently amended into the constitution under the 20122016 government of enrique peña nieto. these measures include among others, the tying of teacher salary and job security to an expanded regime of student standardized testing, and increased private sector involvement in the public provision and financing of education from kindergarten to secondary level education. the neoliberalization of public education has advanced significantly in mexico, especially due to the advocacy of mexican business lobbyists facilitated by ideologically predisposed state officials. however due to a conjuncture of factors, their success is threatened by a consolidating pro-public education teachers’ movement. 1  paul bocking (pbocking@yorku.ca) is a phd candidate at the department of geography, york university. his research interests centre on labour and political economy in canada, mexico and the united states. his projects include union organizing and canadian mining companies in mexico, the development and transnational movement of neoliberal education policy, and teachers’ unions in north america. he is also a community activist and high school teacher active in the ontario secondary school teachers federation. why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 75 keywords: mexico, neoliberalism, education reform, teachers, policy transfer, unions critical human geography and comparative education have developed substantial thinking on the means through which neoliberal public policy spreads across national and subnational boundaries. key means for explaining policy transfer include external advocacy from powerful transnational authorities such as the world bank and organization for cooperation and development (oecd), ideological influence in the form of think tanks and powerful lobby groups, and domestic structural-institutional pressures, in the form of both the interests of national elites as well as the relative strength of opposition groups such as teachers’ unions and pro-public education organizations. in this paper, i investigate the relative weight of each factor behind education policy development in the context of mexico’s contemporary adoption of neoliberal ‘education quality’ reform. i focus on the so-called ‘alliance for quality education’ (ace) regulations enacted in 2008 under the 2006-2012 calderon administration, subsequently amended into the education statutes of the national constitution under the subsequent government of enrique peña nieto in december 2012 and enshrined through legislation in september 2013. these measures include the tying of teacher salary and job security to an expanded regime of student standardized testing, and increased private sector involvement in the public provision of education from kindergarten to secondary level education. these practices strongly resemble both policies advocated by the latest world bank and oecd education strategy papers (making schools work, 2011; getting it right, 2012) and the demands of domestic corporate education lobby groups like mexicanos primero. i argue that the prominent role of the world bank and the oecd in articulating education policy adopted by the mexican government rests significantly on a convergence with the agenda of mexico’s powerful domestic business lobby, which is interested in privatizing public education. the importance of these external groups is principally to offer a technocratic form of legitimation, above the partisanship of mexican electoral politics and interest groups. the close ties of the current secretary-general of the oecd, josé ángel gurría, with the administration of peña nieto is an additional, more coincidental factor which elevates the oecd to greater prominence than it would otherwise likely have in influencing mexico’s education policy. however the rollout of the agenda of these powerful domestic and external elite forces has been uneven because of mexico’s 76 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education democratic teachers’ movement, which has gained strength as the official state-aligned leadership of the teachers’ union has weakened. this empirical study brings together theories on neoliberal policy movement from critical geography, especially peck (2002, 2011), harvey (2007) and prince (2012) and the ‘globally structured agenda for education’ (gsae) approach within comparative education, influenced by steiner-khamsi (2000, 2012), verger (2009), carnoy (1999), klees (2008) and dale (2000), to consider the actors in neoliberal education reform and the relative importance of their roles in the context of mexico. having identified “the agents of transfer” (steiner-khamsi, 2000, 164), i will study the extent to which ‘borrowing’ states actually implement foreign policy, and how this process reinforces or undermines political movements for neoliberal education reform in mexico.2 comparative education and critical geography: theories of policy mobility i begin with the argument that critical perspectives from geography on policy transfer are highly complementary with those of comparative education for understanding why and how neoliberal education policies cross national borders. steiner-khamsi notes how despite the broader, ‘transsectoral’ focus of the policy studies field of research, it supports a welcome depth to the approaches of comparative education. this approach can more specifically be identified as the gsae approach, with its emphasis on situating local or national policy developments within political and economic changes at the global scale (steiner-khamsi 2012, 4). she explains how these two fields of research complement each other with: “...a similar interpretive framework and method of inquiry, that enables them to draw attention to the local meaning, adaptation, and recontextualisation of reforms that had been transferred or imported. they have systematically adopted a lens that lends explanatory power to local policy contexts, and makes it feasible to explore the contextual reasons for why reforms, best practices, or international standards, were adopted. for these authors, reforms from elsewhere are not necessarily borrowed for rational reasons, but for political or economic ones.” (steiner-khamsi, 2012, 4) 2  much of the research and writing of this paper was done while i was living in mexico city in july and november of 2013. during the latter visit, i represented my teachers’ union, the ontario secondary school teachers federation (osstf) at an international conference in solidarity with the mexican teachers’ movement, facilitating much of the access to movement activists and journalists which informs my analysis. why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 77 prince (2012) positions critical geographers as sharing a similar analysis to what steiner-khamsi would likely describe as the gsae approach, emphasizing the importance of studying political and economic causalities within their historical and geographical contexts. more concretely, this means situating the study of policy transfer within an understanding of neoliberalism as a globally dominant political-economic ideology that consistently seeks the expansion of markets into public education. in doing so, he supports the broad methodological analysis developed by fellow geographers harvey (2007, 115-116) and peck (2011, 387-388). critical geography contributes an articulated analysis that is perhaps more explicit than the gsae literature of how neoliberalism’s globally prevalent ideology is highly uneven in its spatial implementation. as will be discussed below, negotiations and conflicts between domestic and elite groups, and especially the opposition of teachers’ movements, are important reasons for this disconnect between policy and reality. recent works in critical geographies of education also emphasize how practices within school systems can have a strong association with political dynamics at the urban scale (thiem-hanson, 2009), such as lipman’s study (2011) concerning the use of charter schools to aid the gentrification of south chicago.3 here, i primarily consider policy transfer and political contestation at the national-international scale, which contains many similarities with the gsae work that is rooted in country-level development studies. mexico’s education system is highly centralized, with key decisions made by the secretary of public education in mexico city. the official teachers’ union, the sindicato nacional de trabajadores de la educación (snte), is tightly controlled by its national executive. during the period examined here from 2008 to 2014, mexico’s teachers were able to mount an opposition movement that spanned the country. however, an awareness of uneven resistance and divergent institutional contexts at the subnational level is critical to understanding why many state governments were compelled to reach compromises with the movement, despite the abstinence of the federal government. like steiner-khamsi (2012) and dale (2010), prince (2012) defines the approach of critical geographers engaging in policy mobilities research against approaches conventionally taken, principally policy convergence as the inevitable result of cultural and social globalization and the up-take 3  other recent urban-focused examples include seattle (lizotte 2013), new orleans (huff 2013) and toronto (basu 2013). few similar studies exist for mexico, however my forthcoming dissertation will study the construction of teachers’ resistance to neoliberal policy in mexico city, among other north american cities. 78 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education by governments of ‘best practices’ from abroad. within education policy studies, this line of argument is most clearly identified with the common world educational culture approach, primarily identified with the work of john meyer ( see dale 2000, 455). this approach has been criticized by steiner-khamsi (2012, 4) as being “naive” for not considering the contingencies of power struggles at various political scales relevant to education policymaking.4 while broadly sharing her critique of ‘consensus-based’ policy convergence (steiner-khamsi 2000, 158), prince (2012, 189) positions that analysis as principally the product of mainstream policy studies, arguing: “but geographers have had a different focus, studying policy transfer in order to think about how they manifest the changing power relations which shape the circumstances in which they occur. this work speaks to the interscalar and cross-national power struggles that produce the policy harmonization and differentiation that together constitute internationalizing policy regimes.” peck (2011, 775) makes a similar distinction utilizing categories to distinguish between positivist best practices ‘policy-transfer’ anchored in political science, and a social constructivist ‘policy mobilities’ that is transdisciplinary and contextual. finding complementary analyses between critical geographers engaged in research on policy transfer and the gsae approach within comparative education, i will now discuss the political and economic causalities behind the latest wave of neoliberal education policies in mexico. constitutional amendments: the contemporary roll-out of neoliberal education policy the package of neoliberal education reforms at the centre of this study were introduced to the mexican congress by enrique peña nieto on december 10, 2012 less than two weeks after his presidential inauguration on december 1. in an instance of what peck has described as ‘fast policy’ (2010, 195), the swiftness by which mexico’s lower and upper 4  dale (2000, 436) draws a key distinction between the common world educational culture (cwec) approach and gsae, with the former emphasizing ‘idealistic’ causality, and the latter using a structural-materialist lens, “for cwec, the world polity is a reflection of the western cultural account, based around a particular set of values that penetrate every region of modern life. for gsae, globalization is a set of political-economic arrangements for the organization of the global economy, driven by the need to maintain the capitalist system rather than by any set of values.” why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 79 legislatures passed this legislation on december 21 and became law on february 6, 2013 was remarkable.5 seemingly intent on distinguishing himself from his two predecessors, whose legislative agendas were largely blocked over each of their six-year terms, as well as shaking off considerable political attacks during the election campaign and allegations of massive vote fraud, peña nieto moved fast and effectively to build a political consensus with his two principal rival parties. the ‘pact for mexico’, co-signed with the leaders of the conservative national action party (pan) and the centre-left party of the democratic revolution (prd) (in the latter case provoking substantial internal dissension), was unveiled on peña nieto’s second day in office. the accord comprised a series of major proposed bills, of which primary-secondary education reform was only the first. others included changes to labour statutes in the constitution that legalized already prevalent precarious employment practices, reforms to the tax code and the denationalization of mexico’s energy sector. the ease by which these major changes passed in peña nieto’s first year in office, with the endorsement of all three dominant parties (though with the prd opposing energy liberalization and leaving the pact for mexico on this basis) is virtually unprecedented since the fading of the institutional revolutionary party’s (pri) seventy year rule over mexico as a one-party state in the 1990s.6 this elite ideological consensus behind the roll-out of neoliberal policy provides much of the basis by which profound changes to mexico’s education system were enacted (hernández navarro, 2013, 27-28). key contents of the reforms centered around teacher hiring, salaries and job security, many of which were in fact previously established in the 2008 ‘alliance for quality education’, negotiated between the prior president felipe calderon, and snte president elba esther gordillo. 5  peck defines ‘fast policy’ as emerging transnational networks of rapid policy exchanges between technocratic experts, typically claiming a pragmatic ambivalence to any political ideology. their activities and policy conclusions tend to be insulated from direct public influence or oversight and in fact emerge from within defined, usually narrow ideological frameworks (peck, 2010, 195-196). 6  the pri and its predecessor parties ruled mexico at the national level, and in nearly all states and municipalities, nearly all of the time, from the end of the armed period of the mexican revolution in the 1920s until 2000, when it lost what was arguably the second free election held during this period. the significance of the rapid enactment of significant neoliberal reforms through peña nieto’s ‘pact for mexico’, is evident when contrasted to the previous three terms of pri and pan presidents. beginning with prista ernesto zedillo’s election in 1994 (the first free election), emerging social movements and fiercely partisan opposition parties made the passing of sweeping policies difficult, defeating radical changes to public education. shifts in the internal dynamics of the pan and the prd that led both to collaborate with peña nieto are beyond the scope of this paper, but the ideological convergence of the three parties and the clear resurgence of the pri after twelve years out of national office are key factors. 80 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education however due to fierce resistance by long-standing opposition within the union, these reforms were wholly or partially unimplemented in several key southern and central states.7 by embedding these policies within the mexican constitution, with all the legal weight this implied and then implementing them through new legislation in a renewed effort to impose them nationally, peña nieto strived to overcome this resistance. the legislation passed in february 2013 inserts new language under the education clauses of the mexican constitution (article 3), stipulating that teacher hiring will be subject to the passing of standardized exams, and that the continuation of their employment will depend on success at subsequent evaluations over the course of their career. the implementation of these articles was defined by subsequent ‘secondary laws’ passed in september 2013 (arriaga, 2013, 13-14). a series of standing proposals from the government were planned to determine teacher employment. the singular focus of these proposed policies lead many education activists to argue that the reforms really have very little to do with so-called education ‘quality’, and should properly be considered as labour market reforms targeting employees in the public education sector.8 new teachers would be hired on the basis of passing a professional exam, a policy advocated as a means of eliminating widespread nepotism in the form of teachers inheriting a position from a retiring parent, or otherwise bidding on an opening in exchange for the outgoing teacher’s ‘endorsement’, a process also reputedly coordinated by corrupt union officers for personal enrichment. the reality was quite different in the southern states of oaxaca and chiapas, where the democratic teachers’ movement union won control of union locals in the 1980s. here, teacher hiring as well as promotions to administrative and supervisory positions have been handled transparently, with the latter determined through elections by their peers, in a remarkable form of workers’ self-management (cook, 1996, 194-195). nevertheless, with teacher hiring practices widely criticized by the public as corrupt due largely to sensational media exposés like the film de panzazo! and the experiences of applicants in states controlled by union officials tied to gordillo, provisions around union control of hiring were eliminated with little resistance. another proposed change in hiring would remove the mandatory requirement of a minimum one-year university degree in education, reducing the qualification 7  oaxaca, chiapas, guerrero, michoacan, morelos and mexico city. 8  in hernández navarro’s (2013, 16) words: “their real goal is to change the nature of work for teachers.” why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 81 for becoming a public school teacher to holding an undergraduate university degree and passing the exam (hernández navarro, 2013, 40).9 under the ‘alliance for quality education’ (ace), salary and job tenure were largely removed from the stipulations of union negotiated collective agreements, with increases determined on a formula weighted 50 percent on the annual standardized exam results of their students (professional development accounts for 30 percent, ‘school leadership’ for 10 percent and seniority 10 percent). however as was mentioned above, teachers’ groups organized outside the official snte union defeated the implementation of the ace in states across central-southern mexico (bocking, 2012, 14). laws under consideration would revive this effort of replacing negotiated salary increases with merit pay driven by student and teacher testing. ace also included the creation the national institute for education evaluation (inee) as a branch of the secretary of public education (sep) to oversee teacher and student exams. the constitutional amendment makes the inee autonomous office, directly overseen by the federal executive, ostensibly to provide it with both greater impartiality and to insulate it from the political contestation of the teachers’ union within the sep. the constitutional change strengthens existing ace policies, with failure on a test stipulating mandatory professional development training at the teachers’ expense at one of many newly opened privately-run training schools, with subsequent failure leading to dismissal (arriaga, 2013, 13-14; bacon, 2013). an additional proposal is the trial roll-out of an extended school day from six to eight hours with some, but not proportional increased compensation for teachers. according to investigative journalist hernandez navarro (2013), peña nieto preempted teacher opposition to this demand by “demagogically” portraying resistant teachers as unwilling to work hard to educate children. finally, a touchstone of the proposed reforms emerging from the constitutional amendment is enhanced ‘school autonomy’. promoted as a measure to increase parental participation in their children’s education, coupled with teacher exams, it would empower principals to directly hire and fire teachers, significantly weakening collective agreement provisions regarding employee 9  even the latter could be negotiated, provided one held sufficiently strong reference letters from administrators, according to some anti-reform activists in the state of morelos who had fought the original pre-constitutional version of this hiring practice initiated in many states as part of the ‘alliance for quality education’. in effect, coupled with a defacto deskilling, one form of patronage was replaced with another, favouring school authorities (bocking, 2012, 14). 82 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education discipline. while the overwhelming focus of the reforms is on changing the employment conditions of teachers, the ‘school autonomy’ measures are also important because of its encouragement of individual schools to set student fees (previously widespread but legislated at the state level, despite violating the spirit of constitutionally guaranteed free access to primary and secondary education). education critics fear the measure will encourage schools to enter into increased corporate partnerships to make up for chronic underfunding. measures also provide for the increased provision of school-based and mobile internet-ready computer labs, with significant private funding. two weeks after the signing of the education reforms into the constitution, mexican authorities arrested the president of the snte since 1989, elba esther gordillo, and charged her with embezzling hundreds of millions of pesos in union funds (tuckman, 2013). the democratic teachers’ movement joined the broad mexican public in celebrating the fall of a power broker legendary for her personal corruption. the arrest of arguably the most powerful woman in mexican politics was strategic both for the roll-out of the education reforms, and for setting the terms of peña nieto’s presidency: “the unpopularity of elba esther gordillo in public opinion is so great, that any action to change the system of teaching in the country that included the defeat of the lifetime leader of the snte, easily won broad popular support.... this announcement [of her arrest] and the intense publicity campaign that accompanied it, led to employer’s associations, academics and parts of the population giving their support to the new government.” (hernández navarro, 2013, 27) i now turn to the political and economic implications of these policies, drawing attention to the intersections of external policy advocacy, cross border ideological movement and domestic institutional struggle. world bank and the oecd: the influence of transnational actors on education policy formation aside from the ‘best practices policy learning’ models proposed by advocates of cwec, and critiqued by researchers using the gsae approach as lacking a nuanced contextual analysis of political and economic power relations, verger (2009) proposes several key ‘mechanisms’ through which global institutions influence national education why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 83 policy: imposition, imf attaches conditionalities related to the implementation of specific economic policies in return for loans; the dissemination of policy through recourse to technical expertise and the shaping of data, as in the case of the extensive research and policy papers produced by the wb and the oecd; and standardization, whereby states agree to adhere to an international norm such as the administering of the program for international student assessment (pisa) exam (verger, 2009, 382). similarly, carnoy (1999) associates these mechanisms with the roll-out of competition and finance-driven reforms, under varying degrees of compulsion by the world bank and the imf, and strongly held beliefs within the national state that such measures are critical for ensuring international competitiveness in the context of capitalist globalization. while advocates of the cwec approach would agree with the significance of the latter two mechanisms, researchers applying a gsae analysis argue that cwec ignores the contextual political conflict in which these exchanges occur, which are important to understanding their role in the context of neoliberal education reform in mexico. the role of the imf and its capacity for influencing state policy through loan conditionalities has declined in mexico in the decades since the massive bailout following the peso crisis of 1994 (sigmond, 2010). the wb and the oecd have a major presence in mexico and a significant impact on the formation of national education policy. however, in my view, the mechanisms by which the wb and the oecd influence mexican education through advocating policy reforms are best described as collaboration through dissemination and standardization, with the leading role played by mexican authorities, rather than through involuntary imposition. klees describes the world bank as “the major player in global education policy” and “at the forefront of the shift to neoliberal thinking” (klees, 2008, 312). mexico is the wb’s fourth largest ‘portfolio’, with loans reaching $6.4 billion in 2010 and dropping to $2.8 billion in 2011 (world bank 2013).10 of twenty-two active projects in 2010, five related to primary, secondary or tertiary sector education, including a $1.5 billion supplement to the mexican government’s oportunidades program, which provides small cash transfers to impoverished families tied to completing tasks such as maintaining school attendance. $220 million was also budgeted in a ‘school-based management’ project 10  mexico’s gdp shrank by 6 percent in 2009, far worse than the average for latin america and the caribbean, which shrank by 1.5 percent, due to mexico’s far greater economic reliance on the struggling us market for exports and as a source of remittances (world bank, 2013). 84 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education intended to assist the roll-out of ace, though at the submission of the 2010 annual report, no funds had been disbursed (world bank, 2010). certainly the world bank’s capacity to provide significant funding for projects it supports has an influence on the priorities of a national education system with pressing needs in numerous areas. in addition to its significant budget, the world bank (like the oecd), can also clothe its recommendations in a veneer of objectivity, making highly political assertions difficult to contest: “the various statistical tables, diagrams, spreadsheets, charts and other abstracting and universalizing technologies which enable comparisons and translations to be made with ease bring these objects, and the places that contain them, into a virtual space of comparison where policy learning, exchange and transfer can take place. the assembly of these technical systems across geographical space enables particular objects that draw on and refer to them... to travel relatively unproblematically from place to place.” (prince 2012: 193) mexico’s constitutional reforms incorporating teacher evaluation and related legislation under deliberation do appear to strongly resemble those advocated by the wb in its making schools work report, which is also primarily focused on changing teachers’ employment conditions, rather than advocating for distinct pedagogical approaches or increased funding for schools. as in the bank’s other recent major education policy document, learning for all (2011), the language centers around increasing ‘accountability,’ ‘quality’ and ‘effectiveness’. the wb’s concept of ‘school-based management’ (sbm), mirrors the ‘school autonomy’ policies found in ace and the proposals for the realization of peña nieto’s constitutional amendments, giving principals the right to grant salary raises, discipline and fire teachers based on their performance on exams or that of their students. while not directly advocating school fees and confronting the basic principles of ‘education for all’, like mexican advocates of school autonomy, the bank suggests additional benefits from sbm can be derived from more “resources from parents (whether in cash or in-kind)” and school committees with parental involvement engaged in fundraising (burns, 2011, 88-90). writing in 1999, carnoy’s critique of ‘school autonomy’ remains prescient. in terms of decentralizing decision-making, he argues that in practice, public school teachers in most countries (including mexico) already enjoy substantial autonomy why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 85 in how they approach curriculum in their classrooms. carnoy notes that ‘autonomy’ policies have been opposed on the grounds that they have tended to consist of downloading some funding responsibility from federal or state authorities to the municipal level, which usually has a more limited capacity for raising revenue, or to the parents of students themselves, as the wb itself implies (carnoy, 1999, 52-56). peck describes this downloading of public services like education since the 1990s as a widespread scalar strategy associated with neoliberalism intended to shift risks and responsibilities where possible to local and extra-state authorities which are increasingly encouraged to compete for globally mobile private investment (peck, 2002, 391-394). as described by carnoy (1999) and klees (2008), while deploying substantial language around improving student learning and despite various ancillary programs, the focus of the wb remains the limitation of state expenditures on public education, principally through reduced labour costs of teachers and privatization. making schools work presents several case studies of experiments in african and south asian countries of the impact on student achievement of replacing permanent teachers with contract employees paid a fraction of the standard salary, and sometimes without professional qualifications (burns, 2011, 147-156). however, despite the bank’s undeniably strong presence in mexico, it is difficult to impute the extent to which the wb directly influences policy of the mexican government, beyond the implementation of specific projects such as the ‘school-based management’ program mentioned above. however a complex and significant relationship can be assembled between the government of enrique peña nieto and the oecd, especially in the persona of its secretary-general, josé ángel gurría, who has deep connections to the president’s institutional revolutionary party (pri). after joining the party at 18, as a “fanatic of the free market” according to hernández navarro (2013, 99), in the 1980s he sided with the ascendant neoliberal technocrats over the populist corporatist faction who had built the pri from its origins in the 1920s. gurría was mexico’s chief negotiator for nafta and later served as minister of foreign affairs and secretary of finance in the zedillo government (1994-2000). a rising star within the pri, he was considered a potential presidential candidate, prior to 12 years of pan rule (hernández navarro, 2013, 99-101). first appointed to lead the oecd in 2006 with an endorsement by outgoing mexican president vincente fox, gurría maintained nominal relations with the government of felipe calderon of pan. however he has only strengthened his ties to peña nieto from when the latter served as governor of 86 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education mexico state prior to winning the presidency, playing an active role in the president-elect’s preparation of policy up to his assumption of office, and afterwards frequently voicing his support publicly for initiatives like the pact for mexico and the education reforms (brito, 2013). in a cnn español article titled “oecd reading the script to peña nieto”, journalists reported on gurría’s initiative to speak out in september 2012 soon after the confirmation of peña nieto’s victory on the urgent need for structural reforms. the president welcomed the comments, replying “i propose that the oecd become a strategic ally for the design of the policies that mexico needs, and what greater contribution than to have a friend at the head of this organization.” (jiménez, 2012) for his part, gurría responded graciously and with urgency that the oecd, “awaits its orders to work with mexico, its institutions...day by day to make the pact [for mexico] a reality.” (hernández navarro, 2013, 101). he adds in the forward to getting it right: strategic reforms for mexico, a document released in september 2012 and explicitly intended to help shape the agenda of peña nieto’s transition team prior to entering office in december, that “the new mexican government should consider the oecd an extension of its own capacities.” (oecd, 2013a, 4). during his inaugural visit with european heads of state in october 2012, the president-elect made time to include a personal visit to the oecd headquarters in paris (hernández navarro, 2013, 114). one month earlier, peña nieto signed a “declaration of intentions” with the oecd to begin the privatization of the publicly owned oil company pemex. the action was seen as evidence of the oecd’s influence, given that this was one of the key recommendations of getting it right (villamil, 2012).11 the education section of this document echoes the wb in encouraging the mexican government’s ongoing drive to increase use of standardized student and teacher evaluations as the surest means to improve education ‘quality’. it also diagnoses a deficit of ‘school autonomy‘, defined as the ability of principals to directly hire, set salaries and fire school staff (oecd, 2013a, 129-130). the consistency of the neoliberal orthodoxy in the oecd’s recommendations and its fealty to ‘finance driven reforms’ as defined by carnoy (1999, 42), is evident by their consistent dismissal of their own extensive survey data, which would reasonably suggest that ‘teacher quality’ in mexico would be best improved by raising salaries and providing paid preparation time, rather than increasing workplace 11  however it should also be noted that privatization of pemex has been a long standing and key demand of mexican business groups, foreign investors and pro-free trade transnational agencies like the oecd as well as the world trade organization, imf and wb. why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 87 discipline. the report cites a secretary of education survey of school principals indicating frequent lateness among staff, due to teachers working at different schools in the morning and afternoon. improvements in teacher scheduling are not suggested, nor are low salaries acknowledged as the reason why many primary and secondary teachers seek an additional shift or ‘plaza’ (oecd, 2013a, 129, 132). according to the oecd’s comprehensive survey of the education systems of member nations, education at a glance 2013, annual classroom instructional hours in 2011 for mexican secondary teachers were 1050 hours (the oecd average is 709), the third highest in the oecd after argentina, chile and the us (oecd, 2013b, 396). another strong indicator provided by this survey of the likely widespread high levels of stress experienced by mexican teachers is that 100 percent of recognized work time for primary teachers and 90 percent for secondary teachers is spent on classroom instruction, by far the highest average in the oecd (oecd, 2013b, 399).12 this means virtually no recognized, scheduled and compensated time is provided for mexican teachers to mark, prepare lesson plans or attend meetings with other school staff or parents. all of the tasks described above are pushed into time unrecognized by education authorities (e.g. evenings and weekends), usually performed away from the worksite. however, rather than disbursing the additional funds required to free up additional teacher time enabling them to improve the ‘quality‘ of education, the mexican government, wb and oecd, in conjunction with business advocacy organizations, pursue a strategy of increasing the ‘quantity‘ of teacher work, disciplined by increased employment precariousness. the specific political conjuncture of the return of the pri to national power and the leadership of one of its own at the head of the oecd has led this transnational agency to obtain significant influence over policy formation within mexico. the context parallels the policy mobilities scenario outlined by koenig-archibugi (2010) and verger (2009) in which outside experts are enlisted to validate the contested policies of factions of the state. navarro clearly makes the connection to the close relationship between the mexican government and the oecd: “[mexican] governments have systematically adopted the great majority of their recommendations. at key moments, this has supported 12  in canada by comparison, elementary and secondary school teachers respectively spend 65 and 60 percent of their recognized work time directly instructing students (oecd, 2013b, 399). 88 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education government policies that did not hold sufficient internal consensus, to be legitimized when presented as the advisories of the supranational organization. in this manner internal negotiating positions are strengthened.” (hernández navarro 108-109) however if this has been the case at least since the affiliation of mexico to the oecd in 1994 and participation in pisa since 2000, how has the close relationship between peña nieto’s government and gurría manifested itself? navarro explains the new closeness of this relationship: “but if the influence of the organization [oecd] on defining education policies has been so significant for many years, what’s new about it now being decisive at the moment of setting these new education norms? the difference between the previous reforms to teaching and the recent changes to the constitution is that these elevate to a higher level the oecd’s proposals, constitutionalizing them....preventing a regression on these reforms.” (hernández navarro, 2013, 103) if it is evident that the wb and especially the oecd have provided critical support in laying the groundwork for the mexican government’s contemporary neoliberal education reforms, another key form of cross border ideological movement has been the role of mexican-based business lobby groups, which strongly resemble similar organizations in the us. while the wb and oecd supply policy rationales and authoritative research, the latter groups strive to open up political space for reforms within the broader mexican public. by studying these organizations, especially the activities of mexicanos primero (mexicans first), a clearer picture of the balance of elite structural-institutional pressures within mexico in favour of neoliberal reforms becomes evident. of course, this broader political-economic context remains a contested space, particularly in light of the democratic teachers’ movement in confronting and potentially transforming these policies. mexicanos primero and domestic structural-institutional factors behind education reform like the world bank and the oecd, since its founding in 2005 mexicanos primero, has worked extensively to popularize the notion that “only quality education will change mexico” (mexicanos, 2013) within policymaking circles and civil society at large. in doing so, it has represented the consortium of corporate interests which comprise its why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 89 directorship and funding sources, emerging as perhaps the most important mexican business lobby group on education. its founder, claudio x. gonzález guajardo was previously the president of fundacion televisa, the corporate social responsibility arm of the televisa conglomerate, mexico’s massive private tv and radio monopoly. he is also the honourary president of the unión de empresarios para la tecnología en la educación (union of businesspeople for technology in education, unete), a corporate lobby group for obtaining technology contracts in mexican public schools. unete funders include intel, microsoft, toshiba and ford (a major private funder of mexican schools). guajardo’s father is multi-billionaire claudio x. gonzález laporte, president of kimberly clark mexico, chair of the mexican businessmen’s association, and one of the most powerful business leaders in mexico (bacon, 2013b; hernández navarro, 2013b; economist, 2008). mexicanos primero rose to significant power with the victory of peña nieto, however the group first emerged to prominence with the release of their film, de panzazo! in 2011. the documentary has been frequently described by critics and supporters alike as a mexican version of the earlier released and us-focused waiting for superman. in both films, education reform advocates decry the failings of their respective national education systems, especially for the most marginalized students, present the power of teacher unions as a principal cause through its alleged role in protecting bad teachers and opposing reforms, and position neoliberal policies as the solution (zebadúa, 2012; bacon, 2013b). how can we account for the strong parallels between messaging of mexicanos primero and similar groups in the us behind waiting for superman, like students first, founded after the mexican organization in 2010 by michelle rhee? david bacon (2013) quotes the founder and former rector of the autonomous university of mexico city, manuel perez rocha, on the parallels between corporate-led strategies in the us and mexico: “the mexican right always copies the united state’s right... the politics of merit pay and the correlation with standardized exam results is identical between the two countries. the right wants to convert education into a commodity and students into merchandise – ‘let’s fill their heads with information and put them to work.’” he notes there are important differences because the national union in mexico [the snte of now deposed elba esther gordillo] is an entrenched part of the power structure. in spring 2013, new york state authorities backed the substance of the concessions demanded by new york mayor bloomberg (a key funder and proponent of students first) and imposed a new teacher evaluation system in response to a deadlock in negotiations between 90 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the united federation of teachers and the city administration. the system closely resembles policies outlined in mexico’s constitutional amendments and specified in the earlier ace policies, evaluations are decided 20-25 percent from the results of standardized student exams, 15-20 percent through ‘in school mechanisms’ and the remainder through principal observation. after two consecutive annual ‘ineffective’ ratings, the teacher is fired (jaffe, 2013). in the absence of evidence of direct exchanges of policies between organizations like students first and mexicanos primero, following the globally structured agenda for education (gsae) methodology, one can conclude that mexico and the us are both subject to a combination of influences from similar waves of policy recommendations from transnational organizations like the oecd and wb, and structural-institutional pressures from domestic business elites embedded within global capitalism (dale, 2000). de panzazo! received a wide release in central mexico through the cinepolis movie theatre chain, whose ceo alejandro ramírez magaña, is also the vice-president of mexicanos primero (mexicanos, 2013), as well as coverage on televisa in the months leading up to the 2012 national elections. the film’s fervently anti-union, pro-privatization message received at least nominal support from the wb, which hosted a special screening of the documentary with a panel discussion at its mexico city offices.13 a promotion for the event on the wb’s website describes the film: “the documentary features interviews with key actors in the education system, hard data, and poignant testimonials from students, parents and teachers. one can see similarities to the u.s. documentary, waiting for superman, which generated widespread debate for its biting criticism of the deficiencies of us public schools and its suggestion that teachers’ unions bear a significant responsibility for them.... we hope that ¡de panzazo! will spark the same type of debates as its u.s. counterpart, and that it continues to draw attention to a much-needed educational reform in mexico.” (world bank 2012) mexicanos primero draws similar support from the oecd. according to navarro, gurría delivered a video address to the organization at its 2011 general meeting soon after the release of de panzazo!, praising its “exemplar work” (hernández navarro, 2013, 111). 13  an event taken seriously by the wb, the panel featured its lead education economist, harry patrinos and its sector manager on education, robin horn (world bank, 2012). why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 91 beyond these instances and the closely aligned policies presented above, it is difficult to know the extent to which the oecd and the wb cooperate with each other and with mexicanos primero in coordinating a strategy for the roll-out of neoliberal education policy in mexico. their relationships with each other are clearly more substantial than that of a mutual recognition of shared interests, but what is unquestionable is the strong influence of the three in the formation of policy under peña nieto. this is particularly evident in the case of mexicanos primero. as the most important representative of mexican capitalism advocating for the privatization of education, its status at the forefront of shaping the roll-out of neoliberal education policy in cooperation with the mexican state underlines the significance of domestic structural-institutional factors relative to the capacities of transnational institutions for determining the roll-out of policy. this is the case considering how so much of the oecd’s apparent influence in mexico as a transnational organization is actually contingent on ‘domestic’ political connections in the persona of gurría, who happens to be its secretary general, with the present regime of peña nieto. contrary to peck’s early description of the emergence of neoliberalism in the developing world as a result of “externally impos[ed] unbending rule regimes enforced by global institutions and policed by local functionaries” (peck, 2002, 381), at least in the case of a contemporary mid-sized ‘middle-income’ state like mexico, national capitalist classes appear to possess a substantial degree of agency in implementing neoliberal reforms in collaboration with the state. peck himself presents a more nuanced analysis along these lines, when he and brenner argue that: “...it is problematic to assume that neoliberalization processes normally or necessarily move ‘downwards’ along a global-to-national vector....this superordinate gaze fails to take account of the strategic role of national, regional and local state apparatuses as active progenitors of neoliberalizing institutional reforms and policy prototypes, and as arenas in which market oriented regulatory experiments are initiated, consolidated and even extended.” (brenner, 2010, 195-196). the mexican state would surely constitute such an actor leading the implementation of neoliberal policy, without whose commitment, associated with its strong connections to mexican capital, much of the recommendations of the wb and the oecd would be ignored (harvey, 2007, 117). soon after the confirmation of peña nieto’s electoral victory, on september 12, 2012 mexicanos primero publicly released the following 92 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education proposals: removal of principals from union membership and reclassification as management, the tying of teacher employment to the results of mandatory standardized evaluations, increasing school autonomy (in the sense defined by the oecd and the wb above) and removing funding for teachers on union time release (hernández navarro, 2013b). shortly afterwards, peña nieto appointed claudio x. gonzález guajardo to lead his education transition team, and lending strong support to the second and third of mexicanos’ recommendations, gurría presented getting it right, “prepared by the oecd in the context of the agreement for a strategic alliance between mexico and the oecd for the 2012-2018 administration.” (oecd, 2013a, 5). during the following three months, peña nieto’s transition team conducted intensive closed door negotiations with the leadership of the two opposition parties to create a toplevel consensus over a significant range of proposed policies prior to any legislative debate (bacon, 2013b). this was the political context in which the pact for mexico gestated before release in the form of the proposed constitutional changes at the start of the new president’s term. resistance to neoliberal education policy: the democratic teachers’ movement there are many more significant actors beyond the state and business associations like mexicanos primero which shape the political and economic context in which neoliberal education reforms are rolled out. however the democratic teachers’ movement, the national coordinating committee of education workers (cnte), has emerged as the most important organization to contest these policies, frequently resulting in their modification or annulation. emerging in a nationwide wave of strikes and organizing in 1979-82, the cnte has since served as a strong pole of resistance within mexico’s largest union, the 1.4 million snte which following its formation in 1943, has been controlled by authoritarian leaders loyal to the national government and affiliated with the governing pri. though the cnte’s strength has fluctuated, it is generally considered to be the dominant force within the union in state-level locals representing roughly a third of the total membership. much of its power is concentrated in the south, with its bedrock of support in michoacán, chiapas, guerrero and oaxaca, mexico’s poorest states with strong traditions of organizing and protest, as well as the elementary teachers’ local in mexico city. here, the cnte has generally led the union locals, and provided historically strong opposition to neoliberal reforms from the secretary of education’s national and state offices. the why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 93 movement has also risen and fallen in many other central and northern states during this time (cook, 1996; foweraker, 1993). coinciding with the power vacuum following former union president gordillo’s ouster, the cnte experienced a resurgence of energy and support among teachers over 2013 as it seized the initiative channeling widespread rank and file teacher frustration following the constitutional reforms. in the months following approval of the constitutional reforms it lead short strikes first in guerrero, followed by michoacán, chiapas and mexico city.14 new outreach by the cnte through regional meetings and forums over the summer of 2013 spread the geographical reach of the democratic teachers into northern and eastern states including zacatecas, chihuahua, jalisco, san luis potosi and veracruz, which previously lacked a significant presence. the broader upsurge also strengthened the movement in states where it was previously divided between dissident factions, as in puebla and morelos. a clear sign of the success of this movement was the ministry of the interior and secretary of education’s recognition of the cnte as a negotiating party, in addition to the official union leadership of the snte. the start of the 2013-14 school year in august witnessed the eruption of full strikes by cnte members in its strongholds, as well as new bases of support in veracruz and campeche. regular demonstrations, occupations of government buildings and toll roads, and one day work stoppages in many more, led to a historic height of major mobilizations by teachers in all of mexico’s thirty-two states and the federal district of mexico city. while recognizing and meeting with national cnte negotiating teams, the interior ministry (gobernación) which took the lead from bargaining from the education secretary, appears to have adopted a scalar strategy according to many teacher and media observers of not yielding on the most contentious issues. these include expansion of student and teacher testing to define teacher effectiveness, the circumvention of union ‘just cause provisions’ to give principals discretionary power to fire teachers on the basis of these exams, and the devolution of significant school financing to local parent councils. the strongest dissident teacher sections would then be compelled to seek negotiations at the state level and thereby isolate and leave vulnerable to repression weaker regions of the movement when the former reach agreements and demobilize. indeed, in mid-september 2013, peña nieto again mobilized the ‘pact for mexico,’ easily passing the 14  information in the following section emerged principally from the author’s time in mexico city in july and november 2013 observing teacher marches, rallies and meetings, and through unstructured conversations with participating teachers, movement allies and journalists. 94 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education ‘leyes secundarias’ (secondary laws).15 meanwhile, negotiations continued between the most consolidated cnte sections in oaxaca, chiapas, michoacán, campeche, veracruz, guerrero and their state governments, amid protests and strikes across most of mexico and a joint encampment of the national movement in mexico city. tentative agreements in the first four were reached by the end of the year, with these teachers returning to the classroom and a smaller group of union activists rotating through the main protest camp in support of unresolved states (proceso, 2013). is the mexican government’s apparent approach of containing opposition to education reforms in a handful of states in order to dampen a national movement, while refusing to compromise on its core policies successful? as i write in late 2014, it is uncertain. journalists and movement participants i discussed this with in november 2013 as protests were demobilizing, believed that in chiapas, oaxaca and michoacán, along with victories on local issues including hiring more teachers, settlements included a de facto agreement that these key aspects of the secondary laws would not be imposed.16 however the interior ministry and peña nieto insist that no circumventions will be tolerated from the core elements of the constitutional changes and their enacting laws, filing complaints in april 2014 with the mexican supreme court that the state governments of oaxaca, chiapas, michoacán and sonora had reached agreements with their teachers that were contrary to federal legislation (aristegui noticias, 2014a). in place of the standardized exams for teachers and students stipulated by ace and the constitutional reforms in oaxaca, an alternative union-designed program is being implemented, the ‘program for the transformation of education in oaxaca (pteo)’. in place of a reliance on multiple choice tests, the pteo conducts student and teacher evaluation primarily through written journals, work portfolios and collective reflection. a comprehensive response to many of the deficits in education structures which neoliberal reforms like ‘school autonomy’ claim to remedy, the pteo strives to increase 15  this time, with a large bloc of prd legislators dissenting, insufficient in the face of unanimous pri and pan support. 16  interview with chiapas journalist, november 22, 2013, mexico city; interview with oaxaca journalist, november 22, 2013, mexico city; interview with trinational coalition in defense of public education activist 1, november 22, 2013, mexico city; interview with michoacan teacher, november 24, 2013, mexico city; interview with veracruz teacher 1, november 24, 2013, mexico city; interview with veracruz teacher 2, november 24, 2013, mexico city. one long time education activist disagreed and argued that agreements reached by these cnte locals left the movement vulnerable because the key text of the secondary laws were included, and could later be put into effect by these state governments (interview with trinational coalition in defense of public education activist 2, november 22, 2013). at the time of writing, the full text of these agreements were not obtainable by the author. why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 95 parent connections with schools by instituting new recognized and funded committees, which in deliberations with local teachers, staff and older students can modify existing programs and timetables, such as including more indigenous language instruction. pteo pilot projects were initiated in 280 schools across oaxaca in may and june 2012 (bacon, 2013). these successes in oaxaca and their clear departure from the national plan for education reform are a legacy of years of militancy on the part of the state’s teachers and their effectiveness in reaching accords with broader civil society. with their focus on democratizing public education through enriched pedagogy which recognizes teacher professional capacities and strengthened community ties through meaningful parent participation (in contrast to more symbolic forms of consultation advocated under school based management), the pteo is a significant local reform contradicting neoliberal policies that are globally dominant.17 in the face of pressure from the mexican federal government, oaxacan governor gabino cué insisted that these measures, “do not contravene in any way the provisions of articles 3 and 73 of the constitution or the secondary laws” (aristegui noticias 2014b), despite the absence of standardized teacher evaluation. oaxacan teachers continued to mobilize as the 2014-2015 school year began to ensure cué did not succumb to this pressure. meanwhile, the cnte succeeded in reopening a national level negotiating table with the interior ministry, which could reduce pressure from the federal government against state-level agreements that circumvent peña nieto’s reforms (solano, 2014).18 during previous national upsurges in 1979-1982, 1989-1990 (foweraker, 1993; cook, 1996) and in 2008 in response to the ace, state-level agreements were reached which combined with 17  parental support for striking teachers during the weeks in which their children were out of school was also bolstered in several states including chiapas and veracruz, which made an apparent strategic error by moving quickly following passage of the secondary laws in september to publicize the exact expenses for which parent councils would now be responsible at their children’s schools. the non-salary expenses included school routine maintenance, utilities and classroom supplies. interview with trinational coalition in defense of public education activist 1, november 22, 2013, mexico city. 18  in the course of revising this article, mexican teachers rallied in support of forty-three rural student-teachers in guerrero, who disappeared in september 2014 following protests against discriminatory hiring practices. news reports suggest that many of these students were murdered by police complicit with one of the state’s powerful drug cartels. in the following weeks, the cnte, university students and families of the disappeared occupied city halls across guerrero, calling for the return of the students and the resignation of the governor. these disappearances and acts of violence against teachers in guerrero, michoacán and northern border states, point to the serious threat posed to civil society by narco power and complicit governments in large regions of mexico (morelos 2014). 96 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education government and official union repression, led to the containment of the movement when its strongest contingents demobilized. this time with the departure of gordillo, the balance of power within the snte is much more favourable to the cnte, lending credibility to declarations that it will challenge control of the union at the national level (solano, 2013). however, as with former president carlos salinas with whom peña nieto is sometimes compared, peña nieto has otherwise enjoyed significant political momentum.19 in the terms of constructing a contextual political-economic analysis, a significant factor in the unevenness of the mexican state’s success in implementing neoliberal education reforms across regions and states are the differences in the balances of class forces, with the strength of the democratic teachers’ movement serving as a key variable. these findings support the claims of harvey (2007) and others (herod,1997; 2001) that aside from the intentions of the state, capitalist actors and transnational organizations, the presence or absence of concerted struggle from labour and other social movements is crucial for determining the degree to which neoliberal policies are implemented. this assertions is supported by cook (1996) and foweraker (1993) when considered in historical perspective though the 1970s-1990s. conclusion this paper explored the relationships of transnational actors, the wb and the oecd, alongside mexicanos primero, a representative of domestic capital, in working with the mexican state to implement neoliberal education policy. i have also emphasized the role of the democratic teachers’ movement as a key actor resisting this agenda. by seeking to understand the activities and relationships between these organizations and key individuals within them, i have mapped the lines of responsibility for contemporary education reforms and constructed the relevant political-economic context. my research supports and reinforces the conclusions reached by others adopting the globally structured agenda for education analytical framework, as well as other critical social scientists. while possessing significant power through access to resources and expertise, much of the wb’s and oecd’s considerable influence on mexico’s education system is contingent upon the political interests of 19  peña nieto, mexico’s business class and foreign investors overcame significant resistance to win a tremendous victory in partially denationalizing the oil and energy sectors in december 2013, which the prior two pan administrations were unsuccessful in achieving. why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 97 the mexican state, which themselves are shaped significantly by domestic structural-institutional pressures defined by a powerful capitalist class organized to exert its influence on policy making through groups like mexicanos primero. 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(accessed june 30, 2013). the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 267 the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally: an interview with greg albo and jerome klassen jordy cummings jordy cummings1 (jc): one of the overarching themes of empire’s ally in general, and your contribution in particular, is a questioning of the predominant thesis held by supporters and detractors of the conservative government, that is to say, the idea that there was a qualitative shift in canadian foreign policy in the last few years, as if being “empire’s ally” is something new. can you delineate what has changed in canadian foreign policy, and what has stayed constant, and connect that, in turn, with shifts within the canadian ruling classes? greg albo2 (ga): let me clarify this by elaborating a few basic themes that i and others attempt to raise in the collection in situating canada as a core imperialist state playing both an independent and supportive role in relation to the us empire and its strategy of primacy in the world order. first, in relation to canadian foreign policy debates, it is necessary to take distance from the dogmas about the canadian state that even much of the left has taken aboard. this was seeing canada as a ‘middle power’ that forged a theory and practice of foreign policy based on new formally equal status of states by the united nations. for canada, this meant serving as ‘loyal ally’ to the u.s. in an evolving multilateral world still braced by the cold war: of nation-states steadily increasing the 1 jordy cummings is a labour activist and phd candidate in political science at york university. with a background in journalism, cummings has written for a variety of publications both journalistic and academic, including socialism & democracy and basics community news service. his dissertation focuses on radical theory in the aftermath of the french revolution and the transition to modernity, using a political marxist methodology. he is also editing a reader of george comninel’s writings and is interventions editor at alternate routes: a journal of critical social research. 2 greg albo teaches political economy at york university. he has recently co-edited empire’s ally: canada and the war in afghanistan (university of toronto press, 2012), as well as registering class (2014) and the question of strategy (2013) as part of the socialist register. 268 | climate change and its discontents economic and military interdependence of the continent within formal institutions; developing with the u.s. joint interests in a liberalized international trading system and defending against external – read communist and socialist movements – threats; prioritizing ‘systemic peace’ in relations between the cold war blocs; cultivating a ‘quiet diplomacy’; and contributing to multilateral institutions and fora where differences in tactics could be debated and compromises negotiated between greater and lesser powers in the context of the u.s. strategy of détente. this position was associated with the thinkers that ‘made’ canadian diplomacy – g. ignatieff, pearson, holmes, and others. more recently, this was the view that the imperatives of economic integration need to be ‘balanced’ by ‘human security’. an arsenal of new doctrines of multilateral governance need to be integrated into the foreign policy practices ‘agenda-setting’ powers: democratic capacity-building, developmentalism, peace-building, responsibility-to-protect, discursive diplomacy, civil society enhancement, responsible governance and so on. this has been the approach of m. ignatieff, byers, axworthy and host of others, and formed the key thinking behind what critics have labeled ‘human rights imperialism’. for these liberals and social democrats, harper represents a canadian turn to the foreign policies of a rogue state as it abandons many of these policies and moves toward a practice of diplomatic isolationism from multilateralism. but canada has always played, we argue, an important role in imperialism, from the supportive position of britain in the atlantic slave triangle to a key ally of the british and us across the 20th century in the making of global capitalism. it has done so, we argue in empire’s ally, as a ‘secondary imperialist power’. this has meant pursuing and developing its own imperialist interests and capacities, but aligned with the dominant imperialist states of the u.k. and the u.s. this is a pattern of ‘co-operative specialization’ in foreign policy as canada cooperates closely with the lead imperialist power. over the cold war period, this meant specializing in diplomacy, peace-keeping and soft power, and in the text jerome klassen and paul kellogg lay out how this worked. in the period of neoliberalism, the foreign policy tasks have shifted: canada now specializes in diplomatic coverage for foreign intervention (as in haiti, lebanon, honduras), advancing free trade agreements (nafta, with ceta or the trans-pacific partnership) and the hard power of ‘disciplinary militarism’ of foreign combat missions. when looking at the overall position of canada within the imperialist hierarchies of the state system, it is the continuities that stand out, and it is from there that the the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 269 specifics of the harper regime need to be judged. this is pretty much a unique thesis to empire’s ally, as only a few writers have pointed in this direction at all, and none of these develop a marxist-inspired critique of canadian foreign policy. second, the american state’s position as the dominant imperialist power and its continued pursuit of primacy has been a consistent in framing canadian foreign policy. obama, for example, never broke with any of the strategies and practices taken up by bush in the ‘war on terror’. he continues with the constant referrals to the us as the ‘indispensible nation’ and has acted on the basis of american exceptionalism with respect to the norms of the world order as, for example, the right to deploy drones at its discretion. this is a strategy of ‘disciplinary militarism’: the use of armed force to compel states, if their domestic capitalist classes and political elites are not already doing so, to adhere to the neoliberal world order under u.s. hegemony. alongside the american-led international policies for free trade, capital mobility, and the re-capitalization of the banking system, they have formed the basis for what can be called a ‘new imperialism’ in terms of the geo-economic framework that has emerged. this has evolved since reagan and consolidated as part of the way neoliberalism has formed the new basis of social rule in the 1990s. it is blindingly obvious that canadian foreign policy even since mulroney has been a key support to this strategy. what we attempted to do in empire’s ally was to accept this context and address how the canadian state and capital out of their own interest fit within this context, and the way the canadian state transformed its internal and international security regimes as a result of the afghan war, as part of what adam hanieh refers to in the volume as a ‘single war’ across the middle and far east. a lot of conventional military analysts have referred to this as a ‘revolution’ in canadian military and foreign policy, and there is something to that. but they totally neglect the continuities in canadian imperialism and simply ignore the role in supporting the internationalization of canadian capital. third, capitalist states always need to be assessed as making, mediating and reflecting the balance of social processes; in other words, as being the institutionalization of social struggles within liberal democracies. they are not neutral instruments held accountable by, and responding to, parliamentary deputies. as such, the department and branches of the state are also being re-ordered and shifting in the internal hierarchy of state power to reflect shifts in social struggle and ruling class strategies. this theoretical point is often seen to be obvious in the case 270 | climate change and its discontents of the canadian state, given the degree of its autonomy from popular democratic forces, and the way the canadian state has been continually re-organized to assist capital accumulation, including the foreign and military apparatuses, and trade and capital flows from britain and the u.s. with canada. since 2001 and the opening of the new round of military interventions, there has been a substantial re-ordering of the canadian state: a general degradation of the institutions of representation and democratic processes; a hardening of the state in terms of policing, prisons military and the security apparatuses, in all its dimensions, from border security to csis; a re-orientation of the economic and trade policy branches to facilitate the internationalization of capital and the competitive capacity of labour processes; and a restructuring of the military and diplomatic apparatuses. but it builds on the project of ‘deep integration’ between canada and the us since the 1990s. ‘deep integration’ follows the internal logic of neoliberalism and the linkage between national security and economic liberalization that have been integral to the exercise of american imperial power. it would take pages to catalogue all of the policy shifts that have been made, but a few can be signaled: the fortress north america realignment of border and security relations with the u.s., as well as economic competitiveness; the support for fipa, ceta, tpp and a host of other ‘free trade’ agreements that secure new mandates for the internationalization of capital; the cooperation around continental energy policies, particularly around the extreme energy policies of offshore, fracking and the tar sands; the remaking of canadian defence policy to secure the arctic for north american control and for the deployment of canadian troops in joint operations in multiple battlefields; and the recasting of canadian diplomatic offices and practices to support ‘hard power’ deployment and alignment with us policies with respect to the middle east and latin america. it is this phase of the new imperialism in canada that we attempt to document in empire’s ally, and the way that the canadian intervention in afghanistan helped facilitate these transformations. jc: so canada is a “secondary power” within the us led “empire of capital”, to use ellen wood’s phrase, a class strategy to restructure canadian foreign policy in line with the internationalization of canadian capital. this begs the question, however, is the notion of “secondary power” sufficient to demarcate the role of canada, when the capitalist class is so thoroughly integrated with u.s. and global capital, on one hand? or the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 271 on the other hand, does the canadian state and canadian capital have interests of their own that sometimes diverge with international capital? jerome klassen3 (jk): in the social sciences, there are several theories of canadian state power in the global political economy. in liberal theory, canada is a ‘middle power’ and thus holds a vested interest in multilateral diplomacy and conflict resolution. it believes, furthermore, that canadian foreign policy is guided by the ethical motivations of political leaders and reflects the democratic will of the public. in my view, this is far too idealistic and uncritical. canada, like every other state, has selfish interests in the global political economy and forges policies that reflect not the popular will but dominant social interests. the idea that canada is a ‘middle power’ is also incorrect; it is a major economic power with considerable military capacities and is not viewed as a ‘middle power’ by other states, especially in the periphery. the realist theory of canadian foreign policy is more accurate in these regards. generally speaking, it debunks the liberal ideology of the postwar period – in particular, the notion that canada was a ‘middle power’ in the cold war and practiced ‘peacekeeping’ for noble and selfless purposes – and tends to view canada as strong or ‘principal’ power in world affairs. one stream of realism also recognizes the power of the u.s. over canada and the way in which canada is forced to work within u.s. power projections. despite these strengths, realist theory is based on a reification of the state and thus ignores the internationalization of canadian capital and the role of dominant social groups in forging canadian state policy at home and abroad. unfortunately, these issues are completely off the radar of realist research, which has been highly supportive of the new militarism in canadian foreign policy. marxism offers the third perspective on these matters. in brief, it holds that canada is an imperialist power in that it is bound up with transnational forms of class exploitation and political domination. however, this perspective is still underdeveloped. although there is a 3 jerome klassen is a research fellow with the international development studies program at saint mary’s university and recently completed a sshrc postdoctoral fellowship at the mit center for international studies. he is co-editor of empire’s ally: canada and the war in afghanistan (university of toronto press) and has published articles in studies in political economy, canadian journal of sociology, and journal of world-systems research. the university of toronto press is publishing his monograph, joining empire: the political economy of the new canadian foreign policy (2014).” 272 | climate change and its discontents strong tradition of marxian political economy in canada, it hasn’t really addressed foreign policy issues, at least in an academic format. so, one goal of empire’s ally was to generate a new research program on the class politics of canadian foreign policy. in my view, the canadian state is best viewed as a ‘secondary’ imperialist power for several reasons. first, it does not command the political, economic, or military powers to fully set an agenda for global politics, for example, as the united states or even china does. instead, it operates in a supporting or ‘secondary’ role in the world market and state system. second, despite its formal autonomy and independent interests and capacities, it tends to work internationally by internalizing and incorporating the political, economic, and military norms and priorities of primary powers such as the united states. this has been true since world war ii, but has increased dramatically since 9/11, as the canadian state embraced the ‘global war on terror’ and, to this end, thoroughly transformed itself. empire’s ally attempts to make sense of these various dynamics. it recognizes that the canadian capitalist class has claims across the world economy and thus is a key player in the internationalization of capital, including in many poor countries and regions. however, the internationalization of canadian capital is still focused on north america, which is dominated by the united states and its national bloc of capital. so, for the most part, empire’s ally recognizes that canada is an imperialist power, but tends to support, or to operate under, u.s. hegemonic designs. of course, tensions and rivalries continue to exist between capitalist classes of different nation-states, including the us and canada. but the idea that canada is locked in ‘inter-imperialist rivalry’ with the u.s. is simply not the case, as some trotskyists seem to argue. to get around these issues, empire’s ally tries to analyze the general tendencies of capitalist imperialism as well as the particular role of canada as a secondary power in the current global conjuncture. in my view, future research should look more closely at how the particular structure of accumulation in canada – in particular, the nexus of energy, mining and finance – generates unique patterns of international engagement under the hegemonic direction of canadian capital. jc: in terms of canada’s and others’ efforts to “rebuild” the afghan state, what hurdles have been faced, and how has canada failed to manage and/or transcended such hurdles? if it is indeed possible to help afghanistan, what can be done, not merely by the canadian state, but by international assistance? the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 273 jk: canada’s approach to state building in afghanistan has been characterized by two key features. first, it largely followed the u.s.-led process of working with president hamid karzai and various warlords, commanders, and sectarian leaders, who filled the power vacuum in 2001. as part of this, the us and the international financial institutions dictated a neoliberal development program for afghanistan, one that was geared towards the privatization of state industries and the liberalization of trade and investment flows. international ngos played a key role in this project, in particular, by providing services and building infrastructure in towns and villages. the result has been a highly contingent and unaccountable form of state building and development, one in which popular needs are not addressed or fulfilled by state institutions. in this context, there is some concern that the afghan state may disintegrate if a civil war resumes after u.s./nato forces withdrawal over the next year. the u.s.-led mission has done nothing for reconciliation and transitional justice after decades of civil war, authoritarian rule, and outside intervention. for example, at the present moment, the u.s. is trying to sign a status of forces agreement for a long-term military presence in afghanistan, one in which its troops will be given legal immunity from afghan jurisdiction and sovereignty. this is a further example of how outside intervention has continued to limit or undermine efforts at sovereign state building in that country. it is important to recognize that canada has enabled the u.s.-led project in afghanistan through several contributions. in fact, it has tried to develop specialized props for the state-building effort. in our book, anthony fenton and jon elmer show how canada’s efforts at ‘democracy promotion’ were in fact based on an elitist model of institutionalizing popular sovereignty. likewise, angela joya and justin podur show how canada’s development projects were linked to a militarized, neoliberal model of pacification. in these ways, the authors demonstrate the particular methods of canadian imperialism in the afghan theatre. what alternatives exist? as several authors in our book argue, canada should withdrawal its remaining military forces and support active and transparent forms of conflict resolution involving the un, the key regional powers, and the full spectrum of afghan political forces. after this, canada should provide aid and reconstruction funding to a future afghan government, which must be allowed to set its own priorities for economic growth and social development. the canadian state 274 | climate change and its discontents must also investigate any canadian military, diplomatic, or security personnel who participated in potential war crimes, including the transfer of prisoners to torture. jc: while empire’s ally touches upon this, i’m wondering if you can say a bit more about the ecological dimension of canadian foreign policy, such as the canadian state’s support and encouragement of ecologically destructive mining industries. jk: environmental issues do not factor centrally into empire’s ally. michael skinner’s chapter does, however, discuss the environmental impact of mining development in afghanistan. the massive projects coming down the pipe are expected to displace small-scale farming and even backyard mining operations, and to disrupt the delicate ecological balance, including irrigation systems, in certain regions. beyond this, the book doesn’t really grapple with environmental concerns. future research on canadian imperialism must, however, do so thoroughly. as a leading per capita emitter of greenhouse gases, canada holds a ‘climate debt’ to the world and thus practices ‘ecological imperialism,’ or the unequal exploitation of the world’s atmosphere as a carbon dump. one major reason for this is that capital accumulation in canada is increasingly based on energy-intensive industrial operations, including mining and bitumen extraction. the subordination of production in canada to global market imperatives has also made the country increasingly reliant on global trade and with it, the infinite use of hydrocarbon resources. for these reasons, progressive movements must integrate an ecological perspective into their anti-imperialist and anticapitalist frameworks. in the final chapter of the book, derrick o’keefe of the canadian peace alliance makes this point in very clear terms and suggests methods for making it happen. ga: in a moment’s reflection, it should become apparent that the american military is the most destructive ecological force on the planet: for its use of natural resources in general; as the foremost user of fossil fuels (and thus contributor to climate change); for its mass campaigns of defoliation and aerial bombing; and for the legacy of radioactive and toxic waste it has strewn across the planet. military activity as a whole is the single greatest contributor to ecological destruction, with the canadian military being a significant contributor. just think of the toxic waste that have been left across the canadian arctic by norad’s dew line, or the ecological the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 275 mess that resides at every canadian and american military base across the country. modern warfare is really one of the areas where the terms ‘ecocide’ and ‘ecological imperialism’ really fit, and they have potentially a very rich conceptual range and possibilities in peace studies research. it is something we need to take up with respect to the canadian military. there is no modern imperialist military intervention that has not left a terrible toxic ecological legacy. we are not yet able to make an assessment of what the impacts on afghanistan has been, but we know it will not be trivial. it is impossible today to be an ecological activist and not also take on militarism and its consequences for climate change and the natural ecology as a whole. and this carries over into being antiimperialist for this is what the american and western military forces are organized to defend and enforce. in turn, to be anti-militarist is to take on the ecological consequences of war-making today. these are clearly the analytical and political points of convergence of the ecological and anti-war movements. but we are some ways still of getting that level of social consciousness and political organization as part of the everyday common-sense of the left and working-class people. but we also need to see the ecological dimensions of foreign policy in terms of the overall organization of the apparatuses of the canadian state. since there has been so much sloppy thinking with respect to the canadian state and foreign policy, it is necessary to begin with a broader point. capitalist states are, as marx put it, “the form of organization which the bourgeois necessarily adopt for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests.” national states play an indispensible nodal role in supplying the extra-market institutional and coordinative roles necessary for capital accumulation, including mediating the inter-state system. as such, the diplomatic branches of the state are delimited in their role with respect to these essential systemic needs of capital. even the much touted period of canada as a ‘middlepower broker’ really reflected the areas of ‘co-operative specialization’, as i put it, consistent with canada’s position as part of the imperialist core re-making global capitalism over the cold war period. since 2001, as we already noted, the foreign policy branches of the canadian state dealing with ‘soft power’ issues like climate change, human rights, family planning, and so forth, have been marginalized relative to security and military issues. and the diplomatic and economic components of the state facilitating the accumulation of capital have been given increased roles and powers. in fact, in the case of afghanistan, the 3d policy framework tied economic and military components together in 276 | climate change and its discontents particular ways. the more recent shifting of cida into the, now renamed, department of foreign affairs, trade and development canada, has also gone in this direction. not surprisingly, given the competitive capacities of the canadian extractive sector, and bay st. as the central place in the world for financing mining, the canadian state has been playing a big part in backing up the internationalization of mining capital. this, of course, has come at some cost to ecological issues, which the harper government has symbolized by gutting environmental regulation and moving environment canada to the margins of the canadian state. but environmental issues are a really important dimension in the matrix of foreign policy issues today, given the international dimensions to all ecology issues, especially climate change. even with what often appears as localized problems of ecology, the competitive imperatives driving capital accumulation forces inter-state competition that puts ecology into competition – in developing more extreme energy sources, dumping pollutants, shirking ghg reduction targets, and so on. this forms a fundamental contradiction in international relations. through international coordination capitalist states can agree to coordinate action to address ecological issues through upgrading binding constraints (the strategy since the brundtland report on sustainable development in 1987). but at the same time these very same states are encouraging accumulation and the competitive capacities of the capitals in their own territorial space that undermine the agreements. well, one of the tendencies within this contradiction is going to prevail. it is clear enough that ecology has been subordinated to the imperialist ordering of the inter-state system and the internationalization of capital. the economic crisis since 2008, and the turn to what can be called permanent austerity, has further pushed ecology to the margins. so, not surprisingly, we have witnessed over the last two years the harper government mobilize the entire international branches of the canadian state in support of oil and gas exports – the keystone pipeline to the u.s. and various natural gas export plans to east asia; and at the same time do whatever the government can do to disrupt the various climate change protocols being negotiated to succeed the kyoto accord (the targets from that agreement being basically ignored, before just withdrawing from the accord). there are any number of other examples of canadian foreign policy taking the exact same stance of disregard for ecology – from landmines, to withdrawal from the un convention to combat desertification, to lack of cooperation in international research on the ecology of the arctic and the other oceans bordering canada, and others. the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 277 there is a habit in progressive circles to charge harper with a radical re-working of canadian foreign policy and stump for an ndp-liberal alliance, backed by a social movement front, to defeat the conservatives. this would allow a return to the canadian state role as ‘active global statesman’. well, harper has certainly intensified the most aggressive and imperialist components of the canadian state, the thesis of empire’s ally suggests that canada’s shifting international role was already forming under chretien and martin and the liberals. the core features of canadian foreign policy will not be radically remade, particularly as both the ndp and liberals have committed to developing the tar sands and the internationalization of canadian capital. to be clear, any departure in canada’s position in the world order is really dependent upon an alternate bloc forming with a program that links anti-militarism and ecology to the traditional demands of the left for democratization, socially-responsible production, increased diversity and autonomy for alternate development models and addressing the inequalities of the world order. in one form or another, this has always constituted the basis of a socialist program for international relations. the anti-war and anti-imperialist movements in canada could play a bit role in bringing these positions from out of the margins. jc: is there a peace movement in canada? is there an environmental movement in canada? what i mean by this question is that, assuming mobilizing for peace and environmental justice are co-constitutive struggles, how can progressive scholars and activists conjoin these movements – and do these movements indeed exist? ga: this is a tough set of questions – they raise the challenge of reading the conjuncture and the state of left strategy and tactics, in canada and more generally. and there are as many illusions about the state of social movements in canada, or elsewhere for that matter, as there are about canadian foreign policy. there has been a certain impulse in some strands of the left, and particularly among movement activists, that capitalism is in deep crisis; that the ruling bloc and the core capitalist countries are increasingly divided (and thus able to resolve political problems and rule); that resistance is rising; and that the social movements have within themselves, as is, a ready alternative. sometimes a further, parallel claim – particularly by union leaderships and progressive ngos – is made: that the ndp and social democratic forces will be able to switch the channel on the policy agenda (perhaps in alliance with the liberals). 278 | climate change and its discontents although there is still a protracted economic crisis, none of these individual claims hold up, and together they have been terribly disorienting for political thinking and strategizing, especially in a country with such a weak socialist culture as canada. it is tiresome when repeated every few years for decades. in fact, the disorganization of the broad left – in radical and social democratic parties and in unions and social movements – has been the actual trajectory. the old leninist formulations behind this theme are completed out of step with the times. the most immediate need is the steady rebuilding of socialist and radical infrastructures and organizational capacities. otherwise the defeats will mount and the illusions of a coming resistance will seem ever more fantastical. rather than building the movements, this type of politics always invoking the coming revolt encourages the collapse of oppositional forces, and the broad working classes, into a fatalism that accepts the existing state of ‘no alternatives’. in effect, the political space that can be occupied by right wing populism is widened and filled, for example, by harperism or the ‘ford nation’ in toronto. we have to begin from a very tough-minded assessment – gramsci’s pessimism of the intellect – of where we are actually at, steadily building new organizational capacities, experimenting with parties of a new kind, and contributing to key political struggles by connecting them across sectors and to a critique of capitalism. there are no political short-cuts. this reading of the current period is, more or less, an implicit theme of empire’s ally in attempting to emphasize canada’s place in the core imperial countries, the reorganization of the military and diplomatic components of the state, and to put the anti-war agenda in canada in terms of building an anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist movement. this is why there is such thorough critique of the mythologies of canada as neutral broker, or as a peacekeeping nation, across the volume. we need to understand the current political terrain as a hardening of capitalist power, not its’ weakening, and make political calculations on the left on that basis. a number of contributions in empire’s ally address the question of the peace movement directly, and to their credit none of this nonsense of impending collapse is to be found. instead, there is a sober assessment of what the peace movements in quebec and canada accomplished in opposition to the war in afghanistan and what remains to be done. benoit renaud and jessica squires, for example, analyze the course of the anti-war movement in quebec, échec á la guerre, in relation to the the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 279 formation of quebec solidaire, and a range of human rights, labour and anti-racist struggles. but they warn that even on this much stronger political ground than elsewhere in north america, there is still a long way to go to rebuild mass movements and the capacity for mass mobilization. derrick o’keefe, one of the co-chairs of the canadian peace alliance, carefully dissects the way that a new military strategy has formed in the canadian state. he stakes out an agenda for re-building an antiwar movement in canada in this new context, and to keep the peace movement relevant. similarly, angela joya and anthony fenton and jon elmer pick apart the way that much of ngo and development work has assisted in building what the latter refer to as an ‘expeditionary force for democracy promotion’. the peace movement is illustrative of the difficulty of building movements in the context of neoliberalism and a hardening of the military strategy of the canadian state. but the environmental movements illustrate a different trajectory. as neoliberalism consolidated in the 1990s, most of the big engos accommodated to the new political terrain – they wanted to remain relevant and they wanted immediate changes, even if incremental and symbolic. a number of us, particularly in the toronto group meeting around the journal capitalism, nature, socialism, began tracking the steady embrace of market ecology by the ecology movement, and an incredibly naïve believe in market prices and cost internalization for effecting ‘green growth’ within capitalism. we further picked these views apart in the socialist register volume 43, coming to terms with nature. even in the current fight over climate change, many of the major ecology groups are relying on market mechanisms and slower development rather than taking up an anti-capitalist political position. the search is for a sustainable energy fix within capitalist social relations. this is not untypical of a range of social movements. it may well be more accurate to speak of a range of activist nodes each, in their way, opposing some of the dislocations produced by neoliberalism. but not becoming social movements mobilizing tens of thousands in mass protests, and the day-to-day practices of resistance – petitions, picketing, deputations, workplace agitation, and so on. and not forming into anti-systemic organizational forces shifting the correlation of national or international forces in a more democratic and egalitarian direction. so much of what goes under the name of social movements in canada represents deep frustrations with the way we live, and anger at the gross abuses of power and privilege of capitalism in canada, but not coherent democratic forces able to suggest a path to another way of living. this is 280 | climate change and its discontents why we put so much stress in empire’s ally on canada as a major capitalist power embedded in the wider u.s. and nato imperialist agenda, and the harper government as an intensification of some of these neoliberal trends but not the initiator. let me return to some of the wider themes. a number of structural transformations have altered the organizational foundations for left politics: the changes in the nature of employment towards more networked production processes and fragmented services provision; the increasing international circulation of capital; the internal differentiation and stratification of the working class; and the re-orientation of so much organized political activism toward negotiating defensive compromises with the state. neoliberalism has, of course, driven these pressures. left alternatives have also suffered historical defeats, for good and ill, in the end of authoritarian communism and the realignment of social democracy toward increasing accommodation of the market and existing distributional relations. these developments have shifted working class capacities in terms of workplace organization, political leadership of oppositional forces and ideological inventiveness. as a consequence, left politics under neoliberalism (in canada since the failure to defeat nafta in the early 1990s) has oscillated between, on the one hand, a ‘politics of chaos’ that in fact reflects the disarray of left forces and organizational weakness, and, on the other, short-term political calculation to avoid further social erosion. above all, then, the socialist left must be actively fostering the formation of new political agencies. one necessary aspect of such an engagement is class reformation through revitalization of unions, and the linking of unions to workers in new sectors, the struggles for gender and racial equality, and the marginalized outside ‘normal’ work processes. it is also necessary to experiment in organizational convergence between the remnants of the independent left, civic organizations, and the sections within social democracy that remained committed to a transformative project. such a reformation needs to be grounded in the building up of educational, communicative and cultural resources indispensable to forming the political identity necessary for a ‘new socialism’ for the 21st century. and concrete anti-neoliberal alliances forged in struggle to defeat particular initiatives and make inroads against neoliberalism will make such a process of reformation ‘organic’. the anti-war movement is, as we signal in empire’s ally, a crucial component of this convergence as a new canadian left will have to be clearly anti-imperialist and offer a radical challenge to the current world the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 281 order and the current matrix of foreign policy. it is not difficult to suggest some of the transitional demands that we need to insist upon – a rejection of current policies toward the middle and far east and war reparations to the people of afghanistan and just settlement in palestine; supporting a multi-polar world order and regional capacities for enforcing peace and dispute settlement; withdrawal from international military alliances and the conversion of military forces into increasingly civil organizations for defence, emergency relief and ecological cleanup; forging a new international economic architecture that places control on capital movements, plans trade, transfers technology and resources, and internationally coordinates a transition to low-carbon economies; and an industrial conversion strategy away from military production. this is the kind of agenda that, as we suggest in empire’s ally, is beginning to emerge across the inter-state system. it is part of the emerging anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist sensibility that is beginning to lay the basis for a new socialism relevant for the 21st century. 282 | climate change and its discontents neoliberalismand thedegradation ofdegradation of degradation ofdegradation of edited by: carlo fanelli & bryan evans alternate routes 2015 © alternate routes, 2015 toronto www.alternateroutes.ca www.aupress.ca www.redquillbooks.com “alternate routes” issn 1923-7081 (online) issn 0702-8865 (print) produced by: published by: alternate routes: a journal of critical social research vol. 26, 2015 managing editors: carlo fanelli and bryan evans interventions editor: jordy cummings book review editors: priscillia lefebvre and nicolas carrier editorial advisory board: nahla abdo, dimitry anastakis, ian angus, pat armstrong, tim bartkiw, david camfield, nicolas carrier, sally chivers, wallace clement, simten cosar, aaron doyle, ann duffy, luis fernandez, randall germain, peter gose, alan hunt, paul kellogg, jacqueline kennelly, mark neocleous, bryan palmer, garry potter, georgios papanicolaou, mi park, justin paulson, stephanie ross, herman rosenfeld, george s. rigakos, heidi rimke, arne christoph ruckert, toby sanger, ingo schmidt, alan sears, mitu sengupta, meenal shrivastava, janet lee siltanen, susan jane spronk, jim struthers, donald swartz, mark p. thomas, rosemary warskett journal mandate established in 1977 at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university, alternate routes is committed to creating outlets for critical social research and interdisciplinary inquiry. alternate routes works closely with scholars, labour, community and social justice researchers to promote the publication of heterodox critical social research in all its forms, as well as provocative and progressive analyses that may not find a forum in conventional academic venues. alternate routes seeks to be a public academic journal and encourages works that advance or challenge theoretical, historical and contemporary socio-political, economic and cultural issues. in addition to full-length articles, we welcome review essays sparked by previously published material, interviews, commentaries, book reviews as well as poetry, drawings and photo-essays. 4 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education table of contents | 5 table of contents editorial introduction capitalism in the classroom: the commodification of education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 carlo fanelli and bryan evans articles the corporate corruption of academic research . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 jamie brownlee the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 jeff noonan, and mireille coral why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? critical theory on policy movement in the context of contemporary reform in mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 paul bocking free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: the bologna process in turkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 simten coşar and hakan ergül rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 garry potter from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial: the consolidation of neoliberalism in ontario’s universities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 eric newstadt the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign: an assessment from a social movement unionism perspective . . . . . . . . . . . 170 caitlin hewitt-white precarious employment in ontario’s university sector: reflections on collective bargaining at carleton university . . 200 mathew nelson and lydia dobson neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 paul orlowski 6 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education “between a rock and a hard place”: negotiating the neoliberal regulation of social work practice and education . . . . . . . . 251 teresa macías a critique of the millennial: a retreat from and return to class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 tanner mirrless interventions neoliberalism and the attack on education: an interview with henry a. giroux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 heather mclean the new brutalism in higher education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 henry a. giroux neoliberal standardization and its discontents: an interview with diane ravitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 christopher bailey beyond education, brains and hard work: the aspirations and career trajectory of two black young men . . . . . . . . . . 332 carl e. james the abode of educational production: an interview with peter mclaren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354 jordy cummings learning without sages? reflections on “flipping” the university classroom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 joel d. harden beyond the first rung: an interview with jim silver . . . . . . . . . 390 jordy cummings critical education and insurgent pedagogies: an interview with e. wayne ross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 carlo fanelli book reviews john marsh. class dismissed: why we can’t teach or learn our way out of inequality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 peter brogan gamel abdel-shehid and nathan kalman-lamb. out of left field: social inequality and sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 christine pich table of contents | 7 meg luxton and mary jane mossman. reconsidering knowledge: feminism and the academy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 jordan fairbairn alain deneault and william sacher. imperial canada inc.: legal haven of choice for the world’s mining industries . . . . . . 343 j.z. garrod nikolas barry-shaw and dru oja jay. paved with good intentions: canada’s development ngos from idealism to imperialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 madalena santos scott neigh. resisting the state: canadian history through the stories of activists. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443 amanda joy a.l. mccready. yellow ribbons: the militarization of national identity in canada . . . . . . . . . . . . 446 shannon t. speed perry anderson. the new old world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 aaron henry articles 10 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education editorial introduction: capitalism in the classroom | 11 editorial introduction capitalism in the classroom: the commodification of education education policy and politics reflect, as so few other areas of social policy do, the role of the state not just in capitalist economic development but also in constructing a working class to fit the needs required for that development. education, at least at the primary level, emerged as among the first public services concerned with human resource development. the industrialization and urbanization of 19th century capitalism required that its working class be numerate and literate. this link to capitalist relations of production and economic development was organic and necessary. education not only provided workers with skills but socialized children into understanding their role as disciplined workers. and that link has been continuous. the confluence of postwar prosperity and the cold war expanded the need for a still more broadly educated workforce capable of undertaking professional and quasi-professional work within the expanding private and public sector organizations, and to contribute to scientific research and development which was largely centred on military strategy. consequently, post-secondary education (pse) underwent an unprecedented expansion and one largely funded by the state. at an ideological level, a new social contract emerged which wove liberal democratic citizenship, state-subsidized research and innovation, and increasing rates of productivity and capital accumulation into a virtuous cycle of mutual social, political and economic gains. such was the golden age of capitalism! today, into the fourth decade of neoliberalism, another new social contract is in the process of being written, and within this new regime of class relations, contemporary education policy and practice corresponds to and reproduces the new balance of class power expressed by this ‘variety’ of capitalism. the contributions presented in this volume deal with a range of foci in education but all illustrate from their own perspective the “new brutalism” (giroux) in education. all, to some degree, are concerned with the role of the state in neoliberalizing education. however, two (cosar and ergul; bocking) are explicitly centred on the politics of public policy in enabling neoliberalization. others are centred around the resistance, uneven though it is, of education workers and students to this process 12 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education (potter; nelson and dobson; hewitt-white; and orlowski). still others take a more labour process and ideational framing approach where the focus is on how professions are ideologically reconstructed (macias) and how the critical centre-place of employability and entrepreneurship in post-secondary education have served to displace, if not destroy, the role of the university as a space for a broad range of perspectives, including critical ones, to incubate and engage with the larger society. instead the only incubation is that of likely-to-fail business ventures. and entrepreneurship is an ideological carrier serving to prepare students for a life of precarity (newstadt; noonan and coral; mirrlees). and informing all of this is the corporate penetration and occupation of the university. the result is an astonishing tale of transformation, de-democratization and a narrowing of vison and therefore of purpose (brownlee). the issues and critiques raised here reflect and respond to the assault of fundamentalist neoliberals, who view education as a commodity to be bought and sold like any other, while the market is presumed to effectively (i.e. profitably) allocate scarce resources. approaching some $3 trillion in market opportunities, the education sector has come to be seen as a major source of untapped privatization. indeed, along with health care, education is a significant dimension in the public services privatization and marketization ‘gold rush’ (huws, 2008). as performancebased evaluations become more prevalent, testing and assessment niche markets are expected to continue growing. a recent (and astonishing for its forthrightness) example of fundamentalist neoliberalism is found in the pages of rebuilding america’s middle class: prosperity requires capitalism in the classroom. this report from southern methodist university’s school of business, o’neil center for global markets and freedom, reads as a revisionist history of us capitalism that trumpets the virtues of further marketizing education in all its forms. for instance, dean of the school, albert w. niemi, contends “...only more competition will improve education,” while chairman of the o’neil center’s advisory board jerry fulinwider, lamenting his distrust of big government, calls the “wagner act, a new deal labor law...unfair, un-american.” the target, in both respects, is the us’s allegedly “centralized, bureaucratic public school system” and the unions “fighting to protect their own interests, not students’ well-being.” contending that us public schools have become a fiefdom for unionized workers and government waste, the author’s of the report, w. michael cox and richard alm (2012, 11), argue: “the superiority of editorial introduction: capitalism in the classroom | 13 the private sector over government arises from choice and competition... government fails because it replaces choice and competition with the ‘take it or leave it’ diktat of politicians and bureaucrats. they decide what people ought to have – one size fits all. government wallows in red tape, resists change and protects entrenched interests.” part populism and part right-wing propaganda, the report is soft on comparative data lacking both methodological rigour and theoretical clarity of comprehension. rather, exaggerated rhetoric and repetitive ideological tropes dominate: “the impediment is a government-run school system resistant to innovation, indifferent to student needs and mired in mediocrity. we won’t improve our school’s until we get government out of the way.” bemoaning unions and their political meddling as obstacles, in a vain attempt at comparative analysis the authors then go on to make the case that the education sector should be run more like apple as opposed to a fictitious government telecommunications company, or more like federal express as opposed to the united states postal service; both companies with well-documented exploitative labour practices, tax avoidance schemes and significant public subsidies which simultaneously go to fund their anti-corporate tax and social security fighting politicking. further, in a twist of methodological manipulation, cox and alm (2012, 10-13) aim to eliminate “demographic bias” by “adjusting each state’s data to reflect the national mix of major ethnic groups in public schools: 59.2 percent whites, 24.6 percent hispanics and 16.2 percent blacks.” this seemingly benign method, while on the face of it incorporating ethno-racial oppressions, in fact does the opposite; it homogenizes state-level demographic differences in math, reading and science to demonstrate the apparent coincidence that students from predominantly white, higher-income earning states outperform their hispanic and black counterparts. drawing on friedman’s capitalism and freedom, the authors argue that public school systems should be run more like restaurants providing bare minimum standards. “government penalizes individual success with higher taxes...failure often gets rewarded with a bigger subsidy” (ibid). they make a case for the total privatization of the educational sector, which includes vouchers, charter schools, tax deductions, credits, online learning and home schooling, without a mention of how such measures exacerbate ethno-racial and class-based oppressions or increase women’s share of unpaid socially reproductive labour. their report reaches its culmination when cox and alm (2012, 16) claim: 14 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education “students will be better serviced in private schools run like a business. there’s no reason to shy away from what this means: operating for profit, replacing principles with ceo’s, paying good teachers more, firing bad teachers, giving schools freedom to innovate in instruction methods and curriculum, letting new schools enter the market, allowing bad ones to fail, encouraging successful schools to takeover unsuccessful ones, getting rid of unions that protect bad teachers and stifle change.” without a glimmer of critical engagement, the authors assert that the market, god-like, simply knows best; but education policy should never be left to faith alone, especially in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. yet, in a recurring set of narratives, the o’neil centre is less concerned with improving education in the sense of enhanced democratic capacities, public engagement and social justice, but in a purely profit motivated sense. as one of the centre’s keynote speakers held at a conference organized on “the future of economic freedom” expressed: “very curiously, despite the tremendous success of capitalism, it has what i call a very serious branding problem. business isn’t seen as good. instead business is mostly seen as selfish, greedy, exploitative, fundamentally unethical” (john mackey in cox and alm, 2012, 21). rather than continuing this promising line of inquiry, however, mackey proposes “conscious capitalism” – a branding exercise to ideologically imbue notions of ‘responsible capitalism’ and counter criticisms of capitalist class power or deficiencies in policymaking outcomes. in line with neoliberalism’s most vocal expositors seeking to transform the role of the state in the provision of social services, veronique de rugy argued: “i want government to compete with each other as ferociously as possible.” in an attempt to draw attention to the global benefits of neoliberal policies in raising living standards, benjamin powell, director of the free market institute at texas tech, added: “..outlawing sweatshops would just make workers in poor countries worse off. sweatshop workers feel fortunate to have their jobs because garment factories offer better pay and working conditions than the most likely alternatives – subsistence farming, begging, scavenging and informal service sector jobs” (cited in cox and arm, 2012, 22). other conference participants such as distinguished professor of capitalism, edward lopez, and a host of others, went on to make similar arguments proclaiming the value of consolidating capitalism in the classroom. in an unrelated but growing choir, the economist (2013) praised small heath secondary editorial introduction: capitalism in the classroom | 15 school in birmingham, england, for their recent change to a businessfriendly curriculum that welcomes “capitalists in the classroom.” unfortunately, many canadian universities have been steadily emulating the us model of privatized post-secondary education.1 the user-fee model, which assumes private, post-graduation returns by charging up-front fees borrowed against expected future earnings, as the articles in this volume argue, has shown itself to be a fundamentally flawed model that has reinforced ethno-racial, gender and class-based oppressions (giroux, this volume; ravitch, this volume). in canada, this signifies a considerable movement away from a publicly funded post-secondary education system financed through a broad range of progressive taxes which, considered historically, have increased equality as measured by social mobility rates, enhanced working conditions, decreased student debt loads and provided a measure of insulation against corporate directed research and study (brownlee, this volume). in order to cope with chronic underfunding, many universities and colleges are turning to part-time instructors rather than full-time, tenured faculty, resulting in an increased rate of precarious employment as well as reduced student-professor face-time (silver, this volume; mclaren, this volume; harden, this volume). for neoliberal proponents “...knowledge [is viewed] as a commodity…and education as a path to income generation that must be privatized and made profitable in order for it to be maintained effectively.” (caffentzis, 2005, 600). increasingly, then, democratic control over resources, knowledge production and public space is monopolized by private interests with no other aim but to make a profit. hence, many universities are streamlining their services and course offerings to those that address market considerations or are “business-related,” while those more critically inclined, and therefore less likely to buy into a purely market driven educational model are isolated or have their program spending reduced or axed all together. this includes smaller departments and/or programs such as women’s and cultural studies, history and philosophy, critical interdisciplinary centres, especially those focused on labour-capital relations and smaller specialized programs like political economy, social and political thought or, oddly enough, canadian studies. as a consequence, university investments in the arts, humanities and the social sciences pale in comparison with the physical sciences and explicitly entrepreneurial or business-related research. rather, university administrators navigate the grant economy seeking to partner with 1  parts of this section are drawn extensively from fanelli, 2013 16 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education private sector philanthropists, in the process endangering scholastic independence by catering to the needs of powerful sectoral interests. this necessarily “curtails the pedagogic processes that potentially generates a critical perspective against the [capitalist] system…” as kumar (2010) continues: “education is more than formal institutional structures and classroom transactions. it is an arena that reflects the agenda and need of the dominant class interests in a society. therefore, to understand whatever happens in education it is important to understand the class politics, or labour-capital conflict, characterizing a society.” in this sense, the terrain of education and what is taught is at its core an ongoing field of class struggles across its diverse forms, including against racism, heteronormativity, gender-based discrimination and other intersecting axes of oppression. these issues, as much as concerns over universal accessibility, social justice, knowledge production and labour-capital-state conflicts in the pse sector and beyond, are themselves deeply entrenched within capitalist power structures (james, this volume; macias, this volume; mirrless, this volume). the province of ontario, where we are located, is exemplary in this respect (newstadt, this volume). between 1988-9 and 2005-6 consecutive federal governments have reduced total transfer (both cash and tax points) payments for pse by 40 percent (in 1998 dollars), while simultaneously pushing for enhanced partnerships with business counterparts in order to create new profit-making opportunities. this has resulted in the semi-privatization of ontario’s pse fees and thereby the creation of a quasi-market in the public sector (fisher et al., 2006; jones and young, 2004). this is perhaps best reflected in the steadily advancing privatization of pse in ontario as there has been a proliferation of private career colleges opened since the 1990s as commercial enterprises. the number of these colleges rose from just over 200 in 1990 to over 450 by 2004 (fisher et al., 2009; levin, kater, and wagoner, 2006 ). in ontario, between 1992-3 and 2004-5 provincial expenditures on pse (in 2004 dollars) decreased by nearly 15 percent (fisher et al. 2009, 553). transfers to colleges and universities per full-time equivalent student enrollment over the same period decreased by nearly 32 percent (caut, 2006). thus in ontario, user-fees and privatization measures are subtly being introduced under a policy framework of incrementalism, with recent reports proposing an expansion of for-profit pse (drummond commission, 2012). in ontario, spending as a share of university operating revenue between 1994 and 2004 decreased from 73 to 49 percent (fisher et al. 2009, 554). while in 1990 tuition fees accounted for 20 editorial introduction: capitalism in the classroom | 17 percent of institutional operating budgets, today it’s over 50 percent. as a consequence, between 1991 and 2008 average domestic tuition fees across canada increased by 176 percent. it is useful to point out that approximately 40 percent of the canadian population lives in ontario and roughly 42 percent of canadians choose ontario as their destination for pse (jones and young, 2004; dylan, 2012). thus what happens to pse and labour disputes in ontario may reveal broader trends canada-wide (hewitt-white, this volume; nelson and dobson, this volume). ontario occupies the unenviable distinction as the most expensive province in the country to complete an undergraduate degree. in 1990 the average cost of canadian tuition was under $1,500 but now stands at more than $6,000 per year. this mirrors a similar process for graduate students who now have to pay the highest fees in the country at over $9,000 per year.2 the tuition fee freeze that students won between 2004 and 2006 was cancelled by the liberal government and replaced with a new tuition framework. that framework, which ran from 2006 to 2012, allowed tuition fees for undergraduate students in their first year to increase up to 4.5 percent, while fee increases for the continuing years were limited to 4 percent. fees in graduate and professional programs, however, could increase by up to 8 percent for students in their first year, and 4 percent for students in continuing years. overall, tuition increases were limited to an annual average of 5 percent at each institution. this framework was succeeded by the current framework where the overall cap is 3 percent and that for graduate studies is a maximum 5 percent increase. the ontario government has done away with specifying a separate undergraduate cap and leaves it to institutions to sort out the undergraduate increase within the overall limit of 3 percent based on their particular program mix (artuso, 2013; yan, 2013). as a result, ontario undergraduate students hold the largest debt at graduation averaging more than $37,000 per student and increasing to over $44,000 for phd graduates. at $9,718 average per-student funding, ontario spends 20 percent less than the national average of $12,500. this has lead to larger class sizes and debt overhangs that have resulted in the number of summer days a student would have to work to make 2  this pales in comparison with quebec’s average undergraduate cost of $2,415, which were previously frozen for thirty-five years. it must be recalled that quebec never passed the cost of federal funding cuts onto students, while college generally remains free for residents and scholarships are ‘needs-based’ in an effort to reduce socio-economic inequalities. similarly, between 2002-04, the government of newfoundland and labrador reduced tuition fees by 25 percent and have since then been frozen, although recent austerity measures have begun to undermine the freeze and the quebec differential. 18 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education enough money to pay tuition fees for one year rising from barely over six weeks in 1980 to fifteen weeks by 2010 (based on undergraduate fees averaging $5,951, minimum wage and an 8-hour work day). as well, ontario continues to provide zero funding transfers to universities for international students. this has not stopped many university administrations from seeing international (particularly graduate) students as a strong source of foreign capital since they pay upwards of three times what domestic students pay (see ross, this volume). all things considered, the trajectory of pse in ontario is one where higher education is envisaged as serving business-related vocational and technical labour market needs, sustaining competition and ensuring market-oriented research (noonan and coral, this volume).3 international trends suggest similar processes of neoliberalizing pse (bocking, this volume; coşar and ergül, this volume). thus recent austerity measures must be considered in historical perspective as budget cuts and the pressures related to austerity are merely the latest in a sustained assault on public colleges and universities (potter, this volume; orlowski, this volume). this has been reflected in a de-democratization tendency or ‘disciplinary democracy’ in the pse sector as across the public sector more generally that ever-more deploys authoritarian measures that marginalizes, and even criminalizes, dissent in defense of austerity and market freedoms (albo and fanelli, 2014). the articles collected here challenge the unsubstantiated assertions of free market fundamentalists dogmatically insisting that education in all its forms requires capitalism in the classroom. this raises the question without providing any easy answers, of course, about under what conditions a social justice-centred approach to education that deepens and extends democratic capacities may flourish. alternate routes first explored these concerns in a series of panels organized at the conference capitalism in the classroom: neoliberalism, education and progressive alternatives held at ryerson university on april 4, 2014. like previous alternate routes conferences, video presentation can be found online at www.alternateroutes.ca. all things considered, this volume builds on our previous conference, while continuing to grapple with subject matter challenging the neoliberal degradation of education. we would like to extend our gratitude to ryerson university’s faculty of arts, office of the dean, 3  some have argued that the university of ontario institute of technology – the first new university in the province in forty years – is explicitly oriented to serving the automotive, technological and electrical power generation industries in ontario (see fisher et al., 2009). editorial introduction: capitalism in the classroom | 19 department of politics and public administration, department of sociology, centre for labour management relations, and toronto centre for social justice for providing us with financial support in order to see both the conference and this issue through. thanks are also due to the conference presenters and participants for their thoughtful contributions and engagement. with this volume, bryan evans joins our editorial advisory board and john shields as co-editor for our next issue. we look forward to continuing and extending alternate routes’ commitment to critical social research. references albo, g. and c. fanelli. (2014). austerity against democracy: an authoritarian phase of neoliberalism? teoria politica: an international journal of theory and politics, 2014, 65-88. artuso, a. (2013, march 28). ontario university, college tuition gets ok to rise 3% per year. toronto sun, http://www.torontosun.com/2013/03/28/ university-college-tuition-to-rise-3-per-year caffentzis, g. academic freedom and the crisis of neoliberalism: some cautions. review of african political economy, 106, 599-608. canadian association of university teachers. (2006). caut almanac of post-secondary education in canada. ottawa: caut publications. commission on the reform of ontario’s public services (drummond commission). (2012). public services for ontarians: a path to sustainability and excellence. toronto: queens printer for ontario. cox, w.m. and r. alm. (2012). rebuilding america’s middle class: prosperity requires more capitalism in the classroom. o’neil center for global markets and freedom, smu cox school of business. texas: southern methodist university. dylan, a. (2012). safety in the classroom: safeguarding liberal arts education from the neo-liberal threat. canadian journal of higher education, 42(2), 34-48. fanelli, c. (2013). fragile future: the attack against public services and public sector unions in an era of austerity. unpublished doctoral dissertation. ottawa: carleton university. fisher, d., k. rubenson, g. jones and t. shanahan. (2009). the political economy of post-secondary education: a comparison of british columbia, ontario, and québec. higher education, 57, 549-566 fisher, d., rubenson, k., shanahan, t., trottier, c., bernatchez, j., clift, r. (2006). canadian federal policy and post-secondary education. vancouver: centre for policy studies in higher education and training. 20 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education huws, u. (2008). the new gold rush: the new multinationals and the commodification of public sector work. work, organisation, labour and globalization, 2(2), 1-8. jones, g.a. and s.j. young. (2004). ‘madly off in all directions’: higher education, marketization and canadian federalism. in texeira, p., b. jongbloed, d. dill and a. amaral (eds.), markets in higher education: rhetoric or reality? (185-206). dordrecht, netherlands: kluwer academic publishers. kumar, r. (2010, december 2). neoliberalism, education and the politics of capital: searching possibilities for resistance. radical notes, http:// radicalnotes.com/category/commentaries/page/4/ levin, j.s., s. kater and r.l. wagoner. (2006). community college faculty: at work in the new economy. new york: palgrave macmillan. the economist. (2013). capitalists in the classroom. the economist, http:// www.economist.com/node/21587817 yan, t. (2013, april 8) . ontario announces tuition fees compromise. the varsity, http://thevarsity.ca/2013/04/01/ ontario-announces-tuition-fees-compromise/ book review: mr. big | 347 mr. big: exposing undercover investigations in canada by kouri t. keenan and joan brockman. winnipeg, manitoba: fernwood publishing, 2010. $19.95, can., paper. isbn: 978-1-5526-63769. pages 1-133. reviewed by allison wallis1 this book presents a critical evaluation of the “mr. big” investigative technique, a tool used by the royal canadian mounted police (rcmp) for obtaining incriminating evidence from key suspects in murder investigations. easily located in legal, sociological, and criminological research on the topic of wrongful conviction, the book would be most useful to those with an academic background or interest in the social sciences, particularly in the disciplines of criminology and criminal justice, law and legal studies, and sociology. although the book is written plainly enough for engagement and understanding by a reader of any discipline, some of the legal and other specialized jargon might limit the reach of this critical evaluation of investigative practices in the canadian criminal justice system. keenan and brockman do three things: 1) they present the reader with a thorough account of the mr. big investigative technique, its prominence, and its general script; 2) they relate the tactics employed during mr. big operations to the rate and risk of erroneous convictions; and 3) they draw on a number of procedural, legal, ethical, and moral issues that arise through its use. the study draws on 81 documented canadian mr. big operations and relevant journalistic reports as their supplements, analyzing transcripts, court documents, and journalistic reports through coding and content analysis. the authors begin by providing an effective illustration of the mr. big investigative technique by detailing three notorious operations, with varying outcomes, in order to provide the reader with an understanding of this increasingly common police tactic. the mr. big investigative technique is a tool employed by the rcmp to elicit incriminating information from targets – suspects in criminal investigations. generally, the technique follows a standard script, staged by undercover officers who 1 allison wallis is a master’s candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university. her current research focuses on the embodiment and performativity of animal rights by self-described animal rights activists within her community. she can be reached at allison_wallis@carleton.ca 348 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages purport to be figureheads in a criminal organization. the target is groomed by undercover operatives and is encouraged to become involved in the criminal organization. once the target has become involved in the fabricated criminal organization, undercover operatives, posing as crime bosses, suggest that criminal charges or suspicions of guilt can be disappeared under the condition that she or he fully discloses to mr. big the details of her or his involvement in the crime. providing verbatim transcriptions of interactions between mr. big operatives and their targets, keenan and brockman identify important moral and ethical questions arising from the mr. big method of investigation, noting particularly the role played by deception to elicit incriminating information from a target. the mr. big investigative technique comes with a high risk of wrongful conviction, the authors argue: the targets of investigation are not only subject to threats of violence, intimidation, and manipulation, but also face incentives such as opportunities for financial gain, recognition and status distinction within an esteemed criminal organization, which may significantly increase the likelihood of obtaining a false confession. the mr. big tactic also opens up moral and ethical questions about canada’s criminal justice system when, for example, public funds are used to enable the elaborate schemes and lavish lifestyles of these fabricated criminal syndicates. the use of “derogatory statements about women and children” and the psychological impact of such investigative tactics are further cited by the authors as evidence of the “moral decay” of our criminal justice system (94). keenan and brockman present a number of legal issues that arise through reliance on the mr. big investigative technique. first, there is the question of whether the technique infringes upon the section 7 charter rights of an individual to remain silent in the presence of an authority. here, it is unclear whether the definition of “person in authority” is applicable to the mr. big undercover operatives who pose as criminal figureheads, and whether ignorance of an individual’s authoritative status negates a target’s charter right to silence (65). second, canadian common law requires that in order to be considered admissible as evidence in court, out-of-court admissions of guilt to a person in authority must be voluntary, and therefore not induced. again, definitions of “person in authority” become blurred when one is presenting himor herself otherwise (68). finally, the authors establish that in canada hearsay – a statement made out-of-court – is bound by the requirement to establish necessity and reliability prior to its admission as evidence in court. in the context of self-incriminating information provided to mr. big, it is unclear whether such information should be governed according to book review: mr. big | 349 the hearsay rule when being admitted as evidence in court. this results in inconsistency in the use of evidence obtained through this investigative technique (75). as the authors note, “no legal safeguards or mechanisms are in place to regularly challenge the reliability of a suspect’s out-of-court statement in a mr. big operation” (76). setting aside questions of ethics and morality in relation to the use of deception and manipulation in obtaining an admission of guilt, we have an investigative technique – sometimes successful in obtaining rightful convictions, but likely to induce false confessions – and a legal system that is not equipped to safeguard against the risks it presents. keenan and brockman conclude that the procedural, legal, moral, and ethical issues that arise, as well as the undue risk of false confession presented as a result of the theatrics and dupery key to the mr. big investigative technique, require that its use be significantly curtailed or discontinued entirely (115). the authors present and analyze several recommendations to reform the laws applicable to the mr. big technique, which they suggest might mitigate its negative effects. they recommend that: 1) the rcmp should be required to obtain judicial authorization prior to commencing a mr. big operation; 2) self-incriminating statements made to mr. big operatives be considered ‘hearsay’ and subject to tests for necessity and reliability prior to admission as evidence in court; 3) self-incriminating evidence should be supported by evidence; 4) jurors should be informed of the potential for false admissions of guilt; 5) expert testimony or evidence should “assist the trier of fact”; 6) the charter right to silence should be applicable to the mr. big technique; and 7) mr. big operatives should be considered “persons in authority,” which would require tests for the voluntariness of admissions of guilt (98). taken together, these recommendations for legal reform might curtail the risk of wrongful conviction. however, as keenan and brockman acknowledge, constraining the mr. big investigative technique through legal reform, while curtailing the risk of erroneous convictions, might also restrict the mr. big investigative technique to the point of ineffectuality. keenan and brockman offer a thorough critical analysis of the mr. big investigative technique, its relation to wrongful convictions, and the procedural, legal, moral, and ethical issues that arise from its use. keenan and brockman provide a number of constructive and potentially useable suggestions for ameliorating methods of interrogation used in the canadian criminal justice system. their call for change will further contribute to the continuing conversation about the accountability of canadian law enforcement. while the authors have established the undue risk of wrongful conviction presented by this investigative technique and 350 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages have acknowledged its utility in securing rightful convictions sometimes, and given keenan and brockman’s call for legal reform or an ultimate discontinuation of the investigative technique, the book might benefit from entertaining the question “if not mr. big, then what?” book review: the black book of canadian foreign policy | 341 the black book of canadian foreign policy by yves engler. co-published by: fernwood publishing and red publishing, 2009. $24.95 paper. isbn: 978-1-55266-314-1. pages: 1-285. reviewed by kara brisson-boivin1 regarding canada’s role and reputation in the field of international relations the widespread public belief is that canada is a tolerant and peaceful nation maintaining a safe distance from conflict and acting as a force for good in the world. yves engler challenges this taken-for-granted assumption asking readers ‘whether or not we should be so proud of canada’s foreign affairs?’ (4). engler’s aim is to expose readers to a side of international relations that remains hidden from public knowledge and to generate public debate as to canada’s actions abroad. in this way, he intends for the book to be an antidote to what he sees as ignorance regarding the actions of the canadian government in support of multinational corporations, military coups and authoritarian governments abroad. engler’s book is not organized into clearly identifiable chapters, rather case studies divide the book into sections, including the caribbean, the middle east, mexico, central and south america, east asia, central and south asia, and africa. within each section, engler outlines canada’s self-serving, anti-democratic, colonial, and environmentally destructive foreign policy initiatives (34). in doing so, engler attempts to cover a variety of contentious topics including colonialism, canada’s unique bind to the united states, the fight against communism and terrorism, war, aid and exploitation, and how these measures are very lucrative profit making opportunities. the author employs a ‘journalistic approach’ to the case studies, whereby he reports facts, news bulletins, policy briefings, and headline stories regarding canada’s role in a particular region. while the case study method can provide a rich connection between empirical observations, as well as the concepts and theories utilized to explain these observations (see blatter and haverland, 2012, 20), this book would benefit from an overarching theoretical framework and conceptual terminology informed by theories and approaches to colonialism and imperialism. 1 kara brisson-boivin is a phd candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university in ottawa. her research examines international governmentality studies, penal standardization, and international penal reconstruction efforts. 342 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages engler is clear that he is not writing for an academic audience, rather his objective is to engage a wider public debate about canada’s actions abroad and its multi-relational implications. however, the absence of a theoretical approach and its lack of engagement with other works in the field of colonialism and imperialism are a major shortcoming of engler’s book. while he is interested in a contemporary discussion of canadian foreign policies, this discussion could be better situated in, for example, post-colonial critiques which highlight the ways modern international relations are simply ‘old formulas of colonialism’ reworked under the guise of liberal democracy and modernization (duffield, 2001). engler’s case studies could be read as illustrations of a wide range of important theoretical subjects such as global governance, the rule of law and global political economy. however, with little to no engagement with these bodies of literature the reader is left to make these connections on their own. further, with an emphasis on contemporary international relations, the book would benefit from a more in-depth discussion of controversies and debates about “globalization” at the outset in order to contextualize the various cases provided. a strength of engler’s book is the inclusion of discussion questions, which does help readers to reflect on commonly held assumptions about canadian international relations as well as the lessons learned in each case. this book would be well suited as a course reader for intermediate level political science, global studies or political sociology courses, however it should be read alongside theory in order to provide students with the tools necessary for analysis. following the case study portion of the book, engler provides a section on international alliances that details canada’s relationship with several prominent international organizations such as the united nations, the world bank, and the north atlantic treaty organization (nato). had this section been integrated within the case studies, engler could have provided specific examples of canada’s international alliances at work in the various global regimes he presents. as it is, this section reads as a disjointed extension of the case studies. further, engler problematically reifies the dichotomy between ‘strong western states’ such as canada which under the guise of aid, and often in conjunction with international alliances, intervene in the affairs of predominantly ‘weak states’ in the global south. yet noam chomsky (2006), david chandler (2010), and mark duffield (2001) argue against this dichotomy of ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ states pointing out that canada and the united states also possess characteristics found in so-called ‘weak states,’ including poverty and unequal access to social services such as healthcare and the colonial objectification and alienation of indigenous peoples. book review: the black book of canadian foreign policy | 343 following the work of barbara heron (2007) on the desire for development, engler’s book fails to capture the ways in which the third world is present in the first world and the first world is present in the third world. in the final section entitled “why our foreign policy is the way it is and how to change it,” engler provides the reader with tangible advice for fixing the problem of canadian foreign relations. the author does not shy away from the difficult task of equipping canadians with tools for demanding democratic, respectful, benevolent, and caring foreign relations. some of his suggestions are bold (such as the suggestion that canada pull out of nato immediately), but by far the strongest section of the book rests on a call to invoke the “golden rule” in foreign policy, versions of which he claims exist in every culture, country, and religion (243). in conclusion, this book has much to contribute to the field of canadian international relations. although the case study approach is underutilized due to the lack of a theoretical framework, engler does successfully challenge the assumption that canada is a peaceful nation acting as a force for good in the world. references blatter, j and m. haverland. (2012). designing case studies: explanatory approaches in small-n research. palgrave macmillan. new york. new york. chandler, d (2010). international state building: the rise of post-liberal governance. critical issues in global politics. london: routledge. chomsky, n. (2006). failed states: the abuse of power and the assault on democracy. holt paperbacks. new york. new york. duffield, m. (2001). global governance and the new wars: the merging of development and security. london: zed books. heron, b. (2007). desire for development: whiteness, gender, and the helping imperative. waterloo. ontario: wilfrid laurier university press. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review the winter is over: writings on transformation denied 1989-1995, by antonio negri. los angeles: california: semiotext(e) foreign agents series, 2013. $16.95 u.s., paper. isbn: 978-158435-121-4. pages: 1-312. reviewed by a.t. kingsmith1 the articles contained in this book attempt to capture the obstruction of the transformation that had been launched by the spring of 1968 (as a direct response to that long post-war winter) and the return of political hope after the collapse of the soviet union. in doing so, negri’s writings present themselves in the form of lucid, sardonic reflections that trace the birth of new networks of social reproduction and of new subjects of living labour from within the technological and tertiary realities of production in twenty-first century capitalism. the “winter” to which antonio negri gestures in this recently translated collection of writings is that of the post-war reconstruction which followed the end of world war two. for negri, the onslaught of this winter neutralized any lasting desire for change. it was a time of sterile reforms and government coalitions (aimed at preventing any credible opposition from the left) dominated by a technocratic bourgeoisie which bribed workers to sell their souls into consumer culture by corrupting their experiences with an unprecedented intensity. negri approaches such a vast conceptual terrain by dividing the work into four fragments— each containing a series of essays. the first, ‘on movements,’ interprets the affirmation of ‘weak thought as a form of mourning’ on the part of socialists for their failed revolutions. the second, ‘on culture,’ explores the ‘softening of critical thought’ confronted by a transformation of reality that seeks to renew the crises of the previous century. the third, ‘on polemics,’ probes the ‘beginning of the end of american hegemony’ in the middle east. the forth, ‘on italy,’ is a personal stage of reflection on the ‘grotesque stain left upon the fabric of italy’ by the neoliberalism wrought by former prime minster silvio berlusconi. in-between such fragments negri constantly asks: is the winter ever really over, or are we faced, instead, with a sort of transfiguration of winter? and if so, what can we make of this winter—a kind of cold season provoking new sensations—that returns after the ice has melted? perhaps negri has a point. who today can truly claim ‘the winter is over’ after the revolutionary aspirations of the twentieth century have not only been pathetically subsumed by the failure of the world—and of ‘really existing socialism’—but also, and above all, in our inability to express, articulate, or even dream of those revolutionary aspirations anymore? 1 a.t. kingsmith is a phd candidate in the department of politics at york university, where they teach international relations and political theory. their research probes the emotional logics and affective infrastructures of the networked society. specifically, it maps the ways in which the politics of neo-liberal exposures and neo-nationalist enclosures of capital generate personalized and generalized forms of anxiety. a.t. is currently co-editing a set of special issues on “augmenting the left” (global discourse, forthcoming 2018). for contact information and more of a.t.’s work see: https://adamkingsmith.com https://adamkingsmith.com/ www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research there are moments in the text we might expect negri to helplessly decry that this deconstruction offers us a definitive narrative of how things have really happened; ’there is nothing left to be done.’ but this is not the case. for as walter benjamin’s infamous angelus novus reminds us: “to articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was.’ it means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.”2 the seasons, as we might remember them from childhood, no longer exist. behind this pervasive transformation of our natures however, “we still find a humanity which, free of memories and nostalgia, still reacts and inhabits spaces where it is possible to develop not only new life projects, but also a nearly unconscious passion for freedom and justice which replicates the experiences of a forgotten past, as they emerge from the unconscious, from the realm of desire” (32-33). there is a contagious optimism to a work which zeros in on ‘a nearly unconscious passion for freedom and justice’ behind the (neoliberal) transformation of our natures. even now—when it appears that information technologies have fully subsumed every methodology of knowledge production, foreign wars are no longer loathsome events but rather dutiful homages to ‘human rights,’ and that progress, which is impossible to peg, must be guided and enjoyed by the richest nations—negri calls upon a ‘democracy of the multitudes’ to lead us out of the darkness. such a democracy of the multitudes is explored in detail through the concept of what negri calls the metropolitan strike. in starting from the dual position that ‘blocking the circulation of commodities has been fundamental in the history of working-class insurgency’ and that ‘the sphere of circulation is no longer simply one movement in the total process of capitalist valourization, but the global form structures production itself,’ negri argues that to confront capital in the sphere of circulation is to strike the metropolis—that fundamental vector of contemporary struggles ‘where life and work tend to pass over one another.’ and yet having said this, negri reminds us that we could never succeed in understanding the radical nature of these new struggles if we were not to ask: who are the actors? drawing from his accounts of the 1995 strikes in france—the largest since may 1968—negri argues that today’s primary agents of struggle are the service sector workers. what negri suggests—and this is the leap that his reading of the strike makes—is that the immaterial and interactive character of the labour performed in the service sector constitutes the global form of an increasingly interactive and even democratic form of production in a postindustrial or post-fordist environment. emergent in these struggles is therefore a form of publicness that is antagonistic to both the state and to a capitalist command that is increasingly parasitic and predatory in its relation to the self-organized sociality and co-operation exhibited in immaterial labour. for negri, it is in this democratic co-production of public services that it will be necessary, in turn, to seek out a properly democratic form of politics. of course, the question these tactics—whether they take the form of occupying urban sites, blockading ports, or the riotous direct expropriation of commodities without passing through the mediation of money—pose to and for us is whether the concept of the strike is flexible enough to capture these forces and energies. should we still speak of a strike when many of the forms 2 walter benjamin. (1968). “theses on the philosophy of history,” illuminations: essays and reflections. berlin: schocken books. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research contemporary metropolitan antagonisms take involve the freezing and shutting down of various forms of transportation and supply and the direct seizure of space and goods? to what extent should we instead retire this term in a post-seasonal epoch no longer defined by struggles around wages—struggles that no longer necessarily have, as their horizon, the seizure of the means of production? and what would it mean to take the city today when ‘the city’ has become the metropolitan concentration of apparatuses and infrastructures inseparable from the valourization of capital? the winter is over does not have all the answers for such difficult questions. however, it is a coherent and impassioned attempt to push the tactics of social transformation into the terrain of the twenty-first century, and for that oft-neglected reason, it is very much worth your time. rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 125 rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education garry potter1 abstract: canadian higher education has been heading in a general neoliberal direction for quite sometime with most universities employing similar strategies. the example of wilfrid laurier univeraity is used to first illustrate some of those strategies and then later on to show a relatively new one. wlu’s integrated planning and resource management (iprm) process is very much like similar processes being undertaken at a number of canadian universities. it is a management strategy to more easily enable unpopular cuts to staff and programs and legitimate the process through enlisting faculty “cooperation”. the aprm is the faculty union’s commissioned alternative report and will be a focal point of resistance with its very different set of recommendations. however, an argument is also made that, though while worthwhile, such-like actions will not nearly be enough to prompt a significant change in institutional direction. it is argued that though there are many prongs to the neo-liberal attack upon higher education, the most significant one is the casualization of its teaching labour force. it is argued that strong action by tenured and tenure track faculty is required to not only eradicate the injustices inherent in the situations of our contract academic colleagues but that this is actually the key to preserving quality education. keywords: neoliberalism, education, casual labour, resource management, austerity 1  garry potter (gpotter@wlu.ca) is a filmmaker and associate professor of sociology at wilfrid laurier university. he has made two feature length documentary films: whispers of revolution, and dystopia: what is to be done? he is also author of the book dystopia and two other books: the bet: truth in science, literature and everyday knowledges, and the philosophy of social science: new perspectives, as well as numerous scholarly articles. he is also co-editor of the book after postmodernism. currently he is producing a series of educational films about classical sociological theory for insight media. 126 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education introduction walmart: the high cost of low price was a documentary film showing the uglier side of the corporation. if cost cutting and cheap products are two of walmart’s prominent characteristics, and if a hidden but nonetheless extremely high cost, is also part of the neoliberal management of the higher education sector, then walmartization is indeed an apt metaphor to apply to canadian higher education.2 some would even assert that with the walton family foundation becoming the major source of private funding support for the development of charter-school alternatives to public schools walmartization is more than a metaphor (martinkich, 2014). but there are more similarities between higher education and walmart as well. there is an ever increasing reliance upon cheap casual labour. there is a constant aggressive expansion of universities, both in a physical sense, a never ending building program, and in terms of student numbers. understandably universities are leaders in technological innovation but they are also at the forefront of the battle to manage and control it. there is also a constant review of its various “systems”: systems of knowledge delivery, systems of administration, systems of resource allocation. this last review, the review of resource allocation, will be the particular focus of this article, as a focal point of this walmartization process and as a site of resistance to it. the hidden, high cost of this walmartization of higher education is the destruction of quality education. the hidden, high cost is the end of the university as an institution in any presently recognizable form. first, i provide an overview of the strategies and policies commonly implemented by canadian universities in the last few decades. i then discuss faculty involvement in a certain kind of resource allocation exercise as one of the more recent processes imposed upon them. this has been attempted in a number of canadian institutions but i will focus upon my own university – wilfrid laurier – as an example to illustrate most of my points. next, again using my own university and my own union, i discuss two different sorts of “rebellious responses”. the first of these is already being done; while the second may never be, but is instead being presented as an analysis, an argument and a call to action. it is an intervention in those ongoing marxist questions: who will educate the educators? and what is to be done? 2  for further utilizations of walmartization in relation to higher education see, for example: bios, 2013; hoeller, 2014. rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 127 strategies of the canadian neoliberal university government regulation and financing of education in canada is a mixture of federal and provincial responsibility, with the latter having the greatest responsibility, effects and control over direction. the kind of governance they provide varies by province from year to year dependent upon the vagaries of electoral politics. however, there is nonetheless a country-wide common trend. this has been in accord with an even broader trend internationally in the english speaking countries of new zealand, australia, the uk and the us. the trend is to move toward neoliberal ideals of educational service, to acting upon short term economic interests, to privatizations, and most crucially, to a cost-benefit analysis being the guiding principle of resource allocation. this broad ideological context internationally has framed the more particular policy direction and strategies that will be outlined below.3 the first thing to note is that there has been an enormous expansion of student enrollment in the last decades or so. but this expansion in numbers has been without a corresponding increase in the government financing of universities. the trend can be clearly seen for ontario in table 1. wilfrid laurier has doubled its enrollment in the last five years (wilfrid laurier, 2014). table 1: summary of fall term full-time enrollments in ontario universities, 2003-04 2012-13 year students year students 2003-04 312,987 2008-09 367,150 2004-05 330,772 2009-10 383,805 2005-06 346,673 2010-11 397,653 2006-07 355,763 2011-12 409,569 2007-08 359,250 2012-13 419,963 source: ontario ministry of training, colleges and universities, 2014. a single sentence from the report of the advisory panel on future directions for postsecondary education to the ministry of training, 3  there is a large and growing scholarly literature upon various aspects of neoliberal reforms and its philosophical framing of issues affecting higher education management. see for example: tores and schugurensky, 2002; sears, 2003; lipman, 2011. 128 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education colleges and universities (mtcu) in 1996 sums up the ontario policy direction for the past decade: “historically, colleges and universities have demonstrated their ability to accommodate increased enrollment demand in an environment of constraint.” professors, both full-time and sessionals, have often acceded to the constant administrative pressure to “do more with less”. this certainly includes more marking and administrative responsibilities, but it is questionable whether this includes more educationally. i support the democratization of education, including higher education. but i do not believe that an increased percentage of the population attending university simply achieves this. while the underfunded expansionary policies of government and university administrations has resulted in a number of things, a better educated populace is not one of them. the first thing to result from the “do more, with less policies”, were larger class sizes, often much larger. this point was made in dramatic fashion in a joint senate and board of governors (bog) meeting at laurier. one of my colleagues, thomas hueglin, had taught the then chair of the bog twenty-five years earlier. he asked the chair if he remembered the class and received a complimentary reply. he then followed with a question as whether he remembered the size of the class. twelve or fifteen was the reply. “well” said thomas, “i’m glad you liked the class. i still teach it. only this term the class size is one hundred and seventy-five!”. small seminar classes still exist of course, though now usually only in the students’ final year. the large introductory classes are now largely devoid of written work because the marking load would simply be too onerous. written assignments have been shifting more and more to machine marked multiple choice assessment. this educational choice was certainly not thought desirable by any professor. rather it was and is a pragmatic response to increased class sizes. in order to enable a higher percentage of ontario high school students to attend university required a lowering of entrance requirements. this manifested itself particularly at laurier in the faculty of arts. these lower entrance requirements went along with a simultaneous general grade inflation in high school. in an interview with journalist michael woods, james côté, a sociology professor at the university of western ontario, notes: “when the ontario scholar program was introduced in the 1960s, average performers were c-students and a-students were considered exceptional...now, 90 per cent of ontario students have a b average rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 129 or above, and 60 percent of students applying to university have an a average.” grade inflation is also occurring at the university level because we were not only supposed to admit these “lower achievers” but to retain and hopefully graduate them. the lowered entrance requirements for laurier’s arts faculty produced a crisis in the fall term of 2010 (the cord, 2011): after closely monitoring their fall-term data for the first time in recent years, the faculty of arts has discovered an alarming statistic – out of five first-year arts students, approximately two are at a high risk of landing on academic probation or not being able to declare their major in second year. thus, an ever increasing amount of time and resources was needed to address this crisis in order to retain these students. thus, more and more time is needed to be spent upon remedial instruction. while many students are ‘getting through’, this strategy overall is resulting not in a better educated public but rather a public with a higher proportion of academic credentials. both the politicians and the university administrators seem content with this. austerity budgeting and surplus transfers as naomi klein (2007) argued in the shock doctrine, a crisis is a way of achieving otherwise unpopular changes. the crisis need not be real. as caut director jim turk (in kershaw, 2009) asserted: “what is publicly perceived as a crisis can be a convenient opportunity to push through changes that administrators may want even when the circumstances at a particular university don’t justify them.” senior administrators, particularly the finance vice-presidents, are perpetually telling their university communities that we are in very bad shape financially. they scare us about our pensions. and they insist on austerity budgets. so, we never get the budgetary increases necessary to deal with the burdens of the increased student numbers. and we often get cuts. we get cuts to course stipends available, cutbacks to program offerings and demands for penny pinching savings to be made to normal office or teaching practices. an example of this last sort of cut at laurier was the decree that we could no longer afford to pay for the printing of course outlines. so instead of the usual practice of instructors at the beginning of courses to pass out course outlines to students and go over them, we now simply tell them to download them and print them themselves from the website. well, some students do this, some students do not. some students prefer 130 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to individually email their instructors to ask them for the relevant pieces of information, as and when it occurs to them. this “money saving” policy, in terms of the additional time spent by instructors emailing, seems like a false economy. oftentimes there are surpluses at the end of the budgetary year. these surpluses, however, seldom go back into operational budgets, which includes staff and faculty wages, heating and light and materials, etc. rather they are transferred into the capital fund. this is reserved for real estate acquisitions and construction costs. laurier, it seems (and this may certainly apply to other universities), is increasingly a real estate and holding company, as much as an educational institution. we are buying and selling; we are renters and rentees; we are constantly tearing down and building. apparently we do this well. laurier has got a good deal renting prime space in a downtown toronto building. our recent sixty million dollar apartment purchases alongside the waterloo campus are set to bring in rental profits for years to come. this is why the bog, with their preponderance of a business people membership, cannot see any problem. yes, we are buying and selling and building. but we are also profiting on this. this is precisely the neoliberal vision, the bottom line as they say. but while we are making millions in the real estate game, we still cannot afford to give our students course outlines, or an anthropology department (laurier’s was recently abolished). this is because the transfers of surplus from operations to capital are never transferred back because the profits made in real estate never come back to pay for actual education, only buildings. the university of western ontario has had a similar situation to laurier’s in this regard (as have had most other ontario universities). the university of western ontario faculty association (awofa) recently commissioned some financial analysts to prepare a report on the issue, entitled every budget is a choice (university of western ontario, 2014, p.3). it is worth quoting from this document at length: “when we hear that our employer doesn’t have funds available to hire the normal contingent of contract academic staff, or to give pay increases that match those at other universities, it is because they have funds tied up in assets – investments, buildings and equipment – and are unwilling to liquidate any of their investments or finance buildings and equipment through debt in order to allow them more cash to meet operational needs. what they are saying is that when rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 131 money is used to fund capital projects, or is invested, that is where it stays. this creates a one-way street: money doesn’t ever flow back to the operating fund to help with operating deficits or rising costs, or to maintain an appropriate staffing level, no matter how flush the capital or reserve funds are. it would only require a change in policy for the board of governors to transfer money back into the operating fund. at this university, at this time, any shortfall of operating funds is an artificial problem of the board’s own making.” casual labour: the keystone of the walmartization process it is a simple strategy that worked for walmart and seems to be working for higher education as well. universities are replacing tenuretrack and tenured full-time professors with a casual labour force to do the teaching. this is what contract academic labour essentially is: casual labour. adjuncts, as they are called in the us, sessionals as they are called in canada, are very low paid, have extremely tenuous job security and few, if any, benefits. fortunately, canada has public health coverage, which, of course makes canadian sessionals immediately much better off than their american colleagues. but they still lack such things as dental coverage or supplements to health insurance for prescription drug purchases, for example, and quite crucially they lack a pension plan. sessionals have historically been called part-timers. this is not only a very misleading term, it is positively insulting. as a tenured professor my full-time teaching load is four course units – two courses each term. many of the contract academic faculty at wlu teach three courses a term here and sometimes another three in the spring and summer terms. many, of course, do not do all their teaching at laurier’s main campus but have their teaching split between campuses (an hour apart by car and impossible to reach by public transit). many do not do all their teaching at laurier at all as they teach for multiple universities. a character in a recent novel – fight for your long day by alex kundera (2010) – taught at four different universities in philadelphia. this novel might be fiction but it was grounded in the realities of the canadian, as well as the american, adjunct/sessional experience. most american adjuncts are much worse off than their canadian colleagues in matters of pay as well. few of them are unionized, which contributes to a situation where the pay scale of the canadian underpayment of teaching would seem like a positively utopian dream to them. 132 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education but it is no utopia. were a sessional at laurier to teach twice as many courses as i do (and many, of course, do) their pay would still be (literally) less than half of mine. expanding class sizes is not sufficient alone to make the “do more with less” strategy work. an ever increasing casualization of the academic workforce is in fact absolutely key to the whole process of the transformation of universities into big box stores of educational credentials. the next step in the neoliberal onslaught so far the replacement of tenure-track and tenured full-time professors with a casual labour force has mainly been done by not replacing tenured retirees with tenure track positions and by ensuring that the new teaching requirements of the university (because of the enormous expansion in student numbers) has mainly been filled by contract academics. but this is not sufficient. a new strategy is required for the further cuts to staff and programs required to achieve the neoliberal multi-campus, mega-university ideal. senior administrators are aware that these coming cuts will be very unpopular among faculty. thus, with the help of some american consultants, they have devised a way to head off such resistance as may be generated in advance through enlisting the faculty’s aid, through giving them an emotional and intellectual investment in making the cuts, and by also causing the faculty to fight among themselves.4 the integrated planning and resource management (iprm) process was thus initiated at laurier. the iprm is simply the laurier variant of a larger process called ‘program prioritization’ developed by u.s.-based consultant robert dickeson and implemented at a variety of universities in that country. this american process is now being exported to canada where a small number of universities – including the university of saskatchewan, brock, york, guelph and laurier – are implementing this method (salatka and kristofferson, 2014). the university’s web page (wlu, 2014) describes it thus: “a resource-allocation process will be developed that will then be utilized to direct resources to the major academic and administrative priorities of the university”. in other words: the process will decide where cuts to staff and academic programs are to be made. it should be emphasized that implementing cuts is something that was being planned anyway. although this would be vigorously and directly denied by the 4  see dickeson, 2010. and for a specific critique of dickeson’s thinking see heron, 2013. rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 133 administration as being the purpose of the iprm exercise. rather they would say things like ‘the process is to discover our strengths and weaknesses and to channel resources toward areas of excellence’. (i am paraphrasing here things repeated many, many times in the senate debates about whether or not to implement the process). however, they are quite correct to assert that the process is not all about making cuts. this was going to be done anyway. rather the process is very significantly about ideologically legitimating such cuts. it states on the laurier website (wlu, 2014): “the planning task force is strongly represented by faculty and will approve the prioritization criteria for both academic and administrative areas”. translation: we want you to make the cuts for us! the recommendations the iprm makes will still have to be approved by senate, as the legally constituted academic decision making body of the university and by the bog as the financial decision making body. a good deal of time and energy was spent in senate discussing and debating this and its ultimate decision making powers were affirmed. however, i believe many missed the ideological point with respect to the initiative. when the iprm issues its report and recommendations in the fall of 2014, the process will have involved a huge number of person-hours. estimates were for three hours a week, from something like sixty faculty on the iprm’s various committees, for two years. this is not to mention that all the university’s faculty and staff have had to have meetings and fill out forms and templates as well. all of this effort thus meant for some, a tremendous investiture of emotion, as well as time. people working so hard and so long in a process quite naturally become emotionally invested in it. when it comes time to implement the recommendations to discontinue programs or layoff staff members, it will be much harder to argue against such after this long lead up involving so many faculty and staff. further many faculty in departments and programs that are feeling very secure in terms of possible cuts, have short-sightedly concluded that the process may be advantageous to them. so, staff and faculty are also divided among themselves. from the point of view of a neoliberal political strategist, it is a brilliant initiative. resistance to the iprm there were probably some faculty members in many departments that thought the iprm was a good idea. there were also quite certainly a great many that did not. but resistance and support for the process was not distributed evenly throughout the university. unsurprisingly, the greatest support for the, at time of writing still ongoing process, is to be found among 134 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the business and economics faculty (sbe). first, many sbe faculty members share the same neoliberal viewpoint that the administration does. second, those in sbe who believe that the iprm process may possibly benefit their particular department or faculty or that at least it won’t disadvantage it, are likely correct. very definitely, all faculties are not equal in terms of, well, anything. there is a growing disparity between the faculty of arts and sbe. it is evident in terms of average faculty salaries and in the buildings in which their respective offices and classrooms are located. a new, very expensive business faculty building is now under construction. but the inequality between these faculties most relevant in terms of this article’s argument, concerns student admissions. what was earlier alleged concerning the general dumbing-down of the neoliberal university is a very unevenly applied situation. thus, the grade admission average for a business administration honours bba degree program for 2013 was 87.5 percent. the average entrance to the bachelor of arts honours ba program was only 75 percent (wlu, 2014). this difference also accords well with the neoliberal vision of the university being primarily about directly servicing the economy. the greatest opposition to the iprm has not only come from the faculty of arts, however, but from the two faculties – the faculty of human and social sciences and the faculty of liberal arts – at the brantford campus. there is a definite political disjuncture in terms of radicalism and resistance between the waterloo and brantford campuses. it has a simple political-material basis. in the preceding fifteen years of laurier’s general expansion, brantford went from near nothing to begin with in 1999 (five administrators and only two part-time faculty) to today’s figure of 2700 students. the new tenure-track, but then still untenured faculty, during this period at the waterloo campus, sometimes had onerous service demands placed upon them. but nearly all of the branford faculty members had this experience. for a time nearly the entire brantford faculty was untenured. they were untenured but forced to head programs and perform other time consuming administrative tasks at the very same time in their career as they faced the greatest demands of time for research and publication to ensure they received their tenure. management was not very sympathetic to this. these early years created lasting resentments and a greater politicization of the workforce. at any rate, the brantford campus has led the iprm opposition thus far. at the beginning not a single faculty member volunteered to be a part of it. and more recently the two brantford faculties passed motions expressing a lack of confidence in the methodology of the process. the waterloo campus faculty of arts quickly followed them and passed a rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 135 similar motion. below is the original brantford faculty of liberal arts (council minutes, february 3, 2014) motion: be it resolved that the concept, method, data collection and analysis of the integrated planning and resource management process is so fundamentally flawed that this body has no confidence that it will provide reliable information upon which sound academic decisions can be made. as such, this body calls for the immediate cessation of the activities of the iprm and the return of academic decision-making to the senate, its rightful place as established by the wlu act. regardless of these calls for cessation, the process continues. however, there is another equally significant piece of resistance underway. the alternative planning and resource management (aprm) report is being researched and written. this is an intended shadow process to the iprm commissioned by the faculty union (wlufa) and i am the chair of the committee entrusted with this. it is interesting to note with regard to faculty involvement in this process the degree of fear connected to it. the researching and writing of this report is a collaborative effort involving staff and contract academic faculty. however, it is only the full-time faculty members’ names which will appear on the report. contract faculty and staff members fear identification and management reprisals and so (perhaps wisely) have chosen to remain anonymous. the aprm will have a radical set of recommendations. the first and foremost of these will counter directly the iprm. we will recommend that there need be no cuts to programs and staff. further, this recommendation will include the clarification that “no cuts to programs” also includes the kind of cuts disguised as mere amalgamations of programs and departments. in preparing this report we have had the benefit of the university of saskatchewan experience. their iprm equivalent process, labeled “transformus”, while still not complete, is further along than our own. in the college of arts and science, transformus will likely merge women’s and gender studies, philosophy, modern languages and religion and culture programs into a new department. those departments feature popular classes, but few people graduate with degrees from the departments, said peter stoicheff dean of arts and science. he said he doesn’t see the changes as cutting programs, but rather building a new department that retains popular classes from the shuttered departments (warren, 2014).”shuttered departments”, of course, 136 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education referring to departments that were cut. to imply otherwise is simply deceptive administrative-speak. while our report will clearly state that we neither accept the need for austerity budgets nor the neoliberal reductive bottom-line ideology that reduces all to simply financial cost-benefit analyses, we do hope to hoist them by their own petard, so to speak. we will be looking at the proliferation of senior administrative positions from a cost-benefit point of view. as table 2 illustrates, while staff and faculty increases have lagged well behind student enrollment increases, senior administrative positions have greatly exceeded them. table 2: wlu workforce growth 50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% should this be laurier’s priority? student enrollment increased by 23% workforce growth 2007/08 to 2011/2012 cupe/iatse/ufcw wlufa full-time wlusa/osstf 0% 7% 12% 44% management *wlu hr annual report of 2011-2012 source: human resources annual report, 2011-12 neither laurier, nor indeed canada, is unique in their senior administrative proliferation, as the us experience equally indicates (ginsberg, 2011). but it does call into question the honesty of then council of universities (cou) president, paul genest, when he asserted: “you could get rid of the entire senior level of an administration and you would still be seeing a number of our universities trying to wrestle a deficit to the ground.” (kershaw, 2009). rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 137 in countering such proposals, we will be recommending a comprehensive, fully transparent review of laurier’s senior administration, including hiring practices, compensation, bonuses, travel funds and so on. we will also recommend that the review seriously consider the need for any of these positions in the first place, bearing in mind that from a cost-benefit perspective none of them are revenue generating. to put this in perspective, the yearly cost of all the teaching of the cultural analysis and social theory master of arts (ma) program and the sociology ma program together with all the teaching of the archaeology department (at least as considered in terms of the value of contract faculty stipends) is actually considerably less than the salary for the vice-president student services. these executives are paid large sums in order to allegedly make important decisions that will effect the wlu student community. and yet, the biggest decision made by the position’s current occupant was to privatize food services. finally, we shall recommend a reversal of the budget transfers from operations to capital projects. we are making profits out of real estate and have accumulated enormous assets. laurier’s total assets over the course of may 2011 to may 2013 was $128,000,000 (wlu budget, 2013). we propose, putting some of that one hundred and twenty-eight million back into education, perhaps even by reducing class sizes. this report will also be made fully public; in addition to sending it to the union membership and the student union newspaper, we will send it to relevant ministers, and members of both provincial and federal parliament. it will also, of course, be sent to the senate and the bog. but we are under no illusions about its recommendations being followed. it will be a consciously political document, intended to provoke thought and discussion, to fire a shot, so to speak, across the bows of both the laurier administration and the politicians who so poorly govern education in the province and country. we hope it shall have some resonance with public discussions about the future of higher education. but we know this will not be nearly enough to fundamentally change the neoliberal directions higher education is heading in. to have a chance of affecting that something much bigger is required to be done. what is to be done? the most obvious aspect of the canadian (and certainly wilfrid laurier’s) neoliberal university not yet mentioned in this article is the increased corporate involvement with universities. wlu came very close to receiving academic censure from the canadian association of 138 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education university teachers (caut) for its, and the university of waterloo’s, official governance regulations for their basillie school of international affairs because it gave a hitherto unprecedented degree of corporate power over academic decision making. but universities are becoming increasingly dependent upon corporate funding. and corporations, unsurprisingly, are wanting increased control as their price for donations. this process has been written about extensively elsewhere (bradshaw, 2012; polster, 2008). however, it is not, i believe, the most serious challenge presented by the walmartization of higher education in canada. it could well become so, but we have not yet reached that stage. in my view, the key issue is the situation of contract academic faculty. it is central to both the overall problem and to its solution, if there is ever to be one. at one time faculty were the senior administrators of the university. they would undertake these tiresome but necessary chores for short durations, a few years perhaps, and then go back to the much more important business of teaching and doing research. but that is certainly no longer true. if a university president once taught and researched, it is something long abandoned and never to be returned to (if they had such an academic background at all). today, university administrators are professional managers. thus, faculty lost all control over the university long ago. and to save higher education they need to get it back. the governance of most canadian universities is bicameral, consisting of a bog and a senate, with the former having responsibility for financial decision making and the latter for academic matters. in practice, there is no clear separation between academic issues and financial ones. academic decisions frequently have financial consequences and more crucially the financial decisions of the bog completely determine the boundaries of possibility for academic activities. there is staff, faculty and student representation on the bog but such is largely token. the majority of the board membership is drawn from the business community, and thus have little problem with the neoliberalization process. in one of the senate meetings at laurier when we were still fighting the initiation of the iprm process, a faculty supporter of the administration admonished senators with a lecture to us asserting that we must be “financially responsible”. a couple of weeks later i referenced this speech and quoted this phrase while addressing the bog. but i added that if that is so for senators, the other side of bicameral governance was that board members must demonstrate academic responsibility in their decision making. i concluded my little speech with a polemical rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 139 flourish: “this isn’t no burger chain we’re running here people”. blank faces greeted this remark. it appears that the distinction between corporations and universities was lost upon many of them. if the university is making money then any decisions that facilitate that process are wise ones, seemed to be the general opinion. the composition of a university’s senate is legally inscribed in its founding act and thus is very hard to change. wlu has a “plus one” clause in its -that is to say, faculty, student and staff representation at senate need have one more member than the administration. however, given that this grouping would have to have complete unanimity (and total attendance) in practice to ever defeat an always united administration, it means that the senate is a largely impotent body. the fact that unanimity is rarely achieved even amongst senators from other faculties other than sbe and that sbe has strong sympathies with a neoliberal vision, means that the senate can achieve little in terms of putting a brake upon the present direction in which we are headed. so what can be done to halt or reverse the bad direction in which higher education is heading? there is little hope to be had from our existing university governance institutions. there is also little hope to be had from government policies. and there is little hope to be had that either students or the general public will insist upon progressive changes. students seem to live with a perception of an eternal present of massive class sizes (“hasn’t it always been like this?”). this leaves only the faculty, as the most directly knowledgeable and invested party, to do something about the situation. but the faculty is divided in many ways and their sole organ of institutional representation and self-defence – the faculty association union is an imperfect one. a great many sessionals are well aware of not only the injustice inherent in their own personal situation but have a sophisticated political generalization of it. many are ready to fight. however, sessionals at any university are a very divided group. many of them, still early in their career, are living with the delusion that a past reality still exists. in other words, once upon a time, sessional teaching could be regarded as simply a stage in their career, a final apprenticeship stage before the tenure-track position. this still is the reality for a few, but statistically this reality belongs to the past. many sessionals are well aware of this fact but nonetheless still live in a personalized state of denial; no matter how long the odds are of them getting a tenuretrack position, they cling to the belief it will happen. they don’t have time for politics with the teaching load they carry and research agenda 140 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education they set for themselves. then, of course, there are the long-time sessional faculty, who have so many different employers and workplaces that to be politically involved in all of them would be impossible. in essence, what i am arguing here is that the contract faculty themselves have structural weaknesses built into their collective situation, so as to make strong coordinated resistance near impossible. evidence of this is the persistence of their dire situation over years and years. full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty have no such deep structural weakness that would prevent coordinated action. yet, the situation for them is far more ironic. this group, at the top of the heap of salaried knowledge workers, whose occupations are much more of a calling than merely a job, who have a direct vested interest in a good education system, are themselves the ones in most need of political education. who indeed, will educate the educators? while tenured faculty do not have direct structural impediments to coordinated political action there are, nonetheless, structural impediments to transcending the neoliberal ideologies that impede the development of political consciousness. in a way, privilege not only begets privilege but it also clouds awareness of privilege. for example, as a group, full-time faculty do less of the teaching of the very large lower level service classes and instead teach more of the higher year seminars and graduate courses. there is thus a polarized collective experience of teaching realities. in a nutshell, the situation for full-timers just doesn’t seem so bad at the moment so as to demand political consciousness and struggle. collectively they have been insulated from many of the harsher changes that have come in recent years. it takes but a moment of reflection for full-time faculty to realize that regardless of the situation of higher education getting worse and worse, their own personal situation is one of privilege. they are impacted by increasing administrative burdens placed upon them, by increased numbers of students requiring remedial instruction, by growing class sizes (though it is much more frequently the contract faculty that teach the lower level mega-classes). but still they are paid well and have benefits; they have time for research; and are privileged. most faculty are aware of their privilege. however, many of them have also been disciplined by the experience of precariousness and fear that led to finally reaching the promised land of tenure. few put it to themselves in terms of a choice with respect to collective action. few put it to themselves with respect to deciding to protect the future of higher education, or even their own situation, if they are to remain part of it long enough. rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 141 the choice is a simple one. the first alternative is to continue not to look beyond the end of your own nose and be ready to fight for two things only. the two things i refer to are simply reactive to the (so far) relatively minor administrative assault upon faculty privilege: pay and pensions. if the university administration pushes too hard upon these issues full-time faculty will likely be willing to strike. my argument here is that there is another choice possible. there is a different set of things entirely that full-time faculty ought to be willing to strike for. and make no mistake, powerful, determined and coordinated action by the faculty is the only thing that will even possibly slow or reverse the walmartization process. of course, we will also need to involve the students. we will need to make them much more aware of hierarchies and the practical ways that “our teaching conditions, are their learning conditions” (lafrance and sears, 2012,). the fight i am proposing, that could be and should be undertaken, could be done much more easily than actual walmart workers effecting political change. they are as yet un-unionized. canadian higher education -of both tenure track and sessionals -is largely unionized. but, as discussed earlier, there is weakness structurally built into the sessionals’ collective position. this could be addressed by the full-timers. and this is exactly what i am proposing here. full-timers could demand change to the contract faculty situation! full-timers could demand change to the hierarchical employment structure of canadian higher education. by doing so – and by showing they were serious about it – they could not only work toward the achievement of justice for a grossly exploited group of colleagues but actually toward the preservation of quality higher education, as these two things are intimately related. my argument here could easily be misunderstood. it could be read as simply a call for full-time faculty to be more altruistic. rather than altruism, however, what i am calling for could be more aptly described as enlightened self-interest. there is a widespread impression that full-time faculty benefit from the exploitation of sessionals. this is a common belief among both full-time and contract faculty, rather more bitterly among the latter group. each can easily perceive the glaring inequalities between their situations. nonetheless, it is a mistake to believe that the exploitation by the institution of the one creates the privileges of the other. when sessional teaching was a rarity, the notion of it being an apprenticeship was to quite some degree a reality. universities did not always depend upon a large casual labour force to fulfill their educational missions. the full-timers of the past were always in a pretty good 142 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education situation vis-à-vis working conditions, perks, security and salary. if anything their collective situation now has significantly deteriorated relative to other professions such as lawyers and medical doctors. the casualization of such a large percentage of the academic labour force has not actually benefited the full-timers; they gained no new benefits or privileges. in fact, sessional labour has been used in part to keep wages for full-timers down. recognizing that fact, however, is only part of what i would consider necessary for full-timers to recognize their “enlightened self-interest”. my argument is that the casualization of the labour force is the flagship policy, as it were, of the neoliberalization of higher education and that this process overall is destroying all the good qualities of the university. full-time professors have both a vested interest and powerful emotive linkage with the maintenance of educational quality. at the same time as maintaining decent salaries, benefits and pensions they have felt the burden of increased class sizes and ever more onerous administrative duties. they have been witnessing the gradual decline of educational quality, and it has pained many of them to witness this. they are experientially aware of many of the negative aspects of the neoliberal university. what they need to put together in their minds (in their hearts and minds!) is the fact that these things come in a package. they need to grasp the fact that the miserable salaries and working conditions of the contract faculty are indirectly but nonetheless powerfully affecting their own working conditions and at some point in the near future are very likely going to profoundly affect their salaries as well! lest i be accused of being an idealistic dreamer, whether what i’m suggesting is seen as “enlightened self-interest,” or simply an altruistic concern for social justice, let me assert quickly that i do not believe what i am calling for is even remotely on the horizon. management has succeeded very thoroughly in dividing us ideologically. a first step toward the kinds of action i am advocating though, would be for the union to engage in an educational campaign to convince tenured and tenure track faculty of the proposition that justice for our seriously exploited colleagues is essential to the preservation of quality higher education. to preserve the university, we must educate the educators! rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 143 references bios, jason (2013) “the walmartization of higher education” the new existentialists, dec. 30. http://www.saybrook.edu/newexistentialists/ posts/12-30-13 bradshaw, james (2012). the tricky business of funding a university, the globe and mail, october 17. cote, james e. & anton l. allahar (2011). lowering higher education: the rise of corporate universities and the fall of liberal education. toronto: university of toronto press. dickeson, robert, (2010) prioritizing academic programs and services: reallocating resources to achieve strategic balance, san francisco: jossey-bass. faculty of liberal arts divisional council minutes (2014) wlu online. http://www.wlu.ca/documents/57710/dc_minutes_ february_3,_2014_1.pdf greenwald, robert (director) (2005) wal-mart: the high cost of low price, brave new films. heron, craig (2013) “robert dickeson: right for ontario” ocufa report. http://ocufa.on.ca/assets/dickeson-right-for-ontario-craig-heron.pdf hoeller, keith (2014) “the wal-mart-ization of higher education: how young professors are getting screwed” salon february 16. http://www. salon.com/2014/02/16/the_wal_mart_ization_of_higher_education_ how_young_professors_are_getting_screwed/ human resources annual report (2011/12) wlu online. https://www.wlu. ca/documents/54203/hr-annual_report_2011-12.pdf kershaw, anne (2009). canada: academics call for greater transparency, university world news. http://www.universityworldnews.com/article. php?story=20090528175147 619 klein naomi (2007). the shock doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism, new york: picador. kundera, alex (2010). fight for your long day, madison, new jersey: atticus books. lafrance, xavier and sears alan (2013) “campus fightbacks in the age of austerity: learning from quebec students”, new socialist, february 6. http://www.newsocialist.org/678-campus-fightbacks-in-the-age-of austeritylearning-from-quebec-students lipman, pauline (2011) “neoliberal education restructuring: dangers and opportunities of the present crisis” monthly review. http:// monthlyreview.org/2011/07/01/neoliberal-education-restructuring/ 144 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education martinkich (2014) “no metaphor here: the walmartization of public education”, the academe blog.http://academeblog.org/2014/06/04/ no-metaphor-here-thewalmartization-of-public-education/ mtcu (1996). “report of the advisory panel on future directions for postsecondary education.” http://www.tcu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/ reports/futuree.html ontario government progress report: education (2014). https://www. ontario.ca/government/progress-report-2014-education polster, clare (2008). waste not, want not: corporatization and ‘efficiency’ in canada’s universities, our schools/our selves volume 17(2), winter 2008. salatka, bill and kristofferson, rob (2014) the wlufa advocate, january 22. http://advocatewlufa.wordpress.com/iprm/ sears, alan (2003) retooling the mind factory: education in a lean state. aurora, ontario: garamond press tores, carlos a. and schugurensky, danial (2002) “the political economy of higher education in the era of neoliberal globalization: latin america in comparative perspective”, higher education, netherlands: kluwer aacademic publishers. http://www.del.ufrj.br/~ricardo/ docsarcusur/carlos.pdf the cord. (2011). struggling to overcome first-year obstacles, march 9. http://www.thecord.ca/struggling-to-overcome-first-year-obstacles/ university of western ontario, (2014). “every budget is a choice.” http:// www.uwo.ca/finance/reports/index.html warren, jeremy (2014) “university of saskatchewan to close four campus libraries” the star phoenix, may 6. http://www.thestarphoenix.com/ news/university+close+four+campus+libr aries/9810436/story.html wilfrid laurier website (2014). https://www.wlu.ca/homepage. php?grp_id=1928 woods, michael (2008) quoting james côté, the journal, issue 8, vol. 136, september 19. http://queensjournal.ca/story/2008-09-19/features/ making-the-grade/ austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal pierre hamel1 and grégoire autin2 introduction in montreal, the challenge of austerity is modulated by the way the local state is undergoing a process of restructuring3. the divisions of power between federal, provincial and local components in the canadian federal system, subject to the constitution, leave municipalities with few options outside of finding acceptable compromises with the provincial government. this is because “municipalities in canada have no autonomous, local and democratic constitutional standing. they have a constitutional position within the realm of the provincial omnicompetence” (lightbody 2006: 39). as a consequence, collaborative governance at the local level is not something new. even though a stark division between the different tiers of the state regarding the emergence of an austerity regime prevails, a varied picture of it is given by social and economic actors. but why do opponents have difficulty in organizing against governmental policies and discriminatory measures around the neoliberal ideology of austerity? on a general theoretical level, the hypothesis we would like to explore is the following: based on a weberian understanding of capitalism described as “slavery without a 1 pierre hamel is a professor in the department of sociology at the université de montréal. his current work focuses on public debate and deliberative democracy, as well as social movements and collective action. email: pierre.hamel@umontreal.ca 2 grégoire autin is a phd student at the department of sociology at the université de montréal. he works on social movements, alternative practices and prefigurative politics. email: gregoire.autin@umontreal.ca 3 the research from which this publication derives is funded by the uk economic and social research council (ref: es/l012898/1) collaborative governance under austerity: an eight-case comparative study. the authors would like to thank jonathan davies who is the principal investigator of this research. see http://www.dmu.ac.uk/esrcausterity. austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 165 mailto:pierre.hamel@umontreal.ca mailto:gregoire.autin@umontreal.ca https://outlook.umontreal.ca/owa/redir.aspx?c=cjkfvohs5yzs12yk5_xgf7wupjmkmpzumcpilj9dnvz9tyhaqpptca..&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.dmu.ac.uk%2fesrcausterity master”, one should not forget that “from an ethical standpoint, it [capitalism] can be contested only as an institution, not on the level of economic actors' personal behaviour” (löwy 2013: 107). we think that this can help understanding why opponents of the neoliberal ideology of austerity, as elaborated by the quebec liberal party, have difficulties in organizing for blocking governmental policies and discriminatory measures coming from austerity policies. based on a series of interviews,4 this article highlights the difficulty of combatting austerity measures implemented by the liberals since their return to power in 2014 at the provincial level. this difficulty pertains mainly to what austerity really is, how blurry its consequences really are, and how fragmented the different actors are in challenging austerity among themselves. austerity is before all an ideology. if the practical and negative consequences of it are mentioned, most of the time, the assessment of its consequences are most difficult to grasp. however, this remark should not erase the divisions between, on the one hand, actors directly related to the management of public infrastructures and/or the promotion of the business milieu – including government officials – and on the other hand those coming from the voluntary sector, community organizations and the labour movement. in montreal, the position taken by the local authority has been driven by ‘opportunism’, reflecting the configuration of power relations among the actors having a say in local politics. these circumstances must be reconciled with what has been going on at the two upper tiers of the state. on one hand, the recent federal election of october 2015 brought justin trudeau and the liberal party of canada to power, introducing a major shift in federal policy about public debt and public spending. the 4 between october and december 2015 we did 11 interviews with public sector community workers and activists, trade unionists, public managers, one elected official and a representative of a pressure group linked to the business milieu. we also followed the political debate around austerity issues in canada. this debate has taken a new orientation since the federal election with the coming to power of the liberal party defending a pro-keynesian type of approach. 166 | austerity urbanism and the social economy newly elected government thus replaced the conservative party who had been in power for almost ten years (from february 6, 2006 to november 4, 2015) with the mandate of restraining growth in public expenditures and pursuing a policy of austerity, and instead adopted a keynesian approach. on the other hand, at the provincial level, the québec liberal party, in power since april 2014, has set as its task reducing the provincial budget deficit. once in power, premier philippe couillard decided to implement drastic measures for cutting expenses in health care and education systems, welfare programs and salaries of government employees. instead of qualifying his policy as one of austerity, he preferred to say that his approach was characterized by “rigour” (rigueur in french). the meaning and impact of austerity thus largely depends on which tier is implementing those policies. this makes it even more difficult to appraise the effective consequences of public austerity measures, especially if we go beyond narratives and representations, and pay attention to effective policies, programs and projects. in that respect, local representatives, as it may happen in other federal systems (but to what extent?), have to play one upper tier of the state against the other or, when possible, collaborate with both of them despite the presence of conflicting dominant ideological beliefs. meanings of austerity austerity is a notion with an abundance of meanings, even though it is fraught with a strong neoliberal connotation. everyone was well aware of this reality among our respondents. beyond this, a majority of them expressed a real concern when it comes to the repercussions of policy measures adopted in the name of austerity towards the poor and/or households with low paying jobs. in the case of trade union representatives, austerity is an occasion to continue the fight against those who are well positioned in the economic system. thus, a trade union representative did not hesitate to combine it with the deterioration of public services, but also with the slogan coined by the occupy austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 167 movement in reference to the one percent. in that respect, it is necessary to combat austerity: “(…) of course i see this as a necessary struggle to put an end to this, this type of politics, so that we can aim for the well-being, the common well-being, instead of enriching a single community” (montreal-tu1-f). several respondents shared this principle. even if they do not agree from the outset about the most efficient strategy to overcome the negative repercussions of austerity measures, they nonetheless express similar concerns about its main issue. there is no doubt, not only on the side of the more vociferous left but more largely on the political spectrum, that austerity coincides with a conservative vision of society. in that respect, according to a planner working at the city-regional scale: “austerity, it’s (…) a conservative approach which aims at reducing public administrations’ costs (…) and justifies an economic context or using an economic context as a pretext to impose this kind of public policies. but it is a choice. it’s wrong to say it is objective. it’s a political choice. fundamentally, it’s a conservative political choice” (montreal-pm3-m). nonetheless, in that respect, austerity needs to be contextualized. as a community worker recalled, talking in terms of austerity when facing major government deficit and debt ratios is one thing, and much different from the one encountered in quebec. what is at stake here is clearly the promotion of a different vision of the state, in comparison, for example, to the “quebec model” – a social model of development – elaborated during the so-called ‘quiet revolution’. ultimately, what should the state look like? “if you ask me what is, for me, austerity, relating to my culture, my background, it’s a different vision from that of the state. we want more space for the private sector. we want to change things. we want to reduce the size of the state, but this is not because of an economic crisis 168 | austerity urbanism and the social economy situation or in front of some urgency (…). we really have a different vision of what the state should be. what should social politics be?” (montreal-vse2-m). the idea or the project of reforming the state is not recent. in fact, it has been observed in most western countries since the middle of the 1970s. at that time, the legitimacy given to the state for the regulation of modern societies seemed already functionally inadequate or unable either to fulfill expectations of social mobility or to meet successfully a number of social demands. the first signs of shortness of breath of a “statecentred” model of governance were already occurring (hamel & jouve 2006). but those were only the first steps of a long journey for state restructuring, one that has not been completely achieved. the current situation – the one prevailing since the quebec election of the liberal government of philippe couillard – is the continuation of a tradition of liberal influence, carrying out a reading that the state is oversized, while overtaxed citizens are at risk of being attracted to a populist discourse. this is the thesis elaborated by the economists micklethwait and wooldridge (2015) who wrote the fourth revolution. the global race to reinvent the state. inspired by their thesis, couillard came to power with a mission to reinvent the quebec state. as he mentioned in his inaugural speech as premier: “international experience shows that simple austerity without structural reforms and growth measure can slow down the economy and worsen the situation” (quoted by dutrisac 2016). from then on, his intention was not only to implement a culture of “rigour” as he liked to say – instead of referring to austerity as such – but, in a more daring manner, to transform in depth the nature of the state. as such, it is not simply a passing policy but a more profound historical process of restructuring the state. where does austerity “bite”? at the outset, one has to keep in mind four points. first, in comparison to other north american cities in terms of economic dynamism, montreal is trying to catch up as is revealed by standard indicators like the high rate of immigrants’ unemployment in comparison with non-immigrants, or the weak rate of austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 169 university graduates per capita.5 nonetheless, one can say that montreal is currently experiencing an economic catching-up (institut du québec 2015). second, the erosion of montreal’s position within the canadian economic system was aggravated by difficulties of adaption to the new economy, causing a lack of job opportunities for new immigrants. thirdly, montreal remains a liveable city and this is due to a mix of several elements: a) the peaceful cohabitation of diverse communities (germain and rose 2000); b) the strong vitality of its civil society including the community and/or voluntary sector; c) the presence of a distinctive and original cultural life that was originally fueled by linguistic divide. fourth, one can mention the presence of lesser social inequalities in comparison to other canadian provinces (desrosiers 2015). and this is due to the presence of stronger social policies, including more redistributive ones. taking these several elements into account, can we better understand how social actors are able to face austerity policies and austerity measures? the main narratives link austerity measures to the 2008 crisis. in the case of canada, the banking system was less vulnerable than in the u.s. and was therefore less hard hit by the crisis. however, as the canadian economy is largely entrenched in what is going on south of the border, indirectly the impact of the u.s. financial crisis was still felt in canada, especially in tourism. on the whole, there was no direct relation between the financial crisis of 2008 in the u.s. and major cuts in canadian social programs or public services. up to november 2015, it was more the neoliberal type of orientation taken by the harper 5 however, such a representation, defining cities as a collective actor proves misleading. indirectly, this is suggested by regime theory where elite or dominant actors are defined as being able to impose a specific urban regime, or to exert their hegemony over urban development perspectives. such a vision should be criticized. at the same time, this critique must be qualified. urban milieus can become creative places and this is related to synergy between a geographical environment and individual competencies. in that respect, a particular city has necessarily a unique personality due to historical and cultural factors. see gunnar törnqvist (1985). 170 | austerity urbanism and the social economy government at the federal level – based on ideological principles – that was a concern, largely in tune with the position taken by the couillard government since he came to power. the process of state restructuring and its multiple and fragmented consequences austerity and welfare reform in montreal, in quebec and in canada is an ongoing issue that dates back to the crisis of the welfare state as it has occurred or been deployed in oecd countries since the middle of the 1970s. as pierre rosanvallon (1981) has correctly underlined, this crisis is before all a legitimacy crisis. for that matter it is particularly difficult to grasp, especially in a federal context like canada, where responsibilities are divided between the two upper tiers of the state. in addition, as mentioned previously, even though municipalities are subordinated to provincial powers, their direct and indirect responsibilities regarding welfare are growing. this can be explained less by internal factors inherent to the canadian federal system than through globalizing trends bringing the local scene in the forefront of economic and social transformations. nowadays, the repercussions of the welfare state crisis are highly diversified depending on reference groups. but few dimensions of the welfare state have remained the same. even the principles of social solidarity underlying the ideal model for the provision of social protection are no longer quite what they used to be. in that respect, the problématique of governance can highlight the deadlocks of this model or at least some of the aspects. in this regard, even if this is difficult to assess in a very specific way – and in the short term – a number of respondents have mentioned that the lowest income households and/or individuals were the most severely affected by the austerity measures and policies taken by the liberal provincial government following its election in 2014. this is mentioned in reference to areas like social assistance, housing conditions, health and education, but also in connection with public services generally speaking. in these areas, the decision to cut austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 171 investments and/or jobs – particularly regarding the provision of personal services – necessarily has consequences in the short or medium term on those who are most vulnerable. what occurred in these areas took different paths. it ranged from a reduction of budgets for centers for early childhood (cec) to a decline of investments in voluntary sector or community groups, to new rules for financing those who are eligible for social assistance program, and offering new working conditions to the workers of the public sector, asking them to “do their part” for reducing the public debt of the provincial government. but it included also some transformations in the management of public services through the abolition of social representation mechanisms. incidentally, it has been the case in the health system, in terms of regional cooperation and local economic development. what should also be taken into account is the major restructuring of employment. work conditions are increasingly precarious and this is a direct consequence of a reorganization of the economic system at a local and global scale. as mentioned by one respondent involved in the labour movement, it is becoming more and more difficult for workers: “montréal was effected at different levels. firstly, many people lost their job. secondly, there’s a high percentage of workers here in montréal with precarious jobs who were affected by the crisis. this crisis further threatened their work conditions. (…) from the top of my head, i think that 41% of the workers in montreal live under the poverty line” (montreal-tu1-f). it is a well-known fact that montreal – starting with low paid workers and single parent families – is deeply affected by poverty. and this poverty is highly concentrated in low-income neighborhoods, even though the same is observed in the two other largest census metropolitan areas (cmas) in canada: toronto and vancouver. 172 | austerity urbanism and the social economy nonetheless, it is in montreal that this concentration is higher. this was documented in the national household census of 2011: “montreal had the greatest number of low-income neighborhoods. of all 478 low-income neighborhoods in canada, 35.8% or 171 were in montreal. toronto and vancouver accounted respectively for 15.7% and 7.1% of these neighborhoods. the three largest cmas accounted for 63.1% of the low-income population living in lowincome neighborhoods. of the total 656,000 low-income persons living in low-income neighborhoods, montreal had the highest share (34.3%), with toronto having 19.7% and vancouver, 9.1%. a similar picture emerged for the very low-income neighbourhoods, even though the ranking changed slightly (...)” (statistics canada 2011: 6). this situation has persisted over many decades, dating back to the 1950s and 1960s. it is related to the difficulty of integrating the labour market, but it is also linked to the opportunity of finding available housing since gentrification processes – even if gentrification is much less pervasive than in vancouver or toronto – are changing the social and ethnic composition of neighborhoods. according to one of our respondents working as a volunteer with a community group in the environmental sector, these ongoing transformations related to gentrification have dire repercussions on local populations in terms of increasing poverty: “i’ve been working since 1984 in saint-henri [a working class neighbourhood]. what we saw was, first of all, a change in the population. there have been no notable new constructions to start with, which is not the case in other neighborhood. however, it is visible, there has been something like a change in the population. the question is: what happen to those with little income? here we’re not only talking about those benefiting from austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 173 the welfare. people in general, small workers, minimum wage workers who cannot afford to live in this neighborhood because land values go up and landlords sell or rent to richer tenants. so there is a displacing of the traditional population. this is not a new phenomenon but it has probably increased” (montrealvse1-m). the system of social assistance prevailing in quebec – and this is applying for people living in the montreal city-region – support individual and/or households who are no longer receiving the employment insurance benefits or who are out of work for diverse reasons. following his political discourse and orientation towards austerity, the couillard government has decided to reform the welfare program. but as one community worker underlined, it is still difficult to predict what will come out of it: “we have to see what will happen concretely. i don’t know. it’s not the first time. cuts in social and welfare programs and reforms in employment incentives have been announced for the last 20 to 25 years. it never worked. they never really went all the way to the end of this logic either. i’m not convinced it will work this time…it’s difficult to say because, paradoxically, the liberals introduced measures for the underprivileged. during charest’s era, for example, we increased the family allowance. (…) we could be surprised at one point. i believe they’re sufficiently capable and intelligent to stop the underprivileged from suffering the worse repercussions. they can choose to increase their levels of income even if this negatively affects the middle classes (…)” (montreal-vse2-m). for the time being, according to the minister françois blais responsible for this, it seems that this specific reform – draft bill 70 that has not yet 174 | austerity urbanism and the social economy been adopted by the national assembly – should finally be less harmful for the poor than initially planned. in this respect, the minister has mentioned that the negative impacts will not effect more than 3 to 4% of welfare recipients. this is at least what one journalist reported: “every year, there are 17 000 new job seekers. this program could ‘offer more’ with a work integration or back-to-school plan for example. allowance would be higher but there would also be “the possibility for penalties if they don’t follow the plan”. “what is important is the existence of consequences. i will take the ocde’s expressions: moderate but strict, so people get a new job as fast as possible”, explained m. blais. the minister did not want to precise how high these penalties would be. (…) precisions will be in the regulations submitted after the law is passed. the objective dignity collective, a convergence of different social groups, asks the government to renounce to the penalties, “to abandon this punitive approach and other obnoxious measures which will further threaten people’s conditions” (chouinard 2016). as we can see it is not yet possible to assess properly this reform. in any event, a number of precautions will have to be taken in order to understand its impact regarding growing social inequalities. as such, consequences of austerity are blurred and difficult to assess. nonetheless, our research shows that certain populations are more at risk of being negatively effected by such policies. migration, ethnicity and marginalisation among those who are most adversely effected by austerity measures, new immigrants are at the forefront. they are struck directly and indirectly by political decisions intended to reduce the budgets of welfare programs and public services. but it is also the general economic situation that is worrying. a good example is tourism because it is probably one of the few economic sectors where new immigrants can find jobs. as underlined by one respondent working for a non-profit corporation promoting that sector, the financial crisis of 2008 and austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 175 subsequent years in the usa had a negative impact on tourism dynamism in montreal. the result has been a decline in employment in hotels and restaurants: “on the other side, when tourism goes up, there are more jobs. (…) there are more housework and maintenance jobs for women in hotels, for example. many immigrants take up these jobs. tourism is probably one of the sectors where most newly arrived immigrants are employed. so when the tourism industry is hit by a crisis, as this was the case in 2008, 2009 and 2010, we can talk about a tendency to precariousness” (montreal-cg1-m). even though it must be underlined that working conditions in the hotel sector in montreal are better in comparison to most other north american cities, mainly due to high unionization rates (montreal-cg1m), this does not mean that poor people are in an enviable position. in fact, if we look at the example of public transit users’ costs, they are the ones who are affected by access inequalities. this was expressed by a local elected politician: “you have to look at those who work for the minimum wage, little more than 10$ an hour, these throngs of immigrants who make up montreal’s new population, who live in insalubrious housing, who pay 82.50$ for their public transit passes, who are the only ones taking the metro at 5:30 am on sunday mornings when the metro opens. all these women who converge towards the city-center to prepare breakfasts and make the beds, they, they pay shit-loads! there is a cost to living in such miserable conditions. i’ve talked about immigrant populations but many french and englishspeaking people also live in similar situations” (montreal-ep1-m). 176 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the voluntary sector: a dual approach. since the beginning of 2015, the voluntary sector has been concerned by the possible negative impacts of reforms that have taken place at the same time in several sectors (education, health, welfare, kindergarten) by the provincial government in the name of a rigorous rationality while pursuing a process of state restructuring. this is the reason why the leaders of the most important private foundations in quebec have joined forces to raise public awareness about the ongoing reforms and the threat of increasing social inequalities: “for the first time, quebec-based foundations come together and jointly talk about the fears and concerns of the people, families and communities they support. at a time when government programs are being called into question and the tax system is being thoroughly examined, we ask ourselves what are the possible impacts of these changes on society. we are particularly concerned by the increase in social inequalities, a growing world phenomenon which calls for more watchfulness on the part of credible economic organizations and well-known political leaders. (…) it is probably due time, today, to examine if the means we gave ourselves are still the most efficient. but there is something the quebecois don’t call into question: the objective of a society which offers its chance to each and every one. we believe it is useful to remember this great consensus in quebec, consensus which was illustrated by the law on the elimination of poverty and social exclusion which was unanimously voted at the national assembly in 2002” (fondation béati et al. 2015: 1-2). the position taken by the leaders of private foundations – financing social and community-related initiatives – was the result of a collective endeavour. at the same time, some were pro-active on their own, as was austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 177 the case with centraide of greater montreal.6 likewise, a representative of centraide did not hesitate writing to quebec premier philippe couillard: “last year, i wrote a letter to the prime minister to inform him that i was preoccupied by the measures that were being taken. and i never got an official answer. but the minister hamad called me to schedule a meeting. this has not yet happened. but us, we're not going to take the streets. it's not our role but we have to raise awareness and talk to people to tell them: 'listen, we're going to have a general description. this is the global description we are aware of. are you aware that all this is happening?' this is our job.” (montreal-cbo1-f). actors, strategies and tactics. shall we say that, in montreal, a strategy prevails among the main components of the local state for promoting austerity? prior to the last federal election,7 even though there was no agreement or concerted effort between the three tiers of the state, a general culture of austerity was shared by the elected politicians in power. and, in addition to a reduction of public services through budget cuts, this culture has resulted in a reduction of the number of public service employees. as such, there was no strategy, no coherent plan that everyone agreed upon. nonetheless, there seems to be an urgency of reducing public debt that made consensus among those in power possible. in the field of welfare, as well as in other fields, the same philosophy was conveyed. it was as if the priority was to reduce the public debt and that no doubt was to be evoked about such a goal. who will suffer, in what ways, and by how much were not concerns in that respect. at the provincial level, it is the treasury board that is before all 6 this private foundation has the mandate to fight social poverty and exclusion. “in greater montreal, one out of seven people receives support from an agency in centraide’s network.” (centraide website) 7 as mentioned previously, the federal election occurred in october 2015. 178 | austerity urbanism and the social economy in charge of defining and implementing austerity measures across public action. there was a large consensus among our respondents who clearly identify this governmental agency and its role. at the municipal and city-regional scale, the mayor has in some respects been compliant with austerity. he has decided to abolish several positions in local public administration. this can partly explain why municipal administration finished the fiscal year 2015 with a surplus of 146 millions of dollars (normandin 2016). at the same time, on some occasions he may stand alongside with citizens and the community sector. his political orientation can be described as determined by a pragmatic approach at least in different areas. he can support some progressive requests, but he is also promoting corporate investors. the mayoralty. urban and regional planning as well as the management of public places and public services in montreal is quite challenging as the municipality is highly decentralized. due to this, the montreal mayor in charge of the borough ville-marie – corresponding to the city centre – and has to share responsibility with borough mayors for decisions regarding the whole agglomeration and/or city-region. montreal is composed of 19 boroughs with specific powers, offering direct services to the population in specific areas. what makes this even more difficult is that in 2006 a new political forum of management was introduced, the montreal agglomeration council. this forum includes 15 de-amalgamated suburban municipalities. these municipalities are located on the island of montreal but did not accept the status of borough. they preferred recovering their previous statuses as autonomous municipalities that existed before the 2000 municipal reform. this reform amalgamated all the suburban municipalities of the island of montreal with the old urban neighbourhoods (on the island as well) under the same jurisdiction, creating a megacity. a referendum that took place in 2005 gave those suburban municipalities the opportunity to recover part of their past status. the condition, however, was that they accepted to contribute to the montreal agglomeration council with the boroughs. austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 179 the montreal political and administrative reform towards decentralization has generated ambivalence in citizens’ minds. on the one hand, the decentralization is promoting a management closer to citizens: it is easier for citizens to be listened to in their borough in comparison to what was experienced regarding participation in the previous municipal situation. on the other hand, power is more diffuse. sometimes it proves difficult to see who is responsible or in charge of getting things done. as a consequence, citizens are no longer interested or, at least, are getting less involved in local politics. mobilization against austerity and contextual constraints. in the face of what has been described in a schematic way, the picture of the fight against austerity measures in montreal is faced with numerous structural and subjective constraints. globalization, market liberalization, neoliberal ideology, these elements were not present when the definition of the social-democrat compromise at the root of the welfare state was elaborated (manin & bergounioux 1979), at least not with the proportions that they entailed nowadays. these factors are added to more subjective constraints derived from a tradition of cooperation and conflicts among the community sector and the labour movement. what was striking in the autumn 2015 was the large mobilization that took place. several initiatives were put forward by social actors. these included large street demonstrations to oppose decisions in the name of budgetary rigour or austerity, asking to stop expenditure cuts, promoting better funding for public services. many of those initiatives were supported by a coalition created in 2009 in order to fight against austerity measures regrouping 77 organizations from the community sector and the labour movement: la coalition opposée à la tarification et à la privatisation des services publics. the street demonstrations organized by the coalition were widely covered by the media. the same prevailed following other citizen initiatives for preserving school services or the centers for early childhood (cec). all those events and mobilizations must be contrasted however with what occurred on a professional and sectorial basis. over 180 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the last half of 2016, what has occurred can be described as negotiation in ‘silos’ between the provincial government and public sector workers. it was as if everyone was somehow more concerned with taking advantage of the conjuncture than to oppose injustices and discretionary measures implemented by the government in regard to the common good. within the health system, for example, there was a clear strategy by reformers and state negotiators to divide and play one section against the other (primary care physicians against specialist doctors, nurses against other workers in the health system, and so on). and a similar logic prevailed among the main sectors (health, education, welfare) of public services. the quebec government – and to a certain extent professional associations and/or professional trade unions – established a balance of power among those sectors. it was as if everyone was trapped in the “iron cage” of state bureaucracy. some respondents were aware of the challenges inherent to ongoing state restructuring, including the reconfiguration of social and political practices. what is at stake goes back to an understanding of state responsibility and modalities of public service provision. it is also how the “quebec model” in connection with the welfare state was defined and redefined in the 1960s and 1970s and during the subsequent years by direct and indirect contributions of major trade union organizations and the community sector. from then on, questions have been raised regarding cooperation among civil society actors. how is it possible for community organizing actors and labour activists to continue working together? how is it possible for them to overcome old corporatist divisions? as one respondent mentioned: “on one side there is the eternal alliance between the community organizations and the trade unions, on the other side community organizations are subjected to trade unions (…) of course the trade union movement is stronger and more present. there are also more people in the streets when trade unions want to demonstrate. trade unions are more present in the media. if austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 181 community organizations do something, on their side, we won't talk much about it or we'll say it's a trade unions' demonstration even though there were only four trade unions' signs” (montreal-vse2-m). “we also need to keep in mind, as it was underlined that the montreal situation is different to the rest of the quebec territory. in montreal, social networks are stronger and better developed: “we're lucky we have the neighborhood coordination tables [tables de quartier] which are not financed by the provincial government” (montreal-cbo1-f). one community worker provided a comment along similar lines: “in the regions, there aren't all those structures like in montreal, and they don't have all these networks like we already have in montreal, it's not the same way of working either” (montreal-vse2-m). he also commented on the fact that for the life and vitality of the community sector the budget cuts outside montreal (in other quebec regions) had more negative impacts. in this respect, another element must be taken into account: the fact that a discrepancy exists between what is elaborated at the political level in regards to austerity measures and the way these are subsequently implemented. to a certain extent, it seems that the public managers (government officials) with whom community workers are dealing with covey an accommodating attitude. according to one neighbourhood respondent: “we, in our case, it's paradoxical because at the national level [the quebec territory] you have different policies being put in place. there are decisions taken and these have impacts in a context of austerity. the impacts are lived at our own level but, paradoxically, we work with agents of the state who are on the ground and who do not necessarily agree with the decisions which are being taken, up in the government. so we are in a weird situation because we work with civil servants to 182 | austerity urbanism and the social economy somewhat sooth what is happening and temper the decisions taken by their own government” (montrealvse2-m). collaborative governance and actors’ fragmentation the local voluntary sector in montreal is diversified and professionalized. it is also entrenched in public policies. but the following should be added: this sector is characterized by a process of constant “recomposition.” this is certainly not specific to montreal. what is, however, pertains to the specificity of the challenges different social actors are facing in montreal. several complementary readings of those challenges are possible according to what is emphasized: child poverty, gender inequalities, new immigrants’ discrimination and exclusion, social welfare, environmental issues.8 neighborhood revitalization, economic dynamism, and so on. depending on the respondents we speak to, variations are expressed: “the fear or the fact that there will be no increase in wages and all this at the level of the public services, of health and education services, this has a major impact. what we directly feel, it's definitely in the education sector, in the school: when there are no more specialized services, we go to the community organizations. and of this, we strongly feel the effects. same thing with health and social services: everything that was helping, for example, people with mental health issues or that offered services to handicapped people, it is clear that there are important effects. i can't tell i know other sectors sufficiently... i can't talk about culture because i don't 8 the specificity of specialized or sector reading is well reflected in the comments of a respondent from the environment sector: “environment organizations, like popular education organizations, have long been a special sector. they have been close to the community sector in general but we are a quite specific sector” (montreal-vse1-m: 13). austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 183 know much about this. but i believe that the decisions which were taken in this sector have impacts too” (montreal-cbo1-f). in some respect, beyond this observation the consequences of austerity measures are blurred. it remains difficult to carry out a clear assessment of their effective consequences in terms of negative impacts toward the most underprivileged. a community worker of the neighborhood tables we spoke to has brought to light the necessity to be nuanced when it comes to assess the concrete effects of these measures. sometimes it is easy to see those when professional contracts are not renewed, as was the case in the educational and health care systems. but it is not always like this. if the decisions taken by the couillard government in regards to austerity are strongly criticized by all the respondents when deterioration of the life conditions of the most deprived social groups are involved, the intention behind those decisions – balancing the budget – is not necessarily perceived negatively. what is questioned, however, is the time-frame that was chosen by the government as well as the final target intended (see montreal-cg2-f). thus, there is room for nuance when it comes to weighing the government’s intentions. but this result does not explain why it is difficult to resist and combat government policies efficiently. the explanations must be situated on the subjective side of collective action. in other words, the divisions among social actors are still too important: “on the side of the trade unions, we feel there is anger and discontent, we feel more people are ready to lose part of their salary for their convictions. we see it with the teachers. but i don't think we're on the brink of having trade union movements going on indefinite or illegal strikes with their members ready to follow a general mobilization. we're not there yet. after all, the rubber band hasn't snapped yet. and as long as some players will come winning out of all this, it will be difficult. it is not the case of all the underprivileged. they 184 | austerity urbanism and the social economy don't really win anything in all this” (montreal-vse2m). issues of leadership – including how the hegemony over the struggle against austerity policies was defined – are at stake, but beyond this it is the diversity of interests that is problematic. some believe that they will perform better than others. in other words, social solidarity values revealed too weak for not letting corporate and/or special interests to take over in terms of convincing social actors of the merit to define a collective strategy. this comment does not mean that austerity policies and measures will not have several negative impacts on life conditions. the fact is that it is extremely difficult to assess. yes, there will be fewer professional services in schools. yes, it will cost more for households to send their children to cec. but who will be most affected and to what extent remains difficult to predict for the time being. regarding the community sector and how it will be transformed, it is also too soon to foresee. nonetheless one has to keep in mind that the precariousness of the situation for the community sector is anything but new, dating back to at least the 1980s (hamel 1993). thus, it is not surprising that from time to time researchers and activists bring to the fore that community organizations are underfinanced due to the fact that the rise of government subsidies are below the increase in the costs of living (lasalle 2016). those who are working the neighborhood tables are well aware of that. from a more general standpoint, austerity certainly offers a diversified challenge in terms of collaboration even though no one is facing it with a carefree attitude. for professionals working with the private sector, it is clear that collaboration can be a useful factor to face adversity. however, collaboration can be weakened: “within an austerity context when everyone feels itself adversely affected, collaboration is more fragile, because everyone can eventually be targeted by the government. thus, before protecting someone else’s turf, the first thing that comes to mind is: okay, let's protect our turf austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 185 first. once given, it will be easier to make offers to our allies for helping them” (montreal–cg2-f). for public managers working in planning processes at the city-regional scale, collaboration is the name of the game, austerity or not: “collaboration, this is what we do. it is the very nature of our organization.” (montreal, pm3-m) for the montreal metropolitan community (mmc) – the authority in charge of planning urban and economic development at a city-regional scale –, governance and austerity are a concern but do not have a major impact on the culture of the organization, because “on the side of public administration, governance goes with an open attitude towards civil society, but also with an opening to the components of public administration” (montreal, pm3m). these few examples bring to the fore diverse situations. when it comes to facing austerity practically, depending on institutional affiliations, attitudes can vary according to the constraints. beyond ideological beliefs, structural and/or organizational factors must be taken into account for understanding the possibilities and the terms of collaboration among actors. conclusion austerity in montreal is rooted in a profound process of state restructuring that occurs simultaneously at the different tiers of the federal system. it is largely viewed as an ideology, much more than as a necessary “crisis policy” as it may be seen in other countries. the effects of this process are multiple and diversified but remain difficult to clearly grasp. in front of this process, social actors are ambivalent: they need to cope with and contest these policies and, at the same time, strive to survive and continue to work. in the end, they remain very fragmented. what now needs to be explored is how this unfolds at the level of the 186 | austerity urbanism and the social economy city-region, and how social actors collaborate or fight against each other in the context of austerity and state restructuring. references chouinard, t. (2016, mars 14). réforme de l’aide sociale : des pénalités ‘modérées mais strictes’ dit blais. la presse, http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/politiquequebecoise/201603/14/01-4960571-reforme-de-laide-sociale-despenalites-moderees-mais-strictes-dit-blais.php desrosiers, é. (2015, mai 23). redistribuer de la richesse pour en créer. le devoir, http://www.ledevoir.com/economie/actualiteseconomiques/440831/perspectives-redistribuer-la-richesse-pouren-creer dutrisac, r. (2016, mars 16). au-delà de l’austérité, une volonté de changer l’état. le devoir, http://www.ledevoir.com/nonclasse/465587/au-dela-de-l-austerite-une-volonte-de-changer-letat fondation fondation béati et al. (2015, mars 11). les risques de la rigueur budgétaire, communiqué de presse, montréal. le devoir, http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/quebec/434025/de-grandesfondations-privees-inquietes-les-risques-de-la-rigueurbudgetaire germain, a., & d. rose. (2000). montréal: the quest for a metropolis. new york, wiley. hamel, p. (1993). contrôle ou changement social à l’heure du partenariat. sociologie et sociétés, 25(1), 173-188. hamel, p., & b. jouve. (2006). un modèle québécois? gouvernance et participation dans la gestion publique. montréal: presses de l’université de montréal. institut du québec. (2015). comparer montréal. tableau de bord de la région métropolitaine de montréal, rapport. montréal: institut du québec. austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 187 lasalle, m. (2016, février 29). les organismes communautaires en santé et services sociaux étouffent. journal forum, http://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/article/2016/02/29/les-organismescommunautaires-en-sante-et-services-sociaux-etouffent/ lightbody, j. (2006). city politics, canada. peterborough: broadview press. löwy, m. (2013). la cage d’acier. max weber et le marxisme wébérien. paris : stock. manin, b., & a. bergounioux. (1979). la social-démocratie ou le compromis. paris: puf. micklethwait, j., & a. wooldridge. (2014). the fourth revolution: the global race to reinvent the state. new york: penguin books. normandin, p.a. (2016, avril 13). montréal termine 2015 avec un surplus de 146 millions. la presse, http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/montreal/201604/13/014970672-montreal-termine-2015-avec-un-surplus-de-146millions.php rosanvallon, p. (1981). la crise de l’état-providence. paris: éditions du seuil. statistics canada (2011). “persons living in low-income neighbourhoods” (nhs in brief) catalogue no. 99-014-x2011003. ottawa: statistics canada. törnqvist, g. (1985). “créativité et développement régional” in boisvert, m., & p. hamel (eds) redéploiement industriel et planification régionale. textes rassemblés et présentés par, montréal (pp.107130). cahiers de recherche, faculté de l’aménagement. université de montréal. 188 | austerity urbanism and the social economy from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 145 from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial: the consolidation of neoliberalism in ontario’s universities eric newstadt1 abstract: extracurricular programs designed to provide ontario’s university students with an opportunity to explore and develop their entrepreneurial talents are now at every university in ontario. largely ignored by mainstream scholars, the significance of such extracurricular programs should not be under-estimated simply because they are not part of the regular curriculum in most programs. on the contrary, the new entrepreneurial programs mark the ascension of neoliberal notions of self-help and self-reliance to the very core of ontario’s universities. tracking the development and evolution of neoliberal understandings of entrepreneurship, helps to illustrate how being an entrepreneur and being entrepreneurial are the by-products of very calculated efforts by chicago school economists milton friedman, arthur director and others. accounting for the agency of students is also critical to understanding the recent outgrowth of extracurricular entrepreneurial programs, just as it is to understanding the potential to press back against the neoliberal program. keywords: entrepreneurialism; higher education; crowd funding; inequality all too frequently, the degree to which students and faculty have been active agents in making and maintaining ontario’s system of higher education is either ignored or underestimated. and in so failing to either recognize or sufficiently emphasize the agency of students and faculty in making higher education in the province, scholars have often tended to also underestimate how rooted and extensive neoliberalism is, not just within the university but also, and perhaps more importantly, outside 1  eric newstadt received his phd from the department of political science at york university. he currently teaches in the department of politics at acadia university. 146 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education ontario’s universities too.2 as such, the significance of any particular policy or program also tends to be misdiagnosed generally as little more than an indication of the fact that neoliberal discourses and policy frameworks have become hegemonic within ontario’s policymaking and university administrative circles. the parameters of neoliberalism are thereby made into a laundry list of policies, some more disciplinary and coercive than others, but none of which affect “everyday life” in ways that have transformed and which continue to transform our subjective self-understanding, not the least as scholars concerned with understanding the dynamics of higher education in ontario.3 when open to and considerate of the agency of students and faculty in the remaking of higher education in ontario, and, at the same time, to a similarly expansive understanding of neoliberalism, one where hegemonic policy paradigms are seen to have a life and a significance beyond either policymaking circles or disembodied notions of “globalization” and “austerity” and not any clear relation to everyday life. in this regard, the recent emergence of extra-curricular programs designed to encourage and support student entrepreneurialism in all of ontario’s 2  throughout, i define neoliberalism as a program of accumulation that emerged after 1980 in response to the crisis of the immediate post-war order. under the aegis of key states and the us in particular, the neoliberal program of accumulation is premised upon the ability of investors to rapidly invest and divest into and out of different jurisdictions. such investment decisions are based primarily, though by no means exclusively, on relative levels of labour market flexibility. such flexibility is not understood as simply a measure of relative wage rates. rather, labour market flexibility is better thought of as an ongoing approximation of capital’s potential to accumulate profit in a particular jurisdiction given multiple considerations. the neoliberal era is also described by the ascent of neoclassical cum neo-liberal theory to a position of unrivalled and global hegemony. the ‘neoliberal university’ and or ‘neoliberalism in the university’ is intended to describe the imposition and normalization of market or market-type signalling at multiple levels (i.e. prices or quasi-prices are attached to virtually all aspects of the university), and institutional functional preoccupation with the (re)production of flexible/quiescent labour and “monopolizable” (patentable/ownable) forms of knowledge. for a fuller description of neoliberalism and its development see (harvey, 2005; gindin and panitch, 2012; fast, 2013). for a fuller description of what is meant by the neoliberal university see newstadt, 2013. 3  what i describe below as “mainstream” scholarship on ontario’s system of higher education is the product of a group of scholars whose work on the subject is most frequently cited and/or relied upon both in the extant literature and in public policy debates. thinkers like michael skolnick, glen jones, donald fisher, david trick, knell rubenson, ian clark, theresa shanahan, paul axelrod, and a handful of others have produced a wide body of literature. their work is frequently referenced in government reports and has even been sponsored by government agencies with an eye to having them outline a policy program for the province to follow. also, skolnik, jones, and fisher have played key roles on various government agencies or advisory bodies at various points in their careers. axelrod is the dean of education at york university in toronto. many of the above have also published together on the subject, and their work – and supervision – has had a clear impact of the extant literature, such that it is hardly a stretch to describe their work as comprising a kind of canon on ontario’s system of higher education. as i outline below, these scholars also tend to share a common ontological and epistemological framework. from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 147 universities is neither marginal to the operation of the university as a whole nor merely about teaching students “disentitlement”, as two critics recently suggested (sears and cairns 2014).4 rather, the recent fascination with student entrepreneurialism is also demonstrative of students’ desire to learn what the proponents of such programs hope to teach: a more individuated and consumer-based form of entitlement, one that seeks to “free” the individual consumer from the fetters of – or potential for – collective action. in other words, the emergence of business incubators and crowd-funding programs in ontario’s universities suggests that patterns of interaction and behaviour that neoliberal capitalism and neoliberal policies encourage are already well-established in and outside of those institutions. what this in turn means is that the new entrepreneurial programs, though extracurricular, will likely play an increasingly notable role in the further extension and consolidation of the facile instrumentalism (like notions of self-help and “free” competition) that describe neoliberal ideology. thus, the new entrepreneurialism will work to undermine the potential for deep and critical analysis in ontario’s universities and to further normalize the kinds of hyper-competitive conditions, managerial rationalities, and disciplinary capacities that all but force even the most critically minded scholars to somehow, and in some way, accommodate. the ubiquity and ambiguity of entrepreneurialism that ostensibly isolated and extracurricular business incubator and crowd-funding programs have a significance that cannot be diagnosed when we focus on the fact that such programs are optional and extracurricular, as is the norm, is best illustrated by those who have championed such programs most aggressively. the remarkable ambiguity of the language used by government agencies and university administrators in discussing the new entrepreneurial programs makes it difficult to discern what the intended ambit of “entrepreneurial education” really is, or who ontario’s “student entrepreneurs” really are. just as quickly as entrepreneurs are described in terms that set them apart from the rest of the student population, so is one pushed to conceive of every student as a kind of entrepreneur. though clearly also suggestive of some grander policy design, the ambiguity of the language also plays 4  for sears and cairns (2014) “teaching disentitlement” is done, “either openly in the curriculum (for example, through entrepreneurship education) or through the structure of the system (for example, through user pay, sharp tuition increases, and ever-expanding class sizes”. 148 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education on another significant, though far less commented on, manifestation of neoliberalism: the idea that students could be entrepreneurs, or even that entrepreneurialism could be learned. before turning to this issue, it is helpful to briefly explore the ambiguity just described. in a recent report by the body that represents all of ontario’s universities, the council of ontario universities (cou), entrepreneurship is described in terms that do little to help readers understand that the business incubators and crowd-funding programs explored therein, are in fact extra-curricular, optional, and not intended as mandated interventions into curricular design: “entrepreneurship, upon which economists say economic growth depends, has moved from the margins to the mainstream of university education. there are entire programs devoted to teaching students what it takes to invent the next big thing, attract investors and take their service or product to market…as a result, universities are now preparing students to create their own jobs, as well as jobs for other people. at the core, they are developing an innovation capacity in students that will enable them to be “intra-preneurs” – employees who behave like entrepreneurs within the context of a large organization. this is much more than an interesting campus trend. it is the key to success for many thousands of students. it is vital to the strength of the economy … many thousands of students a year are learning entrepreneurship in dozens of programs and hundreds of courses at ontario’s 21 publicly funded universities. this focus on innovation is reaping rewards, with hundreds of startup companies being created each year.” (cou, 2013, 1) the government of ontario has also suggested that the proper purview of “entrepreneurial education” is rather broad. in a recent discussion paper intended to frame debate over higher education policy in the province, the government asks: “the government is committed to providing new and dedicated support for ontario’s young entrepreneurs. how can the postsecondary education system contribute to this objective through experiential learning initiatives? what kinds of curricula, programs, or support are needed to increase the labour-market readiness and entrepreneurship capacity of students graduating from ontario colleges and universities? what lessons can be learned from the apprenticeship from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 149 programs as we design new experiential learning opportunities for ontario college and university students?” (mtcu 2012, 21) in those instances where either/both the government and university administrators have indicated that entrepreneurial programming is/will continue to be circumscribed and not completely generalized, such is often discussed with reference to government sponsored efforts to ensure greater institutional “differentiation” between the province’s eighteen publicly assisted universities. apparently, by having some institutions focus on developing students’ entrepreneurial talents, while others look to develop their research skills, the government’s allegedly “armslength” advisory body, the higher education quality council of ontario (heqco) claims that it intends to both provide on-going support for entrepreneurialism and sufficient institutional autonomy so as to ensure programmatic diversity (and academic freedom).5 but the discourse around “differentiation”, which is how the government is described its efforts to direct institutional and programmatic focus/diversity, is also contaminated with references and allusions to the purported benefits of entrepreneurialism, so much so that one is again forced to wonder about the programmatic and curricular limits of “entrepreneurial learning”: “differentiation promotes institutional quality and system competitiveness by enabling each postsecondary institution to grow preferentially in those areas where it already excels, or aspires to excel. higher quality programs means that the credentials students receive upon graduation are more highly valued; this makes the students more competitive relative to those from other jurisdictions and makes ontario universities more attractive to international students.” (weingarten and deller, 2010, 17) in other words, by imposing competitive pressures the government believes it can compel both students and our institutions to behave as would any wise entrepreneur, in a manner that would exploit and capitalize on their competitive advantages. again, beyond the obvious fetishism for the alleged efficiency of markets, what is striking about such discursive constructions is the degree to which they are replete with references to entrepreneurialism. such references are what distinguishes 5  with remarkable alacrity the heqco’s recommendations have either anticipated or mirrored government policy. and the ontario confederation of university faculty associations (ocufa), has even suggested that the heqco’s research is perhaps less “objective” than is sometimes claimed by either the heqco or the government. 150 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the current discourse around entrepreneurialism in ontario’s system of higher education, as something other than a classically liberal articulation of the same idea. and this not only raises the spectre of neoliberalism, it also begs that we consider how and why such articulations have become more widely comprehensible, not least to students and faculty. as it happens, the ubiquity of entrepreneurialism is a relatively recent phenomenon, one which follows hotly on the heels of a series of very deliberate and concerted attempts to both revise and extend neoclassical and neoliberal ideas. indeed, the foundations of the “new”, more inclusive and encompassing entrepreneurialism were laid over sixty years ago, when the fathers of contemporary neoliberalism set about trying to develop – with generous support from the volcker foundation – the theoretical and discursive basis for what they always conceived of as a political project. more specifically, between the 1940s and early 1950s three theoretical “innovations” facilitated and helped drive the ideational, ideological, and discursive extension of entrepreneurialism. first was hayek’s redefinition of the central problematic of economics, which posited markets as a kind of super-computer, massively more dynamic than mere human beings (mirowski, 2011, 26). second, was the neoliberal reconciliation with monopoly, which made market structure irrelevant, anti-trust legislation a fetter on competition, and neoclassical narratives about perfect competition and equilibrium central to public policy (van horn, 2009). and third was the concomitant development of “entrepreneurship studies”, which, during the 1950s, drew heavily from the chicago school in making entrepreneurship less about business enterprise and more a kind of learned decision-making capacity useable in any and every context (soltow, 1968; blaug, 1995; rocha, 2012). by the middle of the 1950s the theoretical stage was set: the market had been inscribed as central to the efficient allocation of scarce resources; the state was resurrected as an invaluable champion in that cause; every organization was subject to intense competition; and entrepreneurialism was effectively freed from the fetters of the corporation and turned into a generalizable set of skills that anyone and everyone could (and should) wisely learn. when in the 1970s and 1980s neoliberal theory began its ascent to the hegemonic position it now enjoys, the scope of entrepreneurialism likewise expanded.6 where entrepreneurialism was once exclusively 6  as fine and and milonakis (2009, 62) describe, the key turning point came after the us federal reserve’s failed attempt to limit the growth of the money supply based on friedman’s understanding of inflation. from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 151 defined in relation to a class of individuals who possessed a high tolerance for risk and a skill-set associated with the management and operation of a private-sector business, it came to also refer more generally to an individual’s learned ability to self-help, tolerate risk, and adapt to fluid and hyper competitive conditions. again, not only was this transition and expansion hardly noticed, at least in terms of the theoretical manipulations just outlined, it was also assiduously prosecuted by the likes of friedman, director, and a host of other like-minded members of the mont pelerin society (van horn, 2009; fine and milonakis, 2009). by the end of the 1980s, the extension of entrepreneurialism was increasingly normalized. david harvey (1989), for example, highlighted what he describes as the turn from “managerialism to entrepreneurialism” as critical to the transformation of urban spaces in the 1980s. more germane to the current subject, slaughter and leslie (1997), as well as slaughter and rhoades (2004) usefully discussed the development of the “entrepreneurial university” in american higher education, also after 1980. for them, the press towards entrepreneurialism in the emergent neoliberal university was evidenced, first and foremost by a series of juridical changes that were intended to incentivize particular forms of research and behaviour, specifically those that had an entrepreneurial bent. in the us, a suite of legislation including, but not limited to, bayh-dole (1980), made it possible for the results of publicly-subsidized research to be held privately (i.e., licensed or sold to the highest bidder). following this, jurisdictions throughout the world rapidly followed suit, or, where legislation was not required, simply became more permissive with respect to the privatization of publicly-funded research. thus faculty the world over were encouraged to explore and develop their entrepreneurial talents. states also began to encourage university-based scientists to commercialize the results of their research by setting new funding guidelines and priorities. as in many other jurisdictions, canada and ontario were quick to move, albeit somewhat less aggressively than was the case in places like the uk, new zealand, and australia. in 1997, canada’s federal government founded the canadian foundation for innovation (cfi), a cdn$ 9 billion concern that is focused on financing the capital costs related to conducting commercially oriented and university-based research (polster, 2007). of course, such moves by the federal government came a decade-and-a-half after ontario’s universities, through the cou, first suggested that the government link research funding to commercial priorities (trick, 2005). and the 152 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education formation of the cfi also came a decade and a half after the provincial government announced the ontario centres for excellence program, which has since been the hallmark of neoliberal science policy in the province. and this policy drift has hardly stalled since then, as has been elucidated by scholars of various stripes (fisher, atkinson-grosjean, and house, 2001; fisher et al., 2009; newson and buchbinder, 1988; newson, 1998; coleman and kamboureli, 2011). entrepreneurialism normalized the fact that the roll-out of policy, backstopped as it has been by a theoretically transfigured liberalism and a politically minded juggernaut, has helped to normalize and universalize entrepreneurialism, is of course, only half of the story. the other half has to do with the various ways in which such policies have been reinforced by both other system and institutional-level changes (in ontario and around the world) as well as by social forces that hardly reside within the policymaking domain, conventionally defined. for instance, the bid to publish and avoid perishing has almost certainly helped to transform conventions of collegial self-governance and thereby to empower an ever larger class of professional managers inside ontario’s universities. the time required to prepare publication makes it necessary for faculty to forgo involvement in the management of their institutions, a role they therefore have ceded to managers.7 the “intersticial organizations” with which both slaughter and leslie (1997) and slaughter and rhoades (2004), were concerned in their analyses of academic capitalism and the entrepreneurial university in the us, things like tech transfer offices8, also became increasingly visible – and powerful – components of every university in 7  the “publish or perish” orthodoxy and its arrival in ontario is hard to date precisely. this is because that orthodoxy is reinforced by a multitude of policies operating and practices at different levels of the university and also because it is reinforced by the way in which the pressure to publish plays-out in other jurisdictions ontario’s universities compete internationally for standing, status, market-share in the lucrative market for foreign students, as well as private-sector funding. also, tight and hyper-competitive job markets in other jurisdictions are forcing newly minted phds to compete on a world-scale. ontario’s universities’ increased reliance on contract and contingent faculty, itself a by-product of fiscal tightness since the late 1970s, has certainly increased the pressure to be productive (rajagopal, 2002). the increasingly heated competition for funding from the three federal granting agencies has also long played a role (polster, 2007; polster, 2003). the progressive imposition of productivity measures, which began with unregulated, but nonetheless significantly regulative, ranking exercises in the early 1990s has also intensified the issue immensely, as has the recent advent of performance-based pay at some of ontario’s universities (newstadt, 2013). 8  since the mid-1990s, all of ontario’s universities have developed either tech-transfer offices, offices of research and innovation, or similar institutional bodies designed to developed greater links between the private-sector and the university. from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 153 ontario, not least because a large and growing segment of the faculty have come to require and demand the assistance and support that such offices provide.9 insofar as a core segment of the faculty has been insulated from many of the pressures and changes just mentioned, they have, nonetheless, also been forced to prove their utility by being entrepreneurial. programs need to ensure enrolment targets are met; faculty need to demonstrate a certain level of productivity in terms of things like grant dollars earned or measures of bibliometric impact (grant, 1998; handford, 2002).10 thus, regardless of whether or not academic work is commercially-oriented or even steadfastly opposed to “academic capitalism”, it is necessarily caught-up in a process of commodity production. the ideological and ideational consequences of such behaviour are difficult to overstate. the need to publish, to compete for funding, or to improve one’s bibliometric ranking, propels scholars to undertake forms of inquiry that can quickly yield publishable results: quantitatively oriented, model-based, and/or circumscribed, discrete, and ideologically narrow exercises that are precisely the forms of thought that are now hegemonic within the contemporary university. of course, the pressure faced by full-time and tenured academics are amplified for academics whose employment is temporary and contingent. though there are some very recent indications that contingent faculty are mobilizing in opposition, most contingent faculty are still forced to comply and attempt to eke out an existence by shoring-up the proverbial boat: publish feverishly and reward students with high grades in the hope that they may, in turn, reward them with good student evaluation of teaching questionnaire scores. and for the army of postdoctoral researchers upon which ontario’s research-intensive institutions depend, the pressure to commercialize 9  as i have argued elsewhere, the pace of neoliberal transformation in ontario was certainly slower than it was in other jurisdictions. this is so for several reasons, including the relatively militant and active nature of organized labour in ontario right-up until the early 1990s. in the 1970s and early 1980s, faculty in ontario’s universities, also waged a vigorous effort to press-back against the ascendant neoliberal tide as the spate of faculty unionizations in the province during that period is testament (newstadt, 2013). but that process stalled in the mid-1980s, when faculty at the university of toronto balked at the idea of unionization in part because the government and the cou embraced the idea of market-based, rather than government-directed, institutional reform. apparently, a sufficient number of faculty at the university of toronto saw in such reform the potential for terrific advantage, given the university’s position as the largest and most research-intensive institution in the country (newstadt, 2013, 384). 10  aside from the fact that faculty at several universities in ontario have been subjected to performance-based pay, there is a growing number of examples, albeit outside of ontario and canada, where contracts around tenure have simply been broken (pitchford, 2012; willmott, 1995; willmott, 2003). 154 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education and be entrepreneurial is intense and outlined as an embedded and inescapable “fact” of university-based research (holloway, 2014). the recent, and largely successful, efforts of postdoctoral researchers to unionize in ontario (and across canada), has often been inspired by the apparent need for postdoctoral researchers to protect their stake in the intellectual property they participate in developing.11 similarly, students have responded to governmentand university administration-led efforts to turn students into customers by thoroughly embracing that ideology.12 increasingly, students are concerned to ensure that they get their money’s worth, not so much by dedicating themselves to the pursuit of higher learning, but rather to the pursuit of high-grades, irrespective of the quality of the work they submit. unquestionably, this attitude has been fostered and fomented by the imposition of ever-higher tuition-fees and the frequently repeated dictum that a university education is best viewed as a kind of investment vehicle.13 nonetheless, students do increasingly conceive of themselves in terms that hardly change when they leave the local mall and head to ontario’s institutions of higher learning. in fact, at ryerson university it is not even necessary to leave the local mall in order to get to the university. even where campuses are more easily distinguished from retail outlets, they often house malls and are increasingly replete with the very same kinds of advertising and branding campaigns that one encounters in retail contexts. much of the advertising and branding that students encounter is put out by their universities, which have become aggressive advertisers with carefully crafted branding campaigns of their own. students’ desire to obtain the most marketable degree is also understandable as a by-product of ongoing economic malaise and 11  i was recently involved in an organizing drive for postdocs at dalhousie university. not only did we draw heavily from similar such drives in ontario and draw from peoples’ experiences in that province, but postdocs at dalhousie also identified the protection of their intellectual property as one of the most important reasons why they felt the need to unionize. 12  the “student-as-consumer” model and its ubiquity in ontario’s universities is evidenced in a multitude of ways. first, tuition-fees have increased dramatically, as have levels of student-debt and consumer-debt held by both students and their families. the final report of the rae review, like several other such reports through the 1980s and 1990s consistently use the language of investment and the private-returns to investment in education as a means by which to encourage students to conceive of themselves as investors/customers. 13  bob rae, among others, has been one of the most notable champions of the idea that a university education is a kind of investment vehicle, one whose benefits accrue to the individual. see the final report of the so-called “rae review”, the 2005 government appointed committee investigating the state of higher education in ontario, to which rae was appointed the chair (rae 2005). from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 155 historically high levels of youth unemployment. in such a context, students are understandably wont to forgo the apparent risks of an “impractical” education when it comes to things like program and course selection or the demands that they make of their professors for “useful” knowledge that can be easily applied in the pursuit of employment and security. either way, students increasingly demand that all of their courses take on an applied or practical bent. the aforementioned ryerson university, a one-time polytechnic long described as “rye-high” because of its ongoing focus on applied programming, has seen the largest net increase of applications by high-school seniors, something that the university’s current president attributes to, “our message of innovation, entrepreneurship and connection to community” (ryerson university, 2012). of course, as readings (1996) pointed out in his excellent excurses on the university (he discussed canada’s institutions most closely) and the discourse of “excellence”, the stranglehold of ranking and measurement, and, it might be added, of entrepreneurialism and commercialization, is such that the content of a course no longer matters very much; in breaking the university into so many discrete and measurable bits, the utility of which are only ever a by-product of market valuation, students’ intellectual curiosity is undermined and made alien and unrecognizable, except perhaps as its own kind of commodity. it is perhaps useful to recall that student evaluation of teaching (sets) were, in an all too ironic twist of capitalist fate, dreamed-up by students as a means by which to force their teachers to assign the kinds of radical texts, like marx’s capital, (not piketty’s), which were once hard to find in american universities, as they have arguably become again, albeit with a decidedly less vocal an opposition (gray and bergmann, 2003). the mutually reinforcing bottom-up and top-down march towards applied and instrumental forms of knowledge just described is also having an impact on the nature and disciplinary background of the faculty in ontario’s universities. as new programs and strategic directions are chosen less for their academic excellence than for the degree to which they provide new streams of potential revenue, new links to emerging private-sector players, as well as potential reputational gains (dill, 2003; hazelkorn, 2007; readings, 1996), ontario’s universities are shifting their programmatic foci. according to data from the cou’s new council of quality assurance, of the 146 programs approved since september of 2011, fully 107 are of an 156 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education obviously-applied nature.14 where faculty in those quarters of the university still bent on teaching radical ideas have not already been forced to adapt, as was outlined above, they are nonetheless rapidly becoming outnumbered by those whose concerns and ambitions jibe more fully with students/customers, university administrators and government bureaucrats. insofar as the scope of entrepreneurialism in the university stretches beyond that of any particular program or curricula, it also stretches beyond the university as well. as i suggested above, the emergence of the neoliberal university, and within it of “entrepreneurialism” coincided with (and was partly a response to) an emergent orthodoxy concerning the state’s appropriate role in the political economy. just as critical, however, was the reemergence of global finance in a renewed and transformed program of capitalist accumulation. what is germane about this is the fact that the rebirth of global finance in the 1970s and 1980s involved incredible innovation and extension such that every aspect of daily life was/is measured and subsumed within global flows of capital (langley, 2008; lebaron, 2010; lapavitsas, 2011; krippner, 2005; gindin and panitch, 2012). the university – and those within it has hardly been insulated either from such transformations or from the avowedly political calculations of those that authored them. thus, the spread of entrepreneurialism throughout the whole university has been “over-determined”, and that over-determination is itself evidence of a new “common sense”, a new neoliberal subjectivity to which no one is entirely immune. as is discussed immediately, the proverbial “facts on the ground” place the promises and realities of neoliberalism in sharp relief. and while this relief makes it all the more tempting to dispense with the issue of agency, we should not be so easily seduced, for the reproduction of neoliberalism is nonetheless affected by so many acts of commission at all socio-economic and political levels of our society. neoliberal subjects: (not)facing the facts it is, of course, hardly coincidental that the new entrepreneurialism is deeply embedded and at absolute odds with the realities that most students are likely to face when they graduate. simply put, the idea that students-cum-entrepreneurs will act as any kind of impetus for durable 14  this calculation is based on my own review of the information published on the quality council’s website at: http://oucqa.ca/program-approvals-menu/program-approvals/ from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 157 forms of economic growth, which is frequently presented as the reason why ontario’s universities have had to develop and expand their business incubator and crowd-funding programs, is not credible given the facts. according to statistics canada, in 2012, most workers in ontario were employed by firms employing over 300 people. moreover, firms employing over 500 people, which statistics canada counts as “large” firms, employed roughly 90 percent of that majority. firms with fewer than five employees, which is the size of most start-up firms, have never made-up much more than 6 percent of total employment in ontario. in fact, between 2001 and 2014, smalland medium-sized employers (smes) of all sizes have accounted for a decreasing proportion of total employment. while it is perhaps true that smes have generated relatively more job growth than have large firms, between 2001 and 2012 they also generated about the same amount of job destruction. in other words, smes have tended to shrink and go out of business far more frequently than their larger counterparts.15 seventeen years ago, in 1997, researchers at statistics canada recognized these facts, and detailed some of the risks associated with employment in smes. there is no reason to believe that any of these facts have changed, particularly given the stagnancy of ontario’s economy. although the overall tone of the statistics canada report nonetheless champions the cause of entrepreneurialism in canada in notes that, “people working at smalland medium-sized firms are especially susceptible [to unemployment and insecurity]. while small businesses have accounted for a disproportionately high share of employment growth over the past decade (picot, baldwin, and dupuy, 1994), they are more prone to failure. young firms are also more at risk: over half the new firms that fail in the first ten years of life fail within the first two years of operation.” (statistics canada, 1997, 11) and not only are workers at small firms more susceptible to business failure when they wind up working for smes, they are also susceptible to lower incomes: between 2001 and 2012, workers at start-ups earned, on average, 17.2 percent less than did workers at large firms. small firms also tend to offer fewer benefits and do not provide workers with access to either defined benefit or defined contribution pensions with nearly the same frequency as do large employers. and we also know that dollarfor-dollar, larger, multi-employer pensions are significantly more stable, 15  all data is from statistics canada, cansim database. cansim table 2810041 158 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education provide workers with a better return on their investment, and thereby ultimately add to the health of the economy than do single employer or matched contribution pensions (arthurs, 2008). these patterns are unlikely to change any time soon. this is because growing inequality and stagnating wages pose real challenges to the ability of most canadians to continue to consume at current levels, let alone invest in the next “big thing”. also, the reluctance on the part of corporate canada to start investing what are now unprecedentedly large stockpiles of cash is also exacerbating the problem of youth unemployment (isfeld, 2014). the unwillingness of those same corporations – as well as the federal and provincial government – to relent on wages and permit even mild inflation likely add further fuel to the unemployment fire. at any rate, the point is that absent the sudden and massive expansion of available seed capital, it is unlikely that many more start-ups than currently get funded will be able to swing into business let alone succeed; even the status-quo for start-ups will be difficult to maintain. and finally, the relationship between smes and large firms is such that the success of many smes is utterly dependent on the performance of large firms. one indication that both the government and ontario’s universities understand how wide is the chasm between the promise of the new entrepreneurialism and the realities of the market, is the recently outlined assertion that “entrepreneurship” programs will teach students to become “intra-preneurs”, that is, “employees who behave like entrepreneurs within the context of a large organization” (emphasis added) (cou, 2013). in so describing the hoped-for impact of entrepreneurial learning, the universities are not only offering a far more realistic assessment of graduates’ life-chances, they are also helping to shed some light on what the new entrepreneurialism is, in part, really about the acculturation to a particular way of life. this point is central to sears and cairns’ (2014) recent analysis of the new entrepreneurialism as a policy program designed, on the one hand, to “teach disentitlement” and, on the other hand, open room to manoeuvre ontario’s universities into a more clearly hierarchical, “differentiated” and class-based “family” of institutions. the problem with their analysis lies not so much in terms of what sears and cairns describe as the intent of the new entrepreneurialism, but rather in what this assessment seems to imply, namely that disentitlement is being taught anew and has not already been thoroughly assimilated by the great majority of students in ontario’s universities. this assessment is perhaps reasonably made, given the design and intent of their article, students’ life chances, and the cou’s rather from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 159 revealing deployment of ‘intra-praneurialism’.16 however, the perhaps unintended implication of their analysis, namely that students are only being taught disentitlement because of top-down influences, and not actively demanding the same, is a conclusion that should be avoided. this is so for several reasons, all of which stem from the analysis provided above. first and foremost, there is absolutely no indication that students are objecting to the neoliberal orthodoxy, either as wouldbe entrepreneurs or intra-praneurs. to be sure, groups like the canadian federation of students have consistently and laudably pushed for a complete overhaul of funding for higher education and research. however, the absence of a vigorous labour movement willing and able to champion the cause of public investment and national ownership means that calls for low or no tuition-fees, or the removal of conditional ear-marks for research funding amount to little more than a kind of reform-liberal “level playing field” type of argument. whether students are to be entrepreneurs or intra-praneurs, the oppositional scope that the students’ movement enjoys is incredibly restricted. there is also good reason to suspect that students are increasingly less able to cogently question the logic behind either the new entrepreneurialism or neoliberalism in general. aside from a slate of anecdotal evidence regarding writing quality and critical thinking ability (smith, 2000), data from now three oecd and statistics canada sponsored international adult literacy tests suggests that the majority of university graduates are only literate enough to read and follow directions (statistics canada and oecd, 2011; oecd and statistics canada, 1995; oecd, 2013). and again, the neoliberalization of higher education, in ontario as elsewhere, has also involved a sizeable shift in terms of both the normative position occupied by a large chunk of the professoriate, and the epistemological and ontological foundations upon which their academic practices are built. the idea that government policy merely continues to “teach” disentitlement is also best avoided because it is reproductive of several far more problematic tropes and tendencies within the “mainstream” literature on higher education in ontario. unlike sears and cairns, mainstream analyses of higher education in ontario are rooted in what can best be described as a kind of left institutionalism. in this frame, the neoliberal “drift” of higher education policy is generally explained as 16  it should be pointed out that the article in question is not – and was clearly not intended as – a scholarly work. their article appeared in a popular and politically oriented magazine, and was clearly meant to describe government policy and the kind of oppositional organizing that is required to press-back against such policy. the article does not seek to problematize or understand agency, so much as it seeks to mobilize. 160 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education a by-product of decision-making at the upper echelons of government bureaucracies and university administrations. without ever denying the social, political, and economic impacts of neoliberal policy in and around ontario’s universities, or the reproductive and redistributive impacts of neoliberalism outside of the university, little attempt is ever made to understand power in a manner that would make visible the kinds of issues raised above. in fact, though rife with references to “academic capitalism”, most analyses of ontario’s system of higher education tend to see government policy as having had a decidedly uneven impact on the university, often in a kind of zero-sum manner. accordingly, some departments are heavily impacted, while others are left largely untouched. david trick (2005), for example, diagnoses a “paradigm shift” around university-based research and research-funding, but not with respect to programs taught.17 as such, neoliberal policy appears within the mainstream literature as that which is only ever threatening to takeover and transform apparently “far from the market fields.” (fisher, atkinson-grosjean, and house, 2001; axelrod, 2008; fisher et al., 2009; clark, 2009; trick, 2005). this analytical frame is not particularly new to the study of higher education in ontario. for the most part it is built on epistemological and ontological foundations that favour clearly institutionalized and obviously proximate lines of causation. for example, the commonly held belief that ontario’s universities enjoy a considerable degree of autonomy and independence is generally gleaned from studies of ontario’s system that have emphasized the fact that ontario’s universities have consistently been allowed to self-regulate, generally in response to threatened intervention (jones, 2004; trick, 2005; royce, 1998). even in instances where the universities’ self-regulatory response to threatened intervention operates according to the same logic and set of priorities as would have government imposed programs, as was arguably the case with quality assessment, the mainstream literature interprets such as an example of neoliberal policy being kept at bay.18 in other words, absent the imposition of neoliberal policy and clear new regulatory practices/ programs that effect and substantively change the nature of academic work, what happens in ontario’s universities is not “neoliberal”. in this 17  in his above referenced doctoral dissertation, david trick (trick, 2005) sees the emergence of conditional forms of research funding tied to commercialization as evidence of an emerged “paradigm”, but one that he does not see as in any way dominant. 18  apparently because the universities can control and amend quality assessment processes, and, most importantly, maintain systems of peer review, institutional autonomy and academic freedom is (re)secured (gesink-walsh, 2007; jones, 1991; jones, 2004). from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 161 way, the university, or the day-to-day rhythms and practices therein, is ascribed an ontological status outside and apart from the political economy (or “politics”, “society”, “the market”). more than this, the university and those within it are held to be almost inert and plastic receptors whose transformation and reconfiguration happens episodically and infrequently. though these assertions map into a hierarchical ordering of causation, there is no way to subject that ordering to critique. on the contrary, key or primary “causative variables”, like the neoliberal orientation of policy, are simply asserted as such without any sustained or coherent way to assess whether policy should be analytically privileged or viewed alongside other such ‘causative variables’. it is also not possible within this analytic frame to understand how policy is ontologically different and more important than, for example, students’ level of indebtedness or professors’ pre-occupation with publication counts, when it comes to explaining either the presence or absence of direct governmental intervention. as a result, most analyses of ontario’s system of higher education fail to pick-up on or understand: 1) the impact had by neoliberal policy on all areas of the university; 2) the links between and impact of the development and evolution of neoliberal capitalism and the transformation of both public policy and the whole university; and, 3) the reasons why a simple “regulatory fix” are not likely to either resuscitate or preserve the capacity for critical thought within ontario’s universities.19 this is perhaps why mainstream scholarship on higher education in ontario has all but ignored the emergence of new business incubators and crowd funding programs; though arguably exemplary of neoliberal drift, such programs are viewed as relatively insignificant manifestations of such given their status as extracurricular programs. towards an ontological and epistemological holism in recognizing the manner in which the domain of entrepreneurialism has shifted we are better able to recognize and make plain the degree to which the new entrepreneurialism, as well as the surrounding discourse, are remarkable, and in some ways quite subtle, obfuscations that work much as they are intended to work: they aid in the reproduction of 19  whether or not the cou maintains control of the province’s quality assessment program, it will still operate to rationalize the system along neoliberal lines, and even if some provision is made to ensure the maintenance of adequate levels of funding for all programs so as to avoid pedagogical convergence, that convergence will still continue to take place. 162 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education neoliberal capitalism. also, by connecting broader shifts in the political economy with the development and evolution of students’ and faculty members’, and administrators’ subjectivities, we see agency in a new light and, simultaneously, open new avenues for the progressive reform of the university. we are also better positioned to understand why practitioners in the mainstream may be less willing or able to see agency where it exists, and to thereby locate and understand power dynamically instead of as something that has ossified in particular parts of particular institutions or institutional arrangements. generally speaking, marxian and some post-structural analyses of higher education, in and outside of ontario, have proven much more adept at documenting and describing the extensive nature of neoliberalism than have their institutionalist counterparts. indeed, critical analysts have usefully outlined the way in which the redirection of funding is not just ghettoizing so-called “basic” or “frontier” research, but also, and at the same time, normalizing the pursuit of commercially oriented research, such that the further instantiation of neoliberal policy often comes at the behest of academics themselves and not just as a by-product of either governmental or administrative efforts to grow the amount of commercially oriented research undertaken in ontario’s institutions (polster, 2007). similarly, sears (2003) has also outlined the way in which higher education has been “retooled” with the aim of “producing” students that are better able to fit within, and thereby reproduce, contemporary, neoliberal capitalism. and newson and buchbinder (1988), famously detailed the manner in which faculty have oftentimes demanded neoliberal reform, as much as they have organized against it. but even here, there remains something of a gap in the literature, not least as concerns the significance of the new entrepreneurialism, which has not received very much attention at all. the gap in question has to do with the failure to fully account for the scope of both neoliberalism and the accordant neoliberalization of higher education, which even radical scholars have tended to describe in terms that seek to preserve concepts of agency less by outlining the ways in which students and faculty have worked to produce neoliberalism and the neoliberal university, than by seeking to accentuate the cracks, fissures, and contradictions of those processes. by focussing, as sears and cairns do, on the vicious malevolence of government and university administrative policy and the importance of a “decolonized” curriculum, they arguably pull us away from a longer, far more disconcerting, look in the mirror and the myriad ways in which even oppositional activities can from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 163 help to reproduce the very malevolence to which we object.20 students and a huge swathe of the professoriate have internalized the lessons of disentitlement that neoliberalism – operating both in and outside of ontario’s universities has had to teach, so much so that a large component of both groups now feels entitled to learn disentitlement, by which i mean the skills and aptitudes necessary for self-help and increasingly competitive labour markets. the new entrepreneurial programs are thus additive to and reinforcing of the entrepreneurial self-understanding that has been consistently encouraged in the neoliberal university since the early 1980s. as a result, the new entrepreneurial programs will operate as “poles of adjustment” around which every other taught program will be forced to articulate; to compete for students and funding, every program taught will be pushed and prodded to root students in methodological approaches to art, or geography, or political science, or anthropology, or whatever, that can be used instrumentally by students when they inevitably look to pull up their boot-straps and make entrepreneurial hay. thus, to the extent that previous rounds of restructuring have not completely evacuated critical thought and potential from the contemporary university, the most recent incarnations of “entrepreneurialism” promise to do just that: annihilate the limited space that remains for meaningful forms of pluralism. of course, the terrain of neoliberalism, like that of the neoliberal university, is hardly even or seamless. perhaps the most pressing contradiction with which neoliberalism and the neoliberal university will have to reckon has to do with the inability of neoliberal ideology to speak to, and explain, peoples’ lived realities. high rates of unemployment, particularly amongst youth, alongside ever-higher levels of consumer and student debt, all in the context of growing inequality will likely pose 20  sears and cairns are entirely correct when they highlight the fact that the new entrepreneurialism is a significant force behind the pressure to differentiate. sears and cairns are also right insofar as mainstream thinkers are wont to read any symptoms of decay and crisis when diagnosed in relation to ontario’s system of higher education as having less to do with the emergence of the neoliberal university than with efforts to contain it. indeed, within mainstream circles, the problems that are affecting ontario’s eighteen publicly assisted universities are seen to be a by-product, if anything, of the government’s unwillingness and inability to support the further marketization of ontario’s universities. indeed, by enabling the universities to maintain operating revenues without concomitant demands that courses properly prepare students for life after graduation, the government is alleged to have fuelled expansion in ways that have created programmatic duplication and an overriding sense of entitlement. this form of analysis generally yields a diagnosis that highlights the need for market-based or market-type reform, albeit in a manner that is cast as a humane and “realistic” response to the present situation (see for example, weingarten and deller, 2010). 164 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education a serious challenge to the hegemony of entrepreneurialism. but still, the need for peoples’ frustration and anger to be mobilized and directed is inescapable. in this regard, the trajectory promised via the pursuit of entrepreneurial learning and institutional differentiation will possibly prove to be fecund ground for organizing in ontario. already, higher education is the most unionized sector of the canadian political economy. while the government’s program of institutional differentiation will not change that, it is likely to create a new set of internal divisions, for instance between teaching-stream and tenure-stream faculty, as well as between faculty at teaching-intensive and “full-service” institutions. while such divisions may internally fracture some unions, they may also lead some faculty to feel stronger allegiances to part-time and contingent faculty, to teaching and research assistants, to students groups, and to other public-sector unions, where austerity has involved persistent attacks. in other words, where the “precariate” in the academy have, to date, not been able to foment particularly strong connections to tenure-stream and tenured academics, they may well discover strong allies in the precariate working outside the academy, in organized labour more generally, and among those faculty, contingent or not, who are converted to – and ghettoized in – teaching stream positions. in this the new entrepreneurial programs and the drive to differentiate ontario’s institutions via market-type mechanisms and incentives, may be sowing the seeds of transformation in a manner entirely befitting the so-called “knowledge-based economy”. in looking to intensify the exploitation of those workers whose work is to produce “knowledge workers” that are less likely to object to the intensification of exploitation, the government may well create the conditions for “knowledge workers” throughout the services based economy to organize and object. then again, the alternative possibility seems now just as likely. given the remarkably compromised position of organized labour and the relative quiescence of students in ontario in the face of a stagnant economy and high youth unemployment, it would seem that students have already come to understand that their fates lie not collectively, but as individual businesses. it may well be that the new entrepreneurial programs help to consolidate and reproduce an ideology that will be linked to a still more flexible labour force than the province now enjoys. again, it is important that we recognize how efficient the university has already proven to be in the “production of ignorance”, and thereby in producing the conditions that complicate the organization of an opposition. of course, if students do come to challenge the neoliberal from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 165 university, it will likely not be as a result of what happens within that institution, but rather because durable links are built between students and a revived labour movement. though hardly a reason to hold out significantly more hope, it does, at a minimum, mean that the potential for the progressive transformation of ontario’s universities does not 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(2010). the benefits of greater differentiation of ontario’s university sector. toronto: higher education quality council of ontario. bodies and borders: migrant women farmworkers and the struggle for sexual and reproductive justice in british columbia, canada amy cohen1 and susana caxaj2 abstract: in 2016, nearly 7,000 mexican men and women arrived in bc under the federally-administered seasonal agricultural worker program (sawp). while all farmworkers face similar workplace hazards, women farmworkers face unique barriers to their reproductive health and wellbeing such as intense surveillance, sexual harassment, and unwanted pregnancies. the reproductive health of women in the sawp is under-researched. even less is known about women’s experiences in the interior of british columbia. based on insights gained in the field and through community-based research and advocacy efforts, this paper outlines what is currently known about women sawp workers’ struggles to attain full reproductive justice. we discuss the unique factors that affect the reproductive health and sexual experiences of sawp workers in particular. ultimately, we argue that women sawp workers face disproportionate barriers when accessing reproductive healthcare and that their sexual behaviour is 1 amy cohen is a college professor in the department of anthropology at okanagan college and is a long-time resident of the north okanagan (unceded secwepemc territory). amy is an organizer with the migrant justice group radical action with migrants in agriculture (rama) and she has been involved in the movement for migrant justice for more than a decade in canada and the us. her research has centered on everyday resistance, migrant rights, illegality, and citizenship. she holds an ma in sociopolitical anthropology from the university of toronto. email: acohen@okanagan.bc.ca 2 susana caxaj is an assistant professor in the school of nursing, faculty of health and social development at the university of british columbia. her research focuses on crosscultural and diversity issues that influence individual and community wellbeing. her most recent research has prompted her to pay closer attention to the diversity within immigrant experiences as particularly shaped by rural or agricultural settings. she is also an active member of radical action with migrants in agriculture (rama). email: susana.caxaj@ubc.ca 90 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice heavily controlled through a variety of legal and extra-legal mechanisms. we conclude with a discussion on how migrant women creatively resist restrictions imposed upon them, and we make recommendations aimed at improving the experiences of women sawp workers attempting to achieve reproductive justice in bc. keywords: migrant women, reproductive justice; british columbia; seasonal agricultural worker program introduction camila is a mother of two from baja california who works in canada as a temporary migrant farmworker. she became a widow in her 30s when her husband died of a heart attack. during the summer of 2015 while working in british columbia, camila became pregnant and did not wish to continue with the pregnancy. she considered booking a surgical abortion at a clinic run by the regional health authority, yet due to her lack of knowledge of english, lack of access to transportation, and the $500 out of pocket expense she would incur for the service, she judged it to be too difficult. she also feared that her employer would find out and repatriate her to mexico. instead, camila had a relative in mexico courier her a medical abortion pill which she administered to herself. unfortunately, complications arose several days later and she was transported to the hospital in an ambulance. camila had experienced an incomplete abortion and required emergency surgical intervention to complete the process. camila’s story, an anonymized vignette representing the experiences of several women, illustrates some of the barriers faced by female migrant farmworkers trying to access full sexual and reproductive justice in canada. the barriers faced by “camila” are not unique to her, but rather are created by the structure of the seasonal agricultural worker program (sawp), a temporary migration scheme under which thousands of foreign farmworkers come to canada each year. we contend that these barriers create a situation of reproductive oppression in which migrant women find themselves unable to make free choices about their own bodies and sexuality. a reproductive justice framework is useful in understanding this particular context as it allows us to focus not simply on each individual’s autonomy over her body, but rather how the social inequities and other factors in a woman’s community undermine bodies and borders | 91 opportunities to ensure reproductive, sexual, and bodily self-determination. for migrant agricultural workers like camila, these conditions include precarious legal status, poverty, lack of access to primary care services, limited knowledge of the health care system, and workplace insecurity. despite the larger body of work on reproductive justice among migrant agricultural workers in the usa, very limited scholarship has considered reproductive justice as it is uniquely negotiated by migrant agricultural women in canada, particularly under the sawp. further, even within canada, each province and region brings unique challenges and histories that require a closer examination in order to understand the particular factors undermining reproductive justice. in this paper we explore the layers of institutionalized and systemic restrictions that threaten the reproductive justice of female migrant farmworkers working in the okanagan valley region of british columbia under the sawp (see figure 1). we argue that women’s access to full sexual and reproductive justice is restricted by state-level policies and practices, employer coercion and control, and circumstances related to the structure of the sawp. despite these restrictions, however, women are involved in various acts of resistance that range from covert or ‘everyday’ strategies to more overt ones, which when considered together represent an ongoing movement for public advocacy and solidarity. our discussion is informed by our experiences as community organizers witnessing and responding to migrant women’s experiences; prior academic research with migrant agricultural women and; analyses of existing literature on reproductive justice and migrant agricultural women’s experiences. we begin by providing an overview of canada’s temporary migration program for agricultural workers, focusing particularly on how the structure of the program creates a highly vulnerable group of workers with little access to social services, labour rights, or health care. we then review the literature on reproductive justice, especially where it intersects with farmworkers. the bulk of our discussion aims to elucidate the forms of reproductive oppression faced by mexican women who come to british columbia under the sawp as well as the creative ways these women push back against that oppression. we finish with a discussion about how governments, health care providers, and scholars and activists can support migrants in their struggle for full reproductive justice. 92 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice figure 1. map of british columbia and the okanagan valley. https://data.gov.bc.ca/ methodology our discussion is informed by three complementary activities and overlapping approaches. first, we are active members of a collective operating in the okanagan region since 2013 called radical action with migrants in agriculture (rama). in this role, we respond to workplace, health, and safety concerns as requested by migrant workers. we also support workers who suffer bodies and borders | 93 https://data.gov.bc.ca/ physical or sexual harassment, workplace discrimination or exploitation, and social isolation. much of this work is carried out through one-on-one casework in which we observe many barriers women face in accessing reproductive health care. our community organizing also entails planning cultural events and recreational activities that provide opportunities to build linkages between migrant workers and permanent residents. these outreach activities often create an environment of trust that can result in disclosure of personal information, such as challenges faced in reproductive health by migrant women. second, each of us has conducted prior academic research with migrant workers in the okanagan valley. cohen’s ethnographic research, initiated in 2013, has involved 14 participants in predominantly one-on-one interviews. the focus of her research has been to examine strategies for resistance that migrant men and women employ in their day to day lives. caxaj’s narrative research was carried out from 2014 2016 with 12 migrant farmworkers in the south okanagan. she used a combination of focus groups and one-on-one interviews to examine migrant farmworkers' experiences of belonging and wellbeing. recruitment in both studies involved purposive snowball sampling in order to emphasize key incidents and priority areas identified by migrant workers, and, to build a network of trust and accountability in building a program of research in this area. emerging from the interviews, we were able to focus on an additional aim: to examine migrant agricultural worker women’s experiences of reproductive health and justice. our analysis was guided by a postcolonial feminist understanding of women migrant farmworkers’ experiences that emphasizes the compounding role of migration, gender, culture, race, and class in uniquely shaping these individuals’ ability to access reproductive justice (braun, 2012; ferguson and mcnally, 2015). over several months, we worked together to contrast stories, identify patterns, and consider the fit of several concepts with our emerging themes using a process of writing as inquiry as outlined by richardson and st. pierre (2005). our analysis was further developed by drawing on key literature focused on reproductive justice in agriculture. due to a paucity of literature emerging from canada and british columbia in particular we included empirical and theoretical literature from both canada and the united states. while our key focus is on the bc context, particularly in the okanagan valley, we see striking parallels with both out-of-province and out-of-country settings. our assumption is that such parallels can help emphasize overarching principles 94 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice of precarity and vulnerability that are at play in limited or no-status migrant agricultural work at the international level. at the national level, these commonalities speak to the consistent marginalization that is enabled through the federally administered sawp. yet while accounting for these similarities, the okanagan region merits unique consideration because it lacks a history of union and community organizing that has been documented in different regions of canada (flecker, 2011). further, the historically conservative, christian and white normative history of the region also present unique challenges for reproductive justice for migrant women farmworkers. advertised widely as ‘wine country,’ and more recently, as a new frontier for tech entrepreneurs, this region has uniquely hidden migrant agricultural workers from mainstream public discourses (hjalmarson, bunn, cohen, terbasket, and gahman, 2015). this analysis may thus have applicability for other regions in canada and the usa with similar local contexts. background canada’s seasonal agricultural worker program (sawp): the sawp is the main agricultural stream of canada’s temporary foreign worker program (tfwp) and is co-managed by the canadian federal government and the governments of mexico and 11 caribbean nations. in 2016, approximately 40,000 sawp workers came to canada, the majority to farms in southern ontario (employment and social development canada, 2016). british columbia, a late joiner of the sawp, received over 7,500 workers in 2016, approximately half destined for the okanagan valley, and the other half for the fraser valley. the vast majority of sawp workers destined for bc (and the rest of canada) are men, with women traditionally making up only about 2% of the total number. however, the number of women participants in the sawp is rising. largely due to efforts by the united food and commercial workers to eliminate gender discrimination in the hiring of sawp workers, in 2016 a landmark agreement was reached with the mexican government that would eliminate the ability of canadian growers to request sawp workers of a particular gender (ufcw, 2016). this seems to have had a small effect on the number of women arriving in bc under the program. hugo velazquez, a representative of the mexican consulate in vancouver told the authors that of the mexican sawp workers who arrived in bc in 2016, 4% were women (h. velazquez, personal interview, april 2017). canada’s sawp has been hailed as a global model for managed bodies and borders | 95 migration schemes, and other countries have attempted to emulate it. despite this reputation, the program has been heavily criticized by scholars who have documented the problems with the program from the perspective of the workers, specifically that it creates a vulnerable and temporary labour force with little or no access to permanent status (basok, 2004, 2007; basok, belanger, and rivas, 2014; hannon, baudar, and shields, 2016; hari, 2014; lenard and straele, 2012; lenard, 2012; nakache and kinoshita, 2010; reed, 2008; goldring, berinstein, and bernhard, 2009; mclaughlin and hennebry, 2013; paz ramirez, 2013; hennebry and preibisch, 2012; preibisch, 2012). despite a decade of study documenting the exploitative nature of the sawp, few changes have been made to this program. the sawp is a “circular migration” program, whereby workers are transported to and from their home countries each year, working a maximum of eight months in canada, many returning each year for decades. many men and women of the sawp spend more time in canada than their countries of origin each year, yet they are not permitted to remain in canada nor are their families allowed to accompany them during their work contract. participants in the sawp, free from all familial and community ties, are highly desirable as ‘dependable’, ‘flexible’, hard-working labourers, but are considered undesirable as permanent residents of canada (faraday, 2012; hennebry, 2012). the sawp provides no dedicated pathways to permanent status such as exist for participants of other temporary foreign worker programs, such as the live-in caregiver program (faraday, 2012; hannon, baudar, and shields, 2016). the only pathway theoretically open to them is the provincial nominee program, however it favours high-skilled workers in very narrow fields of employment that by definition excludes farm labour which is considered lowskilled and temporary (nakache and kinoshita, 2010). further, sawp visas, valid for no greater than 8 months, fall short of the minimum of 9 months a worker must have resided continuously in canada in order to be eligible for consideration for residency under the provincial nominee program (government of canada, 2015). work permits are tied to sawp-approved employers and workerinitiated transfers are difficult to secure, making migrants essentially bonded laborers. further, they are obliged to live in employer-provided housing which almost always means on-farm. this proximity makes workers especially vulnerable to employer surveillance and monitoring, and makes it difficult to refuse overtime and after hour tasks assigned by employers (horgan and 96 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice liinamaa, 2016; andre, 1990). sawp workers are requested by their employers each year by name, creating a situations where workers are pitted against each other in order to demonstrate to their boss that they deserve continued employment. further, sawp contracts give unilateral power to the employer to terminate a worker’s employment for any reason, and without the opportunity for appeal by the worker. fear of deportation or removal from the program discourages workers from rejecting unsafe or unreasonable work conditions, and further, may prevent them from seeking help for injuries or health challenges. this fear is substantiated by prior research that found that 787 workers were medically repatriated from 2001 to 2011 in ontario alone (orkin, lay, mclaughlin, schwandt, and cole, 2014). other issues documented by scholars include workers’ limited access to health care and other social services (mclaughlin, 2009, 2010; faraday, 2012; barnes, 2013), poor housing conditions (aguiar, tomic, and trumper, 2011; tomic, trumper, and aguiar, 2008), and difficulty rejecting unsafe work environments (barnes, 2013; fudge and mcfail, 2009). program advocates state that sawp workers have the same employment protections as canadian workers, but these protections are worthless unless inspections and enforcement of program rules, and protections for workers who complain are in place, which unfortunately they are not. underreporting of injuries and occupational health and safety concerns are exacerbated by a lack of clear guidelines to define safety conditions in farm work as well as limited oversight and enforcement to curb poor employment standards (aversa, 2015; mclaughlin, hennebry, and haines, 2014). in addition to the legal restrictions imposed upon workers by the structure of the program, there are a number of extra-legal practices that farm owners may employ that further contribute to a climate of coercion. these practices include confiscation of passports, overt and covert surveillance, and the imposition of curfews, no visitor policies, and no drinking policies (horgan and liinamaa, 2012, 2016; encalada grez, 2006; mclaughlin, 2009). together, the policies of the sawp, and these extra-legal farm rules serve to divide canada’s work force into a two-tiered hierarchy of laborers —citizen workers and migrant workers. in british columbia, fairey and colleagues’ (2008) report on migrant farmworkers highlighted some key trends in the region that necessitate further study of the bc context. for instance, they found that regulatory mechanisms to maintain employment standards have significantly declined in the agricultural bodies and borders | 97 sector, providing limited pathways to ensure the health and safety of farmworkers. averaging 60 to 70 hours of work a week during peak season, while often residing in unsafe and overcrowded living conditions with precarious and limited transportation, workers in bc are at increased risk for injury and exploitation. because workers lack many benefits (e.g. overtime, vacation), are paid minimum wage, and have limited access to health care services, they are incentivized to disregard their health to secure modest earnings. most significantly, migrant workers in bc are reluctant to report any workplace concerns or even injuries for fear that it will impact their employment status (fairey et. al, 2008). these challenges have a direct impact on migrant women’s ability to seek reproductive justice. reproductive justice and migrant farmworkers. to understand the struggles of migrant women for reproductive and sexual autonomy, we use the reproductive justice framework first articulated by feminist activists of color in the us in the 1990s (galarneau, 2013). reproductive justice utilizes a human rights framework to analyze how the ability of any woman to determine her own reproductive destiny is linked directly to conditions in her community. in other words, a woman’s ability to achieve full reproductive justice is not just a matter of individual choice and legal rights but is also impacted by social, political, and economic factors (galarneau, 2013). reproductive justice is also impacted by factors such as a woman’s race, class, gender, (dis)ability, sexuality, age, and immigration status (asian communities for reproductive justice, 2005). we find this framework particularly useful as it moves the discussion beyond abortion and sexual freedom, and makes demands on all levels of government to ensure women’s options for making choices are safe, affordable, and accessible (ross, n.d.). in british columbia, female migrant workers’ reproductive justice is impacted by intersecting factors such as labour precariousness, lack of full citizenship status, stark power imbalances between employers and workers, and linguistic, geographic, and social factors. while relevant to our area of study, prior literature on reproductive justice among migrant agricultural women must be considered cautiously as it has predominantly emerged from the united states. galarneau (2013) identified three key areas that negatively impact the reproductive justice of migrant agricultural women: (1) labour and occupational conditions; (2) health care and; (3) social relations. labour and occupational challenges include the normalization of agricultural work as inherently 98 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice hazardous and the lack of environmental protections that often result in pesticide exposure. in addition, incidents of sexual abuse and physical and sexual harassment often go unreported due to fear of punitive action by employers or state agents. health care challenges are characterized by limited accessibility and scope of services available to migrant agricultural women (galarneau, 2013). in fact, mexican farmworkers in the usa are at increased risk of reproductive health care issues and infant mortality rates (castaneda and zavella, 2003). migrant agricultural women in canada under the sawp similarly report difficulties accessing preventative sexual health services and prenatal care (mclaughlin, 2009). due to their long work hours, linguistic barriers, and social and geographic isolation, worker often have no community supports. social stigma and racism also exacerbate workers’ ability to navigate public services (walia, 2010). all of these factors interlock to create a system of sexual and reproductive oppression including material conditions, migration status, and socio-cultural ideas about migrant women and their sexuality. while limited research has focused on the gendered experiences of migrant agricultural women, including reproductive oppression, even less research has considered their unique acts of resistance or organizing role in pursuit of reproductive justice. historical examples of women labour organizers have received much less attention than their male counterparts. these selective historical accounts not only obfuscate women’s leadership in labour movements, but also perpetuate the notion of migrant agricultural women as passive and powerless victims (budech, 2014). further, many migrant agricultural women balance multiple roles such as workers, daughters, wives, mothers, and in some cases, activists contributing to labour organizing (zavella, 2016; preibisch and encalada grez, 2010). it is thus necessary to broaden our understanding of resistance to encompass the variety of work that migrant agricultural women engage in when seeking reproductive justice. in her research with mexican migrant agricultural women in california, budech (2014, 92) found that women were active ‘agents of social change’, creating awareness of structural violence enacted against women of colour and building spaces for female farmworkers to exchange experiences and grow a sense of solidarity. gendered challenges faced by female sawp workers. while much literature has focused on sawp workers and their health and healthcare access, very little has examined the gendered experiences of female sawp participants. narushima and sanchez (2014, 8) examine migrant farmworker health from the perspective of employers who hire sawp workers. they found that “regardless bodies and borders | 99 of the degree of appreciation for their workers, what was common among employers was the thin line dividing their sense of responsibility or care and their sense of management of mfws’ personal lives.” for example, all employer participants in the study had farm rules such as curfews, no visitor policies, and inspections of accommodations, clearly attempts at regulating the behaviour of employees in their free time. however, employers scoffed at the suggestion that it would be valuable to offer education on sexual health and an orientation to health services in canada. ultimately, employer attitudes and restrictive farm rules can pose real barriers to migrant farmworkers attempting to access reproductive and sexual health education or services. further, narushima and sanchez’s work shows that restricted sexual freedom has become normalized as a reality of migrant agricultural work in canada. figure 2. sawp worker in a cherry packing plant. photo by elise hjalmarson mclaughlin (2010) includes ‘gender issues’ as one of the major social determinants of health for migrant farmworkers in canada. like in the us, factors uniquely impacting female farmworkers include sexual harassment and pressure to enter into intimate relationships, chemical exposure affecting menstrual cycles and reproductive systems, and vulnerability to stis. other gendered challenges identified by mclaughlin and others include unwanted 100 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice pregnancies, the inability to seek prenatal care, and mental and emotional strain related to long periods of family separation (mclaughlin, 2010). encalada grez (2011) echoes many of mclaughlin’s points, but adds that female sawp workers are more vulnerable to restrictive house rules and punitive measures at the hands of employers and also deal with the burden of unrealistic gendered expectations revolving around being good mothers and wives. further, encalada grez points out that as there are many fewer sawp positions for women, female migrants face greater competition to maintain their spot, a factor that serves to pit women workers against each other. employers may be motivated to maintain this conflictive climate if it results in greater productivity. in 2013, ontario hiv treatment network (2013) released a report on migrant farmworkers and sexual health. like prior literature, this report points to social isolation and separation from family as being a factor that increased migrant farmworkers’ vulnerability to engaging in high risk sexual encounters. the authors also identify cultural values, beliefs, and customs as factors that may lead to misconceptions about risk and sexuality. in sum, this report demonstrates that migrant farmworkers are at heightened risk for contracting and treating stis due to their precariousness and lack of mobility. other canadian studies documenting the challenges of latina immigrants reveal some cross-cutting challenges relevant to temporary migrant agricultural women. perhaps most relevant was a study by ochoa and sampalis (2014) that examined latin american immigrant women’s experiences with sexual health and healthcare. the researchers conducted in-depth interviews with women living in quebec, and found that migratory status, language barriers, lack of social support, and difficulty accessing health care pose a risk to latina immigrant women’s sexual health. female sawp workers and reproductive oppression in the okanagan pre-departure control: gendered oppression takes both subtle and notso-subtle forms and occurs both in mexico and once women sawp workers arrive in british columbia (bc), canada. in most overt fashion, women have faced gender discrimination since the inception of the sawp. canadian growers have long been able to request sawp workers based on their gender, despite the fact that this practice is in contravention of provincial, federal, and international human rights laws3. due to deeply held gendered stereotypes, sawp women 3 in 2014, the united food and commercial workers canada filed complaints with the bodies and borders | 101 often are assigned to work in packing houses or in greenhouses rather than in the fields or orchards. given that the fruit packing season is much shorter than the general agricultural season, women’s stays in canada are on average shorter than men’s. informal conversations with employers have signaled to us that female migrant workers may be regarded as being apolitical or unlikely to protest working or living conditions, and therefore have been preferred employees on some farms. in formal interviews and informal conversations, female sawp participants have told us that ministry of labour officials in their home states or in mexico city actively articulate the expectation that women maintain abstinence while in canada. women who are believed to be sexually active may be humiliated or chastised. one woman from tlaxcala, in central mexico reported that the ministry of labour officials told her: “van a canadá a trabajar, no a andar de putas” (you’re going to canada to work, not to act like whores). other women have confirmed being told similar things. as this quote highlights, women are discouraged, in no uncertain terms, from engaging in romantic or intimate relationships while in canada. several women we spoke with reported that their suitcases were checked to ensure they were not taking contraception with them. as prior research illustrates, these are not isolated cases of harassment; rather, they reflect institutionalized gendered practices that uniquely police women’s sexuality. in fact, others have documented that some sawp-participating countries require women to sign contracts promising not to engage in intimate relations while in canada (encalada grez, 2011). one of the most common mechanisms of control utilized by the mexican ministry of labour officials and the representatives of the mexican government in canada is to stress to women how tenuous their employment is and how there are thousands of other mexican workers waiting for a chance to enter the program. sandra, a farmworker from chihuahua explains how this coercion works: “it is the first thing they tell you here at the ministry. that they don’t want problems, that we are going to canada to work, not human rights commissions in bc, ontario, and quebec, arguing that this aspect of the sawp violated provincial, federal, and international laws. in 2015, the mexican ministry of labour announced that they will no longer be recruiting based on gender and they have given growers 5 years to adapt to this new policy (ufcw, 2016). 102 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice cause problems. and we know that if we want to demand our rights, what they do is kick us out of the program. so most of the time we don’t say anything about what happens to us. we bear it, mostly for our families.” a similar tactic is utilized by consular officials in canada and employers. many workers report being threatened with being sent home if they don’t work more quickly, or if they complain or demand their rights. the fear of deportation is a very effective strategy for minimizing complaints and ensuring compliant and productive workers. and, as basok, belanger, and rivas (2014) have shown, very few migrants actually have to be deported each year for these mechanisms to be effective – the potential of deportation is sufficient to ensure migrant workers, legally employed in canada, feel disposable and remain compliant. it is likely that this strategy is more effective among the women sawp workers due to the very small number of positions open for female workers and the intense competition for those positions. further, as the majority of female sawp workers are single mothers and the sole providers for their children, they are often under greater pressure to keep their place in the program than male participants who are nearly all married. on-farm control: once the women arrive in british columbia, the gendered challenges continue. as sawp workers are obliged to live in employer-provided housing, many women live on farms behind gates and fences, where the supervisors or bosses can monitor everyone who comes and goes. it is common practice for employers to confiscate passports for ‘safekeeping’, adding to workers’ feelings that they are trapped on the farm. they also must endure curfews and surprise inspections of their living quarters, which many women interpret as attempts to check who is off the farm at any given time. no visitor policies, and especially no male visitors, are common ‘house rules’ on farms up and down the okanagan valley and across canada. workers who violate these rules report being punished with no work, or not being requested back in subsequent seasons. even in cases where women have yet to experience such punitive action, the fear of violating these rules can be enough to make them tread very carefully when interacting with others. for instance, on one occasion, one of the authors (amy) was invited to a farm by a worker who wanted to discuss obtaining a wheelchair to take home to her son who suffered from cerebral palsy. rather than meeting in her living quarters or the common area, the worker bodies and borders | 103 requested that they meet in a secluded place several hundred meters off the farm in order not to violate the no visitor policy. “no vale la pena arriesgarlo” (its not worth risking it), she said. even though some of these methods of control are not designed to restrict the sexual and reproductive freedom of migrant women, they have this impact nevertheless. restrictive farm rules, fear of losing their place in the program, and overt surveillance have the effect of isolating women and coercing them into silence. this coercion means they are less likely to seek information or services related to sexual health or to reach out for assistance when facing sexual assaults, unwanted pregnancies, or other reproductive health issues. geographic and social isolation: in addition to the more overt surveillance and control discussed above, migrant women’s reproductive freedom is also impacted by more subtle factors. for example, geographic and social isolation limit their social network and ability to access health information, services, or supports. sawp workers lack opportunities to build social networks and community connections, in part due to their isolated locations and long work hours, and in part because they are actively discouraged from building relationships by consular officials or their employers. this social isolation, combined with forced separation from families, contributes to high rates of mental health stress including anxiety, depression, and loneliness, but also means that migrants often have no one to turn to in emergency situations such as sexual assaults or unplanned pregnancies. the lack of social integration also means that many workers are unaware of how the canadian health care system works, making it more difficult for them to access health care services and community supports. for instance, some workers have assumed that they will be able to access antibiotics and birth control over the counter in pharmacies as they are accustomed to in their country of origin. this lack of understanding of the canadian system can create future health challenges that require more urgent or complex treatment. reproductive health matters can be even more difficult because female workers deal with heightened surveillance and stigma surrounding intimate relationships. in fact, female migrant workers, particularly single women, may face unique scrutiny, even among support groups that typically provide assistance to workers. our experience suggests that this dynamic is pronounced in a socially conservative christian region such as the okanagan in which chastity and domesticity are valued, particularly among mothers. many sawp workers live in rural locations far from bus stops and 104 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice without other modes of transportation. some are able to obtain bicycles which provide limited mobility, but the majority rely on their supervisors and employers to take them everywhere they need to go, including to doctors’ offices, pharmacies, and hospitals. many workers are reticent to disclose their illnesses or injuries to bosses unless of the most acute nature for fear of repatriation and so some workers choose instead to work through their injuries or use home remedies that are not always safe or effective. still others wait until they are in their home countries to address medical issues which sometimes have become more serious due to delay in treatment. when they do request that their bosses take them to obtain medical treatment, migrants must then rely on the boss to act as an intermediary or translator despite the fact that they may not feel comfortable with the nature of their condition being disclosed to their employer. as mclaughlin (2010, 32) points out, while not the ideal situation for any worker, this “is particularly challenging for women to negotiate health services (especially around sensitive issues such as sexual and reproductive health), with their primarily male employers and supervisors acting as intermediaries.” unfortunately, even when workers do request that their employers take them to the doctor, sometimes the employer refuses or dissuades the worker from seeking medical assistance. figure 3. worker accommodations in the okanagan. photo by elise hjalmarson language barriers pose another challenge for migrant workers seeking bodies and borders | 105 to access reproductive health information or services. the majority of mexican sawp workers speak spanish, and in some cases indigenous languages as their first languages. most speak no, or very minimal english, and many have no community connections that they can call upon to assist in interpretation. further, many of the men and women in the sawp program have low levels of literacy in their first languages, as many did not complete primary school. this in and of itself heightens their concerns about communicating with medical professionals, particularly about intimate or sensitive issues such as reproductive and sexual health. financial barriers also contribute to the reproductive oppression of migrant women. all sawp workers are covered by private insurance companies arranged by their employers, and all are eligible for provincial health care coverage after residing in bc for three months, however many are never registered. as noted elsewhere, workers’ access to this coverage is mitigated by their relationship with their employer who is responsible to enroll them (mclaughlin, 2009). this is rarely done, and workers we have advised of this right are reticent to request this of their employer due to concern that it will affect their work status. most walk-in clinics, labs, and pharmacies do not bill private insurance companies directly meaning that workers must bear the financial burden of paying for doctors’ visits, lab tests, and medication up front and submit claims for reimbursement after. this erects a financial barrier to accessing care and treatment as a single doctor's visit can cost upwards of $100 and lab tests can be well in excess of that. further, even if their private insurance companies will cover the costs, claims must be submitted in paper by mail, and reimbursements often take weeks to arrive by which time workers have often finished their contracts and left the country. workers’ private insurance plans are meant to be supplemental to provincial coverage meaning that they do not cover some procedures, including surgical and medical terminations. this means that while on paper female sawp workers have access to abortion services, in reality the barriers are so great that access is incredibly restricted. when taken together, it becomes clear that female sawp workers in the okanagan valley face a set of reproductive oppressions ranging from overt to subtle. in the face of oppression, however, there will always be resistance. resistance everyday forms of resistance make no headlines. just as millions of anthozoan polyps create, willy-nilly, a coral reef, so 106 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice do thousands upon thousands of individual acts of insubordination and evasion create a political or economic barrier reef of their own (scott, 1985, xvii). despite the layers of reproductive oppression faced by the women of the sawp, they nevertheless find creative and powerful ways to push back. we borrow the term ‘everyday resistance’ from anthropologist james scott, who, in his now classic book weapons of the weak, identified everyday resistance as: “...the ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups: footdragging, dissimulation, desertion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so on. these...forms of class struggle have certain features in common. they require little or no coordination or planning; they make use of implicit understandings and informal networks; they often represent a form of individual self-help; they typically avoid any direct, symbolic confrontation with authority” (1985, xvi). everyday resistance strategies are often overlooked or perceived as nonpolitical. in fact, women in particular are seen as ideal workers because they are considered less likely to engage in political protest about their conditions. in reality, however, the lack of overt protest should not be attributed to a lack of political consciousness or the absence of resistance. on the contrary, it should be attributed to migrant women’s keen awareness of the consequences of overt protest and their strategic decisions to engage in subtler, less detectable forms or resistance. as scott warns, to continue to overlook these methods of resistance would be to “ignore the most vital means by which lower classes manifest their political interests” (scott 1985, 33). in this section, we discuss a few of the examples of resistance we have witnessed firsthand, or that women have told us about in interviews. although women are subject to surveillance, curfews, and orders not to engage in relationships, many choose to quietly disregard rules and defy direct orders. for example, many engage in ‘unsanctioned’ relationships with other workers or members of the wider community, acts that require them to lie to their employers about their whereabouts, sneak off-farm after curfew, and cover for each other. these acts are subtle in that they are carried out without the bodies and borders | 107 knowledge of the bosses and supervisors and women do not want them to be discovered. despite this, we view these acts as political and powerful as they directly contest attempts by government officials in mexico and canada as well as farm owners to regulate women’s sexuality. women also find ways to access birth control and information about sexual health even though they are discouraged from doing so. they hide it in their luggage and bring it from mexico or have friends or relatives send it to them in the mail. many are able to overcome physical and social isolation and forge or maintain relationships with community members or members of migrant advocacy groups who can assist them in accessing contraception, health care services, or information about sexual and reproductive health. often the only contacts in canada migrant farmworkers have aside from their employers are members of advocacy groups, with whom they go to great lengths to stay in touch with even if they are transferred across the country. in select cases, migrant women have engaged in more overt methods of resistance despite being aware of the risks they may face. one way that women have overtly contested their reproductive oppression is by speaking about their experiences to the media. luz, a 28-year old mexican migrant who was sexually assaulted by her employer in 2015, explained her reasons for speaking out: i decided to speak to the media because i don’t want this to stay hidden, for it to remain unknown. i would like people to find out, so that this doesn’t happen to any other women, because they keep coming, and it will keep happening...i wouldn’t want any other woman to go through the same thing. despite fearing deportation for speaking out, she decided to share her experiences with a newspaper reporter in order to raise awareness about sexual assaults on farms. while powerful, the fact that luz went public with her story should not be read as an unconstrained decision. the reporter was able to offer confidentiality, which luz felt offered at least some protection from employer retribution or deportation. on the other hand, she decided not to report the assault to the police as she worried about her ability to return in subsequent seasons. another strategy that women have used to contest their reproductive oppression is joining and advising civil society groups that advocate for migrant rights (see for example encalada grez, 2006; gabriel and macdonald, 2011, 2014; russo, 2011; valarezo and hughes, 2012). because migrants have little free time, often this advising is informal and sporadic, or done from afar when migrants are in their home countries during the off season. rama, the only activist organization in the okanagan region working with migrant 108 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice farmworkers, sets priorities based on the those determined by workers (rama okanagan, 2017). workers’ priorities are identified through one on one and group discussions on farms, in the community, and during social events. being involved in grassroots organizations, even if involvement is sporadic and informal, carries considerable risk for sawp participants. workers have reported to us and other researchers (valarezo and hughes, 2012) that they are directed by employers and consular officials not to contact advocacy or migrant justice groups or unions. in spite of this pressure not to, workers nevertheless do organize unions, build and maintain relationships with migrant advocacy groups, and direct the priorities and activities of these groups. among the top priorities for all workers are improved access to health care and for women especially, full reproductive justice. discussion reproductive justice focuses on organizing women, girls and their communities to challenge structural power inequalities in a comprehensive and transformative process of empowerment...that link[s] the personal to the political (ross, n.d.). it is useful to return to a reproductive justice framework when trying to make sense of the situation faced by migrant farmworker women in the okanagan. feminist activist and co-founder of sistersong, women of color reproductive health collective explains: “ownership of your body is not enough. yes, you are not quote “enslaved”, but you can be enslaved by circumstances. you can be enslaved by disabling environment. you can be enslaved by not having enough money to pay for your healthcare or your rent” (johnson, 2017). migrant farmworker women in british columbia are enslaved by circumstances. despite spending the majority of the year in canada, a society that legally upholds women’s right to access health care, (including abortions and other reproductive health care) migrant women’s material conditions and the oppressive circumstances on farms create disabling environments which restrict their ability to exercise their rights. while migrant women theoretically have the right to make free choices about their sexuality and reproduction, these rights are only theoretical. in reality, women must contend with multiple barriers when attempting to avail themselves of those rights. bodies and borders | 109 the reproductive justice framework demands a three-pronged approach to fight reproductive oppression: 1) reproductive health, which deals with service delivery, 2) reproductive rights, which addresses legal issues, and 3) reproductive justice, which focuses on movement building (asian communities for reproductive justice, 2005). in order to address the reproductive oppression occurring in the okanagan, health care providers, governments, scholars, and activists must all be willing to take action to support migrant women in their struggle for reproductive justice. the following recommendations emerged from formal and informal discussions with mexican migrant women as important first steps that must be taken immediately. at the local level, health care providers should be educated and aware of the unique situation faced by migrant workers, and relevant issues related to sexual and reproductive health. it is also crucial that providers are sensitive to the coercive relationships between bosses, supervisors, and migrants which may make women less likely to divulge personal health information especially when the employer is present. health care providers must respect the privacy of workers at all times and ensure that independent translators are available to interpret for workers in their native languages. federal, provincial, and local governments and health care providers should work to ensure that seasonal agricultural workers are enrolled in provincial health care plans and that they are provided information regarding how to navigate the canadian health care system. patient navigators and toll free phone lines are strategies that could be put into place to assist migrant workers accessing care. all ties between health authorities and immigration control must be severed immediately (see for discussion smith and levoy, 2016). migrant women need to feel confident that their health information will remain private, and that it will not be divulged to any person or agency without their consent. we believe this firewall should extend to employers as well. unfortunately, the regional health authority responsible for the okanagan region, has sent collections letters to migrant workers threatening to contact canadian border services agency if their bills are not paid immediately. this tactic serves only to instill fear and deter migrants, who already face significant obstacles when accessing health care, from seeking future treatment. to advance the goal of reproductive justice, we must pressure the canadian federal government to ratify international human rights laws that apply to the situation of migrant workers. in particular, the right to health and wellbeing is recognized in the universal declaration of human rights, and in 110 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice the 1990 international convention on the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families. according to the latter, migrant workers and their families have the right to “enjoy equality of treatment with nationals of the state in relation to...social and health services” (united nations convention on the protection of the rights of all migrants, 1990). migrant receiving states bear a responsibility to ensure that migrant workers and their families can enjoy this equality of treatment. however, canada has not ratified this convention, despite some pressure from migrant sending countries, migrants and advocacy groups. despite the existence of international human rights laws, without the willingness of particular nation states to ratify and enforce the provision of these rights on the ground, they are largely meaningless. as hannah arendt (1951) so insightfully pointed out more than 65 years ago, even with an international human rights regime, without a nation-state to uphold those rights, people are essentially rightless. therefore, it is not enough to demand that canada ratify international conventions protecting migrants’ rights to health, it must also ensure those rights are upheld. in addition to ratifying and adhering to international human rights law, canada must enact and enforce national laws that promote the rights of migrants and lessen the power imbalance between migrants and their employers. one way to do this is to ensure all migrants approved to work in canada receive full status upon arrival. this change would mean that migrants would not be tied to an employer or particular sector, and would guarantee them access to the same social, legal, and labour rights as canadian citizens and residents. finally, we must continue to grow the movement for reproductive justice for migrant women. this starts with recognizing the acts of resistance already taking place on farms. even if not conceived as such by the actors, any act that circumvents 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(2016). contesting structural vulnerability through reproductive justice activism with latina immigrants in california. north american dialogue, 19(1), 36-45. bodies and borders | 117 alternate routes why communism lacked "information flow": a theoretical analysis lukasz nalaskowski formulation ofthe problem every political authority, both in democratic and undemocratic regimes, needs information in order to efficiently exercise the duties of governors or rulers, and reproduce the status quo to maintain power. however, there is a significant difference between democratic and undemocratic regimes with regard to information flow and with respect to how powerholders are kept informed. in this paper i intend to answer two questions: firstly, what factors, if any, influenced information flow under the communist regime; and secondly, the methods used by communist elites, those in charge of decision-making processes, to collect information to aid those decisionmaking processes themselves. i start my analysis by briefly enumerating the main sources of information used for governance in a democratic regime. then, employing niklas luhmann's theory of social systems, i approach the problem of information flow in a communist regime, starting with the description of the communist system and the role of the party. afterwards, i will look at the communist economy and analyze its structure as well as the status of money (a means of exchange) and the failure of its role in the socialist market as an "informative device of society" (see friedrich hayek). secondly, the sphere of formal organizations is then analyzed and how these organizations have replaced the institutions of civil society. in this section i will refer by and large to edmund wnuk-lipinski's works on the monocentric mass society. i conclude the essay with brief enumerate volume 17, 2001 chemins alternatifs tion of the main informative channels (institutions) which were at the disposal of the communist rulers. information flow in an open democratic system one of the many attributes of open democratic systems is the easy and inclusive access to information. many people and organizations, both private and commercial, make a living by selling information. information is also a side effect of the everyday performance of many organizations and institutions, especially economic ones. of course, such information has to be gathered and properly computed in order to be rendered intelligible to a wider audience, including the unemployment rate, flow of capital on the stock market, and the increase or decrease in market prices. apart from the economy, the institutions of civil society work as mechanisms which generate information, by aggregating the will and interests of society and transmitting them upward. if we assume, for the simplicity of this analysis, that the main goal of every government is to maintain power, then it is very likely that we agree on the fact that the attainment of this goal depends on the informative feedback that power-holders receive regarding their policy. in the case of democratic regimes, which are based on the competition of contradictory interests expressed by different groups and institutions, it seems to be a relatively easy task, especially if democracy is accompanied by a free and open market economy. in such regimes the powerholder has to rely on four main sources of information: 1) the free media, which plays an enormously important role as a 'watchdog' of democracy as well as being responsible for the distribution of democracy; 2) the institutions of civil society independent from government, such as trade unions, churches or political parties, which bridge the microlevel of social organization (families, peer groups, etc.) and the macrolevel (nations, states) by transmitting the interests of individuals upward; 3) political opposition; and 4) the free economy, probably the most crucial spring of information, which if uninterrupted by political intervention, generates a large amount of information through the mechanism of markets, through the circulation and accumulation of capital or the increase and decrease of prices. volume 17 2001 31 alternate routes in such cases, all governments have to do is be sensitive and open to criticism, voiced from competitors in the political sphere and press, as well as observe the main trends in the economy and match them with the interests of society. no matter how naive it may sound, in the context of information flow, democracy provides more comfortable circumstances for governments than undemocratic systems. how then does the information flow in a communist regime differ from the one in a democracy? communism: the party's inclusion into the system according to niklas luhmann (1994: 30-42), society is a system which organizes every possible communication connection between people. this system can be divided into subsystems including politics, economies, science, religion and many others. in an open democratic society, these subsystems are independent from each other, in the sense that one cannot be substituted for the other. however, they are also interdependent since they reproduce themselves. yet, in order to reproduce, subsystems must communicate with (react to) their environment, namely other subsystems. this communication has a very peculiar character. each subsystem has its own, typical code of communication. every piece of information which enters a subsystem is transferred into its own code, and by the same token, information which leaves a subsystem, is expressed by means of the same code. such codes are bilateral, which means that they are built on a pair of opposite, mutually excluding values. for example the code of a political system would be 'maintaining power losing power'; the code of economy would be 'benefit loss'; the code of science would be 'true false'. this situation is typical for an open democratic system. how then, if at all, can a communist system be described in terms of luhmann's theory of social systems? at first glance, one can say the nature of communism lies in the hierarchical and central character of the system. however, this explanation does not exhaust the whole complexity of the communist system. the identity ofcommunism as a social system was built on the total inclusion of the communist party into any sphere of public, and, to a limited extent, private life. using luhmann's theory, we could say that the party code (communist hostile) was introduced into every subsystem: politics, economy, science, civil society, etc. this party inclusion may be 32 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternatifs analyzed in many possible dimensions: as the inclusion of the ideological discourse; as the inclusion of party social capital (the system of the so-called nomenklatura; understood as the approval of people appointed to the most important posts in the state and public administration as well as the economic infrastructure); and as the inclusion of different social institutions which originated from communist ideology, like common ownership in economy (which was in fact state ownership) or state initiated formal substitutes of civil society. all those dimensions of party inclusion, in both the state and public spheres, resulted in an ontology of communism, which subsequently contributed to the difference in information flow between communist and democratic regimes. non-quantitative (communist) economy ifwe are content to justify capitalist economies in terms of success rather than nature, the main argument ofmarxist analysis that sets it apart from other economic theories remains, namely that the economy conceives its own selfdescription, represents itself in its own theory, and from this regulates internal and external references. the disaster of the socialist planned economy only teaches us that there are no exceptions (luhmann 1998: 9). alain besancon (1984) divides the communist economy into three roughly autonomous sectors. the first one, where the whole sector of military production was located, was given priority by communist rulers. the status of the soviet bloc as an international superpower relied mainly on that sector. according to besancon, this sector was governed in accordance with the rule of maintaining power, which in economic terms meant that costs of production were disregarded and did not play any role in calculations. the second sector provided for the needs of soviet citizens within which, as besancon argues, the great social experiment of building the communist system was being brought about. the third sector, unlike the two previous ones, was not subjected to the rule of communist ideology. this consisted of the remains of the capitalist economy under communism and was temporarily accepted by the communist rulers (besancon 1984: 19-27). volume 17 2001 33 alternate routes only the last sector was regulated and shaped by a logic, which slightly resembled the mechanisms of a market economy, while the first two were governed in accordance to a completely different logic, namely that of political economy. this logic included such phenomena as different prices for the same commodity. in the communist economy, the price depended on who was the receiver of the product, not on the cost of production. for example, the price of coal depended on whether it was exported outside the soviet bloc, exchanged in barter for different goods within it, delivered to another state-owned economic entity or sold to a private purchaser. the same product could have four different exchange rates. moreover, money, as a means of economic exchange, was administratively divided and rigidly assigned to different budgets and funds without any flexibility and possibility of transfer. for example, it was centrally decided how money, transferred from the central budget to a local economic entity, would be spent and on what. a local entity having different budgets (one for salaries, one for development and investment, one welfare and leisure activities) could not move money from one to another. according to jadwiga staniszkis (1989: 28), this phenomenon contributed to the fact that money was a means of exchange but could not be accumulated in a form ofcapital due to its diversified character. owing to the administrative division of the economy, the socialist market lacked one important feature: it was not quantitative, since the political decisions could not be conveyed by a means of economic variables. the prices of goods were not calculated in accordance with the costs of production, but were determined by political decisions. money lost its role as capital and its circulation could not represent the transactions conducted within the market. as a result, the market ceased to perform its function of the informative device of society (see friedrich von hayek). this had very serious consequences for the central governing of the whole state economy. first of all, statistics had a purely figurative meaning and did not resemble the actual state of affairs — the highly politicized economy — since it could not be conveyed in the language of quantitative economic variables. this made the economy unmanageable due to the complexity and amount of variables and factors, which had to be taken into consideration, along with unavoidable pathologies. in this 34 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternatifs context, the fact of forging official statistics, which was a common practice, became a secondary importance. luhmann (1998: 9) sums up this part of the analysis perfectly: "whatever is economics can be determined only within the economy. if politics wants to be informed, then it has to let the economy work. otherwise it can see only the reflection of whether its own economic plans have been accomplished or not." official substitutefor civil society apart from the fact that the socialist economy was non-quantitative, it also ceased to serve as a mechanism of class structuring. this, accompanied by the ban on freedom of association, resulted in the emergence of a particular type of society, which wnuk-lipinski (1989; 1991) calls 'monocentric mass society'. according to wnuk-lipinski (1989: 10), a perfect monocentric mass society can be characterized by: 1) central control over organizational structure; where only formal, officially approved institutions can exist; 2) blockade of social dynamics, which in the capitalist system is activated by a free market, and the consequent atrophy of class structure; 3) isolation of small social groups resulting from the ban on freedom of association; and 4) the pathology of the group-generating process in formal institutions. such a situation had significant consequences on the information flow in the soviet communist regime. the lack of a free market and the total incorporation of the public sphere by the officially approved and initiated set of formal organizations and institutions erased civil society from the communist system. as mentioned at the beginning of this paper, civil society plays an important role in the coordination and regulation of group interests. this role is performed by the set of institutions which aggregate and transmit the wills and interests of different groups upward. the institutions of civil society bridge two levels of social structures: the microlevel, where interests are being originally formulated and shaped, and the macrolevel, where aggregated interests are converted into policy and, in the form of laws, implemented downward. in the context of information flow, civil society channels communication between the elementary units of each society and its political governors. volume 17 2001 35 alternate routes however, the communist system lacked this 'natural' layer of grassroots institutions (so-called mesolevel of social organization), because it was replaced with a set of formal organizations, which were totally subordinated to the communist party. this situation had a large impact on the characteristics of the microstructures in the communist system and indirectly on the information flow. according to wnuk-lipinski (1989: 15-16), under the communist regime, microstructures were 1) isolated from each other; 2) informal structures started to appear within formal organizations; 3) microstructures provided a forum for a 'behind-closed-doors' articulation of group interests; and 4) pathologies of informal groups existing within formal organizations were quite common. these characteristics of microstructures resulted in the phenomenon of a sociological void, as (see stefan nowak in wnuk-lipinski 1989: 17). according to nowak, polish society in the late seventies was a federation of primary groups within a national community since identification with the formal organization and institutions ceased to exist. wnuk-lipinski (1989: 17-18) argues that the phenomena of sociological voids can be interpreted as "severe crises of institutions, or, more precisely, as a growing contradiction between the restrictions imposed from above on the institutional forms or collective life, on the one hand, and the interests and aspirations of various more or less structuralized social macrogroups. this was the most influential factor, which contributed to the sharp split between the spheres of public and private life. wnuk-lipinski (1989: 18) called this split social dimorphism. social dimorphism had one important consequence for the information flow. first of all, as mentioned above, communism lacked the channel of communication in the form of independent institutions of civil society. secondly, the independent, alternative, unofficial process of communication and interest formation took place on the level of microstructures within informal small primary groups ('behind-closed-door' articulation as wnuk-lipinski puts it). due to the fact that these processes could not enter the structures of official organizations, a so-called second circulation of political, cultural and economic ideas appeared. these types of circulation protected themselves from the intervention of the party apparatus by a means of conspiracy, widening the gap between the public and private sphere. 36 volume 17, 2001 chemins alternatifs it is worth mentioning that in the case of the sphere of civil society and social structure we can observe a very similar tendency as the one in the economy, namely the disappearance of its communicative function. the radical implementation of state-approved and initiated organizations, on the one hand, and the dismantling of civil society, on the other, resulted in the withdrawal of the articulation of group interests from the public to the private sphere, and the emergence of the structures by and large inaccessible by state agents. however, it is worth mentioning that the dividing line between the official and the unofficial sphere existed also within formal institutions, resulting in overwhelming and omnipresent corruption. antoni z. kaminski (1991) calls this phenomenon privatization of the state. according to kaminski (1991: 248-261), under communism, individuals or groups exploited existing opportunities and resources provided by the state and its institutions for their own purposes. these people might have been politically active, overtly accepting the state ideology, but they used their political positions to promote the interest of their families and of allied primary groups. it is especially important to realize that the interests gave birth to informal alliances and groups built on kin and peers relations, which also served as communication networks. these informal networks facilitated the information flow along the horizontal dimension of communist society, between different entities of the public sphere. they were especially crucial for the reproduction of the socialist economy, which permanently suffered from the shortage of goods, not always efficiently distributed by the central planning committee. however, it is somewhat paradoxical and, by the same token interesting, that these functional mechanisms were considered by top party and state rulers to be syndromes of the anarchisation of the middle rank party and state apparatus. it would be extremely interesting to analyze the extent to which rulers of communist regimes were aware of the functional role of these informal networks in the reproduction of the system. moreover, it would also be beneficial to investigate to what extent the central party apparatus intentionally allowed their existence and to what extent it was an uncontrollable phenomenon, existing beyond the scrutiny of the central committee of the communist party. two features of communism which influenced the information flow have to be pointed out again. firstly, civil society was, by and large, volume 17 2001 37 alternate routes incorporated by the official, formal set of institutions approved by the party. secondly, the process of the formation of interests was blocked on the level of small social groups. in this case, the lack of an independent, free press is of lesser importance, since there were no institutionalized groups, which interests in the press could represent. nevertheless, the press and other types of media of mass communication, like tv and radio, existed but the whole sphere was a thoroughly censored system. the censorship of official media indeed contributed to the deformation of the information flow. as mentioned above, the phenomenon of the second circulation appeared as a counteraction to censorship. however, it is intriguing that even the power-holders were interested in the content of the independent political press issued by various opposition movements. for example, in the 1980's, in the special office called biuro studiew (the bureau of studies) located within the structure of sluzba bezpieczenstwa (the main part of the ministry of internal affairs, which used to scrutinized polish society), the opposition press was thoroughly analyzed, and eventually summarized in a form of a short resume, which was later distributed to the top communist elite (widacki 1992: 15-16; beres, skoczylas 1991: 196, 206). how the communists knew what was going on i shall now change my perspective and try to briefly tackle the question: by what means did communist elites manage to collect information? according to alain besancon (1976: 23), communist rulers lived in the world of ideological fiction. the real state of affairs was beyond their consideration since what mattered to them was the full implementation of the ideologically designed project of communism. it is worth pointing out that besancon's reasoning is based on at least two assumptions, both very vulnerable to critique. first of all, it appears to be a rule of thumb that in any political system, there are individuals who are cynical and use ideology as a facade for maintaining power and attainment of their own private goals. secondly, the strength of communists' beliefs in the emancipating power of communist ideology varied along the process of the system's evolution, which weakened toward the end (see zybertowicz 1994). moreover, one cannot be satisfied with besancon's explanation, since it does not fit the assumption concerning the main goal of power-holders 3ff volume 17, 2001 chemins alternatifs in any kind of regime. it was assumed that maintaining power is the main task of any type of political elite. to a limited extent, this goal is to be achieved by receiving necessary information feedback. as it was pointed out in the analysis above, the communist elites lacked such feedback due to ontological peculiarities of the communist system, such as a planned economy and civil society which was replaced with a set of formal organizations loyal to the communist party. in the case of communism, "natural" (spontaneous and grass-rooted) information flow did not exist, and therefore, it had to be artificially simulated by institutions especially designed and used for that purpose. in poland there were three main central institutional structures which used to work as informative channels, upon which the communist elites relied on: l)the party channel, which at least in the case of poland was located within the structure of the organizational faculty (wydzial organizacyjny). this channel collected information about economic situations in local factories as well as social situations and 'moods' of the workers and local communities. it was a highly hierarchical channel, which on a daily basis transferred information from the local party apparatus, like town committees or village committees, to the central committee; 2)governmental institutions and administrations, which mainly collected economic data, such as the central statistical office (glewny urzad statystyczny) or certain specific ministerial channels; 3)the secret police (sluzba bezpieczenstwa), which was a part of the ministry of interior affairs. the secret police should be distinguished from other government structures due to it size. it is estimated that in the 1980's sb —popular abbreviation of sluzba bezpieczenstwa had around 24, 000 employees, who used to work with up to 100, 000 informants (see: zybertowicz 1993, 1998, los and zybertowicz 2000). owing to the sharp split between the public and the private sphere and as a result of its confidential character of information exchange (the socalled second circulation), the secret police seemed to be the most effective instrument for collecting information. this may explain the size of this institution, as well as the importance attached to it by the communist elites. however, it must be realized that its role was not bound to invigilation and oppression of independence movements, but included gathering information on a wide scope of issues, from economic data to public volume 17 2001 39 alternate routes opinion (for more about the role of the secret service in communist systems see: los and zybertowicz 2000). however, the set of institutions (informative channels) varied among countries as well as during the evolution of the system. for example, in poland, after the martial law was imposed in december 1981, different army structures were extensively used in order to gather information about society. it is also worth mentioning that in poland in the 1980's, one could observe a radical shift in the rulers' attitude towards information. at the beginning of the 1980's, the new elite, and especially general wojciech jaruzelski, introduced a completely new policy towards information. a lot of attention was devoted to that matter. new institutions were established to serve the informative purposes of power-holders — such as the centrum badania opinii spolecznej, the first soviet block state-affiliated public opinion research center that worked for the communist elite. existing institutions were enlarged, and for instance, a new faculty of information (wydzial informacji) was established within the party structures. the secret police (sb) was also reconstructed and enlarged. there was also a great amount of consultant and analytical boards affiliated with the government, the communist party or other central institutions (for a complete description of the informative channels at the disposal of the communist elite in the 1980's see: nalaskowski 2000). conclusion this paper has examined the phenomenon of the information flow in the communist system. it was pointed out that the information flow in communism was influenced by 1) a lack of a free market economy, which was substituted by central-planned economy; the market in the centralplanned economy failed to perform the role of informative devise, since the prices did not represent the cost of production but political decisions; and money was administratively divided, which hindered the processes of accumulation and circulation; 2) an abscence of a civil society, which was erased from the system and replaced with a set of institutions totally loyal to the communist party; consequently, the articulation of group interests was blocked on the level of microstructurcs, like families or groups of fellow colleagues. all in all, it resulted in the peculiar information flow, upon which communist elites had to rely on with specialy 40 volume 17,2001 chemins alternatifs designed informative channels (institutions) in order to collect information and feedback on their policies. finally, it has to be mentioned that the role, performance, structure and effectiveness of the informative channels is a fascinating field of study hitherto completely neglected by scholars. bibliography beres, witold, jerzy skoczylas. 1991. general kiszczak mowi .. prawie wszystko [general kiszczak is telling ... almost everything]. warszawa: polska oficyna wydawnicza, bgw. besancon, alain. 1976. krotki kurs sowietologii [short course of sovietology]. feniks. niezalezna oficyna wydawnicza. besanaon, alain. 1984. anatomia widma. ekonomia polityczna realnego socjalizmu [the anatomy of the fantom. political economy of real socialism]. warsaw: wydawnictwo krag. kaminski, antoni, z. 1991. an institutional theory of communist regimes. san francisco: ics press. luhmann, niklas. 1994. teoria polityczna panstwa bezpieczenstwa socjalnego [political theory of welfare state]. warsaw: pwn. luhmann, niklas. 1998. modernity in contemporary society, in: niklas luhmann observation on modernity. stanford: stanford university press, s. 1-21. los, maria, andrzej zybertowicz. 2000. privatizing the policy state. the case of poland. london: macmillan and new york: st. martin's press nalaskowski, lukasz. 2000. spoleczenstwo zamkniete informacyjna pulapka wladzy. kanaly informacyjne scislego kierownictwa prl w latach 80-tych [closed society the communicative deadlock. the informative channels of top communist apparatus of the polish people republic in the eighties], torun: umk (typescript). nowak, stefan. 1979. "przekonania i odczucia wspolczesnych" [believes and views of contemporary poles], in: polakow portret wlasny [the poles' selfportrait]. krakow: wydawnictwo literackie. widacki, jan. 1992. czego nie powiedzial general kiszczak [what hast't been said by general kiszczak]. warsaw: polska oficyna wydawnicza, bgw". wnuk-lipinski, edmund. 1989. peculiarities of the structure of the monocentric mass society. warszawa: ifis pan. wnuk-lipinski, edmund. 1991. rozpad polowiczny. szkice z socjologii transformacji ustrojowej [partial disintegration. essays in the sociology of transformation]. warszawa: ifis pan. staniszkis, jadwiga. 1989. ontologia socjalizmu [the ontology of socialism]. warsaw: wydawnictwo in plus. volume 17 2001 41 alternate routes zybertowicz, andrzej, 1993. w uscisku tajnych sluzb: upadek komunizmu i uklad postnomcnklaturowy [in the grasp of the secret service: the collapse of communism and post-nomenklature web], komorow: antyk. zybetowicz, andrzej. 1994. three deaths of an ideology: the withering away of marxism and the collapse of communism. the case of poland. in: martin krygier (ed.) marxism and communism: posthumous reflection on politics, society, and law. amsterdam: atlanta. zybertowicz, andrzej. 1997. niewidoczna wladza: komunistyczne panstwo policyjne w polsce w latach osiemdziesiatych [the invisible power: communist police state in poland in the eighties], in: r. b%ocker, p. h.bner (eds), skryte oblicze systemu komunistycznego [the hidden dimension of communist system], warsaw: wydawnictwo dig, s. 153-192. 42 volume 17,2001 living wage campaigns and building communities | 235 living wage campaigns and building communities don wells1 the occupy movement’s ‘we-are-the-99%’ protests that erupted in some thousand cities around the world in 2011 have morphed into a growing anti-austerity politics. from athens to seattle, montreal to madrid, london to lagos, protesters in their thousands have been marching in the streets against increasing polarization of wealth, income and power. a principal focus of this anti-austerity politics is the need to end poverty wages. in los angeles, new york and over 200 other us cities, fast food workers and other low-wage workers have been demonstrating in front of macdonald’s restaurants and other low wage firms. together with home care workers, retail employees and other low paid workers in the “fight for $15” movement, they are demanding a minimum of $15 an hour as a “living wage.” recently the university of california agreed to a $15 an hour wage floor. new york state announced a $15 minimum wage for some 200,000 fast food workers and all state workers. seattle, san francisco and los angeles have also adopted a $15 minimum wage and chicago and kansas city have adopted a $13 wage (greenhouse, 2015, 2). similar policies are being debated in other cities, expanding a movement in which over 150 us cities and counties have adopted living wage policies over the past twenty years. in britain almost 1600 organizations have been officially recognized as living wage employers (cooper, 2015), and in 2012 the london olympics became the first living wage olympics. supported by advocacy, educational, research and anti-poverty organizations, such as vibrant communities canada, acorn (association of community organizations for reform now) canada, and the canadian centre for policy alternatives, living wage coalitions are also spreading across canada2. in many ways, british columbia is leading the way. vancity credit union became the largest employer in canada to 1 don wells teaches at the school of labour studies and department of political science, mcmaster university. thanks to tom cooper, carlo fanelli, peter foulds, trish hennessy and anthony marco for helpful comments and information. 2 in ontario alone there are living wage initiatives in at least 24 communities, including hamilton, waterloo, peel, toronto, chatham-kent, london, st. thomas, perth huron, thunder bay, sudbury, ottawa, renfrew county, simcoe county, oxford county, peterborough, kingston, brantford, guelph, windsor, grey bruce, haldimand-norfolk, halton, niagara and gravenhurst. 236 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages adopt a living wage, new westminster, b.c. became the first canadian city to adopt a living wage for its municipal employees, and vancouver city council recently voted unanimously for a living wage for city employees. so what is a living wage? and what is the difference between a minimum wage and living wage? a few minimum wages are living wages, but usually they are a lot less. minimum wages are whatever governments say the legal wage floor is in particular places for various kinds of work. by contrast, living wages are based on two normative premises. one is a moral premise that workers should be paid enough to raise themselves and their families out of poverty and maintain their dignity in society. the other premise is that everyone should have the means and leisure time to participate meaningfully in the civic life of their community. that means that living wages are almost always higher than the minimum wages that governments legislate. in canada there has been a sharp increase in the proportion of workers who work for low wages. wages in the high paying sectors are growing twice as fast as wages in low-paying sectors (tal, 2015, 3), especially in rapidly expanding service sectors. in ontario alone, 700,000 work for a minimum wage. add another million who earn between $11$15 and hour, and we have three out of every ten ontarians working for low wages – almost doubling the proportion of low wage workers in less than fifteen years. this doesn`t include the 11% of workers in ontario who are not covered by the minimum wage (vosko et al., 2014). particularly for those working for minimum wages, the proportions of low wage workers are even higher – often much higher – among women, first nations, youth, racialized workers and recent immigrants (block, 2015, 89; government of ontario 2012; lewchuk et al., 2014; block and galabuzi, 2011). these low wage workers are the ‘working poor.’ they are found across growing expanses of canadian labour markets, including retail, cleaning, hospitality, security, care work, and other sectors. in canada, 1.8 million work for less than they need to pull themselves and their families of out poverty (cooper, 2015). in 2008, two of every three families living in poverty in canada had one or more family members in the paid workforce (canada, 2012, 28). to lift them out of poverty, they need a living wage that allows them to make enough to meet their families’ basic needs – food, clothing, rent, transportation, child care and other essentials – and have a bit left over for things like their children’s soccer team so they and their families can participate more in community life. based on actual costs of meeting these needs, living wage rates vary from community to living wage campaigns and building communities | 237 community. for example, the living wage in vancouver is $20.68 an hour; in toronto it is $18.52 an hour; in hamilton – whose living wage campaign is the main focus here – it is $14.95 an hour. the best place to raise a child in hamilton, an ontario city of half a million, living wage coalitions have been making significant gains. they have also been facing formidable challenges. this mix of success and adversity provides insights into the special importance of community identity to the success of living wage campaigns. the overarching goal of the city council of hamilton and hamilton’s roundtable for poverty reduction, a local coalition of community, faith, policy, municipal groups, charities and private firms, is to make hamilton “the best place to raise a child” by reducing poverty. although the rate of child poverty in canada has been declining in recent years, it is still among the worst among rich countries, ranking 20th out of 30 industrialized nations (raphael, 2009). some parts of the city suffer poverty levels that are among the worst in canada. one of every five hamilton children lives in poverty, and in some neighbourhoods this runs as high as two or three children in five. every month the equivalent of over 270 classrooms of children use foodbanks. a big part of children’s poverty is due to their parents’ low wages. over 30,000 hamiltonians go to work for pay – and yet they and their families still live in poverty. a living wage is a top priority at hamilton’s public school board. teachers and school trustees know personally many of the children who are growing up in poverty while their parents are working for poverty wages. they see the impacts every day in their schools: physical and cognitive developmental delays, poor health, depression and anxiety, aggressive behaviour, kids who are too hungry to learn, and parents who are too stressed out to help them. at a recent recognition ceremony, about twenty hamilton organizations received official public recognition for adopting a living wage policy. this includes the public school board, the first public institution – and the first publicly elected body – in ontario to adopt a living wage. as school trustee who sponsored the board’s adoption of the living wage argued: “the best way to fight child poverty is to pay parents a living wage.” among the employers recognized was the co-chair of hamilton’s living wage coalition, the ceo of a local manufacturing firm. the head of the hamilton chamber of commerce, who adopted a living wage for employees at the chamber, spoke about how his support of the living wage arose in important part because he was raised by a working single mother. 238 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages a living wage policy is also a growing priority at hamilton’s mcmaster university. for several years the mcmaster community poverty initiative (mcpi), a coalition of faculty, staff, students, and unions, in partnership with anti-poverty groups in hamilton, has been promoting a living wage policy. support has been growing across campus, including among some senior administrators, as part of a new priority of “community engagement” inside and outside the university. the university appointed the co-chair of the mcpi to head up the university’s new office of community engagement. it was in this context that cleaners at the university, and their union, the building union of canada, made a major gain. before their most recent contract, many mcmaster cleaners were paid only $13.51 an hour. since many are single parents, what they earn is what their children live on. now, thanks to the university administration’s agreement to a living wage in their contract, they’re making a minimum of $15 an hour. the way the cleaners won the living wage points to the importance of community building. as has been the case for many years in regard not only to the cleaners but also to other low wage, predominantly female, often immigrant workers, including cafeteria workers represented by the service employees international union, university negotiators were very aggressive in contract negotiations. the cleaners were told they were expendable and that the university could get cleaners for even lower than the poverty wages many were making. the university threatened to outsource the cleaners unless they accepted the administration’s `final’ contract offer that would keep many well below the living wage. this threat came in the middle of summer when most students and faculty were not on campus. however, word got out and in a couple of days over 150 faculty, staff and students signed an online petition to the university president expressing their “strong disagreement with the ultimatum” the university had made to the cleaners. they called on the administration to “commit to paying all of its fulltime workers a living wage immediately.” as a “community dedicated to the fulfillment of human potential, mcmaster university should be leading the way on this issue.” after admonishing the administration for its “final best offer” which “perpetuates gender inequality” by keeping workers in the mainly female part of the bargaining unit (but not the mainly male higher skilled part) below a living wage, the petitioners said they wanted to “work in a community that values all its members.” in closing, they noted that many had been inspired by the university president’s public position that the university must “uphold above all else the obligations of the university to serve the living wage campaigns and building communities | 239 greater good, beginning with our immediate community”. with public support for a living wage for the cleaners growing among the public outside the university as well, the hamilton spectator newspaper soon picked up the issue. with the administration’s hard bargaining under pressure from many in the university community and in hamilton, mcmaster’s president, often a progressive voice, announced that the administration would offer a living wage in the new contract. challenges living wage campaigns in hamilton also illustrate formidable challenges. one is that such campaigns can lead to the redistribution of wages among workers: a transfer from higher paid workers to lower paid workers without helping to raise wages for all workers and without changing the overall distribution between the top salaries and bottom wages in the organization. at mcmaster, the lowest paid cleaners got a living wage but the wages of the higher paid cleaners and skilled trades in the bargaining unit were essentially frozen. and there was no redistribution of income from senior administration and other highly paid employees at the university, some of whom make annual salaries upwards of $300,000, $400,000 and more, on top of generous pensions and other benefits. a second major challenge is that the living wage is calculated on the basis of a fulltime job. this assumption does not reflect today’s increasing numbers of part-time and contract jobs. these and other ‘non-standard’ jobs are growing faster than full-time jobs (tiessen, 2014, 20; workers’ action centre, 2015). only about half of the workers in toronto and hamilton have standard employment (lewchuk et al., 2014). about half of ontario’s workers work less than 40 hours a week (block, 2015, 5). so in order for them to get out of poverty, they need either full time work or they need a living wage that is higher for part time work. a third challenge is that because the living wage focuses on raising the “working poor” out of poverty, it does not address the poverty of the unemployed. there is a danger that the unemployed poor, who are already pervasively stigmatized as ‘non-deserving poor,’ may be further excluded. in response to these challenges, the living wage needs to be part of a broader set of policies to reduce poverty. among them are policies to create more and better jobs, and better protection for those who lose their jobs. whereas in 1990 seventy five percent of canada’s unemployed received unemployment insurance benefits, today only thirty nine percent do. and canada’s employment insurance benefits are low compared to those in other rich industrialized countries. 240 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages more affordable housing is also crucial. at least 200,000 canadians use homeless shelters or sleep outside each year. untold numbers more ‘couch surf.’ in the 1990s government support for affordable and social housing was cut, and in 1993 the federal government got out of social housing altogether. about 95% of housing in canada today is built by private, for-profit developers (silver, 2014, 84). there is little profit to be made from building housing for very low income people. often wages and social assistance rates are so low that many people can’t afford to pay their rents. already one in five hamilton renters pay over half their incomes on rent (freeman, 2015). gentrification in hamilton encourages landlords to raise their rents higher, forcing many of the poor out of their apartments. a guaranteed minimum income could be a powerful companion to the living wage. as an experiment in the 1970s, the manitoba and federal governments implemented a policy in the town of dauphin, manitoba in which each family received a minimum income. those who were working had their income from the policy reduced by 50 cents for every dollar they earned in employment. while the minimum income’s impacts on hours of work were minimal, gains to the community were considerable. children and adults attained higher education levels. there were fewer hospital visits, work-related injuries, and car accidents. there was less domestic abuse and lower levels of reported mental illness (forget, 2011; goar, 2011). hours of paid employment went down but this was almost exclusively due to mothers of young children delaying their return to paid work so they could spend more time with their children, and to youth who continued in school instead of leaving to work for wages before graduation. building community politics much of the strategy of living wage campaigns in canada, the us, britain and elsewhere centres on a `business case’ and on local economic development. at the level of individual workplaces and organizations, there is growing empirical evidence associating the adoption of living wages with ‘efficiency benefits’ to employers, including higher employee productivity, lower employee turnover, lower training costs, better corporate reputation and other advantages (brenner and luce, 2008; fairris and reich, 2005; reich, hall and jacobs, 2005). a prominent example is costco, the ‘anti-wal-mart,’ where the yearly turnover is 20 percent in contrast to 50 percent at wal-mart, and where the savings in training and recruitment costs contribute to wages and benefits that average $20,000 more for each fulltime worker than at wal-mart (greenhouse, 2009, 162-4). furthermore, there is evidence that, as a living wage campaigns and building communities | 241 result of living wage contributions to increased consumer demand and `multiplier effects` that flow from that initial increased demand, local net employment is often modestly higher as well (card and krueger, 1994; dube et al., 2010). such benefits to employers and local economic development are important living wage contributions. there is another benefit of living wage campaigns: their contributions to citizen participation and community civic culture. living wage campaigns, and the values of social solidarity and community cohesion they embody, can be strengthened by being linked explicitly to community identity and to `grass roots’ participation. unlike minimum wage legislation and minimum income legislation, the living wage is not something citizens have to wait for politicians and public officials in legislatures to decide. it is a community option. on the one hand, this local character of living wages is a source of major weakness. whereas minimum wages apply to all workers specified in the provincial or federal jurisdiction, the scope of living wages is usually considerably less, so the benefits are fewer. in addition, living wage policies are largely urban-centred and leave out most rural areas. and often they are an option that is not exercised by many employers, especially those with small businesses in predominantly lowerskilled, labourintensive sectors such as retail, fast food, security, cleaning, hotels, etc. since living wages are a voluntary option for individual employers, another weakness is a built-in ‘free rider’ incentive problem. local employers who do not pay a living wage can benefit from or `free ride’ on the increases in local purchasing by the employees of businesses that do pay a living wage. by contrast, government minimum wage laws are mandatory, enforced (to varying degrees) by the state, and typically cover most smaller businesses. consequently they can provide benefits to larger numbers of working poor. on the other hand, the community focus of the living wage can also be a source of strength, but for different reasons. partly this is by default: while most provincial minimum wages have risen in recent years, and alberta’s new government has committed to increase the province’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, as yet no provincial government has provided minimum wage increases that meet a living wage across the province.3 and unlike minimum wage legislation which is largely based on a calculation of political benefits, living wages are, as the name suggests, based on local costs of living. 3 however, in some smaller communities and rural areas, where housing, food and other costs are lower, provincial minimumwages may approximate living wages. 242 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages living wage campaigns operate at multiple levels. they focus on persuading individual employers to pay their employees a living wage, on getting city councils to adopt living wage policies for municipal employees, on mobilizing neighborhood business associations to adopt living wages, and on negotiating living wages as part of local employment provisions in “community benefit agreements” with developers and officials building public infrastructure projects in the community (galley, 2015). this varied nature can make living wage values and arguments part of a multilayered political conversation in which community members, not just a few government officials and politicians, talk about the living wage in the street, at work and at school, at community and faith events, and across the kitchen table. these civic conversations can contribute to increased public awareness of social and economic inequality and exclusion and, at the same time, to a stronger sense of community belonging and commitment. by expanding the meaning and spaces of politics to include people who are left out, such conversations can contribute to popular participation in public policymaking. in addition to the goal of providing a better material basis for workers and their loved ones to participate in community life, by operating outside conventional electoral representation processes, living wage campaigns can strengthen political citizenship. to the extent living wage campaigns are embedded in community consciousness and identity, public moral and political pressure can come not only from those workers who are directly affected by living wage as a `labour issue’ but also from the community itself as a focus of civic identity and community development. in hamilton there is broad support across all party lines in city council for a living wage policy. “anchor institutions,” such as large public and non-profit employers (dragicevic, 2015), with strong identification with hamilton, such as the university, community college, hospitals, the catholic school board, and others are also likely candidates for living wage policies. large private sector employers, including the main newspaper and other media firms, credit unions and other financial institutions, the airport, and hamilton’s iconic steel and other manufacturing companies whose history is deeply intertwined with the city and its sense of itself, are also strategic to linking the living wage as part of hamilton’s community identity. faith organizations, the city’s beloved hamilton tiger-cats cfl team, and prominent community service organizations such as the ymca and ywca, are also strategic candidates for early living wage adoption. to the extent the living wage campaign and its values become integral to how people in hamilton see their city, a new community conversation with living wage campaigns and building communities | 243 employers who have yet to adopt living wage policies can begin, along the lines of “this is hamilton. hamilton is a living wage community. you’re part of hamilton, so why aren’t you paying a living wage?” the hamilton and district labour council is also making a living wage a top priority, vigorously promoting an online petition calling on the city council to adopt a living wage for municipal employees (hamilton and district labour council, 2015). at a time in ontario when union density has fallen to 14% in the private sector, even further to 11.3% for part-time workers in the private sector, and to 6.7% among the rapidly increasing numbers of small workplaces in the private sector (block, 2015, 6, 10-11), living wage campaigns are a way to help build community unionism. living wage campaigns can promote community issues linked to unionized workplaces, and build solidarity among union and non-union workers to help create a kind of informal community collective bargaining around a living wage floor. especially where, as is almost universally the case today, unionized workers are being pressured to make contract concessions, a living wage floor can help to limit employers’ ability to coerce already low paid workers to make more wage concessions or lose their jobs (as we saw for example in the case of the mcmaster cleaners). living wage campaigns are also about building intergenerational solidarity. a disproportionate and growing number of young workers are working for poverty wages. although the canadian charter of rights and freedoms prohibits discrimination on the basis of age, ontario allows employers to pay workers under 18 years of age, who work 28 hours a week or less, a lower minimum wage of $10.30 an hour. wage reductions for young males have been particularly dramatic: between 1981 and 2011, real wages for men 17-24 years old fell more than 14 percent (morissette et al., 2012). in 2014 some 400,000 workers, male and female, in ontario aged 15-24 were paid $11 or less an hour, and another 305,000 made $1115 an hour. together they comprise four of every five low paid ontario workers (block, 2015, 10-11). the impacts of low wage work also extend to parents and other family members, and this opens up new bases of community support for living wage policies. parents, including many who may have higher, more secure incomes, increasingly experience the impacts of the low wage economy through their children who can’t find decent, stable jobs, live with their parents because they can’t afford rent, can’t afford escalating costs of postsecondary education, can’t afford to start their own families and can’t participate in their communities in ways their parents do. growing numbers of low-paid, precarious jobs are transforming the living 244 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages wage into a broader community issue linking generations, as well as income and employment groups. finally, starting at community levels, living wage campaigns can be part of building a more `bottom up’ politics that contributes to more horizontal inter-community, province-wide and nation-wide politics which can foster more genuinely democratic popular participation and social solidarity. references online petition to patrick deane, president, mcmaster university. (2014, august 2014). block, s. (2015). a higher standard: the case for holding low-wage employers in ontario to a higher standard toronto: ontario centre for policy alternatives. block, s. and g.e. galabuzi. (2011). canada’s colour-coded labour market ottawa: canadian centre for policy alternatives. brenner, m. and s. luce. (2008). living wage laws in practice. in r. pollin et al., eds., a measure of fairness (pp.147-191). ithaca: cornell university press. canada. 2012. the national child benefit progress report 2008. ottawa: public works and government services. card, d. and a. krueger. (1994).minimum wages and employment. american economic review. 84(4),772-98. cooper, t. (2015). the living wage movement goes global. http://www.opencanada.org/features/the-living-wage-goes-global cooper, t. and a. johnstone. (2013). living wage: the best way to fight child poverty in hamilton. hamilton spectator, http://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/3240645-living-wage-the-bestway-to-fight-child-poverty-in-hamilton dragicevic, n. (2015). the prosperous province: strategies for building community wealth: anchor institutions. toronto: mowat centre and atkinson foundation. living wage campaigns and building communities | 245 dube, a., w. lester and m. reich. (2010). minimum wage effects across state borders. review of economics and statistics, 92(4), 945-64. fairris, d. and m. reich. (2005). the impacts of living wage policies. industrial relations, 44(1), 1-13. forget, e. (2011). the town with no poverty: the health effects of a canadian guaranteed annual income field experiment. canadian public policy, 37(3), 283-305. freeman, b. (2015, september 5). the new urban agenda. public lecture, westdale united church, hamilton. galley, a. (2015). the prosperous province: strategies for building community wealth: community benefits agreements. toronto: mowat centre and atkinson foundation. gellatly, m. (2015). still working on the edge: building decent jobs from the ground up. toronto: workers action centre. goar, c. (2011, january 11). anti-poverty success airbrushed out. the toronto star, http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2011/01/11/goar_ant ipoverty_success_airbrushed_out.html government of ontario. (2012). the gender wage gap pay equity commission. www.payequity.gov.on.ca/en/about/pubs/genderwage/wagegap.php greenhouse, s. (2015, august). how to get low-wage workers into the middle class. the atlantic, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/fifteen-dollarsminimum-wage/ greenhouse, s. (2009). the big squeeze. new york: anchor books. hamilton and district labour council. (2015). make the city of hamilton a living wage employer by the end of 2015. www.change.org/p/hamilton-city-council-make-the-city-of-hamiltona-living-wage-employer-by -the-end-of-2015 246 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages law commission of ontario. (2012). vulnerable workers and precarious work: final report law commission of ontario. www.lcocdo.org/en/vulnerable-workers-final-report-section lewchuk, w., et al. (2015). the precarity penalty: the impact of precarious employment on individuals, households, and communities – and what to do about it. poverty and employment precarity in southern ontario. hamilton: united way-mcmaster university. mcdonough, l., et al. (2015). the opportunity equation: building opportunity in the face of growing income inequality. toronto: united way of greater toronto. morissette, r., g. picot and y. lu. (2012). evolution of canadian wages ovdr the last three decades. ottawa: statistics canada. raphael, d. (2009). poverty, human development and health in canada. canadian journal of nursing research, 41(2), 7-18. reich, m., p. hall and k. jacobs. (2005).living wage policies at the san francisco airport. industrial relations, 44(1), 106-38. silver, j. (2014). about canada: poverty. halifax: fernwood publishing. tal, b. (2015, march 5). employment quality: trending down. cibc canadian employment quality index. toronto: cibc world markets. tiessen, k. (2014). seismic shift: ontario`s changing labour market. toronto: canadian centre for policy alternatives. td economics. (2015). precarious work in canada www.td.com/document/pdf/economics/special/precariousemployment vosko, l., et al. (2014, may 29). who’s covered by ontario’s employment standards act? assessing the relationships between workers’ characteristics and levels of protection. paper presented at the canadian association for work and labour studies, www.zotero.org/groups/crimt_conference_2014/items/itemkey/n8s6 ctfg restitching reality: how tncs evade accountability for industrial disasters susan dodd york university the first section of this paper tells the story of how union carbide protected itselfin a hostile social environment by exerting profound influence over the construction ofpublic memory ofthe 1 984 bhopal gas leak disaster, its causes and its impact. 1 from this story, we can draw on the body of academic work generated around this paradigmatic industrial disaster 2 to identify the costly story-controlling tactics used by tncs and their agents to construct public memory with the strategic intent ofprotecting the corporate person from social accountability for wrongdoing. having drawn the characteristics of what i will call "tnc accountability evasion" around the paradigm of "union carbide in bhopal" i can begin to analyze other tnc misdeeds and accountability evasion. in section two, i apply this paradigm to a canadian industrial disaster, the sinking ofthe oil rig ocean ranger off newfoundland in 1982, ofwhich there is remarkably little academic analysis. with reference to the paradigm of "union carbide in bhopal," we can organize the information that we do have about the behaviour of responsible tncs in the aftermath ofthe ocean ranger disaster, and thus we can begin to retrieve post-disaster information-control dynamics as they occurred here, in our "industrialized" or "developed" society. finally, with the contrasts between information control in developed nations and developingnations laid out before us, we can begin to evaluate existing liberal-democratic tools for curtailing anti-social behaviour by tncs. focusing on the aftermath of industrial disaster provides a unique opportunity to highlight the suffering knowingly perpetrated by transnational corporations (tncs), as well as to emphasize the vulnerability of public memory to strategically constructed versions of "reality." the tragic impact of industrial disaster—particularly the deaths and sudden injuries—propels alternate routes, volume 12, 1995 © alternate routes, volumel 2, 1995 us through legal, economic and discursive knots in search oftnc perpetrators, in hope of attaching lines of accountability to them. the suddenness and painfulness of industrial disaster tears the fabric of dominant "reality": communities previously living unreflectively with local tnc "development" are confronted with the bottom line of tnc self-interest. in the disaster's aftermath we will see that the tnc draws on all available social resources to stitch this dominant "reality" back together, thus to hide the suffering victim. whereas the "malnourished body of the third world" symbolizes the problem of identifying perpetrators in complex postmodern power systems (escobar, 1 984), the obvious violence of industrial disaster, and demonstrable stitch-up of dominant "reality" after the disaster, represent persisting opportunities for drawing lines of accountability to responsible agents. 1. union carbide in bhopal the story of the bhopal disaster exists in many forms—as many as there are survivors and other interested agencies to tell it. the following is a generally agreed upon account. on the night of december 2-3, 1984 the union carbide india ltd £t% (ucil) plant in bhopal leaked undetermined quantities ofmethyl isocyanate (mic), a chemical component ofthe pesticide seven, along with other, still unidentified gases. the poisonous gases spread over densely populated bhopal: "over 200,000 local people were exposed to the toxic fumes, some 60,000 were seriously affected, more than 20,000 were permanently injured, and as many as 1 0,000 people may have died asa direct result ofthe tragedy" (pearce and tombs, 1993: 192). in addition were unmeasured destruction of crops and livestock, and long-term pollution (dembo et al., 1990: 86). the impact was apocalyptic in bhopal. as the mayor of bhopal stated: "1 can say that i have seen chemical warfare. everything so quiet. goats, cats, wholefamilies—father, mother, children—all lying silent and still. and every structure totally intact," (in varma, 1986: 134). families were fragmented in panic, bodies were buried on bodies, plants and animals died but did not decompose for days as even the micro-organisms ofdecay had been wiped out (varma, 1986: 134). the "initial trauma ofthe catastrophe" was "cosmically frightening" and seemed to many to be "the end ofthe world," (visvanathan, 1986: 148). as for union carbide, then ceo of union carbide corp of america, warren anderson, flew to bhopal and released a carbide statement accepting dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies "moral responsibility," indicating that "restitution would be provided," (behraman, 1 988: 278). two years later, "(a)t the end of 1 986, two. . . socialaction groups applied to the bhopal district court to order union carbide corporation to pay interim compensation to provide for at least the minimal survival needs ofthe victims. the company responded by denying that it had any legal or moral responsibility for the victims' welfare ..." (cassels, 1993: 197). in 1989, five years after accepting moral responsibility, union carbide would settle with the indian government who, acting on behalf ofthe mass of plaintiffs, accepted a settlement of us$ 470 million. cassels says : awards to the families of the deceased victims might produce, after inflation, annual amounts of about $900 for twenty years, with nothing left at the end of that period. awards to those who were permanently disabled might generate about $350 per year. these amounts can hardly be called 'generous'... indeed, the income awards to individuals would likely fall short of total average per-capita income in india, and scarcely exceeds nationwide individual consumption. (cassels, 1993: 230) the settlements are further reduced with the understanding that in india "one wage earner may be responsible for supporting two or three generaqp tions," (tyagi and rosencranz, 1988: 1 109). this settlement was a far cry from the three billion dollar suit the uoi had filed initially in the us, (jaising and sathyamala, 1992: 108). the number of affected victims on which this settlement was based was not supported by any systematic assessment ofthe situation in bhopal. though there were 600,000 filed compensation claims, and indications that as many as 300,000 to 400,000 victims are "suffering from serious medically diagnosable injury today" (jaising and sathyamala, 1992: 1 10), union carbide and uoi settled on the basis of 30,000 injured permanently, and 20,000 injuredtemporarily (jaising and sathyamala, 1992: 109). on top of all this, appeals and distributional complications have plagued the actual delivery of the settlement to union carbide's victims (jasanoff, 1994). the story-control efforts which paved the way for this settlement demonstrate the terrible extent to which tncs' agents are willing to go to protect the corporate person. these efforts are far too complex to be exhaustively represented here; however, the following is a list of staking story-control tactics used by union carbide to evade social accountability for the bhopal disaster. alternate routes, volumel 2, 1995 strategy first union carbide acted strategically from the outset. while surviving victims struggled with physical survival in the chaos of bhopal, union carbide—as aself-interested agent in a hostile environment—marshalled all the forces of transnational privilege: it hired doctors, (jaising and sathyamala, 1992: 105), it hired a team of experienced tort defence lawyers, (cassels, 1993: 1 24), it hired "independent" consultants to "study" the technical and operational failures leading to the gas leak (pearce and tombs, 1 993 : 1 94), and it hired public relations consultants and placed a gag order on all employees (cassels, 1993: 113). union carbide was instantly aware ofthe need to construct, or at least profoundly problematize public memory, particularly where this memory is refracted through expertise: medical, engineering and legal. making sense out ofchaos: the manipulation ofdocumentary evidence by "company" experts while aspects ofunion carbide's tactics seem too fantasticto be strategically useful, they effectively undid confidence in the factual validity of existing f£p documentation, even where they could not plausibly replace it with a carbideprotecting version. medically, the magnitude of bhopal' s suffering before and after the gas leak made documentation extremely difficult. however, union carbide's agents compounded this, refusing to release "trade secrets" about the exact composition ofthe leaked gases (jaising and sathyamala, 1992: 107). union carbide later used the documentary chaos around the medical facts to its legal advantage: throughout the settlement process, union carbide argued that "it was in no position to defend itself against legal claims until it was "aware ofthe number of victims and the extent of their injuries," (cassels, 1993: 189). from the first, union carbide manipulated information about the leaked chemicals, meaning victims did not receive potentially life-saving treatment. throughout the early days of the disaster, "the chief medical officer of union carbide india ltd kept telling enquiring doctors, even as patients were dying by the hundreds, that [mic] was merely an irritant like tear gas, never fatal," (varma, 1986: 1 35; cf jaising and sathyamala, 1992). hence, whereas "clinical information" immediately indicated that mic affected both the respiratory tract and the central nervous system, union dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies carbide's agents—including doctors—withheld and distorted information about the nature ofmic and other leaked chemicals in order to protect union carbide from looming litigation. an anti-cyanide treatment widely found to be effective in clinical use and sanctioned by a famous german toxicologist (who had been flown in by the indian government) was pronounced ineffective by union carbide's medical professionals and the indian council of medical research (icmr). the indian government facilitated union carbide's information hegemony by suppressing the cumulative findings of doctors treating victims in bhopal (varma, 1986: 135). consequently, the anti-cyanide treatment was banned. the success of 'hypo' injections confirmed the presence of cyanide, a fact that embarrassed union carbide officials and some government doctors, 'hi an unusual step, the director of health services issued an official letter banning the use of sodium thiosulphate.' the order was withdrawn only after the evidence became overwhelming. but many lives had been lost during the period ofthe ban from 1 1 december to 3 february. even now...the availability of injections has been restricted to a trickle. (visvanathan, 1986: 151) ffy it is now widely accepted that cyanide can in fact "accumulate in the bloodstream as an indirect result ofmic exposure," (rosencranz et al . , 1 994 : 49). morehouse and subramaniam (1986: 41) argue further that union carbide was well aware ofthe toxic nature of mic, as it had commissioned "confidential "research about the nature ofthe gas as early as 1 963 . the full and long-term effects ofmic remain "undetermined" (lepkowski, 1994: 22). union carbide's marshalling of medical expertise was quick, and evidently motivated by strategic accountability evasion: carbide sought to establish its definition of the problem through limited administrative action and through legitimation. the limited administration included carbide's decision on december 3 to fly in their physician, along with medicines, oxygen, respirators, and 120,000 rupees ($10,000), while providing treatment for 6,000 victims at the company dispensary. the legitimation of company policy appeared as a scientific report, prepared by a carbide "investigation team" and released to the public in march 1985, on the "bhopal methyl isocyanate incident." even the name alternate routes, volume12. 1995 of the report symbolically downplayed the significance, the damage, and thehuman sufferingthat had occurred. thecompany also hired "leading medical authorities here in the united states, not otherwise associated with union carbide," to evaluate the health condition of the victims. by early january, the company's chairman of the board, warren m. anderson, was proclaiming that "those injured by methyl isocyanate are rapidly recovering and display little lasting effects." reports on the scene in bhopal indicated otherwise. (reich, 1994: 186) in the crucial days when people were dying by the thousands, union carbide contributed to confusion about thegases, hence about treatment. part of union carbide's initial reaction to the disaster in bhopal was to ensure that it had its own medical documents, and its own medical expertise to interpret them on the technical front, union carbide's "independent consultants" effectively problematized the logs at the bhopal plant, suggesting that they had been fixed to hide the performance failure ofemployees, (cassels, 1 993 : 1 1 ). despite the fact that "most ofthe world's safety engineering community £h doubts the veracity of carbide's sabotage evidence," (lepkowski, 1994: 35) these experts provided "evidence" in support of union carbide's remarkable series of sabotage theories. scapegoating ofthe myriad accountability evasion techniques used by union carbide and their agents, the evolving set of "sabotage theories" circulated by union carbide is one ofthe most demonstrative oftnc attempts to construct public memory of events: first, it had been claimed that the disaster itselfwas the result of the actions of careless or malicious employees who had placed a water line where a nitrogen line should have been used. the new york times pointed out that neither an accidental nor a deliberate incorrect couplingwerepossible... that samedaywarren anderson withdrew the contention on admitting at congressional hearings that he had no evidence of sabotage then, between 3 1 july 1985 and 3 january 1 986, ucc claimed that a group of sikh extremists called the black june movement were responsible. but no such group was ever identified in any context other than allegedly dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies putting up posters about union carbide... not surprisingly, this was also quietly abandoned. in august 1986 a specific but unnamed employee was blamed... (pearce and tombs, 1993: 194) these sabotage theories were raised by union carbide's lawyers throughout litigation (cassels, 1993). alternately, union carbide would claim that the nonsabotage, organizational/safety failure cause of the gas leak suggested in studies by the indian council of science and industrial research was "developed by reporters in search of a 'scoop,' by government officials seeking to blame union carbide, and by employees seeking to escape responsibility for their part in the disaster" (cassels, 1993: 9). union carbide's 1984 annual report contends that "india's cultural backwardness was responsible for the poor maintenance and management, poor planning procedures and the inadequate enforcement of safety regulations," and that "there was a national proclivity to engage in sabotage, political or personal, and this demonstrated national immaturity/' (paraphrased in pearce and tombs, 1993: 193). we can only speculate as to how conscious union carbide's public relations specialists were as they tapped £f% into anti-indian prejudice, and how useful this prejudice was in re-stitching the collective conscience of shareholders and potential investors. the sabotage theories are transparent scapegoating, intended to turn attention away from union carbide's slack safety management in the bhopal plant. further, the broader scapegoating of india/indians was likely intended to divert attention from the fact that safety management technology in the bhopal plant was demonstrably inferior to that of a similar plant located in institute, west virginia, usa (pearce and tombs, 1993: 196). the scapegoating strategy was successful at least with american "carbiders" — long-time employees in towns built on union carbide work —"when reminded of the bhopal disaster, a carbider always replies that the cause was sabotage at a plant operated by third world foreigners" (lepkowski, 1 994: 25). it is plausible that union carbide hoped to deflect the anger of victims, dependents and an empathetic public around the world from the corporate person, known as "killer carbide" onto some nebulous scapegoat as for the alleged saboteur, he has "often publicly argued against the allegations" (lepkowski, 1994: 35). when finally named publicly, union carbide's alternate routes, volume12, 1995 sabotage suspect "continued to live peacefully among his alleged victims" (cassels, 1993: 11). legal maneuvers the story-controlling tactics discussed so far contributed to union carbide's evasion of accountability through legal routes. legal accountability evasion was helped by the fact that whereas both the survivors themselves and the government of india as their representatives had physical human bodies to sustain, the tnc was concerned only with protecting itself as a legal/ financial entity. the survivors of the gas leak emerged, after the apparent "end of the world," to find themselves immersed in the fray of international law. "the first legal response came from american lawyers who flew down to bhopal and obtained thumb impressions from the victims, authorizing the lawyers to file suits on the victims' behalf in the us. some of these attempts were so crude that there were reports of authorizations being available at a price" (jaising and sathyamala, 1992: 105). more than international ambulance chasers (though the term certainly applies), these lawyers represented the possibility of access to american tort law where plaintiffs stood the chance ofwinning exponentially larger settlements than they might under indian tort law (cassels, 1993: 126). ultimately, the clumsy individual suits were consolidated, and union of india (uoi) passed the bhopal gas leak disaster (processing of claims) act 1985, controversially appropriating the role of legal agent for the mass of plaintiffs (cassels 1993: 1 19). two story-control techniques formed the core of union carbide's complex legal strategy. the first story-controlling technique was a denial of liability of the parent company, union carbide corporation of america (union carbide, or ucc), for the torts of its subsidiary, union carbide of india limited (ucil). the second story-controlling tactic was the claim that indian courts were denying ucc due process. as for ucc's responsibility for ucil and hence for the bhopal plant, tyagi and rosencranz list the following points that indicate "link and control" of ucil by ucc: ucc "consistently exercised critical control over the establishment, structure, policy-formulation and decision-making process;" "all decisions relating to ucil business activities have always been controlled by the ucc;" ucc selected and trained personnel, and retained a 50 9% majority of ucil stock; warren anderson virtually said that ucc oodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies "was in some measure responsible for its subsidiary's gas leak;" and ucc had "offered publicly $350 million to settle with bhopal victims in 1986" (tyagi and rosencranz, 1988: 1 108). despite all this, union carbide was able to problematize the issue of its responsibility for ucil 3 if ucc had managed to prove non-responsibility for ucil conclusively, that could have limited the potential tort recovery by victims to the $50 million in assets held by ucil. fortunately for union carbide, a plea by the victims/uoi to be heard in american courts was rejected: simply stated, what was being argued by ucc was that the us was an inconvenient forum in which to decide the suit, the inference beingthat it should betried in india since all the evidence and witnesses were located there. the hidden agenda was, quite clearly, ucc's wish to avoid paying the levels of compensation ordinarily awarded by us courts in tort litigation; secure in their assumption that life in india was cheap they were confident that an indian court would make much lower awards. (jaising and sathyamala, 1992: 106) the court's decision offorum non com'eniens draws on quite conservative qp liberal conceptions of'us . interest: ' "[judge keenan's] denial that therewas a u.s. interest in the case seems blind to the power that u.s. companies exercise in the developing world; and his reluctance to hear the case in the united states, becausethat would be a form of 'imperialism, ' ignores the fact that it was the government of india itself urging him to accept jurisdiction" (cassels, 1993: 135). it is important to note that part of judge keenan's explanation for this ruling was that american courts needed to be protected, "because ofthe renowned liberality of u.s. remedies, 'the american courts, which are already extremely attractive to foreign plaintiffs, would become even more attractive. the flow of litigation into the united states would increase and further congest already crowded courts'" (in cassels, 1993: 131). ironically, after effectively blocking victims' access to us courts and thus forcing the case into indian courts, union carbide would consistently campaign "to discredit the indian legal system," claiming that it was being denied "due process" throughout the attempts of indian courts to respond to the unusual demands of the case—like the provision of interim relief to the victims in bhopal (cassels, 1993: 187). g alternate routes, volume12, 1995 restructuring will lepkowski descnbes union carbide as a "shamed but staunch" corporation (lepkowski, 1994: 24). though union carbide is now less than a sixth the size it was before bhopal (lepkowski, 1994: 25), it is far from clear that this shrinkage is the result ofany punitive action, much less that it reflects a market disinclination to reward unethical corporate behaviour. admittedly, union carbide stock dropped dramatically from $60 to $30 per share in 1 984 (lepkowski, 1 994: 28). however, the causes of this drop are unclear. union carbide resisted a hostile takeover attempt, divesting itselfofsome ofits most profitable businesses (lepkowski, 1994: 29). as one analyst notes: "thecost of compensating the victims of bhopal pales compared with the debts incurred in fighting the takeover, the legal and banking fees and golden parachutes" (inlepkowski, 1994: 29). yet another analyst says: "clearly, by any objective measure ... ucc and its managers benefitted from the bhopal incident, as did ucil. they were politically able to close a burdensome plant, take aggressive actions to restructure both companies, and enhance management benefits... it is ironic that a disaster such as bhopal [would] leave its victims devastated and other corporate stakeholders better off' (in lepkowski , 1994: 30). finally, ward morehouse comments: "it is naive to think that carbide's ... stock buy-back and divestment maneuvers were motivated solely by its defense against the takeover. just by coincidence, these steps also placed a significant proportion of carbide's assets beyond the reach of victims of that disaster, and effectively immunized the company against a consumer boycott" (in lepkowski, 1 994: 30). ultimately, an indian court had to order union carbide to maintain $3 billion in assets, "a sum equal to the size ofthe indian government's damage claim against carbide," (lepkowski, 1994: 30) when the "settlement" of us$ 470 million was announced, "the price of [union carbide's] shares on the new york stock market rose by $2" (cassels, 1993: 224). manipulation ofstate governments the goal of alleviating poverty by attracting tnc-provided development leads state governments into the heart of risk society's contradictions. as pearce and tombs note: "it is questionable whether it was possible for ucil both to make pesticides safely nnd to sell these pesticides at a profit in the event that they could not do so, either the company could have engaged in safe uneconomic' production, or it could have produced less safely but more dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies economically," (pearce and tombs, 1993: 200). had the indian government forced union carbide to comply with reasonable standards of safety, they would have faced the 'threat of capital flight.' furthermore, state governments often lack the technological know-how to enable them to monitor the production hazards oftncs (cassels, 1 993 : 30), and where the state is a part owner in an enterprise, as the indian government was with ucil, the government is in the contradictory position of regulating itself (cassels, 1993: 38). in the aftermath of bhopal, union carbide would strategically refer to india's regulations requiring a certain percentage of indian-held shares, and india's incentives to produce fertilizers and pesticides for the so-called "green revolution" as having forced ucil to produce dangerous chemicals in bhopal (pearce and tombs, 1993: 200-201; cassels, 1993: 34). union carbide in bhopal: the myth ofthe chastened corporate person the words "union carbide in bhopal" conjure up quite different meanings for different readers. a canadian pro-business ethics article, which makes no other reference to either union carbide or the bhopal gas leak, begins: ^^ "cynics who stubbornly hold that ethics don't effect the bottom line would do well to consider these four words: union carbide in bhopal" (mccallum, 1994: 21). mccallum is confident that "union carbide in bhopal" resonates with the dire financial consequences awaiting unethical businesses. with these four words we are assured that unethical business is unviable business . on the other hand, jaising and sathyamala write, "it is almost as ifthey have succeeded in erasing the event from human memory and public consciousness" (jaising and sathyamala, 1992: 103). these versions ofpublic memory of "union carbide in bhopal" contradict each other yet co-exist quite easily: "union carbide in bhopal" resonates with the false assurance that tnc irresponsibility is punished, wrongs are righted, and tncs are chastened into more ethical behaviour by the economic consequences of disaster such false assurance depends on our collective forgetfulness of human suffering and tnc accountability evasion. against this collective forgetfulness, and as a direct result of story control efforts by union carbide, a counter-discourse arose from medical non-governmental organizations (ngos) as they raced, with incomplete knowledge, to treat the dying and injured. ngos like the morcha and the medico-friends circle (mfc) stood o alternate routes, volume12, 1995 "between the muteness of the victim and the propaganda of the state" (visvanathan, 1986: 155). medical ngos focused on meeting the medical needs ofvictims as the full impact ofmic on human beings became apparent. given the story control efforts of union carbide in tandem with the indian government, medicine-focused ngos were forced into political activism. whereas the mfc sought to reconcile victim experience with formal medical science, the morcha mixed medicine and politics, becoming increasingly militant, and ultimately providing up to 220 ofthe controversial anti-cyanide injections a day. "ifmfc represented the power of voluntarism as 'counterexpertise,' the morcha added to it the dimension of political protest" (visvanathan, 1986: 158). on june 24, 1984, the government brutally "raided" a morcha rally, beating many activists. with many medical professionals frightened offby the violence and a subsequent raid on a clinic that had been set up on union carbide property, "voluntary work, especially relief in bhopal, [was] literally at a standstill" (visvanathan, 1986: 160). visvanathan is scathing in her condemnation of responses by trade unions and opposition political parties. she holds that all such groups showed themselves to be "caught in the grid of modernity, which sees industrialism as good and inevitable," and consequently "saw the victim as an embarrassment" (visvanathan, 1986: 163). besides initial disorientation by apocalypse, victims were poor and many experienced a "sense of psychological squalor" (visvanathan, 1986: 151). thus, the consolidation of local voices following the bhopal disaster depended on ngo facilitators. visvanathan argues: the voluntary organizations had to substitute for [unions and opposition political parties]. voluntarism in this context has a double responsibility. it has to redeem, not only the traditional idiom of power, but also the repressive nature of modern knowledge. as mediator between the state and its people, it is not only the refractor of power, but the proponent of an alternative ecology ofknow/edge. in bhopal it was not only the victims—as politically defeated people-that they had to protect but also their voice, their memory, their right to then own vernacular of pain and distress. (visvanathan, 1 c>86: 163—my emphasis) dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies facilitators, and medical professionals in particular, worked to protect the "alternative ecology of knowledge" formed at the site of tnc ir/ responsibility—the bodies of the victims—from being stitched out of sight during dominant "reality's" rehabilitation. to believe that "union carbide in bhopal" represents an agency profoundly chastened byfinancial retribution for wrongdoing is to wilfully ignore the possibility that union carbide benefited financially from the disaster, or at most, suffered a negligible loss. (union carbide continues to rank as one of fortune's 500 american corporations). what is more, to believe that any financial retribution could settle the account represented by "union carbide in bhopal" is to forget the human suffering inflicted in bhopal—suffering that was perpetrated by union carbide's management failures and/or waning interest—suffering that was intensified and prolonged by union carbide 's active efforts to evade social accountability. tnc accountability evasion as i have indicated, industrial disasters tear dominant "reality," openinga rift in public complacency about a tnc 's relationship with society. with the first indication oflarge scale death by industry, the stitch-up ofdominant "reality" gfa begins. survivors, dependents of victims, political officials all assume the priority of their version of events. this assumption strengthens an established, pre-disaster power imbalance by weakening the positions of victims and their representatives while strengthening the tncs. ' "union carbide in bhopal" demonstrates the following tactics available to tncs in their attempt to evade accountability in the aftermath of an industrial disaster: 1) immediate strategic response: the tnc begins story-controlling tactics immediately, at a time when victims are still focused on surviving — whether physically or emotionally. as a self-interested agent, the tnc is immediately conscious that it needs to manipulate the construction of public memory of the event to protect itself from financial impact. survivors take time, on the other hand, before they can see the lives/deaths of their family members in financial terms; they must also learn to see the tnc, with whom they have co-habitated peacefully up until the disaster, as a self-interested opponent in the adversarial legal "settlement" process. 2) problematize documentary evidence: the tnc hires sources of alternative expert "knowledge" to construct documentary versions of the disaster and its consequences that can either replace or at least profoundly alternate routes, volume 1 2, 1995 challenge the documents put together by government or advocacy agencies. the focus of such tncsponsored documentary expertise is technological areas, that is, areas which defy common sense: medicine, engineering, financing, and statistical analysis. 3) scapegoat: the tnc blames in conformity with prevailing social prejudices, in an attempt to shift the focus of blame off itself and its agents. 4) legal maneuvers: the first three accountability evasion activities contribute to the tnc's capability to evade accountability in legal form. "union carbide in bhopal" is clear evidence that existing structures present un-met promises, rather than clear routes to compensation, punitive measures, and improved safety. 5) manipulate state governments: perhaps the trump card of transnational accountability evasion, tncs can threaten to leave, taking jobs and economic, technological, and broader social benefits with them. this "threat of capital flight" places state governments in a terrible bind, even in the attempt to develop reasonable safety regulations (and then enforce them) in the wake of the disaster. further, tncs can blame state governments for investment and/or development restrictions that stipulate levels of domestic involvement in industrial production/ownership. also, the technological complexity of tnc operations can conspire with joint ownerships—tnc with state government—to leave the government not only regulating a technological process that it lacks the cutting-edge expertise to understand, but also one in which it is a financial partner. 6) restructure. the tnc immediately shuffles its resources to ensure it is protected from traditional punitive measures: it can sell off profitable businesses, and also sell subsidiaries which make consumer products so that brand-identified boycotts become impossible. without brand-identification, it's impossible to know where a particular tnc's product is integrated into the consumer products of other corporations. also, they can ensure that any risky activities of enterprise are segregated in smaller corporations which may be protected by the coiporate veil—thus shielding assets from claims in future accidents (hansmann, 1991). 7) replace local experience with transnational myth: tncs can take advantage of the tendency of public attention to turn from events like industrial disasterwithout foilowing through to compensation or punishment of culprits three major objectives of victims and dependents arise in the aftermath of disaster: to recover lost income (ie. to replace those material dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies resources destroyed by the disaster), to minimize ongoing/future risk by improving safety practices, and to achieve palpable punitive measures against tncs. these are either defeated or drastically curtailed by tnc accountability evasion. for a time, however, local memory resists the stitchup of dominant "reality," as grassroots movements form to articulate the victims' needs and demands. these alternative discourses attempt to legitimize the victims' version, and thus to challenge tnc hegemony; they only gain comprehensive voice once international haggling over the price of local bodies is well under way. even though grassroots demands are defeated or profoundly curtailed by the tnc and state governments, the stitching of dominant "reality" remains visible—some local memories of tncs as unpunished culprits linger. warren anderson accepted moral responsibility in the glare of the international media, then subsequently sanctioned the use of every tactic mentioned above to limit the financial impact on the corporate person, union carbide. there are still calls in bhopal for anderson to be prosecuted on criminal charges. 2. tnc accountability evasion in canada: the sinking of the ocean ranger there is an extensive body of literature analysing the social and organizational contradictions which led to the bhopal gas leak, and these have been drawn together by paul shrivastava to define the "anatomy" of industrial disasters or "crises" (shrivastava, 1987; 1992; 1994a:b). this "anatomy" of industrial disaster is now widely used to analyze other situations where industrial disasters cause major damage to human life and social/natural environments. now, however, i want to extend the paradigm to cover what we have been calling the "accountability evasion" of responsible tncs. for our purposes, this model of tnc accountability evasion provides a framework for organizingthe fragmented, anecdotal information we have about the aftermath of a canadian industrial disaster—the sinking ofthe oil rig ocean ranger. referring to the tactics oftnc accountability evasion identified in section l,wecan: framethe information that has already been collected about the aftermath of the ocean ranger disaster, we can identify areas where information may be submerged in the privacy ofthe out-of-court settlements and/or not yet collected, and we can begin to isolate tactics used by union carbide in bhopal that were not used in the ocean ranger aftermath with a © alternate routes, volume12, 1995 view to understanding tnc behaviour as a strategic, essentially defensive reaction to environments. st. john 's newfoundland, the sinking ofthe ocean ranger on february 15, 1982, the oil rig ocean ranger sank off newfoundland in a winter storm. all 84 workers died. of the 69 canadians killed, 56 were newfoundland residents. the crew abandoned the rig and died either while launching the lifeboats or when the lifeboats sank or capsized (royal commission on the ocean ranger marine disaster, 1984: 122). autopsies on the 22 recovered bodies revealed that all these men had drowned while in a hypothermic state. the rig itself is believed to have capsized and sunk roughly two hours after it was abandoned. a us coast guard report, a us national transportation safety board report, and the canadian joint federal-provincial royal commission on the ocean ranger marine disaster (royal commission, 1984) all indicate that responsibility rests with ocean drilling and exploration corporation (odeco)—a subsidiary of murphy oil coiporation—and with mobil oil of canada ltd (mocan). at the time ofthe ocean ranger's sinking, "odeco was responsible for the rig and the crewandmobil was responsible for the well" (royal commission, 1984: vii). however, as the royal commission established, mobil's senior drilling personnel had effective authority over odeco's marine "master"—the ocean ranger was seen by both tncs and federal and provincial governments as a drilling platform first and foremost (royal commission, 1984: 37). odeco/mocan responsibility derives from their failure to train crew members in basic systems operations; the absence of a chain of command defining marine decision-makers from drilling decision-makers; and the absence/disrepair/worker-ignorance of available safety technologies (campbell and dodd, 1993; o'neill, 1984; royal commission, 1984). on the evening of february 1 4, an unusually high wave struck the "leg" ofthe rig which housed the ballast control room. a glass portlight broke and seawater doused the electronic panel which controlled the rig's stability. no one on the rig understood the ballast system well enough to appreciate the gravity ofthe problem the ballast control operators' attempts to control the system manually—without either adequatetraming or an operations manual — led to the sinking (royal commission, 1984: 90-99) ' little academic analysis has been done of either the organizational failures that led to the ocean ranger disaster, or its social impact. brian dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies o'neill drives home the inaction of canadian politicians at both federal and provincial levels, and more distressing, the capability of politicians to distance themselves from the fact there were no canadian safety regulations specific to offshore drilling operations prior to the ocean ranger's sinking. furthermore, the american coast guard regulations that did exist were not enforced (o'neill, 1984; cf royal commission, 1984: 48). douglas house (1985) presents a comprehensive account of the difficulties facing labour organizers attemptingto break into the offshore workforce, andtheprovincial and federal governments' failure to act soon enough to avert disaster with adequate regulation and enforcement. house also facilitated the collection of accounts ofthe mourning and coping experiences of ocean ranger families, (house 1987). ray hawco outlines the coordinated efforts to assist families through mourning, the terrible pressures on corporate employees responsible for informing families and identifying bodies, and he argues for the need for on-shore response plans to industrial disaster (hawco, 1992). and, in the precursor to this article, mary campbell and i raise the question of the contradictory promises and outcomes of the so-called "settlement" process that ocean ranger families went through with mocan-odeco (campbell and dodd, 1993; dodd, 1993). however, there remains a disturbing lack ofanalysis oftnc behaviour in the aftermath of this disaster, and there is almost no public discussion of the fact that neither mobil nor odeco suffered punitive action for the negligence which cost 84 lives. all families of these 84 men settled out-ofcourt. although the settlements are private, sources indicate that most families settled for around $45,000 for single men with no dependents, and between $300,000 and up to $1 million for married men with children. in total, thegroup offamilies known as the ocean ranger claimants committee settled with mobil oil and odeco for about $20 million (o'neill, 1985). o'neill speculated in 1986: "odeco may have to pay out as much as $100 million or more in legal suits and fees, a figure approximating the cost of a new drilling rig (the ocean ranger ... was insured). mobil's legal expenses will likely be much smaller." furthermore, it is unclear how much odeco recovered (ifanything) from suits it launched against other corporations—the lifeboat manufacturers, and the insurance company for the catering company on the ocean ranger (oil week, april 4 1983: 6). alternate routes, volume 1 2, 1995 strategy first the aftermath for ocean ranger families began with their notification that the rig was in trouble and the men had gone to the lifeboats. because many of the men were employed by companies who subcontracted to mobil, the initial contact varied greatly. in some cases, company notification of events came after media broadcasts ofthe same information. margaret blackmore, whose husband was a medic/radio officer on the ocean ranger, says: "...i called odeco. theytoldme: 'wedon'tknowwhat'sgoingonoutthere,but we'll let you know. ' thatwas the last i heard until i heard—on canada am — that the rig had sunk. the next time odeco contacted me was one day — sometime around the funeral—when two men came out to see me with a cheque" (dodd, 1 992). given that odeco is described by the economist as '"one of the most experienced offshore rig designers and operators in the world,"' (dodd, 1993) it is highly probable that this response was strategic rather than disorganized. shortly after the ocean ranger's mayday call reached st john's we may assume that legal and technical-informational resources were being gathered at odeco's head office in new orleans. problematizing documentary evidence the royal commission report provides some hints as to whereodeco was most interested in the commissioners' public report. various points in the commissioners' account of events are interrupted by interjections—into the text-of an alternative possible course of events by the "counsel for odeco." these tend to be points at which human error and technical failures overlap, particularly in matters concerning the broken portlight, how much water came into the ballast control room when the portlight broke, and what effect the seawater had on the ballast control panel (royal commission, 1984: 61,62,91,95) odeco's counsel asserts that the portlight must have been broken by debris, rather than by sheer water pressure, that the water which entered the ballast control room and covered the control panel did not cause switches to short circuit, and that, ultimately, human error—from the failure to close the cover on the portlight given the bad weather, to the use of the manual ballast control option—was the cause of the ocean ranger's fatal loss of stability however, the royal commission explains: "it is difficult to accept the argument by odeco counsel that the ballast control operator would insert the manual control rods as a precautionary measure ifthe ballast dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies control console was operating normally. the operators on board had never used the rods..." (royal commission, 1984: 96). it would appear that odeco's counsel was trying to deflect attention away from flaws in the rig they had designed and their failure to train their personnel, and toward a failure of "common sense" in their untrained ballast control workers. the royal commission states a clear opinion on the interconnection of technological failure and human error: each event and action which contributed to the loss ofthe ocean ranger was either the result of design deficiencies or was crewinitiated . the disaster could have been avoided by relatively minor modifications to the design ofthe rig and its systems and it should in any event, have been prevented by competent and informed action by those on board. because ofinadequate training and lack ofmanuals and technical information, the crew failed to interrupt the fatal chain ofevents which led to the eventual loss ofthe ocean ranger. it is, nevertheless, the essence of good design to reduce the possibility ofhuman error and ofgood management to ensure that employees receive training adequate to their responsibilities. (royal commission, 1984: 99) 4ft because crew members inaccurately assessed the situation resulting from the seawater's coverage of the ballast control panel, little documentation or formal reporting of its failure was made. hence, "conclusions regarding theeffect ofthe water on the equipment in the ballast control room are drawn from vhf radio conversations overheard [by crewmembers on nearby vessels]," as well as from evidence recovered from the sunken rig (royal commission, 1984: 89). the weakness of the documentary evidence about the technical failures of the ballast system permitted odeco's counsel to interrupt the commissioners' narrativewhich might otherwise have drawn an incontrovertible causal line between design flaws and the loss ofthe rig. once itwas suggested publicly thathuman errorwas responsible for the lost control ofthe ballast system, there was nothing to impede the unreflective attribution of the disaster to the ferocity of february's north atlantic, obscuring odeco's and mobil's failure to provide standard safety equipment and to train its employees in their use. both odeco and mobil had histories of manipulating records/ certifications on the ocean ranger. ballast control procedure was to "fabricate" records about the tension of anchor chains (royal commission, 1984: alternate routes, volume12, 1995 47). at thetimethe rig and crew were lost, odeco still had not met the safety standards stipulated when it received its certificate ofinspection from the us coast guard in 1979 (royal commission, 1984: 2 2). 'furthermore, the crew had resisted reporting—to either mobil onshore authorities or appropriate government authorities—a serious incident on february 6, 1982, involving ballast control when the men had been called to the lifeboat stations (royal commission, 1 984: 5 1 ). this incident clearly indicated that the "master" of the rig did not know how to use the ballast system—not surprising, in that it was his first shift out after having been land-based for the ten years previous (royal commission 1984: 50). mobil's most authoritative worker on the ocean ranger and odeco's shore-based superintendent "had lost confidence" in the master, but did not move to replace him. hence, the royal commission suggests that "the master was only on board in order to comply with us coast guard regulations" (royal commission, 1984: 50). scapegoating if the oil companies anticipated further government subsidized involvement in the newfoundland offshore, then neither mobil oil nor odeco/murphy £?* oil could afford a nasty public battle ofscapegoating. whereas in the bhopal disaster union carbide was unabashed about public litigation, the tncs involved in the ocean ranger case had much more to lose by entering into a public legal case with the widows and parents oftheir victims: mobil oil and murphy oil, the parent company of odeco, are now shareholders in the hibernia oil project off newfoundland (globe andmail, march 26, 1993 p. b6; o'neill 1984,6). thus, we can speculate that tnc will to settle was relatively strong in the ocean ranger case. also useful to mobil and odeco might be the fact that since 1977 newfoundland had a local hiring policy for the offshore (house, 1 985: 1 5). the royal commission report contains an indication that odeco agents attempted to shift blame onto the failure of canadian regulations and the failure to have american marine certifications: odeco's stated operating policy was to ensure that an adequate number of its industrial crew would hold the marine licences required by the us coast guard. in fact only one employee, the ngmechanic, had marine certification . the operations manager of odeco based in st. john's testified that he relied upon the master to ensure that the us coast guard manning requirements were dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies met. he stated that maintaining the required number of marine crew was complicated by the high percentage of canadians on board because canadian marine certification was not accepted by the us coast guard. no evidence was given, however, as to the number of canadians with marine certification. in fact canadian regulations did not require marine training or certificates for crew members employed on rigsoperating offshore. the explanation given by odeco's operations manager, who was responsible for selecting and hiring all new employees, was not persuasive. (royal commission, 1984: 38) the decision to operate the ocean ranger with untrained ballast control operators and without qualified lifeboat operators reflects mobil-odeco's drilling focus which omitted safety concerns relevant to the rig's marine environment. mobile-odeco reference to canadian local preference in ring policyand lack ofcanadian marine regulation is a subleform ofscapegoating intended to compliment the scapegoating of the ballast conrtol operators themselves. legal tactics £$% by february 20, 1 982 the legal ramifications ofthe disaster were becoming public in st john's, as the evening telegram reported: the legal outlook is entangled in the multinational nature of the offshore drilling operations, the fact that the victims were employed by a dozen different companies, uncertainties in us and canadian law, and even the constitutional dispute between ottawa and newfoundland about jurisdiction over the continental shelf where the rig went down. both american "ambulance chasers" and "company" lawyers moved quickly. a lawyer who worked for mobil remembers, "you could pick out the lawyers from new orleans on the streets by what they weren 7 wearing. they had no notion of winter—with summer weight shoes and light top coats" (dodd, 1992). some american law firms sent "point men" to scout potential toit claimants for clients. some families approached by american lawyers were appalled by what they saw as mercenary tactics and engaged local lawyers — settling before any ofthe enquiries had been conducted (campbell and dodd, 1993). most families, however, joined the "ocean ranger claimants' o alternate routes, volume12, 1995 committee," and were represented by st. john's lawyers who consulted american lawyers. most families stayed in canada, accepting settlements roughly double canadian precedents. however, two families, each ofwhom had lost a son, split with the claimants' committee, persuaded by texas lawyer benton musslewhitethat pursuit ofodeco into american jurisdiction might be successful. though they did not ultimately win american jurisdiction, they did settle with odeco in the us, winning some ten times the settlements of comparable cases settled in canada. the story of these settlements contains astonishing parallels to the bhopal litigation—in fact, benton musslewhite would also take part in the bhopal litigation (evening telegram, may 15, 1986). also, of course, were the questions of american parent responsibility for subsidiaries and "american interest" relevant to winningjurisdictionin us courts. as in the bhopal case, the issue of relative dollar values for lives arose as claimants from canadian families sought "compensation" equal to that awarded to american families for their loss (evening telegram, july 14, 1984). because the ocean ranger settlements were all made out-of-court, the negotiations are not immediately accessible. however, discussions with lawyers and plaintiffs indicate that the assignment of negligence seems to have been the least contentious part ofthe ocean ranger settlement process. odeco does not seem to have vigorously opposed the claimants' case that it was negligent because ofthe rig's design. the most difficult legal issues for the settlements were: to what extent would the claimants' case be restricted by the no-fault provisions of newfoundland's workers' compensation scheme; and ifworkers' compensation permitted suits, where should they be heard—in the us, home ofthe responsible parent tncs, or canada, the home of the majority of victims and subsidiary companies? newfoundland's workers' compensation act was amended, giving the board the discretion to permit tort action against an employer even as it providedcompensation to the employee/dependents. in the event of a successful action, the compensation was to be repaid, although the board also had the option to "release its claim" on the money (newfoundland workers compensation act, chapter w-l 1, part iv) these are, i believe, provisions that were made to support ocean ranger families as they waited out their tort action suits against odeco and mobil dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies restructuring this particular accountability evasion technique was not necessary for the tncs' survival after the sinking of the ocean ranger. responsible tncs must have recognized very quickly that the settlements could not be a threat to the integrity of the corporate person, as they might have been for union carbide—and certainly were for ucil. however, odeco seems to have disappeared from the newfoundland oil industry, though its parent company murphy oil remains: murphy oil purchased 6.5% of the shares in the hibemia oil development project that were "shed" by gulf in 1 993 . mobil's share in hibemia increased to 33. 125% (globe and mail, march 26, 1993: b6). manipulation ofstate governments the unemployment situation in newfoundland hardly makes for a receptive audience for critics ofthe few tncs bringingjobs and money to the province. as o'neill notes: "as much as $4 billion (in 1982 dollars) had been spent on east coast offshore exploration by the time of the ocean ranger disaster. roughly 80% ofthis amount—over $3 billion—was provided by canadian taxpayers in the forms of tax allowances and outright grants to the oil industry" (o'neill, 1984: 6). the level of government complicity with the tncs in stitching up dominant "reality" in the wake of the ocean ranger disaster cannot be dealt with here. however, it is worth noting that when pressed by an ndp member to indicate whether criminal action would be taken as a result ofthe ocean ranger disaster, marc lalonde, then minister of energy, mines and resources, responded that "ifthere is critical liability or criminal liability which might be involved, i assume mat this will be the subject of the conclusion by that commission of inquiry" (hansard, commons debates feb 16 1982: 15044). there is no indication mat the royal commission was exploring possible criminal responsibility; rather, the royal commission inquiry appears to have been a forum for providing odeco and mobil with "their day in court" without any punitive possibilities. local experience is overwhelmed by transnational myth against the forgetfulness that facilitates tnc accountability evasion, a group of family members and ngo facilitators, called the ocean ranger foundation, struggled to sustain the alternative ecology of knowledge alternate routes, volume12, 1995 belonging to the families. initially acting as a support group and an information resource, the "foundation" ultimately became a lobby group pushing for the implementation of the recommendations of the royal commission until its provincial -federal funding was cut in 1985. one clear legacy of the ocean ranger disaster is that the canada-newfoundland offshore petroleum board, which is responsible for ensuring industry compliance with canadian regulations, includes an extensive presentation on the causes and regulatory responses to the ocean ranger's sinking in safety presentations conducted regularly with industry workers (cook, 1995). however, despite the efforts ofthe foundation, in some ways the story ofthe ocean ranger has disappeared as effectively as the rig itself. clenewhook — former executive director ofthe ocean ranger foundation—remembers that the press information package that was distributed at the signing and celebration ofthe 1985 hibemia development deal between newfoundland, canada, mobil, and other oil transnationals, contained a history of the offshore oil industry in newfoundland-in which there was absolutely no mention ofthe ocean ranger, or the 84 men whowere lost with it. on the tenth anniversary of the sinking of the ocean ranger, newhook said: "for all intents and purposes the ocean ranger has faded to the back of public and corporate memory" {globe and mail, february 15, 1992). on the other hand, one of the mothers who pursued odeco in attempts to win us jurisdiction says: "when the press calls me on the anniversary to ask how i feel, i say, 'rotten.' i feel rotten ten years after, i'll feel rotten 20 and 30 and 40 years after" (in campbell and dodd, 1993). a widow says of the tncs: "they were negligent, that's clear. but they haven't been hurt, and really, they probably haven't changed. when there's money to be made, nothing matters, not safety, not environment, nothing money is important, i know, but so are other things" (in campbell and dodd, 1993). although accident and fatality rates are higher in the offshore petroleum industry than in other comparable industries, house explains that tncs build on the following myth in response to the question, "what causes a higher accident rate offshore?": the offshore oil industry is portrayed as a romantic battle against the elements, a new and exciting chapter in mankind's struggle for the mastery ofnature. personal risks to life and limb are presented as an integral part of this struggle, as the unfortunate but oodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies necessary price that has to be paid for continued industrial progress. such a view pervades the thinking of governments, the media, the general public, and even offshore workers themselves. it is, however, specious and does not stand up to empirical investigation. (house, 1985: 31-32) the marine nature ofthe ocean ranger disaster saved the tncs much work in stitching dominant reality: coastal provinces like newfoundland have long histories ofmarine death and there is a strong tendency to see death at sea as something to be borne as gracefully as possible—not questioned closely or attributed to negligence. this may explain something of the shift in broader social attitudes toward the widows and parents of ocean ranger victims duringthe "settlement" process. initially, public opinion was fully empathetic with the families. however, as the settlement negotiations and royal commission "dragged on," the women i spoke with became increasingly sensible of broad social perceptions that they were "making money off the backs" of their dead sons/husbands, or that they were chasing after "blood money" (dodd, 1992; cf house, 1987; campbell and dodd, 1993). although they generally agree that the "compensatory" function of their settlement was met—in so far as it served to "replace lost income" (excluding any calculus gfo of pain, suffering or loss of life)—all agree that the punitive promise of tort law was not met. this is true even—perhaps especially—of the two women who pursued odeco into the us. of the small sample of families i spoke with, most felt that there is an exaggerated local perception ofthe size oftheir settlements. when these last two families settled, the headline in the evening telegram was: "going to u.s. courts has paid off for two newfoundland families who sought compensation for sons lost in the loss of the ocean ranger drill rig four years ago..." (evening telegram, may 15 1986). this headline blatantly ignores thepunitive intent ofthe family ' s tort pursuit to the us, and contributes to the broader social conception ofthese families acting out of pecuniary motives. it also misses the relative insignificance of the settlements for the tncs in question (cf dodd, 1993). however real the suffering of odeco employees of newfoundland who lost coworkers and friends, (cfhawco, 1 982) as 'one ofthe most experienced offshore rig designers and operators in the world' odeco had institutional knowledge of all the safety technologies available and in use in the north sea, as well as theprobability of loss of life on a drilling rig. precisely because alternate routes, volumel2. 1995 tncs are essentially legal and financial beings, they can be expected to remember certain costs of industry—mobile and odeco were certainly aware of the financial impact of the loss of lives in the north sea drilling industry and in the gulf of mexico before the ocean ranger loss. 3. limiting tnc accountability evasion: disciplining the corporate person tnc accountability evasion following the ocean ranger disaster was far more subtle than that which followed the bhopal gas leak. in large measure, this can be attributed to the three inquiries by government agencies which institutionalized consistent accounts of the ocean ranger disaster and thus limited the information control opportunities available to the tncs. though some tnc strategies are common to both "developed" and "developing" hemispheres, the economic disadvantage of southern "developing" states vastly increases their susceptibility to victimization through industrial disaster and its aftermath (pearce, 1993; cassels, 1993; shnvastava, 1994b). in a sense, the dramatically different cultural and economic environments in which the bhopal and the ocean ranger disasters occurred make the structural parallels all the more striking. as well, the contrasts in tnc response in these two cases demonstrate the strategic nature oftncs as selfconscious agents adapting to their environments. a tnc is a "corporate person," with its own narrative life-story and its own primary instinct for self-preservation. accountability evasion exercises the flexible, reactive capability oftncs to organize information in a strong sense of defining and articulating what is legitimate, to the exclusion ofwhat is not (douglas, 1986: 47). accountability evasion protects the corporate person on two fronts, legal and investor/worker: legally the corporate person needs to control public memory of events to minimize impact on its financial body, and the corporate person needs to control public memory also to protect itself as an institution, hence against loss of investor/worker complacency within the tncs social environment. as our outline of accountability evasion tactics show, tncs stitch dominant "reality" together over the suffering bodies oftheir victims by profoundly influencing social memory. a tnc is able to refer to the "naturalness" of its place within market society, and as an institution a tnc causes its individual constituents to "forget experiences incompatible with its righteous image, and it brings to their mind events which sustain the view of nature that is complimentary to itself. it dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies provides the categoriesoftheirthought, sets theterms for self-knowledge, and fixes identities" (douglas, 1986: 112). the ability ofthe tnc to write its own narrative life-story, and thus to evade accountability for its injuries against other agents and their property poses grave problems for liberal-democratic law. hence, the absence of punitive action taken against union carbide and odeco-mocan is no more an aberration than the disasters are themselves. tnc accountability evasion is structurally permitted within legal systems and broader societal conceptions of risk, injury and blame. these have been conceptions ofmarket society during industrialism, however, as we become conscious of ourselves as a market society cum "risk society" (beck, 1988/92) our paradigms are shifting. one indication ofthis shift is a rethinking ofthe laws of causality — in the scientific, industrial paradigm, strict causality was demanded for both legal and scientific-medical proof(beck, 1988/92: 63; cassels, 1993: 84). in risk society, concepts of causality are mutating; we can no longer expect to find single chains of causality: perpetrators-to-actions-to-events-to-consequences. corresponding to this is a current problematization of agency and responsibility in legal and philosophicaldebates (dan-cohen, 1 992; campbell, 1994; bergson, 1993). in "risk society," we must search through the synergistic interaction of multiple variables, tracing our way back through manifold causality. the continued adherence of legal practice to strict causality leaves us increasingly vulnerable to tncs and in particular, to their strategic interference in the construction of public memory. in current legal debates, this problem is reflected in the re-thinking of basic legal entities: in attempts to draw lines of responsibility and hence accountability around tncs, their middle managers, and executive officers there is a growing awareness that the fundamental liberal-common law distinction between "legal persons" as actors, and property as that which is acted on, cannot cope with the peculiar actor-property-institutional nature of corporations. as the "union carbide in bhopal" and the ocean ranger cases demonstrate, the sheer size and fragmented identity oftncs in subsidiaries obscures responsibility, and makes accountability more difficult. these difficulties nullify neither the possibility nor the political imperative of achieving tnc accountability and consistent compensation programmes.'' paradoxically, while international legal haggling over the price of local bodies ultimately averts attention from victims/dependents as dominant "reality" is rehabilitated in the disaster's aftermath, this same haggling can forcethe limitations—and possibilities—of liberal-democratic law into stark alternate routes, volume12, 1995 relief against tnc accountability evasion. liberal-democratic law has not concerned itself historically with systemic power imbalances, nor with technologically privileged information control . the following debates within legal discussions indicate that liberal-democratic law is beginning to re-think itself, with precisely these issues in mind. recovery oflost income: tort and workers ' compensation canada, india and the us all havecommon law systems. in both bhopal and ocean ranger cases, plaintiffs attempted to pursuetncs back to their "home jurisdiction" in america, the common law system which most emphasizes the "tort," "private," or "civil" law strain of their british legal heritage. "in law, a tort is said to arise when one party, intentionally or unintentionally, engages in an action which violates the rights (those associated with either effective commodities or resources) of another and thereby causes the latter party to sustain losses" (mercuro and ryan, 1 984: 76). in india, as in canada, there remains a strong burden of proof on the plaintiff, to show that the defendant was intentionally negligent, and hence, directly responsible for injury. as well, canadian and indian awards tend to rely on the traditional calculus, which seeks to replace lost income, generally to the exclusion of hedonic or punitive damages. thus, indian and canadian awards represent the projected market value "of the estimated future stream of the deceased's earnings" (bruehler, 1993: 2). in the us, however, there is an increasing likelihood of receiving "hedonic" damages. hedonic value-of-life assessments are seen "as a signal to those making choices about the value ofthe risks attending to each potential choice" (bruehler, 1993: 2). hedonic damages awards then, are calculated according to a re-construction ofthe probabilityassessments of the perceived risk which culminated in the tort. what we see at work here is a shift away from the strict causality required in thetraditional assessment of torts. acceptance of hedonic value-of-life awards indicate an awareness of incremental blame—that a sequence of decisions based on risk calculations can be attributed to both the claimant and the defendant, reconstructed and weighed against one another after the fact. further, american tort law rules more frequently in favour of the plaintiff, and as a function of the frequent use ofjury trials, awards are much higher. hence,as we saw, both the bhopal victims' and the ocean ranger families' litigation were radically altered by the sheer possibility of access to american tort law dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies a flurry of industrial disasters in the 1980s and subsequent explosion of the number and sizes of personal injury awards in the us has resulted in a rethinking oftort in common law systems (american law institute, 1991). more frequently, plaintiffs band together to pursue a "class action" in the aftermath of industrial disaster. the most cited cases are the settlements won by vietnam vets from the producers of agent orange, the ongoing asbestosrelated disease suits, and, ofcourse, the bhopal disaster litigation. such mass tort claims have a number of similarities: "they result in the filing of many suits, they produce high litigation costs; they aregenerally resolved only after great delay; they affect not only litigants but other users of the court system, and their total human and economic costs affect all of society" (rubin, 1 986: 427). the "true" costs of mass litigation following disasters is impossible to calculate particularly in the bhopal disaster, and others like the hawks nest pass disaster, where plaintiffs died waiting for compensation (dembo et al., 1 990). one thingthat is clear, however, is thatjust more than a third ofincome generated bythe settlement process goes to plaintiffs . for instance. "asbestos litigation has resulted in far more expense than in recovery of damages for injured persons. a rand corporation study estimated that injured persons receive less than thirty-seven percent ofthe total amount spent on litigation. almost two-thirds ofthe total expenditures are for attorney's fees and other litigation expenses" (rubin, 1986: 429). both the ocean ranger settlement process and the bhopal litigation conform to 1980s patterns in tort proceedings in america, in so far as: both plaintiff and defense attorneys "organized their efforts" and "exchanged data"—a growing trend in mass litigation (rubin, 1986: 438). as well, the "ambulance chasers" and "company lawyers" seem to be forming a new international legal expertise: "on both sides, specialized counsel are more frequently appearing as trial counsel that once would have been tried by less experienced counsel" (rubin, 1 986: 439). grisly as this line ofwork may be, it can only bode well for victims, at least in providing legal counsel indisputably on a parr with company lawyers bought with transnational dollars. (f. lee bailey—lately of oj simpson trial fame—was one of the lawyers acting for a group ofbhopal victims prior to the indian government's intervention.) also, the importance of strategically chosen expertise is evident: for instance, the union carbide medical team included a prominent doctor who had been a researcher and (unconvincing) witness for the defense inthe johns-manevilleasbestosis litigation (cassels, 1993: 1 13; cfmorehouse and subramaniam, 1986). in both ocean ranger and bhopal cases, the © alternate routes, volume 1 2, 1995 american "interest" in the activity of the us-based parent tnc, controlling their subsidiaries in "other jurisdictions" was insufficient to warrant claimants' access to america's domestically generous, but overburdened tort system. many american states and all canadian provinces have no-fault insurance systems like workers' compensation which conflict with tort actions. where this is the case, two distinct compensation programmes, supported by different underlying purposes and basic conceptions of "compensation" are competing with one another. to summarize the issue: the sources ofthe dissatisfaction with tort remedies can be traced to legitimate economic concerns. employers exert substantial control and monitoring over workplace conditions, and from a safety incentives standpoint, they should be given financial inducements to provide safe capital equipment and to ensure safe work practices. tort liability remedies can establish such incentives, butthis is a cumbersome process that imposes substantial costs on both sides. workers' compensation offers an administrative compensation remedy that imposes lower transaction cost on ffo claimants and avoids the confrontational aspects of a product liability case ... workers' compensation also provides for more certain and rapid compensation... in return for the greater certainty of compensation, workers receive lower levels of compensation under workers' compensation that they would in a tort judgement. (moore and viscusi, 1990: 136) the no-fault workers' compensation scheme spreads the cost of injury over the entire industry and demands only that the claimant prove he/she was injured at work. tort, as we have seen, demands proof of employer negligence, but in admitting the possibility of punitive awards, it carries an air of retribution lost in the bureaucracy of workers' compensation. further, workers compensation can block tort, even in obvious cases of negligence. as we saw in the ocean ranger case, the workers compensation act (nfld) had to be altered to provide sustenance for families as they pursued their settlements with the tncs. even with the newfoundland provision in place, lawyers for the claimants' committee were concerned that the existence of workers compensation in newfoundland might block their tort action in american courts. in contrast, bhopal's victims had no such support. dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies and further, as we saw, the government of india was less than hospitable to some volunteer ngos who sought to provide much needed relief. risk "management" through tort and regulation in both the ocean ranger and bhopal disasters, the issue is one of the legal and moral responsibility of parent companies for their subsidiaries, and for disasters caused bythe transfer ofhazardous technology without adequate— or at least available—management and safety technology to accompany it. jasanoffargues, "society is forced to make choices about who bears the risks of technological development, knowing well that the distribution is often unequal and that those who reap the greatest benefits from technology a re not necessarily those who suffer most harm" (jasanoff, 1988: 354). though, as beck contends industrial society is giving way to risk society, where one impact ofour toxic industrialization is to equalize or "democratize" exposure to risk on account oftoxicity 's global reach (beck, 1 988/92 ), we must not lose sight of the fact that risk distribution continues to follow class lines: both bhopal and ocean ranger disasters struck the poorest segments of their relative social environments. the fact that one of canada's worst industrial disasters killed 84 people, while the bhopal disaster killed and maimed 4£fc innumerable people, cannot be attributed to chance. the privileged decide how great a risk society is willing to accept for those marginal groups who will then take it. it is widely accepted that both regulatory law and tort law attempt to soften the impact of "tragic choices" a society must make when it decides to become "technologically developed" (jasanoff, 1988: 353). regulatory, or "public" law approaches to risk management have three distinctive characteristics: 1) "they tend to focus on the aggregated impact of technology", 2) they "steer away from concepts of fault or blame" and focus on future prevention, 3) they are "informed by an awareness of recourse constraints" (jasanoff, 1988: 355). tort law is more clearly individualistic and tied to liberal notions of property, hence, "it adjudicates conflicts between specific groups of victims and the producers or generators of specific hazardous techniques" (jasanoff, 1988: 355). tort law deals with past wrongs between parties, attempting to place victims in the same position they would have been in, as far as money can do so, ifthe wrong had not taken place. the "overlap" of tort laws and preventative statutory policies occurs because it is, further, "a well recognized function of privatelaw [tort] to deter harmful conduct by alternate routes, volume 12, 1995 appropriately penalizing wrongdoers" (jasanoff, 1988: 359). as for technological development that out steps regulatory law, tort action under common law has traditionally provided a recourse for workers and victims where the corporations involved should have reasonably foreseen the risk, given their privileged knowledge of the hazards of their technology (jasanoft, 1988: 359). while overlapping is a problem, so too is the presumption that where regulation lags, tort will suffice. both bhopal and ocean ranger disasters demonstrate that tnc accountability evasion is facilitated by criminogenic deficiencies in state regulatory legislation. the corporate person in "risk society" the notion of corporate self-regulation which continues to dominate business ethics debates derives from laissez-faire market notions, with their correlative moral, natural science, and political visions of the world as composed of equally free bodies, moving within common structures of law. it includes, furthermore, the liberal notion of directors and agents as the representatives of shareholders: in much the same way that a political representative is expected to vote as s/he believes will best serve his/her constituency, the ^tk directors of limited liability corporations see themselves as obligated to make decisions in the best commercial interest of their shareholders. the corporate form of business is an integral part ofthe capitalist society. it allows economies of scale by providing a means for a multitude of investors to form a single identity. the risks of ownership are spread out amongst the various investors, allowing a larger percentage ofthe population the chance to own a piece of the operation and profits. since ownership is divested, the responsibility for the control function of the corporation is correspondingly allocated (lansing and hatfield, 1985: 409) of course, the reality of director-shareholder relations is far more complex in a study ofhow corporate directors define their "proper constituencies" it was found that directors' senses oftheir constituencies range "from the beliefthat the shareholders are their only proper constituency to the notion that they are responsible to a much broader range of groups, including consumers, employees, and local communities" (in nesteruk, 1991: 91). nesteruk argues that attempts to influence tnc behaviour illustrate the need to formally recognize the limited liability of corporations as a third legal entity, beyond the traditional liberal elements of actors and their properties. dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies this would mean institutional recognition of corporations as actor-property, and also as sociological contexts, or as nesteruk prefers, "moral worlds" (nesteruk, 1991: 76). currently, as what pearce calls "privileged criminals" corporations can engage in lawful private transactions, like any legal person, but they are not made accountable for their most negligent acts (pearce, 1993). takingthe strategic capacity oftncs into account, we must agree with dembo et al., who argue in their study of union carbide that improvement of safety measures and environmental practices cannot be achieved without the willful participation ofthe tnc world. tncs control information about their own hazardous technologies, and consequently—as the bhopal and ocean ranger disasters indicate—they have great power to evade external controls. withouta real spirittowards self-regulation in industry, change will be extremely difficult, not to say, impossible. in the meanwhile, we desperately need technical experts who are not of the tnc world, those who understand the technical components of industrial risk, can articulate them, and can criticize (beck, 1988/92: 234). universities to some extent have composed a pool oftechnological understanding that was not owned by the tnc world. cuts to funding for universities means more ambitious, able, technologically trained resources for the tnc world and less technological knowledge held publicly. it is possible for state laws to influence corporate behaviour through constructive means. for instance, they can assign personal liability to directors of tncs—as in the recent bata ruling in ontario, where two directors were fined $14,000 each for pollution, with a stipulation that bata not pick up the tab (r. v. bata, 1 992). this has the added benefit of making directors more aware of the "real" or "true" cost of what have traditionally been considered "free" public goods, like common spaces, air and water. in drawing lines of liability to directors and officers in this way, courts are said to "peel back" or "piercethe corporate veil". racquet and romsdahl explain: courts historically looked through, or "pierced", the parentsubsidiary or corporate-shareholder relationship to find the parent or the shareholder liable for the acts of the corporation the piercing doctrine was understood as a way to redress the damages caused by the fraudulent acts of a company, when in fact those acts were committed by the parent or owner, hiding behind the corporate structure. the analysis generally was that the subsidi43 alternate routes, volume12, 1995 ary is no more than the "instrument" of the parent, or that the corporation is only the "alterego" of the shareholder. (racquet, romsdahl, 1993: 372) as inthe r. v. batacase, courts "piercethe corporate veil" in an attempt to respond to "the conflict between a society's need to maintain the benefits of the corporate structure [of limited investor liability] and the need to curb abusive uses of that structure" (racquet and romsdahl, 1993: 371). states can encourage a corporate will to be ethical. for instance, they can implement a system of corporate probation. placer developments ltd. were required by canadian court to conduct research and produce a manual on hazardous discharges and the environment, after being convicted of discharging waste (r. v. placer developments ltd., 1985). lansing and hatfield suggest a toughened criminal law approach to corporate ir/responsibility: this proposal would use a combination of a 'watchdog' in the corporate structure, a procedure to make public certain corporate records, and the ultimate threat of causing corporate death (dissolving the corporation). to a judge or other nonbusiness officer, these actions would not seem as harsh as a high fine, orjail term for an individual . but to a proud capitalist, these penalties are far worse, and would more than likely actually be imposed in practices. (lansing and hatfield, 1985: 413) as with all such schemes, the problem is enforcement: does the cost of enforcement out-weigh the probability that no accident will occur? yet another possibility is to provide monetary incentives in place of regulatory measures (lanoie, 1992). in britain's north sea oil industry, there is a requirement of hazardous productive enterprises to submit a work plan, detailing worker safety and environmental impact before state permission to begin production is permitted. (a scheme such as this was one of the main lobby thrusts ofthe ocean ranger foundation, before its government funding was cut in 1985.) conclusion starting from industrial disaster—the most obvious anti-social activity of tncs— i have argued that tncs are strategic actors who evade social accountability for wrong-doing through a series of demonstable information dodd/ tnc industrial disaster strategies control tactics. tncs stategically influencethe construction ofsocial memory of industrial disaster so that accountability claims are deflected from them states and non-governmental organizations must make legal provisions to protectaltemate "realities" from being overcome by the tncs self-serving version. finally, as agency, responsiblity, and the very language of collective action become increasingly problematic outside the moral worlds of tncs, we must retrieve material urgency from the vagueries ofpostmodern leftism it is imperative that we make the following claims against tncs: 1) recovery oflost resources. this should follow a model seeking to define "replacement of lost income" in cases of death, and a return to previous condition in cases ofenvironmental or property destruction. though there must be provision for medical support for the injured, no monetary value should be put on suffering, or "hedonic" goods in this type of claim 2) implementation of safety measures and a requirement to commit a percentage of research and development investments directly into disaster prevention and response. tncs have privileged information about the dangers of their operations and consequently hold the key to safety. models of corporate probation will be helpful here. 3) internationally enforcedpunitive action against tncs. it is essential that punitive action be legally distinct from compensatory claims of surviving victims or their dependents. punitive action against tncs should be based on a concept of deterrence: if tncs are truly profit-identified organizations, then a sufficiently strong fining system would make ceo agony over whether "it pays to do the right thing" obsolete otherwise, the "corporate veil" will have to be pierced untill it disintegrates. 4) criminal charges should be pressed against any tnc agent whofails to comply to state murder, manslaughter, negligence, bodily harm;freedom ofinformation; environmental, health andsafety, or any other laws, regardless oftheir position in the tnc. without tightly legislated and enforced state and international laws holding tncs accountable in all jurisdictions, no one is safe—though some are certainly safer than others. notes 1. i would like to thank mary p. campell for discussion, comments and editing. 2. industrial disasters are situations in which organized industrial activities cause major damage to human life and social/natural environments (shrivastava, 1994a;b). 3. for a detailed, readable account of the legal struggle, see jamie cassels, the uncertain promise oflaw: lessons from bhopal, 1993. © alternate routes, volume12, 1995 4. these failures conform with shrivastava's characterization of industrial disasters as crises in technological systems which reflect crises in broader systems of social organization, (shnvastava, 1994: 251). 5. after the ocean ranger disaster, odeco was fined us$ 25,000 by the us coast guard "for operating 50 days with an expired certificate of inspection and us$ 100 for operating the rig for two days without two required ablebodied seamen and a lifeboatman" (american press, december 22, 1983). 6. the recent failure of criminal charges against managers in nova scotia's westray mining disaster indicates yet another incidence of corporate accountability evasion in canada. references american law institute 1991 "reporter's study on enterprise responsibility for personal injury." vols 1 and 2. philadelphia. the american law institute. beck, urlich 1988/92 risksociety: towards a newmodernity. translated by mark ritter. sage publications. behrman, jack n. 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" social science medicine. 27(190): 1105-1112. varma, vijaya shankar 1986 "bhopal: facts and reflections." alternatives xi(1 1): 133-147. visvanathan, shiv 1986 "bhopal: the imagination of a disaster " alternatives xi(1 1): 147-165. the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 51 the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education jeff noonan1 and mireille coral2 abstract: this paper explores the ways in which neoliberal schooling is threatening education. we define education as the development of cognitive and imaginative capacities for understanding of and critical engagement with social reality. education opens horizons of possibility for collective and individual life-experience and activity by exposing the one-sidedness and contradictions of ruling-value systems. schooling, by contrast, subordinates thought and imagination to the reproduction of the ruling money-value system, narrowing horizons of possibility for collective and individual life to service to the prevailing structure of power. our paper draws on our overlapping experiences as educators, one in the university system, the other in the adult education system. in both systems, students’ life-requirement for education is subordinated to the capitalist need for compliant wage-labourers and consumers. in opposition to this instrumentalization we will present an interpretation of “real world education” as a unique form of collective work through which teachers and students construct alternatives that can serve as the guiding ideas for new projects for social and political transformation. keywords: education, schooling, neoliberalism, life-requirements, capitalism neoliberal demands for school reform have emphasised the supreme social importance of education even as they have threatened the ability of school institutions to educate. these demands bring to the fore a contradiction between the liberatory implications of education and the ideological effects of schooling. schools both enable students to develop and expand their capacities to imagine and think beyond the established 1  jeff noonan (jnoonan@uwindsor.ca) is professor of philosophy at the university of windsor. he is the author, most recently, of critical humanism and the politics of difference; democratic society and human needs; and materialist ethics and life-value. 2  mireille coral (coral@uwindsor.ca) is an adult educator and phd candidate in the faculty of education, university of windsor. 52 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education limits of what ruling classes define as good, just, meaningful, and true, and at the same time try to produce citizens who confine their thinking and imagination to the ideological meaning of those norms. education builds critical consciousness and political agency, while schooling aims to keep students’ horizons confined to the given world, its class, racial, sexual, and gender hierarchies, its reward systems. education enables students to expose social contradictions, schooling tries to keep people blind to their existence. neoliberalism has intervened in an openly partisan way on behalf of schooling against education. as we will reveal, neoliberalism has been actively attacking the educational mission of schools at all levels of the education system, but especially secondary and post-secondary. if the neoliberal agenda were to be realised, the primary role of schools would be reduced to preparing students for a life as little but complacent alienated workers, quietly content with the ephemeral pleasures of consumer society. there are, fortunately, both political and philosophical barriers to the success of this project. politically, there are the manifold forms of resistance that students and teachers are capable of mounting. the last three years in canada have witnessed intensified struggles against the neoliberal schooling agenda. in quebec, post-secondary students organized a massive, months long strike, ostensibly against tuition hikes but in reality against the neoliberal attempt to further commodify and instrumementalize education. in 2012 in ontario, tens of thousands of teachers, along with many student supporters, waged a brave campaign against draconian legislation designed to not only undermine their bargaining rights but to make them compliant executors of an educational policy imposed by government. in the spring of 2014, teachers in british columbia struck to defend their working conditions and the educational integrity of their schools.3 philosophically, schooling presupposes the development of cognitive capacities that once awoken, by their very nature, cannot be limited in their exercise to providing unthinking support for any prescribed, ideological agenda. schooling of even the most narrow and instrumental sort must teach students to read and write and critically evaluate claims. the development of the capacities for politically engaged social self-conscious agency cannot be avoided, no matter 3  it is not our purpose to provide a careful political analysis of these various struggles. for cogent and concise commentary, see nesbitt, 2012; cooke, 2013; camfield, 2012; brett and mehreen, 2012. information on the settlement agreed to by the british columbia teachers can be found at the website of the british columbia teacher’s federation: https://www. bctf.ca/. the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 53 how narrow and instrumental the scope of schooling. hence, there is always space within schools – bureaucratic and authoritarian as they are already at the primary and secondary level and as they are becoming at the post-secondary level – to educate. educating, we will demonstrate, frees students from intellectual subservience to established norms and structures, not by dogmatic imposition of a radical oppositional agenda, but simply by enabling them to question, think, evaluate, and communicate. our argument will be developed in three steps. in the first, we will elaborate upon the contradiction between schooling and education. in the second, we will examine the recent history of neoliberal school reforms in the ontario secondary school and university systems, concentrating on the way in which the “employability agenda” is an attack on the educational mission of schools. unlike some critics of schooling (most famously, ivan illich) we do not argue that schools should be abandoned in favour of the emancipatory possibilities of popular education. instead, we will argue that the contradictory nature of schools means that there is a space to import and adapt popular education methods into the institution. in the concluding section, we will provide an example of how we were able to use the adult educational classroom as a space for the development of a project in which students, through their own efforts, transformed their experience of school from an oppressive system of imposed rules to a free space for the development of critical consciousness, political agency, and non-alienated labour. schooling and educating our argument proceeds from a contradiction in school institutions. the contradiction is between the socially reproductive demands governments and business leaders try to impose upon them and their educational mission. education frees cognitive and imaginative capacities from subservience to the established social reality, while schooling seeks to conform expectations, imagination, and thought to the given reality, with all of its tensions, hierarchies, and injustices accepted as normal and natural. one might say, following gramsci, that schooling is a set of practices through which the ruling class tries to extend its hegemony over new generations, while education is always at least implicitly a set of practices that enables students to develop the critical consciousness and political agency that allow them to contest hegemony (gramsci, 1971, 26-43). let us examine both sides of this contradiction in more detail. 54 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education schooling is a politically motivated socialisation process through which the ruling powers hope to ensure conflict-free social reproduction by masking the roles power, force and domination play in establishing and maintaining the given social reality. this socialization process involves the inculcation of basic forms of self-discipline (learning to conform one’s demands to the established structure of rules in the various public and private spaces that constitute society), the development of deferential attitudes towards authorities, the cultivation of basic inter-personal skills needed to get along more or less peacefully with others, and the acquisition of basic intellectual skills required for productive functioning in social and economic life. above all else, the schooling process transmits the ruling value system of the society it serves to younger generations. as erich fromm argues, the purpose of schooling is to “qualify the individual to function in the role he is to play later on in society...to mould his character in such a way that...his desires coincide with the necessities of his social order.”(fromm, 1969, 284). the ruling value system of any society justifies the prevailing structure of power and wealth and the rewards and sanctions it makes available and imposes as supremely good, the only sound and sane basis for the formation of individual goals and life plans. to the extent that young people internalise the ruling value system, they bend their efforts to finding a place within the existing structure of power, challenging it only in terms of its failure to provide in practice what is promised in theory, but never in terms of its overall coherence or the substance of the values it affirms. in other words, if the ruling value system is in fact internalised, the capacity for social criticism is dampened, because the political imagination is prevented from exploring different possibilities of social life-organization. if the political imagination is thus hampered in its exercise, the political intellect refuses to accept the real possibility of radically different and better ways of living and instead confines itself to working within the established social reality. thus, confined, it cannot discover the structural contradictions that stand in the way of realizing the values of freedom, equity, justice, and democracy that liberal-capitalist order claims to serve but cannot coherently realize. before students are subjected to alienated capitalist work conditions, schools, in the words of ivan illich (1970, 46), “pre-alienate” young people: young people are pre-alienated by schools that isolate them while they pretend to be both producers and consumers of their own the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 55 knowledge, which is conceived of as a commodity put on the market in school. school makes alienation preparatory for life, thus depriving education of reality and life of activity. school prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught. once this lesson is learned, people...close themselves off to the surprises life offers when it is not predetermined by institutional deformation.” of all the alienating effects school produces, none is more damaging to the formation of individual and collective agency than the belief that making oneself marketable to potential employers is both a primary duty of social life and a natural necessity. once that idea has been instilled, fear of compromising one’s marketability to potential employers strongly impedes the formation of desires for fundamental social changes necessary to abolish alienated labour. while we agree with illich’s critique of schooling, and while we believe that education can and should be pursued outside the walls of school institutions through a variety of experiments in popular education, we do not agree with his “de-schooling” agenda.4 schools, as we have emphasised, are contradictory institutions. all people are thinking beings, and thinking beings cannot be schooled without at the same time having their imaginative and cognitive capacities developed and extended. since students are educated at the same time as they are schooled, their capacity for transformative political agency can developed within their walls, the “pre-alienating” intentions of school authorities notwithstanding. schools are therefore sites of struggle between authorities who want to limit them to purposes of social reproduction and the reality-transforming implications of education. schools are politically essential because they create intellectual space and time free from the very social forces whose demands students are being prepared to accept. one cannot prepare students for life in the contemporary world without cultivating in them basic literacy and numeracy skills, without enabling them to distinguish causes from effects, without developing in them basic communication skills and the ability to negotiate diverse and unfamiliar environments, and without discussing values like freedom, equality, democracy, and human rights. even if the later values are defined 4  both authors have been involved, individually and together, with a variety of popular education initiatives and projects. popular education allows for freedom from institutional formalities, bureaucratic administration, and government interference, but also faces challenges reaching wide numbers of people. the authors conclude that the struggle for education against schooling needs to be pursued both outside and inside the institutional walls. 56 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education operationally in terms of the norms of liberal-capitalist democracies, and even if all the basic intellectual skills listed above are taught in the most narrow and instrumental manner, once they have been developed, they cannot be controlled by external authorities. if one can read, one can read anything readable; once one can perform basic mathematical operations, one can apply them beyond the narrow range of examples used to teach them; once one can talk and communicate with others, one can discover other perspectives and goals, and once one learns the meaning of democracy, one can begin to ask whether its current instantiation is adequate to the idea. these basic intellectual capacities, therefore, are the basis of the educational mission of schools. education is the process whereby the cognitive and imaginative capacities of human beings are developed beyond their given range and depth, freed from subservience to the ruling value system, for the sake of enabling more comprehensive understanding of what there is to be known. education and freedom are related in two ways. first, the development of cognitive and imaginative capacities is freed from programmed service to ruling value systems. second, educated people become free to think for themselves in continually expanding scope and critical depth. once education has drawn out the latent imaginative and cognitive capacities of the human brain, the subsequent development of those capacities can no longer in principle be programmed by institutional authority, because to become educated means to become aware of the freedom of thought in relation to its object. what we mean can be illustrated by unpacking the implications of the colloquial phrase, “i’ll think it over.” rather than just accede to whatever request has been made, the person transforms the request from an externally imposed demand to an internally constituted object of thought. as a thought-object the request is submitted to the critical inspection of the thinker’s mind, which can consider its legitimacy in various dimensions and weigh its value against alternative considerations. the person who thinks something over does not simply do what he or she has been told to do; rather, he or she explores the reasons behind the request and the reasons supporting compliance or refusal. that which she ultimately does is her decision, not the external authority’s and she can account for what she does on the basis of the reasons she herself determines. this capacity to think critically presupposes understanding of the language in which the request has been made, the ability to weigh consequences, the capacity to judge the request against a life-value standard, and the ability to understand the effects of compliance on the natural and social the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 57 worlds of which one is a dependent and interdependent member. these are generic capacities, but they have potentially profound social and political implications – by unhinging thought from service to imposed system-requirements, education frees peoples mindless subservience to social power. the specific values of critical consciousness and political agency affirmed and cultivated by the traditions of popular education are built into the very nature of education, even when it takes place in school institutions. although schooling tries to exclude these values, schools cannot, because schooling presupposes some degree of education and education is always subversive of mechanical incorporation of ruling ideologies into students’ minds. as apple understands, “counter hegemonic activities [are possible] in...schools [as well as] communities.” (apple, 2001, 231). he reminds educators that society is not a place of happy cooperation, but a site of struggle and contestation where working people fight for advancements. (apple, 1990, 96). teachers who take their role as educators seriously recognise that, as the great popular educators paulo freire and myles horton argued, neutrality in education is not possible (horton and freire,1990). educators take sides, but not for one party as against another in any narrow and dogmatic way, but against the attempts of ideological schooling to present social life as fixed, its hierarchies natural. once students understand that social life is historical, that the ways things are is the way they have been made to be by various struggles, they can work out for themselves in whose interests these hierarchies are maintained. at that point, they can insert themselves into the on-going history of struggle without needing to be told on which side their interests lie. education is thus political but not in a way that “silences in the name of orthodoxy [or] imposes itself on students while undermining dialogue, deliberation and critical engagement.” (giroux, 2012). education, popular or institutional, opens students to dialogue about a reality that schooling presents as beyond discussion dialogue is essential to any genuine educational process, for it is only through dialogue that the hierarchical relationship between teacher and student – the form of relationship that makes students resent teachers and impedes the educational process – is broken down. as horton explains, “i think that any kind of dialogue...means that you don’t have inferiors and superiors all in the same conversation... but you respect each other’s experiences and you aren’t trying to use that dialogue to hornswoggle people into accepting your views, because you think it’s good for people. it’s a bottoms-up operation instead of 58 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education a top-down operation. and it’s everybody on the same level trying to come up together.” (horton, 2003, 274-275). although school institutions militate against dialogue, the classroom remains a space shielded from the prying eyes of administrators. therefore, as cunningham (1989) and quigley (2006) note, the classroom can subvert, to some extent, the aim of schooling to simply reproduce oppressive social and cultural relationships. because the teacher is alone with her students in the classroom she can, if she chooses, embed effective popular education practices – basing the curriculum in the life experience of the learners, respecting for the knowledge people bring to the classroom, opening dialogue among equals, and recognizing that education is always political and always on the side of freeing people from oppressive hierarchies. to sum up, any genuine educational process, whether within schools or outside of them, enables students to transform their self-understanding. from thinking of themselves as objects of power, educated people learn to think of themselves as subjects, as people capable of intervening, as individuals or as members of social movements, in the determination of the social reality they inhabit. education, (as opposed to schooling) thus always threatens unjust value systems and institutions. even in the institutionalized classroom educators can put into practice the legacy of one of the great popular education movements of canadian history, the antigonish movement. as both alexander (1997) and lotz (2005) remind teachers, that legacy is one of encouraging critical thinking about established structures of oppression and alternatives to them and never acquiescing in mere training and adaptation to the system. that sort of education, of course, is a potential threat to liberal-capitalist reality. the aim of neoliberal educational “reforms,” to which we now turn, is thus above all to eliminate as much education from schools as possible. neoliberal schooling and the tyranny of work the historical origins of neoliberalism tell us much of relevance about its educational reform agenda. neoliberalism is a set of prescriptions for managing capitalism that emerged in the 1970’s as a response to the “stagflation” crisis. the cause of the crisis was attributed to the failure of labour markets to adequately discipline labour and control its costs. unions were judged too strong, welfare state support for the unemployed too generous, and public services and state enterprises too inefficient. attacking all three became central to the neoliberal project. referring to its first systematic elaboration in thatcher’s england, harvey the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 59 lists its core goals as “confronting trade union power, attacking all forms of social solidarity that hindered competitive flexibility, the privatization of public enterprises, reducing taxes, encouraging entrepreneurial initiative, and creating a favourable business climate.”(harvey, 2005, 23). the intended effect of this package of reforms was to make individual workers more dependent upon market forces and thus more willing to accept terms of employment (lower wages, less benefits, less control over the nature and pace of work) favourable to the owners. as albo, gindin, and panitch argue, neoliberal changes to labour laws, combined with the material pressure exerted by public and private austerity, have “compelled workers to become more dependent on the market as individuals so as to limit their ability to contest the social relations of the capitalist market as a class.” (albo, gindin and panitch, 2011, 90). neoliberal educational reforms, at the secondary and post-secondary level, extend these goals into school institutions. there are external and internal drivers of this agenda. externally, financial pressure and market forces are used to squeeze institutions so as to encourage or force compliance with the internal transformations necessary. for example, the harris government, elected in 1995 and the first ontario government to pursue an openly neoliberal agenda, slashed the education budget by $400 million (maclellan, 2009, 60). in the canadian university sector, public funding as a proportion of operating revenue has been going down and tuition going up (canadian association of university teachers, 2012). in order to meet higher tuition costs more and more students must borrow to finance their education (canadian federation of students, 2013). the deep debt students find themselves in gives them an understandable interest in prioritising future employment over the development of critical consciousness. of course, there is no mechanical relationship between debt and the internalization of neoliberal ideology about employability, but it would be naive for educators to ignore the real economic pressures students face. neoliberal reformers do not, of course, aim to abolish schools or even eliminate all public funding, but to transform expectations about the place and purpose of public institutions. neoliberalism has facilitated a move towards what slaughter and rhoades call “academic capitalism.” “academic capitalism” does not necessarily involve privatization, but works more by “a redefinition of public space and of appropriate activity in that space. the configuration of state resources has changed, providing colleges and universities with fewer unrestricted public revenues and encouraging them to seek out and generate 60 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education alternative sources of revenue.”(slaughter and rhoades, 2004, 306). the new private revenue sources schools and universities are forced to seek come at the price of conformity of curriculum and pedagogy to labour and commodity market demands. instead of educating people for the sake of the free development of imaginative and cognitive capacities, schools are encouraged to produce compliant employees happy to have whatever job is made available. let us now examine the details of the effects neoliberal school reform has had on ontario secondary schools and universities. the neoliberal agenda and ontario’s elementary and secondary schools for our purposes the neoliberal assault on public education in ontario begins with the mike harris government’s “common sense revolution.” ironically, although premised on the neoliberal credo of less government, it actually mandated more government interference in schools. the harris government “reconstituted school governance, standardized and centralized testing, [imposed] massive curricular reform, strict systems of accountability, and the intru[ded]…market goals into public schooling” (maclellan, 2009, 66). the common sense revolution was a political assault on the power of schools to educate. instead of education, the harris reforms attempted to make hegemonic a very narrow conception of schooling as training. as sears (2003, 11) points out, the “agenda for education reform seeks to reorient schooling so that the individual develops a self in relation to the market rather than the state.” a case in point is the 1998 science and technology curriculum for elementary students, which saw the inclusion of skills described as important for the workplace. these skills are often learned by rote and are easily tested, thus having the effect of standardizing the curriculum and exerting tighter control over the work of teachers, making teachers “accountable” to government rather than students’ life-requirement for education (maclellan, 2009; mcnay, 2000). under harris, highly standardized curriculum framed students as nothing more than job seekers motivated only to become aware of the fixed social realities to which they must conform. schools were reconceptualised as manufacturing facilities making future employees: “the key to the meal ticket of the nation.”(bouchard, 2006, 165). while the liberal government, first elected in 2002, increased spending on education 24 percent between 2003 and 2008, they did nothing substantial to reverse the assault on the educational mission the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 61 of schools (ontario ministry of education, 2007). standardized testing continues in grades 3, 6, 9, and 10, administered through the education quality and accountability office (eqao), mirrored at the postsecondary level by the higher education quality assurance council (heqac). the future employability of students remains the core educational objective as outlined in the ministry document growing success: assessment, evaluation, and reporting in ontario schools (2010). arguing that developing the “learning skills and work habits needed to succeed in school and in life begins early in a child’s schooling,” and that these work habits and learning skills may be “strengthened through the achievement of the curriculum expectations” of grades 1 through 12 (ontario ministry of education, 2010, 12), the document goes on to provide a list of employability skills as defined by the conference board of canada. these skills focus on “personal management skills that facilitate growth….and teamwork skills that enhance productivity” (ontario ministry of education, 2010, 12). sample behaviours include being responsible, adaptable, and able to work in teams while completing assigned projects. a more complex list of competencies as outlined by the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) is also cited in the ministry document as necessary for student success. this list is prefaced with an acknowledgement of the complex demands of living in a globalized and modern economy, the need to make sense of rapidly changing technologies, as well as the need to make decisions that represent collective challenges: for example, “the need to balance economic growth with environmental sustainability and prosperity with social equity” (ontario ministry of education, 2010, 13). the sample behaviours associated with these skills are organized into three “categories of competency,”: “using tools interactively,” “interacting in heterogeneous groups,” and “acting autonomously” (ontario ministry of education, 2010, 13). the subordination of education to schooling for the sake of employability might seem to be contradicted by the inclusion of the ability “to defend and assert rights, limits, interests, and needs.” (ontario ministry of education, 2010, 13). despite appearances, this invocation of rights, limits, interests, and needs has nothing to do with developing the capacity of students to identify ways in which existing structures and value systems undermine rights and freedoms. the defense and assertion of rights and interests is framed as the acts of lone individuals content with the existing value system and institutions, not as political subjects motivated to overcome the structural injustices of liberal-capitalism. 62 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education this emphasis on employability is repeated in the adult education sector of the secondary school system. unschooled adults who became injured or unemployed and who looked to the public school system for an opportunity to earn a high school diploma did not fare well under the harris reforms. according to the ontario secondary school teachers federation (osstf), the harris government cut funding to adult day schools by 70 percent; as a result, 85 percent of the student population disappeared between 1995 and 1997, with a net loss of 70,957 students between 1994 and 2001 (osstf, 2014). many of these people, particularly injured workers, were sent to private business colleges to earn diplomas of questionable value quickly (social policy in ontario, 2010). although this practice has been stopped, adult education in ontario remains in need of a “home,” in the words of kathleen wynne, then-parliamentary assistant to the minister of education (ministry of education, 2005, 1). in the case of secondary education, courses taught in an adult high school use the same curriculum guidelines as those taught in any other high school, despite the great differences in age and life-experience between adult and adolescent learners. in the case of adult education, then, the curriculum that reproduces the neoliberal values is being imposed on the very people – unemployed and injured workers – whose lives have been most painfully disrupted by neoliberalism. neoliberalism and the university when we turn our attention from secondary schools to universities, changes in the internal governance and administration take on a significance they do not have in the secondary schools. given the fact that universities traditionally have greater autonomy from government policy than secondary schools, and thus have had greater latitude for the cultivation of socially critical dispositions and capacities, aligning university education with neoliberal objectives requires governance changes that compromise institutional autonomy and academic freedom. one can learn a great deal about the goals of neoliberal reform by examining changes in the administrations that are expected to impose them. the first noticeable change in administration is its growing size. noam chomsky, speaking to a group of unionized adjunct faculty in pittsburgh, described the process: “in the past 30 to 40 years there has been a very sharp increase in the proportion of administrators to faculty and students...[who are] very highly paid. this includes professional administrators like deans...who used to be faculty members that took a couple of years off and then go back to faculty; the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 63 now they’re mostly professional, who then have to hire sub-deans, secretaries, etc.” (chomsky, 2014, 2). more important than the growing size of the administration, is the way in which the professionalization chomsky notes increasingly alienates them from the faculty and students. as senior administrators become more professionalized and more highly paid, they begin to change their sense of mission, from providing academic leadership to managing finances and promoting institutional growth (in student numbers, in the value of research grants and other income, in the architectural footprint of the institution). one mid-level administrator interviewed by a research team in the uk studying the effects of “new mangerialism” in the university system describes the change she felt in herself: “very often when i go to work i have to pinch myself and say ‘look, i’m sure i originally was an academic, but gosh now i feel like an accountant, i spend all my time...talking about issues about money...the academics and the quasi-managers are at logger heads with the real, full-time mangers who have a different career structure and a different career path.” (deem et. al., 2007, 179). these changes to the structure of management are not driven solely by forces endogenous to the university, but have been encouraged by government policies that openly challenge the capacity of universities to govern themselves according to their founding mission – the creation and dissemination of knowledge that serves the public good. universities have been mostly compliant with these demands, rushing to undertake costly and time wasting program reviews to prove their worthiness for government funding. the recently announced “differentiation strategy” for ontario universities and colleges forces every university and college in the province to submit a “strategic mandate agreement” detailing the ways in which the institution is aligning its objectives and strengths with government priorities. the government of ontario (2013, 10) report asserts: “differentiation strengthens alignment between regional development needs and defined institutional mandates. this will advance innovative partnerships and programs that serve the distinct ontario communities to which institutions are connected, as well as broader provincial needs. this alignment will ensure that students graduate with skills that respond to local and provincial labour market needs and contribute to social development. in areas that align with institutional capacity, these partnerships may be global in scope.” 64 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the real implications are clear: only those programs and institutions which can demonstrate a commitment to government policy can be assured of future funding. the overall objective is to contain costs by eliminating duplication in the system, forcing universities to specialise on narrow bands of expertise in contradiction to the very nature of a university. the differentiation policy follows directly from the 2011 commission on the reform of ontario’s public services (the drummond report) which explicitly recommended “differentiation” as a means of using resources efficiently and “encouraging and rewarding quality” as a means of ensuring compliance with government imposed-objectives (commission on the reform of ontario’s public services, 2012, ch.7). in order to tie the goals of schooling more tightly to labour market demand, the traditional rights of professors must also be challenged. the attack on academic labour takes a number of forms. tenure track positions are on the decline or, as in england since 1988, no longer available. in the united states in 2007 the percentage of tenured and tenuretrack professors had declined to 31 percent, while precarious part time academic labour had increased to 50.3 percent (wilson, 2010, 1). as in the private sector, employees without job security are more easily managed. by subjecting faculty to the discipline of academic labour markets, in which supply always far exceeds demand, their willingness and ability to develop in their students the capacity to understand and critique the social forces driving neoliberal reforms (threatening the student’s future as well) is undermined. every proposed change, from centralizing control over the university in senior administrative hands to raising enrolments through on-line courses is justified the same way: better preparing students for the real world of tough competition. as alan sears (2014) has recently argued, “ultimately, the goal of this transformation is a university system that, along with certain skills and knowledge, teaches students: “you are entitled to nothing. you have no right to anything you cannot afford, and you will only be able to afford things through a life of constant hustle.” in other words, students are being prepared for a life in which their personal freedom is reduced to forced self-reinvention at the behest of labour market demand. free choice of life-project remains as a justifying slogan, but is excoriated as irrational if it is exercised to choose courses of study for which there is no market demand. in the neoliberal universe interest and enjoyment count for nothing; life is about making rational investments in oneself, the good of life is maximizing returns on investments. a recent study of the employment outcomes of canadian the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 65 university graduates by the canadian imperial bank of commerce makes this point clear: “another important driver of the relatively low return on education is field of study. for students shelling out thousands in higher-learning costs, a university degree can be viewed as an investment with upfront expenses, and a stream of future benefits.” (benjamin and enenajor, 2013). although it purports to concern itself with graduates’ income, its real concern, since it is studying labour in a capitalist economy, is how much money-value employees create (wages and salaries track labour productivity, such that one can be paid more only if one is producing more for the firm). thus we arrive at the real truth of neoliberal educational reforms at the secondary and post-secondary level – their mandate is to produce productive and compliant workers that will produce more money-value for appropriation by the ruling class, at the expense of understanding the real dynamics and contradictions of this process and their capacity to change it. the real target of these reforms is not any particular subject or discipline, but the time and space that education requires. to conclude, we will examine how education itself is an example of non-alienated work, and thus itself a momentary liberation from the coercive objectifications to which labour markets subject people. education as an example of nonalienated work if neoliberal education reformers are to be believed, the primary interest of young people is to allow their life-horizons to be determined by the changing demands of labour markets. satisfying labour market demand becomes a moral imperative that overrides the openness to the future and freedom from imposed routine that, in propitious social circumstances, generates the feelings of freedom associated with youth. the neoliberal school speaks the language of goals, opportunities, and self-realization, but defines these values in terms of finding paid employment – and then being “flexible” enough to start all over again when market conditions change. in this way, neoliberal schooling confuses being a free subject with being an object of labour markets. our point is not that students can afford to be nonchalant about their future in a society where basic life-necessities are priced commodities. rather, our point is that education enables people to understand the contradiction between the labour on offer in capitalist labour markets and the human life-requirements for meaningful, socially valuable, non-alienated labour. not only does education help people grasp this 66 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education contradiction, it is itself a form of non-alienated. non-alienated labour, for marx, is essentially a labour of self-creation through world transformation, undertaken freely, that is, without the compulsion of natural or social necessity (marx, 1975, 274). through non-alienated labour processes, human capacities are developed for their own sake and the contribution their realization makes to others’ ability to satisfy their own life-requirements. when educational institutions and students are adequately funded, when the life-values of cognitive and imaginative development govern the organization of the institutions, and when the pedagogical methods are collaborative and interactive, education is a non-alienated labour process through which learners and teachers together transform themselves by expanding their capacities for understanding, imagining new social relations and criticising the impediments that stand in the way of the realization of those relations. both transform themselves by meeting and overcoming the limitations that defined their initial levels of understanding. at the same time, not only their own development as individuals, but their willingness and capacity to contribute to social well-being only fully develops when educational activity is experienced as free, un-coerced, non-alienated labour. to illustrate our point we want to share an example of a collaborative project we were involved in with adult learners. as teachers of adults in a city that is experiencing the painful fallout of neoliberal policies, especially unemployment as a result of deindustrialization, we looked for a way to break the reproductive processes at work in schooling. to this end, coral, a teacher in an adult high school, carved out a space within a course the ontario social sciences curriculum mandated her to teach – canadian politics and citizenship – for a critical discussion of neoliberalism. the class studied the hallmarks of neoliberalism: tax breaks for the wealthy, upward redistribution of income, governments consequently starved of revenue for social programmes, downward social mobility and the weakening of unions and workers’ organizations as a function of the globalization of capital. interest in this list of hallmarks led to a request by the class for a more systematic historical and theoretical discussion of neoliberalism and its implications for people in their situation. noonan, a professor at the university of windsor, was invited to speak to the class. he led a collective discussion about neoliberalism that revealed it to be the ideology shaping the economy and public policy of windsor. the discussion spurred the students to begin to think differently about their own social situations. thus were the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 67 the aims and methods of popular education brought into the school institution. instead of being “instructed” the students were engaged in a back and forth conversation in which their own experience enabled them to make sense of the historical and theoretical points under discussion. with the new knowledge of the world they were developing they fashioned a new self-understanding. they began to abandon the sense of victimhood inculcated in them for a sense of their own political agency. the day of the lecture ended with noonan and coral inviting the class to tell their stories of what it means to live under neoliberalism. this ending proved in fact to be the beginning of a new project in which students discovered that education is not synonymous with schooling and work is not identical to alienated paid labour. the students decided that they would take up our invitation and tell their stories of life under neoliberalism and that this would become the major assignment for the semester. in other words, they ceased to rely on the teacher-authorities to tell them what to do to pass the course and instead took the future direction of the course into their own hands, working with coral rather than just listening to her. students wrote about their life experiences: factory closures, unemployment, accessing dwindling social services for themselves and for loved ones with special needs, living on meagre social services, and the deterioration of neighbourhoods. the undertaking and completion of this assignment – writing the stories and reading each other’s stories – was itself a counter-hegemonic process. decisions regarding how the stories would be organized, illustrated, bound, categorized, and titled were collectively made, as was the initial decision to write the book for the major assignment. in the end, as a class, we decided how the assignment would be marked, collectively creating a marking rubric. the generic intellectual capacities cultivated through education enabled the students to not only re-describe their own experience, understand its causes more clearly, and begin to think of themselves as subjects capable of doing something about it, but also to look upon education as a process in which they are active subjects and not just the objects of administrative power. at one point in the book-making process, the students, in a deep discussion about how to organize the stories while coral typed, looked over at her and laughingly commented that the roles had reversed: the teacher had become the typist and the students were making all the decisions. “don’t worry,” they reassured me. “we’ve got this under control.” 68 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education as we emphasised in section two, this project was not about imposing upon students our own beliefs about neoliberalism. instead, it incorporated the popular education practice of co-exploration of a problem, using classroom space and time as a matrix within which students could develop their own critical attitudes towards neoliberalism’s effects on their lives. we understood that adult students are not children – they are living on a daily basis in a social order where their wages are falling, their livelihoods are being exported to other countries for socio-economic reasons they did not initially understand – and that their life experiences had a place in the classroom, connecting the curriculum to the actual lives of the students and empowering the students to speak openly about what they know best: their own life experience. as a result, the classroom became a place where this hegemony could be critically examined and contested. as the course progressed, students began to request classes in “how to vote,” more specifically, how to make sense of the differences between parties, how to make sense of election campaigns, and how to critically examine campaign promises. one man asked to stay after school to talk about how he could “get more involved.” later that week, he walked to the local workers’ action centre to sign up as a volunteer. a student who had been unemployed for a while and had shared with the class the humiliation he experienced applying for welfare, made a comment one day that resonated around the room: “this is making me feel better. it’s good to know i’m not a loser.” it also motivated the foundation, by coral and noonan and some of the most active students, to found the windsor peoples school, a popular education experiment housed in the windsor workers’ action centre. the project we undertook in the adult high school classroom challenged the reduction of education to schooling. in doing so, students discovered the class structures and ruling value systems underlying as social causes the challenges they faced every day in their own lives. our educational objectives had less to do with employability and more to do with living in this historical moment. our concern as teachers was for engaging students in a form of educational labour that enabled them to transform themselves form passive objects to active political subjects, not because we told them to do so, but because their new knowledge spurred a hunger for solutions to the social and economic problems they faced. one man’s comment on his experience in the class was most telling: “finally, i’m learning something in school that i can use to live my life!” that seemed a most appropriate educational objective for a high school curriculum. the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 69 this new critical insight was achieved within a school designed almost explicitly to reprogram adults for labour markets. yet, their own experience, combined with the basic imaginative and cognitive capacities their classes enabled them to develop, led them to an investigation of the causes of their situations, which transformed their self-understanding. formerly, they thought of themselves as objects, whether of bad luck, bad choices, or bad circumstances; subsequently they thought of themselves as individual and collective subjects whose value as human beings demanded social changes. as they became clearer about the causes of their objective situation, these students – often decried as lazy immigrants, as criminal, as addicts, developed a tremendous capacity and appetite for work, just because in their book project they could both “contemplate themselves in a world they had created” and feel themselves as capable of making a (small but real) contribution to solving the problems of the community which affected them as individuals (marx, 1975, 276). it might be objected that this exercise achieved no practical result; the problems that the students faced before the class they faced after, the ‘real world” was still there and the limited range of opportunities they faced was still limited. they would have been better served by job-specific retraining or apprenticeships that focused on real skills. aside from the obvious rejoinder that there is no contradiction between becoming educated and skilled, the deeper point that must be made in response is that the objection assimilates the entire value of human life to being valued as a commodity by a potential employer. this collapse of the difference between the life-value of experience, activity, and interaction and the money-value of skills that you can sell to an employer is precisely the “tyranny of work” under capitalist society. that these students learned to take initiative when they had been told to obey authority their whole lives, that they learned to cooperate when the instinct of many when confronted with a different idea than their own was to fight, and that they enjoyed, for the first time in their lives, learning something because they could feel it making a difference in their lives is essentially relevant to the future course of their lives. moreover, it is obviously not the case that learning to understand society as a field of problems (as opposed to fixed commands to which one must comply), to cooperate with others to understand those problems, to learn to communicate and convince others (and be convinced in turn by them), and to think about concrete solutions that go beyond the established structures of power and ruling value system, are useless. 70 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education these are 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(2010). “tenure, rip.” chronicle of higher education, http:// chronicle.com/article/tenure-rip/66114 (accessed, march 9th, 2014). introduction: climate change | 15 introduction climate change: ‘the greatest challenge of our time’ carlo fanelli1 “climate change is life or death. it is the new global battlefield. it is being presented as if it is the problem of the developed world. but it’s the developed world that has precipitated global warming.” noble peace prizewinner wangari maathai this volume came together as the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) released its fifth report in stockholm, sweden. founded in 1988 by the united nations (un) and the world meteorological organization, the most recent ipcc report brings together over 600 climate scientists from over 130 countries. because every last word of the ipcc reports must be signed off by all un members, the reports are among the world’s most comprehensively vetted and exhaustively reviewed scientific publications. as a result of this wide-ranging consensus, however, it is by design conservative, drawing attention only to the most expansively agreed upon scientific consensuses. despite the conservatism, however, 2013 ipcc co-chair thomas f. stocker made clear that “climate change is the greatest challenge of our time...in short, it threatens our planet, our only home.” (gilis, 2013). since the publication of the ipcc’s first assessment report in 1990, the scientific evidence demonstrating that anthropogenic climate change is intensifying around the world has been strengthened. in 1995, the ipcc estimated that it was “more likely than not” (which translates to a 50 percent probability) that human-produced greenhouse gases (ghg) – as opposed to natural variability – were the main causes of climate 1 carlo fanelli is an instructor and sshrc post-doctoral research fellow at the department of politics & public administration, ryerson university, with interests in critical political economy, labour studies, canadian public policy, climate change, social movements, urban sociology and education. thanks are due to the social sciences and humanities research council, which made this research possible. 16 | climate change and its discontents change. this certainty rose to “likely” (66 percent) in 2001, “very likely” (90 percent) in 2007 and now stands at “extremely likely” (95 percent). the 2013 report puts an exclamation point on what is already known about anthropogenic climate change, refining our understandings and deepening interconnections among them. it is perhaps not a stretch of the imagination to suggest that if present trends continue the next report slated for publication sometime in 2019-2020 will increase this probability of occurrence to “virtually certain” (99 percent). when it comes to the science of anthropogenic climate change, like evolution, the debate is over: it is no longer a matter of debate whether or not human activity is influencing climate change, but the speed and scope of such change and its potential consequences for all life systems. indeed, more than 97 percent of peer-reviewed climate scientists argue that the globe is warming as a result of anthropogenic ghg emissions. put differently, of some 33,700 peer-reviewed climate change papers published between 1991 and 2012, only 34 rejected that climate change was caused by human activities (powell, n.d.; 2012).2 understanding climate change as a political process and yet, despite the overwhelming scientific consensus, climate change continues largely unabated. in light of the overwhelming scientific consensus how is it that nearly half of britons and americans, and some 42 percent of canadians, believe that human activities are not affecting climate change? despite the consensus or perhaps precisely because of it, it is a mistake to assume that valid science will communicate itself (dembicki, 2013). rather, because people are not inherently radical or conservative but adapt to the structured conditions they encounter, a multiplicity of factors from diverse interests and levels of class consciousness to personal experiences, socio-economic status, race, gender, culture and political ideology play a central role in the acceptance or rejection of climate change science. these deeply ingrained sentiments, mediated by competing narratives jostling for hegemony, obscure our understanding of climate change as an inherently political process. it is little wonder, then, that white elites, in particular men, overwhelmingly deny climate change. while just over 7 percent of non-white u.s. men believe that the potential impacts of climate change are exaggerated or unlikely to happen, this number jumps to nearly 30 percent of white males and increases in tandem as perceived understanding of climate 2 see also richard, 2012; oreskes, 2004 introduction: climate change | 17 change rises (mccright and dunlap, 2011; pyper, 2011). “a position on climate change has become almost like a tribal totem...i am conservative, therefore, i cannot believe in climate change.” (lewandowski in mooney, 2013). conservatives tend to question climate change not only on the validity of its scientific conclusions, but equate understanding with broader political and ideological factors such as a skepticism of government or university funded research, liberal conspirational theories, perceived misrepresentations of the data, a belief in the infallibility of markets and technology, media biases, distrust of scientists’ alleged political leanings, and perceived injustices against individual liberties and profit-making freedoms (washington and cook, 2011; oreskes and conway, 2012; dunlap and jacques, 2013). of course, ideological and identificational factors span the political spectrum, but climate change denialism tends to overwhelmingly be the refuge of conservatism. while some 3 percent of climate scientists deny that human activities are directly associated with climate change, skeptics and denialists tend to make up 34 percent of u.s. media coverage (cook et al., 2013). and climate change coverage by the media is diminishing across the u.s. and canada having dropped 20 percent in 2011 over 2010, and more than 40 percent since 2009. this is evident in fewer reporters covering stories, fewer outlets publishing articles and, perhaps most strikingly, a particular silence (and 50 percent decline) from the nation’s editorial boards denouncing the lack of action on climate change (zerbisias, 2012). the growing import of climate change denialists in the popular press and, subsequently, society at large, has risen despite increasing scientific agreement among scientists to the contrary. this is in no small part explained by vast clandestine networks of climate change denial – from media personalities to think-tanks, academics and politicians – that have spent more than $120 million between 2002-2010 to discredit climate change science (goldenberg, 2013; greenpeace, 2013). interest in climate change decreased just as the economic turbulence, political instability and social insecurity of the great recession made its way around the world. but as angel gurria, secretary general of the organization for economic cooperation and development reminded: “this [climate change] is worse than a debt because there is no bailout and if you have two or three good budget years a debt can be reduced, but emissions hang around for 100 years.” (cbc, 2013). in fact, the 2013 ipcc report emphasizes that things are getting worse more rapidly than the best previous models could predict. from global temperature 18 | climate change and its discontents increases to melting ice sheets, retreat of glaciers, rising and acidifying oceans, deforestation, shifts in weather patterns, food chains, plant and animal life, water shortages and massive species extinctions, socioecological crises are escalating across the biosphere. for example, the 2013 report estimates that global temperatures will increase somewhere between 1.8 and 4 degrees celsius by the midway point of this century; sea levels could rise between 18 and 59 centimeters, especially if recent melting in greenland and antarctica continues, by the end of this century; arctic sea ice could disappear by the summer of 2050; and extreme rainfall and heat waves are expected to increase in frequency. what’s more, even if emissions were stabilized today these trends would continue well into the future as some 60 percent of co2 emissions remain in the atmosphere for 20 years, 45 percent remains for 100 years and 20 percent remains 1,000 years after which they are emitted. it is important to emphasize that for the past five-hundred thousand years ghg’s have fluctuated in a narrow band of between 260 and 280 parts per million (ppm). today, however, they are over 400ppm co2, which is roughly 30 percent higher than previous peaks in volume during interglacial periods. the report stresses that beyond a 2 degree celsius temperature rise, humans could lose the ability to take actions that would substantially remedy or mitigate climate change, after which a “danger zone” would be entered in which the climate could become unpredictable and the consequences largely unforeseen. it has been estimated that if present trends continue two-thirds of the world population could suffer from water shortages, 12 percent of bird species and 25 percent of mammals are threatened with extinction and over 70 percent of the earth’s fisheries could become depleted, fully-fished and/or overexploited (woodin & lucas, 2004; gupta, 2001). climate scientists predict that food production could be cut in half, having already risen 140 percent in cost between 2002-2008, and threatening some 2 billion food insecure and impoverished persons around the world. what’s more, the amazon rainforest – dubbed the lungs of the world – could turn to a dry savannah, while melting icecaps could raise sea levels by more than 30 percent worldwide engulfing land presently occupied by more than 1 billion people (lean, 2007; walsh, 2013). the 2013 ipcc report does not take into account worst case or supposed scenarios such as the releasing of terrestrial and oceanic methane (a ghg thirty times more potent than co2) as a result of thawing permafrost and undersea reserves. but threatening messages about climate change have their limitations (for a snapshot of the debate see, lilley et introduction: climate change | 19 al., 2012; angus, 2013). thus while there is certainty about the severity of climate change, the ipcc reports remain moderate reflecting only what are “extremely likely” projections. as one well known phrase puts it: ‘trying to predict climate change is like trying to predict where the next bubble will pop in a pot of boiling water. we understand how the process works but can’t pin-point exactly where the next stream of bubbles will be’. the ipcc report uses the baseline year 1750 to distinguish between pre-industrial and industrial concentrations of ghg emissions, showing a marked increase in the role of human activities in regards to climate change over the period ever since. despite some 200,000 years of human activity on earth, however, it is only in the last 250 years (and 150 years in particular) that the long-term viability of the earth as a sustainable place for inhabitation has been called into question. in this regard, it is important to stress that the broad frame of human activity masks what is specifically capitalist activity: a historically unique form of social relations based on the exploitation of labour, which alters humankinds historic relationship with nature creating deep fissures, i.e., a ‘metabolic rift’. in historical terms, then, destructive anthropogenic climate change is of recent vintage. what, then, lies at the root of climate change? grappling with such a question must inevitably reflect on the ways in which climate change and capitalism are symbiotic – that is to say, how the underlying social relations and forces of (re)production (historically unique and dominant since, say, 1750) are in actuality an instituted compulsion. one where the requirements of life are embedded in a political and economic framework that obscures class exploitation through a complex web of market dependence in which cut-throat competition, labour rationality and profit maximization permeate all aspects of social life. this class exploitation which lies at the root of capitalism, at once gendered, racialized and informed by a host of cross-cutting identificational markers, must be central to our understanding of climate change as socio-ecological crises intersect in myriad non-linear and cascading ways. since orthodox economists assume that everything has a price and that the market will inherently sort out all problems, mainstream approaches to climate change suffer from an inherent inability to deal adequately with the climate crisis. the assumption that everything, no matter how ecologically destructive, socially unhealthy or politically unjust has profit-making potential and can be solved by technological or market means must inevitably come to terms with the biophysical 20 | climate change and its discontents impossibility of unlimited economic growth. said differently, if solutions to the climate crisis are to be found they must be radicalized (i.e. get to the root of the problem) and move away from so-called market based solutions to what are ineradicably market based problems: the capitalist system is inherently incompatible with the goal of sustaining the earth for future generations. the systemic imperatives of capitalism run counter to any socioecological notions of natural limits, critical thresholds and limitations on conspicuous consumption, let alone social justice, since all relations are subordinated to profit maximization. in this sense, it is important to recall the words of engels (1934) who reminds: “[nature] is the foundation upon which we human beings, ourselves products of nature, have grown up…at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature – but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst.” in other words, “man lives from nature, i.e. nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuous dialogue with it if he is not to die. to say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature” (marx, 1964, p.112). it is perhaps not a coincidence that such a large segment of conservative and other groups are adamantly opposed to the science of climate change for substantive solutions require a radical reversal of business as usual – that is to say, a critique of political economy that explicitly rejects capitalist growth as an end in itself and proposes alternative means of organizing society. there are no limitedly scientific, technological or market-based solutions to climate change, only social and political ones that challenge the power of capital to exploit workers, the unwaged, those denied a chance to work and the natural environment upon which all life on earth is based3 . countering climate change denialism, then, is a process of politicization as information is rarely neutral and scientific evidence seldom speaks for itself. in this regard, the reputation of canada as an international pariah is especially disconcerting as even the mildest talk of environmental regulation, especially in a recession, sends captains of industry and their political backers into a tailspin threatening further job cuts. 3 carbon markets have done next to nothing to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, often precipitating more problems than they have solved. consider the failure of the european union’s emissions trading scheme which, far from reducing carbon emissions, are actually set to cancel out over 700m tonnes of emissions saved through renewable energy and energy efficiency effort (carrington, 2013; lohman, 2011). introduction: climate change | 21 canada and climate change inaction among the first acts of business by the stephen harper conservatives was to, in the iconic words of the prime minister, pull out of the “socialist scheme” that is the kyoto protocol, which in his view was designed to suck money out of rich countries. since 2006, environmental monitoring, legislation and protective agencies have been steadily gutted. this includes the elimination, reduction and curtailment of over forty environmental programs related to air, water, transport, oil and gas monitoring, agriculture, hazardous waste management, species at risk, weather services and research funding. the most notable of these include over $222 million being cut from environment canada, the elimination of over one thousand scientists and over $100 million in funding at the department of fisheries and oceans and parks canada, the repeal of the environmental assessment act, elimination of the experimental lakes area program, changes to the navigable waters protection act in order to ease transport restrictions on crude oil, and a host of closures to arms-length government agencies as a result of cuts to funding (nikiforuk, 2013; 2010; caw, 2013). what’s more, as part of this strategy to delegitimize climate change and social justice activists, conservative ministers have gone to great lengths to publically threaten, cajole and intimidate environmental groups characterizing them as anti-canadian, radical ideologues and foreign saboteurs hijacking the political process (oliver, 2012; payton, 2012). in an effort to turn canada into an “energy superpower” the conservatives have pledged to triple tar sands production by 2035, have eased environmental regulations in order to allow mining and oil companies to explore canada’s arctic, and have established the “oil sands advocacy strategy” in the department of foreign affairs. this is on top of subsidies in excess of $1.4 billion to the oil, mining and gas industry, and herculean efforts to ensure that the enbridge northern gateway and keystone xl are implemented despite broad-ranging resistance. part of this strategy has resorted to preventing public scientists from speaking out about canada’s abysmal environmental record. indeed, a recent survey of government scientists found that 90 percent of respondents felt as though they could not speak freely about their work; 86 percent feared retaliation if they went public about their research on public health or environmental science; 71 percent felt that political interference compromised policy development based on scientific evidence; nearly half said they were aware of cases in which their department or agency suppressed information for political reasons; and 25 percent responded 22 | climate change and its discontents to having been asked to directly exclude or alter information for “nonscientific” purposes (chung, 2013; cheadle, 2013).4 furthermore, 86 percent (along with four former federal fisheries ministers) said they felt changes to the fisheries act would drastically hamper canada’s ability to protect fish and habitat provisions as only those deemed economically viable would now be covered (galloway, 2012; barlow, 2012; paris, 2012). the chasm between public servants conducting research and elected officials propagating party lines speaks volumes about the political nature of climate change science and the underlying political efforts to stem serious environmental reforms (for a recent example, see, de souza, 2013). the federal conservatives have also been working diligently to undermine stiffer environmental protocols in other countries, such as california’s low-carbon fuel standard and the european union’s fuel quality directive. this adds to a growing list of federal international inaction illustrated by canada’s unwillingness to sign onto a global treaty reining in carbon emissions in copenhagen in 2009, as well as stifling of plans to implement an international financial transactions tax at the 2010 toronto g20 meetings. in fact, canada’s carbon emissions will be 20 percent higher than the harper government’s own promised reductions under the 2009 copenhagen accord; in actuality some 66 and 107 percent higher than what is needed to meet canada’s international obligation to prevent global temperatures from rising 2 degrees celsius. not only will the federal conservatives miss their own emission reduction target cut of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, they will actually be 2 percent higher by the end of the decade. actual emissions in 2011 were twenty-four times higher than 1990 (environment canada, 2013). canada now stands alone among the g8 as the only nation to not only lack a national housing, transit and infrastructure strategy, but also a national renewable energy program, the last incarnation having been eliminated in 2011. even the u.s., hardly a bastion of renewable energy investment, spends eighteen times more per capita in federal investments in renewable energy than canada (climate action network canada, n.d.). it is plain to see that the federal conservatives lack any serious plans to deal with climate change. since 2006 not only has busi4 among the 4,000 respondents included scientists from environment canada, health canada, department of defence, department of fisheries and oceans, food inspection agency, agriculture canada and natural resources canada. even maclean’s (gatehouse, 2013), a bastion of all things conservative, criticized the harper government’s muzzling of climate scientists as bordering on orwellian. introduction: climate change | 23 ness as usual continued, it has been expanded in scale and scope registering hardly a blip on the federal policy front.5 indeed in policy terms, not only has this exacerbated the class dimensions of climate change as rich nations globally exploit the labour power of the third world and poor and working class communities cope with decreased access to public services, transportation, decent work, rising food prices and general social insecurity, but also its simultaneously gendered and racialized implications. across the global south, for example, women are overwhelmingly responsible for subsistence agriculture and ecosystems services. climate change-induced reductions to food crop production, shifting weather patterns, forced migration, war, water shortages and increases in communicable diseases, coupled with women’s generally lower socio-economic status, levels of education, ownership and access to resources, means that although women are largely under-represented in decision-making capacities they must bare the brunt of its consequences. though varying in form and intensity, even in the global north the gendered implications of climate change are significant as women remain responsible for the majority of unpaid domestic labour and are thus often expected to make up for reductions to public services and programs as well as child and elder care, which face added pressures in light of natural disasters, climate displacement, housing, food and water insecurity. racialized communities, (im)migrants, refugees and those denied status often fare far worse as instances of poverty and malnutrition are intensified by exploitative labour market conditions and higher instances of precarious work. in both north and south, increasing concentration in urban centres without the social and physical infrastructure needed to meet the challenges of climate change threatens to intensify urban air pollution, traffic congestion, water contamination, sanitation issues and the health and well-being of all living systems. automobile-dependent urban sprawl wipes out farmland reinforcing a sub/urban growth dynamic and expensive low-density infrastructure, while pushing working class and racialized communities, in particular women and single-parent households, to the margins (unep, 2011; global gender and climate alliance, 2009). 5 the new democrats, supported by the bloc quebecois and liberals, put forward a private member’s bill titled the climate change accountability act (bill c-311) that called for the government to establish five-year plans outlining how it would reduce ghg emissions. bill c-311 aimed to set regulations that would bring emissions down 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. despite being passed by a majority of members of parliament, the unelected conservative majority in the senate used their power to defeat bill c-311 without debate or study (galloway, 2010). 24 | climate change and its discontents breaking the cycle of climate change inaction means recognizing the relationship between climate change and capitalism. in an era of unprecedented and growing income inequality, climate change threatens to exacerbate health problems, social injustices and violent conflicts around the world. it has been estimated that capitalist-impelled climate change causes some 300,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses annually. and this is expected to double by 2030. what’s more, inaction is already estimated to cost $125 billion annually and is expected to rise to $600 billion by 2030 (vidal, 2009). the class composition of climate change is such that those most vulnerable, exploited and degraded will suffer the most as the capitalist class thrives on disaster recognizing them as opportunities (semeniuk, 2013; cbc, 2013c). as is evidenced from the global tumult of the great recession, neoliberal capitalism has emerged stronger and more consolidated than ever despite a temporary, if short-lived, crisis of legitimacy. never letting a crisis go to waste means using those opportunities as moments to do things that were seemingly unlikely or impossible beforehand. in canada, this has meant an emboldened radicalism from conservatives and segments of capital as so-called right-to-work laws, new pressures on privatizing public services, in particular healthcare, pensions and post-secondary education, the removal of public sector collective bargaining rights, the implementation of a free trade agreement with europe that trumps nafta, work for welfare initiatives, attacks against social assistance, the weakening of employment standards legislation, reductions to old age security and the erosion of progressive taxation, once deemed central to the social fabric of canada, are now destined for the proverbial dustbin of history (fanelli and evans, 2012; banting and myles, 2013; himelfarb and himelfarb, 2013; swift, 2013; braedley and luxton, 2010). climate change, then, far from necessarily compelling any progressive changes may provide opportunities for capitalism to assert itself as the only alternative regardless of the social, environmental and human costs. as such, dealing with climate change is among the most pressing social and political, that is, class struggles of our time. taking climate change seriously despite a crisis of capitalism with few historical parallels, anti-capitalist activists have rarely been as isolated and marginalized as they are today.6 while the economic crisis should have put labour and social justice activ6 pantich and gindin (2012) have characterized the great recession of 2008 as the fourth major structural crisis of capitalism. the first occurred in the last quarter of the 19th century, the second – introduced by the stock market crash in 1929 – ran through the great depression of the 1930s, and the third emerged in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. introduction: climate change | 25 ists on the offensive, it has been capital that has determined the agenda ushering in a series of regressive reforms that has made life more insecure and precarious for most, while ironically enhancing the lives of those that caused the great recession in the first place (rexrode, 2013; goodway, 2012). unfortunately, despite sporadic and localized battles, there has been no subsequent radicalization of labour unions, social movements and anticapitalist groups in a coordinated and structured way. developing a movement that challenges austerity and climate change will need to experiment with new forms of organizing that more effectively breaks out of labour and activist subcultures and builds on the heterogeneity of the working class. one of the few exceptions have been first nations communities, long subjected to british and later canadian colonialism, and idle no more protestors that have defended the rights of the earth against unbridled capitalist exploitation (cbc, 2013b; barrera, 2013; dobbin, 2013). while this is not the place for an overview of debates about left regroupment, the challenge facing trade union, environmental and social justice activists is to move to the anti-capitalist left or risk increasingly becoming an impediment to rather than an instrument of a renewed working class politics. the failure to do so may regrettably amount to an historic class defeat. if climate change and overlapping crises – from air, ocean and water pollution to displacement, disease and labour degradation – are to be comprehensively challenged, it will mean addressing not only its effects but its causes: the capitalist system which degrades the earth and alienates labour. this means integrating rather limited but important individual behaviours, lifestyle and consumptive habits into a broader social justice framework that addresses the structural and systemic roots (i.e. exploitative relations and forces of [re]production) of labour and environmental degradation (albo, 2007). far from grand-theorizing or proselytizing, foresight, not hindsight, is the only realistic starting point from which to move forward. the challenge is for the working classes to develop the confidence and capacities to think as ambitiously and radical as capital, the ruling class, has done since the onset of the recession. taking climate change seriously means rethinking living and working arrangements, leaving fossil fuels in the ground and retooling manufacturing industries to develop an array of renewable energies (e.g. wind, solar, tidal, geothermal), massively expanding public transportation in order to reduce a dependence on individual modes of transportation, renewing local polycultural farming practices, reversing the erosion of progressive taxation, retrofitting homes and industries and, most importantly, moving away from a reliance on the private sector as the engine of economic growth in favour of the expansion of the public sector. 26 | climate change and its discontents socializing and democratizing the banking and finance sectors would mean placing social and environmental priorities ahead of board members, stock owners and corporations’ profitability. reigning in corporate power means recapturing decision-making capacities as part of a larger class project to reclaim and strengthen social and political justice across all facets of life. additionally, this means dispensing with opaque notions of more or less state and instead emphasizing the need to build a different kind of state – a different kind of society. unfortunately, social democracy has demonstrated a recurring inability to stand up to austerity, often deepening and extending market forces rather than challenging its central tenets. in order to challenge market forces, rebuilding the political capacities of organized labour is crucial, but so too is organizing the unorganized, unwaged and swaths of workers engaged in lowwage, insecure and precarious forms of work and labour. rooted in struggles for racial and gender equality, new political formations will need to come to terms with the limitations of militancy alone which, in the absence of a transformative project, has been incapable of countering the drumbeats of austerity and neoliberalism. in the absence of an anti-capitalist politics, then, we risk hampering rather than facilitating political change if we settle for anything less (williams, 2010; mackay, 2009; foster, 2009; boggs, 2012; rowbotham et al., 2013; salleh, 2009) while redistribution is important, a focus on what happens predistribution (i.e. extraction, production, social reproduction) raises a set of demands for non-commodified labour. putting the needs of the earth’s inhabitants first means that food and water sovereignty, along with housing, healthcare and education, are prioritized as human rights. universal social programs, from child and elder care to pensions, public spaces, art and cultural centres are crucial to developing a socio-ecological praxis that seeks to deepen and extend collective civic engagement rather than an individualized social policy arena. in light of historically low interest rates, major public works investments in housing, transit, renewable energy, infrastructure and denser development would lessen a reliance on private capital, decarbonizing the economy, encouraging more locally rooted and regionally coordinated production, and socializing access to basic services. meeting the social and political challenges of climate change within an explicitly anti-capitalist framework is not utopian or impractical, far from it, the real utopians are the ones who think business can introduction: climate change | 27 continue as usual. decades of governmental inaction, subterfuge and capitalist class war have shown that the radical is now the only thing that is practical.7 references albo, g. 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http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2012/01/13/climate_change_coverage_by_the_media_diminishing_as_earth_continues_to_heat_up.html http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2012/01/13/climate_change_coverage_by_the_media_diminishing_as_earth_continues_to_heat_up.html 32 | climate change and its discontents unpaid work, coercion and the fear economy ann duffy1 and norene pupo2 abstract: unpaid work, as a sociological construct, initially emerged in relation to reproductive labour and, in particular, women’s unpaid household work. however, unpaid work, in the sense of socially required and routinized labour that is normatively not compensated in terms of monetary and other tangible mechanisms of exchange, has mushroomed in the context of the grim economy. here, the authors locate unpaid work historically by considering the direct physical force that underlies slavery and work within total institutions, and then analyze the contemporary subtle, indirect pressures exercised by hegemonic ideologies to sustain unpaid internships and unremunerated working days. secondly, we argue that unpaid work is expanding in the current historical/economic context. finally, we propose that shifts in the nature of the capitalist economy and the evolution of the so-called ‘fear’ economy along with the related expansion of the neoliberal state should be seen as key factors precipitating the growth in unpaid work and, therefore, a dramatic intensification of patterns of exploitation. keywords: unpaid work; reproductive labour; household work; fear economy introduction the concept of unpaid work may seem an oxymoron. in everyday parlance ‘work’ typically suggests some organized, purposeful and productive activity resulting in some form of compensation, typically money. in the modern capitalist economy, the notion of work without pay would seem to contradict the fundamental meaning of contemporary work activities and the logic of 1 ann duffy is professor of sociology at brock university. email: aduffy@brocku.ca 2 norene pupo is professor of sociology at york university. email: npupo@yorku.ca 14 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice capitalism. in modern western cultures, work is generally assumed to be a way of making money and therefore participating in the capitalist economy. indeed, only 2nd wave feminism has profoundly shaken this connection between work and pay (waring, 1988). however, closer scrutiny of the past several decades reveals that much work is now not paid. historically, slaves epitomized unpaid work and their requirement to work without compensation underlay a wide variety of economies. generally, dismissed as an artifact of history, unpaid work as a significant economic factor did not re-emerge until feminist political economy was popularized in the 1960s and 70s. reproductive work, including household work and child-rearing is generally unpaid, commonplace and socially required. today, unpaid work framed as reproductive work is dramatically expanding. for example, as a result of significant reductions in state-provided services in neo-liberal regimes, increasing amounts of social support, caring and social welfare work is performed by unpaid workers. routinely, patients in hospital and those discharged from hospital are ‘cared for’ by family members, typically but not always women. similarly, growing numbers of aging seniors are cared for on an unpaid basis by spouses and adult children. reflecting the neoliberal state’s individualistic bent, family members and friends are generally expected to pick up the considerable slack left by dramatic reductions in state services. when actually ‘counted’, this unpaid element of the contemporary economy reveals its significance. time-budget studies indicate that over the past half century unpaid work in the global north has comprised almost half (44.7 percent) of all time spent ‘working’ (williams, 2008). the proliferation of unpaid work in and out of the formal economy is significant not only because of its dimensions but because of its complex interplay with key social patterns of power and coercion. first, unpaid work is not randomly distributed amongst the labour force; rather, it is deeply embedded in relations of power, reflecting and reinforcing them. in particular, the discourse on household work would be incoherent without recognition of the pivotal role of social class, gender, race and age. secondly, unpaid work cannot be understood as simply an expression of informal, unregulated work arrangements. unpaid work is socially contested precisely because in some instances it is indeed paid. the requirement to expend time and energy with no direct reward serves to further enshrine and intensify patterns of social inequality (brennan and stanford, 2013, a19). while this has become readily unpaid work, coercion and the fear economy | 15 apparent in the lives of women – notably those who seek to combine paid employment and unpaid labour in the home – the logic can be extended to youth and new workers who shoulder more and more unremunerated work in the guise of required volunteering or unpaid internships. it follows that unpaid work in contemporary economies warrants scrutiny because it is such an integral element in our lives, because it is core to the functioning of the present-day capitalist state and because it complexly sustains emergent patterns of social inequality. most importantly, evidence suggests that unpaid work is growing exponentially, particularly under neoliberalism and in the context of the ‘fear’ economy. this growth has considerable implications for the consolidation of power relations and the attenuation of social inequalities. finally, the discourses surrounding unpaid work appear to remain so subtle and nuanced that their coercive implications are frequently obscured or minimized. when viewed in terms of coerced labour, it is clear that “unpaid work” not only challenges the logic of contemporary capitalism, but draws attention to a maze of central social issues – including compliance/coercion/choice and relations of ruling. these complexities do not suggest that “unpaid work” is an unworkable concept. rather, we argue that deconstructing “unpaid work” provides an avenue through which we may explore many of the most important dimensions and developments within contemporary capitalist economies. in particular, if unpaid work is conceptualized in more organic and multidimensional ways, it speaks to the complex interplay between history, power relations (most notably with regard to gender, immigrant status, social class, race/ethnicity and age), the public and private spheres, and the impact of globalization. most significantly, it speaks to an important way in which capitalist economic systems are intensifying the exploitation of workers, wouldbe workers and their families, while clouding their exploitation in the rhetoric of compliance and choice. second wave feminism and naming unpaid work unpaid work became an integral element in discussions of labour force activities, thanks in large measure to the efforts of 2nd wave feminists and their proteges (oakley, 1976; seccombe, 1974; waring, 1988; thistle, 2006) who drew scholarly attention to the contributions made by women in the course of raising children, caring for the home and supporting their partners. these scholars, in 16 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice turn, documented that the sheer volume of domestic work and the complex tasks undertaken contributed to both economies and political regimes. research and analysis has tended to elaborate on the complex and often indirect ways in which women’s efforts in the home, though typically uncompensated in direct monetary terms and unrecognized both in terms of skill development and economic calculations of gdp, contribute to the productive as well as reproductive needs of economies. it is important to formally acknowledge that the work done in the home is indeed work and is socially significant – not only to the individual family but also to the larger economic order and, secondly, that responsibility for this unpaid work constrains women’s lives and enshrines their subordination (gaudet et al., 2011; neysmith et al., 2010; ilcan, 2009). that women’s unpaid work is generally not acknowledged in terms of compensation, pensions, divorce settlements and prestige and that women are, in fact, penalized when they attempt to participate in the paid labour force is presented as evidence of a profound gender-based inequity. further, the deconstruction of the hegemonic ideology that women’s work is ‘freely’ chosen as a labour of love rather than socially constructed as the primary adult role for women speaks to the bind women find themselves in – socialized into assuming a role which is socially denigrated, economically marginalized yet culturally romanticized and mandated. indeed, central to the critique of women’s unpaid work is the absence of ‘real choice’ along with the coercion women are subject to (duffy, mandell and pupo, 1989). it was not simply that the work was complex, onerous, and often tedious, or that the work was not rewarded in terms of money, status or some other formal compensation. rather, the central concern was that women, until the 2nd wave of the women’s movement, have not had an opportunity to freely examine and question the choices embedded in their roles as wives and mothers. from slavery to workfare: the neoliberal state subsequent research on unpaid work has drawn heavily on this attention to domestic labour and its implications in terms of gender inequities. however, more recently, the term unpaid work has increasingly been applied more generally to phenomena as varied as ‘compulsory volunteering’, unpaid internships, and work outside job requirements. below we detail many of the unpaid work, coercion and the fear economy | 17 ways in which unpaid work has flourished in recent decades. we argue that, as with gendered household work, unpaid work can be understood as a product of coercion. these coercive power relations may be as subtle and indirect as hegemonic ideologies or as direct and abusive as straightforward oppression. current historical trends, notably, the growth of neoliberal states have been pivotal in the expansion of unpaid work experiences. neoliberalism, with its emphasis on fiscal restraint and individualism has, for example, dramatically reduced the paid assistance previously provided to families and individuals in need while simultaneously downloading more of the costs of employment (most notably tuition increases) onto families and individuals (flavelle 2013, s1). the neoliberal state has at the same time deployed unpaid work – workfare and prison fare, for example – as a direct mechanism to reduce costs and privatize responsibilities. the punitive nature of these policy initiatives – increased reliance on the criminalization of poverty and incarceration of the poor, fits hand in glove with shift in the economic contact. the ‘fear economy’ has grown significantly, particularly since the recession and global financial crisis of 2008 (krugman, 2013). this ‘fear economy’ is generally characterized by widespread unemployment, underemployment and dramatic increases in various forms of precarious work (koeber, 2002; cranford, vosko and zukewich, 2003). in the context of this widespread fear and insecurity, it is not surprising that many individuals find themselves acceding to demands for unpaid labour in the hopes that they will retain their toehold in paid employment or that this unpaid work will be the necessary first step towards economic security (kalleberg and marsden, 2013). contextualized by these political-economic realities, an interesting interplay between unpaid work and coercive practices is evident. as the most extremely coercive form of unpaid work, slavery, past and present, typically entails intense physical and/or psychological oppression. all the benefits of slavery accrue to the owner. the slave complies as a direct result of fear (of physical injury/torture, imprisonment, deportation and/or emotional abuse) combined with an absence of alternatives or possibilities for escape. prison slave labour – by many accounts a common, if unacknowledged, practice in some contemporary national contexts (most notably, china), is similarly rooted in overt, even physical coercion combined with incarceration. inmates are physically compelled to work without compensation as a consequence of their sentence. their labours, however, are productive and may be profitable for those 18 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice in control of the institutions. today, this most coercive form of unpaid labour does persist and emergent national and international inequalities lend themselves to slavery practices. less obviously coercive is unpaid prison work in western economies. often packaged as training or rehabilitation, employment in prison systems has become increasingly popular in neoliberal regimes. inmates are increasingly expected to work without pay or for nominal wages. the reputed rewards for the worker – apparent rehabilitation, the goodwill of prison authorities – are indirect and intangible while the direct economic benefits of inmates’ productivity are funneled to the institution and the state. in institutionalized settings such as group homes for example, young offenders are often expected to participate in some productive activity so as to acquire workplace skills and as testimony to their efforts to reform. once again, overt coercion is a backdrop but more significantly, there is a complex psychological bullying that encourages inmates/residents to embrace this unpaid work as a path to personal redemption, social reintegration and, ultimately, freedom to leave. youth and the growth of unpaid work outside of total institutions, unpaid work is increasingly mandated by new discourses surrounding citizenship, maturity and education. in the broadest terms, young people are now routinely required to provide for their own training and education, activities previously embedded in many labour force activities as apprenticeships and on-the-job training. in almost all national contexts, the lion’s share of the financial costs attached to training and education have been downloaded onto students (livingstone, 2001). young people are typically not paid or are paid very little for these efforts but they, in fact, must themselves pay for this access to education. as a result, for many students the first decade of their formal paid employment will entail paying for their previously accrued debts to the state’s educational apparatus. students – notably high school, but also college or university – are now regularly required as part of their formal education to function as unpaid (underpaid) apprentices or trainees in co-op programs. any direct or indirect monetary benefit may accrue to the school itself but is often buried in a tit for tat exchange by the educational institution and the organization providing the placement. the educational institutions benefit from a low-cost opportunity to offer their students hands-on work experience while employers enjoy access to unpaid work, coercion and the fear economy | 19 free, semi-skilled labour. unpaid co-op programs have become an expected part of many secondary and post-secondary educational curricula and many facilities have established an extensive administrative structure devoted to seeking and maintaining co-operative options. an important variant on this ever more popular arrangement is the requirement in many locales that high school students volunteer for a specified number of hours as requisite for their high school diploma. in ontario, for example, high school students are required to provide documentation that they ‘volunteered’ in one or several community agencies for a minimum of 40 hours in order to ‘earn’ their high school diploma. while community service is presented in terms of the positive benefits and the significance of participation in the local community, the underlying calculus is coercive – students are required (not encouraged) by the educational system to engage in unpaid labour. this is also experienced in university/college contexts, where students are required to engage in a specified number of volunteer/unpaid work hours in a specific context in order to qualify to apply for a targeted university program. similarly, the growing enthusiasm for experiential learning courses rests on the assumption that education and volunteerism are intertwined. finally, unpaid coop students ‘earn’ educational credits for ‘working’ – often alongside ‘real’ workers who are actually earning a wage for precisely the same labours. the dramatic expansion in volunteerism and the voluntary sector is, of course, directly associated with the emergence of neoliberalism regimes and the erosion of state-provided services (wacquant, 2010; ilcan, 2009). while these practices are typically constructed as arrangements that benefit students, in actuality the meaning of volunteerism, education and unpaid work are increasingly conflated and confounded. this pressure on youth to participate in diverse forms of unpaid work reflects emergent structures that normalize the integration of unpaid work into youth employment socialization. nowhere is this more blatant than in the pressures on students, trainees, and unemployed youth to accept unpaid work as a key strategy in building resumes and legitimizing work credentials. in the context of universities, graduate students were recently invited to apply for lengthy unpaid research assistantships at the university of birmingham and at university college london. while public outcry led to the elimination of these advertised ‘opportunities’, the possibility of such positions speaks to the growing acceptance of the notion that working for 20 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice free is a reasonable part of educational and employment discourses (perlin, 2013, a2). this conflation of unpaid and paid work is readily apparent in the popularization of unpaid internships as normative employment practices (perlin, 2011). although headlines announce that the exploitation of unpaid interns is now at ‘epidemic levels’, in actuality relatively little is known about this dimension of the labour force (oved, 2013: gt1; mcnight, 2013, a8). evidence concerning unpaid internships is largely anecdotal. with extremely high rates of youth unemployment, young job applicants increasingly find themselves offered the opportunity to work for weeks or months as an unpaid intern with no guarantee of employment at the end of that period. while employers promise work-place experience, interns often complain that there is very little in the way of on-the-job training and their responsibilities often involve low-level tasks. given the murkiness of labour law on internships, interns may find themselves with little to no labour protection (no access to employment insurance benefits, no coverage under work and safety provisions). while recent high-profile cases have called attention to this practice and its inequities, this ‘institutionalized wage theft’ remains an issue (hananel, 2013, a21; brown and ferguson, 2013, a8). in the ‘fear’ economy, where ‘good’ jobs are rare and unemployment is high, young interns are loath to alienate potential employers. once hired, workers frequently face the prospect of ‘day jobs that never end’. while information technology has established the likelihood that workers of all ages will be ‘on call’ in terms of e-mail, cell phones, twitter and so on beyond their paid working hours, this is particularly an issue for young workers striving to succeed (perlin, 2011). this unending responsibility for the creation and maintenance of cultural capital is seen to be simply a necessity in a harsh labour market. this may be further underscored by draconian employment expectations – no paid time-off, no late arrivals or departures, weekend and night availability, no routine breaks or lunchtimes. while intense expectations have been commonplace at the beginning of well-paid professional careers such as law and medicine, they have been extended now to young workers who are working for relatively scant rewards in terms of income, benefits and long-term job security (wayne, 2013, 7). unpaid work, coercion and the fear economy | 21 unpaid work in the context of paid work despite the concerns about unpaid work articulated by workers – constrained, for example, to finish their tasks or close up the service on their own time when necessary – little academic research has focussed on this aspect. a recent canadian survey supports this extension of paid employment into ‘free’ time but provides little clarification of the patterns. eighty per cent of those surveyed indicated they work during their vacations. not surprisingly, 80 per cent indicated that technology allowed work to invade their ‘free’ time (kane, 2013, s11). the findings invite further research and consideration of national cultures of work. possibly in countries with a strong labour movement coupled with high rates of unemployment, unionized workers (regardless of gender, ethnicity, job status) will be less vulnerable to compelled unpaid work than those occupying higher ranks without union protection and enjoying high hourly rates in a very competitive job market. while we often consider many groups of workers as underpaid for the work they carry out, we may re-examine underpayment as a variant on unpaid work. there are two ways in which workers are not compensated for work they do while performing paid employment. first, in a competitive market with employers searching for cost-savings at every turn, employers rely on their labour forces as a reserve of skills, talents, and abilities for which they are often neither acknowledged nor adequately compensated. as basso (1998, 198) reminds us, profit is “unpaid working time”, unpaid labour, and one of the primary principles around which capitalism operates is the “appropriation of unpaid working time” (199). during the eighties, for example, with the introduction of microtechnology in the workplace, technophiles often found themselves assisting co-workers in teaching computer techniques, programming or re-programming computers, repairing equipment, and adapting the office to various forms of e-work (zuboff, 1984). for many, the expectation was that they would carry out this work in addition to the tasks identified in their formal job descriptions and their pay was not adjusted to account for the higher price their skills might command in the labour market. secondly, under intensified work conditions, many employees report that their work schedule demands that they skip or shorten lunch breaks or rest periods, and that they are expected to accomplish too much for the time that they are employed. as a result, many spend some time at work (or at home) finishing the job for free. in describing the movement beyond a wage-based 22 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice economy, gorz (1999) argues that it is becoming difficult, if not impossible, to identify stable employment with wages based on a set number of hours worked per week. the lines between paid and non-paid time are blurred for knowledge workers, craftworkers, the self-employed, or for those workers–nannies and others in caring occupations and emotional work, for example–who provide services that are “intangible” (gorz, 1999). at the extreme end, private sector sweatshops across the globe exploit workers, including children and young workers, not only by paying far less than a living wage, but also by subjecting workers to deplorable conditions without rest breaks or washroom privileges. anti-sweatshop campaigns exposed nike and a number of other apparel and footwear companies paying workers only a few cents an hour, forcing overtime with little or no bonus, and requiring shifts of twelve or more hours, frequently extending overnight (clawson, 2003). closer to home, sassen (1988; 1991) and other analysts point to the growth of the “informal economy”, referring to the integration of migrant workers– undocumented, underemployed, underpaid–into the post-industrial economy, outside of the formal structures. growth in this illicit work along with an expansion of lower-end work in the formal service sector support the highly paid service, business and professional workers, easing their demanding schedules by providing relatively inexpensive personal and domestic services while providing a barely adequate buffer against outright impoverishment for the workers. while many workers, then, are simply not compensated for their skills or for the volume of work they accomplish during paid work hours, other forms of unpaid work may be less visible as they are often done outside the place of employment or after hours. relatives and friends who contribute freely to “help out” in a business owned by a family member engage in a distinct form of “unpaid market labour” that raise a number of taxation and other policy-related issues (philipps, 2008). for decades, secretaries and, today, administrative assistants have been often expected by their employers to undertake work that is well beyond their job descriptions–dropping off/picking up dry cleaning, buying snacks for office meetings on their way to work. this work is gendered and replicates domestic and motherhood roles, as women are generally assigned the (unwritten) duties of care, including personal problem-solving, maintaining an inviting front, and in some cases, engaging directly in activities such as decorating the office, cleaning the lunch room, and arranging seasonal events, retirement parties, or other social affairs. unpaid work, coercion and the fear economy | 23 finally, it should be noted that many of the paid benefits, notably leave provisions, are being eroded in the ‘fear’ economy. ironically, despite the intensification of unpaid labour, paid ‘free’ time may be increasingly scarce. many of the benefits workers “earn,” including leaves, are not implemented. in the u. s., for example, the family and medical leave act of 1993 entitles workers up to three months leave without pay for personal or family emergencies, while the fair labor standards act is noted for its failure to ensure sick, personal or vacation leaves (johnson, 2002). the working-class in particular is shortchanged by these policies. similarly, because of the low levels of earnings replacement, many new parents throughout western economies are unable to take advantage of parental leaves. among couples who do opt for parental leave, mothers whose regular earnings are typically lower, have higher ‘take-up’ rates than their male partners, thereby leaving intact the traditional gendered division of labour (evans and pupo, 1993; haas, 2004; marshall, 2008). in this context, the erosion of paid retirement benefits throughout western economies indicates not only that workers are required to work longer and more frequently for no pay, but their opportunities for paid ‘free’ time are disappearing. neoliberal welfare regimes and mandated unpaid work many citizens also find themselves shoved into unpaid work by dramatic shifts in welfare ideologies and practices. changes in social welfare in contemporary neo-liberal regimes – in particular the shift from an entitlement to an earned approach to benefits – has directly impacted the involvement of welfare recipients in unpaid labour. today, in the united states, britain and canada, for example, recipients are often required to engage in ‘volunteer’ activities or in ‘paid work’ activities in order to qualify for their benefits. these new patterns in social welfare provision speak to the complexities of unpaid labour today. in some respects, it may appear that the recipients are ‘working’ for their welfare benefits, hence the term “workfare.” when working side by side with paid workers, workfare recipients are still separate and distinct since they do not share the rights and standing (including, job security, benefits and access to unionization) enjoyed by regular workers. in many contexts, if welfare recipients are permitted to retain their employment earnings, some portion of those earnings are ‘clawed back’ through reductions to social assistance payments. for example, until recently recipients of ontario disability support were permitted to work only 10 hours a month before their disability payments 24 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice would be reduced 50 cents for every dollar they earned (monsebraaten, 2013, a3). in a sense, as long as they are dependent on the state, some portion of their work time is unpaid. not surprisingly, recent research speaks to the feelings of coercion often attendant to the work-for-welfare schemes. moreover, as andre gorz (1999) argues required compulsory volunteer work becomes a cul de sac, giving rise to divisions between those who freely volunteer and those who are compelled to do so, and in the process, devaluing the work performed and the services delivered. in this process, welfare recipients on workfare have even been mobilized as a solution to the problems identified with undocumented workers. in virginia and other areas of the u. s., government departments (social services and the immigration and naturalization service) cooperate to replace undocumented workers with welfare recipient-workers who are “equally exploitable and controllable” (chang, 2000). many favour working-for-welfare schemes and especially the replacement of “illegal” workers with welfare recipients because the program simultaneously addresses two contentious contemporary issues–that welfare recipients enjoy a “free ride” and that illegal workers take jobs from americans (157). workplaces for both groups are frequently hazardous, dirty, and unhealthy and workers may be exposed to toxins without proper protections and training. workplace monitoring may be draconian. for example, in san francisco workfare recipients sweeping streets lose one month’s benefits for reporting ten minutes late and, generally, those on workfare are not entitled to any time off (chang, 2000). such measures raise questions about the relationship between workers’ rights and citizenship or human rights and entitlements (ruggie, 2008; swepston, 2007). the intensification of unpaid household work: class, race and immigrant status dimensions in recent decades, analysts have increasingly emphasized the complexities of unpaid household work and move away from simple gendered approaches (for example, matthaei, 2001; eichler and albanese, 2007). for example, the nature, extent and duration of the work will vary considerably from place to place, from social class to social class and will depend upon the family life course and cultural practices (gaudet, cooke and jacob, 2011; mcmullin, 2005). amongst well-to-do classes, for example in the philippines and brazil, unpaid work, coercion and the fear economy | 25 household work may entail hiring, training and supervising domestic staff (as noted in manrai and manrai, 1995). amongst the remainder of the population, unpaid household work may be much more burdensome and time-consuming since labour-saving devices and consumer products are beyond the reach of the family. in many contexts, those with lower incomes spend more time in unpaid work compared to those with higher incomes. recent research in canada concludes that women with ‘lower’ class characteristics, notably, low levels of education, stay at home in unpaid labour for longer periods after childbirth (gaudet, cooke and jacob, 2011). in a few select national contexts, generous state-funded support for work in the home (as reflected in lengthy parental leave provisions, low-cost child care and assistance for seniors) results in more manageable unpaid household work obligations. further, life course analyses have drawn increased attention to the complex ways in which the pressures of unpaid household work vary over time depending upon the presence of young children or aging seniors, the paid employment schedules of partners and, among other factors, the finances available to ‘buy’ some services or state provision or support for such services. within all these diversities, the overarching historical trends are towards increased individual engagement with unpaid work in domestic labour. the upward pressures on unpaid domestic work reflect first, the growing numbers of neo-liberal regimes around the globe intent on absenting themselves from various familial responsibilities; secondly, the globalized intensification of capitalist work relations which exploit a growing diversity of work arrangements globally and, thirdly, the widespread aging national profiles which tend to multiply demands on families and communities. in addition to mothers and fathers, grandparents, children and teens are with increasing frequency picking up any slack left by women’s growing involvement in the paid labour force by engaging in unpaid domestic work. both family type and background affect teens’ unpaid housework. mechanisms for the proliferation of unpaid domestic work are not restricted to family members. the contracting out of unpaid domestic work to paid workers may create another avenue for locating support for domestic work. although in theory, nannies, child-care providers and home cleaners are to be paid for their labours, many of these workers are subject to exploitation as unpaid workers. in particular, immigrant women who come to north america to work as nannies, report that they are routinely expected to work unpaid hours 26 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice over and above their paid responsibilities (ehrenreich and hochschild, 2002; hondagneu-sotelo, 2001). given their position as domestic workers and their vulnerability to immigration policy, it is not surprising that they comply with employers’ demands for unpaid work. similarly, many young women who become baby-sitters and nannies may, by token of their youth, gender and social class, find themselves vulnerable to such exploitation. women who provide babysitting or housecleaning under near-poverty conditions or to augment welfare payments may also be especially susceptible, and they may regularly work beyond paid-for hours. the practice of underpaying or not paying in-home domestic workers is so prevalent that, under pressure from its masses of (primarily latina immigrant) domestic workers, new york state passed the unpaid wages prohibition act in 1997, known as a potent wage enforcement law (hondagneusotelo, 2001; clawson, 2003). under this act, employers are penalized for nonpayment with fines ranging from 25 to 200 percent of the back wages owed. moreover, violations are considered felonies rather than misdemeanours. the majority of domestic workers, however, work without contracts, and even when they are in place, they are very difficult to enforce. despite the new york case, investigations continue to reveal that exploitation, underpayment and nonpayment of nannies, immigrant caregivers, immigrants in general and migrants remain significant social issues (creese and wiebe, 2010; man, 2004; keung, 2012, a12; brazao, 2009). globalization and recent economic developments have transformed the nature of household work and the place of women within structures of inequality. joan acker argues that under globalization, gender is “both embodied and embedded in the logic and structuring of globalizing capitalism” (as cited in gottfried, 2004, 10) and that women have lost out in the separation of reproduction from production. the mobilization of labour for productive work is heavily dependent upon the availability of labour for reproductive work. women in the paid labour force not only provide transnational corporations with a source of cheap labour, but also form a stable labour force, thereby decreasing risks of investment and output (11). in this process, as more women remain in the labour force during child bearing years and have shorter periods of work interruption than in previous generations, some unpaid domestic work is shifted through “transnational ‘care chains’” (hochschild, 2003, 18). domestic workers from across the globe undertake the reproductive work, including unpaid work, coercion and the fear economy | 27 emotional, physical and sexual labour, in the homes and communities of highly educated, professional, wealthy women (ehenreich and hochschild, 2002). meanwhile, many of these domestic workers engaged in cleaning the homes and caring for the children of middle-class individuals leave their own children in the care of their own (unpaid) older children, mothers, grandmothers, and extended family, thereby contributing to the new regime of “transnational motherhood” and the globalization of unpaid domestic labour (lee and pacini-ketchabaw, 2011; hondagneu-sotelo, 2001). this pattern of women who provide both unpaid and paid household or caregiving work may, in turn, be related to women’s segregation into caregiving occupations in the paid labour force. not surprisingly, research suggests that shifts in the structure – decentralization of social welfare organizations along fiscal restraints on government funding – have resulted in increased pressures on these women workers to extend their efforts into unpaid work hours in order to meet the needs of their clients or patients (corman and luxton, 2007). considerable research indicates that it is more vulnerable women – recent immigrants, visible minorities, single mother and working-class women who are particularly likely to be found in many caregiver occupations, for example, as personal support workers – groups who are notoriously vulnerable to responsibilities for work beyond their paid hours (jenson, 1997; armstrong, armstrong and scott-dixon, 2008). the growth of the neo-liberal state has not only put increasing pressures on these paid care-givers and their time, it has also put pressure on the mobilization of voluntarism in diverse communities. susan brin hyatt (2001) argues that voluntarism is a neoliberal discourse based on racist, classist and sexist representations of the welfare state and community cooperation and wellbeing. she argues that formalized structures promoting a volunteer culture override the grassroots, cooperative activities, often spontaneously organized, especially among poor black women. with a mindset of fiscal restraint, eliminating community-based programs and the dismantling of the welfare state, voluntarism becomes an increasingly obligatory aspect of citizenship within working and middle-class communities and negates meaningful forms of cooperation in poor communities. as a result, this platform of neo-liberalism effectively reproduces dependency within a low-paid work force, overriding local community-building activities. an individualistic voluntarism, much more 28 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice in keeping with the strictures and structures of paid work, replaces a “community-embedded” collectivist-rooted voluntarism (eckstein, 2001). unpaid work in the context of unpaid community exchange projects at the far end of the continuum stands unpaid work which is not obligatory but which is embraced as a mechanism to improve community relations, re-establishing trust and reciprocity. a very well-known venture in this regard is the american scheme called time dollars which has been active for over a decade and which is found in over 200 cities. in this program, participants can earn money credits through their unpaid work. for example, one hour of work earns a credit that may be exchanged for one hour of someone else’s time. credits are deposited in a ‘bank’ and withdrawn when needed (burns, 2000). much of the unpaid work in this context is attached to efforts at social reform and, in some instances, projects are seeking to establish a form of exchange or barter where community members can step outside traditional working relations (williams and windebank, 2000). indeed, research on voluntarism in sweden concludes that regardless of the expanse of the swedish welfare state, an extensive volunteer sector exists because people have articulated important needs not addressed within the formal state welfare system (grassman and svedberg, 1996). studying women’s work in charitable activities in australia, baldock (1998) argues for inclusion of voluntarism in feminist discourses on unwaged work. considering motives, choice, and gratification from voluntary work in charities, baldock concludes that women act outside patriarchal constraints, and act on choice, motive and human agency rather than on compulsion in undertaking this work. this may be confirmed as we consider the collectivist work and caring undertaken by different groups of poor and working-class women across the globe. mexican workers in the maquiladoras – primarily women – laid off from levi’s, for example, organized a non-profit food and sewing coop, where people sew in an exchange system, and for a day’s work leave with some gas money, some clothing, and a share of the meal they cooked together with items the workers themselves brought in (louie, 2001, 114-116). indeed, many of these efforts have been intended to address the inequities of women’s unpaid and unrecognized labours in the home and in the community. through the exchange women not only draw attention to their ‘work’ but also receive compensation for it (burns, 2000). unpaid work, coercion and the fear economy | 29 labour movements, activist organizations, ecology movements and other political activities and organizations are largely based upon unpaid labour. volunteers themselves may benefit from broader achievements of these organizations and activities, gaining a sense of fulfilment and self-respect for standing up for a particular political position. amongst the issues taken on by labour activists are anti-sweatshop and fair wage campaigns, along with other hours-of-work and working conditions matters. the chinese staff and workers association in new york city, for example, has taken on sportswear companies, subcontracted by large corporations, for non-payment of wages and violations of minimum wage and overtime laws (louie, 2001, 19-20) and numerous antisweatshop campaigns have challenged manufacturers over health and safety violations as well as fair wages, subcontracting, and labour practices. in short, in many respects while these activities occupy the far end of the unpaid work continuum – in that they are not coerced and are in fact compensated in real, if not monetary, ways – they speak to the important divide between unpaid work which is compelled or required while not being socially valued, and unpaid work which is discretionary and valued. conclusion this approach to the conceptualization of unpaid work, highlights three outstanding features: the work is in some sense coerced, the work that is undertaken is elsewhere in the economy ‘paid work’ and that participation in unpaid work reflects historically specific patterns of social inequality. within these parameters unpaid work may take an enormous variety of forms – from highly structured, time-specific training programs to the more autonomous, multi-tasking of a wife/mother. several points need emphasis in this conceptualization of unpaid work. first, some aspect of coercion or compulsion or requirement appears core to concerns about unpaid work. unpaid work, even some volunteer work, is work without pay that one is required to do and work that cannot be left to others. within this sense of requirement, the actual experience of work may be completely varied and somewhat idiosyncratic, with some elements considered very enjoyable, rewarding and/or educational and fulfilling and some participants extending the boundaries of their ‘work’. other forms of unpaid work – unpaid internships and the ‘endless’ workday – may be experienced as 30 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice oppressive, exploitative and a breach of the social contract that recognizes basic human needs. the ‘obligatory’ elements are not only implied in the analysis but are also reflected in patterns of power and subordination. women, youth, seniors, immigrants, visible minorities, the poor and those who combine these various identities are all heavily implicated in the construction of ‘unpaid employment’. upper-class men (and women) may engage in unpaid work (for example, volunteering to participate in a charitable event or serving on the board of a university) but the notion of coercion (outside of the generally discounted notion of noblesse oblige) is not generally understood to enter into these activities. framed more broadly, this coerced approach to unpaid work likely reflects international power variations (souza-poza and henneberger, 2002). countries with relatively higher gdp per capita, with strong organized labour movements and enjoying relative affluence are likely to be characterized by lower over-all rates of unpaid work. secondly, the ‘work’ identified is work which in other or the same contexts in the same economy is generally compensated or paid. this feature is increasingly self-evident with domestic labour as increasing numbers of tasks are commodified or contracted out. from child-care, housecleaning to lawn care and small household maintenance jobs, there is little that is routinely performed without pay in many households that is not elsewhere undertaken for pay. thirdly, by focussing on the coercive component in unpaid work not only is this approach a direct descendent of the original feminist discussion, but it is suggestive of a whole range of further research into unpaid work. the relationship between women’s unpaid caregiving in the paid workplace and in the home would be a strategic point for research. similarly, the use of grandparents and teens, especially in minority, immigrant and/or poor communities, to provide unpaid domestic help is another promising avenue for exploration. clearly those with the least economic, social and political power are the most subject to some form of coercion into unpaid work. fourthly, this approach to unpaid work is completely compatible with an historical/materialist approach to work. clearly unpaid work is situated in relations of ruling. ideologies which rationalize unpaid work – as rehabilitation, education, training or labours of love – can be seen as rooted in contemporary power relations and reflecting particular class, gender, age, and racial/immigrant status patterns of inequality. changes in these patterns or their constellations are unpaid work, coercion and the fear economy | 31 likely to be reflected in changes in both the ideologies and patterns of unpaid work they support. the aging of the population, for example, in the context of youth unemployment are likely to be reflected in increased demands that seniors exit their paying jobs and, instead, donate or volunteer their time. this is already apparent, for example, in terms of growing numbers of women retiring from paid employment in order to care for their aging relatives–relatives who have been essentially abandoned by the state. finally, as clear from the above discussion, this approach to unpaid work situates the work directly in terms of its ties to the state and the economy, both nationally and globally. as the second wave feminists pointed out, women’s unpaid work kept the capitalist economy functioning while providing a reserve army of labour. in many countries, this pattern persists. in north america and europe 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(1984). in the age of the smart machine: the future of work and power. new york: basic books inc. unpaid work, coercion and the fear economy | 37 settling on austerity: isas, immigrant communities and neoliberal restructuring sophia lowe,1 ted richmond2 and john shields3 abstract: immigrant serving agencies (isas) have long been at the centre of the settlement and integration of newcomer populations in canada. they provide a community-based approach to settlement through nonprofit organizations rooted in the communities they serve, a workforce and volunteers drawn largely from immigrant populations, and a value system and voice reflective of the client base. this has been critical to fostering the ‘warmth of the welcome’ for newcomers that has made canadian immigrant integration so successful in an internationally comparative context. this system however is under increasing challenge from austerity and neoliberal restructuring. the pressures include funding cutbacks, loss of isa autonomy, and a general destabilization of nonprofit service provider organizations. this paper examines the impact of the challenges of government austerity and neoliberal policy for the isas and immigrant communities, and considers the prospects for restoring the leadership role of isas in providing successful integration through appropriate settlement services. keywords: settlement services; immigrants; neoliberalism; nonprofits; permanent austerity; advocacy 1 sophia lowe has been working for over a decade in the immigration and settlement sector in areas related to migrant rights, international credential recognition, and the social and economic inclusion of immigrants. 2 ted richmond currently works as an instructor with the chang school at ryerson university, and as a consultant to the nonprofit sector in toronto. his professional background includes the academic, research, private foundation, and nonprofit sectors. 3 john shields is a professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. his research and publications have focused more recently on immigration policy and the political economy of the nonprofit sector. 14 | austerity urbanism and the social economy introduction this paper examines the state of immigrant settlement services delivered by nonprofit providers in the current period of government imposed austerity. social supports to immigrant newcomers to assist in the settlement process offered through locally based, but government funded nonprofit immigrant serving agencies (isas), have formed the core of the canadian model of immigrant reception and integration fostering a more welcoming setting for new arrivals. this is a model that has been regarded as a ‘best practice’ approach to newcomer settlement harnessing the place-based human resources of nonprofit agencies rooted in the communities where immigrants settle and enabled by the funding support of higher tiered governments (richmond and shields 2005). immigrant settlement supports have come to form an important component of the canadian welfare state which is noteworthy given the continued importance that annual recruitment of large numbers of immigrant settlers play in the country’s economic and social development. canada’s active support for immigrant settlement stands in marked contrast to its southern neighbor which has long embraced a hands-off laissez-faire approach to newcomer settlement (shields and bauder 2016). on the larger international scale canada remains a leader in settlement programing and the country most identified for positive settlement practices (shields et.al 2016). settlement services cover a broad range of activities required by immigrants in the often challenging settlement process, including basic orientation to canadian society services, language training, labour market access supports, housing assistance and other specialized programs centered on immigrant needs. these services are important for “supporting immigrants to make the smooth transitions necessary to be able to more fully participate in the economy and society” (shields, et.al, 2016: 4) including the achievement of full citizenship. hence, settlement supports are more encompassing than just those suited to meet the immediate short-term needs of newcomers but also embrace supports directed at serving longer-term integration goals. settling on austerity | 15 additionally, the canadian approach to settlement is characterized as two-way-street between immigrants and canadian society (tolley 2011), where each adjusts and changes in a dialectal process of integration and accommodation. these adjustments in practice, however, take place far more on the newcomer end than that of the host society. still it is more than just symbolically significant that the approach to settlement is not an assimilationist dialogue. the multicultural foundations of modern canadian society and citizenship are an important part of this more cosmopolitan understanding of immigration which stands in contrast to the narrower american melting pot which suggests an assimilation of immigrant cultures into a single american identity (shields and bauder 2015: 18-19). the canadian model of immigrant settlement does, however, require a more engaged state, financially and legislatively, supporting settlement programming and providing public policies like multiculturalism and anti-racism initiatives to promote diversity, openness and inclusion. it should be noted that support from family, friends and other private means is still the dominant source of ‘informal’ settlement support for immigrant newcomers in canada. however, ‘formal’ settlement supports by governments in canada are substantive and important both materially and symbolically. significantly, the federal government, the largest state funder, spends close to $1 billion on settlement programing (levitz 2015). as well, the state’s material commitment to settlement sends a message of official welcome and inclusion to immigrant newcomers. the diminishing of state supports for settlement, both quantitatively and qualitatively, is negatively felt by immigrants. our understanding of the current state of settlement service supports in canada is, however, limited. a previously widely cited study of isas and state restructuring by richmond and shields (2004b) is more than ten years old and predates the official adoption of an austerity agenda embraced by canadian governments in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis (laforest 2013). in canada, moreover, the last decade has 16 | austerity urbanism and the social economy seen major changes to immigration policies and regulations pushed aggressively forward by an ideologically driven conservative government (root, et.al 2015) which held office in ottawa until recently. these changes have largely been documented and often subject to critical analysis (alboim and cohl 2012; barrass & shields 2015; choudry and smith 2016; forier and dufour 2016; zhu 2016), but in the current period there has been relatively little attention paid to the impact of such changes on isas. approach we seek to address this gap through a critical review of the literature on immigrant settlement in canada and by placing the current period in the context of past developments. as such we are able to document both continuity as well as change in the settlement service sector. more substantively we employ the findings from key informant qualitative interviews with ontario-based experts4 who have been working in various capacities in the field, including those from isas. these were conducted to help uncover current conditions, experiences and policy trends impacting isas and immigrant settlement. some dozen in depth semi-structured interviews were conducted for this paper, lasting up to an hour in length. we asked about experiences, insights and observations on how the sector has changed, what impact this has had and how agencies and other players have responded. while all the persons interviewed were asked the same general questions, the interview process was loosely structured, to provide opportunities for dialogue and expression of concerns outside of our initial framework. for purposes of confidentiality the identities of those interviewed have been kept anonymous and thus the interview content is identified in general terms only. detailed notes were taken during the interviews and important information and developments were documented and major themes that 4 this component of the research was undertaken by the community-based researchers sophia lowe and ted richmond. they followed standard ethics based interview protocols and obtained interview consent from all participants. settling on austerity | 17 emerged identified. we were able to substantiate the findings from these interviews by checking them against interview material from a number of other studies which probed individuals involved with the immigrant settlement sector which also covered other parts of english canada.5 what we uncovered in our interviews very closely paralleled perspectives from these other studies giving us confidence in our findings and their general applicability within english canada. the interviews also offer some new details and perspectives on trends and developments identified in the literature. the interview voices and specific experiences and observations are, of course, based out of the greater toronto area and ontario.6 in addition, the community-based research team members, lowe and richmond, have extensive work histories related to the settlement sector in various capacities. their experiences and insights, in effect, as participant observers, contributed much to a grounded understanding and analysis of the state of the settlement sector. in this paper we provide an assessment on isas and the immigrant settlement sector based on these insights, the literature and a detailed report on our interview findings. austerity and settlement services: neoliberal restructuring of social and human supports the austerity agenda has targeted social sources of government spending for deep cuts. senior levels of government have made use of the 5 john shields over the past years has been engaged in a number of sshrc funded collaborative research projects that have been examining nonprofit service provision including settlement services. in all, over 100 individuals involved with the immigrant settlement sector in english canada were interviewed or engaged as part of focus groups. the insights expressed in these encounters were consistent with the broad themes, experiences and sentiments identified in our set of key informant interviews. 6 quebec’s system of settlement support differs from the other provinces as the federal government provides quebec with special funding for it to establish and run its own settlement and immigrant recruitment programs that are specifically centred on the quebec francophone reality. 18 | austerity urbanism and the social economy local, as made evident in the case of the uk’s big society initiative (szreter and ishkanian 2012), to carry forth their downsizing pro-market neoliberal program. nonprofit service delivery organizations are the quintessential community-based human service bodies. they primarily arise out of, are largely staffed by, and are based within the local communities they serve both geographically and in regards to population groups. significantly, austerity bent governments see cuts and restructuring of supports to these organizations as less publicly visible and as being easily absorbed through the use of more voluntary sources of labour and internal efficiencies – ‘doing more with less’ – to make up for lost government revenues (baines et.al 2015). the retreat from government sources of support, according to neoliberal logic, will free up the space and energies of local philanthropic interests and volunteers which have been displaced by ‘excessive’ government involvement in social provision. the reality is that austerity, although undertaken under different labels, is nothing new to the settlement sector; it has faced, in large measure, a state of ‘permanent austerity’ and neoliberal restructuring since the end of the 1980s. the restructuring of social provision has occurred under the direction of new public management (npm). npm has served as a transmission belt used to impose neoliberal governance and practice models into the nonprofit service sector (evans and shields 1998; evans, richmond and shields 2005). while greater detail regarding the neoliberal restructuring of nonprofit service provision can be found in richmond and shields (2004b) and shields and evans (1998) the essence of the process has involved: • services and care previously provided by the state being increasingly downloaded onto local government, non-profit providers, communities and families. this process is referred to as “responsibilization” as the state relinquishes many of its duties shifting the responsibility increasingly onto individuals and other bodies (kelly and caputo 2011: 11). settling on austerity | 19 • a hollowing out of the welfare state, as the shell of many social programs and policy remain, but their scope and reach is greatly diminished (jessop 2014). this hollowing is accompanied with appeals to ‘community’ and the values of charity and volunteering to pick up the slack left by a retreating state. while welfare provision has long involved a mixed social economy where state, market, nonprofits and family have shared responsibilities for social provision, under neoliberalism there has been a dramatic shift away from state responsibility toward other actors (valverde 1995). • increased use of alternate service delivery (asd) involving reduced services, restricted access and nonprofit delivery agents as key elements in the implementation of neoliberalism. even where the state still provides funding for services this is now to be largely delivered by third party actors, and in particular ‘cheap’ nonprofit service providers. costs are more easily controlled in such provision, especially with reduced labour expenses and with the ability of the state to rather invisibly cut supports given the distance between and ‘invisibility’ of the funding for and delivery of services in such arrangements (baines et.al 2014). • npm commands the adoption of ‘business models’, ‘lean production’ and a narrow focus on ‘efficiency’ by delivery agencies to receive state funding for services. this promotes one size fits all approaches to delivery that favours measurable quantity over quality, and rigidity over flexibility in the way services are provided (cunningham and james 2011). larger multi-service agencies are better positioned to compete in such an environment over smaller and ethno-specific isas. • funding of asd, moreover, moves away from longer term more flexible block grants to short-term, competitively-based program financing tied to narrow and strict audit-oriented accountability mechanisms. this works to tie the hands of organizations who must adhere to controlling funding rules that only narrowly support programs and not the organizations who deliver them, and results in time consuming and costly reporting procedures (eakin 2007). 20 | austerity urbanism and the social economy • the end result is a marketized model of thinned out and leaned out services and a system that does not constitute a true partnership between the state and non-profit service providers but a relationship that is dominated by the funder. in this model the state is able to control nonprofit delivers at a distance through their funding and accountability arrangements, a process shields and evans have termed ‘centralized decentralization’ (1998: 13). • there is a greatly diminished place for advocacy by non-profit providers. in the past community-based non-profit agencies were seen, and even encouraged, to be the voices of more marginalized groups they served. often nonprofits were even provided with funding by the state to engage in an inclusionary advocacy role (evans, richmond and shields 2005). however, under npm advocacy has come to be viewed very negatively and nonprofits are reduced to purely client service role. in fact, the funding model has come to produce a strong ‘advocacy chill’ in the non-profit sector, one particularly felt by isas under harper (evans and shields 2014). • a system where nonprofit provider accountability to the funder comes to trump all other forms of accountability. one of the unique features of the non-profit sector is that its organizations have multiple accountabilities – to the communities they serve, their governance boards; to members, staff and volunteers; to the general public; and to funders. but under npm accountability is overwhelmingly directed one way, upward to funders (richmond and shields 2004a). • the delivery of settlement services through non-profit bodies, of course, pre-dates npm. what changed with npm for isas is reduced autonomy for providers, the tight control of programming by the state, a narrowed role in society, and funding instability (evans, richmond and shields 2005). as will be brought to light through our key informants, this model of state funding and control has had some very negative impacts on isas’ ability to serve the immigrant community. it must be noted that the process and impact of npm/neoliberal structuring has been uneven. the settling on austerity | 21 points identified above are consistent with the longer term trends in transformation of state-nonprofit service provision (almog-bar and young 2016). but as a political project neoliberalism has taken time to implement, encountered practical and political opposition which at times has slowed and even set back the direction of change as evidenced in the push back against neoliberal directions in policy in the wake of the harper government’s defeat. the changing landscape of immigration and migration policy in canada the past number of decades witnessed changes in a neoliberal direction to immigration policy emphasizing greater economic class immigration focused on high human capital, stronger border control and security measures, and restraint in settlement funding (shields 2004). however, it is the past decade that has seen a dizzying pace of change in canadian immigration rules and public policy. this situation is well captured by alboim and cohl (2012): “the pace and scope of change in canada’s immigration system in recent years leaves one breathless. from 2008 to july 1, 2012, the federal government has made changes to every aspect of immigration policy, including the way in which reform is undertaken, and more changes are proposed. while some of the recent changes are positive, many are problematic.” the changes implemented under the harper government constituted a major departure from the past breaking the all-party consensus which had existed around the direction of immigration policy (barrass and shields 2015; dorbrowolsky 2012). in brief, immigration policy has been reshaped to: • align more closely to neoliberal and austerity policy directions; • make immigrants and their families more responsible for their own settlement and immigration, thus reducing the state’s commitment to settlement supports; 22 | austerity urbanism and the social economy • focus very heavily on the immediate narrow economic benefits of immigration; • restrict family unification and reduce refugee intake in favour of economic class immigrants; • greatly increase the use of vulnerable temporary foreign workers to ‘flexibly’ fill the labour ‘needs’ of employers; • devolve settlement service responsibilities to sub-national organizations and nonprofit providers; • restructure national welfare states to reduce services and restrict newcomer access to such supports; • tighten the rules around immigration access; • promote and implement racialized restrictions, directed primarily at muslims, in the name of security; and • promote the notion of so-called ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ immigrants as a basis for justifying funding cuts for immigrant support and the greater restrictions on who gets in (barrass and shields 2015; lo et.al 2015; anderson 2013, 2014; arat-koc 1999, 2012; marwah et.al 2013; alboin and cohl 2012; dobrowolsky 2012; shapaizman 2010). in this austere political climate the so-called ‘warmth of the immigrant welcome’ that canada had become so well known for (reitz 1999) has definitely cooled. with the election of the liberal government in ottawa in late 2015 there has been a turn away from the more extreme changes of the harper era, restoring a more balanced approach to immigration recruitment and greater supports for newcomers, especially refugees. in this regard the non-linear trajectory of immigrant settlement policy is revealed. the liberal party, it is important to note, did run in the election on an anti-austerity platform; it spoke instead of the need for public investments (o’toole 2015). they also promoted the idea of evidencebased approaches to policy determination turning away from harper’s more ideological approach to policymaking (griffith 2013). the restoration of the mandatory census is one prominent manifestation of settling on austerity | 23 this. on the issue of immigration and security, however, the liberals, as manifested in bill c-51, have retained the bulk of harper’s strict securitization measures (mia 2016). while it will take some time before the full direction of the liberal government’s immigration policy is revealed, at this point it is fair to say that it constitutes something of a mixed outcome representative of modest progressive change as well as measures of continuity with the harper period. given the timing of our interviews they are more reflective of the impacts on the settlement sector during the harper period. our key informant interviews indicate that many of the changes to immigration policy and programing under the conservatives coincided with changes in the labour market, resulting in more competition for increasingly precarious employment amongst newcomers (see: lewchuck 2015; and gottfried, et.al 2016). despite these changes our informants tell us that there is still an overall expectation on the part of government funders that immigrants will settle quickly and into good jobs, even with a sluggish economy and labour market. respondents recognized that since the 1990s, immigration policy shifted from thinking of immigrants as citizens with families, to thinking of immigrants as workers – economic units, and this was particularly pronounced in the harper period. as a result, most immigrant-serving agencies shifted their language and culture of how they work with immigrants – for example, they began calling them clients and began focusing on narrow measurable economic outcomes of success as demanded by funders as part of reporting requirements. according to respondents, the focus on economic immigration became more pronounced under the harper government, with a move towards increasing numbers of migrants in canada on a temporary basis – temporary foreign workers and international students (hannan et.al 2016; lowe 2010). these policy changes, coupled with tightening restrictions and regulations for immigrants and their families, took place relatively quickly and created burdens not only for newcomers but also for settlement agencies. staff struggled to serve a growing population of 24 | austerity urbanism and the social economy migrants who are ineligible for many services and have varying and unique needs. services for different immigrant groups, including specialized and knowledgeable employment support for highly skilled immigrants, can be difficult to find and programs are located across a variety of agencies. this makes providing the kind of wrap-around services that agencies tend to support challenging. as well, it has been very difficult to keep up with the required knowledge of all the regulatory changes and rules in order to advise migrants appropriately. and isas, in the spirit of austerity, have been compelled to address these increased and more complex needs to settle immigrants in their local communities in a greatly restricted funding environment. respondents noted that more recent changes to immigration policy not only have favoured economic immigrants, but also have changed the mix of economic immigrants. for example, new policies increased official language requirements to come to canada and introduced the express entry system promoting employer directed recruitment. some informants noted that these changes have negatively impacted the diversity of canada’s immigration program. others emphasized that the underlying presumption in all these changes is that migrants should be successful, without requiring as much settlement service support. this has contributed to devaluing and underfunding the entire settlement sector. in addition, some respondents noted that the ever-present challenge of marketing settlement services and their relevance to immigrants are more pronounced. one person noted that “immigrants [are] not seeing immigrant serving agencies as valuable and want to go to mainstream organizations.” the state-isa funding regime funding for community-based settlement services is limited and unstable, and this is widely acknowledged by our key informants. this is highly problematic for isas given their heavy dependence on government funding, which constitutes 85% or more of their budgets (eakin 2007, baines et.al 2014). the move away from core funding over settling on austerity | 25 the last decades to short-term project-funding from all funders has created additional instability and competition across the sector. the general pattern over the past decades has been funding restraint. in ontario substantive cuts to settlement goes back at least to the mid-1990s under the harris government, including its closure of immigrant welcome houses and removing funding for newcomer children’s programs (omidvar and richmond 2003; zhu 2016: 145). the sector has never enjoyed the benefits of stable and consistent funding. but not only has the sector been chronically underfunded; periodically, a considerable amount of money has been injected into the sector, but without a long term vision or plan. in 2006, the canada-ontario immigration act (coia) negotiated between liberal governments in ottawa and ontario contributed to a substantial initial investment in the overall ontario settlement sector where the majority of newcomers arrived. many agencies grew their staffing and programming in response to more funding. however, one respondent noted that this funding was like building the sector out of a “house of cards” – there was little structural funding or planning to withstand a withdrawal of these funds later on. at the end of the coia agreement under the conservative harper government, there were massive cuts to agencies in the sector. while “the settlement sector did what it could” in these circumstances, many respondents noted that it never fully recovered from the post-coia claw backs. one respondent noted that the sector “expanded everything, and then it was all cut.” coia funding inundated the sector with new opportunities. agencies hired people, grew programs and services, opened up new centres and small ethno-specific spaces were boosted. through coia, three times more funding was pushed into the sector in ontario. this allowed additional programs and collaborations like job search 26 | austerity urbanism and the social economy workshop (jsw), host program7 and language instruction for newcomers to canada (linc) to expand. further, agencies grew their human resources role and their capacity to offer solid employment, which attracted skilled workers and emphasized professionalism. coia was also a milestone in terms of collaboration, with formal tripartite agreements involving the three orders of government (federal-provincialcity). respondents noted that coia allowed the government and sector to “collaborate and design something systematically – not just react.” regions were looking at service delivery based on landings data and areas with fewer services and this period saw the launch of the tripartite welcome centre hub model. according to one respondent, when coia ended, settlement services in ontario lost approximately $200 million. this impacted all aspects of service delivery and the capacity of agencies to do the work they had grown over the coia funding period. further, the strong partnerships built between the three levels of government were not maintained. instead, according to respondents, squabbles over the end of the agreement and funding resulted in further strained relations. following the end of coia, many agencies were forced to lay off staff, salaries were flat-lined, services and programs were closed or limited, and some agencies were pushed to shut down. respondents shared that employment across the settlement sector became more precarious, with increases in the instances of part-time, contract and seasonal employment. since the end of coia, the sector as a whole has not experienced growth. financial accountability became cics most important marker of 7 the host program is aimed at assisting immigrant newcomers to better meet the challenges of moving to a new country. the program focuses on using canadian volunteers to help immigrants learn about available services, practice english and french language, develop work related contacts and to engage in their community (canadian newcomer magazine 2016). settling on austerity | 27 agency success, moving ever-further from examining service impact. some agencies continued to grow and expand services, but these are largely multi-service agencies and those relying on a more diverse revenue streams. smaller agencies, organizations and programs that rely on federal funding continued to be heavily impacted by a lack of resources. additional federal cuts continued during the final years of the harper government. these impacted a number of collaborative programs, capacity-building work, and smaller agencies – largely in the greater toronto area (gta). the host program and the jsw program were closed, as well as 13 agencies in the gta. for other agencies, staff and programs were lost and many agencies incurred huge deficits, as cic refused to pay for any severance for laid off employees. program enhancements that were gained after years of advocacy were lost during the harper years, such as summer language instruction programming and a significant reduction in child care services for newcomer program users. in addition, there were further “nickel and dime” cutbacks that impacted agencies and the people they supported. these included restrictions to paying for any food or public transit tickets for clients, and further cuts to child-minding services and staff salaries. additional budgetary restrictions and inflexibility were introduced. surplus funding was clawed back, while deficits were absorbed by agencies. according to some respondents, these types of changes pushed some agencies to micromanage their budgets and carry significant debts over time. it is clear that isas have felt the full impact of neoliberal/austerity agenda, pushed to ‘do more with ever less’. strict contract conditions and rigid accountability requirements work to limit client eligibility and greatly restrict what isas are able to spend on. accountability respondents highlighted that strict contract conditions and funder accountability requirements have increased, without additional funding to support this work. this includes rigid accounting for all funds 28 | austerity urbanism and the social economy used, how they are used and additional data and reporting on impact. even the federal government’s own independent blue ribbon panel on grants and contributions that looked at nonprofit accountability identified the system as dysfunctional, over burdensome and counterproductive for producing a rational and effective system of service delivery (shields 2014: 271). during the harper period the accountability burden increased. according to respondents, it used to be that reporting on how funds were used, as well as the relationship with funding officers, was more dynamic and responsive to needs within the community and for the agency. now, as noted by all respondents, data collection and reporting to ircc (then cic) is very burdensome. as one respondent put it, “accountability is always to the funder, not to the newcomer communities.” this was identified as one of the most significant challenges for agencies, as ircc funds the biggest portion of the settlement sector, but is considered the most disconnected from what is needed and what is going on. further, there are no common indicators of success in settlement because success is defined differently across the sector (e.g., keeping doors open to all newcomers versus growing services and programs). one is responsive and accountable to funders; the other is responsive to community needs and sets the agenda. some respondents warned that without defining the value and impact of the sector as a whole, the sector would continue to be divided, and demonstrating the sector’s impact to funders and the population at large would continue to be a challenge. one respondent said that the sector needs a strategic plan. without this, there may continue to be competition, rather than collaboration, with smaller agencies and many important services being lost. measuring impact in social services is a challenge (cooper and shumate 2016: 41-42). in a short-term project funding environment, planning, evaluation and measuring outcomes and impact are even more challenging for agencies. coupled with limited funding, the higher demand to prove impact and value of programs is nearly impossible for organizations whose capacity, resources and experience are already compromised. despite this, funders require settling on austerity | 29 greater data on outcomes. according to many respondents, this is about creating and justifying further “efficiencies” in the system. for some services, such as employment, the focus on outcomes and outputs can drive the people served into precarious employment. in these instances, targets may be met for the agencies, but the achievement of good jobs, where skills and experience are used, is no longer the focus. respondents noted that the reporting burden – even for small grants – is significant. funders expect more with less – and demand that it be measurable success and impact. many organizations are dedicating significant resources to accessing grants and reporting to funders. this, according to many respondents, ties up limited resources that could be used to run programs and to serve people directly. despite agreement that accountability and efficiency in service-delivery is important in the sector, respondents believe that the way organizations are held accountable is too burdensome and detracts from the value of their services. accountability has been lifted off the government and put on agencies. site visits and other mechanisms for funders to collect data and information about services are no longer common practice. instead, agencies are required to prove everything that they do and report on it, with limited government or funder interface and knowledge of programming. changing accountability structures and greater dislocation between government funders and service agencies also further removes governments from on-the-ground issues and what matters in communities. this can have a profound impact on program and policy development, and lead to disjointed and illogical service delivery. a good example of this is funders requiring that all immigrant children accessing services through a program run in the toronto district school board (tdsb) have permanent resident cards, directly contradicting the toronto access policy that the tdsb signed onto. proper accountability and the ability to evaluate programs requires good will on the part of funders and non-profit agencies, dedicated resources, available expertise and meaningful dialogue. these are elements that are largely missing in 30 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the current funding and accountability regime which is overly interested in hierarchical control and austere delivery of services. competition and collaboration the current funding system in the settlement sector creates poor conditions for collaboration and capacity-building. according to respondents, there is greater competition amongst agencies, for an eversmaller funding pot. one person noted that funders have a “divide and conquer” mentality and approach. for agencies, it is “quite tricky to build partnerships in this context.” some noted that, in sub-sectors of the settlement sector, such as employment and refugee resettlement, there is less competition and better collaboration. this may be in part due to the interest and focus of government in these areas. there used to be funding for leadership development in the sector, as well support for professional development and capacity-building in the sector (türegün 2016). with funders focused on programs and direct-services, the “soft-supports” such as coordination, collaboration, training and professional development struggle to get funding, despite their importance to build and sustain a strong sector and to offer coordinated services. increasing competition for limited resources has contributed to the difficulty the sector has in coordinating, collaborating, sharing a common vision and fighting back together. some organizations are struggling to “do it all” and better coordination would help achieve a common end-goal of supporting immigrants and refugees to successfully settle and succeed. respondents said that they “can’t serve all immigrants and refugees” and that better collaboration and partnership is necessary. marginalizing the sector respondents believe that limited resources and uncertain funding have created increasingly precarious labour conditions within the settlement sector. precarity concerns the lack of security and/or predictability, fostering vulnerability, instability, marginality and temporariness (baines et.al 2014). under-funding and lack of long-term settling on austerity | 31 funding stability mean: employment insecurity; increased workloads (doing “more with less”); lack of promotion ladders; lower wages and minimal benefits; growth of unpaid and underpaid labour. continual threats of defunding make ongoing settlement service operations ‘permanently temporary’. as well an employment structure of ‘permanent temporariness’ becomes embedded into the dna of the sector (cunningham et.al 2016; shields 2014). speaking in terms of funding and government support, one respondent highlighted that “organizations that serve marginalized groups are themselves marginalized.” within the settlement sector, a number of respondents noted that the staff composition is largely immigrantand femaledominated, and that agencies are not afforded the same support as other sub-sectors in the nonprofit community service sector. that many workers in the settlement sector are themselves immigrants from the very communities they service is an important link helping to keep isas close to immigrant clients. but it is also reflective of the problem faced by so many immigrant newcomers in that they become employed in lower waged and precarious employment (gottfried et.al 2016; preston 2010) a factor that marks isa employment patterns (baines et.al. 2014). despite this reality, respondents noted that there are greater demands for professionalization, but without adequate salaries or professional development opportunities within the sector (türegün 2016). all respondents noted that there has been a significant reduction in funding available for professional development, networking and collaboration – for agencies, their staff and for umbrella groups. noting the challenges of attracting and retaining good staff, one respondent noted that “the sector is not valuing critical roles,” largely as they cannot offer decent employment. not all organizations are facing the same challenges. larger, multi-service agencies or organizations with a diversity of revenue streams become organizations that can attract and retain the most talent, as they are better positioned to offer decent work conditions including pay, benefits and a measure of job security. for smaller organizations that are reliant on single-source government 32 | austerity urbanism and the social economy funding, challenges with staff are often overwhelming. funders are requiring additional competencies (such as multiple languages of communication), which results in organizations dividing one stable role into multiple part-time contracts. respondents also noted a reduction in funding for summer linc programs, limiting the availability of yearround employment. these circumstances lead to difficulties with filling positions and retaining qualified staff. in cases where programs are cut and agencies are losing funding, there are direct job losses. in addition, some funders have refused to pay severance. this leaves organizations with legal obligations to pay severance, which incur greater debts. in these circumstances, any longerterm planning for agencies, including staffing, is close to impossible. most funding is limited to three years and there have been significant cuts across the sector. the pressures on isas threaten their long-term viability and the well-being of the communities they serve. the ‘best value for the dollar’ approach of npm creates a ‘race to the bottom’ for nonprofit agencies threatening their ability to deliver quality services and to survive as organizations (cunningham and james 2011). as the social safety net erodes, marginalized populations turn to community service providers including isas for support – but the capacity to respond has been seriously eroded. diversity and commitment of the sector when asked about the greatest assets of the settlement sector, respondents shared that an engaged, passionate and committed workforce, as well as diversity within the sector itself are its greatest assets. people working in the sector feel that their work is “more than a job,” and shared that they love what they do. many staff working in the settlement sector are themselves immigrants, which helps to keep services relevant to the communities they serve and supports strong linguisticallyand culturally-relevant service delivery. of course, the deep commitment to caring on the part of the sector’s workers is a double edged sword as it also becomes a force to bind them to their duties even settling on austerity | 33 under exploitative conditions (baines et.al 2014). respondents also believe that the sector is nimble and flexible – and that organizations remain mission-driven, despite challenges with funder demands. this enables many of them to serve immigrants, regardless of their eligibility for federally-funded settlement services. others highlighted a similar trend, saying that settlement services are responsive to community need, constantly innovating what is offered to best respond to current needs. however, some noted that the sector tends to be overly reactive, which results in less strategic planning and more chasing of funding dollars and demands. for some, this has made much of service planning and delivery less relevant to the needs of immigrants. the settlement sector is very diverse. this is reflected by staff diversity within settlement agencies as well as by diversity across organizations and those working in this sphere. respondents pointed out that the sheer number of agencies and actors involved in the settlement sector makes it difficult to clearly define. those delivering settlement, employment and support services include: large multi-service agencies, municipal services, community health care clinics, legal clinics, ethnospecific agencies and other small niche agencies, employment agencies, programs within other service agencies, private sector services, postsecondary institutions and programs, and faith-based services. there are also umbrella agencies, think tanks, research centres and academic and community partnerships working across immigration issues and supporting aspects of the settlement sector. over the last ten years, respondents have seen many new players enter the immigration and settlement sector at large. some noted that many so-called new players are in reality old players repackaged with buzz-words and social enterprise models. the corporate sector has taken up a larger role (conference board of canada, canadian chamber of commerce) and, according to some individuals, these organizations garner more respect than the nonprofit sector and its work. on public policy issues related to immigration, immigration lawyers are now some of the biggest advocates; however, respondents noted that lawyers have a 34 | austerity urbanism and the social economy particular stake in issues. more recently, private citizens, constituent groups and neighbourhoods have banded together in growing numbers to support and fund refugee resettlement through private sponsorship. this has added another layer of diversity to the sector that serves immigrants and advocates on issues related to immigration and settlement. wide spread civic engagement in refugee settlement promoted by the syrian crisis has been an important development that has aided in strengthening the wider population’s commitment to progressive immigration policies. most respondents count the diversity of the sector as a strength and an asset, noting how coordinated and networked the sector is – especially in the gta. others said the settlement sector was fractious and divided. this sentiment came across most strongly as respondents described how agencies under the npm model compete amongst each other for limited funding, trying to distinguish themselves as unique, rather than collaborating and building common-ground with other agencies. to most, the ontario coalition of agencies serving immigrants (ocasi) has played a strong role in unifying the sector – especially vis-àvis communication and advocating on behalf of the sector. however, some respondents felt that the sector needed to better define its role and standardize a model of care in order to have common ways to demonstrate and measure success. others felt that any pan-canadian settlement vision needs to take a position in relation to issues such as equity, anti-racism and aboriginal rights, rather than being defined exclusively in terms of service delivery. research, policy and advocacy all respondents believe that some funding autonomy is essential for genuine engagement in advocacy. for many, funding autonomy and, specifically, not being tied to ricc-funds, is a direct contributor to the ability to critique government policy and do advocacy work. most noted that there is always an unequal power relationship with a funder – and when this is government, it is more complicated. this limits advocacy settling on austerity | 35 and push-back. many respondents believe the settlement sector is uniquely positioned to engage in public policy advocacy and to raise awareness on issues related to immigration and settlement. they are on the ground with immigrants and can bring individual issues and trends to a systemic level (see: de graauw 2016). however, according to most respondents, the settlement sector on the whole, does not engage in much advocacy. one respondent noted that, when compared to other nonprofit social service sectors, the settlement sector is quiet and quite tame. for many, this lack of advocacy is related to a fear of losing funding. umbrella agencies, such as ocasi, and other coalitions, such as the consortium of agencies serving internationally-trained persons (casip), play an important role in ensuring that the sector has “protected voices” when advocating. respondents felt that their agencies could not lobby, but that advocacy could happen through these channels. some noted that it is not difficult to advocate, but that this cannot be done in opposition; it can be done in “soft ways,” such as by engaging in planning tables, the national settlement council, working groups, boards and umbrella groups (evans and shields 2014). one respondent noted that “advocacy is also a good service” – helping to ensure that policies and politics align with community needs. however, others noted that the softer advocacy coming from agencies can be a form of self-promotion, reinforcing competition in the sector. others noted that autonomous organizations, like foundations should be playing a more active role in both advocacy and funding advocacy work for agencies, which “can’t separate the political from issues.” recently, umbrella organizations are increasingly monitored and controlled. this, according to some respondents, is intended to restrict advocacy. ocasi, unlike many other umbrella agencies, has continued to speak out in defense of immigrants and the sector (douglas 2016). however, some respondents felt that the advocacy efforts were not always strategic, and were too often reactive and overly focused on settlement sector funding. one respondent noted that in an advocacy 36 | austerity urbanism and the social economy space, ocasi needs to support defining the sector first, in order to be able to best advocate for the sector’s work. another highlighted that advocacy can come directly from agencies themselves, “pushing back with funders and not taking everything as it comes.” some organizations continue to advocate in public spaces, despite the “advocacy chill” produced and perpetuated by governments. respondents noted that some small ethno-specific agencies continue to do valuable advocacy work and respond to local issues. some of these organizations have been defamed for doing so; although many do not risk funding, they may risk revocation of charitable status. the fear of advocacy and speaking out, according to a number of respondents, has never been as severe as it was during the decade of harper rule at the federal level. even still, different actors and players have entered into these spaces to advocate for policy and program reforms. a key example was the direct advocacy and mobilizing of health care professionals, students and other activists around cuts to the interim federal health program for refugees. the formal settlement sector supported and participated in this movement, while the leadership came largely from others. similarly, the recent syrian refugee crisis brought forward a significant surge in public pressure and mobilization from faith-groups, community groups and private sponsorship groups. these groups have been vocal and have drawn important attention to a number of important areas, including the value of resettlement and diversity in canada, the presence of a settlement sector and the inadequacy of many social supports currently in place. when asked about the importance of research for the settlement sector, respondents noted that a growing body of research in this field has been vital to supporting service planning and advocacy. more, respondents noted how ceris, metropolis, social planning toronto, the maytree foundation and other partnerships with researchers and academics, showed agencies that they “could get involved in research and help to define the agenda.” some noted that such collaborations have been important in helping the sector measure success, come into public settling on austerity | 37 policy arenas and influence governments. in addition, some of the research that came from these collaborations built the capacity of agencies to undertake their own research and document, through evidence, local-level and neighbourhood challenges, service impact, and policy issues (shields, et.al 2015). in a policy world where evidence and the ability to show results matter, research capacity can be a significant asset (lum et.al 2016). agencies that use research to build a strong case for their services, according to our key informants, appear to be enjoying greater access to varied funding streams. one respondent highlighted that research on the indicators of disadvantage and how settlement services are aligned and respond to this, would support both the work of the sector as a whole and the ability to convince others of the value in this work. conclusion isas have been an essential part of modern immigration settlement and integration in canada. their funding to deliver locally centred services for newcomers has been part of internationally recognized best practices approaches to immigrant reception. active state support for settlement has in fact become an integral part of canada’s welfare system. however, the impacts of years of neoliberal restructuring of social provision and funding austerity has weakened the foundations of the settlement sector and worked to loosen the community-based ties as npm ‘reforms’ imposed controls on isa programing have bound nonprofit service delivery to funders over communities served. the relationship between isas and state funders has been an overly one directional controlling one, not a true partnership, with government setting all the rules. it has also served to in effect narrow the role of isas to simply that of service provider, marginalizing an advocacy function. the diversity of service delivery offered by nonprofit agencies has long been identified as one of the core strengths of the sector (salamon 2015) but this asset has been weakened 38 | austerity urbanism and the social economy under npm given its preference to fund primarily large multiservice agencies. at the heart of the isa-government relationship is the model of funding developed under npm. the imposition of a competitive shortterm program-based financing tied to a rigid accountability framework, which replaced a more open ended block funding system, is the mechanism by which government is able to control those it funds and impose business-oriented management systems. moreover, the instability of funding for isas and the endless pressures to lean service provision – ‘do more with less’ – has created tremendous precarity in the sector making forward planning very difficult. the key to reform, consequently, rests with the funding model (see: shields 2014: 269-274). funding needs to be longer-term and stable with more flexibility in terms of organizational discretion in spending. the accountability to funders needs to be less rigid and opened up to include accountability to communities served. funders should not be in a position where they impose ‘advocacy chill’ on service providers. a funding system that recognizes the value of the diversity of the settlement sector and supports large multiservice agencies as well as small ethno-specific isas is important as it is this diversity which enables greater reach and a more flexible response to varying newcomer needs. a measure of isa funding autonomy is essential for effective engagement with community and advocacy. isas ‘give voice’ to the communities they serve, and this is essential to making integration a two-way street. for too long the relationship between isas and their government funders has been top down, without real dialogue or true partnership. a mature and respectful relationship between funders and isas that values the services and the organizations that deliver them is critical to improving immigrant settlement and integration. settling on 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(2014 october). discounting immigrant families: neoliberalism and the framing of canadian immigration policy change – a literature review. rcis working paper (ryerson centre for immigration and settlement), no. 2014/7. salamon, l. (2015). the resilient sector revisited: the new challenge to nonprofit america. washington, dc: the brookings institution press. shapaizman, i. (2010). the influence of neo-liberal ideas and political conflict on the privatization process of immigrant policy: a comparison of israel, canada and the netherlands. maryland: centre for international policy exchanges. 44 | austerity urbanism and the social economy https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/20/canada-voted-politics-anti-austerity-justin-trudeau-liberals https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/20/canada-voted-politics-anti-austerity-justin-trudeau-liberals shields, j. (2014). constructing and ‘liberating’ temporariness in the canadian nonprofit sector: neoliberalism and nonprofit service providers. in latham, r., preston, v. and vosko, l., eds., liberating temporariness? migration, work and citizenship in and age of insecurity, (pp. 255-281). montreal: mcgill-queen’s university press. shields, j. (2004). no safe haven: markets, welfare and migrants. in kretsendemas, p. and aparacio, a., eds., immigrants, welfare reform and the poverty of policy, (pp. 35-60.). new york: praeger. shields, j., drolet, j. and valenzuela, k. (2016, february 1). immigration settlement and integration services and the role of nonprofit providers: a cross-national perspective on trends, issues and evidence. rcis working paper. ryerson centre for immigration and settlement. http://www.ryerson.ca/content/dam/rcis/documents/rcis%20w p%202016_01%20shields%20et%20al%20final.pdf shields, j., preston, v., richmond, t., sorano, y., gasse-gates, e., douglas, d., campey, j. and johnston, l. (2015 may). knowledge mobilization/transfer and immigration policy: forging space for ngos – the case of ceris – the ontario metropolis centre. journal of international migration and integration, 16(2), 265-278. shields, j. and bauder, h. (2015). introduction – understanding immigration, settlement, and integration in north america. in bauder, h. and shields, j., eds., immigrant experiences in north america: understanding settlement and integration, (pp.11-33). toronto: canadian scholars press inc. shields, j. and evans, b.m. (1998). shrinking the state: globalization and the “reform” of public administration, halifax: fernwood. shields, j., türegün, a. and lowe, s. (2014). settlement and integration research synthesis 2009 2013. a ceris report submitted to citizenship and immigration canada, ottawa. settling on austerity | 45 http://www.ryerson.ca/content/dam/rcis/documents/rcis%20wp%202016_01%20shields%20et%20al%20final.pdf http://www.ryerson.ca/content/dam/rcis/documents/rcis%20wp%202016_01%20shields%20et%20al%20final.pdf szreter, s. and ishkanian, a. (2012). introduction: what is big society? contemporary social policy in a historical and comparative perspective. in szreter, s. and ishkanian, a., eds., the big society debate: a new agenda for social welfare?, (pp. 1-24). cheltenham, uk: edward elgar publishing limited. tolley, e. (2011). introduction: who invited them to the party? federalmunicipal relations in immigrant support. in tolley, e. and robert young, r., eds., immigrant settlement policy in canadian municipalities, (pp. 3-48). montreal: mcgill-queen’s university press. türegün, a. (2016, october 5). ideas and interests embedded in the making of ontario’s fair access to regulated professions act, 2006. journal of international migration and integration, doi:10.1007/s12134-016-0506-9 valverde, m. (1995). the mixed social economy as a canadian tradition, studies in political economy, 47(1), 33-60. zhu, y. (2016). immigration policy, settlement service, and immigrant mothers in neoliberal canada: a feminist analysis. canadian ethnic studies, 48(2), 143-156. 46 | austerity urbanism and the social economy critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 405 critical education and insurgent pedagogies: an interview with e. wayne ross carlo fanelli carlo fanelli1 (cf): before working in the post-secondary education sector, you also taught as a pre-school and high-school instructor. could you explain the impact that neoliberalism has had philosophically and as a political economic project on the institutional aspects of education. have there been noticeable cultural shifts, differences in pedagogical emphases or allocation of funding priorities? e. wayne ross2 (ewr): for more than three decades now there has been a steady intensification of education reforms worldwide aimed at making public schools and universities more responsive to the interests of capital than ever before. and, neoliberal ideology is at the heart of what’s been labelled the global education reform movement or germ. key neoliberal principles such as reducing government spending for education (and other social services) and privatizing public enterprises has led to targeting the very existence of public education or more precisely education in the public interest. indeed, a key aim of neoliberalism is the destruction of the commons, the very idea of the common 1  carlo fanelli is a social sciences and humanities research council postdoctoral fellow at the department of politics and public administration, ryerson university, and scholar-inresidence at the global labour research centre, york university. in addition to serving as editor of alternate routes, he has published widely on critical political economy, labour studies, canadian public policy, climate change, social movements, urban sociology and education. he maintains a collection of his writing at www.carlofanelli.org 2  e. wayne ross is professor in the department of curriculum and pedagogy and co-director of the institute for critical education studies at the university of british columbia. he has published more than 20 books and over 200 articles, book chapters, essays, and reviews on curriculum studies, social studies education, teacher education, and critical pedagogy. his most recent books include: the social studies curriculum: purposes, problems, and possibilities (4th edition, state university of new york press, 2014) and critical theories, radical pedagogies, and social education (with abraham deleon, sense publishers, 2010). wayne is co-founder of the rouge forum and co-editor of the academic journals workplace, and critical education. he maintains a collection of his writing at http://blogs.ubc.ca/ross/ 406 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education good, instead substituting individualism and individual responsibility. this idea is reflected in stephen harper’s calls to avoid “committing sociology” or margaret thatcher’s declaration that there is “no such thing as society.” denying the existence of the commons and public interests transforms long held notions about what democracy is and the role of public education in democratic societies. neoliberal education reform aims for a large-scale transformation of public education that opens it up to private investment, enabling extraction of private profits. in 2005, the global education market was valued at $2.5 trillion; and the latest estimates are $4.4 trillion, with projections for rapid growth over the next five years. so, the opportunity for profit extraction is huge. corporations and the governments that serve their interests, along with neoliberal think tanks like the fraser institute and frontier centre and philantrocapitalist entities like the gates, broad, and walton foundations have been systematically reconstructing the discourse about public education as well as education funding and the nature of teaching and learning that goes in classrooms so that public education better serves the interests of capital. as a result, education aimed at helping students develop personally meaningful understandings of the world and contributing to a flourishing civil society is stifled. there are three key strategies of neoliberal education reform: (1) school choice and privatization; (2) human capital policies for teachers; and (3) standardized curriculum coupled with the increased use of standardized testing. charter schools are publicly funded independent schools that are attended by choice. neoliberal education reformers promote policies that would close public schools deemed “low performing” and replace them with publicly funded, but privately run charters and/or expanded use of vouchers and tax credit subsidies for private school tuition. human capital policies for teachers aim to alter the working conditions of teachers, which makes eliminating or limiting the power of teacher unions a primary objective of neoliberal education reform. human capital education policies include increasing class size (often tied to firing teaching staff); eliminating or weakening of tenure and seniority rights; using unqualified or “alternatively certified” teachers; increasing the hours that teachers work and reducing sick leave; and replacing governance by locally elected school boards, with various forms of mayoral and state takeover or private management; and using the results of student standardized tests to make teacher personnel decisions in hiring, firing, and pay. critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 407 key parts of the education reform discourse in the usa, which can be traced directly through every republican and democratic presidential administration from reagan to obama, include a focus on standardization of the curriculum and de-professionalization of teachers as teaching is increasingly reduced to test preparation. from reagan’s a national at risk, to george h. w. bush’s national education summits, clinton’s goals 2000, to george w. bush’s no child left behind act, and obama’s race to the top, there has been an ever tightening grip on what students learn and what teachers teach. the primary instruments used in the surveillance of teachers and students and enforcement of official knowledge has been the creation of state level curriculum standards paired with standardized tests, creating bureaucratic accountability systems that undermine the freedom to teach and learn. in parallel to the rise of standards-based, test-driven education there is been an ever growing resistance at the grassroots levels in the usa. what started has a small movement in the education community in the 1990s – led by groups such as the rouge forum, chicago public schools teachers and other educators who produce the newspaper substance, including teacher and writer susan ohanian, the national center for fair and open testing (fairtest) and the rethinking schools collective – has blossomed into a wide-spread resistance movement.3 for example, teachers in chicago and seattle have recently won important victories for the resistance to corporate education reforms. while community-based groups across the usa continue to gain traction in efforts to derail test-driven education, the education de-formers led by obama’s education secretary arne duncan and corporate/philanthropic backers including the gates, broad and walton family foundations still have the upper hand, demanding use of student standardized tests results to make teacher personnel decisions in hiring, firing, and pay. and, the next big thing in standardized curriculum is known as the common core state standards, which were created by gates foundation consultants for the national governors association. the common core is, in effect, a national curriculum that will be enforced via tests that are currently being developed by publishing behemoth pearson. the political and educational landscape in canada differs in important ways from the usa, but it is certainly not immune from the deleterious effects of neoliberal education reform. the canadian education 3  see, for example: fairtest’s “testing and resistance reform news” (http://fairtest.org/ news/other); substance news (http://www.substancenews.net/); susan ohanian’s website (http://www.susanohanian.org/); rethinking schools (http://www.rethinkingschools.org/); and the rouge forum website (http://www.rougeforum.org/). 408 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education system is a collection of regional systems in which governments have advanced neoliberal agendas for public education, including “increasing choice” by fostering private schools, introducing a number of market mechanisms into the public education, imposing standardized tests that used to create ranking or “league tables” to enhance competition between schools as well as allowing private companies to advertise in schools. the province of british columbia, in particular, is an important battleground over neoliberal education reform. bc is home to one of the most politically successful neoliberal governments in the world and schoolteachers have been waging a pitched battle against the bc liberals since the party swept into power in 2001. i’ll say more on that later. school governance in the province is also entirely top-down, with the appearance of local influence via local school planning councils. while bc does not have the proliferation of standardized tests that exist in the usa, standardized tests scores are used by the fraser institute, an influential neoliberal think tank, to rank schools in bc. fraser institute rankings are used to promote the notion “choice” in education and generally serve as a means for categorizing poorer, more diverse public schools as “failing,” while wealthy private schools dominate the top spots. in bc, government retains its authority over public education, but no longer undertakes the responsibility of assuring the educational wellbeing of the public. instead, this responsibility is devolved to individual school boards. the funding model for public education in bc, which i’ll mention again in a moment, reflects the neoliberal principle that more of the public’s collective wealth should be devoted to maximizing private profits rather than serving public needs. canada, like the usa, has also seen a dramatic pushback against neoliberal education reform. perhaps the most widely known recent action was the 2012 quebec student protests, also known as the maple spring, in response to government efforts to raise university tuition. significant examples of resistance to the common-nonsense of neoliberalism in the past decade are the british columbia teachers’ 2005 and 2014 strikes, which united student, parent, and educator interests in resisting the neoliberal onslaught on education in the public interest. the first step in resisting neoliberalism is realizing that we are not “all in this together,” that is, neoliberalism benefits the few at the expense of the many. the corporate mass media would have us adopt the mantra that what is good for the corporate capitalist class is good for the rest of us, thus we have the logic of efficiency, cost containment critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 409 and (deceptive claims about) affordability in education prized over the educational well-being of the public. the central narrative about education (and other social goods) has been framed in ways that serve the interests of capital. for example, in north america, free market neoliberals in think tanks and foundations and in the dominant media outlets have been successful in framing discussions on education in terms of accountability, efficiency, market competition, and affordability. the assumptions underlying these narratives are typically unquestioned or at least under-analyzed. indeed, neoliberal education reforms are not only flawed in their assumptions, but also even when judged on their own terms these reforms are empirical failures and have worsened the most pressing problems of public education, including funding inequalities, racial segregation, and anti-intellectualism. it is imperative that educators challenge the dominant neoliberal frames that would define education as just another commodity from which profits are to be extracted. cf: you are currently involved in the rouge forum and the institute for critical education studies, which also happens to publish the academic journals critical education and workplace. could you explain what initiatives the rouge forum is involved in? in what ways does the institute for critical education studies and its companion journals support critical social research, intellectual freedom and democratic political engagement? ewr: the origins of the rouge forum can be traced back to anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-chauvinist actions carried out by social studies, literacy, and special educators in the mid-1990s. the rouge forum emerged from a series of political controversies within the national council for the social studies (the largest professional organization for social studies teachers and teacher educators in north america) during the 1990s. specifically, two events at the 1994 annual meeting of ncss in phoenix galvanized a small group of activists who later founded the rouge forum. first, a staff person from the central committee for conscientious objectors (who was also a certified social studies teacher) was arrested for anti-rotc leafleting at a ncss conference event; and secondly, the governing body of ncss rejected a resolution condemning california’s proposition 187 (which established a state-run citizenship screening system and prohibited undocumented us persons from using health care, public education, and other social services) and calling for a boycott of the state as a site for future meetings of the ncss. these events fuelled a level of political activism the ncss 410 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education had rarely experienced and emphasized the need for organized action in support of free speech and anti-racist pedagogy in the field of social studies education in general and within ncss in particular in 1998, rich gibson, michael peterson (both then on the faculty at wayne state university), and myself organized what became the first meeting of the rouge forum in detroit. the meeting of around 300 education activists was described by one participant as a “72 hour conversation without end.” people came and went and the agenda flowed with the ideas of attendees. most found it a refreshing change from the routine of reading papers to each other. one important advantage was having access to a venue that was open 24 hours a day, offering a large room for plenaries and small breakout rooms at no cost; testimony to the working class roots of wayne state university. toward the close of the meeting, we chose the name, rouge forum, after the nearby ford river rouge complex, and all of its implications, and our dedication to open investigations of the world. we have never been troubled with the relationship to the french, “red,” but that was not on the minds of the locals to whom the rouge means a river, and a huge factory in death throes, and the possibility to overcome. since, we have been accused of being nothing but reds (hardly true, liberal democrats, libertarians, us troops, socialists, anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, and many others belong to the rouge forum.) we’ve stuck with the name since and the reds inside the rouge forum seem comfortable with the action-oriented liberals, and vice versa. friendship, sacrifice for the common good (solidarity), all remain ethics of the rouge forum. the rouge forum is perhaps the only school-based group in north america that has connected imperialism, war, and the regulation of schooling. the rouge forum has been active in efforts to resist curriculum standardization and high-stakes testing in schools, particularly as a result of the no child left behind act and obama’s race to the top scheme in the usa. the rouge forum produced the first petition against high-stakes testing in schools in the usa and has been a key player in the testing resistance movement from its beginning, working strategically with groups like fairtest (the national center for fair and open testing) and locally organized groups in michigan, new york, illinois and many other states in a variety of campaigns, protests, and direct actions. rouge forum members have also joined, and assumed leadership in, community coalitions organized against the wars in iraq and afghanistan, usually coalitions involving labour, leftists, grassroots collectives, critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 411 and religious groups aimed at ending the war, and they are frequently involved in school-based organizing, and counter-military recruitment as well. the rouge forum holds an annual, theme-based, meeting and members also participate within various professional organizations and union conferences as well organizing local events. the 2015 meeting is in the planning stages and will be san diego state university (rougeforum.org and rougeforumconference.org). the operative principle for the actions of the rouge forum is the idea that schools hold a key position in north american society and educators play a critical role in the creation of a more democratic egalitarian society, or one that increases inequality and authoritarianism. at issue for the rouge forum, as rich gibson and i wrote in a 2007 counterpunch article, “school workers do not need to be missionaries for capitalism, and schools its missions…” the metaphor is nearly perfect. schools hold centripetal and centrifugal positions in north american society. one in four people are directly connected to schools: school workers, students, or parents. many others are linked in indirect ways. schools are the pivotal organizing point for most people’s lives, in part, because of de-industrialization and, in part, the absence of serious struggle emanating from the industrial working class despite its historical civilizing influence. school is not merely school, but the point of origin for health care, food, and daytime shelter and safety for many people. schools are also huge markets (consider the bus purchases, architectural and building costs, salaries), as well as bases for technological instruction and skill training. schools warehouse children, serving as an important tax supported day care system for companies whose increasingly poorly paid workers come from dual income family who see their children an average of 20 hours less a week than they did in 1979. the beginning point in understanding the role teachers play as major actors in a centripetally positioned organization is to understand the value teachers create within capitalist societies. this is what marx had to say: “the only worker who is productive is one who produces surplus value for the capitalist, or in other words contributes to the selfvalorization of capital. if we may take an example from outside the sphere of material production, a schoolmaster is a productive worker when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his pupils, he works himself into the ground to enrich the owner of the school. that the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of a sau412 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education sage factory, makes no difference to the relation. the concept of a productive worker therefore implies, not merely a relation between the activity of work and its useful effect, between the worker and the product of the work, but also a specific social relation of production, a relation with a means of valorization. to be a productive worker is therefore not a piece of luck, but a misfortune.” (marx, 1976, 644) the institute for critical education studies is a relatively new entity, which i co-founded with two of my colleagues in the faculty of education at the university of british columbia, sandra mathison and stephen petrina. as paul simon sings “that’s astute…why don’t we get together and call ourselves an institute.” on the lighter side, that’s what we’ve done. we had been informally networked since 2004. the institute for critical education studies was formally established in october 2010 to support studies within a critical education or critical pedagogy tradition. ices maintains a network that conducts and circulates cultural, educational, or social research and discourse that are critical in method, scope, tone, and content. ices, critical education and workplace: a journal for academic labor defend the freedom, without restriction or censorship, to disseminate and publish reports of research, teaching, and service, and to express critical opinions about institutions or systems and their management. co-directors of ices, co-hosts of ices and workplace blogs, and co-editors of these journals resist all efforts to limit the exercise of academic freedom and intellectual freedom, recognizing the right of criticism by authors or contributors. ices, critical education, and workplace all function with an independent and free press ethic, as a publisher and as media for its academic and citizen journalists. critical education and workplace publish academic research along with a range of critical opinion while the ices and workplace blogs, twitter stream, and facebook walls support academic and citizen journalism. the co-directors of ices function in various capacities as editors, researchers, teachers, cultural critics or intellectuals, and academic and citizen journalists. ices, critical education and workplace promote and defend open access and the principle that making information or research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. critical education is one of a small handful of journals in the field of education that exclusively publishes articles in the critical social science tradition. workplace was one of the very first online, open access scholarly journals ever, and was founded by a collective of critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 413 scholars in higher education, with close ties to the modern language association, particularly the mla graduate student caucus. in its short history ices has been involved with advocacy on public education issues in bc through its own media outlets as well as contributing to mainstream and independent print and broadcast media in bc and nationally on a variety of topics including school curriculum, teaching, education funding, teacher education, academic labour, and education policy. the institute’s major new project is a cohort-based masters of education program in critical pedagogy and education activism (cpea) through the faculty of education at ubc (http://pdce. educ.ubc.ca/cpea/). labour action, appeals to environmentalism, equity and social justice, and private versus public education funding debates challenge teachers to negotiate the fluid boundaries between everyday curriculum and evaluation within the schools and critical analysis and activism in communities and the media. this new program is built on the rationale that teachers, teacher educators, and researchers must realize that intellectual (and political) activism is essential to teaching, learning and evaluation that is transformative. based on principles of solidarity, engagement, and critical analysis and research, the cpea masters program frames education activism as an intentional action with the goal of bringing about positive change in schools and education. an education activist works for positive change at the school level in how teaching and learning are conceptualized and the nature of relationships in education, and also at the workplace and community level in how educational policy, working conditions, and community relations are conceptualized, developed and maintained. cf: what critical theories and radical pedagogies have had the greatest impact on your thinking? how do you integrate these insights in the classroom and in your research? ewr: a colleague once described my thinking as heterodox and that’s fair. i have been influenced by a wide spectrum of thought and has evolved over time in dramatic ways. growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in south and north carolina i lived in the racially segregated world of jim crow and as a high school student experienced the tumultuous events of desegregation of schools in charlotte, nc. my father was a pentecostal minister and my family life revolved around the church and christian fundamentalist beliefs, which rejects theological liberalism and cultural modernism. these contexts have had huge impact on my thinking as i struggled with and against authority and hierarchy. 414 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education my early career as a social studies teacher and teacher educator was marked by interests in critical sociology of teaching, social psychology, and questions about the relations of individuals and community, particularly as explored in the philosophy of john dewey. i would say the roots of my thought can be traced to john dewey’s radical reconceptualization of democracy, though dewey is not a critical theorist. dewey’s notion of democracy cannot be found in the electoral democracies of capitalism. for dewey, the primary responsibility of democratic citizens is concern with the development of shared interests that lead to sensitivity about repercussions of their actions on others. dewey characterized democracy as a force that breaks down the barriers that separate people and creates community. the more porous the boundaries of social groups, the more they welcome participation from all individuals, and as the varied groupings enjoy multiple and flexible relations, society moves closer to fulfilling the democratic ideal. from a deweyan perspective, democracy is not merely a form of government nor is it an end in itself; it is the means by which people discover, extend, and manifest human nature and human rights. for dewey, democracy has three roots: free individual existence; solidarity with others; and choice of work and other forms of participation in society. the aim of democratic education and thus a democratic society is the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality. while dewey’s democratically informed education philosophy is quite familiar to folks in education, it has largely been influential only conceptually, it’s radical potential remains, in almost every respect, unrealized in schools and society. as part of my doctoral studies in the 1980s, i was immersed in the frankfort school critical theory, an interdisciplinary approach to emancipatory social theory. i was particularly influenced by jürgen habermas’s work on communicative action and communicative rationality. the latter, has been described as free and open discussion of an issue by all relevant persons, with a final decision being dependent upon the strength of better argument, and never upon any form of coercion. in my view, this admittedly idealized construction still has tremendous pedagogical power. marx, foucault, and guy debord have also loomed large for me, as well as chomsky’s political thought and critique of capitalist media. i’ve learned much from bertell ollman’s work on dialectics, alienation, class-consciousness, and ideology (not to mention radical humour). my colleague and collaborator, rich gibson, who is an emeritus professor at san diego state university, has been a tremendous marx mentor for critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 415 me. gibson has also extended and deepened my understanding of paulo freire’s critical pedagogy. kevin d. vinson and i have worked together for many years and our collaborative work is deeply indebted to the thought of foucault and debord, the marxist theorist and filmmaker who was a founder of the situationist international. through debord, i began to explore anarchist thought and its vast potential for critical educational work. and, i will be teaching a course in 2015 that draws heavily from the deschooling and free school traditions in education. the oppressive and inequitable consequences of authority and hierarchical organizations in social relations – the church, the state, and capitalism –continue to motivate me in my journey that has taken me from a liberal christian to deweyan democrat and onward to a concern for creating a society characterized by positive liberty as i continue to struggle with and against authority and hierarchy. the radical pedagogical principles that emerge from my study of these scholars include: educators should seek to create conditions in which students can develop personally meaningful understandings of the world and recognize they have agency to act on the world, to make change; education is not about showing life to people, but bringing them to life. the aim is not getting students to listen to convincing lectures by experts, but getting them to speak for themselves in order to achieve, or at least strive toward an equal degree of participation and better future. cf: you have written extensively about the challenges of standardized testing. could you present a snapshot of the debate and briefly explain the promises and perils of “high-stakes accountability” (as you and your colleague sandra mathison refer to it)? ewr: accountability strategies of neoliberal education reform rely heavily on measuring outcomes, especially student achievement, and attaching consequences, either positive or negative, to various levels of performance (e.g., the stakes involved might be advancement in grade level, assignment to a particular curricular stream, or graduation). these accountability strategies affect everyone and every aspect of schools and schooling at local, regional, national, and international levels. in most places, outcome-based bureaucratic accountability prevails. this form of accountability holds teachers and schools accountable to government education authorities for producing improvements in student learning outcomes (e.g., test scores). this accountability strategy focuses teachers, administrators, schools, parents, and students on specific forms of limited knowledge and skills. government agencies 416 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education create guides for common content and standards that are manifest in performance on mandated student tests. accountability, as a concept, is fundamentally an economic interaction in hierarchical, bureaucratic systems, between those who have power and those who do not. it is a state of being in which persons are obligated to answer to others. but complex hierarchical systems, like schools, do not permit those in power to be everywhere and do everything at the same time to achieve what they consider to be desirable outcomes. consequently, authority is delegated to others, which disperses power to lower levels of the hierarchical system. when power is delegated and dispersed to those within a hierarchical system, there is an expected return from the investment of that power in others. those to whom power has been delegated are obligated to answer, or render an account of, the degree of success in accomplishing the outcomes desired by those in power. because of the diffuse nature of many hierarchical systems, accountability depends on both surveillance and self-regulation. the power of surveillance is born out in part by the spectacle that may result from accounting by those to whom power has been delegated. in other words, the powerful in small numbers are surveilling the performance of many (through means such as standardized tests), which in turn become spectacles observed by the many (as in when schools test scores are reported on the front page of the newspaper). self-regulation, that is the faithful exercise of delegated authority (teachers, principals, etc.), is in part based on surveillance and the possibility of spectacle, but also on the perception of the legitimacy of those delegating power. this perceived legitimacy is key to the hegemony of accountability. hegemony is based on a projection by a dominant group (such as governments and corporate leaders) of their own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it (such as school administrators, teachers, students, parents) accept it as “common sense” or “natural.” these groups subordinated in the hegemony of accountability thus live their subordination, and this subordination is sustained through everyday discourse and practice, as well as in the popular media. cf: from pre-school to post-secondary education, public funding has often failed to keep pace with inflation. in many ways, this has led to the development of new user-fees, so-called public-private-partnerships and corporate philanthropy. could you discuss what challenges this ‘privatization by stealth’, as some have called it, poses for publically critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 417 funded, universally accessible education? does corporate sector penetration threaten academic independence? ewr: earlier i briefly mentioned that in bc, the government retains its authority over public education, but no longer undertakes the responsibility of assuring the educational well-being of the public. instead, this responsibility is devolved to individual school boards. this is a fundamental principle of neoliberal government: devolution of responsibility, without authority. again, as mentioned before, the funding model for public education in bc is based upon the principle that more of our collective wealth should be devoted to maximizing private profits rather than serving public needs and you can see how this plays out in the privatization through the backdoor, or stealth privatization. for example, the privatization and marketization of public schools in bc is being pursued through multiple strategies: private schools now receive over $200 million per year in public funding, with some schools receiving 35-50% of their funding from taxpayers and private schools for low-incidence, severely disabled students receiving 100% public funding; school districts are encouraged to sell seats in public schools to international students. international students pay about $12,000/year tuition to attend bc public schools, which is about twice as much as the provincial grant for canadian students in public schools; public school districts are now allowed to create private, for-profit business companies to set up overseas schools staffed by bc certified teachers teaching the bc provincial curriculum as a way to make up for inadequate government funding; inadequate funding from the province has pushed local parent groups into more and more fundraising and made schools more vulnerable to corporate incursions, which include advertising and corporate-branded private grants to support core curricular as well as extra-curricular school activities. a prime example of corporate incursion into public schools is chevron’s “fuel your schools” program, in which the vancouver school board recently refused to participate, prompting something of a backlash in corporate-owned media. the basic logic is underfund public education to create opportunities for supposedly altruistic corporations to fill the funding gap. then you have public schools in the position of relying on the largesse of corporations. in chevron’s case, you have a multinational corporation that runs irresponsible and unsafe operations around the world and in ecuador, for example, despoiling the lands of indigenous peoples and then running away from $9.5 billion court judgement for their illegal actions. the “fuel your schools” program is one way 418 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education chevron whitewashes it corporate image, with a pittance of money that does little in terms of closing the serious funding deficits public schools are grappling with in the province. then when patti bacchus, chair of the vsb, rejects the dirty chevron money, the journalists who do the bidding for the corporate capitalism, like gary mason at the globe and mail, attack bacchus for being “ideological.” of course, chevron is not ideological… this strategy – underfunding public education to create openings for corporate incursion into schools – is employed globally. in mexico, ford and coca-cola have undermined academic independence by offering poorly funded public schools money then requiring them to illustrate their effectiveness in the form of improved test scores. schools become reliant on corporations for basic infrastructure then become obligated to transform teaching and learning into test prep, drill and kill pedagogy aimed at creating a compliant workforce to continue to receive corporate funding. here in bc, the liberals waltzed into the legislature in 2001 and started an unprecedented program of inequitable tax cuts. as a result, bc now has a regressive tax system. a broadbent institute report released earlier this year points out that in bc the poor are now paying more in all taxes as a percentage of income than the rich. bc liberals’ tax cuts over the past 10 years have benefited the richest 1 percent of british columbians to the tune of $41,000 per year, while the bottom 40 percent have benefited by an average of $200 per year. both the canadian centre for policy alternatives and the conference board of canada agree that despite the elimination of the provincial deficit and the recently announced $353 million surplus, overall spending as a share of the provincial gdp in bc is shrinking and will reach a record low in 2017. with bc near the bottom in provincial per student education funding and bc teachers near the bottom in average salary, government budgeted only 0.6 per cent increases for k-12 education the next three years. while the provincial budget conservatively projects revenue increases at 8 percent annually, it has budgeted less than a one per cent annual increase in the budget for b.c. schools. it is within this frame that the government’s public relations machine shaped discourse around what was affordable or not in negotiations with teachers and discussions about remedies for illegally stripping the teachers’ contracts of language around class size and composition. cf: based on your understanding of events, could you summarize the significance of the 2014 british columbia teachers’ strike? what critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 419 was the position of the liberal government and why did teachers go on strike? how was the strike received by the broader community and characterized in the press? ewr: bc has been ruled for over a decade by arguably one of the most successful neoliberal political parties in the world. and the british columbia teachers federation has not shied away from battling against the bc liberals efforts to make the province into a haven for corporations and wealthy individuals at the expense of working people and the environment. the bc liberals have closely followed the neoliberal blueprint by cutting taxes for the wealthy, slashing social programs, privatizing state-owned enterprises, goods, and services, and attacking unions, particularly the bctf. in 2002 the bc liberal government imposed draconian legislation on public sector workers that overrode provisions in existing collective bargaining agreements – a neoliberal human capital strategy, as i previous mentioned. bills 27 and 28, which applied to teachers, unilaterally deleted contract provisions that applied to class-size maximum; class composition; staffing levels; support for inclusion of students with special needs; length of the school day; and hours of instruction in the school year. over the past decade bctf has challenged and won legal decisions against the government’s actions, yet the government has not complied with the court decisions. these were the key issues in the strike, and the bctf was able to secure a deal that did not undo their courts wins and provided improvements on class size and composition for bc schools. but their success in protecting these court wins was tempered by failure to get the kind of gains on wages and benefits that would lift teachers to within shouting distance of the canadian averages. i think a there are a few big take away messages from the strike and the settlement. first, neoliberal governments are ruthless in their policies aiming to slash social services budgets so that taxes can be cut for the wealthy and mega tax breaks can given to corporations. the bc liberals illustrated they were ready and willing to make teachers hurt financially (and they did) by refusing to negotiate in good faith, until they started to feel the pressure from parents and businesses affected by the strike. then a few weeks after squeezing the teachers, bc liberals announced sweetheart tax breaks for the liquid nitrogen gas industry that equal hundreds of millions of dollars. the second takeaway is that bc teachers continue to put teaching and learning conditions in schools at the top of their priority list. it’s not that they don’t need, want, or deserve increases in benefits and wages, 420 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education but in this settlement individual self-interest took a backseat to issues of learning conditions for students. and, as in the illegal strike in 2005, teachers found that more of the public backed their position compared to the government’s. when teachers’ unions fight hard for improved teaching and learning conditions they are much more likely to receive broad public support because it illustrates teachers solidarity with the needs and interests of their students. this principle has been proven in other contexts as well, notably the detroit teachers wildcat strikes, such the one in 1999, which used the slogan “books, supplies, and lower class size.” lastly, public dialogue about the strike was dominated by the government’s news frame. for example, the deceptive “affordability” narrative that advertising man/education minister peter fassbender hammered on for months was accepted at face value by corporate media. this is not surprising given who owns the mainstream media and it highlights the importance of unions and other social movements constructing counternarratives to one’s that serve elite interests. part of what we have tried to do with the institute for critical education studies is provide platforms that support progressive policy initiatives and that insert alternative perspectives, drawing from critical research and analysis into the public discussion on teaching, learning, schooling, and academic labour. cf: are there parallels to be found here in the university sector? i’m thinking also of the tendency to move away from secure, tenure-track employment to increasingly contractual and precarious arrangements, along with larger classroom sizes for example. ewr: absolutely. despite steady growth in post-secondary enrolments over the past thirty years there has been a parallel decline in the number of full time, tenure track jobs. in the us, over seventy percent of the instruction in post-secondary education is delivered by contingent and part-time professors, with canadian universities not far behind. the corporate university is now the norm. for example, university of british columbia’s land trust (the provincial endowment to the university) operates completely independently of the academic side of the university. as a result, we have the anomaly of reduced instructional budgets, loss of faculty lines, increases in part-time sessional faculty, and demands that graduate students and faculty bring money into the university to finance their own programs of research and to justify their continued existence. my own department no longer supplies me with toner for my printer; “get a grant for that or use your professional development benefits to buy one,” i’m told. for technology and research needs faculty are largely critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 421 self-funded. these conditions exist on the academic side, while the university’s real estate development program runs in high gear, building and selling on-campus condos for multi-million dollar price tags neither students or faculty can afford. and, like schools in bc, universities are now selling more and more of their seats to international students who pay about five times more for their education at ubc than canadian students. indeed, ubc is currently building an exclusive new stand alone college for international student that will cost nearly $130 million, which will exclusively enrol international students who will be paying over $50,000 per year to live and study at ubc. while the university pours money into this venture, there is a waiting list of over 5,000 current students seeking housing on campus. and, of course, there is a crisis of student debt across north america. cf: in addition to your formal academic writing you also publish extensively in newspapers and magazines, appear on radio and television, and maintain an active social media presence. how does this work complement your scholarly publishing? do you think critical scholars have a responsibility to engage as public intellectuals? ewr: too often the work of academics stays within a small scholarly community, available and often only fully comprehended by a few researchers who are pursuing similar interests. of course, this circumstance is justifiable as part of the work of academics, but i do believe that as chomsky asserted in the late 1960s intellectuals also have a responsibility to “speak the truth and expose lies.” as chomsky has pointed out, academics, particularly in the west, are something of a privileged minority (although this is less true now than in the 1960s, with reconstruction of academic work from primarily full time, tenurable positions to contingent labour) who have power that comes from political liberty, access to information, and freedom of expression. chomsky argued that the responsibilities of intellectuals are thus deeper than the responsibilities of the people. as a scholar whose work embraces critical social theory i feel a particular obligation to participate in the public discourse on issues relevant to my scholarly work. and my scholarly interests have always been driven, in large part, by social issues. so, for me there is a reciprocal or dialectical relationship between by public engagement and my scholarly work. there are two philosophical statements that i frequently invoke that are relevant to the question. in normative discourse, paul taylor (1961) says “we must decide what ought to be the case. we cannot discover what ought to be the 422 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education case by investigating what is the case.” we – educators and citizens – must decide what ought to be the purpose of schools, education, etc. that requires asking and answering questions like what kind of society (and world) we want to live in. and, michel foucault wrote that critique is not merely a matter of saying that things aren’t good the way they are, but that critique is seeing what types of assumptions, of familiar notions, and unexamined ways of thinking that accepted practices are based on. to do criticism, he says, is to make facile gestures difficult. and that is what i try to do in my scholarship and my engagement with the public issues. references marx, k. (1976). capital, vol. 1. new york: penguin. taylor, p. w. (1961). normative discourse. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. disability and social equality: the centrality of independent living sandra carpenter1 i have been struggling for equality for over 30 years. when i was born in ottawa, in the 1950s, children with disabilities were either kept at home with their parents, or sent to live in a state or charitably run “home”. although i was born with my disability, i wasn’t actually diagnosed until i was 3 years old and subjected to a gamut of medical tests at a charitable hospital in montreal. in the 50’s medicare did not exist, so as a charitable hospital, i was able to receive diagnostic testing that my family could not otherwise afford. when my sister was born, four years after me, she was eventually diagnosed with the same disability as me: spinal muscular atrophy which is a type of muscular dystrophy. i remember going to a “regular” school; a right which my mom had to fight for with the local board of education. and then because of ongoing difficulties with me getting the support i needed to be really integrated in regular school, for example with accessible transportation or washroom assistance, i was sent to the “crippled children’s school”. at first, i was taxied to this school, but after a couple of years of going there, i was deemed ineligible for this “special program” because my disability “didn’t improve with therapy”. so there i was. the regular school wouldn’t let me in, and neither would the “segregated” school. the only recourse was home teaching, which was paid for by the board of education. mom was starting to panic about what was becoming an increasingly isolated and under-stimulated life. she regarded us both (me and my sister) as “smart” and “needing to use our brains”. she worried about a future where neither of us would have the education to get into highschool or university which would lead to a job. although she wouldn’t have been aware of any higher-level analysis at the time, her instincts were right on. if a child with a disability experiences inequity right from the start in terms of education then inequality follows them 1 sandra carpenter was born with a disability in ottawa in the 1950s. she has been actively involved with the evolution of services and supports for people with primarily physical disabilities most of her life. she is currently the executive director of the centre for independent living in toronto. email: execdirector@cilt.ca disability and social equality | 229 throughout life, meaning they won’t get a job. if the prevailing social interpretation assumes that people with disabilities are unable to do anything, these inequities persist. all you need to do is compare the employment statistics of people with disabilities and people without disabilities. when the visiting nurse from easter seals came by for her regular visits she advised my mother to send us to a ‘residential school’ for disabled kids. it seemed like the best option for us and that was what mom told me: “it was a ‘boarding school’. kids went away to ‘boarding school’ all the time.” and so, by 1965 just shy of my 11th birthday, i went to live at bloorview, billed at the time as “bloorview hospital home and school” in toronto. when we got there, dad carried me into the lobby of the old victorian home and sat me down in a big green faux leather upholstered chair. i looked up. opposite me was a plaque that read “home for incurable children”. i could not resolve the message on that plaque with the place where i thought i was going, which was to a “boarding school”. something was not right. some terrible mistake had been made. my heart was broken. i felt like oliver twist! this drove home what society’s expectation was for me, anchoring my inequality or otherness in my own consciousness. in fact, all oppressed groups are also made to internalize their socially determined inferiority. society says this is your problem or pathology as opposed to proposing solutions to the barriers created by society: how it’s organized and how it’s resources are utilized or prioritized. i remember my mother saying ‘you can’t do anything about your disability, but you can sure as hell make them build a ramp.’ over the next few weeks as i absorbed, or in their words “adjusted” to, my new reality i realized that where i had come to live was not a “boarding school” at all. i did not automatically return home between terms, most notably for summer holidays. i was not allowed more than three weeks home in the summer. one week at christmas and one week at easter. no “boarding school” had rules like that. only about four hours a day were actually spent in school. the rest were spent in “therapy”, organized “recreation” or communal dining. my parents weren’t even supposed to come and see me for the first few months in case they undermined my “adjustment”. eight months later my younger sister followed. the fact that she was there forced me to keep up appearances, and make things at bloorview better for her. at some point i realized that the only way to make things better for her, was 230 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice to make things better for all the kids there. i credit this awareness for my lifelong, if at times somewhat disheartened, dedication to disability activism. with the support of my parents and teacher, i pushed to be allowed to go out to a “regular high school”. the schooling at the institution was substandard (meaning i’d never qualify for university admission) and other kids from bloorview got to go out to school. but although they had disabilities, they were the more ‘able disabled’, doing everything for themselves which mostly meant they were able to go to the washroom. although i couldn’t do that task without the help of someone, i pushed and pushed and finally they allowed me to go out to regular high school on a trial basis. when the anticipated problems didn’t emerge, like the problems associated with not being able to perform that task, the arrangement continued. this made it easier for other kids who were not totally independent, to go out to high school in the future. for example, it wasn’t half as hard for my sister because i had already set the precedent. when i was about 17, a group of us went to corbrook sheltered workshop. sheltered workshops were places where disabled people went to work sorting nuts and bolts, or other menial tasks on a piecework basis. they were careful even then to never make more that the allowed amount so the government disability allowance wouldn’t be cut off. the staff were pretty proud of the place, in particular the ‘loom room’. working the looms was an advancement of sorts because there were so few spots and there was a long wait to get one. “this”, some proud custodian said, “is where you will work one day”. i actually couldn’t believe that this was all they expected me to achieve. i resolved then that no matter what, i wouldn’t end up in a sheltered workshop (sheltered from what i wondered) sorting nuts and bolts for a couple of dollars a month. this made me even more determined to have a life in the community rather than going to another medical model institution when i was too old for bloorview (which had an age limit of 18). according to the traditional medical model, physicians and other professionals are the experts one must obey. they tend to see people with disabilities as child-like people who are unable to run their own lives. in dramatic contrast, il philosophy recognizes that people with disabilities can and do take action in their own lives and have the right to do so. i was inspired by older kids with disabilities both going on to university and then acquiring jobs. the fact that these kids were not like me, in that they did not need any help with ordinary activities of daily living, was irrelevant to me. after all, i reasoned, one didn’t need a nursing degree to put on someone’s socks. i saw that kind of help as an extension of the kind of help that disability and social equality | 231 any parent gave to infants and small children until they learned how to do up their own buttons, zippers and laces; definitely not medical. in those days all i figured for my future was that i would go to school, university and then get a job where i could afford to pay a helper myself. even in those years i knew people who avoided institutional life by doing just that or they would get help from a spouse or family member. a situation our brothers and sisters south of the border still face. when the conversations first started in the early 70’s about noninstitutional alternatives for people with physical disabilities who were not totally independent, there was a lot of interest in the communities developed by captain leonard cheshire (leonard cheshire, 2006). cheshire homes served as a successful example of a community based alternative for those with physical disabilities who were dependent on daily physical help. a new model had to be developed for those who needed that help, and so by 1974 clarendon foundation’s first vaughan road site was established, largely driven by parents, teachers, and some interested administrators of bloorview. some people with disabilities, such as myself, were also involved with developing these alternatives.2 the key concept that guided these non-institutional alternatives was that of “normalization”. a theory adapted by wolfensberger which included sub concepts and models such as “citizen advocacy”, “social role valorization” and “devaluation” of people with disabilities (parmenter, 2001). devaluation was an important concept because it effectively labeled a range of sub-standard programmatic approaches towards people with disabilities and forced the acknowledgment of the double standard inherent in them. in order to correct devaluation, it was necessary to adopt approaches which could “empower” individuals. this theory, coupled with pragmatic logic showing that communitybased alternatives were cheaper than institutional options, led to funding support from government for these alternatives (parmenter, 2001). in ontario, apartment projects as they were called then, were fully funded through the ministry of community and social services. they were not staffed by trained nurses or even nurses aids but by attendants who were trained on-the-job by other attendants and by the people who would use their 2 clarendon was the first project modeled after cheshire homes that provided attendant services for people with physical disabilities, unlike mcleod house which, although it predated clarendon, did not provide attendant services. 232 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice services. attendants were the “arms and legs” of the disabled person, a phrase meant to denote that attendants were providing physical support services to people with disabilities, not decision making, supervisory or care-taking services over someone with a disability. these were early examples of non-institutional, non-charitable or non-medical models of community based supports for people with disabilities and daily support needs. and yet as i watched development of these early projects, staff and administrators seemed to be unable to escape the idea that the residents of these projects were somehow in their charge – their responsibility. this still reinforced social inequality by instilling a culture of dependency rather than independence, pity rather than assistance. while institutionalization provides for the most basic of needs (i.e. the provision of food, shelter), it does little and, in many ways, prevents the attainment of higher fundamental needs – social inclusion, empowerment and self-actualization. simply put, i wanted to get out of an ‘institution’, and live a ‘normal’ life in the community. not so simply put, equality was my recognition of equal capacity, value as a human being, and the dignity inherent in independent living approach. it was not a recognition of an abstract equality of physical ability which is never equal between any two people in any case. all people need assistance of some sort. this is the nature of social life and further, depending on your environment, this assistance might take the form of a device. for example, as my good friend audrey king points out ‘we are all disabled on the moon or even under water’. when i left bloorview, it took close to a year for the first clarendon project to become fully realized and take in its first residents. i was among one of the first to live there but left very soon after. i felt very strongly that many of the things i was trying to escape from the institution had merely followed me there namely, inflexibility, depersonalization, isolation/segregation and lack of choice and control. the ideal of ‘normalization’ was still elusive. it would be 6 years until i tried living in an “apartment project” again. the crucial turning point in the struggle for social equality was the emergence of the independent living movement, a movement led and governed by people with disabilities (driedger, 1989). this movement was gaining momentum in the united states and was spreading to canada. during that time (mid 1960s to 70s) institutional alternatives for people who needed daily physical support did emerge. it would be nice to look back at those years and say that those were exciting times, but i can’t. the ‘emergence’ of alternatives did disability and social equality | 233 not keep up with the demand. therefore, for the person with the disability, i would characterize those years as ‘desperate’. unless one came from a family with the resources for a child with a disability to return home, you went from the children’s institution to an adult, or worse, senior’s ‘home’. invariably these people faced an early death from neglect of their human needs and potentials. and so, for me those years were desperate. i needed community-based alternatives to be developed by the time i turned 19 years of age so i wouldn’t be sent from bloorview to a worse institution.3 luckily community-based alternatives were just around the corner. however, before those alternatives could come to fruition, a new problem emerged: isolation and lack of information. yes, we had made some success in achieving integration, but it became more like a file-and-forget type of integration. still not quite hitting the vision that we had for our future. fast forward ten years to the 1980s. slowly but surely independent living centres were emerging across canada largely in response to this emerging need. and largely in response to the fact that considering the millions of dollars that government was pouring into supports and services for us, we – people with disabilities – derived very little benefit. the struggle for equality was only going to be won through our own efforts. the new independent living centre thus committed to employing the very people they were set up to serve. they were social enterprises, and objective proof of both the equal capacity for self-determination on the part of people with disabilities and that the deepest problem we faced was not physical disability, but socially imposed barriers. by around 1984-85 i was working as the executive director of the centre for independent living in toronto. one day, 30 odd years ago, a guy named al simpson phoned me up, several times as i recall, until finally i agreed to attend a meeting in ottawa. al was the kind of guy who didn’t like to take no for an answer. over the course of all these calls he talked to me about this “independent living” movement that was growing in the us and now canada, a model with a philosophy that people with disabilities have the same rights, options, and choices as anyone else. but mostly he expressed a concern that if we – the current centres – didn’t get out ahead of what seemed to be a growing wave of emerging centres anyone could hang out a shingle and say they were an independent living centre. that sold me. 3 those involved with the early development of these alternatives were parents of disabled children, some social service staff, and some people with disabilities themselves. 234 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice al, along with henry enns, had gathered all the il-like organizations across canada to meet. in those days it was relatively easy. there were probably only 6 of us. this is where, according to my memory, we first began to hammer out the principles of the umbrella organization standardize the development of ilcs in canada. we were pretty much able to reach consensus on governance, principles and a strategy to develop more il centres across canada. we agreed that the philosophy would be founded on five principles:4 • consumer control: in recognition that self-governance was a key concept for il.5 nothing about us, without us! • cross-disability: i.e. multi-disability rather than being divided by a medical diagnosis; • full participation and integration of all people with disabilities: as opposed to having rationed services or priorities set by others; • community based: implying that different solutions may be indicated for different communities i.e. language, culture, geographic location and that people with disabilities were the experts on how to address their own needs; • not-for-profit: to avoid any conflict that may emerge between a profit motive and service quality and ensuring a commitment to equality of service without regard to the differences in income. by 1986, the first governing body for the canadian association of independent living centres was made up of current or recent past executive directors of ilcs. this approach was based on the il principle of ‘consumer control’, however in this case the ‘consumers’ were the centres. we were truly, and saw ourselves as, an association of independent living centres. we also agreed that, as a minimum, to actually be an independent living centre, the programs had to be consistent with the principles. we settled on: 4 although only four principles are enshrined in the 1990 ‘guide to independent living centres’, discussion of the not for profit, went without saying. 5 inspired by the ralph nader consumer movement in the usa, in our case people with disabilities were reconceptualised as ‘purchasers’ of disability services and supports denoting more power over the quality of outcomes of those services and supports. disability and social equality | 235 • information and referral: now containing the concepts of networking, navigation and community engagement. this evolved from the simple concept that having knowledge is in itself power; i&r works with individuals to reduce their isolation from the community. we can refer people to the appropriate range of resources to potentially broaden both opportunities and horizons in the self-chosen area. • peer support or self-help: people with disabilities are often more helpful to each other than traditional professionals that can have diminished expectations of what pwds can achieve and who can create artificial dependencies. based on the observation that supportive peer environments provide positive role models which enable individuals to gain skills and the self-confidence needed to overcome barriers; ps encourages people with disabilities to speak with others and share thoughts, concerns, successes and hopes with each other; ps promotes exchanges and discussion between individuals who have lived experience; • individual advocacy: as opposed to systemic advocacy. based on the simple notion that ‘feed a person a fish, you have fed them for a day, but teach a person how to fish, they are fed for life’; the ia goals are to support individuals in learning to manage, coordinate and negotiate a wide range of community resources; assist consumers to exercise their rights and to provide support to people in pursuit of their individual advocacy goals; enhance their problem solving skills; encourage proactive, solutions based approaches to conflict and problem solving and to provide tools, support and resources to create lasting positive change. • demonstration capacity: or service development capacity. giving centres the ability to develop il consistent projects, programs or initiatives but to not necessarily keep them. for toronto two examples of ‘demonstration capacity’ are the direct funding – self-managed attendant service program (dfp) and the parenting with a disability network. but i’m just going to talk for a minute about dfp. through the dfp we fund other most other ontario centres, and ourselves to the tune of over $1m. we really feel that this is a good example of a social enterprise that aligns with il philosophy and principles that other centres may wish to explore. but don’t think for a minute that it will be easy. it was over 10 236 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice years of hard negotiating with the ontario government to make this happen and now the program is 21 years old. dfp provides funding to us, through the ontario ministry of health and long-term care, to act as banker for the program participants who negotiate an agreed upon budget so that they can hire, schedule or terminate their own attendants. currently this model is under consideration for other populations as well. dfp allows for great service efficiency and is administratively light. a future webinar may be planned if there is interest in knowing greater detail about this program. the final area i want to talk about are the key differences between the il and medical models. in order to do that, i’d like to go back to my original story – being at bloorview vs where i am now – on direct funding. although there are growing examples of how the medical model is changing, one of the most challenging assumptions within institutions and society is the pervasive belief that the disability is a pathology to be wiped out. examples of this are numerous – genetic counselling, immigration policy, and most recently medical assistance in dying. people with disabilities aren’t ‘sick’, ‘deficient’, ‘dependent’, or an incredible burden to their loved ones or society. we don’t necessarily require expensive ‘care’ by health professionals who tend to work within authority-driven, risk adverse systems. for those of us who are “disabled” (not “sick”) yet require routine daily assistance with normal activities of daily living (e.g. assistance with dressing, transferring, shopping, errands, meal preparation), such deficiency-based assumptions continue to present a problem. and when we are sick, we do need medical model services – but viewed through a disability positive lens – like anyone else. the il movement has developed its own unique identity in response to the traditional rehabilitation services model. the problem does not reside in the individual, but often in the solution offered by the professional. according to the traditional medical model, physicians and other professionals are the experts one must obey. these experts take charge; they tend to see people with disabilities as child-like, as weak and uninformed, people who are unable to run their own lives; as passive grateful recipients of services. in dramatic contrast, il philosophy recognizes that people with disabilities can and do take action in their own lives and have the right to do so. il has a self-empowerment, self-help method that leads to a new kind of social and political power. through fierce determination, allan simpson, henry enns and the thousands of others involved in the il movement, have changed the course of history and changed the world in which we all live. canada became one of the disability and social equality | 237 first countries to accord people with disabilities constitutional protection of their equality rights. il has taught us to be proud of who we are and not to be ashamed of our disability. we don’t need fixing and we don’t need managing. we just need the right information, support and services that are flexible enough to accommodate the range of activities i/we aspire to do. i/we want to be in control of my services and my destiny. i/we want services that are effective and enabling so i can work or play or meet a host of other social roles in a variety of places of my choice. if i get all these things, it means i get to live a full independent productive life. it cannot be said enough that il philosophy is of utmost importance to people living with disabilities and that our il centres are and must be the delivery agents of this philosophy. an example of this is the story a woman tells about working with a man in kapuskasing that hadn’t been out for dinner with his wife in years. he lived with parkinsons and was too embarrassed of his shaking hands to eat out in public. the centre suggested to him that he was allowing others to prevent him from doing things in the community that he loved to do and that he had right to do, and that maybe if people saw him out in the community more often, maybe he could learn how not to be embarrassed of his disability and in turn the community could learn from him too. he took his wife out for dinner the following week and continued doing so on a regular basis afterwards and yes people did eventually stop staring at him because he became a regular participant in the community, and he felt he was no longer strange or different but became the ‘new normal’. the example of this man shows that inequality for disabled people is a four part problem: 1. there are insufficient resources invested in accessible societies and its attendant institutions – transit systems, schools, hospitals, museums, art galleries etc. 2. lack of awareness that access is not just about design. there are services and supports which also require investment. 3. the dominance of the medical model which continues to drive social assumptions about what disabled people can or can’t do. 4. the way in which disabled people ourselves have internalised this social stigma as other historically oppressed groups have. the independent living movement challenges all four areas. we have systematically improved access, put resources under our more direct control, we live in the community with our fellow citizens, and consider our lives to be 238 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice equally valuable. the progressive process of living independently is the counterpoint, freeing us from the imposed social and medical stigmas. the centre for independent living in toronto (cilt) inc., where i work is run by people with disabilities for people with disabilities. our centre, established in the mid 1980s, was developed in response to an increasing demand for alternatives to institutional living and an increasing need for appropriate community based support. however, examples of inappropriate institutionalization still exist. as recently as july 9th 2017 a toronto star headline stated “care homes not suited to young” (goffin, 2017). there continue to be forces out there that still view institutions as the solution. what is most disturbing in this debate is how little is actually known of these alternatives to institutionalized supports, how much more economically efficient they are and how the capacity to promote autonomy, dignity, equity and respect exists in these models. as our movement has shown, the only way forward for social equality is to demand that governments expend resources to support and build our capacity for independent living. no matter how well-funded or organized, ‘care’ homes will always perpetuate the paternalism and injustice of the past, when disability was confused with illness and disabled people were assumed to be helpless dependents. burdens. like other oppressed groups, disabled people have proven by the success of our own struggles that we are capable of living on our own, working and contributing as equal citizens. the barriers we have faced are more concerned with the organization of social life and institutions than our own bodies which – like everybody – is limited in different ways. whether limitation and disability becomes a source of inequality depends not on the disability, but the extent to which society values disabled persons as persons and invests in the social infrastructure the expression of our abilities require. disability and social equality | 239 independent living perspectives traditional “medical” perspective independent living perspective perception of the situation person with disability is a “patient” who is “sick” & dependent on others person with a disability is a “citizen” with equal rights to participate & contribute to his society focus of problem the person with the disability societal beliefs, which create inaccessible environments, both attitudinally & physically role of disabled person be compliant, grateful, appreciative, complaining, dependent ask questions, learn, take control, negotiate, make decisions role of professionals be an expert, authority, take charge, make decisions regarding persons with disability be a supporter, enabler, collaborator with disabled person focus of intervention curing, rehabilitating, alleviating the “patient’s” functional deficiencies maximizing the strengths, abilities, skills & hopes of the person who lives with a disability authority and responsibility/best interest determination resides with funders, professionals, agents in the chain of command resides with the person living with a disability and/or his family location for receipt of supports/services institutions, bureaucratic systems and dominant hierarchies the individual’s home, community, school and workplace ultimate “solution” for resolving disability issues cure, rehabilitate and alleviate the disability “accommodate” disability by changing attitudes, creating accessible environments & providing required personal supports 240 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice references driedger, d. (1989). the last civil rights movement: disabled people's international. london: c. hurst & co. (publishers) ltd. goffin, peter. (2017, july 9). “disabled adults stuck in long-term care void.” the toronto star. leonard cheshire. (2006). creating opportunities with disabled people. http://www.leonard-cheshire.org/. parmenter, t. r. (2001). intellectual disabilities: quo vadis? in handbook of disability studies. g. l. albrecht, k. d. seelman & m. bury (eds.). sage: thousand oaks, ca. disability and social equality | 241 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review kill all normies: online culture wars from 4chan and tumblr to trump and the altright by angela nagle. washington, dc: zero books, 2017. $16.95 u.s. paper. isbn: 978-178535-543-1 reviewed by tanner mirrlees1 today it is imperative for everyone on the left to understand the growth of right-wing extremism around the world, chart its organizations and networks, explicate the strategies and tactics it uses to organize consent, assess its influence upon mainstream politicians, parties and public opinion, and counter its inroads into and noxious effects within working class cultures and communities. in this context, angela nagle’s kill all normies: online culture wars from 4chan and tumblr to trump and the alt-right is a good introduction to right-wing extremism’s millennial cadre, the alt-right, and its liberal foil, the “tumblr left.” drawing from a five-year study of social media sites, nagle’s book “map[s] the online culture wars that formed the political sensibilities of a generation” (9). according to nagle, the alt-right is “a new wave of overtly white segregationist and white nationalist movements and subcultures, typified by spokespeople like richard spencer, who has called for a us white ethno-state and a pan-national white empire modelled on some approximation of the roman empire” (12). orbiting around the hateful core of the alt-right are a bunch of “alt-light” personalities such as milo yiannopoulos, gavin mcinness and mike cernovich, as well as lots of right-wing political factions that grew semi-independently but joined with the alt-right under the banner of uniting to fight the power of a supposedly mind-controlling and censorious left-wing culture club. this tumblr left is nagle’s pejorative for anti-socialist liberals whose politics amount to demanding their group’s identity be recognized and affirmed by society’s dominant institutions, publicly calling out those who may act or signify in ways oppressive to their group’s identity, and chastising others who represent their group’s identity without first getting permission to do so. nagle casts the alt right as an emerging victor in the early years of an online battle with the tumblr left, and explores how the alt-right crossed over from marginal anonymized websites into “mainstream public and political life” alongside trump’s race for the presidency. nagle traces the alt-right’s mutation from an online subculture in the obama years into a multi-headed media hydra that trump rode to the white house. nagle condemns both the alt-right and the tumblr left, shooting barbs at both. some hit their target; others miss the mark. in any case, nagle provokes the socialist left to get its act together, online, and with new styles. nagle argues that in the same years in which liberal technological determinists and technological optimists were praising the internet and web 2.0 for breaking the filters of mainstream corporate media, eliminating the elitist gatekeepers and putting power in the hands of prosumers, the alt-right was busily “creating an internet-culture and alternative media of their own from the ground up” (41). while some on the left cheered the internet as essential to the formation of de-centralized and leaderless social movements like occupy, nagle demonstrates that facebook and smartphones, twitter and tablets, do not necessarily lean left. in the same moment that left 1 tanner mirrlees is the program director of the communication and digital media studies program in the faculty of social science and humanities at the university of ontario institute of technology. email: tanner.mirrlees@uoit.ca mailto:tanner.mirrlees@uoit.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research techno-theorists were championing the rise of rhizomatic and leaderless movements modelled on internet architecture, white nationalists were using web 2.0 to build de-centralized networks of neo-nazis and horizontal movements of hate. during the obama years, the alt-right developed its own online media empire, and today, the national policy institute’s richard spencer and the daily stormer’s andrew anglin are powerful platform propagandists. spencer has over eighty thousand twitter followers, a sum that exceeds noam chomsky’s followers by about thirty thousand and which outmatches jacobin magazine’s editor bhaskar sunkara’s by fourty thousand. anglin takes $4000 per month on hatreon, a crowdfunding site that he and other fascists “innovated” after patreon banned them for violating its hate speech regulations. save chapo trap house and dead pundits society, patreon socialists are few, and not well funded. in their present configuration, the internet and digital media technologies are neither essentially right or left, but a terrain of struggle. unfortunately, the alt-right seems to be winning the day on this terrain. as nagle says, the internet “has helped to take the right, not the left, to power” (27). true, the “gramscians of the alt-right” have had “remarkable success in spreading their ideas through their own alternative and almost exclusively online media content in the absence of traditional media, political establishment bodies or other institutional support” (53). the gramscians of the left need to develop a social(ist) media strategy for battling the alt-right; if they fail to do this, we will lose. nagle also argues that key to the alt-right’s rise to power was its embrace of the “transgressive style”—a style that not so long ago was associated with the new left, interwoven with the liberal art world and connected to critical theoretical developments in humanities and social sciences departments. nagle says the “transgressive irreverent style of the 60s counterculture was everything the right hated in previous culture wars” (36), but the 4chan shitposters, meme warriors, and doxx hounds of today’s alt-right seem to have “more in common with the 1968 left’s slogan ‘it is forbidden to forbid!’ than it does with anything most recognize as part of any traditionalist right” (28). nagle’s thesis about the alt-right’s co-optation of the new left’s transgressive style is the weakest part of the book. it says little about this style’s co-optation by the cultural industries long ago, and feeds the alt-right’s delusional view of itself as a real agent of social change today. to transgress means to offend or go against an established rule, law, or code of conduct. to be genuinely transgressive, a style must cut against the grain of society. while the alt right’s ethno-chauvinism, sexism and racism shatter the neoliberal myth of america as a vast middle class and multicultural meritocracy, these deplorable ideologies have been integral to american capitalism and empire for time immemorial. they are not system outliers, but serviceable to it. pitting ethnos against ethnos, white against black, man against woman, the altright cuts its style from the bourgeois nationalism of the 19th century, not the countercultural 60s. in this regard, the alt-right’s transgressive style is not transgressive at all, but conformist: it does not offend the 1%’s concentration of wealth and political power, go against reigning private property laws, or subvert the worker’s compulsion to sell their labour for a wage as the only way to survive. nagle might have better conceptualized the alt-right’s style as “pseudo-transgressive,” or, a superficially rebellious and resistant style that is substantively intertwined with the system in dominance that is capitalism and compliant with social class power. the left needs to critique the alt-right’s pseudo-transgressive style while creating 21st century socialist styles. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research overall, nagle’s book is a good introduction to the alt-right and the tumblr left as they were being formed. but one year into trump’s presidency, nagle’s story about alt-right trolls battling tumblr liberals feels dated. neoliberal capitalism has been de-legitimized; a space is opening up for history to be made. but who will make it? as of late, the alt-right’s culture warriors have shed their pseudo-transgressive style and laid bare the fascist militancy once hidden beneath. fists and guns are in the streets, and trump doesn’t mind. to fight the alt-right, the socialist left must not play the right’s caricature of the tumblr left. censorship and violence may gratify in the short run, but they are no substitute for building organizations and movements capable of winning and sustaining long term social change. if the left wants to defeat the alt-right now and for the future, we need to learn how to connect with, guide, organize and perhaps even lead those not already immersed in our echo chambers. we need to make better arguments, write resonant stories, craft more alluring myths, and win large numbers of people to a vision of a better society than this one. above all, this is what nagle challenges the left to do today, and this is perhaps the book’s greatest value. challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 55 challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages stephen mcbride1 and jacob muirhead2 abstract: the existence of a low wage sector is nothing new, nor are efforts to resist the conditions experienced by people whose incomes typically fall below the poverty line. in recent decades, under the rubric of neoliberalism structural and political factors in many western states have combined to expand the low wage sector. in policy terms this is represented by intensified efforts to flexibilize the labour market and to impose conditionality for the receipt of social benefits. various social and political forces have pushed for policies to address issues of low wages and poverty. the paper recognizes the intersection of social and labour market policies but focuses on the latter. it opens with an historical overview of efforts to address low wages that touches on sectoral councils in the u.k, and the awards system in australia. it then moves on to analyze contemporary minimum wage policy and campaigns for a living wage. we then turn to the discourses/argumentation associated with these initiatives, and those employed by opposition to them. our goal is to understand and evaluate the arguments advanced but move beyond discourse to identify the conditions in which particular means of addressing low wages can succeed. keywords: low incomes; low wages; minimum wages; living wage; labour low wages seem endemic to capitalist economic systems though the size of the low wage sector and its characteristics can vary over time. explanations of the low waged include systemic accounts, such as that of marx in which an industrial reserve army of the unemployed and underemployed serves to depress wages generally, or keynes, for whom deficiencies in aggregate demand could trigger depression with the same effect. orthodox economic accounts suggest a relationship between possession of human capital, productivity, and wages. here, the responsibility for being low waged lies with the individual who has neglected to acquire the right amount and type of human capital; and 1 stephen mcbride is professor and canada research chair in public policy and globalization in the department of political science at mcmaster university. 2 jacob muirhead is a phd student at mcmaster university in the department of political science. 56 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages who, as a result, is less productive than his or her peers and endures low wages as a consequence. human capital theory is open to a number of significant objections (see mcbride 2000, 172-6) which undermine its value as an explanation of low wages. although there has never been a time when low wages were unproblematic in capitalist society, the post-war period in which keynesian ideas informed public policy, unions tended to be stronger than either before or since, a relatively generous welfare state came into being, and income disparities became somewhat more equal, represented an exceptional era. with its demise, low waged employment has grown in most jurisdictions (see standing 1999, 208-221). this article focuses on efforts to deal with low wages through statutory minimum wages and, more recently, through living wage campaigns that pressure either government or private employers to pay rates that enable basic survival above the poverty rate. the latter living wage campaigns are a response to the continued and expanding presence of low wage sectors, even in jurisdictions that have statutory minimum wages. typically, minimum wage rates are at levels that consign their recipients to lives below the poverty level. however, other mechanisms to address the issue have been attempted and we provide a brief historical outline of two of them. in the ongoing battle against low wages and poverty we focus on wages and thus the labour market in this article. however it is important to keep all options in mind and to consider also the intersection between wages and the “social wage”, as represented by various income or in-kind supports that are, or could be available to those with insufficient market-generated income. the low waged are part of a larger group comprising all those who have low incomes. the first alternative method was used in britain, was to establish wages councils in a number of low-waged sectors such as retail, hospitality, social and child care, food processing, cleaning, textiles and clothing and hairdressing. founded in 1909, (bayliss, 1962) they were eventually abolished in 1993 under the conservative government’s deregulation of the labour market strategy. defenders of the councils fought to preserve them based on research findings that they had alleviated low wages and had not cost jobs, as opponents both of the councils and minimum wages generally claimed. once they were abolished however, it seemed that a national minimum wage had some advantages, not least broader coverage, and support rallied around that option rather than restoration of the councils (manning 2009; cabrelli, 2014, 245-6). there was also an institutionalized system of consultation in the public service particularly for lower waged public servants. it took the form of challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 57 joint consultative mechanisms, commonly referred to as whitley councils after their originator, john whitley, whose committee on the relations between employers and employees during world war i recommended a system of regular formal consultative councils involving workers and employers. the councils would be empowered to cover any issue related to pay and conditions of service, and to refer issues to arbitration if agreement could not be reached. in the uk a civil service whitley council was set up in 1919. surveys of its early records and other efforts to address poverty, reveal often archaic language but issues and arguments that are very current. these apply both to public sector-private sector comparisons and more generally with regard to low pay and what is now termed precarious work. demands for some kind of living wage had long preceded the councils. as early as 1893 a resolution in the house of commons (and restated periodically at later dates) provided that: “no person [employed by certain types of public sector establishments] be engaged at wages insufficient for a proper maintenance…” (cited in white, 1933, 56). later versions of the resolution extended similar provisions to workers directly employed by the government. the original motion also advanced the idea that public service employment should provide a model to be emulated by private employers: “conditions of labour as regards hours, wages, insurance against accidents, provision for old age, sickness etc., should be such as to afford an example to private employers throughout the country” (white, 1933, 158). however, the whitley councils found it difficult to operationalize such practices. the concept of public sector as model employer was unsuccessfully counterposed to the business argument that the employers should pay what was necessary for recruitment and retention in a market driven system (white, 1933, 158). by 1929 the concept had been dismissed. staff associations pointed out that almost half post-office employees had pay rates below the recognized poverty standard of living, one that recognized “bare physical efficiency.” similarly the associations noted large number of temporary staff (around 35 per cent in 1929) and significant wage differences between men and women employees in the same pay grades, amounting often to 25 per cent of starting salary and/or salary caps (white, 1933, 162-4). in australia, the “awards” system provides another historical model. it has undergone considerable revision in the neoliberal period (see bray and macneil, 2011). however, in its pre-1990s heyday, the awards system of compulsory conciliation and arbitration, working through ‘labour courts’ and tribunals was largely responsible for establishing minimum 58 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages pay and standards for the australian workforce (mccallum, 2011). conciliation was first attempted: if it failed, the labour courts could invoke compulsory arbitration which led to a binding award governing the employers, workers, unions, and employers’ associations applicable to the dispute. the awards specified minimum wages and conditions though bargaining above these minima could occur. the result was that: “all employees who employed workers in the relevant industry or craft were obliged to abide by the terms and conditions of employment (mccallum, 2011, 8). neither state nor commonwealth level governments were typically involved in legislating minima until the 1990s. instead they relied on the labour courts to establish these. although technically confined to the named disputants in an award, awards tended to establish standards which spread beyond those immediately affected to all employees of the listed employers’ associations and often became community standards (bray and macneil, 2011, 156). since the deregulatory neoliberal changes of the 1980s and 1990s statutory minimums, mostly at the federal or commonwealth level, have partially displaced the awards system. whatever its limitations, however, the awards system significantly contributed tone of the most equal distributions of income in the western world and its erosion coincided with increased inequality (pusey, 2003, 48). strategies addressing low-wage work: the minimum wage both examples discussed above have declined or been abolished. in place of them there has been renewed interest in minimum wage provisions and, in light of the perceived deficiencies of that model, in the concept of a living wage. the minimum wage has long been a central public policy used by a variety of states to address low-wage work and economic inequality with varying degrees of success.3 originally, the idea emerged as part of the ‘anti-sweats’ campaigns to protest exploitative working conditions in sweatshops in new zealand and australia in the 1890s. minimum wage systems now are embedded in over 100 countries 3 low wage work has commonly been defined by the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) as full-time work that pays at or less than two-thirds of median full-time earnings. this definition is not the only one, however, and many countries use their own definitions which incorporate different thresholds and vary on whether to include part-time, apprenticeship, young workers, and estimates of the informal economy into their measurements. the oecd, for example, does not include part-time work in its estimate and certainly under-estimates the size of the low-wage economy in countries. see, for example, damian grimshaw, 2011. challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 59 (neumark and wascher, 2008). the historical longevity of the minimum wage as well as its continued centrality in policy discussions around the world speak to the importance of assessing the utility and potential of the idea as a regulatory tool used by states to address and reduce low-wage work. yet this is no easy task. there is considerable variation in minimum wage policy both historically within countries and also comparatively between them. however, the basic function of all minimum wage policy is to set a minimum market value which employers, by law, cannot go below. based on this straightforward definition, one can begin to assess the utility of minimum wages through the degree to which they raise wages and their subsequent impact in reducing the size of the lowwage sector in relation to the overall labour market (schulten, 2014, 13). there are two distinct approaches to minimum wage regulation. generally, minimum wage policies differ most significantly in the manner in which they are determined. first, minimum wages can be set universally at the national level or, in federal countries possibly at a subnational level, and are enforced statutorily through legislation. these minimum wage systems set a common wage floor which applies to all employees unless exceptions are specified relating to age, or industry and historically, gender (schulten, 2014). lower minima for young, inexperienced, or workers in industries where tipping is prevalent are example of variations. universal minimum wage systems are the most common type of minimum wage system. if wage floors are not established through universal statutory legislation, they can be set through a collective bargaining process negotiated either bipartite between employer and union representatives, or tripartite between union, employer and state representatives (schulten, 2014). whereas universal national minimum wages tend to be consistent across all sectors of the economy, those negotiated in bipartite and tripartite agreements generally occur at the sectoral or occupational level. consequently, there is no common wage floor, but instead, a number of different minimum wages. although this system sounds piecemeal and consequently prone to inequality in the minima that are set, workers in those countries which use a collective bargaining system for minimum wage determination generally do so because they are well-represented by powerful unions, that are highly organized, dense, and provide broad coverage to the majority of workers. in addition, where union density is lower, states using this system often have various ways of extending agreement coverage from specific negotiations to all workers within a sector, whether they are unionized or not (eldring and alsos, 2012). countries with this type of minimum wagesetting system include finland, sweden, denmark, italy and austria. 60 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages categorization is not always straight forward, and the two systems are not mutually exclusive as the cases of france and austria illustrate (kampelmann et al., 2013, 31, 33). canada, like most liberal welfare states uses a statutory minimum wage system in order to establish a wage floor (bernard, 2008; esping-anderson, 1990; rueda & pontusson, 2000). minimum wage legalisation has a long history of regulation in canada at the provincial level as jurisdiction over labour issues falls primarily to the provinces (ontario labour relations board, 2013), although there is also a separate federal statutory minimum wage in canada for federally regulated sectors (benjamin, 2001, 187). indeed, the provinces first enacted minimum wage legislation in manitoba and british columbia in 1918, and this legislation was quickly followed by nova-scotia, ontario, quebec and saskatchewan by 1920. although these minimum wages were initially set only for women in the labour force, all of the provinces mentioned above had extended a minimum wage to include men by 1937 (human resources and skills development canada, 2005). minimum wage policy was enacted by the government primarily in response to public concerns, spearheaded most prominently by the national council of women of canada (mccallum, 1986, 32-34) this cause was also picked up by trade unions that fought to extend minimum wage legislation (mccallum, 1986). although the achievement of a statutory minimum wage system across the canadian provinces was a victory for labour activists, these early minimum wage systems still enabled employers to set low minimum wages (mccallum, 1986, 56). as indicated below in figure 4, these wages remain quite low today, at below 45 percent of the median wage of a full-time worker. this leaves full-time minimum-wage workers in ontario, for example, earning just 81 percent of the low-income challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 61 poverty-line measure for the province (tiessen, 2015, 6), although, the real value of minimum wages has been trending upwards in most provinces over the past decade (battle, 2011). countries that determine minimum wages collectively appear on average to have both more generous wage floors that provide a decent quality of life and also less overall income inequality between top and bottom earners (kampelmann et al., 2013). moreover, there is also a correlation between high union coverage and a reduction in the size of the low-wage economy more generally, as seen in figure 1 (schmitt, 2012, 3). statutory, universal minimum wages tend to be lower, but all encompassing, whereas those produced by a collective bargaining system tend to have higher wage floors and less inequality. these outcomes are dependent on high rates of bargaining coverage to be effective (kampelmann et al., 2013). this is important to note, as union density and union coverage has been on the decline in the global north, as illustrated in figure 2, and for this reason the model may have a limited future: the model of a national statutory minimum has therefore been gaining ground. ireland, the united kingdom, and most recently germany in 2015, all introduced a statutory minimum wage in response to declining union density which has increasingly led to fragmented, decentralized bargaining agreements and the erosion of coverage (bispinck and schulten, 2014; eldring and alsos, 2012; schulten, 2014). indeed, one can see in figure 1 that these countries all occupy a middle ground in collective-bargaining coverage between unregulated, decentralized labour markets such as the united states, and more 62 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages regulated centralized labour markets such as denmark or finland. the result of falling bargaining coverage in all three countries has been the growth of a low-wage sector, rising inequality and the emergence of a dual economy. work for unionized workers on the “inside” has remained well paid and secure, while non-unionized work on the “periphery” has become increasingly common, with workers employed in unregulated industries generally defined by low pay, insecure, short-term and flexible employment (bispinck and schulten, 2014; manning, 2013; milner, 1995; pothier, 2014). part of a policy response in all three countries has been a switch to a statutory universal minimum wage that sets a consistent wage floor at the national level without any gaps in coverage. potential of statutory minimum wage systems a great deal of labour market literature has identified an interconnected set of sobering themes: work is becoming increasingly precarious, egalitarian labour market institutions such as unions are in precipitous decline, wages for all but the richest have stagnated, the welfare state is in retrenchment, social benefits are declining and fulltime work is being replaced with jobs that are part-time, temporary and low paying (appelbaum, 2012; bivens et al., 2014; branch and hanley, 2011; brosnan and wilkinson, 1988; hutton, 2003; milner, 1995; western and rosenfield, 2011). statutory minimum wages have become increasingly important not only because of a general rise in low-paying, poor quality jobs within developed countries, but also because within flexible, deregulated labour markets very few alternative strategies to address low-wage work remain. to provide some indication of the incidence of low-wage work among economies in the global north, figure 3 quantifies the absolute numbers and percentage of employees in low paid work within a sample of oecd countries: challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 63 in 2009, over 88 million people within the oecd were employed in low-wage work, and this number has increased since that time as a result of the poor economic conditions that continue to plague many oecd countries and the concentration of post-crisis recovery through the disproportionate growth in low wage jobs. a cursory analysis of statutory minimum wages reveals that they are inadequate in providing a decent standard of living in most cases (oecd, 2015). for example, although there is no commonly accepted definition of what a “fair” minimum wage actually is, both the european council and the commission have at various times in the recent past suggested an equitable minimum wage as 60 percent of a full-time median salary (schulten, 2014). as figure 4 illustrates, most statutory minimum wages are well below this 60 percent cut-off, ranging between 38 and 48 percent in 2012: these meagre wages have remained relatively stagnant in terms of real value since 1975, in spite of consistent year on year growth in labour productivity in the global north. this relationship can be seen in figure 5: 64 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages this analysis reveals that though becoming more widespread, minimum wages are an inadequate approach to addressing low wagework. systems based on collective bargaining are becoming less feasible in the face of union decline and spotty coverage. most statutory minimum wage policies are set too low to meaningfully improve the quality of life for those working in low-wage employment, even while the proportion of lowwage work as a percentage of the overall labour force is rising within the oecd. low wage discourses neoliberal economic thought and public political discourse suggests that a “fair” wage is simply equal to the marginal revenue product of labour (o’neill, 2014). the divergence between labour productivity and real wages noted in figure 5 above is problematic for this perspective. nevertheless it remains in some version the dominant perspective most often articulated by economists and politicians. a minimum wage, therefore, is seen as a policy that interferes with the functionality of the market. those against a minimum wage argue that these policies have a net negative effect on the economy. because minimum wages increase the cost of labour, employers are forced to lay off workers, freeze hiring, increase prices, and reduce hours (brown et al. 1982; dolado et al. 1996; neumark and wascher, 1992; oecd, 1994;). moreover, economists have argued that minimum wages also disproportionately affect youth, and those worst off and in possession of the fewest marketable skills (brown et al. 1992; scott and neumark, 2005). since the 1990s dissenting economic literature has revealed that minimum wage policies may in fact have no impact on employment, or if they do, it is marginal (betcherman, 2014; card and krueger, 1993; dolado et al. 1996; doucouliagos and stanley, 2009; ilo, 2014; manning, 2013; metcalf, 1999). in addition, economic research inspired by the recent financial crisis suggests that not only do minimum wage policies likely do little to hurt employment, but they are also useful counter-cyclical tools that help counteract deflationary spirals, by reducing the burden of aftertax government redistribution, and stimulating overall purchasing power and aggregate demand (ilo, 2014; imf, 2013a; imf, 2013b; kapelmann et al., 2013). finally, recent evidence most powerfully articulated by thomas piketty also suggests that economic inequality is one of the greatest threats to stability in the 21st century. consequently, much more value has recently been placed on interventionary policies such as the minimum wage which can play a role in reducing inequality (kapelmann et al., 2013; piketty, 2014). although it is difficult to quantify, all of this economic challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 65 argumentation relating to the minimum wage as a policy tool has been instrumental in the adoption of statutory wage floors in the united kingdom, ireland and germany in 1999, 2000 and 2015 respectively (o’neill, 2014; pothier, 2014). it should be noted, however, that although the wage floors set in these three countries are more generous than in the united states, they are guided by cautious economic research that recommends very gradual and modest increases and stipulates clear “optimal” upper limits to the utility of minimum wages before they begin to harm the labour market. consequently, although these wage floors hover much closer to the 60 percent of full-time employment metric identified by the eu commission, they nevertheless remain below it. on january 1st, 2015, germany introduced its first national minimum wage. the wage itself is determined in large part through the recommendations of a minimum wage commission that is made up primarily of employer and union representatives. relative to other european and north american countries, the minimum wage level set in january of 2015 was generous (schulten, 2014). at 58 percent of median full-time income, this places the generosity of germany’s minimum wage second in europe only to france. germany’s move to a statutory minimum wage was made in order to fill a minimum wage gap left by a collectivebargaining system which had become inadequate in providing coverage and good wages to an adequate proportion of german workers (eldring and alsos, 2012). where the german labour market was once defined by strong unions which negotiated industry wide agreements on behalf of most workers, many negotiations now take place at the plant level, do not meet the legal requirements for government extension and provide irregular coverage between full-time permanent employees and other, less permanent contract and part-time work (bispinck and schulten, 2014; hassel, 2011). unsurprisingly, both contract and part-time work has been growing in germany as a percentage of overall employment since the 1980s with part-time work doubling between 1991-2007 (hassel, 2011, 19). similarly, the share of low-paid among all workers in germany increased from 14.5 percent in 1998 to 21.5 percent in 2007 (hassel, 2011, 20). based on concern over the composition of the german labour market, an increase in low wage work, and rising income inequality, a number of political parties, including the social democratic party began to prioritize a statutory minimum wage. one study estimated that the new wage floor would raise the income of six million workers and affect 15 percent of the german workforce (pothier, 2014). in explaining such a high initial wage floor, a primary factor has been the role of unions in germany which are, comparatively speaking, still fairly powerful actors despite their declining 66 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages membership. since 2006-2007, the confederation of german trade unions (dgb) has been campaigning for a minimum wage and they also played a key role in turning a statutory minimum wage into a highly salient political issue during the 2013 elections in germany (bispinck and schulten, 2014). during this time, the dgb successfully secured political buy in and support for a minimum wage from the social democrats who went on to form a coalition with angela merkel’s christian democrats in part on the condition of minimum wage legislation (bispinck and schulten, 2014). the outcome of this protracted union-led campaign for a statutory minimum wage is a wage floor that has potential to reduce the incidence of low-wage work and income inequality in the country. however, given its novelty it is too new for any comprehensive empirical work to have been undertaken regarding its effectiveness. the british case is also viewed as a success story although the level of income it provides is less impressive. throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the number of british workers covered by collective pay-setting institutions such as unions or wage councils fell below 50 percent (milner, 1995). within a neoliberal political climate which was fiercely freemarket, successive british governments during this time-period waged war on organized labour. this led to reduced union strength and coverage, as well as the abolition, in 1993, of bipartite wage councils which set minimum wages for 2.5 million of britain’s poorest (machin and manning, 1994). with perhaps the exception of the united states, the magnitude of growth in wage inequality in britain during this time was unmatched in any other industrialized country (gosling and lemieux, 2004; thornley & coffey, 1999, 526-527). the sharp growth in poverty and inequality, combined with sustained pressure from trade unions and activists led the labour government to introduce a nationwide statutory minimum wage in 1999 (thornley and coffey, 1999, 528). this national minimum wage was to be monitored by a non-partisan independent expert commission called the british low pay commission (metcalf, 1999). the wage itself is set each year following the commission’s recommendation (kampelmann et al., 2013). the minimum wage in the uk immediately raised the wages of around five percent of the labour force with no noticeable impact on unemployment (manning, 2013). the british minimum wage has been credited with reducing income inequality, producing higher than average wage increases, and putting more money into the pockets of the approximately 1.5 million low-wage workers who are directly affected by changes in the minimum wage each year (low-pay commission, 2015). in addition, regardless of methodological approach, economic research has challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 67 shown the minimum wage has had little or no effect on employment rates (manning, 2013). however, a common criticism of the national minimum wage in the uk is that it too modest and conservative to make a significant impact on low-wage work (dolton et al., 2010). the wage floor is still one that leaves workers in poverty and the low-wage economy continues to grow in the united kingdom. this brief overview of minimum wage regulation has discussed the potential of these policies to address low-wages. the conclusions are mixed. although some collective bargaining systems ensure relatively generous wage floors, these systems, which rely on strong union membership, are becoming rare. consequently, statutory minimum wages increasingly are the dominant approach to minimum wage regulation. unfortunately, these systems are generally ungenerous and set very low wage floors that leave many fulltime workers employed in poverty. overall, economics discourse has become more favourable to minimum wage regulation. in addition, popular opinion towards minimum wage policy as measured through national surveys, has become more positive (see for example, dugan, 2013; pew, 2014; dahlgreen, 2014; thomas, 2014). moreover, discourses around minimum wages increasingly are now influenced by historical and philosophical considerations preoccupied with issues of justice, fairness, human dignity, social decency, and the good society (brennan, 2012; figart, 2004). these discourses stand at the centre of an increasingly powerful and popular social movement known as the “living wage” movement to which we now turn (figart, 2004; luce, 2012). the living wage movement trends in the labour market over the past few decades have not been positive for the average worker in the global north and these pressures have only intensified as a result of the global financial crisis of 2007/2008. despite increases in labour productivity, the majority of income growth has gone primarily to the top one percent of earners (alvaredo et al., 2015). real wages for those in lower income deciles have remained stagnant or fallen. unions and organized labour typically have nowhere near the same levels of organization, density, power or coverage that they once did (western and rosenfield, 2011). the level of social security that welfare states once provided is declining or threatened. jobs are increasingly temporary, part-time, contract-based, without benefits and low paying (freeman et al., 2005; muffels, 2008). in this article, three different strategies to address low-wage work have been outlined: wages councils, the australian awards system, and minimum wage regulation. 68 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages none of these strategies have proven capable of permanently addressing the issue of low-wages in contemporary society. a relatively new strategy to address low-paying work has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. this is, the living wage movement, (bennett, 2014; bernstein, 2005; clain, 2012; devinatz, 2013; figart et al., 2002; figart, 2001, 2004; glickman, 1997; luce, 2004, 2012; pennycook, 2012; pollin et al., 2008; rossi and curtis, 2013; adams and neumark, 2005; wills and linneker, 2013). part of what has made this movement so compelling has been its ability to frame the battle over lowwages normatively. in particular, at the core of the movement is a plea to human decency, solidarity, and underlying concepts of “fairness” based on the simple notion that those who work should not have to work in poverty. the contemporary living wage campaign has deep historical and philosophical roots (werner and lim, 2015; figart, 2004). the term itself developed some profile in late 19th century america, attracting support from organized labour, faith-based organizations and well-known religious, political, and social advocates of the time that came together to demand a “wage level that offers workers the ability to support families, to maintain self-respect and to have both the means and the leisure to participate in the civic life of the nation” (glickman, 1997, 66). the basic question of what constitutes a living wage has led to the development of a number of complex calculators to quantify this number to an exact monetary amount in given locations at a particular time4 (rossi and curtis, 2013). these are important components of living wage campaigns though the intuitive ideas behind the campaigns are hardly technical. the modern iteration of the living wage movement began in baltimore, maryland in 1994. the impetus was straightforward. throughout the early 1990s, soup kitchens run by religious workers operating in the baltimore area began to notice two things. first, there was a rising demand for their services. second, many of those who visited the kitchen or homeless shelter with their families were people who worked (pollin et al., 2008). the conclusion drawn was that people with families and jobs should not have to work in poverty and bring their families to soup kitchens. over the next two decades over 140 living wage campaigns were won in the united states alone. in the intervening period, the movement also expanded to the united kingdom (2001), 4 see, for example, the “living wage calculator” developed by dr. amy glasmeier of the massachusetts institute of technology and in partnership with penn state’s livingwage project available at: http://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/about. challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 69 canada (2010)5, new zealand (2014)6 ireland (2013-2014)7 and more recently it has also spread to south and south east asia. the campaigns have been a response to mitigate the impact of union jobs lost because of increasing privatization in the public sector. they are also a grassroots response to minimum wages that failed to meet basic living requirements. additionally, they were a response to rising income inequality and wage stagnation in the bottom few income deciles. finally, they were a means of organizing low-wage workers in a post-union economy (bernstein, 2005; levin-waldman, 2005; luce, 2004). living wage campaigns have often focused on the municipal level which provides more direct access to the policy process than other levels of government where campaigns have made less headway (bernstein, 2005; luce, 2004, 2012). the specific demands made by living wage campaigns differ depending on geographical location and country. nevertheless, living wage campaigns tend to model their initial campaign strategies on the basic income requirements for a family of three or four that includes the average cost of child care, food, healthcare, transportation, clothing, and other basic necessities while also taking into consideration cost of living and rent in different geographic locations (brennan, 2012; rossi and curtis, 2013, 122). using these calculations, campaigns emerge with an income that is generally double the statutory minimum wage, and also includes benefits (pollin et al., 2008). advocates argue that these sophisticated models are far more reflective of a basic income than those articulated in relation to state poverty measurements which are generally simplistic and outdated (rossi and curtis, 2013). this is the case in the united states at least, which calculates the poverty line based only on the caloric needs of various sized families while excluding all other costs (u.s department of health and human services, 2014; luce, 2012, 13). once operationalized, living wages can differ in a variety of ways in terms of how they function, which groups or geographic areas they cover, and under what conditions they come into effect. conceptually, however, the vast majority of living wage policy falls into three broad categories. the first living wage model is by far the most dispersed and has been operationalized in nearly 150 american cities. outside the united states, it has had much less impact, although notably, it is also used by the city of london in the united kingdom, as well as in the city of new 5 see for example brennan, jordan. 2012. enhancing democratic citizenship, deepening distributive justice: the living wage movement toronto: canadian centre for policy alternatives. 6 see, for example, livingwage new zealand at http://www.livingwage.org.nz 7 see, for example, livingwage, republic of ireland at http://www.livingwage.ie 70 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages westminster, canada (brennan, 2012; pollin, 2008; wills and linneker, 2013). this particular model operates through municipal ordinances that might best be described as targeted ordinances. this is because they function quite narrowly at the municipal level to affect only those workers whose jobs can be traced to public money (luce, 2004; 45). specifically, they require any actor who interacts in some financial capacity with the municipality to pay their workers a living wage. these ordinances can be targeted towards businesses contracting with the city, businesses which receive economic subsidies from the municipality, subcontractors who work alongside principal contractors on city contracts, businesses which borrow financially from the city, and finally municipal departments themselves (luce, 2004; 45). given their narrow target parameters, the impact of these ordinances is typically fairly low, directly affecting only one or two percent of a municipality’s overall labour force (bernstein, 2005; 117). although the generosity of these ordinances varies from city to city, generally, they require employers to pay wages above the poverty line and also require employers to provide benefits for workers. in addition, these ordinances are often not automatic, and it is quite common that they include minimum requirement conditions before they come into effect. as an example, many municipal wage ordinances only apply to city contracts valued at $100,000 or more (bernstein, 2005; 107). a second living wage model is operationalized through municipal ordinances as well, but instead of targeting businesses involved financially with the municipality, these ordinances have much broader coverage and affect all businesses within the political boundaries of the municipality. essentially, these geographically oriented living wage ordinances are functionally equivalent in terms of how they operate, to statutory minimum wage regulation at the state or federal level. these geographic ordinances set a wage floor for the entire municipality and all businesses within it are required to pay their employees a living wage (pollin et al., 2008). currently, these living wage ordinances are operative only within a small number of cities in the united states although this number has grown more quickly recently. among larger american cities, they exist in chicago (2014), los angeles (2015), oakland (2014), sante fe (2003), san francisco (2003), seattle (2014), washington d.c, (2013), and campaigns with a high probability of success are also currently underway in new york and portland8. given its broad coverage, this type of living wage model has had a much greater impact on low-wage work than 8 for more information, see the national employment law project’s website at http://www.nelp.org/content/uploads/city-minimum-wage-recent-trendseconomic-evidence.pdf challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 71 targeted municipal ordinances, although they are less common within the united states, and do not exist outside of it as of yet. in addition, it should be noted that these geographic living wage ordinances while relatively generous in relation to the federal minimum wage in america, typically do not provide workers with a living wage income. a third type of living wage model does not operate through mandated and legally enforceable municipal ordinance, but rather through voluntarily adoption by businesses themselves. these living wage models have been most successful in the united kingdom, but are also found in canada, ireland, new zealand, and to a lesser extent, the united states. although initial description of these living wage models as voluntary conjures up images of goodwill, corporate social responsibility and amicable cooperation, successful campaigns are also often the result of protracted struggles that rely on public naming, shaming and blaming (moore, 2015). for example, a living wage campaign currently underway in the united kingdom has targeted the english premier league (epl), and the manchester city football club in particular. this football club pays its players an average of £100,000 per week, and has just recently secured a £5.1 billion television contract, however, as advocates involved in this campaign point out, the club refuses to pay an army of contract workers more than the statutory minimum wage. in this respect, it is not out of a sense of noblesse oblige that manchester city is responding to calls for a living wage. rather, the football club is responding to the public outcry that has been conjured up through a highly visible living wage campaign (moore, 2015). despite this example, relationships between businesses and living wage advocates are generally less antagonistic in these models and voluntary cooperation is much more common (wills and linneker, 2013). the uk living wage movement began in london in 2001 (wills and linneker, 2013). london citizens (now citizens uk), is a broad-based community coalition composed of over 300 education, faith-based, union and volunteer organizations (citizensuk, 2015, 3). it is credited with beginning the british iteration of the living wage movement and was directly inspired by the success of the american movement and in close consultation with living wage advocates from baltimore throughout 2001 (wills and linneker, 2013, 188). given this shared history, the british and american living wage movements share some similarities in terms of their approach. for example, one of citizens uk’s first campaign victories was to ensure that the city of london would require a living wage be paid to any jobs that were connected with public money. however, there are key differences between the british and american living wage 72 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages movements. first, living wage campaigns in the uk are much more focused on encouraging voluntary participation by municipalities and businesses in providing a living wage to employees. in this respect, far less emphasis is placed on achieving living wage ordinances through law, and much more attention has been placed on developing collaborative partnerships with employers, trade unions, and municipalities. citizensuk describes itself as a broad-based community coalition, and its membership is primarily faith and education based with some union participation. reportedly, there has been real tension between trade union leaders and citizens uk stemming from secular antipathy based on popular perceptions of misogyny, authoritarianism and homophobia associated with faith groups (wills et al., 2009, 448). this tension is not as visible in the united states, where faith (christianity) plays a more powerful role in politics, and religious groups have a much longer history of strong community activism, often working alongside organized labour activists (wills et al., 2009, 450-451). second, different strategies to ensure compliance and participation with living wages have evolved in the uk. in particular, an accreditation system developed by citizensuk helps to monitor and ensure company compliance. perhaps even more important, this accreditation body also incentivizes companies to participate by turning living wage accreditation into a desirable club-like good (jensen and wills, 2013). currently, about 1000 employers have become accredited (coulson and bonner, 2015, 2). finally, the living wage movement is far more centralized in the uk, as a result of citizenuk’s clear and continued leadership within the movement. they have been involved in every major development in the uk living wage movement. they spearheaded the creation of a living wage accreditation body and they have also monopolized control over setting and determining a living wage for london, and also nationally (wills and linneker, 2013). the movement that originated in london in 2001, has now spread outwards and includes all of england as well as scotland (coulson and bonner, 2015, 4). this is different than in the united states, where living wages reached through campaigns differ from place to place and are the outcome of individual, isolated contests. although there is evidence that the british living wage movement has had some success in securing living wages for low-income workers, clearly voluntary participation has not been effective enough (pennycook, 2012). in fact, since 2001, it is estimated that the movement has secured a living wage for approximately 60,000 workers out of a low-wage labour force of around six million workers. the main business participants in the movement to this date have been public sector employers and large challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 73 financial firms in the city of london. a common feature of many private sector participants in this respect is that they have very few low-wage workers and therefore benefit disproportionately from accreditation (pennycook, 2012). the development of canada’s living wage movement began in the mid-2000s. the movement is especially well organized in british columbia, where new westminster became the first municipality in canada to agree to a living wage for itself and its contracts in 2011, and more recently the city of vancouver agreed to become a living wage employer (aubry, 2010; kieltyka, 2015; ogle, 2015). the origins of the movement, like the american and the british are explained by opposition to the growing low-wage economy (aubry, 2010; ivanova & klein, 2015; johnstone & cooper, 2013; richards et al., 2008). in particular, it is generally accepted that like the us and the uk, the canadian living wage movement was spurred on by exceptionally low minimum wage rates and declining social benefits throughout the 1980s and 1990s (aubry, 2010, 30-31). in the case of british columbia in particular, a strong catalyst for the living wage movement was also the sudden privatization of unionized jobs for public sector cleaners and cooks in the british columbian healthcare sector (aubry, 2010). the canadian living wage movement shares a number of similarities with both the british and the american movements and as a result, can be regarded as sort of hybrid. like the american experience, the canadian living wage movement is relatively fragmented being loosely coordinated by a variety of think tanks, ngo’s, unions, faith-based organizations and academics from across the country. however, in terms of approach, the canadian movement is more closely aligned with the uk living wage movement. for example, like citizensuk, canadian activists have sought to pressure municipalities and corporations alike by educating them on the benefits of living wages, as they relate to things like worker performance, improved corporate reputation, improved community health and so forth (first call, 2014). potential of living wage campaigns during a time of declining union strength and a conservative political climate defined by austere policies and stagnating wages for lowincome workers, living wage campaigns have been successful both in terms of the sheer number of campaign victories they have enjoyed, but also in their ability to provide affected low-wage workers with improved salaries and benefits (luce, 2004, 2012; pollin et al. 2012). living wage campaigns in the uk estimate they have generated an additional £210 74 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages million for 60,000 workers between may of 2011 and november of 2014 (coulson and bonner, 2015, 6). in the united states, an old estimate in 2002 analyzing narrowly focused municipal ordinances cited 100,000250,000 impacted workers although with the introduction of geographic ordinances with much wider coverage, this number is now certainly much higher and in the millions (devintas, 2013). further, pollin et al. (2008) indicate that the average real wage increase for a narrow municipal ordinance in boston saw real wages rise 25 percent on average. in addition, reich et al. (2014) indicate that geographic living wage ordinances in the united states hover anywhere from 14 percent to 106 percent above the federal minimum wage. some argue that living wage campaigns can benefit organized labour (bernstein, 2005; devintas, 2013; luce, 2004 for two interrelated reasons. the first lies in the potential of living wage campaigns to create cross-social movement alliances between organized labour and local living wage activists. at a time when unions have been criticized as overly rigid and narrowly self-interested, living wage campaigns can provide unions with a broader platform to develop long term and enduring coalitions with community allies pursuing social and economic justice (freeman, 2005). second, living wage campaigns can potentially increase awareness of organized labour among non-unionized workers. for example, in both baltimore and los angeles, the campaigns for a living wage ordinance have been followed by unionization efforts for affected workers (nissen, 2000, 38; bernstein, 2005; devintas, 2013; luce, 2004). a review of the economic literature on the impact of all three living wage models outlined above finds only marginal negative economic impacts in terms of price increases, employment loss, business closure or lost contracts due to a more hostile business environment (bernstein, 2005; devintas, 2013; fairris and reich, 2005; pennycook, 2012; pollin et al. 2008; pollin and wicks-lim, 2015). in fact, regardless of the methodology or data set used, the overall aggregated cost of living wage ordinances is between one or two percent of an employers total costs (devintas, 2013). living wages generally do not have harmful employment effects.9 they can and do lead to cost savings for businesses as a result of increased worker retention, decreased absenteeism, improved morale and productivity, the ability to provide longer training, and improved customer service (devintas, 2013; flint et al., 2013; pollin et al., 2008). a recent study comparing turnover rates of employers moving to a living wage indicated a 25 percent reduction on average (wills and linneker, 2013). 9 however, a few studies have shown significant negative employment effects for lowincome earners in some cases (adams and neumark, 2003, 2004, 2005). challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 75 perhaps most important, however, is the living wage movement’s normative appeal. indeed, the international labour organization has specifically identified the potential of the living wage movement as a watershed concept capable of uniting the world’s labour movement in relation to the shared vision people have with respect to the good life, economic justice and a living wage (laliberté, 2012; 10). as wills and linneker point out, the flexibility of the living wage movement to be “translated across space” and be “reconfigured wherever it lands to take root” while still reframing wages as a moral and social justice issue is remarkable (2013, 184). despite their potential, living wage campaigns nevertheless have weaknesses. universal minimum wages at living wage levels would obviously be a better solution. how to get there remains a key political challenge. for now, the proportion of workers covered by living wages around the world is very low. even in the united states where the campaign is most advanced, the total impact of the living wage including all three living wage models may currently impact a few million workers out of a low-wage labour force of 35 or 40 million. in the united kingdom, the total number of workers affected is 60,000 low-wage workers out of about six million (jensen and wills, 2013). an additional limitation of living wage campaigns raised is the real difficulty in ordinance implementation (luce 2004). for a variety of reasons, municipalities do not do a good job of enacting living wage ordinances following successful campaigns. relatedly, municipalities are also fairly poor at monitoring compliance, or enforcing ordinances following violations (luce, 2004). and, of course, even to the extent they are successful, living wages only address part of the low-income problem, that which results from low wages. the broader issue of low incomes and the adequacy of the social wage is not addressed by this strategy and can be a source of tension between different social movements (bennett, 2014; cornish, 2012, 6-7). conclusion a significant sector of low waged workers seems endemic to capitalist economies. its existence, and that of an involuntarily unwaged sector outside the labour market arguably exerts a depressing effect on all wages. nonetheless, continual efforts have been made to at least alleviate the conditions of low waged employees. these include wages councils, the awards system, minimum wages of either statutory of collectively bargained types, and living wages. each mode has advantages and disadvantages. for example, universal statutory minimum wages provide 76 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the most coverage, but typically at rates that hover below the poverty line. collectively bargained minimum wages have tended to be more adequate than statutory ones but their coverage is less, and they depend for their success on strong trade unions. but unionization rates and union power have been in decline throughout the neoliberal period so the preconditions for sustaining, still less expanding such systems may no longer exist. living wages have enormous ideological appeal – the idea that someone working full-time should earn enough to live on resonates with basic concepts of fairness. however, coverage is spotty and in conditions where full-time, full-year work is declining, the hourly rates that express what a living wage is may fall short of an adequate standard of living. as with so much else in the labour market the low wage issue could be more easily addressed in conditions of full-employment. all these modes of dealing with low wages have enjoyed some success, at least for a time, yet none have seriously dented the low waged sector. precluding any enduring and widespread reduction in the low wage economy, in this respect, are the deeply embedded structural and systemic features of contemporary labour markets. in order to successfully reduce the low wage economy, potential solutions must overcome the increasingly common precariousness of work, the highly concentrated power of capital, the high and enduring levels of unemployment which exert downward pressure on wages and the neoliberal architecture which informs the majority of public policy. how might this happen? some have made the argument that the growth of low-waged work is an inevitable, epiphenomenal consequence of economic globalization, and technological innovation and consequently difficult to control. while these factors have certainly played an important role in shaping labour markets, the role of politics must not be underestimated. the war on organized labour and the dismantling of labour laws over the past few decades has been an explicitly political project. these decisions have hindered pro-labour opposition from the left, and contributed significantly to the construction and advancement of a low wage economy dependent on reserves of cheap labour. one way of alleviating the problem of low waged conditions would seem to lie in a revived trade union movement with the strength to push back against a political and corporate elite interested in maintaining the structural conditions necessary for the mass reproduction of cheap labour. however, the rebirth of organized labour in such impressive fashion seems highly unlikely, at least for the present. despite its shortcomings, the living wage movement can contribute to an effective pro-labour agenda. the movement has widespread challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 77 ideational appeal that resonates across the political spectrum and considerable mobilization has occurred around its demands. with that said, it is clear that the living wage movement is still in the embryonic stages and that the structural and political conditions required for the widespread adoption of living wages currently do not exist. the open question yet to be answered, therefore, remains whether the ideological appeal of the living wage can prevail within neoliberal labour markets whose current structural conditions lead to a systematic mass reproduction of cheap labour. references adams, s., & neumark, d. 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(john k. noyes, 1997:14) introduction: just as foucault has lamented on how the "homosexual became a personage" (foucault, 1978:43) in the late nineteenth century, so too did sadomasochism (sm), a term originally coined by krafft-ebbing, become a medicalized identity. however, while the incorporation of sadomasochism into the discourse on sexuality may have occurred over a century ago, it has only been in the late twentieth century that practitioners of sadomasochism have begun to positively embrace their identities, form 'communities' and establish themselves as a political constituency. the reasons for this can be traced to numerous events including the rise of consumerist culture, the development of gay and lesbian communities, and the re-emergence of feminism. for the present purpose, the link between feminism and sadomasochism is particularly insightful because sm has been a point of both celebration and contestation within lesbian-feminist communities. on the one hand, anti-sm lesbian-feminists have attempted to morally regulate sm practices and practitioners by claiming that sm is harmful to all women and that the pio-sm position is a form of subjection to 'false consciousness' and 62 volume 16, 2000 chemins altemat if 'patriarchal values'. to counter this, lesbian smers claim to be engaging in transgressive political acts that resist and challenge forms of oppression. furthermore, they claim that sm plays a therapeutic role and is a means to self-actualization and 'truth.' both the proand anti-sm positions within lesbian-feminist communities can be seen as attempts to integrate lesbian-feminist theory with personal desire (butler, 1982) and lifestyle. while there are many differences between the two positions, they both hold on to some notion of the 'truth' about sex and grant it explanatory power, either as the site of women's oppression or as a path to individual self-fulfillment. this dialectic has been evident throughout the 'sex wars'. it is my view that the 'sex wars', including the debate over sm, have been occurring in the context of a partial move away from emancipatory movements informed by marxist frameworks towards what gidden's (1991) has termed "life politics." i use this term of gidden's to reflect a politics that does not entirely abandon the emancipatory or liberatory agenda of movements like feminism, but tends to conjoin this approach with one that focuses on personal and collective fulfillment and actualization. the move away from emancipatory movements and their attendant obligations and duties is reflective of a move towards an ethic that stresses individual autonomy and where group membership is exercised through freedom of choice and consumption (rose, 1989,1994). the debate between anti-sm lesbian-feminists and their pro-sm counterparts raises numerous questions about the relationship between subjectification and regulation on the one hand, and the potential for resistance and liberation on the other. it is my argument that sm does have the potential to resist certain forms of subjectification and that claims that it represents a threat of harm to the social body are not adequately substantiated. at the same time, by adopting certain technologies of control from the larger social context, such as a power-powerless or dominant-submissive dynamic, sm's potential for resistance is seriously curtailed. furthermore, while anti-sm lesbian-feminists are chastising their pro-sm counterparts' immorality and lack of discipline, and while sm lesbian-feminists herald their 'sexual liberation', there is a third issue that needs to be articulated: the targets of moral regulation have, as is consistent with patterns of moral regulation (hunt, 1997:281), taken it upon themselves to engage in a process of selfand community-formation. this process is therapeutic in nature and, in my view, may become volume 16, 2000 6.? alternate routes a point of resistance in itself. the emphasis on selfand community-formation, as i hope to show, amount to new regulatory regimes within sm communities. while this regulation cannot be assumed to be positive or negative, it does serve as a reminder of foucault's (1978) insistence that 'liberation', defined as freedom from regulation, is not possible. before discussing the main arguments within the sm debate, i would like to briefly address the reasons for my own interest in this topic. i am writing from a position that distinguishes between morality and my own personal distaste and unease with simulations that blur distinctions between sex and violence. my own sense of taste, then, is different from my sense of morality in that a substantiated claim of social harm needs to be evident before i accept something as inherently moral in nature. as a self-identified pro-feminist man, it has been my project for many years to develop an ethical position that is congruent with my identity and with my sexuality. included in this project is my desire to construct a political approach to sm other than those currently offered. in light of this, the intellectual endeavor i am undertaking can also be understood as a project of self-formation. sm as subjectification: the radical feminist critique the existence of self-identified lesbian-feminist sadomasochists poses a direct challenge to both feminist and lesbian-feminist theories. to begin, the idea that women who identify as lesbian and as feminists could be engaged in consensual 'violence' challenges a view of "lesbianism as the beginning of passion, vulnerability, mutuality and trust" that offers the possibility for a "re-posing of power as the extension and creation of new ways of loving" (butler, 1982:169). inherent in this is also a challenge to how women are defined, which for many radical feminists has included a moral differentiation from men. lesbian-feminism, it appears, has been faced with both a theoretical contradiction and a crisis of discipline within its ranks. as a response, anti-smers need a theoretical and moral position to reassert 'true' feminist self-formation and purposeful solidarity. 1 the general response from radical feminists 2 has been that willful participation in sm is a form of 'false consciousness' that is consistent with patriarchal relations: 64 volume 16. 2000 chemins altematif the primary claim of [radical feminism] is that the eroticization of violence or domination, and of pain or powerlessness, is at the core of sadomasochism and, consequently, that the practice of sadomasochism embodies the same values as heterosexual practices of sexual domination in general and sexually violent practices like rape in particular (bar-on, 1982:75). additionaly, sm actually strengthens these relations: to degrade someone, even with that person's consent, is to endorse the degradation of persons. it is to affirm that the abuse of persons is acceptable. for if some people may be humiliated and despised, all may be (hein, 1982:87; emphasis in original). sm is seen as an intolerable perpetuation of violence against women, 'male values' and 'patriarchal relations' that also mocks the very real suffering of oppressed groups. as herman states, i am condemning s/m sex sex that necessarily involves and takes its pleasures in the (consensual and ritualized) infliction of pain and humiliation within a setting that draws upon and mimics the non-consensual abuse (as in mainstream) of real-people raped women, subjugated slaves, and tortured prisoners (1996:152; emphasis in original). these anti-sm critiques view sm practices as being appropriated from the dominant culture (herman, 1996:150) or, as rich has stated, an "acceptance by some lesbians of male homosexual mores" (1983:203). thus, when davis, a lesbian-feminist sadomasochist, calls on lesbianfeminism to "own your 'illegitimate' children" (1987:13), the response from radical-feminist atkinson is direct: "your "enemy" is not the establishment per se. in fact, you claim as your life force the distillation of the essence of that establishment. your enemy is the resistance of the establishment to recognize you as its own" (1982:91; emphasis in original). volume 16, 2000 65 alternate routes while pro-sm advocacy has not been welcome by most radical-feminists, there seems to be a hesitancy amongst some radicals to be overly critical of lesbian sm practitioners. one reason for this is the belief that sm, although not justifiable, is a means to escape feelings of powerlessness that are inflicted upon lesbians and is a result of being "conditioned to making bland observations and cynical jokes in response to obscenities of a national scale and perversity of universal magnitude. we are numbed to the point of being at home with cruelty and despair" (hein, 1982:88). the argument that lesbians have been subjected to a form of conditioning or 'false consciousness' is central to the rejection of sm practitioners' ability to consent. in essence, marxist critiques of contract theory are applied to sexual intercourse with the result that consent is not possible in a patriarchal context where, it is argued, "men have power" and "women are powerless" (morgan, 1982:117). just as some radicalfeminists argue that heterosexual intercourse cannot be separated from rape because of structural inequities (i.e. mackinnon, 1987), lesbian sadomasochists cannot consent to practicing sm because their subjectivities and "desires are formed largely by social ideologies and institutions" (saxe, 1992:60). as russell states, women have been reared to be submissive, to anticipate and even want domination by men. but wanting or consenting to domination and humiliation does not make it nonoppressive. it merely demonstrates how deep and profound the oppression is (1982:177). clearly there are problems with this claim, not the least of which is its circular and self-supporting logic: what lesbian smers do with each other is patriarchy's fault and, rather than revealing a problem in radical feminist logic, the existence of lesbian sadomasochists only serves to prove how powerful patriarchy actually is. a related problem, which is addressed by many sm lesbians, is the disempowerment that results from a renunciation (if women's potential for individual agency. the claim that sm is a private practice has also been denounced by many radical-feminists. for saxe, the acts themselves and their consequences cannot be considered private. even if they could be considered private, she reminds us that "the so-called private sphere of the bedroom is the site ol much of women's worst misogynist oppression" (1992:61). 66 volume 16, 2000 chemins altemat if she believes that sm is highly visible, a concern that morgan furthers by arguing that depictions of lesbian sm reflect and reinforce patriarchal portrayals of women as naturally masochistic (1982:110). this is viewed as dangerous for women because, regardless of the participants' intentions, the context in which these depictions are interpreted cannot be controlled (see star, 1982). bar-on (1982) has reached the conclusion that the social nature of sex means that sexual choices cannot rightfully be decided upon by the individual alone. she argues that everything that is social is rule governed and warns of the dangers that disallowing sexual regulation could incite (1982:74). in many ways, as rose (1989) has pointed out, she is correct in that what is often considered private is in fact public to the extent that it is governable. nonetheless, the trend towards legislating correct and incorrect sexual behaviour within feminist communities led butler, somewhat sympathetically, to site this as a reason for the growth of sm. this is what she terms the "paradox" of "the personal is political": when personal life is expected to conform to a strict politics, sex seems to become "radically public" and open to communal scrutiny (1982:171). critiques of the pro-sm position often include a challenge to its liberatory potential. herman, wary of the possibility of sliding down the slippery relativist slope, asserts that "radical pluralist" approaches to difference need not cede the right to make value judgements (1996:151). similarly, hein warns of the inherent liberalist approach to the realization of the self that characterizes sm (1982:84). true liberation, it is argued, is impossible under conditions of abuse regardless of whether the abuse is consentual (bar-on, 1982) and cannot be reached through the fulfillment of individual desires. as butler states, in response to califia's previous claim that desire is "impeccably honest", "to conceive of desire as [an] 'impeccably honest' law unto itself as key to destroying repressive sexual orders is to exaggerate the autonomy and intelligence of desire" (1982:173). desire, butler argues, can only be as free as its holders. in fact, some writers, such as atkinson, argue that sexual liberation is not a feminist goal because "feminists are women who are sick to death of being defined sexually" (1982:91). however, other writers do consider sexual liberation to be important but reject sm because it does not involve making a personal and political choice to construct one's own sexuality on one's own terms. if sexuality is socially constructed, as most feminist theory posits, then the correct approach is to reconstruct volume 16, 2000 67 alternate routes desire in such a way as to eliminate power dynamics from all relationships. while it is observed that "perfect feminist relationships" are impossible within a male-controlled society (rian, 1982:47), it is nonetheless "crucial that both power and politics get reshaped and deepened from having passed through the lesbian experience" (butler, 1982:173). sexual relationships can also not be separated from the rest of life, a separation that is "patriarchal through and through" and associated with sm (bar-on, 1982:80). for radical-feminists, sex represents an expression of intimacy and a political bond that needs to be carefully managed. while its 'truths' can be reclaimed only by cleansing it of patriarchy, it is also, as foucault has said, "the point of weakness where evil portents reach through to us" (1978:69). within this framework sex cannot be a means to self-realization until after women have acquired self-determination and control over the social structures that shape women's lives and sexual imagination. until that point, lesbians need to be vigilant in their moral self-formation, if for no other reason than for the sake of the movement. in exploring the radical-feminist position, it is worth noting that the marxist roots of this emancipatory movement are clearly evident in many respects. the approach taken is based largely upon marx's historical materialism and has privileged one form of oppression as being determinant. the privileged form of oppression of course revolves around gender, or men's oppression of women within patriarchy, although the specific way that this is formulated varies (for instance, some emphasize reproduction, others emphasize sex itself, etc.). the oppressed women are clearly distinguished from the oppressors and are completely devoid of power. women who disagree with this account of their social position are deemed to have internalized a false consciousness which, in conjunction with their totalizing and absolute powerlcssness in relation to men, nullifies their ability to consent to anything. fortunately, there is hope for a revolution that will bring true liberation and freedom. and, just as marx did not anticipate any flexibility in capitalism, so too do radical-feminists believe that neither their politics nor their identities will need to change in the process of subverting patriarchy. it needs to be mentioned that i have focused primarily on one form of radical feminism for my analysis. i have intentionally presented a relatively unified position and have tried to present some of the basic tenets 68 volume 16. 2000 chemins attentat if for analytical purposes. there are several radical feminist objections to sm that have not been mentioned thus far, such as the racism and antisemitism that some believe to be inherent in it (see sims et. al., 1982). it will become apparent through the course of my argument that my intent is not to discard feminism or marxism per se. rather, my intent is to provide an account of the arguments put forth and to begin examining the foundations upon which they rest in anticipation of a comparison to the arguments and foundations of the pro-sm position. sm as resistance: the pro-sm position as sadomasochists 'come out' in increasing numbers, the position that they articulate has moved from a defense of their right to privacy to an emphasis on political identity, spirituality and epistemology. included in this shift has been an insistence that sm is a legitimate sexual orientation (noyes, 1994:4) and, as such, deserves the same respect and protection as other cultural minorities (i.e. davis, 1987). in this sense, anti-sm discourse is deemed similar to racism and homophobia. the literature that has been produced is diverse and, while academic literature has increased, the majority claims its authority from the experience of sm practitioners. it is important to note that the pro-sm position often (but not always) aligns itself with feminism, and as such, has articulated itself as a liberatory movement. one of the impetuses for the growth in literature has been radical feminist critiques of sm. these critiques, according to rubin, force members of "minority sexual communities" to "face an endless stream of propaganda which rationalizes abuses against them, attempts to impair their self esteem, and exhorts them to recant" (1987:225-6). rubin recognizes a need to evaluate sexual behaviour, but insists that an all-engulfing attack on sm is a form of "cultural imperialism" that bases its judgement not on issues of consent or harm, but rather on an inability "to digest the concept of benign sexual variation" (1987:226). the argument here is that the radical feminist position problematizes conventional styles of sex while simultaneously refusing to consider the possibility that other styles exist. the reason for this, according to rubin, is because "if s/m is understood as the dark opposite of happy and healthy lesbianism, accepting that happy and healthy lesbians do s/ m would threaten the logic of the belief system out of which this opposivolume 16, 2000 69 alternate routes tion was generated" (1987:215). the system of logic rubin criticizes, in addition to attributing oppression to particular styles of sexuality, insists that certain sex acts are the 'cause' for other acts. by expanding the scope to include a threat of harm not only to sm practitioners but to the entire social body, the radical feminists have constructed a justification for increased regulation. in the context of the radical feminist position, smers, particularly lesbian-feminist smers, have expanded the type and range of their claims to legitimacy. not only is sm defended as an individual freedom of choice, it is positioned as being capable of providing numerous personal benefits to its practitioners and as being an act of resistance that challenges current oppressive structures. in addition, increased emphasis has been placed on the role of consent, fantasy, interpretation and the simulative nature of sm 'play'. individual practitioners of sm have claimed to receive numerous personal benefits through the staged simulation of fantasy and desire. included amongst these benefits are therapeutic effects such as assertiveness training, release from tension, an ability to 'come to power', increased bodily awareness, and assistance in dealing with personal fears and experiences of abuse3 (see thompson, 1991 and portillo, 1991). while many radical feminists have suggested that any problems experienced by smers are the result of patriarchy and are being addressed through the re-enactment of patriarchal values and power structures, sm practitioners focus on the simulative context and on the individual interpretation and meaning attributed to 'playing' through 'scenes.' much of the sociological literature supports the interpretive approach to sm, citing the emphasis placed on control, trust and consent in its enactment, as well as research findings in which the majority of smers have been found to feel positive about themselves and their sexuality (see studies cited in weinberg, 1994). hopkins has suggested that the simulative nature of sm needs to be distinguished from replications of patriarchal relationships. he acknowledges that sm is not unproblematic within a context of patriarchal inequality while simultaneously noting that the core features of patriarchy, such as coercive violence, arc absent in sm settings. the stance taken by hopkins is premised on his acceptance of the "radically honest, democratic model of consent" developed within sm communities (1994: 127). he has also noted the potential for gender subversion within sm prac70 volume 16, 2000 chemins attentat if tices in the way they can challenge a static patriarchal framework in which men are dominant and women submissive. radical feminists generally do not accept the argument that sm can subvert women's traditionally submissive role because they believe that power cannot be defeated by enacting it. sm practitioners, on the other hand, view power as inevitable. rather than forming what one could consider fantasies of a power-free society, the pro-sm position argues that parodying power relations is a form of resistance that also enables them to gain a better understanding of power an understanding that some perceive to be withheld by elites who have a vested interest in maintaining its invisibility. undoubtedly, as foucault has argued, "power is tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself (1978:86). attempting to escape the subjectivizing function attached to power could be viewed as a radically transgressive form of resistance. as stated by noyes, "the masochistic move is to seize upon the machinery of domination and pervert its usage, attempting to derive nothing but sexual pleasure from machines that were designed to effect the smooth running of social structures" (1997:12). while noyes argues that parodying technologies of control is subversive, he simultaneously questions its revolutionary potential by arguing that such parodies can perpetuate technologies of social control. this latter insight is neither recognized nor accepted by many practitioners of sm. for instance, in a recent anthology, "leatherfolk" (a term used for sm practitioners who wear leather attire) are described as being the "avatars of the new" (thompson, 1991:xx), the "next generation" in the "evolution of sexuality" (portillo, 1991:50) who are committing "the ultimate act of defiance" (portillo, 1991:55). this "ultimate act" is aimed at challenging "a world that functions on sexual repression", a world in which "the explosion of private sexual fantasy into public view is a powerful political statement" (bronski, 1991:64). it is ironic that the sm literature argues that oppression is not reducible to sex and simultaneously claims either that radical sex has revolutionary potential or that freedom is synonymous with sexual liberation. this is an important point that will be raised again shortly. volume 16, 2000 71 alternate routes sm, self-formation and community-formation one component of moral regulation noted by hunt is that it "characteristically incites those at whom it is directed to engage in practices of self formation" (1997:281). this is particularly true of smers, although i would also add that, in some circumstances, moral regulation also incites processes of community-formation. while the processes through which many sadomasochists have developed personal and community identities differ to varying degrees, attempts to regulate and morally indict sadomasochists has spawned some consistency in efforts to instruct the subjectivities of its practitioners. this maneuver can be interpreted as primarily defensive, although it could be argued that other influences, such as self-help and new age movements, have also acted as impetuses. however, based on the evidence available, i would conclude that these latter movements have primarily facilitated, not caused, the trend towards selfand community-formation within sadomasochist communities. for the most part, medical and psychiatric expertise have been drawn upon only insofar as sm confronts medical and legal prohibitions or in the dispensing of knowledge for the purpose of healthy sexual practice. the primary form of expertise evident in the literature is experience itself, which is fitting given the emphasis placed upon the self in the process of formation. the credibility of experience as expertise can perhaps also be understood in the context of sm's contested relationship with the professions. clearly, self-formation aims towards a positive definition of the self, something that may not be possible from those who have historically been complicit with sanctions against sm. an additional form of expertise that is increasingly referenced is spiritual expertise, although this form of expertise is itself generally based in personal experience. self-formation amongst sm practitioners is simultaneously diverse and isomorphic. in many respects, it reflects what simonds (1995) refers to as the "paradox of self-help literature": on the one hand, the self is viewed as a project that is constantly being constructed; on the other hand, a true self already exists and is waiting for discovery. while this paradox is reflected in the sm community, it requires two additional considerations. first, while many smers are searching for their 'truth', they may not locate it within the mind. rather, for some, the body holds the key to the self (see fair, 1987:1 84). i do realize that some commentators, such as giddens (1991), have remarked that in late modernity the 72 volume 16. 2000 chemins altematif body has become reflexive and a site to be controlled and constructed, but this does not necessarily equate with a search for truth itself in the body. a second concern i have with the paradox is that the message presented by some sm advocates is to accept yourself as you are, not as what you should or could become (see davis, 1987; jacques, 1993). this could be interpreted as an essentialist position, and some sm practitioners do indeed perceive themselves to be 'bom that way' (i.e. vesta, 1991), but it is intended (at least by some) as a statement about accepting your desires and subjectivity without judgement. in this regard the goal is to unapologetically abandon normative expectations. the spiritual and epistemological aspects are perhaps the most interesting developments in the trend towards self-formation amongst smers. for instance, in the introduction to leathetfolk: radical sex, people, politics and practice, thompson describes leatherfolk as "the most expert investigators of eros" (1991:xiii) for whom "radical sexual experience is a triumphant reminder to live in the now" and a "fierce commitment to life" (xvi). the message is that sm is "a process of liberation" (xiv) or self-formation that can "serve deep spiritual needs for wholeness and completion" (xvii). sm, according to thompson, appears to be a very enticing means to heal wounds, erase shame and come to terms with negative aspects of our selves. it is worth quoting liberally from his writing: through erotic enactment and the emotional catharsis it provides, radical sexuality can be an empowering, soul-making process... for many in the leather community today, s/m actually means "sex magic." it is their art, and craft, and means of taking a shamanic journey into the "other world" of personal and collective myth. it is in that secret inner place where the healing occurs.the soul is an earthy place, and we cannot sanitize it in order to make claims of "getting well." as we descend through the psyche's strata we discover violence: dream images of strange drama and torture are not uncommon. the inner world is a place of blood and fire, tears and mud. it is the soul's nature to be in organic upheaval, a perpetual state of death and rebirth, just like the volume 16, 2000 7j alternate routes outer world around it. we cannot put a lid on our soul business and its disquieting work. in this context, to acknowledge and explore one's s/m interests and instincts is to act in the truth (xviii). thompson's writing actively implores the reader to seek help, to address the dangers that lie deep within the self and to act in the name of 'truth.' his perspective is not unique within the anthology he edited; in fact, there is an entire section addressing such topics as "the spiritual dimensions of bondage," complete with interviews from spiritual leaders like purusha the androgyne and the "magical masochist" fakir musafar. despite differences in the content and process of self-formation, there are similarities in how the technologies of the self are deployed. for instance, there are many references to what foucault (1978) has described as the urge to discover the secrets that sex holds and an insistence that it reveals its truths about ourselves. in fact, the emphasis on 'truth' and its accessibility is a frequent theme throughout much of the literature. the discovery or construction of 'truth' is presented as selfactualization through the mastery of one's own experience especially sexual experience. giddens (1991) has commented upon the increased tendency to focus on self-actualization as a goal that can be achieved through the mastery of the body and sexuality. in order for the process of separating 'true' from 'false' selves to be successful, it requires authenticity which, according to giddens, is dependent upon understanding one's own self-formation and identity as being distinct from the technologies of control. without such a distinction, the moral meaning is lost. this insight from giddens may be helpful, at least to some degree, in explaining the seeming need for smers to claim a distance from sexual mores and regulatory systems. then again, it is possible that this distance is simply for pleasure as foucault (1978) has commented, the act of resisting sexual regulation is a source of pleasure in itself. ironically, rose ( 1989) has pointed out that managing the self is partially about the repression or even obliteration of the self. in other words, as one forms the self, any previous selves or alternative choices are subsumed. this insight is particularly applicable to sm, not only because the construction of the self represses other selves, but because the very nature of sm involves playing artifical roles in circumstances in which 74 volume 16, 2000 chem'ms alternatif the participants may be entirely interchangeable. one's individual identity may not really matter that much in sm scenes. the formation of a sm identity is a prerequisite for joining a sm community. for all intensive purposes, sm communities can be characterized by voluntary associations with others who share similar interests in sadomasochistic sexual consumption. while there seems to be increasing acceptance of sm as a cultural minority, it would be premature to assume that all sm practitioners take this position. indeed, it would be problematic to assume that all sm practitioners are involved in a sm community because these communities take many forms and are not always visible. for instance, sm communities may not have a spatially defined location as they often develop over the internet or through newsletters and magazines (see iloulberg, 1995). it is also important to note that there are often different sm communities, even within the same geographical area. regulation is an important aspect of the sm community. the primary role that it plays in this regard is to police the sexual conduct of its members, although this does not occur in a formal manner. rather, sm practitioners have repeatedly claimed that the importance of reputation within small minority communities acts to ensure that people who do not accept the rules around consent and safety are identified and have difficulty finding willing partners (i.e. rubin, 1987; weinberg, 1994). in addition to this, there have been numerous sm manuals and guides that have been published for the purpose of creating shared understandings of the expectations of sm participants (i.e. jacques, 1993). while these developments are definitely positive, there seems to be an assumption that the formation of communities negates problems related to sexualized violence. certainly not all sm practitioners are involved in a close-knit community. the tendency for smers to glorify the lovingness and mutuality of the sm community has been commented upon by bersani (1995:87), although i suspect that the vulnerability felt within the sm community is the impetus for the overly cheery depictions in the literature. the development of sm communities is premised on the exercising of citizenship through voluntary affiliation and sexual consumption. 4 however, these communities increasingly appear to be demanding members to regulate themselves in a manner that is in keeping with the rules of consent and safety. this is entirely justifiable. what may not be so volume 16, 2000 75 alternate routes justifiable and may in fact become a point of resistance within sm communities is the tendency to increasingly regulate members' identities and value systems. similar to how gay and lesbian communities developed and imposed standards defining what it meant to be gay or lesbian, so too might sm communities adopt increasingly rigid identities and values. duncan (1996) has already identified problems experienced by some sm lesbians of colour who feel that differences within sm communities have not been addressed and remain hierarchical. sexual identity categories are problematic in that they are inherently instruments of regulatory regimes. however, as foucault (1978) has noted, they simultaneously facilitate resistance. they are a prerequisite for political mobilization and for the development of communities and a common language through which resistance can be expressed (weeks, 1991:92). in short, sexual identities are both enabling and disabling. to avoid the regulative possibilities as well as the urge to essentialize, my own approach would be to adopt something akin to epstein's (1987) notion of sexual identities and communities as consisting of a combination of external ascription and chosen affiliation. this could possibly provide the fluidity needed to accommodate difference while not abandoning the potential for developing a strong political constituency. discussion and conclusion: so what is an observer to make of this situation? as i stated in the introduction, one of my reasons for undertaking this project is an attempt to develop an ethical and political approach to sm. if one is generally supportive of emancipatory movements like feminism and is simultaneously committed to the 'liberal' values of 'free' choice, 5 what would be an ethical and politically desirable stance to take? the task of determining such a position is not made any easier when one considers that regulation, including moral regulation, is inherently neither positive nor negative (see hunt, 1997). and, as herman (1996:148) has pointed out, supporting sadomasochism and its practitioners is as much of a moral decision as it would be to not support them. what follows is not a comprehensive appraisal of all the issues that need to be considered, but rather it is my own attempt to begin addressing what i feel are some of the basic concerns and contradictions that have been raised. 76 volume 10. 2000 chemins alternotif sadomasochism does occur within a context where social relations are imbued with a dominant-submissive dynamic. while this dynamic is apparent within work and family relationships, as chancer (1992) and others have analyzed, it is perhaps most apparent within the realm of sex and sexuality. regardless of whether the sexualization of power relationships is viewed as a 'natural' occurrence or a symptom of something like patriarchy, sm, even if considered as parody, does reflect and reify this context. in this regard, sm can be characterized as "profoundly conservative in that its imagination of pleasure is almost entirely defined by the dominant culture" (bersani, 1995:87). the construction of a sexual orientation that defines itself through its participation in the technologies of control is an act of accepting power as it is already structured. by this account, sm parody or not supports the structures of power and, by giving them the appearance of being harmless and playful, gives these structures an attractiveness that is presented as being outside of ideology and politics (see bersani, 1995). contrary to the idealistic claims of sm practitioners, one cannot escape from and re-enter the social context at will. it is my interpretation of the context in which sm occurs that keeps me from discarding the radical feminist argument entirely. structural arguments, such as that put forth by radical feminists, are not holistic enough to provide a complete account of sex, power, or the social. nonetheless, an awareness of oppression and i support the use of the term 'oppression,' although i do not believe its form is as simple as posited by radical feminists can cause a strong "gut" reaction6 to images, for instance, of sm practitioners enacting scenes with dominant "nazis" and submissive "jews." public statements that indicate an unapologetic enjoyment of torture can have a strong impact, regardless of the intent of the speaker. for instance, i had a negative reaction upon reading excerpts like this one from an sm practitioner who is reflecting on "stalking its prey": "i wanted to be mean, tough, vicious, revengeful, cruel, and cold. the women i found fed the dark side with their desires to be taken and beaten and told what to do. this paradise of hell was mine, and with consent!" (antolovich, 1991:152). the writer, antolovich, goes on to raise the issue of consent, although she does not answer her own question: volume 16, 2000 77 alternate routes inside my own inner dungeon i asked myself, "what is their consent about anyway? what does their consent mean when all they've known is abusive relationships? with me they at least give permission. how can a person really consent when they think that their role is to do everything they are told to do? how can they give consent when they want to please absolutely, either because they are in lust/crush or codependence?" i started to wonder if the law of the universe "like attracts like" was in action here: my dark side attracting their dark side. meanwhile... (1991:252). antolovich herself questions the ability of her partners to consent and her only apparent answer is that, "with me they at least give permission." the question that antolovich asked is left unanswered, thereby lending some credibility to the radical feminist argument that consent is not possible when power is unequally distributed. the radical feminist argument against the acceptability of consent as a defense for sm is nonetheless very problematic. theoretically, i would agree that true consent that which is unaffected by power relations is not possible in a sm relationship. i would also argue, and quite strongly, that this theoretical stance, while intellectually revealing, is inapplicable because no relationships have an equal distribution of power. certainly differences or similarities in structural location for instance class, gender, and race affect the distribution of power, but so does personality, reputation, and other criteria. the gender reductionist stance adopted by radical feminism does not and cannot provide a full account of power, other than to wish it away a wish that is as much a fantasy as any being acted out on the sm scene. the argument that sm does take place within a social context where power is regularly used and abused is accepted for my purposes here, although accepting this is not meant to imply i agree with the radical feminist claim that sm is harmful to society generally or to women in particular. the evidence for such a claim docs not exist beyond theoretical statements suggesting an intuitive relation between sm and violence against women. if the patriarchal context is to be considered in an analysis ol sm, then it is important to consider the amount of violent imagers that is produced ami consumed daily within that context. sadomasoch7.s volume 16, 2000 chemins attentat if ism is not unique: in fact, images of consensual flagellation are far less prevalent and arguably much less harmful than, for example, movies that are rife with graphic images of war and mindless cruelty. with this in mind, it is important to carefully consider claims that sm is responsible for or a contributing factor in 'real life' violent sexual acts anymore than rambo is responsible for real massacres. a full account of the context in which sm is practiced also requires a consideration of the increasingly 'virtual' or symbolic nature of popular culture. as early as 1969 gebhard suggested that "it may be that a society must be extremely complex and heavily reliant upon symbolism before the inescapable repressions and frustrations of life... can be expressed symbolically in s&m" (cited in weinberg, 1994:276). in this sense, then, perhaps sm can be viewed as a mere simulation amongst many simulations. however, gebhard also notes that dominance-submission relationships must be embedded within a culture that values aggression before sm can become institutionalized (weinberg, 1994:276-277). this latter consideration reinforces my hesitancy to whole-heartedly endorse sm. while there is some potential for resistance through sm, the subversive parody of power is always temporary and never mounts a substantial challenge to structural relations of power. if liberation requires attacking the roots of political rationality, as foucault (1981) has claimed, then arguments positing the liberatory power of sm are seriously misguided. radical feminism requests that sm practitioners reconstruct their desires or, at the very least, repress them for the sake of the movement. thinking critically of one's desires is laudable, although it is incorrect to assume that this is antithetical to sm. but this is not the point i wish to make. rather, the concern i have is with attempts by a social movement to enforce such a strict regime of moral regulation upon its members. such attempts, like moral regulation projects in general, can never be completely successful. this is not to suggest that creating shared values is a bad thing; what it does suggest is that the development of a social movement's subjective understanding of itself and its cause must be capable of change and be flexible enough to account for difference. in other words, standards need to be relative and not absolute, just as apparent contradictions within the movement need to be discussed but not arbitrarily and artificially legislated into silence. volume 16, 2000 79 alternate routes the tendency for emancipatory movements like radical feminism to morally regulate its supporters in an absolutist manner is one of the reasons, in my view, for the attractiveness of 'life politics.' a second reason for the growth of life politics, with its emphasis on empowerment through consumption, is a response to the lack of control people feel over what can broadly be deemed 'the social.' structural approaches have been faced with resistance and an inability to counter the numerous ways in which their claims can be co-opted without necessarily resulting in a restructuring of power relations. blame for this could arguably rest with the structural approaches themselves, but the increasingly international context in which their claims must be made has rendered the structural targets of change (politics, economics, and culture, for instance) unresponsive. a third reason, and perhaps the most important, is that consumer culture and life politics is simply more suited to a context of rampant individualism. in this context, the technologies that push people to develop themselves as unique individuals through consumption is at odds with the communal identification required by structural movements. my reason for raising the move away from emancipatory politics and toward life politics is because it relates to sm in several ways. for the sake of clarity, it needs to be restated that my use of the term 'life politics' does not presuppose the disappearance or illegitimacy of emancipatory movements. this is particularly true for the sm communities' that ironically claim sex and sexuality do not cause oppression, and at the same time make claims of being structurally oppressed because of their sexuality. i do believe that sex and sexuality are repressed, contra foucault, but the claim that sm practitioners are structurally oppressed similar to gays, lesbians, or people of colour requires some consideration. what is being posited is more than a claim for tolerance or even acceptance: the claim suggests that anyone committed to addressing inequality needs to be an advocate for sm in order to be authentic. failing to do so would be an admission of intolerance, insensitivity and complacency in effect, an act of oppression itself. butler (1997) has argued that culture-based identities can be the target of systemic oppression, but her argument is based on an analysis of sexual orientation, not sm. the experience of 'sexual minorities', namely gay men and lesbians, is often used by sm advocates to argue thai they too are a sexual minority that deserves certain 'rights'. 7 while i 80 volume 16. 2000 chemins altemat if agree that sm practitioners do face discrimination in certain circumstances, for instance at some lesbian-feminist events, i do not consider this to be systemic (nor, in some situations, unjustified). in order to be systemic, sm would need to be recognized as an identity, a point that i shall now address. there has been some movement within sm communities to define sm as a sexual orientation and a public identity. this is evident in the importance placed on publicly 'coming out' (for instance, portillo, 1991). however, this approach contradicts some of the defenses for sm put forth, such as the claim that sm roles and power dynamics are kept in the 'playroom' and hence are not a threat to the larger society. more importantly, however, it suggests an essentialist notion of what sm signifies, which poses problems for sm communities' emphasis on the importance of interpretation and fluidity of meaning. if sm is presented as a (at least somewhat) static and fixed identity, then it would also follow that a definition of what constitutes a sadomasochist is required. i have avoided such an endeavor thus far because defining the sadomasochist requires placing boundaries around what constitutes sm. this has been done, but the definitions presented generally revolve around some notion of fantasy, interpretation, safety and consent (examples can be found in jacques, 1993). these criteria are not sufficient for the task of differentiating sm from 'normal' sexual activity and hint that such a definition may very well be incompatible with sm's interpretive and fluid nature. it is my own view, which is shared by some sm practitioners (i.e. thompson, 1991) that a concrete division between smers and nonsmers is impossible, particularly since the acts that are assumed to comprise sm scenes are not uncommon (i.e. bondage). the difficulty inherent in delineating the difference between sm and other, non-sm sexual activities suggests sexual acts themselves are not sufficient in the allocation of rights. the distinction foucault has made between the 'freedom of relationships' and the 'freedom of sexual acts' is helpful in this regard (cited in weeks, 1991:166). while foucault was referring to 'freedoms', his framework can be applied to 'rights' such that there is a differentiation between 'relationship rights' and 'sexual rights.' the former would include the right to determine with whom and under what conditions one engages in sexual activity and personal relationships in general. the latter, on the other hand, refers to sexual acts or styles which individuals are free to participate in if they so choose. 'sexvolume 16, 2000 81 alternate routes ual rights,' because they are based on sexual style, are not subject to systemic discrimination. my argument here is different from some pro-sm positions, particularly that of rubin (1987), which seems to claim that sexual 'style' equates with 'cultural minority' in a legal sense. if rubin's connection is accepted, then any leisure activity and styles thereof could claim their own particular 'rights.' despite my argument that sm practitioners should not be recognized as a distinct constituency deserving their own 'rights,' i strongly oppose any form of regulation that inhibits their ability to freely participate in consensual sm activities. all remaining legal prohibitions against sm need to be challenged. furthermore, public services, such as the legal system, the police, sexual assault centers, and the health care system need to offer services that are free from any discriminatory bias against sm practitioners. similarly, public education on sexuality and health needs to include some basic information on sm. in essence, while i reject the notion that 'rights' should be allocated based on an individual or group's identification with sm, i do believe that the needs of smers should be incorporated into public services and treated in the same manner as many other recreational activities. 8 1 do realize that such an incorporation invariably risks increasing the degree to which sm communities are regulated, but i am not in a position to determine whether the net impact would be positive or negative for sm practitioners. one of my main concerns in addressing sm is my own awareness of the ways in which it has been used to destabilize feminism and gay and lesbian politics. while debates over this issue within feminist and gay communities is inevitable, the existence of sm has contributed to a context in which these communities are increasingly pressured to govern themselves and regulate sm in order to acquire public approval, funding, and political credibility. this will not change in the future. to some extent, contradictions are inescapable within political movements that value difference. other than what has already been stated here, i do not offer any additional recommendations except to emphasize the need for discussion and flexibility in the political approaches that are considered. while i have attempted to articulate my personal approach to sm and some possible future directions for sexual politics, my perspective is not fixed and will undoubtedly change as the political climate and my own subjective understanding of the issues evolve. in the end, however, per82 volume 16. 2000 chemins altemat if haps rubin is correct when she states that, "ultimately, acceptance is gained by political power as much as by rational argument" (1987:225). notes 1. hunt (1997) discusses how moral self-formation is critical for the agents of moral regulation, as well as the tendency to institute self-control within social movements to promote the capacity for purposeful conduct. 2. the term 'radical feminist' or 'radical feminism' will be used to connote the anti-sm position. while this is not an entirely adequate signifier, there tends to be a relation between the more radical strands of feminism and the anti-sm position. by using this term, 1 also hope to avoid confusion between the antism lesbian-feminist position and the pro-sm lesbian-feminist position. 3. note that most sm practitioners reject the assumption that sm practice is the effect of personal histories of abuse. 4. 1 have adopted this description of citizenship from rose (1989). 5. i have put 'liberal' in quotes simply because there seems to be a tendency in both the radical feminist and lesbian-feminist literature on sadomasochism to attach negative connotations to anything attributed to 'liberalism' (even while both positions incorporate some version of it). while values of 'free' choice are certainly liberal, i think it is dangerous to use 'liberal' as a code word to arbitrarily dismiss everything associated with it as 'bad' or even 'patriarchal.' 'free' is in quotes simply to acknowledge that free choice is never truly 'free' in the sense that individual subjectivity and autonomy are far from absolute within a liberal social context. 6. i borrow this term from hopkins (1994). 7. i have not been able to locate a clear articulation of what these 'rights' would entail, other than the eradication of explicit legal prohibitions and vague references to freedom from shame through social recognition. 8. i am thinking, for instance, about the health services provided to recreational sport associations. volume 16, 2000 83 alternate routes references cited atkinson, ti-grace 1982 "why i'm against s/m liberation." pp. 90-92. in linden ct al (eds.), against sadomasochism: a radical feminist analysis. san pal alto, c.a.: frog in the well. bar on, bat-ami 1982 "feminism and sadomasochism: self-critical notes." pp. 72-82. in linden et al (eds.), against sadomasochism: a radical feminist analysis. san palo alto: frog in the well. bersani, leo 1995 homos. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. bronski, michael 1991 "a dream is a wish your heart makes: notes on the materialization of sexual fantasy." pp. 56-64. in mark thompson (ed.), leatherfolk: radical sex, people, politics and practice. boston: alyson publications, inc. butler, judith 1982 "lesbian s & m: the politics of dis-illusion." pp. 168-175. in linden et al (eds.), against sadomasochism: a radical feminist analysis. san palo alto: frog in the well. 1991 "imitation and gender insubordination." pp. 13-31. in diana fuss (ed.), inside/out: lesbian theories, gay theories. new york: routledge. chancer, lynn s. sadomasochism in everyday life: the dynamics of power and powerlessness. new brunswick, n.j.: rutgers university press. davis, katherine 1987 "introduction: what we fear we try to keep contained." pp. 7-13. in samois (eds), coming to power: writings and graphics on lesbian s/m. boston: alyson publications, inc. duncan, patricia l. 1996 "identity, power, and difference: negotiating conflict in an s/m dyke community." pp. 87-114. in brett beemyn and mickey fliason (eds.), queer studies: a lesbian, gay, bisexual and i'ransgender anthology. new york: new york university press. 84 volume 16, 2000 chemins attentat if epstein, steven 1987 "gay politics, ethnic identity: the limits of social constructionism." socialist review. 93/94:9-54. farr, susan 1987 "the art of discipline: creating erotic dramas of play and power." pp. 183-191. in samois (eds.), coming to power: writings and graphics on lesbian s/m. boston. alyson publications, inc. foucault, michel 1978 the history of sexuality, volume one: an introduction, (trans. robert hurley). new york: random house. 1981 "omnes et singulatim: towards a criticism of 'political reason'." pp. 223-254. in s. mcmurrin (ed.), the tanner lectures on human values (volume 2). salt lake city: university of utah press. giddens, anthony 1991 modernity and self-identity: self and society in the late modern age. cambridge, u.k.: polity press. hein, hilde 1982 "sadomasochism and the liberal tradition." pp. 83-89. in linden et al (eds.), against sadomasochism: a radical feminist analysis. san palo alto, c.a.: frog in the well. herman, didi 1996 "law and morality revisited: the politics of regulating sado-masochistic porn/practice." pp. 147-166. in austin sarat and susan silbey (eds.), studies in law, politics and society (vol.15). greenwich, conn.: jai press. hopkins, patrick d. 1994 "rethinking sadomasochism: feminism, interpretation, and simulation." hypatia. 9(1): 116-141. houlberg, rick 1995 "the magazine of a sadomasochism club: the tic that binds." pp.269286. in thomas s. weinberg (ed.), s&m: studies in dominance and submission. amherst, n.y.: prometheus books. volume 16, 2000 85 alternate routes hunt, alan 1997 "moral regulation and making-up the new person: putting gramsci to work." theoretical criminology. 1(3):275-301. jacques, trevor 1993 on the safe edge: a manual i-'orsm play. toronto: wholcsm publishing. mackinnon, catherine 1987 feminism unmodified. cambridge: harvard university press. morgan, robin 1991 "the politics of sado-masochistic fantasies." pp. 109-123. in linden et al (eds.), against sadomasochism: a radical feminist analysis. san palo alto, c.a.: frog in the well. noyes, john k. 1997 the mastery of submission: inventions of masochism. ithaca: cornell university press. portillo, tina 1991 "i get real: celebrating my sadomasochistic soul." pp. 49-55. in mark thompson (cd.), leatherfolk: radical sex, people, politics and practice. boston: alyson publications, inc. rian, karen 1982 "sadomasochism and the social construction of desire." pp. 45-50. in linden et al (eds.), against sadomasochism: a radical feminist analysis. last palo alto, c.a.: frog in the well. rich, adrienne 1983 "compulsory hetcroscxuality and lesbian existence." pp. 177-205. in ann snilow, christine stansell, and sharon thompson (eds), powers ofdesire: the politics of sexuality. new york: monthly review press. rose, nikolas 1989 governing the soul: the shaping ofthe private self. london: routlcdgc. 1994 "expertise and the government of conduct." pp. 359-397. in austin sarat and susan silbey (eds.), studies in law, politics and society (vol.14). greenwich, conn.: jai press. 86 volume 16, 2000 chemins attentat if rubin, gaylc 1987 "the leather menace: comments on politics and s/m." pp. 194-229. in samois (eds.), coming to power: writings and graphics on lesbian s/m. boston: alyson publications, inc. russell, diana e.h. 1982 "sadomasochism: a contra-feminist activity." pp. 176-183. in linden ct al (eds.), against sadomasochism: a radical feminist analysis. east palo alto, c.a.: frog in the well. saxe, lorena leigh 1992 "sadomasochism and exclusion." hypatia. 7(4):59-72. simonds, wendy 1995 "all-consuming selves: self-help literature and women's identities." in debra grodin and thomas r. lindlof (eds.), constructing the self in a mediated world. thousand oaks: sage. sims, karen, rose mason and darlene pagano 1982 "racism and sadomasochism: a conversation with two black lesbians." pp. 99-105. in linden et al (eds.), against sadomasochism: a radical feminist analysis. san palo alto, c.a.: frog in the well. star, susan leigh 1982 "swastikas: the street and the university." pp. 131-136. in linden et al (eds.), against sadomasochism: a radical feminist analysis. san palo alto, c.a.: frog in the well. thompson, mark 1991 "introduction." pp. xi-xx. in mark thompson (ed.), leatherfolk: radical sex, people, politics, and practice. boston: alyson publications, inc. vesta, dianna 1991 "fantasy, fetish, and the goddess." pp. 267-275. in mark thompson (ed.), leatherfolk: radical sex, people, politics, and practice. boston: alyson publications, inc. weeks, jeffrey 1991 against nature: essays on history, sexuality and identity. london: rivers oram press. volume 16, 2000 87 alternate routes weinberg, thomas s. 1994 "research in sadomasochism: a review of sociological and social psychological literature." annual review of sex research. 5:257-279. g8 volume 16, 2000 toronto alles uber: being progressive in the age of progressive conservative urbanism roger keil1 “i’ve said to the cab industry, ‘you should get yourselves modernized.’” – john tory in peat 2015 “the guiding tenet in inner-core regime analysis (its “iron law”) is that for any governing arrangement to sustain itself, resources must be commensurate with the agenda being pursued.” – clarence n. stone 2015 introduction: tory rides the subway a sweaty toronto mayor john tory emerged from a kipling subway station in the west end of the ontario city in the morning of september 7, 2016 to declare that the ride that he had taken along the entire line 2 subway was “uncomfortably hot”. he had experienced, first hand, what thousands of commuters had to endure through the scorching summer of 2016: the toronto transit commission was failing to maintain a state of good repair of the air conditioning units of some of its subway cars while the city was involved in extensive plans, many of them on the mayor’s behalf and insistence, to expand the sorely underperforming rapid rail and bus system in the metropolitan area. tory’s mayoral campaign and reign had previously been focused less on fixing existing problems and had talked about a wholesale revamping of 1 roger keil is york research chair in global sub/urban studies, faculty of environmental studies, york university in toronto. he researches global suburbanization, urban political ecology and regional governance. he is the editor of suburban constellations (jovis 2013), co-editor (with pierre hamel) of suburban governance: a global view (utp 2015) and co-editor (with julie-anne boudreau, pierre hamel and stefan kipfer) of governing cities through regions (wilfrid laurier university press 2016). email: rkeil@yorku.ca, twitter: @rkeil toronto alles uber | 189 mailto:rkeil@yorku.ca the transportation system, especially through the implementation of an ill-conceived smarttrack transit plan (a scheme that would have seen a combination of existing track with newly built rail aimed at building a new east-west connection through the city at allegedly lower cost and in faster time; while the scheme found early backers among the transportation engineering crowd, and played a big role in getting tory elected, it was later considered too costly and complex to be put into practice; cbc 2016; tory 2014). this was a remarkable admission by a man who had so far banked on “disruption” and innovation where there is really only one way forward. instead, he conceded that he was not able to fix even the most mundane of technical problems (spurr 2016). in this paper, i will examine the emerging mayoral regime of john tory in light of two connected critical lenses: tory’s infatuation with technological and economic disruption and the consequences of such a politics for progressives in toronto. for now, toronto is stuck in the middle between a short term recovery from an aberrant mayoral regime representing the margins (of various kinds) and the reconstitution of institutional elite power after 2014; and it is stuck in the middle between its ward parochialism and an expanding sense of regionalism. the new mayoral regime signals modernization through technological shifts and market mechanisms. this new mode of operation both reestablishes centralized elite power and normalizes roll-with-it neoliberalization in the city. it also meshes with what is commonly assumed to be “progressive urbanism”. in this situation, progressive politics in toronto – usually needs to reassemble itself along different lines than in the past, when it could align itself along social justice, environmentalism and diversity. my intervention here asks what those new markers of progressivism might be, what stands in their way, and how they can lead to an alternative to the conservative hegemony and ultimately more systemic change in the city. the election victory of john tory in november 2014 in the race for the mayor’s office signaled the end of a four-year circus around the 190 | austerity urbanism and the social economy mayoralty of rob ford. the late maverick councilor, turned populist mayor, had shaken up elite and common perceptions of what urban politics is about: embracing underdog positions dressed in a language of suburban exclusion and anti-elitism, the etobicoke millionaire ran the city on a platform of austerity, savings and anti-government rhetoric. at the same time, the ford mayoralty is identified with a single-minded plan to expand the city’s subway system into scarborough (over the recommendation of most transit experts and in contradiction of most budgetary projections). ford’s personal issues around drug use, misogyny and racism and potential criminal activities added colour to his policies but they are not what concerns me here. we can look at the ford years as an aberration or as a fulfillment of trends, as a protest vote of the unheard or as the expression of a solid bloc of voters on the political right that are emboldened to throw their weight around when needed. after four years of never ending chaos, john tory appealed to toronto’s voters as a voice of reason. the fast spoken, articulate, groomed, expensively dressed and urbane tory appeared as the exact opposite of his incoherent, bumbling, sloppy and track-suited suburban predecessor. both political conservatives, both wealthy, those two men were nonetheless light-years apart. the two other significant candidates in the 2014 election, the ndp heavyweight olivia chow and the former mayor’s brother doug ford after rob had to undergo treatment for cancer were unable to influence the outcome of the vote in any decisive manner. but the older ford brother still pulled 34 percent of the popular vote city-wide. the candidate of the left (unopposed on her side of the political spectrum) only drew 27 percent. as a basis for any consideration of an organized progressive political pathway for toronto, these numbers are important as they reveal the willingness of a broad majority of torontonians to throw their support behind a spectrum of extreme to moderate political programs fashioned by outspoken right-wingers. any progressive position in toronto proves to be minoritarian at least at the ballot box (a pattern that was also borne out in more recent provincial and federal toronto alles uber | 191 elections during which new democratic party candidates were almost entirely wiped from the political landscape in toronto and its suburbs; a large majority of the electorate threw its support behind the ontario and federal liberals, and selectively even the conservatives who made inroads for the first time in decades into the core of toronto). if ford was perhaps an anomaly in the history of toronto politics, it remains open whether john tory’s mayoralty will be able to shift things significantly or whether he will be incapacitated by the contradictions he inherits. the latter possibility may have more to do with his own baggage than with those contradictions. there is nothing in tory’s background that suggests he would aggressively pursue an agenda of social and spatial justice that could heal the divisions that have ravaged the city. his more recent blunders in the black lives matter file and his decision to push city council to vote for the drastically unjust one-stop subway solution have confirmed that suspicion. but he also is up against structural limitations. he is wedged between a 35 percent hard right opposition that largely coincides with the geographic confines of the etobicoke and scarborough “ford nations” and the 25 percent progressives downtown and elsewhere in the city that voted for a candidate with a decidedly different agenda than the newly elected mayor. it is inconceivable that he will reach the first group who see him as a guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth, an elite representative who talks too fast and is unaware of the problems of the small suburban homeowner and renter. the toronto “progressives,” by which i mean in the context of this paper a broad spectrum the traditional inner city social democratic left, the liberals and “red” (social democratic) tories in the tradition of 1970s urban reform, the middle class environmentalists and most labour groups,2 are more likely to give the tory agenda a try, especially as 2 for a more elaborate discussion of this “progressive” or “reform” tradition in toronto politics see kipfer and keil 2002: 238-240. when using progressive in the context of this paper, i refer specifically and predominantly to these political constellations, not to an aspirational, radical position outside the mainstream political spectrum, although the 192 | austerity urbanism and the social economy supporting him aligns itself with the urbanist dreams of density and creativity espoused by a downtown millennial population raised on recipes popularized by iconic toronto urbanist jane jacobs and her epigones and carried forward through discourses of urban creativity and maker economies. 3 but given the left-liberal leanings of these communities, they will likely tire quickly of the more or less vacuous repetitions of toronto as ‘one city’ and corporatist conjurations of class unity and unity in diversity. tory can count on the full support from his corporate friends who were unhappy that the conservative torch had lately been carried by someone like rob ford who was hard to control and representative of marginal economic sector largely unconnected to the creative globalized money economy they envision to make its home in toronto. apart from a chicago stint, ford’s only business trip was to austin, texas, to seek advice on (and ultimately copy) strategies for making toronto a location for live (rock) music. that is likely going to change under john tory who also traveled to austin in early 2015 to promote all manner of music related technology and start-ups (rider 2015a). but the suave business man he is, he also already hobnobbed with his london counterpart (during the reign of boris johnson) and financial executives in that global city to drum up business for his city’s financial technologies industries (galang 2015) (as his neighbours in markham and mississauga are quite used to do in more far flung locations in china and india) (belina and lehrer 2016). it is not apparent yet what new business regime will form to place its demands on the tory mayoralty, but it will clearly go beyond the small and marginal, often suburban petty bourgeoisie that had ford’s ear. but this article will concern itself more progressive reform tradition in toronto often entailed radical elements that pushed class, race and gender issues to the front of the debate. 3 an example of mild to enthusiastic support from this group of voters would be the positive reaction most progressive urbanists displayed when tory unveiled his plans to begin collecting road tolls on major highways, a measure uniformly considered progressive among urbanists and environmentalists (keenan 2016). toronto alles uber | 193 with the condition for progressive politics than the ambitions of the city’s and region’s elites. this is where we will now turn. progressive politics in the uber age "but if such technologies, such as computer cabling and communication networks, provide a new right to consume information, they fail to grant a right to produce the latter. at most, this happens only through the contemptible charade of communication that is labeled ‘interactivity’. the consumer of information does not produce any information, and the citizen is separated from the producer. yet again, the forms of communication have been changed in the urban milieu, but not its contents" – henri lefebvre 2014: 205 “i am ready to lead” – john tory in keenan 2016 “[t]he city is under new management” (hui 2015) is one of the statements we have gotten used to under new mayor john tory, who was elected in 2014 in toronto. as generic as such a statement sounds, it has been quite foundational for the new regime since its inception, actually already since its election campaign. municipal affairs in tory’s toronto – for which the mayor says he is “the chief salesperson” – have decidedly shifted since he swept up the shambles left by the disastrous ford intermezzo. this shift, which follows a similar radical landslide in voting patterns, as i will explain shortly, also altered significantly the landscape of progressive politics in toronto. in so far as this altered stage is representative (or even productive) of larger tendencies, the tory regime signals the arrival of a souped-up urban neo-liberalism, a true example of the kind of roll-with-it neoliberalization which has been the hallmark of our times that are characterized by perpetual crisis and open-ended constant bricolage we have come to call progress (keil 2009). in this 194 | austerity urbanism and the social economy context, the agendas of urban progressivism have been both redefined and reduced, often to the point of making progressive politics itself difficult to maintain as a separate distinctive sphere of the polity. while there are several layers and terrains on which the altered stage of politics is performed, i will focus here on a particular intersection of the political and the technological that i find especially defining for the tory mayoralty. hence the title of this contribution: toronto “alles uber”. this is a reference, in the first instance to a signature conflict that has been festering since tory campaigned in the summer of 2014: the question of whether and under what conditions uber, the corporate ridesharing service – let’s call it that for now – should be allowed to operate. since its existence in the city, uber operated in a legal grey zone in which the company (and its drivers) set their own rules of operation while, as one analyst noted “mayor john tory has consistently and blatantly winked at uber’s open law-breaking” (valverde 2016). this all changed in may of 2016 when city council voted to implement rules for the operation of uber vehicles.4 toronto is of course not alone in having to make up its mind about the sharing economy and mediated services but it now has a chief executive who has made the question of technologies a major plank of his still evolving platform (he has made it known that he is considering a two term mayoralty already). alles uber includes a reference to not just making uber part of the mobility solutions for a congested city. the adverb “alles” entails the notion that uber might stand for more than just mobility but rather extend to becoming a principle of organizing modern urban life itself. while this is not the place for a detailed discussion of the sharing economy, it must be pointed out that it has been argued that uber should not even be counted as part of that economy (valverde 2016). mariana valverde (2016) explains: “carpooling and car sharing are in the sharing economy and so are the local websites that facilitate the buying and selling of second-hand goods. 4 this included among other things fleet insurance, a 30 cent per ride fee the drivers have to pay to the city (powell 2016; valverde 2016). toronto alles uber | 195 but uber is not an arrangement among citizens, and it is not a company that facilitates such arrangements. uber is an extremely profitable and aggressive american company with global reach that deliberately opens illegal operations – taking advantage of commuter frustration on the customer side and of the precarious economic situation of many groups of male workers on the driver side – and then hires swarms of professional lobbyists to persuade or pressure local politicians to legalize it after the fact on favourable terms” (see also slee 2016). most importantly, some observers have speculated whether “the privatization of city governance” is “uber’s ultimate goal” (sadowski and gregory 2015). if that is the case, the installation of uber and its ostentatious support by the new mayor can be interpreted as a moment in the establishment of a new modality of governance, a step up in the register of roll-with-it neoliberalization in toronto (keil 2009). this new modality, in turn, marks the conditions under which progressive politics in toronto will be shaped. progressive politics in toronto as elsewhere runs up against the opportunity structures offered by the urban regime. building on previous work with julie-anne boudreau and douglas young (boudreau et al., 2009), let me quickly remind ourselves of the regimes that preceded the current one in the past few decades. progressive politics in toronto needs to define itself in relation to historical precedents and future possibilities but also in relation to its own past and reputation as a traditionally progressive place. five political periods in toronto, 1972-20165 the reformist period (1972-1995), from the first election of reformists at city hall in the former city of toronto, to the election of mike harris’ tories in the province of ontario in 1995. during this period, despite the continued significance of the regional two-tier municipality of metropolitan toronto, the central city was dominant in city-regional politics. the main line of conflict was between developers and local residents (who were represented at city hall by reformists). 5 based among other sources on boudreau et al 2009. 196 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the anti-statist neoliberal period (1995-2003), from the election of mike harris to the defeat of the tories in 2003. during the long 1990s, toronto experienced the suburbanization of city-regional politics with the dominance of pro-growth, neoliberal, and suburban interests. the main line of conflict was between economic growth (not only land development, but economic growth understood more broadly) and the quality of life. the neoreformist period (20032010), starting with the election of mayor david miller and paul martin’s new deal for cities. this period is characterized less by a suburbanization of city-regional politics, and more by the creation of a city-regional consensus (between globally and locally-oriented capital, labour, and politicians) on the necessity to focus on the quality of life in toronto as a competitive asset for cityregional economic development. at the same time the contradictions of the neoliberal regime in toronto deepened, especially after the so-called great recession in 2008 (boudreau et al. 2010; fanelli 2016). populist intermezzo (2010-2014). the preceding three periods in the timeline of toronto regime change end in 2010 with a bang or a whimper depending on your perspective when rob ford is elected mayor. the ford years concluded 15 years of major territorial rearrangement, local state restructuring, and popular realignment. in many ways the events between 2010 and 2014 ran counter to the timespace dialectics of the prior two decades. this stripped down political narrative belies the fact, of course, of deeper processes of restructuring at work during which toronto went through a shift towards a regime of roll-with-it neoliberalization, combining the formation of a continentally articulated global city-economy featuring a core creative economy surrounded by an “arrival city” periphery (boudreau, keil and young 2009; saunders 2010). to some degree, of course, ford’s election, which led to a whimsical constellation, not quite a regime, an unstable conjuncture of (more or less conservative) councillors circling around an increasingly shifty mayoral core, was just a moment in a series of cyclical political toronto alles uber | 197 conjunctures and realignments that produce regular backlash – in this case from a perceived tax and spend, labour-friendly leftwing regime to a fiscally conservative, common sense, common people administration. ford’s constructed opposition to the “gravy train” of municipal politics under david miller that benefitted the downtown elites with their cycling habit and streetcar infatuation. ford’s time in office has plausibly been explained through a critical reading of rightwing populism as kipfer and saberi (2014: 128) have done in a recent intervention. they argue that during that period toronto was “under the spell of a populist theatre” in which “‘the people’ often appear as a political football, not a formed subject-in-struggle or a coherent object of rule”. those populist constellations are fickle, not stable regimes. kipfer and saberi (2014: 134) continue: “where populists govern, directly or indirectly, it does not necessarily function as glue to solidify political regimes”. rob ford and his stand-in during the mayoral election, his brother doug, brought a “deeply racialized form of authoritarian populism” to toronto city hall”. ford, then, may just have been a bridge, a cleansing, a front for a more permanent shift that we see emerge now. viewed in this light, the rather absurd time warp the city's regime has been in since the fords got elected may come under a different spotlight: 1) we can see the ford years as a period of hypermodernization of the socio-economic base and total retreat into raw and rabid political superstructures. ford tried and succeeded a souped-up austerity regime based on union-bashing and service cuts; 2) ford’s antics and reactionary politics did nothing to slow down the frantic development pace in the city, especially in its downtown core; 3) but it also didn’t do anything to produce much needed urbanity in the so-called inner suburbs: the city’s school board and housing authority stumbled from crisis to crisis, the tower renewal project was thrown into almost-obscurity; the priority neighbourhoods were largely left to their own devices; dialogue with educational institutions (schools, universities) was non198 | austerity urbanism and the social economy existent, etc. (the latter is particularly noteworthy in light of the intended expansion of such institutions in the sub/urban region (addie, keil and olds 2015). 4) at the same time, and paradoxically, the progressive urbanist projects of the city came to a complete halt (with the exception of those projects that were initiated by the newly hired chief planner of toronto, jennifer keesmaat). bike lanes were ripped out and painted over in an imaginary “war on the car”, ambitious plans to build lrts across the city’s expanse were haphazardly cancelled without replacement; no ideological or material support was given to the many smaller scale regime-building efforts between the newly important “ed & med” sectors in the city and the municipality. ford was oblivious to the challenge and, apart from individual activities, the various schools efforts to remake their neighbourhoods – such as ryerson university’s continued forays into real estate politics – very little of note happened during the ford regime.6 elitist resurgence and post-political modernization (2014-). in assessing the possible outcomes of a tory regime, we might, revert to karl marx’s 18th brumaire of luis bonaparte. john tory, the upper class corporate leader and political operative might have this verdict hanging over his head: “bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all classes; but he can give to none without taking from the others.” tory will try this patriarchal approach to politics but will run into problems as the dissent grows stronger. he will be prepared to counter this dissent on the left and the right with a post-political stance that will disempower critical challenges from the left and populist sniping from the right all at once (swyngedouw 2010). there will be, as 6 this analysis builds on an insightful piece by clarence stone (2015) who notes that large scale coalitions of the post ww2 kind cannot be expected today but classical citybusiness power blocs (with the powerless on the sidelines) are replaced by mini-regimes based largely on the emerging ed&med sector – of course we need to pay particular attention here to the magnetic effect of the creative class which is increasingly coming into its own as a “class for itself” in our cities. toronto alles uber | 199 he is wont to say, “no right and no left, just forward” (powell 2014). of course, tory himself owes his political success to a smooth political move to the centre in a major provincial political realignment which was anything but post-political. the former head of ontario’s progressive conservative party is, by all intents and purposes, a tory in a liberal suit. this realignment may, in itself prove unstable, as the liberal government in the province is shaky and under attack from both the political left and right. at a by-election for a seat in the provincial legislature in september 2016, the provincial conservatives won their first victory in toronto in a generation; at the same time, the provincial new democrats under andrea horwath (who had all but abandoned the issues that matter to urban voters in the 2014 contest) have shown signs of life. at present, though, a political axis of premier kathleen wynne and mayor john tory represents a centrist political fortress outside of which very little political space exists as long as they both remain in power. progressive politics quo vadis? now where does urban progressivism stand in this context? in the historical antecedents of today’s progressivism, we can count waves of revolutionary or reform politics without which we would not be able to use the term progressive politics the way we do today.7 toronto politics has been identified with a version of progressivism that made it the envy of many cities on the continent if not in the world. the “city that works” was the moniker that referred to the integration of growth pressures into a state spatial strategy of a two tier government that 7 the use of the term “progressive” does not refer to the significant tradition of the progressive movement in the united states from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century that was mostly a managerial reform movement introducing market rationality to the governance of cities which were considered mired in corruption and class politics. instead, we can count traditions from politics on the political left among guideposts here: e.g. working class politics, municipal socialism (frankfurt, vienna, manchester); progressive politics in north america (burlington, santa monica); african american autonomy movements (often paired with the politics of movements and protest); brazilian movement towards participatory budgeting. 200 | austerity urbanism and the social economy distributed the benefits of urban expansion across the metropolitan area. during the heydays of the 1950s and 1960s but even into the 1970s, housing and transportation infrastructure as well as ancillary services were deliberately provided to the outskirts as well as key redevelopment areas of the inner city. parallel to this metropolitan state spatial strategy, toronto experienced two decades of sustained reform politics under mayors crombie and sewell that undergirded the core city’s reputation as a forerunner and pacesetter of urban reform in education, multiculturalism, urban planning, etc. (see kipfer and keil 2002 for a history of this tradition). this coalition made way to a more managerial regime during the 1980s and 1990s but it retained a certain significance in civil society institutions that persisted as progressive beacons even during the emergence of decidedly more neoliberal conditions. the toronto political system is remarkably open to a brand of progressive urbanist politics that resonates with a particular majority of business, middle class and inner city interests. this majority has sometimes been in charge of matters at city hall (or in the past in metro hall, but rarely in the suburbs). this brand of politics is currently dominant in toronto and ontario. john tory, a politician trained in the backrooms of the regime of former mayor mel lastman 8 and in corporate boardrooms and law offices, represented civic action before he ultimately won the mayoral election. this hard-to-define organization, founded by the late david pecaut as the toronto summit alliance acted as an unelected shadow government under mayor david 8 lastman, a flamboyant former owner of a major appliances and furniture retailer, was a longtime mayor of the suburban municipality of north york before he was elected the first mayor of the amalgamated city of toronto in 1998. lastman’s regime was characterized by clientilism and patronage politics directed at suburban homeowners. he also managed to build a civic and residential centre and a peripheral subway line in north york that became the trademarks of the modernist suburb north of toronto. his time in office as mayor of the new toronto was characterized by a continuation of clientilism but also by some delegation of key areas (environment, welfare) to progressive members of city council. his tenure ultimately was marred by a series of spectacular gaffes and errors in judgment. toronto alles uber | 201 miller and stayed mostly on the outside of rob ford’s ill-fated rightpopulist regime. now, the kind of business-based neoliberalization pushed by civic action is in full flight in the city and beyond. but in the long perspective it also needs to be taken into account that erstwhile radical anti-amalgamation activist kathleen wynne is now the premier of the province of ontario (boudreau, keil and young 2009; boudreau and keil 2010). a more left-wing version of this centrist coalition was behind the two times electoral success of new democrat david miller, mayor from 2003 to 2010, (who also had strong union support and won in the suburbs). more recently, the miller coalition, which was elevated to more than municipal significance during the mcguinty-martin years at queens park and ottawa, and importantly under jack layton’s presidency of the federation of canadian municipalities and leadership of the federal new democratic party, has been more difficult to reproduce. toronto voters rejected a rather non-urban platform of the ontario ndp in 2014 – olivia chow only won a quarter of the votes in the 2010 mayoral election – but most devastatingly, for the party-political left of toronto, the federal election of 2015 signaled a dramatic shift away from ndp mps who, without an exception, had been instrumental in forging progressive political alliances in what their white paper on urban issues called an “urban nation”. the serious and substantive move(back) by voters to the liberal party turfed, among others, ndp urban affairs critic matthew kellway and author of the party’s urban white paper, who had systematically used his eastern toronto base to forge a progressive urban coalition much in the same way layton had used his position at the head of the fcm to do the same in the early 2000s. a decade after the inception of miller’s mayoralty and the heyday of a federal-provincial-municipal “new deal for cities”, the very notion of ‘progressive’ has blemishes from skirmishes over the right to inhabit the neoliberal city and from fraying edges of the left-liberal project, especially in terms of its questionable politics of policing, labour relations and 202 | austerity urbanism and the social economy poverty reduction through place-based-strategies (fanelli 2014). “progressive” under the current regime is now defined as: • geographically (as inhabiting downtown) • historically (by the post-1968 political culture) • generationally (by the baby boomers and their children) • culturally (by official doctrines of ethnic harmony) • economically (by the creative class) • and most importantly in urbanist terms (a class of professional planners who have decided which urban future will be best for us). about this brand of urbanism lefebvre wrote disparagingly: “what we today term ‘urbanism’ (l’urbanisme), which amounts to extremely rigid guidelines for architectural design and extremely vague information for the authorities and bureaucrats. despite a few meritorious efforts, urbanism has not attained the status of a theory (pensée) of the city. what is worse, it has gradually shrunk to become a kind of gospel for technocrats” (2014: 204).9 in ontario, of course, the curse of the progressive includes the province’s political legacy of progressive conservatism, a brand of right of centre politics to which the current mayor has mostly subscribed, although he has recently begun to surpass the compassionate groundswell of the “red” tories, the historical flag bearers of a more welfare state oriented brand of conservatism, for a more aggressively business-style – disruptive – approach. in a world thus encumbered with ideologies of progress, there is little left for the left to carve out a distinct space along a register of progressivism itself. a broad neo-liberal coalition of the willing has stepped in to fill this void, engineering the shift through material and discursive technologies of power. but it is certainly the key to understanding the forces making up john tory’s liberal-conservative elite coalition which replicates much of the conservative hegemony of art eggleton’s and mel lastman’s political brands that resists radical 9 lefebvre’s characterization also casts a light on the progressive or reformist positions i have evoked throughout this paper. toronto alles uber | 203 political change and consolidates power at the geographical centre and in the elite networks whose power lines come together there. the politics of alles uber the politics of “alles uber” suggests we can all share everything as long as there is an app for it. urban progressives are not equipped to find a way to debunk the promise of opportunity. it is hard to argue against the promise of disruption as revolution. the claims are keen and overwhelming in their audacity. lyft co-founder john zimmer promised recently: “ridesharing is just the first phase of the movement to end car ownership and reclaim our cities” (zimmer 2016). as one conservative observer notes: “[w]hat if uber, and more broadly the sharing economy it has become synonymous with, were treated as an opportunity instead of a problem?” (csanady 2015). urban progressives have few answers to this challenge. stuck, for the most part, in a mindset of defensive struggles against roll-back-neoliberalism, the classical urban political communities on the left are stuck in a time-warp of broken promises and reminiscences of the welfare state. newer and younger progressives tend to sympathize with tactical urbanist ideas that come in more or less radical shapes (brenner 2015), and they take uberx home from the yoga studio or the community meeting at the organic café. the traditional principles of pro-union, egalitarian, collectivist imaginaries are often compromised by newer forms of emerging economic models which, as the political right has begun to understand, capture “small community tool-sharing programs and even small, locally grown start-ups” (csanady 2015). i don’t want to belabor or overplay this point but while much of urban progressive thought and practice is mired in defensive struggles and nostalgia for a more keynesian and social democratic capitalism, the alternatives to current neoliberalism are presented as a more shared form of opportunity which will ostensibly exist in a parallel universe to the precariat that is swelling the ranks of the urban workforce in toronto and elsewhere. as one political observer close to the ndp has noted, the 204 | austerity urbanism and the social economy “embittered young voters” of today will not be buying into the vision of a socialist or social democratic position that operates in the political world of the 20th century filled with “treasured fairy-tales” (sears 2016). in contrast to the era of municipal socialism at the beginning of the 20th century, african american separationist protest in the 1960s or middle class radicalism in santa monica or burlington in the 1980s, today’s progressive politics has not charted another urban world. true, there have been many instances of right to the city movements here in toronto and elsewhere but with few exceptions, these initiatives have not gelled into a coherent alternative vision for a post-capitalist city. this void left by progressives today, is amply filled by a technology-based, free-market imaginary ripe with real and imagined opportunity. a recent article summarizes this shift: “civic engagement today is different than in the past. many contemporary activists eschew sit-ins, picket lines, and paper petitions, stalwart organizing techniques of 1960s civil rights activists. instead, today’s civic innovators push us to “like” neighborhood associations on facebook, tweet at elected officials during city council meetings, send feedback to government agencies via new mobile apps, and donate funds through online crowdsourcing platforms. unlike their counter-culture predecessors, they don’t shun private-sector ideas but instead borrow concepts and language from the business world. civic innovators self-identify as entrepreneurial, innovative, and efficient” (savell et al. 2015). the lack of a horizon worth fighting for in a city that changes too fast to fathom is a critical obstacle to progressive politics in toronto and other cities. the role of technology, while never determining by itself, is critical to the realization of this apolitical or post-political constellation. as the political theorist david graeber has noted, the children of the revolution of the late 20th century were brought up with the idea that technology was on their side. but “the conspicuous absence, in 2015, of flying cars” toronto alles uber | 205 (2015: 106) that were promised in the utopias of the 1960s is stunning. what we get in the era of “alles uber” is a mere authoritarian charade, says graeber: “where once the sheer physical power of technologies themselves gave us a sense of history sweeping forward, we are now reduced to a play of screens and images” (graeber 2015: 111). this is the world that uber and its prospective regulators inhabit. mobility is almost a side product of a shift where progressive perspectives are pushed into a legitimacy crisis where the state is guided into the future by techno-fixes and business opportunity. the real state of affairs in a land of alles uber is more far-reaching than changing the rules of the taxi economy: “the company wants to be involved in city governance – fashioning the new administrative capacities of urban environments. rather than follow government rules, like any other utility, uber wants a visible hand in creating urban policy, determining how cities develop and grow, eventually making the city itself a platform for the proliferation of “smart”, data-based systems” (sadowski and gregory 2015). the progressives have found few answers to this challenge so far. john tory’s toronto is a playground for new ideas that anchor these seductive visions in a local state administrative logic that is designed to lock “disruptive” business-led progress in for the long haul. says tory himself: “if you said to me, ‘what’s in the best interests of the city?’ it’s to have as much valuable, disruptive technology coming in here as possible because that’s what pushes you to be on the leading edge” (nowak 2015b). tory’s love affair with disruption extends back to his days at the telecommunications giant rogers where he oversaw the technological shifts of the early 2000s. the term has since become buzzword and magic formula that is rarely criticized.10 10 the work of bernard stiegler is instructive in this context. see, for example, his interview with la liberation newspaper, july 1 2016; available at http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2016/07/01/bernard-stiegler-l-acceleration-de-linnovation-court-circuite-tout-ce-qui-contribue-a-l-elaboration_1463430; last accessed on september 18, 2016. 206 | austerity urbanism and the social economy http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2016/07/01/bernard-stiegler-l-acceleration-de-l-innovation-court-circuite-tout-ce-qui-contribue-a-l-elaboration_1463430 http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2016/07/01/bernard-stiegler-l-acceleration-de-l-innovation-court-circuite-tout-ce-qui-contribue-a-l-elaboration_1463430 the problem extends beyond toronto. it is central to the “urban age”. instead of finding the new politics of the urban revolution for an urban society of mediation, centrality and difference as lefebvre might have hoped (schmid 2014), we are left with a techno-utopian blueprint that is drawn by post-political subjects that operate in a strategic state space in which capitalism remains the ultimate innovation machine. adam rogers writes for wired magazine: “a century, plus or minus, after human beings started putting their minds toward designing cities as a whole, things are getting good. high tech materials, sensor networks, new science, and better data are all letting architects, designers, and planners work smarter and more precisely. cities are getting more environmentally sound, more fun, and more beautiful. and just in time, because today more human beings live in cities than not.” in an entirely un-ironic appeal to planning by a thousand decisions (perhaps the flipside to urban austerity’s death by a thousand cuts, http://cura.our.dmu.ac.uk/), rogers concludes: “the cities of tomorrow might still self-assemble haltingly, but done right, the process won’t be accidental. a city shouldn’t just happen anymore. every block, every building, every brick represents innumerable decisions. decide well, and cities are magic” (rogers 2015). clearly, this technocratic-decisionist democracy disciplined by the market is a world in which social and environmental progressives are a mere afterthought. who needs radical politics if you have a business model? let’s then give the last word to mayor tory, who recently professed: “so why should the job of people in public life or for that matter in business be to try and stop change? everybody has a self interest, some people have an interest in stopping the advance of these disruptive technologies, but probably you’re going to be unsuccessful. stopping it only buys you time, it doesn’t save whatever it is that you’re doing that’s out of date or on an old business model” (nowak 2015b). toronto alles uber | 207 http://cura.our.dmu.ac.uk/ disrupting disruption ultimately, the class formations and modernizations of the past that had created the playing field for an urban progressivism centred on the local state and especially the long march through the unionized bureaucratic institution of municipal planning and service delivery have dissipated to make way for a new game of innovation and shifting political allegiances. the left and its progressivism are, of course, not buried. they are the undead of the political terrain. like zombies, they seek relevance in a theatre where their alternative visions are performed like shadows on the walls of a cave that is furnished by techno progressivism and market opportunities. as zoe williams has argued in a short if polemic commentary, the left ceded the territory of innovation unnecessarily to the right. progress and innovation were, in fact, once associated with collective ideas, not market individualism: “there is no discovery in human history that wasn’t created by pooled resources, demonstrably the pooling of public money, but beneath that, the pooling of expertise. never mind, could socialism produce the ipad? socialist principles already did” (williams 2015). appeal to the “real” issues of social justice (did anyone say polarization and segregation?) and environmental crisis (did anyone say climate change?) is a losing proposition in a political space where smart design and apps solve problems. john tory wants to be jane jacobs and robert moses at once. he said so much himself in a recent interview: he wants to be “sympathetic” to people but also aims to bring in “disruptive technologies” in order to position the city better in international competition (nowak 2015b). this does not leave much space for a splintered progressive community to find discursive room to maneuver; and it crowds the terrain for the kinds of strategic alignments the left traditionally had to make to succeed, usually middle class/working class coalitions that combine the social and the cultural critique of capitalism in some form. 208 | austerity urbanism and the social economy but not all is lost. there are several areas in which progressive politics can make a comeback in this age of tor(y)onto. • spatial justice, transit justice and equity are taking on a new significance as the system of transit is about to see a major upgrade across the region and as new technologies such as the presto card are introduced. activists and researchers are concerned about equity consequences of such changes (see these reports: http://suburbs.apps01.yorku.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2015/03/switching-tracks_9-march-2015.pdf; http://www.metrolinx.com/en/regionalplanning/rtp/research/ne xt_stop_equity_routes_to_fairer_transit_access_in_the_gtha. pdf). • housing justice (tower renewal; rental rebirth; reform of toronto community housing) (see a recent special edition of alternatives journal on the topic of housing affordability, for example, edited by sean hertel and markus moos). • environment (while the time honoured politics of the toronto environmental alliance continues to lead the way, a new sub/urban political ecology has emerged around the greater golden horseshoe greenbelt; keil and maconald 2015). • social justice (tied to the work on housing and transportation, traditional social justice work continues, especially as the polarization of neighbourhood incomes and community resources continues to widen). • labour and community. new alliances have been forming between labour and urban groups as was the case in the fight against the smart centre development in the film district (lehrer and wieditz 2009), and is currently the case in the struggle to regulate homeshare businesses such as air bnb (a group called fair bnb (fairbnb.ca). • lastly, the fight against police brutality and carding has perhaps become the signature struggle of the times; black lives matter toronto alles uber | 209 have become synonymous with a radical challenge to the status quo in race relations and complex, intersectional injustices. all of these have traditionally been domains of inner city politics but they are now also inspired by suburban sensibilities as cities are increasingly governed through regions. whether this continues to mean making city politics more conservative will remain to be seen (addie and keil 2015; keil et al, 2016). conclusion in conclusion, we can speculate at this conjuncture that toronto is stuck in the middle. this has a spatial meaning as the city is increasingly defined in its relationship towards the suburban ring that surrounds it, where new centralities are emerging; it is institutional as the city continues to struggle in its minor role in the multi-level state architecture of the canadian state; and it is temporal as the regime seems to have lost its way and we appear to be entering a period of elite reconstruction. the city, and the province that regulates all its constitutional affairs, were a poster child for the most aggressive form of raw neoliberalization during the 1990s, which led to the competitive city with its dimensions of entrepreneurialism, difference and revanchism. after the pendulum swung left towards a third way-type neoliberalization in the first decade of this century, neoliberal governmentalities were both pushed back and came into their own. during what now appears like an intermezzo, the city took another hard right turn under late mayor rob ford, this time not supported by the all important oversight government at the provincial level. with the election of conservative john tory, who was endorsed by the governing liberal party, sandwiched between a hard right 35 percent opposition and a regrouping 25 percent on the left, we can expect that toronto will be rolling with neoliberalism in the region (keil 2009). the new mayor has placed himself on a continuum of a long term trajectory of elite rule in the city. this constellation of power, space and class has lasted for more than a century, and has shown mostly 210 | austerity urbanism and the social economy impenetrable to (right wing) populist or (left wing) popular challenges. the reform period of 1970-1982 was a bit of an exception, although it was also firmly anchored in the white, upper middle class core of the city. toronto’s haute bourgeoisie, mostly anglo and always white, has kept the reins of power firmly in hand. the miller years created partial openings towards the creative city of millennials and towards a more progressive and diverse polity; the ford years shut down those possibilities but did redefine what a diverse electorate might mean for toronto. the tory victory is, at first glance, a return to the continuous temporalities of the past: modernization in moderation will be the motto. a sclerotic regime shakes off some of its dust and the dirt it acquired during the tempestuous ford era. while the ford years were all about the inequalities of space – suburbs versus the city – we will now hear a lot of terminology that uses temporal metaphors. even before he had entered office, the mayor-elect burst on to the morning radio scene with promises of modernization and a verdict against the “old fashioned” ways of the past. the new slogan is modernization through high tech, procedural innovation (against the ‘old ways’ of the unions and for ‘working together’; against the syndicalist cab drivers and for the business model of uber). he has since come out in favour of other technological innovation although experts bemoaned his steadfast opposition to taking down the east gardiner which was considered by many to be the real progressive solution by opening up a pathway for urbanist technologies of a new generation. words like big data, hackathons and the like are dropping like honey from the mayor’s mouth at any occasion (hardy 2015a). startups will be welcomed ostensibly (hardy 2015b). toronto is seen part of “silicon valley north” and tory has been seen as a champion of that idea (freeman 2016; pagliaro 2016). we shall see more of that discourse of moving forward as long as it is good for business, customers and as long as it uses high tech. the architect of smarttrack commuter rail has already made the smart city his slogan of choice and recently told an interviewer he would be “pushing the city to be smarter because if you have a city that looks like it’s in the 1960s, you toronto alles uber | 211 won’t attract anything new… i want this place to be the most friendly place in north america for startups and i think it can be” (tory quoted in hardy 2015b). tory specifically touts the multifarious characteristics of toronto as an advantage: “ ‘we have here something that is quite unique,’ tory said. ‘you are going to be in both the financial and the innovation capital of the country’ ” (armstrong 2015). this is ironic, of course, in more than one way: now the blandest, most elite and waspish business elite representative who stands for the most longstanding privileges in the city’s history, is calling upon others to give up their “oldfashioned” ways in favour of some uncharted course of progress into a high tech, proto-capitalist future of individual accomplishment, corporate welfare handouts, post-political community consensus and economic deregulation. the alternatives of collective consumption, welfare state provision in housing and transportation, democratic decision-making and responsible economic development will, for now, be taken out of the timeline of progress and parked in some temporality of yesteryear. it was suggested that tory may be a “compromise candidate” (radwanski 2014). this begs the question, what the compromise would consist of? for now, i interpret it as the continuation and another episode in the sclerotic governance of toronto. tory is not going to bring in change that matters. his ticket will be modernization, technocracy and deregulation but it will be in the confines of the elite notions of what the city is about. in toronto the talk is about space, but the material consolidation of its regime is about time. it is the eternal time of elite reconstruction. references armstrong, j. 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(2016, september 18) the third transportation revolution lyft’s vision for the next ten years and beyond the road ahead. https://medium.com/@johnzimmer/the-thirdtransportation-revolution-27860f05fa91#.83wkpqxnd 218 | austerity urbanism and the social economy paving their way and earning their pay | 137 paving their way and earning their pay: economic survival experiences of immigrants in east toronto keren gottfried1, john shields2, nasima akter3, diane dyson4, sevgul topkara-sarsu5, haweiya egeh6, sandra guerra7 abstract: this paper lies at the intersection of precarious labour and immigrant employment experiences. the labour market has evolved over the past few decades such that jobs are increasingly precarious poorly paid, insecure, and lacking in employee protections. immigrants are overrepresented among those working precarious jobs and face compounded challenges to achieving socio-economic stability. immigrants, especially immigrant women, experience heightened exploitation and marginalization in the process of trying to economically and socially integrate into canadian society. the paper investigates how immigrants living in an east toronto ethnic enclave navigates the labour market and survive precarious and informal employment realities. it makes use of a unique empirical survey of this community to help shed light on the economic lives of this population. keywords: immigrants, informal economy, community research, neoliberalism, precarious work the rise of precarious work is a key phenomenon that is a defining feature of the 21st century canadian job market (lewchuk, et al. 2015). 1 keren gottfried is a public policy and performance measurement professional who has worked at indigenous and northern affairs canada and ipsos global public affairs. 2 john shields is a professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. he is also the acting academic director of the ryerson centre for immigration and settlement (rcis). 3 nasima akter is the executive director of bangladesh­canadian community services. 4 diane dyson is the director of research and public policy at woodgreen community services. 5 sevgul topkara­sarsu is the manager of settlement services at woodgreen communıty services. 6 haweiya egeh is a community development officer with the city of toronto’s toronto newcomer office. 7 sandra guerra is the partnership coordinator for the toronto south local immigration partnership. 138 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages many jobs that once formed the bedrock of middle class employment no longer offer the stability or economic rewards they once provided. precarious employment can be defined as work that has poor job security, poor benefits and employee protections, and it is often poorly paid. these jobs are commonly part­time, temporary, shift work, or informal jobs, many of which exist outside the formally­recognized employment market. this shift in the job market to more precarious work is taking place not only in canada but in many developed and developing countries. the international labour organization (ilo) identifies the absence of ‘decent jobs’ as the new labour market reality (2006), and reflects a ‘decent work deficit’ (likić­brborić and schierup, 2015, 229). the ilo statistics tell us that more than half of the world’s labour force is employed in insecure work today (wise, 2015, 28). the organization for economic co­operation and development (oecd) situates precarious work at the intersection of “low levels of pay and high levels of labour insecurity” (campbell, 1996). employees generally are pushed into these positions because it is the only work they are able to find in today’s labour market and they quickly discover they have “minimal control over working conditions” (law commission of ontario, 2012, 1). a report by the wellesley institute (akter et al., 2013) notes that precarious employment often reflects substandard conditions that do not meet legislated minimum employment standards like minimum wage, hours of work limitations, health and safety codes, and the like. precarious jobs can also be defined as what they are not. poverty and employment precarity in southern ontario (pepso) defines “standard employment relationships” as working at least 30 hours per week, receiving a decent wage and benefits, and expecting to be working at the same employment a year from now (lewchuk, et al, 2013, 13). precarious employment deviates from these norms. some forms of self­ employment also fall in the category of precarious work. the wellesley institute places unregulated self­employment in the precarious umbrella, particularly unregulated self­employment that might run out of one’s home and operate “under the radar of most regulatory and tax rules” (akter, et al., 2013, 8). pepso contends that people who are self­employed but list no official employees are often working in precarious jobs because they tend to be “a disguised form of employment” that in normal circumstances would be part of the waged/salaried labour force (lewchuk, 2015, 19). many precarious jobs are also called “informal” because they fall outside of the formal employment framework expected in western economies (topkara­sarsu, 2013). colin williams (2010) writes these are paving their way and earning their pay | 139 jobs not registered for tax, social security, and/or labour law purposes. more broadly, informal work can be thought of as “emigration from the established ways of working” or operating “against the official norms and formal institutions for economic activity” (schneider and enste, 2013). williams (2008) distinguishes three categories of informal work. the first two reference various forms of unpaid work. first, ‘self­provisioning work’ includes unpaid household labour done by household members. second, ‘unpaid community work’ covers unpaid volunteering and kinship exchange between household members and their extended family, social, or neighbourhood networks. the third refers to ‘paid informal work’ and this encompasses all monetary exchange that is unregistered for tax, social security, and/or labour law but that is largely legal in other respects. informal jobs are united mostly by their heterogeneity (topkara­ sarsu, 2013); they can be legal or illegal, monetary or non­monetary, on or off the books, destructive or complementary to the formal economy, for profiteering or survival, and can be a person’s primary or supplementary income source (schneider and williams, 2013; topkara­sarsu, 2013). the sector includes a range of activity: favours for friends or community members, illicit activity like smuggling or embezzlement, undocumented workers, performing licensed activities without a license like electrical work, and some other forms of self­employment. questions posed in the east toronto enclave survey, however, attempted to tap into informal types of work that were engaged in by respondents or members of their household for some form of financial reward. neoliberalism, a political ideology and mode of governance that celebrates free markets, limited government, deregulation and encourages the heightened socioeconomic inequality that follows (burke, mooers and shields, 2000), tends to view informal work as an example of individual initiative and a creative alternative to its perception of ‘over­regulation’ in the labour market. without state regulation of informal activities, portes and haller (2005) contend, the flow and transactions of goods and services reflect the true will of market forces (topkara­sarsu, 2013). williams maintains that this view “portray[s] informal workers as heroes casting off the shackles of an over­burdensome state” that is blamed for economic and social problems (2010, 3). on the global scale, alternatively, the context is reversed. williams notes that informal jobs, in part, can be seen as having grown from an unregulated world economy that encourages “race to the bottom” labour practices. employers take advantage of opportunities to subcontract work to places where off­the­books workers face “degrading, low­paid and exploitative” conditions (2). the counterweight to these problems, according to the neoliberal viewpoint, is 140 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages that through informal work people can achieve some employment rather than no employment. it demonstrates the autonomy and creativity of individuals who take responsibility for their own livelihoods and make their own living rather than relying on welfare services from the public purse (williams, 2008). a recent ontario initiative, the “changing workplace review,” sheds some light on the evolution of these working conditions. ontario premier kathleen wynne’s mandate letter (wynne, 2014) calls for a review the province’s employment and labour standards processes. the review identifies five key trends that shape the changing labour market: (1) increased reliance on the service sector, (2) a rise of “non­standard employment relationships,” (3) globalization and trade liberalization (which drives competitiveness and increases pressure to keep costs low – including labour costs), (4) rapid technological change, and (5) increased diversity in the workplace. pepso describes the rise of precarious work as “a result of technological change, increased contracting out, and [internationally] extended supply lines” and “financial reorganizations, decisions to relocate, the entry of new competitors, or the inability to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation” (lewchuk, et al., 2013, 13). large companies that typically provide middle­income jobs find they now ‘face an uncertain future’ and are significantly reducing their workforces, reorganizing or even dissolving. though precarious jobs are rising on aggregate across the breadth of the labour market, immigrants are especially vulnerable to work in precarious jobs. this is not due to a lack of appropriate skills. in fact, immigrant newcomers on average have higher levels of education and human capital than those born in canada; despite this, they often remain unemployed or underemployed (shields, et al., 2010). a wellesley institute report explains that “immigrants are not only blocked from entering the professions for which they trained but a substantial portion of them are not in any type or form of secure employment. instead, canadian newcomers often face substandard, precarious and sometimes dangerous working conditions” (2013, 1). a law commission of ontario report (2012) concludes that this is due to the difficulty encountered by many newcomers in finding financially satisfactory standard employment. immigrants tend to take what they can get, i.e. survival jobs. the likelihood of immigrants working precarious jobs is also because of their overrepresentation in jobs most affected by the changing labour market. the worker’s action centre (wac) finds that “outsourcing, indirect hiring, and misclassifying workers takes place in sectors with distinctly local markets: restaurants, business services, construction, retail, paving their way and earning their pay | 141 warehousing, trucking, janitorial, home healthcare and manufacture of goods consumed locally.” moreover, wac explains that “low­skilled or labour intensive” jobs, where immigrants are disproportionately represented, are increasingly contracted out to third parties. to get one of these jobs, employees no longer look for a waged job but instead sign up with an employment agency as an “independent contractor.” the result is that immigrants face barriers to stable employment and experience very poor economic outcomes. these poor economic outcomes have been a reality facing many newcomers for the last number of decades and have been well documented in the literature (shields & türegün, 2014). moreover, some immigrant groups fare more poorly than others. for example, data from the 2006 canadian census show immigrants from racialized groups are more likely to live below the poverty line, as defined by before­tax low income cut­offs thresholds, than those from non­ racialized groups (shields, et al., 2011). as root et al. (2014) explain, the neoliberal mindset has facilitated the development of a particular immigration policy framework in canada that prioritizes so­called “economic migrants” who are “perceived as self­ reliant and embrace practices and expectations around personal responsibility” (5). over the last decade, the federal conservative government has been particularly active in reshaping canadian immigration policy along neoliberal lines. the focus is on highly­skilled immigrants and less of a priority is placed on allowing immigrants to sponsor family members. former minister of immigration jason kenney has been the “prime architect and force” behind these neoliberal reforms and responsible for articulating the “law­and order, family and religious values, small state and self­sufficiency agendas to the immigration portfolio” (ibid, 9). the driving force behind this policy framework is the assumption that highly­skilled immigrants are perceived to be less of a financial burden on the state, less of a challenge to integrate into society, and more likely to have the english/french language skills to succeed in the labour market. kymlica writes that this policy framework “affirms ­ even valorizes ­ ethic immigrant entrepreneurship, strategic cosmopolitanism, and transnational commercial linkages and remittances but silences debates on economic redistribution, racial inequality, unemployment, economic restructuring, and labor rights” (2013, 112). these policies also privilege recognized high levels of education, canadian employment experience, and formal credentials that many newcomers, particularly people of colour and women, often lack (arat­koc, 1999). neoliberalism perpetuates gender stereotypes. the so­called “self­ sufficient family” is praised as one that reflects heteronormative, nuclear 142 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages family structures (root, et al., 2014, 7) and rely on women to provide care through family upbringing and voluntary and low­waged work in social services. with the care­taking responsibilities being offloaded from the public sphere to the family, attempts to balance family and employment obligations becomes impossible and particularly burdensome to immigrant women. neoliberal immigration policy asserts that there is a need to end purported immigrant overreliance on state social supports and ensure that they are making positive contributions to the economy. the charge that immigrants are a public burden is a myth utilized by neoliberal governments to further their ideological policy agenda. a 2013 report by the oecd, for example, notes that immigrants to canada use fewer benefits than might be expected and contribute more to the economy in taxes than they withdraw via public services and benefits – a position reinforced by hiebert (2005). recent changes in social policy, however, has worked to place greater restrictions on newcomer access to social and health benefits, further depressing their usage of such benefits. at the same time, neoliberal policy casts those who make ‘excessive demands’ on public welfare as undesirable and, in the case of newcomers, the language of ‘good versus bad immigrants’ comes to be employed (barrass and shields, 2015). significantly, the federal conservative government’s restrictions on refugee claimants’ access to health services has been ruled by the supreme court of canada as an “outrage [to] canadian standards of decency” (root, et al., 2014, 10). the end result is that immigrants have found themselves in an increasingly hostile environment with leaner settlement and social supports and a more hostile and competitive labour market that is marked by few good job opportunities. women, especially immigrant women, are particularly vulnerable. immigrant women are more likely to engage in precarious and informal jobs and are compensated at lower economic levels than men (akter, et al. 2013; shields & türegün, 2014; shields et al., 2010). peterson (2012) notes that within the labour market, women have unique experiences because “feminized” workers are assumed to be “less demanding, docile but reliable, available for part­time and temporary work and too [frequently] structurally vulnerable to contest low wages” (16). she also describes the immigrant mother as a person who is likely to be working out of desperation for money and the demands of raising children, all while maintaining normative gender appearances (ibid). during times of economic crisis, the double burden – having to care for social reproduction while making monetary contributions to the family – on women increases and is magnified when social services are cut in the name of government paving their way and earning their pay | 143 austerity (root, et al., 2014). immigrant women find themselves taking informal jobs that sacrifice workplace standards, protections, and employment stability in exchange for a degree of flexibility that might relieve the family­workplace juggling act. methodological approach this work is part of a community­university research project the social and economic inclusion of newcomers in toronto: navigating the informal economy and its impact on newcomer outcomes, funded by ryerson university’s rbc immigrant, diversity, and inclusion project. the partners on the project are: the south toronto local immigration partnership, woodgreen community services, and academic researchers from ryerson university. the project is based on an analysis of a dataset conceived and developed by the toronto south local immigration partnership and funded through wellesley institute. the range of community partners included: action for neighbourhood change, taylor massey, bangladeshi canadian community services, chinese canadian national council ­ toronto chapter, neighbourhood link, riverdale east african association, and woodgreen community services (akter, et al., 2013). the data presented herein reflect a sample of n=453 households in east toronto from three communities: bangladeshi (n=199), chinese (n=214), and somali (n=40). the sample included n=284 women: n=122 bangladeshi, n=142 chinese, and n=20 somali. respondents in the survey were selected using interval sampling, were either male or female, and were aged 19 years or older. the stratified sample randomly selected participants in their homes and from street intercepts in east toronto. the interviews were face­to­face and used a semi­structured questionnaire delivered by multilingual, trained community researchers who conducted the interviews in either english or the interviewee’s mother language. interviews were conducted through october­december, 2011. the survey was primarily fielded in the neighbourhoods identified as ethnic enclaves in the east end of the old city of toronto: crescent town, broadview chinatown, and central riverdale. data presented herein were analyzed using spss 22. in the following analysis, we employ descriptive statistics to present a labour market profile of this immigrant enclave sample. we contrast this east toronto population with other groups along a number of dimensions and internally compare differences within the sample using factors such as gender and ethnicity. when employing ethnicity in the analysis of our sample, we are only able to contrast those of bangladeshi and chinese 144 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages background given that the somali sample size was too small to provide statistically meaningful results. furthermore, multivariate statistics are employed to deepen our analysis regarding the independent role of variables like ethnicity, gender, and english language ability on labour market outcomes. data findings demographic profile. about half (48%) of our sample population immigrated to canada under the immigration class of “family/spon­ sorship,” while one in three (34%) were “economic class,” 12% were “refugee claimants,” 5% were here on temporary visitor, student, or work permits, and less than 1% said “other.” more bangladeshi respondents moved here under the economic class (42%) than chinese respondents (30%). chinese respondents were more likely to be refugee claimants (13%) than bangladeshi respondents (3%). about half of the men in the survey were here under economic status (49%) while only one quarter (25%) of women were. considerably more women (62%) than men (26%) fell under family class designation. the majority of respondents (71%) were married, while two in ten (19%) were unmarried and 7% were divorced. the rest were separated (2%) or widowed (2%). a plurality (38%) moved to canada five or less years prior to survey participation, three in ten (28%) moved five to ten years ago, and three in ten (31%) had been in canada for more than ten years. these figures begin to demonstrate how demographic variables link together to compound their impact on labour market experiences. more specifically, six in ten (63%) of respondents had an english proficiency level8 of high intermediate or advanced: more men (73%) than women (58%) did so, however. approximately half (46%) reported using english at home sometimes or all the time (52% men, 43% women) and 87% reported using english at work sometimes or all the time (90% 8 respondents self­identified their english proficiency levels based on the following definitions: beginner (esl levels 1­2, linc levels 1­2)­ communicates only through a few words. may recognize and write letters and numbers and read and understand common sight words. high beginner (esl level 3, linc level 3) – communicates using basic learned phrases and sentences. reads and writes letters and numbers and a limited number of basic sight words and simple phrases. intermediate (esl levels 4­5, linc level 4) – can follow oral directions. has limited ability to understand on the telephone. can read simplified material on familiar subjects. high intermediate (esl level 6, linc levels 5­6) – ability to understand and communicate on the telephone. can participate in conversations on a variety of topics. advanced (esl levels 7­8, linc level 7) – can participate fully in social and familiar work situations; can understand and participate in conversations and in technical discussions in own field. paving their way and earning their pay | 145 men, 83% women). seven in ten (70%) said they use english in the community sometimes or all the time, while more men (75%) than women (68%) said so. hence, overall, a large proportion of all respondents did have good english language skills although there was also a clear gender differentiation. the weaker english language ability among women put them at a distinct labour market disadvantage. we will explore the place of english language and employment patterns more fully in later section of the paper but figure 1 provides an outline of the core nature of the relationship; more advanced english language ability results in improved economic outcomes. those with high intermediate or advanced english ability (62%) were more likely than those with lower levels (52%) to be employed at all – full­time, part­time or casual – though they are just as likely to have full­time work (35% vs. 33% respectively). critically, however, those with stronger levels of english (42%) were considerably more likely than those with weaker english skills (27%) to be living with household income levels above $30,000. n=453 (all respondents) 146 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages employment rates, types, and participation in the labour market. figure 2 gives us a snapshot comparison of general employment outcomes between our surveyed enclave population and the overall canadian workforce in 2011. what particularly stands out is the much lower rates of full­time employment from our surveyed immigrant population and their much higher rates of unemployment. one in three (34%) from our immigrant enclave report were working full time, defined as 30 hours per week or more, while data from the labour force survey by statistics canada report the canadian employment rate among those over the age of 15 in 2011 was 50% (statistics canada, 2015). the difference in unemployment levels between these two groups was 15% versus 7%, a rate that was twice the level for the enclave. the enclave sample also had somewhat higher levels of part­time and casual work. n=453 (all respondents) paving their way and earning their pay | 147 bangladeshi respondents in the survey (36%) were more likely than chinese respondents (32%) to have full­time work, while men and women both held, on aggregate, similar levels of full­time employment (34%). one in ten (10%) responded to having a current employment level that was “casual,” defined as “whenever you can get the work, but it is not very predictable.” chinese (11%) respondents were more likely than bangladeshi (8%) respondents, while men (15%) were more likely than women (7%), to hold casual work. our sample overall reflects 15% currently not employed and looking for work, compared with 7% of the overall canadian labour force, as reported by the labour force survey (ibid). while there is no apparent difference between the ethnicities surveyed, women (17%) were more likely than men (13%) to be unemployed but looking for work. hence, overall our sample experienced significantly greater rates of unemployment and nonstandard employment than the overall labour force. levels of household income reveal the grim employment and financial prospects facing respondents living in these ethnic enclaves. a majority of households (68%), where the respondent said they were working more than 30 hours per week, reported earning less than $30,000, versus only 25% at the city of toronto level (ibid). this is an earnings deficit figure that approaches three times the low incomes levels found in city of toronto households. looking at individual income, eight in ten (80%) overall reported earning less than $30,000 and 40% earned below $10,000. among the lowest income bracket, women (53%) were more than twice as likely as men (25%) to report income levels below $10,000. hence, low income levels displayed a distinct gender dimension with women being greatly disadvantaged. only one in three (37%) households reported being able to fully cover their household expenses on income earned through formal employment while a majority (67%) said they relied on other income sources. six in ten (62%) reported difficulty in meeting their monthly household expenses and one in seven (14%) reported great difficulty in doing so. a similar proportion (60%) of employed respondents (full­time, part­time or casual) said they were having difficulties making ends meet, indicating that this difficult situation reflects poor work prospects among those living in these communities. consequently, the problem for many of these immigrant households was not simple unemployment but employment that did not provide a living wage (i.e. a wage that provided them enough to meet the basic necessities of daily life). one in three (34%) of all respondents reported doing at least some self­employment work and three in ten (32%) reported that someone in 148 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the household was doing cash work. self­employed workers were most likely to say they pursued this route because of unemployment (37%), convenience (25%) or start­up costs (14%). these figures reveal that self­ employment activity within this immigrant enclave has become extremely important for providing a source of income – the survey provides important evidence revealing the turn to work outside the standard labour market for survival work. of those engaged in self­employed work, childcare or babysitting (20%) led the list, followed by self­employment work in food services (12%), building/renovating (10%), caregiving (8%), tutoring (8%), and taxi driving (8%). there were, however, distinct types of self­employment activity utilized by the different ethnic communities and by men versus women. bangladeshi respondents were more likely to say tutoring (16%) or taxi driving (16%) while chinese respondents were more likely to report working in food service (20%), providing room and board (13%), and sewing (8%). men reported building/renovations (20%) or taxi driving (17%) considerably more than women did (1% each) while women reported babysitting (27%) and caregiving (15%) more than men did (11% and 1% respectively). among those working for direct cash payments, factory work (35%), working in a store (29%) and restaurant (14%) work were the most popular forms of employment. bangladeshi respondents were more likely than chinese respondents to say they were doing restaurant work for cash (19% vs. 11%) or tutoring (13% vs. 1%) while chinese respondents were more likely to say factory work (35% vs. 19%). men were considerably more likely to say they were doing factory work for cash (45%) than women (28%). the amount of work carried out in the shadow economy by those in the ethnic enclaves is considerable and speaks to the reach and importance of ‘informalized work’ within the immigrant community (castles, 2015, 57­58). employment standards violations. one aspect of nonstandard employment forms and low wage based work is the notion that these workers are more exposed to employer abuse (rodgers, 1989; rubery, 1989). respondents were asked if they, or anyone in their household, had worked for cash and if certain employment conditions applied to that work. the survey data reveal that immigrants living in the east toronto bangladeshi, chinese and somali communities do in fact face poor employment standards. regarding the household member who was working for cash, about one third (36%) indicated at least one employment standard was not met at this job; 17% reported two violations, 11% reported three violations, and 7% reported four violations. these numbers vary considerably by ethnicity. fully half (50%) of those from paving their way and earning their pay | 149 chinese communities reported experiencing 1 violation while 23% of those from bangladeshi communities reported so. specifically, 16% received less than $10.25 an hour (the minimum wage in 2011) – 23% of chinese and 11% of bangladeshi respondents were below this level. overall, one in ten reported the household member working for cash experienced the following workplace violations: no paid holiday (11%), no vacation pay (11%), and cash payment without deductions (10%). figure 3 reports the frequency and percentage by type of employment standard violation for those who had experienced such victimization. the high incidents of violations of basic employment standard norms speaks to the deficits of employment quality experienced by so many racialized immigrants in urban centres. n=453 (all respondents) 150 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages an immigrant group that has faced particular challenges with integrating into the labour market has been the most recently arrived newcomers. figure 4 examines those who had come to canada within the last five years at the time of the survey. they are a group that are particularly vulnerable to employment standards violations and they survey shows that a high percentage of them were not aware of many of their employment rights. interestingly, however, very large majority were aware of what the minimum wage rate was, yet, as indicated previously, this was the most common form of employment standards abuse by employers. clearly, many newcomers do not feel that they are in a position to stand up for their rights against employer abuses. n=171 (respondents arrived in canada between 2007­2011) paving their way and earning their pay | 151 health and social outcomes. the labour market is closely connected to other parts of society. for instance, poor employment can negatively affect health and social outcomes. this relationship is outlined in the social determinants of health perspective that is widely used in policy circles (graham, 2007). figure 5 compares health outcomes for our sample with the general population. it indicates that there are large differences between these populations with our sample population fairing far more poorly. three in ten (31%) from our sample rated their health as poor (3%) or fair (28%) while the rest (69%) rated their health as good (44%), very good (19%) or excellent (6%). by contrast, only 10% of the canada­wide sample rates their health as poor, 62% as excellent or very good and 28% as good. from our immigrant enclave sample, more men (34%) than women (20%) rated their health as excellent or very good while more chinese (82%) than bangladeshi (70%) respondents said so. three in ten (30%) experienced stress, two in ten (19%) experienced difficulty sleeping, and 12% experienced depression more than twice per week over the past month. clearly, the health outcomes from the east toronto immigrant sample compared negatively along a variety of dimensions to the general canadian population. social determinant of health perspectives relate these kinds of differences directly to poor working and economic conditions of vulnerable populations living in immigrant enclaves (graham, 2007). n=453 (all respondents) 152 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages problems associated with social inclusion were also revealed in the survey. we use one measure here related to feelings of social inclusion – the respondent’s sense of strong attachment to community. the rather weak sense of attachment/inclusion is telling. less than one third (27%) said they strongly felt they are a part of their community. interestingly, more women (29%) than men (22%) and more bangladeshi (37%) than chinese (13%) respondents felt these strong attachments to their communities. as revealed in our findings, there is clearly an inter­ relationship at play between such variables as gender, ethnicity/race, immigration status and class. more work is required of researchers to untangle the nature of some of these differences within such ethnic enclave populations but what is clear in the results overall is that there exists a measurable deficit in feelings of social inclusion among this immigrant population. precarious work precarious forms of work encompasses those in our sample who are employed but are not well paid, who work in informal jobs like self­ employment or cash work but who cannot get by, those employed only part­time or casually but desire more hours, those working jobs where employment standards are not met, and those with poor job security. while there are various ways in which precarious work has come to be operationalized (see lewchuk, et al., 2013) we considered the following variables from our survey to help capture and measure elements of precarity in our sample: a. insufficient employment: those who work full­time (30 hours per week or more) but earn less than $30,000 at the household level; b. precarious informal work: those who work informal jobs (self­ employment or cash work) and report they ’cannot make ends meet’ each month; and, c. workplace violations: those who work full­time but where at least one employment standard was not being met.9 the survey of this east toronto enclave uncovered evidence that a large proportion of this population was struggling to make ends meet and working in precarious, insecure work. of those employed full­time (34%), 65% had household earnings of less than $30,000 at the household level and 32% experienced at least one employment standard that was not met. 9 the following employment standards were measured in the survey: minimum wage, irregular hours, cash payment without deductions, irregular pay schedule, working more than 13 hours per day, no vacation pay, no paid holidays, or poor physical working conditions. paving their way and earning their pay | 153 of those working informal jobs – either self­employed or earning cash without formal documentation – 26% said they could not earn enough to make ends meet. overall, one third (33%) of those surveyed fell into one of these three categories. the literature would suggest that gender, ethnicity and english proficiency are related to involvement in precarious work. taking a look first at some basic relationship testing10, a chi­square analysis suggests ethnicity and english proficiency may play a role though gender may not be a significant factor in determining whether one holds a precarious job, though the type of precarious work done is impacted by gender (see table 1; also refer to the appendix). in fact, a recent pepso study on precarity in the toronto­hamilton region reported broadly similar levels of precarious employment between men and women (lewchuk, 2015, 29­30). an ethnic breakdown of our sample found that eight in ten (78%) bangladeshi respondents who work full­time were also living in households earning less than $30,000, while this was the case for only half (51%) of the chinese respondents surveyed. however, full­time employed chinese respondents appear more likely to be exploited at work; half (47%) reported at least one employment standard as not being met while this was the case for only 21% of bangladeshi respondents. each ethnic group was about as likely to report engaging in any informal work, however; 37% of chinese and 13% of bangladeshi respondents working informal jobs also reported having a hard time making ends meet. those with an advanced level of english language proficiency were considerably less likely overall to do informal work, to have a hard time making ends meet (15% vs. 49%), and to experience at least one workplace violation at their full­time job (15% vs. 43%) among those who were employed on a full­time basis. there does not appear to be a statistical difference by gender, however. a logistic regression sheds more light on these relationships when each independent variable is controlled for11. again, ethnicity and english proficiency level appear to be driving the dependent variable of insufficient employment and involvement in precarious informal work, though only english language level appears to be driving the existence of workplace violations for those with full­time jobs. these models, however, once again do not uncover a significant independent role for gender regarding these relationships. this multivariate analysis may be masking 10 results presented herein are statistically significant to the .05 level according to chi­square independence tests. 11 these findings are also significant at the .05 level according to the multinomial logistic regression. 154 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages an important role played by gender in that it is the very intersectionality (the interconnectedness) of variables working together like ethnicity, gender and english language ability that suggests that gender not be dismissed here. table 1: logistic regression models: sig. values (full results in appendix) clearly, immigrant background/ethnicity (chinese versus bangladeshi12) plays a role in mediating employment type held and employment well­being. further targeted, in­depth research is required to uncover the dynamics behind ethnically­distinct employment outcomes; this should be the focus of future studies. the results point to the fact that ethnicity and/or racialization are experienced differently and unevenly by various segments of society. the role of english proficiency, by contrast, is easier to make sense of. clearly, poorer english skills translates into greater employment precarity and a high incidence of employment standards abuses, like employer wage theft (milkman, 2015, 165). some employers exploit the lack of english language strength of immigrant populations to break workplace rules, confident that workers are either unaware of their rights or too afraid to report employers to authorities (kerwin & mccabe, 2011). indeed, our data reveal that six in 12 the somali sample for the survey was not large enough to derive a statistically significant reading. paving their way and earning their pay | 155 ten (59%) of respondents believed it is likely that their future employment would be negatively affected if they were to raise employment rights or health and safety issues concerns with their current employer. problems communicating in the working language of english also push immigrant workers out of the formal labour market into the shadow economy where they are in greater danger of exploitation (akter, et al., 2013). immigrant men and women are both vulnerable but our sample points to women as having overall weaker english language skills than men, heightening their risk. the need for stronger employment standards legislation, accompanied by strong enforcement, is among the public policy implications of these findings, as is the need for more investment in immigrant language training with targeted programs for women. conclusion this paper provided an analytical perspective on the economic experiences of ethnically/racially identifiable immigrants in urban canadian cities with two approaches. the first approach provided a critical evaluation of the relevant literature that illustrated the nature of the informalize economy generally, the role of immigrants within that spectrum, and the relationship between informal economic activity and the increasing precarity found in jobs in canada today and around the world. the second approach leveraged empirical findings from a unique survey conducted in three ethnic enclaves in east toronto – bangladeshi, chinese, and somali. it has found that the drastic increase in precarious work – poorly paid, insecure, and lacking in employee protections – correlates with the rise of dependence on informal work by immigrants, a scenario reinforced by prevailing neoliberal ideologies. the literature pointed to a relationship between gender and economic outcomes, finding that women are particularly burdened by an increasingly precarious job market. the data presented from the east toronto immigrant survey, however, also demonstrate a strong correlation between economic outcomes and the variables of ethnicity and english language level. bangladeshi immigrants are faring better than their chinese counterparts. strong english speakers fare better than those with poorer english language skills. these two variables are linked; many more bangladeshi immigrants arrived in toronto with stronger english skills than the chinese immigrants surveyed. similarly, though the data did not show this driver, gender is strongly linked with ethnicity and language skills. these variables intersect; men were much more likely in the survey to indicate they had advanced or high intermediate english skills, for example. indeed, given the political economy of immigrant 156 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages selection, and the structure of the family, women are at a distinct disadvantage that is connected to the intersection of gender, language, and ethnicity. the study also demonstrates that women are experiencing job precarity differently from men, largely because they are employed in different types of work. they also report higher levels of experience of discrimination in the workplace and report worse health outcomes. given these results, further in­depth study is needed to more clearly see the full picture of the vulnerability of women in the labour market. the intersectionality of these variables is difficult to tease out but the literature and data point to a troublesome experience for immigrant women that merits targeted public policy attention. appendix: regression tables table 1 logistic regression: dependent variable = insufficient employment (works full-time but hh earns < $30k/yr) table 2 logistic regression: dependent variable = workplace violations (work full-time, at least one workplace 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(2014). 2014 mandate letter: labour. http://www.ontario.ca/government/2014­mandate­letter­labour austerity urbanism and the social economy alternate routes edited by carlo fanelli and steve tufts, with jeff noonan and jamey essex2017 © alternate routes, 2017 toronto www.alternateroutes.ca twitter: @arjcsr “alternate routes” issn 1923-7081 (online) issn 0702-8865 (print) http://www.alternateroutes.ca/ alternate routes: a journal of critical social research vol. 28, 2017 managing editors: carlo fanelli and steve tufts interventions editors: jeff noonan and jamey essex editorial advisory board: nahla abdo, dimitry anastakis, pat armstrong, tim bartkiw, david camfield, nicolas carrier, sally chivers, wallace clement, simten cosar, simon dalby, aaron doyle, ann duffy, bryan evans, randall germain, henry giroux, peter gose, paul kellogg, jacqueline kennelly, priscillia lefebvre, mark neocleous, bryan palmer, jamie peck, sorpong peou, garry potter, georgios papanicolaou, mi park, justin 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lowe, ted richmond and john shields “you got to make the numbers work”: negotiating managerial reforms in the provision of employment support service debbie l rudman, rebecca m. aldrich, john grundy, melanie stone, suzanne huot, awish aslam alternatives to the low waged economy: living wage movements in canada and the united states bryan evans does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? the case of chicago, il. laura pin against housing: homes as a human life requirement jeff noonan and josie watson 7 14 47 80 114 141 interventions austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal pierre hamel and grégoire autin toronto alles uber: being progressive in the age of progressive conservative urbanism roger keil redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs douglas young a beautiful community, but a troubled city: flint’s water crisis otrude n. moyo do efforts to mitigate gentrification work? evidence from washington dc carolyn gallaher the university in the city: the campus as a space of dependence and engagement in the age of austerity kafui attoh, don mitchell, lynn a. staeheli 165 189 219 233 248 264 can marx’s ‘capital’ help us find new routes to radical change? alternate routes and pluto press present: reading ‘capital’ today: marx after 150 years a special edition of the journal published for the 150th anniversary of ‘capital’ visit www.readingcapitaltoday.com to pre-order a copy at a special discount for ar readers april 2017 / 9780745399713 available internationally editorial introduction: austerity urbanism and the social economy carlo fanelli1 and steve tufts2 this issue of alternate routes, “austerity urbanism and the social economy,” is particularly timely and relevant. the ‘urban question’ has been with us for some time, but it seems particularly significant at the current conjuncture. we are now, it is argued, in an age of ‘planetary urbanization,’ with ‘the urban’ predominating contemporary economy and society (brenner 2013). it is not merely an empirical reality that most of the world’s population lives in cities, a ‘statistical artifact’ as brenner and schmid (2013) have argued, but that we now exist in a deeper process of urbanization or ‘global urban condition’. the global financial crisis of the last decade launched a prolonged period of austerity that continues to play out in the urban arena. much needed investments in public transit, affordable housing, aging infrastructure, and social services elude municipalities constrained by low taxation regimes and interurban competition. these urban challenges are beginning to be linked to the broader phenomenon of “permanent austerity," a condition that precedes but is exacerbated by the 2008 recession. ever more, cities are the battlegrounds where the struggles against increasingly authoritarian forms of neoliberalism are being waged (albo and fanelli 2014; thomas and tufts 2016). austerity can be defined broadly as government measures taken to reduce public spending, particularly in the areas of social welfare expenditures and public sector employment. in some cases, this also includes new taxes. according to conventional narratives, these measures are taken when a government’s expenditures exceed its revenues, creating 1 carlo fanelli teaches in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. he is the author of megacity malaise: neoliberalism, public services and labour in toronto (fernwood 2016) and co-editor (with ingo schmidt) of reading capital today: marx after 150 years (pluto 2017). 2 steven tufts is a member of the department of geography at york university. he has recently published in antipode and the labor studies journal. austerity urbanism and the social economy | 7 debt burdens due to over-borrowing. seeing the problems of cities as part of this broader shift towards austerity urbanism, however, is valuable because it reveals the larger political and economic drivers of these problems that go beyond more particular issues such as antipathy towards taxes, over-spending or the salaries of municipal workers. “above all, it is important to recognize” as jamie peck (2015: 6) has recently argued, “that enforcing economy is a relational strategy: austerity is ultimately concerned with offloading costs and displacing responsibility; it is about making others pay the price of fiscal retrenchment. in the language of the occupy movement, it is something that the one percent, which continues to accumulate wealth and power at an alarming rate, does to the 99 percent.” of course, manifestations of austerity urbanism vary across diverse contexts. austerity urbanism can be understood as an uneven form of urban social organization that lacks both luxuries and basic comforts for people. as an approach to public policy, austerity urbanism has included tax-shifting for competitiveness, reductions to social services provisioning, contracting-out and privatization of city assets, new forms of marketization such as the use of public-private partnerships, and a shift away from universality to user-fees. new workplace arrangements have also proliferated, including the use of parttime and short-term contracts, as well as casual and seasonal forms of employment. in some cases, this has also incorporated new restrictions on workers’ rights to unionize and bargain collectively. reductions to employee compensation have also been a stated aim of municipal austerity (fanelli 2016). in this regard, the state has at times imposed austerity from above or led the charge from below, and at other times created the conditions for capital to lead in an assault against urban social life. austerity urbanism is not a universal form, but rather a process of struggle with a diverse set of stories and practices. it is the unevenness across urban space that creates openings and possibilities for the future. this politically imposed condition is being actively resisted across a 8 | austerity urbanism and the social economy diverse range of social actors. this includes struggles against homelessness, fights for living wages, and experiments with new forms of governance all (re)producing the urban.3 what is central is developing an acute understanding of how austerity urbanism is implicated in strategies and tactics that can build a better world. some of these strategies directly confront the logic and ideology of austerity urbanism. but others more closely reflect the context in which they operate. the ‘social economy’, the so-called ‘third’ or voluntary sector of the economy located between the public and private spheres is crucial to the functioning of neoliberal capitalism. as these institutions confront austerity urbanism, they themselves are being transformed – often in alignment with neoliberal practices. this issue addresses, through a number of articles and interventions, the links between austerity urbanism and the social economy. while the analyses provide no absolute paths to a more just world, there is enough evidence and understanding of the current conjuncture to demonstrate that alternatives are indeed necessary. sophia lowe, ted richmond and john shields argue that in the case of immigrant settlement agencies (isas) the current era is an extension of the “permanent austerity” that faced such services since the 1980s. the new model for such services limits advocacy and autonomy, while integrating market driven, new public management ‘best practices’. the next contribution by debbie rudman and collaborators demonstrates how new public management has reconfigured nonprofit employment services agencies in ways that constrain and/or contradict the goals of reducing long-term unemployment. these pressures have reconfigured the relationships between service providers, unemployed persons and state funders, as well as increased the pace of work leading to heightened workplace insecurity. 3 many of these issues are addressed in fuller detail in the 2016 alternate routes special issue, “precarious work and the struggle for living wages,” co-edited by carlo fanelli and john shields. austerity urbanism and the social economy | 9 while transformations in the social economy do reflect the latest phase of neoliberalism, there is resistance. bryan evans reviews the struggles of living wage movements in canada and the united states as an emergent post-industrial working class response to precarity in cities at a time when traditional unionism has failed many workers. laura pin’s examination of participatory budgeting, a much lauded alternative to neoliberal urban fiscal policy, finds that such experiments are themselves limited in their capacity to challenge elite municipal powerbrokers. in what follows, jeff noonan and josie watson critically engage with anti-homelessness movements that frame ‘housing as a right’ as opposed to ‘housing as a human need’. together these contributions demonstrate that resistance to austerity urbanism takes many forms, yet remains an incomplete project. a number of interventions further address austerity urbanism and its uneven social dislocations. pierre hamel and grégoire autin examine how austerity as ideology operates as a necessary collaboration with different levels of government to constrain the autonomy of municipalities. roger keil details with great insight the regime of toronto’s john tory as a form of progressive urbanism that aligns with an elite conservativism under conditions of austerity. toronto remains the focus of discussion as douglas young examines the debates involving residential tower renewal in the ‘in-between city’ as a possible challenge to austerity urbanism. a series of interventions then shift to the us. otrude moyo recounts the flint, michigan water crisis and situates the tragedy in the broader context of a racialized, neoliberal urbanism that has reproduced white supremacy through urban policy. related, carolyn gallaher examines policy efforts to mitigate gentrification in washington, dc through an examination of a tenant ‘right-to-buy’ program which is a complex assemblage of austerity urbanism and social justice efforts. the final intervention from the us is from kafui attoh, don mitchell and lynn a. staeheli, who look at the role of the university in the city. here, the final intervention provides a hint of optimism in an era where post10 | austerity urbanism and the social economy secondary institutions are viewed with increasing cynicism. universities, as spaces of engagement, can provide a place for students and community to come together in the city and resist austerity urbanism.4 we would like to thank all our contributors to this issue. we would also like to gratefully acknowledge the invaluable contributions of external reviewers who lent their time, energy and expertise in providing feedback on articles. thanks are also due to jeff noonan who was joined by jamey essex this year as co-editors of the interventions section. moving into 2017, all book reviews will now be available online at www.alternateroutes.ca on a rolling basis. many of these papers were presented at the alternate routes conference, “sub/urbanizing austerity: impacts and alternatives,” hosted by york university’s city institute in march 2016.5 we thank both the institute and the university for sponsoring the conference and assisting with the publication of this issue. references albo, g. and fanelli, c. (2014). austerity against democracy: an authoritarian phase of neoliberalism? teoria politica, 4, 65-88. brenner, n. (2013). theses on urbanization. public culture, 25(1), 85114 brenner, n. and schmid, c. (2013). the ‘urban age’ in question. international journal of urban and regional research, 38(3), 731-755. fanelli, c. (2016) megacity malaise: neoliberalism, public services and labour in toronto. halifax: fernwood publishing. 4 see also, the broad range of contributions in the 2015 alternate routes special issue, “neoliberalism and the degradation of education,” co-edited by carlo fanelli and bryan evans. 5 video presentations from this and past conferences are available online at the alternate routes website, http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/pages/view/video austerity urbanism and the social economy | 11 fanelli, c. and j. shields, eds. (2016). precarious work and the struggle for living wages, alternate routes 27. edmonton: athabasca university. fanelli, c. and b. evans, eds. (2015). neoliberalism and the degradation of education, alternate routes 26. edmonton: athabasca university press. peck, j. (2015) austerity urbanism: the neoliberal crisis of american cities. rosa luxemburg stiftung (new york), city series #1, http://www.rosalux-nyc.org/wpcontent/files_mf/peck_austerity_urbanism_eng.pdf thomas, m. and tufts. s (2016) ‘enabling dissent’: contesting austerity and right populism in toronto, canada. the economic and labour relations review 27(1) 29–45. 12 | austerity urbanism and the social economy http://www.rosalux-nyc.org/wp-content/files_mf/peck_austerity_urbanism_eng.pdf http://www.rosalux-nyc.org/wp-content/files_mf/peck_austerity_urbanism_eng.pdf 332 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the healing journey: intimate partner abuse and its implications in the labour market by linda deriviere. winnipeg: fernwood publishing, co-published by resolve, 2014. $18.95 can., paper. isbn: 978-1-55266-654-8. pages: 1-199. reviewed by julie poon1 the healing journey: intimate partner abuse and its implications in the labour market seeks to provide insight into the challenges that women confront when leaving an abusive partner within the labour market as well as their everyday lives. linda deriviere argues that examining women’s paths to employment, income, and employment training outcomes are crucial to understanding women’s experiences with intimate partner abuse. the book draws upon two theoretical perspectives: 1) human capital theory emphasizing education, employment training, and work experience as needed for an individual to progress in the workforce; and 2) segmented labour market theory focusing on workplace characteristics consisting of ‘good’ secure, high paying occupations with advancement opportunities versus ‘bad’ undervalued, intermittent work with limited new skills. considering the highly competitive market and the financial and time commitment needed to gain skills and experience, women may face obstacles in competing to earn a living wage upon leaving the abuse. for deriviere, labour market and welfare policies do little for women who have difficulties maintaining employment in terms of getting them out of the secondary labour market. this places women in ‘bad’ jobs and exacerbates their continued dependence and chance of re-victimization. data for this study were part of a tri-provincial (manitoba, saskatchewan, and alberta) longitudinal, labour market study with 414 women interviewed in seven-wave, six-month intervals from 2006 to 2010. chapters 2, 3 and 4 provide empirical evidence to determine the importance of abused women taking part in any employment, education and training throughout their healing journey. results indicated participants were economically disadvantaged irrespective of their level of education and employment. trauma from abuse including childhood 1 julie poon is a phd candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at the university of guelph, ontario, canada. her research examines violence against women with a focus on criminal justice policy responses toward women who are victims and offenders of intimate partner violence. she can be reached at jpoon@uoguelph.ca book review: the healing journey | 333 victimization may have hindered participants’ educational and career performance early on creating a lasting barrier to participating in labour market opportunities. many women had irregular employment histories which may have hindered their attempts to secure a connection to the labour market; 44.7% of the women reported that they had taken a leave of absence, quit, or been fired due to abuse (42). additional education and/or training did not necessarily result in a corresponding growth in earnings for these women. women who increased their income did so by working more hours within low paying, peripheral employment. upon leaving the abuse, women often became the primary provider, however, their earnings within the secondary labour market fell short of securing a family wage. finally, stalking or harassment occurred frequently while attending school or work and this was exacerbated for those who were obliged to maintain child custody agreements with their abuser. taken together, these findings provide strong support for deriviere’s argument that the impact of abuse places women at a disadvantage in the labour market extending beyond the duration of the intimate relationship itself. chapter 5 discusses health-related causal factors to explain why abused women experience difficulties participating in or progressing within the labour market. the findings suggest that some low-income women suffered from chronic physical and mental health concerns including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress, which resulted in extended absences in the workforce. the author advocates for gradual training and workforce entry for abused women, while recognizing the need for welfare policies that promote extended assistance for those who may never be able to participate. however, the author points out that further inquiry is needed with respect to the impact of health conditions on employed immigrant women. in chapter 6, the readers are presented with the effects of the abuse by comparing the women’s prior aspirations and the actual outcomes after separation. upon separating from their abuser, nearly half of the women re-evaluated or abandoned their aspirations citing the need to be pragmatic about their employment and training goals. narrative analysis provides a glimpse into the lived realities of mothers who share testimonials relating to their abuser’s efforts to thwart their familial aspirations by alienating them from their children. chapter 7 provides an estimate of the costs of intimate partner abuse. by drawing upon each participant’s job classification, average hourly wages and weekly hours on the job, and number of years until retirement at 65, deriviere calculates that “the net present value of lifetime earnings losses totalled $37.2 million (2012 dollars) for participants who experienced health issues that 334 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages were attributed to abuse” and that this shortfall “translated into earnings-related productivity losses in the economy” (152). this figure did not account for any additional lifetime reliance on social welfare and social housing, or any loss in revenue that the government would have generated from taxable incomes. the final chapter discusses labour market policies in terms the similarities and differences among the three provinces. deriviere argues that current and supposedly “gender-neutral” policy strategies that center upon assisting individuals and families in becoming financially selfsufficient are, in actuality, examples of workfare that do not adequately address women’s realities. while a thorough list of the strategies is presented to assist abused women in successfully participating in paid work, it would have been beneficial highlight where priority should be given considering the scale of this undertaking. the healing journey is unique in its contribution as the first labour market study to analyze their labour market outcomes of canadian women who have experienced intimate partner post separation. one key criticism of this study is the limited use of narrative analysis; increased use of narratives could have provide greater insight into the complex realities that hindered the women’s ability to pursue their goals and this would have been a valuable addition throughout the rest of the book. also, while the book makes an effort to explain statistical significance and correlations between variables to the novice reader, it lacked a thorough discussion regarding the methodology, interview guides, and data analysis. furthermore, the analysis requires greater recognition of the experiences of visible minorities and immigrant women. overall, this book provides valuable insight to academics, activists and policy makers advocating against violence against women in canada. the findings highlight the need for policy responses that begin from the ground up in order to provide meaningful assistance to women whose everyday lives are faced with poverty and violence. the book provides a degree of insight into the labour market and everyday challenges faced by women leaving abuse and the quantitative analysis is valuable in highlighting patterns of earnings and occupational outcomes as well as economic costs associated with intimate partner abuse. ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 109 ‘illegalized’ migrant workers and the struggle for a living wage charity­ann hannan1, harald bauder2 and john shields3 abstract: a higher proportion of workers are earning sub-poverty wages today, compared to few decades ago. illegalized migrant workers have been disproportionately affected by this trend through super-exploitative employer practices. to improve the wages of low-wage workers, members of unions, community groups, activists, and support coalitions have launched living wage campaigns in cities in the usa, uk and, more recently, canada. recognizing that illegalized migrant workers’ lack of legal status is valuable to neoliberalism’s economic “success”, yet at the same time, subjects them to arrest and/or deportation by federal immigration authorities, this paper examines modern living wage campaigns, and how they have incorporated the situation of illegalized migrant workers into their agenda. a review of the literature shows that living wage campaigns have not been very successful in achieving their broad goals while at the same time protecting low-waged illegalized migrant workers. these findings indicate that current and future living wage campaigns should consider working closely with sanctuary city campaigns to improve their strategies for protecting illegalized migrants from arrest and/or deportation while working to improve the working and living conditions of low-waged workers, including the illegalized. keywords: living wage; poverty; illegalized migrants; exploitation; rights “…the basic premise of the living wage movement could not be more simple: that anyone who works for a living should not have to raise a family in poverty” (pollin and luce 1998, 1). 1 charity­ann hannan is a phd candidate in policy studies at ryerson university. the authors thank natasha pei from canadian living wage movement for advice and acknowledge support from the sshrc grant policy engagement at multiple levels of governance: a case study of the living wage and minimum wage policy. 2 harald bauder is professor in the graduate program in immigration and settlement studies and the department of geography at ryerson university. 3 john shields is professor in the department of politics and public administration and a faculty member of the graduate program in immigration and settlement studies at ryerson university. 110 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages “…irregular/undocumented/clandestine migrants [illegalized migrants] … find themselves in ‘a situation of radical rightlessness’, without ‘voice’ or access to counter­balancing resources for representation. their situation could be designated as one of hyper­precarity, marked by super­exploitation.” (likić­brborić and schierup, 2015, 231). introduction within the past few decades, the income gap between low­wage workers and high­wage workers in western countries has increased, and a higher proportion of workers are earning sub­poverty wages today, compared to few decades ago. the living wage movement is centred on the struggle for what the international labour organization (ilo) calls the decent work and wages agenda to address the growing global problem of the working poor (ilo, n.d.). illegalized migrant workers, who have become an important segment of the working population in western countries, are disproportionately affected by this trend through super­ exploitative employer practices (steinlight and glazov, 2008). their lack of formal legal status strips them of basic rights, exposing such workers to extreme exploitation by their employers. to counter these changes, unions, community groups, activists, and support coalitions have launched living wage campaigns in cities in the usa, uk and, more recently, canada. this living wage movement pushes for change at the levels of policy and practice that will provide vulnerable workers with living wages and is helping more broadly, to revitalize the labour movement at a grass roots level. in this paper, we examine the development of the modern living wage movement considering its contribution to the support of vulnerable workers and the situation of illegalized migrant workers in light of the emerging living wage campaign in toronto, canada. the working population that the living wage movement addresses is an impoverished and disempowered segment of the workforce that is disproportionately racialized, gendered and often of immigrant background. however, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, workers who lack full legal status, are often not included in the movement’s target population. therefore, we explore how illegalized migrants fit within the living wage movement. as workers without access to many basic rights and lacking full legal status, illegalized migrants confront special circumstances. for example, they tend to work in the shadow economy where they are vulnerable to abuse, and lack access to government supported services for citizens and legal residents, which forms an important component of low­wage workers’ overall wage package. in ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 111 addition, workers who lack full legal status are unable to easily pursue legal action against employer violations of their rights. illegalized workers have become a necessary component of the contemporary labour market required by neoliberal capitalism. hence, illegalized workers are an expected, necessary but under­acknowledged contributor to neo­ liberalism’s economic “success”. approach we examine the contemporary living wage campaign with particular reference to illegalized migrant workers in toronto. as a point of entry into our investigation, we completed an extensive review of the english­ language literature on the living wage movement in the uk, us and canada, and on the labour market experiences of illegalized migrants. this review included peer­reviewed scholarly literature as well as grey literature drawn from civil society, municipal documents and public media sources (e.g. newspaper articles, living wage movement websites) published since 1990 when the contemporary living wage movement commenced. the relevant literature was identified through a variety of search terms, and various combinations of these terms including: “living wage,” “(im)migrant”, “undocumented”, “non­status”, “irregular”, “precarious”, “alien(s)”, “illegal(s)”, “unauthorized”, “informal”, and “illegalized”, “labour market”, “employment rights”, and “labour rights”. we define “illegalized migrant” as “a migrant who does not have the right to work or reside in which he or she lives because state policies have rendered him or her “illegal.” ” (bauder and shields, 2015, 421). most illegalized migrants have entered the country legally with the state’s authorization, as in the case of temporary foreign workers, foreign students, visitors, refugee claimants, but their status has lapsed. other terms that have been used to describe this group include: illegal aliens, unauthorized, undocumented, irregular and clandestine migrants (bartram, et al., 2014; pgs. 144­148; hannan, 2015, 144). we employ the term illegalized because it “shifts the emphasis away from the individual and towards the recognition of a societal process that situates immigrants in positions of precarity and illegality” (bauder, 2013, 2). background: rising inequality, the living wage, migration, and illegalization socio­economic inequality has existed within nation­states, subnational regions, and cities for centuries. however, intensified globalization of economic activity, the emergence of “global cities”, and the corresponding transformations in the organization of the labour process 112 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages since the 1960’s, have led to an increase in the socio­economic gap between low­wage and high­wage workers. this transformation has pushed larger numbers of workers into situations of serious economic vulnerability (sassen, 2006). a fordist economy “created the conditions for the expansion of a vast middle class [life styles] because it: (1) facilitated unionization; (2) was based in good part on household consumption, and hence wage levels mattered in that they created effective demand; and (3) the wage levels and social benefits typical of the leading sectors became a model for broader sectors of the economy” (sassen, 2006, 151). in contrast, the post­fordist domination of economy by the finance and services industries was associated with “the growth of an informal economy in large cities and highly developed countries” (sassen, 2006, 152). major cities in highly developed countries, including toronto, experienced greater informalization in the labour market, the decline of standard employment relationships, and an increase of employment precarity and own account self­employment (see lewchuk, et al. 2015). saskia sassen (2006) observed that a series of trends in global cities, including, on the one hand, the demand for high­priced, customized services and products by a narrowly based but growing high­income population; and on the other hand, the increased need for low­cost services and products by an expanding low­income population reflected in a polarizing economy. the rise of a more informal economy has become a conduit “for reducing costs, and for providing flexibility in instances where this is essential and advantageous, resulting in the various shifts in the earnings distribution and income structure in global cities” (sassen, 2006, 162). the recent report the precarious penalty vividly documents the growth of precarious insecure work within the labour force of the toronto region (lewchuk, et al., 2015; also see lewchuk et al., this volume). guy standing (2011) has expanded on global neoliberal capitalism’s need for hyper exploitable precarious labour. migrants “make up a disproportionate part of the growing social category whose experience in the world of work is marked by ‘precarity’ in terms of informal labour, wage squeezes, temporariness, uncertainty, and pernicious risk” (schierup et al., 2014, 2). for standing, illegalized migrants form a core element of the group of low­wage and vulnerable workers he calls the precariat (standing, 2011). according to schierup et al. (2014, 2): “exclusivist migration policies, together with the ‘irregularization’ of citizenship, have forged a globally fragmented and disposable labour force in industry, entertainment, hospitality, care­work, ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 113 cleaning, and domestic services subject to long hours of dangerous, demanding, demeaning, and dirty work in permanent fear of dismissal and, potentially, deportation. these workers are exceedingly vulnerable and many basic labour, citizenship, and human rights simply do not apply to them. it is a precarious workforce present globally; segmented and discriminated against through ascription of race and ethnicity and also gender through insertion into specific sections of the local and national labour markets.” while all low­wage workers including non­migrant and “legal” migrant workers have been the focus of attention for the living wage movement, illegalized migrants are playing a special role to modern capitalism, which requires corresponding attention within the living­wage movement. the living wage movement in 1906, john ryan, a roman catholic priest, argued that, “the laborer’s claim to a living wage is of the nature of a right” (ryan, 1920, revised and abridged edition, 3). he further stated that “the laborer’s right to a decent livelihood is superior to the employer’s right to enjoy goods that are superfluous to his social position” (ryan, 1920, 3). drawing from these ideas, unions, community groups and religious and other civil society organizations today, are lobbying municipalities to pass laws requiring employers to pay employees a living wage for work done for the city and to persuade employers to voluntarily pay a living wage to their employees. the calculation for the “modern” day living wage is usually based on the official poverty threshold for a family of four and centred on the concept that people who work full­time jobs, and their families, should not be forced to live in poverty (devinatz, 2013). the living­wage movement, however, is about more than raising workers’ wages to above sub­poverty levels. it encompasses a much broader agenda for improving the overall labour market conditions of low­wage workers (pollin and luce, 1998; reynolds, 2001). pollin and luce (1998, 7­8) explain: “the living wage movement is resisting dominant economic trends and posing an alternative economic vision, making it an effective voice for economic justice in the united states. [it]… is committed to reversing the economy­ wide wage squeeze, stopping tax giveaways to big businesses, reenergizing the labor movement, and ending the war on the poor.” the goals of the los angeles living­wage campaign, for example, were to “directly affect the lives of workers who are getting a raise; to 114 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages develop a tool for union organizing actions; and to raise the public issue of the need for a living wage, the problem of wage inequity, and a certain level of dignified treatment for workers” (pollin and luce, 1998, 8). religious and union support for the modern living wage movement has also been tied to a broad agenda for equality and economic fairness (holgate, 2013; pollin and luce, 1998). while some living­wage campaigns have been unsuccessful and some living wage ordinances have been repealed, there are many examples of living­wage campaigns that achieved their goals (holgate, 2011; levin­waldman, 2008; luce, 2005; reynolds, 2001). beginning in baltimore in the early 1990s, the living­ wage movement quickly spread to dozens of cities in the us, uk, and canada. while some effort has been made to bring living wage policies to the national and regional scales (bbc, 2015; freeman, 2005), it is at the municipal level of government that the greatest successes have been achieved. living wage movements tend to target municipalities in the core of larger metropolitan areas because “the problem of poverty and low­ wage employment are more severe in cities than sub­urban regions” (pollin and luce, 1998, 54). in practice, cities typically will adopt only one of two versions of living wage policies. the first is the contractor­only ordinance, which covers companies that possess contracts with municipal governments. the second applies to private businesses that receive financial support from the governments. either way, these two kinds of statutes end up applying to less than 3% of the low­wage workforce (fairris and reich, 2005). nonetheless, pollin and luce maintain that living wage ordinances benefit low­wage workers, employers, and society in both direct and indirect ways: “as the low­wage family comes to rely far less on government support to keep themselves afloat, the corollary is that the government spends correspondingly less to help working people survive the effects of earning sub­poverty wages. … [f]irms employing a high concentration of low­wage workers will themselves benefit through establishing a living wage standard. this is because the raises to the low­wage workers will reduce absenteeism and turnover, i.e., the rate at which workers quit their jobs and firms then have to replace them (pollin and luce, 1998, 20­21).” evaluations of the effects living­wage ordinances’ on poverty levels, employment rates, and employee productivity show mixed results. while reducing the likelihood of families living in poverty (neumark and adams, ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 115 2003; schoenberger, 2000), living­wage ordinances have also been found to reduce employment by 3.2% to 17% depending on the type of ordinance that was passed (fairris, 2005; neumark and adams, 2003; yelowitz, 2005). in contrast, reich et al. (2005) found employment increased by 15.6% after the san francisco airport’s living wage policy was passed. similarly, lester (2011) concluded that the implementation of living wage policies in 19 california cities did not adversely impact employment growth. employers in london were also found to have benefited from living wage ordinances, with reports of higher work productivity associated with paying living wages (wills et al., 2009a). similarly, living wage firms were found to have lower rates of labour turnover and employee absenteeism, and a higher morale compared to non­living wage firms in the us (brenner, 2005; reich et al., 2005). living wage ordinances have made it easier for unions to organize low­wage workers and have contributed to the development of broad labour community coalitions that promote labour rights (de graauw, 2015; hearn and bergos, 2011; luce, 2004; pastor, 2001; tapia and turner, 2013). nevertheless, living wage campaigns continue to face opposition from business and its political allies. opponents argue that an increase in wages would weaken firms with a high proportion of low­wage workers, although studies suggest that cost impacts are modest (lamman, 2014; pollin, 2005; schoenberger, 2000). employers have also retaliated against workers who have been part of living wage initiatives. after employees unionized as a part of the living wage movement for example, a uk employer reported the presence of illegalized migrant staff in their organization to uk immigration authorities, who then conducted a worksite raid that led to their arrest and deportation (hearn and bergos, 2011; ivereigh, 2009). employers in the us have similarly reported illegalized migrant workers to immigration authorities, after learning about their attempts to: fight for unpaid wages; report labour violations; and participate in unionizing drives (harris, 2013; smith et al., 2009; smith and cho, 2013). despite resistance and retaliation efforts from living wage opponents, public support for living wage campaigns is strong, with local campaigns emerging in cities across north america, including toronto (ccpa, 2015; living wage canada, 2013; living wage canada: ontario, 2013; luce, 2005). 116 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages living wage advocacy efforts and illegalized migrants in the us, uk, and canada campaigners have applied a variety of strategies and tactics to counter resistance from living wage opponents including: taking advantage of political opportunity structures, helping to frame public policy debate, multi­racial coalition building, union organizing, grassroots actions, engaging in research, evaluation and evidence collection, educating workers about their rights, campaigning around regularization of illegalized migrant workers, and other forms of activism (de graauw, 2015; lopes and hall, 2015; luce, 2005; pastor, 2001; reynolds, 2001; wills, 2008, wills et al., 2009b). as a result of these strategies, many cities and employers have adopted voluntary or mandatory living wage policies. while these responses have benefited many low­wage workers, some employers have retaliated against illegalized migrant workers. such incidents in the us and the uk can provide important lessons for toronto’s living wage campaign. a growing number of workers in the us are earning sub­poverty level wages due to the growth of the informal economy. profit­maximizing, subcontracting and sweatshop work have resulted in greater earnings and occupation dispersions, weak unions and a growing share of casualized low­wage jobs along with a narrower layer of high­income jobs in cities across the us (nelp, 2011; peck and theodore, 2001; pollin and luce, 1998; sassen, 2006). while many low­wage workers have been affected, illegalized migrants have been disproportionately pushed into poverty. they often experience violations of basic employment standards rights, and retaliation by employers after attempts to defend themselves (bernhardt et al., 2009; sassen, 1998; smith and cho, 2013). in response to the rise of low wage work over 100 us municipalities had passed living wage ordinances by the early 2000s (freeman, 2005). leading up to the first living wage ordinance in the us, the first living wage campaign was initiated in the early 1990s by a group of pastors in baltimore who became concerned about the increase in workers using their soup kitchen. as members of the industrial areas foundation (aif), the pastors joined the american federation of state, county, and municipal employees (afscme), and the baltimoreans united in leadership development (build), a coalition of worker centres, to form the local living­wage campaign to pressure the mayor for a resolution to the increasing number of impoverished workers (devinatz, 2013; pollin and luce, 1998; reynolds, 2001). after facing strong opposition from the business community, the city passed the country’s first municipal living wage ordinance in 1994 (pollin and luce, 1998). soon thereafter, religious ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 117 organizations, community groups, labour unions, and student associations joined the iaf, afscme and other political actors to initiate living wage campaigns in other us cities (devinatz, 2013). as a result, living wage regulations were adopted in new york city, santa clara county, milwaukee, jersey city, los angeles, and numerous other cities in the late 1990s. living­wage campaigns also sprung up at colleges and universities across the us, including harvard, wesleyan, john hopkins, brown, and the university of virginia. living wage campaigns applied a range of strategies and tactics to persuade city authorities to pass living­ wage ordinances and for employers to adopt living wage policies. the los angeles living­wage campaign was linked to a broader process to save hundreds of jobs at the airport and to organize 30,000 non­ union airport workers. led by the los angeles alliance for a new economy (laane), the los angeles living wage campaign applied multiple strategies and tactics before winning an 18­month battle with city council in 1997 (reynolds, 2001; saito and truong, 2014). to win over a city council that was led by an unsupportive mayor, laane led the living wage initiative with the goal of linking policy development and union organizing. the campaign conducted phone­in operations, asked organizations to fax letters of support, and mailed council members over a thousand decorated paper plates during thanksgiving that symbolized the struggle to feed a family on poverty wages (levin­waldman, 2008; reynolds, 2001). the campaign also used the media to champion living wage employers and to highlight the social­justice dimensions of the living wage issues. two employers, for example, wrote opinion pieces for the los angeles times explaining how high­wage policies have benefitted their companies. in addition, workers organized a media event that took reporters and city hall staff on a tour that showed the conditions under which they work. workers further made testaments at city hall about work injuries that went untreated, lack of insurance, families crowded into one­bedroom apartments to make rent, and how they visited food pantries to obtain enough groceries to live on. workers’ participation also developed an activist nucleus among low­wage workers that fed into union activity. the service employees international union (seiu), for example, won union jobs for janitors using the living wage law, whereas the hotel and restaurant employees union (here) used the coalition’s support to win union recognition in hollywood. furthermore, los angeles’ living wage campaign runs its own contract and financial assistance database, trains workers about labour law, and maintains a coalition network capable of going after employer violators, as well as employers that attempt to bust unions (pollin and 118 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages luce, 1998; reynolds, 2001). in contrast to portland’s and los angeles’ living wage campaign, which faced weak and moderate levels of opposition respectively, chicago’s living wage campaign confronted strong opposition for three years before the city passed an ordinance in 1999. to gain public and political support for their agenda, the chicago campaign employed a variety of strategies including participation in the may day march through downtown chicago, achieving media coverage through news articles that supported the “wage warriors”, championing prominent society members to pressure the un­supportive mayor for his support, shaming the mayor at the 1996 democratic convention, and by taking busloads of delegates on “tours of shame,” which included visits to low­wage employers who had public contracts and financial assistance. the campaign built a very strong coalition of more than 60 organizations, with a combined membership of 250,000. upon hearing of the strength of the movement, the city illegally closed its doors to the public from attending the city council meeting in which aldermen voted down the proposed living wage ordinance. when the mayor and council began the preparation for proposing salary increases for themselves in 1998 they realized that they could not risk a backlash from the living wage movement who would publicize the hypocrisy. a living wage law was therefore passed, although its terms were narrower than the originally proposed ordinance (reynolds, 2001). although cities with larger immigrant populations and higher union density are more likely to pass living­wage ordinances than cities that do not have these demographics (levin­waldman, 2008), less is known about the link between living­wage campaigns, living­wage ordinances and illegalized migrant workers. employers have fired illegalized migrant workers or called immigration authorities to arrest and deport workers after these workers attempted to retrieve withheld pay, obtain safer working conditions, pay increases and unionize (harris, 2013; nissen, 2005; smith et al., 2009; smith and cho, 2013). the us literature, however, does not demonstrate the extent to which living­wage campaign strategies and tactics have prompted employer retaliation against illegalized migrant workers. furthermore, if living­wage campaigns in the us have resulted in employer retaliation towards illegalized migrant workers, what have living­wage campaigns done to protect illegalized migrant workers from being fired, arrested and deported? like the us, income inequality has risen rapidly in the uk during the past four decades. changes in global production and employment systems have led to growth of precarious flexible, part­time, fixed­term, ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 119 temporary, or agency work, rather than full­time permanent work (mcdowell et al., 2009; sassen, 2006; thornley et al., 2010; wills, 2009c; wills et al., 2009d). also similar to the us, workers who earn sub­poverty level wages in the uk are more likely to be immigrants and illegalized migrants than native­born residents. as “invisible” workers immigrant and illegalized migrant workers often remain hidden from public view when they clean banks, hospitals, or universities while the city sleeps, or when they cook meals in the kitchens of countless restaurants (hearn and bergos, 2011; 2009; rienzo, 2011). studies have found that uk employers prefer to hire exploitable immigrants (with or without legal documents) to gain competitive advantage (hearn and bergos, 2011; tapia and turner, 2007). the east london communities organization (telco) launched london’s first living wage campaign in 2001 (holgate, 2009). the unison trade union and the transport and general workers union (tgwu) provided funds and the human resources to support workers to organize. after securing increases in pay, holidays, pensions and sick pay for cleaners in the early 2000s, tgwu and unison’s union membership grew and the living wage campaign expanded. additional lobbying efforts secured the living wage for all people working on the 2004 olympic projects, and resulted in the establishment of a living wage unit in the greater london authority. supported by the justice for janitors campaign in the us, the tgwu began a sector­wide campaign to unionize cleaners in the city and canary wharf and worked with london citizens (formerly telco) to demand a living wage for all. within months, the campaign expanded to higher education, focusing on low­paid contracted cleaners at multiple universities across london. the living wage campaign has employed a variety of strategies to achieve pay increases for low­paid, mainly migrant workers. however, as in the us, the campaigns have not been without opposition (hearn and bergoes, 2011; holgate, 2009; lopes and hall, 2015). throughout the living wage campaigns, telco, workers, and unions employed a variety of tactics to persuade employers and the city to adopt the living wage. during the beginning of the campaign, public protests (marches, demonstrations, public assemblies) and lobbying of politicians and employers attracted the support of the mayor and trade unions (tapia and turner, 2013). tgwu then decided to focus on a strategy for growth, putting more resources into organizing workers, many of whom were immigrants. including immigrants gave the labour movement an opportunity to transform itself into a stronger force. once the unions shifted their attitudes towards immigrants, and immigrants 120 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages began joining previously closed unions, they acquired new positions within the union structures, changing the union from within (tapia and turner, 2013). the growth in membership influenced unions to fight not only for a living wage, but also for structural changes in the labour market, demanding better social protection for immigrant workers, and, by extension, for all workers. campaigns framed the issues in terms of social justice and fairness. through sustained campaigns, including demonstrations, strikes and civil disobedience, vulnerable workers and their union supporters were able to pressure employers and policy makers to win significant concessions (tapia and turner, 2013; lopes and hall, 2015). telco initiated a ‘strangers into citizens’ campaign, after learning about the city’s role in exploiting illegalized migrant workers. the campaign came together in may 2007 at trafalgar square to call for regularization. the campaign’s proposal was debated in the uk house of commons in june 2007. by september 2007, the liberal democrats adopted the idea of an earned route to citizenship with residence conditions of 10 years and the uk border agency began granting legal status to thousands of asylum seekers whose claims had failed (ivereigh, 2009). not all illegalized migrant workers benefitted from regularization, however, due to strict exclusionary criteria (e.g. proof of long association with the uk). furthermore, uk unions were not united on this initiative (tapia and turner, 2013; ivereigh, 2009). on the one hand, union leaders perceived regularization as a very difficult and contentious issue that many members would not support. on the other hand, some leaders found telcos campaign to be too limited because it was tied to too many conditions. while an opening was created for the union to support regularization of illegalized migrant workers, the political willingness and strategy of the union leaders to make regularization a priority remained absent (tapia and turner, 2013). the deportation of eight cleaners in early 2009, approximately one year after the living wage was won for cleaners at the school of oriental and african studies (soas) at the university of london indicated that “it is not enough to be able to organize a successful campaign around union recognition and pay and conditions, unions must also be in a position to protect their activists” (hearn and bergos, 77). more specifically, “there are a number of important lessons for the trade union movement to learn; namely, the need to have specific legal and campaigning strategies in place to defend its migrant activists as well as calling for the regularization of ‘irregular’ workers” (hearn and bergos 2011, 65). ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 121 temporary foreign workers and the rise of low­wage illegalized work in canada canada’s growing temporary foreign worker (tfw) program is a prime example the use of cheap vulnerable migrant labour to perform expanding shares of the low skilled and poorly paid work in the economy. rooted in the 1973 non­immigrant employment authorization program (nieap) and 1966 seasonal agricultural workers program (sawp), canada’s tfw program has rapidly expanded during recent decades. while 69,901 tfws were employed in canada in 1973 in agriculture, by 2012, 338,221 tfws were employed across canada in agricultural, domestic, live­in caregiving work, food processing, catering, fast­food services, hotel housekeeping and services, engineering, and construction (sharma, 2006; curry, 2014). the tfw program is projected to continue to expand in upcoming decades (ilo, 2009; sawchuk and kempf, 2008). prior to the tfw program, most migrants who entered canada to work were issued a “permanent resident status”, giving them access to labour rights and enabling them to eventually apply for citizenship. with the implementation of the tfw, however, the canadian government began channeling migrant workers into two major status streams: (1) a low­ skilled stream that issued “temporary migration status” and few real opportunities for gaining citizenship, and (2) a high­skilled stream that offered pathways to permanent resident status and eventually citizenship (basok, 2004). unlike the high­skilled immigrant workers who have pathways to citizenship, tfw low­skilled migrants’ are treated as disposable “guest workers”, subjecting them to exploitative employment conditions (binford, 2009). employers continue to claim to need temporary migrant workers because of labour shortages in low­wage, low­skilled work (barnetson and foster, 2013). they characterize the tfw program as a labourmarket necessity and as an opportunity to workers in developing countries to earn valuable dollars to send home. however, the tfwprogramhas beenmore accurately described as a program that bonds workers to importing particular employer (sharma, 2006), resulting in “low wages, often below the minimum, and long hours with no overtime pay; dangerous working conditions, crowded and unhealthy accommodation; denial of access to public healthcare and employment insurance, despite paying into the programs; and being virtually held captive by employers or contractors who seize identification documents” (walia, 2012: 72). due to these labour conditions, some tfws choose to leave their employer to seek employment elsewhere, in which case they lose their status in canada. other tfws overstay their visas. in both cases, workers become “illegalized” (bauder, 2013). 122 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages there are other ways in which migrants and refugees become illegalized. their paperwork can become lost in the bureaucracy; their application for asylum may be; or they can cross the border without the proper documents (bauder, 2013). in canada, most illegalized migrants likely entered the country with legal status of some kind (marsden, 2012). while, their precise number is unknown, reports estimate that the number ranges from 80,000 to 500,000, with half of them residing in toronto (magalhaes et al., 2010; mci, 2012). a 2000 rcmp report further estimated that approximately 15,000 migrants cross the us­canada border annually without proper authorization (oxman­martinez et al., 2005). the expanding tfw program will likely contribute to an increase of illegalized migrants due to an estimated overstay rate of 1.5%4 (basok, 2007). in 1976, the canadian immigration act criminalized the employ­ ment of illegalized migrants through employer sanctions. the crimi­ nalization of employing illegalized migrants continued with irpa in 2001, which states that, “every person commits an offence who … employs a foreign national in a capacity in which the foreign national is not authorized under this act to be employed”. while employers who violate this law can be fined up to $50,000 or imprisoned for up to two years, employers easily escape prosecution if they conducted “due diligence,” for example by asking for a sin number, when hiring employees (library of congress, 2015). illegalized migrant workers face the real brunt of sanctions as they are subject to arrest and deportation. to evade the arm of the law, they become extremely vulnerable to employer abuse and exploitation. american studies have found that us immigration and border policies enacted between 1985 to 2010 increased the vulnerability and undercut bargaining power in the lower segment of the labour force, where many illegalized migrants work (massey and gentsch, 2014). once contacted by a disgruntled employer or employee, immigration officials conduct worksite raids, whereby they arrest, detain, and/or deport illegalized migrant workers (smith et al., 2009). although illegalized migrants are formally be protected by labour rights, fear of employer retaliation usually prevents them from accessing these rights (mondragon, 2011). employers therefore continue to super­exploit illegalized migrants in the us (braker, 2012­2013; heyman, 1998; smith et al., 2009), and findings from studies conducted in canada indicate that illegalized migrants may be facing a similar situation here (goldring & landolt, 2012; magalhaes et al.; monsebraaten, 2009). 4 this rate would likely also increase in the case of a major economic downturn where tfws come to be laid off by their sponsoring employer before the expiry of their contract, as with the recent depression of commodity prices such as oil. ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 123 researchers have therefore argued that most important functions served by the illegal population is political, and resides in illegalized workers’ vulnerability to employers, who can control them easily due to their lack of formal legal status (grasmuck 1984, rivera­batiz 1999, champlin and hake 2006). furthermore, employers prefer illegalized workers during phases of rapid industrial transformation because their lack of legal protection prevents them from unionizing and protesting wage erosion (morales 1983­1984). "the category ‘illegal alien’ is [therefore] a profoundly useful and profitable one that effectively serves to create and sustain a legally vulnerable – and hence, relatively tractable and thus ‘cheap’ – reserve of labor" (de genova 2002, 440). the lack of status prevents migrants from competing for employment with native­ born and legal immigrants on the same terms and conditions. instead, they are bonded to employers, forced into accepting greatly inequitable remuneration for their work and kept in low­paying occupations that legal residents would not accept (donato et al., 1992; gentsch and massey, 2012; gomberg­munoz and nussbaum­barberena, 2011). the living wage and the struggle for the protection of illegalized workers in toronto similar to the us and uk, canada’s labour market policies and practices have shifted dramatically during the past few decades, resulting in the polarization of workers’ income levels especially in cities (hulchanski, 2010; lewchuk et al., 2015; oecd, 2011). without intervention, projections indicate that 60% of toronto neighbourhoods will be low or very low­income neighbourhoods by 2025, threatening social cohesion and the overall inclusiveness and health of the city (city of toronto, 2011; hulchanski, 2010). illegalized migrants are particularly susceptible to employer exploitation. they often work in poor and unsafe work conditions, and do not receive protection against unfair labour practices (goldring and landolt, 2012; magalhaes et al., 2010; sidhu, 2013). to counteract these trends, living­wage campaigns have emerged in canadian municipalities such as toronto and vancouver. unlike cities in the us, however, explicit living wage ordinances have not to date been passed in canadian cities (pei, 2015). canada’s first living­wage campaign was officially launched in vancouver in 2007. in toronto, the emergence of efforts resisting the expansion of precarious work can be traced to councilor ana bailão’s request of toronto’s community development and recreation committee to study the social and economic impact of the city’s intentions to begin contracting­out cleaning and custodial work 124 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages (city of toronto, 2011; vosko et al., 2013). citing concerns of the ilo, the united way, and the toronto community foundation about the disproportionate impact of precarious employment on immigrants, bailão demanded that the study focus “on the social impact of hundreds of jobs being performed at salaries that are barely above minimum wage, often with no benefits, and particularly the impact on [low­income] priority neighbourhoods.” (city of toronto, 2011). after the study’s completion, the city took several steps to reduce the negative impacts of contracting­out services, including: updating the city’s fair wage schedule to reflect prevailing market rates, directing the fair wage schedule to be revised every three years, and revising requirements for companies that bid for custodial services to improve job quality contractors’ employees (wellesley institute, 2015). the toronto city council also directed its staff to develop of a job quality assessment tool that includes a living wage standard and that considers other dimensions of job quality, including skills and training opportunities, and working conditions (city of toronto, 2013; wellesley institute, 2015). in addition, the canadian centre for policy alternatives (ccpa), the toronto and york region labour council, cupe local 79, acorn canada, social planning toronto, the solidarity city network, justicia for migrant workers, the worker’s action centre, and savings and numerous credit unions are advocating for the living wage in toronto and elsewhere in canada (ccpa, n.d.). the ccpa has determined the cost of raising a family of four in various canadian cities as an evidence base in support of living wage policies. toronto’s 2015 living wage is calculated to be $18.52 per hour, which includes the costs for rent, transportation, child­care, food, clothing, internet, and laundry (ccpa, 2015). it builds into its living wage calculation that workers have access to public benefits such as healthcare, employment insurance, housing benefits etc. in general, however, these services are often refused to illegalized migrants who are unable to show identification cards required by service delivery staff and other public officials (sidhu, 2013; solidarity city network, 2013). to provide access to such benefits to illegalized migrants in toronto, and in response to pressure from no one is illegal, the solidarity city network, and other activist organizations, toronto became canada’s first sanctuary city in 2013. as a sanctuary city, toronto improved upon the previous don’t ask don’t tell policy, which enabled city staff to serve illegalized migrant clients without asking about their immigration status. the formal sanctuary city designation is now supposed to ensure that all residents receive access to the city’s funded core services, including ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 125 healthcare, education, income support programs, employment protection, affordable housing, settlement services, social assistance and legal services (cities of migration, 2013). despite becoming a sanctuary city evaluations have shown that illegalized migrants continue to face barriers to accessing these benefits (sidhu, 2013; solidarity city network, 2013). sanctuary city activists are therefore continuing their struggle towards ensuring the successful delivery of municipal services to illegalized migrants and the broadening of coverage to public supports provided by the provincial and federal governments, while simultaneously protecting illegalized migrants from arrest and/or deportation. as the literature review has shown, living wage campaigns have not been very successful in achieving their broad goals while at the same time protecting low­waged illegalized migrant workers. current and future living wage campaigns should consider working closely with sanctuary city campaigns to improve their strategies for protecting to illegalized migrants from arrest and/or deportation while working to improve the working and living conditions of low­waged workers, including the illegalized. the public supports provided by sanctuary city protections are important to illegalized migrants’ economic and social well­being and are in this way complementary to living wage campaigns. conclusion the living­wage movement has directed its attention to workers who are, in guy standing terms, the precariat. illegalized migrants constitute the most precarious and exploited of this segment of the precarious labour force. neoliberal globalization requires a disciplined and low­wage labour force to sustain its economic foundations. in fact, global cities like toronto are a prime location in which to observe increasing income polarization and labour market insecurity for ever larger numbers of workers. therefore, living­wage campaigns have been most marked, and seen their greatest successes, at the urban scale. although illegalized migrants are among the most exploited workers, they are often invisible, even within the living­wage movement. the neoliberal logic maintains that “illegal” migrant work is ultimately a supply problem, and that tolerating or legalizing “illegal” migrants only create incentives that increases the supply of such migrants. hence, the solution according to this logic is to address the supply side and blame vulnerable illegalized migrants for the existence and increased use of unauthorized low­waged work. consequently, authorities are targeting illegalized migrants in addressing this policy problem. however, from the political economy perspective that sassen and standing assume, 126 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages illegalized migrant work is driven from the demand side. vulnerable and exploitable workers facilitate capital accumulation and labour market segmentation (bauder 2006). illegalized work is built into the very dna of modern neoliberal capitalism. addressing the situation of illegalized migrant workers is a way to confront the uncontrolled power of capital in a hyper neoliberal world. the labour market situation of illegalized migrants reveals some of the most exploitative aspects of neoliberal capitalism and the policy framework that supports it. the living­wage movement offers important strategies and tactics employed of active resistance to neoliberal globalization. however, illegalized migrant workers could be placed more centrally within this struggle and more visibly and organically connected to living­ wage movement. the struggle for a living wage is not only an issue for low­ waged citizens and legal residents, but also for all workers, including the illegalized. winning living wages for illegalized workers is connected to broader protections from exploitation by employers and solidarity among workers. a living wage, enhanced security and status of migrants deemed “illegal” by the state is central to a progressive policy agenda. references barnetson, b. and foster, j. 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(2005). santa fe’s living wage ordinance and the labor market. employment policies institute. https://www.epionline.org/wp­content/studies/yelowitz_09­2005.pdf the contradictions of localism | 237 the contradictions of localism: an interview with greg sharzer jordy cummings jordy cummings1 (jc): your book is called no local and it is an immanent critique of inward looking reactions to neoliberal capitalism. one poignant episode you recount surrounds urban agriculture, and the idea that we’ve come to a really problematic situation when poor people are encouraged to grow their own food in addition to working their jobs and raising their kids. what is the political or strategic problem with localism? what are your thoughts, for example, on campaigns like “occupy the economy” and so forth? greg sharzer2 (gs): first i’d like to quickly define some terms. ‘local’ is a space distinct from larger regional, national and international spaces. but it’s also relational, a moment in the global capital circuit. it’s amorphous, changing depending on what you’re measuring: political, social, economic, and so on. ‘localism’ is the fetishization of scale. it’s assigning some positive benefit to a place precisely because it’s small. it’s impossible to be anti-local, unless you’re against units of measurement. but i think it’s a mistake to think that small is always beautiful. localism assumes 1) local economies are fairer than global economies, 2) local spaces are autonomous from, and therefore more open to democratic control than larger spaces, and 3) the political project of revolutionary socialism is dead or, more accurately, never existed in the first place. i think these problems mean that localist schemes for change, such as 1 jordy cummings is a labour activist and phd candidate in political science at york university. with a background in journalism, cummings has written for a variety of publications both journalistic and academic, including socialism & democracy and basics community news service. his dissertation focuses on radical theory in the aftermath of the french revolution and the transition to modernity, using a political marxist methodology. he is also editing a reader of george comninel’s writings and is interventions editor at alternate routes: a journal of critical social research. 2 greg sharzer has a phd in political science from york university in toronto and is currently affiliated with the institute for social sciences at gyeongsang national university in jinju, south korea. 238 | climate change and its discontents community gardens, local currencies and transition towns become pieces of the broader capitalist economy, no matter how sincerely their participants may wish to change it. because of these problems, i think localism is a way to avoid, rather than confront capitalism. most localist schemes assume from the outset that capitalism can’t be changed wholesale, so it’s better to make piecemeal reforms around the edges. occupy the economy says the capitalist system is the problem – not so controversial for left-localism – but goes further and says the heights of industry, the banks and industrial corporations – need to be taken over and run for the benefit of all of us. therefore i wouldn’t call occupy localism. they’re far more ambitious than a transition town and resemble the socialist industrial democracy schemes of 100 years ago. but occupy’s problem is idealism. their occupation will be accomplished by everyone showing up at corporate headquarters and discussing democracy. they even call for activists to set a date. after that, socialism (though they’re careful to avoid that word) will be accomplished...through a constitutional amendment! apparently capitalists and politicians have a long history of giving up their power voluntarily, and general strikes happen when everyone decides to walk off the job. this doesn’t engage with the real history of the labour and socialist movements, which show that you need to win specific victories in different workplaces and community campaigns, while organizing political alternatives that fight to extend those victories. if occupy represents extra-local activism, i can see why some people feel localism is more realistic. but the kernel of truth in occupy the economy is that localist schemes don’t challenge either state or capital effectively. we need to ground dreams of revolution in effective strategy, not only to figure out concretely how to build fighting social movements, but to convince those drawn to localist schemes that we can go beyond the local. jc: structurally speaking, it seems that localism involves some aspect of commodity fetishism, in particular in its co-optation of opposition within capitalist social property relations. would you make a practical distinction between localist political activism, such as those involved in urban agriculture, food security and so on, and the more obvious examples of ethical consumerism, such as “fair trade”, alternative currencies and the like. the contradictions of localism | 239 gs: in no local, i distinguish between proand anti-market localism. the latter is about making capitalism fair and ethical, which i don’t believe is possible. i think those involved in urban agriculture and food security activism are often far more anti-market, seeing serious problems in how capitalism treats the food supply and looking for solutions. i think the former are simply wrong; i agree with much of the latter critique but i don’t feel setting up alternatives economies are the best way to go. both strategies can naturalize capitalist social relations, separating economics from politics and believing that the latter can be ‘fixed’ without the former – or, as marx accused proudhon, taking the good from capitalism and dropping the bad. in that sense, both proand antimarket localism suffer from commodity fetishism, mistaking the world of things for the world of people. pro-market localists believe capitalism can be fixed if things are distributed more ethically. anti-market localists take existing production relations as fixed and seek change at the margins. i’ve always found this a little tragic, since localism is about bringing agency back to people. but as i point out in the book, i think part of what forms localism is pessimism that union and party organizing can restrict any of capital’s rights. and yet there are important differences between these approaches: people seeking anti-market localist alternatives want the same sort of fundamental change that socialists want. we just differ on how to achieve it. for me, this requires mass, democratic unionization, particularly among agricultural workers, regulation and controls on existing supply chains as steps towards nationalization, and of course, worker control over industry as a long-term goal. i think many anti-market localists would be open to those ideas. jc: can you get into the theoretical, or analytical problems with “localism” as part of a project towards eco-socialism or environmental justice. i know people, for example, in vermont, who are not necessarily “politicized” aside from being “progressive” in the american sense, voting for sanders, etc. – and they grow their own food and other supplies, raise their own animals. i remember mentioning your book to a friend down there and he said to me “of course we’re not changing the world, we’re just trying to raise our families”...and pointing out that for every person who raises chickens, grows corn, that takes money out of the agri-business complex. when you were interviewed in “north star”, commenters pointed out the plethora of local co-operative businesses that are a significant part of the economy in the u.k. what is wrong with 240 | climate change and its discontents these kinds of arguments, and what is the concrete role of these rural types? can we find a balance between talking about the “idiocy of rural life” on one hand, and the romanticist and moralistic rusticism of some quarters on the other hand? gs: to take your last question first, absolutely, industrialism vs. romanticism is unhelpful. however, i’d argue that’s precisely what the utopian forbearers of localism did by mistaking capitalism, a system of extraction of surplus value from workers’ labour, for its consequences in industrial society. instead they looked back to a mythical time of petty commodity production. so we need to understand capitalism much more precisely, in order to figure out what to do about it. so on economics….i’ve received many comments along the lines of, “you say that local alternatives are impossible, but here’s an example of a project or genre of projects that has been viable for years.” invariably these are projects supported by the fierce determination of local activists, who have managed to carve out a space – say, for a cooperative or community garden – by mobilizing progressive local politicians, or conducting enough community mobilization that these projects get a level of stability. in which case, saying ‘no’ to the local is just contrarian, a denial of the facts. people who want to make their lives better by growing their own food or meeting their neighbours should do so. workers need to lower the cost of reproducing their labour power. and i appreciate the honesty of your friend, who knows he’s not changing the world. it’s when people start assigning undue political significance to localism that i think it should be questioned. it’s not a question of whether cooperatives are possible – clearly they are – or whether they can make life better for some workers – clearly they can. the resilience and creativity of social enterprises are not in question: their capacity to serve as a base for anticapitalist organizing is. to maintain themselves, they have to make the same kind of compromises that a private firm makes, cutting back in times of recession, rationalizing production and so on. they may not be malign about it, they may spread the costs around more fairly rather than making swingeing cuts, but the discipline that all social enterprises face is imposed by the marketplace, not bad bosses. politically, these schemes are contradictory: they provide a lesson in social production, and marx saw them demonstrating “how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one.” but he didn’t see them as revolutionary agents; the fundathe contradictions of localism | 241 mental antagonism between capital and labour still has to be addressed through political and economic action. it’s impossible to socialize capitalism without confronting the powers-that-be. saying that workers could build alternatives to capitalism, without taking its vast productive capacity away from the capitalists, is like saying that capitalist power is voluntary. it implies people can choose how to participate in the global economy. but by definition, capitalism means workers are alienated from the means of production: the social wealth they produce is stolen from them, taken into private hands, and used against them. if it’s not, if workers aren’t coerced by enclosure, and the mass of dead labour set up to suck living labour from them, then we don’t even have capitalism, just some form of expanded reproduction. and then the political question…how do we organize this confrontation? we need to 1) identify the central relationship of coercion – workers are forced to sell their labour power to survive and 2) build people’s confidence to resist and transform it. instead of these, i see localists encouraging belief in the power of local schemes to outcompete capitalist enterprise and transform capitalist economies through the agglomerating power of a good example. this is not only challenged by the history of capital centralization and concentration, it opens the door to co-optation. lately, the ruling class has become very good at localizing, because it’s another way to devolve responsibility for cutbacks to local administrations, while imposing new forms of market discipline at the micro level. we don’t need to stop making local change; we need to consider how local economic schemes fit into political strategy. everyone has the right to say, “the community garden or local currency i participate in has made me aware of how capitalism works and given me the courage to resist,” and they’re correct. motivation, as i make clear in the book’s introduction, is highly individual. however, marxists believe that people’s ideas change through struggle. it’s only the experience of collective organizing and mass resistance that builds people’s confidence to run society themselves. if we’re going to run the factories and offices democratically, like occupy the economy wants, we need to fight to make them our own, not try and set up spaces away from them. and, because capitalism is a political as well as an economic system, we need to engage in all struggles – anti-racist, anti-sexist, antinuclear, etc. – where capital is trying to make life worse. in other words, there is a choice: it’s not ‘you build your farm, i’ll build my social movement’, and let’s meet in the pub afterwards. 242 | climate change and its discontents this is not an abstract problem. for example, during the protests in gezi park in istanbul, some protestors set up a community garden there. it would be sectarian foolishness not to celebrate the diversity of tactics that led to a garden being planted there. however, some questions remain. how did the gardening tactic resonate with people, particularly after the ferocity of state repression? some organizers suggested that the garden was the work of ‘middle class’ activists who were swept aside when the mass of people came into struggle. is this true, and if so, how did the activists use it to reach out to workers? as i write, the protesters have just been cleared from taksim square in istanbul after weeks of breathtaking occupation. i can guarantee the kind of political discussions that the movement began are breaking down mental blocks to socialism much faster than years of painstaking social enterprise-building. jc: i’m wondering if you can mention aspects of localism that play a dialectical role, that is to say, both support and subvert capitalism? gs: yes. every small project is a set of property relations partially removed from capitalism. internally, it can refuse to replicate hierarchal work relations, and distribute goods via a direct exchange or scrip scheme. yet, as i mentioned above, the scheme is embedded in a global market in the commodity labour power, which means it has to adapt to it by lowering wages, speeding up work or finding a client base willing to pay more for goods that other capitalists can produce more cheaply. i think non-capitalist schemes can also signal capital that a previously non-commodified space is now commodifiable, like the demonstrated link between artist squats and gentrification. so capitalist social relations get buttressed. i’m deliberately leaving out “the power of a good example” as an example of undermining capitalism, because i don’t think it’s at all clear that a good example works in the way proponents intend. when projects adapt or fail, they lend credence to the idea that there is no alternative. jc: what about a set of social property relations that is neither capitalist nor socialist, in the schematic senses of a society of market compulsion on one hand, and of free-association and disalienated labour on the other? gs: i don’t think so, if we conceive of the world market in a marxist sense as a system of global attempts to reduce the cost of socially necessary the contradictions of localism | 243 abstract labour time (snalt). the problem with localist, non-capitalist, proudhonist, etc. schemes is they assume that they get to decide whether their project is capitalist or socialist. capitalism doesn’t allow that kind of autonomy: it operates outside the control of a multinational corporation or national market, let alone an individual firm. socialist property relations are an oxymoron: appropriating the means of production means breaking the power of the state that enforces capitalist property rights. before that, we can have varieties of capitalist power relations – for example, state capitalism, where property is monopolized by a ruling elite dedicated to forms of redistribution. but social property relations imply that the global market no longer coerces firms to achieve snalt. i could see circumstances in which a redistributive state subsidises social enterprises which don’t meet snalt with revenues from other sources: for example, venezuela using oil revenues to support reclaimed factories. but is it non-capitalist to use one segment of the circuit of capital to partially remove another segment? can a change in the mode of production be made through appropriating rents? maybe, although i don’t see how this is sustainable in the long run. i think manuel laraburre’s work on venezuelan worker cooperatives is very useful for pointing out the strength and limitations of this strategy. there’s a temporal aspect to this: certainly, mass struggles throw up examples of workplaces and institutions freed from capitalist property relations. when workers seize a factory and it no longer produces for the world market, that can’t be described as capitalist. but that’s temporary: the struggle must continue to overthrow the state, or be thrown back so that seized enterprises still have to meet snalt. a strike is not about creating social property relations, but about disrupting capitalist ones. if strikers generalize their action and begin to create forms of dual power, producing for distribution by local workers’ councils, for example, that could be ‘in between’. but it’s in between precisely because it’s not stable, and either capital or labour must win. the question of struggle is what saves this discussion from dissolving into the semantics of how one defines capitalist property. if people are fighting capitalist social relations, new forms of production, distribution and association are born – not from the blueprints of participatory economics but from the practical questions involved in running liberated cities and countries. the point is that these relations are in motion, according to the rhythm of class struggle. you can’t create non-capitalism away from the political question of movement-building. those attempts to break out will be re-incorporated. 244 | climate change and its discontents finally, this relates to marxism directly. marx fought against mechanical materialism, which states that people are just products of history and structures. this missed people’s active role in making history. against the fatalism of some forms of political economy, localism has stressed agency, which is a good thing. but the problem is it’s idealist agency: if we have the right ideas, we can reshape the world simply by demonstrating them. socialists can’t re-emphasise mechanical materialism as a response. rather, we need historical materialism: an understanding of how people make history on the terrain provided for them. political economy is determinist in the sense that it sets the terrain upon which we act, one of the conditions marx referred to when he said ‘we act upon a world not of our own making’. the question is not one of rejecting determinism entirely; that way lies voluntarism and ultimately lifestylism. rather, it is a question of figuring out how much determining power capital has; or, put another way, the relationship of political economy to the working class. the ruling class uses dead labour to control the living and so has tremendous power, but it’s not total: capital still needs fresh living labour to mobilize the machines and create surplus value. this is the potential power of the working class: capital needs it. and it’s why schemes for social change that ignore how to mobilize workers, setting examples for them instead, miss the fundamental antagonism at the heart of capitalism. jc: i’m wondering how you would gauge the position of the petit-bourgeoisie. is localism petty-bourgeois, and as well, can you tell me how you would define “petty bourgeois”? and on the terms of actually-existing petty bourgeois interests, does localism contradict their interests in the same sense as it does for the working class? if we accept that there is a petty-bourgeoisie, not in the poulantzian “new middle class” sense, but in the sense of small entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, and indeed farmers, how is localism indeed damaging to their own interests? or is there a “petty bourgeois at all”? gs: in no local, i use erik olin wright’s analysis to describe the petty bourgeois as a group trapped between workers and capital. this is wrong, because a middle layer is too vague a concept to be of any analytical, let along strategic use. worse, if we introduce new classes with the same analytical weight as labour and capital, the labour-capital antagonism disappears, along with marxism. this is one of the unhappy side-effects of the ‘creative class’ thesis, although even before that, there were decades of the contradictions of localism | 245 ‘new middle class’ theorizing: replace the relationship to the means of production with occupations, or even shopping habits, and the list of middle classes is endless. in 1995, after much of the new middle classes debate ended, robert weil came up with a useful characterization: the petty bourgeois is a class that acts as both capital and labour. their highly specialized knowledge is their capital, which they control and use to appropriate surplus value – their own surplus value. but they don’t produce or own enough to stop working and become a real capitalist. this fits very well with the definition of localism as petty bourgeois. the tension that comes from embodying the capital-labour antagonism personally causes a desire for classlessness. in turn, this causes a desire for small: to return to a mythical artisanal economy where the worldhistorical pressures to accumulate and resist exploitation aren’t arrayed against you inside your own head. i think it’s impossible to understand localism without understanding it as an ideology, not just an economic philosophy, though of course this ideology has material roots. it doesn’t damage the petty bourgeois’s own direct interests, because those interests are to avoid class conflict and escape the constant need to accumulate and alienate. but it damages those members of the working class who also want to escape (which is nearly everyone), and whose natural instinct towards class solidarity gets blunted in favour of smallscale communitarianism. a philosophy of solidarity and confrontation can also sweep up the petty bourgeois along with the working class – in any urban revolution, the small shopkeepers often side with the revolutionaries. given the historical weakness of the left, that’s been reversed: the working class is presented with the petty bourgeois point of view. it resonates because nothing else is on offer at the moment, and the hope of being petty bourgeois remains an elusive dream for workers, sustaining millions of people in their daily drudgery or unemployment with the false hope of freedom. jc: your make use of marxist rent theory, it seems we are both big fans of the third volume of capital. can you give us an explanation of rent theory and how it connects to these issues? how is it useful to you? and how has it been used incorrectly? i’ve always thought how one conceives rent theory is informed by how one sees the origin of capitalism, am i right to see this? gs: i claim no expertise on rent theory, but as neil smith once said to me, nobody who claims to get it actually does. it’s one of the hardest 246 | climate change and its discontents parts of marx’s theories, because it’s not intuitive. anyone who works ‘gets’ exploitation; but how is that connected to land? i attempted to reintroduce rent because it seemed that marxists stopped talking about it in the 1980s. yet capitalist exploitation still has to take place somewhere. rent is the theory of how social barriers to investment create temporary advantages for capitalists. these may appear as physical barriers, like a fertile or well-located plot of land. but if one capitalist owns a better piece of land than the other, the second one can apply enough capital to change her land until it’s just as good. the point is the barriers to capital flow are social, and the social barriers of ownership seemed to be just as important today – even more so, given the global push towards urbanisation. so i think it’s impossible to understand how urban development happens without understanding rent, the extra money gained by landowners from situating production on their property, which other capitalists can’t immediately recreate. another way of putting this is that land is not outside the capital circuit. and this is important for localism, because there’s this idea that urban agriculture is somehow protected from capitalism by virtue of its small size. but urban farms have to compete with other capitals far more than rural capitals do: the competition for land use in cities is intense. if we can understand how rent is generated, we can understand how developers make space for urban gardens as a way to raise the value of their condominium towers, for example. we can also avoid the naive notion that poor, ex-industrial places like detroit are outside of capital because of all their spare land. in line with radicals there, i’d argue it’s precisely the new lands created by long-term economic crisis that makes a place like detroit so useful to capital. there is no outside to capital: it keeps finding new ways to destroy ‘inefficient’ property or commons, like detroit’s bankruptcy. this is not to say things like community gardens are impossible; of course there are many places where they’re not only possible but approved by municipal administrations. but my point is that those places are shielded from rent pressures by particular circumstances. they’re temporary, at least in the medium term (witness the pressures on the greenbelt in seoul, for example), and can’t be replicated everywhere. for example, havana turned its spare land into farms because it had no property market. that’s not going to work elsewhere on a grand scale. jc: if local solutions are merely defensive at best, what should socialists be doing about the environmental crisis? one position holds that the contradictions of localism | 247 a lot of eco-socialist discourse relies on what is called “catastrophism”; myself, i’m sympathetic to the position of henwood, mcnally and other contributors to that book3. on the other hand, there are those who accuse those who critique catastrophism of underrating the importance of the ecological dimension of our struggles, even to the point of denigrating their centrality? on both a strategic and theoretical level, where do you stand on this debate? gs: rather than saying all ecological struggles are local, i’d say they’re spatial. they’re always rooted somewhere, which allows people directly affected to shape them – recent activism against tar sands pipelines and fracking are great examples of this. however, eco-struggles are the best example of the limits of localism. on the one hand, capital always ‘lands’ somewhere, it’s never dematerialized. when workers producing a key component of a car go on strike, they can bring the entire production process to a halt, even if the factories are widely scattered. when indigenous people blockade a single pumping station on a pipeline, they can stop the entire project – the company can’t exactly build a new pipeline to go around them. the path-dependency of capital gives local direct actions tremendous disruptive power. on the other hand, a pipeline isn’t the result of a local business. oil companies can bring a lot more pressure to bear on local campaigns precisely because they’re extra-local, like when enbridge pipelines inc. gave $44,000 to the police, at the same time as they need police to protect their property. local actions need to be scaled up, so that capital can be fought on many fronts: financially, politically, direct action, and so on. i don’t think this is controversial, but what i’m arguing is that the implicit, sometimes explicit, message of localism is: “stop there”. if there is any confrontation, don’t make it too big. start locally to outcompete or detach from capital. put more abstractly, space is not a substitute for social relations. starting small still poses the same questions of power that mass movements pose, and to challenge, restrict and defeat the extra-local powers trying to shape localities, we need to get big. the way not to do this is by terrifying people with catastrophe. the north pole officially became a lake a few days ago: there’s plenty of reason to be afraid. but fear is a demotivator: making that fear existential – the entire basis of our civilisation is being undermined! – is a sure-fire way to get people to do nothing 3 lilley, s., d. mcnally, e. yuen and j. davis. (2012). catastrophism: the apocalyptic politics of collapse and rebirth. oakland: pm press. 248 | climate change and its discontents at all. it’s remarkable that a movement based on strict adherence to local or micro-economies and politics – such as intentional communities and even some transition towns – relies on such sweeping generalisations about the state of the world and human nature. in response to catastrophists, i guess i’d say: “ok, we agree that capitalism is destroying the planet. what’s the best way to stop it?” detaching and forming more egalitarian, green-friendly communities is premised on the old ‘propaganda of the deed’ – build it and they will come – model. but capitalism ensures most people are too busy or desperate trying to survive to drop it all and participate in these new models. at which point, catastrophists can go one of two ways: be absorbed with building a better life for themselves right now, or consider strategically how to gain allies. that means speaking to people where they are, about what they’re concerned about. leadership comes from supporting and empowering people to solve their actual problems, not telling them to abandon those problems and focus on planning for the end of the world – whether that end is posed as sweet revenge, our collective doom or a chance to build a new society. the question of our ecological survival is political, not technical. that means reframing our struggles. rather than saying, “runaway global warming is going to drown all of us and lead to mass die-off of flora and fauna and us, so stop the pipeline”, it means saying, “the poor safety record of pipeline companies mean that, when spills happen, toxic chemicals are going to destroy your homes, playgrounds and the health of your loved ones.” both are true: only one poses concrete political questions for those living near a pipeline. jc: we’ve seen a general discrediting of the dominant forms of left organization – top-down vanguard parties; formless affinity groups; bureaucratic social democracy? what kind of organization do we need to be building on the left in order to move beyond these concerns, and move beyond localism and towards class struggle? barring full-scale international socialism, something on the distant horizon, what can be done on the level of national states? of course there can be no “socialism in one country” or delinking, but isn’t it incumbent upon us to suggest new kinds of organization without falling into a pattern of “stagism”? gs: part of localism’s appeal is to stop fussing with theory and organizational models and just get on with doing what you can, right now. but this conceals a pessimism about the prospect for left victories. it takes collective struggle off the agenda and leaves capital free to impose the contradictions of localism | 249 itself. this is a natural reaction to the constant assault of austerity, which have succeeded thanks to 30 years of neoliberal defeat for the workers’ movement in the global north. without an organized left to get involved with, the appeal of diy is much stronger: why bother with discussions about long-dead revolutions when you can rejuvenate a traffic island by planting vegetables on it? there’s a parallel trend which crosses left and right, and that’s to focus exclusively on the mechanisms of power – again, tempting now that we know the nsa is reading and watching everything. but these are not only hidden theories of powerlessness – a concession to the nihilism that capitalist triumphalism feeds on. they miss the exciting developments on the left. for example, the recent and continuing crisis of the british swp is a reference point for english-speaking leftists, at least, and i’ve been very impressed with the rethinking of the international socialist network and others. they’ve identified the centrality of anti-oppression politics, not just paying lip service to gender or race; the need for pluralism; and a sober assessment of the left’s recent history, as starting points. and of course, there’s been the recent mass explosions of struggle in turkey, brazil, egypt and elsewhere. they raise incredibly exciting questions about strategy, dual power, and how to raise demands that can draw layers of people into sustained political campaigns. i think the job of socialists is to learn from and be inspired by these movements, and figure out how their lessons can be applied elsewhere. for the first time in many years, we see the prospect of mass resistances breaking out across the globe, due to highly specific local conditions on the one hand, and the overarching logic of capitalist austerity on the other. suddenly the old question of: how do we organize this into something that can last, and that can make real gains? – makes sense again. i read ‘stagism’ as an attempt to cut off a revolution’s momentum, declare its limits to be national borders and impose a new elite to manage it all. all social movements have stages; but equally, they can leap through different scales and inspire other movements in remarkable ways, the arab spring being the most recent example. i think that’s the best argument against stagism: showing concretely how learning from, and contributing to international movements can help change our own societies. this is another word for a global network of socialist parties, which seems to be a tremendously unfashionable concept these days. but i don’t see how we can get around it. capital is internationalized, and although it’s just as internally divided as ever, its various factions can 250 | climate change and its discontents muster international resources – legal, financial, military – that a left party in one country can’t fully counter. the working class still exists in ever more precarious, gendered, racialized forms, and yet with the vast potential for unity. the advanced sections of the working class still need political organization. without extra-local political organization, capital can play these sections off against each other. jc: what kind of struggles exist right now that link the local with the global? what are their limitations and what are their advantages? if we are to say of course “no local”, how can we situate, in general, globality, without falling into the trap of hardt and negri? gs: i would define a linking struggle not only in terms of scale, but also as one that reveals social relations. again, the anti-tar sands movement is a good example of this: fight a pipeline and you end up fighting multiple levels of government, the police and multinational corporations. you confront the legacy of colonialism in canada and the u.s. it’s a truism to say that every local struggle contains the seeds of global ones – but the keyword there is ‘struggle’. raising chickens, growing your own vegetables, processing your own biofuel is not struggle. (unless the land you’re doing it on is wanted by a developer, in which case the non-capitalist alternative has to quickly learn how to confront capitalism.) a local struggle has to confront some aspect of capitalist power, and through that campaign raise the confidence of its participants to fight back, and provide a way to selfeducate participants in the nuances of organizing. hardt and negri’s failure lies in ignoring the strategic questions that movement organizing has posed since the dawn of capitalism, in favour of a celebration of an amorphous global multitude. years ago i saw michael hardt speaking on why we need a theory of love as the basis for a political movement – not in an ethical sense, he apparently meant it strategically. this convinced me that strategy matters, and that strategy, in turn, rests on an understanding of how capitalism must expand and go into crisis. without a close engagement with that dynamic, and what actual people are doing about it – fighting police brutality, the high costs of living, dictatorships, and so on – we lose a sense of what the questions are and can follow generations of idealist utopians, trying to impose our own order on the world based on what’s in our heads and hearts at the moment. i’d argue what these traditions share is a rejection of the relationship between deterthe contradictions of localism | 251 ministic capital and working class agency. without that fascinating, studiable and actable anchor, we can suggest any version of local or global we want. this is the key advantage of a social movement that looks beyond the local to understand what it’s fighting and who its allies are. it is firmly grounded in the real world, not in the world we’d prefer to live in right now. this is the opposite of closing off possibilities. the real world poses impossibly rich questions, both in analysis and action. for example, what sparked the deposing of morsi in egypt, and what should the role of the left be in it? various accounts have suggested it’s a revolution, a counter-revolution, or both. ‘what side are you on?’ is still the most important question, and by questioning localism, i’d like to see people start asking themselves that again. quickly followed by asking themselves what the sides look like, what motivates them, and how our side can win. 252 | climate change and its discontents digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity | 267 digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity: in conversation with christian fuchs matthew flisfeder1 (mf): in the “introduction” to digital labour and karl marx (2014a), you write that with the global crisis of capitalism that began in 2007-2008 we have entered “new marxian times.” what is particularly new here? does the context of the crisis add something new to marxism and marx’s critique of capitalism, or has the crisis brought about a renewal of interest in marx and marxism? christian fuchs2 (cf): since some time in the 1980s, marxist and socialist thought, politics and practice faced a backlash and repression because of the rise of neoliberalism, the colonisation of social democracy by neoliberalism, the rise of culturalism and postmodernism, the structural self-destruction of the soviet union, etc. being a socialist or marxist in politics or academia or everyday life meant that people were frowning on you and that you often had to face outright repression. the new collected interview volume key thinkers in communication scholarship (lent and amazeen, 2015) tells the stories of how marxist communication scholars faced and confronted different forms of antisocialist repression such as physical violence, hiring discrimination, salary discrimination, publication denial, denial of tenure, ideological scapegoating, racism, denial of important institutional positions, isolation, legal silencing by threat of legal proceedings or actual law-suits, or massive amounts of work-time. marxism and socialism were repressed although at the same time capitalist inequality was rising. in scholarship, the economy was often simply ignored and its relevance downplayed. all of this has changed a bit with the new crisis of global capitalism that started in 2008. now there is more interest in marxist theory and socialist politics. just look at the popularity of jeremy corbyn here in the united kingdom. 1 matthew flisfeder is assistant professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. he is the author of the symbolic, the sublime, and slavoj žižek’s theory of film, and co-editor of žižek and media studies: a reader. his current research focuses on the ideology of social media, and social media and entrepreneurship. 2 christian fuchs is the author of digital labour and karl marx, occupymedia!: the occupy movement and social media in crisis capitalism, culture and economy in the age of social media, and several other books and articles on social media and critical media studies. he is a professor at the university of westminster, where he is director of the communication and media research institute (camri), and editor of the journal triplec: communication, capitalism & critique. 268 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages this shows us that some changes are happening and that the left has new potentials for a renewal. we should think of the old and the new of marxism and socialist politics precisely in marxian-dialectical logical and dialectical-historical terms: capitalism changes dynamically in order to remain the same system of exploitation. marxist theory therefore needs to be based on a dialectic of continuity and change in order to understand the changes capitalist society and communications in it have been undergoing. so society, communications, and theory are neither completely new nor completely unchanged. it is one of the tasks of my own work to show the relevance of such a historical dialectic. mf: in the context of communications and media studies, dallas smythe’s (1977) essay communications: a blindspot of western marxism, and his concept of the “audience commodity,” is often taken up in critical political economic analyses of the media. his work also figures quite prominently in your analysis of social media and social media labour. could you explain the significance of smythe’s concept and how it translates over into the critical analysis of social media labour? cf: i have written in detail on these issues in the books digital labour and karl marx (2014) and culture and economy in the age of social media (2015a), so i would like to refer the reader to these works. i have just completed a companion to marx’s capital volume 1 from a media and communication studies perspective (fuchs, 2016). marx starts this key work with the statement: “the wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities’; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form” (marx, 1990, 125). this means that the critique of political economy always has to start with the questions: what is the commodity form we are confronted with? who produces it? let’s think of advertising-funded media. what is their commodity? the attention produced by audiences. this relates to smythe’s notions of audience labour and the audience commodity. now think of facebook, a targeted-advertising based social media corporation that is besides google the world’s largest advertising agency. what is the commodity form? the personal, social, and meta-data that users’ digital labour creates. so here the notion of the social media data commodity that is produced by users’ digital labour is important. the data commodity shares qualities with the audience commodity, but also has new qualities, such as constant real-time surveillance, the production of not just meaning, but also social use-values, the corporations’ total knowledge of user activities (in the case of the broadcast and newspaper audience commodity, one has in contrast to conduct audience studies in digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity | 269 order to learn about the consumers’ preferences), there is prosumption3 (productive consumption), advertisements can be targeted and personalised, there are algorithmic auctions that set the price of ad space, etc (see fuchs 2015a, chapter 5). this is again an example of the marxian dialectic of continuity and change: there is a continuity of the commodity form and the audience commodity as well as the emergence of new qualities that help to reproduce the commodity form. mf: if communications, then, was a blindspot for western marxism in the late 1970s, when smythe’s article was published, you now say that marxism has in fact become a blindspot for communications, and the whole of the social sciences more generally? why do you think that this is the case? cf: media and communication studies is overall a rather politically conservative field. its mainstream is focused on administrative research. there have been the traditions of critical political economy of the media/communications, critical cultural studies, critical media/communications studies, etc. but they are marginal in comparison to the mainstream. just look at the major journals in our field. the journal of communication has, for example, not published a marxist article in ages. this was a bit different in the 1980s when george gerbner was the editor and critical scholars could get their articles published in this journal. today, such journals that represent the mainstream simply ignore, reject and indirectly repress critical scholarship. at the same time, there is a growing number of critical scholars, especially in the younger generation and among ph.d. students, who also self-organise against the mainstream. we have a profound intellectual struggle between critical and administrative research going on in the field. a journal such as triplec: communication, capitalism & critique (www.triple-c.at) is explicitly a project that wants to be a home for critical communications scholarships that challenges the mainstream. we have to create more institutions and structures that foster critical scholarship. part of the problem is that critical scholars are often isolated in their departments and universities. therefore, it is important that they network with each other and act together. mf: digital labour and karl marx provides a detailed introduction to marx’s critique of political economy, with a particular focus on the exploitation and alienation of labour. early on, you distinguish between 3 the term “prosumption,” first introduced by alvin toffler (1980), refers to the confluence of production and consumption. internet and social media users are often in critical media studies thought of as “prosumers” since they are both producers and consumers of content. 270 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages “labour” and “work.” what is the difference between the two? how does each relate to digital labour (or work)? cf: i do not want to repeat this explanation in detail here because the interested reader can simply look at chapter 2 and especially figure 2.2 in culture and economy in the age of social media (fuchs, 2015a). linguistically, terms such as work (english), werktätigkeit (german), and ouvrer (french), on the one hand, and labour, arbeit, and travailler, on the other hand, have different societal roots. the first group has to do with anthropological features of human beings, the capacity to be creative and the fact that this creativity results in works that satisfy human needs. the second group of linguistic terms has emerged with the rise of class societies and often means things such as slavery, toil, pain, and hardship, etc. mf: i’d like to return to the question of work and labour in a moment, but first let’s talk some more about the role of marxism in communication and cultural studies. the third chapter of your digital labour and karl marx focuses on cultural studies’ “troubled” relationship with marx. how do you respond to the charge made by some prominent cultural studies thinkers in the 1990s that marxism is a form of economic reductionism, which privileges class above other markers of identity, such as gender, race, and sexuality? is a distinction between cultural studies and critical political economy justified, or does the debate obfuscate something central to both? in other words, what do these approaches share in common and how are they useful for studying digital culture? or, more to the point of your book, why might the exploitation of digital labour be a concern for cultural studies? cf: i personally do not care if someone is a political economist and/or a cultural studies scholar as long as she or he is a socialist and is inspired in his or her research by socialist goals. this also means that we have to see that the economic and the non-economic are in capitalism necessarily related to each other, but not reducible to each other. so when we talk about a non-economic topic, we have to talk about class, and when we talk about the economy, we also need to see its connections to racism, patriarchy, etc. there is both celebratory cultural studies as well as nonmarxist political economy of communication. i am critical of both approaches. shortly before stuart hall died, he gave an interview to sut jhally, in which he said that cultural studies should return to its marxist roots. otherwise it would be pointless. i think he made an important point there. if you remember the debate between garnham and grossberg, then the situation was quite polarised (see garnham, 1995a; 1995b; grossberg, 1995). the separation was probably very artificial and overstated. from digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity | 271 today’s perspective, the interesting thing is, however, that garnham, who in this debate took the position of a quite orthodox marxist, today opposes marxist political economy. you can read more about it in a debate between him and me in a forthcoming issue of media, culture & society as well as in a discussion published in triplec (see garnham and fuchs, 2014). personally i think that the gap between cultural studies and political economy can easily be bridged if we analyse how production, circulation, and consumption belong together. that was marx’s point in the introduction to the grundrisse. stuart hall took up the introduction in the centre for contemporary cultural studies’ stencilled occasional papers #1 in 1973. this was marxist cultural studies at its best. we have to again in a different context ask questions about capitalism, the relation of the economic and the non-economic, production/circulation/consumption, the commodity, labour, the relationship of exploitation and domination, class struggles, socialism, alternatives, etc. i also think engaging with raymond williams’ cultural materialism helps us in a lot of respects today. overall, we should overcome defining ourselves as either cultural studies thinkers or political economists. the point is if you are a marxist/socialist cultural studies thinker, a marxist/socialist political economist, a marxist/socialist critical theorist, a marxist/socialist feminist, a marxist/socialist critic of ideology and discourse, etc. the unity in diversity is to think of ourselves as socialist and marxist media and communications scholars and to explore the history of marxist and critical theories in a dialectical manner. mf: going back to questions about labour, there are now many contemporary critical theorists writing about digital media and culture, such as tiziana terranova, and michael hardt and antonio negri, who draw upon the tradition of autonomist marxism, and the concept of “immaterial labour” in particular. do you find anything useful in the notion of “immaterial labour”? how does your own concept of the “internet prosumer commodity” relate to or differ from the concept of “immaterial labour”? cf: i have argued multiple times that the very term “immaterial” is idealist and religious because it philosophically implies that there are two substances: matter and spirit, which contradicts the philosophical law of ground. i have co-authored a book called practical civil virtues in cyberspace: towards the utopian identity of civitas and multitudo (fuchs and zimmermann, 2009) that is a detailed engagement with hardt and negri. although i do not want to use the term “immaterial” and think all communication and all thought is material in a materialist philosophy, ontology, and epistemology, i find the notions of the social factory and the 272 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages social worker helpful because they allow us to overcome orthodox and stalinist versions of the labour theory of value that only see wage-labour as creating surplus-value. also housework, unpaid labour in the free economy, the 30 million slaves in the world, etc. create parts of global capitalism’s surplus-value. in reading marx in the information age: a media and communication studies perspective on capital volume 1 (fuchs, 2016), i repeatedly point out the connection of the notion of the social worker and marx’s concept of the collective worker that he introduces in capital volume 1’s chapter 16. value-production, and therefore class and exploitation are quite complex and global today; they form a differentiated unity in diversity organised as a global division of labour. mf: as with smythe’s argument that audiences work when they are watching tv programs, there are probably many who might disagree with the idea that facebook or twitter users, for example, are in fact exploited labourers. after all, aren’t users receiving a payment in kind from the service provided by the platform itself? isn’t there value in the modalities of connectivity made possible through social media? how do you respond to this argument? how can users’ participation on social media be conceived as a form of exploited labour? cf: i think my recent books give the answers to this question, so there is no point that i repeat the argument here in detail. the wage is the price of labour-power. and price is the monetary expression of a commodity’s labour-power. in capitalism, price is measured in monetary terms. money is a universal commodity, a universal equivalent of exchange. you can buy food by money, but not by facebook access. facebook access is not a universal equivalent of exchange, it is no payment and no wage. most people who argue facebook users are not exploited actually think that everything is alright with facebook and google and nothing needs to be changed. but in fact these are large monopoly-capitalist corporations whose power has negative impacts in many respects. mf: but where does the money come from? since exploited labourers only produce surplus value and not profit itself, which has to be realized in the market through the sale of goods, how in fact is the internet prosumer commodity realized as profit? who is purchasing this commodity? cf: there is a production and a realisation process. the users create the data commodity’s value. the actual realisation and sales process that generates google and facebook’s profits is either a user’s click on an advertisement (pay-per-click) or the presentation of an ad on a profile digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity | 273 (pay-per-view). google and facebook’s advertising clients purchase the data commodity and only pay if a user clicks on an ad or views an ad. of course this advertising economy is connected to the circulation process of other commodities that the advertisers want to sell. there are however a lot of uncertainties about the question of how efficient and effective targeted advertising is, and as a result of these uncertainties the social media economy is also a financialized, crisis-prone bubble economy. mf: could you please elaborate a bit more on the production and realization process. where, in fact, is surplus value produced and how does the users’ labour relate to socially necessary abstract labour time? cf: this question has resulted in a quite substantial debate about what marxian concepts we should use for understanding advertising and digital labour on social media. i can best refer the readers to chapter 5 in culture and economy in the age of social media (fuchs, 2015a) that gives an overview of the state of this debate and to the forthcoming volume reconsidering value and labour in the digital age (fisher and fuchs, 2015) that documents the contributions of a workshop that eran fisher and i organised in 2014 at the open university of israel. the workshop focused on exactly this question. the basic difference is between those that use the concept of rent and those who use the concept of productive labour. i belong to the second group of thinkers. the scholars in the first group argue that advertising in general and targeted advertising on social media in particular is an unproductive attribute of monopoly capital and that the whole advertising sector does not produce, but consume surplus-value created in other industries. it is seen as a “parasitic” sector of the economy, one, in which there is no productive labour, but in which rent is created that comes out of a transfer of the surplus-value exploited in other economic sectors. the second approach argues that there is productive labour and therefore exploitation, wherever labour produces commodities that are sold in order to accumulate capital. advertising is not just part of the sales and production process of other commodities, but is also a capitalist industry in itself that produces a distinct service that is sold as commodity. the fact that we have social media prosumption as form of user-labour that transcends the boundaries between production, circulation, and consumption shows that drawing a division between productive industry and unproductive advertising is monolithic. such an assumption is a form of orthodox marxism that has an old-fashioned understanding of the working class that goes back to the time when advertising and consumer culture did not play an important role in capitalism. 274 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages there is a third approach, namely those autonomist marxists, who speak of the becoming-rent-of-profit. in my view, we do not need the term rent for understanding the political economy of advertising-based social media. but at a level of abstraction, these authors share theoretically and politically more characteristics with the second group than with the first. in the book that eran and i edited, these three positions become quite evident. there is a reason why an apple iphone 6 costs around £450-£550 and an acer liquid jade smartphone only around £100-£200: the iphone is a more well-known brand. you pay more for the brand ideology. but ideologies are not free-floating structures; they need to be produced by someone. the commodity’s ideology that is expressed in advertising is produced by concrete and abstract labour so that additional value, i.e. labour-time, beyond the basic value is objectified in the products that are advertised. apple invests much more into marketing, branding and advertising than acer. and such investments mean actual labour conducted by workers in advertising, marketing and pr departments, and labour conducted by user-workers and consumer-workers. marx thought of transport labour as a special form of labour. if you think of a commodity, then it is not just physically transported from the producer to the consumer or in the case of a digital information commodity not just sent over the internet. there is something more: the commodity ideology expressed in advertisements needs to be produced (by advertisement workers) and transported (i.e. targeted) to consumers and users. the use of targeted advertising-based social media and the consumption of advertisements in general is ideological transport labour, it helps “transporting” the commodity ideologies created by advertising workers to potential consumers. i make this argument in detail in culture and economy in the age of social media (fuchs, 2015a). the point is that there are many forms of labour that do not immediately appear to us as labour because they are unwaged. audience labour and digital labour on social media are just two of them. housework is another one. a specific orthodoxy only considers wage-labour as productive, which downplays the importance of the exploitation of housework and other forms of unpaid labour in capitalism. it is a quite patriarchal argument that fetishizes the wage, a form of wage-labour fetishism. earning a wage is not a necessary criterion for being a productive and therefore exploited worker and thereby part of the working class. advertising as ideological commodity aesthetic has become an integral part of contemporary capitalism. substantial amounts of time are invested into the production and consumption of ads. the labour theory of value is a theory of time in digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity | 275 capitalism (see fuchs, 2015a, chapter 4). advertising as ideology is organized in space and time and needs to be produced and reproduced. the fact that producing and transporting advertisements creates commodity ideologies also points towards the important interconnection of the economy and culture, labour and ideology, in capitalism. we have to stop separating the economy on the one hand and ideology on the other hand (o’brien, 2015). one should in a cultural-materialist manner in the analysis of labour not just analyze the work-process, but also ideology (the ideology of labour, how ideologies are part of management, how they play a role at the everyday workplace, can be challenged by unions and activists, etc.); and we should, when we analyze ideology, not just analyze texts, but also the labour context (the labour that creates and transports ideology). labour and ideology are in a dialectical manner identical and non-identical at the same time. ideologies are created by labour, but also have emergent properties, by which they go beyond the economy and as distorted meanings take effect all over society. mf: speaking of which, i’m quite interested in the way that you deal with the relationship between exploited labour on social media and the problem of ideology. you attend to, in parts of your book, the cultural studies critique of “false consciousness” as a way of explaining the problem of ideology. in dealing with the question of ideology, you note (similarly to others, like jodi dean) that social media and the internet are often championed as platforms for democracy and participatory culture. if users are in fact merely contributing to the mechanisms of their own exploitation as parts of the internet prosumer commodity, are claims about democracy on the internet not simply new forms of “false consciousness”? what about the use of social media for purposes of resistance, such as the so-called “arab spring” movement, occupy wall street, and the “maple spring” and the idle no more movements in canada? cf: i say a lot about this issue in my book occupymedia!: the occupy movement and social media in crisis capitalism (2014b). the problem of social movement media studies is that they tend to neglect political economy. scholars conducting such studies sympathise with the movements they study. this often blinds them from asking critical questions. it does not help social movements if scholars in a technodeterminist manner celebrate them. it is however also wrong to argue that the internet and social media have no influence at all on political change. they are neither unimportant nor determinant, there is a dialectic of online/offline, media/society, face-to-face/mediated communication, etc. there is a lack of political economy and a lack of 276 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages profound empirical studies that address the actual role of social media in protests. for finding out the actual role, theory alone is not enough, we need empirical studies. occupymedia! is a quite unique approach in this respect. i also recommend that people interested in social media politics read todd wolfson’s book digital rebellion: the birth of the cyber left (2014; see also fuchs, 2015c). reading occupymedia! and todd’s book together opens up a dialectical political economy perspective on digital media and social movements. mf: if, then, the internet, digital culture, and social media are mechanism of exploitation, today, how might they figure in an emancipated society? you mentioned, for instance, the unpaid free labour of housework earlier. do campaigns like “wages for facebook” (modeled after the “wages for housework” campaigns of the 1970s) hold any traction? what possibilities are there for the development of a nonexploitative internet? to put it more bluntly: what would the internet look like in a “communist” society? can you propose a way forward towards this possibility? cf: the question is if as the left we should demand “wages for facebook” or public funding for alternative social media and alternative non-commercial non-capitalist media in general. i find the idea of wages for facebook interesting, but i disagree with it. only arguing for wages and higher wages is purely immanent and reformist, it cannot go beyond facebook and capitalism. it makes facebook less exploitative, but does not question exploitation as such. therefore, i think we need to foster initiatives that channel resources towards non-capitalist media projects. one idea for this is taxing advertising and capital in general to a higher degree and using participatory budgeting for channelling such income to non-commercial media. i call this policy perspective the “participatory social media fee” (see fuchs, 2015b). it combines state action and civil society action, the public, and the commons. we need a renewed left, which means in the end a renewed social democracy in the sense that rosa luxemburg understood social democracy, and as part of it we need left-wing media politics. socialism is not an idea of the past, but a democratic idea for the future. references fisher, e. and christian f., eds. (2015). reconsidering value and labour in the digital age. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity | 277 fuchs, c. and r. zimmermann. (2009). practical civil virtues in cyberspace: towards the utopian identity of civitas and multitudo. munich: shaker. fuchs, c. (2014a). digital labour and karl marx. new york: routledge. fuchs, c. (2014b). occupymedia!: the occupy movement and social media in crisis capitalism. winchester, uk: zero books. fuchs, c. (2015a). culture and economy in the age of social media. new york: routledge. fuchs, c. (2015b). left-wing media politics and the advertising tax: reflections on astra taylor’s book ‘the people’s platform: taking back power and culture in the digital age’. triplec: communication, capitalism & critique, 13(1), 1-4. http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/triplec/article/view/661 fuchs, c. (2015c). reflections on todd wolfson’s book digital rebellion: the birth of the cyber left. triplec: communication, capitalism & critique, 13(1), 163-168. http://www.triplec.at/index.php/triplec/article/view/689 fuchs, c. (2016). reading marx in the information age: a media and communication studies perspective on capital, volume 1. new york: routledge. garnham, n. (1995a). political economy and cultural studies: reconciliation or divorce? critical studies in mass communication, 12(1), 62-7. garnham, n. (1995b). reply to grossberg and carey. critical studies in mass communication, 12 (1), 95-100. garnham, n. and c. fuchs. revisiting the political economy of communication. triplec: communication, capitalism & critique, 12(1), 102-141. http://www.triplec.at/index.php/triplec/article/view/553 278 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages grossberg, l. (1995). cultural studies vs. political economy: is anybody else bored with this debate?” critical studies in mass communication, 12(1), 72-81. lent, j. and m. amazeen, eds. (2015). key thinkers in communication scholarship. new york: palgrave macmillan. marx, karl. (1990). capital volume i. ben fowkes, trans. new york: penguin. o’brien, d. (2015, june 28). culture and economy in the age of social media: christian fuchs. http://newbooksincriticaltheory.com/2015/06/28/christian-fuchsculture-and-economy-in-the-age-of-social-media-routledge-2015/ smythe, d. (1977). “communications: a blindspot of western marxism.” canadian journal of political and social theory, 1(3), 1-27. toffler, a. (1980). the third wave. new york: bantam. wolfson, t. (2014). digital rebellion: the birth of the cyber left. chicago: university of illinois press. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review utopia or bust: a guide to the present crisis, by benjamin kunkel. new york: verso, 2014. $14.95 u.s., paper. isbn: 978-1-78168-327-9. pages: 1-180. reviewed by caleb wellum.1 benjamin kunkel’s utopia or bust: a guide to the present crisis is a punchy primer on recent marxist thought. it consists of six essays of varying lengths, each of which engages with the work of a contemporary intellectual on the left. kunkel wrote the essays between 2010 and 2013 in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and previously published each in either the london review of books, n + 1, or the new statesmen. the language and tone of these essays exudes a sense of urgency befitting the context of their composition. they are clearly and purposefully written, perhaps explaining verso’s decision to publish them as a short book in its jacobin series, which is designed to engage the ideas and intellectual history of the left for a popular audience. kunkel is well-suited to the task of popularization. he is a gifted writer and novelist who has become something of a marxist public intellectual of late. his goal is to provide an entryway into marxism for people who know “little about [it] beyond its reputation as debunked economics and totalitarian politics,” but who are disenchanted with global capitalism after the recent financial crisis and want “to look into the matter for themselves” (kunkel 19). kunkel defines marxism as a body of thought that analyzes capitalism as a system in order to transcend it. it asks important questions about the history of capitalism and class struggle, the relations between different classes and the state, and the ways in which culture reflects the economic conditions of its creation. the essays in utopia or bust, however, focus mainly on economics and culture, setting aside politics, ecology, gender, race, and religion. kunkel acknowledges their limited, idiosyncratic scope and supplements them with a brief bibliographic essay. although kunkel composed the essays in utopia or bust separately, there are a few threads that run through the book that comprise its argument. the first is that only contemporary marxism offers a systematic and compelling analysis of capitalism, so people looking to understand the current financial crisis would do well to read marxist analyses. indeed, kunkel is driven by the conviction that this is a propitious moment for marxists to popularize their views to a disgruntled citizenry. the second thread is the idea that “the left,” which kunkel generally equates with marxism, “needs to supplement its anti-capitalism with a basic conception of another order” (kunkel, 16). it needs to reclaim and articulate a vision of utopia to drive a post-capitalist transition. in this, the book seems to be talking more to people already on board with a broadly marxist perspective than to curious citizens looking for a way understand their world. nevertheless, by introducing a broad readership to key ideas in marxist analysis, interspersed with his own assessments and reflections, kunkel hopes to “contribute something by way of intellectual orientation to the project of replacing...capitalism...with another, better order” (kunkel, 2). 1 ph.d. candidate, department of history, university of toronto. email: caleb.wellum@mail.utoronto.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the first four essays in utopia or bust introduce some of the main contours of contemporary marxist thought through appreciations of leftist thinkers who kunkel admires: geographer david harvey, cultural theorist fredric jameson, historian robert brenner, and anthropologist david graeber. the first essay explores “marxian crisis theory” to redress what kunkel sees as a lamentable gap in popular accounts of the financial crisis, despite media lip service to marx “as a neglected seer of capitalist crisis” (kunkel, 23-24). although he discusses several thinkers, most of the essay unpacks david harvey’s work, particularly his 2010 the enigma of capital, which kunkel praises for correctly diagnosing the present financial crisis. the essay offers a succinct, marxian definition of “crisis” and outlines harvey’s spatial analysis of capitalist “overaccumulation.” the second essay moves from economics to consider fredric jameson and the practice of marxist cultural analysis, defined as the effort to “recover the relationship between a given object...and the total historical situation underneath and all around it” (kunkel, 55). this approach has certainly been influential in humanities departments over the past thirty years, but kunkel spends most of the essay defending jameson from accusations of irrelevance and obscurantism rather than applying his insights to the present crisis. the third and fourth essays return to economics and history by way of robert brenner and david graeber. the former uses brenner’s the economics of global turbulence to argue that the current financial crisis is best understood in the context of a long downturn that began in the 1970s, which kunkel attributes to inadequate wages before briefly outlining principles for full employment in the future. the latter essay summarizes graeber’s history of debt, noting how capitalism institutionalizes monetary debt, which it enforces by violence. the chapter ends with a call for the left to imagine “credit systems and monetary authorities” for a post-capitalist world free of inequality rooted in debt (kunkel, 134). the final chapters of utopia or bust pivot from appreciation to critique with essays on the slovenian philosopher slavoj žižek and art scholar borys groys. kunkel praises žižek’s analysis of ideology for showing why it is so difficult to imagine a world after capitalism, but criticizes his persistent vagueness about the shape of a possible post-capitalist system. the essay on groys similarly questions the political utility of its subject’s work, concluding his work is “an occasion to remember” that a “revolution in culture” must accompany any wider political or economic revolution. utopia must be both plausible and cultural if it is to have any chance of political success. kunkel writes clearly and succinctly about complex ideas, but this achievement can interfere with his goals. for instance, if utopia or bust is to introduce to marxist analysis to frustrated citizens looking for a way to understand the financial crisis, it needs to offer better answers to common objections to marxism. kunkel often mentions the derision that marxism has endured, particularly since the end of the cold war, and its roots in the historical failures of communist regimes in the soviet union, china, and elsewhere. kunkel dismisses these charges rather abruptly, never offering even a hint of a convincing response. if kunkel wants to convince a broad audience to integrate marxist analysis into their political views, it would be helpful to propose concise answers to such objections. the same is true for the idea of utopia, which is similarly derided in mainstream discourse as dangerously impossible. finally, because these are separate essays, the reader is forced to figure out how they bear as a whole on the present financial crisis. the introduction clearly introduces kunkel’s purpose, but after reading these wide ranging essays, it would have been helpful to have a conclusion that suggests some points of cohesion. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research these criticisms aside, utopia or bust is a lively and readable account of recent marxist thought that deserves a wide audience. kunkel covers a lot of ground in few pages with verve and clarity, often conjuring memorable phrases to characterize the ideas and impact of the thinkers that he profiles. although the essays on jameson and žižek evade detailed discussion, most of the essays effectively outline the most important contributions of each scholar, showing how their ideas bear on the present. neophytes wanting an accessible introduction to a marxist perspective on the financial crisis, or to the contributions of the scholars that the book covers, will benefit from reading utopia or bust. graduate students and experts will find a thought-provoking refresher, and a challenge to move from critique to building a better society. although kunkel may be hardpressed to convert skeptics, his book raises important questions about vital issues that ought to preoccupy all engaged citizens. book review nationalism by ernest gellner nationalism. ernest gellner. london: weidenfeld & nicolson, 1997, 114 pp. antonio sorge ernest gellner's last book, nationalism, was published posthumously in the final months of 1997, and provides a refinement of his erudite account of the origins of nationalism. it is his last word on this phenomenon, the study of which occupied much of his intellectual energy since his groundbreaking nations and nationalism (1983). nationalism, according to gellner, is a product of the forces of modernity, and is generated from a set of socio-political complexities which flow from industrial organisation. nationalism, he argues, arises in the third stage of human history, which he calls the "scientific-industrial" stage. the two previous stages are the "hunting and gathering" and the "agro-literate." the understanding that nationalism is a modern phenomenon which is not present in the two previous stages is contextualised within gellner's conjectural (though reasoned) history of humankind, as presented in his plough, sword, and book: the structure ofhuman history (1988). this history posits the preconditions for the transfiguration of one type of social order and its progression into another, until we arrive at the modern era. gellner's latest work can be better appreciated with an understanding of this broader framework, which is briefly discussed in the third chapter of nationalism, "a short history of mankind," but which will not be provided here for purposes of brevity. the refinement of gellner's ideas on nationalism can be alternate routes, volume 14, 1997 © found in his discussion of particular "stages," "time zones," and the "stage of morality" within which it emerges. before discussing these, he sets forth two broad scenarios, which are both particulars of a type of social order: the first is conducive to the emergence of nationalism, and the other not. in his own words, the first is one "in which a mobile anonymous mass of participants share the same "high" culture, relatively free of internal nuances, but linked to the political boundaries of the unit with which it is identified" (31). the second is "an agrarian social order in which differences and nuances of culture underwrite a complex system of statuses, but do not indicate limits of political units" (31). it is in the former ideal-type that we witness the emergence of the principle of nationalism, which holds that nation and state should coincide. violation of this principle is a violation of the normative "right" to self-rule, or political sovereignty. the transition from the first type of order to the second is schematised in five stages. these stages are largely inspired ^% by the central european experience, in which the progression towards a normative formulation of nationalism emerged through specific historical eras. the first of these stages was the congress of vienna of 1814-1815, in which the map of europe was redrawn following napoleon's defeat. the last stage is the "attainment of national feeling," essentially the establishment of a normative order in which the citizens of any one discrete political entity "speak the same [political] language" as the citizens of neighbouring states: the language of nationalism (47). the stages in between are the "the age of irredentism," "the age of versailles and wilson," and "ethnic cleansing." it should be noted, however, that not all types of nationalism necessarily need to pass through all five stages, and since reality is more complex than to be effectively explained by five-stage models, gellner introduces the notion of time zones. the four time zones of nationalism account for the variation in forms of state and culture bonds. these time zones proceed from west to east. the first time zone consists of the atlantic fringe of europe and those societies distributed along it. these societies have had a long history of dynastic states ruling over peoples who were more or less culturally homogenous, or at least formed coherent "cultural-linguistic zones" (51) which coincided with these states, consisting of portugal, spain, france, and england. the coming of the "age of nationalism" required no great changes for these societies, since state and culture already roughly coincided. proceeding east, we have the second time zone, in which nationalism was of a unificatory variety. the particular cases here are germany and italy, which already had the high cultures requisite of the national state, but had no history of state-culture congruity. the third time zone is found within eastern europe, including those regions like the volga bend, the caucasus, the balkans, and much of central asia, where neither cultural homogeneity nor national states were ever present. in these regions, the normative "one state-one culture" model of legitimacy typical of nationalist politics would lead to a type of nation-building whereby to attain national unity, an ^^ inexorable process of ethnic cleansing would need to happen, in which a significant amount of cultural and social engineering would result in violence and brutality. the fourth time zone is that area of eastern europe placed under soviet influence and which developed into the successor states of the former soviet union. nationalism in these locales benefitted from the soviet defeat in the economic cold war, and decisively contributed to the decline of communism once this happened. as we can see from this description, the varieties of nationalism differ considerably, however the mainstay of gellner's argument is the essential modernity of the phenomenon of nationalism, for which industrial society remains ever responsible. we are still reminded of the modernity of the whole process in his discussion of the islamic world as constituting the fifth time zone. throughout islam secularisation, the separation of religion from political life, is often not seen to occur. rather, the historic tension found in the muslim world between "high" and "low" variants of islam often gives way to the establishment of a hegemony of the islam of clerics and scholars. in other words, a normative, "high" islamic, or the "great," tradition, as opposed to the folk tradition with its saint cults and brotherhoods, would prevail and become the normative form of political identity. the only thing essentially distinguishing the islamic world's nationalism (by the use of the term "nationalism" in this context, gellner presumably means "islamic fundamentalism") from european nationalism is the lack of severance between faith and culture. the historical circumstances leading to the emergence of nationalism are encompassed within gellner's "stages of morality," otherwise expressed as the ethos or socio-philosophical orientations of any given period. regardless of the various shapes and forms it may assume, or the idioms through which it may be expressed, nationalism is typical of a given stage of human history—the scientific-industrial—and of the morality of this stage. ifpfr the first of these consists of the morality of "my station and its duties." then comes the enlightenment, and then the backlash of romanticism, which is the atmosphere within which nationalism emerges in early modern europe. my station and its duties corresponds to the agrarian world, and it entails that one's identity and source of fulfilment to be "linked to his occupancy of a place in a stable and hierarchical social order" (63). neither ethnicity nor nationality are present in considerations of the legitimacy of the hierarchical socio-political order, and although cultural variation is generally present "between the various entrenched and sacral ised strata," (63) such does not define the limits of political units, nor is it tied to any understanding of either the content or validating myth of morality. the enlightenment was to launch an attack upon this morality, incidentally summed up by marx in his phrase "the idiocy of rural life" (60). the universalist and individualist ethic of the enlightenment held sacred the principle that human obligations and sources of fulfilment flow from our shared humanity, and not our status held in place by "superstition and... phoney reasoning" (64). however, by its logic this universalist ethic, which would have us draw no objective distinction among peoples or allow no group's valorisation over another, was also offensive in its rationalisation of our shared humanity and human sentiment. immanuel kant's version of rationality was especially offensive in that it, for example, would have us believe that even the emotion of love amounts to benevolence for the sake of duty (66). this intrusion into realms that people hold most sacred, like personal love and self-sacrifice, would precipitate a romanticist backlash. romanticism, especially its political variant, "valued and praised feeling [as opposed to reason] and specificity [as opposed to universality]—above all, cultural specificity" (67, emphasis in original). human relationships, and thus society, are not logically reducible to a biological organism which can be scrutinised by reason, and nor is everyone the same, but it is our diversity which is the source of our humanity. from within the romantic age emerged the great expositors of the nationalist ^ft ideal, beginning in germany with the poet friedrich schiller, and then the nationalist johann gottfried von herder (66-68). the emergence of nationalism is then contingent upon, on the one hand, the transition to modernity and the logic of industrialism and, on the other, the underpinnings of the prevailing philosophical currents. in chapter 15, "do nations have navels?", which has its point of origin at a debate with anthony smith which was held at warwick university in october 1995, gellner assumes his stand on the question concerning the divergence between primordialists and modernists on the issue of nationalism. modernists and primordialists operate from widely divergent premises. modernists believe that "nations", as they are conceived by nationalists, are the product of social forces inhering in the modern world, whereas primordialists believe that nations are given, and that the differences between, and the distinctive "characters" of, nations have deep roots, which have existed since time immemorial. if, gellner posits, using the biblical analogy of adam's navel, nations are born of the forces of modernity—as they generally are—then most nations have navels thrust upon them by their modern nationalist leaders. this is not to say that gellner repudiates primordialism entirely. however he does point out that nations which have a genuinely historical (read primordial) navel (read existence) are few, and that european nationalist thinkers have decreed that all nations must be endowed with a navel to coincide with discrete political entities. what, we may well ask, are the practical implications of gellner's rather meandering thesis, or its ramifications for the modern world? moreover, what might be the possible alternatives to a world rife with ethnic conflict, and the suffering which nationalism often entails? the world has changed, in the latter half of the twentieth century, to the point where we are left with few alternatives in dealing with this predicament. if, as gellner suggests, nationalism is not "a consequence of some universal tft% territorial or kin drive" (103), but is rather produced by the confluence of certain elements in the transition to the modern world, can its potential destructiveness and the suffering it brings be attenuated? gellner answers the question in the affirmative, but suggests it would require a fair dose of cooperative political will on an international scale. an explanation of this should be contextual ised within the scope gellner's liberal-democratic ideals. like most conservatives, he views continuity and stability as conducive to peace. the flip side of the coin, of course, would be great social upheavals and discontinuities leading to strife which, in our modern world, often is of an ethnic variety. the strife afflicting the former soviet or yugoslav republics is a good example of this. next, affluence, or the belief in its immanent arrival, largely dissuades people from engaging in "violent conduct which will disrupt their world" (106). the probability of violent conflict is much higher in circumstances where a group's situation is deteriorating, not to mention desperate. greater local autonomy (or cantonisation), on the one hand, and greater ultimate political units, on the other, may well simultaneously flow from advanced industrialism. the reason, partly, is that the proliferation of the know-how for creating destructive nuclear and biological weapons gives rise to a need for "effective central control [that] can avert either ecological catastrophe or the use of effective blackmail by small groups willing and able to impose terrible punishment on those not complying with their dictates" (106). thus, "the agencies preventing nuclear and ecological disaster, controlling the drugs and arms trades, and so on, will have to be super-ethnic, while the agency administering the school and welfare system may become sub-ethnic" (107). the development of "non-territorial cultural associations" and the "de-fetishisation" of land, along with a "de-territorialisation" of nationalism are the final components of his prescription. we are left to see whether this is liable to ever occur, and we are also left wondering whether or how such arrangements could be established without actually precipitating the troubles ^ft we want to avoid in the first place. in the final analysis, however, nationalism has many praiseworthy qualities. the central argument's clarity makes it quite appealing. at the same time, its seeming simplicity incorporates a richness of insight and explanatory skill. gellner presents a rather complex and engrossing account of a rather complex phenomenon and problem, and succeeds. his lucid prose clearly illustrates the highly contingent nature of nationalism, and its variations through both time and space. the overall model is a coherent one which any student of nationalism would do well to take as a guide in any application to actual historical cases, and to allow to be appraised and refined through such applications. book review: resisting the state | 443 book review resisting the state: canadian history through the stories of activists, by scott neigh. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing, 2012. $24.95 can, paper. usbn: 978-1-55266-520-6. pages: 1-227. reviewed by amanda joy1 resisting the state is one of two books in which author scott neigh explores the history of canadian social justice activism through the experiences of longtime organizers. the second book focuses on issues of gender and sexuality, while resisting the state is organized around movements targeting the state in some way, such as anti-poverty work, immigration policy and anti-racism. neigh refers to his approach as “history from below”: whereas we normally learn history from the top down, focusing on elites, institutions and “great men,” he argues that it is not only the powerful who create social and political change. instead, he shows us the course of history as collectively made through the struggles of regular people in both big and small ways. neigh introduces his readers to eight activists in six chapters. these include isabel and frank showler, a couple of pacifists whose radical christian beliefs led them to resist the second world war; charles roach, a trinidadian-canadian lawyer who repeatedly challenged racism and colonialism in the course of his work; and lynn jones, a labour activist who fought racism from within the labour movement. we also meet kathy mallett and roger obonsawin, who have worked with indigenous communities and families in canadian cities, bringing leadership to friendship centres and other indigenous-led organizations; don weitz, an anti-psychiatry activist who helped to develop a radical antipsychiatry magazine; and josephine grey, a human rights activist who has worked with and on behalf of poor communities in ontario. neigh’s approach to telling these stories is to use individual biographies as “nodes” from which to tease out “strands” that can be followed to investigate the social relations in which they are embedded. each chapter begins with relevant context on the historical moment 1  amanda joy (amanda.joy@carleton.ca) is a phd candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university, ottawa. her research interests include canadian social movements, anarchism, political anthropology and hiv/aids activism. she has an ma in sustainable development from chiang mai university, thailand. 444 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education in canadian society and politics, including both an explanation of the problems that the activist is struggling against, as well as the theoretical underpinnings needed to give insight into their perspective and actions. for example, in the chapter on lynn jones, neigh gives a brief history of black nova scotians, followed by some background on slavery and how capitalism has organizes different “kinds” of people to do different types of work; he then discusses race, gender and work in the canadian context. he approaches social theory at an introductory level, incorporating critiques of nationalism, colonialism, capitalism and racism into his historical narratives. neigh writes in solidarity with his subjects by describing them and their struggles in their own terms. while he comes from a radical, antiauthoritarian perspective, his subjects come from a more diverse range of viewpoints and backgrounds. some work from within state systems to effect concrete changes for their communities, and others organize from outside, and in opposition to, the state. the majority of the activists profiled have been involved in either grassroots community organizing or in organizing through official channels, such as the legal system, while only a couple were involved in protest and direct action organizing. the choice of who to include in the book seems to be guided by a desire for a diversity of movements, regions and identities, and in this respect neigh is quite successful. neigh’s approach is reflexive, continually positioning himself by relaying his own autobiography and learning process as it relates to each chapter. in the chapter on josephine grey’s anti-poverty work, neigh describes his own middle-class upbringing, his relationship to money, and how he came to learn about poverty through his activist involvement. he makes himself and his own journey present in his writing, and in the process invites readers to evaluate their own positions in relation to power and oppression. because these stories span decades of activist organizing, neigh is able to detail not only some inspiring victories, but also the ebb and flow of movements over time, including what happens when movements fizzle out. in chapter 3, indigenous activist kathy mallett describes how making gains can be a double-edged sword, contributing to complacency or causing the community to lose focus. similarly, in chapter 4, lynn jones describes the difficulty of engaging a community in struggle over the long term, particularly when people are putting in a lot of volunteer work; in her case, people began to burn out after achieving a significant book review: resisting the state | 445 victory. for activists, there are important lessons to be learned from the histories described here, both from victories and failures. one criticism is that the scope and intent of the book does not appear to match up with what neigh actually delivers. although the book’s introduction frames the project as offering an alternative canadian history, what neigh delivers is a partial history of struggle against the canadian state, told through the stories of a collection of activists and organizers. a narrowed scope would help to keep the stories in focus and prevent the book from seeming fragmented. the book would also benefit from a more thorough discussion of what ties the chapters together, and of what is uncovered by studying activist history “from below.” for example, how is this perspective more insightful than what is offered by “top-down” historians? it would be nice to see neigh in conversation with other scholars for this reason, but direct engagement with other historians is notably absent. neigh’s greatest strength and contribution is in personalizing important moments in the history of resistance in canada. the personalities of the profiled activists, most of whom are now seniors, shine through in neigh’s writing, and this makes for engaging reading. scholars of canadian history or activism may find neigh’s personal approach to these subjects a refreshing change from a more top-down history, while remaining accessible to social justice activists providing insights from prior generations. book review: paved with good intentions | 439 book review paved with good intentions: canada’s development ngos from idealism to imperialism by nikolas barry-shaw and dru oja jay. black point, nova scotia: fernwood publishing, 2012. $24.95 can, paper. isbn: 978-1-55266399-8. pages: 1-303. reviewed by madalena santos1 paved with good intentions provides a critical perspective on the negative impacts of canadian non-governmental organization (ngo) projects in relation to achieving the goals of equality and social justice in countries that are not considered to be part of the west (i.e.: canada, the united states, or western europe), or what the authors refer to as the “global south.” citing various studies from ngo specialists such as sangeeta kanat and michael edwards, james petras, eboe hutchful, mike davis, laura macdonald, tina wallace, and arundhati roy, the authors situate their work within an anti/decolonial framework that seeks to achieve social justice from the bottom up. they examine the power of donors in controlling the direction and focus of development ngos, which they contend reinforce colonial legacies of resource extraction and genocidal policies in the name of benevolence. the authors provide a nuanced yet perhaps contentious view of ngo work suggesting ngos have become at best toothless critics which define the limits of dissent, and at worst proponents of canadian imperial interventions. they distinguish between development ngos and humanitarian ngos, although they devote less space to the latter. in their view, humanitarian ngos provide assistance for short periods of relief efforts such as during natural disasters, for example, while development ngos try to alter the fundamental ways in which societies are organized. in their own words: “we consider development ngos to be distinct from humanitarian agencies. humanitarian action seeks to alleviate episodic instances of suffering, whereas development work seeks to address the root causes of poverty” (14). 1  madalena santos is a phd candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university. 440 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education going further, barry-shaw and oja jay define development ngos as “professionalized, non-profit organizations that depend on cida [canadian international development agency] for funding and whose primary aim is to permanently remedy poverty in the third world” (13). yet while the stated goal of these ngos is to eliminate poverty, the authors show how development ngos often present a paternalistic view of poverty that is unconcerned with power relations and structural or systemic change, but instead emphasizes the individualized goals of “empowerment” and “participation” through projects such as microcredit financing that are closely tied to neoliberal market reforms. they explain how neoliberal ideology promotes greater economic liberalization, privatization, free trade, open markets, deregulation, and reductions in government spending in the public sector in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy. they claim that the work of development ngos not only fails to link development to state politics and ideology, but also disrupts local grassroots activism that attempts to effect transformational change through efforts such as wealth redistribution. in short, they argue that ngos obscure their own role in implementing neoliberal reform through what they call the political project of “ngoization” or “privatization by ngo” (44). over the course of ten chapters, paved with good intentions covers a number of areas in the study and analysis of ngos offering a succinct history of ngos in canada that traces changes within the goals and aspirations of ngos to foreign policy and the geopolitical climate of the day from the fear of communism to the rise and continuance of neoliberal policies and the link to western imperial military interventions. using a structural analysis that examines the underlying systems and methods of development, the authors convincingly argue what they understand as the myth of the benevolent canadian ngo, which they contend has never existed. the authors draw attention to the dependence of ngos on government financial support, which now sees the typical development ngo relying on federal funding for over 50% of its annual budget (59). according to barry-shaw and oja jay, the increase in government money for development work limits and at times prevents ngos from critiquing the canadian state, in particular canada’s foreign state policies. tracing the origin of development ngos in canada to the cold war era of the 1950s, barry-shaw and oja jay provide the historical context for the current growth of neoliberal policies and free trade agreements. the ongoing era of “globalization,” which the authors contend is really a euphemism for capitalistic expansion, has increased ngo book review: paved with good intentions | 441 bureaucratization and collaboration with the state, as well as the simultaneous suppression of social justice and anticapitalist activists. barry-shaw and dru ojay discuss the radicalization of ngos during the 1960s and 1970s, which saw projects put into practice based on a frierian pedagogical approach concerned with the “uprooting of unjust political and economic structures and systems” (144). they show how this period of radical development was stifled through government cuts to funding in the 1980s furthering the depoliticization of resistance and the relationship of dependency of the global south on the global north through clientalism and the cooptation of development projects. the professionalization of ngo projects, the authors go on to argue, helps to maintain or create an educated minority of middle and upper class elite who are not interested in change that would redistribute wealth and make structural and systemic transformations to relations of power that would actually eliminate poverty. much of the money spent on ngo “development” for instance goes to training and the institutionalization of projects rather than going directly to beneficiaries. moreover, they point out how ngo workers from the global north who work in the global south reinforce colonial relations where race, class, and gender play a significant role in establishing and maintaining relations of social and economic privilege (42). the book offers concrete examples of the destructive outcomes of development ngos in a number of countries, including haiti, palestine, honduras, afghanistan, and bangladesh. the authors discuss how development ngos have not only been ineffective in making the substantial changes needed to create more equitable and just societies in the global south, but have actually lead to greater violence and injustice in these countries through support and imposition of corrupt regimes. they present haiti as an extreme yet significant example of the connection between development ngos, the neoliberal goals of canada, france, and the us, and the violent criminalization and marginalization of popular dissent. in this case, they detail how the canadian government helped to overthrow the democratically elected and popularly supported president aristide through the use of military force while providing ngos with the funds necessary to undermine aristide’s popular fanmi lavalas movement, which was overwhelmingly supported by the haitian poor who form the majority of haiti’s population. while more needs to be said about the neocolonial legacy of ngo development and the exacerbation of colonial legacies in the global north, paved with good intentions underscores the possibilities for transformational change that can come 442 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education about through solidarity work that centres the aims and strategies of people working for justice and recognizes the connections between the struggles of peoples across international borders. marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 21 marx’s theory of working-class precariousness – and its relevance today r. jamil jonna and john bellamy foster abstract: worker precariousness has become a major issue globally. much of this, however, is divorced from the central role that this concept played in marx’s critique of political economy. this article traces the notion of precarious labor back to its classical roots in historical materialism, including marx’s general law of accumulation and his reserve army of labor conception. it then examines related work of such important marxian political economists as harry braverman and stephen hymer. utilizing these theoretical foundations and data from the international labor organization, empirical estimates are provided of the extent of the global reserve army today. keywords: marx, braverman, reserve army of labor, precarious, precariat in the last decade and a half the concept of worker precariousness has gained renewed currency among social scientists (e.g. barbier, 2004; vosko, 2000; fudge and owens, 2006). this intensified after the great financial crisis of 2007-09 (vosko 2010; kalleberg 2011; kalleberg, 2012; olsthoorn, 2014; allison, 2013; fashoyin et al., 2013; fudge and strauss, 2013), which left in its wake a period of deep economic stagnation that persists to this day in large parts of the global economy. most investigators define worker precariousness by reference to what workers lack: access to work; protection from arbitrary firing; possibility for advancement; longterm employment; adequate safety; development of new skills; adequate income; and union representation (see standing, 2011, 10). the origin of the concept of worker “precariousness” is often traced to pierre bourdieu’s early work on algeria (bourdieu, 1963). yet investigators routinely pass over bourdieu’s own mature reflections on the concept (bourdieu, 1999, 81-87). bourdieu connected the notion directly to karl marx’s analysis of the reserve army of labor. “precariousness,” for bourdieu (1999, 82), is present when “the existence of a large reserve army…helps to give all those in work the sense that they are in no way irreplaceable.” in line with marx’s conceptions of the floating, stagnant and pauperized populations constituting the industrial reserve army, bourdieu (1999, 83), associated precariousness with what he called the “subproletariat.” however, he tended to see a disjuncture between such 22 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages “subproletarians” and the “proletariat,” with the latter defined by the stability necessary to initiate a “revolutionary project.” as a concept, worker precariousness is far from new. it has a long history in socialist thought, where it was associated from the start with the concept of the reserve army of labor. it was first introduced by frederick engels in his treatment of the industrial reserve army in the condition of the working class in england ([1845] 1993).1 marx and engels employed it in this same context in the communist manifesto (1848). later it became a key element in marx’s analysis of the industrial reserve army in volume i of capital ([1867] 1976). early marxian theorists, notably william morris, were to extend this analysis, explicitly rooting much their critique of capital in the concept of “precariousness.” the concept of precariousness was thus integrally related to the marxian critique. it was to gain added significance in the 1970s, in the work of marxian theorists such as harry braverman and stephen hymer, who explored the relation of surplus labor to the conditions of monopoly capitalism and the internationalization of capital. for many years, marx’s ([1867] 1976, 762-870) analysis of the “general law of capitalist accumulation,” which had pointed to conditions of growing precariousness with respect to employment and to the relative impoverishment of the laboring population, was dismissed by mainstream social scientists (see the discussions in rosldosky, 1977, 300-07; 012, 127; foster and mcchesney, 2012, 125; fracchia, 2008). in recent years, however, the notion of precariousness as a general condition of working class life has been rediscovered. yet, this is commonly treated in the eclectic, reductionist, ahistorical fashion, characteristic of today’s social sciences and humanities, where it is disconnected from the larger theory of accumulation derived from marx and the entire socialist tradition. the result is a set of scattered observations about what are seen as largely haphazard developments. some critical social scientists, most notably former international labour organization economist guy standing (2011), employ the neologism “precariat” to refer to a new class of (mostly younger) workers who experience all of the main dimensions of precariousness (see standing, 2011, 7). as french sociologist béatrice appay (2010, 34) explains, the term precariat “emanates from a contraction of the words ‘precarious’ and ‘proletariat.’ it regroups the unemployed and the 1 engels had initially introduced the reserve army perspective, though in less developed form, in his “outlines of a critique of political economy” in 1843 (marx and engels 1975, vol. 3, 438, 443). marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 23 precarious (manual and intellectual) workers in struggle in all sectors of activity.” since marx himself defined the proletariat as a class characterized by precariousness, the term precariat is often no more than a fashionable and mistaken substitute for proletariat itself (in marx’s sense) – or else is employed to refer to a subcategory of the proletariat, i.e., the “subproletariat.” this resembles earlier theorizations of the “underclass” as a separate entity divorced from the working class (wilson, 1987). in these various formulations, the notion of the precariat is often contrasted to what is characterized as an overly rigidified concept of the proletariat – the latter defined as a formal, stable industrial workforce of the employed, usually organized in trade unions (a notion, however, far removed from marx’s classical definition of the proletariat). radical french sociologist loïc wacquant (2007, 72-73) suggests that “contrary to the proletariat in the marxist vision of history, which is called upon to abolish itself in the long run by uniting and universalizing itself, the precariat can only make itself to immediately unmake itself” – meaning that its only choices are to join the formal workforce and obtain “stable wages” or to escape “form the world of work altogether.” for wacquant the growth of working-class precariousness is a movement toward “deproletarianization rather than toward proletarian unification.” the fact that marx himself presented the conditions of the working-class primarily in terms of the precariousness of working-class employment and existence – a fact we shall elucidate below – is here missed altogether. instead the concept of precariat is being advanced as an alternative to proletariat, often in order to suggest the impossibility of a worker-based revolutionary project in contemporary conditions, in the tradition of andre gorz’s ([1980] 2001) proclamation of farewell to the working class.2 2 the separation of the concepts of precariat, precariousness, precarity off from the proletariat, so that they are frequently counterposed to the latter can be seen in some influential feminist accounts as well. feminist theorist judith butler (2013) uses “precariat” to refer to “a group of people who are not only exploited workers, but whose labor is now regarded as dispensable,” closely related to marx’s industrial reserve army (but not presented in those terms). the implication is that this serves to set the precariat off from the parts of the workforce that experience greater security (i.e. the proletariat) in sharp distinction to marx who saw the proletariat as the working class as a whole. butler, moreover, implies (incorrectly) that marx’s proletariat can be viewed in narrow economic terms. she thus seeks to distinguish the precariat from the proletariat by referring to the precariat as those who also “are targeted by war or are living in regions that have been decimated by development,” ascribing to them the general inhuman condition that marx and engels identified with the proletariat. separating “precariousness” from both labor and the proletariat, butler describes precariousness as “a general feature of embodied life,” applicable to widely differing social situations, and sees “precarity” as an “amplification” of this “embodied” state of instability. 24 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages according to socialist critic richard seymour in “we are all precarious,” “the ‘precariat’ is not a class, and its widespread acceptance as a cultural meme in dissident, leftist culture has nothing to do with the claim that it is. rather, it is a particular kind of populist identification, one that “operates on a real, critical antagonism in today’s capitalism”: the growth on a world scale of an increasingly flexible work force, characterized by unemployment, underemployment, and temporary, contingent employment (seymour 2012). in contrast to such varied discursive views emanating primarily from the postmodernist-influenced left, establishment sociologists typically conceptualize worker precariousness in more prosaic terms as nothing more than a widening gulf between “good jobs” and “bad jobs” (kalleberg, reskin, and hudson, 2000; kalleberg 2011). moreover, there is a strong tendency to adopt a corporatist view in which the goal is to reestablish a “social contract between organized labor and organized capital” (kalleberg, 2012, 440). the object in other words is to regulate working conditions in order to shift back from informal to formal labor. this is naturally associated with the decline of organized labor (see quinlan, 2012, 16). but such surface, reformist analyses rarely explore the historical dynamics with respect to capital accumulation involved in the resurgence of precariousness in the center of the capitalist world economy. in general, conventional social scientists lack the analytical tools to address a phenomenon rooted in the intrinsic character of capital accumulation. century-long conceptual blinders stand in the way. in the face of such a confusion of views, the majority of which are nothing but ad hoc responses to what is seen as a separate and separable social problem, it is necessary to turn back to the classical marxian tradition where the issue of precariousness was first raised, examining the structural relation of precariousness to capitalism, and how this has changed in time. here the ideas of marx, engels, and morris in the nineteenth century, and those of later thinkers harry braverman, stephen hymer, and samir amin are indispensable. on the basis of the analytical frameworks provided by these thinkers, it is possible to look at the empirical dimensions of worker precariousness both in the united states and globally, and to arrive at definite conclusions about the evolution of capital accumulation and worker precariousness in our time, and its effect on the current epochal crisis. marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 25 engels, marx, and morris and the origins of the concept of precarious labor the theoretical construct of worker precariousness tied to the industrial reserve army of labor had its origin, as indicated, in classical historical materialism, particularly in the work of engels, marx, and morris. in the condition of the working class in england, engels ([1845] 1993, 149) wrote: “every new advance brings with it loss of employment, want, and suffering, and in a country like england, where, without that, there is usually a ‘surplus population,’ to be discharged from work is the worst that can befall the operative. and what a dispiriting, unnerving influence this uncertainty of his position in life, consequent upon the unceasing progress of machinery, must exercise upon the worker, whose lot is precarious enough without it!”3 the working class’s general condition thus can be described in terms of precariousness, where the constant threat of being thrown into the “surplus population” of the unemployed and underemployed only intensifies. for engels ([1845] 1993, 96) this was an integral part of the theory of an “unemployed reserve army of labor” that constituted the whole basis for bourgeois exploitation of the proletariat. in the communist manifesto, marx and engels ([1848] 1964, 17, 72) followed this same line of thought, stating that “the growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial cries, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. the unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious.” it was in capital, however, that marx was to develop fully the theory of the reserve army of labor, and with it a theory of the precariousness of working-class livelihood and working-class life itself. in explaining the general law of accumulation marx ([1867] 1976, 798) stated, “the law by which a constantly increasing quantity of means of production may be set in motion by a progressively diminishing expenditure of human power, thanks to the advance in the productivity of social labour, undergoes a complete inversion [under capitalism], and is expressed thus: the higher the productivity of labour, the greater is the pressure of the workers on the means of employment, the more precarious therefore becomes the condition for their existence, namely the sale of their own labour-power for the increase of alien wealth.” a few pages earlier he stated, similarly, “the more alien wealth they [the workers] produce, and…the more the productivity of their labour increases, the more does their very function as 3 punctuation of translation altered slightly in accord with marx and engels 1975, vol. 4, 433. 26 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages a means for the valorization of capital become precarious” (marx, [1867] 1867, 793). marx, in developing this analysis, discussed the “different forms of the existence of the relative surplus population,” as concrete manifestations of the “general law of accumulation.” here he singled out four distinct forms: the floating, latent, stagnant, and pauperized populations. the most tumultuous layer of the reserve army was the floating population, which comes into existence as a counterpart to the extensive application of machinery and the intensive refinement of the labor process. here, at the center of modern industry, the working population is in constant flux – not only because of an unceasing compulsion to reduce labor requirements, but also because the “consumption of labour-power is so rapid” that the human body can only withstand the physical torture of work for a short time before it is no longer suitable to capital. the factories, workshops, mines, etc., thus tend to seek out the freshest, most easily exploitable layers of the reserve army – particularly children, young women and “nomadic” (migrant) laborers. because of the chaotic and intense nature of production in modern industry, flows in and out of the floating population tend be extremely high. workers are “repelled and attracted, slung backwards and forwards, while, at the same time, constant changes take place in the sex, age, and skill of the industrial conscripts” (marx, [1867] 1976, 583, 795, 818). for marx, this manic relation to labor is a distinguishing feature of modern industry: the attraction of new labor at one moment, during an economic expansion, is matched by an equally strong repulsion the next historical moment, during an economic contraction (marx [1867] 1976, 794-95). nevertheless, the floating population consisted of workers who had a connection – if a precarious one – to the active labor army, with a recent history of employment; they constituted those who would likely be the first to be re-hired in an expansion. the next layer of the reserve army, in marx’s ([1867] 1976, 795-96) description, is the latent surplus population. for the most part this refers to the (self-sustaining) segments of the agricultural (or rural) population. this population served as a vast source of potential labor for capitalist industry (hence, “latent”). internationally, ireland, as marx pointed out, constituted a vast labor reserve, with a huge latent population of largely overpopulated rural workers at the beck and call of english industry. such conditions were the result of the english conquest of ireland and subsequent colonial history. “ireland,” marx explained, “is at present merely an agricultural district of england which happens to be separated by a wide stretch of water from the country for which it provides corn, marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 27 wool, cattle and industrial and military recruits” (marx, [1867] 1976, 57172, 860). so precarious were the conditions of rural laborers in england and ireland that they “had one foot already in the swamp of pauperism,” making it easy to attract them to industry when needed, and unceremoniously discarded them the moment they were no longer of direct use to capital accumulation (marx, [1867] 1976, 796). the stagnant population was for marx the sharpest representation of the precariousness that characterized the labor force as a whole. this layer continuously absorbed the stream of workers expelled from modern industry and agriculture, representing an “inexhaustible reservoir of disposable labour-power.” it was “characterized by a minimum of working time and a minimum of wages.” here employment was “extremely irregular”; and to the extent its members attained employment at all, their degree of exploitation tended to be extremely high (marx [1867] 1976, 796-98). this was the “self-reproducing and self-perpetuating element of the working class,” which was forced back further upon its own devices. the stagnant population represented “a proportionately greater part in the general increase” of the working class, with its increase in “inverse proportion of to the level of wages.” such was the condition of workers in the stagnant population, marx wrote, that “it calls to mind the boundless reproduction of animals individually weak and constantly hunted down.” it is here that marx famously anticipated the notion of the demographic transition, arguing that population increase, contrary to malthusian assumptions, falls rather than rises with an increase in wages (marx [1867] 1976, 796-97). in relation to the stagnant population, he pointed out that day laborers (particularly in ireland), constituted the “most precarious form of wage” labor, since it often required traveling long distances to get to work and back, long hours for abysmal pay, and 4 in marx’s analysis “manufacture” still had its original meaning of made directly by human labor, or handicraft production, while the term “machinofacture” was used to describe modern industry (corresponding to the way the word manufacture is used today). when marx refers to “modern manufacture,” he therefore means modern handicraft production, which is distinguished both from traditional handicraft and modern industry. in his analysis of unregulated (informal) work and outwork attached to the factory system, marx further distinguishes between modern manufacture and modern domestic labor (the latter, modern in the sense it is not to be confused with traditional domestic labor). yet, in practice modern manufacture and modern domestic industry were so closely related, in marx’s analysis, as to be almost indistinguishable – though in establishments where it was mainly women working in a small workshop (usually the home of some small employer), as in dressmaking or millinery, it clearly fit the character of modern domestic industry. in practice, marx seems to have often conflated the two under the rubric of modern domestic industry. 28 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages absolutely no safeguards, promoting sicknesses, disease, and want (marx [1867] 1976, 865). central to the structural conditions governing the stagnant population was the development of “so-called domestic industry” or “modern domestic industry” alongside with “modern manufacturing” (modern handicraft production) (marx, [1867] 1976, 591).4 modern domestic industry mainly took place in the homes of workers or in small workshops, for example lace-making establishments. this was a form of what marx called “outwork” or subcontracting attached to the factory system. in modern domestic industry, he wrote, exploitation is “still more shameless than in modern manufacture,” because the workers’ power of resistance declines with their dispersal; because a whole series of plundering parasites insinuate themselves between the actual employer and the worker he employs; because a domestic industry has always to compete either with the factory system, or with manufacturing in the same branch of production; because poverty robs the worker of the conditions most essential to his labour, of space, light and ventilation; because employment becomes more and more irregular; and, finally, because in these last places of refuge for the masses made ‘redundant’ by large-scale industry and agriculture, competition for work necessarily attains its maximum (marx, ([1867] 1976, 591). labor conditions were particularly horrid in modern domestic industry because it took the stagnant surplus population as its basis – i.e., the conditions of the former were reflective of the conditions of the latter. here was to be found a super-abundance of cheap, freshly exploitable labor – the majority of whom were women and children. the precariousness of workers in modern domestic industry was reflected in the fact that workers were rendered “redundant in the form of underpayment and over-work” to the point of superexploitation. workers in modern domestic industry, predominantly women and young girls, were “always paid less than the minimum wage” (marx [1867], 1976, 602-4, 825, 863). the typical modern domestic industry was preponderantly women and young girls working in dressmaking establishments as “outworkers” attached to modern manufacture. marx pointed to a shirt factory in londonderry that employed one thousand workers in the factory and a further “9000 outworkers spread over the country districts.” such outworkers were scattered around in the large towns and rural areas in marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 29 small establishments with the result that “worker’s power of resistance declines with their dispersal.” this tended to accentuate the “murderous side of this economy.” the most notorious of these were the “mistress’s houses” in clothing manufacture. “in english barracks the regulation space allotted to each soldier is 500 to 600 cubic feet, and in the military hospitals 1,200 cubic feet. but in those finishing sties there are between 67 and 100 cubic feet for each person. at the same time the oxygen of the air is consumed by gas lamps.” children began work at age six and fourteen-hour days (or more), “when business is brisk” were not uncommon (marx, [1867] 1976, 595-99). what marx called “modern industry” or the factory system increasingly came under the factory acts, while branches of production associated with modern domestic industry and modern manufacture, which the stagnant population depended on for its exceedingly precarious employment, were still “without legal limit to exploitation,” unfettered by “legal regulations” (marx, [1867] 1976, 353). it thus corresponded in today’s parlance with the informal economy. here, marx insisted, could still be found conditions where children were required to work from 4:00 a.m. to midnight. he quoted the daily telegraph to the effect that in these sectors there was still a struggle to limit the workday to an eighteen hour day! examining branches of production as varied as pottery, wallpaper making, bread making, and lacemaking, marx ended with a discussion of the conditions of dressmakers in london, which was to overlap with his later discussion of modern domestic industry. there he recounted the story, notorious at the time, of 20-year-old mary ann walkley who had died of working continuously for 26 ½ hours, in one of the most respectable dressmaking establishments in london, under conditions of a chronic lack of sleep, oxygen, and cubic space per individual. walkely was being forced to work long hours to produce dresses for a ball announced by the princess of wales. even the morning star, the organ of free traders responded by declaring “our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine and die.” (marx, [1867] 1976, 354-67). as joseph fracchia notes, the exploitation of labor power under capitalism with the reserve army as its fulcrum “is not abstract but concretely rooted in individual bodies, it is [for marx], ‘that monstrosity of a suffering population of workers held in reserve for the changing exploitative needs of capital.’…capitalism reproduces its supply of labourpower by perpetuating, over generations, a class of ‘needy individuals.’ and life-long neediness is a concerted attack on the body and the bodily capacities of those in need” (fracchia, 2008, 47; marx, [1867] 1976, 618, 30 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages 719, 784). the precariousness of employment under capitalism extends to the conditions of work itself, and to the using up of the corporeal basis of human existence. the stagnant population, for marx, fades over into the fully pauperized population. marx identified the “lowest sediment” of the relative surplus population with pauperized workers – who included both the lowest segments of the relative surplus population and elements that were past all employment. the pauperized layer held down the industrial reserve army and the working class as a whole. the largest portion of this layer dwelt “in the sphere of [official] pauperism” – the remainder being made up by “vagabonds, criminals, prostitutes, in short the actual lumpenproletariat.” the degrees of “official pauperism” marx identified included: first, those able to work. one need only glance superficially at the statistics of english pauperism to find that the quantity of paupers increases with every crisis of trade, and diminishes with every revival. second, orphans and pauper children. these are candidates for the industrial reserve army, and in times of great prosperity, such as they year 1860, for instance, they are enrolled in the army of active workers both speedily and in large numbers. third, the demoralized, the ragged, and those unable to work, chiefly people who succumb to their incapacity for adaptation, an incapacity which results from the division of labour; people who have lived beyond the worker’s average life-span; and the victims of industry, whose numbers increase with the growth of dangerous machinery, of mines chemical works, etc., the mutilated, the sickly, the widows, etc. pauperism is the hospital of the active labour-army and the dead weight of the industrial reserve army. its production is included in that of the relative surplus population, its necessity is implied by their necessity; along with the surplus population, pauperism forms a condition of capitalist production, and the capitalist development of wealth (marx, [1867] 1976, 797, 807; engels, [1845] 1993, 96-97). in the condition of the english working class, engels emphasized that the poorest sectors of the working class, the stagnant and pauperized sectors, engaged in a vast realm of hawking whatever they could, a realm of “huckstering and peddling” on every street corner, eking out a precarious existence by selling “shoe and corset laces, braces, twine, cakes, oranges, every kind of small articles,” as well as “matches...sealing wax, and patent mixtures for lighting fires.” other “socalled jobbers” went about the streets looking for any kind of small job: a few hours or a day of work. such was the kind of informal economy that has everywhere been associated with poverty (engels, [1845] 1993, 97). marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 31 marx drew on census statistics for england and wales to point to the much higher formal employment of working-class women than men, largely because women made up 85 percent of all domestic servants. the numbers of domestic servants exceeded those of all textile factory workers (the vast majority of which were women and young children) and metal workers (of which there were lower numbers, but which were predominantly men) put together. precariousness, in the sense of being part of the reserve army, was thus more likely to fall on men, who traditionally earned higher wages than women when employed, but were increasingly deemed unemployable by a capitalist industry forever looking for cheaper labor (marx, [1867] 1976, 574-575). capitalism, was not confined to single countries but was a global system of production. the reserve army of labor, in marx’s view, was thus an international phenomenon, but including the wider periphery via colonialism. “a new and international division of labour springs up, one suited to the requirements of the main industrial countries, and it converts one part of the globe into a chiefly agricultural field of production for supplying the other part, which remains a pre-eminently industrial field” (marx, [1867] 1976, 579-80). precariousness was itself understood as a global phenomenon, impacting the colonized regions most intensely. marx pointed out that “the profit rate is generally higher there [in the periphery] on account of the lower degree of development, and so too is the exploitation of labour through the use of slaves, coolies, etc.” (marx, [186365] 1981, 345). if life was cheap and precarious in the center of the capitalist system, he recognized, it was even more so in the colonized periphery where one found the conditions of primitive (primary) accumulation: “the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population...the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of india, and the conversion of africa into a preserve from the commercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production. these idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation” (marx, [1867] 1976, 915). marx’s theory of working-class precariousness was to be extended by the most brilliant marxian theorist of late nineteenth-century england, namely the celebrated artist, writer, and socialist, william morris. it was morris more than any other thinker in the 1880s and ’90s who built on marx’s theory of the reserve army of labor as manifested primarily in the growing precariousness of workers. as he declared in 1883, in “art under plutocracy,” the result of the degradation of the labor process under capitalism, and the terms in which employment was provided or denied, resulted in conditions for the worker that were extremely “precarious,” 32 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages creating conditions of absolute estrangement (morris, 1915, vol. 23, 17677). likewise, in his famous lecture “useful work versus useless toil” (first delivered in 1883 and later incorporated into his 1888 book signs of change), morris wrote of “the precariousness of life among the workers” resulting from the tendency “to increase in the number of the ‘reserve army of labour.’” the monetary contributions that workers made to trade unions were an extra charge that workers had to pay out of their wages simply to combat “precariousness of…employment” against which organized labor was the only defense. so important did morris consider the issue of “precariousness” in defining the condition of workers under capitalism, that in his 1887 lecture, “what socialists want,” he took the unusual step of penciling “precariousness” in the margin, indicating that it was a major, overriding theme to develop further (morris, [1888] 1896, 169, 187; morris 1969, 232; salmon 1996, 127; leopold 2003, xvi). later, in his 1894 lecture, “what is: what should be: what will be,” morris argued that “higher wages and less precarious work, more leisure, more share in public advantages” constituted the main demands of the workers, but that these goals could only be achieved via “the beginnings of socialism” (thompson, 1976, 613-14). for morris, it was the instability of working class life – the need constantly to struggle to hold on to or find a job, the threat (and reality for many) of unemployment and underemployment, the extreme moral and physical suffering, degradation, and even death brought on by exploitative working conditions, and the omnipresence of pauperism – that constituted the essence of working class life. such insecurity, degradation, and useless toil undermined all free human potential. the global reserve army in the age of generalized precariousness the structural basis of marx’s concept of worker precariousness was the reserve army of labor: the fulcrum of the general law of capital accumulation. as opposed to today’s use of “precariousness” or “precarity” as a kind of “cultural meme,” marxian theory thus offers an integrated theoretical approach and scientific outlook to working class insecurity and exploitation, geared to revolutionary social change. here the notion of the proletariat is not seen as opposed to precariousness – giving rise to a whole new category of the “precariat” – rather precariousness is a defining element in working class existence and struggle. in the immediate post-second world war years, the capitalist world economy, centered in the united states, western europe, and japan, experienced a period of relatively rapid economic expansion based marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 33 on: (1) undisputed u.s. hegemony, (2) a second wave of automobilization in the united states, (3) the rebuilding of the war-torn economies in europe and japan (and automobilization there), (4) the massive growth of the sales effort based in madison avenue, and (5) two regional wars in asia along with the general militarization associated with the cold war. the higher employment, particularly in the korean and vietnam war years, coupled with domestic repression in the united states, and a welfare state (especially in europe – necessary to counter the challenge represented by the soviet union and eastern europe), created an era of relative peace between monopoly capital and the business unions, which viewed themselves as its junior, imperialist partners. multinational corporations emerged in this period as major actors on the world stage. workers at the center of the system benefitted indirectly in this period from the world imperialist system. the u.s. economy peaked in the late 1960s, and in the mid-1970s, as the various external factors that had propped it up gradually waned. consequently, it entered a severe crisis (corresponding with the end of vietnam war), leading to a secular slowdown in economic growth that was to turn into full-fledged stagnation. by the late 1970s, capital had initiated the process of global economic restructuring, cutbacks in welfare state spending, attacks on trade unions, and other measures, commencing the heightened class war that was to become known as neoliberalism (kolko, 1988; magdoff and foster, 2014). in the 1980s, corporations and wealthy individuals seeking outlets for their surplus capital in a climate of overaccumulation and market saturation, in which productive investment no longer seemed viable, began increasingly to speculate, first in corporate mergers, and then in the financial system more generally – to which the financial sector responded by creating an endless array of exotic financial instruments that sliced and diced risk, all based on mounting debt. the financialization of the u.s. and world economy in the new age of monopoly-finance capital generated limited expansion, supported by new digital technology. yet, none of this was able to prevent the deepening economic stagnation at the center of the world capitalist system, with the rate of economic growth in the triad of the united states/canada, europe, and japan, declining decade by decade from the 1960s to the opening decades of the present century (foster and mcchesney, 2012, 4). in the new globalized economy promoted by multinational corporations, a global labor arbitrage was pursued whereby companies took advantage of the much lower wages in the periphery, shifting production to the global south, which by 2008 accounted for about 70 percent of world production 34 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages (as compared with around 50 percent in 1980) (foster, mcchesney, and jonna, 2011, 4). this put pressure on the real wages of workers in the global north, who were experiencing higher unemployment and increased competition from low wages of workers in the south. the latent reserve army of migrant labor from other countries (for example, mexican and central american workers in the case of the united states, turkish workers in the case of germany, and algerian workers in france) generated further conflict within the working class nationally and internationally, as did new waves of imperial wars in the middle east, the former yugoslavia, and north africa in the 1990s and the opening decades of this century (made possible by the disappearance of the ussr from the world stage). the fall of the soviet-type societies and the reintegration of china into the capitalist world market brought hundreds of millions of additional workers into the global reserve army, constituting a new era of globalization. all of this served to remove the floor on wages and working conditions of workers throughout the world. in general, the global working class and its various segments were soon in a race to the bottom: a reality bound to create a new sense of precariousness.5 the great financial crisis, emerging in the united states in 2007, and extending in 2008 and 2009 to the world economy as a whole, led to vast increase in global unemployment and restructuring. an enormous growth of part-time, temporary, and contingent work, as well as greater unemployment/underemployment generally, constituted the new, more perilous structural condition of the international labor market. the failure of most analysts, even on the left, to understand this in terms of marx’s general law of accumulation has created enormous confusion. conventional social science has characteristically treated the more exploitative relations between labor and capital as mere anomalies with no essential relation to the system and no prior historical or theoretical basis, while many left theorists have scarcely done any better, enamored by mere discursive constructs. within marxism itself, the return to marx’s reserve army of labor analysis in the attempt to understand both the reemergence of stagnation and its effects on the working class and the internationalization of monopoly capital began with the economic slowdown in the 1970s – even before the crisis had fully taken hold. the most important theoretical developments in the analysis of labor conditions and their relation to 5 an exception is in china and some countries in asia, where workers experienced rising wages due to rapid accumulation, based on the globalization of the world economy, and the incorporation of their latent (rural worker) reserve army into production. marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 35 accumulation emerged in the 1970s in the path breaking work of marxian theorists harry braverman ([1974] 1998) and stephen hymer (1979). braverman most famously drew on marx’s labor process analysis to demonstrate the degradation of labor under monopoly capitalism. but he also engaged in a close study of the structure and composition of the working class in the united states – both the active labor army and the reserve army of labor (jonna and foster, 2014). hymer emerged as the foremost theorist of multinational corporations, building his analysis on industrial organization theory and the theory of monopoly capital. he went on, however, to extend his work to examining the effects on the international division of labor, building on marx’s general law of accumulation. in 1975, braverman (1975, 29) pointed to the rapid growth of the reserve army of labor in the united states, as well as elsewhere: “the most striking thing to emerge from an examination of the [u.s.] unemployment statistics from the second world war to the present is the secular trend of the gradual but persistent enlargement of the pool of officially counted unemployment.… the unemployment rate of 5 to 6 percent which characterized the recession years of 1949-1950 has now become the prosperity rate of the seventies, the rate which we would be delighted to have back again.” nevertheless, the deficiencies of the data, braverman argued, meant that they were only crude indications of what was really happening, since the larger part of the industrial reserve army (the vast numbers of part-time workers wanting full time work, temporary workers, discouraged workers, the marginally attached, and the economically inactive population) remained uncounted in the official unemployment rate. it was the rapid growth of the reserve army of labor as a whole that was substantially undermining the relatively well-paid working-class sectors (and even the middle class), creating a wider sense of precariousness. more and more workers were drawn into the low-paid service and retail sectors, and into underemployment, unemployment, and unproductive employment. in a detailed statistical analysis, braverman ([1974] 1998, 261-62, 1994, 18-21) demonstrated that in 1970 approximately 69 percent of the available work force in the united states (encompassing both the active labor army and the relevant portions of the reserve army) were attached to the six basic working class occupations. more recent analysis has shown that this remains remarkably constant over forty years later (allowing for shifts in occupations) with the working class constituting some 69 percent of the available work force in the united sates in 2011 (jonna and foster, 2014, 5-8). however, there has been a big shift in the quality of 36 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages employment, with many more workers in low-paid sectors and with parttime, temporary, and contingent jobs. all of this means that the precariousness of the workforce and the downward pull of the reserve army on labor as a whole is growing. in 1975, in “international politics and international economics: a radical approach,” hymer (1979, 256-72) developed an approach to the international division of labor to accompany his analysis of the growth of multinational corporations. building on marx’s general law of accumulation, hymer (1979, 262-63) argued that the two major factors in the development of the capitalist exploitation of labor were technological change that allowed the development of a greater internal reserve army of labor, and the absorption of the “latent surplus population” in rural areas, breaking down pre-capitalist areas and incorporating them into capitalist production. by these two means (what hymer [1979, 269] called “the industrial reserve army” and the “external reserve army”) capital is able to increase the supply of labor in line with marx’s ([1867] 1976, 764) fundamental proposition that “accumulation of capital is, therefore, multiplication of the proletariat.” “above the proletariat,” hymer (1979, 263) wrote, stands a vast officer class of managers, technicians, and bureaucrats to organize it and to overcome its resistance by keeping it divided. below it is a pool of unemployed, underemployed, and badly-paid strata continuously fed by technological change and the opening up of new hinterlands, which undercut its position and inhibit its development toward class consciousness. this reserve army drives the labor aristocracy to keep on working and keeps it loyal to the capitalist system from fear of falling from its superior position. by the nature of things, these different strata often come from different regions within a country, different racial or ethnic groups, and different age and sex classes. thus, the competitive cleavages between workers often reflect lines of race, creed, color, age, sex, and national origin, which make working class consciousness more difficult. the class consciousness of workers, hymer (1979, 259) stressed – quoting from marx’s capital – required that the workers come to the conclusion that by generating through their labor the accumulation of capital, they only increase capital’s economic power relative to themselves, via the action of the reserve army of labor, thereby making their own situation “more precarious.” once that realization was reached, the marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 37 revolutionary role of workers depended on eliminating the competition and inequality within their ranks and reaching out to a wider human liberation. he held out the hope that labor, though increasingly divided by the new international division of labor, and by all sorts of differing social identities, and caught in a condition of growing precariousness, would nonetheless struggle to eliminate the competition within its ranks “at higher and higher levels until it reaches a world historic perspective far more total than capital and replaces capitalism by socialism. this unification, however, is a long-drawn-out process” (hymer, 1979, 271). today the field of operation of the global reserve army of labor spans the entire world. the struggle of labor, as thinkers such as marx, engels, and morris recognized in the nineteenth century, and hymer recognized even more so in the late twentieth century, must therefore be international. labor precariousness ebbs and flows with the global reserve army of labor, but the external labor army, though it remains vast, is not inexhaustible, and is diminishing, requiring that capital displace current labor if accumulation is to continue. meanwhile, billions of people – as fred magdoff (2004) explained in “a precarious existence: the fate of billions,” and as mike davis (2007) expounded in the planet of slums – are concentrating in the large urban centers of the global south where precariousness of existence is the reality, with close to a third of workers living on less than two dollars a day (ilo, 2015a, 28). nothing but a new international of labor is capable of addressing the catastrophic conditions that have emerged for innumerable people (along with the economic devastation of much of the world, rising militarism and war, and impending global ecological catastrophe).6 as hymer (1979, 270-71) wrote with respect to the tendencies at the top of the imperial order in his day: “the structure of the american empire, which kept some sort of order…in the past, is dissolving and a hobbesian-like struggle of all against all seems to be emerging at the world level.” under these circumstances, a rational, socialist society, geared to the common welfare becomes imperative, not simply for a better life, but increasingly as a requirement of human life itself. we can see the significance of the global reserve army of labor, and the source of the precariousness of most of the world’s population, using data from the international labor organization (ilo), which has employed categories closely related to the layers of the reserve army identified by marx. chart 1 shows “the layers of the global working class” from 1991-2013. here it can be seen that the global reserve army 6 on the question of a new international see mészáros, 2015, 199-217. 38 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages constitutes some 60 percent of the available working population in the world, exceeding that of the active labor army of wage-workers plus small proprietors. in 2013, according to international labour organization (ilo, 2015b) figures, the global reserve army consisted of some 2.3 billion people, compared to around 1.65 billion in the active labor army, many of whom are precariously unemployed. the number of officially unemployed at that time (corresponding roughly to marx’s floating population) was 200 million workers. some 1.5 billion workers were classified as “vulnerably employed” (related to marx’s stagnant population), made up of workers working “on their own account” (informal workers and rural subsistence workers) and “contributing family workers” (domestic labor). another 600 million individuals between the prime working ages of 25-54 were classified as economically inactive. this is a heterogeneous category but undoubtedly consists preponderantly of those of prime working age who are a part of the pauperized population. these figures, however, severely downplay the full extent of the global reserve army (in marx’s conception) because those who are parttime, temporary, and contingent workers show up in the ilo figures as employed wage workers, which do not consider the increasingly precarious conditions of many of those with only a partial and insecure relation to employment (foster, mcchesney, and jonna, 2011, 19-26). the share of workers globally making two dollars a day or less stood at 26 percent in 2013, though the percentage is much higher in parts of the global south, such as sub-saharan africa and south asia, where the working poor make up more than 60 percent of wage workers (ilo 2015b). nearly 60 percent of wage workers globally are part-time or in some form of temporary employment; in addition, over 22 percent are self-employed (ilo, 2015a, 13, 39).7 7 note: this data is based on the latest year available for the given country marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 39 chart 1. layers of the global working class, 1991–2013 chart 2 shows the same ilo data with respect to the developed countries. here the proportion of wage workers is larger, and the reserve army of labor proportionately smaller. however, what is clear from even these conservative estimates is that the reserve army even in the advanced capitalist states is massive, constituting some 27 percent of the available work force in 2013, and thus perpetuating, and indeed deepening, a condition of precariousness in the working class majority. in the developing countries he reserve army stood at 64 percent of the available workforce in 2013. sources: “table r3. status in employment,” “table r5. unemployment rate” (world and regional aggregates) and “table 13. inactivity” (standard query). international labour organization (ilo). 2015. “key indicators of the labour market (kilm), 8th edition.” geneva. notes: since the figures on inactivity are given by country they should be considered underestimates due to data unavailability for certain countries and years. 40 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages sources: see chart 1. notes: the category “developed countries” is equivalent to “developed economies & european union” given in kilm. also see the notes to chart 1. chart 2. layers of the working class in developed countries, 1991–2013 conclusion the renewed focus, particularly on the left, on precariousness reflects a kind of coming to terms with the capitalism, and particularly the globalized monopoly-finance capital, of our time. concepts like “precarity” and even “precariat” may have a role if it means describing more fully the conditions that characterize the reserve army of labor and the increasingly tenuous hold of the active labor army on its jobs and working conditions. such concepts can help to demonstrate the fact, as marx emphasized, that capital’s repeated promises to workers are false ones, and that it is now essential that the working class and society move on – in the direction of socialism. more than a century of marxian political-economic critique allows us to appreciate the extent to which the conditions that marx described, focusing on a small corner of europe in the mid-nineteenth century, are now global, and all the more perilous. but marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 41 8 for marx the goal of the working-class movement was not the universalization of the proletariat but its “final emancipation...the ultimate abolition of the wages system” (marx, [1865] 1976, 62). in the age of what amin (2013a, 2013b) has called the “generalized proletariat” versus “generalized monopoly capitalism” the path lies clearly before us. indeed, in contrast to wacquant (2007, 72-73), who contends that “the precariat can only make itself to immediately unmake itself” – as opposed to “the proletariat in the marxist vision of history, which is called upon to abolish itself in the long run by uniting and universalizing itself” – we need to emphasize once again the significance of the reserve army of labor (the precariat) within marx’s understanding of the working class. here the historic task remains what it was before – the forging of working-class unity – not in order to “universalize” the proletariat, but to transcend it.8 references allison, anne. 2013. precarious japan. duke university press. amin, samir. 2013a. three essays on marx’s value theory. new york: monthly review press. amin, samir. 2013b. the implosion of contemporary capitalism. new york: monthly review press. appay, béatrice. 2010. “‘precarization’ and flexibility in the labour process.” in globalization and precarious forms of production and employment, edited by carole thornley, steve jefferys, and 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precarious—on thee concept of the ‘precariat’ and its misuses,” new left project, february 10, http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/we_ar e_all_precarious_on_the_concept_of_the_precariat_and_its_misuses. standing, guy. 2011. the precariat. london: bloomsbury academic. thompson, e.p. 1976. william morris: romantic to revolutionary. new york: pantheon. vosko, leah f. 2000. temporary work. university of toronto press. vosko, leah f. 2010. managing the margins. oxford university press. wacquant, loïc. 2007. “territorial stigmatization in the age of advanced marginality.” thesis eleven 91 (1): 66–77. doi:10.1177/0725513607082003. wilson, william julius. 1986. the truly disadvantaged. chicago: university of chicago press. neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 223 neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response paul orlowski abstract: the biggest threat to civil society in canada and the united states is the economic doctrine known as neoliberalism. sometimes referred to as the corporate agenda, neoliberalism supports the deregulation of industry, privatization of the commons, the weakening of workers’ rights, and corporate tax cuts. it first gained acceptance in canada and the united states during the 1980s, and ever since has had deleterious effects on public services and assets in both countries. the paper asks whether neoliberalism represents a class war waged by the corporate sector and economic elites on the working and middle classes. the province of saskatchewan in central canada is used as a case study. the bir thplace of public healthcare in canada, saskatchewan appears to have experienced a sea change in terms of its dominant political ideology. indeed, provincial governments across the political spectrum have eschewed the collectivist nature inherent in saskatchewan’s history in favour of adopting neoliberal economic policy. the paper argues whether social democracy is strong enough to withstand neoliberalism. there is a focus on the effects of neoliberalism on the province’s public school system, and also a brief discussion of idle no more, one of the largest indigenous mass movements in recent history, that first arose in saskatchewan to resist the federal government’s deregulation of canada’s rivers and lakes. acknowledging that teaching is a political act, the second part of this paper describes pedagogy designed to lift the hegemonic veil for students. this pedagogy uses ideology critique, critical media literacy, and the re-framing of hegemonic neoliberal discourses with progressive discourses. keywords: neoliberalism, social democracy, saskatchewan, critical pedagogy 224 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education introduction saskatchewan is one of three prairie provinces in western canada. for much of the second half of the twentieth century, it has been governed by socialist and social democratic parties (blakeney, 2008; warnock, 2004). perhaps best known as the birthplace of the first publicly funded healthcare system in north america, saskatchewan also has a strong ethos of public ownership of various industries. the province’s progressive roots, however, seem to be withering in an era in which corporate power is becoming firmly entrenched in the body politic. as in other parts of canada, saskatchewan first began to embrace this corporate agenda in the 1980s under a progressive conservative government. despite the social democratic saskatchewan new democratic party (ndp) forming government from 1991 to 2007, corporate power grew during this period. in fact, it could be argued that saskatchewan evolved from its socialist roots in the 1940s and 1950s into a social democratic province in the 1970s, but since then has been embracing the corporate agenda known as neoliberalism. this paper discusses whether social democracy is too weak an ideology to counter neoliberalism. it briefly describes major tenets of neoliberalism, followed by a discussion of protest politics and social movements. following a discussion of class warfare today in canada and the united states,i then turn to a case study of the saskatchewan experience since the 1980s. i argue that this prairie province is not just experiencing a neoliberal assault, but that for far longer it has been the site for a continuing colonial project exacerbated by neoliberalism. notwithstanding this, i conclude with a note of optimism with pedagogical suggestions designed to foster political consciousness in future teachers. the stance the article takes is that in order to effectively challenge neoliberalism, citizens must have a political consciousness. the first step, therefore, is to understand what is meant by neoliberalism. neoliberalism: laissez-faire economics revisited? neoliberalism is the term used to describe economic and public policy based on a powerful discursive formation with the aim of entrenching the corporate agenda throughout society. as gerry caplan (2012) notes: “[e]verything that’s happened in the past several years has gone to further empower and enrich the 1 per cent (or maybe the 5 per cent) at the expense of the rest of us. look anywhere you want. what else neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 225 does the universal demand for austerity programs mean? what else does the sudden concerted attack on public sector workers mean? what else does the intransigent line taken by multinational corporations against their unions mean? what else does the demand for “right-to-work” laws mean? what else does the widespread attack on seniors’ pensions mean?” citizens in both countries have been inundated with a “permanent campaign of persuasion” to win support for the economic policies favoured by neoliberals and politicians willing to implement them (kozolanka, 2007, 7). of course social values are also affected, but economic and political policy is the main focus of neoliberalism (albo and fanelli, 2014). the “liberal” part of neoliberalism refers to its association with the economics of classical liberalism in opposition to the social liberal and state liberal orthodoxies of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. both liberal and conservative governments across the u.s. and canada have passed pro-corporate or neoliberal legislation while touting the free market discourse on domestic and international fronts. indeed, some provincial social democratic governments, too, have supported neoliberal policies. neoliberalism has elicited various definitions from academics since the 1970s when the first attempt at implementation into a nation’s economic policy took place in chile (boas and gans-morse, 2009). it has been described as a broad set of macroeconomic policies, as a procorporate worldview, and as an approach to public policy leading to the commodification of the commons. for the purpose of explaining this current stage of capitalism to prospective high school teachers of history and social studies, i focus on the following key components of the neoliberal agenda on the domestic front: the deregulation of private industry, increased regulation of the public sector, tax cuts (especially for corporations and the wealthy), privatization of the commons, and the weakening of collective bargaining rights for workers. the major theorists of neoliberalism are friedrich von hayek (1944) and, more recently, milton friedman (2002). in high school social studies and history courses, students learn that income inequality, inhumane working conditions and the lack of social safety nets were features of pre-keynesian (or pre-wwii) government policies. government regulations on industry were seen as impediments to financial profit for the capitalist class, and were therefore 226 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education unacceptable. through the eighteenth to early-twentieth centuries, supporters of this doctrine preferred the ‘invisible hand’ of the market to influence economic arrangements and were hostile to the state intervening in economic affairs, especially around regulation of industry. despite the fact that laissez-faire economics has been largely discredited, it is clear that similar thinking continues to permeate the thinking of many economic and political elites today (albo and fanelli, 2014). yet, contemporary social class issues are virtually ignored in high school today (orlowski, 2011a). one particularly effective discourse emanating out of corporate propagandists is the well-known trickle-down theory, that neoliberalism will help everyone no matter their social and economic standing – the deregulated economy will create a rising tide and all of the boats, big and small, will rise with it (harvey, 2005). another current powerful discourse in support of corporate tax cuts touts corporations as job creators. research in canada and the united states, however, demonstrates that large corporations do not use money from tax cuts to create more jobs; rather, they tend to hoard this money or pay dividends to shareholders (stanford, 2011; hungerford, 2012). despite these findings, the job creator discourse is very powerful and works to gain the public’s support for corporate tax cuts. this is clearly the case in saskatchewan today (mcgrane, 2011). under the banner of fiscal responsibility, neoliberal supporters in government, the private sector and in the media have been calling for opportunities to profit from privatizing the commons. indeed, the “politics of austerity...encourage the “total privatization of the public sector” (albo and fanelli, 2014, 14). in canada, entrepreneurial forces are pushing for the creation of a two-tiered healthcare system to replace its treasured, however much-maligned, universal public healthcare system. most provinces are tacking on “medical services plan” fees to erode universality. pension plans for public sector workers and the general public are also very much in peril (kennedy and press, 2012). the reason given is that it is no longer affordable to fund these public institutions and programs through taxes. much of the public seems to be understandably confused over the replacement of the social welfare state with discourses of “personal responsibility and individual culpability” (albo and fanelli, 2014, 9). moreover, these deficit discourses are being trumpeted during a period in which the gap in income inequality between the rich and the poor is widening dramatically to proportions not seen since the 1930s (frank, 2012; albo, gindin and panitch, 2010). neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 227 electoral politics does not seem capable of stopping neoliberalism from dismantling the remaining vestiges of public services and assets. democracy enacted through protest albo and fanelli (2014, 26) contend: “neoliberalism reinforces the inequalities of social class and the differentiated dependence on markets at the expense....of the egalitarian and developmental processes of democracy.” the neoliberal impulse is to reduce our democratic traditions to the procedural democracy of formal elections. indeed, with the possible exception of the nordic countries, it appears that social democratic parties have joined their conservative and liberal counterparts in accepting the main tenets of neoliberalism (albo, gindin and panitch, 2010). with an economic convergence among political parties in canada and the united states, it is little wonder that popular voting in elections have for the most part been on a steady decline since the 1980s. this does not totally translate, however, to the acceptance of neoliberal values promoted by economic and political elites. democratic avenues for expressing counterhegemonic views still exist. amidst countless stories in the united states of home foreclosures, job losses, and increased poverty during the summer of 2011, occupy wall street arose to challenge the growing wealth gap: “we are the 99%” became the slogan of this social movement, the first serious populist resistance to the neoliberal agenda in north america. likewise, in any european nation where austerity is being touted by the government, massive protests have filled the streets of urban centres. in the spring of 2012, moments after the quebec government announced university tuition hikes, huge student protests appeared that were so relentless that they helped force a change in government (giroux, 2012). in the autumn of 2012, another social movement arose out of saskatchewan as indigenous activists reached out to non-indigenous canadians in a show of solidarity to challenge corporate hegemony, environmental degradation and the weakening of democracy (dobbin, 2013). the flashpoint for the idle no more movement was the federal government’s two omnibus budget bills, c-38 and c-45, which effectively gutted the regulation of canada’s lakes and rivers. the idle no more movement continues to attract support across the world as progressive and concerned citizens join with indigenous peoples (kin-nda-nilmi collective, 2014; georgetti and barlow, 2013). indeed, since 2006 there has been a significant increase across the world in citizen protest in favour of increased human rights, economic justice and global justice, 228 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education and against the failure of political representation (ortiz, burke, berrada and cortes, 2013). to counter these democratic expressions of civil disobedience, however, neoliberalism is focusing more and more on disciplining dissent (albo and fanelli, 2014). technological advances have made surveillance a normal part of government activity. and as anyone attending neoliberal events such as the 2010 g20 meetings in toronto can attest, the state has readily utilized authoritarian measures to crack down on these albeit unevenly accepted avenues of democratic expression. despite the state response to dissent, however, it is important for students to note that the creation of the social welfare state was helped through the protests of the 1920s and 1930s. activist trade unions in canada and the united states were essential to the gradual acceptance of keynesian economic policy into the body politic and the social fabric of both nations after the second world war. the conflicts of the past provide inspiration to resist corporate hegemony today. this is crucial because since the 1980s economic elites have waged a vicious attack on the social welfare state. is this what class warfare looks like? the term class warfare means different things to different people. it is a provocative phrase that elicits anger from both the right and the left. i will not suggest a definitive definition for class warfare. rather, the debates about what is occurring in canada is instructive. when one considers the dramatically increasing gaps in wealth, there can be little doubt that neoliberalism is indeed “a project aimed at the restoration of class power” (anijar and gabbard, 2009, 45–46). harvey (2005, 202) states that “if it looks like class struggle and acts like class war then we have to name it unashamedly for what it is.” although it is difficult to prove that the extreme rise in wealth inequality since the 1980s is the result of neoliberalism, it is clear that the two occurred simultaneously. a look at specific neoliberal policies over the past three decades leads one to at least inquire about causality. during the 1980s, reagan republicans began touting deregulation as a way for the economy to flourish (krugman, 2009; laxer, 1999; mcquaig, 1998). this was instrumental for the neoliberal agenda to gain traction in the american economy. today, it is clear that the savings and loans scandal of the 1980s and the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007-08 are directly related to the deregulation of the financial industry (frank, 2012). of course, deregulation was also responsible for the 2010 british petroleum neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 229 horizon explosion in the gulf of mexico that resulted in eleven worker deaths and the largest oil spill in the history of the oil industry with two-hundred gallons of crude oil spilling into the gulf every day for eighty-seven straight days (orlowski, 2011b). in canada, deregulation of the private sector has resulted in too many catastrophes. to name but a few recent examples: the 2013 lac megantic train explosion that resulted in forty-seven deaths (campbell, 2013); the e. coli outbreak at xl foods in alberta in 2012; and in toronto, the 2008 maple leaf foods listeriosis tragedy that resulted in twenty deaths (rouseau, 2013). in divided we stand: why inequality keeps rising, the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd, 2011) reports that the united states has the fourth-highest inequality level in the oecd, after chile, mexico and turkey. moreover, the average income of the top 10 percent of americans was $114,000, nearly 15 times higher than that of the bottom 10 percent, whose average income was $7,800. by comparison, the ratio was 10 to 1 in the mid 1980s, and 12 to 1 in the mid 1990s. keeping in mind that neoliberalism began to gain traction in the u.s. during the reagan presidency of the 1980s, it is clear from the oecd numbers that there is a strong connection between a rising wealth gap and neoliberalism policy. moreover, in 2009, nearly 44 million americans were living in poverty, which was four million more than the previous year (herbert, 2011). in terms of child poverty, 23 percent of american children live in poverty, which is barely better than the situation in romania (monsebraaten, 2012). the growing inequality trend is similar in canada. unicef reports that canada ranks twentyfourth out of thirty-five industrialized nations with a child poverty rate of 13.3 percent. another feature of neoliberalism pertains to work stoppages and the attack on unions. recent american statistics attest to the increase in employee lockouts: “the number of strikes has declined to just one-sixth the annual level of two decades ago … [l]ockouts, on the other hand, have grown to represent a record percentage of the nation’s work stoppages” (greenhouse, 2012). there is growing evidence that this strategy is gaining further traction in canada as well. the day after michigan passed a “so-called right-to-work law aimed at weakening unions in that state,” the canadian federal government passed bill c-377 in the house of commons (walkom, 2012). this new law was “designed to tie the unions up in red tape and – its backers hope – embarrass labour’s leadership” (walkom, 2012). bill c-377, while temporarily halted due to the prorogation of parliament in 2013, was reintroduced in the house 230 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education of commons in september 2014 and aims to impart a host of new financial reporting practices on unions as part of its generalized attack against organized labour (stanford, 2014). indeed, canadian workers have learned that “[a]cross the 1990s, the employment relationship was re-worked to expose workers more forcefully to ‘market forces’” (albo and fanelli, 2014, 11). the fordist arrangement between labour and capital has been torn asunder. another plank in the neoliberal arsenal involves the commons. the current trend toward austerity is most often a precursor to privatizing components of the public sector. indeed, privatization of the public sector is “enforced by a ‘disciplinary democracy’ that ever more deploys anti-democratic measures that marginalizes, and even criminalizes, dissent in defense of austerity and market freedoms” (albo and fanelli, 2014, 7). the display of extreme force used by the security apparatuses of the state during the g20 protests in 2010 attests to this. these included csis, the rcmp, the opp, and the military. since the 1980s, canadian and american citizens have been inundated with a set of discourses and legislation designed to further the economic power of the elites. these discourses have evolved into an extremely powerful discursive formation that comprises the underpinnings of neoliberalism: corporate tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, free markets, and union busting. the neoliberal paradigm provides the basis for a rejuvenated class war. conservative, liberal, and even social democratic governments have supported the dismantling of public services and assets, as well as the weakening of democracy. saskatchewan, a province that for the most part was built on social democratic principles, is a case in point. saskatchewan: a case study “[t]he ndp and the saskatchewan party have accepted, to varying degrees, that labour union freedoms are antagonistic to the free market principles they both endorse” (smith, 2011, 123). the cooperative commonwealth federation (ccf) first came to power in saskatchewan in 1944, becoming the first socialist government in north america. this was the first of five straight electoral victories during which time they enacted policies and laws for the general welfare of society at large as opposed to the narrow interests of the captains of industry. led by premier tommy douglas, some of the ccf’s most notable accomplishments include the first bill of rights in north america (1947), the first arts board in north america (1948), and the rural electrification program neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 231 (1949). in 1961, the ccf evolved into the social democratic new democratic party (ndp), with closer ties to organized labor (mcgrane, 2011; laxer, 1999; whitehorn, 1992). shortly after this, the saskatchewan ndp passed what many consider to be its crowning achievement: a universal public healthcare system. during the years 1971-1982, the ndp returned to government and, led by premier al blakeney, passed progressive legislation in support of labour and the agricultural sector (blakeney, 2008). many crown corporations were created in the energy sectors, telecommunications, car insurance, and the burgeoning potash industry. in october, 1982, the 11-year rein of the saskatchewan ndp government came to an end with the election of the grant devine progressive conservatives (pc). this shift from the ndp to the pcs established the first stages of neoliberalism. during devine’s second term as premier, the pcs sold off some of saskatchewan’s crown corporations, including saskminerals and the especially lucrative potash corporation. when the pcs broke their election promise not to sell off the public utilities and attempted to sell the natural gas division of saskpower, the collectivist impulse of the saskatchewan public was activated (mcgrane, 2011). massive public sentiment against the privatization of saskpower was so intense that the pcs backed down (pitsula and rasmussen, 1990). the progressive conservatives reduced spending on social programs, curbed the power of labour unions, and brought in massive tax cuts. in 1991 voters showed their displeasure by returning the ndp to power in a landslide (pitsula and rasmussen, 1990). the roy romanow-led ndp governed with a decidedly neoliberal perspective, far removed from the strong social democratic values of the blakeney-led government of the 1970s (mcgrane, 2011; smith, 2011). romanow’s first term was marked by a massive effort to “eliminate the deficit with the social democratic goal of redistributing wealth and the need to maintain economic competitiveness in an era of globalization” (mcgrane, 2011, 95). although neoliberal policy prescriptions dominated during this first term, the ndp showed some resistance as they raised corporate taxes and introduced a progressive 10 percent deficit surtax on all taxpayers. romanow’s second and third terms, however, showed a markedly clear move toward attracting business investment simultaneously with social spending cuts. as well, corporate tax cuts and low royalties from resource extraction combined with a regressive sales tax increase (mcgrane, 2011). the ndp, long time supporters of the province’s trade union movement, did little to help organized labour during the romanow 232 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education years (smith, 2011). the ndp’s desire to be economically competitive with its alberta neighbor led to the erosion of workers’ rights, including erecting barriers to organizing unions in previously non-unionized sectors. by the end of romanow’s tenure as premier in 2001, personal income tax cuts had been added to the ndp financial plan. the strategy of tax cuts continued when lorne calvert became premier in 2001, as the governing ndp attempted wealth redistribution through raising the minimum wage and rebates from publicly owned utilities (mcgrane, 2011). despite the decrease in resource royalties and the lowering of “the corporate income tax rate from 17% to 12%” (mcgrane, 2011, 102), it was not enough for the ndp to win a fifth term. in 2007, the newly branded saskatchewan party formed government in 2007. in 2007, voters elected a new government under the moniker, the saskatchewan party, a coalition of former conservatives and liberals. the saskatchewan party, led by popular premier brad wall, embraced neoliberalism even more than grant devine’s pc government or the ndp governments of romanow and calvert. that said, the collectivist nature of saskatchewan’s political culture has resulted in a slower acceptance of neoliberalism than one might expect (mcgrane, 2011). based primarily on resource extraction and agriculture, saskatchewan has been enjoying a period of unprecedented economic prosperity for the past decade or so. since 2008, 26 percent of saskatchewan’s total government revenue is from non-renewable resources, mostly from potash and oil, which is even slightly more than what alberta derives from its non-renewable resources (enoch, 2013). because of its dependence on external capital and markets, saskatchewan is increasingly being integrated into continental and global capitalism. major problems arise when there is an over-reliance on income for government coffers from resource extraction. the cyclical nature of volatile global commodity prices results in an unstable situation in which governments cannot depend upon this income to adequately fund social programs, public healthcare and public education. saskatchewan has recently experienced this situation as “resource revenues came in $563 million lower than was expected in the 2012-13 budget,” but it was even worse in 2009 when falling potash prices resulted in a “$1.8 budget shortfall” (enoch, 2013). as predicted, the current saskatchewan government has been reducing its funding for the social welfare state, including public education and higher education (mcgrane, 2011). rampant extraction of resources is particularly hard on saskatchewan’s indigenous peoples, many of who still live off the land and neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 233 waterways. indeed, “[f]or land-based people the natural environment is the heart of their economies and their very existence” (settee, 2011, 74). this has not been a new phenomenon for the province’s indigenous peoples, however. settee (2011, 76) sums up this relationship thusly: “in spite of saskatchewan’s social democratic political tradition that emphasizes egalitarianism, colonialism has been a consistent reality for the province’s indigenous people.” clearly, colonial attitudes have informed all of saskatchewan’s provincial administrations, regardless of political ideology. this is an aspect of the political culture that must be addressed by critical pedagogy. although saskatchewan has now been governed by provincial governments influenced by neoliberalism for some thirty years, the current saskatchewan government is moving further in its priorities from the province’s social democratic and collectivist roots. indeed, saskatchewan is embracing neoliberalism more ambitiously than ever before. saskatchewan today: a neoliberal province trickle-down economics is clearly not working in saskatchewan. despite the newfound prosperity generated by the recent resource boom, the province’s poverty rate of 15.3 percent remains among the highest in canada (hunter, douglas and pedersen, 2008). also striking is the fact that this poverty is not distributed evenly across racial lines: excluding people living on reserves, aboriginal people, who comprise approximately 16 percent of saskatchewan’s population, are almost four times as likely to be living in poverty than non-aboriginals (hunter and douglas, 2006). this race/class intersection is not only the result of neoliberalism, however. indeed, it seems to be caused by long entrenched colonial attitudes among the province’s settler population (settee, 2011) the situation is especially grim with respect to child poverty. again, despite record royalties from potash and other resources, saskatchewan still has the third highest child poverty rate among canadian provinces (douglas and gingrich, 2009). in 2007, the last year for which there are accurate figures, the rate of under 18-year olds living in poverty was 16.7 percent (douglas and gingrich, 2009). child poverty is even more pronounced for aboriginal families in saskatchewan as a staggering 45 percent of aboriginal children live in low-income families, a proportion six times greater than that of non-aboriginal children. while disadvantage was less pronounced (but still significant) for metis children at 28.3 percent, an overwhelming 57.9 percent of first nations children in 234 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education saskatchewan regularly go without some of the basic necessities of life (douglas and gingrich, 2009). as race and social class are major determinants of educational achievement as well as future life chances, to be born poor and aboriginal in saskatchewan effectively condemns a person to a life of poverty. the job creator discourse has been particularly effective in normalizing neoliberalism in saskatchewan. neoliberal government policy has used this discourse to implement massive corporate tax cuts. as mentioned earlier, since the resource boom hit saskatchewan in 2007, the corporate tax rate has been reduced from 17 to 12 percent with a further 2 percent cut recently announced (enoch, 2013). as well, taxes for small businesses in saskatchewan have recently been cut from 4.5 to 2 percent, and the rate for the wealthiest individuals has been reduced to 15 percent (enoch, 2013). almost every provincial budget since 2000 highlights tax cuts as a government priority. (government of saskatchewan budgets, 2013). this significant revenue shortfall leaves the provincial government with few options. the saskatchewan government’s adherence to neoliberalism is evident in its attempts to make up some of the revenue shortfall by “raiding crown dividends, higher tuition fees, the erratic and haphazard cuts to programs and services and growing public debt” (enoch, 2013). moreover, funding cuts have been employed rather than adopting progressive tax strategies and resource royalty rates successful in places like scandinavia (moore, 20013). in 2012, the saskatchewan government further indicated its support for neoliberalism by launching an attack on labour rights. bill 85 attempted to make it much easier for employers to claim the work of their employees to be an essential service, thereby negating their collective bargaining rights. this attack, however, suffered a setback when the provincial court of queen’s bench sided with the province’s unions by declaring the province’s essential service legislation unconstitutional (ccpa, 2012). in april 2014, the saskatchewan government passed a new saskatchewan employment act, which makes union membership more difficult, and gives workers fewer rights and protections. as expected, the province’s newspapers hailed the law as a victory in which labour was outsmarted by a conservative government in a “labour war” (mandryk, 2014). another major plank in the saskatchewan government’s neoliberal agenda is its preference to privatize the commons. for example, in the melee caused by the federal conservative government’s omnibus neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 235 bill-c38, the saskatchewan government moved to privatize 1.77 million acres of community pasture lands (arbuthnot and schmutz, 2013). this move also effectively negates environmental regulations of the lands, which is consistent with the province’s stance on deregulating industry. privatization of the commons is also on the table: in october 2014, premier brad wall announced that his government is considering “the idea of allowing private companies to charge people directly for diagnostic medical scans” (french, 2014, a1). this is a major shift away from the publicly-funded medicare system that first appeared in saskatchewan in 1962. equally disturbing, the public school system is also being targeted. the neoliberal assault on saskatchewan’s public education system a major objective of canadian social democracy in its ideal form is to protect the commons, especially public education and public healthcare. the saskatchewan ndp that governed from 1991-2007 was more true to this aspect of social democracy than in other areas. the change in government to the more corporate-friendly saskatchewan party has resulted in the province’s public school system being particularly vulnerable to the neoliberal threat. inadequate funding for saskatchewan public schools has resulted in a deterioration of learning conditions for all students, but some students more than others. since 2007 education assistants for special needs students have seen their numbers reduced by 350 full-time positions at the same time that student enrollment has increased by 5,676 and special needs students rose by 764 (cupe, 2011). the decision to make these cuts during an era of economic prosperity in order to facilitate corporate and personal tax cuts seems particularly mean spirited. at the least, it is ideological. moreover, in late 2011, the saskatchewan government announced that it is “committed to funding associate [christian] schools at 80% of the provincial per-student average” (government of saskatchewan, 2011). the most visible manifestation of neoliberal influence in public education is seen in the manner in which the saskatchewan government has treated the province’s normally passive 12,000 teachers. working without a contract since august 2010, teachers responded to stalled contract negotiations by walking out of the classroom for the first time in saskatchewan’s history for a one-day strike (graham, 236 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education 2011). in early 2013, the saskatchewan government unilaterally increased the number of hours teachers spend in the classroom (french, 2013b). in may 2014, 64 percent of the province’s teachers rejected a new contract, demonstrating a degree of militancy rarely seen with this particular group of workers. the most obvious neoliberal influence, however, involves teacher accountability. in early 2013 the saskatchewan government announced plans to increase the frequency of these tests to levels beyond anywhere else in canada (french, 2013a). at a time when most jurisdictions in both canada and the u.s. are moving from standardized assessment (orlowski, 2013a), the saskatchewan education ministry stated that by 2016, “students across the province will participate in annual standardized tests, including evaluations of kindergarteners and pre-kindergarteners, readings tests for grades 1 to 3, and exams in science, math and english for students in grades 4 through 12” (couture, 2013). predictably, this led to an outcry from the saskatoon teachers association (french, 2013a). as well, education professors from the province’s two universities went public in newspapers, radio and television citing numerous studies to explain why the plan was wrong-headed (see mcvittie, 2013; orlowski, 2013; spooner and orlowski, 2013; malone, 2013). it is noteworthy that in this era of tax cuts and reduced funding for public education, the saskatchewan government earmarked $5.9 million annually for this venture. given the research, it is particularly telling that the saskatchewan government plans to spend significant tax dollars to increase the frequency of standardized exams beyond anywhere else in canada. in fact, most other provinces are moving to a random sampling approach to standardized testing (spooner and orlowski, 2013). it is also disconcerting that they are increasing testing at the same time they are reducing funding in other important areas of public education. when resistance to standardized testing strengthened, the minister of education called the term itself “too toxic,” and proceeded to rebrand this assessment strategy as “common assessment” (spooner and orlowski, 2014). this orwellian wordplay indicates the strength of support the saskatchewan government has for neoliberalism. the silence of the media on this rebranding is also telling. it should not be surprising to learn that corporate media have corporate interests. by corollary, corporate media is clearly on the side of neoliberalism. neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 237 challenging neoliberalism in the classroom: teaching for civil society as apple (2004, 14) notes: “[a]n understanding of how the control of cultural institutions enhances the power of particular classes to control others can provide needed insight into the way the distribution of culture is related to the presence or absence of power in social groups.” when it comes to understanding politics, a significant portion of the population is unable to do so; they are politically uninformed and unaware of how economic power operates. this is likely a reason why neoliberalism has been able to replace the keynesian model without very much effective resistance. in critical democracy and education, kincheloe (1999, 73) suggests using critical pedagogy so that students become politically conscious: “the curriculum becomes a dynamic of negotiation where students and teachers examine the forces that have shaped them and the society in which they live.” bearing this important point in mind, the first concept i teach in every social science methods courses to preservice teachers is ideology critique. ideology critique in order to help students understand the major political ideologies, i first have students categorize issues as either social or economic (see appendix 1). for example, on the social spectrum minority rights are on the left side, while the conservative pro-life and pro-death penalty positions are on the right. on the economic spectrum, tax cuts are on the right side, while publicly funded social welfare programs are on the left. in canada, both conservative ideology and liberal ideology are positioned on the right, although liberalism is slightly to the left of conservatism. in its ideal form social democracy is on the left side of both the social and economic spectrum. social democrats and liberals often agree on social issues. in canada, for example, the federal ndp and the liberals agree on rights for aboriginals and lgbqt people. they usually differ on economic issues, however, as their traditional stances on trade unions and free trade indicate. the social democratic ndp, however, has accepted neoliberalism. this approach allows me to demonstrate the extent to which each of the parties stands in relation to the neoliberal agenda. in this way, students comprehend that neoliberalism is an economic paradigm with significant social and political consequences. in recent years, i include a discussion of democratic socialism, and how it differs from neoliberalism and other ideologies on economic issues. by the end of every course i teach in teacher education, the student has at least a basic understanding of 238 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education political ideology in relation to various social and economic issues. the next pedagogical step is to emphasize the role of the corporate media as a hegemonic device. the case for critical media literacy media literacy can take two basic forms: one looks at the pleasures within a capitalist society and how certain groups are represented; the other looks at politics and the media’s role in shaping public opinion. this second approach is the one i focus on, especially around neoliberalism, since it enables the teacher to illuminate the effects of various hegemonic discourses used by the media that portray the poor as lazy, or public sector workers as entitled while ignoring the growing wealth gap. as herman and chomsky (1988) point out, the major role of the corporate media is to “manufacture consent,” to shape the collective consciousness in ways that further the interests of the elite. this is accomplished not only by how issues are covered, but by which issues receive coverage. there are myriad examples of the media ignoring or distorting certain events and policies if there is a perceived threat that the public might turn against the ruling classes. for example, over the past few years there has been a concerted effort in many western nations to weaken or eliminate altogether pensions plans for public sector workers. corporate media have virtually ignored the fact that the attack on pensions is occurring across most western nations. students come to understand this omission as a hegemonic strategy. another hegemonic strategy that i use in teacher education involves understanding the power of language. we are living in a time in which bias, or “spin”, has been hyperbolized to extreme proportions. as an example of current spin, the tendency to limit workers’ collective bargaining rights is not called union busting; rather, the mainstream media and neoliberal politicians refer to it as labour flexibility. lowering the minimum wage is called right-to-work legislation. the orwellian spin strategy has recently been put to good use in canada. in 2011, the federal conservative government passed a bill called “marketing freedom for grain farmers act” that effectively ended the grain price controls put in place in 1935 through the canadian wheat board. this creates a clear disadvantage for the small wheat and barley farmers. right on cue, the neoliberal national post ran a headline equating the wheat board to an “iron fist” (gunter, 2011). students were able to understand how corporate media is a hegemonic device. neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 239 a counterhegemonic strategy that i have found successful involves students accessing and assessing media sources. students demonstrate the degree to which they have become adept at explaining cultural struggles in ideological terms in their “current events” presentations. each student chooses an article from one of the mainstream newspapers or from an alternative news source such as rabble.ca, most of which come from the internet. the chosen article must address a cultural issue pertaining to race, class, gender, sexuality, war, or the environment. each student provides a 2-page written analysis to address issues of bias by showing which groups benefit and which ones lose from the given ideological perspective. they must offer their thoughts about who was quoted and why, and which affected groups were excluded. each student must also present his or her findings to the class with a four-tofive minute presentation. some students choose only articles from mainstream sources, while others willingly, even enthusiastically, search the alternative sources. this has worked well, pedagogically speaking, because students often choose articles on similar topics – climate change and the 2011 canadian election come to mind – and the ideologies emanating from mainstream and alternative sources are not difficult to discern. for another example, students compared how mainstream news and alternative media outlets differed in their coverage of the idle no more social movement. most preservice teachers i recently taught were completely unaware of the role the federal conservatives’ omnibus budget bill had on the rise of idle no more and its focus on the deregulation of canada’s fresh waterways. media bias is quite apparent with such pedagogy. these assignments offer preservice teachers a framework in which to critique the media in terms of the ideological influences of journalists. through this process, they come to understand how most mainstream media often reflect the views of powerful interests. indeed, when students challenge the language and the assumptions that many journalists use, they see how the hegemonic function of the media works in the interests of large corporations and other privileged groups. some students learn to see past the effects of a false political consciousness. in recent years, i have had students look specifically for neoliberal policy being promoted or challenged by some politicians or business representatives in the corporate media. they look for news articles discussing deregulation, privatizing the commons, unions or tax cuts and analyze the language used. the goal of this exercise is two-fold: first, to demonstrate to students the proliferation of neoliberal policies; and 240 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education second, to help them comprehend how language leads many people to believe that work stoppages are most often a result of striking workers rather than lockouts. students come to understand that the dominant discourses used in corporate media support the interests of elites over the common good; indeed, they support profits over broad, societal interests. the dominant neoliberal discourses in the corporate media over the course of neoliberalism – tax cuts, deregulation, debt reduction, cuts to social programs and free global markets – have been the building blocks for a resurgence in economic and political power for elites in north america. re-framing discourse i have recently been engaging in a more sophisticated kind of media literacy, one based on reframing political discourse from different ideological perspectives (lakoff, 2004). the basic theory behind reframing is to address the observation that people who are strongly influenced by any particular ideology find it difficult to listen to facts that might shake their beliefs. the facts do not seem to matter; the intended listener most often remains entrenched in their belief. rather than become frustrated, progressive ideologues need to use positive discourses on policy that rely on progressive values and language. in other words, rather than using the familiar frames of neoliberalism, progressives ought to use ones based on social democratic values. one example from the teacher education program may help to explain the value in reframing. for the neoliberal agenda to continue, significant numbers of poor and working-class people must vote against their own best interests, or not vote at all. the necessary reframing efforts on the part of neoliberal conservatives were successful because a commonly held belief today is that conservative ideas are populist, while liberal or progressive ideas are elitist (frank, 2012). to counter this, i use a critical pedagogy that has the preservice teachers reframe neoliberal arguments using progressive values. for example, neoliberal politicians often attack any notion of increasing the mandated minimum wage by calling it antithetical to business success. instead of defending an increase in the minimum wage, one student reframed the debate and focused on the value of prosperity for all who work hard. this is an idea that people across the ideological spectrum could support. another student produced a defense of taxes not by buying into the neoliberal frames of tax relief or taxes as burden, but by using a social democratic frame – fair tax reform – which indicates that wealthy people neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 241 and corporations should pay their fair share, and that taxes are an investment for the future prosperity of everyone’s children. this led to a reframing of a very contentious local issue that recently made headlines far beyond the university of saskatchewan. the university’s board of governors was trying to implement a major cost-cutting exercise called transformus (hill and french, 2014a). some students in my classes, all of whom were recently elected to the college of education student council, quickly organized a large student rally. they reframed the cost-cutting transformus to defendus and by all accounts, the student action was a catalyst that led to the firing of the university president (hill and french, 2014b). my students became acutely aware of the role that political agency can have in exacting positive change, and found themselves explaining to the media that the university needs to be adequately funded (see figure 1). of course, media access and media compliance are usually important obstacles to these progressive frames becoming commonly accepted. for now, however, if teachers can comprehend corporate media neoliberal discourses, they should be better able to help their students deconstruct the bias that they are experiencing. after all, a major objective of critical media literacy is to help students interpret the news rather than simply absorb it without reflection. this is a crucial pedagogical strategy to develop a political consciousness in which individuals understand and defend their own best interests. some final reflections neoliberalism replaced keynesianism in canada and the us as the dominant socio-economic and political paradigm in the 1980s and 1990s. the saskatchewan experience demonstrates that social democracy is not strong enough to withstand these powerful forces to increase corporate profits at any cost. if not social democracy, then effective resistance to neoliberalism is more likely to emanate from a social movement based on democratic socialist values. compared to other provinces, saskatchewan is in a unique position for a variety of reasons. bucking the global trend, its economy is actually growing more than ever before, thanks to the demand for natural resources the province is bestowed with. one trend the province is subscribing to in a major way, however, is its embrace of neoliberalism. saskatchewan governments ostensibly representing various political ideologies have been adhering to the major tenets of neoliberalism ever more so since the 1980s. these include deregulation of private industry, 242 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the dismantlement of the public sector, corporate tax cuts, privatization of the commons, and the curtailment of free collective bargaining rights for workers. neoliberalism has had particularly grave consequences for saskatchewan’s public school system. tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations mean fewer dollars for the public school system and more private schooling. moreover, the current attack on the province’s teachers and their union is also in keeping with the neoliberal doctrine. paradoxically, the deregulation of private enterprise is occurring simultaneously with increased teacher accountability. this highlights the insidious discourse of neoliberalism; namely, that private enterprise is to be trusted while the opposite is true of public workers such as teachers. it is also unconscionable that saskatchewan’s aboriginal peoples have not been given the same opportunities to benefit from the relatively prosperous economy. the long history of white settler racism toward aboriginal peoples in the province and elsewhere is still clearly present. yet, where there is power, there is also resistance. the idle no more movement is a case in point. this is where hope resides, even in a province that has long held onto colonial values, and seemingly accepted the neoliberal doctrine. perhaps the citizens of saskatchewan, including its teachers, are waking up to the fact that public services and assets are not to be taken for granted. in fact, the social democratic drift toward neoliberalism in saskatchewan might suggest that democratic socialism may be a more viable alternative to the dismantling of oppositional groups, unions and progressive social forces more generally. appendix a an effective way for students to understand political ideology is to consider all issues as either economic or social. economic issues are those that represent significant amounts of money, while social issues do not. for example, capital punishment is a social issue while tax reform is an economic issue. the case can be made that some issues are both social and economic – healthcare is a case in point – yet, to save on getting mired in semantics, the basic economic/social distinction is useful. with political ideologies and political issues divided into the economic and the social, students are able to make headway around why certain media are called left-wing by some, and the very same neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 243 media outlets are called right-wing or right-leaning by others. for example, during the past few federal elections in canada, leaders of the federal liberal party appeal to social democrats (that is, supporters of the new democratic party) as having values that have appeared out of the same concerns for justice, and that their vote should switch to the liberals. the truth of the matter is that on social issues, they are correct. on economic issues, however, the two parties diverge significantly – the liberals are to the right of center, closer to where the conservative party are positioned, while the ndp are to the left of centre. (note: the point about the liberal party being left-wing on social issues and right-wing on economic issues is rarely mentioned in the corporate media.) figure 1: left and right on the social and economic spectra 29 point about the liberal party being left-wing on social issues and right-wing on economic issues is rarely mentioned in the corporate media.) figure 1: left and right on the social and economic spectra assignment 1. research the platforms of the following saskatchewan political parties: – the saskatchewan party the new democratic party 2. research the platforms of the following canadian political parties: – the liberal party – the conservative party – the new democratic party social lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i pro-choice pro-life anti-death penalty pro-death penalty pro minority rights anti-minority rights economic lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i strong social welfare state anti social welfare state pro publicly funded universal healthcare for profit healthcare pro-union anti-union wealthy pay tax at a higher rate tax cuts for all assignment 1. research the platforms of the following saskatchewan political parties: the saskatchewan party the new democratic party 29 point about the liberal party being left-wing on social issues and right-wing on economic issues is rarely mentioned in the corporate media.) figure 1: left and right on the social and economic spectra assignment 1. research the platforms of the following saskatchewan political parties: – the saskatchewan party the new democratic party 2. research the platforms of the following canadian political parties: – the liberal party – the conservative party – the new democratic party social lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i pro-choice pro-life anti-death penalty pro-death penalty pro minority rights anti-minority rights economic lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i strong social welfare state anti social welfare state pro publicly funded universal healthcare for profit healthcare pro-union anti-union wealthy pay tax at a higher rate tax cuts for all 244 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education 2. research the platforms of the following canadian political parties: • the liberal party • the conservative party • the new democratic party • the bloc quebecois • the green party of canada 3. use the social scale or the economic scale to place the various political parties. be prepared to explain why you placed each one where you did. (i) the two main saskatchewan political parties (ii) the five main canadian federal political parties 30 – the bloc quebecois – the green party of canada 3.use the social scale or the economic scale to place the various political parties. be prepared to explain why you placed each one where you did. (i) the two main saskatchewan political parties (ii) the five main canadian federal political parties (iii) using a separate set of axes to represent the economic and social scales, place the letter representing each of the following issues on one of the scales. be prepared to explain why you placed each one where you did. a – capital punishment b – increased rights of gay people c – allowing industry to self-regulate d – tax cuts for all e – increased funding for public education f – pro-life (on abortion issue) g – pro-choice (on abortion issue) h – government regulations of the financial industry social lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i social scale economic lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i (iii) using a separate set of axes to represent the economic and social scales, place the letter representing each of the following issues on one of the scales. be prepared to explain why you placed each one where you did. 30 – the bloc quebecois – the green party of canada 3.use the social scale or the economic scale to place the various political parties. be prepared to explain why you placed each one where you did. (i) the two main saskatchewan political parties (ii) the five main canadian federal political parties (iii) using a separate set of axes to represent the economic and social scales, place the letter representing each of the following issues on one of the scales. be prepared to explain why you placed each one where you did. a – capital punishment b – increased rights of gay people c – allowing industry to self-regulate d – tax cuts for all e – increased funding for public education f – pro-life (on abortion issue) g – pro-choice (on abortion issue) h – government regulations of the financial industry social lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i social scale economic lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i a – capital punishment b – increased rights of gay people c – allowing industry to self-regulate d – tax cuts for all e – increased funding for public education f – pro-life (on abortion issue) g – pro-choice (on abortion issue) h – government regulations of the financial industry i – increased military spending neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 245 j – increased social welfare spending k – private or 2-tiered healthcare system l – subsidized daycare m – the idle no more movement n – “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” philosophy o – support for unions p – banning sex education in schools q – honouring aboriginal land treaties r – support for public transit s – progressive tax reform (eg., raising taxes on large corporations) t – support for using replacement workers during a strike figure 1: college of education, university of saskatchewan students protest transformus cost-cutting exercise (2014, may 21) 246 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education references albo, g. and fanelli, c. 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(1992). canadian socialism: essays on the ccf-ndp. toronto, on: oxford. alternate routes, volume 10, 1993 newsforum newsforum conference report on january 22, 1993, carleton university hosted an all day seminar in canadian communication policy at the school of journalism and communication. the seminar: publics, markets and the state, featured presentations from academia, the public and private sectors. panel 1: revisiting convergence: information, technology and communication services, included speakers: david ellis of friends of canadian broadcasting, heather menzies of carleton university, and michael ferris of the crtc. ellis, referring to aspects of his latest book split screen: home entertainment and the new technologies, stated that the convergence of broadcasting, computing, and television has meant the crtc has been more concerned with orderly market place distribution of video and information services than regulating to serve public interest. menzies suggested that one of the features of convergence in postindustrial society is the end of old mass culture. the new mass culture tends to be more defined in canada by trade relations such as nafta which will have devastating effects on protecting canadian content and cultural industries. ferris focused on crtc restructuring of the canadian broadcasting system which has been influenced by structural changes such as u.s. direct broadcast satellites, digital video compression and extended basic cable tiers. panel 2: the new broadcasting environment: audiences, technologies. issues included speakers ivan emke of carleton university, kenneth katz of the department of justice, and alexander crawley of actra. emke raised a number of questions regarding who or what arc audiences if they arc composed of many divergent groups rather than a unitary mass how do 124 newsforum regulatory authorities determine what policy is in the public interest? katz explains that the charter of rights and freedoms will increasingly force the crtc to confront its own role and reexamine its historical attitude to broadcasting regulation with the development of niche market services such as single religion or politically oriented channels. crawley noted that the creative artist has had to rapidly adapt because of changes in new technologies. as consumption for cultural products increases it should mean an increase for cultural creators but in canada this will not happen without the state, cultural policies and cultural content. george fierheller of rogers cantel mobile communication stated that from the communication industries' point of view the crtc needs to open competition to serve the public needs and demands for communication services. panel 3: telecommunications market services and the public interest, included speakers: david colville of the crtc, joan mccalla of the ontario ministry of culture and communications, and larry shaw of communications canada (department of communication). colville described the changed arena for crtc telecommunication regulation as one which not only protects monopoly subscribers but that includes the benefits of competition which accrue to the public in a fair and equitable manner. mccalla focused on the current provincial telecommunication strategy initiative which addresses telecommunications as both an important sector of the provincial economy and as an enabling infrastructure for all aspects of life. shaw provided an overview of a number of policy issues currently being addressed by the federal department of communications. guiding policies for telecommunication s include keeping telecommunication local rates low, maintaining universality, and providing the most good for the most people through access to new services. 125 alternate routes, lolume 10. 1993 newsforum panel 4: does the work get out? reporting on communications and cultural policy included speakers: tony atherton of the ottawa citizen, val ross of the globe and mail, and alberto manguel, a toronto author and critic. atherton explained how newspapers work against the reporting of cultural policy because reporters who cover this area often have other priorities. as a result, cultural policies are covered haphazardly, without context and sometimes fall through the cracks. ross asks, in cultural policy reporting, what is the role of the reporter? and what, for example, is the public's interest in the public interest? reporters have to be able to tell people why they should care, what is at stake and what the long term effects of a decision or a policy change might be. complex policy issues involve telling a story in the context of a bigger picture. manguel explained that book reviewing has become more of a token showcase in newspapers. the review is less of a focus on the book and tends to be more a profile of the author. often, u.s. publishers and reviewers set the parameters of what a 'good' book review is. this means that reviews of canadian books are defined in an american context and literature from latin america often is seen as quaint local colour. vanda rideout carleton university 126 reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 187 reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work tanner mirrlees1 abstract: in keeping with this issue of alternate routes’ focus on forms of low-waged and no-waged work, this article focuses on low-waged and non-waged work in the reality tv production sector. how do reality-tv studios try to maximize profits by keeping the costs of making their commodities to a minimum, and how does the push for profit disorganize and devalue labour? this article contextualizes and critiques how reality tv studios try to maximize profits by minimizing production costs in three sections. “reality tv producers: work behind the scenes” shows how reality tv’s classification as “non-scripted” programming enables production companies to exploit a non-unionized workforce. “reality tv celebrities: work in the scenes” highlights how reality tv production companies exploit the no-waged labour of “contestant-participants.” “reality tv interns: work behind the scenes, and in them” shows how studios use internship programs to get workers to make reality tv programs without pay and how some of these programs glorify no-waged work. the article concludes on a more optimistic note with an overview of reality-tv worker challenges to reality-tv’s owners with unionization, strikes, litigation, publicity and discourse. keywords: cultural industries; reality tv; cultural work; political economy of communication introduction: the political economy of reality tv since the turn of the millennium, the north american reality-tv production sector has grown immensely, and it is a boon to tv networks as they compete for viewer attention, ratings and ad revenue in a period of tv industry transformation (kraidy and sender, 2011; murray and ouellete, 2009). in the 2001-2002 tv season, reality tv accounted for about a quarter of the prime time network tv audience watching the top ten programs. in the 2007 and 2008 tv season, reality-tv captured about 1 tanner mirrlees is an assistant professor in the communication and digital media studies program at the university of ontario institute of technology (uoit). his research focuses on the political economy of the global cultural and entertainment industries. he is the author of global entertainment media: between cultural imperialism and cultural globalization, hearts and mines: the us empire’s culture industry and the co-editor of the television reader. 188 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages three quarters of the audience for the top prime time tv shows; in 20102011 season, it took in more than half (nielsen, 2011). despite a recent downturn in reality tv ratings (collins 2014), north american tv networks still load their schedules with reality tv shows like big brother, america's got talent, duck dynasty and dance moms to collect viewer attention and cash in on advertising revenue (kraidy and sender, 2011; mirrlees, 2013; murray and ouellete, 2009). reality tv shows are pervasive not simply because viewers demand that tv networks schedule them, but because these shows cost tv networks so much less to acquire from tv production companies than scripted tv shows do (slocum 2005). and reality-tv shows cost less to buy because they cost less to make. on average, an hour long reality tv show costs a studio between $350,000 and $500,000 to make, while one episode of a fictional tv show costs anywhere from $1 to $2.5 million (adalian, 2015; eidelson, 2013; gornstein, 2008). that reality-tv is “cheap” to buy and make relative to more expensive scripted tv shows is not surprising, but newsy descriptions of reality-tv’s low exchange-value obscures the asymmetrical power relations between the owners of reality-tv studios and the workers whose labour they employ to make these commodities. at the base of abstract and impersonal market exchanges between tv networks and tv studios and the scheduled flow and happy consumption of the latest american idol or dancing with the stars knockoff, is the exploitation of human labour. in the capitalist system, especially in this epoch’s post-fordist neoliberal one, corporations competitively strive to maximize profit on behalf of shareholders and they regularly do this by selling commodities for more than what they pay their workers in wages to produce them. following this capitalist logic, high profits correlate with low wages (norris, 2014). the capitalist profit motive is full blown in the reality tv sector, where big tv networks demand cheap-to-acquire content from reality tv studios, and these studios compete against each other by slashing prices and labour costs. how specifically do reality-tv studios try to maximize profits by keeping the costs of making their commodities to a minimum, and how does this disorganize and devalue labour? this article contextualizes and critiques how reality tv studios do this in three sections. “reality tv producers: work behind the scenes” shows how reality tv’s classification as “non-scripted” programming enables production companies to exploit a non-unionized workforce. “reality tv celebrities: work in the scenes” highlights how reality tv production companies exploit the no-waged labour of “contestant-participants.” “reality tv interns: work behind the scenes, and in them” shows how reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 189 studios use internship programs to get workers to make reality tv programs without pay and how some of these programs glorify no-waged work. the article concludes on a more optimistic note with an overview of how reality-tv workers are challenging the power of reality-tv’s owners with unionization, strikes, litigation, publicity and discourse. this paper’s critical focus on reality-tv’s low and no-waged work builds upon important political economy of communication studies of labour in the cultural industries (mosco 2009). in general, political economists of communication analyze the “power relations that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources, including communication resources” (mosco, 2009, 24). over the past decade, scholars have illuminated the “blindspot” of labour in communication studies with significant research on work in the cultural industries, as well as the experiences of cultural workers (cohen, 2012; deuze, 2007; de peuter, 2014; hesmondalgh, 2010; huws, 2010; mayer, banks and caldwell, 2009; mosco and mckercher, 2008; ross, 2004; 2009). the cultural industries – all of the companies involved in the production, distribution and exhibition of cultural and informational commodities that convey meaning about the world –are surrounded by promises of “good work” and some jobs in these industries do enable cultural workers to express themselves, flexibly meet their needs by “doing what they love” and control the fruits of their labour (hesmondalgh, 2010). yet, research shows that the dream of good work in the cultural industries is often dashed by material conditions marked by class division between a few ceos and a “reserve army” of workers (miller et al., 2005), exploitation (cohen, 2012; ross, 2009), the corporate control of intellectual property (ip) rights to worker-produced content (miller et al., 2005), hard tayloristic managerial strategies that standardize, intensify and speed up the labour process (huws, 2010), softer techniques that build “humane workplaces” as a way to get workers to actively coordinate their own exploitation (ross, 2004), creativity automation systems, and the outsourcing of tasks to the new international division of cultural labour (nidcl) (miller et al., 2005). furthermore, political economists of communication have documented how life and labour in the cultural industries tend to be marred by precarity and existential insecurity, as many cultural workers routinely move from short-term contract to contract, never knowing what’s coming next or whether or not their labour will be sellable (cohen and de peuter, 2013; de peuter, 2014). the political-economy of communication method is useful to this article’s study of reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work in the following ways. first, it enables a contextualization of the reality tv industry is 190 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages part of capitalism, an economic system in which privately owned media companies produce cultural commodities for sale in the market (with the intention of making a profit) instead of for human need using privately owned capital goods (technology) and human labour power (the manual and mental capabilities required to complete tasks). second, it centers on the asymmetrical power relations between reality tv industry owners and workers and the class conflicts that emerge as result of them. third, it avoids textual fetishism, or, the tendency to analyze texts sans production contexts, by relating reality tv show texts to the conditions of their production as well as to the lives and labour struggles of the workers who produce them. fourth, its commitment to a good, equitable and just society enables a moral critique of the reality tv industry’s bad, inequitable and exploitative conditions, while also pointing beyond them. in the following three sections, reality tv’s real capitalist conditions are critiqued. this article does not break radically “new ground” in the field. but it hopefully offers readers, especially those unfamiliar with the political-economy communications’ labour turn, a succinct and pedagogically helpful synthesis of some research about, news reports on and union coverage of reality tv’s low wage and no wage work. reality tv producers: work behind the scenes the first way that reality tv studios keep production costs to a minimum is by exploiting non-unionized cultural workers in labour markets defined by post-fordist flex work and precarity. due to the efficacy of its exploitation of labour, the reality tv sector has been conceptualized as “paradigmatic” of post-fordism’s flex production model (hearn, 2014). over the course of the 20th century, workers fought and won battles against fordist-era corporations to establish standard employment regimes and pocket a larger piece of the surplus they generated (i.e. in the form of high wages, benefits and pensions). this fordist worker-capital “class compromise,” however, was rocked to the core in the 1970s and with the onset of political neoliberalism (harvey, 2007). in response to a profit-squeeze stemming from union militancy and strikes, some of which were motivated by worker efforts to escape the factory’s cage of a routinized and standardized “job for life,” corporations pushed a shift from a fordist to post-fordist flex regime of accumulation (harvey, 1989). to consolidate this post-fordist flex work regime, many corporations pushed against standard employment relations and unions, replacing fulltime and secure jobs with regular hours on a relatively fixed schedule with non-standard jobs that were part-time, contingent, insecure and reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 191 temporary (harvey 1989). post-fordism’s lean and mean flex work regime enables corporations to hire workers on contract and fire them as they like while spatially and temporally dis-aggregating work from one place and time into many spaces and time zones, often diminishing the collective power of workers and outflanking union initiatives to organize and bargain. across the many sectors of the post-fordist media and service industries, workers now commonly experience “intermittent employment and radical uncertainty about the future” (ross, 2009, 4) as well as “financial and existential insecurity” (brophy and de peuter, 2007, 180). this post-fordist work regime is typified by the rise of “freelancing, shortterm contracts, internships, solo self-employment, and other unstable work arrangements” (de peuter, 2014, 266). in this context, corporations strive to keep profits high and labour costs low by flexibly exploiting low to no paid workers who precariously move from contract to contract, task to task, without union protection and zero job security. for most of tv’s history, the production of “scripted programming” (i.e. dramas, sitcoms and soap operas) fell under union contracts, meaning that tv studios had to hire unionized workers if they wanted make tv shows. at present, the director’s guild of america (dga), the writers guild of america (wga), the screen actors guild (sag), the american federation of television and radio artists (aftra), the casting society of america (csa) cover “above-the-line” tv workers while the international alliance of theatrical stage employees (iatse) represents “below-the-line” workers and give them a means of negotiating wages, benefits and work conditions with the alliance of motion picture and television producers (amptp), a lobby for media owners. these unions are intermediaries between the interest of tv owners to maximize profits by reducing labour costs and the interests of tv workers to get equitable wages for their labour, residual payments for the reproduction of the tv content they create and benefits. the relationship between tv unions and tv owners is at times collaborative and at others conflicted. but overall, through collective organizing and strike actions, tv unions have clashed with tv owners and established a barrier to their push for maximal profits. the wga, for example, has organized three major strikes against tv owners. in 1960 (january 16 to june 10), the wga went on strike to increase the minimum wage paid to writers for their labour and to ensure that they would receive a fair share of studio revenue accumulated through the lease or sale of movie distribution/exhibition rights to tv networks. in 1988 (march 7 to august 7), the wga struck to try to get writers fair residual payments for hour-long syndicated tv shows, expand the creative power of writers to shape what actors and directors get hired 192 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages and to challenge tv studio strategies for lowering production costs. in the 2007-2008 wga strike (november 5, 2007 to february 12, 2008), the wga struck for pay raises relative to tv profits and a cut of what studios accumulated through dvd sales and deals with digital giants (i.e. itunes, amazon video on demand, netflix and hulu.com) (schechner, 2007). in the context of ongoing (class) struggles between tv owners and unionized tv workers, reality-tv tipped the balance of power in the favour of tv owners at the expense of workers. here’s how. reality-tv covers many different tv formats (i.e. game shows, talent competitions, mock documentaries, unscripted dramas, lifestyle episodes and home improvement shows) that mix different tele-visual genre codes and conventions. but what unites all reality-tv shows is their classification as “non-scripted programming.” to free themselves from collective agreements and bargaining, tv studios used “non-scripted programming” as part of a “wider industry move toward using non-union, freelance production crews” (raphael 2004, 129) and consequently, established a “non-union business model with a work force that is underpaid, overworked and made to feel fungible” (verrone ,2007). the distinction between scripted and non-scripted tv basically split the tv labour market in two. in the first, unionized workers create “scripted” programming; in the second, non-unionized workers make “non-scripted” programming, or “real-tv” (raphael, 2004; yglesias, 2006). in the nonscripted sector, tv owners replace unionized directors with precarious production managers and displace unionized scriptwriters with casualized story editors. workers in this sector get paid less than those in the scripted tv sector, work overtime without pay, lack health insurance and pensions, do not receive residual pay, are denied credits and flexibly move from one reality tv project contract to the next, some lasting weeks, others, many years (eidelson, 2013; rendon, 2004; waxman, 2005). the non-scripted label, however, obscures how reality tv is quite similar to scripted tv in terms of its labour process (delgado, 2007; richmond, 2004; rupel, 2014; stradal, 2014). like many scripted tv shows, reality tv shows entail formats that enable producers to standardize and routinize the labour process. akin to the procedural scripts of ikea furniture assembly manuals, reality-tv formats convey the “one best way” to assemble the given tv show. these taylorize the labour process, breaking it down into steps to be efficiently followed by workers, and they shape the action behind the scenes and the interactions of on-screen hosts and contestants alike. like the sequences in fictional tv, reality-tv scenes are contrived, shot by a production crew on sets that are built or found (mohan 2014). if the initially recorded material does not reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 193 provide the content from which a compelling story can later be fashioned, sequences are often re-staged and re-shot (delgado, 2007). reality tv is supposedly non-scripted, yet, writers, though not recognized as writers, shape what viewers see or don’t see. these “story producers,” “story editors” and “segment producers” turn hundreds sometimes thousands of hours of source material into compelling twenty-two to forty-four minute narratives with a beginning, middle and end, protagonists (heroes) and antagonists (villains) and conflict-driven action—all typical of scripted tv (rupel, 2014; stradal, 2014). they also use franken-byting techniques to splice together select pieces of footage or sound-bites to create sequential clips of contestants doing or saying things that better fit with the producer’s overall vision of the narrative or the story effect they wish to achieve (waxman, 2005). though non-scripted tv is a misnomer, it has helped tv studios and major tv networks outflank and outlast tv union strikes. during the 2007-2008 wga strike, for example, tv workers refused to write new tv episodes, anticipating that this would shut down tv production, compromise network profits, and compel tv owners to meet their demands. though the scripted tv sector stopped churning out tv shows, the non-scripted sector kept assembling tv shows and selling them to tv networks, which filled their schedules with reality-tv shows like american gladiators, farmer wants a wife, and my dad is better than your dad. with reality-tv in cue, tv networks drew mass audiences, upped ratings and collected ad revenue (strachan, 2008). “the strong performance of non-scripted series has network executives brimming with confidence about their anti-strike strategy” wrote a new york times journalist in an article appropriately entitled “reality tv is no lightweight in the battle to outlast strikers” (carter, 2008). furthermore, as reality-tv studios competitively raced to the bottom to sate tv network demand for a glut of cheap tv shows, the wga strike arguably helped major tv networks save money they would have otherwise spent on scripted tv programming. leslie moonves, cbs’s ceo, commented: “we have added a number of reality programs” and “costs will be down considerably” (wyatt, 2007). peter chernin, president of fox, announced: “my guess is that during fiscal 2008, a strike is a positive for us” because “we save more money in term deals and story costs and probably the lack of making pilots than we lose in potential advertising.” chernin continued: “our animated shows are a year ahead in terms of scripts, and we have american idol and other reality shows coming” (tv guide, 2007). 194 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages reality tv celebrities: work in the scenes the second way that reality tv companies keep production costs to a minimum is by exploiting the no-waged labour of anybody who wants to and consents to try to become a reality tv celebrity. for most of tv’s history, tv studios hired and paid for the labor of professional actors, many which were unionized. but reality-tv studios channel the labour of presumably “ordinary people” – as opposed to professionally trained and unionized actors – into the production of “on-screen” tv content. in effect, they bypass aftra and sag-supplied actors, decrease the number of paid jobs for tv actors and increase the number of unpaid jobs for amateur “scab” actors, all for the sake of maintaining low labour costs (utley, 2000). in fact, tv production companies have harnessed the unwaged labour of ordinary people to make tv since network tv’s emergence in the late 1940s. allen funt’s candid camera (1948-) filmed ordinary people being tricked and surprised, the art baker show (195058) invited viewers to interactively submit postcards to producers describing what they wanted to see on tv and ralph edwards’ this is your life (1948-52) profiled the biography of ordinary people before a live studio audience (slocum 2005). game shows that integrate people as unpaid contestant-workers in competitions for money prizes – such as what’s my line, i’ve got a secret and to tell the truth (the 1950s), jeopardy! (1960s), the price is right (1970s), wheel of fortune (1980s) – have aired for decades. pbs’s an american family (1973) turned the daily life of a middle-class santa barbara family (the louds) into a tv show that was a precursor to mtv reality-docu-soaps like the real world, the osbournes and nick & jessica. late in the 1970s, the airwaves carried tv shows based on the lives of people with unique talents such as real people and that’s incredible. in the 1980s, talent contest shows like star search showcased people singing, dancing and joking in spectacular competitions for $100,000. in the 1990s, rescue 911 and cops used police-generated video content to show the security state cracking down on petty criminals in racialized and poor communities. america’s funniest home videos repackaged video content submitted to its producers by people who used low-cost cam-corders to record and watch people just like themselves doing silly things. millennial reality-tv hits like survivor, big brother and american idol integrated the labour of people to make the on-screen reality content that fills each tv episode’s commodity’s form. the realitytv production industry’s incorporation of the labour of amateurs as cast members, life-tellers, contestants, participants into the content it generates, sells and screens significantly reduces, if not eliminates, the reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 195 cost of unionized “actors.” reality-tv’s “field for ordinary people vying for potential fame is virtually inexhaustible” and all of their performances are unwaged, but value-adding (collins 2008, 97). every year, people compete to be cast on reality-tv shows. some of these are trained actors searching for paid work in scripted tv (peterson, 2012) but can’t get it, so settle for unpaid unscripted gigs.tv studios mobilize their workforce by placing ads for casting calls and auditions in newspapers, on tv and on websites (kelley, 2006). at the same time, on websites like reality wanted (www.realitywanted.com), workers promote their talents and headshots in hopes that reality producers will take notice and give them an audition. each year, reality-tv studios audition thousands of people for roles that they’ve pre-designed to be filled by someone who by playing themselves, will fit the part. in preparation for the auditioning process, reality-tv hopefuls self-exploit, committing many hours of unpaid labour and spending a lot of their own money. tom sullivan, for example, worked hundreds of hours without pay and spent thousands of dollars to shoot, edit and mail videotapes of himself to survivor’s casting agents; he was auditioned five times but was never cast (ellin, 2007). sergio alain barrios, an aspiring fashion designer, worked over a thousand unpaid hours and spent $7500 to produce fifteen sample clothing designs in preparation for his project runway audition (ellin, 2007). while reality-tv hopefuls like sullivan and barrios may have believed that self-exploitation would give them an advantage over competitors in the reality-tv labour market, they were not cast by realitytv production firms and neither are most others. the people that do get cast for unwaged work on reality tv must forego waged work if they have it by taking leaves of absence, extended vacations or quitting (gornstein, 2009). how do tv studios get the people they cast to consent to the exploitation of their labour? prior to the audition, prospective reality-tv performers must sign a “participation agreement” with the tv studio (cianci, 2009). the contract for sirens media’s real housewives of new jersey, a bravo reality-tv show, sheds light on the asymmetrical, unequal and exploitative terms of the agreement. the contract asserts sirens media’s right to: 1) exert proprietary control over the contestant’s recorded image, voice, information, videos (footage and materials) and exploit this content in any way it likes; 2) “edit, delete, dub and fictionalize the footage and materials, the program and the advertisements as producer sees fit in producer’s sole discretion”; and, 3) not be held accountable for injuries or damages to the contestant for having “personal, private, surprising, disparaging and embarrassing” details of 196 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages their life (even if not true) represented. furthermore, the contract stipulates that the relationship between the production company and the contestant is not one of employer and employee, but voluntary. as such, the “volunteer” will not receive payment for their appearance on the tv show (“i hereby waive any and all rights i may have to any compensation whatsoever”). the contract implies that the volunteer exchanges their footage and materials – and the labour it requires – for exposure (“i acknowledge and agree that a significant element of the consideration i am receiving [ . . . ] is the opportunity for publicity”). by signing the contract, the participant exempts themselves from being covered by unions and governmental labour laws and regulations and agree to take full responsibility if they are injured, fall sick and or are even killed while making the tv show. also, the contract says the volunteer may be exposed to “public ridicule, humiliation or condemnation” but cannot sue if they don’t like the way that sirens media “took or used the footage and materials or used the footage and materials in the program.” furthermore, the contract says volunteers are not free to talk about their experience of making the tv show and must keep “in strictest confidence” “prior to, during, or after the taping” all “information or materials.” the agreement basically censors what each voluntary can and can’t publicly say about their experience. the agreement says the participant understands they are “giving up certain legal rights under this agreement, including without limitation, my right to file a lawsuit” and additionally, that if the volunteer breaches the terms and conditions of the deal, they could be sued (tereszcuk, 2013). the above “agreement” between sirens media and the “housewives” is comparable to many others in terms of its power to accumulate footage and material by exploiting the people who make it. by signing such agreements, participants voluntarily exculpate their legal rights to the audio-visual content of their labour, privacy, experience, free speech compensation for work, union and an attorney (blair, 2010; cianci, 2009; helppie, 2013; kelley, 2006). “reality tv cast members are subject to totally unequal terms of negotiations” says andrejevic (2009). “they are essentially a disposable commodity, and if they don’t sign the contract there are hundreds of other people lining up for their spot” (cited in wyatt, 2009a). participants do invaluable work for tv companies, but participant agreements obscure this fact (blair, 2010) and are designed by studios to maximize owner power and minimize the power of the workers that appear in their shows. liberal cultural studies scholars make much of reality-tv’s “democratization” of entertainment, citing its inclusion of “oddballs” (steinberg, 2014) and empowering “semiotic selfreality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 197 determination” (hartley, 2004), but the terms of reality-tv participation agreements undermine workplace democracy and creative autonomy on reality-tv. participation agreements give tv owners a “significant legal advantage over participants because reality show participants waive certain rights” and then fall into a “grey area of the law somewhere between the classification of an employee of the studios and an independent contractor” (kelley, 2006, 15). by freely signing the participation agreement, people consent to unfreedom on the job and producer control over their labour and lives. under contract and on sets – beaches, kitchens and stages – reality-tv celebrities are really serfs. survivor’s cast gets stranded on islands; big brother housemates cannot exit the house; bachelorette contestants can’t skip the late-night rosegiving ritual. “they locked me in a hotel room for three or four days” before production started, said jen yemola, a pastry chef who appeared on hell’s kitchen 2007. “they took all my books, my cds, my phone, any newspapers. i was allowed to leave the room only with an escort. it was like i was in prison” (cited in wyatt, 2009a). the labour of reality tv’s contestant-participants is objectively exploited, but what might motivate so many people to consent to this exploitation? political-economists have shown how workers will sometimes consent to work without wages in the cultural industries in exchange for the prospect of accumulating non-monetary rewards like peer recognition, self-actualization, or exposure that may be parlayed into a future oriented employment opportunity (hesmondhalgh, 2010; kuehn and corrigan, 2013; ross, 2004; 2009). what seems to unite many reality-tv contestants is the pursuit of an experience that may yield symbolic and monetary rewards in the near or distant future. some people jump into reality-tv for a shot at the money prize. others give their labour to reality-tv companies in exchange for a chance to build a celebrity profile (couldry, 2002). some may sing, dance, cook or manage on reality-tv in exchange for a coaching lesson from paula abdul, gordon ramsay or donald trump on how to hone their skills as artists, chefs or budding capitalists. others may exchange their labour for a fleeting feeling of being part of tv’s power networks, to rub shoulders and schmooze with industry gatekeepers and tastemakers like simon cowell or ryan seacrest. others exchange their labour for access to privatized services and lifestyle experts – psychologists, dieticians and coaches – that the post-keynesian state fails to provision while internalizing neoliberalism’s ethos of individual self-responsibility for social problems (ouellette and hay, 2008). 198 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages significantly, people may work without wages in the reality-tv factory in exchange for the opportunity to generate publicity for themselves that may translate into future monetary returns. as hearn (2008) says: “reality programming provides the means for individuals to produce their own image personae, or ‘branded selves,’ which, potentially, can be traded for cash down the line.” on chopped, chefs compete to make three course meals for a panel of culinary experts in hopes of winning $10,000, advertising their skills and generating publicity for their current restaurants. the hills’ lauren conrad says she used reality-tv to “help start a business” (fahner, 2008). dragon’s den and shark tank’s motley innovators consent to appear on tv in exchange for a chance to win the financing they need to start a company. sometimes, the unwaged work of reality tv pays off. keeping up with the kardashians gave the kardashian family members publicity that landed them franchising opportunities with advertising companies. survivor marquesas’s contestant hunter ellis did not win the competition, but still leveraged her appearance to get a job as host of history channel’s reality-tv show, tactical to practical and man, moment machine. idol winners like kelly clarkson and carrie underwood were shuttled into careers in the music business. in sum, reality-tv studios invite entrepreneurial cultural workers to gift their labour power to them as a way to publicize themselves and gain access to more lucrative cultural industry labour markets. but in the reality-tv biz, as in capitalism, inequality of outcome prevails, and there are always more losers than winners. a lucky few do profit from their reality-tv work experience while many others suffer great losses and hardships, subsisting “neither as employers nor traditional employees, in a limbo of uncertainty” (ross, 2014, 34). the physical and emotional toll involved in being on camera 24/7, working to be watched, judged and assessed on a weekly basis, trying to act in accord with cultural industry-standard entertainment values, recounting traumatic personal details like breakups, marital discord, accidents, deaths and layoffs, bearing the pressure to competitively complete challenges and crunch producer-ordered tasks, enthusiastically contemplating what it would mean to win the grand prize and then repressing the disappointment of losing it, punishing work routines, sleep deprivation and induced intoxication—all of this leads reality-tv’s reserve army to anxiety, depression and burnout. after the reality tv shoot ends and the deal between tv studios and tv networks is complete, tv studios dump their contestant-workers back into other labour markets of precarity while retaining proprietary control and secure exploitation reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 199 rights to their footage and material. much reality-tv focuses on the power of the makeover, but many former reality-tv volunteers cannot reinvent the image that tv made for them. ridiculed by publics, frowned upon by scripted tv casting agents and desperate to make ends meet, reality-tv’s “dispensable celebrities” chase low-paid appearance gigs at shopping malls, sporting events, conferences, nightclubs, resorts and colleges, often in violation of their “participation agreement” with tv studios (cave, 2005; collins, 2008). unable to exchange their unpaid appearance on reality-tv for a compensated acting career and dispossessed of the sign-value studios made of them, reality-tv has-beens try to regain former waged jobs in the service economy. but some get fired from waged jobs because of being on tv (princ, 2013). ebony, the winner of i want to work for diddy: season two, for example, did not receive her prize as one of diddy’s minions and was fired from her day job as a public school teacher because of her use of profane language. “i’ve been unemployed ever since” said ebony. “this is the most broke i’ve ever been in my life” (moore, 2010). reality tv interns: work behind the scenes, and in them a third way that reality tv studios keep production costs to a minimum is by exploiting the labour power of workers via internships, many of which do not pay in cash, but in experience (mirrlees, 2015). the “internship” is often a synonym for an “experiential education, volunteer work, participant observation, training, or apprenticeship” (perlin, 2012, 206), and the “intern” is often defined by companies as anything but an employee who does real work and is thus entitled to a minimum wage. yet, the “internship” label frequently act as a “kind of smokescreen” (perlin 2012, xi) for the real work that millions of people are doing for corporations in these programs and obscure the fact that many so-called interns are actually cultural workers whose labour power serves the firm’s bottom line (perlin, 2012). internships are pervasive in the contemporary tv industry (cohen, de peuter and brophy, 2013; de peuter, cohen and brophy, 2012) and at present, the us’s big six media conglomerates hire interns for little to no pay and channel their labour toward the completion of tasks that contribute to their tv properties. nbc-universal, for example, says it has “strengthened its commitment to developing young, high-potential talent through the creation of specialized internship and rotational programs” that establishes “a diverse pipeline of talent by building a team of graduates into future leaders.” walt disney says it offers “an internship 200 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages unlike any other world” and an “internship opportunity that only happens once-in-a-lifetime” that enables interns to “contribute to a global company” and explore their “passion alongside some of the most inspiring talent around.” news corp says its program “offers an exciting and fastmoving environment for aspiring media professionals to gain valuable learning experiences.” time-warner declares to prospective interns that an “internship with one of our divisions will not only provide you with valuable experience in media and entertainment, but an opportunity to develop key skills and build your network while learning and having fun within businesses at the top of their industries.” cbs corporation says it is “proud to offer internship opportunities in virtually every field of media and entertainment” and strives to “provide students [ ... ] with meaningful and practical work experience.” viacom claims its internships “allows college students to work in an innovative, progressive, fast-paced and professional environment” that exposes them to “all levels of the company” and which is “an invaluable experience to individuals interested in pursuing a career in the entertainment industry.” the big six media conglomerates offer some paid internships, but many of the sub-contractor reality-tv studios that source the tv networkexhibition subsidiaries of these conglomerates with cheap content do not. skip films, for example, is looking for unpaid reality-tv development interns for “2-3 days a week” to do “heavy research, drafting treatments/pitch materials, pursuing leads to determine if a show concept is feasible/interesting and misc office tasks.” nan fisher entertainment seeks a “highly organized, responsible intern” who has an “enthusiasm for reality television” to “be involved in every aspect of the making of a reality show.” departure films wants to hire “development and casting interns” who have a passion for unscripted tv and an eye for talent” to research “potential show concepts and talent” and conduct “preliminary interviews with talent.” half yard productions says its “looking for an intern” who will work two days a week on “various projects related to television production, including various jobs in the office.” the idea factory posts for “interns to work in [reality] development and production” who are “amicable,” “highly creative,” and “able to think on their feet” and “ready to wear lots of different hats.” clearly, reality-tv production studios are trying to mobilize the labour of young interns and channel it toward the completion all kinds of un-waged jobs “behind-thescenes” that add value of reality tv shows. these examples suggest that interns are actually unwaged cultural workers that do a lot of real work. they conceptualize, research, cast, edit and produce reality tv shows. reality-tv intern ads may attract people to labour without pay in reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 201 exchange for the prospect of career-relevant skills, mentorship and networking opportunities (mirrlees, 2015). and some reality tv shows promote the idea that unwaged internships are a stepping stone to waged work in the cultural industry. as perlin (2012) says: “reality tv truly embraces the intern” (xii). indeed, a number of reality tv shows represent people competitively doing jobs, not for pay, but for experiences that help them land paid careers at a later date. mtv’s the hills season one (2006) depicts lauren conrad and whitney port benefiting from an unpaid internship at the hip teen vogue. at this internship, they enhance their skills, meet peers and make connections, and then move from this experience onto paid creative careers. on cbs’s the cut (2005), fashionista interns square off to win an opportunity to design a clothing line for tommy hilfiger. project runway’s (2004-present) designer interns slog away for training (“mentorships” at companies like banana republic and inter-national concepts), publicity (editorials in marie claire and elle), sales platforms (on piperlime.com and bluefly.com) and cash prizes ($100,000). on america’s next top model (2003-present), women work without pay as walking ads for beauty industry products with the goal of winning a shot at a modelling contract or endorsement deal with one of the tv show’s sponsors. i want to work for diddy (2008-2009) got its contestants to work toward a chance to be a paid assistant to the rapper multi-millionaire sean “diddy” coombs, at bad boy entertainment. reality tv shows like these give expression to and crystallize the fundamentally asymmetrical power relations between corporations and interns but elide social antagonism by showing interned workers worshipping the boss. they depict interned cultural workers as hyperindividualistic and entrepreneurial subjects who employ their cunning to outsmart, out-perform and undermine each other in competitions to win exposure and pay, displacing emerging forms of worker solidarity. they degrade the value of labour in the cultural industries by depicting interns completing numerous high-skilled tasks that contribute to the production of cultural goods and services as a game played for fun rather than as real work that deserves pay. they normalize unpaid work by framing it as something that interns enthusiastically consent to do as a “stepping stone” to a future opportunity of paid work, not as something they are increasingly expected or compelled to do by necessity. moreover, these shows legitimize unpaid work with a meritocratic ideology that conveys the idea that the hardest working and most talented, not the already class privileged, will prosper. 202 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages conclusion: reality tv workers unite! this article has shown how reality tv studios feed upon the labourpower of a low and no waged workforce behind the scenes and in the contrived scenes of the reality tv shows they own. reality tv workers—precarious, flexible, self-branded, performative, entrepreneurial, risk-taking and self-exploiting—fit the job description of 21st century creative capitalism’s “role model worker” (de peuter, 2014). but just as the one-sided rendering of “role model” precariats as hyperexploited risk a “sense that there is no way out,” overlook the capacity of workers to collectively “contest” and “resist,” and gloss over “countervailing possibilities” (de peuter, 2014, 365), stock descriptions of reality tv workers as dupes or pawns fail to address how these workers possess the collective capacities for understanding and changing their circumstances, possibly for the better. it is thus important – analytically and politically – to balance the critique of the capitalist structures that exploit labour with an account of the different ways that workers are uniting to contest them. by way of conclusion, i briefly review five emerging reality-tv worker challenges to studio owner power. first, reality-tv workers are unionizing. from 2006 to date, the writers guild of america (wga) has been attempting to unionize the editors/writers of reality tv shows. during the 2007-2008 strike, it tried to bring reality-tv writers into its fold and called for reality-tv writers to be credited as “story producers” and “supervising story producers.” to elevate this issue in the public mind, the wga protested outside of fremantle north america, one of the largest reality tv firms. the wga lost this battle to the studios, which walked away from the bargaining table and refused to return unless the wga dropped its proposal to unionize reality-tv workers (the economist 2008). despite this setback, the wga continues to try to unionize reality-tv workers and has won some small victories. in 2010, workers at lion television (money from strangers) and optomen productions (worst cooks in america) voted to join the wga and did. in 2012, they won a three-year collective agreement that provides weekly compensation minimums, health benefits, a grievance and arbitration process and vacation time (cunningham, 2012b). following the lead of us unions, the canadian media guild (cmg) (2015) is fighting to expand union coverage to reality-tv workers. in britain, the broadcasting entertainment cinematograph and theatre union is fighting a similar battle. so, there is an emerging international effort to unionize reality tv workers, and some small victories. second, reality tv workers are striking against tv studios. some strikes result from union planning and others are spontaneous. in 2010, reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 203 the below-the-line crew members of the biggest loser who belong to the iatse struck against eyeworks-owned 3 ball productions and won health and pension benefits (andreeva 2010). in august of 2012, iatse’s local 700 won similar benefits for 11 story editors after organizing a strike against blueprint post-production, which was editing the syfy tv show hot set (finke, 2012). some of reality-tv’s on-screen workers have staged wildcat strikes during the shooting of the tv show to demand better working conditions or more control over the creative process. in 2012, participants of the biggest loser walked off set, refused to work and threatened to quit when they learned the producers were planning to bring back former loser-victors to compete with them for the $250,000 grand weight loss prize (hater 2012). by collectively withdrawing their labour, they challenged the power of owners to rig the game. third, reality-tv workers are struggling against tv owners through the courts. while studio participation agreements define the relationship between the studio and the worker as voluntary and outside of existing labour laws, entertainment lawyers are struggling to redefine this relationship as one of employer and employee. the courts should categorize reality-tv studios as employers and reality-tv participants as employees due to the amount of control that studios exercise over contestant labour power. “[r]eality show participants provide ‘services’ to the producers of these reality shows in an environment most often significantly manipulated and controlled by the producers” (kelley, 2006, 37). the fight to expand and enforce labour laws in reality tv is important given that the participation agreements workers sign violate existing labour laws and subvert minimum employment standards. reality-workers are also enlisting the help of attorneys to demand pay for work. in 2009, melody murray, aaron silberman and rosemarie disalvo, producers of reality-tv formats such as the osbournes: reloaded, thank god you’re here and american idol, sued freemantle media north, claiming the company compelled them to work in “sweatshop” conditions, seven days a week, up two twenty hours a day, and falsify payroll records (wyatt ,2009b). some reality-tv workers do not seek legal representation to confront wage theft because they fear employment deprivation. but some workers are gaining the confidence to challenge capital in the courts. fourth, reality-tv workers are using their precariously acquired celebrity power to demand payment for their labour from tv production firms. when a reality-tv series becomes a hit, reality-tv production studios find themselves in a relationship of relative dependence on the people they cast. for example, the thompson family of tlc’s smash hit, here comes honey boo boo, received a stipend of about $5000 per episode 204 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages in season one. the antics of the child amateur-star, honey boo boo, turned the tv show into hit, bringing in ratings and revenue for tlc. using honey boo boo’s fledgling star power as a bargaining chip, the thompson family got the tv studio to pay it a higher stipend—between $15,000 and $20,000 per episode – in exchange for the work they put in to season two (tmz, 2012). in 2014, the “cast” of party down south banded together to collectively demand a 1400% pay increase from 495 productions. each cast member hoped to increase their payment from $500 per episode (as stipulated by the participation agreement) to $7,500 per episode. after some bargaining, 495 productions agreed to a 400% pay increase and now pays each cast member $2000 per episode (daily mail, 2014). the pay increase is a pittance when compared to the $250,000 to $750,000 earned per episode by top-tier tv actors like ashton kutcher, mariska hargita and claire danes. but it does show how reality-tv participants and contestants are starting to perceive themselves as workers and their tv appearances as jobs deserving of pay. finally, reality-tv workers are challenging the discourse of owners by fighting over the definition of the commodity they produce and revealing the real labour that all reality-tv classifications hide. the power of tv studios to maintain a non-unionized, precarious and interned workforce relies in part on their power to define reality-tv as a type of tv that is categorically different from other types in terms of who makes it (non-professional or un-skilled amateur workers) and what it is made of (“the real”). this classification creates the illusion that reality-tv shows are made by workers who do not possess the same skills or do the same jobs as the workers who create un-reality tv shows (scripted programmes) and that reality-tv shows give viewers privileged access situations, events and happenings that are more true to life, original or authentic than conveyed by scripted tv shows (“reality”). this classification enables tv owners to build, control and exploit a low-waged and no-waged workforce (the workers who make reality tv are not unionized) and deflect claims that the people in reality tv are workers whose performances should be paid for (the people are contestants playing a game for fun, not workers in an employer-employee power relationship). in response, reality-tv workers argue that the classification of reality-tv as different from scripted-tv masks substantive similarities between them, namely, a division of labour and company efforts to control their labour as well as the property rights to the reality-effects the make. the struggle to define reality-tv as a product made of labour whose value is equivalent to the labour of making scripted entertainment is integral to the material struggle for expanding union membership, anti-wage theft reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 205 legislation and fair pay to the workers toiling behind and within tv scenes. so, while reality tv studios degrade and disorganize the labour of cultural workers to profit-maximize, these workers are beginning to dignify their labour and organize. the reality tv workers toiling behind the scenes and in them – producers, contestants and interns – are quite different with regard to their professional roles and the distinct tasks they perform in the overall division of labour, but what they share in common is media capitalism’s dispossession and exploitation of their labour. a challenge for reality-tv organizers is to shed light on how these workers’ manifestly different orientations relate and link to a common social relation in capitalism as a class by and for itself. references adalian, j. 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(2009b, august 1). tv contestants: tired, tipsy and pushed to the brink. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/business/media/02reality.html 446 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education book review yellow ribbons: the militarization of national identity in canada by a.l. mccready. winnipeg, manitoba and black point, nova scotia: fernwood publishing, 2013. $18.95 can, paper. isbn: 978-1-55266580-0. pages: 1-128. reviewed by shannon t. speed1 post-9/11 there have been many changes to canadian military practices both domestically and internationally. in yellow ribbons: the militarization of national identity in canada, mccready sets out to contextualize the cultural “shift” of an increasingly militarized canada as reflected in canadian national identity. an overarching theoretical framework for this book is not specifically laid out, but the idea of national identity ties each chapter together. through consideration of both military support campaigns and radio/television productions, mccready argues that canada’s peacekeeping history is used to justify current imperialist military practices. a motivation for this project stems from a concern that campaigns and cultural productions have shifted in focus from supporting soldiers to validating military spending. contextualizing military practices within an environment of canadian multiculturalism, mccready distinguishes between 1) state ‘militarism,’ the belief in the funding, maintenance, and support of militaries and armaments, and 2) ‘militarization,’ a deep and cultural process through which society adheres to the significance of militarism. the author analyses both ideologies in connection with neoliberalism, race, and gender. mccready acknowledges that this book may be received as unsupportive of the troops, and is upfront regarding its controversial content. the topic of war and military service can be polarizing, but mccready successfully addresses a wide-range of stances on military support and spending and explains there, at times flawed, logic. mccready ends the introductory chapter with a brief reference to the notion of “make live or let die” and “protofacism,” neither of which are carefully defined, explained, or contextualized. key ideas such as 1  shannon speed (sspeed@uwaterloo.ca) is a phd candidate at the department of sociology and legal studies, university of waterloo. book review: yellow ribbons | 447 ‘culture’ and ‘national identity’ are left for the reader to interpret, which is problematic as they are crucial to the author’s argument. in the second chapter, mccready provides a discussion of how the myth of canada being a “nation of peacekeepers” allows for the advancement of a “new” militarism (31). referencing canadian literature on race and multiculturalism, mccready notes how canada’s domestic history of colonialism is erased by a global peacekeeping image. a thorough history of yellow ribbons as an image of war is presented from its origins in america to its canadian use. the author argues that the many uses of the commodified yellow ribbon have resulted in it no longer having a single message. it “binds together the often contradictory narratives and affective impulses of militarism and national idealism” (41). mccready connects the semi-privatized organization of the yellow ribbon “support our troops” campaign to neoliberalism and privatized defense, arguing that militarization is a contested notion. this is illustrated by poll results cited by mccready, indicating that canadians differentiate between their support for the war in afghanistan and those fighting in it, although political decision makers conflate this. the author argues that the yellow ribbon is a performative and declarative act that presents a sense of collective identity. mccready goes on to argue that the yellow ribbon is also linked to white privilege through its use in 1992 to show support for those defending the beating of rodney king, and again in 1993 to show support for prison guards held hostage in a racially motivated prison uprising. another public display of supporting the troops presented by mccready is the highway of heroes phenomenon. despite quoting the reason for the initial gathering on an overpass in port hope being to show “support and condolences for the families” (54), mccready contextualizes this phenomenon within patriarchy and the “crisis of masculinity” through an examination of the campaign’s key supporters and its emphasis on the masculine figure of the soldier. although relevant to the book, the highway of heroes phenomenon is not clearly connected to the literature nor is it located within the “cultural shift” referred to by the author. the third chapter is an analysis of cultural productions that provide a link between militarization, entertainment, and industry. mccready looks at canadian forces recruiting ads, the cbc radio show afghanada, and the canadian film production passchendaele. the politics, funding, and support of each of these productions are examined, providing insight into the power of each as contributing to canadian military culture, and 448 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education consequently canadian national identity. furthermore, the author identifies particular themes for canadian forces recruitment ads released in 2006 – the ‘adventure’ ad and the ‘helping’ ad – both of which, mccready concludes, deviate from war-like imagery in favour of showing instances of altruism. mccready suggests that this is a rather alarming reflection of the canadian military as it reinforces a misleading image of canada’s role as ‘peacekeeper’ having created “a military role for itself as moral authority and enforcer and arbiter of democracy” (78). mccready’s subsequent analysis of cbc radio’s afghanada and the film passchendaele provides a detailed description of each production in addition to their financial and political patronage. according to mccready, these productions indicate that militarization has seeped into what is referred to as the ‘national imagination’ through cultural production. here, further consideration of audience demographics and opinion may be useful in order to prevent overplaying what mccready admits are formulaic productions that are not new in their premise or representations. mccready’s conclusion of having located “the new canadian exceptionalism” as “an emerging cultural and political idiom” is unconvincing as it is the first mention of this idea (111). a summary of literature is used to explain exceptionalism as change, newness, the circumvention of laws, exclusion, colonialism, and ‘canadian nationalism becoming american.’ though exceptionalism is applicable to some canadian practices, this idea is not traced throughout the book, nor does the author’s general analysis amount to one of exceptionalism. this book has many important ideas and is an admittedly ambitious project, but would have added impact with a better-organized and more in-depth discussion of the case studies and their main significance. it is difficult to situate yellow ribbons within the literature because the fundamental concepts are not carefully defined and aligned with those of other authors. the concluding chapter begins by characterizing yellow ribbons as having focused on the “transformation” of canadian culture, whereas introductory discussions indicate a “cultural shift.” this book’s contribution would benefit from an explicit conceptual outline, a consistent trajectory, and clearer connections to the literature. overall, mccready offers a descriptive and unapologetically critical look at the militarization of canadian national identity. a beautiful community, but a troubled city: flint’s water crisis otrude n. moyo1 introduction i moved to the city of flint, michigan in the summer of 2014. it was, by all media accounts, a distressed city, struggling under a weight of public troubles.2 this essay is personal. it is about how the crisis unfolded for me. i was drafted into the black community (which is my community), however, whiteness continues to shape both our reality and the outcomes of our lives! the irony is that i moved from eau claire, wisconsin a city reported as the safest city in the united states because of its whiteness. however, i had no community in this safe city; now, in troubled flint, i do. nonetheless, this is not the gist of this essay. my discussion relates to the impact of racialization, neoliberal politics and its incapacity to resolve society’s racialized inequalities. the flint water crisis is a microcosm of these larger issues. historically, in the united states, racialization (the process by which certain population groups are singled out for negative treatment on the basis of real or imagined characteristics) has shaped and continues to reshape cities’ landscapes, people’s lives, and well-being outcomes, including physical and mental health, education, gainful employment, housing, financial security and so forth. one major area of this reshaping is the politics surrounding the curtailment of investment in black neighborhoods and the government’s assistance for companies to move out of predominately black neighborhoods (which were created by government through segregation policies in the first place). currently, with increased globalization and businesses seeking comparative advantage by relocating their enterprises to areas of cheap labor, as well 1 otrude n. moyo is associate professor of social work at the university of michiganflint. 2 see bosman and davey 2016 a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 233 as cheaper production costs, the michigan government enabled this move of industry out of predominately black cities, thereby imposing economic famine accompanied by violence, fear and related public troubles.3 it is no accident that cities like flint and greenville michigan became ‘ghost’ towns with deindustrialization. the disturbing part is that government (at various levels) and business leaders knew that in the presumed new knowledge/technology economy employment opportunities would flow away from cities like flint to the suburbs, pitting flint with its dwindling resources, against suburbia, with no plans to mitigate the devastating impact of the divestment. the shifting economic structure was borne by the most vulnerable – always people of color in places like flint. at a personal level, i know my white colleagues who moved from flint to neighboring suburbs did so because the city was no longer looking like them. when the city was white it offered cultural identity and a sense of belonging. white flight, coupled with the loss of manufacturing industry in flint meant the loss of a tax base to keep up with the maintenance of the entire infrastructure. currently, flint, like other cities in the united states experiencing deindustrialization, suffers from high unemployment, particularly for its young adults. those who experience disproportionate unemployment are predominately black.4 today, a racialized black city is seen as an obstacle to attracting business. in this regard, my relocation to flint was mixed but it brought to the fore the realization that whiteness and neoliberal politics were a problem for black populations, who find their efforts to construct community and attempt to live their lives obstructed by institutional racism and neoliberal politics. in my experience, flint is by and large a city inhabited by individuals who labor seven days a week in more than two jobs just to 3 see the documentary unnatural causes, is inequality making us sick (episode 7, not just a pay check) describing the deindustrialization of greenville, michigan. a similar story with the auto industry’s movement away from flint, michigan. 4 see labor statistics highlighted in highsmith 2015 234 | austerity urbanism and the social economy obtain basic necessities. these workers and their families are reduced to a life of bare subsistence. flint’s water crisis – lead in its tap water – is linked to a deindustrialized city now reeling in poverty, facing a mass exodus of its affluent tax base, which accentuates the existing social inequities and on-going environmental injustice (gostin, 2016). in addition, the flint water crisis is linked to the neoliberal politicking at the state government level. the state assured residents that its takeover of local municipalities would cure all local government ills. in reality, less taxation, more stringent tax policies for municipalities, and cuts in revenue sharing have all contributed to the troubles facing the city of flint today (see michigan municipal league 2014). to give another discursive lens to flint’s woes, engel, sterbenz and erin fuchs (2016), writing for the business insider show how flint became one of the most dangerous cities in the united states. citing homicide numbers based on fbi crime statistics as the major factor associated with the ranking of flint as the united states’ most dangerous cities. flint with a population of 99,000 people had 30 homicides and 1, 694 violent crimes in 2014 (engel, sterbenz & fuchs 2016 quoting mlive media). if flint is a dangerous city, it is particularly so for women. usually i walk to work. i remember my first fall in flint. one evening i was coming from one of my night classes, it was already dark at 9pm. as i walked home, a car pulled up close to me. startled, the person in the car called me out: “professor moyo don’t you know that you cannot walk alone at night in flint as a woman?” peering through the dark i realized it was one of my students. i remember making a light comment about a situation that still terrifies me to this day – being caught up in gun crossfire. i lightly responded to the student that i was alright, getting closer to home, as i pointed towards my building and jokingly said, “i am taking back the night!’ still concerned, the student drove slowly and watched me until i got home. refusing to live with fear, i still walk to work and i notice more and more people are walking my flint streets too. again, this is another lens of the troubles of flint. a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 235 flint water crisis unfolds within neoliberal politics the flint water crisis unfolds within a political economic landscape dominated by neoliberalism, an ideology that drives our lives, yet is rarely named as the root of our city’s problem. i use elizabeth martinez and arnoldo garcia’s (1993) definition of neoliberalism to refer to a set of economic and political policies based on the strong faith in the beneficent effect of free markets. it is an ideology in which the existence and operations of the market are valued in themselves and where the operation of a market-like structures is seen as the only way of doing things. it is also an ethic, presently used as a guide for all human action, and substituting for all other existing ethical beliefs. according to martinez and garcia (1993), the rule of the market is supposed to liberate private enterprises from any bonds imposed by the government/state no matter how much social and environmental damage it causes. attempts to regulate and limit the damage of market competition are treated as inimical to liberty. in this mantra, neoliberalism has advanced policies that cut public expenditure for social services, reducing spending in education, and public assistance to people who are poor, and spending on infrastructure (including water), in the name of reducing government’s role. the only increased spending is on law enforcement and the military. however, with exceptions of racialized places like flint, law enforcement officers’ numbers are usually lower. on the community side, neoliberalism is presumed to undermine the concept of public good or community, replacing it with individual responsibility (martinez & garcia 1993). monbiot (2016) asserts that under neoliberalism inequality is recast as virtue, a reward for its social utility as a presumed a generator of wealth. however, the most disturbing part of neoliberalism is the racialization of political decisions, actions that are tantamount to illiberal democracy and contributing to continued harms to communities that have historically suffered cumulative harms. if neoliberalism relates to policies that undermine citizenship, community and overall wellbeing, a discussion of the role of neoliberal politics in the flint water crisis is essential. the flint water 236 | austerity urbanism and the social economy crisis is a microcosm of the impact of racialization, neoliberal politicking, and structural inequalities on people’s lives. before we address these factors, let us consider briefly the details of the flint water crisis. flint water crisis: a synopsis. i got to learn about the flint water issue on october 13th, 2014 when ron fonger wrote that general motors (gm) flint engine plant on bristol road was shutting off access to the flint river over corrosion worries. the plant was moving away from contracting flint city for its water. according to lederman, the city of flint had purchased treated water from detroit since 1967, but in 2014, in an effort to save money, emergency manager darnell earley made the decision to switch flint city’s water supply from detroit to the flint river. claims remain that the decision to switch the water supply was approved by city council members. however, city council officials deny this claim and argue that the city was already under the emergency manager and they as city officials held no power on this decision. nonetheless, the decision to switch to the flint river water lead to disastrous outcomes for the city’s residents, setting off a chain of health problems including lead poisoning particularly for children who drank the water (lederman 2016). prior to this, residents had complained about the foul smelling and horrid taste of flint city water. over the summer of my move to flint there were three boil water advisories. in the coming months i would receive my water bill and statements from the city that the flint river water was healthy. these assurances were confirmed by the michigan department of environmental quality: they insisted that the flint river water was within public health guidelines. i would attend several meetings where residents would talk with city officials about the water issue, but city officials would assure the public that the water was safe and/or dismiss the residents’ experiences. these experiences lead to further distrust of city and state government. i personally had to buy drinking water, while i engaged a personal protest “not to make payments of my water bill”. i debated shutting the water off and a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 237 installing a water bowser but would ultimately cave in to threats from non-bill payment. in terms of claims-making, it would take an outsider to the city of flint, researcher and professor of engineering from virginia tech taking water samples from various homes in the city to confirm high levels of lead in many city homes. it would take a local physician reporting high levels of lead in children’s blood and the national media spotlighting the water crisis in flint before the issue would receive both state and federal attention. for a city that is predominately black, claims of the flint water crisis would be ignored until these outside experts intervened. flint water crisis and neoliberal politicking loss of state-local government revenue sharing: the deeper problem in flint. lederman (2016), quoting anthony minghine (2014), highlights the loss of revenue sharing from state to local authorities as the major contributor to the decimation of flint city’s revenue and consequently, problems with infrastructure maintenance, including provision of healthy water. the table below highlights the revenue sharing dollars diverted by the state away from municipalities and/or local authorities in the state of michigan (michigan municipality league 2014). the state of michigan’s revenue sharing policy consists of both constitutional and statutory payments. the constitutional portion consists of 15% of the gross collection from sales tax – 4% is distributed to cities, villages and townships based on population. the constitutional portion of the payments are set by the state constitution, and the legislature must appropriate whatever is calculated (michigan municipality league 2014). on the other hand, the statutory portion of the revenue sharing has been traditionally distributed by a formula. the governor and the legislator have the discretional ability to adjust the formula, hence the amounts distributed. the table below shows the revenue sharing dollars diverted by the state from select michigan cities, including flint since 2003. 238 | austerity urbanism and the social economy figure 1. commenting on the diverted revenue sharing dollars (sapotichne, scorsone & henion 2016) assert that the flint water crisis reveals a deeper problem in michigan’s fiscal policies. according to minghine (2014), between 2003-2014 the city of flint lost 60 million dollars in revenue sharing from the state. however, neoliberal politicking tends to hide the fact that the state of michigan is using statutory revenue sharing funds to balance its own budgets and pay for cuts in business taxes. lederman (2016) explains further that unlike constitutional revenue sharing, state authorities in michigan can divert statutory revenue sharing resources at their discretion. minghine (2014) writes about this phenomenon in this way: “the state is trumpeting its sound fiscal management and admonishing local governments for not being as a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 239 efficient. what the state fails to mention is that it balanced its own budget on the backs of local communities.” the gimmicky nature of neoliberal politicking is reflected in the very fact that cuts in revenue sharing increased with the state’s political contribution to the republicans after the defeat of democrat governor jennifer granholm (lederman 2016). austerity measures, claims about cities living beyond their means, and posturing about less taxes as sound government, ruled in tandem. with cities like flint in financial crisis, state authorities required market-friendly reforms, including spending cuts in education and human services that were either consolidated or privatized. under this neoliberal politics, lederman notes that flint, like other michigan cities, were positioned as competitive businesses providing products to their citizen-consumers, except flint city is seen as an obstacle to progress. neoliberalism, racialization and the rise of consumer citizens: illiberal democracy pushed on flint. rachel slocum (2004) notes that scholars of citizenship have noticed a shift in western democratic nations whereby citizens are now addressed as consumers (2004:763). what has happened to the citizen turned consumer is crucial to an understanding of the situation of flint. the distinction between the citizen and consumer might also point towards a way for other cities to address their social issues. within a political economic environment where “cash is king,” the presumed “economic man” is one who sees himself as motivated by the desire to satisfy wants. this works for those who see themselves as privileged consumers and can manage the consumption. a consumer without “financial means” becomes an obstacle to progress where most relations are commoditized. could these consumers without means have a voice in the polity? layered in this formula is a consumer without means who is black, could they have voice? the flint residents, because of unemployment and poverty became citizens without purchasing power. these citizens, in the context of neoliberal politicking, are relegated to the status of what giorgio agamben (1998) calls “homo sacer:” an 240 | austerity urbanism and the social economy ostracized and excluded citizen without a voice, even when a basic need like water is contaminated with lead. the plea of citizens turned consumers were ignored. there is no use for the adage the consumer/customer is always right in this part of michigan. in this case, the embedded messages were that “if you don’t like it in flint just move elsewhere”, a strategy used by local elites to “shrink the city”. in flint, the notion of citizenship is turned on its head. the ideal exercise of citizenship is for one to exercise one’s rights and responsibilities to shape one’s life. under neo-liberalism, citizens are stripped of their voice, government deceit fuels distrust. an example: my recent flint water annual quality report (2015), states the following: “the flint water treatment plan is responsible for providing high quality drinking water but cannot control the variety of materials used in plumbing components.” the city is now distancing itself from the problem it helped create. today the public problem of lead in the drinking water is turned to individual household water lines. the above line “the city cannot control the variety of materials used in plumbing components” taken from my bill, is a statement of denial of responsibility for the misdeeds that led to the water crisis. there is hardly any moral outrage about the problem in this statement. it is a perfect example of the neo-liberal tactic of making individuals responsible for social problems. as a consumer, such statements are meant to silence citizens, however, this has a negative effect as such statements continue to fuel citizen distrust of government. also, i understand the idea of citizenship as linked to people experiencing their freedoms as an exercise of participation in power for the common good: where the law protects the rights of individuals. as taxpayers, it is our right as residents of flint to have clean and healthy water (a common good), and as consumers it is our right to have clean and healthy water. however, these rights are undermined today in flint. fareed zakaria’s (1997) term illiberal democracy is useful to highlight the way in which neoliberalism is undermining these rights, which are the basis of liberal democracy. a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 241 further, in an environment where corporations are turned to individual entities – corporations today have more rights than people – government officials today protect the interests of businesses at the expense of people’s well-being. politicians out for votes deliver their sales pitches as if they were in the marketplace: “vote for me i promise no taxation!” so the mantra goes. this kind of politics has less goodwill for the definition and implementation of the common good. moreover, this language is irresponsible – in states like michigan with restrictive fiscal policies, where is the money going to come from to maintain deteriorating infrastructure? yet, hacker and pierson (2016) reminds us that our well-being depends on effective public policy. was the decision to switch the water from detroit to the flint river an effective public policy? andrew r. highsmith (2015) in his book demolition means progress: flint, michigan, and the fate of the american metropolis articulates well flint’s historical experience with ineffective public policy. bankruptcy in ethical decision making: appointment of emergency managers. in the prevailing environment of loss of statutory revenue sharing, citizens were turned into consumers without a voice. flint city’s financial challenges resulted in the appointment of emergency city managers by the governor – basically emergency city managers were contracted to get the city out of financial troubles. state officials argued that the appointment of emergency managers was a means to rescue residents from failed local elective leadership. the assumption, according to scorsone, was that “the state can do it better…the state can take over local government and run it better and provide the expertise.” berman (1995) asserts that the general objective of state intervention has been to restore financial stability to the local authority. in the flint case, the state failed to “do it better” but instead plunged the residents of flint into a human-made environmental injustice. today, many people in flint have elevated lead levels in their bloodstream. city governance thus harmed the people they were meant to protect. on the negative impact of state takeovers, berman writes that the appointment of emergency managers is itself not a bad thing. however, i find the lack of consultation about the 242 | austerity urbanism and the social economy decision to do so illiberal. if we look at predominantly african-american communities, we see that the appointment of emergency managers has resulted in greater distress for those communities. the distress experienced in these neighborhoods speaks to the racialization of the political economy – the cumulative exclusion of the political interests of african-americans. since current neoliberal politics cause harms to black citizens, a new ideology is required to encourage a politics that takes into account the differential impact of policies and decisions on population groups that have historically experienced harms and disadvantages. further, i do not believe that the emergency manager consulted residents or experts to understand and communicate the pros and cons of their decision to change flint city’s water supply from detroit to the flint river. in my view, there was not enough consultation with various stakeholders, including city engineers, to understand the impact of switching water systems. a city like flint with a history of high socioeconomic and racial differentiation, needs leaders that are attentive to the historically cumulative disadvantages suffered by african-american residents, rather than decision making that accentuates this differentiation. in its paternalistic role the state becomes a benevolent father presented as willing to help, yet silencing the very people it ought to be helping. the state and its authorities failed to uphold their responsibility to the marginalized people of flint and to recognize how their decision would impact everyday life in the community. i teach policy, and one of the important considerations in any ethical decision-making process has to be how the proposed policy will impact the most disadvantaged. it does not seem that this principle was considered in the state’s decision to switch the water supply from the detroit to the flint river. no one challenged the state official’s certainty about this crucial decision, and this lack of critical scrutiny reinforced the injustice imposed on the community. it was an outright refusal to listen to the voices of those who would be most harmed by the switch in the water supply. since the a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 243 overwhelming majority of affected people were african-americans, it is clear that racism played a role. the reality of racial inequality in michigan – its embeddedness in the everyday working of government – reproduces the historical injustice long suffered by african-americans. who defines revitalization of flint under neoliberal politics? the revitalization of a neoliberal city does not mean that it is recreated in the interest of the majority of its citizens. rather, as doreen massey argues, the neoliberal city is defined by elites, and its “revitalization” means that the city as a whole is claimed by a few (miles 2012: 216). neoliberalism expressed in the everyday life of flint, as represented on my typical street, has meant threats to health and cut backs to public spending on such crucial community services as libraries. a new city emerges – a “corporate landscape” for leisure, streets turned into walking/running pavements, after every event plastic water bottles litter the environment and food places dot the main street for foodies looking for places to go. for the poor and racialized it means displacement and marginalization. even my novice students understand that for any decision to be just it has to weigh the costs to its most vulnerable populations – this derives from rawlisian ethics. neoliberal ethics disregards justice in favour of cost saving and, as such, continues to undercut human needs. local non-profit organizations and foundations have been crucial in the rebuilding of flint as well as filling in the gaps left by governmental agencies in terms of social service provisioning. however, their historic strategy of categorizing populations to receive assistance instead of a universal and/or institutional approach is likely to continue the socio-economic differentiation of the population. recently, i received a letter from the department of health and human services outlining that if i was pregnant and had children who had ingested flint water for a particular period i may be eligible for some public assistance. whilst this is a crucial strategy in targeting interventions of the water crisis to those most at-risk, children and pregnant women in a city like flint experiencing multiple complex problems requires a rethink in politics of 244 | austerity urbanism and the social economy selective intervention, which is promoted by neoliberalism. indeed, politics of selective intervention strategies are easier and more palatable but the question of reach remains. concluding remarks the issue of the flint water crisis is complex and is inseparable from the history of racialization of the city. although flint is a largely black city, the people who run the show and determine the outcomes for people’ lives remain white. this leadership continues to use neoliberal politics to further its interest whilst undermining the value of citizenship of those who have historically experienced differential disadvantages. some of the problems, like michigan state fiscal policies, are not quite apparent as issues contributing to the lead problem in flint’s water. however, for effective policies and interventions that actually solve structural problems to be pursued, it is imperative that the voices of the whole community, but particularly its poor and racialized members, be heard. i personally came to live in flint, a beautiful community but a troubled city, and my hopes have been to become part of the difference making. i remain optimistic and believe that people can make good things happen. the flint water crisis is a paradigm case of the moral bankruptcy of current neoliberal politics as it systematically fails to address human well-being. references berman, d.r. (1995). takeovers of local governments: an overview and evaluation of state policies. publius, 25, 3:55-70. bosman, j. and m. davey. (2016). anger in michigan over appointing emergency managers. new york times, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/us/anger-in-michiganover-appointing-emergency-managers.html?_r=0 a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 245 engel, pamela, sterbenz, christina & fuchs, erin (2016). why is flint michigan dangerous. business insider, http://www.businessinsider.com/why-is-flint-michigandangerous-2016-1 gostin, l. o. (2016). lead in the water: a tale of social and environmental injustice. journal of american medical association (jama), 19:2053-2054. dol:10.100/jama.2016.5581. highsmith, a. (2015). demolition means progress: flint, michigan, and the fate of american metropolis. chicago. university of chicago. lederman, j. (2016). flint’s water crisis is no accident. it’s the result of years of devastating free-market reforms: this is what neoliberal governance looks like. http://inthesetimes.com/article/18794/flint-water-crisisneoliberalism-free-market-reforms-rick-snyder hacker, j.s. & pierson, p. (2016). the real cause of the flint crisis. the atlantic’s politics & policy daily, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-realcause-of-the-flint-crisis/472305/ highsmith, a.r. (2015). demolition means progress: flint, michigan, and the fate of american metropolis. chicago. university of chicago. martinez, e. & garcia, a. (1993). intercontinental encounter for humanity and against neoliberalism, july 27-august 3th, 1996 in la realidad, chiapas. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376 michigan municipal league (2014). revenue sharing factsheet. http://www.mml.org/pdf/advocacy/2014-revenue-sharingfactsheet.pdf. minghine, anthony. (2014). the great revenue sharing heist. michigan municipality league. http://www.mml.org/pdf/advocacy/mmlrevenue-sharing-heist-2014.pdf monbiot, g. (2016). how did we get into this mess? politics, equality, nature. new york: verso publishers. 246 | austerity urbanism and the social economy http://www.businessinsider.com/why-is-flint-michigan-dangerous-2016-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-is-flint-michigan-dangerous-2016-1 http://inthesetimes.com/article/18794/flint-water-crisis-neoliberalism-free-market-reforms-rick-snyder http://inthesetimes.com/article/18794/flint-water-crisis-neoliberalism-free-market-reforms-rick-snyder http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-real-cause-of-the-flint-crisis/472305/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-real-cause-of-the-flint-crisis/472305/ http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376 http://www.mml.org/pdf/advocacy/2014-revenue-sharing-factsheet.pdf http://www.mml.org/pdf/advocacy/2014-revenue-sharing-factsheet.pdf http://www.mml.org/pdf/advocacy/mml-revenue-sharing-heisthttp://www.mml.org/pdf/advocacy/mml-revenue-sharing-heistsapotichne, j. scorsone, e. & henion (2016). flint crisis reveals deeper problem in michigan fiscal policies. msu today, http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2016/flint-crisis-reveals-deeperproblem-in-michigans-fiscal-policies/ slocum, r. (2004). consumer citizens and the cities for climate protection campaign. environment and planning, 36: 763-782. zakaria, f. (2012). the rise of illiberal democracy, foreign affairs, 76, 6:22-43 a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 247 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review unions and the city: negotiating urban change, edited by ian thomas macdonald, new york: cornell university press, 2017, $44.95 cad paper. isbn: 9781501706820. pages: 1248. reviewed by duncan maclellan1 ian macdonald’s introduction contextualizes the struggles unions are experiencing across north america but views “…cities and suburbs as great laboratories of labour renewal” (p.1). the eight chapters that comprise the core of this book examine the social, political, and economic contributions of selected unions in new york and toronto. these two cities share similar histories but also sufficient dissimilarities, which is helpful to understand the impact of these labour unions. the four sectors (film, hospitality, green energy, and child care) enrich our knowledge of unions at the urban and suburban levels. the authors comprise a team of united states and canadian experts that span a wealth of scholarly labour studies. the subject matter of this book will appeal to a wide audience of readers, because the themes address the intersection of labour with the hospitable city, the creative city, the sustainable city, and the caring city. the book’s structure enables readers to focus on one or more of the themes. this volume arrives at a time of complex canadian and american trade issues, and this work reminds us that many unions are struggling to maintain what they have worked tirelessly to achieve for their members and to stop the erosion of these hard fought employee gains. as macdonald notes. “[t]he place of unions in urban politics has received scant attention until relatively recently” (p13). this edited volume demonstrates that unions have become sites that incorporate important employment concerns but also endeavor to educate their members about the growing complexity of social, economic, and political issues in urban and suburban settings that will affect the role unions play in the 21st century. the two chapters that comprise the “hospitable city”, examine the impact of developers in new york and toronto wanting to rezone property, more specifically in new york’s hotel sector and in toronto’s gaming sector. in the new york case, unions are determined to ensure new hotels constructed in east midtown continue to offer fair wage and benefits to employees. in the toronto case, the push to construct a casino is supported by unions from across the spectrum because of the potential jobs created; however, unions are pitted against one another in the fight to ensure casino workers are unionized. the successful strategy in new york relies on compromises that emerge from previous encounters. the toronto chapter demonstrates the existence of a fragmented labour environment that results in an unsuccessful casino proposal. labour and the creative city offers case studies of film production in new york and defending studio space in toronto. the new york case relates to which unions are to receive the distribution film and television tax incentives. in toronto, the case revolves around labour’s role in opposing a large-scale redevelopment proposal to replace the toronto film studio with a walmart-led retail mall. the new york case leads to tensions emerging over the need to use public 1 associate professor, department of politics and public administration, ryerson university. email: dmaclellan@politics.ryerson.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research funds to support an already profitable industry, combined with a clear lack of diversity in the film industry. recognizing both of these issues leads to an examination of how to address these concerns more constructively. toronto’s final decision not to rezone the property under contention, thereby protects important media production jobs at this site. the two green-energy themed chapters identify the challenges and tensions that emerge in relation to dealing with environmental policy, environmental justice, and the sustainability of green jobs. growing concerns with the impact of climate change becomes the basis for selected labour and community groups to join forces to support viable green jobs. these two chapters provide important insights to help unions to continue to build coalitions across different interests. the scale of environmental problems will likely become more pressing in the coming decades, thereby providing opportunities for different interests to work together to create a more environmentally sustainable future. the final two case studies focus on labour, specifically child care. the issue of child care has a long record of many unfulfilled promises for parents, guardians, and child care workers. defining the situation as a ‘care crisis’ (p.167) is an accurate description. the persistent presence of neo-liberal policies in new york and toronto undermines the ability of unions to support high quality child care services and to represent the pressing employment needs of child care workers. the ongoing ability of child care sector unions to reach across to community groups and apply their combined pressure will demonstrate how important these issue are to building a society that aims to benefit its citizens more broadly. this important collection investigates the critical policy contributions urban and suburban unions can play to help improve the quality of life for present and future unionized workers in new york and toronto. as cities continue to grow in size and become more complex places to govern effectively, the need for unions to continue to broaden their relationships to include community groups and build strategic allies, will become more important. the scholars who contributed to this volume provide an important blueprint for expanding the role of unions to help promote urban policy that includes a strong focus on social justice in these settings and beyond. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review revolting prostitutes: the fight for sex workers’ rights, by juno mac and molly smith. london, new york: verso books, 2018. $24.95 u.s., paper. isbn: 978-1-78663-360-6. pages: 1-278. reviewed by jennifer mcgibbon1 revolting prostitutes is a well-argued, artfully-organized and accessible theoretical text that takes seriously, and meaningfully builds upon the knowledges produced within sex worker circles. mac and smith situate the experiences of those in the sex industry in the larger political and economic context without losing sight of the material implications of economy and policy. it is an excellent primer for anyone interested in social justice issues including harm reduction, sexual violence, sex trafficking, policing, and prison reform or abolition. revolting prostitutes is ideal for an undergraduate or layperson audience. the book is organized into two parts. the first third of the book deals with theory in relation to three themes: sex, work, and borders. this first section functions as a broad theoretical foundation for the rest of the book. with impressive economy of language, juno and mac establish a pragmatic, materialist framework for understanding the sex industry. the second half of the book is theory-in-practice. using specific countries as examples, mac and smith explore 5 different legal models for regulating the sex industry: partial criminalization, full criminalization, the swedish model, regulationism and full decriminalization. in each chapter the authors explain the ideology and political history behind each legal model and then devote the bulk of the chapter to explaining how these laws actually impact real people in the sex industry. in the first section of the book, the “borders” chapter is exceptionally well-contextualized and argued. it opens with 12 ½ pages explaining what borders are, how they function and what “border” security looks like in practice, before finally introducing the figure of the migrant sex worker and addressing her unique position and concerns. similarly, the “work” chapter fundamentally reframes the question of paid sex by shifting the focus from the episodic and highly fetishized “moment of entry” into the industry to the larger context of work in a capitalist system. mac and smith stubbornly maintain focus on systems of oppression and explain how individualizing the problems of physical and sexual violence does a disservice to those who experience such violence whether at the hands of the state or predators masquerading as clients. the themes that run throughout the text will sound familiar to anyone involved in the sex workers’ rights movement, but with the addition of a compassionate critique of the political and rhetorical blindspots within the movement. there are two closely related key interventions into the dominant narrative. first, the authors give clear voice to an emerging strain of sex worker activism: critique of the broadly conceived category of work in capitalism. though the authors don’t identify 1 jennifer mcgibbon is a phd candidate at the ohio state university in geography. her dissertation explores the impact of u.s. anti-trafficking legislation sesta/fosta on adults in the sex industry. she earned her ma from the university of georgia and ba from uc santa cruz. in addition to her scholarly pursuits, jennifer has been involved in sex workers’ rights organizing for more than a decade. she can be reached at mcgibbon.4@osu.edu www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research themselves as materialist feminists, their analysis can be read as a refreshingly pragmatic materialist feminist engagement with the question of sex-as-work. this theoretical framework is introduced in the first two chapters and paves the way for their second intervention: the outright refusal of a binary categorization of sex work as either good or bad, liberatory or devastating. by refusing a binary reading of sex work, and opening up the concept of “work” to critique, the authors are able to meaningfully center the experiences of survival sex workers throughout their ensuing analysis of competing legal models and policies. this represents a significant departure from the literature which has been characterized by bitter battles between “radical” and “liberal” feminists over the nature of the sex industry and bodily autonomy. historically, the survival sex worker has been inconvenient for each camp as she is neither the abject victim held up by the anti-trafficking movement, nor the enlightened and empowered whore the sex workers rights movement loves.) neither fully victim nor fully empowered, the survival sex worker is in mac and smith’s account, first and foremost a person surviving in an unforgiving economy and despite misguided state interventions. mac and smith are careful to remind us throughout the text that people in the sex industry are just like anyone else; people who make logical decisions within a limited set of options. they accomplish this in part by maintaining a distinction between the “everywoman” invoked by antiprostitution feminists and the immediate material needs of people who trade sex. this will not be a revelation to anyone already interested in sex workers rights, but it is an important intervention into the literatures which treat sex workers as criminals, disease vectors or psychologically damaged individuals. in this same vein, they also refuse the voyeuristic liberal feminist fascination with the “moment of entry” into the industry, a key feature in many academic writings on the sex industry. it is due in part to this insistence on prioritizing the material and immediate needs of their community that their writing is at times choppy and too topical for a book-length analysis. mac and smith build their arguments on a mix of peer-reviewed academic texts, informal think pieces and news stories. but as evidenced by the originality and rigor of their broad theoretical overview in the first several chapters, mac and smith are well-equipped to dive deeper into theory and rely more on research articles than news media. though well-organized and thoughtfully reasoned, the second section of the book (on competing legal frameworks) at times reads more like a lengthy think piece than a book-length analysis. it is, however, in part owing to this approach that the authors manage to cover so as much ground as they do in under 300 pages. as out sex workers, mac and smith have credence that stems not from their personal work experiences (this is little more than a footnote in the text) but from years of organizing and advocating on behalf of sex workers rights. there are occasional poignant reminders that their allegiance lies not with academic competition but with their sex industry peers. for example, in a very well-cited book there are a handful of instances in which the authors share that they have intentionally withheld a citation in the interest of protecting those in the sex industry. these strategic omissions are simply pragmatic, but they also serve as a powerful reminder of the www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research extraordinary courage and personal risk the authors have taken to write so frankly and openly about the sex industry. overall, despite a writing style that is as times desultory, revolting prostitutes succeeds as a well-reasoned, grounded and stubbornly materialist defense of sex workers rights in a literature characterized largely by sex panic, voyeurism, and extrapolation. small causes, large structures. a new look at the roots of social inequality in human societies bernd baldus1 abstract: theoretical discussions of the causes of social inequality still rely largely on frameworks first formulated in the 19th century by marx, spencer and durkheim. for very different reasons these authors arrived at similar conclusions which influenced much subsequent theorizing: inequality structures in human societies were believed to arise from single causes, to impose themselves inevitably on human affairs, and to follow predictable developmental pathways. this paper proposes a new theory which explores elements missing from conventional theories: the role of contingency and chance in the growth of inequality structures, selfreinforcing dynamics and processes of intentional social control which consolidate them, and the indeterminate historical pathways of the evolution of distributive structures. these characteristics also suggest the need to explore alternatives for social change and distributive justice. keywords: marx, weber, durkheim, sociology, inequality this paper assumes that social inequality is one possible outcome of a fundamental social dilemma: how to distribute the results of collective, cooperative activities among the contributors. distribution can range from equal to highly unequal. unequal distributions employ socially constructed limitations to prevent some individuals or groups from having access to collectively achieved results which are available to others. of particular importance are 1 bernd baldus is a professor emeritus at the university of toronto. he has taught and published in the field of social inequality for more than 40 years. his recent book, origins of social inequality in human societies (2017), is a critical examination of theoretical and historical research on the growth, maintenance and change of inequality structures. email: bernd.baldus@utoronto.ca small causes, large structures | 167 strategic resources which have the inherent potential of becoming selfreinforcing: material wealth, specialized knowledge, command and authority and social inclusion or exclusion. where differential access is enforced by coercion, legal or cultural norms it can lead to the emergence of enduring structures such as social classes. the sociological problem is then to understand how inequality-generating processes begin and what strengthens or weakens them over time. sociological research of inequality over the past three or four decades has taken some rather erratic turns. one major change has been a move from the study of the distribution of material wealth to more segmented areas such as inequalities of gender, ethnicity or ‘race’. a quick survey of articles during the past six years in major american sociology journals (e.g. american journal of sociology, american sociology review, sociological theory) shows that publications in these areas outnumber studies of inequalities of income and wealth by a ratio of 3 to1. such thematic variations are of course not unusual. ever since the new forms of inequality in the industrializing societies of the 19th century dominated the agenda of early social theorists from marx to durkheim, from spencer and sumner to weber, from pareto and mosca to nietzsche, lebon and veblen, social inequality has remained a controversial and politically charged topic. in the past, however, sociological interest usually waxed and waned in step with social changes caused by the two world wars, the great depression, or when in the 1970s the u.s. government’s vision of a great society brought a cornucopia of funding to the social sciences. the last two decades offer a more paradoxical picture. on one hand, material inequality in the u.s., and to a lesser extent in canada, has risen to levels not seen since the great depression. by 2016, the top 1 percent of earners received 23.8 percent of all income in the u.s., a slow but steady increase since 1989. during the same period, the share of the lowest 90 percent fell from about 60 percent to 49.7 percent. wealth and asset ownership shows a similar picture: the top 1 percent increased their share from 30 percent in 1989 to 38.6 percent in 2016 while that of the bottom 90 percent fell from 33.2 percent to 22.8 percent (bricker et al., 2017). worldwide a few dozen people now own as much wealth as the lower half of the world’s population (fuentes-nieves galasso, 2014). at the same time, sociological interest in distributive inequality declined.2 2 this trend is not limited to sociology. in 2012, economics students at the university of manchester formed the post-crash economics society (now called rethinking 168 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice the minority of recent studies which did examine inequalities of wealth focused on shortand mid-range causes such as economic rents and the growing financialization of capitalist economies (tomaskovic-devey and lin, 2011; lin and tomaskovic-devey, 2013; dencker and fang, 2016), globalization (alderson and nielsen, 2002), union strength (jacobs and myers, 2014; brady, baker and finnigan, 2013) or power resources (jacobs and dirlam, 2016). a few studies also traced the effects of such causes on the distribution of income and wealth over several decades (wodtke, 2016; mouw and kalleberg, 2010; volscho and kelly, 2012). most research also tended to look only at inequalities of income rather than wealth. a notable exception is piketty (2014). this work shed light on proximate causes of recent inequality structures but stayed well clear of considering more general dynamics that give rise to the growth of inequality structures in its many historical and cultural forms. when it comes to such broader theoretical questions, sociologists tend to retreat to a few conventional and often unexamined paradigms: that social inequality is the result of domination, of functional-rational necessity, or of biological imperatives. these paradigms were first formulated more than a century ago. the search for general causes of social inequality was the primary preoccupation of 19th century social theorists. marx and veblen, comte and durkheim, spencer and sumner were not only trying to make sense of the structural changes brought about by the industrial revolution but drew sweeping historical scenarios which depicted the development of inequality as a universal process moving from the earliest societies to the new industrial order.3 the root causes they saw behind these processes varied widely, but all early authors shared common theoretical assumptions which profoundly influenced later sociological research. first, they believed in the proportionality of cause and effect: since inequality was obviously a significant and apparently ubiquitous social structure it also had to have single causes. the theoretical task was therefore to explain economics) in protest against the complete neglect of inequality in their courses which “wasn’t mentioned in our lectures and what we were learning didn’t seem to have any relevance to understanding it. we were memorizing and regurgitating abstract economic models for multiple choice exams”. (earle et al., 2017) 3 these ideas influenced not only the social sciences but continue to provide templates for current public debates and political decisions. spencer is rarely mentioned, but his prescriptions for social policies (celebration of individual fitness, privatization, and reduction of state services) were revived by neo-liberal economists. small causes, large structures | 169 athe universal necessity which calls forth stratification in any social system (davis and moore, 1966, 47). second, they assumed that these causes were impersonal, and that inequality arose in societies more or less independent of the behavior of their members. social or historical laws propelled social classes through successive modes of production independent of individual will, ensured that the most qualified persons rose to the most important social positions, or guaranteed the survival of the fittest. third, the historical course of inequality structures followed predictable and progressive developmental pathways. their endpoints varied from author to author, but were either already reached by the society in which they lived or would be attained in the foreseeable future. why was there such a broad consensus among theorists who had very different views of the new industrial inequality structures? the answer lies in the social and historical environment in which they worked. their century was a period of extraordinary political and social upheaval. popular ideologies for and against the new inequality structures proliferated, turning on the question who created the new wealth and who should therefore be its chief beneficiary: the worker or the capitalist. the still fresh memory of the french revolution, the waves of strikes and popular uprisings from 1848 to the paris commune of 1871, and the growing size and power of the working class seemed to the wealthy to threaten their position and portend the end of civilized society. others, such as marx and engels, welcomed the same turbulence as harbinger of a future communist society. both sides were keen to garner ‘scientific’ support for order and predictability in the social events they witnessed. they found a seductive template in the many laws discovered by the natural sciences. comte was the first to call for a “science of society” which could prove that beneath all the apparent chaos and conflict social systems were orderly and law-governed, and that their most controversial structure, social inequality, was either natural or beneficial, or was necessary stage on the way towards a better, egalitarian society. since then inequality has lost none of its divisive and conflictual character. in these continuing tensions, rather than in the inability of sociologists to come up with better ideas, lies a major reason for the reluctance to reexamine the causes of inequality. the foundational theoretical paradigm emerging from this environment eventually pervaded all social sciences, from sociological positivism and rationalism to economics, behaviorist psychology and neo-darwinist evolutionism. it implicitly followed newton’s laws of motion. like newton, social scientists assumed that their world was fully determined and predictable. 170 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice the normal state of social systems was equilibrium or constant movement along ascending developmental trajectories or progressive stages. change in these states could only come from external or internal constraints, not from spontaneous change or independent agency. a hidden legacy of fear of the power of the uncontrolled rabble or even worse an organized working class led social and economic theorists, behavioral psychologists and evolutionists to stay away from looking at internal, subjective causes of social change. even marx who emphasized the role of conscious intent in human history always reassured his readers that “this cannot change the fact that the course of history is governed by internal general laws” (marx and engels, 1968, 296). non-marxist social science reduced human behaviour to rational, calculable choice. giddens aptly described the result: in sociology “recognizably human actors seem to escape our grip: the stage is set, the script is written, and the roles are handed out, but the actors strangely never reach the scene” (giddens, 1979, 253).4 newton’s second law stated that the change caused by an external force was proportional to the magnitude of the force itself. the sociological equivalent was to assume that small effects had small causes while large effects such as structures of inequality had large ones. third, newton argued that for every action there was an equal and opposite reaction. action and reaction were reversible and repeatable. the corresponding sociological assumption was that cause-effect relations were parts of a universal social mechanism. it was therefore irrelevant what part or period on that mechanism one chose to examine. place and history did not matter. sociological research, however small or large in scope, would gradually illuminate and eventually reveal the mechanism in its entirety. why does this matter for our understanding of social inequality? we often see theories as abstract constructs which are validated by a process of rigorous testing that ensures that only their ‘true’ variants survive. the reality is messier. theories matter because they are the first step in our research. they are conjectures about what evidence we should collect and what questions we should ask of it. they can reveal hitherto unseen features of the social world but can also obscure our view. if one thinks that the growth of inequality is governed by universal laws or causes, one is unlikely to see the causal role of chance in 4 the brief sociological foray into the subjective dimension of agency by constructivism and symbolic interactionism went to the other extreme: the denial of a causal role of external structures in social behaviour. small causes, large structures | 171 human affairs. if one presumes that human actions are shaped by external determinants or rational constraints one will not have much interest in the role which autonomous, non-rational or creative behavior plays in the genesis and maintenance of inequality. if one assumes that the long-term evolution of inequality follows a line of predictable advancement one will see harmful outcomes as transient and unimportant and dismiss the search for more egalitarian social structures as pointless. early social theorists were not unaware of such blind spots in their theoretical landscape. most of them read widely and were familiar with the complex social history of their own societies, and in the wake of european colonial expansion also with the diversity of cultural practices in other parts of the world. these facts were not easily compatible with their deterministic views. the result was a number of contortionist efforts to force a disorderly social world into an orderly theoretical framework. herbert spencer divided historical details into “deep-seated and really-important” facts which supported his theory, and “superficial” and “trivial” ones which “hide from us the vital connexions and the vital actions underneath” (spencer, 1887, 96). he dismissed the latter as mere variations around an underlying “law of rhythms”. the other major social darwinist, william graham sumner, acknowledged the importance of “aleatory” factors such as chance and error in human history but thought they affected only primitive and not modern enlightened societies. the work of marx and engels, both keen observers of history, contains numerous references to contingent causes and unintended outcomes of social events. engels, in a warning that continues to apply to current concerns over global warming, noted that every human victory over nature at first brought the expected result, but could then be cancelled out by different, unforeseen consequences. in order to make such insights compatible with their view of history he and marx insisted that “the internal laws which pervade and regulate such chance events ... remain invisible and incomprehensible to the individual agents of production” (marx and engels, 1968, 171). laws shaped societies “only in a very complex and approximate manner, as a moving average of eternal variations” (ibid, 836). they determined history only “ultimately”, “in the long run”, “in the last instance” or “more or less”. discrepancies between a predictive theory and a recalcitrant reality also plagued early functional theories. durkheim declared that the gravitation of societies towards equilibrium was “a cosmic law”, while parsons called it “the first law of social process” (parsons, 1964, 205). dysfunctional inequalities which burdened subordinates with heavy and 172 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice unpleasant work while enriching their superiors could only be episodic results of abnormal anomie or external disturbances (parsons, 1964, 252). human rationality would soon bring an end to such states. inequality structures based on error, lies or force could not last. discrepancies between causal determinism and social complexity continue to plague our understanding of inequality. let’s just pick one dogma about the causes of inequality which is part of public ideological folklore but is also shared by many economists and sociologists: the belief that social inequality ultimately reflects differences in inherited or acquired ability. in this view elites are products of rational or natural selection processes taking place in markets which ensure that the most talented individuals assume the most important social and economic positions. high incomes and wealth serve as incentives or rewards for acquiring superior skills and assuming burdensome responsibilities. they then create trickle-down benefits for their society in the form of job creation and economic growth. as a result, “…the dominant theory of hiring in sociology portrays employers’ decisions as driven by estimates of candidate’s human capital, social capital, and demographic characteristics; the residual is typically attributed to error or discrimination…non-rational hiring criteria are portrayed as undesirable intrusions into systematic estimates of productivity, in the form of error, noise, or discrimination via racial animus” (rivera, 2015, 1341). in reality, non-functional and non-rational factors routinely enter modern hiring, promotion and salary decisions. examples are presumed or known social background (baldus and tribe, 1978), the type of school or university attended (burris, 2004), physical attractiveness, markers of “chemistry” or “cultural matching” (rivera, 2012), signaled by comportment, speech, accent, behavior or ‘opaque’ dress codes (kraus and mendes, 2014). a recent british study showed that, in addition to strong preferences for applicants with public school, oxford and cambridge background, “some senior investment bankers still deem it unacceptable for men to wear brown shoes with a business suit” (uk social mobility commission, 2016). in two of the few comprehensive studies of factors that influence life-time mobility, jencks (1972, 1979) estimated that unearned chance factors such as family background, small causes, large structures | 173 schools attended, or unanticipated turns of events or luck accounted for as much as 80 percent of earnings and occupational status attained by american men by the age of 65. similar evidence shows that many individuals in high positions keep their jobs even when their performance is suboptimal, incompetent or criminal and inflicts material or psychological harm on those around them. this evidence clearly contradicts the standard view that non-rational choices could never go “beyond the irregular hiring of an incompetent or the rejection of a superior applicant”, and would inevitably be corrected by “market forces” (england, 1994). there is no space here to review such processes in detail (for a more extended analysis see baldus, 2017). suffice it to recall that most of the individuals responsible for the 2008 financial crisis have returned to multimillion dollar jobs in financial corporations, and most recently to the trump government. more generally, empirical evidence shows that the causes of inequality are not uniform and that it is not a “ubiquitous feature of all human societies”. it tells us that autonomous human action, independent of either rational or genetic constraints, is intimately involved in the creation, maintenance and change of such structures. it also shows us that ways in which societies have distributed collectively achieved wealth have varied greatly across time and cultures and differ substantially even in modern capitalist societies. we may try to ignore this conclusion by avoiding theory altogether, by publishing only statistically significant results, or by convincing ourselves that unexplained variance will eventually be clarified by additional research or better measurements. such avoidance techniques are no different from spencer’s distinction between real and unimportant facts. they can hide but not bridge the gap between what we know about the reality of inequality and what sociological and neo-liberal economic theories tell us about it. there is no quick fix for the newtonian paradigm. instead, we have to fundamentally rethink the nature of social systems, the causes of social inequality and the role of human agency in its origin and maintenance, and in its long-term historical evolution. the first step is to recognize that societies are not clockworks or mechanisms, but complex, variable and always only partially predictable systems. among early sociologists max weber recognized the theoretical implications. he remained a lifelong critic of any notion of general social laws because they ignored the “truly infinite variety of successively or simultaneously appearing and disappearing processes” (weber, 1968, 212) in social life. he also saw the danger that facts which did not fit such laws would be dismissed “either 174 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice as a scientifically not yet explained residue which will be incorporated into the ‘law-governed’ system as it is perfected further, or (as) ‘accidental’, and for this very reason scientifically insignificant and marginal” (ibid, 213), a prophetic view of the direction which much modern positivist and functional/rational sociology would take. as for prediction, weber thought it amounted to little more than what “seems probable, so far as our weak eyes can penetrate the dense mist of the future course of human history” (weber, 1958, 62). the complexity of social life could be reduced to heuristic ideal types but social science could offer no certainties. new ideas could acquire their own independent power and like “switchmen” steer history into different directions. on other occasions, a fortuitous confluence of circumstances such as the rise of protestantism and the growth of capitalist markets could accelerate historical change. weber’s recognition of the ubiquity of contingent events is a first step toward a better understanding of the evolution of inequality structures. if we follow his suggestions we must assume that the normal state of social systems is an unstable variation between stability and disorder. the central theoretical question now becomes “why and how, given the potential for radical discontinuities in system behavior, do some systems seem to evolve away from the extremes of complete order, inertia, and stasis on one hand, and complete randomness and chaos on the other. (matthews et al., 1999, 446). the second step is to see that in complex social systems cause and effect are typically not proportional. small changes in initial conditions may cause disproportionately large effects, and intentional human actions often have unanticipated consequences. cause-effect relations in social systems are therefore typically indeterminate and unpredictable. unpredictably is not just a transient problem that we can eliminate by improved research methods, but a generic feature of social complexity. this implies, furthermore, that social causeeffect sequences are irreversible and time-dependent. in complex social systems, successive events or individual actions always stand in a context of changing environments. we cannot expect that over time the same causes will have the same effects, or that the same effects will lead us back to the same causes. instead of being controlled by ultimate determinants, the growth of inequality structures is a path-dependent process whose current state depends on shorter or longer event sequences that immediately precede it and can change its direction at any point. historical social evolution is therefore likely to be irregularly cyclical and to shift unpredictably between periods of stability and disruption. what are the implications of these principles for understanding the small causes, large structures | 175 origins, consolidation and change of inequality structures in human societies? at first glance, we seem to have jumped from the frying pan into the fire; from the maybe somewhat dodgy but comforting hope to find orderly social mechanisms to a world full of small causes and unanticipated consequences. the way out of this apparent dilemma is to take a closer look at the causative process. i like to think of the causes of inequality (and more generally the evolution of social structures) as lying along two fundamental fault lines of social life. like their tectonic equivalents which do not allow us to predict the precise time or magnitude of an earthquake, but whose underlying geological dynamics we understand quite well, social fault lines are shaped by opposed disruptive and order-creating forces which we can investigate further (baldus, 2017). distributive choices are located in this field of tension. whether they move toward greater equality or greater inequality, their general dynamics consist of the instability created by chance events and the ambiguity relations of trust and cooperation, and the consolidating power of social control. along the first fault line we find the contingent, chance events we encounter in our material and social environments. we experience them every day although they have been studiously ignored by sociologists. a windfall gain may improve our finances, new neighbours may make our life unpleasant, a passing encounter may lead to our first job or to the person we marry, an illness may incapacitate us or eliminate a competitor, global warming may crack the foundations of our house in nunavut or grant us an early spring in toronto. the destabilizing effects of such occurrences come on one hand from the frequency and unpredictability of external events, and on the other from our own and other people’s subjective responses which can be highly original and creative, but are also prone to misjudgement and error. from this perspective social life, rather than being a series of rational choices, is an inventive muddling through an uncertain world with frequently unforeseen results. fortunately for the study of inequality, this does not condemn us to trolling through a potentially limitless series of accidents. their unpredictable effects are curtailed by structuring dynamics. not all accidents are alike. kingdoms may indeed be lost for want of a nail, but nails do not figure prominently among the causes of inequality. instead we can find clusters of contingent changes which are particularly likely to trigger the onset of inequality. timing is often crucial: on many occasions in human history initial settlements along rivers of fords generations later became strategic locations which allowed their owners to exact labor services and monopoly rents. gilman 176 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice (1981) describes how in bronze age europe populations investing in long-term assets such as cleared fields, olive groves or fishing boats created attractive opportunities for take-overs and protection rackets by powerful outsiders. products which achieved early acceptance often maintain their market dominance long after later, better products or technologies become available. professional monopolies or winner-take-all competitions multiply the opportunities opened by chance gains, just as inherited wealth, no matter how it was initially obtained, has time and again facilitated access to wealth, power, entry into ‘elite’ schools or opportunities for meeting ‘suitable’ marriage partners. such early accidental advantages are not likely to be lost again as quickly as they were gained because they have compounding, opportunityenhancing effects. self-reinforcing dynamics appear more often where one or more participants receive large initial windfalls or chance gains which are not available to others, where they acquire monopolies of expertise or control of intellectual, political or economic coalitions or technical synergies, or where prestige and halo effects create self-fulfilling status or power expectations. such advantages grow particularly fast if they lock other participants into a position of dependence from which they can withdraw only at considerable cost (arthur, 1994, 94). the second fault line, cooperation and trust, is just as basic an element of social life as chance and opportunity. like contingency and chance, it can generate destabilizing and ordering social dynamics. trust permits us to extend our relationship with others beyond short-term tit for tat self-interest. trust in turn is indispensable for cooperation which allows us to achieve many times what we could accomplish by ourselves. even many biologists now accept cooperation as one of the crucial adaptations in the evolution of the human species. trust and cooperation can give stability to social relations but can also create opportunities for defection and deception which lead to inequality. trust assumes that others will act in ways that correspond to our values and expectations. but the confidence we place in them also gives them freedom from scrutiny and facilitates abuse of our trust. similarly, in cooperation we assume that others will do their part in a joined project that creates value beyond what each partner alone could achieve. but that added value also creates the temptation to defect and to walk away with our work without doing theirs. such vulnerability weakens intimate personal relationships as much as formal arrangements such as the recent agreements by oil-producing countries to cut back oil production. neither guarantees unconditional loyalty. small causes, large structures | 177 here, too, we can identify areas where breaches of trust and defection from cooperation have particularly frequently in human history initiated pathways to inequality. when we look at transformations of early relatively egalitarian societies we find, for example, that kinship ties and institutions of sharing and generalized reciprocity were especially vulnerable to subversion of trust and cooperation. sharing can be used to build up prestige and bands of clients, and initially communal offices frequently opened opportunities for the rise of chiefs, kings and ruling classes. at the same time, these beneficiaries face their own limitations. they must maintain the pretense of working for the common interest and claim to be selfless cooperators because not doing so would kill the goose that lays the golden egg. theories should be judged by the guidance they provide to our research. what lessons can we draw for the study of inequality from the shift from determining causes to the role of contingency and unpredictability in social life? the first is that we have to pay much more attention to accidental changes in natural and social environments which start pathways to social inequality. similarly, we want to understand when and how trust is converted into deception, and cooperation into defection. identifying such starting processes which offer social actors opportunities to increase their fortune at the expense of others significantly narrows our search for the origins of inequality structures. at the same time, there is no guarantee that people will actually see these opportunities or exploit them in what would seem rational in light of their interests. human actors never have perfect knowledge of the parameters of their choices. errors, mistakes and long-lived incompetence abound on all levels of social behaviour. failure is common, and the reason why it is often overlooked this is that losers tend to walk away quietly while winners embellish their success. all claims to the contrary, there is no universal mechanism that ensures that only the best and the brightest arrive at the top. this insight leads not only to a better understanding of the empirical origins of social inequality. it also deflates the claim that privilege is earned and wealth is a sign of superior ability, ideological tools used to defend inequality structures throughout their history. sutton describes what an actual pathway to power looks like when we remove its ideological cover: “...most professions resemble a rich snob whose family fortune was founded many generations before by a horse-thieving or bootlegging ancestor. the road to respectability – from 178 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice journeyman practitioners to cosmopolitan professionals – was likely to be littered with episodes of greed, prejudice, intellectual foolishness, and political manipulation that today’s professionals would just as soon forget. for any profession, the first item on the agenda is to gain jurisdiction over a chosen field. there is no second item on the agenda” (sutton, 2001, 275). no social structure has given rise to more obfuscation and ideological distortion than social inequality. the reason is obvious: there is much at stake, and people are willing to go to great length to justify and defend privilege and wealth as meritorious and deserved. a more accurate understanding of the pathways to inequality is an important tool for revealing the true sources of social power. the second lesson from our theoretical reorientation is that the inherent ambiguity of chance, trust and cooperation can shed light on how inequality may start, but not on why and how it grows, consolidates and turns into a lasting social structure. in order to understand that process we have to separate the causes that trigger pathways to inequality from the social dynamics which explain its endurance and change over time. these typically appear after the path towards inequality has begun. three clusters of processes affect the longevity of inequality structures. one is self-reinforcing dynamics such as the compounding and leveraging potential inherent in initial shifts of material wealth or fortuitous advantage. control over strategic, self-enhancing resources such as wealth or political power allow their owners to convert crises into opportunities (stoney and krawchenko, 2013) and to legitimate and strengthen their position through force and ideology. this is usually done by disguising their own interests as the common good, by making inequality look normal and natural, and by portraying demands for greater equality as absurd or dangerous. there is a huge field here for sociological research on historical and current ideological constructs, their transmission and dissemination through concentrated media, and their use in entrenching social and economic power. little sociological knowledge exists about why and how such processes succeed and why they are able to endure over often long periods of time. secrecy and fraud in the manipulation of markets, insider trading or clandestine political actions are important feeder operations in modern inequality structures (fligstein and roehrkasse, 2016) but, small causes, large structures | 179 “…with the occasional exception, we as sociologists have not made a practice of studying such things, which means we have turned away from society’s dark regions in order to search for whatever may be conveniently discovered under the light. that has left us ill-equipped to assist in the discovery of secrets that need to be exposed, and—though this is more controversial—in the protection of those that need to be safeguarded” (gibson, 2014, 303). there is a third dynamic which stabilizes inequality structures, and it is much less often noticed: behaviors of subordinate or exploited people which inadvertently strengthen the social position of ruling elites or classes. there are many forms of such behaviours, ranging from outright rejection of equalityincreasing policies (carriero, 2016) to political ignorance, apathy or self-blame, or to the gradual accommodation to the stresses and costs of boring and, nowadays, increasingly uncertain jobs, precarious incomes, or poverty. inequality gives its beneficiaries the leverage to use such accommodation in order to consolidate their positions without incurring additional costs. the support for trump by what clinton dismissed as “deplorables” is an indication how complex political reactions to social inequality are, but also how easily they can be overlooked. the final major lesson from theorizing societies as unstable, indeterminate systems is that the long-term evolution of inequality structures does not take a predictable linear or stepwise course. the sociologist robert michels who wrote early in the 20th century used a more fitting image of waves of equality and inequality constantly washing against the shores of human societies. if we follow these processes back to earlier times we may arrive at nodal historical points where events and decisions conspired to decide whether we read the time clockwise or counter-clockwise, whether we drive on the left or the right side of the road, or whether a 19th century court decides that corporations are legal persons and sets u.s. society on a path to unparalleled corporate dominance leading to the recent citizens united supreme court judgement that opened the door to unlimited contributions to political campaigns. however, reconstructing such ancestral lines does not lead us back to predictive causes, nor can we assume that similar subsequent events will have similar consequences. this has two important implications for sociological research. one is 180 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice that we need to know more about the transitions between relatively equal and unequal social structures, whether in the past or in our time. it is now widely accepted that cooperative and relatively egalitarian social relations were typical of early societies. inequality eventually penetrated most of them, but historical evidence does not suggest that such transitions resulted from universal social, biological or functional needs for inequality. as well, when we look at early societies such as mesopotamia, rome, greece or central and south america, we see that even when inequality is fully developed, demands for more equality never disappear. the beneficiaries of inequality structures need the cooperation of their subordinates to replenish their fortunes, just as they must maintain their support or at least their acquiescence in order to enjoy the fruits of their position without the fear of trouble from below. by doing so, however, they also keep the potential for demands for greater distributive justice alive. the social history of inequality is a history of irregular periods of stability and decline, the result of a constant tension between cooperative egalitarian social interests on one side, and inequality-increasing ones on the other (potter, 2012). by the same token, and that is the second implication, inequality is not our inevitable fate. instead its many forms are historical products of human actions. this means on one hand that as sociologists we can and must subject existing distributive structures to critical scrutiny, especially where gains for some come at the expense of harm and costs for the majority of those whose work produces these gains. we cannot simply assume, as so much sociological and economic literature does, that inequality structures are natural functional or economically efficient meritocracies.5 on the other hand it means that we can think of alternative forms of distributing collectively achieved results. this, too, is a largely uncultivated field of sociological research. what is needed is a careful exploration of alternatives to capitalist distributive structures, starting with existing practical examples from cooperatives and worker-owned companies to the large-scale co-management system in germany or the living wage experiments (mcbride and muirhead, 2016; wells, 2016) tried out in several countries. moreover we find extremely interesting international variations in economic and social policies in the distribution of collectively achieved wealth: 5 there is some irony in the fact that in sociology the concept of meritocracy was first used in michael young’s “rise of the meritocracy” (1958), a scathing satire of a future society where rich enjoy their fortune safe in the knowledge that the lower classes blame themselves for their fate. small causes, large structures | 181 from the six weeks paid holidays in most european countries to the us, the only industrialized country without legislated paid vacations, from the high-tax, high equality distributive structures of scandinavian countries to trump`s impending tax reductions for high incomes and corporations, from social security and health insurance which provides reliable support in case of illness or unemployment, to a barely disguised neo-liberal social darwinism which leaves those without resources to fend for themselves. we also know that these differences are accompanied by parallel differences in public satisfaction and happiness. these existing experiences in achieving greater equality offer important practical lessons for more far-reaching reorganizations of the distribution of wealth and power in current and future societies. back in 1959, the sociologist c. wright mills outlined three public roles for sociologists. the first was to pose as philosopher-kings who looked for the laws of social life, aloof from the mundane world of politics but trusting that the sheer weight of their insights would make it inevitable for those in political power to let sociology chart an optimal course for social affairs. that was the dream of comte. from the start it was woefully naive, but it continues to sustain the hope of some sociologists that their discipline will some day match the prestige accorded to the natural sciences.6 the second posture was to act as advisor to the king, “to become involved in those many trends that make the individual a part of a functionally rational bureaucracy, and to sink into (a) specialized slot ...without being explicitly concerned with the structure of society” (mills, 1959, 180). although he saw this as the most common role of social scientists, mills did not accuse. what he pointed to was rather the oftenimperceptible integration of sociologists into systems of resources and rewards that reflect the preferences and priorities of dominant inequality structures. the third stance was to be a critic of the king’s actions and their consequences for the public, and to suggest alternatives which are better than the king’s policies. this once was, but is no longer a subject of discussion in many sociology departments. in a world of growing inequality and of ever more sophisticated 6 the modern version of comte’s dream is a vision of sociology which excludes the “lay public” from knowledge production, defines what is “legitimate” research, standardizes “cognitive orientations and criteria for defining intellectual problems” and allocates prestige and reputation accordingly, and creates “hierarchical bureaucratic structures” which control resources and research networks and “dominate policy and decision making” (turner, 1994). 182 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice ways of disguising the exploitation of people and the destruction of environments as service to the common good, mills` recommendations are more compelling than ever. references alderson, a. s. & nielsen, f. 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(2016). social class and income inequality in the united states: ownership, authority, and personal income distribution from 1980 to 2010. american journal of sociology 121 (5), 1375-1415. young, m. d. 1958. the rise of the meritocracy: an essay on education and equality. harmondsworth: penguin. 186 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice settling immigrants in neoliberal times: ngos and immigrant well-being in comparative context karla angelica valenzuela moreno,1 john shields,2 and julie drolet3 abstract: current events, such as the 2008 economic crisis, the large number of asylum seekers fleeing from conflict zones, terrorism threats, and the growth of right-wing antiimmigrant populism, all within the context of neoliberalism, raise questions regarding the settlement and integration of migrant newcomers in western liberal democracies. this involves an increasing role for ngos in immigrant settlement provision through state-ngo ‘partnerships’. by exploring immigration and settlement policy in a comparative context, our main objective is to analyze the role of nonprofits in settlement and integration service delivery, as well as their activities aimed at promoting immigrant well-being and social justice in neoliberal times. keywords: immigrants/migrants; settlement services; integration; neoliberalism; ngos; social justice; right-wing anti-immigrant populism introduction the settlement of immigrant newcomers in western liberal democracies in the current socio-economic and political context is challenging. migrants have in many circles come to be viewed negatively and as a source of threat. yet immigrants are also recognized by states as critical to address demographic, labour market and productivity challenges in advanced economies almost all of which have aging populations (barrass and shields, 2017). hence, 1 karla angelica valenzuela moreno is a phd candidate in the department of political and social sciences at the universidad iberoamericana. email: karla_1215@me.com 2 john shields is professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. email: jshields@politics.ryerson.ca 3 julie drolet is an associate professor in the faculty of social work's central and northern alberta region in edmonton. email: jdrolet@ucalgary.ca settling immigrants in neoliberal times | 65 the issue of immigrant settlement and integration remains important. the dominance of a neoliberal governance framework also means that new actors have been engaged in providing services to the public. within this setting ngos are playing an ever larger role in offering supports to migrants. given the way neoliberalism has structured its relationship with ngo providers, however, there are many points of tension with ngos in their efforts to play progressive roles. nonetheless, the social justice missions that guide most ngo service providers is an important resource for newcomers in these difficult and austere times. we examine settlement service provision and the place of nonprofit service providers in addressing the well-being of immigrant newcomers through a comparative examination of the literature, and a scan of settlement programs and their providers in fourteen countries, and offer a critical assessment of development in these areas.4 setting the context the rapid changes triggered by significant events since the beginning of the 2000s have had major effects on public policy and on societal attitudes towards migrants and immigrant integration. the most salient event is perhaps the 9/11 attacks, which worked to frame migrants as a security threat, one that is claimed to be exacerbated by liberal migration regimes (lazaridis and wadia, 2015) with their supposedly overly generous and lax immigration laws. more recent incidents involving the participation of immigrants (or nationals of immigrant origin) in terrorist incidents have strengthened the arguments that consider them a danger to national security and that point to a failed integration strategy. the 2008 global financial crisis also had effects on migrants and immigration policies. these impacts, however, were unevenly experienced. the ‘great recession’ hit countries like spain, portugual, greece, ireland and the united states particularly hard whereas counties like germany and canada were 4 this paper draws upon john shields, julie drolet and karla valenzuela, “immigration settlement and integration services and the role of nonprofit providers: a crossnational perspective on trends, issues and evidence”, rcis working paper (ryerson centre for immigration and settlement), no. 2016, 1. the research was supported from a sshrc grant entitled immigrant integration and inclusion: investigating the canadian partnership model from a complex systems perspective. also, the authors wish to thank two annonomous reviewers for their comments. 66 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice less negatively affected. unemployment among spain’s immigrant population, for example, exceeded 30 percent (oecd 2012: 100). everywhere, however, immigrant newcomers proportionately bore the brunt of job losses (chaloff et al. 2012). but while immigrant populations were more negatively affected by the crisis they were often blamed for causing native-born job loss, feeding support for right-wing anti-immigrant populism in many places. on the policy front there has also been mixed results. while all countries enhanced their security measures to address terrorist threats associated with migration, other migration policies varied considerably. numerous eu countries adopted measures that made it more difficult for immigrant populations (this has been especially extreme in eastern europe). in the case of germany and sweden, however, there have been more progressive responses to migration as illustrated in their humanitarian acceptance of large numbers of refugees. in north america the election of donald trump as us president has brought with it a strong anti-immigrant policy agenda. by contrast in canada the election of the liberal party under justin trudeau in 2015 has seen the reversal of the more extreme immigration laws and measures introduced by the previous conservative administration (barrass and shields, 2017). as a general trend, however, it is fair to conclude that overall there has been a movement toward a stronger anti-immigrant atmosphere, greater restrictions on migration and austerity driven immigration reform (barrass and shields, 2017). in this context, immigrants are targeted for being a threat to both national and economic security. the rise of right-wing populism in europe and the united states, as well as the increasing numbers of asylum seekers reaching some eu countres, have revived the perception of immigrants as being an economic risk, since not all are able to rapidly join the labour market, and thus they may become a “social burden” for the receiving states. some governments have resticted welfare benefits to newcomers (carmel et al., 2012). while immigration remains hotly debated in policy communities and has been restricted in many ways it is also the case that countries need immigrants, especially those with high human capital, as well as temporary migrants to do low paid work native-born populations are not willing to do (gottfried et al., 2016). these developments have taken place and in part been shaped in a world dominated by neoliberal ideas. as a policy orientation, nihei (2010) notes that neoliberalism is based on belief in the value of the free movement and settling immigrants in neoliberal times | 67 accumulation of capital, minimal state intervention in the private sphere of markets and individual rights, and a restructuring of the public domain with the aim of shrinking the state and undoing the keynesian logic embedded in government after the second world war (evans and shields, 2010). neoliberalism came to be the hegemonic policy paradigm in industrialized countries in the 1980’s, when policy trends such as the retreat from government planning in favour of more purely based market economies, privatization of services, and a constraint on social and economic rights began to be embraced (burke et al., 2000). one of the salient aspects in state restructuring is the hollowing out of the welfare state (jessop, 2002) and the devolution of many of its support and service functions from the central government to sub-national jurisdictions and the nonprofit sector (shields, 2014). lester salamon writes about this process as the ‘nonprofitization of the welfare state’ (2015a). these developments have had major implications for immigrants in the global north. this is particulary evident in the growing role of nonprofits in social provision as illustrated in immigrant settlement services. settlement services in cross-national perspective there is no set definition of settlement services but there is a general understanding that they encompass programs and supports designed to assist immigrants to make the necessary adjustments for a smooth transition to fully participate in the socio-economic life of their host society. most migrant serving agencies would agree that settlement should be a two-way process in which both immigrants and the majority society “…are expected to adapt to each other and create a new intercultural basis for mutual identification and solidarity” (hellgren, 2015, 4). in practice settlement is a staged process involving: 1) adjustment, where newcomers become acclimatized to their new country, culture, language and environment, so they can adjust and cope with their new situation; 2) adaptation, which involves deeper learning about and managing with their new situation without need for high levels of assistance; and, 3) integration, which constitutes immigrants’ ability to actively and meaningfully participate in society and contribute as full citizens of their new country (ocasi and costi, 1999, chpt. 2, 1). from a progressive vantage point the goal of settlement supports is to enable newcomers to achieve full integration. however, most settlement services are focused at stage one and to a lesser degree at stage two. drawing from a broad literature review and a cross-national survey of 68 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice settlement and integration programs and policies this paper seeks to set a contextual and theme oriented assessment of the immigrant settlement landscape and the role of nonprofit agencies in the countries under review. when attempting to consider settlement and integration services and the role of ngo providers in their provision in a broad range of countries a number of challenges becomes clearly evident. to begin there are considerable gaps in readily accessible information from which to distill a comprehensive comparative picture of settlement and integration service delivery for newcomers even at a basic descriptive level. moreover, the availability of hard data sources from which to consider different systems of services is highly uneven or in many instances unavailable. given the problems of data and information collection the approach adopted in this paper has by necessity been more qualitative in character and focused at the broader level. the research approach involves a critical review of the cross-national literature on immigrant settement provision and the role of ngos. in addition, using fourteen oecd countries – australia, new zealand, united states of america, canada, united kingdom/england, ireland, germany, france, the netherlands, sweden, denmark, belgium, italy and spain – we conducted, through government websites, a scan of their settlement and integration programs and policies in order to identify the range and scope of settlement actvities in these countries and their use of non-governmental delivery agents. the information gathered in the scan covers the period up to the early 2010s. each country is guided by a national integration approach. different labels have been used to identify these models but broadly cast they can be said to range between an assimilationist model, where newcomers and minorities are expected to fully adapt to the norms and values of the adoptive country, to a multicultural model, where newcomers and minorities are free and encouraged to practice their own cultures and traditions in private and public spaces as long as they do not violate laws of the host country (modood, 2011). most nations have integration approaches that are situated between these two types. every country examined in our study had a well-defined government integration approach. one would assume that their offerings of immigrant settlement services would closely align with their integration model. while their integration strategies are set within a larger policy framework, our findings indicate, at least in terms of settlement services in the countries under consideration, that they have similar programing regardless of their integration models. they all place great emphasis on, labour market integration and settling immigrants in neoliberal times | 69 language acquisition whether they embarce assimilationist, as in france, or multicultural, as in canada, models of integration. a constant found in all countries is the use of ‘partnerships’ for setllement service delivery between governments and ngos. generally, the nonprofit sector offers services tailored to the individual circumstances of newcomers and specific ethnic groups, as well as wide ranging programs spanning the areas of sports and leisure activities, language acquisition, citizenship test courses, community outreach, statistical data gathering, counseling on labour market inclusion, housing and employment, among others. the countries we reviewed considered language acquisition and labour market inclusion services to be the core domains of integration. hence, they focused on offering settlement services related to these areas. an emerging trend that stretches beyond the traditional horizons of settlement services is the formation of multi-ethnic sports teams as a means to integrate children and their parents. this innovation was pioneered in europe by germany, the netherlands, ireland and denmark. in general terms, the main areas of contemporary immigrant integration which includes settlemtent programing as well as broader supports and policies are (koehler et al., 2010): • language acquisition: this along with labour market programing, is the most important feature of integration. variations appear on whether the courses are mandatory and if they have a cost for immigrants. • labour market attachment: securing employment, especially jobs that closely match the skill sets and education of newcomers, is a central dimension of meaningful integration. • education: the enrollment of children of immigrant background in the school system is a key factor, one which also involves language acquisition. clearly primary and secondary education and the schools this takes place in are prime sites in the integration process for children and youth newcomers. schools are also sites where adult family members are able to interact wth the broader community. there are many education related initiatives that can be supportive to newcomers. sweden and some canadian provinces, for example, offer heritage language clases to students. • personalized settlement plans: special programs tailored to the 70 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice immigrant’s needs, whether within the framework of the introductory program or through programs offered at the local level (these can be found in germany, france, the netherlands, sweden, ireland, england and australia). • special courses for women and children: courses for women to overcome the barriers that may keep them from joining integration courses. furthermore, some countries offer day care services to facilitate the enrollment of women in language and other integration courses. equal opportunities for the education of children with immigrant backgrounds are also taken into account (germany, france, spain, usa, new zealand denmark, england and canada provide such programing; germany stands out here). • anti-discrimination policies: although not specifically designed for immigrants, these measures do contribute to the settlement process of many foreign-born by providing legal protections and supports for victims of discrimination. the majority of migrants to oecd countries today are from the developing world and are racial and ethinic minorities. sweden, canada, usa and uk rank the highest in this area according to mipex (nd), a tool developed to compare integration policies for immigrants in several countries • social security agreements: many countries of destination have signed these agreements with some migrant source countries in order to ensure health services and pension plans. these are, however, almost exclusively reached between oecd countries and not with migrant-sending countries from the global south. other programmes that were found are: 1) introductory immigrant integration courses. the main areas that these programs focus on are: civic integration; social and historical information about the host country; and overall orientation to the new country (these are present in germany, france, belgium, the netherlands, denmark, sweden, ireland, england, australia and canada); 2) pre-arrival courses – these are seen as a program innovation to enhance the effectiveness of settlement integration programming, particularly related to the labour market (these can be found in canada, new zealand and france); and, 3) mandatory integration contracts (only present in france and the flanders region of belgium). recent shifts on the immigration policy and program fields indicate settling immigrants in neoliberal times | 71 that they are moving towards the aims of: 1) devolving settlement services to sub-national jurisdictions and nonprofit organizations; 2) holding immigrants and their families themselves more responsible and accountable for their own settlement and integration (root et al., 2014, 3) restructuring national welfare states to reduce services and often restricting or excluding newcomer access; 4) generally tightening rules around migrant access to countries; 5) a renewed focus on security and immigrant racialization (anderson, 2013; sharma, 2015), and; 6) promoting self-deportation strategies through periodical raids, and state and local laws targeting irregular migrants already in the country (hannan et al., 2016). these policy and program shifts not only respond to austerity brought on by the 2008 financial crisis, but they are also a reaction to a considerably more hostile political and social environment for immigrants (kretsedemas, 2015), endorsed by rising nationalisms, particularly in some european countries and the united states. the rise of extreme right-wing anti-immigrant political parties and movements is having a significant impact on settlement and integration policies and programs (traynor, 2015). one of the targets in europe has been multiculturalism. for example, in germany, the united kingdom and the netherlands prominent declarations by their governments of the so-called failure of 'multiculturalism' and the need to rethink immigration and integration policies have been made, signaling important changes in the direction of immigration policy (collet, 2011). only in canada has multiculturalism remained uncontested (joppke, 2017). in the united states, recent attempts of president trump to target muslim communities and force sanctuary cities to cooperate with anti-immigrant federal measures are clear examples of attempts to further criminalize irregular forms of migration (bauder, 2017). in this anti-migrant environment nonprofits have gained more importance, since national and/or sub-national governments generally subcontract the delivery of many of these settlement services to third sector organizations and public educational institutions. nonprofit delivered programming is centred on increasing the capability of the immigrant workforce through training and development and actively connecting newcomers with employers. they also offer programs tailored to give counseling on career planning; job-finding, resume writing and interview skills courses; workshops that would benefit the educational experience of immigrant youth; acquisition of technical language for certain professions; mentoring and short-term work placement programs; work permit workshops; career and employment personal 72 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice development plans; inter-cultural awareness training; credential recognition and information sessions, among others (lowe et al., 2017). ngos and settlement service provision in neoliberal times all countries that were part of our scan have established some kind of partnership with nonprofit organizations for settlement and integration services. however, there remains considerable variation with regard to the depth and scope of services offered through ngos. at one end of the spectrum is canada which has a long record dating back to the 1970s of government funding of a broad range of settlement serivices and a deep network of nonprofit settlement agencies across the country (richmond and shields, 2005). at the other end is the united states whose funding of ngos for such services is rather thin, as the state is guided by a laissez-faire approach to settlement which places the burden of settlement on individual immigrants, their families and the private activities of civil society (shields and bauder, 2015). some other countries, like sweden, have provided generous support for the settlement of largely refugee populations but this has primarily been done directly by the state. overall, there is a growing trend for government to partner with ngos to provide for social, health and human services, including immigrant settlement services, as part of the so-called “global associational revolution” (salamon et al., 2004, 3-4). the nature of these partnerships consists of short term competitive program-based contracts governed by strict accountability rules and regulations that manage how funds are spent and programs delivered (rudman et al., 2017). in this way states have moved to institutionalize their relationship with ngo service providers since the 1980s. it is important to note that civil society organizations have been involved in settlement and other immigrant services for a very long time in several countries. even in the pre-welfare state period, there were remarkable efforts of nonprofit actors to address immigrants´ needs such as housing, health care, poverty and urban integration (friedman and friedman, 2006). however, the post-keynesian neoliberal era has brought changes in the relationship between government and nonprofit service providers. so, the introduction of market mechanisms in the welfare system sheds light on different forms of regulation and cooperation between these actors. as ascoli and ranci (2002) argue, the main new feature of privatization lies not in the involvement of private and nonprofit actors, but in the marketization of the regulatory models and partnering mechanisms. settling immigrants in neoliberal times | 73 neoliberalism aims at modifying the government structures through deregulation policies and the adoption of certain practices of private actors that allegedly improve the efficiency of public institutions. service provision has come to be guided under neoliberalism by new public management (npm). npm is featured by alternative service delivery by nonprofit bodies of publically supported services, the imposition of market oriented and private sector business practices for delivery agencies, short-term competitively sourced program financing, and strict accountability regulations (rudman et al., 2017). while service delivery is downloaded to the ‘community’, government is able to maintain control from a distance through its funding and accountability measures, bringing with it market-centred and business values to nonprofit service operations. in this way npm has become the transmission belt for neoliberal thinking into the ngo sector (shields and evans, 1998; andrews et al., 2013). there are contradictory tendencies regarding the involvement of ngos in social and human services. on the one hand, some experts consider that they are not able to set common transformative goals because they are weak, heterogeneous and do not have enough human and economic resources to promote real change (olvera, 2003). it is certainly true that the nonprofit sector does not have the capacity and reach to replace the state’s ability to redistribute resources on a broad scale as in the case of “the keynesian welfare state’s nearuniversal [social and health] coverage” (deverteuil, 2016, 10). at best on their own ngos are able to provide supports that can fill some of the gaps left by a retreating welfare state. it is also argued that ngos hinder the visibility of structural problems that cause inequalities, since ngos may address certain immediate social issues and prevent them from escalating into more threatening political directions (lewis, 2013). additionally, the responsibility for population well-being under the neoliberal ‘partnership state’ also comes to be divided between the state and ngo actors. this can be counterproductive since it can enable the state to evade its accountablity and transfer some of its social obligations to civil society. finally, the dependence of ngo service providers on government funding also impacts the advocacy/‘voice’ role of these organizations. ngos’ freedom to advocate on behalf of the community and their clients can be greatly constrained because of the fear of offending the government hand that funds them – the problem of ‘advocacy chill’ (evans and shields, 2014). from another perspective, government partnering with ngos can be 74 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice viewed as beneficial. the nonprofit sector provides “a vehicle for social movements, citizenship and survival despite its notoriously asymetrical, uncoordinated and uneven nature, best understood as a heterogeneous set of networks, sites and actors” (deverteuil, 2016, 10). as such ngos are not just service agencies of neoliberal goverments but “sites of help, caring and sustenance for people” (ibid). partnering with government to provide programing engages ngos who are often better postitioned because of their special knowlege in working with local communities to provide services that can be more atuned to the special needs of clients, including racial and ethnic minority migrants. also the fact that ngo service providers are not government means that groups, such as irregular migrants, are more likely to make use of their services as the fear of the reporting of their immigration status is diminished. moreover, government funding of ngo agencies for service delivery has promoted the move to greater professionalization, which on the positive side, can promote improved service provision and implementation of a best practice culture (saurugger, 2009). the residential spaces that immigrants occupy, especially in larger cities where most newcomers settle, are sites of socio-economic polarization), but these spaces are also areas where ngos establish themselves, often in “dense networks, to address the most negative effects of such polarization and as a source of social capital and networking” (deverteuil, 2016, 174). these immigrant enclaves commonly develop into “extensive networks of immigrantserving voluntary-sector organizations attuned to the needs of their specific immigrant clientele” (ibid, 175). these nonprofit service hubs can serve as “spaces of social innovation, sanctuary and sustenance” fostering resilience within the immigrant population (ibid, 10). one of the broader trends in settlement services has been a movement to devolve settlement to regional and even local governments by the national state. this is part of the neoliberal drive to shrink central governments and shift financial burdens onto lower levels of government and the nonprofit sector (ochs, 2015). however, it is also the case that integration occurs primarily at the local/community level and governments as well as ngos located closer to the communities in which immigrants live and work are better positioned to provide and shape such services. however, problems arise when there is a lack of transfered resources from the central state to provide regional and local jurisdictions with enough funding to match expected settlement resource levels. this places those jurisdictions with large immigrant populations and an under settling immigrants in neoliberal times | 75 resourced network of nonprofit sector actors at distinct disadvantage (shields, 2014). ongoing issues and challenges in the ngo-state partnership it is relevant to identify the control mechanisms that governments are able to impose on service providing ngos, which derive from practices based on the npm. government funders are able to decide which ngo they fund based on market rules that often priviledge narrow notions of ‘efficiency’ and ‘accountability’ over other values such as high quality service (baines et al., 2014). this system endorses competition and business market values in the nonprofit sector. it also means that ngos need to align their interests to those issues prioritized and funded by the government, even though they may not match well with the grounded needs of the population that ngos serve. funding and accountability seem to be the root of many problems faced by the nonprofit sector. in immigrant settlement services ngos suffer from lack of funding from private donors. this makes ngos heavily dependent on government financing (smith et al., 2005). the economic dependency of nonprofit service providers on public funding brings with it a considerable amount of government bureaucracy linked to accountability and reporting (schmidt, 2005). phillips and levasseur (2004) note that government funding entails strict accountability measures, which place significant restrictions on ngos’ flexibility in delivering services reducing their abilities to be creative. accountability rules under neoliberal governance have been used to regulate nonprofit settlement service providers to bring them in line with state objectives and to operate in a manner that mimics good private sector business practices but which are often not a good match with the cooperative and sharing ethic of the nonprofit sector. under such governance structures there is a risk of underserving specially vulnerable groups, such as irregular migrants, since the eligibility criteria imposed by public funding requirements oftentimes forbids nonprofits from serving those newcomers in government funded programs who are most in need, in particular migrants with less than full legal status (goldring and landolt, 2013). new outreach strategies are necessary to get to those migrants that have limited social capital and who find it more difficult to access settlement serivces. it has been suggested that a strategy coordinated in partnership with other organizations could better address this issue. a cross-national study conducted by juzwiak et al. (2014), pointed out that while partnerships within 76 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice civil society are still more common, other kinds of alliances involving businesses are emerging. the nonprofit sector is driven under npm to increase its professional competencies in order to compete more effectively for public funding. while it has its advantages this also poses a danger of moving the nonprofit orientation away from its community roots toward business and managerial values that are more tailored to the efficiency and accountability ethics of neoliberal practices (sidhu and taylor, 2009). additionally, as richmond and shields (2005) observe, government funding for settlement services is mainly for the first stages of settlement that concern immediate survival needs, while neglecting other longer term and more imbedded problems in the integration process that are in need of policy and programming attention. budget shortages often result in organizations’ difficulties in hiring and retaining highly skilled staff. further, it means that workers in the immigrant ngo settlement sector are usually not well compensated. the sector’s labour force is made up predominantly of female staff very often drawn from the very immigrant communities they serve. under such conditions settlement services are delivered on the backs of a cheap and exploited workforce that is precariously employed. as pointed to earlier, de-politicization is also a common issue that is identified with ngo dependance on government funding. since advocacy actions are seldomly publicly funded, organizations frequently leave this aside and focus on funded service-based projects. the diminishing of ngo advocacy is the result of both lack of resources and time to conduct such activities and ngo hesitancy to put themselves in a compromising position with funders. this advocacy neutralization has a number of negative consequences. for one, it can undermine an organization´s legitimacy with clients as the ngo voice of the community comes to be muted. secondly, the nonprofit sector is losing ground because of lack of advocacy to influence governments regarding immigration policies and programs (donhilow 2005). it is important to note that there are two core roles that nonprofit organizations play in society – one is its service role and second is its role as a voice for the community by filling its mission mandate to advocate for social justice (feldman et al., 2017). the impact of state-ngo partnerships governed by neoliberal principles risks reducing ngos to one dimensional service providers without effective voice. clearly the kind of partnerships developed between the state and ngos in the settlement sector are far from being balanced. in essence they constitute service contracts with the power of funding giving the state the upper hand. in settling immigrants in neoliberal times | 77 their study of the san francisco bay area, de graauw et al. (2013) argue that ngos in receipt of such funding weaken their ability to act as a counterbalance to government power diminishing civil society. however, ruzza (2014) contends that in the eu context, the 2008 crisis has begun to create a vision of a more balanced state-civil society relationship. a relationship founded on common goals and mutual respect. state fiscal challenges have overlapped with a refugee humanitarian crisis. under difficult circumstances and with limited funding ngos have played a leading role in refugee relief. this has reinforced the central place of civil society in helping to address some of the most pressing societal challenges, emphasizing the value of more meaningful partnerships between the state and nonprofit actors. instead of a relationship featured by heirarchy one of interdependence could be of mutual benefit. as noted, immigrant settlement service ngos are operating in a difficult political and socio-economic environment (szalai and gobl, 2015). austerity has made government resources to support settlement generally harder to secure, anti-immigration forces have gained influence at the political level and public attitudes towards newcomers are more negative (turner and cross, 2015). in this context, aside from attempting to provide direct services to newcomers, nonprofits, where resources permit, are also often engaged in various community-based educational activities aimed at promoting the benefits of immigration and in challenging populist xenophobic attitudes. this is a form of soft advocacy directed at society rather than particular government policies. such actions make ngos more relevant both to migrant populations and society as a whole. a feature of neoliberalism is how it reduces the individual to a narrow economic dimension, minimizing the social, cultural and political aspects of life and belonging (aliweiwi and laforest, 2009). this approach tends to view immigrants as passive recipients of public policies with little agency to challenge and reconfigure the political and social scenarios shaped by the integration policies of their countries of settlement. it also downplays the need of receiving communities to change in order to better accomodate immigrants. hence, neoliberalism by adopting this more limited view of immigrants and their role in society can be counterproductive, since it may hinder integration and newcomers´capacity to actually become more positive economic assets for their communities. in this context, it is not uncommon for settlement services to be viewed as an investment that is not quite paying off, hence the retrenchment of public money for these kinds of programs can be justified. furthermore, the 78 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice requirements for immigrant selection have shifted heavily towards migrants with high human capital who are deemed better able to provide for themselves and their families thus purportedly reducing their need for publicly funded settlement services. jupp notes that under neoliberalism from the 1990´s onwards the state’s focus shifted increasingly from social support to self-reliance and migrant securitization (2011, 50). another feature of neoliberalism present in immigration policy is what davison and shire have called “neoliberal meritocracy”, that is, the belief that those who have been able to thrive have done so based on their own merits, disregarding the existence of structural inequalities based on “…networks of advantage, patronage and power” (2015, 85). following on this idea, if newcomers are unable to adapt, it is thought to be their responsibility, which invisibilizes the fact that there may be a lack of sufficient settlement support and/or that there are conditions of the receiving countries that hinder integration, such as negative public opinion towards migrants. it is important to recognize that the very act of government support for settlement and integration programs is important symbolically as it sends a message to society and immigrants themselves that newcomers are indeed welcome (shields’ interview with senior ontario provincial government official, 2012). in sum, this neoliberal conception of success and failure as individuallydriven, invisibilizes structural factors that make it more difficult for newcomers to integrate and that relate to unequal relations between members of society. it also obscures the sense of social responsibility among all members of a given community, touching upon issues of social justice. of particular interest to us is how ngos that provide settlement services to newcomers have responded to promote immigrant well-being and social justice. discussion and conclusion: settlement services, ngos and social justice while ngo government supported service provision has been influenced by neoliberal practices, it is also the case that ngo organizations are generally progressive and demonstrate considerable creativity at working within a neoliberal context. most ngos’ work is guided by a social justice mission. this is a powerful framework that motivates their workforce and chanels ngo resources to support newcomer populations. this is especially important in the context of austerity and a more adverse environment for immigrants. as resilient organizations (salamon, 2015b) nonprofit service providers are able to marshal considerable assets in support of settlement including voluntary labour, settling immigrants in neoliberal times | 79 donations, access to community-based resources, as well as government funded programming to the settlement cause. ngos work within a larger network of government financed settlement programing as well as other nonprofit initiatives. this includes many smaller nonprofit ethno-specific organizations that work outside of the government funded system liberating them from the restrictions of governmenrt imposed frameworks and rules. they are particularly suited to address difficult to serve immigrant communities providing them with material support and the ability to advocate on behalf of their interests and rights. ngo settlement services offer immigrants a set of skills and tools that help them to navigate the labour market and society in the process of integration. these efforts aim at shaping a community in which all groups can participate equally and individuals have a sense of social responsibility and mutual understanding. therefore, ngos become essential not only for immigrants, but also for society as a whole. a goal of social justice is the “full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs” (bell, 2013, 21). hence, social justice seeks equal relationships that have been negotiated by all members of the collectivity, and it rejects all forms of oppression such as those based on race, gender, sex, nationality and social class that may privilege certain groups over others. as noted above, we understand settlement services as programmes and supports provided to newcomers to promote their full participation in the socio-economic life of their host society. ideally this is a two-way process, in which immigrants as well as the majority society are expected to adapt to one another. given these contextualizations, there is a clear connection between settlement services and social justice. at their best they both pursue equal relationships that appreciate diversity and build upon it. hence, ngos, as core partners in settlement service provision have a sigificant role to play in social justice. ngos, as noted, face several limitations due to their dependance on public funding, which directly impacts their capacity to advocate for social justice. still there is some ground left for action in this field. on the positive side, ngos serve as mediators between the government and the individual migrant (hondagneu-sotelo, 2007), as they comply with the state’s settlement responsibilities towards newcomers while enforcing migrants´ rights. they do so mainly by addressing migrants’ most immediate and practical needs, such as language acquisition, career counseling, and training for the labour market. they also serve to refer migrants to other public or private institutions that may 80 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice be able to provide additional services, such as public libraries, community centres, health clinics or other ngos. nonprofit organizations serve as the first contact of immigrants with the receiving society, so ngos set the ground for a smoother transition of migrants into society. given the neoliberal state’s aim to reduce costs through alternative service delivery, ngos have greatly expanded their in-settlement services in the last number of decades, even in the context of austerity. the ngo approach goes beyond the neoliberal paradigm that considers labour market attachment to be the most salient aspect of the settlement process, shedding light on other domains. for example, sport activities as part of integration programmes reveal that there are universal languages and values appropriated by both migrants and locals. it also speaks for the role that recreational activities play in the everyday lives of newcomers in three key areas: intercultural communication, the struggle against racism and oppression, and contact with the majority society. kenneth (2005), makes the point that when immigrants are able to practice the traditional sports of their hometowns and involve other ethnic groups and native-born community members, it is posible for them to maintain their identity while adaptating to mainstream society. it also builds their social capital within the broader community. on the negative side, public funding does affect the nonprofit sector´s capacity for advocacy and policy change. this situation is made more challenging by the contextual issues in which ngos are working nowadays, namely neoliberalism, economic crisis, securitization of migration and antiimmigrant sentiments and policies. a good example to illustrate these circumstances is the reception of refugee claimants in the eu. under this difficult and polemic situation, ngos juggle between collaborating with the eu – especially regarding frontex – in order to guarantee a secure border crossing, versus being critical about and attempting to influence security policies that have contributed to many migrant deaths in their transit attempts to reach ‘safe havens’. according to irrera (2016), many ngos “…that had initially worked on migration responded to the end of legal immigration and to the growing dominance of control and admission issues by shifting their focus to integration, anti-racism and multiculturalism” (26). furthermore, the “refugee crisis” promoted further collaboration between government institutions and ngos, improving their relations and coordination with member states (irrera, 2014). nevertheless, the actual impact of ngos on eu policy is far from clear. there is a need for a greatly elevated voice for ngos and their social justice settling immigrants in neoliberal times | 81 message. ngos stand for an integration paradigm that respects ethnic diversity and the ability of migrants to integrate at their own pace, taking into account the supports provided by the country of destination (jupp, 2011). an example of a broader role for ngos in settlement is the case of ethnic migrant organizations. within the countries studied, ethnic-based settlement organizations are very common and active. in the case of refugee settlement in the us, for instance, these organizations perceive themselves as not only serving refugees, but the wider community. some of their functions are: service provision; civic and political representation for refugees; fostering mutual understanding and cross-cultural relationships; acting as intermediaries between government institutions and the community; and partnering with the state and non-state actors in attempting to achieve its mission (newland et al., 2007, 10). such organizations have moved beyond standard service provision embracing a broader role in society that includes an active advocacy agenda and community/ relationship building and outreach. paralleling such developments at the local level, cities have taken an increasing progressive lead in settlement support. in the us there are already 26 cities with offices of immigrant integration working closely with migrant organizations (usc center for the study on immigrant integration, 2015). in sum, settlement services work towards adaptation while at the same time they address social justice aims valuing social and cultural differences and opposing social inequality (chi-ying et al., 2011). a narrow focus on economic integration in the era of neoliberalism, securitization and economic austerity is not enough. in the “us versus them” debate, local populations are concerned not only about their jobs and wages, 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(2015). do attitudes to immigrants change in hard times? ireland in a european context. european societies, 17:3, 372395. usc center for the study on immigrant integration (2015). opening minds, opening doors, opening communities: cities leading for immigrant integration. americas society/council of the americas; http://www.as88 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice https://cens.ceu.edu/sites/.../szalai-%20goblmigrationpaper.final.pdf http://www.as-coa.org/sites/default/files/usc_report_layfinal2_17_web.pdf coa.org/sites/default/files/usc_report_layfinal2_17_web.pdf settling immigrants in neoliberal times | 89 http://www.as-coa.org/sites/default/files/usc_report_layfinal2_17_web.pdf . uremate routes work in progress being eritrean in milan 1 anna arnone sussex university this research concerns the eritrean community resident in milan where it originated at least forty years ago. in this paper, i reflect on how to work on the eritrean perceptions of the self as a community away from their native country; on the views on differences and similarities between each other and those considered to be outside this community ; and on the memories of the past of people with different personal and social histories, and loyalties. moreover, since this research relates to the formation of identities and perceptions of the self among a migrant community, all the relevant issues are being collected and analysed with the awareness that movement, dislocation, and re-location have great impact on the perceptions of "home" and of the self in cultural, historical and social terms. i'm looking not only at individuals and their experiences and how they relate to the past, present and future, but i'm also searching for the wider forces that constitute their present identities. memory, societal structures, transnational links, daily practices and discourses are seen as forces to be elaborated in this research. however, greater attention is devoted to issues arising around how categories of "us" and "them" are shaped, away from the sending context, which has been furthermore a conflicting one due to the wars with ethiopia. to understand the shape of the formation of categories. i not only focus on eritreans themselves but also on milanese citizens and other migrants with whom they share the city. the attention on identity formation always presents dangers in notions of its authenticity and underlines the relevancy of considering the contextual and historical complexities that involve individuals in a creative negotiation with the surrounding contexts. therefore it is useful to explain the proccssual formation of identity through concepts of multipositionality and of ambivalence between discourses and practices. 20 volume 19, 2003 chemins altertiatifs the anthropology of identity has had a long history from the colonial description of the "tribe" to the modem studies on "ethnicity". as a discipline, anthropology tends to study the "other". although not all anthropological studies focus specifically on identity formation, there is often an attention to social categories and an analysis of their constitution. by focusing on the "anthropos", the human being, the spotlight on categories is practically intrinsic in the type of gaze itself. generally, anthropology is a type of analysis which tends to describe, shape and often create typologies of cultures and societies. the creation of papers and scripts does not only concern linguistic descriptions and theoretical analyses; the study of society often has wider impacts and becomes incorporated in social defmitions of otherness and difference. the example of the latter statement can be broadly seen in the anthropology of the colonial period, which often supported the colonial apparatus in controlling and in ruling their subjects by dividing them into different "tribes". anthropologists have thus had, and still have, the power to shape the other and to theorise about people's lives, socialising norms and practices (this power however must not be overestimated, as i will argue later). it is because of their participation in the constitution of social discourses that anthropologists need to be reflexive and cautious in collecting data, reporting and transcribing it into literature. this underlying awareness has been brought out especially by the last decade's turns and trends such as postmodernism and feminism, which have upset anthropology and many other disciplines, and have inspired deeper discussions on research methodologies as well as on their outcomes. through this latter analysis on the implications of anthropological studies on society, there has also been a greater application of all forms of reflexivity during fieldwork and in all the other stages of the research. this paper therefore points to the need to reflect even before fieldwork itself. my aim here is not only to reflect on my work in progress and the ways in which i approach the field and the data, but also to understand the ways in which identities have changed form and meaning in anthropological literature and in the social domain of discourses and practices. thus, the research unfolds as a description of a work in progress with its theoretical and epistemological concerns and methodologies. the theoretical background is divided into four parts and deals with four different aspects of the epistemology. the first part elaborates the constitution of identity through history. here i describe the change and development volume 19, 2003 21 alternate routes of concepts such as race, ethnicity and nationalism, through the history of the horn of africa and its colonial relations with italy and ethiopia. furthermore i emphasise the importance that the concepts of ethnicity and nationalism have nowadays in relation to the conflict with ethiopia and the outcomes in loyalties and individual positioning. the historical development of concepts of difference will also be a useful background in mv future elaboration on how ideas of race and bounded cultures are still inscribed in the ways italians perceive the other. the structure that eritreans have left behind by migrating to italy is still present in their lives nearly as much as the receiving context. in fact the second part deals with the politics of identity where both the individuals and the structures come into play. by having its own politics of identity, such as policies of inclusion and exclusion and the rights to citizenship, every nation-state forces individuals to act and negotiate through its structures. introducing the core anthropological concern on discourses and practices, the following part looks into identity formation through which i appreciate transnationalism. memories, loyalties and the embodiment of culture. the two forces, the mnemonic one and the structural one, which shape the constitution of identity, should be looked at not only in the ways people talk about them but how they embody ideas of the self through practices. here identity is observed in its networks, in the ways people shape communities and loyalties, and therefore, the ways in which they constitute the self in relation to others. through three specific sections i investigate the different forces that are affecting identity constitution among eritreans in milan. methodology is discussed through the appreciation of the "field". this last part of the paper is related to the previous theoretical sections, expanding on issues previously raised and explaining the ways through which i'm exploring the field. identity here is explored through some hypotheses on consumption of space and of meaningful objects. the focus is cast on the relation between culture and the body, the embodiment of identity. identity and the development ofconcepts ofethnicity and nationalism through time and space migration is such a loaded aspect of society that it not only becomes visible in policy making, in the jurisdictional, political and economic sectors, but also it is very widely discussed in the media and in main other social contexts. this anthropological research on identity formation 22 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs through migratory experiences specifically wants to contextualise the formation of social categories; by deconstructing them it intends to identify' the implications that these have on individuals. here. i reflect on categories constructed under the italian colonisation and the ways in which they still continue under other guises. through a preliminary analysis of their conceptualisation, race, ethnicity and nationalism are understood not as given natures of peoples but as social constructs. specifically, in present times ethnicity often becomes instrumental to those who have interests in extorting memories and advancing conflicts in the name of a symbolised identity. history and imagined communities historical contingencies here are connected to questions of memory and self-identity. disruption is thus often related to the difficult history starting from the period of italian colonialism (1889-1942). after the italian defeat in 1942 there was a period of transition in which a british mandate was initially installed; following the decision by the league of nations, eritrea became a federation in the ethiopian nation state in 1952. the subsequent annexation in 1962 of the eritrean territory into haile selassies empire brought about complex reactions and fragmented discursive nationalistic rhetoric in eritrea. at this time, there were many attempts to constitute what it meant to be eritrean. first, there was an islamic movement opposed to the ethiopian imposition not only of amharic2 as the official language but most of all to the orthodox church3 as the national faith. after the organisation of the elf (eritrean liberation front), the eplf (eritrean peoples liberation front) was born with its ideology insisting instead on a multiethnic eritrean nation. there was however another contemporary' movement, which fought for the continuation of unity with ethiopia. in the following years there was organised guerrilla warfare between these three different factions and after some years the eplf gained the majority's consent. it was at this time between the seventies and the nineties that eritreanness was constituted as the founding ideology for an independent eritrean nation-state (officially achieved only in 1993) and its long-lasting conflict with ethiopia. the description of colonial history allows an analysis of the constitution of perceptions of the self, in relation to "the other" on both sides, the volume 19, 2003 23 . i liemate routes italian and the eritrean one. thus, the period of the italian colonisation of eritrea can be identified as the beginning of the differentiation of eritreanncss from ethiopianness, hence the rise of such ideas of identities as uniform wholes. before the italian invasion and the contemporary scramble for africa by the european super powers, identity was most likely perceived in other terms. during the 19th century the territories of present-day eritrea and ethiopia were composed of different chiefdoms, which had trading relations between each other and with people along the red sea and other neighbours (selassie 1980). we can imagine that there were similarities and differences between and within groups, and that views of the "other" were often perceived in terms of religion and/or geographic location and/or language, but probably not bounded into nationalities or ethnicities, nor essentialised and naturalised in the ways they tend to be now. it has been argued many times that the idea of homogeneity according to religion, culture and language within a defined territory is in fact a recent one. the constitution of ideas as a whole, identified with a nation, is recognisable in the west as an outcome of the rise of capitalism and the use of the press for mass consumption from the nineteenth century (gellner 1983, hobsbawm 1983 and anderson 1991). in the african context it can instead be understood as a post-colonial symptom. yet different identities were shaped in the same period as in the west, not in the order of nation building as in europe, but as categories imposed by the colonial administration. during colonialism the super powers acted as sovereign nations with specific boundaries, while at the same time they "regionalised" and "tribalised" their subjects in the colonies. these classification systems fixed previously unbounded notions of culture and religion in the same ways as nation building proceeded in the west. though they were contrarily used to differentiate into tribes and clans, to divide rather than unify their subjects, favouring some and neglecting others, ranking peoples through dichotomies based on notions of race, civilization, and religion. this colonial surgery has had a huge impact on the ways in which african liberation movements have imagined their nations and have competed for political power since independence. 24 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs italian colonialism and "la questione della razza ' the premises for the analysis of the italian colonial period in eritrea arise from the fact that at the time when the italian government decided on its politics of expansion italy itself was a newly bom nation-state. most of the citizens did not yet know what it meant to be italian and to belong to a nation-state. moreover, the state itself was not mature in its structures. since italy did not provide sufficient facilities in all its territory, an enormous number of emigrants were moving abroad in search for work. consequently, the decision to colonise was not due to the quest for primary resources abroad or to expand a saturated economy, which was the motivation for british or french colonialism. italy still needed to constitute itself as a nation in all its internal structures and ideologies. thus colonialism was a reaction to the lack of consent and nationalistic feelings and to achieve hegemonic power in italy. it has been recounted that the italian civilians in the eritrean colony in the early years ridiculously numbered fewer than twenty people (rainero 2001). nonetheless, although it failed to colonise in the same organised and economically effective way as other superpowers, it cannot be argued, as often happens, that italian colonisation had no impact and, therefore, that historical memory can be dismissed simply with an embarrassed smile. in present days, the issues around the lack of post-colonial reflection needs to be thoroughly dealt with. this premise to an analysis of italian colonialism needs to be spelled out in order to understand the context, which spooned the obsession in defining bounded categories of racially, culturally and religiously differentiated subjects in the colony. the first period was characterised by a stance identifiable with the patriotic ideal of an italian "civilising" mission towards the "primitive" eritrean population. ethnographers such as alberto pollera were hired to facilitate an understanding of the subjects and, therefore, to achieve more means of control. ethnography was, at this time (1985-1920 circa), used to sustain the customary law through which the administration of the colony was supported. ethnography was thus combined with the employment of local chiefs, the manipulation of customs, and the mapping of the territory. the italian colonial period before the arrival of fascism had already, in many ways, fixed ideas of an eritrean territory not only with defined boundaries, but also with internal differentiations and divisions, often in terms of '"grades" of civilisation of the subjects. durvolume 19, 2003 25 alternate routes ing the second period with the fascist colonialism, there was no such contact with the native population. the two periods differ drastically in their rhetoric, linguistic meanings and discourses, and in the formulation of policies and laws. with the rise of fascism the previous interpretations of difference, which not only related to a biological definition, but also to a social and historical understanding, disappeared. with the empire, the civilising mission was over and replaced by a sort of apartheid in limited terms of race. although the level of racial components of the eritrean population was recognised as superior to that of other "negroes" (biasutti 1941), still the fascist racial classification system created not only a legitimised climax of terror and violence, but also discriminations between the various groups. the change, however, did not happen suddenly; it was instead a slow process in which old colonial administrators were moved from one position to another, with the final intent of getting rid of them and substituting them with the newly recruited colonial officers, trained with the ideology of the fascist regime. this trend is revealed in the biography of alberto pollera, colonial administrator and ethnographer during the first period of italian colonialism and who was slowly but meaningfully rejected during fascism (sorgoni, 2001). the ethnographic attention that was building up in the first period followed particular lines of enquiry such as that found in polleras work. the terms of classification and categorisation of administrative units by which research was carried out certainly determined the answers that referred to essentialised, uniform and bounded groups. though, as fardon (2000) briefly argues, this is due to the fact that those ethnographers were also administrators for the same colonial administration that was posing the questions of enquiry. the following fascist attention to the "qucstione della razza", the race issue, was not applied through ethnographic enquiry but through bio-measurements and descriptions of typologies of physical connotations among different grades of racially defined groups. ethnographers at this point were a hindrance for the new regime of truth since they were questioning the differences between human beings through attentions to variables other than bone structures. anthropology in main ways supported the dominant discourse during the first "civilising" period. though, as was argued by sorgoni, it was appreciated more for its provision of maps and brief and easily understandable descriptions of tribes and clans in the appendices. pollera. 26 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs however, not only focused on those dominant issues. he was also describing processes by which groups shape certain customs rather than others in more complex terms than the ones quoted by the administration. it is true, therefore, that he never stood up to explain that his work should be read in its complexities. here arises the question concerning the power of anthropology. the interpretations of anthropological work, by those commissioning it, certainly determined more than what the ethnographer actually wrote. this does not mean that the way in which people were described should be acceptable in modern anthropological debates, but that the analysis carried out by pollera was at that time probably groundbreaking in manyaspects. moreover, as kuper (1995) argues, anthropology was often not listened to and even mocked. ethnographic work was rarely commissioned from professional anthropologists, but rather from those who were amateurs of the discipline while being, career-wise, colonial administrators. the problem therefore resides not so much in how the ethnography of the colonial period, such as polleras, produced and reproduced those static identities but how this intellectual work was used by the colonial administration at that time and by liberation movements later. liberation andnationalism "did africans swallow ethnicisation wholesale simply by adopting the european gaze and without projects of their own?'" (fardon, 2000: 146). obviously the answer is no. the recurrent argument of the influences of european colonisation on ideas of the self is often overemphasised in terms of a passivity of the african subjects. it has now been confirmed by many scholars that the european gaze shaped ways of defining the african self, but that "modern" ethnicity that has grown since colonialism has more complex character than that of being a simple clone of european ideologies. this passage by turton clearly explains the spirit of ethnicisation in the contemporary scramble for power: first there is the extreme fear and hatred that ethnic difference is capable of arousing in people who formerly lived together as neighbours. second, there is the use of ethnicity by political leaders to mobilise their followers and manipuvolume 19, 2003 27 alternate routes late the international community, a strategy which is not only deliberate but also cynical, because it requires at least some degree of detachment from the collective emotions it plays upon. third, there is the use of electronic media for the global dissemination of images of grief, suffering and destruction brought about by the ethnic enemy. fourth, there is the territorial imperative of ethnic nationalism: the appeal to a selective remembered and invented past to justify current claims to territory. and finally, [...] the characteristic readiness of nationalist leaders everywhere to sacrifice the lives of their followers, supposedly to advance the cause of that abstract entity, the nation, but in reality to extend and consolidate their own hold on political power (1997:1). in turton's passage, the fourth and the final points are especially connected with the previous argumentation around colonialism and anthropology and they are, moreover, useful for the discussion of how the contemporary form of eritrean national identity was constituted. the "territorial imperative" and its combination with the imagination of an historical justification are very relevant in the case of eritrean liberation movements. the sacrifice of lives in order to pursue nation building is another extremely important issue to have in mind since millions have died and this has really soaked into the memories of eritreans. in both issues, it is the strategy of the political, nationalist leaders that needs to be understood in this section, since in many ways they have channelled the whole of eritrea into a nation built with bloodshed. as has been argued by araya (1997), before 1974 the imagining of eritrea was fragmented and contentious. the liberation movements had so many conflicting views of what to fight for that they ended up in guerrilla warfare. from 1974 onwards it was the eplf who incorporated mam fighters under the same name, thus building a strategic ideology which was bound to work in moving the civilians into the struggle for liberation. the fight against ethiopia was often quoted by the eplf leaders as the unifying issue which increasingly constituted the national identity : the ideology of nationalism was constituted more by the hatred for the ethiopian enemy than by the love for eritrean similarities and shared past. 28 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs therefore, the selected history chosen by the nationalists was based on the eritrean "colonised past", not so much the italian but more the ethiopian one (minority rights group 1983). to a large extent, intellectual work contributed to the selection of the history and symbols incorporated in the memory of the eritrean nation. gramsci, in his work, often emphasises the role of intellectuals in building ideologies to be thereafter applied not only in the constitution of political parties, but also to be incorporated in civil society as motors for revolution. intellectuals have largely, though sometimes even unwillingly, brought their influences to bear on issues of ethnicity and nationalism. the work of historical reconstruction and political activism from abroad, by eritrean refugees and emigres, has certainly been deliberate. nationalists have often manoeuvred previous histories and ethnographies in order to support their theses. even the work by westerners interested in determining the nature of ethnicity and nationalism has had its impact. talking about identities in one way or another often ends up being a resource for political rhetoric. political activists, on their part, not only maintain and construct ideologies through symbolic tokens and memories to support their activities, but also to move civil society. those leaders, as emphasised above by turton, are ready '"to sacrifice the lives of their followers, supposedly to advance the cause of that abstract entity, the nation, but in reality to extend and consolidate their own hold on political power" (ibid). this can clearly be seen in eritrean history through those moments in which the eplf literally eliminated entire opposition groups (minority rights group, 1983) that were diverting the liberation movement through their focus on class-consciousness rather than on ethnicity and regionalism, as the eplf was doing. the shift that menkae, for example, would have furthered was an analysis of the weakness of the eplf as an elitist movement, pretending to be populist (araya 1997). through this description of the historical path to the present, i do not want to assess the truth of those historical memories that are the fundamentals for nationalism. contrarily. like anderson (1991), i wish to understand the ways in which this identity has been imagined and practised. anthropologically, this latter task can only be followed through peoples discourses and daily practices. the pursuit of this type of data collection and its intrinsic epistemological and philosophical significance is explained in the third part of this paper. here, i am concerned volume 19, 2003 29 alternate routes with the political and intellectual constitution of loyalties and, therefore, of idioms explaining history and naturalising political ideologies. in the light of the political games nationalists have played, i have included this analvsis of the ideological constitution of eritrean nationalism because it introduces the mnemonic force through which to look at "eritreanness" in milan. eritrean refugees in italy were highly organised during the seventies with annual meeting in bologna and rome. these took place at the time when the discourses of the eplf started to have relevancy in eritrea. migrants and refugees were to large extent the minds and the sponsors of this political activism. thus, many people have lived abroad intensely hoping and fighting for, and believing in, one ideology or another. consequently a politically loaded past is affecting the constitution of different memories among the eritrean community in milan. structure and politics of identity the previous part contained an analysis of the history of eritrea and its implications for the constitution of identity. in describing the various ways in which identity has been imagined and used, i encountered the instrumental use of identity by elites and nationalists. this type of historical analysis helps me to understand the political value of the memories of people who have migrated to italy, or who have applied for political asylum. in continuing on this background analysis, i discuss the institutional influences of the structures in which individuals live now and how these affect the formation of identity. i consider the role of the nation state and its policies and institutional order. this part is positioned after the previous one not only for theoretical reasons but also for the chronological succession of events, from the formation of the nation state of italy first and of eritrea later, to the present consolidation of power and application of nationalism within civil society. while the first part focused on the invention and imagination of the nation, this part hinges on the politics reinforcing and reproducing the rhetoric of being a nation and on polices of inclusion and of exclusion which consolidate the imagined community. in this background reconstruction, the discussion leads to an analysis of current policies and rules by which my informants are constrained and enabled and with which they arc negotiating through official or unofficial paths. 30 volume 19, 2003 chemins altematifs integration and the nation-state the nation state is an entity that defines and shapes individuals within. it presumes a model of homogeneity. the nation has an underlying need to constitute a shared language, territory, history and culture, which are perceived as natural and human. after 140 years, throughout the regions of italy, there is still a perceived difference between the various geographical areas (pratt, 2002). but the nation has been successfully incorporated into the minds of the italians who identify with this imagined community when the need arises. in this way, the concept of italy has become a tool of identification, at times symbolising a need of society to relate to a world that is outside the self-imaginary. hobsbawm (1990) thought that the nation was on its last legs. he thought that with the spread of globalisation the nation-state would have to shift to something different, more suitable for the times. appadurai (1990) and featherstone (1990) instead argued that nationalism and globalisation are two faces of the same process, trying to cannibalise one another and, at the same time, feeding each other. whatever the theories say about the nature of this relation, the facts show that these two social processes find it difficult to communicate and to stabilise with each other. one example is directly related to migration. on the one hand, we have a huge flow of people moving in the world often to other wealthier or politically more liberal countries and the need of societies to open up to the inputs arising from a globalising world. on the other hand, we have a conservative idea of community (the nation-state) that does not allow internal difference. the state, therefore, organises itself using conceptual frameworks to explain the contradictions arising from the need for economic overture and social and cultural closure. the nation state as an organisation finds it difficult to merge inclusion and respect for difference and similarities. thus, we need to understand the effects that different policies have on civil society and on the shape of ethnicity of both the citizens of the nation, and the immigrants who are trying to settle, who are briefly passing through, or who are staying for a short term. integration is an awkward mission in the nation state. if it's seen as a coming together of parts into a whole (group, community, society, nation), so as to render it organic and well organised (j. foot, 1999: 160), it becomes an act of complex surgery inside civil as well as political society'. the immediate outcomes might be painful and contradictory. volume 19, 2003 31 alternate routes contrarily though society as a fluid entity could be appreciated as having the ability to change and adapt to new social relations. in the specific case of the impact of mass immigration, both the host society and the migrants themselves change by interacting with one another. integration, as a political intervention, in this context becomes even more loaded with constraints and contradictions. integration: the italian style confronted with the more tangible and incumbent problems that migration unexpectedly brought to italian society, the policies did not have the means or the time (or were not receptive enough) to harmonise the flux of newcomers and the residents. problems like housing, health practices, and illegal moonlighting (lavoro nero), have found italian governments unprepared and powerless to act. after twenty years the problem is still unsolved and complex. laws and policies have been approved without successful results. confusion and conflict end by ruling the tactics of the state and policy making. but in the same way, as favell (2002) argues, it is because italy is a chaotic society that this new emergence of peoples might be integrated in a more elastic way than elsewhere. people find their way through a system that is highly bureaucratic, but for this very reason, they locate other means for organising themselves. italy, after all, has a different history of migration from that of other european countries such as the uk and france. this diversity' is first of all due to the relative novelty of foreign 5 immigration in italy, secondly to its lack of colonial and post-colonial relations with the newcomers6 , and finally to the deficiency of post colonial reflection in the italian society (riccio 2000). as pointed out by favell (2002), another peculiarity that characterises the italian situation is its economic sector and bureaucracy, which allow relatively easy initial and temporary access to resources, providing low wages in exchange for labour (also salih 2000). problems encountered by the italian society, although very significant, have been exaggerated by the media, where migrants have been pictured as generally responsible for unemployment and involved in criminal activities. within italy, there have been various political responses to migration. bossi. leader of the lcga lombarda. who demands a change in the constitution in order to include the clandestine and illegal presence 32 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs of migrants as prosecutable by law, represents the more common approach. the bossi-fini law is the new act, which was officially accepted in october, 2002. it intends to identify and expel illegal migrants and deny access to those without a work contract. it paradoxically allows people to stay in the country up to two years if possessing a long-term contract of work, forcing employers to "legalise" their position and that of employees. moreover, and this is the weakest part of the law, it intends to collect and record the fingerprints of all "legal** migrants. this latter section has been highly criticised by mam politicians, intellectuals and central exponents of the public scene. they have above all advanced the accusation that the law would create discrimination and criminalisation of the immigrants and, therefore, italian citizens should also have their fingerprints on identify cards. radio popolare, a leftwing activist radio in milan, has even collected fingerprints of milanese residents and immigrants, but rather than that of the index, they asked people to donate the fingerprints of their extended middle finger (!); these fingerprints have then been sent to the government. members of the catholic church have openly discussed the xenophobic character of this law. many organisations such as caritas and some churches have even announced that they will continue to shelter "illegal migrants'* regardless of the law. the unhcr7 has accused this law of denying all rights to asylum seekers and ignoring the entire issue of political asylum. as the bossi-fini law shows, the issues of population movement, legitimacy of movement and asylum seeking are highly sensitive, contested and loaded. it reveals the extent to which ideas of difference are sharply emphasised by the present right-wing government, escalating discrimination and fear. furthermore, it demonstrates lack of reflection on the social dimensions. the multicultural element has never even been approached; there has been no concern about what type of integration to allow; no interest on the migrants* social status in the italian society; nor has there been any analysis of the impacts of this kind of discourse on society itself. this law has passed, but hasn't shown itself fully enacted. this instabilityis greatly affecting the lives of many eritreans in milan, especially those who have recently arrived asking for political asylum. moreover, the stereotypical categories arising from volume 19, 2003 33 alternate routes this kind of political debate themselves become strong forces in the constitution of the eritrean self. practices of identitygreat attention has been placed in the social sciences on the issue of the relationship between individual agency and the forces of the structure's s> sternness. in anthropology, this constituted the initial motor for ethnographic research. in malinowskis (esp. 1922), for example, we can find the origins ofmam other anthropological and sociological approaches to the issue. in the functionalist and structuralist analyses of individual agency and social structure, however, the mechanical character of, and the concentration on social stability divert attention to something not empirically applicable (e.g. parsons, 1951 and giddens. 1984). experience through fieldwork is what is needed to understand the dynamics that occur between the institutional organizations and their practitioners, and the people using the facilities, who are therefore "integrated" within society. it is not the question of rules and regulations which most concerns the research. the focus on agency must be applied through looking at the "little politics of daily life". after discussing the politics of identity in the italian structural context and investigating the dynamics of integration in the nation-state, it is thus necessary to elaborate on the ways in which individuals live the proprieties of modem society. individuals in this structural formation have to interact within its rules, and negotiate in order to be included. the structure is not something detached from the individual, since the former does not exist without the latter. individual and collective actions and discourses are thus producing and reproducing the structure in which they live. the dynamic between structure and agency is therefore a fundamental issue in this research and it is dealt with through an analysis of discourse and practice. plurinational subjects and tvansnationahsm in the transnational context which my research examines, individuals are engaged with more than one of these structures. in migratory experiences individuals often find themselves duelling not only with the hosting society, but also with the sending nation. the ways in which individuals live in transnational contexts constitute them as "plurinational subjects" (salih. 2000). by the term plurinational subjects. salih 34 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs explicitly emphasises the fact that people living in more than one structure will need to negotiate with the rules and regulations of both societies: the sending and the receiving one. with this term she intends to describe those new citizens who move to italy but, nonetheless, want to keep their citizenship in their home country. to do this, these people need to engage with the structures of both nation-states, becoming not only participants in both societies, but also subject to their systems. transnational patterns are found in those practices occurring beyond the boundaries of a nation. there has been great attention to the ways in which migrants and refugees live their lives across nations, the sending and the receiving one. this has been called transnationalism and has been widely discussed across disciplines (vertovec, 1999; basch et al., 1994; and al-ali et al., 2001a). transnationalism has been widely examined in its relation with nation building. as has been brief!} noted in the historical analysis, the states and liberation movements have promoted transnationalism as a means for nation building. transnational activities are therefore not a novelty, but have increased their visibility in recent times through the development of media, international communication and the movement not only of ideas but also of material products and money. different groups and individuals, however, do not experience transnationalism in the same way. transnational activities need to be understood in their single cases and in their changes. the eritrean state has devoted considerable attention to its diaspora. efforts have been made by the eplf before liberation (in minority rights group, 1983 and in al ali et al., 2001a,b) and by the pfdj (peoples front for democracy and justice), the present ruling party in the government to keep eritreans abroad active in helping their homeland. the government demands payment, as the liberation movement previously did, of two per cent of wages earned abroad. during the last war with ethiopia (1998-2001) the percentage increased. in 1993, during the election for the independence of eritrea as a nation, all those abroad were given the rights to vote. the eritrean state and embassies also often organise events, such as conferences and music festivals and so on, encouraging eritreans abroad to identify with a transnational community always in contact with the sending nation-state. al-ali et al. (2001a.b) have noticed that in germany and the uk the social pressure to respect these dynamics was so high that donations were publicly shown on boards stating the names and the amounts paid. other remittances, such volume 19, 2003 35 . 1 1remote routes as family responsibilities and bureaucratic affairs have been described as forms of "forced transnationalism", leading refugees and migrants to an evident involvement with the sending context. in the milieu of eritrean communities in germany and in the uk, alali. koser and black have noticed the visible difference between the "culture of remittances" (2001a.b) and transnational links before the last conflict and how peoples are experiencing their relation with the homeland in present times. some have been caught in the rhetoric of eritrea "as the victim of more populous, more powerful and internationally-supported neighbour bent on recolonisation" (2001a: 595) and, therefore, supported the nation in stronger ways. many, however, are now disenchanted with the politics of the pfdj which has monopolised political power and has engaged eritrea in the recent conflict with ethiopia, costing thousands of lives and great suffering, but also bringing the country to an economic situation even worse than the previous one. therefore, the consent that was previously more or less widespread among the eritrean diaspora has now changed. it is therefore very interesting to understand the impact which recent events have left on the transnational practices linked with the state and with kin ties. jlie constitution ofthe homeland transnational practices, however, are not limited to those described above. the transnational levels at which my research looks, are not only related to the movement of money or goods through remittances from the host country to eritrea. on the contrary, i am engaged above all with the opposite dynamic, that of the movement of goods, ideas and so on from eritrea to italy. in this research, the daily practices are followed in their multiplicity of layers and positions. loyalties are recorded not so much in relation to people's involvement in the reconstruction of eritrea but more in relation with their lives in milan. transnationalism is therefore a concept leading to the elaboration of ideas of "home", "community'* and the constitution of the self abroad. malkki's ethnography of displacement clearly shows how the experienced dctcrritorialisation often affects refugees in shaping "attachments to specific territories and links between people, polity and territory" (1995: 1). furthermore, her research demonstrates that there are struggles over history and truth coming into play. the comparative nature of 36 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs her fieldwork revealed different "communities of memory" (malkki, 1997) that have arisen in two different contexts. the research focused on hutu refugees in tanzania who were displaced after the genocides in burundi and rwanda between 1993 and 1994. malkki carried out fieldwork in a refugee camp and among town refugees. the different shapes of identity that the researcher has noticed are striking. refugees in the camp were describing a primordial social harmony among the original hutu nation. they saw themselves as a "nation in exile 7 ' (malkki, 1995: 3). the town refugees were instead seeking ways of assimilating multiple and shifting identities. "in the course of the everyday, those in town were creating not a heroized national identity', but rather a lively cosmopolitanism a worldliness that led the camp refugees to see them as an impure, problematic element in the "total community* of the hutu refugees heroized as people in exile*" (ibid). the contrast between the historical-national identity of the camp refugees and the cosmopolitan one of the hutu living in the town shows the multiplicity of "communities of memory**, which arise among displaced people in different contexts. povrzanovics fieldwork among the croatian diaspora in sweden shows another type of differentiation in the imagination of the homeland. in this research the author has noted that there is no unified "croatian diaspora"", since it entails an ensemble of different homeland experiences, different positions in the countries of residence and generational differences. people with diverse experiences are however often involved in the creation and re-creation of diasporic discourses and politics. the celebration of national symbols constitutes a high emotional significance which is also opposed to the prohibitions under the previous yugoslav communist regime. povrzanovic, therefore noticed the symbolisms that unified many croatians under the dream of the homeland. the dream though was privately experienced in many different ways by different peoples. the wish to return was alive for some and was completely absent for others who contrarily lived the idea of return with fear and pain. the different perceptions of the homeland and emotions linked with it depended on the individual experiences which had led to their exile and on the positions they hold in the host society (povrzanovic, 1999). the insight in these two researches demonstrates to what extent refugeeness, displacement and diaspora need to be understood in their pluralities and multiplicity of voices. moreover the issues of volume 19, 2003 37 alternate routes transnationalism in contexts where individuals are duelling with pain and violence become more complex in their significance and perceptions. the peculiarities of individual experiences conflate with the lack of comprehension often present among the host community. the anxieties and insecurities with which main transnational people live are augmented by the policies not always allowing inclusion and by the lack of understanding and historical memory of the mainstream of the italian society. these dynamics are now included during fieldwork through a focus on discourse and practice and through an analysis of the relation between the large scale of italian society and the small scale of social life in milan. thus, identity is present through this search for the forces within people's practices and discourses. discourse, practice and embodiment discourse and practice are the realms of the anthropological debate. both the historical and the structural-institutional contexts are to be understood as important milieus. they provide great insight into the heart of the issues relevant to this research and they are basilar for an understanding of exegesis and day-to-day practices among eritrean communities in milan. thus, since the research wants to go beyond structure and mnemonics, the epistemology supporting the fieldwork needs to be spelled in order to introduce the methodology which will be dealt with in the next section. discourse is in itself a multi-faceted concept intrinsically linked with the linguistic formation through which people explain their perception of reality. in recent debates, though, discourse has been conceptualised as the production and reproduction of social understandings. the foucauldian analysis has been widely applied to streams of debates included in the post-modem turn. the ideological concern, prevalent in marxist analysis, has been further developed through discourse analysis. ideology, with its (marxist) implicit idea of alienation, has been expanded in a theoretical appreciation of individual production and re-production of discourses. discourse is therefore a concept used to explain those topical formations of reality in which even individual is involved. although the formation of discursive explanations do not constrain themselves solely to a linguistic reality, in foucaults analysis, discourse is a regime of truth which pervades practice as well as language. in many ways dis38 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs course is like an ideology not produced by the powerful elite which alienates the working class to keep the means of production. discourse is not something over which someone has the power of manipulation (foucault, 1980). every individual is, in fact, subjected to it and at the same time empowers it by re-producing it. it is a snake with no head and no tail. practice has instead been the focus of the phenomenological trend (starting from bourdieu and continuing through m. jackson and h. moore) privileging an attention to performance rather than linguistic exegesis. in this approach, there is a conceptualisation of praxis as something that comprehends the dialectics occurring between structure and agency, and between the material and symbolic domains, away from linguistic interpretations. experience becomes the concern through which the relation between the self and the other is understood. the attention to practical engagement shifts away the structuralist concern about the individual's act of following predefined social rules and norms. the phenomenological and experiential focus also reduces the importance of the social structure by explaining symbolic and ritual practices as concrete bodily engagements, rather than as abstractions depending on the social structures themselves. in the same way as the foucauldian analyses do, phenomenological approaches have developed a theory in which the individual participates in social processes rather than being passively adapted to a-priori rules and meanings. what thus links the two trends is the fact that the individual is not a passive nor alienated being who reproduces something residing outside. neither does the involvement of the individual imply that s/ he is independent and, therefore, may completely detach her/himself from shared meanings. moreover, the concept which links but at the same time differentiates the two trends is that of embodiment. in foucault's analysis of institutions such as the clinic (1973) and the prison (1977), language and categorisation shape the bodies of individuals. the gaze, through which discourse is imprinted, is an embodiment of the linguistic formation of reality; but at the same time, by applying categories on the body, it produces embodiment. there is, therefore, a relation between language and practice in foucault but it is the former which shapes the latter. in the analysis by bourdieu (1977), the experience of the body itself is the motor for embodiment. in his analysis, cognition is not a state of the mind, its a process occurring in the body; he is thus not volume 19, 2003 39 alternate routes talking about knowledge but about embodiment. social incorporation is not simply a sterile reproduction of symbolic frameworks but a process of acquisition. he identifies embodiment through communication; the learning of how to act is achieved through the body, creating memory, posture and feelings. thus social incorporation is achieved through experience. the linguistic exegesis most of the time does not achieve logical explanations of action; it is action itself which shows the meanings. action therefore is the meaning itself. these two stances differ in their focuses. in the first it is discourse which produces and reproduces regimes of truth, and in the latter, it is practice which shows social incorporations. the two stances, one leaning to language, the other to practice, are asking different questions. the foucauldian discourse analysis has, in fact, opened the path towards an understanding of the force that linguistic explanations have on reality. i apply this perspective to understand the italian policies and their discursive influence on people's ideas of the other. moreover, this view leads to the questions on the implications of the discursive formations on individuals. i am thus looking for the ways in which the categories formed by the italian mainstream affect the ways eritreans act, and embodying the gaze which is defining them. at the same time i am interested in the ways in which discourses of identity are produced and reproduced among the eritrean communities in milan. the work by povrzanovic has shown how people may be reproducing symbologies and sharing unified ideologies, while in their day-to-day practices and in their dreams they interpret discourses in different ways through their personal experiences and their specific positions in society. practice and experience are very useful conceptual tools to understand what i call the "politics of little things". questions around the embodiment of social practices are thus dealt with through a particular attention to the body and consumption. there is also an interest in understanding the religious experiences of coptic orthodox eritreans in milan, focusing not on the doctrinal nature of religion but on the process of acquisition of belief and ritual meanings. the phenomcnological approach is also interesting as a methodology for research. the experiential scope is needed to understand the field in its humanity, through the eyes of a human being. moore (1999) and jackson (1989) have explained that it is important to look not only into the particularities of the field of study and its local exegesis but also into the link that the to volume 19, 2003 chem ins alternatifs peculiarities of evensocial field have with each other. the general focus on what they like to call human experience is important to surpass the relativistic approach which would arise out of the sole attention to specificity and difference. on the other hand, the foucauldian discourse analysis leads the researcher to reflect on his/her own words and re-productions of existing discourses and power dynamics, and forces the anthropological gaze to be aware of its impacts and interpretations. both approaches are therefore useful for the research. methodology and fieldwork tlie site eritrean discourses and practices are looked at specifically from the context of an extended and complex city such as milan where there is room for a variety of perceptions of the self, networks allowing transnational social economic and symbolic activities affecting identity, narratives and practices of cultural negotiation, and different spheres of resistance to social and economic marginalisation, and subjection to the nationstate. the field is one of the focal italian eritrean locations in which the eritrean community began with the first arrival of immigrants in the sixties. as receiving milieu, milan has a long past with articulated conceptions beginning with the arrival of people from southern italy throughout the twentieth century and before. in milan, the ""other" was previously branded with the southern migrant workers, and then switched to the recent foreign arrivals, thus continuing to use similar discourses of intrusion, invasion and criminalisation. as j. foot (1999) argues, the milanese site is remarkable in its experiences of migration. additionally, the focus on the eritrean case in milan is significant because its history stretches across almost half a century. eritreans, therefore, not only experience the present political environment, but also some of them have encountered various periods of italian political culture. they have been dealing with issues of citizenship and difference through time in different ways. the newly arrived asylum seekers are negotiating with the system in yet other ways. the area in milan where the first eritrean migrants moved in the sixties is still the social area where eritrean restaurants, bars and clubs are located today. porta venezia has now become a central area of the city. corso buenos aires is a sort of high street swarming with shops, commercial businesses and street sellers, with some organised little market volume 19, 2003 41 alternate routes stalls cutting through the middle of the area. on both sides of corso buenos aires the eritrean community is found. it was one of the first foreign migrant neighbourhood to form in milan. but now they are a small minority among the various foreign communities that share this space in porta venezia. in fact, not only eritreans are found there, but also ethiopians and people from other countries. here, there are eritrean bars, restaurants and clubs. there are also phone shops and internet cafes which serve the purpose of continuing transnational ties; these are run by different peoples and only one of these is eritrean. in the same area, one might notice that there are different businesses run by italians, for example old ironmongers, who have remained small and humble. contrarily, some shops have followed the "ethnic" fashion and sell african objects and hand-made crafts sophisticated!} europeanised, and sold at high prices. although this area of milan is characterised by the presence of people from eritrea, now it has moved on to be a mixture of many peoples. porta venezia remains a socialising context although not all eritreans are actually living there; in fact, since housing is very difficult to find, people have spread into more peripheral areas. the various religious communities, the eritrean coptic church, the catholic eritrean church and the mosques are situated in other areas of the city. in porta venezia i am collecting data on the politics of identity happening within the eritrean community, where a conflict has been noticed between the "new ones" who have arrived asking for asylum, and those participating with the official side of the previously constituted community. the latter are instigating a strong form of nationalism that points to the young arrivals as deserters and, therefore, as opposing to the political line of the pfdj. instead, the new ones are struggling with the slow enactment of the bossi-fini act and are sharing memories of years of limbo in the territories that divide eritrea from italy. here, communities of memories show themselves through performances and visual imaginary about the home country and eritrean culture. the second site where i am slowly entering is one of the council estates where main eritreans live. here i wish to understand the daily life of people of different generations, memories and experiences. while porta venezia is a socialising terrain the latter is more of a mixture of daily encounters. here, it is the marginality and the inequality of the people living in these forgotten corners of the city that must be looked at. through an understanding of living conditions shared by many people of 42 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs poor backgrounds, integration is analysed in its multiple realities. to collect data in this context i am working for a community project run by a few coordinators, the secretary (me), the president and most of all university students who are volunteers. it is a bottom-up committee which provides political, cultural, and social spaces for the tenants of three council estates. this role is enabling me to look into the daily life from very close; here, i wish to collect data not only on the eritrean community but also on their integration in this italian context, through an understanding of the various structures and institutions, and through an attention to the linguistic formations among the tenants, and also among the people involved in this community project. participant observation there is the need to cany out fieldwork in a multiplicityof levels. the socialising areas illustrated above is a place to "hang around"; the coptic churches is part of a specific case study; the personal and family environment is dealt through the collection of life histories, and through individual and group interviews and informal relationships. the italian field of discourses and practices will be followed in non-governmental organisations and institutions. specifically, i'm working, thus participating and observing, in the community project mentioned above which deals with life quality in a council estate area where many eritreans live. i'm also achieving access to governmental and non-governmental organisations for refugees and migrants. it's important to understand how the "mediazione culturale", cultural mediation, is taught to teachers and alums in the educational system and in other institutions. above all i'm very interested in observing how and where the new bossi-fini law is being applied. throughout the many sites, i'm collecting data on practices of negotiation and resistance and not only on reproduction of societal norms. the multisided-ness of the fieldwork is fundamental to understand the multipositionality of individuals. as in even thing, the butterfly effect is present and active in more sites than those specifically involved with the matter. although the insight into multisited fieldwork has been firstly approached through an analysis of globalising effects on society (marcus 1995 and gupta and ferguson 1997), the need for this type of research stems from the porous nature of society not solely in present times. volume 19, 2003 43 alternate routes in the wideness of the context in which i need to look, there is a specific and more focused attention to three fields of study. the first is on ideas of collectivity and community ties and is generally dealt throughout the fieldwork in this multisitedness, but more specifically in porta venezia and in the community project in which i collaborate. the second is topical and followed through two case studies, one focusing on a place and community -the coptic church-, the other looking into the consumption of imnet. the sacred earth, which is a commodity arriving from eritrea. the third is focusing on the individual and personal responses, negotiation and perceptions and is being carried out through intensive collection of life histories and the participation in family reunions and intimate contexts. through these three levels of interaction and experiences i wish to understand the multiplicities of identity, the pluralities of sites in which these are shaped, the ways in which they fluidly change according to situations, time and space and how discourses may be sometimes ambiguously framed not always in accordance to practice. tjie church the study of the eritrean orthodox coptic church is very important given that main studies on migrant communities in italy have focused on mosques and islamic belief (carter 1999, riccio 2000, and salih 2000). italian society is pervaded with catholic rhetoric and discourses flowing especially in the encounters with the "other" more and more identified with islamic people. this classification, however, becomes generalised to often include migrants from different backgrounds and religions. the "other" becomes identified not only with the foreigner but also with people of different religions. the focus on a christian community is interesting since it entails an attention to its recognitions (or lack of recognition) of relatedness but yet of otherness. on the other hand, some kind of classification and differentiation is constituted among copts who have had conflicting moments with the muslim branch of the liberation movement, and with the catholic followers (often linked to italian colonial officials and missionaries). the church is a context in which categories of "us" and "them" arc shaped and performed. the relationship with catholic church organisations is growing since some religious members arc active in their opposition to the present state of political debates and practices around migration. in milan especially. 44 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs the activity of cardinal martini, who has just retired in the summer of the year 2002, has been posing interesting frames for understanding the hardship that the bossi-fini law and similar rhetoric have in relation to the occurring social change. he has stated that it would be detrimental, if not anachronistic and impossible to revert the social process of overture and pluralism which is taking place in milan through recent migratory processes. caritas and many other catholic organisations -as already stated abovehave started an opposition movement, which does not only publicly deny consent to the present government, but which moreover has become a site of political and social asylum for those that the state wants to reject. there are interesting developments of resistance against the present politics of identity and of exclusion which are moreover led by some branches of the catholic church. 9 it's therefore very motivating to look at the development of relations between the various religious communities and their struggles. the church often plays an organisational role; the outcome and experience of migratory processes frequently depends upon and is closely related to the religious institutions in the host country (riccio 2000). thus i'm looking at this aspect of the coptic church in its transnational links and its role of mediator for people arriving from eritrea. this position and responsibility of the church most probably influences the constitution of discursive frames of reference and practices. questions around this issue regard the ways in which the church becomes a force in the constitution of identities and of loyalties. the church often ends up being a site where people escape from the outside world (block 1992) through its moral guidance. contemporary it also becomes a context in which there is not only one fixed and applied shape of identity; there are negotiations. thus religion is a field to be looked at in the ways in which people also contest and oppose discourses around authenticity, tradition and modernity' (salih 2000). politics of identity occur in diverse contexts and are not one-way projects; they are shaped by discourse and practices which entail individual involvement and experiences in creating the field. the sacred earth the religious practices are followed in the church evensunday and in every other occasion and they are also analysed through a related case study entailing another gaze and point of view. there is a focus on the volume 19, 2003 45 alternate routes sacredness of objects. sanctified substances, generally called tsabel, will be linked with theories on consumption -regarded as and compared with commodities holding special roles and meaningsand the body and embodiment. out of all the religious goods, such as holy water, bread, crosses. 1 " it is the sanctified earth. imnet. that has called for special attention. the earth comes from coptic monasteries in ethiopia and eritrea; it is sanctified by the monk and then used as a medicine by ingestion or application on the skin. during my preliminary fieldwork in november 2001 some informants told me about its use in milan. kin members in eritrea send it to them when needed. there appears to be a transnational movement of this substance, which remains still in small scale and without a highly developed consumerist element. some insight may be achieved from an appadurais analysis of exchange and value, which allows a description of imnet as a commodity of some kind. its cultural criteria must be understood in context referring to destination, metamorphosis and diversion. the journey from production to consumption is a great insight to elaborate on its meanings and values. this quote from marx defines the relation between value and exchange in the nature of commodities: "to become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use-value, by means of an exchange"" (marx 1971: 48 in appadurai 1986: 8). the process through which a product becomes a commodity is very interesting in its power dynamics and knowledge definitions. to follow up the political dimension of consumption there must be awareness around processes of enclavement and diversion, which specifically show the power struggles over goods by elites and between the various agents engaged in its commoditisation. "it is in the interests of those in power to completely freeze the flow of commodities, by creating a closed universe of commodities and a rigid set of regulations about how they are to move. yet the very nature of contests between those in power (or those who aspire to greater power) tends to invite a loosening of these rules and an expansion of the pool of commodities" (appadurai 1986: 57). in the case of imnet it is the coptic church that has the role of elite whose power is to enclave its consumption. at the same time though there are other agents engaged in the production of knowledge and the diversion from its closed predestined path. the constitution of mythologies is how appadurai explains the knowledge relations between the various agents: 46 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs (1) mythologies produced by traders and speculators who are largely indifferent to both the production origins and the consumption destination of commodities, except insofar as they affect fluctuation price. [...] (2) mythologies produced by consumers (or potential consumers) alienated from the production and distribution process of key commodities. [...] and (3) mythologies produced by workers in the production process who are completely divorced from the distribution and consumption logics of the commodities they produce. (ibid: 48) although his description applies to goods that have entered a structured system of production, it may apply to imnet in the division of roles and knowledge. those who he calls traders might be kin members in eritrea or people practicing transnational links. it might even be that the earth has become a commodity in the same tenns and that therefore there are traders who export it to milan. consumers will be members of the eritrean community in milan. the workers, in appadurais analysis, will be the monks of the coptic monasteries in eritrean. although it seems inconceivable to analyse the commoditisation of imnet in these terms, it might be interesting to understand the various games occurring around the creation and re-creation of value of the earth in terms of specialised knowledge. primary technical knowledge in fact combines technological and cosmological layers in the production discourse and include the three contexts of interaction: market, consumer, and destination. knowledge thus is not only related to the appropriate ways to consume the commodity, there is a distribution of knowledge at various points of the exchange process. moreover "the social history of things and their cultural biography are not entirely separate matters, for it is the social history of things, over the large periods of time and at large social levels, that constrains the form, meaning, and structure of more short-term, specific, and intimate trajectories" (ibid: 36). simmel recalls value through this statement, which is interesting in relation to imnet: "we call those objects valuable that resist our desire to possess them" (simmel 1957: 73 quoted in appadurai 1986: 3). imnet from this point of view certainly has more value: volume 19, 2003 47 alternate routes the distance and difficult trajectories, which the earth has to go through, resist in mam ways its consumption and therefore increase its value when possessed. distance though may not only affect value but also meaning, "as commodities travel greater distances (institutional, spatial, temporal), knowledge about them tends to become partial, contradictory, and differentiated" (ibid: 56). the other theoretical approach, which can be interestingly applied, is that of the analysis of the social and cultural significance of the practice of consumption. geissler (2000) has studied the practice of geophagy among the luo in kenya. he explains earth eating as a practice creating social distinctions not in terms of ethnicity but according to age, gender and class. the discursive formation around the consumption of the earth is related to status. women and children are the only ones who are allowed to consume the earth; the status of geophagy is low. pregnant women are the single category who can eat earth without any social consequence, though normally women may practice geophagy but might be mocked. children may consume it, but when they reach adulthood they have to stop. men found in the act of earth eating are dishonoured and shamed. moreover the quality of the earth is at stake. women know where to find the best, tastiest earth -normally close to a termites nestand children learn when collecting it for their mothers. wealthy women, however, buy "clean" earth from the market and serve it on special occasions. issues around the differentiation according to the status of the various age sets and genders, and to the quality (purity) of the earth according to status, allowed geissler to understand how the consumption of earth and its role of commodity shape and re-produce social distinctions in the same way bourdieu (1984) has argued. the type of social distinction occurring through the consumption of imnet might be different but it may also be closely associated. distinctions might be related to religious affiliations, ethnicity and modernity but they may also allow insights into age and generational and gender differences. the questions that follow this case study are many and relate to core anthropological domains of enquiry. social distinction, consumption, belief are all analytical focuses which arc dealt with in regards to identity formation and transnational movements. its symbologics and meanings are looked at through its related practices and experiences. the relevant discourses on the knowledge of the body, health, religion and the motherland inspire the focus on individual and collective percepts volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs tions. especially the focus on the ways to experience and talk about the motherland must be one of the major issues since there certainly is a very close link with the ingestion of imnet and the fact that it comes from "home". imnet is not only a symbolic motherland earth but it is in its actual material substance. here symbol and matter conflate in the act of swallowing. life histories biographical data collection will be included in the research. life history is seen here as both a method and a site. since every site and every method provide insights into a variety of issues, the collection of biographies of individuals, their family and people closely related to them opens up a different type of analysis from the ones encountered in participant observation and case studies. the peculiarity of life histories is related to the focus on the individual subject, the diachronic nature of the data, the world of emotions permeating personal memories and experiences, and, above all, the close relationship and dialectics occurring between the researcher and the researched. in the specific case of this research in italy the use of life histories is very significant because of its centrality as a method in social and historical research among italian intellectuals. in italy, life history as a methodology for research has been widely used, in many contexts, disciplines and for different purposes. rammstedt (1995) describes in detail the peculiarity of biographical research in italy in its multiplicities. the objectives connected to the collection of life histories are primarily linked to the desire to let marginalized groups have a chance to speak, giving them a space in the history in which they were denied a voice. life histories, "storie di vita'', have been collected since the 1940s, although they had no place in academia until the 60s. they were at times used to fill the gaps in topical and thematic data. anthropology and sociology used them in a complementary function added to other methodologies of research, providing further insight for theoretical frameworks and hypothesis. later, life histories in the 70s, also presented the possibility for interdisciplinary research. moreover biographies in italy gave insights into context, the past through memories, and present through the description of the circumstances in which interviews were carried out. for some the narrative event was important in its linguistic significance; the narratological axis was for them the analytic framework. others volume 19, 2003 49 alternate routes focused on the dialectical procedure of interaction, between the researcher and the researched, but also between the micro and the macro level. there was also an attention to the self of the researcher; the description of life histories included a self-narration. the political motivation behind the collection of life history is above all significant in italy. marxist scholars started to do biographical research to achieve a description of "popular culture", emphasising the importance of voices from the working class never heard before: peasants and those who were absent in the mainstream production of history. they thought of themselves as doing advocacy, empowering their researched and trying to give them equal status. although biographical research in italy has a longer past than in most other western european countries, similar issues are at stake today in the work of all those who focus on life histories (e.g. c apian, 1997, miller 2000 and plummer, 2001). there are, however, different ways to use the material collected, as has been argued above through the italian cases. my research will not produce only accounts of individual lives but will engage with these in order to achieve further insight in the particular themes and issues dealt with in the previous sections. the conceptualisation of life history as method and field of inquiry is important since it allows insight into those domains of identity difficult to investigate through collective sites. an individual's experiences, looked through the time span of a life, provide the site for an analysis of individual and social change, and life cycles. the narratological event is mostly interesting since the act of describing oneself encompasses the sole depiction of the history of a life. the discursive and the mnemonic formation link together mixing with personal and collective narratives. so. in the analysis of life histories, the multiplicity of voices must be included also with the researchers one. while collecting the biographical data i keep a personal diary, so to record my own voice. when transcribing the interviews i want to include the subjects and try to cooperate with them to gain further access into the linguistic and experiential side of the narration. i include interviews with members of the household. i visit kin and friends in order to have a wider range of data. finally given that, within the context of the whole research, life histories have specific roles, themes and provide specific insight, they must be included and compared with the data collected through other sites and therefore analysed in their collective as well as individual dimension. 50 volume 19, 2003 chemins altematifs access access is a practicality which must not be underestimated. life histories allow access into the intimacy of the household and of personal lives and vice versa. the learning of tigrigna is being done through exchanges. in the past few months i have been learning with people who want to learn either italian or english and therefore we exchange language skills. this, added to the life histories collection, gives me the personal level of communication which allows an understanding of key issues about community dynamics and to access public spaces, through some kind of snowball effect. tigrigna learning in one-to-one meetings throughout a prolonged time span also allows access into the hidden domains of language, the field of the meaningful unsaid, and the tacit forms of communication (pratt, 1989). fieldwork is being carried out with the reflection on my double status of insider in the milanese population, to which also my informants belong, and initially of outsider to their communities. nevertheless, i try to gain as much access as possible in order to feel and be felt as an insider in many ways. the shift to the insider rather than the outsider status enters into those domains in which anthropologists in present times have diverted from the classical ideas of fieldwork among the "other", through "detached"' participant observation. reflexivity is thus crucial since not only do i need to keep track of my actions as well as my informants, but also i need to reflect on my own experiences of being a "migrant" in the uk where i study. to understand the implications of displacement and movement of my informants i must draw attention to the ways in which i have perceived "home" and myself while abroad. during the fieldwork it is usual that people want to know me through my own life experiences, often looking for similarities with their own. reflexivity therefore is not only a politically correct practice but also it becomes a way to get to know people, to gain trust and to achieve creative relationships with informants. ethics with the rise in tension around the status of immigrants in italy and their "legality", this research needs to take into consideration the ethical dimension. issues of movement and asylum seeking have become very politicised and dangerous in many ways. many of my informants are in a fragile position in regards to the bossi-fini act and to the internal frictions within the eritrean community. therefore not only do i need to volume 19, 2003 51 alternate routes achieve access through trust but also i must always explain to them the work in progress, its risks and empowering effects in order to receive a fully informed consent. the information that i gather is conceived as possession of my informants and therefore it's a duty to ask for permission to use it in my work. especially in the case of life histories the ethical issues arising are higher because of the detailed and in depth nature of the information. there will be a close cooperation while transcribing the data and therefore there will be the chance to choose together whether to omit information which might end up hanning my informants or me. the emotional side of this type of research needs attention since the relation with memory and pain is disrupting in most cases and for that reason it needs care and understanding. especially in the collection of life histories there has to be a continuation of the relationship when needed, since the existence of emotional disturbance cannot be simply dismissed. the belmont report states that the primary ethical issue is to carry out research without harming anyone. this aim is the primary concern not only in legal and political terms of but also in terms of an awareness of the human encounter with emotions and of the importance of reciprocity in the research. summary there are many levels in which the research gains legitimacy and significance. anthropologically, issues of identity and perceptions of the self in relation to "communities of memory7 "' (malkki 1997) are here in the spotlight. after the turn in "writing against culture"" (abu lughod 1992) and the reflexive scope of the discipline itself which previously was over-categorising communities and homogenising cultures, this research leads to a discussion of the multiplicity of voices and actions. this anthropological gaze consents to look not only at similarities but also at differences in identity formation among the same community. the concept of communities of memory is important since it allows an awareness of the impact of different experiences in the formation of identity. theoretically, with the stress on agency, this research engages in the discussion around the relationship between structure and agency, which raises fundamental issues in the social sciences. in the italian context, on the one hand the insight into historical memory and post-colonial reflection is useful to start a debate which has been delayed for many years. on the other hand, migration and asylum seeking arc urgent issues to be 52 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs dealt with, through an insight not into the negative impacts of this phenomenon on the italian society, but more in terms of social change. the focus on a foreign migrant community with one of the longest histories in milan raises first of all issues around the different cultures of politics which eritreans have experienced in italy and in milan. secondly it inspires the research to look into the different communities that have been forming throughout time and to analyse the contemporary' ones which may have diverse loyalties. for my informants and the eritrean community in milan there is also an empowering side to the research for there is space for their voices to be finally heard. moreover my informants advise are most appreciated and cooperation is part of the methodology for fieldwork itself. through the reflexive scope, the research should also be an account of an ethnography in which the author is actively participating with all her strengths and weaknesses. notes l.this is a revisited version of an msc thesis in research methods. the paper proposes an insight inside a research in progress, these are my first few months of fieldwork:. in september 2002 i started learning the tigrinya language and gaining preliminary data and access, and since january of 2003 i have started doing multisided participant observation. 2.amharic is the official language in ethiopia, in eritrea the languages most often used are tigrigna and arabic. 3.1n eritrea nearly half of the population follows the christian churches, slightly more than half are muslims and other indigenous religions also exist. 4.the race issue 5.though not internal migrations 6.eritrea and ethiopia are exceptions and this is also why this research is important. 7.in"larepubblica" 12-07-2002 8.the pfdj is the political party which developed from the previous eplf liberation movement. 9.not all branches of it: some cardinals, like biffi, have been stating the incommensurability of religions and cultures and therefore they have been prone to deny access to those "different" people. lo.the coptic crosses are different from the catholic 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(1999). conceiving and researching transnationalism. in ethnic and racial studies vol. 22, no. 2, pp 447-462. volume 19, 2003 57 390 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education beyond the first rung: an interview with jim silver jordy cummings jordy cummings1 (jc): this issue of alternate routes has the theme of “capitalism in the classroom.” so to begin i’d like to ask you, in the broadest sense, what you see as the effect of capitalism in its various forms in the classroom. did neoliberalism introduce a different logic? what about post-crisis capitalism? jim silver2 (js): in the last thirty to forty years, the era of neoliberalism, capitalism has done a lot of damage to education. consider the case of universities. public funding has been systematically reduced in real terms over a long period. tuition is rising in real terms, reducing access for many, but especially for those already on the margins of our society. a high and still rising proportion of classes are taught by nontenured faculty who are part-time, poorly paid and have minimal job security. universities are increasingly corporatized – management is less collegial and more top-down, and private sector fund-raising has assumed enormous importance, adding to the influence exercised by corporations and wealthy individuals. an even greater problem lies outside the classroom. one of the strongest correlations in the social sciences is that between income and educational outcomes. the higher the income, the better are educational outcomes; the lower the income, the worse are educational outcomes. those who grow up in poverty are much less likely to succeed educationally than those who are economically better off. since a major consequence of the neoliberal era is the growth of poverty and inequality, more and more people are left behind educationally. this is worsened by the 1  jordy cummings is interventions editor of alternate routes, and a phd candidate at york university. 2  jim silver is the chair of the university of winnipeg’s department of urban and innercity studies, and is a long-time board member of the canadian centre for policy alternatives-manitoba. beyond the first rung | 391 dramatic changes in the global labour market. here in canada there are very good jobs, and very bad jobs, and ever-fewer in between. to get the very good jobs generally requires high educational achievement. so those who are poor are less likely to succeed educationally and thus less likely to get good jobs and more likely either to get poor jobs – those precarious jobs that are poorly paid, part-time, with no benefits, no security and no union – or no jobs at all. growing numbers are completely detached from the labour market, and have few educational skills. they are the new “surplus” population. capitalism does not need them. and the children of those marginalized from the labour market and the educational system are themselves less likely to succeed in school, thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty that produces poor educational outcomes that lead to poor or no jobs, which then reproduces still more poverty in a vicious downward cycle. this is a huge problem in western canada, especially as regards aboriginal people, who historically have had many negative experiences with education, and who continue to face discrimination in the labour market. educational outcomes amongst aboriginal people are, on average, especially low – although when income levels are factored out this is not the case; it is poverty, not aboriginality that is the issue. this is the case with newcomers as well, especially non-european newcomers, who disproportionately experience poor educational outcomes and poorly-paid jobs. the problems of education, jobs and poverty are increasingly racialized. education is not just about jobs. it is about the joy of learning, the sense of self-worth that educational achievements can produce, the creation of a populace that can participate fully in the increasingly difficult decisions that face us as a society. but capitalism’s neoliberal era produces large numbers who are marginalized from the educational system, the labour market and much of civic society. educational strategies that work well to meet the needs of those, especially adults, who have been marginalized have been developed and have proved effective, but they are non-mainstream approaches that require a commitment – both ideologically and fiscally – to meeting the needs of those least advantaged. little such commitment exists in the age of austerity. neoliberal governments choose instead to pour funds into correctional systems and policing. punishing the poor is an important characteristic of the age of neoliberalism; supporting creative, alternative educational strategies for low-income adults is not. 392 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education jc: as a related question, much of the work you do surrounds building community resistance to capitalism in the classroom. you have written about and worked in adult education. is this kind of empowerment-based approach under threat? in turn, tell me a bit about how it develops community capacities. js: i have written elsewhere (silver 2013) about alternative forms of adult education, especially aboriginal adult education, being practiced in winnipeg’s inner city. these approaches to adult education work well and produce significant numbers of graduates. a high proportion of these graduates choose to “give back” to the low-income neighbourhoods in which they have grown up, contributing to a home-grown, bottom-up form of community development that is effective. the current ndp government of manitoba has been supportive of these alternative educational initiatives, far more than conservative governments would be. successive ndp governments have not invested enough in these forms of alternative education to make the gains that would be possible, but they have been supportive enough that it is worth keeping them in office given the alternative. in manitoba now, the provincial conservative party is led by a former reform party mp who is likely to be as brutal to the inner city, and to alternative and successful forms of education in the inner city, as was the conservative government of gary filmon in the 1990s. much of the aboriginal adult education that has been developed in winnipeg’s inner city, as elsewhere, uses a de-colonizing approach, by which adults are made aware of what colonialism has done and continues to do to them collectively. as a result, they come to see the problems they have experienced in life as being the product not of their personal failings, but of the broad social forces related to colonialism. coming to that realization is often liberating, and enables aboriginal people to develop greater self-esteem and self-confidence, to succeed educationally, and then, in so many cases, to give back to their communities. when individuals start to succeed in such educational settings, they bring their cousins, their sisters, their friends into the program, creating a ripple effect by which the benefits of this form of education spread beyond the individual to families, extended families and friends and neighbours. low-income communities benefit when graduates choose to work in the communities in which they have grown up, making possible a “rebuilding from within” form of community development (silver, 2011). in this way these adult educational approaches are transformative. beyond the first rung | 393 when educational strategies have a de-colonizing character, community development takes a form inspired by traditional aboriginal values, which are collective and egalitarian. developing the capacities and capabilities of individuals and of communities is the goal of this form of community development, and it can reasonably be argued that this is foundational for the building of a better world – a world less driven by individualism and competition than by the egalitarian commitment to ensure that no one is excluded or left behind. the transformative character of these alternative educational strategies is, for the most part, politically progressive. jc: you make the point that literacy is the “first rung on the literacy and education ladder” for working-class people. beyond the obvious, tell me more about how this builds the condition of possibility for improving the lives of working class canadians. if you have any particular stories to share, that would be helpful. js: literacy programs can be seen as the “first rung on the ladder” of an educational journey that can change peoples’ lives in positive ways. in manitoba, 285,000 people have literacy levels that are below the level needed to participate fully in their communities and in the broader society. this is a shocking number. across canada, mainstream economists associated with the chartered banks – that is, they are not radicals – have argued recently that low levels of literacy cost the canadian economy billions of dollars. that’s because people cannot participate in the labour market because of their literacy levels, so there is an “opportunity cost,” and because low levels of literacy correlate with poverty, poor health, poor educational outcomes, and higher rates of incarceration, adding significantly to these costs. many of those who are illiterate become part of canada’s growing “surplus” population. they are no longer needed, not even as a reserve army of labour. so the system – at least a system guided by the values of neoliberalism – does not need to invest in them, and has no particular incentive to do so. but literacy programs and other adult education programs, especially communitybased programs in low-income neighbourhoods, are relatively inexpensive to mount, and can produce dramatic changes in peoples’ sense of themselves, and in their capacities to be part of building a better world. in early october 2014, i spoke to people in a public housing project in winnipeg where i had done a small research project, at the request of a community-based organization, on a literacy program in the housing complex. i reported back to a community gathering on the outcomes of the research, as we typically do in our collaborative and community-based 394 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education form of research in winnipeg’s inner city. the highlight of the event was two of the students in the literacy program, jean and alice (pseudonyms). they are middle-aged women who previously could not read to their children at bedtime, could not read the newspaper to learn more about the world outside their housing project, and who felt a deep sense of shame as a result. each of the two spoke at the community gathering to a crowd of 25-30 people, and described their newfound joy at now being able to read. jean said that she had previously had to rely on her four sons to read anything that had to be read, and now she felt a deep pride in not having to do that, and in being able to read the newspaper and become aware of the wider world around her. she is now volunteering with the kindergarten class in the neighbourhood school. she is a contributing part of the community. her sense of dignity has grown significantly. alice said she had not been able to read to her two older sons, and they had not done well in school, but she was now able to read to her youngest son, and he loves school and is doing well. these are, in the grand scheme of things, small gains, but for these women they are huge gains. with improved investment in such literacy and other alternative adult education programs many such gains could be made, but such investments are completely inconsistent with the neoliberal and austerity-driven capitalism of today. much of the political left in winnipeg is involved in these kinds of grassroots struggles, working closely with those who have been damaged by neoliberalism and by colonialism. this means that we are engaged in day-to-day efforts to make small changes. this may appear to be something other than revolutionary. however, i think it is our collective view that we have to be part of these local struggles, since peoples’ needs are so very great. by being part of these struggles, we are connected with a part of the real world that is being seriously damaged by today’s capitalism, and we are part of a process by which the capacities and capabilities of those otherwise marginalized by the system are being developed. this is the basis of change that can be positive from a left point of view. it means that those who are poor can develop the capacities and capabilities to themselves become the agents of the change so desperately needed in their communities. at the same time, the corporate world is expending considerable effort and money to draw the aboriginal community into their fold. business schools offer specialized programs for aboriginal students; corporations make efforts to hire these graduates. an aboriginal middle class is gradually emerging. our collective efforts in the inner city are beyond the first rung | 395 aimed not at all at creating an aboriginal middle class, but at contributing to a process by which those otherwise marginalized from the dominant society can take charge of their lives to build communities characterized by solidarity and lives lived in dignity. jc: relatedly, you’ve written about doing adult education among indigenous communities. what kind of challenges have you faced? what do you see as short, medium and long-term goals for shifting our practices? js: adult education involving aboriginal people brings its own particular challenges, over and above the key challenge, which is poverty and all the human damage that complex poverty can produce (silver, 2014). aboriginal people have had a century of negative experiences with education. education has produced few if any benefits for the vast majority of aboriginal people. many young aboriginal people see no point in struggling to succeed educationally. they are alienated from the educational system. they are alienated from many systems – the justice system, the corrections system, the child welfare system, for example. most have experienced racism on an almost daily basis. many have internalized the false claims of colonialism – the claims of their own and their cultures’ inferiority – and this often produces a lack of self-esteem and self-confidence and in some cases even a sense of worthlessness and hopelessness. this, and the constant challenges created by life lived in complex poverty, are the greatest challenge to educational success. in the program i run – the university of winnipeg’s department of urban and inner-city studies, located off-campus in the heart of winnipeg’s very low-income north end – we often say that the greatest challenge faced by our students, and especially our many aboriginal students, is life itself. by that we mean that their immersion in complex poverty and the lasting impact of colonialism weighs them down, and consistently produces multiple barriers to educational success – they lose their apartment because of a bed bug infestation, or their son is in the remand centre and they’re worried sick and can’t concentrate on their studies, or two people in their extended families have died in the past week and they have to travel to their home communities for funerals, or they were “jumped” on the weekend and lost all their identification, or any number of other problems. being poor and being aboriginal makes educational achievement difficult. on the other hand, however, approaches to aboriginal adult education have been developed that work well. many aboriginal peoples’ lives have been changed for the better. more of these gains could be made if 396 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education such alternative educational initiatives were expanded, and especially if they were connected with some of the very innovative job creation strategies developed in winnipeg’s inner city. the model that we use can be described as a convergence approach (loxley, 2010), by which linkages are consciously constructed via local hiring, local purchasing, and investing locally to meet peoples’ needs. alternative educational strategies are central to this approach. typically, the educational approaches that work are physically located in low-income neighbourhoods, feature small class sizes, create a warm and friendly and personalized environment, make available extra supports, both academic and personal supports, and design a curriculum that relates to the students’ experience and has a de-colonizing character (silver, 2013; mackinnon, 2013). such educational initiatives can work well and adults can make great gains, improving their level of formal education and perhaps even more importantly, improving their sense of themselves and their preparedness to be agents of change. people who make these gains often choose to give back to the low-income communities in which they have grown up and lived. they become the agents of change that are so desperately needed in such communities. my goal is to be part of a collective effort to expand these kinds of initiatives, and to produce more such agents of change. we are working hard to do this in winnipeg’s inner city. for example, the redevelopment of the old merchants hotel – previously a magnet for a wide variety of serious problems in the north end – will have a very significant impact. merchants corner will be a large complex over seven city lots that includes thirty units of subsidized housing for students with children, and educational space that is shared between the department of urban and inner-city studies, which will hold classes during the day, and the north end high school support program, ceda-pathways to education, which is an after-school program and will use the same classrooms from 4:00-8:00 pm. merchants corner will become part of what we are calling the “north end community campus,” which includes other alternative educational initiatives, plus a childcare centre with a strong aboriginal character that gives first priority to students, and the thirty units of rent-geared-to-income student housing. the north end community campus, located in a one-block area on selkirk avenue in the north end, is a coherent and strategic approach to education for people who would otherwise be likely to be marginalized in a low-income urban space. most of the graduates of urban and inner-city studies, many of our current students, and many of the graduates of the other alternative beyond the first rung | 397 educational initiatives work in inner-city community development initiatives that are driven by values that are, in many important respects, the values of those of us on the political left. merchants corner will create more people who, having grown up in poverty, become the source and the agents of positive change in their low-income communities. it is a “rebuilding from within” strategy. other examples of related winnipeg inner-city initiatives include, to name but a few, social enterprises like build (building urban industries for local development) and mgr (manitoba green retrofit), which hire from marginalized communities and provide training to do useful work – renovating and retrofitting buildings and a range of related tasks, for example. people otherwise marginalized become productive members of society, doing useful work that produces in them a sense of dignity. most of those working in such jobs experience a process of healing from the damage of racialized poverty and colonialism. their lives are improved; their families are strengthened; their communities are healthier. jc: affordable and accessible housing are intrinsically connected with the education of a democratic polis, and you have written about them extensively. how do you connect the two? it seems to me, using michael lebowitz’s idea – out of the early karl marx – that this is to foster “rich human beings” or what the labour activist jane mcaleevy calls “the total worker.” she wrote about how workers unite with community members to demand not merely a better collective agreement but better housing. what can we do when so many people are poor and on the streets or shelter system while condos and luxury homes sit empty? js: housing is a central part of the daily realities of winnipeg’s inner city and of the people who live there. poor housing is a daily experience. as an important social determinant of health, poor housing contributes to ill health, lowered educational outcomes, difficulties with employment. decent and affordable housing, by contrast, is foundational – it is the basis for the building of a better life. the heart of the problem with housing in canada, and in winnipeg’s inner city, is that some ninety-five percent of housing in canada is produced by private, for-profit builders and developers. they build what is profitable, which means single detached dwellings in the suburbs or high-priced condominiums downtown. they do not build low-income rental housing, because low-income people can’t pay enough in rent to make such buildings profitable, and the builders and developers are in the business of making profits. this means that if low-income rental is 398 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to be built, it requires some kind of subsidy, and it is governments that can provide those subsidies. but the federal government abandoned social housing – that is, subsidized housing for low-income people – in 1993 and later that decade off-loaded responsibility for housing to the provinces, which are less fiscally able to produce subsidized housing. the result is a cross-canada crisis in low-income rental housing. there is a lack of supply; rents are unaffordable; in winnipeg’s inner city many private rental houses are poorly maintained and over-priced by landlords. the ndp government in manitoba has been exemplary in producing low-income rental housing and in renovating existing stock, and their efforts have made and continue to make a real difference. but the problem continues, because the backlog is so great and because the federal government, which has the real fiscal capacity, is for the most part not involved in solving the low-income rental housing crisis. the housing crisis in winnipeg’s inner city can, however, be seen and is seen as an opportunity, particularly when viewed through the lens of a community economic development model shaped by a convergence philosophy. deteriorating housing can be renovated and retrofitted; inner-city residents otherwise disengaged from the labour market can be trained and employed to do this work; social enterprises can be created to organize such activity and to supply materials for the purpose. the result of using this approach in winnipeg’s inner city has been increased employment of those typically seen as hard to employ, improved housing quality, reduced heating and water bills for low-income people, strengthened families and healthier communities. the production of low-income rental housing and the financial support of those organizations engaged in a convergence approach to housing and other inner-city issues is a good example of why so many of us in winnipeg continue to support the provincial ndp government, despite its limitations. subsidies are essential if low-income rental housing is to be built, and governments have to provide those subsidies. to produce low-income rental housing in the volumes that are needed is very costly; only governments can do it. the provincial ndp government is doing it, despite its fiscal limitations, while also supporting many of the community-based organizations that do excellent community development work in winnipeg’s inner city. jc: in your work with the working classes of winnipeg, do you see a difference, in terms of levels of consciousness of their class interests, between winnipeggers and people from other parts of canada? tell me about the differences and commonalities you see. beyond the first rung | 399 js: many of those we work with in winnipeg’s inner city are not part of the working class. they are part of capitalism’s surplus population. they experience “complex poverty” or “spatially concentrated racialized poverty” (silver, 2014; 2010). they are either completely detached from the labour market – in many cases inter-generationally – which is a key factor in street gang activity (comack et al., 2013) and in children’s involvement in survival sex, for example, or they have low-level jobs –cleaning motels or seniors’ residences, for example. few appear to be active in retail-level service sector jobs, probably a function of racism, given that so many entry-level service sector jobs require direct interaction with the public. our work in the inner city produces jobs, and growing numbers are employed in such jobs, although most of the community-based organizations in which they are employed are dependent upon government for all or most of their funding, and so this employment is precarious in its own way – subject to changes in governments. winnipeg and other western canadian cities are distinctive in canada because of large and still rapidly growing aboriginal populations, a significant proportion of whom are struggling with complex poverty and the damage caused by colonialism. many still suffer from the inter-generational effects of the residential schools and colonialism more generally, and an astonishing proportion of them have at some point in their lives been institutionalized. in fact, in comack et al. (2013) we use the term “trauma trails” to describe, among other things, the long and largely uninterrupted trail of institutions in which aboriginal people have been incarcerated – residential schools, youth detention centres, the “sixties scoop” (by which many thousands of aboriginal children were seized from their homes and sent away from their parents, often to other cities and even the usa), child and family services (10,000 children, over eighty-five percent of them aboriginal, are now in the care of cfs in manitoba, in foster homes or group homes), and provincial and federal penal institutions, which in western canada are wildly disproportionately populated by young aboriginal men and, increasingly, women. relatively few are the aboriginal families that have not been touched by this institutionalization, and this adds to and reproduces the complex poverty and related trauma that are such a central part of so many aboriginal peoples’ life experience. the results are many – street gang activity as a form of resistance, low levels of formal educational attainment, poor health (diabetes, for example, is an epidemic), the constant struggle with racism, the connection of racism and poverty to 400 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the tragedies of missing and murdered indigenous women, low levels of self-esteem and self-confidence as the result of the internalization of colonialism. our efforts in winnipeg’s inner-city involve our working with people there, as allies, finding ways to create educational approaches that are relevant and that will produce collective benefits, and finding ways to create employment in which inner-city people feel comfortable and can earn a living, and finding ways to support families in building healthier futures for their children. in this work, we spend a great deal of time listening and learning. many inner-city people themselves, and particularly inner-city aboriginal people, have a deep understanding of the character of the problems they face, and of the kinds of solutions that will work. we learn from them and work alongside them. the result is that many of us who come from progressive political backgrounds have become relevant to the lives of those who are poor. we are not disengaged from, but rather are deeply involved with, the complexities and challenges of real-life, day-to-day struggles and the search for real solutions. jc: the late french socialist theorist andre gorz coined the very useful concept of “non-reformist reforms.” these are reforms that don’t fundamentally overthrow the system as a whole, but nevertheless are reforms that actually decommodify aspects of our daily lives, and can help develop our capacities to build a better world and engage in transformative politics. on the other hand, this is counterpoised to “reformist reforms,” in other words, reforms that may indeed provide immediate help to people in need, but actually serve to reinforce the status quo and disempower popular activity from below. how do you see the work you do as fitting in this continuum? it seems to me much of what you do is the former, that is to say, “non-reformist.” js: the question of “reformist” versus “non-reformist reforms” is an interesting one in the case of those of us working in winnipeg’s inner city. one interpretation might reasonably be that we are engaged only in “reformist reforms” – those that provide immediate help to inner-city people and that don’t challenge the status quo. it could well be argued that what we do here simply keeps the bottom from falling out of the inner city, as it has done for example in detroit. many of the communitybased organizations with which we work closely are involved in healing those damaged so greatly by colonialism and racialized poverty. it is responding to immediate and terrible problems. beyond the first rung | 401 i think, however, that the case can be made that overall, our work is, at least potentially, much more than that. the alternative forms of education, especially adult education, that have been developed here in winnipeg’s inner city, and the innovative job creation strategies, really do develop the capacities and capabilities of people, and enable them to play an active and productive role in the communities in which they live. much of the work of community-based aboriginal organizations is aimed at healing at a pre-formal educational level, and can appear to be a classic case of “reformist reforms,” but shauna mackinnon has been able to show in her work (mackinnon and stephens, 2008) that these organizations enable people to take small but exceptionally important steps in developing their agency. i have argued (silver, 2006, chapter 5) that aboriginal forms of community development, rooted in the traditional aboriginal values of sharing and community, can lead from personal healing to individual agency to collective engagement, thus leading to stronger and healthier families and communities. some young aboriginal people are beginning to organize in ways that are exceptionally creative and attractive. their aim is not to overthrow the system, but rather to create a space in which they can live in a dignified and decolonized fashion, as aboriginal people, while emphatically not being a part of the crazed competitiveness and greed of the capitalist system. their approach to change is emerging from their experience of racialized poverty, and of colonization, and is rooted in the aboriginal cultural re-awakening that is part of what is happening in winnipeg’s inner city, and which is built in large part upon traditional aboriginal values, which are non-capitalist values. i would argue that these can legitimately be seen as non-reformist reforms. these reforms, it is true, are not aimed at overthrowing the system and creating in its place a socialist society. they are aimed at enabling the very poor – and in western canadian cities especially, aboriginal people – to build alternative ways of being within a cruel capitalist system. these are ways of being that are rooted in such concepts as sharing and community. as we head toward ever-greater global economic crisis and ever-more climate disasters, these ways of being will increasingly be seen as attractive, and in that sense may well be “non-reformist reforms.” jc: keeping the previous point in mind, you have also written that manitoba’s new democratic party must return to its social democratic roots. you point out the past achievements of social democracy which are not inconsiderable in central canada. you offer a compelling alternative vision of provincial social democracy. with that said, how would 402 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education you respond to the charges that with the combination of low-levels of struggle from below, and the mechanics of capitalism right now, that this type of social democracy is impossible. what kind of agency would make it possible in manitoba or in any other province? js: in the work that we are trying to do in winnipeg’s inner city, governments play a large role, for better or worse. manitoba’s ndp government plays a positive role. they do not do enough, and we work hard to push them to do more. but the difference between their approach and that of manitoba’s conservative party is so great that we believe it is essential to offer critical support to the government. the needs of those who are poor are so great that it would be difficult to justify our not being a part of these struggles. as a result, many of us who are on the political left and outside the government are actively engaged in the inner city, doing what we can as allies to promote positive reforms. in that work we have been, by and large, supported by the ndp government, and in return we offer the government support, and constantly push them to do more. ndp governments could do more, much more. this is possible. there is enormous wealth in canada, but over the past thirty to forty years most of the gains in our collective wealth have been appropriated by the wealthy. they ought to be taxed, and those tax revenues ought to be put to work to solve the kinds of problems being discussed here, and to build an environmentally sustainable future. doing so would produce enormous societal benefits. more people educated and employed – it is possible to create many jobs, because there are so many needs to be met – would increase tax revenues, and reduce government expenditures on health and corrections and social assistance, for example (silver, 2014, chapters 5 and 6). done in an aggressive and systematic and long-term fashion, with governments taking advantage of their capacity to educate the public and win broad-based support for such an approach, this is possible. it may or may not happen, but it is possible. by abandoning the realm of electoral politics and the real-world struggles of those most damaged by neoliberal capitalism and the politics of austerity, the broad left has created a great empty space into which a mean-spirited political right has marched, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. these narrow-minded right-wing ideologues do not have the support of the majority of canadians, but that majority has difficulty seeing any viable alternative. that alternative, i believe, is best built by active engagement in struggles, including electoral struggles. beyond the first rung | 403 jc: it’s a difficult struggle right now for those of us in academia, social movements and policy circles with truly progressive politics. what gives you hope in these dark times? js: i’m not quite sure that my attitude could be described as hopeful. these are, in many important respects, dark times. personally, i enjoy the challenge of being actively engaged in low-income communities, contributing whatever skills i might have to progressive struggles, and learning something new and interesting every day. how much potential this kind of work has to stave off future disasters, i don’t know. but there is in my opinion no real alternative to involvement in the struggle at a grassroots level, and to thinking and talking and writing about the character of that involvement and what it may mean for building a better world. i appreciate gramsci’s slogan, “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will,” and think of that phrase on those days when the going is especially tough. many days are like that, but we win the occasional battle, and one of the important things learned by those of us involved in the great social justice organization of the 1990s here in winnipeg – cho!ces – was the importance of celebrating victories, no matter how small. to celebrate victories, you have to be involved in struggles. being involved in struggles – in the case of many of us in winnipeg’s inner city, struggles alongside those who are particularly poor and marginalized and racialized and colonized – implies a belief in the importance of human agency. marxism has made enormous contributions to our understanding of the dynamic structures of capitalism, but perhaps in doing so has under-estimated the importance of human agency in the process of change. i think that the work we are doing in winnipeg’s inner city is especially focused on the importance of human agency in the process of change. in working alongside those in the inner city our objective is to produce, from within the ranks of the poor, and in many cases the racialized and colonized poor, the human agents of a form of change in which the poor themselves become the means by which their poverty is overcome – in ways and toward ends that they themselves determine. the alternative forms of education and related initiatives that many of us are involved with in winnipeg’s inner city are an important part of this process. 404 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education references comack, e., l. deane, l. morrissette and j. silver. (2013). indians wear red: colonialism, resistance and aboriginal street gangs. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing. loxley, j. (2010). aboriginal, northern and community economic development: papers and retrospectives. winnipeg: arbeiter ring publishing. mackinnon, s. (2013). healing the spirit first: aboriginal second-chance learners in three inner-city programs. in j. silver, ed., moving forward giving back: transformative aboriginal adult education. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing. mackinnon, s. and s. stephens. (2008). is participation having an impact? measuring progress in winnipeg’s inner city through the voices of community-based program participants. winnipeg: canadian centre for policy alternatives-manitoba. silver, j. (2014). about canada: poverty. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing. silver, jim, ed. (2013). moving forward giving back: transformative aboriginal adult education. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing. silver, j. (2011). good places to live: poverty and public housing in canada. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing. silver, jim. 2010. segregated city: a century of poverty in winnipeg. in p. thomas and c. brown, eds., manitoba politics and government: issues, institutions, traditions. winnipeg: university of manitoba press. silver, j. (2006). in their own voices: building urban aboriginal communities. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review making peace with the earth, by vandana shiva. winnipeg, manitoba: fernwood publishing, 2013. $ 24.95 can, paper. isbn: 978-1-55266-566-4. pages: 1-267. reviewed by christoph neusiedl1 in april 2017, a demonstration of some 40 farmers from the indian state of tamil nadu grabbed nation-wide attention: by putting live mice in their mouths, flogging themselves, stripping naked, carrying with them skulls of farmers who committed suicide, and threatening to drink their own urine, the drastic protest was intended to highlight the never-ending plight of india’s farmers, due to which about 300,000 of them have committed suicide over the past 20 years (lakshmana, 2017). in the state of maharashtra alone, an average of seven farmers committed suicide every single day between january and april 2017 (kakodkar, 2017). vandana shiva’s making peace with the earth shows how the mass-suicide of indian farmers is one of the many terrifying outcomes of what she calls a global war against the earth. this war is fought, as shiva explains, by multinational corporations (mncs) and nation-states as their faithful vassals: “governments mutate from welfare states to corporate states as they deregulate corporations and over-regulate citizens (...). the enlargement of ‘free-market democracy’ becomes a war against earth democracy” (21). throughout the book and with a focus on india, shiva explores the different yet interrelated wars being fought against the earth, the means of war applied by mncs and the indian state, and the human and non-human costs of it. we learn how ‘land wars’ displace millions of people and devastate the environment in order to make room for special economic zones (sezs), mega-development projects, and the large-scale exploitation of natural resources; how ‘water wars’ based on the increasing privatisation of water services and assets exclude a huge part of the population from access to safe drinking water as well as to water needed for irrigation; how ‘forest wars’ replace an abundancy of native tree families by monoculture plantations, in the process destroying local livelihoods and the ecosystems on which they are based; or how ‘seed wars’ lead to an ever-increasing dependency on highly expensive, and highly damaging, chemical inputs that in turn result in degraded soils and health risks on the one hand, and indebtedness and suicides of farmers on the other. the chapter on ‘seed wars’ in particular manages to explain a highly complex, technical set of issues around genetically modified organisms, biodiversity and intellectual property rights in an easily understandable and comprehensible way, a testimony of shiva’s long-term research and activism in this field. the emphasis on themes of land, water, climate and seed conflicts then clearly links shiva’s most recent publication with earlier books such as soil not oil: environmental justice in an age of climate crisis (2008), earth democracy: justice, sustainability and peace (2005), and water wars: privatization, pollution and profit (2002). what all of shiva’s work also has in common is an analytical focus on the role of the nation-state and mncs from an eco-feminist perspective which sees the transformation of capitalist structures of domination as ultimate goal (curran, 2007, 118). 1 christoph neusiedl is a phd student at the department of asian and international studies (ais), city university of hong kong. email: cneusiedl2-c@my.cityu.edu.hk www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research based on this framework, making peace with the earth provides a vivid and descriptive account of the politics and concrete impact of what carroll and jarvis (2015) call ‘deep marketisation,’ the latest phase of neoliberalism which is characterised by “an aggressive proprivate sector agenda that seeks to rapidly extend market exchange and social relations using means that work on, through, and around the state” (295). the state here no longer is the focal point and implementer of ‘development,’, but a facilitator and accelerator of ‘development,’ the achievement of which is being ‘outsourced’ to the globalised private sector. this “corporatecentric” (shiva, 18) world demands that “local communities and the country should both give up their sovereign rights for the benefit of global free trade” (40). one of the examples shiva provides for this is the indian state’s massive support for sezs in order to promote exports and attract foreign direct investment. this is being achieved by employing ‘means of war’ such as handing out massive tax breaks, deregulating employment and labour laws, and seizing land for the private sector (33). as shiva explains, these means of war “dispossess farmers and peasants and destroy agriculture, in favour of privileged corporate enclaves, which pay no taxes but burden the entire society with increased fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions” (35). this is typical for deep marketisation projects based on the rule of the ‘free market’ which subjects all social relations to the price form at the expense of any forms of social protection, including access to the commons and public goods (da costa and mcmichael, 2007). ironically, of course, such market processes are everything but free the ‘free market democracy’ is, as shiva shows, accompanied by an excessive force of violence employed by both the indian state, through police, military and paramilitary units, and by mncs themselves through local goons and private armies tolerated by, and sometimes even collaborating with, the state. dinerstein (2015) describes this as the ‘political construction of hopelessness,’ a key instrument of deep marketisation, which systematically uses violence, fear and frustration to oppress resistance and realise the stateand elite-favoured form of economic and social transformation, forcefully constructed as being without any alternative. in this vein, shiva argues that what we can observe in the war against the earth and resistance against it is actually a war between two worldviews the onslaught against the earth and its (non-elite, ‘poor’, ‘native’, ‘lower-caste’, minority…) inhabitants is embedded within a dualist cartesian system that puts humans above nature and thus justifies the subordination and exploitation of nature. what is required then is “a shift in our worldview (…),” (shiva, 265), however it remains rather vague how this shift can materialise itself and what it concretely entails. the movements and resistance against processes of deep marketisation which shiva describes in her book under the label of ‘earth democracy’ then are based on a worldview and a politics that includes “all life on earth and all humans who are being excluded by so-called ‘free market democracy’ based on corporate rule and corporate greed” (shiva, 20). however, while shiva provides numerous examples of resistance, such as the early chipko movement to save forests, the niyamgiri hills movement against mining of bauxite, or the anti-posco movement to prevent a south-korean steel plant joint venture, she avoids delving into details, which is also one of the biggest weaknesses of her work. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research while ‘earth democracy’ is always being highlighted as a reaction against the threats emanating from the state and mncs, it is often unclear what concrete actions, strategies and tactics earth democracy entails and how it is internally organised, as well as how its impact can be maximised. all the different movements featured in the book are portrayed in a rather homogeneous way, despite their rather different backgrounds and membership base. questions of power are almost completely left out, for instance when it comes to strategies of leadership and equal participation within the movements featured, or the rights of women and other minorities. at times, shiva also tends to portray small-holder and indigenous farmers as rather passive victims of the state and mncs that can easily escape their situation by listening to the ‘vanguard’ of enlightened scholars, activists and ngos which, not least, include her own organisation navdanya that is prominently featured throughout the book. additionally, while shiva takes great effort to make the case for the ‘environmentalism of the poor,’ she glosses over the fact that, at times, environmental conservation and economic interests are indeed in conflict with each other, which can for instance be seen in the aftermath of the chipko movement (see mitra, 1993). another aspect that can be seen critically is shiva’s exclusive, class-based focus on the state and mncs, which tends to assign the state a redemptive role once it is ‘freed’ from the dictates of national elites, the private sector and institutions such as the world bank which impose their (neoliberal) demands on the state. thus, once liberated from these constraints, the state is seen as rather unproblematic institution that protects empowered local communities (shiva, 26). as can be seen in making peace with the earth, such an attachment at class analysis eschews important questions of hierarchy and domination outside capitalist structures and overlooks other important sites of struggle. except for these shortcomings, vandana shiva’s book provides a useful entry-point for readers who want to learn more about the impact of globalisation and contemporary development policy on marginalised people and the environment, especially within an indian context but also beyond. together with books such as naomi klein’s this changes everything: capitalism vs the climate (2014), it is an essential read for both lay persons as well as undergraduate students and anyone interested in issues of development, climate change and the environment in order to understand and realise the scale of contemporary social, economic and environmental problems and the challenges we face and need to tackle in the future, considering the effects of both increasing climate change and an expansion of neoliberal market rule across the globe. references carroll, t., and d. jarvis. (2015) the new politics of development: citizens, civil society, and the evolution of neoliberal development policy. globalizations. 12 (3), 281–304. curran, g. (2007). 21st century dissent: anarchism, anti-globalization and environmentalism. new york: palgrave macmillan. da costa, d., and p. mcmichael. (2007). “the poverty of the global order.” globalizations. 4 (4), 588-602. dinerstein, a.c. (2015). the politics of autonomy in latin america: the art of organising hope. new york: palgrave macmillan. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 4 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research kakodkari, p. (2017). 852 farmer suicides in four months in maharashtra [online]. available from: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/852-farmer-suicides-in-four-monthsin-mah/articleshow/58723266.cms [accessed 25 may 2017]. klein, n. (2014). this changes everything: capitalism vs the climate. new york: simon & schuster. lakshmana, k. (2017). in tamil nadu, debt more than drought is driving farmers to commit suicide [online]. available from: http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/in-tamil-nadudebt-more-than-drought-is-driving-farmers-to-commit-suicide/storyga2wv9kvf3nkg8nfetkjij.html [accessed 25 may 2017]. mitra, a. (1993). chipko: an unfinished mission [online]. available from: http://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/chipko-an-unfinished-mission-30883 [accessed 23 may 2017]. shiva, v. (2008). soil not oil: environmental justice in a time of climate crisis. cambridge, mass: south end press. shiva, v. (2005). earth democracy: justice, sustainability, and peace. cambridge, ma: south end press. shiva, v. (2002). water wars: privatization, pollution and profit. cambridge, ma: south end press. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review cuba beyond the beach: stories of life in havana. by karen dubinsky. toronto: between the lines press, 2016. isbn: 978-1-77113-269-5. pages 1-216. reviewed by naomi alisa calnitsky1 focusing in on the complexities and contradictions of havana, queens university-based historian karen dubinsky takes her readers into intimate city spaces to examine havana in a critical time of transition. the city’s trans-national positioning as a central node of cuban culture is introduced within a context of the city’s divergent but shifting relationship with its two northern neighbours, canada and the united states. the book claims to be “about the potential and limitations of relationships across the multiple boundaries that separate the first and third worlds” (7). social networks contribute to life for habaneros, as the author is “persuaded by those cubans who characterize their daily reality as more sociolismo than socialism – more a reciprocal network of favours among friends (socios) than an abstract state ideology (socialism)” (7). sociolismo is later defined as socialism “in spite of the state” (146). this sets a tone for a book that focuses in on the lives and lifestyles of city dwellers with whom the author successfully claims intimacy with through return visits, teaching engagements, and temporary residencies in a city that has persistently attracted her interest. canada functions here as a white flag and sometimes-strategic space the crafting of policy, as in 1953 when cuban opposition parties met in montreal to plan a strategy against batista (11). our warm relationship with cuba is like “that one bad friend you had in high school” with trade and educational ties besides, yet canadian support for this rebellious outpost wasn’t always cut and dry (12-3). while cuban migrations to canada to the tune of 20,000 have occurred, with some cubanness existing in our own far-flung corners, importantly, “we are nowhere equal in our mobility” (18). at play here is the left intellectual west’s problematic fascination with cuba as a socialist paradise, with cuba emerging from the ashes of its revolution as a site of “decolonized cosmopolitanism” for outsiders (20); cuba surfaces in the 1960s as a global site for the intersection of left-wing ideals. these tendencies play against apolitical tourism, which sits uncomfortably alongside a real cuba’s “backward-pointing” nature (22). the book’s angle on havana’s complexities is made analogous to pedro almodóvar’s idea that he could make a film every day by merely “plant[ing] a camera on a street corner,” this setting the aesthetic tone for the book’s eclectic style (25) especially in its focusing in on the gente de zona or “people of the neighborhood” and the sounds of the city that reflect or mirror the dreams and aspirations of its inhabitants (26-7). the first chapter begins in the “cultural hub” of vedado and follows vivian, a “life-long vedado resident” who is “emblematic of her generation of old fidelista ladies” (29-32). stark statistics describe the wage economy and its relationship to prevailing patterns of poverty and consumption, with almost half of the population not meeting “basic food needs.” the cuban food shopping climate is divided into agromercados for vegetables, fruits, pork and illegal products like seafood or potatoes on the 1 naomi calnitsky completed a doctorate in history at carleton university in 2017. her forthcoming book, seasonal lives: twenty-first century approaches, comparatively explores mexican migrant farm worker migrations to canada with pacific island migration to new zealand and australia. email: naomicalnitsky@cmail.carleton.ca mailto:naomicalnitsky@cmail.carleton.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research one hand (the market) and mini-supermarkets on the other (the shopping) where precious items like tomato sauce or vinegar may be kept under glass (34-5). added to this division are statesubsidized stores in the form of bodegas and panaderías that might confound non-cubans by virtue of their association with moneda nacional (mn) and the libreta or “little book” allotment system that used to provide more in the way of luxury or desirable consumables and today accounts for a mere 30% of the caloric intake (36-7). this multi-dimensional economy is shaped by “inconsistencies, bureaucracies and incongruities,” creating a “shopping chaos that simply boggles the mind” (37). bicycles and “beautiful cakes” also occupy a place here, as do pregónes or “little tunes” that often characterize street vendors and have more recently made a comeback, contributing to the complexities of the cuban “soundscape” (42-3, 46-7). dubinsky’s pregoneros are reminiscent of the sounds and scenes one might witness elsewhere in greater latin america; they might occupy a comfortable place alongside the vocal donut vendors of east los angeles. the account is a personal one, with urban encounters shaped more by observation and inquiry than engagement with any cuban present or past that might be distilled through archival research. dubinsky’s knowledge of the city is intimate and her sources are eclectic and diverse. the author’s subjectivities are present in this book, in her role as a visitor passing “unnoticed” (52) in the cerro neighborhood of havana, and through the friendships formed with locals that provide unique social and cultural insights into understudied elements like gay culture and community. her community of gay friends may exercise certain social freedoms: while overt political oppression is absent, these cuban lives are shaped by economic modesty and gender equality within the confines of households. local watercress wine versus french wine becomes an object of conversation, as do emerging travel opportunities to the us. cuban street culture and its impact on female visitors also inform training for her students, before they might encounter the ubiquitous piropos and groseros, or flattering and aggressive remarks (57). the second chapter explores cuban sound culture and the author is its keen anthropologist. here, the wonderful free music of the street competes with professional and popular musicianship (72-4). in havana, “concerts are like conversations” (76), the death of musical icon santiago feliú “registered like a bomb,” (92) x alfonso’s songs blend social commentary with reverence for afro-cuban spirituality (108) while his fábrica de arte cubano serves as a cultural hub; music is a cultural text, with meaning, imbued with creativity and life. in the next chapter, the “new economy” is discussed, including the rise of cuentapropismo (self-employment) and a “kiosk economy” by which small-scale private enterprises might flourish, allowing for an ease of pressure upon an already-present “underground” economy (114-5). havana’s “real estate boom” proved to be a “positive human rights step” according to one us think-tank, yet housing remains “one of the most serious problems in the city” (129, 132) and the new economy’s arrival – la nueva cuba – effectively generated “more stuff” and “less state” (152). a final chapter considers how cuba fits into the broader globalized world and its new technologies, and cuba is assessed as still highly dis-connected. el paquete semanal offers a profitable mix of technological fixes, referred to as “the weekly package” or “google of cuba” by us media and “internet of the poor” by cuban victor folwer (158). the book succeeds in untangling order from disorderly circumstances and realities, and embraces cubans’ persisting “spirit of disobedience” (125) as a leitmotif that knits together multilayered complexities marked by incremental changes over time. finally, it reiterates leela gandhi’s idea that “small acts of www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research friendship” might help sway or at least mitigate “the overwhelming logic of global inequalities” (23-4), offering a compelling read that is at once nuanced, accessible and direct. neoliberal salvation through a gendered intervention: a critical analysis of vulnerable young women’s talk ruth cross1 and louise warwick-booth2 abstract: within the united kingdom (uk) in recent years, disadvantaged young women have been documented as having unmet needs and experiencing gendered inequalities. in response, uk policy-makers have funded early interventions for so-called vulnerable young women. this paper presents a feminist analysis of young women’s talk about their journeys through a gendered intervention (project x). data were generated in focus groups during an evaluation of project x. the focus groups were carried out using creative methods of data collection. the young women were asked to make a storyboard illustrating their journey through project x and the impact it had had on them. they were then encouraged to reflect on, and talk about, their experiences. a secondary analysis and interpretation of the focus group data took place in addition to that required for the purposes of evaluation. this more in-depth analysis laid bare the various discourses the young women took up in order to make sense of their life experiences and their involvement in project x. these included neoliberal discourse such as talk of selfimprovement, reinvention and aspirations of self-control. these are discussed with reference to the themes of choice and control, vulnerability, governance, and resilience. the social 1 ruth cross is course director for health promotion at leeds beckett university and holds a phd in the social construction of risk and young women’s health. she has been involved in research projects with the centre for health promotion research exploring ‘vulnerable’ young women’s experiences of different service provision. email: r.m.cross@leedsbeckett.ac.uk 2 louise warwick-booth, phd is reader and co-director of the centre for health promotion research at leeds beckett university. with a background in health and social policy, louise’s research interests include the evaluation of women-centred projects. email: l.warwick-booth@leedsbeckett.ac.uk 118 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice and political implications of the analysis are discussed including a key argument that the young women’s discursive practices reinforce hegemonic gendered identities, neoliberal ideology and existing structural inequalities. keywords: neoliberalism; gender; youth; united kingdom; inequality introduction and background this paper presents data from an evaluation which explored the impact of a gender-specific intervention designed to support young women (project x). project x sits within a wider agenda in uk policy that frames young women in certain ways which can be interpreted differently depending on contrasting perspectives. this paper takes a critical look at the assumptions underpinning such interventions, the policy background that supports such provision and the way that young women are positioned within policy and subsequent practice. the paper draws on a secondary analysis of qualitative data resulting from the evaluation of project x to illustrate the critique within it. in doing so it adopts a feminist perspective and a post-structuralist critique of the neoliberal policy agenda which pervades many western health and social care systems. in 2007 a review of vulnerable women in the uk criminal justice system was published called the corston report which was commissioned by the uk home office. the report outlined “the need for a distinct radically different, visibly-led, strategic, proportionate, holistic, woman-centred, integrated approach” (corston, 2007, i). the corston policy context focused upon early intervention as a mechanism to manage demands on the criminal justice system (corston, 2007). ten years on it is argued that a joined-up approach is needed to take into account the root causes of women’s offending and that such an approach should include gender-specific women’s community support services, such as project x (gillberg, 2017). interventions like project x are designed to tackle early indicators of potential difficulties in young women, those that might lead to bigger problems. such interventions shift the construction of young women’s ‘problems’ to an earlier point in their journeys but have been criticised for failing to tackle the actual structural determinants which shape and create difficulties for young women (hanbury and ronan, 2013). rather, there is an emphasis in such interventions on change at an individual level, the neoliberal salvation through a gendered intervention | 119 development of coping skills and increases in resilience in the young women themselves. much of current uk policy around young people, and particularly young women, places emphasis on problematic lives and this emphasis shapes practice and provision. this is not unique to the uk, however. we can see similar approaches in the usa where lessons are being drawn from. critics of this political trajectory note the pervading discourse of vulnerability. writing specifically about vulnerability, brown et al. (2017) note the increasing preoccupation with personal crisis that is evident in current social policy such that tackling what is externally defined as vulnerability has become a key concern in current policy and, therefore, practice. the focus on vulnerability is reflected in early interventions targeted at young women. interventions like project x reinforce crisis discourse which in turn feed into a normative behaviour change policy agenda (ecclestone, 2016). there is an interesting tension whereby young women are simultaneously positioned as vulnerable and yet also as a threat – to themselves, to others, to social order and to wider society as a whole. the assumption is that, if early intervention does not happen, then the young women will go on to experience (and create) greater difficulties (nicholles and whitehead, 2012). young women experiencing life challenges are typically socially constructed as problematic and dependent (hanbury and ronan, 2013). such young women are seen to be costly (for example, through potential imprisonment, drug and alcohol problems or children needing state care) (nicholles and whitehead, 2012). the term vulnerable is often employed to denote this. brown et al (2017, 423) note the normative use of the terms vulnerable and vulnerability and how policies designed to address vulnerabilities have become “a persuasive feature of the political landscape”. as brown et al., (2017, 489) argues, the use of vulnerability discourse supports a range of “powerful moral and ethical projects” and project x is no exception. it is also apparent that, as brown (2014, 2) contends, “in the uk the concept of vulnerability is increasingly deployed in the management and classification of individual and groups”. in this case the group being managed and classified is young women who are defined, in some way, as being vulnerable. as will also be argued in the explication of the data, project x (like others which are similar) also promotes and propagates what critcher (2008, 1140) refers to as ‘”the process of moral regulation”. 120 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice project x was aimed at young women with unmet need, who fell under the thresholds for statutory support. from a critical perspective project x is an example of a targeted project which emphasises the notion of problematic adolescent lives that shapes much of current policy around young women (hanbury and ronan, 2014). from a feminist perspective such approaches construct young women as troubled in contrast to how young men are constructed which is as troublesome (green et al., 2000). we concur with green et al.’s point however, we are also minded to note that certain groups of young women are also constructed as troublesome, if not troublesome in the present then potentially troublesome in terms of possibly entering the criminal justice system, causing social problems etc. notably also, ‘troubled’ young women’s responses to their life circumstances are also, at times, constructed as deviant and problematic (for example, alcohol and drug misuse, unplanned teen pregnancy, self-harming, dropping out of school) (ben-david et al., 2016). sharpe (2012) points to lone teenage mothers as a site of public and political anxiety. she argues that “as the average age at childbirth has increased, teenage mothers have become vilified as irresponsible and unacceptably dependent on state welfare” (sharpe, 2012, 148). positive stories of teenage motherhood are relatively hard to come by in a context where teenage pregnancy is highly problematized. we argue that vulnerable young women are also constructed as a site of public and political anxiety in contemporary social policy. they are seen to be potentially dependent on the state in a number of different ways (needing physical and mental health support, for example) and at risk of falling into the criminal justice system (nicholles and whitehead, 2012). from a feminist perspective such concern echoes contemporary popular, public and academic preoccupation with what jackson and tinkler (2007) refer to as troublesome young femininities. the data discussed in this paper resulted from an evaluation of project x. project x aimed to promote early intervention and resilience working with relatively disadvantaged young women in risky life circumstances using holistic, individually-focused, wrap-around support systems to engage vulnerable young women aged between 14 and 25 years in order to meet their specific needs. project x was embedded within a multi-team service (organization x) which was located in the voluntary sector and provided a range of services to women. project x was aimed at vulnerable and disadvantaged young women who are seen to be potentially more likely to be costly in terms of imprisonment, drug and alcohol problems and children needing state care (scott et al, 2001). it used neoliberal salvation through a gendered intervention | 121 a specific approach to identify and engage with girls and young women who were slipping between existing offers of service provision and who might otherwise enter adulthood with severe and escalating levels of need (warwickbooth and cross, forthcoming). the provision was based on a key-worker model with an engagement worker at the centre of it who was supported by a multi-agency steering group facilitated by organization x. the engagement worker took referrals, made assessments, provided supportive engagement, delivered case work, and linked with other agencies for signposting and referral (warwick-booth and cross, 2017). young women could self-refer into the project or, more frequently, were referred by different agencies such as social services and school. the majority of the young women referred into the project were aged 14 – 18 years and self-identified as white british. a small minority self-identified as lesbian or bi-sexual. once the initial referral had taken place the young women engaged with project x entirely on their own terms. the ensuing discussion of the data presented in this paper draws on a number of theoretical concepts that are worth outlining here. a critical perspective is taken of what is termed the ‘neoliberal imperative’. neoliberalism is a specific political and economic ideology based on the individualisation thesis which emphasises personal freedom, individual control and the positioning of the individual as an autonomous agent directing their own destiny (rose et al, 2006). neoliberal ideology has become more firmly embedded within so-called ‘western’ contexts within the past two decades and now permeates all areas of human experience resulting in what gill and scharff (2011, 5) call a “novel form of governance”. the gradual withdrawal of state welfare provision directs responsibility onto the individual subject within the private domain (bell et al, 2011). as will be seen, we contend that interventions like project x perpetuate this. arguably, such interventions also serve as a mechanism of governance (rose, 2006) and of encouraging young women to conform to what it means to be a good citizen or even a good woman (defined as family-focused, healthconscious and in control of one’s self). this links to issues of power. foucault critically examined a range of different sites within which power operates and through which power and knowledge are (re)produced through discursive construction (foucault, 1982). he contended that, rather than power operating in a top-down fashion, power operates within and through individuals via the mechanisms of self-discipline and self-governance (mcnay, 2009). foucault also argued that, where there is governance, there is resistance (lazzarato, 2009). drawing on foucauldian ideas the construction and (re)production of 122 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice alternative discourses can be interpreted as resistance. from a feminist perspective resistance would be to dominant ideals or normative standards of what it means to be a woman i.e. constituted by a refusal to conform with notions of idealised femininity. we return to these theoretical ideas in the discussion of the data later in the paper. methods context of the study: the data here are drawn from a broader evaluation of project x that sought to explore the impact of a specific gendered intervention aimed at young women in need of support. project x was located in the voluntary sector and provided support to women between the ages of 14 and 25 years who did not meet the minimum threshold requirements for statutory intervention such having a criminal conviction, an early unplanned pregnancy or being homeless. project x was for women only and focused on prevention, holistic provision and delivery based on individual need. the core function of project x was relational, built on establishing trust between an engagement worker and the young women with complex needs who accessed the project (duffy and hyde, 2011). as part of the broader evaluation, focus groups were carried out with young women who had engaged with the intervention. the focus groups were designed to explore the impact that the intervention had had on the young women in line with the aims of the evaluation. research approach and overview of the data collection: much research on women has been dominated by positivist models which decontextualize women’s experience and, as pilkington (2007) argues, do not substantially consider socio-cultural content. therefore, our aim was to privilege the young women’s experiences from their own perspectives and to enable them to have a voice in the research process. we used a qualitative, feminist approach to data collection which placed the young women at the centre of the process and aimed to recognise and attempt to address, in part, the power dynamics between the researcher and the researched (abell and myers, 2008). we were also conscious of hedderman et al.’s (2011) argument about the importance of garnering service user perspectives in order to better understand outcomes from gendered interventions. we were interested in the young women’s stories and their subjective experience of being involved in the project and used a co-productive approach via “dialogic communication” (blaikie, 2007, 201) positioning ourselves, as the researchers, as being alongside the participants in the coneoliberal salvation through a gendered intervention | 123 production of knowledge (cross and warwick-booth, 2016). ethics approval was obtained from leeds beckett university faculty ethics committee. two focus groups were carried out at different times with two different groups of young women using creative methods of data collection (one with six young women and one with eight young women; n = 14 in total). the young women were recruited by the engagement worker on a voluntary basis. no coercive or persuasive measures were used. the focus groups were facilitated by the two authors. the focus group schedule was flexibly designed in order to enable the young women to guide the process. there was no set interview schedule rather, during the focus group, the young women were asked to make a storyboard illustrating their journey through the project and the impact it had had on them. they were asked to reflect on where they had been before they were involved in the project (past history), where they were at the point they were talking to us (present situation) and where they hoped to be (aspirations for the future). a range of materials were made available for the young women to use including magazines to cut up, stickers and pens/pencils to write and draw with. they were then encouraged to reflect on, and talk about, their experiences using their storyboards as a point of reference. prompts and probes were used to draw out further information such as ‘can you tell us more about that?’this approach was designed to generate richer, deeper data and to create a more meaningful experience for the young women who took part. in keeping with our feminist-informed methodological approach we, as the researchers, also joined in with the activity alongside the young women (cross and warwickbooth, 2016). the focus groups were audio-recorded with the young women’s permission so that the conversations which took place whilst the storyboards were being created could be captured. the focus groups were transcribed verbatim. the data was subject to a secondary analysis by the two researchers who used a discourse analytic approach to scrutinise and interpret the data. the central components of discursive approaches to analysis include attention to critique and to uncovering issues of social organisation, power and ideologies (wodak and meyer, 2009). specifically, we approached the secondary analysis from a feminist perspective. findings we now present an interpretation of the secondary analysis of the young women’s perspectives through some of their talk. we observed how the young women took up various discourses and subject positions to make sense of 124 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice their personal stories and to establish how they presented themselves within the focus group discussions in terms of their journey through the project. the stories included a dominant discourse relating to neoliberalism which emphasised self-improvement, reinvention and self-control which we refer to as the ‘neoliberal imperative’. dominant discourses are defined as those that are granted the status of truth (marecek, 1999). interestingly, there was an apparent lack of marginal discourses i.e. those that challenged the received wisdom of the dominant discourse. four of the young women’s stories are explored in detail here to illustrate the key arguments in this paper. each story will be explicated in turn with reference to the storyboards that the young women created themselves during the focus group discussions. where appropriate direct quotations are used from the young women’s talk. these, and the storyboards, are anonymised with the use of pseudonyms. emily’s story: “things would be going right and then all of a sudden something would go wrong, set me back again and that’s what’s with the downwards spiral as well [see figure 1 – left side]. and it was a struggle, especially with my family life. and i thought with all that going on, like my gcses were coming up and stuff like that. i was so scared of failure…and one day it just all got too much. locked myself in a cubicle and just cried and i didn’t know what i was doing…so they referred me [into the project]…and i became a lot happier. and then i managed to get organised more with my school work and focus on that and i came out with some really good gcses so now that just leads me into college and i’ve got an equation [see figure 1 – middle column]…but still, life has ups and downs. i’ve been partying a bit too much which is good but then, at the same time, i’ve just been diagnosed with depression, so that’s the black…and i’ve got where i hope to be. i’ve got the word ‘destination’ because i just want to feel like i’m going to one place because i feel like i’m on a journey and i want to settle down and that’s why there’s a family as well. i think because i’ve had a dysfunctional family, i want stability, i want to settle down. and i want to get control and to be a better version of me [see figure 1 – right side]”. neoliberal salvation through a gendered intervention | 125 figure 1: emily’s storyboard at the point at which emily engaged with the intervention she was clearly feeling under a lot of pressure from all sides. she describes life as a ‘struggle’ and positions herself as unhappy and out of control. she then contrasts this with getting ‘organised’ as result of being involved with the intervention. being organised links to the ‘neoliberal imperative’ and is a requirement for independent success however, arguably being organised and in control is a mandate that is prescribed much more for young women than for young men (mcrobbie, 2009). emily goes on to achieve her gcses which is framed as evidence of success. there is some evidence of resistance to the feminised construct of behaving and being in control here when emily talks about ‘partying a bit too much which is good’. she then contrasts this with being diagnosed with depression which is represented by the blocks of black on her storyboard [see left and centre]. emily draws on what could be termed discourse of transformation. she describes herself as being on a journey and as life as having its ups and downs. ultimately emily aspires to getting control – to being ‘a better version of me’. here emily draws on contemporary discourse around selfimprovement and betterment which links with the neoliberal agenda. 126 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice interestingly emily selects a functional and socially normative future as shown by the picture of a nuclear family [see figure 1 – right]. the aspiration around getting married and having children links to socially prescribed ways of ‘doing gender’ (moore, 2010; ben-david et al., 2016) and was a recurring theme within the young women’s stories. emily’s story illustrates ecclestone’s (2016) critique around the juxtaposing subject positions “of the rational, autonomous subject of liberal and neoliberal governance, and the contemporary cultural privileging of its vulnerable, anxious and stressed counterpart” (48). emily positions herself as both at different times and uncritically takes up these contrary constructs. she firstly presents herself as scared and upset (vulnerable, anxious and stressed) and subsequently as being organised and focused (the autonomous, neoliberal subject). cat’s story figure 2: cat’s storyboard neoliberal salvation through a gendered intervention | 127 before cat was involved in the intervention she described herself as experiencing a range of emotions such as being angry, not caring about anything, feeling very depressed and self-harming [see figure 2 – left]. cat had also experienced the care system and described herself as ‘cuckoo’ in reference to her own unstable emotional position. she had disclosed several risk-taking behaviours such as running away, taking drugs, indiscriminate sleeping around and alcohol misuse and stated that she “was running away lot and ended up on drugs…nearly killed someone…i was low and depressed which led to self-harming a lot more” [cat]. this would seem to support the social construction of troubled young women discussed previously (green et al., 2000). however, after support from the engagement worker, cat described herself as being happy, relaxed and calm which is a very different emotional position. “now i’ve got short hair, got a new house, new people, new town and i’m full…my depression’s got a lot better. it’s not as bad as it was” [cat]. in terms of future aspirations, she (with laughter) said she wanted to marry david beckham and become queen [see figure 2 – right]. cat recognised that both were highly unlikely to occur but this is indicative of a shift from how she felt previously and the opportunities that she subsequently felt life had to offer her. similar to emily, cat envisages a heteronormative future in traditional marriage, this despite the fact that she had identified as bi-sexual earlier in the focus group. cat also disclosed some significant abuse which was not atypical of the young women who took part in the evaluation. there was evidence of trauma discourse across the data relating to abuse (marecek, 1999). disclosure revealed various forms of abuse. many of the young women had been through significantly distressing life events of various kinds including abuse, rape, addiction, mental health crisis and selfharm. jenna’s story “i was in a really horrible place, horrible school-life, self-harm, no-one to talk to, i had a, and still do horrible relationship with my mum. now we’re okay ‘cause like not…things aren’t great but plodding on. i’m stopping drinking. i’ve been drinking too much and i don’t want to end up like my mum. my friends have told me to watch what i am drinking because my mum’s been an alcoholic since before i was born...but it got to the point where i was just using it as a release of my problems and it’s not healthy so i’ve decided to stop drinking for a bit until i get 128 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice myself sorted. on my way to university which is where i want to be, i want to be in a stable home and i do want a decent relationship with my mum but now there is someone to talk to [engagement worker] which i’ve so…where i want to be is like got to already like university studying away, hopefully in london and just making new friends, getting independent so i could just go on forever ‘cause that…path that i want to follow, yeah…” figure 3: jenna’s storyboard this extract illustrates how jenna was supported to develop her personal relationships and felt less alone as a result of being involved in the intervention. like cat, jenna discloses risky behaviour (drinking too much alcohol) although, in contrast to emily who cites partying too much as good, jenna constructs her alcohol use as ‘bad’. this is in keeping with more normative discourse about alcohol misuse which is that it is problematic, especially so for young women as it is viewed as predisposing them to a range of risks and vulnerabilities (szmigin et al., 2008). this problematisation around alcohol use does not occur in the same way for young men, rather, as holmila and raitasalo (2005) argue, heavy drinking is more traditionally associated with displays of masculinity. jenna also employs self-regulation which occurs via the taking up of neoliberal salvation through a gendered intervention | 129 governance discourse for example, by stopping drinking for a bit until she gets sorted. being involved in the project had led to a number of positive outcomes for jenna such as increased social connections, meaningful relationships, better emotional and physical health and improved self-esteem. she also draws on discourse of health supporting the view that there is more of a pressure on young women than young men to be interested in health. health is constructed as a gendered pursuit and is tied up with ideas about hegemonic femininity (gough, 2007). the ‘neoliberal imperative’ is reflected in jenna’s talk about getting herself ‘sorted’. jenna has aspirations to go to university which can be interpreted as constructing the enterprising self which feeds into a neoliberal politic that not only celebrates but also rewards independence, self-motivation and active citizenship (brown, 2017). jenna’s story is also illustrative of how the discourse of citizenship dictates good and healthy citizens (petersen et al, 2010) which requires the taking up of a range of normative practices and conforming to social obligations (thompson and kumar, 2011). central citizenship is the civic duty to be useful and productive rather than a drain on shared resources such as the welfare state (patrick, 2012). tracy’s story “i’ll just say where i was. i wasn’t sure how i was ever going to continue, i couldn’t look to the future, i was just trapped where i was: even though i have a close family and we’ve always been close, i just felt alone, i couldn’t talk to them, i was confused, i didn’t really understand what was going on. but now i’m a lot happier and i’m planning my future and going to university. i know how to cope if i get stressed or really anxious, i have someone i can talk to and i don’t feel alone any more. and what i want to do is go to university and be independent, completely stop being afraid anymore and get over my fears and just achieve my dream job and carry on to the future”. 130 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice figure 4: tracy’s storyboard tracy describes how difficult she felt things were before she engaged with the intervention. she positions herself as vulnerable to the point of not knowing ‘how i was ever going to continue’. similarly, to jenna, tracy then positions herself as self-enterprising, and like emily, as in control. tracy’s talk is indicative of increased resilience – ‘i know how to cope’ and ‘i’m planning my future’. on her story board tracy wrote ‘don’t worry little fighter, things will get brighter’ [see figure 4 centre bottom]. like emily, tracy constructs her life as being a battle or a struggle. tracy also has aspirations to independence which was a key theme in the stories from the young women and, again, fits within the neoliberal imperative. data such as this provides support for sharpe’s (2012, 20) argument that “in late modern society, individuals are required to make reflexive choices regarding education, employment, marriage and so on, and there is an expectation that, in the process of creating their own, personalised biographies, individuals will self-monitor or plan and thus make the ‘right’ choices”. discussion we now discuss the findings more generally in relation to four key discursive themes – choice and control; vulnerability; governance; and resilience. each theme is discussed in turn however, there are overlaps between them. we also briefly offer an alternative interpretation of the data. neoliberal salvation through a gendered intervention | 131 choice and control: a theme of personal choice and control is evident in the young women’s talk. however, as ayo (2012) points out, many choices at an individual level are constrained by social and structural factors. numerous barriers to authentic (or real) choice exist in societal structures which limit the possibilities available to young women, particularly those from lower socioeconomic groups (sharpe, 2012). structure and agency are therefore inextricably linked (measham and shiner, 2009). all the young women whose data are discussed here presented a more coherent self as a result of being involved in project x. pre-involvement they construct themselves as struggling, in a mess and not doing well. as a result of project x they are now in a better place – more sorted, more in control and less of a strain on society’s resources. interestingly, prior to their involvement in project x and to developing a relationship with the engagement worker, the young women were apparently resisting social norms and expectations – either deliberately (through ‘risky’ behaviours) or through not feeling in control of their life circumstances. on face value the young women appear to be exercising individual power and agency by taking control over their lives and circumstances however, they also appear to be acquiescing to social requirements which, by definition, perhaps limits the extent of their agency. good citizenship is normative, requires conform and becomes performative – that is, gendered identities as constructed through certain practices (butler, 1990). the young women are arguably performing ‘good citizenship’ within the socially bounded definitions of what it means to be female, or least, positioning themselves as doing so. whilst performativity can be disruptive of gendered norms this is not evident in the data discussed here. notably, normative ideas about good citizenship are closely aligned with hegemonic femininity and particularly, as harris (2003) argues, with middle class femininity. in addition, engaging in the emotional labour of self-improvement would appear, in the case of these young women, to serve as a mechanism for achieving compliance to good citizenship. vulnerability: interestingly the young women’s stories resonate with qualitative findings from sharpe’s (2012) research with offending girls, which revealed two central and recurring themes of troubled families and trouble at school. stories of disconnection and disruption not uncommon in the criminal justice literature. however, contrary to other findings in the wider literature where young people have resisted the label vulnerable (see brown, 2014) the young women in this study do position themselves as vulnerable and in need of help and/or support. without exception, all the young women draw on 132 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice discourses of vulnerability and (consciously or unconsciously) perform vulnerability as reflected in their stories. often the implication of being labelled vulnerable is about “deviation from usually undefined (yet normative) standards of life or behaviour” (italics – our addition) (brown et al, 2017, 498). elsewhere critics have pointed to the gendered dimension of vulnerability as a concept (brown, 2014), simply to be female is to be constructed as vulnerable which is a notion that is not new. it is well rehearsed within the wider literature and has long been criticised from feminist perspectives. the implications of vulnerability discourse therefore become “potentially pathological” (brown et al., 2017, 499) since it problematizes womanand girl-hood. the young women in this study are socially constructed as vulnerable with the attendant concern that such a label brings. the frequent talk of trauma and abuse in the young women’s stories illustrates that, as mcneish and scott (2014) argue, young women are at greater risk of abuse due to structural inequalities and resulting violence. the deployment of vulnerability discourse in policy and practice for young women serves to problematize their experience and to justify various means of control through planned intervention/s such as project x which links to brown’s (2014) argument that “vulnerability appears as an intellectual fashion which reflects and influences certain areas of policy and practice” (brown, 2014, 2). more importantly, “normative accounts of vulnerability are also used to highlight situational concerns there the term is used to demarcate or describe particular adverse experiences, transgressions or groups of people who may be in circumstances of social difficulty” (brown, 2015 and mackenzie et al, 2014 cited in brown et al, 2017, 499). this appears to be the case for the young women in this study. women are especially prone to such labelling, socially constructed as somehow lacking and needy. brown et al (2017, 499) argues that “the concept of vulnerability is often drawn upon to emphasise (individual) biographical experiences which demand special treatment or exceptions to be made in policy and practice processes”. this is evident in early intervention aimed at young women. however, we, like others from feminist perspectives, would take this argument further and argue that the concept of vulnerability is drawn upon to emphasis and reinforce gendered experiences. governance: foucault’s ideas about mechanisms of governance have relevance in the interpretation of the young women’s talk here. the young women uncritically (re)produce governance discourse. self-monitoring (and betterment) become imperative (lyon, 2001) through the privileging of individual autonomy (rose, 2000). similarly, mcrobbie (2009) argues that, in neoliberal salvation through a gendered intervention | 133 the post-modern era, young women are portrayed as being privileged subjects of neoliberalism; as having more agency, control and choice than ever before. however, is it evident from the stories discussed here that these young women have not generally experienced this. having engaged with the project x they have now ostensibly moved into a position where this is more available to them, apparently subsuming the neoliberal imperative. individualisation and selfmonitoring practices require subjects to make the right choices and to comply (mcrobbie, 2009) which the young women are now reportedly doing for the most part. the young women talked about a variety of different outcomes as a result of their journeys through project x including being able to make decisions independently, feeling better emotionally, being more empowered, and improvement in confidence, and feeling able to cope more effectively with their problems. some also talked about a reduction in risky behaviours. the relational support provided by the engagement worker enabled the young women to focus on their life chances and to develop future aspirations, important for both emotional wellbeing and the development of resilience (warwick-booth and cross, forthcoming). however, we also want to offer a broader critique of resilience as used for political ends and means. “the current political imaginary defines resilience as possessing the capacity to ‘bounce back’ from adversity” (harrison, 2013 cited in hanbury and ronan, 2014). resilience is a concept that appears to be relatively uncritically accepted across the board and is lauded as the path to fulfilment, happiness and achievement. the central narratives in resilience closely align with a neoliberal agenda which emphasises personal responsibility and active citizenship (brown, 2017; harrison, 2013). the active citizen is obliged to participants in various forms of self-governance (green et al, 2012). the young women here appear to be relatively compliant in this regard (hanbury and ronan, 2014). arguably, they appear to uncritically accept the requirement to conform to social norms and expectations. resilience: resilience offers a narrow and generic set of markers of success in ‘relation to positive psychological development’ for individuals (masten, 2009; ungar, 2008 cited in hanbury and ronan, 2014). this results in the generation of individualised narratives focusing on betterment whilst ignoring the social and political environments which create distress for young women and limit the opportunities for action available to them. as hanbury and ronan (2014, 83) argue, “in contemporary politics, resilience encourages acquiescence not resistance”. the young women here are true to form in this 134 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice regard as, arguably, they appear to acquiesce rather than resist. in fact, behaviours that could be interpreted as resistance are generally done away with as the young women tell of transition away from, for example, drinking too much or antisocial behaviour. given that project x encourages the young women to develop coping skills and focus on future aspirations this may serve to (re)inscribe traditional gendered subjectivities, linked to dominant discourses of respectable femininity – for example, compliant, family-oriented and selfcontrolled (sharpe and gelsthorpe, 2009) which is also linked to issues of social control (warwick-booth and cross, forthcoming). interventions such as project x are vital and necessary. as hanbury and ronan (2014, 84) argue, “it is important that young people feel sufficiently…equipped to handle their lived situations”. however, they may also re-inscribe the hegemonic conditions of young women’s lives and, under the guise of empowerment, building self-esteem and increasing self-confidence, they often neglect to address the social, structural and cultural circumstances that lead to the difficulties and challenges such young women experience. this problematic construction, we argue, is especially true for young women. however, lessons from the criminal justice field suggest that the power of young women is limited by their structural disadvantage (batchelor and burman, 2004), their invisibility (burman and batchelor, 2009) and lack of choices (worrall, 2001). likewise, feminist critiques argue that interventions like project x do not take into account the broader structural determinants which disadvantage young women in the first place (goodkind, 2009). as hanbury and ronan (2014) argue, interventions such project x can “unwittingly play into the hands of a subtle and pervasive neoliberal agenda” 84). the responsibility for change is put upon the young woman herself and this subject position is uncritically taken up by her becoming subscribed to in her narrative. there exists, therefore, a real discursive tension between the young women acting as active agents and the neoliberal imperative. “words like ‘resilience’, ‘choice’ and ‘empowerment’ create the appearance of feminism that simultaneously privileges individual effort and triumph and in doing so ignores structural and gendered injustice” (hanbury and ronan, 2014, 84). the young women’s capacity for resistance to the neoliberal imperative appeared to be nonexistent. instead they drew on discourses that emphasized resilience and so, we argue, the young women’s discursive practices reinforced hegemonic gendered identities and neoliberal ideology. neoliberal salvation through a gendered intervention | 135 we should also briefly consider an alternative interpretation of this data which can arguably be viewed in a more positive and emancipatory way. discourses of self-improvement and individual empowerment can be revolutionary and transformational. notwithstanding the considerable theoretical and academic debates about the nature of empowerment and how to measure it (see woodall et al, 2011; cross et al, 2017) individual empowerment is widely construed as a very positive phenomenon. the young women here undoubtedly feel more empowered as a result of project x as reflected in their stories and the changes in their life circumstances. in addition, it could be argued that the young women are being strategic and agentic in their use of neoliberal and transformative discourse. however, it could also be argued that it is a peculiar and contradictory form of emancipation and empowerment that prescribes singularly defined conditions of performance. the young women in this study appear to construct themselves as only having access to respectable femininity (heteronormative and essentialist) in a context where, for example, marriage and childbearing is viewed almost exclusively as a positive outcome for vulnerable young women (ben-david et al., 2016). other manifestations of agency might be seen as threats to social order. whilst aspirations to attend university could be viewed as counter to this, the young women here also ascribe to the traditional markers of feminine success such as marriage and childbearing (sharpe, 2012). concluding comments we concur with hanbury and ronan’s (2014) opinion that targeted interventions such as project x are a result of policy discourse which constructs adolescent lives as problematic. young women who in crisis are seen not only to be troubled but also (potentially) troublesome. it is recognised that this is even more the case for working class and ethnic minority young women (aapola et al., 2005). anxieties surround young women and are often framed in terms of concerns about current and future detriments to the young women themselves, and sometimes, to others and wider society in general (gill et al., 2007). “fascination with girls, coupled with anxiety about them, is greater now than ever” (sharpe 2012, 6). the result is a type of moral panic (critcher, 2008; good and ben-yehuda, 2009) which is reflected in contemporary policy. discourses of risk and vulnerability are mobilised as political strategies. social regulation, or control of population, is dependent on power exercised at the individual level, namely through subjective processes. although this phenomenon is not peculiar 136 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice to young women, self-care and self-monitoring are highly feminised constructs (gill, 2007). dobson (2015, 4) argues that, in relation to anti-social behaviour orders, “regulatory social policy and welfare are understood to downplay or deny structural understandings of social problems in favour of individualizing, pathologising and moralizing responses to poor people”. we would argue that the same is true for young women. especially we contend that responses to the challenges they face appear to be largely essentialised and individualised, that young women are pathologised through policy and interventions that are designed to help them (or at least potentially so) and that there is an underpinning moralistic (and paternalistic) stance which pervades such support systems despite the best intentions from those who intervene. this appears to be played out in the data in this study of which an interpretation could be that the young women are conforming to a relatively singular and prescribed formula for being okay, (read acceptable by, and within, wider society). such interventions are designed to encourage self-confidence, self-belief and resilience but may in fact, as hanbury and ronan (2014) argue, “play into the hands of a subtle and pervasive neoliberal agenda” (84). finally, we attest that interventions like project x serve to re-inscribe the hegenomic conditions of young women’s lives and neglect to address the social, economic and cultural context in which their lives are played out. in general, individualised interventions do not take into account the broader structural determinants that disadvantage young women nor do they challenge the received wisdom of accepted societal and gendered norms. reflection on limitations: there are a number of limitations that need to be reflected on in relation to this piece of work, the data generated and our interpretations of it. as stated, the data presented here were collected for a specific purpose related to the evaluation of project x. the purpose of the data collection was to evaluate the impact of project x on the young women that had been involved in it. the design and method was influenced by that purpose. the limitations of this are therefore acknowledged however, the evaluation was underpinned from the outset by a feminist perspective given the gendered nature of the work. the authors subsequently noted, with interest, that the discursive patterns in the resulting focus group data were worth a secondary analysis outside of the formal requirements of the evaluation and in relation to the issues discussed in this paper. however, the young women were not specifically asked for their views about neoliberalism and individual neoliberal salvation through a gendered intervention | 137 responsibility during the focus groups, nor were they involved in the subsequent analysis and interpretation of the data as can be done when undertaking a coproductive approach. the interpretation of the data is therefore solely our own and we are cognisant of the potentially problematic nature of this power dynamic given the perspective from which we were operating. in addition, we acknowledge that the relatively forced structure of the storyboards could produce certain types of narrative. it is, of course, entirely possible that the young women themselves would not concur with our interpretation of their stories given that we have undertaken the secondary analysis as an academic endeavour. references aapola, s., gonick, m. & harris, 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(2001). ‘girls at risk?’ probation journal, 48(2), 86-92. neoliberal salvation through a gendered intervention | 141 book review: colonized classrooms | 329 colonized classrooms: racism, trauma and resistance in post-secondary education by sheila cote-meek. halifax & winnipeg: fernwood publishing, 2014. $24.94 canada, paper, isbn: 9781552666531. pages: 1-198. reviewed by jiyoung lee-an1 in colonized classrooms: racism, trauma and resistance in postsecondary education, sheila cote-meek raises a fundamental question: how do/can aboriginal students and professors contend with ongoing colonization taking place in canadian university classrooms? to answer the question, the author first examines challenges and dilemmas that aboriginal groups who are constructed as 'inferior and unintelligent' racialized subjects face in canadian university classrooms. not only does the author reflect on some of the dilemmas and challenges faced by racialized subjects, but she also pays attention to the struggles and resistances including thought-out personal strategies in response to racism and violence in university classrooms. the author goes further in her analysis by providing practical advice for teaching and learning about colonization as ‘difficult knowledge’ in mixed classrooms. difficult knowledge in university classrooms includes not only the history of colonial violence against aboriginal people and social trauma, but also individual encounters with such violence and trauma in their lives. to convey difficult knowledge without re-traumatizing the colonizer/colonized relationship, the author suggests transformative pedagogies such as ‘communities of memory’ as a space where remembrance is valued with community support, ‘a holistic model of education’ that pays attention to the mind, body, emotion and spirit of a person who experiences violence, and ‘red pedagogy’ which focuses on the quest for sovereignty, and indigenous knowledge and praxis. one of the significant contributions of cote-meek’s book is that she constructs a non-linear understanding of history by placing the postsecondary classroom as a space where past, present and future are concurrently alive. in other words, the author emphasizes that history is not a fossilized form of knowledge; rather, it still affects the ways in which the lives of aboriginal groups are understood and taught in university classrooms. the author emphasizes that colonial violence is not a past product, rather it is still imposed on aboriginal students’ lives in the 1 jiyoung lee-an is a graduate student in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university. 330 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages classroom as a form of discrimination, silencing and denial. what is taught and learned in classrooms are thus struggles for history and memory in order to rectify both a colonial past and present colonialism. for aboriginal groups, education is an element of the ongoing violent colonial regime, which undermines aboriginal peoples' self-determination and ways of knowing (163). cote-meek suggests traditional aboriginal cultural practices should be negotiated outside of the classroom, rather than simply creating a setting in the classroom where culture is consumed by non-aboriginal students (145). the author describes in detail the classroom dilemma in which both aboriginal educators and students are expected to practice aboriginal culture. while both aboriginal students and professors have challenged the racialized constructions of themselves as cultural/spiritual beings, these students and professors have at the same time put significant efforts into revitalizing aboriginal cultural strategies and recovering forgotten histories. the author warns that emphasizing aboriginal culture as a source of empowerment may contribute to perpetuating existing constructions of aboriginal people as the ‘cultural native,’ in contrast to what these cultural practices intend to contribute. in chapters 3 and 4, cote-meek provides detailed narratives of dilemmas, limitations, frustrations and constraints that aboriginal professors and students have experienced in the classroom such as the denial of racism, being silenced, degradation of native studies, and demeaning the intelligence of native students (100-112). the author interprets these narratives as negotiating practices. however, the author does not clearly define what these negotiations actually mean and these interpretations aim to achieve. also, she does not explain how these negotiating practices specifically differentiate from other aspects of individual practices such as opinionating, adapting, complying, and resisting. not only would this book benefit aboriginal students and professors, but also non-aboriginal students and professors who participate in native studies. in particular, this book does provide insight into non-aboriginal professors who either advertently or inadvertently, fall into a trap of reproducing colonized practices. cote-meek criticizes these professors with examples such as asking an aboriginal student to provide a cultural ritual for the class that was predominantly non-aboriginal (143). she emphasizes the responsibilities of professors to provide anti-racist and anti-oppressive pedagogies in four main ways. first, that professors acknowledge that aboriginal students come to the classroom carrying a huge burden of racialized construction and ongoing colonial violence. book review: colonized classrooms | 331 second, that professors engage in holistic pedagogical approaches which focus both on the emotive aspects of students and critical understanding of colonialism. third, a proactive prevention of racism by engaging with any forms of racism and violence. and fourth, the necessity of creating safe and supportive spaces solely for aboriginal students. throughout her book, cote-meek borrows many ideas from antiracist and feminist scholars such as bell hooks, patricia hill collins, and minh-ha trinh, who have provided critical insights of other racialized groups and, in particular, struggles of women of color in north america. cote-meek's research focus on aboriginal groups is meaningful given the lack of academic attention the topic has received. however, where cotemeek does not succeed is in presenting how experiences of aboriginal groups are different from those of other racialized groups. many racialized experiences and their resisting strategies overlapped and are interchangeable with the experiences of many other racialized groups. while she does briefly mention the connection (130), she does not develop this point further. touching upon the complicated relationships of other marginalized and racialized groups in the classroom beyond the binary construction of aboriginal and non-aboriginal would have taken her analysis a step forward. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review marx, capital, and the madness of economic reason, by david harvey. new york: oxford university press, 2018. $24.95 u.s., hardcover. isbn: 978-0-19-069148-6. pages i-xiv, 1-236. the ways of the world, by david harvey. new york: oxford university press, 2016. $19.95 u.s. paperback. isbn: 978-0-19-069051-9. pages i-viii, 1-376. reviewed by jeff noonan1 david harvey is one of the world’s best known radical intellectuals. he has achieved this status despite the fact that his discipline – geography – is one which, like my own (philosophy) everyone has heard of but would be hard pressed to define if asked. if i were asked, i would risk defining geography as the study of spatial relationships. since there is no “space” apart from things and people standing in spatial relationships, geography and philosophy have one more thing in common: anything at all can become an object of geographical or philosophical study. harvey first came to prominence within geography circles as a student of the formation of urban spaces. his studies of ghetto formation in baltimore made him realize that what happens in cities cannot be understood apart from what happens within the economic system generally. his interest in particular places thus led him to the study of global political economic dynamics at a time when cities were becoming central to new capitalist growth dynamics and ‘globalization’ was on everyone’s mind. over the course of a career that has spanned more than forty years, harvey has proven that one cannot understand the production of space without understanding the dynamics of capital accumulation. he has also shown that one cannot understand the dynamics of capital accumulation without understanding “the production of space,” as his predecessor in the marxist study of cities henri lefebvre put it. harvey has thus used historical materialism to revolutionise the discipline of geography, and geography to broaden the focus of historical materialism. spaces, like societies, have a history, and historical materialism is an incomplete science if it cannot explain spatial dynamics and relationships. yet this rather arid description does not do complete justice to his achievement. harvey does not simply interpret the formation of space, his goal is to change it. his alternative future draws on the deepest ethical resources of the marxist tradition to show the multiple ways in which capitalism constricts and suffocates human potential and how a democratic socialism would better satisfy the natural and social conditions of human self-realization in the concrete spaces in which our lives are lived. the two most recent books i will discuss, marx, capital, and the madness of economic reason (2018) and the ways of the world, (2016) could both be read as theoretical resumes of harvey’s life work. the first re-vindicates the importance of a marx’s critique of political economy, while the second collects ten seminal essays from harvey’s career. 1 jeff noonan is professor of philosophy at the university of windsor and a long-time activist in the canadian socialist and academic trade union movements. his most recent publications are the troubles with democracy, (london: rowman littlefield international), and embodiment and the meaning of life (montreal: mcgill-queen’s university press). www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research marx, capital, and the madness of economic reason marx, capital, and the madness of economic reason can be read as both an introduction to marx’s critical political economy and an argument in support of a socialist alternative. in comparison to other introductions to marx’s political economy (the most recent that i have read is johan fornas’s capitalism) harvey’s is lively, readable, and accessible. he ably explains the key concepts of marx’s political economy as these are developed in all three volumes of capital. his eloquent writing style and penchant for the apt explanatory metaphor brings the rather dry categories of capital volume two to life, and his application of marx’s work to explain the 2008 financial crisis demonstrates the continued relevance of marxist political economy. harvey stresses the need to treat all three volumes of capital as a unity. “the point of considering capital as a totality [with three phases of valorization, realisation, and distribution] is precisely to recognise how the different phases presuppose and prefigure the others. while each phase is autonomous and independent all phases are subsumed within the movement of the totality” (p.45). too many marxists, he argues, focus exclusively on the production of surplus value through the exploitation of labour at the point of production, ignoring how surplus value is realized through profitable sale, as well as how the surplus must be distributed amongst all sectors. harvey’s totalising perspective (which was also marx’s) allows him to take into account aspects of the contemporary capitalist landscape that were not essential in marx’s time but are today. realizing surplus value as profit requires the timely sale of product, which makes transport and advertising vital components of the capitalist economy and not secondary features. competition between countries, regions, and cities for capital investment drives public and private investment in the built environment. the dynamics of urbanization in the struggle for locational advantage therefore cannot be ignored. harvey is not afraid to note where marx’s nineteenth century categories need to be developed. while marx laid bare the economic pressure that drives capitalists to substitute technology for labour, he could not have foreseen the extraordinary achievements of computing and communication technology. harvey’s contemporary reflections on marx’s understanding of the relationship between economic competition, technology, and human well-being are a high point of marx, capital, and the madness of economic reason. he reminds the reader that marx was not a technological determinist and he did not understand socialism primarily as a technoscientific achievement (p.112). consequently, historical change is the outcome of a complex interplay between economic forces generated by competition, technological changes, class struggle, myriad fight backs against oppression, and international clashes between nations struggling for hegemony and control over resources. “revolution is an on-going process of movements across the different moments.” (p. 115) the preponderance of one factor will produce one-sided change; a revolution requires the coherent integration of changes in all spheres, not all at once, but over time. harvey’s expanded historical materialist understanding of social change serves the purpose of exposing the potentially world-destroying logic of capitalism. the second half of marx, capital, and the madness of economic reason is an ethical-political argument in favour of the need for a socialist alternative. this part reminded me of his earlier work seventeen contradictions and the future of capitalism, as well as andre gorz’s 1989 classic, the critique of economic reason. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research harvey reiterates the argument he made in seventeen contradictions and reinforces (without directly referring to him) gorz’s main point: capitalism reduces the world and human life to a onedimensional economic reason which treats both as quantified inputs into a process that must expand or die. reforms cannot stop the madness, and in any case, never go so far as to free human life-horizons and potential from subservience to capital. the madness is thus that planetary life-value is subordinated to money value. harvey does not always avoid the problems of conceiving socialism in terms of the production of use-values for the satisfaction of wants (p.165). capitalism produces more than enough use-values: its madness lies precisely in the fact that much of the use-value it produces has no or negative lifevalue. only once we conceive social problems in these terms can we understand the madness of capitalism at its full ethical depth. even though harvey is a social scientist by trade, i have no compunctions reading his work as, essentially, an ethical critique of capitalism. i use “ethics” in its classical signification to refer to an overall pattern of living (as opposed to an abstract set of rules that must be obeyed). the problem with capitalism is the way of life it imposes upon people. the solution to that problem is to create the conditions for another way of life. harvey has sounded this bell throughout his career, as the 10 essays that form ways of the world prove. ways of the world the retrospective will allow readers new to harvey’s body of work to trace his development. the essays are linked together by an abiding methodological concern to develop historical materialism to better account for the spatial dynamics of capitalist development and the complexities of political identity formation. i will focus on the four essays which i think add the most to our understanding of both of those problems. “monument and myth” was originally published in 1979. on the surface, it tells the fascinating tale of the construction of sacre coeur in paris in the years following the paris commune. it reads like a sebald novel, narrating human events through a commentary on spaces and places: a radical tourist’s guide to revolutionary montmartre. on a deeper level, it brings together the more technical problems of the urbanization process under capitalism with harvey’s appreciation for the complex interplay between economic forces, political movements, and symbolic dimensions of identity formation. in a masterfully written 40 pages, harvey captivates the reader with the story of the religious-political-economic intrigues which shaped the history of sacre coeur’s location and construction. the process reveals the deep connections between the french roman catholic church and high finance. harvey’s relating of the tale uncovers the links between international power politics (the franco prussian war) and the urban workers movement in paris, and the problem of the conflict between patriotism and class, town and country. harvey reveals that whether we are talking about 1870 or 2020, the look of cities is shaped as much by capital as it is by architects. to be sure, the symbolic dimensions of urban space are not mechanical functions of capital’s interests, but nor do they spring freely and fully formed from planner’s brains. the essay recapitulates some of the more technical problems of urban geography explored in the three essays www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 4 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research that precede it in the book, but the eloquent articulation of the theory through the narrative of sacre coeur’s construction makes the theory more accessible to non-experts. the second essay i want to discuss is the more philosophical “the nature of environment.” harvey tackles a perennial problem of historical materialism: the relationship between material nature and human social activity. i did not find his solution entirely satisfactory, but he frames the problem with great clarity. harvey picks up from the position that marx and engels first articulated in the german ideology where they chastise feuerbach for treating nature as some fixed reality independent of human activity. harvey develops its implications for the understanding of the politics of environmentalism. “it is fundamentally mistaken,” he argues, “to speak of the impact of society on an ecosystem as if these were two separate systems in interaction with each other. the typical manner of depicting the world around us in terms of a box labelled “society” in interaction with a box labelled “environment” not only makes little intuitive sense … but it also has no historical justification” (p.190). it might not make intuitive sense if we just look out of the window of our home to a park created by landscape architects or a street laid down by a construction crew. but does it have no historical justification? marx and engels (and the lukacs of history and class consciousness) are correct as regards the surface of the earth and the troposphere: their manifest forms and chemical composition have been shaped by human social activity. but there was a time before human beings. human life is the product of billions of years of physical, chemical, and evolutionary processes. these persist as material conditions of life and material constraints on the rationality of social forms. (in the history of marxism, the neglected work of sebastiano timpanaro has urged historical materialists to pay attention to the importance of this material nature). harvey might not disagree (after all, he argues that capitalism is “mad”). nevertheless, i found that here he over-emphasises the social at the expense of the natural, only some aspects of which are structured by human activity while many remain fixed material realities to which human beings must adapt or die trying to ignore them. the next paper i want to discuss is arguably harvey’s most important political essay: “militant particularism and global ambition.” like “myth and monument,” it weaves a political philosophical argument around a concrete narrative: harvey’s involvement in a struggle to keep a car plant in oxford open. harvey’s connection to the struggle started as an academic commitment to help edit a collection of essays and interventions, but it brought him into the heart of a political debate between the militant shop stewards leading the fight to keep the plant open and others (with whom he identified) who wondered whether the local struggle was doomed by global trends. harvey does not shirk from acknowledging the contradictory tendencies at work in any political struggle and does not pretend that he has all the answers. those of us who live in industrial cities (i live in windsor) will understand the dilemma harvey faced. plant closure is a permanent threat to workers’ livelihoods and is often a catalyst for political action that aims to keep the plant open. one’s head might understand that no amount of effort will keep plant’s open that have become uneconomical, but one’s heart has to side with the workers whose income depends upon their job at the factory. these contradictions between local places and global forces and workers’ short-term interests in saving the jobs they depend upon and mobilising for a longer-term struggle for a new society pose the most difficult problem socialists face. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 5 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the urgency of workers’ needs for employment can overwhelm them, making all talk of a radically different society sound like the pipedreams of academics who remain comfortably employed. at the same time, if no one puts forward long-term goals, then the ravages that capitalism wreaks on local communities will continue. harvey explores these contradictions with great subtly and insight (helped in his reflections by raymond william’s novels) but does not arrive at a settled conclusion. the final essay that i will discuss, “capital evolves” returns to the problem of the environment-society relationship. i find the position that harvey adopts here more consistent with a (historical) materialist understanding of nature. he does not reject the view articulated in “the nature of environment” that society and the natural world are not completely separate realities, but he does clarify that there are natural processes that operate independently of human will and that exert independent force on human social behaviour. “what we call “nature,” while clearly affected by capital accumulation (habitat and species destruction, global warming …) is most certainly not determined by capital accumulation. evolutionary processes on planet earth are independently occurring all the time” (p.308). the on-going pandemic provides a clear illustration of the problem for historical materialists. covid-19 may have spread from animals to human beings because of the proximity of human settlements to habitats that used to be more isolated, but urban expansion did not produce the disease, but rather the mutation of existing coronaviruses. likewise, the severity of its impact has been intensified by decades of cuts to public health care systems, but treatment and cure requires scientific knowledge of the physical structure of the virus, the biochemistry of vaccines, and so on. nature and society interpenetrate, but the methods and forms of knowledge required to understand each (and, therefore, to develop a comprehensive understanding of our human biosocial reality) are distinct. a world to win in order to change society for the better, socialists must understand all of the forces that work to keep society as it is or manage change in a capitalist direction. science and technology are fetishized under capitalism, but that does not mean that their achievements are reducible to capitalist ideology. their effects on social life are themselves determined by political struggle. but political struggle is not simply a problem of the formation of global class consciousness. people mobilise around any number of issues that affect their lives relative to the identities that shape that experience and affect how others and social institutions treat them. marx assumed for the most part that as economic crisis grew more severe, differently identified people would identity more and more as workers. the “evolutionary trajectory of capitalism,” according to harvey, is determined by the interaction between seven different “activity spheres”: “technologies and organisational forms, social relations, institutional and administrative arrangements, production and labour processes, relations to nature, the reproduction of daily life and of the species, and mental conceptions of the world.”(p.309) coherent systemic change requires that misalignments between any one and the others have to be overcome. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 6 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the struggle of the oxford car workers illustrates the problem. technological and organisational changes altered the production and labour process upon which the reproduction of their daily life depended. their conception of the world made them decide to fight for the jobs. a more abstract theoretical focus on long-term trends made that struggle appear as a hopeless rearguard action, but in the absence of being able to offer real material support to the day to day lives of workers, that mental conception of the world sounded hopelessly academic and out of touch. i imagine there are many socialists who would dispute with harvey that the problem of political change is really not as fraught and complex as it seems. for that type of socialist every mass mobilisation is a harbinger of the final revolution. but these mass mobilisations have exploded repeatedly over the past thirty years: the anti-globalisation protests of the 1990’s, the mobilisation against us imperialism before the second gulf war, the arab spring and occupy, black lives matter. through it all – maddeningly – capitalism endures. all the evidence therefore suggests that fundamental change is a long-term and open-ended grind. harvey’s work is an indispensable contribution to understanding the world that we need to change, as well as an honest and illuminating analysis of the challenges that stand in the way of success. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review new directions in the study of african american recolonization, by beverly c. tomek and matthew j. hetrick. gainesville, florida: university press of florida, 2017. $89.95 u.s., cloth. isbn: 9780813054247. pages 1 – 356. reviewed by evan c. rothera1 too often, for a number of reasons, scholars rush through colonization when they teach u.s. history. the american colonization society occupies a minute or two of the survey class – a brief rise, limited appeal, and a period of decline after william lloyd garrison thunders onto the scene. however, new directions in the study of african american recolonization offers a strong caution against dismissing or minimizing this movement. beverly c. tomek, currently associate chair of humanities at the university of houston-victoria and matthew j. hetrick, who teaches history at the bryn mawr school, have assembled an excellent volume that challenges much of what scholars think they know about colonization. as tomek notes in the introduction, “when garrison declared war on the acs, he focused on a national organization whose appeal cannot be measured simply by examining its membership rolls and lists of donors” (1). tomek, hetrick, and the contributors demonstrate that colonization was a national movement with significant resources and that it lasted beyond the end of the u.s. civil war. part i explores missionary work as central to the colonizationist impulse. gale l. kenny argues that colonizationists used a missionary sensibility to portray themselves as christian humanitarians, the acs as part of a broader missionary movement, and colonization as the best course of action. this missionary sensibility did not disappear from the antislavery movement and “long after the acs faded away, missionaries and humanitarians would continue to draw on colonizationists’ ideas of sympathy, race, distance, and religion as they appealed to americans to feel and act on behalf of suffering others” (46). ben wright notes that colonization appealed because it held out the possibility of salvation for africa and moral redemption for the u.s. conversionism united a broad and unwieldy, but nevertheless influential, coalition of black and white people as well as men and women. conversionism, he asserts “united colonizationists in a way nothing else could. that their millennial vision proved a mirage does not mean we can dismiss it” (66). andrew n. wegmann and debra newman ham focus on liberia. wegmann analyzes lott cary a black baptist from virginia. cary was “the first settler-missionary, the first public figure who in action and thought saw liberia as a black christian nation, who supported black-led missionary work and civilization through christian ideas rather than western images” (73). ham illuminates the often-overlooked efforts of african american women settlers in liberia. she finds women motivated by the great commission and christian ideals and contends that their contributions “were vital for the development of liberia” (105). part ii explores the political and diplomatic dimensions of colonization. david f. ericson, daniel preston, and nicholas p. wood examine the domestic politics of the acs. ericson argues that the acs “may have been a private organization, but its african colonial enterprise was not a 1 assistant professor, department of history, university of arkansas – fort smith. email: evan.rothera@uafs.edu about:blank about:blank www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research private project. almost from its inception, the society enjoyed the financial support of the federal government” (111). daniel preston zeroes in on james monroe. he finds that monroe shared most of the prejudices of his contemporaries, that he worried about slavery as a threat to the nation’s domestic tranquility, and that he provided support as president and after his presidency to the acs. wood acknowledges the power of conversionist language to hold together a wide coalition of people and the acs’s desire to make colonization a government program. he then illustrates how the debates over the admission of missouri into the union “destroyed the cross-sectional trust essential for a federal colonization program” (146). many white southerners, in other words, became concerned that colonization was too dangerous to entrust to the federal government. also in this section, several essays take an international approach. brandon mills notes that while liberia was one of the first attempts by the u.s. to engineer democracy abroad, “it would be difficult to argue that the united states actively pursued an expansionist agenda in liberia” (166). bronwen everill compares liberia and sierra leone, noting that they were “both part of a wider movement to establish models of extraterritorial representative citizenship in the period following american independence” (200). in both colonies, authorities attempted to create a dependent, but free, black citizenry. sebastian page concludes the section with an account of the acs during the u.s. civil war. he contends that the perseverance of colonizationists “demonstrates the recurrent appeal of escapism in reconciling the founding promises of the united states with the realities of prejudice, exploitation, and the preeminence of states’ rights in determining blacks’ status” (219). nevertheless, colonizationist projects faced obstacles such as gaining consent. part iii posits new answers to old questions about colonization. eric burin argues against the old idea that colonization was little more than a pipe dream. in reality, he demonstrates, through a compelling account of the negotiations over the cape mesurado contract, that “liberia’s establishment was much harder than historians have supposed” and that scholars err in overlooking colonizationist accomplishments. andrew diemer asserts that “colonizationists’ rhetorical use of european immigration helped render antislavery politics all but impotent before the 1850s, by moving away from the gradual but coercive model of emancipation toward an entirely consensual one” (250). robert murray links colonization studies and whiteness studies and argues, fascinatingly, that africans in liberia labeled african americans as white. thus, whiteness became “a shifting cultural category reflecting one’s association with the culture, education, literacy, dress, language, and christianity of the united states or europe” (270). matthew j. hetrick examines the historical memory of paul cuffe. all the complexity about cuffe’s life – such as fighting for african american equality while seeking a home in africa – disappeared. later accounts made him into “a horatio alger story of success through hard work and perseverance” and ignored his interest in colonization. phillip w. magness returns to an argument he has made before – that “lincoln plainly did not cede his longstanding interest in compensated emancipation after january 1, 1863” (304). magness discusses why scholars focus so closely on lincoln and colonization. he is no doubt correct to criticize some analysis of lincoln’s attitudes toward colonization, but, at the same time, he occasionally stretches some of his evidence and asks it to bear more weight than it can. nicholas guyatt concludes the volume with a call to restore colonization to its proper context. colonization “allowed antislavery moderates to acknowledge popular prejudices against racial mixing, and to avoid commitments to www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research equal citizenship after emancipation” (343). thus, he contends, what should trouble us is “their enduring confidence that they could promote grand schemes of segregation while insisting they weren’t racists” (344). anyone teaching the first half of the u.s. history survey, or classes focusing on the civil war and reconstruction, the antebellum u.s., or the age of jackson, should read this book and grapple with the arguments found therein. tomek and hetrick offer a powerful reminder to take colonization seriously and illustrate how much more research needs to occur on this subject. one hopes that the authors will assemble another volume that thinks about colonization with an even broader lens, particularly colonization schemes in latin america. against the commodification of water cameron fioret1 in how does the global order harm the poor? matthias risse (2005) writes that “resources are collective property of humanity” (351) under “egalitarian ownership” (359). i intend to build on risse’s argument and show in this paper that water must not be commodified. rather, water must be open to all regardless of one’s ability to pay for it; it is a necessity and because of its natural occurrence in nature is part of original common ownership. the consequences of commodifying water are destructive for both humanity and the environment. this includes, for example, water being denied to people and sold to corporations in southern ontario and california. if current trends continue, it is estimated that upwards of two-thirds of all people will be affected by water shortages (fanelli, 2014, 18), with the commodification of water exacerbating such scarcity. anyone who needs water should be able to access it without cost. although the right of necessity only applies in particular times of need, water is something that is needed at all times, so the right of necessity applies to it at all times. water is fundamental to the function of not only communities but of the individual; if there is no water there is no life. due to this necessity of water for life, there is a moral right to water. the lack of a basic human right and necessity – the right to, and necessity of, clean water – causes great physical and psychological harm. the necessity of water is the hinge on which all premises and arguments swing in this essay because human survival depends on access to water. risse and collective ownership concerning necessities a contemporary account of common ownership is found in the works of mathias risse. risse appeals to the importance that resources, like water, have for human survival. in common ownership of the earth as a non-parochial standpoint: a contingent derivation of human rights, risse (2009) writes: “first, the resources of the earth are valuable and necessary for human activities to unfold; and second, those resources have come into existence without human 1 cameron fioret is a phd student in the department of philosophy at the university of guelph. email: fioretc@uoguelph.ca against the commodification of water | 283 interference” (285). thus, egalitarian ownership is the most equitable model of ownership, where all citizens of earth have a “symmetrical claim” to the earth’s resources (285-86). for risse (2012), humans have rights not because they are human, but because they have global responsibility as part of the global order (21). understood this way, water is market-inalienable since the life of all (interconnected) species depends upon it. stressing the importance of water and the preservation of life as a moral responsibility can contribute to people acting in a responsible way when consuming water. natural common ownership rights generate associational rights regarding the global order of individuals on earth (risse 2009: 293). risse (2012: 34) explains that “the flip side of these responsibilities is a set of rights individuals hold vis-a-vis the global order. this is how reflection on ownership of the earth leads to membership rights in the global order, and to human rights.” people exist on earth together and they are associated with one another and rely on the same necessities. the global responsibility that risse writes about concerns the responsibility of individuals to not destroy or waste resources, and to abide by collective ownership regarding necessities. collective ownership entails collective responsibility, a responsibility that all people have towards each other as part of the global order. the rights entailed by collective ownership are explained by risse (2012: 34): [collective ownership rights] generates two fundamental guarantees whose realization is a global responsibility: first, states and other powerful entities must ensure their power does not render individuals incapable of meeting basic needs; second, they must create opportunities for them to meet basic needs. such guarantees neutralize the dangers that the global order poses for individuals’ co-ownership status. the first guarantee leads to rights to life and bodily integrity as well as to individual liberties…and political rights…and due process rights. the second guarantee leads to the need for a guaranteed opportunity to enjoy a minimally adequate standard of living, as far as food, clothing, and housing are concerned. all people “should have an equal opportunity to use commonly owned resources” (risse, 2012: 129). collective ownership is the “right to use something 284 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice without a right to exclude other co-owners” (risse, 2012: 128). the crux of collective ownership is that “the distribution of the original resources and spaces of the earth among the global population is just only if everyone has the opportunity to use them to satisfy basic needs…” (risse, 2012: 128). collective ownership is an expression of the rights people have as inhabitants of a space together, and as inhabitants who require necessities within such a space. people have the right to basic necessities for life, and such rights are individual rights that one holds against others; however, collective ownership expresses or represents such rights in a political system, or system of ownership. risse’s (2012: 127) offers three points for why all people collectively own the earth: the resources and spaces of the earth are valuable to and necessary for all human activities to unfold (the earth being humanity’s natural habitat, a closed system of resources everybody needs for survival); the satisfaction of basic human needs matters morally…and that, to the extent that resources and spaces have come into existence without human interference, nobody has claims to them based on any contributions to their creation. in a nutshell, all human beings, no matter when and where they live, have some kind of claims to original resources and spaces that cannot be constrained by reference to what others have accomplished. collective ownership, as described in the above paragraph, overcomes issues in joint ownership. in joint ownership, one must discuss obtaining one’s necessary goods with all members of the ownership group through a “collective decision making process that would have to be concluded to the satisfaction of each coowner” (simmons, 1992: 360). in common ownership, however, one can obtain the necessities required for survival without the consent of others because such consent is already implicit in the very structure of common ownership. as long as no more than one’s fair share is taken, where the amount does not infringe on the rights of others, one is within one’s right to take and consume. one’s “fair share” is the amount one can use to sustain one’s self without harming another’s ability to use their “fair share” as well. collective ownership means a necessary resource is held cooperatively and does not require permission from all members to use it, as long as one does not take too much of the resource so that against the commodification of water | 285 one impinges on the rights of others. impinging on the rights of others entails harming one’s ability to use or consume one’s fair share of a resource, harming one’s ability to sustain one’s self. criticism can be levelled against common ownership, specifically risse’s formulation of common ownership. arash abizadeh (2013: 36) contends that risse’s conception of the “common ownership of the earth” does not satisfy what ownership is because ownership is more than merely use rights (p. 36). collective ownership entails that all people must get their sufficient amount of basic necessities for life, lest people’s lives be resigned to desperation and constant need. in a “common ownership of the earth” model, people must not be allowed to take an amount so large that it infringes on the amount others can get to survive. ownership is more than use rights, but ownership does include a use rights dimension. common ownership extends to more than use rights by identifying the rights people have regarding basic necessities for survival. not only are people to use only as much of a resource as they need, without infringing on the rights of others, people have the right to the very necessity itself because the necessity makes life possible. in other words, it is a lifesustaining right that goes beyond mere access to, but rather guarantees noncommodified use of. one has the moral right to use water and thus exclude others from consuming the water one consumes; however, one does not have the right to prevent others from using a common source of water. water qua water should be commonly owned and used by anyone, and it should only be excluded from others once it is used and not for reasons of commodification and profitmaking. the denial of water to those who cannot afford to pay for it is dehumanizing domination; it shackles one’s survival to their ability to afford a basic necessity (radin, 1996: 77). commodification of water introduces dehumanization as domination, subordination and objectification within a populace. the commodification of a basic necessity for life also commodifies the lives of the people who need the necessity. the price placed on lives is objectification and it subordinates those in need to those who privatize and possess water. risse (2005: 360) writes that the existence of natural resources is “nobody’s accomplishment,” and “who gets them should not depend on accidents of space and time.” it is irrational to assign private and exclusive ownership to the basic natural resource of water because it is original and exists without human creation, invention, or labour. the originality of water means that it should remain in original common ownership and not as a commodity. 286 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice the labour that goes into laying pipe, digging wells, and extracting water might be enough for one to argue that such labour makes it owned by the labourer; thus, water can be privately owned and commodified. however, the moral right and obligation that people have to access water, derived from the necessity of it for life, ought to overwhelm the right-through-labour that a proponent of lockean ownership might proffer. dehumanization as subjugation and subordination are results of water’s commodification. risse’s (2005) idea of “uncompensated exclusion” in how does the global order harm the poor? describes the subordination and subjugation people face as part of the global order when resources are excluded from those in need, and not recognized as being commonly owned. risse (2005: 351) writes that “resources are collective property of humanity, [but] countries possess unequal amounts of resources and it is on the basis of this unequal distribution that they obtain their relative economic standing within that [global] order.” uncompensated exclusion refers to wealthy nations exploiting poorer, resource-filled nations without proper compensation leading to improper distribution of resources that should be commonly owned. risse (2005: 364) explains the implications of uncompensated exclusion: i submit that the most plausible version of spelling out uncompensated exclusion is that the global order harms the poor because the relative economic standing of countries within it is determined by the fact that some possess more useful resources than others, although humankind owns those resources in common. such a disadvantage for some through unilateral exploitation by others is unacceptable because all are co-owners, and thus violates the ownership-rights of those whose interests are so thwarted. commonly owned uncommodified water could allow people to satisfy their basic needs of survival. the “core purpose” of rights, and of common ownership, is to allow people to meet their basic needs of survival (risse 2009: 289). since water is a basic necessity for life, it is best utilized in a system of common ownership that allows all people to use it freely and openly. membership rights for people as part of the global order guarantees that people will be able to satisfy their basic needs and live life minimally at a subsistence level. the right of necessity takes precedence over private property arrangements when people do against the commodification of water | 287 not live at a subsistence level, and do not have necessities for survival (risse 2009). the case for decommodified water my own argument as to why water must be decommodified incorporates common ownership and the right of necessity with risse’s appeals to human necessities for common ownership. water must be free and not commodified because it is essential to human existence. as a necessity for survival, it should be open to all regardless of the ability to pay. water occurs naturally – it is original and without human creation or labour – and it fits naturally in the initial human situation of common ownership as common property. the right of necessity is one justification for why water must be open to all regardless of payment, and the right of harmless use can justify the need for equitable use of water. both rights bind behaviour; even though i am entitled to access water without cost, i am not entitled to pollute or destroy it in such a way as to foul water or another’s use of water. the right of harmless use follows the right of necessity. the right of harmless use should limit the scope of the right of necessity because when one uses a harmful or wasteful amount of a resource, one infringes on the rightful ability of others to take what they need to survive. i do, indeed, have a right to another’s property if i need another’s property to survive, but i do not have the right to use so much of it that i hurt his or her ability to use the resource and survive. why should water not be commodified? because commodification does not align with, or respect, the necessity of water and the natural stipulations of common ownership that water falls under. as a necessity for life, it follows that there is a right of necessity to take one’s fair share. that which is needed for life is correctly called a basic necessity, and such basic necessities must be freely open to all. the right of harmless use tries to ensure that enough water is used to satisfy survival, and that a wasteful amount is not procured in order to respect the right that others have to basic necessities of common ownership. the right of harmless use limits one to an amount that is not wastefully excessive because such wastefulness would affect the rights of others, as well as their ability to acquire such resources. the right of harmless use allows one to use the property of another so long as it does not harm him or her; however, if one takes an excessively wasteful amount of another’s property, one hurts the other property owner. wastefulness harms others by denying others the right to the resource being used. collective ownership highlights the bond of necessity that people 288 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice share in their common environment. there is moral significance concerning resources that are necessary for life. it is in common ownership that the distribution of necessary resources is done efficiently and sufficiently due to the stipulation that all people, regardless of need, must only take as much as they need and nothing more. the denial of water to those who cannot afford water, for example, is present in southern ontario. nestlé purchased a water well in aberfoyle, ontario in august 2016 strictly for commercial use (leslie 2016). nestlé can take up to “3.6 million liters of water a day for bottling” at the aberfoyle site, taking water away from the local township and the “traditional territory of the six nations of the grand river, 11,000 of whom do not have access to clean running water” (leslie 2016). riaz tejani (2004: 146) writes of the harm caused by such commodification to first nations people, arguing “corporate interests enter with their own notions of value that say a natural resource – seeds, water, mineral – can be made into private property and sold back to the people who depend on them.” tejani (ibid) continues, noting that the “local cosmology is one that sees the value of these resources in precisely their common, public nature…in many cases, the inability of indigenous peoples…to value their resources in accordance with the logic of capital has led to the dehumanization of those peoples.” in other words, the commodification of water has dehumanized people and caused them to be expelled from their lands. such examples abound, as is the case in detroit, michigan where those who cannot afford to pay for water have been denied (feeley, 2016). through the first few months of 2014, “detroit's water and sewerage department began turning off water utilities for overdue or delinquent accounts. since april of 2014, the department has cut off the water for nearly 3,000 households per week” (shastry 2014). approximately 100,000 people are being denied water because they cannot afford it. for some residents, there exists an intractable choice between paying for clean water or paying for food. water bills in detroit are some of the highest in the united states because the water infrastructure of detroit has not changed over the last six decades, despite the population declining from two-million people in 1950 to around seven-hundred thousand today (shastry 2014). like detroit, flint, michigan has also been afflicted by a lack of access to clean water. a combination of racialization and austerity policies has left flint, like detroit, ravaged by lead-poisoning as neoliberal policies of privatization have proliferated (moyo 2017: 233, 240). against the commodification of water | 289 the privatization of water has also exacerbated california’s ongoing challenges with water usage. although governor jerry brown has declared the recent drought a state of emergency, nestlé, for example, continues to bottle spring water (koba 2014). nestlé can circumvent state regulators because the company’s sources of water extraction are on a native american reservation, which lies outside state regulations. nestlé’s permit to bottle water in california expired in 1988, yet nestlé still bottles 705 million gallons of water per year (schlanger 2015). bottled water sourced from watersheds and springs that were once public are now privatized and exclusive when bottled, and every drop of bottled water is one drop less for local residents, flora, and fauna (gumbel 2015). bottled water has also been sourced from municipal water supplies, such as walmart sourcing water from sacramento’s municipal supply, resulting in formerly public water being privatized (moore 2015). commodifying water has not resulted in the alleged powers of the market allocating a resource more effectively, on the contrary water shortages are increasingly used to corner the market as control over necessary resources are wrestled from local councils accountable to democratic controls and into the hands of corporate boards of directors. representatives of the united nations have declared the denial of water to those in need as “an affront to human rights” (shastry 2014). as diane feeley (2016: 305) has argued, the denial of water to those in need in detroit runs counter to un documents that state “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right…is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights.” water, treated as common property, would overcome the denial of water to those who cannot afford their water bills because the necessity of water for human life would be realized and placed above profit-making, and thus not denied on the basis of the ability to pay. indigenous people’s, racialized communicates, lowand increasingly median-income households are struggling with the consequences of water commodification. according to a 2016 human rights watch report, for example, drinking water advisories have been issued in “134 water systems – 90 of them in ontario province – in 85 first nations reserves across canada…many of these drinking water advisories for reserves persist for years, sometimes for decades.” the crisis is systemic and pervades first nations communities across canada. in california, surface water in lakes and rivers is being depleted to such an extent that groundwater is now the source of water extraction. groundwater, a “savings account” for when convenient surface water 290 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice is not available, exists nearly 1,200 feet underground in some locations, and it is being used for commercial use (stahl 2014). groundwater was once an insurance-like public good, but it is now being used for commercial purposes, such as bottled water. groundwater is now the lifeblood of inefficient crops, such as almonds (stahl, 2014), where almond farming uses approximately ten percent of california’s water “at a rate of roughly one gallon per almond” (gumbel 2015). sixty percent of california’s water use is from aquifers, whereas aquifers provide thirty-five percent of the water used by humans worldwide (frankel, 2015). as mike davis (2006) vividly detailed in planet of slums, hundreds of millions across the globe suffer from water contamination from raw sewage and toxic chemicals, including the threats posed by the spread of diseases. unicef, for example, estimates that up to 80 percent of deaths from preventable diseases are caused by poor sanitary conditions. such strife and environmental degradation are the results of water commodification and privatization. conclusion in a 2012 report, the us director of national intelligence, stated that within a decade "many countries important to the united states will experience water problems…that will risk instability and state failure.” the report went on to note that the "use of water as a weapon…” would become a reality (stahl, 2014). likewise, the “un’s annual world water development report predicts that as reserves dwindle, global water demand will increase 55 percent by 2050. if current usage does not change, the world will have only 60 percent of the water it needs in 2030” (gander 2015). to control water is to control the lives of those who need it. the abuse of water, by restricting it from those in need and funneling it through corporate coffers, is contrary to collective ownership and the responsibilities within common ownership. publicly owned and controlled water recognizes the inherent need that all people have for water. because water is a necessity that exists independent of human creation and existence, all original necessities must be commonly owned and subject to the right of necessity. commodifying water so that only those who can pay for it can have access to it has been destructive for all life-systems and the earth as a whole. to avoid further conflict and destructive consequences for humanity and the environment, water must be decommodified. the problems plaguing water are solvable, but this requires radical solutions – that is to say, getting to the root of the problem. the market-based status quo is against the commodification of water | 291 unsustainable in the present, assigning millions around the world to water insecurity and imperiling the well-being of eco-systems services around the world. references abizadeh, a. (2013). a critique of the “common ownership of the earth” thesis. the ethics forum, 8.2, 33-40. davis, m. (2006). planet of slums. new york: verso. fanelli, c. (2014). climate change: ‘the greatest challenge of our time.’ alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 25, 15-32. feeley, d. (2016). detroit: realities of destructive accumulation. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 27, 300-312. frankel, t. c. (2015, june 16). new nasa data show how the world is running out of water. the washington post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/16/newnasa-studies-show-how-the-world-is-running-out-of-water/ gander, k. (2015, march 20). world could face water 40 per cent shortfall in just 15years, un report warns. the independent. retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/world-could-facewater-40-per-cent-shortfall-in-just-15-years-un-report-warns10122857.html gumbel, a. (2015, april 19). california drought spurs protest over 'unconscionable' bottled water business. the guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/19/california-droughtprotest-bottled-water human rights watch. (2016, june 7). make it safe. canada's obligation to end the first nations water crisis. https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/06/07/make-it-safe/canadasobligation-end-firstnations-water-crisis#page koba, m. (2014, august 7). california drought can't stop production of bottled water. cnbc. http://www.cnbc.com/id/101892496#. leslie, k. (2016, september 22). nestlé outbids small ontario municipality to buy well for bottled water. the globe and mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/nestle-outbidssmall-ontario-municipality-to-buy-well-for-bottledwater/article31999831/ 292 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice http://www.cnbc.com/id/101892496 moore, a. (2015, may 8). wal-mart bottled water comes from sacramento municipal supply. cbs sacramento. http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2015/05/08/wal-mart-bottled-watercomes-from-sacramento-municipal-supply/ moyo, o. n. (2017). a beautiful community, but a troubled city: flint’s water crisis. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 28, 233247. radin, m. j. (1996). contested commodities. cambridge: harvard university press. risse, m. (2005). how does the global order harm the poor? philosophy & public affairs, 33(4), 349-76. risse, m. (2009). common ownership of the earth as a non-parochial standpoint: a contingent derivation of human rights. european journal of philosophy, 17(2), 277-304. risse, m. (2012). global political philosophy. new york: palsgrave macmillan. schlanger, z. (2015, april 13). nestlé's california water permit expired 27 years ago. newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/nestles-california-waterpermit-expired-27-years-ago-321940 shastry, n. (2014, august 19) shutoff: detroit’s water war. vice news. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvvt03lix0w simmons, a. j. (1992). the lockean theory of rights. princeton: princeton university press. stahl, l. (2014, november 16). depleting the water. cbs news: 60 minutes. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/depleting-the-water/ tejani, r. (2004). the vanishing point: humanity, vision, and value theory in the age of economic globalization. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 20, 132-148. against the commodification of water | 293 book review: the new old world | 449 book review the new old world by perry anderson, new york: verso press, 2009. $39.95 us. isbn: 978-1-84467-312-4. pages 1-561. reviewed by aaron henry1 perry anderson’s the new old world (now) interrogates both the historical processes through which europe emerged and the forces that structure the european union (eu) polity today. in some respects, the historical scope, detail, and length of the text make it an impossible object to review beyond a mere recap of broad themes. so what is the theme of now? in two sentences: ‘europe is dead. long live europe!’ the focus of now is the tumultuous history of europe, its declines, its renewals, and its periods of malaise. anderson’s primary argument is that europe has now entered a period of economic, political, social, and cultural decline. although decline is the guiding thread that binds this study together the structure of now and its method of analysis is very much in the character of comparative politics. now is laid out in four parts: the union, the core, the eastern question, and conclusion. anderson’s focus is predominately on five member states – france, germany, and italy are used to analyze the established core of europe; turkey and cyprus are mobilized not only to tilt the geo-physical borders of the eu but also point to the ahistorical nature of ‘integration.’ while in these individual studies anderson develops a number of insights and detailed historical biographies, each study is used to demonstrate the stagnation or decline of the eu polity. in what increasingly appears as an endangered method, anderson examines his case studies through a historical materialist analysis. he deftly weaves economic transformations to ruptures in intellectual conditions his analysis of germany from philosophy to visual art is most striking (266-277) cultural developments and sea-change shifts in national politics. the linkages and relations that anderson offers between these spheres are well constructed and ensure that the 1  aaron henry is a phd candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university. his research focuses on ‘the district’ as a practice of colonial and state rule in the early nineteenth century. 450 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education ‘economic’ does not emerge as an overly determinative site. drawing on statistics of economic growth, education and art, anderson argues that europe is adrift, economically stagnant, intellectually torpid and falling under the thumb of american imperium. though spanning the registers of the historical, economic, social and cultural, anderson’s erudite focus on the intellectual history of europe is where the work shines brightest. the conclusion of the project consolidates this theme and reveals much of anderson’s purpose in now. now concludes with a discussion of the displacement of christendom within europe, a shift, anderson notes, that was not fully solidified even in the seventeenth century. working from this transition, anderson focuses on the making of europe in both ‘left’ and ‘conservative’ traditions. this intellectual history combs the lives and works of voltaire, rousseau, kautsky, saint-simon and schlegal, and monnet, to name but a few. this conclusion serves to align the text’s case studies with a much longer historical trajectory. as anderson outlines, the intellectual history of europe was one characterized by disequilibrium and equilibrium, a progression of historical forces pushed by ‘left’ and ‘right’, without either ever obtaining intellectual hegemony (504). rather, it is in the course of struggle that europe inherited the bedrock of ideas that would cyclically create and destroy it. knowing his audience, anderson does not belabor this point. the history of europe is as much bound up with the intellectual tradition of dialectics, as it is dialectical. the primacy anderson accords between productive and vibrant intellectual thought underscores his preoccupation with the declining intellectual culture that has taken hold of europe today. although the technocratic class is a running theme in now, the subtlety with which it is handled gives it an ethereal character throughout the text. of course, europe is no stranger to specters so it is not surprising that anderson’s account contains a few of them. we are given glimpses of its processes of class formation, a neoliberal social form born of 1980s restructuring. we see its affects on political ingenuity and its formative role in the disconnect between democratic participation and the supranational offices of the eu; however, much like in political practice, the technocratic class rarely shows face. indeed, while the subtlety that anderson develops in this treatment can be appreciated, foregrounding the intellectual hegemony of the technocratic class would have served to bind some elements of the project closer together. furthermore, in a lengthy chapter entitled “theories”, anderson devotes nearly sixty pages in what appears to be a literature review. book review: the new old world | 451 however, on closer inspection anderson develops an important point here. the chapter demonstrates that the best work in european studies is the product of american political scientists. thus, eu funding bodies have generated an insular ‘techno-academocratic’ culture that is aloof to “wide public consciousness” and is in terms of its style and purpose “as technical as the regulations and directives of brussels [itself]” (80). thus, the review of the literature on the european union doubles as an indictment of the colonization of the intellectual conditions in the eu by a technocratic culture. sadly, this provocation remains underdeveloped and the reader is left with the task of mining out its significance to the project at large. written before the 2008 crisis, now also suffers from the absent presence of the financial crisis. to his credit anderson tries to rectify this and considers the implications of the crisis in an extended conclusion. however, this absence coupled with the rigor of the earlier analyses gives anderson’s discussion comparatively little weight in relation to the rest of the text. the nuance of the analysis and the promise for a future politics comes through at the very end of the book. anderson does not mince words. europe’s cultural, economic, intellectual and political decline has sent it adrift. its place in world politics is, at the moment, aligned with a foreign policy agenda that is related to, if not in the immediate family of, the united states. for anderson though not all is lost; decline holds a special place in europe’s intellectual history. now suggests perhaps as they have done in the past, the destructive forces of economic recession, political malaise, cultural atrophy and intellectual inertia, may “reignite the engines of political conflict and ideological division that gave the continent its impetus in the past” (547). the longstanding disequilibrium, the dialectic, of the old world that past generations sought to conquer, to institutionalize or balance, and in so doing further propelled, have renewed europe before. thus, europe’s current languid state may be the forces of its very renewal. after all it is too much, anderson reminds us, to settle on the “idea that time and contradiction have come to a halt” (547). anderson does persuasively demonstrate that social, economic, and political systems in eu states have weakened. however, as anderson’s analysis of europe’s intellectual history reveals, the meaning of decline has roots that extend beyond some form of empirical state. rather, to borrow from weber, decline is a ‘demonic concept’; once summoned its powers extend far beyond the empirical conditions it is put in service of representing. indeed, decline is a political imagination that serves to 452 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education superimpose ‘the’ historical moment on the present, and historically its political currency does not fall evenly on left and right. offering little to the left, discourses of decline were central to the ideologies of ‘national rebirth’ and ‘new order’ that shored up authoritarian regimes of the 1930s. moreover, writing from the hundred-year anniversary of the start of wwi, it would be remiss not to add that if ‘decline’ revved the engines of political conflict that renewed europe, these engines churned not only on ideas, but on blood and bone as well. such is the melancholy truth of historical development without guarantees. c'hem ins alternatifs the changing configurations of inequality in postindustrial society: volunteering as a case study fiona martin university of melbourne the following paper brings together an empirical and theoretical investigation of humanitarian volunteer work and the post-industrial political condition. as a study of volunteers who work in inner-urban melbourne, australia, providing food, clothing, referrals and support on a 'food bus' for homeless youth, it addresses the basic question of what motivates and sustains their commitment. in doing so, the paper also investigates the interrelationship between humanitarian volunteer work and the processes of structural adjustment that have redefined the responsibilities of the state with regard to issues like poverty and homelessness. the primary aim of the paper is not to chart the historical relationship between volunteering and the welfare state per se, but to consider, more generally, the significance of humanitarian volunteer work in the contemporary social world. in distant suffering: morality. media and politics (1999), french sociologist luc boltanski points out that an increasing number of non-governmental organizations have begun to fill in for lacking essential services in many poorer parts of the world. in the process, he observes, they have incited intense debate around the purpose and efficacy of their actions. he suggests that this is because the emergence of a "nascent humanitarian movement" since the 1970s plays on two tensions in contemporary western societies. the first is between communitarianism and abstract universalism and the second lies at the heart of our "culture of authenticity," wherein humanitarianism seems the ideal means to cultivate a moral self through absorption in one's own pity at the spectacle of an other's suffering. boltanski goes on to unearth the foundations of humanitarian ideology and to explore contemporary humanitarian action without, he writes, "falling into either a smug celebration of the return to kindness or an easy denunciation of the perverse spectator" (xiv). following boltanski's volume 19, 2003 79 alternate routes cue. this paper seeks to challenge both romantic celebrations of volunteering as well as cynical charges that volunteers are essentially self-satisfied "do-gooders." it also confronts the proposition advanced by political analysts of "social decapitalisation," taken up recently by governments in australia and elsewhere, that voluntary associations strengthen collaborative engagement in political life. the volunteers whose narrative accounts make up the body of the case study are represented here as they describe themselves, as everyday people trying to assist a particularly socially and economically marginalised population. at the same time, the interview material below reveals their obvious powerlessness to alleviate the kinds of problems, like homelessness and drug addiction, that working on the food bus exposes them to. most also hold out very little hope that these problems can or will be redressed by governments or community welfare organizations in the conceivable future. those who took part in the study continued to work toward their stated aim to help street kids while at the same time they claimed that nothing they do makes a visible difference in this regard. the question then, that underlies this paper on both a practical and theoretical level, is what motivates and sustains a commitment of this kind? i pose this question in a particular social context, a context that volunteers themselves characterise by increasing social suffering and growing uncertainty that anything can be done to change it. the following attempts to make sense of volunteers* enduring commitment to the food bus by analysing the terms in which poverty is framed in postindustrial welfare states. it also considers whether volunteer work can be explained according to the prevalent logic that it strengthens one's sense of place and purpose in "the community/' ultimately, this paper explores the possibility' that humanitarian volunteer work is, instead, a response to increasingly polarised social and economic inequality. i propose that volunteering takes on a particular meaning in the post-industrial social world as a medium through which people can witness and make sense of lived experiences far removed from their own. the following argues that volunteers continue to work on the food bus. despite its shortcomings, primarily because it allows them to encounter those who share the same city, but few of the same opportunities and luxuries. i conclude that in the context of restructured welfare states like australia, humanitarian volunteer work marks a parho volume 19, 2003 chem ins alternatifs ticular and increasing response to the disjunction between the pleasures of freedom and the risks of poverty. the study during the group interview to become a volunteer on the food bus, we were all asked to divide into pairs and resolve a hypothetical moral dilemma: the world is about to end, but luckily a distant planet at our disposal can sustain human life; the problem is that only a limited number of people can be transported there in time. given a list of briefly described characters who ranged from a nineteen year old heroin user, to a doctor in her mid-forties, to a twenty-five year old aeroplane mechanic, we tried to choose those who would best establish human civilisation anew. eager to come up with the right answer, we busied ourselves plotting procreation, health care, spaceship maintenance and as many other essentials for the survival of the species as we could negotiate, only to learn that the object of the exercise was to demonstrate that no human life is worth more than another and that each of the characters should be considered a suitable representative of humanity. the point was to draw attention to the fact that no one had elected "the junkie." to dismiss a person's potential and worth on the basis of her heroin use was somewhat problematic for a group of people hoping to go out and help street kids. it is also ironic since it is precisely the question of what sets a "junkie" apart that volunteers seek to address in their own way. throughout the course their interviews, they consistently cited the discrepancy between their lot in life and others' untold suffering as the primary reason why they volunteer. they describe being moved into action by questions like "why do my children have a happy home while others' do not?" and "why should i be so depressed when i could get out there and help others much worse off than me?" in fact, having a duty to make amends for their relative good fortune was one unwritten axiom all the volunteers i interviewed shared. given that they also had all been working on the food bus for a significant period of time— one year in a few cases, two to five in others, and as many as ten years in another case — there must be something about the experience of volunteering on the bus that brings them closer to satisfying this sense of duty. this discussion is based on in-depth interviews with ten men and women who i worked with as a volunteer in on the food bus. an outreach volume 19, 2003 81 alternate routes program for street kids in melbourne. open family australia, a national, non-profit organization, initiated the program as part of their long-standing mandate to "improve the well-being and self worth of alienated and excluded australian street children, through unconditional support, wherever and whenever possible, with the view to reconnecting them to the community" (open family australia, 1999). when open family decided to stop running its bus program in 1998, a small group of volunteers campaigned to take it over. the food bus is now entirely volunteerrun, operating only under the auspices of open family. it stays afloat with funding from a local private hospital and donations from the melbourne city food bank. when volunteers commit to making regular outings on the bus, they commit to becoming a recognisable and dependable presence on the street. the design of the program is premised on the idea that street kids will eventually come to know individual volunteers and, ideally, develop meaningful relationships with them. volunteers set out with the belief that through these relationships, they can supply some of the emotional and material resources that street kids need to change their lives. the expectation is that by becoming a trusted figure in street kids' lives, volunteers might help restore them to "normal" life. yet, volunteers' accounts of their work chart a significant departure from what most set out to accomplish: namely bettering the lives of street kids by offering them non-judgemental assistance in the form of friendship, food, clothing and referrals. this is an ideal that most volunteers uphold. by their accounts, however, the majority of people who attend the bus are those whom volunteers affectionately call "oldies" — older men and women who might be classified as "dispossessed," but who are not in a "high risk" category as defined by the bus program. more significantly, most volunteers claimed that whatever it takes to make a tangible difference to either "streeties" or oldies is beyond their reach. for example, anne, one of the most experienced volunteers i interviewed, had been working in the bus program for five years. she signed on expecting that she might be able to help street kids in some way and in the hope that "if we go there then we can catch them and we can change it." she wanted to do something for street kids given the fact that her own three children grew up in a relatively secure, middle class environment. 82 l olume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs i suppose i wanted to find out about street kids and why they were out there. and having children of my own... and knowing there were all these kids out there who are really disadvantaged and thinking, "well why is this so?" and "maybe there's something i can do to help these kids;' early on, however, she found the experience did not live up to these expectations, and has since become cynical about the possibility that any volunteer on the bus program can actually "do something [to] change somebody's life." she now cautions, "if you're hanging out for that, you'll be waiting a long time." she recalled a recent occasion when she and another volunteer tried to approach a twelve-} ear old boy and his older sister, to no avail; "they were happy to take food, but literally did not want to talk." after countless experiences like this, she has become matter-of-fact about her ability to "do something." as she explains in reference to the twelve-year old street kid, ...all the motherly instincts came out [laughs] and i thought, "oh, the kid really needs to be looked after, he's so young." but i think i've got to the stage now where i thought, [sigh] "i really have done all i can do, i literally can't do any more..." for other volunteers the hope to "save" street kids is similarly confounded by their practical experiences working on the bus. john started volunteering on the food bus because he enjoyed his previous work in a training program for unemployed youth. he appreciates that the program provides an opportunity for oldies to "meet other people like themselves" and it fills their "bellies for a night." but, he explains, "i just feel that they're keeping the target group away from the bus." he also recalled numerous occasions when he's tried to help people access more systematic help, but was unable to because of chronic shortages in melbourne. volume 19, 2003 83 alternate routes the way the bus is i don't think i make a difference at all, actually. but i think, when i got into it i thought i had the potential to make maybe a little difference, but the reality is that i actually don't... and that's partly because a lot of people don't care, they're just there to mingle with each other and eat food. and when i do get some one who genuinely needs help, they might see that i genuinely care about them and want to help them, but the services let me down and them down more to the point and i can't help them so off they go. he describes the frequency of experiences like this as very upsetting. if you've really tried to get some one a roof over their head for a night, you can't do it... it's a terrible feeling... you feel terrible and you say "i'm sorry" and give them a blanket if you've got one, and off they go out on the street and that's, that's terrible. john goes on to explain that he has "actually made a difference' ' to street kids only a few times, but then, not knowing where they ended up still worried him. he testifies that even if more street kids approached the bus, and even if they could be placed in beds at night, he would still feel powerless to make a real difference: i would probably feel like... a little bit yeah... a bit of difference. but the other thing is too, with the heroin addicts, the feeling i always get when i'm dealing with heroin addicts is that it's a lost cause... like i just feel like, "ah god..." you know, "this person's sort of..." well i certainly don't feci like i can make a difference to them. i don't have the skills and the knowledge... or else i feci i make a minuscule difference to them. issues like accommodation shortages and the number of oldies who use the food bus are not the biggest problem for john. the biggest problem h4 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs is being unable to address the underlying problems that yield young people's homelessness and heroin addiction in the first place. most volunteers are similarly affected by beholding the facts of life on the street. some keep diaries of their experiences on the food bus and several said they are unable to sleep when they come home from their fortnightly shift. discussing the various disturbing events and situations that volunteers had witnessed over the years took up a significant portion of the interviews. for dana, who initially doubted whether she would be able "to stomach" volunteering on the food bus, it is the "absolutely reprehensible and dreadful situation" of homelessness and the hopelessness that it implies that upsets her most. as she describes, but if you're living under a bridge or in the bush somewhere, how on earth can you ever have hope? you might as well go on taking the drugs and hope that one day you do overdose. you might not have the guts to do it right then and there. because, really you know, it's the most pitiful thing... i just can't... can't imagine that pain... dana recalls one night in particular when a young woman came onto the bus "blasted off her brains" with her five young children: she'd obviously been shooting up and the kids were running amok and i thought, "1 don't understand what's going on here." and once they would have moved in and taken the children from mum... i'm not sure if that's the answer, that's not what i'm saying, but for her to be sitting there and us serving her up toasted sandwiches, you know, i can't comprehend it. i can't reason it out. whether or not it's an answer i'm looking for that doesn't exist. i don't know. maybe this is where the non-judgemental thing comes into it, where you don't make an assessment... but five children, one would be enough, but five children running around, and one just a babe in arms. and then where were they living? the stories above illustrate more than the limits of the food bus; they also convey volunteers* anxieties about whether they are doing the right volume 19, 2003 85 alternate routes thing for oldies and street kids. volunteers struggle to understand how they ought to feel in situations when confronted with the limits of nonjudgemental support and "toasted sandwiches," situations where questions like where people actually sleep at night become more pressing. as nell, a kindergarten teacher in her mid-forties, elaborates when she explains why it makes her uncomfortable when friends congratulate her for doing "such a good thing:" i'm not doing it for a "good thing," because it's a sad thing really... they don't understand that at times, there's things that i've seen that i won't tell anyone... just the terrible abuse that some one you know has been through or whatever, you just feel so, so down. and you give some kids a blanket at the end of the night, knowing that they're going to sleep down at the yarra river and you know, it's bloody freezing cold or they'll probably get harassed or bashed up... we're driving back to, you know, a comfortable bed and place and good food... i mean it sounds blase when we talk about it now. but when you're out there and it's cold and you give them a blanket and you see them walking off and you think "shit..." i mean, that is hard. but we can't do any better. we're giving a blanket. like mam other volunteers, although she ultimately concludes that the program "does serve a purpose," nell can only do so by referring to specific circumstances and small, but, tangible offerings. these confounded hopes and expectations stand at significant odds with popular perceptions of volunteering. in australia, it is common practice for volunteer organizations to play up the personal rewards of volunteering to recruit new and to retain old volunteers (baldock, 1998). although comprehensive studies in the united states have begun to ask why self-interest is the most common logic currently drawn on to make sense of volunteer work (eliasoph. 1998; wuthnow. 1991). most academic research focuses on what volunteers "get out of" the experience. for example, empirical studies into aids-rclatcd causes conclude that people arc more likely to volunteer when "collective identification" in their volunteer organization is high (simon. stunner and stevens. 2000) or when they perceive the recipients of their assistance as "extended 86 volume 19, 2003 chemins altematifs selves" in some way (kayal, 1993). as snyder and otomo (1992: 230) argue, the good (and perhaps romantic) intentions related to humanitarian concern may not be strong enough to sustain volunteers who are faced with the tough realities of their activity . studies of volunteers in charitable organizations similarly conclude that when volunteers draw on explicit moral sentiments to describe the meaning and function of their work, they "co-construct" these values in order to define "for themselves" a sense of "moral personhood" and belonging to a "moral community" (allahyari, 2000; paolucci, 1995). the general consensus is that voluntary commitments reflect the "shrinking circle of concern" (eliasoph, 1998) around oneself and one's community that characterises contemporary social and political life in general. american political analyst robert putnam (1995) and the authors of habits of the heart: individualism and commitment in american life (bellah, madsen, sullivan, swidler & tipton, 1985) argue that volunteering is critical to maintaining the foundational democratic principle of civil engagement. they are concerned by americans' level of direct engagement in politics falling steadily and sharply since the 1970s, which putnam suggests corresponds to an as-profound decline in membership in civic and fraternal organizations. governments and politicians have also begun to make a case for the civic virtues of volunteering. the united nations* international year of the volunteer occasioned a number of initiatives, grants and reports to chart ways for existing groups and organizations to recruit more people to their causes based on the principle that "volunteering is a fundamental building block of civil society" (universal declaration on volunteering, 2001). governments now take an active interest in promoting and overseeing the voluntary welfare sector in particular. studies by brown, kenny, turner and prince (2000) in australia and ullman (1998) in france suggest that a great deal of faith is invested in volunteer welfare organizations to remedy the "crisis of the state" to provide social welfare. brown, kenny, turner and prince suggest that in australia, the voluntary welfare sector currently plays such a fundamental role in the volume 19, 2003 87 alternate routes management and administration of social sen ices that notions of charity have become almost obsolete. the case at hand certainly complicates either notion, that volunteering is self-interested or that it can revive the post-crisis welfare state. if and when volunteers do explain their sense of purpose in self-interested terms, it appears to be a way of reconciling themselves to what they cannot accomplish. for example, roberto, a student in his mid-twenties, insists that he volunteers for his own benefit and "no one else's" to set himself apart from volunteers he claims come out of their enclaves of privilege "to serve their duty to the community once a month." notably, roberto also sets himself apart from other volunteers by disclosing that his own personal experience with heroin makes it easier for him to "break the barrier" with street kids. even though he believes that he has something to offer street kids, roberto still finds it necessary to repeatedly claim that he cannot "change anything" by working on the bus: i don't think i have any sort of great ability or belief that i'm going to change anything personally. i think for me, it's just very interesting to find out more for myself and get a better understanding of what's happening in the world, so to speak. exposure to the realities of poverty and homelessness makes believing in one's "great ability " to change things the only thing worse than claiming to know what being homeless or poor is like. because they regularly confront situations where what they have to offer appears hopelessly inadequate, volunteers" relative privilege becomes more pronounced by working on the food bus. the experience also raises more questions about volunteers* usefulness to others than it answers. many assume personal responsibility for the fact that the bus program does not "do enough" and argue, "we've got to find a better way." main have also given a great deal of thought to what might more effectively "catch" street kids and "save" them. but the question remains, how do we make sense of the fact that volunteers have chosen to address their concern for street kids through the bus program when they themselves disclaim their work as a kind of temporary stop-gap measure for much more profound problems? in order to answer this question, we need to look more closely at the social context of volunteers" work. in particular, we need to explore how the causes and consc88 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs quences of problems like homelessness are configured in the contemporary social and political imagination and whose responsibility they have become. the unmaking ofwelfare and the end ofthe social in work, consumerism, and the new poor, zygmunt bauman (1998) argues that the role of the welfare state in industrial society, to cultivate a well-educated, robust and self-confident labour force and keep the supply of surplus labour in "constant readiness," has been made redundant with the ascent of post-industrial capitalism. he defines the welfare state as the product of "a historically occasioned encounter between the interests of capital and the moral sentiments of society at large" zygmunt bauman (1998: 78). the development of an economic order that has less and less use for surplus labour has summoned what he calls the "abrupt emergence" of consensus against the principle of "collective responsibility for individual misfortune." for bauman this has had two major consequences: the ascendancy of consumer society and the impoverishment of politics. as he explains, the waning benefits that the contented majority receive from the restructured welfare state diminish the imperative to actively engage in political life. consumer desires, then, become the main conduit of social mobilisation and integration and the "royal road to conflict resolution and order maintenance," creating ever new needs to "clamour for" zygmunt bauman (1998: 53). yet, the principal subject of work, consumerism and the new poor is the changing role of the poor members of the citizenry. since the 1970s, official discourses on the poor have ceased to focus on the question of "unemployability," and have increasingly set upon an "alien" and "hostile" group of people "who are beyond classes and outside hierarchy, with neither chance nor need of readmission": the underclass. according to bauman's study, the underclass encompasses a heterogeneous group of "juvenile delinquents, school drop-outs, drug addicts, welfare mothers, looters, arsonists, violent criminals, unmarried mothers, pimps, pushers, and panhandlers" (1998: 66). bauman argues that because poverty is no longer the subject matter of social policy "there is but a tenous and easily crossed line dividing the recipients of welfare from drugpushers, robbers and murderers" (1998: 77). furthermore, he remarks, volume 19, 2003 89 alternate routes the abnormality of the underclass phenomenon 'normalizes' the issue of poverty... it is precisely because the underclass is such a big and urgent problem that the bulk of people living in poverty are not a great issue that needs to be urgently tackled. against the backdrop of the uniformly ugly and repulsive landscape of the underclass, the 'merely' poor shine as temporarily unlucky but essentially decent people who unlike the underclassers will make all the right choices and eventually find their way back into the accepted boundaries of society. (1998: 71) bauman's analysis is ratified in the australian context by criminologist robert white (1996). white argues that in australia, one of the most rapidly restructured welfare states in the world, increasing numbers of people are not simply peripheral to the labour market, but entirely excluded from it. they, in turn, experience increasing levels of social and economic marginalisation, which white defines as the "complex process of stigmatisation and social regulation" that the experience of poverty, unemployment and depending on "handouts"' involves (1996: 1 1 7). he characterises the decline of the australian welfare state by a widened gap between rich and poor, higher unemployment, and specific social policies like adopting remedial rather than preventative social and economic measures, cutting and limiting access to social support services, and offering less benefits and allowances to the unemployed. in addition, governments have tightened the coercive aspects of welfare provision like work, income, assets, lifestyle and attitude tests to establish one's eligibility for welfare support and the level one "deserves." white (1996: 129) explains that. for those who play by the established rules of the game the reward is a meagre sum with which to achieve a modicum of physical survival. however, for those who persistently find it difficult to succeed within the terms of the policy agenda, those who for example, find that more training does not necessarily guarantee greater employability, who refuse to accept the notion that welfare resources exist principally as a privilege rather than a right, or who exhibit high degrees of alienation, resentment, loss of faith in themselves 90 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs or the system, the status of being part of the underclass is an increasing reality in australia. these analysts illustrate how welfare policy now addresses poverty as a question of individual liability and responsibility. the ensuing underclass phenomenon is therefore both a condition of chronic structural inequality and a condition in which the poor struggle with the burden of reformation, the assumption that poverty is surmountable by anyone determined enough. as bauman (1998) suggests, in societies that value freedom of choice above all, societies where consumption is the measure of successful living, having diminished options to consume appears to be simply "choosing" another life instead. he writes, "if being poor once derived its meaning from the condition of being unemployed, today it is defined primarily as the plight of a flawed consumer' (1998: 1). but how so-called "successful consumers,'' or the contented majority, can come to terms with the idea that one might choose to be poor, unemployed or homeless is another question altogether. drawing on his previous work on "strangers" (1997, 17-34; 1995) bauman highlights that these kinds of anxieties are another by-product of consumer society'. in an era of unprecedented freedom to determine one's own life-founding identity—principally through the endless circuits of consumption—the underclass represent the fear that this freedom may be lost. bauman suggests that the way we deal with these anxieties is primarily to exclude the underclass, to relegate them to "no go areas"— which he points out are "no go out" areas for those who live there (1995, 13). the poor have thus been cast out of the social world that "the rest of us" share at the same time as they have been expelled "from the universe of moral obligation" (1997, 35-45). moreover, bauman (1998: 70) argues, poverty'' is now primarily the jurisdiction of penology and criminal law, in a society of free consumers, curbing one's freedom is impermissible; but so is, many would say, not curtailing the freedom of people who use their freedom to abridge other people's freedoms, by accosting, pestering, threatening, funspoiling, burdening consciences and otherwise making people's lives nasty. volume 19, 2003 91 alternate routes in other words, "nastiness" is a condition that agents of social control guard against on behalf of those with the freedom to consume. they, in turn, chose to avoid "nastiness" by moving into their own selective "no come in areas." governmentality theorist, nikolas rose (2000) offers a different perspective on social control and the new poor. like bauman, he contends that neo-liberal governments' "bewildering variety of developments in regimes of social control"— from increasingly severe "three strikes and you're out" mandatory sentencing to "therapeutic rehabilitation"—can best be described as "constant scrutiny of the rights of individuals to access certain kinds of flows of consumption goods; recurrent switch points to be passed in order to access the benefits of liberty" (2000: 326). unlike bauman. however, rose focuses on these "recurrent switch points," strategies and techniques of social control even more pervasive and panoptical than the prison-industrial complex. for him, the outcome of welfare reform is not exclusion. rather, its primary aim is what he calls "responsibilisation: to reconstruct self-reliance in those who are excluded" (2000: 334). he writes, ' w it is through moral reformation, through ethical reconstitution, that the excluded citizen is to be reattached to a virtuous community" (2000: 335). in his earlier work (1996, 1993), rose points out that issues like poverty, homelessness, and drug use have become the dominion of the community, the family, and the inner-lives of individuals. in the transformation of the modern welfare state, the subjects of government have changed. rather than citizens, whose social responsibilities are understood in terms of a system of obligations to 'society' regulated by the state, contemporary social subjects are now to be active in their own government. their responsibilities are understood in terms of allegiance to one's "networks of personal concern and investment" (1996: 336). rose asks us to consider, for example, the contemporary salience of the vocabulary of "community." the advent of community care, community workers, community safety, or the notions of "risk communities" and "ethnic communities" indicates a profound trans formation in ways of thinking and acting that used to be expressed in a social language. there has even been talk recently of a global, "democratic community." as rose explains, "it seems we arc seeing the emergence of a range of ratio92 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs nalities and techniques that seek to govern without governing society, to govern through regulated choices made by discrete and autonomous actors in the context of their particular commitments to families and communities," even, he argues, "where the allegiances presupposed do not immediately appear to exist" (1996: 330-331). rose's thesis seems to aptly describe contemporary approaches to governing certain problematised forms of behaviour as "community problems" and problems of the "ethical individual." his work helps explain the latest official answer to curbing illicit drug use and heroinrelated mortality in australia, the heightened public awareness of which has put significant pressure on the principal drug policy-making body in australia— the ministerial council drug strategy. early in 2001 they launched a $27.5 million advertising and information campaign to promote "the community," namely families, as "our strongest defence against the drug problem." the campaign featured blitz advertising on prime-time television over a period of two months, where one series of dramatic 'drug abuse' imagery, culminating with an adolescent boy being zipped into a body bag, was followed by a separate ad, in which sympathetic white, middle-class parental figures informed viewers "that every home in australia" would receive an instruction booklet on how to talk to children about drugs. on one hand, the campaign made a very palpable case for the federal government's willingness to tackle australia's illicit "drug problem," promoting its commitment to being "tough on drugs." on the other hand, it made clear that the onus is on individuals and families. the prime minister's opening declaration in the information booklet reads, "i believe the best drug prevention program in the world is a responsible parent sitting down with their children and talking with them about drugs" (commonwealth government, 1). such a campaign adheres to the federal government's consistent refusal to "send the wrong message" with regards to implementing drug policies, namely by rejecting proposals for safe-injecting rooms and heroin-prescription trials. the right message in the post-social order does indeed seem to be for the family and communities to assume responsibility to manage unruly and unsightly problems like drug use. the ethic and rationale of working on the bus program seems to conform to the systems of social control that rose describes as ever-more constitutive of subjectivity. volunteers might be understood as governed volume 19, 2003 93 alternate routes through the kinds of initiatives outlined above, through their sense of community morality and responsibility to help street kids. they might also be seen to be governing street kids' lack thereof, particularly in their efforts to restore street kids to "the community" by way of guidance and support. what rose and others (cruikshank, 1996; baidstow, 1994/95; cruikshank. 1993) bring to light is that governments and experts in postindustrial states attribute poverty to the order of the self rather than to the social order. from the sociologist's perspective, however, governmentality theory leaves little room to explore the contradictions and incongruities such a profound transformation produces. it also offers little in the way to demonstrate how strategies and technologies of social control operate at an everyday level. likewise, bauman's analysis of the anxieties that the underclass generate raises further questions about how everyday, "successful consumers'* respond to the existence of so many people who do not and cannot "live the dream."' volunteers talk at length about where street kids come from and why they live the lives they do. a recurrent theme throughout the interviews is the great divide between the privileges that volunteers enjoy and street kids' lack of basics like food and shelter. volunteers describe being bewildered by the fact that some people have so few opportunities to improve their lot in life. in fact, it troubles them a great deal. bauman suggests that the anxieties that the underclass generate are two-fold: they are "strangers" to be feared, and, at the same time, their very* existence challenges the supremacy of consumer society. the creation of an underclass not only merges the condition of being poor with criminal intent. it also relegates a large group of people to the status of being essentially dispensable. bauman convincingly argues that the main tactic deployed to deal with this problematic class of citizens is exclusion. volunteers' impulse to do the opposite—to come into contact with "strangers'*—seems then worthy of more in-depth investigation. it is to this task that we now turn. respect and reparation: volunteers mediated intents and purposes when volunteers talk about what the bus program docs accomplish they do so in relation to the personal and emotional repercussions of the problems—such as mental illness, drug addiction, family breakdown, parental drug use. neglect, and physical or sexual abuse—that they associate 94 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs with street kids and "oldies." alera, who says that the food bus does not even "come close" to its objective to help street kids, affirms that the program is ultimately worthwhile because of the positive impact "just listening" and "just caring" might have. as she elaborates in relation to a friendship she's formed with one of the food bus" regulars, i do think that by going out there, me being a nurse... and sitting down with neil for the whole night, because you know, you get your friends, and just chatting to him about things and him knowing that i accept him for who he is and i don't judge him or i don't say, "you should do this or you should do that." i just listen to him and talk to him and try and make it known that he's not worthless, he's a human being and he's no less of a person than anyone else walking down the street. i hope he knows that, and if he does then i think any one would get something out of that. i think being respected by any one is worthwhile. similarly eddie, who maintains that what volunteers can do for streeties and oldies is finite, offers this example of the program's value: it provides a meeting place for these people, somewhere to gather around. and it provides company for lonely people. heaps of lonely people in melbourne.... and it's great if you can provide... if you can talk to these people... a couple of years ago, we had a guy in his mid-thirties— he only came out at night because he was badly scarred— and one of the pretty volunteer girls sat down and talked to him for, you know, twenty minutes or something. made his night, because some one actually came and had a yak to him... so it does serve a purpose. it is plausible that volunteers reconcile themselves to these interpretations of what the bus program accomplishes in order to feel fulfilled and confident in the work they do. the prospects of providing food and clothes and friendship are certainly much better than saving lives. yet, one of the most common themes in volunteers" narratives is how streeties and oldies are sequestered to deal with their needs, worries, fears and volume 19, 2003 95 alternate routes insecurities ostensibly alone, with very little formal or informal support. as anne surmises after five years as a volunteer, i get the feeling with the kids, whatever background they've had. nobody loves them... i just presume they're there because home's an awful place. john also believes that a general lack of love and attachment sets young people on the path where he finds them. i mean, i've never had heroin, i wouldn't know, but i imagine what would drive someone to heroin is that you're just so unhappy, you just... you know, everything's wrong in your life and you're having such a shit time and you feel there's very few people... that really need you in the world or love you and you think 'there's an escape: 1 someone offers heroin to you and it's bloody fantastic... that must be what happens, i'd imagine. volunteers describe the loneliness and isolation that oldies face in similar terms. joseph, a volunteer in his mid-sixties, has become well acquainted with many older men who he says have "lost all their confidence." he recounts a story of one man in particular, who has lived in a boarding house since he lost his job, left his pregnant wife and their three children, and had the first of several "breakdowns" nine years ago. i asked him, "are you in touch with your wife?" he says. "she phoned me a few weeks ago." "is she with anyone else?" "no," he says. the eldest [child] is 22, the youngest is nine. "why don't you go back? they want you, your children." he says, "when i get my confidence back and i know i can support them." and that's the... 90% of the people on the streets will tell me that: "i want to get my confidence back." now, i don't know if they've or he's ever been on drugs or what... if heroin does that to a person. i just don't know. 96 volume 19. 2003 chemins alternatifs most volunteers believe that accommodation shortages, limited rehabilitation facilities, the closure of mental health institutions, and the fact that governments are not spending enough money on "these people" make the odds facing street kids and oldies insurmountable. in the case of street kids, it is particularly hard to imagine them finding a place to live or a job without more support. alera suggests that "growing up in a home that's totally destructive" might be "too much to undo." i mean, i know they have a choice, but that's just so far ahead of them. i'd just admire someone so much if they came from that sort of background, were on the streets, were using heroin, and got off it and went and did a degree or went and got a stable job... i just think that would be superhuman. anne goes further to place the problems she sees in a context of unpredictable society-wide upheaval. i suppose we're going through a great period of industrial change at the moment, a bit like the industrial revolution, where i think the whole world's turned upside down and you've got unemployment and things changing: there are no jobs for unskilled people, which puts pressure on poor families... i think it puts enormous pressure on them financially if they're unemployed— low self-esteem and that could be a problem for the children in that family, and i think that's a — because of the times we're living in at the moment, with all those unskilled jobs disappearing, i don't know what the answer is there either... i don't know how it will all sort out. i don't know, i can't see ahead to see how it will sort out, but i just feel it's a time of social change and we're all rocked by it. at a time when children, particularly the children of unemployed parents, are increasingly likely to stumble over the obstacles of inexorable social change, expecting "real" change seems as futile as trying to predict the future. volume 19, 2003 97 alternate routes given their sensitivity to the apparent hopelessness of the oldies' and street kids' situations, volunteers estimate the merit of their work in the currency of respect. they value the way the bus program occasions simple, but meaningful opportunities for streeties and oldies to be treated as "normal." they also appreciate that it sets up "a mobile community centre'" for people who might not have homes, a community, family, or strong friendship ties to mix together and to share jokes, ideas and opinions. as anne explains, we're there from the bus, you've got the oldies, who are perhaps living in a room somewhere, you've got the kids on the street. but they all come here and everybody mixes together... and they talk about what they want to, they put their point of view forward, they have something to eat, they might have a hug, they might have a laugh and then everybody goes back... to what they were doing before. volunteers consider giving streeties and oldies food and clothes and creating a time and space for them to enjoy themselves worthwhile primarily because it gives them "something they wouldn't have otherwise." they value the few opportunities they have had to form on-going relationships with oldies and street kids even more. as billy describes her effort to help an "oldie" she has become close to: we probably take it for granted that we can talk to our mum and dad, go and visit them on weekends— they perhaps don't. coming there and having a cup of coffee, talking to us, it's probably the highlight of their week, some of the time... you know, they come and tell you things like their father died or their mother died... i'm thinking of one person in particular, whose father's been very sick and he lost his mother at christinas... and i make a point of. a couple of weeks down the track | asking], "how's your dad going?"... and you know my daughter filled in for me a couple of weeks later and i said to her. "now just ask greg how his dad is." and when i went back a fortnight later, he was so thrilled... it was just that little bit of personal whatever. 98 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs anne also feels as though she made a difference to someone by offering him emotional support, this particular young boy who i got close to, his mother was an alcoholic and he'd been abused and drugged up and... he would say, "look, i know alcoholism is a disease, i know she can't help what she does, i know she can't help how she is," but underneath it there was this quiet, "but i just wish she'd love me." you know, you could just tell this kid was totally unloved and he desperately wanted... 'cause i'd say, "well, give me hug then" and he'd go all sort of gooey and then he'd give me the biggest hug ever... and he'd say, "oh all right then," but he'd give me the biggest hug ever. he just loved it. he just wanted to be hugged and loved and nobody— that's how it appeared to me— nobody had ever just loved him. while anne cannot stop someone's mother from drinking and she cannot find him a loving home, she can respond to his immediate muted loneliness. correspondingly, being a supportive figure for streeties and oldies is vital to her sense of purpose on the food bus. listening to volunteers talk about the causes and effects of homelessness, poverty and drug use, one hears distinct echoes of the social world that bauman and rose describe. the world, according to volunteers, is a place where poverty is not an external condition of unemploy ability . but an internalised condition of lacking confidence, being unloved or having "nothing to lose." in this world, volunteers" small efforts to repair the damage that "dysfunctional families" or generally "feeling shit" has done are important, even if the> cannot effectively "save" anyone. attending to the subjective causes and consequences of poverty , homelessness and drug use could further be construed as an effort to "responsibilise/" or what rose (1996: 347) calls "working with the abjected by virtue of their lack of competence for responsible, ethical self-management"'. yet, few volunteers took the personal causes of problems like drug addiction and homelessness to mean that, therefore, they are the fault of the individual. for example, alera attributes heroin use to the individual experience of depression. volume 19, 2003 99 alternate routes a lot of people on heroin have an underlying mental illness and they're just self-medicating because they're not from a society that says, "go see a psychologist or a doctor"... and i think they don't really acknowledge their feelings and their emotions. they just think, "well, i'm feeling like shit" and "i'll take this" and "it makes me feel better." so it's like a trap and it just keeps happening. but she also goes on to explain, i think there's steps in life— i don't want to sound like some sort of textbook— but for someone to be on the streets, there has to be a cause for that... so heroin's not really the problem i'm talking about... i just think, you know, unemployment, high expectations... i think you sort of are looked down on more if you're from the lower class and you have a lot more expectations to do something with your life. and even though society's wrong in putting those expectations on people and saying "this is what success is," it sort of, still happens. in other cases, when i asked volunteers why they think people live on the streets, they protested their ignorance in order to protect the privacy of the people they've met. billy maintains, "i don't know, i've often wondered. i mean just out of curiosity, because again... i don't judge them, so i don't really care." later she reasserts, "we shouldn't judge... we don't know what sets them... makes them rum to drugs or whatever." some volunteers considered talking about the oldies" and street kids' personal problems fault-finding, which was at odds with their aim to be non-judgmental. in these ways, volunteers did not give purpose to their work by drawing on the rhetoric of reformation—that they could and should correct oldies" and street kids' "problem behaviour."" rather, they spoke more fluently about volunteering in terms of reparation—that the work helps them better understand who street kids are. where they come from, and what they need. to illustrate the merits of the bus program they told sto100 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs ries about the small, but tangible gestures of respect, support and friendship that they have extended to street kids and "oldies." to illustrate what sustains their own commitment to the bus program, volunteers talked primarily about the value of simply coming into contact with street kids and "oldies,"* people who would otherwise remain a mystery to them. for example, pia, an ex-corporate controller in her late-forties says that until she started working on the food bus she lived in "a very conservative, narrow-minded world, where the things that the majority of society perceived as wrong, were wrong." she explains that when "you get a house and a mortgage" not much else concerns you. up until then i had no knowledge of any of this, couldn't care less. and when i started working as a volunteer, i just became very, very interested in the behaviour. because of having to acknowledge how so many people perceive their behaviour as very right even though the majority of society' is looking at it as out of control. becoming more curious about "behaviour" on the food bus prompted pia to quit her job and study psychology full time. likewise, dana explains that at first, volunteering "absolutely blew her mind apart" because "there's a lot of us out there who haven't got any idea what's happening in our community." she says that she did not expect to be able to handle such a "heavy scene." volunteering has not taught her how to "handle" the street scene, but rather that "you can't make a hard and fast rule about anything." as they say, you know, we can't be judgemental, can't be threatening in any way... i used to be really hard-nosed about injecting rooms— i was black and white about it: "take these needles away from them, throw them into rehab, this is what's going to happen" and, you know, "slap them around the ears a bit" and "you'll do it, this is what's going to happen and you'll end up in jail with the murderers... otherwise you get on with it!" of course it's not like that, it's nothing like that... you have a very different perspective when you're not involved in it. volume 19, 2003 10 j alternate routes volunteers value the "very different perspective" that working on the food bus offers them. some stand up for street kids to friends, co-workers and family members based on their experiences working on the bus program. alera described how the other nurses that she works with treat heroin addicts like "animals who don't realise what they are doing." she is attentive to the very human anguish that having to steal or pawn goods in order to buy heroin creates, explaining, "you hate doing and it tears you apart, but you do it anyway." anne similarly describes how the "reasonably important," wealthy men and women that her husband works with often make comments like, "you make your own luck in life." she says that they have got no idea, ...that these people are— that they live these lives, they don't know where they're sleeping, where they're eating and they have to grab the moment as it comes to sleep or to eat or whatever, and you can't fit them back into a normal, everyday life and this is why. for some volunteers, bearing witness to systemic marginalisation renders the idea that you make your own luck in life an outright fallacy. for most, working on the bus program means coming to respect the subjective impact of social marginalisation. attending to the inner, emotional lives of streeties and oldies only feels like an accomplishment because lacking love, support and respect is a crucial aspect of being on the street according to volunteers. their basic aim to befriend streeties and oldies is something they do because to be poor and homeless in the post-social order is to be evermore disregarded and stigmatised. what volunteers bring to light when they stress the importance of asking after someone's particular concerns, giving them a hug, or simply remembering their name, is an aspect of being a member of the underclass that rose precludes, but for bauman (1998: 91) is crucial: in the book-balancing o^ a consumer society, the poor are unequivocally a liability, and by no stretch of the imagination can they be recorded on the side of present or future 102 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs assets. and so for the first time in recorded history the poor are now purely and simply a nuisance. bauman (1995: 15) also argues that the post-industrial social order intensifies freedom "among the joyfully and willingly seduced, while tapering it almost beyond existence among the deprived and panoptically regulated". yet, strangers still do live among us, at least when the fortified walls of prisons and "no-go" areas do not hide them altogether. working on the food bus does not allow volunteers to resolve the anxieties that street kids generate by restoring them to "normal life.'' it does allow them, however, to venture into no-go areas previously unknown to them, to venture into previously impossible social encounters, to better understand experiences so seemingly disconnected from their own. without their volunteer work, the relationships between volunteers and street kids or oldies would be unlikely indeed. as anne illustrates, as she tries to explain why she continues to volunteer despite her frustrations with the bus program, i knew i'd find it hard, i think. i knew i'd find it hard to talk to the kids, 'cause i feel, rightly or wrongly, i feel that they look at me and think, "well, what would this middle-class bitch... [know]... about our sort of life?" but now, she says, i've gotten to know quite a lot of the oldies and youngies and i get along quite well with them. and i... i, my feelings changed in that i don't really believe that there's anything that i can do that's going to change the way their lives are. in this sense, abandoning the dream of "changing the ways their lives are" is not only par for the course. it also seems to be the first step that volunteers take to defend the different kind of meaning that their work takes on. volume 19, 2003 103 alternate routes conclusion in the post-industrial political imagination it does seem as though the material reality of poverty has evaporated into thin air. or rather, dissipated into the inner-recesses of the self. but poverty is also necessary. it haunts us with the spectre of social dislocation so that we guard our goods from the inevitable "bads" that freedom reaps. the current social, cultural and political order has clearly moved from redistributing work to redistributing unemployment (beck 1997). neo-liberal political rationality continues to advance the notion that minimising welfare "handouts" maximises the possibilities of self-advancement and responsible citizenship. as the australian federal minister for workplace relations. tony abbott so succinctly puts it: now it's the responsibility of governments to put policies in place, which over time will allow people to improve thensituation, policies in place that will allow people to earn more and to keep more of what they earn. and that's what government is trying to do. but we can't abolish poverty, because poverty is in part a function of individual behaviour. we can't stop people drinking. we can't stop people gambling. we can't stop people having substance problems. we can't stop people from making mistakes that cause them to be less well-off than they might otherwise be. we cannot remove risk from society without removing freedom, and that's the last thing any government should do (in gordon and gray, 2001). for the federal government, the risk of poverty is a fundamental measure of the pleasures of freedom. but to defend against the uncertainties of neo-liberalism— about its legitimacy and the price we must pay for its greater freedoms— poverty must be the fault of the defective individual. considering volunteers' work in this context. i have highlighted the way they confront the profound contradictions of living with those whose deficit of freedom subsidises the privileges that "the rest of us" enjoy. that volunteers claim their work has very little power to change oldies" or street kids" lives except to treat them with respect is a very particular approach to issues like homclcssncss and drug use. this claim 104 volume 19, 2003 chemins altematifs only makes sense in a world where people are increasingly considered responsible for their own misfortune and left to fend for themselves, a world in which the poor are denied "the right "to claim damages" by presenting themselves as victims of societal malfunction" (bauman, 1998: 70). arguably, however, the argument that poverty is surmountable by anyone with enough confidence, like "the rest of us." is neither fully conclusive nor entirely convincing. volunteers struggle with the consequences of delegating once-were social problems to imaginary communities, broken families and disempowered individuals every night they work on the food bus. the idea that the problems streeties and oldies face can and should be remedied by the individual, the family or voluntary emissaries from so-called "moral communities" seems unlikely to volunteers. in this sense, doing the work of "community responsibilisation" seriously undermines its coherence. rather, the fact that some live with little support and few options is the primary reason why volunteers see a role for themselves and for society's collective responsibility' in proving public support for oldies and street kids' private needs. ultimately, despite the shortcomings of the bus program, volunteers structure their commitment according to what they have learned about oldies and street kids' lives in a world "turned upside down." their work is grounded in the perception that people endure particularly damaging, emotional effects of social marginalisation and dispossession. for the most part, volunteers described the people they've met through the bus program as poor, having "nothing to lose," and no valued role to play in contemporary consumer society. the personal dimensions of being a member of "the underclass" also informed volunteers' ideals for what could actually change lives. they believe that street kids and oldies should be entitled to loving, supportive friendships and families and have access to "other options" like housing, education and employment, all of which are essential to achieving a minimum standard of living and qualityof life. in the meantime, in the quest for answers to questions that the postsocial order raises —questions like, "why do my children have a loving home and other do not?"—volunteers chose to come into closer contact with oldies and street kids. in this way, they try to resolve some of the anxiety that living with "strangers" generates, not by closing their eyes and ears to it, but to be in its presence. their accounts of working on the volume 19, 2003 105 alternate routes food bus sound remarkably like iris marion young's (1990) democratic ideal of "city life," wherein people witness and appreciate different social experiences that they do not share, nor fully understand. in the post-industrial social order, humanitarian volunteer work cannot be reduced to either a subtle mechanism of social control or a means of easing one's overworked conscience. in an era when the anxieties and disjunctions of consumer society are increasingly channelled into communitarian solutions, volunteers expand the social world that they inhabit to include the lives and experiences of marginalised "others." in an era when governments actively expel the poor from the universe of moral obligation, and more importantly, from the domain of a shared humanity, volunteers advance an ethic and logic of 'non-judgement', that the people they meet on the street are worthy of consideration and respect. in this sense, humanitarian volunteer work has become one of the few interfaces between disparate social experiences. given the very arbitrariness of who is left standing in the contemporary social order, perhaps volunteers' commitment to the food bus is also a way of holding out the hope that some one would do the same for them if they fell into oldies or street kids' place. notes 1. this paper presents some of the central findings of research carried out during the course of my master of arts at the ashworth centre for social theory at the university of melbourne, australia. references allahyari, r. a. (2000). visions of charity: volunteer workers and moral community. berkeley: university of california press. baistow, k. (1994/95). "liberation and regulation? some paradoxes of empowerment." critical social policy, 42, vol. 14, no. 3, 34-46. baldock, c. (1998). "feminist discourses of unwaged work: the case of volunteerism." australian feminist studies, 13, no. 27, 19-34. bauman, z. (1995) "making and unmaking of strangers." thesis eleven, 43, 116. — (1997). postmodernity and its discontents. cambridge: polity press. — (1998). work, consumerism and the new poor. buckingham: open university press. beck, u. (1997). "capitalism without work." dissent, 44, no. 1, 51-56. 106 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs bellah, r., madsen, r., sullivan, w., swidler, a. & tipton, s. (1985). habits of the heart: individualism and commitment in american life berkeley : university of california press, 1985. boltanski, l. (1999). distcmt suffering: morality, media and politics. (g. burchell, trans.) cambridge: cambridge university press. brown, k., kenny, s., turner, b.s. & prince, j.k. (2000). rhetorics of welfare: uncertainty, choice and voluntary associations. houndsmills: mcmillan press. commonwealth government (2000). our strongest defence against the drug problem. canberra: commonwealth government. cruikshank, b. (1993). "the will to empower: technologies of citizenship and the war on poverty." socialist review, 23, no. 4, 29-55. — (1996). "revolutions from within: self-government and self-esteem." in a. barry, t. osborne & n. rose (eds.), foucault and political reason: liberalism, neo -liberalism and rationalities of government (231251). chicago: university of chicago press. eliasoph, n. (1998). avoiding politics: how americans produce apathy in everyday life. new york: cambridge university press. gray, d. & gordon, m. (2001, 1 1 july). "abbott view stirs debate on poverty." in the age, news. open family australia (1999). "mission statement." paolucchi, p. (1995). "narratives of volunteering." journal ofmoral education, 24, no. 2, 159-173. putnam, r. d. (1995). "bowling alone: america's declining social capital." journal ofdemocracy, 6, no. 1, 65-78. rose, n. (1993). "government, authority and expertise in advanced liberalism." economy and society, 22, no. 3, 283-299. — "the death of the social?: re-figuring the territory of government." economy and society, 25, no. 3, 327-356. — (2000). "government and control." british journal of criminology, 40,321-339. simon, b., sturmer s. & steffens, k. (2000). "helping individuals of group members? the role of individual and collective identification in aids volunteerism" social psychology bulletin, 26, no. 4, 497-506. snyder, m. & omoto, a.m. (1992). "who helps and why? the psychology of aids volunteerism." in s. spacapan & s. oskamp (eds.), helping and bing helped (222-235). london: sage. ullman, c. f. (1998). the welfare state's other crisis: explaining the new partnership between nonprofit organizations arid the state offrance. bloomington: indiana university press. volume 19, 2003 107 alternate routes "the universal declaration of volunteering." http://www.iyv.org (may 2001). white, r. (1996). "the poverty of the welfare state: managing an underclass." in paul james (ed), the state in question: transformations of the australian state (109-137). st leonard, n.s.w.: allen & unwin. wuthnow, r. (1991). acts ofcompassion: caringfor others and helping ourselves. princeton, n.j.: princeton university press. young, i. m. (1990). justice and the politics of difference. princeton, n.j.: princeton university press. 108 volume 19, 2003 chemins alternatifs the possibility of pleasure: foucault's philosophy of the subject and the logic of an appeal to aesthetics robyn smith carleton university some of the most common complaints against foucault's work are that he does not provide a philosophy of the subject and that (or, and so) he provides neither any normative grounds upon which to judge regimes of power nor alternative themes or ideals to the domination that he diagnoses. however, i argue that it is precisely because of foucault* s philosophy of the subject that he cannot suggest prescriptive action against the domination that he diagnoses. 1 because of foucault's philosophy of the subject he must allow for a greater human autonomy than what would allow him to prescribe action against the domination that he diagnoses. further, and following this, i argue that foucaurfs philosophy of the subject makes aesthetics the most logical place for him to look for experiences of freedom while respecting human autonomy without having to appeal to normative rhetoric or the logic of any particular discourse or form of subjection. 2 foucault's analysis of autonomous fields of discourse and his analysis of modem subjects constituted along the axis of a truth, an ethic and power are mutually re-enforcing to his philosophy of the subject. i will show how this conies about through a consideration of the analytics of finitude. the subject ofknowledge foucault' s analysis of the analytic of finitude can be found in tlie order of tilings (1973). foucault argues that it is along the lines of the analytic of fmitude that modem subjects3 are constituted. i argue that his adherence to the analytic of finitude as the framework for modem thought and the constitution of modem subjects enables foucault to develop a philosophy of modem subjects as constituted along the axis of power, ethics and truth. according to foucault, modem subjects develop with twentivolume 19, 2003 109 200 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education precarious employment in ontario’s university sector: reflections on collective bargaining at carleton university mathew nelson1 and lydia dobson2 abstract: in this article, the qualitative experiences of the authors as union leaders at carleton university are drawn upon, along with the public testimonials of union members, during the 2013-14 round of collective bargaining between carleton university and the canadian union of public employees local 4600. we contend that the trend towards rising precariousness must be seen as the further “proletarianization” of an increasingly insecure segment of the labour force in ontario, which includes workers employed in ontario’s university sector. first, precarious employment in ontario is examined broadly. second, we explore precarious work in the university sector more specifically. third, a case study analysis examining the most recent contract negotiations between cupe 4600 and carleton university in ottawa is examined. this includes: (1) the challenges of mobilization within the union bureaucracy; (2) challenges between the local and national office; and; (3) the role of solidarity in combating precariousness. to conclude, the conditions in which unionized precarious workers can achieve improvements in their workplaces are discussed. it is hoped that other postsecondary union activists can gain from this experience, and in doing so, expand the fight against the negative effects of precarious employment in ontario and elsewhere. keywords: precarious work, carleton university, austerity, unions 1  mathew nelson is a phd candidate in the department of political science at carleton university. 2  lydia dobson is a phd candidate in socio-legal studies at york university. precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 201 introduction since the 2008 global economic crisis, political power has overwhelmingly come to favour business and corporate interests at the expense of canadian workers, while neoliberal processes such as privatization, outsourcing, and the spread of precarious employment have accelerated (peters, 2012). for public sector workers, precarious work provides less pay with few or no benefits, acting as a cheap labour supply for employers purportedly facing cost pressures due to government austerity measures. this restructuring and reorganization of work is regularly carried out through attacks on the historical gains of unions and organized labour. the impact of rising precariousness or “precarity” (lewchuck et al., 2013) in ontario is particularly prominent in the area of post-secondary academic employment. in this article, we draw upon our own qualitative experiences, along with the public testimonials of fellow union members, during the 2013-14 round of collective bargaining between carleton university and the canadian union of public employees (cupe) local 4600, which represents nearly 2,400 teaching assistants (ta’s) and contract instructors (ci’s).3 these first-person accounts, we argue, lend support to bryan palmer’s (2013) materialist, class-analysis, which notes the trend towards rising precariousness or “precarity.’ in our view, workplace precarity can be understood as the further “proletarianization” of an increasingly insecure segment of the labour force in ontario, which includes workers employed in ontario’s university sector. we contend that the growing core of precarious academic labourers in ontario can be understood as a constitutive part of the working class based on their socioeconomic position in relation to broader processes of capital accumulation. it thereby follows that, from a class struggle perspective, the theoretical construction of the notion of an entire new social class or “precariat” (standing, 2011; scott, 2012), in contrast to a declining “professoriat” (burns, 2014, 30), is both theoretically and politically erroneous; this misdiagnosis is class divisive in our view. in the postsecondary sector, the conception of a novel precariat accentuates worker alienation by impeding the development of revolutionary class consciousness amongst workers and students, including adjunct faculty, both inside and outside the university. 3  as local executives involved in strike mobilization activities, lydia dobson served as recording secretary for cupe 4600, while mathew nelson acted as vice-president internal (unit 1). we participated extensively in the bargaining processes at carleton over several years, but during this round our contribution was largely directed at devoting our activities to the local’s strike mobilization committee. 202 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education in what follows, we examine precarious employment in ontario. second, we focus our analysis in the university sector. third, our case study examines the 2013-14 round of contract negotiations between cupe 4600 and carleton university. we explore three features inherent to precarious employment: (1) the challenges of mobilization within the union bureaucracy; (2) challenges between the local and national office; and third, the role of solidarity in combating precariousness. to conclude, we highlight the conditions in which unionized precarious workers can achieve improvements in their workplaces. while the summary that follows is brief, it is our hope that other postsecondary union activists can gain from this experience, and in doing so expand the fight against the negative effects of precarious employment in ontario and elsewhere. employment precarity in ontario workplace precarity is not a new phenomenon, but its qualitative and quantitative dimensions are. from the 1980s onwards, and especially since the 2008 global economic crisis, the use of part-time workers and other forms of precarious labour (clc, 2014), including shift work, temp jobs and contract positions, has increased markedly (grant, 2014). “temporary and part-time work grew faster than full-time and permanent work. the squeeze on the middle class had begun, and employment precarity had become a typical feature of employment for many individuals” (tiessen, 2014, 6). this suggests both a weakness of organized labour to challenge these workplace conditions, as well as disproportionate capitalist class power over the interests of the working class as a whole (barkawi, 2013). the 2008 crisis provided an opportunity for businesses and governments to capitalize on the gradual erosion of job security and life-long employment that has been occurring over the last four decades. as workforces are eroded, different forms of contingent and precarious labour are introduced4 “precarious employment tends to involve greater exposure to hazardous work environments, increased workload, stress, and more time spent travelling between multiple jobs” (mccaffrey, 2013). in both the public and private sectors, these workers are taking on more and more of the tasks and responsibilities previously performed 4  one such example is the temporary foreign workers program (tfwp), which has been highly controversial largely due to its association with the exploitation of low-skilled, service sector workers. a moratorium was recently placed on some aspects of tfwp expansion due to rising evidence that the misuse of the program has increased employment rates in certain areas and has contributed to downward pressures on wages (strauss, 2014). precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 203 by full-time workers.5 the impact spills over into “family, health and community involvement” (grant, 2014). according to the law commission of ontario (2012), around 22 percent of jobs fit the “precarious” definition in the province. in many cases, those adversely affected are women, youth, racialized communities, persons with disabilities, and recent immigrants. according to a mcmaster-united way (2013) study based in the greater toronto and hamilton area this phenomenon is increasingly affecting all income and education levels. a 2012 report by the international labour organization (ilo) documents the growth in precarious work in oecd countries over the last decade and attributes the increase to a “worldwide corporate attack on the right to organize and bargain collectively, by shifting to subcontracting and individual contracts, [and] attacking sectoral and national bargaining” (ilo, 2011, 1). women workers in particular are disproportionally paid lower wages. a recent report by the pay equity coalition found that the gap has grown from 28 percent in 2010 to 31.5 percent in 2014, which is further amplified for racialized and aboriginal women, as well as women with disabilities (drennan, 2014). in a similar vein, “young workers are facing low wages, precarious work, poor work/life balance, and a high cost of living coupled with exorbitant student debt. the problems are even more significant for young workers marginalized by structural racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and sexism” (cupe national, 2013, 3). younger workers also tend to struggle with unemployment and under-employment, exploitative work conditions, a high cost of living and significant student debt (yalnizyan, 2014). the uniting factor in all of these struggles is the fight against precarious employment. from a marxist perspective, as fanelli (2014, 39) has argued, the renewal of working class politics, and the struggle for public services in canada, requires a class-oriented labour movement that is not based in the reformism and sectionalism of business unionism and labour aristocratism. the fight for class-based unionism must involve “the freedom of association to collectively bargain on behalf of and in accordance with other workers…” this fight is a potentiality, that under specific historic conditions, embodies “an emancipatory force capable of transcending social relations of servitude.” organized labour has 5  it is important to note that precarity also differs between the public and private sectors. in the public sector, precarity relates mainly to the use of short-term, full-time employment, while in the private sector, part-time, long-term employment is most frequent (see fanelli, 2014a, 123). 204 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education transformational capacity; and however small, it can be a venue for a radical working class unionism. the precarious university in ontario in ontario’s postsecondary education (pse) sector, austerity measures have long been directed at colleges and universities across the province (fanelli, 2013, ch. 5). budget changes and chronic underfunding have shifted funding away from direct public provisioning towards user-fee models (i.e. tuition) based on competition and profit (nelson and meades, 2013). at the same time, colleges and universities have experienced significant spending cuts over the past decade, and while the recession is usually blamed, right-wing governments continue to cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations. the use of precarious workers, in large corporations and universities alike, is quite often a costcutting strategy that allows employers to shed legally mandated obligations to their employees in the name of greater workplace “flexibility,” less job security, and lower wages and benefits (crow, 2008; sears, 2012). “this labour-cost reduction strategy…has had the effect of increasing the number of precariously employed workers in the university sector” (lafrance, 2010, 2). the neoliberalization of the university entails new forms of privatization, deregulation and corporatization that are connected to reductions in public funding and oversight (giroux, 2002). while the adoption of such austerity measures does not necessarily mark the beginning of a new era, the global economic crisis has intensified this funding crisis. different forms of privatization in the neoliberal university include securing private funding for research, increasing the number of private corporations on campuses, and user fees in the form of higher tuition (crow, 2008). moreover, since the 1970s, an attack on the humanities – and their “so-called promotion of anti-establishment sentiment” has accompanied these changes (scott, 2012). a concerted effort has also been made to transform the role of academia and the university into little more than something resembling a “technical training facility” or a “corporate research institute” (eagleton, 2010). for student-workers such as teaching-assistants (ta’s), as well as contract-instructors (ci’s) and other “contingent faculty” (turk, 2008), increased competitiveness creates the insecurity of “being permanently on the edge of unemployment, having to make do with casual, temporary, perhaps part-time work, or combining several jobs” (callinicos, 2006, 24). as part of an ongoing research project, cupe’s national body precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 205 has undertaken the creation of profiles that show demographic and precarity patterns of occupations within sectors. with respect to temporary jobs, “the post-secondary sector stands out; one-third of low-paid jobs in post-secondary education are temporary.” (jansen, 2014, 4). many of the lower-paid employment sectors also have higher rates of part-time and temporary work. the rise of a “precariat”? in the us context, ehrenreich and ehrenreich (2014, 22) argue that the continued downward mobility of the “professional-managerial class” captures the new economic reality of a system increasingly structured around precarious employment where part-time, contract and temporary workers who are in an unstable position have limited control over working conditions and wages, and may lack union protection or regulations governing their workplace. this trend has led some to proclaim “the rise of a ‘precariat,’ a new, distinct class characterized by insecurity and atomization, and therefore, impervious to traditional labor organizing” (burns, 2014, 31; see also chomsky, 2012). undoubtedly, there are parallels between the us and canada, yet there remains vast differences between the two countries, their postsecondary education, as well as the availability of public health, factors that make a huge difference in the quality of life of workers across the continent. canadian sociologists have begun to call attention to the rise of such a precariat, or “social class,” whose working conditions are void of consistent “predictability” and financial security. with respect to wages, compared to a full-time professor teaching four courses a year whose salary may range anywhere between $80,000 to $150,000 per year, contract faculty teaching the same course load earn on average earn around $28,000 per annum (basen, 2014). in precariat: the new dangerous class (2011), economist guy standing concludes that it is unlikely that “trade unions could be reformed to represent precariat interests” (cited in burns, 2014, 22). however, labour historian bryan palmer (2013, 42) challenges claims that the contemporary significance of precariousness indicates a separate and distinct class formation in the present context. palmer critiques standing for viewing precarious workers as somehow part of a distinctive, “new class force,” within “a hierarchy of differentiated class formations,” as part of “a new neoliberal global economy” (palmer, 2013, 42-43). 206 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education palmer counters the view that, “stable working-class identities have been swept aside; a sense of proletarian power as a transformative agent of social relations of exploitation and oppression is now ended.” (ibid). standing (2011), on the other hand, argues that in light of this new, youth-led precarious class -the so-called dangerous precariat – the traditional labour movement finds itself antiquated and dying. for palmer (2013, 45), however, precariousness has always been “the fundamental feature of class formation rather than the material basis of a new, contemporary class, with an agenda silent on the necessity of socialism.” while the experience of dispossession is highly heterogeneous “…dispossession, in general, nonetheless defines proletarianization” (palmer, 2013, 49). rebecca burns (2014, 33) argues that “precarity is not a new phenomenon…[but a] state of affairs that occurs when the balance of power tips in the favour of employers.” similarly, fred magdoff and john bellamy foster (2014, 2) note that marx himself characterized the general condition of workers as one of precariousness: “the higher the productivity of labour, the greater is the pressure of the workers on the means of employment, the more precarious therefore becomes the condition for their existence, namely sale of their own labour-power for the increase of alien wealth, or in other words the self-valorization of capital.” in the present context, however, the great recession and the deep stagnation that followed, has made the situation of canadian workers ever more precarious. as unifor economist jim stanford (2013) has recently noted, there is “a myth of canadian exceptionalism” when federal leaders consistently espouse the virtues of canada’s recovery following the great recession. in reality, overall prosperity, as well as economic and employment performance, has largely stagnated since that time. in examining the impact of precarious employment on pse, we focus on carleton university, which in many respects has reproduced/ reinforced? the growing ranks of low-wage, precarious workers within institutions that once anchored the so-called white-collar “professoriat” across the sector. we focus on the most recent round of collective bargaining between the administration and cupe 4600, which represents ta’s and ci’s. but rather than juxtapose a precariat, with the stable working class identity of the proletariat, what is needed in the university sector is a unified politics of class struggle that highlights the reality of differentiation within the dispossessed, but does not accentuate divisions that can minimize collective responses or incapacitate the working class in its entirety. precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 207 bargaining austerity at carleton university cupe 4600 was founded in 1979 as cupe 2323 in response to widespread workplace inequality across campus. ta’s received different rates of pay for the same work, had no guarantee of reappointment in successive terms, job security or benefits of any kind. employees could be fired with little or no warning cupe 4600s predecessor, then as now, fought for improved wages, working conditions, job security, and benefits for its members. ta’s merged with contract instructors of carleton university in 1994 forming cupe 4600, which then represented nearly 1800 tas (unit 1) and over 600 contract instructors (unit 2). cupe 4600 has a long history of challenging unilateral administrative prerogatives (see nelson and meades, 2013). more recently, the union has had to contend with budgets that have called for increased enrollment without a corollary increase in paid working time or wages. in effect, this translates into both a wage cut and workload increase. the most recent rounds of bargaining, which spanned from june 2013 to march 2014, offer an avenue for exploring the structural and relational problems that union activists face in the pse sector when bargaining against precarity. during this round of bargaining, the primary concern for ci’s was receiving health benefits, while ta’s were focused primarily on attaining fair wage increases and fixed tuition indexation.6 other key concerns for both units included caps on class sizes, cost of living adjustments (cola), and improved sick leave and seniority provisions around leaves of absence. teaching assistants and contract instructors operate under separate collective agreements, and despite coordinated bargaining efforts, many of their interests are quite different. despite these differences, non-tenured and non-permanent teaching staff share a common experiences of precarity, along with a desire for enhanced pay, improved treatment and working conditions. in a january 29, 2014, edition of the undergraduate student newspaper, the charlatan (armstrong, 2010), unit-1 member tabatha armstrong noted the extent to which the amount of work carried out by 6  during the 2008-09 round of collective bargaining, tas failed to achieve a strong strike mandate, with 49 percent of the membership opposing the possibility of job action. the vote took place in the midst of an ongoing ottawa transit strike and a prolonged ta strike at york university. the low vote resulted in the loss of fixed tuition indexation, where the tuition rate for tas was fixed to either 2000 or 2005 levels depending on the commencement of a student’s program of study. fixed indexation was instead replaced with a rolling index, which stabilizes tuition rates to the year that a student begins their program. the effect is multi-tiered student tuitions; for instance, a student who began their studies in 2011-12 pays approximately 6 percent more than a student who began in 2010-11. 208 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education ta’s is taken for granted, even though “we learn and teach the material, make lesson plans, schedule meetings with students, answer hundreds of emails, and we mark, mark, and mark some more.” in the context of ongoing negotiations, cupe 4600 framed its message to carleton students the following way: “the working conditions of the people teaching and marking are also your learning conditions, and the way your administration chooses to treat ta’s and contract instructors is an example of how they are willing to treat you” (armstrong, 2014). teaching and research assistants, as well as some contract instructors, are the only employees at carleton who have to pay to go to work through user-fees or tuition. as tuition and other compulsory fees continue to steadily rise,7 “the quality of education seems to be ever-decreasing because the people who get the most face time with students are overworked and underpaid” (cited in letson, 2014). contract instructors are responsible for teaching nearly one-quarter of the classes taught at carleton university. while ci’s typically have higher educational qualifications compared to ta’s, they face equivalent precarity. lacking health and dental benefits, they earn only around $6,500 per course, and are “disproportionately responsible for the massive 450 person lectures” in “stadium-style classrooms,” aided by “a small army of tas” (hurl, 2014). the following is how one unit 2 member described his experience: “even though i have three years of teaching under my belt, there are no guarantees i will get another job. if a tenured professor decides they want the course, then i’ll be booted. it’s especially bad in the summer. the limited number of courses means that you are lucky if you can land a job.” (hurl, 2014). his letter concludes, “in the end, after all this time and investment i have put into something i love, i feel that i deserve a little respect, recognition, and some semblance of security. i’m tired of living a double-life” (ibid). in an attempt to alleviate some of the negative effects of precariousness on carleton academic workers, cupe 4600’s negotiating team devised a series of bargaining proposals that for both units proposed improved benefits and a 5 percent pay increase to keep up with rising tuition and costs of 7  according to a recent report produced by the canadian centre for policy alternatives (ccpa), shaker and macdonald (2014, 5) note that tuition and other compulsory fees in canada have almost tripled between 1993-94 and 2014-15, with tuition increasing in ontario by 239 percent. while a tuition fee increase cap on graduate programs remains stagnant at 5 percent, the authors report that “ontario’s tuition fees have been consistently among the highest in the country since the mid-90s” (17). from a broader perspective, whereas in 1988, 12 percent of university revenue was generated via tuition fees, by 2012 41 percent of revenue was generated through tuition (fejzic, 2014). precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 209 living fees.8 however, as a result of having a highly transient workforce, the executive board of the local is constantly struggling in its efforts to mobilize and engage with the rank-and-file membership. while often guaranteed employment for the duration of their studies, tas and cis operate only on four-month contracts. in various ways, the precarity of such working conditions can inhibit the organizing and mobilization efforts ordinarily carried out within the traditional union models. in the following section, we look at several examples of the challenges that were encountered during the 2013-14 year of collective bargaining at carleton university. engaging precarious workers within big union structures a significant challenge facing union locals at present is the need to involve and engage their respective membership in more creative and effective ways (camfield, 2011). however, precarious workers such as ta’s primarily operate on two to four year contracts, the majority of which are two years in duration. these contracts are also dependent on the worker being a tuition-paying student. because collective bargaining takes place every second year at carleton university, many of carleton’s ta’s rarely see the benefits of the collective agreement that was negotiated during their own employment period. many ci’s work multiple jobs both within and outside of academia. the effect is an overall disconnect between workers and their peers, their physical workplaces, their union representatives, and most importantly, the benefits they will accrue from collective bargaining. in our experience, it is extremely difficult to build solidarity amongst contract instructors who have likely never met the majority of their colleagues, or ta’s who are being asked to fight for a collective agreement that will not impact them directly. furthermore, because many ci’s work for more than one employer, they may benefit from preferable salaries and health agreements outside of their contract with the university. thus, attempts to engage these individuals in struggles for higher wages and benefits, which may be far less relevant to their needs, introduces yet another set of challenges. as a result of a bargaining impasse, both the administration and cupe 4600 filed for conciliation in december 2013. despite the appointment of 8  to contextualize this demand, the average wage increase over three years amongst cupe locals in the ontario university workers coordinating committee (ouwcc), a voluntary organization consisting of locals in the university sector, was 1.5 percent for 2010, 1.4 percent for 2011, and 2.1 percent for 2012 (nelson and meades, 2013, 115). 210 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education a conciliation officer by the ministry of labour, university administration was unwilling to meet the demands of the membership. in particular, the employer’s salary proposals remained well below even projected cost of living increases, especially when taking into consideration the rise in tuition costs over the next few years. in the case of unit 2, the administration regularly refused to substantively discuss the issue of health benefits even though during the last round of bargaining they agreed to enter into discussions on the implementation of health and dental benefits for ci’s (cupe, 4600d). this unwillingness to respond adequately to ci concerns must be contextualized within an environment where canadian institutions are increasingly using non-tenured teaching faculty as cost-cutting measures, a phenomenon directly related to declining public funding and increases in overall student enrolments (macdonald, 2013). precarity and solidarity after bargaining had reached an impasse, we acted as participant-observers in the organizing for a strike vote, which included developing and distributing literature across campus, organizing info sessions for both units and the broader university community and providing updates on bargaining that were disseminated to the membership. from february 11-13, 2014, tables were set out at several locations across campus to inform members and to serve as polling stations. these organizing efforts were met with a strong 82.5 percent in favour of strike action for tas, and 87.5 percent in favour for contract instructors (news editors, 2014).9 while this result indicated a strong 85 percent in favour of strike action between both units, the low turnout rate of only 44 percent for ta’s and 32 percent for ci’s reflected the overall disengagement of the membership from the bargaining process. moreover, under cupe national’s instruction, members who were physically unable to be on campus for the voting process could not be accommodated in time.10 while voter participation was less than 50 percent, the outcome did constitute an above-average turnout. as bargaining continued throughout february and march, the administration suddenly offered contract 9  on february 25, 2014, the union issued a communiqué discussing the outcome of the “strong” strike vote: “at issue for carleton’s academic workers are the links between their working conditions, the value of their contribution to the students’ success and the quality of the teaching they provide to students. (cupe 4600e). . 10  our request to cupe national for a legal opinion around proxy voting came days prior to the scheduled vote. outside of concerns about potential legal issues, the timing of our request was a factor considered against advanced polling and proxy voting. precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 211 instructors much of what they were asking for, including a substantial health benefits package. the move had the potential of seriously dividing the local. for ci’s, the proposed collective agreement accommodated the expressed interests of the unit 2 membership. but while the ta unit had proposed zero percent wage increase for three years in order to achieve fixed indexation, the bargaining team was told that the administration would not consider indexation, and that no amount of time spent on strike would change their minds. faced with a satisfied unit 2 bargaining team, the ta unit had to accept that tuition indexation would not likely impact many outgoing members, making it difficult to justify strike action to a large portion of the membership. the bargaining team was forced to accept a collective agreement that did include a small wage increase and no concessions. with the support of the majority of ci’s, a strike would have proven far less effective, as many lectures and tutorials would continue to operate in spite of the work stoppage. neither unit went on strike, although the university administration was ultimately able to leverage a minimalist agreement for ta’s by providing substantial gains for contract instructors. when the details of the collective agreements were presented to the membership, they were met with little resistance from ci’s. however a vocal group of ta’s criticized the agreement for dropping the issue of tuition indexation wherein a tas tuition level is linked to the first year that they commence work (cupe 4600b, 2014). in the lead up to the ratification vote, several teaching assistants even circulated emails advocating against the ratification of the ta collective agreement. however, both collective agreements were eventually ratified with 76.4 percent of unit 1 tas and 86.2 percent of contract instructors in favour. these organizational problems are reflective of the broader structural barriers that unions may face when representing precarious workers. as will be discussed in the section that follows, the policies of cupe national are based on traditional employment relationships that are often stable and full-time, and which can also run counter to the interests of the precariously employed. (un)organizing residence fellows the executive board of cupe 4600 was contacted by a group of non-unionized residence fellows in the months leading up to the local’s strike vote and preparations. as the first point of contact for all disturbances in residence, these workers are constantly on-call, and are 212 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education amongst “the most overworked and precariously employed on a university campus” expected to perform multiple roles as “leaders, administrator, facilitator, and educator” (lefebvre, 2013a). citing a rise in health and safety concerns – including active intimidation, harassment, verbal threats, and cyberbullying (lefebvre, 2013b) the group was frustrated that they were consistently being ignored when voicing their complaints to the university administration. while residence fellows, much like ta’s, have their pay directly allocated to student-associated costs, everrising residence fees has meant that fellows do not receive, as do the majority of tas, a traditional employer-employee paycheque. it was proposed in november 2013 that residence fellows would enter cupe 4600 as a third bargaining unit. after discussions with cupe national, this process began. residence fellow organizers were provided membership cards for the 36 workers on staff and quickly had more than 50 percent of them signed. after submitting the cards to cupe national on november 25, a week later they were informed by cupe that it would not support the union drive. three primary reasons for retracting the initial decision were provided. first, residence fellow contracts were too short to meaningfully organize members; second, their capacity to pay dues was insufficient (despite a pre-approved structure with cupe 4600), and third; as canada’s largest union, cupe national would “not be able to make a big difference” for them (rml, 2013a). the fellows had taken on significant risks, and the decision led ultimately to the resignation of the primary organizers for fear of continued health and safety concerns, as well as employer pressure to resign, face isolating working conditions and other forms of potential retaliation (lefebvre, 2013ab; hendry, 2014). nearly two weeks later, however, national representatives met with residence fellow organizers and cupe 4600 board members to explain the decision. at the time, cupe 4600 member, priscillia lefebvre (2013b), explained: “the needs of young workers are becoming increasingly important if the current labour movement is going to be effective in protecting the right to organize in the workplace. however, the perception of unions as untrustworthy and ineffectual bureaucratized institutions serves as a barrier to many young workers who are hesitant to get involved. unfortunately, the recent actions of cupe national only serves to further reinforce this cynicism.” precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 213 likewise, in an interview given with rabble.ca, the president of cupe 4600, james meades, argued that the move was contrary to the values of “a union that is committing more resources and support to organizing unorganized workers, there was supposed to be a focus on workers that are in precarious positions and there was supposed to be a focus on young workers” (cited in watson, 2013b). in other words, a successful organizing drive would have provided an important opportunity to engage in new or ongoing attempts to organize not only traditional, more stable workplaces, but contemporary new and precarious ones as well. after a public backlash inclusive of several media articles and a public online petition condoning cupe nationals revoked support (lefebvre, 2013ab; rml, 2013a; dehaas, 2014), on january 16, 2014, cupe national president, paul moist, met with residence organizers and cupe 4600 board members to personally apologize, and assign responsibility for the mix-up to a breakdown in communication that led union officials to believe that membership cards had not yet been signed at the point that support was revoked. cupe national also formally supported a unionization drive, led by the now-unemployed organizers (watson, 2014). despite cupe national’s renewed support, however, efforts to unionize the carleton residence fellows were ultimately unsuccessful. falling just short of 50 percent in favour, the remaining residence fellows chose not to unionize with cupe 4600. the ordeal had pulled away the attention of some members of the executive board and the bargaining team. although the objective was to add a third unit to our local during the bargaining process, thereby increasing our capacity for collective action and leverage at the table, the organizing drive had the opposite effect of portraying to the university administration the picture of a weakened and dysfunctional union. the actions of cupe national resonated more broadly with disapproving labour activists across the province, who called into question the ability of contemporary unions to represent precarious workers (rml, 2013a). on december 30, 2013, rebuilding militant labour (rml) issued an open letter addressed to moist, which points specifically to increasing precarity as a major grievance among young cupe workers. it reads, “this action not only dismantled the diligent and extremely effective organizing efforts of these young workers, but has also resulted in 214 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the loss of jobs and housing for those involved in the union drive. the blatant disregard for the vulnerability of these precarious workers has had a massive and devastating impact on the organizers involved. rather than “standing up for fairness,” this decision serves to effectively disenfranchise all those who occupy vulnerable positions across canada.” rml describes itself as “an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial network, which seeks to ally with all the just struggles of the working-class and peoples in canada against our common enemy, the enemy of capitalism” (rmla, 2013). rml emerged out of the 50th cupe national convention in october 2013 by rank-and-file delegates frustrated with the electoral politics of the union, and its perceived inability to strategically defend workers by defeating the neoliberal austerity agenda (da silva, 2013).11 rebuilding militant labour in the university sector rebuilding militant labour (rml), with its heightened emphasis on the plight of precarious workers, provides an important opportunity for academic workers and their union activists to help orient their political activities towards “a comprehensive fight against colonialism and racism, patriarchy and the exploitation of women,” in addition to a renewed struggle against class-based forms of oppression (rml, 2013b). we have argues throughout that while ta’s, ci’s and residence fellows may operate under separate (or nonexistent) collective agreements, possess different educational qualifications and occupy different financial situations or institutional positions, they nonetheless share working conditions that lack “the security or benefits enjoyed in more traditional relationships,” and are thereby becoming more and more part of the precarious “new normal” in our postsecondary workplaces (lewchuk et al., 2013). but if rising precarity is part and parcel of contemporary forms of proletarianization this is because the logic induced by an unequal class system implies that the appropriation of surplus value is the means by which capital is accumulated. precarious faculty are undeniably 11  lydia dobson challenged cupe national president paul moist from the floor during the election portion of the convention receiving a substantial 21 percent of the overall vote, despite lacking the support of the cupe young workers caucus (da silva, 2013; watson, 2013a). precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 215 constitutive of the broader working class to the extent they are the mere owners of their labour power; and at carleton, ta’s, ci’s and residence fellows consistently perform a litany of activities in which they are not compensated for their time and effort. while it is certainly the case that public sector workers do not create exchange value for the capitalist system by producing marketable products, they nonetheless are exploited to the extent that their work can be characterized by the extraction of unpaid surplus labour. they are enumerated, in other words, for their socially determined reproduction costs, not for the entire expenditure of their labour time (finger, 2011, 53-54). it is therefore necessary for a unified class resistance on the part of workers and students to provide the potential for labour activists working in solidarity in the pse sector to move beyond those union models and structures that are less and less capable of addressing the emerging needs of precarious, temporary and casualized workers. they resistance may involve participation in something like rml, student-worker alliances,12 coalitions and solidarity pacts with non-cupe academic locals.13 trade unions, in this regard, can draw on some of the organizing models that led to the 2012 general strike by students in quebec. for workers, students and activists, our collective struggle against austerity must involve not only organizing to strike, but fighting to win (see savard and charaoui, 2012). other potential avenues include campus-specific coalitions (such as campus united at carleton university) or general assemblies, comprised of like-minded individuals, union members and representatives of progressive associations that mobilize together in areas of common interest. effective resistance may also necessitate, to some extent, bypassing large bureaucratic union structures in order for academic locals to work with cupe district councils to develop rapid responses to mobilize immediate support for locals with precarious members facing difficult bargaining situations or much-needed public service cuts – community 12  an interesting development in this regard is the involvement of the canadian federation of students (cfs) in partnering with unifor to organize a good jobs summit at ryerson university from october 3-5. like many workers, students are impacted by “high unemployment rates, unpaid internships, and a precarious job market.” student-worker solidarity, in this sense, means recognizing that that these local forms of solidarity on university campuses are based in “the knowledge that firstly, students are workers, and secondly, we are stronger united” (ponting, 2014). 13  at the provincial level, an interesting example of this sort of network is the ontario university and college coalition, formed in early 2010 to unite different unions (including cupe), as well as student, staff and faculty associations, in the fight to preserve high-quality, accessible and affordable postsecondary education. see http://ontariouniversitycoalition. ca/section/1. 216 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education unionism. recognizing that precarity affects both public and private sector workers alike, councils could undertake grassroots organizing initiatives in support of other precarious workers in the services, hospitality and retail sectors. such proposals fall neatly in line with cupe’s commitment to work with labour allies, coalitions, students, and community partners to engage the public on the need to preserve public services and jobs against privatization and precarity. in the struggle against precarity, the stakes are high. public institutions such as universities are increasingly under siege: “the verdant campuses of many of our universities bespeak peace and stability. don’t be fooled! you are actually looking at a battlefield. the universities are under deadly siege, in a crusade led by neoliberal financial and corporate leaders (backed by their hired think tanks), and with the willing connivance of our governments” (valleau and hamel, 2013). the way in which postsecondary education is predominantly viewed must be challenged: the university is a public good, not simply an individual privilege or a commodity to be purchased for someone else’s profit. conclusion in large union structures there exists any number of cleavages that interfere with organizing efforts directed at precarious workers. nonetheless, the institutional structures and memories that cupe 4600 had in place, along with the resources provided by cupe national, did in many ways prove effective in connecting these divisions during the mobilization and negotiation periods of the bargaining process. for instance, in the week preceding a possible strike, a solidarity rally and march throughout campus was organized, which was well-attended by campus unionists, other members of cupe locals and leaders in the broader labour movement. in the post-settlement period, in the months leading up to the 2014 cupe ontario convention, cupe 4600 submitted three resolutions that addressed rising precarious employment in the university sector, and which called for the funding of a research project examining the impact of precarious employment on post-secondary education in ontario; the launch of a public awareness campaign that links precarious employment in universities to rising tuition rates, student debt levels and growing class sizes; and a significant expansion of cupe ontario’s organizing activities in order to “grow the base of our union and enable precarious precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 217 and non-unionized workers to benefit from union membership.”14 it is hoped that the incoming cupe ontario executive board members seriously consider the extent to which these resolutions may provide a potential first step in bridging the expanding the disconnect between the discourse to advance the struggles of precarious workers, and the resources, political commitment and organizational restructuring necessary for achieving concrete gains in workplaces and within local communities. while traditional union structures provide a foundation from which to build labour activism and engagement, in many ways they have proven incapable of accommodating the growing precarity of organized labour in employment sectors such as pse. in future mobilizing efforts, it is essential that alternative models be considered in order to mitigate the negative effects of precarious work. this means seeking out innovative organizing strategies that nonetheless remain situated in a broader politics of resistance that emphasizes the reality of class struggle. in the context of this ongoing neoliberal assault on pse, students and workers across campuses must recapture and revitalize a militant commitment to class-based forms of struggle, if they hope to capture and secure tangible gains on a university battlefield that already favours the interests of corporate leaders and corporate-minded administrators. while class has always embodied different manifestations of insecurity and precarity in different historical contexts, the strategic necessity of uniting the dispossessed in struggles that can realize a more equitable social order, remains highly relevant to contemporary struggles against precarious working conditions on university campuses. 14  the resolutions are in the possession of the authors, along with various other members of cupe 4600’s executive board. 218 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education references armstrong, t. 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(2013). it’s more than poverty: precarious work and household well-being. toronto. nelson, m. and j. meades. (2013). collective bargaining in a time of austerity: public sector unions and the university sector in ontario. in from crisis to austerity: neoliberalism, organized labour, and the canadian state, ed. t. fowler. ottawa: red quill books. news editors. (february, 2014). tas and contract instructors approve strike if necessary. the charlatan. available at: http://www.charlatan. ca/2014/02/tas-and-contract-instructors-approve-strike-if-necessary/. accessed 8 june 2014. palmer, b.d. (2013). reconsiderations of class: precariousness as proletarianization. in socialist register 2014: registering class, eds. l. panitch, g. albo and v. chibber. london: the merlin press. peters, j. (2012). boom, bust and crisis: labour, corporate power and politics in canada. ed. j. peters. winnipeg and black point, nova scotia: fernwood. ponting, s. 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(december 30, 2013b). cupe denies membership to carleton residence fellows. rabble.ca. available at: http://rabble.ca/news/2013/12/ cupe-denies-membership-to-carleton-residence-fellows. accessed 3 october 2014. watson, h. g. (january 29, 2014). cupe reverses, invites carleton fellows to unionize. rabble news. available at: http://rabble.ca/news/2014/01/ cupe-reverses-invites-carleton-fellows-to-unionize. accessed 8 june 2014. yalnizyan, a. (march 25, 2014). what the federal government could do if it really wanted to reduce youth unemployment: submission to the house of commons standing committee on finance study of youth unemployment, march 25 2014. canadian centre for policy alternatives (ccpa). available at: https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/ files/uploads/publications/national%20office/2014/04/youth_ unemployment_finance_committee.pdf. accessed 3 october 2014. 376 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education learning without sages? reflections on “flipping” the university classroom joel d. harden1 there is a serious crisis in education. students often do not want to learn and teachers do not want to teach. more than ever before...educators are compelled to confront the biases that have shaped teaching practices in our society and to create new ways of knowing, difference strategies for the sharing of knowledge. we cannot address this crisis if progressive critical thinkers and social critics act as though teaching is not a subject worthy of our regard. bell hooks, teaching to transgress. whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning. paulo freire, pedagogy of hope. it was a decision whose time had come: in january 2012, i left a wellpaid job in the union movement. after seven years, i felt disconnected from labour’s activist base; in general, my work involved meetings with union officials, and overseeing large projects. those efforts, while useful in some respects, fell short of my own pedagogical expectations. i had learned valuable administrative skills, but wanted more exposure to a classroom setting as well as learning opportunities with students and fellow educators. i wanted to change my situation, so a new set of circumstances could change me. 1  joel harden is an activist, writer, and educator. he teaches in the department of law and legal studies at carleton university. he is the author, most recently, of quiet no more, which explores the role of grassroots activism in various places, and its impact on the world around us. learning without sages? | 377 but where was i going? my answer at the time was two-fold. on the one hand, i wanted to be more present for our young children; my partner had a very busy job, and i wanted to bolster our existing child care arrangements. on the other hand, i had been writing a manuscript about contemporary social movements (based, in part, on my own doctoral dissertation) and, by 2012, it was time to re-commit myself to that project. from the arab spring to occupy wall street, dissent was making its mark around the world, and i needed to absorb the meaning of this moment in history. over the course of eight months, as more social movements (e.g.: idle no more, chicago’s teachers, anti-pipeline movements) shook north american society, i wrote a book (2013) for a broad audience of researchers, students, curious readers, and activists; but a unique place was needed to test the book’s merits beyond activist publications or scholarly journals. that led me back to university teaching, with all its opportunities and constraints. and so, in the fall of 2013, i re-joined the ranks of the campus precariat. for about $6,500 per half-semester course, i found work as a sessional instructor in carleton university’s department of law and legal studies, right around the time my book was released. i facilitated a first year seminar on “security and social movements” (with twenty-two participants), a third year course on “crime and state in history” (with forty-six participants), and a fourth year seminar on “environment and social justice” (with thirty-five participants). my re-entry into university work would be a teaching-intensive year. these courses were largely based on the canadian political context, though aspects of them ranged beyond these parameters. i used my book for each of these courses, and also utilized recent movement publications, historical studies, and scholarly research. by this point, i had also made contact with several impressive colleagues at carleton, and was excited to be part of a community with like-minded thinkers and doers. the campus was also home to my son’s daycare, and many of the movements in which i was active. but as i thought about “how” to re-engage as a university educator, i struggled with several vexing questions. in using my book, was i compelling students to engage with my ideas, and would they be interested in “dissent and the law” from a movement perspective? and how would i learn from what students brought to class, while still addressing my responsibilities in evaluation and mentorship, and the inevitable power dynamics that exist in university classrooms? 378 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education this article describes my journey in seeking to answer these questions. it documents my use of critical pedagogy, a term widely used to describe teaching that challenges narrative, instructor-centric models of teaching and learning (giroux, 2011; mclean, 2006). it also documents the challenges i faced in doing so, and the insights this provided about current debates on “flipping the classroom” (mazur, 2009; schell and lukoff, 2012; bergmann and sams, 2012). as i explain, i find much in common with advocates of flipped learning, particularly in their efforts to challenge traditional models of education (an objective that, until recently, had largely remained within the concentric circles of radical academe, or popular educators in social movements). and yet, i also worry that flipped learning, in our age of austerity, could become the latest strategy to infantilize students, placate professorial egos, and justify massive spending in technology-based education at the expense of academic staff. locating “flipped learning” inside the political goals of critical pedagogy, i think, offers the best means for educators to resist that outcome. revisiting critical pedagogy as i designed my teaching for 2013-2014, i revisited two sources of critical pedagogy. the first of these could be loosely called “radical academe”: scholars who challenge historic forms of exploitation and oppression, while blending the realms of progressive dissent and academic research in doing so. in the north american context, i am thinking of people like angela davis, michael apple, bell hooks, howard zinn, greg albo, sunera thobani, henry giroux, david graeber, judith butler, noam chomsky, barbara epstein or cornel west. my second source was “popular education”, a pedagogical approach that has challenged passive models of student learning. for popular educators, students are co-learners with teachers, and not empty vessels awaiting the wisdom of some sage. students have their own valuable ideas and experience; popular educators understand this, and design learning environments accordingly. paulo freire (whose work as an educator began working with illiterate peasants in brazil, and later inspired millions around the world) was a forerunner of this method, but others soon followed in his footsteps. i had encountered popular education in graduate school, but immersed myself more deeply in this community while working for unions, notably as education director for the canadian labour congress. while expert-driven learning had been dominant in unions for decades (taylor, 2001), most labour educators learning without sages? | 379 i met were inspired by popular education, and sought to apply its philosophy using an array of updated materials (e.g.: burke et al., 2002; martin, 1995). but as i assessed the merits of radical academe and popular education for my own teaching, various strengths and weaknesses were apparent. radical academe had inspired a generation of social scientists (like me) to question assumptions, and urge students to do likewise. popular education had fostered a vibrant approach that challenged expert-driven teaching, built confidence in learners, and humility in educators. and yet both approaches, in my experience, were focused on narrow left-wing communities, and reliant on a limited pool of trained hands (or wise sages) to survive. as i refined my own university teaching, i wondered how to transcend these limits. could i challenge students with radical academe while using the pedagogical insights of popular education? could i utilize critical pedagogy in a way that retained its principles, but reach out to a broader audience? as i developed answers to these questions, i discovered a recent literature on “flipping the classroom” that had freire-like themes, and met colleagues at carleton university who used this pedagogical approach. the flipped class, according to its advocates, was less about students receiving the wisdom of a wise lecturer. it was, instead, about creating learning environments where students could test the merits of course materials in class after parsing through them first at home. students would receive articles, videos, or recorded lectures by email, or these would be posted to the course website. educators then used class time to facilitate learning exercises designed to apply the insights of course materials; this could involve completing a written assignment, a quiz, or debates in small groups. this method has been used for classes of varying sizes, from large lecture halls to small seminar rooms. as students engage in this process, professors or teaching-assistants circulate throughout the learning environment, listening to discussion and posing questions to stimulate debate. flipped classrooms, as i came to understand them, were more interactive than traditional lectures, and allowed students to influence the direction of their own learning. this approach appealed to my pedagogical instincts, and spoke to my own frustrations in university learning. as a student, i struggled with being “talked at” for extended periods of time, and generally found extra-curricular debates more useful than classroom discussions. in class, it seemed to me, most students were performing for professors or teaching assistants with the hope of earning 380 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education high grades, strong reference letters, and related academic success. they rarely engaged their educator critically; but in lively conversation outside of class, many spoke more openly about their opinions. to my colleagues in graduate school, i lamented how this reflected the meritocratic role of universities, and their function in “sorting” our future roles in society. but must thoughtful educators, i asked, affirm this process? were there not other teaching methods that inspired independent thinking, or intellectual capacities that build engaged, active citizenship? it was questions like these that led me to paulo freire in the mid1990s. in fact, i remember first reading pedagogy of the oppressed (1970) in toronto’s annex-based future bakery, soaking in its countervailing wisdom between gulps of coffee and bites of mashed potatoes. in page after page, freire named the flaws of what he called “narrative learning”, or the “banking system of education”: “narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. worse yet, it turns them into “containers”, into “recepticles” to be “filled” by the teacher. the more completely [s/he] fills the receptacles, the better a teacher [s/he] is. the more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are...in the banking system of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry.the teacher presents themself to students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, s/he justifies their own existence. the students, alienated like the slave in the hegelian dialectic, accept their ignorance as justifying the teacher’s existence -but, unlike the slave, they never discover that they educate the teacher.” (53) nearly two decades after i read these words, i revisited critiques of narrative learning, only now espoused by advocates of “flipping the classroom”. the most astute of these writers cited freire as an influence, quoting his remarks that “education is suffering from narrative sickness”, and that “passive education cultivates passive people” (schell and lukoff, 2012). but could “flipping” legitimately claim the mantle of popular education, and meet the analytical rigour of radical academe? was “flipping” truly about building intellectual capacities of student learning without sages? | 381 learners, or prettifying the massive classes that financed university budgets? were students being challenged as intellectuals, or entertained through nuanced teaching methods? these were the questions i asked while considering the merits of flipped learning, and planning my teaching work for 2013-2014. my adventures in (and lessons from) flipped learning in 2013-2014, my approach to “flipped” learning involved regular writing, limited lecturing, and creative discussion in both small and large groups. in three carleton university courses for the 2013-2014 academic year, i asked for weekly written reflections (including a thesis, evidence, antithesis, and synthesis, to a maximum of 500 words), group facilitation, a short paper (1,000 words), a major essay proposal (1,500 words), a major essay (3,000 words), and discussion-based learning in class. this meant an increase in my evaluation workload, but it helped me regularly convey a clear sense of my expectations. for shorter weekly reflections, my comments were more succinct; for longer assignments, i offered more substantive feedback. no quiz, mid-term, or exams were scheduled, and students were freed from worrying what aspects of our course would show up on tests. instead, in our initial discussions, they were asked to focus on three things: to be “present” (completing written work, participating in class debates, and actively listening to others); to be “honest” (and convey their actual opinions, not ideas they believed were sanctioned by me or our course materials); and to be “fair” (by taking our class seriously, and accurately depicting perspectives with which they disagreed). their final grade was based heavily on class participation (40 percent), while the balance was distributed between the assignments named above. inspired by various popular educators, i ensured the physical layout of each class was amenable to debate and discussion. this meant avoiding rooms with fixed chairs or row-based seating, where students, in my experience, typically search for anonymity in the back with screened devices. instead, tables were pushed against the wall, and chairs were arranged in an horseshoe or circle format. class started with an opening roundtable where everyone provided brief responses to two questions. after that came limited remarks (5-10 minutes) from me, followed by a range of group work (or interactive, popular-education-based exercises), where various multimedia tools were used to engage different learning styles. in one course (“security 382 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education and social movements”), students helped choose curriculum readings in the second semester; in this and a second course (“environment and social justice”), students led in facilitating class discussion. they did so after i demonstrated appropriate readings, and interactive facilitation techniques in previous classes. inspired by radical academe and social movements, i chose provocative topics for our survey of dissent and canadian law. many were introduced for the first time to moments in north american history with which they were rarely familiar: the red river and north-west rebellions of 1869-1870 and 1885; the winnipeg general strike of 1919; the on to ottawa trek (and regina riot) of 1935; quebec’s anti-communist padlock law of 1937, and canada’s related gouzenko affair of 1945; the eviction and relocation of black africville residents by nova scotian officials from 1964 to 1967; the longest student occupation in canadian history of sir george williams college (now concordia university), inspired by black power activism, in 1967; the pro-choice movements of the 1970s and 1980s; the stonewall riot of 1969 in new york city, and gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgendered activism in north america since. added to these cases were more recent examples: anti-oil-pipeline movements, palestine human rights campaigns, occupy wall street, slut walk, pussy riot, and idle no more. as i canvassed colleagues on this selection of topics, i generally heard two criticisms. first, that this course material may provoke more than was necessary, and second, that i risked providing scant attention to many cases over considered attention of a few. my experience, in fact, revealed the precise opposite. students appreciated a larger sweep of history which allowed them to make a more informed choice about the research focus for their major essay. i also found, in general, that controversial topics improved class discussion. the most memorable classes featured tough, passionate debate which generally stayed within the boundaries of respect. but how, overall, was my pedagogy received? in retrospect, it yielded mixed results. our learning, as several students explained in course evaluations, was not “what they expected”, but most enjoyed a different perspective on law and society, and the manner in which we engaged course materials. at the same time, many found the writing demands of our work onerous, and a vocal contingent insisted on more lecturing and testing. my teaching evaluation scores, historically well above average, were fixed more in the average range. the decisive factor were a few learning without sages? | 383 frustrated students who provided very low assessments which impacted my overall scores. there were two moments that embodied this frustration, each of which yielded valuable learning for me as an educator. in the first instance, i was challenged by an infuriated student who received a lower-than-expected grade for his first essay. his essay, in my view, did not demonstrate a critical grasp of our course materials; the text was also loosely cobbled together with little effort at proper editing. and so, as i entered the hallway after class, i was accused by this student of being “biased”, and pigeon-holing him at a “b” level (which, he impressed, he had never been). after listening for some time, i asked the student what he wanted from our conversation. did he want me to re-grade his assignment? did he want to withdraw from our class? or did he just want to communicate his frustration, and leave it there? after more fulmination, the student indicated a potential interest in me re-grading his work, but he wanted more time to consider his options. soon after that, i was contacted by our department’s undergraduate coordinator. the student had now changed his grievance towards the entire course, and alleged it was “unfair” to expect weekly writing given this was not explicitly referenced in our course outline. after i demonstrated that this was mentioned in class, the expectations for which were communicated several times by email, the grievance went away (but i learned, after this experience, to list all my expectations in the course outline). of course, because the quality of this student’s work did not improve, things did not end there. at one point, i was accused of racism by this student in an email following a meeting he had with our department chair (which, i surmised, did not go well). at the chair’s request, the head of carleton’s student services then got involved, and this prompted an apology from the student (retracting the racism charge, but re-asserting the belief that our course had unfair expectations). the student later appealed his final grade to the registrar’s office, which meant several queries that took valuable time to answer. after this experience, i had a better understanding about why many educators prefer a lecture-and-testing approach; in a context of a massive workload (which is true for most tenured, tenure-track, and sessional professors), why not choose a pedagogy that is less time consuming, and easier to defend when challenged? writing-and-discussion-based learning requires more effort for both 384 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education student and educator, and leaves much open to interpretation should emotions run high. another instance of heightened emotion happened the same year, but this time with a much different outcome. in this case, i was approached early in the semester by a student who had shown great promise, but was concerned about her prospects for a decent grade given the demands of her part-time employment. her “part-time” work day, i learned, consisted of waking up at 4:00am and commuting to the ottawa airport. upon arrival, she booked in travelers as a flight attendant, and staffed the rapid route between ottawa and toronto. and so, when our three-hour seminar was held (at 8:30am on tuesday mornings), this student had already worked a half-day shift, which didn’t bode well for being “present” in class discussions. but this job, the student insisted, was crucial as a means to finance her undergraduate studies. she was a first time university goer from a racialized family, and faced intense pressure as a consequence. she was also excited about our learning, and very much engaged in debates over human rights. she asked if i could be flexible in assessing her participation grade, given some days it would be impossible to attend class (as her employer required help as a flight attendant after check-in was completed). after further reflection, and some indication of how many classes would be missed (only three, as it turned out), i agreed to accommodate this request. while some might dispute that choice, my notion of supportive pedagogy does not require identical treatment. i knew i was challenging students, and that some of them faced unique learning challenges and constraints. some of these had institutional supports on campus, while others proved more difficult to assist. for that reason, early-on in our learning, i urged students to approach me personally (or through an institutional advocate) if they needed an accommodation. a few did, and i took their requests, in general, at face value (particularly if they were made well in advance of deadlines). so the student-flight-attendant i discuss here, it should be understood, was following up on an existing invitation. in her case, i asked that her weekly written work be submitted by email; i would look to its quality to evaluate her participation grade for classes in which she was absent. this arrangement worked relatively well, until later in the semester when the intensity of employment/education demands (and, i gathered, a consistent lack of sleep) was having its toll. after receiving the grade for her major essay proposal, this student nearly came undone in a tense conversation, and lamented the effort necessitated by a learning without sages? | 385 writing-based course. with further discussion, however, she was able to focus her research, and produce a strong final essay. despite the challenges she faced, this student scored in the top ten percent of the class. that, of course, was a good news story, and there were other cases where students produced strong work in spite of various challenges (mental health and employment were common reasons). at the same time, i empathized with students who also struggled because my pedagogy was atypical. university education, after all, is a high stakes enterprise – and this is particularly true for first-time university goers in their respective families (a reality which is quite common at carleton university). in our increasingly “marketized” society, parents expect a “return” on their investment, and students want grades to meet such expectations. post-secondary institutions, as many argue, are catering to such sentiments, and designing academic programming based on the “attractiveness of student life”, the “employability of graduates” or “likelihood to attract outside funding” (cairns and cairns, 2014; cbc, 2014; giroux, 2013; groake and hamilton, 2014). these pressures make alternative learning methods dangerous, raising any number of legitimate questions about my motives. how could students, accustomed as most are to lecture-and-testing pedagogy, earn high grades in a flipped classroom? could i be trusted to assess varying points of view (certainly those critical of social movements) fairly? and why place such an emphasis on writing, which is onerous for learners more accustomed to lecture-and-testing classes? flipping into the future? (yes, with a few caveats) as i struggled with these questions, i gained insight from educators at carleton who had also used versions of flipped learning. melanie adrian, a colleague in the department of law and legal studies, hosted a lunch seminar discussing her effort to bring “democracy” into the classroom (2014). she described how (in a second-year human rights law course) students were invited to help co-create the course outline, or accept a syllabus that had already been prepared. if the students opted for the former, they were expected to design a process by which decisions could be made, and present their final syllabus to adrian for comment and approval. to adrian’s surprise, students developed their own course outline over the first three classes, utilizing a painstaking, consensus-driven process in doing so. the reading and assignment expectations were 386 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education more challenging than what adrian had designed in her prepared syllabus, and classes brimmed with lively debate from start to finish. at the same time, a committed minority also wanted a return to more lecturing and testing, and hid behind laptops (or other devices) during class discussions. in debates over the course outline, however, these students realized they could not persuade others and opted, instead, to “go along for the ride” (adrian, 2014). adrian’s takeaway from the experience was two-fold: first, that most students wanted a new challenge, and would rise to the occasion; and second, that some would resist but not, as it turned out, prevent learning opportunities for others. this, she concluded, validated her belief that it was worth taking risks in pedagogy, and pushing students to demand more from their classroom experience. richard nimijean, another carleton colleague based in canadian studies, recounted a similar experience (2014). in his case, he opted to flip large classes (with over 150 students) by circulating pre-recorded lectures, and using lecture time for small group exercises where students (with the help of nimijean and teaching assistants) applied the insights of course materials. in doing so, he noticed a few developments. first, that this methodology “drew out” keen learners who used classroom interactions to advance their research interests. second, that it “woke up” other students who had previously ignored class discussions, and compelled them to either participate or absent themselves (in general, nimijean found the former more common). and lastly, it frustrated those who preferred the anonymity of a large class, and the reception of knowledge through lectures and note-taking. in general, nimijean found the last of these trends did not impact the tenor of class, or the outcome of his teaching evaluations. he therefore concluded, like adrian, that the benefits of flipped learning outweighed its potential negative consequences. like these colleagues, i will continue my use of flipped learning, and largely for two reasons. first, because i fear we often infantilize undergraduate learners, and avoid challenging them with work that respects their intellectual potential. reinforcing this tendency, as giroux (2014) explains, is our neoliberal age of austerity; as social science departments compete to recruit students (and retain crucial funding), educators are resorting to strategies that simplify learning in unhelpful ways. multiple choice exams or are preferred over written assignments, extended film segments over lively debate, or “ted talk” lectures over teaching that develops capacities for engaged citizenship. learning without sages? | 387 these trends, i believe, undermine the potential of social science, and transform learning into a limited, self-congratulatory process, and my experience suggests that students expect better. many want to be challenged, to be taken seriously as thinkers, and not mollified as consumers of a pleasant experience. in saying this, i do not deny the appeal of flashy styles, thoughtful lecturers, or the possibilities inherent in new communication technologies. my point, instead, is that educators must set their sights much higher. we live in a moment when students, staff, and faculty of our institutions are justifiably frustrated with the status quo. the same is true for most in our society who rarely set foot on campus, and regard postsecondary learning with great suspicion. mindful educators must enter this context with creativity, humility, and ambition. we must also recall’s friere’s notion that critical pedagogy is never neutral, but carries an important political vision: it either challenges the status quo, or it facilitates the “integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system...” (1970, 43). second, taking another cue from freire, i also regard teaching as a learning opportunity for educators, and that process is undermined by pedagogy that promotes passive absorption, descriptive analysis, and rote memorization from students. an instructive defense of such pedagogy was made during adrian’s seminar, when a film studies professor remarked, in discussion, that his goal was to actually “disempower students”, and avoid the “vain pursuit” of democracy in the classroom. “too many”, he explained, “think they know cinema after lengthy tours on the internet, or visits to film festivals.“ “my role”, he claimed, “is to use twenty years of experience to challenge that attitude, and to educate students in way they could not manage on their own.” of course, that observation misses the point of flipped learning, and critical pedagogy in general. the goal is not to dismiss an educator’s expertise, but to re-imagine teaching in a way that values student experience, the ideas they bring to class, and their own ability to test the merits of course materials. creating space for interaction facilitates new learning opportunities, and avoids the hubris, in fact, of educators who believe they alone have an answer for every question. powerful writing, active listening, and vigorous debate assisted my survival of narrative teaching. these skills, as i constantly refined them, helped me grasp ideas, and grow in intellectual terms. as i did so, there were certainly moments when a “wise sage” was useful, and i owe these mentors a debt of much gratitude. but those moments were far outnumbered by my own efforts to understand, apply, 388 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education and assess the value of what i was learning. we must encourage that kind of self-reliance in postsecondary learners, and this requires careful thought and practice from educators. that is what i attempted in 20132014, and what i will continue to attempt looking ahead. where will it lead, you might ask? only more experience, more breakthroughs and failures, will reveal that for me. for as friere once said to his colleague myles horton, “we make the road by walking” (1990, 76). references adrian, m. (2014, february 27). “democracy in the classroom a viable pedagogical approach?” presentation made to juristalks, carleton university’s department of law and legal studies, and carleton university’s education development centre. ottawa, on, canada. apple, m. (2011). education and power [third edition]. new york: routledge. apple, m. (2004). ideology and curriculum [25th anniversary 3rd edition]. new york: routledge. basen, i. (2014, september 7). “class struggle.” documentary produced for the canadian broadcasting corporation’s sunday edition with michael enright. http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/ documentaries/2014/09/07/class-struggle/. bergman, j. and sams, a. (2012). flip your classroom: reach every student in every class every day. iste: arlington, va. burke, b. et al. (2002). education for changing unions. toronto: between the lines. friere, p. (1992). pedagogy of hope: reliving pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: bloomsbury academic. freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: continuum. giroux, h. (2014). neoliberalism and the politics of higher education: an interview with henry giroux. truthout, http://truth-out.org/news/ item/15237-predatory-capitalism-and-the-attack-on-higher-educationan-interview-with-henry-a-giroux. giroux, h. (2011). on critical pedagogy. new york: bloomsbury academic. groake, l. and hamilton, b. (2014, january 13). “doing the ppp: a skeptical perspective”. academic matters: the journal of higher education. http://www.academicmatters.ca/2014/01/ doing-the-ppp-a-skeptical-perspective/. hooks, b. (1994). teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. new york: routledge. horton, m. and freire, p. (1990) we make the road by walking: conversations on education and social change. philadelphia: temple university press. learning without sages? | 389 martin, d. (1995). thinking union: activism and education in canada’s labour movement. toronto: between the lines. mazur, e. (2009). “farewell, lecture?” science. 323: pp. 50-51. mclean, m. (2006). pedagogy and the university: critical theory and practice. new york: continuum. nimijean, r. (january 31, 2014). “flipping or flopping? reflections on efforts to engage students in introductory canadian studies.” seminar hosted by the carleton university education development centre. ottawa, on, canada. schell, j. and lukoff, b. (october 15, 2012). “flipping the classroom: how to turn your students’ worlds upside down.” presentation to the new england board of higher education. boston, ma, usa. sears, a. and cairns, j. (2014). austerity u: preparing students for precarious lives. new socialist. http://www.newsocialist. org/736-austerity-u-preparing-students-for-precarious-lives. taylor, j. (2001). union learning: canadian labour education in the twentieth century. toronto: thompson educational publishing. “the elders said if we stop fishing we will die, we will no longer exist”: hannah arendt’s black holes, canadian corporate mining impunity, and indigenous narrative resistance norah bowman1 human rights violations in canada and abroad are endemic to the mining industry. gordon and webber’s 2016 the blood of extraction: canadian imperialism in latin america catalogues canadian corporate mining (ccm) environmental and human rights abuses that, since 2000, have reached an epidemic frequency. reports by non-profit human rights organizations mining watch, rights action, san miguel ixtahuacán defense front, the justice and corporate accountability project, unit for the protection of human rights defenders in guatemala, human rights watch and amnesty international document exploitation, human rights violations and disregard of indigenous peoples’ rights by ccm. neoliberal imperialist exploitation scales easily across radically unequal geopolitical regimes; the reports are disturbingly similar in their accounts of exploitation and their calls for justice (russell, 2016). an unequal balance of economic power between the global north and global south, as well as a legacy of power imbalances between colonial states and indigenous peoples underpins this exploitation. further, legal, financial and moral impunity perpetuates ccm corporate violence; in this essay i examine how impunity in ccm functions and how it can be resisted. ccm impunity works in paradoxical reciprocity with the robust notion of canada as a uniquely humanitarian nation. as recently as a june 2017, a united nations working group (unwg) for business ethics report to ottawa, prepared after a unwg mission to canada, commends canada for “demonstrating leadership in promoting human rights, including of women, both within and outside canada” (unwg, 2017). the same unwg report notes that canadian mining practices abroad and at home fail to “fully address human rights due diligence” (2017). these failures are well documented by human rights organizations who report to the united nations working group 1 dr. norah bowman is a professor cross-appointed to english and interdiscipliinary studies at okanagan college in kelowna, bc, on unceded syilx territory. her work focusses on indigenous and feminist resistance and resilience. email: nbowman@okanagan.bc.ca 268 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice of business ethics as well as by first person accounts from community members facing violence, loss of land, and local environmental pollution. later in this paper i present first nations chief darrell bob’s report to the unwg at williams lake, bc (bob, 2017). behind the un’s milquetoast scolding of canada for tarnishing its human rights reputation are thousands of reports of human rights and environmental abuses. further, canada is recognized as a human rights promoter even while the state subsidizes the activities of canadian mining corporations (ccms) at home and abroad as they violate human rights in spirit and in practice (kading and bass, 2014; churchill, 2002; bowman, 2017). these subsidies come in the form of diplomatic government intervention in support of ccm, financial incentive to ccm, and a refusal to hold ccm accountable for human rights violations. in 2005 canadian parliamentary sub-committee on human rights and international development reported out on the seriousness of the problem of “the effective impunity of canadian mining companies operating overseas in weak-governance zones” such as honduras, mexico and guatemala (coumans, 2014, 29). the committee recommended canada enact formal governance measures to hold corporations accountable, for example, but making protection of human rights a condition of financial and diplomatic services provided by canadian bodies; these recommendations have not been met (coumans, 2014). how, then, can canadian corporations and the canadian state claim responsible humanitarian citizenship at home and abroad? here i turn to another scholar whose work examines systemic state-sponsored violence. published in 1961, political theorist and philosopher hannah arendt’s eichmann in jerusalem: the banality of evil investigates the mechanisms through which state regimes and individual actors maintain privately held moral impunity as well as publicly claimed moral and legal impunity even while engaging in the most grave and systematic human rights violations. her study of state violence, impunity and responsibility in the trial of nazi adolf eichmann uncovers that which was “unprecedented in the nazi genocide. . .in order to understand a crime against humanity, one that would acknowledge the destruction of jews, gypsies, gay people, communists, the disabled and the ill” (butler, 2011). arendt’s analysis of the administration of genocide yields insight into the role of impunity in systematic human rights violations; in particular i look to her formulation of the function of “black holes” of impunity for both individual actors and states guilty of systemic violence. beyond analysis of the structures of impunity, arendt limns how the light of resistance escapes these hannah arendt’s black holes | 269 black holes of impunity. these resistances show us how to work as allies in a time of the trc, undrip, and increasingly exploitative ccm. my position in this paper is relevant; i am a non-indigenous woman of canadian citizenship. i’m implicit in and i benefit from the ongoing colonization and theft of indigenous people’s cultures and land. i draw on my eurocentric cultural and intellectual heritage and training as i seek to understand, to critique, and to battle corporate and state colonial impunity. as an ally in the cross-border indigenous rights struggle, i work to intervene in human rights violations perpetrated by canada’s settler colonial culture with which i am professionally, culturally and financially embedded. as an imperialist nation, canada continues to benefit from capital extracted from impoverished and politically destabilized nations in the global south (gordon and webber, 2016). canada is not unique in this position; global north partners similarly extract capital from poorer, less politically stable, more densely populated nations. unlike its global north partners, canada is home to the vast majority of the world’s mining investment and deals. mining investment regulations in canada are weak and 60% of the world’s exploration and mining corporations are listed on the tse (gedicks, 2015). and of course, canada claims model humanitarian citizenship. of the mining resources listed on the tse, many are located on the homes of indigenous people living in colonial states. by 2025, it is estimated that about “half of all mineral resources targeted by mining companies will come from territories” used or mostly inhabited “by indigenous peoples” (gedicks, 2015, 131). globally, indigenous people – for a number of reasons – are “disproportionately vulnerable to deteriorating environmental conditions” (gedicks, 2015 130). these circumstances mean that indigenous people are overrepresented amongst those who are displaced, disregarded, injured, killed or otherwise hurt by mining abuses in the global north and the global south (gordon and webber, 2016; geddicks, 2015; churchill, 2002). in the case of honduras, canada has been accused of contributing to the political instability from which it benefits. in 2012, after a military-backed coup in honduras removed democratically elected anti-mining president zelaya, canadian technocrats, including ambassador cameron mackay, representatives from the now defunct cida, and from canadian mining corp breakwater resources, lobbied the new government to reverse the honduran moratorium on open-pit mining (russell, 2017; spring, 2016). as a result, while the postcoup economy has been “devastating for most hondurans,” it has been 270 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice beneficial for canadian corporate interests (gordon and webber, 2016, 84). a report from mining watch canada is clear about canadian influence on honduras’ reversal on open-pit mining: “canada supported the 2009 military coup in honduras that ushered in a series of neoliberal reforms to the detriment of communities, signed a free trade agreement with the postcoup regime, and funded and supervised the writing of the new mining code, approved in 2013. the canadian government’s public policy and promotion of canadian mining companies in honduras makes it responsible in part for the devastating environment and social impacts caused by mining companies in la unión, copán” (spring, 2016, 2). multiple local public resistance actions expressed opposition to open-pit mining; a 2011 poll showed that 90% of hondurans were against open-pit mining (spring, 2016). since the 2012 reversal, organizations have documented multiple instances of canadian mining corps violating basic legal procedures in order to establish and operate mines in honduras with absolute legal impunity. aural minerals, a cmc, is expanding a cyanide leaching gold mine in western honduras, a project that includes the destruction of a 200-year-old community cemetery, the forcible displacement of the communities of san miguel and san andrés minas, and violent repression of local protests (spring, 2016). in the case of honduras, cmc, with the support of canadian government representatives have contributed to the structural erosion of democratic human rights. canadian government technocrats have intervened to support cmc operations that violate human rights at proposed and operating mine sites. similarly, in guatemala, an extractive economy benefits canadian corporate mining interests. in 2011, assets of canadian mining in guatemala “were about $1.3 billion,” making guatemala the country in central america with the greatest amount of canadian mining assets (spring, 2016). and, as in honduras, there is significant and ongoing resistance from local communities; human rights organizations continue to “vigorously” reject “efforts on the part of the guatemalan state, foreign corporations,” and canadian corporate and state representatives to eliminate community opposition (spring, 2016). one of the most egregious cases of this, and a clear example of canadian corporate impunity, is the murder of adolfo ich. hannah arendt’s black holes | 271 in 2009, community leader and peaceful indigenous activist adolfo ich was murdered by security guard mynor padilla. padilla, hired by cmc hudbay minerals, also shot german chub, another community member. as a result of the shooting german is permanently paralyzed. for both shootings there are multiple witnesses as well as ballistic and forensic evidence that padilla shot ich and chub. hudbay funded testimony in support of the accused; the legal processes in guatemala were corrupted by this imbalance of financial and judicial access. in september of 2016, as the case continues, the home of angelina choc, adolfo ich’s widow and children was the target of a midnight gunfire attack in september of 2016. it is choc herself who is bringing charges against hudbay, and for the first time, a canadian court has allowed the charges against hudbay to be presented in a canadian court. while the endemic problem of cmc taking advantage of central american judicial infrastructure damaged by centuries of colonialism, extractive neoliberalism, and foreignfunded coups will not be rectified by this particular case being moved to a canadian court, this case represents a significant challenge to a tradition of impunity in cmc. corruption of process, regulatory capture, and disrespect of indigenous communities exists in cmc operations in canada as well as internationally. canadian legal and moral responsibility towards indigenous people has a vexed history; in 2016 canada became a signatory to the united nations declaration on the rights on indigenous people, and in 2017 completed the first step of a truth and reconciliation commission (trc). land title and land use are central to the ongoing trc process; in 2017 the national centre for the trc states that the process is ongoing, and the trc, “will…encourage community members to share their experiences of other policies of aggressive assimilation in canada, encouraging dialogue on topics such as land claims, water, education, poverty, and missing and murdered aboriginal women” (trc, 2017). canadian extractive projects, established decades ago without consent or regard for indigenous peoples’ rights to the land and waters, continue to operate on unceded and treaty indigenous territory. in the context of the trc and undrip, the 2014 mining disaster at quesnel lake, a fjord lake on unceded secwepemc territory, close to the town of williams lake, is an opportunity for redress of colonial extractivism and a potential case of egregious ongoing impunity. on this unceded territory, inhabited by indigenous people since time immemorial without a treaty agreement, imperial metals operates a copper and gold mine. on august 4th, 272 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice 2014, the earthen walls of the tailings storage facility, weakened structurally and filled to capacity with mining effluent, shifted, broke open, and let 25 billion liters of mining waste into the quesnel lake watershed. the watershed flows into the quesnel river and the fraser river, and the spill reached the wild and trade food sources of multiple indigenous peoples downstream, including secwepemc, tsilhqot’in, dene, and st’at’imc nations. the fraser river flows south through some of bc’s most intense commercial agricultural areas, through vancouver, and then into the pacific ocean. and for this, the biggest mining spill in canadian history, an event that affected a sacred watershed and the food sources of many communities, with measurable environmental damage, imperial metals has not been fined, has not been sanctioned, and has, in fact, been allowed to reopen and has been granted permission to permanently release effluent in the watershed (bowman, 2017). on may 28th, 2017, the united nations working group on business ethics visited williams lake for a full day of meetings. i attended the meetings. the unwg listened to indigenous and non-indigenous community members about the spill; overwhelmingly local people spoke of manipulation, disregard, lies, and repression. community members want justice for the spill’s damage, they want their land back, and they want assurance that their food and water sources would be rehabilitated. community representatives, including elders, elected chiefs and council members, nurses, and natural scientists also noted the appearance of regulatory capture, a situation in which regulation of an industry is conducted in favour of the industry. regulatory capture is an effect of intertwined government and industry interests, and leaves indigenous and nonindigenous people without access to justice. extractive industry expert catherine coumans cites a number of recent un and other international studies that highlight “the predilection of governments and corporations for voluntary selfregulation over binding regulatory or legal obligations” (coumans, 2014, 33). self-regulation is a behavioural outcome of a corporate-legislative relationship of impunity. it is also relative to the problem of systemic impunity and regulatory capture to note that imperial metals has donated $234,000 to the bc liberal party, the party governing bc from 2001 to 2017. cmc human rights violations in canada are more closely tied to policy and regulatory manipulations than the shootings and civil rights oppressions seen in central america; however, in light of undrip and the trc, projects that proceed or continue without community consent create structural, ethical, and citizenship impunity problems. currently, the kghm ajax mining hannah arendt’s black holes | 273 proposal for a gold and copper mine on unceded secwpemc territory near the city of kamloops has met absolute opposition from the stk’emlupsemc secwepemc nation (ssn). the ssn states clearly that it does not consent to the development of the mine and that the project is “fundamentally opposed” to indigenous land use at the site, a position to which over 50 non-indigenous environmental and academic groups have signed as supporters. yet, the kghm ajax mining corporation has been reassured by mp kathy mcleod and by outgoing bc premier christy clark that indigenous resistance will not impede the mine. kading and bass state that: “the fact that the ajax proposal has proceeded as far as it has represents just how removed canadian authorities are from intuitively acknowledging and enforcing any meaningful precautionary principle that anticipates the negative effects of resource extraction, and why approval of the ajax mine would be precedent setting for corporate investment” (kading and bass, 2014, 20). in fact, while countless resource extractive projects in canada have been developed in spite of significant community resistance, particularly from indigenous peoples, it is the presence of undrip and the trc that makes ongoing extractive impunity precedent setting. is cmc impunity so firmly entrenched in canadian nation building that it is immune to all rights-based and reconciliation structures? the problem of cmc impunity has multiple damaging effects. first, it is a fundamental problem for reconciliation. with a history of land theft, forced residential schools, forced sterilization, and broken treaties, impunity for historic and ongoing mining operations limits any path forward for reconciliation. impunity is the opposite of reconciliation and the two simply cannot coexist. reconciliation requires a calling forth of culpability, a recognition of violence past and present, and impunity functions to erase the very presence of guilt in actors. if a crime is not called a crime, a murder not a murder, poison not called poison, then canadian corporate mining interests can profess innocence. adolfo ich’s death would never be accounted for, the effluent in quesnel lake can never be called biocide or poison, the loss of salmon and berries and mosses can never be mourned, and the desolation of blasted mountains can never be grieved. certainly, impunity is a fundamental 274 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice mechanism of genocide; impunity for crimes against a population locates that population outside the protection afforded by human rights; people whose experiences, narratives, lives, and deaths are irrelevant or non-existent lay no legal or ontological claim to land or life. impunity relegates life and land to neoliberalism’s garbage heap. as well as having multiple points of impact, impunity is resilient. hannah arendt examines this resilience, finding two fundamental mechanisms through which political and ethical impunity is established. in the first instance, impunity must always overcome the “problem” of conscience – arendt describes the nazi hierarchy’s mechanism of overcoming the “natural instinct of pity in the presence of physical suffering.” faced with cmc technocrats steadfast in their rejection of the pleas of community members, i have observed this seeming lack of the “instinct of pity,” and while pity might be the slightest of reconciliation gestures, it suggests culpability. arendt writes that the nazi hierarchy trained their operatives to locate that feeling of pity but to turn it around. thus, “instead of saying ‘what horrible things i did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: ‘what horrible things i had to watch in pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulder!!” (arendt, 1961, 106). in a 1943 speech to high-ranking ss functionaries, himmler reminded the murderers of their inherent decency and of their historic task: “most of you know what it means when 100 corpses lie there, or when 500 corpses lie there, or when 1,000 corpses lie there. to have gone through this and – apart from a few exceptions caused by human weakness – to have remained decent, that has made us great. that is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and which will never be written” (agambem, 2002, 78). under this direction, the party officials were asked to accommodate a weight of emotional labour, and specifically advised to ignore the suffering of others. for the work of their own emotional labour (the difficulty of seeing so many corpses), their superiors offered a glorious reward. nazi messaging assured them they were involved in something “historic, grandiose, unique – a great task” of national and global importance (arendt 1961, 105). a nazi state would be globally unique at an unprecedented historic scale; this metanarrative was infinitely more glorious than the truly pathetic and thus relatively insignificant troubles caused by the murder of men, women and children. moral discomfort and the problem of pity were easily swept aside by stoic nationalism. hannah arendt’s black holes | 275 in the case of ccm, the mechanism for overcoming moral discomfort exists in promotion of canada as an inherently humanitarian nation. humanitarian canada is a “vehicular idea” (chewinski, 2014) with remarkable resiliency. canada as a uniquely humanitarian nation adheres to corporate interests when cmcs and canadian government technocrats promise that mineral exploitation, regardless of conditions of local consent, lifts communities out of poverty. for example, in 2014, james lambert, then canadian ambassador to the netherlands promoted canadian humanitarianism when he announced that canadian state supported mining projects are ecologically and socially beneficial for local inhabitants (pedersen, 2014, 94). this promise of upward mobility is credible because it issues from a nation already heavily associated with compassionate humanitarianism. in this way international resource exploitation projects are able to “mas[k]” the violence inherent in neoliberal exploitation (chewinski, 2014). and when violence is uncovered, friendly international bodies often frame criticism within a confirmation of canada’s identity as a morally superior nation. the assumption that canada is essentially humanitarian explains why external and internal analysis of canadian foreign policy often presents canadian corporate human rights violations as “confused, rooted in a misunderstanding of the region, or as a simple expression of our subordinate relationship to the united states” (gordon and webber, 2016, 3). the remarkable resilience of canada’s identity as a nation that is fundamentally moral functions like arendt’s nationalist “great task.” it is grandiose and hypocritical to claim moral superiority regardless of multiple and ongoing human rights violations; in order to keep humanitarian canada robust, the violations are presented as exceptions or accidents, even when they have been occurring for 150 years, like the systematic disenfranchisement and oppression of indigenous people. and like arendt’s “great task,” canadian humanitarianism is presented as a uniquely canadian citizenship value. with this mechanism of overcoming guilt with a priori nationalist innocence, canada maintains impunity; there is more room for “natural pity” towards the supposedly confused, us co-opted, and misinformed canadian corporations than for the victims themselves. and yet, evidence for the suffering of victims of state violence emerges to challenge state metanarratives. arendt recognizes a second mechanism for the problem of evidence: the state constructs “holes of oblivion,” places of nonrelevance (arendt, 1963, 233). the state utilizes these to disappear and to erase 276 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice the acts of violence, the evidence, and the victims. holes of oblivion are discursive in that the idea of murder or crime is cast aside, with tricks of bureaucracy. impunity carries on because nothing is made to have existed; through ontological reassignment, erasure of documents, broken treaties, deaths of indigenous men and women in colonial custody, mountains of inaccessible data about watersheds, and residential schools, people are made to disappear. the holes of oblivion in genocide and environmental violence are multiple and diverse. holes of oblivion are material as well as discursive; arendt evokes the mass murders in which bodies are buried, hidden, burned, and unmarked. without evidence of a murder, there is no murder; there remains only a case for impunity. in colonial extractivism, once people are physically forced from their land, the holes of oblivion are deep and cmcs claim the land; impunity and terra nullius operate in tandem. mechanisms of impunity are as efficient as their totalizing discursive machines; they weaken under the power of resistance narratives. arendt concludes her examination of impunity with an assurance that the totalitarian state’s impunity always fails. even the most oppressive regimes are made up of unpredictable, unregimentable people; “[n]othing human is that perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. one man will always be left alive to tell the story” [sic] (arendt, 1963, 233). totalitarian regimes need to condemn resistance, both from within the ranks of oppressive forces and from the oppressed populations, to holes of oblivion. but as arendt points out, stories of resistance survive all regimes. arendt’s elaboration of the importance of resistance to totalitarianism takes into account the relative futility of most resistance; most nazi resisters died before witnessing any results of their courage. nevertheless, the stories of resistance, the words of those who reject impunity and call for justice, those who welcome the flooding feelings of pity, sorrow, and rage, resonate across history. these narratives are bright explosions, fissures of light in holes of oblivion. for this reason, i close this essay with the amplification of a resistance narrative to cmc injustice, in the context of colonial extractivism on unceded indigenous territory. this resistance narrative calls out impunity, calls out injustice, and calls forward the lives of indigenous people; it requires no additional analysis from me. holes of oblivion lose their power reconciliation when people tell their resistance stories. at the aforementioned may 2017 un working group publicly open mission meeting in williams lake, bc, chief darrell bob of the st’at’imc nation, xax’lip nation community, spoke these hannah arendt’s black holes | 277 words, recorded here with his permission, in the style of his powerful oratory. he speaks to injustice of persecution of his people for living the ways they have always lived. he speaks out against the impunity enjoyed by imperial metals, three years after the disaster at mt polley mine. chief darrell bob’s narrative raises up the lives of elders, of young people, of fish, of waters; he calls forth historic agreements and historic assaults, and he frames cmc in colonialism and his people’s lives as resistance: thank you in a good way for being here to listen to our people. i want to talk about corporate corruption at its highest level. last year one of our young men [donovan] got charged for fishing. a fine of 800 dollars for fishing. a man who lives off of fish cannot fish, is charged the fine, does not pay it, has to go to jail! we [have] got imperial metals at the mt polley disaster…[the spill] destroyed millions of [salmon] fry. we are going to, as a st’at’imc nation, we will take them, as well as the provincial government, to court. so what that little story, tells us about the value of compensation…millions of fish are going to be destroyed in the future. i will be dead before we understand the full impacts of mt polley. we have an ecosystem management plan. we have never been consulted by imperial metals or the provincial government or the federal government to approve any mining yet it does impact us. there is no indirect impact. we all live with the waters. that food sources feed a lot of people. the impact of that mine is disastrous. the biggest corruption i see right now is that the mine has not been charged. the province has not been charged. from my understanding and hearing, the dfo [department of fisheries and oceans] locked the doors when the disaster happened. accountability! the only ones accountable in this so-called province are what they called the taxpayers, the fee simple. they are the ones who are going to pay the bill for the company to ruin the land. that is guaranteed 278 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice insurance. the process has to be looked at. the question, the recommendation, is that to have fpic [free, prior and informed consent] you must associate all of the tribes that are tied to that life line. when you think about that, that is a huge undertaking. but that is how we. . .it was through marriage and family ties we had the ways to stay unified as a nation, that is true consent, the understanding of natural law. we are going to put forward [as a claim related to the mt.polley tsf spill] 800 dollars a fish for all the millions of fish they destroyed based on the charges laid on our people trying to lead a healthy life. now we don’t even know if that life will be healthy anymore. we do not stop fishing! the elders said if we stop fishing we will die, we will no longer exist. not this year but next year we will have the true impacts of mt polley starting to come forward. we need to explore as a unified front. the challenge. we need to change the thinking. it is not just sustainable living in one community. so in a good way, thank you. because when we look at it, the mine is open now and they are still spilling into the lakes, there is more money [needed] for this community to clean that mine up and clean the water up than there is for mining. it is going to take a lifetime to clean up. it is. we have no treaty with the province of bc nor canada. they are just corporations trying to take our resources and i will tell you why. our elders talked about an agreement between the queen and our people of the st’at’imc, thus given a crown and a staff that was given to our people. one third one third one third. this agreement meant that one third of resources went to canada, one third to whomever in the crown for the purposes of our medical, our social, our health, our education – the queen agreed to that – the third was that a third of that belonged to our nation so that they could be sustainable into the future. that was the agreement. as a young man, about this tall [holds hand at waist] i hannah arendt’s black holes | 279 remember playing with that staff. we always wondered what that was for until an elder, ernest jacob, brought it forward and told us what it was. these agreements are real to our people. we don’t have an agreement at treaty. we also believe that every community tied to the fraser river fishing system should be provided an opportunity to do studies on the fish of the system. it’s a must because we are going to realize in the future that this spill is going to impact all of us. the regulations are meaningless. they are to corrupt the voters to think they are going to follow this system, to divide native and non-native, to marginalize our people. our elders have always said, first and foremost protect the water because with the water we will always exist. our recommendation is to investigate our companies and our province. they should be charged. they should be charged, as was donovan, for one fish. the second is, every community on the fraser [river] should be able to do a study. we did, we flew our own people in, we had water samples done, we paid on our own. we know in the future we need this evidence. in closing i want to thank you for taking your time. here you have grassroots people who struggle daily. the reserves are third world…we totally rely on the land. without question we have to change the laws of the land according to natural land that we live with it. references agamben, g. 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(2017) retrieved from<https://www.democracynow.org/2017/2/21/headlines/honduras_ indigenous_leader_jose_santos_sevilla_assassinated> gedicks, a. (2015). transnational mining corporations, the environment, and indigenous communities. brown journal of world affairs. xxii (1). gledhill, j. (2014) “indigenous autonomy, delinquent states, and the limits of resistance.” history and anthropology. 2014. 25:4, 507 – 529. gold corp 2015 sustainability report. (2015) retrieved from http://csr.goldcorp.com/2015/ himmler, h. (1943). excerpt from himmler’s speech to the ss-gruppenführer at posen volume 7. nazi germany, 1933-1945. retrieved from http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/english22.pdf kading, t. & bass, e. (2014). can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? big copper versus a small city and the urban environment in a b.c. interior community. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 25. indigenous rights: the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous people. (2007). retrieved http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/drips_en.pdf kirsch, s. (2014). mining capitalism: the relationship between corporations and their critics. university of california press: oakland, california. moore, j. (2015). in the national interest? criminalization of land and environment defenders in the americas. retrieved from <miningwatch.ca> national centre for truth and reconciliation. 2017. retrieved from http://nctr.ca/about.php pedersen, a. (2014). “landscapes of resistance: community opposition to canadian mining operations in guatemala.” journal of latin american geography 13(1): 187-214. hannah arendt’s black holes | 281 http://csr.goldcorp.com/2015/ http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/drips_en.pdf http://nctr.ca/about.php ross, r. (2014). grabbing back: essays against the global land grab. ak press: oakland: ak press. russell, g. (2016, november 13). “canadian mining harms around the world: criminal and civil law reform needed now.” mining watch canada. web. retrieved april 15 2017. http://miningwatch.ca/news/2016/11/13/canadian-mining-harmsaroundworld-criminal-and-civil-law-reform-needed-now spring, k. (2016). mining in a state of impunity: coerced negotiations and forced displacement by aura minerals in western honduras. retrieved miningwatch.org 282 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice uneven engagement: unions and the living wage in ontario david goutor1 abstract: there has been much activism – and much scholarly attention – devoted to the living wage in recent years. while scholars have provided valuable insight into how different organizations – including unions – have united behind living wage campaigns, there have been few detailed studies of just what labour leaders think about the living wage, especially in canada. this is the first recent canadian study to explore this question in depth: it is based on 20 interviews with local labour council executives from around ontario. it reveals strong support for living wage campaigns and a belief that they should be a high priority for the labour movement. however, the extent of labour’s actual engagement in these campaigns was found to be uneven. unionists were notably open-minded when it came to strategies used by living wage campaigns, and overwhelmingly favoured taking the cause into the political realm. but union leaders often cast this cause as somewhat removed from their own bargaining, and they were split about the benefits for unions in reaching out to non-unionized workers. there was also a significant sense of pessimism in the 1 david goutor is an assistant professor in the school of labour studies at mcmaster university. he has studied the living wage in both historical and contemporary contexts. his other specialties are immigration, human rights, and international left movements, and his newest book is a chance to fight hitler: a canadian in the spanish civil war (between the lines.) this project could not have been completed without the excellent work of my research assistants. i would like to thank ben owns, lina assi and especially melissa cameron for their invaluable contributions. much of the funding from this research came from a grant from the fund of the liuna enrico henry mancinelli chair in global labour issues. in addition, an arts research board-sshrcc exchange conference grant from mcmaster university funded my trip to present an earlier version of this paper at the alternate routes conference at the university of turin, italy. i would like to thank these organizations for their support. thanks should also be given to the peer-reviewers that alternate routes engaged for the manuscript, as they offered some constructive and insightful feedback. uneven engagement | 159 answers, about the many problems faced by labour, and the prospects for serious change. keywords: living wage; unions; social movements; poverty; ontario introduction in the early 21st century, campaigns for higher wages or a living wage have comprised one of the most significant forms of labour activism in english speaking countries, including the united states, the united kingdom, and canada. in ontario some important living wage campaigns have emerged – and they have certainly made an impact in the past few years. for instance, the ontario living wage network counts 22 active local or regional campaigns to persuade employers to commit to paying a living wage. in addition, the fight for $15 and fairness, a grassroots campaign launched in 2015, has organized vigorously to pressure the government to raise the minimum wage to $15 dollars an hour. organized labour’s interests in these campaigns – as with any effort to raise workers’ pay rates – should be evident enough. and indeed, one does not need to look long at these campaigns’ material to find unions getting involved in their efforts. a considerable number of unions (such as the ontario secondary school teachers federation and unifor local 444, windsor), and labour councils (such as hamilton’s and sudbury’s) have been certified as living wage employers by voluntary campaigns (ontario living wage, 2019). moreover, the american fight for $15 was driven largely by the service employees international union (seiu), which has devoted tens of millions of dollars to the campaign (greenhouse, 2015). ontario’s fight for $15 and fairness boasts endorsements from almost 50 unions and labour councils, and many of its events are coordinated with labour organizations (15andfairness.org, 2017; 15andfairness.org, 2018). the ontario federation of labour’s make it fair campaign worked “in solidarity with the fight for $15 and fairness.” the ofl’s literature tended to cast make it fair (www.makeitfair.ca) as a campaign to influence the government’s 2016-7 review of labour law (the changing workplaces review), while the fight for $15 and fairness focussed on wage rates (the fight for $15 and fairness, however, has also addressed issues beyond wages). but beyond these surface indicators, just how deep and strong were these connections between organized labour and living wage campaigns? how invested were unions around the province in these efforts and their successes? do labour 160 | populism, power and protest leaders agree with all the strategies these campaigns have used and the policies they have advocated? are there any signs of these organizations coalescing with labour into a larger movement with a more sweeping agenda? there have been numerous studies of how living wage campaigns emerged, how they have been structured, and how they have sought to mobilize support for higher wages, especially in the united states and the united kingdom (luce, 2004; luce, pollin, brenner and wicks-lim, 2008; devinatz, 2013; figart, 2014; bennett, 2014; luce, 2017). many of these studies have examined the role of unions in the campaigns. but few studies delve deeply into the extent of the labour movement’s engagement with the living wage, and labour leaders’ views on the potential benefits and downsides of these campaigns. this lack is especially noticeable in the canadian literature on the living wage, which in general remains at an early stage of development. to be sure, a number of scholars have examined the composition and progress of living wage campaigns in this country (wells, 2016; evans and fanelli, 2016; evans, 2017; evans, mcbride and muirhead, 2017). some of the main scholars of the subject, bryan evans and carlo fanelli (2016), have doubted whether campaigns against the low-wage economy have mobilized as much community and grassroots support in canada as they have elsewhere. evans (2017) has recently reconsidered his scepticism on this point, but the interpretive question he raises is important and it is one of many that remain far from fully answered. this article addresses the need for in-depth explorations of labour’s engagement with living wage campaigns. it is based on a series of interviews with members of executive committees (presidents, vice presidents, recording or coordinating secretaries) of local and regional labour councils around ontario. indeed, it is the first recent study in canada – and one of the first anywhere – based upon detailed discussions with labour leaders about the living wage. it therefore provides vital insights into unionists’ views about a key new form of activism – and about other important social, economic and political matters. background and context while campaigns for higher wages deploy a range of strategies, broadly speaking two models have emerged. “voluntary” campaigns set a living wage rate based upon the local costs of goods and services, and they encourage employers to commit to paying their workers at the local rate. the rates therefore vary between cities – particularly between larger centres (toronto’s rate is $21.75) and uneven engagement | 161 smaller ones (london’s is $15.53). these campaigns have united into the ontario living wage network and they use what is often called the “friendly persuasion” method, which one activist in hamilton described as being “all about the conversation.” (living wage hamilton, 2017) they open dialogues with local businesses and organizations and try to convince them to go through a (usually straightforward) process of getting certified as an employer that pays living wages. altogether these campaigns have certified more than 200 employers across ontario by the start of 2019, including some with large workforces such as school boards, major social service networks, and medical centres. local living wage campaigns in hamilton, windsor, niagara, and waterloo have been the biggest contributors to this total (ontario living wage, 2019). a second model used by campaigns such as the fight for $15 and fairness could be termed a regulatory approach, agitating for wages to be raised through government policy. they particularly seek to raise the minimum wages that governments legislate for all workers; for decades, minimum wage rates in almost all jurisdictions in north america have fallen far behind the rising costs of living (wells, 2016, 236). some organizations – the manitoba federation of labour for example – term this the “make the minimum wage a living wage” approach (mfl.ca, 2019). the fight for $15 and fairness has sought to mobilize workers, hold public events to rally popular support, and pressure the government to raise these rates. for instance, one of its pamphlets was entitled “we organize, we win!” (15andfairness.org, 2017a) taking the lead from the fight for $15 campaign in the united states, it spends little time calculating living wage rates in a given community; instead it sets a broad target rate $15, as the name indicates – for a new minimum wage. at times, there has be some cross-over regarding the approach adopted by different organizations. for instance, in 2017 living wage hamilton became more engaged politically, particularly by agitating for the city of hamilton to commit to paying a living wage for all its employees.2 space does not allow for a lengthy exploration of the lines of division between these campaigns, or of the terminology that they and their supporters use; these distinctions can become quite complex, especially when considering campaigns in different countries and the literature about them. however, it can be said that there is often – though not always – a noticeable divide in the outlooks of the two kinds of campaigns, 2 this author was one of the presenters for living wage hamilton when the issue was brought to city council for discussion. 162 | populism, power and protest particularly regarding the value of using “friendly persuasion” to convince employers to increase wages. at the end of may 2017, the fight for $15 and fairness celebrated a major success when the kathleen wynne’s ontario liberal government introduced bill 148, known as the fair workplaces, better jobs act. officially enacted at the end of november, the bill raised the minimum wage to $14 at the start of 2018 with a further raise to $15 at the start of 2019. these increases were part of a large set of reforms in bill 148 (much larger than almost anyone expected), proposed after a wide-ranging re-examination of ontario labour law called the changing workplaces review (government of ontario newsroom, 2017). both fight for $15 and fairness and the ofl’s make it fair campaign celebrated the enactment of bill 148, since it not only increased the minimum wage but also made unionfriendly changes to labour-relations laws and improved regulations around workplace issues such as hours, leaves, and vacations (government of ontario newsroom, 2017; 15andfairness.org, 2017b). but in the june 2018 election, wynne’s liberal government was swept out of power, and doug ford’s new progressive conservative government quickly repealed almost all of bill 148. ford cancelled the scheduled minimum wage increase to $15, leaving the rate at $14. main findings the interviews reveal a high level of engagement with campaigns for higher wages, at least in a basic sense: they were discussed regularly at local councils and just over two-thirds of respondents claimed their councils were active in supporting a campaign. but the questions about activism by affiliated unions or respondents’ awareness of other living wage campaigns raise doubts about the strength and intensity of local labour councils’ engagement. respondents felt that living wage campaigns produced a range of benefits, which they felt far outweighed the drawbacks. a clear majority of local council executives interviewed also stated that the living wage should be a high priority for the labour movement, though not the first one above all others; indeed, in their discussion of priorities, respondents showed a deep awareness of the many profound challenges their movement needs to face. regarding strategy, the interviews revealed strong backing for both the voluntary and regulatory approaches to living wage campaigns. still, local labour council executives’ support for voluntary campaigns was always qualified, and support for the regulatory approach was markedly stronger. a clear consensus emerged that living wage campaigns had to involve a combination of unions and uneven engagement | 163 different community organizations, especially anti-poverty organizations, with many respondents feeling that these community groups should take the lead. there was also overwhelming support for bringing the struggle for the living wage into the political realm, with the majority of respondents favouring targeting the municipal level. as for the living wage’s potential impact on unions, most respondents saw benefits in collective bargaining for at least some unions though less than a quarter thought all unions would benefit. in fact, most answers depended on respondents’ ideas about who they would be bargaining for: those who focused their answers around unions representing low wage workers tended to see major advantages, but those who focused on higher wage workers did not. a majority – but only a bare majority – of respondents believed that if it became a reality, the living wage would increase unions’ appeal to unorganized workers. about 40% of respondents stated that the living wage would not help unions much in reaching out to the unorganized, and some among these sceptics felt it might hurt. but on this issue (and others they were asked about), respondents felt that the narrow interests of unions were not the paramount considerations, and that the living wage should still be pursued even if there were not immediate payoffs for them. space does not allow for a full and broad-ranging exploration of the implications of these findings. this article is devoted to explaining in detail the main findings of the research. however, some of the key themes that emerged through the answers will be explored further in the conclusion. methodology the interviews were all conducted following a questionnaire that consisted of 12 questions divided into 4 sections. the first section asked about how often living wage campaigns have been discussed by their councils, how active the councils or affiliated locals were in the campaigns, and whether they were aware of campaigns going on elsewhere. the second section asked broader questions about the living wage, particularly its benefits and potential drawbacks, and just where it should be placed on organized labour’s priority list. the third section asked four questions about living wage campaign strategy, particularly about the merits of the voluntary and regulatory approaches, respectively; about what organizations should lead these campaigns; and about how – and at what level – they should engage in politics. the final section explored potential impacts of the living wage on unions, particularly whether it would help their position in 164 | populism, power and protest collective bargaining, and whether in would make it more likely that non-union workers would want to become organized. executives of local labour councils were the focus of this study because these councils have often been a key centre of labour activism since the beginning of the movement (heron, 1984). of course, labour councils are not a perfect representation of working-class activism as a whole. levels of participation can vary widely between regions and localities, and some unions organize their own campaigns, or focus their efforts at the provincial or national level. moreover, some of the main force behind living wage campaigns has come from other organizations such as workers’ action centres. nevertheless, labour council meetings seemed one of the likely places where important campaigns would be coordinated, supported or at least discussed. short of a larger (and more expensive) exploration of unionists’ views across the province, interviewing local council executives seemed an effective way to gauge the depth of labour’s engagement. this author’s research assistants admirably embraced the dauting challenge of establishing contact with labour officials that are usually juggling many responsibilities and demands. a majority of respondents were given an ecopy of the questionnaire before they were interviewed. we were able to interview 20 members of executives, and a maximum of two executives from each council we contacted.3 the responses provide a solid representation of ontario’s different regions: there are six respondents from southern and south-western ontario; five from central ontario, including the greater toronto and hamilton area; five from northern and northwestern ontario, and three from eastern ontario. they also represent smaller and mid-size cities, as well as ontario’s larger metropolitan areas. respondents were not asked how they identified in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or whether they were recent immigrants, or second (or more) generation born in canada. based on names and profiles publicly available online (we did not probe deeply into social media accounts), it appears that 12 of the respondents identified as men and 8 as women. the interviews were conducted in two waves, the first in the summer and early fall of 2016 and the second in the winter and spring of 2017. it is important to place this timing in the context outlined above: the last interview was conducted just before the government announced the introduction of bill 148 in 2017. this 3 there was one exception to this rule: we received a late callback from a third leader of one council and that interview was included in the results. uneven engagement | 165 author started another round of interviews in late 2017, but it became evident that the terms of the debate and the terms of the discussion had changed entirely: all of the attention now centred around bill 148, particularly who should get credit for it and how to ensure the government saw it though into implementation. the focus of the project therefore turned to finishing the transcriptions of the interviews and data analysis. the interviews were not heavily structured: the questions did little to guide respondents into discussing certain aspects of an issue. for instance, the questions regarding the benefits or drawbacks of the living wage did not suggest that respondents consider the impacts on certain groups of workers (such as women, recent immigrants, racialized workers), or potential resistance from certain interests (such as businesses or conservative media outlets). similarly, the question about who is best suited to lead living wage campaigns did not suggest particular types of organizations, such as community groups, workers centres or political movements. indeed, the goal was to learn what directions unionists would take this discussion, which aspects of the living wage were most prominent in their minds, and which were not. and the respondents certainly did engage in the discussion: the average interview length was 26 minutes. answers to almost all the questions could be broken readily into groups. indeed, some clear themes and lines of thought emerged as the data was reviewed. current engagement with living wage campaigns the responses revealed that living wage campaigns have certainly been an important topic at local and regional council meetings. when asked how frequently the living wage had been discussed, 18 said frequently and only two said rarely. in addition, 14 (just over two-thirds of the 20) reported that their council was actively involved in one or more of the living wage campaigns. the questionnaire did not ask specifically about what resources councils had committed to the cause, but representatives of two councils reported that they had released some of their staff’s working hours to help on a campaign. five respondents said that the issue had been discussed frequently but their council was not actively engaged in any campaigns. almost all of these five explained that their councils lacked resources to launch or join the effort. one stated that “everybody knows about it” at her council but it was already involved in a number of other campaigns and “we’re stretched pretty thin.” the regional distribution of the councils that were actively engaged in a campaign was quite even, with the notable exception that most (though not all) of the councils from 166 | populism, power and protest northern and north western ontario reported that they were overstretched and unable to get seriously involved. the picture was less bright regarding council executives’ knowledge about the extent of affiliated unions’ engagement with living wage campaigns. only one of the respondents reported that representatives of the council’s member unions were regularly coming to meetings with news of activism or plans for their own campaigns. but this level of vibrancy stood out: only three other respondents reported any specific local affiliated organizations contributing to living wage campaigns. 16 respondents said that they did not know how much their affiliated unions were involved, most of them adding that this was probably because there was little or no activity to report. overall, the interviews did not give the impression of a deep, widespread, and energetic engagement with the cause. what about union leaders’ awareness of other organizations – which could include local, regional, national, or international groups engaged in living wage campaigns? some respondents said they were well informed about other groups engaged on the issue; they cited a number of examples and generally gave a sense of being part of a larger movement. but they constituted a minority (7 of 20, or just over one third) of the answers received. among the other fourteen, four respondents claimed to be somewhat aware of other organizations’ efforts but mentioned only a few details. seven more said that they had only distant knowledge of other campaigns. one of these seven, one described herself as “peripherally aware of these going on… i am supportive, but i am not actively involved in …learning about other campaigns.” two other respondents said they had little knowledge of other campaigns. altogether, the level of engagement with a larger living wage campaign seemed uneven at best. broader questions about the living wage benefits of living wage campaigns. not surprisingly, the vast majority of labour council executives interviewed (19 of 20) held very positive over-all views about living wage campaigns. respondents identified a wide range of benefits, with the majority orienting their answer around one or two specific benefits. significantly, none of them discussed the benefit of the living wage in isolation from other issues facing workers: they all portrayed it as connected to the effort to change the larger –mostly hostile – landscape. most of the answers (15 of 20) spoke about economic benefits that would accrue if the campaigns were successful and the living wage was implemented or adopted by employers. the most commonly cited economic gain was that winning uneven engagement | 167 a living wage would help to raise standards of living for every worker. it thus would be a way to counter the continual attack on the quality of life for working people, and to quickly “raise the bar” (a phrase often used in these responses) for workers. in a similar vein, four respondents explained that the living wage was a social justice measure – a means of achieving broad-based fairness for workers. but some respondents also thought that there were particular groups of workers who would benefit most. five respondents identified the living wage as a key anti-poverty initiative that would help the working poor – some of them especially focused on the benefits for poor children. one respondent had a job working with children and explained “when we get children out of poverty by making sure that their parents have good work, then [in the] long-term kids come to school more prepared to learn and we can definitely raise the bar when it comes to student learning.” four respondents also contended that attaining the living wage would also benefit the economy, especially in the local community. a keynesian view of the economy emerged strongly in these responses, as they argued that increasing workers’ spending power was essential to reviving or sustaining economic growth. one claimed “i’ve always said that people who are making …a living wage are folks that are going to spend the money locally. they’re not going to be flying to hawaii or to the bahamas once or twice a year to spend that money… they’re going to be spending it at local businesses.” almost half of the respondents spoke at length the benefits for labour arising from the campaigns themselves. education stood out among the types of benefits in this area; , the lack of public awareness about the difficulties of lowwage workers and their families to make ends meet emerged as an important theme. as one respondent explained living wage campaigns were helpful in “impressing upon people the need for a certain amount, a dollar amount, an hourly amount [that] allows somebody to at least put food at the table… [they] allow other people to see that because i just truly believe that people have no clue.” drawbacks of living wage campaigns. all but three council executives interviewed saw significant drawbacks to living wage campaigns, with one problem emerging above the others: resistance from employers and business interests. indeed, a distinct lack of confidence that living wage campaigns could overcome conservative pro-market rhetoric shone through the answers. half of the respondents described the living wage as particularly vulnerable to business’s complaints that wage hikes would lead to higher prices and that small business would struggle to adapt. several respondents worried about talk that “the small 168 | populism, power and protest mom and pop shop won’t be able to afford it and therefore they’d actually have to lay off some their employees.” respondents did not agree about just how vulnerable the living wage was to these complaints and, especially, why it was vulnerable to them. a couple respondents felt that business owners did have some legitimate concerns, especially about having to adjust to a quick hike in wages. one the other hand, a couple others were dismissive of employers’ complaints and believed that living wage campaigns should pay them little heed. as one put it: “if you can’t afford to pay the bare minimum to keep your employees above poverty… you shouldn’t be in business.” the rest felt that even though the complaints were “not always backed up in the actual proof” they were still effective in swaying public opinion – and according to some – even convincing some workers. one council executive from northern ontario lamented that she knew young people “working three jobs and they were pretty close to minimum wage and their attitude was [that if the living wage was adopted] everything’s just going to cost more, it’s not going to make a difference anyway, which was sad.” indeed, in many of the responses, there emerged a feeling of timidity or even resignation in the face of business opposition to the living wage. while criticism from opponents was the most prominent potential downside to the living wage, six of the respondents focused their complaints on the thinking behind the campaigns themselves. two focused on technical concerns about how some voluntary campaigns calculated their living wage. remarkably, a third felt that the wage rates set by the campaign in her city were “padded” and “the calculations on a living wage need to be defendable.” the other three criticized the campaigns from the opposite side of the spectrum, arguing that their goals were not ambitious enough; one said the rates set were too low, and two said more sweeping change was needed. one of the latter was the only respondent who declared that the downsides of living wage campaigns outweighed the benefits. she was also the only respondent to identify her politically as on the radical left. she felt a living wage was “too limited a policy, with too many conditions and contingencies to it.” a top priority? when asked about where the living wage should sit on labour’s list of priorities, 19 of 20 council executives gave firm support to the living wage as a high priority. just how high varied, and the reasons varied more, but two prominent themes emerged. first, respondents’ awareness of the numerous crises facing canadian unions weighed heavily on them and made it a challenge to determine how much energy they should devote to the living wage as opposed uneven engagement | 169 to other causes. as one put it: “there are so many attacks on labour, it’s hard to determine the priority list.” the second key theme was the value of living wage campaigns in helping unions to deliver gains for all workers, not just their own members. even though many respondents noted this in their answers to the questions about the benefits of the living wage (discussed just above), nine of the respondents raised it again in the discussion about priorities. as with the other questions in this section, unionists sounded like supporters of social unionism in their answers. this is to say that respondents felt that labour should reject a narrow business unionist focus on collective bargaining, or servicing their own members. instead look beyond their own union, or unionized workers in general, to become active on a wide range of social and economic issues, and form alliances with other organizations in the community (ross, 2008; 2012). as one respondent argued, the living wage was worth supporting “even though the beneficiaries may not at this point in time be among our membership… it raises the floor for everyone and it’s a social justice issue.” another explained that “labour needs to get away from the navel-gazing that has defined our movement for the past 20 years… [and] has to be recognized as a positive influence for all workers, instead of seeing as being only focussed on their own members.” regarding just how high a priority the living wage should be, none of the respondents claimed that it should stand alone at the top of labour agenda. five simply said, without reservations or qualifications, that the living wage should be a very high priority. a much larger group fourteen respondents – called the living wage a high priority but were careful to emphasize that it should not take labour’s attention away from other pressing issues. for instance, one called it a “good starting point …but there are some other major things that are equally as important.” of these fourteen respondents who felt that the living wage should share labour’s attention and energy, most did not get specific about which causes were of equal or greater importance. once again, the host of urgent problems facing unions influenced their answers, and they hesitated to try ranking them all. but when respondents did identify other important priorities, the changing workplaces review stood out; it was named by 5 respondents (2 as an equal priority, 3 as a higher one). in their answers to questions in this section of the interviews, respondents said little about gender, race or immigration as factors. some respondents who stated that the living wage would be a valuable anti-poverty 170 | populism, power and protest measure did not note how women, racialized workers and new immigrants were especially vulnerable to living below the poverty line. gendered inequities in pay did receive some attention, too. for instance, one respondent who emphasized the educational value of living wage campaigns argued that they could raise public awareness about how “the wage gap between men and women in canada is huge.” another named both immigration and the “gender wage gap” as two of the issues that demanded as much of labour’s attention as the living wage. but these were exceptions to the general absence of discussion of either gender or race. specific questions about living wage campaign strategy the voluntary approach. the questions about which strategies living wage campaigns should employ yielded some of the most unexpected results of the study. given that one of a union’s most basic goals is to use bargaining and potentially strike action to force employers to grant workers better pay, it would be reasonable to expect that most labour leaders would be sceptical of the voluntary approach to living wage campaigning. indeed, union officials would seem unlikely to believe that many employers could be moved by friendly persuasion to raise wages. however, the local council executives interviewed offered surprisingly strong support for living wage campaigns that take the voluntary approach. only three dismissed the approach entirely. one attacked the idea in blunt terms (“i think it’s stupid”) while another reported that his council focused on getting the living wage enacted through legislation, “rather than just giving someone a pat on the back for voluntarily doing it.” but the vast majority of respondents – 17 of 20 – stated that the voluntary approach was worth supporting – although in every case that support came with qualifications: all saw limitations or insisted that a voluntary campaign would have to be supplemented with other forms of activism. the limitation that almost all of them noted, not surprisingly, was the large proportion of employers that would ignore a voluntary campaign and continue to pay low wages. still, they also believed that enough employers would join to make it worthwhile – indeed, there was a notable amount of optimism in the responses that there were many progressive employers in their communities that should be recruited into the campaign. about a quarter saw recruiting progressive employers as a key way to reduce the resistance they feared from the business lobby to the living wage. they believed that employers who got certified could themselves become active “as the volunteers to speak with their business partners …and convince them” to join as well. one went still further, showing remarkable uneven engagement | 171 concern for the perspective of employers: “you don’t want to ram it down the throats of an employer …you have to have buy-in and …i think if you are forcing people to do it, it can have a negative impact.” but even if they did not become active, these respondents felt that when businesses and institutions got certified by a voluntary campaign, it “makes a strong statement that it is possible” to pay living wages. as one explained – again showing a clear perspective on who could have the greatest impact on employers – it showed that the living wage “is not something that’s just basically dreamt up by academics and those who are studying the subject.” respondents also saw positive impacts of voluntary campaigns beyond how many workers would get raises. indeed, unionists’ emphasis on spin-off benefits from voluntary campaigns were another surprisingly prominent theme in the interviews. four saw value in helping workers to reward progressive employers with their business. one suggested a two-pronged strategy of boycotting low-wage employers encouraging workers to shop at “employers who pay a living wage. that’s a way to start this conversation and to give that credit out.” these responses were in keeping with unions’ long history of seeking to mobilize workers as consumers. since the 19th century, labour leaders have used tactics, such as bargaining for union labels (that is, labels on products to show that they were union made), to allow the buying public to distinguish between progressive and regressive employers (glickman, 1997). four respondents returned to the theme of education in discussing the upsides of voluntary campaigns. they returned to the need to address the public’s ignorance of working people’s struggles to get by. one believed that voluntary campaigns “can become part of an education process so individuals recognizing that the living wage …is needed to try to ensure that an individual or a family is not living in poverty.” the regulatory approach. there was definitely stronger support for the regulatory approach to living wage campaigns. respondents were not asked to name which approach they preferred, but all the respondents showed equal or greater enthusiasm for campaigns demanding regulation or legislation to raise wages. the main reason for their preference was the limitations of the voluntary campaign noted above: since it would not be able improve wage rates for enough workers, the regulatory approach was essential. six respondents described the regulatory and voluntary approaches as complimentary – each addressed distinct yet important parts of the larger challenge of creating an effective movement. one argued that “you need grass172 | populism, power and protest roots buy-in and grass-roots champions to start the conversation. at the same time, you need to work at a legislative level as well. this creates change across the board.” three of these respondents again raised concerns about the perspective of employers; they felt that even if wages were raised through legislation, the voluntary campaign was still needed because “you almost have to create buy-in from the employers.” while respondents’ support for the voluntary approach always came with qualifications, the regulatory approach received qualified support from only seven respondents – almost two thirds (12) had no reservations at all. among respondents that did express concerns about the regulatory approach, the nature of the perceived problems varied, but two common themes emerged. the first was compliance: even if the government mandated higher wages, many employers might be determined to resist and underpay their workers. these answers seem to anticipate the reaction of some employers, particularly tim hortons, of the increase in the minimum wage to $14: they complied with the legislated raise, but then clawed back workers’ benefits packages, changed policies on tips and reduced break times to counterbalance the costs (saltzman, 2018; mojtehhedzadeh, 2018). one council executive from southern ontario was particularly skeptical about enforcement because “75% of workplaces were not in compliance” with the “the bare minimum requirements” set out in ontario’s employment standards act. one respondent, in contrast, contended that such possible resistance was precisely why it was crucial to use the power of the law to raise wages. she drew a parallel between equitable workplace laws and “equity laws… whether it’s race or whether it’s sex or gender or sexuality, equity laws are put into place because it’s the right thing to do, not everybody in society agrees but we do it anyway because it’s right.” the second concern was another manifestation of the discouraged mood of many respondents: several worried that mounting sufficient pressure to force governments into enacting living wage legislation would require a massive amount of resources – perhaps more than the labour movement could muster. one council executive from northern ontario explained that “there’s a public perception …that you can’t get anything accomplished [through these campaigns] because it’s just so pro-business and pro-chamber of commerce …and anti-union” in her town. another worried about the length of time such campaigns required, and “with a time issue, what happens is it might sometimes be difficult to keep volunteers and members of committees involved.” uneven engagement | 173 who should lead? when asked what organizations were in the best position to lead the drive for the living wage, all respondents supported an alliance between labour and community groups. indeed, when considering just which community groups should be involved, most wanted to focus on how broad the coalition should be rather than who should lead it. when pondering who should join, one respondent simply said “all organizations!” and laughed. when respondents did identify community organizations that could get involved, the ones most often cited were anti-poverty groups, following by institutions such as the united way, religious groups, workers centres, or other interests that were already involved in supporting the living wage. few respondents incorporated gender, race or immigration into their answers about organizing. some of the community groups which respondents felt should be involved in the campaign (or actually were involved in campaigns), may have represented recent immigrants, racialized workers, or women – but respondents did not note this explicitly. there was one respondent who asserted that “there are probably women’s groups that should be advocating for this,” while another suggested that groups representing recent immigrants should be involved. the latter respondent acknowledged the weakness of labour’s connections with these organizations, and felt it was important to “go in and … explore what [their] rights really are and how to include [them], because i noticed in the meetings … around our labour council table, we aren’t seeing those faces of the different groups in our community.” eight of the respondents did not say whether unions or community groups were the best position to take charge of an alliance that would agitate for a living wage. an equal number (8) stated that community groups should take the lead. here again many respondents sounded like social unionists, with some putting extra emphasis on the need for unions to take a back seat to organizations that represented the poorest and most marginalized in the community. one argued forcefully that unions’ role should be: “supporting, helping the disenfranchised, the people without jobs or making small amounts of money at their workplace… i mean, when they speak, they’ll be speaking the truth, they’ve lived the truth, you know what living on a non-living wage is like.” some of these respondents wanted community groups to take the lead even though they acknowledged that most of them had limited resources. one reported that her council was deeply connected with community groups that should be – and were – driving the local campaign “but they’ve been on hiatus because they were small groups and they burned themselves out.” 174 | populism, power and protest another made a passionate case for unions to increase their support for community groups: “they have no budget, they have no money to get the supplies they need. they come… literally almost begging to labour council. somehow, we have to fund them better so that they feel like they are supported, and they don’t burn out… and if they had more funding from us they would …feel part of us… but [right now] we’re not. they don’t have enough resources.” only four respondents felt that unions were in the best position to lead living wage campaigns. one was a council executive from southern ontario who shared the concerns noted above about the limited resources of community groups but drew a different conclusion: “[unions] can actually make this a priority effort whereas a volunteer-based community group can only do, and it’s nothing against them, but they can only do what they can, right?” political agitation in favour of the living wage. respondents gave overwhelming support for living wage campaigns getting active in the political realm. only two objected to the idea, both of them complaining that hostile or indifferent politicians would find a way to thwart the campaigns’ efforts. five respondents felt that campaigns should focus their energies on all three levels of politics – federal, provincial, and municipal. however, a majority (11) stated that it was best to concentrate on the municipal level – a result almost certainly influenced by the fact that the respondents were local labour council officials. indeed, most respondents focused on the municipal level even though in canada, the provinces control minimum wage policy – and indeed have massive power over municipal governments. some of these respondents felt that influencing municipal politics was “easiest,” while others felt it was the best place for starting a powerful movement. one spoke eloquently about her own experience in this regard: “that’s where you truly see it, when you elect municipal politicians who believe these principles, you see it almost immediately, in your town, in your communities. you see it and then you want to spread it, throughout the province and nationally and then even internationally but i do think it needs to start on a municipal level.” most respondents said little about what tactics or rhetorical strategies living wage campaigns should use. respondents were not asked about specific political parties’ views on the living wage, but some respondents discussed them anyway – all of them to say something negative. two expressed scepticism that the new democratic party would support the living wage, one dismissing the ndp as “a loss of energy and a loss of time.” four more rejected the possibility that kathleen wynne’s liberal uneven engagement | 175 government in queen’s park would support the living wage. one of these asserted that: “this government we currently have has broken far too many promises to the labour movement, and well really anyone with the left-wing agenda, to be trusted with this doing this…” these are more comments that do not look prescient since kathleen wynne’s government proposed and then passed bill 148 (including its increase in the minimum wage) just after these interviews were completed. but, as noted above, local labour council executives were hardly alone in being surprised by extent of the liberals’ labour law reform, and their (short-lived) renewed support for progressive causes in the last few months of their government. the living wage and unions. the last couple of questions focused on the impact of the living wage on the labour movement. when asked whether the living wage would help unions in their collective bargaining with employers, the majority saw benefits for at least some unions. but an even stronger trend emerged: almost all of the answers depended on the respondents’ sense of who they (or their unions) would be representing at the table. this is a surprise in one sense, given the answers in section ii.1; recall that in answering those questions about the general benefits of the living wage, three quarters of respondents said that it would “raise the bar” for all workers. but only four respondents felt that achieving the living wage would have broad and direct benefits in their own bargaining. these four respondents used the same kinds of terms that had been used in discussing the benefits for all workers; they described how the living wage would “raise the floor” and allow unions to “bargain up from the living wage.” however, the most common answer (from 9 respondents) was that the living wage would be vital only for unions representing workers in low-paying jobs. a good example was a council executive from eastern ontario who asked himself: “do i think it’s going to benefit [for example] nurses or …teachers? i don’t think it would.” but he added that unions in many other sectors would see their bargaining position would be seriously strengthened: “i’m thinking hotel and restaurant folks, i’m thinking security folks, i’m thinking [folks] working in our larger grocery store chains; their hourly rate isn’t sort of that high.” most of these respondents did not explain in detail just how unions representing lower paid workers might gain an advantage, beyond the “instant raise members would get. an two claimed that unions could turn their focus towards other issues besides wages, such as health and safety. in one of the more nuanced answers, one respondent argued that the living wage would be especially helpful for unions that had two-tier wage scales, as it would raise the pay of the workers on the lower 176 | populism, power and protest tier and bring them closer to the higher-tier rates. this was also the only answer to address gender or age (none of the answers spoke to race or immigration), as the respondent added the lower tier is made up primarily of “women and younger workers doing… what they call ‘unskilled work.’” four of the respondents felt that the living wage would have no meaningful impact on unions’ bargaining power. all of the sceptics portrayed bargaining as a distinct process that involved a union and an employer, with issues such as the living wage far in the distance. indeed, the social unionist sentiments expressed above faded noticeably in some of the answers about bargaining. moreover, these sceptics assumed or stated explicitly that their unions were bargaining for workers that already had good compensation. one explained that she was a teacher and “we’ve had more than living wage for years. when we bargain, we don’t actually bargain for people who aren’t our members. that’s one of the things about bargaining, right? that’s why you need labour unions all banding together to represent people who they don’t represent ... you’re not in a union? if you’re not in my union, i don’t bargain for you.” perhaps surprisingly, all four of the respondents who saw no spillover benefits for unions in bargaining had stated (in their answers in the earlier sections of the interviews) that labour should make the living wage a high priority, and two were from councils that were very active in one of the campaigns. when asked about the impact of the living wage on the attitudes of nonunion workers, a majority of respondents (12 of 20) said that the living wage would help to boost unions’ appeal among the unorganized. the most commonly cited reason (by 7 of the 12) was that winning the living wage would improve the public perception of unions, and this would make workers more open to joining. one respondent explained that achieving an important gain for all workers would help overcome one of the main obstacles that unions face when reaching out to the working poor, namely that “management keeps telling them that [unions] are just interested in ourselves.” another made an impassioned case that the living wage would be “something that we can point to and say like the weekend, like the forty-hour work week, like the health and safety laws unions have achieved this for you even though you’re not a unionized employee.” he added that if workers then tell workers that “if you think that’s good and if you want to see more things like this, join a union, unionize your workplace, bring democracy into your workplace, strive for these things as an active worker.” five respondents focused on the process of campaigning, rather than the policy goal, contending that the living wage created an opportunity to start uneven engagement | 177 conversations with all workers about how their jobs could be improved. others saw badly needed new momentum “that really took off” through local campaigns, which “could inspire non-union workers to join unions.” on the other hand, eight respondents raised doubts that the living wage would significantly increase nonunion workers’ interest in organizing. three did not think the living wage would be relevant to organizing in general. one contended that “most people don’t join unions because of money” but rather over working conditions and having “a shitty boss.” three went further and predicted negative impacts for the labour movement. one drew a rather bleak picture of workers thinking to themselves, “now that i make enough” thanks to the living wage, “i don’t need a union,” and precarious workers remaining “a little bit reluctant to join unions” for fear that the employer may lay them off or “close down their business.” six of the eight respondents who raised such doubts about benefits for organizing non-union members had (in answering earlier questions) called the living wage a very high priority and two were on councils that were actively involved in campaigns. in fact, one asserted that unions should not be thinking about their own self interest when agitating for the living wage. one explained that “a great concern for us to have every worker in this city, in this province being paid a fair wage and treated with respect and with dignity. hey, i don’t care if they’re a union member or not; i don’t need the dues that bad.” conclusion while space considerations seriously limit the scope of the interpretation of the findings and especially of their potential implications – the focus here being on explaining the results in detail – a number of key themes can certainly be identified. there was a strong base level of support among local council executives for living wage campaigns. respondents were especially enthusiastic about the potential value of raising the wage floor for all workers and living wage campaigns’ ability to engage the public in a discussion about income and poverty. the campaigns’ importance in generating new energy in community mobilizing also featured prominently. these upsides to the living wage usually mattered most to respondents even if they were uncertain about its potential impact on bargaining, or labour’s prospects for organizing non-union workers, or the campaigns’ choice of strategic approach. moreover, unionists were notably open-minded about strategy, with most deeming voluntary campaigns to be worthwhile even though they thought the approach to be limited or even flawed. the main problem respondents saw 178 | populism, power and protest with the living wage was hostility from opponents rather than inherent problems in the idea or the voluntary campaigns. despite the commitment to helping the most disadvantaged workers, there was also a clear sense of distance from the living wage cause. many respondents portrayed the living wage as a social justice issue benefitting the poorest, mostly non-unionized workers. there was unanimous support for labour forging partnerships with community groups on living campaigns – almost half of respondents felt these community groups should take the lead in these campaigns, while less than a quarter felt that it should be labour. when a large portion of respondents discussed the impacts of the living wage on bargaining or on unions’ appeal to unorganized workers, they tended to conceive of unions as representing higher-waged workers rather than workers who would receive a raise from the living wage. this sense of distance was evident in the limited amount of information respondents provided on their affiliates’ living wage activities, or their involvement with living wage campaigns elsewhere. respondents were also not engaged with issues of immigration, race, and gender, as evidenced by how little attention they paid to these issues in their answers. another theme that develops across the responses is anxiety about the ever-mounting pressure on the labour movement and working people in general. regaining lost ground on workers’ standards of living, renewing mobilizing efforts and potentially scoring some badlyneeded victories were consistently seen as among the biggest advantages of the living wage that respondents cited. but this anxiety also meant that the living wage had to compete with a wide array of other pressing issues when unionists discussed priorities. it also infused a seriously pessimistic note into many responses. for instance, even strong supporters of the living wage campaigns taking a regulatory approach expressed doubts about whether they could be successful or even sustain the effort. indeed, the introduction of bill 148 right after the last of these interviews certainly would have come as a major shock, and a rare pleasant surprise, to the respondents. given the tone of the results, doug ford’s cancellation of the minimum wage increase to $15 – and the inability of labour and other movements to stop him – would have been perhaps less surprising. however, the minimum wage hike was very popular among ontario voters (angus reid, 2017). and conservative commentators were proven entirely wrong in their dire predictions of economic doom brought by a drastic increase in the rates: in ontario as elsewhere, after minimum wages were raised, the economy continued to grow and uneven engagement | 179 the impact on employment rates has been minimal (younglai, 2018; hallett, 2019). for ontario’s labour leaders, rallying to insist on the minimum wage increase to $15, or even up to the standards set by living wage movements, would be a popular cause and would achieve many of the goals respondents said they valued in these interviews: delivering meaningful and immediate gains to thousands of workers, providing opportunities to educate the public about the difficulties of the working poor just to get by, showing that unions will fight for not just their members but all workers, building stronger connections to community and anti-poverty groups that know and speak of the truth for the most marginalized workers in ontario. if union leaders are serious about lifting the sense of gloom around their movement, this seems a good place to start. references 15andfairness.org. 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(2018 january 3). tim hortons heirs cut paid breaks and worker benefits after minimum wage hike, employees say, cbc news. http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tim-horton-s-tims-timmiesdoubledouble-minimum-wage-ontario-kathleen-wynne-labour1.4470215 wells, d. (2016). living wage campaigns and building communities. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research 2, 235-246 younglai, r. (2018 august 10). ontario unemployment rate hits 18-year low, six months after minimum wage hike. globe and mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/ business/ economy/ jobs/ articleontario-unemployment-rate-hits-18-year-low-six-months-afterminimum/ 182 | populism, power and protest 338 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the science and humanism of stephen jay gould by richard york and brett clark. new york, new york: monthly review press, 2011. $16.95 u.s., paperback. isbn: 978-1-58367-216-7. pages: 1-223. reviewed by jon careless1 gould saw “the transformation of society by scientific progress” as “the greatest dialectic in human history.” it involves a world filled with constraints and possibilities. it creates contingent historical moments that force the confrontation between the power to change and the limits set by external structures (184). the above passage is illustrative of the late stephen jay gould’s commitment to producing an evolutionary theory predicated not on deterministic principles, but on a dialectical and humanist understanding of evolutionary dynamics. establishing this point is the central thrust of this informative, well-written account of gould’s career as a preeminent “paleontologist, evolutionary theorist, historian of science, and prolific writer.” gould’s most prominent challenge to orthodox ideas is his critique of the modern synthesis, “the neo-darwinian theory based on the merger of darwinian natural selection and mendelian genetics,” which gained paradigmatic status in the 1950s (18). gould, the authors note, greatly admired darwin and did not dispute the validity of selection as an evolutionary factor. rather, gould contested the deterministic assumptions underlying the modern synthesis. this included the idea that evolutionary processes occur strictly through changing gene frequencies in populations regulated by selection (as is argued by gould’s peer richard dawkins). the theory neglects organismal structure and processes taking place at levels other than selection among genes or individuals, along with any events occurring on timescales other than dayto-day interaction between organisms in ecological time. accordingly, proponents of modern synthesis assume organismal structural changes take the form of gradual adaptations generated in response to changing selection pressures. in response to the deterministic assumptions underlying ‘gradualist’ theories, gould and his colleagues developed a dialectical explanation for evolution which they called 1 jon careless is a phd student in the department of political science at york university, with an interest in theories of the state. he can be reached at careless@yorku.ca book review: the science and humanism of stephen jay gould | 339 punctuated equilibrium. according to this theory, most species undergo long periods of relative stasis, during which there are only minor, nondirectional changes in organismal structure. these changes are nondirectional in that their occurrence doesn’t necessarily build upon or progress from the changes that preceded it. indeed, the structural form of development can limit the types of forms organisms can take. these periods of stasis, furthermore, are punctuated by brief periods of rapid evolution. during such moments, new species emerge through separation and speciation by way of geological change, which occurs over millions of years between events of mass extinction. gould thus placed great emphasis on historical contingency as impacting evolutionary pathways. unpredictable events may cause mass extinctions, like the asteroid of the cretaceous era, which ended the evolutionary path of some species (dinosaurs) and opened a path for others (small mammals). the authors allege that the orthodoxy afforded to gradualist evolutionary theories likely stems in part “from the ideology of the social elite, for slow, predictable change against the notion” that historical change can occur in brief revolutionary moments (40). though the authors neglect to explore this elite conservatism in detail, they do include gould’s critiques of biological determinist theories which, the authors purport, legitimize social hierarchies. such theories, like that put forth in the bell curve by herrnstein and murray (1994), argued that intelligence is determined by race, and that “the poor occupy their social position due to their inherently inferior intellects” (123). gould reasoned that such theories fail due to the “proclivity of scholars to interpret ambiguous evidence in a manner that confirms their prior convictions” (119). such logic flows from gould’s alignment with the marxian scientific tradition through which he worked to unmask those cultural biases that were used for the ranking and ordering of humanity. a principal strength of this book is its capacity to communicate gould’s ideas in a way that is not overly technical, but still establishes how gould’s theories contributed to a humanist understanding of evolutionary science. this is due, in large part, to the author’s chosen methodology, which involved an in-depth analysis of gould’s work. the book provides an account of the wide range of philosophical ideas that influenced gould’s work, such as mark twain’s satirical critique of the view of evolution as having determinately prepared the world “for the eventual rise of human beings” (7). through their commitment to excavating gould’s worldview, the authors are better able to illustrate his “insights into a wide range of fields” (8). given their efforts to produce a work that establishes the multi-disciplinary usefulness of gould’s ideas, it 340 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages is clear that this book is intended for audiences across a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences. this feat is made more impressive given that york and clark are not evolutionary scientists, but in fact are practicing sociologists possessed with a keen interest in gould’s work. one of the book’s weaknesses is that it does not include arguments from contemporaries of gould who have challenged his theories. while notable modern theorists like daniel dennett and richard dawkins come under heavy criticism, gould’s own positions are left largely unchallenged. this oversight is likely due, as the author’s note in the introduction, to their desire to focus “on the broader intellectual insights that underlie gould’s work, rather than debating any single particular claim about natural history” (12). in this sense, it is reasonable to suggest that if the authors were to delve heavily into the debates concerning theory, it might detract from the central purpose of the text. that said, the absence of such debates encourages the reader to accept the validity of gould’s criticisms against his peers without having to first consider counterpoints made against him, and thereby decide on what is credible themselves. ultimately, though, this is a minor point of concern in what is an otherwise fantastic and highly readable text that gives due credit to an important thinker. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review escape from the staples trap. canadian political economy after left nationalism, by paul kellogg. toronto: university of toronto press, 2015. $32.95 paper. isbn:978-0-8020-9654-8. pages: 1-275. robert marshall1 facts are simple and facts are straight facts are lazy and facts are late facts all come with points of view facts don’t do what i want them to facts just twist the truth around facts are living turned inside out facts are getting the best of them – talking heads 1980 whilst reading paul kellogg’s escape from the staple trap i could not help but think of the refrain from an old talking heads (1980) song “crosseyed and painless.” by way of statistical and historical analysis, kellogg challenges many of the underlying theoretical and methodological assumptions that underpin much of the left nationalist perspective from the 1960s onwards. in particular, he challenges the argument that canada followed an economic development model typical of the staples-exporting economies in the global south. this argument was popularized in a series of papers and reports including the 1968 task force on the structure of canadian industry, kari levitt-polanyi’s silent surrender: the multinational corporation in canada (1970) and robert laxer’s canada ltd. the political economy of dependency (1973). according to this view, canada was slowly but steadily undergoing a process of cultural assimilation-cum-political disintegration as ever more control of its economy came under foreign (that is, u.s.) control and ownership. although canada was a rich nation, it remained one nevertheless lacking sovereignty and domestic control of its own future. kellogg, instead, argues that canada sits at the core (not periphery) of the world’s capitalist economies, retaining a significant amount of independent power and sovereignty. “canada is now, and has been for some decades, a full participant in the core of the world system. it is an advanced capitalist economy, coexisting there with a handful of similarly privileged states” (xvi). kellogg argues that following the failed 1837-38 rebellions, the canadian elite were “able to assert effective national sovereignty over the territory that was to become the centre of the canadian state” (xviii) in fact, canada became imperialist in its own right, not the least of which is in relation to its treatment of indigenous peoples. canadian imperialist expeditions then spread to the caribbean and south america resulting in both internal and external forms of imperialism. as the name implies, left nationalists were part of a rising tide of resistance to traditional systems of authority and ‘americanization’ north of the 49th parallel amid the struggle for an autonomous and independent canada. indicative of this argument are the essays found in lumsden 1 robert marshall teaches in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. email: rmarshall@politics.ryerson.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research (1970). left nationalism found expression in many ways. for instance, in english canadian debates over economic dependency characterized by the fleeting waffle movement; in pierre elliot trudeau’s short-lived economic nationalism which roughly lasted from the creation of the foreign investment review agency in 1973 to the demise of the national energy program in 1985; in quebec’s push for independence; and in indigenous people’s anti-colonial demands. despite theoretical differences, kellogg follows but goes deeper in the footsteps of arguments made by others, such as steve moore and debbie wells (1977), william carroll (1986) and philip resnick (1990) during the highpoint of left nationalist debates. kellogg’s book is divided into two main sections. in part one, he undertakes a critical literature review of previously published debates in canada, which combined latin american dependency theory with marxist theories of the state and elite theory. in doing so, he provides a nuanced view of the diverse voices that together make up the left nationalist perspective and its relation to staples theory – the idea that canada is, first and foremost, a resource-exporting dependent nation. part two lays out kellogg’s alternative interpretation of canada as an imperialist power in its own right, alongside a detailed analysis of the canadian capitalist class. in many ways, kellogg’s book is reflective of two broad schools of thought at the heart of the canadian political economy tradition going back to the 1960s. the first school was innisian-inspired and documented canadian dependency on the united states. in this view, canadian dependency could only be broken by a socialist project independent of the us. the second school was strongly influenced by the work of marx. canada was not merely a dependent nation but an active agent in the internationalization of capital. this body of thought also worked to provide an alternative understanding of canadian economic development, including class and state formation. of course, both innisian and marxian inspired canadian political economy approaches varied greatly. eschewing core-periphery characterizations, kellogg labels canada a ‘principle economy’. while acknowledging the relatively high levels of foreign ownership in canada, he argues that there has yet to be “evidence of permanent, structural, industrial underdevelopment in canada” (116). to sustain this argument, kellogg draws on the work of alfred maizels (1963) and david mcnally (1981). maizels may seem like an outdated choice, but it fits with kellogg’s overall statistical argument that canada was sovereign by the mid-nineteenth century. at the same time, arguing that left nationalist arguments were limited on both theoretical and empirical grounds, kellogg, drawing on mcnally, makes the case that dependency theory is a form of ‘commodity fetishism’. marx used the term to critique classical political economy’s focus on commodities in exchange rather than as a social relation of production. by focusing on staples exports there had been a failure to theorize them as forms of productive capital. the result, for kellogg, has been a fundamental misunderstanding of the industrial structure in canada and its ruling power bloc. building on this framework, kellogg argues that by the early 1980s a domestic capitalist class had already assumed overall control of the majority of assets in the canadian economy and had indeed even become a net exporter of capital. in other words, for kellogg the result over the last three decades has been not a deepening of dependency – as predicted by the left nationalists – but www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research rather a decline in dependency. or, put differently, growing evidence of canada exercising its uniquely sovereign imperialist ambitions. there are, however, a number of questions skirted by kellogg that beg further analysis. if there have been no structural effects on the canadian economy via foreign direct investment flows, how then does one explain trade dependency first on the british and later american empires? how does one make sense of lower per capita gdp, lower levels of productivity that have often lagged behind other advanced industrial nations, lower levels of basic and applied research and development, and competitiveness, or higher rates of unemployment when comparing canada to the us? while left nationalists sought to address these questions, kellogg seems content with downplaying or avoiding them all together. kellogg also has the benefit of hindsight. many of the left nationalist arguments kellogg criticizes were developed in the 1960s and 1970s. but it seems somewhat odd to criticize these arguments based on new data disembedded from the contexts in which they were written, or absent the most recent debates. the nature of the canadian capitalist class and its relationship to the canadian state could have also been more clearly theorized. in other words, there seems to be no unifying theory of the state. many have noted, for example, the origins of canada as being driven by both the british capitalist class and a nascent canadian capitalist class. this is an argument made by a diverse range of writers such as ryerson (1960), dumett (1990) and smith (2008). more recently, klassen (2014) has also made this point regarding canadian foreign policy vis-à-vis the gulf war and the post 9-11 “war on terror” where continental integration, arguably, has continued apace in an effort to maintain access to the american market and prevent the shutting down of cross-border flows. moreover, if one accepts kellogg’s argument that the canadian capitalist class was in control of the economy by the 1880s, what role might public policy have played in this (if at all)? for instance, what role did ontario’s public hydro utility play in the development of the provincial manufacturing sector? did the trudeau government’s national energy program contribute to the growth of canadian ownership in the oil and gas sector? one could ask similar questions of the original national policy of the macdonald government, or the role of the auto pact in the 1960s? interestingly, in an earlier paper, kellogg (1989) drew heavily upon the theoretical insights of bukharin as a way to address the perceived weaknesses of the dependency school. it seems to be an odd omission from this book as the overall thrust of this framework would seem to fit quite comfortably with the internal logic of kellogg’s argument. despite these lingering questions, kellogg’s book will be of interest to readers both new and well-versed in the canadian political economy debates, including under/graduate students and lay persons alike. and while the debates may seem historically dated, they have been revived of late in discussions and questions of contemporary globalization and the ‘new’ imperialism vis-avis canada’s place in the global economy (see, for example, albo and klassen 2013; burgess 2007, gordon 2010). a planned follow-up to this study, tentatively titled arms and the nation, www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 4 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research promises to focus on the economic effects of militarism and its impacts on the construction of the canadian welfare state in contradistinction to the american warfare state (or what seymour melman [1985] long ago called ‘the permanent war economy’). i look forward to reading it and others amidst the revival of debates about canada’s shifting role in the global political economy. references albo, g. and j. klassen, eds. (2013). empire’s ally. toronto: university of toronto press. burgess, b. (2007) “canada: imperialist or imperialized?” paper presented to ix encuentro international de economistas, la habana. carroll, w. (1986) corporate power and canadian capitalism. vancouver: university of british columbia press. dumett, r. ed., (1999) gentlemanly capitalism and british imperialism. london: longman. gordon, t. (2010) imperialist canada. winnipeg: arbeiter ring. kellogg, p. (1989) state, capital and world economy: bukharin’s marxism and the “dependency/class: controversy in canadian political economy. canadian journal of political science. 22(2), 337-362. klassen, j. (2014) joining empire. the political economy of the new canadian foreign policy. toronto: university of toronto press. laxer, r. ed., (1973) canada ltd. the political economy of dependency. toronto: mcclelland and stewart limited. levitt, k. (1970) silent surrender. toronto: macmillan. reprinted in 2002 by mcgill-queen’s university press with a new introduction by levitt and a new foreword by m. watkins. lumsden, i. (1970) close the 49th parallel etc. toronto: university of toronto press. maizels, a. (1963) industrial growth and world trade. cambridge: cambridge university press for the national institute of economic and social research. melman, s. (1985) the permanent war economy. new york: simon & schuster. mcnally, d. (1981) staples theory as commodity fetishism: marx, innis and canadian political economy. studies in political economy, 6, 35-63. moore, s. and d. wells (1977). imperialism and the national question in canada. toronto: privately printed. resnick, p. (1990) from semi-perimeter of the core: canada in the capitalist world economy. in resnick, p. ed., the mask of proteus. canadian reflections on the state (pp.179-204). vancouver: university of british columbia press. ryerson, s. (1960) the founding of canada. beginnings to 1815. toronto: progress books. smith, a. (2008) british businessmen and canadian confederation. montreal: mcgill-queen’s university press. talking heads. remain in the light. sire records 1980. task force on the structure of canadian industry (1968) foreign ownership and the structure of canadian industry. ottawa: government of canada. migration of bengalis to canada: an historical account | 15 16 | migration of bengalis to canada migration of bengalis to canada: an historical account | 17 18 | migration of bengalis to canada migration of bengalis to canada: an historical account | 19 20 | migration of bengalis to canada migration of bengalis to canada: an historical account | 21 22 | migration of bengalis to canada migration of bengalis to canada: an historical account | 23 24 | migration of bengalis to canada migration of bengalis to canada: an historical account | 25 26 | migration of bengalis to canada migration of bengalis to canada: an historical account | 27 28 | migration of bengalis to canada migration of bengalis to canada: an historical account | 29 30 | migration of bengalis to canada migration of bengalis to canada: an historical account | 31 32 | migration of bengalis to canada migration of bengalis to canada: an historical account | 33 https://sfu-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=tn_duke10.1215/15476715-2385417&context=pc&vid=sful&lang=en_us&search_scope=default_scope&adaptor=primo_central_multiple_fe&tab=default_tab&query=any,contains,bengali%20harlem&sortby=rank&offset=0 http://www.bdhcottawa.ca/bilateral-relations/bangladesh-diaspora-in-canada http://www.bdhcottawa.ca/bilateral-relations/bangladesh-diaspora-in-canada https://sfu-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=tn_proquest215641685&context=pc&vid=sful&lang=en_us&search_scope=default_scope&adaptor=primo_central_multiple_fe&tab=default_tab&query=any,contains,das%20gupta%20tania%20%201988&sortby=rank&offset=0 https://sfu-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=tn_proquest215641685&context=pc&vid=sful&lang=en_us&search_scope=default_scope&adaptor=primo_central_multiple_fe&tab=default_tab&query=any,contains,das%20gupta%20tania%20%201988&sortby=rank&offset=0 https://www66.statcan.gc.ca/eng/1959-eng.htm 34 | migration of bengalis to canada https://www.hciottawa.ca/view_detail.php?id=83 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 35, 49-63 (2024) the racial labour geographies of amazon in canada’s greater toronto area rawan abdelbaki, york university1 abstract: drawing on the framework of racial capitalism, this paper highlights two distinct but related dynamics of racial differentiation in relation to amazon in greater toronto area (gta): at the level of the region’s broader political economy and within amazon’s warehouses. i outline the ways in which the e-commerce giant both exploits and (re)makes the racialized geography of the gta. amazon’s capitalization on neoliberal austerity and corporate welfare perpetuates class and racialized inequalities. these processes adversely affect these suburban localities and negatively impact employment in both quantitative and qualitative ways. in this context, i argue that amazon’s success has been, in no small part, due to its exploitation of canada’s racially stratified labour market. within the warehouse, the notion that digital taylorism produces an undifferentiated workforce and a uniform labour process is interrogated. instead, workers’ own accounts point to the ways digital technologies enable management to generate racial/ethnic differentiation and further squeeze value from workers. by situating amazon within this specific socio-historical and political economic context, i demonstrate that the gta offers a case study through which to examine the racial dynamics of digital capitalism and show that racialized and gendered social relations inflect the uneven experiences of algorithmic management. keywords: amazon; racial capitalism; race/ethnicity; gender, digital labour introduction deborah cowen (2014, 2) argues that “[c]ommodities today are manufactured across logistics space rather than in a singular place,” unsettling notions about a single site of production and underscoring the central role of logistics in today’s just-in-time production regimes (chua & cox, 2023; moody, 2019; delfanti, 2021). amazon’s rise to becoming a goliath in e-commerce business underlines some of the transformations wrought by the making of its logistics spaces and the role it plays in contemporary capitalist accumulation strategies, its impact on the geographies in which it operates, and their implications on the expansion of precarious work. this paper seeks to outline the role that amazon plays on the political economy of work in the greater toronto area (gta). by drawing on the framework of racial capitalism, i highlight two distinct but related dynamics of racial differentiation: at the level of the region’s broader political economy and within amazon’s warehouses. first, i outline the ways in which the ecommerce giant both exploits and (re)makes the racialized geography of the gta. amazon’s capitalization on neoliberal austerity and corporate welfare perpetuates class and racialized inequalities. these policies and processes adversely affect these suburban localities and negatively impact employment in both quantitative and qualitative ways. i argue that amazon’s success has been, in no small part, due to its exploitation of canada’s racially stratified labour market. within the warehouse, i advance workers’ own accounts to trouble the notion that technology and algorithms lead to an undifferentiated workforce and a uniform labour process. instead, i point to the ways that technology enables management to produce racial/ethnic differentiation to further squeeze value from workers. thus, i show that the use of technology in the workplace does not 1 rawan abdelbaki is a phd candidate in sociology at york university. i am grateful to grace barakat for her assistance with the statistical analysis presented in the paper. many thanks to mark thomas, katherine nastovski, stefan mikuska, zareef ahmad, and sam gindin for their important insights and suggestions. last but not least, i thank the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and feedback on this article. this research is supported by the social sciences and humanities research council. 50 neutralize nor transcend existing racial/ethnic social relations. digitalized labour – the use of algorithms and digital technologies to manage the labour process – is a socially grounded phenomenon. work performed under digital taylorist regimes is constituted by racialized and gendered divisions of labour where digital surveillance, managerial discipline, and job precarity are unevenly distributed. by situating amazon within this specific socio-historical and political economic context, i demonstrate that the gta offers us a case study through which to examine the racial dynamics of digital capitalism and show that racialized and gendered social relations inflect the uneven experiences of algorithmic management. the findings and analysis presented here are drawn from semi-structured interviews with amazon workers, amazon corporate reports, government and civil society reports, as well as media sources. research participants were recruited through snowball sampling. the interviews were transcribed and coded by the author. the statistical analysis presented below was generated from the census 2021 data through a cross-tabulation of race/ethnicity and immigration status with labour market and income variables on spss. the racial geographies of labour in the greater toronto area (gta) in canada, the key geographical peripheries in which amazon sets up its “new retail factories” (chua & cox, 2023) are suburbs characterized by racially and ethnically segmented labour markets. the arduous work of circulating and distributing commodities across amazon’s logistical space, which includes stowing, packing, shipping, labelling, and delivery, is performed by a predominantly racialized immigrant workforce living and working in suburban regions. racialized people represent 54.6% of the gta. immigrants comprise nearly half of the gta population (44.8%), with 47.8% in the york region, 46.6% in the city of toronto, and 51.8% in the region of peel (census 2021); roughly 86% of those immigrants are visible minorities (triec, 2018). despite the region’s diversity, racialized immigrants’ inclusion in the economic sphere points to a different material reality (dinca-panaitescu et al., 2019). the liberalization of canadian immigration policies between the late 1960s and early 1970s entailed the removal of explicit racial exclusion and a shift from race-based to class-based selection criteria. this change occurred in a neoliberal industrial relations context defined by a withering away of the post-war compromise – the gradual retrenchment of the welfare state, and the weakening of labour unions. the fruits of this bygone ‘golden era’ of labour were never fully realized by racialized immigrants, for whom the union advantage of better wages, among other benefits, remains elusive (verma et al., 2016, thomas, 2010). in this neoliberal policy context, a plethora of research has established that immigrants often experience downward occupational mobility, professional displacement, and deskilling (guo, 2015; bauder, 2003). despite the emphasis on skill and education that is enshrined in both immigration policy and public discourse, reports on labour market trends have time and again showed that many educated and skilled immigrants continue to ‘lag’ behind white canadian-born workers. as himani bannerji (1995, 134) poignantly notes, “[i]n a society based on the ethics of upward mobility, the non-white population will be mainly expected to reproduce the working class, making class formation a ‘raced’ affair.” although all groups of workers saw a deterioration in the labour market conditions between 2006 and 2016 (block & galabuzi, 2019), immigrants are also much more likely to be unemployed and underemployed, which adversely affects their long-term professional trajectories. it is important to note, nonetheless, that the impact of racialization is an uneven process and does not affect all non-racialized people to the same degree. the data also point to wage disparities as a key 51 indicator of economic integration, as well as immigrants’ overrepresentation in non-standard and precarious, low-wage employment (triec, 2018, dinca-panaitescu et al., 2019; block & galabuzi, 2019; banerjee, 2023). using the 2021 census data, a cross-tabulation of race/ethnicity and immigration status with labour market and income variables showed the following: • 67.6% of those in the bottom decile of incomes were racialized, while 32.4% were not. 53.4% of those in the bottom decile of incomes were racialized immigrants and permanent residents. 62.8% of those in the top decile of incomes were nonracialized, while 37.2% were racialized. • immigrant and racialized canadians are more likely to be in precarious work arrangements. 62.8% of those working in temporary or precarious work (i.e., fixed term of 1 year or more, and casual, seasonal or short-term position of less than 1 year) were racialized. 44% of those working in temporary or precarious work were racialized immigrants and permanent residents. • 68.7% of those in poverty (i.e., fell below the 2018 market-basket-measure (mbm) poverty line) were racialized. 53.5% of those in poverty were racialized immigrants and permanent residents. importantly, while the narrative that newcomers are expected to struggle as part of the immigrant experience, there are differences between racialized and non-racialized immigrants, a trend that is also reflected in generational patterns of inequality. for example, racialized men earn 71 cents for every dollar that immigrant men earn, while immigrant women earned 79 cents for every dollar that non-racialized women earned, with similar outcomes for second-generation racialized immigrants (block & galabuzi, 2019, 14; banerjee et al., 2024). thus, while “migration is often seen as – and can be – a means of moving out of the precariat, migrants often find themselves stuck in it in host countries […] in effect they move out of one section of the global precariat in their homeland to another part in host countries, sometimes indefinitely” (van hear, 2014, s115). the covid-19 pandemic further exacerbated immigrants’ experiences of labour market precarity. recent immigrants in particular were more likely to experience job loss as a result of the impact of covid-19 on economic activity since they were mostly employed in frontline service sector work (statistics canada – the daily). in fact, data shows that racialized groups and immigrants are more vulnerable to layoffs and protracted periods of unemployment, especially during economic crises, that have detrimental long-term effects (shields & alrob, 2021; hou & picot, 2022). as one worker i interviewed observed: “especially with covid and stuff, so many people lost their other jobs and people are coming from all over. it's like bees to honey” (interview). another worker describes amazon’s ability to exploit and feast on the generalized and prevailing milieu of labour precarity: “i don’t wanna stay here but jobs elsewhere are pretty shit too. there aren’t too many good jobs out there nowadays” (interview). meanwhile, people turned to e-retailing businesses amid pandemic lockdowns as a primary site of consumption, and amazon saw a boom in demand for its goods and services. amazon’s ability to seize market share in the context of a pandemic was made possible by recruiting and exploiting this now augmented reserve army of labour of predominantly racialized immigrants. the concept of racial capitalism is useful here as it underscores the relationship between capitalism and racism, or the racial dynamics of capitalist accumulation (knox & kumar, 2023; 52 bhattacharya, 2018; hall et al., 1978; levenson & paret, 2023).2 it helps to describe and explain the relationship between racialization and class formation in capitalist societies. canada’s establishment as a settler colonial, racial capitalist state was and continues to be predicated upon practices of race-making, including indigenous confinement, evictions, and genocide (walia, 2021), alongside policies of “differential inclusion” of migrants that “create different degrees of precarity, vulnerability and freedom by granting and closing access to resources and rights according to economic, individualizing, and racist rationales” (casas-cortes et al., 2015, 79). these raceand class-making practices take place at multiple scales, both at and beyond the nationstate border, to create and reproduce racialized social boundaries (de genova, 2023; lamont & molnár, 2022). as kundnani (2021, 53) rightly posits: “race provides a means of coding and managing the material boundaries between different forms of labour under neoliberalism.” linking the “stickiness”3 (ahmed, 2004) of precarity to racialized labouring bodies, gargi bhattacharya (2018, 109) maintains, “[m]uch if not all of what we describe as instances of racial capitalism as it is enacted in the workplace overlaps with a more wide-ranging erosion of working conditions and a growing insecurity and deregulation of employment. in regions where there remains some memory of workplace regulation, this process of loss may be termed precaritisation.” such processes of precariatization can be observed in changes to basic legislative labour protections, such as minimum wage, minimum hours of work, and vacation and overtime pay. mark thomas’s (2010, 68) analysis of the amendments to the ontario’s employment standards act (esa) between 1995 and 2001 suggests that “racialized inequality in the labour market and the regulation of minimum employment standards […] are intricately linked.” under the auspices of making ontario ‘open for business,’ the neoliberal reforms enacted by mike harris’s progressive conservative government both weakened minimum standards and their enforcement in the service sector, where a vast majority of immigrants work, while altogether exempting certain forms of employment (like domestic and temporary/contract work) from labour protection. these processes (whose ramifications are further discussed below) are part of what burawoy (1983, 587) termed the “politics of production” which he advances to “undo the compartmentalization of production and politics by linking the organization of work to the state.” given these historical and contemporary social policies and dynamics, i argue that amazon’s success has been, in no small part, due to its exploitation of canada’s racially stratified labour market, where its expansion is made possible through the recruitment and exploitation of a predominantly racialized immigrant workforce. amazon has been successful in subsuming the relative surplus populations produced in the course of the covid-19 pandemic, organizing these labouring bodies into a cheap disposable workforce (see also gebrial, 2022). further, i suggest 2 the term ‘racial capitalism’ has been the subject of much academic debate (go, 2021). although the term is frequently attributed to cedric robinson, it first appeared in a 1976 pamphlet written by lagessick and hensen to describe the significance of racism in the ascent of south african capitalism (levenson & paret, 2023; okoth, 2023). robinson’s (1983) thesis in ‘black marxism’ is that ‘racialism’ had already existed within feudal europe, subsequently shaping capitalist class formation along ethnic lines, both in europe and as it expanded globally; that is, capitalism was and is always racialized. while a full review of these important debates is beyond the scope of this paper, the primary caution that social scientists “must demonstrate how it is that racism continues to enshrine inequality, and how this distinctly capitalist mode of differentiation works to augment profitability” (levenson & paret, 2023, 15) animates the analysis offered in this study. 3 sara ahmed uses the term "sticky objects" to describe the ways in which certain ideas, concepts, and practices can become ingrained or "sticky" within social and cultural contexts. sticky objects are symbolic entities that adhere to people and structures, shaping their experiences and interactions. they can be restrictive, exclusionary, and oppressive, enforcing conformity and maintaining power structures. 53 that the concept of racial capitalism helps to explain both the racialized and racializing processes underpinning the making of this reserve army of labour and the precariatization of work where “accrued histories of racialised belief influence what can be tolerated in terms of disposability” (bhattacharya, 2018, 122). the racialized geography of the gta offers us a case study through which to examine the racial dynamics of digital capitalism. in what follows, i outline the political economy of amazon, its presence in the gta, and explore its impact on work and the broader socio-economic context in which it operates. the political economy of amazon amazon inc. was founded by jeff bezos in 1994 as an electronic bookstore at the zenith of the dotcom era of the 1990s and the rise of finance capitalism when venture capital was cheap, and investors sought innovative start-ups (moody, 2020). by 2001, amazon had already attracted $2.1 billion in investments, far surpassing other tech start-ups at that time (ibid.). the market fundamentalism of neoliberal politics allowed amazon to avoid u.s. sales taxes because it had not yet established brick-and-mortar stores, and, as a “low-margin earner,” amazon paid only usd $2.3 billion in corporate incomes taxes from 2002 to 2017 (moody, 2020, 22). today, amazon is a key player and beneficiary of the logistics revolution (the science and profit-maximization of supply chain management that began in the middle of the 20th century), operating a transnational network of sprawling warehouses, sortation centers, and delivery stations – spaces of employment that represent digital capitalism’s new factories (delfanti, 2021). as chua and cox (2023, 125) state, “amazon directly – and radically – integrates formerly distinct spheres of production, transportation, and consumption into a single e-commerce system aimed at the long-term consolidation and transformation of the retail industry into a vast logistical enterprise.” operating on this ever-expanding geographical scale, amazon sells products procured from manufacturing in the global south to relatively more affluent consumers in the global north, particularly in north america and europe. in the united states, amazon is the largest retailer of clothing, the biggest seller of toys, books, shoes (among other consumer products), the fastest growing logistics provider, and through the creation of amazon web services (aws), one of the leading providers of cloud computing services (alimahomed-wilson et al., 2020). like bezos’ original online bookstore, the immensely profitable aws arm was also heavily subsidized by public funds (thomas et al., 2022). it is one of the largest providers of web and computational services, powering the servers of other major companies like uber, netflix, airbnb (alimahomed-wilson et al., 2020; delfanti, 2020), as well as a number of public sector organizations (aws economic impact canada, 2021). the lucrative business of aws allowed amazon to cross-subsidize and re-invest profits into its logistics operations to both increase its warehouse footprint and continue to cut its prices to outcompete other retailers (chua & cox, 2023). however, as massimo (2022) underscores, aws originates from the logistics business – amazon needed to build an it infrastructure in order to manage its expanding physical infrastructure. the warehouse is thus ground-zero for experimenting with new technologies that are then sold to other parties by amazon logistics. through ‘fulfillment-by-amazon’, amazon sells logistics services to third-party sellers that use its platform to reach a wider range of consumers (massimo, 2022; press, 2023; weigel, 2023, mitchell, 2021). in terms of revenue streams, the fees extracted from external vendors to use amazon’s marketplace e-platform accounted for 23 percent whereas aws accounted for 12 percent of the company’s total revenue (mitchel, 2021; massimo, 2020). hence, while aws’s profitability counterbalanced the losses of the company’s retail arm (which as of 2022 has yet to report a profit) 54 and made it an attractive investment for wall street (chua & cox, 2023), the warehouse constitutes the condition of possibility for aws and continues to be the core of the amazon empire in its pursuit of monopoly power in the retail world, both through the exploitation of workers (discussed further below), price-gouging of small businesses, and undercutting its competitors. amazon’s capacity to expand and fulfill orders necessitates the creation of fixed physical infrastructural investments to facilitate its access to consumers (moody, 2019). as rodrigue (2020, 2) notes, “digitalization has a pronounced physicality.” the locational strategy of amazon’s new “retail factories” (chua & cox, 2023) and last-mile logistics is characterized as a process of “logistics sprawling” where “warehouse and distribution centres tend to move away from urban areas and toward more suburban and exurban ones, offering lower land prices and good access to highway networks” (woudsma et al., 2016, 475). in sum, amazon’s rise can be attributed to its exploitation of class and geographical urban/suburban disparities, generous corporate welfare and tax regimes, lax regulatory environments to facilitate its access to cheap land in close proximity to its target consumers, public transportation infrastructure (highways, airports, and rail systems) and labour market (de)regulation that enable the exploitation of low-wage workers. amazon in the greater toronto area since the opening of its first warehouse in mississauga, ontario, (a large suburb in the gta) in 2011, amazon has been steadily expanding across the province and the country. today, amazon operates 23 warehouses (or what the company refers to as ‘fulfilment centres’) across the country, nearly half of which are concentrated in ontario, canada’s most populous province. of the 11 fulfilment centres in ontario, 8 are in or near the gta, located in toronto’s inner and outer suburbs. the gta is a logistics hub. located close to the toronto international pearson airport, a significant proportion of jobs are in the transportation and warehousing sector. while there has been growth in the warehousing cluster, the quantitative and qualitative job losses due to cuts in manufacturing sector in the gta (previously an industrial powerhouse in canada), especially in the aftermath of the 2008 great recession, were never fully recuperated. the economic transition from goods production of the industrial era to goods movement of the logistics revolution (johal et al., 2019; peel-halton workforce development group, 2016) has thus far been unsuccessful in reversing the rise of precarious work, defined as work that is unstable, low-wage work, with no union coverage (thomas et al., 2020). within the logistics sector, amazon has been aggressive in its acquisition of warehousing real estate to expand its distribution network (altstedter, 2021), squeezing out brick-and-mortar retailers (chua & cox, 2023; johal et al., 2019; rodrigue, 2020), a phenomenon that some have called the “amazon effect” (alimahomed-wilson et al., 2020). this phenomenon is most acute in the greater toronto region – the logistics capital of the country – where a bulk of amazon’s activity has been focussed (deveau, 2019). this has implications on the broader political economy of the region and its labour market. the gradual reduction of physical retailers and rise of ecommerce has implications on the fiscal capacities of the region’s municipalities. the politics of municipal governance and finance, and the making of neoliberal urbanism is linked to broader patterns of austerity in the canadian context. the end of the postwar fordist era in the 1970s saw governments at multiple levels shift resource allocation in an effort to court capital and encourage private investment. at the federal level, this took shape in the form of government’s receding role in overseeing urban development, while at the provincial level it was a series of municipal amalgamations that “rationalized” services to sprawling suburbanized spaces. in the 1990s, the conservative 55 government initiated the restraint of fiscal transfers to the provinces, a process that was intensified and accelerated under the liberal government of the mid-1990s. the resultant reduction in provincial revenue led governments to subsequently download much of the funding onto municipalities, marking the beginning of permanent austerity politics at the municipal level, to which the responses have been increased privatization of services and heightened reliance on residential property taxes, the latter occurring to compensate for declines in non-residential tax revenues (albo & fanelli, 2019). importantly, this neoliberal policy paradigm also shaped the spatial stratification of toronto’s inner and outer suburbs along racial and ethnic lines (kipfer & keil, 2002; albo & fanelli, 2019). in the peel region, the gta’s logistics capital, where nearly 40 percent of amazon’s packages to canada are processed, municipalities are failing to establish infrastructure to support its overwhelmingly racialized, immigrant working class population: “peel has been the fastest growing region in ontario for decades, with the most underfunded health care system in the province: there is only one hospital in brampton to serve over 600,000 people. it’s home to the province’s largest number of international students, new immigrants, and workers in distribution centres. many of these people live in multigenerational homes, not just because it’s a feature of their culture, but because of their inability to afford housing and childcare while working paycheque to paycheque” (syed, 2021). the downward trend of the share of revenue from industrial property is in large part due to the decline in the manufacturing sector. the growth of e-commerce and the establishment of massive warehouses in the region have not offset these revenue losses for two main reasons. firstly, there is a distinction between industrial and commercial property classifications: a warehouse that is not attached to a goods production facility is classified as a commercial property, which is taxed at a lower rate than an industrial facility (johal et al., 2019, 38). secondly, the number of jobs per hectare associated with the new distribution and logistics facilities (some of which are highly automated) is lower than would have been the case with manufacturing plants (city of toronto, 2022). thus, the success of amazon’s geographical strategy in the gta relies on the exploitation of struggling suburban municipalities desperate to generate revenue and employment in the context of neoliberal austerity and capitalist crises. in addition, amazon’s efforts to monopolize the logistics and retail industry by hoarding warehousing space in the gta will, contrary to its hailing as a job creation machine (sorkin, 2017), likely result in a net loss in retail employment due to a reduction in properties used for commercial purposes, and decreased tax revenue (johal et al. 2019). amazon’s expansion, however, has also had a qualitative impact on work. its rapid growth, increased monopolization of retail and logistics, and augmented power in the global supply chain and over various suppliers affords the company a greater role in shaping work and employment practices (kassem, 2022; delfanti, 2020; chua & cox; 2023; vgontzas, 2022). this “amazonification of logistics has detrimentally impacted workers by contributing to the further erosion of labor standards, while simultaneously increasing competitive pressure on existing unionized parcel delivery firms” (alimahomed-wilson, 2020, 70). in ontario, even workers in unionized warehouses have not been able to stave off amazon’s “megacycle” shifts (gurley, 2021) of 10.5 hours a day. a former amazon warehouse worker who took up work at a large warehouse in brampton (a large municipality in the gta) explains the impact this has had in her new workplace: 56 “they [current employer] used to have normal 7am-3pm, monday to friday. very reasonable. people could, like, drop off their kids to day care and be home for lunch. when [they] jumped on amazon scheduling, which is 10 hours a day, 4 days a week schedule, it meant starting at 5 o’clock, so people were complaining about all of a sudden having to wake up at 3:30 am, not knowing what to do with their kids in the morning.” (interview) in an effort to keep up with amazon’s aggressive pace and rapid subsumption of market share, workers in the logistics sector now face a race to the bottom, in which work colonizes massive portions of workers time outside of work and reorients workers’ lives around longer and irregular shifts. these dynamics are manifesting beyond the warehouse space and into the last-mile delivery process, where amazon is further entrenching the gigification of work. a year after it established its first warehouse in 2011, amazon extended its prime membership to canadian residents. the e-commerce giant had previously relied on canada post, ups, and fedex to deliver its parcels, whose capacities to keep pace with the immense volume of amazon deliveries ultimately waned. now amazon relies on a ‘contracted out’ workforce to fulfil its prime program’s promise of free one-day shipping. to do this, amazon created amazon flex, a platform through which drivers are hired as gig workers who are ‘legally’ (mis)classified as independent contractors. similar to what has been dubbed the ‘uberization’ of work – that is, the hiring of temporary workers through digital platforms to perform on-demand work without any employee rights – “selfemployed” drivers must use their own vehicles or rented vans and are compensated based on each delivery route completed (hassel & sieker, 2022; alimahomed-wilson, 2020). in addition to the exploitation of “independent contractors” to deliver its packages, amazon introduced its delivery service partners (dsp) program where it relies on small, subcontracted parcel delivery services that operate 20-40 vans to deliver exclusively to the amazon prime membership. like the workers deployed through the amazon flex program, drivers hired through a dsp are also not considered amazon employees. from training to uniforms to work assignments, monitoring and discipline, as well as firing and retention, amazon controls all aspects of work with dsp managers as their intermediaries (mcintyre, 2022). a delivery service partner can also subcontract another smaller delivery company to handle amazon’s packages, thus creating a complex network of subcontracted and sub-subcontracted drivers where “the further down the chain from amazon, the worse the gig” (mcintyre, 2022). in its crucial last-mile distributional operations, amazon’s labour strategy is to exploit (mis)classified categories of predominantly (im)migrant workers towards whom it can abdicate any responsibilities but over whom it can retain full control. in sum, amazon’s profitability is made possible through its capitalization on the broader political economic milieu of austerity and flexible labour regimes that produce a just-in-time, racially-differentiated workforce. these qualitative changes to work and processes of social differentiation also manifest in the digital taylorist labour processes within amazon’s cavernous warehouses. in what follows, i argue that digitalized and algorithmized labour processes are constituted by racialized and gendered divisions of labour that shape the uneven experiences of algorithmic management. digital taylorism and the labour process within its massive warehousing infrastructures, digital taylorism has been a hallmark of work at amazon. these strategies of labour management have their roots both in frederick taylor’s scientific management (or taylorism) as well as the lean production regimes pioneered by japanese automobile production (or toyotaism). 57 like its antecedent management technique – taylorism – digital taylorism deploys digital technologies and algorithms to organize work and control the labour process through automated surveillance. managerial control is outsourced to a technological infrastructure that breaks down work into standardized and simplified tasks, deskilling workers in the process and rendering them replaceable and disposable. as braverman (1974, 70) noted in his seminal work, taylorism entails the “separation of conception from execution,” leaving workers without knowledge on how each task fits into the broader set of operations. this is analogous to the way in with amazon’s system of ‘chaotic storage’ allows its workers to “stow the stuff, [but] not possess an overview of where the stuff is” (delfanti, 2020, 37). in the latter case, worker’s subordination to the algorithmic organization of the labour process further intensifies work, making it more precarious, standardized, and dangerous – what delfanti (2021) calls “machinic dispossession.” similarly, elements of lean methods and its notion of kaizen – the continuous search for marginal improvements “by constantly stressing and readjusting the production system and, above all, the labor process” (moody, 1997, 87) – can also be seen in digital taylorist regimes. lean production (or management-by-stress) shares much of the features of taylorist exploitation of workers, such as reducing the number of workers while intensifying the labour process and squeezing efficiencies by eliminating slack times and implementing employer-oriented flexibility. as moody (1997, 95) notes, “[r]ather than hiring new workers, more overtime is scheduled.” some of the ways in which amazon reduces its labour costs include mandatory overtime, as well as monitoring time off task (tot) through the scanners that workers have to use to scan commodities in the warehouse as they stow, pick, and pack. amazon also recycles vast amounts of its workforce by hiring hundreds of temporary workers (colloquially called “white badges” in amazon jargon) during peak seasons who are then discarded once demand winds down. to be sure, amazon’s ability to enforce mandatory overtime4 and normalize a ‘high churn’ workplace are part of a broader politics of production (burawoy, 1983) where the state-legislated labour regimes discussed above create the social conditions that allow employers to extract more time and flexibility out of its workforce. amazon’s digital taylorist “culture of metrics” (henaway, 2023) also generates a culture of injury through immense physical and mental stress, exacerbated by undisclosed performance goals (the need to ‘make rate’) dictated by algorithms (moody, 2020; alimahomed-wilson, 2019; hanley & hubbard, 2020; uni, 2023, delfani, 2020). this arbitrary “floating rate” is an “overall rate at which workers must complete a task in an amazon warehouse, whether it’s putting items on shelves, taking them off, or putting them in boxes, is calculated based on the aggregate performance of everyone doing that task in a given facility” (mims, 2021). across the united states and canada, injury rates inside amazon’s warehouses continue to be well above industry standards. injury rates are worse in canada than they are in the us, and they are worst in amazon’s toronto-area warehouses where injury rates have more than doubled since 2016 (mojtehedzadeh, 2020). despite consistent reports of the harm workers face in its 4 one of the 2001 amendments to the employment standards act (esa) enacted by the mike harris government concerned the regulation of overtime. the revised legislation revoked the requirement of a government permit for excess hours and instead introduced a requirement for employee ‘consent’ to work overtime (thomas, 2010). as one amazon worker explained to me: workers hired by amazon can opt out of overtime but hiring managers do not inform them of that option. mandatory overtime is discretely embedded in the employment contract that they sign upon being hired. the worker added: “they punish you for [opting out]” by suggesting that it would not be possible to opt back in. the power imbalances between the employer and the employee thus make it difficult for workers to practice their legal right to not consent to overtime, and this is especially the case in the face of economic insecurity, concerns about immigration status, and language barriers (thomas, 2010). 58 warehouses, amazon consistently disputes and undermines the severity of workers’ injury in order to reduce the company’s accident costs and their workers safety and insurance board (wsib) premiums, as well as the benefits injured workers might ultimately receive (mojtehedzadeh, 2020). in all, this hybrid culture of metrics and injury – which some have dubbed “bezosism” (mims, 2021) – pits workers against one another as they are pushed to their physical limits in these technopanopticons. the ’social’ in digital taylorism: racial-ethnic and gender differentiation these digitalized, standardized labour processes that require little training also have implications on the social relations amongst workers. they allow managers to assign tasks arbitrarily, opening the possibility for nepotism and favouritism. henaway (2023, 3-4) suggests that “[s]upervision through algorithms and surveillance masks the power dynamics of this technical division of labour.” as one worker explained to me: “i don’t know, like, the whole idea that this is just an app running things or something… that doesn't really correspond to what my view of how it is at work. there is this whole surveillance system and all this rating and everything, but that's just kind of used to enhance the managers' power in a lot of ways because they still have the discretion they can choose to go complain to certain people and not to other people. there isn't like some automatic process where it's just like based on these metrics that that's how people are being promoted” (interview). although digital technologies have greatly reshaped the management and intensification of work, it is still human managers who decide how work is distributed and who gets disciplined, and technology enables managers5 to mask practices of favouritism through the veneer of digital objectivity. as kelly (2022, 835) notes, the very term ‘algorithmic management’ has “the unintended effect of erasing the human labour of middle management which remains important to the labour process.” while it is true the technologies that workers encounter are standardized across the world, local differences do matter, especially in a highly diverse workplace comprised of different groups of racialized immigrant workers. in this context, favoritism happens along gendered and racial/ethnic lines and is experienced by workers as such: “the arbitrary power of the company over workers worsens the ethnic and gendered dynamics because it gives them power that they can use to do the sort of ethnic favouritism and pit different groups against each other.” (interview) another worker describes the ways in which racial/ethnic dynamics shape how work is organized. she describes the ways that managers sanction social interaction: “i worked at ship dock. they dictate who you're allowed to be around and who you're not to be around. they don't want certain kinds of people mixing together. […] i noticed they had me separated from other east asian people. always kept us separated. and when i’m talking, they would come in and break us up. that's what they do [but] they’ll say, ‘your rate is too slow’” (interview). miraftab (2016) refers to these managerial strategies as the “linguistic choreography of the production line” to describes the ways in which racialization is exploited to quell solidarity and intercultural understanding amongst workers. work is also organized along gendered lines (see also vgontzas, 2022). water spiders – amazon’s borrowed lexicon from lean methods – are workers who provide supplies to other workers in the work process (e.g., ensuring there are enough boxes). these roles tend to be more 5 delfanti (2021) uses the term ‘augmented despotism’ to refer to the interplay between technology and the enhancement of human managers’ powers. 59 physical and are predominantly assigned to young men. in the warehouses, these are considered “indirect process” roles that facilitate others’ work and are not monitored or subject to a specific performance rate in the same way that “direct processes” like picking or stowing might be. the workers who perform the role of a water spider in the warehouses note the physicality of the job, but also expressed feeling relatively more secure in their jobs because their work is not ‘rated’: “a lot of indirect roles are more physical. so for example, like aunties [a term used endearingly to describe older racialized women], older ladies, probably don't want it. i think they would rather be tracked than have to do physical work that's gonna, you know, hurt their back or something” (interview). women in the warehouse can end up in more precarious work situations when confronted with the difficult choice of heightened surveillance or potentially injurious work. another worker notes that the surveillance technology that are afforded to managers to use “their positions of authority for sexual harassment and whatnot” (interview), by tracking a worker’s location in the warehouse, for instance. workers’ actual lived experience of work inside digitized and algorithmized workplaces suggest that the use of technology in the workplace does not neutralize or transcend existing social relations. far from achieving an undifferentiated workforce and labour process, digital taylorism is a socially grounded phenomenon that is situated within an unequal context. this labour process is constituted by racialized and gendered divisions of labour that inflect the uneven experiences of algorithmic management. management’s practices of nepotism and ethnic favouritism, as well the gendered differentiation of work assignments bestow unequal levels of algorithmic surveillance, managerial discipline and harassment, and job precarity. conclusion the past few years have seen a rise in research on digital capitalism and its broader social, economic, and political impacts. this paper seeks to contribute to these discussions through a case study of amazon’s presence and expansion in the greater toronto area, in which most of its warehousing operations are concentrated. by drawing on the framework on racial capitalism, i explore social differentiation at two distinct but related scales: at the broader level of the gta as well as within amazon’s warehouses. amazon’s rise in canada is partly attributable to a racially and ethnically stratified labor market. as i have shown above, this stratification is itself a product of racial capitalist practices of differential inclusion of (im)migrants and racialized workers. in a context of multi-scalar neoliberal austerity and labour flexibilization, it is a predominantly racialized immigrant workforce living in toronto’s inner and outer suburbs that works to stow, pick, ship, and deliver commodities to prop up amazon’s empire. at the level of the warehouse shopfloors, the analysis offered here provides a more nuanced depiction of workers’ experiences of digital taylorism. workers own accounts trouble the notion that technology and algorithms lead to an undifferentiated workforce and a uniform labour process. by insisting that digitality unfolds within a specific socio-historical context, i show that racialized and gendered social relations inflect the uneven experiences of algorithmic management, shaping the division of labour and bestowing differential levels of injury, surveillance, harassment, and job precarity. as amazon continues to expand, worker and community resistance against its monopolistic and exploitative practices will continue to grow. the contribution offered here suggests that attention to racial dynamics of amazon’s digital capitalism is crucial in the struggle for postor anti-capitalist futures. 60 references albo, g. and c. fanelli. 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(2016). logistics sprawl in north america: methodological issues and a case study in toronto. transportation research procedia, 12, 474-488. global english in the wake of the collapse of globalism peter ives1 abstract: drawing on recent empirical findings, this article argues that the advent of global english is fundamentally related to the massive presence of english as a mandatory subject in national public school-systems throughout the world. it shows how this analysis runs counter to common explanations and assumptions about the spread of english in the latter half of the 20th century. in contrast to the common superficial approaches to the politics of english, this article contends that language politics should be central to current debates of global capitalism which becomes increasingly crucial in the wake of the resurgence of nationalism and shifting terrain of neoliberalism. keywords: language politics; global english; global capitalism; globalization; global education introduction “every time the question of language surfaces, in one way or another, it means that a series of other problems are coming to the fore: the formation and enlargement of the governing class, the need to establish more intimate and secure relationships between the governing groups and the national-popular mass[es], in other words to reorganize the cultural hegemony.” antonio gramsci2 1 peter ives teaches political science at the university of winnipeg, canada. he is author of gramsci’s politics of language: engaging the bakhtin circle and the frankfurt school and language and hegemony in gramsci as well as numerous articles and book chapters on the politics of ‘global english.’ he can be reached at p.ives@uwinnipeg.ca. 2 antonio gramsci, notebook 29, note 3 (gramsci 1985, 183-4). i have pluralized “masses” to acknowledge that gramsci was focused on the italian nation-state and its domestic nation-building process, whereas this essay is focused at the global level although also paying close attention to nation-building of individual nation-states (see ives and short 2013). global english in the wake of the collapse of globalism | 219 of the many deceptions or mystifications of neoliberal globalization, one of the least explored is the spread of the use of english globally since the 1950s.3 the massive increase in english has had major effects on the daily lives and actions of people across the globe and it is also a key site of the interactions between global economic dynamics and governments’ resources and policies. however, we are told by everyone from journalists to academic “experts” that this immense turn toward the learning and usage of english is primarily driven by individual choice, the inevitable result of globalization (usually only vaguely defined), cosmopolitan progress or some combination of the three.4 the world is getting smaller, travel cheaper and more frequent, and technology is connecting the world as never before. this type of tripe underpins the many non-explanations or naturalization of what may be one of the most profound changes of the late 20th early 21st century. in a symptomatic logic of late capitalism, this story is presented as at once inescapable, quasi-natural and logical, as well as the result of people around the world wanting (and sometimes needing) to use english. arguments that the rise of ‘global english’ is part of a political project (phillipson 1992) are written off as “conspiracy theory.”5 while marxist historical materialist and other critical approaches provide thorough critiques of such mainstream approaches to ‘globalization,’ such analyses have been surprisingly silent on language politics, including global english (ives, 2010; 2015).6 3 language use is notoriously difficult to quantify, but by most estimates in the middle of the 20th century, about 250 million people used english on a daily basis, whereas by 2000, that number was over 1 billion and many estimate that now almost half the world’s population have significant command of english (see crystal 2003, graddol 2006). 4 for analysis of journalist and mass media depictions of ‘global english’ see christian demont-heinrich 2009. for an overview and critique of three different approaches in scholarly research from sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and language education, see ives (2006). 5 while i will critique robert phillipson’s “linguistic imperialism” approach below, that it is so often read as “conspiracy theory” despite phillipson’s explicit and persuasive rejection of such a reading tells us a lot of the underlying assumptions about ‘global english’ (see ives 2019). 6 of the import exceptions to this are holborow (2015) and block (2018) who provide important analyses of neoliberalism and current language politics and policies. both touch 220 | populism, power and protest moreover, the terrain on which global english arose amidst global capitalism and cosmopolitan ideologies has shifted radically since the election of donald trump in the us, the passing of brexit in the uk, and the worldwide resurgence of populist nationalism. there are at the very least severe cracks in – if not a wholesale collapse of – the edifice of globalism. my argument here is that these shifting dynamics reveal the need to more thoroughly understand the complexities of the spread of global english at the nexus of economic forces and political projects where nationhood, identity and language are inextricable. this is not the place to make any bold analytic conjectures about the fate of global capitalism in the face of this resurgence of nationalism with the antiglobalist trade wars, protectionism, and the faltering belief that ‘free-markets’ are a benefit to all. nevertheless, this shifting terrain further throws into question both standard accounts of why english has ballooned in world usage since the middle of the 20th century and the sense that global english is here to stay. even more important politically are the larger questions that this essay can raise but not answer concerning how the important relations between language(s) and political communities are shifting and what this means to potential transformations of global capitalism. this article begins from some basic empirical findings from a recently completed research project that i conducted with my colleagues, jeff bale (university of toronto) and eve haque (york university), and a large team of linguistically talented research assistants. the project maps out the extent to which national education policies across the world include english as a subject in the national public-school curricula.7 we have documented that over 70 percent of the countries in the world mandate english as a required subject of study. over 80 percent of the world’s population live in these countries where english is a mandatory subject in their schools. this includes 142 countries not counting the us, the uk, australia, canada and new zealand, excluded because the role of their education systems in the spread of english is more complex. the research project includes data on the grades in which english is taught, where available, the hours per week devoted to english, the trends of using english as a medium of on global english but view is significantly as a symptom or example of neoliberalism. holborow’s earlier work (1999) provides a more specific marxist analysis of global english. 7 for more details see the website, https://www.uwinnipeg.ca/global-englisheducation/index.html. global english in the wake of the collapse of globalism | 221 instruction, as well as how english is represented (if it is described as a global or international language, a foreign language, etc.). in addition to these countries, over 40 countries include english as an ‘elective’ or non-compulsory subject. but in many of these countries, like the czech republic, ‘foreign’ or ‘additional’ language requirements mean that students in effect must take some english before graduating from high school (dovalil 2018). here i am leaving aside questions of public education systems providing the resources to teach students who choose to learn english; our project just focuses on the mandatory imposition of english. the website includes various caveats, details and analysis of other data collected. obviously, in many countries rates of school attendance are low. our project could not cover private schooling, which is, of course, significant. perhaps most importantly, we were looking at national level policy, which in some cases is merely aspirational and in all cases is much more complex in the implementation. but even with these caveats, this research demonstrates the extent to which state-education policy is central to the spread of global english.8 and it has many implications, especially comparisons to the similarly central role of mandatory education in the creation of standardized national languages at the heart of nation-building processes in the 19th and 20th centuries, which i will discuss below. while the prevalence of english is often raised in many studies of globalization, it is used merely to illustrate other dynamics, whether it be increasing communication around the world or the advances of a cosmopolitan culture stemming from so-called globalization. even with all the discussions of the ‘linguistic turn’ (or turns) in the 20th century, the rise of global english is most often treated as a straightforward result of other social, technological, economic or cultural dynamics. now these dynamics are changing fast with many heralding the death of neoliberal globalization and, along with it, cosmopolitan liberalism. this change of terrain brings into focus the political and especially state dimension that always underpinned the rise of global english. by locating the rise of global english within the centre of the cosmopolitan dimension of neoliberalism, i want to highlight the role (and thus transformation of) nation-states in proliferating english through mandatory, national education policy. i argue that it is only this type of assessment that provides a clear formulation of key questions concerning the commodification of 8 in 59 of these countries, english is taught in every grade, one through twelve, and in many it starts at the first year of schooling. 222 | populism, power and protest language, transformations and contradictions in nation-building projects and the future of global english in the face of resurgent nationalisms. by showing the shortcomings of the two dominant approaches to global english – the linguistic imperialism as a version of the cultural imperialism school and the cosmopolitan approach – i argue that the future prospects of english as a global language remain uncertain and political. global english: standard interpretations david crystal is one of the most prolific experts on the state of the english language in the world today and provides a good example of how it is most often addressed by scholars, the media and in public discourse. crystal provides ample discussion of the role of british colonialism in the spread of english, as well as the impact of 20th century american imperialism – military, cultural, economic and political. however, at the pivotal moment in his analysis crystal contends that due to ‘globalisation’ (which he suggests is driven primarily by technology – mass communication and cheaper transportation) the world needed a ‘global language’ (crystal 2003, p.13). english fit the bill, according to crystal. he insists that his description of english as being “in the right place at the right time” has an ironic (and welsh) meaning (crystal 2003, p.120) and was not meant to detract from the politics concerning british colonialism and american imperialism, as some critics had charged. he also describes the dangers of language death and the threats that english poses to linguistic diversity (crystal 2003, pp.20-25). thus, at one level, crystal presents a ‘balanced’ view, especially in comparison to, for example, robert phillipson, for whom global english is ‘linguistic imperialism,’ a key component of cultural imperialism (phillipson 1992; phillipson 2009). phillipson’s linguistic imperialism approach, while incredibly important for politicizing the english language teaching industry, especially in the 1990s, is analytically weak in numerous ways (see ives 2006 and ives 2019). the most relevant short-coming is that his focus on two specific countries – britain and the u.s. – overshadows the role of the language policies of all the other nations and their complex interactions. it is as if the u.s. world hegemony is so powerful that each of these 142 countries that mandate english just fall in line to advance the u.s. national interest by forcing their populations to learn english. in addition to being simplistic, such an account has no place for the variations within these english teaching policies – some of which, like colombia – are explicitly aimed at creating a modern global workforce that can compete internationally. some of the policy documents articulate a cosmopolitan globalization rhetoric. others offer global english in the wake of the collapse of globalism | 223 less overtly economic explanations invoking their british commonwealth status, or english as some sort of compromise among competing ethnic languages. others just infer that ‘foreign languages’ are important, and english is presented as the most popular choice. as selma sonntag has shown in her excellent, case-study based analysis, the local politics of global english, the political role of english depends on politics among local and national forces. at times, these forces can be aligned with xenophobia, at other times they are associated with elitism and questions of class gatekeepers; and, in other countries, they can be linked to progressive alliances against traditional elites (sonntag 2003, see also block 2018, p.8-13). but since sonntag’s analysis is based on a case-study methodology, she does not grapple with the systematic forces of english across the globe in the context of global capitalism.9 on the other extreme from phillipson’s “linguistic imperialism” is what i call linguistic cosmopolitanism. political scientists like abram de swann (2001), danielle archibugi (2008) and philippe van parijs (2012) represent this position most clearly but it also captures much of the work in critical language studies by scholars such as suresh canagarajah (2013) and lionel wee (2010). van parjis makes most explicit an assumption underlying all this work, which is that global english is a benefit to the entire world (2012). i have critiques these positions elsewhere (ives 2014), but here my point is that they all end up treating global english too superficially without grasping the historically changing links between language and political community that we shall see below in the influential literature on the formation of modern nationalism by scholars such as benedict anderson, eric hobsbawm and etienne balibar. while neither as pessimistic as the linguistic imperialism school nor as optimistic as the cosmopolitans remains superficial, crystal’s more ‘balanced’ analysis remains superficial, seeing the rise of global english as merely a consequence of economic and technological developments. moreover, while crystal notes that the future of global english is open and could change significantly since, like all international languages, it relies upon the power of the people who use it (crystal 2003, p.7), it leaves us few resources to ask about the future of global english in our current climate of capitalism with the resurgence of nationalism and populism and the coming apart of the neoliberal 9 sonntag’s later work on call-centres goes much further in this direction but never yields a global approach to global english (sonntag 2009). 224 | populism, power and protest cosmopolitan. because crystal, like so many others (including most marxists, see ives 2015) do not place language in that crucial nexus between global capitalism and the nation-state system, he cannot grasp the tensions exerted on it by the resurgence of nationalism, the return of trade wars and the abdication of leadership by the u.s., britain and other countries in the project of cosmopolitanism (and ‘global english’). i have used crystal’s work as an example of the dominant approaches to global english. before moving on, i should note his important point that global english as a phenomenon is inextricable from the questioning of the dominance or place of first language or so-called ‘mother-tongue’ speakers. the vast majority of the increase in the use of english globally since the middle of the 20th century has been by ‘non-native’ users who now outnumber native users, and, as much of the literature in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and education has explored, this is finally shifting presumptions that the ‘native’ standard varieties are inherently superior than the ‘new englishes’ spoken and codified by non-native users. in other words, english is no longer ‘owned’ by british, americans, canadians, new zealanders and australians (e.g. kachru 2005). this is a key point to which i will return below. global english education and the nation-state the absence of focus on mandatory public education in accounts of global english is surprising for several reasons. the most obvious of which is the widely accepted contention that language standardization in general is a key element to nation-building and, as benedict anderson so influentially put it, the ‘imagining of national community’ especially in the 19th and early 20th century. as many diverse scholars have emphasized (e.g. albaugh 2014; heller 2010; bauman and briggs 2003; hobsbawm 1992; anderson 1991; balibar 1991; weber 1976), language standardization was carried out primarily through the creation of national, mandatory, public education systems. as etienne balibar argues, “the institution of state languages that were distinct both from the sacred languages of the clergy and from ‘local’ idioms – initially for purely administrative purposes, but subsequently as aristocratic languages – goes back in europe to the high middle ages” (balibar 1991, p.87). balibar traces how the nation-state projects and their concomitant nationalism were intricately bound with language, education and language standardization (balibar 1991, pp.91-105). and while in that study, originally published in 1990, he does not follow through with the implications, he notes the bourgeois and global english in the wake of the collapse of globalism | 225 capitalist dynamics within the development of the state form, meant that there was a “simultaneous genesis of nationalism and cosmopolitanism” (balibar 1991, p.90). if mandatory national language education is accepted as central to the rise of the modern nation-state system, it seems particularly problematic that it is more or less absent in the prolific debates from the 1990s onwards about globalization and whether or not it spells the demise of the power of the nationstate. this is even more the case if we note the very influential analysis provided by benedict anderson that modern nationalism must be understood as an ‘imagined community’, not in the sense of the not being ‘real’, but rather that we can distinguish different forms of imagining community – for him the large historical forms were religious, dynastic and nationalist – and it was precisely the different roles of languages that played a major part in anderson’s argument. he argues, similar to balibar, that different historical epochs were largely constituted by differences of how language and community were formulated. religious community, for anderson, links people through sacred languages potentially universal where conversion of all humans into the religious fold relies on languages not being linked to specific, finite, ethnic or cultural communities as they were to be constructed later with the rise of the modern nation-state. anderson theorizes the “revolutionary vernacularizing thrust of capitalism” (anderson 2006, p.39) as including changes in latin itself as it differentiated into the romance vernacular dialects, but also other key material conditions like the newspaper, printing-press and especially the book. much has been written about the details of this analysis, but you certainly do not have to accept the specifics of anderson’s analysis to appreciate his larger point, that the standardization of modern languages is part and parcel of the political and institutional projects that constitute the modern nation-state. scholarship on the concept of the ‘mother tongue’ corroborates but also deepens this analysis. several scholars have shown how the ‘mother tongue’ is a particularly modern concept taking hold with the development of capitalism (bonfiglio 2010; yildez 2012). paolo gambarata pushes this analysis further showing how “the category of maternal language is the pre-eminent site of the conflation of natural speech and formal, standardized language that founds linguistic nationalism” (gambarota 2011, p.32). today’s scholars of global english and language generally are very quick to challenge the idea of the mother tongue and the simplistic dichotomy of “native” and “non-native” speakers (kachru 226 | populism, power and protest 2005), but to my knowledge, they never re-connected it to changes in the economy and political community that contextualize this challenge. one key question that anderson’s work and its influence should open concerns current inquiries into the role of digital technology for altering the terrain of ‘print-capitalism,’ newspapers, books as commodities, and the other material and productive elements in terms of how the 21st century heralds a distinctly new form of imagining community. while the rise of global english shares some features of the type of “vernacular linguistic unification” (anderson 2006, p.77) that we saw in especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries, even the most committed cosmopolitan accounts of globalization do not herald global english as a “world language” akin to the role italian or german became (with considerable struggle and continued lack of success) as national languages. of course, the mandatory nature of english language instruction across the globe is not meant to compete with or replace the national standard languages that continue to be imposed through mandatory education. english is often advocated in the name of ‘multilingualism’ although there is some tension in the debates concerning non-native varieties of english that are seen to contain vernacular culture and values (see kachru 2005). nevertheless, on the whole, the policies that use vital national resources to teach global english represent clear examples of nation-state polices not simply giving away their power in the face of globalization, but actively creating key structures for global capitalism and an aspiration for their nation to have a more positive place in it. however, these education polices are clearly open to relatively rapid change to the extent that the cosmopolitan promise of economic globalization gives way to resurgent nationalism, international trade agreements are no longer assumed to automatically benefit all involved, and the world playing field is recast as a zerosum game. conclusion in 2018, the south korean government banned the teaching of english prior to grade three. the policy was explained as linked to a constitutional court decision from 2016 in which concerns over children’s ability to learn korean well were (questionably) connected to the trend of teaching english earlier and earlier, a trend that south korea had been leading (ghani 2018). some of the countries with the most ambitious english teaching policies, such as colombia that aspired to bilingual fluency in spanish and english for all high school graduates by 2020, explicitly connect this policy to globalization and english as the global language. global english in the wake of the collapse of globalism | 227 the usefulness of english and what the cosmopolitan advocates celebrate as its communicative potential rests on the pervasiveness of english across the world. but these english language education policies and all the resources that they require could easily be deemed less than politically pragmatic in a world where the u.s. has abdicated its roll as the leader of a cosmopolitan globalism. added to this is the secondary role that the u.k. has played in supporting global english, which now may be questioned with the ongoing brexit quandaries and the potentially more isolationist position it seems to herald. in other words, when the conjunction of political and economic forces is unstable and changing, so too are language practices, politics and policies. dominant understandings of the rise of global english as a mere coinciding of diverse factors (colonial histories, economic changes fostering more linguistic interactions, cosmopolitan ideologies) are revealed as inadequate. as suggested in my opening quote from gramsci the period in which global english was ascendant, language politics was tied to changing dynamics between governing elites and the masses around the world. this seems now to have given way to different conjuncture, still in flux. we now have the flip side of gramsci’s point, when the relations between the governing classes and the popular masses are shifting, language politics will surface. under these new conditions the politics of global english require a deeper and more substantial understanding especially as they too will be open to transformations which should be central to our political responses to the recent upsurge of nationalism. references albaugh, e. (2014). state-building and multilingual education in africa. cambridge: cambridge university press. anderson, b. (2006/1991). imagined communities. 2nd ed. london: verso. archibugi, d. (2008). the commonwealth of global citizens: towards a cosmopolitan democracy. princeton: princeton university press. balibar, é. (1991). “the nation form: history and ideology,” in étienne balibar and immanuel wallerstein, race, nation, class: ambiguous identities (london: verso), pp.86-106. bauman r. and c. briggs (2003). voices of modernity: language ideologies and the politics of inequality. cambridge: cambridge university press. 228 | populism, power and protest block, d. (2018). political economy and sociolinguistics: neoliberalism, inequality and social class. london: bloomsbury. bonfiglio, t. (2010). mother tongues and nations: the invention of the native speaker. berlin: degruyter. canagarajah, s. 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(2018 march 2). “south korea bans english education for first and second graders,” aljazeera, https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/indepth/features/south-korea-bansenglish-education-graders180302100352881.html?__twitter_impression=true. graddol, d. (2006). english next. london: british council, https://englishagenda.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/attachments/ books-english-next.pdf gramsci, a. (1985). selections from cultural writings, trans. william boelhower. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. heller, m. (2010). paths to post-nationalism: a critical ethnography of language and identity. oxford: oxford university press. hobsbawm, e. (1990). nations and nationalism since 1780. cambridge: cambridge university press. holborow, m. (1999). the politics of english. london: sage. holborow, m. (2016). language and neoliberalism. london: routledge. ives, p. 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(1976). peasants into frenchmen: the modernization of rural france, 1840-1914. stanford: stanford university press. wee, l. (2010). language without rights. oxford: oxford university press. 230 | populism, power and protest rethinking the transnational capitalist class william k. carroll1 it has been more than four decades since stephen hymer (1974) first mooted that globalizing capital was begetting, in its pathways, an international bourgeoisie, and nearly two decades since leslie sklair’s (2001) pathbreaking the transnational capitalist class.2 the basic thesis that with capitalist globalization comes a tendency toward formation of a transnational capitalist class (tcc) is well established, but a tendency is not a fait accompli, and as social scientists and activists we need to be attentive to the complexities in class formation and global political economy. that means clarifying some continuing ambiguities. in this article, i attempt to clarify: 1) how key terms like global, transnational, regional and national apply within transnational capitalist class formation; 2) how the distinction between a capitalist class in-itself and for-itself applies to the tcc; and 3) how insights from the amsterdam school, which embarked upon the first sustained research program on the tcc in the 1980s, can add nuance to our analysis of tcc formation. from the start, there have been different conceptions of the tcc in play. in his foundational statement hymer noted the basic process that underlies tcc formation: the internationalization of capital which leads an internationalizing segment of the capitalist class to “detach their interests from the home market” and to support an international regime that “allows free movement of capital between countries” (hymer, 1974). in a related paper, hymer (1972, 100-1) drew a direct link between internationalization of capital and “international class consciousness on the part of capital”. kees van der pijl (1984), a decade later, focused on the region within the world-system in which capitalist internationalization was most intense, what he called the lockean heartland, and the atlantic ruling class that, over the course of three centuries, had come to form a hegemonic fraction. van der pijl’s densely historical treatment was complemented by meindert fennema’s (1982) network analysis, 1 william k. carroll is professor of sociology at the university of victoria. 2 this article is based on a paper presented at the 4th biennial conference of the network for the critical study of global capitalism in havana, november 1-3, 2017. it extends analyses in carroll (2012, 2013). it has benefited from my involvement in the sshrcfunded corporate mapping project and from comments by gordon bailey. 188 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice which evidenced a developing international network of banks and industrial corporations, strongly centred on the north atlantic. by 1987 robert cox offered a gramscian alternative to realist and idealist international relations theories, noting that with globalization “the historic blocs underpinning particular states become connected through the mutual interests and ideological perspectives of social classes in different countries, and global classes begin to form” as states themselves become internationalized (1987, 358). what cox called a transnational managerial class had emerged, consisting of top managers and directors of multinational corporations, those controlling major national enterprises, and locally-based smaller capitalists linked into the transnational capitalist circuitry. in the 1990s, the terminology began to shift, from internationalization to globalization and from the multinational to the transnational. robinson and harris’s influential 2000 article repeated hymer’s basic thesis, adding in a discussion of how the now-transnational capitalist class contained within itself political factions pushing three analytically distinct globalization projects – the free-market, the structural and the regulatory. sklair’s the transnational capitalist class was the first major study that framed its object within the nowconventional terminology, though he had already presented the basic thesis in his sociology of the global system. sklair’s thesis on tcc formation is that, although it consists of four distinct fractions (executives of tncs and their subsidiaries, globalizing state bureaucrats, globalizing professionals and a globalizing consumerist-media elite) “there is one central transnational capitalist class that makes system-wide decisions, and … it connects with the tcc in each community, region, country, etc” (1994, 175). this thesis is repeated in robinson’s (2004) “theory of global capitalism”, which depicts the globalization of capital, the formation of a tcc and the emergence of a transnational state (tns) as interdependent developments. inspired mainly by sklair and robinson, the network for the critical study of global capitalism has held biannual meetings since 2011, resulting in several published collections that comprise a loosely organized school of thought (struna, 2013; harris and hrubric, 2016; sprague, 2016).3 concurrently, a series of studies, reviewed below, have examined capitalist transnationalization within specific places in the world-system. these studies move to a more concretecomplex level, and raise issues as to how we characterize geographically-specific 3 the network’s website is at https://netglobalcapitalism.wordpress.com/ rethinking the transnational capitalist class | 189 https://netglobalcapitalism.wordpress.com/ segments of transnationalized capital. are nationally-based capitalist fractions (resident say in china) part of the tcc by virtue of their connections into tn circuitry? is the tcc one coherent entity? how do north-south inequities figure in tcc formation? most broadly, how do continuing geopolitical-economic realities shape tcc formation? the global, transnational, regional and national the basic thesis in global capitalism theory holds that global capitalism is undergoing an “epochal shift”, “characterized by the rise of truly transnational capital and the integration of every country into a new globalized system of production and finance, a transnational capitalist class as would be global ruling class, and transnational state apparatuses.” (robinson, 2017, 171). in this formulation, the global and the transnational stand in for each other. yet there is value in distinguishing between them. with sklair (2001), we can identify transnational practices, which cross borders but do not originate from states (which engage in international practices). the “global” is a more abstract term. it refers, within capitalism, not to specific practices but, systemically, to the world market. at mid-19th century, the tendency for capital to globalize was famously observed by marx and engels (1968, 38): “the need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe.” it is the world market (not only for trade but for capital) that creates the systemic dominion of capital, within which the law of value operates as the expression of alienated labour. actual relations and practices are not “global” in this sense, but always situated, though varying in scale and scope, from the local to the transnational. as the world market and especially the world capital market deepens and widens, capital’s structural power grows. global integration of accumulation since the 1970s has meant that “economic calculations of all kinds – from purchases in the supermarket to the determination of the prime interest rate – are subject, quite explicitly, to international calculation” (bryan, 1995, 13). for businesses and state bodies, the fact that competitors function in a globalized field is enough to lead to the embrace of a standpoint of global capital (ross and tracte, 1990, 7-9). it is this shift in the general horizons of economic calculation – for various agents at various sites of the world system – that marks our present era, and that has underwritten transnational neoliberalism as a hegemonic project (carroll, 2003). that project has in turn further widened and deepened the world market. of course, what underlies the market are production relations. 190 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice by the late 20th century not only had the capital market become globalized, but a segment of production itself had become reconfigured into transnational commodity chains that optimize on costs of production. nevertheless, capitalist globalization has not eliminated national spaces; it has made them more permeable. as a concept predicated on the continuing reality of such spaces, the transnational enables us to examine regionalism and spatially-driven fractionation within the tcc. most tncs have well-established home bases, from which they have grown. unlike pregnancy, transnationality is not simply present or absent. a company can be a little transnational or a lot. a few giant companies are extremely transnational (“stateless”), but most have clear operating bases in one country and some are minimally transnationalized. rugman and verbeke (2007) showed that as of 2002 only nine of the fortune 500 corporations had achieve balanced sales across the three regions of the triad, with most tncs “organized at the regional level rather than the global level.” a follow-up study by podrug et al (2018) found that between 2002 and 2012 six of the nine had retreated from regionally-balanced international sales while nine corporations had joined the ranks of highly transnationalized companies, bringing the total to 12. this is modest evidence of increasing transnationality, but the main take-away is that most large corporations continue to have regionalized business strategies, and economic interests. in this sense an arch distinction between “national” and “transnational” capitalist fractions, with the latter conflated with “global capital” may miss a more complex reality. the same holds of course for national states, which have pursued regionalization strategies within blocs such as nafta and the eu. such blocs have promoted specific circuits of regional accumulation, shoring up many companies’ regional business strategies. much of what is transnational is regional – organized in blocs that do not break with geopolitical logic but reproduce it, even as they also contribute to the widening and deepening of the world market. there is also the question of the transnational and the international. some years ago, jerry harris (2003, 330) provided helpful clarification on this when he looked more concretely at the military-industrial fraction of the american bourgeoisie, whose interests he took to be quite distinct from the tcc. the former is strongly (co)dependent upon the us state, but is also involved in the international arms trade and in massive foreign investment. harris pointed out that tncs like boeing accumulate capital internationally rather than transnationally; hence contradictions within the military-industrial rethinking the transnational capitalist class | 191 fraction could raise “a significant challenge to globalization” harris’s study points to divisions between capital that accumulates transnationally (in circuits that transect borders without the commercial involvement of states) and capital that accumulates “internationally” (in international circuits that involve states commercially). the examples could be multiplied, since across the globe there is considerable state support for various corporations that, although transnationally invested, retain national moorings (whether us-based boeing or canada-based bombardier). as our analysis becomes more concrete, as we take up phenomena such as the us military-industrial complex, the tcc appears less as a coherent, homogeneous collective actor that has transcended or captured national states, and more as a highly variegated and regionalized formation containing within itself tensions and contradictions. of course, most capitalists, worldwide, are not transnationalized in their investments, and only a few control big capital that is highly transnational. the most important and archetypal are those who command the leading transnational asset managers – blackrock, fidelity etc. – coming closest to bill gate’s utopian vision of friction-free capital that flows within a unified world market. in its demography, the capitalist class, worldwide, is overwhelmingly national, but the numerically tiny segment that does operate transnationally controls vast stocks and flows of capital (much of it fictitious). building more nuance into the picture – recognizing the concreteness of transnational practices and the continuing relevance of regional/national/local formations – is important, if we are to avoid overly schematic formulations. a master division between transnational and national, one hegemonic the other fading, is too arch to provide much analytical purchase, especially when analysis moves to a more concrete-complex level, which is where history is made.4 in short, the tcc grand narrative operates at an overly abstract level. part of the problem, as others have noted (moore, 2002; van der pijl, 2005) is a studied insensitivity to space, which is both a material reality and a political/economic/cultural construction. as robinson (2017) warns, spatiality, and state territoriality, should not be reified, but neither should they be ignored. concretely, the agency of transnational capitalists does not escape national contexts but occurs simultaneously in several contexts. 4 for a discussion of the abstract-simple and the concrete-complex in social-scientific reasoning see jessop (2008, 2). 192 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice “transnational social forces do not operate outside states but inside different states at the same time” (van apeldoorn, 2004, 145). class-in-itself and class-for-itself a second clarification concerns the distinction between class in-itself and for-itself. since the 1970s the transnational circuits of capital have densified so that within many tncs production occurs through transnational commodity chains optimized for corporate profit while financial capital circulates transnationally at the click of a mouse (or, ditching the mouse, through a programmed trade in fictitious capital). these are the bases for a tcc-in-itself, and they are well established, although sean starrs cautions us about the scale of transnationalization.5 as a class-in-itself, the tcc wields capital’s structural power molecularly, in a multitude of decisions that add up to a (shifting) verdict on places, states and industries. so, even if the transnationalized capitalist fraction is relatively small it exerts a market-mediated class power of great significance. transnational networks of finance and investment provide a fundamental structural basis for the tcc (harris, 2014). however, a tcc-foritself implies more – a class capacity to exert hegemonic leadership in a transnational field. the latter is a tendency held in check by the continuing political power of national states and by the fact that the vast majority of the world’s capitalists – the 99% within the infamous 1% – in fact, are not transnationally invested. what pulls the top tier of a capitalist class together and enables its collective agency are the elite relations that integrate leading capitalists, their corporations and associated organic intellectuals into corporate communities (domhoff, 2006). such integration enables a moving consensus among leading capital interests, but corporate communities simultaneously reach into civil and political society via policy-planning, lobbying and related processes, creating capacity for capital as a class-for-itself. an issue here is, how does a transnational corporate community develop in relation to the national corporate communities 5 as of 2015, only six percent of the world’s total household wealth (excluding primary residence, thus a proxy for the wealth of capitalists) was managed offshore; i.e., “94% of the world’s total household wealth of $168 trillion is managed onshore by firms of the same nationality as their clients” this does not deny the formation of a tcc-in-itself, but it does emphasize the continuing importance of national ruling classes, and associated states. see starrs (2017, 649). rethinking the transnational capitalist class | 193 that pre-exist it? the answer is that the actual historical process of tcc formation has been on a trajectory from nationally-focused monopoly capital to transnationalized monopoly capital, with all the path dependencies that implies. historically, the transnational corporate community takes shape as an accretion of transnational relations to well-developed national business communities embodying fractions of monopoly capital (carroll, 2010). given this historical process, it should not surprise us that national corporate communities persist, even if transnational elite relations increase gradually. research on canada is relevant here. canada’s major corporations have transnationalized while remaining core players in the national corporate community, tied in with the more domestically-focused firms (carroll, 2004; klassen and carroll, 2011) in general, each national corporate community exercises leadership within a system of alliances that extend domestically to think tanks, business councils, lobbies, industry groups, foundations and political parties. the persistence of national corporate communities is also evident in the extent of foreign ownership of shares listed on different stock exchanges. despite rising levels of foreign ownership, domestic ownership is still prevalent for many large corporations, worldwide. in capitalism’s dominant state, american ownership of the largest us-based firms is especially concentrated – american investors own on average 84% of the shares of the largest 50 us-based corporations. for starrs (2017, 652) this indicates “the continued existence of an american-based capitalist class, even as their accumulation of profit flows in from around the world – implying a continued reliance on “their” us state as the primary author and guarantor of this global system.” when we follow the actual historical process, we find that the top tier of the capitalist class is not a clearly discernable tcc-for-itself that has broken free of national moorings. rather, it consists in monopoly capital that is transnationalized to varying degrees and in various regional configurations. the transnational network of capitalists and their organic intellectuals, linked into national corporate networks, forms part of an apparatus of class power that is both transnational and national. this interpretation is consistent with what we now know about the global network of interlocking directorates. mapping interlocks among the world’s five million corporations, heemskerk and colleagues have searched for communities based on actual elite relations, and have assessed whether and how these communities transect national borders. this study concludes that 194 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice corporate communities continue to be nationally focused and that transnational communities are clustered regionally (and in some cases linguistically, e.g. portugal and brazil). the network is largely euro-north american (with scant participation of capitalists based in the global south), and centred upon europe (heemskerk et al, 2016). it follows in the tracks of the atlantic ruling class, but points away from the american hegemony that was integral to its post-world war two consolidation. related research has shown that, in latin america, where capitalists groups are predominantly organized around families, “a cohesive transnational corporate network has not emerged” (cárdenas, 2015, 438). the same pattern holds throughout much of asia (burris and staples, 2012). the weak participation of the global south in a tcc-for-itself is also reflected in a relatively low turnout of brics’ elites at the world economic forum (stephen, 2014). to summarize, the research literature on corporate communities – the epicenters for capitalist class collective agency – underlines the persistence of national networks and the slow accretion of transnational elite relations, which are centred upon europe and extend mainly to north america. as a class-initself, the tcc is a regional formation, replicating the north-south logic of colonialism and imperialism. the amsterdam school if a closer look at key distinctions (global/transnational/international/regional, class-in-itself/class-for-itself) supports a more variegated view of the tcc, the same may be said of the distinction william robinson has drawn between national states and what he considers a now-dominant transnational state (tns). for robinson, the latter includes both international organizations like the wto and parts of national states that have been “captured” by the tcc (robinson, 2014, 2017). there are two problems in this characterization: 1) like national business communities, national states persist as weighty condensations of power, even if within them, transnational capital’s structural power and political influence have grown; 2) key criterial attributes for a tns – a monopoly over the use of force and a relatively unified, hierarchically organized ensemble of power (jessop, 2008, 911) – have not developed in the contemporary geopolitical economy. international organizations like the wto are, in my view, not components of a tns; they are quasi-state apparatuses that exercise power largely delegated to them by national states. in any case, robinson’s doubtful assertion of tns rethinking the transnational capitalist class | 195 ascension leads him prematurely to dismiss the study of international relations as an exercise in reification that falsely attributes agency to national states (2017, 174).6 if there is a kernel of truth in this it is that the predominant theoretical current in international relations (ir) – us-centred “realism” – is founded precisely on such reification. yet ir is not a homogeneous field. the amsterdam school (as) of “transnational historical materialism” has opened an alternative based in gramscian political economy, which avoids state reification by tracing the historical formation of state-society complexes in interaction with transnational class formation. as its leading theorist, kees van der pijl, has argued, capitalism arose within an expanding zone of bourgeois property relations, gaining pace in 17th c britain, then stoked by the industrial revolution – to form a lockean heartland of market-oriented societies. under british and then american hegemony, this heartland grew as “an organically unified group of states at the centre of the international political economy.” (van der pijl, 1998, 64). for other state-society complexes coming to capitalist modernity, the existence of a heartland, already occupying “the international terrain commercially and culturally” pushed them in the direction of state-centred development (van der pijl, 1998, 83). yet these hobbesian contenders, from the bonapartist state of the early 19th c through the fascist states of the axis powers to the soviet bloc, were eventually absorbed into the expanding heartland, sometimes after military defeat. by the late 20th c, the hyperliberal state, on the thatcher/reagan model, had emerged as the predominant state form. its subsequent expansion, from the lockean heartland of anglophone capitalism to a transnational hegemonic project for global capitalism and the tcc, was facilitated by financialization (itself a product of neoliberal policy that cumulatively skewed profit distribution toward short-term financial assets as opposed to fixed-capital industrial investment), by the consolidation of global governance around the washington consensus (promoting investor rights as “free trade” and mandating austerity programs in the debt-ridden global south), and by the collective agency of a tcc centred in the north atlantic, supported 6 robinson himself has recently expressed doubt as to the tns’s governmental efficacy, observing its ‘fragmentary and highly emergent nature’, ‘the dispersal of formal political authority across many national states and the loose nature of a tns apparatus with no center or formal constitution’ (2017, 185). why one would label such a situation a ‘state’ is unclear. 196 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice by many strata of organic intellectuals and an expanding assemblage of policyplanning groups. (carroll and sapinski, 2016, 30). in this perspective the tcc develops in a specific geopolitical context (the existing inter-state system, the heartland, us hegemony) as an accretion to a core that is euro-north american. a significant chapter in this process has been “the neoliberalization of continental europe and the closely associated making of a european tcc” (carroll and sapinski, 2016, 45). indeed, as we have seen, europe has been the epicenter in the nascent formation of a tcc-for-itself. but the project of european unification has been less about relinquishing national sovereignty than about consolidating monetary and financial integration and accelerating neoliberal restructuring to ratchet-up regional competitiveness (bierling, 2006). as van apeldoorn observes, “transnationalization here does not imply the withering away of national states and national social formations but rather the rise of relations across national borders and the constitution of actors that operate not “above” the national state, but in different national contexts simultaneously. it is from this perspective that we can understand how transnational class agency has helped to transform the project of european integration into an ever more undiluted neoliberal project. the essence of this hegemonic class project has been the creation of a transnational space for capital in which the latter’s rule is established precisely by preserving the formal sovereignty of the member states while subordinating their democratic governance to the dictates of the single market” (2013, 189). when we turn, with members of the amsterdam school, to the contemporary state-capital nexus in the us, further insights become available. whereas robinson views imperialist adventures such as the 2003 american-led war on iraq as expressions of tcc power refracted through a tns for which the us state is a “point of condensation” (robinson, 2017, 184), van apeldoorn and de graaff’s analysis of the state-capital nexus at the centre of american open door imperialism presents a more sensitive account. charting the corporate affiliations of successive us administrations since the 1990s, they reveal not only a remarkable number of connections into the “national” american corporate rethinking the transnational capitalist class | 197 community, but a strong presence of “us-based transnational capital” (2012, 600). the predominance of the latter, at once national and transnational, at the heart of the us state-capital nexus illustrates how capital’s continuing national moorings are related dialectically to transnational circuits of accumulation. us-based capital is not in any simple sense bifurcated into “national vs. transnational”. and if the us open door has since the late 1940s facilitated the global expansion of us capital while elaborating a lockean heartland and absorbing hobbesian challengers, the uneven and contradictory character of accumulation and state power cautions us against extrapolating from past to future – particularly in a conjuncture of “trumpism” when, according to der spiegel, “the west as an entity, it would seem, is disintegrating” (der spiegel online, 2017). the example of chinese capitalism is equally instructive. following global capitalism theory, harris (2012, 30) has suggested that china’s current emphasis on developing its home market “is simply globalisation with chinese features,” reflecting “the strategic thinking of the transnational capitalist class, in china, the u.s. and globally.” in this account, “national development in china is an essential feature of transnational capitalism.” despite its insights, the problem with this analysis is again its overly abstract and formulaic character. it is certainly true that capitalism in china is embedded in the world market. at a rarefied level of abstraction, it is also true that all capitalists, including china’s state-capitalist class, have a common interest in sustaining the world market. this is the terrain of class-in-itself. but to read china’s pivot to an autocentric accumulation strategy as an expression of tcc agency strains credibility. after all, global capitalism theory identifies the tcc with the project of capitalist globalization, not with the development of national markets. a stronger account can be built by recognizing, with and de graaff and van apeldoorn, that china’s state/society complex is not based on the lockean scenario of an autonomous capitalist class and expansive civil society, but on “a state class organized around the communist party – which is still the dominant source of power in chinese society” (de graaff and van apeldoorn, 2018, 4). as china assumes a more pro-active role on the world stage, a number of initiatives portend geopolitical rivalry with the us. these include: • a more assertive military posture, particular in the south-china sea; 198 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice • establishment in 2015 of the beijing-headquartered asian infrastructure and investment bank (aiib) which now has 57 members, regrouped under chinese leadership; • the related “belt and road initiative”, which “if successful will establish a vast network of infrastructure (roads, rails, ports and maritime routes) incorporating more than 60 countries across asia, europe, the middle east and africa with china at its heart” (de graaff and van apeldoorn, 2018, 7); • china-led negotiations for a regional comprehensive economic partnership (rcep) agreement which would form a free trade area covering almost half the world population and potentially providing china a major position and platform in regional free trade, from which the us would be excluded. china’s “state-directed” form of capitalism figures significantly in these developments, as a hybrid formation incorporating aspects of hobbesian challenger states within the context of globalizing capitalism. chinese stateowned enterprises (soes) operate extensively abroad and have formed partnerships with western tncs. yet, they perform dual roles, adhering to profit-maximizing norms but retaining the responsibilities of state-owned companies at home (with priorities of e.g. energy security and social stability). this dual character means that even if corporate motives increasingly drive their investment decisions, they “remain firmly tied to the state’s interests and priorities” (de graaff and van apeldoorn, 2018, 9). the directors of these firms are intimately connected to the state. a large majority occupy top-level state positions before and during their soe directorship. in appreciating the hybridity of china’s state class, we can avoid a forced choice between transnational and national. clearly, chinese state-owned enterprises (and the wealthiest private chinese capitalists) participate in the formation of a tcc-in-itself. yet china’s hybridity means that its major capitalists are for the most part detached from the transnational corporate community that loosely embodies a tcc-for-itself.7 and china’s major 7 the tendency toward tcc formation means that china’s hybridity should not be mechanically projected into the future. the recent chinese decision to open its financial sector to more foreign investment may portend a shift toward fuller integration into rethinking the transnational capitalist class | 199 initiatives cannot be read simply as “globalizing”; they represent a state-centred, regionally based bid for leadership, blending “national interests” (always an ideological construction) with the wider interests of china’s partners, and presenting an alternative to us-centred geopolitical economy. a final insight we can take from the as clarifies the issue of class fractions. as we have seen, an arch division of capital into transnational and national fractions is misleading, and too blunt an instrument to take us very far analytically. beginning with kees van der pijl’s 1984 study, the school has emphasized the division, deeply structured into capital’s circuitry, between money capital and productive capital. these furnish distinctive standpoints in the construction of hegemonic projects. the key issue is “how strategic divisions in bourgeois politics and the structural dynamics of capital accumulation are inter-related.” mindful of this, “the fractionation of the capitalist class is understood as a moment of the underlying process of class formation, rather than as an aberration or an insignificant epiphenomenon” (overbeek, 2004, 7, 115). within this perspective, neoliberalism, embracing the standpoint of money capital, also expresses the fractional predominance of financial capital which, since the 1970s, has integrated a transnational historical bloc. recently, van der pijl and yurchenko have explored the relation between fractional divisions and political projects in neoliberalism’s post-2008 “second life”. in neoliberalism’s prehistory, during the era of fordist-keynesian class compromise, capitalism’s “lead circuit” was that of productive capital (mass production for mass consumption), furnishing the basis in the global north for a general interest in robust national economies. but in the 1970s, as productivity gains in the heartland fell behind wage increases, depressing profits, corporations shifted production to low-wage zones. concurrently, the circuit of money-capital gained global sweep and the swelling volume of internationally mobile money capital fed inflation. the volcker shock of 1979 was aimed at restoring the discipline of capital at home while obliging indebted states to avoid default by privatizing assets. it thereby “widened the sphere of capital accumulation under the auspices of interest-bearing money capital,” expanding the basis for a neoliberal project (2015, 502). the objective in this “systemic” phase of neoliberalism was to restore profitability via real accumulation, in no small measure through attacks on organized labour. but as financialization global capital markets. see ‘china opening financial sector to more foreign investment,’ toronto globe and mail 11 november 2017: b1, 5. 200 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice created an ever-expanding volume of fictitious capital, neoliberalism “slowly mutated into a ‘predatory’ version in which real capital accumulation becomes a secondary consideration altogether” (2015, 503). in neoliberalism’s predatory phase, it is money-dealing capital, claiming profit through speculative arbitrage, which dominates the accumulation process. when the bubble inevitably bursts, state bailouts displace financial crisis into a crisis of public finance, and “austerity, the asset-stripping of entire societies…becomes the downside of refuelling speculative money-dealing capital” (2015, 512). in turn, societal asset stripping provokes protective responses from below. any dominant fraction’s hegemony rests upon the alliances it is able to form and sustain with subordinate groups and classes. if the fordist-keynesian project was broadly based in the class compromise in the global north between capital and labour (and in the cliental of the welfare state), systemic neoliberalism found its base, more narrowly, in the asset-owning middle classes. as it becomes more predatory, and as its base thins from an alliance of capital and the propertied middle class to an exclusivist oligarchy, van der pijl and yurchenko see neoliberalism becoming more authoritarian, ratcheting up the free market/strong state dynamic already salient in thatcherism.8 sensitivity to the fractional divisions in capital, to the changing shape and form of capitalism’s circuitry, and to the alliances that congeal (or fail to congeal) into an historical bloc is a key virtue in the as. in my view, these concerns are requisite to an adequate analysis of the transnational capitalist class and its agency within global capitalism. conclusion to conclude, efforts to understand global capitalism and the tcc can benefit from greater clarity on concepts such as the global and the transnational, and class-in-itself and for-itself. although the world market has broadened and deepened and the circuitry of capital has become dramatically more transnational in the past half-century, as a class-for-itself, the tcc is a regional tendency that co-exists amid structures and practices of an era of capitalism fading but not extinguished – including massive north-south disparities (some of which have been intensifying through uneven development (kiely, 2014)). the amsterdam school’s insights can provide additional clarity in this liminal age of overlapping periods, with national formations still intact though 8 see also bruff (2014) and gamble (1988). rethinking the transnational capitalist class | 201 “inhabited” by the global, and vice versa, and with capital both nationally moored and transnationally ascendant (sassen, 2008; garrod, 2017). the troubled presidency of donald trump – who espouses a racialized, ecologically toxic economic nationalism distinct from the allegedly progressive neoliberalism of the clintons and obama – highlights this liminality, while confirming that the american capitalist class has not been dissolved into a tccfor-itself, despite trump’s own transnational-capitalist bona fides. beyond that, the trump phenomenon points to a continuing geopolitical-economic reality that has gone unacknowledged in the global capitalism school: the exceptionality of the us as a dominant, though no longer hegemonic, state. to the extent that the trump administration is pursuing a coherent accumulation strategy, it is not to serve benignly as “the point of condensation for pressures from dominant groups around the world to resolve problems of global capitalism and to secure the legitimacy of the system overall” (robinson, 2017, 184), but to make america(n capital) great again. although the era of unmitigated american hegemony is long past, the united states retains an exceptional position within global geopolitical economy. this exceptionalism is based in several legacies of the american century, as i have noted elsewhere (carroll, 2013).9 continuing dollar hegemony (which enables the chronically indebted us state to stay afloat and to finance its bloated military) and unchallenged military dominance are key, but the unparalleled size of the us home market and the fractured, disorganized state of the american working class also serve now to underpin an accumulation strategy for stoking domestic investment and reviving national industrial (including military-industrial) dominance at the expense of “trading partners” now vilified as enemies of working-class america. framed as a populist expression of the american national interest, this strategy combines protectionism with trickle-down economics, but continues the neoliberal commitment to such international quasi-state organizations as the wto – all in a bid to strengthen us-based capital, both national and transnational. it underlines the fact that a half century of capital crosspenetration among the advanced states has muted but has not eliminated 9 my position supports panitch and gindin’s (2012, 1) claim that “the american state has played an exceptional role in the creation of a fully global capitalism and in coordinating its management, as well as restructuring other states to those ends,” but argues that with the decline of american hegemony there has been a shift to more collective-imperialist coordination among the advanced capitalist powers. 202 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice geopolitical rivalry, particularly as economic/ecological crisis intensifies competition. a transnational capitalist and president at odds with the tcc/tns script for global governance in a borderless world, trump personifies a reality of our time: despite the world economic forum and the transnational corporate community it convenes, as a 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(2015). neoliberal entrenchment of north atlantic capital: from corporate self-regulation to state capture. new political economy 20, 495-517. 206 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review the new poverty, by stephen armstrong. london, new york: verso, 2017. $35.99 can, paperback. isbn: 978-1-78663-463-4. pages: xiii-232. reviewed by carol-anne hudson1 after nearly forty years of social progress, the issue of poverty has re-emerged in the united kingdom (uk), as elsewhere across the global north. during the post-war era, the british government responded to poverty, inequality and social exclusion with comprehensive and universal social plans. stephen armstrong argues that these structures of support, based on the principle of citizen-entitlements, have been abandoned over the past three decades due to the lack of political will. while he acknowledges that weak political effort is also a consequence of economic and policy changes, armstrong argues that social abandonment or disentitlement primarily reflects the change in broader social attitudes, which have been wilfully manipulated by the media. as armstrong demonstrates, the media has played a central role in shattering post-war unity about the evils of poverty into a divisive narrative that is increasingly de-humanizing. according to armstrong, the media has accomplished this through artificially narrowing the policy debate. specifically, the public has been deceived into believing that there are only two kinds of people: those who are work shy and those who are hard working. armstrong’s argument implies that this flattening of the social sphere into “worthy” and “unworthy” has influenced both the broad outlines and specific elements of the british welfare state in the 21st century. this book seeks to set the record straight on the re-emergence of poverty in the uk and to alert readers to how the media reports and interprets social policy and facilitates a conservative ideological orientation. in the new poverty, stephen armstrong resurrects the 19th century practice of social mapping to meticulously demolish the myth that individuals are responsible for their lowincome or marginalization, and thus are undeserving of public social supports. he draws out the complexity of poverty in the new millennium by telling the stories of diverse populations who have been shut-out of opportunity and trapped in poverty, through no fault of their own. armstrong is a journalist. the book emerged from a set of articles he wrote for unreported britain, a project run by the orwell foundation and the joseph roundtree foundation. armstrong begins by reminding (british) readers of the origins of their welfare state – the beveridge report which, on the one hand, was a culmination of decades of social mapping by individuals such as seebohm roundtree and fabian socialists sydney and beatrice webb that established the systemic nature and extent of poverty and, on the other hand, recognized that a strong welfare state enables a strong economy. 1 carol-anne hudson is completing her phd in the department of political science at mcmaster university. her main research interests focus on empirical investigations of urban poverty, inequality and social exclusion, including barriers to social mobility for the working poor and marginalized groups, the depoliticization of social reproduction, grass-roots efforts to renew social policy and business influence in welfare reform. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research armstrong is concerned that the good work done on beveridge’s five giant evils – want, squalor, disease, idleness and ignorance – since the end of the second world war are in grave danger of being entirely undone. armstrong uses the five evils to organize and enrich his account of the re-emergence of poverty and to add detail to his descriptions of media activity. armstrong, following orwell’s highly regarded pre-war poverty report published in the road to wigan pier, travelled great britain for several years to investigate and record the impact of britain’s collapsing social safety net on individuals and communities. in his book, armstrong brings to the reader’s attention not only the bleakness of the lives of those excluded from the severely diminished welfare state, but the increasing number of “new poor”. “new poverty” refers to the growing number of households where there is someone in work, yet they are living in poverty. it also refers to the rising number of middle-class families whose lives more closely resemble poor families: precarious employment, rising cost of living and falling wages. as armstrong emphasizes through-out his reporting, the economic changes which have brought many families to the brink of destitution is a direct result of neoliberal policy-making in the name of global economic competition. the real strength of this book is to be found in the interior chapters. here armstrong puts each of the five elements of poverty under a microscope. his objective is to methodically build-up a powerful and layered counter-narrative to the relentless poor bashing and pull-yourself-up-bythe-bootstraps narratives smeared across british newsprint, television programs, and evening newscasts. with singleness of purpose, armstrong constructs a story of the new poverty around impeccable data, attention to lived experience, and heartening examples of resilience. the result is a narrative that is factual, consistent and unvarnished: people are not poor by their own choosing nor by lack of effort; a severely weakened welfare state and ruthlessly competitive labour market has trapped many in work in poverty; and, the middle-class is no longer secure. armstrong’s approach is admittedly journalistic, he does not pretend to be breaking new theoretical ground. he is a reporter who believes that the british media is no longer an honest broker. the mainstream media has demonized poor people and looked past the systemic causes of poverty. the main theme running through-out this book is that the media’s assault on poor families has serious consequences for all of society. misreporting has polarized the public and resulted in a loss of social cohesion, sense of belonging and community breakdown. armstrong concludes with a warning: the welfare state is fragile and must be defended. that is, citizens must do the work and uncover the root causes of social problems in their communities and fight for a fairer system. in an era of “fake news”, this book provides an important counterpoint to the distorted media-driven image many have of poverty. armstrong’s vignettes enable the reader to place themselves in the story. from this more intimate perspective we are reminded that, wherever we live in the global north, policymaking that decouples economic growth from social welfare puts us all at risk of falling into poverty. this book will be of great interest to undergraduates exploring www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research social policy and poverty issues for the first time and will serve as a handy reference work for academics, journalists and non-profits interested in poverty and the welfare state in the uk. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review indigenous peoples as subjects of international law, edited by irene watson, abingdon and new york: routledge, 2018, $104 u.s., hardcover. isbn: 978-1-138-64515-8. pages: 1-226. reviewed by aziz choudry1 in her introduction, university of south australia law professor irene watson (tanganekald, meintangk and boandik) states that “[t]his volume is not about recycling old ideas because we have run out of new ones, but because nothing much has changed in the world of colonialism…what has been said and written before needs to be said again and again until we all understand the truth, beyond the myths and lies of colonialism” (p.1). critical legal theory and international law are central to this collection, as are arguments about the validity of indigenous laws, philosophy and knowledge and their contributions to challenge and transform dominant legal systems and state paradigms. as watson contends in her chapter, “our laws have always been here” (p.96). this view is reaffirmed by other contributors to this collection as they seek to interrogate and reconstruct international law in ways that break it out from its colonial origins. comprising eight chapters and an introduction, the book is both interdisciplinary and accessible to a range of audiences in the social sciences and humanities. centring on the legal systems of aboriginal nations of australia, ambellin kwaymullina (palyku) asks what norms might shape the international legal system were it to be based in indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, and the relevance of such norms to the international community today. steven newcomb (shawnee/lenape) focuses on the language of domination and political subordination, arguing that metaphors of domination are the imaginative (cognitive) means by which a dominating society – and the language of international law is able to constitute and maintain a reality of domination and subordination over nations and peoples being dominated. he argues that this provides a vocabulary for dehumanizing indigenous peoples and entrenches state domination. marcelle burns (kamilaroi) interrogates the foundational work of hugo grotius and francisco de vitoria on the concept of society in the context of their contributions to shape an (eurocentric) international legal order, and its use as a tool to exclude indigenous peoples from recognition as sovereign subjects within state regimes and international law. ward churchill revisits how the colonization of north america served as a blueprint for hitler’s expansionist policies in europe. arguing for the resumption of genuine self-determination by internally colonized indigenous nations, churchill contends that ‘[t]o locate genuinely liberatory alternatives to the continuation of business as usual, it is necessary to look outside the liberal paradigm altogether’ (p.89) and that this ‘entails the physical/jurisdictional deconstruction of the states themselves” (pp.93-94). 1 canada research chair in social movement learning and knowledge production/associate professor, department of integrated studies in education, mcgill university. email: aziz.choudry@mcgill.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research roger merino discusses tensions in latin american nation-states’ constitutions which recognize the right of self-determination or autonomy of indigenous peoples but without recognition of the self-determination of an indigenous nation with territorial rights that pursue their own models of development. specifically he critiques peru’s prior consultation law, arguing that it does not allow the exercise of indigenous peoples’ self-determination, only permitting them to participate in the process but not oppose state decisions. indigenous peoples are conceived of “as minorities with proprietary entitlements that can ‘participate’ in the benefits of ‘development’” but this means that “the liberal legal framework cannot contain the indigenous cosmology and why indigenous peoples cannot use this legal system and move beyond it in a project of social emancipation that seeks to reinvent the state structure in order to recognize indigenous territorial rights and self-determination.” (p.140). sharon venne (cree) carefully considers the canadian government’s first nations financial transparency act, and how, internationally, state governments sought to undermine indigenous nations within the united nations, to illustrate and analyze how states ‘manufacture consent’ and manipulate indigenous peoples to access their lands and resources. i recently assigned tamara starblanket’s chapter, “’kill the indian in the child’: genocide in international law”, to a bachelor of education global education and social justice class. her chapter is a powerful critique of how cultural genocide has been excluded from how genocide is defined in international law. this definition has serious consequences for indigenous peoples. starblanket writes that ‘[g]iven the deliberate exclusion from international law of cultural genocide and forced assimilation measures by colonial settler states, it is nearly impossible to articulate a claim of this nature in international law’ (p.192). her chapter also identifies residential schools – and the ongoing widespread removals of indigenous peoples’ children in the child welfare system in canada as an intrinsic part of colonization and genocide – to isolate children from their land, and destroy indigenous nations. in the canadian context, venne and starblanket’s chapters are vital reading for anyone concerned with social justice and moving past narratives which even progressive academics and activists sometimes take for granted. taken together, this book’s chapters illustrate the ways in which state governments, particularly in the americas and australia have, as kwaymullina puts it, led to indigenous peoples now being “nations existing within the nation-states that arose from, and inherited the benefits of, our dispossession. further, the laws and legal institutions of these nation-states sprang from the lie of indigenous inferiority required to claim our lands.” (p.8). watson writes that “no major international research has attempted to evaluate how the exclusion of an aboriginal knowledge-centred approach from international law has contributed to global injustices” (p.3). the book raises important challenges to move past liberal rhetorical gestures and notions of reconciliation and decolonization which fail to substantively challenge colonial power relations, and may even further entrench these under a veneer of concern. a number of chapters make good use, and analysis of primary sources such as official state and un documents, as well as firsthand experience of state and intergovernmental processes to expose specific practices through which colonialism continues to operate alongside various official forms of ‘recognition’ of indigenous peoples. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research this is a timely collection which makes a substantive, significant contribution to move thinking beyond understandings of rights that are imprisoned in a taken-for-granted framework of liberalism and colonialism (see also d’souza, 2018, on this) and assimilationist models developed by colonial states like australia, canada and others to accommodate claims for ‘recognition’ and ‘equality’ of indigenous peoples’ rights. this book brings together an impressive array of newer and established scholars and thinkers in a thought-provoking, insightful and challenging volume. references d’souza, r. (2018). what’s wrong with rights? social movements, law and liberal imaginations. london: pluto press. starblanket, t. (2016). suffer the little children: genocide, indigenous nations and the canadian state. atlanta, ga.: clarity press. does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? the case of chicago, il. laura pin1 abstract: this paper uses baiocchi and ganuza’s communicativeempowerment framework to examine a case-study of participatory budgeting (pb) in chicago, il. chicago hosts the longest ongoing pb project in north america: since 2009, the 49th ward has allocated $1 million annually through pb. by 2016, the process had expanded to $6.2 million dollars of infrastructure funding in seven wards. baiocchi and ganuza’s framework provides a mechanism for examining the relationship between the neoliberalization of municipal government and the growing popularity of pb. i argue that when one considers the empowerment dimensions of pb, the experience of chicago has been decidedly mixed: limitations in the primacy, scope and reach of the participatory process limit the capacity of pb as currently constituted to function as a democratic challenge to elite policy making in municipal governance. keywords: participatory budgeting; neoliberalism; chicago; municipal government introduction participatory budgeting (pb) is the direct allocation of a budget by residents, rather than politicians or bureaucrats. in recent years, pb has spread as a policy practice among north american municipalities, with projects in several cities in the united states, including new york, chicago, and vallejo. pb has become popular at a time when the expansion of neoliberal policies has elevated social friction at the 1 laura pin is a phd candidate in the department of political science at york university. email: lpin@yorku.ca 114 | austerity urbanism and the social economy municipal level.2 while neoliberalization is often theorized as antithetical to democratic endeavors, in contrast, pb is described as a means of deepening democratic practice and empowering residents through deliberative mechanisms. writing on the spread of pb projects from latin america to the rest of the world, baiocchi and ganuza (2014) discuss a tendency for communicative dimensions of pb to be considered in isolation from empowerment dimensions. they argue this separation leads to a proclivity for treating pb procedurally: pb becomes an end inand-of itself, rather than a step toward substantive empowerment for participants. this paper uses baiocchi and ganuza’s communicativeempowerment framework as a heuristic device to examine a case-study of pb in chicago, il. chicago is home to the longest ongoing pb project in north america. since 2009, the 49th ward has allocated $1million in capital funds annually through pb. 3 in 2010 pb chicago was formed, and by 2016 the process had expanded to $6.2 million dollars of infrastructure funding in seven different wards. existing literature tends to focus on procedural aspects of the process, rather than the relationship between pb and resident empowerment. in contrast, baiocchi and ganuza provide a framework for examining pb in a way foregrounds the relationship between the neoliberalization of municipal government and the growing popularity of pb. through their framework, i argue that when one considers the empowerment dimensions of pb, the experience of chicago has been decidedly mixed: limitations in the primacy, scope and reach of the participatory process limit the capacity of pb as currently constituted to function as a democratic challenge to elite policy making in municipal governance. this paper draws on survey data of pb participants collected by the university of illinois, chicago (uic), and insights gleaned from three 2 following peck and tickell (2002) i use “neoliberalization” rather than “neoliberalism” to emphasize neoliberal restructuring as an ongoing and dynamic process, rather than a static end-state. 3 all figures are unadjusted us dollars. does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 115 months of fieldwork in chicago, il., from march to june, 2016. fieldwork included participant-observation of community meetings, volunteer trainings, voting events, and the annual “writing of the rules”. in addition, i conducted 32 semi-structured interviews with residents, volunteers, staff, aldermen and community activists. the structure of this paper is as follows. first, i define pb and detail how the process works in chicago. then, i outline baiocchi and ganuza’s communicative and empowerment dimensions, and explain how their framework improves on procedural approaches to pb. finally, i consider pb in chicago through a discussion of each dimension of baiocchi and ganuza’s empowerment criteria. my argument should not be taken as a wholesale dismissal of pb, which can have important benefits in terms of community building and civic learning, but rather a call to interpret these benefits in relation to the overall context of neoliberal policy governance. what is participatory budgeting? pb is a process of community decision making where money is allocated by the people who are affected by a budget, rather than elected officials (pinnington et al. 2009). in north america, pb is typically used to allocate infrastructure funds, giving residents the authority to decide whether to fund park amenities, street re-surfacing, public art, or other neighbourhood improvements, from a ward-level capital budget. originating in brazil in 1989, pb was first implemented when the leftleaning brazilian workers party won municipal elections in porto alegre. the brazilian workers party hoped pb would make the municipal government more responsive to residents, increase the propensity of citizens to pay property taxes, and more effectively redistribute municipal funds throughout the city (bräutigam 2004; de sousa santos 1998). since its inception, variations of pb have spread to hundreds of jurisdictions across the world. in chicago, the process has generally included the following steps: 1) community meetings are held to garner project ideas; 2) a volunteer committee vets project ideas with 116 | austerity urbanism and the social economy staff and determines a list of projects to be included on a ballot; 3) a project expo is held where community members can discuss the merits of individual projects; and finally, 4) voting occurs at the aldermanic office, community centers, schools, and transit hubs. all residents aged 16 or older are eligible to vote, regardless of citizenship or immigration status.4 what sets pb apart from other forms of community consultation is the extent to which the process is resident driven. residents, not elected officials or bureaucrats, identify potential projects for funding and make the final decision on the allocation of funds. pb has grown in popularity at the same time as municipal governance in north america has taken a neoliberal turn. neoliberalization is the commodification and marketization of spaces that had previously been governed by other logics (brenner and theodore 2010). while the logic of neoliberalization is consistent, the implications are variegated, depending on geographic, historical, and social context (brenner et al. 2006). proponents may seek to present the marketization of governance as inevitable or merely “common sense”. nonetheless, neoliberal policy changes are ongoing, and often heavily contested (brenner and theodore 2010). in the 1980s, neoliberal logic became dominant in municipal administration, as has been documented by several scholars (for example, albo 1993; coulter 2009; ranson 2004; peck 2013). neoliberal shifts towards the marketization of local government include: an increase in municipal service provision by private sector providers; an increase in user-fees and cost-recovery models; an emphasis on individual self-help; the foregrounding of the citizen as consumer; and, a focus on efficiency and lean administration (albo 1993; changfoot 2007). these changes reflected a move to value government policies in terms their ability to facilitate the spread of market logics. in chicago, specific changes have included increased reliance on user-fees for public transit (farmer and noonan 2011); the replacement of public housing with mixed income private-sector 4 ward 49 imposes a minimum age of 16 on residents seeking to vote in the pb process. however, some wards in chicago permit residents as young as 14 to vote in pb. does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 117 developments (lipman 2011); the marketization of public education through charter schools (lipman 2011); and a subsequent emphasis on policing and securitization to manage the social unrest associated with public contestation of these policy changes (taylor 2016). the neoliberalization of municipal government has engendered democratic concerns, as the marketization of public administration has often emphasized the management of the public over the facilitation of democratic participation, particularly when elite interests and public opinion diverge (addie 2009; johnson 2011; masuda, mcgee and garvin 2008). this has made the “roll-out” of democratic projects that position citizens as active participants in municipal policy-making crucial in legitimating neoliberal policy decisions (addie 2009; theodore and peck 2011).5 public engagement strategies are strategically mobilized by municipal governments as a means of demonstrating responsiveness to public interests, yet when those interests conflict with elite motivations, research suggests they fail to drive actual policy decisions (johnson 2011; masuda, mcgee and garvin 2008). in chicago, contemporary neoliberal processes have weakened democratic practices. housing, transportation, education, and development policies are widely perceived to be controlled by elite interests (peck 2012; lipman 2011). when public consultations occur, residents have perceived these processes as little more than legitimation exercises delinked from actual decision-making authority (lipman 2011). moreover, chicago’s municipal budget process is notoriously opaque and there is minimal public budget consultation.6 in this context, pb is offered as “a powerful example of how deliberative institutions can take hold, provide redistributive and progressive outcomes, and offer novel solutions to urban problems" (baiocchi and lerner 2007: 9). in contrast 5 “roll-out” neoliberalism is a term coined by peck and tickell (2002) to describe how neoliberalization has entailed the “roll-out” of new institutions of governance. 6 chicago holds annual budget forums. in interviews, residents, aldermen and staff indicated that these consultations are poorly publicized, poorly attended, and widely perceived to have no influence on budgetary allocations. 118 | austerity urbanism and the social economy to public consultation, pb is presented as a new form of democracy that vests residents with real decision-making power (curato and niemyer 2013; ecran and hendricks 2013). to sum up, in chicago and elsewhere, pb projects purportedly address a set of contemporary democratic problems that have occupied a great deal of public attention in conjunction with the rise of neoliberal policies. the disjuncture between the communicative and empowerment dimensions of pb recently, some scholars have questioned the veracity of democratic claims made of pb projects. in tracing the expansion of pb, peck and theodore (2015) note that despite the ambitious beginnings of pb in porto alegre, in global diffusion the process has become “defanged”. while pb may be “the political equivalent of motherhood and apple pie” (peck and theodore 2015: 171), with supporters across the political spectrum, they find its radical democratic potential underwhelming. similar concerns are raised by baiocchi and ganuza (2014), who use a communicative-empowerment framework to develop an explicit set of criteria for assessing pb. like peck and theodore, baiocchi and ganuza argue that in its global travel pb has become less radical, but they attribute this moderation to a heavy emphasis on the part of practioners and researchers on the communicative dimensions of pb, which has led to a relative neglect of the question of empowerment. baiocchi and ganuza’s analysis relies on a differentiation of the communicative and empowerment dimensions of the process. the communicative dimensions concern the internal structure of a pb process, including who participates in discussions, the quality of this participation, and the degree of procedural equity among participants. in contrast, the empowerment dimensions focus on whether pb influences the exercise of political power and municipal decision-making more broadly (baiocchi and ganuza 2014). baiocchi and ganuza suggest pb in porto alegre instigated a pro-poor shift in municipal policy due to the presence of both communicative and empowerment dimensions: pb does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 119 precipitated series of institutional reforms that connected popular decision-making to the exercise of political power. in contrast, a purely communicative focus on the structures and procedures within a pb project can lead to the instrumentalist application of pb as a technical solution: a “simple process of revelation of individual preferences, adjusting it to the routines and goals set by the new public management framework” (baiocchi and ganuza 2014: 42). concerns regarding the overemphasis of the internal communicative dimensions of pb are borne out in much of the literature. while some research on pb in brazil has considered pb in light of broader political developments, such as the transition from military to civilian government (for example, de sousa santos 1998; avritzer 2006), this approach is less common in research on pb on north american countries, which has largely taken the political, social and economic context for granted. while there is research on whether pb leads to different project choices than other forms of budgeting (stewart et al. 2014); research measuring citizen learning through pb (rossmann and shanahan 2012; petite 2014); research on project management in pb (cabannes 2014); and research detailing the ethnic, racial and income composition of participants (crum et al. 2013), this work focuses on the internal dynamics of projects and does not discuss pb in terms of neoliberal governance shifts. focusing exclusively on communicative procedures tends to silo pb projects from broader developments in municipal governance, finance and politics, which are not only important for contextualizing pb, but also necessary to substantially engage with the question of resident empowerment. by way of redress, baiocchi and ganuza suggest researchers consider four specific empowerment dimensions, to assess whether pb projects are connected to centers of municipal power and decision-making. these dimensions are paraphrased below. • the primacy of participatory forums: are they the most important point of contact between government and citizen? 120 | austerity urbanism and the social economy • the scope of budget issues considered in participatory forums: how much of the budget is disbursed through pb and how important is that part of the budget to social justice considerations? • the degree of participatory power in the process: are there institutionalized, direct and transparent links between pb and government action that make public officials responsive to pb demands? do politicians and/or staff retain discretion over the implementation of projects after they are chosen for funding? • the self-regulation of participatory forums: do participants determine the rules of participation? are social justice criteria included in the process? and do participatory forums influence government affairs more broadly? (2014: 39). these four criteria move from assessing the rigor of communicative processes in pb projects to a consideration of how pb is connected to government action. to baiocchi and ganuza’s four criteria, i suggest a fifth consideration: • the permanency of participatory forums: are these forums stable, institutionalized policy programs that will continue to exist if there is sufficient community desire and support? in other words, even if pb is meaningfully empowering in terms of primacy, scope, participatory power, and self-regulation, if the process can be terminated at any time without community input then this curtails the overall empowering effects. the community should have some degree of agency over the establishment and continued existence of a pb process. i now turn to a specific discussion of the political and economic context of pb in chicago. then, i consider how well the criteria of participatory empowerment are fulfilled in the case of chicago. the political and economic context of pb in chicago chicago is well known for its history of highly autocratic and executive controlled municipal government. for most of the twentieth century, the democratic party dominated chicago’s electoral politics does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 121 through its political “machine”: an elaborate system of patronage appointments that started with anton cermak, elected mayor in 1931, and reached its peak under richard j. daley, mayor from 1955 until his death in 1976. political machines in 20th century america often sought maintain control by structuring the electoral system to reduce electoral competition (trounstine 2009). in chicago, the democratic party machine used restrictions on independent candidacy and ward redistricting to their advantage, resulting in a city council that was often a “rubber-stamp” for an executive agenda controlled by the mayor’s office (simpson 2001; royko 1971). traditionally, mayoral elections have been relatively uncompetitive. in fact, the 2015 chicago mayoral election was historic as it was the first time a candidate failed to receive an absolute majority on the first ballot and a run-off was required. another way political machines maintain political control is through patronage – the appointment of political allies to municipal staff positions. in relation to chicago, stone writes, “…support for machine candidates was not based on issue commitments. the political machine was centrally about patronage” (1996: 447). at its peak, 35,000 municipal positions in chicago were controlled through the patronage system. patronage appointees were required to donate money and time to the democratic party, and their partisan campaign performance determined their promotion or termination within the municipal civil service (simpson 2001; royko 1971). chicago’s political machine also maintained control of the municipal government through the active disenfranchisement of certain racial and ethnic groups, with white machine aldermen governing predominantly black constituencies, and city contracting rewarding unions that perpetuated practices of racial exclusion (simpson 2001; royko 1971).7 chicago’s patronage system only declined in the 1980s after the passing of the shackman decrees, 7 in chicago, successive waves of working class immigrants (irish, polish, italian) were brought into the party machinery. the longstanding black population remained largely excluded, and anti-black racism played an important role in the machine’s ability to unite non-black ethnic constituencies (royko 1971; stone 1996). 122 | austerity urbanism and the social economy which declared political hiring and firing unconstitutional. as recently as 2014, chicago’s municipal hiring process was under federal oversight, at which point michael shakman, whose lawsuit spurred the decrees bearing his name, declared overt patronage not dead but “controlled” (abc 2014). the result is that in chicago there is a long history of patronage relations between aldermen and residents, with personal relationships being the dominant political currency. this has led to heavy skepticism on the part of residents as to the impartiality of municipal government (simpson 2001). this political heritage has created pressure for new aldermen, especially those without the support of the democratic party apparatus, to differentiate themselves from their predecessors and find new ways to build community support and legitimate their policies. at the same time, over the last twenty years, the city of chicago has been subject to neoliberal policy changes. budgetary austerity has led to the elimination of public jobs, reductions in library hours, and cuts to other public services (peck 2012). attempts have been made to marketize public transportation through the outsourcing of employment and increased emphasis on cost-recovery (farmer and noonan 2011). taxincrement financing programs have siphoned off public education funding to bankroll private corporations and developers (farmer and poulos 2015).8 the use of charter schools governed by private boards has also expanded (lipman 2011). public housing has been replaced by vouchers and mixed income private developments, and many former public housing residents have been permanently displaced from their communities (lipman 2011; wyly and hammel 2000). the impacts of these policies are stratified, with low-income, latino and black neighbourhoods most affected by transit under-investment and the 8 tax-increment financing (tif) is a capital financing tool where all increases in property taxes in a designated geographic area are earmarked for “economic development projects”. in the absence of a tif, these funds would ordinarily be available to deal with inflationary costs in other areas of municipal provisioning, including schools. as has been extensively outlined in investigations by the chicago reader, tif funds are frequently captured by developers and corporations (joravsky 2015). does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 123 elimination of public housing. the under-funding and privatization of chicago’s public schools also has heavily racialized consequences: less than ten percent of youth enrolled in public schools are white (cps 2016). meanwhile, when public reinvestment in transit and infrastructure has occurred, it has been primarily in affluent, white neighbourhoods (farmer and noonan 2011; weber 2002). in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007, budget cuts at the federal and state levels have exacerbated financial austerity at the municipal level. the 2013 federal sequestration process cut $6 billion from federal transfers to states (peck 2013). in illinois, federal budget cuts, in conjunction with a crisis in state revenue, led to a severe budgetary gap that has precipitated a multi-year financial crisis. illinois completed the 2016 fiscal year without passing budget, with the republican governor and democrat-controlled legislature unable to reach agreement on spending.9 the absence of a state budget has had a significant impact on the city of chicago, where initiatives jointly funded by the state, including upgrades and maintenance to hospitals, schools, and parks, have been put on hold by the unavailability of state funds. considering the history of political patronage in chicago, as well as recent budgetary austerity measures, it is perhaps not surprising that a populist democratic practice like pb found purchase in chicago. alderman moore first won his ward 49 council seat in 1991 as a progressive independent democrat. according to moore, he became interested in pb after speaking with josh lerner, founder of participatory budgeting project at a conference in 2008. according to interviews with residents, after nearly losing the 2007 election in a run-off with a more conservative candidate, there also was an important impetus for creating a policy process that would help solidify his electoral position in the 49th ward at a time when he had declining community support. residents in 9 the illinois legislature and governor have recently reached an interim agreement, approving funding in july 2016 to last through the november 2016 election period and ensure that k-12 schools and post-secondary institutions have enough revenue to operate until the end of the year. 124 | austerity urbanism and the social economy ward 49, under the political leadership of alderman moore, have used pb to allocate $1 million in “menu money” every year since 2009.10 in the municipal budget process, each alderman receives $1.32 million in discretionary menu funds, of which $1 million is typically devoted to the pb in wards that use the process. menu funds are restricted to local infrastructure investments: park improvements, tree plantings, garbage cans, murals, bicycle lanes, local road resurfacing. in the 2015-2016 pb cycle, seven wards participated in a process that included just over 5,000 voters and disbursed $6.07 million in funds. empowerment in chicago’s pb projects chicago residents who have volunteered with pb projects do cite several positive impacts in survey data and interview settings. these include: increased knowledge of government processes, enhanced understanding of menu money, a heightened sense of community, and demystification of municipal infrastructure spending (weber et al. 2014; crum et al. 2013). these positive impacts are not necessarily restricted to the individual level: for example, one of the benefits of pb cited by many residents in interviews was community building through communication and information-sharing across disparate neighbourhoods. nevertheless, questions remain as to whether resident learning and engagement have translated to local empowerment. in the following section, i consider pb in chicago in light of each of the five empowerment dimensions suggested earlier. 1) the primacy of participatory forums. the first empowerment dimension is primacy: how important are participatory forums as a point of contact between residents and elected officials? two ways to consider primacy are, first, the extent to which pb serves as the major mechanism for articulating local resident demands to their elected representatives, 10 menu money was created mayor richard m. daley in 1995 as part of the municipal budget, and specifically the capital improvement program (stewart et al. 2014). menu money is the only funding available to aldermen for local street resurfacing (non-arterial roads and alleyways), and the major source of funding for local infrastructure projects. does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 125 and second, the extent to which residents’ most pressing neighbourhood concerns can be addressed through the pb process. in interviews with residents and staff, it became clear that the pb process does create an additional channel of communication between residents and the aldermen. through the collection and cultivation of project ideas in pb meetings, staff can become better informed of community concerns. one staffer cited the greatest benefit of pb as “putting new projects on the agenda” that previously had escaped staff attention. this can lead to creative strategizing beyond the pb process to develop and implement community ideas for projects. for example, in 2016 accessible doors for the local library branch in ward 49 failed to receive enough votes to be funded. however, in recognition of community concerns over the accessibility of the library, alderman moore decided to fund this project through the $320,000 in menu money not allocated though pb. in addition, although many volunteers with the pb process had pre-existing connections to the aldermanic office, some residents reported in interviews becoming more comfortable and knowledgeable about contacting the alderman’s office, findings that are also supported by survey data collected by pb chicago (crum et al. 2013). on the other hand, pb is certainly not the primary link between residents and their local representatives, and has not supplanted lobbying and personal relationships, as the most important mechanisms for allocating resources. while it is difficult to measure informal demandmaking channels between residents and their elected representatives, two considerations may assist: first, resident perceptions as to how demands are made and met, and second, the scope of demands that can be articulated within the pb process. in many interviews, residents and staff cited a perception that pb does not replace these other forms of negotiation, but exists alongside them. while chicago is in a postpatronage era, the adage, "we don't want nobody nobody sent" (rakove 1979) still holds in many ways, and indeed, was specifically quoted by interviewees as an example of how municipal business is conducted. for example, one resident discussed how a park in a predominantly black 126 | austerity urbanism and the social economy neighbourhood had won funding for a water feature through pb, but had been waiting for years for the installation of this project. in the meantime, a neighbouring park in a predominantly white area received similar improvements, even though it had no project on the ballot. she attributed this outcome to the other neighbourhood having the alderman’s ear. even in wards with pb projects, residents continue to assert that maintaining a close personal relationship with the aldermanic office determines which residents have their needs met. second, the scope of demands matter: if residents’ most pressing concerns cannot be addressed through pb, this limits the primacy of participatory forums as a link between aldermen and constituencies. thus, primacy, the first empowerment dimension, goes hand in hand with considerations of scope, which are discussed in greater detail below. 2) the scope of budget issues. the second empowerment dimension examines the scope of issues considered in participatory forums, and the importance of this budget for social justice initiatives. pb in chicago is funded through menu money, which is capital funding financed through bonds. the terms of the bonds restrict its use to local physical infrastructure improvements that benefit the community as a whole.11 so while enhanced street lighting, road repaving and public park improvements can be funded through menu money, social programming cannot. moreover, two additional points are pertinent. first, when asked in interviews about the major challenges facing their neighbourhood, residents almost uniformly cited policing and schools. many also mentioned affordable housing and economic development. in conversations, residents prioritized social programming over infrastructure, but social programming is ineligible for funding through pb as currently constituted. to relate just one anecdote, while volunteering at a polling station, one man stopped to ask where on the ballot he could vote for increased funding for schools. when told that schools were outside the scope of the process, he walked away without voting. indeed, chicago has recently been rocked by a series of serious 11 interview with paul moody, assistant budget director, city of chicago. does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 127 public protests around the state of policing and the financing of public schools (for news coverage see: wozniak and edwards 2016; wong and crepeau 2016; dna info staff 2016; briscoe 2015). neither of these concerns can be addressed through pb as currently constituted, due to the restricted scope and magnitude of funds. the limited scope also has social justice implications in terms of resident participation. several aspects of the process, including permitting youth, undocumented and unregistered individuals to vote are designed to make the process more inclusive. in fact, the chicago rulebook specifically foregrounds equity and inclusion as two key goals of the pb process (pb chicago 2014). in addition, aldermanic staff and pb volunteers face ongoing pressure to grow the process, both in terms of absolute numbers and the participation of marginalized communities. proportional participation of latino and black communities is taken as an indication of success, as is proportional participation of low-income residents and those with lower educational attainment. community outreach efforts have been both extensive and resource intensive, including hiring translators, establishing spanish-language committees, hosting meetings in less affluent neighbourhoods, and extending invitations to relevant civil society organizations. despite these outreach efforts, exit surveys and interviews confirm that pb volunteers are disproportionately college educated high-earners, who tend to be whiter than their neighbours. survey data indicates that residents with graduate degrees volunteered at or attended pb meetings at twice their proportion of the population, while renters were half as likely to participate in these activities as homeowners (crum et al. 2013). the participation gap may be explained by several aspects of the pb process itself that inhibit expansion to more diverse communities. first, the process privileges individuals with significant technical knowledge about engineering, landscape design, and other areas that assist in presenting a technically feasible, persuasively argued project. many of the participants interviewed were highly educated and cited this as a general trend among volunteers. second, the beautification projects 128 | austerity urbanism and the social economy favoured by pb – trees, park improvements, decorative lighting, public artwork – often appeal to homeowners concerned with property values as a way of “cleaning up” the neighbourhood. the ownership/renter divide has not only class, but also racialized dimensions in a city where latino and black residents are less likely to own their homes and more likely to be denied mortgage loans (us census bureau 2011; martinez 2009). outreach can only go so far in creating a pb process that addresses the needs of different communities, when these needs fall outside the scope of the process. in the words of one resident: “pb invests in things, not people” which limits its ability to address social justice considerations, including policing, school funding, and economic development. taking a broader view, it is possible that pb could be a means for addressing concerns beyond the official scope of the practice if ideas discussed in pb forums are channeled into other processes. however, issues raised in pb forums that fall outside the scope of the process tend to be discarded. in interviews with residents, several volunteers expressed frustration that community input regarding concerns outside the scope of the process was “wasted” when these ideas could be actualized if pb was better integrated with other institutional processes. as currently constituted, pb is limited to the expression of resident demands within the scope of menu funds, leaving highly germane issues like social programming, policing, schools, and economic development outside the process. 3) actual participatory power over the budget. the next empowerment dimension is the degree of actual participatory power over the budget, that is, whether there are institutionalized direct and transparent links between participation and government action, and what discretion elected officials and staff maintain over decisions once they are made. in the case of chicago, there is mixed evidence in terms of the degree of actual participatory power over the budget vested in residents. individual pb projects are clearly resident determined, and past research has demonstrated in comparison with aldermanic allocations, the resident-driven process leads to different project does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 129 outcomes (stewart et al. 2014). as outlined in the 2014-2015 rulebook, all wards hold several “idea collection” events, where any resident can submit ideas, and all ideas are considered by volunteer committees composed primarily of residents (pb chicago, 2014). staff may explain the eligibility rules around the allocation of menu funds, but at this point, staff involvement is usually limited to sketching out the more technical aspects and providing cost estimates. aldermen typically refrain from advocating for specific projects or suggesting projects. in addition, residents have sometimes created elaborate mechanisms to try to ensure a fair and comprehensive process. for example, ward 49’s “streets committee” visits every street in the ward to assess the need for street repaving and then creates a priority list, in an effort to ensure an impartial process. however, as already mentioned, many resident projects generated during idea collection are not included on the ballot because they are deemed to be outside the scope of the use of menu funds. in addition, staff can use the scope of the process as a means of shutting down more creative or unusual projects. for example, projects that involved decorative bike posts, library carpeting, and public murals, although technically within the scope of menu funds, have all faced barriers from city staff, including delayed cost estimates, and/or onerous insurance requirements. at times, difficulty obtaining a cost estimate has prevented projects from being included on the ballot. moreover, while usually staff and aldermen do not interfere with project selection, there is at least one report of a project receiving enough votes to be funded, but being rejected by the alderman who declared it had “accidentally” made the ballot. in other instances, even residents on the volunteer committee were confused about how the projects for the ballot were chosen, describing the aldermanic office as making the final decision. residentdriven and transparent decisions around which projects make it onto the ballot are of crucial importance, because projects only have an opportunity to be funded if they appear on the ballot. 130 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the absence of institutional support also fits with a broader neoliberal trend towards the downloading of government responsibilities to individual citizens and retraction of the state from many areas of public provisioning (brown 2003; addie 2012). if residents can be tasked with determining a local street repaving schedule, identifying neighbourhood infrastructure needs, and arbitrating among these needs, with minimal involvement from municipal staff, then this is a fundamental shift in the role of the government. pb relies on extensive volunteer labour, with some paid support from aldermanic staff, but minimal support from municipal staff. indeed, there is no full-time dedicated staff person in the municipal budget office, parks district, or chicago transit authority (cta) with responsibility for providing technical support to pb projects.12 the absence of direct institutionalized links between participants and municipal staff makes residents dependent on the aldermanic office for information about projects, and reduces the transparency of the pb process. 4) the self-regulation of participatory forums. the fourth empowerment criterion examines the self-regulation of participatory forums – do participants determine and govern the rules of the process, and to what extent is there general participatory influence over the municipal government? in the case of chicago, rulemaking within the constraints of the pb process is very much controlled by residents. with the assistance of pb chicago, an annual “writing of the rules” meeting is held, with representatives from each participating ward, to discuss changes to the rules governing the process, including timelines, resident engagement strategies and other best practices (pb chicago 2014). the resulting discussions are taken back to volunteer groups in the wards for further discussion before any changes are voted for at the city-wide working group. however, participants do not determine the amount of 12 there is one staff person in the municipal budget office theoretically responsible for providing some support to pb projects. however, their role on paper seems over-stated: although this person provided some technical assistance to aldermanic staff, they were largely absent from the day-to-day work of the process. does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 131 funding subject to the process, and cannot broaden the scope to include projects beyond local infrastructure improvements, because as a form of debt-financed funding, ultimately the terms of the bond agreements dictate the use of menu money. the demands of residents are subordinated to the interests of bond holders. to sum up, within the constraints of menu money, the rules of the pb process are resident determined, however, the scope of the process is subject to rigid limits enforced by the rules that govern the city of chicago’s menu funds. the second part of this empowerment dimension concerns the general reach of participatory influence over the municipal government as a whole. scholarship has suggested that a key positive consequence of pb projects is a cultural shift in terms of an enhanced participatory ethos around other processes of municipal governance and demand-making (curato and niemeyer 2013; avritzer 2006). in chicago, however, pb does not appear to have created an environment of heightened legitimacy for resident demand-making and public input around other municipal budget processes. chicago has a history of executive controlled budgeting processes. in the 1950s, mayor richard j. daley removed budgetary responsibility from council as part of his concentration of power in the machine-dominated executive, and important expenditure decisions have typically been made through backdoor negotiations and informal channels (simpson 2001; weber et al. 2015). in interviews, when asked to discuss public participation around the chicago municipal budget, residents, staff and aldermen stated it was very limited or non-existent. even aldermen described the municipal budgeting process as “opaque” and lacking clarity in terms of how and where budgetary allocations are determined. indeed, one alderman with experience in the state legislature noted he was “shocked” by the comparative lack of input from council in the mayoral budget. another alderman noted that the current mayor had held a few public forums on the budget, but since these were mostly taken up by protestors, they were not useful. residents who had participated in mayoral consultations stated that the mayor did not make eye contact, appeared to be “zoned out” and/or would not permit 132 | austerity urbanism and the social economy “political demands”. these statements by interviewees indicate a persistent divide between “productive” resident engagement through pb and social protest, where pb has not necessarily engendered respect for popular demands made through other avenues. in a global overview of pb projects, cabannes notes that, “remarkably, those in municipal government who are responsible for the “participatory budget” have, with a few exceptions, very limited information about the municipal budget” (2004: 33). his observation holds true in the case of chicago, where pb has not engendered greater transparency around the municipal budgeting process more generally. 5) the permanency of participatory forums. the final empowerment dimension is the extent to which these forums are stable, institutionalized policy programs that will continue to exist if there is community support. the pb process in chicago is not institutionalized, meaning there are no mechanisms in municipal bylaws that require aldermen to engage in pb, or continue these projects once they are established. the consequence is that regardless of community or resident support for the process, pb projects in chicago exist at the discretion of the local alderman. without justification or explanation, aldermen can, and do, cancel these projects if they feel they take too much staff time or do not lead to a desirable allocation of local infrastructure resources. the 5th ward, 22nd ward and 46th ward all briefly experimented with pb before cancelling the process. in the case of the 22nd ward, the alderman cancelled the pb project without formally informing past volunteers of this decision, some of whom had started preparing for the next cycle. this points to the lack of control residents have over the continuation of the process, as well as the limited capacity for pb decisions to contravene aldermanic objectives. concluding thoughts the city of chicago has a proposed $9.2 billion dollar operating and capital budget for 2016, a level of funding that dwarfs any disbursements through pb. but while a minority of the chicago city does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 133 budget is disbursed through pb, in participating wards most of the local infrastructure funding is subject to the process. considering this funding longitudinally, however, local infrastructure funding is declining. menu funding has been frozen at $1.32 million since 1995, while the cost of infrastructure has risen significantly over this period. for example, in chicago the cost of repaving a city block in 2016 was approximately 2.5 times what it was in 1995. the magnitude of funds available for local infrastructure improvements has been declining when inflation is considered. in a neoliberal context of declining investment in public infrastructure, and increased public funding being shifted toward private developers, for example, through chicago’s tif program, pb risks becoming a forum for residents to make difficult budget decisions for elected officials. rather than a uniform standard of basic public infrastructure, residents now vote on which streets receive upgrades to lighting or paving, or which parks have functional amenities. unsurprisingly, this tension is greatest in the neighbourhoods with the greatest needs. in ward 22, a low-income area of predominantly latino and black residents, the alderman cited an inability to meet basic infrastructure needs as a reason he stopped practicing pb.13 the alderman stated that he could not support “boutique” projects like community gardens and murals, when streets were becoming unusable. indeed, most pb projects are clustered in the northwest part of the city. these neighbourhoods vary in terms of income and racial composition, but none of them are part of the largely black, historically disenfranchised, southern part of the city, that has been chronically underinvested for decades. this paper has discussed pb in chicago, arguing that to assess whether pb leads to community empowerment, it is important to situate these projects in terms of the broader social, economic, historical, and political context, including trends in municipal governance and municipal budgeting. using baiocchi and ganuza’s (2014) 13 ward 22 had held pb votes in 2014 and 2015 but discontinued the practice in 2016. 134 | austerity urbanism and the social economy “empowerment dimensions” as a jumping off point, this paper has considered whether pb in chicago has led to local empowerment. in the case of chicago, pb largely falls short of resident empowerment, especially in terms of the primacy and scope of the process: as currently constituted, residents’ most pressing concerns cannot be addressed through the pb process. while volunteers cited positive community building effects of participation, including information-sharing with neighbours, evidence is limited as to whether these social connections have the potential to translate to collective organization outside the pb process. moreover, the municipal budgeting process, where many crucial decisions are made regarding social programing, continues to be elitedriven and insulated from resident influence. despite the limitations of pb in a context of urban neoliberalization, this discussion also suggests how the pb process might be structured to more substantially empower local communities. if the scope of the process were expanded to include social programming or a greater magnitude of funds, pb could potentially wrest some components of the mayoral budget from elite control. most promisingly, there have been recent discussions about how to expand pb to tax increment financing funds, including a 2014 pilot project in west humboldt park.14 it remains to be seen, however, whether there is sufficient political appetite to expand the process beyond ward-level infrastructure funds. references abc 7 news. 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(2016, april 5). chicago teachers’ day of action a smashing success. socialist alternative, http://www.socialistalternative.org/ wyly, e.k. and hammel, d.j. (2000). capital's metropolis: chicago and the transformation of american housing policy. geografiska annalers, 83b(4), 181-206. 140 | austerity urbanism and the social economy destructive creation | 313 destructive creation mireille coral1, jeff noonan2, and paul chislett3 joseph schumpeter famously explained the ability of the capitalist system to survive and recover from its structural crises by a process of “creative destruction.” schumpeter agreed with marx that the productive dynamics of capitalism generate crises, but he did not regard these crises as proof of the irrationality of capitalism and the necessity of its ultimate collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. on the contrary, he saw crises as essential to the open-ended survival of capitalism. in crises new means of production, new technologies, new labour practices, and new commodities displace those that were dominant in a previous moment of capitalist evolution. while for those who were dependent on the old structures (capitalists and workers, but mostly workers), periods of crisis can be catastrophic. judged from the abstract perspective of the system and the future, crises are the conditions for intense social and technological creativity unmatched, and unmatchable, by any competing system. schumpeter argues that capitalist history is therefore a history of “industrial mutations…that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. this process of creative destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. it is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live with.”(schumpeter, 1942, 83). it is also what every worker has to live with, and from the perspective of those whose lives are constantly overturned, the process is more destructive than creative. we aim to allow some of those voices to speak, that everyone might better understand the on-the-ground reality of capitalist “creativity.” before turning to the voices of the victims, let us first try to understand more clearly the general outlines of the process. marx too argued that capitalism constantly revolutionized the means of production, and schumpeter acknowledges as much (schumpeter, 1942, 82). whereas marx believed that these crises would become cumulatively more severe and provoke increasingly global working class action, ultimately ending in the overthrow of the ruling class, schumpeter argued that because there is no specifiable limit to what 1 mireille coral is a phd candidate in the faculty of education at the university of windsor, and an adult educator at st. michael’s adult secondary school in windsor, ontario 2 jeff noonan is professor of philosophy at the university of windsor. 3 paul chiseltt is president of the windsor workers’ education centre (wwec). 314 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages capitalists may invent in the future to counteract tendencies towards falling rates of profit, capitalism is potentially endlessly dynamic and not vulnerable to undermining itself from within. since the eighteenth century, capitalism has revolutionized itself through the application of heavy machinery to production, through faster modes of transportation, through the shift towards the mass production of consumer goods as a major source of profitable investment, the application of real time communication technologies to production, and the globalization of financial products and services those same communication technologies have permitted. thus far, it has proven schumpeter and not marx correct. there has as of yet been no successful global revolution (although there have been waves of global struggle, most recently the arab spring-occupy wave beginning in 2010) and no definitive proof that capitalism cannot invent yet another structural revolution to absorb the surplus capital awaiting opportunities for profitable investment ($680 billion in canada alone) (press progress, 2015). there are worries, even from critical mainstream economists like thomas piketty, that capitalism may have reached the limits of profitable growth in the production of real commodities (picketty, 2014, 93-5). should that prognosis be true, and only financial speculation remains to absorb surplus capital – a result that would mean no growth in employment and wages outside the upper reaches of the financial industry – then a political crisis, exacerbated by rejection of the politics of surveillance and control dangerous for the future of capitalism in north america, europe and the bric (brazil, russia, india, china) countries far more dangerous for capitalism may erupt. chris hedges (2015), notably, believes that such a global uprising is inevitable. predications about the inevitability of revolution, especially successful revolution, are always questionable. what seems unquestionable is the fact that capitalism faces material limits to its growth that schumpeter could not see in 1942. the global crisis in lifesupport systems that a century of fossil fuel burning, resource extraction, habitat depletion, and pollution have collectively caused is incompatible with the long-term future existence of any highly organized industrialtechnological economy. a threat to the general environment is a threat to human life itself. at the same time, as movements towards “green capitalism” attest, capitalists as well as environmentalists can recognize long-term ecological dangers, and adjust their practices accordingly. while capitalist production up to this point in history has been materially irrational in its environmental destruction, no one can say for certain that a sustainable capitalism is impossible. environmental crisis could prove destructive creation | 315 to play the same revolutionising role as economic crisis – a spur towards creative destruction of old production methods. david harvey avoids the doomsday talk that dominates much discussion on the left and says, correctly, that “if there are serious problems in the capital-nature relation, then this is an internal contradiction within and not external to capital. we cannot maintain that capital has the power to destroy its own ecosystem while arbitrarily denying that it has a like power to cleanse itself and resolve or at least properly balance its internal contradictions” (harvey, 2014, 259). that which has the power to destroy (being a power over the object destroyed) also has the power to preserve. capitalism could cause global ecological collapse, but since it is essentially a dynamic and self-revolutionising system, that outcome is neither a logical entailment of its principles of organization nor a material necessity of its actual operations, precisely because capitalism lives by changing its actual operations. the future remains open – and that is a good thing for socialists, who can help change that future by effectively organizing to transform capitalism into a democratic socialist life-economy in which natural wealth and human labour are marshalled to produce life capital. life capital is according to mcmurty (2015): “the life wealth that produces more life wealth without loss and with cumulative gain. we defend it by life goods to ensure our life capacities are not reduced but grow through time. most are unpriced – the sun and air, the learning, the home environment, the delight in nature, the play, the love, the raising of children, the fellow arts, and so on. on the social level, the same holds and any well-governed society provides for them in many ways. all may recognise the principle of life capital in their own lives as self-evident, and that all which lasts through time that is worthwhile is life capital.” while political struggle must be future-oriented, it must be anchored in the present, in where we stand now, and not on the non-foundation of abstract principles and dogmatic beliefs. where people stand in the present is determined by where people find themselves in the system of production. as michael lebowitz argues in his must read beyond capital: the political economy of the working class, because needs can only be satisfied through the purchase of proceed commodities in capitalism, the natural object of struggle for working people is not socialism straightaway, but higher wages and better working conditions. “rather than pointing beyond capital, the inability to satisfy their needs in itself leads workers 316 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages not beyond capital, but to class struggle within capitalism”(lebowtiz, 1992, 131). this fact has two implications: first, the struggle to satisfy needs can only ever be completed in a socialist society, but second, workers can make their lives better through successful struggles within capitalism for higher wages, for better working conditions, for shorter working hours, and for pensions that ultimately free workers from the need to keep working for wages. it is in light of this second implication that precarity is best understood. what is called precarious labour, short term, non-unionized, insecure work with few, if any, benefits, is a consequence of class struggle – the class struggle of capitalists against the gains that working class people had made over two centuries of struggle. precarious workers are the victims of capitalist success in undermining historical gains. when we look at precarity from this perspective, schumpeter’s creative destruction looks more like destructive creation. the past gains of working class struggle and the improved lives these gains have enabled are being destroyed by the creation of new forms of precarious labour. while politicians and system-servants will try to draw our thoughts away from the victims through their usual formula of “necessary sacrifices,” human fellow-feeling and critical attention to the real implications for displaced workers’ lives and livelihoods must hold attention fixed on the destructive moment: for those expelled from any sort of secure employment, in a context where a democratic socialist life-economy alternative is not immanent, precarious employment makes life a de-humanizing struggle just to survive. it is in this light that we want to consider precarity by sharing a few of the voices of its victims. although the alienating and oppressive conditions in which they work is de-humanizing, their capacity to endure and to resist lets their dignity as human beings – the foundation of the struggles of all oppressed people – shine through. precarity, from our perspective is first of all a matter of the conscious destruction of the achieved level of life-security won by the organized working class. only in a secondary sense is it a matter of precise sociological analysis (has not work under capitalist conditions always been precarious, which raises the question to what extent the term ‘precariat’ is sociologically meaningful?). these questions are important, but their value lies in the extent to which they help orient struggles to improve life and life’s conditions. as henri lefebvre argued in the first volume of his masterpiece, the critique of everyday life: “once the philosopher is committed to life, he will watch over its meaning and its development from within…at the very heart of the everyday, he will discover what is hindering…the march forward.” destructive creation | 317 (lefebvre, 2014, 120). in order to guide practice, theory must listen to the everyday voices of working people struggling against the destructive creations of new and worse conditions of work. the city of windsor, ontario has lost 14,000 manufacturing jobs in the last decade – unionized work with pensions and benefits that provided real protection against the life-blind cruelties of the capitalist market (pearson, 2015). these jobs have not all been replaced, but to the extent that they have, it has been with precarious labour, often in the service industry, call centres and temporary agencies. the windsor workers’ action centre sat down with some workers struggling with precarious work conditions. in what follows we share their thoughts on workplace precarity, its social and political implications, and how it has affected their personal and familial lives.4 stories from the margins: the precariat speaks our conversations with workers revealed a number of disturbing themes, many which extended precarity beyond the workplace and into the very fabric of their lives. this minimum wage work often included high-stress and fast-paced work environments with ever more demands for multi-tasking, parking lot rendezvous with shadowy contractors, and workplaces that pitted employees against each other in a fear-driven struggle to protect their own jobs. precarity is accompanied by a general atmosphere of fear: fear of supervisors, fear for personal safety, and, overriding everything, the fear of being fired. what became clear in these stories is that, in a climate of ‘no-work’, people felt compelled to take any work. this included jobs that they understood to be unsafe both physically and mentally, and which also undermined their dignity as human beings: work shifts, for example, so demanding that there was no time to go to the washroom, having to eat lunch at the same counter where they worked, and working conditions so crowded that workers rubbed against each other while performing their duties. in an effort to better understand our role as worker advocates in a time and place marked by the displacement of manufacturing jobs 4 these interviews were conducted over a two hour period on august 5, 2015 at the windsor workers education centre by paul chislett and mireille coral. four workers took part in the discussion on their respective workplaces: retail, construction, street organizing, and vegetable packaging plants. each has agreed to the inclusion of the selections of their stories we have chosen. their names have been changed to protect their identities. 318 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages through deindustrialization, and in keeping with the principles of a liberatory critical pedagogy which encourages dialogue rooted in the lives of people (freire, 2005; freire & horton, 1990; horton, 1998, 2003, kane, 2001), the windsor workers’ action centre invited workers who had left precarious workplaces to tell their stories. an ancient and powerful practice, storytelling has been a means for conveying knowledge throughout human history (white, 1980; wilson, 2008). we saw the telling of stories as an opportunity for workers working in marginalized situations to be heard, but also as an opportunity for us to learn from them. in keeping with the model of critical pedagogical practice wherein power relationships are supplanted and inverted (freire, 1995; horton, 1998), as worker advocates we became “students” and the workers became our teachers. by listening to their stories, we gained a more exact understanding of the kinds of problems workers face in windsor, problems which, we are sure, can be generalized across the capitalist world. the following descriptions of workplaces and work experiences come from the workers themselves. packing produce: contractors and cliques two of the workers who shared their stories, norma and cheri, worked in leamington packing produce in greenhouse packaging plants. their stories are immediately characterized by intrigue, as they describe meeting men in minivans in parking lots outside fast food restaurants early in the morning. norma and cheri never learned the full names of the men who picked them up, drove them to work, and paid them on pay day. as norma explained, the job of her contractor was to “find people to work at the farm for another guy that's affiliated with that farm. he talks to people to find people who want to work. he goes to mcdonalds [in windsor] standing outside and gets people to work that way.” cheri described being paid on payday out of “buckets of cash,” which was handed to the workers out the window of the contractor’s minivan: “with my contractor, his wife would hand it out through the car window out of a laundry basket, like the kind you would put in your sink, and there would be little envelopes in line, with your name on it, and they had their little 2 year old son in the back seat.” on her pay envelope were written the deductions from her pay – “i had to pay $60 for my ride, $20 for the privilege of having a time card, $5.50 for the privilege of having a coat because they have to clean it, so for 46 hours i cleared $328.50” – but no mention of ei or cpp deductions required by law. “who are these men with no last names and who do not pay ei or cpp?” cheri was puzzled: “they're off the map. they're taking $2 per hour off your pay and putting destructive creation | 319 it in their pocket, and how they get away with it i don't know. if they have 200 workers they're making $400 per hour. the companies say they are paying so and so, and so it’s off our hands, but they know what’s going on.” furthermore, the cash workers are all paid on the same day and in the same way, adding to the mystery of the identity of the contractors: cheri observed, “obviously people felt pretty comfortable with $5000 cash in their vehicle”. inside, the packing plants are chaotic stressful places: “they had a 25 minute lunch and you have a gown, gloves, and a hat. you can't eat your lunch dressed, so you have to dispose of your stuff and you have to get rid of your smock. well there's 200 people working there; you have 25 minutes to get undressed, go eat, and come back, and they would blow a siren and you're supposed to be at work within 3 minutes and if you weren't in line in time, they were suspending you for a period of time. so basically you are trying to figure out where your coat is…if you want to put your smock in your locker, it’s going to take you 5 minutes to get there, 5 minutes to get to lunch, 5 minutes to put your smock back on, so people were throwing them all over the place and then trying to get them on before the bell went off.” once back at their work places, workers were crowded together: “we’re really packed in together. doing your job, your bum rubs against the person behind you.” workers packing tomatoes and peppers are required to step up on a grate in order to avoid slipping on a floor that, as the shift progresses, becomes increasingly strewn with vegetable matter. when asked about safety training, norma said, “they talked a little bit about it [in orientation] but not much. they said to make sure that you stood on the grid.” norma described her experience at the plant as “worked to the bone and that’s what we expect of you.” she also speaks of groups or cliques that form among workers in the plant, “and if you don’t get into a clique then you just eat by yourself. i didn't talk to many people.” the formation of cliques also proved to be a source of stress and fear, as norma discovered on her last day at work. after being warned of a zero tolerance policy regarding drugs in the workplace, norma approached her supervisor to tell him that she needed to take medication for her bipolar disorder. on her break, she was asked by other workers about “being bipolar because they overheard the conversation with the boss and i was honest with them and thinking it’s my time, it’s my break, and i didn't think there'd be any consequences, so i finished off the work for that night and the next day the driver wouldn't pick me up and the driver wouldn't answer…i got a hold of him 2 days later and he told me i was fired for saying i was bipolar and i was on medication.” norma suspects that one of 320 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the few people she spoke to at work told the contractor about her condition: “i think he was the one talking about me being bi-polar and on my meds and stuff, and i think that’s how they found out. it was actually through a friend of mine.” street labourers: a union of mutual aid while precarious labour makes organizing even more dangerous, it is also a spur to creative resistance on the part of precarious workers. in windsor, panhandlers and buskers have recently come together to form a union. street labourers of windsor (slow) is an organization that provides direction and assistance for anyone who finds him or herself on the street. ryan the organizer who grew the membership from three to twelve, describes his motivation as coming from a place of understanding: “what took me to organizing is because, well, i've seen it all. i've done it all. i know what these people go through. i know their needs; i know that they need to be talked to. i know that people don't know where to go, what to do, and i'm trying to find a connection somewhere where they can reach out.” making sure that people on the street receive guidance and assistance in finding food and shelter is one of the main priorities of the union. why a person is on the street is less important to slow than how; for ryan, “the key is to try to work with people.” slow recognizes the work of panhandling and busking as work, as “just a way of seeking money so that you know you can survive.” as with any work, working conditions are a concern for the union. panhandlers and buskers are very often working with mental illnesses, addictions, or both. in a number of cases, street labourers are people who were injured at work and now find themselves on the street living with chronic pain. communicating needs under these conditions is difficult, and, as r explains, “trying to work with everybody in this to make it one is a very great challenge.” equally challenging is the attitude of the public. antipanhandling sentiments expressed in the windsor star (vander doelen, 2014) in the spring, as outdoor patios began to open, fuelled an angry discourse in the city in which panhandlers were characterized as pests. ryan speaks passionately of remarks from passersby that panhandlers must endure: “i've watched and seen how people have said, ‘you shouldn't be on the street.’ well, that's not yours to say. you don't even know the reason why i'm here, what i'm doing here. are you in the same predicament that i'm in? do you even know who i am? i don't know who you are. and one day you could be doing the same thing.” this concern for the wellbeing of street labourers is not limited to providing material assistance. during the weeks of anti-panhandling destructive creation | 321 arguments, slow represented its membership by undertaking political action. as the anti-panhandling rhetoric increased, the downtown business improvement association proposed the installation of so-called care meters in the downtown core. putting money in the meters would ostensibly be a way for concerned people to help the poor – the money would be distributed among agencies – without contributing to panhandling and its related problems of drug addiction, alcoholism and so forth. for ryan, this was an important political cause. he saw care meters as taking money out of the hands of poor people and giving it to bureaucracies: “we fought against that i was spearheading that, and then it actually went out the window; the motion did not get passed, and then the care meters were never installed, which was a victory for us.” working at the gas station: secret shoppers and chocolate bars joan worked the night shift at a gas station that is located near the last automotive plant in the city still running three shifts. joan earned an undergraduate degree at the university of windsor in the 80s; she argues that she stands as proof that, propaganda about the causal connection between higher education and secure, well-paying work notwithstanding, earning a degree is not a guarantee against precarious work. this was not her first time working as a gas station attendant. “i want to tell you what it’s like, what is expected of minimum wage workers today,” she begins. when she worked as a gas station attendant in 1986, “there were four pumps, and we got to sit at a desk, inside, with a few bags of chips and maybe five different kinds of chocolate bars on the counter to sell. and you sat at this desk and you could read, you could do crossword puzzles or watch t.v.” in 2009, “i had two pages of things to do between customers.” the new gas station had 12 gas pumps, “every chocolate bar made in north america; the whole front counter, bottom of the counter is nothing but chocolate bars. i’ve counted them: there were over 2000 individual chocolate bars, gum packages, tums, you name it, and we also sold lottery tickets. there was a lottery machine, cell phone minutes, as well as seven refrigerated cases where we sold sandwiches, pop, cold drinks. we also sold newspapers, magazines, and car products, like oil and windshield wiper fluid. we were a gas station, convenience store, and there was a tim hortons.” some of the tasks she was required to perform during her shift included watching the pumps, watching the store, selling goods, removing expired food from the refrigeration units, cleaning the inside of the units, cleaning the toilet, and wiping dust and grime off every chocolate bar and package of gum and candy at the front of the store by the cash register. 322 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages “employers find more things for workers to do, ridiculous things to do, to merit any raise in minimum wage.” no chairs were provided; workers improvised by sitting on stacked milk crates and cushions. there were no scheduled breaks and no one to take over if the worker had to use the washroom. workers were expected to eat lunch at the counter while waiting on customers. the only option for a worker who became sick or had to use the washroom was to ask the tim hortons employee to watch the store. “you went to the washroom as fast as you possibly could and then ran back. nine times out of ten somebody would be standing there waiting to pay for something. you’re never really off the job, ever.” gas station attendants were also financially responsible for customers who drove away without paying for gas even though this policy endangered workers’ lives. a gas station attendant in calgary was killed earlier in the summer trying to prevent such theft. once again, the phenomenon of third party contractors – in this case, private franchise owners – plays a role in this dangerous practice. “the corporation can claim to the media that it does not have a policy of making attendants pay for stolen gas,” joan explains, “but you don’t get a paycheque from the corporation. your paycheque comes from the guy who runs the gas station on behalf of the corporation.” in her most recent job as a gas station attendant, joan was assessed in a variety of ways, most notably the “secret shopper” test. she scored 93% on this assessment, but was told that she had failed. “the supervisor approached me like i had done something terrible. i thought, ‘i got 93, that’s an a,’ but the supervisor told me that, in fact, i had failed the secret shopper and the boss is really mad.” the “secret shopper” was actually a corporate spy sent to the store to see if the worker did her job according to corporate standards. anyone coming to the counter might actually be a secret shopper; the worker would find out the next day. of particular concern to the secret shopper was the matter of up-selling: joan was supposed to ask anyone who purchased anything at the store if they wanted one other product: if the customer purchased gas, for example, joan was supposed to ask if the customer wanted washer fluid as well; if the customer bought cigarettes, did he or she want a lighter? joan found it hard to remember to upsell, especially during peak hours. in the wake of her 93% “failure”, she began to use sarcasm as a form of resistance, asking customers who bought only a newspaper if they wanted washer fluid, too. would they like a lighter with their chocolate bar? when the supervisor suggested that joan didn’t need to upsell to everyone who came to the counter because the secret shopper would be a customer who purchased gas, joan pointed out that the next person in line could very well be the destructive creation | 323 secret shopper, listening. to this, the supervisor could make no reply and walked away in frustration. “so i had my little ways of protesting the ridiculousness,” joan said. conclusion the workers’ stories vindicate lefevbre’s argument that the struggle for socialism must be grounded in concrete understanding of workers’ everyday lives. how can workers be mobilised effectively in ever changing conditions of destructive creation of new and worse conditions of employment unless everyone hears the human experience of what it means to be a precarious worker? grounding political practice in everyday life means starting from and accepting the contradictions of everyday life for workers, especially precarious workers, under capitalism. one of the main frustrations of the precarious workers we spoke with was the problem of not being able to organize effectively against the corporation they nominally worked for, because of the role of third party contractors or private franchise owners. these contractors did not provide even the most basic health and safety training; furthermore the use of these contractors or private franchise owners allowed major corporations to not be responsible for policies that could endanger workers’ safety. drawing from a pool of the desperate unemployed, contractors are middle men who stand between multinational corporations and the people who seem to be working for those corporations. workers must always fight on two fronts: first, against the immediate indignities and deprivations of precarious work, and second, against the deeper structural problems of capitalist society itself. norma and cheri, for example, went to work at a major greenhouse operation but were not clearly paid by the greenhouse operators; joan worked at a major gas station chain, but was not employed by that corporation, but by a franchise owner who, because he or she must pay up the chain, is difficult to organize against. in an effort to employ the cheapest most flexible workforce possible, multinational corporations help create the conditions for low-wage flexible work. this demand for ever more low paying and insecure work is the foundation upon which precarious work is created. large employers become less and less responsible for the working conditions of the human beings working in their plants and shops, as administrative costs are minimized, as well as costs associated with health and safety training. this fractured flexible workforce faces an additional challenge of trying to organize to improve their conditions, as workers have done in the past. still, as slow shows, political resistance is also creative. while it is easy to dismiss twelve street workers in a small southern ontario city as 324 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages a woefully inadequate response to global economic problems, one must also keep in mind that global circuits of capital must still pass through human beings, human labour, to reproduce themselves and grow. to the destructive creation that capital imposes on workers’ lives, the selforganization of workers can still be a force of real creative destruction: supersession of the private control of universally required life-resources and their redistribution according to the principles of a democratic lifeeconomy: production and distribution for life need satisfaction, and lifeneed satisfaction for the sake of enjoyed and meaningful contribution to the on-going project of human life-development. references freire, p. 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(2015, february 25). breaking out of the invisible prison. the bullet no. 1085, http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1085.php destructive creation | 325 lefebvre, h. (2014). the critique of everyday life. london: verso. schumpeter, j. (1942). capitalism, socialism, and democracy. new york: harper and row. pearson, craig. (2015, july 22). mulcair in windsor: ndp would campion auto sector. windsor star, http://windsorstar.com/news/mulcair-in-windsor-ndp-wouldchampion-auto-sector press progress. (2015, september 13). corporate canada is sitting on 680 billion, 85% of canadians say raise corporate taxes. press progress, http://www.pressprogress.ca/corporate_canada_is_sitting_on_680_bi llion_85_canadians_say_raise_corporate_taxes vander doelen, c. (2014, april 9). don’t encourage street pests. the windsor star, http://windsorstar.com/uncategorized/dont-encouragestreet-pests white, h. (1980). the value of narrativity in the representation of reality. critical inquiry, 7(1), 5-27. wilson, s. (2008). research is ceremony: indigenous research methods. halifax: fernwood publishing. 354 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the abode of educational production: an interview with peter mclaren jordy cummings jordy cummings1 (jc): you’re from toronto, and politicized in the era of the new left, after attending grad school at massey college and even taking a course with foucault…is there anything particular to toronto’s culture that has inspired you, as an educator, an activist and a socialist? peter mclaren2 (pm): i left toronto kicking and screaming since i couldn’t find a tenure-track university position in canada, but the renowned american educator henry giroux (what irony, he is now a canadian citizen!) had helped me find a position in miami university of ohio, and who could resist that offer? working with henry was an education on its own that could never be purchased. henry has a generosity of spirit that still staggers me. toronto, ah yes. well, as far as my perceptions of schooling and society goes, there was this magazine is about schools that i read in the late sixties and into the seventies, edited by george martell and satu repo. it was housed, as i recall, in rochdale college, where i frequently hung out with friends. it became this magazine sometime in the seventies, i think. i learned a lot from reading that magazine but i was never a subscriber, but rather an intermittent reader. which probably accounts for why i didn’t have much of a coherent theoretical trajectory when i started to write professionally in 1979. i was never recruited by left organizations, nor did i really attempt to join political groups, even school activists. 1  jordy cummings is interventions editor of alternate routes, and a phd candidate at york university. 2  peter mclaren is distinguished professor in critical studies, college of educational studies, chapman university, where he is co-director of the paulo freire democratic project. he is the author and editor of over forty-five books and hundreds of scholarly articles and chapters. his writings have been translated into over 20 languages. the abode of educational production | 355 when i published cries from the corridor, my diary chronicling my experience as an elementary school teacher in the jane-finch corridor, i was basically your missionary liberal educator with a rucksack stuffed with some radical ideas, and the canadian left as i recall was pretty snobbish, maybe that residue of british colonialism, and i was told that my professors at oise (where i did my doctorate) resented all the publicity i received from that book. i think, too, that when i left for the us, there was this feeling that i was abandoning canada. and while i am a dual-citizen and might not be as thoroughly canadian as pierre berton, i consider myself died-in-the wool canadian. i was always hoping to receive offers to return and teach in canada but they never came. i would have returned in a heartbeat. maybe the biggest political lesson i learned was walking down yonge street in willowdale in 1968 on whatever the hallucinogen of the day was, and flipping off a metro cop. i was thrown into a black and white and taken to jail, where i was systematically beaten with a flashlight during the night. i still have a raised section of my skull that you can feel – my wife wang yan calls it my “dragon forehead.” my subsequent trip to california that year was fraught with similar incidents, and i won’t list those now. but, thanks to the bohemian culture of downtown yorkville, where i spent years in the coffee houses and hippie lofts, and romantic moments with pre-raphaelite looking lovers in velvet gowns in the shadows of philosopher’s walk on the university of toronto campus, you could confidently say that prior to leaving canada, i felt i had imbibed the spirit of the beat poets, and consumed as much of underground culture that i could hold in one brainpan without flipping out – poetry, philosophy, eastern religion, psychedelic drugs, all kinds of new ideas – gestalt theory, rational emotive therapy, irving layton, leonard cohen, joni mitchell, buffy saint-marie, gregory bateson, r.d. laing, general semantics, psychoanalysis, anarchism, acid rock, john c. lilly, the occult, pyramid energy, theosophy, darwin, zen buddhism, the bloomsbury group, the inklings, dadaism, mcluhan, gordon lightfoot, luke and the apostles (my guitar teacher was toronto’s own david wilcox), catholic saints, well where should i stop? stompin’ tom connors? even throughout the torment and joy of those troubling and troubled years, i watched hockey night in canada with my dad, and reminisced about how we would go curling together in matching sweaters during the four years my family spent in winnipeg. i really miss those days. that eclecticism no doubt influenced my (thankfully short lived) attraction 356 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to postmodernism in the mid-1980s. i think toronto is one of the great cities of the world, and i have visited many of them. but perhaps my perceptions of the city are dipped in an all-too saccharine romanticism that from time-to-time plagues me and my thinking. one thing that i learned from my countercultural days in toronto was that you make your path by walking and before you can travel the path, you have to become the path. this is the essence of praxis. i had become the path away from willowdale, away from my home in the beaches, away from everything i knew in order to step into the void of the united states. but i had yet to find a path towards something, towards an understanding of capitalist society and what would constitute a socialist alternative. my first impression of the united states was of the vastness of the armies of the homeless, haunted by the slow death that stalked the dispossessed in the so-called most progressive democracy in the world, or so the us was described in those days. it would take me years to understand that when the spectre of progress twists his hourglass watch upside down to mark the death-rattle countdown of those millions who are dying on city streets of preventable diseases and who lay unattended in hospital beds crammed into the corridors of decaying urban medical centers, he is present around the world wherever the logic of capital prevails. the pitted and pock-marked lungs of his victims are now unfillable, their life force fading behind curtains of dust and dead memories. these casualties of ‘progress’ are not restricted to one country. and they are not necessarily living in the streets. they are in office buildings, schools, monasteries, sanctuaries, offices, and shopping malls. they are often our own children, our relatives, our friends, ourselves. jc: the theme of this issue is “capitalism in the classroom”. what does it mean, to you to be an anti-capitalist and a marxist in a pedagogical setting, both in practical and theoretical terms? relatedly, what kind of shifts have you been seeing, and how can marxist theory account for these shifts? it seems to me, as an educator, that this is an uneven, dialectical process. on one hand, we see an increase in online courses and a casualization of the academic profession. on the other hand, the range of information available to scholars has increased. as a marxist, what do you make of all of this, and how does it affect your praxis? pm: clearly from where i sit, a spontaneous wave of indignation has swept throughout the united states, an uprush of animosity against intolerable indignities suffered by the working-class, and people of color. the social character of our life-activity, forged by the hammer blows the abode of educational production | 357 of value-producing labor and stamped by the impact press of capitalist social relations, rests on the pervasive dependence and dehumanization of workers, the ever-increasing interdependence of capital and labor. the ontological conception of alienation was unpacked magnificently by marx and that was what first drew me to his work. there is nothing more alienating than schools, which serve as conceptual, emotional, and epistemological prisons for too many students. the miasmic system of capitalism in which we are inextricably enmeshed is one whose flexibility, omnipresence and omnivalence of oppression has been as expansive as the air that we breathe. but our labor power is both key to our enslavement and our liberation. everywhere people are clamoring for justice. we have been stricken to the quick by an outlawry and scoundrelism exercised with prideful efficiency by the ruling class but the problem is not with personal behavior of capitalists, as egregious as that might be, but with the structure of capitalism itself. youth here in the united states are fed up with war, yet i teach classes where the entire population of students who enrolled in my courses have never not known a time where their country was at war. at this time of endless wars against terror, there are no wistful interludes between wars. wars today are forever ongoing and we merely suffer between the exasperating diminuendos and crescendos of events. now, for instance, the latest crescendo is the push forward by the islamic state. we are a society that fights symptoms and refuses to treat the root causes of our ongoing crises – of the environment, of terrorism, of resources, of personal security, of education and so on. one of the most entangling of these disconcerting relationships is how capitalism structures, organizes and mediates all of these antagonisms in contextually specific ways. in the current interregnum we are, for all intents and purposes, existing as human capital. we have sold our life-activity to other people and some sections of the population (such as the african american populations who are being replaced as cheap labor by the latino/as), are relegated to surplus populations that are unable to sell their labor-power. to acknowledge that we live in a capitalist society is to tremble and shudder. witness today the prodigious and virulent expansion of surveillance technology beyond the exigencies of any agreed-upon notion of decency, technologies that efface the divisions between the real, the hyperreal and the suprarenal and lock us into a scenario much worse that even orwell envisioned, a scenario where will become willing agents of capital. 358 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education we have sold our labor-power for a wage and we can only use those silver dollars squeezed out of the profit ledger of the capitalist to cover the eyes of our corpse and hope that the ferryman of hades will convey our soul across the waters of the styx or acheron as quickly as possible. we are prone in this society to be critical of primary assumptions and of course to protect them from attack they are solemnly made sacerdotal, and hide behind religious prerogatives. as i have argued for decades, the capitalist marketplace is the new god. i live in old town, orange, in california and the most convenient coffee shop for me is in a wells fargo bank. truly, the building from the inside looks like a cathedral. my friend at uc santa barbara, bill robinson, notes that the negative of an anti-capitalist movement does not necessarily involve the positive (and here we can clearly see he is echoing hegel’s negation of the negation) of an alternative post-capitalist or socialist project. which is precisely why, along with my marxist humanist comrades, i have called long and hard for a philosophy of praxis grounded in absolute negativity. here, i have been influenced greatly by the work of hegel and marx, and dunayevskaya’s theory of state capitalism. i’ve learned that you can’t separate hegel’s dialectical method from this absolute idea (the transcendence of the opposition between theory and practice). just as hegel advised us to always, ceaselessly, call into question the grounding ideas from which a phenomenon is grasped, we need to break down external as well as internal barriers to liberation through a philosophy of praxis grounded in absolute negativity. regrettably, marx’s ideas have been ripped out of their revolutionary soil by decades of toxic bombardment by the corporate media and repotted in greenhouse megastores where, under hydrofarm compact fluorescent fixtures, they can be deracinated, debarked and made safe for university seminars and condominium living alike for highly committed twentysomethings who like to whistle to ballpark tunes in their faux-victorian bathtubs. for me, marx provides a dizzying macro-level montage of society filled with autonomous narratives that evoke ineluctable paradoxes that take on new meaning when put all together. in other words, what i find most useful in marx is his dialectics of internal relations, how all of social life is internally related. to stick with a film metaphor, marx gives you that tracking shot with voiceover spiked with the ambient noise of workers marching forward…a relentless tracking shot that won’t let you escape…and you have to follow it. once the setting of the drama has been established, you become the protagonist and you are obligated to play the drama out. as we struggle the abode of educational production | 359 for the supersession of property and labor determined by need and external utility, we look to marx for direction in building a new society based on co-operation and production absent the pressures of external determination, where all manner of people interact and collaborate in freely associated, spontaneous and unpredictable ways. as a teacher, i am interested in how global capitalism is dialectically interwoven with underdevelopment, and how this process is related to the production of knowledge, specifically in school systems and how such school systems teach us how to think, to research, and to develop our methodological skills that often leave us degage and docile. prior to the ascendency of neoliberal capitalism, the primary mission of mass schooling was to create the “deep character” of the nation state by legitimizing the superiority of elite culture, trans-coding the culture of the ruling class with the culture of the nation state so that both were essentially seen as ‘natural’ symmetrical reflections of each other. schools were important mechanisms in the invention of the identity of the modern nation state in the era of industrialization and played an important role in developing the concept of the citizen (a concept always contested by many groups, including conservatives, liberals and radicals). however, schools today (since the mid-1980s), are discernibly shifting their role from building the nation state and creating democracy-minded citizens to serving the transnational corporations in their endless quest for profits. the nation state, it appears, is losing its ability to control capital by means of controlling the transnational corporations. corporations have become in many instances more powerful than nation states (although i am not diminishing the role of nation states here). schools that were once an important political entity that had a public code-setting agenda in creating conventional rules and regulations to be followed by each citizen are fast becoming part of the private sector bent on creating consumers within the capitalist marketplace. as society abandons its outmoded historical garb and takes on new forms, the perpetuity of the existing social order is increasingly called into question. so-called non-political forces – those associated with financial and commodity markets – are now the dominant forces of indoctrination and code setting within our market society and this has greatly impacted education. our collaborative existence as consumers has produced a closure on meaning through the very activity of opening up our desire to consume market commodities by means of a default set of blinders created by a capitalist imaginary that provides the formula or criteria of choice. industrial capitalist schooling was occupied with conventional problem 360 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education solving designed to provide students with the rules and conventions to solve particular problems via rule-based reasoning. knowing the rules of the democratic state was the most important goal and this was often taught by means of a text book-assignment-recitation pattern. with the advent of consumer society and the replacement of western high culture with transnational corporate culture (which relies on well-trained technical workers), the focus has moved away from conventional thinking to technical thinking. what this ultimately excludes, of course, is critical reflection, or producing knowledge from real-life problems or what richard quantz calls “meaningful action.” meaningful action does not always take place in situations where relevant knowledge is available or where people are aware what the right choices and actions might be. meaningful knowledge does require some knowledge of technical reasoning but it requires as well the ability to interpret and critique – to make moral choices and to commit to some action even when relevant knowledge is not available. it requires larger patterns of understanding and reasoning – and it requires us to create and recreate its own foundations and goals as it goes along. given the abandoning of political institutions such as schools by the state, the focus has been on technical problem solving as a means-ends reasoning that involves selecting from available rules those that will help individuals achieve a particular given end. in short, critical reflection is not a priority. it is in fact, the enemy of today’s education, even as schools tout the value of critical literacy and social justice agendas. being a marxist educator means that i see education as a path to socialism. simply put, my struggle as a teacher is to create protagonist agency to fight three very powerful forces, what i call the ‘triplecides’—genocide, ecocide and epistemicide. i see capitalism as a form of genocide (see the work of gary leech) and a number of my students have been developing the field of ecopedagogy (turning traditional forms of environmental education on their heads) –addressing the issues of ecoside, sustainability, ecosocialism and alternative epistemologies found often in first nations cultures. the moral imperative behind today’s neoliberalism reflects a distinct form of neo-mercantilism. the move in the us economy in the 1970s towards financialization and export production helped to concentrate wealth in the hands of ceos and hedge-fund managers – and, as chomsky and others have noted, this led to a concentration of political power, which in turn leads to state policies to increase economic concentration, fiscal policies, deregulation of the economic, and rules of corporate the abode of educational production | 361 governance. neoliberalism as it factors the field of education reflects the logic of possessive individualism, urging all citizens or potential citizens to maximize their advantage on the labor market; and for those who are unable to accomplish this requirement – a requirement, by the way, that functions as a moral imperative – such as undocumented workers, they must as a non-market underclass live in a bottom-tiered netherworld of sweatshop labor that serves those of more fundamental worth to the social order – the more successful capitalist class. all that is to have worth in neoliberal democracies must be directly linked to the functional needs of capitalism, so that capitalism and the capitalist class can reproduce itself along with capitalist society, and the capitalist worldview that legitimates the entire process. so here we can see neoliberalism linked to legal systems and mechanisms of legitimation that will help secure the market as the only authentically potent form of political and social organization. the state, in other words, becomes synonymous with the market. certainly global financial institutions such as the international monetary fund and the world bank comprise the ramparts behind which neoliberal ideology is to be protected at all costs, and it is important to view these institutions as basically controlled by the wealthy western powers, the united states in particular. and it is in this sense that neo-liberal ideology is an imperialist ideology. anything left outside market forces would be under suspicion of being subversive of civilization – after all, there is no alternative to neoliberal capitalism. we could even say that we are living in a neoliberal modernity, in which the capitalist class is gaining power by dispossessing the working-class and selling or renting to the public what was commonly owned. neoliberalism is a revolution from above on the part of the transnational capitalist class to give ever more structural advantage to the global capitalist production system. between this global ruling-class and the working class still exists the shrinking middle class, a fragile buffer between the rich and the poor. according to sociologist bill robinson, we inhabit a loosely constituted historic bloc, a social base in which the transnational capitalist class produces the consent of those drawn into this bloc and exercises moral, political and economic leadership – hegemonic leadership in the classical gramscian sense. my focus as a marxist is on this emerging transnational hegemony – this new historic bloc based on the hegemony of transnational capital – where, of course, the us is definitely playing a leading role. while national capital, global capital and regional capitals are still prevalent, the hegemonic fraction of capital on a world scale is now 362 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education transnational capital. the purpose of the transnational ruling class is the valorization and accumulation of capital and the defense and advance of the emergent hegemony of a global bourgeoisie and a new global capitalist-historical bloc. this historical bloc is composed of the transnational corporations and financial institutions, the elites that manage the supranational economic planning agencies, major forces in the dominant political parties, media conglomerates, and technocratic elites. capitalism, which marx portentously argued was written in letters of blood and fire, continues to be reproduced as robbery, as outlawry. as a marxist educator, i raise these issues with my colleagues, with my students, but mostly i raise them in the context of arguing that critical pedagogy must not remain solely in the classroom but become part of a transnational social movement. jc: the sixth edition of your classic life in schools, one of the few marxist texts on teacher-education, has just been issued, updated for the obama era. what were you trying to do with this book, and what kind of impact has it had? in turn, what kind of obama-era shifts have provoked shifts or tweaks within the book? finally, have you received any “pushback” or red-baiting around the impact of this book? pm: the book has had a number of publishers, and the fifth edition was pearson. yes, the textbook and assessment company that produces standardized texts, that is singled out by progressive educators as one of the companies that is destroying public education. it owns penguin books and the financial times and operates in over seventy countries. i mention in the latest edition that after scheduling a meeting with a pearson editor to discuss the new sixth edition, and after making copious notes and presenting them to her in the lobby of the mark twain hotel in san francisco, she told me that my ideas were “too complex”, that pearson was too “corporate” and that american students could not really absorb the difficult concepts i present in life in schools. there was not going to be a sixth edition, i was told. in fact, she told me that pearson was dropping the book. i asked her if it was because i critiqued the company in the fifth edition of the book, and she said no, that was not the reason. she tried to soften the blow by offering me twenty free copies of the book. and of course the rights resorted back to me, and within ten minutes i had found another publisher. how was it possible to find another publisher in that short time span? well, my meeting with pearson took place during the annual convention of the american educational research association and after the book was dropped by pearson, my wife, wang yan, and i the abode of educational production | 363 walked across the street to the lobby of the hilton. once inside, i noticed a grey-haired fellow frantically waving to me. it was my old friend dean birkenkamp, the head of paradigm publishers. he shouted across the room, “is there any way i can get the rights to your life in schools?” i was a taken aback at my good fortune and of course the deal was sealed within minutes. yes, the book is updated but the problem is when you do a new edition of the book you have to remove the same amount of the old material as you add in the new material. and i have trouble losing what i feel is very good work. but i made room for obama. obama has hurt education reform immeasurably. obama has really carried over the george bush jr. initiatives and rebranded them with some cosmetic touches. you aren’t a good educational leader when your race to the top initiatives tie federal funds for states and localities to their use of assessments of national “college and career readiness” standards; when you set yourself on a mission to privatize or quasi-privatize public schools through an expansion of charter schools; when you evaluate teachers by linking an individual teacher’s salary and employment status to student test scores; or when you pink slip teachers and principals in schools that have been designated as failing schools; and especially when your entire philosophy of education is driven by the logic of assessment and competition that includes merit pay for teachers, etc. to use federal leverage to get your initiatives in place, to sow distrust of public schools and to give preferential treatment to charter schools (that don’t do as well as public schools overall even though they can cherry-pick their students and can refuse to admit students with learning disabilities), to create such a mess that teacher drop-out rates are at an all time high – the voluntary drop out rate for teachers is higher than the failure rate of students as nationally, 16 percent leave after the first year and approximately 45 percent leave within five years – is to give educational reform another kick in the teeth. whether it’s a democrat or republican in the white house doesn’t seem to matter – the democratic will wear hobnailed boots to kick out your teeth, the republicans will use army surplus store boots from the invasion of iraq to do the job. i’m surprised that the book is doing so well in classrooms across the us, because of the political climate here. the works of paulo freire and rudy acuna were banned in tucson, arizona’s public school system, there is a wave a evangelical fervour percolating throughout the us, particularly with the tea party folks, and “socialism” is a hot word. university undergraduates and sometimes graduate students – and their parents – can get riled up if they think they are being encouraged 364 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to criticize the united states. again, at ucla, i was labelled “the most dangerous professor at ucla” during the bush jr. administration. death threats, of course. hate mail, yes. not so much now as during the bush jr. administration but yes, it is there. there is at least one evangelical book that recently cited me as a grave danger to the young minds of america. and yes i get the usual commie in the classroom criticism, and the cuban american community frequently gets on my case because of my book about paulo freire and che guevara. but the support i receive is so much stronger, and that is what keeps me going. and good friends. when you come under criticism you quickly learn who are your fairweather friends, and who are your true friends. and now i am teaching at chapman university, a private university located in one of the most conservative and most ‘charming’ cities in the united states, the city of orange. well, after 20 years at ucla i was made an offer by chapman that i accepted. there is a small community of freireans whom i very much enjoy working with and who walk their talk. you really do need other like-minded people to work with if you want to survive university life. that’s why i decided to join the faculty here. the college of education studies has a progressive dean, don cardinal, who is just about the best leader you could imagine. if you enter chapman from one side of the campus, you see a statue of margaret thatcher, then ayn rand, then milton friedman, and then ronald reagan, so your blood might curdle if you are a leftist. but if you approach chapman from another route, you will encounter statues of marin luther king, benito juarez and, yes, paulo freire. i have found chapman to honour diverse viewpoints and to encourage critical thinking. and the faculty here is highly committed to social justice. we also have dodge college, one of the top film schools in the country. while i teach regularly, i often spend half the week working in america latina with different organizations, teachers unions, indigenous populations, and more recently the europeans have been inviting me to participate in discussions about education. jc: you are very influenced by the work of paulo friere and emancipatory education. can you tell alternate routes a little bit about how you came to be inspired by friere and how academics can make use of his work? pm: i met paulo freire through the esteemed educational scholar and public intellectual henry giroux and one of his close friends, donaldo macedo who is a professor of linguistics. henry giroux had helped bring me to miami university of ohio, after the controversy the abode of educational production | 365 over my book, cries from the corridor, made it impossible for me to land a full-time professorship in canada during that time (although i did manage a one-year appointment at brock university with help from john novak, a prominent deweyan educationalist). henry introduced me to paulo during a conference in chicago in 1985 and later, donaldo macedo helped to facilitate and solidify our relationship. my formation as a teacher has been forged and tempered in the crucible of freire’s copious and courageous works and my life profoundly shaped and keenly affected by the leadership and teachings of paulo freire. paulo in his formidable generosity of spirit wrote several prefaces to books of mine, invited me to cuba and brazil, and while in brazil hosted me in his university and his home. a mentor and friend over the ensuing years, he modeled the kind of educator i wanted to become. i have been fortunate to have met several world-historical figures who exemplify the best of our revolutionary spirit, and i would consider hugo chavez another such individual. freire, chavez, marx – these are figures of inescapable relevance for revolutionary critical pedagogy, all in different ways. while the legacy of paulo freire stands immeasurably beyond us as individuals, his world-historical vision of a just and equitable democratic society nevertheless serves as a quilting-point and guide to the future of education for millions of progressive educators worldwide. revisiting the legacy and vision of paulo freire today chillingly reminds us that the dreams that have been programmed into today’s sterile educational instruments of test-taking, accountability, technocratic thinking, and managerial control have led to an abandonment of the search for what it means to live critically, creatively and democratically in the service of those who have been marginalized and excluded in today’s immiseration capitalist society. we would do well as educators to read today’s ‘businessification’ and corporatization of education against the liberatory vision of paulo freire with the hope that we can and will regain the vision of a critical democracy to which freire’s storied corpus of works points and build the kind of democracy that lives up to its principles and pronouncements. whether this can be done within a capitalist society is doubtful; in fact, i do not believe it can be done. it has become clear to me in traveling to approximately thirty countries in the course of my educational work, that paulo freire is still very much alive in the hearts and minds of all those teachers, administrators, cultural workers, and students who still choose to dream. we need to read the world as well as the world, that is, we need to be able to transcend through absolute negativity those barriers that keep us from realizing our full humanity. 366 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education teachers need to be spokespersons for agency, the embodiment of a critical praxis – i call this protagonistic agency. with wide-eyed awareness, freire serves notice that not only must we raise questions that the world refuses to raise but is incapable of raising at this historical moment. there is always a quixotic aspect of risk-taking in our attempts to transform the world through critical pedagogy. and we need to remember that critical pedagogy is a necessary but not sufficient for bringing about the socialist revolution. freire would advise us, his comrades, not to reproduce his work, to import his work as we would some foreign commodity into our classrooms but to re-invent his ideas in the contextual specificity of where we found ourselves in our struggles, and by this he meant, socially, economically, culturally, geopolitically and the like. critical educators who have been influenced by freire recognize that history is always open and refuse to postulate history as a determinate truth, relinquishing the subjective in the making of history. there are no iron laws of history, since history works backwards, retrospectively, like benjamin’s angel of history, caught in the swirling storm from paradise. for critical educators, ends and means must be interdependent. we can’t read off from science our moral goals. even if scientific laws of history obtained they cannot a priori stipulate moral ends because that would make moral ends meaningless. freire clearly worked within a dialectical materialist epistemology that attempted to posit a dialectical relationship between the objective world and our subjective understanding and knowledge of that world. freire was concerned with the ‘dialecticity’ between consciousness and the world where he views critical consciousness as a type of metaconsciousness or “consciousness as consciousness of consciousness,” as what i have come to term, “protagonist agency” or a type of intentionality towards the world that is intent on transforming the world as much as understanding the world. this means seeking ontological and ethical clarity in our relations with the world and with other human beings. jc: you have an international reputation, having worked with the bolivarians in venezuela, the mst in brazil among many progressive elements in latin america. what kind of innovation is happening, in particular, within the context of the boliviarian process? can any of these innovations be translated into a canadian or american context? pm: i’m not an expert on the bolivarian process. for that kind of expertise, you would need to read the important work of michael lebowitz and marta harnecker. recently, instituto mclaren de pedagogia critica y education popular helped to sponsor a lecture in mexico the abode of educational production | 367 city where marta harnecker appeared as the keynote – the conference is called volver a marx. we at instituto mclaren are helping to organize that conference every year and we have been holding it in various cities throughout mexico. we are trying to interest the general public – workers, students, artists, teachers, managers, farmers, indigenous groups, in the ideas of marx as a way to initiate transformation and change. i certainly admire the potential of the communal councils of the bolivarian revolution, which serve as public pedagogical sites for socialism and endogenous development, and to what michael lebowitz calls ‘a vehicle for changing both circumstances and the protagonists themselves’, and deepening the struggle for socialism for the twenty-first century. such a struggle is founded on revolutionary practice, famously described by lebowitz as ‘the simultaneous changing of circumstances and self-change’. the new socialist society stresses that the control of production is vested in the producing individuals themselves. productive relations are social as a result of conscious choice and not after the fact. they are social because, as lebowitz (2013) perceptively notes, as a people we deliberately choose to produce for people who need what we can produce. since more than seventy percent of university students came from the wealthiest quintile of the population, chávez instituted the bolivarian university system, in which the students themselves were able to participate in the management of their institution. education was designed to promote citizen participation and joint responsibility, and to include all citizens in the creation of a new model of production that stressed endogenous development, that is, an economic system that was self-sufficient and diversified. misiones were created to create a social economy and a diversity of production, and designed to meet the needs of venezuela’s poor and to counteract venezuela’s oil dependency. higher education was de-concentrated from the urban centers in order to assist rural communities. i remember how much i enjoyed teaching at the bolivarian university of venezuela, located near the central university of venezuela – part of mission sucre, which provides free higher education to the poor, regardless of academic qualification, prior education or nationality – housed in the ultra-deluxe offices of former pdvsa oil executives that chávez had fired for their attempt to bring down the government. college enrolment doubled under chávez. student projects were insolubly linked to local community improvement. at a graduation ceremony in the early years of the university, chávez famously said: 368 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education “capitalism is machista and to a large extent excludes women, that’s why, with the new socialism, girls, you can fly free.” chávez set up a structure to offer employment for the graduates of ubv through a presidential commission that enabled new graduates to be placed around the country in development projects. the graduates would receive a scholarship that was slightly above the minimum wage. some of these projects involved mision arbol (tree mission), recovering environments damaged by capitalism such as the guaire river. when i was first invited to venezuela by the government to help support the bolivarian revolution, i remember speaking at the central university of venezuela. the students who attend this university are mainly the children of the ruling elite. not many were chavistas, well, at least not when i spoke there. after i announced to the students present that i was a chavista (soy chavista!), i was told later that some students in retaliation had ripped my portrait off of a mural students had created of critical theorists. yet i was able to have very good conversations with some of the students there in the years that followed. education under chávez was education for the creation of a “multipolar” world. for chávez, education either meant giving life support to capitalism’s profit-orientation in such a way as to bolster the remains of the welfare state, or education meant recreating a socialism for the twenty-first century. chávez was not concerned with incorporating the oppressed within the liberal-democratic framework, but rather in changing the framework through the reorganization of political space through education, that is, through making the state function in a nonstate mode by reorganizing the state from the bottom up through the education and initiatives of the popular majorities. socialism, chávez understood, could be sustained only by the subjective investment of those involved in the process. under chávez, venezuelan education was not only geared to help provide universal access to education (as venezuela’s poor had been shut out for generations), in particular, to those traditionally disadvantaged and/or excluded groups such as the urban and rural poor, those of african descent, and indigenous communities, but to help prepare the next generation of venezuelans to enhance the conditions of possibility of a socialist alternative to capitalism. venezuelan education aspired to be a combination of freirean-influenced critical and popular education, where horizontal and dialogic (subject-subject) relationships were pursued using holistic, integral and transdisciplinary pedagogies and methodologies based on andragogical principles for a liberating and the abode of educational production | 369 emancipatory education. under chávez, little attempt was made to distance educational reform from a politicized approach. education reform clearly directed itself towards an organic form of endogenous socialist development of the social-community context as part of a larger struggle for a participatory-protagonistic democracy. against the privatization of education and approaches hegemonized by the neoliberal education industry, and its consumerist role grounded in egoism, competition, elitism and alienation, venezuelan education aspired to be humanistic, democratic, participatory, multi-ethnic, pluri-cultural, pluri-lingual and intercultural. the development of a critical consciousness among the population was crucial, as was an integration of school, family and community in the decision-making process. venezuelan education favored a multidisciplinary approach linking practice and theory, curriculum and pedagogy, with the purpose of creating social, economic and political inclusion within a broader vision of endogenous and sustainable development, and with the larger goal of transforming a culture of economic dependency to a culture of community participation. this approach, for example, underwrote the courses at ubv where mentorship was provided to students who undertook projects in their local communities. over ninety-three percent of venezuelans aged fifteen and over can read and write. the venezuelan government has more than ninety institutions of higher education and remains committed to the idea that every citizen should be able to have a free education. education was conceived within an integrationist geo-political conception of latin american countries in a way that enabled latin americans to challenge economic dependency fostered on them by the imperialist powers, to resist colonialist globalization projects, and to create spaces where students could critically analyze local problems from a global perspective. chávez’s approach of municipalización refused to isolate universities from the rest of society and geographically de-concentrated the traditional university infrastructure and took the university to where the people are, to municipalities that had traditionally been underserved as well as factories and prisons. canadians and americas can learn a lot from these important initiatives. jc: as of late, you have become a poet. as someone who does cultural analysis, i’m wondering if you can help me develop a marxian take on the idea of “poetic knowledge”? how can we conceive “poetic knowledge” from a materialist standpoint? pm: i like your question but i haven’t produced any systematic analysis of poetic knowledge, although i am certainly drawn to the concept. 370 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education as an undergraduate at the university of toronto, i was influenced by the power of myths, rituals, symbols and this was motivated in part in my study of old english and middle english and eventually elizabethan drama. later, i incorporated my interest in rituals and symbols into my own ethnographic work, influenced mostly through the comparative symbology of the anthropologist victor turner. when i was 19 i met the poet allen ginsburg, and spent time with timothy leary, and i was very much involved in the yorkville scene in toronto. between san francisco, los angeles, and toronto, there was a lot going on. i was quite the fan of andre breton – and you know, the morning star anarchist rebellion work of guy debord and others. the situationists international influenced me. so did claire cahun. my interest continued up through to my reading of benjamin. recently i visited the trotsky museum (for the third time) in mexico city and was quite captivated of the photos of trotsky, diego rivera and breton. writing for academic journals is painful, and to make it less so, i often use images from my dreams and approach topics in a very unorthodox fashion. some readers like it, some don’t, some think it is pompous for an academic to view his or her work as art, others appreciate it. scattered throughout my dreams lately have been disturbing dystopian images; i recall one such dream recently where i discover myself squatting atop a gothic cathedral, whose gargoyles perched below my feet are spouting the blood of history’s time-enduring saints to quell the maelstrom of angry crowds below – crowds made up of the powerless, the forgotten, the excluded, victims caught in the crossfire of capitalism (the result of watching too many zombie or vampire films, no doubt). i peer down at the collarless, blood-covered, and spindle-shanked figures below, shafts of brilliant light slicing through the clouds that hover hesitatingly over the entangled gloom, and then the noxious exhalation and clouds of putrid effluvia wafting upwards from the dank and pungent sewer mist rises to meet the light, and suddenly everyone is playing and celebrating in the city streets, like neighborhood kids who have yanked open a fire hydrant during a heat wave. it is then, in my dream, that a heaven-sweeping yearning to return the planet back to its pristine state wells up in me and i leap into the shadows below. that’s about the time i usually wake up. right after i have been swallowed by the darkness. for me, the challenge becomes thrusting our heads higher than cathedrals, through the confines that limit the imagination, through the boundaries of terminate optimism to a boundless hope so that we can create a world beyond our corrupted self-interest. without the abode of educational production | 371 starting to sound or think like obama. we all have our dreams and nightmares and while i tend to pain our unmooredness or rudderlessness as dystopian it could easily be described under a different name. life does not unfold as some old sheet strewn across a brass bed in the dusky attic of history; our destinies as children, parents, and teachers do not flow unilaterally toward a single vertigo-inducing epiphany, some pyrotechnic explosion of iridescent and refulgent splendor where we lay becalmed, rocking on a silent sea of pure bliss, or where we are held speechless in some wind-washed grove of cedars, in the thrall of an unbridled, unsullied and undiluted love of incandescent intensity. our lives are not overseen by a handsome god who blithely sits atop a terra cotta pedestal and with guileless simplicity, quiet paternalism and unsmiling earnestness rules over his eager and fumbling brood, ever so often rumpling the curly heads of the rosy-cheeked cherubim and engaging the saints in blissful conversation. were there such a god, wrapped in the mantle of an otherworldly platonism and possessing neither moral obliquity nor guilt, who brings forth the world through supernatural volition alone, the world would be nothing but an echo of the divine mind. hunger could be ended by merely thinking of a full belly and sickness eliminated by a picture of perfect health. most of us, jordy, sling ourselves nervously back and forth across the great manichean divide of the drab of everyday existence, where, in our elemental contact with the world, our human desires, for better or for worse, tug at us like some glow-in-the-dark hustler in a carnival midway. we go hungry, we suffer, and we live in torment and witness most of the world’s population crumpled up in pain. we don’t have to witness a final miracle of eschatological significance to reclaim the world. what we do have to accomplish at this very moment is organizing our world to meet the basic needs of humanity. i don’t now if there is something poetic in this. if i have developed a poetics of revolution, then it attempts to endow critical pedagogy with a mission of reconciling love and justice. is love without justice meaningless? or could love without justice be complicit in the reproduction of deepseated structural injustices? i approach the bible as a work of great poetry. i find that i am able to reach students – don’t forget that i live in orange county, behind the orange curtain and there is an evangelical church on nearly every street corner – with the message of socialism through biblical references. recently i’ve re-engaged the work of the jesuit thinker, jose porfirio miranda, who argues with verve and passion that the official teachings 372 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education of the church falsify the gospel, since it is clear from reading the texts of the bible that jesus maintains an intransigent condemnation of the rich. even liberation theology gets this wrong when it asserts that there should be a “preferential option for the poor” – it is not an option, but, as miranda notes, it is an obligation. we cannot shirk from this obligation without imputation of culpability and still remain christians. there is no abstention from this struggle. the condition of the poor obliges a restitution since such a struggle is injustice writ large. jesus died for participating in political transgression aimed at liberating judea from the romans. according to miranda, jesus clearly was a communist, and this can convincingly be seen throughout the new testament but particularly in passages such as john 12:6, 13:29 and luke 8:1-3. jesus went so far as to make the renunciation of property a condition for entering the kingdom of god. when luke says, “happy the poor, for yours is the kingdom of god” (luke 6:20) and adds, “woe to you the rich, because you have received your comfort” (luke 6: 24), luke is repeating mark 10:25 when jesus warns that the rich cannot enter the kingdom. the bible makes clear through jesus’ own sayings that the kingdom is not the state of being after death; rather, the kingdom is now, here on earth. essentially jesus is saying, according to miranda, that the kingdom is a classless society. there is something revolutionary in this, and something immediately poetic. while history may be indifferent to the pontifications and bloviations of both church pulpit and lecture hall, there are few places now to turn for poetic inspiration given the commodification of the life world, not even to the receding forests where death mocks us, dancing on the leaves of jimsonweed (you can see it if you focus your imagination). jc: any final thoughts on “capitalism in the classroom” in the post2008 era of lean production and assembly line education? are there any cracks in the facade that give you hope that a different education is possible in a north american context? pm: i wrote cries from the corridor in the mid-1970s and it was published in 1980. it was a descriptive account of jane-finch that operated from an unconscious missionary, blaming-the-victim ideology. as i grew in my understanding, i remedied this situation by publishing cries from the corridor as life in schools nine years later, three years after schooling as a ritual performance was published, which was a analysis of a canadian catholic school. schooling as a ritual performance received the usual criticism but also many accolades as an example of critical ethnography, such as a glowing review in the london times. but i always the abode of educational production | 373 knew that life in schools would have a larger and more lasting readership, so moving ahead and correcting many mistakes with cries from the corridor was important to me, and having the opportunity to create a text that is not just about pedagogy but also pedagogical in its format was welcomed. i hope there is another edition down the road, and what that road will bring is forbiddingly unclear. i often urge teachers under the press of modern social competition linked to capitalism not to be deceived by the timeless tenor of capitalist life. but, of course, an overtone of guileful distinction creeps into the comparison of capitalism and socialism, especially here in the usa, where fox news equates socialism with the national socialist german workers’ party commonly known as the nazis. try talking about socialism in the corporate media and you won’t get far, unless you are on one of the very few progressive programming slots. recently i published an article, education agonistes: an epistle to the transnational capitalist class, where i drew attention to the development, integration and consolidation of the transnational capitalist class, transnational state capitalism and the emergence of the superclass. these ideas, of course, have been developed by bill robinson, jerry harris and others. some theorists think that the brics (india, china, brazil, south africa, and russia) offer a counterweight to the g-7 countries. the brics are really helping to integrate global capitalism worldwide, although their political strategies vary and are indeed complex and their politics might appear counter-hegemonic at times. so my position is that any counternarratives we want to put forward, any revolutionary practices we wish to engage, must grasp the nature of transnational state capitalism in the current world-historical context. take a look at the crisis of 2008. it was not created by the policies and whims of some cabal of banksters; rather the crisis was and is structurally rooted in the nature of capital. the crisis is structural. some rightwing critics agree that the crisis is indeed structural but they think it has to do with public debt. on the contrary, the root of the crisis can be found not only or mainly in the reality of public debt and political corruption – clearly there has been a contagion of frantic recklessness on the part of banksters and hedge fund slime-masters – but in issues of profitability and renewed capital accumulation. as capital consumes a greater share of the social wealth, the only source of profit and value becomes living labor and as long as the share of living labor relative to capital declines due to increases in productivity and technological innovation, there remains a tendency of the rate of profit to decline. and as peter hudis and others 374 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education have noted, we have seen since the 1970s an acute situation whereby living labor at the point of production has been replaced by new and advanced labor saving devices (and sometimes this pushes us towards exosomatic evolution where we are compelled to give subjective selves away by transforming ourselves into a machine). what we are seeing as a response to the falling rate of profit is a desperate and slovenly unimaginative attempt by governments to redistribute value from labor to capital by imposing economic austerity that is part and parcel of today’s immiseration capitalism. we can’t tame capitalism through planned production, or by trying to provoke the ruling class to recognize the clear intimation that their transitory powers are destroying the planet or by trying to resurrect keynes from his ashes scattered on the downs at tilton, in sussex; rather, we need to theorize how to abolish capitalism through a new kind of labor and human relations that has no use for value production. but we can’t abolish capitalism and leave in tact the ideological causes that engendered it, or we will build even more exploitative systems of survival. but the road must lead to socialism or we will have to contend with the consequences of social dissolution on a scale never before imagined, of social convulsion that will shred the planet of all life. look what happened in greece. bill robinson reveals how, in the wake of 2008, the transnational state failed to intervene to impose regulations on global finance capital. but it did intervene to impose costs of devalorization on labor. goldman sachs advised greek financial authorities to pour state funds into derivatives to make their national accounts look good. this way they could attract loans and bond purchases. but then, as robinson points out, goldman sachs began participating in “credit default swaps” (speculation on sovereign debt) which is a type of parallel derivative trading where they bet on the possibility that greece would default. the cost of borrowing for greece became prohibitive as a result, increasing interest rates dramatically. the whole situation raised the prospect of sovereign debt default while goldman sachs made enormous profits. and of course, all of this made it possible for the eu and imf to offer greece bridge loans on the basis of accepting massive austerity measures. the bailouts of transnational capital represent, as robinson notes, a transfer of the devaluation of capital onto labor, onto the working and popular classes. so here we are, teachers, educators, living in the belly of the beast, watch all of this going on. we watch the actions of alec, or the american legislative exchange council advancing precisely, this transnational corporate agenda. we see the abode of educational production | 375 connections between the state, corporations,, surveillance, militarization of the police. it is all frightening. when we look at the militarization of the police, we see the execution of young black males. as robinson has noted, african-americans went from being the super-exploited sector of the working class to being marginalized as employers switched from drawing on black labor to latino/a immigrant labor as a super-exploited workforce. african-americans are now structurally marginalized than they have ever been in recent history and they are slated for the schoolto-prison pipeline of mass incarceration and police and state terror. capital has fused with reactionary state power, and the white workingclass awaits its salvation from the tea party and their ilk. the road to socialism is made by the path of critical pedagogy. it is achieved by bringing teacher activists together with labor struggles at the point of production, political struggles at the point of reproduction, and political struggles in political society. kees van der pijl and bill robinson and others, have written more extensively about this. richard kahn, sam fassbinder, tina evans, david greewood, steve best and others have studied these implications in the context of ecopedagogy and animal rights. we have an enormous challenge before us. the best advice i can give to north americans who want to improve education is to fight poverty. study after study has shown that students fare better in societies that are more equal, where the gap between the rich and the poor has been appreciably closed. but even this is not enough. we must create a social universe where the idea of economic inequality is unthinkable. we will not be pulled into the future by a carriage with chestnut-coloured warmbloods with ribbon-braided tails. likely we will be pushed into the unknown by our own ignorance and by meekly following the coattails of those who purchase our labor-power. freire urges us to be a subject of history and not a casualty. the stakes are high. they always are. the quantitative tactics used to delegitimize a right to the city social justice movement in bogotá, colombia amy e. ritterbusch1 introduction on may 28, 2016, thousands of government officials, including swat squads, district police, and child protection officers, were involved in the violent intervention and subsequent elimination of ‘el bronx’, bogotá’s largest ‘olla’ or open air drug market and consumption scene. at least 2000 homeless citizens2 were violently displaced from ‘el bronx,’ scattered throughout the city and hundreds were then driven into the canal (see figure 1). these homeless citizens were contained in the canal in inhumane conditions for weeks. in may 2017, the organizations parces 3 and cpat 4 launched a human rights report titled ‘destapando la olla: informe sombra sobre la intervención en el bronx (uncovering the ‘olla’: shadow report on the intervention in ‘el bronx)’ on the brutal treatment of the homeless community during and after the police raid. the report reveals multiple forms of violence committed by the police, including physical violence, verbal violence, forced displacement, use of tear gas in confined space with limited air circulation, and death threats. after being driven into the canal, homeless individuals were subjected to violence by non-state actors as well, including being poisoned by 1 amy e. ritterbusch is an associate professor in the school of government at universidad de los andes in colombia. she was also a co-founder of the social justice organization parces in colombia. email: a.ritterbusch@uniandes.edu.co 2 the number of displaced homeless individuals varies widely (see ‘destapando la olla’ for more detail). 3 spanish acronym for ‘peers in action reaction against social exclusion’. parces was a bogotá-based social justice organization that worked to defend the human rights of historically marginalized urban communities, including homeless citizens, sex workers, drug users and other street-connected communities in colombia. parces is currently in the process of legal dissolution due to a complex intersection of circumstances beyond the scope of this article. 4 a bogotá-based think tank working toward the collective construction of development and peace in colombia in areas such as drug policy, critical urban planning and community-based harm reduction working with homeless drug users and other communities in colombia. 254 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice food that was donated by individuals from surrounding neighborhoods (el tiempo, 2016). additionally, after a heavy rainstorm, multiple homeless citizens were swept away as the water rose in the canal and one individual was found dead (ritterbusch, 2017).5 figure 1: canal in el bronx, bogotá, photograph by parces outreach team, 2016 during my fieldwork as part of the parces human rights team, i witnessed firsthand the inhumane conditions that hundreds of homeless individuals endured in the canal, including the humiliating gaze of thousands of passers-by by day and the violent intimidation tactics used by the police during 5 see the video launched along with the report ‘destapando la olla’ produced by sebastián león giraldo and gabriel delgado forero, available at https://vimeo.com/239706601. the quantitative tactics | 255 the night. in this paper, i examine the inequalities faced by bogotá’s homeless and explore my complex positionality as both a social justice activist and a professor at universidad de los andes, especially how multiple political pressures from inside and outside of academia complicated my work on the police raid in ‘el bronx’. the contextualization of the multiple complications that emerged in both my personal and professional life as an activist-scholar following the report launch, and that contributed, in part, to the demise of parces, is beyond the scope of this paper. i will, however, contextualize one of the dilemmas within my academic context through a close reading of a response published by colleagues at my university less than two weeks after the report launch titled “comentarios al documento: ‘destapando la olla: informe sombra sobre la intervención en el bronx,’ preparado por centro de pensamiento y acción para la transición cpat y pares en acción reacción contra la exclusión social – parces (comments on the document: uncovering the ‘olla’: shadow report on the intervention in ‘el bronx,’ prepared by cpat and parces).” the authors of the response are affiliated with the center for the study of security and drugs (cesed) within the economics department of universidad de los andes, a center closely connected to the department of security of the local government. the response includes a counter-analysis of the quantitative data presented in the report and also questions the methodological rigor of the qualitative data presented in the report. while i celebrate critical and constructive dialogue among academics, activists, and policy makers as a means of reaching across both methodological and ideological lines for social justice purposes and to promote progress in public science by drawing from multiple approaches to knowledge production, i am wary of work, such as this response issued by the cesed, that deepens injustice by delegitimizing the voices of social justice activists and the testimonies of homeless victims of violence. in this sense, in the following pages i respond to the critiques surrounding the qualitative approach employed by parces to document police violence and contextualize the urgent need for engaged and socially committed public science praxis that further justice and work against violence and inequality. 256 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice navigating the terrain between activism and scholarship within a social justice movement: my role in the report and in the fieldwork documenting human rights violations: i was on a brief sabbatical during the semester of the report launch and all of the preparations had to be done remotely. during the day, i locked my cell phone in the file cabinet of my office to avoid conversations with parces colleagues and to be able to focus on the writing that i had to accomplish before my return to the university. at night, i was on calls until three am or later working on the report with our parces outreach team and planning the report launch, among other tasks within the organization on other projects. this rhythm has characterized much of my academic life for the last six years since starting a tenure-track position at universidad de los andes. academic labor and teaching during the day, activism and the associated emotional labor between classes and faculty meetings and during nights and weekends. the debate surrounding authorship of the report ultimately came down to choosing a side, between parces and universidad de los andes. after long discussions with both report team members and the communications officials in my department at the university, i decided to place my name within the report using only my universidad de los andes title in order to avoid breaches of the conflict of interest clause that university employees sign annually (thus silencing, for audiences outside the political context of colombia, my parces affiliation). this was devastating on multiple levels, in terms of my convictions and practices as an activist-scholar, but also as i came to the realization that it would be difficult, moving forward, to speak out against injustice as both co-founder of parces and as an associate professor of the universidad de los andes. my social justice work and split positionality had never been so public as on the day of the report launch, with 220,000 individuals connected to the live streaming and the 500-person auditorium in my university overflowing with individuals from different worlds, including human rights activists, homeless drug users, sex workers, government officials, international human rights organizations and funders, and members of the university community, including students, professors and administrative staff. i have never felt so much pressure to uphold my responsibility to the marginalized communities that our report represented, to my parces colleagues, in terms of speaking up directly and publicly in the face of political intimidation, and to the school of government, in terms of representing the scientific rigor of my university and setting what was supposed to be a ‘neutral’ political tone for the event. even though i tried to the quantitative tactics | 257 set a ‘neutral’ tone, how neutral can you be when you have witnessed the inhumane treatment and brutal violence against a community that you have worked with and fought alongside for more than a decade? as i opened the report launch event, i had to wait for my hands to stop shaking in order to be able to read my opening speech. my nerves were shot after weeks of not sleeping in preparation for the event and trying to balance a writing rhythm during my sabbatical. when i embarked on a path of social justiceoriented work more than a decade ago, i understood the occupational hazards and risks that fighting against violence and injustice implies on both personal and professional levels; however, i was not prepared for the institutional and personal implications of denouncing violence. qualitative methodologies on the frontlines of social justice work the report launch and the report itself, as we expected, was controversial and spurred multiple public exchanges between members of both organizations and government officials, in mainstream media outlets and in twitter. parces team members experienced different emotional and security consequences due to the added political pressure and from this point forward things gradually started to fall apart, in terms of the cohesion of our team, as other complex organizational conflicts came to a head, and as the mental health of multiple team members began to crumble. although not all of these issues are linked to the report launch, the gradual deterioration of the social fabric of our social justice movement can be directly linked to all members’ emotional and physical exhaustion, to the generalized individual and collective burnout resulting from the demanding environment of urban injustice we had immersed ourselves within and to all team members being spread entirely too thin, across administrative and social justice responsibilities. there were also internal ideological conflicts that had been brewing for some time that contributed to the overall implosion of the organization post-report-launch. our qualitative fieldwork that informed the contribution of parces to the report (the ‘human rights: visions and voices from the canal’ chapter), involved deep immersion for months within the humanitarian crisis of homeless citizens struggling to survive in the canal. our team spent time during the daytime tracking the displacement of ‘bronx’ exiles and documenting their experiences of violence during the police raid and during the weeks in the canal. in multiple social justice projects of parces, our team has employed qualitative 258 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice data collection techniques to document human rights violations. in terms of the fieldwork conducted for the human rights report ‘destapando la olla’, we conducted participant observation during nine months following the police raid in 2016, 20 interviews with ‘bronx’ exiles and two focus groups in order to document the forced mobilities of the homeless through mapping exercises and group dialogue. one evening we stayed in the canal until five am in order to witness the intimidation tactics used by the police after the close of the public transportation system (the homeless were positioned in the canal directly below a highly-transited transmilenio bus station). these data collection techniques were implemented within a participatory action research (par) framework, which was one of the critical philosophies underpinning the praxis of parces. as contextualized in the shadow report, the par work of parces: “no es una metodología de investigación, es una posición ética frente al otro y frente a aquellas experiencias que no han sido tomadas en cuenta en la construcción y producción del conocimiento académico con el fin de catalizar procesos de justicia social…es no limitarse a estudiar el mundo sino cambiarlo, a construir un puente entre la academia y las comunidades y a enfrentar el mundo desde una conciencia crítica y desde la energía de una nueva generación ‘sentipensante’ en el sentido conceptualizado por fals borda …(is not a research methodology but rather an ethical position in relation to ‘others’ and in relation to those experiences that have not been accounted for in the construction and production of scientific knowledge [it is an ethical position that seeks] to catalyze social justice processes…it is not about studying the world but rather changing it, as a means of building a bridge between the academy and the communities and confronting the world through critical consciousness [driven by] the energy of the new generation of ‘feelingthinkers’ in the sense set forth by fals borda)” (tovar et al., 2017, 112). the quantitative tactics | 259 the participatory and emancipatory philosophies underpinning our critical practices and principles have guided our work with homeless individuals, sex workers, drug users and other street-connected communities over the years. in relation to these philosophies, the opening sentence of the response cites the ontological underpinnings of the report: “los autores señalan en el documento que su análisis ‘es un trabajo elaborado desde el corazón de dos organizaciones que pretende poner sobre la mesa el debate inexistente entre lo técnico y lo político que se nos plantea desde la opinión pública. esto, pues toda construcción de política pública obedece a una concepción de sociedad.’ siguiendo la misma premisa, con los comentarios que presentamos a continuación no pretendemos criticar la concepción de sociedad de los autores. por el contrario, procuramos abordar el debate acerca de las políticas públicas sobre la base de la rigurosidad metodológica. lo anterior implica que cada comentario se deriva de una revisión profunda del documento, que tiene en cuenta tanto los conceptos utilizados como el análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo (the authors discuss in the document that their analysis ‘is work elaborated from the heart of two organizations that place on the table the non-existent debate between the technical and the political, from the perspective of public opinion as the construction of public policy always emerges from a particular world view’…following the same logic, with these comments we do not intend to criticize the world view of the authors. to the contrary, we approach the debate about public policy based on methodological rigor. this implies that each comment is derived from a profound revision of the document and takes into account the concepts utilized as well as the quantitative and qualitative analysis)” (tobón and zuleta, 2017, 1). was this opening quote included as a means of contextualizing the purported lack of academic rigor by exposing that our writing came from the heart of a social justice struggle? the positioning of this quote at the beginning of the response, followed by a sentence that questions the methodological rigor of the 260 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice report, seems intentional and perhaps placed to foreshadow the authors’ central argument implying that engaged, qualitative scholarship and methodological rigor are mutually exclusive. it is also not clear that the response authors take into account the central concepts and focus of the report, as they claim to do. while the response focuses on generalized crime and homicide rates in the city, the report employed an international human rights legal framework to analyze the types of violations incurred and the central chapters focused on critical urban planning and the right to the city as the conceptual tenets underpinning the report. aligned with behar’s discussion of a critical anthropological practice she coins as ‘vulnerable observation,’ i position the research praxis that underpinned our qualitative fieldwork for the report in the following sense: “in the midst of a massacre, in the face of torture, in the eye of a hurricane, in the aftermath of an earthquake…as a storyteller opens her heart to a story listener, recounting hurts that cut deep and raw into the gullies of the self, do you, the observer, stay behind the lens of the camera, switch on the tape recorder, keep pen in hand?…if you can’t stop the horror, shouldn’t you at least document it?” (behar, 1996, 2). as soon as the horrors of police violence came to our attention in 2016, we began to document testimonies of violence through deeply immersed qualitative fieldwork. in terms of the tone and methodological arguments made in the response, i interpret the article published by my colleagues in the economics department in the context of the classic qualitative-quantitative paradigm war, which has historically “oscillated between philosophical and technical levels of discussion” (bryman, 2006, 111). scholars in multiple disciplines in the social sciences have contextualized the emergence of paradigm warfare as a “debate about quantitative versus qualitative research. others have believed it is a debate between ethnographic and experimental paradigms. still others have argued that it is about positivism and postpositivistic philosophies. other candidate ‘causes’ for the debate are political agendas” (kamil, 1995, 243; bryman, 2006). the response to the parces-cpat report seems to follow several of these characterizations of paradigm warfare, including disciplinary and methodological misinterpretations on epistemological and ontological grounds. as discussed in previous qualitative scholarship, “[o]f course any research may the quantitative tactics | 261 seem ‘poor’ if judged by criteria that are inappropriate to the approach. what could be said about quantitative research if we were to judge this broad church by criteria associated with qualitative research?” (walsh, 2011, 9). the definition of rigor in qualitative research cannot be grounded in quantitative criteria but rather should refer to “the need for a tool or instrument to be at least as complex, flexible, and multifaceted as the phenomena being studied. in other words, ‘it takes a complicated sensing device to register a complicated set of events’” (tracy, 2010, 841). reciprocity in research relations has also been used to conceptualize rigor in qualitative inquiry, in which “[t]he trustworthiness of our research practices is inherent in the politics of what we do at any and every stage of the research process” (harrison, macgibbon and morton, 2001, 324). in this sense, ‘rigor’ in qualitative research should also be reflected in our actions of accountability to the communities with which we work and who are represented by the qualitative data we share with the world. do we sit on urgent data that contains human rights violations or act publicly and quickly upon it? understanding rigor in qualitative work, especially in social justice and human rights settings where the stakes for human life and justice are high, requires that we “move past the methodological machismo into which many of us were socialized as graduate students” (bochner, 2017, 6). considering this context of paradigm warfare and ‘methodological machismo,’ it makes sense that the first tactic used to delegitimize the report content and our social justice work defending homeless citizens’ right to the city was to position the report as lacking methodological rigor. the authors state the following: “todas las metodologías, sean cualitativas o cuantitativas, tienen limitaciones. la rigurosidad en el análisis obliga, por una parte, a advertir las limitaciones y por otra, a realizar los análisis de la forma más completa posible de manera que se logre disminuir la incertidumbre sobre las hipótesis que se discuten. en varios apartes el informe hace omisión de estos aspectos. primero, como señalamos antes, muchos de los argumentos son construidos con base en entrevistas. dadas las características de la población objeto de análisis, la información de entrevistas exige ser complementada con un aparato empírico mucho más robusto y completo. esto es particularmente importante por las implicaciones que tiene su 262 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice interpretación como la verdad sobre lo ocurrido. los testimonios de abuso de autoridad y violencia policial son un ejemplo de esta falta de complemento…(all methodologies, whether qualitative or quantitative, have limitations. analytic rigor requires, on the one hand, to discuss the limitations, and on the other, to complete the analysis in the most complete way possible in order to diminish uncertainty about the hypotheses being discussed. in various parts of the report, there is omission of these issues. first, as we discussed before, many of the arguments are constructed on the basis of interviews. given the characteristics of the population who is the object of analysis, the information from the interviews need to be completed with an empirical apparatus much more robust and complete. this is particularly important due to the implications that the interpretation has as being the truth about what happened. the testimonies of abuse of authority and police violence are an example of this lack of complementary [information])…” (tobón and zuleta, 2017, 6). alluding to the necessity of “much more robust” methodologies is also reminiscent of paradigm warfare. the central objective of the qualitative fieldwork was to document and generate critical consciousness about the multiple human rights violations experienced by hundreds of homeless citizens. the interviews, focus groups and mapping exercises about the brutal treatment and multiple forms of violence exerted against the homeless through the inhumane use of tear gas, threats and forced displacement represent the window we have opened on the world of injustice. additionally, we combined classic forms of qualitative research in this project including observation research and individual and group-based data collection techniques. the tone of the response is clearly aligned with the “19th and 20th century’s obsession with prediction and control, its quest for certainty, and its epic preoccupation with technologies of distance, distrust of subjectivity, and desire to displace personal judgment with quantitative rules,” and a context where falsifiable hypotheses are methodologically necessary (bochner, 2017, 4). hypotheses and the linear logic of the scientific method are not relevant concepts for discussions of rigor or data quality within the reflexive, iterative the quantitative tactics | 263 logic inherent in what is referred to as “the qualitative research spiral” (glesne, 2006, 47). in the context of our fieldwork setting in the midst of brutalized and bleeding homeless citizens in the canal, prediction and control, and distance and objectivity would have been out of place and would have undoubtedly perpetuated more violence against participants. on the frontlines of a humanitarian crisis in the city, it is safe to say that a situated, participatory and socially committed methodology was the most appropriate approach to collecting data for the human rights report. the authors therefore use ‘more robust’ as code for ‘more quantitative.’ their underpinning argument implies that methodologies other than the engaged and embodied qualitative approaches used in the human rights report would have been better and more appropriate. yet this would have unjustly demanded further distance and dehumanization, allowing the violence of academic abstraction to join the other forms of violence visited upon the homeless from the comfort of a university office, and delegitimizing the years of human rights work and relationship building in which parces, cpat and other organizations have engaged across bogotá’s urban and political terrain. in terms of the quantitative critiques of ‘destapando la olla,’ the first five pages of the eight-page response present a counter analysis of the quantitative data presented in the report. the authors questioned whether homicides, theft, and automobile theft in bogotá (and specifically in areas adjacent to or affected by ‘el bronx’) had decreased or increased over the period 2014 to 2016. the authors present alternative quantitative analyses to those presented by cpat in the report suggesting that homicide rates, among other crimes, at the district scale and focusing specifically on neighborhoods affected by ‘el bronx’, decreased after the raid and subsequent elimination of ‘el bronx.’ while the quantitative counter analyses presented by cesed researchers provide valid re-interpretations of the analyses presented by cpat in the report, the political motivations of the response are questionable, given the close relationship between the cesed and the local administration. the cesed was previously directed by the current head of the security department of the local government, which is the government entity directly linked to the recent wave of repressive crackdowns on crime in bogotá. additionally, the authors focus primarily on the presentation of quantitative counter analyses to demonstrate how “la intervención pudo tener efectos positivos para la ciudad y la zona específica de influencia de el bronx (the intervention could have had positive effects for the city and the specific zone of 264 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice influence of ‘el bronx),” a statement that can also be interpreted as politically motivated (tobón and zuleta, 2017, 6). the response seemed to be strategically positioned and timed as a mechanism to undermine the qualitative work done by both cpat and parces, which was used to file a complaint against the peñalosa administration in the inter-american human rights courts. the authors’ focus on the re-interpretation and verification of homicide rates and other measures of crime, representing only 4 pages of the total 118 page content of ‘destapando la olla,’ seems to have been employed to distract readers from the central objective of the human rights report, which was to publicly denounce the human rights violations incurred during and after the violent police raid. it is also relevant to point out how the scales of analysis employed in the quantitative response to a principally qualitative report shift the focus from the state violence exerted against homeless bodies to the anonymous masses of citizens who can now enjoy a safer city. it is harrowing how hegemonic methodological practices, in this case and throughout the neoliberal academy, work to protect the interests of the urban elite and to buffer a system that deepens injustice in society by declaring which lives are worth defending in the name of security. what happened to listening to and prioritizing the voices of the victims of violence, which is a fundamental tenet of a ‘post-conflict’ colombia? the response to ‘destapando la olla’ is more focused on disqualifying than on active listening for justice. in this sense, it is not surprising that government framings of urban development and security initiatives in bogotá have been used historically in the city to smooth over institutional violence and human rights violations (see góngora and suárez, 2008; ritterbusch, 2015). as melissa wright (2012, 564) contextualizes in the context of northern mexico, “the violence that terrorized women and their families…exposed something awful about the state, about capitalism and about the hostility aimed at the country’s poor.” after years of fighting alongside the homeless for their right to the city in bogotá, it is disheartening to witness how influential segments of the academy, as accomplices of the state, continue to silence voices, erasing homeless lives and their connections to place from the accepted content of urban social memory. concluding reflections on the role of the academy in social justice struggles in conclusion, and in light of the controversy surrounding the ‘destapando la olla’ report, what is our role as academics in human rights and social justice struggles? as discussed by routledge and derickson, the bridging the quantitative tactics | 265 of activism and scholarship “can be an effective strategy for producing knowledges that ‘abide by’ (ismail, 2005) the struggles of marginalized communities in ways that reject, but do not ignore, the violent and imperialist histories of the academy…this entails commitments to channel resources and privileges afforded to academics for advancing the work of nonacademic collaborators” (routledge and derickson, 2015, 391). in my case, my role entailed a daily balancing act as a member of parces and as a professor of universidad de los andes working in the streets and in the classroom for social justice in bogotá. although my particular situation of activist-scholarship has reached a complicated crossroads, i will continue to move forward, forging a space for my work both individually and in future collective endeavors. as academics living and teaching in the context of extreme inequality in latin america in particular, and in the global context of increasing violence, segregation and injustice in general, we should consider spending our ‘free’ time at our desks figuring out how to better support our ‘nonacademic’ collaborators who are brave enough to question the status quo and to take on institutions and structures that generate violence against the most marginalized populations in our societies. references behar, r. (1996). the vulnerable observer: anthropology that breaks your heart.boston: beacon press. bochner, a. (2017). unfurling rigor: on continuity and change in qualitative inquiry, qualitative inquiry, 23(9), 1-10. bryman, a. (2006). paradigm peace and the implications for quality, international journal of social research methodology, 9(2), 111-126. el tiempo. (2016, august 31). denuncian que estarían envenenando a habitantes de la calle. el tiempo, retrieved october 24, 2016, from http://www.eltiempo.com/bogota/casos-de-envenenamiento-ahabitantes-de-calleen-bogota-31916 glesne, c. (2006). becoming qualitative researchers. new york: pearson. góngora, a. & suárez, c.j. (2008). por una bogotá sin mugre: violencia, vida y muerte en la cloaca urbana (for a bogotá without filth: violence, life and death in the urban sewer), universitas humanísticas, 66, 107-138. harrison, j., macgibbon, l., & morton, m. (2001). regimes of trustworthiness 266 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice in qualitative research: the rigors of reciprocity, qualitative inquiry, 7(3), 323-345. kamil, m. (1995). some alternatives to paradigm wars in literacy research, journal of reading behavior, 27(2), 243-261. ritterbusch, a. (2015). participatory methodologies in social memory: visualizing life histories for the right to the city in bogotá, colombia. in social memory and heritage tourism methodologies, eds., david butler, perry carter, stephen p. hanna, e. arnold modlin, amy e. potter, 129-150. new york: routledge. ritterbusch, a. (2017, september 28). who are the real targets of bogotá’s crackdown on crime? the conversation retrieved october 24, 2016, from https://theconversation.com/who-are-the-real-targets-of-bogotascrackdown-oncrime-83949 routledge, p. and derickson, k. d. (2015). situated solidarities and the practice of scholar-activism, environment and planning d: society and space, 33, 391-407. tobón, s. and zuleta, h. (2017). “comentarios al documento: ‘destapando la olla: informe sombra sobre la intervención en el bronx,’ preparado por centro de pensamiento y acción para la transición cpat y pares en acción reacción contra la exclusión social – parces (comments on the document: uncovering the ‘olla’: shadow report on the intervention in ‘el bronx,’ prepared by cpat and parces)”. bogotá: cesed, universidad de los andes. tovar, m., trejos, c., giraldo, y., delgado, g., lanz, a., lanz, s., león, s., lloreda, a., pardo, l., morales, a., & salamanca, j. (2017). destapando la olla: informe sombra sobre la intervención en el bronx (uncovering the ‘olla’: shadow report on the intervention in ‘el bronx’). bogotá: impresol ediciones. tracy, s. (2010). qualitative quality: eight ‘big-tent’ criteria for excellent qualitative research, qualitative inquiry, 16(10), 837-851. walsh, k. (2011). quantitative vs qualitative research: a false dichotomy, journal of research in nursing, 17(1), 9-11. wright, m. (2012). the 2010 antipode rgs-ibg lecture: war of interpretations, antipode, 44(3), 564-580. the quantitative tactics | 267 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review democracy at work: contract, status and post-industrial justice, by ruth dukes and wolfgang streeck. hoboken, new jersey: polity press, 2023. $22.95 u.s., paper. isbn: 978-1-509-548996. pages: 1-182. 1reviewed by gerard di trolio when looking at the contemporary workplace, it may seem quixotic to invoke the very twentieth century ideals of industrial citizenship and democracy. however, ruth dukes and wolfgang streeck have done an admirable job doing so in democracy at work: contract, status and post-industrial justice. their willingness to interrogate the underlying assumptions of labour law can help us to begin to think on how to make it relevant in an era of precarious work. dukes and streeck note how the employment relationship is more than just a contract. the legal status of an employee provides certain rights and responsibilities that protects them from the unequal nature of the employment contract and the power it gives to employers. for dukes and streeck, labour law from its origins through fordism and now neoliberalism has been an interplay where contract or status has been emphasized at different moments. fordism in the global north saw status have real power while in the neoliberal era, a contract has come to dominate the employment relationship (p. 58). the authors’ project in resurrecting the notion of industrial citizenship is to try to create as level of field as possible between employer and employee. that is why they employ the idea of the labour constitution. this concept refers to all the laws, institutions, statuses, and regimes that shape working conditions that merely studying the labour market cannot illuminate (p. 15). a labour constitution can be all the regulations and extensive regime of collective bargaining found under fordism or the employment contract dominated conditions found under neoliberalism. the book’s overview of the emergence of industrial citizenship helps to situate the theory properly in history. they compare the work of hugo sinzheimer and philip selznick who were major theorists of labour law in weimar germany and the postwar u.s. during the height of fordism, respectively. sinzheimer envisioned a state-managed capitalism for weimer germany where labour played a major role in regulating the employment relationship and had a say within firms. this vision was instituted by the social democrats in weimar germany (p. 43). but when the great depression came and before the nazis took power, sinzheimer declared a “crisis in labour law” because the capitalists no longer wanted to play by the rules and sought to decrease wages and workers found themselves with much less leverage due to high employment (p. 45). sinzheimer came to see that “the crisis of labour law was a crisis of the entire economic order.” selznick took a very different approach to the law. the work of selznick focused on the supposed progressive evolution of firms and how the law shaped it. selznick saw law as shaping social change through affirming or granting new rights (p. 29). but absent from his work was political economy or analysis of capitalism as a system. selznick’s work was very much a product of its time (p. 30), and the american optimism of the early 1960s would not last. dukes and streeck have examined these thinkers to demonstrate the limits of previous approaches to labour law. progressive labour law like that in weimar germany was unable to withstand the great depression, while the rise of neoliberalism did away with any ideas that firms were developing in a progressive direction in its dealings with labour. they reach the conclusion 1 gerard di trolio is phd candidate labour studies, mcmaster university. email: ditrolig@mcmaster.ca www.alternateroutes.ca 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research that for a labour constitution that gives the worker a say in shaping the workplace, there must also be an economic constitution that places limits on the market. building a society where industrial justice is a reality “may ultimately require a reconstruction of the economy, making it subservient to society” (p. 46). the strongest sections of the book deal with how a new labour constitution could be forged in our neoliberal age. dukes and streeck propose a “restoration of industrial justice from below” (p. 123). this is a helpful insight for several reasons. it would require workers not only to be organized but also maintain a militant posture. it was the assumed security of the postwar settlement that led unions to complacency, and they were caught on the backfoot when the neoliberal onslaught began. because of the flexibility of work arrangements that neoliberalism has created, the authors believe that different industries may have different forms of regulation based on the wishes of those who work in them. they compare gig worker, amazon warehouse worker, care worker, and university professor, all sectors where there has been much discussion of those workers being left behind. the authors envision policies that would allow for ample room for collective action so workers could experiment on what works for them based on their industry (p. 124). and they believe that occupational communities are still the ideal way for workers to come together to advance their interests (p. 122). ideally, these occupational communities would come together and articulate a fairer vision for workers in their industry in ways that is relevant to today. thus, industrial justice could be achieved for a heavily female workforce, like that of care workers in a manner that would not emphasize the male bread winner as was the case in the fordist era. the emphasis on occupational communities is not without its problems. as the authors admit, occupational communities can be exclusionary based on race, gender, and skill (p. 124). this leads to a major gap in the book’s theorization, the issue of migrant workers. very early on, the authors recognize that the experience of work is shaped by “gender, race, age, nationality, social class, and so on” (p. 11). they also recognize the challenges facing migrant workers, like those in the care sector (p. 103). while they recognize the super-exploitation in many cases of migrant workers, there is little to no discussion of the issue of granting some sort of permanent residency status or citizenship. in the global north, the reliance on migrant workers continues to increase as birth rates are stagnant. for an effective labour constitution to be enacted for workers that were previous excluded and to have unions that can make it happen, this is an issue of utmost importance. dualized labour markets and super-exploited migrant workers are major factors facing any movement for industrial justice that addresses the weaknesses of previous eras. a frank discussion of how to incorporate migrant workers as full members of a system of industrial citizenship is greatly needed. democracy at work is a book that is suitable for those who at least have some knowledge of labour law and industrial relations. many of the concepts could be difficult to grasp by those just beginning to learn about those areas, but it is useful to more advanced students as well as scholars and policymakers who are interested in studying how work can be improved. dukes and streeck have given us an important contribution to how we can think about transforming work and ultimately the economy as a whole in order to serve working people. the world market, ‘north-south’ relations, and neoliberalism bob jessop1 this article argues that marx, too, knew more about the future than his present. indeed, far from being merely a theorist of midto late-19th century capitalism, he elaborated the basic mechanisms, tendencies, counter-tendencies, contradictions, and social antagonisms that still shape capital accumulation and bourgeois societalization at the start of the 21st century. while the prophetic nature of his critique of political economy holds for many aspects of his work, here i explore two that have important implications for north-south relations. these comprise his analysis of the world market as the historical presupposition and posit of capital; and, relatedly, its role in generalizing and intensifying the contradictions of capital on a world scale. the continued relevance of marx’s analysis often gets disguised by use of the term ‘globalization’ to describe the current world economy, with its implication that there is a break between the present economic order and earlier periods of mercantilism, free trade imperialism, and imperialism based on territorial conquest and trade blocs. while mercantilist and imperialist features remain, neo-liberalism and financedominated accumulation have radically changed how the world market operates. accordingly, i consider how the recent wave of neoliberalization has promoted even more forcefully (and, in many cases, forcibly) world market integration under the logic of capital. indeed, neoliberalization can be considered as a process oriented to the completion of the world market. this does not abolish north-south relations; but it does transform them in complex ways as well as modify relations within the south. this has raised worries about the economic, political, and social risks generated by growing inequalities of wealth, income, and life-chances. 1 bob jessop is distinguished professor of sociology at lancaster university. he is best known for his contributions to state theory, critical political economy, critical governance studies, and the emerging field of cultural political economy. much of his work is available on researchgate and academia.edu. email: b.jessop@lancaster.ac.uk the world market, ‘north-south’ relations, and neoliberalism | 207 mercantilism, primitive accumulation and the world market the rise of the world market was a major theme in early and classical political economy from the 15th to 19th centuries. it rose in the context of the breakup of feudalism, the spread of a monetary economy, and the expansion of commerce regionally, nationally, and internationally. the world market thematic was elaborated in various doctrines of mercantilism, promoted above all by the representatives of merchant capital, members of the political and administrative elites in trading city-states, and the advisers and bureaucrats of emerging (and often warring) modern dynastic states. it was also linked to a strong commitment to state intervention to secure economic growth, laying the foundations for ‘the other canon’ of economic policy, with its renaissance economic imaginary, that has long been marginalised in the heartlands of neoclassical economics (reinert ,2007; cf. wood, 2003). marx and engels shared the late 18th and early 19th century concern with world society as a horizon of action and reflection, including such themes as world commerce, world constitution, world citizenship, world philanthropy, world peace, world literature, world philosophy, world civilization, and world history. they also criticized successive doctrines in classical political economy related to the mercantile phase of commercial expansion, the transfer of economic leadership to industrial capital, and the development of the world market. while these developments provide the global context in which all the laws of capital accumulation are actualized, marx and engels emphasized that this process was subject to leads, lags, and reversals. thus, in the german ideology (drafted in 1845-1846), they noted that: “[t]he movement of capital, although considerably accelerated, still remained, however, relatively slow. the splitting up of the world market into separate parts, each of which was exploited by a particular nation, the prevention of competition between the different nations, the clumsiness of production and the fact that finance was only evolving from its early stages, greatly impeded circulation” (marx and engels, 1976, 72). while foreign trade drove the world market in its infancy, its further development is radically reinforced by the growth of large-scale industry based on machinofacture. this 'universalised competition…established means of communication and the modern world market, subordinated trade to itself, 208 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice transformed all capital into industrial capital, and thus produced the rapid circulation (development of the financial system) and the centralization of capital’ (marx and engels, 1976, 73; see also 1998, 331). large-scale industry is constantly driven to conquer new markets that have not yet been formally or really subsumed under the logic of capital accumulation. thus, having initially driven accumulation on a world scale, foreign trade later became its product (1998, 235-6; cf. 1989, 58). thus: “it is not commerce…which revolutionises industry, but industry that constantly revolutionises commerce. commercial supremacy itself is now linked with the prevalence to a greater or lesser degree of conditions for a large industry. compare, for instance, england and holland. the history of the decline of holland as the ruling trading nation is the history of the subordination of merchant's capital to industrial capital” (1998, 331-2). the expanded reproduction of capital demands ‘that countries in which the capitalist mode of production is not developed, should consume and produce at a rate which suits the countries with the capitalist mode of production’ (1998, 256). the capital relation thereby comes to dominate the world market, which includes pre-capitalist, capitalist, and non-capitalist modes of production and/or forms of labour. this is reflected in two tendencies that transform centreperiphery relations at different scales up to and including the world market: “the surplus value produced at one point requires the production of surplus value at another point, for which it may be exchanged. … a condition of production based on capital is therefore the production of a constantly expanding periphery of circulation, whether the sphere is directly expanded, or whether more points within it become points of production” (1986, 334–5). indeed, “the more capitalistic production develops, the more it is forced to produce on a scale which has nothing to do with the immediate demand but depends on the constant expansion of the world market” (marx, 1989, 101; emphasis added). the world market, ‘north-south’ relations, and neoliberalism | 209 furthermore, the effective operation of the world market “requires the full development of the credit system and competition on the world market, the latter being the basis and vital element of capitalist production” (ibid, 1998, 110; cf. 1989, 151). as the limits of the domestic market are, for whatever reason, reached, it is only through the expansion of credit that capital can be employed profitably – by lending capital to other countries, domestic capital can create a market for its commodities. this is illustrated in a passage that anticipates the pathological co-dependence of the us and prc economies, marx writes: “the whole credit system, and the over-trading, overspeculation, etc., connected with it, rest upon the necessity to extend the range of, and to overcome the barrier to, circulation and exchange. this appears more colossal, more classical, in the relationship between peoples than in the relationship between individuals. thus e.g. englishmen compelled to lend to foreign nations to have them as their customers” (1986, 343, italics and capitalization in original). while the world market is the ultimate horizon of capital accumulation, integration proceeds in an uneven, combined manner that, using a contemporary scientific term, can be described as fractal. for patterns of uneven and combined development occur in self-similar ways on many scales. thus, while north-south relations can be identified on a global scale (at the level of the world economy), there are similar trends at various geoeconomic scales, whether these involve territories, places, or networked spaces of flows. in this context, marx explored, for example, differences in the national intensity and productivity of labour, the relative international values and prices of commodities produced in different national contexts, the relative international value of wages and money in social formations with different degrees of labour intensity and productivity, the incidence of surplus profits and unequal exchange, and so on (e.g., marx, 1996, 317-26). colonialism and imperialism the preceding analysis may give the impression that the world market emerged mainly through commerce, the development of world money, the extension of the credit system, and the drive of industrial capital to expand its 210 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice export markets. this is misleading because, as noted above, for marx, primitive accumulation was a crucial presupposition of the development and consolidation of the cmp. this connection was already noted in his early work. as lucia pradella notes, “marx’s notebooks show that he paid attention to the relationship between capitalism, colonialism and world history from the very beginning of his economic studies” (2017, 157). for example, he wrote: “direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credit, etc. without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no industry. it is slavery that gave the colonies their value; it is the colonies that created world trade, and it is world trade that is the precondition of large-scale industry” (marx, 1976a, 167). more generally, primitive accumulation involved the creation of a formally free labour force by transforming slaves, serfs and independent producers into wage labourers, enclosing the commons and dispossessing peasants, accumulating treasure for investment through expropriation, looting, enslavement, conquest, and murder at home and abroad (1996, 741). this process unfolded bloodily in overlapping waves and involved an increasingly refined machinery of expropriation and exploitation. marx considered that formal and informal colonies were “powerful levers for concentration of capital” (1996, 741) and further observed that: “the different moments of primitive accumulation distribute themselves now, more or less in chronological order, particularly over spain, portugal, holland, france, and england. in england at the end of the 17th century, they arrive at a systematical combination, embracing the colonies, the national debt, the modern mode of taxation, and the protectionist system. these methods depend in part on brute force, e.g., the colonial system. but they all employ the power of the state, the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten, hothouse fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition” (1996, 739). the world market, ‘north-south’ relations, and neoliberalism | 211 this process had a fractal character, occurring on many scales, and in diverse ways. this is illustrated in marx’s analyses of england’s exploitation of ireland (linked to the flow of the irish rural poor into english factories and cities), the colonization of india (leading to the first indian war of independence), the plunder of mexico, the failure of the european nations to fully subordinate china because of the close ties between agriculture and manufacturing (leading to the taiping rebellion by colonised peoples and the opium wars), the ruthless exploitation in plantation colonies producing crops exclusively for the export trade (such as the west indies), the development of colonies on virgin soil in public ownership and settled by free immigrants (such as the united states and australia) (1996, 741, 751n, 755). these different aspects of what would nowadays be called ‘north-south’ relations are an essential and revelatory dimension of his analysis of the formation and integration of the world market. indeed, marx remarked that “[t]he profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilisation lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies, where it goes naked” (1979, 222).2 the unicity of the world market and plurality of states the discussion of colonialism and imperialism, its various forms and modalities, and the rivalry of different european nations indicates another important feature of the dynamics of the world market. the shape of the emerging world market is related to “the particular pre-existing territorial features of the pre-capitalist system of reproduction and the structure of its administrative apparatus of rule” (von braunmühl, 1978, 167; cf. gerstenberger, 2007). initially the nature of pre-capitalist states was critical for the primitive accumulation of capital (through external conquest, plunder, and colonies as well as dispossession of pre-capitalist classes at home), the creation of a home market, the development of foreign trade, the relation between national monies, international currencies, and an emergent world money, and, finally, the global division of labour. different modes of insertion into the world market at different stages in its development are associated with quite different forms of capitalism and political regime. for the world market “is not only the domestic 2 cited by pradella (2017: 153). this section draws more generally on the work of lucia pradella, whose ma and phd theses first drew my attention to the importance of marx’s notebooks for the analysis of the world market. 212 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice market in relation to all the foreign markets existing outside it, but at the same time the domestic market of all foreign markets, as, in turn, components of the home market” (marx, 1986, 210, capitalization in original). as bonefeld notes, “[t]he establishment of the national state and world market were both products of the same social struggles that revolutionized feudal social relations” (1992, 41). there is nonetheless a crucial difference between these processes. the world market is tendentially unified and integrated through the logic of profit-oriented, market-mediated competition based on trade, financial flows, and (capitalist) commodity production. in contrast, the world political system is marked by a “motley diversity” of states (marx 1989, 95) that tend to co-exist as hostile rivals, if not as deadly enemies. the world of states also involves centre-periphery and other hierarchical relations. it comprises a plurality of quite varied states of different size, capacities, and ability to defend the interests of their respective capitals and/or the capitals operating within the economic space(s) that they seek to govern. but these states no more exist in isolation from each other than do local, regional, or national markets. the world market and the world of states are therefore subject to different logics that nonetheless interact to shape the emerging dynamic of capital accumulation on a world scale. these aspects are closely interrelated, but one is not reducible to the other, with real scope for disjunctions. in their historical analyses, marx and engels provided rich and detailed studies of how this interaction unfolds in specific cases and affects the overall development of the world market. on north-south relations, the ‘third world’ and ‘global south’ in contrast to marx’s emphasis on the world market as the framework in which to explore capital accumulation, other approaches focus on the plurality of territorial states and their role in fragmenting the world market. a comment by jung-en woo (1991) illustrates what is at stake here. she claimed that different economic and political institutions characterize social formations in the ‘south’ compared with those in the ‘north’ and that this justifies different theoretical objects or lines of investigation. she noted that, in north east asia and parts of south (east) asia, the developmental state has attracted attention; in latin america and, one might add, parts of north and south africa, an important research focus has been the dependent capitalist state. this is reflected most recently in debates on extractivism and post-extractivism. to her list one might add the rentier state as an important theme in the middle east and other the world market, ‘north-south’ relations, and neoliberalism | 213 resource-rich regions; and, in south asia, africa, and east asia, there is important work on the commonalities and specificities of post-colonial societies. while such analyses reflect the variegated nature of statehood, they sometimes assume an ideal-typical western state form and neglect the variability of state formation and development that also occurs in the north. while eurocentrism and a metropolitan bias must be rejected, this does not justify other essentialist forms of analysis such as ‘southern theory’, ‘indigenous social science’, ‘epistemologies of the south’ or ‘subaltern studies’ (see for example, connell, 2007, joseph 1991, sousa santos, 2014, and spivak, 1987 respectively). these approaches critique the false universalism of the western canon in the humanities and social sciences and their metrocentric accounts of modernity and elision of non-european worlds and their exploitation by metropolitan centres. in response, they privilege the standpoint of those located in the global south or subaltern positions as somehow more authentic or valid than metrocentric analyses. while sympathetic to this critique and efforts to establish a distinctive ‘global south’ theoretical or practical perspective, i consider it is more important to view both ‘north’ and ‘south’ in terms of the world market, the world polity, and world society. however, just as we must reject an unreflecting metrocentrism, caution is required regarding the ‘global south’ as a ‘geopolitical imaginary’ with wider connotations. we should ask: why this term, why now, with which forces does it resonate, what material and ideal interests does it serve, can it empower subaltern groups, how is it being translated into academic research and/or policy? the term displaced the ‘third world’ or ‘developing world’ from 1969 and really took off during the mid-2000s. noting this, tobias schwarz observes: “by talking about the global south, one did not constantly have to stress that we currently experience a world order that grew out of european colonial domination over most of the world from c1880-1914, resulting in today’s unequal distribution of economic and political power on a global scale” (schwarz, 2015, 11). however, as schwarz notes, these radical connotations can readily disappear when the term is integrated into mainstream academic and official discourse – replacing ‘developing countries’. this serves to divert attention from empire, (neo-)colonialism, and (neo-)imperialism as more appropriate entry-points for 214 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice exploring ‘north-south’, ‘north-north’, or ‘south-south’ relations. this is important in historical analyses, studies of the path-dependent effects of past imperial or colonial encounters, and research on current relations of economic dependency and dependent states. this is one of the lessons of the latin american dependency school and its application to other post-colonial regions locked into a dependent economic, political, and socio-cultural relationship between industrialized and peripheral countries. dependentistas examined the diverse national social formations by assessing the historical overlap of capitalist with pre-capitalist modes of production and/or different kinds of dependent insertion into the world market (see cardoso and faletto, 1969). however, their approach has been strongly criticized by enrique dussel for treating dependency “not as an international social relation and a transfer of surplus-value between total national capitals of different organic composition, in the framework of competition in the world order, but through its particular forms or merely by means of aspects that are secondary phenomena” (1990, 63, italics in original). dussel then presents an account that draws on the 1861-63 draft manuscript for capital to suggest how dependency can be explained starting from the fundamental categories of his critique of political economy. based on these observations, a relevant solution would involve the following steps: (1) avoid core definitions that posit the normality or normative force of european or other ‘northern’ cases; (2) develop a conceptual vocabulary that permits stepwise discovery of the overdetermined complexity of cases; and (3) emphasize the contingent variation of cases grounded in their place in progressively larger social configurations with due regard to their diverse spatiotemporalities. i now explore this in terms of variegated capitalism as one way to explore the contrast between capital’s inherent tendency to develop the world market and the multiple contingencies that condition its tendential realization. variegated capitalism variegation is an important concept for thinking about capital accumulation, political domination, and neoliberalization. it was introduced as a considered response to the risks involved in treating varieties of capitalism in mutual isolation or assuming that there is a single world system with its own master logic that governs the place and mobility of different economic spaces therein. the notion of variegation posits a world market divided into a tangled, unevenly developing hierarchy of local, regional, national, transnational, and supranational markets corresponding to the territories associated with given the world market, ‘north-south’ relations, and neoliberalism | 215 states. it further posits that: (1) there is often wide variation across sectors and/or regions within any individual national economy, casting doubt on the national economy as a valid analytical unit; (2) other socio-spatial configurations are important too, such as emerging supranational blocs, global city networks, core-periphery relations, or global commodity chains; (3) the internal coherence of economic spaces and their governance must be combined with research on rivalry, competition, antagonism, complementarity, or co-evolution across models of capitalism in a wider division of labour; (4) in addition to horizontal relations between regions or nations, ‘vertical’ relations between core and periphery also matter; and (5) different economic spaces and their associated political regimes have unequal capacities to shape the world market and to exploit, displace and/or defer their respective problems, conflicts, and crisistendencies. all of this implies that local, regional, or national varieties of capitalism must be linked to the dynamics of the world market and the interstate system taking account of the insertion of economic spaces and states into the hierarchically structured world system. in short, the approach adopted here assumes an emerging single, but fractally organized, variegated capitalism. this is the product of structural coupling, co-evolution, complementarities, rivalries, tensions, and antagonisms among varieties of capitalism. they are coupled not only through their territorial instantiation (i.e., their articulation within a world of states) but also through entanglements at different scales and through networks (i.e., their respective relations to spatial and scalar divisions of labour and spaces of flows). these processes set limits to compossible varieties of capitalism within a given spacetime envelope – whether this be local, regional, national, supranational, international, or global. some varieties of capitalism in the world market (or lesser scales) cause more problems (or create more ‘disharmonies’) for other varieties than they can cause for it in the constantly changing, still emerging ‘ecological system’ that is formed through the interaction of all these varieties. the most influential states are those that shape the parameters of competition – this was the usa in the post-war international order and, presently, we can observe rivalries between the usa, the european union, and an ascending china. this rivalry is also played out in interesting ways in latin america. how varieties of capitalism are embedded in variegated capitalism affects how states shape and are shaped by the variegated global order as they seek to govern, guide or adapt to its development. 216 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice overall this forces states at different scales to seek to manage the tension between (1) potentially mobile capital’s interests in reducing its placedependency and/or liberating itself from temporal constraints and (2) the state's interests in fixing (allegedly beneficial) capital in its own territory and rendering capital's temporal horizons and rhythms compatible with statal and/or political routines, temporalities, and crisis-tendencies. one response to such pressures is the rise at different scales of ‘competition states’. these not only promote economic competitiveness narrowly conceived but also seek to subordinate many areas previously seen as ‘extra-economic’ to the currently alleged imperatives of capital accumulation (jessop, 2002, 95-139). there are different forms of competition state that reflect the different modalities of competitiveness, how they are integrated, if at all, into accumulation strategies and state projects, and states’ abilities to promote these strategies and projects. for example, the listian workfare national state is oriented to catch-up competitiveness and the horizon for catching-up changes over time. in turn, the prebischian populist national state was oriented to counteracting adverse terms of trade between primary exports and industrial imports and sought, frequently with limited success, to enhance national competitiveness through importsubstitution industrialization behind tariff walls. world market integration is a contradictory process. on the one hand, it enhances capital’s capacity to defer and/or displace its internal contradictions by increasing the scope of its operations on a global scale, reinforcing its capacities to disembed certain of its operations from local material, social, and spatio-temporal constraints, enabling it to deepen the spatial and scalar divisions of labour, creating more opportunities for moving up, down, and across scales, commodifying and securitizing the future, and re-articulating different time horizons. it also weakens the capacity of organized labour to resist economic exploitation through concerted subaltern action across different fields. on the other hand, these enhanced capacities greatly reinforce tendencies to uneven development as the search continues for new spatio-temporal fixes to move the costs of capitalist contradictions elsewhere and/or into the future to create local zones of stability. it also undermines the power of national states to regulate economic activities within mainly national frameworks. and, insofar as it decreases the power of the working class, it increases inequalities of income and wealth, strengthens the potential for overproduction and weak demand, and, as is now widely recognized in critical political economy, creates the potential for financialization and finance-dominated accumulation as a driving force of even the world market, ‘north-south’ relations, and neoliberalism | 217 further – but destabilizing – world market integration. it is important to reject the idea that relatively smooth and harmonious economic growth in some places could ever be generalized throughout the world market. for capital accumulation proceeds through a process of uneven and combined development that creates zones of instability and crisis as both a condition and effect of relatively crisis-free expansion elsewhere. increasing integration of the world market also undermines the power of national states to regulate economic activities within mainly national frameworks. as the ultimate limit to capital is capital itself, the expansion and integration of a relatively unfettered (or disembedded) world market enhances the scope for its contradictions to be realized as well as for resistance to become global. variegated neoliberalism: neoliberalism is also variegated and for similar reasons. its four main forms arose as reactions to the crisis of post-world war ii models of capitalist development: atlantic fordism in advanced capitalist economies, import-substitution industrialization in latin america and subsaharan africa, export-oriented growth in east asia, and, in a different but related context, state socialism in the soviet bloc, china, and indo-china. the most radical form was neoliberal system transformation in the successor states that emerged from the former soviet bloc: russia and poland are two cases with contrasting outcomes. next in the continuum of cases come neoliberal regime shifts. breaking with the post-war atlantic fordist compromise between capital and labour, these shifts introduced liberalization, deregulation, privatization, market proxies in the public sector, internationalization, and cuts in direct taxation. these policies were intended to modify the balance of forces in favour of capital and have largely succeeded in this regard. well-known cases are thatcherism and reaganism. while identified with right-wing parties, neoliberal regime shifts have also been supported by centre-left parties, often under a ‘third way’ label. moreover, with help from northern friends and/or military dictatorships, many latin american economies undertook such shifts (albeit in response to crises in the import-substitution industrialization model, notably indebtedness and inflation) from the 1970s to the-1990s. whereas the second form is largely rooted in domestic politics, the third comprises economic restructuring processes and regime shifts that were primarily imposed from outside by transnational economic institutions and organizations backed by leading capitalist powers and their local partners. this form typically involves neoliberal policies in line with the ‘washington consensus’ as part of a quid pro quo for financial and other assistance to crisis218 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice ridden economies in parts of eastern and central europe, latin america, asia and africa (e.g., gowan, 1996; gwynne and kay, 2000; robinson, 2008; sader, 2008; veltmeyer, petras and vieux, 1997). whether neoliberalism originates mainly in domestic or external political processes and whether its associated policies are pursued through democratic or authoritarian political devices and measures, the policies adopted in the second and third forms of neoliberalism often overlap when they occur outside advanced capitalist economies. fourth, there are more pragmatic and potentially reversible neoliberal policy adjustments. these comprise modest changes deemed necessary to maintain alternative economic and social models in the face of internationalization and a global shift in the balance of forces. the nordic social democracies and rhenish capitalism provide examples. despite the fluctuating political fortunes of the parties more favourably included towards them, these adjustments can nonetheless lead to the development of a neoliberal regime through the gradual accumulation of changes that are never (fully) reversed. neoliberal system transformation largely failed as a ‘grand project’. neoliberal regime shifts required flanking and supplementing by ‘third way’ policies, networks, and public-private partnerships. neoliberal policy adjustments were sometimes reversed, sometimes gradually cumulated. the quack cure of neoliberal structural adjustment often aggravated the underlying disease, leading, in latin america, to the revival of populist politics and demands that governments distance themselves from the neoliberal excesses. with the waning of the pink wave in latin america, however, neoliberalism is being rolled out yet again, reinforcing its residual, path-dependent legacies in that region as elsewhere. capital’s contradictions and neoliberalism the world market is “in which production is posited as a totality and all its moments also, but in which simultaneously all contradictions are set in motion” (marx, 1986, 160, italics added). but what are these contradictions? marx offers several accounts that are not fully consistent. but we can distinguish two main approaches. the first rests on the general principles of the materialist approach to history and posits a contradiction that takes different forms in different epochs: the emergent contradiction between the development of the forces of production and the social relations of production, such that the latter become a fetter on the further development of the former. in the cmp, this is expressed in the contradiction between the growing socialization of productive the world market, ‘north-south’ relations, and neoliberalism | 219 forces through the deepening of the social division of labour on a global scale and the continuing private ownership and control of the forces of production and the appropriation of profit. more important for present purposes, however, are marx’s remarks on the contradictions specific to the capitalist mode of production (cmp) – starting with the contradiction in its economic cell form, namely, the commodity, and related forms in the capital relation. central to the commodity form is the contradiction between the usevalue and exchange-value aspects. among analogous contradictions are that: productive capital is both abstract value in motion (notably in the form of realized profits available for reinvestment) and a concrete stock of already invested timeand place-specific assets in the course of being valorized; the worker is both an abstract unit of labour-power substitutable by other such units (or, indeed, other factors of production) and a concrete individual (or member of a concrete collective workforce) with specific skills, knowledge and creativity; wages are both a cost of production and a source of demand; money functions both as an international currency exchangeable against other currencies (ideally in stateless space) and as national money circulating within national societies (or pluri-national monetary blocs) and subject to a measure of state control; land functions both as a form of property (based on the private appropriation of nature) deployed in terms of expected revenues in the form of rent and as a natural resource (modified by past actions) that is more or less renewable and recyclable; knowledge is both the basis of intellectual property rights and a collective resource (the intellectual commons) (for more details, see jessop, 2002). neo-liberalism is significant in the development of the world market and, a fortiori, in generalizing the contradictions of the capital relation. recalling the argument in the german ideology about the incomplete development of the world market, we might conclude that the world-historical ‘achievement’ of neoliberalism is to reduce (without ever eliminating) two of the four obstacles to the development of the world market. these are the frictions and constraints on capital accumulation deriving from states as ‘national power containers’ and the persistence of ‘inefficient’ financial markets. neo-liberalism thereby frees money capital (and its associated forms of credit) as the most abstract expression of the capital relation to move around the world market to maximize its chances for profit. it increases the emphasis on speed, acceleration, and turnover time and thereby strengthens the dominance of exchange-value over use-value in the global economy, reinforces capital’s short-term ‘indifference’ to its natural and 220 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice social environment, and changes the extra-economic relations that facilitate the global expansion of capitalism and weaken resistance to these effects. this helps in turn to emancipate the monetary profit-oriented, marketmediated moment of capital accumulation from extra-economic and spatiotemporal constraints, increases the emphasis on speed, acceleration, and turnover time, and enhances capital's capacity to escape the control of other systems insofar as these are still territorially differentiated and fragmented. this generalization and intensification of contradictions can be seen in the ways that the extension, deepening, and tendential completion of the world market has been promoted in the shadow of neo-liberalism. the latter has reinforced the exchange-value moments (or, stated subjectively, the profit motive) over the use-value moments (or substantive aspects) of the capital relation. the typical policies of neo-liberalism comprise: liberalization, deregulation, privatization, the use of market proxies in the residual state sector, internationalization, and the lowering of direct taxes. separately and together these measures privilege value in motion (i.e., liquid capital), the treatment of workers as disposable and substitutable factors of production, the wage – including the social wage – as a cost of (international) production, money as international currency (especially due to the increased importance of derivatives), nature as a commodity, and knowledge as intellectual property. moreover, as capital becomes increasingly freed from the constraints of national power containers and increasingly disembedded from other systems, unrestrained competition to lower socially necessary labour-time, socially necessary turnover time, and naturally necessary production time (i.e., the reproduction time of ‘nature’ as a source of wealth) becomes an ever more powerful driving force in the dynamic of capital accumulation. supported by an emphasis on shareholder value, this particularly benefits hypermobile financial capital, reinforcing its competitiveness and enhancing its abilities to displace and defer problems onto other economic actors and interests, other systems, and the natural environment. yet this will also enhance the scope for the contradictions and dilemmas of a relatively unfettered (or disembedded) capitalism to shape the operation of other systems and may thereby undermine crucial extra-economic conditions for accumulation (jessop, 2007). the world market and crisis the dominance of neo-liberalism has introduced some interesting new features into the dynamic of the world market that set it apart from earlier the world market, ‘north-south’ relations, and neoliberalism | 221 periods of free trade imperialism as well as from more overtly statist periods of capitalist development. in particular, neo-liberal globalization strengthens capital's chances of avoiding the structural constraints of other institutional orders and their control efforts, thereby increasing its ‘indifference’ to its social environment. the continuing internationalization and globalization, especially of financial capital, are crucial processes in enabling the logic of capital to operate more completely than ever before on a global scale. whether there is a solution to these problems is discussed in the closing sections of my contribution, which address the nature of world society, global civil society, and questions of institutional design for a better future. credit creation has a major role in promoting the profitable expansion of capital. in turn, however, profit fluctuations in the real economy (which is always-already monetary in marx’s analysis) are critical to monetary crises that are directly rooted in industrial and commercial crisis. these crises occur when declining profits lead to a liquidity-driven ‘dash for cash’ or, alternatively, encourage speculative investments in the financial sector in the search for higher profits. regarding the rush for hard money, marx noted that: “in times of a squeeze, when credit contracts or ceases entirely, money suddenly stands as the only means of payment as the only means of payment and true existence of value in absolute opposition to all other commodities. hence the universal devaluation of commodities. the difficulty or even impossibility of transforming them into money ... for a few millions in money, many millions in commodities must therefore be sacrificed. this is inevitable under capitalist production ... as long as the social character of labour appears as the money existence of commodities, and thus as a thing external to actual production, money crises – independent of or as an intensification of actual [in the real economy] crises – are inevitable” (marx, 1998, 514). crises can also arise directly from the circuits of financial capital, especially when capitalist credit relations become uncoupled from the circuits of productive capital due to the expansion of fictitious capital. marx related this to finance and speculation. an excess of fictitious capital (its oversupply) can lead to the dissociation between changes in fictitious capital and underlying 222 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice movements in the real economy. accordingly, “[a]ll connection with the actual expansion process of capital is thus completely lost, and the conception of capital as something with automatic self-expansion properties is thereby strengthened” (marx, 1998, 464; cf. 828). such monetary or financial crises can affect the wider economy through contagion and feedback effects. once again, then, the contradictions at the heart of the capital relation are expressed in the circuits of capital – this time in the contradictions of the money form and its role in the expanded reproduction of capital. while not fully developed, key elements for a marxist analysis of these issues are provided in the second and third volumes of capital and theories of surplus value (1989: 103-53). money forms, functions, and derivatives: one aspect of the rise of neoliberalism is financialization, including the development of securitization and, especially, the rise of derivatives and their massive expansion. for, as marx anticipated (not only in his remarks on the world market but also in his remarks on fictitious capital and the contradiction between capital as value and capital as property), this generalizes and intensifies competition in relation to means of production, money capital, specific capitals as units of competition, and social capital. derivatives are the most generalized form of this capacity. they have a growing role in the commensuration of all investment opportunities in the world market (bryan and rafferty, 2006). this activates “all the contradictions” of the capital relation (marx, 1989, 140, 163). referring again to the german ideology on the early limits to the development of the world market, we could say that derivatives greatly facilitate its completion. for they tend to: • overcome the frictions of national boundaries, • open national economies to foreign competition, • help to overcome the clumsiness of production, • enhance the role of finance in promoting competition derivatives as forms of financial innovation integrate production on a world scale and, via their role in all the functions of money that marx identified, they also contribute to market completion in real time. yet derivatives represent a fetishized form of money as money and money as capital. as more-or-less rarefied forms of fictitious capital, they bear little relation to the movement of real values. indeed, they reinforce the separation between (1) the general movement of capital based on valorization and the generation of surplus-value the world market, ‘north-south’ relations, and neoliberalism | 223 anchored in production and (2) the more superficial real-world appearances of money prices and profit, which nonetheless have consequences for all circuits of capital. while confidence in the money-form is retained, the credit system can create asset bubbles and fuel self-feeding speculation. this in turn can divert capital from productive investment into short-term speculation oriented towards fluctuations in prices of fictitious capital rather than movements in the real (but still monetary) economy – with increasing volatility and, for those able to exploit volatility, opportunities for superprofits based on hedging, shorting, front-running, and so forth: “credit…crowds out money and usurps its place. it is faith in the social character of production which allows the money-form of products to assume the aspect of something that is only evanescent and ideal, something merely imaginative” (marx, 1998, 568). the destructive impact of financialization is reinforced by the neo-liberal approach to accumulation through dispossession (especially the politicallylicensed plundering of public assets and the intellectual commons) and the dynamic of uneven development (enabling financial capital to move on when the disastrous effects of financialization weaken those productive capitals that must be valorised in particular times and places). yet this also enhances the scope for the contradictions and dilemmas of a relatively unfettered (or disembedded) capitalism to shape the operation of other systems and may thereby undermine crucial extra-economic conditions for accumulation. indeed, in contrast with fordism and the post-fordist knowledge-based economy, the post-fordist neo-liberal financial regime militates against the long-term structured coherence of accumulation regimes and their modes of regulation. in particular, it weakens the spatio-temporal fixes with which regimes based on the primacy of productive capital manage the contradictions between fixity and motion to produce zones of relative stability by deferring and displacing their effects. this is shown in the impact of financialization not only in atlantic fordism but also in the export-oriented economies of east asian and the viability of import-substitution industrialization strategies in latin america and africa. conclusion this article has not directly addressed north-south relations, the third world, or the global south. each of these notions represents specific political and ideological imaginaries in the post-war era with specific geoeconomic and 224 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice geopolitical functions. they also serve to disguise the continuities in the world market from the early days of mercantilism, protectionism, colonization, and primitive accumulation. this does not mean that nothing has changed through the uneven development of the world market, changes in the forms of unequal exchange as long waves of technological and economic development succeed and overlap each other, shifts in economic and political hegemony among advanced capitalist powers, and the reordering of relations within the imperialist heartlands as well as between the heartlands, contending powers in the semiperiphery, and the most marginal economic and social spaces. hegemony has shifted from the venetian republic via the dutch commercial empire, the british empire (with its informal and formal, internal and external colonies and its capacity to dominate the world market), the ascendant american empire (consolidated after the second world war but prefigured in latin america, the philippines, and elsewhere), the challenge from an integrating european union and militarily dependent japan, and, most recently, the rise of china (with its ambitions to re-integrate and promote the eurasian heartland as well as huge investments in latin america and africa and growing influence in europe and north america). the hierarchies in the semiperiphery have also been reshuffled. this was recently manifested in the displacement of the centres of economic gravity linked to the rise of the brics (brazil-russia-india-china-south africa) economies and their efforts to coordinate their position as middle powers. however, the distinctive crisistendencies of their respective varieties of capitalism and the constraints associated with their differential insertion into the variegated world market has meant that only china has fulfilled the expectations hyped in the bric(s) story first narrated after the 9/11 attack on the twin towers of the world trade centre in 2001. but these movements occur on many scales and not simply at the level of inter-state economic and political relations. these complexities are important. nonetheless, when exploring the world market, as marx argued, the more integrated the world market becomes, the less scope there is to resolve crises by extending capitalist relations into previously marginal economic zones. thus, crises will, “…become more frequent and more violent, if only because, as the mass of production, and consequently the need for extended markets, grows, the world market becomes more and more contracted, fewer and fewer [new] markets remain available for exploitation, since every the world market, ‘north-south’ relations, and neoliberalism | 225 preceding crisis has subjected to world trade a market hitherto unconquered or only superficially exploited” (marx 1977: 228). one aspect of these increasingly global and severe contradictions and crisistendencies is, as marx anticipated, the environmental problems inherent in the treadmill of capital accumulation as a mode of appropriating and transforming nature that has no formal limits – but, as we are experiencing, hugely constraining material limits (cf. burkett, 1999; foster, 2000; saito, 2017). eventually, marx argued, the repeated displacement of crisis through the intensive and extensive development of capital would finally reach its limit and increasingly severe general world crises would erupt. this would point to the need to move beyond capitalism to a new historical form of production (marx, 1986, 160) references bonefeld, w. 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(2003). the empire of capital, london: verso. 228 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice editorial introduction covid-19, capitalism and contagion “towards the end of the twentieth century a sickness struck the world. not everyone died, but all suffered from it.” (samir amin, 2003, 7) carlo fanelli1 and heather whiteside2 in times of panic (or pandemic), it is prudent to take stock of one’s path to folly and plan for exit. it has been over forty years since thatcher and monetarism, thirty years since the canada-us free trade agreement came into effect, and twenty years since the launch of the euro. more recently, 2020 marks twelve years since the great recession and bank bailouts began, ten years since the turn to stimulus and sharp return to austerity, and three years since the paris agreement on climate change. these historical milestones already offered an opportunity for a retrospective with future implications; however, 2020 will undoubtedly be remembered as the year of the virus with all the attendant hardship and hope that might bring. circulating since late 2019 through global trade and travel connections from its epicentre in wuhan, china, by early march 2020 the world health organization declared covid-19 to be a global pandemic. soon, some eighty countries had implemented lockdown measures to curb the spread, from restrictions on the movement of people, to commerce and border closures. 1 carlo fanelli is assistant professor and coordinator of work and labour studies in the department of social science at york university. he is the author of megacity malaise: neoliberalism, public services and labour in toronto and, most recently, co-editor (with bryan evans and thomas mcdowell) of rising up: the fight for living wage work in canada forthcoming from university of british columbia press. 2 heather whiteside is assistant professor of political science at the university of waterloo and fellow at the balsillie school of international affairs. her research centers on the political economy of privatization, financialization, and fiscal austerity. her books include: capitalist political economy, canadian political economy, and purchase for profit. she has published in journals such as urban studies, economic geography, environment and planning a, review of international political economy, and cambridge journal of regions, economy and society. 6 | populism, power and protest stalwarts of neoliberal governance quickly became bastions of state intervention: from stimulus and neo-mercantilism to seizing the means of production and interfering with circulation and accumulation (ilo, 2020). proving the marxian insight that capital is value in motion, lockdown breeds a new ill: grim forecasts for 2020-21 predict economic recession harkening back to the depths of the great depression (imf, 2020). by the end of april 2020, more than three million were infected worldwide, resulting in over 225 thousand deaths. global unemployment levels spiked. in canada, all job growth since the mid-1980s had been effectively wiped out as more than one third of working age canadians (more than seven million people) sought basic income support through the new canada emergency response benefit, far surpassing the half million jobs lost in the first year of the 2008-9 recession (subramaniam, 2020). south of the border, 15 percent of the american workforce (26 million) applied for unemployment benefits, wiping out more than 22 million jobs created since 2010. while european job losses have been less severe, due largely to more robust government wage subsidy programs equal to 60-90 percent of wages and a broader social welfare net, it is estimated that upwards of 59 million jobs could be lost by mid 2020, on top of cuts in pay and hours worked (strauss, 2020). contributors on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum predict that the eurozone will experience the most significant economic contraction of its history (schnieder and syrovatka, 2020; kraemer, 2020). the un warns that some 1.5 billion workers in the global south’s informal economy, disproportionately female and often the most vulnerable, are at risk of job losses – a staggering amount equal to nearly half of the global workforce. “[t]hese workers globally have seen a 60 percent drop in income during the first month of the crisis, according to ilo estimates. this translates into a more than 80 percent decline in africa and the americas, 70 percent in europe and central asia, and 21.6 percent in asia and the pacific” (un news, 2020). there can be no doubt that the immediate and dire emergency of the current crisis is directly related to covid19; its roots, however, can be traced much deeper to the contagion that struck centuries earlier: the ‘liberal virus’. samir amin (2003, 9) summarizes the liberal virus in the following way: “social effectiveness is equated by liberals with economic efficiency which, in turn, is confounded with the financial profitability of capital. these reductions express the dominance of the economic, a dominance characteristic of capitalism. the atrophied social thought derived from this dominance is ‘economistic’ in the covid-19, capitalism and contagion | 7 extreme. curiously, this reproach, wrongly directed at marxism, in fact characterizes capitalist liberalism.” the paired opposition of social classes, fractured along crosscutting registers of social identity, provides the basis for this exploitation and propels the capitalist contagion forward (fanelli and noonen, 2018; whiteside, 2020). clarifying the underlying causes of illness, whether coronavirus or liberal virus, is not only an important diagnostic in its own right, it is also crucial for future well-being. profiting from pandemic the 2020 public health crisis is exacerbating the socio-economic disparities of liberal capitalism, pushing low waged and food insecure communities into deeper distress (henderson, 2020). it is estimated that nearly half of the working age us population is employed in low wage jobs, with fortyfour percent of workers earning a median annual salary of $18,000, or roughly $10.22 per hour (picchi, 2019). juxtaposed with the anxiety, stress, concerns, and insecurity of the majority, billionaires profit from the pandemic: the impoverishment of the former and the wealth of the latter are linked economically and institutionalized politically. in less than a month, between march and april 2020, the wealth of american billionaires increased by almost 10 percent or by $282 billion. these astonishing gains were made possible by decades of regressive tax cuts and billionaire-friendly regulations, which saw wealth surge over 1,100 percent between 1990-2018, all the while tax obligations as a percentage of their wealth decreased by 80 percent since the 1980s (collins et al., 2020). indeed, the world’s wealthiest families are estimated to get $4 million richer by the hour (bloomberg, 2019). estimates suggest that global loses from multinational corporations shifting their profits are worth some $600 billion per year, with cash stashed in tax havens equal to at least 10 percent of the world economy (shaxon, 2019). in canada, it is estimated that more than $240 billion is hidden in offshore tax havens, depriving the public purse of close to $15 billion per year (dubinsky, 2018). what is more, it is estimated that the top 1 percent of individuals, those making in excess of $200,000 annually, receive 87 percent of the capital gains tax breaks (taxed at half the rate of regular income), resulting in a $7 billion annual redistribution from the “99%” to the “1%”. statistics canada found that in 2017 canada’s top 0.1 percent saw a 17 percent ($740,300) increase in their average total income, outdone only by the top 0.01 percent who saw their incomes rise 27 percent ($2.7 million) but in stark contrast to the measly 2.5 percent 8 | populism, power and protest ($48,400) average increase – and the fourth-largest increase in close to four decades is set amid declining taxes for the ultra-wealthy (blatchford, 2019). even the resolutely conservative financial post (pelletier, 2019) has declared, ‘our nation of oligopolies is not good for consumers, but great for investors’ as a handful of companies dominate the canadian banking, telecommunications, energy, supermarket, airline and other industries. the oecd ranks canada 25th out of 37, behind even the us, when it comes to public spending on social services as a share of gdp, a trend connected to the decades-long assault on public services as avenues of profit accumulation through privatization, public-private-partnerships and other forms of marketization (evans and fanelli, 2018; whiteside, 2015). business subsidies are all the while estimated to be worth some $29 billion annually; exemplified by the recent federal government write-off of $3.7 billion from the 2009 auto sector bailouts, the $5 billion pipeline purchase in 2018, and the $1.7 billion recently provided to the oil and gas industry as part of the federal government’s covid19 economic response to clean up capital’s mess – orphaned wells being worth an estimated $260 billion in unfunded environmental liabilities (lukacs, 2017; cbc 2019; harris, 2020). in europe, investigations have been launched into the practices of european banks, bank of america, jpmorgan chace, morgan stanley and others who are accused of siphoning some $60 billion from public coffers between 2006-11 at the same time as they received hundreds of billions from taxpayer financial supports (segal, 2020). covid-19 responses feature bailouts for big business and billionaires far in excess of relief efforts for vulnerable workers, those un(der)employed, ill, disabled, or elderly. for instance, the american $2.2 trillion coronavirus aid, relief, and economic security act (cares act) offers households $500 per child and $1,200 for individuals earning up to $75,000, as well as extended unemployment insurance and an additional $600 per week (transfers declining above that income threshold). if individuals owe outstanding debt, there is nothing preventing banks from garnishing that pandemic support, not to mention the labyrinthine patchwork of eligibility requirements needed to access unemployment insurance (dickerson, 2020). small and medium sized businesses are required to make reasonable efforts to maintain their payroll and employees, including restrictions on issuing dividends and executive compensation, but those same rules do not apply to large corporations receiving aid. cares is, in short, an uncaring act defiant of logic and decency. covid-19, capitalism and contagion | 9 revealing the class characteristics of the bailout, the federal reserve and the treasury department will buy up to $750 billion in bonds issued by large corporations with no strings attached: no limits on dividends, executive compensation, stock buybacks, or employment levels. as gibson (2020) reveals, “the richest americans are also enjoying a tax break that senate republicans sneaked in. a recent analysis by the joint committee on taxation found that more than 80% of the benefits of a change in the tax code for ‘pass-through’ businesses will go to americans who make more than $1 million per year.” if past practices are the best predictor of future performance, one need look no further than trump’s 2017 dramatic corporate tax cuts to anticipate the impact of cares. advocates of the 2017 tax reforms claimed wages would rise, investments would surge, and the cuts would pay for themselves. in reality, as the congressional research service has shown, wages did not rise, investment did not increase, and the tax cuts did not benefit government coffers; instead they led to a recordbreaking upswell in corporate stock buybacks and dividends for shareholders worth over $1 trillion, which reduced federal revenue by $170 billion by end of 2018 (gravelle and marples, 2019). again, this recent episode is not only unsurprising, it is also aligned with some forty years of economic evidence (stanford, 2011; mcbride and whiteside, 2011; shefner and blad, 2020). corporations are also looking to pick up assets pummeled by the virus, 2020 deflation being the friend of vulture capital just as toxic assets were through 2008 bankruptcies. a reminder of marx’s diagnosis of capitalist patterns of concentration and centralization, once-liberal states in europe like germany, france, italy, and spain are now taking up nationalist efforts to “veto investment from outside the eu in recent weeks and the bloc is ushering in the first continentwide rules for screening takeovers on security grounds. special safeguards have been offered to biotech firms as the race for a vaccine against covid-19 takes on critical importance” (stearns, 2020). the embrace of foreign direct investment and takeovers has been decisively shuttered over a very short period. whether or not this is a shortor long-term response remains to be seen. states nevertheless continue to bailout large corporations by the billions, with small deviations exemplified by the danish and polish exclusion of tax haven-incorporated firms. canadian prime minister justin trudeau has barred companies that have been convicted of tax evasion from government support. however, with zero companies convicted to date, this decree essentially applies to no one, and thus companies registered overseas are set to receive billions in public support. the vultures continue to circle, with blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager 10 | populism, power and protest (responsible for $27 trillion), now leading the federal reserve’s corporate debt purchasing program worth some $4.5 trillion and thoroughly integrated into the canada infrastructure bank (mcquaig, 2019; nelson, 2020) billionaires may not have caused the pandemic but the public policies enabling their wealth accumulation strategies have exacerbated the collateral damage, with foregone tax revenues and public investments, extreme inequality, poverty and precarity of job tenure precipitating the pandemic and shaping the likely outcomes of current support measures. the covid-19 era is thus a crisis of unprecedented proportions not only for its effects on production and reproduction, but through the coalescing of structural inequalities and cyclical instabilities equally characteristic of capitalism. state responses have been predictably handcuffed by its mode of production and status quo delimitation of future possibilities, making economic overhaul all the more urgent. pushing past the capitalist pandemic “the world is at a critical turning point – economically, politically and environmentally,” opens philip mcmichael (this volume) in his (pre-pandemic) assessment of the multi-pronged crisis experienced by the globalization project. he continues, “economically, the globalization project is unraveling as ‘market rule’ has destabilized economies, generating widespread austerity, precarious employment, and waves of migration. politically, this conjuncture is expressed in a broad set of countermovement politics of leftand right-wing populism. environmentally, market deregulation, resource grabbing, and global consumerism have intensified longer-term emissions of greenhouse gases and ecological deterioration, generating widespread rural displacement and public illhealth.” covid-19 began as a health emergency but having emerged in the context of political-economic illness, it soon brought into sharp focus the significance of public services. researchers at the canadian centre for policy alternatives estimated in 2009 that average canadians received an amount equal to $17,000 from public services (shillington and mackenzie, 2009). for some two-thirds of the canadian population, the social wage – public services or benefits that supplement market income – made up more than half of household income. for canadians in median income households, this amounted to $41,000 worth of public services like healthcare, education, and personal transfer payments. in 2019, statistics canada (2019) came to similar conclusions, estimating that average canadians received over $6,000 in public services, $4,000 in education, and close to $9,000 in direct covid-19, capitalism and contagion | 11 cash transfers (e.g., unemployment insurance, old age security, guaranteed income supplement), including another $2,500 in other public services like housing, recreation, culture and environmental protection. in other words, on average, the social wage was valued at over $20,000, or about one-fifth of actual household consumption. for anyone but the most hardened ideologues, the fact that most people receive far more value from universal public services than that they pay in taxes is well known and appreciated. public services also reduce broader inequalities, particularly in times of economic difficultly or labour market uncertainty, and ensure that ordinary people can have a say in the quality and cost of those services. even so, this has not stopped a cacophony of ‘pedantic, leather-tongued oracles of the ordinary bourgeoisie’ (marx, 1867) from coming out of the woodwork in the midst of the 2020 pandemic to fan the flames of deficit hysteria; without a hint of shame, calling for reductions, or the outright elimination, of the very public services and jobs that have buttressed the most severe effects of the covid-19 crisis (cross, 2020; ivison, 2020). vampire-like ideology is, however, hard to kill, even if it means that “an entire generation has been thrown on the scrap heap in the name of ‘balancing the books’” (coppola, 2018; cf. cohen 1997). as others have noted, the deficit per se is less important than the debt servicing costs associated with it, and what that debt is incurred for matters, particularly when making much-needed investments in public services to restore economic growth or address protracted periods of unemployment. the affordability of public debt is an issue for the denominator: the debt-to-gdp ratio. in the context of rock bottom interest rates (2009+), debt-servicing burdens drop relative to the overall size of the economy when growth occurs. far from radical, these are the findings of neoliberalism’s longtime architect-in-chief, the imf (barrett, 2018), and are the plain implications of the widely debunked fiscal consolidation thesis (herndon et al., 2013). exposed as the vulgar charlatans that they are, proponents of neoliberalism and austerity are out of ideas; indeed, if they were really serious about the deficit, they need not look any further than the tens of trillions doled for corporate welfare and tax cuts for the wealthy. china, as coronavirus epicenter, hampered global supply to/from the ‘workshop of the world,’ with shortages of ventilators, medical supplies, and personal protective equipment, a painful reminder that domestic manufacturing capacity matters. the post-confederation canadian economy, embedded in settler-colonial dispossession, was created by national policy protective domestic tariffs for infant industry and state support (through ownership and investment) 12 | populism, power and protest for transportation, energy, manufacturing, and services. not just an antique feature of canada’s origins, the period preceding the 1980s saw restrictions on unfettered foreign direct investment for fear that this would undermine national sovereignty, self-sufficiency and the democratic capacity to enact policies in the public interest. foreign ownership of key industries declined, high value-added production increased, along with real wages and unionization. “far from being a tool employed exclusively by canada’s economic and political elites,” high (2003, 169) contends “the new nationalism became a powerful rhetorical weapon in the hands of working people to be used against companies that closed plants.” however, the situation changed profoundly over the next twenty years. as jim stanford has shown (2019), canada was reoriented toward the export of raw materials – agriculture, forestry, minerals, and energy. a good many trade sensitive industries were also damaged through sharp currency appreciation, contributing to stagnant productivity and innovation gains, and undermining the development of a sustainable and diversified economy able to weather volatile global commodities markets. canada was not alone, many other countries too having undergone a period of protracted ‘deindustrialization’ as governments facilitated the offshoring of manufacturing capacity to low-wage jurisdictions, often those with lax environmental protections and authoritarian regimes (ness, 2017). covid-19 prompted emergency legislation (bill c-13) granting the canadian government the power to authorize any manufacturer to make patented medicines during a public health emergency. however, as nathaniel lipkis (2020) has written, it may be too little, too late: “today, there appears to be no canadian biomanufacturing facility capable of producing a vaccine at regulatory standard to provide national coverage. even if the necessary treatment does not require biomanufacturing, lack of public knowledge about production and formulation of any new chemical drug may practically prevent domestic manufacture of a generic version within the time needed. as a result, at our time of truly greatest need, we may be beholden to a foreign manufacturer facing unprecedented demand from around the world. if so, our ability to access the medicine will be slower, far more costly, and far less controlled than if we have adequate domestic supply capability.” covid-19, capitalism and contagion | 13 initiatives such as these have led some to conclude that, “the era of peak globalisation is over. an economic system that relied on worldwide production and long supply chains is morphing into one that will be less interconnected” (gray, 2020). indeed, principal responses to the pandemic have been primarily national and sub-national, with attention now turning to national recovery strategies. others remain less convinced: “[t]he world following the pandemic is unlikely to be radically different from the one that preceded it. covid-19 will not so much change the basic direction of world history as accelerate it. the pandemic and the response to it have revealed and reinforced the fundamental characteristics of geopolitics today. as a result, this crisis promises to be less of a turning point than a way station along the road that the world has been traveling for the past few decades” (haass, 2020). what the world economy will look like a year from now, let alone ten or twenty, may be uncertain, but there is little denying that governments will have the difficult tasks of both ramping up spending to rebuild the economy and generating revenue needed to cover the emergency outlays. time and again, the private sector (whether competitive or monopolistic) has shown itself to be not only disinterested in wholesale systemic coordination, but also incapable of it. the private sector has equally hindered government intervention or funnelled it into meeting narrow interests (mazzucato, 2013) a pious fidelity to upholding the same policies that got us into this mess will not be able to reverse its course. any substantive reform agenda will need to begin with the recognition that recovery begins at home, in the spheres of production and social reproduction, centred on the waged, unwaged, and those denied the chance to earn a wage when their skills are deemed unproductive or inferior. a companion to this is the recognition that the climate crisis is the ‘greatest challenge of our time’ (fanelli, 2013). almost daily, we are reminded that the wellbeing of the natural world is also stricken with disease – capitalist-fostered human impacts worsening more quickly than the models predicted, from global temperature increases to melting ice sheets, retreat of glaciers, rising and acidifying oceans, deforestation, displacement, shifts in weather patterns, food chains, plant and animal life, water shortages and massive species extinctions (monbiot, 2018; milman, 2019; carrington, 2019; plumer, 2019; ahmed, 2019). 14 | populism, power and protest it is the ‘unrealistic’ proposals that are increasingly the only ones standing a chance of making a realistic difference. ending climate change requires the end of capitalism as we know it: “any meaningful policy has to upset the established power base and the political donor class. any policy that doesn’t upset these people will be useless. to pretend that we can compromise our way through this while we wait for a magical, technological bullet that will keep temperatures down without costing us anything is beyond wilful ignorance now” (mcduff, 2019). this is a contradiction keynesianism and social democracy are powerless to overcome (evans and schmidt, 2012; fanelli, 2015; schmidt, 2018). if historians of the future are to look back upon the covid-19 pandemic as a truly transformative political and economic turning point, alternate routes are necessary. even the financial times (2020) felt compelled to reason that, “radical reforms – reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades – will need to be put on the table. they must see public services as investments rather than liabilities, and look for ways to make labour markets less secure. redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question. policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.” that the financial times lists as ‘radical’ the protection of public services, creation of less insecure labour markets, provision of a basic income, and implementation of wealth taxes indicates not only the limit of its vision but also how ripe the moment is for change. real change begins with challenging the structural power of capital shaping production and social reproduction; not limiting ourselves to timid redistribution but taking on hard questions like what happens pre-distribution through state power and how distribution is determined through property rights. as jeff noonan (this volume) shows, “no society that allows a minority class to control everything that others need (including their ability to find paid employment to earn the wages that they need to exchange for the goods they need to live) can be fully democratic.” going beyond liberal democratic ‘representative’ democracy is imperative because even our existing examples of robust state institutions are compromised and co-opted. jon carless, for example, finds (this volume) that canadian housing assistance policies initiated in the postwar welfare state era have long since been bent in service of neoliberal financialization, particularly through the activities of the state-owned canada mortgage and housing corporation, given “that the canadian state has persistently shaped the covid-19, capitalism and contagion | 15 direction of housing policy in accordance with the imperatives of the prevailing structure of accumulation.” analyzing the emergence of a ‘new democratic economy’, luke martel (this volume) argues that a transformation is indeed already underway, characterized as not only opposed to neoliberal globalization but also as involving the active creation of local embeddedness to bridge existing political divisions and unite civil society with formalized politics. examples include proposals for social ownership and local wealth schemes pursued by think tanks like the democracy collaborative in the usa and the uk centre for local economic strategy (cles), and through political platforms like corbyn’s labour. election defeat does not extinguish ideas and ideals which include stronger labour market protections, social and environmental supports, such as universal childcare, fare-free public transit, affordable housing, as well as a recommitment to progressive taxation, financial and wealth taxes. even the imf (2019; 2020) recently proposed ramping up income, property and wealth taxes, modeled as a “solidarity surcharge,” noting that profit shifting by multinational corporations in tax havens undermines both public revenue and faith in the fairness of the tax system. and the parliamentary budget officer of canada recently estimated that a 1 percent tax on those with a net worth of $20 million or more could generate upwards of $70 billion over the next decade (pbo, 2019). of course, public policies matter, including the form of state interventions to support value-added activity, such as requirements for domestic processing, limits on exports of unrefined resources, the use of fiscal subsidies to encourage downstream investments and the direct allocation of public equity capital in large-scale resource projects. canadian economic history, not to mention the recent experiences of many latin american and asian economies, has relied on state planning, subsidized capital, strong domestic supply networks and innovation clusters, effective export promotion and effective limits on imports to nurture high value-added export industries. going further, this could also include, contrary to the contemporary emphasis on laissez-faire, proactive policies mandating domestic reinvestment and domestic content quotas in strategic sectors, active trade interventions, and public ownership. the role of the labour movement will be key, including demands for living wages as outlined by david goutor (this volume) like more ‘inclusive’ labour markets and regulatory mechanisms, like international framework agreements (gibb, this volume) that can extend gains won by unionized workers to non-unionized workers. good minimum wages, employment-protection legislation, the enforcement of national 16 | populism, power and protest labour laws, and benefit systems for the jobless and low-income households also help ensure that workers find better jobs with better wages and benefits (see marshall, this volume). so too do strong public services and social programs that provide security for workers and their families (see cameron et al., this volume). with governments increasingly detached from the demands of ordinary people and hostile toward tripartite compromises with labour, public involvement in formal politics has declined significantly (see mcbride and whiteside, 2011 on ‘democratic malaise’ in canada). for pilon (2018), this has led to both an increased public disdain for and seeming indifference to politics, which is indicative of a broader crisis with deeper roots – namely, that western electoral democracies are not, and never have been, wholly democratic to begin with. in the absence of substantive alternatives, mounting inequality and social polarization have led to a resurgence of populist, anti-establishment parties. while bryn jones (this volume) evaluates both left and right populist movements in the uk (corbyn, ukip) and italy (la lega, movimento cinque stelle), more generally the populist upsurge has been dominated by the politics of the authoritarian right. the ‘fanatical centre’ (krugman, 2019), a politics devoid of adversaries, is an increasingly spent force neither able to provide a convincing intellectual explanation nor connect with the various layers of the working class negatively affected by the consequences of neoliberal de-democratization (albo and fanelli, 2014; crouch, 2011). jones (this volume) finds that “populist movements could have the potential to shift both national political economies and that of the eu away from neoliberalism; and its underpinning pillar of representative-based liberal parliamentary democracy;” however, economic constraints suggest the opposite: “italian populism remains within the eu fiscal straitjacket, lacking plans to limit corporate and financial power…in the uk, both the ethos of free market globalism adopted by the anti-eu parties, and their influential financial backers would, most likely, intensify neoliberal forces.” for joe galbo (this volume), the rise of two italian populist movements, the cyber-populism of the five star movement under beppe grillo, and the nativist populism of the lega under matteo salvini, both aim to counter democratic deficits (the former through digital and direct participation in political power, the latter offers ethnic belonging and a relationship between the leader and ‘the people’). however, the left increasingly finds itself at an impasse too, having not only yielded the language of social change to the right but also seemingly unable to seize the appetite for transformative change. indeed, the politics of political discourse have been historically tied to changing dynamics between governing covid-19, capitalism and contagion | 17 elites and the masses around the world (ives, this volume). marx famously noted that history repeats itself first as tragedy and second as farce. for the left, the recurring ability of neoliberalism to reinvent itself has been clearly and consistently tragic. the decade of austerity that has followed in the wake of the great recession reveals how constituted state powers remain political obstacles requiring strategic address, not theoretical abstractions. this is why, in our view, it is mistaken to juxtapose national struggles with transnational activism. if an emancipatory politics of resistance is to emerge, it will do so from multiple scales through a national politics of transformation that is internationalist in its commitments. indeed della porta (this volume) argues that, “social movements will follow multi-level strategies, using leverage at local, national and international level,” with martell (this volume) adding, “there may be limits in the localism of democratic economy proposals.” in other words, local bases of power need to be integrated into revolutionary projects to transform national state power and to internationalize political struggles and alliances against the world capitalist market (albo and fanelli, 2019; whiteside, 2020). in this regard, della porta (this volume) reminds us how, for some significant social movements like many focused on post-2008 anti-austerity campaigns, it is not automatic that the transnational level is where the action is: “while progressive social movements have always linked at the transnational level, the forms these transnational linkages take changes in time, and so do the channels of diffusion of ideas across countries. additionally, economic globalization and the proliferation of international organizations are not automatically followed by transnationalization of contentious politics. rather, resources and opportunities for multilevel campaigns vary, influenced by transformation in global capitalism and its political consequences.” the implications this holds for the role of subaltern voices remain to be seen; that is, how to match the large funding needs for services and generate productive efficiencies for labour while remaining manageable enough to integrate popular input and control. back to the future: the return of the national question “now this liberal virus, which pollutes contemporary social thought and eliminates the capacity to understand the world, let alone to transform it, has profoundly penetrated the whole of 18 | populism, power and protest the ‘historical left’ formed in the aftermath of the second world war.” (samir amin, 2003, 41) with the growing regularization of once-rare crises, there is no shortage of blame to go around. journalist wolfgang munchau (2019) writes that liberal democracy is in decline because liberal regimes have proven incapable of solving problems that arose directly from liberal policies like tax cuts, fiscal consolidation, deregulation, financial instability, job precarity and policy coordination failures, like global tax avoidance. following on the heels of the great recession, he derides governments for not taking control of their banking systems, cracking down on bonuses for the wealthy, raising income and corporate taxes to counter-balance cuts in public spending or imposing a financial transaction tax. but where munchau sees failure in these policies we see ‘success’, insofar as these policies are working precisely as they were designed to do by maintaining the neoliberal social structure of accumulation; not to mention that progressive taxes and tighter banking sector controls fit comfortably within keynesian-liberalism as well. alex ballingall (2019) traces the arc of left populism in canada from william lyon mackenzie’s rebellion against upper canada’s “family compact,” to early-twentieth century farmers’ organizations that helped to form the socialist cooperative commonwealth federation, precursor to the modern ‘social democratic’ new democratic party. left nationalists in countries like canada opposed the early neoliberal free trade initiatives of the 1980s/90s because they anticipated some of the economic problems that we see right populists moving in to ‘address’ today like sectoral decline and dependency. when presented with the opportunity to ‘rip nafta up’ twenty years later, the canadian left was largely silent (if not troubled by the prospect), perhaps owing to the deep structural transformations that have indeed occurred within the economy or perhaps owing to even deeper ideological transformations over the years. thomas walkom (2018) notes how, “in both canada and the us, the left is finding itself trapped in the dead end of identity politics where the key aim is to divide the world into as many subsets as possible, each with its own particular grievance. that has left it to the right to exploit the bigger, common grievances – of work and wages and social class. we have not only surrendered the field to the trumpians, we have willingly allowed them to monopolize its language.” even the language of social change has been seized by (and ceded to) the right. it is social democracy rather than liberalism per se that has most greatly suffered from the failures of neoliberalism (schmidt, 2018; cf. mcmichael this covid-19, capitalism and contagion | 19 volume on ‘neo-illiberalism and the changing of the guard’). costas lapavitsas (2019) writes that the european union has hollowed out democracy in europe, removed popular sovereignty, and alienated poor and working-class communities across countries, a sentiment echoed by galbo (this volume) when he writes that “populism in italy arose, in part, in response to a feeling of non-representation, of being excluded from a political world perceived as dichotomized between the few who have power and the many who do not.” with the left seemingly unable to present an alternative political vision, much of the resulting political reaction has gone to the right. the long shadow of racism and racialized accumulation will also have to be addressed in going ‘back to the future’. the past was not always a pleasant place, and nations are constructions dripping with blood (drapeau, 2019). nour afara (this volume) finds that, “colonial ideas ‘stick’ to bodies, such that particular discursive and affective regimes endure (and mutate) across time.” the recent surge of right-wing extremism merges late modern fatigue from endless liberal economic failures with the enduring racist ideologies of older white supremacist, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and the ‘fresh-faced fascism of the alt-right’ (cai and landon, 2019). the lure of populism, nativism, and racism is further complicated by inherited political philosophies, religions, and ethnic identities, which have curiously also been taken up by racialized and immigrant communities themselves (mosleh and green, 2019; kazin and abrahamian, 2019). “when we think of social transformation and the economic policies we need, the first port of call is domestic strength – commanding the levers of power where we live, where we are employed, where we’re active. that is where it starts, not by seeking strength in paris, lisbon, rome or wherever else. first, we find it in london, in glasgow, in newcastle and so on. that’s where our true strength comes from, always with an international perspective however…” in this sense, it is difficult to imagine change coming from above, within the architecture of the european union, or some indeterminate space beyond the nation state. as jones (this volume) concludes, “the eu’s neoliberal and skeletal democracy has not accommodated popular discontents.” capital may have always been global, but control is usually wrested through on-the-ground conditions. writing about the us context, michael kazin and atossa araxia abrahamian (2019) argue, “the only way out of our current mess is to engage in a political struggle within our nation-state – and to win it.” an ethical internationalism has always been a cardinal virtue of the left, they argue, but it is possible to uphold that ideal without calling for scrapping borders 20 | populism, power and protest and nations – a political trap that plays right into the hands of right populists. gidron (2018) likewise contends that in giving up on appeals to national solidarity, the left has forgotten the basic political argument that served it so well in the past: “that out of the ties that bind together our national communities emerges a deep commitment to the well-being, welfare and social esteem of our fellow citizens.” in other words, being a part of a social, cultural, and political community. inoculating against the scourge of both well meaning (liberal) centrists and the rabid (racist) right will not be easy, but it is clear that the neoliberal market-led order offers nothing helpful. crises of global proportions are forcing government intervention on an unprecedented scale – first to rescue finance in 2008, now production and reproduction in 2020. unlike the problems experienced with social democracy and earlier variants of left nationalism, numerous polls conducted over the last decade indicate a growing interest in socialism, particularly younger adults with less to lose and much to gain. openly socialist candidates in the us like bernie sanders, ksharma sawant, alexandria ocasio-cortez and rashida tlaib, jeremy corbyn in the uk (see martell this volume), and pablo iglesias in spain are starting to win elections, challenge the right, and shift centrist policy discourse. more broadly, calls to deeply transform, if not end, capitalism now make frequent mention in mainstream media. just a decade ago socialism was a dirty word, today it not only offers an anti-capitalist future, it is also breathing new life into the political-economic arena by offering solutions to a dire pandemic and looming ecological collapse – and healthy lives and livelihoods are just what we need right now the 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(2020). canadian political economy. toronto: university of toronto press. covid-19, capitalism and contagion | 27 a critique of the millennial | 277 a critique of the millennial: a retreat from and return to class tanner mirrlees1 abstract: since the turn of the millennium, millions of people born between the late 1970s and the late 1990s have been categorized as “millennials.” a media discourse tells people what a millennial is and is not, shaping how those people it depicts as “millennial” may perceive themselves and how others perceive them. this paper examines four media representations of the millennial: a member of a youth cohort, a consumer, a worker to be managed, and an immiserated victim of hard times. it argues that these four media representations of the millennial distort the capitalist determinations of millennial life and labour and prevent the millennials from seeing themselves as part of the working class. by way of a critique of these four ideological media representations of the class-less millennial, the paper forwards a historical-materialist account of the millennial working class in a new capitalist millennium. keywords: millennial, capitalism, class analysis, youth, media, ideology introduction: the millennial sign as site of struggle since the turn of the millennium, scholars, journalists and marketing consultants have categorized millions of people born between the late 1970s and the late 1990s as “millennials” (dorsey, 2014; pew research, 2014; reason-rupe, 2014; stein, 2013; howe and strauss 2000). books, news articles, tv clips, websites, documentaries, polls and public conversations add to an already large and growing media discourse on the millennial identity. everyone from obama to nike to google analytics has taken part in the “recognition” of the millennial, which is one more identity on a big list of media generated identities that governments, 1  tanner mirrlees (tanner.mirrlees@uoit.ca) is an assistant professor in the communication program at the university of ontario institute of technology. 278 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education corporations and marketing firms use to talk about youth or the “spirit of the age.” whether championing the millennial as the early twentyfirst century’s winner or ridiculing the millennial as its biggest loser, numerous people take part in the construction of this “new” youth identity. images of and messages about the millennial flow through the media, showing and telling people what a millennial is, and is not, and shaping how those they address as “millennials” may perceive their identities in society. this paper analyzes four ways that the media represents the millennial identity: a member of a youth cohort, a sovereign consumer, a worker to be managed, and an immiserated victim of hard times. it argues that these four media representations of the millennial distort the capitalist determinations of millennial life and labour and may prevent millennials from seeing themselves as part of the working class. through a critique of these four media representations of the class-less millennial, i forward a historical-materialist account of the millennial as working class in a new capitalist millennium. this paper’s analysis of media representations of the millennial identity intervenes in current semiotic and political struggles over the meaning of the millennial in twenty-first century capitalist society. the “millennial” is a sign for an identity that the organic intellectuals, movements and parties of the left and right articulate to their projects as they struggle for hegemony (or “moral leadership”) in society (gramsci, 1971). the russian linguist valentin voloshinov (1973) conceptualized words as “signs” that social classes fight to narrow (make “uni-accentual”) or broaden (make “multi-accentual”) as they struggle for political power. extending voloshinov’s account of the role of language in class struggle, the late stuart hall (1982, 70) argued that signs “enter into controversial and conflicting social issues as a real and positive social force, affecting their outcomes” and that signs are part of “what has to be struggled over,” for they are part of the “means by which collective social understandings are created – and thus the means by which consent for particular outcomes can be effectively mobilized.” at present, the millennial sign is fought over by liberals and conservatives who think and write about the world within the normative boundaries of liberal capitalist ideology. liberals and conservatives battle to win the “hearts and minds” of millennials by articulating the millennial “interest” to their own, linking millennial identity to their political identity and reducing the millennial worldview to the precepts of their ideology. liberals, for example, gush at the prospect of the a critique of the millennial | 279 millennial being “our liberal future”(chait, 2012) while conservatives say that the “millennial generation is abandoning liberalism”(street, 2013) and “may grow up more conservative”(leonhardt, 2014). the left, however, has largely remained on the sidelines of the struggle over the millennial sign. this is too bad given that forty twopercent of millennials recently polled say they prefer socialism to capitalism as a means of organizing society but only sixteen percent understand what that really means (harris, 2014). the goal of this paper is to intervene in the battle over the millennial sign. it critiques some dominant media representations of the millennial and sheds light on the capitalist determinations that shape the circumstances of the millennial as working class. by doing so, i assert the continued salience of class analysis in spite of decades of its forced retreat (wood, 1999). panitch and leys (2000, vii-viii) observe how “class analysis as a mode of intellectual discourse, and social class as the pivotal axis of political mobilization, have both suffered marginalization, although certainly not complete collapse, in the face of the casualization of work, trade-union decline and the fracturing of socialist political formations, not to mention the impact of neoliberal and post-modernist ideas.” despite the stultification of class analysis by neoliberal academics, capitalism lumbers forward, and with it, class divisions, conflicts and inequalities. so long as capitalism exists, class will persist as a fact of society and site of analysis. palmer (2014, 57) says it is “imperative that those on the socialist left – as well as those working in unions, social movements, and all matter of campaigns that see themselves challenging capital and the state in the interests of the dispossessed – reassert what is most solid in the marxist tradition,” that being, “a politics of class that speaks directly to the betterment of humanity through insistence that the expropriated are as one in their ultimate needs.” this paper supports this praxis, but does so without illusion and with some qualification. the following section elaborates upon this point by defining some key terms, capitalism and the working class in particular. capitalism, the working class, media and ideology the capitalist system divides people into two antagonistic classes: the owning class (the minority chief executive officers and shareholders who control corporations) and the working class (the majority of people who must sell their labour to corporations in exchange for the wages they depend on to live). in capitalism, workers enter the market and sell 280 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education their labour power – the manual and cognitive capabilities required to do tasks – to corporations as a commodity in exchange for the wage they need to meet their basic needs and cultural wants. in the absence of a “basic income” and advanced welfare state, capitalism “proletarianizes” the great majority of people, meaning that it makes them dependent on the wage relation to live and the “silent compulsion of economic relations” (marx, 1959). in factories and call centres, fast-food restaurants and cafes, mega-malls and boutique retail stores, condo build sites and video game studios, a diversity of people must try to sell their capacity to work in exchange for a wage. the market exchange relationship between workers and corporations appears to be “free” (because there is no direct coercion) and “equal” (because workers and corporations meet in the market as sellers and buyers of labour). yet, this apparently “free” and “equal” exchange relationship mystifies the substantive un-freedom of work (i.e. corporations try to control the worker’s labour process) and the unequal outcome (i.e. the corporation exploits the worker’s labour power to enrich its owning class of executives and shareholders). in the capitalist system, the goal of all corporations is profit and to make it, they bring money, technology, media, and hundreds (if not thousands) of waged workers together into productive social relations. in pursuit of profit, corporations try to sell what they produce for more than what they pay their workers. profit is the difference between the value the corporation takes from selling commodities and the value it pays workers to make them. in capitalism, owners try to squeeze more value from workers than they return to them as wages; workers sometimes respond and resist the terms of their exploitation through acts of solidarity and struggle. in capitalism, being “working class” is not a lifestyle choice or a performance of the self, but a rudimentary social relation experienced by millions of different people who do not own the means of production and for that reason, must sell their labour power to those that do in exchange for the wage they need to live. capitalism makes a working class “in-itself” (i.e. people that sell their labour power to corporations for a wage), but it does not necessarily make a working class “for-itself” (i.e. people that identify themselves as being in opposition to capitalism and as having interests distinct from corporations). the people that sell their labour to the target retail store, for example, are part of a working class in-itself. but there is no guarantee that target’s employees will act as a class for-itself by taking up a fight for workplace democracy, job security or benefits. as gindin (2010) says, “there’s nothing inherently radical a critique of the millennial | 281 about the working class. it just has the potential to be radical”(cited in lilley, 2010). though the wage relation is common to most working people, it does not necessarily foster in each worker a revolutionary consciousness about the perils of capitalism or automatically inspire in them an “interest” to move beyond it. in the twenty-first century, more people are proletarianized than ever before due to the universalization of the wage relation, but the convergences and divergences of exploitation and the oppressions of racism, sexism, ableism and more mean the wage relation is experienced differently (coburn, 2014). also, the worker’s identity (their sense of who they are and who they are not) and interest (their sense of what issue matters most to them and what cause they are committed to) do not mechanically spring from the wage relation, but are socially and discursively constructed by big organizations (i.e. governments, parties, corporations, media firms, organized religion, unions) and their discourses (laws, policies, doctrines, stories, press releases, ads) as they are transmitted from one historical period to the next (hall, 1995). identities and interests carried over from the past shape those available to working people in the present, but they can be transformed. in twenty-first century late-capitalist, postmodern-consumerist and multicultural societies like canada and the united states, working people embody and experience their identities in and across a range of contextually defined and shifting social roles. a worker’s identity is shaped by and shaping of a combination of salient social factors: place (i.e. “torontonians” for or against the ford nation), age (i.e. boomers or millennials), “race” (black power or white power), ethnicity (proud poles or proud germans), nationality (canadian or american), sport (british or brazilian football fans), diet (meat lover or vegan), gender (machoman or metropolitan metrosexual), sexual preference (heterosexual or lgbtq), religion (islam or judaism), consumerism (nike or reebok loyal), political ideology (liberal or conservative), lifestyle (sedentary or active), nationality (chinese or american), fandom (kanye west or drake), occupation (day maintenance associate at wal-mart or apple family room specialist at the apple retail store) and more. these are but a few of the scraps of self that may constitute a worker’s identity and which workers embody and live in their hearts and minds, sometimes fleetingly, sometimes, forever. none of these essentially link with anticapitalism or the politics of socialist struggle. so, though the working class in-itself exists (waged labour and exploitation is a fact of capitalism), the working class for itself (workers 282 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education that recognize their interest to be in conflict with capitalism and unite to move beyond it) always haunts the capitalist system but infrequently takes material form. save moments and movements in periods of prolonged crisis and upheaval, the working class is most often dis-united. the “working class” ought to be one for itself, but most of the time, it is not. the working class’s identity politics and the ways that workers of the world identify themselves and their interests are not consonant or predictable, but contradictory and fluid. the working class is made and unmade in tandem with capitalist transformations, state formations and initiatives, wars of maneuver and of position, the clash of ideologies and the cycles and circuits of struggle. the media and culture industries play a significant role in making and unmaking the working class. these industries are at once profitseeking firms and a powerful means of representing the social world. “[t]he communications industries play a central double role in modern societies, as industries in their own right and as the major site of the representations and arenas of debate through which the overall system is imagined and argued over”(wasko, murdock and sousa, 2011, 2). the media industries are a major source of the representations of the world which express and shape how people think about the world, their identities and those of others (dines and humez, 2011; kellner, 1995). books, magazines, newspapers, bulletins, podcasts, radio broadcasts, hollywood films, tv shows, ads, websites and video games convey representations of the world that address and shape how people come to perceive the world and what it means to be an owner or a worker, rich or poor, man or woman, white or black, adult or youth, us or them. in pursuit of profit, the media industries try to inform and entertain, but in doing so, they play a powerful role in socializing people; they often construct and normalize certain ways of being, thinking and acting that align with capitalism while denying and stigmatizing anti-capitalism. by taking part in the social construction of reality, the media industries and their many representations of society may shape, in significant ways, how workers perceive capitalism and their place in it. media representations might reveal or conceal the conditions of capitalism – the hierarchical class structure, the class division and the class conflicts. they might also recognize or deny the existence of a working class (in and for itself) and encourage or discourage people to see themselves as part of it. the meaning of the working class is “constituted within, not outside of representation”(hall, 1995, 4) and media representations “provide the materials out of which many people construct their sense of a critique of the millennial | 283 class”(kellner, 1995, 1). indeed, the media industries have the power to frame the working class in positive or negative terms by representing it as a source of pride or shame, empowerment or disempowerment, ossification or transformation. overall, the media is an important site where working class identities are formed and deformed, where people’s understanding of their place in society takes shape and where dominant norms, beliefs and values about what a worker should expect or demand from a life of waged labour can be affirmed or opposed. the north american media industries – the vertically and horizontally integrated conglomerates that own the dominant means of producing media representations in society – underrepresent the working class. many media products abnegate the working class by portraying everyone as part of an expansive and upwardly mobile “middle-class” society in which no class antagonism exists (kendall, 2004; zweig, 2000). some fetishistically over-represent people as consumers and underrepresent them as workers, emphasizing the sphere of consumption and hiding the abode of production. others render the working class invisible by glorifying and making role models out of the lives and lifestyles of the system’s rich, privileged and powerful. when media products do address social class, they often stereotype working people as being inherently wasteful, ignorant, angry, childish and tasteless (butsch, 2003; kendall, 2004; skeggs, 2004; zweig, 2000). in sum, media conglomerates and media products often deprive viewers of the ability to see themselves in positive terms as a working class with an outlook and interest different from capitalism and its owners. media firms repackage and sell partial and selective images of and messages about already existing identities that are aligned with the status quo to resonate with the “common sense” of viewers and reproduce capitalist ideology. when media corporations produce and sell media products that conceal the real social relations of the capitalist system – class divisions between owners and workers, structurally antagonistic class interests and the ebb and flow of class struggles – they uphold the ideology of the system and its rulers. the media commodities that under-represent and misrepresent real capitalist social relations are “ideological” because they carry misleading and false ideas about the essence of the system. that said, in periods typified by crisis, media firms may produce and sell goods that convey real representations of capitalist social relations which unsettle ideology and express opposition to it. now that i’ve posited a historical materialist conceptualization of capitalism, the working class, the media industries and ideology, i turn 284 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to examining the media-generated discourse about “the millennial.” do media representations of the millennial help the young people they address as millennials understand the real capitalist social relations that shape their present circumstances? do media claims and statements about the millennial hold a mirror to capitalist logics or distort them? do they support or undermine the formation of a millennial working class, in and for itself? in what follows, i highlight and analyze four significant media representations of the millennial that seem to float above the capitalist forces and relations that act upon it and the youthful bodies it possesses. i critique these media representations and show how they distort real capitalist social relations and may prevent millennials from seeing themselves as part of the working class. the millennial as a member of a youth cohort one way the media represents the “millennial” is as a person born in a certain period of time, as a member of a cohort. according to some millennial authorities, a millennial is someone (anyone) born between 1977 and 1995 (dorsey, 2014). other “experts” say the “millennial” period of incubation spans from 1982 to 2001 (howe and strauss, 2000). most millennial specialists, however, do not clearly explain what the special social significance of the space between these two moments in historical time is for the formation of the millennial’s identity, why it has been selected as a period or how. one wonders what two big events bookended these moments. was it deng xiaoping’s readiness to forge “socialism with chinese characteristics” and the oj simpson trial? perhaps it was the 1982 u.s. embargo on libya’s petroleum imports and the 9/11 terrorist attack? many of the authors who routinely depict every person born at some point in this ill-defined period as belonging to a big group whose common characteristics are different from those exhibited by other cohorts do not seem to care much for careful signposting. some purveyors of millennial discourse, then, presume that a common birth period spanning two decades or so gives people a common identity and set of traits that are unlike those of people born into other periods. hence, the millennial is different from “gen xers” (people born between the mid-1960s to late 1970s) and those labelled “baby boomers” (people born between the mid-1940s and mid-1960s) because they “came to be” and “came of age” in the period they did. commonality of birth period is said to unite millions of people as millennials, cement together their a critique of the millennial | 285 ideas and practices, and ultimately divide them from the gen xers and the boomers. history matters to the making of identities, no doubt. but what’s missing from media discourse on the millennial identity is any sense that the history which makes it moves due to cycles of struggle between protagonists (the workers of the world) and antagonists (the global rich, the 1 percent). by representing the millennial as a member of a cohort defined by period of birth, not by class relations, the media obscures capitalism’s class divide. it is as if the silicon valley-dwelling, facebook owning and conservative-cause supporting billionaire mark zuckerberg and the queer, black and waged worker at the h&m down at the local mall have everything in common, more so than say zuckerberg and google-owner larry page, just because they were born in the 1980s and likely watched the cosby show. by defining age as the thing that unites and divides people, millennial media discourse distorts the substantive division between owning and working class millennials. yet, a division exists. ruling class millennials, for example, include perenna kei (worth $1.3 billion), duston moskovitz (worth $6.8 billion), mark zuckerberg (worth $28.5 billion), anton kathrein ($1.35 billion), drew houston ($1.2 billion), scott duncan ($6.3 billion), yang huiyan ($6.9 billion), fahd hariri ($1.2 billion), robert pera ($2.7 billion), julia oetker ($1.65 billion), and marie besnier beauvalot ($2.7 billion) (mac, 2014). 1 percent of the millennials under thirty-two years old who control $1 million or more do so because this wealth was handed down to them by their rich parents (o’donnel, 2013). over the next two decades, the millennial kids of the 1 percent super-rich boomers and xers are set to inherit about $15 trillion (donovan, 2014), which will further solidify an oligarchic class structure and exacerbate the indisputable problem of class inequality. in twenty-first century capitalism, a millennial owning class minority and working class majority exists. but the media representation of the millennial obscures class division within this cohort and substitutes generational conflict for class conflict, pitting “the young” against “the old” and “the old” against “the middle-aged.” it hides the growing gap between the inter-generational owning and working classes and how all workers – boomers, xers, millennials – live in a class divided society. capitalism’s class divide is growing. one percent of the world’s population controls forty percent of the world’s total wealth, the eightyfive richest people in the world control more wealth than the nearly 3.5 billion people who belong to the poorest half of the population, the 286 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education 400 richest americans own more assets than the poorest 150 million combined, the top one per cent of u.s. households controls about twentythree percent of the nation’s total income and the average u.s. chief executive (ceo) is paid approximately three-hundred and thirty times more than the u.s. worker (cassidy, 2014; olive, 2014; picketty, 2014). two hundred and twenty five million people are unemployed, wages as a percent of gdp are at an all-time low while profits as a percentage of gdp are at an all-time high and one in three people on the planet are poor, barely able to meet their basic needs (common dreams, 2012). between the early 1980s and 2010, the wealth of canada’s ruling elite grew and now, the nation’s 1 percent accumulates at least 10 times more than the typical worker. in 1980, the ratio of pay for canadian chief executive officers vs. frontline workers was 20:1; in 2013, it was 171: 1 (olive, 2014). in 2013, the100 highest-paid ceos in canada took home a total of $7.9 million, each making about 171 times more than what they paid workers (olive, 2014). in 2012, canadian pacific railway ceo hunter harrison received $49.2 million; thomson reuters ceo james smith got $18.8 million; talisman energy ceo john manzoni collected $18.7 million; eldorado gold corp ceo paul wright accumulated $18.7 million; magna ceo donald walker absorbed $16.9 million; open text corp ceo mark barrenechea took $14.8 million; royal bank of canada ceo gordon nixon, $13.7 million; onex corp ceo gerald schwarz, $13.3 million; and, catamaran corp ceo mark thierer, $12.9 million. the top ten highest-paid ceos in canada accumulated a total of $177 million dollars in 2012, a sum larger than what is earned by a small town of about 10,000 median waged workers. capitalist history, not abstract time, is what makes the millennial working class. as marx (1852) might put it, the millennials “make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” the millennial working class lives and works alongside previous generations of workers in a class divided society, but it came to be in a set of circumstances that were slightly different from those which were endured by their parents and their parents. the millennial “structure of feeling”(williams, 1977) was crystallized in a period of time not exactly like the one experienced by the “gen xers” and the “boomers.” the millennials did not live through the radicalizing upheavals of the 60s or grow up feeling that the revolution was around the corner. they were not alive during the keynesian welfare state’s highpoint and the “class compromise” from which the energies a critique of the millennial | 287 of the 1960s exploded into different political formations. they did not face the onset of neoliberal restructuring in the mid-1970s or know that they came of age as this ruling “class project” took off (harvey, 2007). the millennial working class came to be in circumstances shaped by the effects of major economic transformations, state policies and ideologies that its members did not choose, but inherited. though shaped by capitalist conditions, the millennial working class has the power to change them in solidarity with other cohorts, young and old. the millennial as a sovereign consumer a second significant way the media represents the millennial is as a consumer of commodities and services (business, 2013; hoffmann, 2014; ray, 2014). since the 1950s, capital’s mind management corps have mined, co-opted and integrated the trends, styles and mannerisms of youth culture into their selling campaigns. today, marketing, advertising and promotional relations firms – the combined promotional industries – frame the millennial subject as a consumer of the goods and services sold by their corporate clients. in “here is everything you need to know about the millennial consumer,” hoffmann (2014) describes the millennial consumer’s characteristics. millennials are said to constitute 27 percent of the u.s. consumer market and “are more diverse than any previous generation.” this multi-cultural millennial is a “digital native” (i.e. they grew up with new technology) and a proactive consumer (i.e. they search for tips about what to buy from friends, partners, parents and websites). the millennial consumer is networked at all times, uses the internet to browse for commodities and presumably wants to be targeted with sales pitches for goods via facebook, twitter and all kinds of social media platforms and digital devices. in marketing to millennials: reach the largest and most influential generation of consumers ever (2013), barkely advertising’s executive vice president jeff fromm and his lawyer co-author, christie garton, affix some other traits to the millennial consumer. they claim that “80 million members of the millennial generation (born 1977 to 1995) represent over 25% of the u.s. population and more than $200 billion in annual buying power.” they say the millennial consumer values social networking, isn’t shy about sharing opinions, is a prosumer who likes to participate in product development and marketing, expects and demands authenticity and transparency from companies and is a tastemaker, effective at swaying and shaping the shopping habits of others. promoting their book, fromm and barton (2013) explain how marketing companies can build the “trust and 288 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education loyalty” of the millennial consumer and “persuade” it to buy what their clients sell. this media representation of the millennial as consumer is typical in a capitalist system which depends for its survival on the ideological reproduction of consumerism as the dominant way of life. in the capitalist system, corporations produce an abundance of commodified goods and services for market exchange (and profit), not for social use (or human need). but no one corporation can guarantee in advance of circulation how many of their commodities will be consumed or how much profit they will make as result. to increase the prospect of maximal commodities being consumed and optimal profit realized, corporations spend a tremendous amount of money on promotional campaigns that try to persuade people to desire what they sell (sweezy and baran, 1966). in the early twentieth century, the promotional industries –advertising, marketing and pr – developed to service capitalism’s consumer cultivation imperative (ewen, 1996). in the twenty-first century, the “sales effort” still performs a crucial consumer-demand management function for the corporations that rule the market. “consumer spending in today’s economy, dominated by giant firms, is significantly dependent on the sales effort, i.e., marketing as a whole, with advertising as its most conspicuous form”(holleman, stole, bellamy-foster and mcchesney, 2011). the identity and interest forming promotional industries are not in the business of making ads that reflect existing consumer wants for commodities but are instead paid by the captains of industry to engineer images of “what people need and must have” to sustain massive “waves of enthusiasm” for commodities (debord, 1994). manufacturing and managing the consumer and the commodity spectacle is what keeps the promotional sector profitable. the promotional firms are paid to differentiate the images of their client’s commodities from the images that rival firms attach to the goods and services sold by others. they design, for example, the brand images which aim to differentiate tim horton’s from starbucks, mcdonalds from wendy’s, apple from samsung and nike from reebok. in 2013, u.s. corporations collectively spent about $140.2 billion on multi-media marketing campaigns to manage consumer wants for well-crafted brand images (kantar media, 2014). in that same year, apple spent $662 million, samsung spent $597 million and microsoft spent $493 million to get people to buy the images of their technology (advertising age, 2013). in capitalism, the very corporations that produce “want” pay other corporations to define what the want is a critique of the millennial | 289 and convince consumers to pay for its image. consumers do not decide what corporations make or sell, nor do they always know exactly what they want from corporations in advance of the spectacular campaigns that tell them what to want and what the meaning of their want is. though dubious, the media representation of the millennial as an empowered consumer aligns perfectly with neoliberal-capitalist ideology’s champion and hero, the “sovereign consumer.” neoliberal authors posit that human freedom is best advanced by the maximization of business freedoms within a state characterized by property rights, free markets and free trade. for free-market fundamentalists, to be free is to be a sovereign consumer and to be a sovereign consumer is to rationally choose what commodity one wants, when one wants it, from a “free” marketplace (harvey, 2007; hutt, 1940; tucker, 2004; von hayek, 2007). the media represents the millennial as a sovereign consumer in a freemarket that reflects their every demand with a commodity supply. the hipster millennial wants a quizzical hamburger: wendy’s launches the “pretzel bacon cheeseburger”; the health conscious millennial wants low calorie fast food: mcdonald’s releases the mcwrap; the millennial college student wants a big box store: wall-mart builds on-campus (thrasher, 2013). corporations use the idea of millennial consumer “demand” to rationalize the quarterly roll out of new products and to make millennials collectively feel as though they are really in control of the marketplace (when they are not). by representing each new commodity in the marketplace as reflective of millennial demand, the media makes the millennial consumer appear to have decision-making powers comparable to a ceo. as if apple inc. discovered a collective millennial desire for the apple ipad in 2009 and that this is what inspired steve jobs to announce the ipad’s global launch in 2010. in reality, most commodities available in the marketplace are chosen by corporate decision-makers far in advance (and in anticipation) of the millennial consumer’s “choice.” millennials do select commodities to consume (from hundreds upon thousands of available selections), but corporations possess the power choose what commodities actually get made as “selections.” though consumer demand matters to corporations, it is not the primary cause of the capitalist process through which they research and develop, manufacture and bring things and services into the world as commodities. the corporate imperative to expand operations in pursuit of profit on behalf of shareholders is what maintains the ongoing production of “new” commodities. the capitalist goal of ensuring people will buy these 290 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education commodities is what buttresses the growth of the promotional industries and their management of millennial consumer want. in addition to perpetuating the myth of the sovereign consumer, the media representation of the millennial consumer is deeply classist. to make “free” market choices, the millennial must first have money to spend, but not all millennials possess the same amount of money due to the class system. in fact, the media’s ideal-type multicultural, smartphone-owning and brand-conscious millennial panders to the already wealthy millennials who have the new technology, the internet access, the digital literacy skills, the time and the money to shop for and consume commodities. the millennial consumer depicted in the corporate mediascape is a hybrid, urban, tech-savvy, college-educated and “middle class” hipster, never a rural and racialized poor person who cannot afford an ipad, who is deprived of a computer and internet connection and who struggles to earn a college degree in the time left over after working flex-time shifts for a meager wage in the service sector. the consumer market includes and excludes and targets and ignores millennials based upon their ability to pay. in addition to being classist, the media’s millennial consumer hides the human source of the commodities available in the market: the bodies and minds of millions of waged workers. the image of the north american millennial as a free and equal consumer in a marketplace of branded commodities made just for them conceals how corporations exploit young waged workers all over the world. furthermore, the media representation of the millennial consumer erases half of the millennial’s waking life by encouraging them to see themselves as only consumers. to consume, most millennials must work, but the media representation of the millennial as only a consumer conceals the waged work the millennial must endure to acquire the money they need to buy the branded commodities they have been taught by the spectacle to want. the american eagle slacks, the olive garden salad bar, the smirnoff mickey, the apple ipad and tiffany pearl broach cost money and to get it, the millennial must sell a piece of themselves to a corporation. through this exchange relationship, the millennial gets some of the cash they need to buy status commodities, but loses a piece of their being in the process. the dispossessions and sorrows of millennial work (waged and unwaged) are many: deference to management’s control over embodied emotions; the “one best way” of speaking customer service scripts, all day; the psychological drain and physical strain of labouring with one’s a critique of the millennial | 291 heart and mind to personify the company’s “brand promise”; flexibly coming together with others in projects that quickly fall apart and do not reflect one’s true passions; virtually working round the clock, tethered to technologies that collapse pre-existing boundaries between labourtime and leisure-time, work and home. work in capitalism wears the millennial down, but the promotional industries motivate the millennial to keep slogging away at it in exchange for the engineered promises of consumerism. the media representation of the millennial as a consumer conceals the capitalist dispossessions and degradations of waged work but is nonetheless functional to the reproduction of the capitalist circuit. this representation teaches the millennial to see their freedom in the marketplace, not the work-space (the freedom to consume perhaps makes the unfreedom of work bearable); it encourages the millennial to view their means to change the world as the marketplace, not the state (“vote with your dollars” for the best corporate brand, not for a party that best represents your class interests); it gets millennials to view their common interest in lifestyle niche markets, not pro-worker organizations (mobilize with fellow shoppers to lobby for bargains, forget about class solidarity, collective bargaining and political demands). overall, the millennial-as-consumer hides the millennial-as-worker and closes down yet another space in society for the millennial to see themselves as part of a working class with interests non-identical to the mall. the millennial as a worker to be managed a third way the media represents the millennial is as a worker, but one that is an object of modern management (ashkenas, 2014; bradt, 2014; espinoza, ukleja and rusch, 2010; heathfield, 2014; lancaster and stillman, 2010; o’malley, 2014; sannelli, 2014). this media representation depicts the millennial as a “young worker” whose ethos poses all kinds of opportunities and challenges for hr departments. for example, in managing the millennials: discover the core competencies for managing today’s workforce, espinoza, ukleja and rusch (2010) describe the work habits and values of the millennial to provide “managers of all ages with specific recommendations and tools for engaging this burgeoning demographic – some 78 million strong.” in the m-factor: how the millennial generation is rocking the workplace, lancaster and stillman (2010) profess to offer “the definitive guide to millennials in the workplace – what they want, how they think, and how to unlock their talents to your 292 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education organization’s advantage.” in motivating the “what’s in it for me” workforce: manage across the generational divide and increase profits, marston (2007) explains how managers can motivate the millennial to help their corporation “achieve peak performance” and “organizational success” so they “can get more out of every worker, no matter their age and attitude.” moore (2014) says the millennial worker holds “a postmodern worldview, which is quite different from the generations before” and encourages managers to “better understand the postmodern worldview to effectively work with millennials.” in some accounts, the millennial worker is a value-added benefit to business operations. equipped with a smart phone and always connected by the internet to a virtual network of cosmopolitan, civicallyminded and multi-cultural “friends,” the millennial helps corporations to compete in a fast-changing and global marketplace by pioneering new-fangled customer service models, collaboratively solving efficiency problems and innovating new products (burstein, 2013; fuscaldo, 2014). in others, the millennial is a problem, a slacker who undermines corporate performance. distracted by the instant gratifications of web 2.0, obsessed with brand images, coddled by helicopter parents and willfully under-performing, the millennial is a lazy, entitled, selfish, atomized and disengaged worker (stampler, 2013). as a boon or burden to capital, the millennial is a worker that exists as a reified object, a resource to be managed in ways that align with a firm’s profit goals. this managerial-manufactured media representation of the millennial as a manageable worker reflects the fact that in capitalism, owners do rely on human relations experts and consultants to run their operations. in early twentieth century capitalism, owners hired engineers, fredrick w. taylor being the most renowned, to figure out how to control how workers worked (noble, 1977). taylor said that owners could increase production efficiencies by studying the worker’s labour process in minute detail, determining the one best way to do a job and then imposing this standard upon workers. taylor’s “scientific management” tried to maximize the productivity of workers by increasing their “efficiency” with strategies that aimed to standardize and speed up work (noble, 1984). by advising managers to break down production into small and repetitive steps, taylorism divorced the conceptualization of the work process from the workers themselves and put it in the control of managers. by standardizing the steps in each production process, taylorism made it possible for managers to easily train workers, thereby undermining their skill set and bargaining power. taylorism taught owners that the labour a critique of the millennial | 293 process could be engineered and that workers could be replaced, just like the machines that workers used to assemble goods (braverman, 1974). taylorism persists in many millennial-filled workplaces such as mcdonalds (ritzer, 2009), but this fordist and hierarchical managerial strategy of control exists alongside a post-fordist and vertical managerial strategy that aims to get workers to coordinate their own exploitation. in the nominally “humane workplaces” of the new economy, managers recognize each worker’s unique identity and enable them to express their feelings and contribute to decision-making (ross, 2004). by encouraging individualized acts of task-mastering and autonomy, managers deter workers from uniting as a class for itself and fighting for more just workplaces. in postmodern management theory and practice, this “new spirit of capitalism”(boltanski and chiapello, 2005) gets millennial workers to superintend their own dispossession. self-actualization occurs through self-exploitation and freedom is attained by subordinating oneself to more tasks. this mode of capitalist governance encourages workers to loathe themselves, not the system, for their plight. as a tool of the owning class, management takes sides in class struggles. yet, the media representation of the millennial as a worker to be managed makes management seem benign, even class neutral. a well-managed corporation seems to support a win-win situation for millennial ceos, managers and workers alike. this sanguine view of the power relationship between managers and workers downplays the often intense conflicts between management and workers and the fact that the outcome of a well-managed organization can lead to a win-lose situation, with managers and ceos being the winners and workers, the losers. for example, a manager may have an interest in getting the millennial worker to work harder and faster for little pay so as to maximize their productivity and add to the overall profit margins of their organization; the worker may have an interest in working at a pace they determine and feel comfortable with and for as much pay as possible to enhance their quality of work and life. the amount of pay a millennial gets for their work, the amount of time they must work to get paid, and the way they think and act at work are all sites of contention, negotiation and struggle. but these sources of class conflict don’t appear in the made-tobe-managed media representation of the millennial. instead, media discourse on the managed millennial focuses on solving the problem of a supposed “generational conflict” in the workplace between the millennial, gen xer and boomer workers. the pr for lancaster’s (2003) 294 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education when generations collide: who they are. why they clash. how to solve the generational puzzle at work, for example, declares the workplace to be “a battle zone” where “colleagues sometimes act like adversaries” and “generations glare at one another across the conference table” in a blitz of “conflict and confusion.” this ad copy for the book says that “eighty million baby boomers vacillate between their overwhelming need to succeed and their growing desire to slow down and enjoy life,” gen xers “try to prove themselves constantly yet dislike the image of being overly ambitious, disrespectful, and irreverent” and millennials “mix savvy with social conscience and promise to further change the business landscape.” here, workplace conflict arises from cohorts, not social classes; class conflicts between owners and workers of all ages over the terms of work are invisible. furthermore, the media representation of the millennial as an object of management effaces the continuing intersections of sexualized and racialized class inequality and oppression within the twenty-first century workplace. of all the ceos currently running fortune 500 hundred companies, six are african-american (1.2 percent), nine are asian (1.8 percent), eight are latin (1.6 percent) and 23 are women (4.6 percent) (zweignenhalf, 2013). though a rainbow colored ruling class of ceos does business round the world, at least 90.8 percent of the u.s.’s largest companies are still run by white men (diversity inc., 2014). the ceos of the u.s. venture capital industry, for example, are predominantly male (89 percent) and white (76 percent) (teten, 2014). and u.s. media conglomerates are mostly run by white men and staffed by white male cultural content producers (pesta, 2012; women’s media center, 2014). sexualized class inequality (the oppression of working women by corporations predominantly owned and run by men) continues to keep many women in subordinate positions. women are over-represented in the ranks of the poor and under-represented among upper income earners; women working full time earn about 76 percent of what men do for similar jobs; and women spend over one and half times more hours than men doing unpaid domestic work (bouw, 2013). racialized class inequality (the oppression of people who are racialized by those who imagine themselves to be colour blind: “white people”) persists as well. racialized workers are under-represented in managerial positions and over-represented in low-end service jobs. also, racialized workers take home less in pay than non-racialized workers: racialized working men make 68 cents to 76 cents for every dollar earned by white workers and a critique of the millennial | 295 racialized women earn even less than racialized and non-racialized men (galabuzi, caspiullai and go, 2012). clearly, postmodern management’s recognition of the millennial worker’s “diversity” does not support the equitable redistribution of the surplus or challenge the power of a largely white and male ruling class. instead, it transforms diversity into a resource to be exploited on behalf of it. the millennial as immiserated victim of hard times a fourth way the media represents the millennial is as an immiserated victim of hard times. over the past few years, numerous news stories have framed the millennial as part of a completely impoverished cohort with slogans like “generation jobless” (the economist, 2013), the “in-debt generation” (parsons, 2014), “generation precarious” (shupac, 2013) and “generational hopeless” (richards, 2013). there is truth in this media framing of the millennial. in the united states, 40 percent of unemployed workers are millennials, meaning there are about 4.6 million millennials who depend on extra-economic support systems to subsist (fottrell, 2014). while the overall unemployment rate in canada is about 6.9 percent, among millennials, it hovers between 13.5 percent and 14.5 percent (cbc, 2013). debt has become a way of life and a way of work for millennials (ellis, 2014; ljunggren, 2013). bonded to banks and struggling to keep up with debt payments, millennials work for meager wages, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, chipping away at mountainous totals on their credit card bills. yet, the jobs they work to pay down debt are increasingly precarious (cohen and depeuter, 2013). temp work is growing at a faster pace than full-time jobs and in 2012, two million temps competed for contractual gigs (grant, 2013). half of the workers who live in the greater toronto area (gta) subsist in a precarious employment relation to numerous firms (mcisaac and yates, 2014). a recent pew research (2014) poll called “millennials in adulthood” explains that millennials “have higher levels of student loan debt, poverty and unemployment, and lower levels of wealth and personal income” than the gen xer and boomer cohorts “had at the same stage of their life cycles.” the millennial working class is under-employed, indebted and precarious. these circumstances foster intense psychological disturbances: stress, fits of anxiety, low self-esteem, muddled thoughts of depression and nihilism. 296 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the media representation of the millennial as an immiserated victim of hard times sheds light on the real circumstances of the millennial working class but fails to explain them as an outcome of capitalist logics. pew research (2014), for example, frames the millennial’s “difficult economic circumstances” with regard to the great recession (2007-2009) and the long-term effects of “globalization and rapid technological change.” but the recession, globalization and rapid technological change are not in themselves responsible for the millennial working class’s immiseration. they are effects of capitalist production for profit and the decisions made by corporate managers in pursuit of the goal of maximal profit on behalf of the shareholders they serve. as marx (1990) might say, “[millennial] pauperism forms the condition of capitalist production and of the capitalist development of wealth...in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the [millennial] worker, be his [or her] payment high or low, must grow worse.” in the capitalist system, the ultimate goal of all corporations is profit. corporations try to maximize profit by keeping the cost of producing and circulating commodities as low as possible. to do so, they strategize to keep the amount of money they must pay workers for the jobs they do to as little as they can. at present, corporate profits are at an all-time high while wages are at an all-time low (blodget, 2012; brennan, 2012; norris, 2014). corporations are raking in super-profits because they are paying their millennial workers lower and lower sums for the work they do. first, corporations reduce labour costs by demolishing standard employment relationships with workers. in response to a profit-squeeze stemming from worker mobilization, strikes and the autonomous impulse, corporations coordinated a shift from a fordist to post-fordist regime of accumulation and flexibilized employment relations (boltanski and chiapello, 2005; harvey, 1989). corporations started replacing fulltime and secure jobs with regular hours on a relatively fixed schedule with a non-standard employment regime that is part-time, insecure and temporary. by shirking a standard employment relation with workers, corporations flexibly hire and fire workers as they please, eliminate costs associated with benefits and maintain a precarious reserve army (standing, 2011). second, corporations slash their labour costs by generalizing internment, or unpaid work programs (perlin, 2009). these reinforce the class structure by privileging wealthy millennials and discriminating against the poor ones who cannot afford to work for free. corporations use intern programs eliminate paid positions while millennials actively intern a critique of the millennial | 297 themselves in hopes of acquiring the experience, skills and connections needed to land a waged job (de peuter, cohen, and brophy, 2012). third, corporations drive down labour costs “here” by off-shoring tasks to low paid workers elsewhere. “blue-collar” manufacturing jobs lost to offshoring were supposed to be replaced by higher-paying and less strenuous “service” collar jobs. but service corporations offshore tasks to workers in other countries as well and the primary reason they do so is to save on the cost of labour (cheung and rossiter, 2008). also, corporations reduce labour costs by importing foreign workers – mechanics, builders, engineers, machinists and cooks – to do jobs here but for a wage that is less than what domestic workers are paid (coles, 2013; collacott, 2014; goodman, 2014). fourth, corporations buy and implement automation systems to minimize or completely eliminate waged jobs. in almost every sector, corporations have developed and acquired information and communication technologies (icts) and algorithms to replace waged workers (brynjolfsson and mcafee, 2014). boeing’s gigantic jets are automatically riveted by giant machines and philips electronics are assembled by hundreds of robots. in transportation, firms are building driverless vehicles, conductor-less trains and pilotless drones. in music, algorithms write songs; in fashion, they design t-shirts; in publishing, they write books; in the news, they generate headline stories and daily information feeds. the more robots corporations employ, the fewer workers they must to pay. using some or all of the above strategies, corporations keep profits high by paying millennial workers as little wages as they can get away with. the profit-motive thus immiserates the millennial working class. conclusion: pedagogy of the millennial working class as argued in this paper, four dominant media representations of the millennial distort and deflect attention away from the real capitalist determinations of twenty-first century millennial life and labour. the media representation of the millennial as a member of a youth cohort obscures the reality of class division within this cohort and all generational cohorts. the media representation of the millennial as a sovereign consumer gets millennials to see their freedom in the marketplace, not in the workplace. the media representation of the millennial as a worker to be managed obscures the capitalist power dynamics of modern management and the class, sexual and racial oppressions of the workplace. the 298 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education media representation of the millennial as a victim of hard times sheds light on the dire circumstances of the millennial working class but fails to explain millennial immiseration with regard to real capitalist determinations, the profit-motive in particular. together, the four media representations examined in this paper constitute a neoliberal capitalist pedagogy of the millennial. this media method of instruction teaches millennials to see themselves and their interests as identical with the capitalist system and the worldview of its owning strata. it obscures the real capitalist social relations that shape millennial life and labour and works to deter millennials from seeing themselves, their problems and their possibilities, as part of the concerns facing the working class. in a context in which pundits teach millennials to conform with the status quo, left educators might try speaking with millennial workers about the essence of twenty-first century capitalism, learn 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(2013). diversity among ceos and corporate directors: has the heyday come and gone? http://www2.ucsc.edu/ whorulesamerica/power/diversity_among_ceos.html alternatives to the low waged economy: living wage movements in canada and the united states bryan evans1 abstract: the forty-years of neoliberal capitalism has been accompanied by an ever expanding trend toward deepening inequality and the expansion of a low wage labour market. the expansion of the non-union, post-industrial, ‘new’ economy characterized by low wage service sector jobs became identified with a deterioration in employment conditions and quality. employment arrangements, reflecting the new normal, offer not security and adequacy but rather low pay and precarity. living wage movements, as well as campaigns demanding a higher general minimum wage, have emerged as part of the response demanding economic justice. these movements and campaigns, found both in the united states and canada, are significantly different in breadth and tactics. here, those differences are described and interrogated as a function of the uneven terrain of neoliberal restructuring within each country. keywords: living wage; minimum wage; canada; united states; local introduction the forty-year ascent and normalization of neoliberal capitalism is coterminous with an ever expanding trend toward deepening inequality (giles 2014; piketty 2014). the great financial crisis of 2008, and the consequent age of austerity ushered in as states turned to fiscal consolidation once the financial system was stabilized, has contributed to an intensification of this process of economic polarization. in response, living wage as well as campaigns demanding a higher general minimum wage, have emerged as movements for economic justice. this movement 1 bryan evans is professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. email: b1evans@ryerson.ca 80 | austerity urbanism and the social economy is a direct response to the expanding low wage sector in the labour market as well as the political reluctance of governments in both the united states and canada to maintain the general minimum wage at a sufficient level of purchasing adequacy. thirdly, and broadly subsuming the preceding point, is that these movements for economic justice are a contemporary response to the dismantling of the political keynesianism which framed the post-war social contract between capital and labour. and particularly the institutionalization of trade unions as legitimate actors in collective bargaining. the expansion of the non-union, postindustrial, ‘new’ economy characterized by low wage service sector jobs in much of the global north but especially in the so-called angloamerican capitalist economies, became identified with a deterioration in employment conditions and quality. employment arrangements, reflecting the new normal, offer not security and adequacy but rather low pay and precarity (freeman, hersch, & mishel 2005; muffels & luijkx 2008). in the cases surveyed here, economic justice movements find renewed vigour in the aftermath of the 2008 great financial crisis and the roll-out of austerity policy. workers, wages and social movements: the politics of capitalist accumulation the concept of worker ‘precarity’, if not the actual word, is hardly new. engels’ analysis of the industrial reserve army of labour in the condition of the working class in england (1845/1887) is a treatment of the same phenomenon, in contemporary terms, we refer to as precariousness (jonna & foster 2015: 22). the reality of work, in industrial working class life, from its 18th century origins to the opening days of the post-1945 golden age of capitalism, was characterized by insecurity. every dimension of working life was marked by fear and anxiety over access to work, predictability of tenure, adequacy of wages, health and safety, access to leisure time, and the possibilities for advancement and acquiring skills (standing 2011: 10). none of these were a given and, save for those workers in the skilled crafts, such alternatives to the low waged economy | 81 employment arrangements were indeed the norm. only with the legitimation and institutionalization of trade unions, the adoption of a range of labour protections via public policy and regulation, as well as the construction of the welfare state in the mid-20th century, was this regime of insecurity overturned, at least for a large part of the industrial working class if not the entire working class. the neoliberal counter-revolution of the 1970s started a process of dismantling of the political arrangements which constituted the core framework of the post-war capital-labour compromise. by the late 1980s it was becoming evident that the glue which made possible a limited working class but unprecedented degree of consumption was dissolving. a 1990 study by the economic council of canada put an empirical foundation to what everyone was sensing, that good jobs were disappearing and being replaced by lower quality ones. as the report put it, standard employment, that is full-time, 40 hours a week jobs with a degree of tenure, was giving way to non-standard employment, jobs that were part-time, temporary, and provided little or no opportunity for a career ladder (good jobs, 1990). augmenting the direct attacks on labour laws and social protections provided through the state, were the trade and investment liberalization agreements brokered between states. the result was a new international division of labour which facilitated deindustrialization in key sectors of the global north capitalist economies. in political economic terms, the result was a locking-in of the neoliberal model where the international agreements effectively constitutionalized the terms and conditions of the new order of work and production (mcbride 2003; gill, 1992). that fundamentally state-led political interventions had profoundly re-balanced class power in favour of capital was acknowledged by the international monetary fund no less. in a 2015 study, the imf concluded that the incessant expansion of inequality was a product of declining union strength (jaumotte & buitron 2015). consequently, over three decades or more, the non-standard increasingly returns as standard. what was old is made new. but that applies to the political and legal structures which shape labour-capital relations but not 82 | austerity urbanism and the social economy to the working class itself. the reorganization of the working class into forms of insecure employment is not to be confused with the emergence of a class separate and apart from the working class which the term ‘precariat’ suggests (jonna & foster 2015: 22). living wage movements of the late 20th and early 21st century are as much an expression of contemporary working class precariousness as were the 19th century demands for a living wage. in other words, it is one aspect of the reanimation of the working class as a social movement. a key question to ask here is do these campaigns for economic justice constitute social movements? social movements are born of ‘contentious politics’ which emerge “when ordinary people – often in alliance with more influential citizens and with changes in public mood – join forces in confronting elites, authorities, and opponents”. it is the unique contribution of a social movement to provide the capacity to mount, coordinate, and sustain the struggle against powerful forces standing in opposition. the resulting “contentious politics leads to sustained interaction with opponents – to social movements” (tarrow 2011: 6). probably the most widely accepted definition of social movements proposes that social movements engage in a series of actions, undertakings or assertions made by individuals through collective action against others. such collective actions have been expressed in three distinct ways: 1) a sustained, organized public effort making collective claims on the state (a campaign); 2) applying a variety of forms of political action including building coalitions, public meetings, rallies, and demonstrations; and 3) participants' public representations of “worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment on the part of themselves and/or their constituencies” (tilly 2004: 3-4). the key element for comparative purposes is the scope of the movements and the degree of contention raised by the various campaigns. united states: a case of post-industrial working class mobilization? the contemporary living wage movement has its origins in the united states. this can be traced to the emergence of an alliance between alternatives to the low waged economy | 83 religious leaders and community groups in baltimore, maryland in 1994. two decades of deindustrialization destroyed unionized, middle income jobs and left instead an increasingly prevalent working poor (luce 2012). where prior anti-poverty movements had failed, the living wage campaign proved to be more effective as it reflected that element of american ‘common sense’ that those who work should be able to achieve a basic level of subsistence. in political terms, it further filled a vacuum left by the decline of the labour movement which had had its base in manufacturing. community-based coalitions took hold throughout the united states, comprised of religious leaders, anti-poverty activists, labour unions, academics, and charitable organizations to struggle for a living wage. this resulted in more than 140 cities adopting living wage ordinances throughout the united states in the years following baltimore’s pioneering campaign (greenberg et al. 2008: 76). these living wage ordinances have limited coverage in that they apply only to city contracts and, in certain cases, firms receiving economic development subsidies. all cities possess the authority to adopt such ordinances covering their own contracting and subsidy guidelines. again, the scope of coverage – how many workers benefit from such ordinances – can be quite small. in contrast, but still more variable, is the authority for cities to establish wage laws governing private businesses which have no business relationship with the city. in this respect, there are municipalities possessing the legal authority to adopt local minimum wage laws and these have been increasingly passing in the past number of years. in 2015, 14 cities, counties and states approved proposals for a $15 minimum wage (nelp 2015). part of the success of the living wage movement in the united states can be attributed to the authority granted to some municipalities to set their low local minimum wage rates. more than 30 us cities have their own local minimum wage ordinance (local minimum wage laws 2016). as a consequence, living wage activists in the united states have been able to fight their battles at the local levels. this too, has arguably lent itself to the development of locally-based, grassroots movements, 84 | austerity urbanism and the social economy since the political terrain on which the battles have been waged has largely been local rather than national or even state level (dalmat 2005). despite the successes of the living wage movements at the local level, in some states, governors and legislatures, have used their authority to override municipal laws and impose bans on living wage ordinances. in the early to mid-2000s, louisiana and georgia, among others, intervened in such a way. more recently, in 2014, the state of oklahoma passed a law banning local living wage ordinances (bergman 2015). in 2015, debates were held in the state legislatures of maine, minnesota and new jersey on the prospect of imposing a ban on municipal living wage ordinances. in june 2015, michigan’s republican governor signed a pre-emption law to stop local governments from adopting their own ordinances. the following month, wisconsin governor scott walker signed a similar bill in prohibiting municipal living wage ordinances in his state (velencia 2015). in 2016, the state senate of alabama passed a law banning cities and towns from increasing minimum wages. the legislation voided a birmingham ordinance that would have raised the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour (kasperkevic 2016). the impact of this trend towards the use of state power to override the power of municipalities to set wages could have significant implications for the living wage movement throughout the united states. the living wage movement in the us is broad and dynamic. of the movements canvassed here it is the most coherently organized and presents a high degree of popular and political mobilization situated in community-based local and regional, i.e. state-level, campaigns. what is particularly important is the significant participation of certain unions in providing organizational and financial support to these movements. moreover, the broad-based coalitions making up these movements, entail in addition to unions, immigrant rights, faith-based, anti-racism, women’s rights, and various economic justice groups. this inclusivity has echoes of the much earlier civil rights movement as well as of the 1930s cio campaigns to organize industrial unions. in this respect, the american living wage movement has the look and feel of an urban, alternatives to the low waged economy | 85 racialized, working class struggle for social and economic inclusion. and, what is a core dimension of the us movement is that the living wage and minimum wage demands are not conceptually or politically separate as they are in canada to as large degree. indeed, the demand is that the minimum wage, whether the local or the state-wide minima should provide a level of adequacy to constitute a living wage. the “fight for $15” (ff15) was launched with a day of protests and walkouts in new york city in the fall of 2012. hundreds of workers went on a one-day strike and were supported by large demonstrations throughout the city. this was the product of a year of organizing by the seiu and the community group new york communities for change (nycc) – which was a successor group to acorn after it was disbanded. the nycc, with the financial help of the seiu, collected thousands of low-wage workers’ contact information often by circulating petitions on indirectly related issues such as ‘stop and frisk’ policies and access to low-income housing (gupta 2013). these contacts were then used to organize meetings, and ultimately to organize the first strikes and actions. after the successful new york fast food strike, a second round of coordinated one-day strikes and actions were undertaken in the spring of 2013. instead of just one city, the one-day strikes rotated weekly from one city to the next. chicago, new york, detroit, seattle, washington, st. louis and a number of other major centres in the northeast saw strikes. the organizing model remained the same – local organizations often with seiu money developed contacts and built towards strike actions. the strikes themselves varied in terms of the number of workers who participated, but those who did strike were supported by large local crowds of allies. these allies consisted of union members, especially from the seiu, local labour councils, religious groups, community organizations like the nycc, and student activists. strikers took advantage of section 7 of the national labour relations act, which gives all workers the right to strike for economic reasons without being fired 86 | austerity urbanism and the social economy by their employer (basic guide, 1997).2 while workers had the right to strike, ensuring that workers were not fired subsequently remains a major issue for the campaign. indeed, in the few cases where workers were fired, allies went into those workplaces and demanded that those fired be re-instated (croghan 2012). the spring strikes were followed by a large seiu sponsored fast food meeting where workers decided to build on their momentum by calling for a nationwide day of fast food strikes in the late summer. the nationwide one-day strike on august 29, 2013 propelled the $15 minimum wage demand into the national debate. over 60 cities saw protests and they garnered nationwide media coverage. on the political front, the once seemingly unrealistic demand of a $15 minimum wage was already making an impact. democratic party members of congress came out in favour of raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. by november 2013, the president signaled again his support to increase the minimum wage. earlier, in 2008, as part of his presidential campaign, obama called for a $9.50 an hour minimum wage indexed to inflation. although this was much less than the movement was calling for, the political shift emboldened activists and further highlighted the issue. in seattle and minneapolis openly socialist candidates ran for city council in the november 2013 elections on the issue of the $15 minimum wage. in minneapolis, the local candidate lost, but garnered 42 percent of the vote. in seattle, kshama sawant unseated the incumbent democratic party candidate. at the same time, in the outlying community of seatac a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage to $15 won. these victories electrified the movement, which held its largest nationwide day of fast food strikes in december, with over 130 cities seeing participation. 2 technically they can be replaced while on strike but must be offered their job back unless the company has found a replacement. even if that is the case, strikers may seek to be reinstated if they have not found equivalent employment (basic guide 1997). the focus on one-day strikes is thus aimed at limiting the ability of employers to replace workers. alternatives to the low waged economy | 87 the movement continued to grow in 2014. a global day of action for fast food workers’ rights took place in the spring in over 30 countries. two other major coordinated strike days took place in the united states, each bigger and more militant than the last. the seiu also organized a dramatic march on a mcdonald’s shareholder meeting in the summer. building off the movement’s success, the newly-elected seattle councilor sawant pushed the city council to raise the minimum wage in the city to $15. sawant was able to force city council to pass the minimum wage ordinance because of immense pressure from below. labour and community activists formed a local coalition, “15 now” in november 2013 to organize around the issue (the movement existed in seattle before the election, but 15 now was an attempt to coordinate it on a local level). 15 now organized demonstrations, hired full-time organizers, recruited hundreds of volunteers and collected thousands of signatures for a ballot initiative all in the hope of exerting political pressure on city council (figueroa 2014). this effort was ultimately successful in forcing city council to support passing a $15 minimum wage ordinance. in the november 2014 elections, san francisco and los angeles passed city ordinances raising the minimum wage to $15. numerous other states and cities also raised their minimum wage. obama raised federal workers’ minimum wage to $10.10 and highlighted the issue of the minimum wage in his state of the union address. the campaign also reached beyond just fast food, as workers in other sectors such as homecare and retail were now taking up the demand. by 2014 the our walmart campaign, backed and launched by the united food and commercial workers (ufcw) union in 2011, in an effort to organize workers at walmart, had begun to adopt some of the demands of the ff15 (jamieson 2015). however, in late 2014, joseph hansen, the ufcw president who launched our walmart, retired setting off a leadership race resulting in the election of anthony perrone who had, in his campaign, questioned the cost of the our walmart campaign given that it had resulted in few new union members. with perrone’s victory, the union decided to scale back the our walmart campaign (moberg 2015). 88 | austerity urbanism and the social economy in 2015 the movement faced new challenges, while also exceeding their previous accomplishments. new york city raised its minimum wage to $13 and the announcement was followed by the governor of the state raising the minimum wage to $15 for all fast food workers and state employees in the state. in all 21 states saw increases to the minimum wage in 2015, some were due to pre-existing laws that tied the minimum wage to inflation, but most were the product of new laws or ballot initiatives (kasperkevic 2015). the one-day strikes and protests continued in 2015 with two major coordinated days of action in april and in november, which involved more workers and more cities than previous actions (the november date saw actions in 270 american cities). 2015 was also the year that both mcdonalds and walmart shifted from ignoring the protests to making a big show of raising wages for their workers (dorfman 2015). while these raises were in reality not what the companies made them out to be, they signified that the campaign was strong enough to force concessions from two of the country’s largest employers. these victories were followed by a significant labour board ruling in favour of the campaign. in august the nlrb ruled that companies that hire contractors to hire and supervise staff can be considered joint employers. this opened up the possibility that companies using the franchise model would have to directly negotiate with unions. the legal ruling could create the conditions for effective coordinated bargaining in the fast food industry. while the ff15 continued to grow, the our walmart campaign began to falter. the ufcw had envisioned the campaign as a steppingstone into a wider unionization drive of the company. our walmart was launched by ufcw in 2011 as an effort to organize walmart workers. despite garnering numerous headlines and engaging in big protests, it struggled to organize workers in many communities. the campaign operated on strategy minority unionism, where non-unionized workers, usually a small fraction of the total workforce, would organize together to push back against unfair labour practices and bad working conditions. mostly this revolved around public protests and non-union worker alternatives to the low waged economy | 89 strikes. the union, which had poured millions of dollars into the effort, decided to pull up shop and trimmed down its funding and staffing of the campaign (olney 2015). the remaining organizers shifted the focus of the campaign to a fight for higher wages (thus attaching it to the ff15). the high profile backtracking of the campaign was a major setback for the entire movement. the pace of individual cities passing city ordinances is slowing in 2016. this is because of the election cycle. the major unions involved in the movement, the united food and commercial workers’ (ufcw) and the seiu have focused on the presidential and congressional races. activists with the ‘raise the wage’ movement are attempting to turn city ordinances into state-wide ballot initiatives. the fight for $15 has been active in protesting and pushing its demands through the presidential primary and found traction with both the sanders and clinton campaigns. canada: rational politics advocacy and employer voluntarism in canada the movement looks quite different. outside of ontario the fight for $15 is largely notional. some small groups of activists and some labour unions have taken up the struggle, but so far it has remained largely marginal. the victory in alberta by the ndp and its position on the minimum wage has boosted the prospects of canadian activists. the federal ndp’s platform of having a federal sector $15 minimum wage also thrust the issue onto the national stage. unlike the united states there is no workplace aspect to the fight for $15. in the u.s. for instance the ff15 is supported by union money and organizers. because of this the goals of the ff15 in the u.s. are multifaceted: increasing the minimum wage at the legislative level, increasing pay and improving working conditions at large corporations and ultimately trying to achieve union recognition. in canada no union has really approached the ff15 with the same set of organizing goals when it comes to unionizing or organizing workers in the service or retail sector. unions while supportive are not using the fight for $15 as a wide scale organizing effort to leverage employers in the service sector. this 90 | austerity urbanism and the social economy reflects the differences of labour law, unfair labour practices and economic strikes can be undertaken in the united states with some protections for even non-unionized workers. in canada this is not the case. another major difference is the ability to win legislative fights about the minimum wage at the municipal level. in the united states this is possible, while in canada it is not. this makes building local movements easier in the us. the living wage movement in canada is largely divorced from the broader north american movement. in the us, the momentum of the living wage movement takes place through efforts to push through state imposed increases to the minimum wage. in canada, the ngo, non-profit arms of the progressive movement have for years been pushing an altogether different approach: the idea of voluntary agreements. outside of some municipalities, this has been wholly unsuccessful at pushing forward a political and social movement to increase the minimum wage. the first canadian living wage campaign emerged in british columbia in 2001. it was organized in response to a provincial government attack on health care sector workers which saw the government cut the pay of 8000 members of the hospital employees’ union (heu) by 40 percent. the union and the bc office of the canadian centre for policy alternatives turned to the example of london citizen’s living wage campaign as a means to give greater profile to the need for meaningful wages. in 2006, first call: bc child and youth advocacy coalition, started engaging in research into community support for a living wage in british columbia. the impetus for this research was the momentum of the us living wage movement. first call partnered with the bc canadian centre for policy alternatives (ccpa) office to develop living wage principles and a calculation for the actual living wage. this work also included a number of different organizations and individuals in the province. in the fall of 2008 the research report was released and shortly after other ccpa offices began to develop similar living wage principles and calculations for cities in ontario and the western provinces and organizations started to emerge in local alternatives to the low waged economy | 91 communities that sought a living wage. in response, living wage canada, a network for all of these different campaigns emerged and has helped to shape and organize the movement across the country. the bc ccpa, various unions, and community groups came together to establish the living wage for families campaign in 2008, which put forward $15 as a basic living wage. in 2011, the city of new westminster, a municipality within the greater vancouver area, became canada’s first government to adopt a living wage policy that requires all firms that are contracted directly or subcontracted by the city to pay a minimum of $19.62 an hour, nearly double the provincial minimum wage. soon after, the tiny township of esquimalt set a living wage of $17.31, but it has yet to be implemented. in addition, a voluntary accreditation campaign aimed at employers had, by fall 2015, signed on fifty bc employers. there are a number of living wage campaigns currently in bc. a number of the smaller centres do not necessarily have full on living wage campaigns. instead, many of these living wage campaigns are within larger anti-poverty campaigns. a number of others simply provide a calculation of the living wage in the region as a comparison to the minimum wage or to illustrate the growing income gap in the province. the areas that have well-established living wage campaigns in bc are victoria, new westminster, metro vancouver, and esquimalt. new westminster represents the first, and until recently, the only municipality in canada to have passed a living wage policy. the new westminster campaign was very organized right from the beginning when it launched in 2009. acorn canada, whose sister organization acorn us has played a key role in living wage campaigns around the us, was based in new westminster and saw the community as a prime place to attempt to implement a living wage policy in the metro vancouver regional area. the campaign approached a city councilor in new westminster about the possibility of a living wage policy in 2009. the councilor was very receptive of the idea and put forth a motion at city council for living wage to be studied by staff, which was passed by 92 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the rest of council (keddy 2015). as staff were preparing a report acorn used its institutional resources to recruit other organizations to join the campaign. most importantly, acorn was able to secure the support of the new westminster district and labour council, which brought along with it the support of most of the local unions in the area. with a strong team of community partners supporting the campaign, acorn went about engaging the community, local businesses, city council, and other organizations in order to explain the benefits of a living wage. city staff reported back in april 2010 with a report that did not support adopting a living wage for new westminster. however, the engagement work that acorn had undertaken created a ground swell of support for a living wage policy. two days after city staff presented their report to council, city councilors voted unanimously to ignore staff recommendations and adopt a living wage for new westminster (paulsen 2010). the living wage campaign’s multi-pronged approach worked; not only did they have support from other organizations and the community, but they also had an ear of a city councilor. these aspects put together made for a very effective living wage campaign. metro vancouver living wage for families campaign was officially launched in 2008 after the ccpa report was released detailing the issues surrounding poverty and the living wage in the province. the campaign is hosted by first call: bc child and youth advocacy coalition and is guided by an advisory committee made up of community partners including: bc acorn, mosaic, the canadian labour congress, hospital employees’ union, bc government and service employees’ union, bc, poverty reduction coalition, canadian union of public employees bc, among others (staff and advisory committee, n.d.). one of the main foci of the campaign is to recruit employers to voluntarily pay their employees the calculated living wage. however, the campaign also recognizes that many employers are supportive of the idea of a living wage, but are concerned that paying a living wage would undermine their business viability vis-à-vis their competitors who are not paying a similar wage to their workers. thus, alternatives to the low waged economy | 93 the campaign argues that it is “in [the employers’] interest that employers advocate for programs that would ensure that as a society we collectively address the needs of families with children… [increased public programs] would decrease the income families require from employment, and therefore reduce the living wage” (richards, cohen, klein, & littman 2008: 37). thus, it also advocates for change to public policy at the municipal and provincial levels. the campaign has had success in recruiting employers. working with other campaigns in municipalities across bc the campaign has been able to certify 50 employers as living wage employers, with 9 of those coming in 2015. that number represents over 6,500 direct employees earning a living wage in bc (the living wage for families campaign 2015). moreover, the campaign achieved a major victory in 2015 with the city of vancouver officially taking the steps needed to become a certified living wage employer. this would represent one of the biggest employers in the province becoming a living wage employer. although the campaign has not organized any major protests or actions, it does encourage others to become more involved in pursuing a living wage policy by emailing metro vancouver city council members and ongoing dialogue with low-wage workers (spread the word, n.d.). in the provincial capital of victoria, the living wage campaign launched in 2006. it was born out of the original effort to calculate a living wage for the different regions of bc. unlike other areas of bc where the ccpa has played a key role in launching different living wage campaigns, the campaign in victoria was launched by, and is led by, the community social planning council of greater victoria (cspc). being the capital of bc there is a large union presence in victoria, however none of the major unions or other labour organizations are involved in the living wage campaign (living wage and living wage employers 2016). the two major aims of the campaign are to provide a calculation of the living wage for the greater victoria area on an annual basis and to recruit private businesses to voluntarily pay their workforce a living wage. in other words, the campaign is voluntaristic in the sense that the 94 | austerity urbanism and the social economy strategy is to convince private business to agree to pay a living wage “out of the goodness of their hearts” rather than pursuing a living wage policy at the municipal or provincial level. as the cspc explains, its goal is to “conduct outreach activities to inform employers in the capital region of the program and how they can become living wage employers” (living wage and living wage employers 2016). the outreach activities also include public education on the purpose of a living wage in general and what living wage employers can do to support their employees facing rising costs of living. the campaign has had moderate success in this regard with a number of businesses in the greater victoria committing to be a living wage employer moving forward. esquimalt, near victoria, passed a living wage motion but has never implemented this. the entire process was started by a city councilor and led by city staff with no other organizations actively involved. there was little campaigning in esquimalt leading up to the decision to adopt a living wage policy. in august 2010 a city councilor put forth a motion for city staff to report back on the possibility of implementing a citywide living wage in esquimalt (minutes special meeting 2010). the motion was passed unanimously and city staff reported back in december 2010 with a recommendation that “all fulltime, part-time and casual workers for the city” be paid a living wage and “suggested that a policy that included a living wage provision within the tendering process for contracts from private firms be developed” (keddy 2015). before city council voted on the recommendation they opened the debate up to public consultation. the response from the public was overwhelmingly negative, and city council retreated from the recommendation and directed staff to work on new recommendations which were less binding and restrictive on local business. city staff reported back that it would be impossible to develop a policy based on the new requirements set forth by council. therefore, the original recommendations made to council were finally put to a vote in april 2011 (keddy 2015). the recommendations were voted down by council and the living wage debate died in esquimalt as quickly as it had started. alternatives to the low waged economy | 95 to date, there is no local movement attempting to continue the campaign. in ontario, there is a similarly strong living wage movement happening in cities and regions across the province. like bc, the smaller centres have campaigns functioning within larger poverty reduction campaigns. in many of these the living wage work consists of calculating the living wage for the area and comparing it to the current minimum wage. there has been some success in convincing employers to voluntarily adopt a living wage policy. at this point, nearly 60 ontario employers have done so (living wage employers 2016) and several cities including toronto, waterloo, cambridge and hamilton either have or are in the process of adopting a living wage policy for the municipality. of the three provinces in western canada, alberta is home to the most developed living wage campaigns. the community-based nonprofit, vibrant communities calgary (vcc), contributed its resources to establish campaigns across the province. the living wage idea first appeared in calgary when vibrant communities established a community action team in 2003. the team was essentially a network of other community and labour organizations including the alberta federation of labour, the “no sweat coalition”, calgary health region, the calgary chamber of volunteer organizations, and united way, and the ywca. an official campaign was launched with a multi-pronged strategy that included engaging four broad sectors: (1) public (municipal government); (2) private; (3) non-profit; and (4) quasi-governmental (health, education, and post-secondary institutions) (bulthuis 2007). although there is the focus on engaging local government, most of the campaign is voluntarism in the sense that the strategy is to convince private business to agree to pay a living wage. the living wage for calgary in 2015 was estimated to be $18.15 per hour by vibrant communities (cormier 2015). the campaign has been successful in getting more than 50 local businesses in calgary to sign on as living wage employers (living wage leaders, n.d.). the campaign came very close to a major victory in 2009 when calgary city staff recommended that the city should adopt a 96 | austerity urbanism and the social economy living wage policy, however council voted down the recommendation later that year (living wage advocacy, n.d.). it is worth noting that most labour organizations in alberta have chosen to focus on minimum wage rather than living wage, however alberta federation of labour has given its support to the calgary living wage movement. manitoba has a smaller living wage movement where campaigns are located in winnipeg, brandon, and thompson. the campaigns are a shared venture between the three cities and the ccpa, social planning council of winnipeg (spcw), winnipeg harvest, and the united way of winnipeg. the ccpa calculation determined the living wage was $13.44 in winnipeg, $11.10 in brandon, and $11.18 in thompson (the view from here 2009). the living wage was reassessed in 2013 and these values increased to $14.07 in winnipeg, $13.41 in brandon, and $13.46 in thompson (jarosiewicz 2013). the goal of the campaigns was to help bring about a large-scale adoption of living wage policies across manitoba, and the proposed method of doing this is through advocating and lobbying private businesses to “take their fair share” in responsibility rather than look to municipal and provincial government to enact policy guaranteeing a living wage. the campaigns call on business to increase pay and benefits to workers, and help in lobbying the provincial and federal governments to make changes to social transfers to manitoba. so far, the campaign has not enjoyed success in these efforts as there are currently no living wage employers in the province. labour organizations in manitoba do not appear to be willing to support the living wage campaigns, instead they have focused on increasing the minimum wage. in saskatchewan a campaign did emerge in 2004 when the canadian federation of students, the saskatchewan federation of labour and the regina anti-poverty ministry together formed the living wage coalition. however, this campaign was much more focused on increasing the minimum wage in the province as their slogan was: “make the minimum wage a living wage!” the campaign has not progressed, however the saskatchewan federation of labour continues to push for higher minimum wages. a new living wage campaign recently emerged alternatives to the low waged economy | 97 in saskatchewan and is based in and mostly focused on the city of regina. the campaign is being spear headed by the provincial ccpa. as with many other canadian campaigns, the focus is on convincing the private sector to pay their employees adequately instead of directing advocacy efforts at the municipal and provincial governments to enact living wage policy. in the atlantic provinces, living wage movements are only just emerging and have only a small footprint at this point. there are only two emerging living wage campaign in the entire region. one is in saint john, new brunswick, while the other can be found in nova scotia. the campaign in saint john is led by vibrant communities saint john (vcsj). the goal of the campaign is to develop a framework for a living wage (greater saint john 2013). this includes participating in research on low waged work and workers – who are they, where do they work and what are the trends (greater saint john 2013). important to note, new brunswick labour organizations, including cupe new brunswick and the new brunswick federation of labour, do not appear willing to lend support to the campaign; instead they have focused on the issue of raising minimum wage in the province. the nova scotia living wage coalition officially launched in february 2015 and led by acorn nova scotia, also includes partners such as the canadian federation of students – nova scotia, the halifax dartmouth district labour council, and solidarity halifax. the goal of the group is to obtain a $15 minimum wage in the province for all workers (nova scotia needs a raise 2015). the campaign has provincial aspirations, however, the focus has been completely local with the only campaigning happening in halifax. interestingly, dating back to 2007, the ccpa’s nova scotia office had been advocating for a living wage in the province (jacobs 2007). prince edward island (pei) does not have any living wage campaigns operating at present. however, the province does have the pei working group for a livable income. this group was established in 2003. the basic goal of the working group is to “influence the attitudes and actions 98 | austerity urbanism and the social economy of the community, employees, employers, and public policy makers around the advantages of a livable income for all people”. the strategies that the program uses in order to pursue this goal include: “writing letters to the editor and opinion pieces, and by making sure that whenever health, the economy, or jobs are on the agenda, in workshops, public meetings or at conferences, livable income is part of the discussion” (livable income, n.d.). finally, there are no living wage campaigns in newfoundland and labrador. that said, the provincial new democratic party along with campaign 2000 and the community services council of newfoundland and labrador (csc) are leading a campaign to raise the minimum wage in the province (community services council 2004). the newfoundland federation of labour has also supported a raise to the minimum wage, however they have not been overly active in advocating or supporting the campaign. the movement has been successful seeing the minimum wage go from $6.00 in 2005 to $10.50 in 2015. this may be a reason why the living wage movement has failed to gain traction in the province. explaining the difference: policy and political context shaping campaign tactics and strategies what explains the differences observed between the us and canadian living wage movements and campaigns can in part be found in the structural and policy differences between the two countries. the most obvious factor is the depth and breadth of inequality. inequality in canada is, compared to the united states, less severe. the gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 1, which expresses the gap between rich and poor, with 0 representing perfect equality and 1 representing perfect inequality. a number of 1 would mean one person has all the income, while everyone else has none, while a number of 0 would mean everyone has the same income. disposable income simply means after-tax income, after receiving transfer payments. using both the old measure of disposable income and the new measure, which alternatives to the low waged economy | 99 accounts for a more detailed breakdown of transfers received and paid by households, as well as a revised definition of household income, including the value of goods produced for own consumption as an element of self-employed income, we find that income inequality has been increasing in canada and the u.s., but the pace of growing inequality is much more accelerated in america (oecd 2016a). oecd data details that the gap between rich and poor for disposable income in canada has been increasing over the last decade from 2000-2013, which expressed as a percentage change has increased by 2.2% (oecd 2016a). in the u.s. on the other hand, from 2000-2014, the gap between rich and poor for disposable income has increased by 10.4% (oecd 2016a). what this tells us is that although canada is steadily becoming a more unequal country, inequality has been growing at an unparalleled pace in the united states. another measure is the extent of poverty. the oecd defines poverty as 50% or less of the median of disposable income (after-tax income, after receiving transfer payments). in 2000, poverty in canada was at 11.4% of the total population, and by 2011 that had expanded to 11.7% according to this measure (oecd 2016b). we find that from 2000-2011 poverty in canada has increased 2.6% (oecd 2016b). in the u.s in 2000, poverty was at 16.9%, and by 2012 was at 17.4%, showing that poverty in the u.s. has increased 2.9% (oecd 2016b). this shows that poverty has been increasing in both countries, but that poverty in the u.s. has been growing at a slightly faster level and is more widespread. a key factor affecting wage income and therefor income inequality is the significant difference in trade union density. while trade union density in the canadian private sector has been declining, it has been doing so at a much slower rate than is observed in the united states. for example, in 1999, union density in the canadian private sector was 19.9% but by 2015 that had declined to 16.7% (statistics canada, n.d.). in the us, in 1999, the density was 9.4% and by 2015 this had fallen to 6.7% (bureau of labor statistics, n.d.). in both countries public sector union density is considerably higher than that in the private sector. however, in canada, 100 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the density rate is substantially higher at 75.5% in 2015 (statistics canada, n.d.) compared to 35.2% in the us (bureau of labor statistics, n.d.). clearly, unions are faring substantially better in canada then they are in the us. support for the unemployed, both in terms of unemployment insurance and welfare benefits, also provides an indication of how public policy serves the economic needs of those searching for work. canada and the us offer reasonably similar levels of support to people experiencing unemployment, but some key differences mean that canada’s welfare system prevents more people from falling through the gaps in the safety net. both countries offer reasonably similar levels of support when it comes to their insurance-based benefits. they differ far more when it comes to welfare payments, which work to fill some of the gaps in the insurance provisions. in both countries, eligibility for unemployment insurance benefits depends on previous time spent in work, measured either by time or earnings. the maximum weekly insurance payment in canada sits comfortably within the range of maximums that vary across states in the us. unemployment insurance maximums are set by states and vary between $133 in puerto rico and $235 in mississippi to $679 in massachusetts for single people, though the average payment is approximately $300 per week in 2014 (stone & chen 2014). in california, the maximum payment is $450 per week, while new york’s maximum was raised to $420 in 2014, and illinois’ maximum is $426 per week for a single claimant. in canada, the maximum employment insurance payout is capped nationally at $537 per week, which sits at the upper end of the range of payments in the us (floyd & schott 2013; canada 2015), without adjusting for the dollar value differences. it is difficult to identify a consistent, significant difference in the values of support provided by the two forms of insurance. in both countries, welfare payments are lower than insurance rates, however, these vary at the provincial level as well as the state level. temporary assistance for needy families payments have generally been alternatives to the low waged economy | 101 decreasing in value and vary significantly from state to state. for example, tanf in new york tops out at $789 a month. washington, south carolina, new mexico, california, and wisconsin all cut their payments in 2011. in 2016, families of three are entitled to a maximum of $409 in new mexico, and $285 in texas, while many states did not increase their payments (stanley, floyd, & hill 2016). canada’s payments also vary, but tend to be slightly higher for families than payments in the us. ontario’s payments are capped at $1004 ($342 for basic needs and $662 for shelter costs) a month for a single parent family with two dependents under 18. british columbia’s total for the same family unit is $1035.58, while alberta’s payment maximum is $826 (government of alberta, n.d.; ministry of social development and social innovation, n.d.; ministry of community and social services, government of ontario 2016). while both countries restrict access to insurance support, workers in the us are far more likely to run out of unemployment support than canadians. canada’s employment insurance is available for between 14 and 45 weeks, depending on regional employment rates, while unemployment insurance in the us is available for 26 weeks and can be extended for up to another 20 for people in states experiencing high unemployment. in canada, the time limit depends on a province’s unemployment rate. once people run out of their insurance benefits, they can turn to welfare payments in both countries. however, unemployed people in the us are far more likely to end up without any entitlement to income support: the us cuts off access to welfare after five years of receipt across a person’s lifetime. the five-year period includes any month in which a claimant receives another similar welfare payment, such as the supplemental nutrition assistance program. states can also implement more severe time restrictions. both arizona and new york cap access to safety net assistance to just two years (new york state office of temporary and disability assistance 2011, 9-10; schott & pavetti 2011). california and maine moved to four-year time limits, while other states including washington tightened the criteria under 102 | austerity urbanism and the social economy which families could apply for extension policies. in comparison, only british columbia in canada places time restrictions on access to welfare. in all other provinces, canadians can continue to receive welfare as long as they are otherwise eligible. many workers, of course, in both countries, are entirely excluded from insurance payments and are likely to need welfare payments if they experience unemployment. in the us, 23.1% of jobless workers were receiving benefits in december 2014, a record low (mchugh & kimball 2015). a report by the national employment law project highlights research that shows that in the us, “low-educated and racial minority unemployed workers—those who may need financial support most during periods without work—are doubly disadvantaged in accessing unemployment insurance: not only do they report lower application rates, but the unemployed who do apply also report lower rates of receipt” (gould-werth & mckenna 2012: 2). similarly in canada, many are excluded from accessing employment insurance: coverage of canada’s population has decreased from 96% in the 1970s to about 37% in 2013 (doorey 2016: 397-398). both countries also make use of workfare policies, requiring welfare recipients to take the “shortest path to work” (luccisano & romagnoli 2007; mitchell & herd 2005, 65-66, 72), while both countries introduced workfare as part of 1990s reforms, mitchell and herd argue that in canada, the country’s earlier ‘commitment to community and collective responsibility’ meant that voters helped to steer in governments that acted to dull the harsher aspects of workfare (mitchell & herd 2005, 73). prior to the 1990s, canada’s welfare provisions were much more generous, suggesting canadians perhaps have not experienced the harshness of limited welfare for as long as americans. unemployment insurance coverage in canada, for example, was 96% in the 1970s but dropped to 37% in 2013 (doorey 2016, 397-398) finally, there is a gap in the overall support that unemployed families are provided with in the two countries. both countries use a tax credit to supplement the income of families with children under 18 who alternatives to the low waged economy | 103 have limited household earnings. in canada, families with dependent children and an annual income of less than $25,921 can receive both the canada child tax benefit and an extra employment insurance family supplement, though provinces can distribute these payments in different ways (canada 2015). for example, alberta provides a tax credit to working families only, and a reasonably generous child benefit to all families who earn less than $41,220 per year (“alberta child benefit (acb),” n.d.). however, in the us, only people who have earned income are able to receive the earned income tax credit – and unemployment insurance payments or forms of social security do not count as income (“eitc, earned income tax credit, questions and answers,” n.d.). people who haven’t worked in the last tax year are therefore, for the most part, ineligible. people in the us who are going through long periods of unemployment are then likely to be significantly worse off than their canadian counterparts. conclusion comparing the us and canadian campaigns leads to several conclusions. the first is that we might think of them as social movements which employ different tactics and strategies to fit with their respective political realities. clearly, the us experience is older and takes place in conditions where trade unions in particular and workers’ generally have been subjected to a more intense erosion of capacities to bargain and living standards. where the us campaigns have been characterized by strikes and protests, the canadian campaigns have centred on policy advocacy aimed at both employers and governments. a second observation is that in the us, very localized campaigns for municipal living wage ordinances have evolved into state-wide, even national campaigns for a $15 minimum wage. in other words, the central concern has shifted to the greater coverage offered by a higher minimum wage. unions have been central to the success of these campaigns in terms of providing organizational and material support. in contrast, in canada for the most part, living wage campaigns do not seek to merge their demands 104 | austerity urbanism and the social economy with those for higher minimum wages. the two aspects remain distinct. in this sense there is an ideological counter narrative presented in the us which contributes to the mobilization from below. overall, the living wage movement in canada varies considerably. the majority of the campaigns are made up of different community partners, mostly from the non-profit and social justice sectors. for the most part the campaigns are not affiliated with labour organizations, although a few exceptions to this generalization have been noted. instead, in most of the provinces, the labour movement has chosen to focus on the minimum wage rather than the living wage. there are a few campaigns in different parts of the country that are headed up by the actual municipal or regional governments, however this is only in a few small cases and for the most part these campaigns have been less visible and active. the primary strategy for most of the campaigns in canada is to rely on voluntary acceptance and implementation where the campaign is anchored around recruiting private businesses to voluntarily pay their employees a living wage. there are a few campaigns that have focused more on municipal government and policy, however these have experienced mixed success. that said, there are a number of emerging campaigns across the country and the already established campaigns continue to make inroads recruiting private business and lobbying local government. there are no contemporary cases of worker mobilization but rather these campaigns take the form of rational policy advocacy where data is presented, typically in the form of a calculated living wage, and this device is used to engage employers and municipal governments to consider adopting this wage as a matter of corporate human resources policy or, in the case of municipal government, to extend a living wage to direct employees and to those of third party contractors. this is not to say that the canadian campaigns for economic justice are not social 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(2016, october 17). tanf cash benefits have fallen by more than 20 percent in most states and continue to erode. center on budget and policy priorities. http://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/tanf-cashbenefits-have-fallen-by-more-than-20-percent-in-most-states statistics canada (n.d.). table 282-0223 labour force survey estimates (lfs), employees by union status, north american industry classification system (naics) and sex, canada, annual. statistics canada cansim. stone, c., & chen, w. (2014, july 30). introduction to unemployment insurance. center on budget and policy priorities. http://www.cbpp.org/research/introduction-to-unemploymentinsurance 112 | austerity urbanism and the social economy tarrow, s. (2011). power in a movement: social movements and contentious politics. cambridge uk: cambridge university press. the living wage for families campaign congratulates nine businesses as new certified living wage employers. (2015, july 3). living wage for families. http://www.livingwageforfamilies.ca/nine_new_certified_living_ wage_employers the view from here: how a living wage can reduce poverty in manitoba (2009). canadian centre for policy alternatives. ottawa. tilly, c. (2004). social movements: 1768 – 2004. boulder: paradigm publishers. velencia, j. (2015, july 14). scott walker strips wisconsin workers of ‘living wage’ in new state budget. the huffington post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/13/scott-walkereliminates-living-wage_n_7789472.html alternatives to the low waged economy | 113 chemin alternative the 'premeditated' creation of the 'violent' female offender in canada colleen anne dell empirical research and theoretical literature in the area of 'violent' female offenders is virtually non-existent in canada. that which exists primarily portrays women involved in 'violent' offences as 'unnatural/ evil' or as 'helpless victims'. these characterizations are upheld in the limited inquiry into and portrayal of 'violent' conduct by females in various realms of canadian society. the aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between the 'unnatural/evil' and 'helpless victim' 'violent' female offender identities and the ideological and material (physical) control of 'violent' female offenders. the 'violent' female offender identities are explained to be a desired result of the operation of a form of capitalist patriarchy. using the unified-systems variant of socialist feminist theory, it is argued that the ruling class in capitalist patriarchy must maintain the marginalization of women's productive and reproductive labour to perpetuate its own 'powerful' position 1 . it is proposed that increasing female emancipation in canada is viewed as a threat to this form of capitalist patriarchy. examples within the canadian criminal justice system of the material and ideological maintenance of the oppressive identities are provided to invoke the reader to reflect critically upon the gendered structure of this institute of the canadian state. this paper begins with an overview of the unified systems variant of socialist feminist theory. both material and ideological forms of control are addressed. this preempts a discussion of the identification of the 'violent' female offender as 'unnatural/evil' and a 'helpless victim' as a means of oppression. third, theoretical literature and empirical research is reviewed and support shown for the perpetuation of the oppressive identification of 'violent' female offenders. and last, examples within the canadian criminal justice system of material and ideological control volume 15, 1999 83 alternate routes supporting the oppressive identification of 'violent' female offenders are presented. the unified systems variant of socialist feminist theory there are several variants of socialist feminist theory, diverging in focus and origin. 2 following the early period in socialist feminist theorizing, which was dominated by efforts to relate marxism to women's paid and unpaid labour, concern shifted in the mid 1970s to specifying the theoretical links between a concept used widely by radical feminists and women liberationists patriarchy and marx's theory of capitalism. it was no longer the theoretical aim of socialist feminism to tit' women into marxist categories, but rather, it was to transform and unite the two separate theoretical traditions. one stage in the development of socialist feminist thought was unified systems theory, which emerged in response to criticisms of its predecessor, dual systems theory 3 . unified systems theory's concept of capitalist patriarchy is the foundation of the explanation of the creation and perpetuation of oppressive 'violent' female offender identities in canada. unified systems theory sets out to "describe and explain all forms of social oppression, using knowledge of class. ..hierarchies as a base from which to explore systems of oppression centring not only on class, but also on gender" (lengermann and niebrugge-brantley, 1988:426-27). it views class (capitalism) and gender (patriarchy) structures as inextricably intertwined (tong, 1989:185). it analyses capitalism 4 and patriarchy 5 together through the use of one concept: capitalist patriarchy 6 . this form of capitalist patriarchy "emphasizes the existing mutual dependence of the capitalist class structure and male supremacy" (eisenstein. 1979). it centres on the structure of patriarchal society and the operation of its capitalist institutions, such as the criminal justice system, as controlling forces in the lives of women. it claims production (capitalism) and reproduction (patriarchy) comprise the foundation of canadian society which uniformly facilitates female oppression and male domination (comack, 1992). a base concept of unified-systems theory is the gender division of labour. historically, with the advent of capitalism in canada, women were allocated the role of the reserve army of labour 7 (martin, 1986). 84 volume j 5. 1999 chemin alternative the reserve army oflabour worked, and continues to work, to marginalize women's productive and reproductive labour8 . the marginalization of women is an essential component of capitalism. to understand the relations of production (capitalism) and reproduction (patriarchy), one must examine their inter-relation ofpower (eisenstein, 1979:21). unified-systems theory is interested in understanding the system of power derived from capitalist patriarchy. in industrial canada, the interconnected nature of the power of patriarchy and capitalism results in specific patterns of social involvement. focussing on the system of production and the gender division of labour, an upper class exists (men) that has a ruling and exploitative relationship with the working class (women)9 . the upper class possesses power in canadian society. this is in the form of both ideological and material control. messerschmidt explains: what maintains this class rule are both repressive and ideological institutions of the 'superstructure'. the capitalist class is served by, and so controls, at least indirectly, the means of organized violence represented by the state the military and criminal justice system. through its preeminent influence on the state, the capitalist class is able to repress behaviours that challenge the status quo. other institutions, like the educational system and the mainstream media, expound an ideology supporting the status quo. overall, then, the relations of production under capitalism have both material and ideological dimensions (1986:32). focussing on the system of reproduction and the gender division of labour, patriarchal relations are essentially power relations with men exercising control over women by appropriating their labour power 10 and controlling their sexuality" (messerschmidt, 1986:34). messerschmidt states that ...men control the economic, religious, political and military systems of power in society. women's exclusion from these positions is fundamentally parallel to their regulation of primary responsibility for reproductive labour. this exclusion volume 15, 1999 h5 alternate routes is a major reason why women are relatively powerless to centrally change. ..the sexual division of labour (1986:34). since the ruling class is primarily comprised of men, behaviours that question patriarchy are repressed. as well, institutions of the state 12 , such as the criminal justice system, uphold the patriarchal ideology of the ruling class. relations of reproduction under patriarchy, like relations of production, have both material and ideological dimensions (messerschmidt, 1986:34). overall, the systems of production (capitalism) and reproduction (patriarchy), from a unified-systems theory perspective, unite in their oppression of women. together they maintain the gender division of labour and thus ensure the marginalization of women. this is done in the interest of the ruling class to preserve its position of power in this form of capitalist patriarchy. as outlined, two concepts are central to this understanding: material and ideological control within both the productive and reproductive spheres. a socialist feminist explanation of the identification of the 'violent' female offender as 'unnatural/evil' and a 'helpless victim' acknowledging the location of power in this form of patriarchal capitalism provides a basis for understanding why women 'violent' offender identities are created and perpetuated in canadian society. in 1976 carol smart stated: [i]n the past female criminality has not been thought to constitute a significant threat to the social order and even in the present, with the increases in the rates of offenses committed by women, criminologists and policy-makers are slow to re-evaluate the notion that female offenders are little more than insignificant irritants to the smooth running of law and order (2). twenty-three years later, a development has occurred from smart's position: women are perceived as a threat to the social order (capitalist patriarchy). from a socialist feminist perspective it is suggested that h6 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative identification of 'violent' female offenders as 'unnatural/evil' and 'helpless victims' in canada is a manifestation of female oppression. in the past three decades, women's escalating power has been both challenged and sanctioned as a threat to the patriarchal structure of capitalism (messerschmidt, 1986; wolf, 1991). in the interest of maintaining capitalist patriarchy, constraints exist on women to ensure they do not acquire a degree of power that will upset the gender division of labour and existing social order: ruling class dominance. a primary technique has been the promotion and sustenance of a 'powerless' female character structure. women and girls are encouraged to be passive, weak, complacent, dependent and non-violent (steffensmeier and allan, 1996:477). this is exemplified in canada through such mediums as advertisements 13 , public attitude 14 , television programs, pornography and cartoons (wolf, 1991). females who participate in 'violent' conduct exude characteristics associated with the masculine character structure strength, aggression, independence, autonomy, boldness and violence. these characteristics do not 'fit' the condoned patriarchal image of the canadian female. lloyd describes the violent female as 'not living up' to her socially prescribed oppressive female role (1995:36). in fact, the 'violent' female challenges the condoned female and male character structures in this form of capitalist patriarchy. she dismisses portions of the female character structure and adopts elements of the male character structure. in doing this, the 'violent' female dismisses the powerless values of capitalist patriarchy (female characteristics) and adopts the powerful ones (male characteristics) (messerschmidt, 1986:40). from a unified systems theory perspective, it is proposed that an oppressive 'violent' female offender identity has been developed as the condemned prototype against which the socially oppressive and condoned feminine character structure is compared. this has been done in the interest of the ruling class because when women transcend the gendered image of the 'female', it is a direct challenge to the current structure of capitalist patriarchy. simply, the 'violent' female offender poses a threat to patriarchal authority (knelman, 1998). breaking the law becomes secondary to the 'violent' female breaking from her 'feminine' identity. identifying 'violent' women as 'unnatural/evil' and 'helpless victims' maintains and perpetuates power differences in society: the dominance of men and the oppression of women. the 'violent' female volume j 5, 1999 87 alternate routes identity is suggested to be linked to a broader public agenda, set and controlled by men (knelman, 1998). it is suggested here that the identification of 'violent' women as 'unnatural/evil' and 'helpless victims' maintains power differences in society: the dominance of men and the oppression of women. support will be provided for this suggestion through examination of existing theoretical literature and empirical research on female 'violent' offenders and two examples within the canadian criminal justice system. female 'violent' lawbreakers in the literature this section summarizes an extensive review of theoretical and empirical explanations of the 'violent' female offender. the review is extensive in terms of the search for, but not on, the literature due to an absence of scholarship. this (lack of) finding, is supported by others' reviews of the canadian and american literature (brownstein et al., 1994; faith, 1993; fsw, 1995; shaw l5,1995a; shaw. 1995b ). the aim of this section is to demonstrate, from the literature uncovered, the predominant identification of the 'violent' female offender as 'unnatural/evil' and a 'helpless victim'. a socialist feminist understanding of this identity as a means of female oppression is provided. this section begins with the definition of violence employed in this paper. violence defined the criminal code of canada classifications of violent crime include ...assaults ranging from less serious offenses as threats to use violence, or pushing or shoving, through to serious attacks which result in physical injury; sexual assaults; robbery which may involve a threat to use force, a display of a weapon, use of a weapon and actual physical force; abduction; infanticide, attempted murder, murder and manslaughter (shaw. 1995a:8). the criminal code classifications are not questioned in this paper because the aim is to examine the application of the 'violent' offender label (or lack of it) to women charged with or convicted of a 'violent' crime. the existing criminal code definition and its classifications of violent crime is reflective of the masculine character structure and. thus. 88 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative the powerful values of capitalist patriarchy discussed to this point in the paper. it has been asserted that the ruling class identifies women who commit 'violent' crimes as 'unnatural/evil' and 'helpless victims' rather than as violent because to attribute the characteristics associated with violent crime to women in capitalist patriarchy would provide them with the characteristic power normally attributed to men. the identification of female 'violent' offenders as 'unnatural/evil' and 'helpless victims' serves to promote/maintain the dominant position of the ruling class in canadian society. messerschmidt poigtently states that "[tjhe capitalist class is served by, and so controls, at least indirectly, the means of organized violence represented by the state... the criminal justice system" (messerschmidt, 1986:32). critical attention (such as that located in the literature on women's use of violence in self defence 16 ) is needed to address the criminal code definition of 'violent' crime, but that is beyond the scope of this paper. theoretical explanations of the 'violent' female offender it has been suggested in this paper that the theoretical literature on 'violent' female offenders, from a socialist feminist perspective, assists in the maintenance of the operation of capitalist patriarchy by presenting an oppressive and powerless identity of the 'violent' female offender as 'unnatural/evil'. variations of this identity include 'inherently controlled' (i.e., mental illness) and 'an aberration to the true feminine female'. a second common explanation of the female 'violent' offender is as a 'victim', helpless and powerless. it is important to note that this literature review focuses on the identification of the female offender in general, due to the severe absence of early theorizing specific to the 'violent' female offender. as eluded to, the absence of literature commonly resulted in often inaccurate conclusions. individual explanations traditional theories of female criminality adhere to sexist stereotypes of women, treat women as 'other', and perceive women and their crimes as single conceptual categories 17 these theories are dominated by the individual pathology perspective that is based in biological, 18 psychological 19 and societal 20 (view women as socially sick) explanations. characteristic of these studies was the tendency to take what the volume 15, 1999 89 alternate routes authors innately 'knew' about women's nature and locate evidence to support their positions. to illustrate, lombroso, who focussed on the relationship between physical traits and criminality, concluded in his 1895 text. the female offender, that [ijt is evident. ..that. ..anomalies be frequent in the crania of female criminals (and especially of murderesses)... .[a] comparison of the criminal skull with the skulls of normal women reveals the fact that female criminals approximate more to males, both criminal and normal, than to normal women. ...(1895:27-28) in reviewing contemporary individual based theories of female 'violent' crime, the legacy of the traditional studies is apparent (lloyd, 1995:xvi; smart, 1976:16). for example, women's conduct continues to be overmedicalized and explained by pre-menstrual syndrome21 , mental illness 22 , and heredity 23 . to illustrate, dabbs and hargrove (1997) analysed the interacting effects of age and testosterone on criminal and institutional behaviour of female inmates. they concluded that testosterone is related to criminal violence and aggressive dominance in prison among women, as has been reported among men. dabbs and hargrove (1997) also claimed: "[clorrectional studies have found women with higher testosterone levels engage in more sexual activity, drink more alcohol, enter more competitive occupations, and behave in a more masculine and rambunctious manner than low testosterone women" (477). individual theories of women's (violent) lawbreaking introduced women into criminological explanations, however, it remains questionable whether the attention has been more of a detriment than no attention. individual based explanations identify women as 'unnatural' for displaying traits of the masculine character structure (e.g., violence). this assists in maintaining ruling class dominance by preventing women from acquiring characteristics of the masculine (powerful) identity. similar to traditional theories, contemporary theories do not present women's 'violent' criminal conduct as a consequence of their volition, but rather, due to their hormones, mental illness and the like. viewing women's conduct as inherently determined denies women autonomy, again, a characteristic of the masculine character structure. 90 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative a shift from individual-based explanations to the acknowledgement of societal influences in women's crime surfaced in the late 1960s with role theory24 . role theory focussed on differential socialization, differential illegitimate opportunity structures and differential social reaction (smart, 1976:68). role theory, however, ignored the 'larger picture': it neglected to question why women were assigned specific roles (sommers and boskin, 1994:18). essentially, role theory did not acknowledge the patriarchal structure of society. again, considering there was minor, if any, focus specific to female 'violent' offenders, a similar conclusion is drawn. societal explanations: emancipation and opportunity theories societal accounts of female criminality similarly emerged in the late 1960s with the advent of feminist theory and feminist criminology. heidensohn's (1968) work initiated focus on the social domination of women and its relation to crime. the first theory to acquire large-scale attention was adler's emancipation/masculinity thesis (1975), and to a less extent was simon's occupational/opportunity thesis (1975). both proposed that as women's roles became less structured, they had increased opportunity to deviate from their traditional roles and commit criminal acts conventionally committed by men (smart, 1976:70-76). adler, for example, proposed the increase in women's crime was a consequence of the women's liberation movement. she stated: in the same way that women are demanding equal opportunity in fields of legitimate endeavour, a similar number of determined women are forcing their way into the world of major crimes... .it is this segment of women who are pushing into and succeeding at crimes which were formerly committed by males only. female(s)...are now being found not only robbing banks single-handedly, but also committing assorted armed robberies, muggings, loan-sharking operations, extortion, murders, and a wide variety of other aggressive, violence-oriented crimes which previously involved only men (adler, 1975:13-14). in canada, the research of fox and hartnagel (1979) similarly supported that "changes in various aspects of women's structural position in volume 15, 1999 91 alternate routes society affect[ed] female crime rates" (96). although such theories did not focus specifically upon the 'violent* female offender, they did make reference in passing to increasing violence (traditionally characteristic of a male offender) committed by females. for example, adler stated: "(wjomen are indeed committing more crimes than ever before. those crimes involve a greater degree of violence, and even in prison this new breed exhibits hitherto unmatched pugnacity" (1975:3). adler's work sparked immense debate within the tradition, which eventually led to its discredit. however, as faith (1993) claims, "(t]he attention that came to her [adler's] work assured a place for issues on women and crime on the criminological agenda" (68). the myth of the liberated female offender sporadically surfaces in contemporary work, most often as a backlash to feminism, but overall it remains largely silent. supporting the maintenance of this silence is the fact that there has not been an increase in the past decade of women's involvement in crime in general25 and "violent" crime in particular 26 -27 (dell, 1993; faith, 1993; lloyd, 1995; shaw, 1995b). focussing on 'violent' offences over the past several decades in canada, women have firmly comprised 12% of the total violations against a person (faith, 1993; shaw, 1995b:188). in 1976 sman advanced the theoretical position that the emancipation and occupational theories were an attempt to scientifically legitimize women's inferior social position (76). this remains a supported position today. in 1996 jones claimed "adler was quite right that the two phenomena the women's movement and female criminality go together, but not as she supposed in terms of cause and effect. it is simply that the presence of one prompts the fear of the other" (3). similarly, lloyd states: (t]his...myth is proving durable precisely because it provides yet another stick with which to attack women who are working to improve the position of women in our society. it's a new. ..way of blocking that improvement, a new way of keeping women in line ( 1995:52). and as well, chesney-lind (1980) claims: [i]t is lime to recognize clearly the notion of the liberated female crook as nothing more than another in a century-long series of.. .attempts to keep women subordinate 92 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative to men by threatening those who aspire for equality with the images of the witch, the bitch and the whore ( 1980:29). the emancipation and opportunity theories suggest increasing opportunity is the cause of escalating female participation in crime. these theories advance that because females are exceeding the confines of their 'traditional' social roles, they are increasingly participating in criminal conduct, including 'violent' crime traditionally committed by men. consequently, these theories confine women to their powerless role in capitalist patriarchy. this, once again, upholds the ruling class interest of maintaining the gender division of labour: women are denied 'powerful' (masculine) characteristics. victimology the victimology school of thought is rooted in the work of elias (1986). with feminist criminology's increasing focus on the 'larger picture' in the 1980s, the role of the victim in society was acknowledged. this resulted in a view of women's violent conduct as a response to their victimization in an abusive situation or to a past abusive experience (shaw, 1995b: 120). two examples are the theory and legal defence of the battered-woman syndrome2829 and the thoroughly publicized 1996 canadian criminal justice system's review (by judge rutushny) of the cases of 98 women who claimed to have killed their partners in self-defence. using judge ratushny's review as an example, the paramount message depicted was that female 'killers' were wrongfully convicted because they acted in self-defence to an abusive partner. to illustrate, rutushny stated the review "...is valuable. ..because it helps us. ..understand why these killings happened and whether abuse led to it" (the winnipeg sun. 1996:3). theories emerging from the victimological school of thought have placed our understanding of 'violent' female offenders in a macro context, but they have overwhelmingly treated women as 'powerless' victims within it 3". the identity of 'victim' portrays women as incapable of self-initiated violence and therefore devoid of the masculine character of autonomy (a characteristic of power in capitalist patriarchy). it identifies women as 'helpless victims' and this upholds the condoned female character structure (i.e., helpless and weak) in canada's capitalist patriarchal society. additionally, by portraying women as merely reacting to men's volume 15, 1999 93 alter/tore routes violence, it oversimplifies their crime and thereby repeals them of their autonomy once again (shaw, 1995b: 121). it is important to note that a main reason 'violence' by women has not been addressed by feminist criminology is for fear it will undermine feminist analyses of sexual violence and gains made by the feminist movement in general (kelly, 1996:36). for example, "(d]uring the early 1990s we. ..witnessed some individuals in the professions and the media seizing upon emerging evidence about women's use of violence to make outspoken attacks on feminist analysis" (kelly, 1996:35). there has been a 'backlash' against feminist theory with suggestions of women being to blame for their victimization (straus et al., 1980) and the 'battered husband syndrome' (steinmetz, 1977/78) 31 . one constructive response to such public debate and tactic, argued by schwartz and dekeseredy (1993), is 'news making criminology'. they claim "it is essential for feminist researchers to avoid limiting their presentations of alternative messages to academic settings or community groups. it is essential that feminist researchers. ..make strong attempts to disseminate their arguments through the mass media" (shwartz and dexeseredy, 1993:260). not addressing the issue of female 'violent' crime has resulted, as argued, in women being incessantly vilified as 'unnatural/evil' or portrayed as 'helpless victims'. similar to the slated criticism of individual theories of female 'violent' crime, it is important the topic of violence by women be raised. i agree with shaw's (1995a: 15) claim that it is very difficult for scholars, journalists and other social critics to view women as having abused, however, it is imperative that sense be made of the issue. simply, the lack of attention has facilitated the perpetuation of an oppressive and 'powerless' identification of female offenders. in consideration of the range of explanations of the 'violent' female offender reviewed, from the individual pathological and emancipation and opportunity theories' focus on the 'unnatural/evil' identity to feminist criminology's focus on women as 'helpless victims', the limited nature of the explanations and thus the limited advancement in explaining the female 'violent' offender becomes evident. feminist criminological theory, similar to traditional criminological theory, is guilty of allotting neither adequate attention nor autonomy to women who commit 'violent' crimes (e.g., messerschmidt. 1986). the form of capitalist patriarchy discussed in this paper is upheld by the theories: (1) presentation of an oppressive identification of the 'violent' female offender as 94 volume 15. 1999 chemin alternative 'unnatural/evil' or a 'helpless victim', and (2) neglect to address the oppressive 'violent' female offender identity, which in turn enables the identity to be perpetuated. a similar criticism is made of the empirical research. empirical accounts of the 'violent' female offender similar to the theoretical literature on 'violent' female offenders, empirical accounts assist in the maintenance of the operation of capitalist patriarchy by presenting a powerless and oppressive identification of the 'violent' female offender. empirical accounts and official statistics identify the 'violent' female offender as 'unnatural/evil' and. similar to the above explained focus on the 'violent' female offender as a 'helpless victim', devoid women of the powerful masculine characteristics typically associated with violence. official statistics official statistics are one means of measuring the amount of 'violent' crime committed by women. official statistics alone cannot, however, be used to draw conclusions about the extent of women's 'violent' conduct (or any conduct for that matter) 32 . they can be used, however, to examine the identification of women (or lack of) as 'violent'. to explain, the work of zay purports that official data on deviance fulfills one important function: "they indicate the extent to which, and method whereby, the public agencies of social control are dealing with the deviance they define" (1963)33 . for example, official canadian statistics demonstrate that women charged with a 'violent' crime are most likely to be convicted of a minor assault in comparison to a major assault (dell and boe, 1998; faith, 1993; lloyd, 1995:56; schur, 1983:36; shaw, 1995a; shaw, 1995b:188). these examples support that the ruling class in capitalist patriarchy, through state institutionalized means, oppresses women to maintain its dominant class position. it is in the interest of the ruling class to not officially define women as violent because that would attribute 'powerful' masculine characteristics to them. the empirical research on 'violent' women offenders provides further reasoning. empirical research volume 15, 1999 95 alternate routes in the introduction to this section a severe absence of canadian and american empirical literature on violence by women was claimed. others who have attempted to review the literature, such as brownstein et al. (1994), faith (1993), fsw (1995), shaw (1995a) and shaw (1995b). have reached comparable conclusions. shaw, for example, stated: [t]he lack of basic information about women who commit violent offenses is a particular problem in canada although it has been noted elsewhere. ...in canada there are no national court statistics or in-depth studies which would allow us to look at the issue of violence by women in any detailed way. there exists only a handful of studies which have attempted to approach the issue (1995b: 120). an overwhelming characteristic of canadian and american studies that address female 'violent' offenders is that they predominantly focus on women who have killed (e.g., jones, 1996: pearson. 1997; priest. 1994; walford, 1987) and thus are presented in the context of 'curiosity' and 'intrigue'. this suggests an 'unnatural' nature to 'violence' by women. patricia pearson's (1997) book. when she was bad. how and why women get away with murder, is a prime example, noting it was the recipient of the 1997 arthur ellis award for best true crime. the closing cover of person's text reads: when she was bad explores the heart of female darkness and shows that women are more violent than anyone suspected. patricia pearson includes spell-binding portraits of contemporary murderesses including karla faye tucker, who was recently executed for having killed two people with a pickaxe. ..[and]. ..karla homolka. who raped and killed three women, including her sister and then blamed it on the battered-wife syndrome (1998). a second defining characteristic of studies that address female 'violent' offenders is the explanations concentrate on a single explanatory factor (this simplifies the women's conduct/renders women helpless). these explanations are characterized by three themes: ( 1 ) altruism, (2) physical nature of the offence and (3) substance abuse. each is illustrated. 96 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative the first prominent canadian study of female violence focussed on women who killed and was conducted by rosenblatt and greenland, 1974. this study examined the circumstances of homicide and wounding cases and concluded women's violent crimes were altruistic. because so few studies existed at the time in canada (and still do not exist), rosenblatt and greenland's study has been routinely cited and its findings generally left unquestioned. unfortunately, the study is neither generalizable to the population it studied nor to women serving federal sentences today. another landmark study on violence by women, again focussed on homicide, was conducted by ward and ward (1979) in the united states and had considerable influence in canada. the authors' concluded that women killed men when men were at their physical weakest (e.g., asleep or ill) (shaw, 1995a: 17). other studies that have relied on physiological explanations are wolfgang (1958) who reported women used minor physical strength to commit murder, and felson (1996) who concluded physical power was an important factor is explaining the female decision to engage in violence (i.e., homicide). the third theme of studies on violence by women is the establishment of a connection between women's violence and substance abuse. recent studies by brownstein et al. (1994) and robertson et al. (1987) concluded the use of alcohol and illicit drugs were strongly correlated to women's violent conduct. once again, two defining characteristics of canadian and american studies that address female 'violent' offenders are: (1) they focus on the 'curious' aspect of violence by women, specifically women who killed, and (2) they are overly simplistic (propose a single explanatory factor). each criticism is addressed in relation to its perpetuation of the oppressive female 'violent' offender identity as 'unnatural/evil' or a 'helpless victim'. first, the studies onerously focus on the most 'curious' aspect of violence the act of killing. the sensationalization attached to murder in itself endorses a negative identity to the female offender as 'unnatural/ evil' 34 . faith supports that "murder stories, when focussed on the deed, take on the quality of monster tales" (1993:97). left untouched are the circumstances and nature of the crimes. the act of killing is misleading without an understanding of the context (lloyd, 1995:xviii). for example, to understand the relationship between violent crime and substance volume 15, j 999 97 alternate routes abuse for aboriginal women, it is necessary to contextualize it within their oppressive history. studies that focus on women who killed routinely identify them as 'unnatural/evil', that is, as an aberration to the 'true feminine female" (lloyd. 1995). as discussed, this serves as a means of oppression. and second, the studies propose a single explanatory factor (altruistic, physical, substance abuse) for female 'violent' crime. explaining women's crime with a single factor makes the conduct overly simplistic and thus disempowers the women offenders. this is similar to the argument against identifying the female offender as a 'helpless victim". though limited counter-research exists in the area, a 1989 study of federally sentenced women in canada, as part of the federally sentenced women initiative, concluded a 'type' of violent crime committed by women and a 'type' of female violent offender does not exist (sugar and fox. 1990). similarly, a study of female 'violent' offenders by shaw ( 1995b) concluded that all women were not found to act violently in response to a violent situation (e.g., domestic abuse) (122). the studies of female 'violent' conduct cited in this section rudimentarily 'typify' the female offender to causally explain her 'violent' conduct with one explanatory factor. overly simplistic explanations of women's violent conduct deny the crimes of power (i.e.. void women of autonomy). we can see, once again, how refusing to equate the powerful characteristics of violent crime (i.e., autonomy) with the female 'violent' offender serves an oppressive function: dominance of the ruling class in the form of capitalist patriarchy discussed. as a final point, the absence of studies (and therefore knowledge) on 'violent' female offenders contributes to the perpetuation of existing oppressive characterizations as 'unnatural/evil' and a 'helpless victim'. because so few studies exist, those that do are presented and accepted as 'truth' due to the absence of counter-research (i.e.. rosenblatt and greenland. 1974). the canadian experience it has been shown in this paper how criminological theories and studies, as well as the lack of them, have contributed to the creation and perpetuation of the oppressive identification of the female 'violent' offender as 'unnatural/evil' and a 'helpless vicitm'. it has been suggested that these identifications, in the interest of capitalist patriarchy, operate to disem98 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative power women. adhering to the outlined variant of socialist feminism, it was claimed that through the relations of production and reproduction our current form of capitalist patriarchy (ruling class power) is maintained in two ways: material and ideological control. once again, ideological control refers to strong ideas/beliefs characteristic of a group (and its individuals) that influence social and political action and which results in the justification of inequitable social stratification. material control pertains to elements of control that are tangible/physical/palpable. this section of the paper briefly introduces an example within the canadian criminal justice system (an institution of the ruling class) of the material maintenance and an example of the ideological maintenance of identification of 'violent' women offenders as 'unnatural/evil' 16 . the examples support the view that, as lloyd states, "...the system operates against such deviant women because the system itself is deeply embedded in a very traditional and conservative part of the society on whose behalf it operates" ( 1995: 193). the aim of introducing the examples is to invoke the reader to reflect critically upon the gendered structure of an institution of the canadian state, the criminal justice system. material control the operation of the canadian criminal justice system, in its support of the interest of the ruling class, condones the material control of women it identifies as 'violent' offenders through physical violence. an horrific example was the treatment of female offenders as 'unnatural/evil' on april 26 and 27, 1994, at the prison for women (p4w) in kingston. ontario. the kingston penitentiary institutional emergency response team (riot team) was called into the women's institution to 'extract' what the institution claimed were 'rebellious' prisoners from their cells following two days of again claimed 'rebellious' conduct (marion, 1996:125). in the commission of inquiry that ensued the cell extractions. judge arbour concluded the 'rebellious' acts of the female offenders were not. in fact, 'rebellious'. she claimed the women's conduct did not pose a threat to the safety of the institution or its occupants (1996). the conduct, however, in the view of the prison 'rebelled' what it identified as 'appropriate' female conduct. a video was taken of the actions of the riot team with the female offenders (recalling they were not found to have acted 'rebellious' as volume 15, 1999 99 alternate routes was claimed) and it revealed 'shocking images of female prisoners being stripped naked, shackled, prodded with batons and forcibly removed from their cells by male guards in riot suites and helmets' (marron. 1996:124). the so claimed 'rebellious' women were treated as 'unnatural/evil'. to illustrate: a native woman who had been stripped while she was apparently half-asleep looked disoriented and totally humiliated, as she was forced to back up against a wall with a transparent plastic riot shield against the front of her naked body. another naked woman kneeled with hands behind her head, motionless as if in a yoga position, asking in vain for a gown, while a chain was fastened around her waist and two guards stood in front of her with their batons raised like erect penises. but perhaps the most disturbing images were of a woman protesting and struggling as two men pinned her, face-down on the floor, and helped a female guard rip her clothes and tear them from her body (marron, 1996:124). this disturbing image depicts the treatment of female offenders as 'evil/ unnatural' when in fact, once again, their preemptive conduct was later not deemed as such by the commission of inquiry (arbour, 1996). the only 'rebellion' may have been that the women's conduct did not adhere to the socially sanctioned patriarchal prototype of femininity held in the view of the canadian criminal justice system. on april 26 and 27. 1994. women at p4w had their power and autonomy stripped from them both physically and as inmates within a canadian capitalist patriarchal institution 36 . ideological control it has been suggested in this paper that the female 'violent' offender identity is deliberately created to maintain the current form of capitalist patriarchy. it was shown that the characterization of the female 'violent' offender as 'unnatural/evil' and a 'helpless victim' is perpetuated in the theoretical and empirical literature (as well in as the absence of it) and through material control, but how is it that the identification is over100 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative whelmingly accepted and maintained amongst the canadian public? how is it that some members of the canadian public supported the horrific treatment of the female inmates at p4w by the riot team? there are numerous venues of support for an ideology promoting the oppressive identification of female 'violent' offenders, ranging from our educational system to media depictions. one originating venue of this ideology in reference to the criminal justice system is the correctional service of canada and the dissemination of its ideology through the media. two illustrations are csc representative's identification of 'violent' female offenders as 'unnatural/evil' in media reports following ctv's public airing of the p4w cell extractions, and following the alleged 'escape' 37 of females from the recently constructed edmonton institution for women. it is suggested that csc, as a capitalist patriarchal institution and using the media as its medium of dissemination, expounds daily an ideology supporting the status quo (messerschmidt, 1986:32; schwartz and dekeseredy, 1993:259-260). the examples provided of the material and ideological control of the female 'violent' offender identification as 'unnatural/evil' support that the canadian criminal justice system both treats and views the female 'violent' offender as an 'aberration to the true feminine female.' the aim of introducing the examples was to invoke the reader to reflect critically upon the gendered structure of an institution of the canadian state, the criminal justice system. as stated, the criminal justice system, as an institution of the state (which upholds the interests of the ruling class), through both material and ideological forms, works to maintain our current form of capitalist patriarchy. once again, we are able to see that the interconnected systems of production (capitalism) and reproduction (patriarchy), from a unified-systems theory perspective, marginalize women so that the gender division of labour is maintained and thus, the ruling class is ensured its powerful position in capitalist patriarchy. conclusion it has been shown throughout this paper that the oppressive 'violent' female offender identification as 'unnatural/evil' and a 'helpless victim' are premeditated creations by the ruling class (supported through institutions of the state) and maintain our exisitng form of capitalist patriarchy. it was suggested from a socialist feminist perspective that the identities have been created and maintained through ideological and material convolume 15, 1999 101 alternate routes trol because the increasing attempted emancipation by women in canadian society is viewed as a threat to the current form of capitalist patriarchy. theoretical literature and empirical research was reviewed and support shown for the perpetuation of the oppressive identification of 'violent' female offenders. and as well, examples within the canadian criminal justice system of material and ideological control of 'violent' female offenders were presented as further support and to invite the reader to apply the argument of this paper to their canadian experiences — whether that be to support the position presented or challenge it. it is only through critique, challenge and support that progress will be made. 38 notes 1 . this is termed the 'gender division of labour.' 2. see gottlieb (1989), jaggar (1988). lengermann and niebrugge-brantlev (1988) and tong ( 1989). 3. dual systems theory initiated attention on women's experience in relation to 'domestic work' and the fact that it served men and capital. it recognized that women's experience could no longer be accounted for by solely focussing on their role in the reproduction of labour power. this marked a move away from the primacy of marxism with its basis in the economic sphere. dual systems theory afforded primacy to neither capitalism nor patriarchy, but rather, the system was seen as comprised of two systems or structures (messerschmidt 1986). dual systems theorists maintained that "patriarchy and capitalsim (were] distinct forms of social relations and distinct sets of interest, which, when they intersectefd]. oppresse(dl women in particularly egregious ways" (tong. 1989:175). 4. capitalism is defined as an economic system in which the means or production and distribution are for the most part privately owned and operate for private profit (evans. 1995). 5. patriarchy is defined as a system whereby men achieve and maintain social, cultural and economic dominance over females. it is predicated on an understanding of gender relations as inequalities of power (evans, 1995). 6 see jaggar ( 1 988) and young ( 1 980). 102 volume 15. 1999 chemin alternative 7. tong (1989) explains that "...[bjecause a large reserve of unemployed workers is necessary to keep wages low and to meet unanticipated demands for increased supplies of goods and services, capitalism has both implicit and explicit criteria for determining who shall constitute its primary, employed work force and who shall act as its secondary, unemployed work force. for a variety of reasons, not the least being a well-entrenched gender division of labour, capitalism's criteria identified men as 'primary' work force material and women as 'secondary' work force material. because women were needed at home in a way that men were not or so patriarchy concluded men were more free to work outside the home than women were" (184). 8. for example, "[u]nder capitalism as it exists today, women experience patriarchy as unequal wages for work equal to that of men; sexual harassment on the job: [and] uncompensated domestic work" (tong, 1989:185). 9. neither women nor men can be conceived as totalities. diversity exists amongst women (i.e., race and class), however, it is in the interest of the ruling class to have women, in general, in an oppressed position. similarly, all men do not benefit from the power of patriarchy equally. 10. women's labour within both the productive and reproductive realms has been mainly appropriated by men for personal use. 11. for example, normative sexuality "...helps to legitimate the ideology that women are dependent on men for their sexual and economic well-being, denigrates women's relationships with other women, and subjects them to continued domination by men" (messerschmidt, 1986:34). 12. the state is the apparatus of rule or government within a particular territory. it is a social system that is subject to a particular rule or domination. in this form of capitalist patriarchy, the ruling class has great influence on the operation of the state (jary and jary, 1991:623). 13. in march, 1998 fisher price introduced its new line of all male action heros (e.g., fireman) in a television commercial. it promoted the viewer to deduce that girls are not the 'action heros' but rather, they are the 'mythical' 'damsels in distress.' similarly, two 1988 warehouse one (a canadian clothing company) female t-shirts read 'd & g: dumb and gorgeous' and 'caution blonde thinking.' volume 15, 1999 103 alternate routes 14. a 1998 ottawa, ontario, license plate reads 'chvlry.' 15. shaw's review covered the disciplines of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, criminology, social work and education. to examine the range of materials available, it focussed on the most recent publications covered 1984-1994. the cd rom data-bases included the social science index. sociofile, psychlit, eric. uncover, canadian business and current affairs. library searches were conducted at 5 universities and the library of the ministry of the solicitor general. ottawa.the us sources included the ncjrs database, the information centre for the national institute of justice, fay knopp and the safer society program. russ immarigeon criminal justice writer. sharon smolick, and the bedford hills correctional facility. new york (shaw. 1995b). 16. see thomas (1994). 17. see klein (1973). morris (1988) and smart (1976). 18. see cowie et al. (1968) and lombroso and ferrero (1895). 19. see gibbens (1957). glover (1969) and greenwald (1958). 20. see konopka (1966) and thomas (1923). 2 1 . see konopka ( 1 966) and thomas (1923). 22. see maden et al. (1994), ogle et al. (1995) singer et al. (1995) and walklate (1995). 23. see lloyd (1995). 24. see heidensohn (1968). 25. see robertson et al. (1987). 26. see messerschmidt (1986). robertson et al. (1987:754). and steffensmeiser (1996:469). 27. note that women's participation in petty economic crimes has steadily increased (e.g., shoplifting and theft and fraud under $1000). studies have concluded, however, that this is a consequence of economic marginalization and not emancipation (carlen. 1988; dell. 1996; johnson and rodgers. 1989; steffensmeier. 1996) 104 volume 15, 1999 che/nin alternative 28. see allen ( 1987(a):82), comack (1993) and marron (1996: 1 26). 29. "leonore walker suggests a three phase cycle [of the battered-woman syndrome] which begins with an escalation of tension, followed by an explosive violent episode and a subsequent period of calm and reconciliation. she uses the psychological concept of 'learned helplessness' to argue that, over time, battered women feel that they cannot prevent violence" (kelly, 1988:63-65). 30. there are theories of wife abuse that do not appropriate autonomy (power) from women (see lemon, 1995). however, a greater proportion currently do. 31. see schwartz and dekeseredy (1993). 32. even though official statistics are widely cited as indicators of violent behaviour, there are serious concerns with their use. these include: (1) police and court convictions are renditions of societal reactions and are therefore not accurate indicators of behaviour; (2) an undeterminable amount of crime goes undetected and is therefore not accounted for (see chesney-lind and sheldon. 1992); (3) some crime that is reported goes unrecorded (see hood and sparks. 1970:35); (4) categories of crime (including violent) are vaguely defined and variously recorded (see mccleary et al.. 1982; silverman and teveen, 1980); and (5) methods of computing vary and are often used inappropriately. for example, some have used males and females as the base for computing rates of rape (hagan 1984). 33. a related example is the work of allen (1997(b)). which studied the professional treatment of women charged with serious violent crimes and concluded they were rendered harmless (1997(b):54). "the central assertion is that.. .the portrayal of female violence follows a distinct and sexually specific pattern which tends towards the exoneration of the offender" (allen, 1997(b):55). 34. it is important to note there is increasing attention and a growing literature that sensationalises female youth violence and violent gang participation (see krantrowitz and leslie (1993) and sommers and baskin (1994)). 35. the focus is limited in this section to the identification of the 'violent' woman offender as 'unnatural/evil.' however, both material and ideological examples exist of the 'powerless' female as victim. for example, the state's initiation of judge rutushny's review of women who claim to have killed their volume 15, 1999 105 alternate routes partners in self-defence and the legal and media portrayal of karla homolka as a 'batteredwife.' 36. it is interesting to note a personal experience of public support for the material control of female 'violent' offenders. in the days following the public release of the video depicting the deplorable actions of the riot team at p4w (february 25, 1995) i was employed as the executive director of the elizabeth fry society of manitoba (an agency committed to assisting women in conflict with the law). during this time i responded to numerous public and media perceptions that 'the women deserved what they got because they were 'violent' women and that there is 'something wrong with the violent women: they are not feminine.' 37. an inmate at a correctional institute is defined as having 'walked away' when there are no physical barriers preventing the inmate from doing so. when there are physical barriers (such as a barbed wire fence) the inmate is defined as having 'escaped.' the female inmates at the edmonton institution simply climbed a 3 foot chain linked fence and 'walked away.' 38. this paper is made possible through the support of the social sciences and humanities research council pf canada and carleton university faculty of arts and social sciences. graduate studies and the department of sociology and anthropology. references adler, f. 1975 sisters in crime: the rise of the new female criminal. new york: mcgraw hill. allen, h. 1987(a) justice unbalanced: gender, psychiatry and judicial decisions. milton eynes: open university press. 106 volume 15, 1999 chemin alternative 1987(b) "rendering them harmless. the professional portrayal of women charged with serious violent crimes" in k. daly and l. maher (eds.). criminology at the crossroads. feminist readings in crime and justice. new york: oxford university press. arbour, l. 1996 commission of inquiry into certain events at the prison for women in kingston (canada). ottawa: public works and government services canada. bannerji, h. 1995 thinking through: essays of feminism, marxism and anti-racism. toronto: women's press. bhavnani, k. 1993 "tracing the contours: feminist research and feminist objectivity." women's studies international forum. 16(2): 95-104. boritch, h. 1997 fallen women. female crime and criminal justice in canada. ontario: itp nelson. brownstein, h., b. spunt, s. crimmins, p. goldstein and s. langley 1994 "changing patterns of lethal violence by women: a research note." women & criminal justice. 5(2) bryson, v 1992 "modem marxist and socialist feminism." pp. 233-260. in feminist political theory. an introduction. london: macmillan. campbell, a. 1991. the girls in the gang. massachusetts: blackwell. carlen, p. 1985 "introduction." in d. christina and p. carlen (eds.). criminal women: some autobiographical accounts. great britain: billing and sons ltd. 1988 women, crime and poverty. england: open university press. volume 15, 1999 107 alternate routes chesney-lind, m. 1980 "rediscovering lilith: misogyny and the new female criminal." in c. t. griffith and m. nance (eds.). the female offender: selected papers from an international symposium. vancouver: criminology research centre, simon fraser university. chesney-lind, m. and b. bloom 1997 "feminist criminology: thinking about women and crime." in b. maclean and d. milovanovic (eds.). thinking critically about crime. vancouver: collective press. chesney-lind. m. and r. sheldon 1992 girls, delinquency and juvenile justice. california: brooks/cole publishers. comack, e. 1992 "women and crime." in rick linden (ed.) 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woodly24 abstract: to what extent does the american labor movement conceive of justice in ways beyond narrow economic benefits? to assess the notion of justice in discourse and practice, this paper examines cases from three dominant models of labor organizing in the united states: traditional unions, worker centers, and the hybrid form of the fight for $15. over four case studies, we use interviews with workers and organizers, analytical accounts of the differing organizational structures of these labor advocacy groups, and discourse analysis of organizational materials of each to illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of each model. through this examination, we show that across all organizing forms relatively little attention is paid developing and articulating the reasons why a strong labor movement is necessary and beneficial to either workers as a class or society as a whole. we then submit that if labor is to be a movement, rather than a collection of service organizations, then it is important to put forward an idea of “labor justice” which can help members of the polity reconceptualize the relationship between work, leisure, care, dignity, productivity, and prosperity. keywords: labor unions; worker centers; labor movement; justice; inequality 23 authors presented alphabetically. biko koenig is assistant professor of government and public policy at franklin & marshall college in lancaster, pa, usa. email: biko.koenig@fandm.edu 24 deva woodly is associate professor of politics at the new school for social research in new york city, ny, usa. email: woodlyd@newschool.edu building justice in the american labour movement | 107 introduction over the course of more than a century, the us labor movement has been one of evolving strategy, membership, and politics. from the shop and tradebased strikes of the 19th century to the federations and employee unions of the 20th, the espoused values, human composition, and goals of labor have shifted in numerous ways. during the early 20th century, workers made significant gains, not only winning the legal right to collective bargaining, but perhaps more importantly, altering expectations about treatment, compensation, and work schedules. indeed, the greatest success of the american labor movement may have been changing common understandings about how society ought to evaluate work and working conditions (woodly 2015). labor organizers mobilized to establish a new common sense about what employers owed workers (including reasonably safe working conditions and a family wage for white male workers) as well as what workers deserved as members of society (e.g., 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and 8 hours of leisure per day). however, during in the mid-20th century, after the hard-won common sense of the labor movement was codified into law in the national labor relations act and took on institutional life as the national labor relations board, the vision of the labor movement evolved once again. labor unions became more stable, winning many contractual victories from the 1930s to the 1970s. at the same time, the movement’s focus on changing the way that the general public thinks about work, its conditions, and what workers deserve, gave way to more targeted concerns about servicing members and narrow electoral claims. in many ways, the social movement aspect of labor movements dwindled under the obligations of becoming part of the federal bureaucracy (piven and cloward 1977, fantasia 1988). today, modern labor organizations are diverse in their commitment to organizing new categories of workers, especially the women, people of color, and immigrants who increasingly constitute american service workers, as well as whether and how they articulate the benefits of organized labor to both potential members and the general public (fine 2006, milkman 2006, warren 2010). however, overall, 21st century labor organizers and leaders have focused much less than their earlier counterparts on communicating a vision of work and workers that contributes to fair working and living conditions for all. like previous scholars, we are interested in the processes that would lead a collection of unions and union-like groups to function like a dynamic social movement, to "reconcile the short-term and economistic demands of [union] workers with longer-term concerns for generalized social and economic justice" 108 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life (levi 2003, 46). in particular we are interested in the ability of developing and deploying discursive frames and concrete practices that actively transcend the interest-based economistic framework of unions-as-bureaucracies in order to push toward a new understanding of labor justice. in the following, we argue that for labor to become a vibrant and influential force in american politics, the movement needs to claim explicitly political space in line with their common-sense arguments of the early 20th century. this goes beyond throwing financial support behind political parties and endorsing candidates. labor must instead articulate a political vision that aims to persuade both potential union members and the general polity that rethinking the meaning of labor and prosperity is necessary political work. we propose that labor organizations could accomplish this by developing and deploying a political philosophy, what we dub labor justice, that explains why workers must organize as well as what that organizing accomplishes in broad terms. crucially, the audience for these claims needs to target society at large, rather than workers already within or directly adjacent to labor organizations. promisingly, labor already has the makings of such a political vision in some of the discourse that unions and workers centers have been using in recent years. we see this in public opinion research where the importance of unions and key policy issues such as the $15 per hour minimum wage has increased, particularly among people 18-29 (maniam 2017). however, labor activists and unions must continue to move towards more consistently speaking and acting in ways that move beyond wage claims and member service. previous research has shown that when social movements make resonant arguments consistently over time they are able to change the common sense governing public debate thereby creating a more favorable political environment for their claims. below, we develop a notion of what labor justice might look like while evaluating its presence across a number of labor organizations. first, a definition of terms. labor justice is a concept that centers the dignity that all workers are due and insists on certain rights of self-determination for the entirety of society, such as work-life balance, dignified treatment, and the power to participate in setting the terms of employment. importantly, labor justice points to the need for all people to have the ability to holistically flourish in society, and not simply have higher wages. what organized labor requires, if it is to be a political force akin to a movement, is a set of values that speaks not only to economic justice in the distributive register, but one that speaks to the capability of all workers to live lives free of oppression, the “institutional building justice in the american labour movement | 109 constraint on self-development” (developing capabilities) and domination the “institutional constraint on self-determination” (choosing actions) (young 1990, 37). finally, in providing a framework for an equitable society, labor justice is intersectional because the oppression of working people operates through the structural relations of race, gender, immigration status, sexuality, and heritage. in light of these facts, economic justice, which is primarily concerned with wage distribution, is but one component of labor justice. this discussion should be set against a background of steady union decline. from the highpoint in the 1950s where almost a third of the economy was unionized, in 2018 only 10.5 percent of workers were in a labor union (u.s. bureau of labor statistics 2019). this number is buoyed by the relatively high unionization rate of public employees at 33.9 percent. in the private sector, union density stands at 6.4 percent, the lowest in over a century (u.s. bureau of labor statistics 2019). while the democratic party is typically seen as a union ally, membership dropped over 10 percent, or 1.5 million members, during president obama’s two terms in office (dirnbach, 2017). absent a strong political vision, it should not come as a surprise that members have come to subscribe to widely varying worldviews, including reactionary positions on race, immigration, and nationalism seen in strong union support for donald trump in the 2016 presidential election. and while worker centers have emerged as an innovative approach to the labor movement, their numbers remain small relative to that of traditional unions. our arguments build off of ongoing discussions of the potential for revitalization in the labor movement, a topic that has garnered much attention by scholars and practitioners in the past few decades. a core argument in this thread is the need for unions to return to aggressive organizing, an approach that faces internal challenges of organizational conservatism where “many members have learned to view their union as quasi-insurance companies or lawyers” (milkman and voss 2004, 6). several remedies to this challenge have been articulated by labor scholars, including attention to specific tactics (or combinations of tactics), broad strategies, organizational partnerships, and the structure of groups themselves (bronfenbrenner, friedman, et al. 1998; sherman and voss 2000; bronfenbrenner and hickey 2004; milkman and voss 2004; ness 2014). further scholarship has examined the role of low-wage and immigrant workers as a necessary component to revitalization (apostolidis 2010; milkman and ott 2014; adler, tapia and turner 2014). these arguments connect to scholarship on worker centers and “alt-labor” organizations that support immigrant and low 110 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life wage workers but exist outside of traditional union models (fine 2006; eidelson 2013; milkman and ott 2014). a further line of analysis called for “social movement unionism” focused on rank-and-file activism connected to broader movements in society that, together, would drive institutional change for issues like labor law and political economy (freeman and rogers 1999; robinson 2000; levi 2003; fantasia and voss 2004). the discussion below builds on these insights and shares an affinity with social movement unionism and its aim to build a labor movement that works on behalf of the entire society. within this, our primary concern is that efforts that focus solely on economic redistribution for members, even when they are successful, have not been enough to transform the labor movement into a dynamic social movement with clear aims for social and economic justice. we make the case for labor justice both theoretically and empirically. in the following sections, we lay out the concept of labor justice and indicate what makes it both more expansive and more persuasive than the idea of economic justice. after making the theoretical case, we advance our argument by doing an empirical examination of the discourse and practices of four different labor organizations across the spectrum of organizational models from traditional union to workers center, including: service employees international union (seiu), fight for $15 (ff15), restaurant opportunities center united (roc), and the laundry workers center (lwc). our aim here is not to draw conclusions about the labor movement in general, nor to make causal arguments about the nature of movement work. rather, we utilize interviews with leaders and participants in the organizations and content analysis of informational materials to answer the question: to what extent do these labor organizations express an idea of labor justice, and how can we see their ideas about the labor movement’s purpose carried out in their work? theorizing labor justice most labor appeals are in the frame of economic justice. economic justice is an account of fairness that derives from what iris young calls the “distributive paradigm,” the view that what justice requires can be wholly fulfilled by focusing on the “the allocation of material goods […] and social positions” (young 1990, 15). on this account, the problem of oppression can be solved by making sure each individual or group of individuals has a fair allocation of goods. a diverse array of theories of justice, from john rawls’ liberalism to karl marx’s communism, are based on this premise. young contends that while the building justice in the american labour movement | 111 distribution of material goods and social position is a necessary component of what justice requires, it is not sufficient. instead, young indicates that we must pay attention to the social beliefs and institutional processes that have produced distributive patterns. otherwise, distributive corrections only have short-term effects because the social beliefs and practices that made maldistribution seem inevitable, convenient, or even favorable, will cause people to re-inscribe old intent onto new policies in the way that they interpret or implement them. for this reason, it is important for social movements and others who seek to change the status quo to change the way people think about their issue(s) in addition to changing policy. in the case of labor, this means that a successful labor movement must change people’s ideas about what work requires and what all people who work for a living deserve at the same time that they seek specific wage increases or other benefits. as discussed below, this dilemma maps all too well onto the wage victories of the fight for $15. if activists and unions focus almost exclusively on raising wages, they reproduce a neoliberal view of the worker which values them only as producers, possessors, and consumers of goods rather than people who create value not only through the work that they do, but also through the lives they live. from this perspective justice requires not only fair distribution of wages and benefits, but also non-material goods like decision-making power, practical opportunity (which is distinct from formal opportunities that may be difficult or impossible to access), self-respect, care, and leisure time. that means workers must have not only the right to negotiate the conditions of their employment but must also have a reasonable capability to exercise those rights. effecting the capability of workers to determine the conditions of their labor would require rethinking how unions and other organizations in the labor movement conceptualize their task. labor organizations would need to focus less on improving wages and conditions in particular workplaces and more on questioning and seeking to change the beliefs, practices, and institutional processes that create the conditions of oppression and domination that govern most people who work for a living, most of the time. in this way, labor justice requires respect for the labor of life, not only in terms of fair compensation for economic work, but also in terms of acknowledging and supporting non-economic labors such as care work, civic engagement, or play. through this lens, having a predictable schedule, paid sick leave, accessible, quality healthcare and childcare, and affordable leisure are as important as having a higher hourly wage. this is because the acknowledgement 112 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life and support of non-wage-earning labor is necessary to ensure that the full benefit of wage-related gains can accrue to people who work for a living. labor justice, then, is not solely about the re-allocation of resources, but is instead about the elimination of domination and oppression from the institutions that govern work. importantly, this framing makes it easier for labor to ally with other movements seeking to eliminate institutional domination and oppression. the elements of labor justice that we can glean from how workers describe what just relations might look like concretely: dignity, respect, fairness, work-life balance, and security. this deeper definition of labor justice is not only intrinsically important for the labor movement to better understand the appropriate scope of work required to improve people’s lives, but also is essential if the movement hopes to be politically persuasive. recent research in political science has shown that when those who challenge the status quo are able to make resonant arguments consistently over time, they are able to shift common sense on the topic, thereby creating a political environment in which they can more effectively advance their claims (baumgartner, deboef and boydstun 2008; woodly 2015; jackson 2018; williams 2018). for example, deva woodly has shown that marriage equality movement was able to change the political common sense on that issue over a 10 years period by making resonant arguments that reframed the status quo understanding of gay families and what counted as gay rights (2018). similar findings indicating that those challenging the status quo can shift public understanding through the use of what mustafa menshawy has described as “effective’ discourse that [is] coherent, consistent, and resonant …, as well as a ‘credible’ discourse which combine[s] words with actions” have been produced across several topic areas including the gun debate (kerr 2018) and foreign policy (menshawy 2018). put simply, the arguments that movement actors make have concrete impacts on their potential for societal change. an examination of discourse & practice in the next section, we examine four different organizational formations in the labor movement to assess the presence of labor justice within their discourse and practices. we have intentionally selected a range of cases to gauge the presence of labor justice in a variety of contexts, and this is not intended to be a representative sample. the inclusion of two worker centers—roc and lwc— responds to the importance of the model in contemporary organizing, while the hybrid ff15 has achieved significant gains in minimum wage policy victories (luce 2015). seiu stands out for its sheer size in the movement as well as for its building justice in the american labour movement | 113 role in creating the ff15. for each organization, we briefly describe the characteristics of their organizational form. then, using interviews and publicfacing documents, we examine their understanding of what broad political philosophy underlies their work. in addition to scrutinizing their discourse, we observe the institutional habits and practices that either support or contradict their stated worldview. finally, we consider whether and to what extent any of the organizations have a theory and/or practice of labor justice, as we have described it. in concrete terms, what would a labor justice approach to a campaign or an organization look like? in the first order, claims must be made to impact the material lives of working people: contract negotiations, higher wages, and improved benefits all fit into this category. while all labor campaigns involve this type of claim making, labor justice also looks to increase the power of working people relative to economic, political, and social institutions. most labor movement work actively empowers insiders and members in this institutional struggle, but routinely frame this part of the work as secondary to the material ends of new policies or better contracts. for unions in particular, empowerment is typically limited to members. a labor justice approach should seek to empower working people broadly, and not only through policies, such as a higher minimum wage, that impact large numbers of people. this empowerment must also include the symbolic work of impacting widely held norms of work, life, and fairness. it may be the case that the institutional structures of formal labor unions mean that they have no choice but to make narrow distributive claims in service of a continually declining membership base. but as labor continues to lose density, it also continues to lose the normative war about what working life could be. if we are to move beyond the neo-liberal hegemony of work and society, we must construct our own framework of common sense to contest the status quo (smucker 2017). that many labor organizations note these issues in their discourse is telling of their importance, but as the next section shows, few groups put them into practice with much strength. seiu international the service employees international union (seiu), one of the largest u.s. labor unions in terms of membership size, organizes workers in three core sectors: health care, government, and property services. like many labor unions, seiu is organized as a federation, with an international branch that acts as the head and local unions that oversee most day to day operations with members. 114 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life internationals do a great deal in terms of providing rhetorical leadership, setting national agendas for the union, and lobbying to political groups. much of the energy for a renewed approach to organizing comes from international unions, who can set organizing mandates, provide funding for locals, and occasionally even directly organize workers in areas without a local union. nonetheless, locals have a considerable amount of autonomy in regard to international unions, and are the main site of most organizing efforts and contact with workers. given the ability of seiu international to set the agenda, we look to how they frame the purpose and activity of the union. seiu is an exemplary case of a union that is conscious of the need to organize new workers. while they have received much criticism for their efforts, beginning in the mid-1990s seiu became the leader of new organizing efforts across the afl-cio (estreicher 2006; early 2009). this included the development of a new tactical repertoires for union campaigns, including strategic corporate research, working outside of nlra union elections to win recognition, and running campaigns with community support outside of the workplace. as such it is no surprise that the discourse of seiu international contains the strongest labor justice framings we found in the research. of course, much of the language still contains economic justice frames that are geared specifically towards the benefits that unions provide only for their members, such as higher wages, benefits, and job security. we do not contend that such language should be absent, only that it be contextualized in a larger, principled and explicitly political framework. some examples of this kind of framing include: "seiu is a center of unity for underpaid workers who are demanding that our economy works for everyone not just the rich" (seiu n.d.). "unions lead the fight today for better lives for all working people" (seiu n.d. ). "when unions join together and behind advocating for better wages, non-union workers then see the power of unity and start demanding better treatment themselves. unions help all working families a stronger voice in our communities, in the political arena, and in the global economy” (seiu n.d.). building justice in the american labour movement | 115 the common theme here is the universality of the appeals. unions and the labor movement are going to make beneficial changes for everyone, not only members. here, unions may lead but the ultimate aims are a society that provides both material and non-material benefits for workers regardless of membership. the economy that “works for everyone” will of course include “good jobs” and “better wages,” but it will also transform society through the “collective power” of the working class, that will have a “stronger voice” from local communities to global economies and overall “better lives.” the upshot is that the enactment of this discourse requires a set of practices much different from servicing union contracts and handing grievances. in fact, a labor justice practice needs to extend beyond narrow tactics that only seek to organize new members. given the placement of the international, it is challenging to directly assess their practices. as such, we turn to two different seiu local campaigns to add additional layers of analysis. the ff15 campaign acts as both an organization in its own right, and a yardstick for how seiu international puts a labor justice framework into practice. we also look at seiu healthcare campaigns in pennsylvania, which are run by local unions but rhetorically folded into the ff15 national campaign by the international. both show that, in practice, the economic justice frame guides union activity, while labor justice appeals are mostly rhetorical. the fight for $15 while the origin of the fight for $15 in chicago and fast food forward is uncertain, seiu began funding and directing fast-food worker organizing efforts of these and similar organizations across the country by 2012 (brown 2013, gupta 2013). by 2014, these groups coalesced under the universal name fight for $15, and by 2015 seiu had expanded the discourse to include low-wage workers across the economy, including healthcare workers, adjunct university professors, and child care workers. the demand of ff15 is straightforward: “$15 and a union!” as both a slogan and goal, the demand is easy to explain and provocative given current minimum wages and lack of union representation prevalent throughout low-wage industries. it presents itself as a demand to both government and employers. this has been especially effective in regards to minimum wage legislation, given that states and some cities are able to set their own wage floors and thus allow for a national slogan that can be tailored locally (oswald, 2016). tactically, ff15 uses a mix of labor strikes, direct action, and a savvy social media presence. the city or 116 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life nation-wide one-day strike is the main tool of ff15: workers from across the lowwage economy strike together on a single day, usually attending a march or a rally that includes progressive figures from religious groups, the local community, and elected government. usually these strikes do not shut down entire stores, but draw small numbers of workers from individual locations across a city. the widespread but thin nature of strike participation means that low-wage workers are less able to use their economic power through impacts in production, but instead gain influence by raising awareness and striking blows against corporate reputations. nonetheless, the discourse of ff15 is parallel to most labor unions in the call for economic justice. given that the wage demand is in the name of the organization, it should come as no surprise that much of their language is connected to better pay, along with pointing out the bad job conditions that are typical of low wage work: “as underpaid workers, we know what it’s like to struggle to get by. we can barely pay our bills and put food on the table for our families. mcdonald’s answer? go on food stamps. … on top of it all, even mcdonald’s knows it takes $15/hr to get by. we work hard and we’re still stuck in poverty. it’s not right. that’s why we fight back. it’s time to pay people enough to survive. it’s time to pay people what they deserve. it’s time for $15/hr and union rights” (fight for $15 n.d.). ff15 touts its tactics, calling the hikes in minimum wage that it has won, “raises”: “we know striking works. by standing up and going on strike for $15/hr and union rights we won $62 billion in raises for 22 million people across the country. we’ve taken the fight to more than 300 cities in the us and 60 countries across the world on 6 different continents. now, $15/hr is law in california and new york state. it’s law in seattle, in pennsylvania for nursing home and hospital workers, and for municipal employees in countless cities. mayors, city building justice in the american labour movement | 117 councils, and state governments across the nation have announced $15 initiatives. what’s the secret to our success? you. me. all of us who have come together to tell our stories of what it’s like trying to live on low pay from corporations like mcdonald’s. it’s important to remember that we don’t win because politicians or companies decide out of the goodness of their hearts to give us raises. we win because workers stand together to make them give us what we deserve” (fight for $15 n.d.). unlike the language of seiu international, the fight for $15 fits squarely into the economic justice frame: the power of its wage claim is real, but it is also its limit. what does ff15 offer workers who do not fall under the proposed wage floor? what goals exist outside of the higher wages? it is true that anyone can attend the strike events, escort workers to and from their work, or engage with social media campaigns. but to do so as an activist who is not a low-wage worker means that it is not your movement, and you remain on the outside. though ff15 has won important increases in municipal and state minimum wages, these policy victories are limited. first, most of the legislated wage increases phase in over a period of 3 to 5 years. ney york state, for example, passed a minimum wage increase in 2016. however, the $15 minimum wage won’t be fully phased in until 2021. further, a family of four living in new york state where one person works full time making $15 an hour will still be impoverished. further, the calls for union recognition have been less successful, with seiu officials indicating they have no clear idea what unionization would actually look like in practice, and labor commentators noting there is no strategy in place for ff15 to transition into a labor union (zahn 2016). the very nature of these victories shows the importance of the labor justice frame: higher minimum wages have not translated into broader social movements nor narrower union revitalization. in short, though these increases are incredibly important for workers in low-wage jobs, they illustrate the limitations of distributive claims—the $15 wage rate, while unimaginable before ff15 started demanding it 5 years ago, also doesn’t effectively address the problem of working poverty nor the structural issues that spur rising inequality. to put it differently, it does not attempt to construct new norms around work and society. after the $15 wage is won, what goal can organizers push for which will utilize the discursive and organizational foundation that they have laid? it remains unclear 118 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life what will happen in locations that have won higher minimum wages, but the nature of the discourse means that there will be little room left to engage in new campaigns without a fundamental shift in mission and vision. perhaps the “…and a union” component will lead to a second round of organizing, but this seems unlikely given the lack of planning and the fact that no workers have been directly unionized by the campaign. to be clear, this only becomes a problem when we assume that the economic claims of the ff15 will somehow lead to broader practices of labor justice. as a movement with a specific, and powerful, policy agenda, ff15 is incredibly successful. but if this is the upper limit of transformative political action, then more attention must be paid to how movements seek to change the status quo in the wake of policy victories. one might argue that we are calling for too expansive a notion of justice, and that the power of ff15 is in its narrowness and simplicity: $15 and a union. why should a single campaign have to provide discursive and practical entry points for all workers? in response we offer that ff15 (and similar national campaigns such as ufcw’s our walmart) is arguably the most innovative attempt at organizing workers that unions have used in modern times. however, the inability of ff15 to spur either a renewal in union membership or mass mobilization that leads to significant political changes, we must ask what is missing. as we see it, it is worth exploring a justice argument that has universal applicability for workers everywhere. a staffer from seiu illustrates the limits of the ff15 frame in a discussion about outreach: “fight for 15 is built around fast food workers … i was knocking doors around the election, and i knocked on the door of a woman who's a phlebotomist, and she started talking to me about, ‘i make 13 [an hour], and i'm a phlebotomist, i had some education to do this, why would anyone think that fast food workers should make 15? it’s totally outrageous!’” (seui staff member, interview, 2016). their response to the woman was to draw on principle: fast food workers shouldn’t have to earn poverty wages. the challenge is that it sets up an insider/outsider binary. for a college educated phlebotomist making $13 an hour, increasing the minimum wage to $15 would likely be in her material interests. but without a discourse that is built to include her, she cannot square her own building justice in the american labour movement | 119 experiences with that of other workers. a movement with a labor justice frame could have something to offer her, both in terms of a compelling argument as well as a pathway to participation. seiu healthcare pennsylvania over 20,000 health care workers in pennsylvania are members of seiu healthcare pennsylvania (hcpa), including doctors, nurses, aides, and food workers in hospitals and nursing home across the state. as a local that is part of the seiu federation, hcpa is more directly concerned with the day to day business of running a union: servicing members, processing grievances, and preparing for contract negotiations and their attendant mobilization campaigns. while national data suggests that unions today organize at lower rates, even the most conservative unions must routinely mobilize members during contract negotiations. seiu stands as the most aggressive union when it comes to organizing new members, and locals are required to spend 20 percent of their budgets on organizers (seiu staff member, interview, 2017). given seiu’s commitment to organizing, we would expect the discourse of hcpa to be attentive to organizing new members, while at the same time focused on the clientelist aspects of member relations. hcpa frames its mission this way: “nurses and healthcare workers are diverse, but we all we want: wages that attract and retain professionals to do caregiving work, with no employer paying less than $15 an hour for any healthcare job; union rights for all workers to organize and raise their voices to change the healthcare industry for the better; and access to quality, affordable healthcare for everyone in our communities. … we want a more just and humane society. we won’t stop fighting until we get it” (abromaitis 2016). the discourse here is mixed. there is language about what unionization offers its members in terms of higher wages and a stronger voice on the job. at the same time, there are principles of a “just and humane society” and a focus on the importance of healthy communities. the broader language around healthcare is a reflection of the industry. interviews with hcpa staffers revealed that most 120 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life contract and unionization campaigns are constructed in a narrative frame that emphasizes high standards of patient care as the primary concern, and better wages and job conditions as a necessary pathway to those high standards. while this framework is certainly strategic in negotiations with employers, staffers indicate that it also comes directly from workers—sometimes organizers must push workers to demand better wages alongside other problems of delivering quality care, such as high turnover and cheap materials. such a challenge indicates the power of common sense to frame how people understand their economic situation. the question for our purposes is, how does this added layer of caregiving and a concern for healthcare intersect with the discourse and practice of justice? in the first instance, some of the language used by hcpa fits into a labor justice frame, especially calls for a just society and fairness for everyone. however, it is not clear how one might support the process of building a fair society save through joining the union as a health care worker. further, even the caregiving language remains in a distributive frame seen mainly as a material benefit. one could imagine that healthcare and the patient-caregiver relationship present fertile ground for more emancipatory calls for justice, presenting entre for taking a position on an issue as topical as universal healthcare, for example. instead we see a similar discourse to that of ff15: join a union, get better wages, improve your job, and somehow that might deliver us to a new future. we should note that many union workers are not necessarily interested in questions of labor justice as we discuss them: “i think some of our best nurses, our activist nurses, get it [the problem of low-wage work], but it doesn't speak to their core primary issue, which is staffing and nursing conditions … we have some of our best activist nurses who come out to our fight for 15 rallies, and they understand the connection between poverty and health, and that's the other thing, when they deal with poor people, coming in, they understand the link between the healthcare system and inequality and poverty, but i wouldn't say that that's the majority of our nurse membership feels that way. i think that, like in many unions the majority of workers, speaking transparently, are focused on: how do we band together to improve our working conditions, and the healthcare system more broadly and so on, but the fight for 15 building justice in the american labour movement | 121 doesn't speak as strongly to them certainly, as many other issues that the union tries to engage in” (seiu staff member, interview, 2016). nonetheless, staffers noted that in the 2016 contract, non-nurse workers at the bottom of the pay scale received the largest raises, upwards of $3 per hour. at the same time, senior nurse staff received very small raises. this came out of the drive to get all workers at or close to the $15 per hour wage, but required that nurses recognized and advocated for higher wages for support staff, even at the cost of their own raises. an organizer from seiu explains how this played out during the contract negotiation: “… so that conversation happened first with organizers, then with the rank-and-file leadership, and when we're getting the point of trying to settle these contracts, we were having that same conversation with committees, and that same conversation during the ratification drive. you had really good rank-and-file leaders who are going to get a very small raise compared to other workers, who ‘we can't be working next to people who are living in poverty, because they can't provide good care. it affects our ability to provide good care.’ you have lpns [licensed practical nurses] who are higher wage workers in the nursing home who will get small raises, who'll say, ‘i can't do my job next when i've got people next to me who are working double shifts, or two jobs.’ really, in many ways, i found that to be one of the most fascinating parts of the campaign” (seiu organizer, interview, 2016). similar to the employers, this is explained through the power of the national ff15 campaign in changing the norms on wages and poverty for workers inside the union. the way that the fight for $15, the largest, most innovative labor movement campaign in modern times, has created real benefits for healthcare workers once again highlights both the value of the discourse as well as its real limits. sparking solidarity between workers is no small accomplishment, particularly when it requires material sacrifice, such as the nurses who took a smaller raise. 122 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life at the same time, it does not offer either a language or a practice geared towards mass mobilization and societal change: workers outside of the union. rather, it finds its highest value in the narrow, nuanced world of contract negotiations. in its discourse, how does it offer a vision for a better world that is accessible to all workers? in its practice, how does it scale up and create spaces for participation outside of trade union membership? union staffers themselves are concerned about these questions. "we're also trying to think how you get to scale, and how you create the space for people to participate in organizations that doesn't look like a traditional trade union necessarily. and the way we've been thinking about it in home care, what do you need to do that, you need a list or access to the workers, you need a way for people to self-sustain the organization, you need a way to build power and change" (seiu staff member, interview, 2016). as they put it, unions may have figured out how to raise the issue of minimum wage and impact the lives of some workers, but have not yet figured out the practice of mass mobilization, or as the staffer asks, "how does the union with its limited set of resources create a lot of doors for people to participate in lots of different ways?” unions have not yet found an answer. restaurant opportunities center united roc, founded by saru jayaraman and fekkak mamdouh in 2001, was initiated to help the survivors of the windows on the world restaurant in the wake of 9/11. as a worker center, they do not organize people into collective bargaining agreements, but have historically run workplace justice campaigns to combat wage theft, discrimination, and unsafe working conditions at specific worksites. their strategy has evolved significantly since that time, and today they seek to work on several things at once: informing workers about their rights, collecting research for campaigns, organizing employers to take the “high road to profitability,” and lobbying state legislatures for favorable policy. roc is also explicitly collaborative and often works in coalition with other organizations, including acting as a founding member of the food chain workers alliance and forming a partnership for the “on fair wage” campaign with ff15 in new york. building justice in the american labour movement | 123 the discourse and practice of roc today is best summarized in their own words: “the restaurant opportunities centers united (roc-united) engages workers, employers and consumers to improve wages and working conditions in the restaurant industry. the rocunited model involves “surrounding the industry” by simultaneously: (1) engaging workers through job training and placement […] (2) engaging employers through our “high road” employer association raise [… and] (3) engaging consumers through diners united […]” (restaurant opportunities center-united n.d.) as we see from their self-description, roc has abandoned its more confrontational tactics of workplace justice campaigns to embrace an advocacy role and building relationships with owners and customers. a core tenant of this approach is the articulation of “high road” strategies for employers: paying higher wages, offering benefits, and building safe worksites. the highroad strategy is translated into action through programs like raise and the restaurant roundtable, which organize and bring together restaurant owners to learn about high road employment practices. workers, for their part, are the focus of career training programs and know your rights political education. although these activities are not ideological at all, catherine bennett of roc describes her work in deeply principled terms: “at the end of the day, it’s about power. it’s about economic power and so many of us don’t have that … [labor justice is about] fairness –its about dignity and professionalism being ascribed to the work, no matter what it is. we work to live, that should be valued and regarded as important. work deserved to be lifted up, recognized and respected, especially the work of women and people of color [which is often denigrated].” she also describes the goal of roc as having a balance between expert guided and worker-led initiatives. she admits that roc does not always achieve that aspirational balance. “there is some tension. some groups are more worker-led and concrete, while others are more top-down.” further, sometimes people in the 124 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life organization will say “in order to really be successful, we have to move legislation.” but catherine wonders “do we?” she goes on to say, “we’re all struggling with the question of balance and we need to further interrogate it going forward.” she also notes that they don’t often “talk about structural change. we usually say ‘disruption,’ or ‘transformation,’ –amp up the rhetoric to ‘black-beret’ levels sometimes, but what we’re really talking about is structural change. because we have to put changing the system, reinforcing solidarity, at the center of what we do. it’s not just about running trainings.” the practices of roc are nonetheless limited in ways that are similar to ff15: their advocacy for abolishing the tipped minimum wage and training for employers to engage in high road employment practices can provide important material benefits to workers while offering little in the way of mobilization. indeed, the place of workers as political agents for roc’s work has been reduced over time, replaced with a focus on employers, consumers, and policy makers. at the same time, their advocacy programs, while drawing on languages of labor justice, do not surpass the distributive calls for wages that characterize the mainstream labor movement. laundry workers center the laundry workers center (lwc) is a worker center founded in the fall of 2011 to focus on worksite problems among low-income immigrant laundry workers throughout new york city. in short order, however, the lwc turned its attention to food retail, partnering with immigrant deli workers in the hot and crusty campaign, as profiled in the documentary the hands that feed. while their attention has remained in the food sector with campaigns at other restaurants, they have also successfully organized workers at two warehouses for b&h, a photography and video equipment company. partnering with united steel workers (usw), lwc led a successful union drive that culminated in an nlrb election for over three hundred workers, though b&h ended up moving their facility out of state to escape the contract. in its discourse, lwc is worker-centric, with a bare-bones framework that focuses on fairness for workers in low-income industries. in most discussions of the work, the emphasis is on tactics and training, with a philosophy grounded in worker leadership and power. “laundry workers center’s political philosophy is rooted in organizing workers and building their leadership skills and building justice in the american labour movement | 125 political power through a variety of worker-led tools and tactics, including taking direct action at the workplace, serving as their own voice to media outlets, speaking out as member of the community, and acting as their own advocates at the negotiation table. our members are primarily low-income immigrant workers who believe in social and economic justice. lwc campaigns are all member-led” (laundry workers center n.d.). here they present themselves as a tightly focused organization whose main concern is the hands-on training of workers in their core demographic. it is worth pointing out that the workers involved in lwc campaigns are often at the crossroads of multiple labor policy infractions similar to workers in the restaurant industry that are roc’s focus. the demands of many lwc campaigns involve stopping illegal practices, such as unpaid or forced overtime and subminimum wages. for the b&h campaign, problems included erratic scheduling, the handling of chemical hazards without training or equipment, unsafe working speeds with heavy packaging, and overt harassment of immigrant employees. in typical fashion, the campaign was met with heavy resistance from the company, who fired organizers and refused to recognize the union. the upshot is that for most workers involved in lwc campaigns, their jobs involve some of the worst wages and conditions in our economy—simply getting minimum wages can be a big improvement in their lives. further, many workers are afraid of speaking out due to fears of losing their jobs and, in some cases, being threatened with deportation. given that these conditions tend to be standard practices in the low-wage economy, workers cannot easily move to a better job. the demographics of the workers combined with the employment challenges they face and lwc’s commitment to worker leadership leads to a unique model of organizing workers. as described to us by co-directors rosanna rodriguez and mahoma lopez, the core of the lwc model involves a training program called the leadership institute. the institute provides the essentials of workplace organizing combined with political education: a history of the labor movement, how to speak with employers, engaging the media, and designing direct action campaigns. the institute is free, and attended by workers who come to lwc with a problem at their worksite. in fact, the only requirement attached to participating in the institute is that workers must commit to putting what they learn into practice. rather than acting as representatives of workers, the purpose 126 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life of the lwc is to train and empower workers to develop and run their own campaign. “well we cannot decide [what the campaign will look like] because it all depends on what the workers want. so we never decide beforehand. we always have the conversation, you know, ‘what do you want to see in your workplace?’ or ‘what is your ideal workplace?’ or ‘what is your goal? and then, we find a way to support that. but we never make the decision for workers” (rosanna, interview 2016). in and of itself, learning the details of organizing a labor drive can comfortably fit into an economic justice frame, especially when the main goals involve wages and benefits at specific worksites. however, while the goals of the workplace justice campaigns are focused on single worksites, their overall strategy recognizes that individual changes are not enough, something mahoma noted in a previous interview: “mahoma lópez, a leader at the [hot and crust campaign] and now co-director of the center, remembers his first conversation with organizer virgilio aran. “he told us why it’s important to organize,” lópez said. without organizing, even if you win back your stolen wages in court, “they will fire you, and you’ll go to some other place where you will be exploited” (singh 2016). the goal of the leadership institute is thus to empower workers not only to lead campaigns at their worksite, but to become “liberated” in wider, dynamic sense. as mahoma underlined, the direct-action component is key to this process. “…every time we launch a campaign, we occupy the workplace, the workers deliver a demands letter and, that's what we call liberation day. they have a lot of fear, and there is a lot pressure, it is a lot of... a lot of things together, inside of you… but that day when you go public, and you are the person who delivers the letter it’s like ‘okay, now it's my turn. i have a lot of people in the back support me.’ every single worker who experiences that, that the liberation that's... everything changes. building justice in the american labour movement | 127 you can see the people to next day with a new face, you know, ‘okay, i did it!’ you know, they are waiting sometimes so many years. for some people who are exploited, they don't have that opportunity to confront [the employer] face to face. ‘i'm here, now it's my time. you have to respect me, and i am not gonna keep quiet’" (mahoma, interview, 2016). both rosanna and mahoma are explicit in that, while their campaigns involve important material benefits such as wages and better treatment, they also work within a justice framework geared towards empowering immigrant workers for the long-term. political education and the actual work of campaigns are the tools of this empowerment. rosanna: “i think like one of the way to break up the fear is more about political education. so, you know... that's the only way that people can understand. to empower people ... how they can, you know, take power. ummm...and it is possible to break that fear … i mean, [justice and empowerment] can be about, you know, treatment. the treatment in the wages in term of having a living wage, and that the company respects and follows the law. it depends of all the necessity of the workers because every campaign is different. even though we have common issues like wage theft or discrimination. mahoma: “yeah but also, when laundry workers center says “justice,” it's just basically when the workers have the power. after a long process or at the end of the campaign the workers can step in front the boss and say, you know, ‘we need this, and we demand this, and we have no fear.’ you know, it's like just basically they become empowered. […] and yes that's justice because that person is not going to be oppressed no more. it's like, they are fighting for the people they represent themselves” (rosanna and mahoma, interview, 2016). additionally, lwc makes strong efforts to bridge workplace justice issues with a wider political agenda. in the first place, they are involved in a range of wider political and policy issues, including legislation on wage theft and paid 128 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life sick days. given their roots in the immigrant community, they are also involved in a number of initiatives for immigrants that offer a wider justice framework: mahoma: “the laundry workers center, together with other organizations, we have launched a movement called somos visibles or “we are visible.” we feel very proud to be part of this new movement. but we are part of this movement because want to fight for the recognition that all immigrant workers have the right to make decisions in their communities at the local level […] rosanna: “so, it's not about the [2016 presidential election]. it's more about, if i am part of this community and i want to have a new school, or have a better park, or have better housing, i have the right to make a decision in my neighborhood and my community and be a part of that. even though, if i'm an immigrant, or undocumented, i am living over here and i have the right to make decisions in my community” (rosanna and mahoma, interview, 2016). drawing on the training of the leadership institute, somos invisibles uses community organizing and direct-action tactics to take their concepts of fairness out of the worksite and into the wider immigrant community. conclusion communication workers of america (cwa) regional director bob master, quoting martin heidegger, puts the problem this way: “‘language is the house of being’ and people on the left have been homeless because we talk in veiled terms … labor has underestimated the appeal of direct ideological challenge to the status quo, [but] it’s impossible to represent workers without a change in the entire power dynamic, that means an ideological fight.” labor justice is our proposed framework for this fight, one that must take place both conceptually and practically. labor organizations must think together about what it means for people who work for a living to be able to live free of oppression and domination in the workplace and beyond. in addition, the practices of union organizing, campaigns, policy advocacy and other political engagement must make appeals beyond members and potential members, to society as a whole. organizations building justice in the american labour movement | 129 must think critically about their own practices and implement modes of organizing that open pathways for people from various social locations to participate. this is because, whether a person concerned with labor justice can be a member of the union, they should be able to be a member of the movement. references abromaitis, amelia. 2016. forward together – our statement of purpose. november 16. http://www.seiuhcpa.org/2016/11/16/forward-togetherour-agenda-for-working-families/. adler, lee h., maite tapia, and lowell turner, . 2014. mobilizing against inequality: unions, immigrant workers, and the crisis of capitalism. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. apostolidis, paul. 2010. breaks in the chain. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. baumgartner, frank, susan deboef, and amber boydstun. 2008. the decline of the death penalty and the discovery of innocence. cambridge university press. bronfenbrenner, kate, and robert hickey. 2004. 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"“to all members of the liuna general executive board, district councils, and local unions in the united states.” ." open letter, laborers international union of north america. oswalt, michael m. 2016. "improvisational unionism." california law review 87. oxfam america. 2016. "poverty in the us." oxfam america. https://policypractice.oxfamamerica.org/work/poverty-in-the-us/low-wage-map/. pew research center. 2016. the state of american jobs. october 6. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/10/06/the-state-of-americanjobs/. piven, frances fox, and richard cloward. 1977. poor people's movements: why they succeed, how they fail. new york: pantheon books. restaurant opportunities center-united. n.d. our work. http://rocunited.org/our-work/. rick, fantasia, and kim voss. 2004. hard work: remaking the american labor movement. berkeley, ca: university of california press. robinson, ian. 2000. 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(http://www.labornotes.org/2016/06/bh-workers-train-win). smucker, jonathan matthew. 2016. hegemony how to: a roadmap for radicals. oakland, ca: ak press. u.s. bureau of labor statistics. 2017. economic news release employment situation summary. august 4. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm. u.s. bureau of labor statistics. 2019. economic news release union members summary. u.s. department of labor. — 2015. monthly labor review. december. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/occupational-employmentprojections-to-2024.htm . building justice in the american labour movement | 133 warren, dorian. 2010. "the american labor movement in the age of obama: the challenges and opportunities of a racialized political economy." perspectives on politics 8 (3): 847-860. williams, h. howell. 2018. "from family values to religious freedom: conservative discourse and the politics of gay rights." new political science . woodly, deva. 2018. "the importance of public meaning for political persuasion." perspectives on politics 22-35. — 2015. the politics of common sense . new york: oxford university press . young, iris. 1990. justice and the politics of difference . princeton, nj: princeton university press. zahn, max. 2016. in these times. may 2. accessed september 10, 2017. http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/19094/fight-for-15-unionminimum-wage-seiu. 134 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review for a left populism by chantal mouffe, new york: verso, 2018. $23.99 can, hardcover, isbn-13: 978-1-78663-755-0. pages: 1-98. reviewed by barret weber1 for decades, political theorist chantal mouffe led efforts to outline a theory of politics capable of coming to terms with on-the-ground struggles generally referred to as new social movements. the path-breaking work, hegemony and socialist struggle (1985), written with longtime collaborator ernesto laclau, put a unique theory of hegemony on the table for discussion in which “the political” was placed squarely at the centre of analysis. the push was to move beyond “essentialist” thinking in the left that relegated many diverse struggles to the margins. according to mouffe and laclau, a deepened and radicalized concept of hegemony was needed to bring about a new “ontology of the social,” which the authors thought was needed to escape problems they diagnosed in the canons of marxism that reified social class as the a priori category of social and political analysis, as well as the regrettable conversion of social democracy to neoliberalism under “the third way” and new labour. in the influential preface to the second edition of hegemony and socialist strategy (2001), they argued that the left should: create a chain of equivalence among various democratic struggles against different forms of subordination. we argued that struggles against sexism, racism, sexual discrimination, and in the defence of the environment needed to be articulated with those of the workers in a new left-wing hegemonic project (laclau and mouffe, 2001: xviii). it was around this time that i first encountered mouffe and laclau’s work as i began to study and explore my interests in politics and social theory. i fondly remember their interventions as being insightful while certainly a challenging read for theorists and activists building a framework to unite sometimes conflicting struggles in search of social justice. mouffe and laclau’s work was important in articulating a sophisticated, theoretically-informed renewal project capable of providing a framework to unite diverse struggles into an overall democratic project. almost twenty years later, it would seem little has changed: the left is still in search of a unified project and the stakes couldn’t be higher given the obvious advances of right-wing populism across much of the world. for a left populism should be read in the context of well-trod debates in marxist and reformist circles about the nature of politics and social class since the 1980s. it will also likely be read as a restatement of the main tenants of the project after the passing of her famous writing partner and husband ernesto laclau (1935-2014). the main thesis of for a left populism is virtually indistinguishable from many of the earlier texts. mouffe describes the purpose of the book as an effort to challenge an “inadequate conception of politics” in which the left “in both its marxist and social-democratic versions” has failed to unite social movements that cannot be reduced to class terms (1-2). where this book does 1 individualized study tutor, faculty of humanities and social sciences, centre for interdisciplinary studies, athabasca university, email: bweber@athabascau.ca mailto:bweber@athabascau.ca mailto:bweber@athabascau.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research depart from previous works is to directly confront the “populist moment” (5) where neoliberal capitalism has brought about “new forms of subordination...outside the productive process” (6). mouffe builds on laclau’s definition of populism in on populist reason (2005), which is defined “as a discursive strategy of constructing a political frontier dividing society into two camps and calling for the mobilization of the ‘underdog’ against ‘those in power’” (10-11). mouffe argues that the populist moment “signals the crisis of neoliberal hegemonic formation” in western europe since the 1980s. she argues that the solution to the crisis is not quite yet in view, leading to the “expression of a variety of resistances to the political and economic transformations seen during the years of neoliberal hegemony” (12). however, mouffe is clear enough that the task at hand is to build a politics “oriented towards the establishment of a different hegemonic order within the liberal-democratic framework” (38). jeremy corbyn’s “repoliticization” of the british labour party is noted as a recent example of this type of approach. on this basis, mouffe revisits previous work while reflecting on the possibilities for a left populism. chapter 1, as briefly described above, engages with today’s “populist moment.” chapter 2, “learning from thatcherism,” is one of the most interesting and potentially controversial chapters, given the claim that we “should follow thatcher’s route, adopting a populist strategy, but this time with a progressive objective, intervening on a multiplicity of fronts to build a new hegemony aiming at recovering and deepening democracy” (35). chapter 3 “radicalizing democracy” takes up a distinctly anti-capitalist stance, while reasserting the idea that “there is no reason to assume that the working class has an a priori privileged role in the anti-capitalist struggle” (49). this is, as mentioned, part of mouffe’s longstanding polemic against what she goes so far as calling the “extreme left” that does not “engage with how people are in reality, but with how they should be according to their theories” (50). there has been no shortage of debate and even antagonism between those who identify as marxists and mouffe and laclau’s explicitly “post-marxist” approach. chapter 4 “the construction of a people,” a short conclusion, and a “theoretical appendix,” subtitled “an anti-essentialist approach,” make up the remainder of the book. these chapters certainly raise some interesting points particularly around the possibilities of a “left populist strategy” given the changing nature of politics and democratic movements. however, they also contain heavy doses of jargon, tend to repetition in places, and at times come off as defensive. with that being said, mouffe and laclau’s project was always heavy on theoretical detail to the point where it became rather cluttered in terms of the many theoretical traditions it attempted to synthesize. for a left populism contains these traditional weaknesses while itself failing anew to clearly outline a strategy for how the left can effectively oppose the right wing populist moment with a much-needed left wing populist alternative. for readers looking to revisit the debates of the past, including mouffe’s response to the main criticisms of her work, this would be a valued resource. however, for those who are already fatigued by some of the poststructuralist discourse that has informed the project for decades, there really isn’t much new to learn here. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research for a left populism does important work of articulating how left populism might rise to the challenge of opposing neoliberal capitalism. but it is short on offering insights into how this could be organized amongst real grassroots struggles in real situations. the closest answers we get were already contained in hegemony and socialist strategy from 1985; that is, we need “the construction of a collective subject apt to launch a political offensive in order to establish a new hegemonic formation within the liberal democratic framework” (80). for those who are weary of just such a turn away from the traditions of the working class, and who would like to find spaces for struggle outside of liberal democracy – whose very institutional foundations have been damaged and corrupted by neoliberalism – mouffe only responds by saying “there is no point in answering those criticisms that proceed from the very conception of politics against which i have been arguing” (80). in this respect, the more things change, the more they stay the same… according to chantal mouffe, it’s hegemony within liberal democracy or bust. references laclau, ernesto and chantal mouffe, hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics. second edition. new york: verso, 2001. laclau, ernesto, on populist reason, new york: verso, 2005. new edition, 2018 democracy in troubled times jeff noonan1 abstract: the paper examines liberal democracy as a contradictory social formation. on the one hand, liberalism coevolved with capitalism and its alienating, exploitative, and oppressive structures dynamics. on the other hand, just because capitalist property relationships were alienating, exploitative, and oppressive, workers and colonised people were forced to fight back. the democratic side of liberal democracy is largely a result of these struggles. from this perspective, democracy is not so much a particular political form as it is a deeper set of social relationships. the protection and deepening of democracy today must root itself in the history of struggles to reclaim collective control over universally required liferesources. keywords: liberalism; democracy; marxism; rights introduction research conducted over the past three years by political scientists roberto stefan foa and yascha mounck has found that people in the west are growing indifferent towards liberal-democratic institutions and norms. (foa and mounck, 2016; 2017). in a follow up essay in the wall street journal in 2019, foa and mounck worry that the historical dominance of the west may be coming to an end. china and russia appear to have successfully combined authoritarian statism and a market economy and pose a global threat to the liberal-democratic order: whether democracy or autocracy rules the world in the 21st century is thus likely to depend on a number of pivotal countries that could end up as part of either camp. if countries such as india, nigeria and indonesia manage to build 1 jeff noonan is professor of philosophy at the university of windsor and a longtime activist in the canadian socialist and academic trade union movements. his most recent publications are the troubles with democracy, (london: rowman littlefield international), and embodiment and the meaning of life (montreal: mcgill-queen’s university press). 206 | populism, power and protest stable and affluent democracies, the principles of liberty and equality have a chance to maintain and extend their influence in the coming decades. but if these crucial “swing states” turn autocratic while becoming rich, democrats will have a harder time making their case (foa and mounck, 2019). but what “case” would “democrats” make to countries like nigeria, india, and indonesia, all victims of colonial domination and imperialist exploitation at the hands of liberal democracies? foa and mounck do not tell us whether that “other” history of the west, the history known only too intimately by the nonwestern victims of colonialism and imperialism, is democratic or not. and if it is part and parcel of the development of western democracy, why would it be reasonable for its victims to choose it? we could ask the same question of the working class in the west who form a subset of those grown weary of liberal-democratic platitudes: why should they care about “democracy” if democracy means nothing more than voting for one set of politicians from traditional parties who have consistently failed them? is cynicism and indifference not a rational response to decades of betrayal? if “democracy” cannot prevent plant closures, soaring inequality, and destruction of the social and cultural infrastructure that any worthwhile human life requires; if it tolerates racist police violence and attacks women’s hard won rights to control their bodies; if it lets bigots create social policy and allows desperate migrants to die in the mediterranean, why should anyone care to preserve this “democracy?” foa and mounck do not pose these questions, and thus they do not pose the one question that they really need to ask: did liberal democracy ever really respond to the majority of people’s needs? and if it did not, was it ever fully democratic? the answer, i think, is “no,” but it’s complicated. on the one hand, considered domestically, there are certainly democratic aspects of liberal-democratic societies. however, these have always been hemmed in, if not outright undermined by capitalist property relations, certain implications of liberal property rights, liberal assumptions about what is good for human beings, and gross inconsistencies in how relevant social interests are counted and ranked. on the other hand, in its relations with indigenous cultures, liberal democracy has been neither liberal nor democratic. outright colonial violence gave way, after formal decolonization had been achieved, to the dominance at a distance via unfair trade regimes, indebtedness, and the threat— and sometimes actuality—of armed intervention. nevertheless, despite these contradictions, i will argue that it would be wrong for proponents of radical social change to abandon the democratic elements of the history of liberal democracy. democracy in troubled times | 207 liberal democracy is a contradictory expression of democratic values; a partial realization within which radical critics and activists have to work, not dismiss outright. as on-going struggles against authoritarianism and austerity in america, hong kong, the united kingdom, france, egypt, brazil, ecuador and iraq prove, liberal-democratic institutions and public institutions still matter to people. defending and strengthening them is a starting point for more radically transformative struggles. the tactics, strategies, and immediate goals of different struggles depend upon local conditions. my focus here will be north america (and, to a lesser extent, the united kingdom and western europe). of course, there are important differences hidden by this geographical abstraction, but these countries form the historical heartland of liberal-democratic capitalism, and all have faced challenges from a resurgent right-wing populism. hence there is a shared, three-part task for the left in these countries: to understand the difference between democracy and liberal-democracy, to spell out the social conditions that full democracy requires, and to agree upon a set of realizable policy objectives that can build a history of short term successes. short-term success can help win the initiative from rightwing charlatans and fuel momentum for struggles for deeper social changes. democracy against liberal democracy i begin with a simple question and a simple answer. “what is democracy?” “democracy is ‘rule of the people.’” this definition tells us what democracy is as a form of rule distinct from monarchy or aristocracy. unlike those political systems, democracy does not restrict political power to a hereditary or economic elite. however, what it does not tell us, is what set of social conditions must be satisfied if ‘the people’ are to actually govern their own affairs. some of those conditions are obvious. they must have equal rights to participate in the political system (by speaking in favour of one party or policy, or voting, or standing as a candidate for office). these political rights presuppose other, more basic civil rights: the right to speak publicly about political problems, to organize support for a party or create a new one, to assemble freely in public and disseminate information—all the familiar rights enshrined in written constitutions or common law. since the late nineteenth century these civil and political rights have been supplemented by growing body of social rights. social rights are claims on the total wealth of society due to individuals as a matter of membership in the civic body. they undergird the legitimacy of the welfare state and the use of tax dollars to fund public institutions. liberal democracy identifies 208 | populism, power and protest the conditions of self-government (rule by the people), with the set of civil, political, and social rights required by free citizens to exercise their agency as members of a body of citizens. at the same time as liberal democracy secures the conditions for the participation of citizens in the political process, it also erects limits to popular power by distinguishing between public and private spheres. political power -the rule of the people – is limited to the res publica, public things. in matters which are purely private, the person, not the people, rule. since democracy assumes that everyone is a rational and self-governing agent (and it must make this assumption, or else concede to aristocratic critics that democracy is impossible) some distinction between public and private is necessary. no one who regards themselves as rational, free, and equal is going to concede to the community as a whole the right to decide what they as an individual should think, feel, believe, judge, find funny, beautiful, sexy, or morally right and wrong. if democracy extended popular rule into the mind of the individual, it would be as insufferably totalitarian as any autocratic state. the traditional liberal democratic “liberties” thus define a private space within which individuals are legitimately free to think and choose. the problem is not the general distinction between the public and the private, but the proper scope of the public. as jacques rancière has shown, the history of democracy is a history of the expansion of the scope of the private (rancière, 2006, 62). the feminist slogan “the personal is political” is an excellent example of rancière’s point. one of the great accomplishments of feminist struggle has been to reveal to the public the political stakes involved in zones, which have traditionally been understood as private life, like the family. if the family is private, then public law would cease having any force beyond the door of the private home. within the four walls of the house, the father ruled—autocratically, and often with violence. the feminist argument did not imply that everything about family or intimate life was necessarily public, but that there were public, political implications to how the boundary was traditionally drawn. by shielding family life from political-legal regulation, it allowed fathers to harm women and children. by re-drawing the lines between public and private, ways of silencing women and children were overcome, and their agency-their scope for action-was increased. democracy was advanced, because a formerly silenced set of people could now speak more freely. the situation is the same when we turn from family life to the economy. traditionally and still today, liberal democrats insist that the economy is an democracy in troubled times | 209 essential part of the private sphere. liberals differ as to the degree to which it is permissible to regulate economic life, but no one is such a left-egalitarian liberal that they reject market competition as the ultimately appropriate means of developing and distributing society’s resources. all liberals recognize poverty as politically disabling; many support progressive taxation and public services as means of redistributing wealth to expand the agency of poorer people, but none see (more or less) free markets as themselves barriers to democracy. on the contrary, all liberal democrats assume that democracy and free markets imply each other. but if democracy means rule of the people, and we assume that democracy and free markets imply each other, then it must be the case that the people ultimately rule free markets. liberals will say that the people do in fact rule in the free market economy, but they rule as individuals. labour is regulated by contract law and people decide what is produced by the purchases that they make as consumers. if i choose where to work and what to buy, then the liberal picture seems correct: as a collective, the people rule the public realm, and by choosing where to work and what to buy as individuals, they rule the private realm too. hence, the conditions of democracy coincide with the conditions for liberal democracy: popular power with regard to public affairs, private power with regard to private affairs. the boundaries are fluid, but not completely: fixed individual rights set a limit to how far the public can encroach on the private. this picture conceals a structural problem with liberal democracy, one undiagnosed by its most important theorists, even though its effects are everywhere manifest. liberal private property rights not only protect personal property for use, but also private property in the life-sustaining resources that everyone requires. it makes sense that items that we need as individuals like a coat or smartphone are protected by law as mine, because there would be even more social conflict if everyone could simply seize from everyone else anything that they happened to desire. in the case of personal property, rights to keep that which one has legitimately acquired reduce the role of physical power in the distribution of goods. however, where individuals of a minority class are allowed to own the basic resources from which everything that we need is produced, the technology that is used in the production process, distribution and transportation networks on top of that, and the financial system that advances the funds needed to start and keep production going, property rights not only confer power over the things that they own, but also over the lives of the other citizens that depend upon accessing and using those resources. 210 | populism, power and protest this structure of dependence has deep roots. one of the major spurs towards capitalist development in europe were new social relationships that allowed a class of landowners to enclose formerly common land (see wood, 2002, 95-124). the peasants that formerly had access to the commons were forced to sell their labour in order to survive. these new social relationships were codified and legitimised by new conceptions of individual rights, the cornerstone of which was the right of individuals to own and control universally required life-resources. as marx argued, these property rights divided society in two: politically (male) citizens were formally equal, but socially, in terms of the resources that everyone could access, people were substantively unequal (marx and engels, 1976, 167). this inequality is the sign of a structural division of society into classes. the ruling class rules not because it has more political rights than workers, but because the resources they control make their political rights more valuable: since they control the conditions of everyone’s lives, they are able to determine what people do for a living, whether or not they will have a job, and what the terms of employment are. for example, in september of 2019, nemak, a firm producing aluminum engine blocks in windsor, ontario, informed its workers that it would close in 2020, despite the fact that the company had signed a legally binding collective agreement that committed it to stay open until 2022. when workers resisted and blockaded the plant for 13 days, the company sought and won an injunction to force them back to work. their legal right to protect their property overrode the legal right of the workers to have the contract enforced. what this incident shows is that the law, when it comes to private property, has co-evolved with class power, and is a respecter of persons: those who own and control the property. hymns to the rule of law notwithstanding, when it comes to the property of the ruling class, it is money and class interest that rule the way the law is made and enforced. the general implication for democracy is that the social power of the class that owns and controls universally required life-resources undermines the value of the political rights of working people, contradicting the principle of equality and rule of the people that ought to govern a democratic society. if enclosures were the primary impetus to capitalist development domestically, then slavery and colonization were its primary international drivers. here human beings themselves became private property and were put to work on plantations and mines that produced capital for export back to europe. some of the greatest theorists of liberalism, paramount amongst whom was john locke, saw no contradiction between the principle that all people were morally equal and that some people could legitimately be enslaved and worked to death (jahn, 2012, democracy in troubled times | 211 685-705). that the slave trade and colonization were systematically directed by slave companies chartered by the state did not keep liberals up at night worrying whether their vaunted “liberty and equality” was materially contradicted by the total deprivation of liberty and complete extinguishing of equality for enslaved and colonized people. like european workers (but in even worse conditions) enslaved people found themselves totally deprived of need-based access to the means of life and thus utterly dependent on their ability to keep working to the satisfaction of the owner for their survival. thus, the dark secret that liberal-democracy conceals is this structural dependence of workers on the owners of universally required life-resources. the effects of this structural dependence are modulated by the concrete identity of the members of the working class. women, for instance, experience this dependence differently than men (and women in one region differently that women in another). likewise, the enslaved of the colonies experienced a more murderous form of exploitation than workers in europe. but the root of the problem, from the perspective of democracy, is the same: equality and political rights and power is undermined by the legal and legitimate ownership and control of universally required life-resources. no society that allows a minority class to control everything that others need (including their ability to find paid employment to earn the wages that they need to exchange for the goods they need to live) can be fully democratic. conditions existing at the heart of the reproduction of human life, particularly working conditions, where people work to produce everything that shapes the world as human, are structured by dictatorship rather than democracy. at work, the boss rules the workplace with total authority. democracy against liberalism and capitalism i said above that workers and enslaved peoples were totally dependent upon the ruling class for access to the goods that their lives required. this claim is only partially true. in fact, no adult human being is ever wholly dependent on another for their lives, and this deep truth about human beings is essential to understanding how an initially undemocratic liberal capitalism became democratic (and how the promise of democracy can ultimately be fulfilled). people are not like rocks or sand dunes, totally dependent on physical forces that erode them and sculpt them into different shapes. even in the most abjectly unfree social conditions we remain social self-conscious agents capable of understanding that the conditions in which we live are forced upon us and not freely chosen. once people become conscious of the ways in which need-deprived and unfree forms 212 | populism, power and protest of life are imposed upon them, they can (and ultimately will) fight back. because human beings are essentially social self-conscious subjects and not mere things, we struggle for changes once we become conscious of our power to change institutions. undemocratic liberal-capitalist society has become more democratic because the exploited, alienated, and oppressed have fought back for three centuries. the history of these fightbacks is too complex and variegated to discuss in any detail here (see noonan, 2006 and noonan, 2019). instead i want to focus on the common ground (which is not always brought to light even by the best critics of capitalism) on which all opponents of liberal-democratic capitalism stand. while the directly experienced conditions of life of different groups of oppressed people differ, the conditions that permit and legitimate ruling class power are the same. whether it is a sexist society asserting that women are incapable of rational thought and thus have no need for education and no right to participate in the political system, or a racist colonial government insisting that the indigenous people over which they rule are somehow morally and intellectually inferior and thus rightfully dominated, or judges who conclude that workers are legally free to not sign a labour contract and thus cannot claim that they have any rights in the workplace against their bosses – in all of these cases, the subaltern group is treated as a thing, and not as social self-conscious agents. their thinghood, however, is not a function of a philosophical mistake, but a social system in which they really are reduced to the status of things: objects that work to produce wealth and pleasure for the ruling class. when different groups of oppressed people stand up and say “no longer!”, they prove that they are not objects but human beings. they, thus, expose that a philosophical mistake has in fact been made. however, their goal is not to revise philosophical principles, but to change the society that has been justified by a false philosophy. at the same time, if we focus on the underlying capacity to fight back and change society, we see that all of these different struggles have a common goal: to create the social conditions in which every person can live fully and freely as a human being. this goal is the deep promise of democratic society. it has animated peasants in ancient greece fighting against the traditional aristocracy, as well as modern greek workers fighting against austerity. it motivated mary wollstonecraft to argue that the “rights of man and citizen” should apply to women. it motivated toussaint l’ouverture to organize his fellow enslaved human beings into the world’s first anti-colonial, anti-slavery revolution. and it motivates black lives matter activists today to democracy in troubled times | 213 resist police violence. the historical context, the actors, the specific problem, and the language through which the struggle is organized differ in every case, but the material and moral core is the same: people fight back against social structures that deprive them of that which they require to live and develop freely as human beings. these struggles mark out a crucial difference, typically ignored by defenders of liberal democracy, between democracy as a social system and way of life, and democracy as a political system defined by regular elections and constitutional rights. when we say democracy—rule of the people— we have to be saying more than the fact that people get to vote for governments who then enact whatever policies they want, which are justified in the people’s name. it must mean more than the exercise of intermittent political power, because the idea of “rule” is a normative idea. it does not refer simply to a power to act but implies that political power ought to be exercised in accordance with certain standards rooted in our objective interests. rule of the people does not mean, therefore, that people elect a government and authorize it to call whatever they enact “the will of the people.” first, governments are almost never elected by actual majorities. second, and more deeply, given the separation of the economic system from the political system that i discussed above, political power rarely if ever serves the common life-interests of people that have driven struggles for democracy. the example of the climate crisis helps to explain my point. if elected governments continue to make decisions that allow unbridled exploitation of the earth’s resources through industries powered by fossil fuels, then these decisions are materially irrational. they are inconsistent with the future of our societies. if the people really “ruled,” and they understand at least the basic conditions of their on-going existence, then (unless everyone has a death-wish) they would not make decisions that undermined their future. the decisions, however, are not freely taken by the people acting together as a self-governing collective subject aware of their own conditions of life. instead, the decisions are responses to the reified power of market forces. political parties claim to act according to the will of the people but are really serving those forces. on one level, of course, laws issue from legislatures, and therefore political power. however, they are not the result of robust, all-round, democratic deliberations which take into account the need for any sound law to cohere with fundamental conditions of life and life-development. the reason that laws and policies (or, more often, roll backs of earlier regulatory policies) fail to take account of the natural and social conditions of on-going life and life-development is not first and foremost because 214 | populism, power and protest of climate-denial and mis-information (which convinces only a small number of internet shut-ins and far-right fools), but because of the actual structure of social dependence typical of capitalist society. in the short term, people think: “i need to work. i need to drive my car to work. it will be cold soon and i need to heat my home.” work, transportation, and heating are not extravagant luxuries but basic life-necessities. when lifenecessities are commodified, people become dependent on wages to survive. driven to survive, they work and pay their bills. they can see that there is a coming climate catastrophe tomorrow, (this was the highest ranked issue on a list of public concerns for the october 2019 canadian election) but do not see how they can change their patterns life today. we thus carry on, which is not irrational; but in carrying on, we allow economic forces to keep driving us towards the cliff, which is irrational. but to conclude that failure to act is democratic, just because the party in power has been elected, makes a mockery of the idea of popular rule. the people, as human beings who need a life-sustaining environment, are precisely not ruling. we are being led to disaster by reified market forces and the small ruling class that derives short-term social benefit from them. solidarity in the struggle for a democratic society despite my philosopher’s talk of rational and irrational, material conditions and foundations, the solution is not theoretical but practical. if the drivers of climate catastrophe and the hollowing out of democracy are the power that market forces generate and the maneuvers of the ruling class to maintain their power and privilege come what may, then the solution has to be to eventually overcome class rule and the power of market forces. that is easy to say, and much more difficult to do. we have had splendid examples of mass popular mobilisation in the last ten years, including revolutions against long-standing dictatorships in tunisia and egypt, that nevertheless failed to transform the deep structure of dependence that keeps people in thrall to market forces. after the millions in the streets went home, local ruling classes, in open alliance with the united states, reestablished their power (quietly, in tunisia, and through a coup in egypt). in north america and europe, the texture of struggle is different of course, but the same sort of problem besets movements like the gilet jaunes. they have been mobilising tens of thousands of people for months but have not made any decisive changes to the underlying structure of french society. yet it is the underlying structure that must be changed, because it is this structure that keeps people dependent on labour and commodity markets. this dependency in turn democracy in troubled times | 215 causes workers to make rational short-term decisions (say, to be a welder on an oil sands pipeline because it is a well-paying job) that then generate irrational patterns of social policy and choice over the long term. greta thunberg is to be commended for her verve in calling politicians to account for their inaction on climate change, but what her argument lacks is an understanding of how this structure of dependence keeps people voting for politicians who do nothing, all the while saying that preventing climate catastrophe is top of their political concerns. clearly, then, the most important need, if societies are to be democratised in the deep way that i explained in section two, is a set of realizable demands that reduce the dependence of people on labour and commodity markets. one key problem that the socialist left faces is that while they understand the need to change this structure of dependence, they cannot say, with any degree of precision, how a socialist economy will function. the same structure of dependence that they understand so well means it is highly unlikely that workers will fight for a revolutionary socialist future whose present reality exists only in academic argument and whose past is associated in the popular imagination with totalitarianism and technological backwardness. however, there is another legacy of workers’ struggles that is real, not academic, that worked, that still exists, and which can function as a mediation that reduces dependence on labour and commodity markets in the short term, while creating time and space for more radically transformative projects over the long term. that other legacy is the robust set of public institutions and public goods that a century of working-class struggle has created. public health care, education systems, libraries, parks and common green spaces, galleries, cultural centres, and public pensions are all rooted in the principle of distribution according to need, not the ability to pay. it is true that this principle has been eroded by neo-liberal user pay schemes, and that these institutions are bureaucratic not democratic. it is also true that the existence of these institutions owes as much to capitalists’ desire to ward off more radical struggles as much as workers’ fights for freedom from labour and commodity markets. but at the same time, they are real and they work (imperfectly, but they can be democratised and improved right now). as they improve, workers’ dependence on market forces decreases and their scope for action correspondingly increases. as their scope for action increases, they are able to fight for more. the more for which they ought to fight has to be plausible and realizable and not some mere abstraction. nationalization of disused productive assets and 216 | populism, power and protest re-opening of closed plants under public ownership are demands that can be realized within the existing institutional framework, but they also contest the status quo and push it in more deeply transformative directions. we have seen a small but real uptick in the willingness of workers to contest the power of capital to decide their futures. the most recent example was a 13-day blockade of the nemak engine casting plant in windsor. as with the closure of gm’s facility in oshawa, workers did not simply shrug their shoulders and start looking for other work but fought back. a court injunction threatened massive fines if the union did not return to work, so they eventually settled for a fairly weak agreement on the part of the company to submit a final decision on the closure date to binding arbitration. in oshawa, unifor has accepted a very modest gm proposal to keep a few hundred workers employed in a small section of the closing plant. in response, more imaginative and demanding people like sam gindin have come up with realizable proposals to take over the plant and use it to create electric cars (gindin, 2019). the details are not essential here, the important point is that, as with the case of expanded and democratized public institutions, this plan can be executed right now, using institutions and legal mechanisms that currently exist. if successful, it creates a working example of a public enterprise operating under workers’ control, producing ecologically sound technologies for the national market. democracy is thus expanded into the economic system in a way that unleashes a counter-logic to capitalist exploitation and alienation. successful experiments along these lines, combined with expanded public services paid for by taxes on capital and wealth rather than wages and consumption, change the power dynamics between labour and capital. capital can at the very least be put on the defensive for the first time in forty years. to the objection that what we need is revolutionary socialism and not a showcase plant or two under public ownership i offer the following response: indeed we do need revolutionary socialism, but getting there is the problem. socialism is a society, and societies, like energy, are neither created nor destroyed; they just change form. workers cannot live on slogans and abstract demands, and thus cannot simply abandon existing forms of employment on the basis of a vague hope that some undefined alternative economy might work out better for them. at the same time, it is clear that the existing economy is not working for workers and will almost certainly get worse. liberal-democratic capitalism is an increasingly exhausted social form, but it is a form that has been shaped by the needs of capital and the struggles of workers against those reified forces. those struggles have created a legacy of (contradictory) public institutions that can form a concrete basis for democracy in troubled times | 217 further struggles, justified by the value of democracy constantly invoked by the ruling class in theory but denied by them in practice. references gindin, s. (2019 march 29). gm oshawa: lowered expectation, unexplored opportunities. the bullet, https://socialistproject.ca/2019/03/gmoshawa-lowered-expectations-unexplored-opportunities/ foa, r.s. and mounk, y. (2016). the democratic disconnect. journal of democracy, 27(3), 5-17. foa, r.s. and mounk, y.. (2017). the signs of deconsolidation. journal of democracy, 28(1), 5-17. foa, r.s. and mounk, y.. (2019 september 13). when democracy is no longer the path to prosperity. wall street journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-democracy-is-no-longer-the-onlypath-to-prosperity-11551457761 jahn, b. (2012). rethinking democracy promotion. review of international studies 38(4), 685-705. marx, k, and engels, f. (1976). collected works, volume 5. new york: international publishers. noonan, j. (2006). democratic society and human needs. montreal: mcgillqueen’s university press. noonan, j. (2019). the troubles with democracy. london: rowman and littlefield international. rancière, j. (2006). hatred of democracy. london: verso. wood, e. (2002). the origin of capitalism: a longer view. london: verso. 218 | populism, power and protest alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review alt-america: the rise of the radical right in the age of trump, by david neiwert. london: verso, 2017. $16.95 u.s., paper. isbn: 978-1-78663-446-7. pages: 1-456. reviewed by adam beardsworth1 in a letter addressed “to the children of satan” and mailed to more than twenty us mosques in the wake of donald trump’s 2016 election victory, an alt-right group calling itself americans for a better way declared “[t]here’s a new sheriff in town—president donald trump. he’s going to cleanse america and make it shine again. and, he’s going to start with you muslims. he’s going to do to you muslims what hitler did to the jews” (qtd. in neiwert 317). this hatefilled missive, which is included in david neiwert’s magisterial alt-america: the rise of the radical right in the age of trump, supports neiwert’s thesis that trump’s presidency has both emboldened and legitimated the far-right movements that helped secure his election. for neiwert, the rise of american populism cannot be attributed solely to the disenfranchisement caused by unemployment, wage stagnation, and outsourcing (as is argued, for instance, by george packer’s the unwinding or, to some extent, j.d. vance’s hillbilly elegy). rather, the populist wave that helped elect trump has been rising for decades, and has its political roots in the tea party movement that emerged when the libertarian rand paul (later exposed as a racist, anti-semitic conspiracy theorist) brought that party into existence on the 234th anniversary of the boston tea party. as neiwert argues, in a nation where “[r]ight-wing extremism has always been woven into the american political and social landscape (292), only trump “had the charisma to become a national-level coalescing figure for these many threads, and for the first time united them under one banner—his banner” (292). trump, in other words, “was the gateway drug for the alt-right” (292), the political catalyst required to bring a movement that had been fomenting on various fringes for decades, into the mainstream of american politics. for neiwert, trump’s election to the nation’s highest office is not particularly surprising given the decades-long gestation of alt-america, which he defines as “an alternative universe that has a powerful resemblance to our own, except that it’s a completely different america, the nation its residents have concocted and reconfigured in their imaginations” (33). the bulk of neiwert’s book is, therefore, devoted to piecing together how this imaginative reconfiguration of america took place. he traces its genesis from the conservative fringe and militia operations of the 1990s and early 2000s, through the truther, birther, and tea party movements of the post-9/11 and obama eras. each step of the way, he examines in detail the events (ruby ridge, waco, the bundy and malheur standoffs, 9/11, and so on) that helped unify the alt-right and cement the conspiratorial thinking that has fueled its paranoid fears of a repressive liberal new world order. 1 adam beardsworth is an associate professor of english at memorial university of newfoundland’s grenfell campus, and the president of the canadian association for american studies. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the book pays particular attention to how pundits such as limbaugh, coulter, and beck; media outlets such as fox news, breitbart, 4chan, and the daily stormer; and right-wing influencers such as steve bannon, alex jones, andrew anglin, and richard spencer, all helped direct a current of conservative discontent into a torrent of populist unrest driven by fear, paranoia, and hate. the strength of neiwert’s book lies in the vast amount of detail the author compiles in order to show how alt-america emerged as a powerful and influential, political movement. through an exhaustive analysis of the undercurrents that have been feeding the american right for decades, neiwert makes it clear that populism is neither the result of stagnating midwestern economies, nor a response to a presidential candidate who speaks for the disenfranchised. rather, in neiwert’s narrative, trump is the ideal presidential candidate because he is devoted to winning at all costs, even if that means adopting extremist views. neiwert offers ample support for this narrative. in a post from richard spencer’s white nationalist radix journal, for instance, gregory hood acknowledges that “trump is worth supporting . . . because we need a troll. . . . we need someone who can call out the press, the politicians, and the pseudo-intellectuals as the empty shells they are. the fact that trump himself is part of this same farce is utterly irrelevant” (271). spencer himself publicly claimed that with trump “it’s not so much about policy, it’s more about the emotions he evokes” (288), while the “constitutionalist” sheriff david clarke, in an unwittingly prescient remark, claimed “trump understands that what can make our nation safe again is a recommitment to a system of government in which no government official . . . can claim privilege above the law” (288). neiwert’s book is replete with quotations such as these, drawn from key players in conservative movements, that demonstrate the extent to which the alt-right sees itself not as a voter base, but as a shaper of american policy. indeed, by examining the immense influence of limbaugh, breitbart, alex jones, 4chan, and other conservative pundits and outlets, neiwert shows how fringe, conspiracy, and insurrectionists movements have been shepherded into an amalgamated, if not entirely united, political lobby by an ever-louder polyphony of racist, anti-semitic, misogynist, and paranoid voices. the journalistic detail neiwert puts into examining the roots of the alt-right helps contain the often chaotic discourses of politics by demonstrating that trump’s divisive populism did not emerge from a vacuum; rather, it has its roots in the oklahoma bombing, in the conservative standoffs of ruby ridge, waco, and malheur, in the rhetoric of the patriots, birchers, and tea party, and in the conspiracies of the post-9/11 era. by emphasizing the ability of right-wing leaders and media outlets to seize upon this deep-seated disenfranchisement, neiwert is able to cast a net over the alt-right and demonstrate how disparate fringe and conspiracy groups have been mobilized into one of contemporary america’s most powerful political forces. if neiwert’s journalistic commitment to detail is one of the book’s strengths, it is also at times one of its weaknesses. while piecing together the conditions that led to trump’s election demands consideration of myriad sources and contexts, including discussions of key fringe players such as cliven and ammon bundy, or of eliminationist rhetoric on youtube or in social media, the overarching narrative of the text can, at times, get a little lost in the details. at other times, it feels as though more rigorous analysis of the political, economic, and (in particular) ideological conditions that helped spawn fringe conservative movements, and in turn alt-america, could supplant some of the book’s reportage. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research that said, neiwert’s analysis remains aware that “alt-americans are neither stupid no unlettered; what they are instead is oddly gullible, eager to absorb any ‘fact’ if it supports their worldview, and insistent that people who believe official explanations or mainstream media narratives are the real gullible fools” (39). by giving shape to the disparate movements and attitudes of the conservative right, his book demonstrates how these alt-americans were a shaping force in bringing trump to power, and why they will remain a force to be reckoned with for the foreseeable future. the globalization project in crisis philip mcmichael1 abstract: the globalization project is in crisis – evidenced by deepening inequality, widespread civil unrest (including anti-immigrant and ethnic hostilities), a compromised wto, and spreading bilateralism. economies and environments are destabilized and deteriorating, as the deceptions and complicities of market rule are revealed. in this moment of international disorder, with failing us leadership, eu weakening, and russian strengthening, china appears poised to assume a growing political-economic dominance across the world. its recent history can be viewed as strategic manipulation of global neoliberal relations via a combination of shortand long-game maneuvres, anchored in a powerful neo-mercantilist model that resonates with rising national protectionism. keywords: austerity; precarity; counter-movements; extractivism; financialization; fascism introduction as a hegemonic project, the globalization project is in a cumulative crisis of legitimacy materially and ideologically. what global order emerges in its wake is not yet clear. its internal contradictions have been revealed starkly as the covid-19 pandemic has exposed grave inequalities and vulnerabilities of deprived populations, exacerbated by inadequate public capacities with states having surrendered initiative to private interest in the recent neoliberal era. the world is at a critical turning point – economically, politically and environmentally. economically, the globalization project is unraveling as ‘market rule’ has 1 philip mcmichael is a professor of global development at cornell university. recently he has authored food regimes and agrarian questions (2013), and development and social change: a global perspective (2017, 6th edition), and edited contesting development: critical struggles for social change (2010). he works with the civil society mechanism of the un’s committee on world food security. he wishes to thank carlo fanelli, heather whiteside, and max ajl for helpful comments on an earlier draft. 28 | populism, power and protest destabilized economies, generating widespread austerity, precarious employment, and waves of migration. politically, this conjuncture is expressed in a broad set of countermovement politics of leftand right-wing populism. environmentally, market deregulation, resource grabbing, and global consumerism have intensified longer-term emissions of greenhouse gases and ecological deterioration, generating widespread rural displacement and public ill-health. these developments find expression in white/ethnic supremacy movements dramatized in predatory state policies of oppression of identifiable minorities (in china, india, brazil, the philippines, italy, the usa, etc.) via reactionary nationalism – by which market instabilities are transmogrified into threats from non-white and ethnic peoples. these are doubly connected: on the one hand world-wide processes of (economic and environmental) displacement spawn migration, typically from rural spaces in the global south. on the other hand, political elites (already beholden to financial elites) use the threat of immigration, via racist appeals, to distract from root causes in global market volatility. here, racism fetishizes by obscuring predatory market relations. and nationalist politics in turn deepens international disorder as american imperium and its associated soft power (embodied in the united nations and the world trade organization) fragments. this essay addresses this toxic combination as a potential decisive shift in world ordering, arguing that china appears to be poised to both inherit and reorder global economic relations, offering an authoritarian political framework for a state system already compromised by capitalist power, deterritorialization and deepening political polarizations. looming viral and climate emergency, however, complicates any predictions. the globalization project the globalization project began replacing the economic nationalismoriented development project in the 1980s (mcmichael, 1996). in that ‘lost decade’ a world bank/imf-based debt regime, imposed on the global south, rolled back ‘development advances’ such as social provisioning and subsidies, public infrastructure, industrial growth and living wages, and intensified exports of mineral and agricultural resources. such extensive structural adjustments merged with wholesale liberalization policies institutionalized in by the world trade organization (wto) in 1995, with widespread consent by member states now embedded in a global market organized by transnational capital. in collectively establishing the wto, states were ‘no longer writing the rules of the globalization project in crisis | 29 interaction among separate national economies… [they were] writing the constitution of a single global economy’ according to the director general (ruggiero, 2000). early challenges to this geopolitical juggernaut came in the form of the zapatista uprising on january 1st, 1994, the day nafta was implemented, followed by the international peasant coalition, led by la vìa campesina, politicizing claims to ‘feed the world’ by global agribusiness at the world food summit in rome (1996). each movement challenged the privileging of property rights over territorial and food sovereignty rights. and this emergent antiglobalization politics consolidated in 1999 with the battle of seattle with labor and environmentalist movements joining forces in solidarity protest at the increasingly evident destabilization of economies and environments. less than a decade later a financial collapse and global recession provoked an international groundswell against globalization (of labor, capital, food, and austerity) and global elites’ false promises. in 2015 a guardian article, bylined “is globalization dead?” claimed the ‘failure to shield workers from foreign competition has … undermined faith in globalization,’ and that ‘the impact of the financial crisis has led the public to feel they need protection from the ravages of the market’ (stewart, 2015). whether such protection will materialize remains to be seen, given the elusiveness of market rule, as one commentator puts it: ‘unrestrained by national borders or democratic accountability, neoliberal globalization is a force without a face and a system without a centre. it is everywhere – in our pensions, mortgages and public spending cuts – until you try to hold people or institutions responsible for the mess we’re in, and then it evaporates’ (younge, 2019, 13). the crisis registers in a volatile global economy, akin to a casino, in which competitive financial mergers and acquisitions restructure firms and global supply chains, rendering employment everywhere precarious in an intensifying world-wide ‘race to the bottom.’ and within this vortex states are beholden to global finance to attract investment and manage debt, at the expense of social provisions (tooze, 2018). since the bailouts via fiscal stimulus in the 2008 financial crisis, public spending reductions have continued across the state system, institutionalizing austerity as ‘the new normal’ at least until 2024 – as laid out in a report entitled austerity: the new normal; a renewed washington consensus 2010-24. the report notes that austerity measures – including pensions, social security reforms, public sector wages, labor flexibilities, subsides reduction, regressive consumer taxes, stronger public-private partnerships, and 30 | populism, power and protest public privatizations – are ‘expected to impact 130 countries in 2021 in terms of gdp’ especially the global south, and that ‘projections indicate that austerity will affect approximately 5.8 billion persons by 2021 – about 75 per cent of the global population’ (bretton woods observer, 2019, 1). a recipe for deepening instability and widespread revolt against inequality, corruption and concentration of power. urban uprisings have become standard procedure, from food riots during the global recession (patel and mcmichael, 2009) and the 2011 arab spring protests against majority deprivations, state violence, and profiteering of the ruling elites, through greek uprisings against eu austerity measures (2014-15), to similar protests recently in lebanon, iraq, iran, egypt, bolivia, india, algeria, colombia, ecuador, chile, haiti, honduras, india, indonesia, hong kong, sudan and zimbabwe (ehrenreich, 2019). meanwhile, rural populations are confronted by intensifying commodification grabs: of land, seeds and farming knowledge, accomplished with public or private force in the ‘new extractivism’ (veltmeyer and petras, 2014; see also connell and dados, 2014). land & rights watch’s year-end report noted a total of 108 victims in 84 killings related to land conflicts and struggles in 14 countries for 2019 – concentrated in the philippines, colombia and brazil, with state forces involved in a third of the deaths (panap, 2019). the ensuing forced migration of southern peoples represents, so to speak, ‘colonial chickens coming home to roost’ in northern imperial centers. this is the logical extension of the neoliberal globalization project, insofar as the rights of capital compromise state and territorial/ecological sovereignty. and this forced march of displaced non-europeans fuels neo-fascist politics and practices across the global north as an elite-based distraction from austerity. here, the original veneer of liberalism reveals its force and illiberal underpinnings. as ong puts it: ‘neoliberalism as exception is introduced into sites of transformation where market-driven calculations are being introduced in the management of populations and the administration of special spaces’ which express and realize ‘the territoriality of global capitalism’ (2006, 3, 7). such assault on national/sovereign territory, with state complicity, represents the consolidation of ‘market rule’ on a global scale, and, therefore, a profound marginalization of national citizenships (mcmichael, 2020a). liberalism’s veneer has historically enabled and concealed a racist, antisemitic and misogynist complicity, now unmasked in the unraveling of the globalization project (cf. mishra, 2017). further, as ‘market rule’ has enlisted unequal states in deepening transnational flows of capital and commodities, the globalization project in crisis | 31 incorporating labor forces and farming cultures into globally competitive relations, socio-political unrest, resentment and xenophobia has intensified, manipulated by ruling classes incorporated into global financial relations. karl polanyi observed market over-exposure precipitates protective counter-movements social and/or environmental (1957). the 1930s combined progressive and reactionary counter-movements from below and above, with states the object and/or agent of intervention for market regulation either progressive or fascist. protective movements from both directions are again in play, with authoritarianism on an alarming trajectory, in response to the crisis of the imperial globalization project. polanyi’s so-called ‘fictitious commodities’ are on full display: such as labor precarity and transnational migration, carbon offsets and ecological service payments, and cross-territorial financial gambling. the difference with polanyi’s conjunctural moment of social protection (the development project) is that states (and their international institutional complex) are overwhelmingly embedded in the globalization project’s system of market rule. as such they are the object of countermovements demanding either livelihood rights or nativist protections. the juxtaposition of these movements is historically asymmetrical, insofar as the former addresses immediate socioeconomic claims (qua promises) of neoliberal development, while the latter intervenes in a longue durée moment of ethnic replacement, to which we now turn. capitalism’s past as present capitalist development is the culmination of a systematic subordination of non-white cultures to the methods of european capitalist expansion in ‘cheapening lives’ via racial hierarchies (patel and moore, 2017), naturalizing these hierarchies in vertical ladder imagery. but, under neoliberalism, this ladder now upends as a snake, revealing development naturalism to be a hoax: as northern societies ‘hollow out’ while southern societies appear as development beneficiaries. development naturalism is anchored in economic rationality as the organizing principle of society, and, where this representation is revealed as deception – in job loss to, and competition from, a largely southern global labor force – it triggers a selective xenophobia centered in northern societies. this is matched by a ‘coloniality of power’ (quijano, 2005) in southern societies in service of elite authoritarianism, deepening the transnational collusion of north/south elites in securing the benefits of state-sponsored market rule and transnational 32 | populism, power and protest governance (halperin, 2013). such collusion is financially orchestrated, as elites partner in creating investment outlets, corrupting state machineries in service of land grabs and extractivism, producing an oligopolistic neoliberalism, and displacing attention and resentment towards certain minorities. states routinely employ coercion, and consent (discursively), now to silence civil society in order to attract ambivalent investors. these conditions, as antonio gramsci noted: generate ‘a rift between popular masses and ruling ideologies’ involving ‘skepticism with regard to all theories and general formulae.. and to a form of politics which is not simply realistic in fact.. but which is cynical in its immediate manifestation’ (1971, 276). such right-wing skepticism stems from crisis in the neoliberal globalization project. a visible effect of this crisis is the aggressive nativism explicitly expressed by segments of national populations towards immigrants of color, and other minorities (eg. jews in poland, muslims in india, china and the us, rohingya in myanmar, roma in europe, indigenous forest-dwellers in brazil, and palestinians in israel and the occupied territories). while austerity policies condition this nationalist conjuncture across the world, northern nativism is a response to the combined impact of the outsourcing of jobs and the appearance of southern migrants and refugees on northern doorsteps. southern immigrants arrive from urban slums and countrysides, following a sustained assault on southern rural cultures by globalized market rule, that is, the combined effect of structural adjustment policies, and institution of a destabilizing world market via the wto in 1995. rural exodus has intensified with liberalization measures imposed through the 1995 wto agreement on agriculture. associated trade rules have exposed small producers across the world to competition from artificially-cheapened food dumping from the north, driving millions of producers off the land and into peri-urban slums, and across neighboring borders. this process has now intensified via a global land grab driven by financialization, bankrolling land and food futures (mcmichael, 2013a). in this context, the unfolding of far right-wing politics punctuates the end–game of a neoliberal conjuncture, with already devastating impacts on a world majority, millions now existing as displaced minorities and/or as precarious workers and citizens. french writer renaud camus, originator of the phrase le grand remplacement as title of a 2002 alarmist book, argues that ‘native “white” europeans… are being reverse-colonized by black and brown immigrants’ (williams, 2017, 24). in this context it is not difficult to understand why foreign the globalization project in crisis | 33 aid/humanitarian assistance, and reproductive health programs are under threat,2 and immigrant refugees are facing intensified hostility and exclusion. the liberal veneer underlying developmentalism, especially in its global form, is unraveling. the crisis of western liberalism, with its longer global lineage as white supremacy, suggests this historical moment reflects a substantially broader political rejection of liberalism than the fascist upsurge in the 1930s. rather, the ‘modern liberal subject was made, at a colonial frontier. it shouldn’t be surprising that the modern legal person was defined and policed as strictly as the boundaries of the property that this person was allowed to own’ – and, accordingly, the modern liberal subject was both male and white (patel and moore, 2017, 193). but now a segment of white males are fostering a vengeful anti-liberal politics, at the level of the nationstate, where historical destinies locate (anderson 2006, 149-50), and property inequality is most evidently associated with the complicity of governments in the globalist project. the scapegoat is both globalism and its exclusion/inclusion dialectic as embodied in the immigrant experience. over the last half-century the state form that was completed/universalized through decolonization came to embody national historical destiny – even as such destiny was already compromised by geopolitics. western nations carried their imperial histories forward into the construction of a hegemonic development project, with which postcolonial states were enjoined to engage. but, as gilbert rist observed: ‘their right to self-determination [was] acquired in exchange for the right to self-definition’ (1997, 79), suggesting that in adopting the state form third world peoples legitimized and naturalized a liberal order constructed on the historic foundation of their global discrimination. selfdetermination was, then, double-edged: formally it represented admission into a world of sovereign states with liberal national destinies, but substantively the postcolonial state was subject to the unequal market relations spun through the devices of us political-economic hegemony, military power, multilateral institutions, and the legacy of the ‘international division of nature’ (coronil, 1997) from colonial times. the imperial architecture of the development project at large promoted third world subordination to ‘market rule,’ and this was enabled by a series of 2 thus the chief executive of obria, an anti-choice and anti-contraception organization in the us, amply funded by the trump administration, claims christianity is dying out because of contraception and abortion, with the effect of ‘replacing’ europeans with immigrant muslims (kirchgaessner, 2019). 34 | populism, power and protest political dictatorships engineered and supported by western interests through the period of the 1950s to the 1980s. where third world states were deemed guardians of human rights by the 1948 un declaration their elites were granted responsibility for enforcing the disciplines and bio-politics of market rule. and this became most evident in the cold war inspired rollback of economic nationalism, starting with the 1965 indonesian coup by president suharto, followed by general pinochet’s coup in chile in 1973 as a dress rehearsal for the wholesale bio-political assault associated with the debt regime of the 1980s and the implementation of structural adjustment austerity policies. this was the internalization of a process of creeping ‘global fascism,’ immanent in capitalism and premised on state implementation (patel and mcmichael, 2004). arundhati roy perhaps said it best: fascism is about the slow, steady infiltration of all the instruments of state power. it's about the slow erosion of civil liberties, about unspectacular, day-to-day injustices ... fascism has come to india after the dreams that fueled the freedom struggle have been frittered away like so much loose change ... every 'democratic' institution in this country has shown itself to be unaccountable, inaccessible to the ordinary citizen and either unwilling or incapable of acting in the interests of genuine social justice. and now corporate globalization is being relentlessly and arbitrarily imposed on india, ripping it apart culturally and economically ... there is very real grievance here. the fascists didn't create it. but they have seized upon it, upturned it and forged from it a hideous, bogus sense of pride. they have mobilized human beings using the lowest common denominator – religion (2002). as the sovereign vessel for fascism, the national referent is significant, as it obscures the world-historical dimensions of the nation-state form. thus colonial rule not only expropriated non-european life-worlds via colonial divisions of labor, slavery, genocide, displacements, and the emplacement of lumpen-states (fanon, 1967), but it also produced the liberal subject (and its white supremacist dimensions). so the reaction to job outsourcing and in-migration from the majority world can only take a nationalist form, which becomes the source and instrument of illiberal politics. such epistemic nationalism is the globalization project in crisis | 35 convenient for scapegoating, but elides the world-historical origins of the immigrant phenomenon, as one palpable stimulant of rightwing (and sometimes leftwing) backlash. a key to this moment is the re-appearance of malthusian fascism, that is, the overpopulation thesis expounded in the nineteenth century by thomas malthus, referring to the mismatch between arithmetical growth in food output and the geometrical growth in human population. as the political-economic advisor to the east india company, malthus had first hand experience of impoverishment of indian peasantries as the british raj undermined their ecological securities by imposing the commodity form on grain reserves and cotton farming, as well as privatizing forests and commonlands (davis, 2000). malthusian echoes today focus on phenomena such as migrant surges and hunger reports that routinely ignore the highly unequal distribution of land and farming resources, an ongoing global land grab abetted by financialization, accelerating displacement of food crops and forest habitats by feed crops, ranching and biofuel production, and weak or absent support for smallholder farming cultures exposed to subsidized grain-export dumping in local markets. in this sense, the claim of ‘overpopulation’ is a fetish, insofar as the imperial origins of the present stem from ‘dispossession by accumulation.’ neo-illiberalism and the changing of the guard beyond nativism, rising economic nationalism stems from intensifying public anger with deepening inequality, and the perception that the trade regime favors global financial and political elites (goodman 2019; cf halperin 2013). two prominent trade revisionings – us/china bilateralism following trump’s scuttling of obama’s multilateral pacific trading bloc allowing chinese access if it adopted the bloc’s rules, and britain’s exit from the european bloc seeking bilateral trade deals with the us, china, australia and india – signal a new era where nationalism ‘trumps’ collective concerns in the trade arena (goodman 2019), consolidating ‘neo-illiberalism’ (cf ong 2006). global impacts across north and south regions are evident in the breakdown of the wto’s multilateral ‘free trade’ regime. as below, this arises from a combination of the g20’s successful challenge to the asymmetric hypocrisy of this regime (with the us and eu continuing to protect their farm sectors), and the post-2008-food crisis intensification of offshore investment in land grabbing in the south. here, middle eastern and east asian states, via sovereign wealth funds, model state-directed development strategies to invest directly in offshore 36 | populism, power and protest food and fuel supplies, bypassing wto trade rules (mcmichael 2013b). while this phenomenon intensifies the enclosure of southern farm lands and forests, it contributes to erosion of the north/south division, as middle-income southern states reproduce historic northern practices in low-income states, via bilateral deals. these entail post-neoliberal ‘new extractivism,’ whereby state/corporate joint ventures target mining, timber, arable and fishery/aquaculture sites largely in the global south (veltmeyer and petras, 2014; mckeon, 2014). such extractivism deepens environmental risk – exemplified in the recent usmca deal, where despite curtailing the infamous investor-state dispute settlement (isds) (wallach, 2019), mexican environmental protections remain subject to corporate challenge in mining disputes. in response, the sierra club and other environmental organizations issued a joint statement: usmca ‘failed to eliminate this clear-cut handout to oil and gas corporations. as such, the revised deal would allow corporate polluters to sue mexico in private tribunals if new environmental policies under their government contracts for offshore drilling, fracking, oil and gas pipelines, refineries and other polluting activities’ (quoted in rocha, 2020). while multilateralism was no panacea for environmental and labor protections, bilateralism reduces the possibility for coordinated, un-style monitoring across the inter-state system. for europe, where the formation of the european economic community (1957) was designed to check the destabilizing nationalism of the inter-war period (kagan, 2019, 112), brexit symbolizes the erosion of the international political-economic order, and more immediately european unity. domestically, the 2009 eurozone debt crisis precipitated uprisings in the european periphery against berlin’s austerity policies, matched in turn with german anger at ‘bankrolling’ so-called profligate southern european states (ibid, 116). such domestic policies contributed to the right-wing nationalist party, alternative for germany, claiming the third-largest number of seats in the bundestag (ibid, 118). regionally, putin’s intervention in georgia and ukraine (annexing crimea), alongside electoral interference in support of far-right parties, threatens european unity from the outside. such military aggression from russia, matched with its support for syrian dictator barshar al-assad’s unrelenting war on domestic opposition, revealed putin’s intentions to reconfigure regional alliances. further, russian support for the syrian dictator ‘has driven millions of refugees to europe’s shores, causing a split over immigration policy and fueling the rise of populist parties’ (polyakova and haddad, 2019, 112). and, globally, the trump the globalization project in crisis | 37 administration encourages renationalization of europe, embracing leaders of the populist illiberal right in hungary, france, italy and poland, and even germany, renouncing the free trade regime ‘that undergirds european and german political stability’ (kagan, 119). meanwhile, rising chinese investment in european ports and technological infrastructure ‘drives a wedge’ between the us and europe, initially signaled in italy’s 2019 formal embrace of the bri, and the uk’s decision to partner with china’s info-tech giant, huawei, in building britain’s 5g network (polyakova and haddad, 2019, 112). smaller european states are attracted to chinese infrastructural investments, given imf blessing as ‘sustainable debt,’ (lagarde, 2019), even as berlin, paris and brussels remain more circumspect (smith and taussig, 2019, 112). the combination of these internal and external threats are forcing european leaders to strategize to strengthen internal unity, within a dramatically changing context. in particular, german chancellor merkel reorganized the 2020 eu-china summit to include representatives from all eu states, rather than the usual eu officials, at the same time as key eu states cooperate with china on climate change and nuclear proliferation, nevertheless concerned that china is ‘undermining western values, rules and standards’ (smith and taussig, 2019, 115). in consequence, ‘brexit, illiberal triumphs across europe, a resurgent russia, and deteriorating transatlantic ties have sent european leaders scrambling to preserve both the european project and the international system’ (ibid, 124). for the united states, following the 2008 financial crisis, annual meetings of the international financial institutions (ifi) underscored its dramatic effect on the (neoliberal) us, weakening its ability to maintain and/or guarantee its economic power. in this moment china, with its substantial financial reserves, created the asian infrastructure investment bank (aiib), spurring us presidential economic advisor, lawrence summers, to declare this: ‘the moment the united states lost its role as underwriter of the global economic system’ (weisman, 2015). since the crisis, the united states’ ‘share of global economic power fell from 50% to just 15% in 2017’ (mccoy, 2018). symbolic of this moment was recognition of the rise of ‘multipolarity,’ as new regional and trade alliances filled a vacuum left by a retreating us. financial times columnist martin wolf declared: ‘the rise of the group of 20 leading economies [led by brazil, russia, india, china and south africa] reflects new realities of power and authority’ (2010, 7). this development was dramatized in 2006 when brazil, india and china brought the wto’s doha round to a stalemate 38 | populism, power and protest in 2006 on the grounds that the us (and the eu) were continuing to subsidize their farm sectors while requiring, through wto trade rules, all other countries to withdraw protections of their farm sectors. the g-20 leaders were intent on challenging us power, but not the hegemony of market liberalization as such (hopewell, 2016). kristen hopewell observes ‘the creation of the wto represented not the realization of the neoliberal project in the realm of trade but only its beginning. the multilateral trading system is intended to work through successive rounds of negotiations to progressively liberalize trade’ (hopewell, 2016, 203). doha round stalemate left this goal unrealized, expressing state-system disorder, that is, lack of a hegemonic state. alongside remnants of multilateralism, regional and bilateral ftas proliferated, with the rise of multipolarity. the year 2015 recorded nearly 400 fta’s in process. by 2019 the wto came to its knees, with trump’s presidency undermining the wto’s trade dispute mechanism, maintaining a trade war with china, and advancing protectionism internationally. the reality is that the wto originated in an international trade environment created by the us and eu, and their tncs. admission of china in 2001 was on the assumption that it would embrace market rule: ‘the wto’s rules were not written with an economy like china’s in mind, and critics say the organization has failed to adequately police beijing for using a mix of private enterprise and state support to dominate global industries’ (swanson, 2019).3 in light of this, the us trade representative observes that ‘the body’s decisions constrain america’s ability to protect its workers and has insisted it be overhauled’ (idem). ultimately this is a dispute over the changing of the world-economic guard. brad setser, of the us council of foreign relations, commented that ‘china is no longer seen as on a trajectory that favours the us’ (quoted in farrer and kuo, 2019). meanwhile, the brexit decision has solidified the protectionist impulse, strengthening deglobalization tendencies – and undermining ‘free trade’ ideology as the path to progressive development. from this perspective, multipolarity appears as a (formal) dress rehearsal for the decline of multilateralism, insofar as the latter was premised on an international us-centered order. but that order was in transformation already by the turn of the 21st century, expressed in the phenomenon of china as ‘workshop 3 in regard to this, swanson (2019) notes: ‘while the w.t.o.’s ability to facilitate trade negotiations was largely paralyzed, its other arm, which settles trade disputes, has been much more active, reviewing dozens of cases a year’. the globalization project in crisis | 39 of the world.’ in addition to serving as a ‘spatial fix’ for global capitalist underconsumption, chinese industrialization depended on assembling foreign components in a number of coastal special economic zones, as ‘exceptionally neoliberal’ (ong, 2006) spaces on chinese territory. here: ‘much of the chinese economy isn’t chinese at all. this is especially true of its technologically leading sectors, many of which are embedded in global value chains that are dominated by us companies’ (babones, 2017, 60). further, and substantively, amitav acharya defines contemporary global political-economic relations as “multiplex”: ‘the nature of economic interdependence today is denser, consisting of trade, finance, and global production networks and supply chains, whereas … multipolarity is mainly tradebased’ (2017, 11). specifying the crisis of the globalization project requires transcending methodological nationalism to recognize the cross-border structuring of value flows, and recognize, first, why states are so embedded in trade and investment markets, and second, why state mercantilism may prove difficult to implement in the short-run, outside of china. value flows are internal to corporate networks of global production and circulation, expressing the partnering or mediating role of states, in the interests of competitive market positioning, and/or political and economic elite access to export revenues and profitable investments and/or mutual complicity (halperin, 2013). this is the political meaning of ‘public-private partnerships’(ppp), which characterize much strategic investment now, enabled by global financial relations. the chinese government has adopted an aggressive, state-centered form of the ppp. while this has been largely an internal affair over the last two decades or so, with the rise of domestic ‘dragon-head enterprises’ sponsored by the central government (schneider, 2017), instituting the 2013 ‘belt and road initiative’ (bri) represented a new ‘going out’ strategy. the bri establishes an alternative global economic, institutional and diplomatic network to extant trade and investment relations centered in the us/eu nexus. the bri comprises an extensive network of highways, railways, energy pipelines, and new border crossings: south to asia and se asia, and west through former soviet republics in central asia to europe and africa to south and southeast asia, and to the west through the former soviet republics, to europe and africa (jones and zeng, 2019). it involves 90 projects across 60 countries costing $890 billion (compared with the marshall plan’s $130 billion investment in today’s dollars), focused on technology investments (hu, 2015). africa sources oil and minerals in particular, and is an outlet for chinese goods. in 2009, china 40 | populism, power and protest surpassed the us as africa’s largest trading partner, and now surpasses the us aid regime with its concentration on direct investment in resources and transport infrastructures for continental developments (kaiman, 2007). infrastructural development (physical and digital), enables an expanding use of chinese currency, and, according to president xi jinping, breaking ‘the bottleneck of asian connectivity’ to secure energy supplies from the west ‘via routes the u.s. military cannot disrupt’ (chatzky and mcbride, 2019, 2, 6), alongside a twentyfirst century maritime silk road, with ports complementing trade routes. china’s unmatched foreign reserves, along with its state-backed banking system, finance ‘going out’ by its state-owned enterprises (soes) alongside private firms. here, chinese state capitalism puts the global market system to good use, complementing its state developmentalist model with trade, investment and training partners (scoones, 2019). with finance from the chinese development bank, china fashions a strategic ‘beijing consensus’ anchored in an ethic of pragmatism and ‘mutual benefit,’ including infrastructural development as counterpart to the western model of volatile and austere globalization. a related rhetoric of south-south cooperation expresses multipolarity, but with a difference. china commits investment to recipient countries for the longer term, without ‘conditionalities’ (amanor, 2013), net of what some commentators view as ‘debt-trap’ diplomacy: ‘for some countries that take on large amounts of debt to fund the necessary infrastructure, bri money is seen as a potential poisoned chalice. bri projects are built with low-interest loans as opposed to aid grants…some bri investments have required the use of chinese firms and their bidding processes have lacked transparency,’ with contractors sometimes inflating costs, ‘leading to canceled projects and political pushback’ (chatzky and mcbride, 2019). deborah bräutigam disputes ‘debt trap’ claims, arguing that ‘b.r.i. isn’t debt-trap diplomacy: it’s just globalization with chinese characteristics’ (2019). china’s ‘state-centered neoliberalism’ is both hybrid as well as specific to chinese world-historical positioning. in the short-term, china’s opening to global capitalism in the 1990s served to strengthen the prc state and enrich a postrevolutionary population at one and the same time: ‘ “globalization” of the economy from the late 1990s was accompanied by the re-centralization of decision-making, greater coordination of development, and the reassertion of the power over the economy of state-owned financial, energy and industrial enterprises’ (dirlik, 2017a, 63). the prospect of a beijing consensus accords strategically at a time of unraveling of the globalization project. nevertheless arif the globalization project in crisis | 41 dirlik argues that china’s internalization of the contradictions of global capitalism imply that such ‘international and domestic initiatives toward a new global order may be promising but they are hampered by their confinement within the premises of the world system to which the prc owes its rise’ (dirlik, 2017b, 395; see also hung, 2016). however, a long game of pursuing global geo-political power is perhaps presaged in china’s deployment of ‘state-centered neoliberalism:’ to re-center global capital accumulation from west to east across the twenty-first century (so and chu, 2016, 87), perhaps reconfiguring an ‘orientalist’ tributary system, with an emphasis on ‘development cooperation’ (scoones et al. 2016, 8-9). in relation to this, ching kwan lee distinguishes the ‘profit optimization’ approach of chinese state capital in africa from global private capital’s ‘profit maximization’ approach (2018, 12). here, ‘leaving tangible infrastructure for public use is more appealing to local populations than fungible funds which end up being embezzled or misappropriated’ (benabdallah, 2019, 9). in the meantime the prc engages with extant international organizations ‘to increase legitimacy for the bri,’ its long-term strategy (olinga-shannon, et al. 2019, 7), ‘at the same time promoting chinese-led alternative financial institutions’ (benabdallah, 2019, 2). these maneuvers ultimately unite a short-game of operating within an already frayed us-centered global framework, with a long-game constructing an alternative organizing principle, namely neo-mercantilism, anchored by the bri framework (mcmichael, 2020b). whether this principle of economic management will include explicit population management begs the question of chinese global hegemony. an american market individualism tianxia (all under heaven) casts a long shadow across the world, enabling a new form of market rule in the form of ‘surveillance capitalism’ of individual behavior (zuboff, 2019). shoshana zuboff notes that ‘surveillance capitalism moves from a focus on individual users to a focus on populations, like cities, and eventually on society as a whole,’ and it ‘depends upon undermining individual self-determination, autonomy and decision rights for the sake of an unobstructed flow of behavioural data to feed markets that are about us but not for us’ (quoted in naughton, 2019). meanwhile, in public surveillance technologies china leads the world: ‘eight of the 10 most surveilled cities [in the world] are in china,’ with london and atlanta the other two (keegan, 2019, 24). given global proliferation of restive citizenries as austerity policies intensify, repressive political cultures may well multiply, portending a 21st century chinese tianxia of widespread state surveillance. 42 | populism, power and protest conclusion the crisis of the globalization project is more than coincidental with the rising power of china. the chinese ‘workshop of the world’ phenomenon has been the leading site of the ‘race to the bottom,’ by which states attract tnc investments in production of consumer and producer goods with minimal labor and environmental regulations. this race, combined with elite class austerity policies, escalates anti-globalization mobilizations – yet to solidify coherent, compelling paradigmatic alternatives to build consequential socio-ecological alliances.4 intensifying material and intersectional contradictions may strengthen current authoritarian trends as socio-ecological conditions deteriorate – whether right-wing or ‘liberal authoritarianism’ (babones, 2019). in regard to such a trend, the 2017 world economic forum’s extraordinary ‘liberal internationalist embrace of xi jinping as a free trader is emblematic of contemporary liberalism’s prioritization of economic rights over basic freedoms’ (ibid, 59). at davos, not only was china was referred to as the ‘present champion of economic globalization’ (cited in zeng, 2019, 578), but also president xi jinping claimed when organizing a country’s social and economic development path: “all roads lead to rome” – implying that ‘today’s liberal internationalist world could accommodate many different forms of government, including china’s totalitarian one-party dictatorship’ (ibid, 69). while this may be self-serving insofar as the bri offers an alternative, ‘hard’ network by which to secure trade routes, it also offers justification for statist authoritarian solutions, and possibly a hegemonic outcome: ‘a dominant state exercises a hegemonic function if it leads the system of states in a desired direction and, in so doing, is perceived as pursuing a universal interest. it is this kind of leadership that makes the dominant state hegemonic. but a dominant state may lead also in the sense that it draws other states into its path of development’ (arrighi, 1990, 367). such new realities have materialized in deeply authoritarian forms, marrying ideologies of nativism and nationalism claiming to secure borders 4 david harvey’s recent study underscores marx’s full analysis of capital’s movement and pervasive commodification of life, broadening conditions for the construction of anticapitalist political alliances founded in production and social reproduction domains (2017) – integrating demands, for example, from workplaces through healthcare provisioning to farming systems (cf. fraser, 2013; caouette and kapoor, 2015; and selwyn, 2016). the globalization project in crisis | 43 against migrants and commodities that can be produced locally. the former claim has been more evident, effective, and brutally repressive, while the latter remains problematic, given the pervasiveness of global supply networks, formed through varying ‘multiplex’ articulations of corporate and financial deals within and across states.5 adjusting to this economic reality is not straightforward, and the brexit experiment may well reveal just how complicating such supply chains have become. a decade ago, göran therborn observed: ‘looking backwards from 2010, globalization does not look so much an extension of us capitalism as a delimitation of it, by the rise of china and india’ (2011, 52-3). from this perspective china’s repressive development model matched with its statist bri symbolizes the culmination, and perhaps the successor, of neoliberal capitalism. references acharya, a. 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(2019). the age of surveillance capitalism. the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. new york: public affairs. 50 | populism, power and protest alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review just work?: migrant workers’ struggles today. edited by aziz choudry and mondi hlatshwayo. london: pluto press, 2016. $43.69 cnd, paper. isbn-10: 0745335837. pages: 264. reviewed by tania ruiz-chapman1 just work: migrant workers’ struggles today is a collection of articles edited by choudry and hlatshwayo that highlights the difficulties that migrant workers face around the world. the book dissects the global political economic and social conditions that create large groups of precarious worker populations, who ultimately must migrate to find work, and paints a picture of the common injustices that they face and the social and political responses to those injustices. as demonstrated throughout the collection migrant workers are subject to gross human rights violations compounded by the dynamics of racialization which construct migrant workers as less than human as compared to local populations. many of the chapters outline governments’ complicity with the creation of a precarious underclass of migrant workers as a pool of and for perpetually exploitable, expendable labour. the book has sections on africa and the middle east, europe, asia and the pacific, and north america. the collection as a whole demonstrates the commonalities in how, and under which (deplorable and dehumanizing) conditions, migrant workers are taken up as labour sources. most chapters read as case studies of particular countries and take the reader through histories and policies specific to the region. contributors use various methodologies, including ethnographic studies, statistical analysis, interviews, and participatory action research. there is little theoretical analysis, however. most of the authors restrict their accounts to providing descriptive overviews of migrant workers’ resistance movements including union organizing. given the limited space available to each author, the collection reads like an introduction to its subject. it is best suited for readers who are new to the study of migrant labour issues, as it provides an excellent overview of case-specific histories and issues. through reading the entire collection the reader acquires a good sense of the common issues faced by migrant workers globally. the text is also a great resource for migrant worker organizers, and activists working with migrant workers, as it outlines diverse strategies taken up by different groups around the world. several themes repeat themselves across the geographical regions. first, all authors identify migrant work programs as an initiative and strategy of capitalism and neo-liberalism. the need to migrate for work is a result of neo-liberal policies that put workers in precarious states of non employment in their home countries, and the perpetuation of precarious status keeps migrant workers as an exploitable labour pool or what some have referred to (though not in this book) as the precariat. 1 tania ruiz-chapman is a third year phd student at the ontario institute for studies in education (oise), in the social justice education program. email: t.ruiz.chapman@utoronto.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research thus, many of the chapters take up the violence of capitalism and neo-liberalism arguably inherent in the use of temporary foreign work programs. choudry and hlatshwayo articulate this point in their introduction when they write, “the creation and maintenance of categories of workers with different sets of rights tied to their immigration status is a standard policy feature and capitalist strategy which is fundamental to the functioning of many economies, facilitating the provision of reduced labour costs to employers” (5). neo-liberal capitalist regimes have within them a systemic reliance on exploitation based in race and citizenship or status. this clearly applies to migrant workers and is addressed as such by many of the book’s contributors. it is through racialization that workers come to be understood as an underclass not deserving of basic human and workers’ rights. this in turn spills into a second predominant theme of the collection, namely how migrant workers are taken up as a murderable class by host country employers and governments. all chapters include an analysis of the ways in which migrant workers live as expendable labour. the authors recount many stories of migrant workers’ deaths and bodily harm as well as the development of chronic illness, disability and/or psychological trauma. also in their introduction, choudry and hlatshwayo articulate this point: “from the murders and displacements in south africa to the drownings in the mediterranean, migrant deaths are not random incidents, but rather they are manifestations of the intentional violence of border policies and anti-migrant racism” (3). while the book succeeds in pointing out injustices there is little theorizing of this racist dynamic as an inherent strategy of the programs using foreign workers who are always expendable and ultimately murderable with impunity. still, many authors articulate the xenophobic consequences of migrant worker programs that keep workers isolated as a tactic to protect the national population but also as a tactic to reduce the opportunity for organizing across groups. the third predominant theme of this text is an overview of what tactics migrant workers have used to assert their rights. where organizing has been possible migrant workers everywhere report that it comes with great risks, including possible deportation and death. in hlatshwayo’s chapter xenophobia, resilience, and resistance of immigrant workers in south africa, he notes how none of the 30 migrant workers interviewed were members of a union, making them particularly vulnerable to exploitation. he further notes that because of this lack of communal organization resistance to the challenges migrant workers faced tended to be highly individualized. this is a common story throughout the chapters. many note how migrants are isolated from each other and from local communities, and are closely monitored by employers as a way to discourage organizing amongst themselves. other contributors focus on external actors helping migrants organize. for example, in his chapter on migrant work in the gulf arab states, hanieh notes the importance of international solidarity in labour protest: “international links have presented important opportunities to target foreign corporations and institutions around poor working conditions or repression against strike action in the uae” (52-53). other contributors, like pedrina in his chapter lessons from migrant workers’ organization and mobilisation in switzerland, are more concerned with migrant workers’ ability to integrate into national workers’ rights groups including unions. lagnado and francisco, in their respective chapters, demonstrate the importance of education in regards to mobilization. lagnado, for example, explains how the latin american workers association in london was integral to the disseminating of information to workers www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research through educational workshops and classes that informed migrant workers about their rights. the association also organized english language classes for migrant workers, as a way to further empower them. while this collection covers the greater part of the world, it is not comprehensive. for example, it would have been interesting to include indigenous perspectives on the question of temporary foreign worker programs and the fight of many migrant workers for status. some have argued that temporary foreign work programs are a legacy of colonial settlement, or rather a dynamic that takes up the same logics of land and bodies as property of the imperial state, following colonial tradition. ayelabola does provide an historical context of migration in nigeria during the colonial period. he briefly touches on how colonialism changed migration patterns (63). none of the authors in this collection, however, make a theoretical argument in regards to the logic, legacy and continuation of colonialism as a driving force behind the use of migrant workers. indeed, as previously noted, there is limited theorizing of the dynamics of migrant work and more emphasis on pointing to where, and how, people migrate, where and how they experience injustice, and where and how they organize in response to injustice. there is little theoretical analysis of the logics of the programs, or the ways in which the programs are part of a larger history and in turn perpetuate specific economic logics and traditions. overall this is an excellent read recommended for any inquirer interested in learning more about common dynamics in the use and exploitation of migrant workers. the book also illuminates the strength and power of organizing against injustice and exploitation while not painting an unrealistic picture of full success. migration of bengalis to canada | 7 8 | migration of bengalis to canada migration of bengalis to canada | 9 10 | migration of bengalis to canada migration of bengalis to canada | 11 12 | migration of bengalis to canada migration of bengalis to canada | 13 14 | migration of bengalis to canada alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 35, 64-79 (2024) right populism or neoliberalism? understanding austerity in doug ford’s ontario ryan kelpin1 abstract: this paper outlines how right populism and neoliberalism can be regarded as ideologically co-constitutive in the context of doug ford’s election as premier of the province of ontario. in the case of ford, this article demonstrates that right populism and neoliberalism can be mapped by understanding how they are ultimately complementary to one another, even when right populism appears as reactionary to neoliberalism. this is achieved through the performance of right populism and the enactment of neoliberalism co-existing at the point of both discourse and the material environment of legislation and the economy. utilizing his political memoir (ford nation), the conservative 2018 election platform, and the first two years of critical legislation passed by his government relating to de-democratization and disempowering labour and workers, this article shows that the socio-historical specificity of ford’s ideological plan is rooted in austerity politics. while sharing rigid market fundamentalism with neoliberalism, ford’s brand of right populism obscures the complexity of economic and democratic issues in ontario, allowing a legislative agenda built around the continued neoliberalization of ontario. keywords: neoliberalism; de-democratization; populism; doug ford; ontario; austerity when doug ford was elected premier of ontario in the spring of 2018, it marked a departure from the previous 15 years of uninterrupted liberal rule. previous liberal premiers dalton mcguinty and kathleen wynne had cultivated a “softer” form of neoliberalism and austerity (albo et al., 2019), usually titled “third way” neoliberalism (jones, 2018; peck and tickell, 2002). at that time, the province reached a turning point in its model of capitalist accumulation. following the 2008 global financial crisis and the rise of anti-government populism in north american political culture, the liberals sunk to new lows in their approval ratings and leading up to the 2018 election, the progressive conservatives (pc) were polling ahead on the strength of “bread-and-butter” issues in the suburbs: namely, crime, the economy, and jobs (mcgrath, 2018). they were also polling significantly ahead in rural areas, certainly compounded not just by voter fatigue with 15 years of liberal rule but also multiple political spending scandals involving previous premier mcguinty. liberal government scandals regarding public spending and a lack of accountability and transparency in their style of governance (perrella et al., 2020) resulted in mcguinty's resignation and replacement with premier wynne but failed to remedy the situation. ford had recently left municipal politics but was spring-boarded into the conservative leadership by the downfall of patrick brown in a scandal. ford purported to represent the “silent majority” and “the people,” juxtaposing himself against “liberal elites” who were unaccountable and rode the “gravy train” of big government (ford, 2016). the transfer of ford nation narratives from his brother to himself, along with a historic collapse of liberal support and a lack of new democratic party (ndp) representation of class interests, led to ford's electoral success. early media accounts of ford's victory attributed his success to the deployment of trumpstyle politics, placing his win in the broader context of right populism and authoritarian politics in europe and the united states. while trump's comparisons no doubt played a role in his election, it reduced complexity for the sake of generalizable theory and reduced the differences between an 1 ryan kelpin is a ph.d. candidate in the department of politics at york university. he would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers who provided helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper, as well as tom mcdowell, grant andersen, dillon wamsley, brent toye, dani magsumbol, and jon careless who all provided feedback or copy-editing throughout the process of writing. 65 often welfare-state-supporting european model and a market fundamentalist anti-welfare state model of right populism in north america (pelinka, 2013). it also obscures two critical aspects of his brand of governing. firstly, the type of populism ford cultivates is a right populism rooted in geography and a legacy that (in)directly harkens to harris's common sense revolution (csr). ford’s discourse also relies on a “neoliberal common-sense” message highlighting ontario's geographic cleavages (silver et al., 2020; erl, 2021). secondly, it is crucial to understand the relationship between (right) populism and neoliberalization. populism and neoliberalism exist in socio-materially complex and contingent environments and must be analyzed in their co-existence with other ideologies and rationalities. ford’s populist politics must be understood as reactive yet intrinsic to existing neoliberalization processes. when combined with market fundamentalism, these constructions allow right populist discourse and neoliberalization processes to co-exist in the material environment of discourse and the state. the first section explores ways of conceptualizing populism and neoliberalism and how these elements co-exist in the campaigning and governing strategies of doug ford. we can understand how neoliberalism has created the conditions for the rise of the current strains of right populism (brown, 2019; kiely, 2020; puhringer and otsch, 2019; putzel, 2020) while utilizing populist language at specific historical and cultural moments. secondly, a case study of ford's political memoir, ford nation, and his 2018 pc political platform will be analyzed to understand how he performs populist discourse and narrative. thirdly, ford's government legislation related to local democratic institutions and labour relations in the province will be analyzed to contrast his performance of right populism with the reality of his neoliberal austerity policies. the better local government act (2018) restructured toronto’s city council by cutting nearly half of the councillor seats and ties into the critical theme of neoliberalism’s focus on restructuring liberal democratic institutions. the final three bills all focus on the neoliberal attempt to undercut the power of labour in the province and assert the power of capital and employers in their relationship with labour. studying legislative change is critical because, as chandler notes (2020, 126), current research has focused on how populists perform and win elections but dedicated far less attention to the policy agendas they implement while in office. much of the existing analysis on ford claims he is either a populist at the level of only discursive analysis and pre-governing (budd, 2020; erl, 2021) or is focused on exploring the social construction of what constitutes “ford nation” (macaulay, 2023; silver et al., 2020). a study combining pre-office discourse, campaign discourse, and the material legislation of the first two years of an elected executive is vital to understanding the ideological flexibility of right populism from a discursive perspective. however, it also allows for understanding how the neoliberal materiality of economic policies relates to the populist veneer of self-proclaimed populists and the ultimate manifestation of market fundamentalism and austerity measures that are instituted by the government in question. this contributes to the critical literature on populism and neoliberalism, and the case study choice allows for a historical and geographic sub-national contextual analysis that can substantiate the conceptual goals of actually-existing neoliberalism. the case study is limited to the first two years of governing due to the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, which presents a significant disruption in politics and governing for the ford government. an independent study of ford’s pandemic governance would be a worthwhile undertaking in its own right but cannot be effectively undertaken within the confines of this analysis. 66 understanding (right) populism and neoliberalism let us begin by defining neoliberalism. wendy brown's oft-cited definition describes neoliberalism as an assemblage of economic and social policies that affirm free markets, i.e. deregulation, austerity, privatization, end of wealth redistribution, the privileging of finance capital, and the extension of economics further into previously uncommodified aspects of social lives (brown, 2015, 28). while this encompasses the breadth and depth of neoliberalism as an ideology, on its own, it does not suffice as a tool to interrogate ford's policy regime. a theoretically adequate approach must also emphasize the "contextual embeddedness of neoliberal restructuring processes” by focusing on how neoliberalism is implemented in historically and geographically contingent contexts (brenner et al., 2002; brenner et al., 2010; peck and theodore, 2019). it is necessary to understand “actually-existing neoliberalism” as a geographically, historically, socially, and materially specific form (brenner and theodore, 2002; brenner et al., 2010; peck et al., 2018). neoliberalism is never fixed or finished; it does not fail or evaporate in moments of crisis or change. instead, it is adaptable and can be reconstituted. neoliberalism must not be essentialized or treated in isolation from its social context, nor may it be used to explain every aspect of the social order. this is where the current rise of right populist rhetoric comes into play. populism, at its most basic, invokes a type of revolt against established structures, values, and institutions in the name of and in appeal to "the people" (canovan, 1999; abts and rummens, 2007; stanley, 2008; mudde, 2015; chandler, 2020). for stanley, populism has four clear base principles: (1) the existence of two homogenous units of analysis (the people and the elite); (2) the antagonistic relationship between the two; (3) the idea of popular sovereignty; and, (4) the positive valorization of the people and the denigration of the elite (2008, 102). others invoke similar descriptions of populism (chander, 2020; mudde, 2015; otsch and puhringer, 2017), often adding that populist politics tends to rhetorically demonize "special interests" (laycock, 2005; brown, 2019). right populism as a sub-type of populism is the most robust concept for understanding ford's methods of governance. arguably, right populism is an “illiberal democratic response to an undemocratic response to an undemocratic liberalism” (mudde, 2015). but this definition only captures one component of a more complex picture. despite rhetorical appeals to “the people” and condemnations of the elite, right populism also features anti-democratic values and is often used to support the implementation of repressive methods of population control through a strong state. it differs from neoliberalism in its more anti-globalization politics rooted in protecting domestic labour and issues of national sovereignty over borders and trade. however, this is significantly less explicit, or even implicit, at sub-national and regional levels of government, like that of provincial governments. right populist rhetoric provides symbolic responses to the legitimation crises caused by neoliberal policies by representing the victimized “people” as victims of public administrative power rather than capitalism. in this manner, the state's power is much more of a problem of access, with inorganic elites corrupting existing institutions and compounding that power by using bureaucracy and liberal democratic institutions to repress the organic people. michael bray argues that populism is a symptom of repressed class antagonisms forming in the representative institutions of the capitalist state, where: “because the problem is construed as one of ‘private government,’ the solution tends to appear as ‘the people’ regaining the control of the public functions proper to common-sense notions of governing. control over the economic functions of the state can appear as the endgame of social transformation, masking the structures of exploitation” (2015, 44). 67 this has much in common with stuart hall’s argument that the crisis of social democracy in the 1970s-80s uk was driven by the ability of thatcherism to ingratiate itself with popular elements (hall, 1985). hall allows for an understanding of the linkage between legitimation crises and populism, wherein crisis is often the stage in which populism performs (knott, 2020, 116). this is also true because while right populists pose a threat to neoliberal consensus, their focus on spatial and institutional aspects stops short of confronting the foundational economic premises of neoliberalism (davidson and saul argue (2017, 717; italics added by author). this invokes both a theoretical and practical understanding of neoliberalism and its primary protagonists to understand the assumptions that are made about the economy and the state, intervention vs. (perceived) lack of intervention, and the “size” of government (kiely, 2020; peck, 2010; puhringer and otsch, 2018). despite analytical discredit, failures, and contradictions, the continued survival of neoliberal ideas is based on its continued “mongrelization” or its ability to be forged into new hybridities (peck, 2010, 40). after all, hayek claimed that it was not the amount or extent of state intervention but rather the character of the interventions in question (kiely, 2020, 404). with inequality on the rise and increasingly consistent economic crises, rhetoric from the right attacking the state maintains the need for more neoliberalization and austerity but in the name of the people against elites who have captured public policy-making processes. undermining liberal-democratic principles and attacks on attempts at inclusivity under progressive neoliberalisms does not challenge the core principles of capitalism in any way. it also mimics the neoliberal thought of james buchanan and the public choice school, who portray liberal democracy as inherently dysfunctional due to representatives being “rent-seeking” individuals and the average person under the current system is unable to hold them accountable due to lacking a “fiscal morality that refrained from running deficits and abhorred debt” (in biebricher, 2020, 48). he further argues that “establishment elites” are the enemies of a flourishing society and economy, evangelizing a form of politics in which the arbitrarily intrusive and illegitimate liberal democratic governments have undercut constitutional order (in biebricher, 2020, 52). this also invokes the strategy of authoritarian populism, deploying the discourses of “the people” against class, unions, and the “others” cast as the cause of society’s ills while receiving special treatment from the social democratic project (knott, 2020, 115-116). however, the debates around the thin-ness or thickness of populism (stanley, 2008) seem to miss much of the point of analyzing right populism specifically, that being a need for historically specific and contingent analysis of political actors, both materially and discursively. for the sake of generalizable theory, the conceptual usefulness of populism, in any analytical form, can become so stretched and vague that “if everything is potentially populist, nothing is really populist anymore” (tarragoni, 2024, 44). it is also crucial to address not just the inherited institutional and geographic frameworks of said “populist” political actors but a critical understanding of preexisting histories of ideology. if we attempt to understand right populism in any ideological manner, we have an imperative to address the past alongside the present because ideologies are historical formations (bray, 2015; freeden, 1996). in some cases, right populism may be thin and performative at the level of discourse; in others, it could be thick due to foundational ideas where “scarce and vital resources should be distributed according to the principle that certain people, those within an ethnic group or other criterion of deservingness that excludes others, should be prioritized in allocating resources” (schroeder, 2020, 15). on both of these grounds, right populism interacts with the inherited ideological frameworks and institutional impacts of neoliberalism, specifically in ontario. 68 several scholars have noted that the rise of right populist rhetoric and more brutal austerity measures have followed the failure of socially liberal (third way or progressive) neoliberalism (fraser, 2017; kiely, 2020). rejecting any notion of the public or the social, these reactionary forms of politics seek to undermine the rights-based approaches to diversity and government welfare programs of these softer forms of neoliberalism (kiely, 2020, 399; putzel, 2020, 421). indeed, softer forms of neoliberal approaches to social policy have created reactionary resentment among middle-class and working people who have experienced economic decline (putzel, 2020). kiely (2020) argues that right populism is typically a response to the socially liberal variant of neoliberalism and fails to generate any fundamental systematic critique of the economic realities of neoliberalism. friesen (2021, 1) builds on this: “although populism is often conceived of as a rejection of neoliberalism, its right-wing formations generally only object to the ‘globalization’ elements of neoliberalism, but otherwise advance neoliberalism’s faith in the justness of markets and morals over redistributive social justice. indeed, this rejection of redistributive state interventions and bureaucracy moves hand-in-hand with the reactionary elements of right-wing populist formations.” in this manner, contemporary right populisms react to both more complex and softer forms of neoliberalization, yet at the same time reinforce the dominant social relations of neoliberalism – that is, the extension of market logic over nearly all forms of daily life. the rigid categorization of “populist politicians” obscures the complexity of their policies and ideas. at its core, the right-populist moment rejects the institutions of political elitism that exist within neoliberalizing states: the “government oligarchy” and “senior bureaucratic caste,” the media, and academics/experts are framed as the "discursive cement of oligarchic power.” it is less a response to the market fundamentalism of neoliberalism and more a response to how neoliberalism has remade institutions and is reproduced daily both within and without those institutions. neoliberalism's starvation of liberal democracy has created the conditions for this blowback. this is aided by brown’s assertion that neoliberalism achieves legitimacy by "cloaking itself" in liberal democratic discourse (2003, 49), and both she and brenner et al. (2010) argue that neoliberalism works within inherited liberal democratic institutions to remake itself and the institutions themselves. actually-existing neoliberalism constantly shifts in its interactions with other actors, always cloaking itself in discourses that aim to soften the hard edges of austerity and surveillance wherever it appears. as hall and bray show, populist discourse, at even a performative level, is often crucial for the operationalization of neoliberalism. puhringer and otsch build upon populism to show how these ideas are present in both right populism and different varieties of market-fundamental reasoning, which is the foundational basis of neoliberalism (2017, 2018). they invoke both a theoretical and practical understanding of neoliberalism and its primary protagonists to understand the assumptions that are made about the economy and the state, intervention vs (perceived) lack of intervention, and the “size” of government (kiely, 2020; puhringer and otsch, 2017, 2018,). in this manner, neoliberalism uses the crises it generates and constantly exacerbates to better impose the logic of capital and undercut competing notions of what the state should represent. for these reasons, it is necessary to wed the ideational to the institutional to understand the relationship between the discursive and material power of what constitutes neoliberalism and its associated social relations in ontario. by taking analytical lessons from discursive institutionalism and critical discourse analysis, a more critical understanding of how ideas are actualized into material politics. vivienne schmidt is illustrative here when she argues: “discourse is not just ideas or ‘text’ (what is said) but also context (where, when, how, and why it was said). the term refers not only to structure (what is said, or where and how) but also to agency (who said what to 69 whom)” (2008, 304). both van dijk (2015) and fairclough and wodak (1997) highlight the necessity to address discourse as embedded in social relations and structure, how power relations are discursive and how discourse is historical, does ideological work, and is a form of social action. this necessity to understand ford’s discourse as embedded in the social relations of capitalism, and more specifically neoliberalism, grounds the analysis in the following sections. populist discourse: ford nation and the pc platform while he portrays himself as a populist, ford’s policy-making pursues rollbacks from third way neoliberalism and the reconsolidation of harder forms of neoliberalism from the 1980s and 1990s. canada's neoliberal governments of the 1990s and 2000s aimed to prevent the state from “interfering” in markets and undermined social provisioning through austerity measures in the name of business principles (laycock, 2005). ford borrows heavily from this canadian legacy of right populism that was most concretely formulated in the 1990s in alberta and the west by the reform party and, to a lesser degree, in ontario by the pc’s. harris used right populist rhetoric to argue that it was ‘time we demanded the same from the people we elect and the bureaucrats we hire’ (csr, 1995), playing into the people vs the elites and common-sense vs bureaucratic decision-making dichotomies. austerity was justified by needing to protect taxpayers from a bloated government stealing from their paycheques and one that ‘justifies the existence of bureaucrats who run it’ (csr, 1995). the notion that they will ‘put the people first’ ahead of big government means privatization and the necessity of the ‘government does business like a business’ and ‘put the customer first’ (csr, 1995). again, we see the use of right-populist and neoliberal categories like the taxpayer, the customer, and the people, all cast against the elites, bureaucrats, and special interests who use the state to benefit themselves. rather than merely demonizing the state, both harris and reform used right populist dichotomies to herald the mythical “people” and anti-elitism as tools to legitimate austerity. ford nation was written by doug ford and inspired by his late brother, rob ford. it is as much a political platform as a memoir, an uncompromising and unfiltered manifesto for his brand of right populism and neoliberalism and how he would manifest it in ontario and toronto. it would be his unfiltered instrument to communicate with “the people” and the “taxpayers,” terms that were foundational to the book. “the people” is used to construct a homogenous group of support no less than 13 times in the book, such as: “the people are smart,’ rob would always say. ‘they know what they want.’ well, he was right. the people knew what they wanted in 2010. they wanted rob ford to fix toronto” (ford, 2016, 80). this rhetoric constructs “the people” as the group who supports the ford family ideology, while those who do not are dismissed as irrelevant through their construction as non-members. the only reason he does not say “the people” more is because he uses the term “ford nation” interchangeably to represent the same conceptual group. he relies on the historical capitalist and neoliberal discourse of constructing a dichotomy of givers and takers regarding the welfare state. he relies on the simultaneously neoliberal and right populist language of the “taxpayer,” the person who gives to the economy and pays their fair share, constructed in opposition to the people who are takers. “taxpayers” is used as a positive group signifier throughout the book and is placed in a dialectic with members of the out-group: the union members, the government workers, welfare recipients, and special interest groups. while the idea of the taxpayer is utilized by all parties under neoliberalism, in different political ways, taxpayers are a key conceptual dichotomous category used to represent the socially constructed “middle class” and their resentment of “non-taxpayers” or the undeserving poor within capitalism. ford represents a fine-tuning of these politics by 70 wedding market fundamentalism to populist language, where “the people” and “the taxpayers” are meant to represent the in-group in buchanan’s public choice paradigm, where the other “elites” and “special interests” stand in the way of economic liberalism. nowhere was this more evident than when ford demonized all other councillors in an attempt to bolster his brother’s image, arguing, “i will always believe that rob was a better politician drunk or sober than the vast majority of people presently holding office in toronto” (ford, 2016, 209) this construction is placed within the populist dichotomy of the people vs. the elites, the latter being represented by “lefties,” people from “downtown” [toronto], and the liberaldominated “media.” within populism, the in-group is reinforced by knowing what it is in opposition to, and these dichotomies are crucial to the reproduction of ideology and interpretations of power. “lefties” and variations of the word (“downtown lefties,” “downtown left-wingers”) are used pejoratively throughout, for example: “rob used to say that if everyone in etobicoke. scarborough, and north york would come together and vote as a block, they wouldn't be ignored by the downtown elites” (ford, 2016, 94, italics added). this geographical, classist, and demography-based signifier of “downtown” is used pejoratively to construct the group of elites that repress the natural rule of “the people.” ford specifically used right-populist language to create a divide between toronto and the rest of ontario while at the same time having a long (and continued) history of creating divides between downtown toronto and the greater toronto area (gta). these collapse all economic and social complexities to simple antagonistic discourses based on where people live, with attacks directed at the differing forms of toronto. his invocation of these binaries is meant to further previous neoliberalization projects of harris (amalgamation and neoliberalization to undercut the “progressive” demands of downtown toronto) and ford's late brother, rob (who constantly attacked various groups of people who were seen to compose the population and interests of downtown toronto). finally, the term “customer service” is glowingly used throughout the book, often highlighting what democratic politics lacks compared to populist and neoliberal ideas. ford consistently harkens back to his father's focus on customer service that he (and rob) then brought to their political careers, for example: “all i had to do was take that good old customer service model and carry on” (ford, 2016, 109). this is another clear ideological and intellectual linkage to neoliberal thought, focusing on making government run more like a business and citizens be rendered as “customers” or “taxpayers.” to the fords, “the answer is running things more efficiently,” to be found through reducing the “thousands of people on the city payroll filling up the unions” and the “10 tiers of middle managers… really doing anything except justifying their own jobs” (ford, 2016, 92). the government is constructed as a gravy train full of people who steal and waste taxpayers” money, and only when this is overthrown will order be restored in society and the market. this is one of the critical tenets of not just a more generalized conception of neoliberalism but the actually-existing neoliberalism that has operated in ontario since the csr of mike harris in 1995. ford's 2018 campaign for premier of ontario mentions policy choices more specifically. still, it failed to create clear and cost-analyzed policy ideas in the platform – which he was heavily criticized for by the ‘liberal media.’ despite being a much smaller document, the platform has seven positive constructions of “the people,” “special interests” are used as a scapegoat for ontario's problems four times, “open for business,” and “respect for taxpayers” are featured prominently throughout as subheadings and key slogans (plan for the people, 2018). again, we see apparent tensions between surface-level populism and coded neoliberal discourse. these tensions are no more explicit than when ford states: “you know me. you know what i stand for. 71 you know that i am here for the people… make life easier for you and your family” (plan for the people, 2018). to reproduce his populist image, he uses personalistic depictions of himself as an outsider or benevolent everyman you would want to have a beer with. his language is rooted in much of the same discourse of his book, such as arguing to: “clean up the mess in government and restore respect for taxpayers,” “put people ahead of insiders and elites,” “the people see that the system just isn't working for them anymore,” and “with your help we can open ontario for business again” (plan for the people, 2018, italics added). this is in response not to previous three decades of neoliberalization in the province but rather because “the liberals are a corrupt elite that prioritize special interest groups” and the “people demand respect from the ontario government as taxpayers… [and] that pay taxes to the political elites” (plan for the people, 2018). like all political parties in canada, ford places capitalism in a vacuum. however, he uses populist rhetoric to render all economic issues as the fault of the constructed “elite,” which does not include investment firms, major corporations, or the real estate industry. while praising harris as a “real no-bullshit straight shooter” that “rob and i both followed his example in our political careers” (ford, 2016, 41), he spends as much time praising the csr's radical neoliberal re-orientation of society in ontario. he uses the performative power and valorization of what moffit (2014) refers to as “everyday experience” and schmittian divisions between “us and them” to complement the more toned-down and hidden neoliberal realities of the policies he invokes. rather than the technocratic style of third way neoliberalism, he espouses what moffit and tormey describe as a form of bad manners, political incorrectness, and the championing of “common sense against bureaucrats, technocrats, representatives, or guardians of our interests” (2014, 391). he is not mobilizing a group like other more overt right populists (including white nationalists), but instead mobilizing through the language of neoliberal individualism, reoriented to attack the surface of the system of neoliberalism without changing its fundamental dispossessions and contradictions. the system retains what putzel (2020, 421) says is “the people as a collection of separate individuals pursuing their unlimited right to private well being;” albeit constructed differently due to the changing socio-material context at play. right-populist discourse at the surface level obfuscates the goals of neoliberalization while at the same time invoking the same foundational conceptualization of the free market and a clearcut dichotomized view of who is deserving and authentic versus who is undeserving and parasitic on the system. consistent is the appeal to market fundamentalism throughout the book and the platform, allowing for a convergence between neoliberalism and right populism. however, this cannot be fully explored without evaluating the policies and actually-existing neoliberalism in ontario since ford's election. the following section will outline ford's government's legislative and policy reality beyond the right-populist discourse of his book and platform. less deliberation, more business: de-democratization of toronto city council when looking closer at the ford government's legislative record (pre-covid), we can see much of the flesh given to the bones of the campaign promises and claims in his memoir. it is necessary to understand politics at the legislative and material level, as opposed to strictly discursive, which exposes both the convergences and divergences between rhetoric and legalinstitutional structures. due to this, it is too simple to claim that ford's policy agenda reflects either right populism or neoliberalism. by focusing on two critical ideological and legislative categories, namely liberal democratic institutions and the political economy of labour and business, this section will show how it is much more complete to understand how ford has specifically assembled aspects of right populist rhetoric and neoliberal materiality along the lines of market 72 fundamentalism, but also how this results in right-populist discourse that can cloak and/or distract from what amounts to neoliberal austerity. in his book, ford said that the first thing he would attempt to implement was a strong mayoral system that imbued veto and discretionary power in the mayor's office to cut through the “dysfunctional” decision-making processes within a city council containing 47 members (ford, 2016). the better local government act (2018) was the onset of this and the more neoliberal goal of undermining liberal representative democracy to insulate austerity from oversight and critique. this bill utilized the “creatures of the province provision” of the constitution to unilaterally cut the city council from 47 to 25 seats in the middle of an election period, with the stated object of saving $25 million. ford invoked right-populist ideas of too much politics, too many politicians, and nothing getting done. in reality, the policy continues harris's neoliberal attacks on local government, especially concerning the city of toronto. harris amalgamated cities across the province, fired hundreds of municipal politicians, and reduced the size of the ontario legislature. the effect was to centralize power further in queen's park and the premier's office, allowing the province to run roughshod over municipalities and their budgets in the name of “efficiency” and “accountability.” this concentration of power has increased, with ford keen to reduce the space for electing, as he put it: “lefties in toronto that he informally invoked the rarely used notwithstanding clause to limit democratic and judicial oversight (albo, 2018). ford further remarked that the only people fighting the council's restructuring were special interest groups and left-wing councillors “hoping for a free ride on the backs of taxpayers” (rieti, 2018). ford's goal was simple: making government more “efficient” at the expense of essential liberal-democratic deliberation and privileging market fundamentalism to flourish as it is both normalized and insulated from critique. the ethos of this disruption of toronto's democratic institutions is rooted in ford's populist rhetoric about “downtown elites” and the issues with progressive councillors standing in the way of his and his late brother's plan for harsher forms of austerity at both the city and provincial level. ford’s logic was rooted in buchanan-esque anti-deliberative decision-making views (additionally intertwined with anti-downtown rhetoric), reflected in such statements as “nothing gets done at city hall” (benzie, 2018a) and that the change was necessary from the provincial level of government because: “everyone opposed are a bunch of downtown politicians… your [member of parliament] mpp wants bigger government. do you want more transit with the $25 million, do you want more housing, or do you want 22 overpaid politicians from downtown?” (ford, 2018b; italics added by author). his populist appeals against downtown political elites are used to animate the demands for neoliberal institutional efficiency and for the government to run like a business. ford’s opinions on consultation and deliberation were made pretty clear by his brother’s former deputy mayor, norm kelly, who stated: “i don't think he enjoys the cut and thrust of debate because, as a business person, he wants to get all the facts out on the table and make a decision as quickly as possible” (pelley, 2018). for ford: “good governance in any corporation is seven to nine because you can’t get anything done if you have 20 people around the table” (ford, 2018a). like harris amalgamating toronto with the suburbs around it, ford purposefully empowered suburban conservatism to undercut the idea of the “progressive downtown” character. dennis pilon (2018) argues that the goal is to weaken the already shallow substance of liberal democracy, all in favour of strengthening neoliberalism, austerity, and the power of those with substantial wealth. ultimately the goals are to embrace market fundamentalism: reducing the size of the state concerning the character of its intervention in the market and limiting the ability of liberal democratic institutions to critique austerity politics. 73 when challenged by multiple courts, ford sternly stated that unelected judges should stay out of the elected premier's territory (rieti, 2018). the discourse and narrative used by ford and harris are explicitly right-populist, but they are also intensely neoliberal, utilizing both ideologies' dichotomizations to justify their policy choices. those interested in issues of democratic representation are painted as the other, the left-wing ideologues and special interests, the enemies of the people, and the taxpayers within neoliberal and right-populist dichotomies. it is representative of what bray argues is the use of populist appeals to further de-democratize the neoliberal state, mainly its economic functions (2015, 50). open for business: consolidating capitalist class rule the principal animating rhetoric used by ford to represent his pro-employer, anti-labour ideological framework was the slogan indicating ontario was “open for business.” presented as the name of bills, talking points to the media, and physical signs at border entry points across the province, the idea of making ontario open for business iterates two essential claims. first, it was not open for business before, despite the neoliberal convergence of all ontario political parties regarding anti-worker and anti-union policymaking over the last 30 years. in this way, ford represents the continuity of the permanent exceptionalism masquerading as temporary fiscal measures targeting labour (evans et al., 2023). secondly, if it had not been open for business before, the solution to the failures of neoliberalism would be more neoliberalism. “open for business” reflects the neoliberal principles of making government more efficient and more flexible, essentially privileging capital over labour via deregulation and austerity. it echoes the concern of evans et al. (2023) when they argue that freedom under neoliberalism is for those who do business, not those who work for companies or governments (who increasingly act like businesses themselves). while appearing as a hardline form of neoliberalism, ford uses the rightpopulist language and dichotomies to attempt to insulate the actual politics and social relations from critique. ontario becomes representative of the people, as ford constructed in his book and campaign (now that he leads the province), and they are to be protected from the demands of the elites (labour and public-sector unions). the making ontario open for business act (2018) was the first strike against labour and one of the first sweeping legislative acts by the ford government. the key provisions of the act undid previous liberal (previous bill 148) improvements to labour standards, namely removing paid sick-day guarantees, eliminating equal pay for equal work provisions between part-time and full-time workers doing the same work, made it harder to join a union, removed job protections by allowing certain employers to classify workers as contractors, and most notably, cancelled the minimum wage increase (from $14 to $15) (mojtehedzadeh, 2018). through much consultation with businesses, mpp michael parsa argued: “ontario imposes thousands of rules that businesses are telling us just don’t make sense,” and, “we’ll also do what smart businesses do, we will listen to our customers” (parsa, 2018). invoking race to the bottom neoliberalism, ford demanded that detractors “listen to the job creators” while claiming the minimum wage increases were “worse than the carbon tax when it comes to job-killing,” alongside the hyperbole of being “the worst bill for the front-line hard-working people this province has ever seen” (benzie, 2018c). at a private event for ontario chamber of commerce member corporations, ford warned that special interests were trying to thwart the bill, accusing them of violence and intimidation, while assuring the interests of capital to: “keep fighting with me. you know that i am here to fight for the little guy” (benzie, 2018d). at this point, the right-populist rhetoric has wholly disappeared, and a neoliberal inversion of the framework of elites and the people has been reoriented to make the interests of 74 capital indicative of the proverbial little guy. by invoking pro-labour legislation as the “red tape that is driving jobs and investment out of our province” (toronto star editorial board, 2018b), ford is reproducing foundational neoliberal frameworks and language to justify disciplining labour to increase profits. he would continue this in the following two bills as well. the equally aptly named restoring ontario's competitiveness act (2018) was omnibus legislation that builds on these rollbacks under the guise of “reducing red tape” and creating “good jobs” (rushowy, 2018). the government removed overtime caps and protections resulting in lower pay for the same work and re-classified non-construction employers (municipalities, hospitals, universities) so they could hire non-unionized labour (effectively cancelling existing bargaining agreements). the language invoked in support of the bill bears much in common with the previous bill and the language utilized by ford in his platform and book. pc mpp andrea khanjin referred to the liberal era as “darkness in the province” and that restoration was necessary through a: “progressive government that’s bringing back the light again, bringing in the competitiveness” (khanjin, 2019). finally, bill 124, the protecting a sustainable public sector for future generations act (2019), was announced within a year of ford's election and notably imposed a complete overruling of collective bargaining rights by the state in the name of neoliberalism and attacks on publicsector unions. the bill limits compensation increases to one percent per bargaining round, blaming the government deficit on public sector workers rather than revenue shortages, tax cuts for corporations and the rich, and appropriation of state funds through public-private partnerships. the bill effectively overrules open collective bargaining and the rights of unionized workers. ford utilized fault lines between private and public sector unions by attacking public unions and contrasting them with the “hard-working people in private sector unions” specifically (ford, 2019). he differentiates between good and bad unionists, the “hard-working people, folks who don’t always toe the union line” and, “the people we are up against, they’re the same ones who drove the province into the ground” (stone, 2022). this rhetoric employs the right populist imaginary but in the service of market fundamentalism and the anti-worker politics of neoliberalism. the ontario court of appeal found the legislation unconstitutional in february 2024, resulting in billions of dollars of back pay owed to public sector workers. even as it was defeated and ford backed down, he would argue against constitutional supremacy by stating, “the parliament is supreme, meaning the people are supreme,” and saying that wage restraint should be left to the government and not the courts (jones, 2024). these significant pieces of legislation draw upon the right populism and neoliberalism of ford's memoir and platform. the embrace of market fundamentalism through attacks on pay equity, minimum wage, workers’ safety, and labour rights is evident immediately and reflects the economic ideology of the state under neoliberalism. more specifically, it embraces explicit dichotomous constructions to justify itself, namely that of the market vs. big government (by cutting regulations, wage equity, and worker safety) and public sector union employees vs. everyday workers (attacking collective bargaining rights). the idea of the abstracted economy is to be privileged above actual people, outlined in a vacuum categorically separate from the reality of the social relations of capitalism. those making minimum wage or using sick days are constructed as problematic, notably inferred as lazy or undeserving rather than hard-working, deserving workers, or as impediments to a prosperous economy. these wage and employment protections were referred to by ford as “job killers” (bleyer, 2018), and mpp laurie scott said the minimum wage should be decided by “economics and not politics” (crawley and janus, 2018). by artificially separating politics from economics, they reproduce economic liberalism and capitalism 75 in ways that insulate austerity choices as logical, rational, and inevitable beyond political discussion and critique. wendy brown argues that the depoliticization of social problems under neoliberalism strips economic and social outcomes of how they have been historically produced, continuing the project of depoliticizing capitalism itself (2006; 2015). this further builds on the broader traditional trajectory of capitalism, which ellen wood argues is predicated on the “expulsion of politics” from the areas with which it was always traditionally intertwined (wood, 2012, 27). ford explicitly builds on buchanan’s laments against pre-keynesian fiscal orthodoxy and intergenerational debt, arguing: “the transfer of debt from one generation onto the next is not an acceptable proposition” (hauen, 2019). by framing public sector unions as out of touch with the abstracted market, he aims to rile up non-unionized workers to support his attacks on labour in general. rather than representing workers as right-populist discourse inaccurately infers, it becomes a race to the bottom within neoliberalism as public-sector unions are gutted, driving down labour compensation across the board in both the public and private sectors. both right populism and neoliberalism assembled under ford to reinforce attacks on the working class and reconsolidate and reconstitute austerity as it became frequently discredited in a post-financial crisis political and economic context. conclusion this article has argued that doug ford’s ideology cannot be understood through a dichotomy of being exclusively right populist or neoliberal. ford utilizes right populist rhetoric and legitimation to justify the necessity for more neoliberalization and austerity in the province of ontario, resulting in the necessity to have a critical understanding of both right populism and neoliberalism. this is similar to the case within authoritarian populism, where hall and bray both argue that populist rhetoric is essential to legitimizing neoliberalism. while ford uses clear right populist tropes such as “the people” vs “the elites,” anti-bureaucratic and special interests language, and casts the sole villain of society as the liberal democratic state and its capture by these groups, the materiality of the legislation he passes is rooted in neoliberalization and austerity measures. when analyzing his legislative record while in office, it is clear that the material reality of his political project is rooted in market fundamentalism and neoliberalism, both a type contextual to him and his government, but also as a continuation of 30 years of neoliberalization in the province. as shown in this article, his labour and liberal democratic reform policies utilize right populist discourse but reflect foundational neoliberal ideas. analyzing either rhetoric or legislation in a vacuum from one another is an ineffective approach to understanding the actuality and specificity of austerity politics. further exploration of these subjects post-2020 would be especially fruitful due to the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, which saw many neoliberal politicians pivot (albeit temporarily) to more direct interventionism into supplementing workers' wages, amongst other policies. ford was perhaps known best for his ideological flailing throughout covid, maybe the most reactionary and prone to the political retreat of all canadian and provincial leaders. 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http://gas.sagepub.com/search?author1=glenda+wall&sortspec=date&submit=submit alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review labour under attack: anti-unionism in canada, by stephanie ross and larry savage, eds (halifax: fernwood, 2018). $32.00 cnd. isbn: 9781552664780. pages 1-224 reviewed by: timothy j. bartkiw1 the robust, generalized, long run decline of organized labour has been a broadly-tread terrain of scholarly inquiry in various disciplines, for nearly half a century, since the beginning of the significant decline in the size and power of organized labour, particularly in the u.s., as early as the early 1970s. researchers across various disciplines have provided an extremely large set of theoretical explanations for this trend, involving varied social, cultural, legal, economic, organizational, political and technological dimensions to explain this vast trend, or some dimension to it, to some degree. in that very basic sense, this book is aimed at an already widely addressed topic, worthy as it is of ongoing, continued analysis, due to its profound implications. as a book, labour under attack: anti-unionism in canada however, provides a rather interesting and somewhat unique contribution to the overall body of existing historical and social science literature(s) that may be considered broadly as relating to union growth, decline, and/or renewal. that is, it is a collection of complementary works that collectively focus their emphasis on “anti-unionism.” this focus defined in the negative seems to run overall along two main themes. on the one hand is an emphasis on understanding the forces of constraint and coercion that confront workers in their path of collective action. while this is not exactly an entirely new theoretical lens or angle of inquiry or argument, given the larger global social context of long run union decline and the very large literature on this overall, the various chapters do provide interesting and useful theoretical and empirical examinations of various sources of constraint and coercion, ranging from an anti-union dimension in dominant media and culture, to a plethora of specific and recent managerial strategies of union suppression and coercion. on the other hand, as a second theme, the book emphasizes in various parts the importance of improved understanding of what may be called negative union experience or “feedback” effects. that is, it places emphasis on exploring the relationship between negative attitudes about unionization amongst workers and some of the practices of actually-existing unions and unionization. throughout, there is also helpful attention to the role and potential of worker and union agency, and an exploration of alternative strategies to overcome the various negative forces being examined. not surprisingly, the importance of union democracy in relation to this issue of agency is repeatedly stressed. as well, the focus of the book overall is on canadian experience, making it particularly useful and relevant for canadian research and teaching. one of the main strengths of this book is in its organic entirety. that is, as a collection of work with its particular focus, the whole successfully amounts to more than a sum of its individual parts. it is, quite simply, a very good, enjoyable read. the chapters that provide the relatively more theoretical treatments of anti-unionism link the empirical case studies to the larger picture in a thoughtful manner. 1 dr. tim bartkiw is an associate professor in the human resource/organizational behaviour department in the ted rogers school of management, and a cross-appointed member of the faculty of law, ryerson unviersity. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the case studies are also very interesting in themselves and cover a wide range of industry contexts (manufacturing, retail, digital media, casinos, and junior professional sports), each of which provide important insights that resonate beyond their particular context. the case studies also embody fascinating stories of workplace organizing, with interesting accounts of employer and union behavior. some of them are particularly interesting insofar as they give the lie to external appearances of the “good life” associated with certain work and workplaces, and how employer practices interact with, and to some extent seek to construct, dimensions of worker identity. this book also seems potentially useful in teaching for a few reasons. speaking personally, as a professor in a university with a large proportion of the student body already working in retail, and many others seeking work in digital media and analogous “new economy” workplaces (two of the case study chapters) i am sure that this research (even if only to the extent that it has improved my own understanding) will also be useful for teaching purposes. the chapters are overall accessible and appropriate for undergraduate reading, are clearly and engagingly written, and stand to collectively speak to some of the lived experiences of students who, in our time, are increasingly also workers. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review the left in power: bob rae’s ndp and the working class, by steven high. toronto: between the lines, 2025. isbn: 9781771136679. pages: 1-466 reviewed by ryan kelpin1 it has been 35 years since the surprise election of bob rae and the ndp to form a majority government in ontario in 1990. this makes for perfect timing for steven high’s book the left in power: bob rae’s ndp and the working class, which aims to uncover and analyze the government's labour and ideological history. this is a crucial endeavour as not much has been written on this era, especially in the last 10-15 years, leaving of-the-moment political analysis to do much of the historical heavy lifting. thirty-five years later, it gives space to assess a time in power that has existed as a spectre not just for the left but the collective memory of ontarians more widely (fairly or unfairly). there are two main impetuses for the book: firstly, attempting to assess the ideological worldview of rae and his government, one that high contends reflects a type of proto-third way neoliberal politics that predates bill clinton and tony blair (and i would argue, dalton mcguinty in ontario in the 2000s); and secondly, the necessity of a labour history of deindustrialization and the ndp’s policy responses so it. the author bookends the discussion of neoliberalism and third way politics, arguing that rae represents a move towards not just austerity, anti-deficit politics, and an abandonment of the left in ontario (as is usually attributed to him) but a deliberate turn towards a protothird way neo-corporatist and progressive competitiveness form of economic and social policy. rae and the people around him represented a turn towards a neoliberal compromise between the state, capital, and labour, and the financial restructuring caused by north american deindustrialization. it did this through an embrace of communitarian ideas and deep ambivalence towards the centralized state embedded in the new left (and i would argue foundational, albeit in different ways, in james buchanan and gordon tullock’s public choice school, as well as milton friedman’s later adoption of many of its principles). this ideological turn was instrumentalized in an attempt to mediate disputes between labour and capital, to varying effect, often based on how much the ndp abandoned left labour and left nationalist politics. the result is what high argues was a turn towards the third way language of skills formation and human capital, which surrendered politics to the neoliberal terrain: “in their place was the consensual language of social partnership, fairness, and the progressive competitive 1 ryan kelpin has a phd in political science from york university. ryan teaches at york university and seneca polytechnic, contributes to jacobin, canadian dimension and the grind and has published in the canadian political science review, canadian journal of urban research, alternate routes, and the journal of australian political economy. www.alternateroutes.ca 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research desire to find a high-skill, high-wage niche in the global economy” (2025, 136). indeed, rae echoed this in his most crucial budget speech, where he sounded identical to blair and clinton when he stated, “economic renewal, social justice and fiscal responsibility are natural and necessary allies” (2025, 291). while often taking a backseat to the labour history of deindustrialization and plant closures, high uses party and government policy documents to understand the role of third way and neoliberal modes of decision-making and policy process-making is effective. it allows for an understanding not just of the role of policy, but significant catalysts for neo-corporatist and communitarian ideology (namely david wolfe and riel miller) to be assessed as relevant political actors in rae’s cabinet and advisor circles. getting access to rae and various other ndp political actors through interviews was also key to understanding the politics and ideology they were manifesting through their policy choices. high’s second focus is where he is more comfortable and thorough as a labour historian. his main narrative here is that the labour history of rae’s ndp is more complicated than perhaps our memory has allowed. looking at it in a historical, linear, and geographical sense, we can find contradictions and moments where a chance for more left politics was squandered. this is especially true when we look at the ndp from 1990 to the beginning of 1991, versus the ndp from most of 1991 to 1993. in the latter period, the government was reacting to both a recession, an ever-present fear of the discipline from international capital that the socialist mitterand government in france faced in 1982, and the influence of neoliberal political actors within rae’s cabinet. this accounting for various influences allows for an analysis that cuts through the historical homogenizing and unilaterally reactionary depiction of the ndp as a party, both internally and as a government at this time. a central historical-geographical contention here is there were different industrial policies in northern and southern ontario, with the former receiving more government support through capital infusions and policy that benefitted workerled restructuring and ownership efforts to prevent plant closings. this was not the case in southern ontario, where he argues that neo-corporatist european models of employee governance and ownership (which he also contends were thin and flawed) were abandoned in favour of financial and tax incentives to capital and regionally dominant auto manufacturers. his historical method of tracing union policy advocacy and grassroots mobilization, particularly in response to plant closures and deindustrialization, showcases their diminishing influence on rae and his cabinet over time. this allows for a thorough accounting of state responses and their effectiveness regarding plant closures and worker-led initiatives when the ndp was in power. this deep history needs to look at ndp policies before and during rae’s time as premier to understand the political tensions between rae’s cabinet and third way boosting accomplices versus the more leftist politics of the wider ndp members and union movement and track the conflicts between them. far from pragmatic, worker-focused responses to deindustrialization, www.alternateroutes.ca 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the ndp represented a surrendering to the neoliberal political terrain and the start of anti-deficit and austerity neoliberal politics in ontario. high’s book seems primarily aimed at people with a limited or less detailed history of the ndp’s time in government and the politics it represented at different historical moments. it seeks to overcome the narrative mythos (although partially true) about this time in ontario’s history and our collective memory of rae’s time as premier. it would be helpful to people interested not just in canadian/ontario political history but labour historians, scholars who study neoliberalism and third way politics, and political economists who study fiscal crisis and its relationship with austerity. as a labour historian, high was very focused on the history of unions, workers, plants, and their relationship to the state and the ndp as a party and government. this analytical history is done very effectively, but there are times when i was left wanting for deeper analysis regarding the ideological impetus for their policies. while he effectively links rae, wolfe and others to key third way and communitarianism scholars like robin murray, amitai etzioni, and david osborne, it would have been interesting to see a more substantive linking and comparison of the ndp’s politics, both discursively and policy-wise, directly to those that high contends the ndp represented an earlier, proto-third way of, namely clinton and blair. when these two and their governments are mentioned, it is often a reference point or quick comparison rather than substantively engaging with them, as is debatably required when claiming that rae represents a proto-third way form of governance that predates them. this aside, high’s book is an essential labour history of the deindustrialization crisis and the ndp’s failure to respond to it with any left alternative. indeed, he effectively maps how rae and the ndp abdicated class analysis and working-class politics to surrender to the neoliberal terrain of global competitiveness and austerity politics. his insights and hindsight illuminate an often homogenized and mythologized history of rae that lacks nuance and any semblance of penetrating analysis. the precarity penalty | 87 the precarity penalty: how insecure employment disadvantages workers and their families wayne lewchuk,1 michelynn laflèche,2 stephanie procyk,3 charlene cook,4 diane dyson,5 luin goldring,6 karen lior,7 alan meisner,8 john shields,9 anthony tambureno,10 and peter viducis11 abstract: this paper examines the social and economic effects of precarious employment in the greater toronto-hamilton area. the analysis is based on data from two surveys conducted in 2011 and in 2014 by the poverty and employment precarity in southern ontario (pepso) research group. the survey findings paint a picture of how low earnings and economic uncertainty translate into delayed formation of relationships, lower marriage rates for workers under the age of 35, and fewer households with children. they also suggest that workers in precarious employment are more likely to experience social isolation. these findings suggest that the precarity penalty is not limited to economic outcomes from employment but also includes disadvantages in establishing healthy households and being engaged in one's community. workers in secure employment enjoy better economic outcomes from employment that provide the basis for better household wellbeing and increased social integration. while much has been made in recent years of the unequal distribution of income, the pepso study also points to the unequal distribution of many of the non-financial aspects of life that people value including companionship, having a family and having friends. keywords: precarious employment; household wellbeing; families; communities 1 wayne lewchuk, mcmaster university. this chapter was made possible by the support of funds from the united way toronto-mcmaster university sshrccura project on poverty and employment precarity in southern ontario. caroline fram helped with background research and dale brown made comments on earlier drafts. 2 michelynn laflèche, united way toronto. 3 stephanie procyk, united way toronto. 4 charlene cook, united way toronto. 5 diane dyson, woodgreen community services. 6 luin goldring, york university. 7 karen lior, toronto workforce innovation group. 8 alanmeisner, quantacan. 9 john shields, ryerson university. 10 anthony tambureno, mcmaster university. 11 peter viducis, city of toronto. 88 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the poverty and employment precarity in southern ontario (pepso) research group was formed in 2010 to measure the prevalence of precarious employment in the greater toronto-hamilton (gtha) labour market and to examine the effects of insecure employment on workers, families and communities. in 2013, pepso released its first report it’s more than poverty: employment precarity and household well-being based on data collected in late 2011. in 2015, a second report was released the precarity penalty: the impact of employment precarity on individuals, households and communities – and what to do about it based on data collected in 2014. the results from these two reports are disturbing. they suggest that precarious employment is no longer an issue only for low paid workers, women or recent immigrants. it is becoming the norm in many sectors and amongst categories of workers who in the past were privileged to work in secure jobs with good career prospects. the reports show that the effects of insecure employment are much broader than simply low wages and irregular employment. households where employment is insecure face added challenges in maintaining a healthy family and individuals face added challenges fully participating in their communities. combined, these effects represent the precarity penalty associated with less secure employment. many of the survey questions asked in 2011 and in 2014 were identical. this chapter combines the two data sets to assess the nature of the precarity penalty focussing on the penalties that individuals experience as a result of their employment relationship. it is beyond the scope of this paper to explore in detail the effects on families and on communities. the discussion section of the paper will touch on some of the more obvious links between employment insecurity and the challenges maintaining a healthy family and participating fully in community life. these topics will be explored in more detail in future papers. the growth of precarious employment there is overwhelming evidence that labour market conditions in canada, and in much of the developed world, are in transition (weil, 2014; kalleberg, 2011; standing, 2011; vosko, et.al. 2009; farber, 2008; hacker, 2006; cappelli, 1999). for workers in their 20s and 30s, today’s labour market is fundamentally different from the one their parents knew. older workers looking for work after the loss of a stable and secure job find a labour market fundamentally different from the one they first encountered as a younger worker. as noted by hatton, many employers have moved from viewing workers as a long-term “asset” worth investing in to viewing them as a short-run “liability” and as a cost to be minimized the precarity penalty | 89 (hatton, 2011). one outcome of this shift is an increased reliance on insecure precarious employment. since the 1980s, precarious employment grew more rapidly than overall employment. between 1989 and 2014, the percentage of canadian workers in either temporary employment, or those who were self-employed without employees, increased from 13.7% of all workers to 21.8% (pepso, 2015, 24). as insecure forms of employment became more prevalent in the economy, earnings stagnated for the majority of workers in canada and in the united states. income in both countries has become less equally distributed (uwt 2015). in a recent comprehensive review of the performance of the u.s. economy, researchers from the economic policy institute described the period from 1975-2000 as one of wage stagnation and slow economic growth and the first decade of the 21st century as a “lost” decade for most american households (mishel et.al., 2012, 5). the increasing prevalence of precarious employment has not only contributed to the slow rate of wage growth but it also means that more and more workers and their families are falling outside of the protective shield of permanent full-time employment. an increasing number of workers are working on short-term contracts, earn only a basic wage and lack supplementary benefits or pension plans (kalleberg, 2011). the percentage of workers in canada who report having an employer pension plan fell by more than 10% between 1990 and 2013, and the percentage in defined benefit plans fell over 30% (pepso, 2015, 24). hacker (2006) describes this as the “great risk shift” as workers and their families are exposed to the vagaries of the labour market with fewer protections from either employers or the state. precarious employment and family wellbeing it is easy to imagine the link between precarious employment and the conditions of work, but how does the employment relationship affect family wellbeing beyond the obvious question of household income? a large body of feminist-informed research has pointed to the role of the fordist compromise of the post-world war ii period in shaping the norms that govern relations between men and women, social reproduction and welfare regimes (gottfried, 2000; vosko et.al., 2009). it is generally agreed that the fordist male – breadwinner/female care-giver model of economic and social organization privileged men and allocated to women the role of unpaid social reproduction. women who did enter paid employment generally worked at jobs that were low paid and insecure. however, what the erosion of this model of economic and social organization means for male privilege, for female employment, for families and communities is 90 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages less well understood. within households, the transition from the male breadwinner/female caregiver model is likely to lead to new family dynamics and potentially to new opportunities for women. kanji (2013) and fulcher et.al. (2005) argue that as male employment becomes less secure, the rational for the male breadwinner/female care giver model changes and many of the assumption regarding the roles of men and women in the household and in labour markets may also change. they argue that as the contribution of women to household budgets increases, women’s authority to shape household decisions may increase and their opportunities to launch their own careers may improve. a number of researchers including chan (2011); russell, o'connell & mcginnity (2009); hyman et.al. (2005); bohle et.al. (2004); carnoy (2000) argue that increased employment insecurity increases tension at home, as parents and children cope with varying income flows and periods of unemployment and the need to re-negotiate the boundaries between work and unpaid housework as work schedules change. craig & brown (2014) argue that precarious employment and the spread of non-standard hours and irregular work schedules may make it difficult to co-ordinate shared leisure time between couples with negative effects on the sustainability of relationships. a number of researchers have explored how precarious employment may change decisions to form relationships. a german study by (golsch, 2005) suggested for men, insecure employment is associated with delayed marriages and postponing the start of families. but, it has potentially the opposite association for women, providing them with opportunities to combine childcare and part-time employment. fuwa (2014) argues that as precarious employment disrupts the male breadwinner/female caregiver model and increases women’s “market related resources” while at the same time making men a less dependable source of income, women may find traditional marriage less attractive. mills et.al. 2005 speculate that, rather than marry, young people are more likely to live together to gain some of the benefits of marriage, including companionship and the sharing of housing costs, without making commitments to an uncertain future. quilgars & abbott (2000) suggest that renting will become a better option than home ownership as a way of dealing with employment risks. if a reduction in home ownership results in workers having weaker attachments to their community, it could have profound social implications. goldring & landolt (2009 & 2011) argue that for immigrants, early career employment precarity may have long-term negative consequences. a unique study based on 180 interviews with american families in the precarity penalty | 91 1998 and in 2010 provides strong evidence that insecure employment can lead to significant barriers to families trying to get ahead with implications for their children (thomas, boguslaw et.al., 2013). they found that families whose wealth grew more slowly were not necessarily the lowest paid, but rather lacked what the authors call “employment capital.” employment capital is the product of non-wage job benefits, job flexibility and consistent work. workers in a standard employment relationship will generally have more employment capital and those in precarious employment less. for families with limited employment capital, any savings from employment are used to finance the inevitable downturns and unexpected expenses associated with life and thus compromising their ability to accumulate wealth. families whose wealth grew more slowly, or needed to conserve savings for the inevitable rainy day, also risked being less able to invest in their children at the same rate as families with higher levels of employment capital, potentially putting their children at a relative disadvantage. the challenges facing children as they become young adults in families with limited employment capital was vividly described by putnam (2015) who explored how the social mobility of children has decreased in the ohio community where he grew up. how we collected our data to be eligible for the study, individuals had to be between the ages of 25 and 65 and have worked for pay in the last three months. the core objective of the pepso research group is to understand the impact of insecure employment on workers in the prime of their working lives who are more likely to be contributing to a household, raising a family and engaging as citizens in their communities. this is not to suggest that the challenges that younger workers face starting their careers or those of older workers who continue to work later in life are unimportant. historically, both of these groups of workers were more likely to be employed in less secure employment relationships. how these historical patterns of youth and senior employment are changing in the face of the changing nature of employment relationships identified in the pepso reports needs to be the subject of separate research projects. a representative sample of workers living in toronto, surrounding gta municipalities, hamilton and burlington was randomly selected and interviewed over the phone by experienced interviewers. both survey samples are representative by sex, age and the different regions that make up the study area, based on the 2006 census. pepso commissioned leger marketing to conduct both the 2011and 2014 surveys using random digital dialing which included both land lines and cell phones. the 92 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages interviews were conducted in english. the average length of the survey was 15-18 minutes. the data was analyzed using stata software. a total of 8,328 individuals were surveyed and form the data set examined in this chapter (see pepso 2015 for details on how the data was collected). understanding who is precarious while precarious employment is now recognized as an entrenched feature of our labour market, there is no agreed upon way to define it or to calculate how many workers are precariously employed. the challenge is that employment relationships vary across a wide range of characteristics other than simple rates of pay. some employment is more stable. some employment provides supplemental benefits, such as a prescription drug plan that insures workers from unexpected expenses. some employment provides a secure pension for workers when they retire. some employment provides a career path and helps workers acquire new skills. some employment provides predictable work schedules. all of these characteristics shape the degree of employment precarity. a simple approach is to focus on the form of the employment relationship including whether workers are in full-time, part-time, or temporary employment or whether they are self-employed. at best, this provides a rough indicator of precarious employment as the characteristics of employment can still vary widely within different forms of the employment relationship. pepso survey respondents were asked to identify both the form of their employment relationship (full-time, parttime, temporary, self-employment) and the characteristics of their employment (non-wage benefits, variations in earnings, future employment prospects). this makes it possible to identify the precariously employed with some precision. a widely recognized standard for secure employment is the standard employment relationship which represents a sub-set of workers in fulltime employment. as well as being full-time, workers in a standard employment relationship receive non-wage benefits such as a pension or supplemental medical benefits, work for one employer full-time, and have a degree of job security. about 65% of the pepso sample report they are in full-time employment. however, less than 50% are deemed to be in a standard employment relationship. another 8.5% of the pepso sample report they are in permanent part-time employment.12 12 19.1% of the pepso sample work less than 30 hours but only 8.5% report they are in permanent part-time employment. the majority of the remaining 10.6% of the sample working less than 30 hours report they are in temporary employment, on contract or self-employed. the precarity penalty | 93 this leaves about 40% of the pepso sample who are not in a standard employment relationship or in permanent part-time employment. there is no general agreement over how many of this group should be classified as precariously employed. in one sense, this entire group experiences a level of precarity which is greater than workers in a standard employment relationship. the most narrow approach to this question is to rely exclusively on the form of the employment relationship and to limit those in precarious employment to workers who self-report they are in some form of temporary employment. temporary employment includes workers hired into jobs with a fixed end date, including seasonal, temporary, term and casual employment. statistics canada first collected such data in 1996. using this narrow definition, 10.5% of workers in the pepso sample aged 25-65 would be classified as precarious. using a similar definition, statistics canada reported that 11.3% of all canadian workers over the age of 15 were in temporary employment in 2014 (pepso, 2015, 24). the u.s. government accountability office (2006 and 2015) refers to this category of workers as the "core contingent" category. in 2010, they identified 7.9% of the workforce as the "core contingent" category. while there has been some upward trend in this category in countries like canada and australia, it has been relatively stable in countries like the united states and britain since the late 1990s leading some researchers to argue that the spread of insecure employment has been exaggerated (doogan, 2009; cross, 2015). focusing only on workers who declare they are in temporary employment misses a large and growing segment of the workforce who may not self-declare as temporary, but are still precariously employed. this includes the growing share of the workforce employed as freelancers, contractors and the self-employed. 8.8% of the pepso sample were selfemployed and worked on their own without employing any other workers. statistics canada estimated that 10.5% of all canadian workers over the age of 15 in 2014 were self-employed without employees. u.s. bureau of labor statistics identified 16.2% employed as independent contractors or self-employed in 2010. temporary forms of the employment relationship plus the self-employed without employees represent 19.3% of the pepso sample, 21.8% using statistics canada data and 24.1% using data from the u.s. bureau of labor statistics. weill (2014, 271-72) also includes part-time workers in the contingent category. this would increase the number of contingent workers to 30.1% of the u.s. workforce in 2005 and the most recent u.s. data suggests this may have grown to 40.4% in 2010 (u.s. government accountability office, 2015). 94 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages approaches described above that identify workers in precarious employment based on the form of the employment relationship provide a rough estimate of employment security. however, some workers classified as precarious using this approach may have a high degree of employment security and some not classified as precarious may be quite insecure once the characteristics of their employment relationships are taken into consideration. in the pepso survey, almost one-quarter of the sample is neither in a standard employment relationship nor precariously employed based on the form of their employment relationship. many of these workers report uncertainty regarding their future employment prospects, variable hours of employment, uncertain future earnings and few if any supplemental employment benefits beyond a wage (pepso, 2015, 26). in ontario, workers in this category with less than one year of seniority can be terminated with one week’s notice, and even those with up to 3 years of seniority might only get 2 weeks’ notice. in a similar fashion, some workers who declare their job is temporary or are selfemployed without employees can still experience a degree of employment stability that makes their employment relatively secure. there is growing recognition that we can no longer assume that a worker who self-declares as being in full-time employment is also in secure employment.13 david weil (2014, 273) argues that the u.s. workforce has become more fissured, by which he means large lead firms are reducing their core workforce and relying more heavily on the contracting out of tasks to subordinate companies or employing temporary workers hired from external agencies. as a result he argues that, “though workers in those subordinate businesses may be classified as employed on a standard, full-time basis, the relationship between lead firms and those where these workers are employed may be fissured and therefore likely to have the characteristics of precarious employment.” given the inaccuracy of relying on the form of the employment relationship to identify who is in secure employment and who is in precarious employment, pepso developed the employment precarity index to provide a more precise way of identifying precarious employment. the index is made up of 10 questions from the survey and includes both measures of the form of the employment relationship and measures of the characteristics of employment. each of the questions below was scored on a scale of 0-10 and combined to generate the employment precarity index. 13 recent research suggests that many workers on short-term contracts mistakenly report on surveys that they are in permanent employment. see pavlopoulos and vermunt, 2015. the precarity penalty | 95 • do you usually get paid if you miss a day’s work? • i have one employer, whom i expect to be working for a year from now, who provides at least 30 hours of work a week, and who pays benefits. • in the last 12 months, how much did your income vary from week to week? • how likely will your total hours of paid employment be reduced in the next six months? • in the last three months, how often did you work on an on-call basis? • do you know your work schedule at least one week in advance? • in the last three months, what portion of your employment income was received in cash? • what is the form of your employment relationship (short-term, casual, fixed-term contract, self-employed, permanent part-time, permanent full-time)? • do you receive any other employment benefits from your current employer(s), such as a drug plan, vision, dental, life insurance, pension, etc.? • would your current employment be negatively affected if you raised a health and safety concern or raised an employment-rights concern with your employer(s)? the index is used to divide the sample into 4 more or less equal employment security categories as shown in table 1. nearly 20% of workers in the pepso sample in temporary forms of the employment relationship are not classified as precarious using the employment precarity index. table 1: employment security categories source: pepso surveys 96 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages table 2 describes some of the key characteristics of each of the employment security categories. men are under-represented in secure employment and marginally over-represented in precarious employment compared to the percentage of men in the entire sample. while somewhat surprising, this is indicative of the changes that are taking place in the economy of southern ontario as sectors where men enjoyed privileged access to secure employment such as manufacturing are shrinking. it is also a function of women being over-represented in the public sector where unions have been more successful in supporting secure employment and in the under-representation of women in self-employment which tends to be less secure. it is also evidence of the success women have had defending their employment rights through union representation where they now make up a majority of union membership. white workers are over-represented in secure employment and under-represented in precarious employment compared to the percentage of white workers in the entire sample. however, white workers still made up almost two-thirds of workers in precarious employment. the relatively high percentage of men and white workers in precarious employment is indicative of the extent to which precarious employment has spread to socio-economic groups that in the past were largely insulated from this form of employment. young workers, aged 25-34 are under-represented in secure employment and over-represented in precarious employment compared to the percentage of young workers in the entire sample. workers aged 35-54 are still the largest age group in precarious employment and made up just over half of all precariously employed workers. young workers aged 25-34 represented about one-third of precariously employed workers and workers 55-65 represented just under 20% of the category. workers in secure employment are more likely to be married and have children living in their household. nearly two-thirds of the workers in precarious employment are married and over 45% have children living in their households. workers in secure employment are more likely to be unionized. the precarity penalty | 97 table 2: socio-economic characteristics of the employment security categories (% of each employment relationship category) source: pepso surveys. table 3 describes some of the other characteristics of the four employment security categories. workers who describe themselves as doing knowledge work are over-represented in secure employment and under-represented in precarious employment. the pattern in the service sector was the opposite with service sector workers being underrepresented in secure employment and over-represented in precarious employment. manufacturing and construction workers are underrepresented in secure employment but about equally represented in the other three employment categories. it is not surprising that service sector workers represent the largest component of precarious employment. perhaps somewhat surprising is the large number of service sector workers in secure employment and the large number of knowledge workers in precarious employment. again this points to the extent to which precarious employment has spread to all sectors of the economy. the last two columns of table 3 report the distribution of jobs across the four employment categories by the education needed to perform these jobs. workers doing jobs that require a university degree are overrepresented in secure employment and under-represented in precarious employment. the exact opposite pattern can be found with jobs that require only on-the-job training. jobs that require a university degree still represent almost one-third of all jobs in precarious employment. almost half of all workers in precarious employment have a university degree meaning many are working at jobs that do not require the education these workers have obtained. 98 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages table 3: socio-economic characteristics of the employment security categories (% of each employment relationship category) source: pepso surveys. tables 1 to 3 provide a picture of precarious employment between 2011 and 2014 with a number of surprises. racialized workers and young workers are over-represented in precarious employment. however, precarious employment is far from being mainly the preserve of racialized or young workers. nor is it mainly the preserve of women workers, who are actually under-represented in precarious employment, nor is it predominantly found in the service sector. the two pepso surveys indicate that precarious employment has spread throughout the economy and that while racialized workers, young workers and workers doing jobs that require little training are over-represented in precarious employment, many of the precariously employed are white, work in the knowledge sector and do jobs that require university degrees. the employment relationship precarity penalty a critical penalty related to precarious employment with significant social implications is low pay. many researchers examining precarious employment include low pay as a characteristic of precarious employment. the pepso research group opted to examine employment precarity independent of income allowing the analysis of poverty and precarity as two separate characteristics of individuals and families. the main advantage of this approach is that it facilitates the analysis of the social effects of precarious employment amongst middle income households and the impact of low wages on families where employment is secure. over one-third of workers in precarious employment earn more than $40,000 or live in households where household income exceeds $80,000. the precarity penalty | 99 table 4 reports average individual and household income by employment security categories. being precariously employed results in a significant individual and household income penalty. workers in precarious employment earn half as much as workers in secure employment and live in households that earn over one-third less than workers in secure employment. the income ratios of workers in precarious and secure employment are virtually unchanged when the sample is restricted only to married workers who are not separated or divorced. it is often suggested that the model family in the last few decades of the twentieth century was one worker in a good paying secure job and a partner in a less secure low paid job. the findings from the pepso study suggest we are moving away from this model. if the average household was made up of one well-paid securely employed worker and one low-paid less secure worker, we would expect household earnings of married couples to be the same regardless of the survey participant's employment relationship. as shown in table 4 this is not the case.14 survey participants in secure employment report substantially higher household income than survey respondents in precarious employment. one reason for this was evidence that employment insecurity of one partner in a household negatively affects the labour market options of the other partner. there was a higher probability that the partners of workers in precarious employment were either not working for pay, or working in some form of less secure employment compared to partners of workers in secure employment. table 4: average individual and household income by employment security categories source: pepso surveys. 14 on the issue of clustering by employment relationships and how this affects family income and average neighbourhood family income, see chen et.al., 2011. 100 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages precariously employed workers are also penalized in not receiving employment benefits such as a pension or supplemental health benefits. table 5 reveals the unequal distribution of employment benefits by employment security categories. less than 20% of workers in precarious employment have an employer funded pension plan and less than 10% receive supplemental health benefits such as a dental plan or drug plan. everyone in secure employment and the majority in stable employment enjoy both types of benefits as a result of their employment. limiting the sample only to married couples does not result in a significant change in the access to benefits by employment security categories. table 5: employment benefits by employment security categories (%) source: pepso surveys. in 2011, a supplemental question was asked whether workers were eligible for any benefits as result of their partner's employment. just over one-third of workers in precarious employment report they received such benefits. this number increased to almost half for workers in precarious employment who were married. however, nearly 60% of all workers in precarious employment received benefits from neither their employment nor someone else's employment and over 45% of married workers in precarious employment received benefits from neither their employment nor someone else's employment. low income and lack of benefits are only two of the penalties that workers in precarious employment face. as shown in table 6, they also face irregular employment and uncertain future prospects. nearly 40% of workers in precarious employment experienced at least some weeks without work in 2014 and nearly 20% experienced more than two months the precarity penalty | 101 of unemployment. over one-third of workers in precarious employment also report their income varied a lot in the last 12 months. nearly onequarter anticipate their hours of employment will be reduced in the next six months. in addition, workers in precarious employment face uncertainty over their work schedules. table 6: employment insecurity by employment security categories (%) source: pepso surveys *only asked in 2014 inability to find work when work is wanted, variation in income from week to week, uncertain future employment prospects, and unexpected work schedule changes can create both financial uncertainty as well as creating stress and anxiety at home. over 15% of workers in precarious employment report work schedule uncertainty often negatively affected family life compared to less than 4% of workers in secure employment. in 2014, survey respondents were asked if scheduling uncertainty limited childcare choices. over half of workers in precarious employment report this was a problem compared to just over 20% of workers in secure employment. workers in precarious employment also face long-term career penalties. they are less likely to benefit from training provided by their employer and less likely to report their job offers good career prospects. as shown in table 7, less than 20% of workers in precarious employment receive training funded by their employer and over one-quarter fund their own training. one result of this is almost half of workers in precarious employment report their current job does not offer good career prospects. age did not have a large effect on whether the current jobs held by workers in precarious employment offered good career prospects. 102 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages table 7: training and career prospects (%) source: pepso surveys. * only asked in 2011 discussion: the precarity penalty, families and communities workers in precarious employment suffer a number of disadvantages related to their employment. together these disadvantages can be thought of as the precarity penalty. individual income and household incomes of workers in precarious employment are lower than for workers in secure employment. fewer than 1 in 10 workers in precarious employment receive supplemental employment benefits such as a drug plan. they face more employment uncertainty than workers in secure employment including more frequent periods of unemployment, variable earnings, irregular work schedules and increased short-term employment uncertainty. there are also long-term penalties. workers in precarious employment are less likely to receive training provided by their employer and are more likely to be in jobs with limited future career prospects. the final section of this paper examines how the precarity penalty shapes entering relationships, decisions to start a family and social isolation. a) forming a relationship. there are many ways insecure employment can create barriers to forming a relationship with someone. workers who are uncertain of future earnings or career prospects may be reluctant to enter into lasting relationships. low earnings and irregular work schedules can make it difficult to engage in many of the social activities that might lead to a relationship. 18% of workers in precarious employment reported they had delayed forming a relationship with someone due to employment uncertainty compared to only 3% of workers the precarity penalty | 103 in secure employment.15 such delays were most pronounced for workers under the age of 35. nearly one-quarter of workers in precarious employment under the age of 35 had delayed forming a relationship compared to only 4% of workers in secure employment. men in precarious employment were almost 50% more likely to delay forming a relationship than women. racialized workers in precarious employment were almost twice as likely to delay forming a relationship compared to white workers. young racialized men were the most likely to view their employment relationship as a barrier to forming relationships. decisions to delay forming a relationship with someone are reflected in the percentage of workers in different categories who are married. almost 70% of the sample reported being married. just over 62% of workers in precarious employment were married compared to just over 73% of those in secure employment. most of this gap in the overall sample represents much lower rates of marriage of younger workers in precarious employment compared to younger workers in secure employment. 42% of workers under the age of 35 in precarious employment were married compared to 65% of those in secure employment. for workers 35 and older, the percentage married varied very little by employment security category. women in precarious employment were marginally more likely to be married than men in precarious employment consistent with gender differences in delaying forming relationships discussed above. racialized workers in precarious employment were marginally less likely to be married than white workers. the reluctance of young racialized men to pursue relationships with someone is reflected in low rates of marriage for this group. only 31% of racialized men in precarious employment under the age of 35 were married compared to 41% of white men, 48% of racialized women and 56% of white women under the age of 35. b) starting a family. insecure employment can also affect decisions to start a family.16 over 16% of workers in precarious employment reported having delayed having children due to employment uncertainty compared to only 6% of those in secure employment. decisions to delay having children were more significant for younger workers. workers under the age of 35 in precarious employment were almost two and a half times more likely to delay having children than workers under 35 in secure employment. workers aged 35-54 in precarious employment were almost as likely to be married as workers in secure employment however they were still more likely to report delaying having children. over 16% of 15 asked only in 2014. 16 asked only in 2011. 104 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages workers in this age group in precarious employment reported delaying having children compared to just under 5% of workers in this age group in secure employment. men and women in precarious employment were equally likely to report delaying having children due to employment uncertainty. over 20% of racialized workers in precarious employment report having delayed having children due to employment uncertainty compared to 14% or white workers. decisions to delay having children as a result of employment uncertainty are reflected in the number of households with children. just over 45% of workers in precarious employment had a child living in their household compared to just over 55% of workers in secure employment. the impact of the employment relationship was most substantial for workers under the age of 35. 28% of workers under the age of 35 in precarious employment had a child living in their household compared to 40% of workers in secure employment. men and women in precarious employment appear to have approached the decision to start a family differently. 38% of men in precarious employment had a child living in their household compared to 52% of men in secure employment. 53% of women in precarious employment had a child living in their household compared to 57% of women in secure employment. racialized workers and white workers in precarious employment were equally likely to have a child living in their households. c) social isolation. precarious employment can also influence a capacity of workers to engage with their community. factors include low and uncertain earnings that can limit the ability to participate in activities that might lead to friendships. 21% of workers in precarious employment reported not having a close friend who they could talk to about what was on their mind compared to 14% of workers in secure employment. this form of isolation was especially significant for younger workers. 28% of workers under the age of 35 reported not having a close friend who they could talk to about what was on their mind compared to 12% of workers in secure employment. men in precarious employment were marginally more likely not to have a friend they could talk to than women. racialized workers were less likely to have a close friend who they could talk to about what was on their mind compared to white workers. 29% of racialized workers in precarious employment did not have a close friend who they could talk to compared to 17% of white workers in precarious employment. the temporary relationship many workers in precarious employment have to a workplace can also reduce the likelihood of co-workers being a source of friends. 35% of workers in precarious employment reported not the precarity penalty | 105 having a friend at work who they could ask a favour of, compared to 12% of workers in secure employment.17 the absence of friends at work was most significant for workers under the age of 55. men and women in precarious employment were equally likely to not have a friend at work they could call on for support. racialized workers were less likely to have a friend at work they could call on for support compared to white workers. 41% of racialized workers in precarious employment did not have a friend at work compared to 30% of white workers in precarious employment. conclusion this paper has mapped out the disadvantages that workers in precarious employment face at work and how this shapes social outcomes such as decisions to form relationships, to start families and to participate in community activities. the survey findings paint a picture of how low earnings and economic uncertainty translate into delayed formation of relationships, lower marriage rates for workers under the age of 35, and fewer households with children. they also suggest that workers in precarious employment are more likely to experience social isolation. these findings suggest that the precarity penalty is not limited to economic outcomes from employment but also includes disadvantages in establishing health households and being engaged in one's community. workers in secure employment enjoy better economic outcomes from employment that provide the basis for better household wellbeing and increased social integration. while much as been made in recent years of the unequal distribution of income, the pepso study also points to the unequal distribution of many of the non-financial aspects of life that people value including companionship, having a family and having friends. references bohle, p., m. quinlan, d. kennedy & a. williamson. 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(2009). gender and the contours of precarious employment. london: routledge. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 33, 17-35 (2023) professional employees’ transformative potential: labour aristocracy or new working class d.w. livingstone1 abstract: class forces founded in production relations are basic agents of continuity and change in all societies today. the main distinction is between those who own means of production and those they hire to produce goods and services, along with others they hire to coordinate and control the producers. of course, these class differences interact with relations based on race, gender, age and other specific conditions. but those analysts who choose to focus on these factors while either ignoring class relations or reducing them to cultural distinctions are missing the underlying profitdriven dynamic of advanced capitalism. the aim of this paper is to identify the basic classes producing goods and services in advanced capitalism and assess their disposition to progressive change. if we want to move toward a sustainable equitable future, we need to 'find the horses' to get us there. are non-managerial professional employees’ likely candidates? keywords: professional classes; new working class; oppositional class consciousness; wealth effect introduction the neoliberal austerity offensive of the past generation has produced wage stagnation and reduced social benefits for workers, record profits for global corporate capitalists and extreme economic inequality. the great recession of 2007-8 and the covid-19 pandemic have only accentuated these tendencies. at the same time, the many effluents of capitalist industrialization now pose imminent threats to any sustainable ecosystem. russia’s recent invasion of ukraine and the nato-aided counter-offensive should remind us all of the massive military and nuclear destructive capacities of inter-capitalist conflicts. all of these conditions have been welldocumented. the current moment should be provoking concerted efforts by progressive forces everywhere to identify and act toward realizing a more sustainable equitable future. one element largely missing in such efforts to date is class analysis of potential transformative forces that could be involved. since plato, philosophers have aspired to be kings. technocrats are now occasionally appointed to head crisis-bound governments. but the much-heralded ‘professional-managerial class’ (pmc) does not exist. it is largely a figment of the imaginations of various intellectual apologists for the similarly fictitious ‘post-industrial society’ and ‘knowledge-based economy’ (see livingstone, adams and sawchuk 2021; camfield 2020). the basic animating notion— promoted most influentially by daniel bell (1973) --is that a new form of production was emerging in which skilled mental labour would predominate over manual labour, and that knowledge workers and those who coordinated their labours would become the most influential class, while manual workers would diminish and business owners would increasingly defer to the technical wisdom of these experts. the myth was effectively trashed on conceptual and empirical grounds (see meiksins 1986). 1 d.w. livingstone is professor emeritus and past canada research chair in lifelong learning and work at the ontario institute for studies in education at the university of toronto. portions of this article are excerpted from livingstone (2023). 18 but it continues to be reproduced even by critical intellectuals who now point to a “professional class” of technocrats and other knowledge workers whose fixation on objective scientific facts actually aids global capitalists maintain control of the production system and impedes genuine progress on climate change (e.g. huber 2022). as i will document, both managers and non-managerial professional employees have increased as proportions of the class structure in advanced capitalism since the 1980s. but shared growth is hardly sufficient reason to treat them as a coherent class. this professional-managerial class never happened. corporate capitalist owners have gained increasingly concentrated economic and political power in all advanced capitalist economies. they have hired increasing numbers of managers, many without specialized professional training but with assured allegiance to their owners and with delegated authority to coordinate and control the growing numbers of non-managerial professional employees. these professional employees are the most rapidly increasing part of the class structure of advanced capitalism. but there is now solid empirical evidence that they have much less control of their jobs compared to corporate owners and managers, as well as diminishing benefits for their specialized skills and training. there is no indication that non-managerial professional employees are becoming part of a new ruling class. the evidence in this paper will demonstrate the fallacy of the pmc. a more difficult challenge is overcoming the tendency to treat all those who share professional occupational training as one big family. they are not. some professionally trained folks become self-employed and may eventually become employers. others may become managers. most become nonmanagerial employees. as owners/employers, managers or non-managerial workers they have different class interests. a recent book provides ample proof of these class differences among professionals in general and engineers and nurses in particular (livingstone el al 2021). the facts that many folks trained in a given profession tend to join the same professional association and that most of the research literature on professionals ignores distinct professional classes are not a sufficient basis to deny their existence. the issue is very relevant for potential political change because professional employees are now strategically placed knowledge workers designing, performing, reviewing and adapting the information-based production activities that increasingly pervade the paid workplaces of advanced capitalism. the capture of their specialized knowledge (i.e. by burgeoning ‘knowledge management’ offensives) is seen as vital for continuing profitability and productivity (e.g. drucker 1998). at the same time, professional employees are increasingly becoming one of the largest groups of non-managerial workers and joining the labour movement. so, the central issue is not to celebrate professionals as part of a pmc rising to dominance in the ‘knowledge economy’. it is to assess the working conditions of non-managerial professional employees and consider the extent to which these strategic knowledge workers align themselves with capitalist class interests or support the class interests of other labouring classes. the real question in terms of class forces with transformative potential is whether they are more likely to become a new labour aristocracy or a new working class. the labour aristocracy thesis has had many variants. the central claim is that a relatively well-paid highly skilled echelon of wage-earners in advanced capitalist countries has ‘taken the bribe’. that is, relatively affluent and secure working conditions have made them comfortable with capitalism and reluctant to do much to support their more downtrodden comrades. variants of this thesis have often been resorted to by progressive intellectuals when non-managerial workers have not met their revolutionary expectations (see post 2010 for an extensive critical review). 19 conversely, the new working-class thesis has played up the revolutionary potential of skilled technical workers in more automated forms of production to gain greater control of their workplaces and lead revolutionary actions (mallet 1975). variants of this thesis taken up with enthusiasm in the 1960s were first dismissed by empirical researchers (gallie 1978) and have now largely devolved into searches for nominees among highly qualified precarious and dissatisfied gig workers (e.g. winant 2017). so, what does relevant empirical evidence tell us today with regard to non-managerial professional employees, the knowledge workers who are now effectively a main focus of both labour aristocracy and new working-class theses? in this paper, i will first use the best available empirical evidence since the early 1990s on g7 and scandinavian countries to document the main changes in the class structure of advanced capitalist economies. then the general working conditions of non-managerial professional employees will be compared with the upper managers who some presume to be combining with them into the ‘professional-managerial class’. professional employees will also be compared with non-managerial industrial workers, who have long been regarded as the leading working-class force and with service workers, two groups typically seen as the traditional working class. finally, i use survey data on political attitudes to provide evidence of the extent to which non-managerial professional employees and those in other class positions express either pro-labour oppositional class consciousness or pro-capital oppositional consciousness. this will provide some initial estimates of the extent to which these strategic knowledge workers may be inclined to become a new working class disposed to progressive political action against capital or, conversely, to become a highly qualified and relatively affluent contemporary labour aristocracy. changing employment class structure of advanced capitalism there is an increasingly convergent view among critical class analysts that the employment class structure of advanced capitalism is tripartite in character. as noted at the outset, there are owners of businesses, non-managerial producers of goods and services, as well as managers. to stay in business, owners are driven by profit imperatives. the non-managerial workers they hire are driven by the need to gain sufficient benefits to sustain themselves and their families. the managerial hierarchy is driven by both imperatives, with relative priority linked to where they are in the hierarchy. more specifically, we can distinguish ten class positions among these three basic groups in contemporary production relations: owners • corporate capitalists • large employers • small employers • self-employed non-managerial workers • professional employees • service workers • industrial workers managerial employees • upper managers • middle managers • supervisors i have critically reviewed the relevant research literature, defined and documented all these classes more carefully elsewhere (livingstone et al 2021; livingstone 2023). but here i will focus mainly on professional employees in comparison with other non-managerial workers and with upper managers, the class groups that the new working-class, labour aristocracy and pmc theses, respectively, presume as their close allies. 20 non-managerial workers include industrial workers who produce material goods in extractive, manufacturing and construction sectors. second service workers create or deliver a wide array of sales, business, social and other services. third, professional employees are recognized for specialized knowledge and granted some discretionary control to: a) design production processes for themselves and others; and b) have executed their own work with a relatively high level of autonomy, but they remain subordinated to employer and managerial prerogatives.2 upper managers are delegated by owners to control the overall labour process at the point of production to ensure profitability, but also contribute their labour to co-ordinate this process. under the authority of upper managers, there are middle managers who perform administrative and accounting staff services, as well as supervisors who control adherence to production standards by industrial and service workers but may also collaborate directly with them in aspects of this work. these lower-level managers have not typically been regarded as part of a presumed pmc and will not be included in the following comparisons. first, i will summarize some of the main features of this class structure over the past 3 decades, based on the best available comparative data for the g7 and scandinavian countries. the most readily available cross-national source of comparative data on recent employment class structures is the international labour office (2015) data set on key indicators in the labour market (kilm). the kilm report builds on the census data reported by countries to ilo. the kilm report relies on internationally comparable criteria derived from statistical standards agreed by the international conference of labour statisticians. the kilm data provide quite accurate estimates of employment by status--the numbers of employers, self-employed and employees—in these countries. employment by occupation data are also provided, distinguishing managers as well as professional, service workers and industrial workers in non-managerial occupations. but there are a few limits to these occupational data. first, occupation does not equate to class (see wright 1980). someone with occupational training as an engineer or nurse could become an employer, self-employed, a manager or a professional employee, with quite different class interests. the kilm data provided do not permit extracting employers and self-employed from the occupational distributions. so, i have taken the numbers of employers and self-employed for given years in these countries from the employment by status data and expressed the occupational distributions of managers as well as professional, service workers and industrial workers as proportions of the residual occupational data when employers and self-employed are removed. second, the ‘managers’ occupational data category includes only those with primary formal managerial occupations and omits many who combine other occupations with some formal managerial duties. a significant number of lower level managers (i.e. middle managers and supervisors) are buried in the non-managerial occupational groups. comparable kilm data are available from 1992 to 2016 and beyond. with the above provisos, basic estimated distributions of main employment classes for g7 and scandinavian countries in 1992 and 2016 are summarized in table 1. 2 see livingstone (2014) and livingstone, adams and sawchuk (2021) for further discussion and empirical analysis distinguishing professional employees from professional owners, self-employed professionals and professional managers. professional employees are found throughout private and public industrial and service sectors. 21 table 1 employment class structure, g7 and scandinavian countries, (1992) and 2016 (% of employed labour force) country employers selfemployed managers professional employees service workers industrial workers canada (6) 5 (8) 11 (9) 7 (23) 31 (25) 23 (28) 24 denmark (4) 3 (5) 5 (4) (29) 40 (27) 26 (31) 24 finland (4) 4 (12) 10 (4) 3 (22) 37 (30) 22 (28) 24 france (5) 4 (8) 7 (6) 6 (27) 34 (26) 21 (29) 27 germany (5) 4 (4) 6 (4) 4 (28) 36 (25) 25 (34) 25 italy (8) 7 (19) 16 (2) 3 (18) 25 (21) 23 (33) 26 japan (4) 2 (11) 6 (3) 2 (18) 24 (37) 39 (27) 27 norway (4) 2 (6) 5 (13) 7 (21) 42 (27) 25 (30) 20 sweden (4) 4 (8) 6 (4) 5 (30) 42 (25) 23 (29) 20 uk (4) 2 (9) 13 (9) 9 (30) 32 (24) 24 (25) 20 us (4) (5) 4 (8) 10 (29) 34 (28) 27 (26) 23 source: livingstone 2023 (estimated from ilo kilm report, 2015). these data permit the following general conclusions. the vast majority of those in the employed labour force are now hired employees. in most of these countries this amounts to over 85 percent of those employed. employers and self-employed make up less than 15 percent of the labour force in most countries, and the self-employed are twice as numerous as employers. professional employees are increasing significantly and now make up over 30 percent of the labour force in nearly all of these countries. those in skilled trades, machine operators and other manual occupations (‘industrial workers’) are declining significantly and now make up less than 35 percent of the labour force in all these countries. those in clerical, sales and service occupations (‘service workers’) are also now declining at least slightly in most of these countries and generally make up under 30 percent of the labour force.those in definite managerial positions are relatively small numbers -but they are supplemented by those in other non-managerial occupations with some formal managerial or supervisory duties. the conflating of some lower-level managers with non-managerial occupations is problematic. much conventional empirical research continues to confuse employment classes with occupations. to the immediate point, professional employees who become managers should not be presumptively conflated with either professional employees per se or with the smaller numbers of professional employers (livingstone et al 2021). a series of national labour force surveys conducted in canada between 1982 and 2016 permit more accurate class distinctions, as summarized in table 2.3 3 the data in most of the following tables is drawn from livingstone (2023) where there is much further documentation. 22 table 2 general class distribution, employed labour force, canada, 1982-2016 (%) general class location employment class 1982 1998 2004 2010 2016 owners corporate capitalist/large employer >1 >1 >1 >1 >1 small employer 3 6 6 5 4 self-employed 13 10 13 12 10 all owners 16 16 19 17 14 managerial upper manager 1 1 2 2 2 mid/low manager 4 7 10 10 13 supervisor 4 6 6 6 5 all managerial 9 14 18 18 20 non-managerial professional employee 12 17 18 24 23 service worker 33 26 22 23 25 industrial worker 30 27 23 18 18 all non-managerial 75 70 63 65 66 employed n 1758 873 5570 1192 2881 source: livingstone, 2023 owners, including tiny numbers of corporate capitalists and large employers, small numbers of small employers and larger numbers of self-employed, all of whom control their own businesses, have continued to make up around 15 percent of the employed labour force. the numbers of corporate capitalists and large employers are both too small for accurate estimates of change with these samples. corporate capitalists are very tiny in number. even though the cut-off limit for ‘large’ employers is as low as having 10 employees in these surveys, they remain at less than 1 percent of the labour force. these findings are consistent with mounting international evidence that more national capital assets are being consolidated in fewer hands (serfati 2014). the survey evidence does indicate that small employers have remained a consistently small percentage of the labour force. small employers continue to generate significant numbers of new jobs but often with very limited security for either their employees or themselves. the selfemployed have continued to be a more substantial portion of the labour force, around 10 percent, albeit highly prone to bankruptcy and downward mobility into hired labour posts or unemployment, and with more limited prospects of becoming successful enough to hire others and become small employers. nearly all self-employed remain highly dependent on their own labour, whether in independent enterprises or increasingly subcontracting to larger firms. among non-managerial employees, a decline of manufacturing jobs during this period is a major consequence of automation and the export of less skilled jobs to less developed countries. the result has been a reduction of employment of industrial workers in private material goods producing sectors to less than 20 percent of the employed labour force. 23 a relative growth of service workers, or ’white collar proletarians’; through most of the 20th century was grounded in increasing recognition by capital of the service sector as the ’new frontier’ for commodification, as well as the initial difficulty of mechanizing the growing array of discrete clerical recording and personal sales tasks involved in realizing the profits on the burgeoning numbers of material goods. growth of public service workers was also related to processing general population entitlements for health, education and other state benefits even in the wake of plant closures and office computerization. but, more recently, automation and routinization have also led to the rapid rise of self-service (think of the declines of bank tellers, secretarial pools, travel agents and toll booth collectors) and the export of portable service jobs. clerical, sales and service workers have therefore declined somewhat since the 1980s although still making up around a quarter of the employed labour force. professional employees roughly doubled in size to over 20 percent of the employed labour force, consistent with a multitude of predictions about the centrality of `knowledge workers` in the `new economy`. professional employees may now be a larger part of the employed labour force than the declining numbers of industrial workers. an absolute growth of managerial positions has been generally predicted in terms of the need to coordinate and control an increasingly capitaland technology-intensive labor process (kenney 1997). managerial employees actually grew substantially during this period, now making up about 20 percent of the labour force. upper managers, who control a plant, branch or division of an entire organization, have increased in absolute numbers but still make up only 2 percent of the labour force. most of the proportionate increase has been in middle management, ‘back office’ administrative functions regulating non-managerial workers and accounting for production output. direct supervisors and forepersons still make up about the same proportion of the overall labour force as previously, so a smaller proportion of management per se is now devoted to direct supervision. as the managerial hierarchy has expanded, more managers themselves are managed. in 1982, around a third of all managers had no manager above them to whom they were required to report; by 2010, the proportion had declined to around 5 percent (livingstone, pollock and raykov, 2016). this change is mainly reflective of the general inflation of the numbers of middle managers subordinated to upper managers. it should be noted here that there has been a pervasive assumption that all levels of managers generally share similar orientations. but given their different coordinating and controlling roles, significant polarization of their powers has now been found (livingstone et al 2021). so, overall, there have likely been three substantial changes in employment class structure during this period. first and foremost, professional employees with their more specialized knowledge have become a much larger part of the non-managerial labour force. secondly, the traditional working class of industrial workers and service workers, who mainly provide their labour without specialized requirements, has declined from a majority to a minority of the entire employed labour force. thirdly, middle managers are playing a larger role in regulating production processes. some class analysts might accept the general accuracy of this profile of class structure as well as these recent structural changes. but there is a popular tendency to stress more a growing precariousness among non-managerial employees, as well as to portray those in the most temporary insecure jobs as distinctly more dissatisfied and possibly more predisposed to political extremism in response to their fears, with some in this ‘precariat’ portrayed as a new working class to fight for progressive change (e.g. standing 2011). two points here. first, there may have been some increases in proportions of those in part-time jobs during this period. but the most careful 24 estimates of presumed dimensions of precarity confirm that such changes have been marginal at best and have not significantly altered the employment class structure beyond the general changes documented above (ornstein 2021). secondly, few significant differences in either basic working conditions or political attitudes have been found between those who are full time or involuntary part-time in these respective class positions (livingstone 2023). workers’ sense of exploitation undoubtedly varies on many dimensions. but most non-managerial workers in capitalism share the precarious condition of being free to find another employer or unemployment challenges, as well as a general relative worsening of wages and working conditions since the onset of neoliberal austerity. being full or part-time, regular or temporary, does not appear to alter workers’ sense of these conditions much—in spite of much huffing and puffing about greater precarity. class and workplace power in general, we can expect employers to exercise an overarching prerogative of ownership in their firms, managers to exercise more limited authority in delegated terms, and non-managerial employees to be primarily subject to these ownership and managerial powers. a central dimension of workplace power is the extent of direct involvement in organizational decision-making. respondents to the series of canadian surveys were asked whether they participated in significant decision making in their organizations either by making decisions by themselves or with others about such matters as the types of products or services delivered, employee hiring and firing, budgets, workload, and change in procedure. the extent to which people participate in making these kinds of decisions-their organizational decision-making power-is likely to be very relevant to the degree to which they can exercise their autonomy and effectively utilize their skills in their particular jobs. table 3 summarizes the findings for different general employment classes as well as the different professional classes in the 2016 national survey. table 3 employment class by participation in organizational decision-making, canada, 2016 (% yes) employment class general labour force* professionals % % employers 88 100 self-employed 69 51 managers 62 50 professional employees 27 27 service workers 27 - industrial workers 27 - total 42 36 total n 2759 702 source: livingstone et al 2021. * general labour force class data include respondents in professional classes (n=702) as expected, employers generally as well as professional employers are all involved in significant organizational decision-making--with the exception of a few large employers who choose to fully delegate to their managers. the self-employed, including self-employed professionals, would also be expected to be the primary decision-makers in their own businesses, but some are now reliant on sub-contracts with larger corporations with little further influence. managers generally and professional managers in particular, as expected, have intermediate levels of involvement on organizational decisions: less than employers but more than non-managerial 25 employees. the extent of managerial authority can vary greatly from upper managers with power similar to employers to supervisors with much less. but only about a quarter of professional employees now indicate any involvement in organizational decision-making, a level comparable to both service workers and industrial workers. in spite of their specialized skills, professional employees in general are now less likely to be involved in organizational decisions than most managerial personnel and no more likely than less formally qualified non-managerial employees. at least by this measure of workplace power, the indications from this time series of canadian surveys suggest that the job control of professional employees has been diminishing in recent decades, consistent with arguments for the ‘proletarianization of professionals’ (e.g. oppenheimer 1973). further analyses of this time series of national surveys from 1982 to 2016 confirm that professional employees have been experiencing both increasing levels of underemployment of their credentials as well as decreasing opportunities to participate in further education to maintain and upgrade their skills (livingstone et al 2021). professional employees previously were favoured over other non-managerial workers both in terms of lower levels of underemployment given their scarcer qualifications and in terms of greater chances for further education given their strategic production value. but the gap has been quickly closing and a ‘reserve army’ of professional workers grows. these documented changes in workplace power, underemployment and continuing learning opportunities all suggest that professional employees are experiencing relatively worsening working conditions. so what effects if any are these changes having on class consciousness? oppositional class consciousness most recent studies of class consciousness have focused on questions of class identity or specific political attitudes. studies of class identity usually find that people locate themselves in terms of consumption levels, with growing numbers seeing themselves in the ‘middle classes’, that is neither rich nor poor—a reasonably accurate estimate for most consumers in advanced capitalist societies. most steelworkers for example in the 1980s considered themselves to be middle-class in terms of wage levels; at the same time, they were among the most progressive groups in terms of political attitudes (seccombe and livingstone 1999). in conceptual terms, three levels of class consciousness are commonly distinguished (see mann 1973): class identity; oppositional consciousness; and hegemonic capitalist or revolutionary labour class consciousness. • class identity is awareness of classes and extent of affiliation with a particular class; • oppositional consciousness is recognition of conflict of interest with another class or classes; and • hegemonic (or revolutionary) consciousness is recognition of a vision of society consistent with your class interest and commitment to maintain (or realize) this vision. 26 in the wake of major worker and student protests in 1968, particularly in france in may and in italy’s ‘hot autumn, there were various inquiries into the higher levels of class consciousness in advanced capitalist countries.4 since the 1970s, there have been very few critical studies that have investigated higher levels of class consciousness and even fewer that have examined connections between class consciousness and class position (see livingstone 2023). in the wake of the great recession, continuing neoliberal austerity and the covid-19 pandemic, it is surely time for more. here i will summarize highlights from the rare few relevant empirical studies since that time and then assess the current relative connections of employment class and household wealth with higher levels of class consciousness. the main focus will be on oppositional class consciousness. oppositional class consciousness in capitalism involves the extent to which the interests of capital and labour are recognized. the basic interest of capital is in the right to maximize profits. the basic interest of labour is in the right to strike, to withhold labour for decent benefits. someone with clearly pro-capital oppositional consciousness would support profit maximization and also oppose workers’ unconditional right to strike. conversely, pro-labour oppositional consciousness involves opposing profit maximization and unconditionally supporting workers’ right to strike. those with more mixed views on these two questions could be seen as holding a contradictory oppositional consciousness. a coherent oppositional level of class consciousness can be seen as pivotal for understanding the extent of conflict between class interests. without a clear sense of opposed class interests, any vision of an alternative society is more unlikely to be translated into concerted political action. the main questions used to estimate opposed class interests in the most recent canadian labour force survey and the several prior international and canadian surveys are: rights of capital: “owners of corporations make gains at the expense of their workers.” rights of labour: “during a strike, management should be prohibited by law from hiring workers to take the place of strikers.” the merits of these specific questions are certainly open to debate. but they are pretty much the only game in town for the moment and at least offer suggestive findings. a rare set of crossnational surveys containing these questions was done in the early 1980s.5 i have conducted a secondary analysis of the data to generate the estimates of oppositional class consciousness in table 4. 4 for representative studies including these ‘higher’ levels of class consciousness, mainly in the late 1960s and 1970s, see: touraine (1966); leggett (1968); ollman (1972); hazelrigg (1973); and moorhouse (1976). for earlier presentations of my own approach and more extensive literature reviews, see livingstone (1976, 1985, 1987). 5 these surveys were conducted under the leadership of the late erik olin wright. the data are publicly available. for further information on the cscc project data, and access to the data base, interested researchers can contact the institute for social research at the university of michigan, citing: wright, erik olin. comparative project on class structure and class consciousness: core and country-specific files. [distributor], 1992-02-17. https://doi.org/10.3886/icpsr09323.v1. https://doi.org/10.3886/icpsr09323.v1 27 table 4 oppositional class consciousness, advanced capitalist countries, 1980s country pro-capital (%) contradictory (%) pro-labour (%) australia 32 47 22 canada 15 44 42 japan 8 45 47 norway 28 45 28 sweden 11 34 56 us 23 47 30 source: livingstone 2023. many analysts of class consciousness during this period argued—without much direct evidence--that contradictory class consciousness was prevalent in advanced capitalist societies, with many workers’ views clouded by a dominant capitalist ideology (see abercrombie, hill and turner 1982 for critical discussion). the findings for the surveyed countries offer some support for this thesis. but that argument ignores two other important empirical findings. first, oppositional labour consciousness was nearly equivalent to or greater than contradictory consciousness in some countries. secondly, pro-labour oppositional consciousness was greater than pro-capital consciousness in most countries. sweden was the leading case, with a majority expressing pro-labour consciousness and only a small minority indicating pro-capital consciousness. the later series of national surveys conducted only in canada offers estimates of the more recent development of oppositional class consciousness. the general findings are summarized in table 5. table 5 oppositional class consciousness, canada, 1982-2016 oppositional class consciousness year pro-capital (%) contradictory (%) pro-labour (%) 1982 15 44 42 2004 12 54 34 2010 13 55 33 2016 10 54 36 source: livingstone 2023. the general pattern of oppositional consciousness has been fairly consistent during this period. contradictory consciousness has been most common, with many people either choosing to pragmatically accept the opposed rights of both capital and labour, or to avoid making a choice on one or the other. some researchers have argued that such pragmatic acceptance is pervasive among subordinated classes (e.g. mann 1970). but once again this ignores the other basic findings. prolabour oppositional consciousness has remained substantial throughout this period (33 to 42 percent) and much greater than pro-labour oppositional consciousness (10 to 15 percent). the pertinent issue now is how these patterns of oppositional class consciousness are connected to employment class positions. 28 employment class and oppositional class consciousness for class in the production relations of advanced capitalism to have prospects for progressive political significance, there have to be discernible connections between exploited peoples’ grounded experience in these relations and their consciousness of their exploitation. the most basic assumption here is that non-managerial employees are exploited workers. therefore, there should be distinctive connections between these workers’ class locations and their expressions of opposition to capitalist working conditions. more specifically, there should be positive associations between non-managerial employee classes and expressions of pro-labour oppositional class consciousness. conversely, there should be positive associations among corporate capitalists, larger employers and upper managers with pro-capital oppositional class consciousness. those in more intermediate class positions—small employers and the self-employed, as well as lower level managers—should express more mixed variants of these forms of class consciousness. the basic findings from the rare cross-national surveys in the early 1980s that distinguished employment classes adequately and also included oppositional consciousness questions are summarized in table 6. the focus is on non-managerial employees as well as large employers and upper managers, and the extent to which they expressed pro-labour versus pro-capital views. the remainder in each class expressed contradictory consciousness. table 6 class by oppositional class consciousness, advanced capitalist countries, 1980s (% pro-labour/pro-capital views) employment class u.s. norway canada japan sweden corporate capitalist n/a n/a 0/80 n/a n/a large employer 8/50 17/43 9/55 25/38 0/100 upper manager 15/46 14/47 6/53 * 26/32 professional employee 36/22 26/27 48/14 49/9 52/12 service worker 30/17 29/25 41/13 50/5 59/7 industrial worker 40/13 39/16 54/8 51/9 71/3 total % 30/23 28/28 42/15 46/8 55/11 total n 1697 1676 1758 547 1137 source: livingstone 2023. *japanese upper managers were not distinguished from middle managers in this sample corporate capitalists have extremely rarely permitted assessment of their oppositional class consciousness. but in an exceptional series of canadian surveys that addressed the relevant questions, representative samples of corporate executives consistently expressed much higher levels of pro-capital consciousness than any other class groups, and a total absence of pro-labour consciousness (livingstone 2023). this is in keeping with the classic notion of ideological hegemony (see livingstone 1976), where the leading fraction of the dominant class inherently believes in and acts to realize its class interests while other subordinate classes are expected to express more mixed or contradictory views and are vulnerable to alliances and actions against their class interests. consistent with this perspective, large employers and upper managers in most countries were more likely to express pro-capital views than mixed views and much less likely to indicate pro-labour sympathies. 29 patterns of oppositional consciousness among all three groups of non-managerial workers were quite different than this. while contradictory consciousness was often the most common view, in almost every instance pro-labour consciousness was greater than pro-capital consciousness and often far greater. in every case, professional employees were far less likely than upper managers to indicate pro-capital views. professional employees were generally much closer to industrial workers and service workers in their pro-labour views. sweden was the leading case, with majorities among all three groups of non-managerial workers expressing pro-labour views and with very few holding pro-capital views. it is also notable that in the wake of the serious challenge to the sanctity of profits by a proposed wage-earner fund (the meidner plan), large swedish employers expressed the strongest unanimity in defence of profits and against strikes. but the basic point here for my immediate purpose is clear confirmation that nonmanagerial workers in general and professional employees in almost every case were more likely to hold pro-labour views than pro-capital views, indicating substantial awareness of opposed class interests with capital among the most exploited workers. the sole exception was norway where a tradition of use of earnings from public ownership of major corporations--and especially international profits from north sea oil since the 1960s--to improve norwegian workers benefits complicates views on benefits of profit maximization and thereby weakens pro-labour oppositional consciousness. this might be seen as a point in favour of the labour aristocracy thesis, but even here non-managerial workers overall were more likely to express pro-labour than pro-capital views. more recent assessments of connections between employment class and oppositional consciousness need to rely on the later series of canadian surveys. the basic findings on prolabour and pro-capital views are presented in table 7. again, the residual in each class expressed contradictory consciousness. table 7 class by oppositional class consciousness, canada, 1982-2016 (% pro-labour/pro-capital views) employment class 1982 2004 2010 2016 corporate capitalist* 0/80 2/64 n/a n/a large employer 9/55 11/37 0/25 11/17 upper manager 6/53 23/33 14/28 17/23 professional employee 48/14 38/10 40/8 41/8 service worker 41/13 39/9 27/13 37/7 industrial worker 54/8 41/11 37/14 49/6 total % 15/42 13/35 13/33 10/37 total n 1758 2776 1193 2883 source: livingstone 2023. 30 the patterns of oppositional class consciousness among non-managerial workers in canada remained quite consistent over this period. pro-labour views were much greater than pro-capital views among industrial workers, service workers and professional employees. all were more likely to recognize their shared exploitation than to accede to the ideological claims of capital. while direct evidence is lacking since 2000, it is safe to assume that most corporate capitalists still hold strong pro-capital views. but there has been a notable change among capitals’ closest allies. both large employers and upper managers express diminishing support for capital. their majority pro-capital views in 1982 have declined to small minorities while mixed and pro-labour views have increased. this decline appears to be based at least partly on a growing sense among most employers and managers that corporate profits are increasingly benefitting corporate owners at their expense as well. so, the weight of available empirical evidence suggests that professional employees and upper managers generally have quite different working conditions and forms of oppositional class consciousness. the evidence should be sufficient to dismiss the fiction of an emergent ‘professional-managerial class’. the further findings that professional employees do increasingly share working conditions with and consistently express pro-labour oppositional consciousness similar to industrial workers and service workers provides support for their development as a ‘new working class’. the remaining issue is whether the more well-paid non-managerial workers, including professional employees, have ‘bought the bribe’ and become more supportive of capitalism than other workers. the wealth effect the 2016 canadian national labour force survey included a question on net total wealth. respondents were asked to estimate the value of their owned house, vehicles and other consumer durables, cash, checking and savings accounts, stocks and mutual funds, private retirement accounts, and any other assets, minus their mortgage and any other debts. the sample size is reduced because people generally are more reluctant to share financial information. older workers are more likely to have accumulated more assets while unionized workers benefit from at least some wage premium. on the other hand, since the 1970s the hired labour force has become much more burdened by personal debt which has reduced net assets very considerably. in any case, the basic effects of net wealth on pro-labour oppositional consciousness for key employment classes are summarized in table 8. 31 table 8 oppositional class consciousness by employment class and household wealth, canada, 2016 (% pro-labour oppositional consciousness) household wealth ($) <20,000 20— 75,000 75150,000 150500,000 500-1 million 1 million+ all wealth levels class position corporate capitalist -----0 0 large employer -0 0 0 0 0 0 upper manager -0 0 14 50 10 19 professional employee 55 39 42 44 36 32 44 service worker 39 45 37 41 32 57 40 industrial worker 61 44 45 57 52 57 54 total 48 42 35 38 36 28 40 source: livingstone 2023 in assessing the findings in table 8, we should keep in mind the overall pattern of oppositional class consciousness in the labour force in 2016 (see table 5): a small majority with mixed or contradictory consciousness, over a third with pro-labour consciousness and only around 10 percent with pro-capital consciousness. in terms of specific classes, corporate capitalists- generally with net assets over a million dollars--continued to express strong pro-capital views with no pro-labour support in the latest available survey. this only confirms what should be selfevident. in some contrast, large employers have become more disenchanted with exclusion from burgeoning corporate profits, but regardless of their level of wealth they are still clear about their basic class interest in opposing labour’s right to strike. upper managers are also becoming more disenchanted with profit exclusion and some with greater asset security may even increased express support for labour rights. but at most levels of wealth there are still only miniscule prolabour views at best among those who have been corporate capital’s closest allies. none of this should be surprising--aside from glimmers of pro-labour views among some relatively well-off public sector upper managers. the findings for effects of wealth on the oppositional consciousness of non-managerial workers are directly relevant to the labour aristocracy thesis. first, there is virtually no support for claims that either industrial workers or service workers become more accepting of capitalist interests as they accrue greater assets. majorities among both industrial workers with less than 20,000 dollars and those with over a million in net assets express pro-labour oppositional consciousness. service workers may be even more likely to express pro-labour consciousness as they gain greater asset security. it should be kept in mind that much of this asset wealth is in rapidly escalating housing prices which could collapse equally rapidly. at least in these terms, acquiring relatively greater assets is not leading the traditional working class to ‘take the bribe’. 32 the findings for professional employees are not quite so clear. the majority of professional employees with very little net wealth express pro-labour oppositional consciousness. these are mainly younger professionals who are underemployed with large debt burdens. professional employees who have been able to gain some net assets with highly specialized individual skills may be somewhat less likely to hold pro-labour views. but pro-labour consciousness remains much more common than pro-capital views among professional employees at all levels of wealth including those with over a million in net assets. in common with other non-managerial workers, few professional employees at any wealth level express pro-capital views. there is no significant indication here that professional employees who have accrued more net assets are becoming more sympathetic to capitalism. their general patterns of oppositional class consciousness are much more similar to those of industrial and service workers than to ‘big capital’ and upper management. at least on the available evidence from the canadian case, professional employees are not becoming labour aristocrats. their working conditions and views are converging with other nonmanagerial workers and they could well be considered as a new working class. according to further analyses of these survey data, there are also important effects of race and union status on oppositional class consciousness. black workers, who are more likely to be oppressed/discriminated against in their workplaces, are also more likely to express pro-labour consciousness, with the strongest expression among black industrial workers (74 percent) compared to white workers (50 percent). union effects are not quite as strong but majorities of industrial workers, service workers and professional employees who are unionized all express prolabour views. finally, a word about findings on revolutionary class consciousness, as analyzed in detail in the related book (livingstone 2023). both hegemonic capitalist consciousness and revolutionary labour consciousness--the highest forms of class consciousness--are expressed by small proportions of the labour force. but professional employees are now just as likely as industrial workers to express revolutionary labour consciousness. conclusions on the basis of this investigation, i draw the following conclusions. non-managerial professional employees are now the most substantial increasing part of the employment class structure in advanced capitalism. professional employees share both working conditions and extent of progressive class consciousness with industrial workers and service workers, and all three sorts of non-managerial workers sense their exploitation in capitalist production relations to similar extent.professional employees are quite distinct from upper managers in both working conditions and class consciousness, and they are not part of the false amalgam ‘professional-managerial class’ that some pundits have concocted. there is little support for the labour aristocracy thesis often used to rationalize labour quiescence. professional employees and other non-managerial workers who have accrued more net wealth are about as likely as workers with less net assets to express pro-labour oppositional class consciousness. the rejection of the labour aristocracy thesis is consistent with most of the careful historical research on progressive labour movements. as john kelley (1988 p 165) observed: ‘historically, the most class conscious and militant sections of the working class have often been those whose earnings, job security and status placed them in a position of relative privilege relative to many of their fellow workers’. charlie post (2010, 33) more recently concurs: “…relatively well-paid and securely employed workers…tend to be concentrated in large, capital-intensive workplaces that are often central to the capitalist economy. these workers have considerable social power when they act collectively. strikes in these industries have a much greater impact on the economy than 33 workers in smaller, less capital-intensive workplaces (garment, office-cleaning, etc.) workers in such industries are also often the first targets of capitalist restructuring in periods of falling profits and sharpened competition.” finally, these workers often have a greater commitment to the collective defence and improvement of their jobs than the lower-paid. professional employees are now among the most highly skilled, relatively well-paid nonmanagerial workers in advanced capitalism and with comparable oppositional class consciousness to industrial workers. over the past century, democratic national transitions have clearly been more likely to take place when opposition to the incumbent regime has been led by industrial workers (dahlum et al 2019). whatever political alliances emerge to lead grassroots transition, one thing is quite likely. representatives of non-managerial hired labour--marx's proletariat--will be centrally involved. in current terms this includes industrial workers, service workers and professional employees. the core of capitalism's ‘working class’ has changed markedly since the industrial revolution. but these are the people who are now most directly exploited by capital to generate the profits to reproduce this economic system. they have often been divided on bases of race, gender, education and urban-rural grounds but they have remained consistently those with the most oppositional labour class consciousness. further analysis suggests that professional employees are now also just as likely as industrial workers to be among the smaller numbers who express revolutionary labour consciousness needed to lead democratic transitions. (livingstone 2023). professional employees may not be likely to give themselves ‘working class’ identities. but most workers now see themselves in the middle of the class structure and this has not prevented either industrial steelworkers or professional nurses from developing among the highest levels of pro-labour oppositional consciousness (seccombe and livingstone 1999; livingstone et al 2021; livingstone 2023). in addition, professional employees are now among the most highly organized workers and they are increasingly represented in professional unions within national labour congresses. more empirical research is certainly needed to confirm and deepen the findings presented here. similar comparative studies could now quickly be conducted in many countries with current survey technologies through partnerships of progressive labour and social organizations with qualified sympathetic researchers. (the design information and data for the present study are easily publicly available6). such studies are infinitely easier to do now than when the elderly marx tried in 1880 with french workers (marx 1938). but the available direct evidence suggests that professional employees are becoming a new working class ready to play a central activist role in the labour movement of the 21st century to respond to the imminent existential threats of capitalism and to aid in leading transition to a sustainable equitable future. references abercrombie, n., s. hill and b. turner. (1982). the dominant ideology thesis. london: allen & unwin. bell, d. (1973). the coming of post-industrial society. new york: basic books. 6 the research design, survey questionnaires, and detailed data are all publicly accessible to anyone interested at: https://borealisdata.ca/dataverse/canadaworklearningsurveys1998-2016 34 camfield, d. (2020, january 9). the “pmc” does not exist and why it matters for socialists. new politics. https://newpol.org/the-pmc-does-not-exist-and-why-itmatters-for-socialists/ canada work learning surveys. 1998–2016. <https://borealisdata.ca/dataverse/canadaworklearningsurveys1998-2016>. dahlum, s., c.h. knutsen and t. wig. (2019). who revolts? empirically revisiting the social origins of democracy. the journal of politics, volume 81, number 4. published online august 30, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/704699 drucker, peter. peter drucker on the profession of management. cambridge: harvard university press, 1998. gallie, d. (1978). in search of the new working class: automation and social integration within the capitalist enterprise. london: cambridge university press. hazelrigg, l. (1973). aspects of the measurement of class consciousness. in m. axner and a. grimshaw (eds.), comparative social research (pp. 219-47). new york: john wiley. huber, m. (2022). climate change as class war: building socialism on a warming planet. london: verso. international labour organization. (2015). ilo key indicators of the labour market, ilostat database. https://www.ilo.org/global/statistics-and-databases/research-anddatabases/kilm/lang--en/index.htm. (includes projections post-2015). kelly, j. (1988). trade unions and socialist politics. london: verso. kenney m (1997) value creation in the late twentieth century: the rise of the knowledge worker. in: davis j, hirschl ta, stack m (eds.) cutting edge: technology, information capitalism and social revolution (pp. 87–102). new york: verso. leggett, j. (1968). class, race and labor: working class consciousness in detroit, new york: oxford university press. livingstone dw (1976). on hegemony in corporate capitalist states: material structures, ideological forms, class consciousness and hegemonic acts. sociological inquiry 46(3–4): 235–250. livingstone, d.w. (1985). class consciousness. in livingstone. social crisis and schooling (pp 54-57). toronto: garamond press. livingstone, d.w. (1987). class position, class consciousness and political party preference in hard times. (pp. 194-212). in r. argue et al. (eds) working people in hard times. toronto: garamond press. livingstone, d. w. (2014). interrogating professional power and recognition of specialized knowledge: a class analysis. european journal for research on the education and learning of adults, 5(1): 13-29. livingstone, d.w. (2023). tipping point for advanced capitalism: class, class consciousness and activism in the ‘knowledge economy’. black point, nova scotia: fernwood publishing. livingstone, d.w., t.l. adams and p.h. sawchuk. (2021). professional power and skill use in the ‘knowledge economy’. leiden/boston: brill/sense. livingstone dw, k. pollock, m. raykov. (2016). family binds and glass ceilings: women managers’ promotion limits in a ‘knowledge economy’ critical sociology 42(1): 145– 166. mallet, s. (1975). the new working class. nottingham, uk: spokesman books. https://newpol.org/the-pmc-does-not-exist-and-why-it-matters-for-socialists/ https://newpol.org/the-pmc-does-not-exist-and-why-it-matters-for-socialists/ 35 mann, m. (1970). the social cohesion of liberal democracy. american sociological review. 35,3 (june): 423-439. mann, m (1973). consciousness and action among the western working class. london: macmillan. marx, k. (1938). a workers’ inquiry. new international. 4, 12 (december): 379-381. https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol04/no12/marx.htm meiksins, p. (1986). beyond the boundary question. new left review.157:101-20. moorhouse, h. (1976). attitudes to class and class relationships in britain. sociology 10, 3: 469-96. ollman, b. (1972). toward class consciousness next time: marx and the working class. politics and society 3,1 (fall): 1-24 ornstein, m. (2021). precarious employment in canada. canadian journal of sociology. 46,3:217-255. oppenheimer, m. (1973). the proletarianization of the professional. in p. halmos, (ed.) (sociological review monograph series: professionalisation and social change special issue). sociological review 20, s1: 213–237. post, c. (2010). exploring working-class consciousness: a critique of the theory of the ‘labour-aristocracy’. historical materialism, 18, 3-38. seccombe w., livingstone d.w. (1999) ‘down to earth people’: beyond class reductionism and post modernism. toronto: garamond press. serfati c (2014) the new configuration of the capitalist class. in l. panitch, g. albo, v. chibber (eds.) registering class: socialist register 2014. (pp. 139–161). london: merlin press. standing, g. (2011). the precariat: the new dangerous class. london: bloomsbury academic. touraine, a. (1966). la conscience ouvriere. paris: editions du seuil. winant, g. (2017, june 27). the new working class. dissent. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/new-working-class wright e.o. (1980) class and occupation. theory and society. 9: 177–214. https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/issue.htm#ni38_12 https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol04/no12/marx.htm alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review democracy without journalism: confronting the misinformation society, by victor pickard. oxford university press, 2019. $35.99., paper. isbn: 978-0-19094-676-0. pages: 1-264. reviewed by shreyashi ganguly1 in june 2023, canada passed the bill c-18 which mandated the big tech companies such as google and meta to compensate online media organizations if they wished to continue displaying canadian news content on their platforms. aimed to enhance an economically fair relationship between the tech conglomerates and online news portals, the enforcement of the act, however, saw google and meta blocking canadian news content instead (jones & aiello, 2023). this is inconvenient for a large section of the populace that derives its information from news links on facebook and google. but the tech giants would rather have their users denied information than pay the news organizations. this is but one of the many developments that point to the ways in which the global capitalist framework determines the nature of exchange of information and communication around the world. victor pickard’s book, democracy without journalism: confronting the misinformation society (2019) recognizes this important interplay between media and capitalist reckonings and comes at this important juncture in history where capitalist considerations dictate the message on the medium but, more importantly, who gets to read said message. the book essentially explores the crisis in journalism that is affecting the media in the united states today. this is an ambitious project, undoubtedly, but pickard succinctly traces the historical arc of the press in the us, pointing to the different events in press freedom in the country’s history, its long-drawn engagement with commercialization and the many political and social developments that have culminated in the present crisis. pickard etches out some structural fallacies behind this such as media monopoly, the collapse of professional journalism, the disparate coverage of news, the precarious nature of journalistic labour. these and many more such factors have led to the creation of what he calls “misinformation society”, an electorate characterized by increasingly poor levels of journalistic standards. the arguments are specific to the us, although the broad patterns examined in the book can be used to understand key developments in press freedom and the media industry in countries across the world — adjusted for political contexts, of course. the book, however, is not limited to a description of the systemic failures of the us press alone. it also examines the role journalism plays in sustaining democratic ideals. it takes as its starting point the idea of journalism as the fourth estate and delineates the consequences that endemic failures of media might have on democracy. manuel castells argues (2007) that shaping people’s minds is a fundamental source of power that is more effective than fear or coercion. the media’s importance for democracy is amplified when one considers the impact they have on shaping people’s minds. it is in this aspect that pickard’s arguments are nuanced. by pointing to the fact that the degradation of media is dangerous to society, the author underscores the importance of a free, public press in times increasingly characterized by 1 shreyashi ganguly is a phd student in sociology at york university, toronto. email address: shreyag4@yorku.ca www.alternateroutes.ca 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research commercialization, censorship and sensationalism. thus, freeing media from commercial considerations is an important political project. pickard points to the onslaught of the digital media and the ways in which it has upended conventional modes of journalism. although this is not a novel argument, the author does carefully analyse the different avenues through which digital technologies have negatively impacted print media. craigslist is such an example that has taken over classified advertising, an otherwise important source of revenue for newspapers. the book focuses primarily on the structural deficits of the us media, but it does take under its ambit a discussion on the agency within the media industry. it would be too simplistic to think of media houses as readily giving in to the pressures of commercialization. pickard’s analysis is balanced in this sense since it accords importance to the multiple ways in which, historically, journalists and news workers have challenged the commercial logic of the media industry. the book stems from pickard’s prolonged engagement with media reform organizations. the analysis, thus, recurrently draws from personal experiences which lends it a certain sense of authenticity. but the methodology is not clearly defined. pickard mentions the use of historical data and policy documents, and participant observation for over more than a decade. but references to his sample or the nature of the documents he is alluding to are sparse. the author also highlights the spectre of market censorship, where the market controls what can and cannot be said. this is an important argument given that the media oligopolies control much of what can be published in the public domain. but the analysis does not talk about state censorship enough. surely this is important given the collusion between the market and state. perhaps a little more attention to the effects of state censorship on media especially when it aligns with the market logic would have been beneficial. pickard’s analysis, however, is not limited to a mere description of the shortcomings of the media in the us. he goes a step further to offer some concrete measures that can be adopted in order to conceive an alternative. this futuristic rumination aids in achieving a rounded understanding of the problem and contributes positively to the overall reading experience. pickard repeatedly underscores the importance of public service journalism and stresses the importance of well-funded public media institutions, regulation of news outlets and promotion of media ownership diversity as some of the steps that can be taken to strengthen american journalism and, by extension, social democracy in the country. his arguments are well founded in policy analysis and are thus based on evidence. democracy without journalism is timely since capitalist concerns are increasingly becoming determinant of every aspect of democracy, let alone journalism. the book will be of interest to not only people interested in media studies but also to those that are interested in learning about global capitalist framework and its implications for society. its appeal lies in its nuanced arguments which demonstrate careful analysis without veering towards overly complicated deliberations. particularly, the discussion on the way forward elevates the analysis by introducing the element of hope, a rarity in academic scholarship. it shows that in spite of the shortcomings, there are some practical ways to overcome the crisis in journalism. the broad motif explored in the book is not limited to academic discussions alone. the media crisis in the us has serious implications for the functioning of society and given the primacy of the country on the global map, the deplorable condition of journalism in the us adversely impacts journalistic quality across the world. thus, the many suggestions www.alternateroutes.ca 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research offered by the book to resurrect the free press can be carefully appropriated to devise strategies that could potentially be applied to a non-us context. references castells, m. (2007). communication, power and counter-power in the network society. international journal of communication, 1(1), 29. jones, a. m., & aiello, r. (2023, july 21). understanding bill c-18: canada’s online news act and its proposed rules, explained. ctvnews. https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/understanding-bill-c-18-canada-s-online-news-act-andits-proposed-rules-explained-1.6488532 in the fight of our lives | 5 6 | work for change in the fight of our lives | 7 8 | work for change in the fight of our lives | 9 10 | work for change https://medium.com/@oxfamifis/austerity-is-not-a-fair-shot-fdc4e11a06b6 https://medium.com/@oxfamifis/austerity-is-not-a-fair-shot-fdc4e11a06b6 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/for-profit-care-homes-coronavirus-deaths-wfpcbc-cbc-1.5952171 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/for-profit-care-homes-coronavirus-deaths-wfpcbc-cbc-1.5952171 https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/the-10-trillion-dollar-rescue-how-governments-can-deliver-impact https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/the-10-trillion-dollar-rescue-how-governments-can-deliver-impact https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/the-10-trillion-dollar-rescue-how-governments-can-deliver-impact https://www.ft.com/content/c6d2de3a-6ec5-11ea-89df-41bea055720b https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bank-earnings-thursday-1.6042217 https://www.gov.nl.ca/releases/2021/exec/0506n02/ in the fight of our lives | 11 https://voxeu.org/article/fiscal-austerity-intensifies-increase-inequality-after-pandemics https://voxeu.org/article/fiscal-austerity-intensifies-increase-inequality-after-pandemics https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/statements-and-speeches/wcms_779257/lang--en/index.htm https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/statements-and-speeches/wcms_779257/lang--en/index.htm https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/statements-and-speeches/wcms_779257/lang--en/index.htm 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https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/death-rates-in-long-term-care-by-ownership-release/ https://www.ontario.ca/page/long-term-care-covid-19-commission-progress-interim-recommendations https://www.ontario.ca/page/long-term-care-covid-19-commission-progress-interim-recommendations https://www.oecd.org/economic-outlook/ https://www.oecd.org/economic-outlook/ https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00396-2 https://pressprogress.ca/experts-say-long-term-care-companys-report-on-covid-19-deaths-deflects-blame-from-for-profit-business-model/ https://pressprogress.ca/experts-say-long-term-care-companys-report-on-covid-19-deaths-deflects-blame-from-for-profit-business-model/ https://pressprogress.ca/experts-say-long-term-care-companys-report-on-covid-19-deaths-deflects-blame-from-for-profit-business-model/ http://psacunion.ca/new-report-reinforces-need-make-revera-long-term http://psacunion.ca/new-report-reinforces-need-make-revera-long-term in the fight of our lives | 13 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2777924 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2777924 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-government-200-million-mrna-1.6031024#:~:text=politics-,federal%20government%20invests%20%24200%20million%20to%20build%20an%20mrna%20vaccine,investment%20in%20a%20mississauga%2c%20ont https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-government-200-million-mrna-1.6031024#:~:text=politics-,federal%20government%20invests%20%24200%20million%20to%20build%20an%20mrna%20vaccine,investment%20in%20a%20mississauga%2c%20ont https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-government-200-million-mrna-1.6031024#:~:text=politics-,federal%20government%20invests%20%24200%20million%20to%20build%20an%20mrna%20vaccine,investment%20in%20a%20mississauga%2c%20ont 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planners in toronto set out a clear modern vision of a more urban type of suburb to be developed at higher densities and with more variation in built form than earlier suburbs in the region. a key element in their vision was the high-rise residential building. the planners’ ideas were enthusiastically embraced by public and private sector city-builders with the result that more than 1,100 high-rise apartment buildings were built in the city of toronto by the early 1980s. many of them are located in what were once geographically peripheral locations but are now widely referred to as the “inner” or “older” suburbs, descriptive terminology that distinguishes them from newer suburban developments that extend many kilometres beyond them. most of the high-rise buildings have long since lost the glamour they derived from their newness (a new way of living in a new type of building in a new kind of suburb). indeed, today they represent an aging housing stock with extensive building maintenance backlogs and increasingly racialized and low income tenant populations. the neighbourhoods they are situated in are seen to be lacking in the necessities of everyday life: adequate community and social services, good public transport connections, and access to healthy food. the toronto “inner suburb,” and especially its high-rise rental buildings, is widely perceived to be in decline, but there are very different perceptions of the nature and cause of suburban decline as well as ideas about what 1 douglas young is an associate professor in the urban studies program, department of social science, at york university. email: dogoyo@yorku.ca. this article is based on research that was supported by the social science and humanities research council of canada through funding from the major collaborative research initiative “global suburbanisms: governance, land and infrastructure in the 21st century” (2010-2017). the author would like to acknowledge the research assistance of will poppe. redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs | 219 would constitute suburban renewal. perceptions of suburban decline and renewal in toronto provide a clear case of the ways in which austerity as common sense shapes local urban policy and impacts everyday life. in this article i consider two different approaches to defining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs, approaches that directly reflect the implications of suburbanizing austerity and alternatives to it. neoliberal governance of the in-between city toronto’s high-rise suburbs are the direct result of planning policy that called for a substantial number of dwelling units to be provided in high--rise buildings. for example, in the 1960s planners in what was then the borough of north york (now the north-central part of the city of toronto) prepared district plans for as yet to be developed areas and stipulated housing targets. in north york’s district 10, of the total 50,000 dwellings to be built, 27,000 (or 54% of the total) were to be in the form of high-rise buildings (north york planning board 1967; north york planning board 1985). the result is a remarkable landscape with high-rise rental apartment buildings lining arterial roads and grouped into clusters of tall buildings (see figure 1). drawing on the work of german urbanist, thomas sieverts (sieverts 2003; 2006), i conceptualize this landscape as an in-between city: a landscape that possesses some elements of “typical” north american suburbia (wide roads, shopping centres, expansive parking lots, neighbourhoods of detached bungalows), but also some elements generally associated with “typical” central city areas (high-rise buildings, concentrations of public housing, high proportion of recent immigrants). this is not, according to edward relph, “a suburban anti-city” but rather “a different type of city that has to be assessed on its own terms, an extended city of diverse landscapes and land uses” (relph 2014: 104). 220 | austerity urbanism and the social economy figure 1: the landscape of toronto’s in-between city: strip retail and high-rise rental apartment building. photo by douglas young the 1,189 high-rise residential buildings built across the city in the four decades following ww2 comprise about 300,000 dwellings (or just under 1/3 of the total number of dwellings in the city of toronto) and are home to at least 500,000 people (almost 1/5 of the city’s total population). two-thirds of the towers are privately owned; one-third are in the non-profit sector (city of toronto 2008; 2011). while the suburban towers were initially conceived of as settings for a new and desirable kind of everyday life, they are generally no longer seen in that light but rather as physically worn out and socially stressed. several recent reports, notably vertical poverty. declining income, housing quality and community life in toronto’s inner suburban high-rise apartments (united way 2011), have documented the deteriorating redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs | 221 conditions of the buildings, and the increasing racialization and impoverishment of their residents (united way toronto 2004; 2011). in a way, the very essence of their in-betweenness shapes negative perceptions of toronto’s high-rise suburbs. they are neither glamorous or new (like central city condos), “close to nature” (like exurban communities), or dense enough to be considered truly “urban” (like prewar central city neighbourhoods). instead, toronto’s in-between cities seem to lie in a grey zone somewhere between suburban and urban (young 2011). suburban tower neighbourhoods are widely perceived today to be a problem in need of a solution and everyday life in the inbetween city’s hundreds of high-rises is thought to be in need of a governance fix. in twenty-first century neoliberal toronto, what shape will that governance fix take? neoliberal governance my approach to governance questions is guided in part by the work of theodore and peck who tell us to challenge an understanding of neoliberalism as “an authorless, omnipresent, and monolithic phenomenon” and to see it, instead, as “a constructed project” (theodore and peck 2012: 21, emphasis in original). we should “denaturalize neoliberal urbanism as a policy paradigm by exploring its origins, its evolution, and its variegated form” (theodore and peck 2011: 21).in a similar vein, patrick le galès and olivier borraz advise us to look closely, within a general terrain of neo-liberalizing urban governance, at just what is governed and just who is governed. “what part, sector, group of the city is really governed? what is weakly governed? what is left out? what is escaping government?” (borraz and le galès 2010: 139). thus the shape of neoliberal governance in toronto in the first two decades of the twenty-first century reflects a path dependence specific to this particular city region (boudreau et al 2009). in the province of ontario (of which toronto is the capital), radical neoliberalism under the rubric of a “common sense revolution” was implemented by a progressive conservative government in power 222 | austerity urbanism and the social economy from 1995-2003. within days of their election in june 1995, the new provincial government announced the cancellation of all commitments to build social housing (it should be noted that the federal government had cancelled funding of new social housing construction a few years earlier). that was but the first in an aggressive program of roll-back and roll-out neoliberalization that included deep cuts to welfare payments, equally deep cuts to income tax, the elimination of provincial funding of capital and operating costs of local transit systems, a weakening of rent control (to allow vacancy decontrol and the exemption of newly built units from the legislation), a loosening of planning legislation, the downloading of responsibility for social housing operations to municipalities (with no additional funding provided to support them in doing that), the reorganization of public school board funding, and the forced amalgamation of many municipalities in the supposed interest of efficiency in operations. the implications of the common sense revolution were particularly severe in toronto, the city with the largest number of social housing units, the most developed transit system, the largest number of welfare recipients, and the best funded education system in ontario. the amalgamation of seven municipal governments that created a new city of toronto on january 1, 1998 was considered by many as an attack on the pre-amalgamation city of toronto council which had been a vocal opponent of the provincial government’s neoliberal “revolution” and a champion of social democratic urban policy. radical neoliberalization led to new crises of governance in toronto, especially related to housing. the cancellation of new social housing construction has generated a waiting list for subsidized rentgeared-to-income housing that grew to 82,414 households in 2015 in the city of toronto (onpha 2016: 27). the property development industry has largely abandoned building private sector rental housing with the result being an extremely low vacancy rate of 1.6% in 2015 (cmhc 2015). in a city region that experiences annual population growth in the order of 100,000 people, tremendous pressure is brought to bear on all redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs | 223 types of housing but most especially on existing non-profit housing and private sector housing at the more affordable end of the market. these governance crises are met by new modes of neoliberal governance that keil calls “roll-with-it” neoliberalism (keil 2009) and i call, in certain instances, “progressive neoliberalism” (explained below). in ontario the common sense revolution government was replaced in 2003 by a liberal government that promised to address the social and environmental crises triggered by the roll-back and roll-out polices implemented by its predecessor. and in toronto, the progressive candidate for mayor, david miller, was elected in 2003. thus, in the very early twenty-first century, new regimes at provincial and municipal level appeared poised to undo some of the previous regimes’ actions. but as keil predicted, any new mode of regulation would still be “thoroughly bounded by the limits set through normalized neoliberal governmentalities” (keil 2009: 238). this follows from harvey’s description of neoliberalism as a hegemonic “mode of discourse. it has pervasive effects on ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world” (harvey 2005: 3). indeed, neoliberalism in toronto and ontario has successfully constructed a new notion of common sense with austerity at its core. budgetary problems at the city are conceived of as spending problems, not revenue problems. council is reluctant to implement any new taxes or revenue tools that are available for fear of breaching the common sense notion of austerity. current mayor john tory promotes a budget freeze which, due to annual inflation, would in fact represent a budget cut (rider 2016). in a city where the radical common sense revolution was rolled out more than 20 years ago, austerity has become so common sensical that alternatives are, for many people, simply unimaginable. these two theoretical components (neoliberal urban governance and the in-between city) combine to guide my research as a consideration of how to live today with the legacies of a previous era’s urbanism. in other words, how will the legacies of 1960s urban design, 224 | austerity urbanism and the social economy urban planning and housing policy in toronto’s high-rise suburbs be governed in the context of present-day neoliberalism and its foundation on austerity as common sense? two approaches to the “renewal” of inner suburbs considered to be in decline approach 1: tower renewal and progressive neoliberalism. in toronto austerity as common sense shapes one approach to conceptualizing decline in high-rise suburbs and a very particular approach to their renewal. one of the city’s responses to the problem of the inner suburb and its residential towers is the tower renewal program. it originated in a building science class taught at the faculty of architecture at the university of toronto in 2000 that examined the case of toronto’s post-war concrete apartment towers. the students determined that the buildings have a structural lifespan of 300 to 400 years, having been over-designed by engineers for whom they were, in the 1950s, a new building type. but while the structures will last into the twenty-fourth century, every 50 years or so they will require a complete retrofit of all other building components: exterior cladding, windows, roofs, mechanical systems, kitchens and bathrooms will all need replacement. many of the buildings are now at the stage of needing their first total retrofit. the ideas explored in the building science class were further developed by a student in his master’s thesis, picked up by a local architectural firm which hired him upon graduation, and championed by then mayor, david miller. in 2008, the city established a tower renewal office with a handful of staff reporting to the city manager. the initial goal of the program was to create supply side conditions that would entice building owners to rehabilitate their properties: it was argued that building retrofits would reduce energy consumption, improve the quality of life for tenants, and enhance the exchange value of the buildings. subsequently, the goals of the program have expanded to think beyond the scale of individual buildings to consider the revitalization of tower neighbourhoods that would include redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs | 225 improved social and community services. to that end, the city established a tower & neighbourhood revitalization unit in 2015 (toronto 2015). the fundamental policy tool that the program hoped to initiate was for the city to establish a financial institution that would make low interest loans to tower owners in order to fund improvements to their buildings. the city would use its good credit rating to borrow large amounts of capital at very favourable rates. in cases of non-repayment of loans, it would use its taxing powers to add the outstanding balance to the property tax bill. but, setting up this institution requires provincial approval which has not been forthcoming to date. eight years into the tower renewal program we can ask to what extent it has been a success and to what extent it has been a failure. in terms of material improvements to everyday life of suburban tower residents, it has had extremely limited success. the funding that the program has managed to cobble together to date has been minimal. for example, hi-ris (high-rise retrofit improvement support program) is a three-year city of toronto pilot project for energy conservation upgrades. a total of $10 million is intended to fund improvements in 10 buildings (toronto tower & neighbourhood revitalization unit). hiris may prove to be a successful demonstration project and inspire other building owners take on energy retrofits of their properties, but what is actually needed, if the goal is to address the entire rental tower housing stock of more than 300,000 apartment units, is funding in the range of several billion dollars. it is clear that it will take more than the power of suasion to kick start tower building upgrades across the entire tower housing stock in the city. what is distinctive about tower renewal as an approach to suburban renewal is that it weaves a progressive strand through what is otherwise a clearly neoliberal project. it acknowledges the importance of retaining the suburban towers as an important stock of relatively affordable housing, and it seeks to improve the material well-being of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people living in the in-between city. 226 | austerity urbanism and the social economy but at the same time it indirectly contributes to the overall shrinking of ambition around affordable housing, and around the capacity of the state to act directly on the crisis of housing affordability. instead of creating new non-profit units, the focus is on rehabilitating existing affordable stock, most of which is privately owned and all of which will be at risk of higher rents post-renewal. retention of existing rental housing becomes the defacto affordable housing policy of the city, while creating new nonprofit housing quietly disappears from the policy agenda. tower renewal is a clear case of “roll-with-it” modes of neoliberal urban governance, modes “that normalize market strategies and emphasize new partnerships of private and non-profit actors” (abbruzzese forthcoming). it represents a newly constructed articulation of state, market and civil society shaped by austerity as common sense. but the strategic inclusion of a progressive thread makes it all but impossible to oppose this form of progressive neoliberalism even while acknowledging its severe shortcomings. approach 2: the story of w6cat and the power of saying no. the ward 6 community action team (w6cat) was established in 2010 to represent the interests of low to moderate income tenants living in rental housing on lakeshore blvd. west in mimico, a neighbourhood in south etobicoke (itself a district that forms the western part of the city of toronto). in 2006, the local city councillor had prompted city planning staff to embark on a planning exercise called vision20/20: a revitalization action plan for mimico. this exercise was premised on the idea of renewal through private sector redevelopment. the mimico lakefront, in the eyes of the councillor, was a neighbourhood in decline that could be revitalized through what was presented as the natural and inevitable process of hyper intensification in the form of new high-rise high density condominium development. tenants in 1950s-60s era rental buildings that currently line the lakefront feared they would be uprooted and forced out of the community. w6cat was one of several community based organizations that countered that view of renewal. what was distinctive about w6cat was redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs | 227 its focus on protecting affordable housing and in promoting tenants’ rights. key figures in w6cat were sandra van, the health promotion program coordinator from the local community health centre lamp (lakeshore area multi-service project) who saw housing as crucial to health, and brenda bloore, the president of the non-profit norris crescent housing co-operative who was committed to the principle of housing as a right. i came into contact with w6cat through my involvement in the “global suburbanisms” major collaborative research inititiative (mcri) based at york university (http://city.apps01.yorku.ca/?page_id=222) and saw an opportunity for active research in which i could contribute something to the group’s project. when w6cat members expressed frustration at the limited public consultation the city was prepared to undertake as part of its planning work in mimico, i suggested that they undertake their own parallel planning exercise and call it a peoples’ plan for mimico that would force the city planners to at least acknowledge their presence and their ideas. one striking event w6cat organized was an all-day peoples’ visioning exercise that drew 30 residents to the local library where they spent a saturday afternoon talking about their neighbourhood and its future (see figure 2). in effect, what w6cat did was attempt to shape a counterhegemonic discourse around planning and neighbourhood renewal. their goal was to challenge the fundamental assumptions underlying the mimico 20/20 process: the equation of community renewal with marketled property intensification; the limitation of affordable housing policy to retention of existing rental stock; the unspoken assumption that neighbourhood gentrification is a positive outcome; and the superficiality of most public planning consultation processes. eventually city council approved the “mimico-by-the-lake secondary plan” (a neighbourhood scale official plan) which clearly bears the imprint of citizen activism in that the councilor and major property owners are unhappy with the restrictions it imposes on any new developments. 228 | austerity urbanism and the social economy figure 2: poster advertising the peoples plan vision workshop that was held on saturday march 26, 2011. reproduced by permission of w6cat. conclusions tower renewal and w6cat represent two different approaches to suburban decline and renewal in an age of austerity. tower renewal is an example of what i call progressive neoliberalism, a fundamentally neoliberal project that includes a thread of progressivism that serves to redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs | 229 make it very difficult, if not impossible, to oppose it. in contrast, w6cat is a counter-hegemonic attempt to unseat the austerity-based new common sense. i present it as a success story but caution that its achievements may not be widely reproducible. w6cat’s success is linked to the combination of a number of specific factors: the two community leaders (sandra van and brenda bloore), a tradition of community activism in the neighbourhood; widespread organic long term knowledge of the district and relevant planning reports and policies stretching back several decades; the fact that mimico was a separate municipality until 1967 (at which time it was absorbed by etobicoke which, in turn, was merged into the new city of toronto in 1998) which fostered a strong sense of a community identity and culture. nevertheless, w6cat’s success does suggest at least the potential power of saying no to austerity. references abbruzzese, t. (forthcoming). “build toronto” (not social housing): neglecting the social housing question in the competitive city region. in r. keil, s. kipfer, j.-a. boudreau, and p. hamel, eds, governing cities through regions: transatlantic perspectives. waterloo: wilfred laurier university press. borraz, o. and legalès, p. (2010). urban governance in europe: the government of what? pôle sud, 1(32), 137-151. boudreau, j.-a.; keil, r.; and young, d. (2009). changing toronto: governing urban neoliberalism. toronto: university of toronto press. city of toronto. (2011). tower renewal implementation book. https://www1.toronto.ca/city_of_toronto/social_development_fi nance__administration/files/pdf/tr_implementation_book.pdf city of toronto. (2008). mayor’s tower renewal: opportunities book. prepared for the city of toronto by e.r.a. architects and the university of toronto. 230 | austerity urbanism and the social economy cmhc. (2015, november 2). canada’s purpose-built vacancy rate increases. https://www.cmhcschl.gc.ca/en/corp/nero/nere/2015/2015-11-02-0815.cfm city of toronto. (2015). toronto tower & neighbourhood revitalization unit. http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=7fe8 f40f9aae0410vgnvcm10000071d60f89rcrd city of toronto. (2015). high-rise retrofit improvement support program (hi-ris) http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=ab3147e94c5 b3410vgnvcm10000071d60f89rcrd city institute. (n.d.). global suburbanisms: governance, land and infrastructure in the 21st century. http://city.apps01.yorku.ca/?page_id=222 keil, r. (2009). the urban politics of roll-with-it neoliberalization. city: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 13 (2-3), 230-245. north york planning board. (1967, may). draft district 10 plan. north york planning board. (1985, march). the consolidated city of north york district 10 plan. onpha. (2016). 2016 waiting lists survey report. ontario nonprofit housing association (onpha). http://www.onpha.on.ca/onpha/web/policyandresearch/2016_w aiting_list_survey/content/policyandresearch/waiting_lists_ 2016/2016_waiting_lists_survey.aspx?hkey=08cff4ce-7f974af4-910c-c64954d28a4a relph, e. (2014). toronto: transformations in a city and its region. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. rider, d. (2016, june 20). cut costs, build city, toronto mayor tory tells staff. toronto star. (https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2016/06/20/cut-costsbuild-city-toronto-mayor-tory-tells-staff.html. redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs | 231 https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/corp/nero/nere/2015/2015-11-02-0815.cfm https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/corp/nero/nere/2015/2015-11-02-0815.cfm http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=7fe8f40f9aae0410vgnvcm10000071d60f89rcrd http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=7fe8f40f9aae0410vgnvcm10000071d60f89rcrd http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=ab3147e94c5b3410vgnvcm10000071d60f89rcrd http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=ab3147e94c5b3410vgnvcm10000071d60f89rcrd http://city.apps01.yorku.ca/?page_id=222 http://www.onpha.on.ca/onpha/web/policyandresearch/2016_waiting_list_survey/content/policyandresearch/waiting_lists_2016/2016_waiting_lists_survey.aspx?hkey=08cff4ce-7f97-4af4-910c-c64954d28a4a http://www.onpha.on.ca/onpha/web/policyandresearch/2016_waiting_list_survey/content/policyandresearch/waiting_lists_2016/2016_waiting_lists_survey.aspx?hkey=08cff4ce-7f97-4af4-910c-c64954d28a4a http://www.onpha.on.ca/onpha/web/policyandresearch/2016_waiting_list_survey/content/policyandresearch/waiting_lists_2016/2016_waiting_lists_survey.aspx?hkey=08cff4ce-7f97-4af4-910c-c64954d28a4a http://www.onpha.on.ca/onpha/web/policyandresearch/2016_waiting_list_survey/content/policyandresearch/waiting_lists_2016/2016_waiting_lists_survey.aspx?hkey=08cff4ce-7f97-4af4-910c-c64954d28a4a https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2016/06/20/cut-costs-build-city-toronto-mayor-tory-tells-staff.html https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2016/06/20/cut-costs-build-city-toronto-mayor-tory-tells-staff.html sieverts, t. (2003). cities without cities: an interpretation of the zwischenstadt. london: spon press. sieverts, t. (2006). die geschichtlichkeit der großsiedlungen. informationen zur raumentwicklung: stadtumbau in großsiedlungen. bonn: budesamt für bauwesen und raumordnung. 3 / 4, 163-167. theodore, n. and peck, j. (2012). framing neoliberal urbanism: translating ‘commonsense’ urban policy across the oecd zone. european urban and regional studies 19 (1), 20-41. united way toronto. (2011). poverty by postal code 2: vertical poverty. declining income, housing quality and community life in toronto’s inner suburban high-rise apartments. toronto: united way. united way toronto. (2004). poverty by postal code. toronto: united way. young, d. (2011). hyper-development or nothing to do: urban planning in toronto’s in-between city. public: art/culture/ideas. 43, 76-85. 232 | austerity urbanism and the social economy 434 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education book review imperial canada inc.: legal haven of choice for the world’s mining industries by alain deneault and william sacher. vancouver: talonbooks, 2012. $29.95 canada/u.s., paper. isbn: 978-0-88922-635-7. pages: 1-244. reviewed by j.z. garrod1 imperial canada inc. begins with a very simple question: why are 75 percent of the world’s mining corporations registered in canada? alain deneault and william sacher attempt to answer this question by, first, providing a history of canada’s questionable stock exchanges which promote irresponsible financial speculation and, second, through a case study of quebec’s mining sector demonstrating the significant weight and enduring presence of colonialism in canada. the first section of the book is split into two parts: ‘the argument,’ and ‘the history.’ in the argument chapter, deneault and sacher make the case that canada has become a legal haven for the global mining industry. building on deneault’s (2011) previous work on tax havens, the authors claim that there are a number of different advantages that the canadian state offers global mining firms: 1. unlimited speculation on resources through extremely permissive, self-regulating, stock-exchanges that have extremely ambiguous distinctions between ‘resources’ and ‘reserves;’ 2. tax advantages for investors, and the export of canadian mining investment policies to other countries via agencies like the international monetary fund (imf) and world bank (wb); 3. the use of diplomacy to put pressure on foreign countries, as well as providing mining corporations with legal cover by failing to charge them for various human rights abuses; 1  j.z. garrod is a phd candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university. book review: imperial canada inc. | 435 4. the utilization of the law to silence critics (see deneault and sacher’s earlier book, noir canada, which was pulled due to a lawsuit from barrick gold corp) through particularly restrictive libel laws and through institutions such as the wb, in which it files complaints demanding damages from governments who refuse to authorize resource exploitation; 5. the support of global mining corporations through a ‘made-incanada’ propaganda offensive through the education system, in which these corporations provide funding, advertising, and other philanthropic activities, including the development of provincial science curriculums; 6. ‘diplomacy of convenience,’ in which the canadian state provides overseas diplomatic support within a context in which there is a revolving door between high-level politics and the mining industry. in the historical chapter, deneault and sacher focus more explicitly on the wealth of canadian political economy scholarship to demonstrate how canada has always been a jurisdiction based on speculation from london and european capital markets trading on land, railways, and mines. they argue that this speculation was made possible by virtue of the extremely close linkages between state officials and capitalists who, in canadian history, were often the same person. in other words, those who created and enforced the laws did so for the purposes of personal gain. in order to reproduce these profits, canadian capitalists have long focused on foreign investment to fund short-term profit-making endeavours, such as the railways, regardless of whether or not they were suitable for commercial or industrial purposes, or whether they were even built at all. the rest of the book consists of a case study of quebec’s mining sector. in it, deneault and sacher claim that quebec “might as well be called a mineral state” (128) given the extent to which the provincial government has been appropriated by the mining sector. in fact, despite the influence of the quiet revolution, they note that key positions in the industry are still held by english-speaking canadian and foreign investors. ranked as “the most favourable jurisdiction for mining” by the fraser institute, quebec continually subjugates environmental and labour concerns under the concerns of corporate profit. to avoid public pressure, the 436 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education government uses the ‘strategy’ of public consultation and negotiation, which provides for a veneer of democracy, without any decision-making power invested in the consulting bodies. similarly, public investment in the mining sector is high, providing public financial and logistic support, alongside government programs to aid such firms. such practices aid an industry that for a century has been engaging in ecological crime and the dispossession of aboriginal peoples. quebec is thus the ‘standard’ that the industry would like to see replicated worldwide. in their conclusion, deneault and sacher call for canadians to demand greater regulation and oversight of these corporations, and for legal action to be taken against them. the problem, however, is whether this remains possible given the structure of global capitalism today. despite their extremely sound empirical work, deneault and sacher fail to engage with a growing debate on the character and nature of contemporary globalization and imperialism (see hardt and negri, 2000; harvey, 2003; robinson, 2004; and wood, 2003). the absence of an engagement with this literature raises many questions as to whether the relations of global capitalism fundamentally challenge the autonomy and sovereignty of the national state, and thus, the ability of national states to regulate transnational corporations – and this is above and beyond the question of whether globalization can be considered a novel form of imperialism. indeed, despite being part of the book’s title, imperialism is left undefined throughout and there is no discussion as to why we should understand the practices of the canadian state as being imperialistic. for example, one might ask why it would be imperialistic for canada to defend a belgian mining company registered in canada whose primary operations are located in central america? without engaging with fundamental theoretical questions about the nationality of capital today, the reader is left to wonder whether these practices are evidence of a more profound shift in the global political economy, rather than imperialism. similarly, there is little engagement with the renewed debate over whether canada should be understood as a dependent or imperial country (see kellogg, 2005; klassen, 2009; stanford, 2008; and watkins, 2007). by engaging with this debate, deneault and sacher might be able to better explain canada’s particular history of colonization – being both a colony of the british empire and a colonizer of both quebecois and indigenous populations here in canada – and now abroad via destructive mining practices. as it stands, the book simply argues a rather basic point: that the canadian state serves the interests of “speculators book review: imperial canada inc. | 437 and exploiters of the resources of the world’s land” (185). in this sense, there is a feeling that the authors are suggesting that the canadian state simply reproduces the practices of colonialism for the interests of the ruling class, but without any discussion over whether globalization is a qualitatively novel epoch in the history of world capitalism, the reader is left to speculate whether this ruling class is more transnational than national, and whether or not this might have some bearing on the book’s conclusions (see the debates on the character of the contemporary ruling class by mann et al., 2001). some further engagement with the wider literature and debates of global political economy scholarship would greatly help to both contextualize and sharpen their argument. in any case, imperial canada inc. sheds light on the practices of an incredibly opaque, destructive industry, and for that alone the book is extremely valuable. students of global and canadian political economy will find much of interest here and indeed, the sections outlining the ways in which these mining corporations have entered the educational sphere might hit a little close to home. interested scholars should especially keep an eye on deneault’s forthcoming book canada: a new tax haven. one can only hope that this book will address some of the shortcomings of imperial canada inc. and continue to provide a critical view of contemporary canadian political economy. references deneault, a., & holoch, g. (2011). offshore: tax havens and the rule of global crime. new york: new press. hardt, m., & negri, a. (2000). empire. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. harvey, d. (2003). the new imperialism. oxford ; new york: oxford university press. kellogg, p. (2005). kari levitt and the long detour of canadian political economy. studies in political economy, 76, 31-60 klassen, j. (2009). canada and the new imperialism: the economics of a secondary power. studies in political economy, 83, 163-190 mann, m., arrighi, g., moore, j., went, r., van der pijl, k., robinson, w. (2001). the transnational ruling class formation thesis: a symposium. science & society, 65(4). robinson, w. i. (2004). a theory of global capitalism: transnational production, transnational capitalists, and the transnational state. baltimore: johns hopkins university press. 438 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education stanford, j. (2008). staples, deindustrialization, and foreign investment: canada’s economic journey back to the future. studies in political economy, 82, 7-34 watkins, m. (2007). staples redux. studies in political economy, 79, 213-226 wood, e. m. (2003). empire of capital. new york: verso. 300 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages detroit: realities of destructive accumulation dianne feeley1 the media are full of good news stories about the “rebirth of detroit.” the reality – viewed from the ground of struggle against foreclosures, evictions and water shutoffs – is the story in which life remains precarious for the majority of its citizens, 82 percent of whom are african american. as the 2008 crisis gathered storm, an economic tornado tore through black detroit. that year the number of employed detroiters fell by 26 percent and, in a city with a high proportion of african-american homeowners, foreclosures mounted. seven years later one out of three homes lies abandoned. still, 10,000 occupied homes were slated for sale in the fall 2015 tax foreclosure auctions. like the bankruptcy detroit was forced to undergo, the foreclosure process is the result of decisions made by financial and governmental institutions. the city’s debt mounted with the one-two punch of the economic crisis and high fees and interest rates on loans that wall street sold to city officials. financial advisors worked with mayor kwame kilpatrick (200208) to “save” the city millions by using variable interest swaps instead of fixed rates. claiming the transaction could prevent layoffs and keep the city pensions nearly 100 percent funded, the mayor badgered the city council into supporting a complex $1.44 billion deal. wall street feted the mayor – since convicted on federal corruption and fraud charges – and presented him with the bond buyer’s midwest deal of the year award in 2005. three years later the stock market collapsed and detroit’s credit rating was downgraded. to avoid a $400 million penalty, the city pledged casino tax revenue as collateral. with principal, interest and insurance payments, the original loan was projected to double over the next two decades. the response of city officials was to lower operating expenses by almost 40 percent, reducing wages and healthcare benefits and laying off 2,350 workers. while city revenue declined 20 percent, annual debt service payments rose. by 2009 annual debt repayment stood at $330 million, and a year later would rise to $597 million. as the city ran out of cash, mayor dave bing (2009-13) was forced to turn to the michigan state 1 dianne feeley is a retired autoworker active in autoworker caravan, a rank-andfile organization, and detroit eviction defense. she lives in southwest detroit, where residents battle against high levels of air pollution, and is an editor of against the current. detroit: realities of destructive accumulation | 301 finance authority, which arranged a $129.5 million bond underwritten by bank of america. the fee was $1.6 million – the best available offer. by 2012 residents were told that the city’s $11-12 billion debt was unsustainable, but after michigan governor rick snyder’s financial review board investigated, the figure cited was $18 billion. snyder appointed bankruptcy lawyer kevyn orr (from the jonesday firm) emergency manager in 2013 and gave him full power over city finances. within weeks orr started bankruptcy proceedings. despite the fact that the michigan constitution states that for government workers pension benefits “shall not be diminished or impaired,” that guarantee was negated in federal bankruptcy court. city workers and retirees were savaged by the bankruptcy. forced to vote for a reduction of their pensions and health care or promised an even worse “deal,” a majority of the 32,000 retirees and workers agreed. since police and firefighters do not receive social security benefits, their pensions took less of a hit than the majority, who accepted a 4.5 percent cut and lost cost-of-living increases. instead of health care benefits, retirees receive somewhere between a $125-400 check each month. amru meah, retired director of the building safety and engineering department and a cancer patient in remission, remarked to the michigan citizen, “god forbid i should have another operation – i’ve already had two.” his monthly healthcare cost rose from $280 a month to $1200, with a $2800 yearly deductible for him and his wife. reduction in health care coverage alone wiped out $4 billion of the city’s debt. an investigative reporter for the aclu, curt guyette calculated that of the $7 billion trimmed through bankruptcy, 80 percent came from the city workers and retirees. austerity prepares the ground for gentrification gentrification is touted as the way urban centers whose industrial base has collapsed can reinvent themselves. yet in a city that covers 140 square miles, new investment continues to be concentrated downtown, sweeping away african-american-owned businesses and displacing lowincome senior citizens. since 2006, $6 billion has been invested in real estate development in greater downtown; between 2010 and 2012 more than $2 billion was invested in 130 downtown projects. detroit, however, is a city of neighborhoods, so gentrification has been accomplished by starving communities where the vast majority of detroiters live. most people don’t live in a city for its downtown sports arenas, but rather for good schools, strong, safe neighborhoods and access to jobs. from that vantage point, detroit is a disaster. block after block is littered with 302 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages foreclosed homes and vacant stores; more than 100 schools have been closed. in a city where once many walked to factories in their area, or took a trolley across town, those plants are now shuttered. meanwhile downtown has comerica park, where the tigers play; ford stadium, home of the lions; and an expanded (though no longer cityowned) cobo hall, where the international auto show kicks off at the beginning of each year. the planned hockeytown, brain child of mike ilitch, will be not only the new home for his red wings team, but a residential and entertainment complex. while the city donated some of the land, the state arranged a $650 million 30-year bond that will be paid through a private-public partnership. the ilitch organization’s share is estimated to be $367 million; the city will receive little in taxes or even parking fees. mayor mike duggan – detroit’s first white mayor in 30 years – subsequently announced that brush park, an 8.4 acre parcel of land just across from the hockeytown site, has been turned over to dan gilbert of quicken loans. never mind that of the more than 1,000 detroit mortgages quicken loans wrote between 2005 and 2014, the majority ended in foreclosure. in fact the u.s. justice department is currently suing the company for falsifying the worth of its fha-insured loans. yet it is gilbert’s construction company that will be building over 330 townhouses and apartments in historic brush park. formerly derelict downtown buildings have been transformed into elegant hotels, apartments, offices and restaurants. previously some had been abandoned while others had become housing where low-income seniors paid with a federally funded voucher providing 75 percent of the rent (section 8 housing). this was the story of the griswold, designed by detroit’s most famous architect albert kahn, built in 1929. the new owners gave the 100+ residents, several with disabilities, a year’s notice to vacate. initially the company said they would preserve 10-20 units of lowincome housing, but when federal and state agencies declined to negotiate a higher voucher rate, all were given notice. the building received an $8 million upgrade. today the renamed building, the albert, has 127 luxury apartments with such amenities as an exercise room, dog walking services and a 24-hour concierge. perhaps to lure middle-class residents and new businesses, city officials have prioritized building a 3.3 mile track for the m-1, a fast train running up woodward, the only area of the city already adequately serviced by buses. each mile of construction will cost $42 million. the m-1 rail is a public-private partnership and dan gilbert, touted as detroit’s savior, has purchased the naming rights. such partnerships bundle business and foundation monies to attract federal, state and local detroit: realities of destructive accumulation | 303 subsidies and grants to drive their projects. presenting themselves as the city’s business and philanthropic leaders, these partnerships soak up public money for projects residents have not prioritized, and marketize what would once have been considered a public good. detroit uses publicprivate partnerships to establish amenities for the new downtown. these are an essential element to gentrification because city services, according the mayor, are limited to police, fire, street lights and garbage pickup. the detroit police department represents a lingering sore. in 2003 it signed two consent agreements with the justice department, agreeing to independent monitoring for use of excessive force, illegal arrests and unconstitutional conditions of imprisonment. originally the agreement was to last for five years, but failure to meet goals extended that monitoring system until 2016. police misconduct, however, has not been eradicated. between 2008-14 more than 300 people were awarded a total of $27 million in damages. how detroit became poor and black while african americans had been part of detroit since before the civil war – and in fact had built a strong black abolitionist movement – beginning in 1910 the population increased as blacks streamed out of the jim crow south in search of opportunities in northern cities. in detroit they also found the ku klux klan and black legion: a klan sympathizer served briefly as mayor in the late 1920s and the police force was riddled with klan members. housing and steady work were hard to come by, but henry ford viewed black men as hard workers. the company used the black church as a hiring hall and as a means of securing loyalty to ford. at one point 25 percent of all african-american men living in detroit worked at ford’s rouge plant. when a workman fell asleep on the trolley going home, people identified him as a “ford” man. while black organizers played a crucial role in organizing the union at ford, the racial divide in housing, employment and social life continued. hate strikes by white workers broke out in a number of plants during world war ii as more black workers – including black women – were hired or promoted. a 1943 race riot lasted three days and left 34 dead, mostly african americans. although the uaw leadership opposed the violence and used its authority to end the hate strikes, it was timid in defending black workers’ advancement on the job and failed to promote black leadership. as capital expanded in the postwar period, the racial divide widened. auto companies built 33 new plants in metro detroit between 1945 and 1960 – but not one in the city. the biggest of the city’s plants, including 304 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages dodge main and the clark street cadillac plant, shut down just as african americans had gained a strong foothold in the industry. new highways, constructed with federal money under president dwight eisenhower’s administration – combined with federal housing policies that red-lined neighborhoods and enforced segregation – lured the better-off sector of the working class to nearby suburbs. over six decades total detroit property values shrank from $37 billion to $9.4 billion (in 2012 dollars.) this history is the background to understanding today’s detroit. in 1950 there were almost 300,000 manufacturing jobs in the city; now there are 25,000. as industry began to leave and much of the white working class (and some african americans) followed, unemployment and poverty grew. as early as 1963 there weren’t enough white students in the detroit public schools to desegregate them. in the early 1970s a federal judge ordered busing across city boundaries but the michigan supreme court struck the busing plan down, concluding that since the suburbs didn’t cause the city’s problems, they didn’t have to be part of the solution. this court decision articulated the reasoning that easily dismissed the racial and economic divide as it continued to deepen. in 1999 the state took over the city schools. programs to “restructure” education – allowing charter schools, constructing a state-run system for the supposedly “worst” schools and appointing an emergency manager over the public schools – have resulted in the loss of 100,000 students to the detroit public schools, cuts to teacher salaries and benefits, and the closure of more than 100 schools. by 2016 the school debt will balloon to $515 million. deep inequality and poverty produces alarming statistics. detroit’s maternal death rate stands at 58.7 per 100,000 babies, higher than in libya, uruguay or vietnam. while the murder rate has declined, detroit, with a population of 680,000, has as many murders as new york city. no other u.s. city has such concentrated poverty. sixty percent of detroit’s children live in poverty – an increase of 34 percent since 2004 – and children die at a higher rate than any other u.s. city, victimized by poverty, lack of access to health care and violence. while one-third suffers from asthma, at least 35 percent of the total student population has lead poisoning. in a city where there is almost one murder a day, most young people have friends they have seen buried. federal and state governments this entire history was buried under the rug as the city approached bankruptcy. kevyn orr infamously explained his perspective in a wall street journal interview: “for a long time the city was dumb, lazy, happy detroit: realities of destructive accumulation | 305 and rich.” it was that wealth that made people believe “if you had an eighth-grade education, you’ll get 30 years of a good job and a pension and great health care, but you don’t have to worry about what’s going to come.” (battaglia, 2013). what orr did not say was that michigan had actually been reducing detroit’s portion of state revenue sharing since 2003. athough state sales tax collection went from $6.6 billion a year to $7.72 billion over the decade, revenue sharing to cities and towns declined from an annual $900 million to $250 million. over that decade detroit was cheated out of $732 million. (minghine, 2014) was the bankruptcy necessary? not according to wallace c. turbeville’s (2013) report. rather than the assertion that the city had a crushing debt, he concluded that detroit suffered from a $198 million annual cash flow deficit. the demos senior fellow pinpointed three immediate sources that could cut that in half: $43 million from state revenue sharing, $30-45 million in uncollected taxes from reverse commuters, and saving $20 million by not providing tax incentives to corporations. two of those could have been solved by the state, and one by city officials. (turbeville, 2013) the water shutoffs as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, the emergency manager demanded that the detroit water and sewerage department (dwsd) shut off service to delinquent accounts. in the spring of 2014 the department targeted more than 15,000 homes with bills exceeding $150. many did not receive notice or a chance to dispute the bill. (in this writer’s own four-unit building, water has been shut off more than once due to administrative billing mixups.) nearly 10 years ago michigan welfare rights organization spearheaded a water affordability plan (designed by roger colton) for income-eligible residents. this plan was in line with both environmental protection agency recommendations that households pay 2-3 percent of their income for water/sewerage service and un documents that recognize “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights.” the city council passed the plan but the dwsd never implemented it. over time the federal government has reduced its share of funding infrastructural improvements so water department officials responded by borrowing more money and raising residential rates – by 120 percent over the last decade. having made a series of disastrous interest rate swaps, dwsd officials then borrowed more than $530 million to buy their way out of the deals. by the time of the bankruptcy, dwsd was making 306 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages annual debt payments of $420 million, which amounted to more than it spent on its operating costs ($380.6 million). as a result, residents were receiving water bills for as much as 20 percent of their income. in response to the shutoffs the people’s water board, a coalition of two dozen organizations, set up water stations in community centers and churches. delegations from indigenous communities, from canada and from the rural south caravanned to the city, bringing containers of water. groups blockaded trucks to be dispatched for water shutoffs and were arrested. the emergency manager hastily turned the problem over to the mayor, who briefly suspended the shutoffs in order to set up a payment plan option for the poorest. he got various businesses and foundations to contribute funding, but by the summer of 2015 it run dry. as news of the shutoffs went viral, the people’s water board asked the united nations to intervene. two un special rapporteurs visited the city in october 2014, holding an informational meeting attended by several hundred, toured the city and met with water department and city officials. the report they wrote contained recommendations that were promptly ignored by the mayor, who proclaimed that there is no such thing as “free” water. (aclu, 2015). working with block clubs that cover 20 percent of the city, detroit eviction defense and the organizations that make up the people’s water board canvassed neighborhoods and confronted the mayor at public meetings. officials have been forced to adjust their policies, but foreclosures and water shutoffs continue. who can access jobs? in 2015 detroit’s official unemployment rate stood at 10 percent, twice the state’s average, but more importantly about 175,000 workingage detroiters no longer look for work, or never started. a map of metro detroit pinpointing where the jobs are starkly reveals the problems detroiters face. seventy-seven percent of metro detroit jobs are at least 10 miles from the city’s central business district. given that one quarter of detroiters lack cars, the inadequate bus service adds hours to the daily commute. witness the human interest story about james robertson. robertson rode buses and walked 23 miles each way to get to his $10.55 an hour job as an injection molder. many opened their hearts and wallets so that this african-american man in his 50s now has a car and secure housing. yet there are at least 10,000 other detroiters in the same circumstances. the reality is that only 28 percent of city residents are employed within the city; of those working in the suburbs, 42 percent earn less than $15,000 annually. the “fight for 15” campaign is one attempt to overcome detroit: realities of destructive accumulation | 307 the individual problems low-wage and usually non-unionized detroiters face. spearheaded by seiu and supported by southeast michigan jobs for justice and the interfaith committee for worker justice, the detroit campaign has targeted 50 metro detroit companies whose 50,000 workers earn $7.40 an hour. doubling their wages would definitely increase the quality of their lives and dramatically impact other low-wage workers. while the metro area remains an auto manufacturing center, threequarters of the jobs are in the lower-paying and generally non-union auto parts sector. even at the big three assembly plants, workers hired after 2007 make $10 an hour less than what the company calls “traditional” workers. they also have an inferior health care plan and no pension benefits. this two-tier system breaks the lines of solidarity between workers. the newly negotiated big three/uaw contracts do manage to bring the second-tier workers’ wages up to the standard, although only over an eight-year period. however, the contracts also carved out exceptions and extended the use of temporaries, who are locked into a permanently lower wage, few benefits and little job security. multitier wages and benefits are the new normal, locking in inequality. foreclosures continue, blight spreads probably 10,000 occupied homes – around 25,000 people – faced tax foreclosure in 2015. their homes were auctioned off in september and october, just before winter hit. you might wonder why the city and county pursue foreclosure when 42 percent of detroit residents are poor; many living in homes inherited from relatives, or bought in better days. detroiters actually have the highest residential property taxes in the country, and if we fail to pay, an annual 18 percent interest is tacked on. until recently unpaid water bills – now averaging $75 a month – were added on. as a result, property taxes on a foreclosed home are often more than its market value. in 2014 the online tax auction recovered $107 million of the $691 million that was supposedly owned. in short, for a 15 percent recovery rate the city suffered another round of abandoned homes that are quickly stripped by scalpers and often burnt, creating more blight. detroit eviction defense and many other organizations demand a stop to tax foreclosures. even mayor mike duggan admitted current tax assessments are not linked to the market value of homes, but announced it would take several years before reassessments are completed. meanwhile he claims his hands are tied. somehow it’s okay to move quickly through bankruptcy, but be slow as molasses in responding to continuing foreclosures. this is the policy whereby african-american 308 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages working-class homeowners are being displaced. but this “irrationality” in the face of a disaster does have the effect of clearing out large sections of the city. developers will have a unique opportunity to redesign a major u.s. city. foundations have already mapped out what “detroit future city” might look like, with trees and ponds where african-american homes once sheltered generations. “blight removal,” reminiscent of the “urban removal” schemes that destroyed the black communities of paradise valley and black bottom in the 1940s and ‘50s, is reducing african-american homeownership. given that homes represent 53 percent of the african-american families’ total wealth, that drop in ownership will only increase the already widening wealth gap between black and white families. david harvey has summarized this process by noting: “capitalism has periodically to break out of the constraints imposed by the world it has constructed. it is in mortal danger of becoming sclerotic. the building of a geographical landscape favourable to capital accumulation in one era becomes…a fetter upon accumulation in the next. capital has, therefore, to devalue much of the fixed capital in the existing geographical landscape in order to build a wholly new landscape in a different image. this sparks intense and destructive localised crises. the most obvious contemporary example of such devaluation in the usa is detroit.” (harvey, 2014, 155). possibilities, hope and struggle a city is an exciting place to live because of the history and culture residents have created. detroit has been a center of not only industry, but of distinct neighborhoods. it has forged a wide-ranging cultural production from the symphony to the blues, jazz, motown, gospel, hip hop, and techno music to poetry, dance, painting and sculpture. we are home to diego rivera’s industrial murals, the cass corridor art of the 1960s and ‘70s, and the found art installations of tyree guyton’s heidelberg project and street murals. as an activist involved in fighting aspects of gentrification and environmental injustice over the years, and as an active member of detroit eviction defense, i am both proud of our victories and aware of how far we are from what we need. like a number of organizations and coalitions, detroit eviction defense focuses on a particular issue. in our case it is stopping foreclosures. in listening to people’s stories, we encourage them to stay in their homes and advise them of what few resources there are. we accompany them to court – and the presence of a dozen or so people standing up when the case is called puts the judge and attorneys on notice that we have this person’s back. a number of phone calls and of emails, detroit: realities of destructive accumulation | 309 marches through the neighborhood and strategic demonstrations can make a difference. although it is intensive to carry out a 10-hour day, five-days a week watch over a foreclosed home, through the help of neighbors and our committee’s alert system we have stopped eviction orders from being carried out long enough to enable a settlement to be forged. we are fortunate in having several uaw locals work with us, but while they contribute important resources and sometimes their physical presence, most union members are not involved in our ongoing organizational work. a more organic unity would strengthen the work, although brutal alternative work schedules and mandatory overtime make that difficult. certainly if we compare the 1930s factory sit-downs and how they spread like wildfire, or compare ourselves to the mass uaw marches that filled cadillac square during the 1950s and ‘60s, our organizations are a shadow of that working class. clearly the forces that impacted detroit were shaped by business decisions and governmental policies, but organized labor’s willingness to accept deep concessions especially from the early 1980s is also a factor. concessions were sold to the membership on the promise to regain what we lost as the economy picked up. the uaw leadership, having consolidated its power, was threatened by the idea of discussing the economic downturn with its membership. so as the auto industry restructured, that narrow vision undermined the solidaristic culture key to the industrial organizing that made detroit a union town. breaking those bonds reinforced the capitalist culture of “taking care of one’s own” and its embedded racism. it’s musical chairs writ large. today, of every two african-american families living in the city, one is living in poverty. given both the history of racism and the failure of uaw, the city’s main working-class institution, to chart a solidaristic response, politicians demonize detroit. detroiters feel very much alone – and the anger that blames detroiters for the mounting city debt seems very similar to how european powers speak of the greeks and their debt. the key to detroit’s revival is not the gentrification mania and fist of austerity, but meeting the needs of the working class. while that could be more easily possible by pooling the resources of the metro area, given the reality of racism that isn’t an available solution now. yet detroit is alive with organizations and projects that honeycomb the city. at the base, block clubs depend on the initiative of residents to come together, decide priorities, take action and reach out to other residents. in those few areas of the city where a large project is projected, the demand for community benefits is being raised. if such an ordinance were 310 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages adopted by the detroit city council, projects of more than $3 million would need to set aside a certain number of jobs, apprenticeships and training for local residents as well as having provisions for environmental protection, sustainable practices, minimal displacement and first preference to local business for service and supplier contracts. but even this modest demand for jobs and other community benefits is under attack. the detroit economic growth corporation claims such an ordinance would undermine economic progress. for its part the state legislature is attempting to cut off the discussion, with the house having fast tracked a bill that forbids ordinances that would dare to require higher than minimum wages or apprenticeships. in reality, the problems of detroit are similar to those faced by other cities like cleveland, buffalo or east st. louis. without successfully challenging austerity budgets, the growth of low-wage and temporary work, funneling resources to corporations, continued environmental pollution and increased military spending, the will to end poverty and develop sustainable jobs can’t take root. a multi-dimensional organization with a grassroots, democratic culture, some institutional framework with resources and an alternative perspective doesn’t exist. what does exist is a wealth of organizations and larger ngos that carry out small projects and job training that indicate what could be done if resources were available. two models that suggest themselves at the city level, although clearly those by themselves can only provide an outline of an alternative. while not explicitly anti-capitalist, these models attempt to unite grassroots democratic decision-making to an institutional structure. the first was developed in puerto alegre, brazil when a radical section of the workers party won the majority of the city council. a committee of several thousand residents reviewed and recommended which programs were to be prioritized and funded. known as the “participatory budget” process, it was handicapped by an inadequate budget. nonetheless resources were funneled to lower-income communities, resulting in improving community education and health services and reducing corruption. this democratic and transparent process goes far beyond a community benefit ordinance – as important a step as that would be for detroit. another aspect to such a budget would be considering projects to take the place of the auto industry, such as building trains and busses for much needed national and local mass transit systems. the second example is that of richmond, california, a formerly industrial city of little more than 100,000 and home of chevron’s most productive refinery. over the last decade, the richmond progressive detroit: realities of destructive accumulation | 311 alliance has emerged as an organization whose candidates have been elected to the city council on a platform to reduce environmental pollution, stop police violence and develop a transparent and accountable city government. currently of richmond’s seven councilors, three are members of rpa. allied to community organizations willing to challenge chevron’s attempts to make richmond a company town, the councilors have been able to champion legislation that meets the needs of its diverse population – 40 percent latino, 30 percent black, 14 percent asian and fewer than 20 percent white. in both of these actual models, structures have been created to carry out the needs of the majority, not the corporate elite. working only on the local level, clearly there are limits to what can be accomplished at that scale. nonetheless, if detroit residents, through a commission structure similar to puerto alegre, had been able to audit detroit’s finances year after year, chances are that wall street would not have suckered the city into swaps. further, a broad group of residents would understand how the city budget is put together rather than the opaque view that exists today. that would give us a fighting chance to develop an alternative budget – for example, to help the community urban garden movement flourish rather than encourage big box stores and large-scale, for-profit agricultural projects. we need a better, community-driven model, and one that brings union strength into the center of community organizing. references aclu. (2015, august 5). drops in the bucket. youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywzicirvyoc battaglia, tammy stables. (2013, august 15). orr apologizes for 'dumb, lazy' detroit comments. usa today, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/15/orrapologizes-for-dumb-lazy-detroit-comments/2658515 harvey, david. (2014). seventeen contradictions and the end of capitalism. new york: oxford university press. minghine, anthony. (2104). the great revenue sharing heist. michigan municipal league, http://www.mml.org/advocacy/great-revenuesharing-heist.html 312 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages turbeville, walter c. (2013). the detroit bankruptcy. demos, http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/detroit_bankr uptcy-demos.pdf "are you a bengali or are you an indian?" | 35 36 | migration of bengalis to canada "are you a bengali or are you an indian?" | 37 38 | migration of bengalis to canada "are you a bengali or are you an indian?" | 39 40 | migration of bengalis to canada 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 c an ad a n ew f/ l ab p e i n s n b q u e o n t m an s as k a lt a b .c . y u k o n n .w .t . n u n av u t bangladeshi compared to bengali (single ethnicity) bangladeshi bengali "are you a bengali or are you an indian?" | 41 0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 c an ad a n ew f/ l ab p e i n s n b q u e o n t m an s as k a lt a b .c . y u k o n n .w .t . n u n av u t bengali speakers in canada bengali speakers in canada 42 | migration of bengalis to canada "are you a bengali or are you an indian?" | 43 44 | migration of bengalis to canada "are you a bengali or are you an indian?" | 45 46 | migration of bengalis to canada "are you a bengali or are you an indian?" | 47 48 | migration of bengalis to canada http://www.bies-canada.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/bies-research-final-jan-2013.pdf http://www.bies-canada.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/bies-research-final-jan-2013.pdf "are you a bengali or are you an indian?" | 49 https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2015/03/19/ontario-set-to-replace-welfare-cheques-with-debit-cards.html https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2015/03/19/ontario-set-to-replace-welfare-cheques-with-debit-cards.html https://inmemoryofmaggiemay.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/government-of-canada-2016a1.pdf https://inmemoryofmaggiemay.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/government-of-canada-2016a1.pdf http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/komagata-maru-backgrounder-apology-1.3584372 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/komagata-maru-backgrounder-apology-1.3584372 50 | migration of bengalis to canada https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2011/05/08/much_more_than_a_mystic.html https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2011/05/08/much_more_than_a_mystic.html https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/access/content/group/123d20aa-ac83-481d-80bf-3168eaa53a58/canada.doc https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/access/content/group/123d20aa-ac83-481d-80bf-3168eaa53a58/canada.doc https://www.saada.org/item/20110901-312 "are you a bengali or are you an indian?" | 51 https://dli-idd.statcan.gc.ca/wds/tableviewer/tableview.aspx?reportid=22155 https://dli-idd.statcan.gc.ca/wds/tableviewer/tableview.aspx?reportid=22155 https://allpoetry.com/where-the-mind-is-without-fear alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review not good enough for canada: canadian public discourse around issues of inadmissability for potential immigrants with diseases and/or disabilities 1902-2002, by valentina capurri. toronto: university of toronto press, 2020. $29.95 cdn., paper. isbn: 978-1-4875-2323-7. pages: 1-258. reviewed by susan marie martin1 amidst the current debate over vaccination passports and international travel, an understanding of canada’s historical measures ensuring medical admissibility at its borders is very appropriate. just ahead of the pandemic valentina capurri reviewed the political and public discourses underpinning these measures: spanning the period 1902 to 2002, she soundly unearths the breadth of canada’s efforts to establish the economic value and ‘worthiness’ of potential immigrants using these criterion. across this project capurri, a lecturer in the department of geography and environmental studies at ryerson university, demonstrates soundly how immigration and immigrants have been problematized via this specific lens. in the opening pages, capurri describes her first-hand experience with medical admissibility. she arrived in canada in 2001 to start graduate studies, and a short time later she was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting ms. in 2004 she applied for permanent residency. she had a “fairly good medical history”, and had established herself professionally. however, in 2007 she was informed that she was “a person whose health condition might reasonably be expected to cause excessive demand on health or social services” (5). she only received an exemption when sponsored by her canadian partner. this is a topic, she discovered, that has been given little attention in the academy; not good enough for canada fills this void by addressing the construction of canada via what she terms “an idea of nation-building that has at its centre the development of a morally and physically healthy population” (6). the chapters organize her review of public documents by type to develop and analyze discourses around the issue at hand. grounded in archival work, the study draws on parliamentary transcripts, those from the federal and supreme courts, legislation, and newspaper articles, editorials, and letters to the editor from the toronto star and the globe and mail. the data culled from newspapers is shared in two chapters covering 1902-1985, and 1985-2002, the dividing line being the passage of the charter of rights and freedoms. unfortunately the passage of time and the arrival of the charter did not see the provision for medical admissibility reversed or, according to capurri, modified in a substantial way, however it does provide what she calls a “powerful tool to contest the policy” in court (115). 1 susan marie martin is a historical sociologist and holds a ph.d. in applied social studies from university college cork. her interdisciplinary research focuses on the impact of gentrification on the urban poor. her book, the shawlies: cork’s women street traders in the ‘merchants city’ was published in 2017. email: susan.martin@umail.ucc.ie www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the roots of this form of discrimination are located at canada’s very foundation. according to capurri, john a. macdonald “believed that his dream of bringing the west into confederation could only be achieved by promoting immigration of white, anglo-saxon, healthy individuals” (25). the inadmissable were defined as “lunatic, insane, and idiot”, definitions replaced in the 1960s with “mentally retarded and handicapped”, and later with “persons with mental and/or physical disabilities” (14). all that changes with time, it would seem, are the labels. in early days there were notions of moral shortcomings and social deviance associated with illness and disabilities; however, it becomes clear that the economic considerations around productivity and government savings that some assume first make their appearance with the neoliberal era were in play from canada’s early days. indeed, those in power a century ago were just as keen to prohibit admittance to those they believed could not help build the economy or would become a costly burden. in the words of one mp in 1906, “foreign elements” could threaten to “exploit and impoverish the country” (35). that same year a globe editorial claimed that the state had an inalienable right “to adopt defensive measures against mental defectives sent from other countries”, and reported the estimated savings to the state for those deported as $2,000 (77). the law allowed deportation up to two years after arrival if a migrant became sick or injured. the chief medical officer’s report for the fiscal year 1908-9 included statistics on these deportations: capurri located 15 for persons with rheumatism and 22 for persons with epilepsy, among others (36). if one member of a family was medically inadmissable, the entire family would be denied entry and could only stay if the family member in question was returned to his/her country of origin. the impoverished and those deemed medically unfit were evaluated using similar screening processes, blurring further the lines between medical fitness and social fitness in the equation of economic viability. in 1909 the star reported on an english study that purported to find pauperism was due to hereditary “defects”. participants in the study were described as being “characterized by some obvious vice or defect” the list of which included substance abuse, various medical conditions, criminal activity, and “deliberate moral obliquity, or general weaknesses of character” (78) as a final catchall. negative sentiments didn’t stop with editorials or earnest politicians. illustrating the sweep of concern, capurri included a call published in the globe in 1925 from the canadian education association, a group representing teachers, for a tightening on admissions to prevent “half-wit and subnormal mentalities to slip into the dominion” (81). it is important to note that capurri does give space to dissenting voices, when located. it is commendable that capurri includes many of the names and stories of those denied entry or deported, an inclusion that illustrates the human impact of policy and practices beyond numbers and statistics. the story of 14-month old margaret mcconachie is one example. in 1927 her father, a resident of canada, brought margaret, her mother and siblings to canada from scotland. upon arrival margaret was deemed “mentally defective”, and she and her mother were forced to return to scotland. fast forward to 1989, and miguel silva, a 9-year old boy living with his family in toronto, is denied landed immigrant status; born with down’s syndrome, he was ordered to return to peru. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the stories of these two children are developed further, however there are many more that disappeared and remain unaccounted for. flora mcdowall, a young girl who arrived alone from scotland, was rejected because she was overweight. it was noted that she had never secured employment previously as a domestic thus, in her current condition, she was considered unemployable and was returned to scotland. a fine piece of interdisciplinary research, not good enough for canada has a definite place on bookshelves in many departments across the academy, but will easily appeal to historians, and those whose work focuses on discriminatory practices towards those with disabilities and classed-based inequities. capurri’s work is an excellent ‘how-to’ text for those interested in archival methods, and building what foucault refers to as an ‘emancipation’ of histories buried under subjugation. this is also a valuable resource for advocates of migrants, the disabled, and the poor. beyond the issue of immigration, capurri’s investigation raises questions about how attitudes at the border generalize in wider society to those who are canadian citizens and residents living with diseases and disabilities. not good enough for canada is an accessible read, and anyone with an interest in the issues explored and canadian history will find it as a welcome addition to their home library. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research vol. 29, 2018 managing editors: carlo fanelli and garry potter interventions editors: jeff noonan and jamey essex editorial advisory board: nahla abdo, dimitry anastakis, pat armstrong, tim bartkiw, david camfield, nicolas carrier, sally chivers, wallace clement, simten cosar, simon dalby, aaron doyle, ann duffy, bryan evans, randall germain, henry giroux, peter gose, paul kellogg, jacqueline kennelly, priscillia lefebvre, mark neocleous, bryan palmer, jamie peck, sorpong peou, garry potter, georgios papanicolaou, mi park, justin paulson, stephanie ross, george s. rigakos, heidi rimke, arne christoph ruckert, toby sanger, ingo schmidt, alan sears, mitu sengupta, meenal shrivastava, janet lee siltanen, susan jane spronk, jim struthers, mark p. thomas, rosemary warskett journal mandate: alternate routes is committed to creating an outlet for critical social research and interdisciplinary inquiry. a broad range of theoretical and methodological approaches are encouraged, including works from academics, labour, and community researchers. alternate routes is a publicly accessible academic journal and encourages provocative works that advance or challenge our understandings of historical and contemporary socio-political, economic and cultural issues. in addition to full-length articles, we publish review essays sparked by previously published material, interviews, commentaries/interventions, and book reviews. javascript:openrtwindow('http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/about/editorialteambio/7083') javascript:openrtwindow('http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/about/editorialteambio/10441') javascript:openrtwindow('http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/about/editorialteambio/4624') 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javascript:openrtwindow('http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/about/editorialteambio/10416') javascript:openrtwindow('http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/about/editorialteambio/7105') javascript:openrtwindow('http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/about/editorialteambio/7106') javascript:openrtwindow('http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/about/editorialteambio/7106') javascript:openrtwindow('http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/about/editorialteambio/10545') javascript:openrtwindow('http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/about/editorialteambio/5935') javascript:openrtwindow('http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/about/editorialteambio/4515') table of contents editorial introduction ‘a work for the world and for us’ carlo fanelli and garry potter articles unpaid work, coercion and the fear economy ann duffy and norene pupo living on the margins: economic security among senior immigrants in canada nancy mandell, larry lam, jana borras and janice phonepraseuth settling immigrants in neoliberal times: ngos and immigrant wellbeing in comparative context karla angelica valenzuela moreno, john shields and julie drolet bodies and borders: migrant women farmworkers and the struggle for sexual and reproductive justice in british columbia, canada amy cohen and susana caxaj neoliberal salvation through a gendered intervention: a critical analysis of vulnerable young women’s talk ruth cross and louise warwick-booth global citizenship as neoliberal propaganda: a political-economic and postcolonial critique debra d. chapman, tania ruiz-chapman and peter eglin small causes, large structures. a new look at the roots of social inequality in human societies bernd baldus 6 14 38 65 90 118 142 167 interventions rethinking the transnational capitalist class william k. carroll the world market, ‘north-south’ relations, and neoliberalism bob jessop disability and social equality: the centrality of independent living sandra carpenter towards a fairer platform economy: introducing the fairwork foundation mark graham and jamie woodcock the quantitative tactics used to delegitimize a right to the city social justice movement in bogotá, colombia amy e. ritterbusch “the elders said if we stop fishing we will die, we will no longer exist”: hannah arendt’s black holes, canadian corporate mining impunity, and indigenous narrative resistance norah bowman against the commodification of water cameron fioret navigating a necessary inequality: children and knowledge-based injustice michael d. baumtrog re-thinking struggle: starting from story bruce ferguson 188 207 229 242 254 268 283 294 307 ‘a work for the world and for us’ editorial introduction carlo fanelli1 and garry potter2 a spectre is haunting . . . not only europe but the world. however, we cannot now write with the same degree of confidence as did the authors of the communist manifesto. while we reject the teleology inherent in a literal interpretation of that work and conclude that marx and engels meant their assertion of revolution’s inevitability more as an exhortation than as any assertion of fact, they nonetheless seemed very confident in the future. we cannot look at the world situation today and find too much in the way of rational grounds for such optimism. for that we must adopt gramsci’s maxim of pessimism of intellect but optimism of will. the spectre of social justice today is pale and ethereal but nonetheless real. our hope and will are conjoined. as both intellectuals and activists we hold onto another of gramsci’s maxims: to tell the truth is revolutionary. we believe there is much knowledge and truth in this journal issue, most particularly about social inequality and its multiple registers of oppression. much time has passed since the revolutions of 1848 but social inequality is still structurally central to our socio-economic system and growing even more extreme. three men – jeff bezos, bill gates and warren buffet – together hold wealth equal to that of half of the population of the united states. if we add amancio ortega, carlos slim, mark zuckerberg, larry ellison and 1 carlo fanelli is assistant professor of work and labour studies in the department of social science at york university. he is the author of megacity malaise: neoliberalism, public services and labour in toronto, and co-editor (with bryan evans) of the public sector in an era of austerity: perspectives from canada’s provinces and territories. 2 garry potter is a film maker and professor of sociology at wilfrid laurier university. he has made two feature length documentary films: whispers of revolution and dystopia: what is to be done? both available on the website: www.whispersofrevolution.org. he is also author of the book dystopia as well as the bet: truth in science, literature and everyday knowledges, and the philosophy of social science: new perspectives, as well as a series of educational films on social theory available at https://socialtheoryfilms.pivotshare.com. 6 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice http://www.whispersofrevolution.org/ michael bloomberg to the previous three, we then find that these eight men control wealth equal to that of the poorer half of the world (curtin, 2017). the 2018 world inequality report provides considerable empirical evidence for some fundamental conclusions. first, inequality levels differ enormously by region and country. secondly, the degree of inequality has risen sharply from the 1980s to the present. these two conclusions provide support for an even more basic conclusion: governmental policy can profoundly affect the degree of inequality found in societies, either exacerbating it, as they predict will occur if current policies and trends continue into the future, or reducing it if governments pursue some reformist measures. this is where from our point of view, the pale spectre of social justice sits at the fulcrum of the axis of the pessimism of hard analysis and the hope for something better than that. essentially, the authors of the world inequality report offer us a political prescription of government investment and taxation measures, educational access measures and so on, following a comparative modelling of european versus american political economic trajectories over the last few decades. the european way would decrease future inequality, the american way would increase it. they do not mention either keynes or friedman in this regard but that is basically what it boils down to. but is a small return to keynesianism even possible, let alone the best we can hope for? even if true on one level, that best would simply not be good enough; not if we admit environmental materiality into the economic abstractions. moderate reform measures will not stave off climate change and other environmental disasters. moreover, at the core of keynes’ intellectual project was an attempt to rescue capitalism, not surmount it – that is to say, keynes sought to preserve and not upend antagonistic class relations and their particularities of race, gender, ethnicity and so forth. while some sought to ‘radicalize’ keynes in the aftermath of the great recession, we take the view here that keynes stopped short of recognizing the ways in which state power structures reinforced and solidified capitalist class exploitation at the expense of labour, in the process strengthening market-like rule. in other words, juxtaposing (more) state against (less) market presumes that the state is a classneutral arbiter that exists independent of the capital-labour relationship (fanelli, 2015). far from three worlds of welfare capitalism, ‘the country that is more developed industrially only shows,’ as marx put it, ‘to the less developed, the image of its own future.’ thus, rather than decommodifying social relations, the ‘a work for the world and for us’ | 7 keynesian welfare state further embedded commodification helping to lay the basis for the rise of neoliberalism and subsequent turn to more overtly ‘authoritarian’ measures that continue to deepen and extend the marketization of all spheres of social life. even though the left has seldom been more fractured and weaker; even though we see a slide into the mainstream by the far right; still, we do not see it as helpful to repeat the political analytical mistakes of an earlier era; the problem is not neoliberalism, it is capitalism. we saw this error occur through the 1980s as a good many intellectuals, including stuart hall, martin jacques and eric hobsbawn, came to embrace a tawdry reformism in the uk labour party because of their analysis of “thatcherism.” we can look back now with near universal disdain upon that dreadful little book of anthony giddens’ the third way, and the labour party’s transformation from a social democratic party to enthusiastic neoliberal one. the same is true in the canadian context as new democratic parties came to embrace a ‘new’ social democracy without illusions that called for ‘harnessing the market to social ends’ (richards et al., 1991). this rediscovered third way was motivated by a claim that social democracy faced new conditions and challenges, not the least of which was stateless capital and powerless states under the auspices of globalization, and each new strategy was portrayed as the best way forward given the new constraints and opportunities (evans and schmidt, 2012). under this process of neoliberal convergence labour was now treated as just another “interest group” jockeying for influence over public policy. although formal institutional linkages with organized labour still remained, it was now devoid of political content; what others have referred to as “contentless populism” (bradford and jenson, 1991) or “reformism without reform” (mcbride, 2005). perhaps ironically, it is in today’s corbynist uk labour party where we can find signs of renewed hope. however, while inequality levels are susceptible to change arising from even moderate reform measures – and we are certainly completely in favour of such being enacted wherever possible – the very existence of inequality is not contingent in this manner: it is a fundamental feature of capitalism. sitting on the political sidelines is no longer an option, indeed for many it never has been. as has often been noted, arguing from a neutral or supposed objective position reinforces the status quo. one of the great ironies with the turn to authoritarian neoliberalism (albo and fanelli, 2014) has been the radical right’s usurpation of historical demands raised by the left, not uncontroversially and often for different reasons, including demands for national self-sufficiency and self8 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice governance, protection of free speech, anti-globalization and anti-elitism, opposition to “the system” and claims to speak for “common people.” liberal neutrality also has very little to say about addressing group, let alone class, disadvantages, and fails to consider the ways in which state institutions and laws underwrite and enforce the structural power of the ruling class, deepening and extending existing inequalities of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and so forth. in this regard, the spectre of social justice is a presence and possibility, and because it aims to upend existing inequalities in all their forms, it remains a threat that haunts the nightmares of elites the world over. this hope for a better, fairer world has guided the production of the various articles found in this issue. leading us off, duffy and pupo contend that women’s unpaid, socially necessary reproductive work has grown in the context of ever-more unstable and insecure work arrangements. this is especially reflected in the spread of unpaid internships and unremunerated working days, which has dramatically intensified patterns of exploitation. situated historically, women’s unpaid labour has buffeted unequal economic arrangements, while providing a reserve army of labour; this is not a byproduct of agent-less globalization, but part and parcel of capitalism and the relations of ruling that sustain them. next, mandell et al., show how the percentage of the elderly poor has begun to rise in canada, with single elderly women and older immigrants with limited familial supports representing the most vulnerable. rising poverty is associated with shorter average life spans, and greater risk of illness and disability, more family stress and greater physical, psychological and social illness. in an era where economic vulnerability and inequality continue to grow, mandell and authors examine what the short and long-term consequences will be for society when inequality continues to grow leaving a large majority of canadians “unequal to the end.” moreno and co-authors follow this up with an article exploring immigrant settlement and integration services through state and nongovernmental organizational (ngo) ‘partnerships’ across fourteen countries. as noted elsewhere (fanelli et al., 2017), at the core of these partnerships are increasing tensions related to the preservation of programs in the face of neoliberal restructuring, as well as the undermining of nonprofit advocacy out of fear of government funding loss. despite these challenges, moreno et al. show how many ngos continue to emphasize a social justice mission that promotes an active advocacy agenda premised on building community relationships that value social and cultural differences and opposes social inequality. in what follows, amy cohen and susana caxaj discuss women migrant farmworkers and ‘a work for the world and for us’ | 9 their struggles for reproductive sovereignty in british columbia. as they explain, little is known about women’s reproductive health and the experiences of sexual exploitation under the seasonal agricultural workers’ program (sawp). based on a review of federal and provincial healthcare policies, including qualitative interviews and fieldwork, cohen and caxaj reveal the ways in which female sawp workers’ sexuality is restricted and controlled via legal and extra-legal means. cohen and caxaj conclude with a call to expand the movement for reproductive justice for migrant women, beginning with the acts of resistance already taking place on-the-ground, and extending these to broader struggles for migrants’ rights. following this, ruth cross and louise warwick-booth explore uk policymakers’ efforts to fund early interventions for so-called vulnerable young women. the authors conducted focus groups with women who had participated in the intervention to determine the impact it has had on their own lives. cross and warwick-booth show how such interventionist programs guide young women towards an individualized, self-regulatory, normative sense of successful selfhood that resonates with neoliberalism, thereby reinforcing hegemonic gendered identities and existing structural inequalities. next, chapman and coauthors “make the case for a program of critical studies devoted to analyzing the features, sources, institutional carriers and uses of the concept of global citizenship as neoliberal propaganda serving to mystify young people’s understanding of their place in the world.” their analysis is based on two case studies of the concept’s use with regards to international service/experiential learning and the existential conditions of the us/mexican border in the form of dehumanized and racialized latinx bodies. finally, bern baldus contends that current theoretical discussions of the causes of social inequality still rely largely on frameworks first formulated in the 19th century by marx, spencer and durkheim. baldus examines elements in the causation, maintenance and change of inequality structures which are rarely discussed: the role of luck and chance in the growth of inequality, the selfreinforcing dynamics and processes of social control which can consolidate it over time even if its consequences are harmful to the majority of people affected, and its irregular historical pathways. these elements also suggest the need to explore more egalitarian forms of distribution and options for social change and social justice. a series of interventions further confront issues of social inequality and social justice. bob jessop suggests that marx’s analysis of capitalism was far more 10 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice than simply one of his own time but of the future, “the basic mechanisms, tendencies, counter-tendencies, contradictions, and social antagonisms that still shape capital accumulation and bourgeois societalization at the start of the 21st century.” as jessop notes, via marx, the more integrated the world market becomes, the less scope there is to resolve crises by extending capitalist relations into previously marginal economic zones. when this crisis displacement strategy reaches its limit, increasingly severe general world crises erupt, thereby indicating the need to put demands for a new historical form of production on the political agenda. for marxist politics, the proletariat becoming a class-for-itself is still a project, a hope, and above all a matter of class consciousness. the formation of the transnational capitalist class (tcc) could also be said to be a project and a matter of consciousness. william k. carroll argues that we need to bring greater clarity to the old marxist concepts of class-in-itself and class-for-itself, as well as concepts of “the global” and the “transnational”. the tcc, as he refers to it throughout his article, is not fully realized. rather it exists as “a regional tendency that co-exists amid structures and practices of an era of capitalism fading but not extinguished.” the emerging tcc consciousness (becoming a class-for-itself) residual sticking point is the united states. while the clintons and obama embodied and embraced the movement toward the consolidation of the tcc, carroll argues that, to the extent that ‘trumpism’ can be seen to be coherent at all, it is going against this tendency. it is an effort to, as carroll puts it “make america(n capital) great again.” to conclude, he argues that the half century long history of capital cross-penetration among the advanced states has muted but not yet eliminated geopolitical rivalries. in what follows, sandra carpenter’s article focuses upon disability. she recounts her own experiences to argue that the struggle for independent living led by people with disabilities is a key element of the broader struggle for social equality. epistemic inequality and injustice is the focus of michael d. baumtrog’s paper. he argues that children and youth may face unjust knowledge-based discrimination and expounds a theory of epistemic injustice more generally. mark graham and jamie woodcock’s article on digital platform work enumerates the many negative aspects of the way such work is organized, not the least of which is the difficulty of organizing any collective bargaining power in this field of employment. but graham and woodcock offer a new strategy for the struggle: they propose establishing a fairwork foundation that ‘a work for the world and for us’ | 11 would setup certification schemes that are able to carefully distinguish between platforms that offer workers a fair deal and those that do not. cameron fioret’s paper provides an overview of philosophical issues concerning the commodification of water and provides the ethical grounds for why its commodification is clearly wrong. ethical issues are also examined in a very different and politically grounded context in amy ritterbusch’s paper. she reflects upon her own experiences as an academic and social justice activist in the preparation of a human rights report on the brutality exerted upon a homeless community in bogota, columbia. the aftermath of the report’s publication and the critique alleging it to have been produced with a lack of methodological rigour forms the basis for a broader reflection upon the role of social scientific research in relation to struggles for social justice. the critique of her work argued that engaged, qualitative scholarship and methodological rigour are mutually exclusive. we, of course, side with her and do not at all believe this to be the case. but the report and its alleged ‘objective’ critique is the basis for examining the broader politically loaded ‘paradigm war’ about the nature of social scientific research. personal activist history and epistemology are also very much part of bruce ferguson’s article. he makes the argument that we must draw upon indigenous metaphysics, language and stories as the primary source of strategy for resistance by indigenous peoples to guide them in the struggle to regain control of their lives, lands and resources. norah bowman draws upon hannah arendt’s theories of moral and political impunity to examine canadian corporate mining human rights violations in guatemala, honduras, and canada. arendt asserted that narratives of resistance are inevitable and bowman suggests that this could provide a model for grassroots resistance. crucially, in addition to arendt’s ideas, she also provides the oral narrative of chief darrel bob of the st’at’lim first nation as a resistance narrative. this issue of alternate routes grew out of a conference jointly organized with the university of holguin in cuba. we hope all participants found the conference informative and worthwhile; we certainly did, and would like to thank all attendees for their deep insights and lively contributions. many thanks are also due to the contributors of this volume, including the invaluable assistance of nearly two dozen peer-reviewers who graciously lent their time and expertise; these articles are all the better for it and a testament to scholars committed to social justice-oriented critical research that challenges social inequality in its many forms. a great deal of appreciation is also due to jeff 12 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice noonan and jamey essex for their steadfast work and commitment as co-editors of the interventions section. we also want to thank robert marshall and matthew flisfeder for all their hard work and dedication as new book reviews co-editors; we encourage all readers to visit www.alternateroutes.ca and consider undertaking a review of their own. finally, we began this introduction with one of marx’s most famous quotations, so it is perhaps fitting that we conclude it with one of his lesser known ones: “[w]e can formulate the trend of our journal as being: self-clarification (critical philosophy) to be gained by the present time of its struggles and desires. this is a work for the world and for us. it can be only the work of united forces.” references albo, g. and c. fanelli. (2014). austerity against democracy: an authoritarian phase of neoliberalism? teoria politica: an international journal of theory and politics, 4, 65-88. bradford, n. jenson, j. (1991). facing economic restructuring and constitutional renewal: social democracy (pp. 190-211). in fox piven, f, ed., labor parties in postindustrial societies. oxford: polity press. evans, b. and schmidt, i. eds. (2012). social democracy after the cold war. athabasca, alberta: athabasca university press. fanelli, c. (2015). the ‘radical’ keynes: an appraisal. workplace, 25, 69-81 fanelli, c., d. rudman and aldrich, r. (2017). precarity in the nonprofit employment services sector. canadian review of sociology, 54(3), 331352. mcbride, s. (2005). “if you don’t know where you’re going you’ll end up somewhere else”: ideological and policy failure in the ontario ndp. in carroll, b. and r.s. ratner, eds., challenges and perils: social democracy in neoliberal times (pp. 25-45). halifax: fernwood. melanie curtin. (19 january 2017). these 8 men control half the wealth on earth. inc., https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/meet-the-8-men-whocontrol-half-the-worlds-wealth.html ‘a work for the world and for us’ | 13 http://www.alternateroutes.ca/ forever idle: the resilience of colonial ideas on black bodies nour afara1 abstract: my argument hinges on the theme of time: how ideas attached to racialized bodies endure (and mutate) across time. i highlight the question of falling behind and/or failing forward by tracing the failings of social policy and its impacts on black bodies by conducting a cross-historical analysis of seventeenth-century south africa, specifically travel diaries from european incursions and twentieth-century united states, specifically works of social policy. my study analyzes the ways that idleness, as a pejorative social characteristic, is tied to racialized bodies across these two colonial contexts. keywords: colonialism; social policy; idleness; time and space; welfare state introduction in this paper i am interested in the way colonial ideas ‘stick’ to bodies, such that particular discursive and affective regimes endure (and mutate) across time. specifically, i examine how the concept of idleness is closely tied to black bodies, framing them as lazy and decadent—and consequently legitimizing oppressive practices. i will analyze the ways in which idleness, as a pejorative social characteristic, is tied to racialized bodies across two different colonial contexts: seventeenth-century travel diaries from european incursions into south africa and twentieth-century social policy in the united states. it is widely known that european colonizers were present and active in seventeenth century south africa but my argument is that the racial discourses they constructed survived beyond the explicit institutions of colonialism and are evident in twentieth-century u.s social policy. to be clear, i am not suggesting that these racist discourses proceed linearly in time from south africa to the united states but rather i contend that there is a confluence of these affects circulating. beyond the everyday racism that black bodies are subjected to, i argue that these discourses were used by the state to continue to manage them, therefore perpetuating the colonial project. 1 nour afara is a phd candidate in the department of english at the university of ottawa. forever idle | 183 during the colonial period, discourses of 'the idleness of black people' legitimated the colonial project of bringing ‘civilization’ to 'inferior groups' (spillers, 1987, 65). more recently, the ‘idle other’ in us social policy is constructed as a threat to the political community as a result of their ‘dependence’ on the state, consequently legitimating the retrenchment of social support and the entrenchment of state discipline which disproportionately affects racialized bodies (boris, 2007, 599). i will focus on the constructions of the hottentot venus (south africa) and the welfare queen (united states) so as to provide a close reading of idleness and colonialism and their effects on black women.2 i address the lasting effects of the discourses of idleness and decadence through resilience theory. the concept of resilience has been taken up widely and is typically “associated with [the individual's] inner strength or resourcefulness and an ability to bounce back following adversity or trauma” (aranda et al, 2012; hart and blincow, 2007); however, in the context of this paper, resilience is not applied only to sentient beings but also to lasting ideas and institutions. there are collective and organizational aspects to resilience that are useful to my study of the racialized lived experience and the sociocultural markers that have 'stuck' to individual bodies and lasted across time and space. paul pierson discusses the resilience of the welfare state, positing that it "has proved to be far more resilient than other key components of national political economies and far more durable than existing theories of the welfare state would lead one to expect" (pierson, 1996, 144, emphasis mine). he explains resilience as a characteristic of welfare state retrenchment and mobilizes it as a tool for understanding how the contemporary welfare state carries with it traces of the past. kay aranda et al carry this impulse further and add that "contemporary interest in resilience may indeed be a response to broader sociocultural narratives of fear, anxiety and powerlessness and a further manifestation of neo-liberal welfare’s disciplinary logic” (aranda et al, 2012, 559-560; leach, 2008). although the authors gesture to how resilience can refer to sentient subjects, they also extend the definition further and ask, “where resilience resides, [and] how it is achieved”—both queries that demand we apply this theory to ideas and institutions, as well and individuals (aranda et al, 2012, 550). i am suggesting that idleness and decadence are resilient qualities of deeply embedded racist social 2 black women have double the burden than black men because they deal with patriarchal oppression as well as racial, and this makes them the most vulnerable targets to such colonial constructions (wright, 2018, 230). 184 | populism, power and protest institutions: historically seen in my studied travel diaries and letters, and contemporarily mobilized in social policy. prominent scholars of political theory interpret resilience as an adjective used to describe human subjects, providing an alternative reading of this concept. as such, addressing this position is an important step in describing how my study extends this scholarship. mark neocleous suggests that 'resilience' has become a significant and popular political category in the past decade and draws on a "2008 oecd document on state-building, styled 'from fragility to resilience', defin[ing] the latter as 'the ability to cope with changes in capacity, effectiveness or legitimacy" (neocleous, 2013, 3). this definition describes resilience as a state of being that develops for or is acquired by human subjects as a sort of defence mechanism post-trauma. similarly, heidi rimke, who has published widely on resilience theory, shares neocleous' position and criticizes resilience discourses because "they promote a neoliberal model of mental distress that frames struggle as a distinctly personal obstacle to overcome by those with the fortitude and the moral strength of so-called resilience" (rimke, 2018, 33). both scholars scrutinize these discourses because they perpetuate neoliberal perspectives on individual responsibility: putting the onus on subjects to be resilient enough to 'pull through' harm that is typically state-caused. i argue that resilience discourse is far more capacious than neocleous and rimke, among others (howell and voronka 2013) suggest. as social benefits are retrenched and welfare is increasingly devolved to the individual, reading resilience as a quality of a pejorative idea (idleness, decadence) or institution (welfare state) and therefore a mechanism by which these ideas and institutions endure and mutate across time and space, is imperative in our current political climate. case studies for the case studies i have selected for this paper i will first provide a broader look at their social and political climates, and then i will conduct my close readings. my two primary sources are travel diary entries from dutch colonizers in south africa and a passage of united states social policy from the moynihan report (1965). in these two sources i will look at how and why they represent racialized understandings of idleness. i chose to examine dutch travel diaries in south africa because they document a pivotal moment in south african history: first european contact and the beginnings of racialized sexual discourse around black women in that area (dekker, 1995, 2). scholars have noted that "our forever idle | 185 knowledge of african history is not supported by written documents and instead european reports form the only sources" making it all the more pertinent to closely examine a sample of these reports in an effort to understand that colonial moment (bassant and tedeschi, 1990, 157). similarly important is the moynihan report by u.s senator daniel patrick moynihan (1965), which was originally titled, "the negro family: the case for national action", because it marks a moment in recent history when slavery had allegedly ended (‘formally’ in 1865) but conversations regarding the ‘nature’ of black families and 'managing' them were still present and widely accepted. conducting close readings of these cases will allow for clearer examinations of the hottentot venus and the welfare queen, which follow each, respectively. after establishing how hottentot bodies were described and abused, i will narrow my focus to the hottentot venus, saartjie baartman, and how she was reduced to just her body, designated as 'idle', and put in a circus for white visitors to gawk at and consume. i will then move on to a close reading of part of the moynihan report to examine contemporary constructions of ‘black idleness’ before analyzing the construct of the welfare queen. in the second part of the contemporary cases, the language of idleness has stretched and mutated to label black women as 'lazy' and dependant on the state which cripples them (shahani, 2016, 30; spillers, 1987, 66). understanding saartjie baartman's story is a way to trace the stickiness of idle discourse around black women because arguably she set the precedent for the way they have been described and subjugated to date. historical context this section outlines the historical contexts of seventeenth-century south africa and the twentieth-century united states. i am specifically interested in which groups of people were involved in the colonial activities of the time, what colonial culture looked like, and what the social and political contexts of the hottentot venus and the welfare queen were. it is important to note that even though the hottentot venus was a real, individual woman, and the welfare queen is a racist social construct, i am reading both of them as colonial archetypes which have impacted history and affected the way black women (17th century) and as a result, women of colour (20th century and today) are perceived and treated. in his chapter, "idleness in south africa”, novelist and translator j.m. coetzee frames the colonial moment in seventeenth century south africa: he compiles diary entries by european—specifically dutch—travel writers and so identifies who was 186 | populism, power and protest involved in this moment. he also identifies "discoveries" made by british commentators in south africa at the time, and draws on various philosophers, jean-jacques rousseau among them, who specifically discuss the hottentots and their "indolence" (coetzee, 1988, 128-9). coetzee and others (shahani, 2016, 40; hobson, 2011, 404) give insight on the variety of white colonizers and imposers (not directly colonizing but often visiting on holiday) who came to south africa to see the hottentots: to watch them, to laugh at them, and to be repulsed by them (coetzee, 1988, 129; jordan, 2003). a significant aspect of colonial culture in this moment was that hottentot bodies were made a spectacle and then pathologized for it: being called indolent, or lazy, a quality that was allegedly inherent to them. in particular, hottentot women were made to put on shows, parading their bodies for white audiences to consume. in the irony of putting on dance performances, wherein movement is typically necessary, their bodies were still categorized as lazy, immobile, "and perpetually accompanied by danger" (rousseau, 1984, 13). this fear of the 'lazy and dangerous' hottentot, will be seen later in the contemporary moment through the fear of the state-dependent body of colour. complex networks of meaning develop in this time in history, forming inextricable connections between the hottentots and discourses of idleness.3 the discourses themselves were associated with other, related pejorative characteristics. for example, sarah jordan discusses how idle black bodies were also thought to be "grotesque" or repulsive and unnatural (jordan, 2003, 135). i read characterizations of the grotesque hottentot as an accusation of being ‘out of pace’ with what is deemed natural per the colonizers. in her book, the anxieties of idleness, jordan compiles extensive primary evidence from the seventeenth to the late eighteenth centuries on the treatment and observation of the hottentots and points out that reports of african idleness are exceptionally pervasive during this time. while typically discussion of the grotesque racialized subject had much to do with their physical body (connoting filth, anomalous genitalia, strange eating habits, nudity), jordan asserts that these ideas were deeply associated with idleness and an innate inability to ‘keep up’ with normative life, and consequently, normative time (jordan, 2003, 135). for example, philip d. curtin asserts that 3 paul ricoeur (1977) posits that behind every idea is a map, or a network of meaning. these larger meaning structures help us to see the dimensions of socially accepted and historically resilient understandings of idleness. forever idle | 187 european colonizers and observers were “clock-conscious” and as such labeled africans as lazy when they did not keep up similar labour habits (curtin in smith, 1997, 132). the most convincing reading of the connection between idleness and the grotesque is brought forward by coetzee who argues that "idleness often comes together with, and sometimes as the climax of, a set of other characterizations", all of which depict black bodies as lazy abominations (coetzee in jordan, 2003, 129, emphasis mine). indeed this reading is seen in nearly all notable records of hottentot life as published by their observers and imposers. arguably the most profound example of the objectified and sexualized "idle" hottentot is saartjie 'sara' baartman. saartjie baartman was originally from south africa and she went to europe willingly because she was promised a better life—but instead she was made into a 'still' circus attraction, forced to showcase her naked body by standing still to an audience who had never seen a bare black woman. her white audience was fascinated by her protruding buttocks, breasts, and hips, a physique profoundly different than their own women's, and so they stared, touched, and laughed at her. conclusions were made about her not being human because she looked nothing like a white woman (hobson, 2011, 405). baartman's body and identity had been categorized and colonized – from her nonafrican name with saartjie being a dutch diminutive of sara, to her body that was made an idle spectacle. here we see a stark contradiction between the non-african name and the othering of her body, as though she were simultaneously being domesticated and exoticized. knowing her history is important because it allows us to see the travel writer's observations and conclusions in real-world application. the latter half of my analysis focuses on the united states in the twentieth century, specifically in and around 1965 when moynihan wrote his report. keeping in mind that slavery was legally abolished one hundred years prior, the political climate at this time still had residual racism through segregation in the everyday (schools, theatres) in some states. even though slavery was over and the government policy was amended to desegregate schools, individual states implemented this law on their own timelines. the civil rights movement was nearing its end at this time, and progress had indeed been made in terms of more rights for black bodies (bradley, 2016, 5; berghel 2017, 422). this was a post-slave trade moment wherein black people were still subjected to unfair treatment, socially and financially4—the latter impacting how and to what extent 4 some examples of unfair social and financial/economic treatment are: socially embedded everyday racism, non-state sanctioned segregation, and poorer wages and employment 188 | populism, power and protest they could support their families. often the result was that these groups of people had to rely on state-funded assistance, or welfare—a program that started in 1935—and up until the mid-sixties (and today) was far from equal for black people as the financial stipends they are afforded are statistically less generous than those given to white people (brown and wellman, 2005, 197). because of the still substantial racism and racially divided socioeconomic outcomes of the time, the derogatory construct of the welfare queen emerged later through the media in 1974 (kohler-hausmann, 2015, 762). the welfare queen was an archetype used to describe women, specifically black women, who were unmarried or divorced, had multiple children, did not rely on their husbands or any male partner, and either misused state assistance or collected too much of it, all while not working to support themselves or their families. scholar eileen boris outlines specific qualities that are attributed to the welfare queen: their lack of motherhood insofar as having many children but not child-rearing in the ‘traditional’ way, their 'untamed' sexuality, and their lack of dependence on husbands and overdependence on the state (boris, 2007, 598). this archetype shares much in common with baartman insofar as they are both positioned as idle bodies who are othered, sexualized, and ostracized from those around them based on their racialization. much like baartman, the welfare queen is feared but for different reasons: she is 'getting away' with misusing the system, a system that is now criticizing her for the precarity it put her in. what joins these two archetypes together is the marker of laziness, and more specifically, the inability to keep up with clock-time, or “bourgeois time”, per neocleous (2014, 68). much like the hottentots who are ‘out of pace’ with clock-conscious europeans, neoliberal rhetoric frames racialized welfare recipients as delayed, uninterested in setting and meeting goals for progress, and crucially, that these grotesque qualities are willful. as stated above, neocleous might conclude from my reading that these neoliberal markers are the pejorative side-effects of resilience rhetoric being pushed on vulnerable subjects, that bourgeois time should compel us to consider the harmful impact of resilience rhetoric. while his reading is helpful, i assert that outcomes (brown and wellman, 2005, 196). for example, in the 1970s, “even when black workers made substantial economic gains, whites did better. between 1947 and 1959, the absolute median income gap between black and white workers grew from about $7,000 to about $11,500. it remained there until the economic boom of the 1990s” (brown and wellman, 2005, 196). forever idle | 189 resilience—as a theoretical lens used to analyze racist ideas and discourse that have lasted and mutated across time and space—is a useful tool in delineating the lasting effects of racist affective and discursive regimes that still linger in contemporary social policy. theoretical framework this section details how idleness and stickiness can be understood as temporal concepts, lasting and mutating over time. idleness has multiple connotations which construct a web of meanings through which we can understand it and its related concepts. idleness is directly connected to a subject’s assumed/constructed inability to be ‘active’, and productive—all qualities demonstrated by ‘working hard’ in the everyday (coetzee, 1988, 18, rousseau, 1984, 13). as a racialized concept, idleness is articulated through notions of civility, activity, and productiveness. as the european travelers discussed the hottentot’s “misery, purposeful lack of work, and alleged lethargy”, the diary writers (willfully or not) construct a binary by tying these characteristics to a particular population defined by their racialized identity of ‘blackness’ (coetzee, 1988, 22). idleness, then, comes to be a kind of central signifier for moral, spiritual, and physical decay and inferiority (turner, 2003, 5). the inverse of this binary is implicitly constructed and is represented as that which is active and hardworking: whiteness. yet, idleness is not just a concept which occurs across time but is a temporal concept in and of itself. typically, idleness is a quality or trait assigned to bodies, just like other colonial descriptors of people’s hair, skin colour, dress, and the like. i argue that idleness differs from typical descriptors because it implies wider assumptions on the colonized body (turner, 2003). idleness signals a lack of mobility, progress, and change. these assumptions imply a slowed down version of time: that life for bodies deemed idle does not ‘move’ at the ‘normative’ pace, or that the bodies themselves are the impediments, per the colonizer’s assumption that they are abject, stupid, and other. as such we can observe the resilience of these affective and discursive regimes tied to idleness and how they have endured over time and space. this understanding of idleness leverages deep and complex eurocentric moral frameworks which give it meaning. although this history is too broad to engage with fully in this paper, i will draw on work by bryan turner who discusses how particular affects are tied to particular bodies in this eurocentric history. for example, idleness is tied to inactivity, lethargy, and potentially moral and physical 190 | populism, power and protest obesity, which are understood (interrelatedly) as individual moral failures which connote melancholy, excess, a lack of control, and a sign of social corruption (turner, 2003, 2). conversely, activity, sacrifice, and discipline imply ‘responsible’ regulation of the body, which benefits society (turner, 2003, 5). similarly, decadence is tied to inactivity, excess, and lack of control, and is also a sign of social and moral decay (sanders, 2011, 124). the common understanding of decadence is the act of over indulgence in what is luxurious, excessive, and pleasurable. the variation of decadence that i am utilizing traces back to the mid sixteenth century, from the latin term “decadentia”, meaning to decay (sanders, 2011, 124; turner, 2003, 2). this definition intersects with the racist language of idleness that the travel writers included in coetzee’s text use in relation to the hottentots choosing to be poor and miserable, opting into lethargy (a synonym for decay)—as a result of their “innate” idle qualities. when discussing idleness as a racialized concept, it is useful to consider leisure per william gleason. for gleason, leisure is “the counterpoint to work” and he posits that we can understand the formation of the self in relation to national identity by studying the growing emphasis on notions of leisure (gleason, 1999, 300). if, for this paper, the opposite of idleness is work, and for gleason, the opposite of leisure is work—then how are idleness and leisure similar if they are both counterpoints to work? i argue that there is a racial dimension to this binary (leisure versus idleness), because typically, leisure is a privilege (read: i like to sit and read for hours; i enjoy lying by the beach; i prefer to spend my days thinking about the world) afforded to subjects as a result of past effort or class–and therefore, ‘well-earned’. conversely, ‘idleness’ is a result of a lack of effort (read: you are lazy; you are unemployed; you lack ambition) which is typically deployed to described people of colour and poorer people (ali and syed, 2011, 352). as such, leisure somewhat haunts discussions of idleness as its ‘other face’, yet it does not manifest in these cases as it is not deployed for people of colour. the cultural history of idleness and decadence (particular in colonial, christian european, and later, american contexts) provides a social, moral, and cultural lexicon in which idleness, decadence, and activity are situated, draw upon one another and other related concepts, and crucially, ‘stick’ to bodies. ‘stickiness’ is a concept discussed by sara ahmed in her book the cultural politics of emotion; it describes the ways that emotions are tied to particular words and discourses which can operate across different contexts. in this way, ‘traces’ of affectivediscursive regimes from a particular context can be mobilized and used in other forever idle | 191 contexts. through this phenomenon we can begin to parse the ways in which the discourses and affects tied to idleness in seventeenth century colonialism reemerge in twentieth century american social policy (ahmed, 2007, 565). othered bodies are assigned names (per hortense spillers), and those names “stick” to their bodies (per ahmed), travelling with them, and remaining over the passage of time, as we will see in the examination of the welfare queen. should discourses of idleness appear in both temporal and spatial contexts, there is a premise for arguing a possible connection. this is not to say that contemporary discourses of ‘lazy black people’ or ‘the welfare queen’ come from people who read seventeenth century colonial travel diaries, but that the discourses articulated by the latter were sufficiently ‘stuck’ to black women that they retained salience across time and space. historical scholars have asserted that “the conviction that africans were idle specifically provided a splendid justification for slavery” and i would like to examine the ways these justifications have continued (not necessarily linearly) across time and space (jordan, 2003, 158; smith, 1997, 133; hooks, 2015, 91). the following section will outline the criteria by which my examinations will unfold, focusing on how idleness as a temporal concept can have more specific dimensions: mental and physical idleness. criteria. in each case i am looking for two main topics of discussion: activity (a physical action or movement) and initiative (mental action initiated by the self). in conversations about and descriptions of black bodies, it is usually the case that they are deemed to lack activity and initiative. examples of physical activity could anything from performing a dance, to going to work to make money for your family. an example of initiative would be to make ‘productive’ decisions to generate wealth and ‘progress’. mental and physical idleness are often interwoven, as ‘laziness’ describes both physical inactivity and a lack of initiative. on travel diaries and the hottentot venus in this section of the paper i will be conducting my comparative case analysis between seventeenth century travel diaries and the twentieth century moynihan report to examine idleness through discussions of activity (physical) and initiative (mental) and the ways they may be tied to race. following each case will be an analysis, per the same criteria, of the colonial ideas as they apply to black women in each time, specifically the hottentot venus and the welfare queen. as previously mentioned, the reason i have chosen to examine these ideas applied to black women specifically is because they experience double the burden, facing both patriarchal and racial oppression. i will begin with the seventeenth century 192 | populism, power and protest travel diaries. the travel diary sources (primary) i have compiled are many and so i will draw on brief passages from a transcribed entry from traveller christopher fryke, an entry by traveller john ovington, and some historical background on diary entries by scholar r.m. dekker to support each examination. it is important to note that all of these entries are coming from the same historical and geographical moment: they discuss the hottentots from the cape of good hope in seventeenth century south africa. christopher fryke notoriously composed nineteen categories (although they might not always be applied to every case he looks at) called "account of the hottentots” or “description of the hottentots” (shahani, 2016, 14). some of the categories included are: “physical appearance”, “dress: (a) clothing, (b) ornamentation, (c) cosmetics”, “habitation: (a) dwelling, (b) village layout”, and “language” (shahani, 2016, 14). he applies this framework in a letter wherein he is observing the hottentots, and explicitly records his ‘account’ “by stringing together anthropological commonplaces from the categories, physical appearance, dress, diet, recreations, customs, habitation, language, and character” (fryke in shahani, 2016, 16). crucially, despite the variation of categories, they all seem to revolve around the hottentot’s ‘idleness’ (hottentots sleeping all day, lying all over each other, eating cowhide and guts, not ‘proper cuts of meat’) and ‘primitiveness’ (living in huts “like hogs”, utilizing a language which sounds like turkey noises, displaying their sexual organs openly) (fryke in shahani, 2016, 16). again, the ‘observations’ on the hottentots construct a racialized identity that revolves around idleness and primitiveness as signifiers of inferiority, inadequacy, and lack of progress – all of which were opposites of signifiers which constructed ‘ideals’ tied to whiteness (i.e. activity, progress, hard work, etc.) (spillers, 1987, 66). the repetition of these signifiers tied to black bodies – along with the negative affective and moral connotations – cause them to ‘stick’, to become connotations of ‘blackness’ itself. significantly, noting that the hottentots speak a language that sounds like animal noises speaks to a sort of ‘mental’ idleness because their ‘tongue’ is deemed unproductive because it is not understandable by their colonizers. their physical idleness is alluded to through their living conditions, which are also likened to the living conditions of animals: in close quarters, and nude. john ovington observed the hottentots to be "a very lazy people [who] choose to live […] poor and miserable, than to be at pains [effort] for plenty" (ovington in coetzee, 1988, 27). forever idle | 193 further, it was decided that "their native inclination to idleness and a careless life, will scarce admit [hardly allow] of either force or reward for reclaiming them from that innate lethargic humour" (ovington in coetzee, 1988, 27). crucially, the europeans described the hottentots as ‘choosing’ to live lethargically while also saying that it is their ‘native inclination’ (positing that they ‘cannot help themselves’). in this way, although idleness leverages a discursive regime which locates it as an individual failing, it is generalized across an entire racialized population. ovington’s observations seem to imply that the way the hottentots live is their innate ‘nature’ (subsuming all hottentots under one identity), and further, that they, (crucially in contrast with all other humans) are limited by their nature, that they cannot become different (active) than what is being observed of them (coetzee, 1988, 28). conversely, the idea of change and self-improvement would become central to western notions of identity. although the travel writers were allegedly ‘just observing’ the hottentots, ovington, among other travel writers, was drawing conclusions on the hottentots and constructing identities for them. however, observation is neither neutral nor innocent, as their ‘conclusions’ construct (and reinforce) a racial hierarchy which was central to the colonial project (i elaborate on this toward the end of this section). coetzee notes that “although the framework of categories within which the travel writers operate is nowhere explicitly set forth by them, it is not hard to extract it from their texts”, which is to say that the travel writers’ recorded thoughts are their own, but the body of knowledge they are drawing from is a cultural and social structure they are products of – including their understandings of the moral connotations of idleness (coetzee, 1988, 13, emphasis mine). the hottentots’ alleged idleness and primitiveness were described in opposite terms to what were considered moral and social ideals of the observers. overall, the hottentots are seen as idle because of a lack of ‘progress’ by eurocentric standards, which implies a lack of physical activity (or ‘hard work’) and of initiative (to want to be more ‘productive’). an example of the travel writers’ conclusions in application can be found in the abuse of saartjie baartman. we know from the above sections that she was brought from south africa to england—and was made to tour europe for several years—to showcase her body to white audiences (hobson, 2011, 405, allen 2011, 669). what is most significant here is what her 'performance' consisted of: baartman was forced to stand 'still', or 'idle' for the enjoyment of her spectators, making for a great deal of irony. typically, 'performances' by definition consist of activity, or physical movement, and initiative, or showmanship. conversely in 194 | populism, power and protest baartman's case, her show was 'put on' and it lacked both activity and initiative; she was made idle and then mocked and pathologized for being idle.5 in this way, the colonial concept of the idle black body is both borne on and adhered to (stuck to) baartman's body—and each time she put on another 'show', in a different place or time, these ideas remerge, remain resilient, and are reinforced by her audience. regulus allen, george boulukos, gretchen gerzina, and simon gikandi are all scholars who have significantly contributed to studies on transatlantic cultures and have published widely on the ways that bodies of colour were sexualized, compared to wild beasts, and crucially, deemed unable to reason or be productive (boulukos 2008 42-3).this is to say that they way baartman was abused was not anomalous but rather evidence of deeply entrenched views on blackness and the racialized dimension of idleness during the seventeenth century. in a chapter dedicated to black bodies and dancing, gikandi explains that despite the physical movement involved in this activity, dark skin “essentially fated [the subject] for slavery (gikandi, 2011, 47) and consequently condemned them to a life where their movements are unrecognized and unvalued much like baartman in her performances. in the time that europe was colonizing the cape in south africa, the protestant reformation was ongoing and mobilized a discursive regime rooted in notions of activity, effort, and hard work as central to religious identity (coetzee, 1988, 18). martin luther condemned the ‘contemplative life’ (a life spent doing more thought that physical activity—something coetzee speculated the hottentots did), and the discursive regime he helped develop is the inverse of the pejorative ‘observations’ of the hottentots and their idleness. hottentot idleness was understood by many travel writers to be “a sin, that idleness is a betrayal of one’s own humanity” (coetzee, 1988, 21). these reformation attitudes on idleness, according to coetzee, certainly informed the frameworks used by travel writers when observing the hottentots. in this way, the stickiness of idleness to black bodies reinforced the racial hierarchy which informed many efforts to legitimate the colonial project, from the ‘white man’s burden’ to proselytization to christianity (ali and syed, 2011, 350). the way the hottentots were described and the way saartjie baartman was ‘displayed’ reflected eurocentric understandings of physical and mental activity which ascribed ‘idleness’ to both the hottentots and baartman. this ascription was argued to be both innate to 5 medical students came and watched her 'shows' and took notes, observing her body, per criteria similar to fryke's (hobson, 2011, 406). forever idle | 195 their ’race’ and a result of their moral weakness, implying inverse traits – eurocentric ones – as positive and moral. on moynihan’s report and the welfare queen this section will consist of a close reading of a passage from daniel patrick moynihan's report titled, "the negro family: the case for national action", and an example of his understanding of the 'idleness' of black bodies in practice, through the archetype of the welfare queen. similar to the last case study, i will be looking for discussions of activity (physical), and initiative (mental) and deciphering whether these ideas were tied to race in each example. moynihan's report is a policy document which utilizes some statistical data, but primarily relies on vague arguments about the 'nature and history' of black families. it is important to note that no primary ethnographic or interview data was collected from the black people moynihan was discussing. moynihan published this document so as to convince the government at the time that social policy reform alone would not be enough to create racial equality. while his position might be read as 'progressive' (for his time, or otherwise), his arguments still perpetuate deeply colonial ideas regarding the alleged 'decadence', delay, and/or idleness of black bodies. arguably, in positioning himself as someone who supports the civil rights movement, but clings onto colonial understandings of black bodies, his is an especially damaging voice in history; this is because he will be remembered for championing racial equality, all the while linking ideas like 'idleness' to race. the particular pejorative understanding of idleness tied to racialized bodies which was prevalent during seventeenth-century colonialism can be seen as ‘traces’ in contemporary racialized discourses and practices. mid-twentieth century (and onward) us social policy retained the practice of reducing racialized bodies to ‘innate’ pejorative characteristics. two important passage of moynihan’s document read: "in essence, the negro community has been forced into a matriarchal structure which, because it is to out of line with the rest of the american society, seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole, and imposes a crushing burden on the negro male and, in consequence, on a great many negro women as well" (moynihan, 1965, 18). 196 | populism, power and protest “[the black community is a] tangle of pathology […] capable of perpetuating itself without assistance from the white world, and at the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of negro society is the deterioration of the negro family” (moynihan, 1965, 20). these two quotes evoke similar ideas to the seventeenth-century travel diaries examined above. the ‘black community’ (like the hottentots) does not reflect eurocentric values (are “out of line with the rest of the american society”) and therefore are ‘idle’ as a community, not ‘progressing’. given that the dominant cultural discourses of the post-world war two period in the united states were defined by the protestant ethic—hard work, ‘industry’ (initiative), self-reliance, and self-discipline—that is very likely what was implied by moynihan when he said the black community was “out of line with the rest of american society”, and therefore, were mentally and physically idle (kolozi, 2013, 20; mitrea, 2017, 24; hudson and coukos, 2005, 13). further, moynihan frames this condition as inherent to race, as the black community’s “tangle of pathology [is] capable of perpetuating itself without assistance from the white world”. a ‘lack of progress’, in and of itself, suggests lethargy and idleness, and implicitly leverages the colonial discourses which saw ‘primitiveness’ tied to (‘stick with’) black bodies. similar to the travel diaries of the seventeenth century, this report implicitly constructs whiteness in its ‘observations’ of ‘blackness’. instead of explicit discussions on idleness, lethargy, and 'primitiveness', moynihan employs a 'tidier' language that still evokes the same ideas. for example, "to be out of line with the rest of american society" is a statement on black families' unequivocal otherness in their own lives because they are explicitly not 'in line', or 'the same' as others—others who make up the alleged majority of the population at the time. here, moynihan is suggesting that his observations of african american social and familial relations, rather than influenced by a history of slavery and oppression, are effectively endogenous behaviours – innate ways of being which are so regressive and self-destructive that they are linked to disease (‘pathology’). he is insinuating that they are ‘limited’ because they are ‘like this’ or 'cannot help themselves'—similar to the ways the hottentots were perceived to be limited by their natures, according to the travel writers. both the black families in moynihan’s work and the hottentots have identities created and stuck to them by forever idle | 197 external subjects (with more power/social capital)—and further, both examined groups are assumed to have certain ‘innate limitations’ that defer their social progress, and ability to be more like their white neighbors/observers. hortense spillers examines moynihan’s use of particular diction to name, define, and differentiate between white families (active), and black families (idle). according to spillers, moynihan’s thinking that, “ethnicity itself identifies a total objectification of human and cultural motives—the “white” family, by implication, and the “negro family” by outright assertion, is in a constant opposition of binary meanings” (spillers, 1987, 66). as such, moynihan moves to position white families as “present”, and “tense”, unlike black families who he frames as “frozen in meaning as a result of their ethnicity” and “still” (idle) (moynihan, 1965, 30). again, the repetition of discourses of idleness (lacking progress, ’out of line with society’) makes these signifiers and their moral connotations ‘stick’ to black bodies. contemporary social policy, however, also evokes the long colonial history discussed in the previous section by utilizing similar terms in similar ways to similar effects: tying (‘sticking’) idleness to black bodies. while in the seventeenth century, making signifiers of idleness ‘stick’ to black bodies legitimated colonial projects based on the inferiority of the racial other, in the twentieth century, ‘traces’ of that discursive regime legitimates the retrenchment of social support and the entrenchment of state discipline for black and other bodies of colour. a common (colonial) trope of black women within the united states is the label of the “welfare queen”. in an article aptly titled, “on cowboys and welfare queens; independence, dependence, and interdependence at home and abroad”, eileen boris defines the two cultural and political archetypes mentioned in the title as both simultaneously gendered and racialized, as the cowboy represented a symbol of white male individualism and the welfare queen stood for a despised black womanhood. behind the image of the cowboy stand the workings of empire; behind the portrait of the welfare queen lies the punishment of poor women, often african american or latin american, for their motherhood, sexuality, and lack of dependence on husbands (boris, 2007, 599). the archetype of the welfare queen was originally introduced in 1976 in a campaign speech ronald reagan gave on welfare and poverty. in this speech he discussed a woman from chicago who was allegedly defrauding the welfare system, by using "80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, social security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. her tax-free cash income alone has been running 198 | populism, power and protest $150,000 a year” (reagan 1976 interview). in a sentence, he constructed an image of a woman who has come to represent all women despised by his voters6—the woman who does not work hard (or at all), who takes advantage of the 'good' and 'supportive' system upheld by the government, and one who 'fakes' her dependence on her husband(s). in similarly tidy language to moynihan, reagan evokes the idle other, specifically the idle black body. this archetype lacks both activity and initiative but in his reading of her, she somehow 'gets ahead' of good, hard working (white) americans. again, similar to how the hottentots were described and how saartjie baartman was ‘displayed’, the welfare queen is a pejorative idle figure who does not make efforts or take initiative toward being productive in a eurocentric framework. this subject then lives in idleness and decadence by not actually working. however, the difference and tension here is that this subject does make physical efforts and takes initiative, but does so in a manipulative, deceitful, and non-heteronormative way (by not relying on a single patriarchal husband to provide for her – speaking to the ‘pathology’ identified by moynihan) which is a threat to the political community of ‘properly active’ (white) subjects. in this way, the welfare queen leverages older colonial discourses on the idleness of black bodies and combines them with patriarchal discourses on the deceitfulness of women, altogether constructing a figure which legitimates the retrenchment of social policy. what is significant here is the stickiness of the ‘welfare queen’ figure and the understanding of idleness that we can trace back to historical colonialism because of how “welfare dependents have become the primitive other, politically assaulted, responsible for national decline, who need taming through cowboy social policy” (boris, 2007, 599). in the case of the hottentots, because their form of work or activity did not sufficiently resemble that of their white observers— and crucially, that they were framed as lethargic bodies—they were deemed idle by colonial travel writers. similarly, in the case of the ‘welfare queen’, because she does not conform to patriarchal understandings of the normative household (i.e. depending on her husband to provide for her and her children, working)7 , and 6 non-white men and freed male slaves only got the right to vote in 1870—so raegan's voters would have still been largely white (brown and wellman, 2006, 198) 7 double whammy: assuming the welfare queen has multiple children so as to further benefit financially from the political community. forever idle | 199 instead relies on welfare stipends, she is deemed “a primitive other”, idle, and responsible for the decline of the nation (boris, 2007, 560). contemporary stickiness: 1990s-present the goal of this paper is to demonstrate how the concept of idleness, when tied to black bodies and/or bodies of colour, has colonial roots and has proven to be resilient (has 'stuck') over time. this final section is devoted to examples of the effects of the discourse of idleness tied to black bodies. the examples are not exhaustive but serve to illustrate the salience of this discourse and how it is deployed in policy and by political actors. for example, in shut out: low income mothers and higher education in post-welfare american, valerie polakow critiques the united states’ “viciously anti-feminist, anti-poor, white supremacist, and ‘anti-family value’ welfare reforms of the mid-1990’s (notably the 1996 personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act)” (polakow, 2004, 25). briefly, the act was meant to put “work first [and] education later”—a reform that “confines welfare recipients [and single mothers of colour especially] to low-wage employment and denies [them] access to post-secondary educational resources” (polakow, 2004, 25). this reform, signed by former president bill clinton, demonstrates idleness and primitiveness were mobilized as characteristics which defined ‘lazy’ welfare recipients who ‘did not work’, and which disproportionately targeted people of colour. for instance, the act placed an enormous discursive and policy emphasis on ‘individual responsibility’ for life outcomes, eliding the structural trajectories of american society which led to increasingly unequal outcomes. the act contains terms like “obligations of the individual” to “attend school, maintain certain grades and attendance, keep school age children of the individual in school, immunize children, attend parenting and money management classes, or do other things that will help the individual become and remain employed in the private sector”(act 1996).while this excerpt and the act itself do not explicitly refer to black people, it explicitly targets ‘behaviours’ which are heavily tied to those bodies, and was seen by many scholars as disproportionately targeting people of colour (kolozi, 2013, 20; hudson and coukos, 2005, 13; polakow, 2004, 25). this retrenchment in social policy was predicated on the idea that idleness (not working) was an individual failing and a threat to the political community. if we return to the alternative reading of resilience offered to us above by neocleous and rimke, we can see how contemporary social policy favours 200 | populism, power and protest resilience terminology and instructs subjects to behave resiliently (i.e. in the act) but the underlying discussion of race demands that we see how these behavioural instructions are products of racist discourse that has endured across time and space. for those who could or would not ‘reform’ and ‘activate’ themselves through personal responsibility and determination (again, explicit discourses derived from the protestant ethic), escalating disciplinary measures would be taken8 (i.e. the state rescinding all social support) (ali and syed, 2011, 352). another salient example that is even more recent (2017) is an article that details an economic study, positing that "states with more black people have less generous welfare benefits" (jan 2017). the quoted statement is connected to ronald raegan's discourse on the ‘welfare queen’, wherein her ‘dangerous idleness’ (to the state and to ‘good taxpayers’) must be addressed through retrenched welfare benefits (such as through the 1996 act). finally, a canadian example of colonial discourses on idleness was demonstrated through a comment made on april 18, 2018 by nova scotia progressive conservative leadership candidate elizabeth smith-mccrossin. in a house of assembly discussion on cannabis legalization, smith-mccrossin “told the legislature that legalizing cannabis could potentially make nova scotians as unproductive as jamaicans” (boon 2018). despite whatever intentions she might have had with her comment, she perpetuated ‘idle’ discourse around black bodies, which, as critics pointed out to her, “portrays black people as lazy and unproductive” (boon 2018). conclusion the particularities of the constructed identity of welfare recipients is rooted in historical ideas which ‘stuck’ idleness and race together. from the hottentots we see the emergence of a resilient colonial discourse around idleness. this discourse was then deployed with saartjie baartman, moynihan’s report, the ‘welfare queen’ archetype, and other contemporary examples. idleness as a racial concept was used to legitimate colonialism – bringing ‘culture and god’ – as well as contemporary retrenchments of social policy. this discourse was tied to black bodies across history, shaping how they were understood and ‘managed’ by european and american powers (ahmed in riedner, 2004, 701). 8 polakow demonstrates how “far from lazy and deficient they [welfare recipients] are, as [their social circumstances pushed them to] demonstrate their perseverance, skills, and energy, just so they can navigate” the precarity of their lives (polakow, 2004, 81). forever idle | 201 references ahmed, s. 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(2018). queer temporalities: space-ing time and the subject. in t. m. allen (ed.), time in literature (pp. 288-304). cambridge up. forever idle | 205 exploring the trajectory of housing assistance policies in canada jon careless1 abstract, this article explores the degree to which changes in housing assistance policies (haps) reflect the structural shift from the welfare state era towards neoliberalism and financialization, as opposed to efforts concerning the right to shelter that have emerged in canada between the mid-twentieth century and the housing surge of the 1990s and early-to-mid 2000s. my central argument is that the haps instituted by the canadian state during the welfare state era were shown to garner limited legitimacy among policy-makers and served as an effective scapegoat for a state that came to shift the goals of haps towards purposes more explicitly associated with neoliberalism and financialization. to support this argument, i make the following claims that are informed by my empirical findings. firstly, i show how canada’s transition from the pre1980s welfare state era into the contemporary epoch of neoliberalism and financialization saw the state largely withdraw from providing haps in the form of public assistance. the twenty first century brought drastic cutbacks to social housing support through public resources. at the same time, i explain that hap policies were diverted to ramp up the demand for homeownership and access to mortgages which primarily benefited lenders and investors involved in mortgagebacked securities. keywords: housing policy; canada; cmhc; neoliberalism; financialization; liberal-welfare regime 1 jon careless is currently a phd candidate in the department of political science at york university, with interests in canadian housing policy, gentrification and theories of the state. i would like to thank dr. pablo mendez who supervised me through the process of performing this research during my graduate school career. exploring the trajectory of housing assistance policies in canada | 135 introduction for many, the securement of housing is seen as a right that no one should be expected to live without. however, there is no legal basis from which one can demand housing as a right in canada (porter, 2003, 107). rather, housing in canada has always generally been provided by the private market. there are some important exceptions to this rule, as evidenced in the period between 1964 to 1978 where canada moved “toward a comprehensive housing policy, with over 20,000 new social housing units constructed each year” (fallis, 2010,182). the provision of socially assisted housing of this type speaks to the canadian state’s historical efforts to assist those unable to acquire shelter strictly through their own means. it is important that i first explain why i am using the concept of housing assistance policies (haps) as opposed to some other generally accepted definition for policies the state uses to help people access shelter that they can not otherwise secure. most definitions of such housing policies as employed by researchers and policy officials are centered around some metric of affordability. most conceptions one finds will explain it as meaning that housing occupants are paying a manageable percentage of their income to access and maintain the shelter they have (hulchanski, 1995, 472). this follows with the political-institutional definition of affordable housing as expressed by the cmhc (2018) where shelter is affordable so long as it costs less than 30 percent of a household’s before-tax income. yet, hulchanski (1995, 488) reminds us that such ‘rule of thumb’ definitions of affordable housing that rely on a ratio are simply arbitrary because such concepts only raise the question as to why the government and the private sector shifted the ratio up from 20 percent to 25 percent and then to 30 percent “over the course of this century.” for my purposes, the term housing assistance policies better complements my objectives, which is not to understand whether certain policies meet the condition of some metric of affordability. rather, i am exploring changes in the forms and contents of policies devised to provide access to differing types of housing for different classes of canadian residents in ways i will show to be expressly political and determined greatly by changes over time in canada’s larger structures of accumulation. my central argument is that the housing assistance policies instituted by the canadian state during the welfare state era (between roughly 1945 to the mid1980s) and characterized by keynesian economics and welfare policies) were shown to garner limited legitimacy among policy-makers and served as an effective scapegoat for a state that came to shift the purpose of haps towards 136 | populism, power and protest purposes more explicitly associated with neoliberalism and financialization. the emphasis of canada’s haps has always been, and continues to be focused on stimulating housing starts, home ownership and tenancy rates. the shift in housing policy orientation that this article refers to relates to a gradual delegitimization of certain strategies defined by federal leadership and support for non-profit housing construction which were slowly set aside in favour of others predicated on decentralized political control, limited social spending, and the boosting of financial capital’s involvement in housing provision. first, this research shows that canada’s transition from the pre-1980s welfare state era into the contemporary epoch of neoliberalism and financialization, saw the state largely withdraw from providing housing assistance in the form of public subsidies. the twenty first century accordingly saw a reorientation in the content of haps with significant cutbacks to social housing support in favour of more targeted assistance plans. at the same time, hap policies were diverted to ramp up the demand for homeownership and access to mortgages which primarily benefited lenders and investors involved in mortgagebacked securities. the evidence presented will thus reveal how the canadian state undertook this transition towards housing policies marked by neoliberalism and financialization, as well as explain why the state in canada was so susceptible to the influence of neoliberal ideas predicated on removing barriers to capital accumulation (i.e. privatizing public assets, removal of bureaucratic rules and oversight that impede the business class). on this latter point, i claim the liberal philosophy underpinning canada’s welfare state has always made it amenable to promoting a transition towards neoliberal oriented housing policies. what was required for it to happen was a breakdown of keynesianism and the class compromise between capital and the working class that had buttressed the welfare state paradigm. importantly, the evidence provided does not suggest housing policy was necessarily more effective during the welfare state-era at tackling the housing access and affordability problems experienced by the working class and by income poor families overall. a prominent example of this being the federal public housing program that began in the mid 1950s and was expanded greatly through the 1960s as part of the then pearson government’s large expansion of social programs (suttor, 2016). despite being less stigmatized than its us counterpart, federally provided public housing earned enough negative attention that it was replaced by a relatively more successful social housing (subsidized non-profit exploring the trajectory of housing assistance policies in canada | 137 societies, tenant co-operatives) program in the 1970s. such non-profit housing, though, remained a limited option and became a popular culprit for bureaucratic overreach when housing affordability problems mounted during ongoing tumult in the 1970s and early 1980s. the empirical evidence presented below is thus meant to show that the efforts by the state to shift the direction of haps followed in line with larger structural changes that took place in canada. my evidence was derived from reports produced by the canadian mortgage and housing corporation (cmhc), a crown corporation and the primary conduit by which the canadian state administers housing policy, along with statements from past debates between members of the house of commons wherein state officials publicly justify the role and purpose of haps as promoting the public interest. these materials were derived entirely from public sources, including the cmhc website and the hansard online archive. the findings derived from these materials help to establish the ways in which the content and purpose of housing policies have been articulated and justified by political officials. these materials help illustrate how the state employed haps to try and redress the highly complex problems relating to housing affordability as expressed by varying segments of the canadian population. these problems, including housing shortages and affordability issues occurrent in a rapidly urbanizing canada after wwii were followed in subsequent decades by labour market restructuring and heightened concern over public spending levels. these events unfolded with a corresponsive strengthening of canada’s housing securities market and its financial markets generally, which worked over time to augment the criteria of haps intended to mediate them. however, such shifts in haps were largely limited to scaling back direct federal involvement in a sector that remains under formally provincial jurisdiction, as well as creating avenues by which the financial sector can aid housing seekers. the implications of these explanations are such that the canadian state has persistently shaped the direction of housing policy in accordance with the imperatives of the prevailing structure of accumulation. in this way, i show how the purveyance of the liberal welfare state regime in canada after world war ii (esping-andersen, 1996, 128) effectively conditioned the state to perpetually seek market-friendly solutions to housing problems, and thus made canada susceptible to neoliberalism by the 1980s. my contribution to existing scholarship (see walks and clifford, 2015; kalman-lamb, 2017) on this matter is to explain how the changing content of haps through the welfare state era into the age of 138 | populism, power and protest neoliberalism have persistently reflected the state’s efforts to maintain social cohesion within changing structures of accumulation. my analysis provided below will help explain these developments, and thus support my belief that canadian housing policy has historically tended to be directed by the state in a manner accordant with upholding social cohesion, and the prevailing structure of accumulation by extension. by this i mean that the logic of accumulation requires that the state help extend the reach of capital into ever more sources of value once older ones become exhausted (see harvey, 2007). this paper will unfold in two sections. the first section will consider how hap developed after wwii up until the 1980s during the welfare state era. the second section looks at the gradual shift in direction that haps took between the 1980s and 2000s up to the point that canada’s housing surge tapered off following the onset of the 2008 crisis. this paper is thus not a comprehensive analysis of a strand or aspect of canadian housing policy, but rather it provides a brief snapshot of changes in haps over a wide expanse of time. theoretical perspectives in any analysis of the functioning of housing policy, one must consider how and why the state itself deploys such policy in the manner it does. many conservatives and classical liberals, despite their differences, would agree that society functions best when a state restricts itself to safeguarding individual liberties. marxists, too, perceive states as largely oppressive institutions, but are generally in favour of abolishing them given their integral role in shaping and maintaining a structure of accumulation that does indeed produce enormous wealth, but relies on perpetuating exploitative class relations to do so. the evidence i present below supports a view that can be said to be common amongst many marxist state theorists (see jessop, 1990). that is, the state produces cohesion to the extent that the structures of capital accumulation remain supported (bacher, 1993, 33). it is in this vein that this article offers a critical analysis of canadian housing policy that examines the relationship between the state and society in line with the principles of marxist political economy (see harvey, 1989). an historical analysis of the canadian state’s role in the creation and administration of its housing policy is naturally going to engage with the concept of the welfare state. this is because the state in canada has historically employed its resources to help people attain shelter that can not otherwise afford it. accordingly, british historian asa briggs (1961, 228) offers a classic definition of the welfare state as exploring the trajectory of housing assistance policies in canada | 139 organized political power intended to modify the ‘play of market forces’ by providing people a certain minimum income and access to particular services that lie beyond their own means. we generally associate housing assistance policies with those that allow for the provision of subsidized (or rent geared to income housing) by the state, but this can take additional forms in the manner of tax credits for homebuyers, for instance, as these mechanisms all involve helping people access particular forms of housing – and thus are forms of welfare. to situate this understanding of the concept of the welfare state in a canadian context, i borrow from esping-andersen’s (1996, 15) typology of welfare state regimes, within which canada is classified as a liberal welfare regime along with the u.s., great britain, new zealand and australia. the liberal welfare state, according to esping-andersen (1996, vii-2), was a phenomenon that took shape beginning in the 18th century by which governments produced social solidarity, reduced disparities between classes, as well as affirmed “liberal democracy against the twin perils of fascism and bolshevism” in the 20th century. efforts by welfare state regimes to redistribute resources towards the less fortunate in line with demands for equality, however, invariably conflicted with individual rights to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of property,’ a principle accordant with capitalism, a system predisposed to generating class inequalities. as espingandersen (1996, 16) notes, the capacity for liberal welfare regimes to mediate these tensions came under attack following the neoliberal turn of the 1980s, wherein canada, britain, and the u.s. elected to draw back welfare policies and allow market forces even greater freedom to dictate individual access to resources, including housing. it is important, however, to delineate how esping-andersen’s typology can be usefully situated into this analysis of haps in canada. the us and canada, for instance, both engage in ‘market federalism,’ which is the “way in which [the] centralizing power of the state [is used] to protect property rights [and] also provides the state with the capacity to regulate and intervene in…markets” (bousfield, 2013, 398). the primacy of individualism in post-civil war america saw it tend towards decentralized federalism, whereas canada’s market federalism became a means by which its confederated state could use protectionism to guard its resources from colonial appropriation under the banner of nation building, a trend that speaks to canada’s predilection for publicly provided health care and other universalist policies that make it less liberal than the us (bousfield, 2013, 398-399). 140 | populism, power and protest at its peak, canada’s liberal welfare regime, as characterized by ‘market federalism,’ employed a set of strategies defined by technocratic keynesianism. purveyors of technocratic keynesianism “emphasized policies of pump priming not investment control and actuarially sound, contributory social insurance programs not labour-market planning” (bradford, 1999, 31). the objective of technocratic keynesianism was thereby not to radically intervene in the market, writes bradford (1999, 32) but rather “fine tune a mostly booming economy through tax cuts, investment incentives and automatic stabilizers,” the last of which can be classified as welfare policies (for example, unemployment insurance, old age security, and child allowances). such welfare policies help provide supplementary income to under-employed persons so as to stimulate aggregate demand and thus maintain social cohesion. as will be shown below, technocratic keynesianism became afflicted by a legitimacy crisis that struck in the recession plagued 1970s and was subsequently displaced by neoliberalism and financialization as guiding philosophies for policy. neoliberalism is a term given to ambiguity and is not wholly synonymous with the label of ‘small-government.’ palley (2005, 20) identifies it as a conservative laissez-faire philosophy that “emphasises the efficiency of market competition, the role of individuals in determining economic outcomes, and distortions associated with government intervention and regulation of markets.” this is not to say that neoliberalism has rendered states into less powerful actors. that is, the state undertakes and manages processes, such as deregulation and tariff reduction, that lessen the degree to which the state interferes with individual liberties. though financialization may ostensibly appear as a similarly mystifying term of art, its meaning is more straightforward. krippner (2005, 174) defines financialization as “a pattern of accumulation in which profit-making occurs increasingly through financial channels rather than through trade and commodity production.” we can say, then, that financialization refers to activities related to the provision or transfer “of liquid capital in expectation of future interest, dividends, or capital gains” (krippner, 2005, 174-75). hap changes after wwii, strengthening social cohesion following wwii, canada and the other the mature capitalist economies experienced prolonged economic growth often referred to as the golden age (mcnally, 2009), an event that coincided with the augmentation of the liberal welfare regimes in these countries. this proved fortuitous for the canadian state and the capitalist class in general as the post-wwii era was marked, broadly exploring the trajectory of housing assistance policies in canada | 141 speaking, by a fear that canada would sink into another great depression once the war-time economy dissolved (see berry, 1999). as part of its efforts to head off such a calamity, canadian policy makers adopted what became known as ‘technocratic keynesianism’ after wwii. in its american and british forms, at least, keynesianism stressed the active use of monetary and fiscal policy to spur aggregate demand. in their efforts to stimulate economic growth during the welfare state era, the housing market was viewed by the canadian state as an ideal vehicle to achieve this goal and serve as a mechanism for nation building and social stability by extension. indeed, private market housing expansion helped buttress the social status of a once restless working class which increasingly found itself tethered to rentier capital through rent and mortgage payments. “the working classes shared in suburbanization virtually from the outset,” writes dalton (2009, 65) “buying or renting housing in modest, but new neighbourhoods.” as well, bonding the working class (particularly homeowners) to rentier capital through debt repayment schedules in this way helps limit worker unrest, where threats associated with non-payment can overshadow the imperatives of labour movements. the purveyance of homeownership as a political means for generating social cohesion has a long history. writing in the 19th century, friedrich engels warned the working class against such debt bondage “as it minimizes their autonomy by making them dependent on income from labour and diminish the chance of their starting a revolution” (aalbers and christophers, 2014, 385). these developments were spurred as much by changes in state policy enacted immediately after the great depression as they were in the years after wwii. harris (2004) explains how suburban development in canada during the early decades of the 20th century was undertaken by immigrants and blue-collar workers who created communities that were relatively inclusive and heterogeneous. following the great depression and wwii, however, canada amassed a significant backlog for housing. suburban development thereby became more widespread, notes harris (2004), in part because the federal government had entered the housing field in 1935 where local governments adopted national building guidelines and provincial governments committed to more rigorous planning legislation. these efforts eventually culminated in the passing of the national housing act (nha) in 1944 and the creation of the canadian mortgage and housing corporation (cmhc) to administer the nhas guidelines, which included the direct provision of subsidized mortgages using 142 | populism, power and protest taxpayer revenues. canadian suburbs subsequently expanded and became more homogenous (harris, 2004), thereby helping mitigate housing shortages. though these responsibilities given to the cmhc appear pragmatic and politically neutral, its institutional functions related to the state’s efforts to suppress public support for radical political change. this is evident in how the cmhc administered the 1944 nha, along with subsequent amendments made to it. by administering the nha, the cmhc facilitated the expansion of new housing developments which signified the state’s desire to appear as if it were instituting significant reforms meant to house more low-income canadians. by doing so, the state meant to temper public fear of another great depression after wwii, which dovetailed with public concern over housing shortages (bacher, 1993). the benefits that the nha afforded the state and capital were that the increasingly ‘suburbanized’ working class would begin to refrain from challenging capital lest they find themselves unable to pay their mortgages, especially at a time when soviet-era communism presented an attractive alternative to the existing order. the 1944 amendments, and the creation of the cmhc itself, thus went hand in hand with the evolution of the keynesian welfare state, where capital and the state made policy-based concessions to labour to secure their compliance. canada’s federally directed housing policy beginning in 1945 was described by leone and carroll (2010, 389) as a “relatively successful housing policy meeting the needs of returning veterans, baby-boom parents, and, later, baby boomers themselves in addition to those less advantaged through a number of income-support housing programs.” the substantial uptick in birth rates clearly put pressure on the federal government, rather than the provinces or private lenders, to dictate the direction of canada’s housing market, which it was able to accomplish in large part due to its constitutional jurisdiction over banking. canadian chartered banks were not even allowed to enter into the mortgage field until the federal government realized that a growing and increasingly urbanized population “could no longer be supported with available government revenues” and thereby amended the nha so as to let the banks participate (rose, 1980, 20). urbanization, and particularly the enhancement of blighted urban areas, factored greatly in the state’s use of housing policy to generate private growth at this time. wwii had produced expansive growth in manufacturing employment in canada through munitions production, leading to a rapid “increase in urban population, which created a housing crisis in almost every urban centre across the country” (suttor, 2016, 25). the federal government, under amendments made (1944 and 1954) to the nha, provided aid to municipalities for slum clearance exploring the trajectory of housing assistance policies in canada | 143 and urban renewal (carroll, 1989). policy makers held that eliminating slum dwellings would mitigate the ‘pathology’ of slum areas (purdy, 2002), as well as “allay the impact of post-war economic and social volatility” (purdy, 2005, 529). nha amendments made in 1956, furthermore, allowed urban lands purchased by federal funds to be used for commercial redevelopment (pickett, 1968). the state’s post-war housing initiatives helped temper working class consciousness, and at the same time benefited private interests associated with housing development. additionally, the state amended the nha in 1964 to ‘make affordable housing more accessible’ through subsidies. the period between 19641973 accordingly saw “canada’s greatest boom in both public and private apartment housing construction” (walks and simone, 2016, 62). the 1964 changes enabled efforts by each level of government, along with private groups to secure the housing needs of low income families (cmhc, 1965). the amendments themselves included “extended aid for federal-provincial public housing projects” (oberlander, et al., 1992, 57). nevertheless, the federal state’s public housing program remained very small compared to its mortgage insurance and direct lending programs (fallis, 2010, 180). however limited they were, these forays by the state into urban renewal and the provision of subsidized housing served to exacerbate housing affordability problems for poorer slum residents. carroll (1989, 65) emphasizes that “renewal displaced many low-income people who could not afford to move to the suburbs.” as well, by 1970 the federal government commissioned the hellyer task force which “urged an end to large scale public housing projects” which society had by then labeled as being ghettos, and encouraged actions to integrate lower income classes into the private market (warne, 1989, 17). eventually, the federal state heeded the task force’s recommendation, and subsequently stopped its public housing program while some of the provinces continued their own programs after this time. in 1973, ontario initiated a multi-pronged role which included providing assisted ownership, housing rehabilitation support, and expanding social housing production; around the same time, quebec, british columbia, and alberta each became active in building social housing (suttor, 2016). housing policy in the immediate decades following wwii reflect esping-andersen’s (1996, 128) contention that “fiscal federalism, rather than fiscal competition” as being the basis of the welfare state in postwar canada. indeed, the inability of poorer provinces and cities to provide welfare during the fallout of the great depression led to centralization within the federal government of responsibility 144 | populism, power and protest over forms of social security (esping-andersen, 1996, 128), which manifested into direct equalization payments made to provinces. haps in the 1970s, governing for collectives or the individual? such facilitative efforts undertaken by the state are evident also in the years between 1970 up until the mid-1980s. during this period the federal government subsidized non-profit societies and tenant co-operatives in order that they could build low-rent housing for modest income canadians (fallis et al., 1995). “it is this group of related housing programs that now is commonly referred to as social housing,” writes dreier and hulchanski (1993, 52), “meaning that they are socially assisted (receive direct subsidies) and that they house people from a broader social and income mix than the previous public housing program.” according to bryant (2004, 641), in “ontario through the 1970s until 1995 successive provincial governments were committed to rent regulation to protect an affordable rental housing stock in the private rental housing market, and to increase the number of social housing units.” in 1975, ontario’s conservatives “introduced rent control legislation as an anti-inflation strategy” (bryant, 2004, 642) which lasted up until 1995. the year 1995 saw the quebec sovereignty movement lose by only a narrow margin, and the federal government’s need to both resist while also alleviate quebec nationalism converged with its deciding to reduce federal spending and expediting negotiations with the provinces over jurisdiction over various areas of public service provision (suttor, 2016). however expansive, the direction the state took during the welfare state era in the 1970s with respect to housing policy remained primarily concerned with bolstering the private market. as hulchanski (2003, 224) notes, canada's social housing program remained modest in scope “because of the broader policy objective of leaving as much of the housing system in the market as possible" (see also rice and prince, 2013, 36). the state's efforts in the 1970s to combat housing affordability problems were further compounded by wider structural problems that became threats to the welfare state paradigm. a primary threat in this regard was stagflation, which refers to the crisis of high inflation and unemployment that began after 1973 (fortin, 2004). the poor macroeconomic conditions fed into rapidly rising housing costs and growing private rental supply problems, leading to housing becoming “singled out as a cause for concern” (lewis, 2003, 64). as was similarly the case in the late 1960s, for instance, interest rates on mortgages jumped in the late 1970s from “15 percent to more than 21 percent before they declined to the 12-14 percent range in 1983. these record high mortgage rates exploring the trajectory of housing assistance policies in canada | 145 pushed homeownership beyond the reach of many canadians” (prince, 1995, 751). campbell (1987, 217) argues that political decision makers concluded that keynesianism and welfare policies “overheated and its efficiency diminished as a result of incompetent bureaucratic and political meddling.” the legitimation crisis facing keynesianism led to the state abandoning “stimulative policies and [initiating] restraint, or at least the appearance of restraint” (oberlander et al., 1992, 65). following this, the cmhc (1980) declared at the end of the 1970s that its revised primary function was as a mortgage insurer. it would continue making loans and investments using public funds, but the scale was to be “dramatically reduced from that which prevailed until the mid-1970s” (cmhc, 1980, 9). the provision of housing for needy families through public, as opposed to private funds, remained important in the 1980s despite being gradually circumscribed (suttor, 2011). one may be inclined to pinpoint this period as the start of a slow roll-back phase of neoliberalism (see keil, 2002) within the spectrum of hap, which makes sense given the gradual retrenchment of direct cmhc intervention in the housing market. prior to this time, the federal state attributed a greater portion of haps towards collective interests in the form of federally provided resources and cooperative administration with the provinces in the production and management of non-profit housing. this post-wwii welfare regime remained politically tenable only so long as structural conditions permitted. haps in the 1980s to the 2000s: neoliberalism and financialization takes hold the direction haps took during the mid-1980s shows a commitment by the state to abide by the neoliberal principle of limited government intervention and a corresponsive focus on promoting the individualist pursuit of property. neoliberalism in canada and elsewhere staked a path “not of manifest destiny but one shaped by opportunistic moments, workarounds and on-the-hoof recalibrations, which in practice often bear little resemblance to the lofty ideals expressed in neoliberal theory” (peck and theodore, 2012, 179). indeed, the neoliberal turn within canadian housing policy was justified through ideas espoused by state officials who argued the federal government had mapped this result inadvertently through over spending and incompetence during the welfare state era. conservative roch la salle (1984, 4137) remarked to the house of commons in 1984 that “government probably has very little room to manoeuvre 146 | populism, power and protest regarding the amount of assistance it can offer homeowners, and the reason is quite simple, this government, especially in the last ten years, has put this country deep into debt through its unbridled spending.” suttor (2009) documents the momentum of roll-back neoliberalism in 1980s canada, noting that regarding housing policy, priorities for the state became decreasing its supply side measures, that is, reduce the production of publicly subsidized housing (see also peck and tickell, 2002). in 1984, for example, the cmhc revised its program selection process, declaring “only those cost-effective projects which serve the most people in need will be supported in 1985” (cmhc, 1984, 22). paving the path to neoliberalism dovetailed with the state’s concurrent efforts to financialize canada’s housing market. accordingly, the canadian state acted in the 1980s to manage inflation and public deficits so as to reduce risk of volatile shifts in asset prices and interest rates, all key concerns for those wanting to stimulate investor confidence. during the 1980s, interest rates spiked in canada as a response to recurring recessionary conditions, and a result of this was that the federal interest rate guarantees for non-profit and cooperative rental housing ‘made federal costs explode’ (walks and simone, 2016, 63). to get deficits under control, the cmhc’s mandate was put under review, which walks and simone (2016, 63-64) say resulted in the federal government choosing to more “narrowly target housing services to those with highest need” and left not only the provinces and local housing agencies to fill the gap in hap provision while opening avenues for financial capital to get involved also. indeed, by 1986, the cmhc introduced the national housing act – mortgage backed securities (nha-mbs) (cmhc, 1986). the nha-mbs program promoted the creation of a secondary mortgage market by offering investors, institutional (for example, pension funds) and otherwise, "guarantees of timely payments on pools of residential mortgages insured by cmhc” (cmhc, 1996, 9). the state thus encouraged investors to buy and hold nhambs by assuring them they will be protected in the event mortgagors’ default on their housing payments. investors also had a stake in helping fund mortgages as greater housing market activity translated into more opportunities to create revenue-stream generating mortgage backed securities. on the one hand, the state sought to balance budgets and monitor inflation under the pretense of promoting private-market efficiency and reducing risk. on the other hand, the state began actively financializing the housing market by promoting, and guaranteeing the solvency of mortgage-backed securities, a move that necessitates creating more risk for the taxpayer, whom are the lenders exploring the trajectory of housing assistance policies in canada | 147 of last resort. concurrently, the nha-mbs program was said to “benefit home buyers by increasing the amount of private capital available for mortgages, thereby helping keep interest rates competitive and encouraging lenders to offer mortgages renewable at longer terms” (cmhc, 1996, 9). the benefits passed on to home buyers through the nha-mbs program in the form of enhanced access to mortgage financing in what was a market increasingly flush with capital, though, were diluted in the face of stagnating wages, reduced welfare support and rising consumer debt levels in the 1990s. some politicians, meanwhile, continued to project ideas that highlighted deficit repayment as taking precedence over efforts to produce welfare policies. then cabinet minister donald mazankowski stated in the house of commons in 1993, “we all have to recognize that while we are very supportive and indeed want to enhance all our social programs, we have a very serious debt and deficit problem which we have to handle and manage” (mazankowski, 1993, 19053). evans (2002) argues the state’s neoliberal fervour for dissolving welfare policies manifested out of its need to stay competitive in an era of free-trade agreements and highly mobile capital. contra mazankowski, evans (2002, 80) argues that the “deficit was not caused by dramatic increases in social spending but resulted from decreases in government revenue, effects of high interest rates and tight monetary policy that dampened economic growth and led to higher levels of unemployment.” the state was accordingly more wary of developing and administering haps that relied on exclusively public funds as was more the case in prior decades (for example, an expansion of social housing). at the same time, the state opened more avenues for financial capital to help address affordability issues. following the example of the u.s., where securitization increased homeownership rates, the canadian state committed fully to its nha-mbs program, even extending its reach into social housing where the private sector was enabled to invest in what was formerly provided by public sources (walks and clifford, 2015). 1988 marked “the introduction of exclusive mbs pools of government subsidized non-prepayable social housing mortgage loans. starting with one issue in august, social housing pools grew by year's end to 31 issues, for a total of $216.4 million” (cmhc, 1988, 19). this policy is, of course, not indicative of the state neglecting societal interests as it simply permits investors to fund housing that was formerly paid for through conventional channels like commercial banks and state sponsored mortgages. 148 | populism, power and protest where the state reveals its predilection for privileging financial interests more exclusively is with subsequent housing policy developments in the 1990s. in 1996, for example, administrative responsibility for social housing was transferred from the federal government to the provinces, with the elimination of costly overlap named as the primary reason (wolfe 1998; pierre, 2007). the conservative government of ontario, for example, unloaded responsibility over social housing to the municipalities that could not afford to pay for them beginning in 2000. sabotaging city governments, argue hackworth and moriah (2006), was a move intended by the ontario conservatives to raise support for privatization wherein private capital could take advantage by investing and assuming control of formerly public assets and services. the federal and provincial governments’ lack of interest in constructing new social housing by the mid-1990s is evident in the numbers where by that time, roughly “five percent of canada’s households live(d) in non-market social housing.” (hulchanski, 2004, 179). the devolution of responsibility over haps from the federal government to the provinces was a development driven arguably as much by the state's federalist orientation as it was by its commitment to neoliberalism and financialization. whereas post-wwii era hap was characterized by the federal government exercising leadership over the provinces, in the 1990s control over haps became decentralized with the provinces assuming greater autonomy with respect to hap administration (suttor, 2016, 15). budgetary constraints felt within both the federal and provincial governments during the 1990s led the federal government to withdraw itself as primary administrator of housing policy where "decision making as to where federal money was to be spent was largely decentralized to the provinces, municipalities, and even the private sector" (leone and carroll, 2010, 399). when the governments tried coordinating on haps in the early twentyfirst century, the aim tended to be more on providing targeted assistance rather than broad provision of non-profit housing. the results were mixed. in the late 1990s, progressives identified three major housing problems, housing affordability, homelessness, and aboriginal housing, but “neither the federal nor provincial governments showed much enthusiasm for developing a comprehensive housing policy” (fallis, 2010, 185). what followed was the homelessness partnering strategy, considered the most significant housing initiative of the period as well as the joint federal and provincial affordable housing framework agreement which devoted millions for new rental housing and shelter support for low income communities (see cmhc, n.d.) – but this exploring the trajectory of housing assistance policies in canada | 149 floundered amid squabbling between governments at both levels (fallis, 2010, 185-186). canada’s federal state did in fact promote policies in the 1990s that would allow more social housing to be created, but did so in a way that eschewed public funds and instead encouraged financial markets to take advantage. referring to bill c-82 put before parliament in 1992, then cabinet minister elmer mackay stated the proposed law enables the “cmhc to obtain funding from and invest in the capital market. the bill also permitted the cmhc to directly finance social housing projects at lower interest rates” (mackay, 1992, 12087). dupuis (1999) writes that “in the 1993 budget, the federal government announced that it would no longer be increasing its support for social housing through the canada mortgage and housing corporation (cmhc) beyond the current funding level of about $2 billion a year” (ottawa. parl., 1999). as such, investors were afforded more opportunities to finance hap initiatives rather than the state and it was the state itself that facilitated this development. strategies meant to provide housing policy support for renters, meanwhile, have been limited since the neoliberal turn began taking shape. between 1975 to 1999, the canadian federal and provincial governments were insistent on fighting inflation through rent control among other policies (bryant, 2004, 648). the mid-1990s did, however, see six of the ten provinces opting for vacancy decontrol (see arnott, 1995) which is a policy that “allows landlords to increase rent without restriction when a tenant vacates an apartment. the tenant is protected from large rent increases provided s/he does not move” (bryant, 2004, 642). the general trajectory of such policies intended to manage inflation pressures have nevertheless hurt canadian renters who have experienced worsening affordability costs relative to homeowners in conjunction with successive periods of rapid housing price growth beginning in the 1970s, the late1980s, and the early 2000s respectively (cheung, 2014). while policy support for renters deteriorated, the state acted decisively to drive up homeownership rates beginning in the 1990s. by doing so, the state assisted in bolstering housing growth and the nha-mbs market. in 1991, the state initiated the first home loan insurance (fhli) program that reduces the minimum down payment requirement from 10 percent to five percent for firsttime homebuyers (cmhc, 1991). such policies worked in concert with falling interest rates by helping drive up housing starts in 1996 by 24 percent (mcdonough, 1997). rising demand for private market housing driven by growingly indebted canadians was a phenomenon driven by the federal 150 | populism, power and protest government allowing “the cmhc to insure mortgages with 40-year amortizations, zero-down payments, and interest-only mortgages, which the banks were only too willing to provide given they now shouldered none of the risk” (walks and simone, 2016, 67). as canada's housing boom took effect in the mid-1990s, haps were directed towards enhancing access to homeownership through the medium of financial markets. in 2000, the cmhc increased the amount of “insured mortgages that can be securitized” (cmhc, 2000, 18), with the intent of enhancing nha-mbs activity. by the mid-2000s, the cmhc lifted an additional barrier to ownership by reducing home insurance premiums, thus promoting greater affordability (cmhc, 2005). the reduction in cost of home-insurance premiums thus assisted in creating access to homeownership, and mortgage funding by extension, which lenders were more than happy to provide. this is because lenders accrue fees through the sale of mortgages to investors in the nha-mbs market. investors, in turn, are provided a steady revenue stream by purchasing and holding mortgage-backed securities. one may ask why it matters that these policies are meant to entice investors. after all, the 1990s marked the start of a housing boom made possible largely through nha-mbs activity in secondary mortgage markets (seccareccia, 2013). this surge, moreover, led to record levels of home ownership according to the bank of canada (crawford and faruqui, 2011-2012) up until the 2008 crisis emerged in the united states. one response would be to say more people were buying homes not because they were necessarily earning higher wages. the spike in homeownership was largely a product of more credit being lent to consumers. “household debt in total was higher in 2000, rising to $623.4 billion from $449.3 billion in 1994. secondary mortgage markets played a greater role in funding mortgages in 2000, accounting for almost 12.7 percent of the residential mortgages outstanding as of november 2000” (cmhc, 2000, 13). “as the 2000s wore on, it was the banking sector for the most part that became most leveraged, nor the private business sector,” but rather it was individual households (walks and simone, 2016, 67). conclusion this paper has been intended to show the housing assistance policies implemented by the canadian state during the welfare state era helped produce an environment within which canada’s housing sector was moulded into a form concordant with the practice of neoliberalism and financialization. after wwii, exploring the trajectory of housing assistance policies in canada | 151 when returning veterans fueled housing shortage pressures, the canadian state used technocratic keynesianism and fiscal federalism to facilitate the creation of then newfound sources of value production and social cohesion in the form of, a national housing market predicated on direct fiscal support and mortgage insurance and the permittance of bank lending for residential loans, all to spur home-ownership especially in what became suburban housing districts. the territorialisation of the state’s housing policies also spread inwards from residential suburbs towards blighted urban spaces using strategies like slum clearance along with housing subsidization for people unable to afford home ownership. the enactment of these federally led strategies by the state succeeded as a form of market federalism’ to the extent that they helped generate a prosperous national housing market and social stability under the pretext of nation building. at the same time, the predominance of federal leadership in the development and administration of these housing strategies was at once a result of depressionweakened provinces and municipalities playing a cooperatively subservient role, and conditional upon these policies continuing to pay dividends in the form of growth and stability. these strategies that were characteristic of the welfare state era were themselves undermined by the poor planning of the federal public housing program, and that both federally and provincially funded social housing programs were singled out as wasteful public spending initiatives in the recession plagued 1970s. after which, the federal government reversed course and from thereon intervened in a manner concordant with neoliberalism, primarily to download responsibilities over haps onto the provinces and to facilitate avenues for financial capital to stimulate housing demand. what this paper has demonstrated is that the trajectory of haps in canada from the post-wwii era through the 2000s reveals them as being an important signifier of canada’s general thrust towards neoliberalism in the latter end of the twentieth century. three interrelated phenomena appear to be what has driven this transformation in haps content and purpose in canada over this time period, including the historical and socio-economic context in which these policies were enacted, 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(1998). canadian housing policies in the nineties. housing studies, 13(1), 121-33. 158 | populism, power and protest defending public services: canadian and colombian workers on the frontlines kelti cameron,1 louise casselman2 and evert hoogers3 abstract: at the beginning of the new century, the international union movement became aware that colombia was neoliberalism’s killing field, making it the most dangerous country in the world to be a unionist. despite the killings, the courageous resistance of the labour and social movements galvanized the interest of the 4 largest public sector unions in canada, canadian union of postal workers (cupw), the public service alliance of canada (psac), the canadian union of public employees (cupe) and the national union of public and general employees (nupge). the mutual solidarity initiative that emerged helped canadian workers understand the global nature of the attacks they are facing, the power of an organized workforce, and the role and potential of unions in society beyond collective bargaining. this initiative has become the most extensive and longest lasting initiative of its kind involving canadian unions to date. keywords: international labour solidarity; public sector unions; anti-privatization introduction the global struggle to defend public services exposes the devastating impact of capital expansion into every corner of life. facilitated by neoliberal austerity, deregulation, destruction of unions, and violence against communities, 1 kelti cameron is the international solidarity officer at the canadian union of public employees. 2 louise casselman is the social justice fund officer at the public service alliance of canada 3 evert hoogers is a retired national union representative responsible for coordinating international solidarity with the canadian union of postal workers. 252 | populism, power and protest and the environment, the very substance of life is turned into a commodity. thus, the defense of public services and assets becomes one of the most important fights of this millennium. as capital consolidates power globally, public sector unions are increasingly engaged in solidarity with workers in other countries. labour internationalism reinforces the urgency for members to understand the attacks they are facing, the collective power of workers, and the social imperative to strengthen collective bargaining while moving beyond it. workers in canada have more in common with the working class in other countries than with the owners of wealth in canada. however, it remains a challenge to connect these messages with workers’ local experiences. it is not unusual for trade unions that engage in international solidarity, to be asked by members “why focus on unions in other countries when we have so many problems here in canada?” for workers on the frontlines of public sector cuts, and concessions at the bargaining table, this is a fair question reflecting their lived experiences. while public sector unions fight budget cuts, job loss, wage freezes alongside private sector unions, their opposition to privatization further renders them the target of right-wing attacks. the current political context presents new opportunities and challenges for public sector internationalism. what was formerly considered a domestic struggle is now globalized with significant international dimensions. consequently, the courageous resistance of the colombian labour and social movements galvanized the interest of canada’s largest public sector unions: canadian union of postal workers (cupw), public service alliance of canada (psac), canadian union of public employees (cupe) and national union of public and general employees (nupge). the solidarity initiative that emerged was called, defending public services: canadian and colombian workers on the frontlines (hereafter referred to as the frontlines initiative). it has since become the most extensive and longest lasting initiative of its kind involving canadian unions to date. at the heart of this initiative is building worker-to-worker solidarity and raising consciousness about the economic and social context in colombia, by exposing canadian members to forms of resistance necessitated by the shift toward coercive rather than consensual public sector labour relations under neo-liberalism. colombia in the eye of the storm the new century revealed labour’s growing awareness that colombia was neoliberalism’s killing field. global union federations such as the public services defending public services | 253 international (psi) and uni global union focused on colombia as reports emerged that it was the most dangerous country in the world to be a trade unionist. in 2000, us president bill clinton signed into law plan colombia, a huge military aid package that was promoted as a counter narcotic offensive, but in reality, became a vehicle for land grabbing and the proliferation of paramilitaries who engaged in violence against activists who dared resist (lawg). plan colombia also promoted neoliberal policies that opened colombia’s markets and natural resources to foreign investors while cutting government social spending. it called for “tough austerity and adjustment measures, to boost economic activity and recover the historically excellent prestige of colombia in the international financial markets” (leech). it called for the privatization of public companies and banks, including the utility companies and the state coal company. in 2002, the far-right candidate, alvaro uribe, was elected president amid allegations he was connected to drug cartels and the paramilitary. he wasted no time implementing his notorious democratic security policy aimed at eliminating the guerrilla forces, the revolutionary armed forces of colombia (farc) and the army of national liberation (eln). he emboldened the rightwing paramilitaries to act with impunity. making the connection following the successful negotiation of the international postal fund with canada post, cupw launched a 2002 cross-canada tour of two leaders from the colombian union of workers of the national postal administration (sintrapostal). they exchanged information about the onslaught of privatization and the threat to public services in both countries. one of the leaders, dora lilia gomez, subsequently played a key role in the life of the frontlines initiative. workers in canada learned that colombian public sector workers were deprived of their rights to collective bargaining and to strike and faced unjust dismissal and blacklisting. labour reforms under uribe were geared toward massively expanding the informal economy on the backs of public sector workers (schurman & eaton, 2013). while in canada, sintrapostal explained the danger of privatization and contracting out in the post office using associated work cooperatives (ctas), a form of outsourcing aimed at union busting. ctas were 254 | populism, power and protest not bound by the labour code because workers were considered independent owners, receiving compensation rather than wages and benefits. under uribe, vibrant unions were being destroyed within the public sector such as healthcare, the ports and the post office. the pressure on unions was so great that many succumbed to creating ctas to assure their survival, precipitating a spiral of corruption that continues today (hawkins, 2017). many sintrapostal leaders subsequently accepted the expansion of ctas. workers rejecting this capitulation went on to create the union of colombian postal workers (stpc), with porfirio rivas as president and dora lilia gomez as general secretary. the struggle of the colombian postal workers struck a solidarity chord among public sector unions in canada. cupw and psac, also representing canada post employees, began exploring the possibility of embarking on a more ambitious project that would bring together public sector workers in canada and colombia at a time when a major international solidarity commitment was needed. canada’s largest union, cupe, readily joined the initiative. frontlines initiative the first frontlines initiative emerged in 2004 when the three public sector unions, with clc support, hosted five colombian union leaders and social activists for a cross-canada tour. the delegation included representatives from the central union of workers (cut), the stpc, the union of workers for the ombudsmen’s office (asdep), the public service association of public comptrollers4 (asdeccol), and corpenca, an environmental organization fighting water privatization. the visit featured worker-to-worker exchanges, meetings with local and regional councils, workplace visits and public events across canada with the full support and involvement of national and local leadership of all unions involved. the canadian organizers adopted an important worker-to-worker perspective: despite major differences in economic development and the nature of political repression, the situation facing unions and workers in both countries revealed major points of convergence. this message became a cornerstone of the frontlines initiative, providing insight into each other’s workplace struggles including the fight for 4 comptrollers are financial officers responsible for the fiscal management of public institutions. defending public services | 255 equality and against discrimination. the union leaders committed to a plan of action for future collaboration and support, including worker education, leadership capacity building, communications, and solidarity (cupe, cupw and psac 2004). the union resists the privatization of the colombian postal service these commitments were tested in early 2005 when the uribe government and the corrupt administration of adpostal, the state-run post office, launched a furious attack on the postal service and its unionized workforce. all workers were issued notices of “voluntary dismissal” within 24 hours they either signed or lost their jobs. those who signed would have to renounce their collective agreement and receive minimal compensation. many members of the stpc, with full support from their union leadership, refused to sign. an emergency resolution at the 2005 cupw convention called for a solidarity campaign, quickly taken up by the frontlines unions and the clc. pressure from canadian unions and global federations forced the colombian government to briefly conduct consultations on the proposed privatization. nevertheless, in november 2005, the government initiated a process to liquidate the postal service. the coercion placed on permanent postal workers took a toll. dora lilia gomez, stpc general secretary received death threats. other executive members were also threatened. the stpc president, porfirio rivas became the prime target of harassment and death threats and was forced into hiding after his home was shot up. the fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du québec (ftq) ended up bringing him and his family to quebec where they remain in exile. in a strong letter to uribe, also aimed at the canadian government, the 4 national public sector unions protested the liquidation of the remaining postal services, admonishing the negotiations of a us/colombia bilateral fta as behind a long list of liquidations and privatizations that were undermining the delivery of quality public services (letter to uribe 2006). this letter bolstered the resolve of workers in resistance and was distributed in workplaces across colombia. the continued resistance of the stpc elicited a militarized attack that shut down postal plants in simultaneous police raids across the country. workers were terrorized. in the bogota plant, approximately one hundred workers, the majority women, were on the night shift when two hundred heavily armed antiriot police arrived and surrounded the building with armoured tanks. the workers were forcibly corralled into a nearby soccer field. dora lilia gomez was 256 | populism, power and protest working at the time and distributing copies of the support letter from canadian union leaders. the police harassed and intimidated her and others for carrying “subversive propaganda” which they ripped up in the women’s faces. once released, dora lilia contacted supporters in canada who immediately circulated information via social media. the liquidation of adpostal, and the transfer of lucrative postal contracts to corrupt groups and demobilized paramilitary, triggered a stpc-led campaign in the media, the courts and in the colombian congress. with support from canadian counterparts, the stpc organized a national forum to build solidarity by reintegrating members into union activities. it also reformed its statutes to allow all workers in the public and private mail delivery services to become members of the stpc, including contract and temporary workers. broadening the scope of the union to protect all postal workers was a lesson for canadian workers about how unions can overcome adversity and find new and creative ways to resist. despite being deprived of the ability to strike, the stpc found new ways to fight back, including new strategies for organizing, building community support and promoting the social dimensions of public postal services. worker-to-worker solidarity in colombia as conditions deteriorated in colombia, the frontlines initiative, now including nupge, was increasingly committed to the solidarity work in colombia. at the request of colombian counterparts, 2 trade union delegations to colombia were organized in july and november 2006.5 both visits provided an opportunity for canadian union members to learn from many examples of collective resistance developed by colombian unions in the oil and gas, healthcare, municipal and education sectors to keep services public and to stop the sale of state assets to multinational corporations. most emblematic was the union of workers in the municipality of cali, sintraemcali, that fought for years against the privatization of the city’s telecommunications, water and energy services. sintraemcali, employed militant and creative methods to draw attention to the importance of public services in opposition to privatization. their tactics included two occupations of 5 stage one, from june 29 – july 11, 2006, involved 12 activists from cupe, psac, cupw and bcgeu/nupge. stage two, from november 4 -15, 2006, involved 9 activists from cupw, psac and cupe. defending public services | 257 the municipal administration building, numerous marches, international delegations and a public debate with president uribe. their militancy came at a price. the union suffered direct attacks, more than 15 of its members were killed and others were forced into exile or living under constant threat. the summary report of the november 2006 frontlines initiative concluded: “privatization is not just a change in ownership and control of public services, it is a key force in consolidating the power and the privilege of national elites as they restructure their economies to fit within global capitalist interests...any campaign against privatization requires a politically conscious and motivated union membership...if there is to be any success” (arsenault, 2006). on november 9, the delegation participated along with thousands of public and private sector union members in the ‘great national university march’ protesting the killing of students, the incursions of security forces onto campuses and the defunding and privatization of public education. simultaneous marches across the country lambasted uribe’s educational revolution, based on privatizing and divesting public institutions, and pushing universities to the brink of collapse (colletivo). the canadian presence was very encouraging for our colombian counterparts but even more inspiring to canadians was the level of cross-sector organizing they had witnessed. the frontlines initiative was a mutually reinforcing effort that over time, through both political and financial support, provided important opportunities for learning, and raised political consciousness and trust amongst the organizations in both countries. frontlines unions jointly provided political support for critical struggles in colombia, while the individual unions provided sector specific support for union building, education and organizing programs of counterparts or “partners” in colombia. in canada, sector support strengthened the potential for worker-toworker solidarity. for example, cupw was maintaining critical support to the rebuilding efforts of the postal workers. psac was supporting the union of human rights advocates for the ombudsman office and other federal public employees who faced abysmal working conditions, particularly in the zones of conflict. cupe supported nomadesc, a human rights organization formed by the municipal workers of cali during their struggle to stop the privatization of public utilities. during the july 2006 visit, union members were invited by the leadership of the indigenous movement to meet in la maria piendamo in the valle del cauca. considered a political and spiritual centre of convergence for indigenous 258 | populism, power and protest peoples, the territory had suffered a violent government attack during a popular gathering of 15,000 community members. the relationship with colombian indigenous peoples, including afro-descendants, became critical to the frontlines initiative and would increasingly influence its future work. public service unions reject free trade agreement colombia’s ability to secure trading partners and foreign investors became impacted by the intense human rights campaigns carried out by unions, human rights organizations and faith-based communities. most countries were reluctant to ratify trade deals, while the massacres of civilians were making headlines around the world. the harper government reversed this trend when it announced the start of negotiations for a canada/colombia fta at the end of 2007. on may 20, 2008, the frontlines unions issued a press release condemning the trade deal and the labour side agreement allowing for a monetary settlement if the colombian government violated fundamental labour rights. it stated: “we agree with others who have stated that the idea of a country simply paying a fine for murder, as if it were paying a parking ticket, is not only non-negotiable but also an unforgivable violation of the principles of all democracies… we urge you again now, in the name of one million canadian public sector workers, to halt the negotiations until colombia ceases the abuse of human rights and the murder of trade unionists and civil society leaders (frontlines, 2008).” with a trade deal on the horizon, the frontlines initiative organized a union leadership visit to colombia in july 2008. the delegation including the national presidents of psac, cupe, cupw and the international vice-president of nupge. during this visit, the leaders examined human and labour rights conditions, and the impact of privatization in the absence of guaranteed rights recognition. the leaders were shocked to learn that 41 trade unionists had been assassinated in the first six months of 2008. furthermore, colombia had no legal framework for collective bargaining in the public service leaving over 95 percent of the public sector workforce without enforceable rights. defending public services | 259 the leaders attended the closing session of the permanent people’s tribunal. after two and a half years of hearings, the tribunal delivered its final judgement on colombia’s human and labour rights record before a crowd of 2,000 people in bogota. the tribunal findings confirmed what the canadian leaders had seen and heard during their visit: “the government consciously facilitated the creation of a paramilitary system to exert control over the population through massacres, assassinations, threats and harassment. this has allowed massive displacement of people to free up large tracts of land for growing coca to supply the $6 billion annual cocaineexporting business. it has also decimated social movements, including the trade union movement (frontlines, 2008).” four months later, harper signed the canada/colombia fta (ccofta) in advance of a federal election. the agreement still had to be ratified by parliament. frontlines unions worked closely with civil society to stop its ratification. reports were published on the delegation findings, challenging the logic of signing an agreement with a government notorious for human and labour rights violations. a comic book, “top ten reasons why canada should cancel harper’s “free trade” deal with colombia”, was produced by the clc and circulated across the country to thousands of union locals. a core group from the trade union, faith-based, and ngo sector was established to educate the public, circulate petitions and letters, and participate in parliamentary hearings. colombian trade unionists, political leaders, human rights advocates and indigenous leaders travelled extensively to canada during that period. ratification was stalled for nearly two years, thanks to this collective effort. due to the acquiescence of the liberal party, the implementing legislation for ccofta was however passed on june 21, 2010. canada’s ratification opened the dykes leading to the ratification of the us and eu agreements. frontlines returns to colombia in 2013 and 2015, the frontlines initiative organized two solidarity delegations to colombia to explore how ccofta facilitated canadian private investment in public services and how this impacted workers. it was imperative to understand the threat of canadian resource extraction on farmers, indigenous and afro-colombian peoples. these exchanges provided an opportunity to share 260 | populism, power and protest the impact of austerity in canada and the full-frontal attack against the union movement by the harper government. a leader from the 2013 delegation described his impressions: for me, as a canadian and a trade unionist, it was sobering to learn first-hand of canada’s implication in the oppression and misery of ordinary colombians. those memorable face-to-face meetings were an education in themselves. but i came back energized and inspired by the raw courage of our colombian counterparts. if they can join together and stand up in the face of such unimaginable risk—what is stopping us? (aylward) under president juan manuel santos, elected in 2010, colombia embarked on a quest for international respectability. in 2012, santos bowed to international pressure to recognize the right of public sector workers to bargain collectively. until then, 70% of the public sector labour force had been contracted out. when the canadian delegation visited in 2013, the national labour centrals were presenting their first sectoral bargaining demands to the santos government. however, employers continued to ignore collective bargaining. to prepare for this challenge, the psac social justice fund and codevelopment canada partnered with the national federation of state employees (fenaltrase) of antioquia to develop training for 150 public sector workers to equip them with the knowledge and tools in defense of quality public services and the right to organize and bargain collectively. in the state of antioquia, the heart of paramilitarism, frontlines worked with state workers in the judicial system, tax and customs department, comptrollers and hospital workers whose fight to stop privatization and to gain collective bargaining rights included close relationships with citizens’ organizations, indigenous peoples, displaced communities and the impoverished. the judicial workers’ union, one of the strongest unions in the national public service plays a key role in preventing paramilitarism from completely permeating the judicial apparatus, defending an ethical justice system and the right to prosecute perpetrators of crimes against humanity. in this period, nupge developed an important bilateral relationship with the lawyers collective josé alvear restrepo (ccajar) that had worked closely with frontlines since 2006. ccajar lawyers defended many seminal cases regarding trade union repression, indigenous rights and political prisoners. the defending public services | 261 stpc has remained an anchor for the frontlines initiative and cupw continues to support the union in its efforts to create new and innovative methods of organizing and maintaining resistance among workers in the postal services. new relationships emerge in 2012, a key relationship was formed between the water workers’ union sintracuavalle, and cupe. this proved especially important because canadian unions were fighting against the entry of multinational water corporations into the public sector as a result of the canada-eu free trade negotiations. sintracuavalle had become a key example of how unions, public utilities and communities can work together to create a public-community water project as an alternative to public private partnerships (p3’s). frontlines also established a more direct relationship with the union of petroleum workers (uso). uso works with displaced and marginal communities to ensure electrical energy at a reasonable price. it provides displaced communities with educational tools, legal support and sent work brigades into the neighbourhoods to hook up electricity and other services. uso is a critical union in the colombian labour movement as a defender of state control over oil reserves and for organizing efforts in the privatized oil sector controlled by the canadian company frontera energy corporation, formerly known as pacific rubiales. frontera energy is notoriously anti-union and fired 2,000 newly organized workers in 2001, while pretending to negotiate a new contract with uso. the relationship with nomadesc has become a pillar of frontlines. as a social action and research network, it emerged out of the municipal workers’ privatization struggle and became deeply integrated into the land-based struggles of indigenous peoples. it has a deep analysis of neoliberal economic development and the linkage between ancestral land rights and the important role of the state. in addition to facilitating entry into indigenous and afro-colombian communities, nomadesc has helped canadian unions develop linkages with workers in the pacific port of buenaventura. since 2015, buenaventura has been included in the frontlines itinerary because it is an important site of struggle following the signing of multiple trade agreements. to facilitate the shipment of goods to the world markets, the highway from cali to buenaventura was expanded and tunnels drilled into the mountains, violently displacing many afro-colombian and indigenous families who lived 262 | populism, power and protest along that route. these communities have been an important source of resistance and a real inspiration for canadian union members. the port authority in buenaventura was restructured in 1993 into a p3. ten thousand unionized workers lost their jobs, while 4,000 were rehired under a cta or other forms of contracting out, that subjected workers to depressed wages, precarious employment and dangerous working conditions. horrific violence intensified throughout the territory with the arrival of paramilitaries that accompanied the privatization, presumably to protect drug routes. they murdered and dismembered afro-colombian leaders, displaced entire families, stole their lands and established territorial control over much of the city and its surroundings. these experiences of violence and repression are difficult to connect to union member’s experiences in canada, but when workers genuinely understand the difference between charity vs. solidarity, the experiences can be powerful. despite the seemingly insurmountable pressure and threat unions and communities face, that they continue to resist is something that often stays with workers when they return home. important learning takes place when canadian workers start to connect their experiences with the shared impact of neoliberal globalization on workers, and in turn start to consider the potential of collective power and lessons they can draw from diverse fightback strategies used in the south (i.e. developing strong links between trade unions and oppressed communities). the struggle continues today colombian workers are facing unprecedented levels of precarious work, contracting-out, privatization, informality and flexibilization. these trends are being documented in virtually every sector and industry. moreover, the right to organize and bargain collectively continues to be threatened. subcontracting has become an increasingly common means to eschew labour law obligations. collective pacts which have largely replaced ctas6 are the new tools used to undermine union efforts and are broadly recognized by our colombian partners and international observers as impediments to form unions and effectively defend the collective rights of members. 6 under the “colombia action plan related to labor rights”, announced by president obama and santos on april 7, 2011, as part of the us imposed trade act of 2012, the government of president santos promised to curb the influence of ctas. defending public services | 263 labour and workers’ rights have worsened since colombia signed multiple ftas, including ccofta. foreign direct investment (fdi) has grown by more than 900% between 2005 and 2014. explicit policies by the last four colombian governments have provided new guarantees, protections and tax breaks to investors, leading to a large-scale restructuring of colombia’s production in favour of extractive industries, and to the detriment of national industry, public services and decent jobs. as explained by the national labour school (ens), oil, coal and gold account for 52.2 percent of fdi, but only 1 percent of jobs. 7 mass corruption in the colombian government threatens the public sector, as does the weak tax base. unions representing the workers of public comptrollers for the municipalities of medellin and antioquia believe that in order to guarantee equitable quality public services, state corruption must be eliminated and transparent fiscal management must be guaranteed through public, arm’s length territorial offices of comptrollers. the union of taxation and excise workers has taken similar concerns to the streets. while it was negotiating a pay increase, it was also demanding that the government invest in the institution to provide better services to the population. it organized information kiosks on the streets to reach the general population about why tax justice is an important part of a post conflict economy to provide social services to the population. the resolve of this union to implant an honest and transparent fiscal system to protect public services is an inspiration to canadian unions on how to gain the backing of the population as the global tax justice movement is gaining momentum. the potential role for colombian public sector unions in rebuilding the labour movement should not be underestimated. only 6.5% of colombia’s 25 million workers are covered by a collective agreement, but nearly 60% of these agreements are in the public sector. the national labour school predicts that the future of the colombian labour movement relies on the ability of public sector unions, including the powerful teachers’ federation, fecode, to advance the collective rights and conditions of the workers. psac is currently supporting fenaltrase to enhance collective bargaining in the public service. overwhelming political challenges and contradictions face the colombian movement today. since the signing of the peace agreement between 7 cedetrabajo, cut and ens, 2017, colombia’s joining the oecd: a wrong political decision. 264 | populism, power and protest the revolutionary armed forces of colombia (farc-ep) and the colombian government, ending 50 years of armed conflict, hundreds of union organizers, human right defenders, afro-colombian and indigenous activists have been murdered at the hands of paramilitary forces. these paramilitary forces, often linked to the country’s elites, are murdering and threatening community leaders, and forcing communities off their lands to make way for corporate expansion in the extractive industry, hydro-energy projects and big agri-business, and the expansion of the drug trade. the fragile peace agreement exposes that it is the economic development model favouring foreign investment and privatization that is fueling the violence, not necessarily the armed conflict. the pacific port city of buenaventura is ground zero and where these contradictions are clearly evident. structural racism and exclusion largely explain why a city that is 90% afro-colombian, and that contributes nearly us$ 2 billion a year to the national budget, suffers from crumbling infrastructure and a lack of safe drinking water, decent schools and basic health services. in may 2017, 114 social organizations mounted a civic strike that shut down the city for 22 days. a hundred thousand inhabitants were in the streets to protest the lack of public services and government neglect. for 3 weeks they mobilized, held community kitchens, cultural festivals and literally shut down colombia’s most important trade route, the gateway for international free trade. while the strike won important concessions from the government to improve community infrastructure and the collective rights and safety of the inhabitants, threats against community leaders continues to grow exponentially with the plans to expand and modernize the port for oil and mineral exports, many of which are linked to canadian investments. in november 2018, the frontlines initiative with codevelopment canada, common frontiers and others invited three leaders from buenaventura on a cross-canada speaking tour. the goal was to learn more about the strategies developed, the lessons learned in labour and community alliance building, and to raise the international profile of the buenaventura strike committee. international solidarity is long-term work since the canadian and colombian frontlines initiative took shape in 2002, the experience of globalization has changed, as have capitalist relations between nation-states. canadian and colombian workers have suffered under the imposition of these changes. the erosion of the public sector, and the promotion of free trade, privatization and global corporate interests are taking place to the defending public services | 265 detriment of working people. in colombia, state sponsored terrorism has been used to implement this neo-liberal agenda. meanwhile, canadian workers were subjected to similar neo-conservative policies that undermined public services, accelerated corporate-led trade deals, and attacked workers and union rights. the solidarity work encompassing the struggle around the ratification of ccofta must now pay attention to the way in which canada is contributing to the expropriation of wealth and growing exploitation of colombian workers and communities. in recent years, unions in the north have made considerable strides in developing solidarity-based international relations as a necessary way forward. however, it remains challenging to integrate international analysis and solidarity into the difficult domestic fights around collective bargaining, workers’ rights and representation in canada. worker-to-worker exchanges have attempted to bridge divides and engage canadian union members with the social movements and public sector workers who are on the frontlines of resistance in colombia. this work has contributed over the years to a deeper understanding within unions of the interconnected nature of the global economy and its impact on workers and oppressed communities and has underscored the complicity of the canadian government in these processes. the frontlines initiative has revealed the enormity of the work ahead for public sector unions. it is paramount for unions to develop a deep and sustained dialogue among members about capitalism and how it has undermined their power. capital has carried out a determined war for three decades on the very existence of a public realm and on the organizations and workers that have defended it. it is imperative that long-term international solidarity becomes core work. public sector unions that provide leadership in building an internationalist agenda open new and hopeful avenues for surviving and advancing. references arsenault, g. (2006). report on the frontlines november 2006 visit to colombia. aylward, c. (2013). personal interview. canadian union of public employees, canadian union of postal workers, public service alliance of canada, and national union of public and general employees (2004 may 28). joint statement. ottawa ontario 266 | populism, power and protest canadian union of public employees, canadian union of postal workers, public service alliance of canada, and national union of public and general employees. (2006, august 23) joint letter to president uribe. ottawa, ontario. frontlines initiative. (2008, may 20). press release. ottawa, ontario. hawkins, d. (2017). “port workers in colombia: reinstatement as formal workers.” in informal workers and collective action: a global perspective, edited by eaton a.e., latin american working group. the human rights costs during plan colombia, https://www.lawg.org/the-human-rights-costs-during-plancolombia/ leech, g. (2000). plan colombia: a closer look. https://garryleech.com/2000/07/01/plan-colombia-a-closer-look/ schurman, s. j., and eaton, a. e. (2013). trade unions organising workers “informalised “from above:” case studies from cambodia, colombia, south africa, and tunisia. a report to the solidarity centre, rutgers university. defending public services | 267 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review in the ruins of neoliberalism: the rise of antidemocratic politics in the west, by wendy brown. new york: columbia university press, 2019. $25.00 u.s., paper. isbn: 9780-231-19385-6. pages 1-248. reviewed by andrew ramos1 “taking even themselves by surprise, hard-right forces have surged to power in liberal democracies across the globe. every election brings new shock: neo-nazis in the german parliament, neofascists in the italian one, brexit ushered in by tabloid-fueled xenophobia, the rise of white nationalism in scandinavia, and of course, trumpism” (1). with these two opening sentences, wendy brown’s most recent book, in the ruins of neoliberalism: the rise of antidemocratic politics in the west, establishes clear and urgent stakes about the rise of authoritarianism within actually existing neoliberalism. the text raises the point that actually existing neoliberalism deforms its theoretical legacy, and revises brown’s 2015 hit book by shifting from a macro-economic lens to a refined criticism of hayekian neoliberalism. in so doing, in the ruins contributes a greater understanding about the relationship between rising authoritarianism and neoliberalism’s theoretical architecture. brown asserts throughout in the ruins that the current march toward de-democratization is a “frankensteinian creation” of neoliberalism’s theoretical architecture (9-10). that is, that actually existing neoliberalism is not the same thing as the theory developed by friedrich hayek and his contemporaries. this is best exemplified at the end of chapter two. brown suggests that as democracy has been throttled and demeaned, “the effect has been the opposite of neoliberal aims” (84). some opposite effects include big capital seizing legislative processes rather than the state becoming insulated from economic interest, citizenries becoming steered by demagogic nationalists rather than politically pacified, and traditional morality morphing into a hollow battle screech rather than ordering and discipling populations (84). this notion that disparity exists between actually existing neoliberalism and its theoretical architecture is certainly interesting, particularly as a comparison to failed marxist revolutions of the previous century (83). however, this theme is ultimately at odds with in the ruins’ revisions to brown’s popular 2015 text, undoing the demos: neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. “more than a project of enlarging the sphere of market competition and valuation,” brown writes in the introduction, referencing the thesis of her hit book, “hayekian neoliberalism is a moral-political project that aims to protect traditional hierarchies by negating the very idea of the social and radically restricting the reach of democratic political power in nation-states” (12-13). she argues that hayekian neoliberalism destroys the social as a concept and reduces democratic political power, and that it replaces these two processes with a conflation of traditional morality and market freedoms. 1 andrew ramos is a phd candidate in english and creative writing at the university of new brunswick. his dissertation, a novel called small worlds, is a satire that explores neoliberal and totalitarian politics. email: andrew.ramos@unb.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research thus, where undoing the demos undertakes a more macro approach with its stress on neoliberalism’s economization of everything, in the ruins instead homes in specifically on hayekian neoliberalism’s de-democratizing values. this revised methodology enables the text to link the theoretical architecture of neoliberalism to rising authoritarianism. for instance, chapter one juxtaposes hayek’s deconstruction of the social— encapsulated by margaret thatcher’s infamous claim that “there is no such thing as society”— with the ethos that equality is democracy’s foundation: when equality is absent, political power is exercised by and for only a part of the demos rather than the whole, and thus the systemization of group violence or destitution puts an end to democracy (23-25). by juxtaposing democracy’s need for social equality with neoliberal rationality’s dismantling of society as a concept, the text stresses that the foundation of hayek’s theory is intrinsically anti-democratic. furthermore, in the ruins highlights how hayek’s denouncement of the social plays out today, seen in the ridicule and scorn heaped onto those who challenge exclusionary norms as “social justice warriors.” these attacks “serve to buttress nativist, supremacist, and nationalist claims about ‘who built the west’ and to whom it belongs” (40). she goes on to suggest that when thatcher’s infamous “society does not exist” becomes common sense, it “renders invisible the social norms and inequalities generated by legacies of slavery, colonialism, and patriarchy” (43). in essence, if democracy necessitates social equality—a demos for all rather than some—then a theoretical architecture that revels in deconstructing social equality inherently paves the way for de-democratization and authoritarianism. as a result, when in the ruins argues that actually existing neoliberalism is not the same thing that its (hayekian) theoretical architecture prescribes, readers may find themselves asking, “so what?” if neoliberalism’s theoretical legacy intrinsically dismisses inequalities generated by racism, sexism, ableism, etc., then is the current march toward de-democratization really a “frankensteinian” creation? this curious clash of themes comes to a head in chapter three. here, the text suggests that hayek replaces the social and political with traditional morality, which he accomplishes by extending the “private protective sphere” beyond the confines of church and family. brown argues that when the nation is privatized and familialized, “it becomes legitimately illiberal toward aversive insiders and invading outsiders; thus does neoliberalism plant seeds of a nationalism that it formally abjures” (117). furthermore, she outright states that hayek’s formula for transitioning from social democracy to a neoliberal order “featured political authoritarianism” (119). hayek and his contemporaries may not have formally advocated for authoritarianism, but as brown points out, the theory nonetheless wields authoritarian logic at its core. yet, simultaneously, in the ruins claims that actually existing neoliberalism “twist(s) away from hayekian governmentality” and that “hayek’s thought was intrinsically vulnerable” to (de)formation (119). the theme that authoritarianism we see in actually existing neoliberalism strays from neoliberalism’s theoretical architecture rings hollow after the text convincingly argues that authoritarianism is planted at the core of the theory. furthermore, the language used—that the theory has been twisted and deformed—somewhat absolves the theory of its internal authoritarianism, almost letting hayek off the hook for the many crises we see rise as a result of his denouncement of the social and other theoretical legacies. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research a more rigorously sourced final chapter would have helped this theme. the first four chapters signpost chapter five’s analysis of the nihilistic condition as the crux to fully understanding how hayek’s theoretical legacy has led to the rise of authoritarianism in actually existing neoliberalism across the globe. the chapter relies heavily on passages from hans sluga and herbert marcuse to establish a framework of nihilism. though brown tries to connect the active quality of nihilism’s negation to white nationalism (171-179), by failing to engage with much critical race or gender theory, the connection remains underdeveloped. the introduction establishes that in the ruins draws primarily on both the neo-marxist and foucauldian responses to neoliberalism (20). these foundational approaches are certainly a strength when brown critiques hayek; however, as the text frequently argues that his theoretical architecture ignores racist and sexist pasts and presents, the lack of intersectional engagement is noticeable throughout. wendy brown’s in the ruins of neoliberalism is a timely follow-up to her influential 2015 book. it is at its strongest when it analyzes closely the theory set out by friedrich hayek. although the text would have benefitted from sourcing intersectional critical analysis, it nevertheless provides readers an accessible deconstruction of how neoliberalism’s intrinsically anti-democratic architecture links to the authoritarianism we see rising in actually existing neoliberalism across the globe. © alternate routes, 2015 toronto www.alternateroutes.ca “alternate routes” issn 1923-7081 (online) issn 0702-8865 (print) managing editors: carlo fanelli and john shields interventions editor: jordy cummings and jeff noonan book reviews editor: priscillia lefebvre and rebecca schein editorial advisory board: nahla abdo, dimitry anastakis, pat armstrong, tim bartkiw, david camfield, nicolas carrier, sally chivers, wallace clement, simten cosar, simon dalby, aaron doyle, ann duffy, bryan evans, randall germain, peter gose, henry giroux, paul kellogg, jacqueline kennelly, mark neocleous, bryan palmer, jamie peck, sorpong peou, garry potter, georgios papanicolaou, mi park, justin paulson, stephanie ross, george s. rigakos, heidi rimke, arne christoph ruckert, toby sanger, ingo schmidt, alan sears, mitu sengupta, meenal shrivastava, janet lee siltanen, susan jane spronk, jim struthers, mark p. thomas, rosemary warskett journal mandate: established in 1977 alternate routes is committed to creating outlets for critical social research and interdisciplinary inquiry. alternate routes works closely with scholars, labour and community researchers to promote the publication of heterodox critical social research, as well as provocative and progressive analyses that may not find a forum in conventional venues. alternate routes seeks to be a public academic journal and encourages works that advance or challenge theoretical, historical and contemporary socio-political, economic and cultural issues. in addition to full-length articles, we welcome review essays sparked by previously published material, interviews, commentaries, book reviews as well as poetry, drawings and photo-essays. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research vol. 27, 2015 table of contents editorial introduction the paradox of low-wage work.................................................9 carlo fanelli and john shields articles introduction: raising wages.................................................... 12 stephanie luce marx’s theory of working-class precariousness – and its relevance today................................................................. 21 r. jamil jonna and john bellamy foster exploitation, stagnant wages and underemployment in advanced capitalism: a canadian perspective............... 46 david livingstone challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages.................................................... 55 stephen mcbride and jacob muirhead the precarity penalty: how insecure employment disadvantages workers and their families.....................87 wayne lewchuk, michelynn laflèche, stephanie procyk, charlene cook, diane dyson, luin goldring, karen lior, alan meisner, john shields, anthony tambureno, peter viducis ‘illegalized’ workers and the struggle for a living wage..... 109 charity-ann hannan, harald bauder and john shields paving their way and earning their pay: economic survival experiences of immigrants in east toronto...................137 keren gottfried, john shields, nasima akter, diane dyson, sevgul topkara-sarsu, haweiya egeh, sandra guerra lived experiences of unemployed women in toronto and halifax, canada who were previously precariously employed...........................................................................162 leslie nichols reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work...........................187 tanner mirrlees finally the right to strike: but what about organizing?... 213 patricia mcdermott interventions living wage campaigns and building communities........... 235 don wells rethinking precarity and capitalism: an interview with charlie post...................................................................... 247 jordy cummings recomposing the casual class in precarious times............ 253 brett caraway digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity: in conversation with christian fuchs................................ 267 matthew flisfeder art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics...... 279 rebecca garrett and l.k. jackson detroit: realities of destructive accumulation.....................300 diane feeley destructive creation............................................................... 313 mireille coral, jeff noonan, and paul chislett book reviews janet abbate. recoding gender: women’s changing participation in computing............................................. 327 jennifer mackin sheila cote-meek. colonized classrooms: racism, trauma and resistance in post-secondary education.........................329 jiyoung lee-an linda deriviere. the healing journey: intimate partner abuse and its implications in the labour market..................... 332 julie poon tariq ali. the obama syndrome: surrender at home, war abroad...............................................................................335 dax d’orazio richard york and brett clark. the science and humanism of stephen jay gould........................................................... 338 jon careless yves engler. the black book of canadian foreign policy.... 341 kara brisson-boivin fred magdoff and brian tokar. agriculture and food in crisis: conflict, resistance, and renewal...................................344 katie m. macdonald kouri t. keenan and joan brockman. mr. big: exposing undercover investigations in canada..............................347 allison wallis the paradox of low-wage work | 9 the paradox of low-wage work carlo fanelli1 and john shields2 “the worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. the worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. the devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general.” “it is true that labour produces for the rich wonderful things – but for the worker it produces privation. it produces palaces – but for the worker, hovels. it produces beauty – but for the worker, deformity. it replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back into barbarous types of labor and it turns the other section into a machine. it produces intelligence – but for the worker, stupidity, cretinism.” – marx, 1844 in the economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844, marx wrote of work and labour as central to human existence. whereas classical political economy assumed but did not explain the existence of private property, marx took the estrangement of labour under capitalist social relations as his starting point. the process of alienation was intersectional and multifaceted, including: the estrangement of working people from the products of their labour and the work process itself; from nature and conscious life activity; and from other persons. for marx, then, the estrangement of labour simultaneously established the conditions for capital’s gain at the expense of labour’s pain: “accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital.” contrary to classical political economy’s conflation of 1 carlo fanelli is visiting professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. he is the author of megacity malaise: neoliberalism, labour and public services in toronto. 2 john shields is professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. most recently, he is the co-editor (with harold bauder) of immigrant experiences in north america: understanding settlement and integration. 10 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages capitalism with exchange (i.e. distribution or “the market”), the root causes of alienation resided in the social relations of production, and the instituted compulsions of capital, wherein relations of domination and subordination ruled. the conditions of particularly harsh worker exploitation which marx spoke to were from an earlier phase of laisse faire capitalism, a condition that to some considerable degree appeared to be mitigated in the developed west during the keynesian golden era. however, neoliberal capitalism which took hold beginning in the 1980s has once again brought to the fore a more social darwinian approach to capital accumulation rooted in a logic that celebrates the growth of deep inequality, aggressive social exclusion and a tolerance for the widespread existence of the working poor. sharing parallels with the processes so vividly described by marx long ago, contributors to this volume of alternate routes critically deconstruct the paradox of low wage work under neoliberal capitalism. contemporary neoliberal capitalism has championed the rollback of keynesian-based social policies, de-unionization, labour market restructuring, the individualization of risk, and the promotion of falling living standards for vast sections of the working population. a new age of intensified insecurity and widening socio-economic risks have been downloaded onto individuals and families. the growth of employment precarity and the need for a living wage by large sections of the population rest at the heart of this volume. using quantitative and qualitative approaches and informed by critical conceptual analysis the reader is treated to a detailed examination of the lived experiences and the broader implications of precarity and low wage work. the validity of marx’s insights regarding class exploitation and the degradation of work, as captured in the passages quoted above, for the contemporary period of neoliberal capitalism are uncovered in the essays that follow. the issues and concerns explored here were first raised in a series of panels explored at the conference labour pains, capital gains: the paradox of low-wage, no-wage work, which was held at ryerson university on march 27, 2015.3 we would like to thank the centre for labour management relations and its director, gerald hunt, for their tremendous support without which both the conference and this volume would not have been possible. thanks are also due to the department of politics and public administration, and the office of the dean at the faculty of arts, ryerson university, for their continued support. 3 these presentations are available for viewing at http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/pages/view/labour%20pains the paradox of low-wage work | 11 we would like to welcome henry giroux, jamie peck and sorpong peou to alternate routes’ editorial advisory committee, and jeff noonan as new interventions editor. a warm thank you and well wishes to priscillia lefebvre who has served in a number of roles since 2010, jordy cummings who served as interventions editor since 2014, and rebecca schein who served as book reviews co-editor for this volume, for their time and commitment to critical social research as they move on to new avenues of their work. thank you also to pance stojkovski for recording and editing conference presentations. finally, we wish to express our gratitude to authors and reviewers who worked under extremely tight deadlines in order to meet our publishing schedule. references marx, k. (1844). the philosophic and economic manuscripts. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/econom ic-philosophic-manuscripts-1844.pdf alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 34, 80-99 (2024) crises and austerity: the political economy of post-crisis alternatives in canada alicja paulina krubnik1 and stephen mcbride2 abstract: the neoliberal era is increasingly crisis prone but the prospects for crisis-induced paradigm change remain remote. two crises in particular, the global finance crisis (gfc) and the covid-19 pandemic, challenged neoliberal fiscal orthodoxy and especially austerity. in 2008, as in 2020, the initial crisis response was one of fiscal stimulus to prevent economic meltdown. in 2010, this was followed by austerity policies attempting to restore neoliberal normality which had been in place since the mid-1990s. will the same be true in the post-pandemic period? this article contrasts views of resiliency of neoliberal austerity with those who consider current crises might trigger significant policy and even paradigmatic change. we argue that demands for change have encountered an entrenched form of state austerity and concerted effort on the part of political and economic elites to return as soon as possible to neoliberal normality. though recent crises have presented opportunities for a collapse of austerity policy systems, transformation has been limited by ideational promotion of austerity and institutionalised democratic isolation. recent crises have been used to re-embed austerity responses as normal, once the immediate crisis is over. keywords: federal and provincial fiscal austerity, social policy, redistributive retrenchment, political discourses, post-crisis paradigm maintenance, democratic deficit. introduction the neoliberal era is becoming increasingly crisis prone but the prospects for crisis-induced paradigm change remain remote. two crises in particular, the global finance crisis (gfc) of 2008, and the more recent covid-19 pandemic, have challenged the neoliberal fiscal policy orthodoxy, in which austerity is a key component. in 2008, the initial crisis response was one of major fiscal stimulus to prevent economic meltdown. this was quickly followed by austerity policies aimed at restoring neoliberal normality which had been in place for decades. canada was a pioneer in implementing austerity and has been an exemplar of an austerity “polity”, in which conjunctural austerity policies, and an enduring or permanent politics of austerity, became institutionalised (jessop, 2016). this guarantees a concerted effort on the part of political and economic elites to return as soon as possible to neoliberal normality. however, the covid-19 pandemic produced pressures on the social needs of canadians on a scale not seen during the last 30-odd years of austerity and there has been an upward drift of government spending at the federal level. this is exacerbated by compounding crises, like rising inflation, the effects of the war in ukraine and associated western sanctions, disruptions to critical goods supplies, housing shortages, energy issues, mounting environmental pressures, and the demographic impact of an aging society. we briefly review the long-term trajectory of austerity in canada before turning to the issue of whether post-pandemic measures and parliamentary discourse provide any indication 1 alicja paulina krubnik is a phd candidate in international relations and comparative public policy at mcmaster university. she holds an msc in political economy from the lse, an msc in economics and governance from leiden university and a bachelor’s degree from the university of toronto. the authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. we are also grateful to jamie lawson for very helpful comments on an earlier draft. 2 stephen mcbride is professor and canada research chair in public policy and globalization (2010-24) in the department of political science at mcmaster university. his latest book is escaping dystopia: rebuilding a public domain (bristol university press 2022), and he is co-editor, with heather whiteside, of a forthcoming volume on the canadian state. 81 that the severity of the pandemic crisis might lead to radical change or whether, on the contrary, resilience remains the appropriate descriptor. the austerity agenda built upon canadian federal and provincial measures in the 1980s that featured spending restraint, deficit elimination and state retrenchment. from the beginning it was associated with growing income inequality (lewis, 2003, 152-153), a trend that has continued (statcan, 2024a,b). recipients of government social assistance are particularly hard-hit by the effects of recurrent crises, especially when governments do not adjust benefits to inflationary pressures, as most do not (kneebone and wilkins, 2022a). recognising that the immediate impact of the most recent pandemic crisis was one of significant government activity including fiscal stimulus, and that its after-effects are still being navigated, we ask two questions. first: what does an austerity polity entail with respect to fiscal policy and material welfare? second: to what extent do discernible policies, official projections of future policies, and policy discourses indicate a reversion to austerity or departure from austerity toward a more just political economy? in answering these questions, we examine the context of austerity in canada over successive crises and argue that it reflects a “polity” of austerity (jessop, 2016). given the highly decentralized federal system in canada we incorporate some selected provincial data whilst recognising that a fuller exploration of provincial data is needed to supplement the federal picture. an analysis of past spending data is provided to establish baselines of austerity. we explain austerity’s impacts on social policy and socio-economic well-being. we then analyze future fiscal and social policy projections by federal and select provincial governments, and the associated parliamentary discourse. defining austerity in the context of neoliberalism austerity is a multidimensional concept that includes balanced budgets and debt limits, marketization of the public service to enhance efficiency, and labour market reform to achieve “competitiveness” (whiteside et al., 2021 as cited in mcbride & schnittker, 2021, 127). fiscal and monetary decision making is centralised and empowered to increase precarity in social and labour market programming (and increased inequality).here, we focus on fiscal austerity and some of its effects on social policies. in canada, whiteside has argued that austerity is an epiphenomenon of “structural budget reforms” and “discursive shifts and ideological conviction” (2018, 409). an underlying orientation towards austerity has shifted into ideologies and discourse within the state. canada has been a strong proponent of austerity since the 1980s, a stance that was consolidated decisively by the 1995 federal budget. this represented a clear break from the more keynesianoriented political economy in place since world war ii. the chrétien government implemented a sweeping package of austerity reforms in the 1995 budget. these have continued, with the exception of periods of global crisis, after which fiscal consolidation is again pursued, and finds expression in the drive to balance budgets (see figure 1). we can note a trend towards normality, as represented by the base line, in the final years covered in the figure. 82 figure 1: deficits as a percentage of gross domestic product (gdp), over time and governments (calculated from: public accounts of canada and statcan, 2023) balancing budgets has always meant attacking social programs. the first to be hard hit was employment insurance (ei) —formerly unemployment insurance. it was under pressure from the late 1970s (mcbride, 1992). to justify attacks on the ei system, the department of finance depicted ei as a cause of higher unemployment—the so-called ‘work disincentive’ thesis (see mcbride, 1992 for a critique). by the 1995 budget, the scope of social security cuts had widened; “[o]ver half the cuts (55 percent) ‘in the 1995 plan was in transfers to persons and other levels of government’” (sancak et al., 2011 as cited in henderson, 2022, 41). later, in response to the 2007-08 global financial crisis, austerity was the policy strategy of choice despite canada’s crisis being largely ‘notional’ (whiteside, 2018, 411). it did not suffer the extreme consequences to the banking or real estate sectors that many european countries did. the harper government’s initial response was one of denial and minimalism that actively opposed urgent action (mcbride 2015, 405), but it nevertheless played a supporting role for the austerity agenda. although canada did engage in some counter cyclical spending, the underlying approach was based on low taxation and budgets; “cyclical deficits were used [by the national government] to reassert previously established patterns of national austerity, privatisation and marketisation” (whiteside, 2018, 411). controlling public debt, as a percentage of gdp, is central to neoliberal policies, and the spending limits characteristic of austerity are an important means to that end. in canada, central government debt has been firmly controlled since the mid 1990s (as shown in figure 2 below), but general government debt and especially household debt indicate significant increases since the gfc. household credit supports the state’s prioritization of the financial economy at the expense of debt payments and reduced spending capacity for wage-earners with stagnated incomes (pineault, 2014, 91). 83 figure 2: canada debt as a percent of gdp (calculated from: public accounts of canada & statcan, 2023) it is outside our scope to comprehensively analyse developments at the provincial level, but evidence from ontario and québec is suggestive of a common pattern albeit with some variation in québec’s implementation of austerity. in other words, provinces have not acted as a countervailing force against the federal state’s austerity project. ontario. the ontario austerity landscape since the mid 1990s reflected an overall electoral shift to the right (evans & fanelli, 2018, 142). similar to the federal liberal government, the conservative harris government enacted a profusion of austerity measures. social policies, especially income assistance, bore the brunt. employability was advanced as a substitute for income supports. the austerity push began with the conservatives, but there was continuity between political parties, an indication of the entrenchment of the austerity priority beyond mere conjunctural events (see watson, 2020, 74, 77). in addition, the liberal government introduced new user fees placing financial burden on the users of various social programs and controlling public sector compensation (which had downward effects on wages more widely). rhetorically, austerity was given a new sense of urgency following the gfc. the common strategy of framing debt as a burden that would “tax on future generations,” was amplified to the point where there was a “continued use of framing the political-economic conjuncture as a permanent state of crisis was then used by the liberals as a strategy of governance” (watson, 2020, 76). austerity was also framed as a technocratically legitimate solution, exemplified by the drummond commission report, that albo deemed “the most comprehensive plan for the neoliberalization of fiscal policy and administrative modes that any government in canada has yet delivered” (albo, 2018 as cited in watson, 2020, 79). québec. in québec, especially prior to the gfc, partisan differences regarding the welfare state “remained within the bounds of a broad consensus over the welfare state itself, which the two parties contributed to build” (noël, 2019, 84). as early as 2010, following the g7’s call for 84 “expansionary austerity”3, the quebec liberal party (qlp) changed course toward an austere fiscal policy (pineault, 2014, 91). the parti québécois government (2012-2014) continued the drive to austerity, which continued after the liberals regained office following the 2014 provincial elections. like canada and ontario, the commitments were to rapidly balancing budgets and cutting taxes (noël, 2019, 84). whilst there was some reinvestment into some social programs, namely healthcare and education, they were coupled with the “blind, across-the-board budget restrictions [that] contributed significantly to the deterioration of public services […] necessarily important in healthcare, education, and social services” (noël, 2019, 84-85). additionally, there were drastic budgetary restrictions in the operation of these social service agencies in “hospital and public clinic budgets, in home care services and in public health” (vaillancourt, 2017, 37; noël, 2019, 86). nevertheless, the regressive effects of austerity on social supports did re-politicize the debate about fiscal approaches in québec. the 2012 student strike, which also involved women’s movements, and the labour movement, dubbed as the “maple spring”, problematized growing social inequalities and the broader neoliberal agenda (pineault, 2014, 99). however, the recognition of a reduction in the political-economic position of the working class is rarely acknowledged as being result of austerity in orthodox political discourse. the anti-austerity quebec solidaire party did enjoy some electoral success but in general austerity’s contradictions have not shifted the dominant discourse. fiscal policy-making points to the embeddedness of the austerity polity in québec as in the federal level. so, while “quebec’s political economy is far more collaborative and statist than ontario’s” (haddow, 2015, 37), which is more liberal and market-oriented, these elements are still operating within an austere and “market-oriented political economy” (haddow, 2015, 53). responses to the current era of crises: doubling-down on austerity or breaking free? federal and provincial trends canada. figure 3 shows a dramatic decline in federal program spending in the mid-1990s and a relatively flat (i.e. austerity maintenance) line until around 2015 (with the exception of the gfc induced stimulus). from around 2015 there is a slight upward drift until the pandemic spike. increases during the pandemic were reduced afterwards (see table 1) but, projections for the rest of the 2020s point to anticipated difficulties in making further reductions, possibly due to a minority liberal government having to contend with parties less enthusiastic about austerity. however, the budgets indicate a fiscal disposition toward maintaining rather than challenging the status quo of austerity. given the austerity turn from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s at the federal level, flattened spending is not neutral with respect to austerity. it instead reflects the maintenance of austerity. in other words, it is prudent to remember that canada is situated within a context of persistent fiscal austerity and, more broadly, an austerity polity. 3 the idea that austerity could lead to economic growth—the expansionary fiscal consolidation hypothesis—features widely in rhetoric promoting austerity. it has no empirical merit (see blyth, 2013, amongst others, for a rebuttal). 85 figure 3: federal program expenditure (calculated from: oecd, 2022; dof, 2024a;b; statcan 2024c) general government data disaggregated by social programs (oecd, 2022) shows that only health and family (child) benefit programs have shown a relative ability to withstand the austerity program. in more recent years, since the end of the gfc, old age spending has also seen some increase. substantive increases in health expenditure over the past four decades have followed the severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars) outbreak and gfc (oecd, 2022), which exposed weaknesses in the health care system. an uptake in old age spending was preceded by the gfc (oecd, 2022), when supplementary pensions were hard-hit. coinciding with this are also demographic factors, namely an aging population. the political context matters to some degree. such increases as have occurred have tended to coincide with campaigns and the majority/minority status of governments. notably, a boost to family-related program expenditures—from 1.17 percent of gdp in 2014 to 1.74 in 2016 (oecd, 2022)—were due to the canada child benefit, overlapped with the successful liberal federal campaign of 2015, featuring a promise to reduce child poverty. new anti-poverty initiatives that made it into budget 2024, such as the canadian dental care plan and a boost to the national disability benefit can be attributed to the minority status of the liberal government and its resulting agreement with the new democratic party (ndp). there have been significant decreases to ei spending in canada as a percent of the gd since the 1996 employment insurance act—which initiated penalizations for repeat usage, reduced average replacement rates, and restricted eligibility—there have not been major expansions to ei benefits (van den berg et al., 2004, 2 as cited in béland et al., 2021, 822). ei represents maintenance of the austerity status quo as expenditures have not reached close to what they were in the mid-1980s (oecd, 2022), prior to the period of fiscal consolidation. interestingly, while spending on unemployment and incapacity related benefits has declined, so too has it fallen for active labour market policies (oecd, 2022). this suggests a lack of government commitment to income replacement for unemployment compounded by a lack of direct policies to encourage employment or even employability. 86 increased spending on health and, to a lesser extent, pensions are not anti-neoliberal or anti-austerity. these policies do not stray from the overall maintenance of fiscal conservatism. other more redistributive policies that impact poverty and inequality to a greater extent tend to bear the burden. rather, these anti-poverty programs represent what graefe describes as policies that “flank” the shortcomings of the wider austerity polity and social policies largely formed within a neoliberal ideology (2020). like spending trends, government projections from the 2024 federal budget, shown in table 1, suggest continuity in the austerity strategy in terms of program expenses and transfers to provinces and municipalities, albeit at a higher level than was the case prepandemic. delving into some of the details we find a planned decrease for the canada social transfer and ; “[w]ithin the cst, social assistance is politically and fiscally marginal, overshadowed on the national policy agenda” (prince, 2023, 124). table 1: total federal program expenditure trends and projections, as a percent of gdp (calculated from: dof, 2024b. (2018-2019 and prior); dof, 2024a, 371, 380 (2023-2024 (expected) and onward (projected)); statcan 2024c) austerity effects are exacerbated for those reliant on income assistance, especially when taking into account inflation (kneebone and wilkins, 2022a). though there was a spike in expenditure during the height of the pandemic years, the cost of living increased significantly for income support recipients, while welfare policies did not fill this need. a telling example is provided by purchasing powers after average food and rent (for one-bedroom apartments) of loneparents–mostly women–with one child receiving non-disability income support in major cities across canada throughout the pandemic. it should be noted that this considers families with children, who had access to child-oriented benefits, a significant focus in social welfare policies. the purchasing power deficits range from minus 70 percent in vancouver, to those in the minus 10 to 40 percent range in other major cities across canadian provinces (kneebone & wilkins, 2022a as cited in kneebone & wilkins, 2022b). simple legislation by provincial governments to index incomes would have significantly reduced these negative effects. béland et al. note that “in times of high inflation, social programs that lack an automatic indexation formula can avoid policy drift, as long as a strong political consensus allows for ad hoc social policy expansion capable of offsetting the negative effects of inflations on social benefits” (béland et al., 2023, 10). however, evidence of such offsetting is weak. the federal government does index some income support contributions, that are now the canada child benefit and the gst rebate (kneebone & wilkins, 2022a, 8). but provincially, less than half income supports and percentage of social assistance income is indexed (see table 2) for people without children, and thus without access to child benefits, the level of indexation tends to be worse. 1980 1981 1982 1983 1997 1998 2000 2001 2005 2006 2015 2016 2018 2019 2023 2024 2024 2025 2025 2026 2026 2027 2027 2028 2028 2029 17.7 20.5 12.7 11.8 12.5 13.7 14.4 15.6 16.0 15.9 15.7 15.6 15.5 87 table 2: percentage of social assistance income indexed, across provinces, as of 2019 province lone parent single single, disabled british columbia 34% 3% 2% alberta 32% 3% 2% saskatchewan 34% 3% 3% manitoba 78% 75% 69% ontario 45% 10% 7% québec 96% 100% 100% new brunswick 89% 94% 84% nova scotia 40% 4% 3% prince edward island 33% 3% 2% newfoundland & labrador 33% 3% 3% (laidley & aldridge, 2020 as cited in kneebone & wilkins, 2022a, 10; kneebone & wilkins, 2022a, 10) there is also a lack of consistency across provinces and benefit type; “in most provinces, protection from inflation depends on periodic ad hoc adjustments to income support payments, adjustments that are sometimes separated by many years” (kneebone & wilkins, 2022a, 1), with the notable exception of quebec which has nearly full indexation. ontario. despite the dwindling supports from the federal government in social assistances, ontario has not buffeted their effects. during the period of fiscal consolidation at the federal level from approximately 1983 to 1997, it is evident that the province needed to fill much of the necessary gap in social services. however, since then, over the past two decades, fiscal support for more redistributive social programs, which have a greater impact on poverty reduction and inequality, has been consistently low (at or under two percent of ontario’s gdp), as shown in table 3. increases in social program spending are overwhelmingly accounted for by just two categories: health and education, which are less redistributive in nature as they are accessed by most households even in the highest income quintile. table 3: ontario fiscal expenditure as a percent of gdp expenditure category fiscal years 1980 1981 1982 1983 1997 1998 2000 2001 2005 2006 2015 2016 2018 2019 2023 2024 2024 2025 2025 2026 2026 2027 health 3.7 4.3 4.7 4.9 5.7 7.0 6.9 7.5 7.3 7.2 7.1 education 3.1 3.2 2.4 2.3 2.8 4.6 4.8 4.4 4.2 4.2 4.1 social services 1.2 1.4 2.4 1.6 1.7 2.0 1.9 1.7 1.7 1.7 1.6 other programs 3.6 4.1 2.7 2.3 2.7 2.7 3.1 3.6 3.9 3.9 3.6 total program expenses 11.5 13.0 12.3 11.2 12.9 16.2 16.7 17.4 17.2 16.9 16.5 *figures have been rounded to the tenth decimal place ** ‘education’ includes post-secondary, ‘social services’ includes ‘community’ and ‘children’. (calculated from: kneebone and wilkins, 2022c (2018-2019 and prior); mof–ontario, 2024 (2023-2024 (expected) and after (projected)); statcan, 2023) 88 future projections as represented by the ontario 2024 budget show no deviation from the entrenched austerity agenda and spending as a percentage of gdp is projected to return to prepandemic levels by 2026-2027. welfare income as a percentage the poverty threshold (using the market basket measure (mbm)) shows this trend (figure 4). figure 4: welfare income in ontario as a percentage of the poverty thresholds (produced from: laildley & tabbara, 2024; national council of welfare, 2009) as the government plans for a post-pandemic ontario, social assistance policies, ontario disability support program and ontario works, have been targeted by austerity. the latter is not adjusted for inflation. despite the already insufficient income replacement rates, in 2023 average income replacements for single people considered employable, single parents with a child, and couples with two children fell behind inflation (laildley & tabbara, 2024). québec. like ontario, québec has followed an austere approach that has frozen income supports most (table 4). leading into the pandemic, this created a destabilizing situation for welfare. although québec expanded social services spending at the provincial level while federal social transfers contracted from the mid-1980s to late-1990s, since the turn of the century they have since decreased and remained consistently flat. the fact that current spending proportions are just below those prior to the federal period of fiscal consolidation indicates that québec does not fill this austerity gap. in the post-pandemic period total program expenditures expanded and projections indicate the role of the québec state will increase, but this is predominantly related to health and not reflected in the social services envelope. 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 ontario welfare income as a percentage of the mbm poverty line, with comparison to the lowincome measure (lim) unattached single considered employable unattached single with a disability single parent, one child couple, two children lim unattached single considered employable lim unattached single with a disability lim single parent, one child lim couple, two children 89 table 4: québec fiscal program expenditure as a percent of gdp *figures are rounded to the nearest tenth decimal place. **this data is intended solely for illustrative purposes.4 (calculated from: kneebone and wilkins, 2022c (2000-2001 and prior); secrétariat, 2024 (2005-2006 and after); statcan, 2023) that said, the coverage provided by welfare income relative to poverty thresholds are on average stronger than in ontario (figure 5). for this reason, québec’s approach to social policies reflects a more “socially democratic” tradition than other provinces (van den berg, 2017, 53). there were significant increases for employable persons without children through active labour market policies in 2019 and again in 2022, which were comparable to ontario before this. however, employment and social solidarity spending was budgeted to decrease by 36.1 percent in 2023-2024 with marginal reductions thereafter between two and three percent (secrétariat, 2024). 4 data for 2005-2006 fiscal years and after are taken from provincial government expenditure budgets, and the categories of program expenditure do not perfectly match those from kneebone and wilkins (2022c), though the latter are useful for comparing unconsolidated health and social services spending as well for comparing across provinces. for 2005-2006 and after, ‘santé et services sociaux’ is counted as health, social services are calculated from ‘emploi et solidarité sociale’ and ‘famille’, and education includes ‘enseignement supérieur’. expenditure budget figures disaggregated by program (secrétariat, 2024) are planned figures for the respective fiscal year and may thus vary from actual expenditures. fiscal years 1980 1981 1982 1983 1997 1998 2000 2001 2005 2006 2015 2016 2018 2019 2022 2023 2023 2024 (expe cted) 2024 2025 (proje cted) health 6.1 6.5 6.4 6.7 7.2 8.2 8.4 10.9 11.7 10.8 social services 1.9 2.2 2.5 2.3 1.9 1.7 1.5 1.8 1.9 1.7 education 6.7 6.6 4.7 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 5.6 6.1 5.5 other 5.4 5.5 2.8 2.7 3.3 2.5 2.6 5.4 5.9 6.6 total program expenditure 20.0 21.0 16.4 16.0 16.0 16.4 16.6 25.7 25.6 24.6 90 figure 5: welfare income in québec as a percentage of the mbm poverty threshold (produced from: laildley & tabbara, 2024; national council of welfare, 2009) in the 2024-2025 budget of québec, a commitment to fiscal balance has unsurprisingly been reinforced, with the goal to achieve this by the 2029-30 fiscal year. overall, budget expenditures are indicative of a less egregious austerity project than in ontario, though they show that in québec too social service expenditures are significantly impacted by the wider austerity project. discourses of austerity to provide a sketch of the degree to which austerity discourses are maintained or challenged, we conducted an analysis of parliamentary budget debates in the house of commons in 2023. debates5 were analysed with a search, using key terms such as debt, deficit, spend, afford, cost, social, assistance, service, program, welfare, ei, employ, labour, health, child, age, elder, senior, pension, education, disability, poverty, just, democ (for democracy or democratic), represent, and transparency. a summary of the mentions of austerity related themes is presented here.6 as outlined in table 5, there were 88 mentions of the budget being sufficient on program spending (almost all from the governing liberal party); 146 calls for or praise of austerity, describing social supports as wasteful and a cause of poverty, or individualizing responsibility for welfare (almost all from the opposition conservative party of canada (cpc)); 102 mentions of an 5 hansards 174, 175, 179, and 180 were analyzed, which totalled 378 speaking turns. 6 methodologically, we have used ‘critical discourse analysis’ (cda) research (wodak 2013; smith-carrier and lawlor, 2016), to uncover how austerity is situated within the political centre of the austerity polity. cda enables us to explore how austerity is “enacted, reproduced, legitimated and resisted” within discourse (van dijk, 2012 as cited in wodak, 2013). this reveals insights about how (the narratives and mechanisms) and by whom discourse is used to impact political change (smith-carrier and lawlor, 2016, p. 3). 30% 50% 70% 90% 110% 130% 20 02 20 03 20 04 200 5 200 6 2007 2008 20 09 201 0 201 1 201 2 20 13 20 14 2015 2016 201 7 2018 2019 20 20 202 1 202 2 202 3 québec welfare income as a percentage of the mbm poverty line, with comparison to the lim unattached single considered employable unattached single with a disability single parent, one child couple, two children lim unattached single considered employable lim unattached single with a disability lim single parent, one child lim couple, two children 91 inequitable budget, or not enough spending on programs or, less often, the contradictions of austerity and austerity polity mechanisms (ndp and bloc québécois (bq) predominantly). table 5: rhetorical themes in 2023 parliamentary budget debates rank order of themes party count (88) mentions of the budget being sufficient on program spending lib. – 84 ndp – 3 bq – 1 cpc – 0 (83) calls for or praise of austerity cpc – 75 lib. – 2 bq – 1 ndp – 0 (3) calls for permanent austerity cpc – 3 lib. – 0 ndp – 0 bq – 0 (52) social supports as wasteful, and unfair, and even causing of poverty cpc – 50 lib. – 2 ndp – 0 bq – 0 (2) mentions of abused social support cpc – 2 lib. – 0 ndp – 0 bq – 0 (6) mentions of welfare being the responsibility of the individual cpc – 6 lib. – 0 ndp – 0 bq – 0 (84) mentions of an inequitable budget, or not enough spending on programs7 ndp – 41 bq – 37 lib – 5 green – 1 cpc – 1 (18) mentions pointing out the contradictions of austerity and austerity polity mechanisms ndp – 9 bq – 9 lib – 0 cpc – 0 (calculated from: canada, 2023) if we take the governing liberal party as projecting a gradual return to pre-covid levels of spending, and the opposition conservatives as wanting to get there faster and further, then the picture is one of continuity in austerlty discourse. most bq and ndp interventions were on matters of adjusting the impact of measures with relatively few interventions targeting the austerity polity as such. 7 not including six mentions of not enough spending specifically on defence or oil and gas companies by cpc mps. 92 the most frequently mentioned theme was that the budget, which we have shown reflects a long-term pattern to maintain austerity, is responsible, prudent, and overall what should be reflected in a budget. where liberals supported social spending they often focused on the covid19 pandemic but supported a later return to the path of fiscal austerity. though canadians still struggled with the effects of the pandemic, much discussion was framed around the pandemic and its effects having been in the past and suggesting the government must ‘move forward’. discourse analysis shows a trend to downplay income support measures. some groups of “vulnerable” persons are favoured over others. programs that are intended for a wider recipient base (and are hence less redistributive), especially those that provide benefits more reciprocal with contributions, received the most attention. this suggests an anti-redistributive bias in federal social spending. healthcare, particularly dental care, was shown support most often. apart from healthcare, childcare was the next most genuinely supported social program from the liberal remarks. disability and unemployment support significantly lagged behind. even when old age supports, general support for reducing poverty, and even childcare were expressed, it was more often in reference to provision of limited benefits such as dental care. seniors, minority groups, women, and the general “poor” were often also claimed to be supported with one-off—and limited— grocery rebates, suggesting no commitment from such remarks toward lasting redistributive measures to counter poverty and inequality. women and families were also often treated as having been sufficiently addressed in the fiscal plan of the budgets through school food programs. another focus in budget debates was dedicated to arguing that the budget has not done enough for hardship or that more program spending was needed. there was also significant effort by the bq and ndp to employ rhetorical countermeasures against justifications of austerity principles. such arguments held that austerity was worsening poverty and causing the cost-ofliving crisis, and that social program spending, contrary to conservative and liberal rhetoric, did not cause inflation. these remarks tended to reflect a more complex and comprehensive view of poverty, recognizing structural constraints causing it, arguing its inequity, and calling for redistribution and social justice. these mechanisms are part of a “redistributionist discourse” (levitas 2005; raphael 2020, 13). bq and ndp discourses opposed austerity, raised its contradictions, and uncovered potential opportunities to assert anti-austerity changes. still, our analysis also found in parliamentary debates as a whole there was nearly as much rhetoric calling for greater austerity as there was in justifying or reducing the existing level of austerity in the budgets. when counted together with calls for permanent austerity and institutionalizing austerity, claims that social program spending was wasteful and caused poverty, demonizing social program recipients as abusing benefits, or arguing that social welfare is the responsibility of the individual, this was the most mentioned topic of the budget debates. issues of affordability were raised by conservative mps several times, but they maintained their position on greater expenditures cuts. instead, rhetoric suggesting “fairness”—in the sense of contributions to canada’s economy and benefits—and anti-redistributionist mechanisms were used rather than distributional equity and removing structural barriers of poverty and inequality. to summarize, the majority of the 2023 budget debate reinforced austerity; discourse tended to either ignore any issues of austerity, argue that the current fiscal expenditure and distribution was sufficient, or tout furthering austerity measures and/or making them permanent. although not featured as regularly, there was also pushback against the austerity polity in parliament. that discourse, which raised issues with the effects of austerity and even exposed its contradictions, reveals potential fractures in the systems upholding austerity. 93 federal budget debates reflected what levitas (2005) and raphael (2020) have termed a “social integrationist discourse” that “has a narrow focus on paid work”, “does not ask why people who are not working are consigned to poverty”, and “obscures issues of inequality among paid workers” (raphael, 2020, 13). additionally, demonizing social support recipients reflects an attempt to frame poverty as an individual failure. this echoes the “moral underclass discourse” identified by levitas (2005) and raphael (2020), and, in our terms, represents the politics of insinuation in action. it aims to make those living in poverty a socially distinct category, claims their own behaviour causes poverty whilst ignoring the structural constraints of poverty, and views income supports as dependency-creating problems caused by state reinforcement of bad behaviour (raphael, 2020, 13). of course, the ranking of themes in budget discourses is reflective of the opportunity that each party has to speak. the first-past-the-post electoral system limits democratic representation in the house of commons. proportionally, the ndp was the most outspoken in terms of a lack of spending to address poverty, affordability, inequities of many kinds (even pointing out intersecting inequities, such as gender, income, and age), and injustice. the bq followed in critiquing the austerity polity and restated concerns from the harper years (bq, 2008), that the pre-budget consultations disregard affected interests. this brings into question the institutionalised role of policy processes and the attempt to insulate them from potential forces that could contest austerity (see whiteside et al., 2021, 23-6). explaining austerity’s resilience in canada austerity polity: fiscal and rhetorical insulation. even such a profound crisis as the pandemic has not led to paradigm change. canada has an entrenched politics of austerity. austerity agendas operate through institutionalisation that subsequently insulates austerity policies from displacement (whiteside et al., 2021). the worst affected in society lack institutionalized voice and power to change the austerity agenda. at the same time, powerful groups in society are insulated from its effects. this enduring politics of austerity has developed into “an austerity state embedded in a political system (polity) that institutionalizes a ‘permanent’ politics of austerity” (jessop, 2016, 417). similarly, capoccia (2016) argues that once cultural categories are consistently institutionalized, they provide a strong interpretive framework for the general public against which political actors with alternative interpretations have a hard time finding resonance. even during periods of crisis, denial and minimalism have been deployed. and the liberal government since the covid-19 pandemic has downplayed the cost-of-living crisis for economically marginalized canadians. while the acute effects of the pandemic were given attention in budget debates, the lasting circumstances of multiple and intersecting crises and the impact by the long-term austerity project on these consequences were politically ignored. there was little acknowledgement of austerity’s effects on social programs and the ways in which social welfare assistances are particularly affected by expenditure consolidation. nor have debates featured a commitment to seriously addressing distributional injustices. this confirms the role of ‘ideational power’ in neoliberal resilience literature (see: schmidt & thatcher, 2013; schmidt, 2016; carstensen & schmidt, 2016; carstensen & matthijs, 2018). just as variegated neoliberalisms (peck, 2010) are “flexible, adaptable, and resilient” (jessop, 2016, 417), so too does this phenomenon extend to austerity. it is demonstrated in the canadian austerity polity by the continued tendency for crises to further embed austerity rationales. brief pauses to austerity are required during pronounced crises to stabilize and buffer against the effects. however, in ‘recovery’ periods, the benefit of such stabilizers is denied, and orthodoxy falls back 94 on the rationale of austerity, given priority over social welfare. in fact, a common strategy of adaptation seen in support of austerity across party lines, is to “coopt many seemingly alternative ideas, stripping them of more progressive political projects that might be at their root” (joy et al., 2021, 103). in the canadian context this entails the ‘consolidation’ of social services, the ‘devolution’ of responsibility from the federal to provincial levels, and ‘responsibilization’ that individualizes welfare and frames benefit recipients as irresponsible citizens or burdens (joy et al., 2021). the budget debates rhetoric can be characterized overall as promoting austerity for the creation of post-pandemic order. although the rhetorical analysis shows that there were challenges to the austerity imposed, they had a limited effect on fiscal outcomes for social policies. this rhetorical hierarchy works to uphold the austerity polity and demonstrates the limits to representative democratic decision-making institutions as a means of democratic insulation. an entrenched austerity polity can be identified by the “rise of a permanent politics of austerity and a tendential shift to an enduring state of austerity that is characterized by the ‘constitutionalization of austerity’” (mcbride, 2016). there has been opposition to austerity measures, of course, but the failure to provide voice to those most adversely affected shows the limits of liberal democratic institutions in canada. more generally, as jessop, (2016, 417) has noted, as the scope of austerity increases and material supports for subaltern groups decrease, the austerity state seeks to protects itself from related push-back and closes democratic processes from challenge amongst other institutions or organisations, political parties, the voting system, the absence of social partnership institutions (except in quebec), and an internal administrative hierarchy which privileges financial ministries, and an independent central bank all serve as obstacles to debating and possibly changing the austerity imperative. none of the political parties espouse a coherent alternative to austerity though some criticize the measures adopted. a conspicuous example of the institutionalisation and subsequent insulation of austerity from challenges (whiteside et al., 2021), canada’s voting simple majority system, or “first-past-the-post”, has yet to be reformed. parliament and cabinets, remain unrepresentative (raphael, 2020). similarly, and without exaggerating the influence of social partnership/social dialogue institutions elsewhere, their absence in canada deprives subordinate social groups of voice in key economic decisions. the department of finance canada and the treasury board have central roles in the management of public finances. other actors—the bank of canada, the financial institutions supervisory committee, the superintendent of financial institutions, the heads of some provincial securities commissions (ontario, québec, alberta, and british columbia), and select industry groups (boc, 2023) — are given privileged access. at the core of the budget processes are exclusively financial actors. the selective invitation of actors in the budget process is justified through the technical nature of fiscal decision making. with austerity focusing on public debt and deficits through expenditure limits, “finance not only achieved greater leverage over state policies through supplying and overseeing state credit and debt in the form of loans and guarantees” (albo & fanelli, 2014, 12). but, in the provision of social programs, “[f]inance also attained a fulcrum position to maintain continual pressure on the state for its project of total privatization and commodification of the public sector” (albo & fanelli, 2014, 12). there is evidence that, given the opportunity, public opinion would be receptive to reversing austerity measures. a broadbent institute study estimated that, as of 2020, 64% of canadians did not find it necessary for the government to engage in spending reductions and deficit control following the pandemic (coletto, 2020, 2). interestingly, for those who would vote for the governing liberals, 78% believed the government should spend what is necessary to help those in 95 need and stimulate the economy (coletto, 2020, 3). in this way public opinion may contribute to gradualism of projected spending reductions. however, such sentiments are blocked by the “conflict between democratic accountability and technocratic rule application in which institutions lacking popular accountability (such as executives, bureaucracies, central banks and judiciaries), are seen as gaining strength compared to those more amenable to democratic input (such as legislatures)” (mcbride & schnittker, 2021, 128). the overall insulation of austerity decisions from democratic processes creates a selfreinforcing phenomenon of discouraging future democratic pressure (mcbride and whiteside (2011). for these reasons, the post-pandemic recovery has not produced the transformational change necessary to overcome the austerity project, despite the mounting contradictions it engenders. conclusion: the potential for alternative futures the austerity polity remains entrenched but is not unchallenged. however, the window for austerity and neoliberal reversal, as suggested by institutionalist paradigm change literature (see hogan, 2019), has yet to materialize. material deprivations do not interact with ideas in a straightforward way (baker, 2015). while ‘fissures’ (schneider, 2022) in the austerity polity are evidenced by the arguments revealing the socioeconomic effects of austerity and even the contradictions of its merits, the more substantial result has been a reinforcing of and even a greater push for austerity. recent literature on critical junctures has developed nuanced understandings of their occurrences to argue that existing conditions do not constitute an interregnum. our argument follows that of hogan, which circumscribes the realization of paradigmatic change and recognizes that only under particular conditions will critical junctures take place (hogan, 2019, 11). given the prominence of ideational formation around austerity in parliament, our results suggest that there has not been an ideational collapse. because of the continued primacy afforded to austerity ideas, despite significant counter-austerity ideas present in society, one cannot consider this to be a consolidation around new ideas. by this logic of paradigm change and critical junctures we can expect a continuity of the extant austerity polity, albeit with potential policy adjustments or instruments (hogan, 2019). other developments in policy change literature also support this thesis. baker argues that crisis timing, policy sequencing, as well as the political and institutional context must be considered simultaneously to determine a paradigmatic shift (2015). although macroeconomic policy, “is more likely to respond to a slow burning crisis” (baker, 2015, 361)—of which the intersecting crises that have followed the covid-19 pandemic are examples—other important indications that a paradigm shift might occur are not present. policy sequencing to break from austerity has been fleeting and the gfc precedent suggests a post-crisis return to austerity. similarly, while counter-hegemonic ideas do occur in the centre of the policy process, they have been sidelined. additionally, institutional structures have been developed as a part of the austerity polity to insulate it from democratic processes and the threat of austerity’s displacement. though recent crises created the potential for a collapse of austerity policy systems, transformation has been limited by ideational promotion of austerity and institutionalised democratic isolation. we are thus not in a moment of “moment of frustrated transition” (welsh, 2019, 59) limited by the absence of a replacement paradigm. 96 of course, opportunities to deconstruct austerity logics and to offer counter-hegemonic ideas and even policies should not be discounted. fissures in the austerity polity do exist. the covid-19 pandemic and the intersecting crises were leveraged as an “auspicious occasion to promote critical scrutiny of the hegemonic economic paradigm” (russell, 2019, 39). our aim is not to downplay such impacts or disillusion resistance. to the contrary, we hold that the endurance of counter-austerity ideas indicates the existence of opportunity for post-austerity futures, but that this requires a more comprehensive paradigm presenting alternatives to austerity, as well as institutional change to democratize fiscal processes. such pressures are likely to have the most sustainable force when originating from outside of government institutions that support incumbent ideas (bailey et al., 2017). by 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(2017). combating poverty: quebec’s pursuit of a distinctive welfare state. university of toronto press. https://booksscholarsportal-info.proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca/uri/ebooks/ebooks3/utpress/2018-0327/1/9781487513498 watson, j. (2020). contesting the crisis—cupe, the caw, and third way neoliberalism in ontario from 2003-2013 [phd dissertation, mcmaster university]. https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/25976/2/watson_james_d_october2020_phd.p df welsh, j. (2020). struggling beyond the paradigm of neoliberalism. thesis eleven, 158(1), 58–80. https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513619888667 whiteside, h. (2018). austerity as epiphenomenon? public assets before and beyond 2008. cambridge journal of regions, economy and society, 11(3), 409–425. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsy022 whiteside, h., mcbride, s., & evans, b. m. (2021). varieties of austerity. bristol university press. wodak, r. (2013). critical discourse analysis. sage publications ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446286289 https://doi.org/10.1177/0261018316666251 https://doi.org/10.25318/3610022201-eng https://doi.org/10.25318/3610058701-eng https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/2018016/cpilg-ipcgl-eng.htm https://doi.org/10.25318/3610069901-eng https://depot.erudit.org/id/004087dd https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/25976/2/watson_james_d_october2020_phd.pdf https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/25976/2/watson_james_d_october2020_phd.pdf https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513619888667 https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsy022 142 | migration of bengalis to canada "multi-cultural": straddling continents, straddling identities | 143 144 | migration of bengalis to canada "multi-cultural": straddling continents, straddling identities | 145 146 | migration of bengalis to canada "multi-cultural": straddling continents, straddling identities | 147 148 | migration of bengalis to canada "multi-cultural": straddling continents, straddling identities | 149 150 | migration of bengalis to canada "multi-cultural": straddling continents, straddling identities | 151 152 | migration of bengalis to canada "multi-cultural": straddling continents, straddling identities | 153 154 | migration of bengalis to canada "multi-cultural": straddling continents, straddling identities | 155 156 | migration of bengalis to canada https://www.cicnews.com/2017/05/more-international-students-choosing-canada-transitioning-to-permanent-residence-059168.html https://www.cicnews.com/2017/05/more-international-students-choosing-canada-transitioning-to-permanent-residence-059168.html https://www.cicnews.com/2017/05/more-international-students-choosing-canada-transitioning-to-permanent-residence-059168.html "multi-cultural": straddling continents, straddling identities | 157 158 | migration of bengalis to canada alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review understanding the business of global media in the digital age, by micky lee and dal yong jin. new york, ny: routledge, 2018. $41.56 u.s., paper. isbn: 978-1-138-688896-4. pages: 1269. reviewed by samuel lamoureux1 the global media industry and its workers have face huge changes since the early 2000s, often with negative impacts resulting in declining working conditions, concentration of ownership and commodification of content. the book understanding the business of global media in the digital age try to face those challenge by developing new approaches to think about the transformation of the media business in the 21st century. the authors micky lee and dal yong yin, propose three aspects in their book to meet this task: (1) provide example from different country, especially non-western, to see how the media business can be influence by multiple factor such as informal economy or state intervention, (2) introduce three theoretical framework to study the media, which are media economics, critical political economy, and production studies, and (3) to understand the media business through six different lenses: economies, politics, technologies, civil societies, cultures and labor. the first thing to say about this book is that it is written for undergraduate students. this is a weak point, but also an advantage. weak point because some theoretical framework are introduced too easily or even naively, especially the political economy of communication. but it is also an advantage because the authors really take the readers by the hand and give concrete examples to start a case study, for example how to get the financial results of a big corporation like google or bloomberg. after a short introduction, the second chapter open up with a brief history of business of media studies. according to the authors, researchers have only begun to study the media business systematically since the 1980s. this position is of course a shortcut, but winseck (2016) has already done a review of the work prior to this period. three factors have reignited the interest for this subject since the 2000s: the rise of neoliberalism, globalization and media convergence, all related factors. for example: neoliberalism and globalization encourages the development of transnational corporation that uses their power to foster convergence of content across multiple platforms. chapter three is devoted to theoretical approaches. the first approach is media economics, which is essentially the application of neoclassical economics to the study of “objective models” such as media markets or consumers behaviors. the second, more critical, framework is the political economy of communication which examine “the role of power in the production, distribution and exchange of mediated communication” (p. 25). the idea is to examine the role and function of the media in the different forms of capitalism (fordism, finance). the third framework, drawn from cultural studies, is production studies, which is “the study of the people and processes that cause media to take the forms they do” (p. 43). this theory comes out of abstraction and tries to understand the fluid meanings of media production. the authors offer an interesting comparison 1 ph.d. student in media studies, faculté de communication, université du québec à montréal. email: lamoureux.samuel@uqam.ca. mailto:lamoureux.samuel@uqam.ca mailto:lamoureux.samuel@uqam.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research of the three frameworks, which, for example, from the point of view of methodology, range from objective methods (media economics) to critical realism (political economy), or interpretative methods like ethnography (production studies). the following chapters deal with the six lenses to rethink the business of global media. the authors systematically use the three theories to contextualize their subjects. a relevant case study also closes each of these chapters. the first lens is economies. economy is not considered a single entity but rather “a fluid concept that encompasses both an objective reality and a subjective perception, both a state and a process, both a macro and a micro concept” (p. 65). this conception of the economy is very useful to think about the media that currently rely on both the global corporations listed on the stock exchange, but also on many informal economy like hacking or free labor of social network users. the second lens is politics. the role of the state in the media business model varies from country to country. one might think that neoliberalism, privatization of the public sector, and deregulation translates into a withdrawal of the state from the media world. this is true in the united states, but not necessarily in other countries like japan or south korea where state agencies are responsible for promoting creative industries as the « korean wave » (p. 121). the next lens is technology. information and communication technologies (ict) can be disruptive force in the media landscape, but also change agent and power consolidator. media companies can for example take advantage of digitization by offering content on multiple platforms. digital technology has also lowered the entry cost to the content. but the rise of the tic can also lead to commodification of information and labor because it blurred the edges between work and free time. while the civil societies lens develops on the economic dynamics of public, community and activist media, as well as the usefulness of crowdfunding, the labor lens explain how labor is more global and transnational than ever, but also more objectified, exploited and alienated by factors such as the flexible, affective or free labor. finally, culture lens makes it possible to analyze “how media workers construct their personal and professional identities, which in term shape media practices” (p. 192). audience are also more active than ever in the digital age. we can talk of “participatory culture” to illustrate the creativity and the implication of the new media consumer (p. 203). but this creativity is not only positive while the audience is more commodified than ever with targeted advertising and the sale of personal data. this book is an excellent introduction for undergraduate students seeking to learn both critical media theories and different research methods. however, the attention given to the framework of media economics is, i believe, exaggerated considering that this theory is very orthodox, positivist and supports (and even cheers) capitalism (nitzan and bichler, 2009). i find it odd that so much space is given to this very liberal and orthodox theory that is not even taught in many faculties of communication. the cultural industries approach is more popular (and i believe more useful) in the french-speaking world (miège, 1989). the authors could also have looked more towards the sociology of journalism or economic sociology to think about the relationship between the economy and the media in the digital age (lee, 2014). www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research references: lee, m. (2014). what can political economists learn from economic sociologists? a case study of nasdaq. communication, culture & critique, 7(2), 246-263. miège, b. (1989). the capitalization of cultural production. new york: international general. nitzan, j., & bichler, s. (2009). capital as power: a study of order and creorder. new york: routledge. winseck, d. (2016). reconstructing the political economy of communication for the digital media age. the political economy of communication, 4(2). 162 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages lived experiences of unemployed women in toronto and halifax, canada who were previously precariously employed leslie nichols1 abstract: over the past few years, there has been an increase in the number of workers in canada who are not in standard employment relations but are instead in contract, part-time, or otherwise precarious employment. at the same time, the neoliberal policy paradigm has replaced the belief that we should support workers through full-time stable employment with an idea that labour can be utilized whenever and however required, as dictated by the economy’s needs. the detrimental effects of neoliberal market policies are well known. further exploration is needed on the differential impacts of these policies on women with intersectional identities, particularly in an era of increasing employment precarity. based on a qualitative study of unemployed women’s lived experiences in toronto and halifax, this article explores the issues surrounding unemployment, including financial impacts, job searching, retraining, and health impacts of unemployment and employment precarity. the results were analyzed using intersectional and grounded theory. the study concludes with key results related to the impact of precarity in the labour market: neoliberal erosion of the welfare state is manifested in a lack of supports for workers. keywords: precarious employment, women, unemployment, toronto, halifax unemployed workers in canada expect to have access to unemployed workers’ supports because they have paid employment insurance (ei) premiums. many have been unable to do so since 1996/1997, however, when unemployment insurance (ui) became employment insurance. this modification led to stricter regulations and rules, notably in the number of hours required to qualify for supports (macdonald, 2009a, 2009b). not everyone has been impacted to the same degree by the changes. those most impacted have been individuals from lower socio-economic levels in 1 leslie nichols is currently a visiting researcher at osgoode hall law school. dr. nichols' research focuses on the social conditions of women in canadian society through feminist theory and methods, with a focus on women workers in canada. the author would like to thank the editors of this volume, carlo fanelli and john shields, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. lived experiences of unemployed women | 163 society, particularly women, who as a result of their traditional role in the household have been more impacted than men (nichols, 2014a, 2014b; mcgregor, 2004; silver, shields, wilson, & scholtz, 2005; silver, wilson, & shields, 2004). household demands make it more complicated for women to access and remain in the labour market (shields, silver, & wilson, 2006; silver et al., 2005; townson & hayes, 2007). to follow up on this line of inquiry, in 2013 i conducted a study of the lived experiences of unemployed women with intersecting identities that included: being precariously employed prior to the period of unemployment; being a single parent, a parent of a child, or a parent of multiple children; caring for parents; lacking a partner’s income; having a precariously employed or unemployed partner; having a racialized identity or immigrant status; and having various gender, class, and age.2 these multiple identities bring attention to diversities and inequities in women's working lives. i interviewed 15 participants from each region to probe the socio-economic and psychosocial impacts of canadian unemployed workers’ supports, notably financial and health implications. two main findings related to precarious employment resulted from this study. first, the neoliberal policy paradigm has eroded state infrastructure, leading to a paucity of supports for unemployed women workers. second, unemployed women not only face poor ei support, but also have inadequate supports in relation to childcare, health care, retraining, and re-entering the labour market. as a result, many women experience inadequate living conditions if they do not have a domestic partner upon whom they can rely. notably, women’s health is negatively impacted regardless whether they are precariously employed or unemployed, and they develop insecurities because of their inability to plan for the future, their limited income, and the poor health-care benefits they receive. ultimately, neoliberal market policies place women in jeopardy, especially those with specific intersectional identities. women’s employment in canada more women are working in canada today than four decades ago, despite gender roles and the division of labour in the household. in december 2013, 67.6% of canadian men and 58.3% of canadian women were employed (statistics canada, 2014a). in comparison, 72.7% of canadian men and 41.9% of canadian women were employed in 1976 (ferraro, 2010). yet, despite the increase in their employment numbers, 2 these identities were the identities presented by participants. while there are many other identities (such as disability, etc.) to explore in a study related to access to ei policy, the participants did not focus on these other identities. 164 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages few women are able to access unemployment supports when they lose their employment. two segments of the labour market, the primary and secondary labour markets, have structured the labour supply through a variety of social differences (gordon, edwards, & reich, 1982). peck (1996, 46) noted that “segmentation theory holds that social space of the labour market is not only divided into submarkets . . . but also that the rules governing the behaviour of the labour market differ from one segment to another.” better working conditions, better jobs, higher income, secure employment, and possibilities for promotion exist in the primary sector (krahn, lowe, & hughes, 2008; peck, 1996; reich, gordon, & edwards, 1973), while the secondary sector incorporates the fewest desirable jobs, with poor wages and working conditions as well as job insecurity (krahn et al., 2008; peck, 1996). women have generally been employed in the secondary labour market as a result of their presumed domestic duties (peck, 1996), while men have had more access to the primary labour market. this is notably due to the impacts of household labour that, despite legal changes in relation to policies, the majority of women still complete (teghtsoonian, 1996). not all female workers desire to be attached to the labour market, though they generally are compelled to work due to a lack of resources, which limits their ability to choose. women in the middle and upper classes, however, often by virtue of having spouses with high incomes, have more resources that enable them to decide whether they want to participate in the labour market, and if so, to what degree (little, 2004). to address this social inequality, resources should be made available to women, including federal universal child care, so that if they choose to work, they will be on an equal footing in the labour market (little, 2004). changes from ui to ei. ui was introduced in the early 1940s in response to large-scale unemployment caused by the great depression. the program was administrated by the federal government, which contributed 20% of the combined employee and employer contributions to the program (lin, 1998). the goal of the program was to provide financial assistance during times of unemployment (lin, 1998). initially, ui eligibility was based on the number of weeks worked during the year prior to the claim. depending on the region, the claimant was required to have worked between 12 and 20 weeks, with at least 15 hours of work per week (townson & hayes, 2007). a claimant’s benefits were based on the total hours of work during the previous year and the total earnings for that year (nichols, 2012; townson & hayes, 2007). ui was replaced by ei in 1996/1997. the main policy changes included an increase in the number of hours required for receiving lived experiences of unemployed women | 165 benefits and a decrease in the benefit payouts. the change in the number of required hours meant that a worker would have to demonstrate 180 days of paid labour, based on a 35-hour week, within the last two years, twice the number of paid hours that had been required before the benefits were modified (townson & hayes, 2007). taking inflation into account, the average ei claimant received $514 per week in 2014, compared to the $595 per week that the average ui claimant received in 1995 (battle, 2009; government of canada, 2014). the changes in ei had noticeable impacts. for instance, only 39% of unemployed workers were approved for ei benefits in 2009, while 83% had been approved in 1990 (mendelson, battle, & torjman, 2010). growth of non-standard employment and its impacts on workers. over the past few years, the number of workers who are not in standard employment relations, but instead are in contract, part-time or otherwise precarious employment, has increased (chayowski & powell, 1999; joshi, 2002). as in a recent study that examined precarious employment (pepso, 2013), this study incorporates a wide range of forms of employment. as such, precarious employment is not solely defined as being low-wage work, but as any work that has some form of precarity. as a result of widespread changes in the economy (which are often related to new technologies), work has become more unstable and precarious. furthermore, the neoliberal policy paradigm has replaced the belief that we should support workers through full-time, stable employment with an idea that labour can be utilized whenever and however required, as dictated by the economy’s needs. in canada, 20% of the workforce is currently in nonstandard employment relationships, such as short-term and precarious contract work (pepso, 2013). townson and kevin hayes' (2007) study suggests that 30% of canadian men, compared to 40% of canadian women, are working in precarious employment relationships (see also chayowski & powell, 1999; pupo & duffy, 2003). the inequities resulting from precarious employment are summarized in the pepso's recent (2013) report for the greater toronto area: precariously employed workers (a) earn about 46% less than those in steady full-time employment, resulting in household incomes that are 34% lower than their full-time-employed counterparts; (b) face income variability; (c) rarely receive any benefits related to employment; (d) experience few opportunities for progress or promotion within their current employment relationship; (e) often face many weeks of no income; (f) ignore health and safety concerns due to concerns about the future of their jobs; (g) are subjected to more employer monitoring; (h) often hold more than one job; (i) commonly work on call; and (k) often have to pay for 166 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages their own training in the workplace. the increase of precarious employment in canada over the past two decades is associated with a lack of job security, income polarization between the upper and lower classes, and an intensified working life (mikkonen & raphael, 2010). the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) has noted that canada has poor employment protection, with only limited employment regulations and benefits for temporary workers. in fact, canada was ranked 26th out of the 28 oecd nations for employment protection (cited in mikkonen & raphael, 2010), which illustrates the plight that these workers face in neoliberal canada. women and the transition from ui to ei. ei policy does not acknowledge the range of reasons why someone may be unemployed (cooke & gazso, 2009). consequently, women are impacted when they temporarily leave the labour market to raise children (cooke & gazso, 2009; townson & hayes, 2007). canadian workers are viewed as reentrants or new entrants to the labour market if they have been not attached to the labour market for a period of time. this stipulation means that they are not credited with any of the hours they worked before the period when they were not attached to the labour market. furthermore, they are required to have worked 910 hours during the previous 52 weeks to claim ei benefits (townson & hayes, 2007). this stipulation limits individuals’ ability to access ei benefits even though individuals need these benefits to support their efforts to reenter the labour market (bezanson & mcmurray, 2000). theory and methods during 2013, i completed a qualitative interview study with 30 diverse women participants: 15 from toronto and 15 from halifax. this study was designed to explore the various ways that women deal with unemployment through a qualitative analysis. the study focused on lived experiences since becoming unemployed, but it was also designed to comprehend the reasoning behind (bryman & teevan, 2005) the decisions participants made when they were unemployed. from each region, 15 participants were interviewed to explore the psychosocial and socioeconomic impacts of being unemployed in canada. within toronto and halifax, participants were recruited through research advertisements in a variety of social service agencies. this article focuses on participants who were previously employed in precarious employment relationships prior to their unemployment. therefore, 23 interviews were explored for this purpose. lived experiences of unemployed women | 167 the most significant part of this study is its exploration of the effects of ei policy on the lived experiences of unemployed women in canada. the study's main focus was on unemployed women between the ages of 25 to 40 years of age who were caring for children or adult dependents. the study explored the lived experiences of unemployed women in the two cities who had a broad range of intersecting identities (see appendices a and b). the use of a variety of levels of identity analysis is central to a new development of intersectionality that notes the significance of multiplelevel analysis to an inclusive social theory (nichols, forthcoming; scheibelhofer & marotta, 2010). the study concluded with two main findings concerning the experiences of becoming unemployed while caring for children or having dependent adults, either siblings or parents. the first finding is related to the erosion of state infrastructure: there is a lack of supports for unemployed women workers, and they also face difficulties owing to a lack of supports extended through social programs and supports in the areas of health care, childcare, retraining, and reentering the labour market. as a result, many of these women face inadequate living conditions unless they have a supportive domestic partner. second, precariously employed and unemployed women experienced a negative impact on their health. they had to cope with insecurity in both situations, including having to live on a limited income, not having adequate health-care benefits, and not being unable to plan for the future. thus, neoliberal market policies place women in jeopardy, especially those who are caring for children or adult dependents and who have intersecting identities. there has not been much research on the use of intersectionality as a method (denis, 2008; mccall, 2005). my study built on the research of mccall (2005) and hancock (2007) and used intersectionality as a method to illustrate the importance of context specificity and the fluidity of identities (nichols, forthcoming). the main insight of intersectionality theory is that there is not one salient identity; rather, the impacts of identities are context dependent. in addition to using intersectionality as the research methodology, i coded the responses in my study using grounded theory (charmaz, 2004). this involves coding data with an eye to generating new concepts to guide the critical analysis (maijala et al., 2003). grounded theory helps establish a strict set of rules for analyzing qualitative data (charmaz, 2004, 96). in grounded theory the researcher will: “start with individual cases, incidents, or experiences and develop progressively more abstract conceptual categories to synthesize, to explain, and to understand your data and to identify patterned relationships within it. you begin with an area to study. then, you build 168 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages your theoretical analysis on what you discover is relevant in the actual worlds that you study within this area.” (charmaz, 2004, 497). grounded theory helps move qualitative research from narrative or thematic analysis to more carefully defined methods, similar to quantitative methods (bryman et al., 2012; charmaz, 2004). feminist epistemology feminists have critiqued social policies because they are based upon and perpetuate unequal gender roles, assumptions, and social relations. socialist feminists were among the first to analyze the ways in which forms of oppression interact and connect, with a focus on social class and gender (o’connor, 1996; o’connor, orloff, & shaver, 1999). socialist feminists also noted the need to address other forms of marginalization, beyond improving access to the labour market, changing the division of household labour, and ensuring the capability to have and maintain an autonomous household. we need to push the analysis further to explore how different social categories and identities are affected by social policies. the change from ui to ei policy, for example, has marginalized some individuals in the canadian population more than others, including those living in poverty, immigrants, and racialized individuals. starting in the 1980s, third-wave feminists noted that gender is not the salient reason for inequality and that there are instead many other reasons that are related to the creation of identities (tyyskä, 2007). tyyskä noted that “multiple feminisms associated with this most current wave attempt to address women’s local and specific experiences, with an emphasis on the interpretations of the women themselves” (2007, 378). these research endeavors occurred before the term intersectional was coined (walby, armstrong, & strid, 2012) by u.s. scholar kimberlé crenshaw in 1989. the aim of crenshaw’s study was to explore employment-related issues among black american women. crenshaw noted that in critical race theory and traditional feminist theory, one’s identity was seen to be a privilege (crenshaw, 1991). ludvig (2006) argued that gender is only comprehended where it is coined, due to context (time and place; see also acker, 2012; shields, 2008). therefore, intersectionality theory is important and relevant, because it espouses the notion that everyone has many significant parts of their identity, all of which are affected by relations in the social world (garry, 2011). scholars engaging in intersectional projects note, understand, and analyze the intersections among different forms of identity, including race, class, and gender, taking all of these as “fundamental traits” (hindman, 2011; manuel, 2007). using this approach, researchers explore lived experiences of unemployed women | 169 the many different social locations where individuals experience oppression within society, along with the structural systems of power that help marginalize individuals through forms of exclusion and inclusion (hankivsky, 2007). thus, this approach enables us to comprehend a wider range of experiences within society (christensen & jensen, 2012; phoenix & pattynama, 2006). the key theoretical argument of the intersectional approach is “that identity is not additive, fixed, or multiple, but rather that the coming together of race, gender, sexuality, class, and other factors creates distinct wholes” (boris, 2012, 1). although intersectionality was first developed in feminist studies, it has traveled across disciplines (christensen & jensen, 2012; denis, 2008). this approach has been taken by a variety of scholars, leading to many different methods and research studies (acker, 2012; bilge & denis, 2010; mccall, 2005), all of which demonstrate its interdisciplinary nature (shields, 2008) and complexity (mccall, 2005). therefore, it is not surprising to see it used in various ways (phoenix & pattynama, 2006); indeed, intersectionality has been called a “delightfully novel but irritatingly ambitious” term (davis, 2008, 79). at the same time, it is also not surprising that scholars have noted and are beginning to address the “limitations, implications or slipperiness of intersectionality or question its focus” (garry, 2011, 826). the intersectional approach is explored with many different methodologies (acker, 2012). quantitative methods use intersectionality to examine hidden issues that can be the basis for further exploration (covarrubias, 2011). the quantitative approach has a weak premise, however, as it depicts identities as an additive phenomenon. doing so does not capture the agency of the individuals being studied. i approached my interviews using an approach grounded in intersectionality theory, because it provides “a clearer picture of the way the intersections of identity impact individuals’ access to social policies, and, indeed, to full social citizenship” (nichols, 2013, 234–235). a fuller understanding of individuals' lives, choices, and decisions can be developed through the use of intersectionality (manual, 2007). comparing ontario and nova scotia the combination of ontario and nova scotia provides an interesting case study for comparing ei benefits in traditional “have” and “have-not” provinces. in the past, ontario was a “have” province with high levels of employment. because of this status, the province paid federal transfers to “have-not” provinces, such as nova scotia. a significant difference between the two provinces lies in the work patterns. ontario has 170 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages traditionally had high levels of employment in manufacturing. workers employed in this sector often hold standard full-time jobs. in nova scotia, employment has traditionally been in large fisheries that typically provide precarious seasonal employment (porter, 2003). since ei policy is regionally based (radmilovic, 2011), the history of manufacturing and fishing industries in these two labour market regions allow for an interesting exploration of ei policy. this study explored the largest city in each province: the greater toronto area (gta) and the halifax regional municipality (hrm). economic comparisons provide a good starting point. during december 2013, unemployment in canada was 7.2% (statistics canada, 2014a). the unemployment rates in toronto and halifax were higher: 9.2% and 7.9%, respectively (statistics canada, 2014a). during november 2013, 512,330 unemployed workers in canada processed claims for ei benefits, a decrease from 514,220 in july 2013. the number of claimants in ontario for this period decreased from 162,060 in july to 152,120 in november 2013. the number remained about the same between september and november 2013. the number in nova scotia was stable between july and november 2013, beginning at 27,020 and ending at 27,990 (statistics canada, 2014b; see table 1). halifax has traditionally had higher seasonal unemployment due to closed fisheries during the winter season. despite research strongly indicating that seasonal unemployment is better supported by ei programs than precarious employment (van audenrode, fournier, havet, & royer, 2005), it is still easier to make a claim in toronto than in halifax (pepso, 2013). the number of hours required to receive ei benefits in toronto is 530, while in halifax it is 630 (canadian economic insurance commission [ceic], 2012). differences in hours of employment requirements are tied to regional rates of unemployment. in areas where unemployment rates are 6% or less, the number of required hours to qualify for ei are 700; for areas with 9.1 to 10% unemployment rates, the requirement is 530 hours, and for 13.1% or more the cut off is 420 hours. lived experiences of unemployed women | 171 table 1: number of claimants for employment insurance, july to november 2013 note. numbers are actual figures of individuals receiving ei benefits. adapted from employment insurance program (ei) beneficiaries receiving regular income benefits by province, declared earnings, sex and age, seasonally adjusted, monthly (persons), cansim table 276-0022, by statistics canada, 2014. ottawa, on: statistics canada. discussion impact of precarious employment on work and unemployment. seven of the participants from toronto had previously worked in standard employment, while 8 had worked in precarious employment, including working as an educational assistant, a retail sales associate, a personal support worker, a program coordinator and counsellor, a customer service representative working through an agency, an administrative assistant working through an agency, and a tax consultant working through an agency. two participants from halifax had worked in standard employment and 13 in precarious employment, including working as a contract teacher, a hair stylist, a financial clerk working through an agency, an international program officer, a waitress, a retail sales associate, and an early childhood educator. significantly, those who had previously worked in standard employment were approved for ei benefits. previous precarious employment, however, was not a sufficient reason for denying benefits. in fact, nine participants from halifax who had worked in precarious employment were approved for ei benefits, because of the type of precarious employment in which they had engaged. for instance, jessica from toronto had worked multiple jobs as a way to support herself and her family: she had held both an educational assistant job and a retail sales job. she indicated that this was how she supported herself and that 172 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages she was now concerned about having to return to work with a child to care for and support. she was hoping to find a full-time educational assistant job with a nearby school board for the employment income, guaranteed hours, and benefits. participants who were able to work almost full-time hours on a contract, for instance, three participants who had been casual teachers, were able to acquire enough contract hours for ei approval. seven other participants also worked on temporary contracts that allowed them to acquire enough hours to be approved for ei benefits. many participants who had been precariously employed noted that they had also been previously unemployed at some point. for instance, danielle said: “i have been working pretty much since just before i turned 16 at various jobs growing up through high school and university. i’ve been on unemployment off and on…i haven’t jumped from job [to job]…like i’ve worked for a job for about two or three years and then i’d be off for like a month and then start a new job for a few years.” only five participants, three from halifax and two from toronto, noted that this was the first time they had been unemployed. yet these five participants had all previously worked in precarious employment relationships. in fact, the reason why this was the first time they were unemployed seems to have more to do with their age and when they earned their educational credentials. four of these participants were younger workers, all under the age of 31. therefore, one might argue that if they were older, they could have experienced a number of periods of unemployment. susan, the fifth worker who was unemployed for the first time, was an older worker at 38 years of age – but she was new to the teaching field, as she had recently completed her teaching degree. similar to the younger workers who were experiencing unemployment for the first time, susan was a new worker in the teaching field despite her age. in sum, it may be that precarious employment a common employment relationship for mothers attempting to deal with the lack of a social policies that support women and their children, and that young women and those who are new to their profession often face precarious employment. it therefore seems that new junior positions within different sectors of the economy are very unstable and that it is a difficult rite of passage to attain a better full-time and stable job within the labour market. women’s caregiving role was one identity that impacted the form of employment the study participants had prior to their unemployment. all of the participants who were previously employed were caring for a family, and two participants were caring for their parents. the participants who were caring for their children had different numbers of children. for lived experiences of unemployed women | 173 instance, six participants from halifax and four from toronto were each caring for one child; one participant from halifax was caring for two children; another had one child and was expecting a second; and three participants from halifax and two from toronto each had three children. one participant had twins, and another had children born close together. having children, particularly, multiple children or children close in age can lead to a more intensified double shift for working women. as well, it can lead to fewer leisure hours. thus, women’s caregiving role had a significant impact on their other identities arising from their previous precarious employment. ei benefits. participants in the study had substantially different experiences when applying for ei benefits. within this study, of those who were precariously employed in halifax (13 participants), 3 participants were denied ei benefits, and in toronto (10 participants) 4 participants were denied ei benefits and 3 did not apply because they knew they would not qualify. those who did apply, whether denied or not, recounted difficulties in obtaining support from service canada staff and with the online application form. in addition, many of the participants’ previous employers had delayed forwarding a record of employment (roe) to service canada, a situation that often necessitated numerous calls to both their previous employers and service canada. others who worked multiple jobs had to determine by themselves what their highest paid workweeks were, as these are needed for calculating ei benefits. for instance, claire from halifax, a contract teacher with irregular hours at different school boards, had to determine which weeks of employment would maximize her ei benefits. also, many of claire’s paycheques had inadequate hours listed on them, because of a human resources problem at the school board where she worked. these ongoing errors resulted in service canada receiving an incorrect listing of her weekly work hours. she had to visit service canada repeatedly and make multiple calls in hope that they would approve her for ei benefits. jessica from toronto also experienced a delay in benefits that her employer had caused. when she visited her previous employer in preparation for approval from service canada, the employer informed her that they could not give the roe to her directly; instead, they would forward it to service canada as soon as possible. this policy lengthened her waiting time for benefits. these participants had identities with open and fluid connections to one another that resulted in difficulties during the application process. the study participants who had difficulties obtaining ei benefits had previously worked in precarious employment. precarious employment has become a more common labour market attachment in the canadian 174 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages market. it leaves workers at their most vulnerable in the labour market, and yet many are denied ei benefits. financial insecurity and unemployment. financial insecurity was a common theme throughout my study. many participants noted that the first impact of unemployment was a lack of money. sarah from toronto clearly articulated this, saying that “everything [is] related to money.” danielle in halifax noted: “yeah. i can money manage like the best of them, it’s what i did for years, but when the income does not meet the output of what we need, there’s just…it’s impossible to manage a budget when there’s not enough income to pay the bills.” sarah’s and danielle’s words illustrate the general feelings shared by all participants in the study. all participants suffered from the same initial difficulty in maintaining financial security through employment, since they also cared for children or other dependents. as such, these participants strongly believed that their main priority was their dependent(s), which led them to do what was expected of them at home while simultaneously trying to achieve financial security. for instance, jessica, a racialized woman from toronto, noted: “now i am buying for two. when i do have money but it is not enough, i do have to think about my son first because he has to eat, so if it is about him getting his formula over me, then so be it. because, i mean, he is a baby, he was not asked to be born to this world to suffer. it is my responsibility to take care of him to make sure he is doing well.” similarly, tina, a lower-income woman from halifax, said: “i go without new clothes and food at times…if it allows my children to eat. they have no choice, but i have to help them. they are too young to understand. i need an income to pay the bills…i have maxed out my credit. i do not know what i am going to do. i need to support my family…i am worried.” through these examples, we can see that the participants’ roles as caregivers were significant in their view. thus, their financial security also rested on the ability to support their children or other dependents – and this applies to all participants in the study. unemployment and its health implications. despite reports about some health improvements following employment, a majority of participants noted that they had developed health concerns during their period of unemployment, ranging from a decrease in physical health to deteriorating mental health. eighteen participants in total referred to a deterioration of their health while unemployed: 10 from toronto (jules, jessica, ann, janet, jennifer, emily, hilary, carolyn, nancy, and brooke) and 8 from halifax (stephanie, kathryn, danielle, erica, sharon, susan, stella, and tina), despite all of them having different unemployment lived experiences of unemployed women | 175 durations. the duration of unemployment at the time of interview ranged from 1 month to seven years in both toronto and halifax. among the toronto participants, janet was unemployed for 2 and a half months, as were kate and carolyn (3 months), brooke and helen (4 months), sarah (5 months), laura (7 months), jennifer and jessica (8 months), diana (9 months), nancy (10 months), hilary(two years), emily (four years), jules (five years), and ann (seven years). among the halifax participants, meghan was unemployed for 1 month, as were claire and mary (2 months); sharon and susan (3 months); lois, kathryn, and victoria (4 months); tina (5 months); sophia (6 months); stephanie (9 months); danielle (10 months) erica (13 months); stella (14 months); and amy (two years). thus duration of unemployment was not a salient factor for the development of health concerns; what mattered was the unemployment itself. the prior employment relationships that these workers had were all precarious, except for those of jennifer and helen from toronto. jennifer was the manager of a restaurant that closed down. she was married with three children and her income was low, at $19,000 to 34,999 a year. thus, the stress of low prior income combined with the demands of multiple children, compared to helen being single while caring for aging parents, produced similar stress-related health care concerns. in sum, experiences while employed have a more salient impact on a worker’s health while unemployed, while caring responsibilities may have compounded this effect. women who were previously precariously employed suffered from unemployment-related stress as a direct result of their form of employment relationship. the women in the present study, similar to the ones in pepso's (2013) report, previously suffered from a lack of money and supports, and not knowing whether they had a secure future. as a result, since wages are related to hours worked, many of these precarious workers were not eligible for ei, which further compounded their difficult financial situation. jessica noted that her employment situation was difficult and made it hard to plan for her future: “i am praying, because i am a casual employee, that the job is still there. hopefully positions will be open for permanent because i need benefit[s] because i have a baby and medication and things…this would be really helpful plus the pay would be better than what i am receiving right now and then i actually know that i am guaranteed my hours for the week.” similarly, lois in halifax noted the inability to plan for her family’s future: “it just seems that, i don’t know if it’s just a bad string of luck that i’ve had in sales, and jobs i have had were either only temporary jobs or company shut down. or like 176 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages my most recent, they just, they cut out the department i was working in completely. and i just kind of want something that i can make a career out of and know that okay, this is what’s going to happen, this is what i’m trained in, and if something happens with this company i have no problem moving to the next one. i want to know my future.” thus, the main concern for these women was the precarious nature of their previous employment. they were concerned that despite the potential of finding employment, they could be right back into a similar position, including the ongoing stresses in both their employed and unemployed lives. in sum, the participants’ identities of having precarious employment and low-income status impacted how they experienced work, and this, in turn, impacts the length of their unemployment, leading to health complications. this study strongly suggests that within neoliberal markets, workers experience precarity and uncertainty, regardless whether they are employed or unemployed. these workers have limited knowledge about their future, live on a reduced income, and have ongoing concerns about their future. thus, their health situations are similar, whether employed or unemployed. conclusion the numbers of workers who are not in standard employment relations but instead are in contract, part-time, or otherwise precarious employment are increasing. in addition, the neoliberal policy paradigm has replaced the belief that we should support workers through full-time stable employment with an idea that labour can be utilized whenever and however required, as dictated by the economy’s needs. in my study, 23 participants worked in precarious employment relationships, 8 from toronto and 13 from halifax. individuals who work in precarious employment relationships suffer from a lack of money and benefits, and often hold multiple jobs (pepso, 2013). all of these known effects of precarious employment impacted this study’s participants while they were employed and unemployed. these women tended to be willing to accept any form of employment and had limited financial resources to live off of while unemployed, mimicking their employment situation. they also had health concerns prior to their unemployment that remained during their employment, due to difficulties in accessing health resources. most participants in this study would have had a better chance at attaining ui benefits than they had at getting ei benefits, and the ui benefits would have provided more support. through an exploration of participants’ identities and structural conditions, i was able to determine where and how ei policy is not supporting these unemployed women, such lived experiences of unemployed women | 177 as the lack of support for caring for children or dependents, health care and medical benefits, and a general lack of financial support. thus, even though intersectionality theory can be time-consuming and challenging to use in research analysis, it allows us to address fluid realities, personal identities, power relationships, and material conditions (manuel, 2007). policy analysts need to adopt an approach to understanding labour market issues based on intersectionality, which takes into account gender, race, immigration, socio-economic, immigrant, and other identities, in order to identify those areas where ei policy needs to be modified. the detrimental effects of ei policy vary based on identity intersections of immigrant status, parenthood, parenthood of young children, parenthood of children born close together, parenthood of children born as multiples, single parenthood, and racialization, as well as structural impacts, including those coming from the lack of child support and from socioeconomic status. identities are based on context-specific personal and structural circumstances, including single parenthood, and precarious employment before the period of unemployment. these factors significantly impact women’s experience when they are in the labour market, as well as when they are temporarily removed from it through unemployment. this study illustrates the need to analyze and change state policies by examining fluid and context-specific identities. as danielle, a participant in my study, put it, the state ei policy “needs to be customized per situation more…to actually tailor each situation to the person’s needs or their situation. 178 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages appendix a: characteristics of halifax participants lived experiences of unemployed women | 179 appendix b: characteristics of toronto participants 180 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages references acker, j. 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(2012). intersectionality: multiple inequalities in social theory. sociology, 46(2), 224–240. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review karl marx, critique of the gotha program, k.b. anderson and karel ludenhoff trans., introduction by peter hudis, pm press, 2023. isbn: 978-1629639161, pages: 1-128. reviewed by garry potter1 marx’s critique of the gotha program is hardly a new work. rather, this english edition of it is a new translation. however, this review is not a review of the translation. in order to create a translation, one must be fluent in both languages, as well as possessing significant insight into the subject matter of the work in question. likewise, these traits are necessary to assess a translation. i lack these traits. thus, for example, i will not offer an opinion as to whether the phrase “exchange involving equal values” as translated from the critique by tian yu cao, is actually as hudis asserts, a mistranslation. the question as to the relative “correctness” of anderson and ludenhoff’s translation, and of hudis’s interpretation of such, thus will not concern me. no, the focus of this review is a severely circumscribed one. it focuses upon a single question, which in turn was focused upon within peter hudis’s introduction. i wish to provide an assessment of his analysis in terms of how accurately it corresponds with the realities of capitalist production and distribution, past and present, and how this affects our aspirations and possibilities for achieving future socialism. hudis asserts (correctly i believe): “the past one hundred years is the history of a series of defective conceptions of an alternative to capitalism put into practice . . . neither the reformist social democratic version of socialism nor its revolutionary variant that was taken over by various forms of stalinism and marxist-leninism succeeded in posing a viable alternative; instead, each morphed into some version of capitalism.” hudis then goes on to say, “we clearly need a new beginning.” a great many people would agree with him. many, of course, would not; there still exists an abundance of both tankies and social democrats. regardless, i believe hudis is completely accurate with regard to the above. first, theory is crucially important and has real world consequences e.g., the tanks that rolled into hungary and prague can be traced back to underlying theoretical error within stalinism. marx and hudis put their finger on the core of such. i refer here to the analysis of value in capitalism and future socialism/communism. i put socialism and communism together like this because i agree with hudis that the terms can be seen as interchangeable and are not, as many marxists have long believed, labels for different modes of production. i also agree with hudis (and marx as well, i think) that there are to be two stages of communism that will occur in a post-capitalist world; but these are not two different modes of production. the key point is that we do not go in the post-capitalism world straight into production and distribution using the principle “from each according to their 1 garry potter is professor of sociology at wilfred laurier university. www.alternateroutes.ca 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research abilities, to each according to their needs.” hopefully, we’ll get there some day but not immediately. hudis’s analysis here is extremely insightful. i am aware that most, if not all, readers of this review, will have a reasonable knowledge and understanding of marx’s theory of value. however, i am going to go over the very basics of it here, for amongst other things, it is hudis’s contention that such has been long misunderstood. further, he argues it is crucial to our present politics, that a ‘correct’ understanding become prevalent. marx first distinguishes use value and exchange value. the former is simple enough. use value is a thing’s value to anyone for any reason. if, for example, a gaudy trinket of no practical purpose is purchased to be placed upon a person’s mantle, has no use other use other than to display the purchaser’s bad taste, one can still say it has use value. exchange value, is, of course, totally different. exchange value is the comparative value of commodities to one another in a capitalist economy. this value is determined by the socially necessary labour time of the commodity’s production. this is the heart of marx’s theory and the focus of hudis’ analysis as well. in determining value we look at socially necessary labour time not at the actual, concrete, labour time, exerted by any given labourer. if we were to look at the empirical labour achievements of actual labourers, it would result in the absurdity of the slower worker producing more valuable commodities than a faster colleague. and this is without even taking technology into account. each word in the “socially necessary labour time” phrase is important. “socially necessary”, imparts to the phrase the difference between technologically enhanced labour vs labour by hand and insists we should calculate using the former. ‘socially necessary labour time’ hudis emphasizes, is an abstraction. values of commodities do not change according to the efforts of individual workers. they derive from an average; hence exchange value is an abstraction. the distribution and exchange of concrete individually made products of equal “worth,” in the first stage of post-capitalist economy, is thus not based upon the (abstract) exchange value system found in a capitalist mode of production. as hudis says, of the lower phase of communism “ . . . there are no classes, no commodity exchange, and no dual character labour.” classes are based upon relations of production; profit and exploitation are both derived from the (exchange) value function. in communism these relations are superseded by use value and the concrete. this an extremely important point insofar as the misunderstanding of it, was propagated by stalin for example, as he asserts, “the law of value operates in socialism.” hudis argues that many principled antistalinists shared his error upon this point. but intellectual points have consequences. the consequence in this case being that rather than being a powerful signal that things are going wrong; the persistence of the exchange value abstraction and commodity production in the soviet system merely replaced individual capitalist employer’s exploitation through the extraction of surplus value with the same being done by the (totalitarian) state. www.alternateroutes.ca 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the first stage of communism still requires some principle, some mechanism for the distribution of goods and services and recompense for labour. this cannot be exchange value as found in capitalism. rather we mean here concrete actual labour undertook by individuals. not everyone will receive the same recompense. some will work harder than others, some will spend more time upon their labours than others. the point is that such will be undertaken in freedom, and work itself will not be the enslavement that it is under capitalism, but rather something very different. hudis does not refer much to the 1844 manuscripts or the concept of alienation. however, it very much fits here. the work undertaken, the concrete labour of individuals, in the first phase of communism, will not be alienated labour but rather an activity that fulfills people’s species being. the gotha program was only 630 words. marx’s critique is longer, but still is very short; this book is less than 100 pages, including hudis’s introduction. nonetheless, what we have here is a crucial argument for our time. “we need a new beginning!” re-thinking struggle: starting from story bruce ferguson1 philosophy looks at the nature of things. in this article, i try to critique those characteristics of the contemporary indigenous struggle which i find troublesome from the perspective of a person involved for 40 years in the struggle to regain control over our lives, lands and resources. i propose to do this through a summary of my personal, and political formation from 1977-2014 and my current thinking on representations of the indigenous movement as influenced by my philosophical studies at kwantlen polytechnic university since 2014. i will provide a critique of the following four emerging features i consider problematic in our struggle: “us-them” dynamics, [militant] identity politics, allies, and indigenous scholarship. finally, i propose the philosophical regrounding of the indigenous struggle to draw upon indigenous metaphysics, language and stories as the primary source of anchoring the strategic and logistical aspects of engaging in the struggle of resistance, revolution and resurgence. personal formation and perspectives i ground my approach to understanding the struggle in the question: “who am i.” remembering my identity allows me to re-embrace what was loved in our language, creation, culture, world view and ways of being human and what was loved about our own selves. one of the perks of becoming a 60year-old indigenous person is the honour of seeing the world change. seeing change can give one the experience of “feeling on the right side of history” when one witnesses a re-emergence of a people one has dedicated his life supporting. growing older offers a place of finally being at the cusp of a “thought” that can articulate a thing or two life has taught. aging provides, for all of us, an ability to transition away from action to reflection. it was in the spirit of not taking myself too seriously and sensing that i have something to say that i started philosophical studies at age 57. the issue of “taking back our lives” (which means identity) has served at the heart of my understanding of our struggle as a life-long project. i am better at understanding 1 bruce ferguson is a long-time activist, member of the kitigan-zibi anishinabeg, algonquin first nation, and student at kwantlen polytechnic university re-thinking struggle: starting from story | 307 at 60 years old than i was at 40; there is an experience of peace and a sense of “arrival” at who i am and what i need to say, but i am not there yet!” these realizations are central to the question of “who am i” in all philosophical traditions. so, to pursue this question in relation to the indigenous struggle to be ourselves (which is a taking back of all that was loved in our traditions), i wish to research and write about an indigenous based philosophical grounding of our movement so that it remains culturally authentic, sustainable on a long-term basis and global in influence. what is the nature of resistance, revolution and resurgence within the question of “who am i”? i think that what lies at the heart of the indigenous struggle is the regaining of who we understand we are and – in part – having the ability to “be ourselves” in the canadian nation-state. it is a “love for a denied cultural existence”, whose search lasts our whole lifetime. the struggle for social justice in the diversity of struggles is about the right to be ourselves. i include the struggle of the mainstream to reposition themselves, to take back their identity which many perceive as lost and finding new ways to live that identity in the awakening of a society that seeks to balance the dignity and rights of all in a framework of substantive, and not just legal, equality. this aspect of struggle – a fight to be ourselves – as a common feature is not an argument for a relativist position, which would only reduce the importance of specific experiences of struggle, but rather an acknowledgement that each struggle is unique and yet within the diversity of struggle, the nature of struggle binds all. as an example, black lives matter both shares and contrasts with the indigenous struggle. black lives matter stood with us at standing rock and we share many values of community, collectivity and so forth. however, to put both of our struggles under the label of “human lives matter” would be a conceptual minimization and perhaps invalidation of what is being said by black lives matter or the american indian movement in the light of distinct human experience as lived by black and indigenous peoples. all our struggles for justice recognize or ought to recognize that we generally acknowledge that the specific experiences of black people, our own people, the glbtq+ community and others are all forms of acknowledging that “human lives matter” and that the experience of life is unique, yet the concepts of struggle are complimentary. 1970s: small “l” liberalism the indigenous struggle that i “signed up for” in the 1970s was a struggle that was limited to seeking justice within the canadian system. justice 308 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice was considered to be legal and status equality and sameness with other canadians. as i look back, i note that two books represented the two opposite poles of the conversation in the 1970s. on the one side, small “l” liberal concepts were discussed by pierre elliot trudeau (pet) in his book (co-written with thomas axworthy) towards a just society. the aboriginal alternative to trudeau’s concept was articulated by cree lawyer harold cardinal. the unjust society responded directly to the arguments presented by trudeau and axworthy. i think those two classics provide a good overview of how we saw the struggle in the 1970s. we thought, under this liberalism, that we needed to be included in the life of the state. like the liberal feminism exemplified by betty friedan’s the feminine mystique, which holds that the patriarchal system was not necessarily the problem, and that if more women were in the system, the system itself will work out for women. this we no longer subscribed to. it was precisely this small “l” liberalism of pierre trudeau that many of us subscribed to in the 1970s. today, i do not believe that if we have more indigenous people in the legislative assemblies across the country nor the parliament of canada that the fundamental nature of the canadian nation-state will change to a just treatment of our people. 1980-90s: the system itself rejected in the 1980s and 1990s, i moved from the small “l” liberal position, to a position that the system itself is the problem. the system – with its imperialist goals, western philosophical arguments (i.e. locke’s labour theory of property, etc.), colonial history and commitments to consumption, consumerism, capitalism and the market system, led many indigenous activists to conclude that the system itself was the problem. our people began to think that the neoimperialist objectives of canada to maintain a dispossessed indigenous population controlled by purse string management of “income-tax dollars” versus royalties would not change anytime soon. what had survived of my small “l” liberal 1970s thinking to this day was developed in my experiential reflections of the time. we began to see and understand that the imperialist system in which colonization is embedded is problematic. i began to understand the imperialist nature of canada. while we understood that freeing ourselves from neo-imperialism is a long-term goal of resistance, revolution and resurgence, we also saw that we could take on short or medium term projects; i.e. reducing aboriginal incarceration rates, personal and re-thinking struggle: starting from story | 309 infrastructural poverty on reserves, language and educational re-empowerment, health indicators as incremental steps towards liberation. in the 1990s, i drew upon the thinking of the 1970s when i began to think about how we could measure success in those days and indeed in 2017. our measure of medium term success would attempt to bring the average statistics of indigenous people to the same rates as the average canadian and that would indeed be a success that both canadians and ourselves could celebrate. then in a consistent manner with the “just society” vision of the 1970s, we could further raise those standards. equality as “sameness” lost its appeal in this period for me; sameness does not mean equality but elimination of relevant differences. of course, legal equality is important, but only as a precondition of selfdetermination. another lesson in my perspective formation in the 1980-90s was that canadians too, are products and victims of the neo-colonial system; it is a system that does not work even for them, and we see this in the increasing class divides. colonialism, which exists in “neo” forms today, is about concentrating power in the hands of a few at the expense of the majority. we see this in corporations who hire new psychologists every five or so years to ensure that they (and their marketing strategies) relate to the latest research in cognitive processes to remain competitive and wealthy in a global economy. mainstream canadians (and the middle class) are struggling to come to terms with an increasingly multicultural nation-state, trying to address the sense of loss of the “canadian way” as well as the need for re-worked resurgence of mainstream tradition. resurgence of all canadians takes on an increased importance as nations are selling out their sovereignty to the economic system. many mainstream and new canadians, along with our people, are again being left aside and outside of this global reality of neo-colonialism. the struggle today: a description of my understanding there is a sense of urgency in today’s world about things such as climate change and the destruction of a live-able planet and for many this is the justification for militant action; we have no other choice they believe. there is no time for “due process”. immediate action is the call shared by many, not all, indigenous peoples in today’s movement. in terms of strategic and logistical expressions, today’s movement seems to use the approach of martial arts which does not provide resistance to stop aggressiveness, but it “pulls in” the dynamics of an aggression to self-defeat. 310 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice the use of “allies” and western political schools of thought (liberalism, socialism, “left” and “right”) has provided a synergy which has helped in gaining the movement impressive “wins”, but, i ask, at what cost? my core purpose in the struggle today is to advocate for the value of indigenous knowledge to the global problem of survival and a matured human species. i base advocacy on the re-grounding of our struggle to articulate our metaphysics, speak our languages and tell the stories. work in re-grounding is the task ahead for the remainder of my generation’s time. our generation (5th or 6th) were successful in keeping our people’s voice alive through our forms of resistance and we now “pass the torch” onto the 7th generation leadership and are now entering into a time of reflection and thought to help emerging leaders. looking inwards to our communities, i am grateful to see the politicization of frustration with status quo excuses for inaction. canadian “authorities’ are losing their old excuses for ignoring indigenous issues. at the same time, many in our communities no longer tolerate the exploitation of our people by our own leadership and their “allies” in big indian business who rip off the average band member or the voiceless urban aboriginal person who is “managed via the client relationship” by highly funded aboriginal organizations. some are tired of indigenous leadership that are more interested in cocktail parties in the guise of “networking” and “lobbying” when year after year the process only seems to unfold with no or little results. the people are tired of when money does finally get released to the communities only to see that consultants in the big indian business are at the trough of funding from their buddies in the band council. critique of the struggle today the four areas that i have chosen to critique in this article include “usthem” dynamics, [militant] identity politics, allies, and indigenous scholarship. my goal is to draw attention to worrisome trends, not dismiss other perspectives, but to invite conversation, critique, counter-arguments that will help me and others learn. my “arguments” are the lessons and world views reflected in our stories. i consider these sources to be the authoritative basis for the development of my ideas about resistance and resurgence. the key trend that is problematic to our struggle today in my perception is the movement away from referring to our own sources of “truth” that come to us upon reflection of our language, creation, teaching, ethnic stories, legends and “myths” towards incorporating the colonial values behind re-thinking struggle: starting from story | 311 masked indigenous identity politics and other features of today’s struggle. notions of “our land”, “our rights”, coupled with victim identity politics and the politics of justified anger, of polarization and exclusion (indigenous-only spheres) are treated too often as clichés or rhetoric and used in ways that do not reflect the concepts as they should be represented in argument. we must be able to explain concepts like “sovereignty” in relation to how we see the term “our land” not as property but as a relational responsibility, “our rights’ as both natural – how we lived together before contact – and how we have been incorporated into the western system of international laws. people, including our own people, must remember that “aboriginal rights’ are a nonindigenous construct required by british law. even notions of terra nullius were developed (but applied wrongly) to be clear on what territory can and cannot be taken or claimed by a european nation-state. unlike some other perspectives in our movement, i believe that most canadians support us in principle although they don’t pretend to understand the complexity and multi-layered nature of what we are resisting, what we are fighting for, and perhaps the eventual show down we must have becoming liberated on a limited basis with neo-imperialism. the tactics of direct action, confrontation and “victim-based” arguments that are said to mainstream canada in an accusing fashion are tired and i think are becoming ineffective. too much loud confrontational yelling which only succeeds in deafening conversation, understanding and working together towards mutual objectives; in becoming more creative, diverse, inclusive in our strategies while fostering common interests as a basis for resistance, revolution and resurgence is the way forward. them-us: my perception is that there is an increased emphasis on the dualistic construction of “them-us”, ideological tribes and the dynamics that go with this separation. the “us” seems to be more and more based on some version of victimization that have no rationale or ground. there is no evidence for such claims of persecution and rumors of planned genocide. we also hear these patterns mirrored in the rhetoric that justifies “alt-right” claims by white supremacist groups, survivalists that the white race is marked for extinction. once grounded as a marked group for extinction, membership and recruitment are more successful. challenges to the existence of indigenous peoples in canada relate more to dispossession rather than genocide (although cultural genocide could be a result). actual genocidal attempts were made on native america by washington, dc in the past but that does not establish that there are 312 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice further plans for all-out genocide. the myth making of persecution is necessary to create movements utilized by today’s indigenous struggle it seems. should we not be critical of the roles of group paranoia through over analyzes and imagination? the good “us” that reigns in the indigenous narrative perpetuates elements of the noble savage myth, which reflect victimization in a one-sided colonization process. colonization was a highly destructive process, obviously, but indigenous peoples were not only and exclusively passive victims. all peoples affected each other. our peoples benefited in history through military alliances with the english, dutch or french. the “us” narrative is dismissive of the partnerships between indigenous peoples and their ability to adopt white (french) settlers into their communities. the en derouine trade and metissage of the people (country marriage) showcased a reality that highlights arrangements of mutual benefit to both peoples (devine, 2014, 332-3). these facts are a part of the colonial past, and should be included in the assessment of our struggle. the biased accounting of a one-sided colonial account expressed in interpretations of historical facts that are sometimes exploited, out of context, and managed to satisfy the arguments of today is something that we need to be self-critical about as indigenous thinkers. in the “us” dynamic colonization is minimized to a noun, a fact. colonization becomes the answer to and for all our troubles, which is an over-simplified statement. the politics of “us-them” (and the politics of anger, politics of revenge, polarization, etc.) is dividing people within our community and the encampment of ideological tribes that make no room for “the middle”, make no room for incremental or even band-aide solutions that for the short term are better than nothing, make no room for compromise and the meeting of ideas. there seems to be a resistance to exploring ideas without labelling them left, center or right; this is dangerous because once a community stops talking then the signal for the self-destruction of that community has been sounded. identity politics and militant enforcement: the dynamics of “us-them” trend has either spawned “identity politics” or is a product of “identity politics”. the notion of “identity politics” is a reasonable concept. it holds that many of us (not all) who experience life from a certain ethnic perspective (indigenous) share many common experiences, experiences that could be unique to our membership in a group. identity politics simply tries to reinsert our experiential knowledge as a factor in how we see and experience reality and how we see and experience minority status. re-thinking struggle: starting from story | 313 the problem, however, is the tendency to “box-in” a set of political beliefs or positions as characteristic of identity even when these universal claims do not apply to each individual indigenous person. most people understand that the contribution of experience as a way of naming personal and group identity can be a general guideline but not a universally applicable and infallible boundary of identity. the danger in “boxing in” too tightly the characteristics common to the experience of indigenous people are claims that disallow for counter-arguments or indigenous people who do not share what is claimed as core to a political identity. extremists then try to reinforce these political positions, narratives that draw sympathy to a political position by negative means. if you don’t agree with their view of what constitutes our identity, they will find ways to “shut you down.” therein lies the confrontation with long-term or traditional thinking in our communities based on language and story. the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy describes identity politics as “a wide range of political activity and theorizing founded in the shared experiences of injustice of members of certain social groups” (stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, 2017). while i find this to be a good definition, some of the “activity” and “theorizing” that goes on in the name of claiming and defining our own identity leads to the betrayal of traditional indigenous thinking in regards to human relationships. identity politics, when created is a boundary that tries to explain and articulate a set of political characteristics based on our common experience, become an obstacle to the struggle. the common experience used as an identity boundary is the negative experience of colonial history. it is a reading of history that is too black and white, not a realistic interpretation of life nor history. if anything, most of us would see life and history as grey, we cannot be limited to dualistic thinking. and, if life is grey, then our politics (and identity) should be more flexible and creative than binding our political realities in a box. instead of one-sided ideological histories, we need to have the courage to follow the socratic maxim that “a life unexamined is a life not worth living.” indeed, i would go so far as to say that we risk our own cultural vitality if being indigenous people comes at the cost of self-expression, diversity, engaging different ideas, and evolving new ideas and emerging models. perhaps the seeds of a self-imposed genocide are not yet perceived in the new interpretation of our struggle as indigenous peoples, but i sense those seeds as present. as a coalition of indigenous peoples, we must maintain and nurture a healthy self-respect that incorporates the ability to critique and rethink our own 314 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice idea as the times change. it is ironic to me that i must be very intentional in inviting critique; it is almost a fight for the right to have my ideas critiqued in a professional manner that allows me to improve my clarity and/or delve deeper into a question or issue. i am being denied, via politically correct sensitivity on the part of the mainstream, to grow intellectually, i don’t sense all the time that i am being taken seriously and that my premises based on indigenous metaphysics and my epistemological sources and methods of establishing those ontologies are dismissed by academia as an example. a further problem is the militant tendency to signal out people who disagree with the indigenous paradigm (i.e. senator beyak on the residential school system). as i understand her statement, she was saying only that some good things happened in a system so detrimental to indigenous culture, and for expressing this opinion there is the mass calling of her removal from her senate committee. underlining this “calling out” of beyak was based simply on the fact that some were offended that she did not support the indigenous narrative currently in vogue with regards to that tragic piece of history in canada. silencing or shaming of people with an opinion that is not consistent with the claims of indigenous activists runs counter to the notion of tricksters, people who march to a different drum beat and free spirits. expressing an opinion – including the right to be delusional in one’s opinion – should not be suppressed but applauded. those in our movement who take militant angles of identity politics are saying that the rest of us will be silenced if we espouse views that are different than the dogmatic canon of views held as sacred by our indigenous guru’s, academics and leaders. the misuse of the “consequence argument” and the “shutting down” of free thinkers really is a form of political bullying and is wrong and dangerous and runs counter to what our metaphysics, languages and stories talk about. militancy can be good, when used sparingly and as a last resort, it has now become the opening punch in any new battle and a confrontation that has led to the result that even the militant option when necessary will become tired and ineffective. allies: the trend of allies in our contemporary struggle is a relationship that is so important, it is through these relationships that the indigenous struggle is finally having its voice heard in a manner that has planetary significance. the application of indigenous expression to planetary issues is part of the struggle i never would of envisioned in the 1970s; these effective partnerships (and the re-thinking struggle: starting from story | 315 collective voice which created a hybrid language) started to emerge – in my experience – during the 1980s. at the same time, we need to be wary of certain dangers in these relationships with allies. i often wonder whose agenda is whose. i hear more and more indigenous activists parroting mainstream rhetoric on the environment when we ought to be thinking about these issues from our own stories, languages, and indigenous knowledge. if the inuit can note that the earth’s axis is moving via their seal hunting knowledge, there must be scientific value to our traditional knowledge that can contribute our own message in partnership with the messages of our eco-friendly allies. often environmentalists just assume our cooperation and speak on our behalf about fabricated indigenous eco-thinking. our thinking traditionally – as i understand it – is take what you need, no more and then share it with your community. however, to the chagrin of our environmental brothers and sisters, we too had problems with our own values. the metis often killed up to 25 buffalos for their family; the blackfoot would often run buffalo over cliffs. so exploitation of animals is not a mainstream thing, it is a human frailty that hopefully at this stage in our evolution we have matured a bit (devine, 2014, 328-355). it must be noted though that in the 1800s the destruction level of the animals despite these acts mentioned above did not have the environmental impact that our population does on the animals today even though we are limited in what we can fish, hunt or gather (harvest). there is, for example, the notion that indigenous thinking is of pure eco-concern and really it is not. the idea that all indigenous peoples oppose pipelines, natural resource extraction, and so forth is not an accurate reflection of the diversity of opinion in our communities. we continue to be labelled, albeit nice labels, like we are conscious of the earth. we are, but the earth is tough and can take a lot, we can and must extract resources to live, whether that includes bow and arrows to kill moose, or current mining practices. the problem is consumerism and the capitalist way in which to harness these resources; the problem is that once resources are extracted they are not shared. the indigenous view would challenge unbridled extraction and distribution and environmental issues attached in the extraction of these resources. the role of indigenous scholarship: this staple of the struggle must also be examined if we are to understand the value and challenges of constructing knowledge through mainstream academia. indigenous studies departments were founded to push back on the external labelling of our people, our experiences 316 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice and our world views. we have been studied, talked about, described and so forth without being directly involved in the conversation about us. we wanted, through indigenous studies, to think about and work amongst our people to pull out the diversity of identity and experience that forms the richness of our cultures and world view. the goal of indigenous studies seems side-tracked in that today’s indigenous academics are now creating that box that allows me to define myself, a job that was exclusive until recently to the non-native academics. we are not only creating our own boxes, but we are telling non-indigenous people that they can’t play in our sandbox. it is indigenous academics ourselves that are setting up boundaries that often lead to the narrow and strangling focus of indigenous identity politics and the militant reinforcement of those identity principles of so called experiential commonalities of members of a group. the emerging tendency for dualistic constructs that i am seeing as emerging in the indigenous academia is a worrisome dynamic. i have noticed more graduates of the university system (including those with a background in indigenous studies) tend to be very rhetorical, dogmatic, and dualistic in their arguments, which makes me wonder if the university world has taken on freire’s “banking concept” a pedagogical model that assumes an “empty mind” to be filled (canon and suserl, 2011, 275). the rhetoric i have heard from graduates does not seem to question premises and argument format and when pressed on this point, many graduates are insulted when their views are critiqued and especially when critiqued by non-native sources. in fact, when i have pushed students on their claims, they could not back their argument up and took the position that they did not have to answer the question; the assertion that a selfcontained notion of colonialization as the problem is treated by some graduates as a self-evident statement which i of course question. re-grounding: indigenous metaphysics, language and stories when one takes a position or makes an argument, it can be said that there is an opposite argument or position that must be rejected. the text that i have created in this article with regards to my concerns about the contemporary indigenous struggle have oppositional implications. i sense that the movement towards using mainstream political schools of thought, strategical and logistical formats implies the movement away from indigenous sources that i argue to be our remembered and articulated metaphysical reality, the language that re-thinking struggle: starting from story | 317 expresses that reality and the culture and stories that facilitate our reflections and our learning on how to be human that survives in groups. how do we develop our resistance away from mirroring mainstream left-wing (or emerging right wing mainstream politics) to re-ground resistance, revolution and resurgence on the philosophical foundation of our own “traditional stories”, legends, teaching stories, and so forth that we have as a people. while those stories differ from first nation to first nations, metis and inuit communities, i am comfortable in saying that the themes and lessons (as well as reflected thought on those stories) create some foundational principles in which to “take the indigenous struggle back”. the understanding of what our language and stories teach us must also be understood and within the context of the neo-imperialist agenda of canada (to sustain the long-held policy of the dispossession of our people to our lands and the colonial relationship with our peoples by controlling purse strings) otherwise we are just being naïve and romantic in our self-assessment. in the “them-us” paradigm, the trend towards defining the “us” in terms that are more western, including the western-based philosophies that are used to defend aboriginal rights to the land – needs to be carefully thought through. the “them-us” scenario runs against the notion of connectedness of all creation which makes our politics inconsistent with our truth statements. as an example, how do we reconcile the statement that “indigenous peoples live in connectivity with all of creation – well except white people? we of course do not mean that statement literally, we are not against our caucasian brothers and sisters, but we are against the destruction western metaphysics brings to all humanity and to the planet itself; that is a good basis in which to draw upon indigenous knowledge to contribute to the “network of philosophical traditions” which can then be applied to how we mature as a human species in the process of changing our destructive and disconnected ways; that is the white system we are against and white people are just as much victims as we are in this regard. in reflecting on “identity politics” there is much danger in an over use of militancy disconnected from considerations of the long-term goals of our struggle. again, we must look at what identity politics and the militant enforcement of those politics says and read them alongside the text of our stories. we must read militant identity political rhetoric against our stories about respect, about inter-connectivity of creation of which we, the human species, are only a player, that as hinduism teaches us we are a small piece of the 318 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice brahman energy in the universe, we are nothing, so why do we think we are so important? these two examples are ways in which to reinsert traditional sources of text to our evaluation and critique of our movement to take back our lives, lands and resources through resistance, revolution and resurgence. the re-reading and insertion of traditional sources is a lifelong endeavor not just of one person but of a whole network of first nations, metis and inuit community thinkers for many generations to come. the task of this article then can be said to be an exploratory set of thoughts that start to frame our questions for the future. conclusion the indigenous struggle (2017) is a well thought out form of resistance and resurgence. we must nourish and maintain that struggle by acknowledging that no argument is perfect and our thinking must always be challenged by a healthy self-critical indigenous community. we need to park our indigenous ego at the door and consider the hearts of the people and the struggle. this means thinking about the divisive nature of our struggle being expressed through narratives of “them-us”; our narrowing of indigenous identity through extreme identity politics and it means understanding how we are currently constructing our knowledge through mainstream academia. we need – most of all – to transition back to the middle, a place of balancing of rights and interest, a place of connectivity with all creation including caucasians, a place that anchors our struggle on our stories and language not on mirroring the various schools of thought in western political thought. references canon, m. & suseri, s. (eds). (2011). racism, colonialism and indigeneity in canada: a reader. toronto, on: university oxford press. devine, h. (2014). the plains metis. in r. wilson & c. fletcher (eds.) native people, canadian experience (328-355). don mills, on: oxford university press. stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. (2017 sept. 3). identity politics. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/ re-thinking struggle: starting from story | 319 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/ alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review policing indigenous movements dissent and the security state, by crosby, andrew and monaghan, jeffrey. fernwood books ltd, halifax & winnipeg, 2018. isbn 10: 1773630121 / isbn 13: 9781773630120. pages: 1-218. reviewed by elena nogaeva1 policing indigenous movements: dissent and the security state authored by andrew crosby and jeffrey monaghan is a book that presents a shift from the “war on terror” to the notion of “aboriginal extremism”. the facts in the book are supported by numerous declassified materials that enable the authors to demonstrate to the reader the shift from the “war on terror” rhetoric to a carefully crafted discourse that was meant to present the aboriginal population as a new security issue. the book is intended for scholars who are studying indigenous groups and movements. indigenous groups would benefit from this book because it contains vast evidence-based data on how and why some groups were extensively monitored and policed. groups that advocate for indigenous rights and freedoms would find it particularly useful since it presents information on the extent to which the rights were refused to indigenous people and how laws and policies were interpreted and changed for the benefit of the state. the book also benefits those studying indigenous groups worldwide considering the same tools and strategies could be employed in other countries. the authors structure the book in a typical way, with an introduction followed by four chapters and a conclusion. the introduction provides a strong overview of how and why the shift from the “war on terror” to the notion of “aboriginal extremism” occurred. the authors note that their “research deals primarily with the top elements of this hierarchy, beginning with the host of federal departments and agencies that have been fused through the growing network of security, surveillance, and information sharing” (p. 28). further, policing indigenous movements “provides extensive, first-hand accounts of how the security state has developed a prolific surveillance regime that targets indigenous peoples as national security threats” (p. 18). the authors note that they “use first-hand accounts because we refer extensively to the records of police and security agencies to narrate this book” (p. 18). the book is “compiled using thousands of declassified documents from dozens of government departments and hundreds of access to information act (atia) requests, we believe this book is one of the most comprehensive accounts of contemporary government surveillance” (p. 18). this introduction instills confidence in the material and allows the reader to understand that declassified information was consistent with the actions taken on the ground and perceived by the indigenous communities it targeted. the following four chapters detail separate conflicts between the state and aboriginal groups. it appears that each chapter explored the issue that stems from aboriginal resistance towards the exploration of natural resources followed by the loss of aboriginal rights. the authors diligently use declassified material from rcmp, cbsa, csis, dnd, psc, goc, nrcan, pco, 1 elena nogaeva is a phd student at the university of eastern finland. www.alternateroutes.ca 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research and csec contrasted with the first-hand accounts of indigenous leaders to demonstrate what each community faced. chapter one, “welcome to abl world!!!” explores how the algonquins of barrie lake were policed and over-surveilled because of their protests to be heard on issues such as culture, language, traditional governance, and most importantly how their land is to be used. the authors as promised presented ample evidence of how the state used police powers and intelligence resources to deter, stop, and over police this indigenous community. chapter two, “northern gateway pipelines: policing for extractive capitalism” explores how the aboriginal clans of b.c. opposed an energy giant, enbridge, and how enbridge used its power to engage the state for its exploration benefits. the authors write “provincial and federal governments are bound by the canadian constitution and numerous court rulings to consider the implications of contestations over lands unceded by treaty. however, within the broadening domain of the “war on terror”, security state officials can easily evade or ignore any responsibility towards indigenous communities” (p. 75). therefore, those that opposed the pipeline were labeled “environmental criminal extremists”. this chapter presents an excellent analysis of how the security stance can be manipulated by corporate greed. yet, it also demonstrates the resilience of indigenous groups to withstand the over-policing and pressures from the state. chapter three, idle no more and the “fusion centre for native problems” analyzes an indigenous movement that continuously grew in size, had a substantial digital presence, and was located close to the capital of canada. “at the center of the movement is the notion of honoring existing treaties and the right to indigenous self-determination based on an equal nation-to-nation relationship encapsulated in idle no more’s vision “to honor indigenous sovereignty, and to protect the land and water”” (p. 100). because of the location of the protests and the social media campaign, this movement presented an imminent security concern. idle no more was categorized as a “bacteria that threatened the health of the nation” (p. 110) and to deal with the “issue” effectively the state created “fusion centers for native problems”. nonetheless “and despite the efforts of the security state, idle no more is a movement that lives on” (p. 133). chapter four, the raid at elsipogtog: integrated policing and “violent aboriginal extremists” presents the conflict that arose because of the fear of fracking that would negatively impact the land and water in new brunswick. the authors note that the state and state powers had learned from the idle no more movement and were actively policing as well as monitoring social media to prevent another idle no more situation. this chapter as others presents several experts from declassified material that label aboriginal protests as “violent aboriginal extremists” and states that they “pose a realistic criminal threat to canada’s petroleum industry” (p. 174). through the declassified documents, the authors demonstrate that the law enforcement agencies and the government were assigning labels to the aboriginal movements that enabled them to justify their approach as well as legitimize their actions. the authors write “indigenous communities’ and movements’ resistance efforts are increasingly constructed as national security threats and framed under the rubric of “domestic extremism” within the “war on terror” (page 226). however, as the book demonstrates, indigenous groups in the pursuit of their land rights, clean water and equal say on what happens to their land have been rather successful “in not only challenging federal and provincial claims to indigenous land and disrupting the post-colonial imaginary” (p. 225). www.alternateroutes.ca 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the authors note that “a recurrent theme through this book, “traditional concerns” or “sovereignty concerns” is framed by the security state as a threat to extractive capitalism that requires surveillance and potential repression” (p. 234), coupled with “canadian interests” in becoming an energy superpower clashed, leading to over policing, over-surveilling and over criminalizing indigenous movements. presented cases and collection of declassified documents support the intent of the book to demonstrate the shift from the “war on terror” to the notion of “aboriginal extremism”. the authors are committed to presenting to the reader through declassified information how indigenous communities and movements that opposed the state and the state’s interests were labeled “domestic extremists” within the “war on terror” context. the authors effectively presented the state's classified discourse on indigenous movements, successfully delivering this critical information to the reader with clarity and depth. the analysis of movements was sufficiently outlined by giving the reader ample information on the movement, place of origin, and its goals for the reader to connect and understand all nuances of the movement and the state’s response. the authors also discussed how indigenous culture is structured and the importance and value that elders bring to the communities. the authors provide evidence from interviews with elders and community leaders. however, the limited availability of oral evidence, compared to the overwhelming references to classified excerpts, is less effective in connecting the reader to the lived experience of the movement. such a connection could be deepened by providing a concluding statement from elders or leaders of the movement reflecting on the declassified documents. connecting the declassified material to the perspectives of community members about the impacts of over-policing could provide a more comprehensive understanding of how these security practices affect those on the ground, making the analysis more grounded in the lived realities of the people most affected. the authors could consider presenting further evidence regarding incarceration rates, discussing whether they have increased or remained the same during the movements. informed readers for whom this book is intended will likely be familiar with the problem of overincarceration; however, concrete numbers would provide a more comprehensive understanding. nevertheless, this book offers valuable information regarding the canadian state’s response to indigenous movements, exposing the discourse employed to engage security and law enforcement agencies. the authors clearly demonstrate the shift in discursive strategy from the 'war on terror' to the 'notion of aboriginal extremism' by providing the public with numerous declassified materials. policing indigenous movements offers readers a deep understanding of how police and security agencies' practices were shaped by the state's agenda and the discourse surrounding it. by revealing previously unpublished, declassified information, it makes a significant and unique contribution to the literature, shedding light on how the state interpreted and responded to indigenous rights to protest. it makes an important contribution to our knowledge about what drives the state to employ targeted language towards movements that threaten the state’s bottom line and aspirations. this book could also help promote further declassification and transparency regarding how indigenous movements are addressed. the political economy of a modern pandemic | 137 138 | work for change the political economy of a modern pandemic | 139 140 | work for change the political economy of a modern pandemic | 141 https://www.migrationpolicy.org/about/staff/kate-hooper https://www.migrationpolicy.org/about/staff/camille-le-coz 142 | work for change the political economy of a modern pandemic | 143 144 | work for change https://policyoptions.irpp.org/authors/yolande-bouka/ the political economy of a modern pandemic | 145 146 | work for change the political economy of a modern pandemic | 147 148 | work for change the political economy of a modern pandemic | 149 150 | work for change the political economy of a modern pandemic | 151 152 | work for change 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https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/pandemic-border/migrant-domestic-and-care-workers-high-risk-low-protection/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/pandemic-border/migrant-domestic-and-care-workers-high-risk-low-protection/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/pandemic-border/coronavirus-pandemic-could-be-devastating-worlds-migrants/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/pandemic-border/coronavirus-pandemic-could-be-devastating-worlds-migrants/ https://www.thestar.com/business/2020/03/24/cleaners-are-on-the-front-lines-of-the-covid-19-crisis-but-many-work-with-little-protection-for-less-than-minimum-wage-and-theyre-scared.html?fbclid=iwar3g4hh6yzidi9mda7-tedvzmjyrtalvhnd-ddf1yggk-mq0rblpoxalpsm https://www.thestar.com/business/2020/03/24/cleaners-are-on-the-front-lines-of-the-covid-19-crisis-but-many-work-with-little-protection-for-less-than-minimum-wage-and-theyre-scared.html?fbclid=iwar3g4hh6yzidi9mda7-tedvzmjyrtalvhnd-ddf1yggk-mq0rblpoxalpsm https://www.thestar.com/business/2020/03/24/cleaners-are-on-the-front-lines-of-the-covid-19-crisis-but-many-work-with-little-protection-for-less-than-minimum-wage-and-theyre-scared.html?fbclid=iwar3g4hh6yzidi9mda7-tedvzmjyrtalvhnd-ddf1yggk-mq0rblpoxalpsm https://www.thestar.com/business/2020/03/24/cleaners-are-on-the-front-lines-of-the-covid-19-crisis-but-many-work-with-little-protection-for-less-than-minimum-wage-and-theyre-scared.html?fbclid=iwar3g4hh6yzidi9mda7-tedvzmjyrtalvhnd-ddf1yggk-mq0rblpoxalpsm https://www.thestar.com/business/2020/03/24/cleaners-are-on-the-front-lines-of-the-covid-19-crisis-but-many-work-with-little-protection-for-less-than-minimum-wage-and-theyre-scared.html?fbclid=iwar3g4hh6yzidi9mda7-tedvzmjyrtalvhnd-ddf1yggk-mq0rblpoxalpsm the political economy of a modern pandemic | 159 https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/06/12/amid-protests-majorities-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups-express-support-for-the-black-lives-matter-movement/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/06/12/amid-protests-majorities-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups-express-support-for-the-black-lives-matter-movement/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/06/12/amid-protests-majorities-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups-express-support-for-the-black-lives-matter-movement/ https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/08/world-bank-warns-covid-19-pandemic-risks-dramatic-rise-in-poverty?cmp=share_iosapp_other https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/08/world-bank-warns-covid-19-pandemic-risks-dramatic-rise-in-poverty?cmp=share_iosapp_other https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/08/world-bank-warns-covid-19-pandemic-risks-dramatic-rise-in-poverty?cmp=share_iosapp_other https://www.ifs.org.uk/inequality/chapter/are-some-ethnic-groups-more-vulnerable-to-covid-19-than-others/ https://www.ifs.org.uk/inequality/chapter/are-some-ethnic-groups-more-vulnerable-to-covid-19-than-others/ http://p2pcanada.ca/files/2015/09/perceptions-of-discrimination-in-health-services-experienced-by-immigrant-minorities-in-ontario.pdf http://p2pcanada.ca/files/2015/09/perceptions-of-discrimination-in-health-services-experienced-by-immigrant-minorities-in-ontario.pdf https://theconversation.com/could-covid-19-be-the-push-that-europe-needs-for-unconditional-basic-income-137843 https://theconversation.com/could-covid-19-be-the-push-that-europe-needs-for-unconditional-basic-income-137843 160 | work for change https://bmrc-irmu.info.yorku.ca/files/2020/07/covid-19-and-migration-paper-final-edit-js-july-24-1.pdf?x15611 https://bmrc-irmu.info.yorku.ca/files/2020/07/covid-19-and-migration-paper-final-edit-js-july-24-1.pdf?x15611 https://www.policycenter.ma/opinion/coronavirus-and-risk-populism-europe#.xspa3ghkg2w https://www.policycenter.ma/opinion/coronavirus-and-risk-populism-europe#.xspa3ghkg2w https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-there-will-be-no-v-shaped-recovery-but-heres-how-we-can-ensure-the/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-there-will-be-no-v-shaped-recovery-but-heres-how-we-can-ensure-the/ https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/racial-minorities-covid-19-hard-hit-1.5943878 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/racial-minorities-covid-19-hard-hit-1.5943878 https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-05-23/centuries-migrants-have-been-said-pose-public-health-risks-they-don-t https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-05-23/centuries-migrants-have-been-said-pose-public-health-risks-they-don-t https://globalnews.ca/news/6929660/coronavirus-outbreak-over-bylands-nurseries/ https://globalnews.ca/news/6929660/coronavirus-outbreak-over-bylands-nurseries/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/01/the-sociologist-who-could-save-us-from-coronavirus/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/01/the-sociologist-who-could-save-us-from-coronavirus/ http://3cities.neighbourhoodchange.ca/files/2011/05/2004-united-way-poverty-by-postal-code-toronto.pdf http://3cities.neighbourhoodchange.ca/files/2011/05/2004-united-way-poverty-by-postal-code-toronto.pdf https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/05/12/toronto-scientists-dug-into-the-connection-between-race-income-housing-and-covid-19-what-they-found-was-alarming.html the political economy of a modern pandemic | 161 https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/05/12/toronto-scientists-dug-into-the-connection-between-race-income-housing-and-covid-19-what-they-found-was-alarming.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/05/12/toronto-scientists-dug-into-the-connection-between-race-income-housing-and-covid-19-what-they-found-was-alarming.html https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pandemic-covid-coronavirus-cerb-unemployment-1.5610404 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pandemic-covid-coronavirus-cerb-unemployment-1.5610404 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/new-poll-reveals-chinese-canadians-experiences-with-racism-1.5621261 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/new-poll-reveals-chinese-canadians-experiences-with-racism-1.5621261 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 33, 1-16 (2023) a different kind of state: imagining popular power and democratic administration for the 21st century bryan evans1 abstract: since the 2008 economic crisis, the political legitimacy of representative democracy has eroded. the roots of this legitimation crisis are found in growing inequality and the unwillingness of representative democratic capitalist states to address the structural causes giving rise to this polarization. in many respects, in the third decade of the 21st century, the class nature of the state has rarely been so apparent since before the keynesian era. various historical and contemporary cases provide examples of a ‘different kind of state’ where the state’s agenda setting function and policy outputs were informed by working class and other perspectives and interests. the result is greater social and economic inclusion generally and a democratization of the administrative state. keywords: state; neoliberalism; working class; inclusion; representative democracy introduction this paper returns to the question of a different kind of state raised by gregory albo, david langille, and leo panitch in their edited volume published in 1993 (see a different kind of state?: popular power and democratic administration). here we interrogate how the work of public administration can be reconfigured to facilitate greater non-elite, mass participation in the design of public policy and in the implementation of public programs. in this effort, case studies where local governments, led by parties or movement parties of the left, have employed the political capacities of the local state to address inequality illustrate the possibilities for re-imagining a different kind of state. the various cases provide lessons in the art of the possible. these practical insights include the role of decentralization/devolution as a means to re-distribute power to input on and even decide upon policy and program at the neighbourhood or workplace level; selective decommodification of key needs-based goods and services including housing, public transportation, health care, recreational space; and providing resources to enable communities to plan and initiate employment generating projects and enterprises. in all of these, a critical component is the inclusive planning processes which actively seek the participation of citizens and civil society organizations. the following pages are composed of four component parts. first, the reader will be introduced to a theoretical overview of the key conceptual links connecting state theory, at least as how it is presented by poulantzas, to public administration. second, we turn to a discussion of democratic innovations, specifically the means, instruments, the how to tools for operationalizing democratic spaces within the state’s policy and decisional processes. third, three cases of ‘actually existing’ democratic administration are canvassed. these cases are drawn from the experiences of bologna (1945 to 1991), the greater london council (1982 to 1986), and barcelona (2015 to current). each case comes from obviously different historical moments and political contexts. finally, we conclude with critical observations respecting the experiences of these cases in terms of the political openings that can be created within the state but also the limitations. 1 bryan evans is professor in the department of politics and public administration at toronto metropolitan university. together with carlo fanelli, leo panitch and don swartz, he is the author of from consent to coercion: the continuing assault on labour. 2 the problem of the state: state theory, public administration and democracy deepening democratic processes to facilitate the participation of non-elite actors is significant if only the policy and program outcomes produced by those processes serve to mitigate economic inequality through de-commodification of key goods and services as well as greater access to cultural and recreational opportunities. the stuff of daily lived experience. indeed, the communist manifesto states “the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy” (marx & engels, 1973, 74). themes engaging with the idea of expanding democratic practices within public administration and the policy process reach back to the minnowbrook conference of 1968 which gave rise to what came to be labelled the new public administration (npa). npa was concerned with, among other issues, reconciling public administration and democracy and social equity (frederickson, 1997, 832). npa sought a fundamental shift within the discipline of public administration toward an explicit recognition of the unequal distribution of power in society and consequently how this reality was reflected in the work of the state. harold lasswell, a founding member of the field of policy studies, wrote “the concept of power is perhaps the most fundamental … the political process is the shaping, distribution, and exercise of power” (lasswell & kaplan, 1950, 75). following in this vein murphy and fafard (2012) explain hegemonic policy ideas and actors, regardless of the evidence researchers provide, always give expression to powerful societal interests (murphy & fafard, 2012, 729). in the process, non-elite social categories including but not limited to workers, women, racialized minorities, and the poor are excluded from or marginalized as they lack voice within the policy process. in this sense, the line of continuity from npa to democratic administration is one centred on making the state more democratic and representative of non-elite groups and perspectives. democratic innovations depart from traditional methods as they are designed to expand citizen participation in the political decision-making process beyond familiar institutionalised forms of participation such a public consultations and advisory boards (smith, 2009, 1). thus, the characteristics of democratic innovation include: measures to broaden participation; transfer of decision power to participants; participants’ influence on procedures; and measures to assure deliberation is of high quality (röcke, 2014, 39). the power to decide, is central to genuine cogovernance in a more radical democratic sense, it is the tacit knowledge of citizens as the users of public goods and services which must be incorporated into the process. a fundamental re-design of processes is required entailing “new institutional channels that directly link the public service with diverse individuals and non-elite groups outside government who have additional information sources, differing perspectives and direct hands-on experience” (cohen 2005, 6). the process must ultimately entail that non-elite actors have significant control over the process (geissel 2013; patten 2001, 224). therefore who owns the means of deciding is strategically of utmost importance. in the late 1970s, tony benn, then a minister in the labour government, routinely encountered the phenomenon of the senior public service engaged in the curation and framing of political problems and the policy options to address those. from his vantage point, benn observed the limitations of the capitalist state, even when managed by social democrats, for its “inability to solve some of our problems but also for their failure to reflect others adequately … political debates concentrating on economic and other management issues between government and opposition sometimes appear to blank out everything else, while a number of other issues are not sufficiently discussed because they have not been fitted into the current pattern of political debate” 3 (benn, 1981, 108). or, in the parlance of policy process studies, these issues failed to be placed on the policy agenda for review. the end result is a disconnect between how democracy is experienced and valued and the practices of actually existing democracy where “representative democracy no longer appears capable of dealing with new challenges” (sintomer, röcke, & herzberg, 2016, 1). the crisis of representation at the heart of the democracy deficit is compounded by the evolution of an administrative apparatus which has been designed to be insulated from external, non-elite influence and control. albo notes the origins of this politicaladministrative formation can be located with the 18th-19th century emergence of representative institutions within the capitalist state: “the popular-democratic struggles of the early socialist movement sought to wrest control of the state structure from aristocratic elites and compel the administration to be accountable to directly elected parliaments…the imposition of parliamentary control over the state … also entailed the systemization of the organizational structure and bureaucratic rules that distanced the administrative machine from the direct popular control envisioned by democratic reformers” (1993, 20). in order to manage the political pressures being expressed through the representative institutions of democracy, particularly those of the working class, there was need for a heuristic serving to theoretically and practically wall the state from non-elite demands whether voiced in the streets or in the parliaments. with the appearance of the study of public administration, woodrow wilson, later to become president, posited there was little or no difference between public and private administration. wilson posited: “administration is a field of business. it is removed from the hurry and strife of politics it is a part of political life only as methods of a counting-house are a part of the life of society, only as machinery is part of the manufactured product” (wilson, 1887, 210). this introduced an enduring, though contested, concept into public administration – the politics-administration dichotomy (p-ad). public administration should be no more than the “detailed and systematic execution of public law” (wilson, 1887, 212) while the political leadership and their agents set the policy agenda and then leave its implementation of to the public service. for wilson “administration lies outside the proper sphere of politics. administrative questions are not political questions” (wilson, 1887, 210). the p-ad was criticized as an ideologically conservative approach which “accepted and supported the existing political order” particularly through its adherence to efficiency and expertise (fry, 1989, 224). dwight waldo, a scholar of public administration, rejected the very concept as unrealistic (waldo, 1977, 9). rather than serving to advance democracy the concept instead advanced centralization of power in centre of government – the executive (waldo, 1948, 133). the politics-administration dichotomy has in theory and practice informed a particular official ideology of professional public administration. while great lengths are taken to characterize the practice and theory of public administration as imbued with the values of neutrality and professional technical competence, this is an ideological patina for an arrangement of institutions whose purposes are fundamentally political and conservative. the public administrative apparatus was a neutral but technically competent instrument that could be directed by whomever was elected. miliband’s analysis of the capitalist state, however, depicted the upper echelons of the state apparatus, as where “inevitably the administrative process is also part of the political process; administration is always political … at least at the levels where policy-making is relevant” (miliband, 1973, 47). this is likely more accurate in the 21st century than when he set about his interrogation of the capitalist state just as the post-war golden age of capitalism began to wane. 4 the state is not a ‘thing’ but rather a system of power incorporating the complex of governing institutions that rule over sovereign territorial units, the interactions between these institutions and the social forces present in these territories. in this sense the state is not to be understood as an empty vessel in which different social forces can simply inject their own programme by entering the state institutions. the reification of the state has been problematic in state theory, and in political practice, as it “proceeds ‘as if’ the state were indeed a universal a priori predicate to our social existence rather than a product of our social existence” (bratsis, 2002, 249). poulantzas defined the state as “a relationship of forces, or more precisely the material condensation of such a relationship among classes and class fractions”, a definition which avoids “the impasse of that eternal counterposition of the state as a thing-instrument and the state as a subject” (poulantzas, 1978, 129). this material condensation within the apparatus of the state and the array of institutions which compose it, are themselves the “historical product of a multiplicity of class practices and struggles” which then allows us to pose the question “of what material causes and processes underpin the existence of the state” (bratsis, 2002, 258). in other words, the state isn’t akin to say a computer where by changing the software the modalities of the machine can be re-programmed to provide different functions and capabilities. rather the outcome of prior struggles are embedded within the varied institutions of the state. the class bias of these outcomes are expressed in manifold ways in the ‘structural selectivity’ that takes place within the institutions in framing public policies, laws, and state programs (ibid., 259). in this way, the state institutions are themselves a site of class, and other, political struggles which come to give expression to the ebbing and flowing of victories, defeats and stalemates in civil society. the work of the state, “done through the state apparatus” serves as a “filter determining the modality of state economic and ideological interventions” (therborn, 1978, 151). in other words, it is in these organizational structures that state functionaries decide on what to act upon, or do nothing, and how to do so. the term state form captures this concept of the state as constellation of social relations (jessop, 1990). this means, the state takes on a specific institutional form corresponding to the balance of class forces. this results in the production of a distinctive, class-biased structure exercising degrees of relative autonomy which enables the state to structurally and politically adapt to shifting balances in class power. in this respect, state form has “a structure (or strategic) selectivity which reflects and modifies the balance of class forces” (jessop, 1990, 256). more specifically, the balance of class forces is reflected in “structurally inscribed possibilities that each state form offers for the successful pursuit of specific class interests” (jessop, 1990, 256). thus the particular form that a state takes on can be seen as an expression of class power and the balance of power. a second poulantzian concept, state administration, distinguishes between the traditional understanding of public administration where the machinery of the state is seen to be fragmented, politically neutral and technocratic but subject to the dominance of an elected and representative legislature with the observation that the state is instead subject to an expanding concentration of state power in the hands of the executive arm. this executive is composed of the core state bureaucracies and other instruments of administration. correspondingly, the power of the legislative arm shrinks. this represents a shift in legitimacy from parliament to the executive in the form of a move towards the “instrumental rationality of efficiency” (poulantzas, 1973, 219). 5 poulantzas argues that there is a loosening of the “ties of representation” that is moving power away from parliamentary representatives and establishing the executive as the centre of political decision-making. at the same time, “government has become autonomous from parliament, and the administration has become distanced from the process of national representation” (poulantzas, 1973, 222). thus, not only does the executive become the site for the elaboration of state policy, but it is also becomes the principal actor in this process. this shift to state administration has produced a number of important changes. foremost, the principle of public, deliberative debate increasingly became replaced by an institutional principle of secrecy. related, this shift removes popular needs and demands from the policy process in favour of narrow sectional interests. finally, it concentrates and centralizes power into fewer and more compartmentalized structures. imagining a different kind of state: the contours of a radical proposition in fearless cities, a declaration of the global new municipalist movement drafted by barcelona’s left-wing municipal party, barcelona en comú,it states: “those who engage only in a politics of protest or organizing on the margins of society must recognize that there will always be powerit does not simply dissolve. the question is, in whose hands will power reside – in those of the state with its centralized authority, or in those of the people” (barcelona en comú, 2019, 13). and once the question of where power resides or should reside, how is that to be exercised and made manifest? democratic innovation has been defined, at least by one scholar, as alterations that “have been specifically designed to increase and deepen citizen participation in the political decisionmaking process … and represent a departure from the traditional institutional architecture that we normally attribute to advanced industrial democracies. they take us beyond familiar institutionalised forms of citizen participation” (smith, 2009, 1). precisely what the actual components of democratic innovation are varies, however, some criteria have been identified as: measures to broaden participation; transfer of decision power to participants; participants’ influence on procedures; and measures to assure deliberation is of high quality (röcke, 2014, 39). who participates is key to democratization in that the usual cast of those who represent, lobby and advocate for capital are engaged by less integrated citizen-worker actors. this is the measure of genuine inclusiveness (fung, 2006). this transfer of decision-power to ordinary citizens “breaks with the core principles of representative democracy” (röcke, 2014, 40) where the legislature is sovereign in such matters of decision. and the question over what is decided over, in other words what does the state allow to be decided upon, is not a trivial question with respect to how a democratic administration would function, the point should be that power is not “shared” but rather becomes transferred or owned by those same ordinary citizens whether they be those affected by public policy and program decisions, those whose work is to produce and deliver public goods and services. constructing a democratic administration is fundamentally about expanding the means by which the state can be controlled and made responsive to the interests of non-elites rather than being experienced as a means of control over those same people. it is not only about the real gap separating the centres of control from front-line public sector delivery workers that is problematic but also that the state is experienced by many as both remote and unresponsive. overcoming this actually existing state requires a fundamental re-design of public policy and administrative processes which would entail “the creation of new institutional channels that directly link the public service with diverse individuals and non-elite groups outside government who have 6 additional information sources, differing perspectives and direct hands-on experience” (cohen, 2005, 6). as the experience of the paris commune suggests, the existing practices and mechanisms of public administration, specifically hierarchically ordered administrative units, under the exclusive political control of the state executive, is not going to resurrect a sense of legitimacy in liberal representative democracy. broad-based empowerment must be a core dimension in any project of democratic innovation. democratic administration, in its more radical conceptualization, proposes more than an ‘opening up’ of the state apparatus to other social actors and forces. a key lesson from the experience of the paris commune was that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the readymade state machinery and wiled it for its own purposes” (marx and engels, 1973, 8). as noted above, the state is not a machine, which can simply change drivers to change its functions and the social categories whose interests it chooses to intervene on behalf of. rather than an ‘opening up’ of the state we should interrogate how to transform the state through the “reabsorption of the state power by society as its own living force” (lebowitz, 2003, 196) and its conversion “from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it” (marx as cited by lebowitz, 2012, 359). instead of a “state which stands over and above us”, its power and functions are decentralized to the community and workplace facilitating an “unleashing of tacit knowledge and popular energy to link the capacities of people to communal needs and purpose” (ibid.). such a new democratic state does is not simply wished into existence. human action and agency, or as marx termed it ‘revolutionary practice’, through the workplace and communal councils (op cit.) is a necessary first step in the development of human capacities. operationally, it is in this sense democratic administration seeks to “promote the dynamic developmental aspect of democracy, full public disclosure and encouragement of debate on all the options before a ministry, right up to the moment of final decision, is required … debate should be invited, public meetings organized, referenda held to the end of making the process an open one right up to the moment of decision. … the task of democratic leaders and administrators … is to encourage and facilitate the organization of communities of identity and interest” (panitch, 1993, 10-11). this depicts a state which relies upon not only important deliberative and participatory processes as the means to deepen democracy beyond its liberal representative limitations but also to allocate the power to make authoritative decisions to non-state, non-elite social actors. central to this transformation are mechanisms enabling popular (meaning non-elite) participation in the work of the state including multi-scale practices of social dialogue and concertation as well as democratic control and management by public sector workers and citizens who use the public services produced and delivered by those workers. concretely, a program for democratization of public administration entails empowering and enabling citizens with the means and ways to “monitor and direct government activities”; similarly providing the ways and means for front-line service delivery workers to shape how services are delivered; broaden the form and type of official knowledge to include “experiential and practical forms of knowledge and expertise” utilized in policy construction and implementation; and radically broaden “transparency and accountability of decision-making within administrative structures” (cohen, 2005, 10). but is broadening input from non-elites sufficient? the real question is to what degree is power over outcomes (read policy) distributed/shared with non-elite actors engaged in such processes? this is the power to decide and not be confined to deliberation. grounding how the state thinks, or how it comes to frame and understand collective problems, in the lived experience of non-elite actors makes it more probable that policy and program outcomes would address issues 7 relevant to those subaltern groups. it is this correspondence of process with outcome which defines both social inclusion as well as democracy. empowerment, the capacity to participate and decide, is the central feature here. fashionable thinking on deliberative democracy and policy making tends to obscure this point. some key characteristics associated with deliberative democratic exercises with the public include: the provision of information needs to be comprehensive, balanced and accessible; an open agenda where government will set out the broad parameters of the discussion, but the agenda must be open to revision or expansion by the deliberators; deliberative exercises must allow time for discussion, allowing citizens time to work out their own position (coleman & gøtze, 2002, 6). the question of power-sharing, to augment the voice of non-government actors with decisional authority, is the critical piece in building democratic administration. while deliberative democracy is necessary for legitimating the process and the eventual outcome, this deliberative aspect must ultimately entail that non-elite actors “have control over the policy-making process” (patten, 2001, 224). a different kind of state is possible: case studies in democratic administration here we briefly survey three significant cases of historical local/city governments which employed the political capacities at their disposal to advance significant reforms. the three cases draw on the experiences of red bologna (1945 to 1991), the greater london council (1982-1986) and barcelona (2015-current). these cases are presented not as explorations of the local state and the politics therein but rather as examples of how governmental power can be imaginatively employed, even where there are significant constraints politically, legally and fiscally. ‘red’ bologna: devolution to the neighbourhoods. between 1945 and 1991 the italian communist party (pci) governed the city of bologna. in the postwar period, the city administration embarked upon an ambitious social and political reconstruction project. extensive housing and social projects were rolled out through the late 1940s. consequently, ‘red’ bologna’s achievements became the model for local communist government throughout italy (jaggi, muller, and schmid, 1977, 7). despite their success, the italian communists understood, for reasons articulated by albo above, the limits of their local project in the absence of national power from which the pci was excluded. they stated “bologna is not a red island – an oasis of socialism with a human face in a capitalist desert … nor is the city separated from the economic, political, and social life of italy… the communists of bologna have not solved the crisis of capitalism in one area; nor have they developed a conception of socialism in one city. rather they have offered a perspective on what is possible….” (ibid.). the pci-led city council was both progressive and pragmatic in its approach to a range of public policy and program outputs. and informing and shaping the policy process was not a small cadre of state elites or ‘insiders’ but rather a system to enable non-elite participation. this practice of facilitating inclusive participation was understood as the basis for transformation of the state’s institutional apparatuses and was the means to shift power (ibid., p25-26). however, these were not open popular assemblies but devolved mechanisms whose membership was determined by the city council itself. the centre-piece to this was the neighbourhood councils, of which there were, by 1966, a total of 18 composed of twenty neighbourhood residents appointed, as noted, by the city council. in 1967 the council began a process to empower the neighbourhood councils to take on a more direct role in a decentralized administration. by 1974 the neighbourhood councils acquired the political authority to formulate guidelines relating to the city budget, urban planning, economic development, traffic, issuance of building permits, and traffic. 8 in addition, the neighbourhood council’s were encouraged to take up a greater role in improving the management and accountability of public education, health and recreational institutions. to this end, every neighbourhood was mandated to strike work committees to undertake policy development and planning relating to education, local planning, traffic, recreation, tourism, social security and culture. and as a means to embed a direct link to the mayor’s office, each neighbourhood council would elect an ‘assistant’ to the mayor (ibid., 39). in terms of policies and programs, this devolved structure of representation, facilitated a far-reaching reform programme touching every aspect of daily life. to limit property speculation the city council adopted a standard where every person would be ‘entitled’ to 64 sq. metres of public land; nurseries were established; urban infrastructure was modernized with sewer upgrades and street lighting; public transit was given priority over private means; social services such as daycare were to be financed by employers in part; provided support for the establishment and viability of cooperative enterprises; privileged independent retailers over chain stores; and much more (ibid., p50-96). policy and program shifts in housing, education and health were among the most significant. many pci governed municipalities in italy, and bologna was no exception, decided to engage in deficit financing in order to pay for their reform program (ginsborg, 1990). bologna embarked upon social housing development and in this respect, the constraints on property speculation were a strategic intervention. the government’s key objectives in city planning was to promote the role of public housing, improve housing conditions of low-income and working people, rebalance trends in the metropolitan area by strategically selecting the location of industrial plants and protecting agricultural spaces and protecting the heritage of the city centre. a housing policy was prepared in the early 1950s and was used to acquire city land for housing and other public projects such as hospitals, schools, social and cultural centres. while housing funds were controlled by the central government, constraining the city’s attempts to fully solve all of its housing problems, by the 1960s bologna was the only city in italy with a large number of new public housing projects close to the city core (watson & bentley, 2007). in the 1960s pre-school nurseries were set up in order to counter the selection and discrimination processes inherent in the educational system which privileged children from more affluent classes. it was argued that class inequalities in education could only be reduced if all children had access to the same type and quality of education. in addition, these nurseries enabled working class mothers to remain in the labour force. in 1964, bologna’s citizens formed the first parent-teacher association in the city. school committees and parents associations provided the mechanism for popular participation. by 1975, 77 percent of all children between three and six attended the pre-school programs. by 1974, 80 percent of teachers had regular interactions with neighbourhood representatives and 60 percent of teachers participated in meetings with parents. parents and teachers work together to figure out what will be useful for the children. both participate as educators of children. (muller, 1977, p 111-132) in the realm of public health, the local authorities established free clinics in order to address the shortcomings of the prevailing italian healthcare system. children, pregnant women, young mothers and the elderly were the main users of these clinics. in these clinics, medical professionals took a preventative approach and in part they searched for their causes in social settings and the family environment. people were encouraged to see them as being controlled and operated by them. in this way too, incompetent and unsympathetic doctors would be held to account by patients 9 or forced to resign since citizens in their capacity as patients would also participate in the management of these clinics (schmit, 1977, p159-174). the experience of ‘red’ bologna demonstrates a breadth of political imagination which has disappeared to a large degree. legal and fiscal limits were real but the pci took what they had to the limits. but it was understood that bologna was no more than a city embedded within a much broader network of power relations. the secretary-general of the cgil trade union confederation at the time stated: “we must take care not to confuse our successes with the victory of the working class. what we … can achieve is an alleviation of exploitative conditions. but we cannot abolish the exploitation until the socio-political system changes” (jaggi, 1977, 86). and it should be reiterated that the pci did not implement a broad-based practise of popular participation. a more narrow representative model prevailed where the voices of workers could be heard but mediated through other institutions such as the neighbourhood councils, the city council itself, and of course the mayor’s office. the party, specifically the pci, in its commanding position in the representative structures, was key to determining the composition of various participatory and devolved venues for deliberation. greater london council: enabling civil society-based organizations and deliberation. the greater london council (glc) was the site of an important period of experimentation in local democratic innovation under the leadership of mayor ken livingstone between 1982 and 1986. during this brief period, livingstone led a left-leaning local labour majority on the glc where both elected representatives of the labour party and public service staff undertook to employ the local state and its apparatus in a radical experiment in civic power building and drawing upon not evidence per se but the front-line knowledge of public sector workers and service users. indeed the 1981 labour party manifesto for the glc elections, placed social dialogue between the glc, workers, unions, and citizens generally at the centre of its political practise. the manifesto stated: “our vision of the future is a city in which the elected representatives take the lead in economic planning – with maximum community involvement” (mackintosh and wainwright, 1987, 2). this deliberative democracy was central role in shaping decisions and further expressed that the state and its various units were not to be neutral actors. instead together with the unions, public authorities “were to act as allies” (ibid., 137). many of the labour councillors elected in 1982 came from the ranks of social movements, particularly those devoted to public control of land use urban planning. the labour government at the time believed in the ability of londoners themselves to find the solutions to meet the city’s needs. rather than deliver services through the local state, the glc saw its role as one of enabling popular organizations and unions by means of providing resources, financial and professional, to support various citizen initiatives to achieve their goals and be more effective (wainwright, 2018). this was the distinguishing characteristic of the glc. in return for that resourcing, the glc demanded considerable investment of time, knowledge and experience from “many community organisations, trade unionists, women’s groups, and others” in the participatory planning processes. the resulting collaborative planning work undertaken by the council and constituents was the mechanism in economic and industrial policy design (mackintosh and wainwright, 1987, p1-2). this collaboration was not without a certain degree of tension between the participating state units and citizens as the democratizing of the policy process entailed the state and its policy officers, relinquishing some partial control (ibid., 3). the glc’s industry and employment committee utilized its spending powers in five different ways: it invested in jobs in the private or cooperative sectors in partnership with trade unions; it used contract compliance to raise working conditions in private businesses in which it 10 purchased goods/services from; it spent more on improving and expanding its own public employment; it expanded services by addressing shortcomings in welfare services; and it funded the development of organizations and campaigns of labour and other movements who were looking to create socially productive jobs. the glc served as a grant source, providing funding for citizen initiatives that converged with and helped achieve the policies of the glc in a collaborative manner. the popular planning unit and project development unit, for example, offered grants to non-glc groups, such as trade unions, based on a criterion in line with the values and goals of the party’s election manifesto (wainwright, 2018) and thus enabled these to conduct their own research and develop policy alternatives. the glc did not separate administration from politics, it politicized administration by transforming policy development and implementation into a more integrated and democratically controlled process. for example, by providing public funds to unions and community groups. this commitment was rooted in a commitment to participatory governance that was central to defining needs and creating strategies to address those needs in the workplace and wider community. it envisioned a limited role for the local state; while state mechanisms were needed to regain control over capital, state power by itself was inadequate. the glc political strategy understood the need for countervailing powers outside the local state, where civil society activists could be relied upon to encourage participation and strengthen community autonomy. by 1986, more than 700 grants worth 19 million pounds were provided to almost 300 organizations, including union support units, unemployed centres, women and ethnic minority work initiatives, domestic initiatives such as workplace child care and community laundries serving housing residents and labour or community campaigns (egan, 2005). the glc supported community childcare initiatives, led by women, in order to expand high quality and accessible childcare. the glc, in line with its mandate of broad-based public involvement in planning, collaborated with an extensive network of women’s groups, that had established childcare and nurseries in the 1970s, most of which were underfunded and run voluntarily. the popular planning unit, along with the glc women’s committee, consulted with various networks in order to first map existing and potential childcare initiatives. afterward a strategy was devised for funding, grants were provided over a period of time in order to improve quality and accessibility, provide training, management and equality of job opportunities (wainwright, 2018). then prime minister margaret thatcher came to see the glc as a problematic state within a state and would move to dismantle the glc in 1986. the glc under livingstone’s labour party, played the role of enabler of non-government actors and communities to find their own solutions to their problems. in this sense it was informed by participatory policy analysis lead by non-glc persons but supported by glc staff. barcelona: popular participation in repairing the damage. the historical cases surveyed tell a story of working class political mobilization through political parties to draw upon local state power and fiscal resources around a program for social inclusion, the contemporary case of barcelona, while similar in certain respects, is situated in a very different political and economic context. the fundamental objective is to mitigate the worst effects of neoliberalization at the local scale through the use of public ownership or re-nationalization of certain services, and controlling speculation. citizens themselves through civil society alliances work in and through the local state administration to achieve their political objectives. a new political party barcelona en comú (barcelona in common)was the electoral vehicle for this project. its 2014 election manifesto stated its goal was to initiate a “democratic rebellion in barcelona” to “seize control of local 11 government and to disand re-assemble the city’s institutions from within on a more transparent and participatory basis” (charnock and ribera-fumaz, 2017, 189-90). spain was particularly hard hit by the 2008 financial and the resultant austerity policies. against this background, there emerged political movements aiming to enact radical change in policy in order to strengthen democracy and address inequality. barcelona en comu (bec) pursued a program which sought to expand the scope and quality of public goods and services, implement new forms of community engagement, expand public participation in the co-construction and coproduction of public policies, and build a non-market social economy. these elements mark a shift away from the intensification of neoliberal processes of the previous years (blanco, salazar, & bianchi, 2020). bec’s political platform reflected a concern for employment, food security, energy/water, housing and public transport. among the first initiatives of the bec in government was to publish an ‘emergency plan’ which outlined the steps to be taken to give priority to “those most adversely affected by the crisis” (charnock and ribera-fumaz, 2017, 194). the emergency plan stated: “barcelona has enough resources to tackle inequalities and to become a model of a city where people live well in common … to harness these resources, we need a credible and courageous council that is able to stand up to powerful groups that put their own interests above those of the majority, and to a council that taps into the collective intelligence of the people and neighbourhoods of barcelona” (bec, 2016, 3). the plan further stated the government’s commitment to redistributive social policies and to advance social rights foremost of these was the right to housing, but also included food security for children, healthcare, affordable public transit, and a guaranteed basic income of 600 euros/month equal to 60 per cent of the average wage in the city (charnock and ribera-fumaz, 2017, 195). the main objectives of bec was to attempt to recover the old city centre from the massive expansion of tourism which had contributed to property speculation and the loss of long-term rental homes. the municipality established a moratorium on new licenses for companies linked to tourism in the old centre and a moratorium on new tourist accommodations to remain until 2017. bec mobilized already existing venues like neighbourhood councils and created new units such as decidim barcelona to promote broad participation in the municipal plan for which the government and civil society organizations developed policy proposals to debate through meetings and on-line platforms. bec also organized periodic open meetings between residents and the mayor as a forum for participatory dialogue. the electoral base of bec was to be found in lower income districts. in may 2015, it won 25 per cent of the vote and 11 out of 41 seats on the city council. this was a limiting factor in terms of program implementation but nevertheless various policy objectives were achieved. barcelona’s commitment towards broadly inclusive democratic policymaking reflects its history of supporting decentralization and citizen participation at the local government level, following the death of franco in 1975 through social and anti-francoist movements (mclaverty, 2017, 77). the municipal charter is the current legal document and contract that obligates the municipal government to citizen participation in several key areas: citizens must be engaged in order to inform the municipal charter; establishing city advisory councils (cac) must be established comprised of key interest groups including citizens (in the form on neighbourhood associations) to meet and discuss municipal action plans which guide municipal policy from one election to the next (mclaverty, 2017, 85). there has been a further evolution in the practice of citizen participation in that local government was understood to be working for its citizens and over time, it has shifted to working with its citizen from a co-creation perspective. the shift to the 12 latter reflects the ongoing austerity pressures and the need to partition responsibility (mclaverty, 2017, 86). to aid in enabling participation, barcelona established, as noted above, the decidium platform. this technology provides the following function: strategic planning, participatory budgeting, initiatives and citizen consultations, participative processes, assemblies, voting, surveying, sortition (random selection of candidates / citizens with “reproducible, procedures that guarantees non-biased and uniform distributions”) and networked communication. “it supports participatory budgeting, strategic planning, services redesign, urban planning…decidim was born when a young protest movement in spain swept into power…the new leadership created a platform for open strategic planning for the city” (stark, 2017). this was particularly the case in madrid and barcelona where new local parties entered government with a commitment to participatory democracy. the technology provided the means to “speed up and make possible a more complex participation” (stark, 2017). for barcelona, this “open-source platform allows the public to participate directly in government as they would a form of social media, and they have had early success. the city council hosted several organizing events to decide on a strategic plan, and nearly 40,000 people and 1,500 organizations contributed 10,000 suggestions” (stark, 2017). barcelona does not rely solely on the technology to engage citizens in decision-making and policymaking. they have created a structured approach that enables the democratization of policymaking such that citizens can participate in the decision-making process and agenda setting. the participatory processes are a series of meetings delimited in a specific time, to promote debate and to contrast arguments between the citizens or between citizens and municipal officials. a participatory process can be used to diagnose a specific issue, search for innovative ideas, and suggest which forms of intervention may be the most appropriate. the processes are structured in four phases: 1) an information phase: dissemination to the whole of the citizens on what is the subject in which they want to ask for participation; 2) debate phase: dialogue and contrasting arguments, in which the contributions of the participants are collected. during this phase, the most appropriate and diverse methodologies are used to reach all the affected groups; 3) return phase: in this stage of the process, the result is transferred to the participants and the rest of the citizens; 4) follow-up phase: facilitates the monitoring of the development of the results of the process. the outcome of the participatory process does not affect the decision-making and execution capacities of the city council's governing bodies. however, at the outset of any process, it must be clear how the results will be applied to the final decision (stark, 2017).bec represents the emergence of a new party form distinct from the old left social democratic and communist parties. in this regard, bec in program and practice sought to “develop popular capacities for genuinely democratic participation as well as complex democratic representation and administration” (panitch, 2016, 360). conclusion: respecting democratic administration in practice the three cases canvassed here are useful in that they present, and emerge out of, vastly different historical and political contexts. in this sense they are a rather ecumenical collection. each demonstrates the potential of the political imagination to take up what resources and capacities are available, no matter the constraints, and apply them to empowering working class, and other non-elite constituencies. and each case is an example of redesigning the state apparatus, the policy process, in such a way as to directly include these voices from the relative margins. ‘red’ bologna demonstrates the central and critical role of a party, in this case, the italian https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-09-12/barcelonas-decidim-offers-open-source-platform-for-participatory-democracy-projects/ 13 communist party, dedicated to a rebalancing of class forces within the state apparatus, entering the state. and there were no illusions. as the pci acknowledged, bologna was not a ‘red island’ capable of resolving all of the crises of capitalism. but they took what they had in order to improve the quality of working class lives. the greater london council was similar to that of bologna, though much more short-lived, in that the key actor was a political party, in this case a social democratic one, which had as its main strategy the transfer of financial and professional resources to trade unions and communitybased organizations, to undertake the design and implementation of their specific projects. this allowing the tacit, experiential knowledge of non-elite persons and organizations to be applied to addressing local problems. and new structures were designed within the local state to facilitate this transfer and to co-ordinate that devolved work. in barcelona, as with bologna and london, a political party designed to contest elections to enter the state is the central actor. but barcelona en comu is not a party like the others. not a product of the ‘old’ 20th century left, but rather it emerged out of the anti-austerity struggles besetting spain through the 2008 economic crisis. in government, bec, similar to the others, created open processes to facilitate non-elite citizen participation in policy agenda setting – what is to be acted upon. all share a politics to decentralize power, to some degree, by devolving the power to establish policy and program priorities for non-elite citizens. where they differ is in the scale of this decentralization of power. in bologna, the pci created the venues for citizen engagement and took the outcomes of such under ‘advisement’. barcelona’s experience is similar but with a much more explicit programmatic, or political commitment, to situating participatory democracy at the centre of its political practice in government. the left of labour in the glc went the furthest in providing direct financial and technical expertise support to non-elite actors to go ‘do it yourself’. in our cases, the parties of the left recognize this imbalance and privilege access and inclusion of working class, poor and other non-elite social categories. however, this does not constitute a re-composition of the state in such a way as to fundamentally shift the balance of class forces. there is a preferential option expressed for non-elites to gain access and input through new structures and practices but these are no islands of socialism. in all cases a social movement whether consisting of working class organizations such as trade unions, a broad popular front against austerity, or the outcome of anti-fascist armed struggle, is connected to a party engaged in the electoral sphere. in certain cases, such as bologna, the party which organized against fascism is the movement. in barcelona, the anti-austerity movement, the indignados, precedes and then informs the founding of the electoral organization. and in london, the trade unions, in those days still a vibrant political force in their own right, were the key constituent component of the labour party. and the thatcherites hated the trade unions and local government alike (hannah, 2021, 30). there is an important dialectical relationship between movements and parties. social movements, if they wish to see their goals achieved, must to greater or lesser degree work with or through a political party. and in this respect, social movements can contribute to the electoral success of parties by shaping its policy orientations and how work within the state is practiced (goldstone, 2003, 2). in one sense the cases confirm that entering the state is essential. the examples of occupy wall street and nuit debout are examples where “the assemblies soon hit their limits and dissolved … there were no prospects of putting ideas into practice … they were detached from the processes of everyday life, as well as administrative processes” (demirović, 2017, 300). in other words, “you can protest until hell freezes over, but without taking and transforming political power you will never change the world” (panitch, 2016, 361). transformative, emancipatory politics will 14 inform the policy and program processes and outcomes but there are no guarantees, as history demonstrates, that such projects can be sustained indefinitely. radical incursions into the state have been and will be defeated by more powerful adversaries. and, over time, the social democratization of these experiments, while not inevitable, is a real possibility with entering the state. how to maintain a class-focus, as opposed to the drift toward ‘big 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(2007). identity by design. elsevier, butterworth-heinemann. wilson, w (1887). the study of public administration. political science quarterly 2(2): 197222. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-09-12/barcelonas-decidim-offers-open-source-platform-for-participatory-democracy-projects/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-09-12/barcelonas-decidim-offers-open-source-platform-for-participatory-democracy-projects/ challenges for internationally trained engineers in bc | 131 132 | migration of bengalis to canada https://engineerscanada.ca/regulatory-excellence/engineering-regulators challenges for internationally trained engineers in bc | 133 134 | migration of bengalis to canada challenges for internationally trained engineers in bc | 135 • • • • • • • • • • 136 | migration of bengalis to canada challenges for internationally trained engineers in bc | 137 • • 138 | migration of bengalis to canada challenges for internationally trained engineers in bc | 139 140 | migration of bengalis to canada challenges for internationally trained engineers in bc | 141 https://engineerscanada.ca/frequently-asked-questions http://www.bdhcottawa.ca/bilateral-relations/bangladesh-diaspora-in-canada http://www.bdhcottawa.ca/bilateral-relations/bangladesh-diaspora-in-canada alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review automating inequality. how high-tech tools profile, police and punish the poor by virginia eubanks. new york: st. martin’s press, 2017. $34.99 cdn. hardcover isbn 978-1-250-07431. pages: 1-260. reviewed by robert marshall1 virginia eubanks’ book follows in the footsteps of earlier polemics documenting the policing of poverty in the united states.2 unlike these previous studies, and building upon her own prior work (2012), eubanks focuses on the role of information technologies as a tool for increased monitoring and surveillance of social assistance recipients in the united states. while not necessarily employing a technologically determinist argument, eubanks does document the impacts of moving such services online; and, the often devastating human consequences and effects of doing so. the book explores the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms and predictive risk models on economic inequality in three american jurisdictions: the state of indiana’s automated medicaid eligibility process; pennsylvania’s allegheny county predictive algorithm for assessing childhood risk of abuse and neglect; and, los angeles’ coordinated entry system for the homeless. by focusing on the racist and classist effects of these networked systems, she ultimately is also asking very important questions about citizenship and democracy in america today. as eubanks notes, since the dawn of the digital age decision making in finance, employment, politics, health care, and human services has undergone revolutionary change. and what she sets out to document is the revolutionary impacts of such changes on welfare recipients in the united states. the subtitle of her book could just have easily been “the road from prediction to perdition.” while the notion of surveilling the poor is not new, what has transpired is that the means of policing the poor has changed greatly over the past few decades. the technologies of monitoring, regulating and policing not only includes digital tools; but, also includes new discourses, belief systems and frameworks. the rise of neoliberalism and new public management, plus the growth in the alt-right’s further racist and classist marginalization of the poor and working class in the united states, must be accorded significant roles in what is occurring today. often, the debates around neoliberalism or new public management are framed in the language of rolling back the keynesian welfare state so as to impose standards of efficiency and productivity upon the state itself and its bureaucracies. the reality, however, is that neoliberal policies are geared towards disciplining subordinate populations in order to further an accumulation strategy that inculcates a market discipline. 1 robert marshall. department of politics & public administration. ryerson university. email: rmarshall@politics.ryerson.ca 2 see for example the classic study by piven and cloward (1971), or the more recent trilogy by loïc wacquant (2004, 2009a, 2009b), and gustafson (2009). mailto:rmarshall@politics.ryerson.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research such policies are reminiscent of the elizabethan poor laws that differentiated between the deserving and the undeserving poor. eubanks draws a line from the 19th century poorhouse, where the poor and working class were quarantined, to 20th century case worker investigations, and into the 21st century digital poorhouse constructed from data bases, algorithms and risk models. suggesting that the digital poorhouse is part of a long american process, eubanks notes that the poor have long been managed “…in order to escape our shared responsibility for eradicating poverty” (p. 21). she also notes that this continuum originates with the scientific charity movement that arose in the united states in the 1870s. the book describes significant changes that have emerged as to how the system of surveillance has changed over time. in earlier forms, the target had to be identified before the ‘watcher’ could surveil. today in data-based forms, the target emerges from the data itself. at the same time, one should not underestimate that many of the systems under review in the book are also about restructuring the state itself. when discussing the state of indiana, eubanks describes then governor mitch daniel’s ‘famous’ application of a yellow pages test to government services. “if a product is listed in the yellow pages, he insisted, the government shouldn’t provide it” (p. 45). these systems not only removed individuals and families from the welfare rolls, they also resulted in many state workers losing their jobs due to automation. and while not addressed in the book, we know that many of the workers let go have been women.3 i think eubanks, in her own way, also sets out to confront the provocative question raised many years ago by langdon winner (1980) as to whether or not artifacts [a term used for technology] have politics. technology is often presented, or at a minimum understood, as a neutral tool or instrument. winner, and others such as lawrence lessig (1999; 2006) and cathy o’neil (2016), have challenged this idea by suggesting that power dynamics themselves are built into the various technologies that help to determine or shape outcomes. lessig argued that strings of code themselves can regulate our lives as much as any legal set of rules. code that is created and written by humans with all their prejudices, beliefs and foibles. o’neil holds to the view that computer models are opinions that become embedded into machines, which increases inequality and threatens democracy. a more concrete illustration can be found in edwin black’s study (2001) on the usage of hollerith punch cards during the holocaust. the serial numbers tattooed on the inmates began as punch card identification numbers. as eubanks writes “the classism of racism of elites are math-washed, neutralized by technological mystification and data-based hocus-pocus” (p. 192). she concludes, however, that “[h]igh-tech tools have a built-in authority and patina of objectivity that often lead us to believe that their decisions are less discriminatory than those made by humans. but bias is introduced through programming choices, data selection, and performance metrics” (p. 194-195). 3 for two early interventions on this point see lee and hobbs, 1996 and longford, 2002. see also beyeler and annesley, 2011, and findlay, 2015. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research one of the pleasures in reading the book is learning of the author’s journey of discovery as she comes to confront some of her own beliefs. she discovers contrary to the tenets held in the digital divide debate that the poor and working class are more tech savvy than usually given credit for. technology was becoming ubiquitous in their lives but not in a way most of us would, or could, imagine: in the welfare office; in the criminal justice system; and, for those with work, in the places of low waged employment. methodologically the book provides ample space for those who have engaged with the various systems to tell their own stories. what is repeatedly heard are words such as “fear,” “frustration,” “exasperation,” “discriminatory,” “undemocratic,” “unforgiveable,” and “dehumanizing”. as eubanks writes “it’s crucial to listen to those who are their primary targets; the stories they tell are different from those told from the perspective of administrators and analysts” (p.178). “at the heart of this book” she writes “are the stories of those who inhabit the digital poorhouse in indiana, los angeles, and alleghany county” (p. 219). over three years she conducted 105 interviews, attended family court sessions, observed a child abuse hotline call center and attended dozens of community meetings. she talked with caseworkers, policy-makers, program administrators, journalists, scholars and policy officers. as well, eubanks engaged with those organizations who closely worked with the families impacted by the three systems under review. she interviewed administrators and analysts; and, in the process discovered that they earnestly believed they were helping those in need. this raises the important question of how to balance the belief that the system helps with the reality that it does not? eubanks notes that in her interviews with technologists and administrators the belief amongst them that “…new high-tech tools in public services increase transparency and decrease discrimination” (p. 168). the process, however, can often be counter-productive. her evidence suggests families that are targeted as ‘high-risk’ by algorithms may very well lead them to withdraw from those networks that provide services, supports and a sense of belonging to the community. noting that a book can be an invitation to conversation, and at the same time a call to action (p. 219), in the concluding section, eubanks turns her attention to ‘what is to be done’ in order to dismantle the digital poorhouse. drawing upon dr. martin luther king, jr.’s “remaining awake through a great revolution” sermon delivered on 31 march 1968 in which he condemned the impacts of the emerging technological revolution, she returns to his call for a poor people’s campaign. further eubanks stresses “…the most important step in dismantling the digital poorhouse is changing how we think, talk, and feel about poverty” (p. 204). the result would be building empathy and understanding among the poor and working class to ‘forge winning political coalitions’. only then can mobilizing grassroots power to disrupt the status quo occur. as formal policy proposals eubanks concludes with a brief discussion of a universal basic income (ubi); and, a hippocratic oath for the data designers, engineers and administrators an oath of non-harm for an age of big data. a repeated refrain throughout the book is that while these systems were first designed for the poor, they will eventually be used on everyone. “we should all care about the digital poorhouse because it is inconsistent with our most dearly held collective values: liberty, equity, and inclusion” (p. 193). www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 4 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research references: beyeler, m and c. annesley “gendering the institutional reform of the welfare state.” in m. krook et al eds., gender, politics and institutions palgrave macmillan: routledge, 2011, pp. 79-94. black, e. ibm and the holocaust. new york: crown books, 2001. eubanks, virginia digital dead end. fighting for social justice in the information age. cambridge mass.: mit press, 2012. findlay, t. femocratic administration. gender, governance, and democracy in ontario. toronto: university of toronto press, 2015. gustafson, k. “the criminalization of poverty.” journal of criminal law and criminology. vol. 99, no. 3 (2009): 643-716 lee, i. and c. hobbs “pink slips and running shoes: the liberal government’s downsizing of the public service.” how ottawa spends 1996-1997. life under the knife. ed. gene swimmer. ottawa: carleton university press, 1996, pp. 337-378. lessig, lawrence code and other laws of cyberspace. new york: basic books, 1999. ----- code. version 2.0. new york: basic books, 2006. longford, grahman “rethinking e-government: dilemmas of public service, citizenship and democracy in the digital age.” the innovation journal. vol 7 no 2. (2002) https://www.innovation.cc/archives/news/innovation-conference/7_2_4_longford-egovernment-t.pdf o’neil, cathy weapons of math destruction: how big data increases inequality and threatens democracy. new york: crown books, 2016. piven, frances fox & richard a cloward regulating the poor: the functions of public welfare. new york: pantheon, 1971. wacqunat, loïc deadly symbiosis: race and the rise of neoliberal penalty. london: polity press, 2004. ----- prisons of poverty. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2009a. ----- punishing the poor. durham: duke university press, 2009b. winner, langdon “do artifacts have politics?” daedalus vol. 109, no. 1 (winter, 1980): 121136. https://www.innovation.cc/archives/news/innovation-conference/7_2_4_longford-e-government-t.pdf https://www.innovation.cc/archives/news/innovation-conference/7_2_4_longford-e-government-t.pdf book reviews 424 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education book review : class dismissed | 425 book review class dismissed: why we can’t teach or learn our way out of inequality by john marsh. new york: monthly review press, 2011. $19.95 can, paper. isbn 978-1-58367-243-3. pages: 1-217. review by peter brogan1 in class dismissed, john marsh critically deconstructs the myth or common trope that education is the panacea for alleviating poverty and economic inequality. drawing on a wide-range of both qualitative and quantitative secondary literature, marsh makes the case that economic inequality and poverty are rooted in economics and politics, not formal education or the lack thereof. arguing that it is still important what happens in classrooms across america, marsh contends, “equality of educational opportunity may not lead to greater equality of outcomes, but that does not mean it has no value” (202). the book is organized into three parts. the first draws on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative economic and sociological research to detail the depth of the divide between the rich and poor in the united states, which is the widest its been since the 1920s and among developed countries. here, marsh demonstrates why the default position of using education to address economic inequality has failed. the second part of the book examines why, when, and how education has come to dominate discussions about “opportunity, prosperity and poverty in american life” (21), as well as alternative ways americans once imagined they could advance in society (e.g. through collective struggle and a more expansive welfare state) has been pushed out of public policy debates. marsh also suggests that despite a plethora of evidence to the contrary, many americans continue to believe that they (and anyone) should be able to learn their way out of poverty. marsh contends that the belief in the transformative power of education flows from a core desire of many people to want to think that we live in a just world, in which people get what they deserve if they work hard enough and apply themselves in school. however, little effort is made to offer supporting 1  peter brogan (pbrogan@yorku.ca) is a phd candidate at the department of geography, york university. 426 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education evidence or interrogate the cultural mechanisms through which such an ideology takes root in the american context. in the third and final section of the book, marsh analyzes economic literature discussing what else it would take besides, or in addition to, a good education to reduce poverty and economic inequality. the author tends towards an explanation of increasing inequality resulting from a decrease in the bargaining power of workers, and unions in particular, therefore placing an emphasis on rebuilding and expanding union strength as the key to genuinely addressing economic inequality and poverty. in this section marsh also tries to answer why in spite of all the evidence, the “united states has done and appears poised to do so little to act on this consensus [in the sociological and economic literature]” (22). he then turns to a discussion of what ways an education might be beneficial for addressing economic and political problems rooted in social inequality. he makes the case that the best way to improve educational outcomes is by decreasing poverty and inequality in the first place: “the point of this book is that we need to cultivate a new modesty regarding education, to stop believing that it is a magic potion for the poor or for anyone else. only after we’ve cleared the deck of these mistaken beliefs can we embark on a serious effort to fix these problems” (22). while it may be the case that “some people may escape poverty and low incomes through education the problem arises when education becomes the only escape route from these conditions – because that road will very quickly become bottlenecked” (19), marsh argues that despite claims to the contrary, the us economy continues to see an expansion of employment that does not require a college degree. he writes that a “college degree will not make those jobs pay any more than the pittance they currently do…what will make those bartending and other unskilled jobs pay something close to a living wage – if not a living wage itself – constitutes…one of the major public policy challenges of the twenty-first century. education, however, is not the answer” (20). alternatively, marsh argues that education should be focused on learning for its own sake, rather then seeing a direct correlation between learning for earning. thus, a good education (however we may define it), according to marsh, cannot be the solution to economic woes without the necessary expansion of useful, secure, well-paying remunerative jobs. “we should not make economic rights, or economic security more generally, dependent upon how far one goes – of how short one comes up – in exercising his or her right to a good education. rights are requirements” (203). concurrently, marsh is clear that education should serve book review : class dismissed | 427 the working classes, the poor, and the marginalized, hence we should not completely disregard the impact that schooling can have on ones economic fate. “for it remains the case in the united states today that if someone wants a living wage, if she wants her family to not live in or on the edge of poverty, she had better go to college” (209). perhaps the biggest weakness of class dismissed is that it concludes with too brief a discussion of solutions to poverty and inequality, if not how to improve the substance of education. in general, marsh points to the expansion of union numbers and strength as key to a more serious strategy for addressing these problems. he also offers a number of moderate proposals to public policy, but does not substantially address the politics of achieving even modest changes. another limitation is that while marsh dismantles the mythology of education as the key to upward social mobility, while at the same time acknowledging that education can still have a major positive impact on individuals, he fails to interrogate the relevance of education (broadly conceived) for political struggle, or schools’ roles as both sites of ideological reproduction and contestation. while scholars (such as the late historian christopher lasch) have been making similar arguments to that of marsh for quite some time, the claim that education is the primary vehicle out of poverty continues to dominate public policy across the us and canada. with an eye to deconstructing these taken for granted assumptions, marsh’s book is likely to be of interest to scholars and activists interested in an introduction to education justice. 76 | migration of bengalis to canada an oral history of bengali immigrants in british columbia: 1960 2017 | 77 78 | migration of bengalis to canada 0 5 10 15 20 1960-1969 1970-1979 1980-1989 1990-1999 2000-2010 participants by year of arrival an oral history of bengali immigrants in british columbia: 1960 2017 | 79 80 | migration of bengalis to canada an oral history of bengali immigrants in british columbia: 1960 2017 | 81 82 | migration of bengalis to canada 0 5 10 15 20 education/profession education/profession an oral history of bengali immigrants in british columbia: 1960 2017 | 83 employment status in field of training underemployed did not seek employment 84 | migration of bengalis to canada an oral history of bengali immigrants in british columbia: 1960 2017 | 85 86 | migration of bengalis to canada an oral history of bengali immigrants in british columbia: 1960 2017 | 87 88 | migration of bengalis to canada an oral history of bengali immigrants in british columbia: 1960 2017 | 89 https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/access/content/group/123d20aa-ac83-481d-80bf-3168eaa53a58/canada.doc https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/access/content/group/123d20aa-ac83-481d-80bf-3168eaa53a58/canada.doc https://www.straight.com/news/408561/nobel-prize-winner-rabindranath-tagore-visited-sikh-temple-during-vancouver-visit https://www.straight.com/news/408561/nobel-prize-winner-rabindranath-tagore-visited-sikh-temple-during-vancouver-visit alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 35, 69-85 (2023) behind the work-fertility trade-off: women, work and transitions rosemary a. venne1 and maureen hannay2 abstract: in this third decade of the 21st century, discussion of women’s labour-force participation and its impact on fertility continues. while evidence points to a decline in overall fertility rates in most industrialized countries, a direct link to women’s labour-force activity the work-fertility trade-off is not always clear. cultural, economic and sociological factors have greatly affected the roles women play in society, which have in turn contributed to declining fertility. another often overlooked factor is the impact of increasingly longer and complex life-course transitions into adulthood which compress the period of fertility. while these topics have often been discussed in isolation, this paper synthesizes these topics in a demographic overview of women’s changing roles. the current pandemic with its impact on labour-force activity (dubbed the “shecession”) and associated declines in fertility has driven home the need for supportive social policies that can contribute to balancing the earning and unpaid caring roles by enhancing the ability of women to engage in the labour force and meet their fertility aspirations. keywords: fertility; women; labour; life course; pandemic; social policy introduction several decades into the 21st century, the issue of women combining earning and unpaid caring roles is still being debated (for example, see anne-marie slaughter’s (2012) popular article “why women still can’t have it all”). the covid-19 pandemic has placed women’s roles under the spotlight and has had an outsized impact on women’s labour-force activity (dubbed the “shecession” in canada) as well as declines in fertility. never far from the discussion of women in the workplace is the issue of the so-called work-fertility trade-off, what economists refer to as the opportunity costs of foregone wages when a woman has children. most researchers consider the link to be elusive and point to the revolution in women’s changing roles in society to at least partly account for changes in fertility levels. this paper will explore women’s changing roles behind the work-fertility trade-off in a wide-ranging demographic analysis. we begin with a brief explanation of the work-fertility trade-off. the first main section involves examining women’s roles in terms of changing patterns of fertility, marriage and work activity, followed by issues of work-life balance. secondly, we will examine the often-overlooked issue of prolonged transitions into adulthood, which has compressed the period of fertility. while these topics have been examined before, often in isolation, this analysis attempts to weave together a picture of the enormous changes affecting women and their impact on work and fertility. finally, we discuss the effects of supportive social policies in canada that can serve to reduce the incompatibility between employment and childbearing. the work-fertility trade-off this countercyclical argument contends that a rise in women’s earnings in industrialized countries would have a reducing effect on fertility in that bearing children would affect working women’s opportunity costs in several ways, including an immediate impact on women’s employment as well as long-term effects on earning power (trovato, 2015). for economists, the 1 rosemary a. venne is a retired associate professor at the edwards school of business, university of saskatchewan in saskatoon, saskatchewan, canada. 2 maureen hannay is a retired professor at the sorrell college of business, troy university, alabama, usa. the authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments which informed the final version of this article. 70 cost part of this link seems to be a straightforward calculation. for instance, economists have actually estimated the life-cycle career costs of having children to be equivalent to 35 percent of a woman’s total earnings (taking into account women’s decisions regarding labour supply, occupation, fertility and savings throughout the life-cycle, see adda et al., 2017). for demographers and labour scholars the link between women’s fertility and labour-force activity is viewed as more nuanced and has been pondered for decades. though the negative association between work and fertility is hard to miss, early demographers viewed the association as elusive. for example, romanuik (1984) discusses the difficulty in determining the direction of causation in the work-fertility relationship and concludes that the procreative behaviour of any society is part of a very complex process, and it cannot be reduced purely to a function of female labour-force participation. more recently, bonvalet et al. (2015) in their examination of changes in fertility, admit that it is tempting to assume that labour-force activity caused the fall in fertility because both occurred simultaneously, but acknowledge that the link does not always have an obvious direction. additionally, in some countries the two phenomena simply did not coincide. furthermore, trovato (2015) points to recent evidence where high female labour-force participation rates are associated with higher fertility rates in countries which have implemented strong policy programs that reduce the incompatibility between employment and childbearing. while scholars have not been able to definitively define the causal connection in the workfertility trade-off, there certainly are important societal implications to be considered with respect to combining work and fertility. at a societal level, this is an important topic with fertility rates currently below replacement levels in most industrialized countries with significant implications for economic development and labour-force supply. recently, fostik and galbraith (2021) point out that further declines in fertility could put canada in a situation associated with rapid population aging, increased stress on the labour market, public health and pensions. economists and business leaders touch upon these concerns with each release of our country’s census results, often concentrating on future labour-force supply concerns. this is not a new apprehension. for example, earlier this century, a conference board of canada report was titled: too few people, too little time: the employer challenges of an aging workforce (conference board of canada, 2006). a full discussion of the effects of population aging are beyond the scope of this paper, here we will briefly discuss its impact on labour-force supply. as the results of the 2021 census were released, canada’s working-age population was noted to have reached a turning point, in that there was a decline in the main labour-force age group of 15-64, with more people exiting or about to exit than people about to enter the labour force (statistics canada, 2022a). it’s noteworthy that during the 2010s, immigration has been the driving force for canada’s labour supply, accounting for over four-fifths of the labour-force growth (statistics canada, 2022b). given that the pandemic significantly halted canada’s immigration growth in 2020, the projected post-pandemic rebound in immigration will be critical to labour-market recovery. and as the economy has picked up after the shutdowns during the worst part of the pandemic, there have been noticeable labour-force shortages in several areas of industry. yet, it was noted that even though immigration has a rejuvenating effect on the canadian population and on its labour force, this effect is not enough to stop the population aging process. according to statistics canada (2022b, 3), “modest, sustained increases in immigration levels will not fully offset the longer-term impacts of an aging population but are critical for alleviating the effects of aging on the labour market over time”. population aging is a long-term, normal trend that is occurring in most industrialized countries. in canada, these shifts in demography are due to decades-long low fertility rates, the gradual increase in life expectancy, and the fact that the large 71 postwar baby-boom generation began entering retirement ages around 2011 (statistics canada, 2022a). given that women make up 47% of the labour force in canada, policies that support strong female labour-force participation rates and that allow women to meet their fertility aspirations would be critical for labour-force supply. in the following several sections, we will examine women’s changing roles behind the work-fertility trade-off including fertility patterns, marriage patterns and work activity, followed by issues of work-life balance. fertility patterns fertility is defined as the average number of children that a woman has with the fertility rate of 2.1 described as the replacement level for maintaining a population. the postwar (world war ii) fertility hike or baby boom in north america was deemed an anomaly attributable to the exceptionable economic circumstances of the postwar period. in particular, rising postwar prosperity (referred to as the thirty glorious years by ricard (1994) with its robust job market and strong wage increases) greatly influenced increases in fertility as well as encouraging early marriage and the male-breadwinner model of family life. these economic developments were accelerated by the emergence of the welfare state which encouraged government interventions to build infrastructure and support economic expansion (see mitchell, 2006; trovato, 2015). currently, fostik and galbraith (2021) describe canada as a low-fertility country (with a fertility rate that has been on a steady decline since 2008, decreasing further to a record low of 1.40 in 2020 from 1.47 in 2019). significant changes in several key demographic dimensions, including very low fertility rates and declining marriage rates have been explained as a shift in value orientation that centres on the ethos of individualism (often referred to as the second demographic transition, see trovato, 2015). a shift toward more individualistic goals and self-fulfillment is made possible by increased affluence and the emancipation of women (mitchell, 2006). the widespread availability and adoption of modern birth control methods have afforded women more control over their fertility, including the ability to postpone childbearing, which can result in lower fertility overall (trovato, 2015). also, the increased control over fertility allows the option to choose voluntary childlessness, which was once considered evidence of psychological maladjustment and now would be an acceptable lifestyle choice (veevers, 1980). as trovato (2015, 250) affirms “lower fertility has resulted from a combination of sociological, economic and cultural factors” and these factors will likely maintain current below-replacement levels in the future. in the early stages of the covid-19 pandemic, there was some initial speculation that the lockdowns would usher in a baby boom (barroso, 2021; gibb, 2021). in fact, we appear to be in the midst of a baby bust as fertility rates are down with early reports of declines in births in europe and north america being documented (bricker, 2021). a recent statistic canada report exploring fertility intentions noted that 19% of canadians aged 15-49 reported that because of the pandemic, they now want to have fewer children than previously planned, or to have a baby later than previously planned (fostik & galbraith, 2021). reasons for the lower fertility rate relate to economic uncertainty of unemployment and lockdowns along with school and daycare closures resulting in added home responsibility for parents. along with job insecurity and financial precarity, there are also health concerns as women postpone pregnancies due to possible virusrelated health risks (gibb, 2021). 72 the pandemic appears to be accelerating the shift towards lower fertility rates though it is uncertain if this is a temporary downturn. one demographer predicted that a fertility downturn beyond 2021 was likely if covid-19 left serious economic scars on the labour market with the caveat that social and family policies could moderate such impacts (united nations, 2021). the recent united nations report on population pointed out that current evidence of covid-19’s impact on fertility appears to be mixed with the expectation that for high-income countries, covid-19 is likely acting as a temporary interruption rather than a permanent change in long-term fertility trends (united nations, 2022). with falling fertility rates, morgan (2003) observes an important ideological shift that encourages parents to focus attention on a smaller number of children in that each child is unique and deserving of substantial parental investment in terms of resources and time. a related explanation is that these are planned children and smaller family size contributes to the idea that each child is more precious (schulte, 2014). this quality-quantity trade-off is essentially an economic argument implying that low fertility is the result of parents investing in fewer children of higher quality (trovato, 2015). in the modern context, children are no longer the economic assets that they were in the past (as in family-farm labour in an agrarian-based economy). marriage patterns at the end of world war ii, north america and western europe entered into a period of what is referred to as “the golden age of marriage” with marriage viewed as the gateway to adulthood and respectability (coontz, 2005). during the 1950s in particular, there was near universal and earlier marriage (with all but five percent eventually marrying), earlier parenthood, family intactness (low and stable divorce rate) and highly differentiated gender roles (male as sole breadwinner and female as homemaker) (see mitchell, 2006). as women achieved higher levels of education and entered the labour force they gained power and independence raising their status in society. gains in economic independence and autonomy made divorce not only possible but acceptable (bonvalet et al., 2015). by the late 1960s the centrality of marriage in life was waning, resulting in what trovato (2015) referred to as the “flight from marriage”. whereas early postwar prosperity favoured early marriage and early childbearing, now late marriage, single parenthood, divorce and cohabitation are all on the rise (trovato, 2015). while the majority of canadians still marry eventually, the rate of common-law marriage is on the rise with over one in five now living common-law compared to 6.8% in 1981, with the rate of common-law unions being most prevalent in quebec and among same-sex couples (statistics canada, 2017). these changes in marriage patterns reflect fundamental changes in society and serve as a barometer of social change (see trovato, 2015). as noted, society now accepts many different lifestyle models as valid examples of how to structure one’s household. according to mitchell (2006) the model of the family that is rooted in immediate postwar north america was a historical fluke based on a unique and temporary conjuncture of economic, social and political forces. ruggles (2015) documents this retreat from the prior postwar norm of early marriage and the malebreadwinner model (prevalent over the middle part of the 20th century) to the present where the dual-earner model is now commonplace. his main premise is that the shifts in families reflect changes in work and that these economic changes are responsible for the transformations in family composition, marriage and divorce. the current practice of marriage postponement and lower fertility rates are a function of economic conditions, increased education and career factors (see 73 mitchell, 2006). factors relating to women’s paid labour-force activity will be covered in the following section. labour-force attachment/activity of all the changes over the course of the 20th century, women’s changing roles stand out as particularly profound, especially in the second half of the 20th century. women’s entry into the economic sphere (e.g., increased labour-force participation, entry of women into previously maledominated professions, and increased educational attainment) has led to enormous transformations in the roles women play in society. romaniuk (1984) speaks of the fuller integration of women into the economic system and fuller equality with men as accelerating and as a re-orientation of the values and beliefs concerning the appropriate roles for women in society. the increasing involvement of women in the labour force has been referred to as a social and economic revolution, reflecting the changing roles and status of women both in the family and in society (mcvey & kalbach,1995). indeed, women’s expanded opportunities to earn income, status and psychic gratification outside of the family contrasts the traditional unpaid care-giving role as an expensive trade-off (romaniuk, 1984). more recently, bonvalet et al. (2015) note the rise in the economic status of women, referring to work as becoming a cornerstone to female identity. women’s increasing labour-force attachment has been accompanied by an upsurge in educational attainment with the return on education higher for women than for men (ferrer & riddell, 2002). in terms of labour-force attachment and identity, bardwick (1986) describes one’s occupation as a basic grounding of identity in that work is “who we are”. in north america at least, self-image is very closely tied to work. in particular, for women this identity means that they belong to the ‘club’ with the value of their paid work as the measure of their value to society (hovanec & shilton, 2007). today there is a greater identification of women with their work, as a former stay-at-home mom wryly observed “work is what makes you a person” (perle-mckenna, 1998, 57). the cohort differences between the postwar baby-boom women’s and their mothers’ careers are nicely captured in the title of one journal article: “my daughter has a career; i just raised babies” (carr, 2004). the correlation between women’s socioeconomic status and self-esteem has grown stronger with each generation (twenge, 2014). twenge (2014) goes so far as asserting that work, income and education, once relatively unimportant to a woman’s identity, are now even more important to women’s than to men’s identities. in essence, women’s entry into paid employment meant that life was no longer mapped out in advance but instead allowed for broader life choices (bonvalet et al., 2015). bonvalet et al. (2015) note the turnaround from the postwar years where working women were once highly criticized whereas being in the workforce now increases women’s value in society and enables them to develop their own identity. employed women themselves consistently report greater societal as well as spousal respect and indicate that they have greater decision-making power in their homes compared to full-time stay-at-home women (see coontz, 2005). like most industrialized countries, canada has a high female labour-force participation rate (61.4% for 15–64-year-olds) with women comprising a large portion of the canadian workforce (47%) (catalyst, 2020). of the many social and economic changes in the post-world war ii period, one of the most profound is the dramatic increase in women’s labour-force participation (moyser, 2017). for example, canada’s postwar women’s labour-force participation rate in the core working ages of 25 to 54 years has increased from 21.6% in 1950 to 82% in 2015 (moyser, 2017). women are more likely to work part-time than men (26% versus 13%) with childcare being the most common reason for choosing part-time work among women in their 74 thirties (patterson, 2018). it is not surprising that dual-earner households are now the most common household type (close to 70% among couple families with at least one child under 16) whereas the percentage of mothers who work (unpaid) at home full-time is 16.2% (uppal, 2015). early during the pandemic, economists began referring to the chilling economic nosedive in north america as the “she-cession” noting that women’s job losses were greater than men’s (mckeon, 2021). women were bearing the brunt of job losses during the pandemic as they make up much of the workforce in the most affected sectors, such as hospitality (desjardins & freestone, 2021). mothers faced higher job losses than women without children as mothers were more likely than fathers to leave their jobs to care for toddlers and school-age children during lockdowns (wheatley, 2021). the gender wage gap is another reason why in heterosexual partnerships, it’s mostly the mothers, usually the lower earners, who have stepped out of the workforce, and who have shouldered more of the childcare and school supervision (stroh, 2020). it was not surprising to read reports of women lamenting the loss of self and career with home schooling, cutting back on work hours or losing their jobs while on shutdown during the pandemic (for example see bell, 2021). due to the prolonged nature of this pandemic, economists have concerns that a sizeable number of women may be at risk of skills erosion, referred to as the ‘scarring’ effect (wheatley, 2021). with women’s lowered participation rates during the pandemic, there are concerns that the labour-force progress of the past few years is threatened with some predicting that the covid-19 crisis could set women’s advancement back by a decade (grant, 2021). this is perhaps overstating it, though buck (2021) posits that it’s not just income and professional experience that women have been losing during the pandemic: for some it’s their well-being, with survey reports of unemployed women and single parents reporting the worst mental health because of the pandemic. the following section deals with work-life balance issues related to pressures around paid employment, parenthood roles and the intensification of parenting. work-life balance smaller family size associated with reduced fertility was initially predicted to lead to less time spent parenting over a person’s lifetime and to result in less impact on life-course decisions (coontz, 2005). yet, parents now spend more time with their children compared to parents of 30 years ago, despite smaller family size (moyser & burlock, 2018). this phenomenon, labeled as “intensive parenting”, is prevalent throughout the middle classes of many industrialized countries (moyser & burlock, 2018). as a result, families with young children describe themselves as very time-crunched with mothers’ time with their children climbing steeply in recent decades. moyser and burlock (2018) report that qualitative research highlights women’s retention of ultimate responsibility for the coordination of children’s lives; the smooth functioning of the household; “emotion work” (i.e., provision of support); and “kin keeping” (i.e., the maintenance of familial relationships)—even as their economic roles have expanded. they acknowledge that both men and women spend more time on childcare than 30 years ago but that women have increased their time with children to a greater extent than men, reflecting a more intensive form of childrearing. the negative impacts of work-life conflicts and role overload are well documented (i.e., reports of stress and time pressure). higgins et al. (2006) in their survey of canadian workers have suggested that lower birth rates are a hidden cost of the lack of work-life balance. in their canadian survey a higher percentage of female respondents versus males agreed that they had fewer children because of work demands or had not yet started a family/decided not to have a family because of their career. edmonston et al. (2010) note the persistent gap between canadian women’s fertility intentions (largely stable and in the above-replacement-level fertility range from 1990 to 2006) 75 compared to actual below-replacement-level fertility, a gap which continues to be prevalent in most developed countries (including canada) according to the recent united nations (2022) population report discussed earlier. in most discussions of work-life balance the emphasis is heavily focused on solutions for accommodating women and work. however, a number of researchers raise concerns about the lack of male involvement and call for a better sharing of parental work and a better integration of fathers into housework and care duties (see gerson, 2010; matysiak, 2011). moyser and burlock (2018) raise concerns about the “stalled” gender revolution in unpaid work though male involvement is on the rise and a more equal division of household and childcare is associated with higher fertility rates in nordic countries (see beaujot & wang, 2010). mcginn (2021) discusses the possibility of changing fatherhood for the better during the pandemic with more men reporting greater involvement with childcare and household tasks. in their comprehensive multi-decade surveys, duxbury and higgins (2012) note the importance of flexible organizations and supportive organizational cultures in combatting worklife conflicts and point out that women actively seek out these flexible firms. chung and van der horst (2018) provide evidence to show how work-time flexibility and workplace flexibility can enhance the work capacity of female workers in times of increased family demand. one positive aspect that has come out of the pandemic are the experiments with the ‘when’ of work (including flextime, four-day workweeks) and ‘where’ of work (flexiplace or telework). in particular, the issue of telework or work-from-home has received the most attention with researchers estimating that our telework capacity in canada is such that four-in-ten jobs can plausibly be carried out at home (deng et al., 2020). teleworkers are more likely to be female, core-age workers with higher levels of education with 43% of women versus 31% of men teleworking in may of 2020 during the beginning stages of the pandemic (clarke & hardy, 2022). the popularity of telework is related to saving time from not commuting and the flexibility provided from working at home. while working from home served well as a temporary response to the pandemic, deng et al. (2020) propose that this transition might function as a catalyst for a new way of doing business for years to come. recognition of work-life balance concerns continues with changes to the when and where of work and emerging changes in legislation (e.g., right-to-disconnect laws) that will be discussed in the policy section. transitions a frequently overlooked factor behind the work-fertility trade-off is the issue of prolonged life-course transitions into adulthood which compress the period of fertility. a transition is defined by mitchell (2006) as a discrete life change or event. the transitions into full adulthood typically involve leaving school, leaving the parental home, engaging in full-time work, entering conjugal relationships, and having children (trovato, 2015). during the benchmark postwar period these transitions to adulthood (marked by a time of rising wages, low unemployment and muted global competition) were early, uniform and compressed, whereas today’s more complex transitions (accompanied by slow or stagnant wage growth, lessened job security and retrenchment of the welfare state) are more varied, prolonged and sometimes reversible (as in home leaving) (see mitchell, 2006; venne, 2010). put another way, the once-stable postwar life-course has evolved to become more complex and precarious. the pandemic with its associated lockdowns has exacerbated young people’s transitions into the workforce. compared to adults, youth have been harder hit by labour-market shifts during the pandemic with young women being disproportionately affected (wolff & hamilton, 2020). 76 a recent survey of the social and economic effects of precariousness in employment in two large canadian cities (in ontario) revealed the broad, detrimental impact on workers (lewchuk, et al., 2016). the survey findings paint a picture of how low earnings and economic uncertainty translate into delayed relationship formation, lower marriage rates and fewer households with children. the difficulty with transitions to adulthood was also observed in a recent statistics canada report. the report on young millennials, a highly-educated group, noted a strong divide between those millennials who are struggling with student debt, unaffordable housing and stagnant wages versus a small group who are thriving, having benefited from generous intergenerational transfers (bank of mom and dad) to pay for their tuition and sometimes even a house down payment (casey, 2022; heisz & richards, 2019). venne (2010) proposes that the most important transition to adulthood is the increasingly complex education-to-work transition (accompanied by increasing educational attainment) and that delaying this transition tends to delay all other transitions. mitchell (2006) points out that the one trend that shows little sign of changing in the future is the requirement for higher levels of education, sometimes referred to as credentialism. young people increasingly face a more complex and prolonged school-to-work transition compared to their parents, who were more likely to be job ready at the end of high school (beaujot, 2004). though early transitions during the three economically-buoyant postwar decades clearly appear to be anomalous, they sometimes serve as benchmarks for transitions even into this century, likely because we often make comparisons between children and their parents. an important point to make here is that given current economic conditions and job demands, taking longer to transition into adulthood reflects new economic realities and certainly not a failure to launch. while some lament the longer school-to-work transition (for example see levine (2005) who refers to young adults as being in the midst of an epidemic of work-life unreadiness) most researchers recognize that complex and prolonged transitions are the norm for young people today. this new reality of lengthening transitions leaves some families overburdened as they support their children for an extended period (settersten & ray, 2010). the traditional adult tripartite life-course model (see figure 1) consists of young adulthood (education) which is undergoing an expansion, middle adulthood (paid work), which is being compressed, and later adulthood (retirement) which is expanding. worktime compression refers to the fact that our paid employment is being concentrated into relatively fewer decades of midlife, due to an increase in educational attainment at the front end and to earlier retirement at the back end, both relative to our rising life expectancy (venne & hannay, 2017). while we mainly tend to think of longer life expectancy in terms of longer periods of retirement, the first stage of adulthood is also being elongated. 77 figure 1: stages of adulthood stages of adulthood young adulthood ↔ adulthood →← older adulthood ↔ three-phase life model education ↔ expansion of post-secondary education work →← work-time compression over mid-life period retirement ↔ expansion of time spent in retirement period of fertility →← period of fertility compressed adapted from venne and hannay (2017) yet, more complex transitions and an elongated period of young adulthood (to accommodate longer periods of education) are related to later and lower fertility (trovato, 2015). in effect, the period of fertility is being compressed in much the same way that paid worktime is being compressed in the middle stage of adulthood (see figure 1). the factors of increased educational attainment and later entry into career jobs both tend to squeeze the fertile period of adulthood, often pushing the period of possible procreation to a woman’s thirties, in essence resulting in a period of compressed fertility. osberg (2005) notes that the peak loading of our labour supply concentrates paid work into relatively few decades in midlife and that this peak loading also coincides with childbearing and childrearing work or peak years for unpaid work in the home. specifically, gerson (2010) refers to the conflict between childbearing/rearing and the key career-building period. unlike worktime, which can be extended into older adulthood or the so-called third age, there is a finite period for possible childbearing and fertility cannot be easily extended despite improvements in assisted-reproductive technologies. to briefly summarize the two initial sections of this paper: the first section of this paper involved a wide-ranging demographic examination of women’s evolving roles relating to the work-fertility trade-off. the complexity of attempting to account for the work-fertility trade-off is confounded by the fact that "associations between women’s employment and family size are situated in complex social, economic, and occupational contexts, and are also influenced by the prevailing cultural norms around gender roles and gender equity” (moore et al., 2021, 47). we have attempted to capture the complexity of the enormous changes affecting women’s roles in our discussions of changing fertility rates, increased educational attainment coupled with stronger work attachment and later-and-less-intact marriage and finally with a discussion of work-life balance pressures. from having their lives mapped out for them in constrained and limited roles in the past, women are now presented with broader choices in how to structure their working and personal lives. it was previously mentioned that the profound changes in the roles women play were an economic and social revolution with work becoming a cornerstone of female identity reflecting women’s changes in societal status. our second section in this paper involved an examination of the topic of longer transitions into adulthood, an issue that is often overlooked in the discussion of combining work and fertility. yet more complex transitions (including increased educational attainment) during an elongated period of young adulthood are compressing the period of fertility. considering the importance of 78 women in the canadian economy (women make up 47% of the canadian labour force), our final section comprises a discussion of several supportive policy options to help balance the earning and unpaid caring roles as well as policies to support the complex transitions to adulthood. supportive social policies matysiak (2011) predicts that without easing the tensions between paid work and unpaid care there will be serious repercussions (as in decreases) for fertility, with female labour-force participation possibly increasing further to preserve the average lifestyle. yet, morgan (2003) concedes that there is not really a low-fertility ‘crisis’ but that below-replacement fertility is an issue that befalls developed countries that can usually afford to address it through public policy and institutional adjustments. he speaks of policy responses in assisting women in realizing their intended fertility by easing the difficulty of combining childrearing and working. women’s higher fertility intentions open the door to potential policy changes from government that could facilitate the fulfillment of desired fertility (edmonston et al., 2010). more recently, a united nations report (united nations, 2022) noted that current surveys in low-fertility countries (including canada) have indicated that many women are having fewer children than they would like. the report lists the multiple obstacles women face to achieving their desired family size, including demands of higher education, high childcare costs and challenges to work-family balance. the report proposes that countries that address these constraints (which is an expectation of continued progress toward gender equality and women’s empowerment) can help to ensure that women will have the opportunity and means to achieve their desired family size that may result in a small rebound in future fertility. matysiak (2011) questions whether it is possible to increase women’s labour supply without negative repercussions on fertility. yet, supportive policies in the province of quebec (i.e., universal and low-cost childcare since 1997 and parental-leave benefits introduced in 2006) have resulted in increases in both fertility and female labour-force participation in quebec relative to ontario (which had not implemented these policies), demonstrating that it does seem possible to accommodate both caring and earning roles with supportive policies (moyser & milan, 2018). specifically, moyser and milan (2018) note that low-cost childcare in quebec makes it more affordable for those with less education and less earning potential to work. as the economy slowly regains its footing during our adaptation to the endemic nature of covid-19, some employers are finding it increasingly difficult to fill positions. ensuring women who work in areas such as retail, customer service and hospitality-related fields (which tend to be lower paying) have access to affordable childcare may lead to an increase in their labour supply. several decades of evidence from quebec indicate that their childcare system has increased that province’s gdp by 1.7 per cent while providing a return on investment to both levels of government that offsets their initial funding costs (boesveld et al., 2021). or as armine yalnizyan (2020) succinctly puts it: “subsidized childcare literally pays for itself”, viewing childcare as necessary infrastructure in that it helps people get to work. with canadian women earning 42% of household income pre-pandemic, the canadian economy cannot bounce back without restoring women’s contribution to it given that most households are dual earner (buck, 2021). having fuller employment of women ensures a prosperous economy with one economist noting that if women participated in the labour force at the same rate as men, it could add 100 billion to canada’s yearly gdp (wheatley, 2021). despite women’s high investment in education and strong labour-force attachment, sunter (2001) proposes that women’s dominant role in child and household care will likely preclude a full closing of the participation gap with men. 79 for matysiak (2011) the big three recommendations to ease the tension between paid work and unpaid care are access to low-cost childcare, parental leaves and flexible work arrangements. we will discuss each of these beginning with childcare. esping-andersen (2005) contends that the key component to encourage both work and fertility is access to affordable daycare and he considers this the most efficient and equitable option because it helps minimize mothers’ employment interruptions. the current liberal government’s proposed publicly-funded childcare program now has all the provinces (ontario was the last to sign on in march 2022) and territories signed on in their attempt to create a national childcare system. their proposed program involves non-profit delivery, better trained and paid staff and marked-down fees for parents and is often referred to as $10-a-day daycare. mccuaig (2021, 1) notes that “the pandemic has revealed many hidden truths, in particular the social and economic contributions of women with young children” with economists recognizing that the pandemic has created a “she-session” that will persist until women re-enter the paid workforce. though there is excitement regarding the federal government’s planned national childcare programs, there are concerns on the horizon regarding implementation and staff shortages of early-childcare educators (see mcginn, 2022a). canada has a complex system of maternity-and-paternity leave programs mostly funded through employment insurance in its many jurisdictions (comprised of one federal system, 10 provinces and 3 territories). gerson (2010) cautions that parental supports are not sufficient if they reinforce gender inequality in parenting. “by making fathers’ participation in childcare a matter of national policy, such use-it-or-lose-it policies provide strong encouragement for men to be involved” and “they make it clear that all parents have the right to care for their children without risking their jobs, financial well-being, or work identities” (gerson, 2010, 222). despite its many negative impacts, doucet et al. (2020) contend that covid-19 has given rise to a unique opportunity to restructure social policy such as canada’s complex parental-leave structure. evidence from quebec’s early adopter use of non-transferable leaves for fathers dramatically increased the use of fathers using it versus fathers in other provinces (doucet et al., 2020). they conclude that parental-leave design functions best with non-transferable leave (for fathers) coupled with robust wage-replacement rates. they view these policies not only as employment policies but also as care policies to facilitate gender equality within households. the parental-leave program combined with the low-fee childcare has lead buck (2021, o7) to assert that “quebec is forging a path toward greater equality”. one author summarized a simple formula for accommodating earning and caring roles: “to achieve a high fertility rate, a modern industrialized country would have to welcome high taxes, make female equality a social reality, have state-paid childcare, extend parental leave to fathers and then recognize the resulting payoff in tax revenues and female labour-force participation” (allemang, 2012, f3). in terms of easing work-life balance concerns, gerson (2010, 221) contends that the postindustrial workplace is well suited for flexible-work approaches and that “providing work flexibility requires having both formal policies and informal work practices that banish the penalties attached to caregiving and give workers more control over when and how to do their jobs”. macnaughton (2021, 1) asks if the pandemic could create the flexible workplace that parents need and notes that one advocate of flexible work has observed that “one of the benefits of covid19 is that it has catapulted institutional mindsets around flexible work into the future”. the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have resulted in the mass movement to work-from-home arrangements or teleworking for those white-collar workers who were able to do so. for many workers this meant saving time with no longer having to commute but for those supervising their children flextime and reduced schedules were required in some cases. https://voxeu.org/article/cross-country-evidence-covid-19-she-cessions https://voxeu.org/article/cross-country-evidence-covid-19-she-cessions 80 one ceo is hopeful that some good will come out of this challenging year, stating that “we can be flexible and still be successful and productive and that nine-to-five is irrelevant” (macnaughton, 2021, 1). indeed, there have been reported instances of employees resisting the return to the office. one recent survey of canadians found that more than half would look for a new job with remote options if their current employer required them to return to the physical workplace full-time (see mcginn, 2022b). given recent labour-shortage concerns, those employers who are most in tune with these in-demand worktime and workplace flexibilities will benefit in terms of attraction and retention of employees. instead of back-to-normal perhaps a reset is in order with the pandemic removing some of the psychological barriers employers had around flexible work arrangements (kirby, 2021). another recent development in terms of work-life balance is the right-to-disconnect law recently enacted in the province of ontario (requiring firms with more than 25 employees to draft policies that address off-hours work communication). although at a nascent stage in canada as well as globally (only a small handful of countries have enacted this type of legislation) these laws are a starting point as they set out boundaries in an attempt to deal with work-life balance concerns. in contrast to the policy consideration given to balancing earning and caring roles, the issue of prolonged transitions to adulthood has received little attention. given that prolonged or complex transitions tend to delay fertility and the fact that these longer transitions are likely to persist in the post-industrial economies of developed countries, we ask are there ways to ease these transitions to adulthood roles? esping-andersen (2005) points out that in all countries, unemployment is associated with low fertility or as wheeler et al. (2006, 39) put it “babies are born where the jobs are”. wheeler et al. (2006) state that a key lesson from sweden is that fertility is sensitive to the presence or absence of policies supportive of family formation (low-cost quality daycare) as well as prevailing economic conditions (favourable economy with low unemployment). in terms of the latter, strong state support of unemployment can be helpful in smoothing bumpy rides during difficult economic conditions. the pandemic can certainly be referred to as a bumpy economic condition with cerb (canada emergency response benefit) functioning as a policy that provided financial support to those whose jobs were directly affected by the pandemic. other proposed legislation is aimed at workers in the gig economy who face uncertainty in employment. noting that one-in-five (often young) workers toil in the gig economy, the province of ontario has proposed legislation to extend the minimum wage to gig workers such as uber drivers (see ontario newsroom, 2022). also, ontario intends to develop a portable-benefits system for gig workers and other workers who don’t have health, dental or vision coverage with the package intended to move with individuals if they change jobs (cbc news, 2022). ontario’s proposed portable-benefit system for gig workers is a recognition of precarious employment that often affects young workers. mitchell (2006) notes that policy inattention to young adults results in greater intergenerational transfers which present challenges for parents who are increasingly responsible for the economic well-being of their young adult children during their prolonged transition to adulthood. wheeler et al. (2006) discuss the more complex life-course transitions compared to earlier generations and note that many of our social institutions and social policies have yet to catch up with these changing and prolonged demographic transitions. there is a need for flexible policies to support this longer and more complex emergence into adulthood roles, especially for those youth who cannot rely on prolonged intergenerational transfers (see venne, 2010). one recent policy is the first-time home-buyers’ incentive (the tax-free first-home savings account) 81 which is a home-buying plan for first-time buyers and a recognition of rising housing costs that rose substantially during the pandemic. conclusion in this paper we have provided a wide-ranging examination of the changing roles affecting women in the modern world by delving into the work-fertility trade-off. we have woven together the many socio-economic forces affecting women in terms of work, fertility and transitions. arpino et al. (2015) note the importance of institutions and policy in promoting the reconciliation of work and motherhood resulting in recent increases in fertility in some countries. it seems well understood that female labour-force activity and fertility are both higher in countries where there is government support of family-friendly policies (the big three: childcare assistance, parental leaves for both men and women, and flexible work-time arrangements) and where gender norms encourage spousal support in child-care and housework (see beaujot & wang, 2010; trovato, 2015). recently, quebec’s early adoption of supportive policies has resulted in higher female labour-force participation along with higher fertility rates. the pandemic’s impact on labour force activity (the she-cession) has driven home the need for supportive social policies which can contribute to balancing the earning and caring roles by enhancing the ability of women to engage in the labour force and meet their fertility aspirations. along with the big three supports, further flexible policy actions can be used to smooth out the precarious and prolonged transitions to adulthood that often result in delayed and reduced fertility. what is being driven home during this pandemic is the precariousness of female employment and its relationship to supports for those women with dependent children. during the pandemic, many have expressed a desire to return to normal. but instead of returning to business as usual after the pandemic, it makes sense to assess what has worked (flexible work hours and flexible locations for some jobs) and double-down on prioritizing the proposed low-cost childcare system given the impact that the pandemic has had on women’s labour-force participation rates as well as on decreasing fertility rates. these proposed policies will assist in combining the earning and caring roles in the aftermath of this pandemic which may prove to be an epoch-changing era. references adda, j., dustman, c. & steven, k. 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(2020, june 5). no she-covery without childcare. https://atkinsonfoundation.ca/atkinson-fellows/posts/noshe-covery-without-child-care/ https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220622/dq220622c-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-001-x/75-001-x2001002-eng.pdf https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2015001/article/14202-eng.htm https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/october-2020/young-canadians-and-the-long-tail-of-the-covid-crisis/ https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/october-2020/young-canadians-and-the-long-tail-of-the-covid-crisis/ alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 35, 1-17 (2025) high inflation and labour militancy in historical perspective david goutor1 abstract: this article argues that one of the key aspects of the post-covid economy, inflation, deserves more attention than it has received, and particularly more analysis from a historical perspective. it examines each of the periods of high inflation – during and after world war i, after world war ii, the 1970s, and the post-covid economy – and shows a clear correlation between inflation and increased worker militancy. it also explains the causes of this correlation, beginning with the most evident: inflation weakens the buying power of workers’ wages. but deeper analysis reveals five more important factors that recur in every period of high inflation: expectations of the working class tend to rise; workers are forced to make serious sacrifices just before inflation rises; governments tend to be highly active in the economy, making the impact of inflation highly politicized; inflation coincides with political and ideological instability, and elite failures to show they are in control; eventually elites take a “zero sum” approach to policy and impose solutions that inflict more pain on workers. regarding outcomes from resistance, another pattern emerges in every period of high inflation: while worker mobilization can help to win many strikes, there are limits to the broad based gains that militancy alone can make, especially in the face of the power of capital and the state. keywords: inflation; strikes; unions; labour history; political economy introduction high inflation was undoubtedly one of the key features of the post-covid economy. but among leftist commentators, it was definitely not the feature that got the most attention. to be sure, when inflation ran highest in 2022, it was not ignored: the popular leftist press explored the problem in some detail, particularly in a special issue of jacobin magazine.2 there was also a small wave of leftist scholarship on the subject, including valuable contributions by samir sonti, sam gindin, adam tooze, doug henwood, among others. but after 2022, attention to the problem largely subsided with a few exceptions, including the insightful work of thomas ferguson and servaas storm. a quick survey of prominent scholarly journals on labour issues and left political economy finds remarkably few articles that put inflation and its impacts at centre stage.3 to be fair, there are many issues demanding attention in the post-covid years – everrising inequality, the climate crisis, donald trump and the continuing rise of the populist right around the western world, to name a few. but another reason for this avoidance is that inflation has never been a favourite topic of leftists; quite often the approach to it has been glum and defensive. a full accounting of this tendency is not possible here, but it is worth noting that its roots go back to karl marx. his most detailed commentary on the topic – an 1865 lecture that was turned into a pamphlet which was lost and forgotten for years – was a grimly detailed rebuttal of another economist’s claims that trade unions were responsible for high inflation. marx himself 1 david goutor is the director of the school of labour studies at mcmaster university. he pursues contemporary research on the living wage and the basic income guarantee and historical research on unions, immigration, human rights campaigns, and international leftist political activism. his books include guarding the gates: the canadian labour movement and immigration, 1872–1934 (ubc press, 2007), and a chance to fight hitler: a canadian volunteer in the spanish civil war (between the lines, 2018). 2 “inflation,” jacobin 46 summer 2022. 3 i surveyed the tables of contents of socialist register, new labor review, labour/le travail, new left review, monthly review, labor studies journal, and of course, alternate routes, among others. 2 acknowledged that the subject was not bringing out his best, stating near the end of value, price, and profit (1898 (1865)): “after this very long and, i fear, tedious exposition, which i was obliged to enter into to do some justice to the subject matter, i shall conclude by proposing the following resolutions.” contemporary unionists and leftists have also tended to avoid discussions of inflation. henwood (2022) dubbed many socialist and progressive commentators as “evaders” because they were so intent on downplaying the impacts of inflation. similarly, many unionists have even said it was better to ignore the topic, since discussions of it would inevitably lead to labour getting blamed for rising prices (reed, sonti, and gindin, 2022). this is but one example of what economist jim stanford calls “the old 1970s fable” – putting the blame for inflation on collective bargaining for higher wages, which was a key part of the turn towards the neo-liberal era – looming heavily over the left’s views on inflation (pittis, 2022). this paper’s starting point is that periods of inflation deserve more attention – and a careful reassessment. it demands a broader historical analysis that brings it out of the shadow of “the old 1970s fable” and that goes beyond the fairly narrow economic approach that shapes most of the debate. this is especially important because periods of high inflation are consistently periods of high union militancy – a correlation that is often acknowledged but rushed past in many discussions.4 the goal of this article is to begin developing a richer, more comparative and textured history of labour militancy during inflationary times. it will explore each of the periods of high inflation – including the post-covid economy – demonstrating the correlation between inflation and militancy, but also showing much of the complexity and nuances in past eras that have been overlooked. it will examine why militancy increases in these periods, starting with the direct impacts of inflation on workers – which are often noted in the literature – but pushing beyond this to discuss five important, consistently recurring factors: raised expectations among workers; heavy sacrifices by the working class preceding inflationary spikes; extensive government intervention; political and ideological instability and wavering elite confidence; and elite policy responses to inflation that directly attack the welfare of the working class. finally, this paper will also show how periods of inflation reveal the stark limits in the effectiveness of militancy on its own, especially in the face of the power of capital and the state. for present purposes, defining periods of high inflation is straightforward enough without delving into a deeply technical or theoretical discussion of the nature of inflation: prices (usually measured by the consumer price index, or cpi) rise all the time in a capitalist economy, but there are times when they rise faster, and more persistently, than usual. this is experienced and a profound crisis in the economy, as the basic value of money seems to erode rapidly, the economy seems unstable and confidence in the currency and the system in general can erode. the importance and the impacts of high inflation will be discussed in more detail below. the geographical focus of this paper is on canada and the united states. while the patterns of inflation and labour activism in the two countries are not exactly the same, they are certainly close enough to be analyzed together.5 4 see reed, sonti and gindin (2022) and gindin and clarke (2022); both are excellent contributions, but many historical aspects – aside from the 1970s – are not given much attention. 5 the experiences in the rest of the western world are also broadly similar to those in parts of north america, although there are enough significant variations that this paper would risk getting bogged down in grappling with all of them rather than developing the main analytical point. 3 before launching into a detailed review of the different periods of high inflation, one historical pattern is sufficiently important that it should be highlighted in this introduction. the author is aware that at the time of writing in the fall of 2024, some readers may be inclined to view the discussion of inflationary periods as no longer immediately relevant. indeed, inflation rates have eased, and central banks in both canada and the u.s. are ceding to public pressure to cut the interest rates they had raised to combat rising prices. however, every previous period of high inflation saw not one but two spikes in prices, and most had years (such 1948-49 and 1974) when inflation was either receding temporarily or was widely expected to recede. the pattern is readily detectable in the graphs that traces rates of inflation historically. perhaps the inflationary wave of the 2020s will prove an exception, although there are a number of reasons to believe that another surge awaits: supply chains remain insecure, war could erupt between china and taiwan, and the conflict in the middle east could expand and put pressure on fuel supplies. with donald trump back in office, imposing steep tariffs on imports and proposing significant tax cuts, a new spike in prices is extremely likely (brownstein, 2024; greenhouse, 2025). understanding labour’s responses to inflation is important for the next time prices start to increase – be it in the near or distant future. earlier periods of inflation and labour militancy the first period of inflation began during world war i, when major spending on military supplies and armaments led to shortages of many goods, and in turn to price surges. even though canada entered the war earlier, in 1914, it was struck by inflation only a little sooner and harder than the u.s., which did not declare war until 1917 (charest and white, 2015; reed, 2014). the mobilization for war also led to labour shortages, especially in canada, although the increase in prices rapidly eroded the value of workers’ wage gains (heron, 1998). the consumer price index (cpi) rose the most in canada in 1917 (+17.9 percent) and increased by 48.3 percent over the whole of the war (charest and white, 2015). the war was also the first instance of labour militancy rising at a time of high inflation. labour organizing surged, with union membership in canada growing from 166,000 in 1914 to 378,000 in 1919. the post-war period saw a major wave of militancy in both countries, with working days lost to strikes reaching historic highs and general strikes breaking out in centres such as seattle (winslow, 2020). the most dramatic event was the winnipeg general strike, where the initial walk-out shut down the city to the extent that the local labour council’s strike committee was temporarily put in charge of essential services (heron, 1988; naylor, hinther, and mochoruk, 2022). notably, this wave of unrest occurred in a high-inflation economy, as prices continued to rise sharply after the war. in canada, the yearly increase in the cpi was over 10.0 percent in 1919 and 16.3 percent in 1920; in the u.s. the cpi rose 17.3 percent in the first 18 months after the war (charest and white, 2015; reed, 2014). the second period of high inflation is also the one most frequently overlooked – the postworld war ii period. it is forgotten in part because it was overshadowed by the transition to the post-war economy, the coming of the cold war, and the broad prosperity that followed in the 1950s. in north america, inflationary pressures re-emerged as war production ramped up. but with the experience of the last war clearly on their minds, governments stamped it out using strict wage and price controls. this created major pent-up demand that caused prices to rise sharply once controls were lifted in 1946. the pressures on prices were compounded by shortages of consumer goods as the economy had to transition to domestic production, and by some unfortunately timed weak agricultural harvests. in a two-and-a-half-year span starting in february 1946, the price of 4 food rose by 55 percent in the u.s., including a rise of over 100 percent in the price of meat (reed, 2014). overall, annual inflation peaked in the u.s. in 1947 at 14.4 percent, while in canada it peaked slightly higher a year later at 14.6 percent. inflation seemed to be in rapid decline at the close of the decade – but then it spiked again with the start of the korean war, the monthly rate staying at over nine percent for much of 1951 (charest and white, 2015; reed, 2014). the post-world war ii period also saw another major wave of strikes in north america. in canada, industrial unions consolidated the gains made during the war and started laying the foundation for a new industrial relations system known as the rand formula. strikes in this era that helped establish this system, such as at the ford plant in windsor in 1945 and at the stelco plant in hamilton 1946, are seminal moments in canadian labour history (morton, 2007). in the u.s., the labour movement that had expanded dramatically in the 1930s and made further progress during the war had to fight again to protect and consolidate their gains after the war (lichtenstein, 2002). the result was the largest strike wave in u.s. history; the total of american workers participating in strikes reached 4.6 million in 1946 – a new peak that has not been surpassed since (bls, 2024). the third period of high inflation – the 1970s – is almost certainly the best remembered. economists agree on the causes of inflation in the decade – lax monetary policies by central banks that put too much money into the economy; heavy government spending (especially the u.s. military spending on the vietnam war); a sharp rise in the price of fuel after the “oil shock” of 1973; and deeper structural problems in the economy which was already faltering in the late 1960s. however, they disagree fiercely about which cause(s) were most important and which had only minor significance. inflation started a serious climb in 1972 and then became severe after the fuel crisis the next year; then the price pressures eased through the middle of the decade but re-emerged in 1977. the second wave of inflation was stronger than the first and lasted into the early 1980s, with cpi increases peaking in 1980 at 13.5 percent annually in the u.s., and in 1981 at 12.5 percent in canada (reed, 2014; macrotrends, 2024). in terms of labour relations, the 1960s had already seen an upsurge in rank-and-file militancy, and it continued into the 1970s. labour educator and author cal winslow (2021) describes the 1970s as "a high-water mark for the u.s. labor movement, with work stoppages, wildcat strikes, and sit-downs spreading up and down the country, involving workers in all industries.” in canada, there were a series of surges in militancy, the first in 1972, and the largest hitting mid-decade: 1976 saw a new record in “maximum number of workers involved in stoppages” at 11,544,000 and in “person days not worked” at almost 1,585,000 – totals that have not been surpassed since. a final spike came at the tail end of the last rise in inflation, from 1979 to 1981, with “working days missed due to disruptions” averaging 8,600,000 across the three years (statistics canada, 2024). moreover, in canada a wave of organizing that started in the 1960s swept across the public sector, driving a steady increase in union density that continued well into the 1980s. public sector organizing also increased in the u.s. in the 1960s and 1970s, although it was not enough to check the continued decline in overall unionization rates (morton, 2007; lichtenstein, 2002). the union movement also greatly increased its representation of working women and its focus on “women’s issues.” particularly important examples in canada were the strike of female employees in 1978 at the fleck auto-parts plant in the small southwestern ontario town of centralia and the canadian union of postal workers’ 1981 strike for paid maternity leave (backhouse, 1981; broens, 2023). the final period is the focus of this article – the post-covid economy, which saw high inflation return after a long absence starting in early 2021 and peaking in june 2022 at a monthly 5 rate of 8.1 percent in canada and 9.1 percent in the u.s (statista, 2024; statista, 2024a). although the “headline” rates were not as high as in other periods, the increase came after workers had already been facing a “crisis of affordability” for years. moreover, inflation hit the costs of essentials such as fuel, food, and housing especially hard (lowery, 2020; lowery and klein, 2024). as with the 1970s, analysts generally agree on the reasons for rising prices – in this case fuel shortages; supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic (especially in sectors such as auto); government spending in the form of social supports and stimulus; an unusually tight labour market; and a surge in demand, especially for consumer goods. but as with the inflation of the 1970s, there are sharp divisions about which cause is most important (bernanke and blanchard, 2023; wang, 2024; di trolio, 2023). much of this debate centres around the contention of mainstream economists, led by lawrence summers (2021), that the primary cause of inflation was excessive government spending to aid the population through covid and the recovery. this drew a number of responses, including a compelling argument by thomas ferguson and servass storm (2023) that the real driver of inflation in the u.s. was the sharp increase in demand from the richest 10% of households, who enjoyed extraordinary gains in wealth, including a $9.5 trillion (47%) increase in real estate equity. the response of workers was a new upsurge in activism – the most significant of the twenty-first century. in terms of scale, the wave of organizing and striking does not compare to that of the earlier periods, especially when the increases in the size of the economy and the labour force are factored in, but it constitutes a vital reversal of a decades-long period of decline. in the united states, “working days missed due to labour disruption” reached 16,673,000 in 2023, a level not seen since the 1980s (except for the year 2000) (bls, 2024). in canada, the figure for “working days missed” was 6,584,000, the highest rate since the tail end of the last wave of inflation in the early-1980s (except for 1986) (statistics canada, 2024). there were organizing breakthroughs in workplaces of some of leading corporations, including amazon warehouses and more than 500 starbucks outlets in the u.s (unionelections.org, 2024). crucially, labour also showed that militancy could produce gains, with strikes by unions in sectors ranging from the screen actors guild to the united auto workers winning major concessions in 2023 (wilkinson and stewart, 2023; domonkse, 2023). in the fall of 2024, air canada responded to the air line pilots’ association’s aggressive bargaining and a strike threat by conceding a 42 percent pay increase over four years (atkins et al., 2024). with the overall size of the labour movement diminished after decades of neoliberalism, unions’ gains at the bargaining table were not enough to drive a significant increase in wages across the labour market (ferguson and storm, 2024). nevertheless, the fact that so many of these successes were in the private sector, where union decline has been most pronounced, is particularly significant. if this brief review of the history makes the correlation between high inflation and union activism clear enough, it is worth reiterating that it does not (and is not meant to) establish an automatic causal relationship. it should especially be noted that many high points in labour militancy occurred during periods of low or “normal” inflation: the breakthroughs of america’s industrial unions occurred during the great depression and the new deal in the 1930s; the breakthroughs in canada happened during world war ii when wages and prices were controlled by the government; and the peak of intensity of strikes in the u.s. came during the 1960s. in short, not every period of increased labour militancy saw high inflation, but all periods of high inflation brought labour militancy. however, if readers are still skeptical about the correlation between high inflation and union activity, it should be emphasized that capital has no such doubt. a statement by the rbc 6 economics and thought leadership team – a “proof point” – explained the connection succinctly and readily acknowledged unionized workers’ recent victories: “in workplaces covered by collective agreements, recent settlements have produced some of the largest gains in decades” (hogue and battaglia, 2023). the common view of those at the commanding heights of business and finance is that if workers expect price increases and successfully demand wage increases in response, the result is a “wage-price spiral” that will make inflation an economic crisis – or least an entrenched problem. conveniently for capitalists, they can then insist that workers’ wage demands must be forcefully resisted or are to blame for inflation entirely. in august 2023, just as union activism was starting to increase, bank of canada governor tiff macklem abandoned usual pretenses about standing aloof from labour relations matters and issued a blunt message to employers about expectations that prices would rise, and wages would have to keep up: “don’t build that into longer term contracts. don’t build that into wage contracts” (gindin, 2022; rendell and subramaniam, 2022). explaining the connection: causes of militancy during inflation what is it about inflation that leads to this intensification of union activity? the most obvious factor is the impact of inflation itself. a number of leftist scholars have explained the problem well. inflation can be understood fundamentally as the erosion of the value of workers’ wages: when prices rise, the buying power of their money goes down, motivating them to demand more income (reed, sonti, and gindin 2022; booth, 2022). this dynamic is especially strong for the working class, as they feel the impact of inflation especially acutely (saba 2022). as samir sonti (2022) highlights, forms of inflation are happening all the time, such as asset inflation, which has been rampant in the early twenty-first century. but generalized high inflation ensures that everyday essential items will become more expensive, and the working class will especially feel squeezed. this is why gindin insists that inflation should be framed as a distribution problem (gindin and clarke, 2022). business leaders readily acknowledge the connections, as the rbc’s “proof point” explains: “historically, more time is lost to work stoppages during periods of high inflation—as weakening purchasing power prompts workers to rally in labour contract negotiations” (hogue and battaglia, 2023). gindin (2022) quotes a much blunter assessment from when inflation was surging, in the wall street journal: “the struggle is on over who will bear the burden of higher costs.” beyond the direct impacts of rapid price increases, there are a number of other factors that usually occur in periods of inflation that encourage union militancy. it is worth reiterating that the argument here is not that inflation causes these other factors – but they tend to coincide with a high inflation economy. this paper will highlight five such factors. the first is that periods of high inflation tend to happen during or just after economic conditions raise workers’ expectations and raise their confidence that they can win gains through militancy. in many instances of hard times, workers are left demoralized, discouraged from resisting, and may feel inclined to blame themselves. such feelings can take hold for instance, when people are losing their jobs, plants are closing, and communities are collapsing under the pressure of economic decline (case and deaton, 2020). but during periods of inflation, or in the lead-up to them, economic conditions are usually different. people are working, often more than usual, if an economy has been “running hot,” as economists put it (coy, 2024). but workers still feel like they are falling behind because of price rises, hence they become highly motivated to take direct action. 7 for instance, when inflation struck during world war i, the labour market was tight, and there were labour shortages leading to women being drawn into the labour force in major industries for the first time (morton, 2007; mccartin, 1997). workers therefore did not feel easily replaceable. although the u.s. joined the war later and a smaller proportion of its workforce was drawn into the military, unemployment still tumbled from 7.9 percent in 1914 to 1.4 percent in 1918 (rockoff, 2004). in the run-up to the inflation of the late 1940s, again there had been labour shortages during the war. savings rates were unusually high during world war ii as well, giving workers assurance that they had a financial cushion to fall back on, while also creating alarm that inflation was eroding the value of their savings. the post-covid economy fits the pattern neatly: there were significant social supports during the pandemic; labour markets were very tight in the immediate recovery; unemployment was at its lowest rate in decades; and savings rates were unusually high (clarke and fields, 2022; abdelrahman and oliveira, 2024). the one exception to this rule would appear to be the 1970s: the economies of both canada and the u.s. were hit by recession starting in 1973, with unemployment hitting post-war highs by 1976 and then pushing further at the end of the decade and into the early 1980s. however, as sam gindin explains, if the situation is viewed through a wider lens, it becomes clear that the 1970s fits the pattern. gindin contends that once it was evident in the decade that the long post-war boom was coming to an end, the question became who should lose ground in the new lean times. workers had enjoyed two decades of prosperity and rising standards of living – and had used workplace action frequently to keep making gains – and so they were unwilling to accept lower living standards, and the wave of strikes ensued (reed, sonti, and gindin, 2022). the second important factor also speaks to expectations, although in a different way: periods of high inflation tend to occur during or just after the working class had already been asked to make heavy sacrifices. as outlined above, the 1970s are an exception to this rule, as they were preceded by a period of prosperity. still, in the u.s. there had certainly been some sacrifice, as about 80 percent of the 2.5 million enlisted men who served in the war in vietnam were from working class or low-income backgrounds (appy, 1993). but for the other three periods of high inflation, the pattern is readily detectible. in both world wars, the labour market may have been favourable, but workers made major sacrifices – starting of course with the thousands who fought on the battlefield. for instance, canada suffered appalling loses in world war i, with as many dying in battle, 60,000, as the u.s. even though canada had a much smaller population (brown and cook, 1975). on the home front, workers faced shortages, rationing, and often severe overwork in war industries, especially in canada in world war i (heron, 1998; morton, 2007; mccartin, 1997). in the 2020s, the pandemic caused obvious hardships and suffering, and most workers had to continue to do their jobs despite the risks of getting sick. this was especially the case for women, recent immigrants, and racialized workers (fee, kaiser, and wardrip, 2024). indeed, it is no accident that so much of the militancy in the post-covid years has occurred in the manufacturing, healthcare, warehousing, and the broad service sector – all parts of the economy where work had to continue in person and the luxury of remote working was not made available (economic policy institute, 2024). such periods of sacrifice make the working class much less willing to accept even more hardship when inflation rises, and especially when policy makers impose remedies that cause the working class to suffer even more (the latter point will be explored further below). 8 the third factor is that periods of high inflation happen during or after periods of unusually high levels of government intervention in the economy.6 in both world wars, the economy was almost completely centrally controlled in both canada and the u.s. (naylor, hinther, and mochoruk, 2022; mccartin, 1997; lichtenstein, 2002). the inflation of the 1970s came after the era of keynesianism, when governments’ economic policies in both canada and the u.s. were unusually interventionist. the welfare state also went through major expansion in the keynesian era, with, for example, the creation of a public health insurance system in canada, and the great society and the war on poverty in the u.s. moreover, the early reactions to inflation in both countries in the 1970s was even more intervention in the economy in the form of (failed attempts at) wage and price controls (panitch and gindin, 2010). the covid pandemic brought extraordinary new forms of government economic and social control in the form of lockdowns and other health restrictions. there were also new public support programs such as the canada emergency response benefit (cerb) in canada and the cares act in the u.s., and massive subsidies of businesses. one essential political effect of these interventionist periods is that the issue of management of the economy is heavily politicized. governments do not have the option of pretending that they must take a laissez-faire approach to economic matters or that the market will work out the problems. workers can see the hand of government in the economy and have been ready to act if they feel it has been pushing them down. the fourth factor is that periods of inflation involve not only price instability, but also political and ideological instability. in particular, the level of confidence among elites is usually remarkably low. inflationary times are much different than, for example, the era of the washington consensus, which saw a remarkable amount of elite unity around neo-liberal policies. periods of inflation tend to be periods when the foundations of existing orders seem to be shaking. world war i and the years following saw profound crisis – the outcome of the war was far from certain until near the end; in fact, after russia was knocked out of the war in 1917 there was widespread fear that the germans could win. there were also domestic divisions in the u.s. about participating in the war, and in canada even sharper divide between french and english over conscription (brown and cook, 1975; mccartin 1997). elites were also terrified by the russian revolution, the emergence of the soviet union, and other revolutions and turbulence in europe after the war (heron, 1998). elites – especially in the u.s. – planned extensively for the post-world war ii world, yet even into the late 1940s, it was far from certain that a period of growth and economic stability would occur. for much of the 1940s, the canadian media was constantly worried about a return to the depression conditions of the 1930s (goutor, 1997). in addition, foreign affairs created a host of new anxieties and uncertainties, about the risk of new wars in europe, the cold war, the communists’ taking power in the china in 1949 – both of the latter deepening the “red scare” that began as soon as the war ended (whitaker and marcuse, 1996; michaels, 2017). the ideological instability of the 1970s has been widely explored: the keynesian consensus broke down as it could not deal with the combined problems of inflation and a stagnant economy, known as “stagflation” (panitch and gindin, 2012). in canada, there was continual national unity crises in the face of the rise of quebec separatism, from the october crisis of 1970 (when the front 6 this does not mean that government regulations, controls, or spending will inevitably cause inflation; for example, european countries in which governments play much larger roles in the economy than in north america do not automatically have higher inflation. 9 de le liberation du quebec (flq) kidnapped two prominent officials, killing one), through the election of the separatist parti quebecois in the 1976 provincial election, to the first referendum on separation in 1980 (clarkson and mccall, 1990). in the u.s., much of the domestic divisions of the 1960s spilled into the 1970s, particularly as the vietnam war dragged on. the americans’ ignominious final withdraw in 1975, combined with increased economic competition from germany and japan, further damaged confidence of (and in) u.s. elites (lichtenstein, 2002; cowie, 2010). the post-covid era fits the pattern as well; in fact, one of the most popular terms among analysts is “polycrisis”, which describes a group of crises emerging at the same time, thus compounding the problems and making solutions even more elusive. in addition to inflation and supply chain disruptions, the polycrisis of the era includes: the faltering of liberal democracy and the rise of (mostly far-right) populisms; de-globalization in trade, and the fracturing of the neoliberal consensus (especially evident when u.s. president biden kept many of his predecessor’s tariffs in place, and made more evident by trump’s return to power); wars in ukraine, the middle east, and potentially taiwan; and the climate crisis, which now regularly brings “once-in-alifetime” weather disasters (tooze, 2022; lawrence, homer-dixon et al., 2024; albert, 2024). to use gramscian terminology, periods of high inflation tend to be periods when capitalist hegemony seems to falter, when hegemonic ideas no longer seem to be “common sense.” at times a full-blown crisis of authority emerges (hall, 1986). hence, it should be no surprise that in such contexts, workers are more assertive in challenging the authority of employers and policymakers through militant action. the fifth and final factor is that while aspects of capitalist hegemony may waver in periods of high inflation, there are some policies that elites always want, and these policies will directly attack the strength and welfare of the working class. in particular, the capitalist solution to high inflation is for central banks to increase interest rates, which raises debt costs of workers, reduces consumption, and usually drives the economy into recession. the depression of 1920-21 and the deep recession of 1982-83 were classic examples: central banks hiked interest rates, the economy suffered, but pressure on prices eased and inflation eventually slowed (reed, 2014). (the postworld war ii era will be described in more detail in a slightly different context below.) interest rate hikes were again the remedy in the post-covid economy – although this time the results have been unusual. both the u.s. and canada have avoided a recession so far in technical terms, although by per-capita measurements, canada was clearly in recession territory in 2024 (desormeaux, 2024). but according to ferguson and storm (2024), the reason why the economic slump was not worse was the inability of labour, despite the renewed energy, to win wage increases across the economy. the dreaded “wage-price spiral,” which usually leads to a more severe crisis, was thus avoided. indeed, even when official inflation rates eased, there has been no relief regarding the crisis of affordability, with costs of food and housing causing particularly acute pain (lowery and klein, 2024). even establishment news outlets such as cnn have been producing stories such as “the american dream is under siege.” (egan, 2024) meanwhile, stock markets have broken new records and inequality has grown more profound than ever (hernandez-kent and rickets, 2024). in other words, when inflation runs high, workers can have little faith (or even less than usual) that prosperity might be shared by all, or that any of what david harvey (2017) calls the “watery metaphors” of neoliberalism will hold, such as “a rising ride will lift all boats.” as both sonti (2022) and gindin (2022) explain clearly, the public debate centres around the blunt question 10 of “who will pay for inflation” and the answer from central banks and governments is that it will be workers. hence if workers are facing aggressive class war from above, it is no surprise that they will resist, and workplace conflict will rise. this was evident in the post-world war ii period, when workers were tired of sacrifice and the wage controls of wartime (morton, 1998). as noted above, gindin has shown how the militancy of the 1970s was driven by workers’ determination that they would not pay for the end of post-war prosperity. the starkest examples were in world war i and the post-covid economy: in both cases, inflation rose while business profits also ran high and workers were outraged by profiteering, price-gouging and “greedflation” during crisis conditions (heron, 1998; browning et al., 2024). solidarity and its limits if periods of high inflation tend to bring increased labour militancy, they also tend to show the limits of what can be achieved by waves of militancy alone. even if unions do win some strikes and deliver wage increases for many workers, the power of the state – both in terms of force and policy making – has ensured in every case that workers will pay for inflation. while workers may become highly motivated, the underlying strength of the labour movement remains the crucial structural factor, and if labour is not strong enough, and its base not broad enough, the chances of successful resistance are limited. for example, the post-world war i labour revolt may have seen labour put in charge of the city in winnipeg. but the city was quickly isolated, and the government in ottawa marshalled the power of the state to fire public servants who joined the strike, arrest strike leaders, and break up demonstrations by force. in the end the strike was broken after six weeks.7 the state used raw power to defeat other strikes; for instance, it helped to defeat one of the last outbursts of the postwar labour revolt, the cape breton coal mining strikes of 1922-5, repeatedly mobilizing the military against the strikers(macgillivary, 1974). in the 1970s, the labour movement’s militancy set records (especially in canada) and frequently succeeded in bargaining serious wage increases in an attempt to keep up with inflation. but in the end, labour became the “scapegoat for inflation,” as desmond morton (1988) titled the chapter on the 1970s in his survey of labour history. as gindin (2022) explains, since the labour movement only represented a minority of workers, it became easy for capital and the government to stoke resentment of non-union workers against them, thus dividing working-class resistance. as leo panitch and donald swartz outline in their classic study (recently updated by bryan evans and carlo fanelli), the breakdown of the keynesian consensus and the triumph of neoliberalism, including tight monetary policy, was a shift that would last for decades – decades that saw disastrous declines for unions (evans, fanelli, panitch, swartz, 2023). the post-world war ii experience, especially in the u.s., is the best demonstration of the importance of policy and the state. unions were heavily engaged in policy debates at the end of the war: they were determined to keep prices down and could put their support behind an institution, the office of price controls (opa), that had succeeded in controlling inflation during the war. in addition to the campaign to preserve the opa after the war, the united auto workers (uaw) attempted to force price controls through collective bargaining. in one of the largest strikes of the period, the key issue was the uaw’s demand that general motors (gm) increase wages without increasing prices. as sonti (2022) explains, labour’s efforts after the war “amounted to a 7 the elites’ response to the seattle general strike was also venomous, but that strike was ended by the workers after five days, and larger confrontations and outbreaks of violence were avoided (winslow, 2020). 11 campaign for higher wages at the expense of profits and an ongoing role for the state in managing these competing claims on total income. that is, it was about politicizing the question of who gets what.” organized labour was at a highpoint in strength in north america in the 1940s – yet it still decisively lost this struggle. the u.s. government acceded to concerted business lobbying to scrap the opa in 1946, and as expected, inflation ensued. but according to sonti (2022), it was labour that took the blame, and republicans “rode the price wave to a rout at the polls in the mid-term elections that november.” further setbacks followed, as conservatives would successfully argue that further new deal-style social welfare programs would increase pressure on prices. in 1947, congress passed the anti-union (and red-baiting) taft-hartley act, which would allow many states to pass “right-to-work" laws in the following years. then in 1951, the federal reserve won back the independence to set monetary policy that it had lost in the crisis decades of the 1930s and 1940s, thus settling the question of whether it would be “a part of our government” or “a government apart” (sonti, 2022). labour was thus faced with what lichtenstein (2002) calls a “collective bargaining defeat” – unions remained strong at the bargaining table, but it became the only place where they could address any economic problem. the strain this would put on the bargaining process quickly became apparent. in 1950, the uaw and gm signed the “treaty of detroit” – a five-year collective agreement that set the model over the following decades of unions making serious economic gains in bargaining in exchange for giving up a say in management and guaranteeing labour peace. but when the korean war brought new inflation, the supposed peace was hard to find. prices raced past the cost-of-living allowances agreed upon in the deal, forcing the union to ask for the contract to be re-opened to allow for new bargaining. gm angrily rejected the demands, leading to a wave of wildcat strikes and small-scale disruptions. the company finally granted new boosts in pay in 1953 (fillion, n.d.), but the experience highlighted just how blunt their one economic tool would be and how frequently they would have to use strike action to make progress. conclusion in the current climate, there are obvious problems with diving into a deep discussion of just what political economic strategy labour should advocate to deal with inflation: the labour movement has been too weakened in recent decades to rigorously defend its rank and file, let alone try to force through an ambitious policy agenda (reed, sonti, and gindin, 2022; gindin and clarke, 2022; palmer, 2022).8 recent years have seen some notable signs of renewal – and this review of the history shows that it should be no surprise that it occurred during a time of rising prices. as the labour movement tries to continue to grow its organizing and bargaining strength, and become a strong voice advocating for the working class, heeding some of the lessons of previous episodes of high inflation will certainly help. in particular, we have seen that workers have been unusually open to supporting unions and going on strike in every period of high inflation. this is in part because they feel rising prices more acutely than others; workers, who generally so often struggle to get by, feel the pinch when the costs of essentials spike. but there are further characteristics of inflationary times – or the times just preceding them – that encourage labour activism. first, inflation tends to occur during or just after conditions that 8 for readers interested in policy options regarding inflation, sonti (2022) offers an insightful discussion. see also sonti’s phd thesis (2017). 12 raise workers’ expectations – particularly favourable labour markets – and confidence that going on strike may produce results. second, inflation tends to occur at times when the workers feel – rightly – that they have already made substantial sacrifices. when union activists tell workers that they should not be expected to give up still more, workers have been inclined to listen. third, inflation tends to happen after periods when governments have been very active in the economy. this encourages workers to become more politicized, and governments cannot wave away workers’ demands for relief by pretending that they have no role to play regarding economic issues. fourth, high inflation tends to occur when elites are failing to come to grips with economic and political conditions. when dominant ideologies cease to look like “common sense” and the future seems increasingly up for grabs, it is to be expected that workers would be encouraged to assert themselves. finally, elites do settle consistently on certain remedies to inflation – and they are always measures that inflict more pain on the working class. politics in inflationary times have tended to be stark: hopes for prosperity for all diminish greatly, and there is a clear sense that some group will have to suffer so that inflation can be controlled. workers thus have little illusion that they will not have to fight to avoid more misery. while labour’s recent rebound has been comparatively modest, all of these conditions for further activism are still easily detectable in the post-covid economy if high inflation were to recur. such a return of inflation is hardly to be hoped for, especially as it has hurt workers so often in the past. but if it does happen, the labour movement should understand the importance of rallying workers against further sacrifices, and of the enthusiastic response they are likely to get. working people have indeed taken far too much of the brunt of recent crises – including the pandemic and the recent inflation – while the richest have profited spectacularly. for instance, in addition to increase in wealth for the richest 10% noted by ferguson and storm (2023), there has been an even greater concentration of wealth at the very top. the total real wealth of the richest one percent in the u.s. rose by more than nine trillion, from $37.7 trillion to $46.9 trillion (realtimeinequality.org). there is widespread sentiment that the rich should take their share of the burden, with 89 percent of canadians supporting a wealth tax (hemingway, 2023). there is special outrage at corporations – especially in the grocery sector – that have hiked their prices and padded their profits during the pandemic and afterward. a social media page that helped organize a boycott of one chain – entitled “loblaws is out of control” – currently has over 94,000 members (reddit.com). in the chaos of the trump presidency and his cabinet of billionaires, one of few certainties is that he his going to make these inequities worse, between his tax cuts, trade wars, and reductions in social programs. as trump lays siege to the foundations of democracy and the rule of law in america, it may seem that this history of inflation and labour’s response is hardly a pressing concern. and yet. and yet… by far the most commonly cited factor that could lead to a collapse of trump’s support is rising prices, especially as they will be an undeniable result of his policies. it is too much to expect that a resurgence of inflation would be a magic elixir that will bring the labour movement back to robust health. but if unionists and 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https://wellbeingeconomy.org/here-we-go-first-wellbeing-economy-governments-policy-lab-underway-katherine-trebeck https://winnipeg.citynews.ca/2019/02/02/internal-docs-shows-many-federal-departments-not-meeting-gender-analysis-targets/ https://winnipeg.citynews.ca/2019/02/02/internal-docs-shows-many-federal-departments-not-meeting-gender-analysis-targets/ global framework agreements: building and protecting space for local collective bargaining through international organization euan gibb1 abstract: the definitive rejection of any substantive linkage between labour rights and the strong enforcement mechanisms of the world trade organization in 1994 provoked the global trade union movement to develop alternative strategies to increase respect for the ilo’s core labour standards. this article critically assesses the rapid and recent growth of international framework agreements signed between global unions and multinational companies as one labour movement strategy to reduce competition between workers in different countries by organizing to guarantee that all workers have basic, internationally recognized labour rights respected no matter where they live and work. keywords: trade unions; international solidarity; global unions; core labour standards; labour rights introduction the degree of ‘transnationalization’ of the top 100 non-financial transnational corporations (tncs) has steadily intensified throughout the period of neoliberal globalization. the numbers of foreign assets, sales and employment of these companies have all grown during this period (unctad, 2007). by the year 2000, approximately 1/3 of world trade was intra-company and another third involved at least one tnc (scherrer and greven, 2001, 76). while greatly variable across sectors and countries, intra-company trade has continued to intensify (oecd, 2010) and reflects the evolution and expansion of global 1 euan gibb is the interamericas regional assistant for the global union, public services international, based in são paulo, brazil. he completed a masters degree in labour studies at mcmaster university in canada and another in labour policies and globalization at the global labour university in berlin, germany. some of the most important themes that euan is currently working on with psi are tax justice, corporate power and the development of regional anti-racism, lgbtqi and young workers’ committees. 236 | populism, power and protest value/production chains. recent data shows a notable rise of developing country tncs (ogrean and herciu, 2016). all these indicators describe a situation in which an increasing number of works continue to be ‘integrated’ into the global economy. these indicators also depict a globalization that allows tncs to pit workers in one region of the world against workers in another as the extensity of production networks increases, facilitating what streek (1992) referred to as ‘regime competition’. more competition between workers fuels a downward pressure on labour standards. competition between workers in the north and south has intensified simultaneously as in different regions of the south. the relative power of tncs operating under these circumstances has increased. since 1985, union density in the oecd countries has fallen from 30% to 17%, and collective agreement coverage has fallen from 45% to 33%. (oecd, 2017) deepening neoliberal globalization and the related increased abdication of regulatory roles of nation states enhances the downward pressure on workers’ basic rights. as a result, workers’ organizations at the international level have increased efforts to develop independent strength and capacity of local trade unions to act. the struggle to build this capacity and enforce basic rights is fundamental to the trade union movement and its revitalization (ng, 2001). the historic role and activities of the global union federations (gufs) situate them perfectly to do this work. the gufs are “autonomous, selfgoverning, and democratic organizations,” (icftu, 2001, 24) that are made up of national member unions. similar to local and national unions, gufs were sectorspecific organizations that have gone through intense consolidation and amalgamation processes over the last 30 years. they operate largely on consensus. their main functions are to provide information, leadership training, support and coordination of solidarity work throughout national unions who are operating in industries that are internationalized. (moody, 1997, 234). as tncs internationalized their production and supply-chains in this period, national unions and the gufs internationalized their work. as capital went global, so did workers’ organizations. throughout the 1970s, the gufs, together with member unions in the most internationalized industries were active in supporting and developing ‘world company councils’ where local and/or national union representatives that work for or represent workers at the same company would get together to exchange information and, in some cases, coordinate their activities. by the end global framework agreements | 237 of the 1980s, national-level collective bargaining, the promotion of protectionist trade policies and efforts to take wages out of competition (between unionized and non-unionized workers) had already lost much of their effectiveness due to trade liberalization, heightened capital mobility and declining welfare states (stillerman, 2003, 580). global framework agreements: three decades of experience experiences gained with this international work contributed to the innovation of global framework agreements (gfas). workers, their unions and the gufs have accumulated almost three decades of experience in the development and refinement of gfas as a tool to improve compliance with basic workers´ rights in this context of neoliberal globalization. 238 | populism, power and protest these documents are negotiated and signed by senior management of multinational corporations and the relevant guf. the first gfa was signed by the international union of food workers (iuf) on august 23, 1988. one hundred and twenty-two gfas have been signed. they apply directly to roughly 11 million workers; the equivalent of the entire population of greece or portugal. of the world's top 100 non-financial tncs, ranked by foreign assets, (unctad, 2013) almost a quarter of them have signed gfas. as their title indicates, these documents are designed to establish frameworks. gfas do not stipulate wages or detailed working conditions. while there is some variance, almost every gfa uses the international labour organization’s core labour standards (cls) as a basis.2 the purpose of these agreements is to ensure compliance with cls, including at suppliers; achieve recognition and consolidation of the guf as a negotiating partner while creating a transnational mechanism for the resolution of conflicts (in some cases during disputes) at local level; deepening cooperation between unions and opening / securing space for unions to organize locally (fichter et al., 2011). in the present context of neoliberal capitalism and intensifying pressures of global competitiveness, more and more workers in tncs are being told that national management cannot make decisions (tørres and gunnes, 2003, 6). this means that there is clearly a need for an instrument like gfas. former general secretary of the iuf, dan gallin has argued that, “the point of international bargaining is to engage the responsibility of the company at the level 2 freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining (convention no. 87 and no. 98), elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour (convention no. 29 and no. 105), effective abolition of child labour (convention no. 138 and no. 182), and elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation (convention no. 100 and no. 111). global framework agreements | 239 where decisions are actually made” (gallin, 2005). the gufs have an increasingly important role to play in this context (wells, 1998, 9). content comparison and analysis gfas have been about organizing since the beginning. the first agreement signed between the iuf and danone states that its purpose is “…to provide space within the specific global company’s operations for unions to organize freely and for workers to exercise their rights within the company free of any form of obstruction – particularly the right to form or join a union” (iuf, 2006). despite variance in emphasis, the content of the framework agreements themselves maintains a high degree of continuity across the different global unions and over time. more than three quarters of the signed agreements contain explicit reference to the cls of the ilo. many contain clauses focused on occupational health and safety, working time and hours of work, ‘fair’ wages, education and training, the environment and workplace restructuring. the substantive content of clauses in these areas usually obliges management to respect national legislation. most of the gfas also contain references to ilo conventions that are not part of the cls. ilo convention number 135, on discrimination against workers’ representatives and having access to carry out their functions is referred to most commonly. convention 155 on occupational safety and health, convention 1 on hours of work, convention 95 on regular payment of wages directly to workers are also common. most of the gfas include clauses related to suppliers and sub-contractors. strong versions of supplier language articulate a clear commitment on the part of signatories to assist suppliers’ efforts to guarantee that cls are respected. this may include the ultimate consequence of termination of commercial relationships for repeated violations. weak language uses variations of “support and encourage” suppliers to respect cls. the number of workers covered by gfas expands well beyond eleven million when suppliers are included. almost all the gfas make clear statements about communication of the agreement to all workers and suppliers. some of the examples this language oblige management to inform that the gfa exists. others state that management is responsible to inform all managers in all locations and the guf is responsible to inform trade union affiliates and workers. several agreements posit a non-specific “joint responsibility.” 240 | populism, power and protest while some of the gfas have expiry dates, the majority do not. industriall3 agreements rarely include an expiry date. the early icem (now industriall) agreements were the most likely to include an expiry date; commonly valid for period of two years. most gfas include language on dispute resolution. these clauses specifically mention the signatories (almost always the guf) or they recognize the guf as a legitimate party. few agreements contain clauses that explicitly commit management to neutrality in organizing campaigns (other than stated commitments to respect ilo convention 87 on the right to organize) or that they will not hire replacement workers during strikes or lockouts. roughly half of the gfas refer to other documents. most commonly, the un global compact, the ilo declaration on fundamental principles and rights at work, the un declaration of human rights, the oecd guidelines for multinational enterprises, and various other, company specific, usually unilateral corporate social responsibility documents. there is a high degree of similarity between the gfas despite the wide diversity of tncs that have signed them. where differences between the agreements exist, they are typically questions of emphasis, not differences in the underlying premise or structure. internationalization of bargaining? the development of gfas does not represent a ‘scaling up’ of collective bargaining. early on, the ituc claimed that the gfas “can be seen as the start of international collective bargaining” (icftu, 2001). a typical optimistic argument claims that “when companies were local, unions had local agreements; when companies were national, unions had national agreements. now in the global economy we need global agreements” (uni, 2005). an intuitively appealing argument that is unfounded. gfas are not designed to substitute for local or national agreements in any way. gfas don’t replace national agreements because there is no regulatory framework for any form of labour relations at the international level (icftu, 2001, 91). nationally negotiated collective agreements are legally binding documents. they contain clear expiry dates and consequences for not reaching an agreement. definitive dispute resolution relies on national or sub-national labour tribunals and courts. 3 industriall represents workers in the mining, energy and manufacturing sectors. global framework agreements | 241 in contrast, enforcement of a gfa relies on the ability to assemble enough political, moral and sometimes financial (strikes, campaigns, boycotts) pressure on tncs. trade unions in the home country of the tnc often lead the way in the struggle for enforcement of workers’ rights regardless of where violations have occurred. while gufs are increasingly being recognized as an international actor by managers in tncs, this is not equivalent to the legal status of local unions. this is distinct from many national or sub-national frameworks that require management to bargain in good faith with a specific, legally defined and often ‘certified’ local union. this absence of legally prescribed criteria and applicability is one of the strengths of the gfas because the rights and obligations that are articulated in the documents are a ‘floor,’ leaving room for upward mobility, local flexibility and a diversity of tactics. also, a clearly defined group of workers that are covered by any of the gfas does not exist. the complex and ever-changing ownership structures and sub-contracting practices of modern tncs mean that the adaptability offered by gfas is valuable to unions. in principle, a union can make the case that everyone is covered by the gfa. the position that everyone working for the signatory tnc (and its suppliers) is covered by the gfa means that it applies to unorganized workers. consequently, not everyone who is covered is at the negotiating table. given the high-level relationships required to negotiate a gfa, the massive number of workers covered and the extensity of subcontracting relationships, many workers do not even know about gfas. this leaves the process open to the criticism that it is ‘top-down’. these agreements are signed at senior levels of management, far from any shop floor. the premise is that gfas can deepen and improve the regulation of the workplace, not replace other instruments (graham, 2003). there is a strong argument that international bargaining may be necessary to defend and complement national efforts (hammer, 2004). dan gallin (2005) argues that “there is no qualitative difference between local, national and international bargaining: bargaining at different levels is interconnected and forms a continuum.” another example of unenforceable corporate public relations? some authors have criticized gfas claiming they are an example of corporate social responsibility (csr). however, they are fundamentally 242 | populism, power and protest different. csr offers a rhetoric of improving labour standards without substance. csr policies are a corporate response to bad publicity. they are unilateral initiatives created to avoid legislation, regulation, litigation or prosecution (gordon and miyake, 2000). given that the legal construction of the corporation requires a pursuit of self-interest and systemic law breaking (bakan, 2004), any claim to social responsibility made by a tncs needs to be viewed critically. in contrast, gfas are a product of trade union experience with industrial relations. (baker, 2011) most csr schemes are unilateral, do not commit tncs to accept unions, do not include suppliers and sub-contractors, contribute to a privatization of standards, may provide substitutes for independent unions (frundt, 2004), fail to include specific language on basic labour standards, (herrnstadt, 2001) and often contain weak or no language on implementation (miller and grinter, 2003). in contrast, gfas are negotiated documents, making them unique among international instruments (papadakis, 2011). independent workers’ representatives are involved from the start. one of the key clauses included across gfas is the recognition of unions. another important criticism of gfas is that they are negotiated in a topdown way within the european works councils (ewcs). many agreements have been signed with companies headquartered in europe. only twenty percent of agreements are with tncs headquartered outside of europe. unifor research director, bill murnighan (2017) remains supportive of the concept of the ifas but global framework agreements | 243 suggests that they are a product of (and thus constrained by) a european codeterministic culture and structure. trade unions and gufs are the most important and essential actors involved with the negotiation and implementation of the gfas. this remains true regardless of where a given tnc is headquartered. “a strong and effective gfa requires that all the unions in the given company should be involved from the beginning in all stages of the negotiation, then of the implementation, by means of an appropriate democratic structure. a top-down "gfa" is a sham as is any contract negotiated behind the backs of the workers the negotiator purports to represent.” gallin (2005) rather than ignore or discard ifas because of links with ewcs, fichter and mccallum (2015, s66) call for a “union strategy of ‘conflict partnership’, combining dialogue and battle…to realize fully the potential of gfas to contribute to an effective regulatory institutionalization of global labour relations.” this strategy overcomes the inherent structural limitations of the ewcs while valuing and incorporating the traditions of both ‘partnership’ and ‘conflict’ strategies at the local union level trade unions operate within extremely diverse systems of labour relations despite the homogenizing power of neoliberal globalization. decentralization and diversity fit perfectly with gfas. various companies with highly complex, decentralized supplier networks (h&m, siemens, securitas, inditex etc.) where tncs ‘shop around’ for suppliers have signed gfas. in the case of inditex, one of the world’s largest fashion retailers in the world and owner of the zara brand, the title of the gfa includes the following phrase: agreement “on the implementation of international labour standards throughout the inditex supply chain.” further, uni has negotiated gfas with four of the eight largest companies in the hypermarket sector, carrefour, aeon, metro and auchan. the reach of gfas is deep, diverse and continues to expand into areas with predominantly supplierdriven supply chains. perhaps the most significant criticism of gfas is that very little changes when an agreement is signed. gfas are not like collective agreements that are clear and legally enforceable, leading to a claim that the gfas are ineffective. gfas appear weak because their effective implementation requires the slow, difficult and often frustrating building of independent local trade union organizations as a prerequisite. similar to all trade union organizing, there are no short-cuts. 244 | populism, power and protest on the ground evidence after three decades, a diversity of experiences is now widely available. gallin (2005) asserts that they are designed to open “…a space for affiliated unions to consolidate their rights in the company and negotiate their national or local agreements under more favourable conditions...” the consistent inclusion of ilo conventions 87 and 98 on the right to organize and bargain collectively (the ‘enabling’ conventions) supports his argument. nobody knows the priorities of local issues as intimately as local workers and their trade unions. gfas allow that workers at the local level to define and pursue their most important issues in a broader context of heightened mutual support. additionally, in circumstances where there are no unions, gfas can help to create what don wells has called ‘coordinative pre-bargaining’ (wells, 1998, 9) where communication between a nascent local union and management can begin under improved conditions. even with weak, broad language, gfas can help to create density in a sector thus leading to stronger agreements in the future and increasing the potential for a sector-wide agreements. getting employers to recognize an independent union and to sit at the negotiating table still requires (and will continue to require) an engaged and mobilized local group of workers. despite the research showing that management resistance to tnc subsidiaries respecting union recognition, (fichter and stevis, 2013; fichter et al., 2012) there is a lot of evidence that just such groups of workers have been able to use gfas to support local organizing. workers have used the uni – carrefour agreement to solve local disputes in korea (stevis and boswell, 2008, 130) and turkey. the icem– statoil agreement has been used in nigeria, the us (icftu, 2001, 100) and poland for similar ends. there are many cases of industriall gfas being used to access suppliers. the clearest assessment of any type of agreement comes from its effectiveness when workers attempt to organize independent unions (frundt, 2004; tørres and gunnes, 2003, 3). many affiliates of different gufs have reported organizing breakthroughs using the gfas. polish affiliates have been able to organise nine ikea-owned companies. a malaysian timber union has organised two ikea suppliers. north american unions have used the icem agreements with skanska and hochtief to establish unions at construction sites where the right to organize was being openly violated. workers representatives have been elected in faber castell factories in malaysia and china (ifbww, 2004). farm workers on banana plantations in honduras, ecuador and colombia (riisgaard, 2003) and hotel workers in the uk, new zealand, canada, indonesia global framework agreements | 245 the us and various african countries (wills, 2002) have all used gfas to support local organizing. the telefónica, bosch, chiquita, leoni, psa peugeot citroën and securitas gfas have all been used internationally to help in local organizing efforts (papadakis, 2011). according to a brazilian union, the telefónica gfa was key to the organization of call centre workers (uni, 2006). uni commerce has reported that in “pakistan, colombia and russia, traditionally some of the most dangerous and difficult countries to organise in, uni commerce has been able to breakthrough for workers due to gfas” (uni, 2017). uni´s gfa with iss, one of the worlds largest property services tncs has been used by workers in australia and in the netherlands to support organizing (fichter and mccallum, 2015, 75). a turkish automotive parts producer named ditaş fired 400 workers the day after they applied to have their union certified. the gfa with the imf (now industriall) and daimler was key to bringing this employer to the table to negotiate a first collective agreement. then imf general secretary, marcello malentacchi, stated that “it is clear fundamental workers' rights were achieved at ditaş not only due to the hard work of the union but also the backup of our framework agreement at daimlerchrysler” (imf, 2003). global unions have helped organizing efforts with transfers of money to affiliates used to hire organizers and build local structures. gufs have also repeatedly run training sessions, projects and campaigns. it is implicit in the negotiation of these agreements that effective pressure can be applied from above. there is a strong and central role for the gufs in supporting local struggles by demanding that senior managers at a relevant tnc guarantee compliance with the agreement. the majority of the gfas create another seat at the table for labour by having gufs recognized by tncs. negotiation of gfas allows unions to extend what wills refers to as a “multiscalar strategy” allowing the gufs to actively support locally based (and controlled) organizing and bargaining efforts. an ongoing relationship between the tnc and the relevant guf is established. in effect, this means that there is an increased capacity for intervention during disputes (wills, 2001). this strategy has already provided a route around recalcitrant local or even national management. a specific contribution that gfas have the potential to make is an erosion of the notion that jobs are good in the north and bad in the south. as gfas are used in the process of bringing attention to violations everywhere (as those noted above), the divisions between north and south can be eroded. dan gallin (2005) argues that all of the “iuf gfas apply equally to all operations of a company, north or south, east or west. of course a gfa will benefit in the first 246 | populism, power and protest instance the weaker unions in the company (usually, but not always, in the south) through the support of the stronger unions (usually in the north).” there is no discrimination in any of the gfas regarding how they are used or by whom. significantly, local and national unions all over the world have experimented with the use of the gfas. trade union strategies to implement cls are adapted and evolved as economic and political opportunity structures change over time. the gfas are an example of an increasingly important instrument aimed at protecting a minimum set of rights. they provide one tool in the repertoire of workers and their representatives used in efforts to make the ilo cls more a description of reality rather than a normative statement. gfas only become valuable when there is a strong commitment to organizing ‘on the ground’ on the part of local trade unionists (miller and grinter, 2003, 114). without this commitment, the framework of a floor of common rights is of little use. when the commitment to organizing is present, gfas may increase the efficacy of cls by contributing to the international co-ordination of workers’ and unions’ local efforts to enforce their own rights. this must be understood as an “on-going and long-term process” (ifbww, 2004). more than just local commitment, a multiorganizational perspective is needed because of the massive diversity and fragmentation of implementation contexts. implementation needs to involve various actors simultaneously with very different cultures, even within the same tnc (fichter and stevis, 2013). conclusion to implement gfas more effectively, more workers must become aware that the documents exist. there is no shortage of evidence that workers are willing to organize, take risks, and try to improve their own situation. when more workers know about gfas, more support for their efforts to organize themselves and demand their rights can be offered. additionally, it may be possible to negotiate gfas directly into some collective agreements. in order to make them ‘stick’ at the local level (murnighan, 2017). this has occurred in the european textile industry with codes of conduct since 1997 (weber, 1997). inclusion of gfas in collective agreements could offer a route to legal recourse in the case of violations of the negotiated terms. the gufs could also negotiate a ‘choice of jurisdiction’ clause into the gfas that would give recourse to a local court, or labour tribunal. the ilo could even open such a jurisdiction for the administration and settlement of disputes. global framework agreements | 247 in all cases, regardless of where disputes may be heard, the ilo should have what is called ‘persuasive jurisdiction’ for interpretation of the cls. this is not a legally binding interpretation of the cls, but it is often used to develop context in various legal systems. a statement to this effect could be included in the gfas. practical use of gfas provides a solid basis upon which to build further common agendas between trade unionists in different parts of the world in the future. the increasing use of gfas has brought the role and functions of the gufs into sharper focus. effective international coordination to implement ifas can be as “useful and as hamstrung as the global union federations themselves” (murnighan, 2017). historic contradictions and limitations have not disappeared. however, in the context of increasing intensity and extensiveness of the globalization of tncs the possible contributions of the gufs have shifted towards more substantive contributions to global coordination and mobilization of affiliated unions. 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(2002). bargaining for space to organise in the global economy: a review of the accor-iuf trade union rights agreement. review of international political economy 9(4), 675-700. global framework agreements | 251 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 35, 18-27 (2025) the forgotten ones: drug overdose death's since covid-19 fina pirrone1 abstract: drug overdose deaths had become a matter of concern leading up to the year 2019 but became strongly overshadowed once the pandemic was declared. in addition, previous research showed that safe injection sites were not effective in reducing the curve of drug overdose deaths. this review compares the number of apparent opioid toxicity related deaths and covid-19 related deaths. this gives way to an analysis of the lack of funding given to the drug overdose death crisis compared to the overwhelming support for the covid-19 pandemic. findings of this comparison indicated that over 400% more canadian federal funding had been allocated to the covid-19 pandemic compared to that of the drug overdose crisis, although covid-19 had only experienced approximately 30% more deaths than the drug overdose crisis. thus, showing great inequalities experienced by the overdose crisis during and post-pandemic. keywords: harm reduction; safe injection site; policy; canada introduction the covid-19 pandemic brought forward many challenges requiring immediate adaptive strategies. this was especially seen in the sudden spike of drug overdose deaths in canada. drug overdose deaths had become a matter of concern leading up to the year 2019 but became strongly overshadowed once the pandemic was declared. during the pandemic, drug overdose deaths nearly doubled across canada (pirrone, 2023). substance use was on the rise and various health units across canada advised on their websites that overdose death data was not being kept up to date. while it is crucial to acknowledge the profound devastation wrought by covid-19, it is equally important to recognize that, throughout the course of the pandemic, the drug overdose death crisis continued unabated, largely overshadowed by the covid-19 public health emergency. previous research indicated that safe injection sites were not effective in reducing the curve of drug overdose deaths (pirrone, 2023). to ensure clarity, however, although safe injection sites did not reduce the curve of drug overdose deaths, safe injection sites did save lives and additional drug overdose deaths would have occurred without them. as an example, in ottawa, canada there were 1,111 total overdoses reversed by either naloxone, oxygen or rescue breathing in 2019 at their site (pirrone, 2023). further, safe injection sites are only one possible intervention method, as there are other possible intervention methods that continue to develop. continuing along, comparing the number of apparent opioid toxicity-related deaths and covid-19-related deaths allows for an interesting comparison. this gives way to an analysis of the lack of funding given to the drug overdose death crisis compared to the overwhelming support for the covid-19 pandemic. statistics illustrate over 400% more canadian federal government funding had been allocated to the covid-19 pandemic compared to that of the drug overdose crisis, although covid-19 had only experienced approximately 30% more deaths than the drug overdose crisis. thus, showing great inequalities experienced by the overdose crisis duringand post-pandemic. 1 finalba (fina) pirrone is pursuing her doctoral studies at the university of windsor in the argumentation studies program with a research focus on harm reduction and safe injection site policy implementation. fina is also a bilingual employee at the city of windsor. 19 background and context with a view to research first conducted in 2022 (pirrone, 2023), it can be remembered that the drug overdose death spike from 2019 to 2022 was seen heavily in vancouver, ottawa, toronto, and london. windsor, ontario was considered within this research as, at that time, they were gearing up to open the doors to their first safe injection site. in 2019, ottawa reported 141 overdose deaths, toronto reported 593 overdose deaths, london reported 123 overdose deaths, windsor reported 82 overdose deaths, and vancouver reported 248 overdose deaths. in 2020, ottawa reported 239 overdose deaths, toronto reported 1075 overdose deaths, london reported 212 overdose deaths, windsor reported 126 overdose deaths, and vancouver reported 421 overdose deaths. what becomes concerning is the recognition of how the overdose death numbers nearly doubled in all cities mentioned. please refer to figure 1.1 for a visual representation of these statistics. figure 1 overdose deaths by municipality, 2019-2020 moving outwards, the numbers across canada from 2019 to 2020 are very similar in the way that the curve moves upwards consistently, almost doubling during that time frame. according to the public health agency of canada in 2019, for every 100,000 people, there were 3,718 apparent opioid toxicity deaths. for 2020, there were 6,422 apparent opioid toxicity deaths for every 100,000 (phac, 2024). moving on, 2021 saw 8,082 apparent opioid toxicity deaths for every 100,000 people, and 2022 saw 7,525 for every 100,000 people (phac, 2024). this was the first subtle decrease seen within this timeframe. 20 it is important to make clear, however, that the statistics above illustrate only those that are related to apparent opioid overdoses, and no other drugs. unfortunately, statistics on drug overdose deaths in which there is no trace of opioids are not released through canada’s health infobase. for definitions, common opioids can include codeine, fentanyl, morphine, and oxycodone (ccsua, 2024). this means that other drugs, known as stimulants, that can cause drug overdoses are not included in the overdose death reports. drugs of this nature may include cocaine and methamphetamine (peavy, banta-green & owens, 2021). as such, there is a comparison gap in total drug and opioid-related overdose deaths and covid-19 deaths. nonetheless, keeping this in mind, we can continue our comparison. as there had not been clear statistics for covid-19-related deaths in 2019, death statistics for the years 2020, 2021, 2022, and january to june 2023 will be discussed. looking first at 2020, there were 16,151 covid-19-related deaths in canada (deaths 2020, 2022). in 2021, there were 14,446 covid-19related deaths in canada, and in 2022, there were 19,716 covid-19-related deaths in canada, the year in which covid-19 variants began to appear (statistic canada, 2023). as such, the number of covid-19 deaths has continued to increase. as of the time of the review, the canadian health infobase has indicated that weekly covid-19 deaths remain low (phac, 2024). for a visual aid in illustrating the comparison, please refer to figure 1.2. figure 2 apparent opioid toxicity deaths compared to covid-19 deaths, 2019 2022 year apparent opioid toxicity deaths covid-19 deaths 2019 3,718 per 100,000 2020 6,422 per 100,000 16,151 2021 8,082 per 100,000 14,446 2022 7,525 per 100,000 19,716 now looking at cumulative numbers, there have been 58,348 total covid-19 deaths as of february 20, 2024 (phac, 2024). between january 2016, the month in which apparent opioid toxicity deaths began being traced, to june 2023, there had been 40,642 apparent opioid toxicity deaths (phac, 2024). although, as of february 2024, the remainder of apparent opioid overdose death statistics has not been released, a rough comparison based on available data is possible. please refer to figure 1.3 for visual clarification. figure 3 apparent opioid toxicity deaths between january 2016 – june 2023 compared to covid-19 deaths as of february 2024 apparent opioid toxicity deaths as of june 2023 covid-19 deaths as of february 2024 40,642 58,348 for the sake of conducting as close as a fair comparison, we will be adding 3,970 to the apparent opioid toxicity death count to create a very rough estimate of the amount of apparent opioid toxicity deaths. this is because the canadian health infobase declared that from january 2023 – june 2023, there had been 3,970 apparent opioid toxicity deaths (phac, 2024). we will be using the second 3,970 to represent, again very roughly, the unavailable statistics of july 2023 21 – december 2023. as such, this will bring the predicted number of apparent opioid toxicity deaths as of december 2023 to 44,612. using these numbers, we subtract the amount of reported covid19 deaths as of february 2024 from the predicted number of apparent opioid toxicity death counts as of december 2023. equaling roughly 13,736 more, or approximately 30% more, covid-19 deaths than apparent opioid toxicity deaths. figure 4 predicted number of apparent opioid toxicity deaths compared to reported covid-19 deaths predicted number apparent opioid toxicity deaths as of december 2023 covid-19 deaths as of february 2024 44,612 58,348 difference of 13,736 using this information, we are now able to look at the amount of allocated funding to the drug and opioid overdose death crisis and the covid-19 pandemic. this piece will look solely at funding already allocated, not funding that is promised in the future. looking first at the drug and opioid overdose death crisis, funding towards the cause coming from the federal government remains spiritic. according to the most recent canadian budget of 2023 published in march, more than $800 million have been invested by the federal government to the canadian drugs and substances strategies since 2017 (dfc, 2023). on the other hand, as of the published date of june 2023, the fraser institute states the canadian federal government's total funds allocated to covid-19 was $359.7 billion since 2020 (fuss & hill, 2023). although there is a discrepancy in the year in which the funding commences, that being the funding for the opioid crisis starting in 2017 and the funding for covid-19 in 2020, a comparison in funding can still be completed. $359.7 billion minus $800 million equals $358.9 billion. this means that covid-19 has received $358.9 billion more dollars, or 449.6% more, in 3 years from the canadian federal government than the canadian drugs and substances strategies, aiding the opioid and drug overdose crisis, over 6 years. please see figure 1.5 for a chart image. thus, illustrating the largest disparity experienced by the drug and opioid overdose crisis. figure 1.5 federal funds allocated to the canadian drugs and substances strategies since 2017 and to covid-19 since 2020 funds allocated to the canadian drugs and substances strategies since 2017 funds allocated to covid-19 since 2020 $800 million $359.7 billion difference of $358.9 billion 22 allocation of funding the allocation of funding and the understanding of where funds are distributed for both the canadian drugs and substance strategies and covid-19 is important. as a reminder, the canadian federal government did not publish an official 2020 budget due to covid-19. looking first at where funds were allocated for the canadian drugs and substance strategies, one can see the vast areas in which the funding is placed by the federal level of government. the minister of health announced the canadian drugs and substances strategy on december 12, 2016, in which the 2017 federal government acknowledged the epidemic and took an expansive step towards reducing the lives lost at the hands of drugs and opioids. in 2017, the federal government provided support to implement the opioid action plan within the canadian drugs and substance strategy by providing $65 million over five years (dfgc, 2017). $10 million and $6 million were also provided to british columbia and alberta, respectively, to assist in combating their public health emergencies (dfgc, 2017). this budget further proposed $100 million over 5 years to the canadian drugs and substances strategy, starting in 2017 – 2018 (dfgc, 2017). the 2018 canadian federal budget recalls the “federal actions to date” in which it is reminded of the over $100 million that was proposed in 2017 to support the initiatives of the canadian drugs and substance strategy, as well as the millions provided to specific provinces that were experiencing high influxes of opioid-related public health emergencies (dfgc, 2018). the way the minimal information was presented in the 2018 budget indicates that no new funding initiatives were created or started within that fiscal year. the 2019 canadian federal budget saw new proposals, in which a proposed $30.5 million over 5 years would be allocated to address gaps within harm reduction and treatment in canada, focusing on safe supplies, and creating more accessibility to naloxone and naloxone training (dfgc, 2019). a continuation of $1 million following the 5 years was also proposed within the 2019 canadian federal budget (dfgc, 2019). taking a holistic approach, the 2021 budget focused on continuing to fund treatment, hard reduction, and prevention within canadian communities by proposing an additional $116 million over two years, commencing within that fiscal period (dfgc, 2021). the 2022 canadian federal budget takes a similar approach in which $100 million had been proposed to be allocated to health canada for the substance use and addictions program starting in 2022 (dfgc, 2022). 2023 focuses on what the canadian federal budget calls evidencebased services and supports, as well as focusing on breaking down drug trafficking organizations (dfgc, 2023). a large, new proposal is introduced in which $359.2 million over five years with $5.7 million ongoing to assist in the growth of the goals of the canadian drugs and substances strategy (dfgc, 2023). this proposal includes funds being allocated to the substance use and addictions program of health canada to build community-based supports, additional youth substance abuse community-based programs, newer drug checking services, and provide better access to safer supply, invest in public health care and affordable dental care, as well as investment into greater data collection on substance-related harms and deaths, and analysis of the drugs within the illegal drug supply (dfgc, 2023). under the same proposal, funds to develop an app for paramedics and first responders that monitors overdoses, and an allocation of funds to the royal canadian mounted police, public services and procurement canada, and global affairs canada to continue fighting against drug trafficking are seen (dfgc, 2023). 2023 saw the first federal stretch to international territory to assist in tackling the drug and overdose death crisis. 23 now shifting focus over to the funding provided to covid-19 from the canadian federal government, it is much more expansive than what is seen by the canadian drugs and substances strategies. based on the 2021 canadian federal budget, covid-19 saw $3.4 billion go to vaccine research, development and production, and $2 billion to a safe return to class fund (dfgc, 2021). the safe restart agreement received $13.8 billion from the nearly $20 billion agreement which includes top-ups for smaller jurisdictions, testing, contact tracing, data management, personal protective equipment, supporting vulnerable populations, and health care capacity (dfgc, 2021). in total, $4.6 billion was allocated to support provinces and territories in addressing their healthcare system priorities which include critical healthcare system needs, additional support for the territories, and a proposed amount to help healthcare systems recover (dfgc, 2021). $1.3 billion has been administered for vaccine deployment and administration while $2.5 billion has been provided to support indigenous communities (dfgc, 2021). personal protective equipment (ppe) received $2 billion which included ppe and related equipment for essential workers and additional ppe procurement for the healthcare sector (dfgc, 2021). 2021 was a key year while continuing to combat covid-19. the years 2022 and 2023 started to move away from emergency covid-19 response funding and towards preventive measures and succession planning. in 2022, the canadian federal budget focused on implementing a plan that would ensure federal debt remained on a downward track following the pandemic (dfgc, 2022). this included an already invested $2.7 billion to assist in providing vaccines, testing, and therapeutics to middleand low-income countries (dfgc, 2022). the 2022 canadian federal budget further proposed to provide millions of dollars to global affairs canada to ensure the country continues to take part in the global fight against covid-19 (dfgc, 2022). as well as millions to the canadian institute of health research and the indigenous services canada for the indigenous community support fund (dfgc, 2022). further funding was allocated to support vaccine procurement, deployment, and administration, contact tracing and data management, procurement of ppe, medical equipment, provincial and territorial top-ups, as well as funding to assist in the hospital and surgery backlogs, to keep seniors safe within long term care facilities, and keep schools safe for students to return (dfgc, 2022). finally, proposed funds within the 2022 budget looked forward to supporting those experiencing further mental health concerns because of covid-19 (dfgc, 2022). moving to the 2023 canadian federal budget, the focus on rebuilding remains. much of the funding centered on students whose lives were greatly affected by the outfalls of covid-19 by providing grants of up to $6,000 for eligible students (dfgc, 2023). the federal government further outlined in its 2023 budget that it will continue to invest unprecedented funding to both the territorial and provincial health systems to assist in the acquisition of treatments, testing, ppe, vaccines, and varying public health measures (dfgc, 2023). finally, the budget provides a proposed $53.8 million to be provided to the canadian employment and social services development to assist in overpayments that have been found because of covid-19 emergency income supplemental support (dfgc, 2023). as demonstrated above, the federal funds allocated to covid-19 can be found in almost every corner of the country, as well as in parts across the world. 24 discussion and analysis on a grand scale, stating simply that covid-19 had received 449.6% more canadian federal funding than the canadian drugs and substances strategies may be overreaching. however, after discussing the areas of funding allocated by the canadian federal government, covid-19 has received funding in many more areas, both nationally and internationally, in comparison to the canadian drugs and substances strategies. covid-19 saw funding in places such as employment support payments, vaccine development, and citizen funding top-ups. this is funding that is quite different and expansive than the funding received in the substances strategies, thus emphasizing the disparities between the above-mentioned funding. it can, however, be frustrating to find reasons to explain the lack of transparency in drug and opioid-related deaths in the way the information is gathered and released publicly, in comparison to that of covid-19-related deaths. in no way do i wish to take any attention away from the great difficulty that covid-19 presented us with, nor the deaths that occurred during this time. however, the intention of this review has been to illustrate just how the drug and opioid overdose death crisis seems to continue to lack resources and funding, all while it has been experienced firsthand by canadians, especially how governments are able to allocate large amounts of funding to a crisis that are taking lives at a grueling rate. funding, if anything, when it comes to safe injection sites and harm reduction attempts as it relates to drug and opioid overdose death reduction is being cut. an example of such is the safepoint site, a safe injection site and harm reduction facility that opened in windsor, ontario on april 23, 2023, and closed its doors in december 2023 (wecoss, 2023). it has been illustrated within this review that covid-19 deaths have decreased heavily, while opioid-related deaths do decrease, but at a concerningly slow rate. it is to be reminded, again, that other drug or stimulantrelated death statistics are not available. however, the funding for harm reduction resources and research for the drug and opioid overdose death crisis has yet to see anywhere near the same amount of funding that the covid-19 crisis received. a rate of federal funding of 449.6% more when there are only 30% more deaths can be shocking to hear. this disparity in funding and resources could continue to greatly affect the lives of canadians now that the world is moving into a post-covid-19 era. a further point of concern and frustration is the way in which the statistics for each crisis are presented. when looking at apparent opioid toxicity deaths, the statistics present themselves in stating “x number of apparent opioid toxicity deaths per 100,000 people” while covid-19 reporting through the canadian health infobase is clear and concise with the exact number of deaths. thus, creating confusion and difficulty in gathering the statistics. taking a wider approach to this conversation by looking at contrasting arguments would bring forward the argument that covid-19 was unprecedented in the way that it was unknown. unknown in the sense that covid-19 could pass from person to person without rhyme or reason, taking the lives of people of all different levels of health. with that being said a person, for the most part, could not necessarily choose if they would catch covid-19, especially in the beginning before personal protective equipment came into play. on the other hand, a person, again for the most part, can control the drugs, such as deathly opioids, that go into their own body. this consideration creates another layer of frustrations and diversified opinions. on a similar point, covid-19 was one that did affect the day-to-day lives of almost every single canadian, from restrictions to mandatory masking. this was also a pandemic in which the causes of the illness, for a long time, were unknown which created additional chaos, panic, and anxiety. 25 again, as mentioned above, the causes of death for those who have passed due to apparent opioid toxicity are known. on a greater scale, nonetheless, people are dying. what does this say otherwise? covid-19 was an illness completely unknown, and continues to remain unknown to a certain extent, while the cause of the drug and opioid overdose death crisis is known. this statement can most definitely float either way. on one hand, individuals may say for the reason that covid-19 was so unknown, the amount of funding it received was defendable. on the other hand, one could say that the driving reason behind the drug and opioid overdose death crisis is, at base, the drugs. there are numerous additional layers, however, that are to be considered on both sides which then creates a long line of further questions. was the amount of funding allocated to covid-19 done out of fear, that the radical idea of allocating x amount of funds to the unknown would hopefully bring forward solutions? although the base cause of drug and opioid overdose deaths is known, where would additional funding go? would it go to preventative measures? more mental health resources? the idea here is that questions for those in support of either side or no side at all can most definitely produce extravagant counterarguments from almost any point of view. it is as this point that the consideration of stigmas should be noted and how these stigmas could create funding discrepancies, as well as biases in the mortality-based framework used to visualize drug use. the stigmatization towards those who use drugs and opioids may create barriers or unclear steps for combatting the overdose drug crisis. the approach looked at within this report, safe injection sites, is an approach that is geared to support those who may be experiencing additional barriers, such as mental health struggles and homelessness. however, it should be acknowledged that those who are experiencing addiction to drugs and opioids may be employed, may be those who have homes, and may be those who have loving and supporting friends and family. as such, stereotypes and biases can play a large role in how the use of safe injection sites, and the sites themselves are viewed. conclusion it is important that studies continue to be constructed, specifically as it surrounds the allocation of funding towards the canadian drugs and substances strategies in order to combat that drug and opioid overdose crisis. the data collection of drug and opioid overdoses remains scarce; however, a hopeful light is being shed on new ways, with greater emphasis on prevention methods as opposed to reactive measures. as indicated within this report, discrepancies of funding have become a concern coming out of covid-19, yet hopeful movements are being made towards attempting to address the overdose death crisis by better monitoring and gathering data, as well as allowing for comparatives from other states and countries to be conducted. it is hopeful that education campaigns could be conducted in order to assist in removing barriers and stigmatization surrounding those who use drugs and opioids. from this, it would be anticipated that the current ambiguous and confusing data that exist will become clearer, in turn, assisting to better allocate and support increased funding to the drug and opioid overdose crisis. although it is understood that this review is not able to provide a perfectly clear analysis due to the lack of transparent statistics and differences in yearly reports, what this review does accomplish is the illustration of a large disparity between funding received by covid-19 and the drug and opioid overdose crisis. 26 showing greater inequalities experienced by the overdose crisis duringand postpandemic, one can better understand how inequalities may develop after the discussion surrounding where the funding is allocated in each case. a further dive into varying countries that have experienced devastation following both covid-19 and the drug and opioid overdose crises will continue to be researched and developed to bring to light any gaps and differences, as well as looking to see if there are any similarities to the findings seen within canada. references canadian centre on substance use and addictions (ccsua). 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(2024, march 27). opioidand stimulant-related harms in canada: health infobase. canada.ca. https://health-infobase.canada.ca/substancerelated-harms/opioids-stimulants/ public health agency of canada (phac). (2024, april 30). covid-19 epidemiology update: summary. canada.ca. https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/ statistics canada. (2022, january 24). deaths, 2020. the daily. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220124/dq220124a-eng.htm statistics canada. (2023, november 27). deaths, 2022. the daily. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231127/dq231127b-eng.htm wecoss. (2023, december). consumption and treatment services site. consumption and treatment services site | windsor-essex community opioid and substance strategy (wecoss). https://wecoss.ca/consumption-and-treatment-site https://health-infobase.canada.ca/substance-related-harms/opioids-stimulants/ https://health-infobase.canada.ca/substance-related-harms/opioids-stimulants/ https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/ https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220124/dq220124a-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231127/dq231127b-eng.htm https://wecoss.ca/consumption-and-treatment-site precarious design | 87 88 | work for change precarious design | 89 90 | work for change https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/87-542-x/2011002/s02-eng.htm precarious design | 91 92 | work for change precarious design | 93 94 | work for change precarious design | 95 96 | work for change precarious design | 97 98 | work for change precarious design | 99 100 | work for change precarious design 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https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/howard-reich/ct-ent-cso-strike-settlement-0428-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/howard-reich/ct-ent-cso-strike-settlement-0428-story.html https://centreforfuturework.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/speaking-up-being-heard-making-change.pdf https://centreforfuturework.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/speaking-up-being-heard-making-change.pdf https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/87-542-x/2011002/s02-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/87-542-x/2011002/s02-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3310010601&pickmembers%5b0%5d=2.20 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3310010601&pickmembers%5b0%5d=2.20 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3610045201 110 | work for change https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/september-2020/a-step-toward-the-employment-insurance-program-canada-once-had/ https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/september-2020/a-step-toward-the-employment-insurance-program-canada-once-had/ https://www.usa829.org/about-usa-829/history alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 34, 1-15 (2024) pursuing the unachievable: examining worker burnout in ontario’s public employment services sheldon m. bromfield1 and virginia kanyogonya2 abstract: this paper utilizes the job demands–resources (jd-r) model to examine how the neoliberal governance of employment ontario (eo) contributes to worker burnout. the work of employment ontario specialists is governed by neoliberal policies, which are an apparatus of austerity politics mechanized through new public management (npm). npm places a strong emphasis on performance management, quantitative targets and the marketization of public services. this paper demonstrates how these neoliberal policies contribute to worker burnout in public employment services (pes). eo specialists who deliver pes, are tasked with helping vulnerable jobseekers quickly re-enter the paid labour force regardless of systemic barriers, which this study has revealed as a largely unachievable pursuit within a neoliberal market environment. utilizing data from thirty-two interviews, our analysis indicates that eo workers/specialists experience burnout due to unreasonable job demands and a lack of sufficient resources, which inhibit their ability to meaningfully support vulnerable jobseekers. having identified time pressures, work overload, lack of training and development opportunities and job insecurity as some of the stressors experienced by eo specialists, we conclude that prolonged exposure to these stressors leads to burnout. keywords: employment ontario; new public management; worker burnout, job demands– resources model introduction employment ontario (eo) specialists work tirelessly to support jobseekers in securing employment. yet, the marketization of public employment services (pes), including the neoliberal governance systems within which eo specialists operate, has made it difficult for eo specialists to achieve desirable outcomes, such as helping clients obtain commensurable and non-precarious employment. eo is a provincially funded pes program typically delivered through non-profit community-based organizations. it involves the coordination of “a range of resources, supports and services to respond to the career and employment needs of individuals and the skilled labour needs of employers” (employment service program guidelines, 2017). upon reviewing various municipal publications and interviewing client-facing eo specialists, the program seems to be encumbered with challenges that have inhibited its success. as noted by minister mcnaughton, “the current model for employment services is complex, fragmented and has not been effectively helping people find and keep full-time jobs, making it difficult and time-consuming for workers to navigate, particularly those on social assistance.” (“ontario introduces streamlined”, 2021, para. 4). not to mention, literature suggests that due to the marketization of pes, it is not uncommon for service providers to engage in “creaming and parking” to help them achieve their targets and maintain funding (greer et al., 2018; carter, & whitworth, 2015). creaming and 1 sheldon m. bromfield holds a phd from the adult education and community development program (collaborative specialization in workplace learning and social change), department of leadership, higher and adult education, ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto. the research was completed as part of a doctoral study conducted by sheldon m. bromfield, funded by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada, and titled connected yet disconnected: new public management and labour expropriation within public employment services work. 2 virginia kanyogonya is a phd candidate in the adult education and community development program, department of leadership, higher and adult education, ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto. 2 parking can be described as a process where service providers respond to marketization by “providing only a minimal service for clients deemed distant from the labour market and focusing attention on job-ready clients” (greer et al., 2018, 1428). pes programs in canada were first established by the federal government in 1918, after the first world war, to address the pressing unemployment issues of that time (wood, 2018). this prompted the enactment of the employment offices coordination act, catalyzing the employment service of canada (esc), a national network of employment services that were operated by the provinces and partially supported by conditional grants from the federal government (campeau & howard, 2004; wood, 2018). in these initial pes initiatives, the government acknowledged that addressing unemployment was a shared responsibility, and therefore, those who had lost their jobs could be supported through social income benefits (campeau & howard, 2004; green & riddell, 1993; zhengxi, 1998). this keynesian messaging of ‘shared responsibility’ shifted with the emergence of neoliberalism, wherein neoliberal activation policies became more favourable, resulting in the reduction of social income supports (grundy & rudman, 2018; campeau, 2004). it was believed that this activation approach would motivate those who were unemployed to expedite their job search process in hopes of rapidly landing employment (campeau & howard, 2004). as noted by rudman and aldrich (2016), “activation-based policies set parameters for employment support services based on the rationale that citizens “at risk” of state dependency must be transformed into responsible, self-reliant citizens” (2). hence, the demand for pes workers (e.g., eo specialists) arose out of the need to activate the unemployed (rudman & aldrich, 2016). this paper will expound on how activation measures—an aspect of neoliberal governance, contributes to the burnout of workers expected to activate job seekers. utilizing the job demandsresources (jd-r) model to analyze data from thirty-two qualitative interviews, we argue that neoliberal governance policies, which include the marketization of public services and a focus on performance management and quantitative measures, have largely contributed to worker burnout experienced by the eo specialists interviewed in this study. being forced to navigate a system that is essentially set up to fail has taken a toll on eo specialists. worker burnout has been identified as a syndrome in which emotional exhaustion is symptomatic and is often experienced by people who work in human services and care professions (maslach, 1982). similarly, the jd-r model suggests that the manifestations of burnout are shaped by extreme job demands and a lack of adequate resources (bakker & demerouti, 2007; demerouti et al., 2001). utilizing the jd-r model, we examine how neoliberal policies have impacted eo specialists who typically work for non-profits. these workers often have to contend with navigating the contradictory neoliberal businesslike practices that shape their work. some of these practices are antithetical to working with the complex and emotional needs of vulnerable jobseekers. the sections that follow unpack this further. the paper begins with a background outlining how neoliberal governmentality and new public management (npm) act as the apparatus through which eo is marketized. we then present an overview of key literature on worker burnout framed within the jd-r model. this is followed by the methodology section, which outlines the research design and data collection methods. thereafter, we then draw on research findings from qualitative interviews, to provide an analysis of the contradictory experiences of eo specialists. these contradictory experiences are framed within the jd-r model and reveal how unreasonable job demands and insufficient job resources exacerbate worker burnout for eo specialists. the paper contributes to the limited scholarly literature in the field of pes work in canada and, more specifically, employment ontario, thus advancing our understanding of how job design influenced by neoliberal governance in non-profit 3 employment agencies produces burnout. before proceeding to examine how eo specialists have experienced worker burnout, it is important to provide a brief overview on the manifestations of neoliberal governmentality in employment ontario. manifestations of neoliberal governmentality in employment ontario over the years, critical researchers and governmentality scholars have noted that the welfare state is being eradicated to engender personal responsibility as the new norm (e.g., ilcan, 2009; peterie et al., 2019; rose, 1996). as the state endeavours to reduce public spending, it seeks to remove its responsibility from the social contract of ensuring security, welfare and prosperity, passing on these responsibilities to the individual. thus, neoliberal governance becomes a disciplinary apparatus (foucault, 1977) through which unemployed individuals are forced to adhere to neoliberal economic expectations. evidently, the state ensures this adherence process through public employment services such as eo. within eo’s operations, the clients (i.e., service users) are treated as numbers to be managed and files to be opened and closed within a specified timeframe (rudman et al., 2017). essentially, the aim of the eo program is rapid job placements, which can be rendered as a form of neoliberal activation. according to rudman et al. (2017), neoliberal activation is mostly concerned with changing the individual rather than changing economic policy. it involves incentivizing and responsibilizing the unemployed and the eo specialists who are responsible for eo service delivery. this form of dual activation (considine et al., 2018) increases eo job demands in terms of placing extraordinary time pressures on eo specialists. eo specialists are typically expected to make clients job ready and gainfully employed within three months. this short timeframe to transform vulnerable jobseekers into enterprising prospects in a precarious canadian labour market mechanizes the role of these workers. it is worth noting that marketization and privatization are strategies the state employs to govern at a distance. the withdrawal of state presence and responsibility is a form of neoliberal governance that is exercised through strategic emphasis on the private sector and the logic of market efficiency through new public management (npm). as a common approach to public sector management since the 1990s peak neoliberal turn, “npm asserts that governments should function more like the private sector, imposing market discipline on the provision of goods and services and reconstituting work structures” (fanelli et al., 2017, 335). when qualitative work design is reconfigured in the image of competitive, quantitative, performative work experiences, workers’ well-being is usually overshadowed. furthermore, a contradictory work environment engendered by the consistent demands of governmentality can lead to a loss of purpose and a drain on the emotional resilience of eo specialists. as will be later demonstrated, a common sentiment shared by eo specialists is that they did not come into this line of work for pecuniary reasons or to pursue prescribed performance targets; but rather, they were drawn to the sector to meaningfully help people. this conflict between being able to meaningfully help people and meet performative targets reveals the entrenchment of neoliberal practices that dehumanize work and is one of the factors that contributes to burnout. we will turn to examining how and why the jd-r model is a useful tool for assessing worker burnout. 4 how job demands and job resources induce worker burnout the jd-r model is a theoretical framework that attempts to explain how job demands and job resources induce burnout (zábrodská et al., 2018; demerouti et al., 2001). according to demerouti et al. (2001), job demands refer to the “physical, social or organizational aspects of a job that require sustained physical or mental effort and are therefore associated with certain physiological and psychological costs” (501). similarly, job resources are social, physical and organizational components of the job that (a) support workers in achieving their work goals; (b) help to reduce the cost of physiological and psychological job demands; and (c) help to propel personal growth and development (demerouti et al., 2001). the jd-r model, therefore, suggests that extreme job demands that lead to exhaustion and a lack of external resources that make it difficult to meet one’s job demands result in disengagement from work, which, in turn, leads to burnout (demerouti et al., 2001). maslach (1982) describes burnout as “a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization [disengagement], reduced personal achievement that can occur among individuals who do “people work” of some kind” (3). it is worth noting that burnout should not be confused with anxiety, depression (swider & zimmerman, 2010) or compassion fatigue (rossi et al., 2012; sprang et al., 2007). although closely related, figley (1995) describes compassion fatigue as an occupational hazard that involves the professional relief of client trauma while the care professionals themselves unintentionally internalize the trauma, thereby resulting in severe emotional distress. arguably, compassion fatigue is an antecedent to burnout; as burnout manifests in a more gradual fashion and compassion fatigue is observed as a symptomatic short-term processual feature of burnout (adams et al., 2006). therefore, prolonged exposure to client stories of traumatic incidences tends to induce compassion fatigue, which might eventually result in worker burnout. over the years, burnout has been recognized as a pervasive yet pernicious occupational hazard across various professions (solomonidou & katsounari, 2020) that impacts workers’ well-being. in a study that employed the jd-r model to examine burnout among 2,229 university faculty members, the authors found that tasks that increased quantitative demands, such as time spent on administrative grants and administrative paperwork, including publication outcomes that are often challenging to achieve, resulted in higher levels of burnout (zábrodská et al., 2018). zábrodská et al. (2018) further indicated that previous research has observed that paperwork contributes to academic stress. in their words, “as some qualitative research suggests, time spent on paperwork may increase faculty feelings of work pressures both because it is perceived as futile and because it steals time from activities academics truly value, namely, their research and teaching” (zábrodská et al., 2018, 814). interestingly, our study also found that eo specialists are forced to battle with bureaucratic paperwork demands that often take away time that could be spent with clients. drawing on data from our participant interviews, we will expand on how these kinds of job demands influence burnout, but first, it is worth highlighting some noted limitations of the jd-r model discussed in the literature. in an effort to provide a theory of employee engagement, saks and gruman (2014) assert that the jd-r model is insufficient in measuring employee engagement in that the jd-r model does not specify the requisite job resources related to engagement. they additionally note that the jd-r model solely focuses on “work” engagement, which does not take into account other forms of employee engagement (saks & gruman, 2014). the relationship between the constructs of worker burnout and disengagement is that having adequate resources could lead to higher levels of engagement (demerouti et al., 2001). while we recognize this relationship (i.e., burnout and engagement), this paper is not focused on the theorizations of employee engagement, which has 5 its own extensive literature. not to mention, some authors have argued that “while engagement is the antithesis of burnout, it is distinct and therefore should be measured independently of burnout” (schaufeli et al., 2002, as cited by saks & gruman, 2014,164). by contrast, korunka et al. (2009) conclude that after testing the robustness of the jd-r model in eight austrian manufacturing and service companies, they found that the model was a useful framework for assessing burnout and worker engagement. overall, a great deal of previous research has confirmed the value of the jdr model in assessing burnout (e.g., bunjak et al., 2021; zábrodská et al., 2018; bakker & demerouti, 2007; demerouti et al., 2001). taken together, we conclude that even though the jdr model may not be all-encompassing, it is still a helpful starting point for predicting and/or assessing burnout in public employment services. as far as we know, there are hardly any studies that have explicitly examined worker burnout within the pes sector and more so within employment ontario. while some scholarly literature responsibilizes burnout by claiming that personality traits and emotional dispositions are internal predictors of burnout (kim & qu, 2019; lin et al., 2016; swider & zimmerman, 2010), this paper utilizes the jd-r model to demonstrate how the neoliberal governance of eo is a major contributor to worker burnout. having laid out the usefulness of the jd-r model in assessing burnout, we will now turn our attention to the methodology section, which outlines the research design and data collection methods. methodology this paper draws on findings from thirty-two semi-structured qualitative interviews across three different non-profit organizations in the greater toronto area (gta). this study was part of a methodological design of a doctoral research project. the research participants were recruited over a period of twelve months through a snowballing approach. interviews were conducted between november 2019 to november 2020. fourteen of the thirty-two interview participants were former eo specialists, and eighteen were current eo specialists at the time of the interviews. although we recognize that issues related to race and gender exist in pes work, the research study was not designed with the intention of analyzing the race and gender of eo specialists. this omission is noted as a limitation of this study due to a narrow focus on eo’s neoliberal governance and its impact on work design that predisposes worker burnout. to foster an environment where participants could freely share their experiences, a semistructured qualitative interview style was used with open ended questions. the interview questions were designed to elicit candid responses on thoughts and feelings about participants’ work experiences and how they were personally impacted. for example, the following two questions were asked: (a) what types of emotional strains exist as relational stressors (e.g., client and management/funder expectations) that come as part of the territory of the job? (b) could you speak briefly about your ability to maintain a healthy balance between work and personal life? interview participants were given pseudonyms, and their places of work were assigned an alpha-numeric code to maintain anonymity. interviews were transcribed verbatim, and the interview data was analyzed using a combination of elements of open coding based on first impressions (saldana, 2009) and axial coding based on inductive reasoning through categorical connections (strauss & corbin, 1990). this process first involved thematically summarizing whole paragraphs into keywords (e.g., stress, pressure, overwhelm, overwork, worn down, exhaustion, and burnout). these excerpts were then grouped and analyzed by applying the jd-r theoretical lens and were placed into the job demand and job resource categories. the categories of conditions that induce experiences of burnout are discussed in the findings below. the final stage of categorization is what kvale (1996, 192) refers 6 to as “meaning condensation” and “meaning categorization”, which is paraphrasing long statements into a few words and reduced to general categories. for the purposes of this paper, the process of categorization involved a comparative analysis to identify which experiences bring forth compelling exemplars of how eo specialists are impacted by neoliberal governance. how eo demands and lack of adequate resources contribute to worker burnout as noted earlier, many non-profit social service workers are drawn to the sector due to desires of “being part of something bigger than themselves” (vincent & marmo, 2018, 460). however, npm austerity policies have resulted in limited program funding and resources combined with unreasonable targets that contribute to worker burnout. based on these work conditions, 81 percent of interviewees commented that they had some experience with burnout, exhaustion and/or feeling overwhelmed. to help paint a better picture of the impacts of npm policies within the context of eo, we will now briefly highlight some key narratives from the thirty-two interviewees who made references to experiencing worker burnout. the narratives provided below, framed within the jd-r model, demonstrate how these eo specialists work with conditions that leave them predisposed to burnout. the working conditions include intense eo job demands, time pressures, work overload, and a general lack of adequate job resources to meet these demands. these job resources are mainly organizational components of eo work design, including training and development and job security, that support workers’ efficacy towards the achievement of work goals. eo service providers typically secure their funding based on the numerical targets they achieve. it is no wonder that eo specialists tend to overwork themselves as their jobs are contingent on targets rather than the quality of service and the professional duty of care towards their clients. eo job demands – unreasonable targets and heavy caseloads as mentioned above, eo specialists have a three-month timeframe for moving clients from unemployment status to employment. in terms of job placement targets, the program is heavily numbers-driven. a program manager and a supervisor mentioned the following, respectively: “the funder only cares about the numbers” and the program is “all about the stats.” in fact, 75 percent of interviewees confirmed that achieving targets is the main measurement of success of overall program delivery. the result is a largely transactional approach to fast-tracking clients into employment. however, eo specialists also see this approach as unfair to clients. cindy, one of the employment counsellors interviewed, reflected on the challenge of balancing her desire to spend adequate time with clients while also experiencing the external pressure to quickly close client files in order to reach her targets. “it’s so tough to have that balance. i try to not think about the targets in that aspect [seeing the clients as numbers] or else i could never work with a client. and that’s where i always bring myself back to say what will be, will be. i mean i don’t really have that control, but, when you’re then kind of scolded because there are targets that weren’t met, it’s hard to in this type of industry to, swallow [accept] and then you feel like how am i going to support a client when i feel burnt out. i need some counselling, you know” (cindy, employment counsellor). cindy’s comment illustrates how a focus on targets has taken a mental and physical toll, so much so that she indicates needing counselling to help her cope with the demands of the job. given that their performance is predominantly defined by quantitative targets, the daily work of eo specialists is deeply entrenched in a type of neoliberal governmentality that involves surveillance 7 and discipline (gane, 2012) and time pressures that increase the demanding aspects of their work. furthermore, these workers are conscious that their livelihoods are dependent on their attainment of these targets, which fosters anxiety and possibly burnout. interestingly, claire, a former youth job specialist, similarly expressed how she was impacted by her work and struggled with work-personal life balance and having too many clients in her caseload: “but just the work-life balance of the counsellors, like it’s exhausting work and low compensation and they just run you to exhaustion, so you pretty much burnout and then again it all ties back to having too much on your plate, too many clients and then, you emotionally get worn down because you can’t help everyone” (claire, former youth job specialist). cindy and claire’s reflections demonstrate how continuous exposure to the unfairness of a program with a strict focus on fast job placement targets creates a demanding work environment that fosters burnout. as weiss (2020) confirms, burnout is predominantly a response to job demands, lack of fairness and transparency, and other issues beyond supporting clients in crisis. having “too much on your plate, too many clients” signals work overload, and this type of work demand is not easily buffered by job resources. once again, within the jd-r framework, having opportunities to grow within the workplace, receiving performance feedback, the ability to utilize a variety of skills and work autonomy are some examples of job resources (bakker & demerouti, 2017). hence, to ease the burden of this job demand of unreasonable targets and heavy caseloads, additional staff resources may be required to help spread workloads more equitably, which is challenging for publicly funded eo non-profit service providers governed by parsimonious budgetary constraints. moreover, the application of the jd-r model to gauge burnout in these examples, as seen in bakker and demerouti (2007), indicates that when job demands increase in the absence of required job resources, there will be little to no effect on the mitigation of burnout. the issue of resources will be discussed in a forthcoming section. working with high job demands of heavy workloads and time pressures can lead to worker burnout . this type of work overload is symptomatic of neoliberal governance, where the expectation for these eo specialists is to focus increasingly more on the quantitative parts of their jobs, such as the time in which job placements are made (rose, 1996), and a harmful unintended consequence is job strain (bakker & demerouti, 2007). the work terrain of the eo specialists in this study is primarily one of increasing work overload. more than half (62 percent) of the interviewees in this research discussed their experiences with heavy workloads. nevertheless, burnout is characteristic of physical or mental collapse caused by consistent exposure to overwork (wilson, 2016) or job-related stress (lizaano & mor barak, 2015). to complicate the issue of work overload, non-profit organizations are often understaffed and tend to ceaselessly search for donors and sources of additional funding. some organizations add new programs—without increasing staff—in an effort to secure additional funding and save labour costs (see baines, 2004; evans & shields, 2005), which limits capacity and intensifies the work of the existing staff. “[w]e don’t have enough capacity including employers to help people, i don’t know what other challenge. let me think. yeah, to be honest, i’ve been there for seven years and i don’t know if i should tell you this but i feel safe to say this i don’t even care, i’m burnt out, and i’m not the only one. i’m looking for my way out to do something else that is more, you know more satisfying for me to help others. i cannot work in this model. management is focused on funders expectation, which i understand, but the way that is designed is not really helping and if you tell that to management, you are the bad boy, right” (lorna, employment counsellor). 8 the lack of “capacity” that lorna refers to is based on the complexities of understaffing and high staff attrition that some non-profit organizations experience. in addition, within this non-profit funding model, eo specialists are expected to do more with less (baines et al., 2014). lorna mentioned that a recent trend at her organization was not to fill the positions of those staff who quit. instead, management would distribute their caseloads to the remaining colleagues. this dissemination of extra workload induces role conflict, which van den broeck et al. (2017), using the jd-r model, confirms to be a major risk factor for burnout in their multi-sector analysis. role conflict can arise in situations where “incompatibility in the requirements and [expectations] of the role, […] are judged relative to a set of standards or conditions which impinge upon role performance” (rizzo et al., 1970, 155). for instance, role conflict occurs when expectations to meet targets remain unchanged with fewer resources, resulting in disharmony between management’s expectations and the eo specialists’ ability to perform their roles effectively. . hence, the heightened levels of frustration and role conflict that workers like lorna face affirms bakker and demerouti’s (2007) work, in which they observe unfavourable working conditions with limited resources and high job demands, are more likely to produce worker strain and disengagement resulting in burnout. tracy, a former employment resources consultant, commented similarly on why eo specialists, like herself, left the program. “because we really could not handle it anymore and so they left because they were so unmotivated and burnt out from constantly trying to achieve an unachievable goal, and they are like, ‘i cannot do this anymore, it’s taking a toll on my health, it’s taking a toll on my mental health, a toll on my family life and my personal space that i’ve just decided that i’m gonna get a job somewhere else.’ and they leave the organization, right” (tracy, former employment resources consultant). tracy mentions “burnout from constantly trying to achieve an unachievable goal”. an unachievable goal becomes a psychological stressor that can have spill-over effects on personal life contributing to work-family conflict. work-family conflict has been associated with university faculty burnout (zábrodská et al., 2018), and university faculty, arguably, work in a similar marketized public service environment like eo. zábrodská et al. (2018, 813) study observed that work-family conflict performed a mediating role in the development of burnout. further, positive work and personal life balance has been known to produce social relations that act as a buffer against burnout (bunjak et al., 2021). in fact, the eo specialists interviewed in this research commonly remarked that it was the social ties with their co-workers, family and friends that helped them cope with their demanding work environment. however, it would be fair to argue that when these social ties are strained, and the psychological stress of their job becomes unbearable, workers will seek to exit these harmful work environments. eo specialists tend to describe the eo program with market-oriented language, using terms such as “transactional,” “always a hustle,” and “a grind.” in advanced capitalist countries, such as canada, governmentality involves organized and hidden forms of power that initially captivate the desires and interests of passionate individuals and channel them into exploitative labour by enterprising the non-profit and voluntary sectors (see ilcan, 2009). simultaneously, governmentality hollows not only public sector organizations but also produces the abatement of organizations aligned with the social responsibilities of the state (terry, 2005), like non-profits. neoliberal governance and the shrinkage of state responsibility, and by extension, publicly funded 9 non-profits, can foster work environments with increasing job demands and overwork. in addition to the reduction of resources, job demands such as work overload and time pressures are significantly experienced by these eo specialists in these non-profits, as 62 percent feel obligated to work unpaid hours to meet targets. the result of these increasing job demands shapes a work environment conducive to burnout. cunningham et al. (2017) case studied two non-profit social service organizations in ontario and also confirmed that managerial governance led to self-sacrificial work. they write, “workers, moreover, appeared to be losing their capacity to exert discretion over working time, content and pace, and to strike a reasonable work-life balance” (386). bunjak et al. (2021) argue that rapid accelerated work-life, irregular work hours, and increasing job demands pressure workers to push their capacity limits. eo specialists tend to feel obligated to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, as they tend to engage themselves in extra work, above and beyond their duty, which is unpaid and undervalued. additionally, feeling overworked and being stretched too thin triggers existential angst and, of course, can eventually lead to burnout. over time, these occupational stressors tend to accumulate and leave eo specialists feeling overwhelmed to the extent that some have left the sector with no intention of returning. lack of resources that support workers in achieving their goals one of the reasons individuals are drawn to a vocation in social services is a desire to help underserved communities. the eo program targets marginalized/high-barriered individuals; however, eo specialists sometimes feel a sense of helplessness in meaningfully supporting clients. feelings of helplessness lead to frustration, as more than half of the interview participants refer to eo as a program set up to fail. the program is set up to fail because, as eo specialists have remarked, they do not have enough resources to handle diverse needs of high-barriered clients. these high-barriered clients are described as being distant from the market and ‘hard-to-serve’. as one interviewee stated: “when the economy is doing well, unemployment rate is low, so the folks that are left behind are truly what we call distant from the labour market. so, they [eo clientele] are long-term unemployed, dealing with mental health, addictions, disability, and those are the folks that we see through our doors. […]. so, our team gets burned out. our team is feeling very stretched. our team is feeling like they wish they had more tools in their tool kit. and the other part that we find that is challenging is that our focus is decent work, and we want people to have a good job with benefits, but the jobs that are out there and the employers that want to work with us, don’t offer that, right. precarious, part-time, crappy pay and there are some really good employers, but generally, big employers are looking for candidates that are not the candidates we have” (kelly, director, employment and training). kelly’s assessment of the eo clientele and the capacity of the eo specialists helps demonstrate how the lack of “tools in their tool kit” impacts their ability to adequately serve clients. burnout is insidious (rossi et al., 2012; weiss, 2020), and the lack of tools, combined with vulnerable eo clientele and a labour market that produces precarious jobs for these high-barriered jobseekers, over time, fosters a psychological strain that eventually leads to burnout. eo specialists work in a psycho-social environment (zábrodská et al., 2018), which the jd-r model predicts that there will be an increase in psychological or physiological costs which result from not having the “tools” to address job demands (bakker & demerouti, 2007; demerouti et al., 2001), such as being able to effectively support clients in finding decent work. for instance, some clients typically require referrals to other services due to the highly complex set of personal difficulties they experience as they struggle to find employment. 10 notwithstanding these personal difficulties, eo specialists maintain that they are career counsellors and not clinicians. in the following excerpt, pam, a program manager, expresses how she guides her team of eo specialists in navigating their lack of resources. “i’m very strict about, about this, it’s having to let clients know that ‘i’m here to help you with your employment goals. i can’t be your therapist, but let me give you some referral, resources that you can use.’ but they [eo specialists] feel really ill-equipped to deal with a lot of the issues and that causes them a lot of stress. because they are compassionate people. they’re in a helping profession and they can’t help, and that makes it really, really hard” (pam, program manager). this scenario suggests that the inability to help clients mentally wears on eo specialists. at times, clients’ needs far outweigh their capacity to extend care within the narrow constraints of the program. pam mentioned high stress as a result of having compassion for clients but unable to adequately help them. studies of social service workers have noted how carrying the clients’ emotional health and dreams affects the well-being of these workers (e.g., baines, 2011). the jdr model identifies that resources that buffer against worker burnout also include those that help with propelling personal growth and development of workers (demerouti et al., 2001). during pam’s interview, she noted that professional development was the first item to be cut from their budget based on funding constraints. “they are just not equipped with resources, and we don’t have the money to train them on everything that they need to do their jobs”, she noted. the limited program funds that pam mentioned have not increased since 2010, with which eo non-profit service delivery organizations operate, represents the outworking of neoliberal governance and npm austerity. lack of job security eo specialists experience high levels of stress due to potential job loss if targets are not met. when asked what are the consequences of not meeting their target numbers, the immediate response is loss of funding, loss of jobs, and potential closure of the organization. several interviewees pointed to eo service delivery organizations that have been forced to cease operations and close their doors. for instance, hazel, an employment advisor, mentions that if she does not achieve targets for high-barriered clients, her employer will be forced to close their doors. hazel’s comment typifies a fairly common reality for those working within the non-profit sector, the fear of losing program funding and ultimately losing one’s job. within the eo performance-based model, the threat of job loss and organization closure is built into the employment structure of eo service providers. both the organizations’ financial stability and the clients’ well-being are directly interpreted as the responsibility of the eo specialists (see cvenkel, 2020). if they fail to meet their targets, the repercussions are dire: clients will remain unemployed, and eo specialists may also share the same fate. the threat of job loss due to “underperformance” produces job insecurity. demerouti et al. (2001) typology of job resources identifies job security as a mitigating factor/variable against burnout. moreover, research consistently indicates that prolonged exposure to low levels of job security contributes to burnout (e.g., bakker & demerouti, 2007; bunjak et al., 2021; zábrodská et al., 2018). loss of funding due to “underperformance” is a mode of governance that becomes a state of mind designed to impel eo specialists to overwork in light of this probable punishment (foucault, 1977). this punishment of job-loss looms consistently over the heads of eo specialists. given that quantitative targets predominantly define their performance, the daily work of eo specialists is deeply entrenched in a type of neoliberal governmentality that involves surveillance 11 and discipline (gane, 2012). these workers are conscious that not only their livelihoods are dependent on their attainment of performance targets but also the fate of the non-profit organizations for which they work, and the overall well-being of their clientele is at stake if their services cease to exist. conclusion by utilizing the jd-r model, we have demonstrated that eo specialists, in this study, work in conditions that make them predisposed to worker burnout. the jd-r model stipulates that burnout is more likely to occur in work environments where job resources are limited to support workers to effectively manage high job demands. in this paper, we have identified these job demands as unreasonable targets, heavy caseloads, and role conflict. similarly, the job resource factors contributing to burnout are a lack of resources, training and development to meet the diverse needs of the eo clientele and low job security, specifically the threat of losing one’s job if quantitative targets are unmet. neoliberal governance exercised through npm contributes to worker burnout; in that, it shapes a social service work environment that prioritizes quantitative businesslike approaches. the result is a highly performance-driven pes sector that focuses on unreasonable targets, as described by some eo specialists. prolonged exposure to these high job demands, coupled with limited job resources, result in these elements of burnout: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment (maslach, 1982), and are characteristic of the performance-based eo funding model governed through npm. the excerpts from the interviews in this research have revealed instances in which eo specialists, for the most part, experience burnout. their inability to spend ample time with clients without sacrificing the accomplishment of rapid job placement numbers, combined with staff attrition and increasingly heavy caseloads, diminishes organization capacity and induces individual work overload. the eo targets-based funding model also engenders uncertainty and job insecurity. the threat of job loss that might be derived from unattained targets produces a precarious mindset, where eo specialists have noted that they are not far from needing the program themselves. a decreased perception of job security negatively affects the psychological aspects of work that creates feelings of stress and a decreased capacity to cope with job demands (bunjak et al., 2021). additionally, these eo specialists feel that they lack the tools that could help them reduce the cost of physiological and psychological job demands. this feeling of insufficiency relates to the profile of the eo clientele who not only possess complex circumstances that have led them into unemployment, but their circumstances and psycho-social dispositions are unique. as such, a transactional approach to employment is incompatible with effectively supporting them. this paper contributes to the scholarly literature on burnout and pes by utilizing the jd-r model to demonstrate how neoliberal governance can be attributed as a major contributor to worker burnout. although the current study is based on a small sample of participants, the burnout literature confirms that if workers do not develop supports to mitigate feelings of stress and emotional and physical exhaustion, then workers will seek to cope with the ultimate form of mitigation, which is to quit their jobs. indeed, to secure health and overall physiological and psychological well-being, as this study has exemplified, some eo specialists have completely abandoned the pes sector. our paper has not explored some of the ways in which burnout could be adequately mitigated within the current neoliberal pes work environment. additionally, given that the research focus was on examining how neoliberal work design induces burnout, our analysis did not include the social categories of race and gender. this limitation points to the fact that a 12 deepened complexity can be achieved with further research taking into consideration race and gender issues within pes work. lastly, future studies could also examine additional sources of burnout experienced by eo specialists and identify strategies to enhance the mitigation of worker burnout within the pes sector. references adams, r. e., boscarino, j.a. & figley, c.r. 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he referred to as cause and function – cause being those economic and social structures that give rise to the personal problems in individuals’ everyday lives; function being those direct interventions that social workers employ to “help” individuals and families overcome their personal problems, usually understood in psychological, pathological terms. c. wright mills (1959) made a similar distinction between troubles and issues. essentially, he argued that in liberal capitalism widespread public issues are frequently attributed to and treated as problems of individual dysfunction rather than as outcomes of the socio-economic structure of the state. this paper argues that social work in english-speaking canada has lost its once important voice in social reform and, by pursuing professional recognition and protection, has focused its education and direct practice almost entirely on clinical intervention. even in the post-pandemic aftermath – it has merely adapted to continued neoliberalism, managerialism, and accountability. rather than vigorously pursuing social change, social work has remained stuck in its role described by cassidy (1933) as “the stretcher bearers of society.” keywords: neoliberalism; social policy; social reform; social work education; welfare state retrenchment introduction in this paper it is argued that social work primarily in english-speaking canada2 has, over time, lost what was once its significant influence in advocating for social change and reform. beginning with social work’s beginning development as a profession in the early twentieth century, the paper traces the enduring tension in its practice between those who thought its primary emphasis on work with impoverished peoples ought to be on social justice, social reform or even social revolution, and those who placed its primary emphasis on the individual redemption of those who lived in poverty and the reconstruction of their character (mencher, 1967; finkel, 2006). this tension has never been resolved and, with the rise of neoliberalism beginning in the late twentieth century, together with social work achieving long sought after professional recognition, clinical forms of practice have gained supremacy over practice focused on community development and social policy. despite the many gaps in health care and social security exposed during the covid-19 pandemic, the post-pandemic period has produced little change in how 1 hugh shewell, msw, phd, is professor emeritus, carleton university. he was formerly director of the school of social work at carleton university and, before entering academia in 1988, practiced in social services and social work for nearly 20 years mainly in ottawa and vancouver. 2 the history of social work in québec, where french is the dominant language, is different from that in the rest of canada where english is dominant. the mcgill university school of social work educated social workers mainly to serve the protestant, english-speaking population of montréal. the rest of québec, (including montréal’s frenchspeaking population) was dominated by the influence of the roman catholic church which, through its various charities tended to the needs of the destitute and vulnerable populations of the province. social work, as a profession, did not begin to emerge fully until 1942 and 1943 with the establishment of schools of social work at université de montréal and université de laval respectively. 1943 also saw the formation of l’ association professionnelle des auxiliaires sociaux (professional association of social auxiliaries). nevertheless, the influence of the catholic church remained until its demise during the quiet revolution of the 1960s which changed québec into a largely secular, civil society. 63 social work continues to practice, nor has social work been vocal in advocating for reform to address those gaps. origins of social work and its internal tension social work in its modern iteration originated in the late period of the industrial revolutions of both the united kingdom and the united states – thus, its fledgling forms emerged in the latter years of the nineteenth century as a response to the enormous social dislocations, social squalor, extreme poverty and extraordinary inequalities resulting from industrialization and the realignment of class relations. the division in emphasis on practice described in the introduction was situated mainly in the differences between the settlement house movement (shm) – which generally focused on social reform – and the charity organisation society (cos) which focused on individual change. the shm (in britain at least) had strong ties to the fabian society and ideas associated with social planning and positive state intervention in the provision of housing, public health programs, community parks, recreation, and stronger measures of income support. the shm was based on principles of common humanity and fellowship and the notion that a scientific (sociological) understanding of the causes and outcomes of poverty would lead to solutions that bettered the entire community (mencher, 1967; kendall, 2000; jennissen and lundy, 2011). in contrast the cos believed that poverty was the outcome of the individual character of the poor which was exacerbated by indiscriminate charity (alms giving) that merely encouraged dissolute behaviour. only a scientific (psychological) understanding of both the individual and consequently the measured application of philanthropy would result in the elimination of poverty (mencher, 1967; kendall, 2000; jennissen and lundy, 2011). arguably, therefore, the shm eventually spawned social work practice methodologies that included community work, social policy and social research that supported both, while the cos spawned casework (and off shoots like child and family work) and research that supported these more individually focused interventions. not that these divisions were hard and fast. in some settlements and agencies, the application of both principles co-existed with broader community development initiatives occurring concurrently with services to individuals and families. still, there began to emerge in britain, the united states and later in canada, education and training for social workers which emphasized one or other of the approaches. while mary richmond is credited with the first major book on social casework practice methodology (social diagnosis, 1917), the american social work academic, porter lee (1929) identified the tension in social work between what he termed cause and function. social workers interested in cause were principally concerned with social policy and reform; social workers interested in function were principally concerned with working with individuals and their individualized problems (lee, 1929). lee observed that individual temperament likely determined a worker’s preference: some social workers were suited to working on broader social issues, others were better suited to working with individuals. in any case, lee understood that social work had a linked dichotomy and did not dismiss or minimize the importance of cause (social issues and social policy) in social work. cause and function were a dominant thread in social work education curricula – including in canada – for almost 75 years in the 20th century. indeed, even by 1974, william schwartz, the social group work theorist, continued to recognize cause and function as the main attributes of social work definition and practice (schwartz, 1974). 64 social work, social reform and the response of social work education, 1930-1975 the moral imperatives that drove the rise of social work – embodied mainly in the social gospel movement in canada (cook, 1985) – gave way to the need for science and empirical research to inform and provide the basis for both effective casework practice and social policies upon which a better society could be built. in canada, the drive for more research was shared by practice-oriented and reform-oriented groups who, importantly, both considered themselves representative of social work and jointly sought professional status and recognition. the division between those who placed emphasis on practice versus those who placed emphasis on reform was not hard and fast. many of those who were primarily interested in practice nevertheless descried the social conditions in which most of their clients lived and supported the broad movements and calls for social reform. thus, within this emerging umbrella of social work arose the canadian association of social workers (casw) founded in 1926, the canadian conference on social work in 1928 and the canadian council on child and family welfare in 1930 (originally the canadian council on child welfare, 1920 and later, the canadian welfare council [cwc], 1935) (jennissen and lundy, 2011). infused in these organizations was the influence of new social workers and social work educators emanating from the two earliest schools of social work in canada, one at the university of toronto founded in 1914 and the second at mcgill university in montreal founded in 1918 (moffatt, 2001). it was this coalescence of practice-based agencies, reform advocacy organizations and social work educators that provided a vibrant and determined social work presence in the drive towards meaningful social reform and the policies that would flow from that reform. social work and the great depression. the great depression of the 1930s was a defining period for social work in canada and the approach it would take – or not – in building a case for social reform and progressive social policies (moffatt, 2001). as governments at the federal, provincial and municipal levels grappled with the impact of the depression, social work became part of the debate over what was to be done and what role social work should play in bringing the economic crisis to an end. the difference in opinion within social work is best described by wills who identified two main streams: “(1) ‘slow interpretation’ with a focus on fact-finding, neutrality, and the objectivity of science, and (2) ‘direct action’ in which social workers had an analysis of the conflict and contradictions within a social and economic context and believed in the potential for direct engagement to make changes within political systems” (wills, 1995, p. 96-7). these two approaches at least recognized there were greater socio-economic problems to be addressed. there was a third strand within social work that did not see any role for social workers to play other than intervening with individuals and tending to their misery as if it was solely a personal problem. one worker proclaimed, “we are not social reformers: we are social workers” (parker, 1934, p. 2). nevertheless, if social work was to intervene effectively in work with clients it had also to understand the nature of the social problems that gave rise to private troubles. irving (1992) argues that there was a strong movement within social agencies – particularly those in montreal and toronto – to conduct social research so that social workers might have a better idea of the real nature and extent of the problems that poverty-stricken persons faced. indeed, there was a symbiosis between the research and practice arms of these agencies: that what workers experienced at the frontline could also inform the research and that the research would form the basis for new or reformed social policy and intervention. it was however, the two dominant schools of social work at the time, mcgill and toronto that began to take the lead in both teaching, conducting social research and utilizing the findings to promote social planning and reform. 65 prominent among the researchers were leonard marsh and harry cassidy, both graduates of the london school of economics, and both greatly influenced by fabian socialism. marsh headed research at mcgill’s school of social work, cassidy at toronto’s school. both believed that social work practice had to be informed by research and that social work had a strong role to play in the development of social policy (irving, 1992). indeed, the influence of social work in building a case for widespread social reform in canada during this period was enormous. cassidy and marsh were among the founding members of the league for social reconstruction modelled on the british fabian society. the league had two central purposes: the conduct of research and proposing social reform. while the league was not a social work organization, the presence of cassidy and marsh ensured a strong social work perspective. in 1935, the league published a book, social planning for canada which, according to moscovitch (1983) had a significant influence on social thinking in canada at the time and was “a major summation of social research and ideas for social reform” (p. viii). social work also made major contributions to the royal commission on dominionprovincial relations (commonly known as the rowell-sirois commission) that was formed in 1937 in response to the financial crises experienced by the provinces and municipalities as they struggled to meet the hardships of the depression. not only did social work make representations through its professional body, the casw but also through the canadian welfare council (cwc) with which it had very strong ties and with which it developed a powerful alliance in influencing government social policy (tillotson, 1997, p. 148; finkel, 2006, pp. 117-18). the report of the rowell-sirois commission was among the most important in canada’s history and formed the basis both for the introduction of a stronger role for the federal government in economic planning, in social policy and in the eventual formation of the welfare state. in all these activities social work played a strong role in pointing out cause at the root of widespread individual problems (guest, 2003; jennissen and lundy, 2011). besides its contributions to the rowell-sirois commission, social work had an important role in probably canada’s most significant and influential social policy document produced during the war, the 1943 report on social security for canada, popularly referred to as the marsh report after its principal author, leonard marsh. besides his contribution to social planning for canada, marsh had already worked with beveridge in britain and brought the scope of the beveridge report into the canadian arena. marsh produced the report with the assistance of a research team that included three social workers, bessie touzel, george davidson and stuart jaffary. while the federal government did not embrace the marsh report many of its ideas and principles were embodied in its own response, the green book. it too was based on many briefs and representations made by social work and formed the basis for the emergence of canada’s modest welfare state in the post-world war two period (guest, 2003; jennissen and lundy, 2011). the post-war welfare state and the growth of social work education the rise of welfare state measures and programs during and after the world war ii period resulted in an increased demand for trained social workers. many universities responded by instituting new schools of social work in halifax (dalhousie university), winnipeg (university of manitoba), montréal (université de montréal), québec city (laval university: 1943) and ottawa (university of ottawa/now at carleton university). thus, by 1950 there were eight schools of social work in canada; two were in western canada3, one in atlantic canada, three in québec and two in ontario (jennissen and lundy, 2011, p. 152). ironically, curricula still focused primarily on 3 a school had been established in vancouver at the university of british columbia in 1929. 66 casework practice methodology rooted in both freudian and emerging schools of thought in psychology (shewell, 2022a). this pattern persisted through the 1950s and is described by jennissen and lundy (2011) as social work’s conservative decade, largely due to the cold war and the association of social programs with socialism and communism. this conservatism in practice changed considerably during the 1960s when a resurgence in social policy development occurred linked primarily to the persistence of poverty in canada (finkel, 2006). there was also an increasing ground swell of demands for increased local accountability and citizen participation in the organization and functioning of social services, especially towards the end of the decade and into the 1970s (guest, 2003). during the 1960s and up to 1976,15 new schools of social work were established – 3 in atlantic canada, 2 in québec, 7 in ontario and 3 in western canada. thus, by 1976 there were 23 schools of social work throughout the country. most schools during the 1960s had developed two-year msw programs as the preferred degree following a bachelor’s degree usually in the humanities and social sciences. nevertheless, the continued emphasis on a direct practice msw reflected social work’s continuing drive for full professional status and its adherence to clinical casework. the young social work academic, brian wharf (1966), commenting on the obsession with the msw and its proclivity for clinical casework and pathologizing the individual, declaimed that social workers should “relinquish their preoccupation with the treatment of pathology and devote attention to social reform, policy planning and administration” (p.134). his words echoed a similar admonition by wooton (1959) who, according to rogowski (2020) thought social work “was concentrating on theories of intra or, at best, inter-psychic processes rather than the economic and political sources of problems” (p.41). professionalism, it seemed, could only be defined through function, not cause. by the late 1960s social work education curricula were becoming more generic – three models of intervention were often taught (casework, group work and community organization – and sometimes all three as integrated practice) together with social research, social policy and human development. some schools offered interested students the option of focusing more on social policy rather than on direct intervention – even though no canadian text on social policy existed. casework and group work as modes of direct intervention remained clinically focused although group work also incorporated more practical uses such as self-help and task functions. these shifts in curricula partly reflected the general rise in social activism during the 1960s. nevertheless, social workers, because of their own policy advocacy during the 1940s and the reforms that ensued, were now working primarily in government agencies that delivered either statutory or non-statutory social services or in non-profit, charitable social services subject to their own policies but often wholly or partly funded by the state. despite social work’s influence on social policy both through its presence in government public service and through important non-governmental organizations like the cwc (subsequently re-named the canadian council on social development) social work had become comfortably institutionalized. schools of social work generally responded to the field rather than proactively challenging the policies that governed practice, much less the socio-economic system that gave rise to those policies (shewell, 2018; 2022). in sum, social work had found itself; by the late 1960s its more conservative practice tendencies persisted and, by virtue of its own influence in developing the welfare state, had created its own practice preserves. 67 the critiques of the welfare state and of social work by the late 1960s canada’s principal welfare state measures were scarcely in place than several developments began to occur or were already occurring which, over time, further served to undermine social work’s engagement in social policy and its concern for collective well-being and social action. the critiques of social work and of the welfare state came from three main sources: the feminist left, progressive sociology and the business (corporate) right. the welfare state critique from the feminist left. the first development which was certainly occurring by the time the welfare state was fully in place was the rise of second wave feminism and its critique of welfare state programs. the feminist critique struck at the core of the welfare state’s patriarchal framework and its implicit understanding of the role and function of the traditional, nuclear, two-parent family in liberal capitalist states. many, if not all programs and benefits emanated from the fundamental assumption that the male was the head of the household and the main breadwinner. women’s organizations relentlessly pointed out that many benefits were based on the premise that women were still the primary homemakers and care givers and that the relationship between men and women was profoundly unequal and inequitable inside and outside the workplace. rather than enhancing their status as supposedly equal citizens of the country the welfare state reinforced their unequal status (finkel, 2004; cohen,1997). this critique, of course, was not unique to canada. for example, ann oakley (2014), the daughter of richard titmuss and a prominent british sociologist, made this same analysis as did elizabeth wilson in her 1977 monograph, women and the welfare state. importantly, cohen (1997) has observed that the feminist critique of the welfare state was not intended to undermine it, rather it was intended to strengthen it by recognizing women as equals and insuring that through its programs it was fully inclusive and delivered on the services that women demanded. the marxist sociology critique of social work. in the midto late 1970s marxist sociology, in its critique of the welfare state as a prop for capitalism, launched withering attacks on social work and its role in the welfare state, accusing social work of simply maintaining the status quo and working to promote individual adjustment to an oppressive, exploitative system (moreau and leonard, 1989).the welfare state represented a compromise between the forces of capitalism and corporate interests and the threat – overt or underlying – of the working classes to overthrow the entire socio-economic system and replace it with a socialist order (macpherson,1965). it was an act of appeasement and legitimation (finkel, 2004, p.152). at the base of the welfare state lay a class analysis and the notion of class struggle. as observed earlier in the paper the welfare state, because it represented a compromise, did not fundamentally alter how social work practiced; instead, it provided a reliable, well-funded framework within which to practice. the marxist broadsides at the welfare state and the practice of social work during the late 1960s and into the 1970s resulted in a re-awakening to radical social work and, in some schools at least, a more radical analysis of what social workers were doing and what they ought to be doing (bailey and brake, 1975). social work as it was practiced simply abetted the rich and powerful and their oppression of the poor; this was morally repugnant. instead, social work needed “to challenge the economic and political order that gives rise to so much disadvantage and misery” (howe, 2009, p.126) and adopt and work towards a vision of society free of class oppression. in canada, one of the first schools to adopt radical social work was carleton university in ottawa which became a leader in developing structural social work, an approach rooted in political economy and marxist theory. at the time, as maurice moreau and his colleagues began to develop structural social work he was challenged by a fellow colleague, helen levine to account for the 68 role of women in what was fundamentally a patriarchal society (moreau and leonard, 1989). carleton then continued to develop a social work curriculum based strongly in feminist marxism. the critique from the corporate right. the welfare state critiques from the left were certainly valid but, unfortunately, they also left it vulnerable to further attack by big business and the corporate right. in truth, the right had never much cared for the welfare state viewing it more as a necessary evil to maintain social solidarity after world war two (lightman and lightman, 2017; garrett, 2021). social programs as well as other government measures to intervene in the economy were too costly and had to be brought under control. a more targeted, residual approach to welfare and social security was far preferred (guest, 2003). these critiques from the right – forcefully argued by right-wing think tanks and corporate lobbies – first came to a head following the energy crises of the 1970s, a period of high unemployment, inflation and a stagnant economy resulting in what was termed, ‘stagflation’ – something which was apparently not possible according to keynesian economic theory. the growth of government since world war two, taxes and social spending were out of control as were the pay demands of unionized labour (lightman and lightman, 2017; rice and prince, 2013). in response to the critiques from the right the federal government gradually shifted responsibility for social spending to the department of finance and treasury board. in 1993 the progressive conservative government split the department of health and welfare in two and renamed the welfare division, the department of human resources development, an obvious indication of a move away from collective security to both individual responsibility and the reproduction of labour. the discourse on the welfare state began to change rapidly as canada and its economy, like those of other western countries, entered into free trade agreements, globalization and economic re-structuring (teeple, 2000). fiscal restraint, debt and deficit management, welfare selectivity and individual responsibility for personal welfare became the dominant mantras for social and public policies. these mantras, in other words, signaled the rise of neoliberalism (finkel, 2006; lightman and lightman, 2017). concurrently, as these profound shifts in welfare state discourse intensified, social work’s voice and influence on social policy sharply declined. by the first decade of the 21st century social policy formulation and decision-making had largely shifted to canada’s department of finance. since 1975, when the bank of canada adopted monetarism as formal policy and the federal cabinet adopted a budget restraint policy, ‘virtually all discussion of social policy in canada has been couched in the language of fiscal capacity” (lightman and irving,1991, p.71). besides social work’s loss of influence in social policy, the fiscalization of policy and the sharp turn away from universal to targeted programs have resulted in social work being reduced to mere functionaries of a highly bureaucratized, centralized system (rice and prince, 2013). in this capacity, casework remains the principal method of intervention, both because it contains social issues as a personal trouble or problem, and because it perfectly conforms to a managerial system that can easily measure its cost effectiveness and efficiency. this shift away from social work as a contributor to social policy formulation is reflected in most schools of social work curricula; direct practice has regained and/or retained its prominence. social policy, while still a required course is taught to give students a context for practice but is usually worth no more than one full term credit (shewell et al., 2021). 69 public administration, welfare state retrenchment, social work competence and accountability the growth of schools of public administration and public policy. a significant development that accompanied first, the growth in the size of government and public service since world war two and second, the need to develop, manage and administer public policies effectively and efficiently has been the establishment of university-based schools and programs in public policy and administration. arguably, especially during the period of welfare state retrenchment to the present, the growth of these schools and programs has also reflected and contributed to the weakened influence of social work on social policy in canada. social work educators have not strongly resisted this incursion into what had been an emerging field of study in canadian social work during the phase of the welfare state.4 rather, the old fissure between those oriented towards social reform and those oriented towards direct practice has been exacerbated to the detriment of social policy. this does not mean that social work in canada has become purely practice focused, nor does it mean that social work does not pursue social justice. however, it does mean that social work has reframed how it understands and values the pursuit of social justice. this is discussed in the next section of the paper. at this juncture, however, it is important to explore briefly the rise of education in public administration since world war two and its growing impact on public policy and, more narrowly, social policy. before the war, in 1936, dalhousie university in halifax began to offer some courses in public administration and was the only university to do so. the courses were only part of another degree and did not constitute a comprehensive program at the time. after world war two, however, the growth of the federal public service accelerated in response to the recommendations of the previously mentioned rowell-sirois commission and to increased expectations of government to play a more active role in providing services and intervening in the economy. this growth demanded more trained public servants and, in response, carleton university in ottawa established the first school of public administration in canada in 1953. it granted a certificate and a master’s degree in public administration (mpa). over the next two decades five additional educational institutions offered programs in public administration: toronto metropolitan university (formerly ryerson polytechnic) began offering a certificate in 1962 and an advanced certificate in 1964. in 1969 the québec provincial government established the ecole nationale d’administration publique which offered a diploma and a mpa. queen’s university in kingston, ontario established a school of public administration in 1970. it was housed in the department of political science and later became the school of policy studies. finally, the university of western ontario began to offer a diploma in public administration in 1974 while dalhousie finally began to offer a mpa in 1968. notably, dalhousie became a school of public administration in 1975 (shewell, 2022b). thus, during the period following the war until 1974 six different educational institutions offered programs in public administration. these programs at the time were mainly focused on organization and the broad processes of administration, the constitutional context of canadian government administration, budgeting, research and evaluation, and public policy in its broadest scope. they were not usually focused on specific policy areas. 4 it was not until 1975 that canada’s first book on social policy was published. this was andrew armitage’s social welfare in canada: ideals, realities and future paths. this was followed in 1980 by dennis guest’s the emergence of social security in canada. guest’s was largely an historical account rather than an analytical, discursive text. keith banting’s, the welfare state and canadian federalism was published in 1987. of note, both armitage and guest were social workers, banting was a political scientist. 70 the period of welfare state retrenchment and of restraint on government growth paradoxically witnessed a significant growth in the number of educational programs in public administration and the broadening of their scope to include public policy. it could be reasonably argued that this growth was in response to political and big business pressure to bring government spending under control, to make government expenditure more transparent and accountable and to bring greater rationalization to government programs. altogether a total of 16 additional new programs and schools were established between 1975 and 2022 and 15 of these were established after 2005 (shewell, 2022b). in addition to the institute of public administration in canada established in 1947, a body representing the professional interests of public servants, the canadian association of programs in public administration (cappa) was established in 1987. cappa was established to support and promote public administration education in canada. it also serves as an accrediting body, although accreditation is voluntary and only six schools/programs of its 25 institutional members have obtained that status (shewell, 2022b). a cursory review of the available curricula on each school’s website revealed that eight of them (or about one third of the total number) offered at least one course in social policy. this may seem comparable to offerings in schools of social work, but social policy courses in schools of public policy and administration are taught in the context of a generic bundle including courses on policy development, evaluation, costing and analysis. what has this meant for social work and social work education? few, if any, schools of social work in canada, offer social policy in such a complete context. it is becoming increasingly apparent then, that the full study of social policy is being incorporated into education for public administration and public policy while in social work curricula it remains somewhat of an appendage. the influence of social work ideals and values is consequently lost in the development of social policy, or its influence is subsumed under other policy advocacy organizations. perhaps, in the final analysis, social work in canada is destined to be primarily a clinical practice profession – that is certainly now the measure of competence by its various provincial boards and colleges that grant registered status and protect use of title (jennissen and lundy, 2011; canadian council of social work regulators, 2012). each province and territory in canada regulate social work competence through its own set of criteria by which eligibility for registration is determined and an individual is granted social worker title. the criteria vary from province to province but in the main each province adapts the competency criteria developed by the canadian council of social work regulators (ccswr) in 2012. there are 152 competencies of which only 13 (0.08%) are policy related and are identified under the category, “improving policies and practices” (ccswr, 2012). social workers who work primarily in what is termed, policy practice, might now find they are unable to call themselves by the very professional title for which they were educated. the introduction of critical theory previously in the paper it was discussed how carleton university, with the development of structural social work, had responded to the marxist critique of social work during the 1970s. however, in general, social work and social work education responded in mixed fashion. one response was to dispute the critique by claiming that social work as a profession could not mix politics with practice: a social worker had to remain neutral, non-judgmental and non-directive in direct intervention; a second, was to embrace the critique and to radicalize practice as was the case in the united kingdom and the call to action by bailey and brake (1975). 71 there were also ‘in between’ responses; that is, those social work educators and schools that accepted sociology’s critique but acknowledged it in a lukewarm fashion. some introduced minor reforms to their curricula incorporating more attention to community work – often incorporating the more radical methods of saul alinsky (1971), developing forms of integrated social work practice (casework, group work, community organization) or substituting formulaic casework with more dynamic forms of therapies arising from rogerian and gestalt theories that empowered and “freed” individuals from the constraints of their psychological blockages. another mid-range response came from pincus and minahan (1973) who applied a systems approach to social work practice, an approach that recognized clients as living in a society in which they were affected by many interrelated but sometimes competing systems. these systems could also be out of balance. despite these and similar ‘new’ theories, none really questioned the fundamental organization of liberal society and its economic, social and political institutions. instead, they tended to protect the status quo (shewell, 2022a). by the 1990s social work education and practice arguably existed on a spectrum of radical to conservative approaches; this was the situation when postmodern and critical theory began to infuse social work thought. sociology during the 1990s – had tempered its embrace of marxism with foucauldian thinking and with critical theory emanating from the frankfurt school of thought. power could not be only explained by class and economic exploitation as marxist theory did. as howe observes, “it [marxist theory] didn’t seem to explain the oppression and domination suffered by many other groups in society. women were being oppressed by men, children by adults, minority ethnic groups by majority ethnic groups, and gay men and lesbian women by heterosexual men and women” (howe, 2009, p. 131). social work ought not to be working towards some modern, grand, utopian vision based on the notion of social progress because, as foucault argued, that simply doesn’t exist. instead, social thinkers and consequently social workers need to understand “how dominant groups and their ‘discourses’ define social relationships” (howe, 2009, p. 132). dominant groups create dominant forms of knowledge accepted as truths, truths which are translated into professional practice by experts who define what is normal and identify and treat those who can be determined to be abnormal. the service user likewise accepts these truths and thus accepts the control those truths exert over them. social work, among other professions like psychiatry and psychology had fallen into the dominant discourse trap, of governmentality (howe, 2009, pp. 133-34). it was the job of social workers to reflect on their own accepted truths and to assist service users to explore and discover their own identity and narrative and to reject identities (including diagnoses) imposed on them. this came to be known as critical, reflective practice. in canada, this interpretation of social work practice resonated strongly in the context of the country’s high degree of diversity and multiculturalism, and where minority ethnic and racialized groups, as well as others including the disabled and those in sexuality and gender diverse communities were and are frequently victims of oppression and marginalization. the impact of this re-direction in social work was significant. if there were no universal truths and no grand vision to be pursued, then social justice had to be pursued not through broad social policies but through how social workers engaged with individuals, groups and communities of identity and how they advocated for their rights and social equality. in this sense, social work has somewhat backed away from its role in influencing government on social policy affecting the social collective, especially those that arise specifically from the exploitative nature of liberal capitalism. 72 the impact of welfare state retrenchment and neoliberalism the impact of welfare state retrenchment, neoliberalism and managerialism might reasonably have resulted in the attrition of social work services and educational bodies. in fact, the opposite occurred. from 1975 to the present, twenty-one (21) new schools of social work were established – an almost 100% increase over the period of the welfare state and its development. the remarkable growth of social work education in canada during the retrenchment period can be explained, i think, by demographic factors (canada’s population increased by about 65% since 1975, from just over 23 million to just over 38 million in 2021) and by the confluence of neoliberalism and critical theory – both of those last two developments in many ways favoured a focus on social casework. neoliberalism’s focus on social services that are targeted, effectively managed and evaluated and that contain social problems by individualizing them lends itself to casework intervention. the focus of critical theory, while not exactly sympathetic to neoliberal thought, nevertheless lent itself to casework intervention rather than to social policy. it must also be said that not all schools adopted critical theory as the basis of their pedagogy, many have taught other forms of direct casework practice based on psychological theory including cognitive behavioural therapy, strengths-based practice and so on. the net impact however has been that a much larger population has increased the demand for individualized social services which, in turn, has resulted in a greater demand for social workers in direct practice. consequently, social policy focused on more collective, universal objectives has diminished in importance within most schools of social work. while it provides the context for direct practice, it is not seen as a dominant area of social work engagement. conclusion: social work since covid-19 if any recent, single event might have re-awakened social work to the need for a collective demand for social reform reflective of social solidarity and equality, the covid-19 pandemic was that event. but that has not happened in canada. instead, there would seem to be a doubling down on direct practice often framed in the language of social justice though that is not fully explained or defined (jennissen and lundy, 2011, p. 301). the reliance on casework as a fundamental practice mode has never been supplanted, and this has continued in the aftermath of the pandemic. indeed, during the height of the pandemic when lockdowns prevailed, many social workers – excepting those providing some statutory services like child protection – turned to online platforms to provide casework services. boards of registration and colleges that control title and assess competence have not signalled any movement towards a clear, comprehensive inclusion of those persons whose degrees are in social work but whose work is primarily in policy, planning and community work. there has been no impetus to do so since neoliberalism has retained its dominance and as argued, clinical approaches to social work conform well to the neoliberal agenda. nothing has structurally changed, nor has social work developed a collective consciousness beyond acting as “the stretcher bearers of society” (cassidy,1933, p. 2) and mopping up after capitalism (collier,1984). mainstream social work continues to be concerned with social adjustment, not social change and reform. while vulnerable and marginalised populations in canada were those most adversely affected by the covid-19 pandemic, little organized demand has collectively arisen from social work to institute the kinds of social change required to minimise or eliminate the risks faced by those populations. garrett (2021) explores the dimensions of neoliberalism that underpin how those in liberal democracies are socialized to think about and 73 understand the society in which they live. garrett argues that those living in liberal democratic states are so embedded in its ideology and the language it has produced that they are scarcely aware of it – they have simply internalised its dominance. canadian social work academic françois boudreau (2022) writes a cautionary statement for social work in the post-pandemic period. the neoliberal version of human action in the world thus remains very problematic, because it still places the individual before society and property before solidarity. everywhere on the planet, individualistic interests and that of corporate entities are generally placed above the ethics of collective life and the well-being of the people. this way of seeing and organizing society has … led humanity into an alarming impasse, especially with regard to the depth, diversity and dignity of human cultures and the ecological conditions of existence. it is society as a whole that loses its humanistic content, and it brings social relations back to its simplest utilitarian and instrumental expression of the individual: we could think here of a friendly fascism in the manner imagined by huxley, where society pushes the idea that happiness is to be found in consumption…here is where we stand: humanity as a whole is now faced with a new paradigm, truly global and profoundly worldwide, in all the meanings and implications of these terms. … but there is still a lot to be done to clarify and unify our collective understanding of the world we are moving towards. for now, we are fumbling at high speed towards a menacing unknown. 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(1959). social science and social pathology. london: allen & unwin. microsoft word alternate routes vol 30, issue 2 final precarity as the new reality? millennials’ representation in the changing workplaces review policy process jordyn perreault-laird11 and susan silver12 abstract: millennials, comprising the majority of the canadian labour market, have come of age in a time of shrinking safety nets and precarious work. the changing workplaces review (cwr) in ontario was commissioned to explore how work conditions have shifted in line with globalization, neoliberalism, labour market restructuring, and the gig economy. the final report offered a golden opportunity to suggest legislative adjustments to employment standard and labour relation legislation in a way that strengthened workplace and employment conditions for millennials. considering the unique barriers facing this generation, this paper proposes a scale for categorizing the type of representation this group received within the consultation phase of the policy process of the review. findings demonstrate that the most salient aspects of precarious work which specifically target millennials received a small, but substantive representation from community groups, labour unions, and other allies within community consultations. however, our analysis revealed that the substantive representation was not reflected in either the final report or in the ensuing legislation. we conclude that a small clustering of substantive representation, while an important contribution to the public debate, can be overlooked by policy makers, especially when concerns run counter to the dominant framing of the group and issue. keywords: intersectional policy analysis; millennials; precarious work; policy process; changing workplaces review 11 jordyn perreault-laird recently completed a master of social work at mcmaster university. email: perreauj@mcmaster.ca 12 susan silver is associate professor of social work at ryerson university. email: ssilver@ryerson.ca 78 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life introduction the topic of millennial workers has received growing attention from academia, (broido, 2004; standing, 2011; twenge, 2006; worth, 2016) business management (ng, lyons, & schweitzer, 2017; pînzaru, vatamanescu, mitan, savulescu, vitelar, noaghea, & balan, 2016), and marketing (goldman sachs global investment research, n.d.; norris, 2015). this generation’s workplace values, goals, and characteristics are commonly conceived as an anomaly to be studied and explained (bonfiglio, 2008; deal, altman, & rogelberg, 2010; holt, marques, & way, 2012; kuron, lyons, schweitzer, & ng, 2015). interestingly, however, there does not exist one common definition for millennial (ng et al., 2017). the generation born after 1980 has had a number of names: generation y, gen me, gen next, generation squeeze and millennials (kershaw, 2017; ng et al., 2017; twenge, 2006). media representations of millennials have contributed to the confusion of how we understand this cohort. for example, mirrlees (2015) has identified four media representations of millennials that include, “a member of a youth cohort, a sovereign consumer, a worker to be managed, and an immiserated victim of hard times” (p. 278). while these representations reflect the diversity of the group’s constructed identities, we use the popular designation of millennial as introduced to academia by howe and strauss (2000) who defined the cohort by their age range, as being born between the years 1982 to 2002 (aged 18-37). ontario finds itself at a pivotal point for millennials who are just entering the labour market or are searching for an end to precarious employment. for the first time in 25 years, the ontario government has struck a commission that will impact the employment standards act, 2000 (esa) and the ontario labour relations act, 1995 (olra). the changing workplaces review (cwr) was commissioned by the ontario liberal government in 2015 to explore the changing nature of work in ontario and how labour laws may need to adjust in accordance. as the provincial government is intent on moving forward with alterations to legislation (ministry of labour, 2017), the cwr provides a unique opportunity to examine how millennials are represented in relation to discussions of their participation in the ontario labour market. such a review further offers the possibility to ensure that the voices and concerns of the most precarious workers are represented and remedied. although millennials are a diverse cohort with varying life goals, oppressions and privileges, the one constant that remains is their inevitable and precarity as the new reality? | 79 necessary participation in the ontario labour force13 (ng, lyons, & schweitzer, 2017). while most will participate in paid work, their participation will occur in different ways in the labour force, ways that range from low wage labourers to employers. statistics canada (2016) identified that ontarians, between the ages of 15-34, have reached over 2 million. nationally, they have become one of the largest age group in the labour force, surpassing the baby boom generation (norris, 2015). the value of focusing on millennials can be explained by their many years of future labour force participation14. if labour and employment law policy reform are to occur, it must adequately address the needs and challenges of a generation entering a labour market that is increasingly characterized by contract, temporary and precarious forms of employment. this study seeks to explore the different types of representation that this cohort received in the policy process. more specifically, we aim to understand how millennials and their labour force options and experiences are represented in the submissions to the cwr and the final report. we recognize that, while this cohort is defined by age, their multiple constructions (mirrlees, 2015) and lived experiences pose challenges in how they are represented in the policy process. based on the nature of their representation in this policy process, we explore the degree to which millennials are a serious consideration of labour policy, and as such, if they are viewed as a group deserving of this attention. this paper will argue that addressing the challenges of millennials in the ontario labour force is an important policy goal. it will then identify the significance of representation in the policy process in relation to an intersectionality-based policy analysis (ibpa), followed by examining the depth of precarity for this demographic and a brief timeline of the events leading up to the cwr. four codes were developed to operationalise representation in the policy process, and these will be used to explore the research questions. following this analysis is a discussion of how representation is taken up in the submissions to the cwr and in the final report and the implications of the degree of representation achieved. the paper concludes with opportunities for future research that links representation and intersectionality. 13 here is it important to note that the authors are in full support of those who exist outside of that labour force due to health-related issues or otherwise. 14 for more information on the experiences of baby boomers and their experiences of precarious work; please see standing (2011) and silver, shields, wilson, & scholtz (2005). 80 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life representation in the policy process and intersectionality-based policy analysis in 2016, federal minister of finance bill morneau told a group of canadian youth that they should expect "job churn" (characterised by short-term, temporary employment) throughout their lifetime (canadian press, 2016). the comment led to an action by members of a canadian labour congress youth labour forum who turned their backs on prime minister justin trudeau in peaceful protest against the minister's remarks (pedwell, 2016). a demonstration such as this reveals that some members of the 18 to 37 cohort are deeply disappointed with the current conditions of work and the lack of political responses. the peaceful protest against the prime minister and minister of finance’s comments highlighted the disapproval of precarity as the new status quo for millennials. as explained by andré and depauw (2017) disagreement between constituents and their political representatives is a predictable aspect of politics; however, when the opinions of elected officials are found consistently incongruent with their constituents, citizens are likely to be discontent with their policies. this discrepancy reflects the increasing importance of representation in the policy process (andré & depauw, 2017). on the topic of representation and community participation in the policy process, the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd; 2001) outlines a number of benefits. significantly, the report explains how engaging citizens in policy-making contributes to strengthening public faith in governments and creates better policy. results of the report note “higher levels of implementation and compliance given greater public awareness of policies and participation in their design” (oecd, 2001). moreover, “allowing governments to tap wider sources of information, perspectives, and potential solutions" improves the quality of policy (oecd, 2001, 19). the report further highlighted the importance of ensuring representation with respect to diversity as a vital aspect of robust policy creation. in short, representation is important for good policy. recognizing the diversity and complexity of a group’s lived experiences is another important aspect of policy creation and is one of the central tenants of an intersectionality-based policy analysis (ibpa). in a discussion of intersectionality and public policy, hankivsky and cormier (2011) argue for a policy process that considers the unique experiences of social locations that are context dependent and fluid. an intersectional analysis, informed by social precarity as the new reality? | 81 location, gained recognition when it was articulated by crenshaw (1991) in her seminal work in the field of law. crenshaw examined the ways gender, blackness, and class interlock creating unique experiences of oppression for black women in the legal system. intersectionality has since gained popularity in academic fields including public policy (bishwakarma, hunt, & zajicek, 2007; hankivsky & cormier, 2011; hankivsky, hunting, giesbrecht, fridkin, rudrum, ferlatte, & clark, 2014). in the area of social policy, "intersectionality conceptualizes social categories as interacting with and co-constituting one another to create unique social locations that vary according to time and place. it is these intersections and their effects that are of concern in an intersectionality analysis" (hankivsky et al., 2012, 35). to do so, ibpa uses three components in policy analysis. the first element is concerned with the interrogation of diverse sources of information and knowledge, and the implicit assumptions, historical context, and relationships of power that frame the policy issue, (hankivsky et al., 2014). the second component speaks specifically to issues of representation and how policy issues impact specific populations; while the third highlights areas for advocacy efforts (hankivsky et al., 2014). when using an ibpa, these three components are applied to and guide the entire policy process. in this research project, we focus specifically on how millennials are represented in the submissions to the cwr. while this consultation is only one aspect of the policy process, it is the most publicly accessible aspect where issues of representation can be readily introduced. therefore, the focus of this analysis will centre upon this early stage of policy formulation wherein proposals for addressing policy issues are provided and policy actors engage in community consultation processes (biskwakarma et al., 2007). focussing on this area of the policy cycle, our research is grounded in the assumption that “to fully understand who is at issue also requires…the voices of vulnerable and marginalized individuals and groups be represented within the policy-making process” (hankivsky & cormier, 2011, 219). if a group is not represented, then by extension it would be challenging to create a policy that addresses their concerns. further, without effective representation, the analysis cannot move to a reflexive consideration of the “meaning-making processes of privilege and exclusion in policy making and ultimately lead to the reconstruction of harmful and oppressive policies” (hankivsky & cormier, 2011, 219). when working with communities, code (1995) asks what type of space is created for community members to express their ideas. the author argues that “our concern should not be directed at what is said but more significantly, what is 82 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life heard, discussed and considered? whose voices and concerns have ‘a reasonable expectation of take-up’" (code, 1995, xiv). the first step in this process is to identify if the voices of millennials were represented, if the group was heard, were their issues considered or discussed and subsequently if they were taken up in a meaningful way in the final policy. why millennials? globally, millennials are encountering substantial barriers to accessing the labour market in the wake of the financial recession of 2008 (international labour organization, 2013). the international labour organization (ilo) estimates the global youth unemployment rate was at 12.6 per cent in 2013; accounting for approximately 73 million young people. prolonged unemployment is leading many young people to take on jobs that are temporary to generate income (ilo, 2013). compounding this crisis is a skills mismatch wherein young people are overqualified for the job they are doing leaving the benefits of their skills lost on society (ilo, 2013, 1). in response, the ilo is calling for nations to implement “creative, wide-ranging policy solutions” (2) to break this damaging cycle. canada is among the nations impacted by this crisis. the canadian labour market has undergone a drastic transformation, through the 1990s, producing high levels of unstable, part-time precarious work (cranford, vosko, & zukewich, 2003b; silver, shields, & wilson, 2005). since then, canadians have experienced the proliferation of non-standard and precarious work (lewchuk, 2017). precarious employment is defined by "atypical employment contracts, limited social benefits and statutory entitlements, job insecurity, low job tenure, low earnings, poor working conditions and high risks of ill health" (cranford et al., 2003, 455b). notably, a recent statistic canada analysis reveals 5.6% of canadians were involuntarily employed part time, while 12% found themselves in temporary work, and 15% were self-employed (as cited in fleury & cahill, 2018). workers’ perceptions of their employment situation are an important indication of the impact of precarious employment that reach beyond the workplace. lewchuk and colleagues' (2013) employment precarity index measures precarious employment through indicators that include the relationship between the employer and employee, earning and hours of employment, when and how workers are paid (including on missed days), sense of confidence in articulating concerns without fear of losing their job, and personal perception of job permanence. cranford and colleagues (2003a) add the dimension of legislative precarity as the new reality? | 83 protection to this definition by underscoring the lack of employment standard coverage for precariously employed workers. although there are circumstances where part-time employment is desirable and non-precarious, many workers are interested in full-time permanent opportunities (shier, graham, giotam, & eisenstat, 2014). the dismantling of full-time, secure, unionised employment favours the interests of business and capital (stanford, 2008), dramatically affecting workers' quality of life. the lack of security afforded by precarious work has adverse impacts on the future of canada as millennial workers will soon be the largest cohort in the labour force. there are 6.8 million young canadians between the ages of 15 – 2915 ; of which one-third find themselves in temporary employment (canadian labour congress [clc], 2016, 6). although there is a proliferation of part-time work, "over 230,000 young workers would rather work full-time hours but business conditions [do not] allow for it" or they could not locate full-time employment (clc, 2016, 8). this is in sharp contrast to the core working age group16 as young workers are twice as likely to be unemployed (clc, 2016, 7). nationally, ontario has been cast as one of the worst places for youth unemployment and limited fulltime job prospects (kershaw, 2017). in 2013, geobey outlined the reality of youth unemployment in ontario, a valuable analysis which illuminates the experiences of a subset of the millennial category (i.e., those 1824 years old). the report highlights the challenge young workers aged 15 to 24 encounter when accessing the labour market postrecession. the report indicates ontario’s youth are faring worse than other provinces at rates that are “twice as high as the overall provincial unemployment level” (geobey, 2013, 5). more troubling was the finding that youth unemployment is “turning out to be chronic, rather than a short-term result of a global economic crisis” (geobey, 2013, 7). the law commission of ontario (lco; 2012) explored this actuality explaining the compounding effect of their challenges in accessing the labour market and their desire for employment, resulting in young workers being pushed into non-standard jobs (characterised by temporary, part-time, contingent work). as a result, young people are overrepresented in temporary, part-time employment. an additional factor in 15 statistics canada does not use the 18–37 age group but instead 15-19, 19-24, and 24 and over. 16 statistics canada identifies the core-age labour force as 25-54. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-x/10906/9297-eng.pdf 84 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life analysing the unemployment rate is the increase of unpaid internships outside of the degree-specific requirements which add to this generations' level of precarity. unpaid labour has broader and longer-term negative impacts on the ontario economy (lco, 2012). in response to these economic circumstances, the lco identified younger millennials as a vulnerable group within the labour market. these findings are echoed by kershaw (2017) who argues ontario is one of the worst performing economies in canada for people under 45. employment vulnerability has adverse impacts on millennial's short – and long-term quality of life. the standard of living for millennials has deteriorated, impacting this generation's ability to secure good-paying jobs as "ontario is the only province in canada to report a decline in full-time earnings for the typical 25– 34-year-old since 2003" (kershaw, 2017, 3). home-ownership is increasingly challenging, taking an average of 15 years to secure a 20 percent down payment; a stark contrast to the five years it took in 1976 – 80 (kershaw, 2017). high levels of personal debt are burdening the futures of young generations, which has risen by $19,000 since 1999 for ontarians under 35 (kershaw, 2017). this reality has adverse impacts not only on the quality of life of millennials but also for ontario as the downward pressure of a dwindling middle class leads to less purchasing power and reinvestment of capital back into the economy (kershaw, 2017). millennial’s vulnerability and uncertain future is heightened as they are less likely to be covered by the esa. vosko, noack, and thomas (201617) explain that “[m]ore than a quarter of young [aged 15 to 29] employees (27%) have special rules relating to public holiday pay, compared to only 20% of employees overall. young employees’ relatively short job tenure also results in lower levels of access to vacation time as well as termination and severance pay” (p. 4). this is particularly acute in sectors where millennials are overrepresented, such as construction and hospitality which are characteristically precarious. due to the nature of their work, young employees find themselves exempt from the esa on issues related to vacation time, termination and severance pay (vosko et al., 2016). in this way, the esa has created enforcement loopholes that lead to exploitive employment practices impacting this group. many labour organisations and community activists have long advocated for increasing the provincial minimum wage and codifying stronger workers’ rights in law.18 17 report commissioned for the changing workplaces review 18 see http://workersactioncentre.org/ precarity as the new reality? | 85 chronology over the past decade, there have been a number of reports examining the issue of precarity and its relationship to poverty, poor health, and family cohesion. beginning in 2007, the united way produced the report losing ground: the persistent growth of family poverty in canada’s largest city. drawing attention to the considerable increase in poverty within the greater toronto area the report. evidence pointed to precarious employment and the deteriorating social safety net as among the causes of this disparity. calls for changes to the labour force were heralded by academics, activists, organised labour and charities alike (kalleberg, 2011; law commission of ontario, 2012; lewchuk et al., 2013; workers action centre, 2011). focussing on vulnerable workers in precarious labour, the law commission of ontario (lco; 2012). the authors put forward 47 recommendations to address the disadvantages faced by groups through legislative changes. in southern ontario, an lewchuk and colleagues’ (2013) report reinforced the overwhelming impact of precarious employment and poverty on the social, community, financial, physical, and mental well-being of residents in the region. the ongoing conversation about precarity garnered attention in the political realm with premier wynne’s 2014 speech from the throne (office of the premier, 2014) wherein she committed to consulting with ontarians to consider what could be done to address the changing workplace within the context of ontario’s labour and employment laws. soon after, minister of labour michael flynn received his mandate letter from premier wynne. therein, he was charged with leading a review of the province’s employment and labour standards. in spring of 2015, the cwr was launched. the advisors c. michael mitchell and john c. murray were mandated to: “… consider the broader issues affecting the workplace and assess how the current labour and employment law framework addresses these trends and issues with a focus on the lra and the esa. in particular, the special advisors will seek to determine what changes, if any, should be made to the legislation in light of the changing nature of the workforce, the workplace, and the economy itself, particularly in light of relevant trends and factors operating on our society, including, globalization, trade liberalization, technological change, the growth of the service sector, and changes in the prevalence and 86 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life characteristics of standard employment relationships” (ontario ministry of labour, 2017, para 15). excluded from the consultations were labour provisions for the construction industry, the minimum wage, and issues that other policy reviews are already addressing (ontario ministry of labour, 2017). the pieces of legislation governing employment relationships in ontario under review are the olra and the esa. the olra is the law that regulations relations between employers and employees in workplaces including collective bargaining. there have been a number of revisions to the act, however, no major changes have occurred since 2005. the esa establishes the minimum standards of workplaces in ontario and underwent a major review in 2000-2001. as these critical guiding statues have not undergone a comprehensive revision in over a decade, the cwr provided a valuable opportunity to enhance labour protections in response to the onset of widespread precarious employment. given its broad scope and mandate, issues related to millennials' engagement in the labour market would thus have the possibility of being addressed (government of ontario, 2016). over two years, the advisors held public consultation sessions across the province and received submissions from various interest groups, community organisations, and independent establishments. during phase 1 of the public consultations, the review received 217 in-person and written submissions from may 2015 to september 2015 (government of ontario, 2017). the advisors also reviewed academic literature in preparing their report. after the release of the interim report in july 2016, public consultations were held. phase 2 submissions responded to the cwr interim report and the added issue of personal emergency leave coverage (pel). a total of 210 submissions were received for phase 2, bringing the total public, written submissions to 427. the final report was released in may 2017. methodology to examine how millennials were represented in the cwr, this study used content analysis to analyze the submissions to the cwr and its final report (2017). content analysis is a methodology which is a “careful, detailed, systematic examination and interpretation of a particular body of material in an effort to identify patterns, themes, biases, and meanings” (berg, 2007, 304). remaining consistent with the methodology, berg (2007) notes the criteria of selection must precarity as the new reality? | 87 be sufficiently rigorous and established prior to the analysis. the decision to use submissions to the cwr was founded upon the desire to understand the type and degree of representation millennials received in the consultation process and to explore the ways in which their concerns were discussed. equally important was the presence of this cohort in the final report which helped inform the final legislation (ontario ministry of labour, 2017). at the first stage of analysis, we identified where millennials appeared in the 427 submissions by developing a list of descriptive search terms. in accordance with content analysis, berg (2007) explains categories that emerge through the process of developing criteria should reflect all aspects of the messages, using exact wording when possible. as such, an inductive approach was used to create search terms by examining two submissions from groups that explicitly identified themselves as representing young workers and millennials: ontario public services employees union provincial young workers committee (opseupywc; 2015) and ontario economic development society (oeds) (dedier, 2015). within these two submissions, young workers and millennials were described using terms indicated in table 1. in this way, search terms were not selected arbitrarily but rather in accordance with the subject group’s selfidentification. further, these search terms were very stable in that when these terms appeared in the submissions, they were always referencing millennials. table 1: search terms used in submissions and the changing workplaces review final report population demographic characteristics young* youth millennial generation* student note: an asterisk indicates any variation on the term, e.g., generations, younger. submissions were manually searched using the terms from table 1, resulting in a sample of 109 submissions that contained any or all of these terms. 88 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life only submissions that were directly related to the cwr were included19. from this group, three submissions were withdrawn resulting in the inclusion of 106 submissions in the final sample used for our analysis. further, the word student had multiple meanings that did not exclusively refer to post-secondary students (such as students under 18, or the student minimum wage). these occurrences were therefore excluded as they did not meet the inclusion criteria of the 18 to 37 age range. when exploring the representation of millennials, it was important to first consider the physical presence of the demographic identifiers in the text. manifest content analysis is an approach that examines what is physically countable and present in the sample (berg, 2007). as this study is investigating the extent to which millennials are represented in the text, the number of times the identifiers occurred was counted to evaluate the frequency and magnitude of their presence. our categories of representation where then applied to the total sample of 106 submissions which is inclusive of phase 1 and phase 2 consultations. the frequency distribution of these search terms and the corresponding category of representation is presented below, starting in table 4. definition of categories to examine the degree of representation in the community consultation process this research proposes a methodology for categorising a group's presence in policy submissions. each category of representation indicates an increasing recognition of the group. our methodology consisted of coding both the type and frequency with which millennials are identified and their labour force experiences recognized. rather than coding an entire report or submission, coding was initiated by the appearance of a demographic identifier and then the type of representation was determined by considering the surroundings words and sentences. table 3 illustrates the definitions of the categories of representation, followed by an in-depth explanation of each category, including sample quotes from the submissions to illustrate how the coding was conducted. 19 the above-noted letters from opseupywc and oeds were excluded they were used to shape the conversation and search terms. additionally, the submission made by trillys systems was withdrawn as it was a transcript of a debate in the provincial government on bill 139. precarity as the new reality? | 89 table 2: definition of categories of representation type of code mere mention nod substantive recommendation definition appearance in a list connected to other groups; or, used as an example come into focus as a standalone group with unique experie nces; no indepth discussi on of issues group’s issues are discussed in detail; issues relate directly to the labour market and labour laws a recommendation to change the esa or olra is made which name's the group and is in relation to an issue affecting the demographic mere mention the excerpts compiled within this category were chosen based on a demographic characteristic’s appearance in a list (e.g.: racialized people, women, young people, disabled people, etc.) or as an example of a broader issue. this often occurs in the context of identifying a list of those who are considered vulnerable in the labour market. for instance: “it is a similar story in thunder bay as it is elsewhere in the province for precarious workers. they are living on the edge. many go to the food bank regularly. inadequate wages and benefits exacerbate mental and physical health problems. children’s lives are restricted. there is little time to participate in community activities. precarious low wage jobs are heavily represented by women (many single mothers), aboriginal people, recent immigrants and young people” (poverty free thunder bay, 2015, 3). 90 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life this quote demonstrates the way young people are mentioned as part of a list of people experiencing precarity. by doing so, the authors are speaking more to the issue of precarity rather than the specific experiences of millennials. this occurs again when they are used as an example: “recent research on the economic and labour market impact of epl has found that strict epl can reduce job flows, negatively impact the employment prospects of some vulnerable groups (e.g. youth), reduce productivity, and impede economic growth” (apotex, 2015, 11). if the submission or report only identifies the group through a mere mention, then it would be difficult to develop an intersectional policy response as they are taken up as part of a group rather than a unique demographic requiring their own analysis. nod this category was applied to sections of text in which millennial characteristics appeared as a stand-alone problem, and not attached to other groups of people or issues. millennials are spoken about as a unique group with their particular issues regarding participation in the workforce. when millennials are discussed in this context, they suddenly come into focus as a group experiencing vulnerability and precarity in a unique way. below are a number of examples to illustrate this appearance: “compared to other ontario employees subject to the esa, a more significant percentage of employees in small firms are employed part-time (25%) or on a temporary basis (17%). and young employees (ages 15-29) are also concentrated in small firms. in short, the current exemption for pel exacerbates labour market insecurity for employees already experiencing social disadvantages and precariousness in employment” (closing the employment standards gap 1, 2016, p 38). “the growth of so-called non-standard employment is itself a symptom of the growing power imbalance between employers and workers. with good jobs hard to find and a tattered safety precarity as the new reality? | 91 net, people must take whatever is offered – temporary jobs, jobs where agencies rake a commission off their wages, jobs offering too few hours, multiple jobs, jobs without benefits or even meeting minimum standards, or accepting contract or phony “self-employment” status at the cost of esa protections. young workers are particularly vulnerable” (international association of machinist and aerospace workers1, 2015, 4). the excerpts in this category highlight the way millennials are spoken about as a distinct group with their own experiences of marginalization in the labour force. substantive this category extends beyond an acknowledgement of the stand-alone nature of the group and represents a substantive discussion or elaboration of an issue related to millennials. this is where the seeds an intersectional analysis would appear. the excerpts identify concrete employment issues, barriers, and strategies. they reflect an analysis of the concerns this group has about their futures and how the current laws impact their participation in the workforce. it also highlights different perspectives on millennials' labour force participation from industry and employers who discuss the role millennials occupy as their employees, and the perceived benefits of part-time and temporary employment for this group. “in addition, among the women we have interviewed, there is a shared desire for job-protected sick leave. "i worry about making ends meet…paying for the rent, transportation and the other necessities. there isn't anything left. i feel bad about getting sick and that i have to choose between work and health. if i lose hours or any of my jobs, i'm afraid we will end up in one of the shelters." the above expression of anxiety is spoken by a younger refugee woman, a university graduate who is juggling 3 part-time jobs in order to support her parent with disabilities and her siblings, as well pay her student loan” (ng, 2016, 2). “expected long tenure with one employer may be high for incumbent older workers, but many new entrants to the 92 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life workforce cannot expect to have “lifetime” long-tenured jobs and a semblance of job stability with the same, often unionized, employer as did earlier generations. younger workers can expect to start off in limited-term contracts or in internships (sometimes unpaid), or self-employment, and can expect to change careers often working for different employers” (murray & mitchell, 2017, 54). the issues presented in the above excerpts highlight the realities of millennials and a declaration that their experiences of precarity need to be addressed. recommendation this category is applied when demographic characteristics are named as part of a recommendation or solution. all submissions were coded for recommendations but it was beyond the scope of this study to determine whether substantive appearances lead to recommendations. for instance: “unifor strongly recommends that the exemptions and variations listed in category 1 of existing exemptions (page 161) should be removed immediately and workers in these seven categories (it workers, pharmacists, managers and supervisors, residential care workers, building superintendents, janitors and caretakers, students and liquor servers) have the full protection of the esa” (unifor, 2016, 38). “cover all classes of worker and employers under the esa without any exemptions. that would include younger workers, farm workers, workers with shorter tenure and managerial staff” (registered nurses’ association of ontario, 2015, 10). recommendations speak to specific changes that need to be made to the olra or esa in order to address the substantive issues impacting millennials’ workforce participation. findings the findings presented are discussed in relation to the two phases in which the submissions were received by the cwr. in the first phase of precarity as the new reality? | 93 submissions, the results reveal that demographic characteristics appeared a total of 300 times, whereas in the second phase, they appeared 245 (for a total of 545 times in all submissions in which demographic identifiers appeared), and 39 times in the cwr final report. table 4 displays the cumulative count of both sets of submissions both by the terms searched and the type of representation. of all the codes, the largest is substantive representation. within this code, the terms used most frequently were: student (213) and young (161). however, it is important to note that the largest degree of substantive representation was clustered in only 19 submissions across both phases. this indicates that millennials and their relationship to labour laws and the workforce were only discussed substantively in 4.4%20 of the submissions. integral to the research question is whether the presence of group characteristics in the community consultation process made an impact on the subsequent policy document. to explore this question, the same codes were applied to the cwr final report. table 5 demonstrates that within the cwr final report millennial demographics appeared 39 times, with the majority located within the substantive category. students accounted for a larger portion of the substantive comments as there was an entire subheading addressing the issues of the esa student exemption from the 3-hour21 rule which was followed by a recommendation to eliminate this from the labour laws. this was the only recommendation that was reflected in the submissions and the final report which used millennial demographic identifiers. table 4: total frequency of appearance of demographic characteristics in phase 1 and 2 submissions to the changing workplaces review terms/ type mention nod substantive recommendation total by terms student 22 21 145 25 213 20 cluster of 19 substantive submissions divided by the total 427 submissions times 100 equals 4.4% 21 the 3-hour rule “establishes minimum pay for employees whose shifts are normally longer than three hours, but are sent home after working fewer than three hours” (vosko, noack, & thomas, 2016, p. 61) 94 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life young 33 40 79 9 161 youth 22 9 41 4 76 generat ion 3 16 24 0 43 millenn ial 0 0 52 0 52 total by type 80 86 341 38 545 table 5: frequency of appearance of demographic characteristics in the changing workplaces review final report terms/ type mention nod substantive recommendation total by type student 3 1 15 1 20 youth 4 3 2 0 9 young 4 1 3 0 8 generat ion 0 1 0 0 1 millenn ial 0 1 0 0 1 total by terms 11 7 20 1 39 notably, the top terms used to describe millennials in the submissions were student, young, and young. constructing the group in this way connotes a temporary state of being in the labour market. madison (2005) highlights the importance of representation in research. the author argues the way people are represented is often how they are taken up. these labels signify phases of life that someone can move through. such a temporality may allow policymakers to normalize precarity during these periods as passing and therefore resistant to make an effort to change the outcomes for these groups. whereas a more fixed term such as millennials identifies a generational group that continues to suffer precarity as the new reality? | 95 the impacts of precarious labour throughout their lifetimes. the next section will discuss the implications of these findings on millennials. discussion representation in the policy process was a principle concern in this research. as such, the study sought to operationalise representation through the development of four categories that reflect a scale of representation. the study asked if millennials are represented in submissions to the cwr and the final report, and if so, to what degree and how. we found that millennials were represented in a quarter of all submissions to the review22. while they appeared in a quarter of the submissions, the substantive representation was clustered in only 4.4% of all submissions (or 19 submissions in both phase 1 and phase 2). further, phase 2 submissions revealed a stronger presence of substantive comments. this finding could be attributed to the nature of phase 2 submissions as responses to the interim report. it is possible that the public responded to the lack of representation in this interim report with more substantive comments regarding millennials in the second round of consultations. this may explain why they were only discussed substantively 20 times in the cwr. in the cwr, these occurrences were in seven paragraphs of a 420-page report. at the policy level, the limited presence of substantive representation across the submissions would suggest that millennials are being grouped under the heading of vulnerable or precarious along with other groups. although many groups may face similar concerns, this resulted in a nominal consideration of millennials as facing unique challenges. another reason for the liminal presence is the way millennials were predominantly framed as young, youth, and students; therefore, inhabiting a temporary state of precarity. as one would expect, this similar pattern of nominal consideration was reflected in the cwr final report which only came forward with one recommendation aimed explicitly at millennials: the elimination of the student exemption to the 3-hour rule. using the lens of an ipba, it is vital that the voices of the most vulnerable be present in the consultation process to create a nuanced, accurate response to the issues identified by marginalized communities (hankivsky & cormier, 2011). these findings have implications for an ipba as millennials were nominally present in the final report and appeared in only one recommendation. this can 22 number of submissions in which demographic characteristics appeared (108; includes oecd and opseupywc) divided by total submission (427) times 100 equals 25.29 96 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life suggest a connection between a low frequency of appearance in the community consultation process of policy formulation and limited uptake of the group's concerns in the final policy document. additionally, this policy was not intersectional as it did not reflect the experiences and challenges for millennials that were well articulated in the substantive excerpts. it is worrisome that this group was not given specific attention as it will soon become one of the largest demographics in the labour force. further, this study responds to the research question: how are millennials and the employment concerns they face taken up in the cwr final report? as there is only one recommendation that used millennial demographic characteristics, it was unlikely their issues would have been taken up in a way that would make an impact on subsequent policy decisions. given their intense but limited representation in these policy documents, millennials are not represented as a serious consideration of labour policy. consequently, although millennials received substantive representation in this policy process, their outcomes are limited to modest gains afforded to the larger category of those in precarious work. shortly after the release of the cwr, the ontario liberal government passed new legislation on november 22, informed, in part, by the cwr final report. bill 148 – the fair workplaces, better jobs act 2017, provides amendments to the olra and the esa. notable changes included a rise in the ontario minimum wage to $14 per hour in 2018 and $15 per hour in 2019 followed by yearly adjustments to the minimum wage in line with inflation. additional provisions regarding notification of scheduling changes, equal pay for part-time and temporary help workers, regulation around employee misclassification, and redress some of the more limiting aspects of union certification, among others, were also implemented (ontario ministry of labour, 2017). a number of labour organisations have lauded many of the proposed changes to the olra and esa. the ontario office of the canadian centre for policy’s alternatives’ analysis of the report noted that the rise in minimum wage will universally support vulnerable ontarians (macdonald, 2017). other aspects of the proposed legislation will support equal pay for equal work and dis-incentivize employers from using temp agencies (block, 2017). the new legislation addresses some of the most egregiously exploitative practices that millennials encounter in the precarious labour market. the community consultations for the cwr was an important aspect of the policy process that led to bill 148. a significant ongoing challenge for precarity as the new reality? | 97 millennials will be disrupting the idea of precarity as the permanent economic status, as the prime minister and minister of finance suggested. there are already traces of this discourse in the cwr final report. one of the most telling statements is found in the comments made within the cwr final report by the advisors in regards to employment tenure: “expected long tenure with one employer may be high for incumbent older workers, but many new entrants to the workforce cannot expect to have "lifetime" long-tenured jobs and a semblance of job stability with the same, often unionised, employer as did earlier generations. younger workers can expect to start off in limited-term contracts or in internships (sometimes unpaid), or self-employment, and can expect to change careers often working for different employers” (mitchell & murray, 2017, 54). the notion that precarity is the new “reality” must be disrupted to protect the future of the millennial generation and the ontario economy as a whole. as millennials were grouped under the label of vulnerable workers, any benefit this group gains will be experienced by millennials in some capacity. this is primarily based on ideas put forward by intersectionality policy theorists that demonstrate how recognizing common issues and barriers across identity groups that can be collectively addressed through policy responses (hankivsky & cormier, 2011; parken, 2010). however, to truly address the complexities of millennials’ access and engagement in the labour market, their issues must be represented more fully in policy and then monitored to detect and remedy problems of inequality. intersectional policy creation seeks to attend to the unique experiences of different groups and thereby “prevents the distinctions between forms of inequalities from being lost and provides for an inquiry that would capture both individual and group disadvantages" (hankivsky & cormier, 2011, 266). using this approach, policymakers would actively examine the challenges facing a group of people by placing their uniqueness at the fore of the policy process. as stated earlier, this study does not seek to essentialize a group as diverse as the millennials. instead, our research demonstrates that without an intersectional analysis, achieved through effective representation, millennials’ unique experiences of marginalisation are not addressed in the policy process. 98 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life our study suggests that effective representation must be substantive and appear extensively in the policy process. as we found, a small clustering of substantive representation, while important, can be overlooked by policymakers, especially when concerns run counter to the dominant framing of the issue. as we will see below, any degree of representation can be disregarded and erased with changes in the political landscape. conclusion this research presents a methodology for evaluating the types of representation that appear in the policy process. we offer this scale as the beginning of an ibpa in the area of community consultation. the results suggest a correlation between weak representation at the community consultation phase and the outcomes in the final policy. although the subsequent proposed legislation could benefit millennials, the opportunity for an ibpa that considers the unique experiences within this cohort was missed. millennials were represented in the submissions to the cwr and the final report through a cluster of substantive comments. though they appeared in only a quarter of submissions, their concerns were heard by the advisors through the tireless activism of community groups, labour organizations, and other allies. importantly, millennials and their allies have challenged the status quo of precarity and seek to disrupt its damaging presence in the lives of workers. many of the proposed changes to the esa and olra were brought to the fore by activists, labour unions, and anti-poverty organizations who worked tirelessly to identify the acute realities of precarity and mobilise for change. future research would do well to compare the policy outcomes of bill 148 with the demands of these organisations through a social movement and class lens. this also provides an opportunity to consider how the different arguments about precarity and millennials were constructed, and whether we can move towards understandings that can form the basis for collective class action. although bill 148 – fair workplaces, better jobs is a move in the right direction, with the recent election of a majority progressive conservative government in ontario in june 2018, labour gains have been severely impacted. premier doug ford has set a path of cancelling and eliminating many liberal reforms in the name of reducing ontario’s debt. cuts have targeted young people, french language programs, indigenous education training, midwifery, women, low wage earners and the environment (beattie, 2018). precarity as the new reality? | 99 with respect to labour reforms, the pc government introduced bill 47, making ontario open for business act, on october 23, 2018. this new legislation has repealed many of the “modest” workplace changes introduced by bill 148, including the elimination of the two paid sick days and pay equity for part-time and casual workers. most notably, any planned increases to the $14.00 minimum wage have been deterred until october 2020, with current projections indicating that the increase to $15.00/hour will now not occur until 2024 as they will be linked to inflation. instead, the ford government has eliminated income tax on incomes of these than $30,000, though this clearly disadvantages low-income earners that would have been better off with an increase in the minimum wage (rushowy & mojtehedzadeh, 2018). while ontarians brace themselves for new levels of precarity and vulnerability, the importance of representation and intersectionality-based policy analysis have never been more important. further research that monitors and documents the new legislation, bill 47, and its path of deepening precarity is necessary, along with on-going advocacy and activism. otherwise, we risk the very real fear that millennials and other vulnerable groups will continue to be left behind in this era of "progressive" policy. references andré, a & depaux, s. 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(2016). feeling precarious: millennials women and work. society and space, 34(4), 601–616. 106 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life expanding the frame/ing of gendered violence | 111 112 | work for change expanding the frame/ing of gendered violence | 113 114 | work for change expanding the frame/ing of gendered violence | 115 116 | work for change expanding the frame/ing of gendered violence | 117 118 | work for change expanding the frame/ing of gendered violence | 119 120 | work for change expanding the frame/ing of gendered violence | 121 122 | work for change expanding the frame/ing of gendered violence | 123 124 | work for change expanding the frame/ing of gendered violence | 125 126 | work for change expanding the frame/ing of gendered violence | 127 128 | work for change expanding the frame/ing of gendered violence | 129 130 | work for change expanding the frame/ing of gendered violence | 131 http://canadianlabour.ca/issues-research/ending-violence-against-women http://canadianlabour.ca/issues-research/ending-violence-against-women 132 | work for change http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/caf-community-support-services/external-review-sexual-mh-2015/summary.page http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/caf-community-support-services/external-review-sexual-mh-2015/summary.page http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/caf-community-support-services/external-review-sexual-mh-2015/summary.page https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbzbmg9gsxy expanding the frame/ing of gendered violence | 133 https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/national%20office/2016/03/making_women_count2016.pdf https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/national%20office/2016/03/making_women_count2016.pdf 134 | work for change https://ofl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2002.01.01-report-educationprivatization.pdf https://ofl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2002.01.01-report-educationprivatization.pdf expanding the frame/ing of gendered violence | 135 https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/dai/smr08/2014/smr08_190_2014 https://secure.everyaction.com/_h5edxisiksh1oujceovvq2 https://timesupnow.org/work/equity/leveling-the-playing-field-establishing-equity-at-work/ https://timesupnow.org/work/equity/leveling-the-playing-field-establishing-equity-at-work/ 136 | work for change 14 | work for change the people vs. parliament | 15 16 | work for change the people vs. parliament | 17 18 | work for change the people vs. parliament | 19 20 | work for change the people vs. parliament | 21 22 | work for change the people vs. parliament | 23 24 | work for change the people vs. parliament | 25 26 | work for change the people vs. parliament | 27 28 | work for change the people vs. parliament | 29 30 | work for change the people vs. parliament | 31 32 | work for change https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/06/boris-johnson-goes-on-attack-election-speech-after-high-profile-tory-gaffes https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/06/boris-johnson-goes-on-attack-election-speech-after-high-profile-tory-gaffes https://www.supremecourt.uk/prorogation/index.html eu neoliberalism at bay: social democratic renewal or populist economic nationalism? bryn jones1 abstract: after rescuing banks and financial markets from their financial recklessness, the european union continues with neo-liberal globalism while diminishing social protection and state interventionism. successive treaties and increasingly restrictive rules for the eurozone currency system entailed fiscal austerity. the greek debt crisis of 2015-16 and protest movement such as occupy! and the indignados signalled subsequent electoral volatility across europe. though constitutionally unrelated to eurozone restrictions, the uk’s brexit revolt expresses similar antipathies. in different ways, italy’s radical right and populist coalition government, the pandora’s box of brexit and a radicalized uk labour party pose new, acute threats to neoliberal stasis and, potentially, to pillars of the eu regime. national politics hover uncertainly between aspirations for new forms of social democracy and more dynamic forms of right-wing radicalism embracing ethnic discrimination, economic and cultural nationalism and, potentially, authoritarian 'post-democratic' governance. this analysis dissects right and left populisms in italy and the uk to ask whether either of these currents might revitalize or subvert liberal parliamentary democracy, break with neoliberalism, or merely support its continuation. keywords: neoliberalism; social democratic; populist alternatives; european union introduction if neoliberal globalism is ailing, what could replace it? popular protests, 1 bryn jones is lecturer/visiting lecturer at the university of bath, uk. he is the author of corporate power and social responsibility? and co-editor (with mike o’donnell) of alternatives to neoliberalism: towards equality and democracy, and sixties radicalism and social movement activism. eu neoliberalism at bay | 67 such as the indignados and occupy! upsurges, following the 2008 financial meltdown and the consequent austerity regimes, did not translate into effective political power. elite resistance to change is explained by the feedback loop between neoliberal deregulatory policies and the conservatism of the most wealthy and powerful. maintaining and renewing these policies further enriches the wealthiest, incentivising them to back the pro-finance policy of political parties (boyce, 2002). timid and compromised centrist and centre-left politicians, let alone the unchastened right, were incapable, or uninterested, in breaking with the ideological consensus. bolstered by the entrenched positions of neoliberal technocrats and corporate interest groups, the autonomy of deregulated financial institutions remained largely intact. mass political protest movements failed to crystallise into electorally dominant forces. or, as with syriza in greece, they were disciplined into conformity with the new austerity regimes by national and international authorities. but politics abhors a vacuum and now, it seems, different waves of, allegedly, populist political actors are challenging key aspects of the neoliberal paradigm. in the usa, trump is tearing up the free-trade rule book; albeit without much change to domestic austerity. in the uk the successful referendum for a ‘brexit’ from the eu would overthrow the eu model of neoliberal economic governance. tory prime minister, boris johnson promises to adopt trumpian protectionism for the uk. elsewhere in europe the most successful challenges come from populist movements and parties; displacing centrist and social democratic parties in elections and government. are these, mainly new, rightwing forces succeeding where leftist counterparts failed? do they have enough mainstream political traction for major policy changes and a different governance paradigm to neoliberal globalism? media attention certainly portrays them as a potent threat, not only to globalism but even to the liberal parliamentary systems that facilitated it. how credible are these alleged ’threats’ (levitsky and ziblatt, 2018; luce, 2017; kyle and mounk, 2018; baggini, 2016) and, in particular, how do they stand up to three critical questions: first, could new populists break decisively with neoliberal economic governance models? second, might they also provide alternative forms of democracy to supersede the representative model discredited by its commitment to neoliberal economic governance? third, may they simply become new partners in neoliberal globalism to replace the liberal and social democratic parties being rejected by voters? answers to this third question will also clarify whether nationalist populism in particular might dovetail with and reinforce anti-democratic features that writers like bruff (2013) have associated 68 | populism, power and protest with neoliberalism’s evolution into ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’. the following analysis looks specifically at the distinct, but overlapping, cases of italy and uk and their relationship to the eu. these could constitute a special case, but it is of more than local significance. similar contending forces are interacting in other regions, and changes to the eu’s status as a stronghold of the global neoliberal order could have wider ramifications. populist movements could have the potential to shift both national political economies and that of the eu away from neoliberalism; and its underpinning pillar of representative-based liberal parliamentary democracy (lpd). italy and the uk are the eu’s fourth and second largest economies. in addition to its status as a global, financial fulcrum, the uk has significant albeit diminished, military and diplomatic influence. while italy’s deeper integration into eu monetary institutions makes it a crucial pillar of that system. the analysis begins with the underlying context of the crises in liberal democratic systems and the eu. it then assesses and compares the main actors in the uk and italy: the italian la lega (formerly lega nord: ‘ln’), and movimento cinque stelle (m5s) and the british (actually england and wales) cases of the united kingdom independence party (ukip) and (since 2019) the brexit party. for completeness there is also a brief assessment of the ‘corbynist’ politics of the british labour party; parts of whose philosophy resemble the left dimension of italy’s m5s. the crisis of parliamentary democracy anti-system forces on the political right and disquiet within the liberal centre challenge lpd institutions’ viability and their capacity to contain popular resentments and manage economic complexities (streeck, 2011; runciman, 2018). both the traditional right and left worried about globalisation’s weakening of the sovereignty of nation-state institutions. however, its consolidation, from about 1990 to 2007, produced sufficient economic gains to subdue discontents (stiglitz, 2004; kirkland, 2007). however, with the expanded socio-economic jurisdictions of the eu particularly the european monetary union (emu) – over national economic fiscal and monetary policy, disquiet about national sovereignty grew. particularly, when governments, backed by eu leaders, implemented austerity policies for public spending and services after the 2008 financial crisis. one important factor was the gradual capture of governing bodies and processes by elite interests committed to and benefiting from neoliberalism’s ‘liberation’ of financial markets and corporate powers. this international phenomenon was particularly marked in the uk where the erstwhile social eu neoliberalism at bay | 69 democratic labour party became the party of neoliberal ‘modernisation’ (read: commercialisation and privatisation) of public governance and business cultures. links with organised labour and popular values weakened and often broke; replaced by business leaders and financial technocrats in policy making and public sector management (crouch, 2005, 2011; jones and o’donnell, 2017; wilks, 2016). despite intensified financial and fiscal crises of their states, ostensibly left-wing parties lacked both the motivation and vision to re-evaluate and renew social democratic policies. meanwhile their centrist and right wing counterparts regarded the crises as an opportunity to renew and extend neoliberal pruning of the scope of the state and enlargement of market jurisdictions. public awareness of this incorporation of political elites into the business and financial power structure grew. however, in italy and the uk, corruption and malpractice scandals intensified popular disenchantment. for nearly 10 years from 1992, italy’s politicians were embroiled in the tangentopoli (bribesville) corruption scandals. prosecutions and trials were often inconclusive. despite some consequent reforms and dissolution of the formerly hegemonic political parties, key figures such as p.m. silvio berlusconi, escaped conviction and even returned to power. leaders of the (then) lega nord were also convicted of receiving illegal funding. however, ln had not been in government at that point and was subsequently able to evade major ‘contamination’ by tangentopoli, expanding electorally beyond its northeastern strongholds. the reform and prosecution movement petered out, contributing to voter cynicism. the uk experienced an analogous episode between 2009 and 2010. members of parliament (mps) were found to have illegitimately claimed allowances and expenses for varying degrees of personal profit. resignations, sackings, de-selections and retirements of individuals ensued. mps, former mps and members of the (upper) house of lords, were prosecuted and imprisoned. coincident malpractice in the financial world, after its near-collapse in 2008, increased public antipathy to the privileges of the political class. in both italy and the uk these scandals fuelled populist politicians’ crusades against the political elites of liberal democracy. the responses of the two countries’ political establishments differed. italy attempted various electoral and constitutional changes aimed at electing decisive majorities and reducing post-election coalitions. between 2005 and 2018 four different changes were made to the constitution. the government, led by the democratic party leader, matteo renzi, fell in 2016 after a referendum rejected his proposed reforms. british reformist reactions to its 70 | populism, power and protest corruption episode were more modest. the most stringent changes, an independent parliamentary standards authority, plus codes of conduct for mps, focussed only upon the expenses system itself. david cameron, the opposition, conservative, leader, suggested strengthening backbenchers’ rights over the government (cameron, 2009). more fundamentally, labour minister alan johnson proposed a full review of the electoral and political system; including a referendum on replacing the ‘first-pastthe-post’ electoral process with proportional representation (pr) (bbc, 2009). liberal democrat leader, nick clegg also proposed capping donations to political parties, replacing the (mainly appointed) house of lords with an elected senate; and a referendum on electoral reform (clegg, 2009). before the waning labour government of 2005-2010 could develop such reforms, it lost a general election. however, in coalition with the conservatives, clegg won a compromise promise, not for authentic pr but an alternative vote system; which a national referendum rejected in 2011. conservatives’ tacit opposition to the scheme, plus clegg’s diminished public credibility were cited as the main reasons for the defeat: ‘teaching the coalition government a lesson’. popular anger against the system was taking on perverse and vindictive forms (clark, 2011). decimation of welfare and public services by the coalition and subsequent conservative governments exacerbated discontent at the gulf between living standards and mps and government elites’ apparent indifference and affluence (mckenzie, 2019). right-wing populist currents, mushrooming in the anti-eu ukip, echoed and amplified such sentiments: reflecting developments in other eu countries (dye, 2015; mudde, 2007). in italy resentment against ‘elite democracy’ was most publicly expressed and personified by the growing profile and popularity of sometime comedian and social media personality, beppe grillo. the neoliberal crisis of the eu and populist responses the complex of treaties, statutes and agreements that preceded the establishment of the eu set clear aspirations for social standards across its member states (the european social charter 1961 and the community charter of the fundamental social rights of workers 1989). however, the european project was gradually enmeshed in a neoliberal framework of supra-national, financial and economic policy. from the maastricht treaty of 1992 and the move to a single european currency, eu institutions began policing member states’ interest and inflation rates and public spending levels. limits were set on government debt and budget deficits regulated: excluding much of the keynesian economic eu neoliberalism at bay | 71 interventionism of the post-world war ii era. the eu commission’s trade directorate also took over most of the union’s international trade agreements; effectively ensuring the promotion of neoliberal ‘free trade’ policies as against protectionist and nation-state restrictions. the 2007 lisbon treaty effectively cemented the removal of state-level autonomy in trade by making the common commercial policy an ‘exclusive competency’, only actionable at the eu level. policies such as ‘the freedom to subsidise, aid, restructure and, where necessary, nationalise parts of the private sector’ would contradict eu orthodoxy (mason, 2018). although the extent to which the eu could prevent such heresies is disputed (tarrant and biondi, 2017). the newer, neoliberal, eu imposed constraints on member states through the european central bank and the sgp stability and growth pact (sgp) and its more powerful 2011 successor, the so-called fiscal compact (mulder, 2019). liberalization meant elimination of capital controls, on the assumption that integrated stock markets to insure the system against negative shocks, ‘as the impacts are then diffused and contained by all countries’; and ‘a similar mechanism works through the integrated bond market... mortgage market ... [and] banking system’ (de grauwe, 2003, 226). this shift ‘from a bank-based financial system to a markets-based financial system’ also meant: promotion of an eu-wide securities market, and freedom for banks to operate freely in every other member state. the resultant, single eu wholesale market for securities and derivatives meant ‘open and secure retail markets...’ with ‘prudent’ rather than strict controls and rules (mccann, 2010, 92-3, 97). thus the eu itself seeded the 2008 financial crash, as its bigger banks over-lent to less fiscally prudent economies such as greece, italy and spain and ireland. despite abstaining from the sgp, the uk’s domestic policies are virtually identical. eu fiscal policy is rigid, exchange rate flexibility between member states is impossible and monetary policy is centralized. thus only labour market and wage policy ‘instruments’ remain to be urged on the member states (stockhammer, 2014); several of which face an economic rubiks cube of constraints. the deregulated financial flows created debt/credit crises for banks and national institutions that state governments were unable to fund because their own borrowing capacity was discredited or limited. the international authorities, including the ecb, made support conditional on austerity policies to reduce government debt and deficits. these measures intensified recessionary forces and, in several states, stunted the public services and resources that could have cushioned the impact on workers and families. because the fiscal rules prevented 72 | populism, power and protest keynesian recovery measures, member states were then told to cut corporate taxes and decrease employment protection to pursue the, usually illusory, goal of competition-led growth in investment, competition and profitability. the eu commission urged: ‘improved price and cost competitiveness on manufacturers by depreciating real wages and inducing further labour market reforms; intensifying inter-company competition to lower prices; and lowering the overall level of corporate taxation’ (wigger, 2019). thus the entire weight of the costs of the eu fiscal and regulatory superstructure fell upon the working classes; with unsurprising anger amongst those most affected. the unrelated inflows of migrants and refugees across the aegean and mediterranean that gathered pace from 2011 intensified a sense of callous indifference in eu governance. 170,664 arrived by sea into italy in 2014. eu attempts to spread the inflows throughout member states and italy’s pleas for eu financial help with reception and resettlement costs both failed. right-wing politicians promoted a toxic xenophobic backlash from this mass immigration by linking it to eu policies. by comparison the uk’s immigration challenge was minor. in 2015, 35,000 applications for asylum compared to 78,000 in italy and 477,000 in germany (migration watch uk, 2016). yet mass media and right-wing campaigns hyped the massing of ‘illegal’ migrants at channel seaports such as calais. although this ’threat’ gained less political traction than the legal inflows of workers from the newer east eu states of poland, lithuania, bulgaria, romania, hungary and slovakia. uk governments chose not to delay and moderate the entry of such nationals, as eu rules permitted; allowing right-wing media and campaigners to ‘blame’ the influxes on eu ‘freedom of movement’ principles. to summarise: the eu’s neoliberal and skeletal democracy has not accommodated popular discontents. eurozone countries’ divergent economic dynamics and ‘freedom of capital’ produced financial crisis and the kneejerk (and bank-rescuing) response of fiscal retrenchment, welfare austerity and labour market repression. in the popular consciousness ‘freedom of movement’, e.g. workers from the eastern states, seemed to accentuate unemployment and job insecurity: ’stealing’ indigenous workers’ jobs or undercutting wage levels. migration crises from africa and the middle east compounded eu institutions’ association with intra-eu migration and callousness over job security. italy, spain and greece bore most of the associated costs of this influx, while simultaneously having their public services cut by eu fiscal diktats. all of which supports populist parties’ case for brexit-like antipathy to eu regulation to ‘restore sovereignty’. almost any of the mass political forces opposing conventional neoliberal, eu neoliberalism at bay | 73 centre-right and social democratic politics have been labelled as ‘populism’. but this over-blown characterisation fails to distinguish fully between right and leftwing variants. nor between those seeking to change conventional structures of representation and those that merely use them for their own ends. in a joint project with academics, the uk guardian newspaper’s definition, for example, describes populism as ‘a language that frames politics as a battle between the will of ordinary people and corrupt or self-serving elites, and can exist on the left or right’ (lewis, 2019). yet such a common denominator approach would include everything from the french and russian revolutions to the roosevelt new deal administration. it also overlooks ‘populist’ forces’ organisational and policy aims. are they constituted as mass parties or free floating campaign networks? do they aim for structural transformations of a society’s political economy or merely to take over its political institutions? the following analysis does not examine populism as a generic phenomenon. instead it seeks answers to the questions posed in the introduction. following springford and tilford (2017), it suggests that populism especially its nationalist variant, attracts key demographics (older, less educated, ‘more socially conservative’), because of these conditions: low trust in political institutions (including the eu), material inequalities accentuated by the 2008 crash and its accompanying fiscal austerity, plus a perceived ‘problem’ of mass immigration. the first three of these factors have operated in both italy and the uk. the sociodemographic support for the right-wing populism of italy’s la lega and british anti-eu movements is quite similar (maraffi 2018; curtice, n.d.). leftist populism often calls for democratic reforms to solve the problems of elitist politics. this demand may be a minor theme in right-wing populisms, but its more familiar trope argues that more authentic ‘representatives of the people’ should replace political elites. it also stresses the purity or wholesomeness of ordinary people based on their national identity. this exclusivity contrasts with the inclusivity of left-populisms. as mudde and rovira kaltwasser (2013) argue, inclusive movements, like morales in bolivia and chavez in venezuela, are more typical of latin america. most current european populisms emphasise a homogenous national identity; defining ‘the people’ ethnically, in order to condemn, not only corrupt elites, but immigrant, muslim or other minority groups. ignoring their legal status, those of different cultures are regarded, as either outsiders, or enemies. populist democracy implies a rousseauist ‘will of the people’. often without clearly defining the methods to express this will apart from much talk of 74 | populism, power and protest ‘direct democracy’ and the more simplistic view that ‘ordinary’ people should replace the corrupt, out-of-touch and privileged elites; without necessarily challenging traditional governance. ‘direct democracy’ could increase genuine participation in decision-making. however, it also risks the kind of plebiscitary ‘leader democracy’ foreseen by max weber, including: historic dictators, neoliberal champion auguste pinochet in chile, and more recent ‘strong man’ successors to defunct communist regimes. commentators have begun asking whether italian politics is heading in a similar direction (fitzgerald, 2018) to the self-described ‘illiberal democracy’ of countries like hungary and poland (zakaria, 1997). one critical test for populist reforms is whether their own movements practice genuine internal movement democracy, or whether ‘strong’ leaders override members’ wishes. populisms in italy: comparing m5s and the lega in the post-war decades a permanent governing coalition of centrist parties, the pentapartiti, clung together to exclude the communist party (pci) from government. the oligarchical and anti-democratic character of this cartel antagonized supporters of both the pci on the left and the msi (movimento sociale italia) on the right and many in between. after the tangentopoli corruption scandal, pentapartiti all dissolved. yet the potential heirs, mainly the pci, made only temporary gains. the growing appeal of the regional independence party, the lega nord, in northern italy weakened msi electoral support after its pragmatic shift to the centre under fini’s leadership. reacting to the demise of the ussr and the waning of ‘eurocommunism’ the pci reformed as the social democratic ‘party of the democratic left’ (pds), with a small recalcitrant, and soon sub-divided, splinter: the communist refoundation party (partito della rifondazione comunista). msi’s rebranding as alleanza nazionale and its alliance with berlusconi’s more cosmopolitan neoliberalism, muffled right-wing nationalism in the early 2000s. three factors revived extreme nationalism in italy. firstly, the mediterranean migrant crisis ignited widespread xenophobia and racist reactions. secondly, former neo-fascist groups re-asserted their independence from the berlusconian alliance, most notably with the redevelopment of the old msi-an factions into the new frattelli d’italia (fi) party in 2012. thirdly, the lega nord – after backing tough measures against illegal immigration as partners in berlusconi’s 1994-1997 coalition government – moved from generally pro-eu stances to tactical euro-scepticism, and various hard-right views after matteo eu neoliberalism at bay | 75 salvini became leader in 2017. ex-communist salvini was an early campaigner against migrants’ exodus into italy. by successfully displacing the lega’s regionalist focus, dropping the ‘northern’ element in its name, he succeeded in making it the dominant rightwing party in italian and eu elections; and in a 2018 to 2019 coalition government. italian populism came to favour scepticism or hostility to eu institutions for two reasons: because the union failed to develop a common response to, or financial support for the social and economic costs of mass immigration and, secondly the fiscal disciplines and austerity policies imposed by emu. the more eclectic m5s movement moved to similar positions on immigration to compete with the popularity garnered by its notional governing coalition partner. these two movements can now be analysed according to the criteria of inclusive vs exclusive democracy, their internal democratic mechanisms and potential to oppose or accommodate to neoliberal policies and interests. if linkages and affiliations with big business are relevant, as they certainly are for the brexit-populist leaders in the uk, then there is an interesting contrast between the lega and m5s. lega leader, matteo salvini’s own background is in the media. however, prominent figures, such as lega mep angelo ciocca collaborated with italian employers organisations, such as the confindustria, whose leaders indicate that the lega is their favoured party. the lega promotes the neoliberal credo of a single rate ‘flat-tax’ and has given no support to eu efforts to strengthen effective taxation of multinational corporations (corporate europe 2019). by contrast m5s has predominantly opposed the privileges of big business and none of its leading figures have obvious backgrounds in business or finance. the father and son business team, roberto and davide casaleggio analysed below, have been m5s’s technological brains. their it consulting firm, however, is a comparative minnow in the italian business world. the lega. despite its early leadership’s leftist and antifascist affinities, the lega’s regionalist ideology contained the seeds of its present nativist nationalism and anti-eu globalism. formed to secure autonomy, possibly independence, for a nebulous, northern padania area centred on milan, it distinguished, northern workers’ and entrepreneurs’ industrious character from the slothful and corrupt southerners; who benefitted from national government taxes, on the north’s economic diligence. salvini’s signal achievement was to magnify this focus, replacing the feckless southerners with indigent immigrants and the rome elite with the even-more distant brussels eurocracy. in this nativist nationalism all those of direct italian ethnicity constitute ‘the people’. their enemies are 76 | populism, power and protest immigrants and ‘global’ european elites and their supranational institutions. as albertazzi et al point out, lega discourse blends this focus with traditional, authoritarian themes of mandatory heterosexuality, family integrity and law and order. however, salvini‘s dominance seems to be bypassing the lega’s internal democracy. despite conventional representative structures in its regional organisation, the leader now announces major policy shifts, like the party’s name change and embrace of the south, with minimal internal debate (albertazzi et al, 2018). as a partner in the 2018 coalition government, the lega promised to ‘review’ eu missions in the mediterranean and prevent migrant boats landing in italian ports, unless other countries ‘share responsibility’ for migrants final destination. it wanted reforms to the eu’s dublin treaty to force the ‘automatic and mandatory relocation of asylum seekers among eu member states’. regional ‘temporary stay facilities’ were to be set up for thousands of migrants earmarked for deportation within 18 months. islamic associations, mosques and places of worship were to be checked and controlled under a special law (financial times, 2018). exclusivist tendencies in the earlier ln paradigm foreshadowed these xenophobic, borderline racist, policies. table 1 shows how the salvini leadership adroitly converted the keynotes of the lega nord’s regionalist platform to a nationalistic one. table 1: key tropes in the transition of lega nord to la lega trait lega nord lega autonomy (independence?) for northern italian regions for all italy from many eu controls in-group padanians (northern italians): industrious, virtuous workers and entrepreneurs all native-born italians out-groups slothful, corrupt, feckless southerners all immigrants and roma elite corrupt, rapacious, remote governments, and parliament corrupt, rapacious, remote eu politicians and eurocrats internal democracy formal, regionalised, representative hierarchy. increasingly replaced by leader’s diktats eu neoliberalism at bay | 77 movimento cinque stelle (m5s): from its formative pre-party years as the blog, local networks and street events of the comedian beppe grillo, the m5s had a fluid, somewhat nebulous, organisational structure. aided by co-founder gianroberto casaleggio the blog became: ‘the most popular site on the italian internet and one of the 10 most-read blogs in the world’ (loucaides, 2019b). casaleggio masterminded adoption of the informal tech-savvy ethos of successful online firms. decision-making was to happen ’democratically’ through online votes with the same logic as internet ‘platform’ businesses, like uber and airb&b: cutting out ‘middlemen’ businesses between the provider and the customer/citizen. m5s would eliminate the professional politicians who had come between the public and the legislature and government; allegedly for their own benefit. this, ‘dis-intermediation’, philosophy chimes with casalleggio’s first employer, the tech magnate adriano olivetti (olivetti, 1951) who argued that technology would return political processes back to citizens (loucaides, 2019b). since gianroberto’s death from cancer in 2016, the formal organisational rights and controls over the online m5s belong to casaleggio associati. true to this ethos m5s has no physical headquarters. it is, in several senses, a ‘virtual party’ (politi and roberts, 2017). m5s originally pledged internal democracy for all 140,000 registered members with online voting to select local government candidates and policies. since 2016 m5s members must participate through the evocatively titled ‘rousseau’ web forum. gianroberto set up rousseau, with his son, davide, as the new ceo, president and treasurer of casaleggio associates and the rousseau association. it’s debatable however whether this platform’s inspiration, jeanjacques rousseau, would agree that the grillo-casaleggio model expresses the ‘general will’. online polls tend to legitimise controversial/topical issues for the leadership; although diminishing numbers of supporters get to vote and procedures have been criticised as mistimed, arbitrary, lacking in transparency and liable to rejection by the leadership (mosca 2018, pp 12-13). in september 2019 only 60,000 of the 100,000 rousseau registrants voted on a coalition pact with the pd. users supposedly debate, reject, or progress legislative proposals for m5s deputies to bring to parliament. online members have defied the leadership’s advice: backing abolition of anti-immigrant laws and to contest, rather than abstain from regional elections: a move that would have helped shore up the new coalition with the pd (corriere della sera 2019). but grillo and the casaleggios limited topic options and guide eventual choices (politi and roberts, 2017; loucaides, 2019a). m5s developed 78 | populism, power and protest three key principles for the accountability of local government and italian parliamentary deputies. 1) each representative is restricted to two (recently extended to three) terms of office. 2) no candidates with criminal convictions should be allowed. 3) nor those who had ever sought election for another party. the second rule conveniently bans grillo himself, convicted for manslaughter for an old driving offence (loucaides, 2019b). a principle of ‘zero-cost politics’ prohibits representatives from careers in politics and income-optimizing activity. under grillo’s leadership m5s’s policy stances were eclectic and erratic: for and against emu membership, taxation and public expenditure. yet the titular ‘5 stars’ originally referred to its first five policy priorities: sustainable transportation, sustainable development, public water, universal internet access, and environmentalism. these ideas appealed to younger, urban middle classes with higher education but limited economic prospects. alienated by conventional parties’ ineffectiveness, these groups also wanted: more efficient public administration, high-quality public transport and green spaces, and security from local crimes (conti and memoli, 2015).the early m5s promised better public services, environmental protection, and market regulation; albeit with policies for more ‘equitable’ and open economic markets. earlier stances were critical of globalisation and unregulated corporations. yet m5s has never been unequivocally anti-corporate; as one might expect from leaders enamoured of hitech business. with parliamentary power approaching and achieved in 2018, more precise and fiscally considered policies crystallised; notably: a two-tier but otherwise flat tax, plus some form of universal basic income. though less extreme than the lega’s promise to expel all ‘illegals’ and roma and refuse citizenship to italian-born offspring, m5s supported the expulsion of new unauthorised migrants and procedures to assess others’ rights to stay. its early anti-eu rhetoric, settled down to three key demands: exemption from emu rules so as to increase public spending, an exit option from eurozone membership and the cancellation of italy’s €250bn debt to the ecb. however, it now takes a much more conciliatory stance with eu institutions, mainly to win eu ‘fiscal flexibility’ (michalopoulos, 2019). a demand renewed as part of m5s’s latest coalition agreement with the centre-left, ex-pds, partito democratico, discussed below. the lega-m5s government. despite its short 12-month life, until august 2019, the lega-m5s coalition government indicated how far a distinctive and predominantly right-populist government might break with eu conventions and neoliberal economic governance. before the 2018 elections the lega had eu neoliberalism at bay | 79 demanded: a single rate flat tax (20%); emu rule changes to increase public spending and for the ecb to cancel italy’s €250bn+ debt. under the coalition contract, however, the lega conceded some of its economic goals, while the m5s stance on immigration moved closer to lega policies. the contract pledged: to overhaul all eu fiscal and monetary rules; review eu single market rules on trade ‘liberalisation’; a ‘flat’ income tax for individuals and firms at 15% and 20%, with looser powers for tax authorities; and a ‘basic income’ of 780 euro to low income citizens. the coalition’s economic aims challenged eu controls on the italian economy but would do little to escape its neoliberal mould. exceptions to this stasis include the ‘dignity of labour’ decree personally steered by m5s chief minister, luigi di maio. this reform: strengthens workers’ rights to compensation for unfair dismissal, restricts the repetition of short-term labour contracts with one employer, and increases employers’ social security contributions for each renewal. however, continuing mass unemployment (dw.com, 2018), means employers’ superior labour market strength is unlikely to be diminished. on ethnicity and immigration issues the coalition agreed to press for reform of the eu’s dublin treaty on mandatory relocation of asylum seekers to the eu country they first entered. it also specified ‘temporary stay facilities’ for more than 500,000 migrants as a prelude to their deportation. checks on and closures of islamic associations, mosques etc, were agreed. the crusade against elite political power concretised into principles of more governmental transparency and meritocracy; and an end to political patronage in appointments to the state broadcaster (rai). green policies, so central to the early m5s have less prominence. carbon reduction, circular (waste elimination) economy and pollution control (il blog delle stelle, 2018) resemble eu mainstream parties’ policies. democratic renewal measures would: cut the numbers in both the chamber of deputies and senate (similar to democratic party aims in 2014) and establish a right of appeal to the constitutional court against parliamentary decisions on electoral complaints; again similar to previous proposals. m5s ministers continue to press for laws preventing deputies and government agencies combining public roles with business holdings above a certain size (la repubblica, 2019); but what of ‘direct democracy’? m5s’s ‘minister for direct democracy’ drafted legislation for parliamentary groups to introduce one bill for each reform from which the electorate will then choose their preferred text. this would abolish the validity thresholds of wording and total number of proposers for referendums, 80 | populism, power and protest currently set by the constitution court. however, procedures would conform to the council of europe’s 2007 code of good practice and popular initiatives would have to respect both the constitution’s principles and fundamental rights and eu and other international obligations. this programme would move italian political structures closer to a direct, mass democracy model but one still nested within the framework of a conventional parliamentary system. right and left populisms in the uk comparison between british and italian populism needs first to recognise the constraints of the political governance system; particularly its electoral sub-system. except for the northern ireland, scotland and wales governments, party representatives are elected in single-member constituencies under a ‘first past the post’ (fptp) principle. the candidate receiving the highest number votes is elected to parliament. votes for all other candidates are irrelevant. this arrangement traditionally favours the dominance of two mass parties. one of which forms the government and the other the ‘official opposition’. privileges attach to both these statuses and voters are discouraged from voting for lesser parties as their votes would be ‘wasted’. since the 1930s the conservative and labour parties have constituted a de facto duopoly of government and opposition roles; similar to both kirchheimer’s concept of ‘catch-all’ parties and the related ‘cartel democracy’ of state-party fusions (hale williams, 2009; katz and mair, 1995; krouwel, 2003). thus new and alternative political movements often have more chance to gain influence through a presence within a main party, than from competing separately. british discontents with eu regulation and democratic stasis were restricted by the uk’s fiscal autonomy from staying outside the emu. while the two-party duopoly tended to absorb and muffle nationalistic and populist currents. however, segments of the british ruling elites railed against threats to national sovereignty from eu regulation for decades; usually within the natural home for nationalism – the conservative party. this accommodation became increasingly strained by thatcherite policies trying to blend nationalistic values with a stronger commitment to neoliberal economics and globalisation – using the vehicle of eu membership. typical nationalistic and anti-eu currents, often accompanied by varying levels of racist discourse, thus straddled both the far right of the tory party and various fringe right-wing groups. the career of nigel farage, now leader of a new brexit party, described below, personifies this part of the political spectrum. the general configuration of these various agencies is illustrated in figure 1. eu neoliberalism at bay | 81 figure 1: right-populism in the uk the pressure groups in the middle circle are either official or tacit constituents of the conservative party organisation, usually operating at parliamentary levels. those on the left of the diagram exist independently; although individuals migrate to and from the tories as the political climate changes. the box at the top of the diagram indicates the various financial interests that have increasingly sought to rally right-wing politics, to antieu nationalism and even less regulated neoliberalism. ukip (united kingdom independence party). ukip, formed in 1991 to oppose the loss of national sovereignty from eu membership, had a general ethos of economic libertarianism. in 1996 nigel farage, ex-conservative party member, began a gradual putsch against its original leaders, gaining the leadership in 2006. under his influence ukip broadened its policy base, principally aimed at white voters, to include anti-immigration stances. until 2018, its chequered progress accrued increasing vote share and public recognition. however, eu parliamentary elections apart, its millions of votes accumulated nationally, were insufficient, under the fptp electoral system, to gain any mps; apart from two, temporary, mp defectors from the parliamentary conservatives. by copying the mass party model, ukip’s internal democracy has frequently thrown up factional disputes, infringements by far-right groups and, since 2016, bitter leadership contests. farage tried to break ukip’s previous associations with near-fascist right groups, like the british national party. but it 82 | populism, power and protest nevertheless oscillated between inclusivism and exclusivism on citizenship rights for ethnic minorities. in farage’s final years minorities were to be welcomed if they adopted a full ‘british identity’ and placed british law above their own rules and customs: thereby distancing many muslims from full inclusion. ukip’s 2017 manifesto proposed a commission on ways to disband (muslim) sharia councils and to reduce net migration to ‘zero’ over five-years; plus, of course, exit from eu membership to end ‘unlimited eu immigration’. understandably, ukip railed against the fptp system claiming a pr system would have provided 83 mps in the 2015 parliament (ukip southwest, n.d.) under farage, criticisms of ‘westminster’ parliamentary democracy increased, despite ‘winning’ brexit in the 2016 referendum. ukip’s 2017 manifesto continued this trope: ‘politics is corrupted by self-interest and big business. an unaccountable elite revels in mutual back-scratching and cronyism . . .’ (ukip, 2017). in 2014, farage proposed referendums to stop governments unwisely launching military interventions or installing ‘unwanted’ wind farms. he also backed powers for voters to recall wayward mps. ahead of the italian lega-m5s coalition he set out similar conditions to theirs: referendums if petitioned by 5% of voters over a fixed period. the project was to ‘shift in power from brussels to westminster and then onto local communities’. ‘by giving people the chance to call a major national referendum or sack a rotten mp, people might feel more empowered and more favourable to government and what they are doing.’ ukip communities spokeswoman suzanne evans reportedly called for ‘referendums on issues such as major planning developments in local authorities . . .’ (bbc, 2016). by the 2017 election the direct democracy thrust had been moderated. ukip promised abolition of the house of lords now ‘stuffed with party donors and fundraisers, ex-mps, and favoured former employees’. mirroring italian ideas, it proposed one bi-annual national referendum on whichever issue received the most petition signatures (ukip, 2017). farage’s long, recurrent leadership (2006-16) increased his power over the party. his departure led to five leadership elections in three years; indicating membership power against unpopular leaders. however, members have little influence on policies: conference motions are regarded only as ‘advisory’. brexit nationalism: globalist wolf in nationalist sheepskins? ukip’s and (farage’s new vehicle) the brexit party’s, commitment to national economic sovereignty, is contradicted by sympathies for globalised market freedoms. ukip’s 2017 manifesto was explicit: ‘post-brexit, ukip’s aim is to establish the uk on the eu neoliberalism at bay | 83 world market as a low tax, low regulation economy’ (ukip, 2017). ukip’s main backers and leading lights include substantial figures from london’s international finance sector. onetime ukip deputy chair, and farage associate, lord dartmouth argued that the eu ‘threatens . . . britain’s prosperity’, ‘places at risk britain’s ability to compete’; and is ‘institutionally corrupt, unchangeable and incapable of reform’. while britain is ‘well placed to . . . continue to benefit from globalisation. . .’ outside an eu restricted by ‘massive regulation, trade barriers, and the rest’ (dartmouth, 2008). for these populist cheerleaders the problem with the eu is that it is insufficiently free-market and globalist. intellectual and financial elite figures, like thatcher’s economic adviser patrick minford and her ex-finance minister nigel lawson, who inhabit the same social and intellectual milieu as ukip/ brexit leaders, boosted and legitimated the wider eu referendum campaign (chakrabortty, 2019). one influential ukip deputy leader, even further removed from any ‘man of the people’ persona, was the blue-blooded, 10th earl of dartmouth, a stepbrother of diana, princess of wales.’ another, earlier ukip leader, eton-educated lord pearson, was a city stalwart founding an international broking firm at lloyds of london in 1964 (ford, 2010). despite a more modest class background, farage shares these financial mores. his father was a city stock broker and farage junior worked for city brokers on the commodity exchanges. arron banks, the principal ukip and ‘leave’ campaign funder, draws his wealth from off-shore, financial businesses. even the more modestly off, catherine blaiklock (first chair of the brexit party), was previously a currency and derivatives trader. other key brexit party figures from city finance include: new mep richard tyce and financial backer jeremy hosking (the world news, 2019). in sum, figures connected to the british financial elites have steered the apparently populist ukip-brexit parties’ nexus away from a nationalist break with neoliberalism in favour of intensifying neoliberal globalisation. moreover, the july 2019, take-over of the conservative leadership by boris johnson and the neoliberal, vehemently anti-eu, economic research group faction of mps, assured the political ascendancy of this economic elite. under trump favourite, boris johnson as pm, these new overlords of the once pluralist conservative party might remake it into a predominantly faragist populist party. post referendum populism: convergence with italy? despite differences in economic paradigms, ‘faragism’, in both its ukip and brexit forms has affinities with the italian coalition parties; especially with m5s. becoming disenchanted with ukips factional politics (chakelian, 2019), ukip leader, farage became 84 | populism, power and protest interested in casaleggio’s online (m5s) model, visiting milan to discuss its potential with the techmeister. his new brexit party has key m5s features: no branches, no formal membership; top-down decision making, and the minimisation of supporters’ inputs. farage presented these arrangements as ‘direct democracy’ for developing policy; with m5s cited as the model. the new party has parroted casaleggian analogies with tech start-ups as: ‘insurgent and fast-moving business that likes getting things done’; seeing voters ‘as consumers with needs that can be met by business choices’ (casalicchio 2019). before it even launched in 2018, the brexit party was registered as a limited company. thus, farage’s interest extended beyond the platform’s mass communication qualities to the powers of control it allowed. farage was more explicit about this aspect than is the covert power of casalleggio associates and rousseau: ‘we’re running a company, not a political party.’ or as his backer, aaron banks put it: ‘what the five star did, and what the brexit party is doing, is having a tightly controlled central structure, almost a dictatorship at the centre’ (loucaides, 2019a). at the 2018 eu parliament elections, the brexit party took 36%, the highest vote share of any party and sent its new meps to join m5s in the freedom and direct democracy group; effectively replacing the ukip contingent which lost all its seats. however, m5s supporters agreed in a controversial online poll in 2014 the recommendation for m5s deputies to join farage’s eu parliamentary group of ‘freedom and direct democracy’ rather than the greens/european free alliance group favoured by many (la repubblica, 2014). following the late 2019 coalition split with the lega, left-leaning m5s figures’ opposition to this alignment succeeded in leading m5s and green meps beginning negotiations for m5s to join the latter in the strasbourg parliament (financial times, 2019). left ‘populism’ in the uk or democratic social democracy? contradictorily derided as both a ‘throwback’ to statist social democracy and as a far-left variant on leader-focussed populism (baggini, 2016), labour’s ‘corbynist’ movement embodies analogous appeals for greater democracy to some faragist sentiments. it needs considering here because it represents a countervailing force to right-wing and eclectic populism. it may establish successful leftist populisms that are as, yet in italy, submerged within m5s’s eclecticism. jeremy corbyn’s reshaped labour party has three democratic tropes: 1) internal party democracy (labour party, 2018a); unlike farage and salvini, de facto in m5s’s grillocasalleggio axis; 2) reforms to parliamentary institutions; 3) economic democracy to underpin the public and mutual bodies which labour proposes would replace eu neoliberalism at bay | 85 privatised and some shareowner-manager corporations. a formula which also distances labour from the nationalised industry, public ownership model that neoliberalism discredited. labour promised a constitutional convention to examine a wide package of reforms; including a democratically elected, second chamber; with removal of hereditary peers and a reduced number of house of lords’ members as interim measures. its more radical threat to the market governance mechanisms, introduced by successive tory and (‘new’) labour governments, came from the 2017 manifesto commitment to decentralise democratic participation in ‘politics, the economy, the justice system and our communities’ (labour party, 2017a). new, publicly owned, energy companies should be ‘locally accountable’ with more powers for local government councils in areas like urban planning. in the politically peripheral, but culturally central, field of sport labour promises a ‘greater say’ to supporters of currently corporatized football clubs, through supporters’ share ownership and board-level representatives. similarly, a housing policy 2018 green paper promised tenant representatives on housing associations’ boards and ‘similar influence and involvement’ for public housing tenants (labour party, 2018b). further challenges to neoliberal orthodoxy and austerity involved: increased public spending on a publicly-run national education service; a publicly-owned investment bank and tighter regulation of commercial banks and the finance industry. other, more democratic forms of business ownership were heralded in a party-sponsored report, alternative models of ownership, advocating ‘cooperatives, municipal and locally-led ownership forms and new democratic forms of national ownership’ (labour party, 2017b). these show an awareness that older organisational forms of ‘top down’ social democracy cannot simply be disinterred and that public, rather than private-corporate governance needs more decentralised decision-making and participatory democracy: ‘where people have a continuing say in how society is run, how their workplace is run, how their local schools or hospitals are run’ (daily mirror, 2017). accompanying such commitments to ‘institutional democracy’ (jones and o’donnell, 2017) have been efforts to increase member participation in party policy-making and organisation; such as involvement in the annual conference. labour’s emphases on popular welfare and participation, against vested neoliberal interests, have been mistakenly conflated with right-wing populisms. however, their logic and targets differ from the direct – potentially plebiscitary – democracy of nationalist populists in britain and italy and, in some respects, the 86 | populism, power and protest eclectic m5s. ‘corbynism’ promised to open up formal democracy to the civil society social movements that challenged the oppressive policies accompanying neoliberal governance of gender, race and other inequalities (mouffe, 2018). conclusion as this article went to press, electoral uncertainties in both italy and the uk precluded definitive answers to the questions posed at the beginning of this article. the uk’s general election, taking place in december 2019 could have led to various governing permutations; from left-populist, neo-socialist labour government to a populistic, trumpian, conservative government. salvini’s withdrawal from its government partnership with the m5s and the latter’s new ‘marriage of convenience’ coalition with the centre-left democratic party may have stalled right-populism’s advance in italy. more recent developments in both countries, up until the corona pandemic’s destabilisation, have restricted the likelihood of populistic breaks with the neoliberal socio-economic governance and its eu forms. italian populism remains within the eu fiscal straitjacket, lacking plans to limit corporate and financial power. its social reforms may offer some relief to the financially deprived and those in casual employment. however, in their brief alliance, the lega and m5s did not confront the hegemony of ‘market forces’. in the uk, both the ethos of free market globalism adopted by the anti-eu parties, and their influential financial backers would, most likely, intensify neoliberal forces. business and financial players’ effective control of the right populist agenda suggests an accommodation with neoliberal globalism; made more likely by its recapture of the conservative party and its ideology. the second question asked about prospects for alternative democratic processes to current, malfunctioning representative models. the direct democracy championed by the lega and the eclectic m5s only added referendum options to the established parliamentary system. their own internal democracy is warped; offering little improvement on the established conventional parties. ukip, and then the brexit party, do align with progressive campaigns to modernise the electoral system and the accountability and utility of the two antiquated houses of parliament. yet in other respects their ‘direct democracy’, perhaps not coincidentally, resembles the lega-m5s coalition’s mass referendum proposals. these seem unlikely to promote popular participation in governance. judging by their own internal democracy it would be managed and superficial. as with the curbing of muslims’ cultural and religious rights, both countries’ right populists’ exclusivist concept of ‘the people’ would accentuate inequalities amongst ethnic eu neoliberalism at bay | 87 minorities. contrary to blanket media denunciation of its ‘populism’, the renascent british labour party did, at least until the 2019 election, propose clearer and more positive routes away from both stressed-out parliamentary democracy and the stranglehold of neoliberal economic governance. inter-meshing participatory and institutional democracy with de-privatisation of public services and greater corporate accountability could have pushed british capitalism towards a new, internationally relevant, model for socially embedded governance. however, the momentum gained by the right populists’ aggressive brexit campaigns effectively won the 2019 election for the conservatives and removed labour’s left leadership. in a new political landscape, changes to neoliberal economic and political governance will depend on which party or faction succeeds in ‘selling’ their paradigm as the solution to the social and economic disruption of post-corona capitalism. references albertazzi, d., giovannini, a. and seddone, a. 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(1997). the rise of illiberal democracy. foreign affairs, november/december. eu neoliberalism at bay | 93 the democratic economy: beyond globalisation and neoliberalism luke martell1 abstract: an alternative economy is being built that goes beyond globalisation and neoliberalism. it draws on but breaks with previous paradigms and is complex, detailed and practical. it is based in pluralities, governmental and civil society, political and economic, and in its regenerative capacities can appeal across the political spectrum. it is being discussed and implemented by local governments, think tanks, academics, and national political parties. this article asks whether something localised and beyond global capital can avoid parochialism, inequality and the negative effects of competition, stretch to representing the interests of the public as a whole and work at national level. can its embeddedness across institutions and plural actors protect it from reversal or does its shift to community power and interests and away from neoliberalism mean global capital will undermine it? the paper discusses what the new democratic economy is and how it can be implemented and maintained in the face of opposition. keywords: democratic economy; labour party; jeremy corbyn; social ownership; community wealth building introduction in 1945 the labour party came to power in the uk. it nationalised major industries and utilities and established the public national health service (nhs). the state institutions it set up were run top-down. thirty-four years later margaret thatcher became prime minister. she instigated widespread privatisation, carried on by her successor john major and opened public services up to the private sector 1 luke martell is a teaching fellow in sociology at the university of sussex, uk. i am grateful to cat hobbs for her feedback on an earlier version of this article. a shorter earlier version was published in fischer, j. and stedman, g., eds, 2020, imagined economies–real fictions. new perspectives on economic thinking in great britain, bielefeld: transcript verlag, and this version is published here with permission. 94 | populism, power and protest and marketisation. this was continued by tony blair, who removed the commitment to public ownership from the labour party constitution. subsequent labour leader ed miliband made leftward tweaks to the party’s policies but with the 2015 leadership victory of jeremy corbyn the blair era came to a close, at least for now. where the private sector and market had become default policy choices, corbyn brought back public ownership as mainstream rather than marginal. socialism and social democracy have long espoused social ownership of production, especially in marxist strands, and greater equality in distribution of income and services, the latter more in social democratic approaches. corbyn’s labour combined both, and proposals for social ownership discussed in this chapter see ownership of production and equality of distribution as linked. furthermore, social ownership can ensure that public rather than private goals are achieved, including environmental objectives, greater accountability to society, long term over short term thinking, and more economically efficient operations in a number of ways. the labour party’s 2017 and 2019 election manifestos (labour party, 2017b; 2019) proposed socially owned local energy companies and nationalisation of the main energy providers in the uk, the national grid, water, the royal mail and part nationalisation of british telecom so that the government could provide free broadband for all. labour argued for insourcing of council services, municipal social ownership, assistance for the growth of the co-operative sector, and transferring company shares to workers (on inclusive ownership funds, also proposed by bernie sanders, see lawrence, 2019). there is an emphasis on decentralised local forms of social ownership; and where national ownership then in a democratised form. a report for labour on alternative models of ownership discusses co-ops, municipal and national state ownership, community wealth building, procurement by anchor institutions and the preston model (labour party, 2017a; discussed by guinan and hanna, 2018 and new socialist, 2017). corbyn and his shadow chancellor, john mcdonnell, have been interested in experiments in social ownership and local economic regeneration made by preston’s labour council (beckett, 2019; mcdonnell, 2016; reynolds, 2017). labour lost the 2019 uk general election and corbyn subsequently announced his resignation as leader. but the electoral result was less to do with the unpopularity of policies than demonisation of the leader and brexit (see davies 2019, goodwin, 2019 and melloni, 2019). this article, though, goes beyond party policies. proposals for social ownership and local wealth building are being pursued by think tanks like the the democratic economy | 95 democracy collaborative in the usa and the uk centre for local economic strategy (cles). they do not just suggest policy but are hands on and guide implementation. much talked about sites for the implementation of social ownership policies, with the assistance of such action-oriented think-and-do tanks, are in cleveland, ohio in the usa and preston, u.k. (cles and preston city council, 2019; o’neill, 2016; 2018; howard, 2018a). key values and principles of such approaches are: community and collaboration; place and locality; inclusion, good work and the workforce; democratic ownership and systemic and institutional change; multiplier effects; and sustainability and ethical finance (see kelly and howard, 2019; kelly, mckinley and duncan, 2015). policies pursued are often quite localist, but debates about ownership raise the question of the role of the centralised state and public ownership, whether the latter can be democratised, and of the viability of such approaches at national and public-wide levels (beckett, 2019; the economist, 2018; howard, 2019). this article is a critical but sympathetic assessment of democratic economy proposals in corbyn’s labour and beyond. it argues that the democratic economy involves a return to old labour, but a new old labour, brought back to the mainstream of politics for more than a passing phase. i argue that the approach needs to marry local decentralised initiatives with national ownership for all and its supporters should not be complacent about the potential for reversal by fierce opposition. old insights about the worth of national public ownership and the power of capitalist opposition remain vital. community wealth building: from an extractive to a circulatory economy democratic economy initiatives involve community wealth building, where wealth is generated and retained in localities, through political intervention to support socially owned companies and links between community business and anchor institutions (brown et al., 2018; cles and preston city council, 2019; guinan and o’neill, 2019b; kelly et al, 2015). anchor institutions are ones like hospitals, universities or councils that are more or less tied to the locality. they can be encouraged to shift the outsourcing of services from large capitalist corporations to local, sometimes socially owned, providers and require social objectives from contractors, for instance the payment of a living wage. the result is that rather than money flowing outside the area to big corporations and their shareholders, an extractive economy, it stays in the hands of community members and their socially and privately-owned businesses, a circulatory economy. 96 | populism, power and protest retaining money in the local economy generates jobs there. for mathew brown, leader of preston council, it is about creating an alternative economic system at the local level. it is also a method of responding to local government cuts because it takes remaining wealth in the community and tries to keep it there. by the economy being tied increasingly to the locality rather than international investors it is more insulated from global economic shocks like the financial crisis (o’neill, 2016). there is an equality element in wealth being captured for workers or other community owners and reinvestment, rather than being allowed to disappear away to capital and shareholders. in this sense, community wealthbuilding is not just a technical approach to foster local economies but is also about power, re-balancing this away from international capital to local more democratic entities, be they local government or local enterprise socially owned by community actors in various ways (o’neill, 2018). brown et al. (2018) argue that key questions are who owns the wealth, influences it, benefits from it and where does it go? the system that community wealth is trying to get away from concentrates capital, while the place-based economy invests it. brown et al. argue, furthermore, that finance focuses on property and land rather than employment-rich investments like manufacturing and services, and investment in automation means wealth is held less by society through employment than returns to capital extracted by investors. proponents of the foundational economy argue investment should focus on basic infrastructure industries like energy distribution systems, education and health rather than areas such as property and tech (see foundational economy collective, 2018). preston council’s assessment is that between 2012/13 and 2016/17 procurement spending in the city rose from £38.3m (5%) to £112.3m (18.2%), and within surrounding lancashire from £288.7 million (18.2%) to £488.7m (79.2%), despite overall declining by 15%. four thousand extra employees started to receive the living wage, and preston won awards for its improvement on various social and economic indicators, moved its position up on an index of social mobility, was lifted out of the 20% most deprived areas in the uk, and unemployment dropped and fell below the national average (cles and preston city council, 2019; manley, 2018; guinan and hanna, 2018). these approaches fit with a trend towards municipal ownership and remunicipalisation where services are run by and returned to the local public sector. this is often reversing outsourcing and replacing privatisation and publicprivate partnerships of the sort favoured by new labour. for the transnational institute (2017), municipal ownership offers cost advantages for the public, a likely the democratic economy | 97 greater commitment to worker welfare and social and environmental objectives, and greater accountability especially as a local form of state ownership (see kishimoto, 2018). institutional, ownership and system change: a road to socialism? the economist (2018) argues that corbyn’s monetary and fiscal policy was moderate and that it was in structural reform that radical change is envisaged. for guinan and o’neill (2018), proposals for a democratic economy involve an institutional turn, the focus on structural design and system, a predistribution and asset-based as much as redistributional approach to equality. rather than income inequalities growing and being corrected by redistribution, more equal ownership of assets and distribution is encouraged from the start and equality is pursued through wealth as much as income, the reason for social ownership (brown et al, 2018; 126. howard, 2018b). this involves a shift of power as well as income, because ordinary people are empowered in ownership which is not always the case in social democratic redistribution (kelly et al., 2015; labour party, 2017a). this has connotations of miliband’s advocacy of predistribution when labour leader. however, his more modest focus was on labour market measures rather than ownership (new socialist, 2017). piketty (2014) identifies the importance of capital ownership as key to inequalities globally but is for regulating and taxing capital rather than systemic change. advocates of the democratic economy argue that what are needed are systemic changes, not regulatory fixes to a bad system and after-the-fact redistributional corrections (guinan and hanna, 2018, 110-13). part of the case for this approach is on democracy and participation grounds, that we do not have democracy unless it is widened to the economy as well as politics and that political democracy is undermined if economic power can influence or determine political decisions so reducing accountability to voters (see beckett, 2019; guinan and o’neill, 2019a; labour party, 2019a; new socialist 2017). the form of democracy envisaged here is also often participatory with people playing a greater role in the governance of businesses and utilities. one issue is how to build support for the democratic economy, and the incorporation of people into its democratic structures and ownership is seen as a way of fostering this (berry and guinan, 2019). a question is whether there is enough participatory consciousness in uk or other societies for this to work (beckett, 2019). the pressure group we own it argues that people will participate if they have the chance to in an inspiring way 98 | populism, power and protest (2019, 9). but participation may be biased to those with agency, time and money (heslop, morgan and tomaney, 2019). there have been problems motivating, for example, parents and members of the community to participate in school governance, and research on co-operatives suggests that offering meaningful participation does not necessarily lead to it being taken up (carter, 2006). greater democratic participation may need more than the available structures, but also consciousness change, a cultural and not just political change. furthermore, there is a question mark over whether individual participation in collective democracy can mobilise people behind the democratic economy, as berry and guinan (2019) propose, in the way that direct individual ownership stakes in capitalism may be able to. it involves people seeing their stake in a collective rather than individual sense which will require a hegemonic narrative to mobilise people behind this, as thatcher’s popular capitalism of individual ownership did (see hall, 1988). for some the systemic asset-based approach gives democratic economy proposals like corbyn’s a socialist rather than social democratic identity (financial times, 2019). brown et al. (2018, 134-5) describe it as consistent with social democracy (mason, 2019) and for finlayson (2019) corbynism is mild reformism. it is not an approach to overthrow capitalism, at least not yet, so in that sense it is social democratic as much as socialist. but it is about replacing international corporate control where it can with local socially owned democracy and guinan and o’neill (2018) see corbyn’s democratic economy proposals as more than social democracy and as socialist as do guinan and hanna (2018). the democratic economy may include social democracy but has aspects beyond it because it is structural and involves a shift in power and equality through social ownership as under socialism. this is as much as after the fact redistribution and regulations of a social democratic approach which accept a privately owned capitalist economy but tries to control and correct for its maldistributions. berry and guinan (2019) see the proposals as revolutionary or non-reformist reforms; changes within capitalism that gradually replace capitalism by the extension of democratised economic forms. if such proposals are partly socialist this raises the issue of the status of capitalism in them. community wealth proposals do not amount to a dismantling of capitalism so much as a stepping away from contracting international capitalist companies in some places in favour of local community procurement. this does not systematically go after capital but sidesteps or excludes it to create parallel social ownership. it competes with international capital and creates democratic capital, selectively nationalising public services and spreading inclusive ownership, the democratic economy | 99 rather than widely nationalising the economy. but the democratic economy excludes international capital, builds social ownership, and tries to enhance the direction of capital to social ends. it lives with capitalism but changes it in a way that builds in non-capitalist forms and aims alongside continuing capitalism. beckett (2019) asks whether community wealth policies regenerate capitalism and allow it to regroup and come back in a harsher manifestation. this is a fair point but a key point of this article is that democratic economy proposals coming out of places like preston and cleveland should not be seen in isolation as they are compatible with approaches that do nationalise private companies and so complement a politics that does not just dilute capitalism but in part takes it over collectively. plurality of institutions: complexity and reversibility the democratic economy involves a plurality of institutions: socially owned enterprises of various sorts, some community-created co-ops but others local government set-up, with local and national government input to promote social ownership and build relations with anchor institutions. the local and national state facilitate leadership, tax breaks, loans, investment, procurement support, and shelter organisations that will fund, promote and support social ownership (labour party, 2017a). there are the anchor institutions themselves and their procurement policy. think tanks are involved as they have been in preston and cleveland. institutions include municipal enterprise, land trusts, public trusts, public banks and participatory budgeting. initiatives may rise out of social movements (milburn and russell, 2019a) and support comes also from philanthropy and trade unions (brown, 2018). the democratic economy is a pluralist approach and involves networks of agencies and complexity. brown et al (2018, 135) describe the approach as social democracy plus plurality. there are pluralist networks of actors in the co-operative regions of mondragon in spain and emilia romagna in italy (guinan and hanna, 2018). a lot is involved which is complex but also makes it more systemic and institutional and so potentially more effective. one hope is that such institutional and system interrelatedness makes the democratic economy more difficult to reverse and dismantle in the way nationalised industry and utilities were in the uk. embedding change in society, it is hoped, is more likely to outlast changes of government and reversals by subsequent unsympathetic politicians. for beckett (2019, 5), democratic economy proposals are for something more systemic and permanent than nationalisation 100 | populism, power and protest and tax. if less centrally linked to the state, as tax and nationalisation are, then it is more difficult for a new government to reverse them (wainwright, 2017; we own it, 2019). difficulty to reverse may also come from plurality, of forms of ownership, actors and approaches, and potential attractiveness across the political spectrum (cles and preston city council, 2019). but how far is this the case? as publicly owned companies could be sold off what is the difference here? local and municipal social ownership is reversible as is procurement policy by competition regulations or changes in control of a local council. the democratic economy may be more complex to unravel than simple nationalisations or regulations but still do-able by a new government willing to change policy and dismantle relations and support. the question of reversibility is not clearly answered by characterisations of the changes as systemic and institutionalised because systems and institutions can be politically changed. furthermore, discussion of reversibility is often focused on changes of government allowing democratic economic systems to be rolled back, an answer to this being that subsequent governments may like the local regenerative effects of the circulatory community wealth building approach and keep it. but key actors who are disadvantaged are international capital. even if the local economy stays a capitalist for-profit one by and large, international capital gets side-lined by such an approach. global capital may be as much a threat to the community wealth building economy, economic power as much a threat as political changes of government. and governments may find the appeal of local wealth retention less compelling when faced with the opposition of corporate influence and power. berry and guinan (2019) discuss the prospective resistance of finance and big business to corbynist economic plans through measures like capital flight and investment strikes. they advocate controls on the movement of capital and international co-operation in response, although mcdonnell denied capital controls were planned under a labour government (pickard and shrimsley, 2019). they propose social value mandates on finance, transactions taxes, regulation and reforms of banking and the building of democratic finance and public banks. berry and guinan discuss opposition from the civil service, and reforms to deal with this such as: changing personnel and non-executive participants from the corporate sphere; creating units supportive of the government and exploiting pockets of sympathy in the civil service; and introducing new norms of decisionmaking, a more pluralist economics and more social criteria for directing the civil service’s operations. berry and guinan argue that a left government should democratise the system to more participatory forms, which may require the democratic economy | 101 devolution in some areas, so the shift is not from one set of technocratic experts to another but away from technocratic elite control. for some corbynism needs to build coalitions with wider liberal and left political actors to carry out its aims (gamble, 2019 and lawson, 2019). this, however, would require giving up many already historically modest aims. but a strategy for maintaining community wealth and social ownership initiatives beyond reliance on systemic embeddedness will need to include a basis in social movements and popular consciousness. the editors of new socialist (2017) put a strong emphasis on values, culture and movements being important in supporting such changes in the face of opposition from international capital, from within government institutions, and within the labour party. they argue that questions of culture and socialisation are as important as those of economic control and planning, echoing labour’s report on alternative models of ownership. in fact, the importance of culture and consciousness is not just in defending such approaches against dismantling but behind them working in the first place, their development and realisation, for instance in ensuring the take up of participation in democratic structures. new socialist also mention the importance of values such as cooperation, solidarity, empathy and charity. they argue that democratic structures are important not just in themselves but for bringing in and sustaining support for what is democratised, giving people a stake in new structures so that they will want to hold on to them. but it will take more than democratic structures to build culture and values that will make the democratic economy work and protect it from reversal. berry and guinan (2019) emphasise the role of social movements in supporting democratic economy proposals against opposition. movements can hold the left government to account while also being tolerant of the need for political compromises. in addition to building alternative democratic mass media that, unlike some left media, is viewed by those beyond the converted, social movements, alongside party members, can be part of mass political education. this needs to be to the public, beyond meetings for members and activists, and beyond the limits of social media, putting bodies on doorsteps and in workplaces directly explaining political policies that are distorted and misreported in the media. it involves mass party membership, registered member schemes to expand the volunteer base, volunteer and non-member participation, ‘big organising’, millions of doorstep ‘persuasive conversations’ that go deeper than data-gathering canvassing, and community organising mobilised not just around the electoral cycle. some of this has been initiated under ed miliband, by momentum and in 102 | populism, power and protest democrat organising in the usa (garland, 2019; hilder, 2019; klug and rees, 2019). it requires policy knowledge on the part of party members and activists for when they talk to the public, so relies on political education and training within the party and movements. movements can also be forces of resistance in the face of establishment opposition, through protest, education or disruption, for instance by trade union action (german, 2019). with a high party membership, the group momentum in place and links with trade unions the labour party has blocks of a movement basis in place. alongside the top-down use of social movements, new agendas and narratives that frame peoples’ experiences and give them causal explanations and solutions (new economics foundation, 2013) and practical initiatives and experiments, such as alternative economies, often come from bottom up (new economics foundation, 2015). so that is a role for social movements, although new ideas are less the issue for the left in the current phase than mobilising understanding of and support for them. social change and scaling up one issue may be that experiments like preston and cleveland are too small scale, piecemeal, incremental, localist, and do not involve large-scale transformation. a question is whether these can be widened and scaled up (guinan and o’neill, 2019a; howard, 2018b). however, the local approaches can be experimental, seeing whether the approach works, and if it does then demonstrative, showing the way for others. there is a prefigurative element (wainwright, 2017), building alternatives now as a basis for a wider economy along the same lines. initiatives like those in preston can spread across labour authorities; and have been doing so in the uk (leibowitz and mcinroy, 2019). that such approaches were in labour’s 2017 manifesto is a sign of cases like preston widening outwards and rising vertically. the pursuit of change in democratic economy proposals can be not just through experiment and demonstration but also by active political leadership at government level and the involvement of mainstream anchor institutions. they can be pursued not only through showing things can work, thus encouraging adoption and scaling up, but also positively led, facilitated and built by the state, local and national, and by public sector institutions creating public-commons partnerships (milburn and russell, 2019a; 2019b). the preston model is more political than other social alternatives and so more open to being developed by means other than just prefiguration; a political and not just social basis for change. the democratic economy | 103 it is less extra-political, more in politics and public-public relationships, and more in the mainstream of society than on the margins of it or separate spaces. cumbers and hanna (2018) discuss the scaling up of local initiatives and the role of government in this process. government can pursue change through top down nationalisations, remunicipalisation, economic incentives and public funding for social ownership, allowing first refusal for employees to buy companies at risk of closure or takeover, and public procurement policies that favour social and environmental goals and local co-ops, a number of these labour party policy under corbyn. this is built on on-the-ground experimentation promoted more widely at national level by government. a community wealth building unit being established in corbyn’s office shows the potential for the approach being pursued at national level. guinan and o’neill (2018) discuss how community wealth building can be widened from preston and have taken shape in labour party policy. they suggest the nhs could be the ‘mother of all’ anchor institutions with enormous procurement power. labour's 2017 manifesto contained democratic economy proposals as does its report on alternative models of ownership. labour’s proposals have shifted the political agenda to reincorporate public ownership (guinan and hanna, 2018; hanna, 2018a) and the economist (2019) notes that the ideas of corbynomics may survive when the corbyn leadership has gone. as a significant element of the approaches being discussed concerns funds being reinvested locally rather than disappearing out of the area they can appeal also to conservative authorities, locally and nationally, interested in local economic regeneration (o’neill, 2018). new socialist (2017) argues that approaches discussed by labour have a ‘sober practicality’ to them and that social ownership is popular with the public, as noted below. the approaches do not necessarily involve raising tax, increasing public spending or nationalisation, offputting from a right-wing perspective, so can appeal across political divides. mathew brown (o’neill, 2016) sees them as common sense (although also ideological). this can make it easier to implement by the left because they may encounter less right-wing opposition, and to sustain across changes in government as the right may be happy to allow local wealth building to continue. guinan and hanna (2018) argue the approach overcomes simplistic binaries of proand antibusiness as it is about promoting local small business against big corporate capital. however, the emphasis on the political right and capital agreeing with democratic economy proposals puts a lot of faith in rational persuasion about policy and overcoming polarisation between groups that are historically opposed 104 | populism, power and protest and have conflicting interests. furthermore, the appeal to the political right may be to one that sees merits in place-based wealth building and local economic development. a right seen in more class terms as representatives of international capital will be less convinced as global capital is undermined by this approach. it loses business to local contractors and some on the right will be put off by some of this being to co-operative, i.e. non-capitalist, enterprise, which they may view as eroding the place of private capital and as less efficient. despite new socialist (2017) seeing democratic economy proposals as practical and crossing over left-right divides they also warn that they could be frustrated in their formulation and implementation. localism and its limits? community, competition and inequality there may be limits in the localism of democratic economy proposals. they may be best suited to areas with a strong local identity, attachment to place and social infrastructure (heslop et al, 2019). the case for the approach can be made on the basis of a supportive culture and consciousness but less so for places that lack this. furthermore, it depends on place-based institutions that serve as anchor institutions and is not so useful for places where these are less prevalent (o’neill, 2016). the proposals discussed are based in community wealth creation and its retention locally so that it circulates there rather than being displaced outside. this raises issues to do with localism. retention of wealth by the community rather than its extraction by corporate capital who have contracts with local institutions will be welcomed by most with left-wing and community concerns. a more contentious issue is the keeping of wealth locally at the expense of its displacement to a broader community. proposals can be seen to be concerned with local interests and so parochial and insular, and not concerned with the interests and welfare of the wider community in society nationally and globally. for poor areas localism may be defensible. in such cases retaining wealth for local regeneration makes sense. but more widely this could mean in better off areas wealth is retained when redistribution to less well-off areas would be desirable. one solution is pursuing such policies within the context of a more regionally redistributive approach at national or supra-national levels. so, areas where wealth builds up could have some redistributed to poorer areas. this would require local wealth generators not losing the incentive to create and retain wealth locally if they know some will be redistributed. however, this is do-able and is done under many redistributive structures. the democratic economy | 105 o’neill (2018) in discussion with the democracy collaborative’s ted howard raises the issue of the ‘beggar thy neighbour’ approach of community wealth building. howard rejects the criticism for this stage in the process of building community wealth strategies which he says concerns resetting the balance between local communities and international capital, as much as it is about localities versus localities. o’neill makes a similar circumstantial point and says that local government has to step up in the absence of other approaches and interest from national government. he argues this is a non-ideal situation and if national government was more interested in inequality then local economic development strategies could be different. furthermore, what the local community wealth approach replaces is, for howard, itself protectionism where each city competes to attract investment at the expense of another. the difference is that competing for extractive capital allows profits to go out of the area to international shareholders and is not committed in an ongoing way to the local area. o’neill (2016) suggests two paths: one is favouring institutions that are local and another those that have more ethical standards. of course, the two can go together but the emphasis on more ethical and social business would suggest supporting alternative economic structures as much as, or even rather than in some cases, local regeneration. favouring social business over the local business where the two do not coincide would be hard for a local authority but it does give an ethical rather than a localist slant to the approach. cles and preston (2019) say that choosing suppliers based on social value in preston has not always meant the local one. furthermore, the preston policy has led to a shift in contracts away from london and the south-east but not from the rest of the country so has not necessarily meant abandoning a commitment to a wider community beyond the local one. this raises a related issue that such an approach can lead to competition and perhaps inequality between localities. in locally focused wealth creation and retention approaches, areas may be focused on their own interests and become competitive with other areas and in competition there are winners and losers, so inequalities grow. competition can also lead to wasteful duplication and reluctance to share resources or information, such as research and design. this can be the case with local authorities leading and supporting community wealth creation or with local co-ops competing. hanna (2018a) says competition is as much an issue as ownership. a further dimension is that co-ops run the risk of being biased to the sectional group that owns them, for instance workers, as localism is towards the locality. wider forms of ownership may help to counter 106 | populism, power and protest sectional interest or competitive inequality that arises from sectional ownership or localism. these problems echo issues raised by theories for market socialism where the transformatory element is seen as co-operative ownership of companies but within a market context (legrand and estrin, 1989). the market socialist argument is that ownership is the significant issue for socialists and a switch from private to social ownership the key thing in the transition from capitalism to socialism. the hostility of socialism to markets is seen to be misplaced while an economy with socially owned enterprises operating on a market achieves socialism. however, while some definitions of socialism, for instance marxist ones, do put the priority on collective ownership many socialists also emphasise cooperation and equality. while an economy of co-ops involves co-operation internal to the co-ops it can involve the opposite between co-ops unless specific measures are made to build external co-operation, which is of course possible. and competition on a market leads to economic inequality which for many socialists is undesirable. national and public ownership more national public ownership may be desirable, so there is less replication of activities and more sharing of information than under decentralised forms (hanna, 2018ab). this need not replace local ownership, as pluralism is desirable for various reasons, and in many cases greater local accountability and participation is positive. the experience of state ownership itself has suggested that greater democratisation and decentralisation is desirable. another possible route is networks between co-ops and local authorities where agreements are made not to compete or conceal resources and information. this is a feature of the cooperative landscape in places like mondragon and emilia romagna. hobbs (2018) argues that public ownership represents the public as a whole and all who are affected by a company’s actions so not just particular groups (such as workers in worker’s co-ops) or communities (as in community wealth building). as such it can overcome insularity, sectionalism and localism, and oversee equality between local areas so some do not grow better off at the expense of others. for her, this is mostly relevant for public services. the new socialist (2017) also stresses national public ownership as an approach that can guard against geographical inequalities, not just economically but also in equality of service nationally. we own it (2019) argue for local, regional and national levels in social ownership. relatedly common wealth (2019) advocate pluralism in the democratic economy | 107 ownership against a monoculture of ownership. for hobbs and we own it (2019), we should not denigrate state ownership too much. it works or has worked for rail internationally and the nhs, for example. it would be a mistake to go too far the other way. public ownership allows economies of scale, consistency, equality and cross-subsidy. cumbers and hanna (2018) also argue that local and national state public ownership is better for distributing benefits more equally. for them, other forms, such as local and workers ownership, build wealth for specific groups, so can exacerbate inequality and create new forms of vested interest. municipal ownership is better because it covers all local groups. also, sectional groups face greater market pressures so may externalise environmental costs. state ownership can be better on environmental grounds. because of its scale it can have a large impact if pursuing green policies. the labour party’s report on alternative models discusses national ownership and arguments for it; as well as acknowledging its pitfalls and the case for its greater democratisation, via the inclusion of plural involved and affected stakeholder groups in governance, for example local and national states, workers, consumers, managers, experts and community groups (berry and guinan, 2019 and we own it, 2019). this involves the incorporation of industrial democracy into public ownership (berry and guinan, 2019). public ownership may need to be reformed from forms it has taken in the past. but problems of public ownership, such as they have been, could have been due to types of management as much as ownership itself and could be addressed by investigating new forms of management (hobbs, 2018) as much as by a shift to private ownership. reform of public ownership can involve both democratising it and reforming its type of management and these may be related and go hand in hand. polling data shows support for public ownership (hanna, 2018a; kishimoto, 2018; we own it, 2019). the legatum institute found in 2017 that three quarters of the uk public believe that water, electricity, gas and rail should be publicly owned, across generations and party allegiance, and 50% feel the banks should be nationalised (elliott and kanagasooriam, 2017). a 2017 yougov poll shows lower level but still majority support for nationalisation of royal mail, water, rail, and energy, across age, class and region (smith, 2017). for we own it: ‘public services are the best things humans have ever invented’ (2019, 9) and beyond the uk public ownership is not so outlandish, even in the free market usa where it is widespread (guinan and hanna 2018; hanna, 2018ab). it has been equated too 108 | populism, power and protest easily with centralised, bureaucratic, inefficient top-down organisation, despite evidence for efficiency (hobbs, 2018; cumbers and hanna, 2018). murphy (2019) raises the issue of tensions between international, national and decentralised levels and argues that corbynist labour do not deal with these. but an approach that combines decentralisation with central state power may be doing exactly that as central state power can be an overarching context for decentralisation, taking on those things that decentralisation cannot do so well (e.g. public services and environmental protection) and overseeing inequalities and coherence between decentralised units, not to mention linking upwards from them to the international level (adler, 2019). at international levels, however, democratic economy proposals may have implications for trade and globalisation that have been less explored, but within the context of a left that is sceptical about international trade deals (berry and guinan, 2019; pickard and shrimsley, 2019). the alternative economy: beyond globalisation and neoliberalism there is an alternative economy being built, place-based and democratic, beyond globalisation and neoliberalism. the democratic economy is about local value, both economic and social, not international corporate value; the creation and retention of wealth in the community rather than the making and extracting of it from the outside and for shareholders rather than citizens. this is less about trickling down than trickling up (howard 2019). the democratic economy involves the marrying of political and civil society, and of the mainstream and margins. it includes the role of the entrepreneurial state rather than rejection of active government, a local state but also national, and a view of it working in alliance with various institutions rather than on them or by widescale appropriation of private ownership. the theme of reinvestment in the local economy can appeal to local communities and those who may not be socialist. this is part of its practical edge, although it is in a way that may appeal to parochial local self-interest which has negative dimensions. it involves an institutionalisation of the alternative and change via a system, institutions and assets rather than leaving these as they are and compensating by redistributional correction. it is maybe not socialism replacing social democracy, but socialist as well as social democratic. and it is more old labour than new labour, rejigged to give greater emphasis to the local and decentralised. a big question with social alternatives outside politics is how far they can be realised more widely; political alternatives raise issues of entrenchment the democratic economy | 109 and institutionalisation. and local decentralised social ownership needs to be allied, as under corbynite labour, with national public ownership if it is to be equally for all: new old labour but still old labour. the democratic economy is not just utopian but also practical, involving think and do actions, mainstream and political as well as alternative and social. it involves pluralism in various different ways. there is a re-politicisation of alternatives: beyond extra-political alternatives to more public-public politicalsociety links. so extra-political alternatives built on but allied with political intervention and the mainstream public sector; a place for the political in social alternatives. it involves formal as well as informal sectors. it is a channel for scaling up using methods including but beyond experiment and demonstration; also politically designed and facilitated, linked to politics and party. it involves moving to an alternative not just in isolated experiments on the fringes of society but via conventional local and national politics, set up downwards and scaled across as well as scaled up from below. the democratic economy involves the materialisation, politicisation and pluralisation, through institutions and broad support, of an alternative economy. as such, its potential for scaling up is good compared to some other radical alternatives. but even if the political right can be convinced, this new economy will face opposition from international capital as it is them that are disadvantaged. complacency over parochialism and over resistance and the potential for reversal needs to be avoided. embeddedness in society in the face of opposition from international capital and other vested interests will require going beyond just institutionalisation. there will need to be responses and reforms to capital, the civil service and media, and a popular consciousness and social movement basis behind the democratic economy. so, the democratic economy needs to be for all of society equally as well as localised; and geared to a fight back against powerful opposition and not complacent about its wider appeal. it also raises the question of the international regrouping of the left. returning economic power to the people and democratic accountability, and a politics for the many against the few has been on the upsurge elsewhere: in spain where podemos is in alliance with the centre-left in power, portugal where an anti-austerity left has been governing, and with support for sanders in the usa, for example. the experience of syriza in greece, though, has indicated the perils for the left when faced with elite power and a divorce from social movement support. 110 | populism, power and protest references adler, d. 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(2019). when we own it: a model for public ownership in the 21st century. oxford: we own it. the democratic economy | 115 global networks challenging the power of the mining industry judith marshall1 abstract: the establishment of the neoliberal world order has included major changes to the spaces, instruments and discourses through which transnational mining companies wield their power. these include mining industry think tanks, lobbying, contributions to political parties, trade agreements, investment protection treaties, revolving doors between industry and government leaders and high visibility public philanthropy. this study will explore how the mining industry uses and legitimates these new forms of corporate rule and the consequent weakening of labour’s capacity to defend workers’ rights and dignity. it will do so through mini-case studies of the initiatives of the usw to build new forms of solidarity through global networks focussed on two mining transnationals, vancouver-based teck with operations in canada, the us, chile and peru and brazil’s mining giant, vale sa with operations in 14 countries. keywords: neoliberalism; international labour solidarity; unions; free trade; mining introduction this article will explore how unions engage with the multiple spaces, instruments and discourses big mining companies use today to wield their enormous power (marshall, 2015). it will do so by examining recent experiences of united steelworkers (usw) in building global networks of mine workers. the first case-study will focus on efforts in the 1990s to build a network of canadian, chilean and peruvian workers employed by teck resources, a 1 judith marshall is a scholar-activist who holds a phd from the ontario institute for studies in education. she has recently retired after working for two decades in the global affairs department of the united steelworkers of america canadian national office. in this position, she was responsible for member education, project coordination for usw's projects in southern africa and promotion of global labour exchanges and networks. 268 | populism, power and protest vancouver-based mining transnational. the second case-study will analyze a broader network formed in 2010, the international articulation of people affected by vale. this network focussed on the brazil-based mining giant that purchased four inco nickel operations in canada in 2006. the final section will reflect more broadly on the adequacy of union action to challenge corporate-led globalization and the neoliberal world order. a new space for international work inside the canadian union movement opened up in the 1980s when information satellites projected the horrors of the ethiopian famine into canadian living rooms, triggering widespread response throughout the country. usw led the labour response by tabling creation of a labour ngo devoted to international development and relief activities at its national policy conference in 1985, the steelworkers humanity fund. the cep humanity fund and caw social justice fund followed in quick succession. all became registered charities with legal identities distinct from their union sponsors. the funds were sustained through a labour mechanism, collective bargaining. once the humanity fund was adopted into a collective agreement, one penny for every hour worked reverted to the fund. big bargaining units were targeted first; soon monthly remittances were arriving. throughout the 1990s, member contributions totalled about one million annually. for many years, the canadian international development agency (cida) matched some of these contributions on a 3:1 basis. the funds were allocated to disaster relief appeals, support for long-term development projects and member education including worker exchanges. at the beginning, longestablished ngos such as oxfam, cuso and interpares were asked to introduce appropriate “community partners” that the steelworkers humanity fund could support. gradually project funding for “labour partners” was introduced, starting with the south african unions already well known from the years of anti-apartheid campaigning. from 2007-2012, the labour funds collaborated in a cida-funded, clc-coordinated labour development project aimed at strengthening trade union capacity globally through projects with labour partners in multiple countries. at a humanity fund board meeting in 1992, jim saare, a board member from the teck-cominco smelter in trail, warned that member support would disappear if the fund did not find ways to tackle international issues as usw members themselves were experiencing them. according to saare, for steelworkers in bc, this meant tackling corporate globalization, free trade agreements like nafta and chile. his members in bc were watching mining global networks challenging the power of the mining industry | 269 companies packing their exploration equipment and move en masse to chile and wanted to understand why. we designed a week-long workshop called “thinking north south”2 using popular education methodology that drew on the workers’ own experiences to explore themes like globalization, the growing power of transnational corporations, free trade agreements and de-industrialization. project partners were invited as resource people, bringing southern voices and perspectives into the workshop debates. the education programme also included worker exchanges, sending members on solidarity visits to countries like peru or mozambique with reports back at usw events. network of teck workers in canada, chile and peru the warning that continued member support for the humanity fund was contingent on having the fund deal with the members’ own experiences of globalization and trade agreements was heeded. the generic worker exchanges expanded to include worker exchanges specifically designed to build links between workers with common transnational employers. union leaders from newly opened teck and placer dome mines in chile were hosted by local unions during month-long study visits to kamloops and timmins on leaves sanctioned by teck and place dome “to give their chilean workers some canadian experience.” the visits culminated with a usw policy conference in vancouver. the vancouver sun interviews with the two chilean miners included quotes with fairly gentle critiques of conditions at their mines in chile. teck and placer dome managements quickly made their displeasure known. the timmins local union leaders immediately backed off the exchanges, saying “we thought it was just a mine visit and not something political”. the teck workers in kamloops reacted in the opposite way. “the company is pissed off. we must be doing something useful. let’s do more of it.” richard boyce, then president at teck’s highland valley copper, made a return visit to chile. intermittent conference calls on skype with the translator 2 i began to work with the humanity fund in 1991, tasked with development of member education programmes and international worker exchanges. this was later expanded to include coordinating a programme in southern africa, a region i knew well after years of anti-apartheid activism in canada and eight years in post-independence mozambique, developing workplace literacy programmes in the ministry of education. 270 | populism, power and protest on the line kept up communications. boyce and i travelled together to chile in the mid-1990s, to do a mini-bargaining school on the eve of negotiations for a first contract at the quebrada blanca mine. our translator was patty barrera, coordinator of the trade network, common frontiers who had family links to chile. the bargaining school included role plays, scenarios and sharing collective agreement language from other teck operations. one morning boyce played the role of a teck manager opening bargaining. the chileans were dumbfounded. how could boyce have known the exact words their manager had said to them just three days earlier? boyce laughingly explained it was just the standard “crying poor” speech, employed by companies everywhere to launch bargaining. we worried that the chileans might think clauses in the highland valley copper cba could be duplicated in theirs, just for the asking. we tried to explain bargaining as an art, a skill, a mind game. we introduced training activities focussing on sources of union power, communications strategies, winning member and community support, the changed context created by globalization. at night, we drank pisco sours and fretted. if the quebrada blanca bargaining went badly, usw would wear it, with accusations of unwelcome interference. the quebrada blanca workers made reasonable gains, however, and the partnership continued and expanded to include exchanges with teck workers in peru in the next years. we made serious efforts to build support within the membership of the teck operations in kamloops and trail, portraying the teck network linking canadian, chilean and peruvian teck workers as breaking new ground in forms of global solidarity. the prevailing usw culture still saw “international affairs” as the domain of senior leadership and international trips as “loyalty rewards” from the directors. if the network was to build, we needed to legitimate continued contacts and repeat visits. members would quickly veto use of local union funds for ongoing exchanges unless they got beyond seeing the exchanges as perks and began to understand them as a way to defend their own jobs as well. for the teck workers, this was a first exposure to looking critically at globalization. while usw had a strong history of labour schools, the focus in these schools was mainly on “tools courses,” i.e. bargaining, pensions, arbitrations, health and safety. this meant little or no discussion of the new threats to labour created by corporate-led globalization and the neoliberal ideological offensive. global networks challenging the power of the mining industry | 271 mini workshops specifically designed for the teck locals were held in trail and kamloops. an extended roleplay about a b.c. mining company moving to chile was one of the activities. in step 1, the whole group listened to an “eye-witless news” flash about another bc mine closure. the anchor promised further coverage at a global mining conference the following week in vancouver. for step 2, the workshop participants were given time to prep in small groups for their roles as conference delegates. the delegates included mining executives, government leaders, union representatives and environmentalists from both canada and chile. the delegates each gave opening statements, followed by debate. the role play broadened the discussion from narrow labour concerns to corporate reach, social dumping, trade agreements, environment, company-government relationships and power. the teck workers jumped into it readily because they were already living the reality. the take-aways from the role play were usually stark – the absolute power of the corporations to come and go as they pleased and the subservience of the governments to corporate power. some of us saw these mini courses in the teck locals as cutting edge, charting the path for new forms of global solidarity. i learned only many years later that boyce had actually approached usw canadian directors with proposals to establish a usw office in santiago, putting some serious resources into a teck network and developing new forms of collaboration and solidarity. the institutional buy-in was weak, however, with national union leadership both in toronto and santiago showing signs of anxiety about a bottom-up process that had allowed local union leaders such unscripted space to shape global connections. at a union election in kamloops a few years later, boyce lost to an opposition candidate whose campaign promise was to “stay home and tend member concerns” rather than spending time jetting off to latin america. the union president in chile retired so the memories and friendship bonds that had helped keep up momentum dwindled. international articulation of people affected by vale in 2010, usw became involved in a very different kind of network focussed on vale, brazil’s iron mining giant. vale had purchased inco in 2006, in the midst of the decade-long commodities “super cycle” that brought sky high mineral prices and a rash of mining take-overs creating larger and fewer mining conglomerates. vale’s arrival in canada was marked by lots of inflated language. the inco purchase was described by vale as its “crown jewel”. some inco 272 | populism, power and protest workers grumbled publicly about the prospect of having a “third world” employer forcing third world conditions on canadian workers. when veteran brazilian labour leader, didi travesso, travelled to happy valley/goose bay to meet workers from the voisey’s bay mine, he was met with picket signs saying, “brazilians go home.” usw had convened a global meeting in sudbury of unions representing vale workers soon after vale’s take-over. the brazilian unions that participated promised to convene a return visit the next year. over time, however, we came to learn that there were multiple union centrals in brazil representing miners and that most of the fourteen union affiliates representing vale workers were closely aligned with the company. there was relief when the first round of bargaining with vale in thompson basically renewed the old contract. when bargaining began with the other three operations, however, usw found itself facing major challenges. the bargaining resulted in a strike which began in july 2009 and continued for 11 months in sudbury and port colborne, and for 18 months in voisey’s bay, newfoundland. vale stated its negotiating aims clearly. it wanted to change the pension fund from “defined payment” to “defined contribution”, a standard demand in today’s bargaining context. it wanted to remove the nickel bonus. the bonus had been established with inco during a round of bargaining when low nickel prices prevailed. salary demands were dropped in return for a bonus, to become operative when nickel prices rose. vale’s purchase came in the midst of the commodities super cycle with sky-rocketing nickel prices. workers already earning high wages were also receiving a $20/hour nickel bonus, giving many of them six figure incomes. vale’s third aim was more complex, a determination to bring the labour relations in canada in line with vale’s global labour relations. vale defined this as a direct relationship between vale management and the workers, without any intermediaries. in other words, vale was intent on dismantling the historic role of the usw both as bargaining agent and voice for all workers and as a strong workplace presence with multiple eyes and ears to monitor compliance with the detailed collective agreement. active union presence in the workplace included stewards, health and safety reps as well as elected union leaders, some of whom were paid by the company to do union work full-time. in 2010, with the strikes ongoing and after many meetings with vale workers in other parts of the world to gain support for the strikers, usw was global networks challenging the power of the mining industry | 273 invited to a meeting in rio aimed at forming an international articulation of people affected by vale. this was a very different kind of network, with labour participating but not driving its formation. prior to the inaugural meeting in rio there were caravans to introduce international participants to vale operations and mining communities both in iron-rich minas gerais state and in northern brazil where vale’s largest iron mine had been carved out in the amazon in the 1960s, along with an 800 km long railway to port facilities in a neighbouring state. the meeting brought together people not just from minas gerais and the amazon. others came from rio de janeiro state where vale had a joint megaproject with german steel company, thyssen krupp, that was spewing out massive pollution and destroying nearby fishing communities. justice on the rails, a regional network in the north focussing on communities along the vale railway brought strong church connections and academic links. other participants included the landless people’s movement and the movement for people affected by dams, working at community level for those displaced by mines and dams. rights, environment and social justice organizations like pacs and global justice and movsam were also members, as well as groups like ibase working on public policies such as bank loans to vale from brazil’s powerful national development bank, bndes, the inaugural meeting had 160 participants from 14 countries, including peru, chile and mozambique. the brazilians regarded the canadian strikers with awe, heroic figures who had held out against the power of vale for 11 months. some brazilian workplaces had even taken mine gate collections for the strike fund in sudbury. sharing information was and is av’s central function. members post information from our respective countries and struggles, ranging from newspaper articles and studies to videos and breaking news of direct actions like blockades or urgent action appeals.3 in the early years, there were annual face to face meetings in different parts of brazil as well as actions at the vale agm, with an inside strategy for av members holding shares and an outside strategy, often with street theatre. over the years, av did two counter reports to vale’s annual sustainability report, using vale’s own themes and graphic format but 3 since retirement from usw in 2013, i have continued to be active in it through my institutional connection to the centre for research on latin america and the caribbean (cerlac) at york university. 274 | populism, power and protest substituting vale’s self-congratulatory text with testimonies from people affected by vale all over the world. for example, vale’s official sustainability report described the human resettlement at cateme, mozambique to make way for vale’s open pit coal mine as a model of excellence, following world bank recommendations for resettlements to the letter, from robust community consultation to provision of equivalent or higher standards than those in their old communities. it reported weekly visitors to cateme admiring the new housing, latrines, schools, health centre and model farm. the vale unsustainability report gave voice to mozambican families who described being forced off their land and into a nightmare of broken promises both by vale and their own government. nine years after the forced removals, issues of land suitable for farming, water, electricity and compensation were still unresolved. the sub-standard houses began to crumble after the first rainy season. while those resettled still have no land to farm, they are invited to the irrigated model farm operated by vale extension staff for training on “improved farming methods.” with neither vale nor government prepared to resolve their problems, those who lost their land blockaded the railway line to the port in 2012. the problems and protests continue. many exchanges were organized as a mechanism for strengthening av with support from the humanity fund. vale workers from indonesia, new caledonia and mozambique were funded to attend international meetings in brazil. there have been four tri-national exchanges taking brazilian and canadian vale workers to mozambique to participate in health and safety training courses. there was a major exchange taking fourteen mozambicans and four canadians to northern brazil. this exchange had support from canadian embassy csr funds in mozambique, based on the logic that for mozambicans to participate effectively in a consultation process about mining, they needed first-hand knowledge of the dimensions of a fully operational mine, rail and port complex like that of carajas. as a network model, av has both strengths and weaknesses. while the members work in very different areas in different parts of the world, with different political and organizational cultures, they are united in that they all contest some component of vale’s enormous, unregulated power. there are ongoing tensions, however, between the very different organizational cultures of the members. unions, social movements, ngos and religious organizations all have distinct organizational and accountability structures, both within and between countries. global networks challenging the power of the mining industry | 275 the range of information that flows is very broad, much of it generated in brazil, in portuguese. members still put most of their energies and resources into what their own organization does wherever it is located. common actions are few and far between. there are perennial problems of scarce resources, allowing only a part-time coordinator. unions from canada, mozambique and brazil were active in the early days. these included usw representing miners from canada, sinticim representing miners from mozambique, and three unions from brazil, stefem representing railway workers, metabase, representing iron miners and sindiquimica representing workers producing fertilizers. given their ongoing role in representing vale employees, these unions all faced constant pressure from the company. gerson castellano, the sindiqumica rep happened to be in maputo, en route to the mine in tete for a health and safety exchange during a state visit by president lula. after lula’s public meeting on “fighting inequality,” castellano got the chance to talk to him and present him with a copy of the “vale unsustainability report.” castellano flew to tete the next day. that night, he was woken up in his motel room by people calling his name. he found three large men at his door, one with foot inserted to keep the door open. they warned him that he was “far away from home”, that they “didn’t want any trouble in mozambique”, that they would be “watching every step” and to “be careful what you do.” vale’s second president, murilo ferreira toured vale’s global operations when he took over in 2011 without meeting a single union. criticisms for this slight resulted in a meeting with the presidents of the fourteen unions representing vale workers in brazil. according to the report back from valerio vieira, then president of metabase inconfidentes, a founding member of av, 12 of the 14 unions representing vale mine workers were basically “company unions”, eager to praise the new president. vieira opted for a blistering attack, saying three months was far too soon to judge whether vale was really changing course. according to vieira, the old vale still prevailed in minas gerais with wages lower than in neighbouring mines, constant supervisor harassment and serious health and safety issues regularly pushed under the rug. vale’s tendency to buy off local labour, community and government leaders also continued unabated. the attrition rate of the union members in av is significant. an alliance between two metabase unions in minas gerais, inconfidentes and itabira, collapsed when itabira was persuaded to team up with the company 276 | populism, power and protest union in carajas to bid for the union seat on the vale council, including its generous perks. stefem, the railway workers’ union, participated enthusiastically in the first workers exchange to vale’s coal mine in mozambique. soon after, vale invited stefem back to mozambique for a tour of its new port and rail facilities in beira. stefem subsequently withdrew from av. sinticim, the mozambican union, terminated the staff person who had coordinated the av exchanges without explanation. during the construction phase involving odebrecht, sinticim colluded with management, feeding false information to the company about local union activists who had participated in the exchanges and urging disciplinary action. three activists were dismissed. despite court exoneration, the odebrecht/vale employee was never reinstated.4 while the strikes in canada were ongoing, usw was a keen member of av with members claiming they were learning a lot from brazil. jamie west, a usw member and now an ndp mla in the ontario provincial government, participated in the founding meeting. when he was asked to plan a programme in sudbury for a visit by valerio vieira a few months later, he commented that before visiting brazil, the visit would have included just the union hall and the picket line. after brazil, he included three other components. one was poverty and why a major mining hub like sudbury still had such income disparities. he took vieira to meet with united way to hear about anti-poverty initiatives in sudbury. second was environment and inclusion of contacts with people working on reclamation, environmental clean-up and a soil survey in sudbury. third was gender and a meeting with a group of women about work in the maledominated mining sector and the roles of women’s committees in strike support over the years. today, however, with labour “peace” returning to the vale operations in canada, usw participation in av has diminished markedly. the affected by vale network continues its activities, galvanized into more action in response to two catastrophic tailings dam spills at vale iron mines in minas gerais in less than 4 years. the first, at mariana in 2015, had 19 fatalities. the toxic tsunami formed by the spill polluted the entire rio doce river system during the ten days it took to reach the atlantic. at the vale agm in 2019, following shortly after a second catastrophic tailings dam collapse at vale’s brumadinho mine, av members with shares voted against acceptance of vale’s administrative report. the final av negative vote ended with activation of 4 for a fuller study of labour and community protests against vale in mozambique, see marshall (2018). global networks challenging the power of the mining industry | 277 an alarm siren, a pointed reminder of the absence of warning systems when the mariana and brumadinho mines collapsed. outside, av activists had filled the steps in front of the vale headquarters in rio with plaques with names of the 272 people who lost their lives buried in toxic muck – engineers, doctors, managers, workers, both directly employed and sub-contracted, the majority of them employed by vale. mapping corporate power unions have been engaging with transnational mining corporations in recent decades both through direct bargaining relationships at workplace and national levels as well as through the global union federations (gufs). the gufs have promoted global councils linking unions with a common global employer. these global councils promote international framework agreements and value chain bargaining and are meant to build mutual support and solidarity. they tend to focus narrowly on workplace issues, seeking unified bargaining strategies around labour rights, salaries, working conditions and health and safety. the guf initiatives, however, do little to tackle the broader arenas and discourses where mining companies have been most inventive in wielding power. as the steelworkers experimented with initiatives to create new forms of global solidarity, the big mining companies like teck and vale were themselves undergoing a transformation in the way they exercised and legitimated their power. state-owned mining companies virtually disappeared as privatization became the order of the day. private mining conglomerates built global mining empires comprised of massive mining enclaves, many also including railways, ports and ore ships, not to mention massive tailings storage facilities. these enclaves effectively bypassed national borders. james ferguson’s studies of africa in the neoliberal world order captures the essence of the resource extraction enclaves that characterize 21st century mining around the globe. “…such enclaves participate not only in the destruction of national economic spaces but also in the construction of “global” ones. for just as enclaves of, say, mining production are often fenced off (literally and metaphorically) from their surrounding societies, they are at the same time linked up, with a “flexibility” that is exemplary of the most up-to-date, 278 | populism, power and protest “post-fordist” neoliberalism, both with giant transnational corporations and with networks of small contractors and subcontractors that span thousands of miles and link nodes across multiple continents” (ferguson, 2006, 13). unions have done little to grapple with the new spaces, instruments and discourses of corporate-led globalization. labour history is not on the agenda so there is little understanding of the fundamental shift since the mid-1970s away from the post-war order that espoused welfare states, enshrined labour rights and promoted full employment. unions recognize but do not understand why and continue to yearn for the day when usw members could graduate from high school, join fathers and uncles and brothers in a sudbury mine or a hamilton steel mill, enjoy life-long employment with rising wages followed by secure retirement with two pensions, one from government and one from private plans co-funded with the mining company. for unions to challenge how mining corporations wield power today, they need to understand the important historical shift in the relationship between state and capital since the mid-1970s. with corporate-led globalization, corporations have eclipsed governments as the dominant social actors, many commanding budgets larger than most nation states. a standard global governance recipe has come to prevail, consisting of privatization, deregulation, cuts in social sector spending, downsizing of the state and attacks on labour, all of which place corporate well-being above the public good (bieler et al., 2008). as david harvey cogently argues, ideological initiatives formed an integral part of the radical shift to “neoliberalism.” the core of the neoliberal vision is that “human well-being can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, unencumbered markets, and free trade. the role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices” (harvey, 2007, 22). arguably the most radical aspect of neoliberalism has been this down-sizing of the role of the state from pro-active roles, defending the public interest, governing, planning, regulating, and even creating state enterprises. under neoliberalism, the role of the state became that of servicing private capital, “creating and preserving an institutional framework” for a higher power, entrepreneurial freedom and the market. in canada, and more broadly, mining corporation have succeeded in carrying out regulatory capture of both provincial and federal governments. global networks challenging the power of the mining industry | 279 using think tanks like the fraser institute, mining industry associations like mac and pdac, contributions to political parties, revolving doors between government and mining industry leaders, free trade agreements, investment protection treaties, corporate social responsibility projects and public philanthropy, mining companies have succeeded in persuading governments to abandon their role in defending workers, communities and the environment, functioning instead to further the interests of the mining sector. in addition to these legal measures designed to exercise power and create regulatory capture, the mining corporations also employ less than legal means such as bribing government, community and union leaders, spying, employing private security forces and criminalizing social movements raising critical questions about mining. efforts by unions to build global alliances need to face up to the reality of “regulatory capture” not as an abstract economics concept. the textbook definition of “regulatory capture” is a form of government failure in which “regulatory agencies may come to be dominated by the industries or interests they are charged with regulating. the result is that the agency, which is charged with acting in the public’s interest, instead acts in ways that benefit the industry it is supposed to be regulating” (investopedia, 2018). university of chicago nobel laureate george stigler first defined the term in the 1970s reflecting on how regulatory agencies created to act in the public interest came, over time, to advance the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector they are charged with regulating. the regulated industries maintain a keen interest and devote substantial resources to influencing regulators, at federal, provincial or local level, including aggressive lobbying, while ordinary citizens affected by the industry have far fewer resources to challenge it and no collective voice. the revolving doors between government and industry serve to reinforce the regulatory capture (investopedia, 2018). in canada, kevin taft has recently carried out a study of the oil industry in alberta and documented how political parties, universities, legislative assemblies, media, think tanks and the courts – the fundamental institutions of democracy – have all been captured by the oil industry. as a consequence, taft says that these vital institutions “increasingly serve the interests not of democracy, science or the public, but the interests of the fossil fuel industry, especially the oil industry”, creating what taft calls a “deep state” (taft, 2017, 16-17). 280 | populism, power and protest in 2016, the bc auditor general conducted an audit to determine whether regulatory compliance and enforcement activities pertaining to mining were protecting the province from environmental risks. in her scathing report she said: “we found almost every one of our expectations for a robust compliance and enforcement program was …not met.” she recommended creation of an integrated and independent compliance and enforcement unit, given that the bc ministry of energy and mines (mem) “is at risk of regulatory capture, primarily because mem’s mandate includes a responsibility to both promote and regulate mining…” (auditor general of british columbia, 2016). once captured, the government’s central objective becomes attracting and maintaining the confidence of corporate investors. the mining industry’s most precious commodity: its narrative to tackle the power of the global mining industry we need to understand not just the workings of regulatory capture. it is not enough just to unmask “free trade” and “investment protection agreements” showing them to be instruments primarily to enshrine investor privilege. we also have to grapple with discursive practices and how corporations shape the very way we see the world. neoliberalism has not only radically shifted the relationships between corporations and governments in countries around the globe. in effect it has brought about the demise of state sovereignty over political-economic affairs and inserted powerful, self-regulated corporations in its place. david harvey captures the enormity of the ideological shift saying neoliberalism has “swept across the world like a vast tidal wave of institutional reform and discursive adjustment, entailing much destruction, not only of prior institutional frameworks and powers, but also divisions of labor, social relations, welfare provisions, technological mixes, ways of life, attachments to the land, habits of the heart, ways of thought…” (harvey, 2007, 23). the mining industry’s strategies to shape our ways of thought were greatly intensified with the creation of the london-based international council of mining and metals in 2001. icmm today has 27 major mining companies as members along with 30 national and regional associations devoted to mining, the icmm has lobbied globally to shape a discourse promoting continued extraction of the “minerals and metals that make modern life possible”, and this done with full commitment to “sustainability,” “self-regulation,” and “corporate social responsibility” (brereton, 2001). in canada, lobbying to promote this image is carried out through the mining association of canada (mac) and the global networks challenging the power of the mining industry | 281 prospectors and developers association of canada (pdac). through these bodies and corporate think tanks like the fraser institute, the mining companies spin their narrative endlessly using direct lobbying, publications, businessfriendly media and conference events. sustainability has been one of the key themes pushed by mining company lobbies, attempting to counter mining’s disastrous environmental impact. by the early 2000s, almost two thirds of all world metals came from open pit mines, many of them mining remote ore bodies with lower mineral content. new mineral extraction processes leave behind 8-10 percent more waste, much of it toxic, needing care not just during the working life of the mine but into perpetuity (north et al., 2016). the visibility of damages created by mining is expanding with growing frequency of tailings dam collapses.5 mining companies employ lobbyists directly, basing them in national or provincial capitals, allowing constant contact with ministry staff on bills that affect mining companies’ interests. a recent study of fossil fuel lobbyists in b.c. revealed that the ministry of energy and mines was most heavily contacted with 1,353 contacts since 2010 (graham, 2017). these intimate relations between governments and corporations are further consolidated with revolving door policies that take government leaders onto the boards of big mining companies. a politician holding a ministry portfolio morphs into a lobbyist for an extractive sector company the day after retirement. former prime minister, brian mulroney re-emerged on barrick gold’s international board, along with former us president, george bush. in bc, bill bennett, who headed the minister of energy and mining so noted for its pro-mining stance decided not to run for office again in june 2016. by february 2018, he had become a board member of three junior exploration companies in bc eagle plains resources, ascot resources and kutcho copper co. all noted the “deep knowledge of government processes” he would bring to their boards (globe newswire, 2018). mining industry lobbying is tag-teamed with political contributions to political parties in jurisdictions where this is allowed. in january 2017, the new york times labelled british columbia as the “wild west’ of canadian political cash” because it was so wide open to corporate contributions. teck resources 5 for a comparative study of tailings dam collapses in canada and brazil, see my marshall (2018). 282 | populism, power and protest was one of the biggest, donating $1.7 million between 2005 and 2014 (levin, 2017). mining companies polish their image with loud claims of corporate social responsibility. instead of paying rents to host governments, mining companies bargain hard for exemptions and deferrals from taxes and royalties and import/export duties. they threaten closure if more government “flexibility” is not forthcoming. the demands for “corporate welfare” from government are cloaked by strong messaging about the mining company’s own corporate social responsibility projects in the community. contesting the power of mining in the 21st century ironically, while unions have been running to catch up with their transnational employers by creating international networks and global councils and international framework agreements, the corporations themselves have been opting for policies that side-step unions altogether. since the 1970s there has been a massive restructuring of the global mining industry. some would argue that sub-contracted capitalism is central to the new “flexible” model of neoliberalism, replacing the old industrial model with its fixed labour force. a mining company does not have the option of offshoring its costs by moving production to low-wage jurisdictions with lax environmental regulations but through the mechanism of triangular employment relationships “they can in fact offshore their legal responsibilities...” (roth, 2016). companies can hire only a small group of direct employees for “core functions” complemented by an evergrowing number of contingent workers, employed by sub-contractors on a multiplicity of contracts. this creates triangular relationships in which the subcontracted workers do not negotiate with the “real employer” who actually holds the power to affect their working conditions. today many mines have more than half of their workers employed through multiple sub-contractors. the vale mine in sudbury which in 1971 had 20,134 direct, unionized employees, all in the same bargaining unit, was operating by 2015 with 2,670 direct, unionized employees and thousands of nonunion workers employed through sub-contractors (robinson 2015). in vale’s mine in mariana, brazil, there were 2900 direct vale employees and 3700 subcontracted workers when the tailings dam collapsed in 2015. precarious work in sudbury dates from the early 1980s when inco began to contract out large numbers of jobs. by the end of the decade, there was a burgeoning mining supply and service sector in sudbury. non-unionized global networks challenging the power of the mining industry | 283 workers normally earned $10-12/hour compared to the $20 plus per hour of the average inco employee (lowe, 1989). whatever contracting out language existed in the collective agreement was gradually overcome as mine owners off loaded sections of their business deemed peripheral to the “main business” of the company. by carrying out mining operations through sub-contractors, the companies were able to side-step the canadian regulatory framework of the rand formula through which all employees in the workplace paid dues to and were represented by a single bargaining agent. through the now fragmented mining contract relationships, the mining corporation gained a high degree of employment flexibility, a welcome shield from the fluctuations in nickel pricing (roth, 2016). union strategies trade unions setting out to challenge the mining corporations need to start from the premise that neoliberalism has radically altered the playing field. unions are still trying to hold on to the securities and rights of an earlier era. meanwhile governments have basically abdicated their sovereignty over the political economy with “regulatory capture” as the new normal. corporate rule is carried out through “self-regulation” or “regulation by declaration". how can unions respond more adequately to these 21st century realities? a starting point would be staff training and union education programmes on the making of the neoliberal world order. from union top leadership to rank and file members, there is an urgent need for frank discussion and debates about the radically changed relationship between governments and corporations, and the instruments capital is employing for regulatory capture and its systematic attack on labour, north and south. another step might be recognition that unions actually speak for only a small portion of those employed in mining. union strategies still tend to involve only workers directly employed by the mining companies, despite current global trends for sub-contracted workers to make up the majority of the mine labour force. labour initiatives that involve only unionized workers while leaving out the more than half of the work force that is sub-contacted are unlikely to have significant clout. this might point to the need for organizing drives aimed at contract workers, or new forms of labour representation altogether. unions need to reflect on their tendency to act unilaterally, often showing outright hostility to others affected by mining projects, including indigenous and local communities. this often extends as well to watchdog 284 | populism, power and protest organizations and environmentalists, denigrating them as “anti-mining” and/or “anti-development.” the first challenge for trade unions, then, is to deepen their understanding of the neoliberal world order and to expand their understanding of how a mining corporation’s power operates through multiple domains, instruments and discourses. the second challenge is to broaden their alliances, going beyond workers who are contracted directly to those who are subcontracted, often the majority in the workplace, and also building alliances with other people directly affected by the mine’s operations. in canada and many other countries, this means alliances with indigenous people that respect their claims for land and sovereignty. the third challenge is to expand beyond narrow workplace concerns and defence of good-paying jobs for the few to building connections with movements challenging neoliberalism at the structural and discursive levels. if governments of all stripes have deferred to wealthy global elites and abdicated their role of defending the well-being of workers and communities and the planet, workers’ need to find allies for building an alternative world of compassion, social justice and care of the earth. references auditor general of british columbia (2016). an audit of compliance and enforcement in the mining sector. bcauditor.com/pubs/2016/auditcompliance-and-enforcement-mining-sector bieler, a., i. lindberg and d. pillay (2006). labour and the challenges of globalization. london: pluto press. brereton, d. (2002, september). the role of self-regulation in improving corporate social performance: the case of the mining industry. paper presented to the australian institute of criminology conference on current issues in regulation: enforcement and compliance, melbourne. http://www.csrm.uq.edu.au/docs/brereton_2002_1.pdf ccic. (2010). bilateral investment treaties: a canadian primer, www.ccic.ca/_files/en/what_we_do/trade_201004_investmt_treaties_primer_e.pdf global affairs canada. global affairs canada trade and investment agreements, https://www.international.gc.ca/trade-commerce/trade-agreementsaccords-commerciaux/agr-acc/index.aspx?lang=eng accessed 9/11/18 global networks challenging the power of the mining industry | 285 globe newswire. (2018). ascot announces new board member and grant of stock options. https://globenewswire.com/newsrelease/2018/02/01/1330470/0/en/ascot-announces-new-boardmember-and-grant-of-stock-options.html graham, n., b. carroll and s. daub. (2017). behind the numbers. monitor mayjune. harvey, d. (2005). a brief history of neoliberalism. new york: oxford university press. harvey, d. (2007). neoliberalism as creative destruction. annals american academy of political and social science, 610(1), 21-44. international articulation of people affected by vale. (2015). unsustainability report vale 2015, atingidospelavale.wordpress.org. levin, d. (2017 january 13). british columbia: the ‘wild west’ of canadian political cash. new york times, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/world/canada/british-columbiachristy-clark.html marshall, j. (2015). contesting big mining from canada to mozambique. transnational institute, https://www.tni.org/files/download/06_tni_state-of-power2015_contesting_big_mining_from_canada_to_mozambique-1.pdf marshall, j. (2018). strikes, bread riots and blockades: mozambican workers and communities in resistance.” in nowak, j., m. dutta and p. birke (eds.) workers’ movements and strikes in the twenty first century. london: rowman and littlefield international. north, l., r. grinspun and c. larrea. (2016). post-neoliberalism in latin america. in m. dougherty and k. deonandan (eds.) mining in latin america. london. routledge. robinson, d. (2015) labour force data network. inord.laurentian.ca/lfdb/datasets_page.html. roth, r. (2017). the rise of precariousness in sudbury’s mining industry: union responses to the casualization of work. working paper, http://www.reubenroth.com/papers/finalversion03-2016.pdf taft, k. (2017). oil’s deep state: how the petroleum industry undermines democracy and stops action on global warming. toronto: james lorimer and company ltd. 286 | populism, power and protest 52 | migration of bengalis to canada 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000 n o . o f im m ig r a n ts f ro m b a n g la d es h provinces and territories increase of bangladeshi immigrants in canada during 2001-2011 2001 2011 can we really have a jaiga (space) in a new place? | 53 54 | migration of bengalis to canada can we really have a jaiga (space) in a new place? | 55 56 | migration of bengalis to canada can we really have a jaiga (space) in a new place? | 57 58 | migration of bengalis to canada can we really have a jaiga (space) in a new place? | 59 60 | migration of bengalis to canada can we really have a jaiga (space) in a new place? | 61 62 | migration of bengalis to canada can we really have a jaiga (space) in a new place? | 63 64 | migration of bengalis to canada can we really have a jaiga (space) in a new place? | 65 66 | migration of bengalis to canada can we really have a jaiga (space) in a new place? | 67 68 | migration of bengalis to canada can we really have a jaiga (space) in a new place? | 69 70 | migration of bengalis to canada can we really have a jaiga (space) in a new place? | 71 72 | migration of bengalis to canada can we really have a jaiga (space) in a new place? | 73 http://canadaimmigrants.com/bangladesh-immigrants-canada/ http://canadaimmigrants.com/bangladesh-immigrants-canada/ https://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/publications/migration-and-its-enemies-global-capital-migrant-labour-and-the-nation-state https://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/publications/migration-and-its-enemies-global-capital-migrant-labour-and-the-nation-state https://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/publications/creolization-and-cultural-globalization-the-soft-sounds-of-fugitive-power https://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/publications/creolization-and-cultural-globalization-the-soft-sounds-of-fugitive-power 74 | migration of bengalis to canada can we really have a jaiga (space) in a new place? | 75 http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-010-x2011001-eng.cfm http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-010-x2011001-eng.cfm https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=left_coast_press&action=edit&redlink=1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 35, 28-45 (2025) the challenges for international solidarity and labour rights in the emerging multipolar world: the case of the brics travis fast1 and laura dehaibi2 abstract: the classic literature on globalization was dominated by two central questions. the first question had to do with the forces of convergence and divergence in national models of capitalism in the face of a post-cold war unipolar moment led by the united states and anglo dominated global finance. the second question centred on the neoliberal nature of that order and the struggle of workers to protect, assert, and expand their labour rights. the challenge to international labour solidarity, abstractly in any case, was easy enough to identify and define: neoliberal globalization. the rise of the brics group raises some contemporary issues for the promotion of labour rights and solidarity in the global south. has, for example, the emerging of this multipolar order complicated the political economy of global capitalism and given rise to new challenges for labour? to answer this question, we set ourselves two central tasks. first, we analyse how the universalist pretensions of embedded liberalism within the post-war multilateral international system were contradictory and ultimately not practicable along several vectors. second, we examine the formation of brics and its relationship to labour via the brics trade union forum. we find both the lingering constraints of embedded liberalism and opportunities for elevating the status of labour and labour standards and increased labour solidarity within the multiregional brics bloc. keywords: brics; multipolarity; pluralism; labour solidarity; international labour rights introduction the question over the possibility of international labour solidarity is a permanent feature of the global market. one angle through which to view the complexity of the matter is via the observation that labour is more or less fixed in place3 whereas capital, particularly in the post-cold war (unipolar) epoch, is relatively fluid in space. neoliberal globalization under the hegemony of the united states and american capital created a dynamic whereby labour and labour standards were relatively fixed in an international whipsaw where capital was relatively free to engage in a global arbitrage over labour supply, cost, and conditions. of course, the geopolitical situation is never stagnant and over the last decade and a half subtle and not so subtle transformations have occurred. one of these changes which have become more pronounced over the past few years is the emergence of new global actors. of note is an intergovernmental organization located outside the core, namely, the brics. while this new organization has been active since its informal beginnings in 2006, little scholarship has turned its look to it, even less so regarding its impact on transnational labour relations. we tentatively see in the brics a potential change in this deleterious labour dynamic with the emergence of a multipolar geopolitical system with a concomitant multinational pluralism. 1 travis fast is professeur agrégé, at the département des relations industrielles, université laval, where he teaches the political economy of comparative labour market policy. his research is currently focussed on geopolitical and technological changes and their implications for labour market policies. 2 laura dehaibi is assistant professor at the department of industrial relations, laval university, where she teaches labour and employment law. her research focuses on the collective organization of precarious and marginalized workers from a transnational perspective. 3 although labour migration is an old phenomenon that implies movement in space, it has always been dependent on or determined by capital flow, whether forced or voluntary. thus, even in the case of ‘voluntary’ migration, it is less a matter of personal choice than a result of economic circumstances, see reid-musson, 2014. 29 while aware of the criticisms regarding the democratic deficit within some of the brics membership, one of our main contentions is pragmatic: these developments in the global south are happening, they are challenging western preconceptions about international relations and trade-labour relations, and, instead of ignoring the phenomenon, we ought to look closely to it, especially to see how labour solidarity can express itself within this new structure. in other words, we can approach the work of the brics at once with caution and with open curiosity. with respect to international labour solidarity, in this paper we ask two questions. first, what is the status of labour solidarity within this new multilateral grouping? second, has the formation of brics strengthened or weakened the conditions of possibility for global labour solidarity in general and labour’s domestic bargaining position in particular? in answering these questions, we suggest it is important to reconceive accepted wisdoms about the forms and processes of international solidarity, arguing that more informal, yet substantive, solidarities can help bring labour questions to the economic agenda, even in the absence of formal mechanisms allowing it. to begin an answer to the above questions this article unravels in the following manner. the first task is to define our key terms: multipolarity, multilateralism, pluralism, and solidarity. for the purposes of this article, we will make use of a distinction that we draw between mechanistic and substantive solidarity formation. the second task is to analyse the tensions and contradictions of embedded liberalism as it applies to the labour-trade nexus in the western-dominated, post-war multilateral order, emphasizing how the shortcomings of a monolithic approach to international trade relations has pushed state actors to favour regionalism, as a way of facilitating negotiation and compromise. the third task is to assess the potential of the brics summits to provide a venue of coordination and organized labour’s role, if any, in developing tripartite structures. we undertake this task by examining the official communiqués of the brics summits from when the brics was a simple abbreviation used by investment bankers to an official international organisation with a concrete and far-reaching set of political and economic goals, as well as the brics trade union forum (btuf) declarations. from these first echoes, we observe that, although the brics has not developed a formal mechanism for direct trade union participation, trade unions have nonetheless managed to put the issue of workers' rights on the table through both informal interventions and the now accepted practice of formal meetings with the ministers for labour and employment (mle) that do enjoy “official” status inside the brics+ group. contrasting this with the world trade organization’s (wto) repeated failures to embrace non-trade considerations seems to confirm that smaller regional forums offer better spaces for pluralist policymaking. we then conclude this paper with an overarching discussion of opportunities and barriers that the multipolarity embodied in the brics creates for mechanistic and substantive modalities of solidarity formation between national labour movements. multipolarity, pluralism and solidarity in the wake of the end of the cold war, international relations became increasingly characterized by the unipolar dominance of the united states coupled with a hegemonic policy paradigm and parallel processes of neoliberal globalization. the three pillars of the neoliberal policy paradigm are price stability, labour market flexibility, and the free flow of capital and trade (fast, 2012). this anglo-saxon strategy of accumulation was promulgated at a global level through a plethora of international institutions from the organization of economic cooperation and development, the international monetary fund, the world bank and through to the world 30 trade organisation along with a host of unofficial international policy think tanks. by the end of the 1990s this system had, more or less, congealed into a hegemonic policy paradigm, an accumulation strategy with few practicable alternatives on offer, domestically or internationally. from organized labour’s point of view, the neoliberal form of globalization created an environment in which the global working classes were effectively “whipsawed” against each other over working conditions and remuneration which created a cascading effect of deindustrializations in developed regions and newly industrializing regions in underdeveloped regions. in the discussion section at the end of this paper we address these issues in more detail. the formation of brics and the tentative construction of a multipolar international system poses both new opportunities and constraints on building and maintaining international workingclass solidarities. multipolarity describes an international system in which there are more than two dominant world powers or blocs as was the case during the cold war (1945-1989).4 the post-cold war international order was dominated by the united states and has been characterized as a unipolar order under american leadership. dating the start of the unipolar moment is somewhat of a haphazard enterprise but there is consensus that it began in 1989-91 with voluntary disintegration of the soviet union (borell, 2021; hagerty, 2020; harsh; 2009; pant, 2019, mearsheimer, 1990). there are reasons to characterize the present international scene as that of an emergent multipolarity and a waning american unipolarity: from the rise of china as an economic and military superpower in its own right; to the re-birth of russia as an energy and nuclear superpower; and with india’s economic and military modernization granting it the status of a regional superpower (pant, 2019), there is an undeniable shift towards geopolitical multipolarity (peters, 2023). for our purposes we are concerned with ascertaining how the formation of the brics group fits into this emergent multipolar international order and how that, in turn, may shape the prospects for international labour solidarity going forward. a closely related, but not necessarily essential concept to multipolarity is pluralism. pluralism, as understood here, refers to the coexistence of politically and culturally diverse national polities rather than the imposition of dominant (neoliberal) model on the global community. pluralism emphasizes multilateral institutions, diplomacy, compromise and a voluntary adherence to the mutually established norms of international law (de coning et al., 2014; acharya, 2023). from a labour perspective, pluralism can also refer to a plurality of normative actors, beyond the westphalian state (coutu, 2006-2007). the international labour organization (ilo), for instance, not only offers a venue for multilateral policymaking, but also implicates worker and industry organizations in the process, through its tripartite structure. in many respects, this merely reflects the values envisioned in the un charter of 1945 based as it is on the principles of international law, multilateralism, non-interference in domestic affairs (sovereignty) and the equality of states (ch., 1). 5 where the reality of multipolarity comes into conflict with the promise of pluralism is of course over the existence of real and nominal sovereigns and the equality of states. 6 nonetheless, 4 for a classic statement on multipolarity see deutsch and singer’s multipolar power systems and international stability (1963). 5 the language adopted at the 1955 bandung conference, for example, made specific reference to refraining “… from intervention or interference in the internal affairs of another country” in keeping with the language of the u.n. charter (lumumba-kasongo, 2015, p.13). 6 the distinction here is straight forward. to be a real sovereign a state must posses a credible military and economic deterrence vis-à-vis other nations. the united states, russia, china and perhaps india, and france would qualify as real sovereigns. all other nations enjoy nominal sovereignty insofar as they are dependent upon other nations abiding 31 given the pledge to pluralism and the principle of non-interference, a practicable version of equality between nations may be maintained. for, as embedded as the americans were able to make liberalism in the post war multilateral organizations, pluralism, founded as it is on the principal of non-interference, was deeply ingrained within those multilateral structures acting as check on the hegemony of liberalism. as we shall see in the section below, the brics summit communiqués all embrace the principles of international law; the importance of multilateral deliberation, negotiation, and dispute resolution; and the principles of non-interference as do the declarations from the brics trade union federation (btuf). solidarity is a rather nebulous construct containing “moral, political and performative elements” (morgan and pulignano, 2020, p.18). despite being central to understanding labour organizing and broader social movements, it is a “relatively neglected” concept in the social sciences (wilde, 2007). scholars such as heckscher and mccarthy, argue that it “has been rather neglected as an academic topic because it is very hard to analyse: there is little understanding of how it is created or how it has changed” (2014, p.628). here we seek not to enter a theoretical debate on how to operationalize the idea of solidarity to generate a quantitative analysis, but, rather, to use a descriptive definition that helps assess what factors support the development of solidarity. hecksher and mccarthy provide a parsimonious definition and “define solidarity broadly…as a communal sense of obligation to support collective action. the collective action can aim at advancing the group’s collective interests and purposes, or at broader social change” (p.629). inspired by putnam (2001), morgan and pulignano define solidarity as a form of group inclusion that requires bonding and bridging elements. bonding elements help to forge ingroup affinities to its members whereas bridging elements create the basis for solidarities between groups with “limited commonalities” (p.20). we make a further distinction between mechanistic and substantive solidarity. mechanistic solidarity can be defined as formal institutional linkages between organizations and between organizations and their members and relates to the official policies, collective benefits, and obligations as well as legislative agendas they adopt. whereas substantive solidarity involves more informal and spontaneous community-level organisations, interactions, and relationships.7 here we are trying to draw a conceptual distinction between the forms of solidarity that are required to produce autonomous and organically evolving forms of solidarity outside of official institutions and frameworks. importantly, we are not trying to argue for the primacy of one form over the other. to put it in economic terms, we view mechanistic and substantive forms of solidarity as complementary rather than rival goods. from a research point of view, it is easier to evaluate and document mechanistic forms of solidarity formation than it is to do so for substantive forms. we shall nonetheless make some effort, however tentative, to assess the potential for substantive solidarity formation in the context of an emerging multipolar international order in the discussion section of this paper. the first order of business is to establish why the move to a multipolar international order would have any impact on the conditions of possibility for international labour solidarity? conceptually, at least, the problem of international labour solidarity remains the same as it ever by the norms of non-interference and equality of nations set out in the u.n. charter and/or the protection of a real sovereign. 7 an example of this form of substantive solidarity can be found in the digital platform economy, in which many organizations started from informal meetings on the ground, and eventually developed into formal independent trade unions, even connecting transnationally with other similar grass-roots organizations (forsyth, 2023; martínez lucio et al., 2022; morales munoz & dinegro martinez, 2022). 32 was: workers are more or less fixed in national spaces and are composed of very heterogenous identities and skill sets, and located in different sectors of the economy, whereas capital is internationally fluid and has a narrower set of preoccupations and goals.8 in a globalized, neoliberal economy, legislation does little to protect workers from the flow of capital (arthurs, 1999; stone, 1995) and even reinforces the control of worker movement through strict migration laws (reid-musson, 2017). at the more abstract level of accumulation, however, neoliberal globalization under the unipolar and hegemonic leadership of the us created a particularly challenging environment for labour solidarity both within and between countries (wells, 2009; wilde, 2007). neoliberal globalization and by extension the expansion and complexity of global supply chains meant a geographical fracturing of supply and production chains and also the workplace which have in turn acted to solidify multinational managerial control over the labour process and the organization of labour itself (baccaro and howell, 2017; crouch and sisson, 2013; mcbride and teeple, 2010: morgan and pulignano, 2020). in tandem with these ‘productive processes’ has been the concomitant ability of capital to engage in a plethora of regulatory arbitrage strategies eroding the existence and enforcement of national, regional, and local labour laws (warikandwa & osode, 2014). taken together, these processes created a certain pressure for the convergence on a neoliberal model of accumulation that was apparent to early observers of neoliberal globalisation particularly as it was transforming advanced capitalist welfare states (fast, 2005; 2012). even if the above line of reasoning is taken as an acceptable approximation of the unipolar moment, the question remains: how does the shift to a multipolar, and pluralist global order change the fundamental challenges of national and international labour solidarity? for both conceptual and chronological clarity, it is necessary to interrogate the arrangements and issues which predated this emergent multipolarity. we need to examine some of the contradictions and frictions generated by the multilateral system, its universalist pretensions, and the labour-trade nexus. from multilateral universalism to multipolar pluralism the general agreement on tariffs and trade (gatt) and the wto system embody the ideal of universalism within trade and commerce. globalization is a universalist project that seeks to even the playing field by allowing the free movement of goods and services. this universalism is partially put into question by the formation of organisations like the brics because its existence, as we shall see in the penultimate section, is in part a reaction to the institutional failure of these universal multilateral organizations. as blackett (2015; 2020) points out, regionalism may be a better setting to navigate the interplay of domestic and global values and policies than hegemonic international organizations. in that regard, two aspects of the gatt/wto system should be emphasised. first, the universalism it calls upon, as other post-war multilateral international institutions, is effectively west-centric (dehaibi, 2024; roberts, 2017). moreover, it is a shallow form of universalism rather than a profound transversal one, in the sense that it seeks 8 this goes beyond the problem of collective action where cooperation between individuals would make everyone better off but fails to do so because of conflicting interests. in the classic collective action problem, the blockage to solidarity is endogenous differences. but solidarity formation may also be hindered by exogenous barriers. for example, multinational companies can operate on an international scale with effective control over their subsidiaries in manner that international trade unions cannot because national, regional or local labour laws, as is the case in canada, make solidarity strikes illegal. it is not conflicting interests within the group (working class) that are the cause of the failure to act collectively but rather the legal structure they are embedded in (pankert, 1977). 33 a universal set of rules applicable to trade while being mostly hermetically sealed to considerations of ‘non-trade’ issues, such as labour and human development more broadly. while the wto now has 164 members, the gatt, the wto’s constitutional instrument adopted in 1947, was signed by 23 countries (7 in europe, 7 in asia, 5 in the americas, 2 in oceania, and 2 in africa). the gatt’s main objective was to increase the circulation of goods by reducing barriers to trade, such as importation quotas, tariffs, and subsidies on domestic products. it was adopted with the objective of “raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of real income and effective demand, developing the full use of the resources of the world and expanding the production and exchange of goods,” with a clear liberal assumption that free trade and non-intervention are the best way to achieve these goals (gatt, 1947, preamble). these liberal ideals were simply transposed to the international scale: unfettered international trade would result in greater domestic wealth for all the signatories, owing to the inherent unfolding of the gains from trade rooted in the nostrums of comparative advantage.9 within the gatt-wto system, the trade-labour nexus has consistently been understated (langille, 2020; delgado, 2019; brown, 2001; alben, 2001; charnovitz, 1987). the passage from the preamble of the gatt cited above suggests that states are conscious of the effects of trade on various societal issues, but that they embrace the liberal narrative according to which prerogatives of private property and the freedom of commerce will singlehandedly provide greater benefits for all. wto rules do not (directly) consider labour protections adopted at the domestic level as trade barriers (langille, 2020), but they are silent on how international trade can impact labour conditions.10 yet, states within the ilo recognized from its inception the need to address labour protection transnationally, stating in part xiii of the 1919 treaty of peace of versailles, the ilo’s founding instrument: “whereas conditions of labour exist involving such injustice, hardship and privation to large numbers of people as to produce unrest so great that the peace and harmony of the world are imperilled” (preamble). the broad acceptance of the connection between stability, peace, and labour conditions is a major reason industrialized countries progressively adopted an extensive corpus of labour law. yet, when it came to setting up an international set of trade rules, positive actions to supervise commercial exchanges were ignored. both regulation of labour and of trade are associated with international peace in the twentieth century, but no correlation is made between the two. adelle blackett views this two-track strategy of western states as an essential element of ‘embedded liberalism’ (2015).11 it also shows how a narrow universalistic framework is widely inefficient in promoting social justice. since the creation of the wto in 1994, member states have had multiple occasions to address labour issues, without any success. the singapore ministerial declaration of 1996 did lead to members renewing their “commitment to the observance of internationally recognized core labour standards”, while specifying that the ilo was the competent body in setting those standards. in fact, members explicitly reiterate the liberal narrative by stating that “we believe that economic growth and development fostered by increased trade and further trade liberalization contribute to 9 we are not arguing here that there are not any gains from trade. what we are calling into question is whether or not the naïve mechanics of the doctrine of comparative advantage are sufficient to distribute the absolute gains from trade in an equitable and timely matter and further if, in terms of power, the relative inequality in the distribution of the absolute gains from trade do not re-enforce structural inequalities and dependencies in the global market between states. 10 the provisions of the gatt are silent on labour standards, including in its article xx which provides general exceptions to free trade. 11 the classic statement on embedded liberalism is ruggie (1982). 34 the promotion of these standards” (wto, 1996: para. 4). adding to this, members warned against using labour standards for protectionist purposes. this explicit consideration of labour, more than a recognition of the interconnection of trade and labour, reinforces the firewall around trade rules and reproduces the fallacious division between static labour and fluid capital. after the singapore ministerial declaration, labour standards were briefly mentioned in the doha ministerial declaration of 2001, where states reaffirmed what was decided in singapore and merely took “note of work under way in the international labour organization (ilo) on the social dimension of globalization” (wto, 2001). since then, discussions during various rounds of negotiations have been silent on labour standards, in good parts because these were dominated by the failed attempts to liberalize agriculture (berger-richardson & dehaibi, 2024).12 there is a clear contradiction between the universalist projects of the wto and the ilo. the wto made it clear that enhancing labour standards was not part of its globalizing mission, whereas the ilo recognizes that global trade without global commitments towards social justice would lead to adverse results. contrary to the wto’s shallow universalism, the ilo conceives of labour justice as a comprehensive endeavour that penetrates all aspects of social and economic life. as early as in 1919, it was clear that social justice was not a mere domestic matter, with the preamble of part iii of the treaty of versailles stating that “the failure of any nation to adopt humane conditions of labour is an obstacle in the way of other nations which desire to improve the conditions in their own countries.” and when the ilo restated its mission in the 1944 declaration of philadelphia, it emphasized how its principles ought to penetrate economic and financial policies, both nationally and internationally (art. 2), simultaneously committing itself to increased cooperation with other international organizations (art. 4). this call to avoid a levelling down of labour rights through coordinated efforts was even more pressing at the end of twentieth century with the rise of globalization and the corresponding challenges of deregulation, leading to a marked shift in the ilo’s normative work. while the ilo’s standard-setting efforts are impressive, the organization has started a colossal work of reconfiguration starting from the late 1990s by recentring its universalist message around key fundamental rights and principles of social justice. the 1998 ilo declaration on fundamental principles and rights at work is the central instrument in that reorganization and associates ilo membership to a commitment to four core principles (freedom of association, elimination of forced and compulsory labour, elimination of child labour, and elimination of discrimination in employment),13 articulated through eight fundamental conventions which all states must eventually ratify. alongside the 1998 declaration, the secretariat, under the impulse of juan somavia, then director-general of the ilo, developed a policy instrument, the ilo decent work agenda, which creates a new comprehensive concept, of decent work, and establishes a series of priority programs to promote labour standards in the context of globalization (ilo, 1999). it is based on four pillars or objectives: job creation, guaranteeing rights at work, social protection and promoting social dialogue. the distinctive point of the decent work agenda is that it not only focuses on fundamental rights but also addresses head on the idea of commercial efficiency, by promoting sustainable economic development. it is in fact around this agenda that juan somavia built its 12 indeed, the 1947 gatt explicitly excluded agricultural products from its ambit, in large measure because western states significantly subsidised their agricultural sector and were not willing to abandon these protectionist measures. the liberalization of trade in agriculture has been at the centre of trade negotiations since 1994, with little progress. 13 the 1998 declaration was amended in 2022 to add a fifth core principle, namely a safe and healthy work environment. 35 submission to the third wto ministerial conference in seattle which took place at the end of 1999, and which was met with intense anti-globalization protests. in this submission, somavia refers to the guiding principles behind the gatt in relation to raising standards of living and notes how the multilateral trade system is failing in that regard. he then suggests that the four objectives of the decent work agenda can act as “the social foundations of the global economy” (somavia, 1999: para 11). despite these important developments which directly address issues of globalization and economic development, the wto has not formally referred to the ilo’s work since 2001, at which time it made only a vague allusion to ‘work under way’. but as regional developments show, this is more a sign of the wto’s shortcomings than of the ilo’s. the ilo declaration establishes a minimum standard that can easily be incorporated into national legislation and bilateral agreements (arnold, 2005; coxson, 1998) and can help bridge the gap between geographically and culturally distant actors in labour markets. it is a comprehensive, systematic, set of principles which repeats a simple message, easy to adopt by unions and other organizations, both locally and internationally. while the wto remains hermetic to the ilo declaration, many recent regional trade initiatives refer to it. for instance, article 23 of the canada-united states-mexico agreement (cusma), adopted in 2020, refers to the ilo declaration with a clear commitment towards the four core principles. the same goes for the comprehensive and progressive agreement for transpacific partnership (cptpp 2018), in its chapter 19 on labour. both instruments recognize the importance of protecting and enforcing labour rights in their respective preamble, but also substantively suggest that labour rights are integral to the commercial conversation, not incidental (santos, 2020). as adelle blackett argues, a turn to regionalism is interesting from a counter-hegemonic point of view. she writes that “[t]he regional governance level provides a fluid, intermediate space in relation to the national and the 'global' through which approaches adapted to specific contexts can be adopted” (blackett, 2015: 164). regionalism is an experimental space which ought not to be idealized but provides the possibility of thinking of “trade and economic governance more broadly as a policy space through which collective goals and values should be pursued” (ibid.: 165). for blackett, regionalism can further provide a potential remedy to embedded liberalism— that which promotes social welfare at home and full liberalization abroad (blackett, 2020). indeed, she notes that regional forums have shown a greater openness to address the tradelabour linkage (for instance, within the cusma) and, thus, challenge the presumption that labour is confined within national borders (blackett, 2020: 607). by reducing the number of negotiators, smaller forums allow more casual conversations on the trade-labour nexus, and a decentering of grand principles in favour of compromise, which can eventually be formalized, like the chapter on labour in the cusma shows. it is against this methodological backdrop that brics’s interaction with labour should be analyzed. the geopolitical ‘facts on the ground’ are in flux, but brics currently acts as a counter-hegemonic transnational space where embedded liberalism is being challenged and thus may provide the opportunity to revisit the labour-trade nexus. to pose the question directly: does the re-emergence of the possibility of a plurality of viable national strategies for economic development necessarily entail a removal of the constraints imposed by convergence on a unipolar neoliberal model? the immediate answer is of course that it depends on what shape this new multipolar order takes and whether that order is conducive to economic and political models which can accommodate greater solidarity between workers at the national and international levels. 36 from a financial abbreviation to a geopolitical realization the term bric was originally coined by jim o’neill to denote four economies—brazil, russia, india, and china—that he thought, ceteris paribus, could become major actors in the global economy by 2050. he further argued that they were already significant global economic actors that should be included in the g7 advisory group (o’neill, 2001). informal meetings of ministers from brazil, russia, india, and china began in 2006 and they established the basis for formal annual summits beginning in 2009. south africa would join the group a year later in 2010 forming the brics. in 2023, saudi arabia, ethiopia, egypt, iran, and the united arab emirates formally joined the brics to create the brics+. since its founding, the organization has held fifteen formal annual summits, nine informal summits, and one extraordinary summit. using a slightly different methodology than o’neill (2001), by 2022, the brics+ accounted for 35% of global gdp. figure 1 illustrates that between 1990 and 2022 brics demonstrated a remarkable rate of growth in their share of global gdp while the west’s share continued its relative decline. by 2022, according to the world development indicators (2023), brics+ accounted for 39% of global manufacturing value added with china alone accounting for 31% of the global total (figure 2). with the brics expansion, the bloc now accounts for 45% of the world’s population suggesting that their substantial existing economic weight in the global economy is also indicative of high potential future growth of the global economic share. moreover, according to the 2023 statistical review of world energy, the expansion means the grouping is now responsible for +/-43% of total oil production. figure 1 percent of global gdp, ppp (constant 2017 international $) source: word development indicators (2024). gdp, ppp (constant 2017 international $ world bank. beyond these basic economic statistics there is also an equally notable fact about the group which sets it off from previous multilateral formations like the non-aligned movement which came in the wake of the bandung conference in 1955. as we noted above, the brics+ bloc includes energy superpowers such as russia, saudi arabia, the uae, and iran. moreover, china, russia and india are all nuclear triads making them significant geopolitical actors outside of any economic consideration. that is to say, the brics+ has three real sovereigns backing the group. as such, the group enjoys a large degree of internal security and freedom from external threats that a 37 grouping of nominal sovereigns, as was the case initially with the non-aligned movement, would not. figure 2: global manufacturing, value added (current us$) source: word development indicators (2024). manufacturing, value added (current us$). world bank. contemporary accounts of the formation of the brics stress two main points. according to both the bbc (2024) and reuters (2023), the formation of the brics was a russian initiative and had the express purpose of undermining western hegemony, particularly that of the united states and the role of the us dollar in the global financial system. however, leading financial commentators at the time, as selectively surveyed by the financial times, seem to contradict the current narrative and suggest that china was equally, if not more so than russia, interested in creating a counter hegemonic project while the russians were primarily interested in containing the knock-on effects of financial crisis emanating out of the advanced capitalist zone onto other countries. whatever the actual origins story is, of which more below, what is clear is that the formation of the group was met with derision in the west with the financial times leading with the pithy, and misleading, observation that the bric “is almost certainly the first multilateral nation bloc to be created by an investment bank's research analysts and their sales team”; and concluded with a quote from the russian liberal economist yevgeny yasin that the “bric has no future…” (2009, june 6th). examining the diplomatic communiqué from the founding summit provides a relatively objective way to evaluate the motivations for the founding of the group. the text lists 16 points of common concern and policy priorities of the group. they approvingly stressed the key role the g20 summits played in addressing the 2007-2009 financial crises via cooperation and policy coordination. they reiterated their commitment to implement multilateral decisions made at the g20 summits; to advance international financial institution reforms and maintain stability in international trade and the continuation of wto trade negotiations. they further underlined the necessity of aiding the poorest nations affected by financial crises, promoting sustainable development, enhancing energy cooperation, combating terrorism, and strengthening multilateral 38 diplomacy. in short, the bric countries understood their mission as aiding existing multilateral international agencies both within and outside the united nations to tackle global problems (joint statement of the bric countries, 2009, june 16). this initiative was by and large met with more missives in the high street broadsheets with the financial times stating that the “bric is, indeed, an acronym in search of a purpose. but it is also a bit like god. if jim o'neill had not invented it, someone else would have had to” (2009, june 18). it seems clear from the quotes obtained from the russian delegation by the new york times (kramer, 2009) that, in their view, a genuine multilateral geopolitical order would require a multilateral financial infrastructure which no one nation controlled. it must be recalled that when russia was originally making their case back in 2008-09, the question of ukraine was not on the table, and that the russians along with other nations were more motivated by a desire to insulate their economies from the ever-changing needs of the advanced capitalist core. further, this was even more the case given the global financial crisis of 2007-2009 that the americans had created yet all had to contend (levy, 2009). that is, the desire for a multilateral international numeraire was more practical than an ideological or counter-hegemonic idea at that time. this also demonstrates key differences in outlooks on multilateral universalism between the brics and the west: brics views pluralism as a necessary condition for a real universalism in which no one state, or bloc can control the international numeraire. in subsequent summits it became clear that there was a two-pronged strategy vis-à-vis dollar dominance and, by extension, the support it lends to the unipolar dominance of the americans. in the official communiqué released at the end of the delhi summit, the delhi declaration (brics, 2012), they reiterated their support for multilateral institutions including the call for a “more representative international financial architecture” and expressed concern over “the slow pace of quota and governance reforms in the imf” (2012, pts. 8, 9). at the same time, the delhi summit undertook to explore the possibility of establishing independent financial institutions outside the bretton woods and american dominated financial institutions by directing their finance ministers to explore the feasibility of creating a “new development bank” (brics, 2012, pt. 13). this feasibility study was in addition to the establishment of a joint credit facility via their respective development banks for facilitating the import and export of goods and services between member countries in their own local currencies. such an initiative was undertaken to promote trade by lowering transaction costs for operating outside of the existing dollar denominated trading system. further, in 2014 the agreement for establishing the new development bank (ndb) was signed during the sixth brics summit (brics, 2014, pts. 11-12). the ndb was seeded with “an initial authorized capital of us$ 100 billion” and an initial subscribed capital of us$ 50 billion which was shared out equally with the bank itself, headquartered in shanghai. the other notable development from that summit in terms of international finance was the creation of a us$ 100 billion brics contingent reserve agreement (cra) to provide short-term liquidity relief and related “short-term balance of payments pressures” (2014, pt. 13). for the purposes of this paper, the 2014 fortaleza summit was perhaps the most significant summit to date insofar as it was the first time that labour and employment were mentioned and officially put on the exploratory list of areas of greater cooperation and consideration (2014, 18). this in no doubt had in some part to do with the establishment of the brics trade union forum (btuf) in 2012 which in its founding document requested that the brics formally incorporate “workers’ representatives” under the auspices that it would help to “accelerate” the “comprehensive development” of the group (btuf, 2012). the language of their 2014 declaration 39 dovetails with the language used in the brics declaration suggesting significant levels of coordination and/or campaigning by the btuf. in the 2015 ufa declaration, a firm commitment was made to undertake the first ministerial meeting between the group’s ministers for labour and employment (mle) to be held at the 2016 summit with labour and migration coordination issues to be discussed (brics, 2015, pts. 57-59). at the 2016 labour and employment meeting held in goa, india, the ministers established a formal research network for labour and training and, significantly, announced their full support of the international labour organization’s (ilo) “decent work agenda” (something which the wto still fails to do to this day) which has consistently been pushed by the btuf. by the 2017 summit, labour issues had been officially incorporated into the brics institutional structure through annual meetings of the mle during the summits. national representatives of organized labour participate in these ministerial meetings as “social partners” but not as a privileged group within the brics structure like the business forum or the conference of think tanks. during the 2022 concurrent meeting of btuf alongside the brics summit, there was no articulated demand for formal inclusion in the brics summit, but rather a general statement that “trade unions should involve in formulating national occupational safety and health policies...and build tripartite joint meeting mechanisms for industrial relations” (pt. 10). however, at the 12th meeting of btuf in 2023, the official summary communiqué begins with a much more militant language where the “historic mission of the btuf” is described as “a critical platform for building progressive internationalism and advancing working class power in a world undergoing major realignments and geo-political changes.” this language is however, by the end of the declaration, situated in the 2022 demand for the construction of tripartite institutions and a reiteration of the demand to be more formally incorporated into the brics summit structure. discussion from a mechanistic point of view, solidarity formation within the brics may be an easier task for all the actors concerned as the core group is much smaller and is inherently more dedicated to pluralism than is the wto for example. the failed multilateral negotiations in agriculture, which are considered as one of the greatest challenges the wto is facing (gonzalez, 2002; hunter, 2003; sky, 2008; scott, 2017), illustrate two things that make regionalism much more appealing for neglected actors: first, consensus is hard to attain within larger groups. the universalization of the neoliberal message which equates free trade to wealth erases differences (for instance, in terms of financial and institutional capacity to implement policies), and therefore, reinforces them. by contrast, negotiations within regional systems are more likely to embrace differences (blackett, 2015; 2020). secondly, global organizations like the wto remain largely dominated by the west. this means that legitimate concerns of smaller states—say, ensuring food security—are not given as much weight in international negotiations (berger-richardson & dehaibi, 2024). as a result, instead of succeeding at including peripheral states in the universal trade project, multilateral trade regimes like the gatt push these states to look elsewhere. to be clear, regional negotiations are not devoid of power dynamics between stronger and weaker states. one can legitimately cast doubt on the willingness of brics countries to genuinely promote higher labour standards, and countries with a stronger social justice history, like south africa, may not have the same political weight as china or russia. 40 yet, diminishing the number of interlocutors can help negotiate power dynamics more efficiently than in a larger forum, thus providing a more favourable environment for the inclusion of shared social values. in other words, south africa is likely to have a greater voice within the brics than within the wto. it is also worth noting that india is known for its socially oriented constitution, and recent labour reforms in 2020, while far from perfect, could nonetheless be influential at the international level (routh, 2024). most importantly, not only can smaller forums allow for an easier consensus on broad principles, but, in pragmatic terms, the wto system to date has systemically failed to embrace labour issues in its work, which means that whatever is achieved at smaller scales, such as that of brics, would indeed be a step forward. it is also fundamental to view trade union participation within the brics from the perspective of trade-labour relations in the member states of the brics rather than comparing with participation within traditional western institutions. in a context of mutual distrust, relying on unofficial conversations may yield more substantive results than mechanistic structures that create a bureaucratic distance between interlocutors. notably, the btuf has spent the better part of 10 years trying unsuccessfully to gain the same status as the business forum and is thus far considered as one of many social partners. according to the documents reviewed above, one of the major goals of the btuf remains achieving an elevated status in the brics forum to build tripartite structures of planning and decision making within the group. this is an ambitious project given that the federations represented by the btuf do not enjoy this structure and coequal status within their own national jurisdictions. in assessing the opportunities for increased international labour solidarity arising from the formation of the brics group, we argue that the creation of the brics trade union forum (btuf) itself serves as evidence of labour’s solidaristic international response. that is, the formation of the brics was the immediate cause for the coming together of the five major national labour federations for the identification and articulation of their shared priorities with respect to economic development and labour rights. the idea for the formation of btuf was first “mooted” at the 2010 international trade union confederation congress in vancouver canada and was formalized at the ilo decent work conference in 2012 (blackburn, 2017, 3). our above analysis of the relative success of the embeddedness of labour must also be understood within an appreciation of the institutional structure of the brics+ group. the brics+ group is not an international organization like the un or ilo with a permanent office and secretariat. rather, it is a set of mechanisms and advisory groupings with no binding charter or mandates save for a collection of past practices and future commitments. the quasi ad-hoc nature of the brics+ group’s agenda being determined as it is on annual basis by the host country necessarily means that btuf’s agenda and priorities with respect to the brics+ summits are somewhat contingent upon that agenda. with respect to the substantive forms of labour solidarity formation within the brics+, the existence of btuf and its ability to meet with mle on annual basis provides a focussed project that allows the disparate national labour federations to work on a common platform. additionally, it provides for the institutional facilitation of informal exchanges of information and bonding across national labour movements which are the prerequisites for building solidarity between national labour movements and the promotion of a greater sense of an international labour identity (gaztambide-fernández et al., 2022). equally important, as the btuf communiqué from the last summit in 2024 highlights, they have expanded their project beyond the scope of the brics+ group by embedding themselves as a voice in larger multilateral forums such as the ilo, smaller 41 multilateral groupings such as g20 via the parallel labour forum (the l20 union grouping), and international ngo social networks (btuf, 2024). part of this expansive agenda may be explained not only with reference to the commonality of their status of workers within developing countries, but also to the relatively restrained national context several of the trade unions are embedded in. in russia, china and iran, for example, trade union activity is restricted to what we will describe here as a highly subordinated tripartism. as other labour scholars have noted (fox-hodess, 2019), in national contexts where trade unions are subject to either direct coercion or highly constrained labour relations regimes (legal impediments to strike, and lack of freedom of association for example), international groupings and activities may offer a means to escape the narrow confines of their domestic contexts. this in part may explain the ubiquity of references to tripartism within the btuf communiqués—the term is nebulous enough to handle both the political realities within national labour federations which are themselves amalgams of ideological leanings and policy preferences and between national labour federations which display similar levels of practical and ideological diversity (blackburn, 2017). conclusion the ideas in this exploratory piece may raise more questions than it answers, but they are necessary questions in a context where states, especially in the global south, are rapidly moving away from traditional international institutions in which they have felt left out of, and towards regional structures that seem more prone to compromise. in this context, it is worth exploring the role of labour solidarity in keeping the issue of workers’ rights at the forefront. the picture is not necessarily optimistic for labour within the brics, but it is certainly not bleak. this piece should thus be approached as an invitation to pursue investigations on brics institutions with a view of rethinking multipolarity, pluralism and solidarity in a rapidly changing global economic order. references acharya, a., estevadeordal, a., & goodman, l. w. (2023). multipolar or multiplex? interaction capacity, global cooperation and world order. international affairs, 99(6), 2339–2365. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiad242 alben, e. (2001). gatt and the fair wage: a historical perspective on the labor-trade link. columbia law review, 101, 1410. arnold, l.l. (2005). labour and the world trade organization: towards a reconstruction of the linkage discourse. deakin law review, 10, 83. arthurs. h.w. (1999). the new economy and the new legality: industrial citizenship and the future of labour arbitration. canadian labour and employment law journal, 7, 45-63. berger-richardson, s., & dehaibi, l. (2024). l’agriculture et la sécurité alimentaire: un défi insurmontable pour l’omc? in g. dufour & r. ouellet (eds.), réforme de l’omc: vers un nouveau multilatéralisme économique (pp. 175–192). presses de la sqdi. bethuel, m. 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the ‘property owning democracy’ and working class voting bryn jones1 abstract: this paper clarifies the significance of class indicators by identifying internal differences amongst the general working class, particularly that between a secure and propertied working class and a disadvantaged core in low-skill and relatively insecure employment. lacking such ‘middle class’ assets this core working class also has lower electoral participation. because they are less likely to vote, left parties tend to avoid the more radical social and economic policies that would improve these non-voters’ lives. however, evidence from recent uk and us elections suggests that renewed policy commitments to combat economic insecurity, coupled with sustained efforts to increase core working class electoral engagement, might raise participation, gain votes, and increase left parties’ prospects of electoral success. keywords: working class; political engagement; social democracy; uk elections introduction until their acceptance of neo-liberal policies and interests, the manual working class vote was the bedrock of support for socialist and social democratic parties. there is now a nearconsensus across the post-industrial west that these parties have abandoned the policies most relevant to this class. central tenets of social democracy: public ownership; fiscal redistribution through taxation to equalise incomes and provide public services; state intervention to manage the economy have ben diluted, marginalised or rejected. this shift has been accompanied by, or resulted in, a decline in working class participation in democratic processes, with corresponding declines in voting. finally, it is believed, the resulting political vacuum has been filled by authoritarian populists who now rival or replace erstwhile social democratic parties as contenders for government (cf. inter alia, jones 2020). the specific contours of this new landscape vary between countries. however, elements of these trends beset most liberal democracies. yet the exact strength of the interaction between social democratic decline and the political behaviour of working-class citizens is often based on conjecture and conceptual generalisations rather than precise evidence and analytically-sound identification of political participation and class composition. a broad cross-national survey suggested that ‘the young, rural living, and lower educated, especially since the financial crisis abandon social democrat parties’. moreover, within the ‘manual working class’ insecurity was linked to ‘a higher probability of voting for the radical left’ (polacko 2020). however, such shifts have not involved decisive numbers of working-class voters. usual they have been insufficient to boost these other left parties’ prospects of governing. this limited shift raises questions as to the numbers of allegiance-shifters involved and whether working-class voters in particular are realigning or simply continuing long-running trends, especially in the anglosphere states, of not voting at all (schaffer and schwander, 2019). polacko’s study asked whether low socioeconomic status and rural voters are significantly deserting the party for the far right and abstention (polacko, 2020). this study also recommended a more detailed analysis of economic insecurity than only insecure employment. i would argue, firstly, that we need a more precise conceptualisation of ‘the working class’ that is not restricted to occupational or gross income criteria but does unpack variations 1 bryn jones is based at the university of bath, uk. he is co-editor of alternatives to neoliberalism (2017), author, inter alia, of corporate power and social responsibility? (2015) and an editor of chartist, a magazine of the democratic left. 17 in economic security/insecurity. for example, home ownership in neoliberal economies tends not only to give more material security it may also help generate financial resources. at least in britain it has been found that home ownership correlates with greater electoral participation, often, though increasingly less so, as conservative voters (mau, 2015). in other european countries it: ‘de-aligns’ voters to more ‘bourgeois’ instrumental voting (hadziabdicz and kohl, 2022). this instrumental participation is, supposedly, in order to protect these assets (ansell and gingrich, 2022). the importance of this correlation for working-class voters is pursued in section 3 below. a second analytical requirement is to problematize further the assumed transfer of support by insecure working-class voters from social democratic to authoritarian parties (sipma et al 2023). here i argue that most such voters are simply disengaging for mainstream political processes rather than actively supporting ‘the new right’. thirdly and relatedly, we should question the claims of the revisionist social democrats that such voters have lost interest in the ideas, and ideals, of socialism or social democracy. of course, this same strand of opinion could argue that it is not necessary to gain electoral support from the disadvantaged working class in order to enact policies to improve their condition. the important thing, on this argument, is to win elections, by whatever means, in order to be able to so govern. comfortable opinion poll leads and continuing macro-management failures by right-wing governments, as currently in the uk, are sufficient to win an election. this line of argument is examined in the concluding section below. to develop these hypotheses, the following analysis proceeds through four stages. in the first, i define a ‘core working class’ on the basis, not of occupation – a standard approach – but of relative deficiencies in economic assets; distinguishing this stratum from others who may share characteristics such as occupational titles. property ownership, principally of housing assets may contribute to a de-alignment of working-class members away from left parties. forty years of neoliberal restructuring of national economies and ideologies of individual responsibility has encouraged more reliance on such ownership not only as more practical option than vanishing public housing, but also as a hedge against financial insecurity. secondly, i examine correlations between the relatively ‘propertyless’ core and their political disengagement, mainly in terms of participation in the electoral process. this analysis shows that these voters are as, or more likely to have abdicated from support from any political party rather than supported right-wing populists. these reviews are based mainly on data and examples from uk elections, although connections with, and inferences to other liberal democracies such as the usa and canada are referenced. the third, section focuses on local data on voting and non-voting in uk constituencies where voters appear to have deserted a left-wing labour party for the nationalist populism adopted by the successful conservative party. after establishing that abstention from voting played a critical part in the collapse of this ‘red wall’ of former labour constituencies, the conclusion argues for a political focus on the propertyless that would also appeal to other strata who have been disadvantaged by the economics of neoliberalism. class as a multi-dimensional spectrum studies of working-class political behaviour typically relate it to data from occupational classifications. so that the working class is usually taken to mean those in jobs classified as ‘manual’ or ‘routine’ office or service work, such as retail assistants or cleaners. however, there are many such occupations which may involve higher technical skills, or supervisory functions. some studies use educational level as a proxy for class membership; assuming that individuals with only basic school qualifications will either come from or end up in low grade working conditions. however, individuals may ascend the social hierarchy 18 without higher formal educational levels and, conversely, some with, e.g. college degrees or diplomas, may end up in manual or routine service work. more importantly occupational and educational criteria are not guides to the status of work and employment in those positions. even in the same occupational category, economic livelihood can differ substantially. for example, between those in secure, tenured employment, or those in self-employment with their own business, who may have the same kind of occupation but struggle with insecure or temporary employment contracts. moreover, the type of work or employment status says little or nothing about possession of economic and financial assets. a construction worker may own their own house and a salaried clerical worker for a large corporation may have pension or health care plans. relying on occupational titles can lead to inaccurate interpretations of the economic and political dimensions of ‘working classness’. for example, separate uk research by clare ainsley and deborah mattinson used voter polling data or focus groups in a range of occupations classed by official and market research institutions as the c2 or d working class. that is, broadly skilled and semi-/unskilled working-class jobs. ainsley and mattinson, both of whom subsequently obtained influential positions in keir starmer’s neoliberalised labour party, claimed that their resulting samples of voters were unconcerned about the fundamentals of economic inequality. they were, allegedly, more interested in and, indeed defined themselves in terms of, localised and community issues, patriotic values and disdain for ‘scroungers’ (welfare recipients) and the intelligentsia. such interpretations led to recommendations for the labour party to focus on community and ‘family and flag’ type sentiments to win back working-class voters. however, these authors’ methodology of occupational surveys and focus groups mixed together people with potentially quite different economic statuses. for example, reputedly skilled workingclass plumbers might in reality run their own business and have significant financial resources. the different market situations and financial standing is concealed by these methodologies. those lacking educational or skill assets in the labour market, and in menial or low status work, were not separately identified. as a result, specifically working-class interests that may be potentially politically relevant remain shrouded in the obscurity to which parties such as new labour consigned them. in classical theories and early ‘welfare state’ policies it was assumed explicitly, or tacitly, that the disadvantaged working class member would be ‘propertyless’. that is they would own nothing but their capacity to labour; often in the most basic forms of work. working from this basic condition various additional features of class division can be identified. for example, in the uk, mike savage and his collaborators have worked out a multi-dimensional scale of class attributes, covering financial assets and ‘cultural capital’, such as leisure activities or internet proficiencies, as well as occupation. (savage et al 2013). unfortunately, these ideas have not been applied systematically to class differences in voting behaviour. the additional distinctions proposed here are principally economic ones. it is argued that financial assets, such as home ownership and ‘saleable’ educational qualifications, will separate a more secure working-class stratum from those who are, essentially, propertyless and therefore inhabit an insecure and, literally, dis-advantaged economic way of life. but the variety of potential assets means that these divisions form more of a spectrum than a dichotomy, as depicted in figure 1, where the accumulation of assets lifts ‘workers’ above the insecurity threshold sown in figure 2. bear in mind these segmentations within the broadly defined working class when we examine their participation in elections and support for left and right-wing parties. 19 figure 1: class segmentation by assets figure 2: asset accumulation and class position political participation and class inequality psephologists and pollsters tend to ignore the significance of non-voting in most elections, unless levels of voter turnout are dramatically low. for obvious reasons it is difficult, almost impossible to identify precise reasons for abstention, or the political values behind the inactivity. yet levels of non-participation can be substantial. in the 2010 uk general election the three main parties received 10.7, 8.6, and 6.8 million votes. the 15.9 million eligible voters who did not vote dwarfed these totals (figure 3); as they did in 2024. 20 figure 3: relative proportions of non-voters in 2010 in 22 democracies schaffer and streeck record that voter turnout declined steadily from an average 82% in 1970s to 72% by 2010 (schaffer and streeck, 2013). but turnout decline has been particularly acute in switzerland and three anglo-saxon countries: u.k., u.s.a. and canada. schaffer and schwander (2019) have identified a clear correlation between rising inequality – in terms of poverty levels and declines in voting. we know from survey evidence that voters with the lowest levels of education, house ownership and occupational status, have both the least trust in political efficacy and least engagement with political processes. they are less likely to register to vote, or to turn out to vote. building on these data two propositions can be advanced. 1) the non-participants will be mainly the property-less working class. 2) left parties’ electoral failures are linked to a tendency for the propertied working class to support right populism. in canada, for example, if relevant parties move from most leftward to most rightward position, there is a 1 standard deviation increase in inequality (measured according to income or wealth) but an approximate 1.7 percentage point decrease in turnout. (polacko, 2020). the point can be partly confirmed from the 2017 uk general election, when the labour party was led by left-winger jeremy corbyn, it increased its share of working-class voters for the first time in decades. we need then to clarify from which sections of the working class these extra votes are likely to come. further analysis of recent uk elections can shed light on this question. working class divisions and fluctuating votes in uk elections after the startling near-success of corbyn’s labour in 2017 coming within 2.3% of the governing conservatives’ total vote the 2019 election saw significant reversals. the most noteworthy and publicised of these was labour’s loss of a slew of decades-long safe seats: a 21 phenomenon dubbed the ‘collapse of the red wall’. a fall that media commentators associated with the social and economic malaise of britain’s rust belt towns in the north and midlands and the after-effects of the divisive 2016 referendum on a proposal for the uk to leave the european union. for that referendum the labour party had officially backed a ‘remain’ vote. while the conservative leadership also supported continued membership, some of its most prominent mps were vocal in urging a ‘leave’ vote and tacitly allied themselves with the populist right-wing party united kingdom independence party. votes from depressed midlands and northern town contributed substantially to the victory of the ‘leave’ campaign and probably inclined many voters there to favour both ukip and the new right-wing leadership of the tory party that had effectively replaced the party’s previous pro-eu administration. as negotiations over the exact form of the uk’s new relationship with the eu dragged on for three years, hostility to politicians deemed to be failing to implement the ‘brexit’, that a majority of voters had called for in the referendum, focussed mainly on labour. as part of this electoral re-alignment some observers claimed, wrongly, that it was the ‘working class’ vote that decided the referendum result. therefore the argument went, that class was now swinging decisively behind the tories and abandoning labour. it is in this broader political-ideological context that the 2019 general election needs to be considered. the class desertion claim is understandable given that the red wall belt has higher proportions of working-class voters than most other areas of the country. moreover, labour’s losses there were undoubtedly crucial in deciding the scale of the labour defeat. the 48 red wall seats lost by labour between 2017 and 2019 made up 60% of the tory majority. however, and here is the key factor, average voter turnout in most red wall constituencies in that last election was around 60%. that is below, sometimes significantly below, the national average of 68.8%. analyses of the 2019 election results at the level of individual constituencies suggests that labour would have won most red wall seats had the turnout amongst working class voters been higher. so which segments of the working class were the most disengaged? to assess degrees of propertylessness we have to use proxy indicators in available data-sets; particularly ethnicity, education and types of housing tenure. ethnicity is chosen because most, though not all, ethnic minority voters are in low-skill, less secure employment. their educational qualifications are generally lower and they have more difficulty obtaining mortgages to buy housing. education level is not a certain indicator of economic deprivation: it is possible in some industries and trades to secure relatively lucrative work and start one’s own business. conversely, a point which will be explored later, some higher education graduates may have insecure terms of employment; or have recourse to lowskill or low pay work. nevertheless, the majority of people in low-grade and insecure employment will have only basic schooling. as in several other countries, as housing provision has become increasingly privatised and financialised, so home ownership – whether through outright ownership, or bank mortgages – has become less attainable. secure and relatively well-paid employment is a precondition for mortgage eligibility. this is not completely beyond the reach of all those in working class jobs, especially ‘dual-earner’ couples. however, home ownership not only signifies a level of personal wealth but provides a resource that can leverage further financial advantage – as security for loans etc. credit institutions typically look more favourably on 22 home owners when assessing loan applications. conversely, recourse to private rented accommodation can also generate further insecurity. at least in the uk, landlords can end tenancies relatively easily: forcing the renters back into an increasingly competitive search for new accommodation, often at higher rents. so how do these three indicators – ethnicity, education and type of housing tenure – correspond to voter participation in elections? ethnicity. table 1 shows the percentage differences in votes and voter turnout, by party support and ethnicity in the 2019 uk general election. the turnout figures in the final three columns represent the increase or decrease since the 2017 election. these show that amongst former labour supporters, the party lost nearly as many black and minority ethnic voters to abstentions as it did white voters. by contrast the bme turnout for conservative and ‘other’ parties remained the same or increased. it is known from other research that bme voters are much less likely to turn out than white voters. so, labour here lost almost 10% more at this 2019 election. table 1: turnout by ethnicity (2019) ethnicity con vote labour lib-dem other con lead turnout +/ cons lab other white 48 29 12 11 19 63% +3 -10 +4 all bme 20 64 12 4 44 52% +1 -9 +6 source: ipsos (2019) how britain voted in the 2019 election education. as figure 2 shows, in uk elections between 2001 and 2016 voting amongst adults with low or no educational qualifications never rose above 55%, compared to the 60% 70% range for graduates. at the 2019 election turnout was 69% amongst graduate and 59% amongst those with ‘other’ or no qualifications (house of commons 2020). abstentions from the less educated would not have affected labour more than they did in previous recent elections. however, the figure does continue a trend amongst this demographic that began in the years when labour turned away from overt class politics, under its new labour brand in the early 2000s. in that period the ‘less educated’ abstention level then rose from 15% to nearly 45%. 23 figure 3: non-voting rates by educational level 1985-2015 home ownership. voters’ housing status – whether they own or rent their living accommodation – correlates with voting patterns, across different parliamentary democracies. participation is significantly associated with home ownership. in canada, for example, a higher proportion of home owners (71%) are likely to vote than renters (54%); with similar figures in the usa. further distinctions can be made between outright ownership and ownership through loans such as mortgages; and between those who rent from private landlords and those in the public or social housing sectors (uppal and larochelle-côté, 2012). ownership tends to be linked more to voting for conservative, right-wing parties than their left-wing counterparts. this is presumed to be because right-wing parties promote private ownership above state provision and because home ownership breeds an aversion to bold economic policies that might threaten the housing market. so, type of housing tenure also influences propensity to vote or abstain. comparison of turnout according to housing status in the 2017 and 2019 uk general elections confirms this. in 2017 labour was seen as a credible alternative to the tories. amongst other policies it promised to build more homes for rent and controls on the powers landlords had over tenants. in 2019 after a confused and unpopular approach to brexit, allegations of antisemitism and a manifesto widely denounced as economically unrealistic the party’s credibility sank. while these flaws affected labour’s support in all categories of 24 housing occupant the impact on turnout was more distinct. as table 1 shows turnout amongst labour supporters fell by 12% and 8% for those in social and private rented premises. turnout for renting conservative voters, on the other hand, was either unchanged or improved slightly. overall, amongst the voters who stood to gain most potentially from a labour government almost a half did not vote. contrast that figure with the 70% and 64% turnout rates for those with mortgaged or fully owned homes. if the general class model proposed here is correct, then these figures would be another expression of the different political orientations of the propertyless vs the propertied working-class. table 2: differential voting and turnout by housing status, 2019 election compared to 2017 turnout housing status con lab ld other con lab lead (t.o.) all con t.o. lab t.o. lib dem % % % ± % ± % ± % ± % ± % owned 57 22 12 9 +35 70% +2 8 +5 mortgaged 43 33 14 10 +10 64% 0 7 +5 social renter 33 45 7 15 -12 52% +7 -12 +3 private renter 31 46 11 12 -15 51% 0 -8 +4 source: https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2019-election more generally it seems that these significant, though incomplete, indicators of propertylessness show that, excepting 2017, the general trend of abstention from voting is greater amongst this group. this alienation from electoral politics is one of the major causes of the left’s failure to win elections decisively by garnering sufficient votes. we can now check this trend through the uk election results in constituencies that decided the labour defeat at the hands of populistic conservatism in the uk. the red wall revisited: desertion, abstention and the core working class turnout. how far was labour’s lost 2019 vote because working class labour voters switched to the tories and how much because these voters either switched to other ‘protest’ parties, like brexit, or simply abstained from voting? a 2014 study of the predominantly working-class part of the red wall constituency of blackley and broughton – adjacent to the gorton constituency described here later commented on how few (33%) voted at the local elections. the authors forecast then that non-voters ‘provide future unpredictability and display a deep sense of alienation from the political process …’. (at home in europe 2014). the blackley and broughton labour mp did keep his seat at the 2019 election, but with a significantly reduced majority on a turnout of under 53%. similar patterns appear in the red wall seats that labour actually lost. reduced turnouts and brexit popularity lost labour nine out of ten of the highest voting pro-brexit seats. https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2019-election 25 in many of its lost seats, of course, labour’s incoherent and perceived anti-brexit stance was a handicap; but it was not the only negative. table 4 shows correlations between turnout, presence of a brexit party candidate and changes in turnout in the ten seats with the highest pro-brexit vote in the 2016 referendum. table 3: turnout and brexit party factors in ten highest brexit voting constituencies, 2019 constituency 2019 election result brexit party candidate? 2019 election turnout increase(+) or decrease (-) on 2017 turnout bassetlaw labour to conservative yes 59% 3.2% bishop auckland labour to conservative yes 65% + 1.8% bolsover labour to conservative yes 61% -2.2% don valley labour to conservative yes 60% -1.9% dudley north labour to conservative no 59.2% 3.5% leigh labour to conservative yes 60.7% 0.8% sedgefield labour to conservative yes 64.6% 0.5% wakefield labour to conservative yes 64.1 1.7% workington labour to conservative yes 67.8% 1.44% ashfield labour to conservative yes 62.6% -1.4% source: calculated from bbc (2019). in these seats, turnout had been reducing since 1997 during the years of new labour’s turn away from class politics. however, in 2019 it was the progressive loss of just a few thousand former labour voters to abstentions, plus the brexit party, that sufficed to stop labour retaining such ‘legacy’ seats. in leigh, for example where the labour candidate lost by 3,630 votes there were 1431 abstentions and an unknown number of defections to the brexit party. these defeats could owe more to pro-brexit sentiments and, in all except one case, the siphoning of votes to the brexit party than to 2017 supporters abstaining. however, the cumulative decrease in voting over several elections deprived labour of thousands of potential working-class votes. in don valley, for example, turnout declined at almost every general election in the two decades from 1997. 2019’s final addition of only a few more thousand ‘stay26 at-homes’ cost labour seats such as don valley. 61% of households in this constituency fall within the top five classification of deprived areas (ministry of housing, communities and local government, 2019). exceptions to the ‘red wall rule’? tom hazeldine’s historical overview, the northern question (2020) provides a closer focus on red wall demographics. he compared a constituency loyal to labour (gorton) with one that went tory bishop auckland, which seems to exemplify this stereotypical 2019 red wall phenomenon. labour lost 4,703 votes and the tories gained 3,761, 6.8% of the vote. however, the other 1,000 lost labour votes probably went to the lib dems whose total increased by almost 1,000 votes. (presumably eu ‘remainers’, dissatisfied with labour’s lack of full support for eu membership.) turnout increased slightly by an extra 1,227 voters compared to 2017.where these ‘extra’ votes went is unknowable, but most likely they split between the brexit party and the lib dems. on a narrow media definition, gorton is another classic red wall seat. yet here the labour share of the vote actually increased, if only by 1.3%, cementing a majority of 24,621. the conservatives’ vote also increased slightly by 2.2%. turnout was marginally lower by 2.7% than in 2017; probably reflecting abstention by some of the 2,165 who voted for the maverick anti-eu (and pro-muslim) independent george galloway in that year. how to account for the contrast in red wall behaviour in these two seats? hazeldine hypothesises that fine-grained intraclass differences explain these contrasting outcomes; see table 4. if viewed only through the lens of occupational class differences, both seats have majority working class populations, but ‘bishop’ has more employment in large manufacturing firms – entailing more general security and better terms and conditions of employment. it also has a higher proportion (65%) of home ownership and, correlating with that, financial security and more residents in older age groups. also, bishop’s ethnic composition is 99% ‘white’, compared to gorton’s 52% and 29% of asian heritage. in addition, gorton has a much younger age profile and much less home ownership; with many younger, home-renting, possibly ‘precariat’ workers amongst gorton’s former graduate voters. manchester council’s ‘mosaic’ analysis of gorton shows 10.7% of the population were ‘private urban renters’, mainly ‘educated young people’, 41.4% were ‘transient renters’ single people privately renting low-cost homes for the short term. while 14.0% were ‘families with limited resources who have to budget to make ends meet’. by contrast only 2.3% were ‘mature homeowners of value homes enjoying stable lifestyles’. less than 2% were either: ‘mature suburban owners living settled lives in mid-range housing’, or ‘elderly people with assets (in) comfortable retirement’. despite the negative impact of voter abstention reflected in the turnouts in most recent elections, labour seemed to succeed in gorton because of its recent electoral appeal to the social composition of its working class: a mixture of low-waged, or insecure employment of younger graduates and, asian and white workers without much financial security in the form of home ownership. this case indicates that a there is an embryonic kind of ‘new working class’ with political orientations that contradict the conservative ones ascribed to it by, for example, current and recent labour party strategists such as ainsley (2018) and mattinson 27 (2020). overall, it’s likely that labour failed to mobilise many abstaining working class voters, as well as some that did vote but who opted for pro brexit parties: the conservatives and the former ukip, brexit party. table 4: 2019 constituency comparison bishop auckland-gorton (adapted from hazeldine 2020) ‘red wall’: bishop auckland gorton: manchester periphery: c2, de = 51% c2, de = 60% 99% white ethnicity 52% white ethnicity 14% manufacturing jobs 4% manufacturing jobs median age = 46 median age = 29 house ownership =65% house ownership = 42% renting = 35% renting = 58% 2017 election 48% labour: majority 500 =35% 2017=76% labour: maj.31,230 2019 =48% 2019=77.6%. 2016 referendum 60.9% leave referendum 62% remain another check on this hypothesis of a class insecurity influence is outside of the red wall belt, in the greater london constituency of dagenham and rainham. in 2019 labour retained this one-time labour stronghold with a tiny 293 majority: another near collapse of a southern red wall seat? or a seat retained for reasons like manchester gorton? as elsewhere, labour’s majority and turnout had been reducing for decades. since its new constituency boundaries in 2010 labour survived declining turnout in the ‘corbyn-may’ election of 2017 labour’s john cruddas gained an extra 5,000 votes; outpolling the combined ukip tory vote by 1500 votes. a turnout increase of almost 3,000 suggests there is a substantial, latent ‘leftwing’ labour vote dependent, as in the northern seats, on willingness to vote. demographic similarities with gorton, a growing minority of asian voters, are also relevant. moreover, despite some privatisation of a formerly huge council-owned housing stock, more residents live in social housing or privately rented accommodation than those owning or buying homes: 53% to 47% at the 2011 census. ratios which have probably increased even more due to the effects of the 2008/9 financial crash. ‘working class’ groups c2 (skilled manual occupations), d (semi-skilled & unskilled manual occupations) and e (unemployed and lowest grade occupations make up the largest socio-economic grouping at 39%, closely followed by the c1, lower-level white collar and ‘intermediate occupations’ totalling 35%. these social groups correspond closely to the proportions of residents without any qualifications or the minimal nvq level 1, totalling 43% of dagenham and rainham’s adult population (london borough of barking, 2013). these housing and educational characteristics show that something approaching a majority of this constituency’s potential working class electorate can be regarded as insecure, ‘core’ working class lacking ‘middle class’ attributes and assets and receptive to the kind of policies that improved labour’s vote in the 2017 election. 28 comparisons and conclusions if the logic of the uk case is generalizable it seems to confirm that core sections of the working class are not being directly won over to right-populism. the evidence from the uk’s 2017 general election and from gorton and dagenham shows, many in the core working class will vote for a party that prioritises solutions to labour market, housing and financial insecurity. this applies especially where this historic working class, with low-skills and social capital is being augmented by a more educationally qualified ‘precariat’ (standing 2018) which is being drawn into similar economic conditions. this combined, heterogeneous ‘new working class’ may lack the cultural solidarity and collective identity often reported for the traditional industrial proletariat; but this is not the key issue. though they may lack subjective class identity, its different occupational, demographic and ethnic elements are objectively similar in several respects. political campaigning that goes beyond point-scoring competition for votes can help to define and articulate this condition. the preceding analysis argued that social democratic parties such as labour have lost many of these potential supporters in the core working class, not to right-wing populism, but because they do not vote at all, or even get on the electoral register. as the gorton case, dagenham and several other constituencies seem to suggest, this abstention need not always be inevitable. however, if non-participating voters had been mobilised and incentivised to vote they could have made a difference in many red wall seats; almost all of which only continued longer-standing trends of political disengagement. the 2017 uk general election and president biden’s 2020 us election shows re-engagement can happen if a sharper tranche of policies to improve employment, welfare and economic security; notwithstanding culture war issues, such as brexit. economically struggling and marginalized voters may have agreed with populistic memes, such as brexit and immigration curbs, ‘but were more likely to vote for labour … for economic redistribution and to endorse labour’s anti-austerity platform’ (heath and goodwin, 2017). however, if a potentially central demographic lacks the propensity even to vote then there is no opportunity to contest or persuade on such issues. therefore, labour and ‘progressive’ parties in other parliamentary democracies need to combine policy agendas that combat economic insecurity as well as working on political mobilisation: campaigning for voter registration and engagement amongst the core working class. recent successes by other, often more radical parties provide pointers to the electoral rewards from reaching out to areas with low economic security and low political engagement. in salzburg, in 2023, the austrian communist party (kpo) with its young left section, focussed on districts where voter turnout was low and campaigned on issues such as inadequate housing. campaigning as ‘kpo plus’ (kpo proper with its green youth wing) it increased its vote share by almost 200%, coming a close second in the salzburg city elections (fuentes and zeller 2023). after elections in 2020 and 2022, the formerly hard-line irish unification party, sinn fein, became the largest party in the north of ireland and equal first in the south after campaigning on an anti-austerity programme and for social and affordable housing. experts have associated an increase in working class voter turnout with the emphasis that sinn fein and other left parties placed on these issues (kavanagh and durkan, n.d.). 29 pragmatists could argue that parties such as labour can still govern in the interests of this core working class, even if they do not come to power through its support. yet even this ‘back door’ type of concern seems unlikely to happen without electoral links between working class interests and party agendas; at least in the case of the british labour party, after the next general election. since he became party leader in 2020, labour leader keir starmer has dropped several pledges. firstly, the principal of providing universal benefits has been superseded by ideas for a contributions-based system. secondly, the former centrepiece of labour’s economic policy, a well-funded green new deal that would have brought jobs for manual workers and insulated their sub-standard homes has been compromised by reducing its funding. thirdly, proposals for higher taxes on property and high incomes were dropped. this in spite of the fact that without such revenues there is unlikely to be sufficient funds to repair the enormous holes in public services on which the poorest – but not the privately-served wealthy – disproportionately depend. although its ecological aims might have been difficult to promote as beneficial to core working class voters, the prospects of jobs, warmer homes and reduced heating bills would have had some resonance with them. backtracking on the scale of the deal diminishes even this limited type of vision for progress and improvement. for property-less voters the political trade-off that government borrowing will be restrained and upperand middle-class taxes kept low has all the visionary appeal of an accountants’ balance sheet. labour, like other social democratic parties, currently lacks a vision to overcome the sense of marginalization that fuels disengagement from politics. this is not to deny that a reforming party such as labour cannot make marginal and piecemeal improvements to the insecurity that defines the core working. labour has not, yet at least, abandoned a commitment to reducing insecure employment by: ‘banning zero-hours contracts, ending fire and rehire, and scrapping [up to two years of] qualifying periods for basic rights [covering]. . . unfair dismissal, sick pay, and parental leave.’ on trade union rights the party is more circumspect. it says that it will only ‘update trade union legislation so it is fit for a modern economy’ and ‘strengthen the law to enforce workplace rights’ (labour party 2024). however, once in government, countervailing pressure from the business lobby, which starmer’s labour proclaims itself the champion, may well weaken this commitment. of course, the union movement, with its presence in various sectors of the party and its not inconsiderable financial donations could challenge such dilutions. labour has also made promises to strengthen trade union rights for recognition, workplace organising and strike actions. however, expert legal opinion holds that the scale and impact of such reforms, as promised, is likely to be low (hopper and brown, 2023). the prospects for some restoration of pre-austerity levels of spending on welfare, health and public services – on which the insecure working class is especially dependent seems equally slim. with labour committed to stringency in government borrowing – to re-assure the business lobby – only significant tax increases are likely to secure the necessary revenues. yet labour has dropped plans for various taxes on businesses, wealth and capital. all that remains is a commitment to abolish non-domicile tax status (country-hopping elites) and charge vat and business rates on the private schools that educate children of the elites; higher land tax surcharges on overseas buyers; and an extension to the windfall tax on energy companies. 30 instead, the emphasis will be on ‘tax cuts to put more money in the pockets of working people’ (pickard and fleming 2024). an ambition that many deem implausible for an economy with low growth prospects and public debt of almost 100% of gdp. arguably, the democrats achieved victory in the 2020 us presidential election because they appeared to diverge from this strategic path of re-heated neoliberalism. biden only increased the democrats’ share of the white non-college vote (a partial indicator of class) by 1% but that tiny increase, by taking his share up to 37 percent, probably made the difference between defeat and victory (procock 2021). biden’s campaigns, unlike hillary clinton’s in 2016, made unequivocal pitches to working class voters on wages and social security (bbc 2021; williams 2020). with voter turnout in 2020 at its highest since 1900, easier voting procedures (mail-ins) and democrats in some states, such as georgia, mounting concerted efforts to raise turnout, the proportion of low-income voters was 7.5% greater than in states whose voting procedures were left unchanged. like labour, other erstwhile left-wing parties may believe that it is sufficient to manage a neoliberal economy more efficiently than right-wing regimes. however, if as many believe, the crisis of neoliberalism is now systemic some radical reforms are essential. the most likely supporters of radical change remain those in the insecure and propertyless working class. therefore, their re-engagement with the democratic process is critical. the challenge remains as old as the struggle for egalitarianism through liberal democracy. how to convince left politicians and a majority of the voting public that to campaign and govern for the benefit of the most disadvantaged groups will also improve society for all? a stiff challenge, but rightwing parties with no interest in systemic reforms can always outbid parties of the left if the latter rely only, or principally on the votes of the propertied middle and working class. deradicalised left parties may edge temporary electoral successes playing to the propertied gallery. yet such a skewed voter base that excludes, perhaps, 20% of the electorate will provide only a temporary and fickle support as they confront the fall-out from a failing neoliberal economic order. references ainsley, c. 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(2023). working class economic insecurity and voting for radical right and radical left parties. social science research, 109. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0049089x22000849 standing, g. (2018). ‘the precariat: today's transformative class? great transformation initiative’. https://greattransition.org/publication/precariat-transformative-class uppal, s. and larochelle-côté, s. (2012). factors associated with voting. component of statistics canada, catalogue no. 75-001-x. perspectives on labour and income. williams, j. (2020). how biden won back (enough) of the white working class voters. harvard business review. https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-biden-won-back-enough-of-the-white-working-class https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/75-001-x/2012001/article/11629-eng.pdf?st=honk-ro3 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/75-001-x/2012001/article/11629-eng.pdf?st=honk-ro3 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0049089x22000849 https://greattransition.org/publication/precariat-transformative-class https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-biden-won-back-enough-of-the-white-working-class alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review policing black lives: state violence in canada from slavery to the present, by robyn maynard. halifax: fernwood publishing, 2010. isbn: 9781552669792, pages: 1-234. reviewed by anna lippman1 race-based data in canada is and continues to be stark, particularly when compared with our neighbours to the south. despite this dearth of research on the black experience in canada, robin maynard is able to compile a comprehensive picture of canada’s carceral project of policing black lives. robin maynard’s book provides a systematic account of the ways canada has excluded, brutalized, and oppressed black individuals, families, communities, and children. maynard, an assistant professor of black feminisms at university of torontoscarborough, outlines this often-unspoken canadian history with a sharpness that bring this biting truth into the light. with a particular focus on state violence and systemic oppression, maynard outlines how canada is simultaneously able to bill itself as a nice, multicultural haven, and devise policies and practices that enact colonialist, anti-black racism. despite the multitude of ways we see anti-black racism operate in canadian society, maynard’s book focuses specifically on state violence, giving it a clear trajectory and sharp focus. “though anti-blackness permeated all aspects of canadian society, policing black lives focuses primarily on state or state-sanctioned violence (though at times this is complemented with an enlarged scope in instances where anti-black state practices were buttressed by popular hostility, the media or civil society). the reason for this focus is simple: the state possesses an enormous, unparalleled level of power and authority over the lives of its subjects” (pg. 5). this book highlights the state’s oppressive policies and practices meant to expel and exclude black life, from slavery to the present day, showing that while anti-blackness has shifted forms over time, it is still very much alive in modern-day canada. policing black lives is broken up into eight chapters that broadly follow three larger themes. chapters one and two provide a sociohistorical context of black life within and around canada. these chapters contextualize canada within the transatlantic slave trade and in the aftermath of slavery. chapters one and two seek to disrupt the idea of canada as the welcoming end of the underground railroad. through uncovering canada’s history of slavery and complicity in us slavery, these chapters unsettle the history lessons from canadian public schools and trace the hostility towards black people in canada from the beginning of the colonial state to its practice of segregation post-abolition. stark facts, such as the continuance of segregated (and unequal) schooling in canada until 1983 (pg. 34), dismantle discourses of canadian multiculturalism chapter by chapter. 1 anna lippman is a phd candidate in the sociology department at york university. her dissertation, all i need is one mic, explores how black youth in toronto engage hip-hop culture for identity construction and social activism. anna is also a community organizer in toronto and works with groups including showing up for racial justice and independent jewish voices. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research chapters three, four, five, and six provide an overview and explanation of black carceral geographies within canada. these chapters explore the variety of ways the legal system, law enforcement, and policy itself work to enforce notions and practices that criminalize black bodies, both inside and outside of jails and prisons. chapter three shows how, similar to our neighbours to the south, the criminal justice system is designed to criminalize black and indigenous bodies and remove them from canadian society. it is achieving its goals very effectively. despite being just 3% of the canadian population (pg. 97), black people make up the second largest percentage of people behind bars, with indigenous people, who make up 5% of the population making up almost 25% of jails and prisons (pg. 85). maynard traces this phenomenon to the oversurveillance of black bodies, through practices such as carding and the “war on drugs” (pg. 92). importantly, beyond men and the criminal justice system, maynard devotes chapters four five and six to women, gender diverse people, and black migrants. this serves to both show the web of practices and policies that work together in canada to exert anti-black racism, and highlights the richness of diverse bodies and stories within the black diaspora. chapter four highlights six case studies of women who were victims of police violence in canada, representing an “untapped archive of the institutional denigration of black women’s lives” (pg. 116). chapters five and six go further beyond conventional notions of criminalization through discussing anti-black policies and practices in both social services and border ‘security’. these seemingly benevolent areas of the state act in ways that bring to fruition discourses surrounding black poverty and welfare fraud in canada. furthermore, harsh over-regulation of black bodies at both the border and in immigration policy has led to criminalization, detainment, and deportation for obscure legal reasons. the case of debra spencer, who had lived in canada for decades after migrating when eight, and was deported in 2015 for a minor criminal offense (pg. 175-176). chapters seven and eight focus on black young people, through a focus on families and schools. chapter seven looks at the ways anti-black racism permeates the child welfare system, to the detriment of black families and children. maynard notes that black youth in toronto are 40% of the child welfare population, despite being 8% of the general population (pg. 192). maynard also outlines the myriad of ways black youth under state care are treated with less care and resources than their white counterparts, both historically and today. chapter eight present equally appalling statistics on black youth, but in regards to schooling and education. in this chapter, suspension and expulsion as well as disproportionately high dropout rates are discussed against the backdrop of an education system that excludes black bodies from both classroom and curriculum. the conclusion offers much needed hope for the future after such a jarring orientation to canada’s anti-blackness. this hope stems from maynard’s invitation to radically imagine the possibilities of black futurities. she reminds us of the radical tradition of black activism in canada, both past and present. the reader is invited to imagine a world where black bodies are celebrated, rather than brutally repressed. where all have what they need to thrive, rather than simply fighting over table scraps. finally, readers are invited to not just imagine this world, but to take action today in order to manifest these liberatory visions. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 34, 17-32 (2024) québec solidaire’s new party-movement model: stronger organizational power at the cost of deeper democracy and structural power christian pépin1 and audrey laurin-lamothe2 abtract: based on semi-directed interviews, this paper analyzes the recent changes in the political strategy of québec solidaire, characterized by a shift from a so-called “party of the ballots and the streets” to a new “party-movement”. with the help of party-based campaigns between elections, this organizational model aims to expand the level of popular mobilization by facilitating the activism of party members and sympathizers through decentralized and easily accessible resources available on a digital platform. in addition, the proponents of this “party-movement” consider it a powerful means to radicalize social struggles beyond the weaknesses of certain social movements. conversely, other interviewees see this party form as developing a new parallel structure that shortcuts the party’s internal democratic structures and grassroots militant networks. we argue that qs’s party-movement model may at best develop a strong organizational power but rooted in a weak structural power, thus risking being unable to alter the existing balance of class forces for wining bold reforms and implementing a post-capitalist transition in spite of capital’s opposition. keywords: québec solidaire; radical left parties; movement parties; digital parties; left populism; class power. introduction this article analyzes québec solidaire’s (qs) new party-movement implemented since 2018. to build the party as an independent social actor in protest politics, this organizational model aims to expand the level of mobilization by the party membership and beyond through party-based campaigns enabled by resources easily accessible on a digital platform. two main schools of thought influenced qs’s shift in political strategy. the first is left populism (mouffe, 2000, 2016, 2018), which inspired notably france insoumise (hamburger, 2018; marlière, 2019) and podemos (errejón et al., 2016; kim, 2020). this approach advocates a discursive strategy centred around a charismatic leader, the construction of a unified “people” in opposition to an “elite” and the mobilization of popular affects to restore and radicalize democracy away from the depoliticizing neoliberal consensus. the second can be described as the “big organizing” strategy. experimented and theorized by bernie sanders’ campaign staff (gautney, 2018; lawrence, 2020), it helps resource poor organizations develop a volunteer mass base. a radical political project, combined with minimal barriers to active participation and the delegation of organizational responsibilities to “super-volunteers”, encourage the commitment of sympathizers beyond formal members and party militants (bond & exley, 2016). this study suggests that qs has developed a unique “party-movement” model, inspired both by left populism for its media communications and “big organizing” for its mobilization campaigns. our research shows that this party form was implemented for achieving four interdependent objectives for taking power: 1) win demands between elections; 2) act as a 1 christian pépin is a postdoctoral researcher at the université du québec en outaouais. his present research focuses on a comparative analysis of the effects of “green” industrial policies in quebec, canada and the united states on the labour market trends in the renewables and electric vehicles’ sectors. email: christian.pepin@uqo.ca. 2 audrey laurin-lamothe is an associate professor in the department of social science at york university, canada. she is the author of financiarisation et élites économiques au québec (2019, presses de l'université laval), coauthor of construire l’économie postcapitaliste (2023, lux), and co-editor of business and society: a critical introduction, second edition (2023, bloomsbury academic). email: audrey.laurin_lamothe@yorku.ca. this research was supported in part by the sshrc explore grant and the minor research grant, both from the faculty of liberal arts & professional studies at york university. mailto:christian.pepin@uqo.ca mailto:audrey.laurin_lamothe@yorku.ca 18 radicalizing force inspiring the rejuvenation of quebec’s social movements; 3) create a crisis of legitimacy to posit qs as an electoral alternative; and 4) develop an extra-parliamentary wing to support a qs government in office. designing political campaigns to win demands between elections through mass mobilization are legitimate objectives that break with conventional electoralism. however, this party-movement appears limited for building leverage to win bold demands prior to taking power. certain interviewees critique this strategy for developing a new parallel structure in control of strategic decision-making and operating outside the party’s formal democratic structures and grassroots militant networks. thus, this top-down approach is ill-suited to develop the creative capacities of party members and sympathizers needed for rebuilding the rank-and-file militancy of social movements. by approaching its social base as individual citizens of local ridings rather than as members of a class located at the point of production and social reproduction, this strategy ends up with limited leverage by failing to tap into the structural power this base potentially holds. in turn, this can only impede the radical left project of democratizing the economy and the state. we begin by presenting a critical literature review on movement parties and qs. after laying out our methodological approach, we analyze the rationales behind qs’ new “partymovement”, followed by an overview of how these principles operated in practice within qs’ extra-parliamentary campaigns since 2019. we conclude by assessing the shortcomings of this strategy in terms of its democratic limitations and of the limited social power it has managed to develop so far. movement parties and party-movement relationships the revival of interest in radical left parties (rlp) and candidates broke with key arguments developed by social movement and party literatures during the 1980s and the 1990s. social movements and parties were viewed as organizations operating within distinct institutional domains and representative of fundamentally different forms of politics: the former embodied a “new” protest politics based on “post-material” values and new participatory forms of decisionmaking (offe, 2019) whereas the latter were associated with an “old” institutional politics removed from the life of civil society (katz & mair, 1995). research on new rlps has challenged these claims by showing how these types of parties overlapped with the goals and practices of social movements (della porta et al., 2017; tsakatika & lisi, 2013). as dufour (2009) argues, the relationship between social movements and political parties is better understood when distinguishing analytically the space of political action (i.e. parliamentary and extra-parliamentary) from the political agencies involved rather than associating a priori each institutional space with a distinct political agent. the blurring frontiers between political parties and social movements are most recognized and researched by the literature on “movement parties” (cervera-marzal, 2018; della porta et al., 2017), defined as parties influenced by the modes of organization, ideologies, and repertoire of action of social movements. what still distinguished rlps from social movements was their explicit goal of “taking” power, based on the recognition that nation-states and their parliamentary institutions remained a central arena where social conflicts were resolved between classes (panitch et al., 2006). according to brenner (1985) and piven & cloward (1979), however, the participation of political parties to electoral systems and parliamentary regimes under capitalist liberal democracies faces significant constraints. given that an electoral campaign is limited in time, the priority will be accorded to a more “centrist” electoral platform that can secure a majority of votes rather than 19 engage in more contentious proposals and patient transformative politics. additionally, to preserve their parliamentary recognition, left parties will be pressured to reject disruptive forms of politics that have proven historically more transformative than electoral politics. still, recent research recognized that the bureaucratization of rlps was neither inevitable (mudge & chen, 2014), neither was bureaucratization an exclusive feature of political parties, since this process also affected various social movements (bensaïd, 2009). historically, three main types of relationships developed between social movements and parties (della porta et al., 2017): 1) “vanguard”, where parties control civil society groups from the top down through their ancillary organizations; 2) “electoral”, where parties turn to the representatives and social bases of movements only during elections, in an effort often to coopt and deradicalize movements; 3) “organic”, where linkages between parties and social movements are more blurred and cooperative, based on political, financial or logistical mutual supports. in this latter case, parties do not take part in movements but become a part of them. whether through loose leadership, membership overlap or decentralized networks between movements’ struggles and party initiatives, these ties can be used to recruit cadres and involve members into protest and party politics. the “organic” party-movement relationship produces a new political culture that fills the vacuum left by the decline of the mass party. in this way, rlps are better positioned to legitimately present themselves as the credible allies of social movements (della porta et al., 2017; keith, 2019; march & keith, 2016; tsakatika & lisi, 2013). beyond “environmental” linkages, that is, the relations between the party and organized groups in civil society, we also need to analyze “participatory” linkages, namely relations between the party leadership and party members and sympathizers (tsakatika & lisi, 2013). it matters if parties are top-down organizations, more integrated with states than with civil society, structured to preserve and enhance the discretionary power of party leaders and staff or bottom-up organizations enabling the democratic power of party militants (mudge & chen, 2014). significant innovations have been developed by certain rlps for stimulating bottom-up participation, favour the participation of sympathizers and less committed members and encourage the involvement of younger cohorts in new social movements and solidarity initiatives. these modes of organization broke with the reliance of mass parties on the active role of party militants (tsakatika & lisi, 2013). however, the implementation of digital platforms for decision-making processes and mobilization campaigns, contrary to their democratic pretentions, can come with new forms of hierarchical political relationships (gerbaudo, 2019). an important limit of the above literature on rlps is its tendency to disincarnate partymovement relationships from the strategic challenges of democratizing the economy and the state (gray, 2018; panitch & gindin, 2020; wainwright, 2017, 2018). much of this research fails to investigate the types of skills, know-how, and wider political capacities parties nurture or impede for achieving emancipatory projects. thus, a critical political economy approach is needed to map the social roots from which collective action can be developed. distinguishing analytically between structural and organizational power is crucial to analyze the type of class capacities parties can potentially or fail to develop (wright, 2016). structural power refers to the power conferred by a social agent’s differentiated location within capitalist social relations. what social actors can do depend not only on the nature of their organization, its internal power relationships, and the extension of its membership but first and foremost their location within the power relationships of society. for capitalists, their structural power refers to their control over the investment process and their power to hire and fire workers, capacities that are enabled by their private hold over the means of production. labour’s structural 20 power derives from the dependence of capitalists on the living labour of workers to extract surplus value. if workers strike to protest their conditions of work, this will disrupt the “normal” operations of capitalist production and the sustained flow of profits. in comparison with capitalists, the structural power of workers is not given and a great deal of organizational power is necessary to develop the collective agency of the working class (davis, 2020, p. 8). social reproduction theory (srt) (bhattacharya, 2017) expands the conception of structural power beyond the point of production, by highlighting the vulnerabilities of capital at the point of reproductive labour. capital’s dependency on living labor to produce profitable commodities itself depends on life-making processes that reproduces labourers each day and for each generation. viewed from the lens of srt, women’s strikes in paid and unpaid reproductive care work can disrupt the inflow of labour-power to force the state and capital to concede to better working and living conditions while fighting sexual harassment on the job. an encompassing theory articulating the patterns of dispossession, production, and reproduction within capitalism can point toward the various vulnerabilities of capital accumulation (fraser & jaeggi, 2018). in turn, this can better illuminate the material terrain upon which adapted political organizations can be effectively developed. organizational power refers to the resources and repertoire of collective action social actors can tap into irrespective of their location within the web of power relations. thus, a political organization or a left government can have, in certain cases, strong organizational power rooted in weak structural power (rojas, 2018). critically, this point is lost in most analyses of movement parties who fail to ask if and how movement parties contribute to the development of class power that can actually shift political outcomes. while left populist parties have at best a “class focused” politics, by politicizing inequalities through the antagonism of the 1% and the 99% for example, they often lack a “class rooted” politics which can tap into the structural leverage of popular classes (panitch & gindin, 2017). developing a party form oriented by a “class rooted” politics, able to push against the capitalist constraints within liberal democracies, will be tributary of the political ideology and practice driving social actors involved in rlp formation (lafrance, 2023). as a corollary, misinterpretations of the configurations of social power underlying capitalist states, and of the forms of collective action most suited to confront them, can result in a politics maladapted to alter these power relations. these theoretical insights inform the analysis of qs’s party-movement model that follows. québec solidaire: an overview created in 2006, qs is the fusion of two small parties: union des forces progressistes, itself a prior effort of unifying quebec’s political left, and option citoyenne, which was created by community and feminist organizers. the party can be seen as a thoughtful combination of social and political activists, rather than resulting from a schism within a traditional party (dufour, 2009, 57). unlike podemos and france insoumise, qs has a stronger formal internal democratic structure, which allows members to express their views and exercise their dissidence within the boundaries of the party’s program (lavallée 2011, 205). limited to 7.6% of the popular vote and three mps after the 2014 election, qs made its most important electoral breakthrough during the 2018 election, where it won ten seats out of 125 in the provincial national assembly and 16.1% of the votes. comparatively, the following 2022 election represented a relative political stagnation for the party, winning only one extra seat and 15.43% of the votes, while losing its only non-urban riding (rouyn-noranda). soon after, a byelection in a montreal riding allowed the party to increase its mps to 12. the actual twelve mps 21 of qs are concentrated in urban ridings, nine of them representing segments of the montreal population. as of january 2024, qs membership stands at 25 000 members, only second to the parti québecois’ membership (duval 2024). using a reference outside an election year, qs’ expenses were near $2.5 million in 2021, with more than 55 000$ spent on extra-parliamentary political campaigns and mobilization (directeur général des élections du québec, 2023, 9).3 the founding principles of qs combines feminism, ecology, social justice, alterglobalization, and quebec independence (thériault, 2009). the party’s political program is oriented toward a green and socially just transition, based notably on the public ownership of renewable energies, low-cost electrified public transit, and an expansion of quality jobs in public services and the new green sectors. qs also proposes a constituent assembly to redefine quebec’s constitutional status and foundations as a means to break with canada’s “petro-state”. this program is the result of a long-term democratic process shaped by the confluence of various currents within the party, such as social democracy, democratic socialism, and degrowth. the literature on qs remains thin vis-à-vis other left parties internationally. most authors have focused on analyzing the party’s programmatic orientation, electoral results, voter profile, and modes of communications. studies suggest that qs’s voters are significantly more educated, younger, have a lower income, and composed of a higher proportion of women (bélanger et al., 2013, 57 and 196). qs’s voters tend to support quebec sovereignty, although in a lower proportion than the supporters of parti québécois, wealth redistribution, accessible education, a phaseout of oil and gas, and strengthening the political and social rights of immigrants (savoie et al., 2020). privileging the use of social media as a communication tool (sullivan & bélanger, 2016), qs tends to diffuse a large number of “social” tweets, which aim to encourage a dialogue between citizens and a more inclusive democracy, rather than “diffusion” tweets, which are unidirectional communication messages (bélanger, bastien, and gélineau 2013: 137–48; bélanger 2019). the role of movement activists in the emergence of qs, the influence of the political culture of movements on qs’s organizational form, the selection of candidates from movements, and the input of movements in qs’s program and electoral platforms have all been analyzed in various articles and books (dufour, 2009; saillant, 2020). by its programmatic orientation, social base, and linkages with social movements, qs is part of the new wave of rlps but has been little analyzed within the literature on this party family. with the partial exception of dufour and savoie (2014), the relationship of qs to extraparliamentary politics remains under-analyzed. beyond programmatic differences, qs differs from the pq and ndp within quebec’s and canada’s party system by intervening more proactively on the terrain of social struggles. to use a typology introduced above, qs’s “organic” relationships with movements thus differs from the “electoral” orientation of these parties and their practices of cooptation (collombat & lafrance, 2022; savage, 2010). sources and methods twenty-three semi-directed interviews were conducted with influential members and spokespersons of qs from march to june 2019. the selection of interviewees relied on a snowball process and their number was determined by saturation (bowen, 2008; guest et al., 2006; low, 2019). each interview lasted two hours on average. these interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed with the software nvivo according to a thematic analysis (guest et al., 2011; kvale & brinkmann, 2009; schneider & wagemann, 2012). in addition, selected qs documents, 3 this number excludes the salaries of qs’ staff paid to elaborate and implement qs’ political extra-parliamentary campaigns, which is not readily available in qs’ budget. 22 including reports of the party’s parliamentary wing and of the national coordinating committee, press releases, emails to members, facebook posts and events, were used as complementary qualitative sources to understand the operationalization and evolution of the party’s new forms of extra-parliamentary politics. this research has also drawn upon our past experiential knowledge as members and activists of qs and social movements. while this grounded knowledge helped stimulate interview questions, this new research material was systematically confronted to the academic literature on party politics and rlps to generate new insights relevant for rethinking left party strategy and organization (sears, 2014, 24-28). the rationales behind qs’ turn toward a “party-movement” the “party of the ballots and the street” as a wait-and-see attitude. from its origin to the mid-2010s, qs has developed as a “party of the ballots and the streets”, namely presenting candidates to win elections and mobilizing the party behind struggles led by social movements. qs’s parliamentary wing used media coverage and its limited time to intervene in the national assembly to increase the legitimacy of social struggles. while this “party of the streets” mobilized its mps and membership at demonstrations organized by movements, qs rarely developed its own interventions to build additional leverage in a sustained way. the party did initiate autonomous political campaigns: courage politique on fiscal alternatives, gratuité scolaire on free tuition, pays de projets on quebec sovereignty, and sortir de l’or noir on the ecological transition. these were limited, however, to advocating political proposals in the public sphere. by limiting the party to a political relay of the demands and struggles of civil society, the “party of the ballots and the streets” approach led to see the social movements as the main locus where mobilization could be developed. according to an interviewee behind qs’s new “partymovement” strategy, this resulted in under-developing qs as a political vehicle for militancy: “the party of the ballots and the streets … doesn’t say anything about how you articulate the ballots and the streets together … during a long period … what prevailed was the theory of the transmission belt … there was [on the one hand] the social movements … where the real social change occurs and [on the other hand] we [qs] are here … to bring this [the demands of the social movements] to the national assembly. this was a passive vision where we [qs] were social movements’ thrall. [i]t was a wait-and-see attitude toward social movements. the [more recent] idea ... that we [qs] also need to do extra-parliamentary mobilization … this truly expresses the party of the ballots and the streets…” [i15-m].4 given that the “party of the ballots and the street” presupposed constantly thriving social movements, a view sometimes attributed to the legacy of the trotskyst influence inside qs [i11m], this approach made qs vulnerable to the weakening of movements during critical conjunctures. to illustrate this point, our interviewees pointed to a relative downturn in quebec struggles prior to the 2018 election: “the problem when social movements don’t take the initiative anymore, like we are witnessing since three or four years, is what do we do?” [i22-m]. in addition, this previous model was critiqued for exposing the party to the lobbyist and bureaucratic tendencies dominating multiple movements: “our social movements are pettifoggers. we are facing an [ecological] crisis, which necessitates radical actions, and équiterre is still negotiating with the government of quebec” [i13-f].5 4 the interview quotations are randomly numbered, preceded by “i”, followed by “m” or “f” to indicates the interviewee’s gender, for example “i00-f”. all interviews were conducted in french and the selected quotations were translated by the authors. 5 équiterre is a professionalized advocacy environmental organization. 23 in response to these problems, qs’s leadership implemented a new party-movement model to develop a stronger extra-parliamentary wing driven by qs’s own political campaigns. note that many party leaders behind this strategy were key organizers of the 2012 quebec student strike: “this is the experience of 2012. people were in student associations at that time and later became activists within the party, bringing with them all this experience. i think the whole concept is from there” [i12-f]. the organizational form of the “party-movement.” another justification for this political shift was to move away from the party’s “inner-oriented” culture, centred on the party’s internal debates. as the elaboration of qs’s political program span over ten years, internal democracy became associated with a time-consuming process repelling younger generations: “i am not in the streets, i am just writing meeting minutes and voting for whatever a person should be allowed to do or not in an independent quebec. thus, we have to free ourselves of this [way of organizing politically] and go directly to people. [for example], you want a plan on climate action? then, we blockade, we protest, we canalize this youth activism” [i06-f]. the goal was therefore to create an “outer-oriented” political culture that could channel militant energies toward mobilizing for various issues: “[as]a member of qs, your first mission… should be ‘i am an activist who goes outside the organization, participate in social struggles, and grow [in return] the party’” [i15-m]. to favour easier ways to become involved politically, qs set up a digital platform called “mouvement” to connect members to form mobilization teams in their local ridings to do actions such as phone calls, signing petitions, and leafletting. militants could find on this platform printable resources that could facilitate the multiplication of small-scale actions related to the party’s campaigns [i15-m; i16-m; i22-m]. in the eyes of its architects, this party-movement model was more democratic and horizontal by facilitating the “self-organization” of party members. inspired notably by the book rules for revolutionaries (bond & exley, 2016), this strategy encouraged the development of a mass volunteer base invested with a greater autonomy for action. within the parameters of the campaigns’ demands, this party-movement model encouraged the creativity of its members [i13-f]. while sometimes imperfect, hundreds of small actions across the province were seen as always better than one large and well-staged event. the “party-movement” and its relationship to social movements. qs’ new organizational model also aimed to transform the party as a radicalizing force capable of inspiring the rejuvenation of quebec’s social movements: “the necessity of becoming a party-movement is based on an observation: social movements are situated at the right of qs politically. people who sit on the board of civil society organizations are making requests that are more reformist than the program of qs. if qs had followed closely the union movement, qs would have become a centrist party. thus, there is a necessity for qs to force struggles to become more radical” [i21-m]. at a conjuncture level, this claim refers to a relative exhaustion of mass movements in quebec around the mid-2010s, in comparison with the anti-war demonstrations of 2003, the 2005 and 2012 student strikes, and the anti-austerity mobilizations of 2009-11 that preceded and followed the creation of qs in 2006. at a more structural level, it refers to the lobbyist and bureaucratic character of certain social organizations, such as trade unions and advocacy environmental groups. to radicalize social movements, qs wished to defend and reach out to people as individual citizens rather than organized groups. by doing so, qs was attempting to bypass the bureaucratic officialdom of social movements and connect directly with their rank-and-file membership [i22m]. this is one indication of how left populism and party-movement politics are articulated by qs, with the objective of revitalizing movements and heightening the level of political conflict more effectively: 24 “qs is living a populist repositioning toward a party that is oriented toward more mobilization… i think that the transformation we should look at with qs since several years is not a party that conforms to a populist logic, in the european style with france insoumise and podemos. it would be very problematic to endorse the theoretical postulate according to which qs only aims for a populist reconversion toward a “discourse party”. the difference with someone like errejon, it’s that everybody in qs is still talking about activism, grassroots political organization, which is something very close to what the people around sanders are doing. we should not oppose the populist logic of qs and its radicalization. the logic of the party-movement is a logic that allows the emergence of the populist discourse because it’s a logic that radicalizes the base in a broader sense” [i21-m]. by drawing upon different experiments of other rlps, qs’ party strategists bridged in practice left populist narratives and “big mobilizing” to favour a radical left politics beyond parliamentarism and communication-centred parties. according to the party’s leadership, successive campaigns involving mass mobilizations could create a societal movement beyond qs. when reaching this threshold, the party’s social base would be in a better position to reclaim and transform their movements in more militant ways. the strategic goals of the “party-movement”. this party-movement model is viewed as a catalyst to a mass popular movement that could spark a crisis of legitimacy favouring the election of qs [i16-m]. in this process, winning reforms prior to taking power is seen as a crucial element to establish qs’s credibility as a radical left alternative. these ambitions required to elaborate political campaigns with clear sets of demands winnable through an escalation of tactics. initially, petitions would help gather a large contact base that could not only be used during elections, but also for inviting people to participate in the next steps of the party’s extra-parliamentary campaigns. certain party leaders claimed that qs should organize mass actions, from demonstrations to civil disobedience, on a scale greater than anything accomplished yet by the party [i11-m]. beyond favouring the election of a qs government, a longer-term strategic goal of the party’s mobilization campaigns was to build a sustained mass movement that could serve as an extra-parliamentary force during a left government in power [i22m]. qs’ “party-movement”: practices, evolution, and outcomes this new political strategy was implemented for the first time in qs’ ecological campaign ultimatum 2020. this mobilization was structured around three demands: 1) no new fossil fuel project; 2) to force the government in adopting an ecological plan; and 3) to subject this plan to the critical scrutiny of an independent committee. if the government did not satisfy these demands by october 1st 2020, the party would initiate a “parliamentary blockade”: “the ultimatum 2020 is a good example of how far we can go as a political party. we have an ultimatum date which will be used to short-circuit a maximum of the national assembly’s normal operations. in parallel, there will be extra-parliamentary action. for now, we are at the early stages of the campaign where we are mostly gathering contacts but the objective is to translate this in more militant actions in the spring and in the fall of 2020” [i16-m]. the main material of this campaign was a petition to constitute a mass base backing these demands. more than a hundred teams were set up to gather signatures for qs’ petition (québec solidaire, 2019a). by late october 2019, 17 assemblies, where 750 persons participated across more than 12 quebec regions, had been organized to spur this mobilization (québec solidaire, 2019b). other means of action included sending a predefined email to françois legault, quebec’s 25 prime minister, and calling the coalition avenir québec’s (caq) mps to pressure the government in satisfying ultimatum 2020’s demands (québec solidaire, 2019d, 2019e). in parallel, quebec was home to historic climate strikes. on september 27th 2019, a oneday strike led by students and teachers unions resulted in a demonstration of 500,000 people in montreal (savard, 2019). following this day of action, the quebec student movement then began to plan a one-week strike during the spring of 2020. as the caq government ended up elaborating an environmental plan, albeit a neoliberal “green” industrial policy, a resolution was adopted at the party’s national convention in november 2019 to reorient the campaign toward promoting qs’ own ecological transition plan and to better coordinate its actions with the more militant ecological mobilization (québec solidaire, 2019a; 2019d). the campaign, however, was suspended following the outburst of the global covid-19 pandemic (québec solidaire, 2020). in the face of this new conjuncture, qs adopted in september 2020 a new campaign structured around three themes: 1) a post-covid recovery based on a green growth stimulus policy; 2) a revalorization of public services; and 3) tackling inequalities and discriminations. dozens of virtual and in-person public assemblies and workshops were organized throughout 2021 on the themes of qs’ post-covid plan. a web and paper version of the plan was produced and microwebsites presenting specific measures helped gather supporters. this campaign was mainly about advocating for qs’ proposed solutions to problems created or exacerbated by the pandemic. as with ultimatum 2020, this campaign was grounded in multiple local and regional struggles. one of them was the opposition to gnl québec, an industrial project to liquify natural gas in saguenay-lac-saint-jean. qs’ role in this struggle culminated on march 14th 2021, when 29 mobilization teams composed of 93 militants performed “visibility” actions (e.g. picketing buildings of hydro-québec, banner drops at selected bridges) across 14 different cities, organized as part of a week of action called by environmental groups. the popular opposition to this project ultimately succeeded. added to a rebuttal from quebec’s environmental agency charged with evaluating the environmental impact of the project (shields, 2021a), the government decided in july 2021 to block the authorization of this natural gas plant (shields, 2021b). another significant regional struggle was the “3e lien”, a quebec city bridge project that would have substantially increased car use and suburban development. in addition to a leaflet and a poster (québec solidaire, 2019c), qs mps in the quebec region coordinated with neighborhood councils and environmental associations against the project. qs organized public assemblies where citizens expressed their worries about the “3e lien”, which helped develop a popular opposition to the project (dorion 2023, 251-52). these assemblies also built support for urban public transit alternatives, such as a tramway project in quebec city. while the “3e lien” was abandoned by the caq by april 2023 (québec solidaire, 2023c), this government recently revived the project in the name of “economic security”. beyond the environmental front, qs directed its political interventions toward tackling an acute housing crisis in the post-covid context. qs produced and diffused a guide with legal information on how tenants could challenge arbitrary rent hikes and evictions (québec solidaire, 2022a). in-person and virtual public assemblies were also organized on how tenants could defend their rights, to gather testimonies, learn how to mobilize against renovictions, and explore solutions to this crisis (québec solidaire, 2021). in march 2022, qs organized a "visibility” action consisting of setting up placards on vacant or abandoned land, calling to construct social housing on these sites (québec solidaire, 2022b). qs mps were also present at different rallies of solidarity in support of evicted tenants. more recently, qs set up a petition pressuring the government to abandon its project to ban the ability of tenants to pass on their lease to other tenants (québec 26 solidaire, 2023b), considered one of the few still existing legal protections to prevent abusive rent hikes. ultimately, the ban on tenant lease transfers passed the legislative process as part of a new government bill on housing (bélair, 2024). these prominent illustrations of extra-parliamentary politics between 2019 and 2023 were shaped by qs’ strategic turn toward a “party-movement”. the ultimatum 2020 campaign stands out in terms of a clear set of demands to be won through an escalation of tactics, even if the full range of actions associated with this campaign remained to be seen. by contrast with the claim that this strategy would radicalize social movements, qs promoted actions that were significantly less disruptive than the growing climate strike movement, at least prior to suspending its campaign. the aforementioned campaigns often involved one or many of these means of actions: an informative website, a petition, a leaflet, posters, public or virtual assemblies or calls to mps or the prime minister. in some cases, “visibility” actions were used to raise consciousness, delegitimize existing policies and advocate alternatives. still, this political arsenal did not reach the threshold of disruptive collective action. in none of these cases did qs come close to a mass demonstration or civil disobedience, as imagined by some of the architects behind qs’ new “partymovement”. also, many of these campaigns did not appear to have a clear set of demands winnable through an escalation of tactics. if qs contributed to win certain political battles between elections, it is doubtful that qs attained two of its other objectives, namely act as a radicalizing force rejuvenating quebec’s social movements and create a crisis of legitimacy positing qs as an electoral alternative. as argued below, this is due to the democratic limitations of this organizational model and the inability of this party form to overcome structural barriers in the way of exercising disruptive collective action. the strategic shortcomings of qs’s party-movement centralizing strategy, distributing tasks. as part of its organizational model, qs used a digital platform called “mouvement” to facilitate the mobilization of supporters. the use of such technological tools is legitimized as favouring more democratically open parties, where edemocracy promises to break with bureaucratic and opaque modes of organization characteristic of traditional parties. in practice, this type of platform does not lead automatically to the increase of internal party democracy, on the contrary. in fact, several interviewees argued that this way of organizing circumvented the democratic structures of the party [i23-f; i19-m]. matters of strategic decisionmaking, such as setting the demands, means, and goals of the party-movement’s campaigns, were mainly decided by a select inner circle: “the effect is to give a very vague resolution to be adopted in national conventions, and to keep everything referring to the details of political strategies in the hands of ad-hoc committees nominated by the ccn”6 [i04-m]. several interviewees have mentioned the ultimatum 2020 as an illustrative case of top-down decision [i19-m]. this was consistent with the orientations defended by the sander’s campaign organizers, one major influence on qs strategists, who argued that a “centralized plan” is needed while the organizing work is “distributed to a network of volunteer leaders” (bond & exley, 2016, chapter 6). qs’s party-movement shares certain common characteristics with other “digital parties” analyzed by gerbaudo. as in the podemos and france insoumise cases, the alienation of local party “associations” from actual control over strategic questions regarding their party’s orientation 6 ccn stands for the comité de coordination national, an executive committee composed of fourteen elected representatives, including the two national spokespersons, the president, the general secretary, one women representative, and other members responsible for different mandates such as communications and mobilization. 27 and goals led them to focus on small scale and uncoordinated actions (gerbaudo, 2019, chapter 5). gerbaudo (2019, introduction) argues that the hierarchical mode of organization typical of digital parties transforms party members and supporters as passive agents. the promise of a “participatory democracy” through digital platforms rather leads to a “reactive democracy”, in which an amorphous mass base passively reacts on social media to the online interventions of “hyperleaders”. the disintermediation advocated by left populists, in an era of weakening traditional social and political organizations, has rather led to a form of reintermediation in the form of centralized power in the hands of party leaderships (jäger & borriello, 2020). supporters are viewed as foot soldiers, enrolled to execute the party’s actions, rather than being treated “as knowledgeable and productive citizens on whose capacities a government committed to radical social change depends” (wainwright, 2017, 83). stronger organizational power, weak structural power. it is doubtful that qs’s partymovement model can, on its own, win bold demands. many interviewees expressed an ambivalence regarding the range of actions that could be deployed to force a government to concede major reforms. even if qs managed in the future to organize a demonstration of hundreds of thousands of people, as one interviewee suggested, one-time mass demonstrations have rarely, by themselves, led to significant reforms historically. according to the adherents of this model, qs would also act as a catalyst of social change through various campaigns, by inspiring others to emulate qs’s mobilizational capacities within their own movements. this vision is based on a sort of institutional isomorphism (dimaggio & powell, 1983), in the sense that it presupposes that the skills learned through this party-movement model are sufficient to take on the radicalization of quebec’s social movements. true, party militants can call members and sympathizers, sign petitions, distribute leaflets, go door-to-door, organize demonstrations and public assemblies, and these skills can effectively be transferred from parties to movements (the other way around being also true). however, disruptive forms of protest politics, such as mass strikes, require additional capacities to sustain mass action on an expanding scale and for longer periods of time, while overcoming potential repression and hostility. a major flaw in qs’s “mobilizing” model is that the type of power it relies on is based on the numbers of people mobilized irrespective of their embeddedness in different social relations. the failure to act upon these material roots of collective action is a limit both of left populism and “big organizing”, the two currents influencing’s qs’ party-movement model. this party form cannot tap into the kind of structural power needed to build and increase leverage because it treats its social base as individual citizens rooted in a particular local riding rather than as social agents embedded in workplaces, schools, and communities. a party organized according to this formal legal form cannot participate in organizing disruptive forms of collective action, such as mass strikes. this structural power cannot be activated if a party organizes independently from the democratic structures of social movements where strikes, for example, can be decided. thus, if this party model certainly increased qs’ organizational power, it has remained rooted in weak structural power. as mass struggles have tended to recede after decades of neoliberalism (sears 2014), this raises how can an rlp contribute to rebuilding the power of popular classes. in this regard, wainwright (2017, 83) asks critical questions: “ʽwhat are the capacities of these new members and supporters, and what sources of power and transformation do they bring?ʼ moreover, ʽhow can we as a party support these – perhaps new – sources of power?ʼ”. as an alternative path to the type of party-movement model analyzed in this paper, an rlp could equip activists on how to transform reformist and bureaucratized organizations into rank-and-file militant movements (mcnally & 28 post, 2021). by contributing to these patient efforts in organizing from below, this could nurture the political abilities necessary to democratize the economy and the state and overcome the hostility of capitalists and top-ranked functionaries within the state to such a political project (gray, 2018).” in this vein, qs has notably an ecology and a union militant networks. these forms of organization were set up to facilitate the “sectoral” networking of activists to strategize, build power, and transform society. these intra-party organizations help nurture skills both through political education and struggles. however, these networks lack sufficient financial and logistic support from qs’s national headquarters, despite their official recognition by the party since 2014. interviewees raised how this situation impedes the ability of the party to develop the type of power necessary to win bold reforms: “qs’s militant networks should not only be active within the party but also in their milieu. if you gather people who have preoccupations with unions and they want to know what’s happening elsewhere, they network on the basis of their local union and formulate propositions based on diverse experiences in different workplaces. then, you start to circulate information, you reinforce the capacity to resist. it’s not just about being a qs’s political agent but rather, it is about being a development agent on the field to build this network. ... i think that, if we do the work in different milieux, we will be able to accumulate forces but now, we are accumulating nothing. qs, at best, will be elected, but it will not have any entrenchment, and will no be able to proceed to the political transformation the party wishes” [i09-f]. conclusion this study has shown changes in qs’s strategy since 2018, which moved from the “party of the ballots and the streets” to a new “party-movement” paradigm. through party-based mobilization campaigns, qs hoped to win demands between elections, act as a radicalizing political force, and better posit qs as an electoral alternative. while qs certainly developed a stronger extra-parliamentary wing between 2019 and 2023, it still fell short of some of these objectives. although some interviewees showed strong enthusiasm about the possibilities offered by this model, others highlighted the democratic shortcomings and the limited power this model can develop to help qs implement its program once in government. these promises and critiques are consistent with the academic and political literatures on left parties in western countries. while qs retained its formal democratic structures, this organizational model mimics other digital parties who centralize strategic decisions and decentralize the tasks of mobilization, in accordance with the precepts of “big organizing”. while this party-movement model has developed a stronger level of organizational power, based on the resources and militant energies channelled in party-led actions, it still ended up with limited leverage to alter the balance of class forces. it remains to be seen if qs will in the future develop more disruptive means of actions than those analyzed in this paper. however, by failing to tap into the structural power of its members and larger social base, qs will continue to limit its capacity to win significant reforms that develop the skills, confidence, and new solidarities necessary to implement the party’s “radical left” program. further research could notably provide an analysis of if qs still applies the principles of left populism principles in its communications strategy, as these seemed absent from qs’ electoral campaign in 2022 in comparison with the 2018 election. moreover, complementary interviews conducted among key actors involved in social movements could provide a more complete picture of the evolution of qs’s relationships with quebec social struggles. a longer-term case study of 29 qs could assess to which extent this party-movement model is still prominent within the party’s politics, based on new interviews of the party’s leadership reassessment of the initial objectives of this strategy in light of its actual outcomes, including qs’ deceiving electoral results in 2022. such a larger case study could further contribute to enrich comparative analyses of 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(2016). class, crisis and the state. verso books. epub file. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review slavery, capitalism and the industrial revolution, by maxine berg and pat hudson. cambridge: polity press, 2023. $35.00 cdn, hardcover. isbn-13 978-1-5095-5267-9. pages vi-ix, 1-288. reviewed by robert marshall1 in 1944 eric williams published capitalism and slavery with andre deutsch in europe after initially being rejected by another publisher, frederick warburg, in london.2 the book explicitly connected the slave trade and plantation economies as a significant factor in britian’s capitalist and industrial transformation. it was originally submitted as a dissertation to st catherine's college, oxford entitled the economic aspects of the abolition of the slave trade where williams had completed his dphil in history in 1938.3 his dissertation subsequently formed the foundation for the 1944 book when he was a professor at howard university, a private, federally chartered historically black research university in washington, d.c.4 over the years the book has been reprinted in various editions. for example, in 2013 it was republished under the title british capitalism and british slavery by the brooklyn-based diasporic africa press to better reflect more accurately what the publishers saw as williams’ argument. the book, however, would not be published in the u. k. until 2022 when it was finally released as a penguin modern classic. at the time of its original publication in 1944 capitalism and slavery had challenged the then dominantly held view that the abolition of slavery, on 25 march 1807 when king george iii signed into law the act for the abolition of the slave trade banning trading in enslaved people in the british empire, had been for humanitarian reasons. williams’ counter argument about the root causes of slavery’s abolition may well have contributed to it being overlooked by readers and academics, and even rejected for publication.5 contra the humanitarian argument, williams’ capitalism and slavery presented two significant hypotheses: first, the institution of slavery and the trade flows it engendered were the catalyst of the industrial revolution in england. and second, that the british abolished the slave trade not for philanthropic reasons but more accurately because the slave colonies of the british west indies had become less profitable. williams rejected the argument that the half 1 robert marshall is a lecturer in the department of politics and public administration, toronto metropolitan university. email: rmarshal@torontomu.ca 2 in his forward to the 3rd edition of the book, william a. darity jr wrote that in fact the book had been rejected by 6 different british publishers. (williams, 1994, x). 3 it would be published belatedly in 2014. 4 williams (1943) had published an article a year earlier, which largely laid out the arguments of his forthcoming book. 5 in his 1969 autobiography willims wrote that “warburg, britain’s most revolutionary publisher…told me: ‘mr. williams, are you trying to tell me that the slave trade and slavery were abolished for economic and not humanitarian reasons? i would never publish such a book, for it would be contrary to the british tradition.’” (p. 52-53). mailto:rmarshal@torontomu.ca www.alternateroutes.ca 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research century of public campaigning by the anti-slavery movement had little to no effect on the abolition of slavery.6 williams argued that abolition had been due to changing economic policies in the u.k. imperial economy and he posited that the balance of british investments were being redirected to the east indies sugar fields and trade with the americas. slaves in the colonies (excluding areas ruled by the east india company) were not freed until 1838, but only after slave-owners, rather than the slaves themselves, received compensation.7 it has been suggested that the role of the slave trade to british industrialization had long been ignored by noted historians of the industrial revolution such as eric hobsbawn or phyllis dean.8 what berg and hudson do suggest is that “…the role of slavery in the process of industrialization and economic transformation…has been generally underestimated by historians” (p. 7).9 however, this argument was not unknown. as long ago as 1867, karl marx saw slavery as being the ‘critical pillar’ for the rise of british industry.10 at first glance this somewhat lengthy introduction may seem out of place, but it helps serve to pivot to the book under review as its authors engage with williams’ argument by updating and extending it. williams’ thesis has subsequently become known as the “decline thesis” (see for example drescher, 2008). both authors are professors emeritus of history. berg at the university of warwick, and hudson at cardiff university. berg is very well known for her many works on the role of technology in the first industrial revolution (see for example 1980, 1994) whereas hudson is best known for her work as an economic historian focusing on the economic, social, and cultural aspects of the industrialization process (see for example 1992, 2002) both are fellows of the british academy. the clearest expression of the book’s thesis statement is: “this is an economic history of industrializing britian with its slave roots examined and acknowledged. state policies, colonial ambitions and slavery brought europe, the african continent, north america and a small group of islands in the west indies into a dynamic of capitalist development that proved critical to the making of the industrial revolution, and that also influenced the nature of british capitalism in the longer term” (p. 12). the argument they present, while largely in agreement with williams, is at the same time somewhat more nuanced: “we do not argue that slavery caused the industrial revolution.” (p. 7, emphasis added) but they do make several significant claims. chiefly, that britain was able to gain disproportionately from the slave trade and plantation colonies compared with her european rivals. so, at one level their thesis is quite straight forward: “britian’s early industrial revolution, which has defined her economic, political and cultural identity ever since, was 6 berg and hudson would follow williams’ omission as well. 7 the debts taken on by the british state to pay compensation to slave holders would not be paid off until 2015. compensation of £20 million was paid by the british state to over 45,000 slave owners. 8 a 2010 edited collection on ‘reconceptualizing’ the industrial revolution failed to make note of the williams thesis. see horn et al 2010. 9 all citations with just a page number(s) are taken from berg and hudson. 10 see marx’s capital, vol 1. on the “genesis of the industrial revolution.” www.alternateroutes.ca 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research inextricably bound up with the slave trade and colonial plantations” (p. 3 emphasis added). but at a deeper level they also set out to make an important corrective to the historical record of britian’s economic trajectory that has been largely hidden, or ignored, by mainstream orthodox interpretations: “the extent of british trade in enslaved people, her brutal exploitation of plantation labour and the wealth that these activities brought to british families and wider society have been obscured in favour of a more heroic island story of early economic improvement and cultural benevolence” (p. 3). importantly, the authors also argue that gains from slavery accrued not just to a small elite group of merchants, financiers or wealthy planation owners, but also to the larger british population by providing, amongst other things, employment income in many industries and their respective workforces throughout the nation which were dependent upon, or derived from, the products of the slave economy. and whose wages helped to facilitate a culture of consumerism amongst the working class, and eventually amongst an emerging middle class, contributing to the economic expansion of britian. the livelihood of millions of britons depended upon slavery in shipbuilding, manufacturing, retailing, military service (especially the royal navy) and finance. further, benefits were accrued through “cheap” consumer goods that were the products of slave labour: sugar, tea, coffee, rice, tobacco, and raw cotton that found its way into mass-produced clothing. this point is in fact somewhat questionable but will be addressed later in the review. in articulating such an argument, berg and hudson have joined the ranks of with those who have produced studies on the origins of british capitalism which gives greater awareness and significance to the impacts of slavery and race: “historians are also now addressing this subject as part of fresh conceptual frameworks: new histories of consumption and commodity flows; new forms of global history; studies of globalized labour regimes, including modern slavery…to write new histories of capitalism that give central significance to slavery and race” (p. 5). as a part of this ‘fresh conceptual framework’ the book’s methodological scaffolding avails itself of new research tools which provided berg and hudson with an opportunity to access digitalized and searchable primary sources databases. for example, the legacies of british slavery database (lbs, n.d.), which made it possible to trace the british owners of plantations and their linkages to other businesses, industries, and investments. the transatlantic slave trade database (tstd, n.d.), which made it possible to record all slave ships and their human cargoes. other online databases, such as the cambridge group for the history of population and social structure (cghps, n.d.), which documented occupational statistics, were employed making it possible for the authors to consider the impact of the slave-based atlantic trade on many pioneering industrial cities and regions. they also used a wide range of literatures which by their own admission (p. 7). is not usually considered together. 11 for example, they 11 their bibliography is 34 pages in length. www.alternateroutes.ca 4 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research included studies which documented consumption habits and tastes, changes to accounting and business management practices, and changes in national and international finance. slavery, capitalism and the industrial revolution engages with a theoretical approach that has come to be known as the new histories of capitalism (nhc). it is the subject of the book’s concluding chapter. readers of this journal may well have some passing familiarity with the nhc approach if they have read books, for example, by either charles post (2012) or david mcnally (2020). while not suggesting that either author consciously or knowingly engaged in a nhc approach, both books could easily be said to fall within that mold. initially nhc has been responsible for a sizable body of research initially contending that the institution of slavery was a central building block of american capitalism, for example, beeker and rockman, 2018. but heterodox scholars of the british industrial revolution have started to avail themselves of this framework and have used it to explore and rewrite the nation’s industrial historiography and slavery’s place within it. historians pursuing this approach connect the sources of modern economic growth in markets, property rights and money with the part played by violence, coercion and war; especially as these connect to slavery (p. 210). if i had any substantial criticism of the book, it is one of chapter organization. i believe that this concluding chapter could in fact have better served its readers as an introductory chapter by setting up the theoretical framework before presenting the evidence used to support the book’s thesis within this newer, larger debate on the origins of capitalism. a slightly different, but not insignificant critique, may be that the book’s thesis could just as easily have been explained by employing a “varieties of capitalism” approach. afterall, the book basically engages in a micro-economic analysis by focusing on the british experience and only briefly makes mention of other major european colonial holdings and slave trading nations such as france, portugal or spain. this raises the important historical question of why those nations did not industrialize around the same time as britain or why their economies matured differently? what made britain’s trajectory of growth different in comparison? did those nations not also accumulate profits from their slave holdings and to what purposes were they used? berg and hudson develop an argument that is very british-specific, but it might have been useful to ask the same questions of other nations to see if they too were characterized by the same variables and if not why? to achieve this, a more macro-economic analysis may have been warranted. perhaps the subject of a follow-up companion volume? nevertheless, by employing an nhc approach, berg and hudson advance three arguments about the relationship between slavery and british industrialization. first, a dynamic was created by new consumer tastes and markets for what they call ‘plantation groceries’ – especially sugar but also tobacco, rum, molasses, coffee, and cacao alongside other staples. employing a backwards and forwards linkages approach, they note how these products also affected an array of manufactured products from snuff boxes and pipes to sugar basins and tongs. glassware, porcelain, silverware and ceramics could also be added to this list of goods contributing to this consumer revolution. the effect, they suggest, was to promote a shift from an economy based upon household self-sufficiency to one based upon wage labour resulting in www.alternateroutes.ca 5 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research changing household and consumer behaviour which became a significant part of the british industrialization process. second, they examine the ‘ecological’ relief provided by the food and raw materials produced by enslaved labour. “britian’s slave colonies in the america’s contributed food calories that helped to maintain the nutrition of the rapidly expanding population at the end of the eighteenth century as domestic food supplies struggled to keep pace” (p. 217). but more than just providing necessary calories to the british labor force, berg and hudson also calculate how the contribution of imported colonial sugar and cotton alone, from what they label “highly productive colonial ghost acres”, more than likely saved upwards of 8.1 million domestic acres which effectively doubled britian’s land resources by the 1830s allowing for that land to be used for other purposes (pp. 218-219). and third, they examine the role of the british state via its support of the expansion of transcontinental financial and military power through aggressive mercantilism and warfare which served to extend colonial holdings and trading influence. “britian’s trade was enforced by high tariffs and shipping restrictions backed up by naval power, colonial acquisition and warfare to thwart other european trading nations” (p. 221). the british state’s actions also contributed to the transformation of financial, legal, and commercial practices resulting in changing public and private finances. at the same time, the authors note how the expectations, and then realizations, of profits from the slave trade ‘underpinned’ aspects of the 18th century evolution of the national debt, taxation, the formation of bank of england policy and trade in government stock. financially the slave trade was a boon to the largely london-based financial sector and banks such as barclays. but also, to the insurance sector as well as other shipping services. historic venerable companies such as lloyd’s of london, founded in 1689, can trace its roots back to this period as it sold policies which provided maritime and slave trade insurance. lloyd’s had a monopoly on maritime insurance related to the slave trade and maintained it until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. in his book williams had noted that "lloyd's, like other insurance companies, insured slaves and slave ships, and was vitally interested in legal decisions as to what constituted 'natural death' and 'perils of the sea’” (1944, p. 104-105). port cities such as bristol, liverpool,12 and glasgow as well as other industrial cities such as manchester and birmingham benefited, growing massively on the back of slave trade profits. inikori (2002) has argued that before the advent of the slave trade, england’s west yorkshire, the west midlands, and south lancashire were poorer regions but buoyed by slavery’s economic stimulus they became wealthy and industrialized. notable manufacturers saw benefits from aspects of slavery. for example, thomas chippendale’s london-based company produced highly polished rococo style furniture made from mahogany timber harvested by slaves. other elite furniture makers in lancaster also traded in slaves and imported large amounts of mahogany for their businesses (p. 218). 12 liverpool was called “the greatest slave-trading port in the old world” by the end of the 18th century by williams. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/slave_trade_act_1807 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/slave_ship www.alternateroutes.ca 6 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research williams’ book largely focused on the role of the british establishment (such as the slave owing lobby group the west india interest) and other key institutions of the british state such as the royal family and the church of england who supported and financially benefited from slavery. as has been noted by historian michael taylor, the west india interest was not simply supported by the establishment, it was the establishment (see taylor 2020a, and 2020b). anita rupprecht has argued that “one of the most memorable aspects of capitalism and slavery is williams’s naming of prominent financiers, manufacturers and commercial merchants who profited from the atlantic slave trade and plantation slavery and were also key mediators in the development of british industrialisation” (rupprecht, 2007, p. 8). berg and hudson build upon williams’ argument and evidence by expanding upon the historical record to describe who benefited from the slave trade. chapters 3 and 5, as well as throughout other parts in the larger book, document slavery’s many beneficiaries not just the financiers, manufacturers, and commercial merchants who profited from the atlantic slave trade and its plantation economy. as they noted: “over a period of three centuries, millions of british experienced the atlantic slave system through running plantations, managing and working in shipping, dock yards, trading in plantation commodities and enslaved peoples, employment in commercial finance, processing and manufacturing with atlantic raw materials and in consuming colonial produce” (p. 212). this ultimately allowed, they argue, for britian to disproportionally gain from the slave trade and from plantation economies. plantation output shifted consumer tastes and spurred on new manufacturers and methods of production. it was important to the transformation of manufacturers and technology that ‘drove’ the industrial revolution. and finally, the slave trade, colonialism and the plantation economy helped to bring about a revolution in financial services that the authors believe set the scene for britian’s future global role (p. 12). whie arguing that financial gain was made from the slave trade the authors stumble in my opinion when they do not seem to acknowledge the costs to the british state’s fiscal position and by extension the impact on taxpayers. in other words, they only see the benefits which accrued to britian and not the costs. so, while acknowledging that between 1606 and 1815 britain was at war for 70 of the 155 years with most of those wars involving trading rights and colonial possessions there is no discussion asking whether or not that was necessarily been the economic stimulus they envision? indeed, their own words may contradict their argument when they note that “…tax revenues rose making the british second only to the dutch as the most heavily taxed population in europe” (p. 21). so, did the gains outweigh the costs? again, i think they undercut their own argument by admitting that the compensation paid to former slave owners was really in fact a “…subsidy from british wage earners and consumers of basic commodities to ex-slave owners.” (p. 195) but two pages later they suggest that the compensation money “…aided the mid-victorian investment boom in british and overseas railways and public utilities. some was invested in industry” (p. 197). keynes before keynes? they also do not seem to acknowledge that costs www.alternateroutes.ca 7 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research not only accrued generally to taxpayers but also to the very consumers of commodities such as sugar for which they paid above market prices because of a protected home market. if the authors set out to reimagine slavery and the transformation of britain in the book, chapter 9 provided them with the opportunity to consider ‘slavery after slavery’ and the legacies of race and inequality. this chapter may very be the heart and soul of their amassed arguments and evidence as they examine the economic, social and political legacies of slavery that remain in britain today: “slavery thus had a long-term material influence on the british economy and a lasting social and cultural impact on the distribution of power and influence in british society. it also greatly affected inequalities of wealth and income based on class, geography and race” (p. 227). the few caveats aside, slavery, capitalism and the industrial revolution could very well serve to reignite a debate started many years ago by eric williams. and this unto itself is a good thing. whether intentional or not, their book may also provide support for those making arguments in favour of reparation, compensation and restorative justice to the descendants of slaves. reference list: beeker, s. and s. rockman (2018) slavery & capitalism. a new history of american economic development. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. berg, m. (1980) the machinery question and the making of political economy 1815-1948. cambridge: cambridge university press. ----- (1994) the age of manufactures 1700-1820. industry, innovation and work in britian. 2nd ed. london: routledge. cghps (cambridge group for the history of population and social structure). (n.d.). the cambridge group for the history of population and social structure. https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/ drescher, s. (1986) “the decline thesis of british slavery.” slavery and abolition vol. 7 issue 1, pp. 3-24. horn, j. et al, eds., (2010) reconceptualizing the industrial revolution. cambridge: mit press. hudson, p. (1992) the industrial revolution. london: hodder education publishers. ----- (2002) the genesis of industrial capital: a study of west riding wool textile industry, c.1750-1850. cambridge: cambridge university press. inikori, j. (2002) africans and the industrial revolution in england. cambridge: cambridge university press. lbs (legacies of british slavery). (n.d.). centre for the study of the legacies of british slavery. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/ mcnally, d. (2020) blood money: war, slavery and the state. chicago: haymarket books. post, c. (2012) the american road to capitalism. studies in class-structure, economic development and political conflict, 1620-1877. chicago: haymarket books. rupprecht, a. (2007) “excessive memories: slavery, insurance and resistance.” history workshop journal volume 64, issue 1, pp. 6-28. taylor, m. (2020a) “britain’s role in slavery was not to end it, but to thwart abolition at every turn”, guardian (20 june). www.alternateroutes.ca 8 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/20/gladstone-wellington-peelbritain-pro-slavery-british-history-abolition (2020b) the interest: how the british establishment resisted the abolition of slavery. london: penguin randon house. tstd (trans-atlantic slave trade). (n.d.). trans-atlantic slave trade – database. https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/database williams, e. (1943) “laissez-faire, sugar and slavery.” political science quarterly vol. 58 no. 1, pp. 67-85. -----(1944) capitalism and slavery. london: andre deutsch. -----(1969) inward hunger: the education of a prime minister london: andre deutsch. -----(1994) capitalism and slavery. 3rd edition. chapel hill: university of north carolina press. -----(2013) british capitalism and british slavery. brooklyn: diasporic africa press. -----(2014) the economic aspect of the abolition of the west indian slave trade and slavery. lanham: rowman and littlefield. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/20/gladstone-wellington-peel-britain-pro-slavery-british-history-abolition https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/20/gladstone-wellington-peel-britain-pro-slavery-british-history-abolition alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 35, 56-68 (2023) precarity and processes of classification: conflictual concepts of class, labour-power and caring stefano ba’1 abstract: this article presents exploratory research on precarity and aims to contribute to the debate around class and precarity. the social conditions of people in precarious employment are interpreted as conditions of daily struggles, which are conceptually linked to a broader and conflictual concept of class. conflicts and daily struggles within precarity are then central for the approach of this research. the concept of labour-power is centralised to understand how the precarisation of employment is connected to social processes around class. for participants, being in paid employment is crucial in order to attain decent standards of living, that is: they have to be able to sell their labour-power as a commodity. i conclude that being in precarious employment tends to reduce workers to simple owners of labour-power and tends to destabilise the material basis for caring. keywords: precarity; class; classification; insecure jobs; labour-power introduction this article presents a study on precarious workers in order to make a contribution to the debate around precarity and class analysis. much of the sociological literature on precarity is concerned with issues of class (paugam, 2000; standing, 2011; palmer 2014; wright, 2016). however, in analysing precarious employment and class, this article argues for a critical and conflictual concept of class, which is often at the margins of sociological research (bonefeld, 2002; dinerstein & neary, 2002; holloway 2004; tischler, 2009). this conflictual understanding of class is mobilised because it allows the taking into consideration of social conditions, it focuses on diffuse daily struggles (also understood as ‘class struggles’) and it avoids altogether issues of ‘class identity’. indeed, from this perspective, to be part of the working class is a ‘misfortune’ (holloway, 2005) in the same way as for our participants there is nothing normal in being precarious. this study wants to take the specific case of people in precarious employment and with caring responsibilities (ivancheva & keating, 2020) to show that, despite the fact that it may be possible to classify them in conventional class categories, the overarching idea of a general working class who need to rely on wage relations and care work to sustain decent standards of life is critically valid (bhattacharya, 2017). importantly, aligning the analysis with conflictual concepts of class avoids classifying and pigeon-holing individuals into neat categories and avoids giving them an ‘identity’, while respecting their narratives as counter-stories vis-à-vis degrading material conditions and the stigma that in some cases follows precarity. there are not many theoretically driven empirical studies addressing how precarious employment may be inscribed in processes of class and this research aims to fill this gap. the empirical research is set in italy. italy is a country where academic and public interest on precarity traverses at least its whole republican history and it is also where endemic resistance against the precarisation of employment is very diffuse (giannini, 2019). moreover, italy has always been considered an important social ‘laboratory’ (bouffartigue et al., 2017), where the social conditions of employment, labour-capital conflicts and social struggles often assume a european relevance. 1 stefano ba’ is a sociologist and senior lecturer at leeds trinity university. he researches family life, job insecurity and precarity. email: s.ba@leedstrinity.ac.uk 57 as this empirical research is theoretically driven, the next section explains key ideas: precarity and precarisation as key elements to reflect on issues of class and classification. the concept of labour-power is mobilised to establish a link between the two social processes. the methodology section is dedicated to explaining how this exploratory study was conducted, why restricted indicators of class are used to support a critical idea of class and the relevance of an alternative approach to data analysis. there are then three empirical sections: the first is about how some of the participants in insecure jobs can be seen as part of a middle-class in crisis and how their conflictual relations with employment may be a sign of a broader working class struggling with the valorisation of their labour-power (or ‘capacity to work’, that is: skills, qualifications etc). the other two sections are focused on the ‘typical’ precarious workers who have to sustain daily struggles to get by and support their families. it is a class of people that has always been in crisis. in this case, being able to successfully sell their labour-power as a commodity emerges more clearly than in the other group. the conclusion proposes that, while there is not a homogeneous ‘precariat’, through precarisation participants are constantly reduced to their labour-power, to individuals who need to find paid employment and able to successfully stay in the labour market. i suggest that this is also the material condition characterising a broader working class. precariat as a class? conventional and conflictual concepts of class a conflictual concept of social class is crucial to understanding the daily struggles of people in precarity, thus this article deploys alternative concepts around class (adorno, 2019; bonefeld, 2002; dinnerstein & neary, 2002; radice, 2015; tischler, 2009) so as to articulate them in the contemporary scenario of precarious employment. precarity is here understood as a social phenomenon mainly characterised by the temporal insecurity and casualisation of employment relations (vosko, 2010; doerre, 2014), including bogus self-employment (european parliament, 2016). arne kalleberg (2018) characterises as precarious employment those jobs that, as well as insecure in terms of temporal continuity, also offer only low wages. vosko (2010) takes issue with ‘residual’ definitions of precarious employment. according to these, the standard employment relationship (ser) as the typical model of employment for advanced economies (during the post-world war ii period) should provide the criteria for precarity: types of employment which are not standard. this standardised working time of continuous employment, often associated with post-world war ii period and its regime of welfare state social protection was never universal but was accessible mainly to adult male citizens at the exclusion of women and migrants to the extent that this period can be said to be a historical anomaly (bernards 2018; evans, fanelli & mcdowell 2021; ivancheva & keating, 2020; vosko, 2010). this contribution is important because it focuses the analysis on the margins, that is, on gendered, unpaid care work, often performed by migrant labour. following these studies, care work needs to be considered in the study of precarity in the same way bhattacharya (2017) asks to centralise reproductive work when theorising about class. in the literature above, precarity is linked to precarisation as the general erosion of the ser model (castel, 2003; cingolani, 2005; doerre, 2014; giannini, 2019). these definitions allow a frame for precarisation which is not simply ‘economic’ or narrowly relative to industrial relations, but crucially involves ongoing social processes that lead to ‘precarious living conditions and a decline in subjective well-being or even a “destructuring of existence”’ (kalleberg, 2018, 90). the sociological study of precarity, in the sense of casualisation of employment linked to general social insecurity, has been connected with issues of social class almost from the outset (paugam, 2000; castel, 2003; toscano, 2007; standing, 2011). continental european framing of this connection highlights the relational concept of precarity (castel, 2003; doerre, 58 2014). the centralisation of relational and conflictual understandings of precarity represents an approach that privileges the dynamic aspects of social forces (castel, 2003; doerre, 2014; giannini, 2019; vosko, 2010). thus, the relation of labour-capital represents a conceptual reference point for framing precarity and class at the same time (hann & parry, 2018; palmer, 2014). for this study, dynamic concepts of class, which involve social processes of ‘classification’ are preferred to static concepts of class, so as to highlight the active part of ‘struggle’ from the part of ‘classified’ groups (bonefeld, 2014; holloway, 2005; radice, 2015). indeed: ‘[t]he notion of classes as pigeonholes or locations to which the sociologist must assign individuals ultimately invokes static and struggle-disconnected structures’ (holloway, 2005, 143). these conflictual concepts of class then allow the construction of a different frame for understanding class: conflictual relations between labour and capital are not immediately about working class versus capitalist class but refer to labour producing capital. that is to say, the working-class producing value and ‘richness’ but only through the subordination to capital, through the subordination to the wage system (dinerstein & neary, 2002; holloway, 2005). for this understanding, the general working class reproduces capital as well as its social life and does so through daily struggles (bonefeld, 2014; radice, 2015; tischler, 2009). understood this way, the aim is to capture the daily struggles of people in precarious employment. kalleberg’s (2018) primary focus is on job insecurity, with economic insecurity described as one of its consequences, but the approach is the reverse: it is the ‘original’ economic insecurity (bonefeld, 2014, 79), the fact that the working class is ‘wage dependent’ (i.e., they have nothing to sell but their labour power) that should conceptually come first. this is the condition of a general working class, struggling to get the means of subsistence. hence, the thesis formulated here to analyse precarity and social class is that precarisation of employment means the reduction of classes of people to their simplest status of bearers of ‘labour-power’ (dinerstein & neary, 2002) and the reduction of labour-power to its fundamental constituent: its capacity to produce value. labour-power is a concept first formulated by marx (heinrich, 2004) but, used here, it can be translated as the capability of people in insecure jobs to be able to keep ‘knocking’ at employers’ doors. the flow of people knocking at employers’ doors looking for a job turns their labour-power into a specific commodity. if the practice of entering wage relations is considered normal in many sectors of economically advanced nations, for people in precarious employment it is exactly this continuous attempt at constructing stable wage relations that more clearly marks them as commodities for the labour market (ba’, 2019). this reference to labourpower distinguishes this approach to that of wright (2016), who, in his analysis of precarity and class, does not mention labour power or class struggle. palmer (2014) and smith and pun (2018) in their intervention on class and precarity maintain that conflictual capital-labour relations are central. it is the relation between labour and capital that reflects the conceptual side of the processes of classification and class struggle. here, everyday class struggle refers to the uninterrupted efforts within the given circumstances to create better living conditions. classification means processes of class struggle around very concrete issues, mainly about standards of life (bonefeld, 2014), or the stabilisation of employment contracts (ba’, 2019). struggles around standards of life are seldom the efforts of isolated single individuals: women and mothers experience precariousness more than men (bernards, 2014), precarious employment is the historical feature of women’s engagement with the formal labour market (vosko, 2010) and it is for this reason that research on precarity and class necessitates a focus on care, informal and unpaid work (ivancheva & keating, 2020). within this frame, the concept of class is linked to antagonistic social processes around paid work and it is conceptually relational (labour and capital, or human activities and money) 59 as well as linked to marginalised care work as it is performed within families (ivancheva & keating, 2020). while campbell and price (2016, 326) invite us to resist ‘the temptation to leap freely from precarious work to precarious workers’ (and therefore to issues of class), precisely because of the concept of class that is mobilised here this link should be thematised. as marx (1997 [1844], 75) explains, ‘the worker exists as a worker only when he (sic) exists for himself as capital; and he exists as capital only when some capital exists for him’. the working class exists for itself because labour-power is their capital to be exchanged as a commodity with wages, while the single isolated worker can only materially exist insofar as an employer is interested in buying their labour-power, permanently or temporarily. conversely, conventional theories of class aim at descriptions, and they define class through ‘stratification’ approaches, which aim to classify the total sum of the individual adult population (tyler, 2015, 499) and for most of sociological class analysis the descriptive approach can be quite overt (gane, 2020). mainstream concepts of class are usually nonrelational (sayer, 2016) in the sense that rather than classes formed through social relations, they describe ‘strata’ of population. hugo radice (2015) provides an analysis of the conventional descriptors of classification, which rely on non-relational approaches, describing the constitution of the middle-classes in their various historical determinations. the analysis of the middle-classes allegedly complicates the class relational approach on the basis that if there is a class in the ‘middle’, then the antagonism capital-labour cannot be central. however, the fragmentation of the working class as a class has always been an aspect considered by critical approaches (radice, 2015, 278). the relational concept of class relies on the critical concept of wage relations (bonefeld, 2002, 75): the divide between those who need a wage to get the ‘means of subsistence’ and those who own capital becomes decisive only when class struggle to ‘get by’ concretely emerges in the everyday life (tischler, 2009). this emergence is much clearer in the case of workers who are in precarious employment and who perform unpaid reproductive work (ba’, 2019; bhattacharya, 2017). it so follows that the social conditions of people in precarious employment can be interpreted as conditions of daily struggles, which are conceptually linked to a broader and conflictual concept of class. in exploring the themes of precarity, social class and daily struggles, the focus is placed on precarisation as including not only matters around insecure employment, but also care work and parental obligations. methodology and counter-storytelling this exploratory research was devised to capture the narratives of individuals and their families struggling through precarity. the research was conducted in central italy (umbria) using qualitative methods: semi-structured, in-depth interviews were devised to obtain from participants narratives regarding their life stories and their employment history. the interview themes were designed to cover their daily struggles through precarious employment and accounts over their parental responsibilities. the aim was to collect narratives that are personal, but also detailed enough to allow links with broader trends individuated by theoretical work. when recruiting participants who would fit the description of ‘precarious worker’, we approached state-owned job centres whose workers are in temporary contracts, local primary and middle schools that routinely use substitute teachers, a local charity that provides support to care and domestic workers with no employment contract, and the local trade union, which supports factory and agricultural workers in casual employment. umbria, a marginal economic reality of italy, experienced a long period of stagnation following the 2008 financial crisis, which shook traditionally stable sectors, casualising many lines of employment (fumagalli, 2014). 60 twenty-six mothers and thirteen fathers took part in this research. the criteria for taking part were twofold: i) having a non-standard, fixed term or seasonal contract; ii) having caring responsibilities for at least one child. the second point commits to following vosko’s (2010) recommendation of moving from the ‘margins’ and including unpaid caring work in the frame of precarity. among the female participants, eight of them were single parents. all the other participants were married, a smaller proportion cohabiting. the age of their children varied from a few months to late adolescence. each of the participants was interviewed at home for approximately one hour. pseudonyms are used in this article. this article strives to empirically articulate a critical concept of class, while using conventional class indicators for immediate comparative purposes. to collect information about conventional markers of class, there were questions on: family background, qualifications, employment history, description of work tasks, general information about assets and general data on wages and contractual terms (istat, 2017; rose & harrison, 2007). two groups were identified, a and b, as presented in table 1. table 1. participants’ demographic characteristics occupation gender nationality education group a substitute teachers; job centres advisors; telemarketing operators; socio-cultural operators 17 female 7 male tot. = 24 24 italian 16 with university degrees 8 ‘college’ educated group b factory workers, care assistants, cleaning personnel 9 female 6 male tot. = 15 7 italian 8 north african 4 with university degrees 11 with middleschool leaving certificate total 39 participants (26 female + 13 male) 31 italian and 8 north african 20 with university degrees taking into account the proposed european socio-economic classification (rose & harrison, 2007), group a overlaps with class 3 of intermediate occupations of ‘white collar’ and class 6 of ‘lower technician occupations’. these occupations would include: ‘most clerical occupations and administrative assistants, occupations which involve working (…) in ancillary roles’ (rose & harrison, 2007, 467). for the admission of some of the participants classified in group a, they experience a certain degree of stability while still being precarious workers. following that classification scheme, group b can be collocated between class 8 and 9: ‘lower technical occupations and routine occupations’ (rose & harrison, 2007, 469), although some of the participants have university degrees or are specialised factory workers. citizenship status is also relevant for the classification of this group, given that the majority of them are immigrants from outside the european union (istat, 2017). it is, however, important to note that it is the very process of class identification that remains the target of critique. thus, even if participants in group a can be described in terms of a middleclass in crisis, the aim is to understand general processes of classification on the basis of the ‘antagonistic’ nature of class society (bonefeld, 2014). following the insights of critical race methodology (crm), what was key was the interpretation of participants’ narratives as ‘counter-stories’ (solórzano and yosso, 2002). following crm, the subjective reflections of the participants can and should be taken as reflections of personal and collective practices of people trapped by precarisation and in antagonism with the needs of valorisation of their ‘asset’ as ‘human capital’ (rose & harrison, 2007, 462). the ‘counter-storytelling’ approach strives to tap a historical antagonism between the power of classes of people (their labour-power) against their subordination (tischler, 2009). 61 thus, for this exploratory qualitative research, the narratives of participants are considered linguistic creations capable of offering meaningful representations of their social conditions (tischler, 2009). methodologically, crm allows the use of benjamin’s (1981 [1955]) micrological gaze: an accurate description of the social fragment – in this case, a social fragment that can be reconstructed through participants’ narratives – can shed light on the way the social totality assumes meaning in the lives of people (see also: bannerji, 2005). conventional class through precarity: precarity or crisis of class? in the following sections, the analysis of participants’ narratives will take a twofold approach. although aspects of these narratives may fit conventional class categories, the analysis of the social conditions to which they refer to points to broader, critical ideas on class formation. the starting point is outlining how some of the participants’ narratives fit certain conventional traits of the middle-classes (albeit in a precarious position) and how others fit the features of working-classes. however, in doing so, the analysis is pushed forward to the point that these narratives suggest a broader understanding of class. this procedure may seem logically contradictory, but if the focus is the process of classification, rather than a static concept of class, then individual accounts will gain a sociological sense. participants narrate personal lives shaped or even formed by these categories while revealing struggles to resist these economic forces which confine their existence to the margins. the analysis is developed through the contrast of the accounts of two sets of participants whose interviews are particularly well positioned to address the aims stated above. so, the accounts of participants from group a are contrasted with that of group b. in reporting their accounts, the aim is to present a general picture of their stories and their situations. their ‘counter-stories’ are as much statements depicting an anonymous economic system confronting them as they are personal reflections on their private struggles. the analysis begins with group a before moving to group b. marcus is employed as a technical advisor at a job centre and barbara is a substitute teacher. these two participants narrated a series of circumstances that are relatively common for participants in group a, among them: both of their partners are in full-time secure employment, they have home ownership, they own two cars (one for each partner) and a network of relatives who routinely provide support for the care of their children. they are both highly qualified for their jobs and, in the case of barbara, even over-qualified (oliver, 2012). marcus has been working at the job centre for three years and he feels ‘stuck’. he is married and the father of a nine-month-old child. his wife is the manager of a small nursery cooperative. he has a first-class degree in economics and also has other side activities: he is a dance teacher and owner of a small dog-breeding centre. since his graduation, he had a number of fixed-term jobs, however the restructuring of the italian public sector meant that most careers paths are blocked for employees in fixed-term contracts (bagnasco, 2016). as marcus explains: ‘[my job] is not at all gratifying or rewarding...considering my studies and...my training... all of that is not considered at all!’ marcus feels overqualified for the job of technical advisor and, given that he is in possession of a university degree, according to italian law means he is qualified as an ‘expert’, as opposed to technical responsibilities. other technical advisors narrated similar stories, and many feel overqualified. these elements of higher levels of education, qualifications, training, and promotion through career are historically constitutive parts of the italian middle class (bagnasco, 2016; for similarities in the eu, see: courtois and o’keeffe, 2015; oliver, 2012). 62 barbara is married and has two children, eight and five years old. barbara shares with marcus the frustration of having to accept a job beneath her qualifications. she has a phd in biochemistry and twelve years’ experience between doctoral work and a series of fixed-term research contracts in a university lab. both participants enjoy the support of their relatives. their grandparents help look after the grandchildren and allow the parents to have relative freedom to meet work schedules. marcus and barbara narrate a ‘revolution’ in their lives since the arrival of children, however barbara is more involved as she is the one that organises family life according to a series of routines, such as having dinner together. barbara states that ‘research is my job’ but because of job insecurity once she got married and had children, there were few choices other than to abandon research for teaching. it was “hard” and it led to her “not feeling great” about, but the financial difficulty of continuing as a precarious researcher was not an option as two salaries were “essential” to cover the family’s budget (ivancheva & keating, 2020 for similar findings). the erosion of traditional middle-class jobs and careers reproduces gendered roles inside the family (giannini, 2019; cavazza, 2017; ranci, 2017), creating resentment in marcus and resignation in barbara. in both cases, participants feel exploited over their qualifications and skills. at the end of the interview, marcus vents his frustration about his employment conditions: he states a “desire for revenge” regarding his career’s perspectives. barbara’s attitude is more reflexive: ‘as a precarious worker, i do not know if in the future i will be able to send my children to university…my parents did manage that: they worked hard and managed to send me to university’. indeed, job insecurity is preventing them from making long term plans and precarity becomes something that ‘stays inside’ them, something that ‘you do not forget about’ and that is a ‘destabilising factor’ for their personal lives (see ba’, 2019 for similar findings). barbara reluctantly stated how bitter she was: ‘you can do one, two… three months of lab work without being paid, but after that? let’s say the truth, after that it becomes exploitation, lack of respect… not only for me… but also towards others, because it did not happen only to me!’ this counter-story points to the objectifying conditions of precarious employment in that it negates that these conditions are simply a personal matter. precarisation renders unstable the content of work, while confirming the subordination to wage relations. yet this insecure context does not appear to be as harsh as for those in group b. the precarious middle and working class from group b, roberta, raffaella, omar and marika (these last two, a couple interviewed together) are struggling to find permanent jobs and are forced to resort to the informal market and sometimes ad hoc support from the local charity. they also lack a network of relatives or friends for extra support when looking after their children: the two women are single mothers, while omar and marika moved to italy from morocco, where they left their relatives. rapid economic changes and the great recession undermined the viability of their sectors in general and of their skills in particular (miceli, 2011). roberta and raffaella were two artisans, small business owners in the sector of costume jewellery and of ice cream makers, respectively. roberta is a widow with two adolescent daughters and raffaella divorced with a five-year-old daughter. roberta’s husband committed suicide following the collapse of his artisanal activity. omar moved to italy from morocco thirty years ago, he worked regularly in building construction until the great recession and since then he has worked irregularly in construction and seasonally in agriculture. he is married to marika, who came to italy from morocco roughly15 years ago. they have three children. marika was mainly a housewife when their children where younger, but now she has irregular, informal jobs as domestic worker. 63 as the aim of this article is to stretch conventional class belonging in order to frame class formation and struggle, it is important to see how their employment stories reveal the ‘hidden injuries of class’. for them, selling trinkets at market stalls (roberta), finding an informal job as a cleaner (raffaella) or as a bricklayer (omar) is a matter of finding the necessary financial means to get by. however, it is raffaella who is particularly distressed during the interview as she describes the degradation of her material conditions: she has a degree in economics and she has managed a small business of artisanal ice-cream for ten years. the failure of her business, the arrival of her daughter and the divorce pushed her into major financial difficulties. she finds life very difficult and at one point during the interview she pauses to wipe away her tears as she discusses the significant loss of living standards. through the descriptions of their conditions and trajectories, it becomes apparent that these participants are adjusted to underutilised qualifications and skills, unusable work experience and ultimately to simple labour-power. their capability to work, their labour-power as qualified by education and skills, is not deemed economically worthy as it does not produce monetary valorisation. raffaella’s narrative about her employment history is particularly bitter and full of recriminations, so her narrative can be interpreted as a counter-story because she feels there is nothing ‘normal’ in being in precarious conditions. conversely, omar displays a sort of impassibility when he replies to a question about family life and financial difficulties: ‘we have always been in crisis, we were not born as millionaires, we have felt the crisis since our birth (…) [however] i am happy because i have a family of 5 people (…) even happy with a glass of water and a small piece of bread’. there has always been precarity for the dispossessed classes. omar and his wife managed to ensure a fairly comfortable lifestyle for their daughters until the great recession, but since the further precarisation of his working conditions, they need to be more careful about their finances and at times they have to rely on the solidarity of caritas [catholic charity]. they find it difficult to send their daughters to extra-curricular activities or school trips. particularly painful was their recent decision about a school trip to florence for their older daughter: marika: ‘she (daughter) went into a meltdown when we told her that we couldn’t… for the school trip (…) we could not send her…’. omar: ‘she went mad… two or three days of anger and resentment… i could not do anything about it… then she calmed down…’. marika was particularly upset about this episode, her italian is not that fluent, so to express the complex emotions around this event, she reported her daughter’s words, who angrily told them: “you never have [the money] to allow me doing anything [that i like]” these four participants lack the support from grandparents or relatives in general: roberta and raffaella because they moved to umbria from another region, omar and marika because they are migrants from abroad. without any siblings, raffaella was orphaned at a relatively young age. lack of familial support is a well-recognised obstacle for parents in precarious employment (giannini, 2019). roberta has older children, one of them at university. her job is seasonal, she makes trinkets but her business peaks in the summer, where she can have a stall in the various local town markets. she notes: ‘last winter was extremely tough’ and she routinely has to rely on the help of caritas. she has done other jobs in the recent past that were ‘very precarious and very exploitative’. roberta has regrets: ‘i would have liked giving [my daughters] something more… not luxuries… but at least more serenity’. she is from rome and has been living in a medium-sized town in umbria for a very long time, however she feels that they never integrated in the local community (‘we are not from here’). the ‘horrible’ story of her husband’s suicide made them stand out, acquiring a sort of stigma. 64 priced out by the tumultuous developments of international capital, flooding even marginal markets with cheap items (miceli, 2011), her husband committed suicide: his labourpower is extinguished. roberta is reduced to pure labour-power and left ‘free’ to deal with the care of the children on her own. she is then perceived by the local people as the outsider who had no luck, so acquiring a stigma, which meant that she and her daughters were socially avoided, presumably on superstitious grounds. from a strictly neoliberal, free market point of view, they as a family became the bearers of unfruitful (or even failed) labour-power. in roberta’s case, the essence of wage-labour as the means for getting subsistence generates enormous pressure because it is based on the assumption of an abstract subject able to compete in the market (holloway, 2005), while at the same time the capacity to work is essential to get by for her (and for the vast majority of people, especially for those in insecure jobs). within these conditions, labour-power is almost ‘the thing in itself’ (adorno, 2005 [1951]). within this fetishised essence of labour, the person becomes an allegory of labour as a commodity for the free market in the same way that, at the opposite end of the social hierarchy, the persona of the king in the german trauerspiell was used to represent the allegory of social cohesion (benjamin, 2009). using benjamin’s critical frame to understand her story, the stigma indicates cracks in the cohesion of the market society, a cohesion made up by money and wage relations (bonefeld, 2014; holloway, 2005). roberta struggles to get into stable wage relations, roberta and her family are not capable of transmitting the sense of the ‘sacred’ functions of the free market society (money as the god of freedom), as in benjamin’s analysis of the baroque society the fallen king indicates the cracks of the cosmic and social order. the fetishised world of labour-power is irrational and real at the same time: real because wage relations for those who need to sell their labour-power are considered normal; irrational because, despite the ‘socially constructed’ world of wage relations can be seen as objective and objectifying, personal responsibility (that of roberta and her husband) is still taken to be valid, even after death, hence the superstition. precarity and caring this section takes into consideration how our mothers in precarious employment refer to their caring activities. narratives around parenting show how precarious employment makes it difficult to care as it destabilises the material basis of participants’ lives. nonetheless, it emerges that ‘care work is never precarious’; their counter-stories indicate both dignity and the destabilisation of feelings about care. roberta narrates financial difficulties in affording even the train tickets to university for her daughter. when the interviewer observed that, given the financial difficulties and lack of support from partner and relatives, roberta should take some credit for having raised two daughters and sending one of them to university (agricultural sciences), she replied: ‘i think the credit goes to them… because it is no use saying to them “do not do that… do not do this”, in the end it is them who decide [over their life]’. this answer can be interpreted as a counterstory insofar as it tacitly refers to an ideal of dignity (ba’, 2021). as the participant rejects cheap credit for her moral actions, it is possible to see that this counter-story hints at an ‘impassibility’ of her family vis-à-vis unfavourable economic conditions. the term impassibility is here suggested both from the narrative of the participant and from benjamin’s (1981) ideas around ‘class struggle’ as characterised by exactly this type of working-class stance. parents living through precarious employment may not have the ‘mental’ space to connect at a deeper level with children and to accomplish caring at their desired level. raffaella says that ‘the most difficult thing is to reconcile the serenity that a child needs with your lack of serenity, because you do not have a stable economic basis’. when asked about daily routines with her daughter, she replies that she does spend time arranging leisure time but does not think 65 it is quality time because she is always worried: ‘well, there are these problems that do not let you live in peace. so, let’s say yes: i may play with her, but i cannot focus on the game, i struggle to be present with my mind, do you understand?’ silvia federici (2012) rightly observes that care work is never precarious, it is always there; however, this observation must be understood in a critical sense: mothers in insecure jobs struggle to provide constant care for their families (ba’, 2019). this is not a positive fact, as the precarious world where it takes place is a place of suffering, as marika says: ‘it’s just…when you find out that your child wants something… and you cannot… you then feel bad.’ for mothers in our participant group, the overlap of precarity and caring produce contradictions in their everyday lives and it is met by daily struggles. when asked about the most pleasant thing about being a parent, raffaella narrates the following: ‘yesterday i watched them [her child and her friends] play with each other...they are like brothers and sisters, they play with everybody, so... perhaps the best thing about being a parent is that you see how you were and say: but where did i end up? i mean, i think you get flashbacks of what you were like. perhaps if we were all children, the world would be better.’ it is an answer which does not seem to directly address the question. instead, she offers three ‘images’: the peaceful image of children playing together; the image of herself in a distant past, now unrecognisable; the image of the possibility of a better world. the links are the unrecognisable image of herself as a parent, as a person whose place in the world is determined by precarity exactly in a moment of her life when she needed to act as a responsible adult. the responsibility of caring and giving her child a serene space for growing is revealed as unbearable. taken as counter-story, it is possible to see that there is a reference to unstable economic conditions, due to her precarious employment, which directly destabilises her potential to care and to produce adequate feelings for her daughter. precarity is then revealed as an object that silently takes over the possible experience of a normal life. this last image of the object intruding in someone’s experience, is similar to that of barbara (from group a), though obviously more dramatic. thus, care work is never precarious but the social compulsion for its accomplishment leaves scars on mothers. this social compulsion is the result of the pressure on these participants to be reduced to labour-power, they are compelled to find a market to place their capability-to-work as a commodity in exchange for wages, income needed to care and to make their social circumstances ‘better’. conclusion precarity is a buzz word and can hide fundamental class dynamics. however, dismissing appearances is not always a sound sociological strategy; here, precarity as framed theoretically through critical theory’s lenses and narrated by participants shows the need for a broader, critical concept of class. through precarisation, participants are constantly reduced to their labour-power, to individuals who need to find paid employment and to successfully stay in the labour market. this research indicates that this material condition is also the general condition for the formation of a broader working class (bonefeld, 2014). the destabilised material conditions of participants, reflected in accounts that narrate strength and suffering at the same time, point to a broader concept of class and to the fundamental social conflicts around labour as labour-power and its antagonism with capital. while including care work in the considerations around precarity, this article presents the pressing concerns of parents who are in precarious employment. these concerns are about daily material needs as well as dignified standards of life, such as affording school trips for their children. this research shows that even participants who may conventionally be classified as belonging to the “middle-class” are stuck in insecure, low-paid jobs, with few prospects for career advancement. even those who can enjoy the support of grandparents find it difficult to combine employment and care. from their counter-stories, it appears that precarisation renders 66 unstable the content of their work, while they become ever more subordinated to wage relations. this qualitative research shows that there are artisans and parts of the ‘traditional’ working class who lapsed into precarious employment and now face financial difficulties and the degradation of their material conditions of life. their counter-stories tell that while there is nothing normal about being precarious, their social life is polarised between being characterised by a dignified stance vis-à-vis precarity and being marked by stigma, which is likely the result of economic insecurity. finally, narratives around parenting show how precarious employment makes it difficult for mothers to care as it destabilises the material basis of participants’ lives. although ‘care work is never precarious’ (federici, 2012), mothers who are in precarious employment narrate the destabilisation of feelings about care but also reject credit for making care possible. rather, participants narrate their precarious social conditions as struggles to find paid employment, thereby struggling to sell their labour-power. precarity is considered a misfortune, something that in their words ‘is not normal’. although there are considerable differences between them, to the point that it would be correct to state that the precariat is not a homogenous class, this research tries to highlight how the fundamental antagonism of capital and labour that undermines employment, while framing social processes around class. even as the precariat is not a homogeneous class apart from others, the people in precarious employment represent a case through which it is possible to observe the same tendencies of a broader working class whose only means of subsistence is to sell their labour-power. these tendencies are revealing 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(2016). is the precariat a class? global labour journal, 7(2), 123-135. https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v7i2.2583 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 35, 86-100 (2023) neoliberalism and its discontents: the ideal of liberation in the context of dialectical tensions and planetary extremification claudio colaguori1 abstract: this paper offers a critical analysis of the conceptual origins of neoliberal society and its attendant social problems by outlining how traditional concepts founded in western philosophical liberalism have become intensified in the neoliberal present in a manner that perpetuates domination against the original intention of liberal ideals of emancipation. in particular the paper examines five sites of conceptual distortion that perpetuate domination as follows: from the sovereign individual to possessive individualism; the economic conception of freedom and corporate capitalist empire; the liberal rule of law or the neoliberal unruliness of law; liberal democracy and its competing identities; the incomplete liberal promise of female emancipation and the neoliberal perpetuation of the patriarchal order of domination. keywords: liberalism; neoliberalism; extremification; competition introduction liberalism, the body of political thought that gave rise to the prevailing social order in the west, has always held out the promise of transcendence and liberty. freedom from bondage and movement away from the injustices of the past have been among the progressive aims of the liberal tradition. against dire prognoses of the human condition by critical theorists, mainstream theorists such as pinker argue that “more than ever, the ideals of reason, science, humanism, and progress need a wholehearted defense” (2018, 4). yet, enlightenment liberalism has never existed as a coherent, unified discourse, although its general themes can be identified. freeden writes, “classical liberalism evolved around individual liberty, human independence, and the rule of law, and it importantly restricted what states and governments were entitled to do to individuals" (2015, 2). freeden further outlines various layers of liberalism i shall paraphrase as follows: the protection of individual rights and restraint over government powers; a belief in the economic necessity of free exchange of goods and services; a concept of individualism founded on the maximization of human potential; a certain degree of state-regulated welfare to temper the sharp edges of social inequality, as well as the promotion of pluralism, diversity and tolerance (2015, 13). since its inception a few hundred years ago liberal society has had a complex history with various incarnations and points of emphasis, and now we are firmly rooted in the neoliberal era. “neoliberalism,” the term used to describe the current global human condition, especially the economic and political concentrations of power and concomitant social suffering, is not a flattering one. it fails to invoke a reinvigorated sense of the ideal of freedom inherent in classical liberalism and thus neoliberalism is generally used in academic circles as a term of derision. harvey (2011) writes, 1 claudio colaguori is an associate professor in the department of equity studies at york university. he is the editor of crime, deviance and social control in the 21st century: a justice and rights perspective, and author of agon culture: competition, conflict and the problem of domination. the author would like to thank anonymous reviewers for for helpful comments on an earlier draft. 87 “neoliberalism is in the first instance of theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade… it must also set up those military, defence, police, and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets.” (2011, 2-3). this tendency that harvey identifies within neoliberalism, to attain economic imperatives by force, is reflected in the preferential attention and concomitant distortion given to some classical liberal concepts in the age of neoliberalism, including: the ideal of the sovereign individual transmuted into the legal fiction of “corporate personhood” and “possessive individualism” (macpherson, 1962); the expansion of free-market liberalization into imperialist consumerism, global economic domination, a growing gap between rich and poor, unsustainable natural resource exploitation, and the transformation of the ideal of state sovereignty into an intensified type of militarized nationalism that generates perpetual conflict, interstate rivalry, war, and necropolitical suffering. the point regarding neoliberalism as a type of force is also emphasized by biebricher (2019) who argues that neoliberalism is not a haphazard formation, but rather it developed as a response to the crisis of economic instability and financial sluggishness of the early 20th century. the express concern of neoliberalist policies was to create/enforce the proper preconditions for the functioning and indeed thriving of domestic and international markets. the questions then follows: are the neoliberal developments that define the present era a logical continuation of the authentic values and ideals of political liberalism, or are they of a different order altogether? such are the sorts of pressing concerns that critical analysis faces when confronted with the problems of the present geopolitical landscape and the ideological discourses that justify its continuation. just as liberalism is a type of thought associated with a corresponding political life-world, neoliberalism has had its philosophical proponents in the twentieth century that have thrown up reconstructed conceptual ideals of liberal freedom. in this context ayn rand (1905-1982) and milton friedman (1912-2006) are often mentioned as ideologues of the neoliberal order. as recent crises such as the 2008 mortgage and housing fraud have illustrated, the ideas that circulate among the political ruling classes are not without their material effects. the ideal and the material exist in a dynamic interrelation with one another, so then the problems of neoliberalism must be confronted also at the level of political thought and philosophical questioning. critical questions remain: why has liberal policy been so successful at liberating corporate-economic power but not fully extended its liberating principles to other social realms and historically marginalized groups in equal measure? why has liberalism swung back and forth from humanism to authoritarianism and tyranny in the modern era? this analysis follows the philosophical method of immanent critique whereby contradictions, aporias, and potential for misreadings inherent in a foundational social text get expressed in the material manifestations of a society upon which the text is based. thus, it will examine how some central ideas of liberalism have transmuted in the neoliberal era into various types of power through the instrument of law, to produce a new manifestation of domination, that has been referred to differentially as domination (adorno), human rights violations (callaway and stephens, 2007), and more recently as a system of biopower (foucault, 1980), and necropolitics (mbembe, 2003), where certain people are 88 allowed to live while others, (along with other planetary forms of life), are rendered terminable. the analysis offered here adds to this critique by contextualizing the crisis of liberalism as a system characterized by polarizations and extremes. liberalism: the dynamism of an unfinished project and the ideal of freedom the ideal of liberalism has always been about pursuing and maximizing human liberty. liberal concepts have stood the test of time and to this day remain alluring since no reasonable alternative for a better civil order has yet been devised in the context of market capitalism. classical liberalism promoted increased freedoms over and against the restrictive forms of social regulations and human bondage that characterized much of social life in the ancien régime and in the gemeinschaft societies that prevailed for quite some time after. and yet as is often the case with programs for improving society, those with the power to do so take advantage of the loopholes and weaknesses in the master plan to advance their own agendas. this tendency for corrupting otherwise virtuous ideals is not only the fault of those with nefarious ambitions, as critical theory reminds us such problems also arise because they are inherent in the tangled discourse, loopholes and aporias of a given doctrine. whether one can speak of “liberalism” as a doctrine, an ideology, or a program is a matter for debate, one that shall not be pursued here beyond asserting that philosophical and political liberalism has furnished the fundamental ideals upon which the current global order is founded, with social contradictions intact. thus, it is worthwhile to take note of shortcomings inherent in a political vision that contains programmatic problems that remain unresolved and continue to produce social suffering. seigel reminds us of the importance of the legacy of liberalism for figuring out the political challenges of the present when he writes that “the political frustrations of our own day still derive from the powerful dilemmas created when our progenitors took up this liberal stance three or four centuries ago (seigel in manent, 1995, viii). the concept of freedom, arguably the grandest theme of liberal philosophy, was conceived in several different configurations by its early proponents. the viewpoint of francis bacon (1561-1626) clarified the relation between liberalism and enlightenment freedom as one based on a relation of domination as the means towards liberation. he proffered that, “the sovereignty of man lieth hid in knowledge… now we govern nature in opinions, but we are thrall unto her in necessity: but if we would be led by her in invention, we should command her by action” (quoted in adorno and horkheimer, 1969). while bacon addressed the instrumental relationship to nature, john stuart mill’s account of liberty recognized the interdependent nature of social relations and the obligations each person has to the other. he wrote, “a person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury” (1996, 14). these typically liberal accounts of how to enact freedom seem to bear no relation to one another, and like the many other differing conceptions within the canon of liberal thought, ideas about how to conceive of freedom vary in significant ways. the differences in liberal conceptions of freedom have created the occasion for contradictions in the material realm of lived human experience. it is not as if there was ever any consensus about the prospects of liberal society. liberalism has had significant critics in thinkers such as nietzsche, and marx through to those who followed in their mode of critique such as adorno and horkheimer who saw in 89 the unfolding of enlightened liberalism an immanent human crisis, most specifically the holocaust. i would direct the reader to adorno and horkheimer’s proclamation regarding the presumably monumental humanistic shift from mediaeval barbarism to scientific and philosophical enlightenment, where despite liberal progresses made, “the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant” (italics mine 1969, 3). the enlightenment, as the apogee of liberal rationality – with the knowledge it provided towards the dismantling of the feudal, aristocratic bonds of servitude and the replacement of superstition with rationality; to the reconstitution of social interaction to the monolithic organizing principle of economic exchange; to the rise of “sovereign individualism” and sovereign border states has fundamentally transformed the experience of being human in the modern capitalist world order. after centuries of liberal policy and promises of modernist development in impoverished, colonized nations, and in the poverty-stricken places throughout the world, including rising homelessness in the advanced industrial nations, the globalized society remains immersed in mounting human misery and thus all societies share the plight of social suffering and planetary, ecological decay. this dialectical pressure i shall name extremification shall be explored further in the concluding sections of this paper. from the sovereign individual to possessive individualism liberalism, as it was originally conceived and as it remains today, is inseparable from the modern concepts of individual rights, and sovereign individualism. as abercrombie, hill and turner write, “individualism, properly so called, was in origin mainly a political and subsidiarily an economic doctrine relating to the rights and obligations of persons that was associated with the english political theory of the seventeenth century, which later heavily influenced british and american culture” (1986, 2). the concept of the sovereign individual has materialized in many forms that are simultaneously founded on the original conceptions but vary substantially in character and type. if we can identify an essence or motive behind the desire to liberate the individual it would be freedom of the individual from the naturalized social hierarchies (characteristic of feudal society) and be free to act in their own self-interest as self-preservative agents in the pursuit of their own economic destiny. just how such concepts as “free agent,” “selfinterest” and “prosperity” get defined specifically has as much to do with liberalism as with political economy. thus, although the liberal conception of individual freedom was possessive (realized through the category of private property), at its inception, contemporary consumer society conceptions of individualism have fully passed over onto what c. b. macpherson (1962) called possessive individualism. macpherson argues that english political thought from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries shared a persistent, underlying and unifying assumption that connected the conception of the self to a new reality based on two fundamentally modern sociological realities: 1) the economic marketplace, and 2) the principle of exchange. macpherson writes of liberal individualism as follows: “its possessive quality is found in its conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his [sic] own person or capacities, owing nothing to society for them. the individual was seen neither as a moral whole, nor as part of larger social whole, but as an owner of himself… the human essence is freedom from dependence on the wills of others, and freedom is a function of possession. society becomes a lot of free equal individuals related to each other as proprietors of their own capacities and of what they have acquired by their exercise. society consists of exchange between proprietors” (macpherson, 1986, 3). 90 the liberal trope of “individualism” in its various manifestations is now such a normal part of modern consciousness that even the unschooled call its substance by name when they invoke phrases such as “my individual rights,” “my property” and “my personal self expression.” sovereign individualism transmuted into possessive individualism to bolster capitalist consumerism, especially after the first world war, demonstrated the dynamic flexibility of the cornerstone categories of liberal thought and the multiple modalities of its forms of expression. as seigel states, “thus do we live still with consequences of the original choice that established individuals as the only basis of social and political life” (seigel in manent, 1995, ix). as such individuals under advanced capitalism become transformed into consumers and political freedom somehow becomes freedom of consumer choice and personal agency become skilfulness at bargain hunting for corporately produced commodities in the retail spaces that have almost completely reconfigured urban spaces and the public realm of desire. with the possessive drive to accumulate consumer products the traditional conception of liberal individualism is now transmuted into the neoliberal conception of the individual as an active subject where self-preservation becomes open selfishness – an interpretation that was notoriously popularized in rand’s (1964) conception of individualism as concern with one’s own interests. whether or not this is an accurate reading of the original meaning of individual self-preservation in liberalism or even a correct reading of rand’s interpretation of self preservation is irrelevant since the economic agents who have realized neoliberalism and its economic hegemonies have proceeded on this reading of it: enlightened self-interest means “lets all go get rich!” it is no secret for example that alan greenspan, former federal reserve chairman in the us was an avid ayn rand disciple and applied her libertarian principles to his own economic policy decisions. the concept of possessive individualism is directly related to the economic conception of freedom espoused by another icon of neoliberalism, milton friedman, to whose ideas we shall now turn. the economic conception of freedom and corporate capitalist empire in his book capitalism and freedom (1962) milton friedman writes, “it is extremely convenient to have a label for the political and economic viewpoint elaborated in this book. the rightful and proper label is liberalism” (1982, 5). one might be surprised at such a bold act of self-labelling, yet it seems friedman felt the need to correct his detractors who dismissed him as excessively conservative despite his insistence that his theories were rooted firmly in the tradition of classical liberal thought. friedman’s writings have been lambasted as ideological justification for the decline in welfarism and middle-class social stability. he is unapologetic when he writes that, “the scope of government must be limited. its major function must be to protect our freedom from both the enemies outside our gates and from our fellow citizens: to preserve law and order, to enforce private contracts, to foster competitive markets” (1982, 2). in these words, we can begin to see the outlines of features of the contemporary neoliberalism, and we may take issue with them, especially because “protection” gets transmuted into perpetual war, and “fostering competitive markets” has been a dismal failure considering the increasing corporate and financial monopolization of the capitalist business arena and the injustices this has created for workers and for less-than-sovereign consumers. 91 yet friedman lures us with a kernel of political truth when he writes, “economic freedom [is] a necessary condition for political freedom” and “economic freedom is [also] an inseparable means toward the achievement of political freedom” (1982, 4, 8). who can deny that people should be free to engage in the economic exchange of goods and services in a manner that is suited to sustainable living? and yet this self-evident principle of free exchange has become, in the context of neoliberalism open justification for multinational corporations to engage in global pillage in a manner more intensified than during the colonial and classical imperialist eras of capitalism. the political manipulation of legal categories such as “individual rights” has been used to invent legal fictions such as “corporate personhood” as the latest incarnation of the limited liability provisions that were initially granted to business enterprises to give them special status under the law and has been the main legal force legitimating the neoliberal advance of corporate imperialism under the naturalizing ideology of globalization (bakan, 2004, jameson and miyoshi, 1998, gordon, 2010).2 the liberal rule of law or the neoliberal unruliness of law? another fundamental feature of liberalism is the ideal that the law of the sovereign should act as the equalizing instrument in the conduct of civil matters. the idea of governance through law goes back at least to the time of aristotle (384bc-322bc) but was revived in specifically modern ways in the liberal writings of john locke (1632-1704) and montesquieu (1689-1755) among others. even when not specifically invoked the concept of establishing a legal order as the basis for a stable society is among the fundamental tenets that underpin liberalism. the idea that law can serve as an ordering mechanism to furnish justice and address civil wrongs is also commonly associated with the philosophy of thomas hobbes, (especially in leviathan, 1651): that humans are untrustworthy at best and dangerous to each other at worst, and that the domination of the weak by the powerful is a repeating pattern of history that is best managed by a regulating instrument to which all must submit in the attempt to achieve civil order. that instrument is law. politics derived from law founded in the authority of the sovereign state is not only a liberal principle of modern social organization and human regulation it extends back to ancient civilizations as well. what distinguishes the modern liberal orientation of the sovereign political rule perspective is that power is no longer concentrated primarily within the state bureaucracy and its hegemonic structures or on the privilege of a particular noble class, but that legal protection is the right of every individual, with the notable exception of women and children. furthermore, the classical liberal concept of state sovereignty was restricted to domestic politics. strong writes, “hobbes made no attempt to extend the notion of sovereignty beyond state borders” (in schmitt 1996, xxiii). this limited conception is far from the case in the neoliberal present where dominant nation-states claim legal authority to extend their own will to foreign lands by means of military and market forces 2 it is important to mention that friedman’s economic views can be seen as an extension of f. a. hayek’s (1938-1992) view of human nature which embraced a homo economicus conception where people are driven primarily by individual self-interest. a view that conflicts with classical sociological accounts of humans as primarily intersocial beings who function properly in collective groups and cooperative interactions. 92 and thus neoliberal capitalism serves to create a new type of asymmetrical empire with global ambitions (hardt and negri, 2000). in neoliberalism the “rule of law” concept has been distorted to serve the interests of state power (bingham, 2011). post 9/11 anti-terror legislation has been criticized as ushering violations such as the extra-legal rendition and detainment of presumed terrorist suspects, widespread restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly and has been used notoriously to criminalize political opposition in backwards nations (chang 2002). agamben (2005) has explored the political-legal device of martial law employed by states in times of crisis which normalizes authoritarian rule known as the “state of exception.” the state of exception, a political condition initially explored by schmitt (1996) is yet another manifestation of the transformation of classical liberal state into the neoliberal state. the former celebrates the reduction of state power and interference in civic life while the latter has expanded the power of the state as an instrument of force. in the post 9/11 neoliberal state the widespread use of revived categories including “enemy of the state” to prosecute individual citizens who have no terrorist ties whatsoever along with the criminalization of dissent, the lack of protection for whistle-blowers and those interested in protecting freedom of information against the secrecy aims of the security state apparatus are among those targeted in the use and abuse of anti-terror laws. what has become especially apparent in neoliberal global order is that the concept of the rule of law has become inverted. originally designed to ward off against abuses of power, it is now evident that law does not restrain power – instead power makes law in its own interests. this is a significant reversal of the liberal intention to produce a global order based on the kantian ideal of “perpetual peace” (1795) and just system of law that has been the aim of so much effort after the catastrophic wars and atrocities of the twentieth century. a second troubling case of the perversion of the principle of rule of law has to do with the growing menace of political corruption and underground criminality that is creeping into the gaps of economic exclusion left by neoliberalism. in some countries corruption is so completely normalized that political and economic systems are based upon it (cockcroft, 2014). the increase in corruption is correlated with the expansion of neoliberalism, and in this manner criminal economies merge with legitimate economies to convolute the entire program of the rule of law. derrida (1994) refers to this proliferation of organized criminal corruption that is intertwined with and “not clearly dissociated from the process of democratization” as “super-efficient and properly capitalist phantom states” that have successfully evaded criminal legal prosecution (derrida, 1994, 83). neoliberal democracy and its competing identities the concept of liberalism often evokes another master concept with which it is intricately related, that of democracy – an idea from classical antiquity and yet one that has been continuously reconstructed and repurposed by nation-states. democracy has become the basis for arguably the grandest political mythology of advanced liberalism and remains virtually uncontested as the proper and best way to conduct manage government in the attempt to deter a despotic state apparatus. what is minimized also is democracy’s essential connection with capitalism. for what is important to the dominant economically powerful states in relation to other states on the globe is not the extent of their democracy but their willingness to do business. thus, the fiefdoms of africa and the east where presidents often aim to rule for life, the capitalist component of their being seems to far outweigh their 93 lack of a democratic component. yet the concept of democracy persists, even to the point of justifying wars of aggression (the american led invasion of iraq in 2003) which was justified with the express purpose of exporting democracy by force. the operating logic of capitalist democracy is competition: the political agon. liberal democratic power is therefore founded on the competitive mechanism of selection (colaguori, 2012). however, the ideal of free and fair competition in democratic elections is often far from the actuality. the competitive mechanism gets tampered with by both domestic and foreign powers, vote tampering, media disinformation, and other political “dirty tricks,” which influence electoral outcomes. the degradation of democracy into a camouflage for bourgeois hegemonic control was evident early in the twentieth century when politicians developed a type of statecraft based on the open and deliberate manipulation of the consciousness of voters – what walter lippman (1922) in public opinion called the manufacture of consent. the popularity of democracy has also to do with the appeal of the concepts of freedom and human rights with which it is discursively bound. yet, in the context of claiming rights a type of competitive neo-tribalism prevails as cultural, racial, sexual, national, and other identitarian groups are pitted against one another in claiming of rights against the same attempts made by others. the idea of rights as political commodities that liberalism has furnished has become the new ground upon which primitive social conflicts are renewed that can produce resentment creating adversarial identities fuel civil wars, genocides and “inter-ethnic wars [which] are proliferating” (derrida, 1994, 82). the old liberal left was informed by weber’s (1864-1920) concept of verstehen, which can mean empathetic understanding of the position of the other, which compelled those who were targets of discrimination to identify with and support the struggles of other discriminated peoples. neoliberal identitarian individualism dispenses with this empathetic ethic to make a competition of suffering. in such a context there is a competition for rights in a manner that reproduces the ancient agonistic practice whereby one’s own transcendence depends on the negation of the other. the incomplete liberal promise of female emancipation and the neoliberal perpetuation of the patriarchal order of domination how much of humanity continues to remain under the yoke of the patriarchal values and its forms of subservience? how has liberalism managed its official opposition to the patriarchal order in the west, and how has the neoliberal world order failed to address the persistence of patriarchal systems of domination in many other parts of the world where repressive mediaeval codes of honour, shame, blatant misogyny and femicide continue to prevail? – the honor killings, bride burnings, acid attacks, female infanticide, child sexual enslavement, and so on. if we contemplate answers to these questions, we find some disturbing realities which indicate patriarchal forms of domination from female subjection to hypermasculine violence and war continue under neoliberalism. some concrete examples shall serve to illustrate the gravity of the suffering: the ongoing practice of child brides being forcibly wed to often much older males against their will; the growing trade in the sex trafficking, sex-tourism, and enslavement of vulnerable and captured women and girls throughout the world; the systematic exclusion of women in the economic and political spheres of power and decision making and the denial of education for girls in orthodox patriarchates; the ongoing cultural practice of female genital 94 mutilation that is based on denying women sexual pleasure and instead offers a lifetime of physical and emotional pain (hirschi ali, 2006); the practice of honour killing and shaming of females, including in-the-face acid attacks; female infanticide the wilful murder of female babies, and the deliberate abortion of female foetuses amounting to nothing less than femicide (hvistendahl, 2011); the ongoing violence and sexual assault against women, including the violence against women and girls as rape victims in times of war (see oliver, 2007); and further, patriarchy is not always beneficial for males who are the primary victims of workplace deaths, homicide, suicide, and it is predominantly male soldiers who are sacrificed for military ends (dyer, 2004). as j. s. mill wrote in the classic liberal text the subjection of women (1869), “the sufferings, immoralities, evils of all sorts, produced in innumerable cases by the subjection of individual women to individual men, are far too terrible to be overlooked” (1996, 95). and yet the liberal revolution to date has failed to curtail the innumerable patriarchal practices of oppression. j. s. mill is unequivocal in his declaration that, “…the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes – the legal subordination of one sex to the other – is wrong in itself, and one of the chief hindrances to human improvement, and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other” (mill, [1869] 1996, 117). despite the expansion of neoliberal capitalism and democracy – hailed by proponents of progress as forces of justice and equality – the patriarchal order has proven incredibly resilient in remaining intact as the largest, most ancient, all-encompassing social order that merges itself indelibly into the fabric of other spheres of social organization and systems of power. in many non-western nations the situation is dire, and females are at risk of attack by strangers as soon as they leave the protective confines of their home. in india, ironically touted as “the world’s largest democracy” women walk in fear for their lives everyday to the point where men are often seen as predators for women alone and un-chaperoned in public (bannerji, 2016). even in the presumably economically emancipated nations privileged to be included in the exclusive club of the european union such as romania, the patriarchal codes of moral and social regulation remain in full force. consider the prevailing attitudes favouring the patriarchal system that are held by a great number of men, and unfortunately by the many women who lend their support to patriarchy (lerner, 1986) – mill’s observation that arguments in favour of female subjection fail the test of “a preponderating weight of argument against it… the more persuaded its adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, which the arguments do not reach” (1996, 117). conclusion: the sky is falling, the sun is rising the sky is falling. david harvey explains, “the main substantive achievement of neoliberalization, however, has been to redistribute, rather than to generate wealth and income” (2005, 159). wealth redistribution across society is uneven and disproportionately apportioned to the economic elites who ‘own and control the means of production’. this “accumulation by dispossession” (2005, 160) has four main components: privatisation and commodification: the privatization of hitherto public assets; financialization: the everincreasing scale and power of financial institutions; the management and manipulation of crises: the state intervention in bailing out failing businesses etc. thus preventing 95 dialectical change; state redistribution: the state’s attempt at reversing the flow of capital wealth from upper to lower classes (2005, 161-163). beyond the technical aspects of neoliberalism listed above, what other features of social life – the realm of lived experience – are shaped by neoliberalism, its mounting tensions and violent oppositions? we have recourse to the postmodern idea of catastrophic intensification (connor, 1997) which relates directly to what i am naming as the process of extremification as: life conditions for the dispossessed and those who do not fit into neoliberal society are being pushed to the limit of survival globally through wealth disparities, homelessness and psychological trauma; polarizations of power between class and status groups are forming into diametrical oppositions in a manner that is incompatible with liberal conceptions of unity and equality; the polarization of humans versus nature is evident in the realm of the ecological with mass species extinctions, deforestation, and unforeseen levels of pollution globally. the dialectical shifts that would normally arise from such polarizations are not being allowed to unfold into something new due to the efforts of crisis managers who maintain order through coordinated disaster management. there is also what we might term the phenomenological dimension of neoliberalism wherein its extremes are reflected in psychic subjectivity and quotidian experience – this includes the effects of the digital imperialism conducted through mediated image and message culture that includes social media, contributing to the reification of consciousness – themes which shall be considered below. extremification is putting planetary life on the brink (bender and druckrey, 1995). extremification is reflected also in neoliberal terminology, especially in popular discourse so that everyday language reflects the rise of the new reality of conflict and increasing existential tension. the word “impact” has virtually replaced the word “effect” – “middle class” replaces “working class” to eliminate the idea that the vast majority of people are actually and still remain global proletarians. other examples of linguistic forms of the extremification prevail, gen z says “unalived” instead of killed or dead. bombs are referred to as “weapons of mass destruction” and people are compelled to accept that they live within a “military definition of reality” (mills, 1956). the militarization of reality is evident in the sovereignty of force. the greater force prevails over the weaker and the champion is decided based on the supremacy of the capacity to wield violence. extremification flourishes in the global agon where violence, militarization and the militainment are continually celebrated in the media spectacles that constitute such a large part of entertainment culture and furnish the ideological justification for the excesses of neoliberal capitalism (stahl, 2010). some french theorists tell us that the entire social order of diametrical extremes, the “empire of disorder” (joxe, 2002), is driven by the seductive authority of the visual image and its spectacle of hegemonic illusions, today intensified, and personalized by the ubiquity of instantaneously accessible social media handheld communications technology, where “public space is profoundly upset by techno-tele-media apparatuses and by new rhythms of information and communication” (derrida, 1994, 79). john berger (1972) reminded that the visual image itself is arguably the primary icon of modernity. it began with the ideologies of class embedded in classical european oil paintings and moved into advertising images and then onto the visual culture of consumerism at large. now virtually everyone participates in populating the world with consumer images: images of themselves consuming, images of commodities, images of power, violence, wealth, excess, grimacing 96 tough male faces, pouty duck-lipped female faces posing for the camera eye. consumer glamour and branded luxury images remain the dominant themes of the cosmopolitan urban scene and when taken as a whole, this collage of images mystifies one’s ability to understand how the production of wealth and the production of poverty are part of the same extremes of possession and systematic impoverishment (berger, 1972). glamorized images of power and status are highly publicized. what remains mostly unseen are visions of the nihilism of neoliberal decadence: images of the homeless and the poor, of oceanic dead zones and toxic algal blooms, images of the massive garbage waste dumps that are the literal excremental concentrations produced by the cities of excess, of people actually eating garbage to survive – all of which are hidden from the eye of the possessive individual. educators of children should reconsider taking their students to science centres and museums – every elementary school student should be taken on a field trip to a garbage processing site, and to a prison so that the extremes of life close to home are rendered brutally visible. the dialectic of production and destruction that underpins the tension of the neoliberal order benefits nothing from revealing its dark underbelly, just like books on the topic of war are not wont to display images of mangled and dismembered corpses, of dead children and bloodied aid workers and murdered journalists, but instead celebrate the clever tactics of battle. the system of extremification in the neoliberal west promotes itself by showing the glitz and glamor of celebrity, and deliberately avoids attention towards negative underbelly of ongoing carnage. the proliferation of consumer images which once was limited to tarnishing urban landscapes with its “empire of signs” (barthes, 1970) now extends its dominion directly onto people’s bodies in the form of extreme body tattoos, self-harming body piercings as fashionable deformations, and conspicuous-consumption-logo-branded clothing items. visual bondage is the neocolonialism of neoliberalism. in this manner the personal handheld communications device is both the key to cultural inclusion as well as the prime hegemonopolistic object of the neoliberal cultural landscape. it provides the public with technoconnected social relations in an age of the “death of the social” (baudrillard, 1983) just as it parasitizes the very essence of that which is nourishing and affirming in human social relations – friendship is killed off in the name of virtual friendship. the role of the visual image in modernist capitalism was a powerful one but it remained in the background of social life. it pales in comparison to the “empire of the spectacle” (rancière, 2009, 32) in neoliberalism. the image-world, the simulacrum matrix, is now virtually inescapable. to participate in neoliberal society is to be complicit in image consumption. baudrillard (2010) reminds us in the agony of power that hegemony has replaced domination as the primary modality of power in social life. mass public consent to technological immersion, giving in to the ecstasy of the machine, joining life in the circuit of images and consumer objects, clichéd thoughts, memes, and gadgets have become normal and fun and the source of escapist delirium: “human beings… spend their life in full-time alienated performances” (marcuse, 1978). virtually every form of domination identified by early 1900s critical theory is still present today in more extreme forms: slavery, patriarchal sexism and exploitation, racism and discrimination, popular fascism, the exploitation of labour and the reification of consciousness, global warfare and the domination of nature. weather extremes worldwide and global climate disruption effects from droughts to floods, to wildfires, to sinkholes to 97 nuclear plant meltdowns producing displaced and “disposable populations” (holmer nadesan, 2013) – phenomena which are at once both natural(ized) and generated by human action are yet another aspect of neoliberal disorder. as the universal order of life works its way into the particular, individuals assume, absorb and internalize the tensions of the extremified world, and many break down in stress, anxiety and psychological trauma while others revel in it by embracing extreme activities thinking that joining the violent frenzy is somehow a defense against it. the magnitude of psychological stress and human neuroses today is more than a measure of the fragmented consciousness of existential being itself – it reflects a wholesale shift in being itself, far more extreme than the concept of reification indicates. the “horror of the world” (adorno, 1974) is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the stultifying reality that millions of children go missing and are abducted each year, many of whom are likely sold into slavery and sexual servitude to feed the hunger of human depravity. how can one fathom the horror of delivering a child into such a state of trauma? what are we to make of the everyday horrors that humans have created in their “societies”? are we to be left in a state of shock and depression by the awareness of this? no. on the contrary we are to live our lives tempered by the fact that social reality is painful, traumatic and difficult on so many levels. despite capitalist marketplace euphoria derrida cautioned us to the “macroscopic fact” of the age as follows: “the inequality of techno-scientific military, and economic development maintain an effective inequality as monstrous as that which prevails today, to a greater extent than ever before in the history of humanity. for it must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelize in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realized itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity… let us never neglect this obvious macroscopic fact, made up of innumerable singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, never have so many men, women, and children been subjugated, starved, or exterminated on the earth” (derrida, 1994, 85). everyday horrors increasingly include the victimization suffered by the unrelenting commission of criminal acts of all varieties that go unpunished, and that the forces of law and order are simply impotent to prevent and are sometimes complicit. the ongoing daily and random tragedy of vicious acts of criminality where dangerous humans prey upon the vulnerable and the off-guard in the regularized evil that men (mostly) do only increases in times of scarcity and want. the normalcy of global crime is so broad that it produces an underground economy that feeds the agents of corruption with wealth and serves to bridge the legal and illegal economies in such a monstrous way that liberal economic philosophers never even imagined possible, even though slavery and colonialism were rampant throughout the genesis of liberal capitalism. ian taylor, offering a perspective on criminality in liberal-market societies, analyses how the intensified conditions of job scarcity and increased competition for work creates the social conditions where people engage in a heightened form of “in-your-face incivility.” he states that, “the logic of market competition insinuates new systems of social classification and evaluation into just about every workplace as well as into the biographies of just about every working citizen… as “winners” and “losers” [and is] at the core of the defensive/aggressive individualism which many young people exhibit in a “winner-loser culture”” (taylor, 1999, 5). 98 the sun is rising. all freedom begins with freedom of thought. people have not given up hope for a better life as they continue to rethink the norms that maintain the status quo and begin to resist the expansion of domination, political corruption and economic hegemony. new forms of consciousness have emerged such as the public awareness of how the onepercent power-elite control the majority of global wealth. what is now common knowledge was a short decade ago something confined to sociology textbooks. multiple forms of backlash against domination include new types of social affirmation in the forms of social praxis and self actualization: newly invigorated social movements reflecting revolutionary self-assertion, food security movements, human rights movements, environmental movements, anti-violence movements, and more. there are material changes occurring including the rise of non-petroleum-based energy sources and the growing shift away from gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles that may mark the beginning of a shift away from a petroleum industry global hegemony. extreme conditions have their limits. domination is never a complete process. society is in a constant state of flux and change and unforeseen contingencies can influence the course of history in significant ways that can ameliorate or amplify social suffering. the covid pandemic shook up the world of global capitalism, and capitalism struck back with massive layoffs, food and energy price inflation, high interest rates, and record profits for the rich. is there actually a procedural plan to build a political, economic and cultural alternative to capitalism through coordinated planning, or as rancière (2009) suggests change can come from unplanned dissensus: “… there is no hidden secret of the machine that keeps [people] trapped in their place. it would be assumed that there is no fatal mechanism transforming reality into image; no monstrous beast absorbing all desires and energies into its belly; no lost community to be restored. what there is are simply scenes of dissensus, capable of surfacing in any place and at any time… collective understanding of emancipation is not the comprehension of a total process of subjection. it is the collectivization of capacities invested in scenes of dissensus. it is the employment of the capacity of anyone whatsoever… today there is more to be sought and found in the investigation of this power than in the endless task of unmasking fetishes or the endless demonstration of the omnipotence of the beast” (2009, 48-49). references: abercrombie, nicholas, stephen hill and bryan s. turner. 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(2004 [1922]). public opinion. dover publications inc. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review queering representation: lgbtq people and electoral politics in canada edited by manon tremblay. vancouver bc: ubc press, 2019. $34.95 u.s., paper. isbn: 9780774861823. pages: 1-358. reviewed by david girard1 the fight for equal rights for lgbtq communities, while at times slow and exasperating, has evolved significantly over the past fifty years in canada. queering representation brings many facets of this fight to light that have shaped both the experiences and perceptions of lgbtq peoples and concerns. this book is not a history of lbgtq politics, but an academic endeavour to organize how we should approach political representation of lgbtq peoples. manon tremblay’s objective in queering representation is “to explore the relationship between electoral politics and lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and trans and queer people in canada” (p.32), and, in so doing, to “substantiate the idea that political representation of lbgtq people through electoral politics strengthens canadian democracy” (p.33). the book is a “compendium” edited by tremblay, a professor in the school of political studies at the university of ottawa who has published pieces on women, lesbian and gay activism, and politics generally. the compendium includes sixteen other authors as well as a foreword by reverend dr. cheri dinovo (the only woman to have signed “we demand” and the person who performed the first same-sex marriage in canada). some of the chapters in queering representation were discussed at the 2016 canadian political science association congress in calgary but otherwise all of the chapters are original contributions. tremblay divides the book into two unequal parts, the first having to do with voters and the second having to do with representatives. this division highlight’s the book’s emphasis on the practical realities of electoral politics as opposed to political activism. nevertheless, lgbtq activism is not ignored in the text but is instead considered in terms of how it impacts political representation. part 1: lgbt voters comprises four chapters focusing on the lgbtq electorate and their voting behaviours (ch.1), the stereotypes that influence (straight) voters’ views of lgbtq politicians (ch.2), the role of the media in framing perceptions of lgbt candidates (ch.3), and the need for lgbtq representation as an argument for proportional representation (ch.4). part 2: lgbtq representatives could itself be divided into separate parts. the three initial chapters concentrate on canada’s major federal parties: the conservative party (ch.5), the liberal party (ch.6), and the ndp (ch.7). the remaining chapters explore challenges faced by those who seek office and the representational role of out-lgbtq politicians: chapter 8 examines why lgbtq individuals are best suited to represent their own community; chapters 9 and 10 deal with social and cultural prejudices that still impede the election of lgbtq representatives even though sexual orientation is not a barrier to entry; chapter 11 gives a brief 1 david girard is a pansexual philosopher and recent (2021) ph.d graduate from the university of ottawa. their dissertation, the truth of skepticism: philosophy, tragedy, and sexual jealousy, employs interdisciplinary considerations to bring traditional problems in epistemology, such as skepticism, closer to our everyday lived experiences. email: dgira084@uottawa.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research history of proud politics; and finally chapter 12 the authors problematize a range of lgbtq issues such as balancing short-term economic gains against long-term community goals using the experience of krystyn wong-tam as a case study. the afterword by graeme truelove gives a brief account of ndp mp svend robinson’s contributions to the lgbtq community. what i found amazing about this final addition was not the writing (which was enjoyable) but that i had never heard about robinson or his exploits. a cursory search would only reveal that he was the first politician to come out as gay and that he was convicted of theft. while robinson’s coming out has political importance, the significance of being “out” almost pales in comparison to everything else he set into motion. truelove cites that by 1983 robinson had raised lgb issues to parliament more times in a single session than all the sessions of parliament since 1867 combined (p.314), he proposed an amendment to include sexual orientation to the charter (defeated by unanimous opposition of the liberals and progressive conservatives (pcs)), and he proposed amendments to the canadian human rights act to include sexual orientation (‘stymied’ by liberals until 1984) before robinson astonishingly managed to get the pcs to agree to bring the issues to a subcommittee. robinson flooded the subcommittee with witnesses as one of the first large-scale mobilization of lgbtq peoples in federal politics. this led the department of justice to announce that sexual orientation is a prohibited ground of discrimination. this was all before he came out. robinson’s story serves as a ‘moral’ at the end of the compendium, but it would have been more impactful to have the afterword at the beginning as he is referenced throughout the book. this history could have served as a unifying narrative to make the book more digestible. this is, in part, because the first four chapters are a dry read, concerned primarily with lgbtq voter statistics. while these initial chapters are important for framing the rest of the book, the findings could be summarized as being roughly in line with expectations but with nuance. for example, “lgb citizens are almost twice as likely as others to self-place on the left of the ideological continuum” (74). yet even if a group is “likely” to have certain dispositions, not all members share the same views. the authors are keen to remind the reader that just because lbgtq people tend to identify with the political left, this is not something that can be assumed. the middle chapters addressing the three major federal parties highlight this fact, although the way the chapters are framed, as i will explain, come off as a bit misleading. the chapter on conservatives takes a mostly balanced approach by identifying that there is ample room for someone to be both lgbtq and conservative despite the lgbtq community’s connections to the left. the other two chapters fail to achieve this balance for different reasons. the chapter on the liberals focuses solely on the good things the party has done for lgbtq communities without mention of any criticism. when we turn to the ndp in the following chapter, the main criticism against the ndp is that they should abandon homonational politics in favour of engaging grassroots organizations and activists. yet, it’s unclear how the ndp have failed the lgbtq community aside from antiquated homophobic comments from individual mps (of which every party is guilty) and the fact that the party has never held a majority status. when i consider how robinson was in the ndp and how many times the liberals prevented or stood in the way of his initiatives i cannot help but notice that www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the chapter on the liberals lacks the nuance – the balance between praise and criticism – that is otherwise so carefully crafted throughout the majority of the book. this book serves as an entrance to further academic study of lgbtq issues in canadian politics and is a decent introduction to these topics for budding scholars. the authors do a great job of maintaining a balanced approach while engaging many seldom-explored issues. they force the reader to abandon their assumptions by examining the data and problematizing the issues raised by lgbtq voters and representatives without reaching beyond the scope of the book. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review seeking social democracy: seven decades in the fight for equality, by ed broadbent with frances abele, jonathan sas and luke savage. toronto: ecw press, 2023. $38.95, hardcover. isbn: 978-1-77041-738-0. pages: 1-309. reviewed by matt fodor1 seeking social democracy: seven decades in the fight for equality is a collection of short essays and long-ranging interviews with former ndp leader and elder statesman ed broadbent. the book offers a rich and wide-ranging discussion on the theory and practice of social democracy, in canada and around the world, from the perspective of both theorist and practitioner. the format of seeking social democracy is modelled on that of thinking the twentieth century, a collaboration between the late historian tony judt and interviewer timothy snyder, which snyder described as a combination of “history, biography and political treatise.” the book is divided into three main sections: three chapters on broadbent’s life growing up, university education and intellectual influences, and election as an mp from oshawa, the main section of five chapters covering his tenure as ndp leader from 1975 to 1989, and two final chapters on his life since stepping down as leader in 1989, covering up until the present day. broadbent is interviewed by retired carleton university professor frances abele, policy analyst jonathan sas, and jacobin editor luke savage. growing up during world war ii and the immediate postwar years, broadbent described his native oshawa as “working class but by no means poor,” where the “benefits of a strong union – in this case – the united automobile workers – were readily apparent.” the first member of his family to attend university, broadbent studied philosophy as an undergraduate at the university of toronto in the mid-1950s, where he first engaged with socialist literature “of the social democratic and anti-communist variety.” broadbent switched to political science for his ph.d. so he could study with political theorist c.b. macpherson. according to broadbent, macpherson maintained that “the egalitarian parts of liberalism and the freedom of individuals to flourish – were undermined by its long-standing allegiance to capitalism and its promotion of a market society”; broadbent credits macpherson for “showing how capitalism was, by definition, exploitative.” broadbent was also influenced by the work of john stuart mill, particularly in political economy, which was the subject of his doctoral dissertation. according to broadbent, mill combined, “the cooperative ethic of socialism” with “the importance of competition” in order to prevent a monopoly of power in the state or the economy.” broadbent’s academic study and critical reading of mill became “the intellectual foundation” for the ideas he championed in his political career. the two most important ideas were “a commitment to equality” and “a commitment to decommodification.” 1 matt fodor is a political scientist and author of from layton to singh: the 20-year conflict behind the ndp’s deal with the trudeau liberals. www.alternateroutes.ca 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research broadbent joined the department of political science at york university in 1965, but entered electoral politics just three years later, running for mp in oshawa in the ‘trudeaumania’ election of 1968, where he narrowly defeated a long-serving conservative mp. broadbent’s entry into politics coincided with the rise of the new left which questioned the keynesian welfare state and consumer society and left-nationalism which demanded greater public ownership and economic independence from the u.s. broadbent was also initially involved in the waffle, where he wrote the section on industrial democracy, but soon distanced himself from the final document over its rhetoric. moving closer to the mainstream, broadbent ran for the leadership in 1971 against david lewis (as well as waffle leader james laxer) – a move broadbent later regretted as the greatest mistake of his political career. the expulsion of the waffle by the ndp in 1972 – which created a wedge between left intellectuals and the party – unfortunately goes undiscussed. by the time broadbent was elected to the federal ndp leadership in 1975, the world had fundamentally changed. as broadbent notes: “it was…the end of the postwar boom in the west – the golden era of capitalism that consolidated a significant cross-political consensus in support of an expanding roster of social programs and public responsibility for full employment.” the postwar consensus would soon by under assault as politics moved to the ideological right. at the same time, the ndp became more attuned to such issues as feminism, lgbt rights, racial equality and indigenous rights. broadbent also sought to make the ndp a contender for power, and it was under his leadership that the party first adopted modern campaign techniques and hired professional pollsters. the 1972-74 minority parliament achieved progressive reforms but showed the limits of third-party status. broadbent was explicit in his goal of forming government: “from the outset of my leadership, i set out to make the ndp the governing party of canada. that pursuit was not corrupting. i viewed it as a moral imperative.” under broadbent, the ndp sought to leave ‘the conscience of parliament’ behind. in the 1984 election, the ndp had developed an electoral strategy centered around ‘the ordinary canadian’ and the ‘bobbsey twins’ of bay street, where broadbent successfully painted brian mulroney and john turner as interchangeable representatives of corporate canada. the poor showing of the liberals in the election resulted in a caucus that was only slightly larger than that of the ndp. by 1987, the party’s prospects appeared bright; ndp was leading in several national polls and even reached 25 percent in quebec. broadbent went into the 1988 election with the personal hunch of displacing the liberals and forming the official opposition, which would put the ndp “in a strong position to realign canada’s party system so that it reflected the leftright split common in european countries such as the united kingdom and west germany.” but the ndp never achieved its desired breakthrough, in spite of receiving its then-best result of 20 percent of the vote and 43 seats. as is well known, the canada-u.s. free trade www.alternateroutes.ca 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research agreement was the main issue of the 1988 campaign, and the anti-free trade vote coalesced behind the liberals who campaigned more aggressively against the deal. broadbent’s biggest disappointment was the inability to win any seats in quebec, and it was for that reason that he stepped down as leader in 1989. broadbent, unsurprisingly, rejects the claim from critics that the ndp downplayed the issue, noting that the party had strategic and tactical concerns about a central focus on free trade (as polling that suggested that the liberals would be the primary beneficiary). indeed, the 1988 campaign came under heavy criticism from traditional supporters who argued that the party had veered too far from its principles in the pursuit of power and allowed polling to dominate electoral strategy. it was the most centralized, modern campaign up to that time; a discussion about the impact of polling and centralized campaigning could have been fruitful. broadbent was also actively engaged internationally, more so than any other ndp leader. one chapter focuses on his work with socialist international where he served as vicepresident of the organization between 1979 and 1989. while there, broadbent developed a close relationship with its president, west german spd leader and former chancellor willy brandt. broadbent found the discussions “deeply engaging…i learned how various social democratic models worked and about the policy debates found within the different national parties.” following his leadership, broadbent served as the first president of the canadian government organization rights and democracy, which promoted human rights and international development (an organization, after broadbent’s departure, that was dismantled by the slavishly pro-israel harper government). broadbent has remained closely involved with the ndp. he was a strong supporter of jack layton, who he supported for the leadership in 2003 over long-time caucus member and personal friend bill blaikie; broadbent briefly returned to politics during the 2004-2006 parliament. broadbent describes layton’s federal leadership as “instinctively progressive…his instincts were always the right ones.” the historic 2011 election result – which saw the ndp displace the liberals as official opposition and a breakthrough in quebec led many in the party to trust layton as he oversaw a project of bureaucratic modernization and ideological moderation. though it goes unmentioned in the book, broadbent opposed the effort by party modernizers around layton in 2009, who tried to capitalize on the popularity of barack obama and rename the ndp the democratic party. interestingly broadbent, who was involved with the coalition negotiations of 2008-09, now believes the attempt to form a coalition was mistaken, noting there was too much “groupthink” between layton, brian topp and himself, while understanding stephane dion’s lack of legitimacy in the liberal party as well as harper’s ability to attack the legitimacy of the coalition. broadbent supported layton strategist brian topp for the leadership in 2012, and was an early skeptic of thomas mulcair; like many in the party he was concerned that “mulcair was quite conservative in his economic outlook.” to his credit, broadbent publicly questioned www.alternateroutes.ca 4 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research mulcair’s social democratic credentials during the leadership race. for broadbent, mulcair’s centre-right positioning on balanced budgets and taxation, was “not just a serious mistake, but a dangerous one for the ndp’s identity as a social democratic party.” certainly, mulcair took the party further rightward, but it should be noted that a shift to third way social democracy was evident in the 2011 election platform. broadbent is pleased with the leadership with jagmeet singh who is committed to “traditional social democratic principles. he speaks with passion and conviction about inequality, the serious need for action on the environment, and issues of racial justice.” under singh, there has been a shift away from the layton-mulcair third way toward ‘soft left’ positioning. however, the confidence and supply agreement with justin trudeau’s liberals (which occurred after these interviews took place) essentially represented a reaffirmation of the liberal platform and it remains to be seen whether it delivers gains for the ndp. the 1990s saw the emergence of third way social democracy, and broadbent is highly critical of european social democratic leaders such as tony blair and gerhard schroder who pursued the “neoliberal project” and “led governments that introduced privatization and expanded the role of markets in areas that had been previously carved out of the market in the struggle for social rights.” broadbent points to the federal ndp as an example of a social democratic party that did not embrace the third way (there is no mention of provincial governments; since the 1990s ndp governments have accepted the neoliberal parameters). broadbent differs from marxist and left skeptics (including his late spouse, the marxist political theorist ellen meiksins wood) who maintain that global capitalism effectively limits social democracy’s ability to pursue equality: “we haven’t reached the limits of what social democracy can achieve in any society…the adoption of neoliberalism by social democratic parties is by no means inevitable.” but the prospects for egalitarian social democracy appear bleak a generation after the third way was officially declared; as historian donald sassoon put it in his recent book, morbid symptoms, “[t]raditional social democracy…has been comprehensively defeated almost everywhere…most social democratic parties sooner or later embraced a policy of austerity, allowed wages to stagnate and inequalities to increase, and privatised services to an extent unimaginable thirty years ago.” in addition to the interviews and essays, seeking social democracy contains extensive appendices of archival material, including lectures, speeches in the house of commons, and the broadbent principles for canadian democracy adopted by the broadbent institute. for students of social democracy and canadian politics, the book is an insightful and essential read. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 35, 101-117 (2023) just transition in the construction industry: a union’s campaign to create jobs by promoting climate change upgrades in buildings john calvert1 abstract: examples of unions successfully implementing climate change initiatives to reduce energy use and ghg emissions while simultaneously expanding members’ jobs are not that common. this article documents one such initiative: an innovative energy audit program developed by a small construction union, local union 131 of new brunswick and prince edward island, whose members install mechanical insulation (mi) on furnaces, ductwork and pipes. faced with the contraction, or closure, of the traditional heavy industries where its members worked and in response to the failure of the insulation contractors employing its members to find new work in other sectors of the economy the union decided to do this itself. it developed a free energy audit program to persuade building owners of the financial benefits, energy savings and ghg emission reductions from upgrading their insulation. these have lowered building operating costs while achieving climate benefits, healthier indoor air quality, improved temperature control, better moisture management and improved student, faculty and staff comfort. in finding new work for its members using a strategy outside the bargaining table, the union has implemented a just transition program which it plans to expand to hospitals, government buildings, offices and manufacturing facilities. in the process it has raised the profile and reputation of the union in the industry while promoting awareness among members and the wider public of how its work addresses climate change. keywords: climate change; just transition; building energy audits: union renewal introduction the purpose of this article is to document the efforts of local 131, a union representing new brunswick and pei mechanical insulators to expand its members’ employment by establishing an energy audit program to reduce energy use and ghg emissions in buildings. union members install mechanical insulation (mi) on heating, ventilation air conditioning (hvac) systems. starting in 2017, the union has offered free energy audits to school and university building managers to encourage them to upgrade their mi. audits estimate the potential energy reductions and financial savings from mi upgrades. by the summer of 2022 it had conducted audits on 43 schools in 5 of the 7 school districts in new brunswick and three quarters of mount allison university’s 34 buildings, including its 3.5 km of tunnels. implementing audit recommendations has generated work for union members and facilitated a transition from employment in declining heavy industries such as pulp mills and oil refineries. the union is now engaged in expanding its program to other public and commercial buildings. it is unusual for a union to be generating work for the contractors who employ union members. local 131 has pursued its audit initiative quite separately from traditional collective bargaining. it has created large numbers of new jobs employers would not otherwise have found. its initiative shows how a small, provincially based union with an innovative idea can find new work for its members while contributing to address the climate crisis. 1 john calvert was an associate professor at simon fraser university until his retirement in 2021. he researched labour and climate issues as part of a series of four shirc grants, including adapting canadian work and workplaces to climate change. he is currently part of an international research project to promote climate literacy in the apprenticeship program of building workers funded by the federal government’s utip program and administered by the cbtu. maddie crabtree, a recent sfu mph graduate provided research support for this article. 102 the structure of this article is as follows. it begins with a brief account of the impact of buildings as contributors to ghg emissions. it then reviews the evidence that mi can significantly reduce energy use in buildings by making hvac systems more efficient. it next describes the work of the insulator trade and explains why mi is often poorly installed. it then outlines an earlier effort in british columbia to initiate mi energy audits – an effort which, although unsuccessful, provided the model for local 131’s initiative. it proceeds to document the development of the union’s energy audit program and the challenges it faced in gaining acceptance from building managers. next it looks at the actual audits, including the data on energy savings and ghg reductions it concludes by discussing how the campaign has created jobs for insulators, raised the profile of the union and generated heightened member awareness of the value of their trade and their contribution to addressing the climate challenge. the methodology utilizes a case study approach. the research began with a literature search on the impact of mi on building energy use. this confirmed that mi auditing has achieved major savings in commercial and institutional buildings in the us and canada through using thermographic cameras and industry standard software. it documented local 131’s campaign through a series of interviews with joshua sherrard, president of local 131, lee loftus, the former business manager of bc’s local 118, insulation contractors and officials from nb schools and mount allison university. it also analyzed data from the energy audits of several dozen school buildings in five nb school districts and the university. to confirm the accuracy of the findings a draft was shared with public school finance directors, facility managers and a national mi commercial insulation contractor operating in nb. the impact of buildings on climate change the science of climate change is now well established (ipcc 2022). buildings are a major contributor to ghg emissions and energy use globally, making them a key target for climate change mitigation and adaptation. (ipcc 2014; iea 2021). the united nations environment program (unep) noted that, globally, the building and construction sector were responsible for 34% of global energy consumption and 37% of co2 emissions over the lifecycle of buildings (unep 2022). in its 2014 report on climate mitigation, the ipcc devoted an entire chapter chapter 9 specifically on the role of buildings and construction as contributors to global warming (ipcc 2014). lowering energy use and ghg emissions in buildings was a key component of canada’s 2015 paris agreement commitment and the subsequent federal-provincial pan-canadian framework on climate change (un 2015; canada 2016). since then, there has been a veritable snowstorm of legislation at all levels of government to address mitigating or adapting to climate change. the canadian net-zero emissions accountability act of june 2021 gives the federal government the legal framework for significant additional climate commitments beyond its paris commitments. the government expects the building and construction sector to make a major contribution to its objective of lowering ghg emissions by 40 to 45% by 2030 and net zero by 2050 (environment and climate change canada 2021). reducing the climate footprint of buildings and infrastructure is now a central component of canada’s climate strategy. 103 the role of mechanical insulation in conserving energy and reducing ghg emissions there are many ways to improve building energy efficiency such as sealing the building envelope, eliminating thermal bridges, triple glazing windows, installing led lighting, and adding wall and ceiling insulation. however, upgrading mi in hvac systems is a very cost-effective approach (insulation institute 2023). poorly insulated boilers, pipes and ductwork are the source of substantial building energy losses (lang, fraser et. al. 2012). mi improves energy efficiency, reduces ghg emissions, regulates indoor temperatures, protects building occupants from dangerous hot surfaces and reduces noise. it also controls humidity and improves air quality by limiting particulate concentrations, bacteria, vocs and mould in pipes and ventilation systems with corresponding benefits to health and occupant comfort (ashrae 2009; racusin 2017; ashrae 2019; babich and demanega 2020). the importance of building air quality has become particularly significant since the outbreak of covid-19. it may seem simple to put insulation on pipes, ductwork, boilers and other components of hvac systems. but this is not the case. industrial, commercial and institutional systems differ widely in size, complexity and function. (naima 2012; srivastava et al 2020).2 insulation products are produced by different manufacturers using varying materials and technologies (dasdemir 2017). pipes and ductwork can be made of copper, stainless steel, or a variety of plastics and composites. the type and thickness of insulation required varies accordingly. (kumar and kumar 2020; tiac 2021; ashrae 2022; de rosa 2023). thus, installers must know a wide variety of mi applications. local 131’s members have this competency because they have completed a four year red sea; apprenticeship involving 7200 hours of technical and on the job training (ellis chart 2023). the positive role of mi in conserving energy is poorly understood and frequently overlooked by many in the construction industry. (king 2009; h. b. lanarc 2010; crall and king 2011; insulation institute 2019; atienza-márquez 2022 ). contractors often skimp on mi to cut costs knowing that sub-standard work is unlikely to be spotted. building owners usually are not aware of the extent of energy losses from missing or badly installed mi. there is a widespread assumption in much of the building and construction industry that installing mi does not require much skill and can be done by almost any construction worker. hence the way mi is (or is not) installed does not receive much attention, even in buildings that are promoted as low, or zero, energy structures. unlike gas or electrical work, provincial building codes do not require mi to be installed by workers with a provincial trades’ certificate or a red seal qualification. decisions about the qualifications of installers are left to contractors who do this work. in canada’s low-bid, competitive construction industry, it is cheaper for contractors to hire, or sub-contract, to workers without a trades’ ticket. too often they do not have the skills to do the work properly. confusion about appropriate mi standards and lack of attention to installation details means sub standard work often goes unnoticed and its adverse energy impact unmeasured (king 2009; h.b. lanarc 2010). recent literature on the effectiveness of energy conservation buildings has highlighted the ‘performance gap’ in new and refurbished net zero buildings. this is the difference between their designed energy use and the actual energy used by the completed building. (zero carbon hub 2014; calvert 2014; hart and rosenberg 2015; gleeson 2016; aste et. al. 2020;; atienza-márquez 2022 ). numerous factors influence the performance gap, such as flaws in the original design, 2 a more detailed discussion of the various functions of mi can be found on the web page of the thermal insulation institute. https://insulationinstitute.org/ https://insulationinstitute.org/ 104 inappropriate material and equipment substitutes, poor coordination among architects, engineers and contractors during construction and building occupant behaviour (de wilde 2021). however, the energy efficiency of the hvac system is also critical (icf 2022). hvac performance is contingent on all elements of the system being properly insulated so that energy consumption meets design standards such as ashrae 90.1. construction engineers and prime contractors often do not specify the details of the type, quality, thickness, and other properties of mi in the plans they provide to sub-contractors and installers for hvac systems. they rely on those installing the mi to make the right choices. (naima 2010). even where hvac manufacturers and building engineers specify more detailed standards, they cannot ensure those installing mi are qualified and their specifications followed properly (h.b lanarc 2010; gleeson and lowe 2013).this problem is compounded by other trades, or contractors not appreciating the importance of mi and, for example, failing to leave sufficient clearance around pipes and ductwork for mi to be installed properly. mi is not a high priority for most contractors who often fail to give insulators adequate time to install it properly. effectiveness can also be compromised by contractors performing hvac maintenance and failing to put it back properly. as many hvac components are hidden in basements and furnace rooms or within walls, improper installation practices go unnoticed. (lang, fraser et. al. 2012; atienzamarquez, antonio et. al. 2022). this explains why there are often major gaps in the mi in school and university buildings. energy savings from upgrading mi can be substantial. a study in a sample of us schools found that energy savings from properly installed mi amounted to 20% of total energy used (king and crall 2010). a more recent study by ifc consulting found comparable savings in schools from a combination of roof insulation and mi (ifc 2022). the return on investment (roi) for upgrading mi in existing buildings is also normally quite rapid, with costs typically being recovered within a year or two, while producing ongoing savings for decades (h.b. lanarc; 2010). local 131’s efforts to promote the benefits of mi through energy audits the key feature of local 131’s innovative approach to upgrading mi in buildings is free energy audits. audits identify thermal losses from missing, damaged, or improperly installed mi. they measure energy use and ghg emissions and calculate the cost of upgrades to mi. in developing its energy audit program, local 131has built on well-established pathways to improving building energy performance. there is considerable evidence demonstrating how mi energy audits produce major energy and cost savings. (atienza-marquez 2022). for over a decade, the us department of energy’s “save energy now” program has helped numerous industrial and commercial facilities to benefit from energy audits. 3 engineers have been interested in how to calculate the energy impacts of various kinds and thicknesses of insulation. (naima 2010; khan and abro 2018; tiac 2019). with the advance of technology, methods for measuring the energy losses from pipes and ductwork have become more sophisticated. among the most widely used is a system using a thermographic camera to take infrared images of the energy released by hvac components. (flir 2011; naima 2012; fox and coley 2014: kylili 2014; fox and goodhew 2016). thermography can assess heat emitted from pipes and ductwork. 3 see the department’s “save energy now” website. https://www.energy.gov/search/site?keywords=save+energy+now+program. there are numerous examples in the publications of the insulation institute. https://insulationinstitute.org/about-naima/institute-experts/ https://www.energy.gov/search/site?keywords=save+energy+now+program https://insulationinstitute.org/about-naima/institute-experts/ 105 thermographic images are analyzed using an industry standard software package called 3e plus (insulation institute 2023). according to icf international, this is the “…primary tool for measuring heat loss” in hvac systems. (icf 2022 p. 26). 3e plus software includes reference tables to make the needed calculations. according to the us insulation institute, it can determine the appropriate type and thickness of recommended insulation upgrades based on capital costs, labour, fuel use, taxes, installation expenditures and future maintenance costs. it can also estimate the return on investment (roi ) based on fuel costs, interest rates and other factors to give building owners the pay back time for their investment (insulation institute 2023). once building administrators agree to an audit, the union schedules a site visit for a physical inspection and to take thermographic photos. the union then prepares a technical report using the 3e plus software and shares it with the building owner. reports normally include dozens of paired infrared and standard photos of hvac components. by comparing the two types of photos, building managers can see that pipes or ductwork which look well insulated often release large amounts of energy. the union offers audits at no charge because it is difficult to persuade building administrators to pay for an audit when they have no idea whether this expenditure is prudent. a free audit, on the other hand, faces no such barrier. building administrators review the audit reports and decide whether to commission mi upgrades. most school and university administrators are not knowledgeable about the insulation industry so the local provides them with a list of qualified unionized contractors. however, it makes clear that administrators are free to share the audit with any contractor, whether unionized or not, and offer the work to the one who submits the best bid. after a contractor completes the mi upgrade, local 131 returns to do a final quality control inspection to ensure the upgrades meet the audit’s specifications. sometimes this has meant requiring contractors to fix problems identified in the inspection. it is in the interests of the local to ensure that contractors achieve audit estimates of energy saving as this impacts the credibility of the process. while the local does not charge building owners for the audits, it does charge the audit and subsequent inspection costs to the successful bidder. if the work has not been commissioned, the local swallows the audit cost. building on precedents: the bc insulators energy audit program the idea for local 131’s auditing program was developed by bc insulators local as part of its program to encourage building owners to upgrade their mi. (bc insulators 2011; bc insulators 2017; calvert and tallon 2019).the union explicitly linked its campaign to canada’s efforts to lower the climate footprint of the construction sector, using as its moto: ‘saving energy and saving the planet’ (bc insulators 2011). the campaign was triggered in 2010 by the failure of the newly constructed olympic village in vancouver to meet its heavily promoted environmental and climate benefits. the union’s detailed on-site examination of its hvac installations found that much of the specified insulation was either missing, of the wrong type and thickness, or improperly installed. failure to implement industry standard mi practices undermined its sustainability goals. some problems, such as rapidly growing mould, excessive condensation and contaminated air were already emerging during construction (calvert and tallon 2016). that there were problems with poor quality building work in bc was well known as documented by the barrett commission’s extensive report on bc’s ‘leaky condo’ disaster. (barrett 2000) 106 facing resistance from the city of vancouver to its critique, the union commissioned a 74-page report, “pipes need jackets, too” on the state of the mi industry in bc by a well-respected consulting engineering firm (h.b. lanarc 2010). the report documented the widespread failure of the industry to install mi properly. this led to excessive energy consumption, premature deterioration of building components from condensation and shortened life span of hvac systems. it identified major gaps in bc’s regulations and argued for much stronger mi standards in building and energy codes. the union also commissioned an 86-page manual on best practices entitled: “mechanical insulation guide and specifications for british columbia” for the industry (besant et. al. 2012). local 118’s campaign influenced inclusion of more detailed mi specifications in canada’s national building code. additionally, the 2018 red seal revisions included a reference on the benefits of mi in lowering carbon emissions and achieving net zero. drawing on the bc research, the international association of heat and frost insulators international introduced energy audit training for its canadian locals. in 2012, the bc insulators’ union established a not-for-profit company, salamander inspections, to provide free energy audits to building owners to demonstrate mi’s energy and climate benefits.4 the company audited hvac systems in hospitals, schools, and shopping malls in bc, government buildings in alberta and the legislature in saskatchewan hoping that they would encourage building managers to commission mi work. (calvert and tallon 2019). however, the bc insulators could not persuade the managers of the buildings it audited to commission the recommended insulation improvements. senior government officials did not understand – or did not believe – that there were significant potential energy savings. they were also reluctant to commission upgrades as they were not familiar with hvac systems or the insulation industry, so they did not include mi upgrades in their budgets. without buy-in from administrators or contractors or support from government, the bc insulators did not have the resources to continue its free auditing work. however, local 118’s efforts were not in vain. it succeeded in getting changes to building codes and mention of net zero in the red seal standards for apprenticeship training. the international union introduced an audit training program for its locals. most importantly, bc had provided the model for local 131’s subsequent mi auditing initiative. the history of local 131’s mi energy auditing program local 131’s members work in industrial, commercial and institutional settings. until recently, the membership was concentrated in the industrial sector, including pulp and paper mills, oil refineries, electrical power plants and nuclear facilities. the market share of unionized mi contractors in this sector, historically, has been about 95% according to sherrard because the work requires a high degree of skill and careful installation practice. industrial facility managers are acutely aware of their energy expenditures and the costs of faulty or inadequate insulation. accordingly, they have demanded high standards of energy performance from qualified insulators. however, employment in nb’s industrial sector has contracted as companies have downsized or closed. industrial facilities have also become more automated and less energy intensive, impacting insulators’ jobs and employment security. 4 the term salamander has a special significance for insulators as there have been numerous historical references to the ability of the lizard to cope with heat. see: iahfi 2023. the salamander story. 107 however, in the education, institutional and commercial sector, most building owners and managers were not aware of the impact of mi on their energy consumption. consequently, there was a large, untapped potential for expansion. when the union’s audit campaign began in 2017, unionized mi contractors had only about 5% of the work in the education sector. since initiating the audit program, sherrard estimates the market share of unionized contractors has increased to about 85%. expanding in this sector offered new employment for union members, implementing a “just transition” out of declining sectors to new jobs in other parts of the province’s economy (paris agreement 2015; hampton 2015; unrisd 2018). sherrard began performing mi energy audits after taking a thermography course sponsored by the international union in 2017 and a level 1certification course at toronto’s infrared training center. as a result, he felt that energy audits could significantly expand the mi trade in nb. he persuaded the local to invest roughly $10,000 on the purchase of a thermographic camera. he performed his first two energy audits in the elementary and high schools he had attended in the anglophone north school district. the district has about 7,000 students and 29 schools according to its 2021 annual report. it spends about $4 million on energy, annually. he chose the schools because he knew their layouts. he also realized that there would be a learning curve to become proficient in the technology. mr. sherrard knew the finance director and the facility manager personally and persuaded them to allow him to do the audits. the audits found major energy losses in school hvac systems due to inadequate mi, costing the school district significantly, given the high price of the fuel for its heating and hot water systems. upgrading mi could reduce energy use, justifying the investment. the finance director commissioned the work. to find contractors, the school district agreed that mr. sherrard could share the audits with insulation contractors who might be interested in the work. three contractors submitted bids. two were successful. once the work was completed, sherrard performed a second audit at each school to confirm they had met the anticipated reduction in energy use which they did. the district had recently built a new leed certified school as a model for other nb schools. the provincial engineer overseeing the project agreed to an audit to compare its efficiency with the older schools. the audit found a ‘performance gap.’ the new school’s hvac system was no more energy efficient than the older schools. sherrard wanted to expand auditing to other school districts. however, he faced considerable skepticism from provincial building managers about the potential savings. they questioned whether the audit software was accurate and whether the union was competent to use the technology. while sherrard was red seal qualified, he was not a professional engineer, so questions were raised about the accuracy of his audits. however, since he was using the same 3e plus technology that engineers use across north america, the audits met industry standards and could be readily duplicated. his credibility was further supported by the evidence his school district administrator shared about the savings achieved in the anglophone school district. eventually, sherrard met with the nb department of transportation and infrastructure committee to explain the audit process and present the findings from his own school district. this sparked interest within the department and with other school facility managers. his presentation led to four other school districts requesting audits, all of whom now have used local 131’s services. mount allison university had considered upgrades to the mi on its campus. however, it found commissioning this work was not easy. to justify funding a major retrofitting project, it required information on the capital cost and roi to ensure the money would be well spent. without the expertise to carry out mi audits, mount allison was not equipped to make these estimates. 108 identifying competent contractors to complete the work posed further challenges. however, a contractor working with the university on other projects was familiar with mr. sherrard’s school initiative and suggested to the university’s energy manager that it might benefit from local 131’s auditing program. sherrard performed two pilot audits, one on the central heating plant and another a newly retrofitted building. after seeing the high level of technical detail and the projected savings from upgrades, the energy manager decided to commission audits of all 34 buildings on the campus. three quarters of this work is now completed. recently the union has expanded its program to the private sector. it has audited a mccain food processing plant in alberta, two in manitoba and plants in graham falls and florence ville, nb. the audits in provinces outside of nb involve insulators from locals in those provinces, potentially expanding the program nationally, and providing opportunities for other insulation locals to gain auditing experience. sherrard has also contacted several hospitals in pei and is confident that the local can address the complexity of hospital heating and cooling systems. he is also exploring a federal government pilot project to audit six government buildings in nb as well as one with another university. local 131’s audit model: an innovative approach to expanding union jobs as noted, the bc insulators union had earlier initiated an auditing program, similar to that of local 131 but could not ensure that its free audits resulted in contracts to do the work. local 131 took a different approach. it had collective agreements with a number of insulation contractors in the province. based on the experience of the first schools, where audits had been shared with prospective unionized contractors, it decided to make a practice of linking school facility managers to potential contractors. to guarantee competition and give school districts choice, the local normally arranges to have at least three contractor bids per project. as noted, school districts are free to share audits with any other contractors if they feel unionized contractors are not sufficiently competitive. local 131 has developed several quality control measures to ensure mi upgrades meet industry standards. audits provide bidders with detailed information about the work, including a description of the standards of material and workmanship required. sherrard normally offers a ‘walk through’ of the facilities to bidders to explain technical details of the project and the standards to be met. he also informs them that the union will perform an inspection once their work is finished. if the union’s inspection of mi upgrades find they do not meet audit specifications, the local requires the contractor to redo the work. contractors know work must pass inspection, so they have to do it properly to get paid. to ensure installation quality, the union’s audit reports recommend that the work be performed by contractors employing qualified red seal insulators (or apprentices working under them). this is because the mi upgrades must be done properly to achieve projected savings. any contractor employing red seal insulators – both union and non-union can meet this requirement. but unionized contractors always employ red seal insulators, so it is not an issue for them. the union has also signalled to its own members and the contractors employing them that high quality work is essential if it is to continue to find work for them. this is to maintain the union’s credibility. the audit program has addressed a problem faced by contractors. typically, contractors contact potential clients and advertise the benefits of mi. the best way to persuade clients to upgrade mi is through an energy audit. if the contractor does an audit and the prospective client does not proceed, or chooses to give the work to another contractor, it has nothing to show for its effort. however, persuading potential clients to pay for an audit in advance was difficult given that 109 they had no guarantee the audit would lead to cost savings. local 131’s approach eliminated these risks by enabling contractors to bid on jobs after the audits had been completed and building owners had made a commitment to do the work. unionized contractors who have participated in the initiative are now advertising the local’s auditing to other prospective clients. as this generates more work, they have an interest in promoting the initiative. and the union is key to its effectiveness. the union has created an unusual relationship in which contractors depend on it for their work. they, in turn, see it in their interest to promote the union’s initiative. persuading building managers about the climate and energy benefits of mi the local’s initiative has helped facility managers to learn about the energy performance of their hvac systems. sherrard has tried to build relationships with school facility managers and administrators, discussing audit findings with them to ensure they understand his calculations. meeting with finance directors has been important as they are the final arbiters of whether to commission work. they need to feel comfortable that return on investment (roi) projections are accurate. facility managers interviewed commented that during his ‘walk throughs’ he also suggests helpful improvements to other aspects of their hvac systems. they recognize his expertise and appreciate his interest in making their systems more efficient. a factor facilitating the program’s expansion has been the very short time period of the rois compared with other energy saving options. as part of their climate policies, school districts have been exploring energy saving programs such as roof and wall insulation, better windows, leds, low flow toilets and more efficient boilers. however, these investments are expensive, and often take a decade or more to brake even. in contrast, rois for upgrading mi is normally a year or two. the local has recognized that there could be concerns about the fair allocation of contracts, with some contractors having privileged access. any perception of favouritism would undermine the program’s credibility. it deliberately plays a neutral role, leaving contract evaluation to school and university administrators. this is particularly important for the union, internally, because it has members who work with all the unionized contractors. to date, allocations of contracts appear to be fair. for example, in 2021 educational institutions awarded contracts for 16 mi projects of varying sizes. each of the three contractors received about the same dollar value, with some getting more, but smaller, contracts and others getting fewer, but larger ones. the union says it has not received complaints on this issue. a more detailed look at the audits by august 2022, 5 nb school districts had completed mi upgrades in 32 of the 43 audited schools and mount allison university. the following table presents total projected annual energy savings, financial savings, co2 reductions and the rois. they total 22.6 million kbtu of energy, 3,327 megatons of co2 and over five hundred thousand dollars. these are annual figures, so the savings over the lifetime of the upgrades will be substantially more. average roi period is 1.43 years, with the lowest 0.5 years and the highest 3.6 years. 110 table 1: summary of projected energy and cost savings generated by mi upgrading schools contract cost ($) energy savings (kbtu) annual savings ($) co2 reduction (mt/yr) roi (years) school 1 2,961.00 140,448 2,159.00 9.95 1.6 school 2 41,966.00 2,348,299 65,474.00 137 0.7 school 3 43,532.17 862,146 38,512.00 58 1.3 school 4 10,545.22 255,168 7,527.00 14.79 1.6 school 5 7,239.13 154,629 4,547.69 9.39 1.8 school 6 9,312.17 174,689 5,728.00 20 1.9 school 7 21,488.00 2,143,494 26,886.01 123.3 0.7 school 8 5,335.00 50,793 5,913.67 28.38 1 school 9 4,243.00 35,387 3,990.69 18.68 1.2 school 10 3,985.00 76,449 3,045.69 14.73 1.2 school 11 10,656.00 138,271 8,531.00 27.93 1.4 school 12 22,485.00 2,139,657 56,626.90 180.76 0.5 school 13 4,752.00 8446 1,319.88 3.87 3.6 school 14 7,806.00 11,894 5,802.44 18.06 1.3 school 15 29,174.00 1,686,992 45,546.99 148.82 0.6 school 16 12,859.00 25,779 5,942.01 14.18 0.9 school 17 8,020.00 23,548 6,055.40 14.52 1.1 school 18 12,052.00 33,194 8,758.54 21.43 0.9 school 19 5,340.00 25,322 5,185.92 12.24 1.2 school 20 19,981.00 411,957 10,774.00 26.74 1.9 school 21 7,827.00 36,226 5,823.00 13.86 1.3 school 22 10,017.00 20,079 6,006.00 1576 1.7 school 23 8,805.00 19,665 4,972.00 12.32 1.8 school 24 21,264.00 932,606 22,866.50 57.74 0.9 school 25 4,660.00 20,612 3,838.00 8.99 1.2 school 26 16,210.00 488,861 9,131.00 30.63 1.8 school 27 32,153.00 1,438,253 28,958.00 112.37 1.1 school 28 5,554.00 137,958 5,173.00 22.5 1.1 school 29 12,806.00 225,790 8,519.00 37.54 1.5 school 30 7,857.00 94,459 3,501.00 15.75 2.2 school 31 15,595.00 662,394 13,168.00 43.91 1.2 school 32 7,439.00 240,933 4,859.45 19.48 1.5 mt allison 366,490.00 7,584,579.27 95,168.40 483.00 3.6 total 797,447.69 22,648,977.27 528,151.18 3326.91 1.4 source: data compiled from the 33 individual audits conducted by local 131 in addition to seeing the audit program’s overall impact, it is helpful to examine a typical school audit to get a better picture of the long term financial impacts. below is a sample from one audited school. 111 table 2: investment, annual savings, cash flow and cumulative savings for a typical school simple payback period, years 0.9 internal rate of return (roi) 108.80% net present value (unadjusted) $513,009 year investment annual savings cumulative cash flow 0 ($24,711) 0 ($24,711) 1 0 $26,886 $2,175 2 0 $26,886 $29,061 3 0 $26,886 $55,947 4 0 $26,886 $82,833 5 0 $26,886 $109,719 6 0 $26,886 $136,605 7 0 $26,886 $163,491 8 0 $26,886 $190,377 9 0 $26,886 $217,263 10 0 $26,886 $244,149 11 0 $26,886 $271,035 12 0 $26,886 $297,921 13 0 $26,886 $324,807 14 0 $26,886 $351,963 15 0 $26,886 $378,579 16 0 $26,886 $405,465 17 0 $26,886 $432,351 18 0 $26,886 $459,237 19 0 $26,886 $486,123 20 0 $26,886 $513,009 source: data extracted from the mi audit of an anglophone north school district school as the table above shows, the capital investment was fully recovered in operational savings by the end of the first year. subsequently, estimated savings continue to accumulate for the following 19 years. of course, these numbers may change to reflect increases or decreases in fuel costs or any maintenance needed during the period. however, given the very large savings involved, the table provides a reasonable estimate of the financial and environmental benefits. each individual audit contains more detail by identifying the potential savings within hvac components so the building owner can decide to do part of the work one year and the remainder later, giving priority to the components with the quickest roi. this provides flexibility in budgeting, making it easier to do upgrades, incrementally, over several budget years. 112 co-benefits of upgrading mi most public institutions now have policies on climate change. signalling that mi has been refurbished can contribute to implementing these policies. for example, mount allison now references its mi upgrade program in its climate plan. the finance vice president has spoken about the program on several occasions as an example of how the university is following through on its climate commitments. school districts also point to mi upgrades to demonstrate their progress on climate issues. facility managers interviewed noted that mi upgrades improve the health, safety and overall comfort of building users. buildings have better moisture control and less mould and dampness. (ashrae 2020). building air quality is improved. better insulated pipes and ductwork reduce risk of burns from hot pipes and boilers and lower fire risks. improved temperature control makes buildings more comfortable, something students and staff appreciate. it also makes working in furnace rooms more pleasant, while better insulation makes them quieter. the union’s audit program has encouraged building managers to focus on quality in contract specifications. interviewees say they are more diligent in developing specifications in work they commission. quality, not just low price, is now a key consideration in drafting contracts. they are also more concerned to monitor the work and to check that the standards in their contracts are met. the program has encouraged managers to recognize the value of using contractors employing properly trained staff, capable of doing high quality work. the focus on quality makes the low bid ‘cowboys’ far less attractive. managers are now looking for work that meets industry standards and provides long term savings. the union’s audit program also involves checking for asbestos. many older hvac systems were insulated with it, creating significant health risks. asbestos removal is specialized work which requires specific training and extensive precautions. it is essential that those performing work on hvac systems are trained and qualified to do this work. local 131’s members receive extensive training in asbestos containment, or removal, as part of the trade’s apprenticeship program. safe asbestos practice is included in audit recommendations, an important reason that mi contracts should stipulate using qualified red seal trades’ workers. conclusion local 131’s energy audit program can be assessed from various perspectives. it has had significant financial benefits for nb’s education system by reducing energy consumption and fuel bills. it has delivered climate benefits by lowering ghg emissions and energy use. audits have generated new contract work for unionized contractors. they do not have to persuade building owners of the potential benefits of mi. but most importantly, it has created many new jobs for union members and training opportunities for apprentices, while increasing the profile and reputation of the union. there is substantial evidence that net zero construction requires a more knowledgeable, skilled and highly trained workforce. practices that were acceptable in the past when lowering ghg emissions and reducing energy use were not priorities are no longer acceptable. net zero construction requires that every component of a building meets design standards to achieve climate objectives. the insulator union’s emphasis on high quality performance is consistent with the direction that the industry must go to achieve canada’s climate objectives. (clarke and gleeson 2017; cgbc 2019; clarke and sahin-dikmen et. al. 2020). 113 the mi energy audits illustrate the importance of quality work to apprentices in their classroom training. the thermography camera and 3e plus software show the differences between shoddy and quality work. the technology enables apprentices to see the energy savings, ghg reductions and monetary benefits of properly installed mi. it also enables apprentices to assess how they are progressing in the practice of the trade. in showing apprentices the importance of doing their work properly, sherrard believes it is fostering a more energy and climate aware workforce for the future, especially among younger workers. knowing the climate and environmental benefits of their work increases their appreciation of its value to society and is something for which they can take pride. sherrard also believes the audit program has increased respect for the trade, among other trades and in the building industry. his numerous presentations to building managers, school finance directors, university administrators and provincial officials has raised their understanding of the work of the insulating trade and its contribution to making buildings better. it has enhanced the union’s public reputation, both in terms of its commitment to promoting progressive environmental and climate issues and its competence in producing technical audit reports. the audit program has also had a positive impact on members’ perception of the union. when local 131 began the audit program in 2017 some were skeptical, questioning how the time and money required to offer free audits could be justified. other insulation locals in canada were not doing it. it was new and risky, financially, and there was no guarantee of success. there was also concern that the technology might be a tool for assessing their work performance. however, the experience of the program and its success in generating jobs, increasing employment security, raising the profile of the trade, and adding new members appears to have addressed these concerns. local 131’s initiative raises broader issues about the strategy of unions in addressing climate change. undoubtedly, the fact that its members’ work is directly related to saving energy and reducing ghgs has made the audit program attractive. however, it built on the fact that its members had skills that could be exercised outside the declining industrial sector. and while saving energy costs has been the key incentive for schools and the university to upgrade their mi, the fact that the union noted how it met important societal objectives relating to mitigating climate change has also been important. significantly, the local did not limit its focus to trying to persuade contractors employing its members to create more jobs. for they were clearly unable, or unwilling, to do so. instead , it chose to circumvent them by going directly to school building owners, showing them why upgrade work was needed. thus, it created new demand for their work. the union identified where new jobs could be found and developed a strategy for getting them. this process was completely outside traditional collective bargaining. it required the union to recognize the opportunity the audit technology created and to see the potential of the bc insulators audit initiative but apply bc’s idea in a different way. it involved the union learning how to build relationships with school administrators and provincial officials such that they came to recognize the value of what the union offered and the contribution it could make to achieving their energy and climate goals. it also meant having a vision of how the initiative could be expanded from its modest initial success in two schools, to a province-wide program covering five school districts, a university and, more recently, a number of other facilities in the public and private sectors. a lesson from local 131’s experience is that promoting just transition may require unions to develop strategies that go beyond the bargaining table and that identify opportunities in economic sectors outside where members normally work. 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(2018). mapping just transitions(s) to a low-carbon world: report of the just transitions research collaborative. www.unrisd.org/jtrc-report2018 unep.(2021).global status report for buildings and construction: towards a zero-emissions, efficient and resilient buildings and construction sector. http://www.mechanicalinsulators.com/research.htm https://insulationinstitute.org/tools-resources/resource-library/codes-standards/ https://insulationinstitute.org/tools-resources/resource-library/codes-standards/ https://insulationinstitute.org/about-naima/institute-experts/ https://insulationinstitute.org/about-naima/institute-experts/ http://www.unrisd.org/jtrc-report2018 117 unep. (2022). co2 emissions from buildings and construction hit a new high. https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/co2-emissions-buildings-andconstruction-hit-new-high-leaving-sector https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/co2-emissions-buildings-and-construction-hit-new-high-leaving-sector https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/co2-emissions-buildings-and-construction-hit-new-high-leaving-sector alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 35, 76-95 (2025) climate change, coal and cars: commodity fetishism in the energy transition in indonesia tracy glynn1 and siti maimunah2 abstract: the global rush to replace fossil fuels with cleaner forms of energy have generated the conditions for indonesia to become a new resource frontier. the acceleration of extraction and smelting of nickel, in high demand by global manufacturers of electric vehicles, is wiping out island agriculture and fisheries in indonesia. at the same time, coal production in indonesia continues to increase for both export and domestic use, including for the country’s burgeoning nickel industry. in this paper, we present the political economy of the global energy transition as it is playing out in indonesia today, specifically looking at the beneficiaries and losers of nickel and coal production. we then apply the marxist concept of commodity fetishism and gunderson’s critique of the defetishization thesis to problematize the greening of extractivism in indonesia. commodity fetishism involves the masking of the labour expended to produce commodities by treating the commodities as if they are objects with inherent value. the defetishization thesis argues that alternative markets can lead to a less mystified relationship with commodity production by giving consumers information about how the commodities are produced. we join critics of this thesis as it applies to the greening of extractivism in indonesia. a new layer of commodity fetishism is being produced that serves to hide the devastating conditions under which energy is being produced in indonesia. keywords: coal; commodity fetishism; extractivism; defetishization; energy transition; indonesia; nickel. introduction this paper traces the making of indonesia into a resource frontier for renewable energy, growing out of its long and interwoven history of nickel and coal production. indonesia is promoting the expansion of nickel mining as part of its green economy strategy and long-term economic development planning. the contradictions are evident in that indonesia has a stated commitment of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2026 or sooner (iea, 2022) and yet it expands coal production as well as carbon-intensive laterite nickel mining to meet the demand for electric vehicle (ev) batteries, slowing down the transition to renewable energy in the country. indonesia’s energy demands jumped nearly 60 per cent from 2000 to 2021, with coal being used to fill the demand (iea, 2022; sangadji et al., 2025). coal exported from indonesia has also skyrocketed, rising 8 per cent in 2024 from the year before (usgs, 2025). after presenting a brief history and political economy of indonesia’s nickel and coal industries during the colonial and post-colonial periods, we apply the marxist concept of commodity fetishism and gunderson’s critique of the defetishization thesis to discuss how such perspectives can demystify the social relations of fossil capitalism behind today’s so-called green energy transition in indonesia. 1 tracy glynn is an assistant professor in the sustainability and environmental studies program at st. thomas university. the authors wish to thank participants of the ‘green extractivism’ and global commodity chains writing workshop held at the norwegian university of science and technology in trondheim, norway on september 28-30, 2023, for their feedback on an early draft of this paper. the authors also thank alex corey for his helpful feedback on the concepts presented in the manuscript. 2 siti maimunah is a lecturer at the university of indonesia and former national coordinator of jatam. 77 the transition to a future low-carbon economy is linked to an explosion in the extraction of so-called critical metals or transition metals such as nickel, copper and cobalt (hund et al., 2020; iea, 2023), including in former no-go zones like the seabed (lidström et al., 2024). we argue that so-called ‘green extractivism’ involves the expansion of new resource frontiers that is reproducing historical patterns of accumulation and dispossession seen in zones of resource extraction of the past (andreucci et al., 2023; astuti et al., 2025), while also evoking colonial notions that represent local people as being incapable of their own development (andreucci et al., 2023; butler, 2015). the international energy agency estimates that as much as 70 per cent of total nickel demand by 2040 will come from clean energy technologies (iea, 2021a). indonesia is already the world’s largest nickel producer, extracting more than half of the world’s supply in 2024 (usgs, 2025). in the nickel rush driven by market demand for ev batteries, indonesia is opening more nickel mines and smelters, with a much larger footprint – in what the country is calling nickel industrial parks, without taking the pedal off coal mining. this paper challenges climate activists to be attentive to the concrete processes that have been set in motion under the rubric of the socalled energy transition that directly run counter to its intended goals. indonesia’s early history of fossil capitalism fossil capitalism is a concept that links hydrocarbon energy (oil, gas and coal) to the expansion of capitalism and reorganization of global production and accumulation (malm, 2016; marley, 2016). indonesia’s history of hydrocarbon energy and resource extraction predates its 1945 founding as a nation. petroleum was first exploited in the late 18th century in east kalimantan (wood, 1985). the dutch colonial government began mining coal in east kalimantan in 1861 then in west sumatra, starting in 1892. coal extraction continues on these islands today. dutch companies exploited nickel in the sorowako region of the island of sulawesi and began exporting it to europe in the 1930s (sangadji, 2021). prior to the dutch colonial period, nickel mining and smelting in the region were carried out for domestic use (robinson, 1986). under dutch colonization (1861-1941), japanese occupation (1942-1945) and the current post-colonial period, resource exploitation has primarily benefited colonial powers and capitalists, which can explain why indonesia is today on the frontier of a new rush for metals to fuel the renewable energy economy. today, indonesia continues to grapple with the legacy of colonial agrarian laws as communities claiming adat (customary) status refuse displacement and dispossession. the state must decide which territories it wants to recognize as adat and what that means. the dutch east indies put into place laws and policies aimed at supporting private interests (neilson, 2020). from 1830 to 1870, the dutch formally adopted a policy of cultuurstelsel (forced cultivation system) where peasants across java and other areas of indonesia were forced to produce coffee, sugar, and indigo for the colonial administration (neilson, 2020). this unfree form of labour exploitation was replaced by exploitation through private land tenure when the dutch colonial administration passed the 1870 agrarian laws that encouraged domein verklaring (free state domain). the principle allowed the colonial administration to hand over land to private interests and encouraged european investment in large-scale commercial coffee, tea, sugar and rubber plantations (neilson, 2020). if marx and engels (1848) were correct in their assessment that capitalism was establishing itself as a global system that “must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere,” historically it came to be established in indonesia by the armed political power of dutch colonial capital between 1861-1870. 78 after indonesia became independent in 1945, indonesia began a period of self-reliance and non-alignment under sukarno, the first president of indonesia (bevins, 2020), cancelling mining permits issued by the dutch east indies and nationalizing private firms owned by dutch mining companies (project multatuli and singgih, 2024). indonesia’s anti-imperialist posturing ended when western powers including the u.s supported the 1967 military coup in which general soeharto overthrew sukarno. from 1965 to 1966, soeharto, a high-ranking army general, oversaw the killings of approximately one million people affiliated with the indonesian communist party (pki) and political left in the country (bevins, 2020). budiardjo (1986: 1219) characterized the soeharto regime as a “violent and ruthless military bureaucracy” that controlled “all facets of life” and had a “fanatical hatred for left-wing ideology and political islam--two ideologies that have long traditions of mass support in the country.” soeharto’s pro-capitalist interventions, corruption and attempts to squash left-wing opposition did not stop the marxists, scholars and artists, such as indonesia’s most celebrated writer, pramoedya ananta toer, from resisting the regime. many of them became political prisoners, spending years in jail. soeharto introduced the ‘pancasila’ concept, integrating a mixture of five religious and political tenets, under the aegis of which atheists and communists were marked as enemies of the state (budiardjo, 1986; gellert, 2015). with no substantial middle class or national bourgeoisie presence at the time of soeharto’s ascent, petty bourgeois interests threatened by the communists played a key role in advancing soeharto’s authoritarian regime that justified state intervention in the national interest (hadiz, 2004). private interests with political influence and national interests aligned behind a regime that used brutal means to develop the country in their vision (hadiz, 2004). as part of soeharto’s modernization vision for indonesia, his regime used the ‘pancasila’ concept to force people to convert to one of the state’s recognized religions, which had the effect of suppressing ethnic diversity (großmann et al., 2017). furthermore, while promoting paternalistic notions that indigenous peoples of indonesia were backwards and primitive, soeharto engaged in a nation-building program that banned ethnicity, religion, race, and group affiliation in political spheres with a stated purpose of avoiding national fragmentation (großmann et al., 2017). the purging of anyone labeled a dissident or communist and the replacement of nationalist, antiimperialist sukarno with an anti-communist, pro-west soeharto as president of indonesia were huge wins for the u.s. and capitalism during the cold war era when the u.s. tried to stop the influence of the soviet union and spread of communism (bevins, 2020; gellert, 2015; panitch and gindin, 2012). as president, soeharto, backed by the u.s. and other western powers, immediately set out to make foreign investment and economic development the country’s main priorities (bevins, 2020; gellert, 2025). resource exploitation by foreign companies soon became a cornerstone of indonesia’s path to economic development. indonesia treated opposition to resource extraction as an activity that went against state interests and therefore subjected it to varying levels of state repression depending on the location, timing and nature of the resistance. while there are numerous cases of historical and ongoing exploitation of bauxite, tin, gold, coal, nickel, and other metals and minerals to discuss in relation to predatory capitalist interests in indonesia, the following section of the paper will discuss how the nickel operation in sorowako, today majority-owned by vale from brazil and previously by inco ltd. from canada, has operated during different post-colonial eras in the country. this case study will illustrate how laws, policies, institutions and ideologies have served to displace and dispossess people in the interests of mining investors. 79 nickel mining in sorowako the vale operation in sorowako on the island of sulawesi is the longest running nickel mining and smelting operation in the country, established within two decades following indonesia’s independence from dutch colonial rule and japanese occupation in 1945. in fact, vale dates its history in sorowako back to july 25, 1968, one year after soeharto came to power, but the company that founded the operation, inco ltd., had a geologist, h.r. elves, go to sulawesi decades before, in 1937, to study nickel laterite deposits (project multatuli and singgih, 2024). inco benefited from the soeharto’s administration enactment of foreign-investor friendly legislation. soeharto’s 1967 foreign investment law cleared the way for foreign investment in the mining sector, establishing a contract of work system (multatuli and singgih, 2024). basic forestry law no. 5, also enacted in 1967, turned most of indonesia’s forest areas, including the forests around the nickel operation, into state-controlled property that could more easily be exploited (rachman and siscawati, 2016). at the same time, soeharto was negotiating joint ventures with multinational companies. in 1968, pt inco, majority-owned by canadian nickel mining company inco ltd. (taken over in 2006 by vale of brazil) became the second multinational mining investor to sign a joint venture or contract of work with indonesia. with soeharto in power and clearly on the side of foreign investors, companies such as inco ltd. began establishing operations in the country in the late 1960s. ownership of these operations changed hands in the following decades while extraction persisted. post-soeharto governments continued to promote export-oriented mining for revenue and economic development for indonesia (asmarini and munthe, 2017; resosudarmo, 2005). the strategic importance of mining for indonesia’s economy makes resistance to extractivism difficult. extractivism, different than extraction, involves economies built around the extraction, export and sale of resources (acosta, 2013; gudynas, 2018; foster, 2024). such an extractivist mode of accumulation encourages processes of internal colonization, rent-seeking and erosion of local democratic institutions while also exacerbating poverty, local conflict, environmental degradation, gender inequality and other social inequalities (acosta, 2013, astuti et al., 2025). extractivism extends to other economic sectors besides mining, agriculture and logging, such as call centres and sweatshops, and has become a main feature of capitalism (ye et al., 2020). ye et al. (11) argue that extractivist networks are: “void (their debts often are higher than their assets). they do not contribute anything new (they take over and combine already existing resources and apply already existing technologies, etc.), they do not produce value – they just drain value that is produced by others or is lying dormant in the subsoil and they do so through the application of extra-economic power and/or financialization.” furthermore, patel and moore (2017) contend that extractivism reproduces global capitalism through a process that cheapens nature, money, work, care, food, energy and lives. in indonesia, extractivism is supported by the government through investor-friendly regulations and providing permits to both foreign-owned and state-owned mining and logging companies. when soeharto’s indonesia claimed the forests of different customary or ethnic communities across the country as state forest in 1967, it opened the territories to extractivism (großmann et al., 2017; myers et al., 2017). the indonesian state facilitated establishment of the inco nickel mine by forcing people to give up land and shifting cultivation, which they had practiced for generations (robinson, 1986). 80 fig. 1. sorowako residents grow rice and other crops in the shadow of the vale nickel smelter. fourteen karonsi’e dongi and sorowako women interviewed in 2015 said their families grow crops and fish for subsistence or to supplement income earned from contract work at the mining and smelting operations (glynn and maimunah, 2023, 2024). photo by author. the inco nickel operation attracted thousands of people from across indonesia seeking work and a better life to sorowako, transforming the rural community into a bustling town. however, locals have long felt they do not benefit as much as outsiders do in terms of jobs and services. protests against the nickel operation related to unfair land acquisition, environmental impacts and disparate access to jobs and social services date back to the 1970s and have continued sporadically to this day by the different ethnic groups that claim the territory in the mining area, including the karonsi’e dongi and sorowako peoples (glynn and maimunah, 2023). during and following soeharto’s years as president, discourses on nationalism and the ‘asian difference’ (accounts of how modernity was playing out differently in asia than in the west), and indonesia’s nationalized oil and timber sectors delayed some of the neoliberal reforms for a time. furthermore, in southeast asian countries such as indonesia, neoliberalism did not necessarily take the form of a rolled-back state (nevins and peluso, 2008). governments across the southeast asia region, including nationalist governments, made what ong (2006) called exceptions to accommodate aspects of neoliberalism to participate in the global capitalist economy. while some neoliberal reforms were delayed in indonesia, neoliberalism would take hold in the country in ways that benefited the elite with interests in extractivism. these reforms have included lifting of barriers for foreign investment and export-oriented production. such 81 reforms came relatively late to indonesia, since as a loyal anti-communist ally, the u.s. tolerated soeharto’s statist policies (nevins and peluso, 2008; panich and gindin, 2012). the 1997 asian financial crisis and countrywide protests set in motion the end of soeharto’s decades-long reign, which occurred in 1998. international financial institutions pressured the country into making political and financial reforms, including 140 neoliberal structural adjustments (aspinall, 2013; panitch and gindin, 2012). neoliberalism in indonesia is shaped by what gellert (2019) calls an altered state developmentalism, where land rights are nominally acknowledged but the state reinforces an ideology of development that supports free markets as the way to achieve growth and prosperity. indonesia’s economic and political elite support consumerism and point to jakarta’s mushrooming skyscrapers and the country’s growing per capita gross domestic product as evidence of indonesia’s course to prosperity. they argue indonesia can prosper if it curbs corruption and educates its populace (gellert, 2015). however, this neo-modernizationist development model will not solve the country’s structural inequalities because it is “a vision of life for a privileged and transnationalised segment of the population” (gellert, 2015: 308). indonesia, known as one of the ‘tiger cubs’ or ‘little dragons,’ remains home to stark contrasts of immense wealth next to severe poverty (astuti et al., 2025; tadjoeddin et al., 2021). critics of ahistorical neo-modernization theory do not share the elite’s optimism that indonesia’s economic and social problems will dissipate through individual responsibility and consumerism (gellert, 2015). accused but never convicted of war crimes, retired army general susilo bambang yudhoyono was elected president in 2004 and again in 2009. yudhoyono, trained by the u.s. military, oversaw indonesian soldiers sent to occupy east timor in the 1970s when indonesia committed acts of genocide (budiardjo, 1986). before yudhoyono left office, he banned raw metal ore exports so that firms would build smelters and create jobs (asmarini and munthe, 2017). in 2017, the joko widodo (jokowi) administration eased the ban on exports of nickel and bauxite ores (warburton, 2018). jokowi promoted state-led development and continued the resource nationalism set in motion by yudhoyono, nationalizing some of the assets held by multinational mining companies in the country, including those controlled by freeport mcmoran (kim, 2022). the country’s elite, many with fortunes made from mining and extractivist policies, has enormous political clout in post-soeharto indonesia. electoral politics in indonesia is a transactional space for the country’s oligarchs to further their power and fortunes. local regent and governor candidates pay enormous amounts of money to run in elections. an electoral politics of this nature serves the elites who can sponsor their candidate or themselves. for example, jokowi’s vice-president was yusuf kalla, founder of the kalla group. the kalla group has interests in mining, energy, construction, finance, automotives, among other sectors (kalla, 2025). while indonesia is said to be on a path of democratization following the fall of soeharto, the economic elite in indonesia continues to exercise its power, compromising democratization efforts. besides controlling who runs and gets elected in indonesia, private resource and energy interests maintain close relationships with village heads, customary chiefs and army officers. they take advantage of ambiguous laws and their weak enforcement to grab land and resources for their own benefit (bakker, 2016; li, 2014). despite the promises of regional autonomy laws that passed in 2001 to decentralize government and give local people more power over their affairs, the indonesian state and its functionaries still possess a large degree of power in local matters. furthermore, the patronage being handed out at the local level is driving a ‘decentered clientelism’ that supports neoliberalism on the ground as it also hinders state-led development efforts and contributes to the fragmentation 82 of various government and civil society institutions (aspinall, 2013). promises of decentralization have yet to be realized due to a powerful oligarchy that controls electoral politics and large sectors of the resource economy. outside institutions have also affected the way that decentralization has played out in indonesia. the world bank and international monetary fund have promoted decentralization ostensibly to put local resources in the control of local people. however, the international financial institutions funded the design and technical assistance of such decentralization efforts in the neoliberal vision (aspinall, 2013). the suite of policy prescriptions imposed on indonesia have included privatization of state enterprises, deregulation to facilitate free markets, reduced social spending, and legal protections for property rights. while the indonesian state implemented numerous neoliberal economic reforms to obtain loans from these institutions, the country has continued to own and control many sectors of its economy (aspinall, 2013), including mining. indonesia’s state-owned company, antam, has owned or co-owned several mining ventures with multinational mining corporations across the country since 1968 when it formed from a merger of several state-owned mining companies (antam, n.d.). national and local governments have made weak attempts to make resource extraction more beneficial to local communities, while it continues to deny people of sorowako and across the archipelago from fully benefiting from the extraction of resources from their land (glynn and maimunah, 2023, 2024). local government officials have periodically attempted to increase the benefits and amount of revenue from the inco mining operations but with little success. for example, in 1999, local government officials where inco operates requested that the contract between inco and the government of indonesia be reviewed, but they later backed down when inco threatened international arbitration against such an action (mizwar, 2003). governments prioritize investment and employment from mining and therefore undertake policies to support their continued presence. vale (n.d.) employs 2,934 workers at its indonesian operations. the power of the mining company to intervene in national policies has been evident in its ability to obtain favourable laws, taxes and government regulation, even when this means contravening laws written for environmental protection. for example, after banning mining in protected forests, the government introduced a regulation in 2004 that allowed some investors, including inco, to mine in protected forests. this regulatory exception has remained in place even though a constitutional court ruling recognized the negative effects of mining in protected forests (maimunah, 2012). since the advent of colonial rule and capitalism, enclosures and commodification of the land and people for government-backed megaprojects such as mining have been resisted (sangaji, 2007; tsing, 2002). states have used their repressive apparatus to allocate resource-rich land to private interests or national enterprises, including state-owned oil, gas, mining and timber operations, and plantations (nevins and peluso, 2008; tadjoeddin et al., 2021). in sorowako, community members have long resisted the acquisition of their land for mining (glynn and maimunah, 2023). mining interests in indonesia have also benefited from new laws and initiatives that prioritize attracting investments, including by categorizing nickel mining and processing as a national strategic project (astuti et al. 2025) and the omnibus job creation law passed in 2020 (jatam, 2020). the law aims to make it easier to do business in the country through simplifying licensing processes, land acquisition and environmental impact assessments, and providing more incentives to free trade zones that benefit foreign investors including in the mining sector (jatam, 83 2020; unctad, 2020). the job creation law as well as amendments to the 2009 mining and coal law have been protested by jatam, indonesia’s mining watchdog (jatam, 2020). in summary, indonesia’s colonial past followed by the 32-year authoritarian reign of soeharto and the post-soeharto neoliberal period have all shaped the nature of resource extraction in the country and forms of resistance to that industry. the state remains captured by capitalists and a political elite and is thus unable to fully implement the kinds of democratic and economic reforms that could more fully benefit local populations affected by resource extraction. while resistance to the dispossession caused by mining has become more open following the fall of soeharto, local opponents continue to be repressed and criminalized. ‘green extractivism’ or a third layer of commodity fetishism? increasingly, scholars and activists are calling for climate solutions to go beyond ‘green extractivism’ that favours external accumulation at the expense of locals, often the rural poor (bruna, 2022). extractivism must be understood in spatial terms, as a chain of processes from digging through to transportation, burning, smelting, consumption and waste disposal (martin, 2017, 23; martinez-alier & mariana, 2016). ‘green extractivism’ refers to a paradox where a colonial and destructive mode of extraction and accumulation is hailed as a climate solution (dunlap et al., 2024). ev demand has grown sharply in recent years (iea, 2023) as state actors commit to stabilizing the global average temperature to no more than 1.5 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels (ipcc, 2018). states have supported a slew of ineffective market-based and technological solutions to the climate change problem. the case of indonesia demonstrates how the selected means for ending climate change can conflict with the stated aim. expanding nickel production to meet ev battery demand runs up against the state’s commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2060 or sooner (iea, 2022). before covid-19, the jokowi government announced it would reduce its dependency on coal-based power generation. however, in response to the pandemic, the government made the coal sector eligible for a six-month 30 per cent tax reduction and additional fiscal incentives. these developments contradict the aim of reducing coal-based power generation and further increase indonesia’s dependence on coal extraction (quitzow et al., 2021). the rate of growth of coal power production in indonesia is currently among the highest in the world. the world’s largest coal exporter (iea, 2024), indonesia is also the world’s third largest coal producer (jong, 2023). indonesia burned 33 per cent more coal in 2022 than the year before, contributing to a 20 per cent increase in the country’s carbon emissions from fossil fuels, making indonesia the world’s sixth largest carbon dioxide emitter (jong, 2023). the expansion of nickel mining and processing has led to the clearing of more forests and land on the island of sulawesi (fig. 2), the maluku islands of north maluku, halmahera and obi, and west papua. strip-mining of nickel from sorowako’s forested hills continues to be smelted with power from coal and hydro-electric dams (glynn and maimunah, 2023; sangadji et al., 2025). coal mined in kalimantan is exported to not only global markets but also to sulawesi and java where it is consumed in power plants and at nickel industrial parks (nasir et al., 2022; ordonez et al., 2022). meanwhile, refining, precursor, cathode, and battery factories are located on the island of java (adhiguna, 2024). this is only one example of the many trans-territorial extractivist chains that exist across the archipelago (fig. 3). dominating the global nickel supply chains are chinese companies such as huayou cobalt and catl that are engaged in nickel smelting, refining and battery manufacturing, and some 84 nickel mining in indonesia. the batteries are predominantly produced in china for leading global ev manufacturers including germany’s volkswagen, bmw, and mercedes-benz, and u.s.-based tesla (sangadji et al., 2025). in just three years, indonesia has signed deals worth more than us$15 billion for battery materials and ev production with other manufacturers including hyundai and lg (jo, 2024; lotulung, 2024). fig. 2. strip-mining of nickel from a hill behind one part of the town of sorowako in 2015. photo by author. according to former president jokowi, indonesia can become the largest ev producer by 2027 if it integrates nickel production with copper and bauxite while pushing for the wider use of evs. the emissions growth from expanding ev production and mining will likely render the country’s decarbonization plans impossible (deny, 2023). in 2020, jokowi put an end to raw nickel exports and encouraged the construction of nickel smelters around mining sites in the form of industrial parks (astuti et al., 2025). following the export ban, indonesia became the world’s largest producer, with nickel production increasing from 606,000 mt in 2019 to 1 million mt in 2021 (astuti et al., 2025). the value of indonesia's nickel exports rose from usd 4 million in 2017 to usd 34 million in 2023 (edy, 2023). however, the downstreaming (known as hilirisasi in indonesia) of nickel is not without its critics. local communities and organizations that support mine-affected communities such as jatam and walhi continue to raise alarm about the social and environmental impacts of the nickel industrial sites while members of the national elite, many of them coal mining magnates, spread sovereignty concerns related to china controlling the nickel supply chain (riyanto et al., 2025). 85 fig. 3. map of indonesia depicting key sites of nickel and coal production and consumption. nickel mining is occurring in sorowako and other locations on the island of sulawesi as well as on the islands of maluku and west papua. coal mining is occurring in kalimantan and being exported outside the country as well as shipped to sulawesi and java where it is consumed in power plants. refining, precursor, cathode, and battery factories are found on the island of java. despite broad evidence of environmental and social harms associated with nickel mining and smelting (glynn and maimunah, 2023, 2024; nasution et al., 2024; sangadji et al., 2025), nickel, because it is a key ingredient of ev batteries and other renewable technologies, is being called a green commodity or a green energy metal (vikström, 2020). the energy transition is said to depend on its sustainable supply (basuhi et al., 2024). the international energy agency predicts evs and battery storage will replace stainless steel as the largest end user of nickel by 2040 (lotulung, 2024). indonesia is again becoming a commodity frontier of nickel, this time in the form of battery-grade nickel. commodity frontiers are defined as “processes and sites of the incorporation of resources into the expanding capitalist world economy” (beckert et al., 2021, 435). such capitalist processes have transformed and destroyed vast natural landscapes, and acquired more land and labour (beckert et al., 2021). an astonishing 116 nickel smelter projects are operating at various stages of development in the country. just ten years ago, there were 31 such projects. forty-seven nickel smelter projects are currently in operation (project multatuli and singgih, 2024). based on the government of indonesia’s nickel mine operation data, there are 329 nickel mining companies operating in the country with a total concession of 836,000 hectares (sangadji et al., 2025). besides brazil’s vale and japan’s sumitomo metals, china’s tsingshan holding group, france’s eramet, switzerland’s solway investment group and several indonesian companies, including antam are mining and smelting nickel on the islands of sulawesi, maluku and west papua (globaldata, 2024; project multatuli and singgih, 2024). in 2023, vale and sumitomo, ranked in the top five of nickel producers in the world (globaldata, 2024). 86 processing indonesia’s nickel for ev batteries is particularly carbon intensive. indonesia’s laterite nickel requires more processing to become battery-grade nickel than sulfide nickel ore found mostly in canada, russia and australia (mudd, 2010). indonesia’s laterite ore resources are estimated to release two to six times the amount of carbon dioxide emissions as producing batterygrade nickel from sulfide deposits (iea, 2021b). also, most nickel smelters in indonesia are powered by coal (jong, 2024; lotulung, 2024). besides the carbon footprint of the nickel operations, nickel mining and smelting in indonesia is dangerous with abysmal working conditions, frequent workplace accidents, injuries and deaths, and sites of forced displacement of indigenous peoples and livelihoods, land disputes, pollution of the air, water and fishing grounds, deforestation, increased incidences of landslides and flooding, and increased food insecurity and violence (andreucci et al., 2023; astuti et al., 2025; glynn and maimunah, 2023, 2024; nasution et al., 2024; riyanto et al., 2025). sangadji et al. (2025) refer to the mass deforestation of the halmahera rainforest for the industrial weda bay nickel project as genocide against the indigenous o’hongana manyawa people. fewer than 500 people remain in the area today, a significant drop in population from around 3,000 two decades ago. rapid industrialization at other sites of nickel production in the country is associated with increased crime and drug abuse, the introduction of sex work, and garbage pollution (riyanto et al., 2025). nickel smelters pollute the air with sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and coal ash as well as fine particles that affect respiratory health. to transform nickel ore to battery grade nickel involves less conventional methods, such as high-pressure acid leaching which produces toxic waste (lotulung, 2024). the nickel industry has been turning to deep sea tailings disposal to dump its waste (andreucci et al., 2023). sulawesi fishermen near the nickel operations must travel further into the sea to catch fish and are spending more money on petrol (lotulung, 2024). indonesia as well as guatemala and the philippines are places where human rights violations are linked to the development of the world’s largest nickel mines (glynn and maimunah, 2023, 2024; müller and reckordt, 2017; nolin and russell, 2021). these countries are also among the world’s deadliest countries to be an environmental defender. in 2023, 17 of the 196 environmental activists killed or forcibly disappeared were in the philippines, four were in guatemala and three were in indonesia (global witness, 2024). indonesia’s nickel industrial parks have a larger ecological footprint (sangadji, 2019). for example, the indonesia morowali industrial park, a sprawling 10,000-acre industrial site that includes 50 factories and employs around 66,000 workers, 6,000 of them from china, is producing stainless steel, carbon steel, high carbon ferrochrome and nickel pig iron. the site also has a lime plant, coke plant, acid plant, port facilities, airport, three mosques, dormitories for workers, and a four-star executive hotel (chen, 2023; lotulung, 2024). ten years ago, the industrial site was rainforest (nasution et al., 2024). land use changes have been linked to the loss of fish for a community traditionally reliant on fishing (chen, 2023). the company boasts being able to source abundant higher grade nickel ore which is banned from export. it also has reduced its electricity costs by having a 1.26-gw power plant on site that is powered by coal sourced in indonesia (bria et al., 2025). the vertical integration at these industrial parks involves using nickel ore and coal power to produce a higher output of stainless steel or other nickel products at a lower cost. nickel is found in the stainless steel in our forks and weapons, and now in ev batteries. as consumers of nickel, we do not think of the social and environmental harms associated with nickel’s transformation into a commodity. commodities are goods produced to be exchanged in the market for capital accumulation. for marx (1867), the commodity form obscures the social 87 relations through which the commodity came to be, namely the labour expended in the production of commodities. his concept of commodity fetishism describes how commodities are treated as objects with inherent value. according to marx’s labour theory of value, the value of a commodity is measured by the average number of labour hours required to produce that commodity (marx, 1867). furthermore, commodity fetishism naturalizes capitalism by making it seem as if capitalism is governed by “natural laws” rather than something that can be radically transformed. the commodity form and relations rooted in commodity production turn people into things and grant social characteristics to commodities (marx, 1867). allen and kovach (2000) introduced the concept of defetishization to describe the way that green food markets can potentially combat what marx (1867) called the “mysterious character of the commodity form.” organic food labels are said to partially demystify the consumer’s relationship with food production by providing information about the conditions under which the food was produced. such a defetishization process is supposed to challenge people to think critically about the food system, but gunderson (2014) argues it encourages people to think of themselves as individuals and consumers, and not as responsible members of a collective. such neoliberal subjects are also said to not consider themselves as even a bearer of rights (brown, 2015). the elite can continue buying a green status, symbolically displaying they are more careful consumers (gunderson, 2014) while the poor are scapegoated as the cause of environmental and social problems through their individual choices as consumers. commodities bestowed with the honorific of ‘green’ and ‘ethical’ fail to fundamentally counteract the pervasiveness, scale and harms of capitalism (gunderson, 2014). ethical consumerism does not defetishize the commodity form but to the contrary adds another ideological layer of fetish, further masking the harms of capitalism and shutting down critical interrogation of the contribution of the commodity form itself to the extractivist degradation of the environment. gunderson (2014) argues that the defetishization thesis claims alternative markets can lead to a more honest, less mystified relationship with food production and, in turn, strengthen civil society but that it really doesn't, and in fact, adds a third layer of commodity fetishism. similar arguments can be applied to so-called green energy production. in 2019, amnesty international challenged ev manufacturers to commit to sourcing “ethical batteries” (andreucci et al., 2023). while the intentions behind such calls are laudable, this sort of civil society participation unintentionally contributes to the third layer of commodity fetishism since it ignores and therefore hides important critical interventions that expose the inherent exploitation found in how batteries are produced under capitalist social relations. providing consumers with more knowledge about the products they consume generates the illusion of greater consumer power over the impact of their consumption, while averting their focus from a wider sociological lens able to see how their individual choices are embedded in society, specifically the social relations of production that take place not for social need but for unlimited accumulation, which entails the endless transformation of nature into a field of extraction (foster, 2024). renewable energy expansion is expected to reinforce extractivist dynamics of global dependent peripheries. ‘decarbonisation by dispossession’ is occurring where renewable energy expansion in the form of unprecedented mining in the global south is disproportionately harming rural populations already historically marginalized (andreucci et al., 2023). in the case of nickel, this expansion contributes to ecological destruction and territorial dispossession, human rights abuses and violence (glynn and maimunah, 2023, 2024). decarbonizing economies in the imperial cores is resulting in green sacrifice zones across the globe (andreucci et al., 2023). 88 green extractivism, a term coined in 2017, tries to square sustainability goals with environmental destruction caused by industries under capitalism (dunlap et al., 2017). in indonesia, such green extractivism involves a larger environmental footprint with nickel industrial parks occupying an even larger area than previous nickel mining operations. such parks have been described as ‘sacrificial zones’ that vertically integrate production chains with the goal of reducing costs to enhance profits (naryono, 2023). green extractivism generates new and more extensive extractivist chains and draws in new resources such as rare earth metals, widening the hunt for raw materials (dunlap et al., 2017). expanding on the ideas of marx, foster et al. (2011) argue that capitalist relations to nature involve it continually creating metabolic rifts and shifts. capital extracts more than can be replenished, exceeding natural capacities, while at the same time shifting environmental problems, either geographically, or through a change in production methods, that in turn create new forms of environmental harms. the global climate movement’s emphasis on electrification of society is being used to justify increased exploitation of metals, continuing metabolic rifts with nature that make it a false climate solution. to be ecologically sustainable, capitalism would need to slow economic growth, so it does not overstep natural limits, and plan production to meet the basic needs of human beings and the rest of the biosphere. however, capitalism is growth-dependent and exists to expand and accumulate capital. as economies grow so does environmental degradation (foster, 2024). as seen in indonesia, in capitalist societies, energy production exists to increase profits, not to produce energy per se, as a social need to be satisfied. gunderson (2014, 114) points out that the notion of ethical or green consumerism involves a third layer of commodity fetishism: commodity fetishism still naturalizes capitalism, as it always has—indeed, shopping to create a better world presupposes that one conceives capitalism as a given, absolute entity, favorable, or, at the very least, exceptionally malleable—but now the very same mechanisms that cause capitalism’s discontents are marketed as their own remedy, thereby making radical, structural change unappealing and seemingly preventable. gudynas argues that a just energy transition must involve “indispensable extraction,” that is extraction that is only “genuinely necessary” (andreucci et al., 2023, 7). for others, climate solutions must involve a fundamental break with capitalism and colonialism (malm and carton, 2021; foster, 2024; sultana, 2023). for sultana (2024, 6), decolonial climate solutions that respect planetary boundaries involve a “fundamental reformulation of paradigms and solidarities rooted in justice and meaningful praxis.” when considering the burden placed on local communities affected by nickel mining in indonesia, for the global decarbonization effort, astuti et al. (2025) argues for a “community-centric justice” focused on the lived experiences of those most harmed by extractive industries to imagine and realize more equitable and just outcomes. conclusion the global rush to meet the demand for metals for electrification in place of fossil fuels has caused new frontiers of capitalist resource extraction. indonesia is just one location where capitalists have captured the climate crisis for their own gains, peddling the idea of ‘green extractivism’ when the driving motive is capitalist profit. dispossessed peoples are left with degraded environments and rendered unable to survive from renewable sources that once sustained them. 89 while the rush to transition from internal combustion engine vehicles to rechargeable battery-based vehicles is supposed to reduce the carbon footprint of transportation, nickel production for ev batteries has an immense carbon footprint (climate rights international, 2024), which furthers our argument that extractivist chains are ultimately not green. large-scale resource extraction and firms specializing in frontier ‘green’ technologies in indonesia operate in overlapping geographies with millions of people who continue to farm, fish and access the forest for a living. it is a region of immense biodiversity and resource wealth but also severely degraded landscapes, soils and waters (struebig et al., 2022), globally known for its endangered orangutan and extinct tigers. the archipelago is home to 17 per cent of the world’s bird species, 16 per cent of the world’s reptile species, 12 per cent of the world’s mammal species and 10 per cent of the world’s flowering plant species (von rintelen, 2017). mining is just one industry destroying habitats, a driving force of biodiversity loss in indonesia (von rintelen, 2017). in june 2025, the indonesian government halted four of five nickel mining permits on the raja ampat islands in west papua, citing concerns over marine pollution and deforestation. a designated unesco global geopark, the islands are home to 75 per cent of all known coral species (jong, 2025). however, at other nickel production sites, the pollution continues. chromium-6laden sediment pollution is killing aquatic life around the harita mining operation on halmahera’s obi island (moore, 2025). residents blame black dust from coal burning at the morowali nickel industrial park for causing respiratory illness (handayani, 2025). forging ahead with an economic development path that prioritizes extractivism and supplying resources for global markets, indonesia is likely to continue its repression of local resistance. prabowo subianto, an army commander under soeharto, was elected president in 2024. prabowo’s cabinet includes the most-ever members with military or police backgrounds (priamarizki and hairpin, 2024). as expected, community leaders demanding an end to the pollution at nickel production sites are being criminalized (moore, 2025). preliminary research on energy transitions shows it is replicating problems associated with the pattern of ‘resource frontiers’ of the past (beckert et al., 2021; garcía and fold, 2022). using the cloak of climate action, indonesia is mining nickel to put more evs on roads. indonesia aspires to have 2 million electric cars and 12 million electric two-wheelers by 2030 (huda et al., 2025). the world’s largest nickel producer, indonesia supplied over 50 per cent of the world’s nickel in 2024 (usgs, 2025). at the same time, indonesia has become the world’s largest coal exporter in 2024 (iea, 2024), a process of carbon lock-in initiated by former president jokowi (ordonez et al., 2017). applying the concept of commodity fetishism to today’s green energy transition serves to disrupt the spell of ‘green’ consumption that restrains our ability to solve the climate crisis by transforming our present social relations of fossil capitalism. indonesia provides an illustrative case study of the importance of breaking with fetishistic notions that cars can be green. 90 references acosta, a. 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at the institutional level, the dynamic between bureaucratic and democratic centralism; at the level of class struggles, the dynamic between corporatism and universalism. interpreted through these categories, passive revolution becomes a valuable tool both to overcome the fallacies of contemporary critical theory as well as to understand the challenges faced by anti-capitalist movements today. keywords: gramsci; passive revolution; hegemony; critical political economy; critical theory introduction one of the main theoretical references that critical scholars have relied upon in the last few decades in order to provide a non-deterministic 7 gianmarco fifi is a phd candidate in the department of politics and international studies at the university of warwick. the dimensions of passive revolution | 55 understanding of capitalist dynamics is the work of the italian marxist antonio gramsci. since the translation of the prison notebooks into english and the publication of the complete critical edition edited by valentino gerratana, gramsci’s thought has produced a polymorphous variety of interpretations and applications that testify both to the liveliness of his thought and to the contemporary value of investigating it. in particular, the present paper will consider the contemporary relevance of the concept of passive revolution, suggesting that this could be a fruitful tool to understanding changes and stabilities in the order of capital. the concept of passive revolution carries great political value. in fact, it tries to respond to a fundamental question: ‘if the proletariat had emerged in many european countries as a collective social and political actor in the wake of industrialisation, why had the deepest crisis of capitalism not led to a revolution, but rather to various forms of capitalist reorganisation?’ (roccu, 2017, 538). far from being an out-of-date problem, this is a crucial question today as the global financial crisis of 2007-8 has not been followed by any substantial paradigm shift. the relevance of the term, however, is far from being an original contribution of the present article. in fact, the notion of passive revolution is nowadays a constant point of reference not only for gramscian scholarship but also for fields as diverse as historical sociology, ethnography and international relations (allinson and anievas, 2010; bruff, 2010; mckay, 2010; nash, 2013; simon, 2010; wanner, 2015). the variety and extension of the work provided on passive revolution in the last decade would in fact suggest a more conscious and parsimonious use (callinicos, 2010). in what follows, i will argue that in order to conceive passive revolution as a relevant tool for understanding contemporary capitalism, we should firstly rethink its very connotation. according to peter thomas, passive revolution for gramsci meant ‘a distinctive process of (political) modernization that lacked the meaningful participation of popular classes in undertaking and consolidating social transformation’ (thomas, 2013, 23). thomas argues that ‘[i]n a certain sense, the concept has almost become synonymous with modernity, which is now viewed as a melancholy tale in which the mass of humanity is reduced to a mere spectator of a history that progresses without its involvement’ (2006, 73). coming back to the prison notebooks, i shall argue that in case we are to accept the former point – passive revolution as synonymous of modernity – we necessarily need to criticise the second one concerning the position of the so-called subaltern groups within the process. in this sense, responding to the recent season of studies on passive 56 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life revolution, the present paper will suggest that this can be seen as a synonym with modernity only so long as the passivity of the masses is not conceptualised as imposed by exogenous forces, but always-already incorporated in their everydaypraxis. in particular, three main interrelated dialectical relations will be identified as being key to understanding both passive revolution and the struggle against it: at the ideational level, the dialectic between common sense and good sense; at the institutional level, the dynamic between bureaucratic and democratic centralism; at the level of class struggles, the dynamic between corporatism and universalism. a close investigation of these categories in gramsci’s oeuvre is essential in order to see how the different dimensions of passivity are not merely imposed on subaltern groups, but rather represent the effect of their own shortcomings, that can always be turned into a revolutionary upheaval. the present paper will be structured as follows. firstly, i will discuss current approaches to the concept of passive revolution, particularly focusing on its recent reception in studies in critical political economy. secondly, i will provide a critique of current approaches to the term and, coming back to the prison notebooks, i will suggest an alternative reading revolving around the aforementioned categories. in particular, i shall argue that it is only by seeing the seeds of capital restructuring already at play in the every-day practice of the subaltern groups, that gramsci is able to think their potential for emancipation. ultimately, i will conclude by summarising the possible contribution of a renewed understanding of passive revolution for both studies in critical theory and for redefining the challenges of anti-capitalist movements today. domination without hegemony? passive revolution in the literature recent scholarship touching upon the notion of passive revolution, particularly within critical political economy, has revolved around the issue of how far we can extend this concept and the extent to which this is an apt representation of how changes and stability work in contemporary capitalism. three main interventions have been recently made in this regard. firstly, adam morton suggests that passive revolution today is a ‘portmanteau concept that reveals the continuities and changes within the order of capital’ (2007, 68). in this sense, morton agrees with peter thomas in arguing that passive revolution has become almost a synonym with modernity, and a particularly apt notion to explain both capitalist state formation and maintenance (morton, 2010, 322; see also mckay, 2010). the dimensions of passive revolution | 57 in critiquing such an approach, alex callinicos argues that this definition brings about an issue in terms of distinguishing different situations. in this sense, passive revolution would lose its own specificity thus becoming ‘a distinction without difference’ (2010, 505). relying on gramsci’s uses of the term, callinicos argues that, for example, the analogy between risorgimento and fordism fails to recognise a crucial difference between the two processes. only the former seems in fact to appear as a plausible representation of passive revolution inasmuch as ‘the ancien régime has given way to a society in the capitalist mode of production prevails’ (ivi, 498). it is thus argued that the emphasis should be placed on the passage from one mode of production to another, not extending the use of passive revolution to transition within capitalism. in fact, callinicos continues, neither fascism nor fordism produced a systemic transformation and thus these are better seen as ‘counter-revolutionary projects that seek to manage the structural contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, not the accomplishment of socialist transformation by other means’ (ibidem). callinicos thus concludes that what we need is a more restricted understanding of passive revolution, in order not to make it interfere with other concepts such as that of counter-revolution. a third approach that tries to integrate the previous two interpretations is the one delineated by roberto roccu, who criticises morton for the over-extension of its use of the term while at the same time contesting the idea that passive revolution somehow needs to produce a transition to a new mode of production, as in callinicos. in particular, roccu stresses the importance that the partial fulfilment of people’s demands has in what gramsci defines as passive revolution – something that finds only limited echo in morton’s formulation (roccu, 2017, 549). whilst such a discussion is certainly of theoretical relevance, i shall argue that the extension or limitations of passive revolution can only be rethought via a renewed understanding of gramsci’s usage. notwithstanding the differences highlighted in the previous conceptualisations, in fact, the three authors tend to agree in understanding the outcome of passive revolution as being ultimately in the hands of the ruling classes – something that seems in contrast with gramsci’s treatment in the prison notebooks. the existing literature acknowledges that the phenomenon of passive revolution originates from the limits of bourgeois rule (morton, 2013, 55). in this sense, the process is seen to represent a response to dynamics that ruling circles do not directly control. these dynamics can vary from crisis-induced contradictions amongst ruling class fractions in which its progressive force tends to deteriorate (q1§44, 42), to external shifts in the 58 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life accumulation process forced by uneven tendencies in capitalist development (morton, 2011, 36), or from subaltern challenges to the established hegemonic bloc. nevertheless, the outcome of passive revolution is often seen as heavily dependent on ruling classes’ power. in his book on mexico, morton proposes two definitions of passive revolution: first, ‘a revolution without mass participation, or a “revolution from above,” involving elite engineered social and political reform that draws on foreign capital and associated ideas while lacking a national-popular base’ (ivi, 38); second, a situation in which ‘a revolutionary form of political transformation is pressed into a conservative project of restoration’ (ivi, 39). although, the two definitions are in some respects different, they both imply a top-down force that produces a conservative form of change, either by not including the subalterns in the process or by displacing their demands. this might be only a matter of emphasis. in fact, morton acknowledges that in the process of passive revolution a significant role is played by the shortcomings of counter-hegemonic projects. for example, he argues that, [i]n the case of italy, the “passive” aspect refers to the restrictive form of hegemony that emerged out of the risorgimento because of the failure of potential ‘jacobins’ in the partito d’azione to establish a program reflecting the demands of the popular masses and, significantly, the peasantry (morton, 2013, 52). in addition, many of morton’s analyses of gramsci’s texts as well as applications to concrete examples remark the importance of acknowledging the limits of movements of opposition vis-à-vis capital, and of not considering bourgeois rule as a ‘quasi-automatic’ process (2011, 46). this is shown, for example, by his sensitivity towards the backwardness of the italian peripheral forces in southern italy before the risorgimento (2007, 62), as well as towards the lack of a united front based on the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry during the revolutionary upheaval in mexico (2011, 45-6). yet, morton never theoretically elaborates on what the key features of such shortcomings are and on the extent to which these influence and facilitate capitalist restructuring itself. for this reason, passive revolution is ultimately seen as a process in the hands of the ruling bloc – that, although at times is forced to accommodate requests from below, it always does so within the existing social the dimensions of passive revolution | 59 formation given its privileged position within the state (ivi, 53; sassoon 1987, 207). in analysing the italian risorgimento, for example, whilst acknowledging the deficiencies of the action party, morton ultimately sees passive revolution as representing ‘the inability of the ruling class to fully integrate the producer classes through conditions of hegemony’ (morton 2007, 68). given the absence of hegemony, he adds, the state becomes crucial in order to further capitalist dominance (ivi: 102). morton applies similar considerations to the process of capitalist developments in mexico, where the peasants’ revolution ended up being offset by ‘mexican populism’ that had ‘counterrevolutionary roots based on the domination and manipulation of the masses behind the façade of revolutionary rhetoric’ (morton, 2011, 48). in this sense ‘passive revolution … is a revolution, marked by violent social upheaval, involving a relatively small state class engaging with “the acceptance of certain demands from below” in order to restrict class struggle, while insuring the creation of state power and an institutional framework consonant with capitalist property relations’ (morton 2013: 54; original emphasis). in morton’s account is implied something that we will see developed more clearly in callinicos and roccu: namely, a juxtaposition (rather an interrelation) of the revolutionary upheavals of the subaltern and the potential for the ruling classes to restructure order and hegemony. rather than seeing the former as limiting (and potentially impeding) the possibility of the latter, morton seems to argue that the more requests from below become pervasive the more the ruling classes’ privileged access to the state becomes crucial in order to restructure society. this point will be better explained by referring to the arguments made by callinicos and roccu. postulating or presupposing? the antithetical treatment of the antithesis roccu attempts to move beyond morton’s interpretation, suggesting that the emphasis should be placed on the partial fulfilment of people’s demands which, he argues, is exactly the means that produces masses’ passivity. he acknowledges the ambivalence of gramsci’s application of passive revolution, as in some occasions this ‘is presented as a residual strategy deployed to maintain power when hegemony is lacking (“dictatorship without hegemony”)’, whilst in other passages of the prison notebooks ‘passive revolution seems to occur under conditions of limited, fractured, hegemony, when a class or fraction thereof is hegemonic towards some others but not across society’ (2017, 546). such a remark, however, does not result in a sceptical position as in callinicos. in fact, roccu is convinced that we can extrapolate a core from gramsci’s multi-facet 60 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life engagement with passive revolution. this core is made of four elements, of which the first two are presuppositions, the third has to do with its specific method, and the fourth with its outcome. the first element is linked to the international situation that in periods of structural changes requires ‘from specific state formations an attempt to developmental catch-up through transition, both from a non-capitalist to a capitalist mode of production…and between different regimes of capital accumulation’ (ivi, 545). secondly, roccu refers to gramsci’s use of hegel’s categories in order to contend that passive revolution also presupposes a thesis that, despite its limitations, ‘develops to the full of its potential for struggle’ (q15§11), while the antithesis is incapable of doing the same. thirdly, in terms of method, roccu argues that crucial for passive revolution is an heavy reliance on state power by the ruling classes in order ‘to weaken and defuse the political potential of subaltern classes’ (roccu, 2017, 545). lastly, as it pertains to the outcome, passive revolution combines a real transformation, ‘either towards or within capitalism’ (ivi, 546), and, at the same time, the ‘partial fulfilment and displacement of the demands raised by the embryonic subaltern bloc’ (ibidem). this attempt at extrapolating the core of passive revolution from gramsci’s writings is certainly valuable if one wants to define the limits and potentiality of the term, perhaps moving beyond both morton’s overextension and callinicos’ excessive scepticism vis-à-vis its use. yet, what is puzzling in roccu’s formulation is that the weakness of the antithesis is emphasised as being both a presupposition and a result of the process. this already makes it difficult to understand what the contribution of passive revolution would be, if the passivity that this is supposed to impose on the subaltern bloc (ivi, 550) is in fact there from the beginning. on the other hand, this basic presupposition is questioned by roccu himself. in fact, when criticising morton for under-appreciating the role played by the partial fulfilment of popular demands, he argues that much more emphasis should be placed on ‘the presence of a vigorous antithesis prior to a passive revolution’ (ibidem; my emphasis). also callinicos (2010, 501) makes the same point, as he argues that actually the vigorous antithesis is a basic feature to a passive revolution. the justification for this idea is found in a quote from notebook 15, where gramsci (q15§62, 1827) argues that ‘the conception [of passive revolution] remains a dialectical one – in other words, presupposes, and indeed postulates as necessary [presuppone, anzi postula come necessaria], a vigorous antithesis which can present intransigently all its potentiality for development.’ callinicos seems to completely misread the meaning of this formulation, as he takes it to suggest that the dimensions of passive revolution | 61 in order to have a passive revolution we need a strong antithesis. gramsci’s position is actually the opposite: it is in order to avoid a passive revolution that the antithesis needs to develop to its full potential. this is clear already from the quoted note q15§62, where gramsci provides the aforementioned argument in order to prevent any ‘historical defeatism’ and ‘fatalism’ associated with the term passive revolution, particularly in reference to the italian risorgimento. in fact, he also adds that passive revolution is not to be understood as a political program, but rather as ‘criterion of interpretation in absence of other active elements in a dominant manner’ (ibidem). this becomes even more evident when looking at gramsci’s treatment of the risorgimento and the relation between the action party and cavour’s project of modernisation. borrowing an expression of vittorio emanuele ii, he argues that the moderates had their opponents in their pockets, given the latter’s inability to form a real hegemonic alternative to cavour’s leadership (q1§44, 412). in fact, ‘the moderates represented a relatively homogenous class … whilst the action party was not based on any historical class and the oscillations that its governing bodies experienced ultimately followed the interests of the moderates’ (ivi, 40-1). for gramsci, the moderate bloc should be understood as being a dominant class in two manners: ‘it is leading [dirigente] of the allied classes and dominant [dominante] of the opposing classes’ (ivi, 41). the distinction between leading and dominant is often understood as marking two opposite alternative forms of government, which would give the ruling classes the option to choose according to the specific situation to use coercive mechanisms in order to retain power when hegemony is absent. nevertheless, gramsci promptly remarks that a certain class must possess political hegemony before taking governmental power, and also once it has become dominant ‘it continues to be “leading”’ (ibidem). the example of the risorgimento proves exactly this. in fact, the moderates ‘continued to lead [dirigere]’, and not merely to dominate, ‘the action party also after 1870.’ it is, thus, exactly thanks to this cultural and political subalternity of the antithesis that the ruling bloc is capable of using the state as a means to integrate also the sporadic active elements in the opposing forces (for example, through the phenomenon that gramsci names trasformismo). the emphasis on the presupposition of a strong antithesis seems also to remove one of the two preconditions that roccu argued were constituting the core of gramsci’s concept: namely, a lacking antithesis. in this sense, passive revolution seems to describe two possible situations. on the one hand, a situation in which 62 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life both capitalist class and its opponents are weak; on the other hand, a condition in which they are both powerful at the same time. this schematic and abstract representation already shows something interesting regarding current approaches to the term: namely, the fact that thesis and antithesis are not dialectically related, but rather abstractly juxtaposed. the growing power of the antithesis does not per se reduce the potential for the thesis to respond, but rather surprisingly increases it. conversely, the weakness of movements of opposition is not seen as necessarily implying a relative position of dominance for the ruling classes. the result is that passive revolution is invoked to represent a situation of relative equilibrium between opposing fractions, with the necessary clause that at the end the struggle is going to be solved by the favourable position of the ruling bloc within the state.8 this is further proved by the fact that both in callinicos and roccu passive revolution is seen as opposed to counter-revolution and hegemony, two situations in which the capitalist class is thought as being relatively stronger than its opposition. failure to link the lack of a strong antithesis to the empowerment of the dominant class, ultimately forces us to view passive revolution as ‘a backup strategy for a ruling class that fails to be hegemonic and thus relies on its control of state power and a favourable balance of political forces to perpetuate its own political dominance under new structural conditions’ (roccu, 2017, 556; my emphasis). hegemony and passive revolution: the zero-sum game of political struggles degenerations of such an approach could be found, for example, in ian bruff’s account of agenda 2010 in germany, where passive revolution is explicitly contrapposed to hegemony (bruff, 2010; see also coutinho, 2007 and losurdo, 1997, 155). it is true that gramsci himself refers to certain historical developments to be the result of a condition of ‘dictatorship without hegemony’ (q15§59); yet, if taken literally, this formulation can be highly misleading. the reason for this can be exposed by looking at gramsci’s treatment of the disaggregation and reconstruction of the hegemonic group after world war i. gramsci’s line of thought is the following: 8 this approach can be seen also in roccu’s (2017, 555) treatment of the tunisian restructuring after ben ali’s overthrowing, considered as exemplary of what gramsci calls passive revolution. roccu, in fact, seems not to consider the absence of a jacobin moment in tunisia as the primary reason for capitalist restructuring. the dimensions of passive revolution | 63 first of all, why has it disaggregated? perhaps because a strong collective and antagonistic political will has developed? if that was the case, the problem would have been solved in favour of this antagonistic force. it has disaggregated, rather, because of purely mechanic causes of different type: 1) because great masses, previously passive, started moving [sono entrate in movimento], but in a chaotic and disorganised movement, without direction, i.e.: without a precise collective political will; 2) because the middle classes that during the war had a position of leadership and command, have lost it during the time of peace … 3) because the antagonistic forces resulted incapable of organising for their own advantage such disorder (q7§80: 912-3; author’s translation and emphasis). it is certainly true that there is a substantial difference between a purely a-critical mass of people that passively accepts the ruling order (thus fully accepting its position of leadership and command) and one that moves against it, though in a chaotic and un-organised manner. however, as it is clear from this passage, the absence of an organic collective will is the ultimate reason why oppositions do not manage to move beyond, and thus end up re-precipitating into, the previous hegemonic bloc. here it is probably worth referring to what ernesto laclau and chantal mouffe, in a rather critical account of gramscian understanding of hegemony, define as the ‘zero-sum game of political struggles […] where a failure in the hegemony of the working class can only be followed by a reconstitution of bourgeois hegemony’ (2014, 59). this means that passive revolution, in gramsci, should not be seen as opposed to hegemony; but rather as describing a situation in which failures to produce a creative moment force the subaltern to recapitulate, nolens volens, into the previous hegemonic bloc. as it has been argued in this section, current approaches to passive revolution not only are at times philologically inconsistent with gramsci’s text but they also present at least three issues in the conceptualisation of movements of opposition and their relation vis-à-vis capitalist restructuring. firstly, the great emphasis placed on the potential of the ruling bloc to use state power seems to undermine (both theoretically and practically) any potential for revolutionary politics. secondly, and connected to the first point, the aforementioned approaches are unable to account for strengths and weaknesses of movements of resistance vis-à-vis capitalist restructuring, mainly because they do not see the two 64 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life realms as dialectically interrelated, and a strengthening of the former could always be repressed by impositions from the later. in fact, and this is the third point, the strong antithesis of the subaltern, even when emphasised, appears as being never enough when compared to capital’s ability to restructure the social order. in what follows, i will suggest that engaging with gramsci’s notion of passive revolution could be useful to move beyond these fallacies. in particular, i shall argue that it is only by seeing the seeds of capitalist restructuring always-already at play in the every-day praxis of the subaltern classes, that gramsci is able to conceptualise the potential for revolutionary politics. passive revolution in the prison notebooks: passivity revisited given the aforementioned criticisms to current approaches to passive revolution, this section will argue that antonio gramsci’s conceptualisation of changes and stability within the capitalist society has the potential to re-establish a connection between struggles and socio-historical development. against the general conceptualisation of current studies that think the gramscian analyses of passive revolution as a process that is ultimately in the hands of the ruling classes, i suggest that this is better understood as being based on the passivity of a potentially transformative agency. the notion of passive revolution was firstly formulated by vincenzo cuoco, who employed it in order to understand the lack of involvement of the popular masses in the neapolitan revolution of 1799. gramsci argues that whilst cuoco meant it as a ‘warning to create a national mood of greater energy and popular revolutionary initiative’, the term was soon converted by the moderates and the neo-guelphs ‘into a positive conception, into a political programme’ that concealed ‘the determination to abdicate and capitulate at the first serious threat of an italian revolution that would be profoundly popular, i.e.: radically national’ (1971, 59f, q10§6, 1220). the idea of passive revolution as a process crucially dependent on the shortcomings of subaltern groups is well encapsulated in a note that gramsci writes in notebook 8, where he criticises the idea of mechanicism as explaining capitalist stability. gramsci argues that: when the subaltern becomes diligent and responsible, mechanicism appears sooner or later as an imminent peril […] the limits and the dominance of the force of things are restricted, why? because, at the end, whereas yesterday the subaltern was a thing, today he is not a thing anymore but a the dimensions of passive revolution | 65 historical person; whereas yesterday he was irresponsible because he resisted an external will, today he is irresponsible because he does not resist, despite being an active agent. but has he ever been mere resistance, mere thing, mere irresponsibility? certainly not, and that is why it is always necessary to demonstrate the futility of mechanic determinism (q8§205, 1064; author’s translation). stability is thus not the product of external impositions, rather it is dependent on the passive role played by the subaltern groups that (actively) help in reproducing the current system of exploitation.9 in fact, gramsci warns us that ‘it is never to be forgotten that historical development follows the laws of necessity only so long as the initiative has not decisively passed on the side of those forces that aim at the construction according to a plan, of pacific and sympathetic division of labour’ (q14§68, 1729; author’s translation). passivity is thus related to the lack of political initiative of the subalterns. in this sense, gramsci not only provides us with useful theoretical tools to criticise the vulgar materialism associated with nikolai bukharin that understands the subaltern classes as ontologically deprived of will. the prison notebooks conversely criticise the idea that the masses are always-already active. in fact, as he argues in a famous passage, ‘the philosophy of praxis […] is not an instrument of government of the dominant groups in order to gain the consent of and exercise hegemony over the subaltern classes; it is the expression of these subaltern classes who want to educate themselves in the art of government and who have an interest in knowing all truths, even the unpleasant ones, and in avoiding the (impossible) deceptions of the upper class and – even more – their own’ (gramsci, 1995, 3956; q10§41xii, 1320). continuity in the order of capital is thus not rooted in external impositions or in the rationalisation of society operated by institutional apparatuses, but rather in the self-deception of potentially oppositional social groups. therefore, a strong antithesis, rather than being the basic condition for a passive revolution, as callinicos and roccu would have it, is the primary antidote to it. it thus becomes crucial to understand what is involved in the passage from a state of passivity to one of creative activity. returning to the prison notebooks, three overlapping dialectical relations are identified as being key to 9 for a similar argument see finocchiaro, 1973. 66 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life gramsci’s understanding of this relation: at the ideational level, the dialectic between common sense and good sense; at the institutional level, the dynamic between bureaucratic and democratic centralism; at the level of class struggles, the dynamic between corporatism and universalism. this analysis is not meant to suggest an abstract fragmentation of gramsci’s holistic thought. as i will show, in concrete situations, these dimensions are indeed very much interrelated. the purpose of analysing them separately, however, can be seen as threefold. first, it will help me to emphasise gramsci’s treatment of the manifold roots of popular passivity and its implication for rethinking popular agency. secondly, i will be able to demonstrate that such passivity is not seen as being imposed on the subaltern through the backup strategies of the ruling class, but rather it is always part of dynamics internal to the subaltern themselves. thirdly, i will argue that gramsci takes such passivity as the main reason why the ruling class is capable of keeping and reinforcing its position of dominance. i will thus argue that it is on these levels that the prison notebooks identify the challenges faced by revolutionary projects, that do not limit themselves to accept the already established structures, but want to engage in the creation of a new state. for the reasons highlighted in the previous section, these dimensions can also be seen as different levels on which the ability of the subalterns to emancipate themselves from pre-established hegemonies – and thus create their own – is articulated. in turn, i will take into consideration both the role that they play in the perpetration of capitalist dominance as well as the political project that they point towards if one wants to overcome it. common sense and good sense as anticipated, the struggle against passive revolution at the ideological level is identified with the dialectic between common sense and good sense. in gramsci, this dichotomy is at the core of the relationship between intellectuals and people-nation. whilst common sense is an incoherent stage of opinion formation, good sense is realised once people begin to think coherently and organically to their everyday life experience, thus producing their own intellectuals. in the prison notebooks good sense is thus the embodiment of philosophy in society. gramsci significantly argues for a strict connection between philosophy and common sense, suggesting that we would need a history of common sense in order to investigate the genesis of the problems that are reflected only in a minimal part in the history of philosophy. this would ultimately ‘help to demonstrate their real value (if they still have one) or the significance that they the dimensions of passive revolution | 67 have as overcome links of a chain and to individuate the new and actual problems or the actual stage of old problems’ (q11§12, 1383; author’s translation). the value which is alluded to here is that coming from the connection ‘between intellectuals who “know” and the “people-nation” that merely “feels”’ (fontana, 2015, 57). these two are strictly connected, as there is no ‘high culture’ that has not germinated from everyday-issues and, conversely, no philosophical speculation is meaningful if it is unable to speak to people’s problems. the prison notebooks thus recognise both the importance of and the necessity to overcome common sense, thought as both being the necessary point of departure of critical intellectual activity and, at the same time, as one of the main obstacles that keep the subalterns in their position of passivity and prevent them from becoming hegemonic. therefore, not only is there a common ideological feature shared by both fragmented common sense and what gramsci calls ‘high culture’ (alta cultura) – that proper to those intellectuals that construct a coherent philosophy detached from the masses and functional to socio-political domination. more radically, for gramsci, these are two sides of the same coin: ‘high culture’ can be coherently articulated and used as a means of dominion only so long as common sense is fragmented and incoherent. the prison notebooks thus radically detach themselves from the physiological readings of ideology à la bukharin, also developed by the idéologues. it is ultimately the recognition of the historical, thus potentially criticisable, nature of ideas to give the ‘philosophy of praxis’ its nondeterministic character. ideology, for gramsci, is not a pre-constituted set of ideas that is to be merely installed by the dominant groups into the minds of the subaltern classes. this is ultimately far from a coherent monolith: ‘[s]ome participate in ideology because of their position in the world of production, others for their participation in disaggregated world of common sense; there are those that produce ideology from their position as great intellectuals and those that do so as simple “clerks of the dominant group”’ (filippini, 2012, 94; author’s translation). this manifold manifestation of the ideological production points also to the fact that the incoherent rejection of the ruling class’ intellectual production, per se, does not imply a complete emancipation. an example can be found in notebook 3, where gramsci discusses the position of peasants in southern italy (defined as morti di fame, the ‘starvelings’) and their ‘generic’ hate for the so-called ‘masters’ (q3§46, 323) matured in conjunction with the highly uneven development of the italian state since the beginning of the 19th century. the 68 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life polemic position of the peasantry, gramsci argues, can be seen as a primary level of rejection of the constituted order; but at the same time it is insufficient to build ‘class consciousness’ inasmuch as ‘not only does it not have an exact consciousness of its own historical personality, but it does not even have the consciousness of the historical personality and limits of its opponent’ (ivi, 323-4). this also escalates into the collaboration of the most productive sections of the morti di fame (those that aspire to small municipal jobs or to positions of clerk in the city) with the local bourgeoisie against the peasantry. the backward praxis of peripheral groups is thus understood as giving rise to a vague ‘cosmopolitanism’ that proves inadequate to build a revolutionary position based on a thorough knowledge of the state and on an organic class consciousness. gramsci ultimately attributes a stage on ‘non-activity’ (linked to the lack of ‘comprehension of one’s own role’) to the sporadic and subversive actions of the morti di fame, and argues that this needs to be linked to ‘“subversion” from above, thus … an arbitrary politics and of a personal or group clique [cricca personale o di gruppo]’ (ivi, 3267; author’s translation). this makes clear that, in gramsci, the leading position of restricted groups is always mirrored (and in some sense is the epiphenomenon of) the cultural passivity of the subalterns. or, as robert jackson puts it, ‘the sedimented layers of the anachronistic tradition continue to be reproduced not simply from above, but by the very groups that stand to benefit from the negation of their influence’ (jackson, 2016, 221). as it is clear from the example of the morti di fame, gramsci connects the inconsistent intellectual production of subaltern groups both to the fragmentation of struggles and to the bureaucratisation of politics that leaves coercive power in the hands of a restricted group of people. these other dimensions on which passivity is articulated and reproduced will be analysed in the following sub-sections. bureaucratic centralism and democratic centralism gramsci defines bureaucratic centralism as the dominion of a part over the whole, whilst democratic centralism is ‘centralism in motion’ [centralismo in movimento], thus a continuous adjustment of the organization to the real historical development’ (q9§68, 1139; author’s translation). bureaucracy plays a crucial role in ensuring the continuity of capital as it is ‘the most dangerous habitual and conservative force’ (q13§23, 1604; author’s translation). institutional dynamics are therefore a primary example to be taken into consideration if we are to understand the ‘non-contemporaneity of the present’ the dimensions of passive revolution | 69 (thomas, 2009). in this emphasis on the connection between bureaucracy and the continuation of capitalist dominance, gramsci shares a concern that is common among contemporary critical studies – particularly those that highlight the role played by strong institutions in ensuring the endurance of capital’s laws (bonefeld, 2015, 2017; ryner, 2015). yet, the identification of the sources of such bureaucratic structure seem to be radically different in the two cases. whilst the reference to strong institutions usually alludes to the displacement of an otherwise already democratic stance of change, for gramsci bureaucracy is possible only in virtue of masses’ passivity. in fact, he argues that ‘it needs to be stressed that the unhealthy manifestations of bureaucratic centralism occurred because of a lack of initiative and responsibility at the bottom, in other words because of the political immaturity of the peripheral forces, even when these were homogeneous with the hegemonic territorial group’ (gramsci, 1971, 189; q9§68, 1139). in synthesis, it is only by seeing the seeds of bureaucracy in the everyday shortcomings of potentially transformative agency that gramsci is able to conceive an overcoming of bureaucratic centralism. against such static structures, in fact, democratic centralism offers an elastic formula, which can be embodied in many diverse forms; it comes alive in so far as it is interpreted and continually adapted to necessity. it consists in the critical pursuit of what is identical in seeming diversity of form and on the other hand of what is distinct and even opposed in apparent uniformity, in order to organise and interconnect closely that which is similar, but in such a way that the organising and the interconnecting appear to be a practical and ‘inductive’ necessity, experimental, and not the result of rationalistic, deductive, abstract process – i.e.: one typical of pure intellectuals (gramsci, 1971, 189; q13§36). democratic centralism, therefore, can be seen as the truest realisation of the unity of theory and praxis, which involves an organic connection between the intellectual strata and the popular masses as well as between the rulers and the ruled (gramsci, 1971, 190). gramsci thus points towards the need to move beyond bureaucratic systems, beginning with the awareness of the main reasons that brought about bureaucracy in the first place and, therefore, identifying the aspects on which the subaltern can work to overcome it. this will ultimately give 70 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life collective subjects, rather than isolated individuals, the possibility to produce real historical change (filippini, 2017, 51). this critically shows the interrelations between the overcoming of bureaucratic centralism and the need to move both beyond occasional and fragmented opinion and beyond disaggregated forms of struggles, in order to create a collective subjectivity. this will be best understood by looking at the following sub-section. corporatism and universalism in a note called alcuni aspetti teorici e pratici dell’ ‘economicismo’, gramsci argues that movements of resistance should not be solely studied via the lenses of economic activity, ‘as this affirms an immediate element of force, thus the availability of a certain financial supply direct or indirect… and that’s it. too little. also in this case, the analysis of the different degrees of relation [gradi di rapporto] of forces cannot but culminate in the sphere of hegemonic and of ethico-political relations’ (q13§18, 1597; author’s translation). in fact, gramsci’s understanding of revolutionary politics should be understood as articulated on three levels (see frosini, 2010). firstly, an organization based on an homogeneous social group linked to professional relations within a certain group. here we have the mere corporatist phase typical of the organizzazioni di mestiere. secondly, the group develops the consciousness of solidarity but still purely within the economic realm. thirdly, we have a phase in which consciousness of one’s corporatist interests…overcome the corporatist realm of the economic circle, and can and should become the interests of other groups subordinated. this is the phase more explicitly political… determining beyond the economic unity and politics also the intellectual and cultural unity, not on a corporatist realm, but rather on a universal one, of hegemony (q4§38, 457; author’s translation). praxis par exellance in gramsci is thus not that of economic activity, but rather the ethico-political production. it is only through the creation of a new hegemony that the ‘structure ceases to be an external force which crushes man, assimilates him to itself and makes him passive; and it is transformed into a means of freedom’ (gramsci 1971, 367; q10§6, 1244). the dimensions of passive revolution | 71 such a dynamic was already emphasised in gramsci’s polemic against trade unions for remaining still within the realm of economic competition, and in the comparison with the factory councils which were more apt to create a revolutionary alternative, based not only on the competition between classes, but on a new ethico-political system and on the self-government of the working class (gramsci, 2016). in particular, whilst trade unions were acknowledged as being a positive organism to move beyond workers complete subalternity vis-à-vis capital, their action was necessarily also conservative as their very organisation made sense only within the borders of a capitalist system. in gramsci’s (2000, 93) words, ‘[t]he emergence of an industrial legality is a great victory for the working class, but it is not the ultimate and definitive victory.’ for this reason, gramsci criticised the approach to unionism of organisations such as the confederazione generale del lavoro (cgl) and its metal-mechanic affiliate, the federazione italiana operai metallurgici (fiom). this is again a situation in which a purely passive and alienated mass of workers can be distinguished from forms of organisations, such as unions, that help in producing a critical consciousness of one’s position. yet, in both cases the antithesis tends to fall back into the previous hegemonic bloc, in as much as it does not create a hegemonic moment of its own. this idea in gramsci is ripped of any form of determinism, as he argues that ‘[t]he trade union is not a predetermined phenomenon. it becomes a determinate institution, i.e. it takes on a definite historical form to the extent that the strength and will of the workers who are its members impress a policy and propose an aim that define it’ (ivi, 92). gramsci also adds that [i]f the trade-union officials regard industrial legality as a necessary, but not a permanently necessary compromise; if they deploy all the means at the union's disposal to improve the balance of forces in favour of the working class; and if they carry out all the spiritual and material preparatory work that will be needed if the working class is to launch at any particular moment a victorious offensive against capital and subject it to its law then the trade union is a tool of revolution, and union discipline, even when used to make the workers respect industrial legality, is revolutionary discipline (ivi, 93). ultimately, the success or failure of trade unionism to sublate itself and develop into a revolutionary movement is dependent on the capacity of hegemonic 72 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life production of the workers and people that compose it. in the same manner, the defeat of the factory councils in the 1920s proved that the absence of coordination of revolutionary forces makes it possible for moderates to incorporate them into a conservative project (salvadori, 2018, 151-61). conclusion as previously remarked, in 1933 gramsci suggested that passive revolution should not be confused for a political project, but it can guide praxis only to the extent that it ‘assumes, or postulates as necessary, a vigorous antithesis’ (q15§62, 1827).10 in gramsci, the historical subject is thus not shaped by preexisting structures but proves its autonomy in actively recomposing and overcoming given conditions, crucially emancipating itself ‘from the fallacies of representation and perception of life that that subject, being subaltern, necessarily possesses in itself at the beginning’ (finelli, 2011; author’s translation). objective historical conditions are, therefore, never the ultimate explanatory tool to understand the failure of a revolutionary project, and conversely only a project capable of moving beyond immediate reality to produce a creative moment of its own can overcome passivity and become hegemonic. in fact, [m]ass action is not possible while the masses remain unconvinced of the purposes it is pursuing or the means to achieve them. if it is to become a governing class, the proletariat must rid itself of all the residue of corporatism, of every syndicalist prejudice. what does this mean? it means that not only must the divisions between different jobs be overcome, but that to achieve consensus and to win the trust of the peasants and some of the semi-proletarian urban masses some prejudices have to be addressed as well as elements of egotism which still persist among workers even when they have left behind craft particularisms. the metal worker, the carpenter, the building worker will need to learn to see themselves as members of a class that will lead the peasants and the intellectuals, a class that can only win and build socialism if it is supported and followed by the majority of society. if it does not achieve that […] it will give 10 for accounts that consider passive revolution as a political project see e.g.: callinicos, 2010; vianna, 1998. the dimensions of passive revolution | 73 the state the possibility of crushing the rising tide of workers’ struggles and breaking the movement (quoted in robaina, 2006; my emphasis). the link is thus evident between the potential for the bourgeoisie to impose coercively its own control over society and the fallacies of subalterns’ attempt to become true organic subjectivity (badaloni, 2014, 102). the coerciveness of capital restructuring would in fact not be possible if it was not for the ideological (common sense), organizational (bureaucratic centralism) and interest-based (corporatism) fragmentation of potentially revolutionary social groups. gramsci seems to reverse the general insight of critical theorists according to whom we can understand the continuation of capitalist practices as the result of increasing rationalisation and coerciveness of the capitalist system. in this light, future studies should point not only to the significance of gramsci in grappling with crucial theoretical concepts which allow us to overcome the fallacies of contemporary critical studies. at the same time, the prison notebooks could be a fruitful source to point in the direction of alternative lines of research that not only focus on how mechanisms of government tend to impose capitalist dynamics but also to how such logics are asserted, reproduced and can potentially be contested from the subalterns themselves. this challenges us to identify and perpetrate the forms of praxis that are capable of offsetting the dead mechanisms that seem to mechanically rule over our everyday life. having this as an objective, the concept of passive revolution can be an important tool both to guide political praxis and to provide a coherent understanding of the connection between capitalist dominance and its potentially contested nature. references allinson, j. and anievas, a. (2010) the uneven and combined development of the meiji restoration: a passive revolutionary road to capitalist modernity. capital & class, 34(3): 469–490. badaloni, n. (2014) gramsci and the problem of the revolution. in mouffe, c. ed., gramsci and marxist theory (pp. 80-110). london: routledge. bonefeld, w. (2015) crisis, free economy and strong state: on ordoliberalism. european review of international studies, 2 (3), 5-14. bonefeld, w. (2017) the strong state and the free economy. london: rowman & littlefield international. 74 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life bruff, i. (2010) germany’s agenda 2010 reforms: passive revolution at a crossroads. capital & class, 34(3), 409–428. callinicos, a. (2010) the limits of passive revolution. capital & class, 34 (3), 491-507. coutinho, c. n. (2007) l’epoca neoliberale: rivoluzione passiva o controriforma? critica marxista: analisi e contributi per ripensare la sinistra, 2, 21-6. del roio, m. (2012) translating passive revolution in brazil. capital & class, 36(2), 215–234. filippini, m. (2012) tra scienza e senso comune. dell'ideologia in gramsci. scienza & politica, 25 (47), 89-106. filippini, m. (2017) using gramsci: a new approach. london: pluto press. finelli, r. (2011) antonio gramsci. la rifondazione di un marxismo senza corpo. consecutio rerum: rivista critica della postmodernità. available at: http://www.consecutio.org/2011/05/antonio-gramsci-la-rifondazionedi-un-marxismo-senza-corpo/. finocchiaro, m. (1973) gramsci and the history of dialectical thought. cambridge: cambridge university press. fontana, b. (2015) intellectuals and masses: agency and knowledge in gramsci. in mcnally, m. ed., antonio gramsci (pp. 55-75). london: palgrave macmillan. frosini, f. (2010) la religione dell’uomo moderno: politica e verità nei «quaderni del carcere» di antonio gramsci. roma: carocci. gramsci, a. (1971) selections from the prison notebooks, edited and translated by q. hoare and g. nowell-smith. london: lawrence & wishar london: lawrance & wishart. gramsci, a. (1975) quaderni del carcere (ed. v. gerratana). turin: einaudi. gramsci, a. (1995) further selections from the prison notebooks, edited and translated by d. boothman. london: lawrence and wishart. gramsci, a. (2000) the gramscian reader: selected writings 1916-1935, edited by d. forgacs. new york: new york university press. gramsci, a. (2016) masse e partito: antologia 1910-1926, edited by g. liguori. rome: editori riuniti. jackson, r. (2016) subalternity and the mummification of culture in gramsci’s “prison notebooks”. international gramsci journal, 2(1), 201-225. laclau e. and mouffe c. (2014) hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics. 2nd ed. london: verso. the dimensions of passive revolution | 75 mckay, i. (2010) the canadian passive revolution, 1840-1950. capital & class, 34(3), 361–382. morton, a. d. (2007) unravelling gramsci: hegemony and passive revolution in the global political economy. london: pluto press. morton, a. d. (2010) the continuum of passive revolution. capital & class, 34 (3), 315-342. morton, a. d. (2011) revolution and the state in modern mexico: the political economy of uneven development. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. morton, a. d. (2013) traveling with gramsci: the spatiality of passive revolution. in m. ekers et al. (eds) gramsci: space, nature, politics. oxford: john wiley & sons, 47-64. nash, f. (2013) participation and passive revolution: the reproduction of neoliberal water governance mechanisms in durban, south africa. antipode, 45(1): 101–120. robaina, r. (2006) gramsci and revolution: a necessary clarification. international socialism 109. available at: http://isj.org.uk/gramsci-and-revolution-anecessary-clarification/ roccu, r. (2017) passive revolution revisited: from the prison notebooks to our ‘great and terrible world’. capital & class, 41 (3), 537–559. ryner, m. (2015) europe's ordoliberal iron cage: critical political economy, the euro area crisis and its management. journal of european public policy, 22(2), 275-294. salvadori, m. l. (2018) storia d’italia: il cammino tormentato di una nazione, 1861-2016. torino: giulio einaudi editore. sassoon, a. s. (1987) gramsci’s politics. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. simon, r. (2010) passive revolution, perestroika and the emergence of the new russia. capital & class, 34(3), 429–448. thomas, p. d. (2006) modernity as ‘passive revolution’: gramsci and the fundamental concepts of historical materialism. journal of the canadian historical association, 17 (2), 61-78. thomas, p. d. (2009) the gramscian moment. philosophy, hegemony and marxism. leiden: brill. thomas, p. d. (2013) hegemony, passive revolution and the modern prince. thesis eleven, 117 (1), 20-39. vianna, l. w. (1998) a revolução passiva: americanismo e iberismo. rio de janeiro: revan. 76 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life wanner, t. (2015) the new ‘passive revolution’ of the green economy and growth discourse: maintaining the ‘sustainable development’ of neoliberal capitalism. new political economy, 20(1), 21–41. williams, g. (2008) struggles for an alternative globalization: an ethnography of counterpower in southern france. aldershot: ashgate publishing. the dimensions of passive revolution | 77 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review wild things: the disorder of desire, by jack halberstam. durham, north carolina: duke university press, 2020. $25.95 u.s., paper. isbn: 978-1-4780-1108-8. pages: 1-240. reviewed by mckenna james boeckner1 sail me back over years, in and out of weeks, and into the night to find my father beside me in my bed: max and maurice sendak’s wild rumpus sliding me into sleep. years later now, my father on the verge of retirement—freed time lost in his thoughts—and knowing how i am studying in new brunswick to become a writer, pitches me story ideas: “it will be a prequel” he explains, “or sequel” he extrapolates; “it will explore exactly where the wild things are, and where they have gone.” i do not have the heart to tell him this has already been written—academically, that is, in the theoretical musings of jack halberstam. in his new book, wild things: the disorder of desire (2020), halberstam tracks the rhetorical presence of those wild things from sendak’s infamous children’s book as they manifest in contemporary and historical knowledge production and offer theoretical potential as anti-colonial and anti-heteronormative genealogical tools. like sendak’s wild things, halberstam calls us to reorient human-nonhuman intimacies, to unmake our postcolonial worlds, and to freefall into our ecocritically wild erotic ontologies; halberstam’s work asks the question: “what was nature in the realm of sexuality, and when and why did we leave nature behind?” (15). known largely in the field of queer theory for his formative focus on female masculinities, halberstam’s more recent work has focused on elaborating queer(ed) embodiments in/of time and space. in this vein, wild things represents halberstam’s first book-length foray into what can be considered ecocriticism or queer ecologies. a companion volume on the same topic, wild beyond: art, architecture, and anarchy, is scheduled to be released in 2022. in line with his writings since the queer art of failure (2011), halberstam’s wild things, as well as his promotions for wild beyond, betray his characteristic lighthearted reliance on low theory, academically discredited but theoretically viable forms of knowledge production found in children’s media. framing the wild things are campy references beyond sendak into dreamworks animation’s madagascar (2005), adele’s “hello” (2015), and illumination entertainment’s the secret life of pets (2016) that help to explicate the heavily analytical high-theories of institutionally recognized ecocritics henry david thoreau, jacque derrida, and jane bennett, among others. by way of approaching the complex genealogy in which humans “left behind” our “nature,” halberstam turns first to the lasting globalized effects of colonialism. in the first section of his wild things, halberstam tracks the emergence of categorical “unnaturalness” of racially and sexually marginalized bodies in colonial contexts, using michael taussig’s analysis of heart of darkness, irish diplomat roger casement’s black diaries, and swampy cree artist kent monkman’s paintings to illuminate how “going wild might well propel us into another realm of thought, action, being, and knowing” that defies colonial progress towards a civilized hegemony (42). reading aesthetics of bewilderment as queer in addition to anticolonial, halberstam draws on timothy morton’s concept of “unfathomable intimacies” (80-81) and dianne chisolm’s “biophilia” (79) to develop a central epistemology of the ferox in which our intimacies 1 mckenna james boeckner (they/them) is a queer scholar and playwright pursuing a ph.d. degree in english and creative writing from the university of new brunswick. their current research and writing interests are geared towards fairy tales and other forms of storied historical records as vehicles to explore contemporary masculinity as it relates to gender and queerness. their academic writing appears most recently in the edited anthology fandom: now in color (2020) and at various related research conferences. email: mckenna.james@unb.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research with or fantasies of animals provide an “approximate language” with “grammars available for expression of love, desire, and sex” that exceed and disarticulate the category of human and translate us back to nature (79). the second section of his book continues in similar aims, alternatively taking up the biocentric mindframes of an archetypal wild child that resists the white and heterosexual norms of our “civilized world” and the imagined zombified psychologies of domesticated animals that challenge perceived contemporary companionate relationships. with a bargainer’s hope, halberstam ends his book by musing on the ways in which those animals who threaten to become “feral again and rise up against the human” (161) remind us marginalized bodies of our always lurking and defiant wildness. a key chapter making grounds in advancing the broader field of queer theory is the third, “epistemology of the ferox,” a must-read for those ecocritical queer scholars attempting to analyze our genealogies in the anthropocene. as an aptly studied queer theorist might already ascertain, halberstam takes aims in this chapter to provide expansions onto seminal work by foundational queer theorist eve kosofsky sedgwick, the epistemology of the closet (1990). this return to sedgwick is not a new act. where halberstam stands out, however, is in his strategic use of queer ecocritics such as catriona mortimersandilands and bruce erikson and eco-enmeshed 20th century writers such as t. h. white and j. a. baker to articulate an epistemology of the ferox, wherein “we leave the strictures, indeed the internal confines, of the home and enter a larger world” across which “an unknowable self is dispersed” (10). at the crux of sedgwick’s epistemology of the closet is a recognition that crucial indices of knowledge production in western culture—such as masculine/feminine, natural/artificial, and innocence/initiation—are perpetually marked by the widespread and “suffusing stain of the homo/heterosexual crisis” (sedgwick 1990, 72). rather than an unspeakable ignorance of homosexuality, contemporary indices of knowledge for halberstam are always caught within an unknowable and forgotten wilderness, or within “entire systems of knowing, signifying, and desiring that simply exceed the human” in our contemporary form (82). by trading the weighty epistemological space of the closet in sedgwick for an ecologically engaged purview, halberstam intrigues queer critics to revisit “the an/archives of desire” to find those “forms of love, affection, being and knowing, feeling, making, intuiting, lusting, marking, and enjoying [that] gave way, slowly and incompletely, under the sway of new definitional closure” to our anthropocentric existences (108-109). anticipating critique against the racially charged epistemological term “wild” as framing mechanism for oft-whitewashed queer desire, halberstam is clear to repeatedly air an awareness of the colonial legacy of his terminology (46; 49; 123). by way of ameliorating obvious problematics, halberstam draws from a large number of black thinkers and theorists including frank wilderson and saidiya hartman. what is lacking, however, is proper homage to indigenous theory and thought, a major locus of debate around contemporary uses of terms like “wild” that connote primitivism. while halberstam appears to draw on jodi byrd as a token indigenous voice in articulating wildness and bewilderment as decolonial strategies and appropriates a pan-indigenous “trickster” to organize two-spirit kent monkman’s “disorderly” aesthetic, such a limited scope belies disengagement with indigenous thought and theory—indeed, drew hayden taylor (1996) famously reads “trickster” as a red flag in ethnocentric analyses (88). with a growing number of indigenous biocentric ways-of-being amalgamated into academic vocabulary (cf. king 1992; kimmerer 2013; justice 2018), “wild,” “feral,” and “ferox” as analytic devices to understand indigenous aesthetics can only be read as ill-informed. despite progressive aims to unmake a colonial world through bewilderment, halberstam clearly runs into problems when treating his new epistemology as totalizing or tautology. it is perhaps imperative to note in ending how an original book-proof provided by nambe pueblo scholar debbie reese (2018) illustrates how sendak, the originating trace in halberstam’s rhetorical genealogy, reads appropriated and stereotyped indigenous garb as inspiration for child-like animacies in where the wild things are (see figure 1). www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research figure 1: book-proof of sendak's where the wild things are with ink drawing of pan-indigenous stereotype. sailing, then, by way of conclusion, back over years, in and out of weeks, and into the night and where the wild things are, i want to underscore the complexities and intricacies inherent in halberstam’s theorizations. maurice sendak’s writings occupy a special place in mine, my father’s, and halberstam’s thought processes; and because of its low-theory prominences, the familiar children’s book helps to articulate alternative modes of worlding and of queer epistemologies beyond the hetero/homo closet. still, contemporary critics must be mindful of the ways in which the constructions of a queered wild run in deepseated racial oppressions. this critique is not to devalue halberstam’s work. indeed, bewilderment as an ecocritical reaction to our ecosystems expands existing theorizations on vibrant ecologies and emboldens marginalized existence within an essentialist ferox mind. there is, additionally, very promising work to be done in drawing out queer histories with these alternative feral epistemologies. but no theory should be totalizing or tautologizing, and commentary on indigenous art and history should always demonstrate practiced awareness of ongoing indigenous thought and discussion. “wild” as a framing mechanism is rife with explicit and implicit racial biases—as halberstam is well aware—but a wild rumpus in appropriate contexts has potential to shift our dependent presents, destruct(ure) our uninhabitable hegemonies. references justice, daniel heath. 2018. why indigenous literatures matter. waterloo: wilfrid laurier university press. kimmerer, robin wall. 2013. braiding sweetgrass. minneapolis: milkweed editions. king, thomas. 1992. all my relations: an anthology of contemporary canadian native fiction. norman: university of oklahoma press. reese, debbie. 2018. “what was sendak thinking about when he created where the wild things are?” american indians in children’s literature. americanindiansinchildrensliterature. blogspot.com/2018/10/hmmm-what-was-sendak-thinking-about.html. sedgwick, eve kosofsky. (1990) 2008. epistemology of the closet. berkely: university of california press. taylor, drew hayden. 1996. funny, you don't look like one: observations of a blue-eyed ojibway. penticton: theytus books. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review governing the social in neoliberal times, edited by deborah brock. vancouver, bc: ubc press, 2019. $32.95 cdn., paper. isbn: 978-0-77486-091-8. pages 1 – 328. reviewed by naty tremblay, rosa duran, and kathryn reinders1 “publish or perish” is the mantra of academic success in neoliberal times. as interdisciplinary phd students with a commitment to social justice and change work, we sought an opportunity to collaborate, co-learn, and share our perspectives via collective writing. settling on a book review, we hoped to find a text with space for our diverse experiences and time to resist the structures within which we live and learn. seeking to provide “a lens for discovering the less obvious organization and flows of power that serve to sustain relations of social inequality” (p. 4), governing the social in neoliberal times, edited by deborah brock, was of interest because the analysis promised an unveiling of the complex power flows and social dynamics which for and inform the social in our everyday lives. designed for readers throughout their scholarly journey, governing the social applies foucault’s governmentality to interrogate and investigate how normalization, neoliberalism, and governmental power influence practices of subjectification in everyday life, shaping some of the most pressing issues of our time. while the book could have benefitted from a more nuanced, intersectional approach to unpacking neoliberal governmentality, governing the social provides a strong foundation in foucault’s core ideas, concepts, and applications that may spur further critical analytical work and continue building the consciousness required to understand the consequences of power, privilege, and inspire everyday acts of resistance. divided into three sections, governing the social features a wide array of case studies which illustrate how specific practices of neoliberal governmentality have shaped the west over the last four decades. part one “governing subjects, communities and cultures”, emphasizes the “everydayness of neoliberalism” (p. 35) as a transformative force, especially through the promotion of individual accomplishments. part two “governing responsibility'', moves on to argue the importance of understanding how neoliberal logics insidiously infiltrate socially conscious movements and shape individuals' good deeds, ultimately locating the risk of leaving governing logics unchallenged. finally, part three, “governing (in)security”, draws attention to how day-to-day practices of neoliberal governmentality can be powerful forces which shape nation building, belonging, and our expectations of self, fellow people, and government. while the choice to organize the book in three parts allows readers to view how neoliberal governance operates at different scales, it can create artificial separation between the governing of subjects, 1 naty tremblay, rosa duran, and kathryn reinders are phd students in social practice and transformational change at the university of guelph, guelph, ontario. we are a diverse group of students with collective experience in the areas of sovereignty, neoliberalism, education, rights and justice; as change-makers; as artists and caregivers; and as humans striving to help build a more just world. we can be reached via email at: natytrem@uoguelph.ca; rduran@uoguelph.ca; and kreinder@uoguelph.ca. special thanks to julia gruson-wood for being available to facilitate our co-learning and knowledge sharing. mailto:kreinder@uoguelph.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research responsibility, and in(security). as an example, in chapter two, the authors unpack the use of “love” in the fight for equality rights for lgbtq2s+ folks, while chapter twelve considers the regulation of gender and sexualities in the refugee process. engaging with these chapters backto-back may provide a deeper understanding of how neoliberal governmentality shapes subjecthood, and how subjecthood informs the governing of risk and insecurity in neoliberal states. theoretically rigorous, each chapter applies contemporary approaches to governmentality as an analytical framework, analyzing news stories, reports, and legal/policy documents to evidence the breadth of neoliberalism as a governing logic. the chapters in section one identify how the ‘new normal’ shaped by neoliberalism affects diverse peoples, communities, and cultures. examples of neoliberal social formations within disabled and lgbtq populations, racialized communities, and indigenous nations, expose the shifting nature of power, uncovering “organizing” alternative rationalities and practices of neoliberal governance. the chapters in section two unveil state strategies used to normalize particular standards and ideals which transform individuals to neoliberal subjects through the pursuit of self-improvement efforts and self-governance in order to achieve unrealistic standards of moral subjecthood. this, along with the shift to individual responsibility for harmful conditions created by state and market driven decisions, and the fabrication of fear which informs risk management, surveillance and control, successfully demonstrate how individuals are forced to adapt to social and economic instability created from neoliberal conditions. finally, each of the chapters in part three trace the complex and often contradictory politics of risk, security, and belonging and their construction as biopolitical problems under advanced neoliberalism, drawing a compelling picture of how state policies and practices around resiliency, truth-claims, and population movement govern the (in)security of populations. while we thoroughly appreciated how the analysis was centred around guiding questions which invite readers to sharpen their awareness of how power flows in daily life, who benefits, and why, more synchronicity between the aim of each chapter, and how each chapter met the aims laid out in the introduction would have been helpful. as a group of scholars whose diverse backgrounds ground our scholarship and practice, we were not sure the book was “for us” as an audience. first, many chapters only hinted at how the diversity of structures within which we live including colonialism, patriarchy, heteronormativism, structural racism, ableism interact with neoliberal governing logics which shape our day-to-day experiences as people. as a result, we found ourselves asking if the use of governmentality on its own was the most useful framework for unpacking neoliberalism. combining governmentality with more detailed intersectional analysis, might have provided a more nuanced understanding of the role of advanced liberalism in how we govern ourselves socially. second, the introduction hinted at practical applications for resistance work and social change (p.15, 27) and on this metric we were left unsettled. we found that this was an important tension in the book, which led to unclear or unresolved notions of change, resistance, and strategies for change. while some chapters provided practical strategies for resisting neoliberalism as a governing force, other www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research chapters did not. while each case study thoughtfully sketched the path of neoliberal governmentality, we were often left asking “but what do we do?” during our initial read, this left us conflicted about the role of change and resistance in the book, which took focus away from the strong theoretical contributions woven throughout each chapter which is where governing the social truly shines. attending to resistance much the same as terms like “power” or “biopolitics” would have helped us widen or narrow our expectations of the practical application of this book as related to social change. ultimately, the authors promised a book which would “investigate specific practices of neoliberal governmentality so that we can make sense of the profound social, political, and economic changes that have occurred in the west” (p. 26). this book absolutely meets these aims, inviting the reader to consider new, unseen, concealed or subtle dimensions of neoliberal influence including their own biases and privileges. but, they also hinted at the expansive disciplinary scope of governmentality along with practical applications for resistance work and social change. this meant that we were (to some extent) expecting a different book, which more consistently incorporated the lived experiences of a multiplicity of scholars, practitioners, and everyday people. regardless, we found that governing the social in neoliberal times was a strong and theoretically rigorous book, which provided us additional analytical tools and language to use in talking about neoliberalism. equally useful for all learners interested in governmentality and neoliberalism, this book is a timely and valuable read during our current times of social crisis. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 34, 33-48 (2024) giorgia meloni and gray neofascism: a conservative party of the right in power joseph galbo1 abstract: this paper examines giorgia meloni’s political rise to power within the context of the neofascist movimento sociale italiano (msi), the post fascist alleanza nazionale (an) and fratelli d’italia (fdi), as well as current populist politics. fratelli d’italia, i argue, embodies many of the ideas and political attitudes of what has been called a “gray neofascism”: a form of populist, formally democratic authoritarianism that promotes a sanitized memory of fascism. i focus on this issue by examining giorgia meloni’s autobiography and tracing her “roots” within the roman neofascist and post fascist political world of colle oppio and her ascendance to political power. the paper concludes with an assessment of meloni’s leadership in power, her recent visit to north america, and her ambition to consolidate the political power of a new european right. keywords: neofascism, giorgia meloni; fratelli d’italia; populism; italian politics introduction: amnesty international (2022), in a report on politicians who used hate speech in italy’s 2022 election, placed matteo salvini at the top of the list. giorgia meloni was number two. part of the reason for meloni’s electoral victory can be attributed to her skillful use of populist fearmongering. during her election campaign she framed political issues within a familiar rhetoric of “culture war” wherein she positions herself as the defender of the identity and security of ordinary italians against “enemies” that threaten to destroy the values of italian culture and undermine national interests. meloni’s campaign was run on a mix of populist, nativist, and eurosceptic messages that were accepted as official party policy at the trieste (fdi, 2017) party conference. these messages were framed within a clear binary of “good” vs “bad”: meloni supports the “natural” traditional family and opposes what she calls the “lgbtq+ lobby,” a phrase also used by the ultra-conservative governments of poland and hungary to repress civil and rights. she supports “christian values” and claims to defend the nation against the “islamization” of europe. she campaigned to stop non-governmental organizations (ngos) from helping refugees reach italian shores and she promised stronger border security to combat “illegal migration” and “ethnic substitution.” she repeated the populist message that corrupt global elites are undermining the interests of the nation and reproduced the sovereigntist stereotype of soulless european technocrats wanting to cancel national identities. meloni’s victory was helped by her construction of a moral panic around national identity as well as her social media influencer status, yet this does not mean that italian voters have moved to the right or are duped by the viral spread of social media propaganda. the fratelli d’italia victory owes a great deal to the record abstention of 36.1% of italian voters. fratelli d’italia received 7.3 million votes or 26%, compared to 4.3% in 2018. the fdi success came at the expense of salvini’s national populist party, the lega, which fell from 37% of the vote in 2018 to 8.7% in 2022. 1 professor joseph galbo, department of social science, university of new brunswick, saint john, canada. an earlier version of this paper was presented at the alternate routes conference prospects for a post-capitalist future (2023) at the university of bari, italy. i would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers who gave excellent feedback and made this a much stronger paper. special thanks to dr. miriam jones who provided editorial assistance and critical feminist insights about fantasy fiction and popular culture. my research was also helped by the kind assistance of numerous librarians in the biblioteca universaria di bologna, biblioteca communale dell’archiginnasio, and the biblioteca salaborsa. 34 the election of the fratelli d’italia, a marginal party with post fascist roots, seemed to shock the foreign press, but for those who have followed the normalization of the italian right for the past thirty years, it was not earthshaking news. it wasn’t even the first time: a post fascist party first entered italian government in 1994 when silvio berlusconi’s forza italia (fi) embraced gianfranco fini’s alleanza nazionale (an), itself a reinvention of the neofascist party movimento sociale italiano (msi), and made it part of his ruling centre right coalition. the longstanding “cordone sanitaire” against cooperation with the hard right began to crumble. under fini’s leadership, and after the historic fiuggi conference (jan. 25-29, 1995), the msi rejected some of its neofascist history and values, adapted to new political circumstances, and emerged, re-baptised, as the alleanza nazionale (ignazi, 1994). the coalition forged by berlusconi’s first government created, for the first time in the postwar period, a common political space for the various parties of the right. when gianfranco fini guided the transition from the msi to the an, he wanted to consign italian fascism to the judgement of history but only after “we have extracted from it those values and intuitions that are still valid and real” (ignazi, 1994, 77). he also defined the an as a “post fascist party,” a term which asserts its links to the past but claims to go beyond them. berlusconi legitimised post fascism, in italy referred to as sdoganare: after decades of exclusion the post fascists had “cleared through customs” and were “admitted to the political system by a powerful gatekeeper” (orsini, 2010, 80). the powerful gatekeeper soon found himself in trouble, however. in 2009 silvio berlusconi formed a new party, popolo della liberta (pdl), or the people of liberty. the party was designed to consolidate under one new roof all the parties of the right: forza italia, alleanza nazionale, and lega nord. the pdl, led by berlusconi, formed a government in 2008-2011, but his leadership was severely hindered by various personal scandals and mounting criticisms. fini objected to berlusconi’s use of the pdl as a personal fiefdom and left the party along with a group of faithful allies in 2010 and founded another short-lived party, futuro e libertà (future and freedom) (turco, 2011). in 2012 yet another group, mostly from the former an, founded fratelli d’italia. giorgia meloni was one of this group, along with ignazio la russa, a former msi activist, and guido crosetto, previously a member of berlusconi’s forza italia. the transitions from movimento sociale italiano, to alleanza nazionale, to the final incarnation of fratelli d’italia, were strategic adaptations to new circumstances in the democratic liberal order. the decision to launch a new party of the right and move in a nationalist-populist direction is discussed in giorgia meloni’s autobiography. according to meloni (103-107), the merger of the an with berlusconi’s pdl was a mistake and a betrayal of the history and legacy of the italian right. gianfranco fini believed that the right could a be part of a mainstream, centrist, law and order party. meloni disagreed and countered that the right needed to return to early days of nationalist ideology and identity politics. over the next several years through various party conventions, fiuggi in 2014, trieste in 2017, and milan in 2022, the fdi, with meloni as leader, established itself as a nativist radical right party, with a people-centered, eurosceptic, antiestablishment rhetoric typical of populism (donà, 2022). in this investigation i use giorgia meloni’s popular autobiography io sono giorgia: le mie radice, le mie idee (2021), current critical political literature, fratelli d’italia policy statements, and news reports of meloni’s first year in government to examine the ascendency of meloni and the italian far right. the article is structured in three sections and a conclusion. the first is a genealogical discussion of italian fascism, neofascism, post fascism and what they signify within the italian context, and a brief review of debates about the memory of 35 fascism in italy and the ways in which the anti-fascist narrative of liberation has been contested by the right. the second section considers giorgia meloni’s autobiography, examines her “roots” within the roman neofascist and post fascist political world of colle oppio, and pays close attention to the rhetorical construction of the political persona “giorgia” presented to the reader. the third section examines meloni’s relationship to what i call a “gray neofascism”: a form of populist, formally democratic authoritarianism that claims to have shed its old fascist skin but continues to promote an emotional bond with the italian fascist heritage and offers a sanitized version of fascist history as respectable and acceptable. the paper concludes with a brief assessment of meloni’s first sixteen months in power, her recent visit to north america, and her ambition to consolidate the interests of a new european right in the european parliamentary election. fascism, neofascism, post fascism, and the contested memory of fascism the msi was founded in rome in 1946 by war veterans and former fascists who found themselves without a party or a leader. the new party answered psychological and political necessities: to justify the fascist past, ensure the survival of fascist values, and defend the founders’ own actions (parlato, 2006). neofascism, immediately after the war, was characterised by feelings of loss and wounded pride missing from the original fascist ideology. fascism placed an emphatic stress on the nation state, a cult of violence and personality, anti-democratic elitism, and imperial expansion, but also expressed a modernist impulse to create something new, a “new fascist man” who could conquer the present and govern the future. many of the leaders and associates of the neofascist msi — giorgio almirante, pino rauti, pino romualdi, and the outlier julius evola—felt an estrangement from their society and from modernity. they felt exiled from their own nation (ignazi, 1989; tarchi, 1995; germinario, 2005). to survive politically, many of the “new fascists” agreed to accept democratic processes as a formal necessity and as a means of legitimation, but few of them viewed democracy as a suitable alternative. decadence and loss are the tropes through which they understood the modern italian republic: compromised, without heroes or martial values, hedonistic, and relativistic; and they continued to challenge the democratic values of solidarity and equality that were the basis of the anti-fascist republic. neofascists where ideologically opposed to the postwar liberation narrative of anti-fascism because in their view it was used by the left to assert their political hegemony and to exclude those who sympathised with the conservative and traditionalist ideas and values that were part of fascism. there is a sense of victimization and self-justification that continues to be part of the social psychology of neofascism and post fascism. the msi was a prominent force in distancing italian fascist history from its affiliation from imperial violence and genocide, promoting a “neutral” fascist past and a humanised portrait of mussolini. when the msi was founded, it followed, under the leadership of augusto de marsanich (1950-1954), an ambiguous policy of “non rinnegare e non restaurare” (don’t repudiate and don’t restore) and walked a fine line between reframing the fascist past and making enough concessions to pass the litmus test for entry into democratic government (germinario, 2002). giorgio almirante, one of the founders and an early party secretary, appropriated the tricolour flame used by the arditi, the italian shock troops of world war i, and made it the symbol of the new party. all three parties — msi, an, and fdi — use the tricolour flame in their respective logos. the same tricolour flame is on display at benito mussolini’s mausoleum in predappio. the three parties, for the past seven decades, have also shared the same offices at via 36 della scrofa 43 in rome. through all the programmatic changes that occurred as the italian right moved from neofascism (msi), to post fascism (an), to a conservative party of the right with post fascist roots (fdi), the refusal to unambiguously repudiate their heritage remained a point of contention. sympathetic narratives about fascism spread after the war because of the ability of neofascists to create persuasive myths about a lost war which downplayed the role of fascist violence, softened the fascist experience in italy, and presented the military survivors of the republic of salò as victims of leftist partisan violence. mussolini’s puppet government, the republic of salò, was created at the end of 1943 after the italian monarchy switched sides and signed an armistice with the allies. the racial laws the fascist regime instituted in 1938 were applied ruthlessly during salò and thousands of italian jews and partisan political prisoners were sent to camps like fossoli, where primo levi was first deported before being transported to auschwitz. fascist police and military linked with saló carried out the initial roundups and transport of these prisoners, yet over the years this memory has been transformed and salò has been portrayed by sympathisers (pisanò, 1965) as a doomed romantic adventure led by the “boys of salò,” young patriots who refused to surrender. a new historical interpretation of fascism, inspired by the work of historian renzo de felice (1974;1975), began to gain traction in the mid 1970s. this interpretation cast mussolini as authoritarian rather than totalitarian and emphasised the regime’s role in the modernization of the country and its ability to create broad public consensus. the “rebranding” of the regime as authoritarian softened the image of mussolini and was complemented with a new popular narrative emphasis on the violence that left-wing partisans inflicted on the surviving fascists. the work of journalist giampaolo pansa, il sangue dei vinti, (2003) (the blood of the vanquished) is a notable text that blends narrative fiction and historical journalism to present a bleak picture of the italian resistance. characterised by british historian philip cooke (2011) as “the dan brown of italian history” (181), pansa painted a portrait of the violence and abuse the partisans inflicted on the vanquished fascists during the resa de conti (the settling of accounts) which followed 25 april, the date subsequently celebrated as the day of liberation. meanwhile other journalists, such as roberto gervaso, giordano bruno guerri, and in particular indro montanelli, described by filippo focardi (2016) as “talk show historians,” wrote popular works that sought to humanize mussolini as the embodiment of both the moral virtues and vices of italians: mussolini was the image and likeness of a country characterized by bursts of rhetoric, love interests, but minimal violence and repression. one of renzo de felice’s students and critics, emilio gentile (2002; 2023), called the popularizing trend a “retrospective defascistization of the regime” which ignores the reality that fascism was from its inception committed to the destruction of the liberal democratic system and oriented towards war. filippo focardi (2013) is one of the critical historians who have examined the evasions of popularised historical narratives where mussolini and the fascists are relieved of the accountability for the atrocities of the war, including colonial genocide in africa and collaboration and participation in the shoah. the blame for suffering is assigned to the “bad german” while the “good italian” is cleared of responsibility. the italian historiography of fascism is impressively extensive and critical but tends to be overly academic and inaccessible to most citizens, while the narratives of popularizers lack the critical tradition of the professional historians and the universities but are widely read and quickly circulated on social media. more recently, as italians reflected on the 100 anniversary of the fascist march on rome (1922-2022) in a social media environment of post-truth and misinformation, a more critical discussion and awareness of 37 fascism has been encouraged. led by a group of academic historians (see in particular, bidussa, 1994; del boca, 2005; focardi, 2013; 2016; filippi 2019; 2020; gobetti, 2020; colombini, 2022; gentile, 2023), they, often at great personal risk, have been challenging the cliches and stereotypes found in the right-wing narratives of historical memory. the three parties — the defunct msi, and an, and now fratelli d’italia — were and continue to be active participants in “the war on memory,” which often involves an attack on how italian educational institutions teach history and represent historical events. one of giorgia meloni’s early actions as a member of the an youth group involved a fight to “correct” the history of the communist victims of the foibe. the foibe are sinkholes caves found in the mountains at the border between italy and yugoslavia where many—the figures are deeply disputed and can range from 500 to 100,000— italian soldiers and civilians were thrown into the caves and killed by yugoslav communist partisans. the issue had been seized for years by the msi and later the an as an example of italian “ethnic cleansing” by marshal tito’s communists and is often compared in the literature of the right in highly exaggerated terms as an italian holocaust (see gobetti 2020) which the italian left is accused of keeping out of official history. as a young activist, meloni was involved in a campaign to remove from italian schools literature that did enthusiastically proclaim the right nationalist narrative of italian victimhood at the hands of the left and received one her first public recognitions during one these actions. “it was a great political victory,” she wrote in io sono giorgia. “we went into a bookstore and stamped the pages of the more partisan textbooks with the words "fake, don't buy it." then, not wanting to harm the bookseller, we asked the few deputies of the an to buy all the stamped copies. someone still says that we set fire to those books, but it's false. we bought them from first to last. i'm not surprised by this mystification; our world has always been light years away from the story told about it” (49-50). the strategy amounts to, on the one hand, an attack on the public memory of anti-fascism by equating it with left totalitarianism, and on the other, spreading a narrative of italian neofascists as underdogs who heroically fought against every political and social marginalization and persecution. in this endeavour the right has been supported by silvio berlusconi. for many years the right has been seeking to abolish 25 of april as liberation day, and to equate the fighters of saló with the partisans. silvio berlusconi at first supported these views and initially refused to participate in the april 25 celebrations. he celebrated the holiday for the first time in 2009, but he continued to use a sly public rhetoric (pietrucci, 2012) designed to create ideological ambiguity, and to make friendly public statements about historical fascism. in 2003 he was quoted in the press as saying: “mussolini did not murder anyone. mussolini used to send people on vacation in internal exile,” and in 2013, “mussolini did many good things aside from instituting racial laws and siding with hitler” (focardi, 2013, 263). the msi, the post fascist an, and the fdi have all worked independently to white-wash the history of italian fascism. they also have given financial and organizational support to candidates who share their political perspectives. political scientists (baldini, tronconi, angellucci, 2023) have characterized fratelli d’italia as a “rooted newcomer” party. unlike genuinely new parties such as berlusconi’s forza italia or beppe grillo’s m5s (movimento cinque stelle—five star movement) fdi is considered a party that can build its appeal on a symbolic language already recognised by former msi and an voters and can also rely on existing organizational resources for support as was the case with the rise of giorgia meloni. after fratelli d’italia was formed in 2012 it inherited a financially well-endowed “foundation.” set up to manage the real estate and financial assets of the msi/an and reportedly 38 worth “between 150-200 million euro (turco, 2022, 77), the foundation uses its funds to sustain their newspaper, secolo d’italia, and to fund conservative think tanks, speaking series, youth forums and sports clubs, publication houses, and book prizes, including the caravella tricolore book prize given yearly to new books about politics and culture. in 2021 the caravella prize was given to giorgia meloni for her autobiography io sono giorgia. meloni was forging a new party but was being supported by well-established organizational structures. these rooted links are not inconsequential, and no doubt have contributed to her political rise. her success can also be attributed to her ability to cultivate a memory of neofascism as an emotional heritage—proudly patriotic, defiant, excluded—that moved younger generations like herself towards political activism. post fascism represents the political normalization of neofascism and is enabled by an evasive political rhetoric (griffin, 1996; petrucci, 2012) which meloni has learned to master. part of what defines the discourse of post fascism is rhetorical ambiguity. politicians like meloni have learned to use an equivocal political language that tip toes around issues so as not to alienate their traditional voters and simultaneously appeal to a wider electoral base. critics (petrucci 2009) have called this rhetorical manoeuvring “strategic ambiguity.” such rhetorical contortions are not unusual in political speech, and they were recently used by meloni (2023) in a letter sent to the italian newspaper il corriere della sera, during the latest celebration of liberation day. she credits berlusconi’s liberation day speech in 2009—where he both celebrates anti-fascists and praised mussolini’ followers at the same time—as an inspiration and precedes to tepidly support liberation day and reassure the neofascist nostalgics by making reference to their exclusion from the parliamentary system and victimization at the hands of partisans and the left. the political formation of giorgia meloni: from colle oppio to political power meloni’s autobiography was a remarkable popular success and sold more than 100,000 copies. she claims to tell her story truthfully and “without filters” (9). political biographies, however, are generally unreliable and offer favourable messages about their authors and so we should be wary of marketing claims that profess that the author will “tell all” in an authentic and truthful voice. io sono giorgia constructs a political personality, the “giorgia” of the book title, and the autobiography is entertaining and easy to read but full of gaps which are beginning to be filled by more critical investigative journalists such as susanna turco in her recent book re: giorgia: controstoria della donna che si é preso l’italia (a counter story of a women who has captured italy) (2022). for all its flaws and omissions, however, io sono giorgia allows for detailed examination of meloni’s rhetorical style, offers insight into the imaginary of the italian far right, especially their use of fantasy fiction to promote ideas of heroism and threat, and reveals the emotional and ideological bonds that unite a younger generation of neofascists and post fascists. meloni, though historically one of the youngest italian political leaders, is an experienced “insider” of the italian political system who has been active in party politics and government for the last 30 years of her life. she joined the youth wing of the msi fronte della gioventù in 1992 as a fifteen-year-old. within a few years of her entry, the msi was transformed into the an and meloni quickly rose through the ranks to become, in 2004 at the age of 27, the president of azione giovani, the youth wing of alleanza nazionale. in her autobiography she reports that when she was elected president, she moved to her new office in via della scrofa and was overtaken with emotions. “i arrived at the office and closed the door.” this office had “belonged to gianfranco fini, and before him to pino rauti and giorgio almirante. . . . i have on my shoulders the dreams 39 and the hopes of a people that found themselves without a party and without a leader. it was as if they were watching me in silence and asking: ‘will you be up to it?’” (162). meloni explicitly measures herself against the historic leaders of the msi and signals connections to a past that she both wants to preserve and, in some respects, change. raised in what was then the working-class neighborhood of garbatella, the teenaged meloni joined the msi local office at colle oppio, a rugged historic building without bathrooms located on a hill opposite the roman colosseum, and was pulled into the swirl of neofascist politics. meloni’s political education, her “baptism of fire” as she calls it in one of the chapters in her autobiography, was with the roman colle oppio group where the ideas of pino rauti and other proponents of the new right dominated. rauti is an extremely controversial and divisive figure. he was one of the main exponents of the ideas of julius evola and after the war continued to promote the idea of a national politics that goes beyond the traditional right and left (ferraresi, 1978). at the age of 17 rauti volunteered to join mussolini’s republic of saló. after 8 months in the italian north fighting the allies and anti-fascist partisans, rauti was captured by the british and interned in a french pow camp in algeria. he escaped and joined the spanish foreign legion in morocco where he was captured again, this time by the french, and sent to a new prison camp in algeria (tarchi, 2016). he made his way back to italy in april of 1946 and became part of what the historian giuseppe parlato (2006) called “fascists without mussolini”: leaderless groups looking to continue the fight both for their beliefs and to justify their actions. he joined the newly founded msi in 1946 as well as the clandestine group far (fasci di azione revoluzionaria) and continued to agitate against the emerging anti-fascist republic. one of the last post-war provocations by the far involved inciting a mutiny in a naval school in taranto in 1951. the plan was to blow up the italian battleship colombo which was to be transferred to the soviet union as part of a war-reparations deal (ignazi, 1989). the list of arrested provocateurs included pino rauti and julius evola, the latter whom during the trial described himself as a “superfascist.” both were later cleared of the charges for insufficient evidence. rauti’s neofascist political philosophy, like that of his mentor evola, drew from wider european sources than the italian fascist tradition and helped to shape the ideology of the italian new right (revelli, 1984). during the late 1970s and through the 1980s, rauti, along with alain de benoit of the french new right, pursued a strategy based on antonio gramsci’s ideas of hegemony and of using cultural power as a slow way to achieve political power. fabio rampelli, along with gianni alemanno and umberto croppi, were leaders of roman right-wing youth activist movements in the 1990s and were deeply engaged with the new right (rosati, 2018, 2829). rampelli built a political community at colle oppio different from the “neofascist nostalgics” and flamboyant extremist rightist groups. in a country where the soccer stadium can influence politics, he kept a guarded distance from the roman ultras, the working-class soccer fan clubs whose unruly subjectivity, links to violent neofascism, drugs, and criminality were notorious and well reported (jones, 2018; 2019). rampelli, an athlete who trained to join the italian olympic swimming team but who was sidelined by injuries, focussed on creating a clean and respectable image of neofascism at colle oppio. group visits to mussolini’s mausoleum in the village of predappio were discouraged, and drugs were out of the question. there were, however, plenty of “celtic crosses” (lanna and rossi, 2003, 439), an import from the french new right; group-building exercises such as the “solstice ceremonies” where young members celebrated the rising sun; and one ritual recalled fondly in meloni’s autobiography, the “call of the horn.” a reference to the horn of boromir from lord of the rings, 40 the call of the horn was a weekly gathering where members met to discuss articles, books, journals, daily papers, and international issues. the meetings began with each member clasping their hands behind their back and reciting a relevant quote or aphorism to be discussed. the idea of europe and its future were intensely debated. at the close of each meeting, participants would sing “the future belongs to us,” adapted from the song “tomorrow belongs to me” from the 1966 musical cabaret. in the play the song was sung by a waiter, but the 1972 film offers a chilling critique of the idealistic submission of nazi youth to a conformist future by having the song sung by a hitler youth. ironically, given the anti-fascist roots of the song, in more recent years it has become a neofascist hymn. the song was re-written and adapted into italian by the “traditionalist” musical group la compagnia dell’anello (the fellowship of the ring), a rightist band formed during the three hobbit camps that occurred between 1978-1980. at colle oppio meloni was part of a hobbit camp revival that occurred in rome in the early 1990s. like the first hobbit camps (see apiú mani,1982; tarchi, 2010), the revival had among its aims a strategy to occupy culture and make it, to use alain de benoit’s phrase, “metapolitical.” tolkien’s lord of the rings has been used by the right to validate order and hierarchy, and to celebrate an invented heroic ethic claimed to have been destroyed by modernity and globalization (cappellini, 2021; horowitz, 2022). fantasy culture and nordic mythology have been important resources for promoting myths of “fatherland” and “tradition,” “heroism” and “national identity.” meloni uses fantasy fiction to construct her self-image and communicate the moral and practical qualities that a leader needs to change the world. she has a favourite hobbit, sam gamgee, with whom she identifies. sam gamgee does not have, she writes, “the regal stature of aragon. the magic of gandalf, the strength of gimli or the speed of logolas. he is only a hobbit; he is a gardener in real life. but without him, frodo would never have accomplished his mission.” it is the “small hands that change the world,” writes meloni, channelling tolkien (39). meloni is not only a humble hobbit and a gardener, however; she can quickly morph into a mighty pre-modern warrior: a joan of arc, a woman who can lead men into battle and rule nations with the aid of her faith. she makes the point that she was born on jan 16, the same day as joan of arc, and feels an affinity with the maid of orleans. her faith is manifested in her obsessive need to collect statues of angels, and she has a personal private angel in whom she confides and believes guides her. the semantic links meloni makes between fantasy fiction, religion, and politics are the rhetorical strategies of association used throughout her autobiographical narrative to create the “giorgia” personality and build a favourable rapport with the reader. one of meloni’s successful projects as a youth activist was the organization of the yearly antreju youth festival which had started in 1998 in meloni’s political home base, colle oppio. the antreju festival grew out of local community-organized events: the young giorgia, as part of a youth group, dressed as a hobbit, visited schools, and presented tableaux vivant representing episodes from the lord of the rings to young children. antreju is the child-hero character from the novel the neverending story (1979) by the german children’s fantasy writer michael ende, who made italy his home in the last 20 years of his life. antreju is tasked with stopping the dark force, the nothing, from engulfing the wonderland world of fantasia. the nothing, can of course be many things, but is used by meloni has a sign contemporary nihilism, the invisible hand of the global economy and the faceless elites and globalists that have shriveled religious authority and emptied the world of values. neither j.r.r. tolkien or michael ende consciously wrote their fantasy epics as whitenationalist propaganda, but the texts do hark back to an imaginary eurocentric realm in which 41 heroes are white-skinned, and enemies are characterised as a dark menace. symbols are frequently appropriated for purposes for which they were never intended and it’s useful to study these transformations and how the cultural landscape is politicised accordingly. over the years antreju has changed from a youth festival channelling the spirit of the early hobbit camps and anti-nihilist worldviews, into important annual political events hosting politicians and intellectuals from other parties and abroad, including steve bannon in 2018, viktor orbán in 2019, and recently rishi sunak (2023), of which more later. the ideal europe to which the adherents at colle oppio aspired was radically different, writes meloni, from the present “european union, an undefined entity in the hands of obscure bureaucrats that leave out of consideration national identities or cancels them altogether” (p. 4142). “they say that we are anti-europeanist, but this is totally false,” claims meloni. we have “a precise idea of europe that we defend and want to construct” (41) and she provides a vision of this europe by making a reference to the la compagnia dell’anello song “sulla strada” (on the road). in that song europe is presented as free from modernity with its complexities and discontents: europe as a fictional middle earth where “liberty” and “tradition” are valorised as part of an imagined ethno-nationalist past filled with ancient people, burial grounds, and misty forests. meloni describes the colle oppio as a community full of “intellectual curiosity,” “open mentally to new trends,” free “to read whatever book they wanted,” part of a movement that was allied to peace, and willing “to fight and resist in the name of liberty” (32-53). those familiar with colle oppio speak of it as a shrine to dead comrades and leaders, and a closed organization with a bunker mentality that demanded strict allegiance from its “camerati,” a term of address used in the fascist and neofascist youth movement (turco, 2022). each of the new recruits was baptised with a new name and meloni’s was “calimora.” the street battles the “camerati” fought were against the left, which in meloni’s telling has always been “fanatical and provocative” and willing to use violence “as a legitimate instrument against right wing organization” (45). the irresponsible, violent left is a foundational narrative of the msi, and meloni employs the trope relentlessly to justify her anti-leftist beliefs as well as to explain some of the difficulties of her personal life. meloni’s mother, anna paratore, was a romance writer and under the pen name josie bell and other pseudonyms, wrote “around to 140 romance novels” (meloni, 24). although a prolific writer of romantic fantasies she lived a precarious existence and relied on meloni’s maternal grandparent for help. she would later enter the roman real estate market and find considerable financial success there under conditions which have attracted media scrutiny (palladino, 2023). her mother’s decision not to have an abortion but to give birth to giorgia at a time when her marriage was collapsing, writes meloni, informs all her own subsequent life choices and strengthened her christian faith and conservative family values. the psychological hurt she feels for her family breakdown is transformed into a defence of what she calls the “natural family” (caravale, 2022) and the promotion of pro-natalist ideology to combat an italian demographic decline and “ethnic substitution.” meloni’s father, francesco, is described as “a man of the left” who ran off to the canary islands, a spanish archipelago off the coast of western africa, on a sailboat called crazy horse in 1979 when meloni was one year old. the absent father is represented as the emotional wound that unsettled her life. the family is constructed as divided between the virtuous, religious, hardworking conservative mother who is supportive of the msi, and the father who stands for egoism, abandonment, and leftist infantilized dreams. there is more to this story than meloni is willing to disclose, however. francesco meloni was the son of the italian character actress zoe incrocci (1917-2003) who worked extensively in 42 theatre, radio, and television as a voice actress. she worked in films with the famous italian comedian totó and with the popular actor alberto sordi. giorgia meloni bears a remarkable physical resemblance to her grandmother and has the same theatrical flair and expressive use of voice. when giorgia meloni uses her stern and threatening “voce grossa” (big voice) to assert an authoritative position, she is channelling her grandmother acting and voice skills. francesco meloni opened a discotheque, the fin fan, and a successful italian restaurant called la gomera, in san sebastian, one of the smaller of the canary islands. giorgia and her sister adrianna visited francesco for several years. during these visits she learned spanish, a language she uses and knows very well. she terminated the relationship with her father after one of these early visits because he had shown no emotional interest or involvement with either her or her sister’s lives. journalists have dug into the story and found that francesco meloni was arrested when police found 1,500 kilos (1.5 tons) of hashish hidden on his boat. he was sentenced to nine years in a spanish jail (turco, 2022, 37; palladino, 2023, 85). this omission from the narrative is perhaps understandable but given the promise she made to “tell all” without filters or distortions, meloni appears as a dissimulator who obscures hard and uncomfortable truths about her life with evasive narratives. at the same time there something in meloni’s story that makes the reader sympathetic to the struggles of an independent and a self-conscious 15-year-old with a loving mother and an absent, hated father, who finds refuge in a neofascist organization such as the msi, fronte della gioventù. colle oppio became “my second family. a family decidedly more numerous than my original one,” she writes. within this family, politics became a “totalizing experience” and soon meloni became part of a group called the gabbiani or seagulls (the name came from american author richard bach’s popular 1970 novel, jonathan livingston seagull). the gabbiani became her faithful crew and she found in this community a fellowship that developed into deep friendships, love interests, and marriages: her sister, arianna meloni, would marry a fellow gabbiani, francesco lollobrigida, now minister of agriculture in meloni’s government. the shadow of a gray fascism: deep roots don’t freeze the history of the msi, an and fdi demonstrates the gradual ideological changes and the rhetorical strategies used to bring an excluded political movement into the constitutional mainstream. their problem has been how to appear respectable and competent within the democratic political framework while shifting and holding on to their ideological identity and political imaginary. the cultural and political pessimism expressed by msi early leaders was synthesised into the ideas of a new right who claimed it wanted to escape the nostalgic ghettos of their fathers. but the historical past continues to haunt the present. meloni is found of using a quote from j.r.r tolkien: “deep roots don’t freeze.” her youthful militancy at colle oppio was both part of the youth movement’s break with the nostalgic past and an emotional affirmation of its legacy. the creation of the an was a way of finally entering the government, gaining legitimacy, and looking towards the future. meloni’s biography indicates, however, that this “future” is more a longing backward-facing mythical conservatism precariously founded on fascist memory obfuscated by evasions and popular fiction. the founding of msi in 1946 did not represent the return of fascism. for one thing, an historical phenomenon does not return in the same way. and in this instance, we cannot talk of a “return” of something that has never gone away, even with an epochal break such as 1945. as enzo traverso (2019; 2022) and argentinian historian federico finchelstein (2017) remind us, fascism was never fully exhausted after the war: it regenerated, adapted to the great political and 43 social transformations of the age, found new faces, recoded old mythologies with the tropes of fantasy fiction, and used strategic rhetoric to defend its heritage. the result in italy has been a mixture of the old and the new, not a transcendence but a “minestrone” of conflicting ideas, a confluence of both populist sentiments and extreme right self-interested sanitizations of fascist history. few believe italy will return to an old fashioned black shirted fascism with the election of meloni. the liberal internationalist historian, timothy garton ash (2022) noted the peculiarities of italy’s relationship to fascism which he calls “relaxed and indulgent especially in many sectors of the italian right.” garthon ash believes that the real fascists in today’s europe are to be found in putin’s russia. italy has strong constitutional checks and balances, and ash argues that italy’s democracy is less threatened by right wing politics “than that of the united states.” the chief concern others have, however, is that this relaxed and indulgent relationship of both the italian right and the mainstream media towards mussolini and fascism encourages what historian claudio vercelli (2022) calls “gray neofascism”: a populist authoritarianism that promotes a sanitized memory of fascism and a disregard for individual rights. i prefer to use gray neofascism rather than post fascism because the latter is used by the said parties (the an and fdi) to connote a transformative break with the past. gray neofascism, while not widely shared in public discourse, is a colour and a concept more attuned to the continuities that a political party has with its fascist heritage, and more aware of the dangers it poses to democracy. in the middle of the second world war, italian philosopher benedetto croce (1943) wrote an article in the new york times in which he called fascism a “germ” found in many nations. he warned readers to be on guard against this contagion as the war wound down to its inevitable end. today, in the time of covid, the metaphor of a virus to describe the contagious diffusion of authoritarian, anti-establishment, and anti-intellectual discourses through social media, has returned in force (confora, 2023; pietrucci 2023). these discourses comply with many of umberto eco’s (1995) fourteen tests for fascism, which include contempt for the weak, fear of difference, and appeals to social frustration and group identity, and they are used to produce hate speech. it’s no wonder that amnesty international ranked meloni’s electioneering speeches as hateful even if only second to salvini’s rantings. twenty-three years of fascist rule in italy (1922-1945) left a deep emotional legacy that has been difficult to uproot or reconcile. a well noted fact about many of the italian parties of the extreme right is that they are family affairs where the continuity with the past is both asserted and legitimated. alessandra mussolini, the granddaughter of benito mussolini, first entered public politics as a member of the an. the family album includes the sons, daughters and grandchildren of fascists who become neofascists, then post fascists, and now claim to be hard right conservatives with “post fascist roots.” the genealogy of fascism has been recently documented in david broder’s mussolini’s grandchildren (2023). a quick look at the leadership of fratelli d’italia makes clear the enduring influence of family links with the past. ignazio la russa is the son of a neofascist msi senator. the younger la russa was one the founders of the fratelli d’italia and is the current the president of the senate of the republic. he is well known for his right-wing ideas, collection of fascist memorabilia, and extreme criticism of anti-fascist history in italy. isabella rauti is currently undersecretary of defence in georgia meloni’s government. she is the daughter of pino rauti, the so-called “black gramsci” and former secretary of msi who earlier in his career founded ordine nuovo, a group inspired by the teachings of the self-proclaimed “superfascist” julius evola and associated with the fascist terrorist violence during italy’s anni di 44 piombo (years of lead, 1970-1982) a period of bombing, assassinations and kidnapping by both the right and left (see drake, 2021). isabella rauti was married to gianni alemanno who was a minister in berlusconi’s government; he later became mayor of rome and was briefly in fratelli d’italia. alemanno was arrested, along with fabio ravelli (now in the inner circle of meloni’s government), in 1989 for protesting president george bush’s visit to the american military cemetery in the town of nettuno close to anzio beach near rome, because the visit was deemed an offence to the italian fascist soldiers in mussolini’s republic of saló who died fighting against the allies. giorgia meloni has vehemently rejected criticisms that fratelli d’italia is connected to historical fascism or to nostalgic neofascism. some political scientists agree and call fratelli d’italia an “afascist” party (vassali and regnati, 2023): agnostic about fascism. this is not an opinion i or many others (see galli, 2024; urbinati and pedullà, 2024) share, largely because meloni has been silent about the embarrassing pro-fascist sentiments expressed by her party’s supporters. the most egregious example was in rome during a memorial, attended by fabio rampelli and other member of the fdi, commemorating the deaths in 1978 of three members of the msi youth wing fronte della gioventù during italy’s anni di piombo (roberts, 2024). the ceremony ended in a mass fascist salute that would not been out of place in mussolini’s rome or in hitler’s nuremburg rallies. the ghost of fascism within fratelli d’italia is present and evident in the party’s attacks on individual rights, and in the rhetorical ambiguity used by politicians like meloni and la russa who on one hand claim to abjure fascism and on the other seek to minimise its violent anti-democratic past. the overwhelming majority meloni’s inner circle started their political activities as members of the msi, an, or the youth wings of these parties, and political scientists (baldini, tronconi, angelucci (2023) have noted that “the continuity with neofascist and post fascist-parties, at least in the profile of its ‘inner circle’ could not be clearer.” how this continuity is shaping meloni’s policies in power is more difficult to gage but after more than a year in government and with the european parliamentary election looming, there are signs of what to expect. conclusion as of this writing (march 20224), giorgia meloni has visited the u.s.a. and canada and met with president joe biden and prime minister justin trudeau. her leadership so far has been a mix of increased international pragmatism abroad and conservative reaction at home. in the past, meloni had sought a close relationship with former president donald trump and his advisor steve bannon, both of whom hailed her election as a major victory for the political right. president biden initially regarded meloni’s hard-line political philosophy like that of donald trump—a form of “semi-fascism”—and commented that her election was a retreat from democracy. when meloni visited the white house for the first time in july 2023, biden praised her, and whatever doubts he may have had about her were strategically put aside. biden does not want the italian right to be troublesome about nato and the war in the ukraine. silvio berlusconi and matteo salvini had been allied with pro-putin interests in the past. with the death of berlusconi—he died in june 2023 at the age of 86—meloni has positioned herself as a faithful american ally who will support ukraine, be critical of china, work within the nato alliance, and toe the line on us support of israel in the gaza war. italy has consequently withdrawn its participation from china’s belt and roads initiative (bri) and was among several european nations that froze funds to the unrwa (united nations relief and works agency for 45 palestine refugees in the near east) after several of its staff were accused by israel of involvement in the oct. 7 hamas attack. meloni has led her government for the past sixteen months and polls suggest that her party has the support of 28% of voters. but cracks are beginning to show in the political consensus. her first domestic setback was in the recent sardinian regional election (feb. 2024) where the fdi candidate lost to one supported by both the m5s and the pd. meloni’s right-wing politics are being called into question by a young progressive, elly schlein (2022), unexpectedly elected (feb. 2023) as the first woman to lead italy’s centre left democratic party (pd). the popular chant meloni used during the election campaign and which became a widely circulated social media meme— “i’m giorgia, i’m a woman, i’m a mother. i’m a christian!”—was met head on by elly schlein’s response: “i am a woman. i love another woman. i am not a mother, but i am not less of a woman for this.” in her pre-election rabble-rousing speeches meloni affirmed that a child should be raised by heterosexual parents and spoke out against gender ideology and the lgbt+ “lobbies.” in government, meloni has grown closer to the movements whose principal aim is to promote “traditional family values” and to reverse progressive legislation won in the last decades by both the lgbtq+ and feminist movements. these polices prompted justin trudeau to express his concern with her government. one of the meloni government’s pieces of legislation, for example, criminalizes people who go abroad to have children via surrogacy. while statistically most people who seek surrogacy identify as heterosexual, the legislation is particularly harsh on same sex parents and pressure has been put on local governments not to register children born to same-sex parents through surrogacy. in june 2024, 400 million people across the european union are eligible to vote in the european parliamentary election and send 720 representatives to brussels, and all eyes are on the center-right for they are predicted to make new gains. the leadership of key eu positions is today in the hands of ursula von der leyen (president of the european commission, 2019), christine lagarde (president of the european central bank, 2019), and roberta metsola (president of the european parliament, 2022). european parliamentarian elisabetta gualmini speaks of this shift in leadership as the beginning of a mamma europa (2023), a more empathetic europe where women’s rights, health, civil rights, migration, and respect for international law are protected and defended. gualmini’s views are aspirational but point to the important role that women are playing in political leadership. since her activist days in colle oppio, meloni has held her own political aspiration to build a new european ethnonationalist right. she is the current president of the european conservatives and reformists (ecr) and has forged alliances with far-right authoritarian groups trying to make the new right the center of european power and influence eu policy on climate change and migrants. at the same time, meloni is wooing traditional mainstream conservative support, and they, in turn, are courting her. she invited rishi sunak to the atreju festival in december of 2023 and supported him over a shared hardline approach over immigration. the uk government has attempted to ship asylum seekers to rwanda while italy has struck a deal with the albanian government to process up to 30,000 asylum seekers: legally questionable solutions that would change little but would play well to the base. we shall see how meloni navigates these political waters: whether she will side with visegard, the ultranationalist authoritarian group guided by hungarian leader viktor orbán, or, move towards the moderate centre right european people’s party (epp) of ursula von der leyen and roberta metsola. the u.s.a. and canada (cbc, 2024) 46 are more interested in keeping meloni as an ally; they, at 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(2021). neofascismo in grigio: la destra radicale tra l’italia e l’europa. einaudi. ttps://www.politico.eu/article/giorgia-meloni-youth-front-brothers-of-italy-neo-f coming abroad to find home | 159 160 | migration of bengalis to canada coming abroad to find home | 161 162 | migration of bengalis to canada coming abroad to find home | 163 164 | migration of bengalis to canada coming abroad to find home | 165 166 | migration of bengalis to canada coming abroad to find home | 167 168 | migration of bengalis to canada coming abroad to find home | 169 microsoft word alternate routes vol 30, issue 2 final policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus: embedding neoliberalism bryan evans1 and marcel goguen2 abstract: this contribution explores the resilience of neoliberal policy ideas within the state by situating the process of manufacturing policy advice within the context of the prevailing policy paradigm. the central question informing this work is despite evident failure, neoliberal ideas continue to prevail within the state policy process. why and how this is the case, despite the lived experience and evidence, is the subject interrogated here. while the study of conventional public policy tends to be presented as a technical, evidence-based discipline, this ignores, or at best minimizes the highly hierarchical and politicized nature of evidence, expertise and knowledge employed in the work of constructing policy. keywords: neoliberalism, policy paradigm, evidence, new public management, centralization introduction this paper examines the relationship between ‘policy paradigms’ (hall, 1993) and the institutional structure of the state apparatus. while work on policy 1 bryan evans is professor in the department of politics and public administration, ryerson university, toronto, canada. together with stephen mcbride, he is the co-editor of austerity: the lived experience and the austerity state. 2 marcel goguen is a ph.d. candidate in international relations at mcmaster university, hamilton, canada. his dissertation examines the methodological implications of critical theories of the state for the study of global finance. we wish to acknowledge the support from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada and dr. stephen mcbride (mcmaster university), principal investigator leading a partnership development grant whose generous support enabled part of this research. marcel goguen would like to acknowledge support from the centre for research in empirical social sciences (cress) at mcmaster university. policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 13 paradigms has produced many useful insights relating to the processes through which certain ideas influence the policy making process, it has thus far not sufficiently examined how these dynamics interact with the structure of the state apparatus. we thus argue that an important but still mostly unexplored dimension in understanding the dynamics involved in the struggle over the maintenance and replacement of policy paradigms is the institutional structure of the state apparatus and role of ‘ideational’ agents working within that. lukes (2005) forwards the claim that for a process to be understood as an exercise of power it assumes “that it is in the exerciser’s or exerciser’s power to act differently” (2005, 57). this framing implies that operatives within the institution possess the agency to make different decisions. the broader political context in which these agents (exercisers) function (the paradigm) works to constrain this exercise of agency. to illustrate this broader theoretical argument, we draw on previous and recent interviews with government and non-government policy workers in three canadian provinces to examine the ways in which changes in the structure of the state apparatus has shaped the mechanisms involved in maintaining the stability of the neoliberal policy paradigm and helped insulate it from alternative ideas. this article proceeds in three parts. a first section sets out the significance and meaning of the concept of policy paradigms for studying the power dynamics involved in the policy process. a second section examines the changes in the structure of the state apparatus associated with the emergence of npm and the ‘neoliberal state’. a third section examines the impact of these changes in the structure of the state apparatus on the dynamics involved in maintaining or contesting the existing neoliberal policy paradigm. public administration and policy paradigms despite the ideology of technocratic neutrality having long prevailed in the field of public administration and the public service in most western democracies (raadschelders and rutgers, 1996; waldo, 1948), policy making does not take place in a power vacuum. contrary to the implicit view that dominates the field of public administration, then the ideas that come to be accepted as common wisdom and received knowledge in the manufacture of policy are not there simply as a result of having been 'proven' to be superior through a neutral and apolitical process wherein experts carefully weigh evidence and refine their understanding of (social) reality. ideas concerning public policy and management, as the basic building blocks of knowledge and expertise, no matter 14 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life how anodyne and antiseptic the packaging, are anything but technical and apolitical. politically imposed deadlines usually push policy practitioners to make a decision without there being sufficient time to completely weigh the evidence (forshey, 2005; lidman and sommers, 2005). further, more information does not necessarily contribute to a greater degree of consensus on policy, partly because what constitutes evidence is contestable and shaped by the power dynamics of the broader political context. how policy problems are framed, the identification of viable solutions, what is deemed to be acceptable or not, what instruments are chosen, are all reflections of where power is located and held by which policy actors. in this process, not all knowledge is created equal. specific ideas are socially and culturally embedded in ways making them powerful or, on the other hand, not powerful (strassheim and kettunen, 2014). as a result, some forms are privileged and are readily utilized while other forms become relatively marginalized, a process that makes certain solutions appear more credible and/or legitimate than others. the relationship between power and ideas in the policy process remains difficult to conceptualize and empirically investigate, however, partially because it can be rather hard to “differentiate the effects of ideas themselves from the effects of the actors who bear them” (campbell, 2002, 31). while interest in the impact of ideas on the policy process had been rather limited until the 1980s, there has since grown a significant body of literature examining this issue by scholars who were/are skeptical of the assumption that was then dominant: “that politics are driven solely by actors operating according to a self-interested cost-benefit calculus” (campbell, 1998, 377). a central research topic within this body of work is concerned with the different ways that ideas can be powerful in their own right and the main factors involved in shaping which ideas become influential (e.g. hirshman and berman, 2014; campbell, 1998, 2002; béland, 2005, 2009; walsh, 2000; carstensen and schmidt, 2016; seabrooke and wigan, 2016). in order to contribute to efforts at more precisely measuring the impact of ideas on the policy process, carstensen and schmidt (2016) have distinguished between three forms in which ideas can be powerful. the first is power through ideas, which refers to the ability of particular actors to use ideas to convince others of the normative value or cognitive validity of their worldview in such a way as they alter their beliefs about how the world works or how it should be (carstensen and schmidt, 2016, 325-6). power over ideas concerns the ability of actors to define what certain ideas mean and to gather enough legitimacy around their view so that policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 15 they can avoid having to consider alternate definitions of the same idea or competing ideas. finally, power in ideas refers to quality that certain ideas can possess, once they have become sufficiently widely accepted, that they end up “structuring thought at the expense of other ideas” (ibid, 329). it is this dimension of power in ideas that we are primarily interested in this paper. one illustration of this ideational power is provided by widmaier in a series of papers examining the impact of what he calls ‘intersubjective understandings’ – but which we can describe as socially and politically dominant ideas about how the world works – on policies meant to deal with economic crisis (2003), international cooperation on monetary and financial regulation (2004), and the relative balance of price and wage guidelines and monetary policies as the primary mechanism of us economic policy (2007). widmaier’s main point is that in dealing with different economic crises, a central role is played by the broad ‘intersubjective understandings’ through which policymakers construct their understanding of when they began, what caused them, and how best to deal with them (2007, 46). for example, widmaier explains, from the end of the second world war up to the 1970, dominant keynesian ‘intersubjective understandings’ of inflationary crises and price fluctuations as ‘market failures’ meant that they could be plausibly dealt with through government intervention in the form of the adoption of wage and price guidelines. in contrast, beginning in the 1970s, neoclassical ‘intersubjective understandings’ of inflationary crises were caused by the failure of state policies so that they could only plausibly be dealt with through fiscal and monetary austerity (widmaier, 2007, 47-49; 2004; 2003). this should not be taken to imply that material forces and events are unimportant but rather that it is only by giving meaning to the ‘material trends’ through the lens provided by the dominant ‘intersubjective understandings’ of a period that policymakers can identify the existence of a crisis, its causes, and then ‘react’ appropriately to deal with it (widmaier, 2003, 64; 2004, 450). but how should we understand and analyze the processes through which certain ‘intersubjective understandings’ (what we shall simply call ideas) come to gain the authority that enables them to structure “thought at the expense of other ideas”? one avenue could be to explore this topic through the lens of ideology which, as it is typically used in marxist terms, refers to how certain ideas shape perceptions of the existing order to minimize the desirability of any possible alternative that erodes the power of the dominant class (marx, 1932; berman, 2017). one particularly influential contribution to public policy that adopts this 16 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life approach is the work of lukes which highlights how power is exercised by preventing people “from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things” (2005, 11, 28). however, despite proposing some useful amendments to address the problems of traditional work on ‘false consciousness’, lukes’ work remains theoretically very close to conventional work on ideology (hay, 1997). as a result, it is of limited use for our purposes as it both tends to depict ideas in an instrumental manner as well as leave relatively little room for a consideration of the agency of policy makers. therefore, we proceed in a manner similar to konings (2018, 29) who suggests that it is important to consider how we might understand neoliberalism “even if we assume little about the ability of capitalist elites to capture state institutions or the minds of policymakers”. from this perspective, rather than understanding state officials as being either “corrupted by private interests” or intellectually captured by the dominant ideology, they come to be viewed as being “primarily disposed to stabilize the economic system” by relying on a set of ideas that seemingly provides a “degree of cohesion at the level of practice” (konings 2018, 29) the central question then becomes how some ideas, and not others, come to be understood as providing the best policy options. for our purposes, peter hall’s (1993) work on the concept of policy paradigms provides a useful lens through which to examine this issue. for hall, a policy paradigm is “framework of ideas and standards that specifies not only the goals of policy and the kind of instruments that can be used to attain them, but also the very nature of the problems they are meant to be addressing” (1993, 279; béland, 2005, 5). broadly speaking, what policy paradigms do is form the background view of how the world works and the kinds of causal relations that exists within it and, as a result, they constrain the range of possibilities considered as plausible or likely to succeed by policy makers (campbell, 2002). in specifying how this operated in practice, hall distinguished his approach from work drawing on heclo’s (1974) concept of ‘social learning’ in which policy makers were understood to be perpetually ‘fine tuning’ the design of their policies based on a process of accumulating evidence of past policy successes and failures (hall, 1993, 277). the problem for hall was this approach suggested a view of how policy-makers learned from their experiences that was insufficiently attentive to the power dynamics involved in struggles over how to interpret the meaning of past policy experiences. the concept of policy paradigms is meant to address this weakness by foregrounding the interpretive process through which policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 17 past experiences are evaluated and given meaning by incorporating them into a coherent account of what the world is like. from this perspective “policy paradigms guide learning processes through which existing policy legacies are evaluated and criticized” (béland, 2009, 705). in policy construction terms, the concept of policy paradigm is thus useful to conceptualize the way that ideas can shape how a policy problem is constructed in a way that makes the problem intelligible, so that it can be understood by political decision makers and policy makers, in one way rather than another. one of the primary advantages of adopting this approach in analyzing policy construction is that it provides the tools necessary to examine how power shapes the policy process beyond its manifestations in 'normal' electoral politics and the struggle over control of governments (béland and cox, 2013, 194). these power dynamics are most clearly visible in situations in which an established paradigm is challenged by a competitor; i.e. in cases of ‘paradigm shift’. in the original kuhnian sense, paradigm shifts are understood to occur when the accumulation of anomalous evidence that cannot be convincingly included into the view of the world espoused by a paradigm reaches a tipping point, and the search begins for an alternative view of the world in which the (so-called) anomalies can be convincingly integrated. once this happens, once a new view of the world is discovered that can more convincingly integrate the ostensibly anomalous facts than the view espoused by the previous paradigm, then we can speak of a ‘paradigm shift’. in policy paradigms, however, the processes involved in paradigm shifts are more complicated and are crucially related to the role of power (blyth, 2013; henriksen, 2013). power plays such a central role in policy paradigm shifts because since “each paradigm contains its own account of how the world facing policymakers operates and each account is different, it is often impossible for the advocates of different paradigms to agree on a common body of data against which a technical judgment in favor of one paradigm over another might be made” (hall, 1993, 279). as a result, what is considered to be evidence and what evidence means is inherently contestable. simply stated, this means that “discrediting a policy paradigm is a much more contested and interpretive process than the one which lies behind scientific refutation” (wilder and howlett, 2014, 187). this implies that (1) the process of their replacement is likely to be more social and political than scientific, (2) issues of competing authority are likely to be central to the process of (policy) paradigm shift and, (3) that “the movement from one paradigm 18 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life to another ... is likely to involve the accumulation of anomalies, experimentation with new forms of policy, and policy failures that precipitate a shift in the locus of authority over policy and initiate a wider contest between competing paradigms” (hall, 1993, 280). in supporting this view policy paradigm shifts, blyth proposes that the fact that the 2007-8 global financial crisis did not cause a paradigm shift seems to demonstrate the strength of the this account of paradigm shifts (2013, 206), since while the crisis represents the failure of decades of received wisdom of the neoclassical policy paradigm, no paradigm shift has taken place; quite the contrary (quiggin, 2011; mirowski, 2013). thus, blyth explains, “it is politics, not economics, and it is authority, not facts, that matter for both paradigm maintenance and change” (blyth, 2013, 210). but how does this play out in practice? how do certain ideas come to exert influence on the policy-making process while others are marginalized? in exploring this issue, widmaier’s (2016) “staged theory” of ideational power provides a useful starting point. in this account, ideas that were initially used as rhetorical instruments to defend a particular policy can sometimes take on “structural weight” that makes them function “at a deeper level than [mere] policy ideas” as the “unarticulated … background knowledge” that limit the range of policy options that are understood as being potentially acceptable (widmaier, 2016, 345). although the process wherein specific ideas come to be embedded in this way is clearly shaped by power relations, once specific ideas come to be embedded into important institutions, they can have a significant impact on the manufacture of policy in their own right. in this process, the struggle over who gets to occupy those sites which really matter in interpreting events and anomalies and imposing meaning onto the facts is central. the work of policy takes place within ‘gated’ policy communities. policy paradigms operate, are fought over, maintained or overturned, within specific social, material and institutional 'locations'. while policy expertise is distributed both in and outside of the state apparatus, policy decision makers, those who ultimately construct a policy, and in the process determine what will be done or not done and how, are employed within the formal state apparatus. it is here that the work of policy is conducted. this means that the kinds of ideas which come to form the core of policy paradigms, the role of experts in maintaining, transferring, and applying these ideas, and the strategies that are used by those seeking to foster or preclude a policy paradigm shift, are all crucially centered on and shaped by these locations. policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 19 the policy-making process is often quite unresponsive to influences originating outside of the specific 'locations' from which public policy is manufactured. policy work, and those who conduct the crafting, insulate the policy function of the state apparatus from unorthodox policy alternatives. alternatives are filtered out through a dense network of ideational relays including think tanks, consultants, and various policy entrepreneurs within or well-linked to the state from the outside. as a result, the composition of these 'locations', and the social, technological, political, and institutional networks to which they are connected, significantly shape how policy paradigms operate. to borrow from blyth’s (2013) formulation above, while it is indeed ‘politics and not economics’ that “matter for both paradigm maintenance and change”, an important aspect of this is the inherently political struggle over paradigm maintenance and change which is shaped by the institutional terrain. to gain a better understanding of the power dynamics involved in maintaining or replacing a policy paradigm, it is important to more closely consider not only the composition of the ‘locations’ within the state apparatus in which policies are constructed but also the specificity of their connections with the social, political and academic actors outside of the state apparatus. in the next section, we examine the relationship between the current neoliberal policy paradigm and the institutional structure of the post-welfare state apparatus. transforming the structures of the state apparatus and the neoliberal paradigm the keynesian welfare state apparatus3 emerged out of a period defined by the events of the great depression and the second world war that had provoked a re-thinking of how business, labour, and government could work together in ensuring economic stability within the context of overall growth. through these formative events, governments had “learned a great deal about the practical problems of macroeconomic management” and broader views 3 in this paper, we use the concept of the ‘state apparatus’ in order to forestall the tendency to reify the state as a homogenous, unified and rational actor. the state apparatus refers to the administrative bureaucracies, legal systems, and military and police organizations, among others, that are involved in regulating social and economic relations (miliband, 1972). these are the “legally defined organizations that wield state authority, that is, organizations whose goals and modes of action are defined within the law-making process, and that can mobilize state force, bureaucratic, judicial and physical force to implement their decisions” (gran, 1994, 65). 20 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life concerning the role of government in the administration of the economy had become generally more positive (drache, 1996, 32). the welfare state apparatus served this purpose as it organized political power and administrative capability “in an effort to modify the play of market forces” through the provision of social security programs such as insurance against unemployment, illness, accident, and old age (briggs, 2000, 18). consequently, “this new system also demanded new institutions, a new politics, and major changes in the role of the state” (ross and jenson, 1985/86, 24). as is well documented, the keynesian welfare state began to wobble and undergo transformation through the 1980s (alber, 1988; peters and savoie, 1993). in a context of increasing inflation and unemployment and the decline of both profitability and disposable income (goldthorpe, 1984, 2), the welfare state slowly “unravelled” (banting and hoberg, 1997, 410). its decline was accelerated and celebrated by reagan and thatcher’s ascendant brand of ‘new right’ thinking which counter-posed its values of economic liberalism, individualism, and inequality to those associated with the postwar social contract of collectivism, social rights and equality (farnham and horton, 1996, 12). it was in this context that the ‘new public management’ (npm) movement arose as the “domesticated, depoliticized version of the new right or market liberal policy analysis, made somewhat more technical, consensual and generic” (dunleavy, 1997, 17). the key characteristics of npm include: 1) a shift in focus from inputs and processes and towards outputs and outcomes (results); 2) a shift towards more measurement and quantification; 3) a preference for more specialized lean, flat and autonomous organizational forms; 4) replacing hierarchical relationships with contract relationships; 5) use of market or markettype mechanisms (mtm’s) for the delivery of public services; 6) an expanded concern with service quality and a consumer orientation; 7) a blurring of the separation between the public, private and non-profit sectors; and 9) a shift in core values away from universalism, equity, and security and towards efficiency, economy, effectiveness and individualism (pollitt, 2003, 27-28). within this perspective, the proper role for government came to be redefined as one where the objective was to “reduce or relinquish their previous responsibilities for maintaining full employment and a comprehensive system of state welfare; … privatize public services or their delivery whenever practicable; and … reform their own operations in accordance with market concepts of competition and efficiency” (self, 1993, ix). as such npm “provides a label under which private sector disciplines can be introduced to the public services, political control can be strengthened, budgets trimmed, professional autonomy reduced, public service policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 21 unions weakened and a quasi-competitive framework erected to flush out the natural inefficiencies of bureaucracy” (pollitt, 1990, 49). in this sense, npm can be thought of as a transmission belt for the transfer of neoliberalism into public sector organizations (spronk, 2007). while there are definitional debates regarding neoliberalism (cahill and humphreys, 2019, 2), it can generally be defined as a paradigm applying a market approach to governance and as such represents an ideological shift in the role of government. harvey suggests it is a theory “proposing that human well-being can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, unencumbered markets, and free trade” (2007, 22). in policy, it manifests itself as market liberalization, deregulation, privatization and an erosion of worker and social protections (larner, 2000). while neoliberalism is often presented as a force hostile to the state, actually existing neoliberalism is a paradox where the “state is to be simultaneously rolled back and rolled forward. non-interventionist and decentralised in some areas, the state is to be highly interventionist and centralised in others” (gamble, 1988, 28). this is the paradox of “centralized decentralization” (hoggett, 1996, 74, 9-32). it is necessary to centralize power in order to dismantle state-provided social protections and to use state power to advance the neoliberal project. this is the central paradox of the neoliberal state apparatus and it is absolutely critical to an understanding that despite the rhetoric of ‘rolling back the state,’ building the neoliberal state in fact requires that the state be reorganized as an active instrument for marketization (gamble, 2006, 21-2; harvey, 2007, 22). this paradox at the heart of neoliberalism manifests itself in the effects of npm on structure of the state apparatus. rather than simply diminish the state apparatus, therefore, npm reconfigures the distribution of power within and between its component parts and its relationship to forces outside of it such as capital, labour and other civil society movements (harvey, 2005, 78). more specifically, the implementation of market fundamentalist interventions requires a concentration of authority at the centre of the state. thus, while npm is identified with decentralization, that is so with respect to delivery. the assertion of a new managerialism within the neoliberal state apparatus renews the old concept of the politics-administration dichotomy by empowering managers but also gives greater control over policy to central agencies, the executive and the political arm of government (i.e. ministerial offices and staff) (savoie, 1994). 22 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life npm was thus no mere effort at tinkering but rather sought a transformation within the public sector and the public sector’s relationship to government and economy and so “aims at the replacement of the traditional model altogether” (hughes, 2003, 50; clarke and newman, 1997). the new model of public administration was explicitly directed at “achieving more frugal, more efficient…more effective…governments” (lynn, 2006, 104). since these views did not sit comfortably with the post-war state inhabited by a closely-knit set of senior public servants and political leaders who shared common values respecting the mixed economy and the welfare state (heclo and wildavsky, 1981, 30), it was necessary to co-ordinate the political/managerial resources required to overcome resistance (e.g. pusey, 1991). on an ideational level, the legitimacy of the policy proposals espoused by npm and proponents of the neoliberal state apparatus rested largely on the authority of the world view espoused by neoclassical economics. economics, more so than any other social science, has been an exceptionally powerful academic discipline in its ability to inform public policy (schneider and kirchgässner, 2009, 324). economists are in this respect “gatekeepers” occupying a strategic location for providing the theoretical rationale informing the allocation of public resource (markoff and montecinos, 1993, 52). in addition, because of this preponderance, “(a)spects of economic theories and techniques become embedded in real-life economic processes, and become part of the equipment that economic actors and ordinary citizens use in their day-to-day economic interactions” (fourcade et al., 2015, 109). as a result, the indirect influence of economists is often just as important as their direct influence in reshaping “how non-economist policymakers understand a given issue” (hirschman and berman, 2014, 780). in short, they frame problems and thus establish the range of policy interventions to be considered. though the prominence of economics is not in itself new, the discipline itself has changed substantially since the end of ww2. indeed, through the great depression and the post-war era, a “generation of keynesian trained economists and policy analysts came to the fore and populated a growing state apparatus (evans, 2005, 25). however, even as that paradigm wobbled, economists continued to work as key policy actors but with “newer ideas of economic management” that “now come with an impressive variety of complex and esoteric models of their own and require equally elaborate technical staffing” (markoff and montecinos, 1993, 43). the influence of economists assumes an intellectually hegemonic location of this discipline over other social sciences. the scientization of economics, referring to the application of empirical testing, typically by various policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 23 mathematical methods, provides the methodological foundation for this status as the ‘queen of the social sciences’. economists have thus perceived their role as above sectional politics as theirs is a discipline “whose intellectual achievements are held to be in the refinement of beautifully abstract and highly mathematized models” (markoff and montecinos, 1993, 51). this scientization works to depoliticize economic policy (dyson and marcussen, 2009) and so contributes to insulating the prevailing orthodoxy from alternative models. more than this, scientized economics reduces the debate to one based on purely technical, and therefore apolitical, solutions which share the same assumption respecting macroeconomics. this depoliticization through scientization is not unique to the neoliberal state. indeed, policy problems were framed by keynesian economics as “technical questions to be solved by economic experts. because the problems are understood as merely technical ones, they appear to be beyond the political sphere” (wisman, 1991, 118). as a result, contemporary neo-classical economic theory thus function “mainly as a surrogate ideology for the market economy” (keen, 2011, 4) and economists have at times been described as 'carriers' of the neoliberal market ideology (evans, 2017, 22631). despite initial rumblings that the 2007-8 global financial crisis (gfc) would lead to a decline in the authority of economics and potential shift away from neoliberalism (collignon, 2008), outside of relatively minor changes to prudential financial regulation, the longstanding prestige and influence of neoclassical economics within the policy making process has not significantly diminished since the gfc (mirowski, 2013, 158; crouch, 2011; quiggin, 2011). this progressive institutionalization of neoclassical economics and its ability to withstand substantial opposition and empirical evidence (the gfc) suggesting that many of its central assumptions are flawed or simply false, finds many echoes with widmaier’s (2016) ‘staged theory’ of ideational power, discussed above. what has so far remained largely unexamined is the role played by changes in the state apparatus in enhancing the stability of the neoliberal policy paradigm. in the next section we examine this issue by drawing on previous and recent semistructured interviews. the neoliberal state apparatus, the centralization of power, and the policy process in many western countries, policy often had what could be characterized as an 'upward' movement within state bureaucracies; with policies being 24 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life developed in departments by public sector advisors before being presented to members of the executive for appraisal and decision (evans, 2017, 10). this process allowed for input from various sources and included an important role for public sector policy analysis (good, 2013, 213). however, the centralization of political control discussed above has been accompanied by a movement to repoliticize the state by concentrating policy making authority in specific strategic centres operating largely under the direct control of the executive branch (aucoin, 2010; savoie, 1994). the public policy expertise upon which governments rely is thus increasingly centered outside of the civil service. public policy work becomes politicized as work which had been the purview of the public service is “turned over to … partisan policy advisors, to think tanks and to lobby firms for advice” (savoie, 1993, 21-2). policy work within the neo-liberal state is one in which influence over the design and manufacture of policy is now limited to a limited number of central actors and in which “public service advisors are either shunted aside or are recruited for their ‘political’ fit” (evans, 2017, 233). whitehall scholar peter hennessey observed of the thatcher era that the expanding role of external policy advice has produced “an era when the armani-clad minds in the penumbra of fad-and-fashion prone private think tanks can be preferred (especially if their advice comes gift-wrapped and suitably politically tinted) to that more sober, sometimes inconvenient fare served up by the tweed-clad minds in the career bureaucracy” (1997, 4-5). this has created formidable barriers that effectively exclude alternative ideas from having any influence on the formal policy process. for instance, in a series of interviews with ontario government policy analysts and policy managers conducted in 2005, a number of themes emerged respecting how policy work was restructured through the 1990s and beyond. these themes included an observed diminishment of research capacity within the public service and the increasing centralization of power in the executive (evans, 2005, 34). in addition, the interviews identified the overt politicisation of the policy agenda and the decline of research and evidence in the policy process (evans, 2005, 37). the decline in policy capacity was understood to be linked to the centralisation of power in the premier's office as well as the “marginalisation of the public service from participating in policy formulations which had been a central function in the post war period” (evans, 2005, 35). commenting on these changes, one former executive noted that the “ops had lost its capacity to say 'no' in the harris years” (evans, 2005, 35). the reference to harris being to mike harris who served as premier from 1995 to 2002 and whose government pioneered the most radical and aggressive neoliberal policy agenda in ontario’s policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 25 modern history. echoing this view, one senior policy manager observed that senior executives have increasingly “seen their role as facilitating the political agenda in an expeditious 'make it so' manner without full due diligence” and that “decisions are made through a political filter not a technical one” (evans, 2005, 38). another executive ranking informant commented on the “growing policy role of politicians and their 'external advisors' and the commensurate marginalisation of the public service” as having “moved (the public service) from being architects to being contractors” (evans, 2005, 35). these findings are echoed by a 2012 survey of 1510 government and non-government policy workers in three canadian provinces provides some insight into the centralized and insular nature of the policy making process. survey responses revealed that approximately 30 per cent of non-government respondents indicated they were never invited to consult with government and between 6 and 13 per cent were invited on a monthly basis to engage in a policy dialogue. moreover, more than 46 per cent indicated that they worked with government on a policy issue only after all key design issues were decided or were limited to an implementation role (evans and sapeha, 2015, 258). a related research project entailed 31 semi-structured interviews with government and non-government policy and program staff working in the immigrant settlement field. the interview probed the working relationship between the government and non-government actors in this specific field. the general view of non-government staff was that “policy consultations were largely predetermined … their experience of policy engagement with government was often simply frustrating. despite providing what they viewed as relevant information and perspectives that would benefit policy design, this was too often not heeded” (evans and shields, 2014, 122). interviews with 18 trade union-based researchers also struck a rather negative experience in dealing with government. indeed, all informants “characterized the climate for labour policy advocacy as ranging from “chilly” to “hostile,” (evans and ross, 2018, 340). in addition, all experienced a decline in their ability to access policy makers accompanied by a “prevailing sense that the message was not being heard by simply putting forward evidence” (evans and ross, 2018, 340). these conclusions find additional support from eight more recent interviews, carried out in march, april and may 2018 with former and current public service policy advisors and senior managers whose careers were in the ontario public service (ops), the permanent, non-partisan governmental bureaucracy. most participants touched on the decrease in the role of expertise 26 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life in the process and the increased prevalence of centralized top-down policy manufacture. thus, one participant noted that “knowledge and expertise were valued more in the 1990s” but that, “over time” it had become “less valued” and that they felt that they had become primarily a “typist” rather than a “knowledge worker” (interview 1). another participant, having been a long-time public service employee (26 years), observed that during their time in government they had “witnessed the degradation in the use of knowledge in the policy process” (interview 2). during the peterson government (1985-1990), they noted, government “consulted widely with experts” and “this insight was shared and discussed among the policy staff” (interview 2). however, this is “no longer the practice” and now things are “driven by political expediency” with decisions being made in the assistant deputy minister's office or the deputy minister's office and policy staff's job being limited to “build around what is given” (interview 2). one participant admitted that they saw the role of knowledge and expertise in the policy process as being “generally perfunctory”; noting that there is an 'obvious' tendency to 'curate' “evidence to support a (given) policy direction” (interview 3). this view was echoed by participant 4 who noted that while evidence plays a role, if it does “not support the political direction then we curate that evidence to align with the political direction” (interview 4). similarly, a former senior policy manager observed that “evidence is contestable. there are so many competing interests to weigh. for decision-makers evidence can then be tricky. there is a critical role for evidence in problem identification but then it must align with stakeholder definitions of the problem and their solutions to some degree. and evidence must reflect the priorities of the government or it will be ignored” (interview 8). from this perspective, they continued, “research is not really important. you make the data/evidence fit the political direction” (interview 4). they concluded that they had had “no experience where the evidence swayed the position of political leaders” (interview 4). one participant was even more blunt in making this point, noting simply that ““politics trumps evidence-based policy making” (interview 5). in the words of another, “political congruence was always more important than superior data” (interview 1). from this perspective, as two participants noted, policy expertise was often limited to the creation of narratives using data to support policy directions communicated by the central agencies or the minister's office (interview 5; interview 6). though one participant did highlight a recent “push to a more evidence based approach to policy work” in the ops, they did nonetheless add that the process is largely driven by political policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 27 decisions by elected leaders, where decisions about which policies to pursue often emerging out of high level meetings and, from the perspective of public sector employees, seemingly coming “out of no where” (interview 7). this same participant did note however that the role of expertise is related to the issue area, with specialized forms of knowledge playing more important role in highly technical issues dealing with things like radiation and asbestos, but less so in economic policy, which is less technical (interview 7). this supports previous arguments made in this direction by hirschman and berman (2014). overall, these accounts largely supported the view that most of the important policy decisions were informed by political considerations and that direction nearly always came from the premier or minister’s office, the deputy minister or the assistant deputy minister or from some other central agency (interviews 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8). two participants noted that the ministry of finance and the treasury board were the most important actors involved in deciding which policies were pursued (interview 1 and 2), and that they essentially were the “veto point” deciding which initiatives were taken up and transformed into policies (interview 2). these claims support previous findings by blakeney and borins that governments also have a tendency to only accept advice from public servants when it is either “consistent with the broad outlines of government policy” or it is in an area “where the government doesn’t have strong policy ideas” (1998, 49). in general, these interviews support arguments in the literature about the increasingly centralized nature of the policy making process and the resulting marked decline in the role played by public sector expertise and knowledge as an independent driving force in the manufacture of policy. however, we would maintain that this does not simply imply that knowledge and expertise does not matter for the policy making process, nor that policy paradigms do not have an impact on the manufacture of policy, having been replaced by explicit and overt politically led direction from central agencies and the offices of ministers, deputy ministers, and/or assistant deputy ministers. rather, what it does appear to support is the view that struggles over the content of policy paradigms in the era of neoliberal market states now take place in a narrower set of 'locations' than they did in the era of the keynesian welfare state apparatus. the kinds of knowledge and expertise that matter are narrow(er than they used to be) and those that do not have the right characteristics or institutional origins are filtered out or not listened to in the (now) highly centralized locations from which policies are manufactured in practice. 28 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life what we propose is thus not only that the dominance of the neoliberal policy paradigm constrains policies by making some options less credible but also that the neoliberal state-apparatus has altered the composition and environment of the institutional 'locations' from and through which public policies are manufactured. these changes have fostered a situation in which the policy making process is increasingly insulated from the influence of ideas that either originate from outside of the very select locations from which they are usually drawn or are composed of content that goes against the core ideas of the neoliberal policy paradigm. this has important implications for how we understand the causal mechanisms underlying the change or stability of policy paradigms. for instance, it implies that the process of overturning and/or replacing current (neoliberal) is not simply a matter of achieving electoral success. the central ideas of the neoliberal policy paradigm appear to have become sufficiently embedded that it is often politically expedient for successive governments to draw on it when manufacturing their policies even when they might genuinely desire adopting alternative policies. in many cases there are actually mechanisms in place, like credit rating agencies for example (sinclair, 2004), that push against the incorporation of alternative or counter-hegemonic ideas into the highly centralized location from which policies are manufactured. this can mean that governments seeking to draw on alternative or heterodox ideas can find themselves being coerced or pushed in various ways to avoid doing so and to stick with ideas from the dominant policy paradigm this also means that focusing attention on changing the beliefs of public sector experts is likely to meet with only limited results since for the most part ideas that are popular outside of the centralized locations in which policies are manufactured tend to not be allowed to cross these important boundaries. conclusion here we have explored the relationship between policy paradigms and changes in the structure of the state apparatus. it is argued that an important, but mostly unexplored dimension in understanding the dynamics involved in the struggle over policy paradigms, is the institutional structure of the state within which they are embedded. through this, we sought to contribute to the development of a better understanding of both the role of expertise in the manufacture of policy as well as the broader relationship that exists between policy paradigms and the institutional structure of the state apparatus within which the policy process is embedded. thus we argue that transformations in the policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 29 structure of the state apparatus within which the manufacture of policy is embedded appears to have altered the role played by expertise and knowledge in the policy process. the shift in policy paradigms (from keynesianism to neoliberalism) that led to significant changes in the structure of the state but also altered the ground on which struggles over policy paradigms takes places. references alber, j. 1988. is there a crisis of the welfare state? crossnational evidence from europe, north america, and japan. european sociological review, 4(3), 181-205. aucoin, p. 2010. “canada”. in partisan appointees and public servants: an international 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innovation labs: a neoliberal austerity driven process or democratic intervention? meghan joy4, john shields5 and siu mee cheng6 abstract: social innovation labs (sils) are a recent policymaking development that are spreading rapidly in many different countries. sils are said to address difficult and complex social policy problems that have been resistant to solutions. to date, there has been limited scholarly analysis of sil development, with many questions in need of critical policy assessment. this paper seeks to conceptualize sils in the canadian context by mapping the sector and exploring how these labs fit within the broader ecosystem of policy innovation. we consider why sils have become so popular in this particular socio-political moment. we contend that the sil trend speaks to a dual and contradictory desire on the part of governments for more participatory policymaking and cost saving. thus, while sils may create opportunities for the democratization of social policy, they are also motivated by efforts to do more with less in an environment shaped by austerity and neoliberalism. this suggests that sils could equally result in the marketization and depoliticization of social policy. this paper highlights these tensions conceptually with the purpose of guiding empirical studies that explore how these contradictions may manifest in policy practice and perhaps offer openings for policy that addresses both the roots and symptoms of complex social policy problems. 4 meghan joy is assistant professor in the department of political science at concordia university. 5 john shields is professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. 6 siu mee cheng is a phd candidate in the policy studies program at ryerson university. social innovation labs | 35 keywords: social innovation labs; social innovation; austerity; neoliberalism; new public management; social impact bonds; democratizing policymaking introduction social innovation labs (sils) represent a new policymaking process that has spread rapidly since the 2008 financial crisis (westley, goebey & robinson, 2012). sils are experimental social innovation mechanisms designed to tackle complex social policy and service design problems, such as poverty, that government is increasingly thought to be incapable of solving on its own (mcgann, blomkamp & lewis, 2018). these labs create learning communities out of a group of “multi-disciplinary teams and diverse stakeholders” drawn from government, the social sciences, technical experts, civil society, citizens, and the business community who share an interest in solving the problem (vanaptwerp, 2014, np; tiesinga & berkhout, 2014). such collaboration takes place in a physical space that separates these stakeholders from their usual environment and especially away from government bureaucracy (westley et al., 2015). it is in this space where facilitation and design processes that provide direction on how solution-finding will be undertaken, outside the sphere of ‘government speak’, occurs (westley et al., 2015). a core component of this process is the requirement that all participants “let go of their preconceived ideas about the problems that exist and the best solution(s) to them” (westley et al., 2015, 12), so they are able to embrace ‘change thinking’. deep collaboration without the constraints of traditional institutional structures is said to be made possible in this environment (vanaptwerp, 2014) and it is in such a creative space, proponents contend, that innovation and radical solutions can be directed to “our most pressing social problems” (hassan, 2014, 2-3). in this way, sils are said to address “complex societal challenges that require systems change” (vanaptwerp, 2014, np). diverse social actors are convened in the sil process because they are thought to encompass a relevant representation of the system that needs to shift. this gathering presents an opportunity to identify the unintended consequences of policy and the associated adjustments that need to be made to initiate a radical system shift. as addressed below, sils have emerged in different sectors (public, university, for-profit and non-profit) in response to these developments. to date, there has been limited scholarly analysis of both the emergence and practice of sils. several articles propose potential drivers for sil emergence, 36 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life but these have not been examined in depth. gregoire (2016) posits that the retreat of government from addressing social problems arising from neoliberal policies and the ongoing practice of new public management (npm) and its most recent iteration, new public governance (npg), has helped to drive the emergence of sils. the public policy forum’s (2013) report aligns sil development in canada with the rise of austerity and the “need to do more with less” in government and an emphasis on independent problem-solving autonomous from state bureaucracy (1-2). this argument is furthered by van den steenhoven (2016), who claims that sils have permitted a shift in problem-solving from government to society. this is said to democratize social policymaking in both the public and non-profit sectors (bc healthy communities, 2016; carstensen & bason, 2012). new systems thinking is said to be a key element of sils, an approach which is thought to break down the silos in and rigidities of government processes and result in a more comprehensive approach to problem-solving. the inclusion of different societal stakeholders in the sil process can be understood as an implementation of the ‘nothing about us without us’ idea from social justice. this paper seeks to conceptualize sils in the canadian context by mapping the sector and exploring how these labs fit within the broader ecosystem of policy innovation. there is a need for in-depth theoretical and empirical exploration as to why sils have emerged so quickly and extensively in this sociopolitical moment. while the two core drivers of neoliberalism and the democratization of policy-making appear present in the push for sils, their analysis is piecemeal and cursory, undertheorized, and lacks empirical assessment. we posit that these drivers are unlikely to be weighed equally and are in fundamental conflict. for instance, meaningful participatory processes can be costly and time consuming and can result in demands for substantial public investment in social welfare and private sector regulation to address the roots of policy problems such as poverty, homelessness, and precarious employment. this paper offers a preliminary conceptual exploration of the sil drivers of neoliberalism and democratization, highlighting how these are in tension in theory and offering critical questions for future empirical investigation. we begin by mapping the development of sils in canada to establish key trends, identify different conceptual approaches to understand their emergence, and highlight potential contradictions that merit further empirical analysis. social innovation labs | 37 mapping the canadian sil landscape a systematic search was undertaken on-line using the google search engine for canadian-based, english-language websites with the search terms “social innovation lab”. this produced 141,000 results. for the purposes of the sil inventory, the following types of labs were included: 1) labs that appear to have a social problem focus and/or benefit for the public; 2) labs run by government, universities, non-profit organizations and the private sector; and 3) labs that provide their social problem-solving services for a profit. the components of diverse engagement, physical space, design processes, and retiring pre-conceived notions identified in the literature were used to further assess inclusion in the inventory. the search results and analysis yielded 59 sils in canada as of december 2017. our survey shows that there has been a proliferation of sils across canada, with labs operating in the public, university, private and non-profit sectors. overall, the maturity of these sils vary as the majority do not meet all sil characteristics as defined in the literature. we find that sils may be internally operated by a larger public, private, or non-profit organization or may be a standalone entity that offers its services to these organizations at no cost, or for a fee. four sils were identified in the for-profit sector, two in ontario and two in quebec. these sils can be grouped in two categories: 1) labs that have been established by large private-sector companies that provide social impact funding, wherein funds are provided to implement policy solutions developed by participants; and 2) labs that provide services for a fee to clients in the community, government and private sectors. the common set of priorities amongst these sils include urban innovation, information and technology, and healthcare. canadian governments at all three levels have shown significant interest in sils. internal sils are operating in the provinces of alberta, quebec and new brunswick. colab in alberta is located within the ministry of environment and acts as an internal consulting firm, offering its expertise in systems-based approaches to policy design across ministries. in new brunswick, the economic immigration lab addresses issues associated with attracting newcomers in the province and intends to provide funding to solve social problems experienced by immigrants. in quebec, innovative territories in social and solidarity economy (tiess) brings together players in the social and solidarity economy in different geographic areas, including research centers and academic institutes, to develop new projects and facilitate policy transfer and diffusion. one of the eight sils is run by the federal government – the impact and innovation unit – and acts as a 38 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life consulting firm that works with “departments in applying innovative financing approaches, new partnership models, impact measurement methodologies and behavioural insights in priority areas for the government of canada” (government of canada, 2018). three sils are operating in the municipal governments of toronto, vancouver and calgary. the vancouver city studio is the most developed and has interests in active transportation, pollution abatement, developing the green economy and local food systems, and social inclusion. both the calgary and toronto labs have yet to identify priorities but have city service knowledge sharing and innovation as their mandate. there is an even greater interest within the canadian university landscape toward the sil trend, with 19 labs identified. these labs have either been financially supported by private sector donors, and/or the public sector and/or internally by the universities. these labs generally lack clear mandates, scopes of operations, sets of priorities, and target audiences and overall, are loose and underdeveloped operations. within the academic environment, several reasons for sil development, distilled from their websites, are identified: to nurture and invest in student-led social entrepreneurial endeavors; to find solutions to social problems; and, to drive collaborations across faculty, the student body, and with external stakeholders in the public, private and non-profit sectors. they are also seen as initiatives that market universities as societally relevant organizations that offer their services to these external stakeholders. by far, the greatest number of sils have been established in canada’s non-profit sector. however, the majority of these 28 labs do not exist as standalone entities and are supported by another non-profit organization, funding agency, university and/or government. this illustrates the hybrid nature of the lab concept. unlike the labs headquartered in other sectors, non-profit sils place emphasis on supporting their communities to address the social problems they identify. a common theme that has emerged among these labs is a focus on environmental/sustainability issues and healthy physical environments with respect to creating spaces that encourage healthier lifestyles, active transportation and social inclusion. such civic actors have often been useful in identifying issues and pointing out possible grounded solutions to government policymakers and the wider public. many of these non-profit-based sils are more grassroots and democratic in character and often, aside from their interaction at the local level, are distanced from the actual centers of government decision-making. a striking exception is the mars solutions lab based in toronto. this sil has been well-financed and social innovation labs | 39 connected to government, the business sector and communities of experts. for example, mars has been closely involved with so-called impact investing, noting that it “works to unlock the power of private capital to tackle persistent social challenges. it works with investors, governments, ventures and service providers to create funding solutions for projects that generate social and financial returns” (kim & farthing-nichol, 2017, 2). mars is currently engaged in work with the federal department of immigration, refugees, citizenship canada (ircc) in a pay-for-performance project involving the settlement and employment of syrian refugees (kim & farthing-nichol, 2017). while mars is well linked into policy networks, it lacks organic grassroots grounding. the pattern seems to be that the more grassroots the sil, the less connected to senior level policy circles (henfrey et al., 2017). only five of the sils offer social impact funding to implement and evaluate solutions, three of which are university-based while the other two are non-profit and private. 42 of the sils identified clear priorities that they were advancing, with respect to social problems that they wished to address. the sils that possess the clearest mandates and sets of priorities are those situated in the non-profit sector, while those in other sectors are generally not as fully evolved. the lab trend is thus growing but still in its infancy in canada and there is a clear need to theorize and conduct empirical research on sils more broadly as well as within particular sectors. the following presents a first effort to theorize/conceptualize sils through a critical policy frame based on the two core drivers identified in the literature: neoliberalism and democratizing policymaking. sils as a neoliberal policy process sils can be understood through a lens of neoliberalism as an innovation to npm and npg in a context of austerity due to the 2008 financial crisis. it is important to note that the issue of public sector innovation is not new. earlier public-sector reforms date back to at least the 1980s as part of the ‘reinventing government’ movement popularized by osborne and gaebler (1992) and npm reforms which were about institutionalizing a more ‘entrepreneurial state’, breaking down bureaucracy, and bringing in market-like business practices to the public sector, including ‘doing more with less’ (shields & evans, 1998). neoliberalism is the hegemonic policy paradigm that displaced keynesian based public policy embracing market-centered ideas, approaches and solutions to societal problems. harvey (2005) defines neoliberalism as “a theory of political 40 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life and economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong property rights, free markets, and free trade” (2). the state, under neoliberalism, is given a mandate to extend markets into realms in which they have been absent. npm has served as the key mechanism transmitting neoliberal based managerialism and ‘market think’ throughout the public and non-profit sectors (evans & shields, 2018). yanow (2007) explains that the npm project also called for a “"scientific" basis for administrative practices, as well as of extensions of so-called evidencebased medicine into the fields of management, social welfare, and so on” (117), to justify government spending. we see a similar drive working through the sil labs that we mapped. over the last three decades, npm has shrunk the role of the state in collective service provision, limiting its policy capacity and marketizing service delivery by public, private, and non-profit actors (evans & shields, 2018). it is also a process that works to blur the lines of distinction between public, private and non-profit sectors as all are encouraged to adopt market-based and entrepreneurial values and approaches to their operations. further, there is the embrace of the idea that citizens are really customers, clients, consumers and individual agents of human capital. market values are usurping collectively oriented public values (clarke et al., 2014). these trends have been extended more deeply into the social sector with the latest round of austerity (mcbride & evans, 2017), and sils may be a feature of this. npg is a reform of npm that gives emphasis to ‘new’ pluralistic relationships between the state and other societal actors. the idea of networked government is prominent where other organizations are brought into the policymaking process creating more horizontal and ‘democratic’ decision-making (osborne, 2006; craft & howlett, 2012). sils are cast as a prime example of the move to npg, as are seeming shifts that highlight the adjustment from such things as: “structural adjustment to good governance”, “greed-is-good to markets-withmorals”; “privatization to public-private partnership”; and, “conviction politics to best practice” (peck, nd, np). there are questions as to how deep and transformative the move from npm to npg actually is and whether it has actually occurred at all (evans & shields, 2018). phillips (2007) argues that the policy process is not “as open and as participatory as the model of ‘governance’ suggests” (497), a conclusion we also propose regarding sils in this paper. the shift to an npg discourse in government has overlapped with the neoliberal political management of the financial crisis of 2008. neoliberal ideology social innovation labs | 41 has proven itself particularly adaptive at taking advantage of crisis, flexibly adjusting its policies and persona while retaining pro-market and fiscally ‘responsible’ approaches to governance (peck et al., 2012; peck, nd). in so doing, neoliberalism has demonstrated its hegemonic control over the policy agenda even under crisis conditions (crouch, 2011). neoliberalism’s use of sils may very well be another reflection of its adaptive capacities. the drive to sils serves to expand the ‘knowledge market for policy’ outside of government, which has resulted in a greater role for consultants like kpmg who compete with university and non-profit sil actors to find the solution to complex problems. the value of so-called entrepreneurial approaches to problem solving that include stakeholders from the private sector is prevalent in sil framing (bc healthy communities, 2016). shrinking the state also meant shrinking the policy capacity of and in government itself (baskoy et al., 2011), which is blamed on inherent government rigidities necessitating internal consulting agencies to find a fix as the alberta colab and the federal impact and innovation unit demonstrate. cuts to social services and offloading policy responsibility onto municipal governments combined with the expectation that they engage in policy innovation is also likely a driver for local labs operating in canada’s biggest cities and this merits further research. the associated decline in government authority, political polarization, and growing levels of plutocracy with the advance of income inequality is challenging pre-existing approaches to policymaking (drezner, 2017). a major factor here is the belief that the state is no longer able to afford expensive social programs due to limited revenue capture (bellefontaine, 2012). furthermore, there is the anti-statist notion that government is inherently risk intolerant and thus incapable of addressing major policy problems through innovation (bellefontaine, 2012). these factors are said to have placed complex social issues beyond the sole capacities of the state to solve and has made room for the creation of a social service market and with sils, a social policymaking market. interestingly, and perhaps revealingly, sil popularity coincides with a trend that we have been tracking: social impact bonds (sibs) (joy & shields, 2013; 2017; 2018a). sibs are a tool that allows private investors to fund non-profit social service interventions with the promise of receiving a return from a government partner should the service achieve pre-defined measures of social value. this social value is defined as a cost saving to government, and presumably the taxpaying citizen, that results from the change in behaviour of the client group in question, be they mothers with inadequate support or citizens experiencing 42 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life unemployment or homelessness, reducing their service requirements over time and shrinking government social spending. for instance, in a program targeting individuals experiencing homelessness, the investors might receive a return should these individuals reduce their demands for intensive service supports over a pre-defined time period (sinclair et al., 2014). the turn to sibs illustrates the desire among governments to shift from funding public services to funding policy outcomes. this requires finding out, to use a blairist turn of phrase, ‘what works’; to push for new ways of thinking about social problems, to use the market in creative ways to fund and find solutions, and to approach social policy solutions in a pragmatic apolitical fashion. this suggests that the market is a neutral force that can be used in progressive ways. this notion is captured in a recent documentary directed and produced by nadine pequeneza on sibs entitled ‘the invisible heart’ (2018), a play on adam smith’s famous ‘invisible hand’ analogy, suggesting that hidden forms of altruism lay within the free market. pequeneza’s documentary raises critical questions here, highlighting the power dynamics between investors like goldman sachs and rbc and the subjects of these policy experiments who are pressured to adopt behavioural changes that will trigger a profit for these financial actors. profiting off social policy interventions can result in social good – the magic of the market at work – we are told by supporters of sibs who frame themselves as ‘progressives’. in this market, social problems become commodified and governments contract with marketized players who can produce social value for money. in other words, these new market actors must prove that they can solve complex social problems. it is in this way that sils can come to represent the policy design processes on which sibs, and other market-based policy approaches, are based. sils are an important mechanism by which these solutions are sought and, in this way, could represent a continuance of the state and policy reforms which have been tightly linked to neoliberal governance. sils may encourage a further marketization and depoliticization of social policy and this is a crucial area of analysis for further empirical study. the social innovation drive was born in the period of neoliberal government cutbacks and restructuring, where state financial support for nonprofit organizations providing services to the community has been shrunk and the general social expectations on government greatly reduced (struthers, 2018). competitive funding, heavy reporting requirements, dependence on government funds with limits on policy advocacy, and employee turnover challenge the ability of actors in this sector to engage in problem solving more fundamentally (evans social innovation labs | 43 & shields, 2018). it is significant that the advocacy role of non-profit providers has been systematically muted through npm mechanisms (evans & shields, 2014) at the very time that sils are being promoted. this raises serious questions regarding which voices in policymaking are being encouraged and heard. increasingly, non-profits are contracted to deliver targeted support to those who have fallen through the cracks of a crumbling social welfare system; yet, are increasingly monitored in their ability to produce evidence of results so that these individuals become less costly (joy & shields, 2018a). as promoted by third sector journals like the stanford social innovation review, the turn to the employment of innovation and social finance as an alternative to the lack of government support to pursue social good in a period of austerity has come to be seen as the only way forward. in this way, the use of enterprise and markets for social ends are legitimated by some ‘progressives’, as has been the case with ‘third way’ advocates. this ‘realist’ perspective is challenged by the more ‘critical’ approach that we advance. we have critically argued, in contrast, that sibs are a case of private agents ‘profiting from pain’, an immoral market-base process that commodifies citizens and ‘their problems’ and works to strip vulnerable populations of social rights and supports (joy & shields 2018b; 2016). this clash of perspectives by progressive voices remains a matter of ongoing contestation. it is crucial to study how such processes might be at work through non-profit sil projects, but which may also provide an opportunity for those experiencing complex policy problems to have a right to define the problems they face (bacchi, 2009) and the appropriate policy solutions. one point of exploration is the extent to which complex policy problems are represented as behavioural in nature, with solutions focused on behavioural change that individualizes and thus simplifies social problems (joy & shields, 2018a; clarke, 2017). in this respect, social value is achieved by changing behaviours that reduce demands for costly policy programs. westley et al (2015) have stated that the roots of sils began in the 1950s, starting with the focus on group dynamics, group therapy and psychology that became the basis for organizational design and development. at the same time, this work was integrated with thought leadership on how groups can address systems change. in the 1950s and 1960s, e. trist, a social scientist, furthered these concepts by stating that “mega messes” existed, and to address these broad problems, systemsoriented solutions were required (westley et al., 2015, 10). we contend that complex social problems are rooted in an intersection of systems such as global capitalism, patriarchy, racism, ableism, ageism, etc. that 44 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life manifest in public institutions, the intermingled symptoms of which exist in local places. while it is crucial to recognize and address these symptoms at the scale of the local, the understanding of problems must be multi-scalar and intersectional in nature to tackle the public policies (or absence thereof) that have produced these problems in the first place (gkiouleka et al., 2018). for instance, any program that aims to tackle homelessness must address real estate marketization, the privatization of public housing, and the inadequate public system of mental health supports. yet, neoliberal approaches to social problems reject more holistic understandings of issues like poverty, homelessness and unemployment. instead, these approaches isolate and individualize the sources of these problems and seek marketized solutions (harvey, 2005). requoting david ingram, sossin (1993) notes that “under capitalism, controversial questions regarding distributive justice must be removed from the democratic process and dealt with as technical problems requiring resolution by managerial elites” (379). yet, with sils, processes for addressing these questions are in theory opened-up for broader discussion. again, where citizens fit into this discussion and how social justice and equity are considered in sil problem solving are important areas for future analysis. we posit that the trend to sibs and sils may create dilemmatic spaces (newman & clarke, 2009) or openings where alternative democratic interventions to austerity may exist. we are thus interested in examining how tools like sibs and sils can open-up more democratic approaches to policymaking that may result in more socially progressive policy. in the abstract, there are two potentially progressive elements to these social innovation trends: 1) sibs and sils are said to be about tackling the systemic roots of policy problems that are complex in nature; and 2) they also promise to involve/engage citizens and non-profit actors in policy design and delivery, democratizing the process, with an emphasis on achieving positive social outcomes that improve the lives of individuals (struthers, 2018). the question is whether the use of entrepreneurship and markets in practice can in fact be value neutral or if they are imbedded within logics that compromise social justice goals and democratic processes (roy & hackett, 2016). our own examination of sibs points to how the profit motive works to pervert the potential progressive elements of such market-centered tools (joy & shields, 2018a). we establish the contours of these contradictory dynamics in the following section. social innovation labs | 45 sils as a democratic policymaking intervention? sils represent a reorientation of rationalist policymaking, which is in its essence about finding objective, technical and scientific solutions to policy problems that can be generalized across contexts (torgerson, 1986). the intention of the rationalist project in policymaking was to bypass ideological and partisan conflicts that produced inefficiency by linking the problem not to politics but to the need for better problem-solving administration and technique (fischer, 1989). togerson (1986) explains that this was in fact a political strategy to separate problems from their socio-political context, subverting a deeper analysis and questioning of problems as linked to dominant ideological and material structures, and thus protecting prevailing structures and interests. while the sil policy orientation is toward the dominant role of ideas in driving forth policy change, the notion of solving complex problems illustrates that there may be a limited understanding that if people simply adopt the right ideas – or truth – then problems can be fixed. here, sils may also pull on the notion that policy issues are primarily technical problems that can be solved by groupings of experts with applied knowledge and experience with the policy problem. as a policymaking technique, sils “lay claim to universal or near universal application” (mcgann et al., 2018, np) across policy domains, awarding them a magical fix kind of quality. yet, social innovation is a concept that lacks firm definition, making “it highly adaptable to the shifting contours of policy directions and challenges” (mcgann et al., 2018, np). the ambiguity and impression of the concept (miller & langhorst, 2017) also makes it at the same time about everything and nothing and thus not particularly helpful for dealing with complex policy problems. by the 1970s, the rationalist project was increasingly seen as unable to solve complex or ‘wicked’ policy problems, a term coined by rittel and webber in 1973, in siloed government departments. the author’s state that “because there is no definitive single casual factor or factors for many wicked problems…the challenge resides both in determining all possible causes and in establishing causation to the social phenomenon” (rittel & webber, 1973, 162). while rittel and webber (1973) considered the search for all possible causes impossible because of value conflicts in defining wicked policy problems, noting that “social problems are never solved. at best they are only re-solved over and over again" (169), the sil emphasis on findings solutions through system change seems to refute this claim. this may be done by bypassing value conflict in problem representation and linking the impasse to government’s inability to learn from citizens as well as other sectoral actors from the private and non-profit sectors, its 46 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life siloed nature where departments fail to communicate, its risk aversion, and its limited data collection and processing capability. yet, yanow (2007) explains that “technical-rational tools, such as cost-benefit analyses, and the combination of mass (or large 'n') surveys and high-speed computers held out to policy-makers the promise of solutions to knotty social problems. forty years' experience with these promises have shown that they are useful for some situations, but complex problems require analytic tools that do not oversimplify social realities in order to force-fit them into restricted, and restrictive, models” (118). it is further crucial to examine whether there is a tendency to oversimplify causes. stone (1989) offers this warning about problems linked to complex causes: “they postulate a kind of innocence, in that no identifiable actor can exert control over the whole system or web of interactions. complex causal explanations are not very useful in politics, precisely because they do not offer a single locus of control, a plausible candidate to take responsibility for a problem, or a point of leverage to fix a problem. hence, one of the biggest tensions between political science and real-world politics. the former tends to see complex causes of social problems, while the latter searches for immediate and simple causes” (289). with sils, complex problems appear to be increasingly useful today and it is important to decipher why this is the case, particularly when one works from the understanding that causes are selected because they empower certain actors to ‘solve’ the problem (stone, 1989). sils thus offer up the dual and enticing possibility of engaging in both more pluralist and rationalist approaches to social problem-solving. the rationalist project has also been critiqued for being undemocratic because public bureaucrats, understood as neutral technocrats, were the only actors to possess the scientific skills to find solutions to policy problems (fischer, 1989). sossin (1993) explains that “instrumental reason aspires to objective truth, but it makes intersubjectivity impossible by causing citizens to be treated as objects to be social innovation labs | 47 administered” (375). he advises that it is this rationalist project that is the problem, and not bureaucrats per se, as many of these rules are in place to control the bureaucracy and eliminate their discretion. it is crucial to study whether sils are about improving the bureaucracy by supporting discretion that enables communicative relationships with citizens (sossin, 1993) or whether it is based on an essentialist understanding of the bureaucracy meant to sidestep government. there appears to be debate as to the role of government in sil projects, as some writers emphasize reducing the government role in problem-solving (van den steenhoven, 2016) and others seek improvement to internal government policymaking (carstensen & bason, 2012). whether the latter is more about producing evidence to prove value for money in service provision than democratic policymaking informed by citizen and non-profit voices requires further exploration in the sils case. crucial to sils is an emphasis on the importance of the non-profit sector and locally centered initiatives for the future of social welfare (bellefontaine, 2012). the significant amount of sil activity within the non-profit sector in canada may be a reflection of how communities are seeking to problem-solve in a more democratic way, opening space for citizens to define the problem on their own terms (bacchi, 2009). some of these are grassroots initiatives led by citizens seeking to solve highly localized problems in their communities (henfrey et al., 2017). however, there may be a disconnect here between the localization and fragmentation of sil projects and the emphasis on addressing the complex roots of problems and engaging in more comprehensive or systems-oriented policymaking. approaches that emphasize fast testing to prove outcomes quickly (peck & theodore, 2015) continue to embody rationalist perspectives that may challenge engaging in conflictual discussions and critical thinking on wicked policy problems. this may be more likely the case if non-profits are contracted by governments to deliver social value for money, as here governments have often already defined the problem, which may be understood as more behavioural than structural in nature. while sils theoretically open up interesting possibilities regarding participatory policymaking and the involvement of grassroots civil society, the question is whether sils address issues of values and power that lie at the root of wicked social policy problems (rittel & webber, 1973). a crucial question is who is and is not dominant in sil problem framing and what sorts of causal stories are presented as this informs the policy solution chosen (stone, 1989). are these primarily neoliberal and individually oriented storylines or ones that are centered 48 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life within the broader context within which social problems originate? there is a risk that sils ignore power with respect to who is defining the ‘right’ ideas about problem framing and potential ideas that may get silenced as well as who is considered an expert. in these ways, sils can depoliticize the policymaking process (mcgann et al., 2018). furthermore, what counts as proof that the policy problem has been solved? the issue of what is being measured is critical and this is a value judgment linked to the defined cause of the problem. quantitative analysis focused on measuring behavioural change to prove social value for money may be quite limiting if not combined with qualitative and community actionoriented research on improved quality of life. policy problems are often wicked because they are understood and represented differently by societal actors (bacchi, 2009; stone, 1989). for instance, indigenous poverty may be seen by some as an individual behavioural problem and by others as a more structural problem of colonial and neocolonial policy and racism. it is unclear how sils as a process is going to address this. again, this speaks to who has the power to define the problem and whether\how sils embrace difficult conversations/argumentation about conflict. here, rittel and webber (1973) suggest that “approaches of the "second generation" should be based on a model of planning as an argumentative process in the course of which an image of the problem and of the solution emerges gradually among the participants, as a product of incessant judgment, subjected to critical argument” (162). here, the political context is fundamentally recognized by all involved in the policymaking process and not pushed under the table (fischer, 1989). exploring whether tangible mechanisms exist to support true socio-political and administrative change and whether this is being conducted in practice are important areas for future empirical research on sils. conclusion our mapping research reveals that there is a clear social innovation agenda in place within canada. this agenda exists at all levels of government and all sectors through the commitment and attention to sils. we contend that it is no mere coincidence that the rise of sils in canada, especially in the non-profit sector, corresponds with the financial crisis and the continued hollowing out of the welfare state. sils may illustrate a reoriented welfare state where problems are commodified as new market opportunities. this, in turn, may be driving problem-solving away from addressing systemic conditions and towards quick and easy testable solutions that remain small in scale and fragmented; a warning social innovation labs | 49 presented by rittel and webber against rational policymaking almost fifty years ago. further empirical research should explore trends and contradictions related to this strategy and how this affects particular policy outcomes chosen and the wider goal of social justice these labs claim to espouse. it should also explore how this might differ between government, private, university and non-profit labs. at the same time, sils may create opportunities for democratic public policymaking that incorporates non-profit and citizen voices, who may push governments to address more systemic issues. such democratic opportunities will remain at the level of possibility with marketized and austerity driven forces in the sil driver seat. sils represent an assemblage of contradictory rationales and interests of different players who have different levels of social, economic and political power to define so-called wicked problems. with the continued commitment and investment in sils in canada, further empirical research is needed to decipher how these conflicts play out in practice. the following research questions are crucial: can the good intentions of the lab methodology be subverted and how exactly does this happen? are the ‘right’ people gathered in the room and what are the conflicts that exist between them? what practices can social justice-oriented practitioners bring to specific lab processes that can guard against intentional or inadvertent exclusion? this analysis must look at power with respect to prevalent discourses about policy problems and solutions and the institutional positions of actors that support them. we suggest that any such examination must place these power dynamics within a policy environment where neoliberalism is a dominant political project, but one that is deeply contested and can be subverted. references bacchi, c. 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(2007). interpretation in policy analysis: on methods and practice. critical policy analysis, 1(1): 110–122. 54 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review the twittering machine, by richard seymour. brooklyn, new york: verso, 2020. $26.95 u.s., paper. isbn: 978-1-78873-928-3. pages: 1-250. reviewed by mary germaine1 the original twittering machine, paul klee’s 1922 painting, is a bleak scene. pale blue and mauve washes make a flat background for four mechanical birds, squawking on a crankoperated wire as if to attract listeners of the ruddy pit below. this image is richard seymour’s opening metaphor for social media, or as he calls it, the social industry: the extremely profitable trade facebook, google, and twitter make with users, offering communication tools in exchange for their personal data. these platforms, though glowing brighter blue than klee’s watercolour, cast a similar menace. as today’s foremost purveyors of fake news, fascist propaganda, bullying, trolls, and mobs of moral panic, web 2.0 spurs on anxiety, depression and targeted violence irl. while seymour maintains that none of the above social ills are new or intrinsic to the internet, he argues that the social industry has capitalized on these crises in a way that has transformed society for the worse. the social industry puts us in the centre of several paradoxes. despite the endless opportunities to shop and “upvote,” seymour argues “[t]he machine is not a democracy, and it isn’t even a market: we are neither customers nor voters” (62). online, we don’t have the rights of citizens nor the entitlement of a paying customer—even though we do pay the social industry, not with cash but with the most intimate information about our lives (our preferences, questions, location at any given time). we are used more than we are users of social media. following computer scientist jaron lanier, seymour describes users collectively as a digital serfdom (62) and he writes in an inflated first-person plural to further emphasize the magnitude of entanglement. the titles of the six chapters follows the same pattern: “we are all…“connected,” “addicts,” “celebrities,” “trolls,” “liars,” and “dying.” these chapters dissect the ways the social industry, like a machine meting out rewards and punishments to rats in cages, conditions our interactions with each other, the media, as well as our political process. the glut of information that the web makes available has created a “furnace of meaning” (162) in which a caravan of refugees takes up the same amount of space—implicitly, the same significance—as super cute cat compilations. the randomness of the web, seymour argues, makes traditional authorities appear arbitrary and flashy outbursts wildly popular. insurrections (instigated by isis or by donald trump) may succeed or fail, but the machine always wins. stacks of books, apps, and dollars have been made by addressing internet addiction. seymour too makes “user” synonymous with “addict,” but his focus is the textuality of the internet and so according to him, what we are addicted to is the writing—not the ping of a notification. 1 mary germaine is a phd student at the university of new brunswick. her debut collection of poetry congratulations, rhododendrons came out with house of anansi press in 2021. email: mary.germaine@unb.ca. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research he chooses an old word for this new phenomenon, concluding: “we are all scripturient”. users are compelled to write into the cacophonous twittering machine, gambling their public image for attention, positive or negative, depending on their kink. in the rat park of neo-liberal isolation and alienation under late capitalism, social media have trained us to depend on web connections, even though our interactions online are not, in the direct sense, with other people but with the platform itself. we may think we are writing to our friends, but in reality we are writing into the twittering machine. seymour conceptualizes the internet as an ever-expanding tome of selfies, shit posts, data, and code. while novel, seymour’s addiction as writing ignores the silent majority of users who do not or rarely write anything online. in the us, pew research found that 97 percent of twitter content is generated by only 25 percent of users. and according to another pew survey, of the bottom 90 percent of posters (the seldoms and nevers), nearly half use the platform daily. what, then, is the big draw for people who log in just to lurk? not a compulsion to write, except in the general sense that scrollers “write” data by what they click on. seymour doesn’t address silent users directly but does put an answer in front of us through his account of how the twittering machine “manages time differently” (65), counting the minutes, hours, or weeks since content was posted, rather than the clock time at which it was published. the social industry projects a hyper-intense chronology. seymour cites the neuroscientist marc lewis, who claims that “[f]or many addicts, the idea of facing the normal flow of time is unbearably depressing” (65) which leads them to seek out an anodyne. “screen time,” i would argue, offers that sweet release; an alternative time, not text, is the real addictive substance of social media. while he doesn’t actually make this argument, seymour adumbrates a similar idea with the image of a chronophage, a literal “time-eater”, a spiky, cricketoid mechanism that sits atop the corpus clock in cambridge and claws the minutes into its scaly gut. the clock on which it feeds only occasionally shows the correct time. the chronophage is an apt metaphor for an industry that distorts reality and gobbles up the moments that make up our lives. seymour’s goal is an easy-reading essay, something you don’t need a phd to appreciate. to keep the text clean, he keeps his references in the back pages. besides copious news reports, seymour cites the big names you’d expect—marx, freud, foucault—some more thoughtfully than others. for example, he too briefly drops in eve sedgwick’s notion of paranoid reading without making its relevance clear (though paranoid reading is actually a helpful framework for seymour’s own method of presenting evidence from a range of psychological, political, and economic sources to prove the social industry is out to get us). the research is sound, even if he trades some rigour for engaging, fast-paced rhetoric. one criticism of a paranoid approach is that it provides little in the way of solutions to the problems that seymour illuminates. the book begins with “the minimum utopian question: what else could we being doing with writing, if not this?” (17). seymour’s musing does not get an answer in the end, i think, because the main issue is something more sinister than misspent literary energies. the social industry survives on our data entry labour, so maybe a strike would improve conditions (210), but without social media, organizing such a thing seems impossible. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research and in any case, a strike would not solve the widespread addiction to our own exploitation. as seymour himself points out, to break an addiction, a person must reinvent their way of being in the world (212). after reading the book, we are left with maximum utopian questions: how do we remake ourselves to better shoulder the injustice and ugliness around us, or remodel the world so that it’s bearable? anyone with internet access has a stake in these questions. seymour’s tone often doomsday, but he supplies psychological, social, and economic evidence to justify the panic; it is nearly impossible to escape the call of the twittering machine. in the past few weeks, i’ve found myself reaching for this book over and over, believing the black rectangle on the front cover was my phone. i get the feeling i’m not the only one to make that mistake. references mcclain, colleen, et al. “the behaviors and attitudes of u.s. adults on twitter.” pew research center: internet, science & tech, 15 nov. 2021, www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/11/15/the-behaviors-and-attitudes-of-u-s-adultson-twitter/. accessed 15 jan. 2022. wojcik, stefan, and adam hughes. “sizing up twitter users.” pew research center: internet, science & tech, 24 apr. 2019, www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-uptwitter-users/. accessed 15 jan 2022. http://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/11/15/the-behaviors-and-attitudes-of-u-s-adults-on-twitter/ http://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/11/15/the-behaviors-and-attitudes-of-u-s-adults-on-twitter/ http://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/ http://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/ spreading protests: changing paths of transnationalization of social movements donatella della porta1 abstract: while progressive social movements have always linked at the transnational level, the forms these transnational linkages take changes in time, and so do the channels of diffusion of ideas across countries. additionally, economic globalization as well as the proliferation of international organizations are not automatically followed by transnationalization of contentious politics. rather, resources and opportunities for multilevel campaigns vary, influenced by transformation in global capitalism and its political consequences. reflecting on recent waves of protests – from the global justice movement to the anti-austerity movements and the ‘hot autumn’ of 2019 – this article aims at singling out changing patterns in the spread of contestation. keywords: social movements; globalization; diffusion; protests; global justice movement introduction the global justice movement has been interpreted as a sign of globalization of contentious politics. as decisions moved at the international level, social movements seemed to adapt, targeting international organizations. this was all the more the case in europe, where the european union had acquired more and more competences, opening various channels of access to civil society organizations. in the beginning of the new millennium, the european social forums offered an important public space for the convergence of various streams of progressive movements all over the continent and beyond. acting globally, various transnational campaigns were seen to reflect but also fuel the spreading of 1 donatella della porta is professor of political science, dean of the faculty of political and social sciences and director of the phd program in political science and sociology at the scuola normale superiore in florence, where she also leads the center on social movement studies (cosmos). 116 | populism, power and protest cosmopolitan values. at the beginning of the decade 2010s, mobilisations in tunisia, egypt, spain, greece, and the united states, and later on in turkey and brazil, up to the french nuit debut, were considered as belonging to a common wave of antiausterity protests. while all of them were triggered by a global financial crisis, they seemed however to be more rooted at the national level, targeting domestic institutions. what is more, against decisions made by international organizations that appeared to expropriate citizens from their capacity to affect politics through electoral accountability, they also addressed issues of national sovereignty and referred to the nation state as the space for democratic accountability (della porta, 2015; della porta and mattoni, 2014). this happened also in europe where conditionalities were imposed to the countries endowed with less competitive economies and forced to get loans from so-called troika, including eu institutions. research has pointed however also at the interconnections among these different protests, considering them as part of an ‘international cycle of contention’ (tejerina et al., 2013; della porta and mattoni, 2014). towards the end of the years 2010s, the discontent with austerity measure still mobilized strong wave of protests in various countries and with various intensity, the crisis of political legitimacy as well as social inequalities have unleashed strong social movements that, while keeping attention on social injustice, singled out some of their specific consequences on violence on women, the peripheral economies, global warming, precarious youth, self-determination. several of these movements quickly spread at international level, through global days of action, promoting a global view of the problems and global solutions. fifty years after the ‘hot autumn’ of 1969, with workers protests spreading in europe, a new global ‘hot autumn’ was noted in 2019, with massive protests, including millions’ marches and civil disobedience, erupting contemporaneously in lebanon and iraq, chile and ecuador, barcelona and london. protestors often referred to each other, through the showing of each other banners and flags, calling for solidarity. while progressive social movements have always linked at the transnational level, the forms these transnational linkages take changes in time, and so do the channels of diffusion of ideas across countries. additionally, economic globalization as well as the proliferation of international organizations are not automatically followed by transnationalization of contentious politics. rather, resources and opportunities for multilevel campaigns vary, influenced by the transformations in global capitalism and their political consequences. spreading protests | 117 in this article, i will reflect on the diffusion of protest imageries and practices across countries and across time, taking these three moments of contentious politics as empirical illustrations. using my own research as well as studies by other scholars as relevant sources of information, i aim at singling out the various paths and forms in which a transnational’ dimension emerges in contentious politics. after having, in the next part, briefly introduced the social science literature on transnationalization of social movements, i will look at crosstime and cross countries diffusion of protest ideas and practices since the turn of the millennium. conceptualizing social movement transnationalization late to develop in social movement studies as well as in other field of studies, the analysis of the transnational dimension has flourished with research on the global justice movement (della porta et al., 2006; della porta and tarrow, 2005; tarrow, 2005). acquiring global visibility with the protests against the 3rd summit of the world trade organization in seattle in 1999, it spread through counter-summits and social forums that proved to be important venues in which activists from all over the world met to build a shared criticism of corporate globalisation and propose alternatives to it (della porta, 2007). social movement studies explained the emerging transnational social movement organisations, global protests, and cosmopolitan framing as triggered by economic, social, political, and cultural globalisation. while social movement ideas had often spread cross-nationally, the need to act globally increased with the shifts of competences towards international organisations and multinational corporations. upward scale shift from the national to the transnational level of contention seemed to be an unstoppable trend. while anti-austerity protests maintained a transnational focus, targeting the negative role of especially international financial institutions, they organized, however, mainly at domestic level with protests following the timing of developments of the economic crisis. while embedded in their national contexts, anti-austerity protests that flourished in several countries shared however many characteristics at the level of both protest visions and protest practices, so stimulating scholars to reflect on the different paths of diffusion of ideas through formal, but also informal channels, in unmediated but also mediated, thick but also thin forms of diffusion (della porta and mattoni, 2014). as the anti-austerity protests developed a few years after the pick of the global justice movement, reflections grew on the cross-time diffusion of ideas both within and beyond 118 | populism, power and protest national social movement cultures (della porta et al., 2017). finally, as anti-austerity protests did not end, but proceeded in short waves, with social movements and their activists sometimes moving inside the institutions, a new cycle of protests seemed to emerge with massive mobilizations, often coordinated in global days of action. focusing on violence against women understood in a broad sense and linked to social conditions, the ni una menos collectives spread from latin america to southern europe, mobilizing a new generation of young feminists. at the same time, the fridays for future protests spread fast and massive all over the globe, bridging the youngest generation with other ones already active against climate change. what is more, the ‘hot autumn’ of 2019 surprised the mass media and the public opinion with the convergence in time but diffused in space of massive waves of protest against increasing inequalities as well as the corruption of the political and economic elites. the apparent lack of direct connection but also frequent expression of reciprocal solidarity is triggering a new reflection on transnationalization through learning and emulation at the distance, diffusion processes are multi-dimensional, requiring scholars to employ a heterogeneity of theoretical perspectives and research methodologies (givan et al., 2010). in fact, “despite the variations on the what, how, and why spread over the context of such mobilisations, focusing on the same time frame and, to some extent, the same types of mobilisations across different countries offers us the opportunity to compare diffusion mechanisms as they occurred (or not) within a quite homogeneous set of case studies, although considered from different perspectives” (della porta and mattoni 2015). as mark beissinger (2002) noted in his research on the breakdown of the soviet union, and valerie bunce and sharon wolchik (2011) in their analysis on the orange revolutions, ideas might also spread where conditions are less favourable, but their capacity to produce successful mobilisation is then constrained. especially, structural differences might jeopardize that assessment of similarities, which is a relevant conducive condition for cross-national diffusion. late comers within a wave of protest might also find particular difficulties in catching up with mobilization and so can countries in which strong waves of protest were on their declining phases. moments of economic instability are often considered as less propitious for mass mobilization than period of economic growth. besides the degree of severity of the crisis, the opening or closing of political opportunities can contribute much to explain different paths of diffusion, the specific movements’ cultures and traditions also play a role (see table 1). while activists traveling spreading protests | 119 cross-country bring with them emerging ideas, the activists reactivated from previous waves of protest carry with them their specific visions and experiences. as new technologies mediate (facilitate and constrain) cross-country spread of information, memory acts as a filter in the reception of the new mobilisations occurring in other countries. as diffusion happens in space, but also in time, forms of action can be imported from past experiences travelling from an historical context to a new one (flesher fominaya and montanes, 2014). translation, experimentation and deliberation mechanisms allow a specific protest tactic to be dislocated from its original context into another (chabot 2010, 106) as activists engage with ideas and practices rooted in social movement experiences that took place in different historical moments and/or countries (della porta, 2015; wood, 2012). learning from each other’s experiences, but also reinterpreting them, is embedded in practices of remembering and comparing present and past protest contexts on the side of activists. table 1. transnational channels of diffusion cross-time cross-country relational diffusion reactivated activists traveling activists non-relational diffusion memory new technologies from della porta and mattoni, 2014b besides diffusion, the development of transnational social movements involves different paths of action defined as domestication, externalisation and transnationalization (della porta and kriesi 1999; tarrow 2005; della porta and tarrow 2005). processes of domestication develops when international organizations affect national politics, triggering discontent, that however targets especially the national governments that implement policies required by international organizations. for instance, in the early 1990s, protests against the european union addressed the national governments that applied its directives and policies (imig and tarrow 2001). externalisation processes are instead at work when discontent with national policies is expressed in international arenas, in the attempt to find allies that can put pressure on domestic decision makers. this has been the cases of several campaigns calling the united nations or the european unions to take position against violation of civil rights and political freedom in various countries. the global justice movement has been considered as a typical example of transnationalization, as social movement organization 120 | populism, power and protest organized world-wide, targeting international organizations. in recent times, solidarization develops through reciprocal references and horizontal ties between movements active in different countries but with the perception of a common global enemy. spreading protests across time first, empirically, the three waves are interrelated, with the spreading of ideas across time, through memories and legacies but also an adaptation to the changing times through learning processes. old and new social movement groups meet in the organization of protests. old activists are mobilized anew, bringing in their experiences and knowledge to new generations, that develop new protest tastes, more adapted to their own conditions. in fact, while each of them involved new generations of activists, each also remobilized previous ones that brought to the new waves knowledge and experiences of past collective mobilizations. while growing in a moment of still rampant neoliberalism, the global justice movement had seen the convergence of various progressive streams in broad and fluid networks. a meta-frame had developed bridging specific concerns within broader meta-frames that targeted neoliberal capitalism, calling for justice against increasing inequalities as well as for participatory and deliberative forms of democracy. global and macroregional forums represented arenas for encounters for thousands of groups and tens of thousands of activists, massive demonstrations took citizens back to the streets in contestation of the summits of international organizations, including the european union (eu). about a decade later, as the financial crisis confirmed the pessimistic prediction of the global justice movement about the lack of capacity of neoliberalism to fulfil it promises of progress and wellbeing, a new transnational cycle of protests developed, still targeting increasing inequalities and calling for another democracy. face to massive participation of the citizens, the acampadas (protest camps) represented an innovative form of, at the same time, organization and action. targeting the austerity measures that national governments had adopted, under pressure from lending international organizations, in the occupied squares activists prefigurated different forms of relations, based on participation and discursive quality that adapted those invented by the global justice movement to new circumstances. as protests against austerity periodically emerged anew, towards the end of the year 2010 new waves of protests against violence on women or global warming took over some of the frames of the previous waves, locating those issues spreading protests | 121 within a critique of the existing social and political relations. fluid networks connected groups active on the territory, often mobilizing citizens for the first time. the struggles against extreme inequalities and corrupt elites resonated with the anti-austerity protests of the beginning of the decade, but within more global waves. while fridays for future, extinction rebellion and ni una menos repeatedly organized global days of protest, the massive mobilizations of the hot autumn of 2019 were rooted in national cleavages but also expressed rage at a global capitalist development that increased social inequalities and constrained civil rights and political freedom. the at times brutal repression of civil disobedience in the streets and in the courts fuelled further protests in a spiral of politicization and with moments of radicalization. at the empirical level, the three waves are also interrelated reacting to different moments in the development of neoliberalism, as a specific form of relation between the state and the market that privilege free markets over state intervention to reduce social inequalities. at the same time, they also reacted to a political crisis with declining legitimacy of representative institutions, promoting participatory and deliberative democratic practices as crucial for the creation of globalisation from below (della porta 2009a; della porta 2009b; della porta 2013). in sum, the global justice movement influenced the anti-austerity protests through the development of collective memory (daphi and zamponi 2014; della porta et al 2018) and, filtered from the latter, also impacted on the most recent wave of global protests against social and political inequalities. cross-national diffusion and the transnationalization of social movements in all of the three mentioned waves of contention, transnationalization of contentious politics happened, even if in different forms. as i argue in what follows, the diffusion process and the main agent of this diffusion changed over time (see table 2). table 2: paths of diffusion in three waves of global protests global justice movement anti-austerity protests the hot fall of 2019 diffusion processes thick thin thin diffusion actors social movement networks and coalitions individual activists and protest mediated contacts 122 | populism, power and protest participants media infrastructure activists mailing lists and alternative informational websites commercial social media platforms and global satellite televisions networks global mediascape the global justice movement pushed social movement studies to analyse the transnational dimension of contentious politics. transnational countersummits and social forums, as venues for protests and proposals against neoliberal globalisation, were empirically investigated in order to understand the organizational forms, action repertoires and collective framing at transnational level. political opportunities – a central explanatory concept in social movement studies – started to be considered as multilevel. transnationalization of social movements appeared as a trend driven by globalisation but also by cosmopolitan culture. economic globalization represented a main target of the protest; that however contributed to political globalization by forming transnational political actors and calling for different global policies. democratization of global politics was an important aim in attempts to reform international organizations, going from the world bank and the international monetary fund to the united nation and the european union. plural and cosmopolitan identities grew through transnational collective action. the global justice movement acted as a transnational public sphere in order to make powerful and secretive international organisations accountable to world citizens for their deeds and misdeeds. transnationalization was indeed visible on the main dimension of social movements (della porta 2007; 2009a; 2009b). protests were more and more often organised transnationally, challenging the idea that the nation-state is the natural arena for contentious politics. protests moved to the places in which international organisations held their summits, especially those of the international financial organisations, such as the wto, world bank, and international monetary fund, which had played a major role in spreading neoliberal doctrine; but also to the most powerful macro-regional organisations. in particular, the european union, was also criticised as betraying its public mission of creating better conditions for citizens, instead defending the powerful (della porta, 2009b). counter-summits involved a complex protest repertoire, with non-violent direct action in the street, but also forums devoted to the development of an alternative vision of world spreading protests | 123 politics. growing in number, transnational protests were particularly influential given their capacity to network activists of different countries, during long-lasting preparations and emotionally intense performances. the social forums helped building a different knowledge from below, fostering the development of cosmopolitan identities. through the organization of transnational action, also transnational networks grew in members and in numbers. they also broadened their forms adding to the formal associations, characterized by small core of activists and reliance on the discrete forms of transnational diplomacy, the horizontal networks, part local and part global, growing within global protest campaigns. while social forums were active also at the local and national levels, the global dimension remained the most important one. activists presented their action as part of a global movement calling for global justice and global democracy. bridging the local and the global (della porta and tarrow, 2005), they contributed to the development of a transnational political system and cosmopolitan identities (tarrow, 2005; della porta and caiani, 2009). a few years later, the great regression seemed to have, if not inverted, at least slowed down what seemed a trend towards the transnationalization of social movements. in particular, “while both waves of protest speak a cosmopolitan language, claiming global rights and blaming global financial capital, the global justice movement moved to the national (and the local) from the transnational, while the new wave took the reverse root and focused on the national level of protest…probably the most visible disjuncture between the two waves of protest, therefore, is indeed related to their territorial level: while the global justice movement often engaged in cross-border mobilisations that moved from one country to another, the current wave of protest chose relatively stable camps, deeply inserted in the urban settings of hundreds of cities across the world, as the main venue of activists” (della porta and mattoni 2014). while the global justice movement was rooted in national politics and social movement cultures (sommier and fillieule 2013; della porta et al. 2006), the national level became all the more relevant for anti-austerity protests (della porta 2013). national pride was often shown through the use of national flags and anthems within calls for defence of national sovereignty against the dominance of powerful states, international organisations, and big corporations. protestors stigmatized the abduction of national democracy by financial powers and international organisations, above all the international monetary fund and the european union. given the varying timing and intensity of the financial crisis, mobilisations were particularly sensitive to national political opportunities (or the 124 | populism, power and protest lack thereof). surveys carried out during protests events in various european countries signalled the increasing importance given to the national level of government as the target of the protest claims (della porta, 2013). processes of cross-national diffusion of frames and repertoires of action were however also at work through both direct, face-to-face contacts and mediated ones. direct forms of diffusion seem to have been especially important within some geopolitical areas: egyptian activists learned from tunisians, thanks also to some direct contacts. egyptians exerted indirect influence on spanish indignados (romanos, 2013b), who were instead in direct contact with greek activists as well as very relevant in steering the occupy movement (romanos, 2013a). across distant countries, social media helped quick information exchange and mutual learning (see roos and oikonomakis, 2014). some protests were moreover called worldwide, as in the case of the global day of action launched by the spanish indignados on 15 october 2011, which saw protest events taking place in 951 cities in 82 countries (perugorría and tejerina, 2013). transnational coordination was very grassroots: not much embedded in structured movement organisations, it was rather based on fluid networks, participatory web platforms, micro-blogging spheres (della porta and mattoni, 2014). while activists in the gjm often belonged to various social movement organizations, the massive participation in the anti-austerity protests in several countries was based upon the mobilization of ‘first comers’, especially among those who were suffering more of the consequences of the crisis. while emerging from existing social movement organisations, that kept mobilizing during the protests (gerbaudo, 2012), the involvement of common people was praised among anti-austerity protests. as jeff juris (2012) noted, in the global justice movement the logic of networking in the organisation of mobilisations, with intense frame bridging during the campaigns of the global justice movement, was if not substituted at least accompanied by a logic of aggregation among individual participants that often used social media to come together around specific events. in fact, while the global justice movement presented itself as the space of encounter of various progressive movements – a ‘movement of movements’ –praising their differences, the anti-austerity movements claimed to represent the overwhelming majority, ‘the people’ or the ‘99%’, indignant against the corruption of the elites (della porta, 2015). also, in the anti-austerity protests, transnationalization of protest happened through a marked diffusion of ideas, practices, and frames (della porta and tarrow, 2005) that was facilitated by the perception of a shared conditions of spreading protests | 125 a global crisis. this helped the cross-national travelling of a form of protest such as the protest camps that spread from tahrir square in egypt to puerta del sol in madrid, and from there to syntagma square in athens and zuccotti park in new york to many squares and parks in many other countries of the world, including gezi park in turkey and the squares of the nuit debut (see della porta and atak, 201; felicetti and della porta, 2018). while not resonating equally in all countries, when and where it spread the acampadas became entrenched in the very identity of the movements with occupied spaces becoming ‘vibrant sites of human interaction that modelled alternative communities and generated intense feeling of solidarity’ (juris, 2012, 268). aiming at reconstructing a public space that had been lost in neoliberal times, the visions and practices that characterized the protest camp also spread to many and diverse countries. what is more, the experimentation with participatory democracy during the informal and formal gatherings in the squares challenged existing forms of representative democracy. in the elaboration of radical imageries related to the very idea of democracy, a semantic renovation of the terms linked to these imageries and the experimentation with participatory democratic practices allowed activists to experience, not just to imagine, different conceptions of democracy. also, attention to deliberation became more central in the movements against austerity as it resonated with (more traditional) participatory visions but also with deliberative conceptions that underline the importance of creating multiple public spaces. during anti-austerity protests, the prefiguration of participatory and deliberative democratic forms acquired particular relevance, not only in the movements of 2011, but also later on, in 2013, in gezi park in turkey or in the nuit debut in france in 2016 (della porta, 2016; felicetti and della porta, 2018). in fact, what is valued as democratic is: “the possibility to elaborate ideas within discursive, open, and public arenas, where citizens play an active role in identifying problems, but also in elaborating possible solutions… indeed, this conception of democracy is prefigured by the very same protestors that occupied the squares, transforming them into public spheres made up of ‘normal citizens’. it is an attempt to create high-quality discursive democracy that recognises the equal rights of all (not only delegates and experts) to speak (and be respected) in a public and plural space, open to discussion 126 | populism, power and protest and deliberation on themes that range from situations suffered to concrete solutions to specific problems, from the elaboration of proposals on common goods to the formation of collective solidarity and emerging identities” (della porta and mattoni, 2014). anti-austerity protests were characterized, however, by selective diffusion. some of the ideas developed during the 2011 protests travelled well from tunisia to egypt, and then to spain, greece, and the united states but not so much in countries which, like germany or france or the united kingdom, less hit by recession, or not even in some countries that were indeed hit by the recession, as with portugal, or italy or the czech republic. as the financial crisis had different characteristics in different countries in terms of public debt and state dependency on foreign banks. diffusion has played a pivotal role in the transnationalization of the global justice movement allowing for the spreading of several social movement features, from forms of organisation to forms of contention, from one country to another (della porta and tarrow, 2005) but it also occurred in the anti-austerity protests. the forms of diffusion changed however, being thick in the former and thin instead in the latter. as della porta and mattoni (2014) summarized, in the global justice movement thick diffusion was “based on a global organisational network in which social movement organisations as well as grassroots activist groups had a relevant role in supporting (and spreading) transnational mobilisations like counter-summits. partially supported through information and communication technologies managed within the social movement milieu, and in particular by activist mailing lists and alternative informational websites, this global organisational network was also thickened due to transnational, but also national, gatherings like the social forum, whose practices rested on a collective conception of politics based on activist groups and organisations” (della porta and mattoni, 2014). vice versa, anti-austerity protests were considered as examples of thin diffusion as “information travelled quickly from individual to individual through social spreading protests | 127 networking sites, frequently in combination with portable mobile devices like smart phones. the ability of individuals to communicate the content of protests was therefore important to spreading imageries in the global wave of protest. more important than social movement organisations and social movement groups were activists who designed and provided web platforms able to function as content aggregators, to navigate the impressive amount of information produced in the framework of protests. the diffusion of information on the protest was therefore characterised by a weak organisational process of transnationalization. occasions for face-to-face communication might have improved in time at the individual level – activists travelling cheaply and often – but collective arenas for transnational encounters like the social forum were less central. indeed, the protest camps like the spanish acampadas quickly achieved world visibility but were mainly national, if not local in the range of people involved (della porta and mattoni 2014). during anti-austerity protests, days of transnational solidarity with greece took place, for instance, on 18 february 2012 in about nineteen non-greek cities, targeting local branches of the international monetary fund and greek embassies across europe; on 19 january 2013, solidarity rallies and actions in front of greek consulates and embassies were organised in twenty-six cities across the world, while demonstrations also occurred in twenty-five cities within greece (kousis 2015). also, international claims referring to other countries were present in domestic demonstrations. in portugal, “a special focus is set on social movements from other countries facing austerity measures and heavily indebted. the protests in greece have been used as a thread, claiming ‘we consider ourselves greek.’ the slogan ‘spain! greece! ireland! portugal! our struggle is international!’ was prominently proclaimed during the 2011 demonstrations” (baumgarten, 2013). transnational collective action, characterizing the global justice movement (della porta and tarrow 2005) that targeted international organizations through transnational action, have also been visible as anti-austerity protests targeted the european central bank and the international monetary fund, as well as rating agencies. activists linked to the 15m mobilisation in spain called for a global action day against capitalism and austerity for the 15 october 2011, with protests counted in 951 cities in 82 countries under the slogan ‘united for global change’ (perugorría and tejerina, 2013). on 14 november 2012, trade unions organised a global action day against austerity that involved the major unions in portugal, spain, greece, italy, cyprus, and malta. however, “while 128 | populism, power and protest these mobilisations certainly had a transnational flavour, they did not imply the gathering of activists coming from various european countries within the same protest site, as regularly happened in the case of the global justice movement” (della porta and mattoni, 2014). in may 2012, four blockupy days of protests, organised by a transnational network of activists, aimed at blocking the activities of the european central bank in frankfurt to denounce the european financial policies and austerity measures implemented in many european countries (della porta, 2020). also, in the following years, activists travelled from various european countries to reach germany and engage in several protest actions, including the attempt at a peaceful blockade of the european central bank. in the case of blockupy, transnationalization was however limited, as the organization and participation remained mainly german. while it is too early to make empirically founded assessments, diffusion certainly happened in the third wave of protests that started globally, through the interconnection of domestic contention. the campaigns against global warming as the ones against violence on women started nationally but quickly spread globally through global days of action with massive demonstrations all over the globe. triggered by specific grievances – from the tough sentences against independentist leaders in catalonia to the small increase in the fares of public transports in chile or the $6 tax per month on whatsapp voice messages in lebanon or the increase of fuel in ecuador or the law in hong kong – countrybased massive waves of protests connected cross-nationally, through expression of reciprocal solidarity. in all these cases, diffusion seems to occur almost automatically, through a dense media environment in which information spread globally through the interaction of old and new media. million marches and mass forms of civil disobedience (as well as, sometimes, general strikes) testify for the spread of discontent but also contribute to its spreading. highly connected through a global media-scape, the various domestic waves of protests also connect by singling out of shared conditions in the increasing inequalities and related corruption. so, for instance, while located in distant geopolitical areas, the protestors in chile and in lebanon in the hot autumn of 2019 targeted the capturing of political institutions by plutocrats, seen as physically embodying the 1% that dominate over the population in situation of extreme inequalities (suffice to remember that the richest 1% monopolize 58% of wealth in lebanon and 33% in chile). together with the misère of the citizens, the corruption of the elites is a powerful diagnostic frame in the two countries as well spreading protests | 129 as in iraq or in ecuador, in algeria as in haiti. what is more, the rich and colluded elites are perceived as united worldwide and supported by some international organizations. deprived of consensus and delegitimated, those elites often fuel the protests through failed attempts at scaring protestors with high levels of repression that at times backfire, producing further discontent and radical expression of it. so, from relatively small and focused triggers, that inflame latent dissatisfaction, intense waves of contention see an escalation of the claims from the withdrawal of specific measures that ignited the struggles to the punishment of those who repressed, up to deeper changes in the political and social regime. as economic inequalities reduce trust in the political institutions, issues of sovereignty and territorial controls emerge as contested, with a re-emergence of cleavages between the centre and the periphery as well as the rural and the urban areas, that interact with class cleavages (as, for example, in different forms in catalonia and hong kong). while the covid-19 pandemic has temporarily hampered street protests, we can expect that the post-pandemic times will be ridden with social conflicts against the dramatic growth of inequalities. conclusion in sum, transnationalization happened in different forms in the three waves of global contention that i singled out since the turn of the millennium. the processes had, however, different degrees of thick versus thin diffusion, with dense organizational networks in the first wave, aggregation of individual activists in the second and mediated contacts within loose connections in the third. the media infrastructure was more controlled by social movement organizations during the first wave, influenced by individual use of new social media in the second, and fuelled by dense interaction in a global media sphere in the third. these three waves cannot however be taken as three isolated instances of global campaigns of protests. as i have shown, they were, rather, interconnected in time, with activists of different generations mobilizing together. in addition, the three waves of protests expressed discontent for a common global trend of neoliberal capitalism, in its rampant form in the first wave, in the eruption of its crisis in the second one, and in the consolidation of its crisis in the third wave. central to the framing of the protests was, all over, the condemnation of extreme social inequality and or related political corruption, and the quest instead for justice and democracy. the two observations should be combined when reflecting on the future 130 | populism, power and protest prospects for transnationalization of protests. first, we cannot expect that the globalization of protests follows a linearly growing trend. while a power shift at global level can stimulate global protests (as the power shift at national level during the creation of nation states focused protests at that level), the mounting of global organizations and global action is costly for social movement actors. we might therefore expect that, while ideas will keep diffusing cross-nationally, social movements will follow multi-level strategies, using leverage at local, national and international level. transformation in capitalism as well as changes in political opportunities certainly affect these choices, opening and closing channels for international mobilization. given the importance that communication always had for movements, technological transformations certainly influence the process of cross-national diffusion. beside strategic calculations, however, progressive movements appear to be driven by a deep normative commitment to global justice and international solidarity. learning from previous cycles of protests, they will also inherit repertoires of global protests and transnational networks that are adapted to further campaigns. references baumgarten, b. 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(2012) direct action, deliberation, and diffusion: collective action after the wto protests in seattle, cambridge: cambridge university press. zamponi, l. and d. priska (2014) breaks and continuities in and between cycles of protest: memories and legacies of the global justice movement in the context of anti-austerity mobilisations, in d. della porta. and a. mattoni (eds.) spreading protest, essex: ecpr press. 134 | populism, power and protest austerity urbanism and the social economy alternate routes edited by carlo fanelli and steve tufts, with jeff noonan and jamey essex2017 © alternate routes, 2017 toronto www.alternateroutes.ca twitter: @arjcsr “alternate routes” issn 1923-7081 (online) issn 0702-8865 (print) http://www.alternateroutes.ca/ alternate routes: a journal of critical social research vol. 28, 2017 managing editors: carlo fanelli and steve tufts interventions editors: jeff noonan and jamey essex editorial advisory board: nahla abdo, dimitry anastakis, pat armstrong, tim bartkiw, david camfield, nicolas carrier, sally chivers, wallace clement, simten cosar, simon dalby, aaron doyle, ann duffy, bryan evans, randall germain, henry giroux, peter gose, paul kellogg, jacqueline kennelly, priscillia lefebvre, mark neocleous, bryan palmer, jamie peck, sorpong peou, garry potter, georgios papanicolaou, mi park, justin paulson, stephanie ross, george s. rigakos, heidi rimke, arne christoph ruckert, toby sanger, ingo schmidt, alan sears, mitu sengupta, meenal shrivastava, janet lee siltanen, susan jane spronk, jim struthers, mark p. thomas, rosemary warskett journal mandate: alternate routes is committed to creating an outlet for critical social research and interdisciplinary inquiry. a broad range of theoretical and methodological approaches are encouraged, including works from academics, labour, and community researchers. alternate routes is a publicly accessible academic journal and encourages provocative works that advance or challenge our understandings of 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in montreal pierre hamel and grégoire autin toronto alles uber: being progressive in the age of progressive conservative urbanism roger keil redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs douglas young a beautiful community, but a troubled city: flint’s water crisis otrude n. moyo do efforts to mitigate gentrification work? evidence from washington dc carolyn gallaher the university in the city: the campus as a space of dependence and engagement in the age of austerity kafui attoh, don mitchell, lynn a. staeheli 165 189 219 233 248 264 can marx’s ‘capital’ help us find new routes to radical change? alternate routes and pluto press present: reading ‘capital’ today: marx after 150 years a special edition of the journal published for the 150th anniversary of ‘capital’ visit www.readingcapitaltoday.com to pre-order a copy at a special discount for ar readers april 2017 / 9780745399713 available internationally editorial introduction: austerity urbanism and the social economy carlo fanelli1 and steve tufts2 this issue of alternate routes, “austerity urbanism and the social economy,” is particularly timely and relevant. the ‘urban question’ has been with us for some time, but it seems particularly significant at the current conjuncture. we are now, it is argued, in an age of ‘planetary urbanization,’ with ‘the urban’ predominating contemporary economy and society (brenner 2013). it is not merely an empirical reality that most of the world’s population lives in cities, a ‘statistical artifact’ as brenner and schmid (2013) have argued, but that we now exist in a deeper process of urbanization or ‘global urban condition’. the global financial crisis of the last decade launched a prolonged period of austerity that continues to play out in the urban arena. much needed investments in public transit, affordable housing, aging infrastructure, and social services elude municipalities constrained by low taxation regimes and interurban competition. these urban challenges are beginning to be linked to the broader phenomenon of “permanent austerity," a condition that precedes but is exacerbated by the 2008 recession. ever more, cities are the battlegrounds where the struggles against increasingly authoritarian forms of neoliberalism are being waged (albo and fanelli 2014; thomas and tufts 2016). austerity can be defined broadly as government measures taken to reduce public spending, particularly in the areas of social welfare expenditures and public sector employment. in some cases, this also includes new taxes. according to conventional narratives, these measures are taken when a government’s expenditures exceed its revenues, creating 1 carlo fanelli teaches in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. he is the author of megacity malaise: neoliberalism, public services and labour in toronto (fernwood 2016) and co-editor (with ingo schmidt) of reading capital today: marx after 150 years (pluto 2017). 2 steven tufts is a member of the department of geography at york university. he has recently published in antipode and the labor studies journal. austerity urbanism and the social economy | 7 debt burdens due to over-borrowing. seeing the problems of cities as part of this broader shift towards austerity urbanism, however, is valuable because it reveals the larger political and economic drivers of these problems that go beyond more particular issues such as antipathy towards taxes, over-spending or the salaries of municipal workers. “above all, it is important to recognize” as jamie peck (2015: 6) has recently argued, “that enforcing economy is a relational strategy: austerity is ultimately concerned with offloading costs and displacing responsibility; it is about making others pay the price of fiscal retrenchment. in the language of the occupy movement, it is something that the one percent, which continues to accumulate wealth and power at an alarming rate, does to the 99 percent.” of course, manifestations of austerity urbanism vary across diverse contexts. austerity urbanism can be understood as an uneven form of urban social organization that lacks both luxuries and basic comforts for people. as an approach to public policy, austerity urbanism has included tax-shifting for competitiveness, reductions to social services provisioning, contracting-out and privatization of city assets, new forms of marketization such as the use of public-private partnerships, and a shift away from universality to user-fees. new workplace arrangements have also proliferated, including the use of parttime and short-term contracts, as well as casual and seasonal forms of employment. in some cases, this has also incorporated new restrictions on workers’ rights to unionize and bargain collectively. reductions to employee compensation have also been a stated aim of municipal austerity (fanelli 2016). in this regard, the state has at times imposed austerity from above or led the charge from below, and at other times created the conditions for capital to lead in an assault against urban social life. austerity urbanism is not a universal form, but rather a process of struggle with a diverse set of stories and practices. it is the unevenness across urban space that creates openings and possibilities for the future. this politically imposed condition is being actively resisted across a 8 | austerity urbanism and the social economy diverse range of social actors. this includes struggles against homelessness, fights for living wages, and experiments with new forms of governance all (re)producing the urban.3 what is central is developing an acute understanding of how austerity urbanism is implicated in strategies and tactics that can build a better world. some of these strategies directly confront the logic and ideology of austerity urbanism. but others more closely reflect the context in which they operate. the ‘social economy’, the so-called ‘third’ or voluntary sector of the economy located between the public and private spheres is crucial to the functioning of neoliberal capitalism. as these institutions confront austerity urbanism, they themselves are being transformed – often in alignment with neoliberal practices. this issue addresses, through a number of articles and interventions, the links between austerity urbanism and the social economy. while the analyses provide no absolute paths to a more just world, there is enough evidence and understanding of the current conjuncture to demonstrate that alternatives are indeed necessary. sophia lowe, ted richmond and john shields argue that in the case of immigrant settlement agencies (isas) the current era is an extension of the “permanent austerity” that faced such services since the 1980s. the new model for such services limits advocacy and autonomy, while integrating market driven, new public management ‘best practices’. the next contribution by debbie rudman and collaborators demonstrates how new public management has reconfigured nonprofit employment services agencies in ways that constrain and/or contradict the goals of reducing long-term unemployment. these pressures have reconfigured the relationships between service providers, unemployed persons and state funders, as well as increased the pace of work leading to heightened workplace insecurity. 3 many of these issues are addressed in fuller detail in the 2016 alternate routes special issue, “precarious work and the struggle for living wages,” co-edited by carlo fanelli and john shields. austerity urbanism and the social economy | 9 while transformations in the social economy do reflect the latest phase of neoliberalism, there is resistance. bryan evans reviews the struggles of living wage movements in canada and the united states as an emergent post-industrial working class response to precarity in cities at a time when traditional unionism has failed many workers. laura pin’s examination of participatory budgeting, a much lauded alternative to neoliberal urban fiscal policy, finds that such experiments are themselves limited in their capacity to challenge elite municipal powerbrokers. in what follows, jeff noonan and josie watson critically engage with anti-homelessness movements that frame ‘housing as a right’ as opposed to ‘housing as a human need’. together these contributions demonstrate that resistance to austerity urbanism takes many forms, yet remains an incomplete project. a number of interventions further address austerity urbanism and its uneven social dislocations. pierre hamel and grégoire autin examine how austerity as ideology operates as a necessary collaboration with different levels of government to constrain the autonomy of municipalities. roger keil details with great insight the regime of toronto’s john tory as a form of progressive urbanism that aligns with an elite conservativism under conditions of austerity. toronto remains the focus of discussion as douglas young examines the debates involving residential tower renewal in the ‘in-between city’ as a possible challenge to austerity urbanism. a series of interventions then shift to the us. otrude moyo recounts the flint, michigan water crisis and situates the tragedy in the broader context of a racialized, neoliberal urbanism that has reproduced white supremacy through urban policy. related, carolyn gallaher examines policy efforts to mitigate gentrification in washington, dc through an examination of a tenant ‘right-to-buy’ program which is a complex assemblage of austerity urbanism and social justice efforts. the final intervention from the us is from kafui attoh, don mitchell and lynn a. staeheli, who look at the role of the university in the city. here, the final intervention provides a hint of optimism in an era where post10 | austerity urbanism and the social economy secondary institutions are viewed with increasing cynicism. universities, as spaces of engagement, can provide a place for students and community to come together in the city and resist austerity urbanism.4 we would like to thank all our contributors to this issue. we would also like to gratefully acknowledge the invaluable contributions of external reviewers who lent their time, energy and expertise in providing feedback on articles. thanks are also due to jeff noonan who was joined by jamey essex this year as co-editors of the interventions section. moving into 2017, all book reviews will now be available online at www.alternateroutes.ca on a rolling basis. many of these papers were presented at the alternate routes conference, “sub/urbanizing austerity: impacts and alternatives,” hosted by york university’s city institute in march 2016.5 we thank both the institute and the university for sponsoring the conference and assisting with the publication of this issue. references albo, g. and fanelli, c. (2014). austerity against democracy: an authoritarian phase of neoliberalism? teoria politica, 4, 65-88. brenner, n. (2013). theses on urbanization. public culture, 25(1), 85114 brenner, n. and schmid, c. (2013). the ‘urban age’ in question. international journal of urban and regional research, 38(3), 731-755. fanelli, c. (2016) megacity malaise: neoliberalism, public services and labour in toronto. halifax: fernwood publishing. 4 see also, the broad range of contributions in the 2015 alternate routes special issue, “neoliberalism and the degradation of education,” co-edited by carlo fanelli and bryan evans. 5 video presentations from this and past conferences are available online at the alternate routes website, http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/pages/view/video austerity urbanism and the social economy | 11 fanelli, c. and j. shields, eds. (2016). precarious work and the struggle for living wages, alternate routes 27. edmonton: athabasca university. fanelli, c. and b. evans, eds. (2015). neoliberalism and the degradation of education, alternate routes 26. edmonton: athabasca university press. peck, j. (2015) austerity urbanism: the neoliberal crisis of american cities. rosa luxemburg stiftung (new york), city series #1, http://www.rosalux-nyc.org/wpcontent/files_mf/peck_austerity_urbanism_eng.pdf thomas, m. and tufts. s (2016) ‘enabling dissent’: contesting austerity and right populism in toronto, canada. the economic and labour relations review 27(1) 29–45. 12 | austerity urbanism and the social economy http://www.rosalux-nyc.org/wp-content/files_mf/peck_austerity_urbanism_eng.pdf http://www.rosalux-nyc.org/wp-content/files_mf/peck_austerity_urbanism_eng.pdf articles settling on austerity: isas, immigrant communities and neoliberal restructuring sophia lowe,1 ted richmond2 and john shields3 abstract: immigrant serving agencies (isas) have long been at the centre of the settlement and integration of newcomer populations in canada. they provide a community-based approach to settlement through nonprofit organizations rooted in the communities they serve, a workforce and volunteers drawn largely from immigrant populations, and a value system and voice reflective of the client base. this has been critical to fostering the ‘warmth of the welcome’ for newcomers that has made canadian immigrant integration so successful in an internationally comparative context. this system however is under increasing challenge from austerity and neoliberal restructuring. the pressures include funding cutbacks, loss of isa autonomy, and a general destabilization of nonprofit service provider organizations. this paper examines the impact of the challenges of government austerity and neoliberal policy for the isas and immigrant communities, and considers the prospects for restoring the leadership role of isas in providing successful integration through appropriate settlement services. keywords: settlement services; immigrants; neoliberalism; nonprofits; permanent austerity; advocacy 1 sophia lowe has been working for over a decade in the immigration and settlement sector in areas related to migrant rights, international credential recognition, and the social and economic inclusion of immigrants. 2 ted richmond currently works as an instructor with the chang school at ryerson university, and as a consultant to the nonprofit sector in toronto. his professional background includes the academic, research, private foundation, and nonprofit sectors. 3 john shields is a professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. his research and publications have focused more recently on immigration policy and the political economy of the nonprofit sector. 14 | austerity urbanism and the social economy introduction this paper examines the state of immigrant settlement services delivered by nonprofit providers in the current period of government imposed austerity. social supports to immigrant newcomers to assist in the settlement process offered through locally based, but government funded nonprofit immigrant serving agencies (isas), have formed the core of the canadian model of immigrant reception and integration fostering a more welcoming setting for new arrivals. this is a model that has been regarded as a ‘best practice’ approach to newcomer settlement harnessing the place-based human resources of nonprofit agencies rooted in the communities where immigrants settle and enabled by the funding support of higher tiered governments (richmond and shields 2005). immigrant settlement supports have come to form an important component of the canadian welfare state which is noteworthy given the continued importance that annual recruitment of large numbers of immigrant settlers play in the country’s economic and social development. canada’s active support for immigrant settlement stands in marked contrast to its southern neighbor which has long embraced a hands-off laissez-faire approach to newcomer settlement (shields and bauder 2016). on the larger international scale canada remains a leader in settlement programing and the country most identified for positive settlement practices (shields et.al 2016). settlement services cover a broad range of activities required by immigrants in the often challenging settlement process, including basic orientation to canadian society services, language training, labour market access supports, housing assistance and other specialized programs centered on immigrant needs. these services are important for “supporting immigrants to make the smooth transitions necessary to be able to more fully participate in the economy and society” (shields, et.al, 2016: 4) including the achievement of full citizenship. hence, settlement supports are more encompassing than just those suited to meet the immediate short-term needs of newcomers but also embrace supports directed at serving longer-term integration goals. settling on austerity | 15 additionally, the canadian approach to settlement is characterized as two-way-street between immigrants and canadian society (tolley 2011), where each adjusts and changes in a dialectal process of integration and accommodation. these adjustments in practice, however, take place far more on the newcomer end than that of the host society. still it is more than just symbolically significant that the approach to settlement is not an assimilationist dialogue. the multicultural foundations of modern canadian society and citizenship are an important part of this more cosmopolitan understanding of immigration which stands in contrast to the narrower american melting pot which suggests an assimilation of immigrant cultures into a single american identity (shields and bauder 2015: 18-19). the canadian model of immigrant settlement does, however, require a more engaged state, financially and legislatively, supporting settlement programming and providing public policies like multiculturalism and anti-racism initiatives to promote diversity, openness and inclusion. it should be noted that support from family, friends and other private means is still the dominant source of ‘informal’ settlement support for immigrant newcomers in canada. however, ‘formal’ settlement supports by governments in canada are substantive and important both materially and symbolically. significantly, the federal government, the largest state funder, spends close to $1 billion on settlement programing (levitz 2015). as well, the state’s material commitment to settlement sends a message of official welcome and inclusion to immigrant newcomers. the diminishing of state supports for settlement, both quantitatively and qualitatively, is negatively felt by immigrants. our understanding of the current state of settlement service supports in canada is, however, limited. a previously widely cited study of isas and state restructuring by richmond and shields (2004b) is more than ten years old and predates the official adoption of an austerity agenda embraced by canadian governments in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis (laforest 2013). in canada, moreover, the last decade has 16 | austerity urbanism and the social economy seen major changes to immigration policies and regulations pushed aggressively forward by an ideologically driven conservative government (root, et.al 2015) which held office in ottawa until recently. these changes have largely been documented and often subject to critical analysis (alboim and cohl 2012; barrass & shields 2015; choudry and smith 2016; forier and dufour 2016; zhu 2016), but in the current period there has been relatively little attention paid to the impact of such changes on isas. approach we seek to address this gap through a critical review of the literature on immigrant settlement in canada and by placing the current period in the context of past developments. as such we are able to document both continuity as well as change in the settlement service sector. more substantively we employ the findings from key informant qualitative interviews with ontario-based experts4 who have been working in various capacities in the field, including those from isas. these were conducted to help uncover current conditions, experiences and policy trends impacting isas and immigrant settlement. some dozen in depth semi-structured interviews were conducted for this paper, lasting up to an hour in length. we asked about experiences, insights and observations on how the sector has changed, what impact this has had and how agencies and other players have responded. while all the persons interviewed were asked the same general questions, the interview process was loosely structured, to provide opportunities for dialogue and expression of concerns outside of our initial framework. for purposes of confidentiality the identities of those interviewed have been kept anonymous and thus the interview content is identified in general terms only. detailed notes were taken during the interviews and important information and developments were documented and major themes that 4 this component of the research was undertaken by the community-based researchers sophia lowe and ted richmond. they followed standard ethics based interview protocols and obtained interview consent from all participants. settling on austerity | 17 emerged identified. we were able to substantiate the findings from these interviews by checking them against interview material from a number of other studies which probed individuals involved with the immigrant settlement sector which also covered other parts of english canada.5 what we uncovered in our interviews very closely paralleled perspectives from these other studies giving us confidence in our findings and their general applicability within english canada. the interviews also offer some new details and perspectives on trends and developments identified in the literature. the interview voices and specific experiences and observations are, of course, based out of the greater toronto area and ontario.6 in addition, the community-based research team members, lowe and richmond, have extensive work histories related to the settlement sector in various capacities. their experiences and insights, in effect, as participant observers, contributed much to a grounded understanding and analysis of the state of the settlement sector. in this paper we provide an assessment on isas and the immigrant settlement sector based on these insights, the literature and a detailed report on our interview findings. austerity and settlement services: neoliberal restructuring of social and human supports the austerity agenda has targeted social sources of government spending for deep cuts. senior levels of government have made use of the 5 john shields over the past years has been engaged in a number of sshrc funded collaborative research projects that have been examining nonprofit service provision including settlement services. in all, over 100 individuals involved with the immigrant settlement sector in english canada were interviewed or engaged as part of focus groups. the insights expressed in these encounters were consistent with the broad themes, experiences and sentiments identified in our set of key informant interviews. 6 quebec’s system of settlement support differs from the other provinces as the federal government provides quebec with special funding for it to establish and run its own settlement and immigrant recruitment programs that are specifically centred on the quebec francophone reality. 18 | austerity urbanism and the social economy local, as made evident in the case of the uk’s big society initiative (szreter and ishkanian 2012), to carry forth their downsizing pro-market neoliberal program. nonprofit service delivery organizations are the quintessential community-based human service bodies. they primarily arise out of, are largely staffed by, and are based within the local communities they serve both geographically and in regards to population groups. significantly, austerity bent governments see cuts and restructuring of supports to these organizations as less publicly visible and as being easily absorbed through the use of more voluntary sources of labour and internal efficiencies – ‘doing more with less’ – to make up for lost government revenues (baines et.al 2015). the retreat from government sources of support, according to neoliberal logic, will free up the space and energies of local philanthropic interests and volunteers which have been displaced by ‘excessive’ government involvement in social provision. the reality is that austerity, although undertaken under different labels, is nothing new to the settlement sector; it has faced, in large measure, a state of ‘permanent austerity’ and neoliberal restructuring since the end of the 1980s. the restructuring of social provision has occurred under the direction of new public management (npm). npm has served as a transmission belt used to impose neoliberal governance and practice models into the nonprofit service sector (evans and shields 1998; evans, richmond and shields 2005). while greater detail regarding the neoliberal restructuring of nonprofit service provision can be found in richmond and shields (2004b) and shields and evans (1998) the essence of the process has involved: • services and care previously provided by the state being increasingly downloaded onto local government, non-profit providers, communities and families. this process is referred to as “responsibilization” as the state relinquishes many of its duties shifting the responsibility increasingly onto individuals and other bodies (kelly and caputo 2011: 11). settling on austerity | 19 • a hollowing out of the welfare state, as the shell of many social programs and policy remain, but their scope and reach is greatly diminished (jessop 2014). this hollowing is accompanied with appeals to ‘community’ and the values of charity and volunteering to pick up the slack left by a retreating state. while welfare provision has long involved a mixed social economy where state, market, nonprofits and family have shared responsibilities for social provision, under neoliberalism there has been a dramatic shift away from state responsibility toward other actors (valverde 1995). • increased use of alternate service delivery (asd) involving reduced services, restricted access and nonprofit delivery agents as key elements in the implementation of neoliberalism. even where the state still provides funding for services this is now to be largely delivered by third party actors, and in particular ‘cheap’ nonprofit service providers. costs are more easily controlled in such provision, especially with reduced labour expenses and with the ability of the state to rather invisibly cut supports given the distance between and ‘invisibility’ of the funding for and delivery of services in such arrangements (baines et.al 2014). • npm commands the adoption of ‘business models’, ‘lean production’ and a narrow focus on ‘efficiency’ by delivery agencies to receive state funding for services. this promotes one size fits all approaches to delivery that favours measurable quantity over quality, and rigidity over flexibility in the way services are provided (cunningham and james 2011). larger multi-service agencies are better positioned to compete in such an environment over smaller and ethno-specific isas. • funding of asd, moreover, moves away from longer term more flexible block grants to short-term, competitively-based program financing tied to narrow and strict audit-oriented accountability mechanisms. this works to tie the hands of organizations who must adhere to controlling funding rules that only narrowly support programs and not the organizations who deliver them, and results in time consuming and costly reporting procedures (eakin 2007). 20 | austerity urbanism and the social economy • the end result is a marketized model of thinned out and leaned out services and a system that does not constitute a true partnership between the state and non-profit service providers but a relationship that is dominated by the funder. in this model the state is able to control nonprofit delivers at a distance through their funding and accountability arrangements, a process shields and evans have termed ‘centralized decentralization’ (1998: 13). • there is a greatly diminished place for advocacy by non-profit providers. in the past community-based non-profit agencies were seen, and even encouraged, to be the voices of more marginalized groups they served. often nonprofits were even provided with funding by the state to engage in an inclusionary advocacy role (evans, richmond and shields 2005). however, under npm advocacy has come to be viewed very negatively and nonprofits are reduced to purely client service role. in fact, the funding model has come to produce a strong ‘advocacy chill’ in the non-profit sector, one particularly felt by isas under harper (evans and shields 2014). • a system where nonprofit provider accountability to the funder comes to trump all other forms of accountability. one of the unique features of the non-profit sector is that its organizations have multiple accountabilities – to the communities they serve, their governance boards; to members, staff and volunteers; to the general public; and to funders. but under npm accountability is overwhelmingly directed one way, upward to funders (richmond and shields 2004a). • the delivery of settlement services through non-profit bodies, of course, pre-dates npm. what changed with npm for isas is reduced autonomy for providers, the tight control of programming by the state, a narrowed role in society, and funding instability (evans, richmond and shields 2005). as will be brought to light through our key informants, this model of state funding and control has had some very negative impacts on isas’ ability to serve the immigrant community. it must be noted that the process and impact of npm/neoliberal structuring has been uneven. the settling on austerity | 21 points identified above are consistent with the longer term trends in transformation of state-nonprofit service provision (almog-bar and young 2016). but as a political project neoliberalism has taken time to implement, encountered practical and political opposition which at times has slowed and even set back the direction of change as evidenced in the push back against neoliberal directions in policy in the wake of the harper government’s defeat. the changing landscape of immigration and migration policy in canada the past number of decades witnessed changes in a neoliberal direction to immigration policy emphasizing greater economic class immigration focused on high human capital, stronger border control and security measures, and restraint in settlement funding (shields 2004). however, it is the past decade that has seen a dizzying pace of change in canadian immigration rules and public policy. this situation is well captured by alboim and cohl (2012): “the pace and scope of change in canada’s immigration system in recent years leaves one breathless. from 2008 to july 1, 2012, the federal government has made changes to every aspect of immigration policy, including the way in which reform is undertaken, and more changes are proposed. while some of the recent changes are positive, many are problematic.” the changes implemented under the harper government constituted a major departure from the past breaking the all-party consensus which had existed around the direction of immigration policy (barrass and shields 2015; dorbrowolsky 2012). in brief, immigration policy has been reshaped to: • align more closely to neoliberal and austerity policy directions; • make immigrants and their families more responsible for their own settlement and immigration, thus reducing the state’s commitment to settlement supports; 22 | austerity urbanism and the social economy • focus very heavily on the immediate narrow economic benefits of immigration; • restrict family unification and reduce refugee intake in favour of economic class immigrants; • greatly increase the use of vulnerable temporary foreign workers to ‘flexibly’ fill the labour ‘needs’ of employers; • devolve settlement service responsibilities to sub-national organizations and nonprofit providers; • restructure national welfare states to reduce services and restrict newcomer access to such supports; • tighten the rules around immigration access; • promote and implement racialized restrictions, directed primarily at muslims, in the name of security; and • promote the notion of so-called ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ immigrants as a basis for justifying funding cuts for immigrant support and the greater restrictions on who gets in (barrass and shields 2015; lo et.al 2015; anderson 2013, 2014; arat-koc 1999, 2012; marwah et.al 2013; alboin and cohl 2012; dobrowolsky 2012; shapaizman 2010). in this austere political climate the so-called ‘warmth of the immigrant welcome’ that canada had become so well known for (reitz 1999) has definitely cooled. with the election of the liberal government in ottawa in late 2015 there has been a turn away from the more extreme changes of the harper era, restoring a more balanced approach to immigration recruitment and greater supports for newcomers, especially refugees. in this regard the non-linear trajectory of immigrant settlement policy is revealed. the liberal party, it is important to note, did run in the election on an anti-austerity platform; it spoke instead of the need for public investments (o’toole 2015). they also promoted the idea of evidencebased approaches to policy determination turning away from harper’s more ideological approach to policymaking (griffith 2013). the restoration of the mandatory census is one prominent manifestation of settling on austerity | 23 this. on the issue of immigration and security, however, the liberals, as manifested in bill c-51, have retained the bulk of harper’s strict securitization measures (mia 2016). while it will take some time before the full direction of the liberal government’s immigration policy is revealed, at this point it is fair to say that it constitutes something of a mixed outcome representative of modest progressive change as well as measures of continuity with the harper period. given the timing of our interviews they are more reflective of the impacts on the settlement sector during the harper period. our key informant interviews indicate that many of the changes to immigration policy and programing under the conservatives coincided with changes in the labour market, resulting in more competition for increasingly precarious employment amongst newcomers (see: lewchuck 2015; and gottfried, et.al 2016). despite these changes our informants tell us that there is still an overall expectation on the part of government funders that immigrants will settle quickly and into good jobs, even with a sluggish economy and labour market. respondents recognized that since the 1990s, immigration policy shifted from thinking of immigrants as citizens with families, to thinking of immigrants as workers – economic units, and this was particularly pronounced in the harper period. as a result, most immigrant-serving agencies shifted their language and culture of how they work with immigrants – for example, they began calling them clients and began focusing on narrow measurable economic outcomes of success as demanded by funders as part of reporting requirements. according to respondents, the focus on economic immigration became more pronounced under the harper government, with a move towards increasing numbers of migrants in canada on a temporary basis – temporary foreign workers and international students (hannan et.al 2016; lowe 2010). these policy changes, coupled with tightening restrictions and regulations for immigrants and their families, took place relatively quickly and created burdens not only for newcomers but also for settlement agencies. staff struggled to serve a growing population of 24 | austerity urbanism and the social economy migrants who are ineligible for many services and have varying and unique needs. services for different immigrant groups, including specialized and knowledgeable employment support for highly skilled immigrants, can be difficult to find and programs are located across a variety of agencies. this makes providing the kind of wrap-around services that agencies tend to support challenging. as well, it has been very difficult to keep up with the required knowledge of all the regulatory changes and rules in order to advise migrants appropriately. and isas, in the spirit of austerity, have been compelled to address these increased and more complex needs to settle immigrants in their local communities in a greatly restricted funding environment. respondents noted that more recent changes to immigration policy not only have favoured economic immigrants, but also have changed the mix of economic immigrants. for example, new policies increased official language requirements to come to canada and introduced the express entry system promoting employer directed recruitment. some informants noted that these changes have negatively impacted the diversity of canada’s immigration program. others emphasized that the underlying presumption in all these changes is that migrants should be successful, without requiring as much settlement service support. this has contributed to devaluing and underfunding the entire settlement sector. in addition, some respondents noted that the ever-present challenge of marketing settlement services and their relevance to immigrants are more pronounced. one person noted that “immigrants [are] not seeing immigrant serving agencies as valuable and want to go to mainstream organizations.” the state-isa funding regime funding for community-based settlement services is limited and unstable, and this is widely acknowledged by our key informants. this is highly problematic for isas given their heavy dependence on government funding, which constitutes 85% or more of their budgets (eakin 2007, baines et.al 2014). the move away from core funding over settling on austerity | 25 the last decades to short-term project-funding from all funders has created additional instability and competition across the sector. the general pattern over the past decades has been funding restraint. in ontario substantive cuts to settlement goes back at least to the mid-1990s under the harris government, including its closure of immigrant welcome houses and removing funding for newcomer children’s programs (omidvar and richmond 2003; zhu 2016: 145). the sector has never enjoyed the benefits of stable and consistent funding. but not only has the sector been chronically underfunded; periodically, a considerable amount of money has been injected into the sector, but without a long term vision or plan. in 2006, the canada-ontario immigration act (coia) negotiated between liberal governments in ottawa and ontario contributed to a substantial initial investment in the overall ontario settlement sector where the majority of newcomers arrived. many agencies grew their staffing and programming in response to more funding. however, one respondent noted that this funding was like building the sector out of a “house of cards” – there was little structural funding or planning to withstand a withdrawal of these funds later on. at the end of the coia agreement under the conservative harper government, there were massive cuts to agencies in the sector. while “the settlement sector did what it could” in these circumstances, many respondents noted that it never fully recovered from the post-coia claw backs. one respondent noted that the sector “expanded everything, and then it was all cut.” coia funding inundated the sector with new opportunities. agencies hired people, grew programs and services, opened up new centres and small ethno-specific spaces were boosted. through coia, three times more funding was pushed into the sector in ontario. this allowed additional programs and collaborations like job search 26 | austerity urbanism and the social economy workshop (jsw), host program7 and language instruction for newcomers to canada (linc) to expand. further, agencies grew their human resources role and their capacity to offer solid employment, which attracted skilled workers and emphasized professionalism. coia was also a milestone in terms of collaboration, with formal tripartite agreements involving the three orders of government (federal-provincialcity). respondents noted that coia allowed the government and sector to “collaborate and design something systematically – not just react.” regions were looking at service delivery based on landings data and areas with fewer services and this period saw the launch of the tripartite welcome centre hub model. according to one respondent, when coia ended, settlement services in ontario lost approximately $200 million. this impacted all aspects of service delivery and the capacity of agencies to do the work they had grown over the coia funding period. further, the strong partnerships built between the three levels of government were not maintained. instead, according to respondents, squabbles over the end of the agreement and funding resulted in further strained relations. following the end of coia, many agencies were forced to lay off staff, salaries were flat-lined, services and programs were closed or limited, and some agencies were pushed to shut down. respondents shared that employment across the settlement sector became more precarious, with increases in the instances of part-time, contract and seasonal employment. since the end of coia, the sector as a whole has not experienced growth. financial accountability became cics most important marker of 7 the host program is aimed at assisting immigrant newcomers to better meet the challenges of moving to a new country. the program focuses on using canadian volunteers to help immigrants learn about available services, practice english and french language, develop work related contacts and to engage in their community (canadian newcomer magazine 2016). settling on austerity | 27 agency success, moving ever-further from examining service impact. some agencies continued to grow and expand services, but these are largely multi-service agencies and those relying on a more diverse revenue streams. smaller agencies, organizations and programs that rely on federal funding continued to be heavily impacted by a lack of resources. additional federal cuts continued during the final years of the harper government. these impacted a number of collaborative programs, capacity-building work, and smaller agencies – largely in the greater toronto area (gta). the host program and the jsw program were closed, as well as 13 agencies in the gta. for other agencies, staff and programs were lost and many agencies incurred huge deficits, as cic refused to pay for any severance for laid off employees. program enhancements that were gained after years of advocacy were lost during the harper years, such as summer language instruction programming and a significant reduction in child care services for newcomer program users. in addition, there were further “nickel and dime” cutbacks that impacted agencies and the people they supported. these included restrictions to paying for any food or public transit tickets for clients, and further cuts to child-minding services and staff salaries. additional budgetary restrictions and inflexibility were introduced. surplus funding was clawed back, while deficits were absorbed by agencies. according to some respondents, these types of changes pushed some agencies to micromanage their budgets and carry significant debts over time. it is clear that isas have felt the full impact of neoliberal/austerity agenda, pushed to ‘do more with ever less’. strict contract conditions and rigid accountability requirements work to limit client eligibility and greatly restrict what isas are able to spend on. accountability respondents highlighted that strict contract conditions and funder accountability requirements have increased, without additional funding to support this work. this includes rigid accounting for all funds 28 | austerity urbanism and the social economy used, how they are used and additional data and reporting on impact. even the federal government’s own independent blue ribbon panel on grants and contributions that looked at nonprofit accountability identified the system as dysfunctional, over burdensome and counterproductive for producing a rational and effective system of service delivery (shields 2014: 271). during the harper period the accountability burden increased. according to respondents, it used to be that reporting on how funds were used, as well as the relationship with funding officers, was more dynamic and responsive to needs within the community and for the agency. now, as noted by all respondents, data collection and reporting to ircc (then cic) is very burdensome. as one respondent put it, “accountability is always to the funder, not to the newcomer communities.” this was identified as one of the most significant challenges for agencies, as ircc funds the biggest portion of the settlement sector, but is considered the most disconnected from what is needed and what is going on. further, there are no common indicators of success in settlement because success is defined differently across the sector (e.g., keeping doors open to all newcomers versus growing services and programs). one is responsive and accountable to funders; the other is responsive to community needs and sets the agenda. some respondents warned that without defining the value and impact of the sector as a whole, the sector would continue to be divided, and demonstrating the sector’s impact to funders and the population at large would continue to be a challenge. one respondent said that the sector needs a strategic plan. without this, there may continue to be competition, rather than collaboration, with smaller agencies and many important services being lost. measuring impact in social services is a challenge (cooper and shumate 2016: 41-42). in a short-term project funding environment, planning, evaluation and measuring outcomes and impact are even more challenging for agencies. coupled with limited funding, the higher demand to prove impact and value of programs is nearly impossible for organizations whose capacity, resources and experience are already compromised. despite this, funders require settling on austerity | 29 greater data on outcomes. according to many respondents, this is about creating and justifying further “efficiencies” in the system. for some services, such as employment, the focus on outcomes and outputs can drive the people served into precarious employment. in these instances, targets may be met for the agencies, but the achievement of good jobs, where skills and experience are used, is no longer the focus. respondents noted that the reporting burden – even for small grants – is significant. funders expect more with less – and demand that it be measurable success and impact. many organizations are dedicating significant resources to accessing grants and reporting to funders. this, according to many respondents, ties up limited resources that could be used to run programs and to serve people directly. despite agreement that accountability and efficiency in service-delivery is important in the sector, respondents believe that the way organizations are held accountable is too burdensome and detracts from the value of their services. accountability has been lifted off the government and put on agencies. site visits and other mechanisms for funders to collect data and information about services are no longer common practice. instead, agencies are required to prove everything that they do and report on it, with limited government or funder interface and knowledge of programming. changing accountability structures and greater dislocation between government funders and service agencies also further removes governments from on-the-ground issues and what matters in communities. this can have a profound impact on program and policy development, and lead to disjointed and illogical service delivery. a good example of this is funders requiring that all immigrant children accessing services through a program run in the toronto district school board (tdsb) have permanent resident cards, directly contradicting the toronto access policy that the tdsb signed onto. proper accountability and the ability to evaluate programs requires good will on the part of funders and non-profit agencies, dedicated resources, available expertise and meaningful dialogue. these are elements that are largely missing in 30 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the current funding and accountability regime which is overly interested in hierarchical control and austere delivery of services. competition and collaboration the current funding system in the settlement sector creates poor conditions for collaboration and capacity-building. according to respondents, there is greater competition amongst agencies, for an eversmaller funding pot. one person noted that funders have a “divide and conquer” mentality and approach. for agencies, it is “quite tricky to build partnerships in this context.” some noted that, in sub-sectors of the settlement sector, such as employment and refugee resettlement, there is less competition and better collaboration. this may be in part due to the interest and focus of government in these areas. there used to be funding for leadership development in the sector, as well support for professional development and capacity-building in the sector (türegün 2016). with funders focused on programs and direct-services, the “soft-supports” such as coordination, collaboration, training and professional development struggle to get funding, despite their importance to build and sustain a strong sector and to offer coordinated services. increasing competition for limited resources has contributed to the difficulty the sector has in coordinating, collaborating, sharing a common vision and fighting back together. some organizations are struggling to “do it all” and better coordination would help achieve a common end-goal of supporting immigrants and refugees to successfully settle and succeed. respondents said that they “can’t serve all immigrants and refugees” and that better collaboration and partnership is necessary. marginalizing the sector respondents believe that limited resources and uncertain funding have created increasingly precarious labour conditions within the settlement sector. precarity concerns the lack of security and/or predictability, fostering vulnerability, instability, marginality and temporariness (baines et.al 2014). under-funding and lack of long-term settling on austerity | 31 funding stability mean: employment insecurity; increased workloads (doing “more with less”); lack of promotion ladders; lower wages and minimal benefits; growth of unpaid and underpaid labour. continual threats of defunding make ongoing settlement service operations ‘permanently temporary’. as well an employment structure of ‘permanent temporariness’ becomes embedded into the dna of the sector (cunningham et.al 2016; shields 2014). speaking in terms of funding and government support, one respondent highlighted that “organizations that serve marginalized groups are themselves marginalized.” within the settlement sector, a number of respondents noted that the staff composition is largely immigrantand femaledominated, and that agencies are not afforded the same support as other sub-sectors in the nonprofit community service sector. that many workers in the settlement sector are themselves immigrants from the very communities they service is an important link helping to keep isas close to immigrant clients. but it is also reflective of the problem faced by so many immigrant newcomers in that they become employed in lower waged and precarious employment (gottfried et.al 2016; preston 2010) a factor that marks isa employment patterns (baines et.al. 2014). despite this reality, respondents noted that there are greater demands for professionalization, but without adequate salaries or professional development opportunities within the sector (türegün 2016). all respondents noted that there has been a significant reduction in funding available for professional development, networking and collaboration – for agencies, their staff and for umbrella groups. noting the challenges of attracting and retaining good staff, one respondent noted that “the sector is not valuing critical roles,” largely as they cannot offer decent employment. not all organizations are facing the same challenges. larger, multi-service agencies or organizations with a diversity of revenue streams become organizations that can attract and retain the most talent, as they are better positioned to offer decent work conditions including pay, benefits and a measure of job security. for smaller organizations that are reliant on single-source government 32 | austerity urbanism and the social economy funding, challenges with staff are often overwhelming. funders are requiring additional competencies (such as multiple languages of communication), which results in organizations dividing one stable role into multiple part-time contracts. respondents also noted a reduction in funding for summer linc programs, limiting the availability of yearround employment. these circumstances lead to difficulties with filling positions and retaining qualified staff. in cases where programs are cut and agencies are losing funding, there are direct job losses. in addition, some funders have refused to pay severance. this leaves organizations with legal obligations to pay severance, which incur greater debts. in these circumstances, any longerterm planning for agencies, including staffing, is close to impossible. most funding is limited to three years and there have been significant cuts across the sector. the pressures on isas threaten their long-term viability and the well-being of the communities they serve. the ‘best value for the dollar’ approach of npm creates a ‘race to the bottom’ for nonprofit agencies threatening their ability to deliver quality services and to survive as organizations (cunningham and james 2011). as the social safety net erodes, marginalized populations turn to community service providers including isas for support – but the capacity to respond has been seriously eroded. diversity and commitment of the sector when asked about the greatest assets of the settlement sector, respondents shared that an engaged, passionate and committed workforce, as well as diversity within the sector itself are its greatest assets. people working in the sector feel that their work is “more than a job,” and shared that they love what they do. many staff working in the settlement sector are themselves immigrants, which helps to keep services relevant to the communities they serve and supports strong linguisticallyand culturally-relevant service delivery. of course, the deep commitment to caring on the part of the sector’s workers is a double edged sword as it also becomes a force to bind them to their duties even settling on austerity | 33 under exploitative conditions (baines et.al 2014). respondents also believe that the sector is nimble and flexible – and that organizations remain mission-driven, despite challenges with funder demands. this enables many of them to serve immigrants, regardless of their eligibility for federally-funded settlement services. others highlighted a similar trend, saying that settlement services are responsive to community need, constantly innovating what is offered to best respond to current needs. however, some noted that the sector tends to be overly reactive, which results in less strategic planning and more chasing of funding dollars and demands. for some, this has made much of service planning and delivery less relevant to the needs of immigrants. the settlement sector is very diverse. this is reflected by staff diversity within settlement agencies as well as by diversity across organizations and those working in this sphere. respondents pointed out that the sheer number of agencies and actors involved in the settlement sector makes it difficult to clearly define. those delivering settlement, employment and support services include: large multi-service agencies, municipal services, community health care clinics, legal clinics, ethnospecific agencies and other small niche agencies, employment agencies, programs within other service agencies, private sector services, postsecondary institutions and programs, and faith-based services. there are also umbrella agencies, think tanks, research centres and academic and community partnerships working across immigration issues and supporting aspects of the settlement sector. over the last ten years, respondents have seen many new players enter the immigration and settlement sector at large. some noted that many so-called new players are in reality old players repackaged with buzz-words and social enterprise models. the corporate sector has taken up a larger role (conference board of canada, canadian chamber of commerce) and, according to some individuals, these organizations garner more respect than the nonprofit sector and its work. on public policy issues related to immigration, immigration lawyers are now some of the biggest advocates; however, respondents noted that lawyers have a 34 | austerity urbanism and the social economy particular stake in issues. more recently, private citizens, constituent groups and neighbourhoods have banded together in growing numbers to support and fund refugee resettlement through private sponsorship. this has added another layer of diversity to the sector that serves immigrants and advocates on issues related to immigration and settlement. wide spread civic engagement in refugee settlement promoted by the syrian crisis has been an important development that has aided in strengthening the wider population’s commitment to progressive immigration policies. most respondents count the diversity of the sector as a strength and an asset, noting how coordinated and networked the sector is – especially in the gta. others said the settlement sector was fractious and divided. this sentiment came across most strongly as respondents described how agencies under the npm model compete amongst each other for limited funding, trying to distinguish themselves as unique, rather than collaborating and building common-ground with other agencies. to most, the ontario coalition of agencies serving immigrants (ocasi) has played a strong role in unifying the sector – especially vis-àvis communication and advocating on behalf of the sector. however, some respondents felt that the sector needed to better define its role and standardize a model of care in order to have common ways to demonstrate and measure success. others felt that any pan-canadian settlement vision needs to take a position in relation to issues such as equity, anti-racism and aboriginal rights, rather than being defined exclusively in terms of service delivery. research, policy and advocacy all respondents believe that some funding autonomy is essential for genuine engagement in advocacy. for many, funding autonomy and, specifically, not being tied to ricc-funds, is a direct contributor to the ability to critique government policy and do advocacy work. most noted that there is always an unequal power relationship with a funder – and when this is government, it is more complicated. this limits advocacy settling on austerity | 35 and push-back. many respondents believe the settlement sector is uniquely positioned to engage in public policy advocacy and to raise awareness on issues related to immigration and settlement. they are on the ground with immigrants and can bring individual issues and trends to a systemic level (see: de graauw 2016). however, according to most respondents, the settlement sector on the whole, does not engage in much advocacy. one respondent noted that, when compared to other nonprofit social service sectors, the settlement sector is quiet and quite tame. for many, this lack of advocacy is related to a fear of losing funding. umbrella agencies, such as ocasi, and other coalitions, such as the consortium of agencies serving internationally-trained persons (casip), play an important role in ensuring that the sector has “protected voices” when advocating. respondents felt that their agencies could not lobby, but that advocacy could happen through these channels. some noted that it is not difficult to advocate, but that this cannot be done in opposition; it can be done in “soft ways,” such as by engaging in planning tables, the national settlement council, working groups, boards and umbrella groups (evans and shields 2014). one respondent noted that “advocacy is also a good service” – helping to ensure that policies and politics align with community needs. however, others noted that the softer advocacy coming from agencies can be a form of self-promotion, reinforcing competition in the sector. others noted that autonomous organizations, like foundations should be playing a more active role in both advocacy and funding advocacy work for agencies, which “can’t separate the political from issues.” recently, umbrella organizations are increasingly monitored and controlled. this, according to some respondents, is intended to restrict advocacy. ocasi, unlike many other umbrella agencies, has continued to speak out in defense of immigrants and the sector (douglas 2016). however, some respondents felt that the advocacy efforts were not always strategic, and were too often reactive and overly focused on settlement sector funding. one respondent noted that in an advocacy 36 | austerity urbanism and the social economy space, ocasi needs to support defining the sector first, in order to be able to best advocate for the sector’s work. another highlighted that advocacy can come directly from agencies themselves, “pushing back with funders and not taking everything as it comes.” some organizations continue to advocate in public spaces, despite the “advocacy chill” produced and perpetuated by governments. respondents noted that some small ethno-specific agencies continue to do valuable advocacy work and respond to local issues. some of these organizations have been defamed for doing so; although many do not risk funding, they may risk revocation of charitable status. the fear of advocacy and speaking out, according to a number of respondents, has never been as severe as it was during the decade of harper rule at the federal level. even still, different actors and players have entered into these spaces to advocate for policy and program reforms. a key example was the direct advocacy and mobilizing of health care professionals, students and other activists around cuts to the interim federal health program for refugees. the formal settlement sector supported and participated in this movement, while the leadership came largely from others. similarly, the recent syrian refugee crisis brought forward a significant surge in public pressure and mobilization from faith-groups, community groups and private sponsorship groups. these groups have been vocal and have drawn important attention to a number of important areas, including the value of resettlement and diversity in canada, the presence of a settlement sector and the inadequacy of many social supports currently in place. when asked about the importance of research for the settlement sector, respondents noted that a growing body of research in this field has been vital to supporting service planning and advocacy. more, respondents noted how ceris, metropolis, social planning toronto, the maytree foundation and other partnerships with researchers and academics, showed agencies that they “could get involved in research and help to define the agenda.” some noted that such collaborations have been important in helping the sector measure success, come into public settling on austerity | 37 policy arenas and influence governments. in addition, some of the research that came from these collaborations built the capacity of agencies to undertake their own research and document, through evidence, local-level and neighbourhood challenges, service impact, and policy issues (shields, et.al 2015). in a policy world where evidence and the ability to show results matter, research capacity can be a significant asset (lum et.al 2016). agencies that use research to build a strong case for their services, according to our key informants, appear to be enjoying greater access to varied funding streams. one respondent highlighted that research on the indicators of disadvantage and how settlement services are aligned and respond to this, would support both the work of the sector as a whole and the ability to convince others of the value in this work. conclusion isas have been an essential part of modern immigration settlement and integration in canada. their funding to deliver locally centred services for newcomers has been part of internationally recognized best practices approaches to immigrant reception. active state support for settlement has in fact become an integral part of canada’s welfare system. however, the impacts of years of neoliberal restructuring of social provision and funding austerity has weakened the foundations of the settlement sector and worked to loosen the community-based ties as npm ‘reforms’ imposed controls on isa programing have bound nonprofit service delivery to funders over communities served. the relationship between isas and state funders has been an overly one directional controlling one, not a true partnership, with government setting all the rules. it has also served to in effect narrow the role of isas to simply that of service provider, marginalizing an advocacy function. the diversity of service delivery offered by nonprofit agencies has long been identified as one of the core strengths of the sector (salamon 2015) but this asset has been weakened 38 | austerity urbanism and the social economy under npm given its preference to fund primarily large multiservice agencies. at the heart of the isa-government relationship is the model of funding developed under npm. the imposition of a competitive shortterm program-based financing tied to a rigid accountability framework, which replaced a more open ended block funding system, is the mechanism by which government is able to control those it funds and impose business-oriented management systems. moreover, the instability of funding for isas and the endless pressures to lean service provision – ‘do more with less’ – has created tremendous precarity in the sector making forward planning very difficult. the key to reform, consequently, rests with the funding model (see: shields 2014: 269-274). funding needs to be longer-term and stable with more flexibility in terms of organizational discretion in spending. the accountability to funders needs to be less rigid and opened up to include accountability to communities served. funders should not be in a position where they impose ‘advocacy chill’ on service providers. a funding system that recognizes the value of the diversity of the settlement sector and supports large multiservice agencies as well as small ethno-specific isas is important as it is this diversity which enables greater reach and a more flexible response to varying newcomer needs. a measure of isa funding autonomy is essential for effective engagement with community and advocacy. isas ‘give voice’ to the communities they serve, and this is essential to making integration a two-way street. for too long the relationship between isas and their government funders has been top down, without real dialogue or true partnership. a mature and respectful relationship between funders and isas that values the services and the organizations that deliver them is critical to improving immigrant settlement and integration. settling on austerity | 39 references alboim, n. and cohl, k. 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(2016). immigration policy, settlement service, and immigrant mothers in neoliberal canada: a feminist analysis. canadian ethnic studies, 48(2), 143-156. 46 | austerity urbanism and the social economy “you got to make the numbers work”: negotiating managerial reforms in the provision of employment support service debbie laliberte rudman,1 rebecca m. aldrich,2 john grundy,3 melanie stone,4 suzanne huot,5 and awish aslam6 abstract: neoliberal activation logic has intensified in the employment services sector, accompanied by austerity measures and new public management (npm). we report findings from the canadian site of a collaborative ethnographic study addressing the negotiation of longterm unemployment, specifically focusing on local-scale implications of administrative reforms to employment service delivery. informed by street-level bureaucracy and governmentality, we demonstrate how the articulation of managerialism in activation-focused employment services and the emphasis on ‘making the numbers work’ results in a series of inter-related effects, including: work intensification; reconfiguration of key relationships; and heightened insecurity. simultaneously, frontline staff engage in forms of service provision unaccounted for under official metrics, but central to their perceptions of service users’ needs. our analysis confirms the necessity of ethnographic approaches to documenting street level enactment of, and resistance to, neoliberal governmentalities. 1 debbie laliberte rudman is an associate professor, school of occupational therapy and graduate program in health and rehabilitation sciences, university of western ontario. email: drudman@uwo.ca 2 rebecca aldrich is an assistant professor, department of occupational science and occupational therapy, saint louis university. email: raldrich@slu.edu 3 john grundy is a postdoctoral fellow, department of political science, york university. email: grundy@yorku.ca 4 melanie stone is a phd candidate, women’s studies and feminist research, university of western ontario. email: mstone33@uwo.ca 5 suzanne huot is an adjunct professor, school of occupational therapy, university of western ontario. email: shuot2@uwo.ca 6 awish aslam is a phd student, department of sociology, university of western ontario. email: aaslam5@uwo.ca “you got to make the numbers work" | 47 mailto:drudman@uwo.ca javascript:main.compose('new',%20't=raldrich@slu.edu') mailto:mstone33@uwo.ca mailto:shuot2@uwo.ca mailto:aaslam5@uwo.ca keywords: neoliberalism; precarity; activation; governmentality; austerity introduction labour market policy in canada has undergone profound reforms over the past several decades. federal and provincial governments have embraced the activation framework of labour market policy, which entails disciplinary approaches to the unemployed. in the name of removing work-disincentives, and buttressed by a parallel rise in austerity measures, activating reforms emphasize limiting unemployed individuals’ access to income security programs such as employment insurance (ei) and enforcing their entry into paid employment through the adoption of rapid re-employment or ‘work-first’ employment service delivery models. within service provision, there is an emphasis on interventions that enhance individuals’ employability and job-seeking efforts through changing client behaviours and attitudes (grundy 2015a; porter 2015). such ‘work-first’ models are bolstered through the use of techniques of new public management (npm) in service delivery, including the extensive use of performance-based contracting of service providers and outcomes-based accountability measures. policy makers promote these techniques as maximizing the efficiency of client reemployment and achieving greater value for money. yet, as a growing body of critical social policy scholarship demonstrates, the adoption of npm, as well as activation measures, can also be viewed as attempts to discipline managers, service providers, and clients’ conduct in ways consistent with neoliberal rationalities (brodkin 2011; soss et al. 2011). reporting findings from a broader ethnographic study of employment service provision and long-term unemployment in canada and the united states, and drawing on street-level bureaucracy and governmentality literatures, this article examines the consequences of 48 | austerity urbanism and the social economy npm as a concealed track of welfare reform (brodkin 2013) for service providers and service users. building on recent scholarship that emphasizes the need to study what actually happens when governmentality practices ‘hit the ground’ or the ‘street level’ (brady 2011; lipsky 1980/2010), our central claim is that the articulation of managerialism in employment service delivery, and the heightened pressure on staff to ‘make the numbers work’, results in series of interrelated effects. these effects include work intensification for service providers; reconfiguration of the relation between service providers, funders, and clients; and heightened insecurity for service providers and service users. we also highlight instances of resistance and subversion that demonstrate the ways service delivery staff seek to work around or, at times, push back against narrow quantitative measures of service delivery, often assuming the risk of undertaking unaccounted work and pursuing invisible outcomes in the process. following brodkin (2011), we contend that these combined effects of activation measures and npm are often not made visible through dominant ways of studying service delivery, such as examining legislation and administrative documents or tracking official metrics, but instead require investigating policy in action within the contexts of service delivery and everyday lives. theoretically, we demonstrate how employing an ethnographic approach to examining governmentality, combined with a sensitivity to street level practices, enables moving beyond linear, all-pervading assertions regarding the effects of neoliberal governance toward more complex understandings of how activation and npm measures are negotiated in everyday practices. background and theoretical framework among many member nations of the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd) employment policies and services have been significantly reconfigured according to the paradigm of neoliberal activation, and in many countries this reconfiguration has intensified since the 2008 recession (boland 2015; evans & albo 2010; “you got to make the numbers work" | 49 porter 2015; soss et al. 2011). activation policy has redefined the problem of unemployment. while for much of the post-war period, policy makers conceived of unemployment primarily as an economic problem to be addressed through macroeconomic policy promoting full employment, contemporary ‘activating’ approaches to unemployment place much more emphasis on modifying the behaviour and attitudes of unemployed individuals. within an activation paradigm, unemployment is essentially a problem of the unemployed, one to be resolved through interventions that ‘activate’ and ‘responsibilize’ unemployed individuals (grundy 2015a; ilcan 2009). activation approaches are purported to transform passive unemployment into active job-seeking, discursively locating the factors causing unemployment within the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of individuals (boland 2015). in turn, those experiencing unemployment are increasingly expected to demonstrate responsible citizenship through engaging in a range of activities such as resume writing, interviews, and networking, which are held out as ways to enhance and market the self within the labour market. in addition, engagement in expected activities is often a condition of benefit receipt and/or maintenance of benefit eligibility. there is also an emphasis on finding the ‘quickest route to work’ and being open to the broadest range of employment opportunities possible, with increasingly less consideration of work precarity, under-employment, or wage replacement (boland 2015; porter 2015). overall, activation-based approaches, consistent with neoliberal rationalities, individualize the problems of and solutions for unemployment, privileging measures aimed at transforming citizens ‘at risk’ of state dependency into selfreliant, responsible, and productive citizens (schram et al. 2010). labour market policy in canada has undergone profound reforms over the past several decades that have sought to activate the unemployed and re-shape service delivery models in ways that emphasize individual responsibility (grundy 2015b; porter 2015). moreover, individualization and the focus on rapid re-employment have been exacerbated and shaped in more disciplinary ways within a broader 50 | austerity urbanism and the social economy ‘austerity’ response (evans & albo 2010; ilcan 2009; soss et al. 2011). as porter (2015) demonstrates, changes to employment insurance implemented in 2012, including alterations to the definition of suitable employment and measures that promote acceptance of precarious lowwage work, enact an austerity approach “aggressively moving to create conditions that would ensure a sizable low wage labour pool” (porter 2015; 38; see also grundy & laliberte rudman 2016). the rise of neoliberal activation in labour market policies and austerity approaches has also been accompanied by the incorporation of npm principles and practices purported to optimize the performance, efficiency, and effectiveness of employment services (brodkin 2015; grundy 2015a). driven by overarching goals of ‘doing more, with less’ and re-making public bureaucracy in the image of the private sector (baines et al. 2004), npm focuses on the incorporation of market-based, competition-driven tactics to manage public services, such as using performance systems that monitor outcomes and emphasize accountability, establishing benchmarking systems, and employing competitive contracting mechanisms (pollit & bouckaert 2011; soss et al. 2011). with the incorporation of npm by the federal liberal government in canada accelerating in the 1990s, the implementation of npm has involved a shift away from process or input measures in the employment services sector towards quantitative outcomes measurement (grundy 2015a; ilcan 2009). in an increasingly decentralized policy environment (ilcan 2009), npm has been drawn upon as a mechanism to delineate what activities and outcomes ‘count’ in the employment services sector; steer discretion in service provision processes; and optimize the fit of higher-level system goals with what occurs in street-level practices (brodkin 2011; schram et al. 2010). drawing upon a governmentality perspective, within this study we conceptualize npm and the performance management techniques it promotes as “neoliberal systems for disciplining service providers” (soss et al. 2009; i205). as such, we frame managerial reforms in the employment services sector as techniques of governance aimed at “you got to make the numbers work" | 51 shaping the conduct of service providers at a distance in an increasingly decentralized system. these techniques attempt to establish a ‘chain of discipline’ inter-linking various levels of government, service organizations, front line staff, and clients, through which a responsibilizing ethos emphasizing self-government is promoted, shaped, and monitored. such techniques do not necessarily require various actors to accept or take up a neoliberal worldview or rationality. rather, they operate by organizing fields of practice, for example, via establishing outcomes to be achieved and reported and backed up by rewards and penalties, in ways that shape decision-making and self-discipline (llcan 2009; schram et al. 2010). however, research has challenged the assumption that npm strategies achieve their intended effects unproblematically. according to soss et al. (2011), attempts at discipline through npm cannot be assumed to be easily achieved given that “disciplinary power of the npm (new public management) shapes consciousness and behaviour in ways that are deep and far reaching yet also fractured, inconsistent and incomplete” (i205). ethnographies of neoliberal governmentalities further highlight the importance of attending to failures and contradictions that become visible when such strategies unfold in service provision spaces (brady 2011, 2014). moreover, research that has expanded on lipsky’s seminal work on street-level bureaucracy points to the importance of better understanding the “ways in which discretion interacts with managerial reforms and what that means for production of policy in everyday organizational life” (brodkin 2011: i255). thus, in this study we also draw upon lipksy’s work, particularly as it has been taken up by contemporary scholars who use it to frame policy implementation as involving “complex interaction between reflexive subjects involved in multiple relations of power and objective factors that present both opportunities for and constraints on action” (prior & barnes 2011: 268). in our research, we aim to demonstrate how service provision organizations and front-line service providers negotiate the effects of npm in their everyday practices and discretionary capacities. based on 52 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the data analysed below, we offer a critique of npm’s premises and promises by pointing to the contradictions, tensions, and ‘unintended’ implications that arise in its application (brady 2011; brodkin 2011). methodology findings presented in this article are drawn from a collaborative cross-site ethnography (lassiter 2005; lassiter & campbell 2010) being conducted in ontario, canada and missouri, u.s.a. that is funded by the canadian social sciences and humanities research council. ethics approval for this study was received from universities in both study sites. this study focuses on illuminating the boundaries and possibilities for service provision and the individual negotiation of long-term unemployment in everyday life, as shaped through contemporary policy and employment service provision approaches. in this article, we draw upon data from the canadian site that focused on service provision processes and practices. in the canadian site, the sample for this particular phase of the study consisted of 12 participants (10 female, 2 male) associated with four employment service provision organizations. ten participants provided direct services to clients, while 2 had shifted into managerial positions. in contrast to their counterparts from the u.s.a. study site, these service providers spoke at length about the effects of activation and austerity reforms on their everyday work practices. in particular, the canadian service providers described actively negotiating performance management initiatives that shaped possibilities and boundaries for service delivery. we collected data with these participants over a five-month period via one to two audio-recorded semi-structured qualitative interviews and one to four workplace observation sessions per participant. observations explored various aspects of service provision including individual meetings with clients, educational workshops for clients, and team case conferences. data were recorded in written and/or audio-recorded field notes. in addition, we held a site-specific focus group at the end of individual data collection efforts to discuss preliminary analytical findings with a sub“you got to make the numbers work" | 53 group of five service providers. following verbatim transcription of interview audio recordings, we used open coding, focused coding, and critical discourse analysis (cheek 2004; laliberte rudman 2013) to achieve a complex understanding of the data. analytical findings: the negotiation and implications of managerial reforms this study’s findings are interpreted in the context of changes to labour market policy in canada. austerity measures and policies have long been a driver of managerial reforms to employment service delivery in canada. during the 1990s, the canadian federal government significantly reduced public sector spending and simultaneously transferred increasing responsibility for employment support services to provinces via labour market partnerships (ilcan 2009). in the mid-1990s, extensive budget cuts to human resources development canada, the federal department then responsible for delivering employment services, fueled the contracting out of service delivery to non-profit and some forprofit agencies (grundy 2015a; ilcan 2009). at the same time, the federal government implemented a performance measurement regime known as the ‘results-based accountability framework’ for employment service delivery, which held service providers accountable for the number of clients returned to work, and the amount of savings to the employment insurance (ei) fund as a result of employment service provision. there was widespread acknowledgement that these performance measures led to systemic pressure among providers to offer short-term, work-first services to those most job-ready, while further limiting services for nonei eligible clients (grundy 2015b). the federal government began to transfer employment service delivery to the provinces in 1996. yet, it was not until 2007 that ontario assumed control of the bulk of labour market programming following the signing of a labour market development agreement that entailed the transfer of federal staff and resources to the province. a subsequent canada-ontario labour market agreement (2008-2014) provided 54 | austerity urbanism and the social economy additional federal funds for services directed at those ineligible for eifunded training, including immigrants, social assistance recipients, and the long-term unemployed (ilcan 2009; wood 2015). within ontario, the provincial employment service was branded as employment ontario (eo), intended as a comprehensive suite of employment supports including employment assistance services, labour market information, and job referral as well as training and apprenticeship programs. eo emphasizes a one-stop model with services delivered through 171 service providers located at over 300 sites (ministry of training, colleges and universities 2015). extending the use of competitive contracting established by the federal government, the ministry of training, colleges and universities (mtcu), renamed the ministry of advanced education and skills development (maesd) in summer 2016, contracts for eo services mainly with non-profit agencies but also with publically and privately funded post-secondary institutions (eo 2011). consistent with a npm emphasis on promoting accountability and ensuring efficiency through benchmarks and delineated quantifiable outcomes, since 2010 the mtcu/maesd has monitored the performance of agencies through the eo information system – case management systems (cams). this system was designed as a mechanism to systematize how service providers across the province initiate, design, and enact services with clients. through its on-line platform, cams establishes, tracks, and reports predetermined, quantifiable outcomes (employment, training/education, or other) at 3, 6 and 12-month time points for each ‘assisted service unit’ or client opened, commensurate with a ‘quickest route to work’ approach. data that service providers are required to input through the system are used to track individual and organizational level performance, and are drawn upon to manage and organize the delivery and contracting of eo services (employment ontario information system – cams, 2014). in its 2014/15 ‘results-based plan briefing book’, the performance measurement target set by the mtcu for eo was that “79 percent of employment service program clients will obtain employment or go on to “you got to make the numbers work" | 55 further education/training” (13). the condition of the ontario labour market poses additional challenges for service providers. a lasting effect of the great recession has been a persistent spike in long-term unemployment. in ontario, during april 2016, 20 percent of the unemployed were long-term unemployed (unemployed for 27 weeks or more), whereas during april 2008 this figure was 13 percent (maesd 2016). beyond long-term unemployment, there are numerous indicators that precarious employment is spreading in the province’s labour market. the share of employees in ontario earning the minimum wage has increased from 2.4 to 11.9 percent between 1997 and 2014 (block 2015: 2). the portion of ontario employees earning within $4 of the minimum wage, that is, lowwage workers, also increased during this time, from 19.8 percent of ontario employees to 29.4 percent. as well, six in ten minimum wage earners and four in ten low-wage workers experienced unpredictable and erratic hours of work. the share of ontario employees working less than 40 hours a week is also increasing: in 1997 it was 42.5 and in 2014 it stood at 50.5, representing a 19 percent increase (block 2015: 5). the greater prevalence of long-term unemployment and precarious employment makes the attainment of stable, high quality employment increasingly more difficult. shifting to data collected in our study, service providers (identified below using pseudonyms) fore-fronted discussion of changes in the nature of their work related to the specific implementation of the cams system; policy, funding, and labour market conditions; and a more general push towards an outcome-based system in which they felt increasingly pressured to ‘make the numbers work’ for individual and organizational performance metrics. although they acknowledged the importance of tracking outcomes, service providers raised concerns about the implications of increased emphases on narrowly-defined predetermined outcomes, work intensification related to the demands for tracking and reporting, and changed relationships within the sector. as well, service providers framed npm initiatives as setting boundaries on 56 | austerity urbanism and the social economy their abilities to support clients’ well-being and employability. in contradiction to the ultimate intended outcomes of enhanced employability or employment, service providers articulated that meeting demands to make their numbers work enhanced both their own precarity and that of their clients. although service provides described how they complied with accountability measures, they also resisted their narrowing effects at times, raising concerns regarding how various types of outcomes they valued and needed to prioritize in their work with clients were made ‘invisible’ within existing metrics and framing themselves as obliged to engage in unaccounted work to support clients. below, we illustrate these concerns and discuss them in relation to npm as a technology of government, which is negotiated by service providers within employment service provision. making the numbers work npm measures aim to shape service providers’ discretionary practices through delineating what activities count as performance and what outcomes are valued and rewarded (brodkin 2011). service providers described experiencing a pervasive pressure to ‘make the numbers work’ within the overall movement towards outcomes-based funding and contracting of services in the sector. as stated by nicole, “going back to the ministry, across the provincial government, everything is moving to outcomes based programming. and that’s not going to change.” similarly, courtney indicated, “there’s so much more expectation from the funder as far as accountability, right. how we’re spending the money. and trying to prove our worth and that we are doing our jobs, and by trying to provide those statistics to the funder to provide that. so there’s been so much of that since eo came into play.” this pressure to meet outcome expectations was further enhanced by the use of an approach in which service providers not only needed to show positive numbers but had to show continuous improvement: “you got to make the numbers work" | 57 “the thing with the policy is the ministry doesn’t typically care what you are doing well, they want to know how you are going to improve the things that you are not doing well. so, because we are in a continuous improvement model you must always be continuously improving. every quarter we have to report how we are doing well in our numbers or not” (kevin). given the disciplinary function of npm (schram et al. 2010), service providers found themselves having to work with their numbers in ways that allowed for the demands of funders to be met because “you can’t argue with the funder, the funder is who pays us” (kevin). however, in their efforts to make the numbers work, service providers often subverted the intent of the system through re-arranging reporting to meet system expectations, while at the same time obscuring work that was not expected or that defied the ‘work first’ orientation. for example, kevin shared how he managed his monthly case closings in ways that made the numbers work from the ministry’s perspective, but at the same time resisted the ministry’s demands in ways that protected himself and his organization: “am i closing the ones [referring to cases] that are bad outcomes?...no, i’m gonna wait until next month when i have a little more because i’m only allowed a couple bad outcomes a month. right? so i push the ones that don’t need to be closed this month...the numbers will work for the ministry, no matter what.” similarly, kate shared that she and her colleagues always found a way to meet the funder’s expectations: “i would say sometimes those parameters that are set by our funders are challenging so, but, you know, we always make a way to turn it into a success no matter how we have to work to get that done.” pointing to tensions, service providers described experiencing ethical conflicts associated with ‘playing’ the numbers, but experienced such actions as necessary given the need to ensure their own jobs and the 58 | austerity urbanism and the social economy survival of the organizations they worked for. these sentiments are expressed in the following two quotes: “the writing was on the wall that it was becoming a much more outcomes based [system]. just the accountability of these agencies that you have to show and prove what it is that you are doing with the funding dollars. but there are games that are played with that, right? that is the frustrating part ethically, if you are going to follow the rules compared to others that don’t…you got to make the numbers work” (courtney). “the whole ticky box thing. it’s like, am i meeting the criteria? am i meeting so many clients? am i getting so many open files? are there so many closed files? what is the outcome of that particular client?...and, of course, it almost seems mechanical where we have taken out the need of the client and we’re just kinda jumping through hoops so to speak, and that pulls on me sometimes” (kate). thus, ‘making the numbers work’ did not reflect an unproblematic compliance with outcomes measures established via the cams system, but also involved subverting the system in ways that allowed the appearance of meeting required metrics. although service providers addressed the importance of tracking outcomes and tried to do so in ways that met system expectations, they pointed to associated work intensification as well as tensions created through the narrow definition of success in npm measures. work intensification service providers’ efforts to make the numbers work were associated with work intensification tied to caseload volumes, expected timelines, and inter-related tracking and documentation requirements. for example, in order to meet performance benchmarks, such as 20 successful outcomes and 20 intakes each month, service providers took “you got to make the numbers work" | 59 on large caseloads that allowed them to make their individual numbers work: “it’s a really busy place…we’re looking to close – we want results for 20, and we want intake for 20, so we all sit around 80 to 100 clients. that’s manageable. it’s busy” (emily). while sometimes described as manageable, increasing caseloads were also described as leading service providers away from a desired case management, client-centred approach towards crisis management. combined with enhanced administrative burden tied to documentation requirements, service providers experienced increasing caseloads but decreasing client contact time: “carrying a case load of 80 people is not my ideal world…it’s really just putting out little fires. i can never really get ahead of my caseload” (kevin). “a large part of our job now is paperwork, whereas somebody else used to do that before computers came on our desk. we were much more directly counsellors then than we are now” (emily). another aspect connected to work intensification was the way in which the three-month time frame for outcome measurement set pressures to work intensively and quickly with clients, even if such an approach was seen as unrealistic for a client or not achievable within current labour market conditions: “so the expectation is, under cams, they come in, and they’re out in three months. and it just keeps rolling….but the reality is, if you don’t cycle through people quickly, you cannot meet your metrics” (dwight). “well, they want us to open and close the file…the shortest is three months. we can keep it open longer, but we have to justify reasons why we are. overall, it sorta goes against their research if they’re saying six to eight months to become re-employed in a recessive market, and so the expectations there, i think, are unrealistic” (emily). 60 | austerity urbanism and the social economy overall, service providers described having to do more work within a shorter time frame and connected work intensification and the broader influence of npm to undesired changed relations in the sector at several levels. changed nature of relations service providers talked about the changed nature of relationships at several levels, including with clients, with other organizations, and with the ministry. in relation to clients, many service providers emphasized how important it was to employ a client-centred approach to counselling, in which they took the time to understand each client’s perspective and needs in an individualized and holistic manner. however, they found that enacting this type of approach to counselling became increasingly challenging within current policies and systems. sarah stated, “as a counselor, we need to be counselling, not only [getting people] employed…honestly, we are getting sometimes very frustrated when we hear clients [talk about challenges].” according to schram et al. (2010), npm practices extend beyond making agents accountable to reconstituting agency. such reconstitution was apparent in how service providers discussed changed communication practices with clients. for example, in attempting to negotiate large caseloads and documentation requirements, service providers noted the lack of time to build a relationship through multiple in-person meetings. instead, service providers resorted to relying heavily on virtual modes of communication with clients even though they found such modes insufficient to meaningfully connect with clients: “our caseloads are so high for the work that we do, [so] that [we] do a lot on email now. so i can talk a little bit on email, but it’s not the same as having them with me for an hour and it being a personal conversation…so we’re finding that the amount of people we’re seeing limits the amount of work we can do on those levels” (emily). “you got to make the numbers work" | 61 “i’m doing much more mass communication…we don’t have time to build the relationship…i communicate through social media, text, or email” (dwight). service providers also highlighted other barriers to establishing meaningful relationships with clients, including a de-personalized approach stemming from the need to categorize or “cookie-cutter” (courtney) clients and “call a person a unit” (kevin). in addition, service providers discussed the challenge of constantly balancing the expectations and needs of funders and those of clients: “is it you meeting the numbers, or the client? we need to focus on the individual. we need to focus on the support we give. we don’t need to be thinking in the amount of administrative jobs we need to do, because it’s a lot. be careful with this…use the data, but don’t pressure people with the data. our mission is to give support and to produce results for the individuals and not for the government” (teresa). “it’s important that they understand that i actually care about what’s going on with them, and this is not me just putting a notch on a piece of paper, you know, the whole ticky boxes that we have to put in place. sometimes it can be a little bit overwhelming, and i don’t wanna lose my client focus. that’s extremely important to me…so i make sure that i take the time to let them know that you’re not just a number to me” (kate). nicole, who had previously provided front-line services to clients and now carried out middle management activities, pointed to ways that human resources had been shifted towards administrative tasks and away from direct client service, further creating a barrier to establishing effective relationships: “and that [referring to documentation requirements of cams] is why so much human resources have been taken away from client facing activity, is because of the cams system”. with respect to relations amongst organizations, consistent with npm 62 | austerity urbanism and the social economy principles, service providers noted how time-bound contract funding in the employment service sector had fostered increasing pressure to compete amongst non-profit organizations in the sector: “the other thing is not being able easily to collaborate with other partners. like the funders have set it up kind like a survival of the fittest type scenario where you have to fight with each other over your clients” (kevin). in the same way service providers discussed trying to maintain positive relationships with clients in the face of de-personalizing systems and increasing work intensification, they also talked about how they attempted to maintain collaborative relationships with other organizations to meet clients’ needs, even if this meant they might take a ‘hit’ on their personal numbers: “i have friends over at all the other agencies. so if i think they’re going to be better served at x [another employment support services provider], i call my friend…we have an informal network that we use quite regularly. everything is statistically driven; everything is outcome driven. so i just need to realize that out of my 20 for the month, i have four that are negative” (dwight). nicole also addressed changed relationships with the mtcu. she indicated that although the ministry, as the primary funder of service, was talking a language of ‘partnership’, it had been increasingly unresponsive to the perspectives or input of employment support service organizations: “the ministry does not partner with us on anything...they don’t do things with us. it’s gone, there’s no partnership whatsoever with the funder.” as in their attempts to make numbers work, service providers positioned themselves as in between the demands of the ministry and the needs of clients. they struggled with the implications of meeting accountability demands of the ministry for the relationships they could maintain with clients and other organizations. within these struggles, a complex mix of compliance, subversion and resistance is revealed. the “you got to make the numbers work" | 63 findings demonstrate that npm sometimes re-shaped their practice, as in shifting to virtual modes of communication, and sometimes was defied through actions such as collaborating with another organization to meet a client’s needs, the latter of which could have negative implications for a service provider’s performance assessment. heightened insecurity for service providers and clients at the same time that service providers discussed ways they continued to push forward in providing services and working towards outcomes they viewed as important, they emphasized that doing so was increasingly challenging given a heightened sense of their own precarity. demonstrating the disciplinary potential of npm, service providers experienced boundaries on their exercise of discretion given that their own work security was connected to meeting funders’ outcome expectations (schram et al. 2010). speaking to the conditions of their own work, they described experiencing on-going stress associated with having to ensure their own survival and that of their organizations through their numbers. natalie, who shared that “in the last five years, i’ve been laid off twice”, emphasized the on-going stress she experienced related to meeting the ministry’s definition of success: “i’ve already been laid off from an organization once because we lost a contract. and this could be the same with this program…if it’s not successful in the eyes of the ministry, then there could be another program that’s lost. so the pressure is on.” teresa also spoke to the on-going stress experienced in relation to meeting performance metrics, indicating that this made it challenging to focus on a client’s needs: “well, at some point, even if you keep your mind on the client, you are in the stress of the organization for being targets. so that is stressful. sometimes, worrisome because you can lose your job. and that is the reality we 64 | austerity urbanism and the social economy face every day…i would like to have less pressure for the numbers really.” this sense of on-going precarity ultimately disciplined service providers to make the numbers work, not only for their own survival but also for that of their organizations: “okay, so our funding is based on if we hit our targets. so, we have monthly and yearly targets that we have to hit, which would be people that are, files that are employed or close…in training…if we didn’t, if we all just kind didn’t close that the files that we had to…our funding could not be given to us…our center would close” (hillary). critics of activation-based approaches that emphasize the quickest route to work have argued that people are unlikely to have sufficient time to find a job in the area they were trained or to upgrade their skills, leading to a situation in which persons experiencing cyclical unemployment are increasingly pushed into the low-wage precarious labour force (porter, 2015). our informants also pointed to ways that the current system, with its use of time limits, prioritization of obtaining work as a successful outcome, and limited space for the provision of comprehensive employment support services, not only shaped precarity for themselves but also for clients. kevin discussed how a ‘work first’ approach often meant clients were not matched with appropriate jobs: “they are looking to get people in and out as quickly as they can, which they should and i agree. i think that there are a lot of people who are not taking the right job fit because of the pressure to get them working right away” (kevin). emily and sarah emphasized the frustration that resulted from narrowly defining success as a ‘survival’ or temporary job and the potential cycle of precarious employment and unemployment that could evolve: “you got to make the numbers work" | 65 “so the ministry sees them working in a survival [job] and the file is close because they’re working. so although the ministry see it as a success…it’s not the intent when they came in and sat down with me” (emily). “then, after a few months, they will contact us when they lose a temporary job to look for another job. so for me, as a person, i don’t like to put that ticky point. why? because i want to help them to be in a stable career not only temporary” (sarah). dwight connected the ministry’s use of short frames and focus on narrow outcomes to shaping a cycle of precarious employment for clients. he stated that “the timeframes attached to funding influence directly, affect how services are delivered as the entire process… is outcome based”, such that, “the problem i have on a personal level is i’ve opened the same client multiple times within 12 months. they go to precarious employment, temporary job, come back in three months. i get them to access another temporary job.” although these numbers could be tracked in the current system as indicative of multiple successes in relation to attaining an employment outcome, service providers pointed to enhanced precarity for clients. subversion and resistance within service provision: ‘invisible’ outcomes and unaccounted work to summarize findings presented thus far, service providers discussed the pressure to ‘make the numbers work’ to meet the expectations of the ministry. service providers discussed being aware of ways npm measures were being enacted so as to shape their conduct. yet they also described how they did not always comply with the narrow vision of organizational activity embedded in the performance measurement system. as noted above, they discussed playing with the numbers in ways that simultaneously met the ministry’s metrics while subverting its demands for timely reporting so as to extend service provision for clients and avoid the implications of reporting ‘negative’ 66 | austerity urbanism and the social economy outcomes. they also discussed how they tried to establish individualized relationships with clients and collaborative relationships with other service organizations despite the barriers established by the setup of the system. in addition, service providers emphasized how they attempted to circumvent the shaping of services through npm measures through working towards outcomes and enacting services not mandated nor counted in the cams, that is, toward outcomes beyond, as one participant put it, “they have a job or they’re in training for a job” (kevin). such forms of service delivery are important to highlight because they demonstrate how techniques of neoliberal governmentality, such as performance measurement, are not unproblematically deployed across social and organizational settings. service providers were overtly critical of the many boundaries on service provision being shaped through the current eo model. in particular, they pointed to ways that current policies and accountability mechanisms meant that the needs of persons experiencing long-term unemployment or facing complex challenges to employment were often not adequately addressed. for example, kevin and emily were critical of the disincentives built into the system associated with providing longterm services to clients, “employment ontario really doesn’t have any additional supports to help people move (out) of long [term unemployment]...our points system is what marks…how well we do…if we take more than 90 days on particular item, actually hurts us...so, i guess just the way it was rated, like funded, kind of dictates that and long term really isn’t supported in that capacity.” (kevin) “the people who really, regardless of how nice their resume looks or the interview skills look, they’re just not bought in, they don’t believe, they’ve given up…or there’s addictions, there’s things that we need to be working on with them and having them involved in before we ever open the file here because as we open a “you got to make the numbers work" | 67 file here, the ministry needs to see action, and those aren’t even counted. it’s a referral out, but it’s a lost stat” (emily). megan emphasized that the focus on ‘work first’ meant that she could not provide adequate pre-employment skills training that some clients required: “but that pre life skills training, personal counseling is something that, i think, is really lacking here. and if we had that, then people could move forward to employment…but these are barriers that really need to be addressed.” it was therefore clear that service providers, and sometimes the organizations they worked for, held more complex understandings of the pathways to employment and client success than the practices and outcomes codified via cams, resulting in challenges and tensions at the level of service delivery. for example, megan discussed particular challenges providing services to clients who were recent immigrants and whose paths to employment tended to be lengthy due to numerous barriers: “we get outcomes for in training or education or employed, so our numbers have to reflect that and it can be challenging”. natalie discussed tensions that arose for her when working with clients who faced barriers and could not directly move forward to the ministry’s outcomes, emphasizing she resisted the pressure to ‘push’ clients too early into a service even when this could have a negative impact on her own numbers: “the challenge i have is when things are out of my control, because i have stats i have to reach…when things are out of my control for whatever reason, it’s just not the right time for the plan or the barriers…they come back and have mental health issues, or drug addictions, alcohol addictions…so that’s, like it’s a person i’ve lost so it’s a stat that has gone, so i might explain myself. i am there for the client and i understand 68 | austerity urbanism and the social economy that i have stats too, but i won’t just push somebody into a work experience when it’s not the right thing for them.” thus, at the same time as describing the disciplinary effects of npm on their behaviours (soss et al. 2011) such that they were constrained in their ability to provide what they perceived to be essential services, service providers also described moving forward in achieving outcomes that remained unaccounted for given their understandings of clients’ needs and the values they held as service providers. a common concern expressed by service providers was that officially measured outcomes, that is, training, education or employed, were too narrow to capture many of the outcomes that providers did achieve with clients. activities such as linking clients with personal counselling, getting a bus pass for clients, or securing housing, were often recognized as essential “baby steps” (courtney), necessary to ensure wellbeing and a stable foundation prior to addressing employment, education or training but rendered invisible through performance management mechanisms: “the organization wants a solid number, so like, employed, or, in training. so, they’re not going to go, ‘yay? you went and registered for a course’, or, ‘you went and grabbed your bus pass’, or ‘oh, you were able to move forward and…get more secure housing.’ it doesn’t really – they don’t measure the little steps” (hillary). “sometimes when you're working with people that you're referring out to addictions counseling…to support groups… you see changes in them, that's incredible to me as a counselor, a success on a level that's not even coded. it’s considered a soft skill, so they wanna know are you working or are you in school” (emily). indeed, almost all service providers described work that they did that was essential but not counted in the metrics of the current system. such work “you got to make the numbers work" | 69 was often framed as subversive, that is, as intentionally occurring out of view of the ministry metrics and, in many cases, as not accounted for in considering a service provider’s work or quality of performance. for example, hillary discussed how she continued to remain in touch with clients and “support them all the way through” even when the client case was officially closed in the ministry system: “it’s closed. it’s not open sort of in the ministry eyes. it’s a closed file, but i mean, i assist so many people that aren’t officially registered.” natalie discussed working with her clients, who were mostly youth, on many “soft skills” that were necessary for them to move forward, acknowledging that this work was not counted or recognized: “there are so many steps that the youth make…but it doesn’t fit with the ticky boxes. so it’s not recognized by management. so you just have to find a way to push that to one side.” nicole shared how service providers developed their own outcomes, which they celebrated collectively and which continued to motivate them in their work: “i think it’s really important that we have our own measures to satisfy those other needs. and we do. we celebrate, like if a client can’t get out of bed and get into the office to attend a workshop, and they overcome that hurdle, we do celebrate those things….that’s what fills our gas tanks…the bottom line is i don’t get warm and fuzzy because i met my numbers, i get teary eyes when i see something amazing happen for a client.” while staff used their discretion to provide services based on their values and beliefs regarding best practices and their perceptions of clients’ needs, such workarounds were not without personal or professional costs to staff, costs which are undoubtedly exacerbated by their own labour market and organizational insecurities. as explained by dwight, “i have seen my team members bend over backwards taking their own time, their own personal energies.” working towards outcomes not valued in the system but valued by service providers and clients required personal investment: “and at the pace we’re going…you’ve got to be really 70 | austerity urbanism and the social economy invested and wanting to help. our caseloads are way too high for the amount of work we do.” thus, as responsibilities and accountabilities are downloaded to the level of service provision, service providers are acutely aware of the costs of discretion, particularly forms of discretion that resist and subvert the aims and rules of npm measures. in turn, these costs, such as work intensification that involves not only ‘visible’ work expected within the system but ‘invisible’ work that resists the limits of the system, may set boundaries on the extent to which service providers can incur the risks associated with such actions. discussion and conclusion the integration of npm into the employment services sector has been one means to establish ‘governing at a distance’ through a chain of disciplinary relationships running from the provincial government, to organizations dependent on government contracts, to frontline workers and to clients (schram et al. 2011; soss et al. 2011). within the context of this study, performance monitoring through cams attempts to enlist organizations and service providers in enacting a management culture in which pre-determined outcomes are tracked to reward or rebuke service providers on the basis of their performance. as recent ethnographies of neoliberal governmentality in employment service delivery demonstrate, however, technologies such as performance measurement do not completely determine what service providers do, given their many contradictions and inconsistencies (brady 2011; huot 2013; soss et al 2011). moving beyond textual based methods that often result in an account of the coherence and disciplinary effects of various forms of power, ethnographies of governmentality can capture the complex ways power operates including resistance, evasions and unintended effects of governmental techniques (brady 2011). through examining how service providers understand, enact, and negotiate npm within the contemporary policy, funding and labour market conditions in ontario, canada, this study highlights both the disciplinary effects and cracks associated with the interweaving of activation, austerity, and npm. “you got to make the numbers work" | 71 pointing out such cracks serves to reveal not only problematic ‘facts’, but also opens up the possibility “for doing things differently” (mcdonald & martson 2005:379). in many ways, this study’s findings support critical scholarship on npm that has suggested a tendency of performance management to prompt organizations, and front-line service providers, to make the numbers work in ways that may actually be contradictory to intended processes (grundy 2015a; soss et al. 2011). these findings illustrate how the articulation of managerialism in activation-based employment support services can lead to an emphasis on ‘making the numbers work’, such that service providers are disciplined to account for system-defined outcomes. however, given the narrow definition of successful outcomes, service providers simultaneously manage the numbers and exercise discretion so that they can achieve other outcomes that are preparatory for system-defined outcomes and are needed by clients in the complexity of everyday life. as the sector has become increasingly de-centralized (ilcan 2009), npm has been implemented in ways that download costs and insecurities to street level organizations and their employees (baines et al. 2014; phillips & levasseur 2004). in this study, the costs and insecurities have been work intensification, barriers to establishing collaborative relationships, engagement in unaccounted work to achieve outcomes not visible in performance metrics, a pervasive sense of precarity for service providers, and an uneasiness about perpetuating precarity for clients. the implementation of npm within the employment service sector has been purported as a means to enhance service delivery outcomes through promoting efficiencies, enhancing accountability, and ensuring a ‘work first’ orientation (brodkin 2015). however, highlighting how such measures can work against providing equitable, quality service, service providers underlined the ways in which the existing metrics and reporting demands set boundaries on who was served and what types of services could be provided. in particular, service providers’ descriptions of their daily negotiations at the street-level raise concerns regarding how 72 | austerity urbanism and the social economy such dynamics make it increasingly hard, as well as risky to service providers, to meet the needs of clients facing complex challenges such as long-term unemployment. at the same time, the 2012 ei reforms have further limited protections for persons experiencing labour market insecurities and have promoted the creation of a low-wage labour pool (grundy & laliberte rudman 2016; porter 2015), increasing entrenchment of particular types of workers in precarious labour. addressing these contradictory effects arising out of the misfit between client needs and the organization of services and income security is essential to promote systems that enable service providers to respond more effectively to the heterogeneous nature of persons experiencing unemployment, many of whom are not ‘work or training ready’ given their life circumstances and conditions. these findings also highlight the importance of going beyond an overall valuing of numerical performance targets to critical considerations of what ‘outcomes’ come to be valued and counted and who has a say in defining outcomes (brodkin 2011; grundy 2015a). although service providers did not negate the importance of outcomes related to education, training and return to employment, the findings demonstrate concerns regarding the limits of such outcomes. for example, setting such outcomes within a time-limited service frame appeared to promote a ‘work first’ orientation, even when this was associated with perpetuating a cycle of low-wage, precarious work. as well, it also promoted unaccounted work addressing a series of other outcomes viewed as successes by service providers, such as securing transportation or acquiring needed food and housing resources. without acknowledgement of the importance of such outcomes, and the work that is required to attain them, the needs of particular client groups may become increasingly marginalized and invisible and the working lives of service providers may increasingly be characterized by ethical conflict, stress and frustration. as argued by phillips and levasseur (2004), it is of concern that increasing pressures to conform to particular processes and outcomes implemented through npm accountability frameworks can “you got to make the numbers work" | 73 promote “thinking small and inside the box” (458) in ways that stifle risk taking and innovation in service delivery. moreover, service providers’ experiences of precarity, work intensification, and tensions between what they can do and what they think and feel they should do raise concerns about the effects of such work on service providers’ well-being and tenure in the employment support services sector (eikenberry & kluver 2004; curtis 2006). as brodie (2008) reminds us, “[p]reviously cultivated identities, political consensus, and cultural ideals...constitute obstacles to the promotion of a new governing order, and its particular way of representing and intervening” (148). drawing together governmentality and street-level bureaucracy literatures, this article examined both the implementation of, and resistance to, npm in employment service provision. the findings support an understanding of service providers as ‘situated agents’ who act in contexts shaped by npm as reflexive actors who interpret a range of structural, interactional and personal factors (prior & barnes 2001). in this study, service providers did express that npm strategies had set the rules of the game (brodkin 2011), but they simultaneously enacted discretion in ways that sometimes worked around, subverted and resisted such rules in creative and often hidden ways. positioning themselves as intimately experiencing and negotiating the clash of clients’ social needs and system pressures and boundaries on a daily basis (schram et al. 2010), these service providers described challenges that evolved out of having to work in a business model while valuing their work as counsellors. work-arounds often occurred when service providers experienced ethical tensions, or tensions between their own beliefs about service provision and their assessments of clients’ needs with the forms of service provision valued and accounted for within the systems in which they worked. however, while exercising discretion and engaging in workarounds that subverted limits in service, service providers often had to do so at a personal cost, such as doing work that was not accounted for, putting their own numbers ‘at risk’, enhancing work intensification, or 74 | austerity urbanism and the social economy drawing on their own personal time and resources to support clients. ultimately, within the context of a system guided by a logic of activation and imbued with npm, service provider discretion was limited by a sense of the precarity of their own jobs as well as the precarity of the organizations they worked through. as such, although the findings show moments of resistance and subversion, they also show the disciplinary power of npm upon service providers. theoretically, these findings point to the need for further studies that attend to how service level discretion happens within contexts of new managerialism as a means to expand upon lipksy’s original work that occurred in a historically different managerial context (ellis 2011). the implications of managerial reforms as a part of activationbased employment services have remained largely opaque to researchers because they cannot be apprehended through traditional sources of information such as formal policies, expenditure data, or outcome measures (brodkin, 2011). revealing such implications requires extending upon governmentality-informed textual analysis to examining how policies and techniques are experienced and negotiated in action (brady 2011; grundy 2015a; mcdonald & marston 2005). this study supports the contention that employing critical ethnography at the level of service provision is a fruitful way forward to illuminate the implications, and limitations, of the intersections of activation, austerity and npm. as one example, the findings support questioning the sustainability of systems shaped through npm and an activation logic which provoke mistrust and uncertainty as opposed to collaboration and shared responsibility, and which require service providers to transgress in order to ensure clients have access to foundational resources (phillips & levasseur 2004). in turn, there is a need for further attention to, and dialogue about, the types of partnership and management models that can support positive, collaborative relationships at various levels and more sustainable approaches to addressing accountability (baines et al. 2014; phillips & levasseur 2004). as such, further ethnographic studies of street-level organizations can add to a counter history of activation “you got to make the numbers work" | 75 (grundy 2015b) and thereby provide a “foundation for developing alternatives to it” (brodkin 2011: i.253). references baines, d., campey, j., cunningham, i. & shields, j. 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(2015). hollowing out the middle, recasting federal workforce development programs under the harper government. policy alternatives, www.policyalternatives.ca/harper_record_20082015/11-harperrecord-wood.pdf “you got to make the numbers work" | 79 alternatives to the low waged economy: living wage movements in canada and the united states bryan evans1 abstract: the forty-years of neoliberal capitalism has been accompanied by an ever expanding trend toward deepening inequality and the expansion of a low wage labour market. the expansion of the non-union, post-industrial, ‘new’ economy characterized by low wage service sector jobs became identified with a deterioration in employment conditions and quality. employment arrangements, reflecting the new normal, offer not security and adequacy but rather low pay and precarity. living wage movements, as well as campaigns demanding a higher general minimum wage, have emerged as part of the response demanding economic justice. these movements and campaigns, found both in the united states and canada, are significantly different in breadth and tactics. here, those differences are described and interrogated as a function of the uneven terrain of neoliberal restructuring within each country. keywords: living wage; minimum wage; canada; united states; local introduction the forty-year ascent and normalization of neoliberal capitalism is coterminous with an ever expanding trend toward deepening inequality (giles 2014; piketty 2014). the great financial crisis of 2008, and the consequent age of austerity ushered in as states turned to fiscal consolidation once the financial system was stabilized, has contributed to an intensification of this process of economic polarization. in response, living wage as well as campaigns demanding a higher general minimum wage, have emerged as movements for economic justice. this movement 1 bryan evans is professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. email: b1evans@ryerson.ca 80 | austerity urbanism and the social economy is a direct response to the expanding low wage sector in the labour market as well as the political reluctance of governments in both the united states and canada to maintain the general minimum wage at a sufficient level of purchasing adequacy. thirdly, and broadly subsuming the preceding point, is that these movements for economic justice are a contemporary response to the dismantling of the political keynesianism which framed the post-war social contract between capital and labour. and particularly the institutionalization of trade unions as legitimate actors in collective bargaining. the expansion of the non-union, postindustrial, ‘new’ economy characterized by low wage service sector jobs in much of the global north but especially in the so-called angloamerican capitalist economies, became identified with a deterioration in employment conditions and quality. employment arrangements, reflecting the new normal, offer not security and adequacy but rather low pay and precarity (freeman, hersch, & mishel 2005; muffels & luijkx 2008). in the cases surveyed here, economic justice movements find renewed vigour in the aftermath of the 2008 great financial crisis and the roll-out of austerity policy. workers, wages and social movements: the politics of capitalist accumulation the concept of worker ‘precarity’, if not the actual word, is hardly new. engels’ analysis of the industrial reserve army of labour in the condition of the working class in england (1845/1887) is a treatment of the same phenomenon, in contemporary terms, we refer to as precariousness (jonna & foster 2015: 22). the reality of work, in industrial working class life, from its 18th century origins to the opening days of the post-1945 golden age of capitalism, was characterized by insecurity. every dimension of working life was marked by fear and anxiety over access to work, predictability of tenure, adequacy of wages, health and safety, access to leisure time, and the possibilities for advancement and acquiring skills (standing 2011: 10). none of these were a given and, save for those workers in the skilled crafts, such alternatives to the low waged economy | 81 employment arrangements were indeed the norm. only with the legitimation and institutionalization of trade unions, the adoption of a range of labour protections via public policy and regulation, as well as the construction of the welfare state in the mid-20th century, was this regime of insecurity overturned, at least for a large part of the industrial working class if not the entire working class. the neoliberal counter-revolution of the 1970s started a process of dismantling of the political arrangements which constituted the core framework of the post-war capital-labour compromise. by the late 1980s it was becoming evident that the glue which made possible a limited working class but unprecedented degree of consumption was dissolving. a 1990 study by the economic council of canada put an empirical foundation to what everyone was sensing, that good jobs were disappearing and being replaced by lower quality ones. as the report put it, standard employment, that is full-time, 40 hours a week jobs with a degree of tenure, was giving way to non-standard employment, jobs that were part-time, temporary, and provided little or no opportunity for a career ladder (good jobs, 1990). augmenting the direct attacks on labour laws and social protections provided through the state, were the trade and investment liberalization agreements brokered between states. the result was a new international division of labour which facilitated deindustrialization in key sectors of the global north capitalist economies. in political economic terms, the result was a locking-in of the neoliberal model where the international agreements effectively constitutionalized the terms and conditions of the new order of work and production (mcbride 2003; gill, 1992). that fundamentally state-led political interventions had profoundly re-balanced class power in favour of capital was acknowledged by the international monetary fund no less. in a 2015 study, the imf concluded that the incessant expansion of inequality was a product of declining union strength (jaumotte & buitron 2015). consequently, over three decades or more, the non-standard increasingly returns as standard. what was old is made new. but that applies to the political and legal structures which shape labour-capital relations but not 82 | austerity urbanism and the social economy to the working class itself. the reorganization of the working class into forms of insecure employment is not to be confused with the emergence of a class separate and apart from the working class which the term ‘precariat’ suggests (jonna & foster 2015: 22). living wage movements of the late 20th and early 21st century are as much an expression of contemporary working class precariousness as were the 19th century demands for a living wage. in other words, it is one aspect of the reanimation of the working class as a social movement. a key question to ask here is do these campaigns for economic justice constitute social movements? social movements are born of ‘contentious politics’ which emerge “when ordinary people – often in alliance with more influential citizens and with changes in public mood – join forces in confronting elites, authorities, and opponents”. it is the unique contribution of a social movement to provide the capacity to mount, coordinate, and sustain the struggle against powerful forces standing in opposition. the resulting “contentious politics leads to sustained interaction with opponents – to social movements” (tarrow 2011: 6). probably the most widely accepted definition of social movements proposes that social movements engage in a series of actions, undertakings or assertions made by individuals through collective action against others. such collective actions have been expressed in three distinct ways: 1) a sustained, organized public effort making collective claims on the state (a campaign); 2) applying a variety of forms of political action including building coalitions, public meetings, rallies, and demonstrations; and 3) participants' public representations of “worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment on the part of themselves and/or their constituencies” (tilly 2004: 3-4). the key element for comparative purposes is the scope of the movements and the degree of contention raised by the various campaigns. united states: a case of post-industrial working class mobilization? the contemporary living wage movement has its origins in the united states. this can be traced to the emergence of an alliance between alternatives to the low waged economy | 83 religious leaders and community groups in baltimore, maryland in 1994. two decades of deindustrialization destroyed unionized, middle income jobs and left instead an increasingly prevalent working poor (luce 2012). where prior anti-poverty movements had failed, the living wage campaign proved to be more effective as it reflected that element of american ‘common sense’ that those who work should be able to achieve a basic level of subsistence. in political terms, it further filled a vacuum left by the decline of the labour movement which had had its base in manufacturing. community-based coalitions took hold throughout the united states, comprised of religious leaders, anti-poverty activists, labour unions, academics, and charitable organizations to struggle for a living wage. this resulted in more than 140 cities adopting living wage ordinances throughout the united states in the years following baltimore’s pioneering campaign (greenberg et al. 2008: 76). these living wage ordinances have limited coverage in that they apply only to city contracts and, in certain cases, firms receiving economic development subsidies. all cities possess the authority to adopt such ordinances covering their own contracting and subsidy guidelines. again, the scope of coverage – how many workers benefit from such ordinances – can be quite small. in contrast, but still more variable, is the authority for cities to establish wage laws governing private businesses which have no business relationship with the city. in this respect, there are municipalities possessing the legal authority to adopt local minimum wage laws and these have been increasingly passing in the past number of years. in 2015, 14 cities, counties and states approved proposals for a $15 minimum wage (nelp 2015). part of the success of the living wage movement in the united states can be attributed to the authority granted to some municipalities to set their low local minimum wage rates. more than 30 us cities have their own local minimum wage ordinance (local minimum wage laws 2016). as a consequence, living wage activists in the united states have been able to fight their battles at the local levels. this too, has arguably lent itself to the development of locally-based, grassroots movements, 84 | austerity urbanism and the social economy since the political terrain on which the battles have been waged has largely been local rather than national or even state level (dalmat 2005). despite the successes of the living wage movements at the local level, in some states, governors and legislatures, have used their authority to override municipal laws and impose bans on living wage ordinances. in the early to mid-2000s, louisiana and georgia, among others, intervened in such a way. more recently, in 2014, the state of oklahoma passed a law banning local living wage ordinances (bergman 2015). in 2015, debates were held in the state legislatures of maine, minnesota and new jersey on the prospect of imposing a ban on municipal living wage ordinances. in june 2015, michigan’s republican governor signed a pre-emption law to stop local governments from adopting their own ordinances. the following month, wisconsin governor scott walker signed a similar bill in prohibiting municipal living wage ordinances in his state (velencia 2015). in 2016, the state senate of alabama passed a law banning cities and towns from increasing minimum wages. the legislation voided a birmingham ordinance that would have raised the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour (kasperkevic 2016). the impact of this trend towards the use of state power to override the power of municipalities to set wages could have significant implications for the living wage movement throughout the united states. the living wage movement in the us is broad and dynamic. of the movements canvassed here it is the most coherently organized and presents a high degree of popular and political mobilization situated in community-based local and regional, i.e. state-level, campaigns. what is particularly important is the significant participation of certain unions in providing organizational and financial support to these movements. moreover, the broad-based coalitions making up these movements, entail in addition to unions, immigrant rights, faith-based, anti-racism, women’s rights, and various economic justice groups. this inclusivity has echoes of the much earlier civil rights movement as well as of the 1930s cio campaigns to organize industrial unions. in this respect, the american living wage movement has the look and feel of an urban, alternatives to the low waged economy | 85 racialized, working class struggle for social and economic inclusion. and, what is a core dimension of the us movement is that the living wage and minimum wage demands are not conceptually or politically separate as they are in canada to as large degree. indeed, the demand is that the minimum wage, whether the local or the state-wide minima should provide a level of adequacy to constitute a living wage. the “fight for $15” (ff15) was launched with a day of protests and walkouts in new york city in the fall of 2012. hundreds of workers went on a one-day strike and were supported by large demonstrations throughout the city. this was the product of a year of organizing by the seiu and the community group new york communities for change (nycc) – which was a successor group to acorn after it was disbanded. the nycc, with the financial help of the seiu, collected thousands of low-wage workers’ contact information often by circulating petitions on indirectly related issues such as ‘stop and frisk’ policies and access to low-income housing (gupta 2013). these contacts were then used to organize meetings, and ultimately to organize the first strikes and actions. after the successful new york fast food strike, a second round of coordinated one-day strikes and actions were undertaken in the spring of 2013. instead of just one city, the one-day strikes rotated weekly from one city to the next. chicago, new york, detroit, seattle, washington, st. louis and a number of other major centres in the northeast saw strikes. the organizing model remained the same – local organizations often with seiu money developed contacts and built towards strike actions. the strikes themselves varied in terms of the number of workers who participated, but those who did strike were supported by large local crowds of allies. these allies consisted of union members, especially from the seiu, local labour councils, religious groups, community organizations like the nycc, and student activists. strikers took advantage of section 7 of the national labour relations act, which gives all workers the right to strike for economic reasons without being fired 86 | austerity urbanism and the social economy by their employer (basic guide, 1997).2 while workers had the right to strike, ensuring that workers were not fired subsequently remains a major issue for the campaign. indeed, in the few cases where workers were fired, allies went into those workplaces and demanded that those fired be re-instated (croghan 2012). the spring strikes were followed by a large seiu sponsored fast food meeting where workers decided to build on their momentum by calling for a nationwide day of fast food strikes in the late summer. the nationwide one-day strike on august 29, 2013 propelled the $15 minimum wage demand into the national debate. over 60 cities saw protests and they garnered nationwide media coverage. on the political front, the once seemingly unrealistic demand of a $15 minimum wage was already making an impact. democratic party members of congress came out in favour of raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. by november 2013, the president signaled again his support to increase the minimum wage. earlier, in 2008, as part of his presidential campaign, obama called for a $9.50 an hour minimum wage indexed to inflation. although this was much less than the movement was calling for, the political shift emboldened activists and further highlighted the issue. in seattle and minneapolis openly socialist candidates ran for city council in the november 2013 elections on the issue of the $15 minimum wage. in minneapolis, the local candidate lost, but garnered 42 percent of the vote. in seattle, kshama sawant unseated the incumbent democratic party candidate. at the same time, in the outlying community of seatac a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage to $15 won. these victories electrified the movement, which held its largest nationwide day of fast food strikes in december, with over 130 cities seeing participation. 2 technically they can be replaced while on strike but must be offered their job back unless the company has found a replacement. even if that is the case, strikers may seek to be reinstated if they have not found equivalent employment (basic guide 1997). the focus on one-day strikes is thus aimed at limiting the ability of employers to replace workers. alternatives to the low waged economy | 87 the movement continued to grow in 2014. a global day of action for fast food workers’ rights took place in the spring in over 30 countries. two other major coordinated strike days took place in the united states, each bigger and more militant than the last. the seiu also organized a dramatic march on a mcdonald’s shareholder meeting in the summer. building off the movement’s success, the newly-elected seattle councilor sawant pushed the city council to raise the minimum wage in the city to $15. sawant was able to force city council to pass the minimum wage ordinance because of immense pressure from below. labour and community activists formed a local coalition, “15 now” in november 2013 to organize around the issue (the movement existed in seattle before the election, but 15 now was an attempt to coordinate it on a local level). 15 now organized demonstrations, hired full-time organizers, recruited hundreds of volunteers and collected thousands of signatures for a ballot initiative all in the hope of exerting political pressure on city council (figueroa 2014). this effort was ultimately successful in forcing city council to support passing a $15 minimum wage ordinance. in the november 2014 elections, san francisco and los angeles passed city ordinances raising the minimum wage to $15. numerous other states and cities also raised their minimum wage. obama raised federal workers’ minimum wage to $10.10 and highlighted the issue of the minimum wage in his state of the union address. the campaign also reached beyond just fast food, as workers in other sectors such as homecare and retail were now taking up the demand. by 2014 the our walmart campaign, backed and launched by the united food and commercial workers (ufcw) union in 2011, in an effort to organize workers at walmart, had begun to adopt some of the demands of the ff15 (jamieson 2015). however, in late 2014, joseph hansen, the ufcw president who launched our walmart, retired setting off a leadership race resulting in the election of anthony perrone who had, in his campaign, questioned the cost of the our walmart campaign given that it had resulted in few new union members. with perrone’s victory, the union decided to scale back the our walmart campaign (moberg 2015). 88 | austerity urbanism and the social economy in 2015 the movement faced new challenges, while also exceeding their previous accomplishments. new york city raised its minimum wage to $13 and the announcement was followed by the governor of the state raising the minimum wage to $15 for all fast food workers and state employees in the state. in all 21 states saw increases to the minimum wage in 2015, some were due to pre-existing laws that tied the minimum wage to inflation, but most were the product of new laws or ballot initiatives (kasperkevic 2015). the one-day strikes and protests continued in 2015 with two major coordinated days of action in april and in november, which involved more workers and more cities than previous actions (the november date saw actions in 270 american cities). 2015 was also the year that both mcdonalds and walmart shifted from ignoring the protests to making a big show of raising wages for their workers (dorfman 2015). while these raises were in reality not what the companies made them out to be, they signified that the campaign was strong enough to force concessions from two of the country’s largest employers. these victories were followed by a significant labour board ruling in favour of the campaign. in august the nlrb ruled that companies that hire contractors to hire and supervise staff can be considered joint employers. this opened up the possibility that companies using the franchise model would have to directly negotiate with unions. the legal ruling could create the conditions for effective coordinated bargaining in the fast food industry. while the ff15 continued to grow, the our walmart campaign began to falter. the ufcw had envisioned the campaign as a steppingstone into a wider unionization drive of the company. our walmart was launched by ufcw in 2011 as an effort to organize walmart workers. despite garnering numerous headlines and engaging in big protests, it struggled to organize workers in many communities. the campaign operated on strategy minority unionism, where non-unionized workers, usually a small fraction of the total workforce, would organize together to push back against unfair labour practices and bad working conditions. mostly this revolved around public protests and non-union worker alternatives to the low waged economy | 89 strikes. the union, which had poured millions of dollars into the effort, decided to pull up shop and trimmed down its funding and staffing of the campaign (olney 2015). the remaining organizers shifted the focus of the campaign to a fight for higher wages (thus attaching it to the ff15). the high profile backtracking of the campaign was a major setback for the entire movement. the pace of individual cities passing city ordinances is slowing in 2016. this is because of the election cycle. the major unions involved in the movement, the united food and commercial workers’ (ufcw) and the seiu have focused on the presidential and congressional races. activists with the ‘raise the wage’ movement are attempting to turn city ordinances into state-wide ballot initiatives. the fight for $15 has been active in protesting and pushing its demands through the presidential primary and found traction with both the sanders and clinton campaigns. canada: rational politics advocacy and employer voluntarism in canada the movement looks quite different. outside of ontario the fight for $15 is largely notional. some small groups of activists and some labour unions have taken up the struggle, but so far it has remained largely marginal. the victory in alberta by the ndp and its position on the minimum wage has boosted the prospects of canadian activists. the federal ndp’s platform of having a federal sector $15 minimum wage also thrust the issue onto the national stage. unlike the united states there is no workplace aspect to the fight for $15. in the u.s. for instance the ff15 is supported by union money and organizers. because of this the goals of the ff15 in the u.s. are multifaceted: increasing the minimum wage at the legislative level, increasing pay and improving working conditions at large corporations and ultimately trying to achieve union recognition. in canada no union has really approached the ff15 with the same set of organizing goals when it comes to unionizing or organizing workers in the service or retail sector. unions while supportive are not using the fight for $15 as a wide scale organizing effort to leverage employers in the service sector. this 90 | austerity urbanism and the social economy reflects the differences of labour law, unfair labour practices and economic strikes can be undertaken in the united states with some protections for even non-unionized workers. in canada this is not the case. another major difference is the ability to win legislative fights about the minimum wage at the municipal level. in the united states this is possible, while in canada it is not. this makes building local movements easier in the us. the living wage movement in canada is largely divorced from the broader north american movement. in the us, the momentum of the living wage movement takes place through efforts to push through state imposed increases to the minimum wage. in canada, the ngo, non-profit arms of the progressive movement have for years been pushing an altogether different approach: the idea of voluntary agreements. outside of some municipalities, this has been wholly unsuccessful at pushing forward a political and social movement to increase the minimum wage. the first canadian living wage campaign emerged in british columbia in 2001. it was organized in response to a provincial government attack on health care sector workers which saw the government cut the pay of 8000 members of the hospital employees’ union (heu) by 40 percent. the union and the bc office of the canadian centre for policy alternatives turned to the example of london citizen’s living wage campaign as a means to give greater profile to the need for meaningful wages. in 2006, first call: bc child and youth advocacy coalition, started engaging in research into community support for a living wage in british columbia. the impetus for this research was the momentum of the us living wage movement. first call partnered with the bc canadian centre for policy alternatives (ccpa) office to develop living wage principles and a calculation for the actual living wage. this work also included a number of different organizations and individuals in the province. in the fall of 2008 the research report was released and shortly after other ccpa offices began to develop similar living wage principles and calculations for cities in ontario and the western provinces and organizations started to emerge in local alternatives to the low waged economy | 91 communities that sought a living wage. in response, living wage canada, a network for all of these different campaigns emerged and has helped to shape and organize the movement across the country. the bc ccpa, various unions, and community groups came together to establish the living wage for families campaign in 2008, which put forward $15 as a basic living wage. in 2011, the city of new westminster, a municipality within the greater vancouver area, became canada’s first government to adopt a living wage policy that requires all firms that are contracted directly or subcontracted by the city to pay a minimum of $19.62 an hour, nearly double the provincial minimum wage. soon after, the tiny township of esquimalt set a living wage of $17.31, but it has yet to be implemented. in addition, a voluntary accreditation campaign aimed at employers had, by fall 2015, signed on fifty bc employers. there are a number of living wage campaigns currently in bc. a number of the smaller centres do not necessarily have full on living wage campaigns. instead, many of these living wage campaigns are within larger anti-poverty campaigns. a number of others simply provide a calculation of the living wage in the region as a comparison to the minimum wage or to illustrate the growing income gap in the province. the areas that have well-established living wage campaigns in bc are victoria, new westminster, metro vancouver, and esquimalt. new westminster represents the first, and until recently, the only municipality in canada to have passed a living wage policy. the new westminster campaign was very organized right from the beginning when it launched in 2009. acorn canada, whose sister organization acorn us has played a key role in living wage campaigns around the us, was based in new westminster and saw the community as a prime place to attempt to implement a living wage policy in the metro vancouver regional area. the campaign approached a city councilor in new westminster about the possibility of a living wage policy in 2009. the councilor was very receptive of the idea and put forth a motion at city council for living wage to be studied by staff, which was passed by 92 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the rest of council (keddy 2015). as staff were preparing a report acorn used its institutional resources to recruit other organizations to join the campaign. most importantly, acorn was able to secure the support of the new westminster district and labour council, which brought along with it the support of most of the local unions in the area. with a strong team of community partners supporting the campaign, acorn went about engaging the community, local businesses, city council, and other organizations in order to explain the benefits of a living wage. city staff reported back in april 2010 with a report that did not support adopting a living wage for new westminster. however, the engagement work that acorn had undertaken created a ground swell of support for a living wage policy. two days after city staff presented their report to council, city councilors voted unanimously to ignore staff recommendations and adopt a living wage for new westminster (paulsen 2010). the living wage campaign’s multi-pronged approach worked; not only did they have support from other organizations and the community, but they also had an ear of a city councilor. these aspects put together made for a very effective living wage campaign. metro vancouver living wage for families campaign was officially launched in 2008 after the ccpa report was released detailing the issues surrounding poverty and the living wage in the province. the campaign is hosted by first call: bc child and youth advocacy coalition and is guided by an advisory committee made up of community partners including: bc acorn, mosaic, the canadian labour congress, hospital employees’ union, bc government and service employees’ union, bc, poverty reduction coalition, canadian union of public employees bc, among others (staff and advisory committee, n.d.). one of the main foci of the campaign is to recruit employers to voluntarily pay their employees the calculated living wage. however, the campaign also recognizes that many employers are supportive of the idea of a living wage, but are concerned that paying a living wage would undermine their business viability vis-à-vis their competitors who are not paying a similar wage to their workers. thus, alternatives to the low waged economy | 93 the campaign argues that it is “in [the employers’] interest that employers advocate for programs that would ensure that as a society we collectively address the needs of families with children… [increased public programs] would decrease the income families require from employment, and therefore reduce the living wage” (richards, cohen, klein, & littman 2008: 37). thus, it also advocates for change to public policy at the municipal and provincial levels. the campaign has had success in recruiting employers. working with other campaigns in municipalities across bc the campaign has been able to certify 50 employers as living wage employers, with 9 of those coming in 2015. that number represents over 6,500 direct employees earning a living wage in bc (the living wage for families campaign 2015). moreover, the campaign achieved a major victory in 2015 with the city of vancouver officially taking the steps needed to become a certified living wage employer. this would represent one of the biggest employers in the province becoming a living wage employer. although the campaign has not organized any major protests or actions, it does encourage others to become more involved in pursuing a living wage policy by emailing metro vancouver city council members and ongoing dialogue with low-wage workers (spread the word, n.d.). in the provincial capital of victoria, the living wage campaign launched in 2006. it was born out of the original effort to calculate a living wage for the different regions of bc. unlike other areas of bc where the ccpa has played a key role in launching different living wage campaigns, the campaign in victoria was launched by, and is led by, the community social planning council of greater victoria (cspc). being the capital of bc there is a large union presence in victoria, however none of the major unions or other labour organizations are involved in the living wage campaign (living wage and living wage employers 2016). the two major aims of the campaign are to provide a calculation of the living wage for the greater victoria area on an annual basis and to recruit private businesses to voluntarily pay their workforce a living wage. in other words, the campaign is voluntaristic in the sense that the 94 | austerity urbanism and the social economy strategy is to convince private business to agree to pay a living wage “out of the goodness of their hearts” rather than pursuing a living wage policy at the municipal or provincial level. as the cspc explains, its goal is to “conduct outreach activities to inform employers in the capital region of the program and how they can become living wage employers” (living wage and living wage employers 2016). the outreach activities also include public education on the purpose of a living wage in general and what living wage employers can do to support their employees facing rising costs of living. the campaign has had moderate success in this regard with a number of businesses in the greater victoria committing to be a living wage employer moving forward. esquimalt, near victoria, passed a living wage motion but has never implemented this. the entire process was started by a city councilor and led by city staff with no other organizations actively involved. there was little campaigning in esquimalt leading up to the decision to adopt a living wage policy. in august 2010 a city councilor put forth a motion for city staff to report back on the possibility of implementing a citywide living wage in esquimalt (minutes special meeting 2010). the motion was passed unanimously and city staff reported back in december 2010 with a recommendation that “all fulltime, part-time and casual workers for the city” be paid a living wage and “suggested that a policy that included a living wage provision within the tendering process for contracts from private firms be developed” (keddy 2015). before city council voted on the recommendation they opened the debate up to public consultation. the response from the public was overwhelmingly negative, and city council retreated from the recommendation and directed staff to work on new recommendations which were less binding and restrictive on local business. city staff reported back that it would be impossible to develop a policy based on the new requirements set forth by council. therefore, the original recommendations made to council were finally put to a vote in april 2011 (keddy 2015). the recommendations were voted down by council and the living wage debate died in esquimalt as quickly as it had started. alternatives to the low waged economy | 95 to date, there is no local movement attempting to continue the campaign. in ontario, there is a similarly strong living wage movement happening in cities and regions across the province. like bc, the smaller centres have campaigns functioning within larger poverty reduction campaigns. in many of these the living wage work consists of calculating the living wage for the area and comparing it to the current minimum wage. there has been some success in convincing employers to voluntarily adopt a living wage policy. at this point, nearly 60 ontario employers have done so (living wage employers 2016) and several cities including toronto, waterloo, cambridge and hamilton either have or are in the process of adopting a living wage policy for the municipality. of the three provinces in western canada, alberta is home to the most developed living wage campaigns. the community-based nonprofit, vibrant communities calgary (vcc), contributed its resources to establish campaigns across the province. the living wage idea first appeared in calgary when vibrant communities established a community action team in 2003. the team was essentially a network of other community and labour organizations including the alberta federation of labour, the “no sweat coalition”, calgary health region, the calgary chamber of volunteer organizations, and united way, and the ywca. an official campaign was launched with a multi-pronged strategy that included engaging four broad sectors: (1) public (municipal government); (2) private; (3) non-profit; and (4) quasi-governmental (health, education, and post-secondary institutions) (bulthuis 2007). although there is the focus on engaging local government, most of the campaign is voluntarism in the sense that the strategy is to convince private business to agree to pay a living wage. the living wage for calgary in 2015 was estimated to be $18.15 per hour by vibrant communities (cormier 2015). the campaign has been successful in getting more than 50 local businesses in calgary to sign on as living wage employers (living wage leaders, n.d.). the campaign came very close to a major victory in 2009 when calgary city staff recommended that the city should adopt a 96 | austerity urbanism and the social economy living wage policy, however council voted down the recommendation later that year (living wage advocacy, n.d.). it is worth noting that most labour organizations in alberta have chosen to focus on minimum wage rather than living wage, however alberta federation of labour has given its support to the calgary living wage movement. manitoba has a smaller living wage movement where campaigns are located in winnipeg, brandon, and thompson. the campaigns are a shared venture between the three cities and the ccpa, social planning council of winnipeg (spcw), winnipeg harvest, and the united way of winnipeg. the ccpa calculation determined the living wage was $13.44 in winnipeg, $11.10 in brandon, and $11.18 in thompson (the view from here 2009). the living wage was reassessed in 2013 and these values increased to $14.07 in winnipeg, $13.41 in brandon, and $13.46 in thompson (jarosiewicz 2013). the goal of the campaigns was to help bring about a large-scale adoption of living wage policies across manitoba, and the proposed method of doing this is through advocating and lobbying private businesses to “take their fair share” in responsibility rather than look to municipal and provincial government to enact policy guaranteeing a living wage. the campaigns call on business to increase pay and benefits to workers, and help in lobbying the provincial and federal governments to make changes to social transfers to manitoba. so far, the campaign has not enjoyed success in these efforts as there are currently no living wage employers in the province. labour organizations in manitoba do not appear to be willing to support the living wage campaigns, instead they have focused on increasing the minimum wage. in saskatchewan a campaign did emerge in 2004 when the canadian federation of students, the saskatchewan federation of labour and the regina anti-poverty ministry together formed the living wage coalition. however, this campaign was much more focused on increasing the minimum wage in the province as their slogan was: “make the minimum wage a living wage!” the campaign has not progressed, however the saskatchewan federation of labour continues to push for higher minimum wages. a new living wage campaign recently emerged alternatives to the low waged economy | 97 in saskatchewan and is based in and mostly focused on the city of regina. the campaign is being spear headed by the provincial ccpa. as with many other canadian campaigns, the focus is on convincing the private sector to pay their employees adequately instead of directing advocacy efforts at the municipal and provincial governments to enact living wage policy. in the atlantic provinces, living wage movements are only just emerging and have only a small footprint at this point. there are only two emerging living wage campaign in the entire region. one is in saint john, new brunswick, while the other can be found in nova scotia. the campaign in saint john is led by vibrant communities saint john (vcsj). the goal of the campaign is to develop a framework for a living wage (greater saint john 2013). this includes participating in research on low waged work and workers – who are they, where do they work and what are the trends (greater saint john 2013). important to note, new brunswick labour organizations, including cupe new brunswick and the new brunswick federation of labour, do not appear willing to lend support to the campaign; instead they have focused on the issue of raising minimum wage in the province. the nova scotia living wage coalition officially launched in february 2015 and led by acorn nova scotia, also includes partners such as the canadian federation of students – nova scotia, the halifax dartmouth district labour council, and solidarity halifax. the goal of the group is to obtain a $15 minimum wage in the province for all workers (nova scotia needs a raise 2015). the campaign has provincial aspirations, however, the focus has been completely local with the only campaigning happening in halifax. interestingly, dating back to 2007, the ccpa’s nova scotia office had been advocating for a living wage in the province (jacobs 2007). prince edward island (pei) does not have any living wage campaigns operating at present. however, the province does have the pei working group for a livable income. this group was established in 2003. the basic goal of the working group is to “influence the attitudes and actions 98 | austerity urbanism and the social economy of the community, employees, employers, and public policy makers around the advantages of a livable income for all people”. the strategies that the program uses in order to pursue this goal include: “writing letters to the editor and opinion pieces, and by making sure that whenever health, the economy, or jobs are on the agenda, in workshops, public meetings or at conferences, livable income is part of the discussion” (livable income, n.d.). finally, there are no living wage campaigns in newfoundland and labrador. that said, the provincial new democratic party along with campaign 2000 and the community services council of newfoundland and labrador (csc) are leading a campaign to raise the minimum wage in the province (community services council 2004). the newfoundland federation of labour has also supported a raise to the minimum wage, however they have not been overly active in advocating or supporting the campaign. the movement has been successful seeing the minimum wage go from $6.00 in 2005 to $10.50 in 2015. this may be a reason why the living wage movement has failed to gain traction in the province. explaining the difference: policy and political context shaping campaign tactics and strategies what explains the differences observed between the us and canadian living wage movements and campaigns can in part be found in the structural and policy differences between the two countries. the most obvious factor is the depth and breadth of inequality. inequality in canada is, compared to the united states, less severe. the gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 1, which expresses the gap between rich and poor, with 0 representing perfect equality and 1 representing perfect inequality. a number of 1 would mean one person has all the income, while everyone else has none, while a number of 0 would mean everyone has the same income. disposable income simply means after-tax income, after receiving transfer payments. using both the old measure of disposable income and the new measure, which alternatives to the low waged economy | 99 accounts for a more detailed breakdown of transfers received and paid by households, as well as a revised definition of household income, including the value of goods produced for own consumption as an element of self-employed income, we find that income inequality has been increasing in canada and the u.s., but the pace of growing inequality is much more accelerated in america (oecd 2016a). oecd data details that the gap between rich and poor for disposable income in canada has been increasing over the last decade from 2000-2013, which expressed as a percentage change has increased by 2.2% (oecd 2016a). in the u.s. on the other hand, from 2000-2014, the gap between rich and poor for disposable income has increased by 10.4% (oecd 2016a). what this tells us is that although canada is steadily becoming a more unequal country, inequality has been growing at an unparalleled pace in the united states. another measure is the extent of poverty. the oecd defines poverty as 50% or less of the median of disposable income (after-tax income, after receiving transfer payments). in 2000, poverty in canada was at 11.4% of the total population, and by 2011 that had expanded to 11.7% according to this measure (oecd 2016b). we find that from 2000-2011 poverty in canada has increased 2.6% (oecd 2016b). in the u.s in 2000, poverty was at 16.9%, and by 2012 was at 17.4%, showing that poverty in the u.s. has increased 2.9% (oecd 2016b). this shows that poverty has been increasing in both countries, but that poverty in the u.s. has been growing at a slightly faster level and is more widespread. a key factor affecting wage income and therefor income inequality is the significant difference in trade union density. while trade union density in the canadian private sector has been declining, it has been doing so at a much slower rate than is observed in the united states. for example, in 1999, union density in the canadian private sector was 19.9% but by 2015 that had declined to 16.7% (statistics canada, n.d.). in the us, in 1999, the density was 9.4% and by 2015 this had fallen to 6.7% (bureau of labor statistics, n.d.). in both countries public sector union density is considerably higher than that in the private sector. however, in canada, 100 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the density rate is substantially higher at 75.5% in 2015 (statistics canada, n.d.) compared to 35.2% in the us (bureau of labor statistics, n.d.). clearly, unions are faring substantially better in canada then they are in the us. support for the unemployed, both in terms of unemployment insurance and welfare benefits, also provides an indication of how public policy serves the economic needs of those searching for work. canada and the us offer reasonably similar levels of support to people experiencing unemployment, but some key differences mean that canada’s welfare system prevents more people from falling through the gaps in the safety net. both countries offer reasonably similar levels of support when it comes to their insurance-based benefits. they differ far more when it comes to welfare payments, which work to fill some of the gaps in the insurance provisions. in both countries, eligibility for unemployment insurance benefits depends on previous time spent in work, measured either by time or earnings. the maximum weekly insurance payment in canada sits comfortably within the range of maximums that vary across states in the us. unemployment insurance maximums are set by states and vary between $133 in puerto rico and $235 in mississippi to $679 in massachusetts for single people, though the average payment is approximately $300 per week in 2014 (stone & chen 2014). in california, the maximum payment is $450 per week, while new york’s maximum was raised to $420 in 2014, and illinois’ maximum is $426 per week for a single claimant. in canada, the maximum employment insurance payout is capped nationally at $537 per week, which sits at the upper end of the range of payments in the us (floyd & schott 2013; canada 2015), without adjusting for the dollar value differences. it is difficult to identify a consistent, significant difference in the values of support provided by the two forms of insurance. in both countries, welfare payments are lower than insurance rates, however, these vary at the provincial level as well as the state level. temporary assistance for needy families payments have generally been alternatives to the low waged economy | 101 decreasing in value and vary significantly from state to state. for example, tanf in new york tops out at $789 a month. washington, south carolina, new mexico, california, and wisconsin all cut their payments in 2011. in 2016, families of three are entitled to a maximum of $409 in new mexico, and $285 in texas, while many states did not increase their payments (stanley, floyd, & hill 2016). canada’s payments also vary, but tend to be slightly higher for families than payments in the us. ontario’s payments are capped at $1004 ($342 for basic needs and $662 for shelter costs) a month for a single parent family with two dependents under 18. british columbia’s total for the same family unit is $1035.58, while alberta’s payment maximum is $826 (government of alberta, n.d.; ministry of social development and social innovation, n.d.; ministry of community and social services, government of ontario 2016). while both countries restrict access to insurance support, workers in the us are far more likely to run out of unemployment support than canadians. canada’s employment insurance is available for between 14 and 45 weeks, depending on regional employment rates, while unemployment insurance in the us is available for 26 weeks and can be extended for up to another 20 for people in states experiencing high unemployment. in canada, the time limit depends on a province’s unemployment rate. once people run out of their insurance benefits, they can turn to welfare payments in both countries. however, unemployed people in the us are far more likely to end up without any entitlement to income support: the us cuts off access to welfare after five years of receipt across a person’s lifetime. the five-year period includes any month in which a claimant receives another similar welfare payment, such as the supplemental nutrition assistance program. states can also implement more severe time restrictions. both arizona and new york cap access to safety net assistance to just two years (new york state office of temporary and disability assistance 2011, 9-10; schott & pavetti 2011). california and maine moved to four-year time limits, while other states including washington tightened the criteria under 102 | austerity urbanism and the social economy which families could apply for extension policies. in comparison, only british columbia in canada places time restrictions on access to welfare. in all other provinces, canadians can continue to receive welfare as long as they are otherwise eligible. many workers, of course, in both countries, are entirely excluded from insurance payments and are likely to need welfare payments if they experience unemployment. in the us, 23.1% of jobless workers were receiving benefits in december 2014, a record low (mchugh & kimball 2015). a report by the national employment law project highlights research that shows that in the us, “low-educated and racial minority unemployed workers—those who may need financial support most during periods without work—are doubly disadvantaged in accessing unemployment insurance: not only do they report lower application rates, but the unemployed who do apply also report lower rates of receipt” (gould-werth & mckenna 2012: 2). similarly in canada, many are excluded from accessing employment insurance: coverage of canada’s population has decreased from 96% in the 1970s to about 37% in 2013 (doorey 2016: 397-398). both countries also make use of workfare policies, requiring welfare recipients to take the “shortest path to work” (luccisano & romagnoli 2007; mitchell & herd 2005, 65-66, 72), while both countries introduced workfare as part of 1990s reforms, mitchell and herd argue that in canada, the country’s earlier ‘commitment to community and collective responsibility’ meant that voters helped to steer in governments that acted to dull the harsher aspects of workfare (mitchell & herd 2005, 73). prior to the 1990s, canada’s welfare provisions were much more generous, suggesting canadians perhaps have not experienced the harshness of limited welfare for as long as americans. unemployment insurance coverage in canada, for example, was 96% in the 1970s but dropped to 37% in 2013 (doorey 2016, 397-398) finally, there is a gap in the overall support that unemployed families are provided with in the two countries. both countries use a tax credit to supplement the income of families with children under 18 who alternatives to the low waged economy | 103 have limited household earnings. in canada, families with dependent children and an annual income of less than $25,921 can receive both the canada child tax benefit and an extra employment insurance family supplement, though provinces can distribute these payments in different ways (canada 2015). for example, alberta provides a tax credit to working families only, and a reasonably generous child benefit to all families who earn less than $41,220 per year (“alberta child benefit (acb),” n.d.). however, in the us, only people who have earned income are able to receive the earned income tax credit – and unemployment insurance payments or forms of social security do not count as income (“eitc, earned income tax credit, questions and answers,” n.d.). people who haven’t worked in the last tax year are therefore, for the most part, ineligible. people in the us who are going through long periods of unemployment are then likely to be significantly worse off than their canadian counterparts. conclusion comparing the us and canadian campaigns leads to several conclusions. the first is that we might think of them as social movements which employ different tactics and strategies to fit with their respective political realities. clearly, the us experience is older and takes place in conditions where trade unions in particular and workers’ generally have been subjected to a more intense erosion of capacities to bargain and living standards. where the us campaigns have been characterized by strikes and protests, the canadian campaigns have centred on policy advocacy aimed at both employers and governments. a second observation is that in the us, very localized campaigns for municipal living wage ordinances have evolved into state-wide, even national campaigns for a $15 minimum wage. in other words, the central concern has shifted to the greater coverage offered by a higher minimum wage. unions have been central to the success of these campaigns in terms of providing organizational and material support. in contrast, in canada for the most part, living wage campaigns do not seek to merge their demands 104 | austerity urbanism and the social economy with those for higher minimum wages. the two aspects remain distinct. in this sense there is an ideological counter narrative presented in the us which contributes to the mobilization from below. overall, the living wage movement in canada varies considerably. the majority of the campaigns are made up of different community partners, mostly from the non-profit and social justice sectors. for the most part the campaigns are not affiliated with labour organizations, although a few exceptions to this generalization have been noted. instead, in most of the provinces, the labour movement has chosen to focus on the minimum wage rather than the living wage. there are a few campaigns in different parts of the country that are headed up by the actual municipal or regional governments, however this is only in a few small cases and for the most part these campaigns have been less visible and active. the primary strategy for most of the campaigns in canada is to rely on voluntary acceptance and implementation where the campaign is anchored around recruiting private businesses to voluntarily pay their employees a living wage. there are a few campaigns that have focused more on municipal government and policy, however these have experienced mixed success. that said, there are a number of emerging campaigns across the country and the already established campaigns continue to make inroads recruiting private business and lobbying local government. there are no contemporary cases of worker mobilization but rather these campaigns take the form of rational policy advocacy where data is presented, typically in the form of a calculated living wage, and this device is used to engage employers and municipal governments to consider adopting this wage as a matter of corporate human resources policy or, in the case of municipal government, to extend a living wage to direct employees and to those of third 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(2015, july 3). living wage for families. http://www.livingwageforfamilies.ca/nine_new_certified_living_ wage_employers the view from here: how a living wage can reduce poverty in manitoba (2009). canadian centre for policy alternatives. ottawa. tilly, c. (2004). social movements: 1768 – 2004. boulder: paradigm publishers. velencia, j. (2015, july 14). scott walker strips wisconsin workers of ‘living wage’ in new state budget. the huffington post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/13/scott-walkereliminates-living-wage_n_7789472.html alternatives to the low waged economy | 113 does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? the case of chicago, il. laura pin1 abstract: this paper uses baiocchi and ganuza’s communicativeempowerment framework to examine a case-study of participatory budgeting (pb) in chicago, il. chicago hosts the longest ongoing pb project in north america: since 2009, the 49th ward has allocated $1 million annually through pb. by 2016, the process had expanded to $6.2 million dollars of infrastructure funding in seven wards. baiocchi and ganuza’s framework provides a mechanism for examining the relationship between the neoliberalization of municipal government and the growing popularity of pb. i argue that when one considers the empowerment dimensions of pb, the experience of chicago has been decidedly mixed: limitations in the primacy, scope and reach of the participatory process limit the capacity of pb as currently constituted to function as a democratic challenge to elite policy making in municipal governance. keywords: participatory budgeting; neoliberalism; chicago; municipal government introduction participatory budgeting (pb) is the direct allocation of a budget by residents, rather than politicians or bureaucrats. in recent years, pb has spread as a policy practice among north american municipalities, with projects in several cities in the united states, including new york, chicago, and vallejo. pb has become popular at a time when the expansion of neoliberal policies has elevated social friction at the 1 laura pin is a phd candidate in the department of political science at york university. email: lpin@yorku.ca 114 | austerity urbanism and the social economy municipal level.2 while neoliberalization is often theorized as antithetical to democratic endeavors, in contrast, pb is described as a means of deepening democratic practice and empowering residents through deliberative mechanisms. writing on the spread of pb projects from latin america to the rest of the world, baiocchi and ganuza (2014) discuss a tendency for communicative dimensions of pb to be considered in isolation from empowerment dimensions. they argue this separation leads to a proclivity for treating pb procedurally: pb becomes an end inand-of itself, rather than a step toward substantive empowerment for participants. this paper uses baiocchi and ganuza’s communicativeempowerment framework as a heuristic device to examine a case-study of pb in chicago, il. chicago is home to the longest ongoing pb project in north america. since 2009, the 49th ward has allocated $1million in capital funds annually through pb. 3 in 2010 pb chicago was formed, and by 2016 the process had expanded to $6.2 million dollars of infrastructure funding in seven different wards. existing literature tends to focus on procedural aspects of the process, rather than the relationship between pb and resident empowerment. in contrast, baiocchi and ganuza provide a framework for examining pb in a way foregrounds the relationship between the neoliberalization of municipal government and the growing popularity of pb. through their framework, i argue that when one considers the empowerment dimensions of pb, the experience of chicago has been decidedly mixed: limitations in the primacy, scope and reach of the participatory process limit the capacity of pb as currently constituted to function as a democratic challenge to elite policy making in municipal governance. this paper draws on survey data of pb participants collected by the university of illinois, chicago (uic), and insights gleaned from three 2 following peck and tickell (2002) i use “neoliberalization” rather than “neoliberalism” to emphasize neoliberal restructuring as an ongoing and dynamic process, rather than a static end-state. 3 all figures are unadjusted us dollars. does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 115 months of fieldwork in chicago, il., from march to june, 2016. fieldwork included participant-observation of community meetings, volunteer trainings, voting events, and the annual “writing of the rules”. in addition, i conducted 32 semi-structured interviews with residents, volunteers, staff, aldermen and community activists. the structure of this paper is as follows. first, i define pb and detail how the process works in chicago. then, i outline baiocchi and ganuza’s communicative and empowerment dimensions, and explain how their framework improves on procedural approaches to pb. finally, i consider pb in chicago through a discussion of each dimension of baiocchi and ganuza’s empowerment criteria. my argument should not be taken as a wholesale dismissal of pb, which can have important benefits in terms of community building and civic learning, but rather a call to interpret these benefits in relation to the overall context of neoliberal policy governance. what is participatory budgeting? pb is a process of community decision making where money is allocated by the people who are affected by a budget, rather than elected officials (pinnington et al. 2009). in north america, pb is typically used to allocate infrastructure funds, giving residents the authority to decide whether to fund park amenities, street re-surfacing, public art, or other neighbourhood improvements, from a ward-level capital budget. originating in brazil in 1989, pb was first implemented when the leftleaning brazilian workers party won municipal elections in porto alegre. the brazilian workers party hoped pb would make the municipal government more responsive to residents, increase the propensity of citizens to pay property taxes, and more effectively redistribute municipal funds throughout the city (bräutigam 2004; de sousa santos 1998). since its inception, variations of pb have spread to hundreds of jurisdictions across the world. in chicago, the process has generally included the following steps: 1) community meetings are held to garner project ideas; 2) a volunteer committee vets project ideas with 116 | austerity urbanism and the social economy staff and determines a list of projects to be included on a ballot; 3) a project expo is held where community members can discuss the merits of individual projects; and finally, 4) voting occurs at the aldermanic office, community centers, schools, and transit hubs. all residents aged 16 or older are eligible to vote, regardless of citizenship or immigration status.4 what sets pb apart from other forms of community consultation is the extent to which the process is resident driven. residents, not elected officials or bureaucrats, identify potential projects for funding and make the final decision on the allocation of funds. pb has grown in popularity at the same time as municipal governance in north america has taken a neoliberal turn. neoliberalization is the commodification and marketization of spaces that had previously been governed by other logics (brenner and theodore 2010). while the logic of neoliberalization is consistent, the implications are variegated, depending on geographic, historical, and social context (brenner et al. 2006). proponents may seek to present the marketization of governance as inevitable or merely “common sense”. nonetheless, neoliberal policy changes are ongoing, and often heavily contested (brenner and theodore 2010). in the 1980s, neoliberal logic became dominant in municipal administration, as has been documented by several scholars (for example, albo 1993; coulter 2009; ranson 2004; peck 2013). neoliberal shifts towards the marketization of local government include: an increase in municipal service provision by private sector providers; an increase in user-fees and cost-recovery models; an emphasis on individual self-help; the foregrounding of the citizen as consumer; and, a focus on efficiency and lean administration (albo 1993; changfoot 2007). these changes reflected a move to value government policies in terms their ability to facilitate the spread of market logics. in chicago, specific changes have included increased reliance on user-fees for public transit (farmer and noonan 2011); the replacement of public housing with mixed income private-sector 4 ward 49 imposes a minimum age of 16 on residents seeking to vote in the pb process. however, some wards in chicago permit residents as young as 14 to vote in pb. does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 117 developments (lipman 2011); the marketization of public education through charter schools (lipman 2011); and a subsequent emphasis on policing and securitization to manage the social unrest associated with public contestation of these policy changes (taylor 2016). the neoliberalization of municipal government has engendered democratic concerns, as the marketization of public administration has often emphasized the management of the public over the facilitation of democratic participation, particularly when elite interests and public opinion diverge (addie 2009; johnson 2011; masuda, mcgee and garvin 2008). this has made the “roll-out” of democratic projects that position citizens as active participants in municipal policy-making crucial in legitimating neoliberal policy decisions (addie 2009; theodore and peck 2011).5 public engagement strategies are strategically mobilized by municipal governments as a means of demonstrating responsiveness to public interests, yet when those interests conflict with elite motivations, research suggests they fail to drive actual policy decisions (johnson 2011; masuda, mcgee and garvin 2008). in chicago, contemporary neoliberal processes have weakened democratic practices. housing, transportation, education, and development policies are widely perceived to be controlled by elite interests (peck 2012; lipman 2011). when public consultations occur, residents have perceived these processes as little more than legitimation exercises delinked from actual decision-making authority (lipman 2011). moreover, chicago’s municipal budget process is notoriously opaque and there is minimal public budget consultation.6 in this context, pb is offered as “a powerful example of how deliberative institutions can take hold, provide redistributive and progressive outcomes, and offer novel solutions to urban problems" (baiocchi and lerner 2007: 9). in contrast 5 “roll-out” neoliberalism is a term coined by peck and tickell (2002) to describe how neoliberalization has entailed the “roll-out” of new institutions of governance. 6 chicago holds annual budget forums. in interviews, residents, aldermen and staff indicated that these consultations are poorly publicized, poorly attended, and widely perceived to have no influence on budgetary allocations. 118 | austerity urbanism and the social economy to public consultation, pb is presented as a new form of democracy that vests residents with real decision-making power (curato and niemyer 2013; ecran and hendricks 2013). to sum up, in chicago and elsewhere, pb projects purportedly address a set of contemporary democratic problems that have occupied a great deal of public attention in conjunction with the rise of neoliberal policies. the disjuncture between the communicative and empowerment dimensions of pb recently, some scholars have questioned the veracity of democratic claims made of pb projects. in tracing the expansion of pb, peck and theodore (2015) note that despite the ambitious beginnings of pb in porto alegre, in global diffusion the process has become “defanged”. while pb may be “the political equivalent of motherhood and apple pie” (peck and theodore 2015: 171), with supporters across the political spectrum, they find its radical democratic potential underwhelming. similar concerns are raised by baiocchi and ganuza (2014), who use a communicative-empowerment framework to develop an explicit set of criteria for assessing pb. like peck and theodore, baiocchi and ganuza argue that in its global travel pb has become less radical, but they attribute this moderation to a heavy emphasis on the part of practioners and researchers on the communicative dimensions of pb, which has led to a relative neglect of the question of empowerment. baiocchi and ganuza’s analysis relies on a differentiation of the communicative and empowerment dimensions of the process. the communicative dimensions concern the internal structure of a pb process, including who participates in discussions, the quality of this participation, and the degree of procedural equity among participants. in contrast, the empowerment dimensions focus on whether pb influences the exercise of political power and municipal decision-making more broadly (baiocchi and ganuza 2014). baiocchi and ganuza suggest pb in porto alegre instigated a pro-poor shift in municipal policy due to the presence of both communicative and empowerment dimensions: pb does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 119 precipitated series of institutional reforms that connected popular decision-making to the exercise of political power. in contrast, a purely communicative focus on the structures and procedures within a pb project can lead to the instrumentalist application of pb as a technical solution: a “simple process of revelation of individual preferences, adjusting it to the routines and goals set by the new public management framework” (baiocchi and ganuza 2014: 42). concerns regarding the overemphasis of the internal communicative dimensions of pb are borne out in much of the literature. while some research on pb in brazil has considered pb in light of broader political developments, such as the transition from military to civilian government (for example, de sousa santos 1998; avritzer 2006), this approach is less common in research on pb on north american countries, which has largely taken the political, social and economic context for granted. while there is research on whether pb leads to different project choices than other forms of budgeting (stewart et al. 2014); research measuring citizen learning through pb (rossmann and shanahan 2012; petite 2014); research on project management in pb (cabannes 2014); and research detailing the ethnic, racial and income composition of participants (crum et al. 2013), this work focuses on the internal dynamics of projects and does not discuss pb in terms of neoliberal governance shifts. focusing exclusively on communicative procedures tends to silo pb projects from broader developments in municipal governance, finance and politics, which are not only important for contextualizing pb, but also necessary to substantially engage with the question of resident empowerment. by way of redress, baiocchi and ganuza suggest researchers consider four specific empowerment dimensions, to assess whether pb projects are connected to centers of municipal power and decision-making. these dimensions are paraphrased below. • the primacy of participatory forums: are they the most important point of contact between government and citizen? 120 | austerity urbanism and the social economy • the scope of budget issues considered in participatory forums: how much of the budget is disbursed through pb and how important is that part of the budget to social justice considerations? • the degree of participatory power in the process: are there institutionalized, direct and transparent links between pb and government action that make public officials responsive to pb demands? do politicians and/or staff retain discretion over the implementation of projects after they are chosen for funding? • the self-regulation of participatory forums: do participants determine the rules of participation? are social justice criteria included in the process? and do participatory forums influence government affairs more broadly? (2014: 39). these four criteria move from assessing the rigor of communicative processes in pb projects to a consideration of how pb is connected to government action. to baiocchi and ganuza’s four criteria, i suggest a fifth consideration: • the permanency of participatory forums: are these forums stable, institutionalized policy programs that will continue to exist if there is sufficient community desire and support? in other words, even if pb is meaningfully empowering in terms of primacy, scope, participatory power, and self-regulation, if the process can be terminated at any time without community input then this curtails the overall empowering effects. the community should have some degree of agency over the establishment and continued existence of a pb process. i now turn to a specific discussion of the political and economic context of pb in chicago. then, i consider how well the criteria of participatory empowerment are fulfilled in the case of chicago. the political and economic context of pb in chicago chicago is well known for its history of highly autocratic and executive controlled municipal government. for most of the twentieth century, the democratic party dominated chicago’s electoral politics does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 121 through its political “machine”: an elaborate system of patronage appointments that started with anton cermak, elected mayor in 1931, and reached its peak under richard j. daley, mayor from 1955 until his death in 1976. political machines in 20th century america often sought maintain control by structuring the electoral system to reduce electoral competition (trounstine 2009). in chicago, the democratic party machine used restrictions on independent candidacy and ward redistricting to their advantage, resulting in a city council that was often a “rubber-stamp” for an executive agenda controlled by the mayor’s office (simpson 2001; royko 1971). traditionally, mayoral elections have been relatively uncompetitive. in fact, the 2015 chicago mayoral election was historic as it was the first time a candidate failed to receive an absolute majority on the first ballot and a run-off was required. another way political machines maintain political control is through patronage – the appointment of political allies to municipal staff positions. in relation to chicago, stone writes, “…support for machine candidates was not based on issue commitments. the political machine was centrally about patronage” (1996: 447). at its peak, 35,000 municipal positions in chicago were controlled through the patronage system. patronage appointees were required to donate money and time to the democratic party, and their partisan campaign performance determined their promotion or termination within the municipal civil service (simpson 2001; royko 1971). chicago’s political machine also maintained control of the municipal government through the active disenfranchisement of certain racial and ethnic groups, with white machine aldermen governing predominantly black constituencies, and city contracting rewarding unions that perpetuated practices of racial exclusion (simpson 2001; royko 1971).7 chicago’s patronage system only declined in the 1980s after the passing of the shackman decrees, 7 in chicago, successive waves of working class immigrants (irish, polish, italian) were brought into the party machinery. the longstanding black population remained largely excluded, and anti-black racism played an important role in the machine’s ability to unite non-black ethnic constituencies (royko 1971; stone 1996). 122 | austerity urbanism and the social economy which declared political hiring and firing unconstitutional. as recently as 2014, chicago’s municipal hiring process was under federal oversight, at which point michael shakman, whose lawsuit spurred the decrees bearing his name, declared overt patronage not dead but “controlled” (abc 2014). the result is that in chicago there is a long history of patronage relations between aldermen and residents, with personal relationships being the dominant political currency. this has led to heavy skepticism on the part of residents as to the impartiality of municipal government (simpson 2001). this political heritage has created pressure for new aldermen, especially those without the support of the democratic party apparatus, to differentiate themselves from their predecessors and find new ways to build community support and legitimate their policies. at the same time, over the last twenty years, the city of chicago has been subject to neoliberal policy changes. budgetary austerity has led to the elimination of public jobs, reductions in library hours, and cuts to other public services (peck 2012). attempts have been made to marketize public transportation through the outsourcing of employment and increased emphasis on cost-recovery (farmer and noonan 2011). taxincrement financing programs have siphoned off public education funding to bankroll private corporations and developers (farmer and poulos 2015).8 the use of charter schools governed by private boards has also expanded (lipman 2011). public housing has been replaced by vouchers and mixed income private developments, and many former public housing residents have been permanently displaced from their communities (lipman 2011; wyly and hammel 2000). the impacts of these policies are stratified, with low-income, latino and black neighbourhoods most affected by transit under-investment and the 8 tax-increment financing (tif) is a capital financing tool where all increases in property taxes in a designated geographic area are earmarked for “economic development projects”. in the absence of a tif, these funds would ordinarily be available to deal with inflationary costs in other areas of municipal provisioning, including schools. as has been extensively outlined in investigations by the chicago reader, tif funds are frequently captured by developers and corporations (joravsky 2015). does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 123 elimination of public housing. the under-funding and privatization of chicago’s public schools also has heavily racialized consequences: less than ten percent of youth enrolled in public schools are white (cps 2016). meanwhile, when public reinvestment in transit and infrastructure has occurred, it has been primarily in affluent, white neighbourhoods (farmer and noonan 2011; weber 2002). in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007, budget cuts at the federal and state levels have exacerbated financial austerity at the municipal level. the 2013 federal sequestration process cut $6 billion from federal transfers to states (peck 2013). in illinois, federal budget cuts, in conjunction with a crisis in state revenue, led to a severe budgetary gap that has precipitated a multi-year financial crisis. illinois completed the 2016 fiscal year without passing budget, with the republican governor and democrat-controlled legislature unable to reach agreement on spending.9 the absence of a state budget has had a significant impact on the city of chicago, where initiatives jointly funded by the state, including upgrades and maintenance to hospitals, schools, and parks, have been put on hold by the unavailability of state funds. considering the history of political patronage in chicago, as well as recent budgetary austerity measures, it is perhaps not surprising that a populist democratic practice like pb found purchase in chicago. alderman moore first won his ward 49 council seat in 1991 as a progressive independent democrat. according to moore, he became interested in pb after speaking with josh lerner, founder of participatory budgeting project at a conference in 2008. according to interviews with residents, after nearly losing the 2007 election in a run-off with a more conservative candidate, there also was an important impetus for creating a policy process that would help solidify his electoral position in the 49th ward at a time when he had declining community support. residents in 9 the illinois legislature and governor have recently reached an interim agreement, approving funding in july 2016 to last through the november 2016 election period and ensure that k-12 schools and post-secondary institutions have enough revenue to operate until the end of the year. 124 | austerity urbanism and the social economy ward 49, under the political leadership of alderman moore, have used pb to allocate $1 million in “menu money” every year since 2009.10 in the municipal budget process, each alderman receives $1.32 million in discretionary menu funds, of which $1 million is typically devoted to the pb in wards that use the process. menu funds are restricted to local infrastructure investments: park improvements, tree plantings, garbage cans, murals, bicycle lanes, local road resurfacing. in the 2015-2016 pb cycle, seven wards participated in a process that included just over 5,000 voters and disbursed $6.07 million in funds. empowerment in chicago’s pb projects chicago residents who have volunteered with pb projects do cite several positive impacts in survey data and interview settings. these include: increased knowledge of government processes, enhanced understanding of menu money, a heightened sense of community, and demystification of municipal infrastructure spending (weber et al. 2014; crum et al. 2013). these positive impacts are not necessarily restricted to the individual level: for example, one of the benefits of pb cited by many residents in interviews was community building through communication and information-sharing across disparate neighbourhoods. nevertheless, questions remain as to whether resident learning and engagement have translated to local empowerment. in the following section, i consider pb in chicago in light of each of the five empowerment dimensions suggested earlier. 1) the primacy of participatory forums. the first empowerment dimension is primacy: how important are participatory forums as a point of contact between residents and elected officials? two ways to consider primacy are, first, the extent to which pb serves as the major mechanism for articulating local resident demands to their elected representatives, 10 menu money was created mayor richard m. daley in 1995 as part of the municipal budget, and specifically the capital improvement program (stewart et al. 2014). menu money is the only funding available to aldermen for local street resurfacing (non-arterial roads and alleyways), and the major source of funding for local infrastructure projects. does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 125 and second, the extent to which residents’ most pressing neighbourhood concerns can be addressed through the pb process. in interviews with residents and staff, it became clear that the pb process does create an additional channel of communication between residents and the aldermen. through the collection and cultivation of project ideas in pb meetings, staff can become better informed of community concerns. one staffer cited the greatest benefit of pb as “putting new projects on the agenda” that previously had escaped staff attention. this can lead to creative strategizing beyond the pb process to develop and implement community ideas for projects. for example, in 2016 accessible doors for the local library branch in ward 49 failed to receive enough votes to be funded. however, in recognition of community concerns over the accessibility of the library, alderman moore decided to fund this project through the $320,000 in menu money not allocated though pb. in addition, although many volunteers with the pb process had pre-existing connections to the aldermanic office, some residents reported in interviews becoming more comfortable and knowledgeable about contacting the alderman’s office, findings that are also supported by survey data collected by pb chicago (crum et al. 2013). on the other hand, pb is certainly not the primary link between residents and their local representatives, and has not supplanted lobbying and personal relationships, as the most important mechanisms for allocating resources. while it is difficult to measure informal demandmaking channels between residents and their elected representatives, two considerations may assist: first, resident perceptions as to how demands are made and met, and second, the scope of demands that can be articulated within the pb process. in many interviews, residents and staff cited a perception that pb does not replace these other forms of negotiation, but exists alongside them. while chicago is in a postpatronage era, the adage, "we don't want nobody nobody sent" (rakove 1979) still holds in many ways, and indeed, was specifically quoted by interviewees as an example of how municipal business is conducted. for example, one resident discussed how a park in a predominantly black 126 | austerity urbanism and the social economy neighbourhood had won funding for a water feature through pb, but had been waiting for years for the installation of this project. in the meantime, a neighbouring park in a predominantly white area received similar improvements, even though it had no project on the ballot. she attributed this outcome to the other neighbourhood having the alderman’s ear. even in wards with pb projects, residents continue to assert that maintaining a close personal relationship with the aldermanic office determines which residents have their needs met. second, the scope of demands matter: if residents’ most pressing concerns cannot be addressed through pb, this limits the primacy of participatory forums as a link between aldermen and constituencies. thus, primacy, the first empowerment dimension, goes hand in hand with considerations of scope, which are discussed in greater detail below. 2) the scope of budget issues. the second empowerment dimension examines the scope of issues considered in participatory forums, and the importance of this budget for social justice initiatives. pb in chicago is funded through menu money, which is capital funding financed through bonds. the terms of the bonds restrict its use to local physical infrastructure improvements that benefit the community as a whole.11 so while enhanced street lighting, road repaving and public park improvements can be funded through menu money, social programming cannot. moreover, two additional points are pertinent. first, when asked in interviews about the major challenges facing their neighbourhood, residents almost uniformly cited policing and schools. many also mentioned affordable housing and economic development. in conversations, residents prioritized social programming over infrastructure, but social programming is ineligible for funding through pb as currently constituted. to relate just one anecdote, while volunteering at a polling station, one man stopped to ask where on the ballot he could vote for increased funding for schools. when told that schools were outside the scope of the process, he walked away without voting. indeed, chicago has recently been rocked by a series of serious 11 interview with paul moody, assistant budget director, city of chicago. does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 127 public protests around the state of policing and the financing of public schools (for news coverage see: wozniak and edwards 2016; wong and crepeau 2016; dna info staff 2016; briscoe 2015). neither of these concerns can be addressed through pb as currently constituted, due to the restricted scope and magnitude of funds. the limited scope also has social justice implications in terms of resident participation. several aspects of the process, including permitting youth, undocumented and unregistered individuals to vote are designed to make the process more inclusive. in fact, the chicago rulebook specifically foregrounds equity and inclusion as two key goals of the pb process (pb chicago 2014). in addition, aldermanic staff and pb volunteers face ongoing pressure to grow the process, both in terms of absolute numbers and the participation of marginalized communities. proportional participation of latino and black communities is taken as an indication of success, as is proportional participation of low-income residents and those with lower educational attainment. community outreach efforts have been both extensive and resource intensive, including hiring translators, establishing spanish-language committees, hosting meetings in less affluent neighbourhoods, and extending invitations to relevant civil society organizations. despite these outreach efforts, exit surveys and interviews confirm that pb volunteers are disproportionately college educated high-earners, who tend to be whiter than their neighbours. survey data indicates that residents with graduate degrees volunteered at or attended pb meetings at twice their proportion of the population, while renters were half as likely to participate in these activities as homeowners (crum et al. 2013). the participation gap may be explained by several aspects of the pb process itself that inhibit expansion to more diverse communities. first, the process privileges individuals with significant technical knowledge about engineering, landscape design, and other areas that assist in presenting a technically feasible, persuasively argued project. many of the participants interviewed were highly educated and cited this as a general trend among volunteers. second, the beautification projects 128 | austerity urbanism and the social economy favoured by pb – trees, park improvements, decorative lighting, public artwork – often appeal to homeowners concerned with property values as a way of “cleaning up” the neighbourhood. the ownership/renter divide has not only class, but also racialized dimensions in a city where latino and black residents are less likely to own their homes and more likely to be denied mortgage loans (us census bureau 2011; martinez 2009). outreach can only go so far in creating a pb process that addresses the needs of different communities, when these needs fall outside the scope of the process. in the words of one resident: “pb invests in things, not people” which limits its ability to address social justice considerations, including policing, school funding, and economic development. taking a broader view, it is possible that pb could be a means for addressing concerns beyond the official scope of the practice if ideas discussed in pb forums are channeled into other processes. however, issues raised in pb forums that fall outside the scope of the process tend to be discarded. in interviews with residents, several volunteers expressed frustration that community input regarding concerns outside the scope of the process was “wasted” when these ideas could be actualized if pb was better integrated with other institutional processes. as currently constituted, pb is limited to the expression of resident demands within the scope of menu funds, leaving highly germane issues like social programming, policing, schools, and economic development outside the process. 3) actual participatory power over the budget. the next empowerment dimension is the degree of actual participatory power over the budget, that is, whether there are institutionalized direct and transparent links between participation and government action, and what discretion elected officials and staff maintain over decisions once they are made. in the case of chicago, there is mixed evidence in terms of the degree of actual participatory power over the budget vested in residents. individual pb projects are clearly resident determined, and past research has demonstrated in comparison with aldermanic allocations, the resident-driven process leads to different project does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 129 outcomes (stewart et al. 2014). as outlined in the 2014-2015 rulebook, all wards hold several “idea collection” events, where any resident can submit ideas, and all ideas are considered by volunteer committees composed primarily of residents (pb chicago, 2014). staff may explain the eligibility rules around the allocation of menu funds, but at this point, staff involvement is usually limited to sketching out the more technical aspects and providing cost estimates. aldermen typically refrain from advocating for specific projects or suggesting projects. in addition, residents have sometimes created elaborate mechanisms to try to ensure a fair and comprehensive process. for example, ward 49’s “streets committee” visits every street in the ward to assess the need for street repaving and then creates a priority list, in an effort to ensure an impartial process. however, as already mentioned, many resident projects generated during idea collection are not included on the ballot because they are deemed to be outside the scope of the use of menu funds. in addition, staff can use the scope of the process as a means of shutting down more creative or unusual projects. for example, projects that involved decorative bike posts, library carpeting, and public murals, although technically within the scope of menu funds, have all faced barriers from city staff, including delayed cost estimates, and/or onerous insurance requirements. at times, difficulty obtaining a cost estimate has prevented projects from being included on the ballot. moreover, while usually staff and aldermen do not interfere with project selection, there is at least one report of a project receiving enough votes to be funded, but being rejected by the alderman who declared it had “accidentally” made the ballot. in other instances, even residents on the volunteer committee were confused about how the projects for the ballot were chosen, describing the aldermanic office as making the final decision. residentdriven and transparent decisions around which projects make it onto the ballot are of crucial importance, because projects only have an opportunity to be funded if they appear on the ballot. 130 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the absence of institutional support also fits with a broader neoliberal trend towards the downloading of government responsibilities to individual citizens and retraction of the state from many areas of public provisioning (brown 2003; addie 2012). if residents can be tasked with determining a local street repaving schedule, identifying neighbourhood infrastructure needs, and arbitrating among these needs, with minimal involvement from municipal staff, then this is a fundamental shift in the role of the government. pb relies on extensive volunteer labour, with some paid support from aldermanic staff, but minimal support from municipal staff. indeed, there is no full-time dedicated staff person in the municipal budget office, parks district, or chicago transit authority (cta) with responsibility for providing technical support to pb projects.12 the absence of direct institutionalized links between participants and municipal staff makes residents dependent on the aldermanic office for information about projects, and reduces the transparency of the pb process. 4) the self-regulation of participatory forums. the fourth empowerment criterion examines the self-regulation of participatory forums – do participants determine and govern the rules of the process, and to what extent is there general participatory influence over the municipal government? in the case of chicago, rulemaking within the constraints of the pb process is very much controlled by residents. with the assistance of pb chicago, an annual “writing of the rules” meeting is held, with representatives from each participating ward, to discuss changes to the rules governing the process, including timelines, resident engagement strategies and other best practices (pb chicago 2014). the resulting discussions are taken back to volunteer groups in the wards for further discussion before any changes are voted for at the city-wide working group. however, participants do not determine the amount of 12 there is one staff person in the municipal budget office theoretically responsible for providing some support to pb projects. however, their role on paper seems over-stated: although this person provided some technical assistance to aldermanic staff, they were largely absent from the day-to-day work of the process. does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 131 funding subject to the process, and cannot broaden the scope to include projects beyond local infrastructure improvements, because as a form of debt-financed funding, ultimately the terms of the bond agreements dictate the use of menu money. the demands of residents are subordinated to the interests of bond holders. to sum up, within the constraints of menu money, the rules of the pb process are resident determined, however, the scope of the process is subject to rigid limits enforced by the rules that govern the city of chicago’s menu funds. the second part of this empowerment dimension concerns the general reach of participatory influence over the municipal government as a whole. scholarship has suggested that a key positive consequence of pb projects is a cultural shift in terms of an enhanced participatory ethos around other processes of municipal governance and demand-making (curato and niemeyer 2013; avritzer 2006). in chicago, however, pb does not appear to have created an environment of heightened legitimacy for resident demand-making and public input around other municipal budget processes. chicago has a history of executive controlled budgeting processes. in the 1950s, mayor richard j. daley removed budgetary responsibility from council as part of his concentration of power in the machine-dominated executive, and important expenditure decisions have typically been made through backdoor negotiations and informal channels (simpson 2001; weber et al. 2015). in interviews, when asked to discuss public participation around the chicago municipal budget, residents, staff and aldermen stated it was very limited or non-existent. even aldermen described the municipal budgeting process as “opaque” and lacking clarity in terms of how and where budgetary allocations are determined. indeed, one alderman with experience in the state legislature noted he was “shocked” by the comparative lack of input from council in the mayoral budget. another alderman noted that the current mayor had held a few public forums on the budget, but since these were mostly taken up by protestors, they were not useful. residents who had participated in mayoral consultations stated that the mayor did not make eye contact, appeared to be “zoned out” and/or would not permit 132 | austerity urbanism and the social economy “political demands”. these statements by interviewees indicate a persistent divide between “productive” resident engagement through pb and social protest, where pb has not necessarily engendered respect for popular demands made through other avenues. in a global overview of pb projects, cabannes notes that, “remarkably, those in municipal government who are responsible for the “participatory budget” have, with a few exceptions, very limited information about the municipal budget” (2004: 33). his observation holds true in the case of chicago, where pb has not engendered greater transparency around the municipal budgeting process more generally. 5) the permanency of participatory forums. the final empowerment dimension is the extent to which these forums are stable, institutionalized policy programs that will continue to exist if there is community support. the pb process in chicago is not institutionalized, meaning there are no mechanisms in municipal bylaws that require aldermen to engage in pb, or continue these projects once they are established. the consequence is that regardless of community or resident support for the process, pb projects in chicago exist at the discretion of the local alderman. without justification or explanation, aldermen can, and do, cancel these projects if they feel they take too much staff time or do not lead to a desirable allocation of local infrastructure resources. the 5th ward, 22nd ward and 46th ward all briefly experimented with pb before cancelling the process. in the case of the 22nd ward, the alderman cancelled the pb project without formally informing past volunteers of this decision, some of whom had started preparing for the next cycle. this points to the lack of control residents have over the continuation of the process, as well as the limited capacity for pb decisions to contravene aldermanic objectives. concluding thoughts the city of chicago has a proposed $9.2 billion dollar operating and capital budget for 2016, a level of funding that dwarfs any disbursements through pb. but while a minority of the chicago city does participatory budgeting lead to local empowerment? | 133 budget is disbursed through pb, in participating wards most of the local infrastructure funding is subject to the process. considering this funding longitudinally, however, local infrastructure funding is declining. menu funding has been frozen at $1.32 million since 1995, while the cost of infrastructure has risen significantly over this period. for example, in chicago the cost of repaving a city block in 2016 was approximately 2.5 times what it was in 1995. the magnitude of funds available for local infrastructure improvements has been declining when inflation is considered. in a neoliberal context of declining investment in public infrastructure, and increased public funding being shifted toward private developers, for example, through chicago’s tif program, pb risks becoming a forum for residents to make difficult budget decisions for elected officials. rather than a uniform standard of basic public infrastructure, residents now vote on which streets receive upgrades to lighting or paving, or which parks have functional amenities. unsurprisingly, this tension is greatest in the neighbourhoods with the greatest needs. in ward 22, a low-income area of predominantly latino and black residents, the alderman cited an inability to meet basic infrastructure needs as a reason he stopped practicing pb.13 the alderman stated that he could not support “boutique” projects like community gardens and murals, when streets were becoming unusable. indeed, most pb projects are clustered in the northwest part of the city. these neighbourhoods vary in terms of income and racial composition, but none of them are part of the largely black, historically disenfranchised, southern part of the city, that has been chronically underinvested for decades. this paper has discussed pb in chicago, arguing that to assess whether pb leads to community empowerment, it is important to situate these projects in terms of the broader social, economic, historical, and political context, including trends in municipal governance and municipal budgeting. using baiocchi and ganuza’s (2014) 13 ward 22 had held pb votes in 2014 and 2015 but discontinued the practice in 2016. 134 | austerity urbanism and the social economy “empowerment dimensions” as a jumping off point, this paper has considered whether pb in chicago has led to local empowerment. in the case of chicago, pb largely falls short of resident empowerment, especially in terms of the primacy and scope of the process: as currently constituted, residents’ most pressing concerns cannot be addressed through the pb process. while volunteers cited positive community building effects of participation, including information-sharing with neighbours, evidence is limited as to whether these social connections have the potential to translate to collective organization outside the pb process. moreover, the municipal budgeting process, where many crucial decisions are made regarding social programing, continues to be elitedriven and insulated from resident influence. despite the limitations of pb in a context of urban neoliberalization, this discussion also suggests how the pb process might be structured to more substantially empower local communities. if the scope of the process were expanded to include social programming or a greater magnitude of funds, pb could potentially wrest some components of the mayoral budget from elite control. most promisingly, there have been recent discussions about how to expand pb to tax increment financing funds, including a 2014 pilot project in west humboldt park.14 it remains to be seen, however, whether there is sufficient political appetite to expand the process beyond ward-level infrastructure funds. references abc 7 news. 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(2000). capital's metropolis: chicago and the transformation of american housing policy. geografiska annalers, 83b(4), 181-206. 140 | austerity urbanism and the social economy against housing: homes as a human life requirement jeff noonan1 and josephine watson2 abstract: the paper argues that human beings have a need for homes, not just housing. when this claim is unpacked at the proper level of complexity, it becomes apparent that the dominant mode of struggle for a right to housing is inadequate. not only does the struggle for the right to housing operate at a level of abstraction removed from the material demands of need-satisfaction, it also fails to specify exactly what a right to housing is a right to. the paper explains the three dimensions of the need for homes (the physical need for shelter, the social need for a space in which one feels at home, and the political need to participate in struggles and movements that lead to the satisfaction of the first two dimensions of the need for homes). the paper concludes with a brief discussion of the practical implications of the political-philosophical claims. keywords: rights; needs; homelessness; social determinants of health introduction more than a century ago, in 1844, friedrich engels observed that working class housing was, “badly planned, badly built, and kept in the worst condition” (engels 1969: 106). he traced the privations the working classes suffered directly to the way in which housing markets allowed unscrupulous landlords to prey upon workers’ need for space. since workers had a need for housing but lacked the ability to pay for high quality accommodations, landlords exploited their need by making 1 jeff nonnan is professor of philosophy at the university of windsor. email: jnoonan@uwindsor.ca 2 josephine watson is a clinical nursing instructor at the university of windsor. email: jwatson@uwindsor.ca against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 141 mailto:jnoonan@uwindsor.ca mailto:jwatson@uwindsor.ca profits from renting deplorable hovels. workers were crammed into “desolate, small, wretched huts, with no comforts whatsoever” (engels 1969: 290). workers were housed, one might say, but they lacked human homes. later, in 1872, engels published the housing question, in which he observed a direct link between poor health and housing among the working classes: “the so-called "poor districts" in which the workers are crowded together are the breeding places of all those epidemics” (engels 1872: 24). what engels demonstrated was that the problem of homelessness was not simply a problem of not having a roof over one’s head, but also of not having access to homes. despite the many changes that have occurred since engels’ early observations, the crisis of homelessness still persists, even in the world’s wealthiest countries. estimates put the number of men, women, and children in canada who experience homelessness at varying intervals and durations each year at 300,000, but we also know that many more canadians who migrate to urban areas suffer from inadequate housing and shelter. on any given night, 35,000 canadians will be absolutely homeless (gaetz, gulliver, & richter 2014; stock 2016). but as engels argued, homelessness means more than absolute lack of shelter. approximately 40% of people renting in ontario have difficulty affording their space, while over 150,000 households in ontario are on waiting lists for affordable housing, the average wait time being about 4 years (monsebraaten 2016; advocacy centre for tenants ontario 2016). yet under the flag of austerity, governments have stopped building public housing and cooperatives and have instead returned to a more or less unregulated real estate market to provide the “incentives” for private landlords to solve the housing crisis. as in victorian manchester, so too today: private landlords and developers have not solved the problem of homelessness, but left those who cannot afford to pay for living space out in the cold. when there is no political commitment to affordable housing, people become homeless. as a study conducted by one of the authors in windsor confirmed, a primary reason for homelessness is lack of income. forty-eight percent of the participants reported not having 142 | austerity urbanism and the social economy permanent housing due to inability to pay (33% receiving monies from ontario works (ow) and 100% receiving monies from ontario disability support program (odsp) (watson, crawley, kane 2016 ). however, inability to pay market prices does not mean absence of the need for the good of which one is deprived. the need for homes, as opposed to housing, i.e., a mere roof over one’s head is, we will argue, three-dimensional. it involves, first, the physical need for shelter. this physical need is combined with a second, psycho-social need for domestic space under one’s own control in which one is not only sheltered but “feels” at home. finally, in conditions where many people are deprived of homes, a third, political dimension opens up, the need to participate in struggles and movements against the structural forces that generate homelessness, i.e., to help satisfy one’s own needs through one’s own individual agency in concert with others who together manifest the collective agency needed to solve problems democratically. this needs-based approach to the problem of understanding the legitimacy of struggles for homes contrasts with the dominant rightsbased approach. typically, the struggle for homes has been and still is interpreted as a struggle for the human right to housing. while we do not disagree in any sectarian way with this approach, we will argue that the full implications of the struggle for homes are better understood from the standpoint of the principle that human beings need homes, not rights to housing. the needs-based approach better explicates the complexity of the life-value of homes and better illuminates the structural causes of homelessness. by better illuminating the structural causes, the needsbased approach points more clearly to what must be done to solve it: not struggles to secure a legal right in the abstract, but to take back urban space from control by capitalist developers, to make it truly public space in which the home-deprived can participate in the satisfaction of their need for homes. while our argument is not designed to shape short-term government policy or solve the nightly problem of homelessness, we do not think that it is without practical significance. of course, in making against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 143 this distinction between houses and homes, and specifying that the human need for housing is really a need for a home in the sense given above, we recognise that in emergencies the bare physical minimum is better than the alternative. when there is a fire, it is necessary to call the fire department. but social criticism and transformative change go beyond putting out immediate fires. they must also think of fire protection (addressing the systemic causes) and engineering new materials that are fireproof (providing a permanent solution to the problem). that means, in the case of homes, freeing land, building materials, and architectural and construction labour from their subordination to capitalist real estate markets and the appropriation of all urban space by for-profit development. our argument will be divided in three sections. in the first, we will briefly distinguish mere housing from homes and argue that the human need for homes is more complex than the mere physical need for shelter. this examination will set the stage for a more detailed explanation of the political differences between needs-based and rightsbased struggles to solve social problems, and an argument about why only a needs-based approach can solve the problem of homelessness in its full complexity. in the final section we will draw our analytical and critical arguments together by making some general, although still practically relevant, political conclusions regarding the overall significance of struggles against homelessness for the future of a democratic alternative to capitalism. homes, not housing our political argument turns on the claim that a needs-based approach to the problem of homelessness exposes important shortcomings of rights-based approaches. the first step to substantiating this claim is to explain the politically relevant sense of “need’ and the full complexity of the human need for homes. in any use, the idea of need is connected to the idea of necessity. when one says they need something, they are asserting that unless they have access to that thing, they will not 144 | austerity urbanism and the social economy be able to complete some goal or project. however, there are qualitative differences between the sorts of projects human beings can pursue. the qualitative differences are distinguished by the kind of necessity that characterises the project. if i want to watch the baseball game, i need a television or a computer, but there is no necessity to my having to watch the game, in the sense that nothing essential to my life and well-being is lost if i do not watch it. people sometimes speak in hyperbole and say: “if i miss that game, i will die.” since they go on living, it is obvious that they do not literally mean what they say. however, there are things that we do need in this exigent way. if we are deprived of oxygen, or nutritious food, or water we will die. thus, when we say we need food in order to live, we are not saying that we have a contingent need for an instrumental input into some project we could pursue or not pursue, but rather that our being able to access that good (or another which meets the same requirement) is a matter of absolute necessity (assuming only that we want to continue living). when we use the term “need” in our argument it is in this exigent way. we follow the definition worked out by john mcmurtry: “n is a need, if, and only if, and to the extent that, deprivation of n always leads to a reduction of organic capability” (mcmurtry 1998: 164). these needs, in contrast to what one might call instrumental needs relevant to a given contingent project, are non-optional life-requirements because, if they are not satisfied, the person suffers objective harm in the form of loss or reduction of the human life-capacities to think, move, feel, relate to others, and act as a social self-conscious agent. the harm is objective in the sense that it cannot be overcome simply through changing one’s selfinterpretation. if i feel harmed because i missed the ballgame, i can revise my self-interpretation to convince myself that watching baseball is a waste of time, so that i was better off missing it. but if my brain is damaged by oxygen deprivation, i cannot revise my self interpretation to make that brain damage disappear. mcmurtry’s definition recognizes degrees and different concrete forms of harm. not every form of deprivation leads to death or serious against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 145 cognitive impairment. moreover, human beings are integrally natural and social, which means that we have a more complex set of needs than other animals, who for the most part require only physical inputs to maintain their health. human beings have raw physical needs like oxygen, but they also have psycho-social needs, like loving attention; we have basic organic life-requirements like water, but also political needs like being able to participate in the determination of the laws we will be compelled to obey. elsewhere one of the authors has developed a systematic account of the full range of fundamental human natural and socio-cultural needs, but it would take us too far afield to repeat those arguments here (noonan 2012: 46-88). instead, let us content ourselves with the general point that in the case of our physical needs it is our health that is impaired if we fail to meet them. in the case of social, political, and cultural needs, failure to satisfy them impairs the development of our social-self-conscious agency. since it is obvious that human beings have the potential to become social-self-conscious agents, that is, subjects capable of determining their own goals and projects, harm to our social self-conscious agency is a real and objective harm, analogous to the organic harms that result from the deprivation of our physical needs. when we turn now to homes, the need for them has three interrelated dimensions: a physical need for shelter, a psycho-social need for a home as a dwelling space for personal freedom, and a political need to participate in the processes by which homes are obtained and built. we will discuss each element of the complex need for homes in turn. deprivation of our need for shelter causes a myriad of health problems. we can explicate the complex set of health problems homelessness causes through the social determinants of health. these are the social and economic conditions which shape lives and determine the health of individuals and societies in so far as they regulate the availability, quality, and quantity of social and economic resources that people need as socialorganic beings (mikkonen & raphael 2010). we use them to help explain the damages that homelessness causes because they have revolutionized 146 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the field of public health by politicising it. they break public health out of an abstract biologistic conception of health and its conditions by revealing, a) that the incidence of disease is not only a function of pathogens, but overall life-conditions; b) that inequality of access to key social determinants negatively impacts health; and c) health is not simply optimal organic functioning but a holistic capacity to act as a free subject in which physical and mental capacities, social opportunities and biological functions are integrally united. the social determinants of health model emerged as researchers sought to explain how experiences of daily living conditions in contexts of structural inequality of access to basic life-requirement satisfiers influenced the health of individuals within a population (mikkonen & raphael 2010). the term “social determinants of health” was first used by blane, brunner, and wilkinson (1996) who were expanding upon then canadian minister of national health and welfare marc lalonde’s, a new perspective on the health of canadians health field concept (health and welfare canada 1974). since 1996, the actual social determinants of health have been variously theorized in academic literature and numerous national and international policy documents (rootman & o’neill 2012). access to homes has been identified as an independent variable for poorer health outcomes and is thus a key social determinant of health (mikkonen & raphael 2010). lack of adequate and safe housing and the experience of material and social deprivation contribute to increased stress that affects physical and psychological health. (galabuzi 2009). health complications are associated with long periods of stress, especially when individuals feel that their ability to control their situation is threatened and limited. as lippert and lee (2015) confirm in their study of coping, stress, and mental health among homeless people, it is the cumulative stress that impacts psychological health most dramatically. empirical research has established beyond a shadow of a doubt that cumulative stress causes heart disease, diabetes, and chronic illnesses (marmot & wilkinson 2006; mcewen 2004; mikkonen & raphael 2010). against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 147 when we look at homelessness through the lens of the social determinants of health, we can understand the true damage it causes to people’s life and well-being. let us return to watson’s study (which was rooted in the social determinants of health model) in order to substantiate these claims empirically. the broad aspects explored in this study pertaining to housing were: age when first homeless, number of years homeless, reasons for not having permanent housing, educational level, employment history and income. the earlier homelessness began, the more severe the negative impacts on physical, psychological and social development, because children and youth are especially vulnerable to the health consequences of the material and social deprivations involved in homelessness. the people in her study reported the following medical diagnoses: dental problems (33%), cardiac (29%), respiratory (24%), hepatitis c positive (24%), hiv positive (5%), and foot problems (3%); psychological diagnoses most prevalent were anxiety (57%) and depression (52%). forty-eight percent of the participants reported both anxiety and depression. while it may be easy to calculate medical and psychological diagnoses through self-report, it is not so easy to calculate the health toll on an individual’s overall ability to realize their lifecapacities in conditions of social and material deprivation. the study found that all the participants experienced social exclusion, which diminished their ability to access quality social supports (they felt ashamed), increased risky behaviours (especially drug use), and compromised physical and psychological health. participants described various forms of marginalization, for example being restricted from shelter use due to substance abuse history (watson, crawley, kane 2016). as important as the physical dimensions of human beings are, we are not just bodies with physical needs, but thinking-feeling agents who interpret and evaluate the physical spaces in which we live and discriminate between places in which we “feel at home” and places in which we feel like strangers. a shelter, let us say, is the material basis out of which homes are built, but homes depend upon feeling at home in the shelter in which one dwells. if you couch-surf at a friend’s place you are 148 | austerity urbanism and the social economy sheltered, but if you do not feel at home, the psycho-social need for a home has not been met. hence, there is a difference between being sheltered and having a home. henri lefebvre makes the point eloquently: “dwelling, a social and yet poetic act, generating poetry and art work, fades in the face of housing, an economic function. the ‘home,’ so clearly evoked and celebrated in the work of gaston bachelard, likewise vanishes: the magic place of childhood, the home as womb and shell…confronted with functional housing, constructed according to technological dictates, inhabited by users in homogenous, shattered space, it sinks and fades into the past” (lefebvre 2014: 766). just as the unemployed, in order to live fulfilling human lives do not need (as the mantra goes) “jobs” but meaningful, non-alienated labour, so too, the homeless, to satisfy their need in a fully human way, do not need “housing” (i.e., any shelter whatsoever) but homes. that is, they need a private space within social space in which they feel at one with the space. feeling at home enables people to gather themselves, reflect, relax, and renew themselves for the hard business of living. in social contexts in which a significant number of people are deprived of homes as both shelter and as dwelling space, a third dimension of need opens up: the political need to be engaged in movements to overcome (or at least mitigate) the structural causes of deprivation. human beings have political needs to participate in the determination of the forces and laws that structure their own lives because they have the capacity to become subjects, self-determining social self-conscious agents. if we were nothing but the objects of natural and social laws and forces, there would be no need to participate in the determination of those forces and laws, because we would lack all capacity to shape them. we keep our cat safe and secure, but we do not consult her about the household budget, because she lacks the capacity to participate in a meaningful discussion of alternative priorities. but human beings do have the capacity to participate in political discussions, and if we are deprived of the opportunity to satisfy the need to help shape those forces that shape our lives, we are harmed in our social selfagainst housing: homes as a human life requirement | 149 conscious agency. this harm takes the form of alienation, exploitation, and oppression. this point is relevant to the problem of homelessness because it means that merely providing housing for the homeless (shelters, public housing) without involving them in the satisfaction of their needs might solve the problem of shelter, but leaves unaddressed the deeper dimension of oppression, because it leaves the need-deprived in the status of mere objects of benevolent social policy and not (as the non-need deprived think of themselves) self-determining agents who satisfy their needs through their own individual and cooperative efforts. in order to understand this point more fully, we must shift to examine the political differences between a rights and needs-based approach to solving social problems. the political implications of needs-based struggle as with most other major social problems, the dominant approach to the solution of the problem of homelessness is to remind governments that housing has been recognized as a human right and to demand that they make good their rhetorical commitment to human rights in general by allocating funds to build affordable housing. in the case of housing, article 25(1) of the universal declaration of human rights asserts that housing is a human right, as does the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (1966/1976). in 2007, miloon kothari, united nations special rapporteur for the right to adequate housing reprimanded canada for its homelessness crisis and for not fulfilling its obligations to the covenant. in february 2016, canada was again criticized by the un agency responsible for monitoring enforcement of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (1966/1967) for its lack of progress in solving the problem. the report criticised canada for the “absence of a national housing strategy; inadequate housing subsidy within the social assistance benefit; shortage of social housing units; increased evictions related to rental arrears; increased numbers of homeless and lack of homelessness prevention; shortage of emergency 150 | austerity urbanism and the social economy shelters; laws that penalize people for being homeless; lack of adequate housing for people with psycho-social and intellectual disabilities; and the poor housing conditions of canada’s indigenous peoples” (monsebraaten 2016). we of course concur with this criticism of decades of government inattention to the growing problem of homelessness, and do not disagree, in any dogmatic way, with the appeal to the right as a tactic of shaming governments into resuming their responsibilities for public investment in affordable housing. however, we want to argue that if access to housing is a right, it is a right because human beings have the sort of complex need for homes discussed in the previous section. if we accept that a) people have this complex need for homes and b) that it is systematically ignored by the normal operation of real estate markets and government policy, then c) it follows that homelessness is a structural problem of the normal operations of the socio-economic system, which prioritises profitable investment over need satisfaction. since, as we will now argue, rights are also a normal part of this same system, they cannot, on their own, solve the problem of the unmet complex need for homes. thus, in order to understand the limits of a rights-based solution to the problem of homelessness, we must understand the role rights have historically played in capitalism, and in order to understand the role they have played in capitalism, we must think of capitalist society not only as a functional economic system, a mode of producing and distributing commodities, but also as a value-system which legitimates its way of producing and distributing commodities as good for those who live within it. few if any societies have ever reproduced themselves solely on the basis of coercion, force, and overt political violence. human societies, even the most oppressive, typically appeal to sets of norms that determine for a given socio-cultural system what is good and what is bad, and identify their social system with the unique conditions that allow that good to flourish (mcmurtry 1998: 15). the threat of force against opponents is thus legitimated by appeal to the good that opponents threaten to ruin by their oppositional activity. if a majority can be against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 151 convinced of the legitimacy of the value system, they will comply with its demands, making the need for overt violence unnecessary, and also creating citizens who will protect the integrity of the system against opponents, even in cases where, objectively speaking, the opponents make demands which are in the interests of the citizens. liberaldemocratic capitalist societies are unique in the history of social organization for building in self-correcting mechanisms in the form of means of legitimate protest and social change. rights have, since the eighteenth century, been essential to this self-correcting mechanism. the rights of citizens establish that which citizens may legitimately demand of their governments, and the formal procedures of democratic politics are the accepted means for pursuing these protests. in one sense, the legitimacy of protest and opposition represents a great historical victory over alien and oppressive political and social power. it comes, however, with built in limitations. marx was the first to understand the systematic limitations of citizenship rights as the political means to achieve the social conditions for human freedom. in on the jewish question, he demonstrated that the condition of granting citizenship rights was their separation from the “private” economic sphere. in the political realm people are considered equal citizens, but this equal citizenship did not entail material equality in the sphere of production (marx 1977: 153). on the contrary, in the sphere of production other laws prevail: the laws of self-interest, pursuit of individual advantage, and the distribution of income and advantage according to market forces (marx 1986: 43). while the development of social rights in the twentieth century ameliorated to some extent (in the wealthiest capitalist countries) the gross deprivations of the industrial revolution and victorian capitalism, they do not contest the dynamics of the capitalist system as a whole, its prioritization of private profit of comprehensive and universal need satisfaction, or legitimate the mobilization of oppressed and exploited and alienated themselves to transform the structures that cause systematic need-deprivation in the first place (wood 2002: 130-1). as evidence, consider that explosion of 152 | austerity urbanism and the social economy inequality in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, which did not require the formal revocation of any citizenship rights, but used political tactics to weaken the power of workers to resist and protect their interests by intensifying competition between them for jobs and investment. where market forces are allowed more or less free play, the prices for a given commodity can rise beyond the ability of a large number of people to pay for it, with the result that, in cases where the commodity is a life-requirement, people are harmed because they are deprived of that which they need. when this structure of deprivation obtains, the deprived have three general alternatives. on the one hand, people can be left to suffer the consequences of their deprivation, as the homeless typically are today. on the other hand, governments can use public policy to meet the need, as they define it and to the extent that they feel it is necessary to present themselves as champions of people’s rights and to maintain social stability. this alternative is clearly better than the first. still, it is distinct from the third, which occurs where the need-deprived mobilize themselves, define the extent of their needs and what they regard as adequate means of satisfying them, and demand access to the resources that would be required to satisfy them. the various direct action struggles that the ontario coalition against poverty has organized over the years to combat homelessness in toronto (especially the occupation of empty buildings) is a small but significant example of the sort of movement we have in mind. let us now contrast the implications of rights and needs-based approaches to the problem of homelessness. the first point to note is that the right (to housing, in this case) is asserted as a counter-claim against the logic of production for profit, but it does not contest the legitimacy of the value system whose normal outcomes – society-wide deprivation – it tries to correct. just as in the case of the constitutions of liberal-democratic states, the universal declaration of human rights also recognises the right to private property, without distinguishing personal property for use from universally required life-resources. where the latter: land, water, against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 153 minerals, productive apparatuses, and labour power are allowed to become private property, the products of their combination determined by considerations of profitability, and the acquisition of those products determined by ability to pay, there will always be crises of needdeprivation, as the history of capitalism attests. the problem is that the appeal to the right to the need-satisfying good is met by a counter-appeal to the right to dispose of private property as the owner sees fit. the right of the home-deprived to public housing is met by the counter-right of those with capital to dispose of it as they see fit in projects that return profit to themselves. where moral obligation is understood in the language of rights, duty extends only so far as other people’s rights over us. where private property is a legal and accepted institution, individual rights to the goods that will satisfy their needs do not extend to other people’s personal property. if i am hungry and you have a sandwich, i have no right to half. the structure of moral obligation becomes a problem when private property extends to the control of basic natural resources and vast pools of social wealth, such that one group’s holdings prevent other groups from satisfying their needs. those groups will have no legally actionable right against those who have (legitimately, within the rules of the game) acquired that property, and thus will not be able to satisfy their needs just by acting on their rights because their right does not override the opposed rights of private property. right is met by right in this contradictory way because the “rights-ground of social morality” has co-evolved with the capitalist mode of production (noonan 2006: xvi-xvii). a ground of social morality is the basis of legitimate claims on social wealth and natural resources. in capitalism, rights (legally actionable entitlements) serve as the basis of legitimate claims on social resources. however, these rights come in two forms: the right of exclusionary private property in life-resources represented by money, and the right of universal life-requirement satisfaction of those systemically deprived of needed goods. the problem, from a practical perspective, is that if there is to be public provision 154 | austerity urbanism and the social economy legitimated by appeal to people’s needs, there must be funds for public provision, which can only be acquired through taxation. those with surplus wealth will resist paying higher taxes and legitimate their resistance by appeal to their right to private property. moreover, if there are economic forces (such as those unleashed by globalization) that create pressure to reduce marginal tax rates on the rich, then funds for public investment can dry up, without there being any formal violation of anyone’s rights under the rights-ground of social morality, since it does not specify which of the two countervailing sets of rights are to win in any conflict, but rules out extra-legal struggle to resolve them. in these sorts of cases, democratic progress depends upon the mobilization of social forces against exclusionary rights to private property. in these cases, a different social morality is brought into play, the social morality of need-satisfaction. where the structure of rights blocks access to needed resources, it becomes a means of legitimating objective harm. since it allows the harms of need-deprivation to proceed unchecked, its own legitimacy comes into question. its legitimacy is challenged by social movements which do not appeal to authorities or experts to satisfy their rights for them, but draw on their own social power to secure access to and control over the resources that they need to satisfy their own rights. this form of organizing is consistent with the master democratic norm of self-determination, and is, in fact, the only way that needs can be satisfied in an empowering, as opposed to paternalistic, way. to put this crucial point another way, only a needs-based social morality exposes the real problem with the capitalist value system: it subordinates the life-value of goods and services to their money-value. the basic life-value of any good is the contribution that it makes to the satisfaction of non-optional needs (mcmurtry 1998: 164). when lifevalue is subordinated to money-value, people can be deprived of that which they need and the economy still judged good, because the basis of judgement is not the satisfaction of people’s life-requirements, but return on investment to the owners of capital. such is the case with housing against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 155 markets as currently constituted. hundreds of thousands of people cannot afford homes, but if house prices are rising, the markets are judged good by those who profit from them. occasionally (as with the vancouver foreign buyers tax) governments will intervene to cool markets in order to prevent the emergence of bubbles and the deeper social problems they can cause, but this sort of regulation is distinct from a structural solution to the homelessness crisis. putting the problem in terms of life-requirement deprivation also highlights a second limitation of the rights-based approach. the universal declaration asserts that housing is a right, but it does not further define the conditions that count as satisfying that right. all rights-statements tend to be programmatic and abstract. a discussion of human life-requirements, by contrast, cannot be carried out without reflection on the nature of the life that has the requirements. in other words, it is never enough to assert that “x is a life-requirement,” one must always unpack the life-value of x in relation to human life to explain just what it is that x contributes to life which, if absent, would cause harm. we tried to provide this complex unpacking in the case of the need for homes in section one. if we content ourselves with the assertion that ‘housing is a right,’ it remains an open question what is required to satisfy the right. does any sort of ‘roof over one’s head’ constitute satisfaction of the right? are the rights of social assistance recipients housed in motels while they await public housing violated? there is no straightforward answer to these questions if we focus only on the right to housing, because it does not explain why it is that human beings need housing, beyond the obvious that we require shelter. when the needdeprived mobilise to explain just what they need, and demand the resources to satisfy that need through their own labour and intelligence, this problem disappears because they tell everyone exactly what they require to satisfy their need. the struggle against homelessness: general implications 156 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the orthodox neo-liberal solution to the housing crisis through market-incentives to developers not only has not solved the problem, it ignores completely the voices of the homeless. although it does not concern people who are completely without homes, but rather working class people living in public housing and vulnerable to market forces, the example of the on-going re-development of regent park in toronto illustrates this point clearly. the left-liberal press has trumpeted the redevelopment of regent park, canada’s first social public housing development, as a great success. starting in 2002 the toronto community housing corporation [tchc] committed to the revitalization of several social and public housing locations and regent park became the most celebrated experiment. the introduction of condominiums to turn what had been a low-income, ethnically diverse working class community into a mixed income neighborhood was sold as serving the interest of the original residents, even though they were never fully consulted on the plans, much less involved in their realization. in her critique, august does allow the voices of those who were displaced during the redevelopment of regent park to speak, and they were not supportive of the project. when they were asked, residents reported only minimal consultation from housing authorities. moreover, they expressed the fear that if they spoke out against the redevelopment they could lose access to the housing that they needed. august described a sense of powerlessness among tenants of regent park to resist what they could see were not benevolent forces of social improvement but rather the market power of gentrification bent on displacing them to make room for higher money-value developments. as she explains, “residents were given the option of moving directly into brand-new off units, rather than (old) temporary locations units. tenants who did this, however, gave up their right to return to a replacement unit in the redeveloped rp” (august 2014: 1327). conveniently for the redevelopers, the physical displacement of the original residents changed the cultural value of the neighborhood. from being perceived as a dangerous slum, it now appeared as yet another hip new urban space, a against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 157 change which encourages further displacement of the original residents as more and more wealthier people feel safe enough to move to what would formerly have been a no-go area for them. the fact that residents were encouraged to leave leads stefan kipfer and jason petrunia to interpret the redevelopment of regent park and analogous projects elsewhere as a move to “re-colonize” public space by and for market forces that drives the “re-vitalization agenda.” they argue that “property, class, and race are first articulated by strategies of recommodifcation: privatising land ownership and socializing the risk of private investment in redevelopment efforts. the chair of the toronto community housing corporation (tchc) praised the project...and declares regent park ‘open for business.’ public land is to be leased or sold to developers…two prime city blocks, which now constitute prime obstacles to the gentrification of the east downtown district, are being reconnected to real estate markets with the prime objective of maximizing land rent. in the words of housing company chief executive derek balantyne, regent park is ‘prime real estate that will draw higherincome people’ ” (kipfer and petrunia 2009: 122). when the individual and collective agency of the exploited and oppressed is ignored, and their “needs” defined for them by the agents of market forces, they become mere instruments of those forces: useful to the extent that they can be exploited, and obstacles to be removed when they cannot. the significance of this example for the struggle against homelessness is as follows. human beings are not automobiles who simply need to be sheltered from the elements, they are integral biosocial beings who need a space in which they feel at home, which is under their control, and which they have played an active role in procuring. for the homeless, this need takes the form not only of the need for homes, but the political need to participate in the struggle to provide homes for themselves. hence, there can be no complete solution to the problem of homelessness that does not engage the individual and collective agency of the homeless themselves. while canada certainly needs a national housing strategy and massive re-investment in public housing, this 158 | austerity urbanism and the social economy strategy and re-investment cannot repeat the approach of the post-war era, which focussed exclusively on the social need to house people, and not the complex need that human beings have for homes. satisfying that need takes more than low-cost apartment buildings, it requires that the home-deprived themselves participate in the satisfaction of their human needs for homes. one very small scale example of the type of participation we have in mind started in toronto a decade ago under the leadership of the parkdale area recreation group. it was able to acquire and empty building with the assistance of the ministry of housing. homeless parkdale residents, many of them psychiatric survivors, then helped renovate the space as well as draw up a constitution defining the rules by which residents would abide (noonan 2006: 245-6). by helping to create the space they would inhabit and collectively determining the rules of living there, empty physical space became a home: a psychic space felt to be free and safe and regulated not by the impersonal forces of the market but to self-conscious values of the people who lived there. as the parc example show, homes need not be walls that separate people from each other. the walls of a home are not so much exclusionary in a pernicious sense as material conditions of free self-determination of one’s living environment. the parc example is very small, to be sure, and cannot be a universal model for the satisfaction of the need for homes. if the underlying forces driving homelessness in canada’s major cities today are the skyrocketing real estate values that make investment in condominium construction preferable to low-cost rental accommodation, and if these forces are driving what kipfer and petrunia called above the re-colonization of public space by private developers, the systematic solution must involve protecting and extending public space. struggles for the “right to the city” must become struggles to reclaim urban spaces from the forces of privatization and their constructive use to satisfy the complex need for homes that we have defined (harvey 2012: 24). the immediate form that struggle takes is a struggle for against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 159 expanded and democratized public services. implicit in such demands is, as carlo fanelli recently argued, the system-changing demand for “noncommodified labour and services…housing, public transit, community centres, and other social services” (fanelli 2016: 79). if that claim is true, then it follows that the demand for democratized public services is, at least implicitly, a struggle against the domination of human life by market forces, and therefore the domination of human beings by other human beings who control the resources from which private wealth is produced and amassed. this struggle, to be ultimately successful, must not only influence government policy and increase public spending, it must begin to re-appropriate universally required resources and democratise public institutions so that both serve the fundamental purpose of need-satisfaction, for the sake of enabling all people to realise their life-capacities in projects that are both individually meaningful and socially valuable for other people. that struggle – to create a society in which social wealth was used to satisfy needs and work was the nonalienated expression of our intellectual and creative capacities – was once called the struggle for socialism. whatever one wants to call it today, the mass deprivation of so basic a human need as the need for homes shows that canada very much needs a renewed such struggle today. references august, m. 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(2002). the origins of capitalism: a longer view. london: verso. against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 163 http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b36c.html interventions austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal pierre hamel1 and grégoire autin2 introduction in montreal, the challenge of austerity is modulated by the way the local state is undergoing a process of restructuring3. the divisions of power between federal, provincial and local components in the canadian federal system, subject to the constitution, leave municipalities with few options outside of finding acceptable compromises with the provincial government. this is because “municipalities in canada have no autonomous, local and democratic constitutional standing. they have a constitutional position within the realm of the provincial omnicompetence” (lightbody 2006: 39). as a consequence, collaborative governance at the local level is not something new. even though a stark division between the different tiers of the state regarding the emergence of an austerity regime prevails, a varied picture of it is given by social and economic actors. but why do opponents have difficulty in organizing against governmental policies and discriminatory measures around the neoliberal ideology of austerity? on a general theoretical level, the hypothesis we would like to explore is the following: based on a weberian understanding of capitalism described as “slavery without a 1 pierre hamel is a professor in the department of sociology at the université de montréal. his current work focuses on public debate and deliberative democracy, as well as social movements and collective action. email: pierre.hamel@umontreal.ca 2 grégoire autin is a phd student at the department of sociology at the université de montréal. he works on social movements, alternative practices and prefigurative politics. email: gregoire.autin@umontreal.ca 3 the research from which this publication derives is funded by the uk economic and social research council (ref: es/l012898/1) collaborative governance under austerity: an eight-case comparative study. the authors would like to thank jonathan davies who is the principal investigator of this research. see http://www.dmu.ac.uk/esrcausterity. austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 165 mailto:pierre.hamel@umontreal.ca mailto:gregoire.autin@umontreal.ca https://outlook.umontreal.ca/owa/redir.aspx?c=cjkfvohs5yzs12yk5_xgf7wupjmkmpzumcpilj9dnvz9tyhaqpptca..&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.dmu.ac.uk%2fesrcausterity master”, one should not forget that “from an ethical standpoint, it [capitalism] can be contested only as an institution, not on the level of economic actors' personal behaviour” (löwy 2013: 107). we think that this can help understanding why opponents of the neoliberal ideology of austerity, as elaborated by the quebec liberal party, have difficulties in organizing for blocking governmental policies and discriminatory measures coming from austerity policies. based on a series of interviews,4 this article highlights the difficulty of combatting austerity measures implemented by the liberals since their return to power in 2014 at the provincial level. this difficulty pertains mainly to what austerity really is, how blurry its consequences really are, and how fragmented the different actors are in challenging austerity among themselves. austerity is before all an ideology. if the practical and negative consequences of it are mentioned, most of the time, the assessment of its consequences are most difficult to grasp. however, this remark should not erase the divisions between, on the one hand, actors directly related to the management of public infrastructures and/or the promotion of the business milieu – including government officials – and on the other hand those coming from the voluntary sector, community organizations and the labour movement. in montreal, the position taken by the local authority has been driven by ‘opportunism’, reflecting the configuration of power relations among the actors having a say in local politics. these circumstances must be reconciled with what has been going on at the two upper tiers of the state. on one hand, the recent federal election of october 2015 brought justin trudeau and the liberal party of canada to power, introducing a major shift in federal policy about public debt and public spending. the 4 between october and december 2015 we did 11 interviews with public sector community workers and activists, trade unionists, public managers, one elected official and a representative of a pressure group linked to the business milieu. we also followed the political debate around austerity issues in canada. this debate has taken a new orientation since the federal election with the coming to power of the liberal party defending a pro-keynesian type of approach. 166 | austerity urbanism and the social economy newly elected government thus replaced the conservative party who had been in power for almost ten years (from february 6, 2006 to november 4, 2015) with the mandate of restraining growth in public expenditures and pursuing a policy of austerity, and instead adopted a keynesian approach. on the other hand, at the provincial level, the québec liberal party, in power since april 2014, has set as its task reducing the provincial budget deficit. once in power, premier philippe couillard decided to implement drastic measures for cutting expenses in health care and education systems, welfare programs and salaries of government employees. instead of qualifying his policy as one of austerity, he preferred to say that his approach was characterized by “rigour” (rigueur in french). the meaning and impact of austerity thus largely depends on which tier is implementing those policies. this makes it even more difficult to appraise the effective consequences of public austerity measures, especially if we go beyond narratives and representations, and pay attention to effective policies, programs and projects. in that respect, local representatives, as it may happen in other federal systems (but to what extent?), have to play one upper tier of the state against the other or, when possible, collaborate with both of them despite the presence of conflicting dominant ideological beliefs. meanings of austerity austerity is a notion with an abundance of meanings, even though it is fraught with a strong neoliberal connotation. everyone was well aware of this reality among our respondents. beyond this, a majority of them expressed a real concern when it comes to the repercussions of policy measures adopted in the name of austerity towards the poor and/or households with low paying jobs. in the case of trade union representatives, austerity is an occasion to continue the fight against those who are well positioned in the economic system. thus, a trade union representative did not hesitate to combine it with the deterioration of public services, but also with the slogan coined by the occupy austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 167 movement in reference to the one percent. in that respect, it is necessary to combat austerity: “(…) of course i see this as a necessary struggle to put an end to this, this type of politics, so that we can aim for the well-being, the common well-being, instead of enriching a single community” (montreal-tu1-f). several respondents shared this principle. even if they do not agree from the outset about the most efficient strategy to overcome the negative repercussions of austerity measures, they nonetheless express similar concerns about its main issue. there is no doubt, not only on the side of the more vociferous left but more largely on the political spectrum, that austerity coincides with a conservative vision of society. in that respect, according to a planner working at the city-regional scale: “austerity, it’s (…) a conservative approach which aims at reducing public administrations’ costs (…) and justifies an economic context or using an economic context as a pretext to impose this kind of public policies. but it is a choice. it’s wrong to say it is objective. it’s a political choice. fundamentally, it’s a conservative political choice” (montreal-pm3-m). nonetheless, in that respect, austerity needs to be contextualized. as a community worker recalled, talking in terms of austerity when facing major government deficit and debt ratios is one thing, and much different from the one encountered in quebec. what is at stake here is clearly the promotion of a different vision of the state, in comparison, for example, to the “quebec model” – a social model of development – elaborated during the so-called ‘quiet revolution’. ultimately, what should the state look like? “if you ask me what is, for me, austerity, relating to my culture, my background, it’s a different vision from that of the state. we want more space for the private sector. we want to change things. we want to reduce the size of the state, but this is not because of an economic crisis 168 | austerity urbanism and the social economy situation or in front of some urgency (…). we really have a different vision of what the state should be. what should social politics be?” (montreal-vse2-m). the idea or the project of reforming the state is not recent. in fact, it has been observed in most western countries since the middle of the 1970s. at that time, the legitimacy given to the state for the regulation of modern societies seemed already functionally inadequate or unable either to fulfill expectations of social mobility or to meet successfully a number of social demands. the first signs of shortness of breath of a “statecentred” model of governance were already occurring (hamel & jouve 2006). but those were only the first steps of a long journey for state restructuring, one that has not been completely achieved. the current situation – the one prevailing since the quebec election of the liberal government of philippe couillard – is the continuation of a tradition of liberal influence, carrying out a reading that the state is oversized, while overtaxed citizens are at risk of being attracted to a populist discourse. this is the thesis elaborated by the economists micklethwait and wooldridge (2015) who wrote the fourth revolution. the global race to reinvent the state. inspired by their thesis, couillard came to power with a mission to reinvent the quebec state. as he mentioned in his inaugural speech as premier: “international experience shows that simple austerity without structural reforms and growth measure can slow down the economy and worsen the situation” (quoted by dutrisac 2016). from then on, his intention was not only to implement a culture of “rigour” as he liked to say – instead of referring to austerity as such – but, in a more daring manner, to transform in depth the nature of the state. as such, it is not simply a passing policy but a more profound historical process of restructuring the state. where does austerity “bite”? at the outset, one has to keep in mind four points. first, in comparison to other north american cities in terms of economic dynamism, montreal is trying to catch up as is revealed by standard indicators like the high rate of immigrants’ unemployment in comparison with non-immigrants, or the weak rate of austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 169 university graduates per capita.5 nonetheless, one can say that montreal is currently experiencing an economic catching-up (institut du québec 2015). second, the erosion of montreal’s position within the canadian economic system was aggravated by difficulties of adaption to the new economy, causing a lack of job opportunities for new immigrants. thirdly, montreal remains a liveable city and this is due to a mix of several elements: a) the peaceful cohabitation of diverse communities (germain and rose 2000); b) the strong vitality of its civil society including the community and/or voluntary sector; c) the presence of a distinctive and original cultural life that was originally fueled by linguistic divide. fourth, one can mention the presence of lesser social inequalities in comparison to other canadian provinces (desrosiers 2015). and this is due to the presence of stronger social policies, including more redistributive ones. taking these several elements into account, can we better understand how social actors are able to face austerity policies and austerity measures? the main narratives link austerity measures to the 2008 crisis. in the case of canada, the banking system was less vulnerable than in the u.s. and was therefore less hard hit by the crisis. however, as the canadian economy is largely entrenched in what is going on south of the border, indirectly the impact of the u.s. financial crisis was still felt in canada, especially in tourism. on the whole, there was no direct relation between the financial crisis of 2008 in the u.s. and major cuts in canadian social programs or public services. up to november 2015, it was more the neoliberal type of orientation taken by the harper 5 however, such a representation, defining cities as a collective actor proves misleading. indirectly, this is suggested by regime theory where elite or dominant actors are defined as being able to impose a specific urban regime, or to exert their hegemony over urban development perspectives. such a vision should be criticized. at the same time, this critique must be qualified. urban milieus can become creative places and this is related to synergy between a geographical environment and individual competencies. in that respect, a particular city has necessarily a unique personality due to historical and cultural factors. see gunnar törnqvist (1985). 170 | austerity urbanism and the social economy government at the federal level – based on ideological principles – that was a concern, largely in tune with the position taken by the couillard government since he came to power. the process of state restructuring and its multiple and fragmented consequences austerity and welfare reform in montreal, in quebec and in canada is an ongoing issue that dates back to the crisis of the welfare state as it has occurred or been deployed in oecd countries since the middle of the 1970s. as pierre rosanvallon (1981) has correctly underlined, this crisis is before all a legitimacy crisis. for that matter it is particularly difficult to grasp, especially in a federal context like canada, where responsibilities are divided between the two upper tiers of the state. in addition, as mentioned previously, even though municipalities are subordinated to provincial powers, their direct and indirect responsibilities regarding welfare are growing. this can be explained less by internal factors inherent to the canadian federal system than through globalizing trends bringing the local scene in the forefront of economic and social transformations. nowadays, the repercussions of the welfare state crisis are highly diversified depending on reference groups. but few dimensions of the welfare state have remained the same. even the principles of social solidarity underlying the ideal model for the provision of social protection are no longer quite what they used to be. in that respect, the problématique of governance can highlight the deadlocks of this model or at least some of the aspects. in this regard, even if this is difficult to assess in a very specific way – and in the short term – a number of respondents have mentioned that the lowest income households and/or individuals were the most severely affected by the austerity measures and policies taken by the liberal provincial government following its election in 2014. this is mentioned in reference to areas like social assistance, housing conditions, health and education, but also in connection with public services generally speaking. in these areas, the decision to cut austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 171 investments and/or jobs – particularly regarding the provision of personal services – necessarily has consequences in the short or medium term on those who are most vulnerable. what occurred in these areas took different paths. it ranged from a reduction of budgets for centers for early childhood (cec) to a decline of investments in voluntary sector or community groups, to new rules for financing those who are eligible for social assistance program, and offering new working conditions to the workers of the public sector, asking them to “do their part” for reducing the public debt of the provincial government. but it included also some transformations in the management of public services through the abolition of social representation mechanisms. incidentally, it has been the case in the health system, in terms of regional cooperation and local economic development. what should also be taken into account is the major restructuring of employment. work conditions are increasingly precarious and this is a direct consequence of a reorganization of the economic system at a local and global scale. as mentioned by one respondent involved in the labour movement, it is becoming more and more difficult for workers: “montréal was effected at different levels. firstly, many people lost their job. secondly, there’s a high percentage of workers here in montréal with precarious jobs who were affected by the crisis. this crisis further threatened their work conditions. (…) from the top of my head, i think that 41% of the workers in montreal live under the poverty line” (montreal-tu1-f). it is a well-known fact that montreal – starting with low paid workers and single parent families – is deeply affected by poverty. and this poverty is highly concentrated in low-income neighborhoods, even though the same is observed in the two other largest census metropolitan areas (cmas) in canada: toronto and vancouver. 172 | austerity urbanism and the social economy nonetheless, it is in montreal that this concentration is higher. this was documented in the national household census of 2011: “montreal had the greatest number of low-income neighborhoods. of all 478 low-income neighborhoods in canada, 35.8% or 171 were in montreal. toronto and vancouver accounted respectively for 15.7% and 7.1% of these neighborhoods. the three largest cmas accounted for 63.1% of the low-income population living in lowincome neighborhoods. of the total 656,000 low-income persons living in low-income neighborhoods, montreal had the highest share (34.3%), with toronto having 19.7% and vancouver, 9.1%. a similar picture emerged for the very low-income neighbourhoods, even though the ranking changed slightly (...)” (statistics canada 2011: 6). this situation has persisted over many decades, dating back to the 1950s and 1960s. it is related to the difficulty of integrating the labour market, but it is also linked to the opportunity of finding available housing since gentrification processes – even if gentrification is much less pervasive than in vancouver or toronto – are changing the social and ethnic composition of neighborhoods. according to one of our respondents working as a volunteer with a community group in the environmental sector, these ongoing transformations related to gentrification have dire repercussions on local populations in terms of increasing poverty: “i’ve been working since 1984 in saint-henri [a working class neighbourhood]. what we saw was, first of all, a change in the population. there have been no notable new constructions to start with, which is not the case in other neighborhood. however, it is visible, there has been something like a change in the population. the question is: what happen to those with little income? here we’re not only talking about those benefiting from austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 173 the welfare. people in general, small workers, minimum wage workers who cannot afford to live in this neighborhood because land values go up and landlords sell or rent to richer tenants. so there is a displacing of the traditional population. this is not a new phenomenon but it has probably increased” (montrealvse1-m). the system of social assistance prevailing in quebec – and this is applying for people living in the montreal city-region – support individual and/or households who are no longer receiving the employment insurance benefits or who are out of work for diverse reasons. following his political discourse and orientation towards austerity, the couillard government has decided to reform the welfare program. but as one community worker underlined, it is still difficult to predict what will come out of it: “we have to see what will happen concretely. i don’t know. it’s not the first time. cuts in social and welfare programs and reforms in employment incentives have been announced for the last 20 to 25 years. it never worked. they never really went all the way to the end of this logic either. i’m not convinced it will work this time…it’s difficult to say because, paradoxically, the liberals introduced measures for the underprivileged. during charest’s era, for example, we increased the family allowance. (…) we could be surprised at one point. i believe they’re sufficiently capable and intelligent to stop the underprivileged from suffering the worse repercussions. they can choose to increase their levels of income even if this negatively affects the middle classes (…)” (montreal-vse2-m). for the time being, according to the minister françois blais responsible for this, it seems that this specific reform – draft bill 70 that has not yet 174 | austerity urbanism and the social economy been adopted by the national assembly – should finally be less harmful for the poor than initially planned. in this respect, the minister has mentioned that the negative impacts will not effect more than 3 to 4% of welfare recipients. this is at least what one journalist reported: “every year, there are 17 000 new job seekers. this program could ‘offer more’ with a work integration or back-to-school plan for example. allowance would be higher but there would also be “the possibility for penalties if they don’t follow the plan”. “what is important is the existence of consequences. i will take the ocde’s expressions: moderate but strict, so people get a new job as fast as possible”, explained m. blais. the minister did not want to precise how high these penalties would be. (…) precisions will be in the regulations submitted after the law is passed. the objective dignity collective, a convergence of different social groups, asks the government to renounce to the penalties, “to abandon this punitive approach and other obnoxious measures which will further threaten people’s conditions” (chouinard 2016). as we can see it is not yet possible to assess properly this reform. in any event, a number of precautions will have to be taken in order to understand its impact regarding growing social inequalities. as such, consequences of austerity are blurred and difficult to assess. nonetheless, our research shows that certain populations are more at risk of being negatively effected by such policies. migration, ethnicity and marginalisation among those who are most adversely effected by austerity measures, new immigrants are at the forefront. they are struck directly and indirectly by political decisions intended to reduce the budgets of welfare programs and public services. but it is also the general economic situation that is worrying. a good example is tourism because it is probably one of the few economic sectors where new immigrants can find jobs. as underlined by one respondent working for a non-profit corporation promoting that sector, the financial crisis of 2008 and austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 175 subsequent years in the usa had a negative impact on tourism dynamism in montreal. the result has been a decline in employment in hotels and restaurants: “on the other side, when tourism goes up, there are more jobs. (…) there are more housework and maintenance jobs for women in hotels, for example. many immigrants take up these jobs. tourism is probably one of the sectors where most newly arrived immigrants are employed. so when the tourism industry is hit by a crisis, as this was the case in 2008, 2009 and 2010, we can talk about a tendency to precariousness” (montreal-cg1-m). even though it must be underlined that working conditions in the hotel sector in montreal are better in comparison to most other north american cities, mainly due to high unionization rates (montreal-cg1m), this does not mean that poor people are in an enviable position. in fact, if we look at the example of public transit users’ costs, they are the ones who are affected by access inequalities. this was expressed by a local elected politician: “you have to look at those who work for the minimum wage, little more than 10$ an hour, these throngs of immigrants who make up montreal’s new population, who live in insalubrious housing, who pay 82.50$ for their public transit passes, who are the only ones taking the metro at 5:30 am on sunday mornings when the metro opens. all these women who converge towards the city-center to prepare breakfasts and make the beds, they, they pay shit-loads! there is a cost to living in such miserable conditions. i’ve talked about immigrant populations but many french and englishspeaking people also live in similar situations” (montreal-ep1-m). 176 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the voluntary sector: a dual approach. since the beginning of 2015, the voluntary sector has been concerned by the possible negative impacts of reforms that have taken place at the same time in several sectors (education, health, welfare, kindergarten) by the provincial government in the name of a rigorous rationality while pursuing a process of state restructuring. this is the reason why the leaders of the most important private foundations in quebec have joined forces to raise public awareness about the ongoing reforms and the threat of increasing social inequalities: “for the first time, quebec-based foundations come together and jointly talk about the fears and concerns of the people, families and communities they support. at a time when government programs are being called into question and the tax system is being thoroughly examined, we ask ourselves what are the possible impacts of these changes on society. we are particularly concerned by the increase in social inequalities, a growing world phenomenon which calls for more watchfulness on the part of credible economic organizations and well-known political leaders. (…) it is probably due time, today, to examine if the means we gave ourselves are still the most efficient. but there is something the quebecois don’t call into question: the objective of a society which offers its chance to each and every one. we believe it is useful to remember this great consensus in quebec, consensus which was illustrated by the law on the elimination of poverty and social exclusion which was unanimously voted at the national assembly in 2002” (fondation béati et al. 2015: 1-2). the position taken by the leaders of private foundations – financing social and community-related initiatives – was the result of a collective endeavour. at the same time, some were pro-active on their own, as was austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 177 the case with centraide of greater montreal.6 likewise, a representative of centraide did not hesitate writing to quebec premier philippe couillard: “last year, i wrote a letter to the prime minister to inform him that i was preoccupied by the measures that were being taken. and i never got an official answer. but the minister hamad called me to schedule a meeting. this has not yet happened. but us, we're not going to take the streets. it's not our role but we have to raise awareness and talk to people to tell them: 'listen, we're going to have a general description. this is the global description we are aware of. are you aware that all this is happening?' this is our job.” (montreal-cbo1-f). actors, strategies and tactics. shall we say that, in montreal, a strategy prevails among the main components of the local state for promoting austerity? prior to the last federal election,7 even though there was no agreement or concerted effort between the three tiers of the state, a general culture of austerity was shared by the elected politicians in power. and, in addition to a reduction of public services through budget cuts, this culture has resulted in a reduction of the number of public service employees. as such, there was no strategy, no coherent plan that everyone agreed upon. nonetheless, there seems to be an urgency of reducing public debt that made consensus among those in power possible. in the field of welfare, as well as in other fields, the same philosophy was conveyed. it was as if the priority was to reduce the public debt and that no doubt was to be evoked about such a goal. who will suffer, in what ways, and by how much were not concerns in that respect. at the provincial level, it is the treasury board that is before all 6 this private foundation has the mandate to fight social poverty and exclusion. “in greater montreal, one out of seven people receives support from an agency in centraide’s network.” (centraide website) 7 as mentioned previously, the federal election occurred in october 2015. 178 | austerity urbanism and the social economy in charge of defining and implementing austerity measures across public action. there was a large consensus among our respondents who clearly identify this governmental agency and its role. at the municipal and city-regional scale, the mayor has in some respects been compliant with austerity. he has decided to abolish several positions in local public administration. this can partly explain why municipal administration finished the fiscal year 2015 with a surplus of 146 millions of dollars (normandin 2016). at the same time, on some occasions he may stand alongside with citizens and the community sector. his political orientation can be described as determined by a pragmatic approach at least in different areas. he can support some progressive requests, but he is also promoting corporate investors. the mayoralty. urban and regional planning as well as the management of public places and public services in montreal is quite challenging as the municipality is highly decentralized. due to this, the montreal mayor in charge of the borough ville-marie – corresponding to the city centre – and has to share responsibility with borough mayors for decisions regarding the whole agglomeration and/or city-region. montreal is composed of 19 boroughs with specific powers, offering direct services to the population in specific areas. what makes this even more difficult is that in 2006 a new political forum of management was introduced, the montreal agglomeration council. this forum includes 15 de-amalgamated suburban municipalities. these municipalities are located on the island of montreal but did not accept the status of borough. they preferred recovering their previous statuses as autonomous municipalities that existed before the 2000 municipal reform. this reform amalgamated all the suburban municipalities of the island of montreal with the old urban neighbourhoods (on the island as well) under the same jurisdiction, creating a megacity. a referendum that took place in 2005 gave those suburban municipalities the opportunity to recover part of their past status. the condition, however, was that they accepted to contribute to the montreal agglomeration council with the boroughs. austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 179 the montreal political and administrative reform towards decentralization has generated ambivalence in citizens’ minds. on the one hand, the decentralization is promoting a management closer to citizens: it is easier for citizens to be listened to in their borough in comparison to what was experienced regarding participation in the previous municipal situation. on the other hand, power is more diffuse. sometimes it proves difficult to see who is responsible or in charge of getting things done. as a consequence, citizens are no longer interested or, at least, are getting less involved in local politics. mobilization against austerity and contextual constraints. in the face of what has been described in a schematic way, the picture of the fight against austerity measures in montreal is faced with numerous structural and subjective constraints. globalization, market liberalization, neoliberal ideology, these elements were not present when the definition of the social-democrat compromise at the root of the welfare state was elaborated (manin & bergounioux 1979), at least not with the proportions that they entailed nowadays. these factors are added to more subjective constraints derived from a tradition of cooperation and conflicts among the community sector and the labour movement. what was striking in the autumn 2015 was the large mobilization that took place. several initiatives were put forward by social actors. these included large street demonstrations to oppose decisions in the name of budgetary rigour or austerity, asking to stop expenditure cuts, promoting better funding for public services. many of those initiatives were supported by a coalition created in 2009 in order to fight against austerity measures regrouping 77 organizations from the community sector and the labour movement: la coalition opposée à la tarification et à la privatisation des services publics. the street demonstrations organized by the coalition were widely covered by the media. the same prevailed following other citizen initiatives for preserving school services or the centers for early childhood (cec). all those events and mobilizations must be contrasted however with what occurred on a professional and sectorial basis. over 180 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the last half of 2016, what has occurred can be described as negotiation in ‘silos’ between the provincial government and public sector workers. it was as if everyone was somehow more concerned with taking advantage of the conjuncture than to oppose injustices and discretionary measures implemented by the government in regard to the common good. within the health system, for example, there was a clear strategy by reformers and state negotiators to divide and play one section against the other (primary care physicians against specialist doctors, nurses against other workers in the health system, and so on). and a similar logic prevailed among the main sectors (health, education, welfare) of public services. the quebec government – and to a certain extent professional associations and/or professional trade unions – established a balance of power among those sectors. it was as if everyone was trapped in the “iron cage” of state bureaucracy. some respondents were aware of the challenges inherent to ongoing state restructuring, including the reconfiguration of social and political practices. what is at stake goes back to an understanding of state responsibility and modalities of public service provision. it is also how the “quebec model” in connection with the welfare state was defined and redefined in the 1960s and 1970s and during the subsequent years by direct and indirect contributions of major trade union organizations and the community sector. from then on, questions have been raised regarding cooperation among civil society actors. how is it possible for community organizing actors and labour activists to continue working together? how is it possible for them to overcome old corporatist divisions? as one respondent mentioned: “on one side there is the eternal alliance between the community organizations and the trade unions, on the other side community organizations are subjected to trade unions (…) of course the trade union movement is stronger and more present. there are also more people in the streets when trade unions want to demonstrate. trade unions are more present in the media. if austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 181 community organizations do something, on their side, we won't talk much about it or we'll say it's a trade unions' demonstration even though there were only four trade unions' signs” (montreal-vse2-m). “we also need to keep in mind, as it was underlined that the montreal situation is different to the rest of the quebec territory. in montreal, social networks are stronger and better developed: “we're lucky we have the neighborhood coordination tables [tables de quartier] which are not financed by the provincial government” (montreal-cbo1-f). one community worker provided a comment along similar lines: “in the regions, there aren't all those structures like in montreal, and they don't have all these networks like we already have in montreal, it's not the same way of working either” (montreal-vse2-m). he also commented on the fact that for the life and vitality of the community sector the budget cuts outside montreal (in other quebec regions) had more negative impacts. in this respect, another element must be taken into account: the fact that a discrepancy exists between what is elaborated at the political level in regards to austerity measures and the way these are subsequently implemented. to a certain extent, it seems that the public managers (government officials) with whom community workers are dealing with covey an accommodating attitude. according to one neighbourhood respondent: “we, in our case, it's paradoxical because at the national level [the quebec territory] you have different policies being put in place. there are decisions taken and these have impacts in a context of austerity. the impacts are lived at our own level but, paradoxically, we work with agents of the state who are on the ground and who do not necessarily agree with the decisions which are being taken, up in the government. so we are in a weird situation because we work with civil servants to 182 | austerity urbanism and the social economy somewhat sooth what is happening and temper the decisions taken by their own government” (montrealvse2-m). collaborative governance and actors’ fragmentation the local voluntary sector in montreal is diversified and professionalized. it is also entrenched in public policies. but the following should be added: this sector is characterized by a process of constant “recomposition.” this is certainly not specific to montreal. what is, however, pertains to the specificity of the challenges different social actors are facing in montreal. several complementary readings of those challenges are possible according to what is emphasized: child poverty, gender inequalities, new immigrants’ discrimination and exclusion, social welfare, environmental issues.8 neighborhood revitalization, economic dynamism, and so on. depending on the respondents we speak to, variations are expressed: “the fear or the fact that there will be no increase in wages and all this at the level of the public services, of health and education services, this has a major impact. what we directly feel, it's definitely in the education sector, in the school: when there are no more specialized services, we go to the community organizations. and of this, we strongly feel the effects. same thing with health and social services: everything that was helping, for example, people with mental health issues or that offered services to handicapped people, it is clear that there are important effects. i can't tell i know other sectors sufficiently... i can't talk about culture because i don't 8 the specificity of specialized or sector reading is well reflected in the comments of a respondent from the environment sector: “environment organizations, like popular education organizations, have long been a special sector. they have been close to the community sector in general but we are a quite specific sector” (montreal-vse1-m: 13). austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 183 know much about this. but i believe that the decisions which were taken in this sector have impacts too” (montreal-cbo1-f). in some respect, beyond this observation the consequences of austerity measures are blurred. it remains difficult to carry out a clear assessment of their effective consequences in terms of negative impacts toward the most underprivileged. a community worker of the neighborhood tables we spoke to has brought to light the necessity to be nuanced when it comes to assess the concrete effects of these measures. sometimes it is easy to see those when professional contracts are not renewed, as was the case in the educational and health care systems. but it is not always like this. if the decisions taken by the couillard government in regards to austerity are strongly criticized by all the respondents when deterioration of the life conditions of the most deprived social groups are involved, the intention behind those decisions – balancing the budget – is not necessarily perceived negatively. what is questioned, however, is the time-frame that was chosen by the government as well as the final target intended (see montreal-cg2-f). thus, there is room for nuance when it comes to weighing the government’s intentions. but this result does not explain why it is difficult to resist and combat government policies efficiently. the explanations must be situated on the subjective side of collective action. in other words, the divisions among social actors are still too important: “on the side of the trade unions, we feel there is anger and discontent, we feel more people are ready to lose part of their salary for their convictions. we see it with the teachers. but i don't think we're on the brink of having trade union movements going on indefinite or illegal strikes with their members ready to follow a general mobilization. we're not there yet. after all, the rubber band hasn't snapped yet. and as long as some players will come winning out of all this, it will be difficult. it is not the case of all the underprivileged. they 184 | austerity urbanism and the social economy don't really win anything in all this” (montreal-vse2m). issues of leadership – including how the hegemony over the struggle against austerity policies was defined – are at stake, but beyond this it is the diversity of interests that is problematic. some believe that they will perform better than others. in other words, social solidarity values revealed too weak for not letting corporate and/or special interests to take over in terms of convincing social actors of the merit to define a collective strategy. this comment does not mean that austerity policies and measures will not have several negative impacts on life conditions. the fact is that it is extremely difficult to assess. yes, there will be fewer professional services in schools. yes, it will cost more for households to send their children to cec. but who will be most affected and to what extent remains difficult to predict for the time being. regarding the community sector and how it will be transformed, it is also too soon to foresee. nonetheless one has to keep in mind that the precariousness of the situation for the community sector is anything but new, dating back to at least the 1980s (hamel 1993). thus, it is not surprising that from time to time researchers and activists bring to the fore that community organizations are underfinanced due to the fact that the rise of government subsidies are below the increase in the costs of living (lasalle 2016). those who are working the neighborhood tables are well aware of that. from a more general standpoint, austerity certainly offers a diversified challenge in terms of collaboration even though no one is facing it with a carefree attitude. for professionals working with the private sector, it is clear that collaboration can be a useful factor to face adversity. however, collaboration can be weakened: “within an austerity context when everyone feels itself adversely affected, collaboration is more fragile, because everyone can eventually be targeted by the government. thus, before protecting someone else’s turf, the first thing that comes to mind is: okay, let's protect our turf austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 185 first. once given, it will be easier to make offers to our allies for helping them” (montreal–cg2-f). for public managers working in planning processes at the city-regional scale, collaboration is the name of the game, austerity or not: “collaboration, this is what we do. it is the very nature of our organization.” (montreal, pm3-m) for the montreal metropolitan community (mmc) – the authority in charge of planning urban and economic development at a city-regional scale –, governance and austerity are a concern but do not have a major impact on the culture of the organization, because “on the side of public administration, governance goes with an open attitude towards civil society, but also with an opening to the components of public administration” (montreal, pm3m). these few examples bring to the fore diverse situations. when it comes to facing austerity practically, depending on institutional affiliations, attitudes can vary according to the constraints. beyond ideological beliefs, structural and/or organizational factors must be taken into account for understanding the possibilities and the terms of collaboration among actors. conclusion austerity in montreal is rooted in a profound process of state restructuring that occurs simultaneously at the different tiers of the federal system. it is largely viewed as an ideology, much more than as a necessary “crisis policy” as it may be seen in other countries. the effects of this process are multiple and diversified but remain difficult to clearly grasp. in front of this process, social actors are ambivalent: they need to cope with and contest these policies and, at the same time, strive to survive and continue to work. in the end, they remain very fragmented. what now needs to be explored is how this unfolds at the level of the 186 | austerity urbanism and the social economy city-region, and how social actors collaborate or fight against each other in the context of austerity and state restructuring. references chouinard, t. (2016, mars 14). réforme de l’aide sociale : des pénalités ‘modérées mais strictes’ dit blais. la presse, http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/politiquequebecoise/201603/14/01-4960571-reforme-de-laide-sociale-despenalites-moderees-mais-strictes-dit-blais.php desrosiers, é. (2015, mai 23). redistribuer de la richesse pour en créer. le devoir, http://www.ledevoir.com/economie/actualiteseconomiques/440831/perspectives-redistribuer-la-richesse-pouren-creer dutrisac, r. (2016, mars 16). au-delà de l’austérité, une volonté de changer l’état. le devoir, http://www.ledevoir.com/nonclasse/465587/au-dela-de-l-austerite-une-volonte-de-changer-letat fondation fondation béati et al. (2015, mars 11). les risques de la rigueur budgétaire, communiqué de presse, montréal. le devoir, http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/quebec/434025/de-grandesfondations-privees-inquietes-les-risques-de-la-rigueurbudgetaire germain, a., & d. rose. (2000). montréal: the quest for a metropolis. new york, wiley. hamel, p. (1993). contrôle ou changement social à l’heure du partenariat. sociologie et sociétés, 25(1), 173-188. hamel, p., & b. jouve. (2006). un modèle québécois? gouvernance et participation dans la gestion publique. montréal: presses de l’université de montréal. institut du québec. (2015). comparer montréal. tableau de bord de la région métropolitaine de montréal, rapport. montréal: institut du québec. austerity governance and the welfare crisis in montreal | 187 lasalle, m. (2016, février 29). les organismes communautaires en santé et services sociaux étouffent. journal forum, http://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/article/2016/02/29/les-organismescommunautaires-en-sante-et-services-sociaux-etouffent/ lightbody, j. (2006). city politics, canada. peterborough: broadview press. löwy, m. (2013). la cage d’acier. max weber et le marxisme wébérien. paris : stock. manin, b., & a. bergounioux. (1979). la social-démocratie ou le compromis. paris: puf. micklethwait, j., & a. wooldridge. (2014). the fourth revolution: the global race to reinvent the state. new york: penguin books. normandin, p.a. (2016, avril 13). montréal termine 2015 avec un surplus de 146 millions. la presse, http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/montreal/201604/13/014970672-montreal-termine-2015-avec-un-surplus-de-146millions.php rosanvallon, p. (1981). la crise de l’état-providence. paris: éditions du seuil. statistics canada (2011). “persons living in low-income neighbourhoods” (nhs in brief) catalogue no. 99-014-x2011003. ottawa: statistics canada. törnqvist, g. (1985). “créativité et développement régional” in boisvert, m., & p. hamel (eds) redéploiement industriel et planification régionale. textes rassemblés et présentés par, montréal (pp.107130). cahiers de recherche, faculté de l’aménagement. université de montréal. 188 | austerity urbanism and the social economy toronto alles uber: being progressive in the age of progressive conservative urbanism roger keil1 “i’ve said to the cab industry, ‘you should get yourselves modernized.’” – john tory in peat 2015 “the guiding tenet in inner-core regime analysis (its “iron law”) is that for any governing arrangement to sustain itself, resources must be commensurate with the agenda being pursued.” – clarence n. stone 2015 introduction: tory rides the subway a sweaty toronto mayor john tory emerged from a kipling subway station in the west end of the ontario city in the morning of september 7, 2016 to declare that the ride that he had taken along the entire line 2 subway was “uncomfortably hot”. he had experienced, first hand, what thousands of commuters had to endure through the scorching summer of 2016: the toronto transit commission was failing to maintain a state of good repair of the air conditioning units of some of its subway cars while the city was involved in extensive plans, many of them on the mayor’s behalf and insistence, to expand the sorely underperforming rapid rail and bus system in the metropolitan area. tory’s mayoral campaign and reign had previously been focused less on fixing existing problems and had talked about a wholesale revamping of 1 roger keil is york research chair in global sub/urban studies, faculty of environmental studies, york university in toronto. he researches global suburbanization, urban political ecology and regional governance. he is the editor of suburban constellations (jovis 2013), co-editor (with pierre hamel) of suburban governance: a global view (utp 2015) and co-editor (with julie-anne boudreau, pierre hamel and stefan kipfer) of governing cities through regions (wilfrid laurier university press 2016). email: rkeil@yorku.ca, twitter: @rkeil toronto alles uber | 189 mailto:rkeil@yorku.ca the transportation system, especially through the implementation of an ill-conceived smarttrack transit plan (a scheme that would have seen a combination of existing track with newly built rail aimed at building a new east-west connection through the city at allegedly lower cost and in faster time; while the scheme found early backers among the transportation engineering crowd, and played a big role in getting tory elected, it was later considered too costly and complex to be put into practice; cbc 2016; tory 2014). this was a remarkable admission by a man who had so far banked on “disruption” and innovation where there is really only one way forward. instead, he conceded that he was not able to fix even the most mundane of technical problems (spurr 2016). in this paper, i will examine the emerging mayoral regime of john tory in light of two connected critical lenses: tory’s infatuation with technological and economic disruption and the consequences of such a politics for progressives in toronto. for now, toronto is stuck in the middle between a short term recovery from an aberrant mayoral regime representing the margins (of various kinds) and the reconstitution of institutional elite power after 2014; and it is stuck in the middle between its ward parochialism and an expanding sense of regionalism. the new mayoral regime signals modernization through technological shifts and market mechanisms. this new mode of operation both reestablishes centralized elite power and normalizes roll-with-it neoliberalization in the city. it also meshes with what is commonly assumed to be “progressive urbanism”. in this situation, progressive politics in toronto – usually needs to reassemble itself along different lines than in the past, when it could align itself along social justice, environmentalism and diversity. my intervention here asks what those new markers of progressivism might be, what stands in their way, and how they can lead to an alternative to the conservative hegemony and ultimately more systemic change in the city. the election victory of john tory in november 2014 in the race for the mayor’s office signaled the end of a four-year circus around the 190 | austerity urbanism and the social economy mayoralty of rob ford. the late maverick councilor, turned populist mayor, had shaken up elite and common perceptions of what urban politics is about: embracing underdog positions dressed in a language of suburban exclusion and anti-elitism, the etobicoke millionaire ran the city on a platform of austerity, savings and anti-government rhetoric. at the same time, the ford mayoralty is identified with a single-minded plan to expand the city’s subway system into scarborough (over the recommendation of most transit experts and in contradiction of most budgetary projections). ford’s personal issues around drug use, misogyny and racism and potential criminal activities added colour to his policies but they are not what concerns me here. we can look at the ford years as an aberration or as a fulfillment of trends, as a protest vote of the unheard or as the expression of a solid bloc of voters on the political right that are emboldened to throw their weight around when needed. after four years of never ending chaos, john tory appealed to toronto’s voters as a voice of reason. the fast spoken, articulate, groomed, expensively dressed and urbane tory appeared as the exact opposite of his incoherent, bumbling, sloppy and track-suited suburban predecessor. both political conservatives, both wealthy, those two men were nonetheless light-years apart. the two other significant candidates in the 2014 election, the ndp heavyweight olivia chow and the former mayor’s brother doug ford after rob had to undergo treatment for cancer were unable to influence the outcome of the vote in any decisive manner. but the older ford brother still pulled 34 percent of the popular vote city-wide. the candidate of the left (unopposed on her side of the political spectrum) only drew 27 percent. as a basis for any consideration of an organized progressive political pathway for toronto, these numbers are important as they reveal the willingness of a broad majority of torontonians to throw their support behind a spectrum of extreme to moderate political programs fashioned by outspoken right-wingers. any progressive position in toronto proves to be minoritarian at least at the ballot box (a pattern that was also borne out in more recent provincial and federal toronto alles uber | 191 elections during which new democratic party candidates were almost entirely wiped from the political landscape in toronto and its suburbs; a large majority of the electorate threw its support behind the ontario and federal liberals, and selectively even the conservatives who made inroads for the first time in decades into the core of toronto). if ford was perhaps an anomaly in the history of toronto politics, it remains open whether john tory’s mayoralty will be able to shift things significantly or whether he will be incapacitated by the contradictions he inherits. the latter possibility may have more to do with his own baggage than with those contradictions. there is nothing in tory’s background that suggests he would aggressively pursue an agenda of social and spatial justice that could heal the divisions that have ravaged the city. his more recent blunders in the black lives matter file and his decision to push city council to vote for the drastically unjust one-stop subway solution have confirmed that suspicion. but he also is up against structural limitations. he is wedged between a 35 percent hard right opposition that largely coincides with the geographic confines of the etobicoke and scarborough “ford nations” and the 25 percent progressives downtown and elsewhere in the city that voted for a candidate with a decidedly different agenda than the newly elected mayor. it is inconceivable that he will reach the first group who see him as a guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth, an elite representative who talks too fast and is unaware of the problems of the small suburban homeowner and renter. the toronto “progressives,” by which i mean in the context of this paper a broad spectrum the traditional inner city social democratic left, the liberals and “red” (social democratic) tories in the tradition of 1970s urban reform, the middle class environmentalists and most labour groups,2 are more likely to give the tory agenda a try, especially as 2 for a more elaborate discussion of this “progressive” or “reform” tradition in toronto politics see kipfer and keil 2002: 238-240. when using progressive in the context of this paper, i refer specifically and predominantly to these political constellations, not to an aspirational, radical position outside the mainstream political spectrum, although the 192 | austerity urbanism and the social economy supporting him aligns itself with the urbanist dreams of density and creativity espoused by a downtown millennial population raised on recipes popularized by iconic toronto urbanist jane jacobs and her epigones and carried forward through discourses of urban creativity and maker economies. 3 but given the left-liberal leanings of these communities, they will likely tire quickly of the more or less vacuous repetitions of toronto as ‘one city’ and corporatist conjurations of class unity and unity in diversity. tory can count on the full support from his corporate friends who were unhappy that the conservative torch had lately been carried by someone like rob ford who was hard to control and representative of marginal economic sector largely unconnected to the creative globalized money economy they envision to make its home in toronto. apart from a chicago stint, ford’s only business trip was to austin, texas, to seek advice on (and ultimately copy) strategies for making toronto a location for live (rock) music. that is likely going to change under john tory who also traveled to austin in early 2015 to promote all manner of music related technology and start-ups (rider 2015a). but the suave business man he is, he also already hobnobbed with his london counterpart (during the reign of boris johnson) and financial executives in that global city to drum up business for his city’s financial technologies industries (galang 2015) (as his neighbours in markham and mississauga are quite used to do in more far flung locations in china and india) (belina and lehrer 2016). it is not apparent yet what new business regime will form to place its demands on the tory mayoralty, but it will clearly go beyond the small and marginal, often suburban petty bourgeoisie that had ford’s ear. but this article will concern itself more progressive reform tradition in toronto often entailed radical elements that pushed class, race and gender issues to the front of the debate. 3 an example of mild to enthusiastic support from this group of voters would be the positive reaction most progressive urbanists displayed when tory unveiled his plans to begin collecting road tolls on major highways, a measure uniformly considered progressive among urbanists and environmentalists (keenan 2016). toronto alles uber | 193 with the condition for progressive politics than the ambitions of the city’s and region’s elites. this is where we will now turn. progressive politics in the uber age "but if such technologies, such as computer cabling and communication networks, provide a new right to consume information, they fail to grant a right to produce the latter. at most, this happens only through the contemptible charade of communication that is labeled ‘interactivity’. the consumer of information does not produce any information, and the citizen is separated from the producer. yet again, the forms of communication have been changed in the urban milieu, but not its contents" – henri lefebvre 2014: 205 “i am ready to lead” – john tory in keenan 2016 “[t]he city is under new management” (hui 2015) is one of the statements we have gotten used to under new mayor john tory, who was elected in 2014 in toronto. as generic as such a statement sounds, it has been quite foundational for the new regime since its inception, actually already since its election campaign. municipal affairs in tory’s toronto – for which the mayor says he is “the chief salesperson” – have decidedly shifted since he swept up the shambles left by the disastrous ford intermezzo. this shift, which follows a similar radical landslide in voting patterns, as i will explain shortly, also altered significantly the landscape of progressive politics in toronto. in so far as this altered stage is representative (or even productive) of larger tendencies, the tory regime signals the arrival of a souped-up urban neo-liberalism, a true example of the kind of roll-with-it neoliberalization which has been the hallmark of our times that are characterized by perpetual crisis and open-ended constant bricolage we have come to call progress (keil 2009). in this 194 | austerity urbanism and the social economy context, the agendas of urban progressivism have been both redefined and reduced, often to the point of making progressive politics itself difficult to maintain as a separate distinctive sphere of the polity. while there are several layers and terrains on which the altered stage of politics is performed, i will focus here on a particular intersection of the political and the technological that i find especially defining for the tory mayoralty. hence the title of this contribution: toronto “alles uber”. this is a reference, in the first instance to a signature conflict that has been festering since tory campaigned in the summer of 2014: the question of whether and under what conditions uber, the corporate ridesharing service – let’s call it that for now – should be allowed to operate. since its existence in the city, uber operated in a legal grey zone in which the company (and its drivers) set their own rules of operation while, as one analyst noted “mayor john tory has consistently and blatantly winked at uber’s open law-breaking” (valverde 2016). this all changed in may of 2016 when city council voted to implement rules for the operation of uber vehicles.4 toronto is of course not alone in having to make up its mind about the sharing economy and mediated services but it now has a chief executive who has made the question of technologies a major plank of his still evolving platform (he has made it known that he is considering a two term mayoralty already). alles uber includes a reference to not just making uber part of the mobility solutions for a congested city. the adverb “alles” entails the notion that uber might stand for more than just mobility but rather extend to becoming a principle of organizing modern urban life itself. while this is not the place for a detailed discussion of the sharing economy, it must be pointed out that it has been argued that uber should not even be counted as part of that economy (valverde 2016). mariana valverde (2016) explains: “carpooling and car sharing are in the sharing economy and so are the local websites that facilitate the buying and selling of second-hand goods. 4 this included among other things fleet insurance, a 30 cent per ride fee the drivers have to pay to the city (powell 2016; valverde 2016). toronto alles uber | 195 but uber is not an arrangement among citizens, and it is not a company that facilitates such arrangements. uber is an extremely profitable and aggressive american company with global reach that deliberately opens illegal operations – taking advantage of commuter frustration on the customer side and of the precarious economic situation of many groups of male workers on the driver side – and then hires swarms of professional lobbyists to persuade or pressure local politicians to legalize it after the fact on favourable terms” (see also slee 2016). most importantly, some observers have speculated whether “the privatization of city governance” is “uber’s ultimate goal” (sadowski and gregory 2015). if that is the case, the installation of uber and its ostentatious support by the new mayor can be interpreted as a moment in the establishment of a new modality of governance, a step up in the register of roll-with-it neoliberalization in toronto (keil 2009). this new modality, in turn, marks the conditions under which progressive politics in toronto will be shaped. progressive politics in toronto as elsewhere runs up against the opportunity structures offered by the urban regime. building on previous work with julie-anne boudreau and douglas young (boudreau et al., 2009), let me quickly remind ourselves of the regimes that preceded the current one in the past few decades. progressive politics in toronto needs to define itself in relation to historical precedents and future possibilities but also in relation to its own past and reputation as a traditionally progressive place. five political periods in toronto, 1972-20165 the reformist period (1972-1995), from the first election of reformists at city hall in the former city of toronto, to the election of mike harris’ tories in the province of ontario in 1995. during this period, despite the continued significance of the regional two-tier municipality of metropolitan toronto, the central city was dominant in city-regional politics. the main line of conflict was between developers and local residents (who were represented at city hall by reformists). 5 based among other sources on boudreau et al 2009. 196 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the anti-statist neoliberal period (1995-2003), from the election of mike harris to the defeat of the tories in 2003. during the long 1990s, toronto experienced the suburbanization of city-regional politics with the dominance of pro-growth, neoliberal, and suburban interests. the main line of conflict was between economic growth (not only land development, but economic growth understood more broadly) and the quality of life. the neoreformist period (20032010), starting with the election of mayor david miller and paul martin’s new deal for cities. this period is characterized less by a suburbanization of city-regional politics, and more by the creation of a city-regional consensus (between globally and locally-oriented capital, labour, and politicians) on the necessity to focus on the quality of life in toronto as a competitive asset for cityregional economic development. at the same time the contradictions of the neoliberal regime in toronto deepened, especially after the so-called great recession in 2008 (boudreau et al. 2010; fanelli 2016). populist intermezzo (2010-2014). the preceding three periods in the timeline of toronto regime change end in 2010 with a bang or a whimper depending on your perspective when rob ford is elected mayor. the ford years concluded 15 years of major territorial rearrangement, local state restructuring, and popular realignment. in many ways the events between 2010 and 2014 ran counter to the timespace dialectics of the prior two decades. this stripped down political narrative belies the fact, of course, of deeper processes of restructuring at work during which toronto went through a shift towards a regime of roll-with-it neoliberalization, combining the formation of a continentally articulated global city-economy featuring a core creative economy surrounded by an “arrival city” periphery (boudreau, keil and young 2009; saunders 2010). to some degree, of course, ford’s election, which led to a whimsical constellation, not quite a regime, an unstable conjuncture of (more or less conservative) councillors circling around an increasingly shifty mayoral core, was just a moment in a series of cyclical political toronto alles uber | 197 conjunctures and realignments that produce regular backlash – in this case from a perceived tax and spend, labour-friendly leftwing regime to a fiscally conservative, common sense, common people administration. ford’s constructed opposition to the “gravy train” of municipal politics under david miller that benefitted the downtown elites with their cycling habit and streetcar infatuation. ford’s time in office has plausibly been explained through a critical reading of rightwing populism as kipfer and saberi (2014: 128) have done in a recent intervention. they argue that during that period toronto was “under the spell of a populist theatre” in which “‘the people’ often appear as a political football, not a formed subject-in-struggle or a coherent object of rule”. those populist constellations are fickle, not stable regimes. kipfer and saberi (2014: 134) continue: “where populists govern, directly or indirectly, it does not necessarily function as glue to solidify political regimes”. rob ford and his stand-in during the mayoral election, his brother doug, brought a “deeply racialized form of authoritarian populism” to toronto city hall”. ford, then, may just have been a bridge, a cleansing, a front for a more permanent shift that we see emerge now. viewed in this light, the rather absurd time warp the city's regime has been in since the fords got elected may come under a different spotlight: 1) we can see the ford years as a period of hypermodernization of the socio-economic base and total retreat into raw and rabid political superstructures. ford tried and succeeded a souped-up austerity regime based on union-bashing and service cuts; 2) ford’s antics and reactionary politics did nothing to slow down the frantic development pace in the city, especially in its downtown core; 3) but it also didn’t do anything to produce much needed urbanity in the so-called inner suburbs: the city’s school board and housing authority stumbled from crisis to crisis, the tower renewal project was thrown into almost-obscurity; the priority neighbourhoods were largely left to their own devices; dialogue with educational institutions (schools, universities) was non198 | austerity urbanism and the social economy existent, etc. (the latter is particularly noteworthy in light of the intended expansion of such institutions in the sub/urban region (addie, keil and olds 2015). 4) at the same time, and paradoxically, the progressive urbanist projects of the city came to a complete halt (with the exception of those projects that were initiated by the newly hired chief planner of toronto, jennifer keesmaat). bike lanes were ripped out and painted over in an imaginary “war on the car”, ambitious plans to build lrts across the city’s expanse were haphazardly cancelled without replacement; no ideological or material support was given to the many smaller scale regime-building efforts between the newly important “ed & med” sectors in the city and the municipality. ford was oblivious to the challenge and, apart from individual activities, the various schools efforts to remake their neighbourhoods – such as ryerson university’s continued forays into real estate politics – very little of note happened during the ford regime.6 elitist resurgence and post-political modernization (2014-). in assessing the possible outcomes of a tory regime, we might, revert to karl marx’s 18th brumaire of luis bonaparte. john tory, the upper class corporate leader and political operative might have this verdict hanging over his head: “bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all classes; but he can give to none without taking from the others.” tory will try this patriarchal approach to politics but will run into problems as the dissent grows stronger. he will be prepared to counter this dissent on the left and the right with a post-political stance that will disempower critical challenges from the left and populist sniping from the right all at once (swyngedouw 2010). there will be, as 6 this analysis builds on an insightful piece by clarence stone (2015) who notes that large scale coalitions of the post ww2 kind cannot be expected today but classical citybusiness power blocs (with the powerless on the sidelines) are replaced by mini-regimes based largely on the emerging ed&med sector – of course we need to pay particular attention here to the magnetic effect of the creative class which is increasingly coming into its own as a “class for itself” in our cities. toronto alles uber | 199 he is wont to say, “no right and no left, just forward” (powell 2014). of course, tory himself owes his political success to a smooth political move to the centre in a major provincial political realignment which was anything but post-political. the former head of ontario’s progressive conservative party is, by all intents and purposes, a tory in a liberal suit. this realignment may, in itself prove unstable, as the liberal government in the province is shaky and under attack from both the political left and right. at a by-election for a seat in the provincial legislature in september 2016, the provincial conservatives won their first victory in toronto in a generation; at the same time, the provincial new democrats under andrea horwath (who had all but abandoned the issues that matter to urban voters in the 2014 contest) have shown signs of life. at present, though, a political axis of premier kathleen wynne and mayor john tory represents a centrist political fortress outside of which very little political space exists as long as they both remain in power. progressive politics quo vadis? now where does urban progressivism stand in this context? in the historical antecedents of today’s progressivism, we can count waves of revolutionary or reform politics without which we would not be able to use the term progressive politics the way we do today.7 toronto politics has been identified with a version of progressivism that made it the envy of many cities on the continent if not in the world. the “city that works” was the moniker that referred to the integration of growth pressures into a state spatial strategy of a two tier government that 7 the use of the term “progressive” does not refer to the significant tradition of the progressive movement in the united states from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century that was mostly a managerial reform movement introducing market rationality to the governance of cities which were considered mired in corruption and class politics. instead, we can count traditions from politics on the political left among guideposts here: e.g. working class politics, municipal socialism (frankfurt, vienna, manchester); progressive politics in north america (burlington, santa monica); african american autonomy movements (often paired with the politics of movements and protest); brazilian movement towards participatory budgeting. 200 | austerity urbanism and the social economy distributed the benefits of urban expansion across the metropolitan area. during the heydays of the 1950s and 1960s but even into the 1970s, housing and transportation infrastructure as well as ancillary services were deliberately provided to the outskirts as well as key redevelopment areas of the inner city. parallel to this metropolitan state spatial strategy, toronto experienced two decades of sustained reform politics under mayors crombie and sewell that undergirded the core city’s reputation as a forerunner and pacesetter of urban reform in education, multiculturalism, urban planning, etc. (see kipfer and keil 2002 for a history of this tradition). this coalition made way to a more managerial regime during the 1980s and 1990s but it retained a certain significance in civil society institutions that persisted as progressive beacons even during the emergence of decidedly more neoliberal conditions. the toronto political system is remarkably open to a brand of progressive urbanist politics that resonates with a particular majority of business, middle class and inner city interests. this majority has sometimes been in charge of matters at city hall (or in the past in metro hall, but rarely in the suburbs). this brand of politics is currently dominant in toronto and ontario. john tory, a politician trained in the backrooms of the regime of former mayor mel lastman 8 and in corporate boardrooms and law offices, represented civic action before he ultimately won the mayoral election. this hard-to-define organization, founded by the late david pecaut as the toronto summit alliance acted as an unelected shadow government under mayor david 8 lastman, a flamboyant former owner of a major appliances and furniture retailer, was a longtime mayor of the suburban municipality of north york before he was elected the first mayor of the amalgamated city of toronto in 1998. lastman’s regime was characterized by clientilism and patronage politics directed at suburban homeowners. he also managed to build a civic and residential centre and a peripheral subway line in north york that became the trademarks of the modernist suburb north of toronto. his time in office as mayor of the new toronto was characterized by a continuation of clientilism but also by some delegation of key areas (environment, welfare) to progressive members of city council. his tenure ultimately was marred by a series of spectacular gaffes and errors in judgment. toronto alles uber | 201 miller and stayed mostly on the outside of rob ford’s ill-fated rightpopulist regime. now, the kind of business-based neoliberalization pushed by civic action is in full flight in the city and beyond. but in the long perspective it also needs to be taken into account that erstwhile radical anti-amalgamation activist kathleen wynne is now the premier of the province of ontario (boudreau, keil and young 2009; boudreau and keil 2010). a more left-wing version of this centrist coalition was behind the two times electoral success of new democrat david miller, mayor from 2003 to 2010, (who also had strong union support and won in the suburbs). more recently, the miller coalition, which was elevated to more than municipal significance during the mcguinty-martin years at queens park and ottawa, and importantly under jack layton’s presidency of the federation of canadian municipalities and leadership of the federal new democratic party, has been more difficult to reproduce. toronto voters rejected a rather non-urban platform of the ontario ndp in 2014 – olivia chow only won a quarter of the votes in the 2010 mayoral election – but most devastatingly, for the party-political left of toronto, the federal election of 2015 signaled a dramatic shift away from ndp mps who, without an exception, had been instrumental in forging progressive political alliances in what their white paper on urban issues called an “urban nation”. the serious and substantive move(back) by voters to the liberal party turfed, among others, ndp urban affairs critic matthew kellway and author of the party’s urban white paper, who had systematically used his eastern toronto base to forge a progressive urban coalition much in the same way layton had used his position at the head of the fcm to do the same in the early 2000s. a decade after the inception of miller’s mayoralty and the heyday of a federal-provincial-municipal “new deal for cities”, the very notion of ‘progressive’ has blemishes from skirmishes over the right to inhabit the neoliberal city and from fraying edges of the left-liberal project, especially in terms of its questionable politics of policing, labour relations and 202 | austerity urbanism and the social economy poverty reduction through place-based-strategies (fanelli 2014). “progressive” under the current regime is now defined as: • geographically (as inhabiting downtown) • historically (by the post-1968 political culture) • generationally (by the baby boomers and their children) • culturally (by official doctrines of ethnic harmony) • economically (by the creative class) • and most importantly in urbanist terms (a class of professional planners who have decided which urban future will be best for us). about this brand of urbanism lefebvre wrote disparagingly: “what we today term ‘urbanism’ (l’urbanisme), which amounts to extremely rigid guidelines for architectural design and extremely vague information for the authorities and bureaucrats. despite a few meritorious efforts, urbanism has not attained the status of a theory (pensée) of the city. what is worse, it has gradually shrunk to become a kind of gospel for technocrats” (2014: 204).9 in ontario, of course, the curse of the progressive includes the province’s political legacy of progressive conservatism, a brand of right of centre politics to which the current mayor has mostly subscribed, although he has recently begun to surpass the compassionate groundswell of the “red” tories, the historical flag bearers of a more welfare state oriented brand of conservatism, for a more aggressively business-style – disruptive – approach. in a world thus encumbered with ideologies of progress, there is little left for the left to carve out a distinct space along a register of progressivism itself. a broad neo-liberal coalition of the willing has stepped in to fill this void, engineering the shift through material and discursive technologies of power. but it is certainly the key to understanding the forces making up john tory’s liberal-conservative elite coalition which replicates much of the conservative hegemony of art eggleton’s and mel lastman’s political brands that resists radical 9 lefebvre’s characterization also casts a light on the progressive or reformist positions i have evoked throughout this paper. toronto alles uber | 203 political change and consolidates power at the geographical centre and in the elite networks whose power lines come together there. the politics of alles uber the politics of “alles uber” suggests we can all share everything as long as there is an app for it. urban progressives are not equipped to find a way to debunk the promise of opportunity. it is hard to argue against the promise of disruption as revolution. the claims are keen and overwhelming in their audacity. lyft co-founder john zimmer promised recently: “ridesharing is just the first phase of the movement to end car ownership and reclaim our cities” (zimmer 2016). as one conservative observer notes: “[w]hat if uber, and more broadly the sharing economy it has become synonymous with, were treated as an opportunity instead of a problem?” (csanady 2015). urban progressives have few answers to this challenge. stuck, for the most part, in a mindset of defensive struggles against roll-back-neoliberalism, the classical urban political communities on the left are stuck in a time-warp of broken promises and reminiscences of the welfare state. newer and younger progressives tend to sympathize with tactical urbanist ideas that come in more or less radical shapes (brenner 2015), and they take uberx home from the yoga studio or the community meeting at the organic café. the traditional principles of pro-union, egalitarian, collectivist imaginaries are often compromised by newer forms of emerging economic models which, as the political right has begun to understand, capture “small community tool-sharing programs and even small, locally grown start-ups” (csanady 2015). i don’t want to belabor or overplay this point but while much of urban progressive thought and practice is mired in defensive struggles and nostalgia for a more keynesian and social democratic capitalism, the alternatives to current neoliberalism are presented as a more shared form of opportunity which will ostensibly exist in a parallel universe to the precariat that is swelling the ranks of the urban workforce in toronto and elsewhere. as one political observer close to the ndp has noted, the 204 | austerity urbanism and the social economy “embittered young voters” of today will not be buying into the vision of a socialist or social democratic position that operates in the political world of the 20th century filled with “treasured fairy-tales” (sears 2016). in contrast to the era of municipal socialism at the beginning of the 20th century, african american separationist protest in the 1960s or middle class radicalism in santa monica or burlington in the 1980s, today’s progressive politics has not charted another urban world. true, there have been many instances of right to the city movements here in toronto and elsewhere but with few exceptions, these initiatives have not gelled into a coherent alternative vision for a post-capitalist city. this void left by progressives today, is amply filled by a technology-based, free-market imaginary ripe with real and imagined opportunity. a recent article summarizes this shift: “civic engagement today is different than in the past. many contemporary activists eschew sit-ins, picket lines, and paper petitions, stalwart organizing techniques of 1960s civil rights activists. instead, today’s civic innovators push us to “like” neighborhood associations on facebook, tweet at elected officials during city council meetings, send feedback to government agencies via new mobile apps, and donate funds through online crowdsourcing platforms. unlike their counter-culture predecessors, they don’t shun private-sector ideas but instead borrow concepts and language from the business world. civic innovators self-identify as entrepreneurial, innovative, and efficient” (savell et al. 2015). the lack of a horizon worth fighting for in a city that changes too fast to fathom is a critical obstacle to progressive politics in toronto and other cities. the role of technology, while never determining by itself, is critical to the realization of this apolitical or post-political constellation. as the political theorist david graeber has noted, the children of the revolution of the late 20th century were brought up with the idea that technology was on their side. but “the conspicuous absence, in 2015, of flying cars” toronto alles uber | 205 (2015: 106) that were promised in the utopias of the 1960s is stunning. what we get in the era of “alles uber” is a mere authoritarian charade, says graeber: “where once the sheer physical power of technologies themselves gave us a sense of history sweeping forward, we are now reduced to a play of screens and images” (graeber 2015: 111). this is the world that uber and its prospective regulators inhabit. mobility is almost a side product of a shift where progressive perspectives are pushed into a legitimacy crisis where the state is guided into the future by techno-fixes and business opportunity. the real state of affairs in a land of alles uber is more far-reaching than changing the rules of the taxi economy: “the company wants to be involved in city governance – fashioning the new administrative capacities of urban environments. rather than follow government rules, like any other utility, uber wants a visible hand in creating urban policy, determining how cities develop and grow, eventually making the city itself a platform for the proliferation of “smart”, data-based systems” (sadowski and gregory 2015). the progressives have found few answers to this challenge so far. john tory’s toronto is a playground for new ideas that anchor these seductive visions in a local state administrative logic that is designed to lock “disruptive” business-led progress in for the long haul. says tory himself: “if you said to me, ‘what’s in the best interests of the city?’ it’s to have as much valuable, disruptive technology coming in here as possible because that’s what pushes you to be on the leading edge” (nowak 2015b). tory’s love affair with disruption extends back to his days at the telecommunications giant rogers where he oversaw the technological shifts of the early 2000s. the term has since become buzzword and magic formula that is rarely criticized.10 10 the work of bernard stiegler is instructive in this context. see, for example, his interview with la liberation newspaper, july 1 2016; available at http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2016/07/01/bernard-stiegler-l-acceleration-de-linnovation-court-circuite-tout-ce-qui-contribue-a-l-elaboration_1463430; last accessed on september 18, 2016. 206 | austerity urbanism and the social economy http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2016/07/01/bernard-stiegler-l-acceleration-de-l-innovation-court-circuite-tout-ce-qui-contribue-a-l-elaboration_1463430 http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2016/07/01/bernard-stiegler-l-acceleration-de-l-innovation-court-circuite-tout-ce-qui-contribue-a-l-elaboration_1463430 the problem extends beyond toronto. it is central to the “urban age”. instead of finding the new politics of the urban revolution for an urban society of mediation, centrality and difference as lefebvre might have hoped (schmid 2014), we are left with a techno-utopian blueprint that is drawn by post-political subjects that operate in a strategic state space in which capitalism remains the ultimate innovation machine. adam rogers writes for wired magazine: “a century, plus or minus, after human beings started putting their minds toward designing cities as a whole, things are getting good. high tech materials, sensor networks, new science, and better data are all letting architects, designers, and planners work smarter and more precisely. cities are getting more environmentally sound, more fun, and more beautiful. and just in time, because today more human beings live in cities than not.” in an entirely un-ironic appeal to planning by a thousand decisions (perhaps the flipside to urban austerity’s death by a thousand cuts, http://cura.our.dmu.ac.uk/), rogers concludes: “the cities of tomorrow might still self-assemble haltingly, but done right, the process won’t be accidental. a city shouldn’t just happen anymore. every block, every building, every brick represents innumerable decisions. decide well, and cities are magic” (rogers 2015). clearly, this technocratic-decisionist democracy disciplined by the market is a world in which social and environmental progressives are a mere afterthought. who needs radical politics if you have a business model? let’s then give the last word to mayor tory, who recently professed: “so why should the job of people in public life or for that matter in business be to try and stop change? everybody has a self interest, some people have an interest in stopping the advance of these disruptive technologies, but probably you’re going to be unsuccessful. stopping it only buys you time, it doesn’t save whatever it is that you’re doing that’s out of date or on an old business model” (nowak 2015b). toronto alles uber | 207 http://cura.our.dmu.ac.uk/ disrupting disruption ultimately, the class formations and modernizations of the past that had created the playing field for an urban progressivism centred on the local state and especially the long march through the unionized bureaucratic institution of municipal planning and service delivery have dissipated to make way for a new game of innovation and shifting political allegiances. the left and its progressivism are, of course, not buried. they are the undead of the political terrain. like zombies, they seek relevance in a theatre where their alternative visions are performed like shadows on the walls of a cave that is furnished by techno progressivism and market opportunities. as zoe williams has argued in a short if polemic commentary, the left ceded the territory of innovation unnecessarily to the right. progress and innovation were, in fact, once associated with collective ideas, not market individualism: “there is no discovery in human history that wasn’t created by pooled resources, demonstrably the pooling of public money, but beneath that, the pooling of expertise. never mind, could socialism produce the ipad? socialist principles already did” (williams 2015). appeal to the “real” issues of social justice (did anyone say polarization and segregation?) and environmental crisis (did anyone say climate change?) is a losing proposition in a political space where smart design and apps solve problems. john tory wants to be jane jacobs and robert moses at once. he said so much himself in a recent interview: he wants to be “sympathetic” to people but also aims to bring in “disruptive technologies” in order to position the city better in international competition (nowak 2015b). this does not leave much space for a splintered progressive community to find discursive room to maneuver; and it crowds the terrain for the kinds of strategic alignments the left traditionally had to make to succeed, usually middle class/working class coalitions that combine the social and the cultural critique of capitalism in some form. 208 | austerity urbanism and the social economy but not all is lost. there are several areas in which progressive politics can make a comeback in this age of tor(y)onto. • spatial justice, transit justice and equity are taking on a new significance as the system of transit is about to see a major upgrade across the region and as new technologies such as the presto card are introduced. activists and researchers are concerned about equity consequences of such changes (see these reports: http://suburbs.apps01.yorku.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2015/03/switching-tracks_9-march-2015.pdf; http://www.metrolinx.com/en/regionalplanning/rtp/research/ne xt_stop_equity_routes_to_fairer_transit_access_in_the_gtha. pdf). • housing justice (tower renewal; rental rebirth; reform of toronto community housing) (see a recent special edition of alternatives journal on the topic of housing affordability, for example, edited by sean hertel and markus moos). • environment (while the time honoured politics of the toronto environmental alliance continues to lead the way, a new sub/urban political ecology has emerged around the greater golden horseshoe greenbelt; keil and maconald 2015). • social justice (tied to the work on housing and transportation, traditional social justice work continues, especially as the polarization of neighbourhood incomes and community resources continues to widen). • labour and community. new alliances have been forming between labour and urban groups as was the case in the fight against the smart centre development in the film district (lehrer and wieditz 2009), and is currently the case in the struggle to regulate homeshare businesses such as air bnb (a group called fair bnb (fairbnb.ca). • lastly, the fight against police brutality and carding has perhaps become the signature struggle of the times; black lives matter toronto alles uber | 209 have become synonymous with a radical challenge to the status quo in race relations and complex, intersectional injustices. all of these have traditionally been domains of inner city politics but they are now also inspired by suburban sensibilities as cities are increasingly governed through regions. whether this continues to mean making city politics more conservative will remain to be seen (addie and keil 2015; keil et al, 2016). conclusion in conclusion, we can speculate at this conjuncture that toronto is stuck in the middle. this has a spatial meaning as the city is increasingly defined in its relationship towards the suburban ring that surrounds it, where new centralities are emerging; it is institutional as the city continues to struggle in its minor role in the multi-level state architecture of the canadian state; and it is temporal as the regime seems to have lost its way and we appear to be entering a period of elite reconstruction. the city, and the province that regulates all its constitutional affairs, were a poster child for the most aggressive form of raw neoliberalization during the 1990s, which led to the competitive city with its dimensions of entrepreneurialism, difference and revanchism. after the pendulum swung left towards a third way-type neoliberalization in the first decade of this century, neoliberal governmentalities were both pushed back and came into their own. during what now appears like an intermezzo, the city took another hard right turn under late mayor rob ford, this time not supported by the all important oversight government at the provincial level. with the election of conservative john tory, who was endorsed by the governing liberal party, sandwiched between a hard right 35 percent opposition and a regrouping 25 percent on the left, we can expect that toronto will be rolling with neoliberalism in the region (keil 2009). the new mayor has placed himself on a continuum of a long term trajectory of elite rule in the city. this constellation of power, space and class has lasted for more than a century, and has shown mostly 210 | austerity urbanism and the social economy impenetrable to (right wing) populist or (left wing) popular challenges. the reform period of 1970-1982 was a bit of an exception, although it was also firmly anchored in the white, upper middle class core of the city. toronto’s haute bourgeoisie, mostly anglo and always white, has kept the reins of power firmly in hand. the miller years created partial openings towards the creative city of millennials and towards a more progressive and diverse polity; the ford years shut down those possibilities but did redefine what a diverse electorate might mean for toronto. the tory victory is, at first glance, a return to the continuous temporalities of the past: modernization in moderation will be the motto. a sclerotic regime shakes off some of its dust and the dirt it acquired during the tempestuous ford era. while the ford years were all about the inequalities of space – suburbs versus the city – we will now hear a lot of terminology that uses temporal metaphors. even before he had entered office, the mayor-elect burst on to the morning radio scene with promises of modernization and a verdict against the “old fashioned” ways of the past. the new slogan is modernization through high tech, procedural innovation (against the ‘old ways’ of the unions and for ‘working together’; against the syndicalist cab drivers and for the business model of uber). he has since come out in favour of other technological innovation although experts bemoaned his steadfast opposition to taking down the east gardiner which was considered by many to be the real progressive solution by opening up a pathway for urbanist technologies of a new generation. words like big data, hackathons and the like are dropping like honey from the mayor’s mouth at any occasion (hardy 2015a). startups will be welcomed ostensibly (hardy 2015b). toronto is seen part of “silicon valley north” and tory has been seen as a champion of that idea (freeman 2016; pagliaro 2016). we shall see more of that discourse of moving forward as long as it is good for business, customers and as long as it uses high tech. the architect of smarttrack commuter rail has already made the smart city his slogan of choice and recently told an interviewer he would be “pushing the city to be smarter because if you have a city that looks like it’s in the 1960s, you toronto alles uber | 211 won’t attract anything new… i want this place to be the most friendly place in north america for startups and i think it can be” (tory quoted in hardy 2015b). tory specifically touts the multifarious characteristics of toronto as an advantage: “ ‘we have here something that is quite unique,’ tory said. ‘you are going to be in both the financial and the innovation capital of the country’ ” (armstrong 2015). this is ironic, of course, in more than one way: now the blandest, most elite and waspish business elite representative who stands for the most longstanding privileges in the city’s history, is calling upon others to give up their “oldfashioned” ways in favour of some uncharted course of progress into a high tech, proto-capitalist future of individual accomplishment, corporate welfare handouts, post-political community consensus and economic deregulation. the alternatives of collective consumption, welfare state provision in housing and transportation, democratic decision-making and responsible economic development will, for now, be taken out of the timeline of progress and parked in some temporality of yesteryear. it was suggested that tory may be a “compromise candidate” (radwanski 2014). this begs the question, what the compromise would consist of? for now, i interpret it as the continuation and another episode in the sclerotic governance of toronto. tory is not going to bring in change that matters. his ticket will be modernization, technocracy and deregulation but it will be in the confines of the elite notions of what the city is about. in toronto the talk is about space, but the material consolidation of its regime is about time. it is 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(2016, september 18) the third transportation revolution lyft’s vision for the next ten years and beyond the road ahead. https://medium.com/@johnzimmer/the-thirdtransportation-revolution-27860f05fa91#.83wkpqxnd 218 | austerity urbanism and the social economy redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs douglas young1 introduction in the 1950s and 60s, municipal planners in toronto set out a clear modern vision of a more urban type of suburb to be developed at higher densities and with more variation in built form than earlier suburbs in the region. a key element in their vision was the high-rise residential building. the planners’ ideas were enthusiastically embraced by public and private sector city-builders with the result that more than 1,100 high-rise apartment buildings were built in the city of toronto by the early 1980s. many of them are located in what were once geographically peripheral locations but are now widely referred to as the “inner” or “older” suburbs, descriptive terminology that distinguishes them from newer suburban developments that extend many kilometres beyond them. most of the high-rise buildings have long since lost the glamour they derived from their newness (a new way of living in a new type of building in a new kind of suburb). indeed, today they represent an aging housing stock with extensive building maintenance backlogs and increasingly racialized and low income tenant populations. the neighbourhoods they are situated in are seen to be lacking in the necessities of everyday life: adequate community and social services, good public transport connections, and access to healthy food. the toronto “inner suburb,” and especially its high-rise rental buildings, is widely perceived to be in decline, but there are very different perceptions of the nature and cause of suburban decline as well as ideas about what 1 douglas young is an associate professor in the urban studies program, department of social science, at york university. email: dogoyo@yorku.ca. this article is based on research that was supported by the social science and humanities research council of canada through funding from the major collaborative research initiative “global suburbanisms: governance, land and infrastructure in the 21st century” (2010-2017). the author would like to acknowledge the research assistance of will poppe. redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs | 219 would constitute suburban renewal. perceptions of suburban decline and renewal in toronto provide a clear case of the ways in which austerity as common sense shapes local urban policy and impacts everyday life. in this article i consider two different approaches to defining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs, approaches that directly reflect the implications of suburbanizing austerity and alternatives to it. neoliberal governance of the in-between city toronto’s high-rise suburbs are the direct result of planning policy that called for a substantial number of dwelling units to be provided in high--rise buildings. for example, in the 1960s planners in what was then the borough of north york (now the north-central part of the city of toronto) prepared district plans for as yet to be developed areas and stipulated housing targets. in north york’s district 10, of the total 50,000 dwellings to be built, 27,000 (or 54% of the total) were to be in the form of high-rise buildings (north york planning board 1967; north york planning board 1985). the result is a remarkable landscape with high-rise rental apartment buildings lining arterial roads and grouped into clusters of tall buildings (see figure 1). drawing on the work of german urbanist, thomas sieverts (sieverts 2003; 2006), i conceptualize this landscape as an in-between city: a landscape that possesses some elements of “typical” north american suburbia (wide roads, shopping centres, expansive parking lots, neighbourhoods of detached bungalows), but also some elements generally associated with “typical” central city areas (high-rise buildings, concentrations of public housing, high proportion of recent immigrants). this is not, according to edward relph, “a suburban anti-city” but rather “a different type of city that has to be assessed on its own terms, an extended city of diverse landscapes and land uses” (relph 2014: 104). 220 | austerity urbanism and the social economy figure 1: the landscape of toronto’s in-between city: strip retail and high-rise rental apartment building. photo by douglas young the 1,189 high-rise residential buildings built across the city in the four decades following ww2 comprise about 300,000 dwellings (or just under 1/3 of the total number of dwellings in the city of toronto) and are home to at least 500,000 people (almost 1/5 of the city’s total population). two-thirds of the towers are privately owned; one-third are in the non-profit sector (city of toronto 2008; 2011). while the suburban towers were initially conceived of as settings for a new and desirable kind of everyday life, they are generally no longer seen in that light but rather as physically worn out and socially stressed. several recent reports, notably vertical poverty. declining income, housing quality and community life in toronto’s inner suburban high-rise apartments (united way 2011), have documented the deteriorating redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs | 221 conditions of the buildings, and the increasing racialization and impoverishment of their residents (united way toronto 2004; 2011). in a way, the very essence of their in-betweenness shapes negative perceptions of toronto’s high-rise suburbs. they are neither glamorous or new (like central city condos), “close to nature” (like exurban communities), or dense enough to be considered truly “urban” (like prewar central city neighbourhoods). instead, toronto’s in-between cities seem to lie in a grey zone somewhere between suburban and urban (young 2011). suburban tower neighbourhoods are widely perceived today to be a problem in need of a solution and everyday life in the inbetween city’s hundreds of high-rises is thought to be in need of a governance fix. in twenty-first century neoliberal toronto, what shape will that governance fix take? neoliberal governance my approach to governance questions is guided in part by the work of theodore and peck who tell us to challenge an understanding of neoliberalism as “an authorless, omnipresent, and monolithic phenomenon” and to see it, instead, as “a constructed project” (theodore and peck 2012: 21, emphasis in original). we should “denaturalize neoliberal urbanism as a policy paradigm by exploring its origins, its evolution, and its variegated form” (theodore and peck 2011: 21).in a similar vein, patrick le galès and olivier borraz advise us to look closely, within a general terrain of neo-liberalizing urban governance, at just what is governed and just who is governed. “what part, sector, group of the city is really governed? what is weakly governed? what is left out? what is escaping government?” (borraz and le galès 2010: 139). thus the shape of neoliberal governance in toronto in the first two decades of the twenty-first century reflects a path dependence specific to this particular city region (boudreau et al 2009). in the province of ontario (of which toronto is the capital), radical neoliberalism under the rubric of a “common sense revolution” was implemented by a progressive conservative government in power 222 | austerity urbanism and the social economy from 1995-2003. within days of their election in june 1995, the new provincial government announced the cancellation of all commitments to build social housing (it should be noted that the federal government had cancelled funding of new social housing construction a few years earlier). that was but the first in an aggressive program of roll-back and roll-out neoliberalization that included deep cuts to welfare payments, equally deep cuts to income tax, the elimination of provincial funding of capital and operating costs of local transit systems, a weakening of rent control (to allow vacancy decontrol and the exemption of newly built units from the legislation), a loosening of planning legislation, the downloading of responsibility for social housing operations to municipalities (with no additional funding provided to support them in doing that), the reorganization of public school board funding, and the forced amalgamation of many municipalities in the supposed interest of efficiency in operations. the implications of the common sense revolution were particularly severe in toronto, the city with the largest number of social housing units, the most developed transit system, the largest number of welfare recipients, and the best funded education system in ontario. the amalgamation of seven municipal governments that created a new city of toronto on january 1, 1998 was considered by many as an attack on the pre-amalgamation city of toronto council which had been a vocal opponent of the provincial government’s neoliberal “revolution” and a champion of social democratic urban policy. radical neoliberalization led to new crises of governance in toronto, especially related to housing. the cancellation of new social housing construction has generated a waiting list for subsidized rentgeared-to-income housing that grew to 82,414 households in 2015 in the city of toronto (onpha 2016: 27). the property development industry has largely abandoned building private sector rental housing with the result being an extremely low vacancy rate of 1.6% in 2015 (cmhc 2015). in a city region that experiences annual population growth in the order of 100,000 people, tremendous pressure is brought to bear on all redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs | 223 types of housing but most especially on existing non-profit housing and private sector housing at the more affordable end of the market. these governance crises are met by new modes of neoliberal governance that keil calls “roll-with-it” neoliberalism (keil 2009) and i call, in certain instances, “progressive neoliberalism” (explained below). in ontario the common sense revolution government was replaced in 2003 by a liberal government that promised to address the social and environmental crises triggered by the roll-back and roll-out polices implemented by its predecessor. and in toronto, the progressive candidate for mayor, david miller, was elected in 2003. thus, in the very early twenty-first century, new regimes at provincial and municipal level appeared poised to undo some of the previous regimes’ actions. but as keil predicted, any new mode of regulation would still be “thoroughly bounded by the limits set through normalized neoliberal governmentalities” (keil 2009: 238). this follows from harvey’s description of neoliberalism as a hegemonic “mode of discourse. it has pervasive effects on ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world” (harvey 2005: 3). indeed, neoliberalism in toronto and ontario has successfully constructed a new notion of common sense with austerity at its core. budgetary problems at the city are conceived of as spending problems, not revenue problems. council is reluctant to implement any new taxes or revenue tools that are available for fear of breaching the common sense notion of austerity. current mayor john tory promotes a budget freeze which, due to annual inflation, would in fact represent a budget cut (rider 2016). in a city where the radical common sense revolution was rolled out more than 20 years ago, austerity has become so common sensical that alternatives are, for many people, simply unimaginable. these two theoretical components (neoliberal urban governance and the in-between city) combine to guide my research as a consideration of how to live today with the legacies of a previous era’s urbanism. in other words, how will the legacies of 1960s urban design, 224 | austerity urbanism and the social economy urban planning and housing policy in toronto’s high-rise suburbs be governed in the context of present-day neoliberalism and its foundation on austerity as common sense? two approaches to the “renewal” of inner suburbs considered to be in decline approach 1: tower renewal and progressive neoliberalism. in toronto austerity as common sense shapes one approach to conceptualizing decline in high-rise suburbs and a very particular approach to their renewal. one of the city’s responses to the problem of the inner suburb and its residential towers is the tower renewal program. it originated in a building science class taught at the faculty of architecture at the university of toronto in 2000 that examined the case of toronto’s post-war concrete apartment towers. the students determined that the buildings have a structural lifespan of 300 to 400 years, having been over-designed by engineers for whom they were, in the 1950s, a new building type. but while the structures will last into the twenty-fourth century, every 50 years or so they will require a complete retrofit of all other building components: exterior cladding, windows, roofs, mechanical systems, kitchens and bathrooms will all need replacement. many of the buildings are now at the stage of needing their first total retrofit. the ideas explored in the building science class were further developed by a student in his master’s thesis, picked up by a local architectural firm which hired him upon graduation, and championed by then mayor, david miller. in 2008, the city established a tower renewal office with a handful of staff reporting to the city manager. the initial goal of the program was to create supply side conditions that would entice building owners to rehabilitate their properties: it was argued that building retrofits would reduce energy consumption, improve the quality of life for tenants, and enhance the exchange value of the buildings. subsequently, the goals of the program have expanded to think beyond the scale of individual buildings to consider the revitalization of tower neighbourhoods that would include redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs | 225 improved social and community services. to that end, the city established a tower & neighbourhood revitalization unit in 2015 (toronto 2015). the fundamental policy tool that the program hoped to initiate was for the city to establish a financial institution that would make low interest loans to tower owners in order to fund improvements to their buildings. the city would use its good credit rating to borrow large amounts of capital at very favourable rates. in cases of non-repayment of loans, it would use its taxing powers to add the outstanding balance to the property tax bill. but, setting up this institution requires provincial approval which has not been forthcoming to date. eight years into the tower renewal program we can ask to what extent it has been a success and to what extent it has been a failure. in terms of material improvements to everyday life of suburban tower residents, it has had extremely limited success. the funding that the program has managed to cobble together to date has been minimal. for example, hi-ris (high-rise retrofit improvement support program) is a three-year city of toronto pilot project for energy conservation upgrades. a total of $10 million is intended to fund improvements in 10 buildings (toronto tower & neighbourhood revitalization unit). hiris may prove to be a successful demonstration project and inspire other building owners take on energy retrofits of their properties, but what is actually needed, if the goal is to address the entire rental tower housing stock of more than 300,000 apartment units, is funding in the range of several billion dollars. it is clear that it will take more than the power of suasion to kick start tower building upgrades across the entire tower housing stock in the city. what is distinctive about tower renewal as an approach to suburban renewal is that it weaves a progressive strand through what is otherwise a clearly neoliberal project. it acknowledges the importance of retaining the suburban towers as an important stock of relatively affordable housing, and it seeks to improve the material well-being of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people living in the in-between city. 226 | austerity urbanism and the social economy but at the same time it indirectly contributes to the overall shrinking of ambition around affordable housing, and around the capacity of the state to act directly on the crisis of housing affordability. instead of creating new non-profit units, the focus is on rehabilitating existing affordable stock, most of which is privately owned and all of which will be at risk of higher rents post-renewal. retention of existing rental housing becomes the defacto affordable housing policy of the city, while creating new nonprofit housing quietly disappears from the policy agenda. tower renewal is a clear case of “roll-with-it” modes of neoliberal urban governance, modes “that normalize market strategies and emphasize new partnerships of private and non-profit actors” (abbruzzese forthcoming). it represents a newly constructed articulation of state, market and civil society shaped by austerity as common sense. but the strategic inclusion of a progressive thread makes it all but impossible to oppose this form of progressive neoliberalism even while acknowledging its severe shortcomings. approach 2: the story of w6cat and the power of saying no. the ward 6 community action team (w6cat) was established in 2010 to represent the interests of low to moderate income tenants living in rental housing on lakeshore blvd. west in mimico, a neighbourhood in south etobicoke (itself a district that forms the western part of the city of toronto). in 2006, the local city councillor had prompted city planning staff to embark on a planning exercise called vision20/20: a revitalization action plan for mimico. this exercise was premised on the idea of renewal through private sector redevelopment. the mimico lakefront, in the eyes of the councillor, was a neighbourhood in decline that could be revitalized through what was presented as the natural and inevitable process of hyper intensification in the form of new high-rise high density condominium development. tenants in 1950s-60s era rental buildings that currently line the lakefront feared they would be uprooted and forced out of the community. w6cat was one of several community based organizations that countered that view of renewal. what was distinctive about w6cat was redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs | 227 its focus on protecting affordable housing and in promoting tenants’ rights. key figures in w6cat were sandra van, the health promotion program coordinator from the local community health centre lamp (lakeshore area multi-service project) who saw housing as crucial to health, and brenda bloore, the president of the non-profit norris crescent housing co-operative who was committed to the principle of housing as a right. i came into contact with w6cat through my involvement in the “global suburbanisms” major collaborative research inititiative (mcri) based at york university (http://city.apps01.yorku.ca/?page_id=222) and saw an opportunity for active research in which i could contribute something to the group’s project. when w6cat members expressed frustration at the limited public consultation the city was prepared to undertake as part of its planning work in mimico, i suggested that they undertake their own parallel planning exercise and call it a peoples’ plan for mimico that would force the city planners to at least acknowledge their presence and their ideas. one striking event w6cat organized was an all-day peoples’ visioning exercise that drew 30 residents to the local library where they spent a saturday afternoon talking about their neighbourhood and its future (see figure 2). in effect, what w6cat did was attempt to shape a counterhegemonic discourse around planning and neighbourhood renewal. their goal was to challenge the fundamental assumptions underlying the mimico 20/20 process: the equation of community renewal with marketled property intensification; the limitation of affordable housing policy to retention of existing rental stock; the unspoken assumption that neighbourhood gentrification is a positive outcome; and the superficiality of most public planning consultation processes. eventually city council approved the “mimico-by-the-lake secondary plan” (a neighbourhood scale official plan) which clearly bears the imprint of citizen activism in that the councilor and major property owners are unhappy with the restrictions it imposes on any new developments. 228 | austerity urbanism and the social economy figure 2: poster advertising the peoples plan vision workshop that was held on saturday march 26, 2011. reproduced by permission of w6cat. conclusions tower renewal and w6cat represent two different approaches to suburban decline and renewal in an age of austerity. tower renewal is an example of what i call progressive neoliberalism, a fundamentally neoliberal project that includes a thread of progressivism that serves to redefining “renewal” in toronto’s high-rise suburbs | 229 make it very difficult, if not impossible, to oppose it. in contrast, w6cat is a counter-hegemonic attempt to unseat the austerity-based new common sense. i present it as a success story but caution that its achievements may not be widely reproducible. w6cat’s success is linked to the combination of a number of specific factors: the two community leaders (sandra van and brenda bloore), a tradition of community activism in the neighbourhood; widespread organic long term knowledge of the district and relevant planning reports and policies stretching back several decades; the fact that mimico was a separate municipality until 1967 (at which time it was absorbed by etobicoke which, in turn, was merged into the new city of toronto in 1998) which fostered a strong sense of a community identity and culture. nevertheless, w6cat’s success does suggest at least the potential power of saying no to austerity. references abbruzzese, t. 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(2003). cities without cities: an interpretation of the zwischenstadt. london: spon press. sieverts, t. (2006). die geschichtlichkeit der großsiedlungen. informationen zur raumentwicklung: stadtumbau in großsiedlungen. bonn: budesamt für bauwesen und raumordnung. 3 / 4, 163-167. theodore, n. and peck, j. (2012). framing neoliberal urbanism: translating ‘commonsense’ urban policy across the oecd zone. european urban and regional studies 19 (1), 20-41. united way toronto. (2011). poverty by postal code 2: vertical poverty. declining income, housing quality and community life in toronto’s inner suburban high-rise apartments. toronto: united way. united way toronto. (2004). poverty by postal code. toronto: united way. young, d. (2011). hyper-development or nothing to do: urban planning in toronto’s in-between city. public: art/culture/ideas. 43, 76-85. 232 | austerity urbanism and the social economy a beautiful community, but a troubled city: flint’s water crisis otrude n. moyo1 introduction i moved to the city of flint, michigan in the summer of 2014. it was, by all media accounts, a distressed city, struggling under a weight of public troubles.2 this essay is personal. it is about how the crisis unfolded for me. i was drafted into the black community (which is my community), however, whiteness continues to shape both our reality and the outcomes of our lives! the irony is that i moved from eau claire, wisconsin a city reported as the safest city in the united states because of its whiteness. however, i had no community in this safe city; now, in troubled flint, i do. nonetheless, this is not the gist of this essay. my discussion relates to the impact of racialization, neoliberal politics and its incapacity to resolve society’s racialized inequalities. the flint water crisis is a microcosm of these larger issues. historically, in the united states, racialization (the process by which certain population groups are singled out for negative treatment on the basis of real or imagined characteristics) has shaped and continues to reshape cities’ landscapes, people’s lives, and well-being outcomes, including physical and mental health, education, gainful employment, housing, financial security and so forth. one major area of this reshaping is the politics surrounding the curtailment of investment in black neighborhoods and the government’s assistance for companies to move out of predominately black neighborhoods (which were created by government through segregation policies in the first place). currently, with increased globalization and businesses seeking comparative advantage by relocating their enterprises to areas of cheap labor, as well 1 otrude n. moyo is associate professor of social work at the university of michiganflint. 2 see bosman and davey 2016 a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 233 as cheaper production costs, the michigan government enabled this move of industry out of predominately black cities, thereby imposing economic famine accompanied by violence, fear and related public troubles.3 it is no accident that cities like flint and greenville michigan became ‘ghost’ towns with deindustrialization. the disturbing part is that government (at various levels) and business leaders knew that in the presumed new knowledge/technology economy employment opportunities would flow away from cities like flint to the suburbs, pitting flint with its dwindling resources, against suburbia, with no plans to mitigate the devastating impact of the divestment. the shifting economic structure was borne by the most vulnerable – always people of color in places like flint. at a personal level, i know my white colleagues who moved from flint to neighboring suburbs did so because the city was no longer looking like them. when the city was white it offered cultural identity and a sense of belonging. white flight, coupled with the loss of manufacturing industry in flint meant the loss of a tax base to keep up with the maintenance of the entire infrastructure. currently, flint, like other cities in the united states experiencing deindustrialization, suffers from high unemployment, particularly for its young adults. those who experience disproportionate unemployment are predominately black.4 today, a racialized black city is seen as an obstacle to attracting business. in this regard, my relocation to flint was mixed but it brought to the fore the realization that whiteness and neoliberal politics were a problem for black populations, who find their efforts to construct community and attempt to live their lives obstructed by institutional racism and neoliberal politics. in my experience, flint is by and large a city inhabited by individuals who labor seven days a week in more than two jobs just to 3 see the documentary unnatural causes, is inequality making us sick (episode 7, not just a pay check) describing the deindustrialization of greenville, michigan. a similar story with the auto industry’s movement away from flint, michigan. 4 see labor statistics highlighted in highsmith 2015 234 | austerity urbanism and the social economy obtain basic necessities. these workers and their families are reduced to a life of bare subsistence. flint’s water crisis – lead in its tap water – is linked to a deindustrialized city now reeling in poverty, facing a mass exodus of its affluent tax base, which accentuates the existing social inequities and on-going environmental injustice (gostin, 2016). in addition, the flint water crisis is linked to the neoliberal politicking at the state government level. the state assured residents that its takeover of local municipalities would cure all local government ills. in reality, less taxation, more stringent tax policies for municipalities, and cuts in revenue sharing have all contributed to the troubles facing the city of flint today (see michigan municipal league 2014). to give another discursive lens to flint’s woes, engel, sterbenz and erin fuchs (2016), writing for the business insider show how flint became one of the most dangerous cities in the united states. citing homicide numbers based on fbi crime statistics as the major factor associated with the ranking of flint as the united states’ most dangerous cities. flint with a population of 99,000 people had 30 homicides and 1, 694 violent crimes in 2014 (engel, sterbenz & fuchs 2016 quoting mlive media). if flint is a dangerous city, it is particularly so for women. usually i walk to work. i remember my first fall in flint. one evening i was coming from one of my night classes, it was already dark at 9pm. as i walked home, a car pulled up close to me. startled, the person in the car called me out: “professor moyo don’t you know that you cannot walk alone at night in flint as a woman?” peering through the dark i realized it was one of my students. i remember making a light comment about a situation that still terrifies me to this day – being caught up in gun crossfire. i lightly responded to the student that i was alright, getting closer to home, as i pointed towards my building and jokingly said, “i am taking back the night!’ still concerned, the student drove slowly and watched me until i got home. refusing to live with fear, i still walk to work and i notice more and more people are walking my flint streets too. again, this is another lens of the troubles of flint. a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 235 flint water crisis unfolds within neoliberal politics the flint water crisis unfolds within a political economic landscape dominated by neoliberalism, an ideology that drives our lives, yet is rarely named as the root of our city’s problem. i use elizabeth martinez and arnoldo garcia’s (1993) definition of neoliberalism to refer to a set of economic and political policies based on the strong faith in the beneficent effect of free markets. it is an ideology in which the existence and operations of the market are valued in themselves and where the operation of a market-like structures is seen as the only way of doing things. it is also an ethic, presently used as a guide for all human action, and substituting for all other existing ethical beliefs. according to martinez and garcia (1993), the rule of the market is supposed to liberate private enterprises from any bonds imposed by the government/state no matter how much social and environmental damage it causes. attempts to regulate and limit the damage of market competition are treated as inimical to liberty. in this mantra, neoliberalism has advanced policies that cut public expenditure for social services, reducing spending in education, and public assistance to people who are poor, and spending on infrastructure (including water), in the name of reducing government’s role. the only increased spending is on law enforcement and the military. however, with exceptions of racialized places like flint, law enforcement officers’ numbers are usually lower. on the community side, neoliberalism is presumed to undermine the concept of public good or community, replacing it with individual responsibility (martinez & garcia 1993). monbiot (2016) asserts that under neoliberalism inequality is recast as virtue, a reward for its social utility as a presumed a generator of wealth. however, the most disturbing part of neoliberalism is the racialization of political decisions, actions that are tantamount to illiberal democracy and contributing to continued harms to communities that have historically suffered cumulative harms. if neoliberalism relates to policies that undermine citizenship, community and overall wellbeing, a discussion of the role of neoliberal politics in the flint water crisis is essential. the flint water 236 | austerity urbanism and the social economy crisis is a microcosm of the impact of racialization, neoliberal politicking, and structural inequalities on people’s lives. before we address these factors, let us consider briefly the details of the flint water crisis. flint water crisis: a synopsis. i got to learn about the flint water issue on october 13th, 2014 when ron fonger wrote that general motors (gm) flint engine plant on bristol road was shutting off access to the flint river over corrosion worries. the plant was moving away from contracting flint city for its water. according to lederman, the city of flint had purchased treated water from detroit since 1967, but in 2014, in an effort to save money, emergency manager darnell earley made the decision to switch flint city’s water supply from detroit to the flint river. claims remain that the decision to switch the water supply was approved by city council members. however, city council officials deny this claim and argue that the city was already under the emergency manager and they as city officials held no power on this decision. nonetheless, the decision to switch to the flint river water lead to disastrous outcomes for the city’s residents, setting off a chain of health problems including lead poisoning particularly for children who drank the water (lederman 2016). prior to this, residents had complained about the foul smelling and horrid taste of flint city water. over the summer of my move to flint there were three boil water advisories. in the coming months i would receive my water bill and statements from the city that the flint river water was healthy. these assurances were confirmed by the michigan department of environmental quality: they insisted that the flint river water was within public health guidelines. i would attend several meetings where residents would talk with city officials about the water issue, but city officials would assure the public that the water was safe and/or dismiss the residents’ experiences. these experiences lead to further distrust of city and state government. i personally had to buy drinking water, while i engaged a personal protest “not to make payments of my water bill”. i debated shutting the water off and a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 237 installing a water bowser but would ultimately cave in to threats from non-bill payment. in terms of claims-making, it would take an outsider to the city of flint, researcher and professor of engineering from virginia tech taking water samples from various homes in the city to confirm high levels of lead in many city homes. it would take a local physician reporting high levels of lead in children’s blood and the national media spotlighting the water crisis in flint before the issue would receive both state and federal attention. for a city that is predominately black, claims of the flint water crisis would be ignored until these outside experts intervened. flint water crisis and neoliberal politicking loss of state-local government revenue sharing: the deeper problem in flint. lederman (2016), quoting anthony minghine (2014), highlights the loss of revenue sharing from state to local authorities as the major contributor to the decimation of flint city’s revenue and consequently, problems with infrastructure maintenance, including provision of healthy water. the table below highlights the revenue sharing dollars diverted by the state away from municipalities and/or local authorities in the state of michigan (michigan municipality league 2014). the state of michigan’s revenue sharing policy consists of both constitutional and statutory payments. the constitutional portion consists of 15% of the gross collection from sales tax – 4% is distributed to cities, villages and townships based on population. the constitutional portion of the payments are set by the state constitution, and the legislature must appropriate whatever is calculated (michigan municipality league 2014). on the other hand, the statutory portion of the revenue sharing has been traditionally distributed by a formula. the governor and the legislator have the discretional ability to adjust the formula, hence the amounts distributed. the table below shows the revenue sharing dollars diverted by the state from select michigan cities, including flint since 2003. 238 | austerity urbanism and the social economy figure 1. commenting on the diverted revenue sharing dollars (sapotichne, scorsone & henion 2016) assert that the flint water crisis reveals a deeper problem in michigan’s fiscal policies. according to minghine (2014), between 2003-2014 the city of flint lost 60 million dollars in revenue sharing from the state. however, neoliberal politicking tends to hide the fact that the state of michigan is using statutory revenue sharing funds to balance its own budgets and pay for cuts in business taxes. lederman (2016) explains further that unlike constitutional revenue sharing, state authorities in michigan can divert statutory revenue sharing resources at their discretion. minghine (2014) writes about this phenomenon in this way: “the state is trumpeting its sound fiscal management and admonishing local governments for not being as a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 239 efficient. what the state fails to mention is that it balanced its own budget on the backs of local communities.” the gimmicky nature of neoliberal politicking is reflected in the very fact that cuts in revenue sharing increased with the state’s political contribution to the republicans after the defeat of democrat governor jennifer granholm (lederman 2016). austerity measures, claims about cities living beyond their means, and posturing about less taxes as sound government, ruled in tandem. with cities like flint in financial crisis, state authorities required market-friendly reforms, including spending cuts in education and human services that were either consolidated or privatized. under this neoliberal politics, lederman notes that flint, like other michigan cities, were positioned as competitive businesses providing products to their citizen-consumers, except flint city is seen as an obstacle to progress. neoliberalism, racialization and the rise of consumer citizens: illiberal democracy pushed on flint. rachel slocum (2004) notes that scholars of citizenship have noticed a shift in western democratic nations whereby citizens are now addressed as consumers (2004:763). what has happened to the citizen turned consumer is crucial to an understanding of the situation of flint. the distinction between the citizen and consumer might also point towards a way for other cities to address their social issues. within a political economic environment where “cash is king,” the presumed “economic man” is one who sees himself as motivated by the desire to satisfy wants. this works for those who see themselves as privileged consumers and can manage the consumption. a consumer without “financial means” becomes an obstacle to progress where most relations are commoditized. could these consumers without means have a voice in the polity? layered in this formula is a consumer without means who is black, could they have voice? the flint residents, because of unemployment and poverty became citizens without purchasing power. these citizens, in the context of neoliberal politicking, are relegated to the status of what giorgio agamben (1998) calls “homo sacer:” an 240 | austerity urbanism and the social economy ostracized and excluded citizen without a voice, even when a basic need like water is contaminated with lead. the plea of citizens turned consumers were ignored. there is no use for the adage the consumer/customer is always right in this part of michigan. in this case, the embedded messages were that “if you don’t like it in flint just move elsewhere”, a strategy used by local elites to “shrink the city”. in flint, the notion of citizenship is turned on its head. the ideal exercise of citizenship is for one to exercise one’s rights and responsibilities to shape one’s life. under neo-liberalism, citizens are stripped of their voice, government deceit fuels distrust. an example: my recent flint water annual quality report (2015), states the following: “the flint water treatment plan is responsible for providing high quality drinking water but cannot control the variety of materials used in plumbing components.” the city is now distancing itself from the problem it helped create. today the public problem of lead in the drinking water is turned to individual household water lines. the above line “the city cannot control the variety of materials used in plumbing components” taken from my bill, is a statement of denial of responsibility for the misdeeds that led to the water crisis. there is hardly any moral outrage about the problem in this statement. it is a perfect example of the neo-liberal tactic of making individuals responsible for social problems. as a consumer, such statements are meant to silence citizens, however, this has a negative effect as such statements continue to fuel citizen distrust of government. also, i understand the idea of citizenship as linked to people experiencing their freedoms as an exercise of participation in power for the common good: where the law protects the rights of individuals. as taxpayers, it is our right as residents of flint to have clean and healthy water (a common good), and as consumers it is our right to have clean and healthy water. however, these rights are undermined today in flint. fareed zakaria’s (1997) term illiberal democracy is useful to highlight the way in which neoliberalism is undermining these rights, which are the basis of liberal democracy. a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 241 further, in an environment where corporations are turned to individual entities – corporations today have more rights than people – government officials today protect the interests of businesses at the expense of people’s well-being. politicians out for votes deliver their sales pitches as if they were in the marketplace: “vote for me i promise no taxation!” so the mantra goes. this kind of politics has less goodwill for the definition and implementation of the common good. moreover, this language is irresponsible – in states like michigan with restrictive fiscal policies, where is the money going to come from to maintain deteriorating infrastructure? yet, hacker and pierson (2016) reminds us that our well-being depends on effective public policy. was the decision to switch the water from detroit to the flint river an effective public policy? andrew r. highsmith (2015) in his book demolition means progress: flint, michigan, and the fate of the american metropolis articulates well flint’s historical experience with ineffective public policy. bankruptcy in ethical decision making: appointment of emergency managers. in the prevailing environment of loss of statutory revenue sharing, citizens were turned into consumers without a voice. flint city’s financial challenges resulted in the appointment of emergency city managers by the governor – basically emergency city managers were contracted to get the city out of financial troubles. state officials argued that the appointment of emergency managers was a means to rescue residents from failed local elective leadership. the assumption, according to scorsone, was that “the state can do it better…the state can take over local government and run it better and provide the expertise.” berman (1995) asserts that the general objective of state intervention has been to restore financial stability to the local authority. in the flint case, the state failed to “do it better” but instead plunged the residents of flint into a human-made environmental injustice. today, many people in flint have elevated lead levels in their bloodstream. city governance thus harmed the people they were meant to protect. on the negative impact of state takeovers, berman writes that the appointment of emergency managers is itself not a bad thing. however, i find the lack of consultation about the 242 | austerity urbanism and the social economy decision to do so illiberal. if we look at predominantly african-american communities, we see that the appointment of emergency managers has resulted in greater distress for those communities. the distress experienced in these neighborhoods speaks to the racialization of the political economy – the cumulative exclusion of the political interests of african-americans. since current neoliberal politics cause harms to black citizens, a new ideology is required to encourage a politics that takes into account the differential impact of policies and decisions on population groups that have historically experienced harms and disadvantages. further, i do not believe that the emergency manager consulted residents or experts to understand and communicate the pros and cons of their decision to change flint city’s water supply from detroit to the flint river. in my view, there was not enough consultation with various stakeholders, including city engineers, to understand the impact of switching water systems. a city like flint with a history of high socioeconomic and racial differentiation, needs leaders that are attentive to the historically cumulative disadvantages suffered by african-american residents, rather than decision making that accentuates this differentiation. in its paternalistic role the state becomes a benevolent father presented as willing to help, yet silencing the very people it ought to be helping. the state and its authorities failed to uphold their responsibility to the marginalized people of flint and to recognize how their decision would impact everyday life in the community. i teach policy, and one of the important considerations in any ethical decision-making process has to be how the proposed policy will impact the most disadvantaged. it does not seem that this principle was considered in the state’s decision to switch the water supply from the detroit to the flint river. no one challenged the state official’s certainty about this crucial decision, and this lack of critical scrutiny reinforced the injustice imposed on the community. it was an outright refusal to listen to the voices of those who would be most harmed by the switch in the water supply. since the a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 243 overwhelming majority of affected people were african-americans, it is clear that racism played a role. the reality of racial inequality in michigan – its embeddedness in the everyday working of government – reproduces the historical injustice long suffered by african-americans. who defines revitalization of flint under neoliberal politics? the revitalization of a neoliberal city does not mean that it is recreated in the interest of the majority of its citizens. rather, as doreen massey argues, the neoliberal city is defined by elites, and its “revitalization” means that the city as a whole is claimed by a few (miles 2012: 216). neoliberalism expressed in the everyday life of flint, as represented on my typical street, has meant threats to health and cut backs to public spending on such crucial community services as libraries. a new city emerges – a “corporate landscape” for leisure, streets turned into walking/running pavements, after every event plastic water bottles litter the environment and food places dot the main street for foodies looking for places to go. for the poor and racialized it means displacement and marginalization. even my novice students understand that for any decision to be just it has to weigh the costs to its most vulnerable populations – this derives from rawlisian ethics. neoliberal ethics disregards justice in favour of cost saving and, as such, continues to undercut human needs. local non-profit organizations and foundations have been crucial in the rebuilding of flint as well as filling in the gaps left by governmental agencies in terms of social service provisioning. however, their historic strategy of categorizing populations to receive assistance instead of a universal and/or institutional approach is likely to continue the socio-economic differentiation of the population. recently, i received a letter from the department of health and human services outlining that if i was pregnant and had children who had ingested flint water for a particular period i may be eligible for some public assistance. whilst this is a crucial strategy in targeting interventions of the water crisis to those most at-risk, children and pregnant women in a city like flint experiencing multiple complex problems requires a rethink in politics of 244 | austerity urbanism and the social economy selective intervention, which is promoted by neoliberalism. indeed, politics of selective intervention strategies are easier and more palatable but the question of reach remains. concluding remarks the issue of the flint water crisis is complex and is inseparable from the history of racialization of the city. although flint is a largely black city, the people who run the show and determine the outcomes for people’ lives remain white. this leadership continues to use neoliberal politics to further its interest whilst undermining the value of citizenship of those who have historically experienced differential disadvantages. some of the problems, like michigan state fiscal policies, are not quite apparent as issues contributing to the lead problem in flint’s water. however, for effective policies and interventions that actually solve structural problems to be pursued, it is imperative that the voices of the whole community, but particularly its poor and racialized members, be heard. i personally came to live in flint, a beautiful community but a troubled city, and my hopes have been to become part of the difference making. i remain optimistic and believe that people can make good things happen. the flint water crisis is a paradigm case of the moral bankruptcy of current neoliberal politics as it systematically fails to address human well-being. references berman, d.r. (1995). takeovers of local governments: an overview and evaluation of state policies. publius, 25, 3:55-70. bosman, j. and m. davey. (2016). anger in michigan over appointing emergency managers. new york times, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/us/anger-in-michiganover-appointing-emergency-managers.html?_r=0 a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 245 engel, pamela, sterbenz, christina & fuchs, erin (2016). why is flint michigan dangerous. business insider, http://www.businessinsider.com/why-is-flint-michigandangerous-2016-1 gostin, l. o. (2016). lead in the water: a tale of social and environmental injustice. journal of american medical association (jama), 19:2053-2054. dol:10.100/jama.2016.5581. highsmith, a. (2015). demolition means progress: flint, michigan, and the fate of american metropolis. chicago. university of chicago. lederman, j. (2016). flint’s water crisis is no accident. it’s the result of years of devastating free-market reforms: this is what neoliberal governance looks like. http://inthesetimes.com/article/18794/flint-water-crisisneoliberalism-free-market-reforms-rick-snyder hacker, j.s. & pierson, p. (2016). the real cause of the flint crisis. the atlantic’s politics & policy daily, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-realcause-of-the-flint-crisis/472305/ highsmith, a.r. (2015). demolition means progress: flint, michigan, and the fate of american metropolis. chicago. university of chicago. martinez, e. & garcia, a. (1993). intercontinental encounter for humanity and against neoliberalism, july 27-august 3th, 1996 in la realidad, chiapas. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376 michigan municipal league (2014). revenue sharing factsheet. http://www.mml.org/pdf/advocacy/2014-revenue-sharingfactsheet.pdf. minghine, anthony. (2014). the great revenue sharing heist. michigan municipality league. http://www.mml.org/pdf/advocacy/mmlrevenue-sharing-heist-2014.pdf monbiot, g. 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(2004). consumer citizens and the cities for climate protection campaign. environment and planning, 36: 763-782. zakaria, f. (2012). the rise of illiberal democracy, foreign affairs, 76, 6:22-43 a beautiful community, but a troubled city | 247 do efforts to mitigate gentrification work? evidence from washington, dc carolyn gallaher1 introduction we don’t usually think of austerity2 as something that happens in booming cities. this is true even for cities like washington, d.c., that have recent experience with formal austerity. although washington, d.c., was placed in federal receivership in 1995 and stayed there for six years, it is now more likely to appear on internet lists like “america’s coolest cities” (carlyle 2014), “the most walkable urban metro areas” (leinberger and lynch 2014), and the “most expensive us cities for renters” (avakian 2016). as the latter list suggests, however, recovery often creates a new type of austerity3 for poor and working class people. instead of formal austerity (imposed in d.c.’s case by congress), today’s austerity is more informal, often the result of cities’ decisions to foster development at all costs. in d.c. this austerity among riches is most 1 carolyn gallaher is associate professor in the school of international service at american university. email: caroleg@american.edu 2 the dictionary defines austerity as “a situation in which there is not much money and it is spent only on things that are necessary.” in the context of governance, austerity usually refers to a package of policies and laws that govern how budget deficits will be trimmed and services will be prioritized. austerity can be imposed by outsiders or willingly adopted by insiders. in dc austerity was externally imposed by congress. indeed, congress (with the president’s approval) decided to put the city into receivership despite opposition from its mayor, city council, and a majority of its citizens. 3 austerity can also be a side effect of policies unrelated to budget cutting. when dc was released from congressional authority in 2001, for example, the city’s government adopted a number of policies designed to attract new residents into the city in an effort to grow the city’s tax base. most of these programs involved long-term investments. however, the city’s efforts to attract new residents coincided with the housing bubble and an influx of cash from the federal government’s post-9/11 terrorism-related spending. the result was not just an increased tax base, but intense gentrification. although the city’s leaders did not plan for gentrification, at least in the early years, they can be faulted for ignoring the consequences of it in later years. 248 | austerity urbanism and the social economy notable in the housing market. although the average income for the city’s poorest residents fell between 2007 and 2014, the city’s housing costs continue to rise (tuth 2016). in 2016, the median home price in the district was over half a million dollars ($534,900), while the median rent was $2,220 for a 1-bedroom apartment and $3,140 for a 2-bedroom (woo 2016). a key question that bedevils gentrification scholars is how to stop or at least mitigate gentrification so that it does not lead to the displacement of in situ residents. most scholars have advocated for measures that help people step outside of, or work against, the market principles that sustain gentrification. these measures include limited equity co-operatives, organized squatting, and community land trusts, among others (huron 2012; defilippis 2004; martinez 2009; springer 2016). in this paper i look at a market-oriented solution to displacement, a one of a kind statute in washington d.c., called the tenant opportunity to purchase act (topa). topa stipulates that if a landlord signs a contract to sell a residential apartment building, tenants have the right to refuse the sale and to purchase the building instead for the contracted sale price. the goal of the statute is to mitigate displacement by giving tenants economic leverage during periods of gentrification (eisen 1993). although right-to-buy programs are usually defined as neoliberal and thus viewed with suspicion by critical scholars, i argue here that topa is better seen as an assemblage of keynesian, social justice and neoliberal imperatives. as such, activists and advocates in the city have been able to use a market-oriented solution to non-market ends. as i explain in the conclusion, though topa is unique to d.c., it provides lessons for how critical scholars might approach urban policies that are ideologically imperfect but helpful to vulnerable populations nonetheless. indeed, in a strategic sense supporting policies that are “less than perfect” but “good enough” signals the importance of achieving smaller ‘wins’. thwarting or limiting the worst of neoliberal urbanism may not amount do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 249 to final victory, but it does deliver tangible benefits to its victims nonetheless. why d.c. enacted topa topa was crafted in 1980 in response to a wave of gentrification just outside the city’s downtown core. as property values increased, landlords began selling their apartment buildings to developers interested in converting them into condominiums. condos were a relatively new form of housing at the time – the federal housing administration only began insuring mortgages for individual units inside of multifamily buildings in 1961 – but, they quickly became an ideal investment vehicle in cities, where land available for horizontal development is relatively scarce (stray-gundersen 1981; lassner 2009, 2012). not surprisingly, the boom in conversions resulted in high and concentrated levels of displacement. the city’s paper of record, the washington post, covered the conversions extensively, paying special attention to displaced renters (robinson 1980; weiser 1980). housing advocates also chimed in, asking the city to step in to protect elderly tenants and other vulnerable residents, many of whom had lived in their apartments for decades. in response, the city council issued a temporary condo conversion moratorium in 1979 (richburg 1980). a local business group sued the city, however, arguing that the measure was unconstitutional because the city had used its emergency powers to introduce the bill.4 the court ruled in the plaintiff’s favor, so the city council went back to the legislative drawing board (whitaker and camp 1979). 4 in 1973 congress passed the district of colombia home rule act, which gave the city the power to elect its own mayor and city council. the act came with restrictions, however. congress can veto legislation passed by the city council and approved by the mayor. although the home rule act allows the city council to pass legislation without congressional approval for legislation meant to handle emergency situations, a business group challenged the city’s interpretation of conversion displacement as an emergency. 250 | austerity urbanism and the social economy in june of 1980 the council voted on a new legislative solution to conversion-related displacement – the rental housing and conversion sale act (rhcsa).5 once the mayor signed the bill, it was submitted for review to the u.s. house of representatives committee on the district of colombia.6 although the committee’s chairman, charlie wilson (dtx), was opposed to the bill (ostensibly on free market grounds7), he was unable to rally sufficient support to veto it. as a result, rhcsa became law in september of the same year. rhcsa includes two parts – the conversion of rental housing to condominium or cooperative (crhcc) and the tenants opportunity to purchase act (topa). the first part – crhcc – states that a property owner may only convert a rental accommodation to condominium with the permission of a majority of its leaseholders (50% plus 1 of total units). the owner must hold a formal election and report the results to the city agency in charge of administering the program. the second part of the bill – topa – gives tenants’ associations the right to refuse a contracted sale of their apartment building and to purchase the building instead for the contracted sale price. the tenants may then decide if they want to convert to a co-op or condominium or keep their building rental. how it operates readers may wonder how tenants can afford to buy an entire apartment building on their own. indeed, many of the city’s tenants have 5 rental housing conversion and sale act of 1980, tenant opportunity to purchas act, d.c. code §42-3404.02. 6 as i note in footnote 3, congress has the power to veto legislation passed by the d.c. city council and signed by its mayor. today the u.s. house of representatives’ oversight and government reform committee is charged with reviewing district legislation. 7 because topa was a one of a kind bill, there was little evidence from other cities that critics could use to justify their opposition to the bill. as a result, the bill’s opponents resorted to a ‘guilt by association’ tactic, equating the bill with the city’s rent control statute, which was unpopular in real estate development circles. for more detail on the congressional review of the topa statute, see my review (gallaher 20016) or the transcript of the hearing cited in the bibliography. do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 251 low or moderate incomes. and even in relatively well-off buildings, tenants’ associations rarely have existing bank accounts or credit reports that would allow them to qualify for private loans. the topa statute accounts for tenants’ uneven footing in the market by allowing tenants’ associations the right to either sell or assign their topa rights to a third party that can help tenants with financing. by practice, third parties are usually developers. in mixed income buildings tenants often work with for-profit developers, while tenants in low income buildings are more likely to work with non-profit developers. the city also offers financial assistance for low income tenants going through the topa process, including bridge loans to help tenants’ associations cover acquisition costs while long-term financing and grants are arranged to help individual tenants pay closing costs on their units. because tenants can choose who, if anyone, to assign their right of first refusal to, they can also negotiate with multiple developers before choosing a partner. during this phase tenants’ primary concern is usually to keep their housing costs affordable and/or stable. in buildings where tenants want to convert to a condominium or co-op, this means negotiating for so called ‘insider prices’ for tenants who want to purchase their units. insider prices are usually below market, although the degree to which they are below market can vary (gallaher 2016). tenants’ associations that plan to keep their buildings’ rental also want to keep their housing costs stable. although the city’s rent control statute should theoretically prevent against steep rent hikes8, the statute does provide five categories9 under which landlords may petition to raise rents above 8 every may washington dc uses a “rent control cpi” (consumer price index) to establish the maximum annual rental increase per year. between 2010 and 2016 the rent control cpi has ranged from 0% (2016) to 3.6% (2012). for historical comparisons since 2012 please see the following factsheet from the city’s office of the tenant advocate: http://ota.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ota/release_content/attachments/2016%20his tory_of_ss%20cola%20vs%20rhc_cpi_ota.pdf 9 dc allows landlords to petition to raise rents beyond the state caps for 5 reasons: hardship, capital improvements, services and facilities, substantial rehabilitation, and voluntary agreement. for more detail see the following factsheet from the city’s office of 252 | austerity urbanism and the social economy http://ota.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ota/release_content/attachments/2016%20history_of_ss%20cola%20vs%20rhc_cpi_ota.pdf http://ota.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ota/release_content/attachments/2016%20history_of_ss%20cola%20vs%20rhc_cpi_ota.pdf permitted amounts. tenants associations can, therefore, demand that potential partners agree to forgo petition requests before striking a deal. tenants in both scenarios also negotiate for improvements to their buildings, many of which have been subject to disinvestment. tenants can ask for structural improvements, such as new windows (to block traffic noise and retain heat), central heating and cooling (to replace outdated radiators and window ac units), and repairs to roofs, foundations and joists. tenants can also ask for amenities such as fresh paint, new landscaping, updated furniture for common areas, and rooftop decks. developers also negotiate for things. non-profit developers, for example, do not need to make a profit, but they do need to break even for a partnership to work. so, they may negotiate to do repairs over a longer time frame, or to forgo amenities. non-profits who want to help tenants become homeowners can also require that tenants take steps to ready themselves for homeownership before agreeing to partner with a tenants’ association. for-profit developers, by contrast, have a more singular goal – making a profit. as such, they usually request the right to offer tenants so called buyouts – a payment given to a tenant in exchange for agreeing to waive her right to stay put. in buildings converting to condominium or co-operatives, developers can sell bought out units at market rates.10 in buildings staying rental, bought out units should be shielded from steep increases because of the city’s rent control statute. however, if developers believe rent control caps will not produce sufficient profit, they can negotiate for the right to submit one of the petition requests discussed above. in recent years developers have negotiated for the right to submit “voluntary agreement” petitions. unlike other petition categories that require developers to show the need for substantial (and the tenant advocate: http://ota.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dhcd/publication/attachments/rentcontrolfa ctsheet2013.pdf 10 although developers usually want to sell as many units as possible at market rates, dc’s booming housing market means they can still make handy profits when agreeing to discounted units for tenants staying put. do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 253 http://ota.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dhcd/publication/attachments/rentcontrolfactsheet2013.pdf http://ota.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dhcd/publication/attachments/rentcontrolfactsheet2013.pdf costly) repairs, vas allow landlords to raise rents above the cap if 70% or more of their tenants agree to the increase. under normal circumstances, tenants will reject vas, but the calculus often changes in buildings where tenants are trying to use their topa rights. indeed, tenants who need third party financing will consider vas if the potential partner promises to only raise rents to market rates in units that are bought out. as one local journalist (depillis 2012) explained, in situ tenants often agree to vas because they “raise rents on future tenants, who aren’t around yet to protest.” does topa work? although topa has been in place for 40 years, we do not know the extent to which it has mitigated displacement. a primary reason is the city’s failure to track the program.11 the city does not, for example, collect data on how many tenants’ associations invoke their topa rights. nor does it track how many associations choose to convert versus remain rental. without these numbers, it is difficult to measure how many tenants have used topa to stay put in temporal or spatial terms (e.g. during the real estate boom or in a particular neighborhood). d.c. think tanks have tried to fill in these data gaps by looking at tenants’ associations that receive city assistance to buy their buildings (reed 11 the city recently announced that it is building a database to track tenants’ associations going through the topa process. why it has taken over 35 years to do so is a matter of debate. one explanation is that the failure to collect data on the process is consistent with how the city’s bureaucracy was run at the time. fisher (2011) argues, for example, that city leaders used to treat the bureaucracy as an “employer of last resort,” so professional standards were in short supply. another explanation is that the city saw topa as a private rather than public solution. that is, the city saw its contribution as providing a right to its citizens rather than a durable good or service that could be tracked. politics provides a third explanation. critics contend that the city agency in charge of topa oversight has long been beholden to developers. during the height of the real estate boom ne city councilmember described the agency as “fully captured” by special interests (grim 2006). 254 | austerity urbanism and the social economy 2013).12 while tracking how well low income tenants use topa is important – after all, these are the very tenants the statute was designed to help – it gives us only a partial picture. specifically, we need to know how well topa works in mixed income buildings, where tenants have economically varied interests that could make consensus difficult to reach. a second problem is that there is no clear baseline for measuring the success of right-to-buy schemes. although advocates often see purchase as an indicator of success, the experience of tenants who purchased their homes when margaret thatcher privatized britain’s public housing suggests home ownership can create as many problems as it solves (forrest and murie 1990; beckett 2015). indeed, britain’s council housing stock was in such poor shape that many buyers could not afford the cost of repairs and upkeep after purchase. there is also no established purchase rate above which a program is considered successful and below which it is seen to have failed. there is likewise no agreement on how to evaluate buyouts in the context of right-to-buy programs. some advocates see buyouts as a necessary evil, as a way to encourage private investment in an aging housing stock, while others see buyouts as contributing to gentrification because they can lead to higher than normal rent increases (see depillis 2012, for a summary of the debate). given the lack of both quantitative data on topa and established benchmarks for measuring it, i decided to make a qualitative assessment of topa in my new book, the politics of staying put: condo conversion and tenant right-to-buy in washington dc (gallaher 2016). i began by developing a representative sample of seven buildings that went through the topa process after 2000 (roughly, the start of the housing boom in the u.s.). these buildings were selected to represent the social and economic diversity of the city as well as differences in building size. i then contacted the tenants’ associations in each building to find 12 because these tenants’ associations receive city money, there is a paper trail that researchers can consult to piece together what they did with their topa rights (convert or stay rental) and whether they were successful (e.g. loan paid in full). do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 255 out how the topa process unfolded in each. with information gleaned from these interviews i was able to make four estimates for each building: the percentage of tenants who stayed put, the percentage of tenants who took buyouts, the percentage of units that were subject to price increases (the sum of bought out units plus units vacant at the time of conversion), and an estimate of the affordability of units that were subject to price increases post-topa. my goal was two-fold: to see how many tenants stayed put through topa and to track the affordability of bought out units going forward. my findings indicate that topa’s results are mixed. on average, tenants in 50.01% of sample units were able to stay put using topa. the people who stayed put were also able to stay put as both new homeowners and renters. that is, they were not forced to become owners in order to stay put. in fact, 3 of the 7 sample buildings used topa to stay rental and a fourth negotiated to convert only a small number of units to condominium. however, the housing costs in the units subject to price increases were uniformly unaffordable after topa. in buildings that converted to condo, the income threshold necessary to afford a condo was between 4.7 and 6.5 times the 2010 poverty threshold for a single person household ($10,956). in buildings staying rental, the income threshold necessary to afford new rents was between 6.8 and 11.8 times greater than the same threshold. evaluating topa as i note in the previous section, evaluating topa with empirical data is difficult because there are no agreed upon metrics on which to base the evaluation. this leaves us with theoretical categories such as neoliberal, keynesian, and social justice. although these categories are descriptive inasmuch as they indicate what sorts of solutions are typical to each, they are also ideological. they point to underlying assumptions about what the relationship between the state and its citizens should be. in the context of housing, for example, neoliberals believe that the market is best equipped to meet demand for 256 | austerity urbanism and the social economy housing. they argue that state involvement in the market produces inefficiencies and socially undesirable outcomes. by contrast, keynesians sees a role for the state in ensuring (via subsidies and/or regulation) that private capital is invested in housing for the municipal workforce. keynesians also support public investments in housing for vulnerable citizens (e.g. the disabled, the poor, etc.). for their part, social justice advocates believe in both a “just distribution” and one that is “justly arrived at” (harvey 1973: 9). in the context of housing social justice requires that investments are distributed across municipal space and for all income groups within it. in the critical gentrification literature, neoliberal programs are usually regarded as inferior to programs guided by either keynesian or social justice imperatives (defilippis 2004; slater 2006). in particular, critics contend that by turning housing into a commodity – something not just bought and sold, but speculated on – neoliberal policy has contributed to rising housing costs. although rising costs have affected housing costs at all price points, low and moderate income families have had the most difficulty adapting to higher housing costs because their wages have been stagnant, or in some cases declined, since the great recession. critics also argue that the emphasis on ownership in neoliberal ideology means that renting has come to be regarded in moral terms, as inferior to owning, and those who rent as suspect and unworthy of public assistance (blomley 2005, 2008). in many ways topa is classically neoliberal. it was offered after a decidedly social justice approach to the problem of conversion-related displacement – a moratorium – was rejected in court. topa also works solidly within neoliberal precepts. first and foremost, it gives tenants a chance to become owners – arguably one of neoliberalism’s most sacred designations. the role of developers in making tenant ownership possible also means that tenants must work within and often succumb to market demands, not the least of which is ensuring that developers make a sufficient profit. the amount of profit deemed necessary can, of course, vary by developer, but it is worth noting that the growing role of do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 257 international investors in d.c.’s real estate market has put upward pressure on what is considered an acceptable profit (depillis 2012). given these problems, it would be easy to reject topa out of hand, as yet another neoliberal solution that purports to help tenants even as it hurts them. there are, however, reasons for resisting such an interpretation. my evidence suggests that topa is better regarded as an assemblage of neoliberal, keynesian, and social justice imperatives. two elements of the statute are especially illustrative. first, though topa gives tenants the right to buy, the right is not given to individual tenants but to the tenant collective (i.e. the tenants’ association). the focus on the collective is antithetical to the emphasis on the individual in neoliberal ideology. indeed, the basis for both social justice organizing, and the keynesian distribution of resources has long been the collective, whether organized by identity, occupation, or need. in the context of topa, the focus on the collective is especially important in mixed income buildings where low income tenants and middle and upper income tenants may have different interests. if the city allowed individual tenants, or a small group of tenants to refuse a sale, for example, it would be possible for wealthy tenants, who are often better situated to take advantage of their rights, to work with a developer to refuse a sale and then convert to condo even if a majority of fellow tenants were unable to afford their units. the first part of rhcsa – crhcc – also lends to the collective ethos by stipulating that even if tenants buy their building through the topa process, they cannot convert it to condominium or cooperative without at least 50% (+1) of units agreeing to conversion. second, by allowing tenants to assign their rights to a third party, topa gives tenants bargaining power they can use to determine the outcome of their building’s topa process. while tenants can become owners, they are not forced to use ownership to stay put. this is no mean feat given the perils that can attend home ownership for low income people. in my sample, the preference for remaining rental was much stronger than i had anticipated, with 4 of 7 buildings choosing to remain fully or largely rental. topa’s categorical fuzziness – its assembled 258 | austerity urbanism and the social economy nature – has theoretical and political implications. theoretically, the topa statute suggests that assisting low income people does not always have to occur on pure ideological terrain. specifically, keynesian and social justice imperatives can work through neoliberal structures, producing outcomes that are to varying degrees antithetical to neoliberalism. politically, this recognition means that the neoliberal elements of topa cannot be grounds for refusing its potential. i will admit that this was a hard admission for me to make. when i was writing my book, i struggled to see past the problems the neoliberal elements of topa caused, even though i knew many tenants were able to use topa to stay put. in many ways i continue to struggle with topa’s weaknesses. as i was writing this paper, for example, a new journal article, “fuck neoliberalism,” came across my research feed. the essay, by simon springer (2016), made me laugh (such a rare and wonderful thing for an academic paper) and feel energized (yelling “fuck off” to someone or something that richly deserves it is really liberating). springer’s approach also seemed potentially relevant to evaluating topa. the “politics of refusal” beneath springer’s holler back – the idea, as he argues, that we can fuck neoliberalism “by doing things outside its reach” – suggested that maybe the topa statute is a poor solution for neoliberal victims, if not part of the problem. indeed, springer specifically calls out scholars like david harvey for both insisting on a role for the state and “dismiss[ing] non-hierarchical organization and horizontal politics as greasing the rails for an assured neoliberal future” (2016: 287). once my euphoria wore off, though, the idea of rejecting or abandoning topa seemed unwise. gentrification in washington, d.c. has been rapid. only twenty years ago the city was experiencing its fifth decade of population loss, confronting high crime and disinvestment, and struggling to make ends meet with a declining tax base – the latter leaving little to remedy the former (gillette 2006). the city was also watching its hard earned autonomy get stripped away by an do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 259 unsympathetic congress. this context helps explain why city leaders did little to stop gentrification when it arrived, and in some cases tacitly supported it. the city’s changing fortunes are seen as a guarantor of autonomy, as a bulwark against another round of congressional meddling. in this regard, springer’s assessment of the state is fair. d.c. has become part of the problem. by encouraging gentrification, the city has hurt its most vulnerable residents. unfortunately, efforts to step outside of neoliberalism in the city have not produced measurable gains. in fact, the only thing that has actually stopped (some) displacement is the city’s topa statute. none of this is to suggest, of course, that topa is perfect or only needs minor tweaks. topa cannot, for example, build affordable housing or ensure that landlords don’t find unethical ways to push tenants out of their apartments (e.g. by refusing to make repairs, threatening to shut off services, or using petty rules infractions to force evictions). however, because topa contains elements that work at cross-purposes to neoliberalism, it can be used to help tenants in nonneoliberal ways. my research on topa points to two improvements that should be made to the statute. in my book, for example, i argue that the city should rewrite the rent control statute to prohibit the use of vas in buildings going through the topa process. the ability of tenants to keep their buildings rental through topa is one of the statute’s most important mechanisms. if vas were prohibited, rents in these buildings would be kept at below market rates. at the very least, the city’s two main statutes for helping low income tenants (topa and rent control) should not undermine one another. second, i argue that the city should reserve rights to a portion of bought out units in every topa building. this would allow the city to use these units for low income residents, without the economic burdens involved in purchasing and maintaining entire buildings. again, contra to springer (2016), i see an important role for the state in providing low income housing. d.c.’s low income citizens are desperate for affordable housing, and the market has proven unwilling to meet the demand. in fact, it has not even been able to preserve the 260 | austerity urbanism and the social economy affordable units that do exist. between 2012 and 2014, for example, nearly half of the city’s private affordable housing units vanished, subject to demolition, rent hikes, and the like (rivers 2015). small scale efforts to step outside the market, like organized squatting by homeless people, simply cannot compete in this context. none of the ‘fixes’ i have outlined here will solve all of topa’s problems, but they can help. and, in the spirit of those who want to be done with neoliberalism and the austerity it imposes on society’s most vulnerable, these fixes can and should happen alongside of the horizontal, outside the neoliberal box efforts that springer (2016) calls for in his article. references beckett, a. 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(2016). the politics of staying put: condo conversion and tenant right-to-buy in washington dc. philadelphia: temple university press. do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 261 gillette, h. (2006). between justice and beauty: race, planning, and the failure of urban policy in washington dc. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. grim, r. (2006, june 30). dcra: defending the city’s ruling aristocracy. http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com harvey, d. (1973). social justice and the city. baltimore: johns hopkins university press. huron, a. (2012). the work of the urban commons: limited-equity cooperatives in washington dc (unpublished ph.d. dissertation). city university of new york. lasner, m. (2012). high life: condo living in the suburban century. new haven, ct: yale university press. lasner, m. (2009). own-your-owns, co-ops, town houses: hybrid housing types and the new urban form in postwar southern california. journal of the society of architectural historians 68(3): 387-403. leinberger, c & lynch, p. (2014). foot traffic ahead: ranking walkable urbanism in america’s largest metros, 2016. washington dc: the center for real estate and urban analysis, george washington university school of business. martinez, m. (2009). the squatters' movement: urban counter-culture and alter-globalization dynamics. southern european society and politics 12(3): 379-398. reed, j. (2013, september 24). dc’s first right purchase program helps to preserve affordable housing and is one of dc’s key antidisplacement tools. washington d.c.: fiscal policy institute. http://www.dcfpi.org richburg, k. (1980, july 30). city council in final-day spurt approves restrictions on condominium conversions. the washington post, pp. c1. rivers, w. (2015, march 12). going, going, gone: dc’s vanishing affordable housing. washington d.c.: dc fiscal policy institute. http://www.dcfpi.org 262 | austerity urbanism and the social economy robinson, t. (1980, february 29). halt condo conversion notices, four apartment owners ordered. the washington post, pp. b2. slater, t. (2006). the eviction of critical perspectives from gentrification research. international journal of urban and regional research 30(4): 737-757. springer, s. (2016). fuck neoliberalism. acme: an international journal for critical geographies, 15(2): 285-292 stray-gundersen, k. (1981). regulatory responses to the condominium conversion process. washington university law review 59(1): 513-534. tuths, p. (2016). a city breaking apart: the incomes of dc’s poorest residents are falling, while economic growth is benefiting better-off residents. washington d.c.: d.c. fiscal policy institute. http://www.dcfpi.org weiser, b. (1980, december 12). court rejects apartments’ conversion. the washington post, pp. b3. whitaker, j. & camp, p. (1979, october 20). city’s emergency condominium law overturned. washington post, pp. b1. woo, j. (2016, august 8). august 2016 national apartment list rent report. https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/nationalrent-data/ do efforts to mitigate gentrification work | 263 the university in the city: the campus as a space of dependence and engagement in the age of austerity kafui attoh,1 don mitchell,2 and lynn a. staeheli3 “… [a] schoolmaster is a productive labourer, when, in addition to belaboring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. that the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of a sausage factory, does not alter the relation.” karl marx 1867 introduction as critiques of the corporate university abound, marx’s equation of schools with sausage factories has never seemed more apt (bousquet 2008; nelson 1997; newfield 2004, 2011; washburn 2006; fabricant and brier 2016). corporate methods of managing academic labor and measuring institutional “through-put” – whether in the form of publications, patents, corporate partnerships, or student-commodities themselves – are by now commonplace. observing these trends well before the current round of intense, global higher-education restructuring sparked by the 2008 economic crisis, the geographer neil smith (2000) asked his readers to think seriously about “who rules the sausage factory” – and who should. the privatization of education at every level, smith observed, was turning many a teacher and professor into exactly the kind of “productive laborer,” marx warned about. but this need not be the case: there was, he argued, a fight to be had and we had better fight it. of course, many of us have been fighting – and often 1 kafui attoh is assistant professor of urban studies, joseph s. murphy institute, cuny. email: kafui.attoh@mail.cuny.edu 2 don mitchell is professor of cultural geography, department of social and economic geography, uppsala university. email: dmmitc01@maxwell.syr.edu 3 lynn staeheli is professor of geography and sgd director, school of geography and development, university of arizona. email: lstaeheli@email.arizona.edu 264 | austerity urbanism and the social economy mailto:dmmitc01@maxwell.syr.edu mailto:lstaeheli@email.arizona.edu alongside politicized students well aware of their status as branded “sausages.” and yet privatization and corporatization continue apace. indeed, the conditions under which academics work as “productive labor” has grown increasingly alarming, especially as university administrators claim their institutions must face up to the new realities of “austerity.”4 faculty members and their departments must, as administrators invariably put it, learn to do more with less. simultaneously, ever-more instrumentalized forms of knowledge production assume pride of place in the imaginations of trustees and chancellors alike, as branding becomes central to university missions, and as franchising (especially in china and the middle east) seems a logical way to “compete” in what is imagined to be a global higher education marketplace.5 given all this, for those of us who work in them, or who study in them, universities can feel an awful lot like a sausage factory – or, perhaps, even the supermarkets that sell the sausages (elite whole foods, plebian walmart, and the whole range in between). yet for even the most cynical observers, the university is more than a sausage factory. not only are universities places that can facilitate real learning, they are also institutions positioned, even now, to promote the public good, to expose social injustice and even promote social struggle, to train civically-minded citizens, and to produce knowledge aimed at advancing public wellbeing. the campus can provide a space for experimentation and activism, and from which the world can be engaged. for many faculty and students, it is precisely for these reasons that universities remain – despite their increasing corporatization – essential tools in constructing a more just society. if that’s the case, then 4 which somehow never slows the construction of new gyms, stadiums, luxurious dining halls, on-campus multiplexes, and – in icy climates – heated sidewalks. 5 the necessity of competition for high-fee-paying out-of-state and foreign students is a logical result of the decades-old assault by legislators on public university budgets. for private universities, as tuition skyrockets (to pay for the heated sidewalks) and as another kind of competition – for a “diverse” student body – intensifies and thus requires significant subsidies for some students, increasing foreign student numbers is likewise a necessity. the university in the city | 265 it is worth examining just what kind of a “space for engagement” the neoliberal university campus is, and perhaps can be. i some years ago, political geographer kevin cox (1998) sought to distinguish between what he called “spaces of dependence” and “spaces of engagement.” he argued that certain spaces – a city neighborhood, for example – were spaces of dependence in the sense that they provided a localized congeries of social relation upon which we come “to depend for the realization of essential interests” and which “define place specific conditions for our sense of well-being.” it is easy to see how, in their development as a specifically modern institution in the 19th and 20th centuries, universities became spaces of dependence, performing a set of functions (in cox’s words) “for which there is no substitute elsewhere” (1998: 2). they developed preeminently as “nation-building” institutions, charged with developing, instilling, and reproducing a national culture (including national predominance in the sciences); many (especially public colleges and universities) were charged with developing the practical knowledge – cocooned within the liberal arts – for supporting the burgeoning agricultural and industrial economy; and they were charged with cultivating the managerial and professional classes suitable for running that economy (reading 1996). they had an essential role to play in supporting both localized and national-scale capital accumulation, but were not usually themselves directly sites of it. the economy, as well as the polity, depended on the university, in just this sense. at the same time, they were also spaces of dependence in that they were community centers. in small towns and cities alike, they were places for music, art, public lectures, adult learning, and, of course, sports. not infrequently they were where community life was centered. even at private universities, campuses were often considered community, public spaces. as large (sometimes the largest) employers, they were places upon which local economies often depended. and both directly 266 | austerity urbanism and the social economy and indirectly they were supported by public funding precisely because they were depended on for all these functions. as early as world war ii, however, some of these aspects of the university’s raison d’etre began to erode. in the west (if not so much in newly-independent countries) “nation-building” lost some of its political urgency (especially as the pace of globalization quickened after the 1970s economic crises), undermining a key rationale for the liberal arts. the democratization of the university delivered another blow as students (and eventually faculty) questioned all manner of canonical learning and its relevance to newly diverse student bodies. simultaneously, the sort of practical training that “land-grant” universities in the u.s. and their global equivalents (like britain’s polytechnics) had excelled at (agricultural specialists, mechanical engineers, etc.) began to seem outmoded.6 universities were facing a crisis of legitimacy. they also faced an economic crisis. as the social-democratic compromises of the postwar era have been blown apart, mindless “austerity,” has emerged to fill the void. indeed, “austerity” is perhaps all that is left of a neoliberalism that – bereft of any remaining justification – is what neil smith once described as “dominant but dead” (smith 2008: 155).7 in this context, universities have realized they are a quite different kind of space of dependence. if communities are dependent on them, they are themselves decreasingly dependent on skeptical legislators, and increasingly dependent on students able to pony up large tuition payments, as well as on the good will of corporate and individual donors. the embrace of corporatization, privatization, the globalization of the higher education “market,” and the instrumentalization of knowledge by administrators, politicians, bureaucrats, and not a few faculty members, 6 in the u.s. the 1862 morrill land grant act authorized the selling of federal land to finance state universities and colleges; “land-grant” universities were mandated to support agricultural development in their states. 7 at the dawn of the 2008 economic crisis, neil smith (2008) was already arguing that neoliberalism was “dominant but dead.” the ensuing years have proved him correct. neoliberalism is now bereft of its guiding ideology; all it can now muster is a weak faith in “austerity” (in public budgets), without even by now even trying to justify that faith. the university in the city | 267 is thus symptomatic of the university’s lost legitimacy, its unclear role in restructured capitalist economies, and the rapid shift from state-funding to tuitionand donation-based budgets. in this landscape, becoming a site for capital accumulation (not just a site for the support of it) has – in the eyes of many – not only lent the university a new legitimacy but has opened up potential new revenue streams.8 the much-hyped moocs (massive open online courses) and new, perhaps innovative partnerships, like that between starbucks and arizona state university, are evidence of the shifting sands of dependence that mark the university and its place in wider society (adams 2014).9 so too is the increasing competition for research dollars that faces every research-oriented campus, the rise of a star-system for faculty (and its adjunct, the sinking of adjuncts into penury), the pandering for corporate contracts and willingness to undertake proprietary research, and the ever-expanding, ever-more global search for fee-paying students. in many instances, increasing competition among and within universities has been precisely the goal for policymakers and trustees, perhaps most clearly exemplified in the uk by the introduction of the research assessment exercise (now the research excellence framework 2014) and the transfer of higher education oversight and funding to the department of business innovation and skills. such shifts in the conditions of dependence are quite evident on university campuses themselves. as universities devote more money and 8 many universities are, for example, creating their own in-house venture funds to “incentivize” directly commercially-applicable research that they can benefit from. they are also encouraging, and being encouraged, to allow corporations to locate on campus for significant tax breaks as long as they hire a few interns and plow a bit of their profit back into the universities’ budgets. for one example see: don mitchell (2011) “the entrepreneurial university and its discontents: or, why the university is no longer a public space (if it ever was)” 9 if moocs are the “disrupters” their cheerleaders claim they are, then one thing they will disrupt will be the cultural function of the university as a campus – as a place for the gathering of students and communities alike. 268 | austerity urbanism and the social economy space to securing or shoring up “market share,” new fitness centers, climbing walls, library coffee-shops, resort-like swimming lagoons, stadiums and training complexes, and palatial dorms sprout like mushrooms (often funded through complex borrowing and bond schemes) (freedman 2014). universities now sponsor (with planning as well as money) the wholesale redevelopment of surrounding commercial districts to assure pleasing and presumably safer edges to their campuses, and just as frequently create their own police forces to patrol them. the transformation of the university in the post-national, neoliberal era has meant the transformation of the campus itself. as a space of dependence, in other words, the university is now a quite different place than it used to be even as tree-lined malls and grassy quads are preserved as key selling points. ii but what about the university, and especially the campus, as a “space of engagement”? as kevin cox wrote, “people, firms, state agencies, etc. organize in order to secure the conditions for the continued existence of their spaces of dependence but in doing so they have to engage with other centers of social power: local government, the national press, perhaps the international press, for example. in doing so they construct a different form of space … a space of engagement” (cox 1998: 2). attempts to reconstruct the university’s legitimacy as well as to rebuild a secure financial foundation have entailed remaking campuses into new kinds of spaces of engagement, as much of the above discussion has indicated.10 yet it is worth thinking about this literally – about just what kind of “space of engagement,” the university campus is. 10 the line between dependence and engagement is blurry. one could interpret a university concert series, for example, as either or both. it helps make the university a space of dependence (in the first sense above) by creating an essential campus-based good perhaps not available elsewhere in town. but it is also a means to draw onto campus external publics, to position a university as a cultural good within a larger state bringing to it either prestige or legislative goodwill, and to engage in a larger world of the arts, breaking down a parochialism that might undermine relations of dependence. the university in the city | 269 campuses have long been places within which students, faculty, and others organize and engage with external worlds near and far. agricultural extension services, university-sponsored settlement houses and urban missions, and laboratory schools represent examples from earlier eras. the development of schools of citizenship and public policy, like schools of education, was rooted in a pragmatic politics of outreach, of social reformation from within the campus. and campuses provide space (and gather together people) for political organization. after all, as a denver student activist put it in an interview with us in 2010, “you have thousands of people all in one place with not a lot to do, and that tends to lend itself well to activism.” this is not an inconsiderable purpose for the university – a central way in which it is a space of engagement – and it is perhaps something that sets itself apart, at least a bit, from other “sausage factories.” to give a paradigmatic example: the berkeley free speech movement of 1964 was, among many other things, a fight over how students should or could engage with political movements and social upheavals in the bay area and beyond. as university of california president clark kerr emblematically put: “a few of the ‘non-conformists’ have another kind of revolt [than one against the university] in mind. they seek instead to turn the university, on the latin american or japanese models, into fortresses from which they can sally forth with impunity to make their attacks on society” (draper 1966: 266). for student activists, the campus was a place for organizing from which they could then strike out into the world. if, however, the waning of sixties activism and the neoliberalization of the university led to a generation (or two) of political quiescence, the question of controlling student (and faculty) politics on campus never disappeared. indeed, it burst into a new visibility in the wake of the economic crisis, the official austerity response, and the (worldwide) student organizing these spawned. the crisis and response certainly seemed to crystalize the question of controlling student and 270 | austerity urbanism and the social economy faculty protest, and thus the nature of the campus as a space of engagement in many administrators’ minds. for example, in october 2010, we found ourselves in the oakland office of a lawyer representing faculty unions in a number of california community college districts. to spark the conversation, the lawyer showed us a large stack of documents that he explained were resolutions pushed by the community college league of california and being passed by districts up and down the state which redefined college campuses as “non-public forums.” in legal-speak, this means that these campuses were being turned into a kind of property on which, though it was publicly-owned, there was no a priori right to protest. one of the resolutions, he noted, while pulling a file from atop the stack, was for the peralta community college district covering berkeley and oakland.11 the proximate cause of the district board’s consideration of the resolution was the appearance at laney college of a militant antiabortion group whose march through campus upset a number of faculty and students. the district now planned to create “free speech zones” outside which leafletting, speechmaking, and protesting would be banned. this was, the lawyer argued, “inconsistent” with the goals of higher education, since, he noted, colleges and universities had “long been recognized as … marketplaces of ideas.” for him, the “educational environment [was] supposed to be a place where people talk, and think, and confront ideas,” and not a place where such ideas were confined to some remote “speaker’s corner.” the resolution facing the peralta district was especially extreme in that it included a provision permanently banning individuals from political activity on district campuses after violating the free speech policies just once. as a veteran of the free speech movement, the lawyer was genuinely perplexed by this statewide effort to restrict the speech and political activities of students on community college campuses, given their important role in educating working class and 11 the peralta district is perhaps most famous for being home to merritt college where the black panthers was founded. the university in the city | 271 immigrant students. and he was perplexed as to why this push was happening then, and offered two theories as to what was at stake. one theory saw the push for free speech zones as a response to predicted student unrest over austerity. he argued that administrators “were sold on doing this because they feared students would be protesting … the coming budget cuts and increases in tuition that were recognized a couple of years ago.” his second theory saw the push for free speech zones as related to the corporatization of higher education. “it is very interesting that that [the speech zone controversy] has erupted at this time. one might say it’s because of all the conflict in society, that there are people in administration who prefer a more orderly campus, a more businesslike campus. of course, colleges are not businesses. a lot of people don’t want to hear that, but they’re not. they’re educational institutions, and you can’t decide if they’re profitable just by the amount of dollars that they earn in a particular year. these policies that we have here are really very important. even if they’re unconstitutional, they’re sending a message to people” (interview with authors, october 11, 2010). the people the message was being sent to, he implied, were not only on the peralta campuses, but also on the nearby uc berkeley campus. or perhaps, the message to the peralta district was received from berkeley. in 2009, berkeley students staged a series of mass protests and building occupations to protest soaring tuition costs and to demand greater state funding. these protests were linked to earlier (2007) and subsequent (2010) protests contesting uc berkeley’s decision to team up with british petroleum to construct a new building for mostly proprietary research. for the oakland attorney, the sudden wave of campus resolutions restricting free speech was hardly a coincidence. free speech zones and other efforts to limit campus activism were appearing at exactly the moment when student dissent was most needed and precisely when the corporate assault on universities seemed primed to speed up. 272 | austerity urbanism and the social economy of course, for even some of the most apolitical observers, free speech zones are dangerous because they undermine the idea of college campuses as a “marketplace of ideas” – a space of engagement in that sense. for progressive observers like the lawyer, however, they were dangerous because they threatened a more radical potential of universities, which persists even despite their rapid restructuring as a space of dependence – a potential for a form of radical community engagement. iii to see what this might mean, we travelled to scotland, where in 2011 student activists had taken over the hetherington building on the glasgow university campus. the “free hetherington” movement was one of many “anti-cuts” actions that swept britain beginning in 2010 (of which university occupations were just one part). over the course of the hetherington occupation, the building became central to communitybased political organizing as well as the site of an alternative university that boasted free lectures, workshops and classes. although the space remained relatively free of the sort of sectarian power struggles that marked other occupations around the uk, it was not an entirely comfortable space (for some – especially female activists – it could be quite intimidating). and yet few could deny that the free hetherington movement had created a space on the glasgow university campus – a classic “university on a hill” – that was uniquely open to the wider community. from within occupied hetherington, students worked hard to link up with – and invite in – other local struggles, like ongoing actions against police brutality in working class and immigrant neighborhoods and campaigns against displacement from redevelopment associated with the upcoming 2014 commonwealth games. free hetherington was a space of engagement: by creating a space on campus in which students, faculty, and community members could meet and collaborate, and learn from one another, free hetherington offered a notable example of what might be understood as the university in the city | 273 radical community engagement. by turning hetherington into an incubator for local political organizing, this was a form of engagement that, in fact, questioned the traditional boundaries of the university itself, which is not necessarily a new project (there is a long history of free universities, of course), but one that takes on added salience as the whole question of the university – its status as a space of dependence – has been reopened by the legitimacy and economic crises that now beset it. “community engagement” usually has far less radical connotations.12 in fact, it is often a way of corralling political passions and making them “productive.” more typical than free hetheringtontype engagement on campuses are the community engagement initiatives at places like glasgow caledonian university (gcu) and salford university in manchester, both former polytechnics. gcu sponsors an impressive array of community engagement initiatives ranging from public forums and community volunteer days to initiatives like the caledonian club (a mentorship program that connects students with primary school children in underserved communities) and working with mohammad yunis to develop microloan programs for nearby housing estates. such initiatives are designed to open the campus to outside publics as well as push students off campus to engage the world beyond its borders. for gcu administrators, such efforts have an economic logic: “in order to survive,” an official told us, gcu had to differentiate itself from its competitors. community engagement was a marketing device that allowed gcu to stand out in the competitive market for higher education. at salford, community engagement was increasingly incorporated into the university’s “brand,” administrators told us. administrators positioned community engagement as a vital resource the university could offer students to build their resumes as they confront a highly competitive job market. according to the community engagement officer, enrolling at salford would allow students to burnish their cvs with marketable skills, learned through community engagement 12 for a typical discussion see kingma 2011 274 | austerity urbanism and the social economy incentivized by course credit. that this sort of engagement was highly instrumentalized was not lost on students. as a student at nearby university of manchester commented in relation to its university leadership program: “they find a project, they drive you to the project, and there are people who tell you what to do on a project, and you do what they tell you. and then they put you on a bus and take you back home.” sometimes these efforts are nakedly self-interested. as the community engagement officer at salford told us, the university had to sponsor programs in surrounding communities because those communities were beset by “wicked problems” and if these problems were not addressed then the campus would be perceived as unsafe and salford would have more trouble attracting fee-paying international students. the contradictions that arise, and the university’s confusion over how to manage them, are readily apparent on campus. at salford we were repeatedly told about how the university was building bridges to surrounding (mostly working class) neighborhoods. administrators positioned the campus itself as a community asset. yet every entrance is marked by big, permanent signs declaring, in all caps, the campus of salford university – a public university – to be private property. and waving from standards along many of the walks were banners announcing not salford’s “excellence” or celebrating its diverse student body, but reminding students to “keep all valuables out of sight,” and that “1 in 10 students will become a victim of crime.” conclusion whatever the contradictions, community engagement programs like those at gcu and salford which seek to integrate campuses and surrounding neighborhoods in new ways (as part of an exercise in brand differentiation) both affirm the sausage factory-like reality of contemporary higher education (a particular brand of university churning out a particular brand of student) and the fact that universities are and always must be more than mere factories: they remain, as they the university in the city | 275 were in the nation-building era, institutions of citizen-formation, even under conditions of neoliberalization and financial austerity. community engagement gcu and salford-style seeks to create citizens geared for a neoliberal world, turning students (and for that matter faculty) into “academic entrepreneurs,” as one prominent analysis of community engagement approvingly calls them (kingma 2011). to the degree that community engagement initiatives hew to what is essentially a corporate ethos, there is a very real danger they will serve the same function as free speech zones – namely to redirect political involvement away from potentially radical engagement into safer, officially sanctioned channels. against this, occupations like free hetherington are hardly surprising; they mark an active resistance to engagement shaped from above and emptied of oppositional force. they mark out one end of what remaking the campus as a space of engagement might look like at its best, and it is a prospect, obviously, that many trustees, administrators, and corporate sponsors do not find attractive. at the other end of the spectrum, officially-sanctioned community engagement might end up helping prove clark kerr right. writing before the free speech movement, he argued that the new university – the “multiversity” – was charged with producing “new men,” who would be the managers of a world that was significantly postpolitical, where revolts would only ever be “little bureaucratic revolts that can be handled piecemeal” (kerr et al. 1960, 295; draper 1964; kerr 2001[1963]). changed conditions of dependence and experiments with new forms of engagement would remake the campus as a space of containment, a space (potentially) as carefully controlled as the shop floor of a sausage factory. for neil smith, implicit in his question, “who rules the sausage factory?” was the belief that universities – as institutions and as cityspaces – were worth fighting for. as the neoliberalization of the university continues apace, the prospects seem stark. at the bleeding edge of that neoliberalism, we find not only an ever-expanding army of austerity’s adjuncts, but an increasingly indebted student body worried 276 | austerity urbanism and the social economy about its future (for which instrumental versions of community engagement thus make eminent sense). simultaneously, the instrumentalization of research is entrenched through audits like the ref and legislative demands that research pay immediate dividends, and through funding secured by (now university-sponsored) venture capital. to put it in marxist terms, university labor is becoming more like typically capitalist abstract labor, valuable only to the degree it produces readily measured surplus value. such trends make the fight for the university – the fight to rule the sausage factory – all the more important. there are, in fact, some reasons to be optimistic that the fight is hardly over despite all the depressing news. it is increasingly clear, for example, that those currently charged with administering the university – trustees, presidents, higher education consultants – have little idea how to manage the contradictions and competing pressures corporatization, neoliberalism, and austerity have wrought. how else does one square the desperate rush towards online classes and the use of adjuncts with the simultaneous emphasis on “student experience”? similarly, how does one reconcile the persistent emphasis on critical thinking – however diffuse a concept – with the turn towards “learning outcomes” and other instrumental modes of knowledge transfer? in this context, the university is up for grabs. the kind of space of engagement it is going to be is hardly settled; the sort of space of dependence it is, is in flux. another way of phrasing marx’s pithy comment equating schoolhouses with sausage factories is to ask: just what kind of use value is the university? is it something like a public forum (as the oakland lawyer suggests), something like a space for community struggle and development (as with free hetherington), or a training ground (as with instrumentalized versions of community engagement)? is it a place for critical inquiry, or only for research directly relevant to “stakeholders” like corporations, donors, foundations, or militaries? or more accurately, what ought the balance between these be? within the city, what kind of space of dependence and what sort of space for engagement can the university be imagined to be? these are far from settled questions. the university in the city | 277 of course the struggle for the university will necessarily involve much more than reclaiming the campus for politics or reimagining community engagement. of course, neither the campus nor community engagement initiatives are neutral or disconnected from the broader forces of neoliberalization, corporatization and austerity, shaping the contemporary capitalist city. in this regard, it is worth remembering, and worth fighting to preserve, the fact that universities are not – or not only – sausage factories. they are, necessarily, spaces deeply dependent on their surroundings, which in turn depend on them, and they are, crucially, spaces of intense engagement, the contours of which are never fully decided, but always a scene of ongoing debate and struggle. references adams, s. (2014, june 16). starbucks announces it will give free education to thousands of workers. forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/16/starbucksannounces-it-will-give-a-free-college-education-to-thousandsof-workers/#7d59d2906e20 bousquet, m. (2008). how the university works. new york: new york university press. cox, k. (1998). spaces of dependence, spaces of engagement and the politics of scale, or: looking for local politics. political geography, 17(1), 1-23. draper, h. (1966). berkeley: the new student revolt. new york: grove press. draper, h. (1964). the mind of clark kerr. berkeley: independent socialists club, http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt009n973m/. fabricant, m and brier, s. (2016). austerity blues: fighting for the soul of public higher education. baltimore, ma: johns hopkins press. freedman, j. (2014, march 19). the hidden college problem, when universities not just students, take on debt, forbes. 278 | austerity urbanism and the social economy kerr, c; dunlop, j; harbison, f and myers, c. (1960). industrialization and industrial man. cambridge: harvard university press. kerr, c. (2001[1963]). the uses of the university. cambridge: cambridge university press. kingman, b. (2011). academic entrepreneurship and community engagement: scholarship in action and the syracuse miracle. ithaca: cornell university press. marx, k. (1979 [1867]). capital: a critique of political economy, volume 1. new york: international publishers company. mitchell, d. (2011). the entrepreneurial university and its discontents: or, why the university is no longer a public space (if it ever was). in zelizer, b., ed., making the university matter (pp. 154161). london: routledge. nelson, c. (1997). manifesto of a tenured radical. new york: new york university press. newfield, c. (2004). ivy and industry: business and the making of the american university, 1880-1980. durham, nc: duke university press. newfield, c. (2011). unmaking the public university: the forty-year assault on the middle class. cambridge: harvard university press. readings, b. (1996). the university in ruins. cambridge: harvard university press. smith, n. (2000). afterword: who rules the sausage factory? antipode, 32(3), 330-339. smith, n. (2008). comment: neo-liberalism – dominant but dead. focaal, 51,155-157. washburn, j. (2006). university, inc.: the corporate corruption of higher education. cambridge: basic books. the university in the city | 279 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research vol. 28 2017 www.alternateroutes.ca twitter: @arjcsr the global financial crisis launched a prolonged period of austerity that continues to play out in the urban arena. much needed investments in public transit, affordable housing, aging infrastructure, and social services elude municipalities constrained by low taxation regimes and interurban competition. reductions to employee compensation have also been a stated aim of municipal austerity. the ‘social economy’, the so-called ‘third’ or voluntary sector of the economy located between the public and private spheres, is also being more closely aligned with neoliberal practices. in this regard, the state has at times imposed austerity from above or led the charge from below, and at other times created the conditions for capital to lead in an assault against urban social life. while there are no absolute paths to a more just world, there is enough evidence and understanding of the current conjuncture to demonstrate that alternatives are indeed necessary. “this issue of alternate routes offers an extremely valuable set of contributions on widely distinct aspects of the current urban crisis and, closely related, the crisis of neoliberalism from the vantage point of urban problems and relations, and the social struggles associated with them.” ~ alfredo saad filho, soas university of london. “as we approach the age of trump, north american cities are the battlegrounds upon which the struggles for a radical democratic future will be played out, and alternate routes has a decisive role to play in this process. the contributions to this issue on austerity urbanism and the social economy provide much food for thought on how the left can provide clear and desirable alternatives (surely, our most immediate task) that speak to urban social justice.” ~ linda peake, director, the city institute, york university. “creeping neoliberalism and the (il)logics of austerity are foreclosing opportunities for a more just city. the contributors to this issue of alternate routes provide clear-eyed analyses of possible urban futures—a most welcome intervention in these challenging times.” ~ nik theodore, university of illinois at chicago cover front cover final table of contents alternative routes pluto advert colour fanelli and tufts introduction austerity urbanism articles lowe, richmond and shields settling on austerity sw eds rudman negotiating managerial reforms sw eds ministry of advanced education and skills development (maesd) (2016). ontario labour market statistics for april 2016.www.tcu.gov.on.ca/eng/labourmarket/currenttrends/docs/monthly/201604.html ministry of training, colleges and universities. (2015). results-based plan briefing book, 2014-15. issn #1718-7095.www.tcu.gov.on.ca/eng/about/annualreport/2015rbp_en.pdf evans living wage us and canada sw eds pin participatory budgeting sw eds noonan against housing sw eds interventions hamel and autin austerity in montreal sw eds keil toronto alles uber sw eds young redefining renewal sw eds moyo flint water crisis final sw eds (1) gallaher efforts to mitigate gentrification sw eds kafui et al the university in the city sw eds cover back cover final microsoft word alternate routes vol 30, issue 2 final edited by carlo fanelli and stephanie luce alternate routes vol. 30 (2), 2019 austerity and the precarization of everyday life © alternate routes, 2019 toronto www.alternateroutes.ca twitter: @arjcsr “alternate routes” issn 1923-7081 (online) issn 0702-8865 (print) alternate routes: a journal of critical social research vol. 30, issue 2, 2019 editors: carlo fanelli and stephanie luce interventions editor: matthew flisfeder reviews editor: thomas mcdowell editorial advisory board: nahla abdo, dimitry anastakis, pat armstrong, tim bartkiw, david camfield, nicolas carrier, federico chicchi, sally chivers, wallace clement, simten cosar, simon dalby, aaron doyle, ann duffy, bryan evans, randall germain, henry giroux, peter gose, paul kellogg, jacqueline kennelly, priscillia lefebvre, marco marrone, mark neocleous, bryan palmer, jamie peck, sorpong peou, garry potter, georgios papanicolaou, mi park, justin paulson, stephanie ross, george s. rigakos, heidi rimke, arne christoph ruckert, toby sanger, ingo schmidt, alan sears, mitu sengupta, meenal shrivastava, janet lee siltanen, susan jane spronk, jim struthers, mark p. thomas, rosemary warskett journal mandate: alternate routes is committed to creating an outlet for critical social research and interdisciplinary inquiry. a broad range of theoretical and methodological approaches are encouraged, including works from academics, labour, and community researchers. alternate routes is a publicly accessible academic journal and encourages provocative works that advance or challenge our understandings of historical and contemporary socio-political, economic and cultural issues. in addition to full-length articles, we publish review essays sparked by previously published material, interviews, commentaries, and book reviews. table of contents editorial introduction austerity without end carlo fanelli and stephanie luce articles policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus: embedding neoliberalism bryan evans and marcel goguen social innovation labs: a neoliberal austerity driven process or democratic intervention? meghan joy, john shields and siu mee cheng the dimensions of passive revolution gianmarco fifi precarity as the new reality? millennials’ representation in the changing workplaces review policy process jordyn perreault-laird and susan silver building justice in the american labour movement biko koenig and deva woodly 6 13 35 55 78 107 editorial introduction austerity without end carlo fanelli and stephanie luce in 2019, the now 187-member international labour organization celebrated its 100th anniversary. as one of the oldest agencies of the united nations, the ilo used the occasion to renew calls for improved opportunities and working conditions, social protections and collective bargaining rights. the ilo’s global commission on the future of work (2019, 2) proposed a “human-centred agenda for the future of work that strengthens the social contract by placing people and the work they do at the centre of economic and social policy and business practice.” because the world of work begins at home, this included calls for new investments that more evenly distribute unpaid care work, from parental leave to public care services, thereby genuinely increasing opportunities in the workplace; universal entitlements to lifelong learning via active labour market policies that provide opportunities for re/upskilling; proactive universal social protections that support people’s needs over the life cycle; new investments in the institutions of work, from regulations and employment contracts to collective bargaining and labour inspection systems; expanded “time sovereignty,” that is, the right to disconnect from work and greater autonomy over working time; and harnessing technology – artificial intelligence, automation and robotics – in a manner that prioritizes human well-being, regulates data use and algorithmic accountability in the world of work. the commission (2019, 3) also called for establishing a universal labour guarantee: “all workers, regardless of their contractual arrangement or employment status, should enjoy fundamental workers’ rights, an “adequate living wage” (ilo constitution, 1919), maximum limits on working hours and protection of safety and health at work.” they stress urgent action is needed to develop national strategies on the future of work and transformative investments that meet the challenges of climate change. there is a vast gap between this call for living wages and fundamental rights, and the reality most workers face in the workplace. for decades, employers have been attempting to increase profit margins by re-organizing work. this includes subcontracting, offshoring, converting full-time jobs to part-time and temporary, and reclassifying direct employees as independent contractors. this is 6 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life what economist david weil (2014) calls the “fissured workplace.” they have introduced new technologies to cut jobs and adopted “just-in-time” scheduling practices to more precisely adjust work hours. in some fields, like healthcare, workers are forced to work long hours and double-shifts. in others, such as retail, employees often do not have enough hours of work and may even have to compete with other employees to get assigned shifts (clawson and gerstel 2014, lambert, haley-lock, and henly 2012). employers have been able to pursue some of these strategies due to neoliberal reforms which deregulate industries and labor laws. indeed, “labor flexibility” is a key plank of a neoliberal platform. employers and policymakers have worked hand-in-hand to rewrite laws and regulations; the result is greater rights for employers and investors, and fewer rights for workers (luce 2014). finally, employers and their associations have in many countries actively worked to weaken labor unions. the “union-avoidance” industry began to flourish in the united states in the 1970s and eventually grew into a multi-billion dollar international industry (logan 2006). the result has been declining union density in most industrialized countries. a recent ilo brief (xhafa 2018) finds that canada failed to crack the top twenty countries when it comes to the rate of collective bargaining coverage as a proportion of total employment. at 27 percent, canada finds itself in a category of medium-to-low levels of collective bargaining coverage with japan, south africa and the united kingdom. collective agreements extend the rule of law to the workplace (doorey 2017). they afford workers certain rights and place limits on the arbitrary power of employers, like grievance-arbitration mechanisms that give workers rights like due process and fair treatment, not available to other workers except via the courts. and because unions raise wage and benefit floors these gains are undoubtedly one of the main reasons why unions have historically been opposed, and continue to be opposed, by employers and governments. unions also create a presence in local labour markets or sectors – “spillover effects” – that can create pressure to raise wages in surrounding non-unionized workplaces. this often compels employers to adjust wages to remain competitive in labour markets, often to stave-off unionization efforts. aside from the socio-economic advantages to being unionized – higher wages, pensions and benefits, job security, training, transparency and due process – organized labour has a long history of shaping social policy in the interests of working class communities and strengthening the social wage – public services or benefits that people receive in supplement of their wages earned from work and austerity without end | 7 paid for by redistributing wealth through the tax system (himelfarb and himelfarb 2013). compensation in unionized workplaces tends to be more equitable overall, with relatively higher wages for lower paid workers and less of a wage gap for women, younger workers and racialized groups. unionized workers are also more likely to be full-time, permanent and to work longer for their employers. finally, unionized environments tend to be safer, with lower rates of critical injuries, mobility impairments, lost-time due to injury claims and broader support services. unions are also able to exert political pressure outside the workplace, such as raising a series of demands for pay equity and equal pay for work of equal value, the undervaluation and occupational segregation of women and other groups, struggles for changes to human rights legislation, and same-sex spousal benefits. as susan hayter and jelle visser (2018: 4) have argued: “it was considered desirable that the norms and rules negotiated between organized employers and the union(s) be made generally applicable.” in neoliberalism’s wake, that is no longer the case, if it ever was. in canada, there has been major structural shifts to the composition of union membership by sex, age and industry over the last three decades. since the 1980s, the proportion of unionized members in the public sector has eclipsed private sector trade union density. whereas public sector union density has stayed relatively consistent from the mid-1980s to early-2000s, hovering around 72 percent, total canadian private sector density fell from 26 percent to just over 18 percent. since 2011 private sector union density has fallen to around 16 percent, while public sector density remained generally stable (statistics canada 2019). in other words, while public sector unionization rates have remained fairly consistent over the past thirty years – buoying total union density (around 30 percent) – private sector unionization has been nearly halved. in the united states, the patterns are similar. today, 14.7 million workers belong to unions. union density peaked in 1955 at 35 percent and has been on the decline since, though that hides certain interesting patterns. public sector density was at 33.9 percent in 2018, compared to just 6.9 percent in the private sector. and like canada, public sector members outnumber that of the private sector. national density figures mask tremendous variation between states. in fact, over half of all union members live in just seven states: california, illinois, michigan, new york, ohio, pennsylvania, and washington (us department of labor 2019). 8 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life union density figures may reveal the extent of potential union organization, but it is also illustrative of the ways in which organized workers have been able to effectively reduce inequality, improve working conditions and widen income distribution through wider bargaining coverage and coordination. advancements for workers via collective bargaining are illustrative of capitalist class concessions fought for and won over the course of intergenerational class struggles, not privileges bestowed by employers or the benevolence of the state. the growing spread of low-waged work has occurred in tandem with stagnant union growth, aggressive anti-labour legislation and drastic expenditure reductions in general government spending and public services – that is to say, austerity without end (evans and fanelli 2018; albo and fanelli, 2014;). as kris warner (2013: 111) has argued: “while the loss of heavily unionized manufacturing jobs has been a contributing factor in the declining private-sector unionization rate in [the us and canada], it would be a mistake to place too much emphasis on this in and of itself because it cannot explain the inability of workers to realize their desires for unionizing the new jobs they have moved into. instead, in both countries, the increased ability of employers to effectively oppose unionization offers a more compelling explanation. in the united states this has been a long-standing issue, while in canada it is a relatively newer phenomenon, related in large part to a change in the way unions can be formed.” though variegated in form and function, the state has often been the chief architect of neoliberalism’s anti-labour reforms: at times imposing austerity from above or leading the charge from below, and at other times created the conditions for capital to lead in an assault against working class institutions. the results have been a continued decline in real wages and the erosion of the total labour share of wages. in contrast to the postwar class compromise, the ability of organized labour to help secure increases in social spending, impart political pressure for more progressive taxation and improved equality for all workers is at an impasse. should the trendline continue, this could have significant implications for labour in an era of authoritarian neoliberalism and amid the resurgence of radical rightwing populists (thomas and tufts, 2016; greenhouse 2019; albo et al., 2019). the mutual relationship between higher rates of unionization and austerity without end | 9 increased democratic participation has received consistent empirical support (sojourner 2013). as alex bryson and colleagues (2014) have recently argued, union members have historically been more likely to participate in general elections than non-members, cultivating a broader civic culture and participation in democratic politics. union members are also more likely to vote and engage in a range of pro-social civic behaviours, including the signing of petitions, attending public meetings and/or volunteering for political parties. consistent with previous research, bryson et al., have noted that the wider decline in civic engagement is also coincident with the decline of trade union density and larger collective disengagement from formal political participation. in other words, democratic governance at work in the form of higher rates of unionization tends to contribute to a life-long attachment to democratic politics outside of it. with union density stagnant or shrinking across much of north america and europe, the democratic implications of rising low-waged work and political polarization has emerged as a significant political concern. while challenging the ‘common sense’ of neoliberalism is important and necessary, so too is confronting the wider capitalist context that leaves workers dependent on the imperatives of capital. in this regard, unions are paradoxical institutions, simultaneously advancing workers’ interests but rarely challenging the prevailing power relations at work (fanelli and noonan, 2017). as james rinehart (2006, 203-4) has noted, while unions might nibble away at the margins of power, they do not alter the subordination of labour that lies at the root of capitalist class power. of course, unions remain one of the few mechanisms through which workers can affect change inside and outside of their workplaces. but if trade unions are to deepen and extend their political influence and organizational capacities, it is incumbent on a wider revitalization of workingclass politics, like movements for living wages embody (evans et al., n.d.; luce 2017). the welfare states of the postwar era were only possible because millions of people demanded change. if labour is going to break from its political paralysis it is dependent upon a wider renewal of a politics left of social democracy – a spent force increasingly an impediment to, rather than an instrument of, progressive politics – and rooted in an intersectional class politics that prioritizes building new institutions, engaging in direct action, running for office, organizing in our workplaces and communities. in other words, a politics that confronts both the authoritarian/anti-democratic politics of the right and transcends the debilitating “post-politics” of radical centrism (mouffe 1998). liberal democratic capitalism 10 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life is losing legitimacy. but what comes next may be a form of right-wing populism, supported by nationalist politicians and movements looking to close borders and blame immigrants and trade for economic insecurity. will unions look to protectionism or internationalism? will working class movements be able to unite across borders to radically shift the balance of class power relations? references albo, g. and c. fanelli (2014). austerity against democracy: an authoritarian phase of neoliberalism? teoria politica: an international journal of theory and politics, 2014, 65-88. bryson, a., r. gomez, t. kretschmer and p. willman. (2014). what accounts for the union member advantage in voter turnout? evidence from the european union, 2002-2008. relations industrielles/industrial relations, 69(4), 732-765 clawson, d. and n. gerstel. (2014). unequal time: gender, class, and family in employment schedules. new york: russell sage foundation. doorey, d. (2017). the law of work. toronto: elgar publishing. evans, b. and c. fanelli, eds. the public sector in an age of austerity: perspectives from canada’s provinces and territories. montreal and kingston: mcgill-queens university press evans, b., c. fanelli and t. mcdowell, eds., (forthcoming). living wage movements in canada: comparative perspectives on resistance and alternatives to low-waged work. vancouver: university of british columbia press. fanelli, c. and j. noonan. (2017). capital and labour. in schmidt, i. and c. fanelli, eds. reading capital today: marx after 150 years. london: pluto press. greenhouse, s. (2019). beaten down, worked up: the past, present, and future of american labor. new york: knopf doubleday publishing group. hayter, s. and j. visser, eds. (2018). collective agreements: extending labour protection. geneva: ilo himelfarb, a. and j. himelfarb, eds. (2013). tax is not a four letter word: a different take on taxes in canada. waterloo, on: wilfrid laurier press. austerity without end | 11 international labour organization. (2019). global commission on the future of work. https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/future-ofwork/wcms_569528/lang--en/index.htm lambert, s, a. haley-lock, and j. r. henly. (2012). labour flexibility and precarious employment in hourly retail jobs in the u.s: how frontline managers matter. in c. warhurst et al., eds., are bad jobs inevitable? trends, determinants and responses to job quality in the twenty-first century. london: palgrave macmillan. luce, s. (2014). labor movements: global perspectives. wiley. luce, s. (2017). raising wages. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 27, 12-20. mouffe, c. (1998). the radical centre: a politics without adversary. soundings, 9, 11-23. rinehart, j. (2006). the tyranny of work: alienation and the labour process. toronto: nelson. sojourner, a. (2013). do unions promote electoral office-holding? evidence from correlates of state legislatures' occupational shares. industrial and labor relations review, 66(2), 467-486. statistics canada. (2019). table 14-10-0132-01: union status by industry. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1410013201 thomas, m.p. and s. tufts. (2016). austerity, right populism, and the crisis of labour in canada. antipode, 48(1), 212-230 u.s. department of labor. (2019). union members summary. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm warner, k. (2013). the decline of unionization in the united states: some lessons from canada. labor studies journal, 38(2) 110–138 weil, d. (2017). the fissured workplace: why work became so bad for so many and what can be done to improve it. boston: harvard university press. xhafa, e. (2018). ilo brief no. 3 – collective bargaining and non-standard forms of employment: practices that reduce vulnerability and ensure work is decent. geneva: ilo 12 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus: embedding neoliberalism bryan evans1 and marcel goguen2 abstract: this contribution explores the resilience of neoliberal policy ideas within the state by situating the process of manufacturing policy advice within the context of the prevailing policy paradigm. the central question informing this work is despite evident failure, neoliberal ideas continue to prevail within the state policy process. why and how this is the case, despite the lived experience and evidence, is the subject interrogated here. while the study of conventional public policy tends to be presented as a technical, evidence-based discipline, this ignores, or at best minimizes the highly hierarchical and politicized nature of evidence, expertise and knowledge employed in the work of constructing policy. keywords: neoliberalism, policy paradigm, evidence, new public management, centralization introduction this paper examines the relationship between ‘policy paradigms’ (hall, 1993) and the institutional structure of the state apparatus. while work on policy 1 bryan evans is professor in the department of politics and public administration, ryerson university, toronto, canada. together with stephen mcbride, he is the co-editor of austerity: the lived experience and the austerity state. 2 marcel goguen is a ph.d. candidate in international relations at mcmaster university, hamilton, canada. his dissertation examines the methodological implications of critical theories of the state for the study of global finance. we wish to acknowledge the support from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada and dr. stephen mcbride (mcmaster university), principal investigator leading a partnership development grant whose generous support enabled part of this research. marcel goguen would like to acknowledge support from the centre for research in empirical social sciences (cress) at mcmaster university. policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 13 paradigms has produced many useful insights relating to the processes through which certain ideas influence the policy making process, it has thus far not sufficiently examined how these dynamics interact with the structure of the state apparatus. we thus argue that an important but still mostly unexplored dimension in understanding the dynamics involved in the struggle over the maintenance and replacement of policy paradigms is the institutional structure of the state apparatus and role of ‘ideational’ agents working within that. lukes (2005) forwards the claim that for a process to be understood as an exercise of power it assumes “that it is in the exerciser’s or exerciser’s power to act differently” (2005, 57). this framing implies that operatives within the institution possess the agency to make different decisions. the broader political context in which these agents (exercisers) function (the paradigm) works to constrain this exercise of agency. to illustrate this broader theoretical argument, we draw on previous and recent interviews with government and non-government policy workers in three canadian provinces to examine the ways in which changes in the structure of the state apparatus has shaped the mechanisms involved in maintaining the stability of the neoliberal policy paradigm and helped insulate it from alternative ideas. this article proceeds in three parts. a first section sets out the significance and meaning of the concept of policy paradigms for studying the power dynamics involved in the policy process. a second section examines the changes in the structure of the state apparatus associated with the emergence of npm and the ‘neoliberal state’. a third section examines the impact of these changes in the structure of the state apparatus on the dynamics involved in maintaining or contesting the existing neoliberal policy paradigm. public administration and policy paradigms despite the ideology of technocratic neutrality having long prevailed in the field of public administration and the public service in most western democracies (raadschelders and rutgers, 1996; waldo, 1948), policy making does not take place in a power vacuum. contrary to the implicit view that dominates the field of public administration, then the ideas that come to be accepted as common wisdom and received knowledge in the manufacture of policy are not there simply as a result of having been 'proven' to be superior through a neutral and apolitical process wherein experts carefully weigh evidence and refine their understanding of (social) reality. ideas concerning public policy and management, as the basic building blocks of knowledge and expertise, no matter 14 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life how anodyne and antiseptic the packaging, are anything but technical and apolitical. politically imposed deadlines usually push policy practitioners to make a decision without there being sufficient time to completely weigh the evidence (forshey, 2005; lidman and sommers, 2005). further, more information does not necessarily contribute to a greater degree of consensus on policy, partly because what constitutes evidence is contestable and shaped by the power dynamics of the broader political context. how policy problems are framed, the identification of viable solutions, what is deemed to be acceptable or not, what instruments are chosen, are all reflections of where power is located and held by which policy actors. in this process, not all knowledge is created equal. specific ideas are socially and culturally embedded in ways making them powerful or, on the other hand, not powerful (strassheim and kettunen, 2014). as a result, some forms are privileged and are readily utilized while other forms become relatively marginalized, a process that makes certain solutions appear more credible and/or legitimate than others. the relationship between power and ideas in the policy process remains difficult to conceptualize and empirically investigate, however, partially because it can be rather hard to “differentiate the effects of ideas themselves from the effects of the actors who bear them” (campbell, 2002, 31). while interest in the impact of ideas on the policy process had been rather limited until the 1980s, there has since grown a significant body of literature examining this issue by scholars who were/are skeptical of the assumption that was then dominant: “that politics are driven solely by actors operating according to a self-interested cost-benefit calculus” (campbell, 1998, 377). a central research topic within this body of work is concerned with the different ways that ideas can be powerful in their own right and the main factors involved in shaping which ideas become influential (e.g. hirshman and berman, 2014; campbell, 1998, 2002; béland, 2005, 2009; walsh, 2000; carstensen and schmidt, 2016; seabrooke and wigan, 2016). in order to contribute to efforts at more precisely measuring the impact of ideas on the policy process, carstensen and schmidt (2016) have distinguished between three forms in which ideas can be powerful. the first is power through ideas, which refers to the ability of particular actors to use ideas to convince others of the normative value or cognitive validity of their worldview in such a way as they alter their beliefs about how the world works or how it should be (carstensen and schmidt, 2016, 325-6). power over ideas concerns the ability of actors to define what certain ideas mean and to gather enough legitimacy around their view so that policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 15 they can avoid having to consider alternate definitions of the same idea or competing ideas. finally, power in ideas refers to quality that certain ideas can possess, once they have become sufficiently widely accepted, that they end up “structuring thought at the expense of other ideas” (ibid, 329). it is this dimension of power in ideas that we are primarily interested in this paper. one illustration of this ideational power is provided by widmaier in a series of papers examining the impact of what he calls ‘intersubjective understandings’ – but which we can describe as socially and politically dominant ideas about how the world works – on policies meant to deal with economic crisis (2003), international cooperation on monetary and financial regulation (2004), and the relative balance of price and wage guidelines and monetary policies as the primary mechanism of us economic policy (2007). widmaier’s main point is that in dealing with different economic crises, a central role is played by the broad ‘intersubjective understandings’ through which policymakers construct their understanding of when they began, what caused them, and how best to deal with them (2007, 46). for example, widmaier explains, from the end of the second world war up to the 1970, dominant keynesian ‘intersubjective understandings’ of inflationary crises and price fluctuations as ‘market failures’ meant that they could be plausibly dealt with through government intervention in the form of the adoption of wage and price guidelines. in contrast, beginning in the 1970s, neoclassical ‘intersubjective understandings’ of inflationary crises were caused by the failure of state policies so that they could only plausibly be dealt with through fiscal and monetary austerity (widmaier, 2007, 47-49; 2004; 2003). this should not be taken to imply that material forces and events are unimportant but rather that it is only by giving meaning to the ‘material trends’ through the lens provided by the dominant ‘intersubjective understandings’ of a period that policymakers can identify the existence of a crisis, its causes, and then ‘react’ appropriately to deal with it (widmaier, 2003, 64; 2004, 450). but how should we understand and analyze the processes through which certain ‘intersubjective understandings’ (what we shall simply call ideas) come to gain the authority that enables them to structure “thought at the expense of other ideas”? one avenue could be to explore this topic through the lens of ideology which, as it is typically used in marxist terms, refers to how certain ideas shape perceptions of the existing order to minimize the desirability of any possible alternative that erodes the power of the dominant class (marx, 1932; berman, 2017). one particularly influential contribution to public policy that adopts this 16 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life approach is the work of lukes which highlights how power is exercised by preventing people “from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things” (2005, 11, 28). however, despite proposing some useful amendments to address the problems of traditional work on ‘false consciousness’, lukes’ work remains theoretically very close to conventional work on ideology (hay, 1997). as a result, it is of limited use for our purposes as it both tends to depict ideas in an instrumental manner as well as leave relatively little room for a consideration of the agency of policy makers. therefore, we proceed in a manner similar to konings (2018, 29) who suggests that it is important to consider how we might understand neoliberalism “even if we assume little about the ability of capitalist elites to capture state institutions or the minds of policymakers”. from this perspective, rather than understanding state officials as being either “corrupted by private interests” or intellectually captured by the dominant ideology, they come to be viewed as being “primarily disposed to stabilize the economic system” by relying on a set of ideas that seemingly provides a “degree of cohesion at the level of practice” (konings 2018, 29) the central question then becomes how some ideas, and not others, come to be understood as providing the best policy options. for our purposes, peter hall’s (1993) work on the concept of policy paradigms provides a useful lens through which to examine this issue. for hall, a policy paradigm is “framework of ideas and standards that specifies not only the goals of policy and the kind of instruments that can be used to attain them, but also the very nature of the problems they are meant to be addressing” (1993, 279; béland, 2005, 5). broadly speaking, what policy paradigms do is form the background view of how the world works and the kinds of causal relations that exists within it and, as a result, they constrain the range of possibilities considered as plausible or likely to succeed by policy makers (campbell, 2002). in specifying how this operated in practice, hall distinguished his approach from work drawing on heclo’s (1974) concept of ‘social learning’ in which policy makers were understood to be perpetually ‘fine tuning’ the design of their policies based on a process of accumulating evidence of past policy successes and failures (hall, 1993, 277). the problem for hall was this approach suggested a view of how policy-makers learned from their experiences that was insufficiently attentive to the power dynamics involved in struggles over how to interpret the meaning of past policy experiences. the concept of policy paradigms is meant to address this weakness by foregrounding the interpretive process through which policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 17 past experiences are evaluated and given meaning by incorporating them into a coherent account of what the world is like. from this perspective “policy paradigms guide learning processes through which existing policy legacies are evaluated and criticized” (béland, 2009, 705). in policy construction terms, the concept of policy paradigm is thus useful to conceptualize the way that ideas can shape how a policy problem is constructed in a way that makes the problem intelligible, so that it can be understood by political decision makers and policy makers, in one way rather than another. one of the primary advantages of adopting this approach in analyzing policy construction is that it provides the tools necessary to examine how power shapes the policy process beyond its manifestations in 'normal' electoral politics and the struggle over control of governments (béland and cox, 2013, 194). these power dynamics are most clearly visible in situations in which an established paradigm is challenged by a competitor; i.e. in cases of ‘paradigm shift’. in the original kuhnian sense, paradigm shifts are understood to occur when the accumulation of anomalous evidence that cannot be convincingly included into the view of the world espoused by a paradigm reaches a tipping point, and the search begins for an alternative view of the world in which the (so-called) anomalies can be convincingly integrated. once this happens, once a new view of the world is discovered that can more convincingly integrate the ostensibly anomalous facts than the view espoused by the previous paradigm, then we can speak of a ‘paradigm shift’. in policy paradigms, however, the processes involved in paradigm shifts are more complicated and are crucially related to the role of power (blyth, 2013; henriksen, 2013). power plays such a central role in policy paradigm shifts because since “each paradigm contains its own account of how the world facing policymakers operates and each account is different, it is often impossible for the advocates of different paradigms to agree on a common body of data against which a technical judgment in favor of one paradigm over another might be made” (hall, 1993, 279). as a result, what is considered to be evidence and what evidence means is inherently contestable. simply stated, this means that “discrediting a policy paradigm is a much more contested and interpretive process than the one which lies behind scientific refutation” (wilder and howlett, 2014, 187). this implies that (1) the process of their replacement is likely to be more social and political than scientific, (2) issues of competing authority are likely to be central to the process of (policy) paradigm shift and, (3) that “the movement from one paradigm 18 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life to another ... is likely to involve the accumulation of anomalies, experimentation with new forms of policy, and policy failures that precipitate a shift in the locus of authority over policy and initiate a wider contest between competing paradigms” (hall, 1993, 280). in supporting this view policy paradigm shifts, blyth proposes that the fact that the 2007-8 global financial crisis did not cause a paradigm shift seems to demonstrate the strength of the this account of paradigm shifts (2013, 206), since while the crisis represents the failure of decades of received wisdom of the neoclassical policy paradigm, no paradigm shift has taken place; quite the contrary (quiggin, 2011; mirowski, 2013). thus, blyth explains, “it is politics, not economics, and it is authority, not facts, that matter for both paradigm maintenance and change” (blyth, 2013, 210). but how does this play out in practice? how do certain ideas come to exert influence on the policy-making process while others are marginalized? in exploring this issue, widmaier’s (2016) “staged theory” of ideational power provides a useful starting point. in this account, ideas that were initially used as rhetorical instruments to defend a particular policy can sometimes take on “structural weight” that makes them function “at a deeper level than [mere] policy ideas” as the “unarticulated … background knowledge” that limit the range of policy options that are understood as being potentially acceptable (widmaier, 2016, 345). although the process wherein specific ideas come to be embedded in this way is clearly shaped by power relations, once specific ideas come to be embedded into important institutions, they can have a significant impact on the manufacture of policy in their own right. in this process, the struggle over who gets to occupy those sites which really matter in interpreting events and anomalies and imposing meaning onto the facts is central. the work of policy takes place within ‘gated’ policy communities. policy paradigms operate, are fought over, maintained or overturned, within specific social, material and institutional 'locations'. while policy expertise is distributed both in and outside of the state apparatus, policy decision makers, those who ultimately construct a policy, and in the process determine what will be done or not done and how, are employed within the formal state apparatus. it is here that the work of policy is conducted. this means that the kinds of ideas which come to form the core of policy paradigms, the role of experts in maintaining, transferring, and applying these ideas, and the strategies that are used by those seeking to foster or preclude a policy paradigm shift, are all crucially centered on and shaped by these locations. policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 19 the policy-making process is often quite unresponsive to influences originating outside of the specific 'locations' from which public policy is manufactured. policy work, and those who conduct the crafting, insulate the policy function of the state apparatus from unorthodox policy alternatives. alternatives are filtered out through a dense network of ideational relays including think tanks, consultants, and various policy entrepreneurs within or well-linked to the state from the outside. as a result, the composition of these 'locations', and the social, technological, political, and institutional networks to which they are connected, significantly shape how policy paradigms operate. to borrow from blyth’s (2013) formulation above, while it is indeed ‘politics and not economics’ that “matter for both paradigm maintenance and change”, an important aspect of this is the inherently political struggle over paradigm maintenance and change which is shaped by the institutional terrain. to gain a better understanding of the power dynamics involved in maintaining or replacing a policy paradigm, it is important to more closely consider not only the composition of the ‘locations’ within the state apparatus in which policies are constructed but also the specificity of their connections with the social, political and academic actors outside of the state apparatus. in the next section, we examine the relationship between the current neoliberal policy paradigm and the institutional structure of the post-welfare state apparatus. transforming the structures of the state apparatus and the neoliberal paradigm the keynesian welfare state apparatus3 emerged out of a period defined by the events of the great depression and the second world war that had provoked a re-thinking of how business, labour, and government could work together in ensuring economic stability within the context of overall growth. through these formative events, governments had “learned a great deal about the practical problems of macroeconomic management” and broader views 3 in this paper, we use the concept of the ‘state apparatus’ in order to forestall the tendency to reify the state as a homogenous, unified and rational actor. the state apparatus refers to the administrative bureaucracies, legal systems, and military and police organizations, among others, that are involved in regulating social and economic relations (miliband, 1972). these are the “legally defined organizations that wield state authority, that is, organizations whose goals and modes of action are defined within the law-making process, and that can mobilize state force, bureaucratic, judicial and physical force to implement their decisions” (gran, 1994, 65). 20 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life concerning the role of government in the administration of the economy had become generally more positive (drache, 1996, 32). the welfare state apparatus served this purpose as it organized political power and administrative capability “in an effort to modify the play of market forces” through the provision of social security programs such as insurance against unemployment, illness, accident, and old age (briggs, 2000, 18). consequently, “this new system also demanded new institutions, a new politics, and major changes in the role of the state” (ross and jenson, 1985/86, 24). as is well documented, the keynesian welfare state began to wobble and undergo transformation through the 1980s (alber, 1988; peters and savoie, 1993). in a context of increasing inflation and unemployment and the decline of both profitability and disposable income (goldthorpe, 1984, 2), the welfare state slowly “unravelled” (banting and hoberg, 1997, 410). its decline was accelerated and celebrated by reagan and thatcher’s ascendant brand of ‘new right’ thinking which counter-posed its values of economic liberalism, individualism, and inequality to those associated with the postwar social contract of collectivism, social rights and equality (farnham and horton, 1996, 12). it was in this context that the ‘new public management’ (npm) movement arose as the “domesticated, depoliticized version of the new right or market liberal policy analysis, made somewhat more technical, consensual and generic” (dunleavy, 1997, 17). the key characteristics of npm include: 1) a shift in focus from inputs and processes and towards outputs and outcomes (results); 2) a shift towards more measurement and quantification; 3) a preference for more specialized lean, flat and autonomous organizational forms; 4) replacing hierarchical relationships with contract relationships; 5) use of market or markettype mechanisms (mtm’s) for the delivery of public services; 6) an expanded concern with service quality and a consumer orientation; 7) a blurring of the separation between the public, private and non-profit sectors; and 9) a shift in core values away from universalism, equity, and security and towards efficiency, economy, effectiveness and individualism (pollitt, 2003, 27-28). within this perspective, the proper role for government came to be redefined as one where the objective was to “reduce or relinquish their previous responsibilities for maintaining full employment and a comprehensive system of state welfare; … privatize public services or their delivery whenever practicable; and … reform their own operations in accordance with market concepts of competition and efficiency” (self, 1993, ix). as such npm “provides a label under which private sector disciplines can be introduced to the public services, political control can be strengthened, budgets trimmed, professional autonomy reduced, public service policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 21 unions weakened and a quasi-competitive framework erected to flush out the natural inefficiencies of bureaucracy” (pollitt, 1990, 49). in this sense, npm can be thought of as a transmission belt for the transfer of neoliberalism into public sector organizations (spronk, 2007). while there are definitional debates regarding neoliberalism (cahill and humphreys, 2019, 2), it can generally be defined as a paradigm applying a market approach to governance and as such represents an ideological shift in the role of government. harvey suggests it is a theory “proposing that human well-being can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, unencumbered markets, and free trade” (2007, 22). in policy, it manifests itself as market liberalization, deregulation, privatization and an erosion of worker and social protections (larner, 2000). while neoliberalism is often presented as a force hostile to the state, actually existing neoliberalism is a paradox where the “state is to be simultaneously rolled back and rolled forward. non-interventionist and decentralised in some areas, the state is to be highly interventionist and centralised in others” (gamble, 1988, 28). this is the paradox of “centralized decentralization” (hoggett, 1996, 74, 9-32). it is necessary to centralize power in order to dismantle state-provided social protections and to use state power to advance the neoliberal project. this is the central paradox of the neoliberal state apparatus and it is absolutely critical to an understanding that despite the rhetoric of ‘rolling back the state,’ building the neoliberal state in fact requires that the state be reorganized as an active instrument for marketization (gamble, 2006, 21-2; harvey, 2007, 22). this paradox at the heart of neoliberalism manifests itself in the effects of npm on structure of the state apparatus. rather than simply diminish the state apparatus, therefore, npm reconfigures the distribution of power within and between its component parts and its relationship to forces outside of it such as capital, labour and other civil society movements (harvey, 2005, 78). more specifically, the implementation of market fundamentalist interventions requires a concentration of authority at the centre of the state. thus, while npm is identified with decentralization, that is so with respect to delivery. the assertion of a new managerialism within the neoliberal state apparatus renews the old concept of the politics-administration dichotomy by empowering managers but also gives greater control over policy to central agencies, the executive and the political arm of government (i.e. ministerial offices and staff) (savoie, 1994). 22 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life npm was thus no mere effort at tinkering but rather sought a transformation within the public sector and the public sector’s relationship to government and economy and so “aims at the replacement of the traditional model altogether” (hughes, 2003, 50; clarke and newman, 1997). the new model of public administration was explicitly directed at “achieving more frugal, more efficient…more effective…governments” (lynn, 2006, 104). since these views did not sit comfortably with the post-war state inhabited by a closely-knit set of senior public servants and political leaders who shared common values respecting the mixed economy and the welfare state (heclo and wildavsky, 1981, 30), it was necessary to co-ordinate the political/managerial resources required to overcome resistance (e.g. pusey, 1991). on an ideational level, the legitimacy of the policy proposals espoused by npm and proponents of the neoliberal state apparatus rested largely on the authority of the world view espoused by neoclassical economics. economics, more so than any other social science, has been an exceptionally powerful academic discipline in its ability to inform public policy (schneider and kirchgässner, 2009, 324). economists are in this respect “gatekeepers” occupying a strategic location for providing the theoretical rationale informing the allocation of public resource (markoff and montecinos, 1993, 52). in addition, because of this preponderance, “(a)spects of economic theories and techniques become embedded in real-life economic processes, and become part of the equipment that economic actors and ordinary citizens use in their day-to-day economic interactions” (fourcade et al., 2015, 109). as a result, the indirect influence of economists is often just as important as their direct influence in reshaping “how non-economist policymakers understand a given issue” (hirschman and berman, 2014, 780). in short, they frame problems and thus establish the range of policy interventions to be considered. though the prominence of economics is not in itself new, the discipline itself has changed substantially since the end of ww2. indeed, through the great depression and the post-war era, a “generation of keynesian trained economists and policy analysts came to the fore and populated a growing state apparatus (evans, 2005, 25). however, even as that paradigm wobbled, economists continued to work as key policy actors but with “newer ideas of economic management” that “now come with an impressive variety of complex and esoteric models of their own and require equally elaborate technical staffing” (markoff and montecinos, 1993, 43). the influence of economists assumes an intellectually hegemonic location of this discipline over other social sciences. the scientization of economics, referring to the application of empirical testing, typically by various policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 23 mathematical methods, provides the methodological foundation for this status as the ‘queen of the social sciences’. economists have thus perceived their role as above sectional politics as theirs is a discipline “whose intellectual achievements are held to be in the refinement of beautifully abstract and highly mathematized models” (markoff and montecinos, 1993, 51). this scientization works to depoliticize economic policy (dyson and marcussen, 2009) and so contributes to insulating the prevailing orthodoxy from alternative models. more than this, scientized economics reduces the debate to one based on purely technical, and therefore apolitical, solutions which share the same assumption respecting macroeconomics. this depoliticization through scientization is not unique to the neoliberal state. indeed, policy problems were framed by keynesian economics as “technical questions to be solved by economic experts. because the problems are understood as merely technical ones, they appear to be beyond the political sphere” (wisman, 1991, 118). as a result, contemporary neo-classical economic theory thus function “mainly as a surrogate ideology for the market economy” (keen, 2011, 4) and economists have at times been described as 'carriers' of the neoliberal market ideology (evans, 2017, 22631). despite initial rumblings that the 2007-8 global financial crisis (gfc) would lead to a decline in the authority of economics and potential shift away from neoliberalism (collignon, 2008), outside of relatively minor changes to prudential financial regulation, the longstanding prestige and influence of neoclassical economics within the policy making process has not significantly diminished since the gfc (mirowski, 2013, 158; crouch, 2011; quiggin, 2011). this progressive institutionalization of neoclassical economics and its ability to withstand substantial opposition and empirical evidence (the gfc) suggesting that many of its central assumptions are flawed or simply false, finds many echoes with widmaier’s (2016) ‘staged theory’ of ideational power, discussed above. what has so far remained largely unexamined is the role played by changes in the state apparatus in enhancing the stability of the neoliberal policy paradigm. in the next section we examine this issue by drawing on previous and recent semistructured interviews. the neoliberal state apparatus, the centralization of power, and the policy process in many western countries, policy often had what could be characterized as an 'upward' movement within state bureaucracies; with policies being 24 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life developed in departments by public sector advisors before being presented to members of the executive for appraisal and decision (evans, 2017, 10). this process allowed for input from various sources and included an important role for public sector policy analysis (good, 2013, 213). however, the centralization of political control discussed above has been accompanied by a movement to repoliticize the state by concentrating policy making authority in specific strategic centres operating largely under the direct control of the executive branch (aucoin, 2010; savoie, 1994). the public policy expertise upon which governments rely is thus increasingly centered outside of the civil service. public policy work becomes politicized as work which had been the purview of the public service is “turned over to … partisan policy advisors, to think tanks and to lobby firms for advice” (savoie, 1993, 21-2). policy work within the neo-liberal state is one in which influence over the design and manufacture of policy is now limited to a limited number of central actors and in which “public service advisors are either shunted aside or are recruited for their ‘political’ fit” (evans, 2017, 233). whitehall scholar peter hennessey observed of the thatcher era that the expanding role of external policy advice has produced “an era when the armani-clad minds in the penumbra of fad-and-fashion prone private think tanks can be preferred (especially if their advice comes gift-wrapped and suitably politically tinted) to that more sober, sometimes inconvenient fare served up by the tweed-clad minds in the career bureaucracy” (1997, 4-5). this has created formidable barriers that effectively exclude alternative ideas from having any influence on the formal policy process. for instance, in a series of interviews with ontario government policy analysts and policy managers conducted in 2005, a number of themes emerged respecting how policy work was restructured through the 1990s and beyond. these themes included an observed diminishment of research capacity within the public service and the increasing centralization of power in the executive (evans, 2005, 34). in addition, the interviews identified the overt politicisation of the policy agenda and the decline of research and evidence in the policy process (evans, 2005, 37). the decline in policy capacity was understood to be linked to the centralisation of power in the premier's office as well as the “marginalisation of the public service from participating in policy formulations which had been a central function in the post war period” (evans, 2005, 35). commenting on these changes, one former executive noted that the “ops had lost its capacity to say 'no' in the harris years” (evans, 2005, 35). the reference to harris being to mike harris who served as premier from 1995 to 2002 and whose government pioneered the most radical and aggressive neoliberal policy agenda in ontario’s policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 25 modern history. echoing this view, one senior policy manager observed that senior executives have increasingly “seen their role as facilitating the political agenda in an expeditious 'make it so' manner without full due diligence” and that “decisions are made through a political filter not a technical one” (evans, 2005, 38). another executive ranking informant commented on the “growing policy role of politicians and their 'external advisors' and the commensurate marginalisation of the public service” as having “moved (the public service) from being architects to being contractors” (evans, 2005, 35). these findings are echoed by a 2012 survey of 1510 government and non-government policy workers in three canadian provinces provides some insight into the centralized and insular nature of the policy making process. survey responses revealed that approximately 30 per cent of non-government respondents indicated they were never invited to consult with government and between 6 and 13 per cent were invited on a monthly basis to engage in a policy dialogue. moreover, more than 46 per cent indicated that they worked with government on a policy issue only after all key design issues were decided or were limited to an implementation role (evans and sapeha, 2015, 258). a related research project entailed 31 semi-structured interviews with government and non-government policy and program staff working in the immigrant settlement field. the interview probed the working relationship between the government and non-government actors in this specific field. the general view of non-government staff was that “policy consultations were largely predetermined … their experience of policy engagement with government was often simply frustrating. despite providing what they viewed as relevant information and perspectives that would benefit policy design, this was too often not heeded” (evans and shields, 2014, 122). interviews with 18 trade union-based researchers also struck a rather negative experience in dealing with government. indeed, all informants “characterized the climate for labour policy advocacy as ranging from “chilly” to “hostile,” (evans and ross, 2018, 340). in addition, all experienced a decline in their ability to access policy makers accompanied by a “prevailing sense that the message was not being heard by simply putting forward evidence” (evans and ross, 2018, 340). these conclusions find additional support from eight more recent interviews, carried out in march, april and may 2018 with former and current public service policy advisors and senior managers whose careers were in the ontario public service (ops), the permanent, non-partisan governmental bureaucracy. most participants touched on the decrease in the role of expertise 26 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life in the process and the increased prevalence of centralized top-down policy manufacture. thus, one participant noted that “knowledge and expertise were valued more in the 1990s” but that, “over time” it had become “less valued” and that they felt that they had become primarily a “typist” rather than a “knowledge worker” (interview 1). another participant, having been a long-time public service employee (26 years), observed that during their time in government they had “witnessed the degradation in the use of knowledge in the policy process” (interview 2). during the peterson government (1985-1990), they noted, government “consulted widely with experts” and “this insight was shared and discussed among the policy staff” (interview 2). however, this is “no longer the practice” and now things are “driven by political expediency” with decisions being made in the assistant deputy minister's office or the deputy minister's office and policy staff's job being limited to “build around what is given” (interview 2). one participant admitted that they saw the role of knowledge and expertise in the policy process as being “generally perfunctory”; noting that there is an 'obvious' tendency to 'curate' “evidence to support a (given) policy direction” (interview 3). this view was echoed by participant 4 who noted that while evidence plays a role, if it does “not support the political direction then we curate that evidence to align with the political direction” (interview 4). similarly, a former senior policy manager observed that “evidence is contestable. there are so many competing interests to weigh. for decision-makers evidence can then be tricky. there is a critical role for evidence in problem identification but then it must align with stakeholder definitions of the problem and their solutions to some degree. and evidence must reflect the priorities of the government or it will be ignored” (interview 8). from this perspective, they continued, “research is not really important. you make the data/evidence fit the political direction” (interview 4). they concluded that they had had “no experience where the evidence swayed the position of political leaders” (interview 4). one participant was even more blunt in making this point, noting simply that ““politics trumps evidence-based policy making” (interview 5). in the words of another, “political congruence was always more important than superior data” (interview 1). from this perspective, as two participants noted, policy expertise was often limited to the creation of narratives using data to support policy directions communicated by the central agencies or the minister's office (interview 5; interview 6). though one participant did highlight a recent “push to a more evidence based approach to policy work” in the ops, they did nonetheless add that the process is largely driven by political policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 27 decisions by elected leaders, where decisions about which policies to pursue often emerging out of high level meetings and, from the perspective of public sector employees, seemingly coming “out of no where” (interview 7). this same participant did note however that the role of expertise is related to the issue area, with specialized forms of knowledge playing more important role in highly technical issues dealing with things like radiation and asbestos, but less so in economic policy, which is less technical (interview 7). this supports previous arguments made in this direction by hirschman and berman (2014). overall, these accounts largely supported the view that most of the important policy decisions were informed by political considerations and that direction nearly always came from the premier or minister’s office, the deputy minister or the assistant deputy minister or from some other central agency (interviews 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8). two participants noted that the ministry of finance and the treasury board were the most important actors involved in deciding which policies were pursued (interview 1 and 2), and that they essentially were the “veto point” deciding which initiatives were taken up and transformed into policies (interview 2). these claims support previous findings by blakeney and borins that governments also have a tendency to only accept advice from public servants when it is either “consistent with the broad outlines of government policy” or it is in an area “where the government doesn’t have strong policy ideas” (1998, 49). in general, these interviews support arguments in the literature about the increasingly centralized nature of the policy making process and the resulting marked decline in the role played by public sector expertise and knowledge as an independent driving force in the manufacture of policy. however, we would maintain that this does not simply imply that knowledge and expertise does not matter for the policy making process, nor that policy paradigms do not have an impact on the manufacture of policy, having been replaced by explicit and overt politically led direction from central agencies and the offices of ministers, deputy ministers, and/or assistant deputy ministers. rather, what it does appear to support is the view that struggles over the content of policy paradigms in the era of neoliberal market states now take place in a narrower set of 'locations' than they did in the era of the keynesian welfare state apparatus. the kinds of knowledge and expertise that matter are narrow(er than they used to be) and those that do not have the right characteristics or institutional origins are filtered out or not listened to in the (now) highly centralized locations from which policies are manufactured in practice. 28 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life what we propose is thus not only that the dominance of the neoliberal policy paradigm constrains policies by making some options less credible but also that the neoliberal state-apparatus has altered the composition and environment of the institutional 'locations' from and through which public policies are manufactured. these changes have fostered a situation in which the policy making process is increasingly insulated from the influence of ideas that either originate from outside of the very select locations from which they are usually drawn or are composed of content that goes against the core ideas of the neoliberal policy paradigm. this has important implications for how we understand the causal mechanisms underlying the change or stability of policy paradigms. for instance, it implies that the process of overturning and/or replacing current (neoliberal) is not simply a matter of achieving electoral success. the central ideas of the neoliberal policy paradigm appear to have become sufficiently embedded that it is often politically expedient for successive governments to draw on it when manufacturing their policies even when they might genuinely desire adopting alternative policies. in many cases there are actually mechanisms in place, like credit rating agencies for example (sinclair, 2004), that push against the incorporation of alternative or counter-hegemonic ideas into the highly centralized location from which policies are manufactured. this can mean that governments seeking to draw on alternative or heterodox ideas can find themselves being coerced or pushed in various ways to avoid doing so and to stick with ideas from the dominant policy paradigm this also means that focusing attention on changing the beliefs of public sector experts is likely to meet with only limited results since for the most part ideas that are popular outside of the centralized locations in which policies are manufactured tend to not be allowed to cross these important boundaries. conclusion here we have explored the relationship between policy paradigms and changes in the structure of the state apparatus. it is argued that an important, but mostly unexplored dimension in understanding the dynamics involved in the struggle over policy paradigms, is the institutional structure of the state within which they are embedded. through this, we sought to contribute to the development of a better understanding of both the role of expertise in the manufacture of policy as well as the broader relationship that exists between policy paradigms and the institutional structure of the state apparatus within which the policy process is embedded. thus we argue that transformations in the policy paradigms and the structure of the state apparatus | 29 structure of the state apparatus within which the manufacture of 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democratic intervention? meghan joy4, john shields5 and siu mee cheng6 abstract: social innovation labs (sils) are a recent policymaking development that are spreading rapidly in many different countries. sils are said to address difficult and complex social policy problems that have been resistant to solutions. to date, there has been limited scholarly analysis of sil development, with many questions in need of critical policy assessment. this paper seeks to conceptualize sils in the canadian context by mapping the sector and exploring how these labs fit within the broader ecosystem of policy innovation. we consider why sils have become so popular in this particular socio-political moment. we contend that the sil trend speaks to a dual and contradictory desire on the part of governments for more participatory policymaking and cost saving. thus, while sils may create opportunities for the democratization of social policy, they are also motivated by efforts to do more with less in an environment shaped by austerity and neoliberalism. this suggests that sils could equally result in the marketization and depoliticization of social policy. this paper highlights these tensions conceptually with the purpose of guiding empirical studies that explore how these contradictions may manifest in policy practice and perhaps offer openings for policy that addresses both the roots and symptoms of complex social policy problems. 4 meghan joy is assistant professor in the department of political science at concordia university. 5 john shields is professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. 6 siu mee cheng is a phd candidate in the policy studies program at ryerson university. social innovation labs | 35 keywords: social innovation labs; social innovation; austerity; neoliberalism; new public management; social impact bonds; democratizing policymaking introduction social innovation labs (sils) represent a new policymaking process that has spread rapidly since the 2008 financial crisis (westley, goebey & robinson, 2012). sils are experimental social innovation mechanisms designed to tackle complex social policy and service design problems, such as poverty, that government is increasingly thought to be incapable of solving on its own (mcgann, blomkamp & lewis, 2018). these labs create learning communities out of a group of “multi-disciplinary teams and diverse stakeholders” drawn from government, the social sciences, technical experts, civil society, citizens, and the business community who share an interest in solving the problem (vanaptwerp, 2014, np; tiesinga & berkhout, 2014). such collaboration takes place in a physical space that separates these stakeholders from their usual environment and especially away from government bureaucracy (westley et al., 2015). it is in this space where facilitation and design processes that provide direction on how solution-finding will be undertaken, outside the sphere of ‘government speak’, occurs (westley et al., 2015). a core component of this process is the requirement that all participants “let go of their preconceived ideas about the problems that exist and the best solution(s) to them” (westley et al., 2015, 12), so they are able to embrace ‘change thinking’. deep collaboration without the constraints of traditional institutional structures is said to be made possible in this environment (vanaptwerp, 2014) and it is in such a creative space, proponents contend, that innovation and radical solutions can be directed to “our most pressing social problems” (hassan, 2014, 2-3). in this way, sils are said to address “complex societal challenges that require systems change” (vanaptwerp, 2014, np). diverse social actors are convened in the sil process because they are thought to encompass a relevant representation of the system that needs to shift. this gathering presents an opportunity to identify the unintended consequences of policy and the associated adjustments that need to be made to initiate a radical system shift. as addressed below, sils have emerged in different sectors (public, university, for-profit and non-profit) in response to these developments. to date, there has been limited scholarly analysis of both the emergence and practice of sils. several articles propose potential drivers for sil emergence, 36 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life but these have not been examined in depth. gregoire (2016) posits that the retreat of government from addressing social problems arising from neoliberal policies and the ongoing practice of new public management (npm) and its most recent iteration, new public governance (npg), has helped to drive the emergence of sils. the public policy forum’s (2013) report aligns sil development in canada with the rise of austerity and the “need to do more with less” in government and an emphasis on independent problem-solving autonomous from state bureaucracy (1-2). this argument is furthered by van den steenhoven (2016), who claims that sils have permitted a shift in problem-solving from government to society. this is said to democratize social policymaking in both the public and non-profit sectors (bc healthy communities, 2016; carstensen & bason, 2012). new systems thinking is said to be a key element of sils, an approach which is thought to break down the silos in and rigidities of government processes and result in a more comprehensive approach to problem-solving. the inclusion of different societal stakeholders in the sil process can be understood as an implementation of the ‘nothing about us without us’ idea from social justice. this paper seeks to conceptualize sils in the canadian context by mapping the sector and exploring how these labs fit within the broader ecosystem of policy innovation. there is a need for in-depth theoretical and empirical exploration as to why sils have emerged so quickly and extensively in this sociopolitical moment. while the two core drivers of neoliberalism and the democratization of policy-making appear present in the push for sils, their analysis is piecemeal and cursory, undertheorized, and lacks empirical assessment. we posit that these drivers are unlikely to be weighed equally and are in fundamental conflict. for instance, meaningful participatory processes can be costly and time consuming and can result in demands for substantial public investment in social welfare and private sector regulation to address the roots of policy problems such as poverty, homelessness, and precarious employment. this paper offers a preliminary conceptual exploration of the sil drivers of neoliberalism and democratization, highlighting how these are in tension in theory and offering critical questions for future empirical investigation. we begin by mapping the development of sils in canada to establish key trends, identify different conceptual approaches to understand their emergence, and highlight potential contradictions that merit further empirical analysis. social innovation labs | 37 mapping the canadian sil landscape a systematic search was undertaken on-line using the google search engine for canadian-based, english-language websites with the search terms “social innovation lab”. this produced 141,000 results. for the purposes of the sil inventory, the following types of labs were included: 1) labs that appear to have a social problem focus and/or benefit for the public; 2) labs run by government, universities, non-profit organizations and the private sector; and 3) labs that provide their social problem-solving services for a profit. the components of diverse engagement, physical space, design processes, and retiring pre-conceived notions identified in the literature were used to further assess inclusion in the inventory. the search results and analysis yielded 59 sils in canada as of december 2017. our survey shows that there has been a proliferation of sils across canada, with labs operating in the public, university, private and non-profit sectors. overall, the maturity of these sils vary as the majority do not meet all sil characteristics as defined in the literature. we find that sils may be internally operated by a larger public, private, or non-profit organization or may be a standalone entity that offers its services to these organizations at no cost, or for a fee. four sils were identified in the for-profit sector, two in ontario and two in quebec. these sils can be grouped in two categories: 1) labs that have been established by large private-sector companies that provide social impact funding, wherein funds are provided to implement policy solutions developed by participants; and 2) labs that provide services for a fee to clients in the community, government and private sectors. the common set of priorities amongst these sils include urban innovation, information and technology, and healthcare. canadian governments at all three levels have shown significant interest in sils. internal sils are operating in the provinces of alberta, quebec and new brunswick. colab in alberta is located within the ministry of environment and acts as an internal consulting firm, offering its expertise in systems-based approaches to policy design across ministries. in new brunswick, the economic immigration lab addresses issues associated with attracting newcomers in the province and intends to provide funding to solve social problems experienced by immigrants. in quebec, innovative territories in social and solidarity economy (tiess) brings together players in the social and solidarity economy in different geographic areas, including research centers and academic institutes, to develop new projects and facilitate policy transfer and diffusion. one of the eight sils is run by the federal government – the impact and innovation unit – and acts as a 38 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life consulting firm that works with “departments in applying innovative financing approaches, new partnership models, impact measurement methodologies and behavioural insights in priority areas for the government of canada” (government of canada, 2018). three sils are operating in the municipal governments of toronto, vancouver and calgary. the vancouver city studio is the most developed and has interests in active transportation, pollution abatement, developing the green economy and local food systems, and social inclusion. both the calgary and toronto labs have yet to identify priorities but have city service knowledge sharing and innovation as their mandate. there is an even greater interest within the canadian university landscape toward the sil trend, with 19 labs identified. these labs have either been financially supported by private sector donors, and/or the public sector and/or internally by the universities. these labs generally lack clear mandates, scopes of operations, sets of priorities, and target audiences and overall, are loose and underdeveloped operations. within the academic environment, several reasons for sil development, distilled from their websites, are identified: to nurture and invest in student-led social entrepreneurial endeavors; to find solutions to social problems; and, to drive collaborations across faculty, the student body, and with external stakeholders in the public, private and non-profit sectors. they are also seen as initiatives that market universities as societally relevant organizations that offer their services to these external stakeholders. by far, the greatest number of sils have been established in canada’s non-profit sector. however, the majority of these 28 labs do not exist as standalone entities and are supported by another non-profit organization, funding agency, university and/or government. this illustrates the hybrid nature of the lab concept. unlike the labs headquartered in other sectors, non-profit sils place emphasis on supporting their communities to address the social problems they identify. a common theme that has emerged among these labs is a focus on environmental/sustainability issues and healthy physical environments with respect to creating spaces that encourage healthier lifestyles, active transportation and social inclusion. such civic actors have often been useful in identifying issues and pointing out possible grounded solutions to government policymakers and the wider public. many of these non-profit-based sils are more grassroots and democratic in character and often, aside from their interaction at the local level, are distanced from the actual centers of government decision-making. a striking exception is the mars solutions lab based in toronto. this sil has been well-financed and social innovation labs | 39 connected to government, the business sector and communities of experts. for example, mars has been closely involved with so-called impact investing, noting that it “works to unlock the power of private capital to tackle persistent social challenges. it works with investors, governments, ventures and service providers to create funding solutions for projects that generate social and financial returns” (kim & farthing-nichol, 2017, 2). mars is currently engaged in work with the federal department of immigration, refugees, citizenship canada (ircc) in a pay-for-performance project involving the settlement and employment of syrian refugees (kim & farthing-nichol, 2017). while mars is well linked into policy networks, it lacks organic grassroots grounding. the pattern seems to be that the more grassroots the sil, the less connected to senior level policy circles (henfrey et al., 2017). only five of the sils offer social impact funding to implement and evaluate solutions, three of which are university-based while the other two are non-profit and private. 42 of the sils identified clear priorities that they were advancing, with respect to social problems that they wished to address. the sils that possess the clearest mandates and sets of priorities are those situated in the non-profit sector, while those in other sectors are generally not as fully evolved. the lab trend is thus growing but still in its infancy in canada and there is a clear need to theorize and conduct empirical research on sils more broadly as well as within particular sectors. the following presents a first effort to theorize/conceptualize sils through a critical policy frame based on the two core drivers identified in the literature: neoliberalism and democratizing policymaking. sils as a neoliberal policy process sils can be understood through a lens of neoliberalism as an innovation to npm and npg in a context of austerity due to the 2008 financial crisis. it is important to note that the issue of public sector innovation is not new. earlier public-sector reforms date back to at least the 1980s as part of the ‘reinventing government’ movement popularized by osborne and gaebler (1992) and npm reforms which were about institutionalizing a more ‘entrepreneurial state’, breaking down bureaucracy, and bringing in market-like business practices to the public sector, including ‘doing more with less’ (shields & evans, 1998). neoliberalism is the hegemonic policy paradigm that displaced keynesian based public policy embracing market-centered ideas, approaches and solutions to societal problems. harvey (2005) defines neoliberalism as “a theory of political 40 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life and economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong property rights, free markets, and free trade” (2). the state, under neoliberalism, is given a mandate to extend markets into realms in which they have been absent. npm has served as the key mechanism transmitting neoliberal based managerialism and ‘market think’ throughout the public and non-profit sectors (evans & shields, 2018). yanow (2007) explains that the npm project also called for a “"scientific" basis for administrative practices, as well as of extensions of so-called evidencebased medicine into the fields of management, social welfare, and so on” (117), to justify government spending. we see a similar drive working through the sil labs that we mapped. over the last three decades, npm has shrunk the role of the state in collective service provision, limiting its policy capacity and marketizing service delivery by public, private, and non-profit actors (evans & shields, 2018). it is also a process that works to blur the lines of distinction between public, private and non-profit sectors as all are encouraged to adopt market-based and entrepreneurial values and approaches to their operations. further, there is the embrace of the idea that citizens are really customers, clients, consumers and individual agents of human capital. market values are usurping collectively oriented public values (clarke et al., 2014). these trends have been extended more deeply into the social sector with the latest round of austerity (mcbride & evans, 2017), and sils may be a feature of this. npg is a reform of npm that gives emphasis to ‘new’ pluralistic relationships between the state and other societal actors. the idea of networked government is prominent where other organizations are brought into the policymaking process creating more horizontal and ‘democratic’ decision-making (osborne, 2006; craft & howlett, 2012). sils are cast as a prime example of the move to npg, as are seeming shifts that highlight the adjustment from such things as: “structural adjustment to good governance”, “greed-is-good to markets-withmorals”; “privatization to public-private partnership”; and, “conviction politics to best practice” (peck, nd, np). there are questions as to how deep and transformative the move from npm to npg actually is and whether it has actually occurred at all (evans & shields, 2018). phillips (2007) argues that the policy process is not “as open and as participatory as the model of ‘governance’ suggests” (497), a conclusion we also propose regarding sils in this paper. the shift to an npg discourse in government has overlapped with the neoliberal political management of the financial crisis of 2008. neoliberal ideology social innovation labs | 41 has proven itself particularly adaptive at taking advantage of crisis, flexibly adjusting its policies and persona while retaining pro-market and fiscally ‘responsible’ approaches to governance (peck et al., 2012; peck, nd). in so doing, neoliberalism has demonstrated its hegemonic control over the policy agenda even under crisis conditions (crouch, 2011). neoliberalism’s use of sils may very well be another reflection of its adaptive capacities. the drive to sils serves to expand the ‘knowledge market for policy’ outside of government, which has resulted in a greater role for consultants like kpmg who compete with university and non-profit sil actors to find the solution to complex problems. the value of so-called entrepreneurial approaches to problem solving that include stakeholders from the private sector is prevalent in sil framing (bc healthy communities, 2016). shrinking the state also meant shrinking the policy capacity of and in government itself (baskoy et al., 2011), which is blamed on inherent government rigidities necessitating internal consulting agencies to find a fix as the alberta colab and the federal impact and innovation unit demonstrate. cuts to social services and offloading policy responsibility onto municipal governments combined with the expectation that they engage in policy innovation is also likely a driver for local labs operating in canada’s biggest cities and this merits further research. the associated decline in government authority, political polarization, and growing levels of plutocracy with the advance of income inequality is challenging pre-existing approaches to policymaking (drezner, 2017). a major factor here is the belief that the state is no longer able to afford expensive social programs due to limited revenue capture (bellefontaine, 2012). furthermore, there is the anti-statist notion that government is inherently risk intolerant and thus incapable of addressing major policy problems through innovation (bellefontaine, 2012). these factors are said to have placed complex social issues beyond the sole capacities of the state to solve and has made room for the creation of a social service market and with sils, a social policymaking market. interestingly, and perhaps revealingly, sil popularity coincides with a trend that we have been tracking: social impact bonds (sibs) (joy & shields, 2013; 2017; 2018a). sibs are a tool that allows private investors to fund non-profit social service interventions with the promise of receiving a return from a government partner should the service achieve pre-defined measures of social value. this social value is defined as a cost saving to government, and presumably the taxpaying citizen, that results from the change in behaviour of the client group in question, be they mothers with inadequate support or citizens experiencing 42 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life unemployment or homelessness, reducing their service requirements over time and shrinking government social spending. for instance, in a program targeting individuals experiencing homelessness, the investors might receive a return should these individuals reduce their demands for intensive service supports over a pre-defined time period (sinclair et al., 2014). the turn to sibs illustrates the desire among governments to shift from funding public services to funding policy outcomes. this requires finding out, to use a blairist turn of phrase, ‘what works’; to push for new ways of thinking about social problems, to use the market in creative ways to fund and find solutions, and to approach social policy solutions in a pragmatic apolitical fashion. this suggests that the market is a neutral force that can be used in progressive ways. this notion is captured in a recent documentary directed and produced by nadine pequeneza on sibs entitled ‘the invisible heart’ (2018), a play on adam smith’s famous ‘invisible hand’ analogy, suggesting that hidden forms of altruism lay within the free market. pequeneza’s documentary raises critical questions here, highlighting the power dynamics between investors like goldman sachs and rbc and the subjects of these policy experiments who are pressured to adopt behavioural changes that will trigger a profit for these financial actors. profiting off social policy interventions can result in social good – the magic of the market at work – we are told by supporters of sibs who frame themselves as ‘progressives’. in this market, social problems become commodified and governments contract with marketized players who can produce social value for money. in other words, these new market actors must prove that they can solve complex social problems. it is in this way that sils can come to represent the policy design processes on which sibs, and other market-based policy approaches, are based. sils are an important mechanism by which these solutions are sought and, in this way, could represent a continuance of the state and policy reforms which have been tightly linked to neoliberal governance. sils may encourage a further marketization and depoliticization of social policy and this is a crucial area of analysis for further empirical study. the social innovation drive was born in the period of neoliberal government cutbacks and restructuring, where state financial support for nonprofit organizations providing services to the community has been shrunk and the general social expectations on government greatly reduced (struthers, 2018). competitive funding, heavy reporting requirements, dependence on government funds with limits on policy advocacy, and employee turnover challenge the ability of actors in this sector to engage in problem solving more fundamentally (evans social innovation labs | 43 & shields, 2018). it is significant that the advocacy role of non-profit providers has been systematically muted through npm mechanisms (evans & shields, 2014) at the very time that sils are being promoted. this raises serious questions regarding which voices in policymaking are being encouraged and heard. increasingly, non-profits are contracted to deliver targeted support to those who have fallen through the cracks of a crumbling social welfare system; yet, are increasingly monitored in their ability to produce evidence of results so that these individuals become less costly (joy & shields, 2018a). as promoted by third sector journals like the stanford social innovation review, the turn to the employment of innovation and social finance as an alternative to the lack of government support to pursue social good in a period of austerity has come to be seen as the only way forward. in this way, the use of enterprise and markets for social ends are legitimated by some ‘progressives’, as has been the case with ‘third way’ advocates. this ‘realist’ perspective is challenged by the more ‘critical’ approach that we advance. we have critically argued, in contrast, that sibs are a case of private agents ‘profiting from pain’, an immoral market-base process that commodifies citizens and ‘their problems’ and works to strip vulnerable populations of social rights and supports (joy & shields 2018b; 2016). this clash of perspectives by progressive voices remains a matter of ongoing contestation. it is crucial to study how such processes might be at work through non-profit sil projects, but which may also provide an opportunity for those experiencing complex policy problems to have a right to define the problems they face (bacchi, 2009) and the appropriate policy solutions. one point of exploration is the extent to which complex policy problems are represented as behavioural in nature, with solutions focused on behavioural change that individualizes and thus simplifies social problems (joy & shields, 2018a; clarke, 2017). in this respect, social value is achieved by changing behaviours that reduce demands for costly policy programs. westley et al (2015) have stated that the roots of sils began in the 1950s, starting with the focus on group dynamics, group therapy and psychology that became the basis for organizational design and development. at the same time, this work was integrated with thought leadership on how groups can address systems change. in the 1950s and 1960s, e. trist, a social scientist, furthered these concepts by stating that “mega messes” existed, and to address these broad problems, systemsoriented solutions were required (westley et al., 2015, 10). we contend that complex social problems are rooted in an intersection of systems such as global capitalism, patriarchy, racism, ableism, ageism, etc. that 44 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life manifest in public institutions, the intermingled symptoms of which exist in local places. while it is crucial to recognize and address these symptoms at the scale of the local, the understanding of problems must be multi-scalar and intersectional in nature to tackle the public policies (or absence thereof) that have produced these problems in the first place (gkiouleka et al., 2018). for instance, any program that aims to tackle homelessness must address real estate marketization, the privatization of public housing, and the inadequate public system of mental health supports. yet, neoliberal approaches to social problems reject more holistic understandings of issues like poverty, homelessness and unemployment. instead, these approaches isolate and individualize the sources of these problems and seek marketized solutions (harvey, 2005). requoting david ingram, sossin (1993) notes that “under capitalism, controversial questions regarding distributive justice must be removed from the democratic process and dealt with as technical problems requiring resolution by managerial elites” (379). yet, with sils, processes for addressing these questions are in theory opened-up for broader discussion. again, where citizens fit into this discussion and how social justice and equity are considered in sil problem solving are important areas for future analysis. we posit that the trend to sibs and sils may create dilemmatic spaces (newman & clarke, 2009) or openings where alternative democratic interventions to austerity may exist. we are thus interested in examining how tools like sibs and sils can open-up more democratic approaches to policymaking that may result in more socially progressive policy. in the abstract, there are two potentially progressive elements to these social innovation trends: 1) sibs and sils are said to be about tackling the systemic roots of policy problems that are complex in nature; and 2) they also promise to involve/engage citizens and non-profit actors in policy design and delivery, democratizing the process, with an emphasis on achieving positive social outcomes that improve the lives of individuals (struthers, 2018). the question is whether the use of entrepreneurship and markets in practice can in fact be value neutral or if they are imbedded within logics that compromise social justice goals and democratic processes (roy & hackett, 2016). our own examination of sibs points to how the profit motive works to pervert the potential progressive elements of such market-centered tools (joy & shields, 2018a). we establish the contours of these contradictory dynamics in the following section. social innovation labs | 45 sils as a democratic policymaking intervention? sils represent a reorientation of rationalist policymaking, which is in its essence about finding objective, technical and scientific solutions to policy problems that can be generalized across contexts (torgerson, 1986). the intention of the rationalist project in policymaking was to bypass ideological and partisan conflicts that produced inefficiency by linking the problem not to politics but to the need for better problem-solving administration and technique (fischer, 1989). togerson (1986) explains that this was in fact a political strategy to separate problems from their socio-political context, subverting a deeper analysis and questioning of problems as linked to dominant ideological and material structures, and thus protecting prevailing structures and interests. while the sil policy orientation is toward the dominant role of ideas in driving forth policy change, the notion of solving complex problems illustrates that there may be a limited understanding that if people simply adopt the right ideas – or truth – then problems can be fixed. here, sils may also pull on the notion that policy issues are primarily technical problems that can be solved by groupings of experts with applied knowledge and experience with the policy problem. as a policymaking technique, sils “lay claim to universal or near universal application” (mcgann et al., 2018, np) across policy domains, awarding them a magical fix kind of quality. yet, social innovation is a concept that lacks firm definition, making “it highly adaptable to the shifting contours of policy directions and challenges” (mcgann et al., 2018, np). the ambiguity and impression of the concept (miller & langhorst, 2017) also makes it at the same time about everything and nothing and thus not particularly helpful for dealing with complex policy problems. by the 1970s, the rationalist project was increasingly seen as unable to solve complex or ‘wicked’ policy problems, a term coined by rittel and webber in 1973, in siloed government departments. the author’s state that “because there is no definitive single casual factor or factors for many wicked problems…the challenge resides both in determining all possible causes and in establishing causation to the social phenomenon” (rittel & webber, 1973, 162). while rittel and webber (1973) considered the search for all possible causes impossible because of value conflicts in defining wicked policy problems, noting that “social problems are never solved. at best they are only re-solved over and over again" (169), the sil emphasis on findings solutions through system change seems to refute this claim. this may be done by bypassing value conflict in problem representation and linking the impasse to government’s inability to learn from citizens as well as other sectoral actors from the private and non-profit sectors, its 46 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life siloed nature where departments fail to communicate, its risk aversion, and its limited data collection and processing capability. yet, yanow (2007) explains that “technical-rational tools, such as cost-benefit analyses, and the combination of mass (or large 'n') surveys and high-speed computers held out to policy-makers the promise of solutions to knotty social problems. forty years' experience with these promises have shown that they are useful for some situations, but complex problems require analytic tools that do not oversimplify social realities in order to force-fit them into restricted, and restrictive, models” (118). it is further crucial to examine whether there is a tendency to oversimplify causes. stone (1989) offers this warning about problems linked to complex causes: “they postulate a kind of innocence, in that no identifiable actor can exert control over the whole system or web of interactions. complex causal explanations are not very useful in politics, precisely because they do not offer a single locus of control, a plausible candidate to take responsibility for a problem, or a point of leverage to fix a problem. hence, one of the biggest tensions between political science and real-world politics. the former tends to see complex causes of social problems, while the latter searches for immediate and simple causes” (289). with sils, complex problems appear to be increasingly useful today and it is important to decipher why this is the case, particularly when one works from the understanding that causes are selected because they empower certain actors to ‘solve’ the problem (stone, 1989). sils thus offer up the dual and enticing possibility of engaging in both more pluralist and rationalist approaches to social problem-solving. the rationalist project has also been critiqued for being undemocratic because public bureaucrats, understood as neutral technocrats, were the only actors to possess the scientific skills to find solutions to policy problems (fischer, 1989). sossin (1993) explains that “instrumental reason aspires to objective truth, but it makes intersubjectivity impossible by causing citizens to be treated as objects to be social innovation labs | 47 administered” (375). he advises that it is this rationalist project that is the problem, and not bureaucrats per se, as many of these rules are in place to control the bureaucracy and eliminate their discretion. it is crucial to study whether sils are about improving the bureaucracy by supporting discretion that enables communicative relationships with citizens (sossin, 1993) or whether it is based on an essentialist understanding of the bureaucracy meant to sidestep government. there appears to be debate as to the role of government in sil projects, as some writers emphasize reducing the government role in problem-solving (van den steenhoven, 2016) and others seek improvement to internal government policymaking (carstensen & bason, 2012). whether the latter is more about producing evidence to prove value for money in service provision than democratic policymaking informed by citizen and non-profit voices requires further exploration in the sils case. crucial to sils is an emphasis on the importance of the non-profit sector and locally centered initiatives for the future of social welfare (bellefontaine, 2012). the significant amount of sil activity within the non-profit sector in canada may be a reflection of how communities are seeking to problem-solve in a more democratic way, opening space for citizens to define the problem on their own terms (bacchi, 2009). some of these are grassroots initiatives led by citizens seeking to solve highly localized problems in their communities (henfrey et al., 2017). however, there may be a disconnect here between the localization and fragmentation of sil projects and the emphasis on addressing the complex roots of problems and engaging in more comprehensive or systems-oriented policymaking. approaches that emphasize fast testing to prove outcomes quickly (peck & theodore, 2015) continue to embody rationalist perspectives that may challenge engaging in conflictual discussions and critical thinking on wicked policy problems. this may be more likely the case if non-profits are contracted by governments to deliver social value for money, as here governments have often already defined the problem, which may be understood as more behavioural than structural in nature. while sils theoretically open up interesting possibilities regarding participatory policymaking and the involvement of grassroots civil society, the question is whether sils address issues of values and power that lie at the root of wicked social policy problems (rittel & webber, 1973). a crucial question is who is and is not dominant in sil problem framing and what sorts of causal stories are presented as this informs the policy solution chosen (stone, 1989). are these primarily neoliberal and individually oriented storylines or ones that are centered 48 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life within the broader context within which social problems originate? there is a risk that sils ignore power with respect to who is defining the ‘right’ ideas about problem framing and potential ideas that may get silenced as well as who is considered an expert. in these ways, sils can depoliticize the policymaking process (mcgann et al., 2018). furthermore, what counts as proof that the policy problem has been solved? the issue of what is being measured is critical and this is a value judgment linked to the defined cause of the problem. quantitative analysis focused on measuring behavioural change to prove social value for money may be quite limiting if not combined with qualitative and community actionoriented research on improved quality of life. policy problems are often wicked because they are understood and represented differently by societal actors (bacchi, 2009; stone, 1989). for instance, indigenous poverty may be seen by some as an individual behavioural problem and by others as a more structural problem of colonial and neocolonial policy and racism. it is unclear how sils as a process is going to address this. again, this speaks to who has the power to define the problem and whether\how sils embrace difficult conversations/argumentation about conflict. here, rittel and webber (1973) suggest that “approaches of the "second generation" should be based on a model of planning as an argumentative process in the course of which an image of the problem and of the solution emerges gradually among the participants, as a product of incessant judgment, subjected to critical argument” (162). here, the political context is fundamentally recognized by all involved in the policymaking process and not pushed under the table (fischer, 1989). exploring whether tangible mechanisms exist to support true socio-political and administrative change and whether this is being conducted in practice are important areas for future empirical research on sils. conclusion our mapping research reveals that there is a clear social innovation agenda in place within canada. this agenda exists at all levels of government and all sectors through the commitment and attention to sils. we contend that it is no mere coincidence that the rise of sils in canada, especially in the non-profit sector, corresponds with the financial crisis and the continued hollowing out of the welfare state. sils may illustrate a reoriented welfare state where problems are commodified as new market opportunities. this, in turn, may be driving problem-solving away from addressing systemic conditions and towards quick and easy testable solutions that remain small in scale and fragmented; a warning social innovation labs | 49 presented by rittel and webber against rational policymaking almost fifty years ago. further empirical research should explore trends and contradictions related to this strategy and how this affects particular policy outcomes chosen and the wider goal of social justice these labs claim to espouse. it should also explore how this might differ between government, private, university and non-profit labs. at the same time, sils may create opportunities for democratic public policymaking that incorporates non-profit and citizen voices, who may push governments to address more systemic issues. such democratic opportunities will remain at the level of possibility with marketized and austerity driven forces in the sil driver seat. sils represent an assemblage of contradictory rationales and interests of different players who have different levels of social, economic and political power to define so-called wicked problems. with the continued commitment and investment in sils in canada, further empirical research is needed to decipher how these conflicts play out in practice. the following research questions are crucial: can the good intentions of the lab methodology be subverted and how exactly does this happen? are the ‘right’ people gathered in the room and what are the conflicts that exist between them? what practices can social justice-oriented practitioners bring to specific lab processes that can guard against intentional or inadvertent exclusion? 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(2007). interpretation in policy analysis: on methods and practice. critical policy analysis, 1(1): 110–122. 54 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life the dimensions of passive revolution gianmarco fifi7 abtract: responding to the recent season of studies on antonio gramsci’s notion of passive revolution, the present paper will argue that this could fruitfully contribute to a nondeterministic understanding of capitalist dynamics. however, this relevance should be based on a renewed understanding of the concept itself. against contemporary conceptualisations that tend to understand passive revolution as an instrument in the hands of the ruling classes, the present paper argues that this is better understood as originating from the shortcomings of the so-called subaltern groups. the focus should thus be placed on the passivity of a potentially transformative agency rather than on processes of change that are per se out of reach for revolutionary movements. coming back to gramsci’s prison notebooks, three overlapping dialectical relations are identified as being key to understanding both passive revolution and the struggle against it: at the ideational level, the dialectic between common sense and good sense; at the institutional level, the dynamic between bureaucratic and democratic centralism; at the level of class struggles, the dynamic between corporatism and universalism. interpreted through these categories, passive revolution becomes a valuable tool both to overcome the fallacies of contemporary critical theory as well as to understand the challenges faced by anti-capitalist movements today. keywords: gramsci; passive revolution; hegemony; critical political economy; critical theory introduction one of the main theoretical references that critical scholars have relied upon in the last few decades in order to provide a non-deterministic 7 gianmarco fifi is a phd candidate in the department of politics and international studies at the university of warwick. the dimensions of passive revolution | 55 understanding of capitalist dynamics is the work of the italian marxist antonio gramsci. since the translation of the prison notebooks into english and the publication of the complete critical edition edited by valentino gerratana, gramsci’s thought has produced a polymorphous variety of interpretations and applications that testify both to the liveliness of his thought and to the contemporary value of investigating it. in particular, the present paper will consider the contemporary relevance of the concept of passive revolution, suggesting that this could be a fruitful tool to understanding changes and stabilities in the order of capital. the concept of passive revolution carries great political value. in fact, it tries to respond to a fundamental question: ‘if the proletariat had emerged in many european countries as a collective social and political actor in the wake of industrialisation, why had the deepest crisis of capitalism not led to a revolution, but rather to various forms of capitalist reorganisation?’ (roccu, 2017, 538). far from being an out-of-date problem, this is a crucial question today as the global financial crisis of 2007-8 has not been followed by any substantial paradigm shift. the relevance of the term, however, is far from being an original contribution of the present article. in fact, the notion of passive revolution is nowadays a constant point of reference not only for gramscian scholarship but also for fields as diverse as historical sociology, ethnography and international relations (allinson and anievas, 2010; bruff, 2010; mckay, 2010; nash, 2013; simon, 2010; wanner, 2015). the variety and extension of the work provided on passive revolution in the last decade would in fact suggest a more conscious and parsimonious use (callinicos, 2010). in what follows, i will argue that in order to conceive passive revolution as a relevant tool for understanding contemporary capitalism, we should firstly rethink its very connotation. according to peter thomas, passive revolution for gramsci meant ‘a distinctive process of (political) modernization that lacked the meaningful participation of popular classes in undertaking and consolidating social transformation’ (thomas, 2013, 23). thomas argues that ‘[i]n a certain sense, the concept has almost become synonymous with modernity, which is now viewed as a melancholy tale in which the mass of humanity is reduced to a mere spectator of a history that progresses without its involvement’ (2006, 73). coming back to the prison notebooks, i shall argue that in case we are to accept the former point – passive revolution as synonymous of modernity – we necessarily need to criticise the second one concerning the position of the so-called subaltern groups within the process. in this sense, responding to the recent season of studies on passive 56 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life revolution, the present paper will suggest that this can be seen as a synonym with modernity only so long as the passivity of the masses is not conceptualised as imposed by exogenous forces, but always-already incorporated in their everydaypraxis. in particular, three main interrelated dialectical relations will be identified as being key to understanding both passive revolution and the struggle against it: at the ideational level, the dialectic between common sense and good sense; at the institutional level, the dynamic between bureaucratic and democratic centralism; at the level of class struggles, the dynamic between corporatism and universalism. a close investigation of these categories in gramsci’s oeuvre is essential in order to see how the different dimensions of passivity are not merely imposed on subaltern groups, but rather represent the effect of their own shortcomings, that can always be turned into a revolutionary upheaval. the present paper will be structured as follows. firstly, i will discuss current approaches to the concept of passive revolution, particularly focusing on its recent reception in studies in critical political economy. secondly, i will provide a critique of current approaches to the term and, coming back to the prison notebooks, i will suggest an alternative reading revolving around the aforementioned categories. in particular, i shall argue that it is only by seeing the seeds of capital restructuring already at play in the every-day practice of the subaltern groups, that gramsci is able to think their potential for emancipation. ultimately, i will conclude by summarising the possible contribution of a renewed understanding of passive revolution for both studies in critical theory and for redefining the challenges of anti-capitalist movements today. domination without hegemony? passive revolution in the literature recent scholarship touching upon the notion of passive revolution, particularly within critical political economy, has revolved around the issue of how far we can extend this concept and the extent to which this is an apt representation of how changes and stability work in contemporary capitalism. three main interventions have been recently made in this regard. firstly, adam morton suggests that passive revolution today is a ‘portmanteau concept that reveals the continuities and changes within the order of capital’ (2007, 68). in this sense, morton agrees with peter thomas in arguing that passive revolution has become almost a synonym with modernity, and a particularly apt notion to explain both capitalist state formation and maintenance (morton, 2010, 322; see also mckay, 2010). the dimensions of passive revolution | 57 in critiquing such an approach, alex callinicos argues that this definition brings about an issue in terms of distinguishing different situations. in this sense, passive revolution would lose its own specificity thus becoming ‘a distinction without difference’ (2010, 505). relying on gramsci’s uses of the term, callinicos argues that, for example, the analogy between risorgimento and fordism fails to recognise a crucial difference between the two processes. only the former seems in fact to appear as a plausible representation of passive revolution inasmuch as ‘the ancien régime has given way to a society in the capitalist mode of production prevails’ (ivi, 498). it is thus argued that the emphasis should be placed on the passage from one mode of production to another, not extending the use of passive revolution to transition within capitalism. in fact, callinicos continues, neither fascism nor fordism produced a systemic transformation and thus these are better seen as ‘counter-revolutionary projects that seek to manage the structural contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, not the accomplishment of socialist transformation by other means’ (ibidem). callinicos thus concludes that what we need is a more restricted understanding of passive revolution, in order not to make it interfere with other concepts such as that of counter-revolution. a third approach that tries to integrate the previous two interpretations is the one delineated by roberto roccu, who criticises morton for the over-extension of its use of the term while at the same time contesting the idea that passive revolution somehow needs to produce a transition to a new mode of production, as in callinicos. in particular, roccu stresses the importance that the partial fulfilment of people’s demands has in what gramsci defines as passive revolution – something that finds only limited echo in morton’s formulation (roccu, 2017, 549). whilst such a discussion is certainly of theoretical relevance, i shall argue that the extension or limitations of passive revolution can only be rethought via a renewed understanding of gramsci’s usage. notwithstanding the differences highlighted in the previous conceptualisations, in fact, the three authors tend to agree in understanding the outcome of passive revolution as being ultimately in the hands of the ruling classes – something that seems in contrast with gramsci’s treatment in the prison notebooks. the existing literature acknowledges that the phenomenon of passive revolution originates from the limits of bourgeois rule (morton, 2013, 55). in this sense, the process is seen to represent a response to dynamics that ruling circles do not directly control. these dynamics can vary from crisis-induced contradictions amongst ruling class fractions in which its progressive force tends to deteriorate (q1§44, 42), to external shifts in the 58 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life accumulation process forced by uneven tendencies in capitalist development (morton, 2011, 36), or from subaltern challenges to the established hegemonic bloc. nevertheless, the outcome of passive revolution is often seen as heavily dependent on ruling classes’ power. in his book on mexico, morton proposes two definitions of passive revolution: first, ‘a revolution without mass participation, or a “revolution from above,” involving elite engineered social and political reform that draws on foreign capital and associated ideas while lacking a national-popular base’ (ivi, 38); second, a situation in which ‘a revolutionary form of political transformation is pressed into a conservative project of restoration’ (ivi, 39). although, the two definitions are in some respects different, they both imply a top-down force that produces a conservative form of change, either by not including the subalterns in the process or by displacing their demands. this might be only a matter of emphasis. in fact, morton acknowledges that in the process of passive revolution a significant role is played by the shortcomings of counter-hegemonic projects. for example, he argues that, [i]n the case of italy, the “passive” aspect refers to the restrictive form of hegemony that emerged out of the risorgimento because of the failure of potential ‘jacobins’ in the partito d’azione to establish a program reflecting the demands of the popular masses and, significantly, the peasantry (morton, 2013, 52). in addition, many of morton’s analyses of gramsci’s texts as well as applications to concrete examples remark the importance of acknowledging the limits of movements of opposition vis-à-vis capital, and of not considering bourgeois rule as a ‘quasi-automatic’ process (2011, 46). this is shown, for example, by his sensitivity towards the backwardness of the italian peripheral forces in southern italy before the risorgimento (2007, 62), as well as towards the lack of a united front based on the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry during the revolutionary upheaval in mexico (2011, 45-6). yet, morton never theoretically elaborates on what the key features of such shortcomings are and on the extent to which these influence and facilitate capitalist restructuring itself. for this reason, passive revolution is ultimately seen as a process in the hands of the ruling bloc – that, although at times is forced to accommodate requests from below, it always does so within the existing social the dimensions of passive revolution | 59 formation given its privileged position within the state (ivi, 53; sassoon 1987, 207). in analysing the italian risorgimento, for example, whilst acknowledging the deficiencies of the action party, morton ultimately sees passive revolution as representing ‘the inability of the ruling class to fully integrate the producer classes through conditions of hegemony’ (morton 2007, 68). given the absence of hegemony, he adds, the state becomes crucial in order to further capitalist dominance (ivi: 102). morton applies similar considerations to the process of capitalist developments in mexico, where the peasants’ revolution ended up being offset by ‘mexican populism’ that had ‘counterrevolutionary roots based on the domination and manipulation of the masses behind the façade of revolutionary rhetoric’ (morton, 2011, 48). in this sense ‘passive revolution … is a revolution, marked by violent social upheaval, involving a relatively small state class engaging with “the acceptance of certain demands from below” in order to restrict class struggle, while insuring the creation of state power and an institutional framework consonant with capitalist property relations’ (morton 2013: 54; original emphasis). in morton’s account is implied something that we will see developed more clearly in callinicos and roccu: namely, a juxtaposition (rather an interrelation) of the revolutionary upheavals of the subaltern and the potential for the ruling classes to restructure order and hegemony. rather than seeing the former as limiting (and potentially impeding) the possibility of the latter, morton seems to argue that the more requests from below become pervasive the more the ruling classes’ privileged access to the state becomes crucial in order to restructure society. this point will be better explained by referring to the arguments made by callinicos and roccu. postulating or presupposing? the antithetical treatment of the antithesis roccu attempts to move beyond morton’s interpretation, suggesting that the emphasis should be placed on the partial fulfilment of people’s demands which, he argues, is exactly the means that produces masses’ passivity. he acknowledges the ambivalence of gramsci’s application of passive revolution, as in some occasions this ‘is presented as a residual strategy deployed to maintain power when hegemony is lacking (“dictatorship without hegemony”)’, whilst in other passages of the prison notebooks ‘passive revolution seems to occur under conditions of limited, fractured, hegemony, when a class or fraction thereof is hegemonic towards some others but not across society’ (2017, 546). such a remark, however, does not result in a sceptical position as in callinicos. in fact, roccu is convinced that we can extrapolate a core from gramsci’s multi-facet 60 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life engagement with passive revolution. this core is made of four elements, of which the first two are presuppositions, the third has to do with its specific method, and the fourth with its outcome. the first element is linked to the international situation that in periods of structural changes requires ‘from specific state formations an attempt to developmental catch-up through transition, both from a non-capitalist to a capitalist mode of production…and between different regimes of capital accumulation’ (ivi, 545). secondly, roccu refers to gramsci’s use of hegel’s categories in order to contend that passive revolution also presupposes a thesis that, despite its limitations, ‘develops to the full of its potential for struggle’ (q15§11), while the antithesis is incapable of doing the same. thirdly, in terms of method, roccu argues that crucial for passive revolution is an heavy reliance on state power by the ruling classes in order ‘to weaken and defuse the political potential of subaltern classes’ (roccu, 2017, 545). lastly, as it pertains to the outcome, passive revolution combines a real transformation, ‘either towards or within capitalism’ (ivi, 546), and, at the same time, the ‘partial fulfilment and displacement of the demands raised by the embryonic subaltern bloc’ (ibidem). this attempt at extrapolating the core of passive revolution from gramsci’s writings is certainly valuable if one wants to define the limits and potentiality of the term, perhaps moving beyond both morton’s overextension and callinicos’ excessive scepticism vis-à-vis its use. yet, what is puzzling in roccu’s formulation is that the weakness of the antithesis is emphasised as being both a presupposition and a result of the process. this already makes it difficult to understand what the contribution of passive revolution would be, if the passivity that this is supposed to impose on the subaltern bloc (ivi, 550) is in fact there from the beginning. on the other hand, this basic presupposition is questioned by roccu himself. in fact, when criticising morton for under-appreciating the role played by the partial fulfilment of popular demands, he argues that much more emphasis should be placed on ‘the presence of a vigorous antithesis prior to a passive revolution’ (ibidem; my emphasis). also callinicos (2010, 501) makes the same point, as he argues that actually the vigorous antithesis is a basic feature to a passive revolution. the justification for this idea is found in a quote from notebook 15, where gramsci (q15§62, 1827) argues that ‘the conception [of passive revolution] remains a dialectical one – in other words, presupposes, and indeed postulates as necessary [presuppone, anzi postula come necessaria], a vigorous antithesis which can present intransigently all its potentiality for development.’ callinicos seems to completely misread the meaning of this formulation, as he takes it to suggest that the dimensions of passive revolution | 61 in order to have a passive revolution we need a strong antithesis. gramsci’s position is actually the opposite: it is in order to avoid a passive revolution that the antithesis needs to develop to its full potential. this is clear already from the quoted note q15§62, where gramsci provides the aforementioned argument in order to prevent any ‘historical defeatism’ and ‘fatalism’ associated with the term passive revolution, particularly in reference to the italian risorgimento. in fact, he also adds that passive revolution is not to be understood as a political program, but rather as ‘criterion of interpretation in absence of other active elements in a dominant manner’ (ibidem). this becomes even more evident when looking at gramsci’s treatment of the risorgimento and the relation between the action party and cavour’s project of modernisation. borrowing an expression of vittorio emanuele ii, he argues that the moderates had their opponents in their pockets, given the latter’s inability to form a real hegemonic alternative to cavour’s leadership (q1§44, 412). in fact, ‘the moderates represented a relatively homogenous class … whilst the action party was not based on any historical class and the oscillations that its governing bodies experienced ultimately followed the interests of the moderates’ (ivi, 40-1). for gramsci, the moderate bloc should be understood as being a dominant class in two manners: ‘it is leading [dirigente] of the allied classes and dominant [dominante] of the opposing classes’ (ivi, 41). the distinction between leading and dominant is often understood as marking two opposite alternative forms of government, which would give the ruling classes the option to choose according to the specific situation to use coercive mechanisms in order to retain power when hegemony is absent. nevertheless, gramsci promptly remarks that a certain class must possess political hegemony before taking governmental power, and also once it has become dominant ‘it continues to be “leading”’ (ibidem). the example of the risorgimento proves exactly this. in fact, the moderates ‘continued to lead [dirigere]’, and not merely to dominate, ‘the action party also after 1870.’ it is, thus, exactly thanks to this cultural and political subalternity of the antithesis that the ruling bloc is capable of using the state as a means to integrate also the sporadic active elements in the opposing forces (for example, through the phenomenon that gramsci names trasformismo). the emphasis on the presupposition of a strong antithesis seems also to remove one of the two preconditions that roccu argued were constituting the core of gramsci’s concept: namely, a lacking antithesis. in this sense, passive revolution seems to describe two possible situations. on the one hand, a situation in which 62 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life both capitalist class and its opponents are weak; on the other hand, a condition in which they are both powerful at the same time. this schematic and abstract representation already shows something interesting regarding current approaches to the term: namely, the fact that thesis and antithesis are not dialectically related, but rather abstractly juxtaposed. the growing power of the antithesis does not per se reduce the potential for the thesis to respond, but rather surprisingly increases it. conversely, the weakness of movements of opposition is not seen as necessarily implying a relative position of dominance for the ruling classes. the result is that passive revolution is invoked to represent a situation of relative equilibrium between opposing fractions, with the necessary clause that at the end the struggle is going to be solved by the favourable position of the ruling bloc within the state.8 this is further proved by the fact that both in callinicos and roccu passive revolution is seen as opposed to counter-revolution and hegemony, two situations in which the capitalist class is thought as being relatively stronger than its opposition. failure to link the lack of a strong antithesis to the empowerment of the dominant class, ultimately forces us to view passive revolution as ‘a backup strategy for a ruling class that fails to be hegemonic and thus relies on its control of state power and a favourable balance of political forces to perpetuate its own political dominance under new structural conditions’ (roccu, 2017, 556; my emphasis). hegemony and passive revolution: the zero-sum game of political struggles degenerations of such an approach could be found, for example, in ian bruff’s account of agenda 2010 in germany, where passive revolution is explicitly contrapposed to hegemony (bruff, 2010; see also coutinho, 2007 and losurdo, 1997, 155). it is true that gramsci himself refers to certain historical developments to be the result of a condition of ‘dictatorship without hegemony’ (q15§59); yet, if taken literally, this formulation can be highly misleading. the reason for this can be exposed by looking at gramsci’s treatment of the disaggregation and reconstruction of the hegemonic group after world war i. gramsci’s line of thought is the following: 8 this approach can be seen also in roccu’s (2017, 555) treatment of the tunisian restructuring after ben ali’s overthrowing, considered as exemplary of what gramsci calls passive revolution. roccu, in fact, seems not to consider the absence of a jacobin moment in tunisia as the primary reason for capitalist restructuring. the dimensions of passive revolution | 63 first of all, why has it disaggregated? perhaps because a strong collective and antagonistic political will has developed? if that was the case, the problem would have been solved in favour of this antagonistic force. it has disaggregated, rather, because of purely mechanic causes of different type: 1) because great masses, previously passive, started moving [sono entrate in movimento], but in a chaotic and disorganised movement, without direction, i.e.: without a precise collective political will; 2) because the middle classes that during the war had a position of leadership and command, have lost it during the time of peace … 3) because the antagonistic forces resulted incapable of organising for their own advantage such disorder (q7§80: 912-3; author’s translation and emphasis). it is certainly true that there is a substantial difference between a purely a-critical mass of people that passively accepts the ruling order (thus fully accepting its position of leadership and command) and one that moves against it, though in a chaotic and un-organised manner. however, as it is clear from this passage, the absence of an organic collective will is the ultimate reason why oppositions do not manage to move beyond, and thus end up re-precipitating into, the previous hegemonic bloc. here it is probably worth referring to what ernesto laclau and chantal mouffe, in a rather critical account of gramscian understanding of hegemony, define as the ‘zero-sum game of political struggles […] where a failure in the hegemony of the working class can only be followed by a reconstitution of bourgeois hegemony’ (2014, 59). this means that passive revolution, in gramsci, should not be seen as opposed to hegemony; but rather as describing a situation in which failures to produce a creative moment force the subaltern to recapitulate, nolens volens, into the previous hegemonic bloc. as it has been argued in this section, current approaches to passive revolution not only are at times philologically inconsistent with gramsci’s text but they also present at least three issues in the conceptualisation of movements of opposition and their relation vis-à-vis capitalist restructuring. firstly, the great emphasis placed on the potential of the ruling bloc to use state power seems to undermine (both theoretically and practically) any potential for revolutionary politics. secondly, and connected to the first point, the aforementioned approaches are unable to account for strengths and weaknesses of movements of resistance vis-à-vis capitalist restructuring, mainly because they do not see the two 64 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life realms as dialectically interrelated, and a strengthening of the former could always be repressed by impositions from the later. in fact, and this is the third point, the strong antithesis of the subaltern, even when emphasised, appears as being never enough when compared to capital’s ability to restructure the social order. in what follows, i will suggest that engaging with gramsci’s notion of passive revolution could be useful to move beyond these fallacies. in particular, i shall argue that it is only by seeing the seeds of capitalist restructuring always-already at play in the every-day praxis of the subaltern classes, that gramsci is able to conceptualise the potential for revolutionary politics. passive revolution in the prison notebooks: passivity revisited given the aforementioned criticisms to current approaches to passive revolution, this section will argue that antonio gramsci’s conceptualisation of changes and stability within the capitalist society has the potential to re-establish a connection between struggles and socio-historical development. against the general conceptualisation of current studies that think the gramscian analyses of passive revolution as a process that is ultimately in the hands of the ruling classes, i suggest that this is better understood as being based on the passivity of a potentially transformative agency. the notion of passive revolution was firstly formulated by vincenzo cuoco, who employed it in order to understand the lack of involvement of the popular masses in the neapolitan revolution of 1799. gramsci argues that whilst cuoco meant it as a ‘warning to create a national mood of greater energy and popular revolutionary initiative’, the term was soon converted by the moderates and the neo-guelphs ‘into a positive conception, into a political programme’ that concealed ‘the determination to abdicate and capitulate at the first serious threat of an italian revolution that would be profoundly popular, i.e.: radically national’ (1971, 59f, q10§6, 1220). the idea of passive revolution as a process crucially dependent on the shortcomings of subaltern groups is well encapsulated in a note that gramsci writes in notebook 8, where he criticises the idea of mechanicism as explaining capitalist stability. gramsci argues that: when the subaltern becomes diligent and responsible, mechanicism appears sooner or later as an imminent peril […] the limits and the dominance of the force of things are restricted, why? because, at the end, whereas yesterday the subaltern was a thing, today he is not a thing anymore but a the dimensions of passive revolution | 65 historical person; whereas yesterday he was irresponsible because he resisted an external will, today he is irresponsible because he does not resist, despite being an active agent. but has he ever been mere resistance, mere thing, mere irresponsibility? certainly not, and that is why it is always necessary to demonstrate the futility of mechanic determinism (q8§205, 1064; author’s translation). stability is thus not the product of external impositions, rather it is dependent on the passive role played by the subaltern groups that (actively) help in reproducing the current system of exploitation.9 in fact, gramsci warns us that ‘it is never to be forgotten that historical development follows the laws of necessity only so long as the initiative has not decisively passed on the side of those forces that aim at the construction according to a plan, of pacific and sympathetic division of labour’ (q14§68, 1729; author’s translation). passivity is thus related to the lack of political initiative of the subalterns. in this sense, gramsci not only provides us with useful theoretical tools to criticise the vulgar materialism associated with nikolai bukharin that understands the subaltern classes as ontologically deprived of will. the prison notebooks conversely criticise the idea that the masses are always-already active. in fact, as he argues in a famous passage, ‘the philosophy of praxis […] is not an instrument of government of the dominant groups in order to gain the consent of and exercise hegemony over the subaltern classes; it is the expression of these subaltern classes who want to educate themselves in the art of government and who have an interest in knowing all truths, even the unpleasant ones, and in avoiding the (impossible) deceptions of the upper class and – even more – their own’ (gramsci, 1995, 3956; q10§41xii, 1320). continuity in the order of capital is thus not rooted in external impositions or in the rationalisation of society operated by institutional apparatuses, but rather in the self-deception of potentially oppositional social groups. therefore, a strong antithesis, rather than being the basic condition for a passive revolution, as callinicos and roccu would have it, is the primary antidote to it. it thus becomes crucial to understand what is involved in the passage from a state of passivity to one of creative activity. returning to the prison notebooks, three overlapping dialectical relations are identified as being key to 9 for a similar argument see finocchiaro, 1973. 66 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life gramsci’s understanding of this relation: at the ideational level, the dialectic between common sense and good sense; at the institutional level, the dynamic between bureaucratic and democratic centralism; at the level of class struggles, the dynamic between corporatism and universalism. this analysis is not meant to suggest an abstract fragmentation of gramsci’s holistic thought. as i will show, in concrete situations, these dimensions are indeed very much interrelated. the purpose of analysing them separately, however, can be seen as threefold. first, it will help me to emphasise gramsci’s treatment of the manifold roots of popular passivity and its implication for rethinking popular agency. secondly, i will be able to demonstrate that such passivity is not seen as being imposed on the subaltern through the backup strategies of the ruling class, but rather it is always part of dynamics internal to the subaltern themselves. thirdly, i will argue that gramsci takes such passivity as the main reason why the ruling class is capable of keeping and reinforcing its position of dominance. i will thus argue that it is on these levels that the prison notebooks identify the challenges faced by revolutionary projects, that do not limit themselves to accept the already established structures, but want to engage in the creation of a new state. for the reasons highlighted in the previous section, these dimensions can also be seen as different levels on which the ability of the subalterns to emancipate themselves from pre-established hegemonies – and thus create their own – is articulated. in turn, i will take into consideration both the role that they play in the perpetration of capitalist dominance as well as the political project that they point towards if one wants to overcome it. common sense and good sense as anticipated, the struggle against passive revolution at the ideological level is identified with the dialectic between common sense and good sense. in gramsci, this dichotomy is at the core of the relationship between intellectuals and people-nation. whilst common sense is an incoherent stage of opinion formation, good sense is realised once people begin to think coherently and organically to their everyday life experience, thus producing their own intellectuals. in the prison notebooks good sense is thus the embodiment of philosophy in society. gramsci significantly argues for a strict connection between philosophy and common sense, suggesting that we would need a history of common sense in order to investigate the genesis of the problems that are reflected only in a minimal part in the history of philosophy. this would ultimately ‘help to demonstrate their real value (if they still have one) or the significance that they the dimensions of passive revolution | 67 have as overcome links of a chain and to individuate the new and actual problems or the actual stage of old problems’ (q11§12, 1383; author’s translation). the value which is alluded to here is that coming from the connection ‘between intellectuals who “know” and the “people-nation” that merely “feels”’ (fontana, 2015, 57). these two are strictly connected, as there is no ‘high culture’ that has not germinated from everyday-issues and, conversely, no philosophical speculation is meaningful if it is unable to speak to people’s problems. the prison notebooks thus recognise both the importance of and the necessity to overcome common sense, thought as both being the necessary point of departure of critical intellectual activity and, at the same time, as one of the main obstacles that keep the subalterns in their position of passivity and prevent them from becoming hegemonic. therefore, not only is there a common ideological feature shared by both fragmented common sense and what gramsci calls ‘high culture’ (alta cultura) – that proper to those intellectuals that construct a coherent philosophy detached from the masses and functional to socio-political domination. more radically, for gramsci, these are two sides of the same coin: ‘high culture’ can be coherently articulated and used as a means of dominion only so long as common sense is fragmented and incoherent. the prison notebooks thus radically detach themselves from the physiological readings of ideology à la bukharin, also developed by the idéologues. it is ultimately the recognition of the historical, thus potentially criticisable, nature of ideas to give the ‘philosophy of praxis’ its nondeterministic character. ideology, for gramsci, is not a pre-constituted set of ideas that is to be merely installed by the dominant groups into the minds of the subaltern classes. this is ultimately far from a coherent monolith: ‘[s]ome participate in ideology because of their position in the world of production, others for their participation in disaggregated world of common sense; there are those that produce ideology from their position as great intellectuals and those that do so as simple “clerks of the dominant group”’ (filippini, 2012, 94; author’s translation). this manifold manifestation of the ideological production points also to the fact that the incoherent rejection of the ruling class’ intellectual production, per se, does not imply a complete emancipation. an example can be found in notebook 3, where gramsci discusses the position of peasants in southern italy (defined as morti di fame, the ‘starvelings’) and their ‘generic’ hate for the so-called ‘masters’ (q3§46, 323) matured in conjunction with the highly uneven development of the italian state since the beginning of the 19th century. the 68 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life polemic position of the peasantry, gramsci argues, can be seen as a primary level of rejection of the constituted order; but at the same time it is insufficient to build ‘class consciousness’ inasmuch as ‘not only does it not have an exact consciousness of its own historical personality, but it does not even have the consciousness of the historical personality and limits of its opponent’ (ivi, 323-4). this also escalates into the collaboration of the most productive sections of the morti di fame (those that aspire to small municipal jobs or to positions of clerk in the city) with the local bourgeoisie against the peasantry. the backward praxis of peripheral groups is thus understood as giving rise to a vague ‘cosmopolitanism’ that proves inadequate to build a revolutionary position based on a thorough knowledge of the state and on an organic class consciousness. gramsci ultimately attributes a stage on ‘non-activity’ (linked to the lack of ‘comprehension of one’s own role’) to the sporadic and subversive actions of the morti di fame, and argues that this needs to be linked to ‘“subversion” from above, thus … an arbitrary politics and of a personal or group clique [cricca personale o di gruppo]’ (ivi, 3267; author’s translation). this makes clear that, in gramsci, the leading position of restricted groups is always mirrored (and in some sense is the epiphenomenon of) the cultural passivity of the subalterns. or, as robert jackson puts it, ‘the sedimented layers of the anachronistic tradition continue to be reproduced not simply from above, but by the very groups that stand to benefit from the negation of their influence’ (jackson, 2016, 221). as it is clear from the example of the morti di fame, gramsci connects the inconsistent intellectual production of subaltern groups both to the fragmentation of struggles and to the bureaucratisation of politics that leaves coercive power in the hands of a restricted group of people. these other dimensions on which passivity is articulated and reproduced will be analysed in the following sub-sections. bureaucratic centralism and democratic centralism gramsci defines bureaucratic centralism as the dominion of a part over the whole, whilst democratic centralism is ‘centralism in motion’ [centralismo in movimento], thus a continuous adjustment of the organization to the real historical development’ (q9§68, 1139; author’s translation). bureaucracy plays a crucial role in ensuring the continuity of capital as it is ‘the most dangerous habitual and conservative force’ (q13§23, 1604; author’s translation). institutional dynamics are therefore a primary example to be taken into consideration if we are to understand the ‘non-contemporaneity of the present’ the dimensions of passive revolution | 69 (thomas, 2009). in this emphasis on the connection between bureaucracy and the continuation of capitalist dominance, gramsci shares a concern that is common among contemporary critical studies – particularly those that highlight the role played by strong institutions in ensuring the endurance of capital’s laws (bonefeld, 2015, 2017; ryner, 2015). yet, the identification of the sources of such bureaucratic structure seem to be radically different in the two cases. whilst the reference to strong institutions usually alludes to the displacement of an otherwise already democratic stance of change, for gramsci bureaucracy is possible only in virtue of masses’ passivity. in fact, he argues that ‘it needs to be stressed that the unhealthy manifestations of bureaucratic centralism occurred because of a lack of initiative and responsibility at the bottom, in other words because of the political immaturity of the peripheral forces, even when these were homogeneous with the hegemonic territorial group’ (gramsci, 1971, 189; q9§68, 1139). in synthesis, it is only by seeing the seeds of bureaucracy in the everyday shortcomings of potentially transformative agency that gramsci is able to conceive an overcoming of bureaucratic centralism. against such static structures, in fact, democratic centralism offers an elastic formula, which can be embodied in many diverse forms; it comes alive in so far as it is interpreted and continually adapted to necessity. it consists in the critical pursuit of what is identical in seeming diversity of form and on the other hand of what is distinct and even opposed in apparent uniformity, in order to organise and interconnect closely that which is similar, but in such a way that the organising and the interconnecting appear to be a practical and ‘inductive’ necessity, experimental, and not the result of rationalistic, deductive, abstract process – i.e.: one typical of pure intellectuals (gramsci, 1971, 189; q13§36). democratic centralism, therefore, can be seen as the truest realisation of the unity of theory and praxis, which involves an organic connection between the intellectual strata and the popular masses as well as between the rulers and the ruled (gramsci, 1971, 190). gramsci thus points towards the need to move beyond bureaucratic systems, beginning with the awareness of the main reasons that brought about bureaucracy in the first place and, therefore, identifying the aspects on which the subaltern can work to overcome it. this will ultimately give 70 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life collective subjects, rather than isolated individuals, the possibility to produce real historical change (filippini, 2017, 51). this critically shows the interrelations between the overcoming of bureaucratic centralism and the need to move both beyond occasional and fragmented opinion and beyond disaggregated forms of struggles, in order to create a collective subjectivity. this will be best understood by looking at the following sub-section. corporatism and universalism in a note called alcuni aspetti teorici e pratici dell’ ‘economicismo’, gramsci argues that movements of resistance should not be solely studied via the lenses of economic activity, ‘as this affirms an immediate element of force, thus the availability of a certain financial supply direct or indirect… and that’s it. too little. also in this case, the analysis of the different degrees of relation [gradi di rapporto] of forces cannot but culminate in the sphere of hegemonic and of ethico-political relations’ (q13§18, 1597; author’s translation). in fact, gramsci’s understanding of revolutionary politics should be understood as articulated on three levels (see frosini, 2010). firstly, an organization based on an homogeneous social group linked to professional relations within a certain group. here we have the mere corporatist phase typical of the organizzazioni di mestiere. secondly, the group develops the consciousness of solidarity but still purely within the economic realm. thirdly, we have a phase in which consciousness of one’s corporatist interests…overcome the corporatist realm of the economic circle, and can and should become the interests of other groups subordinated. this is the phase more explicitly political… determining beyond the economic unity and politics also the intellectual and cultural unity, not on a corporatist realm, but rather on a universal one, of hegemony (q4§38, 457; author’s translation). praxis par exellance in gramsci is thus not that of economic activity, but rather the ethico-political production. it is only through the creation of a new hegemony that the ‘structure ceases to be an external force which crushes man, assimilates him to itself and makes him passive; and it is transformed into a means of freedom’ (gramsci 1971, 367; q10§6, 1244). the dimensions of passive revolution | 71 such a dynamic was already emphasised in gramsci’s polemic against trade unions for remaining still within the realm of economic competition, and in the comparison with the factory councils which were more apt to create a revolutionary alternative, based not only on the competition between classes, but on a new ethico-political system and on the self-government of the working class (gramsci, 2016). in particular, whilst trade unions were acknowledged as being a positive organism to move beyond workers complete subalternity vis-à-vis capital, their action was necessarily also conservative as their very organisation made sense only within the borders of a capitalist system. in gramsci’s (2000, 93) words, ‘[t]he emergence of an industrial legality is a great victory for the working class, but it is not the ultimate and definitive victory.’ for this reason, gramsci criticised the approach to unionism of organisations such as the confederazione generale del lavoro (cgl) and its metal-mechanic affiliate, the federazione italiana operai metallurgici (fiom). this is again a situation in which a purely passive and alienated mass of workers can be distinguished from forms of organisations, such as unions, that help in producing a critical consciousness of one’s position. yet, in both cases the antithesis tends to fall back into the previous hegemonic bloc, in as much as it does not create a hegemonic moment of its own. this idea in gramsci is ripped of any form of determinism, as he argues that ‘[t]he trade union is not a predetermined phenomenon. it becomes a determinate institution, i.e. it takes on a definite historical form to the extent that the strength and will of the workers who are its members impress a policy and propose an aim that define it’ (ivi, 92). gramsci also adds that [i]f the trade-union officials regard industrial legality as a necessary, but not a permanently necessary compromise; if they deploy all the means at the union's disposal to improve the balance of forces in favour of the working class; and if they carry out all the spiritual and material preparatory work that will be needed if the working class is to launch at any particular moment a victorious offensive against capital and subject it to its law then the trade union is a tool of revolution, and union discipline, even when used to make the workers respect industrial legality, is revolutionary discipline (ivi, 93). ultimately, the success or failure of trade unionism to sublate itself and develop into a revolutionary movement is dependent on the capacity of hegemonic 72 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life production of the workers and people that compose it. in the same manner, the defeat of the factory councils in the 1920s proved that the absence of coordination of revolutionary forces makes it possible for moderates to incorporate them into a conservative project (salvadori, 2018, 151-61). conclusion as previously remarked, in 1933 gramsci suggested that passive revolution should not be confused for a political project, but it can guide praxis only to the extent that it ‘assumes, or postulates as necessary, a vigorous antithesis’ (q15§62, 1827).10 in gramsci, the historical subject is thus not shaped by preexisting structures but proves its autonomy in actively recomposing and overcoming given conditions, crucially emancipating itself ‘from the fallacies of representation and perception of life that that subject, being subaltern, necessarily possesses in itself at the beginning’ (finelli, 2011; author’s translation). objective historical conditions are, therefore, never the ultimate explanatory tool to understand the failure of a revolutionary project, and conversely only a project capable of moving beyond immediate reality to produce a creative moment of its own can overcome passivity and become hegemonic. in fact, [m]ass action is not possible while the masses remain unconvinced of the purposes it is pursuing or the means to achieve them. if it is to become a governing class, the proletariat must rid itself of all the residue of corporatism, of every syndicalist prejudice. what does this mean? it means that not only must the divisions between different jobs be overcome, but that to achieve consensus and to win the trust of the peasants and some of the semi-proletarian urban masses some prejudices have to be addressed as well as elements of egotism which still persist among workers even when they have left behind craft particularisms. the metal worker, the carpenter, the building worker will need to learn to see themselves as members of a class that will lead the peasants and the intellectuals, a class that can only win and build socialism if it is supported and followed by the majority of society. if it does not achieve that […] it will give 10 for accounts that consider passive revolution as a political project see e.g.: callinicos, 2010; vianna, 1998. the dimensions of passive revolution | 73 the state the possibility of crushing the rising tide of workers’ struggles and breaking the movement (quoted in robaina, 2006; my emphasis). the link is thus evident between the potential for the bourgeoisie to impose coercively its own control over society and the fallacies of subalterns’ attempt to become true organic subjectivity (badaloni, 2014, 102). the coerciveness of capital restructuring would in fact not be possible if it was not for the ideological (common sense), organizational (bureaucratic centralism) and interest-based (corporatism) fragmentation of potentially revolutionary social groups. gramsci seems to reverse the general insight of critical theorists according to whom we can understand the continuation of capitalist practices as the result of increasing rationalisation and coerciveness of the capitalist system. in this light, future studies should point not only to the significance of gramsci in grappling with crucial theoretical concepts which allow us to overcome the fallacies of contemporary critical studies. at the same time, the prison notebooks could be a fruitful source to point in the direction of alternative lines of research that not only focus on how mechanisms of government tend to impose capitalist dynamics but also to how such logics are asserted, reproduced and can potentially be contested from the subalterns themselves. this challenges us to identify and perpetrate the forms of praxis that are capable of offsetting the dead mechanisms that seem to mechanically rule over our everyday life. having this as an objective, the concept of passive revolution can be an important tool both to guide political praxis and to provide a coherent understanding of the connection between capitalist dominance and its potentially contested nature. references allinson, j. and anievas, a. 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(2008) struggles for an alternative globalization: an ethnography of counterpower in southern france. aldershot: ashgate publishing. the dimensions of passive revolution | 77 precarity as the new reality? millennials’ representation in the changing workplaces review policy process jordyn perreault-laird11 and susan silver12 abstract: millennials, comprising the majority of the canadian labour market, have come of age in a time of shrinking safety nets and precarious work. the changing workplaces review (cwr) in ontario was commissioned to explore how work conditions have shifted in line with globalization, neoliberalism, labour market restructuring, and the gig economy. the final report offered a golden opportunity to suggest legislative adjustments to employment standard and labour relation legislation in a way that strengthened workplace and employment conditions for millennials. considering the unique barriers facing this generation, this paper proposes a scale for categorizing the type of representation this group received within the consultation phase of the policy process of the review. findings demonstrate that the most salient aspects of precarious work which specifically target millennials received a small, but substantive representation from community groups, labour unions, and other allies within community consultations. however, our analysis revealed that the substantive representation was not reflected in either the final report or in the ensuing legislation. we conclude that a small clustering of substantive representation, while an important contribution to the public debate, can be overlooked by policy makers, especially when concerns run counter to the dominant framing of the group and issue. keywords: intersectional policy analysis; millennials; precarious work; policy process; changing workplaces review 11 jordyn perreault-laird recently completed a master of social work at mcmaster university. email: perreauj@mcmaster.ca 12 susan silver is associate professor of social work at ryerson university. email: ssilver@ryerson.ca 78 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life introduction the topic of millennial workers has received growing attention from academia, (broido, 2004; standing, 2011; twenge, 2006; worth, 2016) business management (ng, lyons, & schweitzer, 2017; pînzaru, vatamanescu, mitan, savulescu, vitelar, noaghea, & balan, 2016), and marketing (goldman sachs global investment research, n.d.; norris, 2015). this generation’s workplace values, goals, and characteristics are commonly conceived as an anomaly to be studied and explained (bonfiglio, 2008; deal, altman, & rogelberg, 2010; holt, marques, & way, 2012; kuron, lyons, schweitzer, & ng, 2015). interestingly, however, there does not exist one common definition for millennial (ng et al., 2017). the generation born after 1980 has had a number of names: generation y, gen me, gen next, generation squeeze and millennials (kershaw, 2017; ng et al., 2017; twenge, 2006). media representations of millennials have contributed to the confusion of how we understand this cohort. for example, mirrlees (2015) has identified four media representations of millennials that include, “a member of a youth cohort, a sovereign consumer, a worker to be managed, and an immiserated victim of hard times” (p. 278). while these representations reflect the diversity of the group’s constructed identities, we use the popular designation of millennial as introduced to academia by howe and strauss (2000) who defined the cohort by their age range, as being born between the years 1982 to 2002 (aged 18-37). ontario finds itself at a pivotal point for millennials who are just entering the labour market or are searching for an end to precarious employment. for the first time in 25 years, the ontario government has struck a commission that will impact the employment standards act, 2000 (esa) and the ontario labour relations act, 1995 (olra). the changing workplaces review (cwr) was commissioned by the ontario liberal government in 2015 to explore the changing nature of work in ontario and how labour laws may need to adjust in accordance. as the provincial government is intent on moving forward with alterations to legislation (ministry of labour, 2017), the cwr provides a unique opportunity to examine how millennials are represented in relation to discussions of their participation in the ontario labour market. such a review further offers the possibility to ensure that the voices and concerns of the most precarious workers are represented and remedied. although millennials are a diverse cohort with varying life goals, oppressions and privileges, the one constant that remains is their inevitable and precarity as the new reality? | 79 necessary participation in the ontario labour force13 (ng, lyons, & schweitzer, 2017). while most will participate in paid work, their participation will occur in different ways in the labour force, ways that range from low wage labourers to employers. statistics canada (2016) identified that ontarians, between the ages of 15-34, have reached over 2 million. nationally, they have become one of the largest age group in the labour force, surpassing the baby boom generation (norris, 2015). the value of focusing on millennials can be explained by their many years of future labour force participation14. if labour and employment law policy reform are to occur, it must adequately address the needs and challenges of a generation entering a labour market that is increasingly characterized by contract, temporary and precarious forms of employment. this study seeks to explore the different types of representation that this cohort received in the policy process. more specifically, we aim to understand how millennials and their labour force options and experiences are represented in the submissions to the cwr and the final report. we recognize that, while this cohort is defined by age, their multiple constructions (mirrlees, 2015) and lived experiences pose challenges in how they are represented in the policy process. based on the nature of their representation in this policy process, we explore the degree to which millennials are a serious consideration of labour policy, and as such, if they are viewed as a group deserving of this attention. this paper will argue that addressing the challenges of millennials in the ontario labour force is an important policy goal. it will then identify the significance of representation in the policy process in relation to an intersectionality-based policy analysis (ibpa), followed by examining the depth of precarity for this demographic and a brief timeline of the events leading up to the cwr. four codes were developed to operationalise representation in the policy process, and these will be used to explore the research questions. following this analysis is a discussion of how representation is taken up in the submissions to the cwr and in the final report and the implications of the degree of representation achieved. the paper concludes with opportunities for future research that links representation and intersectionality. 13 here is it important to note that the authors are in full support of those who exist outside of that labour force due to health-related issues or otherwise. 14 for more information on the experiences of baby boomers and their experiences of precarious work; please see standing (2011) and silver, shields, wilson, & scholtz (2005). 80 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life representation in the policy process and intersectionality-based policy analysis in 2016, federal minister of finance bill morneau told a group of canadian youth that they should expect "job churn" (characterised by short-term, temporary employment) throughout their lifetime (canadian press, 2016). the comment led to an action by members of a canadian labour congress youth labour forum who turned their backs on prime minister justin trudeau in peaceful protest against the minister's remarks (pedwell, 2016). a demonstration such as this reveals that some members of the 18 to 37 cohort are deeply disappointed with the current conditions of work and the lack of political responses. the peaceful protest against the prime minister and minister of finance’s comments highlighted the disapproval of precarity as the new status quo for millennials. as explained by andré and depauw (2017) disagreement between constituents and their political representatives is a predictable aspect of politics; however, when the opinions of elected officials are found consistently incongruent with their constituents, citizens are likely to be discontent with their policies. this discrepancy reflects the increasing importance of representation in the policy process (andré & depauw, 2017). on the topic of representation and community participation in the policy process, the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd; 2001) outlines a number of benefits. significantly, the report explains how engaging citizens in policy-making contributes to strengthening public faith in governments and creates better policy. results of the report note “higher levels of implementation and compliance given greater public awareness of policies and participation in their design” (oecd, 2001). moreover, “allowing governments to tap wider sources of information, perspectives, and potential solutions" improves the quality of policy (oecd, 2001, 19). the report further highlighted the importance of ensuring representation with respect to diversity as a vital aspect of robust policy creation. in short, representation is important for good policy. recognizing the diversity and complexity of a group’s lived experiences is another important aspect of policy creation and is one of the central tenants of an intersectionality-based policy analysis (ibpa). in a discussion of intersectionality and public policy, hankivsky and cormier (2011) argue for a policy process that considers the unique experiences of social locations that are context dependent and fluid. an intersectional analysis, informed by social precarity as the new reality? | 81 location, gained recognition when it was articulated by crenshaw (1991) in her seminal work in the field of law. crenshaw examined the ways gender, blackness, and class interlock creating unique experiences of oppression for black women in the legal system. intersectionality has since gained popularity in academic fields including public policy (bishwakarma, hunt, & zajicek, 2007; hankivsky & cormier, 2011; hankivsky, hunting, giesbrecht, fridkin, rudrum, ferlatte, & clark, 2014). in the area of social policy, "intersectionality conceptualizes social categories as interacting with and co-constituting one another to create unique social locations that vary according to time and place. it is these intersections and their effects that are of concern in an intersectionality analysis" (hankivsky et al., 2012, 35). to do so, ibpa uses three components in policy analysis. the first element is concerned with the interrogation of diverse sources of information and knowledge, and the implicit assumptions, historical context, and relationships of power that frame the policy issue, (hankivsky et al., 2014). the second component speaks specifically to issues of representation and how policy issues impact specific populations; while the third highlights areas for advocacy efforts (hankivsky et al., 2014). when using an ibpa, these three components are applied to and guide the entire policy process. in this research project, we focus specifically on how millennials are represented in the submissions to the cwr. while this consultation is only one aspect of the policy process, it is the most publicly accessible aspect where issues of representation can be readily introduced. therefore, the focus of this analysis will centre upon this early stage of policy formulation wherein proposals for addressing policy issues are provided and policy actors engage in community consultation processes (biskwakarma et al., 2007). focussing on this area of the policy cycle, our research is grounded in the assumption that “to fully understand who is at issue also requires…the voices of vulnerable and marginalized individuals and groups be represented within the policy-making process” (hankivsky & cormier, 2011, 219). if a group is not represented, then by extension it would be challenging to create a policy that addresses their concerns. further, without effective representation, the analysis cannot move to a reflexive consideration of the “meaning-making processes of privilege and exclusion in policy making and ultimately lead to the reconstruction of harmful and oppressive policies” (hankivsky & cormier, 2011, 219). when working with communities, code (1995) asks what type of space is created for community members to express their ideas. the author argues that “our concern should not be directed at what is said but more significantly, what is 82 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life heard, discussed and considered? whose voices and concerns have ‘a reasonable expectation of take-up’" (code, 1995, xiv). the first step in this process is to identify if the voices of millennials were represented, if the group was heard, were their issues considered or discussed and subsequently if they were taken up in a meaningful way in the final policy. why millennials? globally, millennials are encountering substantial barriers to accessing the labour market in the wake of the financial recession of 2008 (international labour organization, 2013). the international labour organization (ilo) estimates the global youth unemployment rate was at 12.6 per cent in 2013; accounting for approximately 73 million young people. prolonged unemployment is leading many young people to take on jobs that are temporary to generate income (ilo, 2013). compounding this crisis is a skills mismatch wherein young people are overqualified for the job they are doing leaving the benefits of their skills lost on society (ilo, 2013, 1). in response, the ilo is calling for nations to implement “creative, wide-ranging policy solutions” (2) to break this damaging cycle. canada is among the nations impacted by this crisis. the canadian labour market has undergone a drastic transformation, through the 1990s, producing high levels of unstable, part-time precarious work (cranford, vosko, & zukewich, 2003b; silver, shields, & wilson, 2005). since then, canadians have experienced the proliferation of non-standard and precarious work (lewchuk, 2017). precarious employment is defined by "atypical employment contracts, limited social benefits and statutory entitlements, job insecurity, low job tenure, low earnings, poor working conditions and high risks of ill health" (cranford et al., 2003, 455b). notably, a recent statistic canada analysis reveals 5.6% of canadians were involuntarily employed part time, while 12% found themselves in temporary work, and 15% were self-employed (as cited in fleury & cahill, 2018). workers’ perceptions of their employment situation are an important indication of the impact of precarious employment that reach beyond the workplace. lewchuk and colleagues' (2013) employment precarity index measures precarious employment through indicators that include the relationship between the employer and employee, earning and hours of employment, when and how workers are paid (including on missed days), sense of confidence in articulating concerns without fear of losing their job, and personal perception of job permanence. cranford and colleagues (2003a) add the dimension of legislative precarity as the new reality? | 83 protection to this definition by underscoring the lack of employment standard coverage for precariously employed workers. although there are circumstances where part-time employment is desirable and non-precarious, many workers are interested in full-time permanent opportunities (shier, graham, giotam, & eisenstat, 2014). the dismantling of full-time, secure, unionised employment favours the interests of business and capital (stanford, 2008), dramatically affecting workers' quality of life. the lack of security afforded by precarious work has adverse impacts on the future of canada as millennial workers will soon be the largest cohort in the labour force. there are 6.8 million young canadians between the ages of 15 – 2915 ; of which one-third find themselves in temporary employment (canadian labour congress [clc], 2016, 6). although there is a proliferation of part-time work, "over 230,000 young workers would rather work full-time hours but business conditions [do not] allow for it" or they could not locate full-time employment (clc, 2016, 8). this is in sharp contrast to the core working age group16 as young workers are twice as likely to be unemployed (clc, 2016, 7). nationally, ontario has been cast as one of the worst places for youth unemployment and limited fulltime job prospects (kershaw, 2017). in 2013, geobey outlined the reality of youth unemployment in ontario, a valuable analysis which illuminates the experiences of a subset of the millennial category (i.e., those 1824 years old). the report highlights the challenge young workers aged 15 to 24 encounter when accessing the labour market postrecession. the report indicates ontario’s youth are faring worse than other provinces at rates that are “twice as high as the overall provincial unemployment level” (geobey, 2013, 5). more troubling was the finding that youth unemployment is “turning out to be chronic, rather than a short-term result of a global economic crisis” (geobey, 2013, 7). the law commission of ontario (lco; 2012) explored this actuality explaining the compounding effect of their challenges in accessing the labour market and their desire for employment, resulting in young workers being pushed into non-standard jobs (characterised by temporary, part-time, contingent work). as a result, young people are overrepresented in temporary, part-time employment. an additional factor in 15 statistics canada does not use the 18–37 age group but instead 15-19, 19-24, and 24 and over. 16 statistics canada identifies the core-age labour force as 25-54. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-x/10906/9297-eng.pdf 84 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life analysing the unemployment rate is the increase of unpaid internships outside of the degree-specific requirements which add to this generations' level of precarity. unpaid labour has broader and longer-term negative impacts on the ontario economy (lco, 2012). in response to these economic circumstances, the lco identified younger millennials as a vulnerable group within the labour market. these findings are echoed by kershaw (2017) who argues ontario is one of the worst performing economies in canada for people under 45. employment vulnerability has adverse impacts on millennial's short – and long-term quality of life. the standard of living for millennials has deteriorated, impacting this generation's ability to secure good-paying jobs as "ontario is the only province in canada to report a decline in full-time earnings for the typical 25– 34-year-old since 2003" (kershaw, 2017, 3). home-ownership is increasingly challenging, taking an average of 15 years to secure a 20 percent down payment; a stark contrast to the five years it took in 1976 – 80 (kershaw, 2017). high levels of personal debt are burdening the futures of young generations, which has risen by $19,000 since 1999 for ontarians under 35 (kershaw, 2017). this reality has adverse impacts not only on the quality of life of millennials but also for ontario as the downward pressure of a dwindling middle class leads to less purchasing power and reinvestment of capital back into the economy (kershaw, 2017). millennial’s vulnerability and uncertain future is heightened as they are less likely to be covered by the esa. vosko, noack, and thomas (201617) explain that “[m]ore than a quarter of young [aged 15 to 29] employees (27%) have special rules relating to public holiday pay, compared to only 20% of employees overall. young employees’ relatively short job tenure also results in lower levels of access to vacation time as well as termination and severance pay” (p. 4). this is particularly acute in sectors where millennials are overrepresented, such as construction and hospitality which are characteristically precarious. due to the nature of their work, young employees find themselves exempt from the esa on issues related to vacation time, termination and severance pay (vosko et al., 2016). in this way, the esa has created enforcement loopholes that lead to exploitive employment practices impacting this group. many labour organisations and community activists have long advocated for increasing the provincial minimum wage and codifying stronger workers’ rights in law.18 17 report commissioned for the changing workplaces review 18 see http://workersactioncentre.org/ precarity as the new reality? | 85 chronology over the past decade, there have been a number of reports examining the issue of precarity and its relationship to poverty, poor health, and family cohesion. beginning in 2007, the united way produced the report losing ground: the persistent growth of family poverty in canada’s largest city. drawing attention to the considerable increase in poverty within the greater toronto area the report. evidence pointed to precarious employment and the deteriorating social safety net as among the causes of this disparity. calls for changes to the labour force were heralded by academics, activists, organised labour and charities alike (kalleberg, 2011; law commission of ontario, 2012; lewchuk et al., 2013; workers action centre, 2011). focussing on vulnerable workers in precarious labour, the law commission of ontario (lco; 2012). the authors put forward 47 recommendations to address the disadvantages faced by groups through legislative changes. in southern ontario, an lewchuk and colleagues’ (2013) report reinforced the overwhelming impact of precarious employment and poverty on the social, community, financial, physical, and mental well-being of residents in the region. the ongoing conversation about precarity garnered attention in the political realm with premier wynne’s 2014 speech from the throne (office of the premier, 2014) wherein she committed to consulting with ontarians to consider what could be done to address the changing workplace within the context of ontario’s labour and employment laws. soon after, minister of labour michael flynn received his mandate letter from premier wynne. therein, he was charged with leading a review of the province’s employment and labour standards. in spring of 2015, the cwr was launched. the advisors c. michael mitchell and john c. murray were mandated to: “… consider the broader issues affecting the workplace and assess how the current labour and employment law framework addresses these trends and issues with a focus on the lra and the esa. in particular, the special advisors will seek to determine what changes, if any, should be made to the legislation in light of the changing nature of the workforce, the workplace, and the economy itself, particularly in light of relevant trends and factors operating on our society, including, globalization, trade liberalization, technological change, the growth of the service sector, and changes in the prevalence and 86 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life characteristics of standard employment relationships” (ontario ministry of labour, 2017, para 15). excluded from the consultations were labour provisions for the construction industry, the minimum wage, and issues that other policy reviews are already addressing (ontario ministry of labour, 2017). the pieces of legislation governing employment relationships in ontario under review are the olra and the esa. the olra is the law that regulations relations between employers and employees in workplaces including collective bargaining. there have been a number of revisions to the act, however, no major changes have occurred since 2005. the esa establishes the minimum standards of workplaces in ontario and underwent a major review in 2000-2001. as these critical guiding statues have not undergone a comprehensive revision in over a decade, the cwr provided a valuable opportunity to enhance labour protections in response to the onset of widespread precarious employment. given its broad scope and mandate, issues related to millennials' engagement in the labour market would thus have the possibility of being addressed (government of ontario, 2016). over two years, the advisors held public consultation sessions across the province and received submissions from various interest groups, community organisations, and independent establishments. during phase 1 of the public consultations, the review received 217 in-person and written submissions from may 2015 to september 2015 (government of ontario, 2017). the advisors also reviewed academic literature in preparing their report. after the release of the interim report in july 2016, public consultations were held. phase 2 submissions responded to the cwr interim report and the added issue of personal emergency leave coverage (pel). a total of 210 submissions were received for phase 2, bringing the total public, written submissions to 427. the final report was released in may 2017. methodology to examine how millennials were represented in the cwr, this study used content analysis to analyze the submissions to the cwr and its final report (2017). content analysis is a methodology which is a “careful, detailed, systematic examination and interpretation of a particular body of material in an effort to identify patterns, themes, biases, and meanings” (berg, 2007, 304). remaining consistent with the methodology, berg (2007) notes the criteria of selection must precarity as the new reality? | 87 be sufficiently rigorous and established prior to the analysis. the decision to use submissions to the cwr was founded upon the desire to understand the type and degree of representation millennials received in the consultation process and to explore the ways in which their concerns were discussed. equally important was the presence of this cohort in the final report which helped inform the final legislation (ontario ministry of labour, 2017). at the first stage of analysis, we identified where millennials appeared in the 427 submissions by developing a list of descriptive search terms. in accordance with content analysis, berg (2007) explains categories that emerge through the process of developing criteria should reflect all aspects of the messages, using exact wording when possible. as such, an inductive approach was used to create search terms by examining two submissions from groups that explicitly identified themselves as representing young workers and millennials: ontario public services employees union provincial young workers committee (opseupywc; 2015) and ontario economic development society (oeds) (dedier, 2015). within these two submissions, young workers and millennials were described using terms indicated in table 1. in this way, search terms were not selected arbitrarily but rather in accordance with the subject group’s selfidentification. further, these search terms were very stable in that when these terms appeared in the submissions, they were always referencing millennials. table 1: search terms used in submissions and the changing workplaces review final report population demographic characteristics young* youth millennial generation* student note: an asterisk indicates any variation on the term, e.g., generations, younger. submissions were manually searched using the terms from table 1, resulting in a sample of 109 submissions that contained any or all of these terms. 88 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life only submissions that were directly related to the cwr were included19. from this group, three submissions were withdrawn resulting in the inclusion of 106 submissions in the final sample used for our analysis. further, the word student had multiple meanings that did not exclusively refer to post-secondary students (such as students under 18, or the student minimum wage). these occurrences were therefore excluded as they did not meet the inclusion criteria of the 18 to 37 age range. when exploring the representation of millennials, it was important to first consider the physical presence of the demographic identifiers in the text. manifest content analysis is an approach that examines what is physically countable and present in the sample (berg, 2007). as this study is investigating the extent to which millennials are represented in the text, the number of times the identifiers occurred was counted to evaluate the frequency and magnitude of their presence. our categories of representation where then applied to the total sample of 106 submissions which is inclusive of phase 1 and phase 2 consultations. the frequency distribution of these search terms and the corresponding category of representation is presented below, starting in table 4. definition of categories to examine the degree of representation in the community consultation process this research proposes a methodology for categorising a group's presence in policy submissions. each category of representation indicates an increasing recognition of the group. our methodology consisted of coding both the type and frequency with which millennials are identified and their labour force experiences recognized. rather than coding an entire report or submission, coding was initiated by the appearance of a demographic identifier and then the type of representation was determined by considering the surroundings words and sentences. table 3 illustrates the definitions of the categories of representation, followed by an in-depth explanation of each category, including sample quotes from the submissions to illustrate how the coding was conducted. 19 the above-noted letters from opseupywc and oeds were excluded they were used to shape the conversation and search terms. additionally, the submission made by trillys systems was withdrawn as it was a transcript of a debate in the provincial government on bill 139. precarity as the new reality? | 89 table 2: definition of categories of representation type of code mere mention nod substantive recommendation definition appearance in a list connected to other groups; or, used as an example come into focus as a standalone group with unique experie nces; no indepth discussi on of issues group’s issues are discussed in detail; issues relate directly to the labour market and labour laws a recommendation to change the esa or olra is made which name's the group and is in relation to an issue affecting the demographic mere mention the excerpts compiled within this category were chosen based on a demographic characteristic’s appearance in a list (e.g.: racialized people, women, young people, disabled people, etc.) or as an example of a broader issue. this often occurs in the context of identifying a list of those who are considered vulnerable in the labour market. for instance: “it is a similar story in thunder bay as it is elsewhere in the province for precarious workers. they are living on the edge. many go to the food bank regularly. inadequate wages and benefits exacerbate mental and physical health problems. children’s lives are restricted. there is little time to participate in community activities. precarious low wage jobs are heavily represented by women (many single mothers), aboriginal people, recent immigrants and young people” (poverty free thunder bay, 2015, 3). 90 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life this quote demonstrates the way young people are mentioned as part of a list of people experiencing precarity. by doing so, the authors are speaking more to the issue of precarity rather than the specific experiences of millennials. this occurs again when they are used as an example: “recent research on the economic and labour market impact of epl has found that strict epl can reduce job flows, negatively impact the employment prospects of some vulnerable groups (e.g. youth), reduce productivity, and impede economic growth” (apotex, 2015, 11). if the submission or report only identifies the group through a mere mention, then it would be difficult to develop an intersectional policy response as they are taken up as part of a group rather than a unique demographic requiring their own analysis. nod this category was applied to sections of text in which millennial characteristics appeared as a stand-alone problem, and not attached to other groups of people or issues. millennials are spoken about as a unique group with their particular issues regarding participation in the workforce. when millennials are discussed in this context, they suddenly come into focus as a group experiencing vulnerability and precarity in a unique way. below are a number of examples to illustrate this appearance: “compared to other ontario employees subject to the esa, a more significant percentage of employees in small firms are employed part-time (25%) or on a temporary basis (17%). and young employees (ages 15-29) are also concentrated in small firms. in short, the current exemption for pel exacerbates labour market insecurity for employees already experiencing social disadvantages and precariousness in employment” (closing the employment standards gap 1, 2016, p 38). “the growth of so-called non-standard employment is itself a symptom of the growing power imbalance between employers and workers. with good jobs hard to find and a tattered safety precarity as the new reality? | 91 net, people must take whatever is offered – temporary jobs, jobs where agencies rake a commission off their wages, jobs offering too few hours, multiple jobs, jobs without benefits or even meeting minimum standards, or accepting contract or phony “self-employment” status at the cost of esa protections. young workers are particularly vulnerable” (international association of machinist and aerospace workers1, 2015, 4). the excerpts in this category highlight the way millennials are spoken about as a distinct group with their own experiences of marginalization in the labour force. substantive this category extends beyond an acknowledgement of the stand-alone nature of the group and represents a substantive discussion or elaboration of an issue related to millennials. this is where the seeds an intersectional analysis would appear. the excerpts identify concrete employment issues, barriers, and strategies. they reflect an analysis of the concerns this group has about their futures and how the current laws impact their participation in the workforce. it also highlights different perspectives on millennials' labour force participation from industry and employers who discuss the role millennials occupy as their employees, and the perceived benefits of part-time and temporary employment for this group. “in addition, among the women we have interviewed, there is a shared desire for job-protected sick leave. "i worry about making ends meet…paying for the rent, transportation and the other necessities. there isn't anything left. i feel bad about getting sick and that i have to choose between work and health. if i lose hours or any of my jobs, i'm afraid we will end up in one of the shelters." the above expression of anxiety is spoken by a younger refugee woman, a university graduate who is juggling 3 part-time jobs in order to support her parent with disabilities and her siblings, as well pay her student loan” (ng, 2016, 2). “expected long tenure with one employer may be high for incumbent older workers, but many new entrants to the 92 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life workforce cannot expect to have “lifetime” long-tenured jobs and a semblance of job stability with the same, often unionized, employer as did earlier generations. younger workers can expect to start off in limited-term contracts or in internships (sometimes unpaid), or self-employment, and can expect to change careers often working for different employers” (murray & mitchell, 2017, 54). the issues presented in the above excerpts highlight the realities of millennials and a declaration that their experiences of precarity need to be addressed. recommendation this category is applied when demographic characteristics are named as part of a recommendation or solution. all submissions were coded for recommendations but it was beyond the scope of this study to determine whether substantive appearances lead to recommendations. for instance: “unifor strongly recommends that the exemptions and variations listed in category 1 of existing exemptions (page 161) should be removed immediately and workers in these seven categories (it workers, pharmacists, managers and supervisors, residential care workers, building superintendents, janitors and caretakers, students and liquor servers) have the full protection of the esa” (unifor, 2016, 38). “cover all classes of worker and employers under the esa without any exemptions. that would include younger workers, farm workers, workers with shorter tenure and managerial staff” (registered nurses’ association of ontario, 2015, 10). recommendations speak to specific changes that need to be made to the olra or esa in order to address the substantive issues impacting millennials’ workforce participation. findings the findings presented are discussed in relation to the two phases in which the submissions were received by the cwr. in the first phase of precarity as the new reality? | 93 submissions, the results reveal that demographic characteristics appeared a total of 300 times, whereas in the second phase, they appeared 245 (for a total of 545 times in all submissions in which demographic identifiers appeared), and 39 times in the cwr final report. table 4 displays the cumulative count of both sets of submissions both by the terms searched and the type of representation. of all the codes, the largest is substantive representation. within this code, the terms used most frequently were: student (213) and young (161). however, it is important to note that the largest degree of substantive representation was clustered in only 19 submissions across both phases. this indicates that millennials and their relationship to labour laws and the workforce were only discussed substantively in 4.4%20 of the submissions. integral to the research question is whether the presence of group characteristics in the community consultation process made an impact on the subsequent policy document. to explore this question, the same codes were applied to the cwr final report. table 5 demonstrates that within the cwr final report millennial demographics appeared 39 times, with the majority located within the substantive category. students accounted for a larger portion of the substantive comments as there was an entire subheading addressing the issues of the esa student exemption from the 3-hour21 rule which was followed by a recommendation to eliminate this from the labour laws. this was the only recommendation that was reflected in the submissions and the final report which used millennial demographic identifiers. table 4: total frequency of appearance of demographic characteristics in phase 1 and 2 submissions to the changing workplaces review terms/ type mention nod substantive recommendation total by terms student 22 21 145 25 213 20 cluster of 19 substantive submissions divided by the total 427 submissions times 100 equals 4.4% 21 the 3-hour rule “establishes minimum pay for employees whose shifts are normally longer than three hours, but are sent home after working fewer than three hours” (vosko, noack, & thomas, 2016, p. 61) 94 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life young 33 40 79 9 161 youth 22 9 41 4 76 generat ion 3 16 24 0 43 millenn ial 0 0 52 0 52 total by type 80 86 341 38 545 table 5: frequency of appearance of demographic characteristics in the changing workplaces review final report terms/ type mention nod substantive recommendation total by type student 3 1 15 1 20 youth 4 3 2 0 9 young 4 1 3 0 8 generat ion 0 1 0 0 1 millenn ial 0 1 0 0 1 total by terms 11 7 20 1 39 notably, the top terms used to describe millennials in the submissions were student, young, and young. constructing the group in this way connotes a temporary state of being in the labour market. madison (2005) highlights the importance of representation in research. the author argues the way people are represented is often how they are taken up. these labels signify phases of life that someone can move through. such a temporality may allow policymakers to normalize precarity during these periods as passing and therefore resistant to make an effort to change the outcomes for these groups. whereas a more fixed term such as millennials identifies a generational group that continues to suffer precarity as the new reality? | 95 the impacts of precarious labour throughout their lifetimes. the next section will discuss the implications of these findings on millennials. discussion representation in the policy process was a principle concern in this research. as such, the study sought to operationalise representation through the development of four categories that reflect a scale of representation. the study asked if millennials are represented in submissions to the cwr and the final report, and if so, to what degree and how. we found that millennials were represented in a quarter of all submissions to the review22. while they appeared in a quarter of the submissions, the substantive representation was clustered in only 4.4% of all submissions (or 19 submissions in both phase 1 and phase 2). further, phase 2 submissions revealed a stronger presence of substantive comments. this finding could be attributed to the nature of phase 2 submissions as responses to the interim report. it is possible that the public responded to the lack of representation in this interim report with more substantive comments regarding millennials in the second round of consultations. this may explain why they were only discussed substantively 20 times in the cwr. in the cwr, these occurrences were in seven paragraphs of a 420-page report. at the policy level, the limited presence of substantive representation across the submissions would suggest that millennials are being grouped under the heading of vulnerable or precarious along with other groups. although many groups may face similar concerns, this resulted in a nominal consideration of millennials as facing unique challenges. another reason for the liminal presence is the way millennials were predominantly framed as young, youth, and students; therefore, inhabiting a temporary state of precarity. as one would expect, this similar pattern of nominal consideration was reflected in the cwr final report which only came forward with one recommendation aimed explicitly at millennials: the elimination of the student exemption to the 3-hour rule. using the lens of an ipba, it is vital that the voices of the most vulnerable be present in the consultation process to create a nuanced, accurate response to the issues identified by marginalized communities (hankivsky & cormier, 2011). these findings have implications for an ipba as millennials were nominally present in the final report and appeared in only one recommendation. this can 22 number of submissions in which demographic characteristics appeared (108; includes oecd and opseupywc) divided by total submission (427) times 100 equals 25.29 96 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life suggest a connection between a low frequency of appearance in the community consultation process of policy formulation and limited uptake of the group's concerns in the final policy document. additionally, this policy was not intersectional as it did not reflect the experiences and challenges for millennials that were well articulated in the substantive excerpts. it is worrisome that this group was not given specific attention as it will soon become one of the largest demographics in the labour force. further, this study responds to the research question: how are millennials and the employment concerns they face taken up in the cwr final report? as there is only one recommendation that used millennial demographic characteristics, it was unlikely their issues would have been taken up in a way that would make an impact on subsequent policy decisions. given their intense but limited representation in these policy documents, millennials are not represented as a serious consideration of labour policy. consequently, although millennials received substantive representation in this policy process, their outcomes are limited to modest gains afforded to the larger category of those in precarious work. shortly after the release of the cwr, the ontario liberal government passed new legislation on november 22, informed, in part, by the cwr final report. bill 148 – the fair workplaces, better jobs act 2017, provides amendments to the olra and the esa. notable changes included a rise in the ontario minimum wage to $14 per hour in 2018 and $15 per hour in 2019 followed by yearly adjustments to the minimum wage in line with inflation. additional provisions regarding notification of scheduling changes, equal pay for part-time and temporary help workers, regulation around employee misclassification, and redress some of the more limiting aspects of union certification, among others, were also implemented (ontario ministry of labour, 2017). a number of labour organisations have lauded many of the proposed changes to the olra and esa. the ontario office of the canadian centre for policy’s alternatives’ analysis of the report noted that the rise in minimum wage will universally support vulnerable ontarians (macdonald, 2017). other aspects of the proposed legislation will support equal pay for equal work and dis-incentivize employers from using temp agencies (block, 2017). the new legislation addresses some of the most egregiously exploitative practices that millennials encounter in the precarious labour market. the community consultations for the cwr was an important aspect of the policy process that led to bill 148. a significant ongoing challenge for precarity as the new reality? | 97 millennials will be disrupting the idea of precarity as the permanent economic status, as the prime minister and minister of finance suggested. there are already traces of this discourse in the cwr final report. one of the most telling statements is found in the comments made within the cwr final report by the advisors in regards to employment tenure: “expected long tenure with one employer may be high for incumbent older workers, but many new entrants to the workforce cannot expect to have "lifetime" long-tenured jobs and a semblance of job stability with the same, often unionised, employer as did earlier generations. younger workers can expect to start off in limited-term contracts or in internships (sometimes unpaid), or self-employment, and can expect to change careers often working for different employers” (mitchell & murray, 2017, 54). the notion that precarity is the new “reality” must be disrupted to protect the future of the millennial generation and the ontario economy as a whole. as millennials were grouped under the label of vulnerable workers, any benefit this group gains will be experienced by millennials in some capacity. this is primarily based on ideas put forward by intersectionality policy theorists that demonstrate how recognizing common issues and barriers across identity groups that can be collectively addressed through policy responses (hankivsky & cormier, 2011; parken, 2010). however, to truly address the complexities of millennials’ access and engagement in the labour market, their issues must be represented more fully in policy and then monitored to detect and remedy problems of inequality. intersectional policy creation seeks to attend to the unique experiences of different groups and thereby “prevents the distinctions between forms of inequalities from being lost and provides for an inquiry that would capture both individual and group disadvantages" (hankivsky & cormier, 2011, 266). using this approach, policymakers would actively examine the challenges facing a group of people by placing their uniqueness at the fore of the policy process. as stated earlier, this study does not seek to essentialize a group as diverse as the millennials. instead, our research demonstrates that without an intersectional analysis, achieved through effective representation, millennials’ unique experiences of marginalisation are not addressed in the policy process. 98 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life our study suggests that effective representation must be substantive and appear extensively in the policy process. as we found, a small clustering of substantive representation, while important, can be overlooked by policymakers, especially when concerns run counter to the dominant framing of the issue. as we will see below, any degree of representation can be disregarded and erased with changes in the political landscape. conclusion this research presents a methodology for evaluating the types of representation that appear in the policy process. we offer this scale as the beginning of an ibpa in the area of community consultation. the results suggest a correlation between weak representation at the community consultation phase and the outcomes in the final policy. although the subsequent proposed legislation could benefit millennials, the opportunity for an ibpa that considers the unique experiences within this cohort was missed. millennials were represented in the submissions to the cwr and the final report through a cluster of substantive comments. though they appeared in only a quarter of submissions, their concerns were heard by the advisors through the tireless activism of community groups, labour organizations, and other allies. importantly, millennials and their allies have challenged the status quo of precarity and seek to disrupt its damaging presence in the lives of workers. many of the proposed changes to the esa and olra were brought to the fore by activists, labour unions, and anti-poverty organizations who worked tirelessly to identify the acute realities of precarity and mobilise for change. future research would do well to compare the policy outcomes of bill 148 with the demands of these organisations through a social movement and class lens. this also provides an opportunity to consider how the different arguments about precarity and millennials were constructed, and whether we can move towards understandings that can form the basis for collective class action. although bill 148 – fair workplaces, better jobs is a move in the right direction, with the recent election of a majority progressive conservative government in ontario in june 2018, labour gains have been severely impacted. premier doug ford has set a path of cancelling and eliminating many liberal reforms in the name of reducing ontario’s debt. cuts have targeted young people, french language programs, indigenous education training, midwifery, women, low wage earners and the environment (beattie, 2018). precarity as the new reality? | 99 with respect to labour reforms, the pc government introduced bill 47, making ontario open for business act, on october 23, 2018. this new legislation has repealed many of the “modest” workplace changes introduced by bill 148, including the elimination of the two paid sick days and pay equity for part-time and casual workers. most notably, any planned increases to the $14.00 minimum wage have been deterred until october 2020, with current projections indicating that the increase to $15.00/hour will now not occur until 2024 as they will be linked to inflation. instead, the ford government has eliminated income tax on incomes of these than $30,000, though this clearly disadvantages low-income earners that would have been better off with an increase in the minimum wage (rushowy & mojtehedzadeh, 2018). while ontarians brace themselves for new levels of precarity and vulnerability, the importance of representation and intersectionality-based policy analysis have never been more important. further research that monitors and documents the new legislation, bill 47, and its path of deepening precarity is necessary, along with on-going advocacy and activism. otherwise, we risk the very real fear that millennials and other vulnerable groups will continue to be left behind in this era of "progressive" policy. references andré, a & depaux, s. 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(2016). feeling precarious: millennials women and work. society and space, 34(4), 601–616. 106 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life building justice in the american labor movement biko koenig23 & deva woodly24 abstract: to what extent does the american labor movement conceive of justice in ways beyond narrow economic benefits? to assess the notion of justice in discourse and practice, this paper examines cases from three dominant models of labor organizing in the united states: traditional unions, worker centers, and the hybrid form of the fight for $15. over four case studies, we use interviews with workers and organizers, analytical accounts of the differing organizational structures of these labor advocacy groups, and discourse analysis of organizational materials of each to illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of each model. through this examination, we show that across all organizing forms relatively little attention is paid developing and articulating the reasons why a strong labor movement is necessary and beneficial to either workers as a class or society as a whole. we then submit that if labor is to be a movement, rather than a collection of service organizations, then it is important to put forward an idea of “labor justice” which can help members of the polity reconceptualize the relationship between work, leisure, care, dignity, productivity, and prosperity. keywords: labor unions; worker centers; labor movement; justice; inequality 23 authors presented alphabetically. biko koenig is assistant professor of government and public policy at franklin & marshall college in lancaster, pa, usa. email: biko.koenig@fandm.edu 24 deva woodly is associate professor of politics at the new school for social research in new york city, ny, usa. email: woodlyd@newschool.edu building justice in the american labour movement | 107 introduction over the course of more than a century, the us labor movement has been one of evolving strategy, membership, and politics. from the shop and tradebased strikes of the 19th century to the federations and employee unions of the 20th, the espoused values, human composition, and goals of labor have shifted in numerous ways. during the early 20th century, workers made significant gains, not only winning the legal right to collective bargaining, but perhaps more importantly, altering expectations about treatment, compensation, and work schedules. indeed, the greatest success of the american labor movement may have been changing common understandings about how society ought to evaluate work and working conditions (woodly 2015). labor organizers mobilized to establish a new common sense about what employers owed workers (including reasonably safe working conditions and a family wage for white male workers) as well as what workers deserved as members of society (e.g., 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and 8 hours of leisure per day). however, during in the mid-20th century, after the hard-won common sense of the labor movement was codified into law in the national labor relations act and took on institutional life as the national labor relations board, the vision of the labor movement evolved once again. labor unions became more stable, winning many contractual victories from the 1930s to the 1970s. at the same time, the movement’s focus on changing the way that the general public thinks about work, its conditions, and what workers deserve, gave way to more targeted concerns about servicing members and narrow electoral claims. in many ways, the social movement aspect of labor movements dwindled under the obligations of becoming part of the federal bureaucracy (piven and cloward 1977, fantasia 1988). today, modern labor organizations are diverse in their commitment to organizing new categories of workers, especially the women, people of color, and immigrants who increasingly constitute american service workers, as well as whether and how they articulate the benefits of organized labor to both potential members and the general public (fine 2006, milkman 2006, warren 2010). however, overall, 21st century labor organizers and leaders have focused much less than their earlier counterparts on communicating a vision of work and workers that contributes to fair working and living conditions for all. like previous scholars, we are interested in the processes that would lead a collection of unions and union-like groups to function like a dynamic social movement, to "reconcile the short-term and economistic demands of [union] workers with longer-term concerns for generalized social and economic justice" 108 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life (levi 2003, 46). in particular we are interested in the ability of developing and deploying discursive frames and concrete practices that actively transcend the interest-based economistic framework of unions-as-bureaucracies in order to push toward a new understanding of labor justice. in the following, we argue that for labor to become a vibrant and influential force in american politics, the movement needs to claim explicitly political space in line with their common-sense arguments of the early 20th century. this goes beyond throwing financial support behind political parties and endorsing candidates. labor must instead articulate a political vision that aims to persuade both potential union members and the general polity that rethinking the meaning of labor and prosperity is necessary political work. we propose that labor organizations could accomplish this by developing and deploying a political philosophy, what we dub labor justice, that explains why workers must organize as well as what that organizing accomplishes in broad terms. crucially, the audience for these claims needs to target society at large, rather than workers already within or directly adjacent to labor organizations. promisingly, labor already has the makings of such a political vision in some of the discourse that unions and workers centers have been using in recent years. we see this in public opinion research where the importance of unions and key policy issues such as the $15 per hour minimum wage has increased, particularly among people 18-29 (maniam 2017). however, labor activists and unions must continue to move towards more consistently speaking and acting in ways that move beyond wage claims and member service. previous research has shown that when social movements make resonant arguments consistently over time they are able to change the common sense governing public debate thereby creating a more favorable political environment for their claims. below, we develop a notion of what labor justice might look like while evaluating its presence across a number of labor organizations. first, a definition of terms. labor justice is a concept that centers the dignity that all workers are due and insists on certain rights of self-determination for the entirety of society, such as work-life balance, dignified treatment, and the power to participate in setting the terms of employment. importantly, labor justice points to the need for all people to have the ability to holistically flourish in society, and not simply have higher wages. what organized labor requires, if it is to be a political force akin to a movement, is a set of values that speaks not only to economic justice in the distributive register, but one that speaks to the capability of all workers to live lives free of oppression, the “institutional building justice in the american labour movement | 109 constraint on self-development” (developing capabilities) and domination the “institutional constraint on self-determination” (choosing actions) (young 1990, 37). finally, in providing a framework for an equitable society, labor justice is intersectional because the oppression of working people operates through the structural relations of race, gender, immigration status, sexuality, and heritage. in light of these facts, economic justice, which is primarily concerned with wage distribution, is but one component of labor justice. this discussion should be set against a background of steady union decline. from the highpoint in the 1950s where almost a third of the economy was unionized, in 2018 only 10.5 percent of workers were in a labor union (u.s. bureau of labor statistics 2019). this number is buoyed by the relatively high unionization rate of public employees at 33.9 percent. in the private sector, union density stands at 6.4 percent, the lowest in over a century (u.s. bureau of labor statistics 2019). while the democratic party is typically seen as a union ally, membership dropped over 10 percent, or 1.5 million members, during president obama’s two terms in office (dirnbach, 2017). absent a strong political vision, it should not come as a surprise that members have come to subscribe to widely varying worldviews, including reactionary positions on race, immigration, and nationalism seen in strong union support for donald trump in the 2016 presidential election. and while worker centers have emerged as an innovative approach to the labor movement, their numbers remain small relative to that of traditional unions. our arguments build off of ongoing discussions of the potential for revitalization in the labor movement, a topic that has garnered much attention by scholars and practitioners in the past few decades. a core argument in this thread is the need for unions to return to aggressive organizing, an approach that faces internal challenges of organizational conservatism where “many members have learned to view their union as quasi-insurance companies or lawyers” (milkman and voss 2004, 6). several remedies to this challenge have been articulated by labor scholars, including attention to specific tactics (or combinations of tactics), broad strategies, organizational partnerships, and the structure of groups themselves (bronfenbrenner, friedman, et al. 1998; sherman and voss 2000; bronfenbrenner and hickey 2004; milkman and voss 2004; ness 2014). further scholarship has examined the role of low-wage and immigrant workers as a necessary component to revitalization (apostolidis 2010; milkman and ott 2014; adler, tapia and turner 2014). these arguments connect to scholarship on worker centers and “alt-labor” organizations that support immigrant and low 110 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life wage workers but exist outside of traditional union models (fine 2006; eidelson 2013; milkman and ott 2014). a further line of analysis called for “social movement unionism” focused on rank-and-file activism connected to broader movements in society that, together, would drive institutional change for issues like labor law and political economy (freeman and rogers 1999; robinson 2000; levi 2003; fantasia and voss 2004). the discussion below builds on these insights and shares an affinity with social movement unionism and its aim to build a labor movement that works on behalf of the entire society. within this, our primary concern is that efforts that focus solely on economic redistribution for members, even when they are successful, have not been enough to transform the labor movement into a dynamic social movement with clear aims for social and economic justice. we make the case for labor justice both theoretically and empirically. in the following sections, we lay out the concept of labor justice and indicate what makes it both more expansive and more persuasive than the idea of economic justice. after making the theoretical case, we advance our argument by doing an empirical examination of the discourse and practices of four different labor organizations across the spectrum of organizational models from traditional union to workers center, including: service employees international union (seiu), fight for $15 (ff15), restaurant opportunities center united (roc), and the laundry workers center (lwc). our aim here is not to draw conclusions about the labor movement in general, nor to make causal arguments about the nature of movement work. rather, we utilize interviews with leaders and participants in the organizations and content analysis of informational materials to answer the question: to what extent do these labor organizations express an idea of labor justice, and how can we see their ideas about the labor movement’s purpose carried out in their work? theorizing labor justice most labor appeals are in the frame of economic justice. economic justice is an account of fairness that derives from what iris young calls the “distributive paradigm,” the view that what justice requires can be wholly fulfilled by focusing on the “the allocation of material goods […] and social positions” (young 1990, 15). on this account, the problem of oppression can be solved by making sure each individual or group of individuals has a fair allocation of goods. a diverse array of theories of justice, from john rawls’ liberalism to karl marx’s communism, are based on this premise. young contends that while the building justice in the american labour movement | 111 distribution of material goods and social position is a necessary component of what justice requires, it is not sufficient. instead, young indicates that we must pay attention to the social beliefs and institutional processes that have produced distributive patterns. otherwise, distributive corrections only have short-term effects because the social beliefs and practices that made maldistribution seem inevitable, convenient, or even favorable, will cause people to re-inscribe old intent onto new policies in the way that they interpret or implement them. for this reason, it is important for social movements and others who seek to change the status quo to change the way people think about their issue(s) in addition to changing policy. in the case of labor, this means that a successful labor movement must change people’s ideas about what work requires and what all people who work for a living deserve at the same time that they seek specific wage increases or other benefits. as discussed below, this dilemma maps all too well onto the wage victories of the fight for $15. if activists and unions focus almost exclusively on raising wages, they reproduce a neoliberal view of the worker which values them only as producers, possessors, and consumers of goods rather than people who create value not only through the work that they do, but also through the lives they live. from this perspective justice requires not only fair distribution of wages and benefits, but also non-material goods like decision-making power, practical opportunity (which is distinct from formal opportunities that may be difficult or impossible to access), self-respect, care, and leisure time. that means workers must have not only the right to negotiate the conditions of their employment but must also have a reasonable capability to exercise those rights. effecting the capability of workers to determine the conditions of their labor would require rethinking how unions and other organizations in the labor movement conceptualize their task. labor organizations would need to focus less on improving wages and conditions in particular workplaces and more on questioning and seeking to change the beliefs, practices, and institutional processes that create the conditions of oppression and domination that govern most people who work for a living, most of the time. in this way, labor justice requires respect for the labor of life, not only in terms of fair compensation for economic work, but also in terms of acknowledging and supporting non-economic labors such as care work, civic engagement, or play. through this lens, having a predictable schedule, paid sick leave, accessible, quality healthcare and childcare, and affordable leisure are as important as having a higher hourly wage. this is because the acknowledgement 112 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life and support of non-wage-earning labor is necessary to ensure that the full benefit of wage-related gains can accrue to people who work for a living. labor justice, then, is not solely about the re-allocation of resources, but is instead about the elimination of domination and oppression from the institutions that govern work. importantly, this framing makes it easier for labor to ally with other movements seeking to eliminate institutional domination and oppression. the elements of labor justice that we can glean from how workers describe what just relations might look like concretely: dignity, respect, fairness, work-life balance, and security. this deeper definition of labor justice is not only intrinsically important for the labor movement to better understand the appropriate scope of work required to improve people’s lives, but also is essential if the movement hopes to be politically persuasive. recent research in political science has shown that when those who challenge the status quo are able to make resonant arguments consistently over time, they are able to shift common sense on the topic, thereby creating a political environment in which they can more effectively advance their claims (baumgartner, deboef and boydstun 2008; woodly 2015; jackson 2018; williams 2018). for example, deva woodly has shown that marriage equality movement was able to change the political common sense on that issue over a 10 years period by making resonant arguments that reframed the status quo understanding of gay families and what counted as gay rights (2018). similar findings indicating that those challenging the status quo can shift public understanding through the use of what mustafa menshawy has described as “effective’ discourse that [is] coherent, consistent, and resonant …, as well as a ‘credible’ discourse which combine[s] words with actions” have been produced across several topic areas including the gun debate (kerr 2018) and foreign policy (menshawy 2018). put simply, the arguments that movement actors make have concrete impacts on their potential for societal change. an examination of discourse & practice in the next section, we examine four different organizational formations in the labor movement to assess the presence of labor justice within their discourse and practices. we have intentionally selected a range of cases to gauge the presence of labor justice in a variety of contexts, and this is not intended to be a representative sample. the inclusion of two worker centers—roc and lwc— responds to the importance of the model in contemporary organizing, while the hybrid ff15 has achieved significant gains in minimum wage policy victories (luce 2015). seiu stands out for its sheer size in the movement as well as for its building justice in the american labour movement | 113 role in creating the ff15. for each organization, we briefly describe the characteristics of their organizational form. then, using interviews and publicfacing documents, we examine their understanding of what broad political philosophy underlies their work. in addition to scrutinizing their discourse, we observe the institutional habits and practices that either support or contradict their stated worldview. finally, we consider whether and to what extent any of the organizations have a theory and/or practice of labor justice, as we have described it. in concrete terms, what would a labor justice approach to a campaign or an organization look like? in the first order, claims must be made to impact the material lives of working people: contract negotiations, higher wages, and improved benefits all fit into this category. while all labor campaigns involve this type of claim making, labor justice also looks to increase the power of working people relative to economic, political, and social institutions. most labor movement work actively empowers insiders and members in this institutional struggle, but routinely frame this part of the work as secondary to the material ends of new policies or better contracts. for unions in particular, empowerment is typically limited to members. a labor justice approach should seek to empower working people broadly, and not only through policies, such as a higher minimum wage, that impact large numbers of people. this empowerment must also include the symbolic work of impacting widely held norms of work, life, and fairness. it may be the case that the institutional structures of formal labor unions mean that they have no choice but to make narrow distributive claims in service of a continually declining membership base. but as labor continues to lose density, it also continues to lose the normative war about what working life could be. if we are to move beyond the neo-liberal hegemony of work and society, we must construct our own framework of common sense to contest the status quo (smucker 2017). that many labor organizations note these issues in their discourse is telling of their importance, but as the next section shows, few groups put them into practice with much strength. seiu international the service employees international union (seiu), one of the largest u.s. labor unions in terms of membership size, organizes workers in three core sectors: health care, government, and property services. like many labor unions, seiu is organized as a federation, with an international branch that acts as the head and local unions that oversee most day to day operations with members. 114 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life internationals do a great deal in terms of providing rhetorical leadership, setting national agendas for the union, and lobbying to political groups. much of the energy for a renewed approach to organizing comes from international unions, who can set organizing mandates, provide funding for locals, and occasionally even directly organize workers in areas without a local union. nonetheless, locals have a considerable amount of autonomy in regard to international unions, and are the main site of most organizing efforts and contact with workers. given the ability of seiu international to set the agenda, we look to how they frame the purpose and activity of the union. seiu is an exemplary case of a union that is conscious of the need to organize new workers. while they have received much criticism for their efforts, beginning in the mid-1990s seiu became the leader of new organizing efforts across the afl-cio (estreicher 2006; early 2009). this included the development of a new tactical repertoires for union campaigns, including strategic corporate research, working outside of nlra union elections to win recognition, and running campaigns with community support outside of the workplace. as such it is no surprise that the discourse of seiu international contains the strongest labor justice framings we found in the research. of course, much of the language still contains economic justice frames that are geared specifically towards the benefits that unions provide only for their members, such as higher wages, benefits, and job security. we do not contend that such language should be absent, only that it be contextualized in a larger, principled and explicitly political framework. some examples of this kind of framing include: "seiu is a center of unity for underpaid workers who are demanding that our economy works for everyone not just the rich" (seiu n.d.). "unions lead the fight today for better lives for all working people" (seiu n.d. ). "when unions join together and behind advocating for better wages, non-union workers then see the power of unity and start demanding better treatment themselves. unions help all working families a stronger voice in our communities, in the political arena, and in the global economy” (seiu n.d.). building justice in the american labour movement | 115 the common theme here is the universality of the appeals. unions and the labor movement are going to make beneficial changes for everyone, not only members. here, unions may lead but the ultimate aims are a society that provides both material and non-material benefits for workers regardless of membership. the economy that “works for everyone” will of course include “good jobs” and “better wages,” but it will also transform society through the “collective power” of the working class, that will have a “stronger voice” from local communities to global economies and overall “better lives.” the upshot is that the enactment of this discourse requires a set of practices much different from servicing union contracts and handing grievances. in fact, a labor justice practice needs to extend beyond narrow tactics that only seek to organize new members. given the placement of the international, it is challenging to directly assess their practices. as such, we turn to two different seiu local campaigns to add additional layers of analysis. the ff15 campaign acts as both an organization in its own right, and a yardstick for how seiu international puts a labor justice framework into practice. we also look at seiu healthcare campaigns in pennsylvania, which are run by local unions but rhetorically folded into the ff15 national campaign by the international. both show that, in practice, the economic justice frame guides union activity, while labor justice appeals are mostly rhetorical. the fight for $15 while the origin of the fight for $15 in chicago and fast food forward is uncertain, seiu began funding and directing fast-food worker organizing efforts of these and similar organizations across the country by 2012 (brown 2013, gupta 2013). by 2014, these groups coalesced under the universal name fight for $15, and by 2015 seiu had expanded the discourse to include low-wage workers across the economy, including healthcare workers, adjunct university professors, and child care workers. the demand of ff15 is straightforward: “$15 and a union!” as both a slogan and goal, the demand is easy to explain and provocative given current minimum wages and lack of union representation prevalent throughout low-wage industries. it presents itself as a demand to both government and employers. this has been especially effective in regards to minimum wage legislation, given that states and some cities are able to set their own wage floors and thus allow for a national slogan that can be tailored locally (oswald, 2016). tactically, ff15 uses a mix of labor strikes, direct action, and a savvy social media presence. the city or 116 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life nation-wide one-day strike is the main tool of ff15: workers from across the lowwage economy strike together on a single day, usually attending a march or a rally that includes progressive figures from religious groups, the local community, and elected government. usually these strikes do not shut down entire stores, but draw small numbers of workers from individual locations across a city. the widespread but thin nature of strike participation means that low-wage workers are less able to use their economic power through impacts in production, but instead gain influence by raising awareness and striking blows against corporate reputations. nonetheless, the discourse of ff15 is parallel to most labor unions in the call for economic justice. given that the wage demand is in the name of the organization, it should come as no surprise that much of their language is connected to better pay, along with pointing out the bad job conditions that are typical of low wage work: “as underpaid workers, we know what it’s like to struggle to get by. we can barely pay our bills and put food on the table for our families. mcdonald’s answer? go on food stamps. … on top of it all, even mcdonald’s knows it takes $15/hr to get by. we work hard and we’re still stuck in poverty. it’s not right. that’s why we fight back. it’s time to pay people enough to survive. it’s time to pay people what they deserve. it’s time for $15/hr and union rights” (fight for $15 n.d.). ff15 touts its tactics, calling the hikes in minimum wage that it has won, “raises”: “we know striking works. by standing up and going on strike for $15/hr and union rights we won $62 billion in raises for 22 million people across the country. we’ve taken the fight to more than 300 cities in the us and 60 countries across the world on 6 different continents. now, $15/hr is law in california and new york state. it’s law in seattle, in pennsylvania for nursing home and hospital workers, and for municipal employees in countless cities. mayors, city building justice in the american labour movement | 117 councils, and state governments across the nation have announced $15 initiatives. what’s the secret to our success? you. me. all of us who have come together to tell our stories of what it’s like trying to live on low pay from corporations like mcdonald’s. it’s important to remember that we don’t win because politicians or companies decide out of the goodness of their hearts to give us raises. we win because workers stand together to make them give us what we deserve” (fight for $15 n.d.). unlike the language of seiu international, the fight for $15 fits squarely into the economic justice frame: the power of its wage claim is real, but it is also its limit. what does ff15 offer workers who do not fall under the proposed wage floor? what goals exist outside of the higher wages? it is true that anyone can attend the strike events, escort workers to and from their work, or engage with social media campaigns. but to do so as an activist who is not a low-wage worker means that it is not your movement, and you remain on the outside. though ff15 has won important increases in municipal and state minimum wages, these policy victories are limited. first, most of the legislated wage increases phase in over a period of 3 to 5 years. ney york state, for example, passed a minimum wage increase in 2016. however, the $15 minimum wage won’t be fully phased in until 2021. further, a family of four living in new york state where one person works full time making $15 an hour will still be impoverished. further, the calls for union recognition have been less successful, with seiu officials indicating they have no clear idea what unionization would actually look like in practice, and labor commentators noting there is no strategy in place for ff15 to transition into a labor union (zahn 2016). the very nature of these victories shows the importance of the labor justice frame: higher minimum wages have not translated into broader social movements nor narrower union revitalization. in short, though these increases are incredibly important for workers in low-wage jobs, they illustrate the limitations of distributive claims—the $15 wage rate, while unimaginable before ff15 started demanding it 5 years ago, also doesn’t effectively address the problem of working poverty nor the structural issues that spur rising inequality. to put it differently, it does not attempt to construct new norms around work and society. after the $15 wage is won, what goal can organizers push for which will utilize the discursive and organizational foundation that they have laid? it remains unclear 118 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life what will happen in locations that have won higher minimum wages, but the nature of the discourse means that there will be little room left to engage in new campaigns without a fundamental shift in mission and vision. perhaps the “…and a union” component will lead to a second round of organizing, but this seems unlikely given the lack of planning and the fact that no workers have been directly unionized by the campaign. to be clear, this only becomes a problem when we assume that the economic claims of the ff15 will somehow lead to broader practices of labor justice. as a movement with a specific, and powerful, policy agenda, ff15 is incredibly successful. but if this is the upper limit of transformative political action, then more attention must be paid to how movements seek to change the status quo in the wake of policy victories. one might argue that we are calling for too expansive a notion of justice, and that the power of ff15 is in its narrowness and simplicity: $15 and a union. why should a single campaign have to provide discursive and practical entry points for all workers? in response we offer that ff15 (and similar national campaigns such as ufcw’s our walmart) is arguably the most innovative attempt at organizing workers that unions have used in modern times. however, the inability of ff15 to spur either a renewal in union membership or mass mobilization that leads to significant political changes, we must ask what is missing. as we see it, it is worth exploring a justice argument that has universal applicability for workers everywhere. a staffer from seiu illustrates the limits of the ff15 frame in a discussion about outreach: “fight for 15 is built around fast food workers … i was knocking doors around the election, and i knocked on the door of a woman who's a phlebotomist, and she started talking to me about, ‘i make 13 [an hour], and i'm a phlebotomist, i had some education to do this, why would anyone think that fast food workers should make 15? it’s totally outrageous!’” (seui staff member, interview, 2016). their response to the woman was to draw on principle: fast food workers shouldn’t have to earn poverty wages. the challenge is that it sets up an insider/outsider binary. for a college educated phlebotomist making $13 an hour, increasing the minimum wage to $15 would likely be in her material interests. but without a discourse that is built to include her, she cannot square her own building justice in the american labour movement | 119 experiences with that of other workers. a movement with a labor justice frame could have something to offer her, both in terms of a compelling argument as well as a pathway to participation. seiu healthcare pennsylvania over 20,000 health care workers in pennsylvania are members of seiu healthcare pennsylvania (hcpa), including doctors, nurses, aides, and food workers in hospitals and nursing home across the state. as a local that is part of the seiu federation, hcpa is more directly concerned with the day to day business of running a union: servicing members, processing grievances, and preparing for contract negotiations and their attendant mobilization campaigns. while national data suggests that unions today organize at lower rates, even the most conservative unions must routinely mobilize members during contract negotiations. seiu stands as the most aggressive union when it comes to organizing new members, and locals are required to spend 20 percent of their budgets on organizers (seiu staff member, interview, 2017). given seiu’s commitment to organizing, we would expect the discourse of hcpa to be attentive to organizing new members, while at the same time focused on the clientelist aspects of member relations. hcpa frames its mission this way: “nurses and healthcare workers are diverse, but we all we want: wages that attract and retain professionals to do caregiving work, with no employer paying less than $15 an hour for any healthcare job; union rights for all workers to organize and raise their voices to change the healthcare industry for the better; and access to quality, affordable healthcare for everyone in our communities. … we want a more just and humane society. we won’t stop fighting until we get it” (abromaitis 2016). the discourse here is mixed. there is language about what unionization offers its members in terms of higher wages and a stronger voice on the job. at the same time, there are principles of a “just and humane society” and a focus on the importance of healthy communities. the broader language around healthcare is a reflection of the industry. interviews with hcpa staffers revealed that most 120 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life contract and unionization campaigns are constructed in a narrative frame that emphasizes high standards of patient care as the primary concern, and better wages and job conditions as a necessary pathway to those high standards. while this framework is certainly strategic in negotiations with employers, staffers indicate that it also comes directly from workers—sometimes organizers must push workers to demand better wages alongside other problems of delivering quality care, such as high turnover and cheap materials. such a challenge indicates the power of common sense to frame how people understand their economic situation. the question for our purposes is, how does this added layer of caregiving and a concern for healthcare intersect with the discourse and practice of justice? in the first instance, some of the language used by hcpa fits into a labor justice frame, especially calls for a just society and fairness for everyone. however, it is not clear how one might support the process of building a fair society save through joining the union as a health care worker. further, even the caregiving language remains in a distributive frame seen mainly as a material benefit. one could imagine that healthcare and the patient-caregiver relationship present fertile ground for more emancipatory calls for justice, presenting entre for taking a position on an issue as topical as universal healthcare, for example. instead we see a similar discourse to that of ff15: join a union, get better wages, improve your job, and somehow that might deliver us to a new future. we should note that many union workers are not necessarily interested in questions of labor justice as we discuss them: “i think some of our best nurses, our activist nurses, get it [the problem of low-wage work], but it doesn't speak to their core primary issue, which is staffing and nursing conditions … we have some of our best activist nurses who come out to our fight for 15 rallies, and they understand the connection between poverty and health, and that's the other thing, when they deal with poor people, coming in, they understand the link between the healthcare system and inequality and poverty, but i wouldn't say that that's the majority of our nurse membership feels that way. i think that, like in many unions the majority of workers, speaking transparently, are focused on: how do we band together to improve our working conditions, and the healthcare system more broadly and so on, but the fight for 15 building justice in the american labour movement | 121 doesn't speak as strongly to them certainly, as many other issues that the union tries to engage in” (seiu staff member, interview, 2016). nonetheless, staffers noted that in the 2016 contract, non-nurse workers at the bottom of the pay scale received the largest raises, upwards of $3 per hour. at the same time, senior nurse staff received very small raises. this came out of the drive to get all workers at or close to the $15 per hour wage, but required that nurses recognized and advocated for higher wages for support staff, even at the cost of their own raises. an organizer from seiu explains how this played out during the contract negotiation: “… so that conversation happened first with organizers, then with the rank-and-file leadership, and when we're getting the point of trying to settle these contracts, we were having that same conversation with committees, and that same conversation during the ratification drive. you had really good rank-and-file leaders who are going to get a very small raise compared to other workers, who ‘we can't be working next to people who are living in poverty, because they can't provide good care. it affects our ability to provide good care.’ you have lpns [licensed practical nurses] who are higher wage workers in the nursing home who will get small raises, who'll say, ‘i can't do my job next when i've got people next to me who are working double shifts, or two jobs.’ really, in many ways, i found that to be one of the most fascinating parts of the campaign” (seiu organizer, interview, 2016). similar to the employers, this is explained through the power of the national ff15 campaign in changing the norms on wages and poverty for workers inside the union. the way that the fight for $15, the largest, most innovative labor movement campaign in modern times, has created real benefits for healthcare workers once again highlights both the value of the discourse as well as its real limits. sparking solidarity between workers is no small accomplishment, particularly when it requires material sacrifice, such as the nurses who took a smaller raise. 122 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life at the same time, it does not offer either a language or a practice geared towards mass mobilization and societal change: workers outside of the union. rather, it finds its highest value in the narrow, nuanced world of contract negotiations. in its discourse, how does it offer a vision for a better world that is accessible to all workers? in its practice, how does it scale up and create spaces for participation outside of trade union membership? union staffers themselves are concerned about these questions. "we're also trying to think how you get to scale, and how you create the space for people to participate in organizations that doesn't look like a traditional trade union necessarily. and the way we've been thinking about it in home care, what do you need to do that, you need a list or access to the workers, you need a way for people to self-sustain the organization, you need a way to build power and change" (seiu staff member, interview, 2016). as they put it, unions may have figured out how to raise the issue of minimum wage and impact the lives of some workers, but have not yet figured out the practice of mass mobilization, or as the staffer asks, "how does the union with its limited set of resources create a lot of doors for people to participate in lots of different ways?” unions have not yet found an answer. restaurant opportunities center united roc, founded by saru jayaraman and fekkak mamdouh in 2001, was initiated to help the survivors of the windows on the world restaurant in the wake of 9/11. as a worker center, they do not organize people into collective bargaining agreements, but have historically run workplace justice campaigns to combat wage theft, discrimination, and unsafe working conditions at specific worksites. their strategy has evolved significantly since that time, and today they seek to work on several things at once: informing workers about their rights, collecting research for campaigns, organizing employers to take the “high road to profitability,” and lobbying state legislatures for favorable policy. roc is also explicitly collaborative and often works in coalition with other organizations, including acting as a founding member of the food chain workers alliance and forming a partnership for the “on fair wage” campaign with ff15 in new york. building justice in the american labour movement | 123 the discourse and practice of roc today is best summarized in their own words: “the restaurant opportunities centers united (roc-united) engages workers, employers and consumers to improve wages and working conditions in the restaurant industry. the rocunited model involves “surrounding the industry” by simultaneously: (1) engaging workers through job training and placement […] (2) engaging employers through our “high road” employer association raise [… and] (3) engaging consumers through diners united […]” (restaurant opportunities center-united n.d.) as we see from their self-description, roc has abandoned its more confrontational tactics of workplace justice campaigns to embrace an advocacy role and building relationships with owners and customers. a core tenant of this approach is the articulation of “high road” strategies for employers: paying higher wages, offering benefits, and building safe worksites. the highroad strategy is translated into action through programs like raise and the restaurant roundtable, which organize and bring together restaurant owners to learn about high road employment practices. workers, for their part, are the focus of career training programs and know your rights political education. although these activities are not ideological at all, catherine bennett of roc describes her work in deeply principled terms: “at the end of the day, it’s about power. it’s about economic power and so many of us don’t have that … [labor justice is about] fairness –its about dignity and professionalism being ascribed to the work, no matter what it is. we work to live, that should be valued and regarded as important. work deserved to be lifted up, recognized and respected, especially the work of women and people of color [which is often denigrated].” she also describes the goal of roc as having a balance between expert guided and worker-led initiatives. she admits that roc does not always achieve that aspirational balance. “there is some tension. some groups are more worker-led and concrete, while others are more top-down.” further, sometimes people in the 124 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life organization will say “in order to really be successful, we have to move legislation.” but catherine wonders “do we?” she goes on to say, “we’re all struggling with the question of balance and we need to further interrogate it going forward.” she also notes that they don’t often “talk about structural change. we usually say ‘disruption,’ or ‘transformation,’ –amp up the rhetoric to ‘black-beret’ levels sometimes, but what we’re really talking about is structural change. because we have to put changing the system, reinforcing solidarity, at the center of what we do. it’s not just about running trainings.” the practices of roc are nonetheless limited in ways that are similar to ff15: their advocacy for abolishing the tipped minimum wage and training for employers to engage in high road employment practices can provide important material benefits to workers while offering little in the way of mobilization. indeed, the place of workers as political agents for roc’s work has been reduced over time, replaced with a focus on employers, consumers, and policy makers. at the same time, their advocacy programs, while drawing on languages of labor justice, do not surpass the distributive calls for wages that characterize the mainstream labor movement. laundry workers center the laundry workers center (lwc) is a worker center founded in the fall of 2011 to focus on worksite problems among low-income immigrant laundry workers throughout new york city. in short order, however, the lwc turned its attention to food retail, partnering with immigrant deli workers in the hot and crusty campaign, as profiled in the documentary the hands that feed. while their attention has remained in the food sector with campaigns at other restaurants, they have also successfully organized workers at two warehouses for b&h, a photography and video equipment company. partnering with united steel workers (usw), lwc led a successful union drive that culminated in an nlrb election for over three hundred workers, though b&h ended up moving their facility out of state to escape the contract. in its discourse, lwc is worker-centric, with a bare-bones framework that focuses on fairness for workers in low-income industries. in most discussions of the work, the emphasis is on tactics and training, with a philosophy grounded in worker leadership and power. “laundry workers center’s political philosophy is rooted in organizing workers and building their leadership skills and building justice in the american labour movement | 125 political power through a variety of worker-led tools and tactics, including taking direct action at the workplace, serving as their own voice to media outlets, speaking out as member of the community, and acting as their own advocates at the negotiation table. our members are primarily low-income immigrant workers who believe in social and economic justice. lwc campaigns are all member-led” (laundry workers center n.d.). here they present themselves as a tightly focused organization whose main concern is the hands-on training of workers in their core demographic. it is worth pointing out that the workers involved in lwc campaigns are often at the crossroads of multiple labor policy infractions similar to workers in the restaurant industry that are roc’s focus. the demands of many lwc campaigns involve stopping illegal practices, such as unpaid or forced overtime and subminimum wages. for the b&h campaign, problems included erratic scheduling, the handling of chemical hazards without training or equipment, unsafe working speeds with heavy packaging, and overt harassment of immigrant employees. in typical fashion, the campaign was met with heavy resistance from the company, who fired organizers and refused to recognize the union. the upshot is that for most workers involved in lwc campaigns, their jobs involve some of the worst wages and conditions in our economy—simply getting minimum wages can be a big improvement in their lives. further, many workers are afraid of speaking out due to fears of losing their jobs and, in some cases, being threatened with deportation. given that these conditions tend to be standard practices in the low-wage economy, workers cannot easily move to a better job. the demographics of the workers combined with the employment challenges they face and lwc’s commitment to worker leadership leads to a unique model of organizing workers. as described to us by co-directors rosanna rodriguez and mahoma lopez, the core of the lwc model involves a training program called the leadership institute. the institute provides the essentials of workplace organizing combined with political education: a history of the labor movement, how to speak with employers, engaging the media, and designing direct action campaigns. the institute is free, and attended by workers who come to lwc with a problem at their worksite. in fact, the only requirement attached to participating in the institute is that workers must commit to putting what they learn into practice. rather than acting as representatives of workers, the purpose 126 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life of the lwc is to train and empower workers to develop and run their own campaign. “well we cannot decide [what the campaign will look like] because it all depends on what the workers want. so we never decide beforehand. we always have the conversation, you know, ‘what do you want to see in your workplace?’ or ‘what is your ideal workplace?’ or ‘what is your goal? and then, we find a way to support that. but we never make the decision for workers” (rosanna, interview 2016). in and of itself, learning the details of organizing a labor drive can comfortably fit into an economic justice frame, especially when the main goals involve wages and benefits at specific worksites. however, while the goals of the workplace justice campaigns are focused on single worksites, their overall strategy recognizes that individual changes are not enough, something mahoma noted in a previous interview: “mahoma lópez, a leader at the [hot and crust campaign] and now co-director of the center, remembers his first conversation with organizer virgilio aran. “he told us why it’s important to organize,” lópez said. without organizing, even if you win back your stolen wages in court, “they will fire you, and you’ll go to some other place where you will be exploited” (singh 2016). the goal of the leadership institute is thus to empower workers not only to lead campaigns at their worksite, but to become “liberated” in wider, dynamic sense. as mahoma underlined, the direct-action component is key to this process. “…every time we launch a campaign, we occupy the workplace, the workers deliver a demands letter and, that's what we call liberation day. they have a lot of fear, and there is a lot pressure, it is a lot of... a lot of things together, inside of you… but that day when you go public, and you are the person who delivers the letter it’s like ‘okay, now it's my turn. i have a lot of people in the back support me.’ every single worker who experiences that, that the liberation that's... everything changes. building justice in the american labour movement | 127 you can see the people to next day with a new face, you know, ‘okay, i did it!’ you know, they are waiting sometimes so many years. for some people who are exploited, they don't have that opportunity to confront [the employer] face to face. ‘i'm here, now it's my time. you have to respect me, and i am not gonna keep quiet’" (mahoma, interview, 2016). both rosanna and mahoma are explicit in that, while their campaigns involve important material benefits such as wages and better treatment, they also work within a justice framework geared towards empowering immigrant workers for the long-term. political education and the actual work of campaigns are the tools of this empowerment. rosanna: “i think like one of the way to break up the fear is more about political education. so, you know... that's the only way that people can understand. to empower people ... how they can, you know, take power. ummm...and it is possible to break that fear … i mean, [justice and empowerment] can be about, you know, treatment. the treatment in the wages in term of having a living wage, and that the company respects and follows the law. it depends of all the necessity of the workers because every campaign is different. even though we have common issues like wage theft or discrimination. mahoma: “yeah but also, when laundry workers center says “justice,” it's just basically when the workers have the power. after a long process or at the end of the campaign the workers can step in front the boss and say, you know, ‘we need this, and we demand this, and we have no fear.’ you know, it's like just basically they become empowered. […] and yes that's justice because that person is not going to be oppressed no more. it's like, they are fighting for the people they represent themselves” (rosanna and mahoma, interview, 2016). additionally, lwc makes strong efforts to bridge workplace justice issues with a wider political agenda. in the first place, they are involved in a range of wider political and policy issues, including legislation on wage theft and paid 128 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life sick days. given their roots in the immigrant community, they are also involved in a number of initiatives for immigrants that offer a wider justice framework: mahoma: “the laundry workers center, together with other organizations, we have launched a movement called somos visibles or “we are visible.” we feel very proud to be part of this new movement. but we are part of this movement because want to fight for the recognition that all immigrant workers have the right to make decisions in their communities at the local level […] rosanna: “so, it's not about the [2016 presidential election]. it's more about, if i am part of this community and i want to have a new school, or have a better park, or have better housing, i have the right to make a decision in my neighborhood and my community and be a part of that. even though, if i'm an immigrant, or undocumented, i am living over here and i have the right to make decisions in my community” (rosanna and mahoma, interview, 2016). drawing on the training of the leadership institute, somos invisibles uses community organizing and direct-action tactics to take their concepts of fairness out of the worksite and into the wider immigrant community. conclusion communication workers of america (cwa) regional director bob master, quoting martin heidegger, puts the problem this way: “‘language is the house of being’ and people on the left have been homeless because we talk in veiled terms … labor has underestimated the appeal of direct ideological challenge to the status quo, [but] it’s impossible to represent workers without a change in the entire power dynamic, that means an ideological fight.” labor justice is our proposed framework for this fight, one that must take place both conceptually and practically. labor organizations must think together about what it means for people who work for a living to be able to live free of oppression and domination in the workplace and beyond. in addition, the practices of union organizing, campaigns, policy advocacy and other political engagement must make appeals beyond members and potential members, to society as a whole. organizations building justice in the american labour movement | 129 must think critically about their own practices and implement modes of organizing that open pathways for people from various social locations to participate. this is because, whether a person concerned with labor justice can be a member of the union, they should be able to be a member of the movement. references abromaitis, amelia. 2016. forward together – our statement of purpose. november 16. http://www.seiuhcpa.org/2016/11/16/forward-togetherour-agenda-for-working-families/. adler, lee h., maite tapia, and lowell turner, . 2014. mobilizing against inequality: unions, immigrant workers, and the crisis of capitalism. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. apostolidis, paul. 2010. breaks in the chain. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. baumgartner, frank, susan deboef, and amber boydstun. 2008. the decline of the death penalty and the discovery of innocence. cambridge university press. bronfenbrenner, kate, and robert hickey. 2004. 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"the social contract in an era of precarious work." pathways (stanford center on poverty and inequality). katz, lawrence, and alan krueger. 2016. the rise and nature of alternative work arrangements in the united states, 1995-2015. nber working paper series, national bureau of economic research. kelber, harry. 2005. ""afl-cio's 50 year organizing record under meany, kirkland, and sweeny."." truthout magazine. march 30. accessed building justice in the american labour movement | 131 november 13, 2013. http://www.truthout.org/archive/item/53349:aflcios-50year-organizing-record-undermeany-kirkland-and-sweeney. kerr, selina. 2018. a partisan issue? policy-making and guns in the united states. glasgow, uk: palgrave macmillian . laundry workers center. n.d. our mission. http://laundryworkerscenter.org/our-mission. levi, margaret. 2003. "organizing power: the prospects for an american labor movement." perspectives on politics 1 (1): 45-68. luce, stephanie. 2015. "$15 per hour or bust: an appraisal of the higher wages movement." new labor forum 24 (2): 72-79. maniam, shiva. 2017. most americans see labor unions, corporations favorably . http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/30/most-americanssee-labor-unions-corporations-favorably/: pew research center . menshawy, mustafa. 2018. "constructing state, territory, and sovereignty in the syrian conflict." politics . milkman, ruth. 2014. "introduction: toward a new labor movement? organizing new york city's precariat." in new labor in new york, edited by ruth milkman and ed ott. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. — 2006. l.a. story: immigrant worker and the future of the us labor movement. new york city, ny: russel sage foundaiton. milkman, ruth, and ed ott, . 2014. new labor in new york: precarious workers and the future of the labor movement. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. milkman, ruth, and kim voss, . 2004. rebuilding labor. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. mishell, lawrence, and will kimball. 2015. unions’ decline and the rise of the top 10 percent’s share of income. feburary 3. http://www.epi.org/publication/unions-decline-and-the-rise-of-thetop-10-percents-share-of-income/. moody, kim. 2016. the state of american labor. june. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/06/precariat-labor-us-workersuber-walmart-gig-economy/. ness, immanuel, ed. 2014. new forms of worker organization. oakland, ca: pm press. 132 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life o'sullivan, terry. october 26, 2016. "“to all members of the liuna general executive board, district councils, and local unions in the united states.” ." open letter, laborers international union of north america. oswalt, michael m. 2016. "improvisational unionism." california law review 87. oxfam america. 2016. "poverty in the us." oxfam america. https://policypractice.oxfamamerica.org/work/poverty-in-the-us/low-wage-map/. pew research center. 2016. the state of american jobs. october 6. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/10/06/the-state-of-americanjobs/. piven, frances fox, and richard cloward. 1977. poor people's movements: why they succeed, how they fail. new york: pantheon books. restaurant opportunities center-united. n.d. our work. http://rocunited.org/our-work/. rick, fantasia, and kim voss. 2004. hard work: remaking the american labor movement. berkeley, ca: university of california press. robinson, ian. 2000. "neoliberal restructuring and u.s. unions: towards social movement unionism?"." critical sociology 26 (1-2): 109-138. seiu healthcare pennsylvania. 2016. "forward together 2016 annual report." seiu. n.d. . the union advantage. http://www.seiu.org/cards/5-good-reasonsto-unite-at-work/the-union-advantage-is-substantial/p2. — n.d. working together, union members have the strength. . http://www.seiu.org/cards/5-good-reasons-to-unite-at-work. sherman, rachel, and kim voss. 2000. "breaking the iron law of oligarchy: union revitalization in the american labor movement." american journal of sociology 106 (2): 303-349. singh, sonia. 2016. b&h workers train to win . june 8. (http://www.labornotes.org/2016/06/bh-workers-train-win). smucker, jonathan matthew. 2016. hegemony how to: a roadmap for radicals. oakland, ca: ak press. u.s. bureau of labor statistics. 2017. economic news release employment situation summary. august 4. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm. u.s. bureau of labor statistics. 2019. economic news release union members summary. u.s. department of labor. — 2015. monthly labor review. december. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/occupational-employmentprojections-to-2024.htm . building justice in the american labour movement | 133 warren, dorian. 2010. "the american labor movement in the age of obama: the challenges and opportunities of a racialized political economy." perspectives on politics 8 (3): 847-860. williams, h. howell. 2018. "from family values to religious freedom: conservative discourse and the politics of gay rights." new political science . woodly, deva. 2018. "the importance of public meaning for political persuasion." perspectives on politics 22-35. — 2015. the politics of common sense . new york: oxford university press . young, iris. 1990. justice and the politics of difference . princeton, nj: princeton university press. zahn, max. 2016. in these times. may 2. accessed september 10, 2017. http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/19094/fight-for-15-unionminimum-wage-seiu. 134 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life www.alternateroutes.ca twitter: @arjcsr alternate routes: a journal of critical social research vol. 30, issue 2 2019 in 2019, the international labour organization celebrated its 100th anniversary. the ilo used the occasion to renew calls for improved opportunities and working conditions, social protections and collective bargaining rights. there is a vast gap between this call for living wages and fundamental rights, and the reality most workers face in the workplace. for decades, employers have been attempting to increase profit margins by re-organizing work through the use of subcontracting, offshoring, converting full-time jobs to part-time and temporary, and reclassifying direct employees as independent contractors. in addition to employer-led demands for concessions, state power has often supported these measures by introducing anti-labour reforms: at times imposing austerity from above or leading the charge from below, and at other times creating the conditions for capital to lead an assault against working class institutions built up over generations. although liberal democratic capitalism is losing legitimacy, what comes next may be a form of right-wing populism supported by nationalist politicians and movements looking to close borders and blame immigrants and trade for economic insecurity. will unions look to protectionism or internationalism? will working class movements be able to unite across borders to radically shift the balance of class power relations? alternate routesar “in an era in which ‘progressive neoliberalism’ has frayed, reactionary populism is on the rise and climate breakdown is visibly accelerating, activists and activist-scholars need the insightful and penetrating analyses that alternate routes provides – if we are to understand and change our troubled world.” ~ william k. carroll, professor of sociology, university of victoria, and author (with j.p. sapinsky) of organizing the 1%: how corporate power works “alternate routes once again proves itself an invaluable resource to scholars and activists working to secure a more just world...[t]he authors in this issue push our thinking in precisely the right direction -namely, toward a working class politics that extends across workplaces, across communities, and across borders.” ~ kafui ablode attoh, city university of new york, school of labor and urban studies “[alternate routes is] one of the first and longest-lasting responses to the stifling effects of traditional academic journal publication practices in the social sciences.” ~ research resources for the social sciences alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review breaking free of neoliberalism: canada’s challenge: what it will take to deal with american decline inequality and the climate crisis, by alex himelfarb. toronto: james lorimer and company, ltd. isbn: 978-1-4594-1947-6. pages: 1-240. reviewed by matt fodor1 “perhaps if we understand how we got here, we will be in better shape to find our way out. what is it about how we have organized ourselves that has so divided us, that has led so many to think that the best we can hope for is to slow the decline or to focus on protecting ourselves and those closest to us from its consequences?” (14). this is the question alex himelfarb seeks to answer in his timely book, breaking free of neoliberalism: canada’s challenge. it begins from the premise that “ideas matter – the ideas the elites hold about how to govern and the ideas we all hold about what’s desirable and what’s possible – and that these ideas took a dramatic turn over the 1980s and 1990s” (14). since that time, neoliberalism has become the dominant ideology and the main barrier to overcoming great challenges such as climate change, growing inequality, the declining state of democracy, and the erosion of solidarity. the book chronicles “the development of neoliberalism from philosophy to political project to a political order that has shaped public policy and penetrated our common sense” (16). hence neoliberalism is not only a set of ideas and policies such as lower taxes, deregulation, privatization and free trade, but “most important and least visible, it is a way of thinking about ourselves and our relationships to one another, the state, and the future” (22). himelfarb comes to the subject from an interesting vantage point as “a complicit insider and an interested outsider” (10). a sociology professor before entering the civil service in the 1980s, himelfarb served in several senior roles before being appointed clerk of the privy council and secretary to the cabinet in 2002, serving prime ministers jean chrétien, paul martin, and (briefly, during the transition) stephen harper. having been in the federal government during the transition, himelfarb reflects: “i don’t think…[we] truly understood how profound the changes we were experiencing and helping to usher in…it’s hard to see revolutionary change when you are in the middle of it, part of it, complicit in it” (15). since retiring from government service, himelfarb has been a prominent progressive voice and critic of the dominant neoliberal ideology. he coedited the book tax is not a fourletter word (2014) and currently serves as chair of the steering committee of the canadian centre for policy alternatives. breaking free of neoliberalism , however, is not an insider account; instead, it draws from public sources informed by personal impressions of the public service. 1 matt fodor is a writer, political strategist and phd candidate in political science at york university. his research areas are comparative politics and canadian politics with a special interest in social democracy. www.alternateroutes.ca 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research breaking free of neoliberalism is comprised of eight chapters. the first four chapters chronicle neoliberalism’s journey from political philosophy to political project to political order, and how neoliberalism took hold in canada. the latter four chapters look at the persistence of neoliberalism since the 2008 economic crisis, neoliberalism’s cultural impact, and the possibility of a progressive alternative. neoliberalism can be traced to friedrich hayek and other thinkers in the 1940s who sought to combat social democracy, keynesian economics and the welfare state. neoliberals sought a state that protected the market and was insulated from democratic demands that promoted economic equality. it soon attracted the support of wealthy business interests who sought to overturn the postwar consensus. the end of the postwar boom in the mid-1970s created an opportunity to forge a new consensus. margaret thatcher and ronald reagan were the first world leaders to embrace neoliberalism. but neoliberalism was truly consolidated as a political order in the 1990s when centre-left and social democratic parties underwent a transformation known as the third way, a governing philosophy embraced by bill clinton and tony blair. the third way promoted inclusion and the lifting of the bottom but was more accepting of inequality than traditional social democracy. like thatcher and reagan before them, clinton and blair accepted the neoliberal premise of “organizing ourselves around competition in the market, focusing the state on protecting the market and insulating the market from the democratic urge to equality and solidarity” (91). neoliberalism now seemed inevitable; while partisan differences still existed, electoral choices were narrowed to different variations of neoliberalism. himelfarb then chronicles the history of neoliberalism in canada over a three decade period, covering the governments of brian mulroney, jean chrétien, paul martin and stephen harper. mulroney led the first neoliberal federal government, which lifted restrictions on foreign investment, made the tax system less progressive, privatized crown corporations, cut social programs. most crucially, mulroney negotiated the canada-u.s. free trade agreement, which more deeply integrated canada into the american economy and over time led to the harmonization of tax and social policies. “it’s hard to get a handle on the chrétien-martin years,” himelfarb concedes, “no doubt in part because i played some part as a nonpartisan advisor to both and therefore am inevitably complicit in the policies i am describing” (106-107). nonetheless, himelfarb is highly critical of the government he served in further extending neoliberalism in canada. the chrétien liberals pursued a third way approach of fiscal prudence, low taxes and investments in human capital and the knowledge economy (chrétien was among the world leaders who took part in the meetings of the progressive governance network of third way leaders; himelfarb served as advisor to the prime minister at these meetings). free trade was taken as a given, beginning with the ratification of nafta in 1994. www.alternateroutes.ca 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the 1995 budget slayed the deficit in two years, but it came at the expense of large cuts to vital services, further constraints on federal spending, and a reduced federal role in social policy. in 2000, the liberals implemented significant income and corporate tax cuts. while the tax and program cuts stopped after 2000 and the liberals moved in a more progressive direction (a period coinciding with himelfarb’s tenure as clerk), the fiscal anchors remained in place. harper then brought a more unapologetic and ideologically conservative neoliberalism. the kelowna accord with indigenous peoples and the childcare agreements with provinces that were negotiated during martin’s minority government were torn up. for himelfarb, harper’s decision to cut taxes – including a two-point cut to the gst, as well as income and corporate tax cuts – is particularly illustrative. unlike his predecessors, who could justify austerity and program cuts in order to balance the budget, harper faced a surplus situation. the tax cuts were a solution to the “problem of too much money to spend.” the gst cut resulted in $15 billion in lost revenue. the impact of all the tax cuts “was to eliminate the surplus, seriously restrain the possibility of any new possibility of any new federal programs or investments, and eliminate any cushion for the bad times which, in turns out, were just around the corner” (124-125). two other key components of the harper regime were punitive anticrime measures and unwavering support for the petroleum sector. neoliberalism has not delivered growth and broadly shared prosperity, but instead unprecedented corporate wealth and power, and a dramatic increase in inequality. its credibility took a hit in the 2008 global financial crisis, but neoliberal governance continued. in the u.s., barack obama promised “hope and change” but was more of a conventional politician than many of his supporters initially believed and surrounded himself with advisors steeped in neoliberalism. american politics then took a darker turn with the election of donald trump, who represents not a break from neoliberalism but rather an authoritarian variation of it (the recent u.s. election confirmed trump’s dominance of the u.s. political scene). in canada, justin trudeau promised “real change” from the harper years and has led the most activist government in decades. nonetheless, himelfarb maintains, trudeau “was still colouring within the neoliberal lines” (154). trudeau did increase taxes on the wealthy (though this was offset by the ‘middle class’ tax cut), increased income supports for children and signed childcare agreements with the provinces. but the trudeau government’s climate action plan remained heavily dependent on market mechanisms, and the dental plan implemented with the support of the ndp is means-tested, in line with neoliberalism’s preference for targeted rather than universal programs. when the pandemic struck in 2020, “it seemed that covid-19 might do what even the financial meltdown and climate change had not: make clear what needs changing and even convince us that big change is possible” (162). governments around the world provided essential supports to workers and businesses and spoke about ‘building back better.’ but regrettably, decades of declining trust, neoliberal ideology, and the isolation of the pandemic www.alternateroutes.ca 4 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research “created the perfect conditions for misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories…we could find whatever truth we were looking for online, whatever ‘proof’ or ‘expert’ that might confirm our biases or feed our hunger for certainty” (165). (himelfarb chaired a panel on science and health misinformation for the council of canadian academies). the disconnect between citizens and government and politics has widened and politics has taken a sharp turn to the right. the 2024 budget, himelfarb notes, included some progressive measures on housing, pharmacare and the closing of some tax loopholes, but the rhetoric was not backed up by the necessary taxation and spending. predictably, it was attacked by the conservatives and the business community as ‘tax and spend’ and too focused on social priorities rather than economic productivity, while generating little enthusiasm with progressives. political choices seem to be limited to progressive incrementalism or something far worse. himelfarb makes the insightful point that while most critical analyses of neoliberalism view it as a political project-turned-political order, it is also very much a cultural project; as gramsci argued, a political order requires language to infiltrate our “common sense” and everyday thinking. crucially, neoliberalism has made all of us doubt the value or utility of acting collectively. “breaking out of the age of neoliberalism,” himelfarb writes in the concluding chapter, “means breaking free of neoliberal common sense” (207). in terms of an alternative to neoliberalism, there is no blueprint, and a top-down approach is neither feasible, nor desirable. himelfarb takes inspiration from the presidential campaigns of bernie sanders, which offered an ambitious agenda and pointed a possible way to a post-neoliberal world, and social movements such as the leap manifesto and the forward together moral movement which see the crises we face as interwoven and tackle questions of class, power, and democracy. crucially, what is needed is a new solidarity and to “rediscover the emancipatory power of collective action” (219). breaking free from neoliberalism provides an insightful analysis of how neoliberalism emerged and its continued grip on politics and discourse, presented from the unique perspective of a practitioner who participated in its development and has since critically reflected on its impact. it picks up from the work of those who have chronicled the development of neoliberalism in canada such as william carroll, william little and jim stanford and brings the analysis up to the present period; it also follows in the path of those of those, such as the american political theorist wendy brown, who have written on neoliberalism’s impact on the political imagination. himelfarb’s breaking free of neoliberalism is a clarion call for the rejection of neoliberalism and its impoverished conception of freedom as the freedom to compete and consume and a renewed focus on solidarity and the common good. written in an accessible, conversational manner, it is of interest to general readers who wish to understand our current malaise as well as students of canadian politics. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review the rowell-sirois commission and the remaking of canadian federalism by robert wardhaugh and barry ferguson. vancouver: university of british columbia press, 2021. $45.00 cdn, hardcover. isbn 978-0-7768-6501-2. pages ix-xiii, 1-411. reviewed by robert marshall1 “a royal commission is an arm of government and should not be used to destroy the body that created it.” mackenzie king, 21 december 1937. – wardhaugh and ferguson, 2021, p. 115 authored by robert wardhaugh and barry ferguson, professors of history respectively at western university and the university of manitoba, and with the subtitle “the remaking of canadian federalism”, one might mistakenly think that this might yet again be another ‘dusty old tome’ on the machinations of federal-provincial relations and fiscal federalism. in reality, it is a fascinating investigation into what would turn out to be a pivotal moment in canadian history that would foreshadow a significant restructuring of the roles of the federal and provincial states in canada; and the institutional impact of a commission of inquiry during a period of the crisis of monopoly capitalism as the country transitioned from a largely rural agricultural nation to one that was increasingly becoming more urban and industrial. one might also mistakenly think that when a government appoints a commission of inquiry, they are in fact trying to “shunt off” to the sidelines a problematic issue so as not to address it directly themselves but at the same time appear to be actively engaged with it. and while there are degrees of truth to both these statements, regarding commissions of inquiry they can in fact have a significant impact on public policy, the role of the state, and by extension the lives of canadians – depending on their findings and recommendations. for example, gregory inwood (2004, 2014) has demonstrated this. as many long-standing left nationalists may recall, the fight over a free trade agreement with the united states was presaged by donald mcdonald, who in 1982, while heading the royal commission on the economic union and development prospects for canada, stated that canada needed to, in his words, take a ‘leap of faith’ and sign a free trade deal with the united states. for his reflections on this, see macdonald, 1991. the implications of the mcdonald commission for the canadian economy, the labour market, the powers of federal and provincial governments, questions on canadian sovereignty and other intersections in society were quite significant and have in fact been long lasting. more recently, canadians have witnessed the 2015 indian residential school truth and reconciliation commission chaired by former judge and senator murray sinclair. when the commission wrote that the impact of residential schools amounted to cultural genocide, a much needed and long delayed conversation emerged about canada’s historical relationship with the indigenous population. 1 robert marshall is a lecturer in the department of politics and public administration, toronto metropolitan university. email: rmarshal@ryerson.ca mailto:rmarshal@ryerson.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research when wardhaugh and ferguson posed the question why write a book on a canadian royal commission established in the 1930s, they deftly answered it themselves by noting that “some commissions…are called at critical junctures in a nation’s or a province’s history to deal with essential matters of state” (pg. 3). so when canada, alongside the rest of the world, faced a dire economic crisis in the 1920s and 1930s, alongside an environmental crisis and the threat of municipal and provincial bankruptcy, the federal government of mackenzie king faced growing calls to take immediate action by establishing an inquiry into the financial arrangements and constitutional powers that were embedded in the 1867 british north american act. the act not only established the broad perimeters of federal-provincial relations, it divided revenue raising and spending powers between levels of government. and, as any student of the canadian political regime should know, it assigned to the federal government significant taxing powers while at the same time assigning to the provinces the responsibility of delivering social and relief programmes. the needs of the 20th century were not being met by a constitution created in the 19th century. when faced with these dual crises, federalism, as shaped by the 1867 constitution, failed ordinary canadians. the constitutional division of powers had been subject to debate and dissention almost as soon as the ink on the1867 bna act itself was drying, as evidenced by the provincial rights movement of the 1880s led by the premiers of ontario and quebec, oliver mowat and honoré mercier respectively; the impact of decisions made by the judicial committee of the privy council based in london england; and the lack of a constitutional amending formula. despite all of this, no significant steps had been taken to redress multiple grievances. facing a reluctant federal government embodied by the cautiousness of liberal prime minister mackenzie king (whom the authors refer to as ‘crafty’), the maritime and prairie provinces, in particular, pushed hard for the federal government to take concrete steps to correct the fiscal imbalance by establishing an inquiry into it. building on findings from earlier federal and provincial commissions which looked at a diverse range of issues – from maritime freight rates to national finance – and reports generated by the newly minted bank of canada, it was only after powerful senior federal civil servant o.d. skelton conveyed to the prime minister that “the disintegration of canada is proceeding fast” (pg.5) did king grasp the seriousness of what was being demanded and the federal government succumbed to the pressure and appointed a royal commission on 14 august 1937 [p.c. 1908]. at the heart of the book is a detailed examination of the commission’s formation, operation and recommendations. led by ontario’s chief justice newton rowell and quebec notary joseph sirois (a replacement for supreme court of canada justice thibaudeau rinfret, who fell ill before the commission got underway), it also included the influential editor of the winnipeg free press, j. w. dafoe, as well as the university of british columbia’s henry angus and dalhousie university’s robert mackay. the later two’s presence would guarantee that the social sciences would play a key role by providing reinterpretations of canadian economic and political history the commission also included future prime minister louis st. laurent who was hired as the commission’s french-language lawyer. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the authors draw upon archival materials and evidence including all the relevant documents from the commission itself which included four hundred written presentations and over nine thousand pages of transcripts, background notes and personal observations from key federal civil servants, briefings prepared by the provincial governments and other witnesses, excerpts from mackenzie king’s diary, the private correspondence of commissioners and staff, alongside secondary literature. at times doted with gossipy little tidbits – an exiled former german chancellor heinrich bruning teaching at harvard university was the only witness allowed to smoke during his presentation; one member of the commission called halifax’s main thoroughfare “shoddy”; king noting in his diary that he wished that ontario premier mitch hepburn were dead (“i don’t often wish that a man should pass away, but i believe that it would be the most fortunate thing that could happen at this time,” pg. 235) the authors construct an interesting and insightful description of rowell-sirois’ work. the commission was working not only against the backdrop of a global economic crisis, but also against an approaching war in europe; and significantly, a ‘radical’ rethinking of traditional monetary policy (the bank of england view which was based on a belief of ‘careful budgeting and managing expenditures’); as well as the impact of new ideas generated by individuals such as the director of social research at mcgill university leonard marsh and economists such as john maynard keynes and gunnar myrdal. the old view of succumbing to the vagaries of the marketplace were slowly being challenged by a new approach to economic thinking the full impacts of which would be delayed, and yet at the same time compelled forward, by the second world war. publishing their final 3 volume report in 1940 with numerous background research studies, the commission recommended, amongst other things, the creation of equalization payments as well as an increased federal responsibility for unemployment insurance and public pensions. the commissioners avoided calling for formal constitutional change, instead proposing that the federal and provincial governments engage in voluntary agreements which would delegate or jointly administer functions. a january 1941 dominion-provincial conference on the commission’s proposals would dissolve into acrimony and abandonment, much to prime minister king’s relief as the authors noted. in the short run, the report would lead to a constitutional amendment, enacted in 1940, which transferred jurisdiction over unemployment insurance from the provinces to the federal government. (s.91, 2a). but the longer-term impact would be felt over the next few decades as a welfare state would be slowly constructed during a period of co-operative federalism. equalization would become a key stone of contemporary fiscal federalism, and a series of funding agreements, such as the canada assistance plan, would be reached with the provinces. indeed, it would not be inaccurate to suggest that the commission’s report would serve as a ‘touchstone’ for the restructuring of federal and provincial governments; and not only the very nature of federalism itself but the purpose of the contemporary state. as the author’s suggested, “…rowell-sirois was the ‘culmination of a new liberalism’ which embedded a ‘positive’ role for the state in building infrastructure and establishing social insurance programs….” (pg. 264). and, noting its lasting impact “…it served as a set of principals and a source of policy ideas about federalism that would define an era and guide a generation” (pg. 267). www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 4 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research as concluded by the authors in the final paragraph in the book: “the commissioners articulated a vision of federalism far removed from the nineteenth-century model they were called upon to renovate and they rose above the conventional views of their time. their original instructions were to tinker with the federation, the machinery of government, but their recommendations were nothing less than to remake canadian federalism into a system designed to provide the “maximum welfare” of all its citizens” (pg. 303). books will find different audiences depending on their readers’ own interests. as a political economist with a deep and abiding interest in state theorization, i was most interested in learning how the commission, alongside its findings and recommendations, influenced the restructuring of the state in canada. while not overtly evident, i thought sub-textually that the book was a study of institutional state theorization and, as such, it may be of interest to students of state theory. embedded in the concept of path dependency, institutionalism has struggled with explaining how in fact change occurs and not defaulting to an argument of institutional rigidity. perhaps less overt, there is a quality of exploring historical and discursive institutionalism throughout the book that i found appealing. for me, then, the strength of it in this regard is that a reasoned and thoughtful explanation was proffered on the economic, historical and political forces that contributed to the evolution of the foundational institution of federalism in canada. finally, this book also reminds us that the very real challenge of governing canada is not new; and that struggles between federal and provincial governments have long been a part of our history and remain so as united conservative party leadership hopeful daniella smith’s proposed sovereignty act demonstrates. the legislation would give the albertan government the power to ignore federal laws and court rulings deemed not in the province’s interests. plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. references: inwood, gregory j. continentalizing canada: the politics and legacy of the macdonald royal commission. toronto: utp, 2004 inwood, gregory j. et al eds., commissions of inquiry and policy change: a comparative analysis. toronto: upt, 2014. macdonald, donald “a leap of faith: the canadian decision for free trade.” american review of canadian studies vol. 21, nos 2-3 (summer/autumn, 1991): 155-161. wardhaugh, robert and barry ferguson “thinking confederation. st-laurent and the rowell-sirois commission.” in patrice dutil ed., the unexpected louis st-laurent. vancouver: university of british columbia press, 2020, pp. 133-155. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review the robotic imaginary: the human & the price of dehumanized labor by jennifer rhee, minneapolis: minnesota university press, 2018. $27.00, softcover, isbn: 978-1-5179-0298-8. pages 1 – 226. reviewed by josh grant-young1 what does it mean to be ‘staying with’ the human in an age of growing artificial intelligence? when all manner of fields (posthumanism, the ‘nonhuman turn’, and other challengers) for suggest the human remains “one of our elastic fictions” (per diana fuss), is there a danger in jettisoning such fictions – ones with “incredible ideological force” with “very real material effects” for various excluded groups (in terms of privilege, right, safety and other considerations)? jennifer rhee’s work suggests that despite the ‘bagginess’ of the human, there is a fundamental need to attend to the discourses, privileges and exploitative conditions wrapped up in the human – ones often forgot in the desire to move ‘beyond the human’ (per zakiyyah ima jackson) and put such an idea to rest (2-3). in short, to imagine ‘beyond the human’ or to conceive of new relations with a.i. requires, rather than mere speculative steps into the dark, a concerted effort to remain with the human and the various troubles associated with care, feeling, thinking and death found within the human and bound up in a.i.’s very history. rhee’s the robotic imaginary: the human & the price of dehumanized labor (2018) is as much a cautionary tale of desires to take that speculative step beyond the human and capitalism without attending to past and present as it is a compelling account of the dehumanized among us who we (in seeking such an exit) continue to forget. while tarrying with the human, rhee’s the robotic imaginary also explores various controversial and informative links between the cultural robots of science fiction (film, literature, art) and the reality of artificial intelligence and labor, presenting an intriguing account of their coconstitution. the human and the dehumanized, for rhee, has considerable truck in conversations about the anthropomorphized robot (paradoxically modelled after the human and not human). rhee employs the term ‘robotic imaginary’ to consider the various “inscriptions of humanness and dehumanizing erasures” wrought within the very form of the robot, providing readers with an impressive survey of speculative fiction and stark reality (4-5). rhee’s foreword hammers the matter of dehumanization home, drawing on ezzaldeen tuaiman’s experience of the increased drone warfare (which took the life of his father and older brother) perpetuated by the united states military drone program and operators accounts of the ‘ants’, ‘black blobs on a screen’ and ‘fun-sized terrorists’ they were targeting. at the heart of these gut-wrenching statements, and tuaiman’s fear that his death is impending, is rhee’s contention that the labor of such operators is “embedded in the history of robotics and its various inscriptions and erasures of the human” – the latter quite evident in the book’s later discussions of drone warfare in the section “dying” (1). the robotic imaginary is organized into several parts, shaped by various ‘anthropomorphic paradigms’ which “centrally organizes robotics research” in relation to the notion of devalued or 1 ph.d. candidate at the university of guelph, canada. email: jgrantyo@uoguelph.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research dehumanized labor (24). each section – “caring”, “thinking”, “feeling” and “dying” – explores one facet of a.i. in relation to these paradigms, revealing crucial insights along the way. “caring”, the first chapter of the robotic imaginary, argues convincingly that a.i. and care labor – “a feminized and routinely undervalued form of labor” (31) – has always been (per rhee) wrapped up in the history of a.i. drawing on joseph weizenbaum’s rogerian therapist a.i. named eliza, the character helen in richard power’s novel galatea 2.2, samantha in the spike jonze film her, and art installations featuring a.i., rhee explores how alan turing’s foundational essay “computing machinery and intelligence” sets the pace for care work to be a crucial part of a.i. labor (with care labour being an undervalued and unwaged one under capitalism). “caring”, as a chapter, is a profoundly rich one, allowing readers to re-evaluate their conceptions of care politics, labor and the affectual considerations that come with care itself. “thinking” takes aim at domestic labor and closed worlds with aid from fictional works like the stepford wives and (an admittedly less developed but still intriguing engagement with) ex machina, investigating the dual issues of dehumanization in the domestic sphere and ‘mindless’ labor of real and fictive domestic robots. in an answer to these confining parameters for the human and robotic, rhee explores robotic embodiment through art installations which highlight both corporeal vulnerability and the need to enact, not merely theorize, more open worlds (99-100). “feeling” tackles the theme of emotional labor – a form of labor forged by normative assumptions (via expression) which determine ‘humanness’, power relations and various ‘claims to universality’. whose emotions, in this discourse, are legible, appropriate, and valued? rhee examines how in the 1990’s, a ‘turn’ towards emotions as a defining quality of the human experience (counter to the enlightenment’s insistence on reason) arises in tandem with the development of machines who communicate with humans via emotional expression – termed ‘sociable robots’. such sociable robots, at this juncture an unsurprising revelation for readers, are manifested with the intention to serve in care labor professions (education, care for the elderly, healthcare) alongside human companions. rhee guides the reader through two science fiction tales of philip k. dick, social robots built at the mit media lab, and provides a thoughtful series of reflections on emotional labour, shame, and the value of emotions. “dying” presents the bleakest vision of dehumanization within the robotic imaginary. within, rhee tends to both the racialized and gendered humans who are eradicated with extreme prejudice and the operators of the drones who perform this labor – ones whose humanity is compromised in the execution of their orders. contrasting the digital projects seven short stories about drones, dronestagram and #notabugsplat, rhee draws the reader into a powerful meditation on ethics, dehumanization, colonialism and orientalism, and dis-identification, pushing readers to not only question the vantage of the drone, but their own ethical position in this discourse. the codas which follow each chapter, along with the epilogue of the robotic imaginary, present the reader with various visions of the human which works against both the overdetermined normative values of the human and the desire to ‘go beyond’ the human. presenting readers with thoughtful theoretic and artistic renderings of the complex relation of a.i. and the human (via www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research installation art), themes like corporeal vulnerability, grief, fragility and encounters with the unknown help rhee inquire as to how one might work to overcome the present robot imaginary. rhee’s the robotic imaginary is a welcome addition to a.i. scholarship, offering an interdisciplinary and wide-ranging cultural and political exploration of the complexities of labor as a primary site of dehumanization via the robotic imaginary. scholars of a.i. seeking a fruitful account of the various ethical challenges entangled in the history, present and future of a.i. and its implications for the ‘human. the inclusion of various pop-culture and artistic content further expands the readership of the robotic imaginary – making it an accessible and important text for popular audiences curious about a.i. as well. in sum, such a work demands we look to the very circuits and seemingly closed systems of thought which dominate our concepts and see how we might re-wire, rather than hardwire our visions of the future. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research review essay building the commune: radical democracy in venezuela, by george ciccariello-maher. new york: verso, 2016. $20.95 u.s., paper. isbn: 9781784782238. decolonizing dialectics, by george ciccariello-maher. durham, nc: duke university press, 2017. $23.95, paper. isbn: 978-0-8223-6243-2. reviewed by colin mooers1 “on may 20th, 2018” an opinion piece in the globe and mail (rosales 2018) lamented, venezuelans “are poised to re-elect president nicholas maduro to another six-year term.” were this to occur, it would confirm a long-standing pattern stretching back nearly twenty years, in which popular left-wing governments have been consistently re-elected, if occasionally by slim margins. in gubernatorial elections held in october 2017, the united socialist party of venezuela (psuv) managed to win seventeen of twenty-three states, despite a deepening economic crisis which has shredded working class living standards and a ferocious anti-government campaign by opposition parties, the international media, various right-wing foundations and the u.s. state department. “chavismo,” named after the late hugo chavez, who held the presidency from 1999 until his death in 2013, has proven remarkably resilient. why have the venezuelan people so consistently voted for the party of chavez? according to the author quoted above, the only plausible answer is that “the current crisis has been used as an opportunity to manipulate the poorest people’s needs for political support and discipline” (rosales 2018). one need not be an apologist for the maduro regime, nor deny the real hardships being suffered by the popular sectors of venezuelan society, to recognize how threadbare such denunciations have become. as one pro-government demonstrator recently observed, “it’s a lie that they fire you if you don’t show up. the vast majority of people are here of their own volition. even if they were coerced to attend, who says they have to be so enthusiastic?” (quoted in koerner 2018). it is simply an insult to portray the venezuelan people as the passive pawns of the maduro government. no other country in latin america has witnessed the sheer combativeness and sustained popular insurgency as in venezuela. the revolt against the old oligarchic regime began nearly thirty years ago – ten years before chavez was elected president – in the great revolt of 1989, popularly known as the caracazo – “the explosion in caracas.” as george ciccariello-maher observes in his short and informative book, building the commune: radical democracy in venezuela (verso, 2016), “the caracazo marked the first of a series of latin american rebellions against the spread of neoliberal economic reforms that would see presidents deposed and political parties collapse across the continent” (2). in the 1980’s the same movements that “made chavez” had also established neighbourhood assemblies in various parts of the country to discuss local issues and revolutionary strategy at the national level. it was out this ferment that the first national network of communeros and communeras was born. so, even though the chavez government formally recognized and encouraged the expansion communal movement in law in 2006, the 45 1 colin mooers is professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. email: cmooers@politics.ryerson.ca mailto:cmooers@politics.ryerson.ca www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research 000 communal councils and 1500 communes that exist today are the product of decades of popular struggle from below. the communes take a myriad of forms – from government owned to those directly owned and managed by the commune. in the latter case, communal selfmanagement anticipates a version of direct, participatory democracy, which in the minds of many communeros has become the measure of progress to socialism. in 2014, the movement established a national coordinating structure intended to defend gains already made and to push the movement forward. as ciccariello-maher stresses, “the communes embody both the present and the future of the bolivarian process: with the commune, so goes the revolution” (28). in the countryside, it is easy to measure the success of the communes. over a decade, ten million acres have been distributed to small farmers from public lands or lands deemed idle. the redistribution has benefited over a million campesinos or half the rural population. the el maizal commune has brought two-thousand acres under communal control. moreover, it has shown that autonomous self-managed production of corn, coffee and milk can be more efficient than private production: state officials have confirmed that el maizal’s productivity per acres is twice the national average (91). ironically, el maizal’s success has also garnered it enemies within the government who, jealous of its financial autonomy, have attempted to undermine its achievements. as angel prado of el maizal bitterly comments, “we communeros share very little with the governing party” (92). despite these tensions, ciccariello-maher argues, the uneasy alliance between the state and the communes remains essential given the relentless hostility of large landowners and agribusiness interests. the gradual consolidation of a national network of communes means that “we can begin to glimpse the emergence of a new communal state from below, just as the presidential council has begun to consolidate relations between the communes and the bolivarian government from above” (99). in venezuela, ninety-percent of the population live in cities. this means that, while most productive communes are located in rural areas, communal organization has begun to colonize urban centres as well. the 2002 land law allowed poor urban dwellers in the great barrios that encircle most cities to claim title to land they had built on already or on unoccupied land. by 2016, nearly one million families had established ownership rights to urban lands through the land committees. despite these gains, there exist real tensions within the urban collectives. many are both armed to defend against crime and police repression and fiercely independent while others have drawn closer to the state through access to government funds. some see the collectives as the bedrock of the bolivarian project, constantly pressuring the government in a more radical direction, others remain suspicious of them as vectors of corruption and violence . in his final speech, “golpe de timon” (turn of the rudder), hugo chavez declared that the future of the bolivarian project would be decided by la comuna o nada, the commune or nothing. ciccariello-maher acknowledges that the political, cultural, and institutional obstacles facing the communes are immense: economic crisis, inflation, shortages, hostility from both the state and from the still dominant private sector. ciccariello-maher believes that the situation of dual-power which now exists in venezuela cannot hold indefinitely. “as time runs out,” he declares, “the future rushes to greet us …the time has come to bet it all on the communes” (134). www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research overcoming the structural and political obstacles to revolution is one of the central themes of ciccariello-maher’s other recent and more theoretical book, decolonizing dialectics (duke university press, 2017). drawing on the work of georges sorel, franz fanon, and radical mexican political theorist enrigue dussel, ciccariello-maher wants to rescue dialectical theory by grounding it in the problematics of race, nation, class and ‘the people’ in the colonial and postcolonial world. at the heart of ciccariello-maher’s argument for a de-colonized dialectics is an anti-determinist conception of dialectics based on social rupture and combat – “leaps, leaps, leaps” (14) – in which the constraints of both capitalism and colonialism are blasted apart through the conscious, sometimes violent, intervention of the oppressed and exploited (49). ciccariello-maher rightly argues that orthodox marxism, long-influenced by the legacy of stalinism, saw race, gender, and culture as secondary to class and the economically determined ‘stages’ of capitalist development. on this view, colonialism, including the slave trade, was conceived in narrowly economic terms; colonial conquest was about access to territory, resources and cheap labour to feed the engines of european capitalism. which it was. but it was also about much more when examined from the standpoint the subjects of colonialism. for ciccariello-maher, the history of colonialism demands “a radicalized dialectics” to “begin to think race, class and the nation anew” (49). fanon, for example, struggled to reconcile race and class in the colonial context. he rejected the class reductionism of those like jean-paul sartre, who prematurely enclosed “race within a predetermined dialectics of class” (66), and remained suspicious of essentialist notions of both black identity and nationalism. instead, he argued for a non-essentialist concept of race as “co-determined by class” (87). what remained unresolved in fanon’s thought was how such ‘co-determination’ was capable of generating the kind revolutionary consciousness required for a decisive break with both anti-colonial nationalism and capitalism. for enrique dussel, the flaw in traditional dialectics lies precisely in the belief that there exists an internal logic of class or race under capitalism that propels them toward revolutionary transformation. according to dussel, the marxist concept of “totality is inherently a colonial concept … openly hostile to alterity and difference” (dussel, quoted in ciccariello-maher 2017: 109). even those, like marcuse, adorno and bloch, who eschewed the reductionist formulations of orthodox marxism, remain “naïve with respect to the positive criticality of the utopia of political exteriority of peripheral peoples, the workingclass woman, the oppressed youth and the dependent societies (dussel, quoted in ciccariello-maher 2017: 114) the only category capable of capturing and ‘stitching together’ the multiplicity of struggles around class, race, and nation is that of ‘the people’ (dussel, quoted in ciccariello-maher 2017: 103). while he disagrees with the weight dussel places on the concept of exteriority, as a kind of pure state of being beyond the strictures of capitalism – preferring the formulation “interiorityexteriority” – ciccariello-maher insists on the centrality of ‘the people’ as “a political project, to be projected as in a struggle against imperialism and capitalism” (120). what is important about dussel’s idea of ‘the people’ is that it “breaks with a narrowly marxist focus on economic exploitation and the working class as the revolutionary subject, providing a new conceptual framework to accommodate the analysis of colonial economic conditions found in mariategui, fanon and others” (130). ciccariello-maher is aware that ‘the people’ is not always a progressive www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 4 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research force, that it can be seized upon by reactionary forces. that is why, in his view, ‘el pueblo’ must be “fabricated, constructed mythically and drawn together into a combative unity” (137). the caracazo of 1989 embodied “a truly decolonized dialectics” by challenging both the exploitative relations of capitalism and the racialization of colonial bodies (141). the ongoing struggle in venezuela thus represents a new type of dialectics, no longer grounded in the outmoded concept of a unity of opposites but rather: a tense unity … multiplication of local dialectics in venezuela – popular, racial, gendered, class based – has also coincided with their progressive unification, stitched together in a combative tapestry, that, if singular, disintegrates outward toward the edges. (147) what to make of all of this? while there is much that is appealing and provocative in these arguments – especially ciccariello-maher’s insistence on a class-based understanding of ‘el pueblo’ – i am less convinced on two major conceptual points: first is the assumption that class, race, and nation have no internal structural basis of unity under conditions of capitalist colonialism; and second, that, therefore, an external political agent is required to ‘stitch together’ the apparently disparate ranks of the oppressed and exploited. it is always dangerous to generalize, as ciccariello-maher does, from the sins of reductionist versions of marxism to marxism in general. there are currents within both feminist and anti-racist marxism today that specifically reject the idea that capitalism can be understood in terms of class relations at the point of production. rather, they emphasize that capitalism is a system of ‘social reproduction’ whose scope encompasses gendered forms of labour and reproduction in the family, racialized divisions within the working class as well as the policing of black and brown bodies in the broader society. in other words, properly understood, capitalism is, in marx’s own words, an ‘ensemble of social relations’, in which specific forms oppression and exploitation are interwoven with each other. this suggests that the history of capitalism has been as much a process of differentiation as it has been one of homogenization; alterity and difference are as much constituent parts of its internal relations as the tendency to reduce everything to the commodify-form. a slightly more abstract way of putting this point would be to say that the dialectic of capitalism is constituted on the basis of a series of internal relations of identity and difference. in order to subjugate the colonial world, capitalism constructed a baroque ideology of race in which the colonized and enslaved were de-humanized, placed beyond the ambit of any enlightenment or religious conception of humanity. european capitalism certainly traded on similar racial tropes within its own borders. irish, southern, and eastern europeans were seen as inferior to northern, white europeans and therefore amenable to specific forms of racialized exploitation. colonialism generalized and intensified this system of racialized capitalism to entire continents and peoples. colonial bodies could be subjected to super-exploitation involving a variety of labour regimes because they were ontologically excluded from the european idea of humanity. but if we look closely at this exclusionary ontology we find that race, class, and gender were intricately interwoven such that each category was defined in terms of the others. as ann mcclintock observes: www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 5 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the rhetoric of race was used to invent distinctions between what we would now call classes … the rhetoric of gender was used to make increasingly refined distinctions among the races. the white race was figured as the male of the species and the black race as the female. similarly, the rhetoric of class was used to inscribe minute and subtle distinctions between other races. (mcclintock 1995: 54–55) a final point with regards to political agency. ciccariello-maher is no doubt correct in arguing that ‘el pueblo’ is a useful term for describing “a popular subject with a clear class content” (143). in most of latin america an immense portion of the population works in the informal sector, sometimes combining such labour with occasional work in the formal sector. women, indigenous groups, and youth form a disproportionate part of this highly unstable and precarious sector. while such groups fall outside the traditional definition of waged labour, their lives are tied by countless threads to the circuits of capital, from the products they sell in the marketplace to food and housing. class, race, and gender inequality is built into the fabric of daily existence for these sectors of ‘el pueblo’. the claim, however provocative, that an entirely new dialectics is required to make sense of these multiple forms of colonial oppression and exploitation, seems to me, misguided. equally problematic is the idea that class agency requires a force or will originating outside these social positions. since ciccariello-maher rejects the idea of internal structural determinants he is thrown back on the necessity of a “strictly political” mythos originating somewhere beyond the actual social positions inhabited by ‘el pueblo’. while the appeal of certain forms of voluntarism have become popular in recent years – in part due to the frustrating intransigence of capitalism globally – little is to be gained in solving the riddle of political agency by side-stepping the real constraints imposed by the structures of capitalism. but structures are also enabling of political agency and present in the daily battles and insurgent struggles that these two books so eloquently champion. references koerner, lucas. 2018. “will the venezuelan masses still stand with maduro at election time?” venezuelanalysis.com. february 26th, 2018. web. https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13681. viewed april 11th, 2018. mcclintock, ann. (1995). imperial leather: race, gender and sexuality in the colonial contest. abington-on-thames, uk: routledge. rosales, antulio. (2018). “weaponizing hunger is a new low for venezuelan president nicolas maduro.” the globe and mail. march 11, 2018. web. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-weaponizing-hunger-is-a-new-low-forvenezuelan-president-nicolas/. viewed april 12th, 2018. https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13681 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-weaponizing-hunger-is-a-new-low-for-venezuelan-president-nicolas/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-weaponizing-hunger-is-a-new-low-for-venezuelan-president-nicolas/ 108 | migration of bengalis to canada empowerment: intercultural activities in a community garden | 109 110 | migration of bengalis to canada empowerment: intercultural activities in a community garden | 111 112 | migration of bengalis to canada empowerment: intercultural activities in a community garden | 113 114 | migration of bengalis to canada empowerment: intercultural activities in a community garden | 115 • • • • • • • 116 | migration of bengalis to canada empowerment: intercultural activities in a community garden | 117 118 | migration of bengalis to canada empowerment: intercultural activities in a community garden | 119 120 | migration of bengalis to canada empowerment: intercultural activities in a community garden | 121 122 | migration of bengalis to canada empowerment: intercultural activities in a community garden | 123 124 | migration of bengalis to canada empowerment: intercultural activities in a community garden | 125 126 | migration of bengalis to canada http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/meeting-with-newcomers-aims-to-counter-stereotypes-of-indigenous-people-1.3423438 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/meeting-with-newcomers-aims-to-counter-stereotypes-of-indigenous-people-1.3423438 empowerment: intercultural activities in a community garden | 127 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/journalist-bridges-connection-between-refugees-and-indigenous-people-1.4115311 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/journalist-bridges-connection-between-refugees-and-indigenous-people-1.4115311 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2013.818957 128 | migration of bengalis to canada https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/news_attachments/english_annual_report-2015.pdf https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/news_attachments/english_annual_report-2015.pdf http://www.internal-displacement.org/assets/library/asia/bangladesh/pdf/bangladesh-overview-jul09.pdf http://www.internal-displacement.org/assets/library/asia/bangladesh/pdf/bangladesh-overview-jul09.pdf http://www.internal-displacement.org/assets/library/asia/bangladesh/pdf/bangladesh-overview-jul09.pdf http://www.southasianrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/status-of-minorities-bangladesh-2010.pdf http://www.southasianrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/status-of-minorities-bangladesh-2010.pdf empowerment: intercultural activities in a community garden | 129 https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.090292 http://www.ryerson.ca/content/dam/rcis/documents/rcis_wp_neborak_no_2013_8.pdf http://www.ryerson.ca/content/dam/rcis/documents/rcis_wp_neborak_no_2013_8.pdf 130 | migration of bengalis to canada https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353509105630 http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/5session_factsheet1.pdf http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/5session_factsheet1.pdf https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/265744.pdf challenges for internationally trained engineers in bc | 131 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 33, 36-55 (2023) pandemic capitalism and cities: work and inequality carlo fanelli1 and heather whiteside2 abstract: in this paper we explore how precarious work is being globalized across urban space. we tie the devaluation of labour to the growth of multi-scalar inequality through the covid-19 pandemic and in the context of urban austerity. we also seek to identify opportunities for rebuilding worker power through a radical anti-capitalist politics attuned to cities in crisis. we argued that this unevenness across multiple scales creates openings and possibilities for future resistance. keywords: pandemic; cities; austerity; urbanism; precarious work; inequality introduction before marx, much of the classical political economy tradition assumed private property and profits emanated from the act of buying cheap and selling dear. it so followed that poverty, dangerous work, malnutrition, ill-health and decaying housing appeared as either unrelated phenomena or worse, the result of individual pathologies, idleness or alleged cultural and religious backwardness. understood this way, the “dark satanic mills” of newly industrializing cities appeared as something inherently urban. for marx and engels, however, these dramatic urban upheavals were not unrelated tendencies but inextricably linked with the brutal historical process of separating people from the means of providing for themselves. in other words, for capitalism to become dominant, the economic self-sufficiency of feudal communities had to be destroyed. not only were market forces brought to the countryside, eliminating traditional rights and security, but the city of time immemorial was transformed too. the english enclosure movement turned formerly feudal lands into private property, transforming products like wool into cloth made in factories by a now landless proletariat and value-added commodities sold in trading ports to fuel british imperial domination (whiteside 2020). resistance was met with a series of state-sponsored disciplinary measures, including flogging, branding, and execution (perelman 2000). the need to instill market discipline, “civilize” workers, and stamp out indolence justified the harsh measures. private property and profits did not, as smith, ricardo and others contended, derive from age-old practices that gave rise to the division of labour and the industrial revolution, but rather by ‘the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the conquest and looting of the east indies, and the turning of africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, wherein capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt’ (marx [1867] 1977, chap. 31). in other words, urbanization and capitalist growth came to dominate on the backs of slave, peasant and proletarian immiseration. 1 carlo fanelli is assistant professor and coordinator of the work and labour studies program in the department of social science at york university. he is the author of from consent to coercion: the continuing assault on labour (with bryan evans, leo panitch and don swartz). email: fanelli@yorku.ca. this paper extends the arguments first raised in fanelli and whiteside, 2020; 2021. 2 heather whiteside is associate professor of political science at the university of waterloo and fellow at the balsillie school of international affairs. her books include: capitalist political economy; canadian political economy; and purchase for profit. email: h2whiteside@uwaterloo.ca 37 extreme wealth and poverty thus went hand-in-hand as once self-sufficient communities, now dispossessed, migrated to cities with nothing to sell but their labour power. as david harvey (2008) argues, “from their inception, cities have arisen through geographical and social concentrations of a surplus product. urbanization has always been, therefore, a class phenomenon, since surpluses are extracted from somewhere and from somebody, while the control over their disbursement typically lies in a few hands.” the wage relationship became a seemingly ‘voluntary’ affair as impersonal market forces both ensured and obscured working-class subordination to capital.3 although capitalist class relations give the unique impression that the labourer was a ‘free vendor of his labour-power’ (marx 1986: 194), market-dependence is an instituted compulsion: capital has a choice, labour does not. capital too faces an imperative: accumulation or crisis (harvey 1982). and with that we get an urban dynamic oriented to fostering growth in one moment, only to render it obsolete at another. in this paper we explore how precarious work is being globalized across urban space. we tie the devaluation of labour to the growth of multi-scalar inequality through the covid-19 pandemic and in the context of urban austerity. we also seek to identify opportunities for rebuilding worker power through a radical anti-capitalist politics attuned to cities in crisis. we argue that this unevenness across multiple scales creates openings and possibilities for future resistance. precarious work: global urban dimensions we are now, it is argued, in an age of ‘planetary urbanization’ with ‘the urban’ dominating contemporary politics and economics (brenner 2018). beyond the empirical reality that the global majority now lives in cities, deeper processes of capitalist crises and class inequalities related to global urbanization are upon us. indeed, the united nations (un) reports that crowded and connected cities were the early epicentre (2020) of the global pandemic: “the size of their [cities’] populations and their high level of global and local interconnectivity make them particularly vulnerable to the spread of the virus…covid-19 highlights the critical role local governments play as front-line responders in crisis response, recovery and rebuilding” (un 2020). likewise, the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) equally acknowledges that cities have been on the “frontline” of pandemic-related effects, and that local governments have mobilized the delivery of services and strategies for recovery despite the conundrum that “cities cannot fix the magnitude of the challenge on their own” (oecd 2020). the global financial crisis (gfc) of the previous decade launched a prolonged period of austerity that continues to play out in particularly urban ways. much needed investments in public transit, affordable housing, aging infrastructure and social services elude cities constrained by low taxation, interurban competition and an ongoing ideological commitment to neoliberalism. with the onset of the covid-19 pandemic (2020), national governments around the world intervened 3 the violent, historical process of ‘original accumulation’ set in motion a specifically capitalist urban dynamic whereby ‘the market’ (and the city) acquired a qualitatively new role in agrarian production relations, as direct producers were deprived of non-market access to the means of their own self-reproduction. as marx noted: ‘the historical movement which changes the producers into waged workers, appears, on the one hand, as their emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds, and this side alone exists for our bourgeois historians. but, on the other hand, these new freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. and the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire’ (1986: 508). 38 with trillions in broad tax relief, wage subsidies, grants, preferential loans and other guarantees to prevent widespread economic collapse and support the recovery. governments also took equity stakes in everything from energy, rail, automotive and air transportation to support troubled firms. as emergency responses once more turn to exit strategies, challenges are beginning to be refocused within the broader prism of ‘permanent austerity’ (pierson 2001; albo and fanelli, 2014), a condition preceding but exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis. an estimated 2.3 billion people could face the dire consequences of future pandemic-related budget constraints and income loss by 2023 (kentikelenis and stubbs 2021). austerity can be defined broadly as government measures taken to reduce public spending, particularly in the areas of social welfare expenditures and public sector employment (whiteside et al. 2021). among conventional approaches, these measures are taken when a government’s expenditures exceed its revenues, creating debt burdens due to over-borrowing; and for municipal governments without monetary or fiscal autonomy, the widespread presence of balanced budget legislation has meant having to do more with less. seeing the problems as part of this broader shift towards permanent austerity, as opposed to a transient and temporary slimming of fiscal capacity, is valuable because it reveals the larger political and economic drivers of these problems that go beyond more particular issues such as antipathy towards taxes, alleged over-spending or the salaries of municipal workers (albo and fanelli, 2019). born of crisis, austerity urbanism reconfigures the neoliberal city (peck 2012), the manifestations of which vary across diverse urban contexts. as an approach to public policy, austerity urbanism has included tax-shifting for competitiveness, reductions to social services provisioning, contracting-out and privatization of public assets, new forms of marketization such as the use of public-private partnerships, and a shift away from universality to user-pay provisions (fanelli and thomas, 2021). new workplace arrangements have also proliferated, including the use of parttime and short-term contracts, as well as casual and seasonal forms of employment. in many cases, this has also incorporated new restrictions on workers’ rights to unionize and bargain collectively, including reductions to workplace compensation (evans et al., 2023; yates, 2022; ness, 2021). the covid-19 era has thus meant a crisis of unprecedented proportions for urban workers, not only for its effects on production and reproduction but also through the coalescing of structural inequalities and cyclical instabilities characteristic of capitalism. it has also brought into focus how local capitalisms materialize from these particularities, not as isolated local economies and states, but as part of the value flows of the world market. the power condensed and legitimated in the national state may ultimately set the political parameters, policy fields and fiscal capacities of cities, but they cannot avoid operating within and through the local state (gough 2014). in 2019, the international labour organization (ilo), in celebrating its 100th anniversary, used the occasion to renew calls for improved opportunities and working conditions, social protections and collective bargaining rights. the ilo’s global commission on the future of work (2019, 2) proposed a “human-centred agenda for the future of work that strengthens the social contract by placing people and the work they do at the centre of economic and social policy and business practice.” the un body urged action to develop national strategies on the future of work and transformative investments that meet the challenges of climate change. yet there remains a considerable gap 39 between this call for ‘decent work’ and fundamental rights, and the reality most workers face in the workplace. for decades, employers have been attempting to increase profit margins by reorganizing work to make it more precarious, that is, insecure, unstable and deregulated (graeber, 2019; benanav, 2020). this includes subcontracting, offshoring, converting full-time jobs to part-time and temporary, and reclassifying direct employees as independent contractors. employers have also introduced new technologies to cut jobs and adopted “just-in-time” scheduling practices to more precisely adjust work hours. in some sectors, like healthcare and education, many workers are often forced to work overtime and double-shifts (armstrong and armstrong, 2019). in others, such as food, hospitality and retail, employees often do not have enough hours of work and may even have to compete with other employees to get assigned shifts (clawson and gerstel 2014, lambert, haley-lock, and henly 2012). employers have been able to accelerate these strategies due to neoliberal reforms that deregulated industries and made labour laws less protective, particularly for unionized sectors. employers and government have worked together to rewrite laws and regulations; the result is greater rights for employers and investors, and fewer rights for workers (luce 2014; evans et al., 2021). pushed to the margins, workers are in the fight of their lives: on the frontlines of the pandemic, in their homes and workplaces, for climate justice and against the daily precariousness of life under capitalist oppression and exploitation. across the global south, it is estimated that 1.5 billion informal workers concentrated in cities, most of which are women, often children and amongst the most vulnerable, lost their job with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic – an amount equal to nearly half of the global workforce (un news, 2020). informal workers’ earnings, which comprise some two billion people worldwide, often without labour rights and social protections, have been cut in half. for migrant workers, a sector dominated by long-standing employment and human rights violations and exemptions, work and living conditions have gone from bad to worse, with a growing preponderance of nonor underpayment for work performed (foley and piper, 2021). and, for the first time in two decades, the number of child labourers has risen, which now stands at more than one-hundred and sixty million worldwide – an increase of more than eight million, with estimates suggesting this number could rise by more than forty-six million in the absence of extended social protections (unicef, 2021). the ilo’s 2022-23 global wage report estimates that inflation rose between four and nearly ten percent across emerging and developing economies by the end of 2022. increased costs of living disproportionately impact lower-income earners and their households because of the greater proportion of disposable income spent on essential goods and services. in the global north, job losses have also been concentrated in densely populated urban centres. in 2020, fifteen percent of the us workforce (26 million persons) applied for unemployment benefits, wiping out more than 22 million jobs created since 2010. it is estimated that nearly half of the us working age population is employed in low wage jobs, with forty-four percent of workers earning a median annual salary of $18,000, or roughly $10.22 per hour (ross and bateman, 2019). while european job losses were less severe through the pandemic, due largely to more robust government wage subsidy programs equal to 60-90 percent of wages and a broader social welfare net, it is estimated that upwards of 59 million jobs were lost, on top of cuts in pay and hours worked, while the eurozone experienced the most significant economic 40 contraction in its history (schnieder and syrovatka, 2020; kraemer, 2020; strauss, 2020; picchi, 2019). globally, the share of labour income has declined by us$3.7 trillion (8.3 percent), equivalent to roughly 4.4 percent of global gdp (crs, 2021). by end of 2022, worker purchasing power was lower than before the pandemic began, declining 2.2 percent across the g20 and 1.4 percent globally, with the exception of china. falling real wages have coincided with positive productivity growth, with the gap in 2022 reaching its widest point since the start of the twentyfirst century at more than twelve percentage points above wage growth (ilo, 2023). urban poverty rates have risen sharply with close to one-hundred million joining the ranks of the extreme poor (earning less than us$1.90 per day), and an additional eighty million more undernourished than before the pandemic. cumulative per capita income losses over 2020-22, compared with pre-pandemic projections, are equivalent to 20 percent of gdp in the global south (excluding china), while losses in the north are expected to be roughly half that (oecd, 2021). covid-19 has dramatically accelerated the global restructuring of work, with the most prescient impacts being felt in urban centres. an estimated 255 million jobs were lost, with global unemployment increasing by thirty-three million, and more than eighty million leaving the ranks of the labour force altogether (ilo, 2022). loss of employment and income has disproportionately impacted youth, women, racialized and lower-educated workers who have experienced the most dramatic declines. patterns of racialized urban labour market inequality have intensified as neoliberalism weakened labour market protections and income security policies (acuto et al. 2020; fanelli and hudson, 2020). as a consequence, racialized groups and new immigrants often remain trapped in low-income occupations across the labour market (ilo, 2023; ritchie, 2022). if present trends continue, these differential impacts are likely to leave a generational scar on labour force participation, productivity growth and global macroeconomic stability. urban austerity and inequality in the context of growing precarity of job tenure and poverty, inequality has grown across various scales, from intra and inter-urban aspects, to regional, national and global dimensions (nijman and wei, 2020). in what follows, we illustrate the ways in which these processes overlap and are inextricably embedded in capital accumulation strategies that tend to reinforce spatial inequality and uneven development. the unequal relationship between ruling and ruled class is linked economically and institutionalized politically. pandemic-induced insecurity has strengthened the grip of ruling classes worldwide. the speed and scale of billionaire growth is unprecedented, with the world’s 2,755 billionaires worth $13.1 trillion in 2021, up more than sixtytwo percent from $8 trillion just a year earlier (jackson, 2021; tognini, 2021). a recent report from oxfam (2023) suggests that the richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population. likewise, top financial institutions have reported record profits all the while benefitting from a global tax system that conveys disproportionate advantages to the wealthy (evans, 2021). covid-19 responses feature bailouts for big business and billionaires far in excess of relief efforts for vulnerable workers, those un(der)employed, ill, disabled, or elderly. for instance, the us $2.2 trillion coronavirus aid, relief, and economic security act (cares act) offered 41 households $500 per child and $1,200 for individuals earning up to $75,000, as well as extended unemployment insurance and an additional $600 per week (transfers declining above that income threshold). if individuals owed outstanding debt, there was nothing preventing banks from garnishing the pandemic support (dickerson, 2020). small and medium sized businesses were required to make reasonable efforts to maintain their payroll and employees, including restrictions on issuing dividends and executive compensation but those same rules did not apply to large corporations receiving aid. likewise, the federal reserve and treasury department purchased $750 billion in bonds issued by large corporations with no strings attached: no limits on dividends, executive compensation, stock buybacks, or employment levels. as gibson (2020) reveals, “a recent analysis by the joint committee on taxation found that more than 80% of the benefits of a change in the tax code for ‘pass-through’ businesses will go to americans who make more than $1 million per year.” if past practices are the best predictor of future performance, one need look no further than trump’s 2017 dramatic corporate tax cuts to anticipate the impact of cares. advocates of the 2017 tax reforms claimed wages would rise, investments would surge, and the cuts would pay for themselves. research by the congressional research service found that wages did not rise, investments did not increase, and the tax cuts did not benefit government coffers. instead, they led to a record-breaking upswell in corporate stock buybacks and dividends for shareholders worth over $1 trillion, which reduced federal revenue by $170 billion by end of 2018 (gravelle and marples, 2019). these astonishing gains were made possible by decades of regressive tax cuts and billionaire-friendly regulations, which saw wealth surge over 1,100 percent between 1990-2018, all the while tax obligations as a percentage of wealth decreased by 80 percent since the 1980s (collins et al., 2020). indeed, even before the pandemic began the world’s wealthiest families were estimated to get $4 million richer by the hour (bloomberg, 2019). likewise, approximations suggest that global loses from multinational corporations shifting their profits are worth some $600 billion per year, with cash stashed in tax havens equal to at least 10 percent of the world economy (shaxon, 2019). macro-level inequalities reproduce themselves in locally specific contexts through the intersections of multiple deprivations – lack of quality employment, low income, poor housing, ill-health, inadequate public transit, limited public services – and spatially segregated inequalities among urban residents. but cities are not only the victims of austerity urbanism (peck 2012), they also create their own precarious circumstances through statecraft (pike et al. 2019a; 2019b). gentrification, neoliberal urbanism, austerity, and financialization are found beyond the angloamerican context (deruytter and bassens 2021; ward 2021; fanelli, 2016) and extend to the global south (aalbers 2020). putting this together, and focusing attention on extended urban zones, biglieri et al. (2021, 564) write: “decades of underinvestment in social, health, housing and transformation infrastructures in the peripheries [of cities]…contributes to structure social vulnerabilities that are exacerbated by covid-19, especially for demographic groups like older adults, immigrants, racialized folks, disabled individuals, and people living in poverty…as a consequence, we see health issues exacerbated by covid-19 in the periphery, often located in the ‘forgotten densities’ of social housing, poorly maintained rental housing towers, prisons, group homes for the disabled, long term care (ltc) and retirement facilities.” 42 generalized instability throughout the pandemic has not only stretched workers and maxed out supports for social reproduction, it has also left governments large and small saddled with large debts, with most unwilling to reverse the neoliberal assault on fiscal policy. already by the midway point of 2020, global economic stimulus amounted to $10 trillion, three times more than the collective responses to the gfc (cassim et al., 2020). by 2021, this had grown to over $20 trillion, with the value of covid-19 fiscal stimulus packages as a percentage of gross domestic product (gdp) in some g20 countries surpassing more than 50 percent (imf, 2020; oecd, 2021). a recent imf report (2020b), spoke of the “difficult trade-offs between implementing measures to support near-term growth and avoiding a further buildup of debt that will be hard to service down the road.” while the imf did recommend some modest tax and revenue measures to support the economy, it also cautioned of debt sustainability and reminded of the familiar need to remove targeted support in the future. in a rare, candid moment of ruling class honesty, mario draghi, former president of the european central bank (2011-2019) and former prime minister of italy (2021-22), alluded to what likely lies ahead, writing: “the loss of income incurred by the private sector — and any debt raised to fill the gap — must eventually be absorbed, wholly or in part, on to government balance sheets. much higher public debt levels will become a permanent feature of our economies and will be accompanied by private debt cancellation” (draghi, 2021). like the gfc a decade earlier, private debt is increasingly at risk of becoming public debt, with corporations and the well-heeled disproportionately benefitting (konzelmann 2019; shefner and blad 2020; whiteside et al. 2021). the implications of this covid turning point can be anticipated through earlier literature on the political economy of neoliberal private finance and public fiscal policy, though dynamics today are different from those of the 1980s given decades of neoliberalism and a dramatic pre-existing expansion of indebtedness for cities, workers, pensioners and even capitalists. the resurgence of austerity following the gfc – and poised to return as covid-19 emergency stimulus unwinds – are part of a longer historical trend (blyth 2013) of neoliberal era spending restraint through balanced budget legislation and spending control, regressive taxation, growing mercantilism in fiscal federalism and protracted low growth/recession. within this context, streeck (2014) argues that for states long since starved of funds but with services, operations, and infrastructure costs to cover (even after significant episodes of privatization), the tax state has been transformed into a debt state – one which is heavily reliant upon credit accessed through financial markets for its financing. useful though it may be, the concept of a ‘debt state’ ignores the nuance offered by broader ‘fiscal studies’ (whiteside 2021) that capture the uneven distribution of budget cuts: expenditures on services, programs and employees (benefits, pensions, jobs) are quick to face the axe of fiscal restraint, but those budgetary elements which draw on the market for financing often escape unscathed through financialized urban governance (peck and whiteside 2016; whiteside 2018). exposed like never before to the vagaries of financial markets and monetary policies, the presence of significant inflation in 2022-23 and promises of interest rate hikes through a renewal of monetarist-style class politics, are threats once more. the inflation debate has generated a good deal of controversy, with some arguing it is ‘transitory’ and others suggesting the rising price of 43 global commodities are here to stay. this has left policymakers with the difficult task of assessing whether it is prudent to continue raising interest rates sharply to tighten monetary policy, or whether such actions could lead to a prolonged recession. while a full discussion is not possible here, conventional monetarist approaches lament ‘excessive monetary injections’, while keynesians lay blame at ‘excessive demand’. as roberts (2022) has noted, both approaches reveal the inadequacies of mainstream explanations of inflation and their policy remedies. there is little evidence to support a ‘wagepush’ explanation, and rapidly increasing interest rates essentially calls for creating unemployment to weaken the bargaining power of workers. while recognizing, to varying degrees, the supplychain bottlenecks caused by the covid pandemic, as well as the russia-ukraine conflict, both approaches misread the distributional conflict at the heart of inflation, particularly in the context of wholesale price gouging (i.e. higher corporate profit margins). as noted earlier, labour’s share of income and real wages have been falling, even as unemployment falls (perkins, 2022; bivens, 2022; roberts, 2022b). building worker power: inside and outside the workplace breaking the cycle of precarious work and rising inequality that has characterized the last four decades of austerity urbanism requires a radical political economic agenda that rejects the market-based remaking of urban life. for socialists, building worker power begins with organizing against those who make the rules – employers and expressions of class power through the tools of state action. the covid-19 pandemic sparked wide public demands for protecting people’s standards of living against rapidly eroding purchasing power, precarity of job tenure and inequality. it was also painful reminder that domestic manufacturing capacity matters, whether ventilators, medical supplies, personal protective equipment or basic foodstuffs. what the world economy will look like a year from now, let alone ten or twenty, may be uncertain, but there is little denying that governments will have the difficult tasks of both ramping up spending to maintain standards of living and generating revenue needed to cover the emergency outlays. increasing urbanization and the outsized economic role of cities (and wider regions) are creating pressures to reform fiscal and governance capacities to foster the conditions for growth and social progress. in an era characterized by the geographical restructuring of economic relations and spatial reconstitution of state power to supra-national and local bodies, neoliberalism should not be read as a juxtaposition of state against market, but rather as a particular kind of state suited to capital in a historically specific conjuncture. greg albo notes (2007: 23) there are few reasons to suggest that “the national and global are on a scale that is any less human and practical than the local. this is not to deny the importance of the local in anti-neoliberal politics; nor the importance of the question of appropriate scale for post-capitalist societies. it is to insist, however, that local socio-ecological struggles cannot be delinked from – and are indeed always potentially representative of – universal projects of transcending capitalism on a world scale.” building up local bases of power and administration must be connected to projects to transform national state power and to internationalize political struggles and alliances against the world capitalist market. the most effective internationalism at this stage is for each labour movement to try to learn as much as possible from others about the limits and possibilities of class struggles that are still inevitably locally based. 44 as peck and tickell (2012: 247–8) remind, the solution is not to re-double local efforts aimed at stimulating globally competitive urban environments: “but to challenge and ultimately transcend the extra-local rules of the game that were being shaped by the rolling process of neoliberalization, since the potential of local initiatives would always be limited by an essentially antithetical, competitive inter-local settlement.” given this wider context, there is an urgent need to do more thinking about socialist alternatives to neoliberal urbanism, but only new organizational capacities will make such ideas politically viable. various ‘rebel cities’ campaigns, for instance, are focusing on ‘living wages’, free public transit, social housing, public spaces that are protected from commercialization and anti-poverty initiatives. making the case for expanded public services counters the prevailing orthodoxy of neoliberalism — one that challenges private accumulation as the engine of economic growth — and raises a set of demands for non-commodified labour and services (mcbride, 2022). while challenging the policies of neoliberalism is important and necessary, so too is confronting the wider capitalist politics that leaves those with nothing to sell but their labour power market-dependent. central to any radical political economic project will be the rebuilding and remaking of trade union capacities. aside from the socio-economic advantages to being unionized – higher wages, pensions, benefits, job security – organized labour has a long history of shaping social policy in the interests of working class communities and strengthening the social wage – public services or benefits that people receive in supplement of their wages earned from work and paid for by redistributing wealth through the tax system (himelfarb and himelfarb 2013). compensation in unionized workplaces tends to be more equitable overall, with relatively higher wages for lower paid workers and less of a wage gap for women, younger workers and racialized groups. unionized workers are also more likely to be full-time, permanent and to work longer for their employers. and unionized environments tend to be safer, with lower rates of critical injuries, mobility impairments, lost-time due to injury claims and broader support services (petach and wyant, 2023; jones and schmitt, 2014; banerjee et al., 2021). unions also exert political pressure outside the workplace, such as raising a series of demands for pay equity and equal pay for work of equal value, the undervaluation and occupational segregation of women and other groups, struggles for changes to human rights legislation, and same-sex spousal benefits. as susan hayter and jelle visser (2018: 4) recount: “it was considered desirable that the norms and rules negotiated between organized employers and the union(s) be made generally applicable.” in the wake of neoliberalism, general applicability is no longer the case, if it ever was. advancements for workers via collective bargaining are illustrative of capitalist class concessions fought for and won over the course of intergenerational class struggles, not privileges bestowed by employers or the benevolence of the state. higher rates of unionization also often lead to increased democratic participation outside of work (sojourner 2013). alex bryson and colleagues (2014) argue that union members have historically been more likely to participate in general elections than non-members, cultivating a broader civic culture and participation in democratic politics. union members are also more likely to vote and engage in a range of pro-social civic behaviours, including the signing of petitions, attending public meetings and/or volunteering for political parties. in other words, building power at work in the form of higher rates of unionization tends to contribute to a life-long attachment to democratic politics outside of it. 45 in contrast to the postwar class compromise, the ability of organized labour to help secure increases in social spending, impart political pressure for more progressive taxation and improved equality for all workers is at an impasse. should the trendline continue, this could have significant implications for labour in an era characterized by the resurgence of right-wing authoritarianism (thomas and tufts, 2016; greenhouse 2019; albo et al., 2019). but unions are paradoxical institutions, simultaneously advancing workers’ interests but rarely challenging the prevailing power relations at work. james rinehart (2006, 203-4) has noted that while unions might nibble away at the margins of power, they do not alter the subordination of labour that lies at the root of capitalist class power. unions remain one of the few mechanisms through which workers can affect change inside and outside of their workplaces, but if trade unions are to deepen and extend their political influence and organizational capacities, it is incumbent on a wider revitalization of working-class politics that can address wider social dislocations in and outside of the workplace. community and labour activists continue to struggle with new ways of understanding the relationship of movements to one another, their shared interests and how to build solidaristic political capacities. however, it is becoming ever more difficult to envision the “democratic capitalism” that has animated so much of social democracy as a feasible alternative to neoliberalism. as berman and snegovaya (2019) uncover, “from the late nineteenth through the late twentieth century, the distinguishing feature of the social-democratic left was its insistence – in contrast to communists, liberals, and others – that it was possible to use the democratic state to mitigate or even eliminate capitalism’s most destructive effects” social democracy emerged in a historically specific capitalist conjuncture and constellation of class relations. the social democratic link is significant, especially through the post-war ‘golden age’, as keynes’ ideas helped to establish the policy and ideological terrains enabling liberal state intervention. but the social democratic welfare state has had the paradoxical effect of deepening and extending commodification not, as is frequently argued, decommodifying public services. these initiatives accelerated commodification through full-employment policies and the expansion of services, which bound the working class to the imperatives of capital. these short-term, historical interludes quietly consolidated capital’s control by legitimating the social subordination of labour via impartial social welfare inducements as a patch onto the flawed fabric of capitalism until they were unleashed onto the world market. in this regard, social democracy has, time and again, proven itself unable or worse unwilling, to challenge the power of capital for democratic control over workplaces, politics and the economy (albo, 2007; sharzer, 2012; schwartz and sunkara, 2017). the politics of austerity that has emerged since 2008 take further steps toward the privatization of the public sector, deploying anti-democratic measures in defense of austerity and market freedoms. capitalist class and state militancy against workers and working class standards of living has been a hallmark of so-called post-covid-19 public policy as reflected in increasing back-to-work legislation, sharp reductions to pandemic relief, the growing threat and use of antilabour legislation, increased private sector provisioning and legislated caps on public sector wages. 46 against this context, organized labour cannot transcend the institutional and legal limitations that dictate so much of its behaviour; this requires: a left as much outside as inside of formal trade union structures to build the capacities of workers to fight back against concessionary demands; develop a movement inside the union that pushes for enhanced democratic participation and control; pursues a radically feminist, anti-racist, class-struggle-oriented political praxis that engages with the struggles of the broader community; and educational efforts intent on building a mass of workers and activists that embody both intellectual understanding and engagement. the challenge before the left today is not just one of policies but of politics – to inspire and rebuild a socialist movement across the diverse cleavages of working class communities. conclusion in 2020, the financial times felt compelled to reason that, “radical reforms – reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades – will need to be put on the table. they must see public services as investments rather than liabilities and look for ways to make labour markets less secure. redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question. policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.” that the financial times lists as ‘radical’ the protection of public services, less insecure labour markets, a basic income and implementation of wealth taxes indicates not only the limit of its vision but also how ripe the moment is for change. real change begins with challenging the structural power of capital shaping production and social reproduction. rather than limiting political possibilities to forms of timid redistribution that merely enable the poor to keep their heads above water, combatting precariousness requires taking on hard questions like what happens pre-distribution through state power to fiscally support cities now resorting to austerity, and how distribution is determined through property rights. even the imf (2020) recently proposed ramping up income, property and wealth taxes, modeled as a “solidarity surcharge,” noting that profit shifting by multinational corporations in tax havens undermines both public revenue and faith in the fairness of the tax system. public policies, of course, matter, including the form of state interventions to support value-added activity, such as requirements for domestic processing, limits on exports of unrefined resources, the use of fiscal subsidies to encourage downstream investments and the direct allocation of public equity capital in large-scale resource projects. given that the world of work begins at home, the ilo has also called for new investments that more evenly distribute unpaid care work, from parental leave to public care services, which would increase opportunities to engage in paid employment; universal entitlements to lifelong learning via active labour market policies that provide opportunities for re/upskilling; proactive universal social protections that support people’s needs over the life cycle; new investments in the institutions of work, from regulations and employment contracts to collective bargaining and labour inspection systems; expanded “time sovereignty,” that is, the right to disconnect from work and greater autonomy over working time; and harnessing technology – artificial intelligence, automation and robotics – in a manner that prioritizes human well-being, regulates data use and algorithmic accountability in the world of work. 47 with governments increasingly detached from the demands of ordinary people and hostile toward tripartite compromises with labour, public involvement in formal politics has declined significantly (mcbride and whiteside, 2011). this has contributed to both an increased public disdain for and seeming indifference to politics, which is indicative of a broader crisis with deeper roots – namely, that western electoral democracies are not, and never have been, wholly democratic to begin with (pilon, 2018). in the absence of substantive alternatives, mounting inequality and social polarization have led to a resurgence of populist, anti-establishment parties, often manifest as a rural/suburban ‘working class’ or ‘common folk’ vs. an urban ‘liberal elite’ which is not only empirically imaginary in class terms, but also grossly exaggerates polarization for political effect. the ‘centre’, like social democratic politics more widely, is a politics devoid of adversaries, and increasingly a spent force neither able to provide a convincing intellectual explanation of what has been happening over the last forty years, nor connect with the various layers of the working class negatively affected by the consequences of neoliberal dedemocratization. the decade of austerity that has followed in the wake of the gfc and, now covid-19, reveals how constituted state powers remain political obstacles requiring strategic address, not theoretical abstractions. if an emancipatory politics of resistance is to emerge, it will do so from multiple scales through a national politics of transformation that is internationalist in its commitments. in other words, local bases of power need to be integrated into revolutionary projects to transform national state power and to internationalize political struggles and alliances against the world capitalist market. building working class power, unionized and non-unionized, waged and unwaged, across the diversity of those with nothing to sell but the labour power is therefore the primary political imperative of the twenty-first century. socialism was a dirty word a decade ago, but today it not only offers an anti-capitalist future, it also brings new life to the political-economic arena by offering alternatives to a dire pandemic and looming ecological collapse. common cause on existential threats to health and environment makes the task of reorganizing space and society in more socially just and equitable ways all the more urgent. as james meadway (2021) has noted: “covid-19 emerged at a specific point in our history. it has spread because of how we organize ourselves, and the path the pandemic takes from here onwards will depend on that social organization…covid is, in other words, a disease of capitalism, and it is in this register that it is best understood.” executive power is increasingly inoculated from parliamentary scrutiny and accountability all the while multiplying state surveillance, legalized restrictions and policing modalities for the disciplining of dissent by the ‘austerity state’. with cities as epicentres of capitalist and coronavirus disease, the urban dimensions of the pandemic have tracked those of exploitation and immiseration more generally, with effects exacerbated by local government deficiencies wrought through austerity and neoliberalization. covid-19 responses have underlined the enduring importance of an active and interventionalist state at multiple scales of governance in the making and remaking of global capitalism (panitch and gindin, 2015). better labour laws, improved social protections and a stronger voice for workers’ organizations will be central to any successful and sustainable recovery (evans et al., 2022). the welfare states of the postwar era were only possible because millions of people demanded change. if the working class is going to break from its political paralysis it is 48 dependent upon a wider renewal of a politics left of social democracy – a spent force increasingly an impediment to, rather than an instrument of, truly progressive politics – and must be rooted in a broad class politics that prioritizes building new institutions, engaging in direct action, running for office, organizing in our workplaces and communities. in other words, a politics that confronts both the authoritarian/anti-democratic politics of the right and transcends the debilitating “postpolitics” of radical centrism (albo and leys, 2022). liberal democratic capitalism is increasingly losing legitimacy. but what comes next may be a form of right-wing populism, supported by nationalist politicians and movements looking to close borders and blame immigrants and trade for economic insecurity. this uncertainty raises the question, without any foregone conclusions, of whether working class movements will be able to unite to radically shift the balance of class forces. potential initiatives are political choices, not simple determinants of economic competitiveness. references aalbers. 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dated and self-interested system based on capital accumulation have generated a new battle cry for the modern era: our food system is in crisis! this system, centred upon tightly consolidated, large-scale, transnational corporations, is also responsible for squeezing all stages of food production – scarring the land, air, and people that are each an integral part of this same system. taking the 2008 global food (and financial) crisis as the point of departure, magdoff and tokar paint a damning picture of the truly global scope of our failing food system. unearthing the true stranglehold that political and economic power has had on many facets of the food supply, magdoff and tokar outline a number of contemporary issues. the use of biotechnology in the age of peak oil and soil, food sovereignty and land reform, and the perennial question of how we are to feed the nine billion eaters that this planet will carry by 2050. each of these concerns have erupted from age-old issues of colonialism, degradation of indigenous knowledge systems, and the erroneous belief in free trade as a solution to food provision. this is a rendition of the usual suspects (e.g. international monetary fund, world bank, world trade organization, governments), up to their usual tricks (faith in export-oriented markets and the illusory benefit of comparative advantage), except in this version of the story – the masses are beginning to resist. the book is set in two parts: first, pieces by philip mcmichael and walden bello contextualize the latest iteration of the food crisis through the historical and politico-economic underpinnings of capitalized production of agrofuels, livestock feed, and international land grabbing. in order for institutional, long-lasting change to occur, the workings of the industry must first be laid bare. in the next section, the book offers case studies of resistance to this dominant food system. while the call for food 1 katie m. macdonald is a phd candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at the university of guelph. her primary research surrounds the political economy of food systems, value chains, and the ontario pork industry. katie can be reached at kmacdo08@uoguelph.ca book review: agriculture and food in crisis | 345 policy based on food sovereignty, agro-ecology, and small-scale landholding – particularly from a global south perspective – provide a hopeful and improved form of agricultural productivism, rhetoric of export-oriented production is one of the most truly devastating and thus lasting influences that capitalist agribusiness firms have had in this crisis. the inefficient global marketplace is one where food is treated and traded like any other commodity, essential skills are destroyed, and those we depend on for its production, while dwindling in number, have become disenfranchised “labourers for agribusiness” (magdoff and tokar, 2010,14). each of these facets signals the lasting degradation of poor and ineffectual agricultural policies mirrored as food policies. when food’s status as a nourishing life-essential is degraded to speculative futures trading deals, we all risk marginalizing the health of our bodies and of our communities. the message of the book is clear: if you eat, and if you care about your ability to eat in the near future, you should care about the issues considered in this book. the range of disciplines represented by the contributing authors is among the book’s strengths. contributions include work by a sociologist (mcmichael), an economic geographer (fahy bryceson), food activists and advocacy groups (kirschenmann; schiavoni & camcaro; grain), agroecologists (altieri; holtz-giménez), economists and policy analysts (patniak; murphy), alongside some contributors who fall across a number of different categories. this transdisciplinarity adds depth to the treatment of such a complex set of problems, which are intertwined with an array of agricultural, ecological, social, and policy questions. the information offered here provides evidence of the truly global linkages that exist between flawed production and consumption patterns. a central theme in this collection concerns the glaring inefficiencies of industrialized agriculture, which have become normalized as unavoidable costs of production. the contribution from grain outlines the land-grabbing that results from finance capitalists seeking to diversify their portfolio stocks (grain, 2010,143), while the tokar piece describes the implications for land-use of expanding ethanol agrofuel production (tokarm, 2010, 127). contributions by howard, patnaik, and fahy bryceson detail the gross inefficiencies of our current food system, as land is diverted to use for mono-cropped soy for livestock feed (howard, 2010,176), which later results in a grossly insufficient consumptive calorie conversion (patnaik, 2010, 87), and risk to biodiversity (fahy bryceson, 2010, 81). 346 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages once the reader is sufficiently angered by the bleakness of the current food crisis, and the powerful institutions and the governments that have played a role in its development, the latter half of the text provides cases of resistance. there are accounts of peasants enacting change through “occupation and reclamation – “reform from below…” (rosset, 2010, 195) when higher levels of reform were ineffective, along with the subsequent potential for poverty alleviation through more labour-intensive, small-scale holdings. there is also a wonderfully positive spin to the projected spike of oil prices that will serve to make the cost of industrial agriculture prohibitive (kirschenmann, 2010, 232), and essentially force a better designed and managed food system. our food system is indeed in crisis. the 2008 food crisis that swept across much of the globe was one of those times when the sheer magnitude of the impacts became glaringly obvious. the issues are not new, but are rather the intensification of productivist policies based on greed and appropriation. we must each state our claim and our position in this crisis, and insight into the historical development and complex path ahead, is the first step for us all to fight for a fairer food system. microsoft word alternate routes vol 30, issue 2 final editorial introduction austerity without end carlo fanelli and stephanie luce in 2019, the now 187-member international labour organization celebrated its 100th anniversary. as one of the oldest agencies of the united nations, the ilo used the occasion to renew calls for improved opportunities and working conditions, social protections and collective bargaining rights. the ilo’s global commission on the future of work (2019, 2) proposed a “human-centred agenda for the future of work that strengthens the social contract by placing people and the work they do at the centre of economic and social policy and business practice.” because the world of work begins at home, this included calls for new investments that more evenly distribute unpaid care work, from parental leave to public care services, thereby genuinely increasing opportunities in the workplace; universal entitlements to lifelong learning via active labour market policies that provide opportunities for re/upskilling; proactive universal social protections that support people’s needs over the life cycle; new investments in the institutions of work, from regulations and employment contracts to collective bargaining and labour inspection systems; expanded “time sovereignty,” that is, the right to disconnect from work and greater autonomy over working time; and harnessing technology – artificial intelligence, automation and robotics – in a manner that prioritizes human well-being, regulates data use and algorithmic accountability in the world of work. the commission (2019, 3) also called for establishing a universal labour guarantee: “all workers, regardless of their contractual arrangement or employment status, should enjoy fundamental workers’ rights, an “adequate living wage” (ilo constitution, 1919), maximum limits on working hours and protection of safety and health at work.” they stress urgent action is needed to develop national strategies on the future of work and transformative investments that meet the challenges of climate change. there is a vast gap between this call for living wages and fundamental rights, and the reality most workers face in the workplace. for decades, employers have been attempting to increase profit margins by re-organizing work. this includes subcontracting, offshoring, converting full-time jobs to part-time and temporary, and reclassifying direct employees as independent contractors. this is 6 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life what economist david weil (2014) calls the “fissured workplace.” they have introduced new technologies to cut jobs and adopted “just-in-time” scheduling practices to more precisely adjust work hours. in some fields, like healthcare, workers are forced to work long hours and double-shifts. in others, such as retail, employees often do not have enough hours of work and may even have to compete with other employees to get assigned shifts (clawson and gerstel 2014, lambert, haley-lock, and henly 2012). employers have been able to pursue some of these strategies due to neoliberal reforms which deregulate industries and labor laws. indeed, “labor flexibility” is a key plank of a neoliberal platform. employers and policymakers have worked hand-in-hand to rewrite laws and regulations; the result is greater rights for employers and investors, and fewer rights for workers (luce 2014). finally, employers and their associations have in many countries actively worked to weaken labor unions. the “union-avoidance” industry began to flourish in the united states in the 1970s and eventually grew into a multi-billion dollar international industry (logan 2006). the result has been declining union density in most industrialized countries. a recent ilo brief (xhafa 2018) finds that canada failed to crack the top twenty countries when it comes to the rate of collective bargaining coverage as a proportion of total employment. at 27 percent, canada finds itself in a category of medium-to-low levels of collective bargaining coverage with japan, south africa and the united kingdom. collective agreements extend the rule of law to the workplace (doorey 2017). they afford workers certain rights and place limits on the arbitrary power of employers, like grievance-arbitration mechanisms that give workers rights like due process and fair treatment, not available to other workers except via the courts. and because unions raise wage and benefit floors these gains are undoubtedly one of the main reasons why unions have historically been opposed, and continue to be opposed, by employers and governments. unions also create a presence in local labour markets or sectors – “spillover effects” – that can create pressure to raise wages in surrounding non-unionized workplaces. this often compels employers to adjust wages to remain competitive in labour markets, often to stave-off unionization efforts. aside from the socio-economic advantages to being unionized – higher wages, pensions and benefits, job security, training, transparency and due process – organized labour has a long history of shaping social policy in the interests of working class communities and strengthening the social wage – public services or benefits that people receive in supplement of their wages earned from work and austerity without end | 7 paid for by redistributing wealth through the tax system (himelfarb and himelfarb 2013). compensation in unionized workplaces tends to be more equitable overall, with relatively higher wages for lower paid workers and less of a wage gap for women, younger workers and racialized groups. unionized workers are also more likely to be full-time, permanent and to work longer for their employers. finally, unionized environments tend to be safer, with lower rates of critical injuries, mobility impairments, lost-time due to injury claims and broader support services. unions are also able to exert political pressure outside the workplace, such as raising a series of demands for pay equity and equal pay for work of equal value, the undervaluation and occupational segregation of women and other groups, struggles for changes to human rights legislation, and same-sex spousal benefits. as susan hayter and jelle visser (2018: 4) have argued: “it was considered desirable that the norms and rules negotiated between organized employers and the union(s) be made generally applicable.” in neoliberalism’s wake, that is no longer the case, if it ever was. in canada, there has been major structural shifts to the composition of union membership by sex, age and industry over the last three decades. since the 1980s, the proportion of unionized members in the public sector has eclipsed private sector trade union density. whereas public sector union density has stayed relatively consistent from the mid-1980s to early-2000s, hovering around 72 percent, total canadian private sector density fell from 26 percent to just over 18 percent. since 2011 private sector union density has fallen to around 16 percent, while public sector density remained generally stable (statistics canada 2019). in other words, while public sector unionization rates have remained fairly consistent over the past thirty years – buoying total union density (around 30 percent) – private sector unionization has been nearly halved. in the united states, the patterns are similar. today, 14.7 million workers belong to unions. union density peaked in 1955 at 35 percent and has been on the decline since, though that hides certain interesting patterns. public sector density was at 33.9 percent in 2018, compared to just 6.9 percent in the private sector. and like canada, public sector members outnumber that of the private sector. national density figures mask tremendous variation between states. in fact, over half of all union members live in just seven states: california, illinois, michigan, new york, ohio, pennsylvania, and washington (us department of labor 2019). 8 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life union density figures may reveal the extent of potential union organization, but it is also illustrative of the ways in which organized workers have been able to effectively reduce inequality, improve working conditions and widen income distribution through wider bargaining coverage and coordination. advancements for workers via collective bargaining are illustrative of capitalist class concessions fought for and won over the course of intergenerational class struggles, not privileges bestowed by employers or the benevolence of the state. the growing spread of low-waged work has occurred in tandem with stagnant union growth, aggressive anti-labour legislation and drastic expenditure reductions in general government spending and public services – that is to say, austerity without end (evans and fanelli 2018; albo and fanelli, 2014;). as kris warner (2013: 111) has argued: “while the loss of heavily unionized manufacturing jobs has been a contributing factor in the declining private-sector unionization rate in [the us and canada], it would be a mistake to place too much emphasis on this in and of itself because it cannot explain the inability of workers to realize their desires for unionizing the new jobs they have moved into. instead, in both countries, the increased ability of employers to effectively oppose unionization offers a more compelling explanation. in the united states this has been a long-standing issue, while in canada it is a relatively newer phenomenon, related in large part to a change in the way unions can be formed.” though variegated in form and function, the state has often been the chief architect of neoliberalism’s anti-labour reforms: at times imposing austerity from above or leading the charge from below, and at other times created the conditions for capital to lead in an assault against working class institutions. the results have been a continued decline in real wages and the erosion of the total labour share of wages. in contrast to the postwar class compromise, the ability of organized labour to help secure increases in social spending, impart political pressure for more progressive taxation and improved equality for all workers is at an impasse. should the trendline continue, this could have significant implications for labour in an era of authoritarian neoliberalism and amid the resurgence of radical rightwing populists (thomas and tufts, 2016; greenhouse 2019; albo et al., 2019). the mutual relationship between higher rates of unionization and austerity without end | 9 increased democratic participation has received consistent empirical support (sojourner 2013). as alex bryson and colleagues (2014) have recently argued, union members have historically been more likely to participate in general elections than non-members, cultivating a broader civic culture and participation in democratic politics. union members are also more likely to vote and engage in a range of pro-social civic behaviours, including the signing of petitions, attending public meetings and/or volunteering for political parties. consistent with previous research, bryson et al., have noted that the wider decline in civic engagement is also coincident with the decline of trade union density and larger collective disengagement from formal political participation. in other words, democratic governance at work in the form of higher rates of unionization tends to contribute to a life-long attachment to democratic politics outside of it. with union density stagnant or shrinking across much of north america and europe, the democratic implications of rising low-waged work and political polarization has emerged as a significant political concern. while challenging the ‘common sense’ of neoliberalism is important and necessary, so too is confronting the wider capitalist context that leaves workers dependent on the imperatives of capital. in this regard, unions are paradoxical institutions, simultaneously advancing workers’ interests but rarely challenging the prevailing power relations at work (fanelli and noonan, 2017). as james rinehart (2006, 203-4) has noted, while unions might nibble away at the margins of power, they do not alter the subordination of labour that lies at the root of capitalist class power. of course, unions remain one of the few mechanisms through which workers can affect change inside and outside of their workplaces. but if trade unions are to deepen and extend their political influence and organizational capacities, it is incumbent on a wider revitalization of workingclass politics, like movements for living wages embody (evans et al., n.d.; luce 2017). the welfare states of the postwar era were only possible because millions of people demanded change. if labour is going to break from its political paralysis it is dependent upon a wider renewal of a politics left of social democracy – a spent force increasingly an impediment to, rather than an instrument of, progressive politics – and rooted in an intersectional class politics that prioritizes building new institutions, engaging in direct action, running for office, organizing in our workplaces and communities. in other words, a politics that confronts both the authoritarian/anti-democratic politics of the right and transcends the debilitating “post-politics” of radical centrism (mouffe 1998). liberal democratic capitalism 10 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life is losing legitimacy. but what comes next may be a form of right-wing populism, supported by nationalist politicians and movements looking to close borders and blame immigrants and trade for economic insecurity. will unions look to protectionism or internationalism? will working class movements be able to unite across borders to radically shift the balance of class power relations? references albo, g. and c. fanelli (2014). austerity against democracy: an authoritarian phase of neoliberalism? teoria politica: an international journal of theory and politics, 2014, 65-88. bryson, a., r. gomez, t. kretschmer and p. willman. (2014). what accounts for the union member advantage in voter turnout? evidence from the european union, 2002-2008. relations industrielles/industrial relations, 69(4), 732-765 clawson, d. and n. gerstel. (2014). unequal time: gender, class, and family in employment schedules. new york: russell sage foundation. doorey, d. (2017). the law of work. toronto: elgar publishing. evans, b. and c. fanelli, eds. the public sector in an age of austerity: perspectives from canada’s provinces and territories. montreal and kingston: mcgill-queens university press evans, b., c. fanelli and t. mcdowell, eds., (forthcoming). living wage movements in canada: comparative perspectives on resistance and alternatives to low-waged work. vancouver: university of british columbia press. fanelli, c. and j. noonan. (2017). capital and labour. in schmidt, i. and c. fanelli, eds. reading capital today: marx after 150 years. london: pluto press. greenhouse, s. (2019). beaten down, worked up: the past, present, and future of american labor. new york: knopf doubleday publishing group. hayter, s. and j. visser, eds. (2018). collective agreements: extending labour protection. geneva: ilo himelfarb, a. and j. himelfarb, eds. (2013). tax is not a four letter word: a different take on taxes in canada. waterloo, on: wilfrid laurier press. austerity without end | 11 international labour organization. (2019). global commission on the future of work. https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/future-ofwork/wcms_569528/lang--en/index.htm lambert, s, a. haley-lock, and j. r. henly. (2012). labour flexibility and precarious employment in hourly retail jobs in the u.s: how frontline managers matter. in c. warhurst et al., eds., are bad jobs inevitable? trends, determinants and responses to job quality in the twenty-first century. london: palgrave macmillan. luce, s. (2014). labor movements: global perspectives. wiley. luce, s. (2017). raising wages. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 27, 12-20. mouffe, c. (1998). the radical centre: a politics without adversary. soundings, 9, 11-23. rinehart, j. (2006). the tyranny of work: alienation and the labour process. toronto: nelson. sojourner, a. (2013). do unions promote electoral office-holding? evidence from correlates of state legislatures' occupational shares. industrial and labor relations review, 66(2), 467-486. statistics canada. (2019). table 14-10-0132-01: union status by industry. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1410013201 thomas, m.p. and s. tufts. (2016). austerity, right populism, and the crisis of labour in canada. antipode, 48(1), 212-230 u.s. department of labor. (2019). union members summary. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm warner, k. (2013). the decline of unionization in the united states: some lessons from canada. labor studies journal, 38(2) 110–138 weil, d. (2017). the fissured workplace: why work became so bad for so many and what can be done to improve it. boston: harvard university press. xhafa, e. (2018). ilo brief no. 3 – collective bargaining and non-standard forms of employment: practices that reduce vulnerability and ensure work is decent. geneva: ilo 12 | austerity and the precarization of everyday life alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 33, 118-142 (2023) 118 unpacking the alberta advantage through an intersectional lens: social class, gender and minority groups in alberta guillaume durou,1 michelle maroto,2 delphine brown3 abstract: the province of alberta has a reputation of being a political maverick. fighting against ottawa for more control over its natural resources is one of its distinctive characteristics. over the years, alberta has created a model of prosperity based on a particular ethos and the political adage called the “alberta advantage,” an often-seen appellation for equality and abundance. our research seeks to understand the extent of that so-called advantage by examining the intersection of social class, gender, race, marital status and immigrant status for two distinct periods – before and during the covid-19 pandemic. for this, we used the 2016 canadian census and the alberta viewpoint survey of 2021. by using those two datasets, we shed a light on the dynamics of inequality and rethink social class in the west. keywords: social class; intersectionality; alberta; inequality; gender; minorities introduction in 2019, united conservative party of alberta candidates, including the former premier jason kenney, claimed to want to “bring back” and “renew” the proverbial alberta advantage, a concept popularized during the ralph klein era. kenney’s own definition meant that those who worked hard should be rewarded accordingly. what working hard actually means is another story, but the very idea of “advantage” is a recurring dictum that has little to do with equality. although politicians often redefine the alberta advantage for political purposes, its core elements are the intertwining of an individualistic ethos, limited taxation, and an unresisted laissez-faire perspective. put into practice decades ago by corporations and small businesses with the clear support of the state in the 1990s, those principles are expected to increase wealth for those at the top of the distribution and then trickle down to everyone else. but do these principles really accomplish such goals for all albertans? although wages and employment rates are usually higher in alberta than in other provinces, so too are disparities by race, class, and gender. data from the 2016 census show that, for example, wage gaps between black workers and workers not from visible minority groups were about 25% higher at the mean in alberta than in canada (statistics canada, 2020). for indigenous workers, gaps were 73% larger in alberta. alberta also has one of the highest gender pay gaps in the country (flanagan, 2015). across the economy, two interesting but somehow contradictory dynamics occurred from 2015 to 2020. on the one hand, alberta recorded the largest decline in after-tax income due to lower oil prices, but on the other, the cushioning effect of the federal’s fiscal policy, including the canada emergency response benefit (cerb), during the 1 guillaume durou is assistant professor in sociology at the university of alberta. his research focuses on the study of contemporary social class and inequality and the historical sociology of capitalism and the working-class. 2 michelle maroto is an associate professor of sociology at the university of alberta. her research interests include social stratification, gender and family, race and ethnicity, labor and credit markets, and disability studies. 3 delphine brown is a research assistant in the sociology department at the university of alberta 119 pandemic largely contributed to the temporary decline of income inequality (statistics canada, 2021). alberta’s usual free market mantra and ottawa’s keynesian approach created an interesting situation for social scientists to examine. needless to say, subsequent studies based on the 2021 census might show the effect of this unprecedented situation, which will inevitably raise questions of “durable inequality” in alberta. given that social positions within society also depend on different contexts and determinants, we investigate where people in alberta fall on the social ladder and what brings them to the position they are. we address the following research questions: how are categories based on gender, race/ethnicity, marital status, and citizenship status associated with people’s position among alberta’s stratified society? what do our results say about alberta and its “advantage”? in these times of uncertainty and economic hardship, who actually profits from the said advantage? given the background and context mentioned above, this article seeks to unveil the different inequalities that shape albertan society. using data from the 2021 alberta viewpoint survey and the 2016 canadian census, we address in the same breath categorical inequalities – class, gender, ethnicity, political status, marital status– and individual’s positionality – self perceived social position, level of identification to their social group, and perception of social mobility – in order to provide an informed analysis of western canada. first, we examine the alberta advantage and its periodization. then, we discuss the use of the intersectional framework in quantitative analysis and concepts such as “categorical inequalities” and “relational inequalities.” finally, we present our data and analysis followed by a critical discussion of inequalities in the albertan context. debating the alberta advantage in the 21st century alberta’s –and much of canada’s– economy depends on fossil fuels. a fossil economy, a system based on self-sustaining growth in which the mere consumption of fossil fuels is the central characteristic (malm, 2016), is detrimental to the whole ecological system and democracy. since the 1950’s, alberta has fully embraced fossil capitalism and thus became a state rentier province. while promoting a specific economic model and western lifestyle unique to canada, “alberta’s so-called “tax advantage” primarily relies on an extreme dependence on oil rents from producers who are either fully foreign-owned or majority foreign-owned (laxer, 2022) resulting in a clear “deterioration of the link between the state and citizens” (carter & zalik, 2018, 58). the alberta advantage is a prominent feature of alberta culture that cuts across political periods. the slogan was first utilized by ralph klein, along with cuts that gave rise to period of austerity and arguably harmed the notion of alberta as a place of equal opportunity and prospects. in 2006, ed stelmach replace klein as premier of the province. stelmach sought to change the slogan of the alberta advantage, introducing instead “freedom to create...spirit to achieve.” he sought to rework the province's dependence on oil (macleans, 2009). then in 2011, stelmach was replaced by allison redford, followed by prentice. stelmach and redford’s platforms 120 included raising royalties for diversifications and social services, but this divided the conservative movement to their detriment (lawson, 2022). in 2015, the progressive conservative leadership ended as rachel notley of the alberta new democratic party came into power. the alberta advantage was still a prominent political feature, but its meaning shifted. notley argued the government could preserve the alberta advantage without a sales tax as pst was politically too risky (gibson, 2015), given the inertia of the alberta advantage (salomons & béland, 2021). finally, jason kenney became premier in 2019 with the united conservative party and resurrected the neo-liberal notions in the alberta advantage. despite major social issues, alberta remains an attractive land of work opportunity, particularly in the energy sectors which contributes about a quarter of the province’s gdp and directly accounted for about 6% of the province’s employment (national energy board, 2019). evidently, oil and gas are a crucial aspect of political culture in alberta and have implications for how inequality is experienced across albertans. oil booms have created intense interprovincial migration and increased international migration, periodically changing the socioeconomic structure of the province. to truly understand if the alberta advantage exists, we want to engage in an intersectional analysis across key categorical groups in alberta. the results from the alberta viewpoint survey and the 2016 census are a snapshot of this fluctuant economy and the categorical inequalities. intersectionality intersectionality focuses on the distribution of power and resources in a given society through axes of privilege, domination, and oppression rooted in historically institutionalized categorical inequalities (collins 2001; crenshaw, 1989). the framework is perhaps “the most valid approach to the sociological study of social stratification” that considers the irreducible complexity of human life (yuval-davis, 2015,94). intersectionality is also a demanding theoretical framework due to the inherent complexity of social interplays. nonetheless, the intercategorical complexity of intersectional analysis helps capture the different configurations of inequality of a given society (mccall, 2005). the intersectional approach focuses on the very detrimental cumulative effect of racism, sexism, and other status characteristics. incorporating dimensions of oppression and intersectionality, historians and sociologists have addressed long lasting inequalities. for instance, french sociologist colette guillaumin’s binary framework on language of discrimination (1995), bourdieu’s persisting social antagonism of dominant and dominé (2001), and charles tilly’s (1998) creative socio-historical analysis of inequality have presented interesting historical conditions for domination and oppression. as a framework, intersectionality has been extensively used in qualitative analyses (e.g., semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participatory research). it is less common in quantitative work (mccall, 2005), but interest in statistical analyses using the intersectional framework has risen considerably over the past few years (bauer et al.; 2021, fehrenbacher & patel, 2020; dubrow, 2013). as different methodologies produce different knowledge, and a broader scope of methodologies is necessary to grapple with issues that arise at particular 121 intersections (mccall, 2005), expanding the scope of quantitative intersectional approaches is valuable, particularly to expose where inequalities may lay. intersectionality provides an open-ended framework and encourages creativity to explore novel areas (davis, 2008; yural-davis, 2015). however, this does not mean all potential intersections must be incorporated in an analysis, instead, the focus should be on the most important intersections for the proposed research question (choo & ferree, 2010; misra et al., 2021). quantitative models can study groups separately, allowing for an examination of intersections without interaction terms, but using a multiplicative approach through “interaction effects” (guan et al., 2021; bauer et al., 2021; dubrow, 2013) helps to show how categories interact with each other and affect the outcome. for some researchers, by definition, intersectional approaches necessitate the need for interaction terms (choo & ferre, 2010; dubrow, 2008) and this allows them to better identify multiplicative effects of inequalities, rather than additive ones (abichahine & veenstra, 2017; scott & siltanen 2016). both qualitative and quantitative intersectional methods give researchers the freedom to uncover relations of power not only in a creative way, but in accordance with the theoretical framework of intersectionality. of course, there are limits with this line of analysis, and statistical models need to be combined with conceptual strategies. quantitative analyses of interactions between social categories can sometimes lead to speculation and generalization and undermine the process of theorization. social relations, institutions, and historical processes shape categories such as class, gender, and ethnicity. here, the contextual dimension of inequality is primordial. how social categories interact with each other and how individuals and groups experience them in each period and a given society, are important parts of the analytical process. this further pertains to identity formation. identity – through the lens of intersectional categories – may be understood as “categories of practice” rather than mere homogeneous and individual properties. these include “categories of everyday social experience, developed and deployed by ordinary social actors, as distinguished from the experience-distant categories used by social analysts” (brubaker & cooper, 2000 4). in particular, tilly’s (1998) analysis of historically rooted organizational capacity to create social categories helps grasp the persistence of a binary conception of society. using categorical pairs such as citizen/immigrant, men/women, white/non-white, and secular/religious, tilly (1998, 86) delineates four central causal mechanisms throughout history for their institutionalization as categorical inequalities: (1) exploitation, (2) opportunity hoarding, (3) emulation and (4) adaptation. these mechanisms, when reproduced across organizations and time, help to make categorical inequality durable and lasting. categorical approaches can be useful in highlighting the privilege of certain categories, such as whiteness in canadian society, but they also can homogenize race-based experiences of others. we incorporate these with an intersectional perspective to study the linked dimensions of race, ethnicity, immigrant status, gender, and marital status using data from the 2016 census and the alberta viewpoint survey. although the alberta viewpoint questionnaire was not designed following a specific intersectional methodology, the survey, however, directly approaches social 122 class, as linked to both income and self-identification; gender and marital status; race, ethnicity, and indigeneity; and immigrant status. dimensions of categorical inequality categories carry different meanings within social and historical contexts. hence, it is necessary to assess categorical and relational inequalities as institutionalized and routinized practices, rather than as random acts that have lingering effects on groups and individuals. looking at the intersection of two or more categorical inequalities across groups is informative of the social and historical patterns of injustice and inequity. social class social class describes a person’s position in a social and economic hierarchy. social class can be explored objectively through measures, such as income, education, and occupation, and subjectively, through a person’s perception of their class location relative to others (diemer et al., 2013). intersectionality primarily focuses on race, class, and gender, but frequently other categorical variables are considered as axes of inequality. class is usually seen as an explanatory variable in intersectional analysis. the relation of power between poverty class and upper class can contribute to prejudicial effects such as classism. however, class itself is the product of a long process, starting with the social reproduction of a parent’s own position within society, social actors’ agency, and other exogenous factors. we argue that gender, political status, marital status, and ethnicity can interact with each other and with different contexts, and influence and define an individual’s social positioning. social class, although not necessarily fixed, is linked to these dynamics. our research focuses specifically on those intersectional determinants of social class. the variety of measures that can be used in social class research and inequality is not necessarily problematic, instead it is problematic when the chosen measures do not match the research question (williams, 2009). given our focus on the alberta advantage, including the individualistic ethos, limited taxation, and an unresisted laissez-faire perspective, measuring income is an instinctive way to identify class. we have approached class in a conservative, perhaps more convenient way to have a better identification process. as such, income what we use in both the census and survey data, and we were able to recreate both objective and subjective class positions. however, we are aware of other cultural and symbolic dimensions that constitute what a social class is, but in the context of this article, we focus on class position related to income and examine its relationship with gender and marital status; race, ethnicity, and indigeneity; and immigrant status. gender and marital status the structure of society produces certain gender inequalities (blackburn, jarman & racko, 2016), as evident in an increasing gender gap since the mid-1900s in alberta (al-zyoud et al., 2018). across canada, women have lower average personal incomes and hourly wages than men 123 (fortin, 2019; fox & moyser, 2018). they are also less likely to occupy higher-paying occupations and are overrepresented in lower-paying sectors. given experiences of inequality, gender differences can also persist across subjective class identity. prior swedish research reported small non-significant effects in terms of gender and status perceptions, but women who identify within the working class placed themselves lower on a status scale than working-class men (karlsson, 2017). meanwhile, other research finds men place themselves higher than women (evans & kelly, 2004). some of these different findings are likely linked to marital status and household structure where research indicates husbands and wives utilize the same cues in determining their subjective class identity (plutzer & zip, 2001). gender disparities must be considered in relation to marital status, which changes individuals’ financial circumstances, allows individuals to pool resources, provides social mobility, and conditions class awareness. “marital supremacy,” as being the legal privilege of marriage, shapes the legitimacy of family status, and that supremacy varies among class and race (mayeri, 2015). mayeri’s intersectional account of marital status applies to canada as well, though there are strong disparities between common-law couples and married couples. between 1976 and 2011, marriage rates dropped drastically for the lowest earners as opposed to a slight decrease among the highest earners. the existing “marriage gap” between rich and poor canadians has persisted for decades (cross & mitchell, 2014). meanwhile, divorced people often experience the economic shock of divorce, have child or spousal support payments, and may no longer have the economic support of their partner. in these situations, women are more likely to be exposed to precarity (margolis & choi, 2019). more generally, outside marriage, women tend to be more vulnerable economically, and there are differences in terms of economic well-being across marital status and gender. taken together, gender and marital status have clear implications for objective and subjective class measures, along with other demographic considerations. race, ethnicity, and indigeneity across various racial and ethnic groups, differences prevail through indicators of social class. for instance, in canada, livingstone and weinfeld (2015) observe a decreasing trend of the socioeconomic status of most black families with children. the effect of racial identity on class identification is complex and linked to racial discrimination (sosnaud et al., 2013; speer, 2016). ethnicity, different from race with a focus on culture, can also influence social positions. levinerasky (2011) finds the intersection of whiteness and middle-classness is reinforcing, but when ethnicity is considered, these positions can contradict each other, demonstrating variation by ethnicity. ethnicity as a category can also be subject to controversy. in historically colonial societies, such as canada, indigenous peoples “have not regarded themselves as one monolithic racial society” (bird, 1999, 2). this is one of the reasons the identification of indigenous peoples can be contentious. indigenous and ethnic identities differ, and the former must be regarded as a historically and culturally distinct group of the society 124 (williams & schertzer, 2019). for this reason, we treat “indigeneity” as a single category rather than an ethnic one. as our study examines alberta where four numbered treaties have shaped the political relations of settlers and first nations, the lived experiences of indigenous peoples require special consideration in assessing social class and inequality. their experiences of poverty are rooted in colonialism and racialization (harell et al., 2014). the transgressions of residential schools, the 1960s scoop, and intergenerational trauma continue to negatively affect indigenous peoples, and this is evident when looking at reports of higher rates of unemployment (lamb, 2015), overrepresentation within the working class (liodakis, 2009; wotherspoon, 2003), along with the prevalence of inadequate housing and poorer health (department of justice, 2022). despite governmental recognition of the dire circumstances some indigenous peoples face, such as water boiling adversaries on reserves, inequalities persist. despite the importance of studying and addressing inequality, there is little research on social class and indigenous peoples (norris et al., 2013), although expanding this research is useful in analyzing inequality within indigenous populations. we contribute to an important research gap by examining the experiences of marginalized groups, and indigenous peoples, given the context of alberta, home of the blackfoot, cree, chipewyan, dene, sarcee, and stoney (nakoda sioux) first nations, métis, and inuit. alberta is also home for many immigrants as immigrant landings continue to support population growth (government of alberta, 2022). immigrant status being an immigrant in canada is a socially and economically complex situation. first, the country recognizes various types of immigrants –non-permanent residents, economic immigrants, immigrants sponsored by family, temporary foreign workers, and other immigrants and refugees– which represent a multifold challenge for the concerned persons. second, even though most immigrants access citizenship at some point, they might continue to be perceived as immigrants by the dominant group. many individuals experience stigmatization, and this situation intensified during the pandemic (lin, 2022). citizens with immigrant backgrounds also experience discrimination in the labour market (beauregard et al. 2019; eid, 2012). the adage of the market as being “colour-blind” is thus directly contradicted by the many immigrant job-seekers’ experience. furthermore, transitioning to a new country can influence social class, as immigrants often leave behind their social networks, which are beneficial in terms of finding a job and experiencing occupational mobility (nakhaie & kazemipur, 2013). common concerns are devaluation in the labour market in terms of education and skills and discrimination (akkaymak, 2016; premji & shakya, 2017; salami et al., 2020). prior canadian research indicates concerns with employment (liu, 2019), in particular for older immigrants (ferrer et al., 2022), african immigrants (salami et al., 2020), and immigrant women (premji & shakya, 2017; wing et al., 2019). overall, immigrants often fare worse than non-immigrants in terms of poverty (kazemipur & halli, 2000, 2001a, 2001b). 125 these studies indicate immigrants’ experiences can influence objective class measures, but also, immigrant status can influence subjective class identification, with some studies finding changing social status post-migration (vaquera & aranda, 2017). however, immigrants are not a homogenous group and taking other factors such as ethnic origin and gender into consideration also reveals further variation in the experiences of immigrants (hogarth, 2011), indicating the necessity of an intersectional approach. together, the categories mentioned above shape the experiences and life chances of canadians. however, their effects likely vary by region, province, and city. cultural, economic, and political contexts, as well as the availability of social assistance, all affect how ethnicity, immigrant status, gender, and marital status are linked to social class outcomes. we explored whether and how these relationships are predominant in the experience of social class in alberta. methods we use data from the september 2021 alberta viewpoint survey (n=1,115) and the 2016 canadian census (n=107,460) to examine relationships between ethnicity, indigeneity, gender, immigrant status, marital status, and social class. the alberta viewpoint survey is a recurring cross-sectional online survey of residents of alberta (citation for ab survey). the september 2021 wave was conducted via leger. the canadian census of 2016 is the most recent microdata available for researchers (statistics canada, 2019). we restrict our analyses to alberta adult residents in 2016, resulting in a sample size of 82,945 respondents. the census provides an overview of disparities in alberta in 2016, prior to the pandemic, and the viewpoint survey provides updated information for life during the pandemic. the larger sample size for the census also allows for an intersectional analysis of key categorical groups. for analyses of census data, our primary predictor variables are gender, measured as male or female; race/ethnicity, measured with categories of white, asian, black, latin american, and mixed or other; indigeneity as being part of the canada’s indigenous or not; political or immigrant status, measured as citizen or immigrant (including the four status of immigrant mention above); and marital status, measured as being in a relationship (i.e., married or common-law) or not being in a relationship. for intersectional analyses, we focus on categories at the intersections of these variables. using a series of logistic regression models with interaction terms, we examine how these measures are jointly associated with three class-based outcomes: (1) very low incomes, (2) low incomes and (3) unemployment. for the alberta viewpoint data, we kept the same predictors and focused the analysis on subjective social class, as our outcome variable. this variable allowed respondents to self-identify across five categories: poverty class, working class, lower middle class, middle class, and upper middle class.4 4 the original survey question also provided respondents with options of "upper class" and "other" with the ability to fill-in a response. only 5 respondents chose "upper class" and were therefore combined with the "upper middle class" responses. respondents who chose "other" and did not provide a response were dropped from the analysis. 126 pre-covid-19 pandemic our first set of pre-pandemic findings, presented in table 1 depict clear class divides by gender, ethnicity, immigrant status, and marital status. table 1 shows results for three sets of models predicting very low income status (model 1), low income status (model 2), and unemployment (model 3). the odds of having very low incomes were 2.6 times higher for women than men, and the odds of experiencing low incomes were 3 times higher. single or divorced people were also 1.4 times as likely to be unemployed. indigenous people are also subject to economic hardship with odds of earning very low income being two times higher than for nonindigenous people. black albertans also have odds of unemployment which are two times higher than white people. immigrants are also approximately 1.5 times as likely as citizens to earn aftertax incomes lower than $20,000 and lower than $39,000. table 1 shows that categorical inequality is indeed present in alberta, likely diminishing the alberta advantage for many. however, such divides are much more complex, as shown in table 2, which presents the results of interaction models. first, examining the variation within categorical groups, married, white immigrant women are 4.5 times greater than a white married man with canadian citizenship to earn a very low income, and married, racialized immigrant women are 4.4 times greater than a white married man with canadian citizenship to earn a very low income. here, immigration status appears to play a decisive role in the access of economic resources. recent studies have shown that the incidence of low income has increased in the last decades, maintaining the low-income gap between immigrants and canadian-born (picot & hou, 2019; picot et al., 2008) and alberta makes no exception regardless of the intensity of its international net migration. looking at the predictors of model 2, the categorical configurations are almost the same. an immigrant woman is more likely to yield a low income as opposed to a canadian-born white married man. unemployment (model 3) however seems to affect almost exclusively men, with slight differences with the marital status and the ethnicity. in alberta, unmarried canadian racialized men have 5.1 greater odds of being unemployed than married white canadian men. if we now compare among categorical groups and the three different models, immigrant women living alone (admittedly single), either white or racialized, have clearly higher chances (6.8) of accessing limited resources (low income) followed by single white immigrant women (6.2). of course, it is impossible to assess which of the categories have the most influential effect statistically speaking on being lower class and poverty class, but the categorical configurations and the recurrent convergence of certain categorical characteristics (i.e., racialized, immigrant, single) offer a better idea of which people within society are more likely to experience precarity. as intersectionality scholars have long argued, it is not ethnicity or gender per se that causes or creates discrimination, but how society perceives and treats differences, and generates combined effects of sexism, racism, and nativism for instance (collins, 2004). put differently, difference does not imply inequality, instead, it has to do with how “differences of race, ethnicity, language, religion, gender, sexuality, citizenship and so on do have a systematic bearing on inequality” (brubaker, 2015, 11). in a more statistical perspective, categorical variables do not explain why 127 people earn very low and low incomes, nor why they suffer from unemployment. they establish a mere relationship. moreover, people with multiple category memberships also regard discrimination differently from one another. the interactive effects of social categories (gender, ethnicity, indigeneity, immigrant and marital statuses) as studied above provide a glimpse of the many manifestations of inequality and shed a light on discrimination as potential drivers of exclusion overall, gender, indigeneity and marital status are suggested to be strong predictors for the three models. that is to say, predicted positionality of class also becomes itself an object of discrimination and interacts with other axes of domination and oppression. additionally, class locations are not always fixed. upward mobility can be enabled and eventually prevent discrimination based on class. this is however not always true, since inherited cultural disposition and signs of social class can be difficult to erase completely and may lead to suspicions about individuals moving upwardly from one position to another (kraus et al. 2017; bourdieu, 1979). the interaction categories discussed above can be visualized horizontally (among groups) and vertically (within groups) with their respective class locations (figure 1). by first separating the expectable categorical configurations by gender, we examine sexism. we can then study the proportion or relative frequency of interaction effects within each ethnic identity and their class position based on the net income. first, we observe an obvious gap among men and women in terms of class location. 15.88% of men on average are socially located in the lower class whereas on average 32.73% of women are. alternatively, 20% of men on average are present within the upper class while women reach only 8.13%. men of all groups also benefit from a better class position when they are married, while single and married citizen women have greater chances to be in the upper middle class and upper class. second, there is also a significant difference between canadian-born women and immigrant women. immigrant status for married and single women signals a strong likelihood of lower class position. another situation that stands out is the single black immigrant men with a higher proportion of lower class membership (44.4%). single immigrant women from a mixed ethnic background also represent 43.8% of the lower class belonging. 128 table 1: logistic regression of very low income, low income, unemployment on gender, ethnicity, indigeneity, marital and political statuses for alberta, 2016 model 1 very low income model 2 low income model 3 unemployment gender (man) woman 2.559*** 3.055*** 0.845*** (0.021) (0.017) (0.037) ethnicity (white) asian 1.128*** 1.231*** 1.201** (0.035) (0.032) (0.07) black 1.194** 1.044 2.107*** (0.067) (0.062) (0.103) latin american 1.294*** 0.925 1.686*** (0.079) (0.075) (0.133) mixed/others 1.088 1.352* 1.425 (0.158) (0.144) (0.276) indigeniety (non-indigenous) indigenous 1.828*** 1.557*** 1.927*** (0.603) (0.041) (0.074) political status (citizen) immigrant 1.442*** 1.614*** 1.214 (0.031) (0.028) (0.063) marital status (married, common-law) single or divorced 0.600*** 1.362*** 1.368*** (0.029) (0.023) (0.052) constant 0.156*** 0.345*** 0.071*** (0.018) -0.015 (0.029) n 61323 61323 43774 -2 log likelihood 63307.076 78489.176 22771.705 r² 0.075 0.120 0.012 ***p<0.001; **p<0.01; *p<0.05 standard error in parentheses source: statistics canada, 2016 very low income refers to individuals with less than $20,000 after taxes. low income refers to individuals with less than $39,000 after taxes. unemployment includes only respondents who were in the labor force. for the sake of space and simplification, "married" also include common-law and people admittedly in a relationship. 129 table 2: logistic regression of very low income, low income and unemployment with interaction of categories for alberta, 2016 model 1 very low income model 2 low income model 3 unemployment interaction (man, white, citizen, married) i. man, racialized, citizen, married 0.807 (0.153) 0.737* (0.121) 0.837 (0.213) ii. man, racialized, immigrant, married 1.953*** (0.040) 2.394*** (0.033) 1.418*** (0.062) iii. man, racialized, immigrant, single 2.192*** (0.126) 3.965*** (0.109) 1.511* (0.213) iv. man, racialized, citizen, single 1.862 (0.428) 3.099*** (0.354) 5.101*** (0.480) v. man, white, citizen, single 1.259*** (0.057) 2.033*** (0.043) 1.867*** (0.078) vi. man, white, immigrant, married 1.071 (0.064) 1.547*** (0.047) 1.006 (0.102) vii. man, white, immigrant, single 1.277 (0.164) 2.793*** (0.119) 2.035** (0.248) viii. woman, white, citizen, married 2.993*** (0.027) 3.694*** (0.023) 0.888 (0.050) ix. woman, racialized, citizen, married 2.181*** (0.107) 2.428*** (0.0921) 1.020 (0.202) x. woman, racialized, immigrant, married 4.384*** (0.036) 5.899*** (0.034) 1.398*** (0.066) xi. woman, racialized, immigrant, single 3.740*** (0.075) 6.802*** (0.076) 1.437* (0.167) xii. woman, racialized, citizen, single 2.661** (0.317) 1.646* (0.097) 0.878 (0.730) xiii. woman, white, immigrant, single 1.382* (0.114) 6.199*** (0.091) 1.296 (0.282) xiv. woman, white, citizen, single 1.174*** (0.046) 3.983*** (0.034) 0.959 (0.234) xv. woman, white, immigrant, married 4.510*** (0.049) 4.809*** (0.047) 0.828 (0.127) constant 0.150*** (0.022) 0.323*** (0.017) 0.074*** (0.033) n 61323 61323 43774 -2 log likelihood 63075.369 78332.002 22829.666 r² 0.08 0.123 0.009 ***p<0.001; **p<0.01; *p<0.05 standard error in parentheses source: statistics canada, 2016 very low income refers to individuals with less than $20,000 after taxes. low income refers to individuals with less than $39,000 after taxes. unemployment includes only respondents who were in the labor force. for the sake of space and simplification, "married" also include common-law and people admittedly in a relationship. 130 figure 1: proportion of ethnic groups across social classes, 2016 131 during the covid-19 pandemic although canada has a reputation for being a multicultural land of equal opportunity, sociologists question these assumptions by examining structural inequalities (godley, 2018). some argue that inequality is on the rise, and must be explored through the intersections of gender, ethnicity, immigrant status, and social class (jedwab & satzewich, 2015). we introduce these intersections into our analyses to better understand the positions of those advantaged and disadvantaged in alberta. in the alberta viewpoint survey, questions about social positioning had two sides. on one hand, respondents were asked to share their perception of their social ranking. instead of using subjective measurements such as the macarthur scale of subjective social status (adler et al., 2000), we directly ask the respondents where they would position themselves using commonly known social ranks (i.e., poverty class, working class, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class and upper class). thus, self-reported social class was identified as subjective. on the other hand, we were able to measure social ranking using the classical indicator of income, that is the objective social class. income serves as a basis to compare self-perceived positionality and actual resources that are generally “operationalized in terms of wealth and income, educational attainment, and occupation” (manstead, 2018, 272; stephens et al., 2014). by comparing those two measures of class, we observed discrepancies between perceived and actual social class among lower middle class and upper class respondents (figure 2). this discrepancy is often referred to as status inconsistency (sosnaud et al., 2013) or status maximization (oware, 2008). this discrepancy is also gender based. for instance, women’s social class identity may be primarily determined by the social standing of their husband while few others may identify their class independently (sobel et al., 2004, 38). in other words, when it comes to self-identification, men’s social position tends to matter more, most of the time. self-perceived class positions also tend to vary among non-white groups as well (rubin et al., 2014). the overall picture of the survey shows that the majority of the respondents are actually middle class and their subjective position oscillates between the lower and the upper ends of the middle class. then, if we examine the gender and minority categories, we have a more heterogeneous picture. when we compared self-reported class location with social class based on income, certain gaps appear among gender and minorities. beginning with objective social class, proportionally speaking, we find more men in the upper class than women. conversely, we find a higher proportion of women among the poverty class. this could occur because men tend to exaggerate their self-perceived position within the upper middle class as opposed to women who underestimated it. 132 figure 2: subjective and objective class across gender, ethnicity, and indigeneity, 2021 subjective class objective class 133 figure 3: class identity and class solidarity across social categories, 2021 134 alternatively, black, indigenous, and latin american men overstated their presence among the working class. if we examine the intra-group variations of objective class, we observe very few distinctions, but a fair concentration around the middle class and a slight concentration among the upper class. black and latin american women are far more present within the working class where most of the women are middle class. the socially tolerated devaluation of women’s work in general and the view that men’s work is more valuable may have influenced the subjective class gap (shaked et al., 2016). intragroup and intergroup examinations are often the favored strategies to better grasp inequality differentials among groups and within them (leicht, 2008). for instance, the income of a specific group might be low compared to the general population, but high within the group (ostrove et al., 2000). as mentioned earlier, our research focuses on determinants of social position as well as self-perceived position. the alberta viewpoint survey measured subjective sense of belongingness to social class by gauging the importance of class identity and class solidarity. our results suggest that men, whether immigrants or citizens, white or indigenous, married or single, attach more importance to class identity in general compared to women (figure 3). now, focusing only on ethnicity, indigeneity, and immigrant status across genders, the expectations of gender roles expectation can explain that distinctive appraisal of social position. overconfidence may also be associated with a manifestation of masculinity in relation to social status (liu et al., 2016; pyke, 1996). men tend to perceive social status as important when defining their position within a hierarchical system. however, other studies suggest that, between power and status, men lean towards the prior, and women towards the latter (hays, 2013), but none of them are mutually exclusive. additionally, in democratic societies, social class and by extension incomes and occupations, is the predominant, if not, the only way to establish social status. according to our survey, male albertans are likely to pay more attention to the class they belong to. however, they will strongly and somewhat strongly identify with members of their class (solidarity and class consciousness) as much as women do. consequently, we can argue that class identity represents a strong social marker and differs greatly among genders. ethnicity and indigeneity may also moderate class belongingness, especially among men. non-white respondents consider class identity very important (17%) and important (40.2%) where more than a half of non-white (51.6%) and indigenous (52.6%) women consider their class identity important. across the relative frequencies of identity and solidarity, racialized men tend to attach more importance to their social class identity and to solidarity, as opposed to white men. immigrants, both men (45%) and women (59%) also emphasize the importance of their class identity whereas citizens may experience a certain detachment to their class identity. the pattern is similar when it comes to expressing solidarity with other members. immigrants experienced social hierarchy before coming to canada and must navigate the new society by strategizing their social position, even performing class expectation in order to create their new class identity (bonjour & chauvin, 2018). for this reason, social class acquires a symbolic and an economic significance for them (darvin & norton, 2014). despite the statistically significant relationship and moderate association between categories as shown by the chi-squares and phi coefficients, the 135 relatively small size of our sample leads us to remain cautious in our analyses at the risk of unnecessary speculation. a larger sample size would allow us to reinforce our findings. nevertheless, the survey provides for the first time, actual knowledge on the distinct class experience among gender and minorities and remains an insightful snapshot of the socioeconomic context of the pandemic. conclusion after seven years of economic slowdown in the energy sector, during the summer of 2022, alberta received windfall royalties, leading to a record-breaking revenue. nothing is certain about how such a jackpot might be enough to curb inequalities. recently, despite rising oil prices, prosperity still awaits in alberta. meanwhile, the province scores the highest rate of food insecurity in the country (tarasuk et al. 2022), an increasing trend confirmed by food banks canada. with the recession on the horizon, an opioid crisis sweeping across the province, rising homelessness in calgary and edmonton, and other major social issues, alberta’s inequalities are symptomatic of a historically economic culture and dependence on volatile markets. we began this paper with the question: does an alberta advantage exist? perhaps this question should be rephrased as: for whom does an alberta advantage exist? our results indicate that such an advantage is likely tied to certain status characteristics. we also show that dimensions of social class are intertwined with ethnicity, gender, immigrant status, and marital status. we have tested models using cumulative effects of social categorical determinants in order to provide a better understanding of how inequalities are structured across society. although quantitative modeling using interaction effects is necessary, we are aware that it also has certain limitations (misra et al., 2020, 21, cole, 2009, 178). because interaction provides an approximation, it must be completed with other analytical strategies. intersectionality is not per se a cumulative system of sociodemographic factors, but a paradigm (holman et al., 2021, 17). for this reason, overlapping axes of oppression and domination cannot be entirely captured quantitatively. moreover, even though statistics treat categories such as gender, ethnicity, immigrant status as “independent” variables, we know that those characteristics are not intrinsic to individuals and groups. that is true when measuring the level of experienced discrimination where the personal threshold may vary given the cultural background, along with the social position, and so on. the difference between perceived social class and actual social class also provides insights on how people gauge their own position and mobility, and how categorical determinants may affect their response. additionally, the objective lower middle class may be different for a white man and a black man, as well for an asian woman and an indigenous man. nonetheless, statistics provide valuable information that may be completed with conceptual thinking. in further research, we might analyze and compare categorical inequalities among provinces and have a 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(2015). situated intersectionality and social inequality. raisons politiques, 58, 91-100. the federal reserve and authoritarian statism | 33 34 | work for change the federal reserve and authoritarian statism | 35 36 | work for change the federal reserve and authoritarian statism | 37 38 | work for change the federal reserve and authoritarian statism | 39 40 | work for change 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 15000 16000 17000 18000 19000 20000 21000 22000 23000 24000 25000 1978 1983 1988 1993 1998 2003 2008 total employment, left figure 1 employment, federal reserve system, 1977-2012 source: federal reserve employment, regulation and supervision, right the federal reserve and authoritarian statism | 41 42 | work for change table 1 federal reserve regulatory cycles: 1977-2014 source: regdata.com; federal reserve. note:*calculation based on year end 2011, due to changes in reporting. regulatory information is available until december 2014. methodology: cycles were identified on the basis of clear shifts in supervisory hiring and financial regulations. in the periods between cycles the regulatory burden on financial firms was generally decreased reflecting a reduced emphasis on financial supervision inside the federal reserve system. these trends were analyzed against the annual reports of the federal reverse, with focus on the supervision and regulation section in each report. finally, fomc meeting minutes were analyzed using a key word search which highlighted major trends. the federal reserve and authoritarian statism | 43 44 | work for change the federal reserve and authoritarian statism | 45 46 | work for change the federal reserve and authoritarian statism | 47 48 | work for change the federal reserve and authoritarian statism | 49 50 | work for change the federal reserve and authoritarian statism | 51 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 2008 2013 2018 federal reserve federal government figure 2 total expenses, federal reserve vs federal government, percentage change 2008 2019 source: federal reserve 52 | work for change source: federal reserve 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 1915 1925 1935 1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 2015 dodd-frank bill figure 3 federal reserve expenditure as a percent of total system expenditure the federal reserve and authoritarian statism | 53 54 | work for change the federal reserve and authoritarian statism | 55 http://www.socialistproject.ca/documents/austerity%20againstdemocracy.pdf 56 | work for change https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/review-of-monetary-policy-strategy-tools-and-communications-statement-on-longer-run-goals-monetary-policy-strategy.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/review-of-monetary-policy-strategy-tools-and-communications-statement-on-longer-run-goals-monetary-policy-strategy.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/review-of-monetary-policy-strategy-tools-and-communications-statement-on-longer-run-goals-monetary-policy-strategy.htm https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/ https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/1999/19991019.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/1999/19991019.htm the federal reserve and authoritarian statism | 57 58 | work for change https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20200827a.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20200827a.htm the federal reserve and authoritarian statism | 59 towards a fairer platform economy: introducing the fairwork foundation mark graham1 and jamie woodcock2 the problem with platform work increasingly greater numbers of people are now using apps, platforms, and websites to find and perform jobs.3 there are at least seven million platform workers that live all over the world, doing work valued at us$5 billion per year outsourced via platforms or apps (kuek et al., 2015; heeks, 2017). eleven percent of the labour force in the united kingdom have already earned income from digital labour platforms (huws and joyce, 2016), and it is predicted that by 2025, one third of all labour transactions will be mediated by digital platforms (standing 2016). the common feature of all digital labour platforms is that they offer tools to bring together the supply of, and demand for, labour. the functions fulfilled by digital labour platforms vary greatly. in some cases, they simply become new intermediaries for existing services. in others, they facilitate new jobs and skills (drahokoupil and fabo, 2016). and, in yet others, they fragment labour processes temporally and spatially in order to allow for fundamentally reconfigured economic geographies of work (graham and anwar, 2018). some platform work follows the broad trends of business process outsourcing, for example, the shift of call centre work from the uk to india (taylor and bain, 2004). however, platform work goes significantly further, involving the "act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call" (howe, 2006, 1). this does not require the 1 mark graham is professor of internet geography at the oii, a faculty fellow at the alan turing institute, a senior research fellow at green templeton college, and an associate in the university of oxford’s school of geography and the environment. email: mark.graham@oii.ox.ac.uk 2 jamie woodcock is a fellow in the department of management at the london school of economics. his research focuses on the digital economy, the transformation of work, and esports. email: j.woodcock@lse.ac.uk 3 we would like to thank richard heeks for his extensive and thoughtful comments and suggestions to this piece. we also thank the european research council under the european union's seventh framework programme for research and technological development (fp/2007–2013) / erc grant agreement n. 335716. 242 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice shifting of workplaces, equipment, or the management function, instead allowing this work to be distributed along digital supply chains. without the formal workplace, scholz (2015) has argued that work platforms have been able to use "the spectacle of innovation to conceal the worker.” an example of the different kinds of possibilities this entails is the rise of professional content creators on platforms like youtube and twitch. new career paths are being forged by entrepreneurial creators who can make significant incomes from their activities. millions of newly-connected potential workers in lowand middle-income countries are now seeking to escape their local labour markets and instead find work in what many now see a world-spanning global labour market (graham and anwar, 2018). these emerging forms of work provide jobs and income to many, but are not without their problems. this article is not the place for a comprehensive overview; however, it is worth pointing to concerns that arise for a number of primary reasons. first, new practices harmful to digital worker are emerging. for instance, to ensure the operation of large content platforms like the ones mentioned above, an increasing number of “commercial content moderation” workers are employed to routinely check and remove offensive content (roberts, 2016). this work can involve looking at traumatic content for extended periods of time, with subsequent stress and emotional strain. a second reason that some have pointed to problems in the platform economy relates to the ways that platforms are transforming existing practices. de stefano (2016), for instance, has argued that platforms undermine the standard employment relationship through fragmented work and increased casualisation. activities that were previously considered to be a formal or standard job can be mediated through platforms in order to commodify and societally dissembled them, thus attempting to bypass rules, standards, and traditions that have protected working standards (wood et al., 2017). an example of this is the new platform being proposed for the uk’s national health service that would have nurses bid for shifts under the guise of offering flexibility rather than being provided with more stable contracts. thirdly, the spatially fragmented nature of some platforms means that workers from around the world are brought into competition with one another for the same jobs. as ever more people from low-income countries connect to the internet, these workers are placed into fierce competition with one another (graham et al., 2017a). lacking the ability to collectively bargain, these workers have little ability to negotiate wages or working conditions with their employers towards a fairer platform economy | 243 who are often on the other side of the world. as a result of this new global market for work, many workers have jobs characterized by long and irregular hours, low income, and high stress (graham et al., 2017b). the international nature of much platform work means that it tends largely to be done outside of the purview of national governments, with very few employers paying attention to relevant existing regulation in either their home countries or the worker’s home country. international digital labour platforms threaten to undermine workers’ ability to defend existing jobs, liveable wages, and dignified working conditions, in both lowand high-income countries (graham et al., 2017a). finally, in almost all types of platform-mediated work, workers themselves have found it extremely challenging to exert any sort of power to bargain with the platform itself, change policies, or articulate an effective voice. part of the issue is because platforms tend to make it extremely hard for workers to collectively organise or bargain. on some platforms, workers are inherently encouraged to compete rather than collaborate. on others, they can be “delisted” (i.e., fired and not eligible for future contacts) for anything deemed threatening to the platform. the fact that platforms tend to see themselves as simple brokers between clients and suppliers of labour, rather than as employers in the traditional sense means that it is difficult for workers to even know who to bargain with in the first place when suffering from issues such as non-payment or poor working conditions. a major problem with understanding the emergence of the online gig economy is due to asymmetries of information involved with platforms (heeks, 2017). the information asymmetries facilitate and exacerbate existing inequalities in the digital workplace. in this article, we argue that these asymmetries need to be overcome, and outline a strategy for improving online gig work that builds on existing attempts, while formulating a response that can match the scale and complexity of the challenges these workers face. as a note, we use the term “worker” throughout the article, despite the differences in employment contracts, partly due to the problematic nature of these categorisations, but also to emphasise that all people involved in this kind of work should be afforded some basic work-related protections. building on scholarship from the sociology of work and labour geographies, we outline a range of potential responses, and conclude with our own plans to develop a “fairwork foundation”: a project that sits at the intersections of strategies from worker/consumer alliances, and radical transparency. 244 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice what strategies could work? to clarify what we are discussing in this article, we distinguish between three types of “platform” work based on the labour process involved: firstly, location-specific labour platforms (type a); secondly, crowdwork or “microtask” platforms (type b); and finally, freelance or “macrotask” platforms (type c). the first distinction is the use of location-based apps requiring workers to be in a specific location. this form of platform work is therefore “geographically-sticky” (type a). for example, uber (with transport), deliveroo (delivery), or taskrabbit (doing handyman type tasks) which have locationspecific requirements. the next two types are digitally-mediated in ways that are less location-specific, but differentiated in terms of the skill involved. microtask platforms (type b) involve short tasks distributed via crowdsourcing and require a relatively similar level of skill. the work is highly commodified and clients never interact directly with workers; e.g., amazon mechanical turk or crowdflower. freelance platforms (type c) involve more specific skills and facilitate a more direct relationship between client and worker, for example upwork or freelancer. hence type b and type c are differentiated in terms of the scale from “microtask” to “macrotask.” it is important to distinguish between the different types of platform work on this basis because the technical differences in the labour process have important implications for workers. for example, workers on type a platforms are more likely to have physical contact with other workers. although this differs, for example with deliveroo drivers coming into contact at meeting points, whereas uber drivers may not have these direct interactions (facility and woodcock, 2017). challenges for intervention: the composition of platform work across the different types creates serious strategic challenges for worker organising. at the most basic level, workers engage with digital platforms without necessarily having contact – either physical or via other communication methods with other workers. this means that starting the process of collective organising is much harder than with forms of work in which workers regularly share space. as gearhart (2017, 13) has explained, even where there are unions, they "cannot collectively bargain with an algorithm, they can’t appeal to a platform, and they can’t negotiate with an equation." the structure of work includes a number of asymmetries, including those relating to “value”, “risk”, “resource”, “information”, and “power” (heeks, 2017, 16-17). the asymmetry of information continues from the basic level of communication to many other aspects of the work. for example, the processes involved with the work can often be obscured from towards a fairer platform economy | 245 workers themselves, with little or no access to the data they are producing. scholz (2015) has captured this asymmetry by considering these platforms as “digital black boxes”, which pasquale (2015, 3) also uses to refer to a "system whose workings are mysterious.” the potentially damaging consequences of these factors has "led to both calls for interventions and actual interventions by various stakeholders," mostly coalescing around aspects of what could constitute ‘decent work’ (heeks, 2017, 2). interventions into the platform economy: within these different strategies it is worth considering the role of academic research at this point. much research has "focused on optimizing ... these platform ecosystems," yet scholz (2015) argues that instead what is needed is research that focuses on the "building of alternatives, outrage, conflict, and worker organization." counterhegemonic research and action is thus particularly needed to overcome the asymmetries and inequalities that are currently built into platforms. there have been attempts at regulatory or legal reform, but many of these are ongoing. for example, in the uk, both uber and deliveroo have been taken to tribunal for the use of the self-employed independent contractor status. recently transport for london threatened to remove uber’s licence to operate, citing a range of reasons – none of which mention the treatment of workers by the platform (tfl, 2017). this act of regulatory change – if it goes through – would lead to 30,000 uber drivers losing their work in london. uber, like deliveroo, have seen the beginnings of worker selforganisation that cold point in a different direction. as dewhurst (2017, 23), an activist from the iwgb (independent workers union of great britain), explains, "it is extremely difficult to unionise in this industry. yet, what we are doing is a start, and we are welcoming new members every day" (dewhurst, 2017, 23). however, as another activist from the union pointed out, both platforms are "refusing to recognise our union and refusing to negotiate ... and this needs to change before we can move forward" (mcclenahan, 2017, 9). in light of these structural and power inequalities it is worth considering what role academic research could play. after all, silberman (2017, 16) reminds us that "worker rights in online labour platforms should be of interest for anyone concerned with the present and future of democracy." an important example of what could be pursued is the london living wage campaign. the initiative, established by london citizens, recommends a wage level above the minimum wage based on the costs of living in london. this involves independently calculating these figures and undertaking research. 246 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice however, the figure on its own is not going to transform workers' conditions. since 2001, the campaign has spread from london and been formalised into the living wage foundation, but has also become a common demand in workers’ campaigns. it provides a benchmark for low-paid workers to aim for, and while successfully winning the increase would not solve all problems at work, it remains an important intervention that has resulted in significant pay rises for some of the lowest paid workers. workers, unions, and activists can point to this research in their strategies to get wages to, or above, the living wage threshold. the combination of research and organising has clearly had a substantial and quantifiable effect on work in london and other parts of the united kingdom. another important example of a different kind of strategy in online gig work can be found with the turkopticon project. this focuses on amazon mechanical turk, providing "a place for workers to help one another with information and their experiences about employers" (turkopticon, 2017). this was achieved by developing a browser plugin to allow workers to review the work tasks, attempting to reverse the panopticon-like surveillance of the platform (hence the name). in addition to this, there is a forum for workers to communicate. the project itself began from surveys of workers on the platform, and sought to build upon this, involving workers and their views in the strategy. this intervention provides one way to overcome the barriers between workers created by the platform organisation, while also foregrounding the activity of the workers involved (irani and silberman, 2013). when considering the kinds of regulatory change needed in platform work, serious complications arise when that work is organised across national borders. as graham (2017, 30) has noted elsewhere, there are two key problems when addressing these issues on a global scale: firstly, there is a "massive oversupply of labour power and ... intense competition for jobs"; and secondly, "there is little stopping that work from being re-outsourced." clearly, the london living wage campaign is unable to intervene across national borders – neither would a single wage rate make sense due to the differences in costs of living along existing lines of global inequality. however, these two interventions provide important pointers towards what could constitute an effective strategy that utilises academic research. this is also not to discount the "more traditional strategies such as constructing (virtual) picket lines or collectively withdrawing their labour" that are available to workers (graham, 2017, 30). all of these approaches have to contend with the asymmetries – particularly informational – discussed earlier. towards a fairer platform economy | 247 the fairwork foundation the london living wage sought to bring together workers, businesses, and broader societal benefits as part of the campaign. a key part of this has been making visible the exploitative practices of low pay that are often invisible. in platform work, the practices are hidden in increasingly complex ways. for example, the "users of facebook, google, and other digital services, sites, apps, and algorithms currently have no idea if the workers that help to create and maintain those services are treated fairly or paid living wages" (graham, 2017, 30). we increasingly rely on these global digital supply chains, yet at the same time seem to be increasingly detached from the realities of the work involved at different points. any attempt to change work first needs to understand it, and digital technology also potentially lowers the barriers to inquiring into the conditions of work, particularly in relation to workers documenting their own experiences (woodcock, 2014). the clearest example of this articulation in terms of worker and consumer alliances can be found with fairtrade (2017), which attempts to change “the way trade works through better prices, decent working conditions and a fair deal for farmers and workers in developing countries.” this requires companies to open up their supply chains to independent inspections, the development of published standards, and the use of certification marks on products that consumers can identify. this method, albeit adapted, could follow the "same way that the fairtrade foundation highlights successes and makes lead firms concerned about unethical practices in their supply chains” and “could have a similar impact in the realm of digital work” (graham, 2017, 30). an impetus for this can be found with the frankfurt declaration, which argues that "platform operators, workers, worker organizations, clients, researchers, and regulators must work together to bring democracy to these new digital workplaces" (faircrowdwork, 2016). from the declaration, this has involved rating crowdwork platforms, including both assessments based on the terms of service offered to workers, but also workers own reviews of the platforms (faircrowdwork, 2017). as heeks (2017, 23) has argued, this is the only “existing code or standard of specific relevance to the digital gig economy.” it is from this context that we propose the establishing the fairwork foundation. this is a response to the challenges that are faced by platform workers, but also draws on ongoing empirical research to develop effective strategies to address those challenges. as has been suggested by heeks (2017, 11), the ilo (2013) framework for “decent work” provides an important route into 248 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice analysing the conditions of platform work, particularly in relation to “employment context”, “employment”, and “work conditions.” this requires important distinctions between the three types of work discussed earlier: location-specific labour platforms, crowdwork “microtask” platforms, and freelance “macrotask” platforms. in order to differentiate between the different platforms a focus on the labour process involved provides a way to distinguish between the specificities of the work and challenges associated with it. central to making this effective will be the development of a set of certification schemes that are able to carefully distinguish between platforms that offer workers a fair deal and those that do not. however, the existing literature lacks focus on job quality in the emerging platform economy. as such, we propose an initial set of criteria for fair digital work. the criteria build directly on the fifteen criteria established for crowdwork by ig metall, the german metalworkers’ union, which silberman (2017, 16) has outlined. the criteria for the fairwork foundation covers: 1. minimum wage. the platform ensures that workers are paid at least minimum wage in their location, regardless of employment classification. 2. non-payment. the platform does not allow non-payment for completed work. 3. compliance with relevant laws. the platform abides by all relevant laws in the worker’s location. 4. pay terms. for crowdwork and freelance platforms, the time in which clients agree to review and pay for submitted work is stated up front, and is clear to the worker before accepting the task. 5. non-competition agreements. the platform does not require workers to sign non-competition agreements. 6. non-disclosure agreements. if the platform requires workers to sign nondisclosure agreements, the agreement prohibits disclosure only of data submitted by customers, not pay, work processes, or working conditions. 7. access to collected data. the platform allows each worker access to all data collected about them by the platform at any time, including work history data and work evaluations or ratings. towards a fairer platform economy | 249 8. contestation of work evaluations or qualifications. the platform allows workers to contest work evaluations and qualification test outcomes. such contestations are reviewed by a human employee of the platform. 9. communication. the platform ensures that customers and platform operators respond promptly, respectfully, and substantively to workrelated worker communications. 10. information about client and purpose of work. the platform gives workers information about the client and use or purpose of their work. 11. psychologically stressful or damaging tasks. tasks that may be psychologically stressful or damaging (e.g., review of social media content for hate speech, violence, or pornography) are clearly marked. workers completing such tasks have access to counselling or support paid for by the customer and/or platform. 12. account deactivation. worker account deactivations are reviewed by a human platform employee. 13. the right to collective representation and bargaining. regardless of employment status, workers have a legally protected way of voicing their desires for improved working conditions to platform management. this broad set of criteria cover a range of well-known and existing problems on platforms. many of these have emerged from previous research with crowdsourcing workers, based on feedback from surveys. we recognise that many of these strategies will need to be contextualised to local environments (and, indeed, we will need to establish what a ‘local environment is when clients, platforms, and workers might potentially all be in different countries). the criteria are instead intended as a starting point and will be refined and improved in a regular multi-stakeholder dialogue with workers, unions, platforms, and scholars. instead of simply certifying a variety of platforms remotely using desk research, we aim to establish deeper collaborations with the platforms themselves as well as with workers and unions. this will allow us to ensure that criteria are constantly attuned to the needs of digital workers and the practices of platforms. conclusion this proposal envisions a way of holding platforms accountable through a programme of research focused on fair work. it operates under a governing belief that core transparent production networks can lead to better working 250 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice conditions for digital workers around the world. the establishment of the foundation and a certification scheme will provide demonstrable impact for digital workers, customers, and platforms. for digital workers, it addresses the twofold structural weakness that they face: first, the lack of ability to collectively bargain due to the fragmentation of the work process; and second, the asymmetry of information between workers and platforms. the certification process provides an important means to address these two challenges, along with building and developing connections between workers and institutions like trade unions and regulatory bodies. new kinds of work require innovations in organising techniques and regulations, and the fairwork foundation provides an important starting point for developing these in practice.4 as millions of people turn to platform work for their livelihoods, it is no longer good enough to imagine that there is nothing beyond the screen. our clicks tie us to the lives and livelihoods of platform workers, as much as buying clothes tie us to the lives of sweatshop workers. and with that realisation of our interwoven digital positionalities comes the power to bring into being a fairer world of work. references de stefano, v. 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http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/automate-delivering-resistance-gig-economy http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/automate-delivering-resistance-gig-economy http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/automate-delivering-resistance-gig-economy http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/automate-delivering-resistance-gig-economy http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/automate-delivering-resistance-gig-economy http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/automate-delivering-resistance-gig-economy alternate routes: a journal of critical social research, 35, 46-61 (2025) the ‘contained critique’ of the anti-poverty advocacy community and ontario’s ‘inclusive’ liberal agenda wendy mckeen1 abstract: in the past three decades, governments and many social poverty advocates in canada, and elsewhere, have embraced an ‘inclusive’ liberal model of social policy, known for its activist, employability orientation. this paper examines how, in this period, the social policy advocacy community in ontario was involved in advancing this model. it draws from assemblage theory to focus on how their work served to ‘contain the critique’ of neoliberalism, limit the conditions for possibilities of ‘thinking otherwise’, and recasting the meaning of social policy, equity, social justice, and possibilities for meaningful change. keywords: inclusive liberalism; neoliberalism; poverty politics; advocacy community introduction the ‘social investment’ approach also referred to as the ‘third way,’ ‘social liberalism,’ or more recently, ‘inclusive liberalism’,2 was embraced by many industrialized nations in the 1990s. the model was envisioned around the project of finding a balance between social and economic objectives; production and social reproduction; and ideally, be one that is adaptive, pragmatic, non-ideological, and effective in reducing social costs (coulter, 2009; graefe, 2020; jenson, 2004; jenson, 2009; laruffa, 2018). while governments, politicians and intellectuals have been at the forefront of promoting and implementing this model, the social policy advocacy community has also been involved in doing this work, particularly, in developing and promoting visions and policy measures in the hopes of influencing government policy. the paper examines the work of the latter community in shaping and sustaining this model, and queries whether and how it makes space for policy-making that transcends neoliberalism. it presents the case as occurred in ontario, canada, over the 2000’s and 2010’s. this paper draws from excellent critical empirical research, often from a political economy/structural perspective, on the role played by the social policy advocacy community in ontario in this period (e.g. hudson and graefe, 2011; graefe and hudson, 2018; mahon and macdonald, 2008; mahon and macdonald, 2010; mahon, 2008; noël, 2006). the latter research methods tend to rely on observable evidence and primarily focus on social policy as the outcome of competing interests and unequal power relations. this paper seeks to provide a post-structural perspective on policymaking. post-structuralism shares much with the structural approach but also puts a focus on how policy-making struggles, and the measures and discourses produced, are also working to ‘create’ reality, including, the meta-level recasting of the very concepts being debated, such as ‘social policy,’ ‘citizenship,’ ‘poverty,’ ‘dependency,’ and more. this paper applies the post-structural approach as presented in ‘assemblage theory.’ this theory starts from the premise that social policy is ‘assemblage,’i.e. the act of bringing elements, such as discourses, propositions, etc., together in strategic ways with the aim of governing conduct in desired ways (li, 2007a, li, 2007b; savage, 2018; savage, 2020). according to assemblage theorist, tania murray li, when oppositional actors engage in 1 wendy mckeen is an associate professor in the school of social work at york university; co-editor of the canadian review of social policy and has published several articles on the role of the social policy advocacy community in social policy debate. 2 i use the term ‘social investment’ when discussing the 1990s, and turn to ‘inclusive liberalism’ when discussing the 2000’s and 2010’s. 47 collective advocacy, they often make compromises that result in ‘containing’ or ‘censoring’ their critique in order to win tangible outcomes and maintain their ability to stay in the game (li, 2007a; li, 2007b; savage, 2018; savage, 2020). the research draws from the critical literature on welfare and poverty; material (reports, briefs, and commentaries) issued by key social policy advocacy groups and organizations over this period. it examines the mobilizing efforts of the social policy community in ontario to uncover how, in key moments, their actions, taken together, were doing the work of assemblage – essentially, the work of organizing certain possibilities and visions into, and out of, antipoverty policy making, in ways that served to ‘contain the critique’ (of neoliberalism) and give coherence and legitimacy to the inclusive liberal model, while obscuring the possibilities of doing policy ‘otherwise’ (savage, 2020, 331). the ultimate purpose is to better understand the implications of this model in shaping the ‘social.’ the paper starts with a brief explanation of assemblage theory and then focuses on the context surrounding the social policy advocacy community in the 1990s. it then turns to critically examine three key moments in the 2000’s and 2010’s, in which the social policy advocacy community was active in efforts to influence future social policy reform in ontario, including: 1) the work of defining problems and solutions in the name of social investment; 2) the task force on modernizing income security for working-age adults (miswaa) (20042006); and, 3) the 2017 report, “income security: a roadmap for change.” the paper concludes with final reflections on the inclusive liberal model, its equity and social justice implications, and the possibilities for meaningful change. social policy as ‘assemblage’ as post-structural analysts have pointed out, social policies and social policy discourses do not describe reality they create reality particularly, how we understand social problems and solutions, and such concepts as poverty, citizenship, dependency, and ‘the poor’ (garrett, 2018; schram, 2015; wiggan, 2012; mcgimpsey, 2017). assemblage theory takes the position that policy always exists in the form of assemblages (savage, 2018): the work of drawing heterogeneous elements together “into particular strategic relations (his italics) with a particular desired impact” (savage, 2020, 325) and sustaining these connections in the face of tension (li, 2007b). assemblage theory invites us to ask how certain policies are made to cohere and puts the attention on “the role of various actors and agents in creating the conditions of possibility for certain policies to emerge, while … obscuring possibilities for doing policy otherwise” (savage 2020, 331). assemblages are always “the outcome of agency and struggle” (savage, 2020, 329, citing li), and while the agency of political actors and organizations is always “situated” and “context dependent,” humans always have agency and a capacity to make change (savage, 2020, 331, citing mcfarlane). tania li’s research on ‘improvement schemes’ as assemblage is particularly pertinent to the study of social policy and provides insight into the practices often used in the course of struggle over ideas and policy agendas, and how they can carve paths for some ideas to rise to the fore, while submerging other possibilities (li, 2007a; li, 2007b). while li identifies several generic practices of assemblage, this paper focuses on two key practices: ‘problematization’ identifying “how problems come to be defined as problems in relation to particular schemes of thought, diagnoses of deficiency and promises of improvement” (savage, 2020, 331, citing li); and “rendering technical”, which amounts to reducing the messiness of the social world to “a set of relations that can be formulated as a diagram in which ‘problem’ (a), plus intervention 48 (b), will produce beneficial result (c) (li, 2007b, 265). to render an issue technical is also to render it nonpolitical excluding political-economic relations from the diagnoses and prescriptions and focusing on the capacities of the poor, who are seen as subjects to be improved (li, 2007a; li, 2007b). it is important to clarify the limitations of this approach, however. assemblage theory does not take account of the intentions or the strategies behind the actions taken in the process of collective policy-making situations involving competing ideologies and interests. it therefore leaves out the complexities and dilemmas actors often face in making decisions or seeking compromises, especially when it involves engaging with the state. the purpose of this paper is not to cast judgment on any of the actors involved, or the decisions they made, but gain a better understanding of how their actions were the work of assemblage, carving paths in sustaining the ‘social investment’ model. the paper turns below to provide a very brief account of the situation of the social policy advocacy community in the 1990s, just prior to the period examined in this paper. background: ‘social investment’ and the social policy advocacy community the new era of ‘social investment’ emerged over the 1990s in canada, and in the face of growing poverty, unemployment, inequality, and the threat of social cohesion. it was based on the idea of bringing social policy and economic policy together to find a compromise or balance between the economic and social spheres, between social justice and economic competitiveness; efficiency and equity; and left and right politics. this approach was solidly established in canada by the midand late-1990s with the federal government’s turn to restructure canada’s social policy system in alignment with the social investment approach, with the objective of reducing social costs. many social policy experts and advocates were also drawn into this approach over the course of the 1980s and 1990s. under the neoliberalism of the 1980s, many social movement organizations lost credibility and status, and social policy advocacy groups also experienced a decline in credibility, funding cuts, and were effectively sidelined as participants in social policy debates and policy-making initiatives (mckeen, 2004). this situation also occurred in ontario under the right-wing and austerity-focused neoliberal harris government that was in power from 1995 to 2003. by the midand late-1990s/early 2000s, however, ‘social investment’ had become the dominant social policy model in canada, and many social policy advocacy organizations and actors had been drawn into the debates, and for many this was welcome relief after the many years of being marginalized (noël, 2006). to be clear, the ‘social policy advocacy community’ was never homogenous or static; it included a range of actors (e.g. social policy advocacy groups, individual consultants, community-groups, social policy research institutions, unions, charitable foundations, and, at times, business), and this varied over time and place. research has shown that these actors also varied with respect to credibility and power, with the key dividing lines being between the more centrist, liberal-reformist actors and organizations, and the more social democratic actors; the former having more market-oriented interests, and the latter, more social justice oriented and greater willingness to challenge neoliberal thinking (graefe and hudson, 2018; freiler and clutterbuck, 2017). below i examine three key moments in the mobilization of this community. 49 poverty: manufacturing solutions and problems as noël has described, in the late 1990s/early 2000s the issue of poverty “caught fire,” and an array of social policy and anti-poverty actors and institutions converged on the issue of poverty reduction (noël, 2006, 317). several key non-profit and non-governmental social advocacy organizations, many funded by a handful of non-profit charitable foundations with interests in addressing poverty, turned to developing new ideas and visions for social policy reform. several high-profile organizations and individual social policy advocates became involved in designing a “new social architecture,”3 that would address the new ‘social risks’ associated with the rise of the new global knowledge-based economy and had contributed to the growth of precarious low-wage labour, and growing poverty and unemployment. other contributing factors were new family structures, an aging society, shifts in immigration, challenges faced by historically disadvantaged populations, etc. the aim of the new social architecture was to create a system that would protect people from these social risks, especially by improving the lives and prospects of the working poor and working-age adults; investing in children as future citizens and workers; and reducing poverty, especially child poverty and the intergenerational transition of poverty. these goals were also seen as important and necessary for promoting social cohesion and enhancing economic efficiency and a healthy economy (mosher, 2014; coulter, 2009; jenson, 2009). the organizations and advocates involved in this work called for a new modernized ‘social architecture’ that gave more recognition to the “make work pay” model, which they saw as a core value of canadians, and what canadians wanted (e.g. jenson, 2004; stapleton, 2004b; stapleton 2004b; battle, et al., 2005; battle, et al., 2006); a model that would improve prospects for the working poor; invest in children as future workers; and reduce poverty, particularly, child poverty. the idea was to ensure that everyone had equal opportunities and access to paid work, that a person working full-time, full year would have a decent living wage. the preferred design for a new ‘social architecture’ was to deconstruct or reduce, and ultimately eliminate, the social assistance program, and build up an income security system that would provide a level of income security to all working-age adults with low incomes, whether paid work or not, including welfare recipients, largely through income supplementation programs for low wage workers (e.g. various tax credit programs (similar to child benefits) and others). indeed, a key element in the ‘social architecture’ material, including the multiple publications of key policy experts and commentators in this period, involved extolling the deficiencies of the social assistance program, specifically, its ineffectiveness in helping recipients make the transition from welfare into paid employment and ‘self-reliance.’ this came to be known as the “welfare wall” – referring to built-in disincentives that were seen as effectively ‘trapping’ welfare recipients, such as: eligibility criteria that stripped recipients of their financial assets; the loss of health, vision, and drug benefits that recipient’s would face when leaving welfare for paid work; and the high rate of clawbacks that are applied to any employment earnings recipients receive. 3 including the canadian policy research network’s (cprn); the caledon institute of social policy, and john stapleton, long-time public servant in ontario social services and policy consultant. to be clear, some social policy advocates were skeptical of the social investment model and the idea of a new social architecture (jackson, 2004; townson, 2004). 50 indeed, a number of publications were issued by several high-profile experts in social policy, poverty, and social assistance that forcefully argued that the welfare system was irredeemably “broken” and not worth fixing; a failed program that should be deconstructed (stapleton 2008; stapleton, 2004a, 16, 18; stapleton, 2004b, 17); it created a “welfare wall”; welfare recipients were “tangled in welfare”; it was a subtle form of “micro-colonialism” that disempowered and deterred recipients from acting to improve their lives (battle, et al., 2005, 433); it was “outdated,” “archaic,” “paternalistic,” “punitive,” “deeply stigmatizing”; treated recipients “as dependents, as quasi-children/criminals,” it was “simply a poor program” and “not amenable to fixing up” (battle, et al., 2005; stapleton, 2004b); and it was unpopular with the public; and “not what ontarians, canadians want or value.” the solutions put forward were for the gradual dismantling of social assistance (varying sometimes, with a promise to temporarily increase the effectiveness of the program), and the creation of a new ‘social architecture’ that puts the emphasis in the value of paid work (graefe, 2008). certainly, this material contributed more some understanding of some of the problems and potential solutions in addressing poverty and social justice and provided important insight into some of the serious flaws of the welfare system (i.e. the complex and unfair regulations, the surveillance and moral regulation of recipients, lack of support and training programs, and more. indeed, many of these issues had been brought forward in previous government reviews and had been raised by many anti-poverty advocacy groups that had long pushed for solutions. the narrative, however, was doing more than just presenting reality; it was also working to create it. indeed, the narrative was far from being ‘politically neutral’ and ‘evidence based.’ the repetitive claims about the ‘welfare wall,’ and that the social assistance program was broken, also served to render the program and surrounding issues, as purely technical concerns. they cast the program as a broken machine that was not equipped to deal with ‘new risks,’ or challenges, and that there was an automatic and simple technical fix to this “design” problem – it being the preferred new ‘social architecture’ plan that entailed eliminating the program (stapleton, 2004a). by the same token, the narrative served to objectify welfare recipients as passive, unfulfilled commodities and in need of ‘improvement.’ in this way, the narrative presented a ‘contained critique’ by obscuring power relations – the power that governments, and their political allies, had wielded as a way to preserve the principles of ‘less eligibility’ and ‘perversity’ (i.e. ensuring benefits for welfare recipients are maintained at levels inferior to those of the lowest paid workers; and the idea that the more money given to people, the more they become lazy and undisciplined). one example that stands out was the state’s targeting of ‘welfare mothers’ as suitable candidates for ‘work incentive’ measures while also failing to deliver on the promised childcare and other supports that would have made this a viable option for mothers; and its campaigns to vilify welfare recipients as enemies of the state and taxpayers, and dehumanize them by casting them as lazy and unworthy (mckeen, 2020; evans, 1996; little, 2012; gavigan and chunn, 2007; maki, 2011; mosher, 2014; marks, et al., 2016). the narrative also obscures social inequities and the realities of inequality for example, in failing to recognize the important role welfare has played, and continues to play, as a vital safety net for populations affected by discrimination and inequitable social structures (i.e. women, single mothers and their children, racialized populations, indigenous people (mosher, 2014; caragata, et al., 2018; maki, 2011; smith-carrier and lawlor, 2017; smith-carrier, 2017; gaszo, 2015; little, 2012; mckeen, 2020; jackson, 2009). also negated, are the past political struggles of anti-poverty and welfare rights groups, women’s groups, anti-racist 51 organizations, and community groups to protect and improve the conditions for recipients, often in the face of government-imposed austerity. indeed, this practice of ‘problematization,’ matched with ‘a particular scheme of thought’ and ‘promise of improvement,’ was reiterated over the next two decades and, as i argue, served to narrow the parameters of poverty debate in ontario and limit the possibilities for alternative policy ideas and agenda to emerge. the paper turns next to the miswaa task force initiative and the way it served to condition the possibilities for certain ideas to come to the fore, while obscuring others. task force on modernizing income security for working-age adults the task force on modernizing income security for working-age adults (miswaa) emerged in 2004, and when poverty was high on the public radar and both government and non-government actors had embraced the inclusive liberal approach. it was sponsored by toronto city summit alliance (tcsa) an alliance of liberal-minded business, city leaders, and “centrist policy analysts” in toronto, with interests in strengthening the competitiveness of toronto’s economy and “upgrading of the labour force’s “human capital” (hudson and graefe, 2011, 4; graefe and hudson, 2018, 318), and funded by the atkinson charitable foundation, as well as others. its advocacy approach was to collaborate across a wide cross-section of constituencies in order to achieve a broad consensus on a plan and proposal, based on shared values and principles. the membership included representatives from business (e.g. the toronto dominion bank), labour (i.e. canadian labour congress (clc)), policy institutes (e.g. c.d. howe institute, caledon institute of social policy), academia, independent policy consultants, and advocacy organizations (e.g. the workers’ action centre (wac), income security advocacy centre (isac), interfaith social assistance reform coalition (isarc)), community-based legal services).4 miswaa’s final report, “time for a fair deal,” bares the stamp of a more centrist approach.5 miswaa’s objective was to achieve a “just society” and “fully productive economy” by way of moving working-age adults and recipients of welfare into the labour force (tcsa, 2006, 12; graefe and hudson, 2018). it reiterates the narrative that the income security system is “deeply flawed,” and that “any person should be financially better off working than not working” (tcsa, 2006, 52), and it puts the core focus on addressing the needs of lowincome working-age adults by incentivizing paid work and eliminating the ‘welfare wall’ for those on welfare. the plan put forward largely aligned with the ‘social architecture’ template (graefe and hudson, 2018, 319). it called for the creation and implementation of two new income supplementation programs a new tax benefit for ‘all’ low-income working-age adults, and a working income benefit for low-wage wage-earners (tcsa, 2006), and to move the benefits for children allotted to families on welfare into the national child benefit program, where it would be added to income supplements that would go to all low-income working-age adults, whether on welfare 4 other significant members included: scotia bank economics, conference board of canada, canadian policy research network, canadian council on social development, st. christopher house, citizens for public justice, the daily bread food bank, and neighbourhood legal services. 5 the task force’s co-chairs were david pecaut, head of tcsa, and susan pigotte, ceo of st. christopher house, and its working group was co-chaired by jill black, consultant, and john stapleton, miswaa research director, and st. christopher house fellow. the report does not indicate the author(s) but seems to have involved a process of circulating drafts to receive feedback by members. 52 or in paid employment (graefe and hudson, 2018; jackson, 2009). it also called for a number of changes to the social assistance and other programs, which were generally seen as positive steps forward.6 miswaa is known for its success in influencing the ontario government to implement the ontario child benefit program, and more generally, as a turning point in bringing forward coherent social policy discourse, and one that broke with the neoliberal/neoconservative social policy approach of the previous (harris) government (graefe and hudson, 2018; hudson and graefe, 2011; barata and murphy, 2011). the focus here, however, is on miswaa as a moment of assemblage – one that served to ‘contain the critique,’ and obscure the possibilities for other (more progressive) ideas to be heard. certainly, the members of the task force shared certain values and goals – such as, a commitment to making changes that would respect people living in poverty, achieve tangible reforms, that would help improve the economic security of working-age adults living on low incomes. however, a close reading of the miswaa report shows that the process was fraught with tensions and disagreements. this is made clear in the "alternative views” that were put forward by some members as found in the appendix of the task force’s final report (tcsa, 2006, 44-49). these members included representatives from academia and anti-poverty advocacy organizations, some being community-based agencies that work on the front line with people with low incomes and/or are receiving welfare.7 as a group, they were more willing to challenge neoliberal ideas (graefe, 2008). while they were a small minority of the membership, their views were shared with many constituencies and agencies outside of miswaa, including, for example, isac, campaign 2000, isarc, the ontario coalition of social justice, and others (isac, 2003). while most of these members endorsed many of the report’s recommendations and acknowledged miswaa’s role in bringing new public attention to the issues of income security, welfare, and poverty, they were critical of many of the proposals put forward in the report, particularly, regarding income supplementation programs and the failure to consider raising benefit rates for welfare recipients (tcsa, 2006, 48, 47).8 for example, there were also a number of criticisms of the wage supplement programs, for example, they were seen as creating disincentives for increases in wages, statutory benefits, and social assistance benefits (tcsa, 2006, 45, 47);9 disadvantaging women by basing them on household, rather than, individual incomes; and because they give little to people without earnings (tcsa, 2006, 33). most of these members also strongly opposed the task force’s endorsement of the provincial clawback of child benefits from welfare recipients, and the proposal to take child benefits out of social assistance as discussed. some critics saw these measures as discrimination of welfare recipients, and potentially concealing the real causes of child poverty (i.e. the lack of affordable childcare, good jobs, and good wages) (tcsa, 2006, 45, 47, 49).10 they also opposed the report’s strong emphasis on the ‘welfare wall’ and the need to increase work incentives for welfare recipients. lightman (and others) saw this as ignoring the strong evidence that showed that work incentives were not the main problem, and as promoting the 6for more information, see, graefe and hudson, 2018. 7 these members included: wac; isac; isarc; reverend susan eagle, city councillor, london, ontario; ernie lightman, professor, school of social work, university of toronto; and hugh mackenzie, independent consultant and social policy researcher. 8 wac; mackenzie. 9 isac, mackenzie. 10 isac, mackenzie, eagle. 53 view that welfare recipients were deficient and in need of coercion to enter the market, likely resulting in getting recipients into short-term, insecure, precarious employment (tcsa, 2006, 45, 46, 49).11 some of these members were critical of the lack of specificity on certain recommendations related to reforming employment insurance, raising minimum wages, some welfare rates, employment standards, as compared with the much greater specificity given to the recommendation on the supplementation plans (tcsa, 2006, 49, 48).12 with respect to the process, one critic pointed to the inability to vote on recommendations, or any consensus procedure, which meant that input from members was limited to an ‘individual’ view, as seen in the report’s appendix (tcsa, 2006, 49).13 i turn here to examine how miswaa was a moment of assemblage in sustaining the connections that make up the inclusive liberal approach; containing the critique of neoliberalism; and obscuring the possibilities for more progressive ideas to be heard. indeed, from the beginning, miswaa’s goals are expressed in vague and ‘common sense’ terms that serve to erase politics – for instance, achieving a “well-functioning” safety net, developing “pragmatic” proposals, a “fair deal”, and making recommendations that are “affordable” and are “acceptable to the general public” (tcsa, 2006, 17). while the report acknowledges the presence of the ‘alternative perspectives,’ it minimizes their visibility, and gives the impression that miswaa members were largely aligned, and had been successful in working through their differences, and in making “compromises and trade-offs” (tcsa, 2006, 52). the criticisms with respect to raising welfare benefits and introducing a new income supplement program were, in many ways, reduced to technical and apolitical issues. for example, the report presents the tensions over the issues of raising welfare benefits and setting an income benchmark for a working individual as differences of opinion between individual members over what counts as adequacy, and as a case of “agreeing to disagree,” all of which screens out the politics.14 as professor lightman comments, the term “affordability” was used only when referring to the issues around welfare and poor people, but not when it came to a discussion of the tax deductions, exemptions, credits and other provisions in the tax system that benefits everyone else. he also pointed to the lack of data collection and modeling with respect to the income supplementation plans, particularly with respect to the question of who would, and who would not benefit very much (tcsa, 2006, 45, 46). lightman was also critical of the special attention the report gives to td economics’ work on the impact of the ‘marginal effective tax rate’15 on welfare recipients, which serves to “confirm enabling assumptions” and construct the issue as technical, and as having technical fix, namely, increasing work incentives (tcsa, 2006, 46). this technical and politically neutral worldview also helps to smooth over the contradictions within the report for instance, in appearing to be on the side of welfare recipients by showing a desire to help the increase their ‘capacities’ and support their ‘aspirations,’ and by acknowledging that welfare benefits were 11 lightman, isac, eagle. 12 eagle, wac. 13 eagle. 14 based on research, one of the reasons the more centrist advocacy actors have tended to resist raising welfare rates is because they are seen as a possible threat to the goal of achieving the larger plan to transform the income security system (see hudson and graefe, 2011; and freiler and clutterbuck, 2017). this may have also been an influence in the case of miswaa. 15 this compares the value of receiving welfare benefits, with what recipients who enter paid employment stand to lose in increased taxes and foregone benefits. 54 not enough to cover the basics of life, yet giving support to federal and provincial clawbacks from welfare recipients and refusing to recommend increases to welfare benefits. to be clear, this analysis does not take account of the intentions or strategies of the actors involved in this process and is not in any way a judgment of the decisions that they made. the purpose here is to draw attention to the impact that these practices, together, had in “closing down debate on how and what to govern, and the distributive effects of particular arrangements by reference to expertise” (li, 2007b, 265). they closed down the possibilities for serious discussion of the real needs of welfare recipients, and the material impact of their proposals on those affected. these practices served to close off considerations of political-economic relations and reduce the messiness of the social world to a set of relations where problem ‘a’ (the system is ‘broken’ and ‘useless’) plus intervention ‘b’ (a new social architecture emphasizing the value on paid work) equals outcome ‘c’ (a ‘well-functioning’ social safety net), all of which reinforces and sustains this social liberal model while obscuring the possibilities of thinking ‘otherwise.’ the paper turns next to a report that, while not implemented, reflects the inclusive liberal mindset that prevails today among many advocates and politicians (excluding the current ford government). the roadmap report: practices, discourses and implications in 2016, ontario’s liberal wynne government appointed three working groups tasked with developing concrete recommendations that would provide a ten-year ‘roadmap’ for reform of the income security system, including recommendations for a future holistic, client-centred social assistance system. the focus here is on the work of the ‘income security reform working group.’16 its membership included social policy actors and advocacy groups that had been active in the 25 in 5 network for poverty reduction, and the ontario social assistance review advisory council (sarac), and have been seen as influential in producing the approach taken to income security reform (hudson and graefe, 2011).17 the final report, “income security: a roadmap for change,” largely reflects the inclusive liberal, employment-focused approach of the earlier reports – including the 2010 sarac report and the 2012 report by the commission for the review of social assistance in ontario (isrwg, et al., 2017). its goal is to reform the income security system to help lowincome people reach their full potential, achieve social and economic inclusion, and “contribute to the social fabric of our communities and the economic wellbeing of our province” (isrwg, et al., 2017, 1). its policy recommendations are aligned with sarac’s proposals to restructure the income security system by eliminating or reducing the role of the social assistance program and building a basic platform of programs that would provide financial support for all low-income working-age adults, whether employed or receiving welfare benefits. the latter entailed introducing a new portable housing benefit for low-income people; enhancing the federal working income tax credit program; and expanding and extending essential health benefits (dental, vision, hearing, and medical transportation) to all low-income adults. it also involved moving the benefits for children (for families on social assistance) outside of the program, to 16 the two other working groups were first nations income security, and urban indigenous table on income security reform. 17 they included representatives of the metcalfe foundation; united way, income security advocacy centre; voices of the street; colour of poverty; ontario municipal social services; and some from business and municipal governments. 55 be spread across programs that support all low-income people; and to transform social assistance into a simpler, less coercive and punitive program, in keeping with the proposals of social assistance review. many within the broader social policy advocacy community viewed the proposed increases in welfare benefits as insufficient, lacking in urgency, and having unacceptably long time-horizons (e.g. spno, 2017; isac, 2017; opseu, 2017). they welcomed, however, many of its recommendations, and its recognition of ‘historical disadvantages,’ ‘systemic racism and discrimination,’ and past trauma; its commitment to the guiding principles of income adequacy, rights, reconciliation, economic and social inclusion, equity and fairness (i.e. historical systemic disadvantage and structural racism), respect and dignity, and its attention on the needs and experiences of indigenous peoples, racialized people, people with disabilities and other marginalized populations (isrwg, et al., 2017; isac, 2017). it is important, however, to recognize the ways this initiative was also moment of assemblage, in its work to advance certain understandings of poverty and its solutions, while ruling out more critical alternatives. indeed, as many critical scholars and advocates have observed, while the principles and goals expressed in the report appear to promote a more caring, humane, and progressive approach to social policy, they actually serve to create a mantle of ‘niceness’ and neutrality that obscures the deeply political, neoliberal capitalist principles and goals underlying the approach (coulter, 2009; gill, 2021; laruffa, 2018). indeed, the report’s references to the issues of equity, equality, fairness, respect, dignity, gender, race, and disability, are treated as ‘perspectives’ or ‘lenses’ (e.g. used in measuring outcomes, or guiding behavior of front-line workers), rather than as integral to the framing of the plan.18 while the ‘roadmap’ report discusses the hardships people face due to various social and economic shifts, and recognizes that some populations are more vulnerable than others, they are reduced to issues to be attentive to, and to be fixed by providing ‘tailored solutions’ for populations ‘at risk.’ indeed, the more powerful guiding principles and assumptions of the report are the neoliberal ideas that human beings have value only for their wage potential; they are ‘human capital’ to be invested in, and managed. this can be seen most clearly in the report’s focus on reforming social assistance, which was one of its main solutions. using a “human-rights-based equity lens” the plan was to change the culture of the program to promote one of “trust,” “collaboration,” and “problemsolving” (isrwg, et al., 2017, 93). front-line workers would become ‘case-collaborators’ and ‘problem-solvers’ who would quickly intervene to reinforce “the person’s self-perception as an independent individual with workforce attachment” (isrwg et al. 2017, 10, 93, 96); and help them problem-solve “every issue that may present a barrier to work” and to develop a “tangible,” “clear,” “realistic” plan for entering the workforce, and ‘equip recipients to reaching their full potential,’ to fully participate in society (isrwg, et al., 2017, 96, 97, 2, 90). while social structures such as inequality, racism, historical disadvantages, and systemic discrimination are acknowledged in the report, they are rendered as personal ‘barriers’ or ‘challenges’ that ‘individuals’ with low incomes must learn to overcome (isrwg et al. 2017; smith-carrier and lawlor, 2017; mosher, 2014; schram, 2018). despite good intentions, this individualization of poverty means that any failures are attributed to the lack of effort and personal deficiencies of individuals (laruffa, 2018; garrett, 2018; schram, 2015; whitworth, 18 this analysis is borrowed from janet mosher’s critical analyses of other social policy reports (mosher, 2014). the one exception of this is inclusion of the working group, ‘urban indigenous table on income security reform’. 56 2016), many of whom come to believe that they are the problem (reininger and castro serrano, 2021). as schram (2015) has argued, the approach effectively reproduces the binary of “the deserving autonomous, self-sufficient individual and the undeserving dependent” (2015, 89; also see schram 2018). as many have argued, this effectively creates the conditions for “inclusive exclusion” wherein welfare recipients are forced to take almost any job under almost any condition effectively regimenting them into low-wage labour, where they come to be seen as the “working poor” (schram, 2015; schram, 2018; garret, 2018, citing winslow and hall; whitworth, 2016; zon and granofsky, 2019). this technical and apolitical rendering of the issues shifts the focus away from the subject’s well-being, and onto administrative, cost-benefit interests, which can be seen in the increased focus on “measurable outcomes.” this is demonstrated in the report’s narrative on lone mothers and welfare. lone mothers are presented as a ‘success’ story based on the fact that increases in federal and provincial child benefits had led to a significant drop in the numbers of lone mothers on welfare (from 46% of the cases in the late 1990s, to 28% in 2016/17), and in the numbers applying for welfare in the first place (isrwg et al., 2017). while this may be true, this rendering fails to take account of the actual messy realities of the lives of lone mothers in poverty (indeed, the report barely mentions women at all). in theory and practice this concept renders social policy technical and apolitical and reinforces the neoliberal notion that welfare recipients are ‘failed’ or untapped human capital, but still manipulable, and able to adapt their behavior and improve their human capital with the help of the state. this rendering (‘failed human capital’ + ‘support’ = ‘transition into a job and out of poverty’) erases the real-life circumstances of diverse and marginalized populations (including women), and “perpetuates the neo-liberal silencing of equality,” structures of power, and the need for substantial equality and social justice (mosher, 2014, 171). conclusion poverty policy does not fall from the sky; it is manufactured and sustained by the choices made by politicians and governments and is often influenced by or reliant on the knowledge and creativity of the non-governmental anti-poverty advocacy community. critical political economy research has given us important insight into the politics of policymaking over the past several decades as ontario shifted to an inclusive liberal approach to social policy, including the role played by the social policy advocacy community in advancing the inclusive liberal social policy model. this paper is meant to contribute to the latter discussion by exploring the activities of the advocacy sector through the post-structural lens of ‘assemblage’ – taking the view that their activities function not only to improve the social policy and income security system, but to some degree, ‘create’ or re-work ‘reality,’ including, the fundamental concepts of ‘social policy,’ ‘citizenship,’ ‘poverty,’ ‘dependency,’ and more. this work has shown how, in key moments, key situated actors engaged in various generic ‘practices of assemblage’ that were productive in creating and sustaining the inclusive liberal policy approach. the practice of ‘problematization’ (social assistance is ‘broken’), strategically attached a promise of improvement (‘new social architecture’), served to construct social policy in technical and apolitical terms – as discussed further below. this inclusive liberal scheme of thought was sustained and reinforced through the work of miswaa, wherein actors engaged in generic practices of assemblage that obscured, and 57 closed down, the challenges posed by those with alternative views. the inclusive model was also reinforced and maintained by the ‘roadmap’ report, and in many ways, is an exemplar of the underlying common-sense logic of ontario’s current social policy-making approach. to be clear, many critical scholars view the inclusive liberal approach, with its interests in investing in citizens as workers and addressing social justice, as having potential for making space for alterative development strategies that challenge the boundaries of neoliberal capitalism (see graefe, 2018; graefe 2020; mahon and macdonald, 2008; mahon and macdonald, 2010; noël, 2006). this paper presents a more troubling picture in this regard, in presenting the ways that inclusive liberalism’s economistic, technical, apolitical framing of reality works to thwart such challenges, and continues to reaffirm and sustain neoliberal capitalism as a default-logic (schram, 2018, citing henry giroux, 2015). this framing narrows the parameters of poverty and social policy debate by promoting the notion that the only good social policy is one that provides an economic ‘return on investment’ (schram, 2018; mcgimpsey, 2017), and that political choices around social policy are not something to be considered and debated (laruffa, 2018). in privileging paid employment over all other activities and ways of life, and independent competitive workercitizens above all other citizens, it effectively perpetuates the exclusion of populations and people who do not fit easily into this model (and often for reasons beyond their control). this puts the responsibility for poverty onto the shoulders of individuals, while making policies that mostly ignore the actual messy realities of their lives. in doing so (and despite good intentions and strategic planning), this technical/apolitical ‘improvement’ approach reinforces and maintains a system of social policy founded on inequality the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ and completely counters the objectives of achieving real equity, as sought by equityand social justice-seeking movements. finally, and less visible, is how this policy approach is shaping the ‘social,’ notably, how we understand the economy, poverty, social policy, humanity, care, social justice, and more. as several critical thinkers have argued, in treating human beings as commodity objects we cover over the trauma of poverty and human exposure to vulnerability (schram, 2015, 108, 99; mcgimpsey, 2017, 79, citing butler; laruffa, 2018), all of which steers us away from having human compassion and caring; treating people with dignity and respect; and recognizing our own complicity in perpetuating other people’s poverty (mcgimpsey, 2017). these erasures can lead to policy decisions being made on the basis of ‘who matters more’ and ‘who matters less.’ the repeated unwillingness of key social policy advocates to raise social assistance benefits at a time when welfare recipients are living in deep poverty (and have been for decades) may be a case in point.19 governments have seemingly also increased their willingness to harm or deprive whole categories of people in ‘the here and now’ for the sake of maintaining the privilege, power and wealth or deservingness of the others (gill, 2021). just one example is how the response of governments to pandemic failed to recognize inequitable impact it was having for disadvantaged populations, and in the case of the emergency response benefit, discriminated against, excluded, and ignored the most vulnerable populations; as pin, et al. (2023) put it, it “reinforce[ed] the resonance of moral deservingness as a frame for allocating income support” (420, also see scoffield, 2022) and there are many more recent examples. 19 welfare recipients have lived below the deep poverty threshold for over 24 years (laidley and tabbara, 2024, 148, 149). 58 many critical theorists see hope for change in opening space for discussion of genuine and meaningful alternatives to neoliberal capitalism. as williams (2021, citing solnit) offers, it is important to recognize that profound change can happen, and it involves telling other stories about who we are, what we want, and what is possible (173). it is possible to have a society, economy, and social policy that recognizes and respects difference, acknowledges and values care, human interdependence, want, and vulnerability, and gives everyone the capacity to choose lives worth living (mosher, 2014, 189, citing west). references battle k., mendelson m. and torjman, s. 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(2019). resetting social assistance reform. toronto: munk school of social affairs and public policy, university of toronto. against housing: homes as a human life requirement jeff noonan1 and josephine watson2 abstract: the paper argues that human beings have a need for homes, not just housing. when this claim is unpacked at the proper level of complexity, it becomes apparent that the dominant mode of struggle for a right to housing is inadequate. not only does the struggle for the right to housing operate at a level of abstraction removed from the material demands of need-satisfaction, it also fails to specify exactly what a right to housing is a right to. the paper explains the three dimensions of the need for homes (the physical need for shelter, the social need for a space in which one feels at home, and the political need to participate in struggles and movements that lead to the satisfaction of the first two dimensions of the need for homes). the paper concludes with a brief discussion of the practical implications of the political-philosophical claims. keywords: rights; needs; homelessness; social determinants of health introduction more than a century ago, in 1844, friedrich engels observed that working class housing was, “badly planned, badly built, and kept in the worst condition” (engels 1969: 106). he traced the privations the working classes suffered directly to the way in which housing markets allowed unscrupulous landlords to prey upon workers’ need for space. since workers had a need for housing but lacked the ability to pay for high quality accommodations, landlords exploited their need by making 1 jeff nonnan is professor of philosophy at the university of windsor. email: jnoonan@uwindsor.ca 2 josephine watson is a clinical nursing instructor at the university of windsor. email: jwatson@uwindsor.ca against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 141 mailto:jnoonan@uwindsor.ca mailto:jwatson@uwindsor.ca profits from renting deplorable hovels. workers were crammed into “desolate, small, wretched huts, with no comforts whatsoever” (engels 1969: 290). workers were housed, one might say, but they lacked human homes. later, in 1872, engels published the housing question, in which he observed a direct link between poor health and housing among the working classes: “the so-called "poor districts" in which the workers are crowded together are the breeding places of all those epidemics” (engels 1872: 24). what engels demonstrated was that the problem of homelessness was not simply a problem of not having a roof over one’s head, but also of not having access to homes. despite the many changes that have occurred since engels’ early observations, the crisis of homelessness still persists, even in the world’s wealthiest countries. estimates put the number of men, women, and children in canada who experience homelessness at varying intervals and durations each year at 300,000, but we also know that many more canadians who migrate to urban areas suffer from inadequate housing and shelter. on any given night, 35,000 canadians will be absolutely homeless (gaetz, gulliver, & richter 2014; stock 2016). but as engels argued, homelessness means more than absolute lack of shelter. approximately 40% of people renting in ontario have difficulty affording their space, while over 150,000 households in ontario are on waiting lists for affordable housing, the average wait time being about 4 years (monsebraaten 2016; advocacy centre for tenants ontario 2016). yet under the flag of austerity, governments have stopped building public housing and cooperatives and have instead returned to a more or less unregulated real estate market to provide the “incentives” for private landlords to solve the housing crisis. as in victorian manchester, so too today: private landlords and developers have not solved the problem of homelessness, but left those who cannot afford to pay for living space out in the cold. when there is no political commitment to affordable housing, people become homeless. as a study conducted by one of the authors in windsor confirmed, a primary reason for homelessness is lack of income. forty-eight percent of the participants reported not having 142 | austerity urbanism and the social economy permanent housing due to inability to pay (33% receiving monies from ontario works (ow) and 100% receiving monies from ontario disability support program (odsp) (watson, crawley, kane 2016 ). however, inability to pay market prices does not mean absence of the need for the good of which one is deprived. the need for homes, as opposed to housing, i.e., a mere roof over one’s head is, we will argue, three-dimensional. it involves, first, the physical need for shelter. this physical need is combined with a second, psycho-social need for domestic space under one’s own control in which one is not only sheltered but “feels” at home. finally, in conditions where many people are deprived of homes, a third, political dimension opens up, the need to participate in struggles and movements against the structural forces that generate homelessness, i.e., to help satisfy one’s own needs through one’s own individual agency in concert with others who together manifest the collective agency needed to solve problems democratically. this needs-based approach to the problem of understanding the legitimacy of struggles for homes contrasts with the dominant rightsbased approach. typically, the struggle for homes has been and still is interpreted as a struggle for the human right to housing. while we do not disagree in any sectarian way with this approach, we will argue that the full implications of the struggle for homes are better understood from the standpoint of the principle that human beings need homes, not rights to housing. the needs-based approach better explicates the complexity of the life-value of homes and better illuminates the structural causes of homelessness. by better illuminating the structural causes, the needsbased approach points more clearly to what must be done to solve it: not struggles to secure a legal right in the abstract, but to take back urban space from control by capitalist developers, to make it truly public space in which the home-deprived can participate in the satisfaction of their need for homes. while our argument is not designed to shape short-term government policy or solve the nightly problem of homelessness, we do not think that it is without practical significance. of course, in making against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 143 this distinction between houses and homes, and specifying that the human need for housing is really a need for a home in the sense given above, we recognise that in emergencies the bare physical minimum is better than the alternative. when there is a fire, it is necessary to call the fire department. but social criticism and transformative change go beyond putting out immediate fires. they must also think of fire protection (addressing the systemic causes) and engineering new materials that are fireproof (providing a permanent solution to the problem). that means, in the case of homes, freeing land, building materials, and architectural and construction labour from their subordination to capitalist real estate markets and the appropriation of all urban space by for-profit development. our argument will be divided in three sections. in the first, we will briefly distinguish mere housing from homes and argue that the human need for homes is more complex than the mere physical need for shelter. this examination will set the stage for a more detailed explanation of the political differences between needs-based and rightsbased struggles to solve social problems, and an argument about why only a needs-based approach can solve the problem of homelessness in its full complexity. in the final section we will draw our analytical and critical arguments together by making some general, although still practically relevant, political conclusions regarding the overall significance of struggles against homelessness for the future of a democratic alternative to capitalism. homes, not housing our political argument turns on the claim that a needs-based approach to the problem of homelessness exposes important shortcomings of rights-based approaches. the first step to substantiating this claim is to explain the politically relevant sense of “need’ and the full complexity of the human need for homes. in any use, the idea of need is connected to the idea of necessity. when one says they need something, they are asserting that unless they have access to that thing, they will not 144 | austerity urbanism and the social economy be able to complete some goal or project. however, there are qualitative differences between the sorts of projects human beings can pursue. the qualitative differences are distinguished by the kind of necessity that characterises the project. if i want to watch the baseball game, i need a television or a computer, but there is no necessity to my having to watch the game, in the sense that nothing essential to my life and well-being is lost if i do not watch it. people sometimes speak in hyperbole and say: “if i miss that game, i will die.” since they go on living, it is obvious that they do not literally mean what they say. however, there are things that we do need in this exigent way. if we are deprived of oxygen, or nutritious food, or water we will die. thus, when we say we need food in order to live, we are not saying that we have a contingent need for an instrumental input into some project we could pursue or not pursue, but rather that our being able to access that good (or another which meets the same requirement) is a matter of absolute necessity (assuming only that we want to continue living). when we use the term “need” in our argument it is in this exigent way. we follow the definition worked out by john mcmurtry: “n is a need, if, and only if, and to the extent that, deprivation of n always leads to a reduction of organic capability” (mcmurtry 1998: 164). these needs, in contrast to what one might call instrumental needs relevant to a given contingent project, are non-optional life-requirements because, if they are not satisfied, the person suffers objective harm in the form of loss or reduction of the human life-capacities to think, move, feel, relate to others, and act as a social self-conscious agent. the harm is objective in the sense that it cannot be overcome simply through changing one’s selfinterpretation. if i feel harmed because i missed the ballgame, i can revise my self-interpretation to convince myself that watching baseball is a waste of time, so that i was better off missing it. but if my brain is damaged by oxygen deprivation, i cannot revise my self interpretation to make that brain damage disappear. mcmurtry’s definition recognizes degrees and different concrete forms of harm. not every form of deprivation leads to death or serious against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 145 cognitive impairment. moreover, human beings are integrally natural and social, which means that we have a more complex set of needs than other animals, who for the most part require only physical inputs to maintain their health. human beings have raw physical needs like oxygen, but they also have psycho-social needs, like loving attention; we have basic organic life-requirements like water, but also political needs like being able to participate in the determination of the laws we will be compelled to obey. elsewhere one of the authors has developed a systematic account of the full range of fundamental human natural and socio-cultural needs, but it would take us too far afield to repeat those arguments here (noonan 2012: 46-88). instead, let us content ourselves with the general point that in the case of our physical needs it is our health that is impaired if we fail to meet them. in the case of social, political, and cultural needs, failure to satisfy them impairs the development of our social-self-conscious agency. since it is obvious that human beings have the potential to become social-self-conscious agents, that is, subjects capable of determining their own goals and projects, harm to our social self-conscious agency is a real and objective harm, analogous to the organic harms that result from the deprivation of our physical needs. when we turn now to homes, the need for them has three interrelated dimensions: a physical need for shelter, a psycho-social need for a home as a dwelling space for personal freedom, and a political need to participate in the processes by which homes are obtained and built. we will discuss each element of the complex need for homes in turn. deprivation of our need for shelter causes a myriad of health problems. we can explicate the complex set of health problems homelessness causes through the social determinants of health. these are the social and economic conditions which shape lives and determine the health of individuals and societies in so far as they regulate the availability, quality, and quantity of social and economic resources that people need as socialorganic beings (mikkonen & raphael 2010). we use them to help explain the damages that homelessness causes because they have revolutionized 146 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the field of public health by politicising it. they break public health out of an abstract biologistic conception of health and its conditions by revealing, a) that the incidence of disease is not only a function of pathogens, but overall life-conditions; b) that inequality of access to key social determinants negatively impacts health; and c) health is not simply optimal organic functioning but a holistic capacity to act as a free subject in which physical and mental capacities, social opportunities and biological functions are integrally united. the social determinants of health model emerged as researchers sought to explain how experiences of daily living conditions in contexts of structural inequality of access to basic life-requirement satisfiers influenced the health of individuals within a population (mikkonen & raphael 2010). the term “social determinants of health” was first used by blane, brunner, and wilkinson (1996) who were expanding upon then canadian minister of national health and welfare marc lalonde’s, a new perspective on the health of canadians health field concept (health and welfare canada 1974). since 1996, the actual social determinants of health have been variously theorized in academic literature and numerous national and international policy documents (rootman & o’neill 2012). access to homes has been identified as an independent variable for poorer health outcomes and is thus a key social determinant of health (mikkonen & raphael 2010). lack of adequate and safe housing and the experience of material and social deprivation contribute to increased stress that affects physical and psychological health. (galabuzi 2009). health complications are associated with long periods of stress, especially when individuals feel that their ability to control their situation is threatened and limited. as lippert and lee (2015) confirm in their study of coping, stress, and mental health among homeless people, it is the cumulative stress that impacts psychological health most dramatically. empirical research has established beyond a shadow of a doubt that cumulative stress causes heart disease, diabetes, and chronic illnesses (marmot & wilkinson 2006; mcewen 2004; mikkonen & raphael 2010). against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 147 when we look at homelessness through the lens of the social determinants of health, we can understand the true damage it causes to people’s life and well-being. let us return to watson’s study (which was rooted in the social determinants of health model) in order to substantiate these claims empirically. the broad aspects explored in this study pertaining to housing were: age when first homeless, number of years homeless, reasons for not having permanent housing, educational level, employment history and income. the earlier homelessness began, the more severe the negative impacts on physical, psychological and social development, because children and youth are especially vulnerable to the health consequences of the material and social deprivations involved in homelessness. the people in her study reported the following medical diagnoses: dental problems (33%), cardiac (29%), respiratory (24%), hepatitis c positive (24%), hiv positive (5%), and foot problems (3%); psychological diagnoses most prevalent were anxiety (57%) and depression (52%). forty-eight percent of the participants reported both anxiety and depression. while it may be easy to calculate medical and psychological diagnoses through self-report, it is not so easy to calculate the health toll on an individual’s overall ability to realize their lifecapacities in conditions of social and material deprivation. the study found that all the participants experienced social exclusion, which diminished their ability to access quality social supports (they felt ashamed), increased risky behaviours (especially drug use), and compromised physical and psychological health. participants described various forms of marginalization, for example being restricted from shelter use due to substance abuse history (watson, crawley, kane 2016). as important as the physical dimensions of human beings are, we are not just bodies with physical needs, but thinking-feeling agents who interpret and evaluate the physical spaces in which we live and discriminate between places in which we “feel at home” and places in which we feel like strangers. a shelter, let us say, is the material basis out of which homes are built, but homes depend upon feeling at home in the shelter in which one dwells. if you couch-surf at a friend’s place you are 148 | austerity urbanism and the social economy sheltered, but if you do not feel at home, the psycho-social need for a home has not been met. hence, there is a difference between being sheltered and having a home. henri lefebvre makes the point eloquently: “dwelling, a social and yet poetic act, generating poetry and art work, fades in the face of housing, an economic function. the ‘home,’ so clearly evoked and celebrated in the work of gaston bachelard, likewise vanishes: the magic place of childhood, the home as womb and shell…confronted with functional housing, constructed according to technological dictates, inhabited by users in homogenous, shattered space, it sinks and fades into the past” (lefebvre 2014: 766). just as the unemployed, in order to live fulfilling human lives do not need (as the mantra goes) “jobs” but meaningful, non-alienated labour, so too, the homeless, to satisfy their need in a fully human way, do not need “housing” (i.e., any shelter whatsoever) but homes. that is, they need a private space within social space in which they feel at one with the space. feeling at home enables people to gather themselves, reflect, relax, and renew themselves for the hard business of living. in social contexts in which a significant number of people are deprived of homes as both shelter and as dwelling space, a third dimension of need opens up: the political need to be engaged in movements to overcome (or at least mitigate) the structural causes of deprivation. human beings have political needs to participate in the determination of the forces and laws that structure their own lives because they have the capacity to become subjects, self-determining social self-conscious agents. if we were nothing but the objects of natural and social laws and forces, there would be no need to participate in the determination of those forces and laws, because we would lack all capacity to shape them. we keep our cat safe and secure, but we do not consult her about the household budget, because she lacks the capacity to participate in a meaningful discussion of alternative priorities. but human beings do have the capacity to participate in political discussions, and if we are deprived of the opportunity to satisfy the need to help shape those forces that shape our lives, we are harmed in our social selfagainst housing: homes as a human life requirement | 149 conscious agency. this harm takes the form of alienation, exploitation, and oppression. this point is relevant to the problem of homelessness because it means that merely providing housing for the homeless (shelters, public housing) without involving them in the satisfaction of their needs might solve the problem of shelter, but leaves unaddressed the deeper dimension of oppression, because it leaves the need-deprived in the status of mere objects of benevolent social policy and not (as the non-need deprived think of themselves) self-determining agents who satisfy their needs through their own individual and cooperative efforts. in order to understand this point more fully, we must shift to examine the political differences between a rights and needs-based approach to solving social problems. the political implications of needs-based struggle as with most other major social problems, the dominant approach to the solution of the problem of homelessness is to remind governments that housing has been recognized as a human right and to demand that they make good their rhetorical commitment to human rights in general by allocating funds to build affordable housing. in the case of housing, article 25(1) of the universal declaration of human rights asserts that housing is a human right, as does the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (1966/1976). in 2007, miloon kothari, united nations special rapporteur for the right to adequate housing reprimanded canada for its homelessness crisis and for not fulfilling its obligations to the covenant. in february 2016, canada was again criticized by the un agency responsible for monitoring enforcement of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (1966/1967) for its lack of progress in solving the problem. the report criticised canada for the “absence of a national housing strategy; inadequate housing subsidy within the social assistance benefit; shortage of social housing units; increased evictions related to rental arrears; increased numbers of homeless and lack of homelessness prevention; shortage of emergency 150 | austerity urbanism and the social economy shelters; laws that penalize people for being homeless; lack of adequate housing for people with psycho-social and intellectual disabilities; and the poor housing conditions of canada’s indigenous peoples” (monsebraaten 2016). we of course concur with this criticism of decades of government inattention to the growing problem of homelessness, and do not disagree, in any dogmatic way, with the appeal to the right as a tactic of shaming governments into resuming their responsibilities for public investment in affordable housing. however, we want to argue that if access to housing is a right, it is a right because human beings have the sort of complex need for homes discussed in the previous section. if we accept that a) people have this complex need for homes and b) that it is systematically ignored by the normal operation of real estate markets and government policy, then c) it follows that homelessness is a structural problem of the normal operations of the socio-economic system, which prioritises profitable investment over need satisfaction. since, as we will now argue, rights are also a normal part of this same system, they cannot, on their own, solve the problem of the unmet complex need for homes. thus, in order to understand the limits of a rights-based solution to the problem of homelessness, we must understand the role rights have historically played in capitalism, and in order to understand the role they have played in capitalism, we must think of capitalist society not only as a functional economic system, a mode of producing and distributing commodities, but also as a value-system which legitimates its way of producing and distributing commodities as good for those who live within it. few if any societies have ever reproduced themselves solely on the basis of coercion, force, and overt political violence. human societies, even the most oppressive, typically appeal to sets of norms that determine for a given socio-cultural system what is good and what is bad, and identify their social system with the unique conditions that allow that good to flourish (mcmurtry 1998: 15). the threat of force against opponents is thus legitimated by appeal to the good that opponents threaten to ruin by their oppositional activity. if a majority can be against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 151 convinced of the legitimacy of the value system, they will comply with its demands, making the need for overt violence unnecessary, and also creating citizens who will protect the integrity of the system against opponents, even in cases where, objectively speaking, the opponents make demands which are in the interests of the citizens. liberaldemocratic capitalist societies are unique in the history of social organization for building in self-correcting mechanisms in the form of means of legitimate protest and social change. rights have, since the eighteenth century, been essential to this self-correcting mechanism. the rights of citizens establish that which citizens may legitimately demand of their governments, and the formal procedures of democratic politics are the accepted means for pursuing these protests. in one sense, the legitimacy of protest and opposition represents a great historical victory over alien and oppressive political and social power. it comes, however, with built in limitations. marx was the first to understand the systematic limitations of citizenship rights as the political means to achieve the social conditions for human freedom. in on the jewish question, he demonstrated that the condition of granting citizenship rights was their separation from the “private” economic sphere. in the political realm people are considered equal citizens, but this equal citizenship did not entail material equality in the sphere of production (marx 1977: 153). on the contrary, in the sphere of production other laws prevail: the laws of self-interest, pursuit of individual advantage, and the distribution of income and advantage according to market forces (marx 1986: 43). while the development of social rights in the twentieth century ameliorated to some extent (in the wealthiest capitalist countries) the gross deprivations of the industrial revolution and victorian capitalism, they do not contest the dynamics of the capitalist system as a whole, its prioritization of private profit of comprehensive and universal need satisfaction, or legitimate the mobilization of oppressed and exploited and alienated themselves to transform the structures that cause systematic need-deprivation in the first place (wood 2002: 130-1). as evidence, consider that explosion of 152 | austerity urbanism and the social economy inequality in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, which did not require the formal revocation of any citizenship rights, but used political tactics to weaken the power of workers to resist and protect their interests by intensifying competition between them for jobs and investment. where market forces are allowed more or less free play, the prices for a given commodity can rise beyond the ability of a large number of people to pay for it, with the result that, in cases where the commodity is a life-requirement, people are harmed because they are deprived of that which they need. when this structure of deprivation obtains, the deprived have three general alternatives. on the one hand, people can be left to suffer the consequences of their deprivation, as the homeless typically are today. on the other hand, governments can use public policy to meet the need, as they define it and to the extent that they feel it is necessary to present themselves as champions of people’s rights and to maintain social stability. this alternative is clearly better than the first. still, it is distinct from the third, which occurs where the need-deprived mobilize themselves, define the extent of their needs and what they regard as adequate means of satisfying them, and demand access to the resources that would be required to satisfy them. the various direct action struggles that the ontario coalition against poverty has organized over the years to combat homelessness in toronto (especially the occupation of empty buildings) is a small but significant example of the sort of movement we have in mind. let us now contrast the implications of rights and needs-based approaches to the problem of homelessness. the first point to note is that the right (to housing, in this case) is asserted as a counter-claim against the logic of production for profit, but it does not contest the legitimacy of the value system whose normal outcomes – society-wide deprivation – it tries to correct. just as in the case of the constitutions of liberal-democratic states, the universal declaration of human rights also recognises the right to private property, without distinguishing personal property for use from universally required life-resources. where the latter: land, water, against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 153 minerals, productive apparatuses, and labour power are allowed to become private property, the products of their combination determined by considerations of profitability, and the acquisition of those products determined by ability to pay, there will always be crises of needdeprivation, as the history of capitalism attests. the problem is that the appeal to the right to the need-satisfying good is met by a counter-appeal to the right to dispose of private property as the owner sees fit. the right of the home-deprived to public housing is met by the counter-right of those with capital to dispose of it as they see fit in projects that return profit to themselves. where moral obligation is understood in the language of rights, duty extends only so far as other people’s rights over us. where private property is a legal and accepted institution, individual rights to the goods that will satisfy their needs do not extend to other people’s personal property. if i am hungry and you have a sandwich, i have no right to half. the structure of moral obligation becomes a problem when private property extends to the control of basic natural resources and vast pools of social wealth, such that one group’s holdings prevent other groups from satisfying their needs. those groups will have no legally actionable right against those who have (legitimately, within the rules of the game) acquired that property, and thus will not be able to satisfy their needs just by acting on their rights because their right does not override the opposed rights of private property. right is met by right in this contradictory way because the “rights-ground of social morality” has co-evolved with the capitalist mode of production (noonan 2006: xvi-xvii). a ground of social morality is the basis of legitimate claims on social wealth and natural resources. in capitalism, rights (legally actionable entitlements) serve as the basis of legitimate claims on social resources. however, these rights come in two forms: the right of exclusionary private property in life-resources represented by money, and the right of universal life-requirement satisfaction of those systemically deprived of needed goods. the problem, from a practical perspective, is that if there is to be public provision 154 | austerity urbanism and the social economy legitimated by appeal to people’s needs, there must be funds for public provision, which can only be acquired through taxation. those with surplus wealth will resist paying higher taxes and legitimate their resistance by appeal to their right to private property. moreover, if there are economic forces (such as those unleashed by globalization) that create pressure to reduce marginal tax rates on the rich, then funds for public investment can dry up, without there being any formal violation of anyone’s rights under the rights-ground of social morality, since it does not specify which of the two countervailing sets of rights are to win in any conflict, but rules out extra-legal struggle to resolve them. in these sorts of cases, democratic progress depends upon the mobilization of social forces against exclusionary rights to private property. in these cases, a different social morality is brought into play, the social morality of need-satisfaction. where the structure of rights blocks access to needed resources, it becomes a means of legitimating objective harm. since it allows the harms of need-deprivation to proceed unchecked, its own legitimacy comes into question. its legitimacy is challenged by social movements which do not appeal to authorities or experts to satisfy their rights for them, but draw on their own social power to secure access to and control over the resources that they need to satisfy their own rights. this form of organizing is consistent with the master democratic norm of self-determination, and is, in fact, the only way that needs can be satisfied in an empowering, as opposed to paternalistic, way. to put this crucial point another way, only a needs-based social morality exposes the real problem with the capitalist value system: it subordinates the life-value of goods and services to their money-value. the basic life-value of any good is the contribution that it makes to the satisfaction of non-optional needs (mcmurtry 1998: 164). when lifevalue is subordinated to money-value, people can be deprived of that which they need and the economy still judged good, because the basis of judgement is not the satisfaction of people’s life-requirements, but return on investment to the owners of capital. such is the case with housing against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 155 markets as currently constituted. hundreds of thousands of people cannot afford homes, but if house prices are rising, the markets are judged good by those who profit from them. occasionally (as with the vancouver foreign buyers tax) governments will intervene to cool markets in order to prevent the emergence of bubbles and the deeper social problems they can cause, but this sort of regulation is distinct from a structural solution to the homelessness crisis. putting the problem in terms of life-requirement deprivation also highlights a second limitation of the rights-based approach. the universal declaration asserts that housing is a right, but it does not further define the conditions that count as satisfying that right. all rights-statements tend to be programmatic and abstract. a discussion of human life-requirements, by contrast, cannot be carried out without reflection on the nature of the life that has the requirements. in other words, it is never enough to assert that “x is a life-requirement,” one must always unpack the life-value of x in relation to human life to explain just what it is that x contributes to life which, if absent, would cause harm. we tried to provide this complex unpacking in the case of the need for homes in section one. if we content ourselves with the assertion that ‘housing is a right,’ it remains an open question what is required to satisfy the right. does any sort of ‘roof over one’s head’ constitute satisfaction of the right? are the rights of social assistance recipients housed in motels while they await public housing violated? there is no straightforward answer to these questions if we focus only on the right to housing, because it does not explain why it is that human beings need housing, beyond the obvious that we require shelter. when the needdeprived mobilise to explain just what they need, and demand the resources to satisfy that need through their own labour and intelligence, this problem disappears because they tell everyone exactly what they require to satisfy their need. the struggle against homelessness: general implications 156 | austerity urbanism and the social economy the orthodox neo-liberal solution to the housing crisis through market-incentives to developers not only has not solved the problem, it ignores completely the voices of the homeless. although it does not concern people who are completely without homes, but rather working class people living in public housing and vulnerable to market forces, the example of the on-going re-development of regent park in toronto illustrates this point clearly. the left-liberal press has trumpeted the redevelopment of regent park, canada’s first social public housing development, as a great success. starting in 2002 the toronto community housing corporation [tchc] committed to the revitalization of several social and public housing locations and regent park became the most celebrated experiment. the introduction of condominiums to turn what had been a low-income, ethnically diverse working class community into a mixed income neighborhood was sold as serving the interest of the original residents, even though they were never fully consulted on the plans, much less involved in their realization. in her critique, august does allow the voices of those who were displaced during the redevelopment of regent park to speak, and they were not supportive of the project. when they were asked, residents reported only minimal consultation from housing authorities. moreover, they expressed the fear that if they spoke out against the redevelopment they could lose access to the housing that they needed. august described a sense of powerlessness among tenants of regent park to resist what they could see were not benevolent forces of social improvement but rather the market power of gentrification bent on displacing them to make room for higher money-value developments. as she explains, “residents were given the option of moving directly into brand-new off units, rather than (old) temporary locations units. tenants who did this, however, gave up their right to return to a replacement unit in the redeveloped rp” (august 2014: 1327). conveniently for the redevelopers, the physical displacement of the original residents changed the cultural value of the neighborhood. from being perceived as a dangerous slum, it now appeared as yet another hip new urban space, a against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 157 change which encourages further displacement of the original residents as more and more wealthier people feel safe enough to move to what would formerly have been a no-go area for them. the fact that residents were encouraged to leave leads stefan kipfer and jason petrunia to interpret the redevelopment of regent park and analogous projects elsewhere as a move to “re-colonize” public space by and for market forces that drives the “re-vitalization agenda.” they argue that “property, class, and race are first articulated by strategies of recommodifcation: privatising land ownership and socializing the risk of private investment in redevelopment efforts. the chair of the toronto community housing corporation (tchc) praised the project...and declares regent park ‘open for business.’ public land is to be leased or sold to developers…two prime city blocks, which now constitute prime obstacles to the gentrification of the east downtown district, are being reconnected to real estate markets with the prime objective of maximizing land rent. in the words of housing company chief executive derek balantyne, regent park is ‘prime real estate that will draw higherincome people’ ” (kipfer and petrunia 2009: 122). when the individual and collective agency of the exploited and oppressed is ignored, and their “needs” defined for them by the agents of market forces, they become mere instruments of those forces: useful to the extent that they can be exploited, and obstacles to be removed when they cannot. the significance of this example for the struggle against homelessness is as follows. human beings are not automobiles who simply need to be sheltered from the elements, they are integral biosocial beings who need a space in which they feel at home, which is under their control, and which they have played an active role in procuring. for the homeless, this need takes the form not only of the need for homes, but the political need to participate in the struggle to provide homes for themselves. hence, there can be no complete solution to the problem of homelessness that does not engage the individual and collective agency of the homeless themselves. while canada certainly needs a national housing strategy and massive re-investment in public housing, this 158 | austerity urbanism and the social economy strategy and re-investment cannot repeat the approach of the post-war era, which focussed exclusively on the social need to house people, and not the complex need that human beings have for homes. satisfying that need takes more than low-cost apartment buildings, it requires that the home-deprived themselves participate in the satisfaction of their human needs for homes. one very small scale example of the type of participation we have in mind started in toronto a decade ago under the leadership of the parkdale area recreation group. it was able to acquire and empty building with the assistance of the ministry of housing. homeless parkdale residents, many of them psychiatric survivors, then helped renovate the space as well as draw up a constitution defining the rules by which residents would abide (noonan 2006: 245-6). by helping to create the space they would inhabit and collectively determining the rules of living there, empty physical space became a home: a psychic space felt to be free and safe and regulated not by the impersonal forces of the market but to self-conscious values of the people who lived there. as the parc example show, homes need not be walls that separate people from each other. the walls of a home are not so much exclusionary in a pernicious sense as material conditions of free self-determination of one’s living environment. the parc example is very small, to be sure, and cannot be a universal model for the satisfaction of the need for homes. if the underlying forces driving homelessness in canada’s major cities today are the skyrocketing real estate values that make investment in condominium construction preferable to low-cost rental accommodation, and if these forces are driving what kipfer and petrunia called above the re-colonization of public space by private developers, the systematic solution must involve protecting and extending public space. struggles for the “right to the city” must become struggles to reclaim urban spaces from the forces of privatization and their constructive use to satisfy the complex need for homes that we have defined (harvey 2012: 24). the immediate form that struggle takes is a struggle for against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 159 expanded and democratized public services. implicit in such demands is, as carlo fanelli recently argued, the system-changing demand for “noncommodified labour and services…housing, public transit, community centres, and other social services” (fanelli 2016: 79). if that claim is true, then it follows that the demand for democratized public services is, at least implicitly, a struggle against the domination of human life by market forces, and therefore the domination of human beings by other human beings who control the resources from which private wealth is produced and amassed. this struggle, to be ultimately successful, must not only influence government policy and increase public spending, it must begin to re-appropriate universally required resources and democratise public institutions so that both serve the fundamental purpose of need-satisfaction, for the sake of enabling all people to realise their life-capacities in projects that are both individually meaningful and socially valuable for other people. that struggle – to create a society in which social wealth was used to satisfy needs and work was the nonalienated expression of our intellectual and creative capacities – was once called the struggle for socialism. whatever one wants to call it today, the mass deprivation of so basic a human need as the need for homes shows that canada very much needs a renewed such struggle today. references august, m. 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(2002). the origins of capitalism: a longer view. london: verso. against housing: homes as a human life requirement | 163 http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b36c.html © red quill books ltd. 2013 ottawa www.redquillbooks.com isbn 978-1-926958-24-8 printed on acid-free paper. the paper used in this book incorporates post-consumer waste and has not been sourced from endangered old growth forests, forests of exceptional conservation value or the amazon basin. red quill books subscribes to a one-book-at-a-time manufacturing process that substantially lessens supply chain waste, reduces greenhouse emissions, and conserves valuable natural resources. includes bibliographical references. “alternate routes” issn 1923-7081 (online) issn 0702-8865 (print) red quill books is an alternative publishing house. proceeds from the sale of this book will support future critical scholarship. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research volume 25, 2014 editors: carlo fanelli and bryan evans 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‘the greatest challenge of our time’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 carlo fanelli capitalism, the climate crisis and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 ryan katz-rosene gendered emissions: counting greenhouse gas emissions by gender and why it matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 marjorie griffin cohen overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 john calvert approaches and responses to climate change: challenges for the pantanal and the upper paraguay river basin . . . . . . 119 antonio augusto rosotto ioris brazilian dystopia: development and climate change mitigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 garry potter, jun mian chen and nazar hilal can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? big copper versus a small city and the urban environment in a b.c. interior community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 terry kading and elisabeth bass ‘greening work’ in lean times: the amalgamated transit union and public transit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 jeffrey carey and steven tufts 6 | climate change and its discontents interventions the contradictions of localism: an interview with greg sharzer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 jordy cummings urban space in perspective: an interview with matthew gandy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 aaron henry indigenous takes on environmentalism: an interview on the front lines of indigenous land defense . . . . . . . . . . . 259 megan kinch the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally: an interview with greg albo and jerome klassen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 jordy cummings working in a warming world: on climate change and union renewal with carla lipsig-mummé . . . . . . . . . . . 283 christina rousseau climate change and socialism: an interview with john bellamy foster. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 steve da silva reviews john bellamy foster, brett clark and richard york. the ecological rift capitalism’s war on the earth; anthony giddens. the politics of climate change . . . . . . . . . . . 303 samantha wilson silvia federici. revolution at point zero: housework, reproduction, and feminist struggle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 danielle dinovelli-lang ross sutherland. false positive: private profit in canada’s medical laboratories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 deborah komarnisky ernesto che guevara. el diario del che en bolivia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 gabrielle etcheverry victoria law and china martens. don’t leave your friends behind: concrete ways to support families in social justice movements and communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 kevin partridge victoria law. resistance behind bars: the struggles of incarcerated women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 rebecca jaremko bromwich babak fozooni. what is critical social research? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 mahnam a. malamiry harry e. vanden and marc becker. josé carlos mariátegui: an anthology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 matthew hawkins c.l.r. james. a new notion: two works by c.l.r. james . . . . . . . . . 329 paul whiteley holly gibbs, belinda leach, and charlotte a.b. yates. negotiating risk, seeking security, eroding solidarity: life and work on the border . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332 madalena santos richard swift. the great revenue robbery: how to stop the tax cut scam and save canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 matt fodor 8 | climate change and its discontents editorial introduction: climate change and its discontents | 9 editorial introduction climate change and its discontents carlo fanelli1 and bryan evans2 in “capitalism, the climate crisis and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’”, ryan katz-rosene explains how the material and subjective systems governing transport infrastructure are ecologically unsustainable and largely undemocratic. rather than challenging market forces, the canadian state has played a central role in deepening and extending these practices. in his view, confronting these challenges requires a genuinely democratic, anti-capitalist politics aimed at transforming state power across all scales of public administration. next, marjorie griffin cohen shows why counting “gendered emissions” matters. while many of the gendered analyses exploring climate change focus on the implications for women and their work in the global south, less attention has been devoted to exploring how climate change differentially effects women in the north. cohen’s analysis breaks new ground in understanding how paid and unpaid labour as well as consumption issues vary by gender in the developed world, and explains why knowing the gendered distinctions in ghg emissions can inform radical ways to think about public policy and its relation to climate change. moving forward, in “overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry” john calvert argues that reducing ghg emissions and energy consumption of the built environment is central to mitigating climate change. he explores how building trades workers can adopt low carbon construction policies. to do this, he argues, means challenging the pervasive use of sub-contracting and precarious employment, as well as largely unregulated construction markets. a ‘green’ construction culture, boosted by enhanced training and apprenticeship programs and improved job security through unionization, could go a long way in implementing climate objectives at the workplace. the following article by antonio augusto rosotto ioris, “approaches and responses to climate change: challenges for the pantanal and the upper paraguay river basin”, draws on original empirical research that explores a range 1 carlo fanelli is an instructor and sshrc post-doctoral research fellow at the department of politics and public administration, ryerson university. thanks are due to the social sciences and humanities research council for their financial support. 2 bryan evans is associate professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university and a member of the yeates school of graduate studies. 10 | climate change and its discontents of responses that are being developed in order to cope with the negative impacts of climate change. loris shows how the influence of the agribusiness sector, coupled with few national and trilateral environmental policies, have focused on principles of systematic adaptation, climate skepticism and/or marketization. in “brazilian dystopia: development and climate change mitigation”, potter et al., stress the ecological importance of the amazonian rainforest to the rest of the world. they argue that deforestation, rather than the carbonized energy and transport sectors, disproportionately accounts for brazil’s ghg emissions. they explore the “dystopia thesis” concretizing their arguments through an examination of the complex relationships between the brazilian economy and practices aimed at mitigating climate change. kading and bass ask “can you build an openpit mine in an urban centre?” they explore how residents of the city of kamloops found themselves at the centre of a controversial debate over a foreign-domestic investment proposal: the establishment of an openpit copper and gold mine in a b.c. interior community. they argue that environmental and community concerns have been overshadowed by the rhetoric of job creation, low taxes, balanced budgets and economic growth at all costs. should this proposal go unchallenged, they argue, it could set a canada-wide precedent with dire implications for the livability, economic future and democracy for residents of kamloops and beyond. the final article by jeffrey carey and steven tufts, “‘greening work’ in lean times: the amalgamated transit union and public transit”, explores the trialectic relationship between capital, labour and nature in canada’s public transit unions. they review union documents and canadian newspapers finding that the state uses the environment as a wedge issue in its ‘war of position’ with unions: workers’ strike actions are characterized as harmful to the environment and community. their article concludes with an examination of a recent campaign strategy by toronto’s atu local 113 wherein they call for more community based approaches to resistance. our interventions section brings together leading thinkers and community organizers in the pursuit of ecological, political, economic and social justice. starting us off, jordy cummings interviews greg sharzer, author of no local, on the issue of localism. their discussion explores the limitations of ethical shopping, community initiatives like gardens and farmers’ markets and local economic development. sharzer suggests that these initiatives will not change the world, but that challenging market priorities will. next, aaron henry and matthew gandy discuss editorial introduction: climate change and its discontents | 11 new critical methodological tools with which scholars and activists can get a handle on the conjuncture, encompassing a range of issues connected with gandy’s theory of ‘partial modernity’. following this up, megan kinch delves into conversation with indigenous anishinaabe and haudenosaunee land defenders, exploring land occupation, cultural revitalization, and their perspectives on both marxism and environmentalism in what follows, christina rousseau discusses the impact of climate change on labour markets with carla lipsig-mumme, incorporating a discussion of her most recent work titled work in a warming world. the following interview with empire’s ally editors greg albo and jerome klassen discusses a range of issues surrounding canadian imperialism in general and the war in afghanistan in particular. in their discussion with jordy cummings, albo and klassen challenge the humanitarian aspects of the afghanistan war, drawing attention to the ecological, social and political consequences of war without end. the section is capped with an interview between john bellamy foster, editor of monthly review, and steve da silva. they discuss the frightening prospects that we face as a species, incorporating discussions of recent ipcc reports as well as foster’s highly original reading of marx and engels’ writings on nature and the metabolic rift. concluding alternate routes’ thirty-seventh year of publication and twenty-fifth issue are eleven reviews examining everything from climate change to progressive taxation, healthcare, revolutionary social and political thought and cross-border solidarity. we would like to thank all contributors for working under extremely tight publishing deadlines, carefully addressing reviewers’ concerns and contributing their time and energy to put together this volume. special thanks are also due to our editorial advisory board, as well as a number of external reviewers, who graciously volunteered their time and expertise to see this project through. this collection would not have been possible without your steadfast support. the concerns raised in this issue cross-cut racial, ethnic, gender and class lines; the actions or inactions taken to mitigate and adapt to climate change will effect all living systems on earth now and well into the future. in 2000, perry anderson remarked: “the only starting-point for a realistic left today is a lucid registration of historical defeat. capital has comprehensively beaten back all threats to its rule, the bases of whose power – above all, the pressures of competition – were persistently under-estimated by the socialist movement...for the left, the lesson of 12 | climate change and its discontents the past century is one taught by marx. its first task is to attend to the actual development of capitalism as a complex machinery of production and profit, in constant motion.”3 fourteen years later anderson’s words are perhaps more revealing now than when they were first written. we hope that the contributions in this volume, along with those of socialists, feminists, anti-racists, indigenous communities and ecologicallyinspired authors and activists from around the world, assist readers in interpreting the consequences of climate change and inspire them to do something about it. 3 anderson, p. (2000). renewals. new left review, http://newleftreview.org/ii/1/perry-andersonrenewals articles 14 | climate change and its discontents introduction: climate change | 15 introduction climate change: ‘the greatest challenge of our time’ carlo fanelli1 “climate change is life or death. it is the new global battlefield. it is being presented as if it is the problem of the developed world. but it’s the developed world that has precipitated global warming.” noble peace prizewinner wangari maathai this volume came together as the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) released its fifth report in stockholm, sweden. founded in 1988 by the united nations (un) and the world meteorological organization, the most recent ipcc report brings together over 600 climate scientists from over 130 countries. because every last word of the ipcc reports must be signed off by all un members, the reports are among the world’s most comprehensively vetted and exhaustively reviewed scientific publications. as a result of this wide-ranging consensus, however, it is by design conservative, drawing attention only to the most expansively agreed upon scientific consensuses. despite the conservatism, however, 2013 ipcc co-chair thomas f. stocker made clear that “climate change is the greatest challenge of our time...in short, it threatens our planet, our only home.” (gilis, 2013). since the publication of the ipcc’s first assessment report in 1990, the scientific evidence demonstrating that anthropogenic climate change is intensifying around the world has been strengthened. in 1995, the ipcc estimated that it was “more likely than not” (which translates to a 50 percent probability) that human-produced greenhouse gases (ghg) – as opposed to natural variability – were the main causes of climate 1 carlo fanelli is an instructor and sshrc post-doctoral research fellow at the department of politics & public administration, ryerson university, with interests in critical political economy, labour studies, canadian public policy, climate change, social movements, urban sociology and education. thanks are due to the social sciences and humanities research council, which made this research possible. 16 | climate change and its discontents change. this certainty rose to “likely” (66 percent) in 2001, “very likely” (90 percent) in 2007 and now stands at “extremely likely” (95 percent). the 2013 report puts an exclamation point on what is already known about anthropogenic climate change, refining our understandings and deepening interconnections among them. it is perhaps not a stretch of the imagination to suggest that if present trends continue the next report slated for publication sometime in 2019-2020 will increase this probability of occurrence to “virtually certain” (99 percent). when it comes to the science of anthropogenic climate change, like evolution, the debate is over: it is no longer a matter of debate whether or not human activity is influencing climate change, but the speed and scope of such change and its potential consequences for all life systems. indeed, more than 97 percent of peer-reviewed climate scientists argue that the globe is warming as a result of anthropogenic ghg emissions. put differently, of some 33,700 peer-reviewed climate change papers published between 1991 and 2012, only 34 rejected that climate change was caused by human activities (powell, n.d.; 2012).2 understanding climate change as a political process and yet, despite the overwhelming scientific consensus, climate change continues largely unabated. in light of the overwhelming scientific consensus how is it that nearly half of britons and americans, and some 42 percent of canadians, believe that human activities are not affecting climate change? despite the consensus or perhaps precisely because of it, it is a mistake to assume that valid science will communicate itself (dembicki, 2013). rather, because people are not inherently radical or conservative but adapt to the structured conditions they encounter, a multiplicity of factors from diverse interests and levels of class consciousness to personal experiences, socio-economic status, race, gender, culture and political ideology play a central role in the acceptance or rejection of climate change science. these deeply ingrained sentiments, mediated by competing narratives jostling for hegemony, obscure our understanding of climate change as an inherently political process. it is little wonder, then, that white elites, in particular men, overwhelmingly deny climate change. while just over 7 percent of non-white u.s. men believe that the potential impacts of climate change are exaggerated or unlikely to happen, this number jumps to nearly 30 percent of white males and increases in tandem as perceived understanding of climate 2 see also richard, 2012; oreskes, 2004 introduction: climate change | 17 change rises (mccright and dunlap, 2011; pyper, 2011). “a position on climate change has become almost like a tribal totem...i am conservative, therefore, i cannot believe in climate change.” (lewandowski in mooney, 2013). conservatives tend to question climate change not only on the validity of its scientific conclusions, but equate understanding with broader political and ideological factors such as a skepticism of government or university funded research, liberal conspirational theories, perceived misrepresentations of the data, a belief in the infallibility of markets and technology, media biases, distrust of scientists’ alleged political leanings, and perceived injustices against individual liberties and profit-making freedoms (washington and cook, 2011; oreskes and conway, 2012; dunlap and jacques, 2013). of course, ideological and identificational factors span the political spectrum, but climate change denialism tends to overwhelmingly be the refuge of conservatism. while some 3 percent of climate scientists deny that human activities are directly associated with climate change, skeptics and denialists tend to make up 34 percent of u.s. media coverage (cook et al., 2013). and climate change coverage by the media is diminishing across the u.s. and canada having dropped 20 percent in 2011 over 2010, and more than 40 percent since 2009. this is evident in fewer reporters covering stories, fewer outlets publishing articles and, perhaps most strikingly, a particular silence (and 50 percent decline) from the nation’s editorial boards denouncing the lack of action on climate change (zerbisias, 2012). the growing import of climate change denialists in the popular press and, subsequently, society at large, has risen despite increasing scientific agreement among scientists to the contrary. this is in no small part explained by vast clandestine networks of climate change denial – from media personalities to think-tanks, academics and politicians – that have spent more than $120 million between 2002-2010 to discredit climate change science (goldenberg, 2013; greenpeace, 2013). interest in climate change decreased just as the economic turbulence, political instability and social insecurity of the great recession made its way around the world. but as angel gurria, secretary general of the organization for economic cooperation and development reminded: “this [climate change] is worse than a debt because there is no bailout and if you have two or three good budget years a debt can be reduced, but emissions hang around for 100 years.” (cbc, 2013). in fact, the 2013 ipcc report emphasizes that things are getting worse more rapidly than the best previous models could predict. from global temperature 18 | climate change and its discontents increases to melting ice sheets, retreat of glaciers, rising and acidifying oceans, deforestation, shifts in weather patterns, food chains, plant and animal life, water shortages and massive species extinctions, socioecological crises are escalating across the biosphere. for example, the 2013 report estimates that global temperatures will increase somewhere between 1.8 and 4 degrees celsius by the midway point of this century; sea levels could rise between 18 and 59 centimeters, especially if recent melting in greenland and antarctica continues, by the end of this century; arctic sea ice could disappear by the summer of 2050; and extreme rainfall and heat waves are expected to increase in frequency. what’s more, even if emissions were stabilized today these trends would continue well into the future as some 60 percent of co2 emissions remain in the atmosphere for 20 years, 45 percent remains for 100 years and 20 percent remains 1,000 years after which they are emitted. it is important to emphasize that for the past five-hundred thousand years ghg’s have fluctuated in a narrow band of between 260 and 280 parts per million (ppm). today, however, they are over 400ppm co2, which is roughly 30 percent higher than previous peaks in volume during interglacial periods. the report stresses that beyond a 2 degree celsius temperature rise, humans could lose the ability to take actions that would substantially remedy or mitigate climate change, after which a “danger zone” would be entered in which the climate could become unpredictable and the consequences largely unforeseen. it has been estimated that if present trends continue two-thirds of the world population could suffer from water shortages, 12 percent of bird species and 25 percent of mammals are threatened with extinction and over 70 percent of the earth’s fisheries could become depleted, fully-fished and/or overexploited (woodin & lucas, 2004; gupta, 2001). climate scientists predict that food production could be cut in half, having already risen 140 percent in cost between 2002-2008, and threatening some 2 billion food insecure and impoverished persons around the world. what’s more, the amazon rainforest – dubbed the lungs of the world – could turn to a dry savannah, while melting icecaps could raise sea levels by more than 30 percent worldwide engulfing land presently occupied by more than 1 billion people (lean, 2007; walsh, 2013). the 2013 ipcc report does not take into account worst case or supposed scenarios such as the releasing of terrestrial and oceanic methane (a ghg thirty times more potent than co2) as a result of thawing permafrost and undersea reserves. but threatening messages about climate change have their limitations (for a snapshot of the debate see, lilley et introduction: climate change | 19 al., 2012; angus, 2013). thus while there is certainty about the severity of climate change, the ipcc reports remain moderate reflecting only what are “extremely likely” projections. as one well known phrase puts it: ‘trying to predict climate change is like trying to predict where the next bubble will pop in a pot of boiling water. we understand how the process works but can’t pin-point exactly where the next stream of bubbles will be’. the ipcc report uses the baseline year 1750 to distinguish between pre-industrial and industrial concentrations of ghg emissions, showing a marked increase in the role of human activities in regards to climate change over the period ever since. despite some 200,000 years of human activity on earth, however, it is only in the last 250 years (and 150 years in particular) that the long-term viability of the earth as a sustainable place for inhabitation has been called into question. in this regard, it is important to stress that the broad frame of human activity masks what is specifically capitalist activity: a historically unique form of social relations based on the exploitation of labour, which alters humankinds historic relationship with nature creating deep fissures, i.e., a ‘metabolic rift’. in historical terms, then, destructive anthropogenic climate change is of recent vintage. what, then, lies at the root of climate change? grappling with such a question must inevitably reflect on the ways in which climate change and capitalism are symbiotic – that is to say, how the underlying social relations and forces of (re)production (historically unique and dominant since, say, 1750) are in actuality an instituted compulsion. one where the requirements of life are embedded in a political and economic framework that obscures class exploitation through a complex web of market dependence in which cut-throat competition, labour rationality and profit maximization permeate all aspects of social life. this class exploitation which lies at the root of capitalism, at once gendered, racialized and informed by a host of cross-cutting identificational markers, must be central to our understanding of climate change as socio-ecological crises intersect in myriad non-linear and cascading ways. since orthodox economists assume that everything has a price and that the market will inherently sort out all problems, mainstream approaches to climate change suffer from an inherent inability to deal adequately with the climate crisis. the assumption that everything, no matter how ecologically destructive, socially unhealthy or politically unjust has profit-making potential and can be solved by technological or market means must inevitably come to terms with the biophysical 20 | climate change and its discontents impossibility of unlimited economic growth. said differently, if solutions to the climate crisis are to be found they must be radicalized (i.e. get to the root of the problem) and move away from so-called market based solutions to what are ineradicably market based problems: the capitalist system is inherently incompatible with the goal of sustaining the earth for future generations. the systemic imperatives of capitalism run counter to any socioecological notions of natural limits, critical thresholds and limitations on conspicuous consumption, let alone social justice, since all relations are subordinated to profit maximization. in this sense, it is important to recall the words of engels (1934) who reminds: “[nature] is the foundation upon which we human beings, ourselves products of nature, have grown up…at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature – but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst.” in other words, “man lives from nature, i.e. nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuous dialogue with it if he is not to die. to say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature” (marx, 1964, p.112). it is perhaps not a coincidence that such a large segment of conservative and other groups are adamantly opposed to the science of climate change for substantive solutions require a radical reversal of business as usual – that is to say, a critique of political economy that explicitly rejects capitalist growth as an end in itself and proposes alternative means of organizing society. there are no limitedly scientific, technological or market-based solutions to climate change, only social and political ones that challenge the power of capital to exploit workers, the unwaged, those denied a chance to work and the natural environment upon which all life on earth is based3 . countering climate change denialism, then, is a process of politicization as information is rarely neutral and scientific evidence seldom speaks for itself. in this regard, the reputation of canada as an international pariah is especially disconcerting as even the mildest talk of environmental regulation, especially in a recession, sends captains of industry and their political backers into a tailspin threatening further job cuts. 3 carbon markets have done next to nothing to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, often precipitating more problems than they have solved. consider the failure of the european union’s emissions trading scheme which, far from reducing carbon emissions, are actually set to cancel out over 700m tonnes of emissions saved through renewable energy and energy efficiency effort (carrington, 2013; lohman, 2011). introduction: climate change | 21 canada and climate change inaction among the first acts of business by the stephen harper conservatives was to, in the iconic words of the prime minister, pull out of the “socialist scheme” that is the kyoto protocol, which in his view was designed to suck money out of rich countries. since 2006, environmental monitoring, legislation and protective agencies have been steadily gutted. this includes the elimination, reduction and curtailment of over forty environmental programs related to air, water, transport, oil and gas monitoring, agriculture, hazardous waste management, species at risk, weather services and research funding. the most notable of these include over $222 million being cut from environment canada, the elimination of over one thousand scientists and over $100 million in funding at the department of fisheries and oceans and parks canada, the repeal of the environmental assessment act, elimination of the experimental lakes area program, changes to the navigable waters protection act in order to ease transport restrictions on crude oil, and a host of closures to arms-length government agencies as a result of cuts to funding (nikiforuk, 2013; 2010; caw, 2013). what’s more, as part of this strategy to delegitimize climate change and social justice activists, conservative ministers have gone to great lengths to publically threaten, cajole and intimidate environmental groups characterizing them as anti-canadian, radical ideologues and foreign saboteurs hijacking the political process (oliver, 2012; payton, 2012). in an effort to turn canada into an “energy superpower” the conservatives have pledged to triple tar sands production by 2035, have eased environmental regulations in order to allow mining and oil companies to explore canada’s arctic, and have established the “oil sands advocacy strategy” in the department of foreign affairs. this is on top of subsidies in excess of $1.4 billion to the oil, mining and gas industry, and herculean efforts to ensure that the enbridge northern gateway and keystone xl are implemented despite broad-ranging resistance. part of this strategy has resorted to preventing public scientists from speaking out about canada’s abysmal environmental record. indeed, a recent survey of government scientists found that 90 percent of respondents felt as though they could not speak freely about their work; 86 percent feared retaliation if they went public about their research on public health or environmental science; 71 percent felt that political interference compromised policy development based on scientific evidence; nearly half said they were aware of cases in which their department or agency suppressed information for political reasons; and 25 percent responded 22 | climate change and its discontents to having been asked to directly exclude or alter information for “nonscientific” purposes (chung, 2013; cheadle, 2013).4 furthermore, 86 percent (along with four former federal fisheries ministers) said they felt changes to the fisheries act would drastically hamper canada’s ability to protect fish and habitat provisions as only those deemed economically viable would now be covered (galloway, 2012; barlow, 2012; paris, 2012). the chasm between public servants conducting research and elected officials propagating party lines speaks volumes about the political nature of climate change science and the underlying political efforts to stem serious environmental reforms (for a recent example, see, de souza, 2013). the federal conservatives have also been working diligently to undermine stiffer environmental protocols in other countries, such as california’s low-carbon fuel standard and the european union’s fuel quality directive. this adds to a growing list of federal international inaction illustrated by canada’s unwillingness to sign onto a global treaty reining in carbon emissions in copenhagen in 2009, as well as stifling of plans to implement an international financial transactions tax at the 2010 toronto g20 meetings. in fact, canada’s carbon emissions will be 20 percent higher than the harper government’s own promised reductions under the 2009 copenhagen accord; in actuality some 66 and 107 percent higher than what is needed to meet canada’s international obligation to prevent global temperatures from rising 2 degrees celsius. not only will the federal conservatives miss their own emission reduction target cut of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, they will actually be 2 percent higher by the end of the decade. actual emissions in 2011 were twenty-four times higher than 1990 (environment canada, 2013). canada now stands alone among the g8 as the only nation to not only lack a national housing, transit and infrastructure strategy, but also a national renewable energy program, the last incarnation having been eliminated in 2011. even the u.s., hardly a bastion of renewable energy investment, spends eighteen times more per capita in federal investments in renewable energy than canada (climate action network canada, n.d.). it is plain to see that the federal conservatives lack any serious plans to deal with climate change. since 2006 not only has busi4 among the 4,000 respondents included scientists from environment canada, health canada, department of defence, department of fisheries and oceans, food inspection agency, agriculture canada and natural resources canada. even maclean’s (gatehouse, 2013), a bastion of all things conservative, criticized the harper government’s muzzling of climate scientists as bordering on orwellian. introduction: climate change | 23 ness as usual continued, it has been expanded in scale and scope registering hardly a blip on the federal policy front.5 indeed in policy terms, not only has this exacerbated the class dimensions of climate change as rich nations globally exploit the labour power of the third world and poor and working class communities cope with decreased access to public services, transportation, decent work, rising food prices and general social insecurity, but also its simultaneously gendered and racialized implications. across the global south, for example, women are overwhelmingly responsible for subsistence agriculture and ecosystems services. climate change-induced reductions to food crop production, shifting weather patterns, forced migration, war, water shortages and increases in communicable diseases, coupled with women’s generally lower socio-economic status, levels of education, ownership and access to resources, means that although women are largely under-represented in decision-making capacities they must bare the brunt of its consequences. though varying in form and intensity, even in the global north the gendered implications of climate change are significant as women remain responsible for the majority of unpaid domestic labour and are thus often expected to make up for reductions to public services and programs as well as child and elder care, which face added pressures in light of natural disasters, climate displacement, housing, food and water insecurity. racialized communities, (im)migrants, refugees and those denied status often fare far worse as instances of poverty and malnutrition are intensified by exploitative labour market conditions and higher instances of precarious work. in both north and south, increasing concentration in urban centres without the social and physical infrastructure needed to meet the challenges of climate change threatens to intensify urban air pollution, traffic congestion, water contamination, sanitation issues and the health and well-being of all living systems. automobile-dependent urban sprawl wipes out farmland reinforcing a sub/urban growth dynamic and expensive low-density infrastructure, while pushing working class and racialized communities, in particular women and single-parent households, to the margins (unep, 2011; global gender and climate alliance, 2009). 5 the new democrats, supported by the bloc quebecois and liberals, put forward a private member’s bill titled the climate change accountability act (bill c-311) that called for the government to establish five-year plans outlining how it would reduce ghg emissions. bill c-311 aimed to set regulations that would bring emissions down 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. despite being passed by a majority of members of parliament, the unelected conservative majority in the senate used their power to defeat bill c-311 without debate or study (galloway, 2010). 24 | climate change and its discontents breaking the cycle of climate change inaction means recognizing the relationship between climate change and capitalism. in an era of unprecedented and growing income inequality, climate change threatens to exacerbate health problems, social injustices and violent conflicts around the world. it has been estimated that capitalist-impelled climate change causes some 300,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses annually. and this is expected to double by 2030. what’s more, inaction is already estimated to cost $125 billion annually and is expected to rise to $600 billion by 2030 (vidal, 2009). the class composition of climate change is such that those most vulnerable, exploited and degraded will suffer the most as the capitalist class thrives on disaster recognizing them as opportunities (semeniuk, 2013; cbc, 2013c). as is evidenced from the global tumult of the great recession, neoliberal capitalism has emerged stronger and more consolidated than ever despite a temporary, if short-lived, crisis of legitimacy. never letting a crisis go to waste means using those opportunities as moments to do things that were seemingly unlikely or impossible beforehand. in canada, this has meant an emboldened radicalism from conservatives and segments of capital as so-called right-to-work laws, new pressures on privatizing public services, in particular healthcare, pensions and post-secondary education, the removal of public sector collective bargaining rights, the implementation of a free trade agreement with europe that trumps nafta, work for welfare initiatives, attacks against social assistance, the weakening of employment standards legislation, reductions to old age security and the erosion of progressive taxation, once deemed central to the social fabric of canada, are now destined for the proverbial dustbin of history (fanelli and evans, 2012; banting and myles, 2013; himelfarb and himelfarb, 2013; swift, 2013; braedley and luxton, 2010). climate change, then, far from necessarily compelling any progressive changes may provide opportunities for capitalism to assert itself as the only alternative regardless of the social, environmental and human costs. as such, dealing with climate change is among the most pressing social and political, that is, class struggles of our time. taking climate change seriously despite a crisis of capitalism with few historical parallels, anti-capitalist activists have rarely been as isolated and marginalized as they are today.6 while the economic crisis should have put labour and social justice activ6 pantich and gindin (2012) have characterized the great recession of 2008 as the fourth major structural crisis of capitalism. the first occurred in the last quarter of the 19th century, the second – introduced by the stock market crash in 1929 – ran through the great depression of the 1930s, and the third emerged in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. introduction: climate change | 25 ists on the offensive, it has been capital that has determined the agenda ushering in a series of regressive reforms that has made life more insecure and precarious for most, while ironically enhancing the lives of those that caused the great recession in the first place (rexrode, 2013; goodway, 2012). unfortunately, despite sporadic and localized battles, there has been no subsequent radicalization of labour unions, social movements and anticapitalist groups in a coordinated and structured way. developing a movement that challenges austerity and climate change will need to experiment with new forms of organizing that more effectively breaks out of labour and activist subcultures and builds on the heterogeneity of the working class. one of the few exceptions have been first nations communities, long subjected to british and later canadian colonialism, and idle no more protestors that have defended the rights of the earth against unbridled capitalist exploitation (cbc, 2013b; barrera, 2013; dobbin, 2013). while this is not the place for an overview of debates about left regroupment, the challenge facing trade union, environmental and social justice activists is to move to the anti-capitalist left or risk increasingly becoming an impediment to rather than an instrument of a renewed working class politics. the failure to do so may regrettably amount to an historic class defeat. if climate change and overlapping crises – from air, ocean and water pollution to displacement, disease and labour degradation – are to be comprehensively challenged, it will mean addressing not only its effects but its causes: the capitalist system which degrades the earth and alienates labour. this means integrating rather limited but important individual behaviours, lifestyle and consumptive habits into a broader social justice framework that addresses the structural and systemic roots (i.e. exploitative relations and forces of [re]production) of labour and environmental degradation (albo, 2007). far from grand-theorizing or proselytizing, foresight, not hindsight, is the only realistic starting point from which to move forward. the challenge is for the working classes to develop the confidence and capacities to think as ambitiously and radical as capital, the ruling class, has done since the onset of the recession. taking climate change seriously means rethinking living and working arrangements, leaving fossil fuels in the ground and retooling manufacturing industries to develop an array of renewable energies (e.g. wind, solar, tidal, geothermal), massively expanding public transportation in order to reduce a dependence on individual modes of transportation, renewing local polycultural farming practices, reversing the erosion of progressive taxation, retrofitting homes and industries and, most importantly, moving away from a reliance on the private sector as the engine of economic growth in favour of the expansion of the public sector. 26 | climate change and its discontents socializing and democratizing the banking and finance sectors would mean placing social and environmental priorities ahead of board members, stock owners and corporations’ profitability. reigning in corporate power means recapturing decision-making capacities as part of a larger class project to reclaim and strengthen social and political justice across all facets of life. additionally, this means dispensing with opaque notions of more or less state and instead emphasizing the need to build a different kind of state – a different kind of society. unfortunately, social democracy has demonstrated a recurring inability to stand up to austerity, often deepening and extending market forces rather than challenging its central tenets. in order to challenge market forces, rebuilding the political capacities of organized labour is crucial, but so too is organizing the unorganized, unwaged and swaths of workers engaged in lowwage, insecure and precarious forms of work and labour. rooted in struggles for racial and gender equality, new political formations will need to come to terms with the limitations of militancy alone which, in the absence of a transformative project, has been incapable of countering the drumbeats of austerity and neoliberalism. in the absence of an anti-capitalist politics, then, we risk hampering rather than facilitating political change if we settle for anything less (williams, 2010; mackay, 2009; foster, 2009; boggs, 2012; rowbotham et al., 2013; salleh, 2009) while redistribution is important, a focus on what happens predistribution (i.e. extraction, production, social reproduction) raises a set of demands for non-commodified labour. putting the needs of the earth’s inhabitants first means that food and water sovereignty, along with housing, healthcare and education, are prioritized as human rights. universal social programs, from child and elder care to pensions, public spaces, art and cultural centres are crucial to developing a socio-ecological praxis that seeks to deepen and extend collective civic engagement rather than an individualized social policy arena. in light of historically low interest rates, major public works investments in housing, transit, renewable energy, infrastructure and denser development would lessen a reliance on private capital, decarbonizing the economy, encouraging more locally rooted and regionally coordinated production, and socializing access to basic services. meeting the social and political challenges of climate change within an explicitly anti-capitalist framework is not utopian or impractical, far from it, the real utopians are the ones who think business can introduction: climate change | 27 continue as usual. decades of governmental inaction, subterfuge and capitalist class war have shown that the radical is now the only thing that is practical.7 references albo, g. 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(2012, january 13). climate change coverage by the media diminishing as earth continues to heat up. toronto star, http://www. thestar.com/news/insight/2012/01/13/climate_change_coverage_by_t he_media_diminishing_as _earth_continues_to_heat_up.html http://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/pie-chart-13950-peer-reviewed-scientific-articles-earths-climate-finds-24-rejecting-global-warming.html http://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/pie-chart-13950-peer-reviewed-scientific-articles-earths-climate-finds-24-rejecting-global-warming.html http://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/pie-chart-13950-peer-reviewed-scientific-articles-earths-climate-finds-24-rejecting-global-warming.html http://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/pie-chart-13950-peer-reviewed-scientific-articles-earths-climate-finds-24-rejecting-global-warming.html http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/science-team-pinpoints-time-when-climate-will-shift-to-unnatural-state/article14774332/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/science-team-pinpoints-time-when-climate-will-shift-to-unnatural-state/article14774332/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/science-team-pinpoints-time-when-climate-will-shift-to-unnatural-state/article14774332/ http://www.unep.org/pdf/rra_gender_screen.pdf http://www.unep.org/pdf/rra_gender_screen.pdf http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/may/29/1 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/may/29/1 http://science.time.com/2013/11/01/oceans-warming-faster-than-they-have-over-past-10000-years/ http://science.time.com/2013/11/01/oceans-warming-faster-than-they-have-over-past-10000-years/ http://science.time.com/2013/11/01/oceans-warming-faster-than-they-have-over-past-10000-years/ http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2012/01/13/climate_change_coverage_by_the_media_diminishing_as_earth_continues_to_heat_up.html http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2012/01/13/climate_change_coverage_by_the_media_diminishing_as_earth_continues_to_heat_up.html http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2012/01/13/climate_change_coverage_by_the_media_diminishing_as_earth_continues_to_heat_up.html 32 | climate change and its discontents capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 33 capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’: theoretical interventions in ecological political economy ryan katz-rosene1 abstract: this paper approaches the intertwining crises of capitalism and climate change from an ecological political economy (epe) perspective in order to highlight the fundamentally unsustainable character of canada’s contemporary relations of mobility and the possibilities for socio-ecological change. an important component of the nation’s broader social relations, the ‘relations of mobility’ refer to the material and subjective systems governing how canadian transport infrastructure is produced and how and why people and things move from one place to another. unfortunately, the capitalist state has played a pivotal role in structuring these relations and as such it has little interest in significantly changing them. this highlights the need for a genuinely democratic, anti-capitalist politics aimed at obtaining power at the level of the ‘state’ – municipally, provincially, and federally – in order to change the relations of mobility for the better. this paper thus has three objectives falling under the rubric of epe: first, it demonstrates how canada’s contemporary relations of mobility negatively impact the natural environment. second, it historicizes the unsustainable origins of such relations within canada’s political economic structure, showing how the neoliberal capitalist state in particular is ‘uninterested’, ‘unwilling’ or ‘incapable’ of altering them. finally, it makes a normative argument for the mobilization of a democratic, anti-capitalist politics as a means of confronting the unsustainable character of canada’s present relations of mobility and social relations more broadly. 1 ryan katz-rosene is a phd candidate in the department of geography and environmental studies with a specialization in political economy at carleton university, as well as a board member of the environmental studies association of canada. his current research focuses on the ecological political economy of high-speed rail development in canada. the author would like to thank reviewers for their comments and suggestions. in addition, thanks are due to the social sciences and humanities research council of canada for the financial support which made this research possible. 34 | climate change and its discontents introduction given the concurrent and interrelated crises of global capitalism and climate change, canada’s contemporary ‘relations of mobility’ – a component of the nation’s broader social relations – are unequivocally unsustainable. this is to say that the material and subjective systems governing how canadian transport infrastructure is produced and how and why people and things move from one place to another will not be able to continue in their present form for much longer. change is required to avoid serious social and ecological upheaval. the instability of both domestic and global energy markets in recent years has manifested in rising costs for basic human needs like food, home heating, and transportation. the problems associated with anthropogenic climate change are all the more challenging for communities already threatened by rising living costs, as they become additionally vulnerable to the wrath of a planet attempting to recalibrate the biogeochemical cycles being altered by human activities. add to this the growing disparity in wealth and power and the culture of austerity brought about from years of neoliberal capitalism, and the perversity of our present reality becomes frighteningly clear: this situation cannot go on. unfortunately, the capitalist state has played a pivotal role in structuring these relations, and has little interest in significantly changing them. this highlights the need for a genuinely democratic, anti-capitalist politics aimed at obtaining power at the level of state governance – in municipalities, provincial governments and federally – in order to change the relations of mobility for the better. with this in mind, this paper makes three interventions to the study of ecological political economy (epe): first, it demonstrates how canada’s contemporary relations of mobility, as embodied within a complex web of social and politico-economic practices relating to transportation and conditioned by global capitalist productive processes, negatively impact the natural environment. second, it attempts to situate the unsustainable origins of such relations within canada’s political economic structure by historicizing them alongside the development of both the keynesian and subsequent neoliberal periods, showing how both of these iterations of capitalism brought about socio-ecological degradation. the paper goes on to examine how present neoliberal forms of the state in particular tend to be either uninterested, unwilling or incapable of altering the relations of mobility for the sake of ameliorating society-nature interactions. finally, i draw some normative conclusions for epe about the need to mobilize a democratic anti-capitalist politics as a means to concapitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 35 front the unsustainable nature of canada’s present relations of mobility (and social relations more broadly). arguably, a nuanced understanding of the socio-ecological implications of a market-based transport sector could play an important role in generating new political expressions in canada, advocating a shift toward critical epe ideals – such as the decommodification of transport services, or the re-empowerment of public ownership within the transport and related sectors – as a means of addressing the twin crises of capitalism and climate change. canada’s relations of mobility and the environment the canadian transportation sector has an enormous environmental impact, which, by extension, affects human wellbeing. in this sense, such impacts are ‘socio-ecological’ (castree, 2001). in ‘downstream’ service provision alone, the transportation of freight and passengers is responsible for 27 percent of canada’s emissions of greenhouse gases (ghgs). that percentage is in fact immeasurably larger when the ‘upstream’ production supply chain of transport vehicles and related ‘accessories’ (such as fuel and infrastructure) are also included. as environment canada (2010) has noted, one of the main reasons why canada’s ghg emissions grew by 24 percent between 1990 and 2008 – when, according to original kyoto protocol commitments made by the federal state they should have decreased by 5 percent – is that there has been a large increase in the number of motor vehicles, in particular sport utility vehicles and heavy transport trucks. it is no wonder then that the sector, a voracious consumer of fossil fuels, is responsible for nearly a third of the country’s energy consumption. unfortunately, despite the existence of low carbon transport technologies more than 99 percent of the energy used in canadian transport is derived from oil, a non-renewable resource whose production and use places a severe toll on the environment and the earth’s climate (national energy board, 2009). in addition to being a large contributor to climate change and the decline of non-renewable energy resources, the transportation of goods and people is also one of the largest sources of air pollution in canada, leading to related problems such as acid rain, smog, and respiratory health problems (environment canada, 2004). the heavy reliance on motor vehicles in canada’s urban areas is also largely responsible for traffic congestion and the high costs of building and maintaining roads (turcotte, 2008). canada now holds the unenviable distinction of playing host to north america’s busiest highway – the part of highway 401 which stretches across the greater toronto area – traversed by over half a million vehicles every day (thün 36 | climate change and its discontents and velikov, 2008). these are just some of the socio-ecological impacts of transportation that have been documented by governmental agencies and transport analysts, mostly relating to the overuse of the dominant petroleum based modes – automobiles and airplanes. less understood is the way that high rates of mobility and related production processes (including the construction of highways and road infrastructure) exacerbate the contamination and depletion of fresh water, the destruction of wildlife habitat and migration routes, the erosion and degradation of arable land, and so on. these often-overlooked impacts are important, as cumulatively such problems can undermine the ecological foundation of social life. in light of the dire state of 21st century society-nature relations and of the negative contribution of canada’s existing transportation practices, a rather obvious course of action is required: canada must reduce its overall use of private automobiles, airplanes, and heavy-duty transport trucks (the three biggest culprits in terms of per capita use of petroleum), while building capacity for urban mass transit, more efficient inter-city passenger rail, and electric rail for freight shipping. less obvious is how to make this happen in a just, equitable and efficient manner. the task at hand is further complicated by the broader context of global capitalism and economic interdependency in which canada’s energy and transport sectors are situated. the economic and legal ties canada shares with its trading partners places external limitations upon the likelihood and possibilities of political economic change. nevertheless, a good place to start domestically is to use the powers of the state to support more ecologically friendly transport modes and discourage the use of less ecologically sensitive modes. investing in public transit and more efficient transport technologies is essential in order to provide canadians with affordable, energy efficient transport alternatives, but it alone is not enough. the harsh reality is that it is the very social relations which define mobility practices that are unsustainable (not to mention highly unequal2) in the first place. as such, the introduction of new energy-efficient transport vehicles on their own will fail to address these socio-ecological problems unless paired with hard cap restrictions on unsustainable transport practices or major changes to our collective social behaviour (which suggests changes to our political economic structure). this is why the state and various scales of 2 put simply, the rich can and do travel much more than the poor. affluent families in canada have much higher access to the means of mobility, while lower income families pay a higher proportion of household revenue on transportation. in effect, the market imposes a de facto restriction of access to mobility upon lower income families and individuals. statistically, the prototypical high-use car driver in canada is male, between the ages of 45 and 54, and lives in a low-density suburban neighbourhood. there is a clear relationship between the indicators of gender, race and class, and access to mobility (turcotte, 2008). capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 37 government will inevitably need to get involved and mobilize the range of tools at their disposal. the difficulty lies in transforming awareness of this problem into action towards social change, and more importantly, ensuring that such action occurs in a just, democratic manner while guaranteeing a decent quality of life for all canadians. neoliberalism, environmental common sense and the transport sector to trace the origins of unsustainability within canada’s relations of mobility one must delve into the material and subjective structures of the nation’s political economy. the neoliberal turn in canada and corresponding understandings of society-nature relations have reshaped the country’s transport sector and reconstituted the scope of what is perceived of as ‘feasible’ governmental recourse to reform mobility relations or reduce fossil fuel consumption. in part this is due to the emergence in recent decades of a neoliberal variant of what can be called ‘environmental common sense’. neoliberal beliefs on the merits of private property rights, market competition and free trade have played a crucial role in shaping how canadian policy-makers confront socio-ecological problems. as mccarthy and prudham (2004, p. 275) have written, “neoliberalism and modern environmentalism have together emerged as the most serious political and ideological foundations of post-fordist social regulation.” while this relationship has given rise to an extensive literature on ‘neoliberal nature’ – that is, the way nature has fared under the intensification of market relations (see bakker, 2009; or heynen, mccarthy, prudham, and robbins, 2007)”number-of-pages”:”298”,”source”:”catalogue.library.carleton. ca library catalog”,”event-place”:”london ; new york”,”isbn”:”9780 415771481”,”call-number”:”hc21 .n43 2007”,”shorttitle”:”neoliberal environments”,”editor”:[{“family”:”heynen”,”given”:”nik”},{“family ”:”mccarthy”,”given”:”james”},{“family”:”prudham”,”given”:”scott ”},{“family”:”robbins”,”given”:”paul”}],”issued”:{“date-parts”:[[“200 7”]]}},”prefix”:”or”}],”schema”:”https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json”} – very little attention has actually been paid to the ways that popular environmentalist beliefs amongst the polity and within civil society are pervaded by neoliberal logic as well, and the processes involved in this formation. the existence in canada of what bakker (2009) calls ‘green neoliberalism’ or what albo (2007) calls ‘market ecology’ has thus brought ideological limitations to the types of policies, programs and actions that can ‘fea38 | climate change and its discontents sibly’ be taken by neoliberal authorities at various scales of government to confront socio-ecological problems. due to prevailing neoliberal common sense ‘wisdom(s)’, the ‘selfregulating market’ is not only seen as a democratic arbiter of prices, it is also interpreted as a social tool to address environmental problems such as resource scarcity and pollution. a poignant example is the belief that the best way to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide is to create a market for the gas, which would theoretically enable private firms to profit from improving their greenhouse gas intensity. within neoliberal conceptions of environmental common sense, the idea of the state imposing fixed limitations on resource use or pollution by firmly restricting usage or by setting pre-determined prices in order to influence citizen or corporate behaviour is often considered anathema to the current suite of policies. there are exceptions to this rule, but as demonstrated below this phenomenon is particularly pervasive within the canadian transportation sector. neoliberal common sense was subsumed into canadian transport policy throughout the late 1980s and 1990s. strongly held beliefs in the benefits of privatizing formerly state-owned transport corporations and ‘opening’ the sector to the market are showcased in a 1995 compilation of essays on canadian surface transportation published by the fraser institute. within, the editor (palda, 1995, p. xi) writes the following: “transportation policy is a unique topic among academics. unlike experts who debate welfare, education, and the debt, transport researchers seem to have a united outlook: the best prescription for the transport industry is fewer regulations, lower subsidies, and less government ownership.” certainly not all transport researchers are as unified as palda suggests, but the majority of commentators, influenced by the new neoliberal common sense, have indeed advocated a market path. most importantly, those in political power have tended to share this viewpoint. as the federal government expressed in a policy paper regarding sustainable transportation, “the government of canada believes that the transportation system of tomorrow should remain largely marketdriven” (transport canada, 2003, p. 6). for decision-makers, this means ensuring a largely ‘deregulated’ and privatized transport sector, wherein state authorities use a minimal amount of influence to guarantee competition between privately owned firms vying for clients and a share of the mobility market. it means catering to those modes that are furthest capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 39 from state control (i.e. automobiles, airplanes, freight trucking), where questions of access, distribution and usage are most often determined by the wealth of producers and consumers, supply and demand. further, neoliberal common sense compels authorities at various scales of government to pursue the sale of assets from the public sector to the private sector, supposedly as a means of fostering growth and reducing state spending, thereby tackling deficits and the debt (cameron, 1997). this contradictory common sense wisdom has found expression throughout the neoliberal world, not just canada. as docherty, shaw and gather (2004, p. 258) have plainly put it: “[during the 1980s and 90s] transport was profoundly affected by the desire to reduce state involvement in the planning and delivery of public services. state provision of transport services was reduced in favour of the market, competition restrictions were reduced or removed altogether, and the procurement and financing of infrastructure became more dependent on the private sector as governments sought to reduce their spending and debt liabilities.” these authors, however, argue that the transport sector has seen some level of retrenchment in recent years. they point to scholars charlton and gibb as perhaps the first to note the mediated nature of transport neoliberalization. as the latter have written, “[despite the] undeniable prominence of liberalised transport systems, there is an apparent contradiction between the broad policy support for deregulation and privatization and the continued, and even enhanced, regulatory environment affecting many transport systems” (charlton and gibb, 1998). nevertheless, the contradictory relationship between the professed theory of neoliberalism and the material actions of the state in practice (regulation, policy, security, etc.) does not necessarily suggest any scaling back of neoliberalism. as neo-polanyist hannes lacher has pointed out, the pursuit of an orthodox form of market liberalism is practically impossible without creating widespread social and environmental havoc (lacher, 2011), and with this in mind, the neoliberal state must engage in some basic forms of regulation and policy setting in order to set out a basic framework for capital accumulation and to secure private property rights. it is thus inevitable that transport neoliberalization would be accompanied by new regulatory frameworks that guarantee the sector’s role in growing domestic product. 40 | climate change and its discontents regulation as a framework for capital accumulation to further flush out these different types of regulation, let us consider the example of the canadian freight trucking industry. it would be inaccurate to describe this industry as ‘deregulated’. the opposite is true – in literal terms it is highly regulated: the provinces regulate truck weights, dimensions, and even speeds indirectly through the control of highways and roads; the federal government regulates safety practices of the trucking industry through the motor vehicle safety act and closely oversees crossborder flows of freight. nevertheless, this “patchwork quilt of regulations across the country”, as the canadian trucking alliance calls it (canada transportation act review panel, 2001), is better interpreted as a set of ‘rules’ to outline a framework of optimal efficiency, competition and profitability. despite this ‘regulatory framework’, the trucking industry does exist in a highly neoliberalized setting: all trucking firms are private and compete for a share of the market with other private firms; these private firms are allowed to set their own rates and prices without government interference; foreign capital is welcome to invest in the industry; further, the industry plays an essential role in reinforcing existing systems of free trade with the rest of north america. from a neoliberal standpoint, the provincial and federal governments have no interest in imposing ‘hard cap’ regulations that genuinely intervene in the freight trucking market, nor are they willing to restrict the role of the sector in facilitating capital accumulation – as doing so would severely hamper a key component of canada’s economic growth engine. as one government report acknowledges, the commercial trucking industry produces revenues in the area of $20 billion annually – 40 percent of the transportation component of canada’s gdp (ibid.). it is in this light that ‘soft’ regulations – such as those described above – are actually required in a neoliberal political economy in order to set up a framework for capital accumulation. in fact, the canadian trucking alliance has lobbied for more comprehensive regulations, precisely because it believes the present lack of a definitive framework of rules “hampers trucking industry productivity, competitiveness and profitability, and impedes optimization of the industry’s safety and environmental performance.” (ibid.). as the example shows, a neoliberal environmental common sense has delimited the scope of possible interventions that can be taken by state institutions: ‘soft’ regulations are allowable, if not necessary, while radical forms of state intervention (such as the nationalization of the entire industry or specific firms, capping firms’ usage of fossil fuels, setting shipping prices, etc.), are simply not considered ‘feasible’. and yet, thinking capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 41 socio-ecologically, the latter interventions are the types of regulations needed to confront the damaging contribution of the trucking industry to fossil fuel use and anthropogenic climate change. the janus-faced character of regulation in the canadian transport industry (and the problematic nature of these terms in general) has been identified by keil and young (2008, p.743), who note with irony how “since the 1980s the federal government, which has constitutional authority over transportation, has moved generally towards deregulation while remaining strategically interventionist.” on the one hand, the state has moved towards privatizing former crown corporations involved in transportation and transferring ownership of the major airports in the country to private (albeit non-profit) agencies, while on the other hand the state has continued to play a regulatory role in terms of securitizing (in the case of airports) and expanding (in the case of highways) transport infrastructure. again, these so-called ‘market interventions’ have actually helped to set up a framework for accumulation, further reified the federal state’s primary interest in economic growth, and guaranteed its role as an enabler of entrepreneurial activity. de facto privatization and capital accumulation the neoliberalization of canada’s transport sector is perhaps most noticeable in successive waves of privatization. privatization has not only transformed the role of the state from ‘provider’ (of goods and services) to ‘enabler’ (of competition, consumerism, productivity, efficiency, etc.), it has also worked at limiting the capacity of the federal state to use publicly owned assets as policy tools. neoliberal common sense has not only advocated the privatization of transport service providers such as canadian national railways and air canada; it has also aimed at privatizing former public manufacturers such as ontario bus industries and canadair, as well as former public enterprises involved in the provision of transport accessories and infrastructure (such as petro canada, a producer of the fuels required by transport vehicles – see table 1). interestingly, although many privatizations occurred during the neoliberal era, there were in fact two prior historical moments during the keynesian period that helped pave the way for privatization within and across various inter-regional transport modes. the first occurred in 1957, when a newly formed conservative government “expressed itself in favour of competition, and allowed canadian pacific airlines to break the transcontinental monopoly” hitherto held by the crown-owned trans-canada 42 | climate change and its discontents airlines (ashley and smails, 1965, p. 259). the second moment is marked by a similar phenomenon with respect to freight, which came about through the 1967 national transportation act (the first act of this kind in canada). table 1: transport-related crown corporations: a history of privatization and commercialization name of corporation brief history of ownership status in 2013 transport service provision trans-canada air lines/ air canada founded in 1937, and given a monopoly over trans-continental services; privatized in 1988. private corporation canadian national railways incorporated through a parliamentary act in 1919, taking over an agglomeration of formerly public and private railways. privatized in 1995. private corporation via rail officially incorporated as a crown corporation in 1978 after cn began to rid itself of passenger rail. now operates like a commercial enterprise. federal crown corporation (commercialized) canadian national (west indies) steamships company a passenger steamship company founded in 1928, owned by the canadian national railway company, and dissolved in 1958. obsolete northern transportation company became crown company in 1944 through expropriation. purchased in 1985 by the inuvialuit and nunasi corporations. private aboriginal owned company metrolinx/go transit go transit started in 1967 as regional inter-city service. merged with metrolinx in 2009. board is directed by both public and private sector. provincial crown corporation (commercialized) transport vehicle and craft production canadair founded in 1944 to manufacture aircraft; nationalized in 1976; privatized in 1986. obsolete canadian government maritime marine limited incorporated in 1918 to build and operate merchant marine ships. purchased in 1936 by three private british companies. obsolete ontario bus industries/ orion international formed by the ontario government in 1975; privatized in 1993. private corporation transport accessory provision and management petro-canada founded as crown corporation in 1975; privatized in 1991. bought by suncor in 2009. private corporation st. lawrence seaway authority / st. lawrence seaway mgnt corporation established as crown corporation in 1954 to plan, construct, and operate seaway. re-established as a non-profit in 1998. crown corporation capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 43 as gratwick (2001, p. 3) notes, the act “introduced the idea of competition between the modes as the cornerstone of the new (or more correctly, the first) clearly enunciated transport policy, together with a multimodal regulatory commission that would apply the new policy consistently across the whole transport spectrum.” these two moments in federal transportation policy are pivotal in the way they secured the rights of private enterprises to compete with nationally owned corporations. internationally, as a result of the neoliberal turn in the 1980s in great britain and the u.s. at the hands of thatcher and reagan, new global norms were developed in which it was believed that entire sectors of industrialized economies – in particular the transportation and energy sectors – would be best off in the hands of private enterprises (harvey, 2005). by the time brian mulroney’s progressive conservatives came to power in canada in 1984, the groundwork had already been laid for the wholesale neoliberalization of the transport (and related) sectors. there are two main ways in which forcing canadian crown corporations into competition with the private sector during the keynesian era sowed the seeds of neoliberalization and limited the capacity of the state. first, although the ownership of some transport firms remained in the hands of the state, those firms were now operating within an open market; they had to compete with private firms for customers; they had to focus their efforts on ensuring profitability (as opposed to serving the public); and they had to match their private competitors in ‘contributing’ to growth in domestic product. as such, they could no longer be used as policy tools to shape citizen behaviour (rather, they in turn were influenced by new market relations where supply and demand reigned supreme). second, once a crown corporation lost its monopoly over a subsector, it was only a matter of time before private lobbying emerged calling for the sale of said crown assets, now easily justified on the premise that public subsidies were being ‘unfairly’ allocated to some firms while their competitors were left without public funding. at this time a rhetoric of government’s role in ‘maintaining a level playing field’ for competing firms became commonplace.3 in some cases, privatization took place in spirit if not in law – a phenomenon referred to as ‘commercialization’ or ‘privatization by stealth’ (whiteside, 2012). this outcome (in which a public enterprise 3 for example, a 1998 parliamentary review on passenger rail services in canada strongly recommends “that the government ensure that, with regard to competition in the passenger rail sector, no undue hardship be placed on the private passenger rail operator by a passenger rail subsidy, thus ensuring a level playing field” (house of commons standing committee on transport, 1998). 44 | climate change and its discontents is forced to behave like a private corporation due to the neoliberalization of the sector at large) is exemplified today by via rail – canada’s last remaining crown corporation involved in national-level passenger transportation. as the company notes on its website, over the last two decades via has “focused on reducing overhead, administrative and operating costs, while improving the quality of service to attract more customers and increase revenues” (via rail, 2011). this is a mandate mired in neoliberal rationality that prioritizes profit and competitiveness over serving the public interest. via’s managers consider those who ride the train as ‘customers’, not the citizen ‘owners’ that a truly democratic conception of the public sector would imply. via was founded in 1977 as a concession to canadian national and canadian pacific, as the latter corporations had no interest in owning passenger rail services facing decreasing profitability in the face of growing automobile and air travel. to this day via remains a fledgling, undercapitalized crown corporation forced to rent track time from the (now private) rail freight companies. without any considerable government support, it must compete in the free market against other modes of intercity passenger transport which (thanks to the present artificially low price of fossil fuels) are cheaper, faster, and more convenient. important to note here is the way that the neoliberalization of the inter-city passenger transport sector has reconstituted the way the canadian state views this particular crown corporation. despite having a relative modal monopoly in passenger rail, the canadian government shows no interest in using via as a tool to get passengers out of automobiles and airplanes, even though via has itself identified a role it could play in transporting passengers more efficiently (via rail, 2007). following a neoliberalized environmental common sense, the federal government believes that via’s role as an ecologically-friendly mode should depend on its corporate ability to compete with the other modes, that its role as a provider of more energy efficient inter-city travel should be decided by questions of competitive pricing and consumer choice. even though the inter-city passenger transport industry is mediated by ‘soft’ regulations as well as some remaining subsidies and even in a limited sense ownership, the sector nevertheless exists in a neoliberalized setting where the primary motivation is to contribute to growth in domestic product through the generation of profit. again, from a socioecological viewpoint, this is bad news as this fuel-efficient passenger mode is underutilized while more profitable (and polluting) modes continue to see growth. capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 45 a similar situation (in which the control of publicly owned transport enterprises is constrained by the neoliberal setting in which said enterprises are situated) can be witnessed at the municipal scale. most canadian cities still own systems of public transit. however, under the existing relations of mobility, public transit must compete against privately owned automobiles. neoliberal common sense often leads citizens, urban planners, city councilors, regional newspapers, business improvement associations, etc., to protect the rights of private, individual commuters in automobiles from ‘unnecessary infringements’ upon their mobility. policies aiming to make public transit and alternative transportation more attractive to commuters which might have the consequent effect of making automobile transportation more costly or inconvenient (or which require an increase in the rate of municipal taxes) are met with a tirade of criticisms about governmental infringements on consumer freedoms. in ottawa, for example, the city’s recent proposal to build a dedicated bike lane on one cross-town street prompted an influx of criticisms regarding the supposed negative effect the bike lane would have on available parking spaces, and thus the profitability of local businesses which rely on automobile patrons (cbc news, 2011a). in another example, ottawa’s public transit service recently announced a major overhaul of its services, not for the purpose of increasing service hours (in fact, it significantly reduced them), but rather because it needed to ‘optimize costly inefficiencies’ by cutting $22 million from its annual budget (in order for the city to avoid imposing a 5 percent municipal tax hike). neoliberal common sense made the former option an obvious choice for local officials (cbc news, 2011b). as the examples indicate, despite public ownership of the transit system, municipal governments typically hesitate to enact policies which might inconvenience automobile commuters or result in an increase of public spending, or require an increase in the municipal tax rate; such ‘hard cap’ regulations would supposedly hamper the localized processes of capital accumulation. this puzzle revolving around the centrality of automobility in canada’s contemporary relations of mobility leaves those concerned about the socio-ecological impacts of urban transportation in a tough situation: if restricting unsustainable forms of mobility is not ‘feasible’ under neoliberalism, how will such impacts ever be tackled given the present political economic setting? 46 | climate change and its discontents on environmental political economy in these final pages i draw some conclusions about the need to transcend existing mobility relations by mobilizing an anti-capitalist politics at the level of the state. all three scales of political governance in the canadian federal system – municipalities, provinces, and the federal government – play a role in structuring transport regulations and as such play a role in (re)producing canadian mobility relations. such relations have undergone significant change during the neoliberal period; such state entities no longer have the willingness, interest or capacity to genuinely alter the relations of mobility for the sake of the public good. this is not to suggest that the state has weakened its grasp on power, but rather that the powers of the state have been reconstituted; state intervention has largely been limited at an ideological level while its ultimate legal claim and sovereignty remains largely intact (see held, 1999 for a discussion on state transformation). from the above analysis it would seem that neoliberal states are largely incapable of genuinely altering existing relations of mobility. i briefly summarize three ways in which this is the case. primary interest in capital accumulation a comparison of keynesian and neoliberal political economies highlights the extent to which the capitalist state, in its present form, tends to prioritize economic growth above all else. interestingly, the histories of capitalism, fossil fuel consumption, and economic growth are closely intertwined (huber, 2008; mckibben, 2007). the combustion of fossil fuels has provided the foundation for high rates of production and consumption, leading to a cycle of capital accumulation which in turn has had drastic socio-ecological consequences. it was, however, during the keynesian era that these relations began to intensify to such a degree that the ways in which people transported themselves and their goods became fundamentally unsustainable. in the post-war years, a ‘treadmill of production’ emerged in which the imperative for growth fed an ongoing process requiring an ever-increasing supply of ‘goods’, which in turn required more inputs of raw materials, chemicals and energy resources (gould, pellow, and schnaiberg, 2008). this further intensified the relations of mobility, fueled by a seemingly endless supply of cheap crude oil. in short, this political economic system saw incredible growth in the socio-ecological impacts of transportation, perhaps most notably during the ‘great acceleration’ of anthropogenic climate change which occurred in the post-war fordist decades (steffen, crutzen, and mcneill, 2007). capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 47 despite this, it is worth considering the extent to which the keynesian state was more willing than the subsequent neoliberal state to pursue broad societal goals that mediated the impacts of growth. arguably, this stemmed from the way in which the keynesian state had a more reflexive ontology of the market. to be sure, the keynesian political economy was firmly capitalist – and yet, the existence of welfare-statist common sense at the time allowed for some venues of restrictive intervention. for example, in canada this was a time of increased centralization and planning, expansion of the public service and spending, widespread government intervention in market processes (including even determining ‘made in canada’ prices for the oil sector and rail freight shipping), as well as the nationalization of enterprises into crown corporations. while this political economic model undoubtedly contributed to socio-ecological problems, it nevertheless presented some limited opportunities for state agencies to prioritize collective goals over economic growth. unfortunately, reducing the use of fossil fuels and restricting mobility were not political priorities at the time; in fact, these were both seen as positive developments contributing to a higher quality of life. arguably, one main contributing factor to a higher willingness to prioritize collective goals over capital accumulation during this period was the existence of a different political economic ideology, where market capitalism was ontologically understood as a force that could bring about a better quality of life, but which nevertheless had to be ‘controlled’ so as to prevent its worst and most insidious effects. in the neoliberal era that cautionary view of relentless growth has dissipated. today the leading ideology always prioritizes capital accumulation over collective goals, because capital accumulation has itself become the means to the end. neoliberal states may have a willingness to reduce the socio-ecological impacts of transportation, but this is continually trumped by an unwillingness to intervene in the processes of economic growth. thus, there is something to be gained from trying to disarticulate the progressive elements of the keynesian political economy (the state’s increased capacities to pursue public policy and control markets), from the negative reactionary elements inherent to that system (the socio-ecological damage wrought by the capitalist mode of production). the myth of non-intervention and deregulation as the examples explored above suggest, there is an important distinction between two types of state ‘intervention’ in market processes. the ‘soft’ forms of regulation described above work at liberating the 48 | climate change and its discontents processes of capital accumulation by setting the ‘rules of the game’; they are not ‘hard cap’ regulatory interventions that limit capitalist relations of production. the notion that the capitalist state is ‘non-interventionist’, or that it has an interest in ‘deregulating’ sectors is a myth (a concept miliband identified long ago, see miliband, 1969) – but it is important to recognize the form of intervention and regulations that are being employed. the neoliberal turn in canada has worked at limiting the interest of federal, provincial and municipal governments to implement ‘hard cap’ regulations in the transportation sector (policies that restrict the most wasteful forms of mobility). put differently, the historical experiences of neoliberalization in canada (across various jurisdictional scales) have tended to diminish the willingness of various levels of government to use transportation policy and regulation as tools to confront socioecological problems by restricting unsustainable mobility practices. however, such restrictions are required if the canadian polity has any hope of addressing the severe socio-ecological impacts of transportation. the loss of assets and ownership throughout the neoliberal era the logic of privatization has been pursued as a solution to public debt problems, with the irony of shortterm capitalization juxtaposed with long-term asset value loss being lost on policy-makers.4 as cameron (1997) has written, the privatization of public assets is akin to an absurd situation in which a homeowner sells their house in order to afford mortgage payments. despite the absurdity of privatization at this level of theoretical abstraction, it has found salience in contemporary common sense, and most of canada’s transport related crown corporations have either been sold, commercialized or dismantled altogether. a key problem, as cameron’s analogy implies, is that in selling these assets the public has lost a considerable amount of control, not only over the corporations in question, but across the whole sector. it is worth considering the increased capacity that the state would have in confronting existing relations of mobility if it had maintained ownership throughout the transport sector. if the sector was still publicly owned, governmental agencies (at multiple scales of jurisdiction) would have the ability to coordinate inter-modal shift, moving passengers and goods from more polluting modes to more efficient ones, without having to worry about guaranteeing the rights of private firms to compete on a ‘level playing field’. 4 in a recent example, finance minister jim flaherty announced that “there are some opportunities for some privatization of businesses that one questions why the government is in them anymore… so we’ll look at those and i expect that in the next year we’ll be able to make some announcements” (cbc news, 2010). capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 49 democratic institutions would make transport planning and management decisions based on the needs of citizens, not the private interests of profitdriven firms. yet this is not the case, and presently the private sector is known to lobby government against environmental action whenever its ability to profit is put at risk (mcgregor, 2010). working towards an anti-capitalist politics environmental implications have rarely been prioritized within canadian political economic debates about the transport sector, whether relating to questions of production, ownership, use, or service allocation. this is a problem – the prevailing view of socio-ecological impacts as mere ‘externalities’ is dangerous, as it fails to consider the dialectical relationship between forms of human organization (modes of production) and the experience of the ‘natural world’. as argued above, neoliberalization in canada has worked at limiting the capacity of various levels of government to truly regulate markets if such interventions restrict the processes of capital accumulation. herein lies an integral problem of ecological political economy: without relying on restrictive policies aiming to influence citizen or corporate behaviour, how are governments possibly going to enforce much needed changes in social relations (which we know are responsible for causing socio-ecological problems)? of all the transport examples showcased above – in the freight trucking industry, inter-city passenger rail, and even localized public transit – government institutions are compelled to rely upon the market as a tool to address social policy, because setting a framework for accumulation has become the very purpose of regulation under neoliberalism. to deal with this puzzle, epe must work towards the articulation of ‘good sense’ conceptions of regulation and policy by recognizing the inbuilt structural flaws of neoliberal capitalism. while neoliberalized environmental common sense finds surface level ‘solutions’ to ecological problems within existing systems of production, good sense environmentalism calls the very mode of production into question as the source of the problem. the task of a critical epe is thus to challenge and question existing structures of political economy and normalized solutions to socio-environmental problems, in part by interrogating the structural and social origins of such problems. as explained above, the keynesian era saw incredible growth in the socio-ecological impacts of transportation, but it also provided a more 50 | climate change and its discontents reflexive ontology of capitalism, which in turn afforded the state some additional capacities to restrict capital accumulation when the public interest was at stake. this is by no means a call for a return to a keynesian political economy. rather, the claim here is that there may be lessons to learn from the relative capacities, strengths and weaknesses of state entities facing different political economic contexts. arguably, canadian municipal, provincial and federal governments would have a higher capacity to deal with the socio-ecological impacts of transportation if a) they had wide-ranging ownership and control over the sector; and b) the prevailing conceptions of environmental common sense considered ‘hard cap’ regulations a valid method of influencing the behavior and actions of citizens (as opposed to neoliberal common sense, which relies upon market fundamentalist notions of self-regulating, rational utility maximizing consumers). theoretically, these two factors could furnish in the state a willingness to intervene in market processes for the purposes of socio-ecological protection. yet such ideas are unlikely to be entertained without the mobilization of an anti-capitalist politics. good sense conceptions of epe have a role to play in advocating new forms of state capacity. in a recent interview, leo panitch characterized the type of mobilization required in such anti-capitalist political formations: “[we need] organizations that are prepared, not just to make proposals to the state, but to risk going into the state. maybe at first at the municipal level… we need to be prepared to say – ‘look, we will at some point be putting the question of state power on our strategic agenda’” (as quoted in lewis, 2011). such movements would do well to consider the socio-ecological implications of neoliberalism and recognize how socio-ecological problems are in fact best addressed by changing social relations. this can be done by more closely managing, coordinating, and in some cases restricting the processes of production and consumption. to offer a few examples drawing from the discussion above and delving into the realm of the ‘ideal’, states (municipalities in particular) should take bolder steps in restricting the excessive use of single-occupancy vehicles; major expansions to public transit systems certainly help, but the problem in full will not be addressed without more active interventionist steps to actually manage transport demand in urban areas (winters, 2000). similarly, the nationalization, centralization, integration, and de-commoditization of transport services within provincial and federal states would go a long way towards furnishing these state authorities with the interest, willingness and capacity to implement more sustainable public transport practices while restricting wasteful capitalism, the climate crisis, and canada’s ‘relations of mobility’ | 51 behaviours by private firms and individuals. for instance, such structural changes would enable the introduction of electrified inter-city rail infrastructure (for both passengers and freight) without raising the ire of the fossil fuel, automobile and airline lobbies, as the latter subsectors would be integrated into the state-owned transport-energy complex. but there is also room to think outside the box in terms of altering broader social relations which compel us to travel in the first place: this could include work-from-home legislation which offers no-unnecessarycommuting rights to workers (to save on unnecessary work trips across town during rush hour); new suburban rezoning laws which forbid the development of sprawling residential neighbourhoods that are fundamentally dependent on the services, resources and employment opportunities found elsewhere; public education and public health campaigns which foster new subjectivities about the merits of alternative forms of transportation, etc. the lack of state capacity, as explained above, exists largely at an ideological level – at the level of common sense. there is no doubt that radical ideas of nationalizing (or reclaiming public ownership over) various firms within and across the transport modes, increasing the willingness to intervene in market processes, decommodifying public services, and ditching economic growth as the foremost political priority all run counter to contemporary neoliberal common sense beliefs. yet as argued above, movement in this direction would significantly enhance the capacity of governmental institutions to implement the programming and policies needed to engender truly sustainable relations of mobility in canada. 52 | climate change and its discontents references albo, g. 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(2000). transportation demand management. transportation in the new millenium. gendered emissions | 55 gendered emissions: counting greenhouse gas emissions by gender and why it matters marjorie griffin cohen1 abstract: in recent years, as a result of women’s concerted efforts, more attention has been paid to gendered distinctions related to climate change. most of this literature focuses on the implications for women and their work in developing nations. in contrast, the gendered discussion that is focused on developed countries tends to be more concentrated on the distinctions in attitudes toward climate change and the implications this has for public policy initiatives. while this is an important step toward understanding the gendered distinctions at the household level, still relatively unexplored are the implications of the gendered distinctions in contributions toward greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions. this paper will focus on gendered distinctions relating to climate change for both paid and unpaid labour, as well as consumption issues in developed nations. specifically it attempts to measure the greenhouse gas emissions by gender through work and the aspects of consumption that can be separated by gender. it then attempts to understand the significance of this in relation to both climate justice issues and public policy strategies to mitigate climate change. the paper will argue that knowing the gendered distinctions in ghg emissions can be informative for creating ideas about green jobs and a green economy that could provide a radical way to think about public policy and climate change. 1 marjorie griffin cohen is an economist and professor of political science and gender, sexuality and women’s studies at simon fraser university. her research focuses on energy, labour, political economy, and gender issues. she has been on the board of directors of bc hydro, bc power exchange, and newgrade energy in saskatchewan. she was one of the founders of the canadian centre for policy alternatives – bc and is currently on its board. this study is part of the work in a warming world project (w3). the author appreciates the financial support received for this project through a social sciences and humanities research council community-university research alliance (sshrc-cura) research grant. w3 is a five-year research project to address the challenge of climate change for canadian employment and work with carla lipsig-mumme at york university as the principal investigator. an earlier version of this paper appeared on the w3 website. the author would also like to thank the following for their research assistance on this project: heather whiteside, matt pelling, and greg o’brien. 56 | climate change and its discontents introduction both climate disasters and incremental climate changes have an enormous impact on the way people live and work and these physical changes are not confined to the most marginal areas of the world’s surface, but impinge upon the developed world as well. it is also fairly clear that public policy to deal with climate change in too many places is woefully inadequate to deal with the magnitude of the problem (victor, 2011).2 public policy to deal with climate change has gendered implications both for its effectiveness in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and for what it means for different aspects of work, play and consumption. feminists have not ignored the gendered effects of climate change but, unsurprisingly, gender issues have a fairly low profile in policy discussions. at the international level there is discussion of procedural justice, as more recognition is given to the need for a variety of interests to be part of the discussion and decision making process (ipcc, 2007; agarwal, b., 2001). but any formal way to facilitate procedural justice has been absent from most concrete policy making (klinsky and dowlatabadi, 2009; dankelman, 2002). even popular sector movements that recognize the need for inclusivity in the discussion of alternatives tend to ignore women and the distinctions by gender (riddell, 2011; stahl, rees and byers, 2011). this void is explained by some as a result of several things: one relates to the need to focus on “universal” issues, given limited resources, and the other stresses the prominence of technology and science solutions in policy discussions, as opposed to the ‘soft’ policies that look at social differences, particularly as they relate to incomes and opportunities (lambrou and piana, 2006). these are the kinds of factors that frequently inhibit a gender analysis of any social issues, but climate change has a specific disadvantage that contributes to the gender blindness that occurs in research and policy, particularly in developed nations. this is the lack of visibility of gendered environmental differences or injustices and a lack of imagination about how a gender analysis could be applied in research. gender issues are more visible in developing countries or among aboriginal societies and the literature about the effects of climate change and gender related to these areas constitutes the bulk of the information available on gender and 2 canada reduced its ghg emissions between 2007 and 2010, but much of this can be attributed to the decreased production associated with the economic recession, although the shift away from using coal from electricity production in some provinces also contributed to the improvement. but, the long-term trajectory shows the pattern of reduction is not expected to continue to decline (environment canada, 2011; 2013). gendered emissions | 57 climate change.3 because of the less developed nature of the economies, and the close proximity women have to agriculture and the resource sectors, climate change’s effect on women’s work in these countries is visible and dramatic (brownhill, 2007; agarwal, 2001; beaumier and ford, 2010; nelson and stathers, 2009). the issue of invisibility of gender issues for such a long time in the climate-justice literature and action in developed countries is also explained by some as a result of the dominance of males in the environmental movement’s senior posts and the general gender blindness of the movement (buckingham and kulcar, 2009, p. 673). the actions of the state on environmental issues are conditioned by the ways it is contested by activist organizations and the kinds of issues they highlight. the fact that these organizations usually are male dominant means that gendered issues are not explored in either identifying environmental justice issues, or in seeking policy solutions. as most groups dealing with inequality know, identifying the distinctions of experience itself is crucial for being included in policy discussions. but when the differential experiences are less visible through being diffuse as a community or income group, unpacking the implications is not straightforward. while academics are increasingly interested in environmental injustices, particularly as they relate to public policy, they tend to focus on inequalities in income and/or race and neglect gender (buckingham and kulcur, 2009). the most common understanding of environmental justice as it applies to individuals is exemplified in the definition used by the us environmental protection agency: “environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” (http://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/). for the most part gender (and age and disability) issues have been subsumed under class or income issues with the assumption that women’s issues will be covered under the treatment of low-income and poverty groups. many of the methods that have been used to talk about gender and climate change tend to conflate the material related to developing nations with conditions associated with developed nations. while some studies are careful with regard to how examples are being used in specific references, there is an assumption (based primarily on experiences in developing regions) that in general, women are more vulnerable to climate change than men, have fewer resources to deal with it, and have 3 for a bibliography related to gender and climate change see whiteside and cohen, 2012. http://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/ 58 | climate change and its discontents greater work burdens as a result (haight and valley, 2010; johnssonlatham, 2007, bjonberg and hansson, 2013). the primary method that is used to span the national divides is the assumption that since everywhere women on average are poorer than men in general, they will, as a result, be disproportionately disadvantaged by climate change. while it is true that women in developed nations have lower incomes on average than men, gender distinctions are not confined to income distribution alone, but also relate to the entire gendered experiences of our societies. one particular gap in knowledge pertains the relationship between climate change and gender in developed nations. the intention in this study is to try to understand how men and women contribute to climate change through both work and consumption. the first part of the paper will specifically examine the gendered nature of paid work-related contributions to climate change by quantifying emissions associated with major ghg emitters in canada. it will also discuss the gendered nature of consumption as it relates to work with a particular focus on the problems of unpacking gendered work/consumption within the household. one area of work/consumption that is easily quantifiable by gender is consumption related to vehicle transportation, one of the major sources of ghg emissions in canada. the findings will then be analyzed in light of two categories of understandings of their significance. one will be how the gendered distinctions in ghg emissions through work and consumption can be understood in relation to climate justice. the other will be an exploration of the significance of gender in expanding our ideas about both green jobs and a green economy. effects of work on climate change almost nothing has been written about the impact of work in developed nations on climate change with distinctions made by the gendered nature of paid work. most of the interest in work has been on creating “green jobs,” as a positive way of ensuring that government programs to reduce ghg emissions do not result in actions that increase unemployment rates.4 the assumption is that with correctly designed policy, jobs can be created that have a low impact on the environment and that are well paid (lee and carlaw, 2010). this argument has been advanced to counteract the slow move of many developed nations to enact effective legislation to reduce ghg emissions. north american governments’ rationale for inaction either 4 for example, blue/green canada, the alliance between environmentalists, civil society, and trade unions describes on its website its work to “advocate for working people and the environment by promoting solutions to environmental issues that have positive employment and economic impacts.” (http://bluegreencanada.ca/). gendered emissions | 59 explicitly stated, or at least implied, is that unless all countries in the world adopt similar climate change policies, those countries that do so will be punished with poorer economic performance and rising unemployment rates as corporations readjust their production process to those jurisdictions that have no or few restrictions on emissions. this is the argument that canada uses, for example, for not highly regulating the emissions from the tar sands in alberta (clarke, 2008) and why the us government did not sign on to the kyoto agreement (biermann and brohm, 2005). in broad terms some jobs are dirty jobs that add a great deal to ghg emissions, while others have a more benign effect on the economy. this can be calculated in a variety of ways, with different types of measures of damage. while studies that look at these measures tend to talk in very broad terms, and not with reference to who does what type of jobs, it is possible to get an idea of where gender distinctions occur. while there are methodological (and justice) problems associated with attributing ghg emissions to specific groups of labour, counting something seems to be the primary way that gender issues get noticed. in virtually anything related to distributional impacts (such as wage inequality, occupational distribution, poverty levels) calculating gender differences is the major way to have an issue recognized as significant. in the case of labour and ghg emission policies, bringing the gendered dimension into the discussion necessitates showing both the unequal contributions by gender and the gendered nature of mitigation or adaptation policies. the method i have used for calculating gendered ghg emissions through work is to use the known major contributors to ghg emissions in a variety of different ways. the two most important contributors are through the industrial output by sector and the numbers of hours at work. in dealing with these issues, i first examine the major sectors of the economy in canada that contribute to ghg emissions and, through a simple weighting of the gendered composition of the labour force in that sector, calculate the gendered contribution in each sector. paid employment: ghg emissions by industrial sector the energy sector is the biggest source of ghg emissions, accounting for 81 percent of the total in canada. it should be noted that this includes all energy and heat generation and consumption in households, business, and transportation (environment canada, 2011). the rest of the ghg comes primarily from the agricultural sector (8 percent) and the industrial process sector (8 percent). 60 | climate change and its discontents energy production itself (from electricity, and oil and gas) accounts for 37 percent of total ghg emissions. while electricity production in canada is largely hydro based and accounts for only 16 percent of total ghg emissions, this country is the source of a particularly dirty form of oil that is derived from the tar sands in alberta. production in the oil and gas sector alone accounts for 21 percent of total ghg emissions. below is an example of the gender breakdown of those employed in the energy sector compared to the gender breakdown in the labour force as a whole. table i. labour characteristics of the energy sector – canada (% of total employed) cdn. labour force oil & gas electricity men 52% 72% 75% women 48% 28% 25% source: statistics canada, labour force survey, 2007. in what follows i calculate the gendered distinctions in production of ghg emissions by focusing on the categories of industrial production, transportation, and residential contributions to ghg. industrial production accounts for 66 percent (455,000 mt) of the total, transportation 28 percent (195,000 mt) and residential use 6 percent (41,000 mt). these calculations come from the national inventory report 1990-2011 prepared by environment canada. table ii shows the major sources of ghg emissions by industry in canada. transportation, the largest single sector contributing to ghg emissions, is omitted from this table. it will be dealt with in the subsequent section because the method used for calculating the gender share in transportation is slightly different from that used below.5 as table ii shows, industrial production in canada is highly gendered with females dominant in industries that have lower ghg emissions than those dominated by males. so, for example, the commercial and institutional industries account for only 4 percent of total industrial ghg emissions and are sectors that are dominated by females. the 5 the calculations of the gendered share, (e.g. female share) of ghg emissions from major industrial emitters (ghg female major industrials = ghgfmi) is as follows: ghgfmi = i1-12(f1-12). i1 = ghg emissions from electricity and heat generation; i2 = fossil fuel production and refining; i3 = mining and oil and gas extraction; i4-8 = manufacturing heavy emitters (iron, steel, and non-metals; chemical; paper and pulp; cement; other manufacturing); i9 = construction ; i10 = commercial & institutional; i11 = agriculture; i12 = waste; f1-12 = % of women working in these industrial sectors. gendered emissions | 61 industries with the highest ghg emissions are the energy sector whose gender breakdown was presented in table i, and agriculture where women comprise 30 percent of the labour force. within manufacturing and industrial processes males again dominate in most of the heavy emitters (iron, steel and metal production), cement and mineral products, and ‘other’ sectors. the only sector in this category with high emissions and where women’s employment is a large proportion of the total is the chemical sector where women account 41 percent of the labour force. altogether the gendered breakdown of ghg emissions in the manufacturing and industrial processes is highly skewed. the male share of ghg emissions in the industrial and manufacturing sector is 76 percent and the female share is 24 percent. table ii. gender share (%) of ghg emissions by industry canada 2010 in megatons (mt) ghg categories to ta l g hg em is si on s in m t % o f to ta l la bo ur f or ce fe m al e % o f to ta l l ab ou r in in du st ry m al e % o f to ta l l ab ou r in in du st ry fe m al e em is si on s in m t m al e em is si on s in m t ghg emissions total mt 692,000 major industrials electricity and heat 101,000 15% 24% 76% 24,240 76,760 fossil fuel production 53,000 8% 10% 90% 5,300 47,700 mining, oil and gas1 96,800 14% 18% 82% 17,424 79,376 mfg industries and industrial processes2 93,100 13% 28% 72% 26,068 67,032 iron and steel 22,890 3% 11% 88% 2,518 20,143 chemical 16,500 2% 41% 59% 6,765 9,735 pulp and paper 6,460 1% 23% 77% 1,486 4,974 cement, lime, mineral 12,070 2% 8% 92% 966 11,104 other manufacturing 35,700 5% 28% 72% 9,996 25,704 construction 1,490 0% 11% 89% 164 1,326 commercial and institutional 28,400 4% 56% 44% 15,904 12,486 agriculture 59,260 8% 30% 70% 16,800 39,200 waste 22,000 3% 19% 81% 1,480 17,820 total major industrial emitters 455,050 65% 24% 76% 111,058 343,992 1mining, oil and gas extraction and fugitive sources 2 mfg. industries and industrial processes are combined 62 | climate change and its discontents sources: environment canada, national inventory report 1990-2010 table a12–2 canada’s 1990–2010 ghg emissions by sector; statistics canada, labour force survey, table 282-0008; naics; custom data for labour force survey 2012 transportation generally when issues of consumption are examined, the main focus tends to be on gender differences with regard to transportation, primarily because this form of consumption looms so large in ghg emissions. in canada, transportation accounts for about 28 percent of total ghg emissions, the single largest category, and within this group road transportation accounts for 69 percent of total emissions for all transportation (or 19 percent of total ghg emission).6 in the us men are more likely than women to drive long distances to work7: about 3.5 million people have a travel time of four hours per day and two-thirds of these are men. in sweden it is estimated that men account for at least about 75 per cent of all driving, expressed as person kilometers. about 6.9 million cars are registered in the country, of which women own only 1.7, or 25 percent, and women represent about twothirds of all households where no one has a driving license (johnssonlatham, 2007 p. 53). my calculations for canada show clearly that males dominate in the number of miles driven and account for most of the vehicle emissions. as can be seen from table iii, females account for about 34 percent of the miles driven and almost all of these occur in passenger vehicles. passenger vehicles emit fewer ghgs than do trucks, especially very big trucks, which are almost exclusively driven by males. in calculating women’s proportion of the driving by vehicle type (table iii), and applying that to the emissions by vehicle type (table iv), it is possible to show that women as a group contribute about 11 percent of ghg emissions from driving vehicles. i have calculated this in the following way: ghgtf = v1 (f1) +v2 (f2) + v3(f3). ghgft = ghg emissions for female vehicle owers; v1 = ghg emissions from vehicles up to 4.5 tonnes; v2 = trucks 4.5 – 14.9 tonnes; v3 = trucks over 15 tonnes. f1,2,3 = % of women driving each class of vehicle. 6 calculated from environment canada 2011, table s-1. 7 it should be noted that information available is not consistent across countries. in canada the information about vehicle use is available by vehicle type and mileage, but not by the division between work and other activities. gendered emissions | 63 table iii vehicle-kilometers by gender, canada 2009 (million km) type of vehicle total males females females % total, all vehicles 332432 236908 95524 29% vehicles up to 4.5 tonnes 302959 208083 94877 31% trucks 4.5 tonnes to 14.9 tonnes 8242 8153 89 1% trucks 15 tonnes and over 21231 20673 558 3% table iv. gender share of ghg emissions for road transportation total ghg mt female% miles male % miles f ghg m ghg vehicles up to 4.5 tonnes *** 41,701 31 69 12927 28774 trucks 4.5 tonnes to 14.9 tonnes **** 44,890 1 99 449 44407 trucks 15 tonnes and over ***** 47,110 3 97 1413 45697 all road vehicles 133,701* 14,789 118,878 % total vehicle emissions 11% 89% note: the total for emissions from vehicle type differs slightly from the total ghg from road transportation on table s-5. source: calculated from table a12–2 canada’s 1990–2010 ghg emissions by sector, national industry report; data by gender calculated from table 405-0073 canadian vehicle survey 64 | climate change and its discontents graph i visually shows the large discrepency in the gender of vehicles driven and the ghg associated with these vehicles. graph ii shows the total proportion of ghg emissions by gender in canada graph i sources: canada’s ghg emissions 1990-2010, table s-2, gendered emissions | 65 graph ii calculated from table a12–2 canada’s 1990–2010 ghg emissions by sector, national industry report; data by gender calculated from table 405-0073 canadian vehicle survey the gender breakdown is also available for domestic civil aviation, but not for railways, navigation and other forms of transportation. the total ghg emission from civil aviation is 6,200 mt. according to the commercial aircraft travel survey of residents of canada 2010, females account for 54 percent of air travel and men 45 percent. through air travel then, women would be responsible for 3,370 mt and males 2,829 megatons. (statistics canada, travel survey 2010) 66 | climate change and its discontents household gender/work and consumption-related issues one major difficulty in discussing the gendered distinctions in the impact of work on the climate is the problem of separating the act of consumption from activities that constitute work. consumption is integral to concepts of work (such as gasoline consumption) and is especially relevant in places like the household. dealing with what constitutes work within the household is a conceptual problem that separates it from work that is marketized. certain kinds of household related consumption have gendered patterns that relate to the work roles within or for the household. in this paper i am primarily concerned with the gendered division of labour within the household because it has important implications for public policy responses to climate change. in broad sweeps the literature tends to find that virtually everywhere throughout the world males account for greater consumption and greater carbon dioxide emissions than females (johnsson-latham, 2007). this consumption pattern is primarily associated with greater mobility for a larger proportion of men. analysis of gendered consumption in sweden, for example, shows that males’ consumption of transport is double that of females. other areas where male consumption is higher than females in sweden is in dining out, alcohol and tobacco consumption, and leisure activities related to sports. the areas where female consumption is greater than males is in household related consumption, where women make the majority of purchases for consumer goods, clothing and shoes, health and medical care, and books, newspapers and media (see appendix i). the swedish study does not show the energy content of the gendered consumption baskets, so for areas other than transport, the ghg emissions impact of consumption by gender is not clear. getting a clear picture of gendered consumption in the household is not straightforward. in canada there is no attempt to understand these distinctions by statistics canada, our major data collection body. in the us there is an interest in the subject, but the lack of data that includes observations of consumption for men and women separately does not permit understanding of spending by gender in households with both males and females. in one attempt to get at this issue the us consumer expenditure survey examines gender differences between single men and single women. because the survey does not collect data on which member of households consisting of both men and women purchased an item, this is the only data so far to show gender differences in household gendered emissions | 67 spending. of course, the spending patterns of single men and women may be very different from households where joint decisions are made (shipp, 1987). class or income level is the issue that is usually found to affect the level of consumption in any country (oecd, 2008). the more wealthy the country, the higher the level of consumption, and within countries the wealthier the household, the higher the consumption level. measures of consumption for climate change purposes usually invoke the ‘carbon footprint,’ a measurement of quantities of carbon dioxide emissions associated with an activity (kitzes and wackernagel, 2009).8 sweden, for example, has a considerably higher level of energy consumption than the eu average, with the average swedish consumer driving a more energy intensive car, living in more space, and eating more meat than other eu citizens (johnsson-latham, 2007, p. 38). similarly, the average person in the us consumes a great deal more than most people in the world and those in canada have among the highest per capita energy consumption.9 in canada the high energy use is usually explained by the cold climate and massive size of the country. within nations, consumption usually is correlated with income levels, which in turn can be associated with marital status and paid employment by gender (mckenzie, messinsger and smith, 2008). however, information on this varies from country to country. a netherlands study shows that two-income families, or families where women have paying jobs, tend to have higher consumption levels as a result of higher incomes and the increased time pressures from having both paid and unpaid work. the two-income household uses more energy than a household where either the female partner did not work or a woman was living alone (clancy and roehi, 2003). a uk study showed somewhat different results. as elsewhere, energy and transport are the biggest contributors to the ‘footprint’ of households. rural and adult households with few members had significantly larger energy use than did urban/suburban households and households with many members. the direct household energy use relates to heating, 8 the carbon footprint is a component of the ecological footprint. the ecological footprint is a concept in resource accounting that measures how much productive land and sea is used, either by an individual, nation, or type of activity, and relates this to the total available. according to william rees, ‘a complete eco footprint analysis would quantify the total ecosystem area that the population effectively ‘appropriates’ to meet its final demand for economic goods and services.” (rees 2006). 9 the us and canada are among the highest energy users in the world. according to world bank statistics canada used 7,243 kg of oil equivalents per person in 2012 and the us used 6,793. (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/eg.use.pcap.kg.oe) 68 | climate change and its discontents cooking, fueling cars, but also considered was the indirect energy use in consumption associated with production, processing, and distribution of food. this study also found that a higher household income affects energy use, most notably for travel (caird and roy, 2006). in canada, evidence shows that the ecological footprint of high-income households is substantially greater than other households and that with the exception of expenditures on food, consumption in every category increases steadily as incomes increase (mackenzie, messinger and smith, 2008). at least one study in the us, however, finds little evidence to indicate differences between male and female-headed households, and in countries where more equal economic conditions exist, women tend to adopt male-type lifestyles and consumption patterns (lambrou and piana, 2006). in lieu of a method for calculating the gendered nature of ghg within a household i have divided these equally so that females and males each account for 50 percent of the residential ghg emissions, or 20,500 mt. gender totals and shares by aggregating the ghg emissions by gender from three main categories, industrial sectors, transportation, and residential use, one is able to arrive at an approximate sense of the gendered nature of ghg emissions in canada. table v. ghg emissions by gender in canada categories total ghg emissions female ghg male ghg industrial 455,050 111,058 343,992 transportation road 133,701 14,789 118,878 air 6,200 3,370 2,829 residential 41,000 20,500 20,500 total 635,951 149,717 486,199 share 23.5% 76.5% *note: the total ghg emissions in canada = 692,000. i have only included categories in my total where it was possible to ascertain gender differences. so, for example, i did not include transportation other than road and air. gendered emissions | 69 discussion the major question is whether knowing the gendered contributions to climate change matters in any way. there are several ways to examine the significance in this sense, but i will focus on three issues that may be significant. one relates to issues of climate justice, where it is often understood that those responsible for ghg emissions have a greater responsibility and thus greater obligations than those who do not. the second framework relates to public policy initiatives to reduce ghg. knowing the gendered impact of these policies can be important for climate justice. the third major framework that ultimately may be most significant relates to climate change initiatives that are broader than those currently envisioned. as you will see as the discussion proceeds, my sense is that the climate justice implications are less significant than what the implications of gendered distinctions in ghg emissions can indicate about the economy itself. i hope to show that expanding the notions of what constitutes a ‘green job’ or a ‘green economy’ can be accelerated if issues of gender are taken into account. this could ultimately be crucial for moving toward a cleaner, fairer economy altogether. climate justice academic discussions of climate change and issues of ethics focus almost exclusively on distributive and procedural justice as it pertains to climate reduction policy of nations (e.g. klinsky and dowlatabadi, 2009; posner and sunstein, 2008; adger, 2006).10 some international groups have posited principles for climate justice that go beyond ethical issues between nations and recognize the significance of identifying certain identifiable populations as crucial for consideration in public policy issues. the environmental justice movement in the us, for example, cites ten principles for climate justice policies in the us and specifically mentions “low-income workers, people of color, indigenous peoples,” and future generations. it also calls for community participation in decisions related to climate change (environmental justice movement, n.d.). the bali principles of climate justice has a more extensive list of twenty principles and includes various types of justice that focus on the poor, women, rural, and indigenous peoples (international climate justice network, 2002). 10 distributive justice refers to the ways that both the burden of climate change and its solutions are ethically part of public policy. procedural justice refers to the inclusion of all who are affected by climate change in designing public policy to deal with it. 70 | climate change and its discontents one academic study that is useful for dealing with the applied ethics involved in climate policy is by sonja klinsky and hadi dowlatabadi (2009). in this review of the literature on climate change justice, five basic principles emerge as a guide to the ethics of climate change policy. these are as follows: • causal responsibility (polluter pays) • preferential treatment based on need (related to both the ability to pay for emission reductions and to recover from climate change impacts with a focus on the most vulnerable) • equal entitlements (to protection from climate impacts) • equal burdens (to climate policy costs). the assumption is that all people have equal moral responsibility and there is no reason why some should have a heavier burden than others. • procedural justice (i.e., representation by all who have a stake in the outcomes of climate policy) clearly, some of these principles can be at odds with others: causal responsibility is at odds with the equal burden principle and equal entitlements can be at odds with preferential treatment. these are the types of ethical issues that are common in discussions about crafting public policy and have been addressed in various types of human rights legislation. i will focus my analysis on causal responsibility and what this might mean for certain kinds of policy initiatives. the main point of causal responsibility is that “the mismatch between beneficiaries of fossil energy and victims of climate impacts gives the beneficiaries special obligations” (klinsky and dowlatabadi, 2009, p. 90). normally this is associated with the pain experienced in less developed nations and the benefits conferred upon developed nations. the climate justice message is that it is not justifiable that those who have benefited and those who have not benefited bear equal obligations. however, the idea of identifying who is responsible for climate change is problematic, particularly when people individually benefit from increased ghg emissions in different ways, either through their work, consumption, or profits. the major problem with assigning a gendered position to causal responsibility is that the beneficiaries, by gender, are not easily determined. while males benefit, often because of higher rates of employment and wages when working in ‘dirty industries,’ our economic reality is that what is produced is diffuse throughout the population and often is gendered emissions | 71 essential to maintain life or a standard of living. also, men and women live together and share material goods within the household. while this may not be equal sharing, as discussed above, until consumption patterns reveal that males do consume in ways that are more detrimental to the environment than females, for most purposes the assumption of equal benefit from male employment in ‘dirty industries’ makes sense. because the household is shared space, assigning gendered weight for consumption intensity is problematic. so while males may have a larger carbon footprint because they drive more and further, with more gas-guzzling machines, the social gendered nature of the division of labour, rather than consumption decisions, largely conditions these work-related aspects of consumption. all consumption practices are embedded in a social context and households are collective entities where some consumption practices do relate to individual preference, but most household consumption decisions relate to collective use and are subject to the usual processes of organizing household behaviour. the structural nature of the economy greatly affects how closely households shape their consumption patterns according to income distribution, employment levels, and the gendered division of labour (schultz and steib, 2009). the important point to be taken from this is that gendered consumption intensity may in some respects reflect individual choices, but for the most part is shaped by larger economic and social issues. this does not, however, mean that the impact on public policy decisions relating to household consumption will not have significant gendered impacts. some public policy considerations having different information about the gendered nature of climate change issues could be very important for understanding the impact of various types of public policy designed to reduce ghg emissions. i will use as examples two of the most frequently used policy instruments that are designed to change people’s behaviour in order to reduce ghg emissions. these are time-of-use electricity metering and carbon-taxes on gasoline. because of the gendered division of labour and different consumption habits, the respective policies may have different impacts. smart meters and time-of-use electricity policy time of use electricity metering is gaining popularity, particularly in jurisdictions that rely on fossil fuel for electricity generation. in order to save the electricity company expensive building for new generation, 72 | climate change and its discontents several different types of strategies are used to reduce energy use. one important one that would smooth out energy use (to avoid building for peak periods) is to encourage people to reduce their household concentration of energy use at specific times (e.g. from 7-9 a.m. and from 5-10 p.m.) to other times of the day. usually this is done by providing reduced rates for off-peak periods. the impact this could have on certain types of household labour could be substantial. the most often cited example of how this could reduce a household’s electricity bill would be by shifting activities like laundry to late-night hours when the demand for electricity drops dramatically. many new daily housework and caring responsibilities are incurred through public policy on climate change without any understanding of what this means for work within the household. as one analyst has noted, “with the rise of public campaigns for environmental awareness, those who manage households...are expected to be more diligent in adopting time consuming green practices like recycling and precycling” (macgregor, 2006, p.69). all of these issues become even more significant in a neoliberal climate where appropriate public services are being reduced without new ones being created to meet the additional needs of families at a time when two incomes are the norm. this is not to imply that government environmental policy should not apply to the realm of the household, but that there needs to be an increased understanding of the work burdens these changes imply. the method to be used here would be time/use studies of gendered work within the household. with knowledge of these gendered impacts different kinds of public policy initiatives might be considered. what i have in mind are policies related to paid work that affect the gendered division of labour within the home. it has long been recognized that the higher demands of male work-force participation by hours worked have contributed to a negative effect on contributions to household labour. the policy implications, then, would not only have environmental, but also market oriented as well as social implications. reducing hours of work, hourly productivity and the employment to population ratio is thought to be a solution to the environmental problem posed by long hours of work (hayden and standra, 2009, p. 592). reduction of hours of work through productivity gains would shift remuneration to ‘time affluence’ and could have a marked impact on household workloads by gender. so far, the examination of household behaviour seems to be of interest to climate change researchers less because of the justice issues involved than because of the ways different consumer behaviours can gendered emissions | 73 be affected by public policy. public policy makers or analysts are interested in knowing what affects people’s attitudes and decisions and how households respond to environmental policies (oecd, 2008). so, while certain kinds of policies, such as user charges for waste disposal, can be identified as being regressive with poorer households assuming a greater proportional impact of the policy, little is known about the increase in household work and who does it when policy initiatives result in more work intensive processes. carbon taxes the literature on the effects of carbon taxes tends to focus on differential impacts based on class. a carbon tax is a tax on the purchase of fuels, including gasoline, diesel, natural gas, and coal – all fuels emitting carbon. in the body of literature on this subject, households are treated as undifferentiated units and gender distinctions are not usually considered (metcalf, 2008). the usual interest is whether the poor are unjustly treated through a disproportional tax burden. when this is understood, there are attempts to encourage the government to design the tax to correct the regressive nature of its incidence (lee and carlaw, 2010). one exception in the approach in the academic literature is the work done by nathalie chalifour. her study examines carbon taxes as they were instituted in two provinces in canada, namely british columbia and quebec. in b.c., the government sought popular approval by making the carbon tax ‘revenue neutral,’ meaning that it was not going to be instituted as a tax gatherer, but rather was designed to change consumer behaviour. this meant that many tax reductions and rebates were a feature of the design as were the promises for using any surplus revenues. chalifour uses the causal responsibility principle of social justice as her framework for understanding gender distinctions: “just as it would be inequitable to expect the same level of emissions reductions from countries that have contributed little to creating the climate change problem, it would be inequitable to design policy responses to climate change that place a greater burden on women than on men” (chalifour, 2010, p. 186). she also makes the point that any analysis of environmental tax policy must include an examination of not only the tax but also of any complementary policies (that is, income tax deductions) and decisions pertaining to the use of the revenue generated by the tax. the “purpose of this goal is to ensure, at a minimum, that inequality between women and men is not perpetuated by the policy and, ideally, to seek out carbon tax policies that are capable of promoting gender equality” 74 | climate change and its discontents (chalifour, 2010, p. 191). chalifour’s conclusion is that women are disproportionately affected because they are, on average, poorer than men and, therefore, pay a great proportion of their income on the tax than would men. this may well be the case and is an important contribution to the understanding of the complexities of climate change policy. my intention is to build on this approach by urging greater research into gendered distinctions in both the contribution to climate change and the impact of public policy to either mitigate or adapt to climate change. so, for example, if we assume that the household is shared space with equal responsibilities for climate change, the impact of a carbon tax on individuals by gender may be on vehicle drivers. if this is true (and it is by no means certain), the heaviest impact would be on males who drive considerably more than females. figuring out who, in this case, would be most affected by gender is complex and new ways of looking at disparities besides income distribution need to be considered. so, for example, information about the incidence of the tax would also benefit from clear understandings pertaining to the kinds of households (male headed or female headed, age of person within the household, etc.) and energy use. wider implications for green jobs and a green economy ultimately, knowing the gender contribution to ghg emissions lends weight to the argument that including gender considerations in public policy decisions about climate change could be a significant dynamic for a very different policy approach to the economy. currently most ideas about ‘green jobs’ and a ‘green economy’ focus fairly narrowly on reducing the ghg emissions from the dirtiest industries. this includes substantial subsidies to ‘dirty industries’ in order to ‘green’ them and creating entirely new industries in the energy sector to displace the reliance on fossil fuels. when gender issues are considered at all in this framework, it is on how to get women into the typically male-dominated jobs in these sectors. in the instances when training for ‘green jobs’ occur, for example, this is usually in the building trades, transportation, or in the energy sector. the push, then, is to include women in the training initiatives that are normally the purview of men with the hope that ultimately women will receive jobs through green initiatives in this sector. what tends to be ignored is the daunting task of not only training, but getting women accepted in non-traditional jobs in skilled trades (mcfarland, 2013). the struggendered emissions | 75 gles with this over the years has been the object of much feminist activity and while there are significant initiatives from time to time, the over-all tendency is for little to change (cohen, 2003). within the new ‘green’ industries that are created (such as wind, solar, bio-mass) the overwhelming tendency is for the labour distribution by gender to continue the same pattern as in the energy industry at large (cohen and calvert, 2013). the initiatives related to continue to dominate the discussion of ‘green jobs,’ but there is increasingly an interest in expanding the concept so that a wider range of occupations can be included in policy initiatives. often this is referred to as ‘greening jobs,’ and includes ideas about how all existing jobs can be less environmentally damaging (lipsig-mumme, 2013). this is a considerable shift from the current way of treating employment that is not only environmentally damaging, but also largely segregated by gender. in addition, there are beginning to be some serious discussions, even in more traditional arenas like the un, for a more expansive concept of a ‘green economy’ as a way of rethinking traditional ideas about how economies are structured and oriented primarily toward economic growth. the united nations environment programme has gone so far as to state (in its green economy initiative, 2011) that there is ‘disillusionment with our prevailing economic paradigm,’ and the sense that the economic and ecological crisis can be overcome by fostering a green economy. in many respects it may appear utopian to envision an economy that is light on the environment, but is able to provide the crucial materials and services that people need. clearly moving in this direction would be almost impossible with the vested interests of the current economic structures so firmly in place. but if governments could be convinced that promoting areas where there are real needs, primarily among the caring sector, and reducing all of the government support that goes toward the energy and material goods sectors, the beginnings of a shift in economic emphasis could occur. my main point in this regard is that by making caring work more visible by recognizing its significance to the general economic health of a nation, a shift in the structure of an economy could begin to occur. identifying sectors of the economy that are already ‘green,’ that is, sectors where women are concentrated, and giving jobs in these sectors as much prominence in the discussion of what is ‘green’ would be a first step in rethinking economic priorities. 76 | climate change and its discontents conclusion there are gendered differences in the work associated with climate change. men, as a group, are more involved with work that contributes to ghg emissions than are women. this is evident by their direct work in industries that are identified as the major sources of ghg emissions in canada. it is also evident by the much greater contribution of males to ghg emissions through vehicle use. less clear is the division of responsibility for ghg emissions from labour within the household. this paper argued that until significant time/use studies within the household associated with ghg emissions is undertaken, the assumption of shared responsibility for this source of emissions needs to be taken. this does not mean, however, that labour within the household is unaffected by public policy related to ghg emissions. public policies frequently impose increased labour burdens on households, that without appropriate offsets could have significantly unequal impacts by gender. but the most significant implications of understanding gender contributions to ghg emissions will be the shifts that could occur in dealing with issues of climate change. while the production of clean energy and energy efficiency and the reduction in emissions from ‘dirty industries’ and vehicle use are all clearly essential, more attention must be given to boosting those areas of the economy that are inherently less damaging to it, but provide essential human needs. such a shift would have the most positive gender implications. appendix i consumption expenditure in swedish krona/capita 2004 type male female men’s consumption as a share of women’s eating out 2 010 1 370 3/2 alcohol 360 160 2.5/1 tobacco 620 380 2/1 consumer goods 190 820 1/4 (incl. hygiene) 40 800 1/20 household services 620 1 220 1/2 clothing and shoes 3 010 4720 2/3 health and medical care 1 470 2450 2/3 transport 1 350 740 3/2 gendered emissions | 77 -of which car repairs and maintenance 670 380 2/1 leisure-time activities 2 800 2 650 1/1 of which sport 1 350 970 3/2 books, newspapers, tv licence 430 690 2/3 source: johnsson-latham, 2007, p. 39. references adger, w. neil, ed. 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(2011). achieving climate justice: a framework for action in a climate of chaos. vancouver: canadian centre for policy alternatives statistics canada. 2010. labour force historical review 2009 (table 028). ottawa: statistics canada (cat. no. 71f0004xvb) statistics canada 2009. canadian vehicle survey: annual. (cat. no. 53-223-x) ottawa: statistics canada. statistics canada 2011. women in canada: a gender-based statistical report. cat. no. 89-503-xwe. ottawa: statistics canada. stevens, c. (2009). green jobs and women workers: employment, equity, equality. madrid: international labour foundation for sustainable development. victor, d. (2011). global warming gridlock: creating more effective strategies for protecting the planet. cambridge: cambridge university press. whiteside, heather and marjorie griffin cohen. (2012). gender and climate change bibliography (1990-2011), http://warming.apps01.yorku.ca/ wp-content/uploads/gender-and-climate-change-bibliography.pdf world bank. energy use (kg of oil equivalent per capita). http://data.worldbank. org/indicator/eg.use.pcap.kg.oe http://warming.apps01.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/gender-and-climate-change-bibliography.pdf http://warming.apps01.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/gender-and-climate-change-bibliography.pdf gendered emissions | 81 82 | climate change and its discontents overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry: the important role of building workers in implementing climate objectives at the workplace john calvert1 abstract: there is a broad consensus among climate scientists and policy makers that reducing the ghg emissions and energy consumption of the built environment is critical to mitigating the impact of global warming. this means adopting policies that will dramatically accelerate the introduction of low carbon construction, both in new structures and in retrofitting the existing building stock. an important, but often overlooked, component of this process is how to ensure that climate objectives are properly implemented at the workplace by building trades workers. this paper argues that for this to happen, there must be major changes in how the industry is organized – changes that challenge the unregulated market with its pervasive reliance on labour sub-contracting and precarious employment and its negative impact on building standards. the industry must transform its inadequate training and apprenticeship system to give workers the additional skills needed for low carbon construction. it must reduce the loss of qualified workers and their skills, by providing greater job security and a long term career in the industry. and it must incorporate a greater role for the workforce and the unions that represent it in creating a ‘green’ construction culture at the workplace. 1 john calvert is a political scientist and associate professor in the faculty of health sciences at simon fraser university. this article is a component of a larger sshrc funded project titled work in a warming world. overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 83 introduction: the significance of the construction industry in combating global warming year by year it becomes ever clearer that global warming presents the greatest challenge to the future of our species. the massive amount of scientific evidence is increasingly being reinforced by the growing number of disruptive climate events – unprecedented storms, disappearing arctic ice, receding greenland glaciers, measurable increases in sea levels and numerous other worrisome indicators. the prospect of a four degree celsius increase in global temperatures is no longer an extreme estimate – it is becoming increasingly probable by the end of the century (hansen,1988; mckibben, 1989; intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc), 2007; stern, 2006; unep, 2009; world bank, 2012; world meteorological association; 2013; iea, 2013; ipcc, 2013). in light of these developments, the need to curb and then reduce – greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions and energy consumption is now imperative. while there are many areas of our economy that require urgent attention, the built environment is, arguably, at the top of the list. buildings produce an estimated 30-35 percent of ghg emissions and account for almost 40 percent of energy use. in its 2007 examination of the building sector, the ipcc noted that: “over the whole building stock the largest portion of carbon savings by 2030 is in retrofitting existing buildings and replacing energy – using equipment due to the slow turnover of the stock.” (ipcc, 2007, p. 389). a more recent study by the international labour organization (ilo, 2012, p.127) examined the potential for ghg and energy reductions in the world’s major economies and concluded that: “of all the elements that constitute society, buildings are the biggest consumers of energy and the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. yet, the building sector also has the highest potential for improving energy efficiency and reducing emissions. many investments in resource-efficient buildings are cost effective and the large stocks of older and inefficient buildings, notably in industrialized countries, mean that placing greater emphasis on renovation could yield substantial environmental benefits.” conserving energy in the built environment involves designing and introducing new energy conservation systems in buildings under construction and retrofitting the existing building stock. as new construction represents only about 1 ½ percent of the existing stock of buildings, retrofitting existing buildings is clearly critical to achieving effective 84 | climate change and its discontents climate change mitigation, given the relatively small share of the total building stock that new construction will represent over the next several decades (unep 2009). progress in addressing climate change in the built environment requires the transformation of canada’s building industry to give it and its workers the capacity to implement low carbon construction in all the areas in which it operates. this transformation must entail every step in the supply chain, from the decisions by those who commission and purchase construction services, through the work of architects, planners and engineers who design the buildings, to the general contractors and sub-contractors who oversee projects and, finally, to the trades and labourers who actually carry out the work on the building site.2 at each stage of this process the industry needs to implement the most effective and technologically advanced low carbon construction innovations. and all those who work in the industry must be trained and committed to the same objective. in the words of the 2007 ipcc report noted above, it will require “…very significant efforts to enhance programs and policies… well beyond what is happening today…” (ipcc, 2007, p.390) characteristics of canada’s building industry impeding the transition to low carbon construction canada’s construction industry accounted for approximately 7.4 percent of the country’s workforce at the beginning of 2013 (cansim table 282-0088). while its contribution to canada’s gdp fluctuates significantly with the ups and downs of the business cycle, it has averaged about 6 percent in recent years (canada year book, 2012). construction is almost exclusively a private sector activity, in which the economic interests of the owners and developers who commission construction services and the contractors that deliver these services shape virtually all aspects of its operation. market forces influence what gets built (or renovated), who builds it and the development priorities adopted by the industry. even where government is the purchaser of construction services, private firms carry out the actual work. admittedly, there is extensive public regulation of many aspects of construction, such as building codes that address fire safety, electrical systems, plumbing, engineering standards, structural integrity and the use of specific construction materials. there is also public oversight of 2 the terminology for describing general contractors varies somewhat in the industry. another term commonly used is prime contractor. overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 85 planning and development through provincial and municipal government regulations that influence – at least to some degree what gets built and where it gets built. however, in practice, the industry exercises enormous influence over much of the public regulation that exists. moreover, the economic and political influence of the industry ensures that most regulation is ‘industry friendly’ in that it accommodates the industry’s focus on maximizing profits and minimizing regulations that would challenge this basic objective. progress towards low carbon construction and renovation has been painfully slow in canada to date. it is the contention of this paper that the explanation for this poor performance is to be found in the way the industry is currently organized. the industry’s predominantly market based approach – an approach which is strongly resistant to public planning and public regulation impedes the adoption of effective climate change measures in the built environment.3 and the industry’s influence over much of the public policy debate and related decision making further compounds this problem. for it minimizes the scope of the challenge we now face and reinforces the view that we can address climate change without major changes to the way the industry currently functions. this is not to deny that certain parts of the industry are attempting to introduce innovative greener building practices or establish more climate friendly standards through the adoption of voluntary initiatives such as leed, boma, built green, green globes, iso-14001 and passive house. but these initiatives are not mainstream and do not reflect the prevailing approach of the industry. there is an enormous gap between what needs to be done to meet the challenge of climate change and what the construction industry, as currently organized, can deliver. the determining factor in what gets built and how it gets built, or renovated, is price. climate considerations take second place. competition, based almost exclusively on low bid, results in a race to the bottom as firms strive to obtain work through cutting corners on design, materials, technology and labour. rather than upward pressure encouraging adoption of the highest environmental standards, unregulated price competition results in the opposite: pressure to adopt the minimum standards that will prove acceptable in the competitive market (barrett, 1998; bosch and phillips, 2003; prism ana3 the focus of this article is on construction in english canada. as will be noted in various parts of the text, the situation in quebec differs quite substantially from the rest of canada. many of the problems identified in the paper are far less pronounced in that province due to its much more extensive public regulation of the industry. see charest, 2003 for a good analysis of the quebec industry. 86 | climate change and its discontents lytics, 2010). while this focus may satisfy the economic interests of the industry as presently constituted, it does not provide the basis for low carbon construction. this is compounded by the fact that most purchasers of construction services are not knowledgeable about the details of the work and are not in a position to evaluate matters such as quality of design, materials, installation methods or workmanship. too often they are not aware of the options available to reduce the carbon footprint of their buildings or the potential long term financial benefits of reduced energy use. the classic principal – agent dilemma is characteristic of much of the industry’s operation reinforced by asymmetry of information between purchaser and contractor (o’grady, 2010; hamilton-smith, 2012; bcit, 2012). additionally, where landlords do not pay the cost of heat and electricity, they often see little benefit in paying for improved energy conservation in their buildings, while tenants have no reason – or capacity to invest in improved insulation or other energy conservation initiatives in buildings they do not own and in which they may not rent long enough to reap the benefits (ipcc, 2007; unep, 2009). these factors are further impacted by the conservative, highly risk averse attitude of many in the industry. while the industry is accustomed to ongoing change as new technologies and building methods are introduced, it sees change primarily in terms of lowering the costs of meeting prevailing building standards and norms, rather than a vehicle for a major ‘green’ transformation of the industry. fundamentally new approaches, such as those entailed in much low carbon construction, can be more challenging to implement and hence raise the risk of lawsuits if purchasers are dissatisfied with the outcome (o’grady, 2010; bc construction association, 2011). in contrast, standard construction methods minimize risk and ensure predictable, that is, profitable outcomes. this conservative tendency is reinforced by a culture in english canada that strongly resists attempts by governments to introduce more directive public regulation, whether in terms of planning, design requirements, engineering standards, tougher building codes, demolition protocols, new technologies or mandated workforce training and overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 87 skills qualifications.4 it is normally willing to accept such changes only where they do not impose major costs, can be introduced with minimal disruption to its activities and do not otherwise interfere with its profit maximizing objectives (bosch and phillips, 2003). much of the industry views government efforts to impose new regulatory standards as an unwarranted interference in the market. while it is not averse to government support, such as tax concessions, training subsidies, or public funding of research and technological innovation, it sees such support in terms of the government assisting it with its commercial objectives. government direction to change the way it currently operates is a different matter entirely. the industry has many characteristics that present major challenges to resolving the widely recognized weakness in its labour regime. fluctuations in the business cycle, as well as seasonal weather changes, result in a ‘boom and bust’ pattern of building activity. these changes are much more dramatic than in most other sectors of canada’s economy. the industry does not control – and often cannot easily predict these larger economic factors that affect the level of building activity. but the construction industry is strongly affected by them. this makes much construction work risky. the way the industry deals with risk is largely through sub-contracting (bosch and phillips, 2003). this practice enables developers and prime contractors to reduce their exposure to cyclical fluctuations by being able to ramp their use of sub-contractors up and down as demand fluctuates. it also enables them to reduce the risk of major capital investment in equipment and facilities being idle. for sub-contracting enables them to shift responsibility for much of this investment to smaller operators. and, because they are not employers of the workers of the sub-contractors, developers and general contractors reduce their employment obligations, shifting the costs of downturns to sub-contractors and workers.5 4 one of the most egregious examples of this is in the demolition of existing buildings. because it is normally far cheaper to bulldoze an old structure than to dismantle it so that its materials can be re-used, massive volumes of used materials end up in landfills. the industry prefers this option as it minimizes labour expenditures, which are the major cost in taking apart a building. industry influence has largely undermined efforts by municipal governments to implement effective materials recycling as this would require extensive public regulation of demolition practices and the creation of new markets for used materials. 5 in recent years there has been a great deal of interest in how global supply chains now involve extensive sub-contracting of much of the world’s manufacturing to developing countries with low wages, minimal taxes and little worker protection. but, in reality, this pattern has been part of the construction industry in canada for generations. sub-contracting is the norm with consequences that parallel what has been happening more recently in the extensive outsourcing by corporations in the developed world to sub-contractors in the developing world. 88 | climate change and its discontents however, labour market ‘flexibility’ is achieved largely at the expense of the workers who face periodic unemployment, whether directly as employees, or indirectly as self-employed ‘owner operators’. one of the consequences of this precarious employment system is that it prevents a long term attachment to the industry. instead of a career, many workers abandon the industry during downturns to seek work in other sectors of the economy. high labour turnover means the industry loses valuable skills and squanders a significant part of its investments in training. the extensive use of sub-contracting also results in a very fragmented industry structure. while there are a number of very large contractors, especially in the industrial, commercial and institutional (ici) sector, overwhelmingly the industry is composed of very small firms or individual owner operators. fully 89 percent of employers have 20 or fewer workers and 61 percent have less than 5 workers (o’grady, 2005; hamilton-smith, 2010). extensive sub-contracting is the norm. historically, contractors have also used sub-contracting to circumvent unionization and union collective agreement obligations.6 the fragmented industry structure makes it very difficult to provide an effective training system. small contractors normally do not have the qualified journeypersons or other resources to support apprentices. as we shall discuss further in this paper, unions can address this problem through multi-employer agreements. but this is an option that most of the industry opposes. and governments have not been prepared to address this issue through establishing a much more directive approach that would require contractors to support training both financially and by accepting apprentices. given this situation, it is perhaps not surprising that canada’s construction industry has not been very successful in developing a workforce capable of achieving the scope of the transition that is now required to cope with global warming. three major barriers to industry transformation identifying all the challenges to ‘greening’ the industry is clearly a task beyond the scope of a single article. as noted, the basic organization 6 the demarcation lines between various trades is, arguably, also a contributor to industry fragmentation, as it reinforces a proprietary approach to work in which control over skill sets (and the unions representing workers with these skill sets) results in occupational silos. this can impede broader worker solidarity, as well as more effective integration of all work on a building site, particularly as there are significant differences in wages among various trades. in countries such as denmark, where the wage structure is very flat, unions have been able to overcome these divisions more effectively than in canada as demarcation issues do not impact wages significantly. overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 89 of the industry, with its focus on price competition to the exclusion of other concerns – and its opposition to public regulation – lies at the root of the problem. a fundamental reorganization of the industry will be required to address these issues. assuming such a re-organization were to be implemented, the bulk of the process will draw upon the expertise of planners, architects, engineers and other professionals. it is these professionals who will be in a position to re-design the industry’s approach to implementing low carbon construction. the focus of this article is considerably narrower. it is to examine some of the key changes needed to facilitate the development of a construction labour force capable of implementing green construction at the building site. while transforming the industry will require far larger changes than those discussed in this article, a restructured industry will still require workers with the capacity and training to implement progressive climate objectives. consequently, examining the barriers that are currently impeding this from happening and outlining some of the possibilities for overcoming these barriers constitutes one – admittedly modest – component of this larger climate change project. it is possible to highlight three key barriers. the first is the impact of the underground economy in driving down standards and impeding introduction of more energy efficient building techniques. the industry’s extensive reliance on sub-contracting encourages underground activity by facilitating small-scale, ‘under the radar’ building work. government reluctance to address its negative impacts compounds the problem. the second is the inadequacy of the current training and apprenticeship system, an issue that is widely acknowledged in the industry, but which it has failed to address effectively, in part due to its fragmented structure. and the third is the widespread neglect of the potential role that workers and the unions that represent them can – and should play in the process of greening the built environment, a neglect based on a lack of interest in – or hostility to the role of organized labour in the industry by many of those advocating the ‘greening’ of the industry. the negative impact of underground construction activity canada’s underground construction economy consists of a variety of economic activities that its participants keep hidden from public view to avoid taxes, regulations and, in some cases, conceal illegal activities. its characteristics have been extensively documented in a variety of studies in recent years by both academics and government agencies (mirus, 90 | climate change and its discontents 1994; gervais, 1994; lippert and walker, 1997; barrett, 1998; giles and tedds, 2002; armstrong and o’grady, 2004; gilbert, 2010; hamiltonsmith, 2010; ontario construction secretariat, 2010; dean, 2010; terefe et. al., 2011; drummond, 2012; statistics canada, 2012). statistics canada estimated that in 2009, underground activity in the entire canadian economy amounted to $36 billion. the construction industry accounted for about 29 percent of this total. there are a number of interrelated factors that facilitate the operation of underground construction activity. one is the extensively documented practice of tax avoidance (auditor general of canada, 1999; pigeon, 2004; prism analytics, 2010a; statistics canada, 2011; 2012) employers, small contractors and self-employed workers avoid taxes either by not divulging that they are receiving income from those purchasing construction services or by disclosing only part of it. by not charging customers hst (or gst in some provinces), they gain a major cost advantage over legitimate contractors. they also reduce costs by avoiding canada pension plan (cpp) contributions, employment insurance (ei) payments, workers’ compensation premiums and other employment related deductions (armstrong and o’grady, 2004). additionally, they may not declare their work to the relevant municipal authorities, thus avoiding the costs of building permits (and the oversight of building inspectors). while workers may share in some of the immediate cost savings of underground activity because they avoid paying statutory contributions such as cpp and ei, they also lose the significant benefits that flow from these programs. because many of their customers – particularly in the residential construction and renovations sector – do not have the expertise to assess if work is being done properly, underground firms can also cut corners on materials and workmanship. aside from the negative impact on building standards and on the employment conditions of workers in this sector (whether employed, or in some cases, described, misleadingly, as self-employed ‘owner operators’), competition from underground suppliers pressures legitimate contractors to cut corners to remain competitive, including using less skilled or unskilled workers wherever feasible. it encourages deskilling rather than up skilling. these practices enable them to under-bid legitimate employers and contractors by a substantial margin – normally in the range of 20-30 percent, but in some cases as much as 50 percent (armstrong and o’grady, 2004; hamilton-smith, 2010). in an environment overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 91 where price is normally the dominant factor in determining who gets work, underground operators have an enormous advantage. while the underground economy adversely affects much of the construction industry, from the perspective of this paper its impact in undermining ‘green’ construction is of particular importance. ruthless cost cutting makes it difficult to implement new green technologies or use more environmentally responsible working practices because these tend to be more expensive – at least in the short run than other options. confusion over the right technology, or standards, in the context of conflicting claims by different contractors or manufacturers, makes this even more challenging for those who purchase construction services, a problem often exacerbated by the absence of clear guidelines from government. even when low carbon innovations are commissioned by customers wishing to support good environmental practices, these may not be properly installed due to poor installer training and the absence of proper inspections (gleeson, 2010). the underground economy poses a major barrier to the development of the skills needed to implement green construction. workers get little or no formal training and only rarely are able to obtain recognized qualifications such as a journeyperson’s ticket (o’grady, 2004; hamiltonsmith, 2010). underground employers do not want to support apprentices partly because the insecurity of their contracts, partly because of the costs, partly because of the need to permit release time for classroom study and partly because of the administration associated with participating in a formal training program. many want to avoid publicly acknowledging that they even have employees, as this may raise the visibility of their construction activities not only to the apprenticeship authorities, but also to other government agencies and may expose them to unwanted inspections or tax audits. consequently, most workers in the underground sector have no pathway to formalized training, because they do not ‘exist’ from the perspective of the regulatory and training authorities. at the same time, workers are normally not in a position to invest in their own training, given their precarious job security and fluctuating incomes due to frequent lay-offs. the result is that this large segment of the industry fails to train its workforce. this failure most clearly impacts the conventional training and apprenticeship of construction workers. but it also means there is little opportunity for a large portion of construction workers to acquire the advanced skill sets that are so necessary for implementing low carbon construction. 92 | climate change and its discontents the underground economy not only drives down standards by providing a cost advantage to contractors that work ‘under the radar’: it also pressures legitimate firms to cut corners on design, materials, equipment and staffing. it thus undermines the capacity of the industry to implement high quality construction. from the perspective of ‘greening’ the construction industry and reducing the carbon footprint of the built environment, failure to address the problems of the underground economy results in failure to implement many of the innovations necessary for the green transformation of the industry. this is particularly important because so much of the underground economy is involved in renovation, repairs and maintenance work where green retrofitting needs to be widely implemented. while some of the remedies for addressing the underground economy are well known, and while governments have taken some limited steps to deal with issue like tax evasion, overall they have not moved aggressively to implement many of the obviously relevant regulatory changes (drummond, 2012). moreover, in some provinces, such as bc, governments have actually abandoned some of the policy tools formerly used to support training and apprenticeship programs for the construction workforce. this has been done to placate industry opposition to alleged government regulatory and spending excesses. in bc, for example, the provincial government terminated the industry training and apprenticeship authority (itac), replacing it with the more narrowly focused and employer dominated bc industry training authority (ita), a decision that effectively excluded labour participation in the province’s training programs (bc federation of labour, 2012). aside from the impact of lobbying by affected developers and contractors, government reluctance to regulate the underground economy reflects a broader commitment to neoliberal principles. to a large degree, governments accept the view that the regulatory ‘cure’ – tough government measures for the problems identified in the underground economy is worse than the ‘disease’ of unregulated market functioning. despite the obvious problems, supporters of the status quo, such as the independent contractors and business association (icba) of bc, maintain that there is no pressing need to regulate it more extensively because government intervention inevitably leads to greater inefficiency and undermines economic progress.7 7 see, for example, the anti-government focus of the publications of the independent contractors and business association of bc for the most extreme version of this view. overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 93 addressing the impact of the underground economy on construction standards while a fundamental restructuring of the construction industry involves much more than simply curbing the abuses of the underground economy, there is no question that this needs to be part of the process. governments have a variety of policy options to address some of its worst excesses. the key point is to recognize the need for a comprehensive approach that utilizes a wide range of these tools simultaneously and in a coordinated manner. within canada, only quebec, with its commission de la construction du québec (ccq) has adopted this wide ranging approach (charest, 2003). government options include rigorous enforcement of the existing tax laws through comprehensive auditing of contractors, including selfemployed ‘owner operators’. in addition to capturing unpaid income tax, auditors can ensure that ccp, ei and other statutory payments are also collected. both federal and provincial governments need to cooperate in this endeavour. provincial governments can provide additional resources to their workers’ compensation boards to ensure that contractors register the workers they employ and pay their assessments. they can increase the frequency of workplace inspections to curb unsafe working practices. they can also enforce employment standards and human rights codes more vigorously (prism economics, 2010). and they can increase penalties for violators to a level that acts as a real deterrent, something which quebec, uniquely, has been considerably more successful at doing. by providing significant funding to the ccq, the province claims to have recovered $1.9 billion in unpaid taxes and levies during the 1997 to 2008 period. the volume of ‘declared’ work has also increased much more rapidly than the growth of construction investment in the industry, indicating that more of the underground contractors and independent operators are now complying with the law (ccq web site, oct. 4, 2013). quebec also requires all construction workers to be registered as a condition of working in the industry and to ensure that they are enrolled in the industry’s pension and welfare plans. another approach is for governments to license all contractors working in the sector (armstrong and o’grady, 2004). currently, anyone can set up shop and provide construction services. however, there is no quality control, no protection for purchasers and no guarantee that employers are following employment standards, health and safety legislation or meeting their statutory contributions to ei, cpp and 94 | climate change and its discontents other programs. licensing would force many underground operators to acknowledge that they are providing construction services and make tax and regulatory avoidance more difficult. it would establish a data base on which the performance of contractors could be monitored, both by public authorities (tax auditors, workers’ compensation officials, etc.) and by customers of their services (hamilton-smith, 2012). requiring employers to be members of employer associations, as in quebec, would also facilitate greater co-ordination of the sector, particularly with respect to training (charest, 2003). government procurement contracts can also level the playing field by again including fair wage requirements. quebec is now requiring that all construction workers register and provide a current resume of their training and skill sets on a government managed web site. the intention is both to enable workers to advertise their availability and to make it more difficult for workers in the underground economy to continue to operate. registration will also make it easier to address some of the other problems of the underground economy such as tax evasion as workers will have to identify themselves as working in the industry. provincial and municipal governments can also enforce building codes more rigorously – including hiring sufficient numbers of building inspectors to guarantee that the work being performed meets existing standards. one reason underground contractors continue to function is that they avoid building inspections, particularly in the residential renovations sector where work is often easy to conceal. their ability to do so is a consequence of the limited resources governments have been allocating to inspections. provinces such as bc could also expand the number of ‘compulsory’ trades and take measures to ensure that only those with the appropriate qualifications are able to perform key components of construction work (armstrong, 2008). this approach to labour regulation is standard practice in a number of european countries such as germany. more stringent licensing of the trades would also provide a major incentive for workers to take formal training or apprenticeships, given that, once completed, these qualifications would provide greater job opportunities. to address the failure of underground contractors to support training, governments can require all firms operating in the industry to contribute to the cost of training through compulsory levies such as have been implemented in some states in australia, california, numerous european countries and quebec which has a compulsory 1.5 percent of payroll levy (charest, 2003; calvert, 2011; hamilton-smith, 2012). overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 95 another major policy tool is labour legislation (which will be discussed more extensively later in this paper). unionized sectors of the industry have been far more successful in achieving good training outcomes than the unorganized sectors. minimally, as in quebec, public policy should encourage, rather than limit the ability of workers to unionize. this would make a major difference in the construction industry in the rest of canada and would also make it much easier to implement an effective training and apprenticeship regime. the industry’s training challenges a second key area where the construction industry fails to meet the challenge of climate change is in training its workers. successful ‘green’ construction requires a highly trained workforce. much of the work involves very tight tolerances and careful installation of components (gleeson, 2010; goodland 2012). it also involves introducing new technologies and new building methods. in the area of retrofitting, where the largest energy savings are possible, the skilled trades must be able to implement low carbon construction in a wide variety of different building types, erected at different times with different technologies and different materials. to do this work well, the construction trades must have a comprehensive knowledge of many different building methods so that they are able to apply the most effective approach to each specific project. successful ‘green’ construction requires the development of higher skill levels and this requires a significant, ongoing, investment in workforce training. as noted earlier, canada’s construction market is characterized by a ‘boom and bust’ pattern that exaggerates the ups and downs of the business cycle and the related property market. the wide variations in demand lead to periods of intense building activity followed by periods of unemployment (bosch and phillips, 2003). the cyclical and seasonal economic forces shaping the industry make it particularly difficult to develop and maintain a qualified workforce arguably much more difficult than in most other areas of the canadian economy where more stable employment provides a stronger base for both employers and workers to invest in training, because both sides of industry can reasonably expect to accrue the benefits of this investment. the training and apprenticeship system involves a number of players. in addition to the trainees, it includes contractors who provide employment and on the job experience, training providers – predominantly public colleges and/or unions – to provide the classroom and the96 | climate change and its discontents oretical components of the trade and governments to fund and regulate the training system, usually through arm’s length agencies, although sometimes directly through ministries of education, post-secondary education or their equivalents. apprenticeship is the core approach to training construction workers. in most trades approximately eighty percent of the time is spent on the job and the remainder in formal classroom training. the periods of formal education are normally scheduled for part of each year to correspond to the increasing on-the-job experience of workers. apprentices need employment to complete their training program and graduate as qualified journeypersons. however, as noted, the industry is characterized by wide swings in employment that reflect the business cycle, seasonal factors and the state of the local property market. in some provinces this is exacerbated by boom and bust employment patterns in major infrastructure or resource projects. when the economy is booming, construction contractors are desperate for workers. when it is in recession, workers are regularly laid off for months or even years at a time (sharpe and gibson, 2005; hamilton-smith, 2010; coe, 2011). these factors lead to high labour turnover and the corresponding loss of the skills and experience that workers have acquired. rather than a national, comprehensive approach to training the construction workforce, canada has a patchwork quilt of apprenticeship and trades training arrangements, reflecting the constitutional jurisdiction of provinces/territories (sharpe and gibson, 2005; morissette, 2008; armstrong, 2008; laporte and muller, 2010). the federal government provides funding through a package of training agreements with the provinces. but outside quebec, the training system is fragmented, inadequately funded and poorly regulated, shifting most of the costs and risks to workers. instead of supporting training in low carbon construction, the current federal government’s main interest in trades training is in response to demands from the oil, gas and mining sectors. this approach ignores both the need for training in green construction methods and the much larger potential gains achievable in the built environment where reductions in ghg emissions and energy can be most effectively implemented.8 8 while provinces have made significant efforts to establish national standards that are recognized across the country through the red seal program, there are still significant variations in provincial approaches. this is highlighted by the differences in the number of designated ‘compulsory’ trades in which practitioners must have a certificate of trades’ qualification (tq) as a legal condition of performing a particular type of construction work. while some provinces have several dozen such trades others have as few as three. overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 97 the volatile nature of construction means that workers take significant risks when they commit to the long term training associated with a full three to five year apprenticeship. most have no guarantee that they will obtain steady employment – employment which they need to fulfil the on-the-job component of their apprenticeship program. given that most are from working class backgrounds, they normally do not have significant financial resources to carry them over during prolonged periods of unemployment, an issue compounded by the fact that in the initial years, apprentices’ wage rates start at half or less of that of a journeyperson. absent adequate financial resources they can be – and often are forced to abandon their training program to seek work in other parts of the economy. the drop-out rate in many trades is well over half of those who commence an apprenticeship (laporte and muller, 2010; hamilton-smith, 2010; coe, 2011). the paradox is that when there is ample work, apprentices may not wish to go back to school due to the loss of income, but also because they may fear not getting work when they are finished their classroom studies each year. this means losing their investment in acquiring building skills (bosch and phillips, 2003). at the same time, the industry loses the potential benefits of future skilled workers. these problems are inherent in how the largely unregulated construction labour market functions. they pose an ongoing challenge to establishing and maintaining a qualified workforce. in practice, larger employers and/or unionized employers tend to be more supportive of the training system and their apprentices have a much higher than average completion rate. for some of these employers, the benefits of having a well trained workforce are so substantial, and the costs of poorly performed work so significant, that investment in workforce skills makes economic sense. in some sectors of the economy, such as oil, gas and other resources, profit margins are high and the pay offs from having a skilled workforce are substantial, so they support apprenticeships. in addition, where employers are party to a collective agreement, they are also likely to support training as a result of contract provisions stipulating the ratio of apprentices to journey persons and as a result of negotiated contributions to training funds – normally cents per hour to supporting apprenticeship programs (o’grady, 2005; prism, 2010) however, most construction employers are very small and do not conform to this pattern. overall, the industry’s training performance is very poor, with alarmingly high rates of non-completion. (gunderson 98 | climate change and its discontents 2010) efforts by the federal and some provincial governments to encourage more workers to take apprenticeships over the past fifteen years have largely failed (hamilton-smith, 2010). according to coe and emery (2012, p.95): “…(t)he large expansion in apprenticeship training registrations since 1991 has not produced a substantial increase in the number of persons completing apprenticeship programs in the building trades. in 2007, there were only 3900 completions of apprenticeship programs in the building trades, up only 300 from 3600 completed in 1991. moreover the ratio of completed apprenticeships to the number of individuals registered in building trades apprenticeship programs fell from 7.7 percent in 1991 to 4.9 percent in 2007.” desjardans and paquin of statistics canada carried out a detailed examination of the completion rates of the 1994 and 1995 cohorts of starting apprenticeships using canada’s registered apprentice information system (rias) ten years later. they found that the completion rates for the construction trades were, on average, much lower than for nonconstruction trades. some building trades did much better than others, with construction electricians (62 percent), plumbers (58 percent) and sheet metal workers (56 percent) doing relatively better. but others, such as steamfitter-pipefitter (38 percent) and carpenters (34 percent), did relatively poorly (desjardans and paquin, 2010).9 bc’s industry training authority (ita) noted that the completion rate for apprenticeships after 6 years in its provincial program was only 40 percent in 2011 (ita website). bc’s ita does not provide a break-down between union and nonunion apprentices. but there is evidence that the average completion rates it cites would be considerably lower if the relatively high success rates of apprenticeships with unionized employers were excluded. the bc and yukon territory building and construction trades council (bc bctc) claims that the training programs run by its member unions have a success rate averaging about 90 percent over the past 5 years (bc bctc web site). in his study of factors influencing apprenticeship completion rates, coe (2011) noted that the rate was 10 percent higher for compulsory trades and concluded that a shift towards increasing the number of compulsory trades would likely increase this rate. unions have been strong supporters of expanding the number of compulsory trades. 9 while statistics canada’s data for 2011 indicate an increase in completions to 55,422, the number of apprentices registered in the system is also up to 426,283 (cansim table 4770054). overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 99 small contractors and contractors working in residential and low rise apartment construction, as well as non-union employers, have a particularly poor track record in supporting apprenticeships, while those in the underground economy provide almost no formal apprenticeship training, despite the significant size of this part of the industry (o’grady, 2010; hamilton-smith, 2012). even among larger employers, unionization is a key factor in apprenticeship. a 2013 survey by katherine jacobs (2013) of the ontario construction secretariat found that 83 percent of unionized contractors supported apprentices, compared with only 42 percent of their non-union counterparts. these problems are exacerbated by free-ridership, where employers who do not train benefit from those who do by poaching the latter’s newly qualified journeypersons (bosch and phillips, 2003). it is also exacerbated by the absence of a system with the notable exception of quebec that would require all construction employers and/or contractors to contribute to the costs of training the industry’s workforce. such arrangements are common in much of europe, california and parts of australia, to cite examples where such cost sharing is in place. one of the advantages of an industry-wide levy on employers is that having paid into it, many employers then choose to take advantage of the funds it makes available by supporting trainees or apprentices. if you are paying for training, why not take advantage of it yourself by claiming some of the available training money? greening the built environment requires enhanced training and skills while the construction industry might simply continue with its somewhat dysfunctional approach to training and apprenticeship, the problem now is that we need to ‘green’ the built environment and hence need a training system that prepares construction workers properly for this task.10 numerous studies indicate that low carbon construction requires considerably higher levels of training and skills than currently possessed by canada’s construction workforce (leeson, 2010; goodland, 2012; aitkenhead, 2012). a recent ilo (2012, p.127) study concluded that: “experience in a growing number of countries, both industrialized and developing, demonstrates that the construction of energyand 10 this is not to imply that the industry will automatically provide jobs to workers who have acquired green skills. the economics of the labour market will determine employment, absent much tougher government requirements forcing industry to adopt low carbon construction. however, if there are fundamental changes in the industry’s support for green building techniques, then a qualified workforce will be essential. 100 | climate change and its discontents resource-efficient buildings requires competent enterprises and a skilled workforce. poorly installed equipment and materials do not yield expected gains in efficiency and emissions reduction. targeted investments in skills upgrading and certification of building firms, formalization – notably of small and medium-sized enterprises (smes) which dominate the sector – and improvements in working conditions to retain qualified workers are therefore essential components of a successful strategy.” indeed, much of the literature indicates that trades workers require significant additional training beyond what they have received in a conventional apprenticeship (goodland, 2012). the building industry’s overall lack of support – both policy and financial for a comprehensive, industry-wide training and apprenticeship system results in large segments of the workforce that lack both the basic skills and the enhanced ‘green’ skills needed to meet the challenges of implementing low carbon construction competently. while the need for a high level of skills may seem apparent in new construction, as noted earlier the need for such skills is even greater in retrofitting. new construction only accounts for about 1 ½ percent of canada’s total building stock. so the impact of low carbon construction in new building is relatively small and will take generations to have a significant impact. retrofitting the existing built environment is thus critical to implementing an effective climate change program. the existing building stock is characterized by a wide diversity of building types, materials, technologies, dates of construction, and many other factors. the approach to construction at the turn of the nineteenth century, or in the 1920s or 1930s – and many of these buildings still exist – is significantly different from that of buildings constructed in the 1980s or 1990s. each building has its own particular challenges with respect to retrofitting. there is no general ‘cookie cutter’ for much of what has to be done to reduce its carbon footprint. decisions about what needs to be done to ‘green’ the existing building stock require both an understanding of the particular attributes of individual buildings and a knowledge of the options now available to reduce energy consumption. these options must also be assessed in light of their cost effectiveness, installation complexity, skill requirements/skills availability and a variety of other factors. they require an understanding of the fundamentals of building construction and the possibilities arising from the new ‘green’ technologies, materials, and overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 101 systems now available. this requires knowledge, judgement and a clear understanding of the challenges that have to be overcome.11 construction workers are constantly involved in problem solving on the work site. they normally do this without close supervision. often on smaller projects only one or two members of a trade are responsible for handling the work and they are expected to do it to on their own in a way that meets the professional standards mandated by the architects, engineers or prime contractors. while there are tasks on building sites that can be performed by workers with little or no training or skills, retrofitting does not readily fit in to this pattern. in reality every project is different and every project has its unique challenges, many of which are not predictable in advance. consequently, the trades have to be able to analyze the characteristics of a wide variety of building projects and make judgements about how best to implement the objectives of these projects in a cost effective, safe and efficient way. it is true that those further up the supply chain, and particularly architects and engineers, are positioned to make many of the ‘big picture’ decisions about the selection of appropriate technologies or changes to building design or building systems. but the practical challenges facing retrofitting are ones that must be addressed on the job site by those actually doing the work. it is they who, for the most part, are able to see the details of what is 11 the negative consequences of relying on a deregulated approach to implementing green retrofit programs were starkly illustrated in the experience of australia with its energy efficiency homes package (eehp) normally referred to as the home insulation program (hip). this was part of the federal government’s response to the 2008 global economic meltdown. this program, announced at the beginning of 2009, was part of a larger $42 billion nation building jobs plan. the insulation component was targeted to reduce energy consumption by as much as 40 percent in 2.7 million australian homes, although the number actually ended up being only a small fraction of this target. while the overall ghg reduction approach of the australian federal government to the fiscal meltdown was, arguably, far more thoughtful than what the canadian government did in its comparable, but reluctantly implemented, infrastructure program, the actual implementation of the hip was characterized by a number of major installation problems. large numbers of unskilled workers with little understanding of the potential dangers associated with electrical fires resulting from careless installation of insulation in attics were commissioned to do the bulk of the work. however, their work quickly resulted in a numerous fires, and a small number of fatal electrical accidents among the poorly trained installers. this led to a major public reaction to the program, a number of high profile government investigations at both state and federal levels and a rapid shift to other less dangerous conservation options such as heat pumps. alan hawke noted that a subsequent audit performed in queensland and cited in the commonwealth parliamentary debates revealed the following: “over 14,600 roof inspections have been undertaken, and 1000 targeted audits of electrical safety issues in queensland have also been carried out as at the end of the program. the results of roof inspections have shown significant levels of work that did not fully meet quality and safety standards (16 percent of inspections revealing quality issues and 7.6 percent of inspections revealing safety issues) (hawke, 2010, p. 55). 102 | climate change and its discontents currently in place and it is they who are often in the best position to assess the right choices for implementing low carbon construction. introducing new materials, new technology, and new working practices is contingent on construction workers and particularly the skilled trades knowing how to install these innovations correctly. thus while the role of labour is only one component of the broader package of changes needed to ‘green’ the construction industry, it is nevertheless a critical one. and the failure to address this area significantly limits the ability of the industry to implement many of the climate innovations that architects, engineers, project managers and policy makers wish to achieve. similarly, the establishment of more stringent energy conservation requirements in building codes is contingent not only on having an effective and adequately resourced enforcement system to ensure that builders comply with these requirements, but also in having a workforce that knows what the codes require and is capable of implementing them on the building site. knowledge of building codes is a key part of building work. it requires extensive training. all of this underlines the need to strive for much higher levels of training and skills within the industry. yet, as noted, the economic characteristics of the industry make the achievement of this objective difficult. the extensive underground economy, the large number of very small employers and independent operators with no training capacity, the extensive reliance on sub-contracting which encourages use of the least qualified labour, the prioritization of low bid over quality, the difficulty in costing the long term benefits of lowering energy consumption, the split between owners and tenants which encourages the former to minimize spending on conservation and numerous other factors push the industry in the opposite direction. rather than recognizing that effective climate change programs will require a major commitment to training and upgrading the skills of the workforce and major changes to the fundamentals of how the construction industry is organized, both government and industry participants remain wedded to an unregulated market model based on narrowly conceived price competitiveness and opposition to government regulation. the role of workers and their unions in implementing green construction a third barrier to the greening of the construction industry is the limited role that building trades’ workers and their unions currently overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 103 play in this process.12 outside quebec, less than a third of the industry is organized. union representation is concentrated in the ici sector and primarily with large contractors. it is also uneven, varying considerably among the trades and between the trades and semi-skilled or unskilled construction workers. although average union density in construction has remained fairly constant at just under a third of the workforce during the past fifteen years in canada, after falling significantly during the 1980s and early 1990s, this figure conceals major shifts in the pattern of unionization, with increases in quebec offsetting declines in english canada. (charest 2003, statistics canada labour force survey, table 282-0078) construction collective agreement coverage in canada 1997 – 2012 (percent of workforce) province 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009 2012 newfoundland & labrador 25.71 27.27 20.78 27.10 26.62 31.95 prince edward island 20.59 13.79 19.35 13.95 17.95 23.68 nova scotia 38.16 26.97 22.78 26.40 23.98 28.99 new brunswick 27.78 29.41 20.00 21.74 29.72 25.13 quebec 48.48 50.11 56.25 57.69 57.80 59.30 ontario 32.62 32.42 32.99 29.52 30.51 31.51 manitoba 22.56 21.47 17.34 27.83 22.48 22.22 saskatchewan 22.86 24.66 23.31 22.01 17.67 21.60 alberta 17.19 21.04 21.67 18.78 19.29 19.38 british columbia 31.31 31.77 30.51 25.02 20.35 21.89 all canada union coverage 32.39 32.53 34.19 31.67 31.23 32.76 source: statistics canada table 282-0078 labour force survey estimates 12 this section should not be misinterpreted as saying that unions in all sectors of construction are in decline. for example, unions with specific skills in certain sectors, such as ua which represents pipeline workers, enrol virtually all workers involved in laying large diameter pipelines, an economic activity that is expanding. individual unions in other sub-sectors of construction, such as the ibew in certain provinces have also maintained or increased union density in areas such as hydroelectric utilities. however, the point is that when all sectors of the industry are examined, the overall influence of unions has been weakening, at least outside quebec. 104 | climate change and its discontents overall, the influence of the building trades unions like the larger canadian labour movement has been on the decline (charest, 2003). despite these setbacks, some unionized trades, such as the international brotherhood of electrical workers (ibew) continue to play a major role in establishing and enforcing the qualifications for their trade through its role in the national electrical trades council (netco) (macleod, 2012). construction unions in ontario have persuaded the government to give them a role as board members overseeing the construction component of the newly established college of trades. and building trade unions in certain regions, such as the greater toronto area, continue to organize significant numbers of workers in major commercial and industrial projects (although the residential sector remains largely unorganized). nevertheless, some unions continue to play a significant role in training and apprenticeship. in ontario, for example, they operate over 200 trades training facilities, normally in co-operation with unionized employers (o’grady, 2005). the building trades unions have collective agreement provisions requiring their employers to contribute part of the wage package – normally about 1 percent of payroll (in the form of a specified number of cents per hour) to training trust funds (ttfs). ttfs are jointly managed by a union and a group of contributing employers with which the union has collective agreements. they provide part, or all, of the classroom training that apprentices require, in some cases supplemented by provincial government purchases of training ‘seats’. they may also share some of the classroom training with publicly funded community colleges or purchase classroom capacity from them. in an industry characterized by numerous small employers, where few have the capacity to guarantee apprenticeships, individually, or provide the classroom component of training, the ttfs fulfil an important industry need. most apprentices work for a number of employers during their training and their union affiliation provides employment continuity during this period. because they are based in multiemployer collective agreements, ttfs tend to have stable funding over time which facilitates long term planning of courses and programs. o’grady estimates that in ontario fully 25 percent of building union members receive some training each year from ttfs. they also have an excellent track record in terms of the percentage of apprentices who actually complete their apprenticeships – a rate that is far higher than in the non-union sector (o’grady, 2005) this contrasts sharply with a number of federal and provincial government policy initiatives, such overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 105 as providing training tax credits to employers, which have simply failed to achieve better apprenticeship outcomes despite large outlays of public funds on these programs (hamilton-smith, 2012). the major exception is quebec where the building trades have significantly expanded their role in training and apprenticeship, a development that reflects the provincial government’s very different approach to construction labour relations and its willingness to require employers to take more responsibility for training through its payroll levy system. the government’s 1968 legislation an act respecting labour relations, vocational training and manpower management in the construction industry (bill r-20) has encouraged collective bargaining in the construction sector and resulted in relatively high union density.13 quebec unions have been able to establish a wide network of ttfs through negotiations with unionized employers and these continue to play a central role in trades training in the province (charest, 2003; o’grady, 2005). according to the commission de la construction du quebec, its $150 million training fund supports 20,000 trainees, annually, for apprenticeship and continuing trades training. minimally, as in quebec, public policy in english canada should recognize and support a much greater role for unions in trades training. another way governments can work with unions in supporting training is through the use of project agreements such as bc’s vancouver island highway project. this was the largest construction project in western canada during the mid-1990s. the provincial government created a public corporation to act as the employer of all the construction labour on the project. it then negotiated a blanket agreement with the 13 highway construction unions which included commitments to local hire, local training and a major focus on training for members of bc’s four equity groups. in an industry in which equity group participation was about 2 percent overall, the vancouver island highway achieved equity participation of just over 20 percent of all hours worked during the 8 years of the project. union training facilities played an important role in this process (cohen and braid, 2003; calvert and redlin, 2003). 13 in the fall of 2013, new quebec legislation entitled an act to eliminate union placement and improve the operation of the construction industry established the carnet reference construction, a body that registers all construction workers covered by the r-20 law and acts as a clearing house that employers must now use when they hire workers. workers must post a resume outlining their skills and training on the carnet’s web site in order to be hired. there is considerable dissatisfaction among unions about the new limits it places on their earlier role in dispatching workers to employers. approximately 85 percent of workers were already directly hired by employers before the new law was enacted, but those who were dispatched by the unions normally went to the larger work sites. whether this new law will have a significant impact on union density is not yet clear. see: http://carnet.ccq. org/en/ 106 | climate change and its discontents supporting a greater role for construction unions despite the evidence that unionized workplaces have a much higher success rate in apprenticeship completions and that unions have been consistent advocates of the maintenance of a high quality training system, most policy makers do not see them as major players in the green transformation of the industry. in much of the literature on greening the construction industry, unions simply do not exist. in fact, a number of provincial governments, such as bc’s, have taken steps to exclude them from provincial training authorities while enacting changes to labour codes and procurement policies designed deliberately to weaken the role of organized labour in the industry and, not insignificantly, to deny construction workers a voice in this process. similarly, outside the specific organizations that unions and unionized employers have jointly created to promote training and workplace skills, such as the national electrical trade council (netco), government policy makers and many advocates of ‘greening’ the built environment generally ignore the potential role of unions in this process. the assumption is that low carbon construction will be introduced successfully without the active involvement of workers – other than by doing what they are assigned to do.14 one reason why policy makers have not been more interested in viewing unions as major players in ‘greening’ the industry is that there has been a more general shift in canada towards a neoliberal labour relations paradigm, in which the role of all unions is marginalized. the labour climate has become increasingly hostile to unions at both federal and provincial levels, as evidenced by regressive changes to labour leg14 the federal government’s trades training initiatives have focused on providing skills for its favoured resource extraction industries where it needs the training expertise of a number of the construction unions. the goal is to get unions to address industry needs in the absence of other apprenticeship and training options the federal government might otherwise prefer. arguably, it is courting some of the major building trades unions not because it supports unionization but because it – and resource industry employers – needs them, at least for the immediate future. however, its policies are designed to enable employers, not unions or workers, to have a greater say about where public money for training will be allocated. for example, its controversial canada jobs grant program provides no new money. rather it will shift $300 million, annually, from existing canada labour market agreement training programs to its more employer-focused approach. the federal government will provide employers with up to $5,000 per trainee to be matched by an equal contribution by provinces and, in theory, employers. however, these initiatives to meet the needs of employers have not been accompanied by any policies designed to expand union representation. significantly, there is virtually no mention of unions in the federal government’s outline of its various employment and training initiatives in its canada action plan 2013 with the exception of its helmets to hardhats program for veterans (http://actionplan. gc.ca/en/initiative/canada-job-grant). overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 107 islation and the increasing tendency of governments to impose back to work legislation whenever unions take strike action. in the context of an overall anti-labour shift by the current federal and most provincial governments, arguments about the potential benefits of a greater union role in training, apprenticeship and climate change initiatives go against the tide. yet the evidence is clear: a highly skilled construction workforce is now needed to implement climate objectives and unions have demonstrated that they can contribute to this process. that there is significant potential for unions to play a greater role in climate initiatives as is evidenced by a number of promising initiatives in the built environment. one example is the work of the bc insulators union which has developed a comprehensive package of new building code measures and government procurement requirements explicitly designed to significantly reduce ghg emissions and energy consumption (lee loftus, president, bc insulators, interview june 7, 2012). it has made numerous presentations to bc municipalities and to the provincial government advocating implementation of these policy changes. it has also worked closely with the bc institute of technology (bcit) in modifying the classroom training program for apprentices in the insulating trade to include new climate modules. and it has worked extensively with both the environment committee of the bc federation of labour and the bc green jobs coalition to advocate tougher climate policies. similarly, at the national level, the ibew has worked closely with industry through the netco to develop new standards and training modules for the installation of solar pv equipment and related renewable electric vehicle technology. qualified electricians can now add a certification in these areas to their trades’ qualifications (carol macleod, netco interview aug. 12, 2013; andy cleven, ibew interview july 12, 2012; macleod, 2012). the implementation of low carbon construction on the job site aligns well with the building trades unions’ goal of maintaining high standards of skills and supporting the apprenticeship and training system (lowe, 2009; loftus op. cit.; cleven, op. cit.). true, their goal of a high skill, high wage industry reflects their self-interest in maintaining, or improving, the wages of their members and reflects a desire to exercise control over the labour process. at the same time, most skilled trades take pride in the exercise of their skills and in their ability to adapt to a wide range of problem solving situations – a key feature of effective climate retrofitting. the interests of building trades unions also correspond to the need to have a more stable and permanent workforce, with a long term attach108 | climate change and its discontents ment to the industry. their members want a career, not just a job. this too, is a precondition for expanding and maintaining the knowledge base essential to implementing low carbon construction. high turnover in the industry, especially among trainees who fail to complete their apprenticeships, is not conducive to effective climate programs. but the final aspect of this is the role of unions in contributing to a change in the culture of the workplace – a culture that values work well done and takes pride in learning and exercising demanding skills (sennett, 2009). the challenge of incorporating climate issues into a stable workplace culture that already supports these values is far less than one of attempting to do so in the context of a workforce that is poorly skilled, precarious, low paid and with little or no long term attachment to the industry. conclusion this article has identified three major problems that are impeding the ability of the canadian construction industry to meet the challenge of global warming: the extensive and largely unregulated underground economy, fundamental weaknesses in the training and apprenticeship system and the failure to include workers and the unions that represent them in the process of greening the built environment. it has not claimed that these are the only, or indeed the most important, impediments.15 but it does assert that addressing these three problems is an essential part of what needs to be done. and it also recognizes that there is no single (or simple) answer to resolving these problems. rather, a combination of different policy changes is needed that, together, can fundamentally shift the focus of the industry in a more environmentally responsible direction. provincial and federal governments must take a co-ordinated approach to dealing with the underground economy. this means enforcing tax, wcb, ei, ccp and other statutory obligations. provinces and municipalities can enforce building codes vigorously and ensure that contractors meet health and safety and employment standards regulations. a comprehensive contractor licensing system, coupled with registration of workers, can also facilitate more extensive oversight of the sector, making it easier to monitor tax evasion, protect worker interests and provide more effective consumer protection. 15 thus, we have not discussed issues such as the major role that publicly funded trades training colleges can play, a greater emphasis on climate issues in the education of architects and engineers, the comprehensive ‘greening’ of municipal planning and building codes and direct government financial support for training and apprenticeships, to cite a few of the more obvious areas where major climate initiatives are also needed. overcoming systemic barriers to ‘greening’ the construction industry | 109 governments need to require all employers, contractors and selfemployed owner operators to contribute to workforce training by paying a compulsory training levy and hosting apprentices. this will address the ‘free rider’ problem and provide funds for employers and unions who support training, eliminating one of the major financial barriers to successful apprenticeships. governments in some provinces can also expand the scope of compulsory trades to ensure that workers performing skilled jobs are actually qualified to do this work. more stringent licensing of the trades would also provide a major incentive for workers to take formal training or apprenticeships, given that, once completed, these qualifications would provide greater job opportunities (armstrong, 2008). this should be accompanied by the introduction of major ‘green’ components to the curriculum of the trades training institutions. governments can also condition their purchase of construction services by requiring contractors to employ apprentices on publicly funded projects. and they can restore, or expand, apprenticeship and training in their own operations. turning to unionization, changes to labour legislation can play a role in industry transformation by supporting, rather than undermining union representation. as the example of quebec illustrates, supportive labour law and extensive industry regulation does make a difference (charest, 2003). governments can support union training centres through training seat purchases and through dedicating payroll training levies to them. the work of some unions, such as bcs insulators and the ibew in pushing for better climate policies was noted earlier. unions outside the building trades, both nationally, and internationally, have developed policies that focus on what they describe as a just transition to a low carbon economy (sustainlabour, 2008; cep, 2009; ituc, 2013). investing in major retrofitting of the existing built environment is an extremely effective way to create employment. there is an enormous potential to create new construction jobs in energy conservation and retrofitting, given the size of the existing stock of buildings and the urgency of reducing ghg emissions and energy use.16 as was indicated at the beginning of this paper, there are a variety of other measures needed to ‘green’ the built environment in addition 16 an example of this is found in the approach of the danish construction unions to the economic crisis of 2008. recognizing that a stimulus package was needed to address the crisis, they lobbied the government (successfully) to bring forward a number of major building retrofitting programs which they argued would both create jobs and reduce the country’s carbon footprint (calvert, 2011). 110 | climate change and its discontents to the three discussed above. clearly, effective action requires a comprehensive approach that includes a wide range of initiatives affecting many different components of construction. moreover, as noted, many of the major planning, technological and organizational changes are beyond the scope of the construction workforce itself. innovations currently being promoted by progressive climate scientists, architects, planners, engineers and developers, as well as proponents of various regulatory and building code amendments are essential to reducing canada’s ghg emissions and energy use. however, the present policy framework supports the status quo in english canada and undermines efforts in a variety of areas to restructure the construction industry. the industry is failing, by a wide margin, to achieve sufficient progress on climate issues. its commitment to free market policies effectively precludes the kinds of major policy measures now required. hostility to public regulation, failure to tackle the abuses of the underground economy and industry’s unwillingness to support fundamental changes to the current training and apprenticeship system – including a larger role for unions are all major barriers to achieving a workforce capable of implementing low carbon construction successfully. absent significant changes to the basic organization of the construction industry, it will not have the capacity to implement the kinds of climate measures that are now so urgently needed.17 references act r-20: an act respecting labour relations, vocational training and manpower 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augusto rossotto ioris1 abstract: anthropogenic climate change is expected to have serious socioecological consequences around the globe, in particular for wetland areas. that is the case of the pantanal, a large tropical wetland located in the upper paraguay river basin (uprb), in the centre of south america, where a range of responses are being devised to cope with the negative impacts of climate change. after a review of the most common approaches discussed in the literature, the results of an empirical study conducted in brazil, bolivia and paraguay are presented. the research attested that most responses have so far evolved around the principles of systematic adaptation (e.g. technology amelioration) and climate scepticism (e.g. postponement of responses) and, more recently, under the influence of marketisation measures (e.g. carbon trading). however, there is also growing enthusiasm, particularly in bolivia, for the inclusion of initiatives associated with the architecture of entitlements (e.g. improved access to resources) and climate justice (e.g. compensation for the negative impacts of conventional development). two important factors that seem to undermine the efficacy of the responses to climate change in the region: the hegemonic influence of the agribusiness sector and the relatively low importance of the uprb for national and trilateral environmental policy-making. 1 antonio a.r. ioris is a human geography lecturer at the university of edinburgh. he can be reached at a.ioris@ed.ac.uk. this research was supported by the brazilian research council (cnpq) through the sinergia project coordinated by the pantanal research centre (cpp); ioris was directly responsible for its sub-project 3.1 ‘politico-institutional vulnerabilities to climate change’. the author wishes to thank dr. carlos padovani (embrapa-pantanal) for allowing the reproduction of the river basin image (figure 1), three anonymous referees for their helpful comments on a previous version of this paper, ms. isabel kirsten for her dedicated assistance during the research project, prof. pierre girard (cpp and ufmt, cuiabá) for the opportunity to take part in the sinergia project and, in particular, the many stakeholders in brazil, bolivia and paraguay who kindly agreed to take part in the interviews. approaches and responses to climate change: | 121 anthropogenic climate change represents one of the most challenging, complex and contested problems faced by the international community today. the contemporary concerns about human made climate change also offer a unique entry point into the preparedness of public and private responses to global environmental problems. for instance, the multilateral negotiations on the united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc) reflect the failures of technical assessments, the intricacy of international relations and the shortcomings of conventional environmental management. particularly the embeddedness of the carbon economy in contemporary society means that the climate change controversy is at once a problem of environment, economy and human rights (haines & reichman, 2008). the global interlinkages of the climate mean that no region in the planet is likely to be spared of the consequences of anthropogenic global warming, even areas that are located relatively distant from the main economic and industrial centres, such as the south american pantanal. the pantanal is a large floodplain wetland in the centre of the upper paraguay river basin (uprb), which has a total area of around 360,000 km2 (see figure 1). the pantanal spreads for about 140,000 km2 is shared between brazil (80 percent of the pantanal area), bolivia (19 percent) and paraguay (1 percent). the rainy season in the region begins between september and december, increases between january and march, and then promotes a flood wave movement from the north through the south pantanal that inundates as much as 70 percent of the floodplain until july (hamilton et al., 2002). significant portions of the pantanal floodplain are submerged from four to eight months each year by water depths from a few centimetres to more than two meters (pcbap, 1997). the pantanal functions as a large reservoir that stores water from the surrounding plateaus during the rainy season and then delivers it slowly to the lower sections of the paraguay river. as a result, any significant change in the rainfall pattern is likely to have major impacts on the local ecology and socioeconomic relations. 122 | climate change and its discontents figure 1 the upper paraguay river basin (uprb) and the location of the pantanal wetland at the 8th intecol (international wetlands conference), which was held in the pantanal region in july 2008 – more exactly, in the city of cuiabá – it became clear that, although wetlands (including marshes, peat bogs, swamps, river deltas, mangroves, tundra, lagoons and river floodplains) only cover a relatively small percentage of the planet’s surface, they actually contain a large proportion of the world’s carbon stored in terrestrial soil reservoirs (kayranli et al., 2010). that means a major contribution regarding the balance of greenhouse gases (ghgs) in the atmosphere and underscores the importance of wetland conserapproaches and responses to climate change: | 123 vation. beyond carbon storage, wetlands provide a range of environmental services, including water filtration and storage, erosion control, buffer against flooding, nutrient recycling, biodiversity maintenance, and nursery for fisheries. in the same event, the pantanal has been recognised as one of the most important tropical wetlands in the world and it had been officially designated a biosphere reserve by unesco in 2000. the local ecosystems comprise a complex biodiversity mosaic with influences from the amazon, cerrado and chaco biomes (pcbap, 1997). nonetheless, the pantanal is also one of the most threatened socioecological systems in the planet, especially due to pollution, loss of biodiversity, high sedimentation, modification of natural cycles, large-scale projects, the lack of conservation units and the impacts of anthropogenic climate change (swarts, 2000).the tension between available resources and economic growth has resulted in recurrent calls for ecological protection and the conservation of ecological systems (ioris, 2004), but there are major disagreements about the most adequate environmental management and regional development policies (neves, 2009). the majority of the economic pressures and development conflicts have occurred in the brazilian section of the pantanal region, where the ecosystems have been impacted by uncontrolled urban and agroindustrial expansion in the surrounding plateaus, as well as to the intensification of agriculture production, tourism and recreation activities, and the use of agrochemicals within the floodplain itself (alho et al ., 1988). native vegetation has been increasingly removed to make space for artificial pastures, which occurred together with other problems such as illegal hunting, unsustainable tourism and the use of fire as an (unlawful) land management technique. due to the introduction of exotic pastures, the pantanal floodplain has lost already 17 percent of its original vegetation (harris et al., 2005) and between 2002 and 2008 the rate of deforestation (713 km2/year) was proportionally higher than in the amazon region (statistics from deter/inpe, published by brasil, 2010). in addition, around 115 new hydropower schemes are under construction or being planned in the brazilian side of the uprb, though the local and the cumulative impacts of such structures are still not properly understood. however, there are some preliminary evidences of serious disruption caused by the operation of hydropower dams (zeilhofer & moura, 2009). all those pressures lead junk & cunha (2005, p. 392) to declare the pantanal at a crossroads, in the sense that “increasing economic and political pressure requires fundamental decisions to be made in the near future.” 124 | climate change and its discontents the above challenges have been magnified by the likelihood of disturbances in the regional climate due to global warming. the scientific community has actually identified a series of potential consequences that are going to follow climate change in south america, which includes the salinisation and desertification of agriculture land, the savanisation of forested areas and a reduced availability of water (ipcc, 2007). marengo et al. (2010) produced future scenarios of climatic change with the use of three regional climate models (hadrm3p, eta ccs and regcm3) and indicate a trend of reduction in precipitation (according to one model) and high probability of increase in temperature through the whole year (according to the three models) in the central region of brazil. marengo et al. (2012) have also estimated likely changes to the la plata river basin (which contains the uprb) between 2011-2040 and an increase of 1.8oc in the annual temperature (1.2oc in the summer and 1.8oc in the winter) and a reduction in annual rainfall of 2.1 percent (-0.7 percent in the summer and -11.9 percent in the winter, which is the dry season). however, these results seem to contradict the tendency of higher flows in the paraguay basin since the 1970s (collischonn et al., 2001), and the expected increase in soil erosion in some areas of the pantanal due to rainfall changes (querner et al., 2005). more important than the disagreement among hydrologists and climatologists about the course of environmental impacts, climate change is expected to aggravate existing shortcomings in the access, use and conservation of natural resources, as well as to further challenge the already hesitant environmental policies and regulatory enforcement in the three countries. to understand these even more perverse consequences of climate change, it is important to briefly revisit recent economic development and the evolving relations of production in the region (barkin, 2009). the conversion of the uplands into large plantation farms in the brazilian section of the uprb commenced in the 1960s with the expansion of the agriculture frontier, which was fuelled by heavy subsidies and federal government investments in technology and infrastructure (railways, roads and grain storage capacity). government agencies were responsible for providing credit, conducting agronomic research and disseminating technologies through rural extension. large landowners were the main beneficiaries of economic development, at the expense of the demands of low-income, disenfranchised social groups (ioris, 2012). such an expansionist process continued in the following decades, but since the neoliberal reforms of the brazilian state in the 1990s it observed a more market-oriented approach and the consolidation of the agribusiapproaches and responses to climate change: | 125 ness sector in the plateaus that surround the pantanal. the growth of agribusiness has reinforced a dualistic model of development that favours plantation farmers and modern cattle ranchers and discriminates against the majority of the rural and urban population (rossetto, 2004). the adoption of capital intensive agriculture in recent years never affected the overarching pattern of inequality, but has merely led to the fragmentation of the old farms and the reconcentration of land in the hands of newcomers (araújo, 2006). what is important for the purpose of this paper is that, without fundamental reforms in the structure of production and without more inclusive public policies, there is a serious risk that the impending consequences of climate change will unevenly affect different social groups, both aggravating the hardship already experienced by low-income sectors and siphoning the results of adaptation and mitigation measures to those who benefit more from current economic trends. in order to go beyond narrow development and conservation debates, it is necessary to account for a range of highly politicised issues at the intersection between interpersonal relations and socioeconomic pressures (ioris, 2013). whenever the responses to climate change are formulated according to the demands of agribusiness and other hegemonic sectors, these may help to mitigate climate change at the regional scale, but are also expected to produce socioeconomic distortions and result in additional socioecological risks. for instance, deprived communities are more likely to live in unsafe areas along the river courses, have more difficulty to adapt to a changing environment and fewer opportunities to influence governmental decisions (even when formal channels of consultation and participation exist, such as catchment committees and park advisory councils). despite the obvious complexity of climate change issues, so far most of the public debate in the region has remained too focused on the physical consequences of climatic alterations and has dedicated less attention to the underlying social inequalities that magnify negative impacts and prevent the formulation of fair mitigation measures. official publications in particular tend to concentrate on legal, administrative and technological issues, but fail to acknowledge the profound, politicised interconnections between development pressures and socionatural relations (e.g. in paraguay by the secretariat of the environment [seam], n/d, and in brazil by the strategic issues nucleus [nae], 2005). ostrom (2012) observes that the conventional explanation of the sources of climate change is largely confined to the uncontrolled outcomes of economic development, lack of scientific information and 126 | climate change and its discontents an inadequate environmental regulation, but without sufficiently addressing the also important socio-political and institutional issues. following her advice, this paper aims to review, from a critical social sciences perspective, the pillars of main responses to climate change and the concrete experience in the uprb. the next pages will contend that most of the current approaches have combined, not always in a coherent fashion, different elements of the international policy framework. the different responses identified through the research reflect contrasting rationalities of environmental conservation, social inclusion and the mitigation of climatic risks. our discussion is based on research carried out in 2010-2012, which included 45 interviews with government officials (8 interviews), civil society representatives (12), academics (10) and business sectors (15), as well as the analysis of policies and documentation and the attendance of public events, meetings and workshops. interviews were transcribed, coded and analysed in portuguese and spanish and only the extracts reproduced in this paper were translated into english. before examining the achievements and weaknesses of the various responses to climate change – to be honest, still in an embryonic stage of development in the uprb – a review of ideal-type approaches or paradigms within contemporary climate debates will be first introduced. approaches and responses to climate change because of the number of sectors and issues involved, the policy arrangements developed for dealing with climate change in any country are prone to be complex and multifaceted. normally, the approaches of governments and civil society organisations combine a range of interpretations of climate change scenarios, which are influenced by the specific socio-political and ecological circumstances. therefore, a clear appreciation of interactions, uncertainty and contested knowledge, as well as the interdependency among diverse and unequal interests, is required (fish et al., 2010). policy responses are not restricted to the economic and legal domains, but represent adjustments in a range of social institutions. institutions are here understood as legislation, norms, cognitive frames and meaning systems that guide human action and structure social interactions (hall & soskice, 1996). in sociological terms, institutions are “the formative products of an amalgamation of factors, just as they themselves can and do influence such factors” (thynne, 2008, p. 239). institutional responses must be seen as norms that shape action, frame identities, affect the realisation of problems and influence decisions approaches and responses to climate change: | 127 and solutions. such responses are not purely rational or technical, but include a range of actions that are culturally determined and constantly renegotiated between groups of interest. in the context of the climate change debate, o’riordan & jordan (1999) describe institutions as the multitude of means for holding society together. the rationale behind the different reactions to the threats of climate change are both informed by the institutional arrangements and materialised through modifications in social institutions. therefore, institutional responses go beyond the simple dichotomy between ‘adaptation’ and ‘mitigation’, but it is necessary to consider the wider variety of interpretations and reactions to climate change (füssel & klein, 2006). the first approach to be mentioned is the scepticism about the origins and possible consequences of climatic change as discussed under the unfccc. on the one hand, the intergovernmental panel on climate change [ipcc] and other international organisations have presented compelling data, within the margin of errors of the established scientific methods that indicate the existence of anthropogenic causes behind contemporary climate change. for instance, hydrological changes seem unequivocal, as well as the reduction in glaciers and in the rate of snow cover due to human-made global warming (as included in the ipcc’s fifth assessment report published in 2013). on the other hand, despite of such mounting scientific evidence and concerted international efforts, there is still significant scepticism, particularly among radical right-wing political groups, about the actual causes of climatic change. climate scepticism refers to a sense of climate ‘denialism’ or ‘contrarianism’ that has recently been very much in the media spotlight, especially because of the unauthorised publication, november 2009, of emails exchanged between scientists that exposed their doubts climate change evidence (nerlich, 2010). sceptics argue that it is not possible to demonstrate, beyond doubt, that the progressive warming of the planet does not have natural causes (poortinga et al., 2011). in practice, climate scepticism has been a convenient and prominent institutional response to the climate change demands. this argument has been particularly useful for lobbyists representing the interests of those sectors that are directly responsible for large emissions of ghgs (e.g. oil industry, timber producers, energy generation, etc.), particularly after the 2008 global financial crisis that has put extra pressure on tight national budgets. it is important to realise that, although the number of sceptical scientists and opinion-makers is small, their presence in the international discussion gives a misleading impression that the debate is evenly split between 128 | climate change and its discontents those that believe and those that dispute the anthropogenic causes of climatic change. the perverse result is that climate sceptics have had a growing influence on governments unwilling to spend resources and political capital on the adjustments required to cope with climate change. the second approach discussed here includes measures associated with market or market-like transactions. in order to achieve the stabilisation of ghg concentrations, economists have recommended the allocation of appropriate emission reduction responsibilities among nations or administrative units that should be implemented through market-based mechanisms (jepma & munasinghe, 1998). such an approach is based on the claims that a global optimisation of ghg emissions can only secure techno-economic efficiency through market or market-like transactions (bührs, 2010). in theory, the abatement of emissions must be pursued up to the level where the margin benefit of reducing emissions of ghgs by one additional unit is equal to the marginal cost of curbing such emissions (davoudpour & ahadi, 2006). this sort of institutional response – that constitutes a main inspiration for public policies and is indeed the main driver of the climate change diplomacy nowadays – is directly influenced by the application of the neoclassical economic theory to the study of environmental degradation (ioris, 2010). according to environmental economists, monetary valuation can guide the choice among numerous potential methods of improving the quantity and the reliability of environmental management. for instance, global wetlands are redefined as providers of ecosystem services, which can be quantified in monetary terms at as much as us$ 20,000 per hectare (keddy et al., 2009). however, it must also be observed that the reduction of wider socioeconomic and environmental processes to a set of independent utility functions has become an important source of criticism levied against environmental economists. anthoff & tol (2010) specifically argue that the standard calculation of the costs of emissions and impacts is inadequate, because it presumes a global welfare function that ignores the differences between poor and rich countries. these authors recommend that the national government should value impacts in other regions of the world when computing a social cost of carbon that could be used in domestic cost benefit analysis. this sort of methodological adjustment, nonetheless, still fails to remove the reductionist basis of environmental economics. methodologies adopted by environmental economists tend to restrict the reaction to climate change to the narrow determination of economic costs, benefits and effects. economic-centred measures fall short of addressing the mounting conflicts and negative impacts associated with the emission of ghgs, as approaches and responses to climate change: | 129 well as the recognition of differential responsibilities. bromley (1991) submits that, instead of focusing on the economic use of resources only, the solution to environmental problems requires first of all the determination of collective standards of performance that can reward individual initiative, experimentation and efficiency, as discussed next. another common response – third in our list – that has attracted great attention is systematic adaptation based on ’experimentation‘, that is, through a constant reassessment of initiatives and results (arvai et al., 2006). systematic adaptation, at the regional and global scales, is posited as an interactive process that aims to transform social relations by creating new knowledge, networks and partnership among interdependent actors. it is described as essentially a form of learning-by-doing, a mechanism by which responses are negotiated, implemented and jointly evaluated by those involved. the process is often initiated as a result of several factors, such as a perceived environmental threat or crisis (e.g. climate change), a new regulatory demand or the availability of financial incentives. at this point, stakeholders begin to appreciate their interdependence, the need to act together and the importance of redesigning social institutions (gupta et al ., 2010). subsequently, the participating organisations focus on desirable future conditions as well as the underlying values, beliefs and principles that will guide them towards their joint ambitions and aspirations. this tends to be followed by a structuring phase in which specific goals and objectives are established, programmes of activities are designed, and roles and responsibilities are assigned to the various participating organisations and groups (glaas et al., 2010). systematic adaptation (or adaptive management) is essentially part of the broader agenda of environmental governance that permeates contemporary policy-making (mitchell & breen, 2007). governance represents a means of describing and analysing new regulatory arrangements and institutional configurations whereby roles and responsibilities for governing are shared among state-based entities and actors operating beyond the boundaries of formal government. governance, instead of conventional government, is described as the pursuit of more flexible strategies and mechanisms of public administration to accomplish policy goals, realise values and manage environmental risks and impacts (howlett and rayner, 2006). it includes different ‘modes of governance’ aiming at raising awareness, influencing personal and group behaviour and involving social actors in decision-making (treib et al., 2007). conventional distinctions and boundaries that previously defined statemarket-civil society relations have become blurred as different combi130 | climate change and its discontents nations of actors have become engaged in the pursue of environmental governance and, ultimately, adaptive management (dengler, 2007; engle and lemos, 2010). huitema et al. (2009) even recommend that the theory of adaptive management can be even reconceptualised as ‘adaptive comanagement’, which is based on collaboration in a polycentric governance system. notwithstanding the appealing discourse, the argument of adaptive management (and the related endorsement of environmental governance type of solutions) has the serious weakness of diluting the accountability for the causes of climatic change and the uneven distribution of impacts. for instance, government initiatives in the uk have stimulated a further set of actions at other scales in public agencies, regulatory agencies and regional government (and the devolved administrations), though with little real evidence of climate change adaptation initiatives trickling down to local government level (tompkins et al., 2010). that has seriously undermined the ability of systematic adaptation to face the challenging and contested nature of climate change challenges, which gives room for the next two institutional responses. the fourth main paradigm to be analysed is the architecture of entitlements. most of the responses formulated today by governments and multilateral organisations have tried to overcome climate change scepticism, but have been largely trapped in the narrow debate between, on the one side, a management discourse based on a technocratic worldview and neo-malthusian prejudices against poor populations, and, on the other side, a populist argument portraying local actors as the victims of external interventions (who should be somehow incorporated into the formulation of mitigation approaches) but without much consideration of the historical inequalities in the access to resources (adger et al., 2001). therefore, adger & kelly (1999) suggest that responses to climate change should follow the lens of entitlements, an approach based on the argument that deprived conditions, such as famine, are caused by the lack of access to food rather than a lack of food availability (sen, 1981). the line of reasoning is that the extent to which groups and communities are entitled to use resources determines their ability to cope with and adapt to climatic stress. consequently, the focus should shift towards the determination of entitlements and obligations among the parties involved in the use and conservation of natural resources. this fourth approach brings attention to how entitlements are defined and contested, and also the wider political and socioeconomic aspects of environmental management. “the factors which deterapproaches and responses to climate change: | 131 mine levels of social vulnerability define how the pattern of access to resources is constructed; this construction can be termed the ‘architecture of entitlements’” (adger and kelly, 1999, p. 256). instead of the exogenous preferences and costless social contracting claimed by neoclassical environmental economists, the institutional structure of entitlements (i.e. property or liabilities) directly influences the nature of the bargaining process between two or more parties. in spite of the more comprehensive understanding of the climate change dilemmas, the formulation of responses based on the theory of entitlements seems still to miss the deeper connections between local exchanges and globalised scales of interaction. devereux (2001) directly condemns the architecture of entitlements approach for its methodological individualism and its privileging of economic aspects above socio-political determinants. without recognising such associations between local and global politics, there is the risk of atomistic and technocratic solutions that normally end up falling under the hegemonic influence of environmental economics and environmental governance. finally, this schematic review needs to include a fifth institutional response to the threats of climate change that is more closely associated with grassroots activists and the campaigners of environmental justice. the emerging climate justice movement focuses on the politicised interactions between climate change threats and the erosion of social and economic rights. haines & reichman (2008) argue that fair approaches to climate change require understanding the strengths and limitations of conventional environmental policy-making. for those authors it is necessary to tease apart the intricacies of international law and governance to find ways to turn economic, legal, and cultural norms toward creating climate justice. the basic claim is that the creation and funding of international institutions for adaptation or mitigation to climate change inescapably involve questions of justice (harris and symons, 2010). because of the perceived discrimination and injustices that are maintained or aggravated by the responses to climate change, the global movement on climate justice has criticised the ineffectiveness of top-down responses, as well as the new spaces for capital accumulation created by the expansion of ‘green capitalism’, that is, the accumulation of capital that benefits from the environmental crisis itself (dawson, 2010). the fairness element of the fifth area of institutional response implies that climate change should be related, in a transformative way, with the problems of poverty and marginalisation in the south and overconsumption and fuel dependence in the north. according to such line 132 | climate change and its discontents of argument, the lack of effective responses to the risks posed by climate change grew almost inevitably from global inequalities, which has perpetuated highly inconsistent ways of thinking and dealing with shared risks (parks and roberts, 2010). consequently, it is contended by climate justice authors that the reaction to anthropogenic global warming should target human welfare rather than provide compensation to states (seen as the primary responsible for unchecked ghg emissions) and should be funded through measures that impose similar emission costs on affluent people in both developed and developing countries. also inequalities within the same groups reinforce the importance of finding common ground between the development and climate justice agendas, as well as to reconcile the conflicting messages and objectives of civil society (parks and roberts, 2010). the above overview of the five main approaches or institutional responses to the challenges related to climate change – see table 1 – will now inform our examination of the institutional context in the three countries that contain the uprb and the pantanal in south america. table 1: approaches to climate change: a schematic overview of the bibliography approach or institutional response main reasoning claims and approaches examples of responses and policy implications climate scepticism denial of the anthropogenic causes of climate change major scientific uncertainty remaining and the disproportionate cost of precautionary measures no change in existing environmental and economic policies; ’wait and see’; maintain carbon intensive economic development marketisation measures neoclassical economics principles; solutions through the market assessment of the monetary value of ecosystem services and the costs of ghg reduction market-based responses; carbon trading and carbon taxes; adoption of schemes such as redd and other forms of payment for ecosystem services systematic adaptation continuous revaluation of initiatives and technologies search for better environmental governance and technological improvements interactive responses; tentative initiatives and heuristic examination of results; constant adjustments and improvements approaches and responses to climate change: | 133 architecture of entitlements equity between countries, groups and individuals acknowledgement of the social construction of resource scarcity and vulnerability clarification of entitlements and obligations of all parties involved in terms of access to natural resources and the distribution of impacts climate justice criticism of unfair production and distribution patterns denunciation of the exploitation of society and the rest of nature struggle for a compensation for past and present inequalities; fulfilment of the demands of the more vulnerable social groups assessing approaches to climate change in the uprb the preceding review of the literature on the approaches and responses to the risks posed by anthropogenic climate change should help to understand the socio-political context and the institutional dilemmas currently affecting the management of the uprb and the pantanal region. our analysis should first recognise that the uprb does not figure very high in the list of climate change priorities of brazil, bolivia or paraguay. on the contrary, in those three countries scientists and policymakers have mostly concentrated their attention to other biomes (such as the amazon, the andes and the chaco, respectively). as observed in some of our interviews: “as a matter of fact, there is no specific legislation for the uprb [concerning climate change], because the priority has been the amazon. most national policies are focused on monitoring and deforestation, which means that there are no local policies [for the uprb] either.” (environmental regulator, brazil, jul 2011) “i think that the main obstacle is the lack of financial resources, but also the difficulty to establish alliances with other organisations due to the bureaucracy that characterises public agencies. also there are no clear guidelines to inform the cooperation between organisations and how these can help the implementation of existing policies.” (ecologist, bolivia, sep 2011) it means that the institutional framework for dealing with climate change in the pantanal region are mainly the residue of the public policies primarily intended for some other geographical areas in the three countries. that situation represents a considerable ‘policy-making gap’ 134 | climate change and its discontents that, in the end, has tended to undermine the advance of climate change policies within each country and between countries. the marginalisation of the region in the structures of policy-making also brings us a particular analytical difficulty, given that the current research had to deal with subtle evidences and limited information likewise, it is also important to acknowledge the existence of strong elements of climate scepticism in the region, which still permeate many development strategies of governments and the stronger socioeconomic sectors. although the ecological value of the pantanal wetlands and its surrounding plateaus are mentioned in official discourses and corporate publications, there has been significant hesitation to effectively tackle the prospects of climate change in the uprb. that is clearly demonstrated by the delay to organise formal state regulation and to engage civil society in the aspects of the public debate that are specific relevant for coping with climate change risks. after recognising the secondary importance of the region for national policy-making purposes and the persistence of climate change scepticism, it should be possible to analyse the institutional responses actually considered for the uprb. referring back to the literature review in the preceding pages, we can verify that the climate change action in the three countries has been essentially a hybrid combination of different approaches (hence the importance of the description of those five approaches). we can start our examination with brazil, the country that includes most of the pantanal and the uprb territory. it is worth remembering, at least in symbolic terms, that the signature of the climate change convention happened in brazil during the united nations conference on environment and development, which took place in rio de janeiro in 1992. two years later, in 1994, the convention was ratified by the brazilian congress and allowed its implementation by the national state. because of its federal configuration, the reactions to climate change had to be shared between the central government and the state (provincial) administrations, as well as by thousands of municipal authorities (cole, 2009). the two states that contain the brazilian section of the river basin (mato grosso and mato grosso do sul) have followed the example of the national government and instituted a preliminary structure of policy-making for dealing with climate change, although the approval of state legislation has proven controversial. for instance, mato grosso has a climate change forum since 2009, but the activities have produced limited results and serious disagreements led to the departure of some key organisations from the forum (such as the amazon environmental approaches and responses to climate change: | 135 research institute, ipam, in june 2010, which published an ‘open letter’ denouncing the hesitation to effectively face up to the challenges related to climate change in mato grosso). based on our interviews and on the analysis of the documentation, it was possible to ascertain that most of the institutional responses formulated in the brazilian section of the uprb seem to gravitate around systematic adaptation measures, particularly related to new agriculture production technologies and the expansion of hydropower energy. probably the most relevant element of adaptive management is the improvement of agriculture practices as a strategy to reduce ghg emissions. techniques such as no-tillage, crop rotation and perennial crops have the potential to store more carbon in the soil and help to mitigate the risks of climate change; at the same time, those practices can also contribute to conserve soil and water resources at the catchment level (tollefson, 2010). in mato grosso do sul, a new law passed in 2010 (no. 3,951) introduced green certification of products as means to induce carbon capture in the soil through new agriculture practices. also in 2010, the federal government launched the programme ‘low carbon agriculture’ (abc), which provides financial incentives for the adoption of techniques such as no-tillage, reforestation and cattle-cropforest integration. because of the scale of the agribusiness sector, both mato grosso and mato grosso do sul are important areas for the abc programme and farmers in those states have expressed their satisfaction with the funds already made available by the national government (valor econômico, 2011). similar reductions in terms of ghg emissions are supposed to be obtained from the operation of additional hydropower plants in the uprb (although in this case localised impacts are typically associated with the construction and operation of hydroelectric schemes). historically, most of the electricity generation in brazil has come from hydropower plants, but until lately the uprb had not been a priority area for the construction of energy schemes (ioris, 2012). in addition to those initiatives, the last decade, there has been a concerted emphasis in translating environmental economic principles into policy-making in brazil. the main goal is to assess the monetary value of the impacts of climate change and formulate financial incentives to reduce the emission of ghgs. that follows what was described above as ‘marketisation measures’, that is, the application of solutions to environmental problems to foster economic rationality and promote management efficiency. in december 2009 a new legislation was passed in the country instituting the national policy on climate change, which 136 | climate change and its discontents included, among many other clauses, the creation of the ‘brazilian emission reduction market’ (mbre). this initiative is aimed to manage carbon emission trade in the country and is supposed to operate through the normal stock market channels. likewise, the national climate change fund (fnmc) was also established in 2009 to raise funds to be applied in the concession of loans and in the financial support (non-reimbursable) to projects aimed at climate change mitigation and adaptation. the pursuit of economic instruments became the new face of the policy-making related to climate change in brazil. for instance, viglizzo & frank (2006) calculate that the ecosystem services in pantanal has the highest gross annual value of ecosystem services in the plata basin (us$ 5,726.9/ha/ year), which would serve as justification for the conversion of such services into monetary payments to those involved in their conservation. initiatives related to emission trading have increasingly encouraged the production of biofuel, such as ethanol and biodiesel, in the agriculture areas the surround the pantanal. an association of the biofuel producers of mato grosso do sul, known as biosul, was already organised to represent the sector at the local and national levels. despite the technological advances achieved under institutional responses that follow the rationale of systematic adaptation and marketisation, it is also important to observe the narrowness of those initiatives, especially in terms of the unevenness of the actual beneficiaries. considering together, the above institutional responses to climate change in brazil can be blamed for having followed the same pattern of public subsidies being channelled to the stronger and better organised economic sectors, at the expense of more inclusive and publicly accessible strategies. not surprisingly, both systematic adaptation and marketisation measures were repeatedly criticised in our interviews with by brazilian academics and ngo activists. the main criticism is that technological improvements alone are likely to reinforce the same pattern of socioeconomic inequalities and concentrated land tenure, which in itself constitutes a serious contradiction in policies that are supposed to deal with a universal problem (i.e. the effects of climate change). in addition, there are serious suspicions of corruption related to the granting of environmental licences to new hydropower schemes, which motivated the creation of a parliamentary enquire commission in the state assembly of mato grosso in march 2011. as pointed out in one interview, the consequences of climate change in the region are becoming increasingly evident (although that is yet difficult to demonstrate with the scant climatological data available), but it has mainly penalised the less well off in society: approaches and responses to climate change: | 137 “the most vulnerable populations in the uprb, like fishermen and collectors are already suffering the negative impacts of climatic changes. extreme events, such as years with serious droughts and also floods have really impacted the life of local communities, particularly in terms of their infrastructure and social organisation.” (member of a local ngo, brazil, jun 2011) if in brazilian the institutional responses to climate change have largely operated within a technocratic and business-friendly framework, the comparable initiatives in bolivia have followed a different pattern under the government of president evo morales. until his election in 2005, bolivia used to adhere to the recommendations of the mainstream climate change community, essentially in favour of mitigation measures influenced by the principles of environmental economics. similarly to the brazilian experience in the period, the 1990s were a decade of intense institutional reform in bolivia, which attempted to restructure the economy along neoliberal lines. even a few months before the unexpected electoral result, the previous national government passed a hydrocarbon law and other pieces of legislation aimed to regulate the activity of national and international private operators, mainly interested in exploring the abundant gas reserves of bolivia. with the victory of morales, however, bolivia took a more independent, and confrontational, attitude regarding the implementation of the climate change convention. the main tone of the institutional responses to climate change under morales has been the affirmation of the architecture of the entitlements, but in a way that realign that architecture to better distribute resource entitlements amongst the population according to climate justice concerns. in the last few years, the government has passed a series of laws that established large reserve areas for the settlement of indigenous groups and poor peasants, which contradicts the interests of agribusiness and other dominant economic groups. furthermore, bolivia has become a vocal opponent of the dominant framework for climate change negotiations, as its diplomatic interventions have constantly denounced mainstream climate change negotiations as neocolonial practices (de angelis, 2011). in the end, the institutional responses advanced by the bolivian government have increasingly incorporated elements of climate justice. for example, at the climate change summit in 2009, the bolivian government joined a coalition of smaller state and non-state actors that push for main concessions from the central economic countries. morales 138 | climate change and its discontents went to cop-15 in copenhagen and proposed that northern capitalist economies should fund mitigation and adaptation mechanisms in other countries to pay for their “ecological debt with future generations and the rest of the world” (published at www.presidencia.gob.bo/discursos. php). bolivia declined to endorse the final agreement and called for an alternative summit “to defend mother earth, which is under attack from the irrational politics of industrialisation of the developed nations.” that was named the world people’s conference on climate change and the rights of mother earth, which took place in cochabamba in april 2010 and was attended by around thirty thousand activists from dozens of countries. at the end of the conference, the “agreement of peoples” on earth day was signed, which exhorted the major powers to join the kyoto protocol, called for a global referendum on climate change and pushed for the creation of an international climate change court. later in the same year, morales was one of the most critical voices during the cop-16 in mexico, when bolivia was the only country that refused to sign the cancun accord and denounced its vagueness. the result is that the bolivian government has raised a distinct voice in the international arena and galvanised the dissatisfaction of traditionally marginalised groups not only in south america, but also around the world. morales derives legitimacy for his autonomous stance on climate change partly from his recent re-election in 2009 and partly from the input of the bolivian platform against climate change, a network of over 180 organised groups. the change of discourse by the national government under morales has had repercussions for the mobilisation and intervention of civil society organisations, which have directly called for a combination of alternative technologies and the fulfilment of civil rights (e.g. centre of investigation and peasantry promotion [cipca], 2009). interestingly, despite its confrontational policy, the bolivian government has also paradoxically welcomed initiatives more closely associated with the creation of carbon markets and other forms of payments for ecosystem services. in particular, bolivia is one of the priority countries for the implementation of redd, the un programme on the reduction of emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries. the signature of an agreement with redd by the morales government in september 2010 – it is a pilot project which aims to strengthen institutional capacities and test the redd framework; the project involves us$ 4.7 million in financing and support from the world bank and german international cooperation – was inescapably seen by many climate justice activists as a form of political betrayal to the very political platforms approaches and responses to climate change: | 139 advanced by morales (benton-connell, 2011). such institutional complexity and apparent inconsistency of the bolivian responses to climate change was mentioned in an interview: “the main obstacle for dealing with climate change is still the lack of political will, and the harmful influence of the business sector. there are strong economic interests involved in this whole debate.” (environmental ngo activist, bolivia, sep 2011). the situation of paraguay is at an intermediate position between the approaches taken by brazil and bolivia in recent years (and probably closer to marketisation measures than climate justice). paraguay translated the climate change convention into national legislation in 1993 and in the year 2000 a regulatory system was introduced under the coordination of seam. also in 2000 a national ghg inventory was published and identified the main emission sectors (despite the limited amount of data available). although the pantanal wetland only occupies a small percentage of the country, most of its economic activity depends heavily on navigation along the paraguay river and the impacts of climate change are likely to pose a significant threat to the operation of international waterways (what was mentioned in various interviews and seems to be one of the main areas of concern among paraguayans). despite those serious consequences of climate change, in practical terms, the institutional framework developed so far in paraguay has proven very feeble and inadequate to deal with major politico-economic pressures that insist on the maintenance of conventional forms of production and natural resource exploitation. at the same time that various initiatives have been advanced in terms of alternative agriculture, forestry and energy technologies (programa de las naciones unidas para el desarrollo [pnud], 2007), the agribusiness sector continues to expand due to the rising prices of agriculture commodities in global markets. furthermore, the country has most of its electric energy generated from hydropower (i.e. the massive itaipu dam on the border with brazil), but the demand for oil and the high rates of deforestation remain a serious challenge in terms of ghg emission reduction. the institutional contradictions of the climate change responses formulated in paraguay are demonstrated in the following statement: “there is a need to revise and consolidate the institutional approaches in the whole river basin [i.e. uprb]. there is an agency responsible for 140 | climate change and its discontents climate change in paraguay, but the dissemination of information is very poor. (...) the large agribusiness firms are able to use new technologies that help them to cope with climate change, but the small farmers don’t have any access.” (academic, paraguay, sep 2011). it is relevant to mention also that the treaty which established mercosul (or mercosur) was signed in asuncion, paraguay, in 1991. mercosul is the new economic block between south american countries that intended to eliminate tariff and non-tariff restrictions on imports. the agreement included a series of legal instruments on environmental regulation and policy-making, which have the primary goal of harmonising environmental legislation. one of its administrative units is the common market group (gmc), which passed resolutions on various environmental matters (for example, the resolution 9/91 on gas emissions and acceptable levels of pollution). negotiation between member states on environmental issues have in fact represented an important element of the cross-country cooperation, but have also revealed the weaknesses of the mercosul environmental policies (morosini, 2010). in addition to the domestic difficulties to coordinate the different levels of government and engage the non-governmental sectors in a sustainable management of the pantanal region, the achievement of genuine trans-boundary integration has also proved very problematic. despite a reiterated commitment for cooperation at the high level of south american geopolitics, on the ground there have been frequent clashes between nation states, such as the increase in the price of the natural gas exported from bolivia to brazil (through pipelines that cross the pantanal). likewise, changes in land use impact the river flow regime and has harmful consequences for paraguay, located downstream of brazil and bolivia. international negotiators insist on a convergence of institutional responses, but in practice economic disputes and a weak civil society seem to largely undermine the efforts of dealing with climate change in the region. conclusion this brief assessment on the responses to climate change risks in the uprb shows the fragility of the institutional framework that currently deals with the conservation and sustainable use of the pantanal wetland and its surrounding, upland areas. the timid measures taken so far to deal with the consequences of climate change have clearly reflected approaches and responses to climate change: | 141 hegemonic economic and political influences in the three countries that share the river basin, especially form the agribusiness sector. it is possible to verify that most government initiatives in brazil and paraguay have combined systematic adaptation (particularly in terms of technology amelioration) and, more recently, the influence of marketisation approaches (e.g. carbon trading and redd). the bolivian government has tried to implement a more autonomous and critical programme of measures associated with climate justice, but the experience has not prevented the adhesion to mainstream initiatives such as the redd project. in addition, the uprb continues to occupy only a secondary position in the national climate change priorities of the three countries and local political leaders have been unable to influence the formulation of legislation and policies. this situation represents not only a significant obstacle for doing social sciences research on climate change responses, but the slow implementation of those measures in the region also suggests that the pantanal wetland and the uprb remain relatively marginalised in the formulation of environmental policies and even in the environmental diplomacy between brazil, bolivia and paraguay. the threats of climate change for the uprb have failed to capture the imagination of most environmental policy-maker and politicians, while the mobilisation of the private sector has also been reluctant or opportunistic. the demand for energy, natural resources and commodity production represent major pressure over biological processes and have been pursued with little consideration of the needs of the lowincome population and the opinion of grassroots groups. the regional experience is a case in point of the inherent limitations of the institutional reforms and the contradictory influences of neoclassical economics on the ongoing reorganisation of the environmental sector. instead of promoting a genuine change in public policies, the new approaches have largely preserved the hegemonic interests of landowners, industrialists, construction companies and real estate investors, at the expense of the majority of the population and the recovery of ecological systems. the crux of the matter has been the persistent inability of governments and of the representative of the hegemonic sectors to formulate more inclusive and sound climate change policies. centralised, conventional approaches have ultimately perpetuated a situation of high socio-ecological vulnerability and institutional unpreparedness to cope with climate change. the more recent attitude of the bolivian government has represented a contrasting voice in the international arena, but the same government has also accepted other mainstream mechanisms that are based on the 142 | climate change and its discontents monetisation of costs and benefits. at the same time, formal public participation forums created in the brazilian section of the uprb have been a little more than a formality and have not avoided internal political friction. the climate change debate in paraguay is still in its infancy, despite the risks posed to the navigation and socio-economy, and the country has systematically lagged behind the developments in the other two upstream nations. taking together the current situation in the three countries, it is possible to identify only modest sings of institutional improvement in the uprb region and many questions are left unanswered. the perverse irony is that climate change in the uprb seems still a very 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(2009). hydrological changes in the northern pantanal caused by the manso dam: impact analysis and suggestions for mitigation. ecological engineering, 35(1), 105-117. approaches and responses to climate change: | 147 148 | climate change and its discontents brazilian dystopia: development and climate change mitigation garry potter1, jun mian chen2, nazar hilal3 abstract: the amazonian rainforest is an area of particular ecological importance to the world. and it is mainly its deforestation, rather than the usual combination of the carbonized energy and transport economic sectors, which make brazil the world’s fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases. brazil, with its political and diplomatic alliances with russia, india, china and south africa also occupies a prominent position in the complex negotiations with developed countries over the manner in which the “right to development” is defined and understood on the one hand, and then, on the other, balanced with ecological concerns. there are many such concerns but the focus of this article is climate change mitigation. the “dystopia thesis” concludes that humanity faces a plethora of imminent inter-related crises in complex feedback loops. it also concludes that these problems cannot be solved, or even sufficiently ameliorated, from within the context of capitalist reform, or at least not so as to avoid suffering on a colossal scale. this extremely broad, abstract theoretical conclusion, is examined empirically in this article in the particular case of the relationship between the brazilian economy and the development of the amazon on the one hand, and climate change mitigation efforts on the other. the examination provides further evidence for the dystopia thesis’s most pessimistic conclusions. for our own well being, indeed our very survival, we must protect the amazonian rainforest; but we are not going to be able to do so with mechanisms functioning within the context of the present world political economy. 1 garry potter is associate professor of sociology at wilfrid laurier university. he is the author of several books including dystopia: what is to be done? as well as filmmaker of the documentary by the same name. more recently he has made another documentary film: whispers of revolution, available for viewing online at www.whisperofrevolution.org 2 jun mian chen is a master’s student at the department of sociology, wilfred laurier university. 3 nazar hilal is a master’s student at the department of sociology, wilfred laurier university. http://www.whisperofrevolution.org brazilian dystopia | 149 introduction “there are no environmental solutions to environmental problems, only social, economic and political ones.” charles secret, friends of the earth this article will examine climate change with a focus on brazil, deploying a framework we call the “dystopia thesis.” climate change is, of course, not only brazil’s problem but the world’s. the dystopia thesis predicts a dystopian future for humanity, with many different forms, shades and degrees of horror among the possible futures. perhaps the worst of these possibilities is a global eco-catastrophe, arising from runaway global warming beyond the point wherein checking it is still a possibility. this is a global problem but brazil will play a key role: either in climate change exacerbation or its mitigation. the general argument of what we are calling “the dystopia thesis” will be summarized in the first section of the article but the principal focus will be upon how it applies to brazil. there are a number of reasons for this. the dystopia thesis identifies a great many currently existing ills, as well as offering predictions. brazil is afflicted by many of them. world socio-economic inequality is a key feature of the dystopia thesis and in the brazilian case it is simultaneously a causal force and a humanly suffered result. brazil wishes to economically develop; one could say that brazil needs to economically develop, if only to mitigate some of the suffering accompanying the poverty of a sizable portion of its population (21.4 percent of its population lives below the poverty line and 4.2 percent are below the “extreme poverty line” according to the cia world factbook, 2013). but economic development and the exploitation of natural resources frequently comes into conflict with both local and global ecological imperatives, with global climate change being the most serious of these. this is true everywhere but it is particularly important because of the key role the amazon rain forest plays in the world’s eco-system. the second section of this article thus explains the ecological importance of the amazonian rain forest and the absolute necessity of its preservation. the third section of the article looks at the economic side of dystopia as manifest in the brazilian case. it considers both some of the realities of development and the “right to development” discourse of many developing nations, including brazil. brazil’s poor need the benefits of development; they need better health care and education to name but two. the rights of individuals to such can thus be argued as a nation’s 150 | climate change and its discontents “right to development”, as conflicts with the necessity to preserve the rainforest are diplomatically negotiated with the richer countries of the north. we examine this discourse and the realities of global capitalism that underlie it. the latter ensure, first of all, that virtually unbridled exploitation of the forest does take place. secondly, such structural realities ensure that the benefits of such development do not usually extend to the poor. and thirdly, that a more farsighted care and management of resources does not take place. in essence, there are structural causal forces producing amazonian dystopia. the next sections of the article deal with the drivers of rainforest destruction and the failures of capitalist solutions to these problems. the fourth section looks at the forest industry’s ecologically sustainable forestry practices certification programs and their failures. the fifth section looks at an even more powerful driver of destruction than forestry: the cattle industry. this section includes an examination of the way the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge in relation to this industry is given a dystopian twist. this article is in many senses a particularized application of the broader focus of what has been called “the dystopia thesis.” this argument has been articulated by one of the co-authors of this article elsewhere (potter, 2009, 2010a), including in the pages of this journal (potter, 2012). however, for the benefit of most readers who are probably unfamiliar with this argument, the first section here provides a synopsis. the dystopia thesis “if a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.” thomas hardy the dystopia thesis asserts that our collective human future will be one of poverty, disease and eco-nightmare: it will be an extreme dystopian reality beyond the imaginations of the writers of fiction. this is because the realities of the scope of human suffering are more than any single mind can grasp. dystopia is already here for perhaps as many as a billion people. it is here in the form of poverty in the extremes of famine and untreated treatable disease, infant and child mortality and in the incredible pain behind the disturbing statistics. it is here in the form of poorly paid dangerous and/or degrading work, including work done by children. it is here in all the various forms of pollution and is on track for getting worse. it is already here in war and terror and torture. brazilian dystopia | 151 but just as we can see various forms of pollution getting worse, dystopia is still just emerging. we can see it in the growing numbers of unemployed and the alienated under-employed. we can see the inevitable financial crises coming and going while the cutbacks in governmental (virtually every developed countries government) welfare programs and spending on health and education continue unabated. we can see the effects of global climate change beginning to emerge in unusual weather patterns and the increased frequency of hurricanes, droughts and floods. we can see the beginnings of resource shortages where water is beginning to rival oil as a pressurizing factor in the lead up to wars. on the other hand, we have had to live with some risks for such a long time that we have grown accustomed to them; we have begun to believe they are no longer with us. but the probabilities of nuclear war, for example, have increased rather than decreased. a constant in all of this is extreme socio-economic inequality. all the above problems are set in a context of structural causality. the world socio-economic political system directly or indirectly causes these problems or exacerbates them or prevents a serious viable long term solution to them being seriously attempted. structural causality is why the dystopia thesis repudiates any notion of “capitalism with a human face.” unemployment and social inequality, for example, are not contingent features of capitalism. they are intrinsic to it. unemployment rates may vary over time and from one country to another. they may rise or fall in relation to particular governmental policies. but the existence of unemployment is structurally built into the system; the existence of social inequality, and therefore poverty, is structurally built into the system. the developing nations’ need for their populations to have access to healthy diets, clean water, proper medical care and disease prevention, education and so on, their need for people to have the freedom to live happy fulfilled lives, will not become available through the current system’s developmental practices. they develop not only in such a way as to have devastating environmental impacts but so as to ensure inequality and injustice are maintained. humanity’s desire for social justice is linked in a complex but necessary way to our collective need to protect the environment. in this regard, the dystopia thesis broadly shares the marxist perspectives upon ecology of such writers as john bellamy foster and saral sarkar.4 it shares foster’s view that there is no third option; humanity faces 4 see for example foster, john bellamy. (2011). capitalism and degrowth: an impossibility theorem, monthly review, 62(8), 28-33, and saral sarkar. (1999). eco-socialism or eco-capitalism? a critical analysis of humanity’s fundamental choices. london: zed books. http://monthlyreview.org/author/johnbellamyfoster http://monthlyreview.org/2011/01/01/capitalism-and-degrowth-an-impossibility-theorem http://monthlyreview.org/2011/01/01/capitalism-and-degrowth-an-impossibility-theorem http://monthlyreview.org/archives/2011/volume-62-issue-08-january-2011 152 | climate change and its discontents a choice; it is either eco-socialism or barbarism. or in our language here: eco-socialism or dystopia. but though foster is correct that continual economic growth is necessary to capitalism we would disagree with foster, at least in part, with regards to potential for different kinds of growth in alternative systems. the dystopia thesis, with its very pessimism, posits as a potentiality its dialectical opposite: a different kind of development, one in harmony with, rather than against, nature. of course, there are resource shortages and other ecological limits to growth but the plunder of finite resources is not the only sort of development possible. the dystopia thesis also rules out any sort of kovelian conclusion (kovel, 2002) positing socialism as inevitable because of eco-crisis. the only thing that is inevitable is crisis, both economic and ecological. the two are inextricable. perhaps facing the imminent realities of horror might wake up sufficient numbers of people to act and stave them off. but not only are there no guarantees of socialist revolution but the probabilities of such are looking exceedingly unlikely. still, such hope as there is, begins with an unflinching look at the harsh realities of our collective prospects. it is difficult to perceive such realities when the utopian visions of an enlightened eco-capitalism are constantly being presented to us. the market itself, it is alleged, can save nature. we merely need “the creation of markets for the exchange of ‘ecosystem services’ in the form of payments for ecosystem services (pes)” (sullivan, 2009, p.19). pes is “an incentive-based, voluntary, and conditional conservation approach” that is intended to be “a more equitable alternative to regulation, by explicitly compensating landholders’ opportunity costs” (börner et al., 2010, p.1280). but the “payments for the environmental services produced by nature’s labour do not go to the environment itself, but to whoever is able to capture this newly priced value” (sullivan, 2009, p.20). the dystopia thesis is in agreement with those who argue that “any approach that simply encourages the market to put a price on the environment is inadequate as a response to environmental problems since this does not sufficiently orient business or society in general towards the environmental issue that we face” (beder, 2006b, referenced in andrews et al., 2010, p.616). carbon trading is a case in point. it is a key capitalist policy instrument to reduce global warming (leimbach, 2003, p.1033). actually, it has become a common practice which countries utilize so that their obligations under the kyoto protocol are met (zhang et al., 2011, p.128). but this is merely an accounting solution (and usually a crooked one at that). it is simply paying for the right to pollute with the emissions put on someone else’s books. it has brazilian dystopia | 153 been shown to be wholly ineffectual in actually reducing overall emissions. in fact, some would go so far as to assert that contradictory to its intended aim, carbon emissions trading “is to promote global greenhouse gas emissions” (ibid.). for example, if a company’s emission of co2 is under its limit, there is a temptation to sell the remaining limit in exchange for a profit (ibid.). in the view of the global alliance of indigenous peoples and local communities (noredd, dec.13, 2011), the recently negotiated market mechanism reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (redd) is likely to result in “the biggest land grab of all time.” capitalism distorts human efforts to deal with problems, ultimately reducing all to the making of profits. a further aspect of the dystopia thesis is the theory of structural mystification (potter, 2010b). the relationship between knowledge and power is such that the institutional production and dissemination of knowledge produces its dialectical opposite: structural mystification. structural mystification is the obfuscation of the production of knowledge and the restriction and/or prevention of its dissemination. thus, for example, knowledges concerning climate change are produced and have a limited dissemination. a consolidation of such knowledge is continually challenged by a combination of real scientific endeavor illustrating the complexity of the subject matters on the one hand and media promulgated disinformation on the other, including, most importantly, the facts concerning the scientific community’s consensus on the issue. all of these points, outlined above and made elsewhere about the dystopia thesis, are made in a more specifically focused form in this article. the dystopia thesis does not forecast any particular doom to accompany its gloom; there are many forms of possible future barbarism and nightmare. but this article focuses upon only one of these possibilities. it focuses upon the probabilities of the very life being choked out of us in a climate change disaster. climate change has many different facets and causal feeds into it but none are more important than damage to “the lungs of the world”, the amazonian rainforest of brazil. global warming and the ecological imperative to save the rainforest “a nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.” franklin d. roosevelt 154 | climate change and its discontents the amazon rainforest in brazil is the only one of its kind; there are no other tropical forests left in the world that are comparable to its size, structure, and biodiversity. through the photosynthesis of its millions of plants and trees the amazonian rainforest absorbs a huge amount of carbon dioxide (co2) from the atmosphere and releases oxygen into the air. it is thus often claimed to be “gaia’s lungs”, a metaphor personifying the world’s most natural and efficient filtration system of excess co2 (laurance, 1999, p. 96). indeed, the lungs of the world have been, for the past few decades, inhaling earth’s increasingly excess amounts of co2, principally attributed to the burning of fossil fuels by humans (ibid.). there is, thus, a growing consensus in the scientific community of the vital role of the brazilian amazon in containing what would otherwise be a damaging excess amount of co2 in the very atmosphere which we all depend upon for our survival and well-being (d’oliveira et al., 2011, p. 1490). the amazon rainforest also provides a second ecological service, to both the local population and to the rest of the world, with its repository of carbon in both biomass and soils, thereby reducing the effects of global warming (fearnside, 2012, p. 71). the rainforest has taken in huge amounts of carbon stocks and much of this is contained in the trees. the practice of deforestation, mainly for pasture conversions and agricultural purposes (see section five) releases absorbed co2 back into the atmosphere. while logging and forest fires emit co2, deforestation remains the leading source of emissions in brazil (ibid.). when deforested, the stocked co2 is released back into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases (ghgs), in the form of co2 and methane (ibid.). the turbulent spew of co2 in the aftermath of deforestation causes an ecological devastation upon the climate. fearnside (1996, p.21) emphasizes that: “[d]eforestation in brazil already makes a significant contribution to the global load of greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions, and complete or nearly complete replacement of brazil’s amazon forest by pasture would both contribute to global warming and greatly reduce evapotranspiration in the region.” as well, gerwing (2002, p.139) stresses that brazil’s, “local phenomenon of forest degradation could have global consequences to the extent that logging and fire reduce forest biomass and liberate previously sequestered carbon.” since tropical forests stock anywhere between 20-100 times more carbon per unit area than agricultural lands, the burning of tropical rainforests thus accounts for approximately 25 percent of the total global co2 emissions (brady, 1996, p. 5). brazilian dystopia | 155 other assessments claim 15-35 percent of global co2 emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (mazzei, sist, ruschel, putz, marco, pena & ferreira, 2010, p. 367). more recent estimates suggest that deforestation accounts for 10-15 percent of global co2 emissions; perhaps this lower figure is a result of a reduction of deforestation in recent years through enforcing land-use regulations (tollefson, 2013), but it should be emphasized that all of these estimates are just that: estimates. the soil also has an important ecological role to play in the global carbon cycle, not only because it represents a storage medium for co2, but that the soil itself actually contains more carbon than biomass (jassal, 2005, p.177). the soil accumulates carbon from the atmosphere, which is transferred to the soil by plants through processes such as litterfall or root turnover, where the co2 becomes part of the organic matter of the soil (nitschelm et al., 1997, p.411, p.415). aerts et al. (1992, p.187) found that root turnover contributes a significant amount of litter production in an ecosystem. elevated levels of co2 not only leads to an increase in biomass by speeding up the rate of photosynthesis but it also stimulates root growth, resulting in longer plant roots at a faster rate of growth (rogers et al., 1996, p.230, p.240). roots are able to transfer co2 to soils at a greater radius and at a faster rate. soil respiration is linked to root activity, as well as microbial activity in the decomposition of organic material (søe et al., 2004, p.86). furthermore, higher levels of co2 have a stronger effect on root biomass than on leaf biomass (ibid., p.91). studies have found that soil respiration increases under elevated co2, which in turn is due to the increase of plant biomass production under it (ibid. p.91; nitschelm et al., 1997, p.415). these findings indicate that soils are a very important sink for co2. but when forests with a large stock of carbon are replaced by cattle pastures, they lose that carbon (davidson et al., 2012, p.326). the amazon rainforest is precipitously being cleared for cattle pastures and agricultural ends, which have a ruthlessly destructive impact on the forest’s rich biodiversity (fearnside et al., 2009, p.1968). fearnside (1995, p.53) notes that “[t]he great majority of deforestation in brazilian amazonia is followed by conversion of land to cattle pasture, either immediately or after 1-2 years of use under annual crops.” in fact, more than 60 percent of deforested land ends up as cattle pasture (butler, 2012). 156 | climate change and its discontents figure 1 butler, r. (2013) http://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_destruction.html the conversion of the amazon rainforest to cattle pastures obviously negatively alters the biodiversity by drastically reducing the number of plants and animal species to a homogeneous existence (rodrigues et al., 2013, p.988). but more surprisingly fearnside (2001) argues that the deforestation of the amazon forest actually yields very little economic benefit because the deforested areas that become cattle pasture have low productivity (p.173). the amazon cattle ranchers use the deforested land wastefully in terms of animals per hectare, yielding a low level of investment per hectare (ibid., p.6). cattle are rarely fed with energy-rich grains and protein; and fertilizers and the use of legumes are seldom used to improve pastures (boucher, 2011, p.7). as a result, weed invasions tend to degrade many of the cattle pastures (smith et al., 1998, p.9). in addition, employment levels in ranching are low and ownership is highly concentrated in a select few (ibid.). even so, cattle remain an attractive option in the amazon rainforest because developers can http://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_destruction.html brazilian dystopia | 157 gain entitlement to the land that is cleared (butler, 2012). some data indicates that agriculture and pasture made up over 80 percent of what drove deforestation in south america from 1990-2000 (ibid.). we further analyze this issue in section four of this article. besides clearing vast amounts of forest space for cattle pastures and agricultural purposes, much deforestation is to produce lumber for building construction worldwide and for luxury furniture. fearnside (1995, p.61) maintains that: “...the value of amazonian forests for ‘ecological’ uses such as biodiversity maintenance, carbon storage and water vapor supply overshadows by far both current and potential revenue from both timber and nonwood products.” the veracity or not of this assertion, however, is dependent upon effective international agreements and the willingness of developed countries to pay to protect a crucial global resource. we analyze the international situation and the north versus south tensions and contradictions in this regard in section three of this article. while road paving is among the economic activities that simulates deforestation (davidson et al., 2012, p.323), a key driver of deforestation comes from private investors who seek to maximize profits by supplying timber, soybeans, and beef to both global and national markets (celentano et al., 2011, p.850). thus, deforestation is largely attributed to the high demand for logs, sawn wood, and furniture in both the domestic and international markets. timber extraction has become a major economic activity in the amazon forest, especially in the last two decades (smith et al., 1998, p.17). this is in part because the stability of the market for logs, sawn wood and furniture is higher than that for fruits and nuts (ibid.). deforestation of the amazon forest is thus a consequence of global economic forces (butler, 2009). this point is further argued and analyzed in section four. forestry and wood harvests can be conducted in a variety of ways. clear cutting is economically the cheapest but it is also the most ecologically damaging and wasteful. there are thus environmentalist pressures to engage in more ecologically balanced and responsible forestry practices. there are actually many certification programs to show the developed countries’ ecologically conscious consumers that their luxury furniture or flooring purchase comes not from irresponsible amazonian destruction but from careful, ecologically managed forestry harvest. sec158 | climate change and its discontents tion four of this paper examines this apparent positive step to protect the world’s forests and the amazonian forest in more detail. in particular it examines its failures and the reasons for them. there are many such capitalist reformist environmental solutions. the amazon rainforest could financially benefit brazil through the sale of environmental services at the same time as it mitigates against global warming (fearnside, 2012, p.71). fearnside (ibid) explains that, “[e]nvironmental services in the amazon rainforest are of global importance and can form the basis for substantial monetary flows to brazil.” fearnside’s view, however, we would argue is utopian. projects intended to reward the environmental services (i.e. the storage of carbon) of brazil’s amazon rainforest are increasing but their effectiveness in achieving what they are intended to do is doubtful. for example, brazil has created the amazon fund, with the intention to decelerate deforestation by promoting sustainable economic alternatives to cattle ranching and farming (ribeiro, 2012). brazil’s amazon fund functions by receiving donations from voluntary countries, such as norway and germany (fearnside, 2012, p.77). a key factor in this, as in many such projects, is their voluntary nature. in practice, the ineffectiveness of the project discouraged potential donors from contributing (ribeiro, 2012). there is also the redd plan, whose limitations we discussed earlier. other efforts include the rainforest conservation fund (rcf), which has helped to create a 960,000-acre reserve in the peruvian amazon in february of 2012 (enviroadmin, 2012). this is undoubtedly a positive development; but it is by no means adequate to the scale of the problem. deforestation is sure to cause irreversible damage to not only the amazon forest itself, but also to cause an important loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, and crucially, climate change. sustainable utilization of the forest is thus essential. agro-forestry provides some hope as a way of combining development and environmental protection. it is, potentially at least, a sustainable system of growing trees and crops at the same time. commercial agro-forestry, from plantations of bananas, oranges, and papayas to cashews, plays a somewhat effective role in slowing deforestation (smith et al., 1998, p. 7). however, agro-forestry is rarely performed on ranches (ibid., p.9) and, as we mentioned above, and will detail in section five, ranching is the most significant driver of deforestation. though it is practicable to boost agro-forestry on small-scale ranches, by fencing off pasture for the allowance of fruit trees to grow, there are constraints to agroforestry (ibid., p.12). inadequate market information, weak farmers’ brazilian dystopia | 159 associations, and a poor agro-industrial infrastructure are the main socio-economic constraints upon making agro-forestry a widespread viable sustainable management of the forest (ibid.). a survey conducted by smith et al. (1998) found nonetheless, that “a substantial proportion of farmers are incorporating timber species in their agro-forestry systems” (p.17). this indicates that, despite the constraints upon agro-forestry, some farmers are doing what they can do to sustain the forests. we are faced with an ecological imperative to save what is left of the amazon rainforest through sustainable methods like agro-forestry; otherwise there will be nothing to save humanity from global warming. there are small signs of hope. we can see from figure 2 below that some of the practices to decelerate deforestation have had some effect and we can also find some hope in brazil’s projections for a further deceleration. figure 2 butler, r. (2008). http://news.mongabay.com/2008/1212-amazon_targets.html http://news.mongabay.com/2008/1212-amazon_targets.html 160 | climate change and its discontents developmental necessities: people and capital “the poor complain, they always do but that’s just idle chatter. our system brings rewards to all, at least, to all who matter.” gerald helliener the divide between developed and developing countries in relation to the issue of climate change mitigation is categorized by the annex i/non-annex i division in the united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc) (heyward, 2007, p.519). according to the unfccc, annex i nations are industrialized countries with highincome economies, mainly those who were members of the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd) in 1992, plus some few other countries with economies in a transitional state. the annex ii category consists of the countries that are developing. this category is further split into two sub-categories. one group includes the developing countries that are most vulnerable to climate change; these are countries with low-lying coastal areas and those that are prone to desertification and drought. the second group includes countries that rely heavily upon income from fossil fuels and are vulnerable to the potential economic impacts of climate change (ufccc, 2013). the growing demand for an equal and unconditional right to development among the developing countries is on the rise (sengupta, 2002, p.841-842). this demand has been emphasized as one of the basic human rights for all countries, so as to meet their basic needs by increasing productivity and economic opportunities. this is a simple proposition but it has profound implications. the slogan “right to development” contains problematic aspects for the distribution of benefits and entitlements (lofquist, 2011). as we shall later argue, the slogan and surrounding discourse has significant implications for global ecology, as well as economy. the “right to development” lacks consensus among countries because the discourse is all about sustaining self-interests. the problematic of distribution represents the contradiction between ecological limitations to development on the one hand, and the basic capitalist concept of “never-ending improvement” on the other. this argument in practice, however, manifests itself somewhat differently. it pits the developing countries’ needs for fundamental improvements to living standards against the unlimited further development of the already developed countries. brazilian dystopia | 161 a fundamental feature of capitalism is the endless need for growth. beyond this worldwide systemic necessity, however, is a more basic physical reality of human needs. this is manifest in a discourse of rights and entitlements, with developing nations understandably pushing for achievements with respect to adequate living standards. an “adequate living standard” is defined by the universal declaration of human rights (udhr) as “the least amount of satisfaction of subsistence rights that are sufficient food and nutrition, clothing, housing and care when required” (alfredsson & eide, 1999, p.523). but as lars lofquist explains, “this does not imply that we must reject a right to a certain minimum level of well-being; it just means that this right cannot include claims for never-ending improvement” (lofquist, 2011, p.251). climate change is not only an environmental problem, it is also a developmental dilemma. its effects, as well as any efforts aimed at mitigation, will significantly impinge on developing countries with economies primarily based on natural resources such as agriculture and forestry. climate change causes more damage to those who are already vulnerable and is therefore likely to further exacerbate poverty and human deprivation. the various negotiated protocols and agreements between nations are intended to reduce the effects of greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions. they are attempts to preserve and save future life from devastating consequences. but the negotiations and agreements are also about the preservation of individual nations’ economic interests and balancing conflicts of interest with others. of course, imbalances in global power relations come to the fore here. there are, of course, alliances based upon commonalities of interest. brazil for example, is a member of one of the leading groups in this debate, the so called bric nations (brazil, russia, india and china), later forming an even stronger alliance of shared interests and diplomatic strategy (basic is the acronym for them) when russia was dropped in favour of south africa. climate change, it is argued by some, should be addressed as ‘everyday behaviors’ (hochstetler and viola, 2012, p.753) in which the right to development becomes a common and equal right but at the same time entails responsibility. the challenge for achieving climate change mitigation agreements lies in how to equally protect the right to development, while at the same time creating a binding plan to de-carbonize economic activities. consequently, the debate of how best to address the issue is inevitably plagued by differences of national interests and of just what constitutes the right to development (baer et al., 2008). 162 | climate change and its discontents in theory, there were many opportunities for cooperation between developed and developing countries in implementing the right to development within the normative and institutional framework of the united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc) and its kyoto protocol. the kyoto protocol set targets for ghg emissions reductions for industrialized countries (annex i countries) and also created the clean development mechanism (cdm). the cdm is unique in light of its two-fold objective: mitigating climate change and contributing to sustainable development (baer et al., 2008, p.80-85). recently, the cdm has aided in promoting sustainable energy projects (lee et al., 2013). but as argued earlier, it is a capitalist solution to a problem not solvable within the structural constraints of a world capitalist political economy. the cdm has an accreditation system of defined certified emission reduction (cer) credits. these are units of carbon dioxide reduction equivalent to one ton. the reduction of emissions in the developing countries and the accumulation of these cer credits can then be sold and used by industrialized countries to meet some of their emission targets as set by the kyoto protocol (ufccc-cmd, 2013). to qualify for the cer credits project, developers must demonstrate the reduction in emissions that they implemented, compared to what would have occurred without these implementations (the guardian, 2011). the cdm is the principle diplomatically negotiated way discovered so far, of balancing the various different interests of developed and developing nations with regard to climate change mitigation and development. it embodies the alleged possibility of sufficient reform and diplomacy to solve one of the world’s most serious and pressing issues; its principles with regard to climate change mitigation are the very embodiment of hope for salvation through capitalist reform and self-regulation. in europe the cdm has been used with the creation of a mandatory trading scheme, called the eu emissions trading scheme (ets), which allows companies to buy cer credits to contribute to their own emission reduction goals (ibid.). therefore, the cdm, and its cer accreditation system in conjunction with the ets, would seem to have the potential for reducing emissions in the european nations at the same time as contributing to sustainable development in developing countries, and in particular fast growing countries such as brazil. except that it is isn’t working! pielke (2013) argues that the ets has thus far failed pretty much entirely in its de-carbonization goals for europe. the cdm might have been more effective in countries like brazil if the cdm and its cer system had included forest conservation and brazilian dystopia | 163 measures to avoid deforestation to its protocol. however, the kyoto protocol excluded them from the cdm permit for a variety of political and practical reasons (laurance, 2007, p.20-21). most significantly, for the possibility of it really succeeding in its purpose, it would have needed to be a binding agreement rather than voluntary in terms of compliance. but the cdm is not a binding policy and, of course, it includes loopholes that discourage companies and countries from abiding by it. the phrase “of course” in that last sentence signifies a dystopia thesis perspective upon this. the argument is that the really serious issues affecting humanity cannot be properly dealt with in the context of our existing political economy. contesting forces of national and corporate self-interest dictate what finally gets agreed upon and acted upon in the global community. so, most countries end up with ineffectual voluntary policies that determine their “everyday behaviors” in the efforts to address climate change. brazil, for example, has pledged to reduce the ghg emissions between 36.1 percent and 38.9 percent by 2020 (de motta, 2012). this is an admirable target. but it is also an unrealistic target. brazil is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, along with china and india. according to the united nations development program document, “the unprecedented rise of the south”, brazil is raising its living standards by expanding international relationships and anti-poverty programmes that are emulated worldwide” (undp, 2013). this is good. yet by contrast, with respect to climate change, brazil is the world’s fourth largest ghg emitter. most of brazil’s ghg emissions derive from agriculture, land-use change and forest management (roman, 2010, p.1). moreover, in international negotiations as stated earlier, brazil occupies a distinct position as an active member representing the “south” and is a major actor within the coalition of the (basic) countries. the basic agreement included a possible walk-out of negotiations if their common basic minimum position was not met by the developed nations (hochstetler & viola, 2012, p.755-756). brazil’s climate agenda has evolved around three issues: “stressing every country’s sovereign right to development; opposing any suggestion that the amazon rainforest be put under international control for its protection; and emphasizing the industrialized countries’ historical responsibility and obligation to compensate for their emissions to date” (roman, 2010, p.1). while this is fine on one level, and from our perspective of international fairness, quite reasonable, it has nonetheless produced an ecology destroying stalemate with the developed world, not 164 | climate change and its discontents all of which were even kyoto signatories and most of which have failed to meet their own emission reduction targets. the brazilian case of an emerging economy shows climate change policies characterized by contradictions. such contradictions include the preservation of national interests and the implementation of unbinding and voluntary policies. the right to development has been manipulated as a means to an end by both developed and developing countries alike. the ultimate goal for all these countries is to maximize their production and economic opportunities well beyond the level of an adequate living standard. the “right to development” discourse has simply been exploited as an ideological tool of self-interested justification. if the dystopia thesis generally is correct, then it could not be otherwise, in brazil or anywhere else. the fundamental structural features of the global political economy not only condition economic decisions but also frame the discourse in which policies and values are diplomatically debated and agreed upon. there is thus from a long term environmental perspective, a wholly inadequate set of policies with built-in loopholes. the collective failure to properly act upon what is ecologically necessary for humanity’s long term well-being is, for the near future at least, virtually guaranteed. the failures of market solutions: forest certification programs “one of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions and not by their results.” milton friedman there is worldwide awareness and concern for the preservation of the amazonian rainforest, just as there is a global demand for the products of its resource harvesting. the brazilian population has its own surprisingly high public awareness of ecological issues generally and climate change in particular (pew research, 2010). there is thus pressure from both within and outside brazil for protective measures. there is government legislation, driven both by international pressure and domestic motivation. the greatest weakness of these environmentally protective laws is the issue of compliance and enforcement. a great deal is left up to the voluntary efforts of corporations and citizenry. there are voluntary international targets for emission levels with respect to climate brazilian dystopia | 165 change on the one hand, and local legislative measures and international codes of forestry management on the other. it is the latter that we shall discuss in this section as their failures illustrate perfectly the dystopian contradictions preventing real solutions to real, and recognized, serious problems, upon whose solution the future of humanity and a healthy global ecosphere depend. the problem is that the most serious strategies attempted to remedy ecological/economic issues are such that the hoped for solutions derive from the very same mechanisms that caused and are causing the problems in the first place. the strategies are all market driven and/or dependent upon a kind of consumer voluntarism. one might think that a code of ecologically sound principles to guide forestry practices could do nothing but good. but as it turns out the story is far more complicated. there are a plethora of local and international inspection and sanctioning bodies with respect to forestry. that is actually part of the problem itself: different bodies, different regulations, different credentialization and certification practices. internationally, more than thirty different such certification systems exist (http://www.accreditation-services.com/archives/certification_ bodies). however, we shall focus on only one of these bodies the forest stewardship council (fsc) as it embodies all the dilemmas of market driven solutions to issues affecting the global commons. the fsc program the following is from the website of a hardwood flooring company (tulip floors, 2011) located in berkeley, california: “despite the well publicized reports of clear-cutting of tropical and oldgrowth forests, it has taken a long time for government and industry bodies to coalesce around a common certification system. part of the difficulty has originated with the timber industry itself, which has spent enormous resources propping up its own weak “certification” bodies. in the tropics, government bans against illegal logging are weakly enforced, with enormous corruption allowing illegal loggers to act with impunity. fortunately, the last decade has seen fsc certification come to the forefront as the most trusted and widely accepted independent certification system in the world. the forest stewardship council (fsc) is headquartered in bonn, germany, and is an international non-profit organization that sets environmental and social standards of forest management.” 166 | climate change and its discontents the flooring company identifies more than one of the global problems we are aware of: corruption, weakly enforced legislation, the timber industry’s own “weak” certification bodies and, of course, the crucial importance of ecologically sound forest management. this, they correctly imply, is absolutely necessary for any brazilian (and world!) climate change mitigation efforts. why does the company forefront such concerns so prominently on its website? certainly most hardwood flooring companies do not. we may speculate upon the green political leanings of the company’s ownership and management. they may well have quite altruistic intentions. however, such intentions can fit well with the bottom line in a capitalist economy. there is a niche market for ecologically sustainable products. consumers aware of the ecological importance of the amazonian rainforest and other fragile forests eco-systems, are willing to pay more for a trusted certification that the products they buy have been produced in environmentally sound ways. what possibly could be wrong with that? isn’t that exactly what will solve the amazonian (and other) logging operation deforestation problems? well, it is certainly the most popular pseudo-solution offered us by the corporate powers that rule the world. the very existence of a ‘niche market’ presumes the existence of a wider market place from which the niche market is differentiated. so if there are good “environmental and social standards of forest management”, certified as such by the fsc as is the wood flooring of tulip floors quoted above, then it follows that there are uncertified wood products for sale elsewhere and that many or most of these products are a result of ecologically unsustainable practices. as stated earlier, there are more than thirty certification organizations with no agreed upon common levels of certification or standards of practice. perhaps, more importantly, over 90 percent of the world’s forests have no certification process at all. in brazil, where the fsc is the biggest forest management certification agency, only 1.4 percent of its forests are fsc certified. further, as asserted in the usda report wood market update (2006) “...it is only an estimated 2% of the tropical wood produced in brazil that is derived from certified forests.” the report goes on to say that: “some estimates show that over 40% of brazil’s tropical wood production comes from illegal logging”. so, ecologically unsound practices are rampant and climate change be damned. why is this so? the situation expresses the essence of alleged market driven solutions to global problems: individual consumer choices will solve collective problems with collective costs. if you want to have a brazilian dystopia | 167 conscience, a concern for the collective, you have to pay for it. so, for example, in addition to those consumers willing to pay more for “fair trade” coffee (coffee production, of course, being another of brazil’s concerns) there are far more people unaware of the problem that the “fair trade” products address and/or more people who are unwilling to pay that little bit extra as a partial solution to a social justice issue. it is the same with ecology. some people are just going to choose the cheaper hardwood flooring (or furniture or any forest product) over the bragging rights that they personally are not contributing to ecological harm. individual consumer choices, in theory, could be the driver to solve the problems if everybody made the eco-ethically responsible choices. but in a world riven with inequality, desperation and media conditioned greed, it seems more than unlikely that everyone will. further, the dystopia thesis would argue that even if consumers came together in some amazing unanimity of environmentalist ethos, environmental harm, while perhaps being significantly reduced, would, nonetheless, continue to take place. why is this so? well, let’s look at the brazilian case of forestry. let’s look at the fsc more closely. in the first place, it is not a direct inspection agency itself. it does not employ agents in the field. rather it certifies the certifiers, those who actually (or perhaps only allegedly) examine the practices of the forestry companies. the fsc does not have just one level of certification – ecologically sound practices or not. rather, it has a plethora of different certifications and certifiers. in part this is because of the complexity and scale of its worldwide operations; in part this is because of a grindingly slow bureaucracy. but it is also because the logging companies themselves have a significant position upon the fsc board! it is not at all surprising that abuses occur. it is interesting that a non-profit organization dedicated to ecological concerns such as the fsc has spawned another non-profit organization dedicated to watching and reporting on it! the organization fsc watch alleges that clear-cutting and harvesting of old growth trees can occur even if a wood product is fsc certified. their allegations are numerous and seem pretty well founded as well.5 the existence of such watchdogs is a ray of hope in the dystopian gloom of probabilities. it works toward the stripping away many of the illusions generated by the many selfpolicing, niche market driven solutions to deep ecological problems. notwithstanding such hopes, the dystopia thesis posits a level of contradiction and complexity to the issues such that knowledge dissemination, 5 for a us example see: fsc watch, 2008. 168 | climate change and its discontents and the failures of political will, have their own dystopia force of causality. the next section will examine this argument through the example of the brazilian beef export industry. knowledge, dystopia and brazilian beef export “where’s the beef?” walter f. mondale 1984 democratic presidential nomination campaign slogan “it’s the economy, stupid.” former u.s. president bill clinton 1992 campaign slogan brazil was the world’s largest beef producer and exporter until only recently being overtaken by the u.s (rapoza, 2011). the united states’ overtaking of brazil in this economic sector was largely due to a weakened dollar; and the fact is, that brazil has been the most significant producer and exporter of beef for quite some time. this, however, is not a very well-known fact to the environmentally concerned public, who understandably instead, focus their gaze upon deforestation because of logging. but brazil’s beef production and export sector not only has even more serious ecological consequences than does forestry but it illustrates very well one of the aspects of the dystopia thesis to do with knowledge, which we will look at in the latter part of this section. cattle produce co2 and methane gas as natural animal functions. they thus contribute to the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. but how much of a contribution do they make? the first and most obvious statement to make with respect to this, is that the more cattle that are raised, the greater is this contribution. a less obvious factor is that in contemporary livestock management the cattle are kept in relatively small areas proportional to their numbers; this leads to concentrated emissions of methane gas. these methane emissions, per mole, have a global warming potential of 3.7 times that of carbon dioxide (lashof & ahuja, 1992). also contemporary practices frequently involve over-grazing with serious unintended consequences. o v e r g r a z i n g leads to the hardening and erosion of the surface soil which not only makes the soil infertile and repellent of the precipitation that normally replenishes the groundwater, but it also releases the sequestered carbon into the atmosphere and destroys the soil’s capability of absorbing brazilian dystopia | 169 carbon. it is a rarely mentioned fact that soil is the biggest terrestrial reservoir and sequesterer of carbon. soil organic carbon has a potential rate of sequestration of up to 3 billion tons of carbon per year (fairlie, 2012, p.1).finally, it must be observed that brazil’s cattle raising and beef export industry has expanded dramatically in recent years (see figures 3 and 4 below) and thus is another significant brazilian factor that is increasingly contributing to global climate change. figure 3 source: fao, 2013 170 | climate change and its discontents figure 4 source: fao, 2013 further as we can see from figure 5 below, the expansion of ranching is the significant driver of deforestation. figure 5 butler, r (2013) http://rainforests.mongbay.com/deforestation_drivers.html brazilian dystopia | 171 the key economic concept pertaining to the north-south divide in terms of standards of living, development and ecology is that of production for export. human beings are eating more beef than they used to; and perhaps that is true to some degree for brazil as well. as brazil develops, and its beef production is, of course, a part of that development, their standard of living increases and increased meat protein in people’s diets usually goes along with that. but brazilian cattle ranching and beef production, and most importantly, its relatively recent huge expansion, is export driven. one could say (though, of course, with some qualification) that the north-south divide with respect to brazilian beef, is that it is produced in the south but consumed in the north. it is, thus, certainly not only brazilians that benefit from brazilian development. they are a part of a global economy of unequal exchange. and in beef production, just as in the forestry industry, there are serious ecological consequences, including the focus of this article, emissions and climate change. a key component of the ecological situation is that forestry and logging combine in their environmental impact. land is deforested to enable the expansion of cattle ranching. so, there is a double impact, so to speak; gas emissions from the increased numbers of cattle themselves, and from the deforestation that indirectly arises from the expansion of the beef production industry. this is where the dystopia thesis’s assertions about knowledge come in. the dystopia thesis argues that knowledge and production are dialectically interrelated with the obfuscation of knowledge production and the restriction of its dissemination with an accompaniment of confusion, mystification and failures of understanding. as said earlier, the label given by the dystopia thesis to the dialectical opposite of knowledge production is “structural mystification” (potter, 2010b). the complexities of the relationships between knowledge production, knowledge consolidation, knowledge dissemination and the generation of mystification as are promulgated in this abstract theoretical articulation are, in part, illustrated concretely in the empirical brazilian case. omission of the effects of land use changes in estimates of life-cycle greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions can lead to serious underestimates. this is particularly true for cattle raising. but changes in land usage may or may not be included in estimates of so-called “carbon footprints.” carbon footprint is a term that the educated layperson interested in environmental matters is quite familiar with. but few are aware its calculation is not standardized and thus may be subject to both legitimate scientific disputation on the one 172 | climate change and its discontents hand, and that more crassly motivated on the other (wiedmann & minx, 2007; east, 2008; finkbeiner, 2009; peters, 2010; pandey et al., 2011). scientific misunderstandings, or arguable errors over methodologies, or more fundamental debates, are not very well intellectually appreciated by the public. the public very largely has the mistaken belief that science is principally about certainties; when, of course, checking and re-checking measurements, questioning methods of measurement and critical inquiry and debate are much more its hallmarks. but knowledges need consolidation amongst the scientific specialist community before they can be publicly consolidated as knowledges and harnessed to a political will on a related issue. by consolidation, we mean, generally accepted. for example, while there is scientific consensus about climate change generally and its anthropomorphic origins, public consensus about the issue is still far away. this is not only because of the media misrepresentation of the status of scientific debate and its over-representation of the climate change deniers, a condition that much has been written about even by journalists, but because of the legitimate debates of specialism’s (climate change, as we know, encompasses many different issues in many different disciplinary specialism’s) about details. this leaves the public somewhat confused, and ripe as it were, for misdirection, as this too is misrepresented in the media. thus, we have the brazilian situation where land use changes driven by the economic imperatives of meat export may or may not have a critical indicator with respect to their effects upon climate change taken into account. but yet this indicator is crucial. cederberg et al. (2011, p.1773) argue: “the carbon footprint of beef produced on newly deforested land is estimated at more than 700 kg co2-equivalents per kg carcass weight if direct land use emissions are annualized over 20 years. this is orders of magnitude larger than the figure for beef production on established pasture on non-deforested land.” they further (ibid.) argue that: “while brazilian beef exports have originated mainly from areas outside the lar, i.e. from regions not subject to recent deforestation, we argue that increased production for export has been the key driver of the pasture expansion and deforestation in the lar during the past decade brazilian dystopia | 173 and this should be reflected in the carbon footprint attributed to beef exports. we conclude that carbon footprint standards must include the more extended effects of land use changes to avoid giving misleading information to policy makers, retailers, and consumers.” but misleading information in this, as in many cases, is the norm rather than the exception. the reason for this is apparent if we consider the brazilian situation elucidated above. it derives from an apparently reasonable compartmentalization of facts and empirical data. but holistic analysis is really required here (and, of course, in many similar situations). the production increase in beef for export has obviously been an economic driver in pasture expansion (not the only one, but the most important one in this context) and hence in deforestation. what is crucially being obscured by the lack of a holistic understanding is actually the dominant feature of causality with regard to cattle ranching and deforestation. the world geo-political economy is actually the causal force leading to the double negative environmental impact of brazilian beef production and export, and of the developed world’s consumption. if one follows the logic of this case through, it seems to be the case that in the north-south debate concerning who should foot the bill for the trade-offs between development and environmental protection, the north, far from being generously indulgent by being willing to allow some compensation for southern climate change mitigation, along with some latitude to southern economic development, is actually wanting further southern subsidy for their own rather glutinous consumption. conclusion “an alarmist is defined as a person who alarms others needlessly. yelling “fire!” in a crowded theatre when there is no such fire is clearly alarmist. pointing out an actual plume of smoke is not.” anonymous ambassador pablo salon, one of the bolivian hosts of the 30,000strong world people’s conference on climate change and the rights of mother earth in cochabamba, presented a six step path to move forward from the current climate talks deadlock (pwccc.wordpress.com, 2011): 174 | climate change and its discontents 1. agreement on the size of the gap (12-14 gigatonnes of c02e) 2. recognize that developed countries will need to take a larger share of the reduction. 3. agree on parameters for sharing the burden, based on historical responsibility and capacity of the parties. 4. have developed countries’ emissions peak immediately. 5. represent every countries’ target in terms of gigatonnes, defined as reductions from domestic emission levels and without the use of ‘offsets’. 6. agreement on legal actions for parties that do not fulfill their obligations under the kyoto protocol (for a second commitment period) and under the convention. the dystopia thesis would be clearly understood by many who attended the cochabamba conference. the six points outlined here by solon show a clear way we can embrace a dystopian view, and come up with a meaningful political response. something like these six steps is crucial for the welfare of the planet. many people recognize this. but the steps have not been taken and show absolutely no signs that they are going to be. the dystopia thesis is alarming in its degree of pessimism concerning humanity’s future. it provides, among other things, a very long and varied global list of problems and future crises. it is not, however, the large number of such, or indeed, even the severity and seriousness of any single one of them, which is most alarming. in this regard, the focus of this article, global warming, must rank up there in contention for the top position of the most worrisome danger humanity is facing. no, what is most alarming is not the potential harm (our self-elimination as a species?) but rather the prognosis for possible avoidance. the worst outcomes, whether with respect to global warming or any of the other dystopian projections into the future, cannot be avoided without fundamental change to the world socio-economic political system. global warming is by definition a global problem. its effects will ultimately be effects that are felt by everyone. however, they will arrive differentially. for example, many small island nations may well literally be under water before the populations of the developed world experience much more than ‘weird’ weather patterns, occasional mild inconvenience at home and the more frequent witnessing of multi-variable catastrophes afflicting others – hurricanes, floods, droughts, etc. – unless they happen to have the misfortune to be one of the others in question. further, global brazilian dystopia | 175 warming, while on one level can be understood as having global causation, on another, its causality is highly differentiated between parts of the world as well. the developed nations have and continue to have the greatest contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. there are a number of forests in the world, all of which are important. but as we emphasized in section two of this article, the amazonian rainforest has a particularly crucial role in maintaining the earth’s climate equilibrium. brazil’s deforestation thus is far from simply being a brazilian problem, and as we argued, cannot have an isolated brazilian solution. both brazil’s population and its government have a degree of environmental awareness and concern. but however environmentally progressive a government brazil elects in the future, it will not be sufficiently so, that it will produce, all on its own, the legislative and enforcement measures to effectively protect the amazon. the “right to development” is not merely a discourse; it is a very real human need and driven by poverty and suffering as well as capitalist greed. and this is the truly alarming dystopian problem that we can see in brazil’s particular case, as well as globally. brazil is situated in a global political economy that not only drives development but drives it in such a way so as to not address the problems of the poor and also to not address the problems of the environment. it is not the argument of this article that the predictions of the dystopia thesis are our inevitable future, just our probable future. no, we believe it is actually necessary 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rees, 2013). 1 terry kading is associate professor of political science in the department of philosophy, history and politics at thompson rivers university. elisabeth bass is an undergraduate researcher and work-study student in political science at thompson rivers university. we would like to thank derek cook, lecturer in political science at thompson rivers university, for organizing the community forums that contributed to this article, and the reviewers for their constructive advice. can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 183 introduction: the ajax mine proposal in a radical neo-liberal environment the ajax mine project will encompass more than 2500 hectares of land, and will be located partially within the city of kamloops, british columbia (city of kamloops, 2013). within city limits will be located the tailings storage facility, process water pond, processing plant, the north waste rock management facility and the ore stockpiles (see map – appendix 1). a small canadian mining firm, abacus mining and exploration co., acquired the rights to the abandoned afton mine site south of kamloops, b.c., and after completing successful tests for copper and gold partnered with mining giant kghm to advance the project (abacus, 2013). located well outside of city limits, and of limited scope and success, the afton mine had encompassed 161 hectares and operated on and off from 1989 until 1997. the ajax project has an expected mine life of 23 years, mining approximately 22 mt of ore a year, where 17 mt of ore was mined at afton over the entire eight year period. thus, the scope and impact of the ajax proposal represents a significant intrusion into this urban centre in which the authority of the local government carries little weight as to the placement of facilities and evaluations of the proposed mining activity. this analysis draws on a critical geographical perspective on neoliberalism to situate theoretically the ajax mine proposal, highlight the path-dependent character of this proposal as part of the neo-liberal reform project, and the “strategic role of cities in the contemporary remaking of political-economic space” (brenner & theodore, 2002, 349). as a distinctive case of “actually existing neo-liberalism” within the broader process of neoliberalization adopted by province of british columbia, the proposal exemplifies the main methodological premises of this perspective: the unstable historical geographies of capitalism, where “the creative destruction of capitalist territorial organization is always unpredictable and deeply contested” and “capital’s relentless quest to open up fresh spaces for accumulation is inherently speculative, occurring through “chance discoveries” and “provisional compromises in the wake of intense sociopolitical struggles”; and the uneven geographical development and the regulation of uneven geographical development that has both fostered a local context amenable to such a controversial proposal and forged the opposition arising from “compensatory regional policies.” most evident is the mining proposal as an example of evolving geographies of state regulation where during periods of crisis the “resultant ‘search for a new institutional fix’ generally entails the partial dismantling or reworking of inherited institutional landscapes in order to 184 | climate change and its discontents ‘open up space’ for the deployment and institutionalization of new regulatory strategies” (brenner & theodore, 2002, 355-356). the uniqueness of this project, which also highlights its audacious character, is that while urban spaces in b.c. are subject to the “devolution of new tasks,” “contracting out of services,” “expansion of community-based and private approaches to social service provision,” “emergency shelters” for the homeless and other “creative moments of neoliberal localization,” (brenner & theodore, 2002, 369-372), the proposal is less about revamping the regulatory environment than attempting to utilize existing environmental assessment criteria that was never intended for an open-pit mine within an urban setting. the unwillingness of federal and provincial officials to acknowledge this feature and stop the proposal from advancing stems from the urgency of “growth restoration and budgetary constraint” arising out of the 2008 crisis, in which expanded resource extraction has become a federal and provincial priority (peck, theodore & brenner, 2012, 265). our examination of this mining proposal also supports and expands on the critical analysis of nathan young on the remaking of rural geographies in b.c. arising from the adoption of radical neo-liberalism at the provincial level (young, 2008). young documents the effects in small communities from neo-liberal restructuring in the provincial government and the forestry industry, and the initiatives to address decline and dislocation through “guided entrepreneurialism” and local “independence.” in contrast, our analysis focuses on one of the small cities that have been a net beneficiary from this provincial restructuring, emerging as a “regional centre” providing a range of government services previously available through smaller communities. despite this enhanced status, kamloops remains subject to the “freeing” of corporate actors “to manipulate the spaces of resource production in order to gain efficiencies that are deemed crucial to (global) market competitiveness” (young, 2008, 2). for kghm the placement of the ajax project has many advantages over developing a mine in more remote areas. by locating major mining facilities within city limits there is easy access to an established transportation, water, and electrical network, significantly reducing the time and costs of developing a fully functioning mine site. in addition, there is a large local workforce and mining service providers due to the proximity of the city to two other established mine sites – highland copper and new gold (kghm, 2013). from a resource investment perspective the location is optimal, but within the city this project has fostered deep divisions driven by competing economic, health and environmental fears. can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 185 on the one side are the supporters of the project, where insecurities generated by the local fallout from the 2008 economic crisis have reinforced the position that the city is in no position to be rejecting a major investment and employment opportunity. the opponents of the project highlight that the environmental costs are not only related to health concerns, but will destroy a number of economic opportunities and dramatically reverse local efforts to diversify against a long-standing weakness of resource dependence. perhaps what is most surprising is an announcement of a billion dollar+ investment commitment in mining at the height of the global financial crisis, an unprecedented context in the history of the resource sector in b.c. unlike previous recession experiences, the 2008 global financial crisis has served to significantly revive rather than undermine the prospects for mining in british columbia, as global prices for a variety of base metals have remained consistently high due to demand from asian markets (particularly china). this has allowed what was a largely moribund industry to offer itself up as a “recession proof” revenue option with high paying jobs, and the ability to address the declining employment opportunities in the forestry sector of the interior and north of b.c. (gratton, 2010; brino, 2013). it is only the ironic persistence of this external demand and price for copper at the height of a major global downturn that explains the unwillingness of the provincial government and the main opposition to reject outright ajax as inappropriate as proposed. accelerated resource extraction is viewed as the basis of a secure financial future that may revive interior economies. thus, short-term electoral calculations, an entrenched bias favoring corporate interests and an inability to accept and promote an alternative development strategy accounts for the silence by the two main political parties (the liberal party of b.c. and the new democratic party of b.c.) as they have become entrapped in the “benefits” of a neo-liberal resource growth agenda. the roots of this “consensus” lay in the decisive defeat of the ndp government by the liberal party under gordon campbell in 2001. the provincial context and the mining revival despite the image of british columbia as largely a resource-based economy dominated by forestry, fishing, and mining, the reality is that by the end of the 20th century, in terms of gdp by industry and number of employees, these sectors had faded in significance. these trends would continue under the liberal government such that by 2007-08 agriculture, forestry and fishing would contribute only 3% to provincial gdp, and less 186 | climate change and its discontents than 3% from mining, oil and gas (brownsey, howlett & newman, 2010, 22-23). employment in forestry, fishing, mining and oil and gas combined would decline from 2.6% of the total workforce in 1998 to 1.9% in 2008. over this ten year period the largest employment gains would be seen in transportation (+25,000), education services (+40,000), retail and wholesale trade (+50,000), healthcare (+45,000), professional, scientific and technical services (+40,000), finance and real estate (+35,000) and construction (+100,000). given these trends in employment and contribution to the overall provincial economy, the ajax project is neither significant nor necessary. rather, the ajax project, as part of a larger revival in mining investment, serves to address a political problem created by the effort to maintain a very low corporate and personal tax environment yet generate employment opportunities in the interior. the vast majority of employment growth in services, transportation, construction, and finance has benefitted the lower mainland and southern victoria island region (in and around vancouver and victoria) while most other regions have remained dependent on the declining prospects in the resource sector, notably forestry. this “interior-southern coast” divide would be significantly exacerbated by both the aggressive change in the provincial regulatory framework under the liberal government after 2001, which led to substantial job losses in the forestry industry, and the financial outlay to host the 2010 winter olympic games which favoured the vancouver region. the 2008 financial crisis further pushed the provincial government’s interest in fomenting resource extraction as declining revenues from other sectors has made the royalties from resources extremely attractive to fund a significant number of costly services e.g. healthcare, while attempting to maintain a very low tax environment. coming into the 21st century, though, b.c. was an anomalous context with a higher tax and regulatory regime in place relative to neighbouring jurisdictions, and where perceived low levels of economic growth (versus the national level), private sector investment, and business confidence fuelled a broader societal discontent (and a sense that many were leaving for better employment opportunities in other provinces). the 2001 provincial election was a powerful rejection of the prevailing regulatory model endorsed by the new democratic party, with the liberal party of b.c. garnering 58% of the vote and 77 of 79 seats in the provincial legislature. through the 1990s the new democratic government had enhanced the broad regulatory structure that had developed in b.c. with respect to the business sector and resource industries (brownsey and howlett, 2001, 318 & 323). this regulatory context placed can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 187 significant requirements on large industries to meet environmental, labour and safety standards, and in the important resource sectors i.e. mining and forestry, to provide employment opportunities to those communities proximate to these resource extraction activities (kukucha, 2005, 220-222; young, 2008, 8-10). this latter feature attempted to ensure that the benefits of these activities were distributed throughout the province. comprised of a social-democratic ideology that favoured the rights of organized labour, workers, and the lower classes, government policies further ensured that a broad range of public services in education, healthcare, social assistance, and regulatory functions, were distributed throughout communities in the province, irrespective of size. the liberal government would quickly initiate the types of changes seen as necessary to bring the province in line with other jurisdictions, establishing a pro-business investment environment with profound implications for small communities and the environment. the liberal government signaled the shift in ideological priorities by cutting tax rates, terminating various government positions, privatizing some government agencies, contracting out government services, and allowing various government entities to raise prices on services (fuller, 2001, 1; fuller & stephens, 2002, 4-7; klein, 2002, 1-8). the broadest attack was on the larger regulatory edifice that was seen as deterring private sector investment and preventing b.c. from being seen as “competitive” with other jurisdictions. this was most evident as the government established a specific minister of deregulation, which decreed that all ministries must cut regulations by one-third, irrespective of content (fuller, 2001, 1). these dramatic reductions in government conditions and oversight would extend to the resource sector, where extraction and processing would no longer be tied to the benefit of local communities. by reducing conditions on resource extraction the expectation was that corporate investment would generate the economic prosperity in the hinterland to secure the rural vote (brownsey, howlett and newman, 2010, 25-26). this “rationalization” in the resource sector would allow for much greater private sector latitude in extraction, transport and processing as corporations desired more flexibility to respond to global market conditions. at another level the liberal government began regional centralization in a range of government services and programs (education, healthcare, legal services, administrative) such that certain regional centres would become the main conduits of essential government services, compelling residents of smaller centres to travel or relocate for access to these 188 | climate change and its discontents services (lee, murray and parfitt, 2005; young, 2008, 24). for instance, some 176 schools had been closed by 2009, with the prospect that another 60 were threatened with closure, the majority being in remote areas with declining overall populations (bctf, 2013). within regions, one would see population increases in certain small cities, while surrounding towns and small centres would be confronted with precipitous declines in population due to lost employment in the forestry sector or government services and agencies, often where the government had been either the number one or number two employer. for instance, while kamloops grew by 4% from 2001 to 2006, surrounding small towns had population declines that varied from the 2% range to up to 26% plus (ubcm, 2013). centralization of government services and rationalization in the resource sector generated quite contradictory outcomes, with the future uncertain for many smaller communities. at a provincial level economic growth rates rose, unemployment rates fell, and government revenues increased overall, appearing to vindicate the aggressive policy changes of the liberal government in attracting private sector investment (mcmartin, 2009). these changes, though, would take place at the expense of the broader distribution of high wage jobs that had maintained many small towns and communities in the past. these inequities extended to the regional level as prosperity or “boom times” in some areas were contrasted with economic decline and dislocation in others. by 2008 some 20,000+ jobs had been lost in the forestry industry alone, a loss of over 25% of the workforce in this sector even before the 2008 financial crisis (hoberg, 2010, 332-333; united steel workers, 2008). while forestry exports would begin to stabilize by expanding sales to asian markets, in terms of employment prospects and government revenues, forestry continued to fade in significance, replaced by opportunities in the energy sector. by this time the significance of the energy sector had become apparent, such that from 2001 on government revenues from this sector consistently surpassed forestry, and by 2008 were more than double that of forestry – accounting for 6-7% of all government revenues. investment in natural gas alone had gone from $1.8 billion in 2001 to $7.1 billion by 2008, and by 2013 the liberal government had made the revenue prospects from exporting liquefied natural gas (lng) the centre piece of its reelection campaign as the means to finance government services well into the century (government of bc, 2013). mining activity did not figure as a resource priority for the liberal government until the 2008 financial crisis, and only after can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 189 it became apparent that base metals appeared to be increasing in royalty contributions to government revenues (schrier, 2011). with declining provincial growth rates more attention was focused on the prospects for mining, particularly as a means to boost investment and employment in the interior where the effects of the financial crisis were being more immediately felt. mining also had the advantage over energy of matching more closely the areas most affected by the fallout in the forestry sector in the southern and central interior, whereas the potential from oil and gas activity is largely concentrated in the remote northeast of the province. unlike the oil and gas sector, though, the numerous proposals that have emerged for mineral development have generated far more environmental scrutiny given their proximity to established communities (in which the ajax proposal is the most extreme in this regard). it is also this accelerated provincial government interest in mineral extraction that has raised questions and suspicions as to the rigor of the provincial environmental review process. what stands out in this regard is the taseko mines limited gold and copper project near william’s lake, which upon submitting its proposal to the province for environmental assessment in 2009 quickly received approval at the provincial level, but failed to receive federal approval due to the multiple deficiencies that were found in the company’s environmental impact statement (mining watch, 2012). to this day this project remains stalled at the federal level. the priority given to accelerated resource extraction with questionable environmental oversight by the provincial government confirms the aggressive quality of the neo-liberal process in b.c., the failed efforts at “guided entrepreneurialism” and compensatory strategies for many communities, and the limits of a low tax environment in funding the necessary services for the province. however, the regional support for these varied extraction initiatives and related infrastructure projects as the “only way” to reverse the fortunes of numerous small communities in the interior has generated a broader liberal-ndp “consensus” on the merits of resource extraction. this has allowed for a new stage of “creative destruction” fraught with contestation (harper, 2013). within this political space, where the liberal government is committed to opening eight new mines by 2015, the measure of how aggressive and contested this stage has become is exemplified by the ajax proposal and the recent experience of the residents of kamloops. 190 | climate change and its discontents the local context of insecurity and uncertainty in multiple ways the city of kamloops has been a net beneficiary of the provincial process of centralization as government services became concentrated in this regional centre e.g. provincial lottery, healthcare services, and education, leading to a marked diversification in services, employment and the image of the city. due to the recent diversification away from a long history of resource-dependence at the local level the ajax project has generated differing and complex levels of insecurity and uncertainty as to the effects of this project on the municipality. in addition, and despite the increased expansion and diversification in occupations over time, for decades the region has had to confront a persistently high unemployment rate (until of late). this has fostered a local political culture more receptive to controversial investment initiatives such as ajax. this 1981 to 2001 phase was in marked contrast to the post-war period of unparalleled local growth and prosperity. by the late 1970s this interior centre in british columbia had experienced over twenty years of population growth on the order of seven percent a year, establishing a pattern seen as continuing well into the future. over this period the population had grown from 20,000 to 50,000 and the likelihood of having to address a population in the 80-100,000 range appeared imminent, perhaps by the early to mid-1980s (city of kamloops, 1974, 21; department, 1980, 11). based on the prospects for megadevelopments in energy, mining and forestry individuals were drawn to the area to the opportunities in these primary sectors and related public and private services (development, 1998, 3). the economic recession that began to hit kamloops (and the b.c. interior generally) in late 1981 was an unexpected shock in both depth and duration, and a communityaltering event regarding urban development. by late 1981 the city was mired in mass layoffs and cutbacks, labour strikes and a steep economic decline as a result of depression-era prices on the global market for these resource sectors, leading to the “the dubious distinction of having the highest unemployment rate in the nation” (mcrae, 1983, a1). with the termination of projects and related investment, unemployment hovered from 18% to 28% during the mid-1980s and a steady outflow from kamloops ensued. by the late 1980s city officials recognized that the city had few prospects due to its resource dependence (city of kamloops, 1989, 40-41). the early 1990s saw a brief revival in economic activity but by the mid-1990s stagnation had returned, such that by late in 1999 it was noted that “[t]alk of a community in economic distress has been a primary can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 191 theme leading to this year’s municipal election in kamloops”(muir, 1999, b1). candidates for mayor were in agreement that kamloops needed an “anything goes” attitude to be competitive with other urban centres for tax revenues and jobs, one candidate noting “[w]e should never be in a position as a city – unless it’s a nuclear reactor – to have to say no to development” (fortems, 1999, a5). at this point, the ajax project would have been a welcome blessing to this distressed community. into the 21st century, growth prospects for the city appeared minimal. the emergence of big box retailers had increased the regional profile of the city, but with a 12%+ unemployment rate, a declining forestry industry and news that the highland valley copper mine may end operations due to low prices generated local fears of continued decline. a gradual turnaround would be marked by the appearance of a major call centre, convergys, which would quickly grow to over 1500s employees, making it the largest private sector employer in the city. pollard note (currency) and northern trailer would establish manufacturing facilities, a local brewery would emerge, and as metal prices rose new gold would begin developing an abandoned gold mine outside of town and highland copper would expand facilities into processing. along with the expansion of the sun peaks ski resort came the creation of other golf course, conference and resort facilities in and around the city, suggesting that kamloops was replicating the “tourist – retirement” dynamic of neighboring kelowna. these diverse initiatives would be supported by a significant increase in provincial spending in healthcare and education, such that the province would be the dominant employer fueling an institutional, commercial and residential construction boom not seen since the late 1970s. by 2010 there had been such a notable change in the fortunes of the city and in the employment profile (see table below), that local concerns over the forestry industry had evaporated, replaced by a focus on expanding opportunities from the university (with a new law school), health services, transportation (air, rail, trucking), retail services, real estate, tourism and retirees. 192 | climate change and its discontents kamloops job profile (2000 and 2013)* top 10 employers: employer (2000) employees employer (2013) employees school district 73 1486 interior health authority 2921 royal inland hospital 1446 school district 73 1872 weyerhauser canada 920 thompson rivers university 1780 university college 800 highland valley mine 1256 city of kamloops 650 city of kamloops 713 overlander extended care 450 northern trailer (horizon north) 582 highland valley mine 449 new gold inc. 475 mcdonald restaurants (5) 315 domtar (formerly weyerhauser) 430 canada safeway 306 bc lottery corporation 424 bc lottery corporation 295 cn 320 * 2000 data from mackinnon and nelson, 39; 2013 data from venture kamloops the local effects of the 2008 financial crisis would be most evident in the private sector dynamic that had emerged. convergys would quickly slide in employment and close down in the face of a high canadian currency and broader corporate restraint for their services, along with pollard note. weyerhauser (now domtar) pulp and wood operations would continue to decline in employment (falling below the 430 employees listed above). tobiano, a major golf resort and housing development would go into receivership before completing its plans, and within the city the massive mission hill condominium project would go into bankruptcy as a half completed project. these trends served to heighten employment insecurities as the unemployment rate went from a low of 3.9% (2006) to 8.3% (2008), and 9.1% in 2010 (venture kamloops, 2013). this context allowed the ajax project (with 400 potential positions) to resonate with some local residents, commercial suppliers and trades people – with legitimate concerns regarding the vulnerability of the “new economy” that had emerged, in light of no provincial level commitment to support the diversification – “green economy” trends in place. for both the liberals and the ndp there was a consensus on “fiscal prudence,” “low taxes” (with marginal increases on higher incomes), and expanding resource development. the re-elected liberals placed can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 193 more emphasis on “balanced budgets,” “debt reduction” and the expansion of government services tied to royalties from aggressive resource extraction, while the ndp only countered with some reservations over the rigor of the existing provincial environmental assessment process. as the two provincial ridings that divide the city of kamloops are comprised of numerous small rural communities awaiting the benefits of a resource revival, and unaffected directly by the proposal, the liberal and ndp candidates in the two local ridings did not contest the appropriateness of an open-pit mine in an urban centre. this created the political space for the ajax project to be left largely unquestioned by the two main parties and local candidates in deference to the existing review process. this silence has allowed kghm to advance the mining project in the face of mounting local opposition and a debatable environmental assessment process being applied to an urban centre. the local opposition those opposed to the ajax mine proposal emphasize the extent to which an open-pit mine is wholly inappropriate for an urban context and the evident lack of adequate assessment criteria in place to even evaluate such a proposal. the opposition to the ajax project is comprised of the kamloops area preservation association (kapa), physicians for a healthy environment (fortems, 2013), kamloops mothers for clean air (kmca, 2013), and two (of nine) city councilors. of these the kamloops area preservation association (kapa) is the most visible, “a group of people brought together by their concern over the proposal to permit the development of a huge, open pit mine far too close to the city … its members include local ranchers, physicians, former mine employees, and residents of knutsford and kamloops.” (kapa, 2013). as they highlight “[w]e are not opposed to mining, but we are opposed to the location of the ajax mine.” those opposed to the ajax mine are concerned that the proximity of the mine is going to pose a threat to the environment, a threat to personal health, and a threat to the considerable efforts to overcome an old and unstable resource-based economy and “industrial” image. the ajax mine would be located on the high ground overlooking kamloops, knutsford, and the ranch-land on the southern perimeter of the proposed mine. if the project is approved it would set a canadawide precedent. up-wind of the city, less than one kilometre from a residential area, and only 2 kilometres from an elementary school, the 194 | climate change and its discontents proposed mine would pose a serious threat to the health and well-being of residents, both within and outside the city …. the real estate value of homes located so close to the mine would plummet. the impact of noise, vibration (from blasting), dust and light pollution would irrevocably change the entire character of kamloops, and particularly of the aberdeen, pineview and sahali areas. the dust would easily be carried by the prevailing southwest wind over the entire city. if dust and noise from the mine create significant impacts in the city of kamloops, the population of kamloops could decline as retired people, students, migratory workers, sports tournament participants and tourists move away or avoid the city. selected secondary economic impacts could be substantial. (kapa, 2013) these potential detrimental effects have raised significant concerns for kamloops city council, having devoted considerable time, planning and resources to an alternate vision for the city since 2003. the city of kamloops has three community plans established through broad community consultation that are counter to the impact of the ajax mine: the principles enshrined in the kamplan (the official community plan), the aberdeen plan and the sustainability plan (city of kamloops, 2013). in fulfillment of these plans, the city has taken on considerable debt to finance the expansion of parks, paths, and large recreational and leisure facilities to rebrand the city as a centre of “health and sport” in attracting residents and investment (and from which it has received glowing reviews). the sustainability plan was created to address at the local level issues including water consumption (which had previously been the highest per capita in canada), developing transportation infrastructure to serve a growing population in challenging topography, reducing solid waste to increase the life of the landfill, building on the reputation as canada’s tournament capital (which creates approximately $12 million a year in local economic spinoff), and improving air quality (in recognition of the compromised air shed already in place at certain times of the year). the sustainability plan outlines four phases to balance social, economic, and environmental welfare. sensitive areas and environmental curriculum have been reviewed, and the city has planned land-use and parks, and strategized for community wellness and recycling expansion. future plans suggest a high tech/green industry attraction strategy, a carbon off-set strategy, an air shed plan, and an alternate source study. councan you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 195 cillor donovan cavers, one of only two councillors with a position on the proposal, states that the city will have no chance of meeting these sustainability initiatives once the mine is operational (bass, 2012-13). consultation on the aberdeen area plan was initiated in 2004 to prepare for the tremendous growth expected within the southwest sector and to identify and protect environmentally sensitive sections which were already experiencing groundwater and slope stability issues (city of kamloops, 2008). forty eight percent of the city’s growth is expected for this area and considerable economic commitment has already been invested to create the infrastructure to accommodate this growth. although the impact of the mine will be evident for the entire city of kamloops, the aberdeen growth boundary will only be 310m away from the strategic stockpile and low grade ore stockpile, the closest home within 1400m, the elementary school less than 2000m away and the explosives storage facility less than 4000m from the elementary school. it is already known that the mine will use as much water and electricity as the entire city of kamloops and burn 91,000 litres of diesel per day over the 23 year expected life of the mine (kapa, 2013). although a complete list of chemicals used in the operation of the mine is unknown residents can expect blasting, crushing, concentrating, high powered lighting 24/7, uncomfortable levels of noise, vibration and dust, and a tailings pile so large as to permanently change the topography (reducing exposure to sunlight). the city recognized the looming threat and forwarded to the b.c. environmental assessment office (eao) an eleven page letter of inquiry in 2011, to which kghm was expected to reply. a series of community forums held in the fall and winter of 2012-13 allowed those concerned to review both sides of the argument (bass, 2012-13). norman thompson, for kghm, stated that many members of his organization were long-term residents of kamloops and that the best interests of the community were a priority for their project, however during the question period thompson was unable to answer many questions to the satisfaction of the audience (bass, 2012-13). scott bailey, executive project director of the bc environmental assessment office (eao), presented the process that will consider the ajax proposal, stating that this is a way to identify and evaluate effects of proposed projects and attempt to find ways to mitigate the impacts. in the case of ajax, the proponent kghm, was required to develop a community consultation plan to address the public on issues relevant to the environment, health, and the social and economic effects on the community. public input rounds are to be open for participation during various stages 196 | climate change and its discontents of the assessment, and a community advisory group, which bailey mediates, had been established (bass, 2012-13). the eao welcomes kamloops city council to participate in the process, and although they recognize the limited ability of municipal leaders to actually make decisions, they will be listened to and considered. while bailey affirmed that the eao recognizes the uniqueness of the ajax case, short -comings of standards were later made evident by the community advisory group when it was found that kghm may not even have to address the local health effects in its environmental assessment. “they were meant to provide community input during the environmental-assessment process for the proposed ajax copper and gold mine. but, after 15 months of meetings, members of a government-appointed community-advisory group are calling for a complete revamp of the way mines are approved in b.c. “the environmental process is not set up to deal with a mine that’s going to be placed inside a city … and those flaws in the process are glaring” said dr. twila burgman …. “one of the big concerns of kamloopsians is our health, and if that’s not being addressed properly, you can imagine the other concerns we have that are also not being addressed properly.” (klassen, 2013, p. 1) thus, while the eao had initially satisfied some concerns regarding the process, it would become increasingly evident that requests by the community advisory group and city council for urban appropriate assessment criteria and findings would be repeatedly rejected. during the series of community forums there were unexpected indications of a significant negative growth effect due to the ajax mine. an in-house survey of kamloops doctors showed that 70 percent of respondents would definitely or probably not have come to kamloops if the ajax mine was operational (young, 2013). of the152 (of 207) who responded, 105 said that they would not have considered kamloops to practice if ajax had been in place, and 54 stated that they would likely leave kamloops if the project is approved. eighty four percent were concerned about potential health impacts of the ajax mine on kamloops residents. where an estimated 15,000 people already are without a family doctor in kamloops, dr. derek plausins stated that “community leaders do need to know this issue does exist and the social impact is not one to be underestimated. the reality is kamloops has to compete with other communities to recruit doctors. unfortunately this is going to be another hurdle.” the results of the survey have served to highlight both can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 197 the potential negative effects to health from the mine and the economic impact. as a regional trauma centre already confronting a major shortage in doctors, a further decrease in medical professionals would affect not only kamloops but the entire region. councillor tina lange, who views the mine as a threat to the reputation of kamloops, has emphasized that health care is the number one service that people need and is requesting council confer with health professionals for more information and send a letter to the eao asking for the survey results to be weighted in their reports (bass, 2012-13). however, the role and status of city council in the process overseen by the eao remains uncertain. as the city awaits the completion and submission of an environmental assessment by kghm, the local concerns and divisions escalate. the local newspapers have had almost daily citizen editorials on the ajax project – the majority vehemently opposed on health and environmental grounds. community events with kghm sponsorship have been met with threats of boycotts, and city council has been repeatedly pushed to debate petitions for and against the project. riding-by-riding results of a recent poll in kamloops revealed 43% in favour / 32% opposed (north thompson), and 42% in favour / 36% opposed (south thompson), with about 25% undecided in both ridings (fortems, 2013). during the provincial election the legitimacy of the provincial assessment process was further brought into question as the local ndp candidate for south thompson broke ranks and advocated for an independent federal review of the ajax project after door-to-door canvassing revealed the extent of the fears of local residents most affected by the proposal. through press coverage, editorials, community forums, petitions, and polls, the fears over the environment, health implications, and the potential loss of professionals and the local image have created a context of anxious limbo. pictures in the local paper of vast dust clouds emanating from the highland copper mine on windy days have supported the likelihood of significant increases in particulate throughout the valley from ajax mining activity. other emerging issues include concerns over residential ground stability related to continuous blasting, the proximity of waste storage facilities, and the effects on property values and future residential developments. this anxiety has been imparted largely by kghm in a “relentless quest” to be granted approval by meeting the minimum regulatory requirements stemming from the continuing “open-mindedness” of provincial and federal officials regarding their proposal. 198 | climate change and its discontents the corporate response the trepidation that has gripped the city has only been exacerbated by kghm. suspicion was inculcated from the beginning with the kghm proposal in 2010, when the company website stated that the project was to be located 10km south of the city. only local sleuthing revealed the extent of the placement within city limits, thus establishing early signs of deception for some citizens. expected to address air quality, water quality, noise and vibration, and human health and ecological risks, there were initial indications of a priority on the views of local authorities. in the face of mounting opposition kghm has adopted an uncompromising position as to the placement and scope of the project while being ill-prepared to address critical health, environmental, and liveability questions. the corporate response has been to increasingly direct their focus at the provincial level, an arena more disposed to a narrow economic case for advancing this project. by the fall of 2012, the retiring local mla and minister of state for mining, kevin krueger, released a surprising critique in an open letter directed to kghm, confirming the extent of local fears and the suspicions of the opposition. dear ajax, here’s the thing. you really need to start answering some questions publicly, through respected, independent experts, on a range of key questions. i was pleased to hear mr. thompson say in local media that you are fully aware that your mining proposal cheek-by-jowl with some of kamloops’ newest residential developments requires a far higher standard than any other in canada (my paraphrase). it does. i have heard from anxious constituents in droves for many months. good citizens who have been pouring their volunteer time into your “consultations” protest to me that you are burying them in paper, tread milling the process, stonewalling and attempting to put the onus on government. if that is your approach, you will run out of resources long before you have any hope of building a mine …. let’s end the uncertainty, fear, anxiety and acrimony. very fine citizens of kamloops, including a number of highly-prized specialist doctors, are seriously considering moving elsewhere because of the present uncertainties. we don’t want that to happen. (krueger, 2012) krueger called on kghm to spend the money necessary to address all local concerns in order to acquire “social licence,” and warned that can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 199 unless his suggestions were followed “i have a strong premonition we’ll be wishing you farewell, some time in the future.” rather than heed the advice of the local mla, kghm sought to refurbish its local reputation in the community by changing the messenger, but not the message. kamloops’ highly respected rcmp superintendent, yves lacasse, resigned his position to join the ajax team in early 2013. however, local expectations that lacasse would provide an account of how kghm was willing to address local concerns would be quickly dashed. with the notable increase in organized criticism, and as the tangible negative effects of the ajax proposal became evident, kghm revised the terms of consultation – retreating to the narrowest procedural requirements to advance the project “as is.” initially under abacus it was emphasized that “if any one of the levels of government says no, this project will not go ahead,” including kamloops city council and the thompson-nicola regional district. later, through local newspaper ads, kghm emphasized that the provincial and federal ministers “have the final say on whether or not our project is approved” and “[t] hat means the mines proponents would go ahead with the project with provincial and federal approval even if city council officially opposes it, kghm ajax spokesman yves lacasse confirmed” (klassen, 1). this rigid tone would be carried into kghm’s long-awaited response to city council’s request for more information as “kamloops city council sounded off about a letter from kghm ajax meant to answer questions asked of the proponent two years ago, calling the responses a range of things from less than useless to shallow to a poor excuse. essentially the only thing council did not call it was informative” (stahn, 2013). “coun. nelly dever, noted kghm continues to use other mines as examples as to why ajax will work in kamloops, but refuse to give related information or studies. “when ever we’ve asked for comparative information, they’ve been very reluctant to give that information because according to the answers we’ve received all the mines are different, all mines are independent, are specific to climate, topography.” dever said this is a “poor excuse, whenever we ask a question, and they feel they have their backs up against the wall, they use the reasoning we’ve done it with these other mines before. we should be able to get that information.” (stahn, 2013) instead of addressing concerns the kghm response only aggravated fears, as in the letter to council “the company says they have no plan to 200 | climate change and its discontents go beyond the existing footprint, yet literature for investors had previously mentioned future mineral claims and expansion. if you’re telling your investors that you plan to expand – then you plan to expand” noted councilor tina lange. the whole context of this response was not helped by kghm. spokesperson yves lacasse emphasized on submitting the letter that environmental and health questions will be addressed in the company assessment, not in the response to council, and that “quality of life is subjective and a study will only be considered once the mine is in operation” (stahn, 2013). a later request by concerned citizens and city council that kghm complete a “full-blast test” to determine local effects was rejected by kghm as too expensive and not required as part of the assessment process, but kghm did acknowledge that residents will be able to feel the blasting (youds, 2013). a request by the community advisory group for a full-blast test was turned down by the eao, even though geotechnical consultants had reported to the eao the possibility of not just blast vibrations, but “sonic booms” strong enough to shake houses and break windows more than 10km from the proposed mine site (klassen, 2013). frustrated by the intransigence of kghm and the eao, the mayor of kamloops met directly with the federal and provincial ministers to request a full-blast test but received no guarantees (klassen). shortly after this kghm announced that it was considering revising the placement of the controversial structures within city limits, but only because new core samples revealed the potential for developing a much larger mine site. and thus, the anticipated environmental assessment by kghm for the fall of 2013 has been postponed until “at least” 2014 (paillard, 2013). it is apparent that kghm, despite affirming the unique qualities of its proposal, has no intention of making any meaningful or conciliatory gestures to allay the multiple fears and concerns expressed at the local level. meanwhile, kghm site tours and community information sessions continue (with no study results) even though the placement, overall size and impact of the proposed mine and facilities have become even more elusive. the kghm strategy attests to the corporate resolve to force open “new spaces of accumulation” through “chance discoveries” by meeting only minimal standards of regulatory compliance however ill-suited these are for the urban environment they intend to enter. to this end federal and provincial officials have been complicit in encouraging this position by deferring to the existing provincial process in an effort to accelerate resource extraction across the province. can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 201 conclusion the gravity and the implications of the ajax mine proposal are distinctive versus the quite common disputes over development initiatives in urban centres. city council and community groups remain uncertain as to their role and the weight of their input in the final decision. there is a lack of clarity over the standards and conditions kghm is expected to meet at the provincial or federal levels, and no regard for the established land-use, community or sustainability plans of the city. ‘informal recognition’ of the uniqueness of this proposal by the eao or kghm has not been sufficient to dampen the health or environmental concerns of citizens, or prevent institutions and processes from declining in repute. increasingly it appears the burden of “research” has fallen to the local level, as kghm, despite “expertise” in this area, refuse to provide information regarding health and environmental impacts from other operations, nor has the province been forthcoming as to the potential effects based on data from other mines. the imposition of this project to the potential detriment of the local economy, and the possibility that local citizens may be subject to “constant and involuntary exposure” to contaminants from the mine, strikes many as just wrong, irrespective of the support for the project. the fact that the ajax proposal has proceeded as far as it has represents just how removed canadian authorities are from intuitively acknowledging and enforcing any meaningful precautionary principle that anticipates the negative effects of resource extraction, and why approval of the ajax mine would be precedent setting for corporate investment. that a city with a highly diversified economy, an already compromised air shed, and sustainability plans in place would be considered an investment opportunity for an open-pit mine within city limits, speaks to the entrenched deference to corporate priorities. the project serves no critical employment or revenue needs at the local or provincial levels with some 30+ mining proposals under review, several within the kamloops region, and a local unemployment rate of 5.3% (venture kamloops, 2013). due to the unwillingness of federal and provincial authorities to recognize firm health and environmental standards for urban centres, and the inability to realize the link between these standards and the creation of new economic opportunities, the ajax proposal has been allowed to generate considerable local fear and anxiety for tens of thousands of residents. in the end the “precedent” established by approval of the ajax proposal may prove to be just too controversial for provincial and federal 202 | climate change and its discontents authorities, or the requirements on kghm for approval may be too onerous and costly. there is also the very real possibility that declining copper and gold prices, due to slower growth in china and increased supply from mines being developed around the globe at this time, may reduce the corporate commitment to this project. nevertheless, the mere fact that this project has been entertained as “feasible” has established a local context of uncertainty that may continue for many years even if the likely “conditional approval” were established. in that time, the cost to the city in reputation and lost economic opportunities due to reservations over the potential effects of the ajax mine by retirees, students, professionals, tourists, existing residents and other investors may be incalculable. can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 203 appendix 1 kapa. (2013). from www.stopajaxmine.ca/maps-ajax-mine 204 | climate change and its discontents bibiliography abacus mining and exploration corp. (2013). ajax project – overview. from www.amemining/s/afton-ajax.asp?reportid=333034 bass, elisabeth (2012-13). observations from community forums (sept. 9, 2012; oct. 14, 2012; jan. 17, 2013). tru political science work-study student. bctf. (2013). school closures. from www.bctf.ca/schoolclosures.aspx brenner, neil and nik theodore. (2002). cities and the geographies of “actually existing neoliberalism.” antipode. 34(3), 349–379. brino, karina. (2013). mining builds communities keynote address to vancouver board of trade. from http://www.mining.bc.ca/speeches. brownsey, keith, and michael howlett. (2001) british columbia: politics in a post-staples political economy. in keith brownsey and michael howlett (eds.) the provincial state in canada (pp. 309-334). peterborough: broadview press. brownsey, keith, michael howlett & joshua newman. (2010). from forestry to film: the changing political economy of british columbia. in m. howlett, d. pilon and t. summerville (eds.), british columbia: politics and government (pp.15-29). toronto: edmond montgomery publications. city of kamloops. (2008). aberdeen area plan. kamloops: city of kamloops. from http://www.city.kamloops.bc.ca/communityplanning/aberdeen. shtml city of kamloops (1974, june). kamplan: survey and analysis. kamloops: city of kamloops. city of kamloops. (1989, may). kamplan 1989: situation audit. kamloops. kamloops: city of kamloops. city of kamloops. (2013). proposed ajax mine. from http://www.kamloops. ca/ajax/land-ajaxmine.shtml city of kamloops. (1983, april 12). regular council meeting. kamloops: city of kamloops. city of kamloops. (1984, december 3). regular council meeting. kamloops: city of kamloops. city of kamloops. (2013). sustainable kamloops. from www.city.kamloops. bc.ca/ sustainable/index.shtml department of economic development. (1980). city of kamloops community profile. kamloops: city of kamloops. development and engineering services department (1998, january). annual report: 1997. kamloops: city of kamloops. fortems, cam. (1999, october 29). candidates differ over big-box developments. kamloops daily news. p. a5. can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 205 fortems, cam. (2013, april 20). groups call for more ajax transparency. the daily news. from http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/20130420/ kamloops0101/130419757/-1/kamloops/groups-call-for-more-ajaxtransparency fortems, cam. (2013, april 18). more support ajax than don’t. the daily news. from http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/20130418/ kamloops0101/130419826/-1/kamloops/more-support-ajax-thandont fuller, sylvia. (2001). “restructuring government in bc.” bc commentary: a quarterly review of provincial and economic trends. 4(4), 1-2. fuller, sylvia and lindsay stephens. (2002). cost shift. vancouver: canadian centre for policy alternatives. government of bc. (2013). lng – liquefied natural gas: a strategy for bc’s newest industry. victoria: ministry of energy and mines. from http:// www.gov.bc.ca/ener/popt/down/liquefied_natural_gas_strategy.pdf gratton, pierre. (2008). mining industry in bc: key issues and trends -presentation to bc construction roundtable from http://www.mining. bc.ca/presentations?page=1 gratton, pierre. (2010). the renaissance of mining in british columbia keynote address, vancouver board of trade business luncheon, bc mining week 2010 from http://www.mining.bc.ca/speeches harper, margo. (2013, september 21). coal mining protest in b.c. set to erupt. globe and mail. p. a8. hewlett, jason. (2013, august 1). no guarantee on mine blast: milobar delivers ajax worries to b.c. ministers. the daily news. pp. a1-a2. hoberg, george. (2010). bringing the market back in: bc natural resource policies during the campbell years. in m. howlett, d. pilon and t. summerville (eds.), british columbia: politics and government (pp. 331352). toronto: edmond montgomery publications. kapa – kamloops area preservation association. (2013). stop ajax mine. from www.stopajaxmine.ca/about-kapa kghm international. (2013). kghm international ajax project – project information centre from www.ajaxmine.ca/documents.html klassen, andrea. (2013, april 23). advisory group wants federal review on ajax. kamloops this week. pp. a1 klassen, andrea. (2013, april 2). ajax: city opposition not applicable. kamloops this week. pp. a1. klassen, andrea. (2013, july 30). city’s ajax report lands with a boom. air blasts could shake houses, break windows, consultants says. kamloops this week. pp. a1 & a7. http://www.mining.bc.ca/presentations?page=1 http://www.mining.bc.ca/presentations?page=1 http://www.mining.bc.ca/speeches 206 | climate change and its discontents klassen, andrea. (2013, august 1). ajax rejects calls for blast test. kamloops this week. pp. a1. klein, seth. (2002). reckless and unnecessary. vancouver: canadian centre for policy alternatives. kmca – kamloops mothers for clean air. (2013). from www. kamloopsmomsforcleanair.com koopmans, robert. (2013, january 31). lacasse hopes to bridge ajax divide. the daily news.from http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/20130131/ kamloops0101/130139970/-1/kamloops/lacasse-hopes-to-bridgeajax-divide krueger, kevin. (2012, october 29). an open letter to ajax. the daily news. from http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/20121029/ kamloops0303/121029866/-1/kamloops/an-open-letter-to-ajaxmine kukucha, christopher. (2005). lawyers, trees and money: british columbia forest policy and the convergence of international and domestic trade considerations. canadian public administration. 48(4),506-527. lee, marc, and stuart murray, ben parfitt. (2005). bc’s regional divide: how tax and spending policies affect bc communities. vancouver: canadian centre for policy alternatives. mackinnon, robert and ross nelson. (2005). urban and economic change in kamloops: postindustrial adjustments in a staples economy. in w. f. garrett-petts (ed.). the small cities book: on the future of small cities (pp. 23-48). vancouver: new star books. mcmartin, will. (2009, april 23). bc’s economy: whose was best? the tyee. from www.thetyee.ca/views/2009/04/23/bcecon mcrae, allen. (1983, february 4). jobless rate still high. the kamloops news. pp. a1. mining watch. (2012, december 11). taseko gets an incomplete: 50 substantial deficiencies found in environmental impact statement. from http:// www.miningwatch.ca/blog/taseko-gets-incomplete-50-substantialdeficiencies muir, jennifer. (1999, november 18). a big box story: is the retail invasion hurting other businesses? kamloops daily news. pp. b1. paillard, sylvie. (2013, august 3). kghm changes ajax scope. the daily news. pp. a1-a2. peck, jamie, nik theodore; and neil brenner. (2012). neoliberalism resurgent? market rule after the great recession. south atlantic quarterly. 111(2) 265-288. rees, simon. (2012, august 23). kamloops development project to set environmental precedent. from www.miningweekly.com/ article/kamloops-development-project-to-set-environmentalstandard-2012-08-23 can you build an open-pit mine in an urban centre? | 207 schrier, dan. (2011, may 11). bc’s mining sector digging up more export dollars. bc stats – analytical reports. from www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/ publications/analyticalreports.aspx?subject=mining stahn, jennifer. (2013, may 3). kghm ends 104 weeks of waiting (sort of). infotel. from http://infotel.ca/newsitem/kghm-ends-104-weeks-ofwaiting-%28sort-of%29/it1759 stahn, jennifer. (2013, may 8). kghm response to ajax questions offer little information. infotel. from http://infotel.ca/newsitem/shallow-letter-asmall-step-not-enough/it1827 ubcm. (2013). 2006 census information for b.c. municipalities. from www. civicinfo.bc.ca/81_ver2.asp united steel workers. (2008). campell’s legacy of mismanagement. from usw2009.ca.ca/docs/forestry%2010%20point.pdf venture kamloops. (2013). community facts. from http://www. venturekamloops.com/communityfacts.htm venture kamloops. (2013). labour force. from http://venturekamloops.com/ labour.htm youds, mike. (2013, july 29). ajax urged to conduct full-test blast. the daily news. pp. a1-a2. young, michele. (2013, november 20). doctors down on ajax, survey suggests. the daily news. from http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/ article/20121120/kamloops0101/121119876/-1/kamloops/doctorsdown-on-ajax-survey-suggests young, nathan. (2008). radical neoliberalism in british columbia: remaking rural geographies. canadian journal of sociology. 33(1). 1-36. 208 | climate change and its discontents ‘greening work’ in lean times: the amalgamated transit union and public transit jeffrey carey1 and steven tufts2 abstract: this paper examines the amalgamated transit union’s (atu) discussion of environmental issues since the mid 1980s. we explore the trialectic relationship between capital, labour and nature in canada’s public transit unions, primarily through the lens of labour geography. in a review of union documents and canadian newspapers we find the state uses the environment as a wedge issue in its ‘war or position’ with unions, representing workers’ strike actions as harmful to the environment and the community. the state’s positioning of atu members as crucial to both the functioning of communities and environmental sustainability lends itself to counter-hegemonic campaign strategies. we examine a recent campaign by toronto’s atu local 113 entitled “protecting what matters” as a local union’s community and environmental strategies during a period of austerity. the paper concludes with lessons learned from a labour geography perspective and calls for a more community based approach to resistance. introduction a marginal issue in labour studies until recently, climate change mitigation and adaptation are increasingly important processes in the examination of work, workers and workplaces (lipsig-mummé, 2013). for workers and their organizations, environmental or ‘green’ issues present both potential opportunities and challenges in workplace and broader regulatory disputes. it is perhaps to be expected then that union responses to the long-run crisis of climate change have been highly var1 jeffrey carey is a phd student at the department of geography, york university. 2 steven tufts is associate professor and chair at the department of geography, york university. this paper was supported by the sshrc-funded work in a warming world (w3) cura. the authors would like to acknowledge the helpful comments on an earlier draft of the article provided by members of w3 during a recent workshop. we also would very much like to thank the ar reviewers. the responsibility for the content rests with the authors. ‘greening work’ in lean times | 209 iegated with some adopting hard-line responses and others attempting to find some form of middle-ground between jobs and the environment. rather than conforming to a single coherent discursive policy and action plan on the environment, economic actors routinely adopt different discursive strategies influenced by a number structural-economic and political-ideological factors. labour’s response to climate change is further complicated by the variable strategies adopted by capital and the state. this paper presents a case study of the amalgamated transit union (atu) as an example of how labour utilizes environmental discourse to further its objectives while capital and the state simultaneously adopt similar discourses on the environment to discipline and fragment workers. for some workers, the long-term impacts of climate change and the mitigation strategies in response to impacts present opportunities in bargaining and organizing new workers. a union that would appear positioned to benefit from adaptation and mitigation efforts is the amalgamated transit union (atu), a union representing 190,000 public transit workers in canada and the us. increasing public concern over unsustainable north america automobile transportation systems, increased ridership throughout large urban public transit systems, decaying public and private infrastructure associated with transit use, and the potential identification of the transit worker as an ‘essential green worker’, place the atu at the crux of nature-economy and ‘greenjob’ debates. in theory, the union is well positioned in terms of potential coalition building on environmental issues in the short and long terms. in the short term, this position should serve as a strategic advantage in collective bargaining disputes with capital and the state as the union seeks broader support within the community on transit issues, such as increased public funding of services and the ‘greening’ of transportation systems. in the longer term, climate change should also potentially serve as the issue which defines the atu as a progressive actor in union-community (or union-environmental) alliances with the goal of developing alternative transportation planning solutions mediating society-nature relations. at the same time, however, the current age of austerity following the global financial crisis presents real material challenges to public transit workers. in the united states, a high profile budget showdown in congress over the funding of a long-term transportation bill (eventually signed into law as h.r. 4281) in march 2012 highlighted the contentious nature of transportation planning in the current economic and political climate (plungis, 2012). in canada, austerity budgets at lower levels 210 | climate change and its discontents of government, have entailed warnings of further cut-backs in investment for public transportation, privatization of services, and in some instances the passage of essential service legislation to limit the collective bargaining strength of workers (see recent report by gilligan and stolarick (2013) in the toronto case). in some instances, this has entailed the invocation of a ‘green’ agenda on the part of the state to discipline workers. this is evidenced most recently in collective bargaining disputes in ottawa and toronto as the state has employed discourses on the environment and climate change to discipline workers and increase public discontent towards the atu (globe and mail, 2006; rupert, 2009; ottawa citizen, 2009). these recent events, specifically those in canada, highlight the complicated role of the state in defining and defending green issues in collective bargaining disputes with public transportation workers. the state is not only in many cases the employer of public transit workers but also the regulatory and disciplinary power over all workers as it reproduces capitalist relations through labour laws, collective agreements and cultural norms. in an intensified neoliberal regulatory environment, this has entailed significant roll-backs in workers’ rights (specifically collective bargaining rights,) macro-economic regulations, and the public service more generally (amin, 1994; peck, 2001; jessop, 2003; panitch & swartz, 2003). more specific to public transportation workers, this changing regulatory environment has entailed moves to privatize services, and more recently, the legislative clawing back of collective bargaining rights through the passage of essential service legislation. discourses on the environment – specifically those geared towards mitigating climate change, decreasing congestion, and reducing pollution – remain a relatively marginal issue in recent efforts to remove these rights, but they have been utilized by the state to discipline workers in other collective bargaining disputes, opening ground to represent transportation workers as both essential to the economy and the environment. given the complicated context and messy character of what is referred to as a ‘capital-labour-nature’ trialectic, this paper looks to uncover the ways in which the atu has adopted climate change mitigation and adaptation discourses into its collective bargaining and organizing strategies, and broader campaign strategies for transit regulation and public funding. we also examine, however, the ways in which ‘green’ issues have been adopted by the state to discipline workers and produce cleavages between the union and the broader community. we find that the union employed environmental discourses more shrewdly ‘greening work’ in lean times | 211 during periods of economic crisis and its’ ability to develop lasting coalitions strengthened. yet these efforts were countered by the state and the atu’s efforts were limited in several jurisdictions in canada. the development of medium to long-term strategies to engage the public in labour-friendly public transit development remains uneven, leaving some questions as to the success of the union’s community and environmental agenda for the future. this paper begins with a brief conceptual discussion of the capitallabour-nature trialectic. particular emphasis will be placed on integrating literatures in ways that highlight how both labour and capital are implicated in the production of nature and conversely how nature confers limits upon both capital and labour. however, we feel that an emergent ‘labour geography’ can both contribute to this discussion and gain from a deeper consideration of nature. the paper discusses the results of an analysis of the canadian atu’s language on the environment in print media between 1986 and 2012. of particular concern is the extent to which the canadian atu mobilized workers around climate change and the ways by which they sought to include mitigation and adaptation strategies into immediate changes in the workplace (such as through bargaining more immediate health and safety regulations in the workplace) or proposing more long-term changes to transportation systems. we detail the ways by which the atu has attempted to implement such strategies, specifically the ‘types’ of coalitions they have been forged with outside groups and potential points of cleavage that employers have exploited in the past. the third section reviews two recent campaigns: a case is identified in which the union successfully tied union practices to environmental issues and social justice issues more broadly and a less successful attempt is reviewed in which the union failed to draw explicit links between transit workers and the environment. we conclude with a discussion of how capital-labour-nature read through labour geography informs some normative recommendations for union-environmental practices in the public transportation sector. capital-labour-nature working in the tradition of marx, there has been a considerable output of literature detailing the ways capital and labour represent and produce nature as well as the ways nature confers limits upon capital and labour. we argue a potentially rich understanding can be developed through a cross-fertilization of ideas between two literatures: debates on the production of nature and labour geography. exploring this syn212 | climate change and its discontents thesis, the remainder of this section moves from the abstract production of nature thesis to the more concrete debates within ‘labour geography’. the production of nature debates were pioneered by smith (1984) in his spatialization of marx’s capital in uneven development: nature, capital, and the production of space. with respect to nature, smith’s (1984) argument is twofold: first, nature is understood as a socially produced phenomena – discursively and materially –under capitalism; and, second capitalist nature is reproduced throughout society through production, circulation and capitalist social relations. as castree (2000) notes, smith’s production of nature thesis is notable in its dialectical materialist treatment of the society-nature relation. rather than treat nature and society as distinct entities smith (1984) draws explicitly on marxist philosophy to identify how nature is transformed (through productive relations) into a ‘second nature’. smith (1984) constructs his argument through an analysis of the labour process from preto post-capitalist socio-economic forms. in early, pre-class based societies he notes a metabolism or relation between society and nature. the relation to nature was governed through usevalues as people produced differentiated goods from nature and through labour. later, capitalism opened a rift or division between society and nature as (1) the development of post-agrarian class-based societies formed, and (2) through the usurpation of use-value by exchange values in the governance of society-nature relations. indeed, the disjuncture between exchange and use values is at the heart of eco-socialist critique (see burkett, 1999). smith (1984) argues further that this rift is reproduced through both structural-economic and political-ideological factors as ruling ideologies of nature pre-figure society-nature relations, presenting nature as external and distinct from society. more recently, smith (2007) elaborated on how shifts in productive practices have informed shifts in ideological discourses of an externalized and instrumental nature at lower levels of abstraction. in particular, he notes processes such as the deepening of finance capital into the wetland credit trade and its reproduction in mitigation discourses. he further clarifies his production of nature thesis with respect to the dialectical relation between society and nature arguing that just as capital produces nature, nature produces or presents limits to capital noting the production of nature can create “accidental, unintended and even counter-effective results vis-à-vis nature” (smith, 2007, p.10). similarly, the production of nature is never entirely under the control of capital; control over nature is variegated, contradictory and spatially and tem‘greening work’ in lean times | 213 porally negotiated despite the increasing centrality of nature to accumulation strategies (e.g., biotechnology, ecotourism, carbon credits) (see castree, 2005). this relation between capital-nature is clearly dialectic, a fundamental element of the production of nature thesis. labour, however, is also implicated in this process. explicit explorations of labour’s embedded role in the production of nature are offered by prudham (2005; 2007), nugent (2011), and hrynyshyn & ross (2011). in his analysis of the “owl wars” in the douglas-fir region – a region spanning the west coast of the united states and southwestern canada – prudham (2005) explores the dialectical relationship between nature and local logging communities. drawing on polanyi (1944), he argues that nature confers ‘limits’ upon capitalist accumulation through eco-regulation. capital’s creeping commodification of nature results in a form of push back, or eco-socialization, by which new regulations are struggled for (or against) producing new social modes of regulation. workers are involved in this process in contradictory ways as they contest government regulations and environmentalist action that threatens economic livelihoods as is the case in prudham’s (2005) study of forestry workers and logging communities. in a later study, he notes the historical cleavages within the labour movement over environmental management and relates the divisions to cold war ideological conflicts (prudham, 2007). nugent (2011) similarly notes the emergence of divergent strategies within the labour movement on the environment in response to the dual crises of the great recession and climate change. in his analysis of the contrasting environmental strategies employed by the united steelworkers (usw) and canadian autoworkers (caw) in response to the general manufacturing crisis of the early 2000s, nugent (2011) argues that the usw effectively resisted dominant neoliberal discourses of ecological modernization. this was largely achieved through partnerships with outside groups and the formation of blue-green coalitions. together they forged a counter hegemonic discourse; one that he terms ‘green new dealism’, predicated on an expanded role for the state in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and tripartite economic planning. conversely, he argues, the caw responded to the general manufacturing crisis of the early 2000s through militant particularism, adopting a corporatist and eco-liberalist stance towards environmental issues. he explains the divergent strategies through attention to the different crises facing steel and auto. focusing more explicitly on the caw, specifically the effect of the general manufacturing crisis on union discourses on the environment, 214 | climate change and its discontents hrynyshyn & ross (2011) echo nugent’s (2011) findings. similarly, they argue that the union became increasingly defensive and isolationist in response to the crisis, leaving little room for coalition building with environmental groups and adopting a similar discourse to the employer on north american automobility. this, they argue, conflicts with popular representations of the caw as a “sword of justice” and representative of idealized forms of social unionism. it further evidences the temporal and contextual character of the labour-nature dialectic under capitalism; that is, macro-processes and structures such as the global economy or regulatory environment can and do shift labour’s discursive and material practices on environmental issues. it is here where labour geography does have the potential to add to debates on capital-labour-nature relations. nugent (2011) is an early attempt to bring a labour geography sentiment to eco-socialist approaches. labour geography as called for by herod (1997; 1998; 2001) attempts to centre labour in the analysis of the production of economic landscapes. several recent critiques and commentaries have addresses the strengths and limitations on an approach that attempts to look at the agency of workers within the constraints of a capitalist system (castree, 2007; lier, 2007; tufts & savage, 2009; coe & lier ,2011; rutherford, 2010; herod, 2010). while it is beyond the scope of this paper to detail all of the current debates within labour geography, there are four main areas of contention: agency, the role of the state, scale and class. consideration of nature has not been central to these debates, but each of these issues can be enriched by a placing nature within capital-labour relations. in terms of perhaps the defining ‘analytical boundary’ of labour geography, ‘agency’ remains a contested issue. some feel that herod (1997) perhaps overstated the ‘capital-centrism’ of much radical economic geography (peck, 2013). but a more pointed critique is perhaps how inserting agency obscures the domination of capitalism as a system of exploitation. mitchell (2011, p.567), for example, has specifically challenged the limits of overemphasizing labour’s agency: “....i would like to suggest, any labor geography must be tempered with a sober, materialist assessment of labor’s geography—the world “as it really is”. that is, as we seek to see how workers create economic spaces and landscapes we must also closely examine those spaces and landscapes that they have not made, at least in any basic sense, but in which they find themselves and must live—those landscapes that are, through struggles and the exercise of power, produced not for them but for others, those ‘greening work’ in lean times | 215 landscape that make “a new kind of community” all but impossible”. in an even more stinging critique, das (2012, p.21) argues that “agency has often been used as a quasi-empirical category: a tool to describe how labor is making a difference to the spatial organization of capitalism, here and there. agency is opposition to capital’s own existence, agency in collaboration with capital, and agency involved in gaining concessions, without challenging capitalist class relations, are all problematically put together”. even herod (2010) concedes that ‘agency’ has been under theorized; coe and lier (2011, p.14) dismissed this concern and continue to focus on “developing more precise concepts for describing the politics of work”. here the goal is to theorize agency more rigorously, and they turn to cindi katz’s (2004) typology of agency (resilience (adaptive, getting by), reworking (shifting distribution systems) and resistance (changing the forces of production, balance of power) (see also cumbers et al., 2010). as we insert nature into a trialectic, agency becomes even more complicated as we consider how non-human objects and process impact social systems (latour, 2005). however, labour geographers have begun to look at how climate change is indeed ‘acting’ on systems of reproduction. in sector analysis, geographers have looked at the responses of workers to climate change in tourism (tufts, 2013), forestry (holmes, 2013) and auto production (holmes & hracs, 2013). exactly how nature acts within these processes has only begun to be theorized in labour geography. labour geographies important contribution is its understanding of how worker action can best mobilize labour against increasingly mobile capital, a topic that continues to inspire herod (2011). as sadler (2000, p.148) notes, study “of labour geographies suggests there is further potential in focusing on the precise ways in which labour strategies are bound in place and give rise to particular scales of action, and what potential there is for changing that scale of engagement.” it has been noted that labour geographers have focused on the workplace, communities, cities, regions, nations and global (lier, 2007; tufts, 2007). some debate remains among scholars as to which scale (e.g., the workplace, local, national, global) is the most practical means of achieving greater power for workers and the ways in which different scales of organization conflict and compliment one other. indeed, a multiscalar analysis and strategy is deemed most appropriate when dealing with labour’s relation to capital. (wills, 2002; sadler, 2004; sadler & fagan, 2004; tufts, 2007). castree et al. (2004) emphasize the challenges to organizing at 216 | climate change and its discontents international scales as local labour inevitably confronts a ‘geographical dilemma’ as workers compete in a global economy for investment and jobs in their communities. and this is perhaps the most contentious point for critics such a das (2012) who see labour geography as a largely localist project that picks its case studies, largely from advanced capitalist regions and fails for focus on the demands of a universal working class. the result is research that romanticizes militant particularism (harvey, 1996) at the expense of broader working class alliances. while das is absolutely correct that labour geography’s empirical base is narrow, he misses the point of much labour geography research, which is to document the processes in which labour produces scale in order to normatively work toward a global fight against capital. and this is exactly what labour confronts when dealing with climate change. how can workers express unity in the midst of a global climate crisis, when uneven development remains integral to capitalism? how can workers produce a scale of organizational power to confront such challenges? indeed, here the concept of ‘scaling-up’ power and the contradictions of beginning with localized action becomes even more apparent. will workers in areas that benefit from longer growing seasons mitigate climate change in cooperation with workers in droughtridden areas? there is also the question of the role of the state within labour geography research, argued to be a largely forgotten institution (herod, 2010). castree (2007) notes that labour geographers have demoted the state relative to other institutions and relationships. the state, while not being ignored by labour geographers, has paid less attention to the role of labour law in structuring action. questions range from how the nation state must be included in projects looking to ‘scale-up’ labour law (rutherford, 2013). lier (2012) has also argued that public sector workers have also been relatively neglected as an empirical focus. again, this is not surprising given that the study of labour action within neoliberal attacks have perhaps rendered the state as an implicit antagonist – and therefore of no longer any excitement. extra-state strategies of labour as unions attempted to out maneuver neoliberal governments drew attention. further, transnational corporate responsibility agreements (wills, 2002) appeared to outflank states, at least temporarily. labour geographers have begun to explore the variety of ways workers engage with local, regional and national governments in order to shape economic space (tufts, 2010). in an era of intensified austerity, however, further attention to the state will become paramount. ‘greening work’ in lean times | 217 the state is also primary regulator of the environment and must be taken seriously in the capital-labour-nature trialectic. it would not be without merit to suggest that perhaps a labour-capital-nature-state ‘quadrialectic’ is required. how labour geographies are affected through the state’s engagement with natural processes will remain a fertile ground for research. in terms of climate change, much remains both theoretically and politically unpredictable. as wainwright & mann (2012) have recently argued there are many adaptation possibilities to climate change ranging from ‘climate leviathan’ strong-states to market-focused governance to more experimental, decentralized democratic approaches. last, a central area for debate is the issue of class in the labour geography project. rutherford (2010) offers a sympathetic critique, warning labour geographers against decentering class from analysis in lieu of other identity formations among workers and a trend toward intersectional analysis. he is also concerned with the trend toward moving analysis away from the workplace and struggles over the labour process. similarly, mitchell (2005) has argued for a larger consideration of working-class studies in geography. labour geography’s concept of ‘class’ is the primary target of das’ critique. his main argument is that “it is time to move from the labour geography type approach, whose dominant and narrowly defined agency-oriented concerns include social-democratic manipulation of landscapes of capitalism, to a dialectical-materialist class analysis of social-geographical issues, which has more radical ambitions and which will encompass a less voluntarist and more radical labor geography” (das, 2012, p.19). das points to two mistakes within labour geography. first, labour is conflated with class when class is a much broader category and second, class is an anti-essential category subordinated to differences of race and gender. what labour geographer’s lack is a theory that encompasses the “unity that defines class” (das, 2012, p.23). das is correct, much recent work in labour geography does explore the differences among workers that complicate class struggle, especially in cosmopolitan global cities (mcdowell et al., 2008). but there is work that centres the question of the reserve army of labour in the context of abundant local and international supplies of workers (wills et al., 2010). for many labour geographers, the question of working-class formation is how to operationalize a class politics in a context where capitalism fragments class through daily practices. much of the critique of labour geography stems from a more general 218 | climate change and its discontents confusion over poorly defined levels of abstraction. first, labour geographers spend less time abstracting labour as a commodity that has been separated from natural forces (e.g., land) necessary for social production. instead, labour is immediately read as a ‘pseudo-commodity’, that is to say workers are only temporarily a commodity (during the working day), are living beings with agency, and are in a social relationship with capital (castree et al, 2004, p.29). second, there is concern that many contemporary geographical studies of unions conflate institutional labour with the entire working-class. the critique is that labour unions are hardly the beginning and the end of working-class agency. in fact, they are creatures of capitalism that fail to represent (directly in any case) much of the globally fragmented working-class which is still in search of unity. as a result, labour geography’s focus on organized labour creates theoretical challenges with respect to issues of agency, class, struggles with the state, and the production of scale from the outset. labour geographers are no doubt guilty of such conflation. herod’s (1997) initial intervention, however, called for only a minor correction to economic geography that failed to see any active agency in workers. what has evolved since then has been a study of labour firmly within a capitalist system and its role in shaping capitalist economic landscapes (often through the power of labour unions). there were never any claims that labour was producing non-capitalist landscapes. it is here where we can draw some connections to debates over the last two decades on marx’s theorization of nature. burkett (1999; 2003), for example, has countered critiques of marxism as an anthropocentric theory view of ‘nature’ as limitless and subject to forces of production. instead, he argues that marx was aware of the inherent contradictions of both labour and the natural limits to capital. in other words, capitalism takes place in the ‘natural’ world and as much as it might attempt a complete subsumption of labour and nature, the contradictions inevitably lead to economic and ecological crisis. what burkett underemphasizes is the role that labour plays in both its own and nature’s subsumption to social relations of production, but unevenly so. as a sectarian agent representing narrow material interests, labour unions in some sectors (e.g., forestry) have historically come into conflict with activist communities, fragmenting the broader workingclass. the process of how environmental issues disrupt class unity and disciplines specific classes must be integrated into analysis. we are simply too far removed at the current juncture from a class-based ecological revolution that would supplant capitalist ownership of nature with ‘greening work’ in lean times | 219 a system of social use values for nature as advocated by eco-socialists (magdoff & bellamy-foster 2011, p.137). it is, however, appropriate and worthwhile to look at how labour ‘produces nature’ within the confines of capitalism and how ecological crisis influences processes of labour’s deeper subsumption. labour geography provides a rich lens for examining how the production of nature intersects with labour and capital’s production of economic landscapes within a capitalist system. issues of agency, scale, the role of the state, and class fragmentation within labour geography are informed with a consideration of nature. such a perspective informs the analysis of environmental issues and the atu. the amalgamated transit union and eco-socialization: canadian transportation systems this section details the major findings from two primary ‘grey literatures’ reviewing the atu’s language on the environment, specifically with relation to climate change and the union’s positioning on issues relating to mitigation and adaptation. these included literature published by the atu – specifically in transit, the union’s primary publication disseminated to workers and newspaper articles spanning the period of 1986 to 2012. as noted in the introduction, particular concern was placed in understanding when and how environmental issues were leveraged by the union in contract and broader regulatory disputes in media and their own propaganda. further, we attempted to identity how the employer (often the state) used similar rhetoric as a means to discipline workers. admittedly, this is a brief snapshot of how environmental issues are implicated in transit industrial relations, but content analysis of documents and media remains a powerful unobtrusive research method (forbes, 2000; babbie & benaquisto, 2002). in the case of the atu, where battles with public employers are often fought in the media, it was determined that examination of such documentation is one acceptable method. established in 1892, the atu is now the largest union representing transit workers in the usa and canada. the atu represents more than simply bus drivers but also related services including, para-transit, light rail, subway, streetcar, ferry boat operators, mechanics, clerks, baggage handlers, and municipal employees. the canadian branch of the atu was formally established by the international union in 1982. reviewing union publications, it appears that the canadian branch has 220 | climate change and its discontents remained dependent upon its ties with the international union, with the majority of the research and educational capacities remaining within the united states. a brief review of in transit publications for the past five years revealed only two canadian specific issues (atu, april 2012 and december 2011). in other editions of the publication, canadian content is limited, generally appearing under the regular headline “the canadian agenda” wherein local transit issues were discussed rather than more broad national transit issues (as is more common in the sections detailing events in the united states.) at the local scale, the atu has taken part in coalitions with transit users in order to improve access supporting the bus riders union in los angeles and other urban transit movements (averill, 2010). however, participation with community transit activists is uneven across north american jurisdictions. in toronto, the current leadership of atu local 113 has not particularly embraced any serious coalition strategy with riders or environmentalists seeking to expand public transit. ian macdonald (2013) notes in his critique of recent ‘tactical errors’ by the atu in toronto (including a late friday night walkout which left riders stranded), the union has to date failed to advocate for any significant alternative transit policy aimed at servicing poor neighbourhoods. toronto transit workers and the union continue to struggle with building a positive relationship with the public. indeed, the atu has played a minor role in the larger struggles to build a ‘greener’ economy at either the national or municipal level. blue-green canada, for example, is an alliance largely driven by the united steelworkers (usw). in toronto, atu local 113 did co-sponsor a large good green jobs for all conference in 2009, but the content of that event was largely focussed on transition to green manufacturing and infrastructure renewal. the conference primarily organized by the local labour council drew its inspiration from the los angeles alliance for a new economy (laane) and its ongoing efforts to advocate for economic growth through public transit expansion and local procurement strategies (willis-aronowitz, 2013). local 113 is largely absent from more recent transit development community campaigns. it is not an active part of the toronto community benefits network, a coalition attempting to secure a community benefits agreement with metrolinx, the greater toronto area’s authority overseeing $8.4 billion of transit expansion. the union did sponsor a series of town halls in 2010 to hear rider concerns, but this followed an intense period of media demonization of transit workers (cbc, 2010). ‘greening work’ in lean times | 221 with regards to environmental issues, the atu presents few explicit ties to climate change mitigation and adaptation in its internal (union-members) publications. where issues are discussed, such as in a february 2008 issue entitled “going green”, individual solutions are presented in the way of retrofitting workers homes and encouraging environmental stewardship amongst workers (both within canada and the united states, see figure 1). although the union has remained quiet on environmental issues internally, they have addressed issues of climate change and drawn explicit links between transit workers and mitigating climate change in the popular press. the remainder of this section details the primary findings of a review of canadian newspapers between 1986 and 2012. here, discourses on the environment have been utilized by both the employer and the union with two major points emerging. first, the canadian atu employed its discourse on the environment more explicitly during periods of contraction in the public sector. they did so primarily through advocating for an expanded public transportation system; making connections between reducing traffic congestion and minimizing greenhouse gas emissions. as early as 1991, amid talks of contraction of transit services throughout the greater toronto area, local 1587 of the atu proposed the expansion of regional transportation lines, specifically an expansion of go transit bus operations into new regions including niagara, brantford, and haldimand-norfolk (hamilton spectator, 1992). it should be noted that in this early example, the union’s position was couched primarily in terms of increasing membership and ensuring job security. it was the government, specifically then transportation minister gilles pouliot, that drew the most explicit ties to the environment: “in the vicinity of the greater toronto area we do have the responsibility to move people...it’s friendly to the environment, especially on rail” (hamilton spectator, 1992). in a later example, the atu made more direct links between increasing transit ridership and decreased greenhouse gas emissions in their partnership with other unions including the hotel employees, restaurant employees international union local 75 (here, now unite-here) to secure employer subsidized transit passes (canadian newswire, 2001). similar to earlier efforts, this came at a time when the city of toronto and the ttc were facing a significant budgetary crisis. in this instance, an expanded public transportation system, specifically through employer subsidized transit passes, was framed by the partnership as having broader implications on the environment, workers lives and livelihoods, and the long-term sustainability of industries outside of transit. this link is identified strongly by paul clifford, then president of here local 75: “the employer subsidized transit pass is good for all for 222 | climate change and its discontents workers, for the environment, for the citizens of toronto and for the longterm health of the tourism industry” (canadian newswire, 2001). second, ties to the environment were most commonly made by the state, particularly during job actions and prolonged strikes. this was most prominent post-2000 when the state made direct links between transit disruptions, traffic congestion, and environmental degradation. for instance, during a 2006 wildcat strike in toronto, then toronto transit commission (ttc) vice-chair, adam giambrone, urged toronto residents to avoid driving when questioned about the environmental harm that an atu strike had on the environment. “it’s been a long time since the last system-wide shutdown. as an aside, i hope that our first instinct when we need an alternative to transit is to bike or walk, not take the car. not only does it help our air quality, but it helps ease traffic congestion.” (giambrone quoted in globe and mail, 2006). similarly, during an extended strike in ottawa in 2008 through early 2009, city officials encouraged residents to ease congestion through carpooling, biking and walking during the duration of the strike (ottawa citizen, 2009; rupert, 2009). again in toronto, perhaps the most brazen example of eco-discipline came from brad duguid in 2008 when in the course of the ontario government’s legislating ttc workers back to work he noted that transit strikes meant “higher pollution levels, with the related health effects and impact on our environment” (macdonald, 2013, p.30). in all three cases, the environment, specifically climate change and greenhouse gas emissions were utilized in a nuanced way to divide ties between the union and the community. all three instances would appear to be a form of reverse job blackmail or a classist representation of the issue through an attempt to refocus community dissatisfaction on workers as a means to diminish bargaining strength. striking workers were painted as taking actions that were damaging to the community and the environment and could be further interpreted as a troubling inroad to the future representation of the transit worker as an ‘essential green worker’. as tufts (2011) identifies, if used more explicitly environmental issues could serve as a means to further diminish workers collective bargaining rights. the passage of a 2011 bill that designated the ttc an essential service evidenced that the province (with the city’s backing) was prepared to diminish workers’ rights citing the economy as a central issue (cbc, 2011; schein, 2011). as these examples demonstrate and recent events would dictate, it is not difficult to envision a scenario in ‘greening work’ in lean times | 223 which a government utilizes the environment as a wedge issue to further limit workers’ rights in collective bargaining. ‘greening work’ in lean times: the dual crises of climate change and the great recession perhaps the most explicit ties between environmental issues, job security and workers lives and livelihoods from the union have come recently with the international atu taking the lead in promoting the ‘greening’ of transportation systems in the united states and canada. however explicit, on the ground responses have been highly fractured across space and time with a significant diversity of responses between and within the international atu and canadian locals. the twin crises of climate change and the great recession have prompted creative proposals from the international atu with respect to the eco-socialization of north american transportation systems. perhaps sensitive to some diminished strength on the part of the state in both the united states and canada to regulate these crises, the international atu has seized some ground couching its calls for the expansion of public transportation in terms of environmental sustainability, climate change mitigation, and the ‘greening’ of work more generally. this is evidenced in the international atu’s recent coalition with unions and environmental groups in the blue-green alliance in addition to its sustained efforts to fight development of the keystone pipeline (associated press, 2011). cynically, there is a point to be made that restricting the supply of cheap oil for cars by limiting pipeline capacity will perhaps force more people to use public transit. nevertheless, international president, lawrence hanley had made the union’s ties to the environment and transit workers position in a ‘green’ economy explicit: “...we have to convince people that green jobs matter, and that transit is the greenest job you’re going to find” (bluegreen alliance, 2012). although explicit ties have been drawn by the international union, this commitment has not always trickled down to lower scales as recent canadian campaigns demonstrate. on the one hand the union has hit back at government calls to reduce funding for public transportation citing the importance of public transportation to the community and the environment. at the same time, recent campaigns in toronto have been notable in their complete neglect of environmental issues. the remainder of this section highlights the fractured quality of ‘green’ activism in the canadian atu reviewing (1) the response of local 113 to the city of 224 | climate change and its discontents toronto’s calls for cut backs to the ttc and (2) its’ later neglect of environmental issues in a recent advertising campaign entitled protecting what matters. in 2011, leaving the recommendations from a kpmg report largely unchanged, the city of toronto released its core services review calling for a roll-back of ttc services including cuts to night buses, accessibility services for the disabled, and increased crowding standards on existing routes. the review immediately drew a heated response from the president of atu local 113, bob kinnear: “this is a war on commuters, lowwage workers, the disabled and the environment” (canadian newswire, 2011). he further cautioned that, “(this) will drive people away from transit, creating more pollution, more road congestion and more anger about inadequate ttc service.” (canadian newswire, 2011). the union’s response drew immediate links between environmental justice and increased transit ridership, specifically with respect to transit representing a viable solution to the environmental harms associated with traditional forms of north american automobility and the need for increased funding of transit projects and services to increase ‘buy-in’ from the public. furthermore, the atu drew links between environmental justice and social justice in the community. further to presenting transit expansion as good for transit workers, the atu identified the maintenance of a robust public transportation system as fundamental for all workers. this is identified by kinnear in his response to the core services review, “at a time when pollution levels are at record highs and toronto’s road congestion is the worst in north america, recommendations to reduce ttc services are delusional.” he adds, “what this report says is: ‘let’s punish low wage night shift workers who cannot afford cars and let’s cram more commuters into already intolerably-crowded rush hour vehicles” (canadian newswire, 2011). more recently, the canadian atu’s ‘green’ advocacy has been more tempered or starkly absent. this is perhaps best exemplified in a recent advertising campaign by the union entitled protecting what matters. responding to ttc plans to contract out maintenance services, local 113 launched a reportedly $1 million print and video campaign in october 2012. reaching a broad audience, advertising spots were purchased at cineplex theatres throughout the city of toronto (atu 113, 2012). campaign videos begin asking “what is the lifeblood of a city” pointing to the essential service that transit workers supply to the city and its residents. in the campaign video explicit ties are drawn between maintenance workers and the daily functioning of the system: “for over a million riders each ‘greening work’ in lean times | 225 day, we’re who you don’t see. we repair, restore, rebuild every streetcar, bus and train. we get you to school and work; get you home, (and) keep you safe. we work for this city, we’re a part of this city, we’re toronto transit workers” (atu 113 protecting what matters, 2012). the union’s language is curious given recent actions by the provincial government to declare the ttc an essential service. it is perhaps unsurprising given these recent moves that the ttc has been quick in co-opting this message and using it against the union. ttc commissioner, karen stintz, notes that she “agrees with the union that the ttc is the lifeblood of the city” (toronto sun, 2012). she continues, “that’s why we have to work together to make it sustainable. we need to work together to improve our customer service and deliver our service more cost effectively. that’s why i support contracting out” (toronto sun, 2012). further to its curious use of language, the union’s most recent campaign appears to cede ground on certain issues, most notably the importance of all transit workers to the environment. indeed, frontline workers were largely absent in the campaign as ‘behind the scenes’ workers were featured. this is understandable on two fronts. first, frontline workers such as fare collectors and bus drivers are the subject to most of the abuse by transit users. second, it is maintenance and cleaning workers that are most vulnerable to sub-contracting by the ttc as reiterated above by karen stintz. less understandable is the removal of the environment from the message. in print and video ads, no references are made to the importance of the ttc and ttc workers in general in mitigating climate change. the campaign slogan “protecting what matters” (see figure 2) opens ground for connecting transit workers to numerous causes. however, the campaign maintains a more narrow and short-term focus on economic and community issues. this is somewhat curious given other locals success in defining and defending green issues in past campaigns. the campaign takes a more narrow focus on pressing economic issues focussing on how some workers (specifically maintenance workers) are essential to the functioning of the system and not others (e.g., front of line staff). conclusion as this paper has explored, the atu has employed language on the environment to further their position in collective bargaining disputes and the longer range expansion of public transportation systems. successful campaigns have generally sought to make connections between 226 | climate change and its discontents economic justice and environmental sustainability through alliances with outside groups. while framing public transit as essential to both the environment and the community and warning against cutbacks could serve as a central issue in the development of enduring coalitions between labour, environmental and community groups, local 113’s most recent campaign demonstrates the limited and fractured nature of environmental advocacy in the canadian branch of the union. lessons from labour geography infused with a capital-labournature trialectic may assist in the understanding the limits of the atu’s implementation of environmental rhetoric. first, in terms of labour agency, the atu has been able to exercise some power in dealing with state employers, but the importance of public transit to contemporary metropolitan economies combined with states that have systematically reduced their revenue streams through low taxation have admittedly reduced the power of public transit unions. in the case of toronto, the city has lagged behind in terms of public transit investment (gilligan & stolarick, 2013). in order to maintain public transit costs, the state has disciplined labour with legislation that effectively removes the right to strike (schein, 2011). in rudimentary gramscian terms, atu local 113 simply lost the war of maneuver as workers were designated essential by the a heavy handed ontario government and was forced to make a transition to a war of position (hoare & smith, 2010, p.108-110). the ttc seems to also be leading in the war of position as current campaigns and media offensives that paint atu members as lazy, corrupt, mean, yet essential public ‘servants’ to economic circulation and competitiveness. the atu seems to be consistently outflanked in the war of position as claims of environmental importance have been appropriated by state as a means to discipline dissent. while the media campaign by the atu seems to demonstrate resistance, it is too early to see if there are any material gains for members. the second issue central to a labour geography perspective is scale. here, the breakdown between the international and canadian branch points to the need for the development of more wide-ranging research and planning capacity in canada. although the international atu positions itself at the crux of the nature-economy dialectic, the fragmented nature of canadian locals have created challenges in the development of a coherent message aimed at local, provincial and national governments. furthermore, the lack of a coordinated response on the environment has led to some locals assuming a militant particularist stance on ‘greening work’ in lean times | 227 the environment, placing jobs over environmental issues and shortterm economic gains over medium to long-term strategies in the ecosocialization of public transportation systems. the development of these capacities would seem crucial to the development of more enduring and multiscalar solutions in the eco-socialization of canadian transportation systems, specifically in the way of pressuring government for increased funding for public transportation projects. fully understanding the limits of the atu’s ability to exercise power in capital-labour-nature relations due to the specific scale of its organization and strategies will require further analysis. in the interim, increased local or regional research and campaign capacity may prove beneficial. in the end, employing a coherent message on the environment may not be enough for the atu to achieve gains as the state too employs language on the environment to rally public support against workers. this should prompt significant concern within the atu (and public sector unions more broadly) as the state can forcibly push a ‘green’ agenda as a means to further fragment and discipline workers. the case of public transit demonstrates how the state and its role in hegemonic processes remain pivotal. it is here where the role of the state must be considered by labour geographers who have neglected regulation and focused more directly on capital-labour relations. debates within labour geography on the fragmentation of class are also paramount. the atu has attempted to build class unity in its campaign but largely in reference to its own members’ jobs. class unity, however, requires that workers reach out and build coalitions which transcend difference be they gender, race, and geography. there are campaigns which have encouraged the atu to support a ‘free and accessible transit’ strategy (schein, 2011) as a means of building community resistance to 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(2002). bargaining for the space to organise in the global economy: a review of the accor-iuf trade union rights agreement. review of international political economy, 9, 675-700. figure 1: atu guide to “going green” (source: http://www.atu.org/in-transitpdfs/jf_it08.pdf). • purchase a low-flow shower head: replacing an outdated shower head with a new, water-efficient shower head can save you hundreds of dollars each year, and save countless gallons of water. additionally, you’ll save on the power used to heat the water! installation is easy and can be done in minutes. • switch to compact fluorescent lightbulbs: making the switch to cfls is cheaper than ever, as the average bulb now costs about $2. drawing significantly less energy than a standard incandescent bulb, cfls also last an average of ten times longer. according to the environmental protection agency, if every american household switched just one bulb to a cfl, we would save enough energy in one year to power 2.5 million homes. http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/579.php http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/579.php http://nextcity.org/forefront/view/money-train#.um7-wzpqdec.twitter http://nextcity.org/forefront/view/money-train#.um7-wzpqdec.twitter http://www.atu.org/in-transit-pdfs/jf_it08.pdf http://www.atu.org/in-transit-pdfs/jf_it08.pdf ‘greening work’ in lean times | 233 • monitor refrigerator and freezer temperatures: refrigerators and freezers use more power than any other household appliance. maximize efficiency by setting the refrigerator temperature to 37°f and the freezer temperature to 0°f. • buy local produce: shop at your local farmers’ market. though the offerings can be more expensive, you can generally count on a higher quality product and the entire purchase price goes directly to the farmer. buying any goods produced locally saves energy by reducing the fossil fuels needed to transport food and other items across the country and around the globe. • utilize the sun. open blinds or drapes to let in natural solar heat on cold days, then close them once the sun sets, and you can reduce your heating bills by 10 percent. you can also cut your cooling costs by up to 33 percent in the summer by blocking out sunlight with exterior blinds, shutters, or awnings. • go from scalding to just hot. turn your water heater’s temperature setting down from the standard 140 degrees f to 120 degrees. not only will this save you some bucks, it’ll also slow down mineral buildup and corrosion, prolonging the life of your tank. since a new water heater costs about $900 installed, each additional year of use saves you money as well. • lose the lawnmower. everyone wants a puttinggreen perfect lawn. but constant mowing, watering and fertilizing is a bore, as well as a burden on the environment. a two-stroke, gasoline-powered lawnmower releases as many hydrocarbonds into the atmosphere in 30 minutes as a card does in 90 minutes. switch to an electric mower, which costs $8 to $10 a year to operate. 234 | climate change and its discontents figure 2: “protecting what matters” advertisement (source: http://www.protectingwhatmatters.ca/) http://www.protectingwhatmatters.ca/ ‘greening work’ in lean times | 235 236 | climate change and its discontents interventions ‘greening work’ in lean times | 237 238 | climate change and its discontents the contradictions of localism: an interview with greg sharzer jordy cummings jordy cummings1 (jc): your book is called no local and it is an immanent critique of inward looking reactions to neoliberal capitalism. one poignant episode you recount surrounds urban agriculture, and the idea that we’ve come to a really problematic situation when poor people are encouraged to grow their own food in addition to working their jobs and raising their kids. what is the political or strategic problem with localism? what are your thoughts, for example, on campaigns like “occupy the economy” and so forth? greg sharzer2 (gs): first i’d like to quickly define some terms. ‘local’ is a space distinct from larger regional, national and international spaces. but it’s also relational, a moment in the global capital circuit. it’s amorphous, changing depending on what you’re measuring: political, social, economic, and so on. ‘localism’ is the fetishization of scale. it’s assigning some positive benefit to a place precisely because it’s small. it’s impossible to be anti-local, unless you’re against units of measurement. but i think it’s a mistake to think that small is always beautiful. localism assumes 1) local economies are fairer than global economies, 2) local spaces are autonomous from, and therefore more open to democratic control than larger spaces, and 3) the political project of revolutionary socialism is dead or, more accurately, never existed in the first place. i think these problems mean that localist schemes for change, such as 1 jordy cummings is a labour activist and phd candidate in political science at york university. with a background in journalism, cummings has written for a variety of publications both journalistic and academic, including socialism & democracy and basics community news service. his dissertation focuses on radical theory in the aftermath of the french revolution and the transition to modernity, using a political marxist methodology. he is also editing a reader of george comninel’s writings and is interventions editor at alternate routes: a journal of critical social research. 2 greg sharzer has a phd in political science from york university in toronto and is currently affiliated with the institute for social sciences at gyeongsang national university in jinju, south korea. the contradictions of localism | 239 community gardens, local currencies and transition towns become pieces of the broader capitalist economy, no matter how sincerely their participants may wish to change it. because of these problems, i think localism is a way to avoid, rather than confront capitalism. most localist schemes assume from the outset that capitalism can’t be changed wholesale, so it’s better to make piecemeal reforms around the edges. occupy the economy says the capitalist system is the problem – not so controversial for left-localism – but goes further and says the heights of industry, the banks and industrial corporations – need to be taken over and run for the benefit of all of us. therefore i wouldn’t call occupy localism. they’re far more ambitious than a transition town and resemble the socialist industrial democracy schemes of 100 years ago. but occupy’s problem is idealism. their occupation will be accomplished by everyone showing up at corporate headquarters and discussing democracy. they even call for activists to set a date. after that, socialism (though they’re careful to avoid that word) will be accomplished...through a constitutional amendment! apparently capitalists and politicians have a long history of giving up their power voluntarily, and general strikes happen when everyone decides to walk off the job. this doesn’t engage with the real history of the labour and socialist movements, which show that you need to win specific victories in different workplaces and community campaigns, while organizing political alternatives that fight to extend those victories. if occupy represents extra-local activism, i can see why some people feel localism is more realistic. but the kernel of truth in occupy the economy is that localist schemes don’t challenge either state or capital effectively. we need to ground dreams of revolution in effective strategy, not only to figure out concretely how to build fighting social movements, but to convince those drawn to localist schemes that we can go beyond the local. jc: structurally speaking, it seems that localism involves some aspect of commodity fetishism, in particular in its co-optation of opposition within capitalist social property relations. would you make a practical distinction between localist political activism, such as those involved in urban agriculture, food security and so on, and the more obvious examples of ethical consumerism, such as “fair trade”, alternative currencies and the like. 240 | climate change and its discontents gs: in no local, i distinguish between proand anti-market localism. the latter is about making capitalism fair and ethical, which i don’t believe is possible. i think those involved in urban agriculture and food security activism are often far more anti-market, seeing serious problems in how capitalism treats the food supply and looking for solutions. i think the former are simply wrong; i agree with much of the latter critique but i don’t feel setting up alternatives economies are the best way to go. both strategies can naturalize capitalist social relations, separating economics from politics and believing that the latter can be ‘fixed’ without the former – or, as marx accused proudhon, taking the good from capitalism and dropping the bad. in that sense, both proand antimarket localism suffer from commodity fetishism, mistaking the world of things for the world of people. pro-market localists believe capitalism can be fixed if things are distributed more ethically. anti-market localists take existing production relations as fixed and seek change at the margins. i’ve always found this a little tragic, since localism is about bringing agency back to people. but as i point out in the book, i think part of what forms localism is pessimism that union and party organizing can restrict any of capital’s rights. and yet there are important differences between these approaches: people seeking anti-market localist alternatives want the same sort of fundamental change that socialists want. we just differ on how to achieve it. for me, this requires mass, democratic unionization, particularly among agricultural workers, regulation and controls on existing supply chains as steps towards nationalization, and of course, worker control over industry as a long-term goal. i think many anti-market localists would be open to those ideas. jc: can you get into the theoretical, or analytical problems with “localism” as part of a project towards eco-socialism or environmental justice. i know people, for example, in vermont, who are not necessarily “politicized” aside from being “progressive” in the american sense, voting for sanders, etc. – and they grow their own food and other supplies, raise their own animals. i remember mentioning your book to a friend down there and he said to me “of course we’re not changing the world, we’re just trying to raise our families”...and pointing out that for every person who raises chickens, grows corn, that takes money out of the agri-business complex. when you were interviewed in “north star”, commenters pointed out the plethora of local co-operative businesses that are a significant part of the economy in the u.k. what is wrong with the contradictions of localism | 241 these kinds of arguments, and what is the concrete role of these rural types? can we find a balance between talking about the “idiocy of rural life” on one hand, and the romanticist and moralistic rusticism of some quarters on the other hand? gs: to take your last question first, absolutely, industrialism vs. romanticism is unhelpful. however, i’d argue that’s precisely what the utopian forbearers of localism did by mistaking capitalism, a system of extraction of surplus value from workers’ labour, for its consequences in industrial society. instead they looked back to a mythical time of petty commodity production. so we need to understand capitalism much more precisely, in order to figure out what to do about it. so on economics….i’ve received many comments along the lines of, “you say that local alternatives are impossible, but here’s an example of a project or genre of projects that has been viable for years.” invariably these are projects supported by the fierce determination of local activists, who have managed to carve out a space – say, for a cooperative or community garden – by mobilizing progressive local politicians, or conducting enough community mobilization that these projects get a level of stability. in which case, saying ‘no’ to the local is just contrarian, a denial of the facts. people who want to make their lives better by growing their own food or meeting their neighbours should do so. workers need to lower the cost of reproducing their labour power. and i appreciate the honesty of your friend, who knows he’s not changing the world. it’s when people start assigning undue political significance to localism that i think it should be questioned. it’s not a question of whether cooperatives are possible – clearly they are – or whether they can make life better for some workers – clearly they can. the resilience and creativity of social enterprises are not in question: their capacity to serve as a base for anticapitalist organizing is. to maintain themselves, they have to make the same kind of compromises that a private firm makes, cutting back in times of recession, rationalizing production and so on. they may not be malign about it, they may spread the costs around more fairly rather than making swingeing cuts, but the discipline that all social enterprises face is imposed by the marketplace, not bad bosses. politically, these schemes are contradictory: they provide a lesson in social production, and marx saw them demonstrating “how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one.” but he didn’t see them as revolutionary agents; the funda242 | climate change and its discontents mental antagonism between capital and labour still has to be addressed through political and economic action. it’s impossible to socialize capitalism without confronting the powers-that-be. saying that workers could build alternatives to capitalism, without taking its vast productive capacity away from the capitalists, is like saying that capitalist power is voluntary. it implies people can choose how to participate in the global economy. but by definition, capitalism means workers are alienated from the means of production: the social wealth they produce is stolen from them, taken into private hands, and used against them. if it’s not, if workers aren’t coerced by enclosure, and the mass of dead labour set up to suck living labour from them, then we don’t even have capitalism, just some form of expanded reproduction. and then the political question…how do we organize this confrontation? we need to 1) identify the central relationship of coercion – workers are forced to sell their labour power to survive and 2) build people’s confidence to resist and transform it. instead of these, i see localists encouraging belief in the power of local schemes to outcompete capitalist enterprise and transform capitalist economies through the agglomerating power of a good example. this is not only challenged by the history of capital centralization and concentration, it opens the door to co-optation. lately, the ruling class has become very good at localizing, because it’s another way to devolve responsibility for cutbacks to local administrations, while imposing new forms of market discipline at the micro level. we don’t need to stop making local change; we need to consider how local economic schemes fit into political strategy. everyone has the right to say, “the community garden or local currency i participate in has made me aware of how capitalism works and given me the courage to resist,” and they’re correct. motivation, as i make clear in the book’s introduction, is highly individual. however, marxists believe that people’s ideas change through struggle. it’s only the experience of collective organizing and mass resistance that builds people’s confidence to run society themselves. if we’re going to run the factories and offices democratically, like occupy the economy wants, we need to fight to make them our own, not try and set up spaces away from them. and, because capitalism is a political as well as an economic system, we need to engage in all struggles – anti-racist, anti-sexist, antinuclear, etc. – where capital is trying to make life worse. in other words, there is a choice: it’s not ‘you build your farm, i’ll build my social movement’, and let’s meet in the pub afterwards. the contradictions of localism | 243 this is not an abstract problem. for example, during the protests in gezi park in istanbul, some protestors set up a community garden there. it would be sectarian foolishness not to celebrate the diversity of tactics that led to a garden being planted there. however, some questions remain. how did the gardening tactic resonate with people, particularly after the ferocity of state repression? some organizers suggested that the garden was the work of ‘middle class’ activists who were swept aside when the mass of people came into struggle. is this true, and if so, how did the activists use it to reach out to workers? as i write, the protesters have just been cleared from taksim square in istanbul after weeks of breathtaking occupation. i can guarantee the kind of political discussions that the movement began are breaking down mental blocks to socialism much faster than years of painstaking social enterprise-building. jc: i’m wondering if you can mention aspects of localism that play a dialectical role, that is to say, both support and subvert capitalism? gs: yes. every small project is a set of property relations partially removed from capitalism. internally, it can refuse to replicate hierarchal work relations, and distribute goods via a direct exchange or scrip scheme. yet, as i mentioned above, the scheme is embedded in a global market in the commodity labour power, which means it has to adapt to it by lowering wages, speeding up work or finding a client base willing to pay more for goods that other capitalists can produce more cheaply. i think non-capitalist schemes can also signal capital that a previously non-commodified space is now commodifiable, like the demonstrated link between artist squats and gentrification. so capitalist social relations get buttressed. i’m deliberately leaving out “the power of a good example” as an example of undermining capitalism, because i don’t think it’s at all clear that a good example works in the way proponents intend. when projects adapt or fail, they lend credence to the idea that there is no alternative. jc: what about a set of social property relations that is neither capitalist nor socialist, in the schematic senses of a society of market compulsion on one hand, and of free-association and disalienated labour on the other? gs: i don’t think so, if we conceive of the world market in a marxist sense as a system of global attempts to reduce the cost of socially necessary 244 | climate change and its discontents abstract labour time (snalt). the problem with localist, non-capitalist, proudhonist, etc. schemes is they assume that they get to decide whether their project is capitalist or socialist. capitalism doesn’t allow that kind of autonomy: it operates outside the control of a multinational corporation or national market, let alone an individual firm. socialist property relations are an oxymoron: appropriating the means of production means breaking the power of the state that enforces capitalist property rights. before that, we can have varieties of capitalist power relations – for example, state capitalism, where property is monopolized by a ruling elite dedicated to forms of redistribution. but social property relations imply that the global market no longer coerces firms to achieve snalt. i could see circumstances in which a redistributive state subsidises social enterprises which don’t meet snalt with revenues from other sources: for example, venezuela using oil revenues to support reclaimed factories. but is it non-capitalist to use one segment of the circuit of capital to partially remove another segment? can a change in the mode of production be made through appropriating rents? maybe, although i don’t see how this is sustainable in the long run. i think manuel laraburre’s work on venezuelan worker cooperatives is very useful for pointing out the strength and limitations of this strategy. there’s a temporal aspect to this: certainly, mass struggles throw up examples of workplaces and institutions freed from capitalist property relations. when workers seize a factory and it no longer produces for the world market, that can’t be described as capitalist. but that’s temporary: the struggle must continue to overthrow the state, or be thrown back so that seized enterprises still have to meet snalt. a strike is not about creating social property relations, but about disrupting capitalist ones. if strikers generalize their action and begin to create forms of dual power, producing for distribution by local workers’ councils, for example, that could be ‘in between’. but it’s in between precisely because it’s not stable, and either capital or labour must win. the question of struggle is what saves this discussion from dissolving into the semantics of how one defines capitalist property. if people are fighting capitalist social relations, new forms of production, distribution and association are born – not from the blueprints of participatory economics but from the practical questions involved in running liberated cities and countries. the point is that these relations are in motion, according to the rhythm of class struggle. you can’t create non-capitalism away from the political question of movement-building. those attempts to break out will be re-incorporated. the contradictions of localism | 245 finally, this relates to marxism directly. marx fought against mechanical materialism, which states that people are just products of history and structures. this missed people’s active role in making history. against the fatalism of some forms of political economy, localism has stressed agency, which is a good thing. but the problem is it’s idealist agency: if we have the right ideas, we can reshape the world simply by demonstrating them. socialists can’t re-emphasise mechanical materialism as a response. rather, we need historical materialism: an understanding of how people make history on the terrain provided for them. political economy is determinist in the sense that it sets the terrain upon which we act, one of the conditions marx referred to when he said ‘we act upon a world not of our own making’. the question is not one of rejecting determinism entirely; that way lies voluntarism and ultimately lifestylism. rather, it is a question of figuring out how much determining power capital has; or, put another way, the relationship of political economy to the working class. the ruling class uses dead labour to control the living and so has tremendous power, but it’s not total: capital still needs fresh living labour to mobilize the machines and create surplus value. this is the potential power of the working class: capital needs it. and it’s why schemes for social change that ignore how to mobilize workers, setting examples for them instead, miss the fundamental antagonism at the heart of capitalism. jc: i’m wondering how you would gauge the position of the petit-bourgeoisie. is localism petty-bourgeois, and as well, can you tell me how you would define “petty bourgeois”? and on the terms of actually-existing petty bourgeois interests, does localism contradict their interests in the same sense as it does for the working class? if we accept that there is a petty-bourgeoisie, not in the poulantzian “new middle class” sense, but in the sense of small entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, and indeed farmers, how is localism indeed damaging to their own interests? or is there a “petty bourgeois at all”? gs: in no local, i use erik olin wright’s analysis to describe the petty bourgeois as a group trapped between workers and capital. this is wrong, because a middle layer is too vague a concept to be of any analytical, let along strategic use. worse, if we introduce new classes with the same analytical weight as labour and capital, the labour-capital antagonism disappears, along with marxism. this is one of the unhappy side-effects of the ‘creative class’ thesis, although even before that, there were decades of 246 | climate change and its discontents ‘new middle class’ theorizing: replace the relationship to the means of production with occupations, or even shopping habits, and the list of middle classes is endless. in 1995, after much of the new middle classes debate ended, robert weil came up with a useful characterization: the petty bourgeois is a class that acts as both capital and labour. their highly specialized knowledge is their capital, which they control and use to appropriate surplus value – their own surplus value. but they don’t produce or own enough to stop working and become a real capitalist. this fits very well with the definition of localism as petty bourgeois. the tension that comes from embodying the capital-labour antagonism personally causes a desire for classlessness. in turn, this causes a desire for small: to return to a mythical artisanal economy where the worldhistorical pressures to accumulate and resist exploitation aren’t arrayed against you inside your own head. i think it’s impossible to understand localism without understanding it as an ideology, not just an economic philosophy, though of course this ideology has material roots. it doesn’t damage the petty bourgeois’s own direct interests, because those interests are to avoid class conflict and escape the constant need to accumulate and alienate. but it damages those members of the working class who also want to escape (which is nearly everyone), and whose natural instinct towards class solidarity gets blunted in favour of smallscale communitarianism. a philosophy of solidarity and confrontation can also sweep up the petty bourgeois along with the working class – in any urban revolution, the small shopkeepers often side with the revolutionaries. given the historical weakness of the left, that’s been reversed: the working class is presented with the petty bourgeois point of view. it resonates because nothing else is on offer at the moment, and the hope of being petty bourgeois remains an elusive dream for workers, sustaining millions of people in their daily drudgery or unemployment with the false hope of freedom. jc: your make use of marxist rent theory, it seems we are both big fans of the third volume of capital. can you give us an explanation of rent theory and how it connects to these issues? how is it useful to you? and how has it been used incorrectly? i’ve always thought how one conceives rent theory is informed by how one sees the origin of capitalism, am i right to see this? gs: i claim no expertise on rent theory, but as neil smith once said to me, nobody who claims to get it actually does. it’s one of the hardest the contradictions of localism | 247 parts of marx’s theories, because it’s not intuitive. anyone who works ‘gets’ exploitation; but how is that connected to land? i attempted to reintroduce rent because it seemed that marxists stopped talking about it in the 1980s. yet capitalist exploitation still has to take place somewhere. rent is the theory of how social barriers to investment create temporary advantages for capitalists. these may appear as physical barriers, like a fertile or well-located plot of land. but if one capitalist owns a better piece of land than the other, the second one can apply enough capital to change her land until it’s just as good. the point is the barriers to capital flow are social, and the social barriers of ownership seemed to be just as important today – even more so, given the global push towards urbanisation. so i think it’s impossible to understand how urban development happens without understanding rent, the extra money gained by landowners from situating production on their property, which other capitalists can’t immediately recreate. another way of putting this is that land is not outside the capital circuit. and this is important for localism, because there’s this idea that urban agriculture is somehow protected from capitalism by virtue of its small size. but urban farms have to compete with other capitals far more than rural capitals do: the competition for land use in cities is intense. if we can understand how rent is generated, we can understand how developers make space for urban gardens as a way to raise the value of their condominium towers, for example. we can also avoid the naive notion that poor, ex-industrial places like detroit are outside of capital because of all their spare land. in line with radicals there, i’d argue it’s precisely the new lands created by long-term economic crisis that makes a place like detroit so useful to capital. there is no outside to capital: it keeps finding new ways to destroy ‘inefficient’ property or commons, like detroit’s bankruptcy. this is not to say things like community gardens are impossible; of course there are many places where they’re not only possible but approved by municipal administrations. but my point is that those places are shielded from rent pressures by particular circumstances. they’re temporary, at least in the medium term (witness the pressures on the greenbelt in seoul, for example), and can’t be replicated everywhere. for example, havana turned its spare land into farms because it had no property market. that’s not going to work elsewhere on a grand scale. jc: if local solutions are merely defensive at best, what should socialists be doing about the environmental crisis? one position holds that 248 | climate change and its discontents a lot of eco-socialist discourse relies on what is called “catastrophism”; myself, i’m sympathetic to the position of henwood, mcnally and other contributors to that book3. on the other hand, there are those who accuse those who critique catastrophism of underrating the importance of the ecological dimension of our struggles, even to the point of denigrating their centrality? on both a strategic and theoretical level, where do you stand on this debate? gs: rather than saying all ecological struggles are local, i’d say they’re spatial. they’re always rooted somewhere, which allows people directly affected to shape them – recent activism against tar sands pipelines and fracking are great examples of this. however, eco-struggles are the best example of the limits of localism. on the one hand, capital always ‘lands’ somewhere, it’s never dematerialized. when workers producing a key component of a car go on strike, they can bring the entire production process to a halt, even if the factories are widely scattered. when indigenous people blockade a single pumping station on a pipeline, they can stop the entire project – the company can’t exactly build a new pipeline to go around them. the path-dependency of capital gives local direct actions tremendous disruptive power. on the other hand, a pipeline isn’t the result of a local business. oil companies can bring a lot more pressure to bear on local campaigns precisely because they’re extra-local, like when enbridge pipelines inc. gave $44,000 to the police, at the same time as they need police to protect their property. local actions need to be scaled up, so that capital can be fought on many fronts: financially, politically, direct action, and so on. i don’t think this is controversial, but what i’m arguing is that the implicit, sometimes explicit, message of localism is: “stop there”. if there is any confrontation, don’t make it too big. start locally to outcompete or detach from capital. put more abstractly, space is not a substitute for social relations. starting small still poses the same questions of power that mass movements pose, and to challenge, restrict and defeat the extra-local powers trying to shape localities, we need to get big. the way not to do this is by terrifying people with catastrophe. the north pole officially became a lake a few days ago: there’s plenty of reason to be afraid. but fear is a demotivator: making that fear existential – the entire basis of our civilisation is being undermined! – is a sure-fire way to get people to do nothing 3 lilley, s., d. mcnally, e. yuen and j. davis. (2012). catastrophism: the apocalyptic politics of collapse and rebirth. oakland: pm press. the contradictions of localism | 249 at all. it’s remarkable that a movement based on strict adherence to local or micro-economies and politics – such as intentional communities and even some transition towns – relies on such sweeping generalisations about the state of the world and human nature. in response to catastrophists, i guess i’d say: “ok, we agree that capitalism is destroying the planet. what’s the best way to stop it?” detaching and forming more egalitarian, green-friendly communities is premised on the old ‘propaganda of the deed’ – build it and they will come – model. but capitalism ensures most people are too busy or desperate trying to survive to drop it all and participate in these new models. at which point, catastrophists can go one of two ways: be absorbed with building a better life for themselves right now, or consider strategically how to gain allies. that means speaking to people where they are, about what they’re concerned about. leadership comes from supporting and empowering people to solve their actual problems, not telling them to abandon those problems and focus on planning for the end of the world – whether that end is posed as sweet revenge, our collective doom or a chance to build a new society. the question of our ecological survival is political, not technical. that means reframing our struggles. rather than saying, “runaway global warming is going to drown all of us and lead to mass die-off of flora and fauna and us, so stop the pipeline”, it means saying, “the poor safety record of pipeline companies mean that, when spills happen, toxic chemicals are going to destroy your homes, playgrounds and the health of your loved ones.” both are true: only one poses concrete political questions for those living near a pipeline. jc: we’ve seen a general discrediting of the dominant forms of left organization – top-down vanguard parties; formless affinity groups; bureaucratic social democracy? what kind of organization do we need to be building on the left in order to move beyond these concerns, and move beyond localism and towards class struggle? barring full-scale international socialism, something on the distant horizon, what can be done on the level of national states? of course there can be no “socialism in one country” or delinking, but isn’t it incumbent upon us to suggest new kinds of organization without falling into a pattern of “stagism”? gs: part of localism’s appeal is to stop fussing with theory and organizational models and just get on with doing what you can, right now. but this conceals a pessimism about the prospect for left victories. it takes collective struggle off the agenda and leaves capital free to impose 250 | climate change and its discontents itself. this is a natural reaction to the constant assault of austerity, which have succeeded thanks to 30 years of neoliberal defeat for the workers’ movement in the global north. without an organized left to get involved with, the appeal of diy is much stronger: why bother with discussions about long-dead revolutions when you can rejuvenate a traffic island by planting vegetables on it? there’s a parallel trend which crosses left and right, and that’s to focus exclusively on the mechanisms of power – again, tempting now that we know the nsa is reading and watching everything. but these are not only hidden theories of powerlessness – a concession to the nihilism that capitalist triumphalism feeds on. they miss the exciting developments on the left. for example, the recent and continuing crisis of the british swp is a reference point for english-speaking leftists, at least, and i’ve been very impressed with the rethinking of the international socialist network and others. they’ve identified the centrality of anti-oppression politics, not just paying lip service to gender or race; the need for pluralism; and a sober assessment of the left’s recent history, as starting points. and of course, there’s been the recent mass explosions of struggle in turkey, brazil, egypt and elsewhere. they raise incredibly exciting questions about strategy, dual power, and how to raise demands that can draw layers of people into sustained political campaigns. i think the job of socialists is to learn from and be inspired by these movements, and figure out how their lessons can be applied elsewhere. for the first time in many years, we see the prospect of mass resistances breaking out across the globe, due to highly specific local conditions on the one hand, and the overarching logic of capitalist austerity on the other. suddenly the old question of: how do we organize this into something that can last, and that can make real gains? – makes sense again. i read ‘stagism’ as an attempt to cut off a revolution’s momentum, declare its limits to be national borders and impose a new elite to manage it all. all social movements have stages; but equally, they can leap through different scales and inspire other movements in remarkable ways, the arab spring being the most recent example. i think that’s the best argument against stagism: showing concretely how learning from, and contributing to international movements can help change our own societies. this is another word for a global network of socialist parties, which seems to be a tremendously unfashionable concept these days. but i don’t see how we can get around it. capital is internationalized, and although it’s just as internally divided as ever, its various factions can the contradictions of localism | 251 muster international resources – legal, financial, military – that a left party in one country can’t fully counter. the working class still exists in ever more precarious, gendered, racialized forms, and yet with the vast potential for unity. the advanced sections of the working class still need political organization. without extra-local political organization, capital can play these sections off against each other. jc: what kind of struggles exist right now that link the local with the global? what are their limitations and what are their advantages? if we are to say of course “no local”, how can we situate, in general, globality, without falling into the trap of hardt and negri? gs: i would define a linking struggle not only in terms of scale, but also as one that reveals social relations. again, the anti-tar sands movement is a good example of this: fight a pipeline and you end up fighting multiple levels of government, the police and multinational corporations. you confront the legacy of colonialism in canada and the u.s. it’s a truism to say that every local struggle contains the seeds of global ones – but the keyword there is ‘struggle’. raising chickens, growing your own vegetables, processing your own biofuel is not struggle. (unless the land you’re doing it on is wanted by a developer, in which case the non-capitalist alternative has to quickly learn how to confront capitalism.) a local struggle has to confront some aspect of capitalist power, and through that campaign raise the confidence of its participants to fight back, and provide a way to selfeducate participants in the nuances of organizing. hardt and negri’s failure lies in ignoring the strategic questions that movement organizing has posed since the dawn of capitalism, in favour of a celebration of an amorphous global multitude. years ago i saw michael hardt speaking on why we need a theory of love as the basis for a political movement – not in an ethical sense, he apparently meant it strategically. this convinced me that strategy matters, and that strategy, in turn, rests on an understanding of how capitalism must expand and go into crisis. without a close engagement with that dynamic, and what actual people are doing about it – fighting police brutality, the high costs of living, dictatorships, and so on – we lose a sense of what the questions are and can follow generations of idealist utopians, trying to impose our own order on the world based on what’s in our heads and hearts at the moment. i’d argue what these traditions share is a rejection of the relationship between deter252 | climate change and its discontents ministic capital and working class agency. without that fascinating, studiable and actable anchor, we can suggest any version of local or global we want. this is the key advantage of a social movement that looks beyond the local to understand what it’s fighting and who its allies are. it is firmly grounded in the real world, not in the world we’d prefer to live in right now. this is the opposite of closing off possibilities. the real world poses impossibly rich questions, both in analysis and action. for example, what sparked the deposing of morsi in egypt, and what should the role of the left be in it? various accounts have suggested it’s a revolution, a counter-revolution, or both. ‘what side are you on?’ is still the most important question, and by questioning localism, i’d like to see people start asking themselves that again. quickly followed by asking themselves what the sides look like, what motivates them, and how our side can win. the contradictions of localism | 253 254 | climate change and its discontents urban space in perspective: an interview with matthew gandy aaron henry aaron henry1 (ah): you have suggested that the process of urbanization is too complex to be captured by a narrow theoretical framework. instead, you have utilized an interdisciplinary perspective that combines a number of fields. can you expand on the analytics you use to put these fields in conversation with one another? matthew gandy2 (mg): the challenge of interdisciplinarity is one of the intellectual driving forces behind my work. but interdisciplinarity presents us with a profound paradox. on the one hand, as andrew barry and other scholars have shown, the movement towards greater interdisciplinarity reflects an emerging emphasis by governments and funding agencies on making scientific research more “useful” and responsive to the needs of a wider spectrum of so-called “stakeholders”. on the other hand, however, the types of research questions we need to pose in order to make sense of urban space necessarily entail the use of more than one discipline, and may extend to radically distinct bodies of knowledge. the field of interdisciplinary research is often conceptualized as an interaction between the social and natural sciences, a dialogue that is most frequently invoked in relation to urban environmental challenges. 1 aaron henry is a phd candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university. his research is focused on the hudson bay company and the formation of colonial registers of territory as a technology of primitive accumulation. other research interests include: state formation, natural history as a conduct of social-spatial inspection, and late nineteenth century projects of pacification. 2 matthew gandy is professor of geography at university college london. his book concrete and clay: reworking nature in new york city (mit press, 2002) was co-winner of the 2003 spiro kostof award for the book within the previous two years “that has made the greatest contribution to our understanding of urbanism and its relationship with architecture.” he is currently completing three book manuscripts: the fabric of space: water, modernity, and the urban imagination (mit press), moth (reaktion animal series), and a co-edited collection the acoustic city (jovis). since 2013 he has been co-editor of the international journal of urban and regional research. urban space in perspective | 255 yet these earlier attempts at interdisciplinarity, that we could extend to the appropriation of ecological metaphors by the chicago school of sociology, have almost invariably proved unsatisfactory. a typical outcome has been an unreflective extension of one epistemological approach into an unrelated domain or the misapplication of scientific metaphors (a trend observable in more pretentious forms of architectural discourse). so how should we do interdisciplinary work? i would suggest that a first step must be to take seriously the work of different disciplines to understand better their specific agendas, methodologies, and expository strategies. if i draw on art history to analyze cultural representations of cities i want to be sure that i understand the types of key debates in pages of journals such as october that clearly speak to my concerns. equally, if i want to include epidemiological aspects to urban landscapes or appreciate the wider scientific context for protecting urban bio-diversity i need to examine those fields carefully before attempting to combine aspects of the bio-physical sciences with a historically and geographically nuanced approach to the analysis of the production of urban space. the example of art history is significant since the widely held conception of interdisciplinary work as an intellectual pivot between the natural and social sciences can effectively exclude the humanities and a whole raft of critical insights. it is better, i think, to conceive of interdisciplinarity as a triangulation between the social sciences, the natural sciences, and the humanities. i have used this “triangulation” in my recent research on gilles clement’s design for parc henri matisse in lille in response to recent debates about the “rewilding” of urban space and new approaches to urban design. in this context i have been reflecting on the status of an artificially created “urban island” in relation to its ecological dynamics, symbolic significance, and wider connections to urban land speculation. like much of my work the starting point was serendipitous (in this case a chance visit to an exhibition in montreal) and evolved gradually through a process of close engagement with specific sites. ah: you have focused on the technological mastery of water and malaria and its relation to the constitution of urban space in lagos, nigeria. how does linking ecological and epidemiological projects to the formation of urban space allow us to resituate the colonial dimensions of capital accumulation? 256 | climate change and its discontents mg: i think a starting point here is to acknowledge that any urban project is simultaneously an environmental project. the transformation of urban space entails a complex set of ecological and epidemiological effects ranging from new types of metabolic interactions with the human body to the destruction and creation of distinctive types of ecological assemblages. in the case of colonial egypt, for example, timothy mitchell shows how the imposition of a particular conception of technocratic modernity, exemplified by large-scale irrigation, generated a public health crisis through the spread of malaria. in my own work on lagos i have been interested in the way new insights into the epidemiology of malaria emerging in the late nineteenth century became incorporated into a form of “scientific racism” that fed into governmental concerns with residential segregation and essentialist understandings of cultural difference. the persistence of malaria in lagos through both the colonial and post-colonial era has occurred in spite of attempts to drain swamps and alter the “disease topography” of the city and its surroundings. in my recent writing on lagos i show how the first serious attempt to control malaria occurred for geo-political reasons during the second world war. the apapa air base near lagos served as the main staging post for british troops in north africa but because of extensive illness that interfered with military operations a vast swamp drainage programme was initiated in the 1940s that also helped to protect the city of lagos itself. by the late 1950s nigeria was a focus for public health optimism about the eradication of malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases through a kind of science-led technocratic modernity but in subsequent decades many of these assumptions behind global health policy have unraveled. with the effective collapse of the nigerian economy in the 1980s and infrastructure planning in disarray it has been possible for malaria and other infectious diseases to become more prevalent in urban areas. the history of malaria, through both the colonial and post-colonial era, serves a poignant indicator for wider tensions and contradictions underlying the development of lagos and its changing socio-ecological dynamics. ah: in a recent talk entitled “mosquitoes, modernity and post-colonial lagos” you suggested lagos may be thought of as “a partial modernity”, “or as a space outside or in distinction of modernity”. arguably, this assessment places modernity on one side as the instrumental rationalization of social, political and ecological processes and the chaos of failed or non-existent attempts to rationalize social life on the other. yet the western imaginary of the city seems increasingly preoccupied by urban space in perspective | 257 ‘failure’ and ‘chaos’ (e.g. feral cities, the failed city, militarized cities and urban-centered catastrophe). does this perhaps complicate the ‘north’ and ‘global south’s’ ‘custody’ agreement on modernity? mg: the term “partial modernity”, which i used at my public lecture in newcastle, denoted the failure of a particular model of technocratic modernity exported from europe. it is important to recognize that modernity is not a singular teleological process but an array of simultaneous, overlapping, and sometimes contradictory developments. to think of modernity as a multiplicity of forms helps to de-centre urban discourse and avoid manichean distinctions that fail to recognize the global interconnectedness of urban space. ah: you have historicized urban space from the nineteenth century ‘bacteriological city’ to contemporary urban spaces constituted through ‘municipal managerialism’. how, if at all, have environmental concerns shaped the constitution of urban space? has the recent focus on green cities/technologies disrupted spaces of municipal managerialism or served as a means to further mobilize these processes? mg: it is certainly the case that histories of engineering, planning or other professional fields tend to overstate their influence over the urban process. the classic critique here is christine m. boyer’s book dreaming the rational city where she re-interprets the practice of planning within a broader historical and political context. boyer’s account is especially helpful in thinking through the dissolution of the “public interest” as a self-evident or unproblematic focus for professional discourses. the identification of various periodizations can be helpful, certainly in a heuristic sense, but i think terms such as the “bacteriological city” or “municipal managerialism” need to be used in combination with a broader explanatory framework. there is a tendency in much historiographic research to look for patterns, phases, and distinctions that can sometimes obscure interconnected and overlapping sets of developments. i think it is more interesting to reflect on how conceptual terms such as “modernity” have been used in practice rather than worry too much about semantic distinctions. the recent upsurge of “green urbanism” or “ecological urbanism” is a case in point. the speculative dynamics of contemporary urbanization have cannibalized any available vocabulary to provide an ecological veneer to the oxymoronic dimensions to sustainability. the tragedy for municipal managerialism has been the brutal divestment of the public 258 | climate change and its discontents realm and the shattering of links between environmental policy and the democratic arena. the possibilities for strategic thinking that might have been achieved via the relative autonomy of the state and its cadre of technical experts has been so extensively circumscribed that the very idea of “public policy” now lies in a zone of conceptual limbo. where does expertise now lie in relation to urban and environmental policy making? in the case of london the disbandment of the city’s regional government in 1986, followed by the re-introduction of a weaker successor authority in 2000, has involved a process of dismemberment and scattering of public sector expertise. in fields such as bio-diversity, for example, london now lacks dedicated scientific personnel, systematic data collection, or a coherent strategy for the future. interestingly, in other cities such as berlin, we can observe how failed privatizations have opened up the possibility for essential services such as water and other utilities to be taken back into public ownership. perhaps what is most critical here is the political need to dispel the deleterious neoliberal mantra of only one pathway and enable an informed citizenry to wrestle back control of urban space. ah: in concrete and clay: reworking nature in new york city, you discuss the environmental politics in new york city around waste management. what does the political scale of the city offer environmental politics, is it an expedient scale for radical political action? mg: i have also been reflecting on this question of scale. i think perhaps there are two dimensions here. first, the scale of urbanization itself and the “ecological frontiers” and “operational landscapes” engendered by the process of urbanization. we can usefully return to henri lefebvre’s distinction between cities and urbanization as is currently underway in the “planetary urbanization” project developed by neil brenner and christian schmid. second, there are the various spaces within which political action and public deliberation can take place. the emergence of a digital public realm is producing new types of intersections and alliances between material locales and different bodies of knowledge. at the same time, however, the massive increase in global inequalities and the etiolated “post-political” characteristics of much policy discourse generates new tensions exemplified by the rise of xenophobia, anti-political movements, and a pervasive sense of confusion and disorientation fostered by corporate-owned media networks and what we might term the “culture industry” in its broadest sense. recent grassroots insurgencies urban space in perspective | 259 such as the occupy movement have been highly significant in terms of highlighting injustices and attracting global attention but they do not yet offer a coherent political strategy. ah: the ‘spatial-turn’ has brought critical geography to the fore as an important set of analytics. what do you think critical geography can do to help unpack ongoing strategies and projects of austerity in urban spaces? mg: a key aspect of the “spatial turn” is a cross-fertilization of ideas since the 1990s that forms part of the impetus towards more interdisciplinary modes of scholarship that i alluded to earlier in this interview. the term “critical geography”, however, is not as straightforward as it might appear since its use does not so much denote the radical neo-marxian insights of the 1970s and 1980s but to some degree their relative displacement by other approaches in the 1990s that have been loosely grouped under the umbrella of postmodernism. in contrast, i am interested in thinking through critical geography as a radical synthesis between the neo-marxian heritage of radical geography and more recent insights from feminism, queer theory, post-colonial studies and other fields. the just space network in london, involving many of my colleagues at university college london, is a clear example of how critical geography can enrich the public sphere and contribute towards the articulation of alternative strategies for cities. if we want to challenge “austerity urbanism” we need to draw on all the intellectual resources at our disposal. 260 | climate change and its discontents indigenous takes on environmentalism: an interview on the front lines of indigenous land defense megan kinch1 in conversation with giibwanisi, anishinaabek nation2; kaikakons, anishinaabek naiton3; sleeping grizzly, haudenosaunee nation4 background and context doing an interview with someone who is currently doing a land reclamation meant that the usual email method had to be modified a bit. as giibwanasi is currently on location at the site, answering my emailed questions would have meant typing out essays on a smartphone. so instead, after a long day chopping wood and doing work, he read my questions to himself and his friends kaikaikons and sleeping grizzly, and they answered in the form of a conversation by the fire. the oshkimaadiziig unity camp is a land occupation and cultural revitalization project: the anishinabek confederacy to invoke our nationhood (action). what follows, is a shortened and condensed version of their discussion. discussion megan kinch (mk): mainstream environmentalism has been hopelessly sidetracked into greenwashing, environmental capitalism and tokenistic gestures. when even david suzuki is writing essays about the failure of environmentalism, we know that something has gone wrong. people 1 megan kinch is a journalist and activist in toronto with the toronto media co-op and basics community news service. 2 giibwanisi, bear clan of the anishinaabek nation, and is a co-founder of the oshkimaadziig unity camp and action. 3 kaikaikons, loon clan of the anishinaabek nation, is also a co-founder of the oshkimaadziig univty camp and action. 4 sleeping grizzly, bear clan of the haudenosaunee nation and a member of the oshkimaadziig unity camp. indigenous takes on environmentalism: | 261 affiliated with “environmental justice” movements in canada have been trying to address previous shortcomings by putting solidarity with indigenous people at the forefront, but it hasn’t gathered the kind of support that mainstream environmentalism used to enjoy, nor has it been able to define what exactly that solidarity means. do you see your struggle as relating to environmentalism? is there an “environmental movement” that you feel could support struggles like yours? or does a new movement have to be built from the ground up? kaikaikon: if you want to call our struggle “environmentalism” yes, sure, but at the same time we are much more than that. it’s a spiritual struggle, it’s a political struggle. [our struggle is] a different kind, we have a way of life. its environmentalism, its spiritualism, its matriarchy. environmentalism is just one aspect of it. we are so much more. its [limiting it to just environmentalism is] kind of like bastardizing who we are. giibwanasi: to answer that question i think you have to look at the medicine wheel and you have to look at the physical, the emotional, the mental, the spiritual. the land, the air, the fire, the water. it is all one. one and the same. we cannot look at it as just one aspect of, one category... kaikaikon: its not under one genre or ideology of struggle or fight, you can’t categorize our fight as anishinaabe liberation movement and resistance. even the annishinaabek indigenous resistance movement where there’s our people who have security culture and i guess warrior-ism, for lack of a better word, what we’re doing is trying to achieve every aspect of who we once were and trying to bridge the gap with trying to live in this society with using the technology of everybody who is in that medicine wheel. when you go back and classify our individual struggle as environmentalism, then we got to say no. people have their own definition of ‘environmentalism’. greenpeace has their own view of environmentalism, and they are against seal hunts, which is people’s traditional diet and right to feed themselves from the land. if you want to start utilizing who you are, there are some things our allies may not agree with. hunting, trapping. and that’s not, in their eyes, environmentalism (laughs). 262 | climate change and its discontents sleeping grizzly: it is not really environmentalism, it’s more of us living with the land with what the land provides. but don’t take from the land more than you need. when you take from the land you have to make sure that what you’re taking, like when we want firewood or we want to build a box or a canoe or something we’re going to take from the dead. we’ll only take from the living when we need to build something with structure, something that can dry over time and provide a lot of strength. something we can manipulate to the way that we need, but not take more than we need, just take what we need. giibwanasi: i have not seen an environmental movement that could support struggles like us because, as we said before, there are so many different genres of environmental “activism”, whether its fracking or tar sands or pipeline or nuclear or ‘save the water’ or ‘save the trees’ or ‘save the air’ or anything like that. there is not a single organization that i have seen that encompasses it all. so if you want to consider anishinaabekism or haudenosaunee-ism who stands against all of these things then i think that maybe if there is one of those things out there maybe, i don’t know, i have not seen it. “idle no more” seems to be about the water and some of bill c-38 and bill c-45 but at the same time they have their own view of liberation and they’re very exclusive. so a lot of the times we were not included into their liberation agenda. because at one time they were adamantly and vehemently opposed to blockades and land reclamations and they distanced themselves from them. sleeping grizzly: there is a group down in kansas city right now that are living off of 180 acres, they are planning to build and right now gathering supplies to...live off the land and what they can grow and gather themselves. kaikaikon: look at the different camps, like the unist’ot’en camp and all these similar actions who are living off the land. under the definition of what an “environmentalist” is i’m not too sure if it is, or is not, other indigenous nations (laughs). giibwanasi: ya, i think i’d have to agree with the unist’ot’en… kaikaikon:. because, first, under our teachings it says we have to concentrate on the south, the family, community, nation, the people of our turtle island, our continent. then we start making alliances with these indigenous takes on environmentalism: | 263 other folks. and i think our ideas and teachings can really benefit this person whose asking these questions, but they could learn a lot from our people. even, all these questions, if they have some humility that they can adapt and just observe. because our people have been observing for thousands of years and survived, we’re still surviving. they can just observe from the people who’ve been here first and lived through a lot. a lot of environmental disruptions and we’re still here surviving. mk: your occupation at oshkimaadiziig unity camp is on the site of a council fire. it’s been an ongoing debate on the left as to how different peoples should relate to each other in struggle. some would argue that everyone should be in the same organizations and struggle on a class basis, others that nationally oppressed peoples need their own separate organizations which should relate to others. today, there is also the theory that settler organizers need to ‘take direction’ from native organizers, but this is more useful as a guideline for settlers participating in native struggles rather than as a directive for social movements as a whole. what do you think should be the organizing relationships between native and non-native people? kaikaikon: [in] my own opinion, what we’re trying to achieve here is we’re trying to create a confederacy, we’re trying to rebuild our confederacy. we had alliances with other indigenous nations like the haudenosaunee and the cree and the wendat, so we’re trying to build or own, reassert our own laws, our trade alliances and through that came the two-row [wampam]. and the settler society, we have an agreement with them we’re trying to uphold here. i don’t want to sound racist (laughs), i have to be careful about how i answer this. but our nations have been dealing with euro-centric people for too damn long. and we need to start any kind of agreement. it comes to a point [where] we need to drop out of these treaties and even the 1764 niagara covenant chain belt and reestablish something new [with] the other people who are oppressed from all over the world, something has to come representative of the 1764 niagara chain covenant belt, but something that is more representative of the minorities and the oppressed people. and when the question is asked “non-native people’ you have to ask “what non-native people’. i think we have to have an equal relationship but it has to be with people of struggle who come from other nations. and they have to maybe start a new government. 264 | climate change and its discontents giibwanasi: so what should be the organizing relationship? kaikaikon: until that happens all lands come back to us! (chuckles) we can establish zones like their cities and shit where they can remain but we’re still the landlords. this is kind of radical but those people they need to overthrow their friggen governments. but we need to work with these people whoever are out there to overthrow the governments and the police and the military which is a damn hard thing to do, but we need to do that. and reestablishing our governance, our agreements, our relationships. and that i believe is the other minorities who come here. they don’t even know the relationship that exists and i think we’d find common ground to unite stronger. giibwanasi: going back to the two-row wampum, it says that we’re not supposed to steer each other’s boats. but the way that i perceive things is that the canoes have been hijacked and is actually aboard the settler ship. and we are basically trying to live our canoe way of life on top of that settler ship. so, saying that i’m not supposed to steer the settler ship. well you know what, my fucking canoe is sitting in that fucking settler ship. so national liberation for native people and organizing is like saying, you know what, i don’t want to tell you how to run your own fucking ship but you’re ship and the people that run it, the captains, they are not listening to the workers or to whoever, the deckhands and whatnot. so i guess the way to answer that question is, if you are not actively trying to overthrow the captain, then i think that maybe its time that we are in a position to say, you know what, in order to save humanity, to save ourselves, save turtle island, that ya, i think at some point, because the original agreements have been so intertwined and entangled, that i think at times that native people are, do have to be in a position to tell non-native people what to do. kaikaikon: we were just talking about this last night. and i was thinking about this all day to how to write this because its been on my mind for a while, because it needs to be said without hurting peoples indigenous takes on environmentalism: | 265 feelings. because it needs to be said and it needs to be brought out amongst our brothers and sisters out there who are working with these activists in the different organizations. we’ve been colonized for so long, that some of us, even on the front line struggles and even back at home in our communities have developed a kind of syndrome that we’re kind of, all these fears and intimidations and feeling inferior to white people, is something that is internal and we’re dealing with. so when we’re working with these people how they come and ‘help’ there’s little subtle ways and different ways that they make our people feel inferior. me, i feel like i’m kind of like, were dependent on their help. so no matter how they’re trying to help, its funny but, they’re still the colonists, the white people are the colonists. because they’re helping to “decolonize,” but that word “colonize” is still in there. they are ‘decolonizing,” so they’re still the indian agents running around trying to do what’s best for indians. because they’re’ the ones who think they know it all so they’re helping us. even by answering these questions, even though we use the english language and their ideology we’re using everything that’s theirs. even their marxism. somewhere there’s our own war chiefs and our own ideas that answers these questions and that we should be using. we’re still finding out ourselves, but we need to utilize other peoples, the revolutionary schools of thought, i guess, marxism? mk: do you think that that their agreements such as the dish with one spoon and the two-row wampum are relevant here? do they apply to the state or do they apply to peoples including western revolutionaries? kaikaikon: what we’re trying to accomplish here is to rebuild ourselves and rebuild our alliances with other indigenous nations. our responsibility is to our people first and to our communities and our families. so it applies to the state and it applies to them. because what you said, we can’t answer that, its up to them. its up to these newcomers to settle that and fight amongst themselves on that. because we have our own fight to do trying to be with our people who are trying to speak and represent us, who are going against these original agreements, so we’re trying to liberate ourselves from what they’re doing to us, what our chief-and-council and these peoples are doing. so we’re trying to liberate ourselves so we gotta work together with our common allies to remove this shit in our own communities. so it is relevant. 266 | climate change and its discontents giibwanasi: personally, i think that the two-row, the two relationships between settlers and native people that the two row is, is relevant because of the entire context … its fundamental principles. and the fundamental principals is the relationship, from an indigenous perspective, with the two-row wampum with everything. with the creator, the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, the two leggeds, the four leggeds, the wingeds, the crawleds, the ones that go in the water, and i think that, ya, the founding principles of the two-row wampum, we could use those things. but at the same time, the two-row wampum was never entered into the one good mind from the settlers point of view. they did not use their one good mind to make this relationship. i think it can be applied if people come with that one good mind and they want to work together, i think that can be. but also understanding the two-row wampum with the settlers, that was made with mostly white people. and now we find that we live in a society out there where there are many people of many different colours. and if we go back to that settler ship there is class division on that settler ship. there is the captain, there was his lieutenants, there was the deckhands. there was indentured servants, and there were slaves stuffed in the back, stuffed in the bottom of those ships. so i think that the two-row wampum has to be inclusive of the other nations that are here. and i truly believe that had our people known that there were slaves stuffed into the bottom of those ships i truly believe that we probably never would have entered into those agreements, knowing how they treat other humans. because if we were to look and see those slaves, how could someone enter into one good mind with that? kaikaikon: the one dish one spoon is an agreement between indigenous nations that others right to live on a territory without interfering with each others right to eat. and to provide from those resources. gibwanasi: so basically you could apply that to organization kind of? kaikaikon: right, yes definitely. mk: to what extent do you find western philosophies of struggle – things like marxism, anarchism, social democracy – to be useful to you? i’ve seen you identify capitalism as a central force to struggle against, in addition to colonialism, does western analysis like marxism help in understanding those forces? what are the limits of these philosophies for your struggle? indigenous takes on environmentalism: | 267 giibwanasi: from my own perspective, i have to be open-minded to everything, to all sorts of struggles including those mentioned above. but there are things that are useful and there are things that are not useful. i don’t ascribe to anarchism because i do not believe in disorganization. i like some of the things that are said about marxism, especially the scientific approach to understanding economy, political science, and all of that. but, at the same time, there are a lot of things that i do not agree with marxism. such as, they often omit two parts of the medicine wheel. marxism focuses on specifically ideology which is the mental, and probably the physical, like taking physical action of revolution. but they omit the emotional and the spiritual context of how we think and operate. 268 | climate change and its discontents the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally: an interview with greg albo and jerome klassen jordy cummings jordy cummings1 (jc): one of the overarching themes of empire’s ally in general, and your contribution in particular, is a questioning of the predominant thesis held by supporters and detractors of the conservative government, that is to say, the idea that there was a qualitative shift in canadian foreign policy in the last few years, as if being “empire’s ally” is something new. can you delineate what has changed in canadian foreign policy, and what has stayed constant, and connect that, in turn, with shifts within the canadian ruling classes? greg albo2 (ga): let me clarify this by elaborating a few basic themes that i and others attempt to raise in the collection in situating canada as a core imperialist state playing both an independent and supportive role in relation to the us empire and its strategy of primacy in the world order. first, in relation to canadian foreign policy debates, it is necessary to take distance from the dogmas about the canadian state that even much of the left has taken aboard. this was seeing canada as a ‘middle power’ that forged a theory and practice of foreign policy based on new formally equal status of states by the united nations. for canada, this meant serving as ‘loyal ally’ to the u.s. in an evolving multilateral world still braced by the cold war: of nation-states steadily increasing the 1 jordy cummings is a labour activist and phd candidate in political science at york university. with a background in journalism, cummings has written for a variety of publications both journalistic and academic, including socialism & democracy and basics community news service. his dissertation focuses on radical theory in the aftermath of the french revolution and the transition to modernity, using a political marxist methodology. he is also editing a reader of george comninel’s writings and is interventions editor at alternate routes: a journal of critical social research. 2 greg albo teaches political economy at york university. he has recently co-edited empire’s ally: canada and the war in afghanistan (university of toronto press, 2012), as well as registering class (2014) and the question of strategy (2013) as part of the socialist register. the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 269 economic and military interdependence of the continent within formal institutions; developing with the u.s. joint interests in a liberalized international trading system and defending against external – read communist and socialist movements – threats; prioritizing ‘systemic peace’ in relations between the cold war blocs; cultivating a ‘quiet diplomacy’; and contributing to multilateral institutions and fora where differences in tactics could be debated and compromises negotiated between greater and lesser powers in the context of the u.s. strategy of détente. this position was associated with the thinkers that ‘made’ canadian diplomacy – g. ignatieff, pearson, holmes, and others. more recently, this was the view that the imperatives of economic integration need to be ‘balanced’ by ‘human security’. an arsenal of new doctrines of multilateral governance need to be integrated into the foreign policy practices ‘agenda-setting’ powers: democratic capacity-building, developmentalism, peace-building, responsibility-to-protect, discursive diplomacy, civil society enhancement, responsible governance and so on. this has been the approach of m. ignatieff, byers, axworthy and host of others, and formed the key thinking behind what critics have labeled ‘human rights imperialism’. for these liberals and social democrats, harper represents a canadian turn to the foreign policies of a rogue state as it abandons many of these policies and moves toward a practice of diplomatic isolationism from multilateralism. but canada has always played, we argue, an important role in imperialism, from the supportive position of britain in the atlantic slave triangle to a key ally of the british and us across the 20th century in the making of global capitalism. it has done so, we argue in empire’s ally, as a ‘secondary imperialist power’. this has meant pursuing and developing its own imperialist interests and capacities, but aligned with the dominant imperialist states of the u.k. and the u.s. this is a pattern of ‘co-operative specialization’ in foreign policy as canada cooperates closely with the lead imperialist power. over the cold war period, this meant specializing in diplomacy, peace-keeping and soft power, and in the text jerome klassen and paul kellogg lay out how this worked. in the period of neoliberalism, the foreign policy tasks have shifted: canada now specializes in diplomatic coverage for foreign intervention (as in haiti, lebanon, honduras), advancing free trade agreements (nafta, with ceta or the trans-pacific partnership) and the hard power of ‘disciplinary militarism’ of foreign combat missions. when looking at the overall position of canada within the imperialist hierarchies of the state system, it is the continuities that stand out, and it is from there that the 270 | climate change and its discontents specifics of the harper regime need to be judged. this is pretty much a unique thesis to empire’s ally, as only a few writers have pointed in this direction at all, and none of these develop a marxist-inspired critique of canadian foreign policy. second, the american state’s position as the dominant imperialist power and its continued pursuit of primacy has been a consistent in framing canadian foreign policy. obama, for example, never broke with any of the strategies and practices taken up by bush in the ‘war on terror’. he continues with the constant referrals to the us as the ‘indispensible nation’ and has acted on the basis of american exceptionalism with respect to the norms of the world order as, for example, the right to deploy drones at its discretion. this is a strategy of ‘disciplinary militarism’: the use of armed force to compel states, if their domestic capitalist classes and political elites are not already doing so, to adhere to the neoliberal world order under u.s. hegemony. alongside the american-led international policies for free trade, capital mobility, and the re-capitalization of the banking system, they have formed the basis for what can be called a ‘new imperialism’ in terms of the geo-economic framework that has emerged. this has evolved since reagan and consolidated as part of the way neoliberalism has formed the new basis of social rule in the 1990s. it is blindingly obvious that canadian foreign policy even since mulroney has been a key support to this strategy. what we attempted to do in empire’s ally was to accept this context and address how the canadian state and capital out of their own interest fit within this context, and the way the canadian state transformed its internal and international security regimes as a result of the afghan war, as part of what adam hanieh refers to in the volume as a ‘single war’ across the middle and far east. a lot of conventional military analysts have referred to this as a ‘revolution’ in canadian military and foreign policy, and there is something to that. but they totally neglect the continuities in canadian imperialism and simply ignore the role in supporting the internationalization of canadian capital. third, capitalist states always need to be assessed as making, mediating and reflecting the balance of social processes; in other words, as being the institutionalization of social struggles within liberal democracies. they are not neutral instruments held accountable by, and responding to, parliamentary deputies. as such, the department and branches of the state are also being re-ordered and shifting in the internal hierarchy of state power to reflect shifts in social struggle and ruling class strategies. this theoretical point is often seen to be obvious in the case the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 271 of the canadian state, given the degree of its autonomy from popular democratic forces, and the way the canadian state has been continually re-organized to assist capital accumulation, including the foreign and military apparatuses, and trade and capital flows from britain and the u.s. with canada. since 2001 and the opening of the new round of military interventions, there has been a substantial re-ordering of the canadian state: a general degradation of the institutions of representation and democratic processes; a hardening of the state in terms of policing, prisons military and the security apparatuses, in all its dimensions, from border security to csis; a re-orientation of the economic and trade policy branches to facilitate the internationalization of capital and the competitive capacity of labour processes; and a restructuring of the military and diplomatic apparatuses. but it builds on the project of ‘deep integration’ between canada and the us since the 1990s. ‘deep integration’ follows the internal logic of neoliberalism and the linkage between national security and economic liberalization that have been integral to the exercise of american imperial power. it would take pages to catalogue all of the policy shifts that have been made, but a few can be signaled: the fortress north america realignment of border and security relations with the u.s., as well as economic competitiveness; the support for fipa, ceta, tpp and a host of other ‘free trade’ agreements that secure new mandates for the internationalization of capital; the cooperation around continental energy policies, particularly around the extreme energy policies of offshore, fracking and the tar sands; the remaking of canadian defence policy to secure the arctic for north american control and for the deployment of canadian troops in joint operations in multiple battlefields; and the recasting of canadian diplomatic offices and practices to support ‘hard power’ deployment and alignment with us policies with respect to the middle east and latin america. it is this phase of the new imperialism in canada that we attempt to document in empire’s ally, and the way that the canadian intervention in afghanistan helped facilitate these transformations. jc: so canada is a “secondary power” within the us led “empire of capital”, to use ellen wood’s phrase, a class strategy to restructure canadian foreign policy in line with the internationalization of canadian capital. this begs the question, however, is the notion of “secondary power” sufficient to demarcate the role of canada, when the capitalist class is so thoroughly integrated with u.s. and global capital, on one hand? or 272 | climate change and its discontents on the other hand, does the canadian state and canadian capital have interests of their own that sometimes diverge with international capital? jerome klassen3 (jk): in the social sciences, there are several theories of canadian state power in the global political economy. in liberal theory, canada is a ‘middle power’ and thus holds a vested interest in multilateral diplomacy and conflict resolution. it believes, furthermore, that canadian foreign policy is guided by the ethical motivations of political leaders and reflects the democratic will of the public. in my view, this is far too idealistic and uncritical. canada, like every other state, has selfish interests in the global political economy and forges policies that reflect not the popular will but dominant social interests. the idea that canada is a ‘middle power’ is also incorrect; it is a major economic power with considerable military capacities and is not viewed as a ‘middle power’ by other states, especially in the periphery. the realist theory of canadian foreign policy is more accurate in these regards. generally speaking, it debunks the liberal ideology of the postwar period – in particular, the notion that canada was a ‘middle power’ in the cold war and practiced ‘peacekeeping’ for noble and selfless purposes – and tends to view canada as strong or ‘principal’ power in world affairs. one stream of realism also recognizes the power of the u.s. over canada and the way in which canada is forced to work within u.s. power projections. despite these strengths, realist theory is based on a reification of the state and thus ignores the internationalization of canadian capital and the role of dominant social groups in forging canadian state policy at home and abroad. unfortunately, these issues are completely off the radar of realist research, which has been highly supportive of the new militarism in canadian foreign policy. marxism offers the third perspective on these matters. in brief, it holds that canada is an imperialist power in that it is bound up with transnational forms of class exploitation and political domination. however, this perspective is still underdeveloped. although there is a 3 jerome klassen is a research fellow with the international development studies program at saint mary’s university and recently completed a sshrc postdoctoral fellowship at the mit center for international studies. he is co-editor of empire’s ally: canada and the war in afghanistan (university of toronto press) and has published articles in studies in political economy, canadian journal of sociology, and journal of world-systems research. the university of toronto press is publishing his monograph, joining empire: the political economy of the new canadian foreign policy (2014).” the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 273 strong tradition of marxian political economy in canada, it hasn’t really addressed foreign policy issues, at least in an academic format. so, one goal of empire’s ally was to generate a new research program on the class politics of canadian foreign policy. in my view, the canadian state is best viewed as a ‘secondary’ imperialist power for several reasons. first, it does not command the political, economic, or military powers to fully set an agenda for global politics, for example, as the united states or even china does. instead, it operates in a supporting or ‘secondary’ role in the world market and state system. second, despite its formal autonomy and independent interests and capacities, it tends to work internationally by internalizing and incorporating the political, economic, and military norms and priorities of primary powers such as the united states. this has been true since world war ii, but has increased dramatically since 9/11, as the canadian state embraced the ‘global war on terror’ and, to this end, thoroughly transformed itself. empire’s ally attempts to make sense of these various dynamics. it recognizes that the canadian capitalist class has claims across the world economy and thus is a key player in the internationalization of capital, including in many poor countries and regions. however, the internationalization of canadian capital is still focused on north america, which is dominated by the united states and its national bloc of capital. so, for the most part, empire’s ally recognizes that canada is an imperialist power, but tends to support, or to operate under, u.s. hegemonic designs. of course, tensions and rivalries continue to exist between capitalist classes of different nation-states, including the us and canada. but the idea that canada is locked in ‘inter-imperialist rivalry’ with the u.s. is simply not the case, as some trotskyists seem to argue. to get around these issues, empire’s ally tries to analyze the general tendencies of capitalist imperialism as well as the particular role of canada as a secondary power in the current global conjuncture. in my view, future research should look more closely at how the particular structure of accumulation in canada – in particular, the nexus of energy, mining and finance – generates unique patterns of international engagement under the hegemonic direction of canadian capital. jc: in terms of canada’s and others’ efforts to “rebuild” the afghan state, what hurdles have been faced, and how has canada failed to manage and/or transcended such hurdles? if it is indeed possible to help afghanistan, what can be done, not merely by the canadian state, but by international assistance? 274 | climate change and its discontents jk: canada’s approach to state building in afghanistan has been characterized by two key features. first, it largely followed the u.s.-led process of working with president hamid karzai and various warlords, commanders, and sectarian leaders, who filled the power vacuum in 2001. as part of this, the us and the international financial institutions dictated a neoliberal development program for afghanistan, one that was geared towards the privatization of state industries and the liberalization of trade and investment flows. international ngos played a key role in this project, in particular, by providing services and building infrastructure in towns and villages. the result has been a highly contingent and unaccountable form of state building and development, one in which popular needs are not addressed or fulfilled by state institutions. in this context, there is some concern that the afghan state may disintegrate if a civil war resumes after u.s./nato forces withdrawal over the next year. the u.s.-led mission has done nothing for reconciliation and transitional justice after decades of civil war, authoritarian rule, and outside intervention. for example, at the present moment, the u.s. is trying to sign a status of forces agreement for a long-term military presence in afghanistan, one in which its troops will be given legal immunity from afghan jurisdiction and sovereignty. this is a further example of how outside intervention has continued to limit or undermine efforts at sovereign state building in that country. it is important to recognize that canada has enabled the u.s.-led project in afghanistan through several contributions. in fact, it has tried to develop specialized props for the state-building effort. in our book, anthony fenton and jon elmer show how canada’s efforts at ‘democracy promotion’ were in fact based on an elitist model of institutionalizing popular sovereignty. likewise, angela joya and justin podur show how canada’s development projects were linked to a militarized, neoliberal model of pacification. in these ways, the authors demonstrate the particular methods of canadian imperialism in the afghan theatre. what alternatives exist? as several authors in our book argue, canada should withdrawal its remaining military forces and support active and transparent forms of conflict resolution involving the un, the key regional powers, and the full spectrum of afghan political forces. after this, canada should provide aid and reconstruction funding to a future afghan government, which must be allowed to set its own priorities for economic growth and social development. the canadian state the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 275 must also investigate any canadian military, diplomatic, or security personnel who participated in potential war crimes, including the transfer of prisoners to torture. jc: while empire’s ally touches upon this, i’m wondering if you can say a bit more about the ecological dimension of canadian foreign policy, such as the canadian state’s support and encouragement of ecologically destructive mining industries. jk: environmental issues do not factor centrally into empire’s ally. michael skinner’s chapter does, however, discuss the environmental impact of mining development in afghanistan. the massive projects coming down the pipe are expected to displace small-scale farming and even backyard mining operations, and to disrupt the delicate ecological balance, including irrigation systems, in certain regions. beyond this, the book doesn’t really grapple with environmental concerns. future research on canadian imperialism must, however, do so thoroughly. as a leading per capita emitter of greenhouse gases, canada holds a ‘climate debt’ to the world and thus practices ‘ecological imperialism,’ or the unequal exploitation of the world’s atmosphere as a carbon dump. one major reason for this is that capital accumulation in canada is increasingly based on energy-intensive industrial operations, including mining and bitumen extraction. the subordination of production in canada to global market imperatives has also made the country increasingly reliant on global trade and with it, the infinite use of hydrocarbon resources. for these reasons, progressive movements must integrate an ecological perspective into their anti-imperialist and anticapitalist frameworks. in the final chapter of the book, derrick o’keefe of the canadian peace alliance makes this point in very clear terms and suggests methods for making it happen. ga: in a moment’s reflection, it should become apparent that the american military is the most destructive ecological force on the planet: for its use of natural resources in general; as the foremost user of fossil fuels (and thus contributor to climate change); for its mass campaigns of defoliation and aerial bombing; and for the legacy of radioactive and toxic waste it has strewn across the planet. military activity as a whole is the single greatest contributor to ecological destruction, with the canadian military being a significant contributor. just think of the toxic waste that have been left across the canadian arctic by norad’s dew line, or the ecological 276 | climate change and its discontents mess that resides at every canadian and american military base across the country. modern warfare is really one of the areas where the terms ‘ecocide’ and ‘ecological imperialism’ really fit, and they have potentially a very rich conceptual range and possibilities in peace studies research. it is something we need to take up with respect to the canadian military. there is no modern imperialist military intervention that has not left a terrible toxic ecological legacy. we are not yet able to make an assessment of what the impacts on afghanistan has been, but we know it will not be trivial. it is impossible today to be an ecological activist and not also take on militarism and its consequences for climate change and the natural ecology as a whole. and this carries over into being antiimperialist for this is what the american and western military forces are organized to defend and enforce. in turn, to be anti-militarist is to take on the ecological consequences of war-making today. these are clearly the analytical and political points of convergence of the ecological and anti-war movements. but we are some ways still of getting that level of social consciousness and political organization as part of the everyday common-sense of the left and working-class people. but we also need to see the ecological dimensions of foreign policy in terms of the overall organization of the apparatuses of the canadian state. since there has been so much sloppy thinking with respect to the canadian state and foreign policy, it is necessary to begin with a broader point. capitalist states are, as marx put it, “the form of organization which the bourgeois necessarily adopt for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests.” national states play an indispensible nodal role in supplying the extra-market institutional and coordinative roles necessary for capital accumulation, including mediating the inter-state system. as such, the diplomatic branches of the state are delimited in their role with respect to these essential systemic needs of capital. even the much touted period of canada as a ‘middlepower broker’ really reflected the areas of ‘co-operative specialization’, as i put it, consistent with canada’s position as part of the imperialist core re-making global capitalism over the cold war period. since 2001, as we already noted, the foreign policy branches of the canadian state dealing with ‘soft power’ issues like climate change, human rights, family planning, and so forth, have been marginalized relative to security and military issues. and the diplomatic and economic components of the state facilitating the accumulation of capital have been given increased roles and powers. in fact, in the case of afghanistan, the 3d policy framework tied economic and military components together in the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 277 particular ways. the more recent shifting of cida into the, now renamed, department of foreign affairs, trade and development canada, has also gone in this direction. not surprisingly, given the competitive capacities of the canadian extractive sector, and bay st. as the central place in the world for financing mining, the canadian state has been playing a big part in backing up the internationalization of mining capital. this, of course, has come at some cost to ecological issues, which the harper government has symbolized by gutting environmental regulation and moving environment canada to the margins of the canadian state. but environmental issues are a really important dimension in the matrix of foreign policy issues today, given the international dimensions to all ecology issues, especially climate change. even with what often appears as localized problems of ecology, the competitive imperatives driving capital accumulation forces inter-state competition that puts ecology into competition – in developing more extreme energy sources, dumping pollutants, shirking ghg reduction targets, and so on. this forms a fundamental contradiction in international relations. through international coordination capitalist states can agree to coordinate action to address ecological issues through upgrading binding constraints (the strategy since the brundtland report on sustainable development in 1987). but at the same time these very same states are encouraging accumulation and the competitive capacities of the capitals in their own territorial space that undermine the agreements. well, one of the tendencies within this contradiction is going to prevail. it is clear enough that ecology has been subordinated to the imperialist ordering of the inter-state system and the internationalization of capital. the economic crisis since 2008, and the turn to what can be called permanent austerity, has further pushed ecology to the margins. so, not surprisingly, we have witnessed over the last two years the harper government mobilize the entire international branches of the canadian state in support of oil and gas exports – the keystone pipeline to the u.s. and various natural gas export plans to east asia; and at the same time do whatever the government can do to disrupt the various climate change protocols being negotiated to succeed the kyoto accord (the targets from that agreement being basically ignored, before just withdrawing from the accord). there are any number of other examples of canadian foreign policy taking the exact same stance of disregard for ecology – from landmines, to withdrawal from the un convention to combat desertification, to lack of cooperation in international research on the ecology of the arctic and the other oceans bordering canada, and others. 278 | climate change and its discontents there is a habit in progressive circles to charge harper with a radical re-working of canadian foreign policy and stump for an ndp-liberal alliance, backed by a social movement front, to defeat the conservatives. this would allow a return to the canadian state role as ‘active global statesman’. well, harper has certainly intensified the most aggressive and imperialist components of the canadian state, the thesis of empire’s ally suggests that canada’s shifting international role was already forming under chretien and martin and the liberals. the core features of canadian foreign policy will not be radically remade, particularly as both the ndp and liberals have committed to developing the tar sands and the internationalization of canadian capital. to be clear, any departure in canada’s position in the world order is really dependent upon an alternate bloc forming with a program that links anti-militarism and ecology to the traditional demands of the left for democratization, socially-responsible production, increased diversity and autonomy for alternate development models and addressing the inequalities of the world order. in one form or another, this has always constituted the basis of a socialist program for international relations. the anti-war and anti-imperialist movements in canada could play a bit role in bringing these positions from out of the margins. jc: is there a peace movement in canada? is there an environmental movement in canada? what i mean by this question is that, assuming mobilizing for peace and environmental justice are co-constitutive struggles, how can progressive scholars and activists conjoin these movements – and do these movements indeed exist? ga: this is a tough set of questions – they raise the challenge of reading the conjuncture and the state of left strategy and tactics, in canada and more generally. and there are as many illusions about the state of social movements in canada, or elsewhere for that matter, as there are about canadian foreign policy. there has been a certain impulse in some strands of the left, and particularly among movement activists, that capitalism is in deep crisis; that the ruling bloc and the core capitalist countries are increasingly divided (and thus able to resolve political problems and rule); that resistance is rising; and that the social movements have within themselves, as is, a ready alternative. sometimes a further, parallel claim – particularly by union leaderships and progressive ngos – is made: that the ndp and social democratic forces will be able to switch the channel on the policy agenda (perhaps in alliance with the liberals). the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 279 although there is still a protracted economic crisis, none of these individual claims hold up, and together they have been terribly disorienting for political thinking and strategizing, especially in a country with such a weak socialist culture as canada. it is tiresome when repeated every few years for decades. in fact, the disorganization of the broad left – in radical and social democratic parties and in unions and social movements – has been the actual trajectory. the old leninist formulations behind this theme are completed out of step with the times. the most immediate need is the steady rebuilding of socialist and radical infrastructures and organizational capacities. otherwise the defeats will mount and the illusions of a coming resistance will seem ever more fantastical. rather than building the movements, this type of politics always invoking the coming revolt encourages the collapse of oppositional forces, and the broad working classes, into a fatalism that accepts the existing state of ‘no alternatives’. in effect, the political space that can be occupied by right wing populism is widened and filled, for example, by harperism or the ‘ford nation’ in toronto. we have to begin from a very tough-minded assessment – gramsci’s pessimism of the intellect – of where we are actually at, steadily building new organizational capacities, experimenting with parties of a new kind, and contributing to key political struggles by connecting them across sectors and to a critique of capitalism. there are no political short-cuts. this reading of the current period is, more or less, an implicit theme of empire’s ally in attempting to emphasize canada’s place in the core imperial countries, the reorganization of the military and diplomatic components of the state, and to put the anti-war agenda in canada in terms of building an anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist movement. this is why there is such thorough critique of the mythologies of canada as neutral broker, or as a peacekeeping nation, across the volume. we need to understand the current political terrain as a hardening of capitalist power, not its’ weakening, and make political calculations on the left on that basis. a number of contributions in empire’s ally address the question of the peace movement directly, and to their credit none of this nonsense of impending collapse is to be found. instead, there is a sober assessment of what the peace movements in quebec and canada accomplished in opposition to the war in afghanistan and what remains to be done. benoit renaud and jessica squires, for example, analyze the course of the anti-war movement in quebec, échec á la guerre, in relation to the 280 | climate change and its discontents formation of quebec solidaire, and a range of human rights, labour and anti-racist struggles. but they warn that even on this much stronger political ground than elsewhere in north america, there is still a long way to go to rebuild mass movements and the capacity for mass mobilization. derrick o’keefe, one of the co-chairs of the canadian peace alliance, carefully dissects the way that a new military strategy has formed in the canadian state. he stakes out an agenda for re-building an antiwar movement in canada in this new context, and to keep the peace movement relevant. similarly, angela joya and anthony fenton and jon elmer pick apart the way that much of ngo and development work has assisted in building what the latter refer to as an ‘expeditionary force for democracy promotion’. the peace movement is illustrative of the difficulty of building movements in the context of neoliberalism and a hardening of the military strategy of the canadian state. but the environmental movements illustrate a different trajectory. as neoliberalism consolidated in the 1990s, most of the big engos accommodated to the new political terrain – they wanted to remain relevant and they wanted immediate changes, even if incremental and symbolic. a number of us, particularly in the toronto group meeting around the journal capitalism, nature, socialism, began tracking the steady embrace of market ecology by the ecology movement, and an incredibly naïve believe in market prices and cost internalization for effecting ‘green growth’ within capitalism. we further picked these views apart in the socialist register volume 43, coming to terms with nature. even in the current fight over climate change, many of the major ecology groups are relying on market mechanisms and slower development rather than taking up an anti-capitalist political position. the search is for a sustainable energy fix within capitalist social relations. this is not untypical of a range of social movements. it may well be more accurate to speak of a range of activist nodes each, in their way, opposing some of the dislocations produced by neoliberalism. but not becoming social movements mobilizing tens of thousands in mass protests, and the day-to-day practices of resistance – petitions, picketing, deputations, workplace agitation, and so on. and not forming into anti-systemic organizational forces shifting the correlation of national or international forces in a more democratic and egalitarian direction. so much of what goes under the name of social movements in canada represents deep frustrations with the way we live, and anger at the gross abuses of power and privilege of capitalism in canada, but not coherent democratic forces able to suggest a path to another way of living. this is the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 281 why we put so much stress in empire’s ally on canada as a major capitalist power embedded in the wider u.s. and nato imperialist agenda, and the harper government as an intensification of some of these neoliberal trends but not the initiator. let me return to some of the wider themes. a number of structural transformations have altered the organizational foundations for left politics: the changes in the nature of employment towards more networked production processes and fragmented services provision; the increasing international circulation of capital; the internal differentiation and stratification of the working class; and the re-orientation of so much organized political activism toward negotiating defensive compromises with the state. neoliberalism has, of course, driven these pressures. left alternatives have also suffered historical defeats, for good and ill, in the end of authoritarian communism and the realignment of social democracy toward increasing accommodation of the market and existing distributional relations. these developments have shifted working class capacities in terms of workplace organization, political leadership of oppositional forces and ideological inventiveness. as a consequence, left politics under neoliberalism (in canada since the failure to defeat nafta in the early 1990s) has oscillated between, on the one hand, a ‘politics of chaos’ that in fact reflects the disarray of left forces and organizational weakness, and, on the other, short-term political calculation to avoid further social erosion. above all, then, the socialist left must be actively fostering the formation of new political agencies. one necessary aspect of such an engagement is class reformation through revitalization of unions, and the linking of unions to workers in new sectors, the struggles for gender and racial equality, and the marginalized outside ‘normal’ work processes. it is also necessary to experiment in organizational convergence between the remnants of the independent left, civic organizations, and the sections within social democracy that remained committed to a transformative project. such a reformation needs to be grounded in the building up of educational, communicative and cultural resources indispensable to forming the political identity necessary for a ‘new socialism’ for the 21st century. and concrete anti-neoliberal alliances forged in struggle to defeat particular initiatives and make inroads against neoliberalism will make such a process of reformation ‘organic’. the anti-war movement is, as we signal in empire’s ally, a crucial component of this convergence as a new canadian left will have to be clearly anti-imperialist and offer a radical challenge to the current world 282 | climate change and its discontents order and the current matrix of foreign policy. it is not difficult to suggest some of the transitional demands that we need to insist upon – a rejection of current policies toward the middle and far east and war reparations to the people of afghanistan and just settlement in palestine; supporting a multi-polar world order and regional capacities for enforcing peace and dispute settlement; withdrawal from international military alliances and the conversion of military forces into increasingly civil organizations for defence, emergency relief and ecological cleanup; forging a new international economic architecture that places control on capital movements, plans trade, transfers technology and resources, and internationally coordinates a transition to low-carbon economies; and an industrial conversion strategy away from military production. this is the kind of agenda that, as we suggest in empire’s ally, is beginning to emerge across the inter-state system. it is part of the emerging anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist sensibility that is beginning to lay the basis for a new socialism relevant for the 21st century. the geopolitical ecology of empire’s ally | 283 284 | climate change and its discontents working in a warming world: on climate change and union renewal with carla lipsig-mummé christina rousseau christina rousseau1 (cr): despite the changing face and composition of the labour force, the organized labour movement (i.e. unions) has grown stagnant in its responses to austerity measures against working class people, a shrinking job market, and the erosion of unions themselves. running parallel to the issue of union renewal and attacks against working class people is the issue of climate change. as your recent work suggests, climate change and union renewal are not necessarily parallel, and are, in fact, connected as a broad range of issues facing workers in canada and across the globe. can you elaborate on this connection? carla lipsig-mummé2 (clm): it seems to me not only are they not just parallel, but they feed each other and they can create each other. i saw this when i was living and working in australia, where i was a national councilor for the national tertiary education union, which are blue-collar and white-collar workers together. they bargained nationally – and we had enterprise, or workplace bargaining, as well. my state 1 christina rousseau is a union activist and phd candidate in humanities at york university. she is currently working on the first, full-length historical study of the wages for housework campaigns in italy and canada in the 1970s. her broad research interests include movement organizing, unwaged labour, and marxist-feminism. 2 carla lipsig-mummé is professor of work and labour studies at york university. currently principal investigator social science and humanities research council’s environmental cura research grant, work in a warming world, carla has also been principal investigator of a study on the state of expert knowledge about the impact of global warming on canada’s employment and work, funded by cihr, sshrc and nserc. author of more than 200 academic works in english and french, her most recent book climate@work (fernwood) was published in 2013. work in a warming world will be published in 2014 and coedited by lipsig-mummé and stephen mcbride. her current research focuses on factoring work and employment into the struggle to respond to climate change, the future of work, trade unions and the renewal of union militancy in a globalizing era, regulating professions and emerging labour relations regimes. working in a warming world: | 285 of victoria asked me to head a committee that they were setting up on green campaigning. we had representatives from each one of the universities in victoria, and then it became a national effort, and in a very short period of time we pulled together material and the language for collective bargaining around climate change. there were basically a series of issues that emerged, and ways of bargaining as well. more than that, all the locals participated. what people were reporting back was interesting: at various universities, young people (in their early 20s) who had never come to a union meeting (and they might be science people, they might be techs, they might be grounds people because academics were not separated out) came for the environment issues and came out of a concern for environmental questions. one of the three people who put their hands up to take my place on the council when i left later became state secretary of the national tertiary – and now he is a major force in the australian council of trade unions, doing serious work for environmental change. by this i mean the unions and the corporations argue a very fine line in policy statements, as indeed do many environment groups. the policy statements usually have a target on either consumer behaviour, or on what regulations or laws we need from the government. all of this is what others can do. i’m suggesting that unions have considerable residual powers through occupational health and safety and collective bargaining that will allow them to raise issues of environmental responsibility. through their collective bargaining, for example, they can draw in people who haven’t been active before. the link between occupational health and safety and collective bargaining will mobilize people who would surprise you, and people who wouldn’t surprise you. i think that engagement with environmental responsibility is one of several sources for union renewal, mainly at the local level. this is rank and file work. it can gather, and it has to. and what could reinvigorate unions more than engagement with bargaining? we need to build from the rank and file, because that’s where we negotiate. another thing i learned from my australian experience (and i’ve seen this in germany as well) is that environmental work in a workplace sometimes begins with one or two people who are passionate in gathering others. i listened to a series of secondary and tech college teachers in southern germany talking about how they got active. one teacher had talked to their students and together they formed a group in one class, then other classes did. they started out by asking, “what are we wasting? how is our energy being used?” and they formed other clus286 | climate change and its discontents ters – this is real rank and file work. what you can’t ever do is present it as a means to a different end, because the people who come to this really care about the environment, and they care about their unions too. there are other ways to link union renewal and climate change, which we haven’t done yet, but which we may with work in a warming world3. in a hospital you may have eleven different unions. at york university we have seven, i believe. gather a delegate from each one of those unions and call them your green stewards. or they could be your existing occupational health and safety officers. you can learn how to audit a workplace and not accept the employer’s evaluation. because if you accept the employer’s evaluation, every one of the universities is environmentally superb! and we’re not. so you gather this information, and you connect with concerned scientists and environmental lawyers, and you get the tools for auditing and drafting your proposals. but you also draw up a green plan where you develop what we need to do, what our timeframe is, what expertise is needed, etc. that idea – which could be somewhat common across workplaces and sectors – is to have a small group that’s interested in green issues. cr: there is a lot of talk about the creation of green jobs. what does this mean? clm: what’s a green job? governments look at the issue and say, “we’ll create 2 million, 3 million, 4 million jobs.” but there’s no consensual definition of green jobs. the idea of green jobs is used largely as a lure – it’s basically job creation with a trendy title. we will produce x number of jobs, and the numbers are never the same. these new green jobs are based on a series of hypotheses: if this law passes, if the shift to cleaner energy occurs within a certain amount of time, if, if. it seems to me that in defining green jobs we need to have 2 or 3 characteristics: 1) the item being produced is of environmental value to better it, and not simply keep it equal; 2) the methods of production are themselves environmentally responsible; 3) the workers have green awareness and green training. but what does it mean to say the processes 3 work in a warming world (w3) “is a 5 year research programme clustering a number of projects and grants. it is a research partnership among academics and community partners to bring work back into canadian focus in the struggle to slow global warming. the cluster of w3 projects bridge two solitudes: between environmental and labour market organizations, and between academic and practitioner research. w3 brings together more than 50 organizations and researchers in 10 universities and 4 countries.” for more information, see http://www.workinawarmingworld.yorku.ca/ working in a warming world: | 287 of production? i argue that we need to start to use a life cycle assessment: we start with the inputs, we come to the technology we use to transport, the physical environment in which your work takes place, distribution, disposal. it’s a chain. once you do that, once you consider these factors, there are precious few green industries and green processes. the number of green jobs obviously varies. and worse than that, very few new green jobs are actually being created. in the last month, gretchen morgenson of the new york times looked at this. the united states has a series of programs to fund small and medium sized businesses to hire people who are working on environmental responsibility. she followed some of the companies and found that they took the money, but the jobs never came. we don’t have any consensus on the issue of green jobs, other than that it is a political tool. all policies, whether to create green jobs or to regulate existing jobs – are vulnerable to politics. we’re not that vulnerable yet in canada. so far, our labour relations framework has stood up better than other countries. i know the conservatives are now looking for right to work legislation, so maybe we aren’t going to hold up. but so far we do: we have contracts, we have bargaining, we have occupational health and safety laws that are independent of our contracts, etc. and can it all get wiped out? sure it can. and so can our unions. but right now we have powers we’re not using, and they just might renew us. cr: in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis and as a response to canadians demanding environmental accountability, the canadian government has promised the creation of “green” jobs. the reality in canada, however, is that resources are going to support environmentally destructive practices like fracking and the oil sands industry (not to mention the canadian government completely abandoning its kyoto commitments). it seems that people in canada are interested in green jobs – or at least in greening existing jobs. but instead resources are going to support environmentally devastating industries and practices. why is canada so stalled compared to other developed countries? how does the canadian labour movement compare with other countries in its response? clm: in canada, we’re still around 30 percent unionized – the us is around 11 percent. if i had my druthers, we wouldn’t be going workplace to workplace. but we don’t have the government in our hands. i don’t reject the ndp out of hand because having lived in australia when the conservative coalition came into power. the government at 288 | climate change and its discontents the national level completely got rid of protective elements; all dues collection was by hand, you couldn’t collect it at the source any longer. the federal government said repeatedly, “our goal is for every worker to be a self-employed contractor.” union membership in australia went from 56 percent down to 21 percent. unions had no money to have offices or staff. there are a number of initiatives that are good within the union movement as a whole. but the harder issues, which happen around collective bargaining, are very rare. is there good will in the movement? absolutely (especially in british columbia). we need to get back the right to bargain in the public sector, because we almost don’t have it anymore. i’ve watched the labour movement engage in the past, and it has been very promising. it hasn’t been quick, but it’s been promising. for example, the united food and commercial workers union, organized greenhouse workers who are almost always migrants. they understand the contradictions: from field, to truck, to factories, to fork – there’s a whole political economy. i’m waiting to see not just the unions, but also the environmental movement, go beyond the proposal of policies to make the changes happen. we’ve seen a little of that, but not much – and we do have the places and the spaces to do so. there are things we can bargain, and also ways we can bargain. we developed this in australia, and it works almost everywhere: 1) what are you negotiating to demand the employer to do?; 2) what are you prepared to do jointly with the employer (create a joint commission in which you and the employer oversee a whole range of things, e.g., the heating plant, etc.; 3) what you will negotiate into your collective agreement to have the employer do for your members as citizens in civil society? free metro passes, for example. hotel workers in toronto have negotiated that for their workers; 4) we as a union are going to educate our members as part of our collective bargaining responsibility. that’s new. we take on the education. it goes through every sector, and that could be part of the green plan. these are the ways you can bargain, and they are doable. how does it compare to other countries? the european unions are way ahead. they’ve been on social partnership for years. they have a tripartite hold that works against conservative governments. for example, there was a partnership to create cleaner steel. the green workplaces project in the uk is something i would love to borrow for here. there are between 300-350 companies building relationships workplace by workplace to green, consult and negotiate. that’s a model i would like to see us get involved with. it’s workplace based, but it’s trade union congress enabled. there are lots of other examples as well. codetermiworking in a warming world: | 289 nation in germany will do something like this too. codetermination gives unions enormous research capacity. board fees pay for research centers, when union members sit on company boards. the fees do not go into their pockets, but into this. european unions, when they have money – and the quebec unions do this too – put money into research so that when they go to the table or into the strike, they have backup. and we have never done that here, nor do i see the climate for it now. compared to what we do vis-à-vis the government, you might ask why canadians who are concerned about the environment continue to reelect a government which is the pariah of the western world, although it’s about to be joined by australia. cr: the reality is that people working in environmentally destructive industries like the oil and mining industries in canada are working these jobs because they earn them money. how can we get these workers to care about environmental responsibility when they have a pay cheque to think about? clm: we can ask the same question in many places. if you have chronically poor communities, in the maritimes or in the atlantic provinces for example, they’re going to migrate. i’ve been talking with a group that is looking at an alternative skills training program. my thought is that you create regional instead of provincial labour markets, because then you may at least keep them somewhere in the atlantic. well before we got into climate change, there was a skills training problem: we never solved it, and we keep asking the same questions 20 years later. there is a dilemma of personal need. i think that we often forget in universities that everybody doesn’t have the range of choices that we do. for example, if you come from an outpost, if you come from a fishing community where fish are gone, your choices are made in function of a lot of pressures. if we stay students for a long time (as i did), then you can underestimate the perception of no choice. i would only be contacting these workers through their union. coming from the outside in some industries never works. above all, we have a number of things that are not climate but that are linked and related. for example, the canadian government’s scandalous negligence: piping, or rail carrying of the oil sands, the lack of rail standards, and the dangers attached to them, etc. all kinds of people who work in those and other kinds of industries can gather around that. gathering around issues that are not climate change in the workplace, but are envi290 | climate change and its discontents ronmental so that the links may also happen elsewhere the community. that doesn’t take you to a practice – the idea of green plans or environmentally responsible charter for workers in their workplaces. those are places that we can’t go to from the outside. in climate@work we write about what we are doing with unions and what unions are doing in the workplace4. in some ways it’s not part of our academic writing. i think when we cluster stories better that may happen. but it’s a different kind of work for us. cr: there have been a lot of grassroots responses to environmental devastation and climate change in canada. for example, the anti-fracking movement in new brunswick by mi’kmaq warriors and the elsipogtog first nations in response to shale-gas exploration in the area, recently culminating in a massive blockade and the proclamation of a massive land reclamation. this is, of course, one example of environmental activism coming from first nations and indigenous people in canada. i was recently at my union’s national convention (canadian union of public employees), where an emergency resolution was passed in support of the elsipogtog first nations. on a national level, with my union, it seems to have ended there. clm: cupe has environment committees in 130 different locals. they’re probably not doing “nothing”. cupe is very decentralized in this way. i always know that they’re doing more than what i know about. we have something called a work and climate change report, which is a compendium of worldwide research – it comes out monthly, and it’s free. it’s a straight thing. you go to it if you want to know what is happening. you don’t often find stuff about mobilization. it’s geared for what it does, which is gather people who you could otherwise never talk with and give them information and hope they use it. we work on a number of different levels and with several different goals inside this work. cr: can you talk about the connections between unions and grassroots movements? how do they compare, and how can they respond to climate change and environmental devastation in a meaningful way? clm: different ways in different parts of the country. i would say by responding to environmental degradation. given what we’re getting out of the harper government, concern about climate change has moved into 4 carla lipsig-mummé, ed. (2013). climate@work. halifax: fernwood publishing. working in a warming world: | 291 a larger concern about the environment as a dangerous thing because of the way the government deals with it. british columbia would be far in advance of everyone else on this. british columbia will say it’s an unwritten rule that nobody goes forward anymore with an environmentally destructive plan if the first nations don’t want it. across the whole country, i don’t know what local links are made. local bargaining isn’t happening really. we’ve got examples of things included in contracts – there are clauses, and there are more than we know. but there is not awareness that there is a lot out there. we know there’s more than we know, but until we get a good search engine or even a federal system, we put it together bit by bit. what it means is, in terms of actual awareness, people pick up the spark and bring it home to their locals – and those are the things we’ll be looking at with work in a warming world with another seven years of funding. i’d like to be moving into the local work sooner than that. cr: so the work is something that is happening more at a local level than at the national level in unions? clm: when we’ve talked with people in packed rooms, few talked about what they were bargaining. they talked about what they were doing with their occupational health and safety committee, or talked about separate environment committees. but i didn’t hear about bargaining in that room. that’s the next step. in any place that it hasn’t already started, they really have to be starting from the ground. because quintessentially what we do in this country is we bargain from the local level. we can provide some of the material, the information; find out what they need to help. and it helps a lot that we have these good unions, and unions that are largely good in terms of listening to their locals and taking up the work of work in a warming world. in other words, they are taking up the work of work in a warming world and that helps too. but it’s a long way to go. cr: according to a statistics canada report from 2012, the percentage of workers in unionized positions is 31.2 percent compared to 33.8 percent in 1997. clm: how lucky we are that we only dropped 2 precent! but yes, precarious jobs are a killer in making any kind of unionized force. 292 | climate change and its discontents cr: while union membership has grown in this period, there has been a greater growth of non-unionized jobs: precarious, temporary, part-time work. the major issue for a lot of these workers is job security. additionally, the public sector has largely lost the right to collective bargaining. with the impending threat of “right to work” legislation, what are we to do? how can workers be integrated into struggles not only for better, secure jobs, but also for environmental protection and opposing climate change? clm: we do things that will sound very much reformist. we ensure the government that wants to do this is not in office again. but there is a whole active and confrontational life for unions, which somehow nationally has disappeared since 2000. the canadian labour congress under bob white was extraordinarily creative in not letting these things take root. leadership, to some degree, matters. if nothing else, it matters if only in terms of despair or the willingness to fight. that willingness to fight – and i’m talking about climate bargaining at the local level and the mood of the labour movement as a whole – has been taking a giant step backwards; a step of resignation for a very long time. that needs to change. and that means getting involved with political parties that can stop the party that won’t. in other words, it needs a certain kind of reformist political action. cr: do you see a place for returning to the roots of the labour movement, which was built out of nothing, and out of militancy and illegitimacy? clm: it grew out of itself and out of the chances people took with their own lives and with the lives of others. do i see it? i haven’t seen it yet. labour as a social movement fought for the legal right to continue to represent and bargain. the price you pay to get the right to bargain is to lose the social movement. on the other hand, if we lose the right to bargain, we have to start right back again. where do i see it coming from? i see it coming from workers. fast food workers and minimum wage workers in the united states are doing quite spectacular work, and i don’t think we’re seeing that here. now we’re not talking about climate. we’re talking about the simple role of the union as defender and an advancer of social rights and social power. in other words, we’re talking about something in which climate is only a part. i haven’t seen anything here that is like what the fast food workers in the united states are doing. and it’s not just them. the day labourers are enormously working in a warming world: | 293 organized in the united states. what we’re talking about is: does the united states of the 1930s happen again? and the answer is: lose our basic rights and there are certainly people of several generations willing to fight back. that’s politique de la pire – in other words, we will become radical if it gets a lot worse. i’m not hoping so; i’m hoping it gets better. but that’s the only place i can see it coming from. if we’re talking about union radicalism again, i think it will take us getting to a moment where we understand that we have everything and all to lose. then i have a certain amount of faith in several generations for that fight back. but that means that it needs to get desperately worse, and it’s hard to wish that. 294 | climate change and its discontents climate change and socialism: an interview with john bellamy foster steve da silva steve da silva1 (sd): over the last decade you have emerged as a leading thinker in synthesizing radical ecology with the marxist tradition. from marx’s ecology (2000) to the ecological rift (2010) and everything in between, you’ve carried out the much needed intellectual work of recovering the overlooked ecological content of marx’s original thought, presenting us with a side of marx that many marxists may have not been aware of. you have also developed a 21st century dialectical materialism, particularly as it pertains to ecology and the unprecedented ecological crises that confront our species and earth. could you briefly summarize the ecological crises that we confront, perhaps by explaining the concept of the “metabolic rift” and the various “planetary boundaries” that capitalism threatens to surpass or has already surpassed? john bellamy foster2 (jbf): scientists led by johan rockström of the stockholm resilience center now refer to nine “planetary boundaries” defined by the holocene geological epoch in which civilization arose. these nine boundaries, all of which we have crossed or are in the process of crossing, relate to: climate change, ocean acidification, the destruction 1 steve da silva is former phd student who studied political economy and canadian history in the social and political thought program at york university. da silva is a former editor of basics community news service, with which he remains people’s journalist; an anti-imperialist activist within cupe local 3903, its first nations solidarity working group, and within the canadian chapter of the international league of people’s struggles; and a young father within a fledgling community parenting movement and its associated parenting coops. 2 john bellamy foster is editor of monthly review and a professor of sociology at the university of oregon. he is the author of marx’s ecology (2000), the ecological rift (2010, with brett clark and richard york); and what every environmentalist needs to know about capitalism (2011, with fred magdoff) all published by monthly review press. these texts and his frequent contributions to monthly review have made foster one of the leading marxist ecologists today, bridging the critique of capitalist political economy with a materialist understanding of the ecological crisis and the increasingly urgent argument for a revolution in social relations. climate change and socialism | 295 of the ozone layer, the loss of biological diversity (or species extinction), the disruption of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, the loss of land cover, the loss of fresh water, aerosol loading, and chemical pollution. we can see this as the development of various rifts in the biogeochemical cycles governing the earth system. the notion of a rift in the metabolism between nature and society (or in the universal metabolism of nature) goes back to marx’s capital, where he constructed a theory of how the labour and production process under capitalism, which he defined as the metabolic interaction between human beings and nature, was disrupted by capitalist agriculture through the shipment of soil nutrients in the form of food and fiber to the cities where they could no longer be returned to the soil, and where they contributed to urban pollution. marx’s approach here, in which he introduced the concept of social metabolism and connected this to the earth metabolism anticipated the structure of all subsequent ecological systems theory and our understanding of ecological crisis. it is basically in such terms that science has come to understand our present global ecological predicament. sd: a high-level climate change report came out in september 2013 from the united national intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc). what do you make of the findings in this report? is the sense of urgency reflected in your work to be found there? are the predictions and estimates your are framing in your work validated, downplayed, or challenged in this new ipcc report? jbf: it think that the most important development in the new ipcc report as compared with previous ones is the establishment of a carbon budget based on the trillionth metric ton of actual carbon emissions, which marks the point of irreversible climate change associated with a 2° celsius increase in average global warming. in monthly review we have been basing our analysis of the planetary emergency for the last three years on the carbon budget associated with the trillionth ton, using the same data. so this fits with how we have framed the problem in line with the scientific literature. at current rates of emission the carbon budget will be exhausted (the trillionth ton will be reached) somewhere around 2040 – so the urgency of finding a way of drastically reducing carbon emissions is very great. it is clear, especially given the short time span, that this cannot be accomplished by technological means alone, but will require conservation, changes in social relations, and the selfmobilization of the population. kevin anderson at the tyndall institute 296 | climate change and its discontents for climate research says we need a moratorium on economic growth, something hard to think of in a capitalist society. certainly, we need a revolution in our social priorities. sd: i am curious if you have a sense of who has been more receptive to your work: radical environmentalists or marxists, socialists, communists? have you found it easier for radical environmentalists to embrace a dialectical materialist analysis and its historical socialist and communist conclusions, or for socialists and communists to apprehend the gravity of the ecological crisis and reorient their programs, strategic orientations, and concrete organizing accordingly? also, do you think the chasm between class struggle militants and environmentalists is narrowing? jbf: there has been a broad receptivity of all of these groups to the interpretation offered in my marx’s ecology and paul burkett’s marx and nature, and to what has come to be known as the theory of metabolic rift, drawn from marx. the biggest remaining hurdle for marxists has to do with the issue of the “dialectics of nature,” of which there is a longstanding criticism within western marxism. it was argued, following lukács’ history and class consciousness, that the dialectic applied only to society, not to nature – a position that led western marxists largely to ignore natural science and external (non-human) nature. lukács in his later work offered a way out of this dilemma, arguing that the key to a qualified, materialist dialectics of nature was to be found by following marx’s stress on the labor process as the metabolic interaction between nature and society. thus marx’s concept of social metabolism is now recognized to be of fundamental ontological, epistemological, and ecological significance, promising a wider critical synthesis within marxian theory. i have discussed this recently at a talk i have given in stockholm on october 20, and this will be published in more complete form in the december 2013 issue of monthly review under the title “marx and the rift in the universal metabolism of nature.” sd: environmentalists and leftists aside, have you observed a shift in consciousness concerning ecological crises in recent years amongst people more broadly? here in canada, there has certainly been a growing awareness of the destruction wrought by alberta’s tar sands. this is translating into popular resistance that cuts across and bridges, uniting indigenous and non-indigenous people, which is a very posiclimate change and socialism | 297 tive development. from hurricanes katrina and sandy to fracking, i’m wondering if you can describe the pulse of people’s consciousness in the united states concerning ecological issues? or, do the existing rising environmental currents reside within a nimby-istic framework? jbf: i wrote an article entitled “the fossil fuels war” in the september 2013 monthly review that dealt with these issues. there are a lot of environmental activists who understand the necessity of blocking tar sands and other unconventional fossil fuels if we are going to have a chance of avoiding breaking the carbon budget. if we were to use all of the tarsands oil in alberta we would cross the point of irreversibility creating devastating conditions beyond our control. as a result there is a fierce battle taking place across north america to oppose the keystone xl pipeline. in canada, the resistance is being led by idle no more, arising out of the indigenous communities, around which a larger alliance has developed. this is not simply a “not in my backyard” or nimby movement, but a real revolt – though one that has huge obstacles in front of it. people are already physically opposing the keystone xl pipeline in its critical southern leg. sd: from the bolivarian revolution in latin america to the arab spring, have you any sense of the extent to which the mass movements and popular uprisings sweeping the world in recent years are developing a consciousness of “the ecological rift.” jbf: there are some indications of this. i believe that la via campesina, the international peasant’s movement, has embraced the concept of the metabolic rift in some of their work. the vice president of bolivia, álvaro garcía linera, has drawn on marx’s metabolism concept in his discussion of ecological issues. marx’s notion of social metabolism has played a big role in intellectual discussions and movement activities in venezuela and brazil, mainly through the influence of istván mészáros’s work. samir amin has been emphasizing marx’s distinction between wealth and value as part of an ecological argument that he has been advancing within the world forum for alternatives, based in senegal. in china the metabolic rift concept is now central to discussions of ecological marxism. how much these ideas have actually filtered down within the movements globally i don’t really know. but the kind of theory we are talking about, which aims at a more synthetic view of material-ecological conditions, erasing the traditional distinctions between workplace and 298 | climate change and its discontents environment, for example, is itself a reflection in part of the dire conditions we face and the convergence of economic and ecological crises in our time. the fact that marx’s classical ecological critique is being rediscovered in this context does not alter the fact that the motivation for such analysis arises from the planetary emergency of our time, in which all that is solid in the material existence itself is seemingly melting away and people are at last forced to come face to face with the dire consequences and the contradictions of a whole epoch. it is hardly surprising that we are now seeing what may be the emergence of a new environmental working class worldwide, reminiscent of the early industrial revolution, where the struggles were equally based in factories and communities; and that this is part of what has contributed to the growing unrest in emerging economies such as egypt, brazil, turkey, and china. sd: the argument has been put forward in the new volume catastrophism (2013) by sasha lilley and others that ‘catastrophist’ discourses are more harming than they are helping the left. certainly, the themes of the end times and apocalyptic scenarios are ubiquitous in the cultural apparatus of capitalist-imperialist north america – from the apocalypse genre in hollywood to the increasingly dominant conspiracy theories being propagated by rightwing libertarianism – which suggests the use of catastrophist discourses as a reactionary ideological form. as dialectical materialists, how should we cut through the consciousness of defeatism, apathy, and helplessness that catastrophism takes issue with without downplaying the actual ecological crises on the horizon? also, though you seem to have been spared the ‘catastrophist’ label in lilley et al., there seems to be an implicit critique of your form of presentation in their work. what do you make of their presentation of ‘catastrophism’ and their argument that catastrophe-mongering on the left is a dead end strategy? jbf: the right introduced the term “catastrophism” to attack the environmental movement and the scientific community. there is no such thing as catastrophism anywhere on the left, since this would be a contradiction in terms. the slogan of the green left in australia is “system change, not climate change.” it is the global scientific consensus that tells us that we are headed towards catastrophic developments on a planetary level if we don’t alter our relations with nature. to deny this is to deny science itself, and reality as we know it. to argue, as the world climate change and socialism | 299 scientific community does, that we are facing a certain planetary disaster if we continue along the lines of business as usual, is merely to insist that the latter must change. the small number of individuals on the left who have been saying lately that we have to avoid any kind of environmental “catastrophism” seem mostly to be people who are beginning to take the environmental problem seriously for the first time, and yet who are still reluctant to acknowledge the severity of the crisis – or for some reason would rather deny it. so their first reaction is to say that it is all exaggerated – or, alternatively, that telling people the truth in this area should be avoided, since they will then simply freeze and be unable to act. but what is really making it difficult for the population to act in response to this crisis is not the immobilizing force of so-called “catastrophism,” as has been lately suggested, but rather the power structure of capitalism itself, which is currently blocking at every level and by every means possible the necessary radical shift to a sustainable society. i know of only one case on the left where i myself have been accused of falling prey to a mindless “catastrophism” and that is in an article, entitled “transcending the metabolic rift,” that my friend jason moore wrote in the january 2011 issue of the journal of peasant studies, where he wrote: “a theory of capitalism that identifies the convergence of rapidly explosive contradictions need not succumb to catastrophism. (a world that runs like a red thread through foster’s work.)” i was quite bemused by this because i knew of no occasion over the years where i had used the word “catastrophism” – except of course to deny it recently in the face of such criticisms. in this sense i would draw a sharp line between talking about likely catastrophes if society continues to follow a certain course – when the object is to change it – and what is being called “catastrophism,” or a position that vacates all hope. i think it is incontrovertible that for the first time in human history, beginning in 1945 with hiroshima, and since then with the disruption of the biogeochemical cycles of the earth, humanity has created the conditions for its own potential annihilation as a species – and certainly the destruction of civilization as we know it. this conclusion is one of the most startling discoveries of modern science. nothing could be more opposed to historical materialism than to deny such conditions. sd: the perennial challenge of socialist/communist strategy has always been to identify concrete struggles around which people can be rallied around on a progressive basis that moves them in the direction of confronting the broader social contradictions that make up capitalist-impe300 | climate change and its discontents rialism. the challenge of rallying around “the ecological rift” seems to be the equally remote and seemingly intangible threat it poses. the incrementally minute changes year-over-year just don’t seem to convey the truly catastrophic consequences of moving beyond the “tipping points”. where do you see the points of intervention being taken up or that have yet to be utilized for generating a stronger ecological consciousness? jbf: i don’t think it is remote at all. this ecological rift is everywhere apparent today. extreme weather events which science has traced to climate change are occurring all over the globe now. water shortages, crop failures, destruction of forests, loss of biological diversity, global land grabs, are becoming ubiquitous realities. at the same time the system is searching more rapaciously for fossil fuels, leading to fracking, ultradeep-sea oil drilling, exploitation of tar sands oil, etc. people’s lives are being affected in dire ways, and countless numbers of people across the globe are engaged in struggle. my argument is that the material conditions of the globe and the world economy are being undermined across the board creating the conditions for the emergence of an environmental working class and a broader, co-revolutionary struggle. the struggle is taking more rebellious forms, as one would expect, in the global south, but it must be universalized everywhere on the planet if we are to succeed. marx’s concept of the metabolic rift is useful in this context because it helps us understand how this crisis is structurally related to capitalism itself. sd: my final question concerns the capacity of generalized international monopoly capitalism to meet the looming crises in a manner than strengthens its system. you address the rise in the exploitation of unconventional oil sources in monthly review november 2013, a course of action that is hurling us even more rapidly off the “carbon cliff” and that is ultimately unsustainable. but what about nuclear energy? capitalism can’t escape the second law of thermodynamics, which states that energy in the universe proceeds in one direction from low to high entropy, but it does seem intent on trying to tap energy sources at a whole new level. what are the possibilities and risks associated with nuclear? is this the site of capitalism’s next “technological fix”? jbf: nuclear energy has been promoted by some climate scientists as a partial solution to the carbon problem. in the past i have called all attempts to go in this direction a faustian bargain. to go in this direction climate change and socialism | 301 would be to seal our doom. one is reminded of the sign at the entrance to hell in dante’s inferno: “abandon every hope, ye who enter here.” but in truth nuclear energy is not really on the table anymore where carbon emissions are concerned. it takes a long time to build and put into operation new nuclear power plants, they are notoriously expensive, and they raise all sorts of security issues. can one really imagine the global expansion tenfold of nuclear power throughout the world? the simple truth is that there is simply not enough time to go in that direction, if we are trying to avoid breaking the carbon budget. the only real answers are alternative, non-carbon, energies coupled with conservation on a huge scale, requiring the transformation of social relations. of course, capitalism is not going to go in this direction. its last-ditch attempt at a “technological fix” is more likely to proceed along planetary geoengineering lines. one is reminded that marx and engels in the communist manifesto invoked the sorcerer’s apprentice when addressing capitalism. for those with any sanity left the only answer to our problems lies in an ecological and social revolution on a global scale. humanity as a whole has to reenter history once again. 302 | climate change and its discontents reviews climate change and socialism | 303 304 | climate change and its discontents book review the ecological rift: capitalism’s war on the earth by john bellamy foster, brett clark and richard york. new york: monthly review press, 2010. $17.95 u.s., paper. isbn-13: 978-1-58367-218-1. pages 1-544. the politics of climate change second edition, by anthony giddens. cambridge, london: polity press, 2011. $ 21.95 cdn., paper. isbn: 978-0-7456-5515-4. pages: 1-256 reviewed by samantha wilson1 the maintenance of an earth system in which humanity can safely exist hangs in a delicate balance. recent evidence suggests that society has exceeded the regenerative capacity of the planet by 30 percent (foster, clark and york, p.18). what’s more, if we continue down this path we risk irreversible environmental damage which stands to threaten humanity and the biodiversity of future generations. despite increasing precariousness of our social and natural environments, governments in advanced capitalist countries have yet to implement policies which adequately address the climate crisis. the harper conservatives’ cancellation of the kyoto protocol is just one example of this. this raises a few important questions: what policies can adequately address the severity of the climate crisis? what is required to bring about a more egalitarian and sustainable society? in this review i will compare and contrast two recent contributions that address the above questions: the ecological rift: capitalism’s war on the earth by john bellamy foster, brett clark and richard york, and the politics of climate change by anthony giddens. for reasons that will be explored, i contend that the arguments made by foster et al., provide not only a stronger analysis of the climate crisis but proposes stronger remedies for rectifying ongoing ecological degradation. at the core of the ecological rift is an analysis of the fundamentally antagonistic relationship between capitalism and the environment. the authors explore “various radical ecologies that challenge the treadmill of 1 samantha wilson is an independent researcher with interests in critical political economy, feminism and environmentalism. book review: the ecological rift | 305 capitalist accumulation, with the object of generating a new relation to the earth” (foster, clark and york, p.8). foster et al., argue that humanity has become alienated from its natural environment. drawing on marx’s ecology, they argue that the separation of one’s inorganic from organic nature poses a serious threat to both the basis of life and society as a whole. foster, clark and york make the case that, despite the severity of the environmental crisis, mainstream social science has become all the more removed from radical, even critical approaches that might offer substantive alternatives. rather, in their view, much environmental social science is premised on what they refer to as ‘ecological modernization’. this approach champions technological fixes and market-based solutions as providing a way out of the crisis, rather than addressing the structural and systemic roots of capitalism – that is to say, unequal forces and relations of production. foster et al., stress that the ecological and social crises humanity faces are one and the same. in their view, a solution to the ecological rift will necessarily require an anti-capitalist project: one that transcends “a society based in class, inequality, and acquisition without end” (foster, clark and york, p.47). foster, clark and york argue that cut-throat competition and the quest for capital valorization necessarily exploits the natural environment resulting in the undermining of the world’s ecosystems. they counter orthodox economists which contend that market-based mechanisms, including complex financial instruments and potentially catastrophic technological fixes (e.g. nuclear power) will result in a more sustainable capitalism. rather, the authors explore various paradoxes which lie at the root of capitalist development. they illustrate this, for example, by way of a discussion of the jevons paradox. it was william stanley jevons’ contention that increased efficiency in coal use would not as had been assumed lead to decreased demand “because improvement in efficiency led to further economic expansion” (foster, clark and york, p.171). this is, of course, contradictory to the assertions of ecological modernists who champion sustainable technologies as the key to dealing with the climate crisis. and this is where the work of foster et al. contrasts most sharply with that of giddens. rather than challenge the structural and institutional shortcomings of capitalism, giddens’ so-called “realist” approach contends that we must work within the capitalist system and established institutions in hopes of alleviating climate change. in his view the primary agent of change must be the state, which would provide the legal parameters and institutional configurations through which technological advancements 306 | climate change and its discontents and market outcomes could be based. a key theme throughout giddens’ work is the centrality of the state in mitigating climate change. giddens argues that the state must “act to counter business interests which seek to block climate change initiatives” (giddens, p.93). he proposes that the state and capital work together to promote more sustainable development. in my view, however, such a contention is not only idealistic but naïve. not only does this fail to recognize the role of the state in capitalist societies as the superintendor of capitalism but incorrectly assumes that the state’s role is to act as the neutral guarantor of the public good.2 rather, the primary role of capitalist states is to facilitate capital accumulation and to legitimize unequal class relations. thus it is difficult to envision how states might counter business interests rather than extend and deepen them, often at the expense of both the public good and environment. moreover, the politics of climate change suffers from what are irreconcilable contradictions. if it is true, as giddens argues referring to the keynesian era, that “…centralized planning of the economy, supposed to overcome the irrationalities of capitalism, proved quite unable to cope with the complexities of a developed economic system” (giddens, p.95), how is such a view reconciled with his state-centric solution to the climate crisis? like giddens’ confused understanding of the role of the state in capitalist societies, far from challenging the vested power of capital and the anti-democratic institutions through which they prowl the world looking for profit making opportunities, the prescribed solutions fall far short of what is actually needed. not only is a return to a pristine era of so-called state regulations on capital not possible but the era of neoliberalism has worked to thoroughly embed market compulsions into the overall architecture of society. indeed, throughout his analysis, giddens reveals himself to be a great apologist for the capitalist system seeking to justify a marketoriented approach to climate change rather than challenge it. giddens (p.213) contends that the only solution to the climate crisis lies in further economic growth on a large scale. but unlike foster et al., he does not envision economic development of an alternative kind, one where the means of production are held in common and ecological sustainability are placed front and centre. it is this apparent contradiction – that between capitalist development and environmental degradation – that is missing throughout the politics of climate change. in line with foster et 2 for an expansion of this argument see the important study by panitch, l. and s. gindin. (2012). the making of global capitalism: the political economy of american empire. london: verso. book review: the ecological rift | 307 al., only a radical, socialist-inspired alternative to the climate crisis may offer a way out of the crisis that is capitalism. in sum, giddens’ the politics of climate change falls disappointingly in line with what foster et al., earlier referred to as the school of ‘ecological modernization’. meaningful social change will not derive from technological fixes or a cult-like belief in the infallibility of market mechanisms. giddens ignores this reality, while foster, clark and york attempt to uncover the cause of the climate crisis: capitalism. the continuation of business as usual represents a significant threat to the livelihood of future generations. as such, an alternative anti-capitalist project is of the utmost necessity. this is undoubtedly a great challenge, but it is certainly feasible as the daily struggles of countless millions around the world can attest to. 308 | climate change and its discontents book review revolution at point zero: housework, reproduction, and feminist struggle by silvia federici. oakland, california: pm press, 2012. $15.95 us, paper. isbn: 978-1-60486-333-8. pages: 1-188. reviewed by danielle dinovelli-lang1 carleton university revolution at point zero is a collection of twelve important essays (plus a preface and introduction) by the marxist-feminist political theorist silvia federici. as a collection, it is remarkable for its combination of historical breadth – the earliest essay was originally published in 1975, and the latest in 2011 – and sustained engagement with the topic of reproductive labor. reproductive labor is not just the book’s organizing theme; it emerges through the process of reading federici’s essays in sequence as the political problem that manifestly joins what would otherwise appear to be very different historical conditions of struggle, from the wages for housework campaign in the ‘70s to the anti-globalization movements of the fin de siècle. it is, as federici affirms in the preface, “the work in which the contradictions inherent in ‘alienated labor’ are most explosive, which is why it is the ground zero for revolutionary practice, even if it is not the only ground zero,” (2012, p. 2, emphasis in the original). federici’s concept of reproductive work (or labour) is maximally inclusive without ever seeming to be imprecise. it includes everything that goes into the reproduction of labour-power, that is, of human beings, from the constitutively unwaged labour of motherhood, to subsistence agriculture, to the grossly underpaid services of personal care workers. it excludes, by definition, the so-called productive labour of commodity production that generates surplus value for capital at the expense of the worker. still, because this latter expense is measured in the difference between what the working class requires to reproduce itself and what it is capable of producing, reproductive and productive labour are inextricably linked, even as they are constantly opposed by the movement of capital. this is important because it clarifies federici’s relationship to 1 danielle dinovelli-lang is an assistant professor of anthropology at carleton university in ottawa, ontario. she can be reached at danielle_dinovelli@carleton.ca mailto:danielle_dinovelli@carleton.ca book review: revolution at point zero | 309 orthodox marxism: while insisting that the exploitation of women, and others, cannot be understood or combated independently of the material conditions of production required and generated by global capitalism, she is equally insistent that global capitalism cannot be understood or overthrown without acknowledging the enormous surplus and critical significance generated by unpaid labour in the sphere of reproduction. it is this crucial expansion of the revolutionary dialectic to include as central those forms and aspects of life that are disingenuously externalized by capitalist production – cooking, childrearing, gardening, subsistence farming, as well as the life-giving capacities of nature itself – that enables a book whose theoretical underpinnings were born in the feminist struggles of the 1970s to feel so timely in the contemporary context of intensifying neoliberalism. armed with the understanding that reproductive work is absolutely essential to the functioning not only of capitalism but of whatever social system we may decide to put in its place, and that it is therefore revolutionary, federici is able to explain why so many contemporary anti-capitalist mobilizations … … have not been fought only or primarily by waged industrial workers, marx’s projected revolutionary subjects, but have been fought by rural, indigenous, anticolonial, antiapartheid, feminist movements. today as well, they are fought by subsistence farmers, urban squatters, as well as industrial workers in africa, india, latin america and china. most importantly, these struggles are fought by women who, against all odds, are reproducing their families regardless of the value the market places on their lives, valorizing their existence, reproducing them for their own sake, even when the capitalists declare their uselessness as labor power (p.92-93). what unites these struggles is that they are all waged not only against capitalism but also in defense of the alternative sphere of reproduction and, implicitly, a mode of production that would be subordinate to that sphere rather than the other way around. otherwise, they are all very different, and herein lies federici’s most crucial contribution to the discussion of revolutionary subjects and subjectivities, most clearly articulated in the 2008 essay, “the reproduction of labor power in the global economy and the unfinished feminist revolution,” quoted above: by dismantling marxist claims that capitalism has a progressive character (p.92) federici frees us from the expectation that the revolution must come “after” it. in the case of the five essays written during the wages for housework campaign, this means that, “you don’t need to enter a factory to be part of a working class organization” (p.38). in the case of the six anti310 | climate change and its discontents globalization essays written much later, it means that the historically continuous attack on subsistence, whether this be the expropriation of peasants in europe and asia, women gardeners in africa and inner-city north america, or indigenous people everywhere, is fundamentally an attack on these subjects’ revolutionary ability “to resist a more intense exploitation,” (p.86). in other words, our capacity to resist capitalism from the outside just as much as our capacity to revolt against it from within both rely on our ability – contingent on our control of the means of subsistence in time (reproductive labor) and space (land) – to be different from it. this perspective dismantles the prevalent supposition that the anticolonial struggle for territory and workers’ struggle for higher wages are constitutively opposed. it also dispenses with the attractive illusion, made prominent by the writings of hardt and negri2, that the disappearance of autonomous localities in the face of globalization could ever engender, never mind sustain, a revolutionary uprising (federici 2012, p.142). i should add that the essays in revolution at point zero could absolutely be read independently of each other, as precise analyses of specific political situations. the essay, “on elder care work and the limits of marxism,” for instance, is a particularly compelling analysis of an under-theorized crisis of our time, while the final essay, “feminism and the politics of the common in an era of primitive accumulation,” articulates federici’s relationship to important contemporary debates about common property and neoliberalism’s new enclosures. to read them this way is to read them as a student or a scholar, which is good and valuable enough. but to read them all is to read them as a subject of history, compelled by capital and invited in solidarity, which is much better. 2 hardt, michael and antonio negri. 2004. multitude. cambridge: harvard university press; 2000. empire. cambridge: harvard university press. book review: false positive | 311 book review false positive: private profit in canada’s medical laboratories by ross sutherland. black point, nova scotia and winnipeg, manitoba: fernwood publishing, 2011. $17.95 cdn., paper. isbn:978-1-55266409-4. pages: 1-135. reviewed by deborah komarnisky1 carleton university ross sutherland provides an intriguing argument exploring the relationship between the use of private for-profit medical laboratories and the erosion of universal access to health care in canada. sutherland questions whether the principle of universality is still a cornerstone in canada’s health care system and whether patient care suffers due to the self-interest of private capital. this book is of interest to anyone concerned about current health care funding and the debates on the privatization of health care in canada. sutherland worked as a home care nurse in eastern ontario. he was part of a home care team that administered intravenous antibiotics to patients. sutherland had daily encounters with private for-profit medical laboratories and found troubling trends within the health care system. private and public health clinics and physicians contract medical laboratory services to private for-profit medical laboratory. the private forprofit medical laboratory receives payment for each sample it tests. tests are performed on a large scale with samples being shipped from various regions to a central location. throughout the book the author argues that private for-profit medical laboratories have infiltrated canada’s health care system. the private for-profit medical laboratories have taken over publicly funded non-profit private and public community based medical laboratories. sutherland argues that there are three main private for-profit medical laboratories, namely lifelab (formally known as mds), canadian medical laboratories (cml) and gamma-dynacare (a subsidiary of laboratory corporation of america). private non-profit medical clinics send samples for testing at what the private for-profit medical labora1 deborah komarnisky is a ma candidate at the department of law and legal studies at carleton university. 312 | climate change and its discontents tories deem as more affordable rates than rates charged by public nonprofit medical laboratories. blood, tissues and other biological samples are collected at local specimen centres or as sutherland labelled them as “bleeding centres.” next, samples are transported to another location for testing and analysis. once results are available, the results are transmitted to the treating physician who then review the results and transmits them to the patient with treatment options. many of the private for-profit laboratories send blood, tissue and other biological samples to a central location for testing and analysis. transporting the collected samples to a central testing and analyzing location can result in time delays in testing, analysis and, ultimately, treatment for patients. private for-profit laboratories work on volume – the testing and analysis is done at a single location so that the for-profit laboratory only has to hire limited technicians. samples from the different local specimen centres are all shipped to a single centre. the faster samples can be tested and results analyzed, the faster the private for-profit laboratory will be paid. more complicated tests or tests that are less common are not seen as profitable. this delays results and places patient care in jeopardy. sutherland frames his argument by considering the historical development of private for-profit medical laboratories in ontario and throughout canada. sutherland argues that the private for-profit medical laboratories are one trend in a greater erosion of the public non-profit medical system in canada. sutherland continues developing his argument by considering the current use of private for-profit medical laboratories. this shift is seen as indicative of a greater shift in the development of global capital markets and the rise of neo-liberalism. are private for-profit medical laboratories regulated? are private for-profit medical laboratories inspected by health canada or through each province? the development of private for-profit medical laboratories shows the evolution of the private for-profit medical care system. the democratic nature and universality of the health care system is in jeopardy. sutherland argues that the democratic health care system ensures access for all canadians and ensures services are provided universally throughout canada. access to timely medical testing is important to ensure proper medications are given to patients. improper dosage of medications or improper type of medication given to a patient can have dire, and even fatal, consequences for patients. canada’s notion of universality is successfully challenged by sutherland. sutherland also challenges whether canadians have equal access to medical care and through the use of private for-profit medical labobook review: false positive | 313 ratories. sutherland presents the notion that a democratic public health care system ensures that testing is done in a timely fashion and patient care is of paramount importance. a question to consider is whether the health care of canadians is being compromised by the use of for-profit medical laboratories operating in conjunction with private non-profit health care clinics and public health care clinics. sutherland maintains that the exclusive use of public non-profit organizations is the best way to increase access to medical care, control costs incurred by private forprofit medical care, integrate services, improve quality of healthcare and enhance the democratic control of health care in canada. the question of whether governmental regulation of health care can monitor private for-profit laboratories must be considered when determining the direction of the future of canada’s health care system. sutherland advocates that the social principle of universality cannot be compromised by the lure of profits in health care policy and regulation in canada. sutherland suggests that that the healthcare system in canada has shifted from a democratic patient-centric system to a profit driven neo-liberal system. sutherland leaves us with the question of whether canada’s public health care system can truly be universal if private for-profit medical laboratories are operating and controlling the testing of medical samples across canada. sutherland convincingly advocates that fee-for-service for laboratory services be ended and that canada’s health care system be transformed into a fully integrated public-non-profit system guaranteeing universal access to health care for all canadians. 314 | climate change and its discontents book review el diario del che en bolivia by ernesto che guevara. adys cupull and froilan gonzalez, eds. havana, cuba: editora política, 2006. price n/a, paper. isbn 959-010714-1. pages 1–428. reviewed by gabrielle etcheverry1 carleton university the diary of che in bolivia was written by ernesto “che” guevara during his 1966–67 revolutionary campaign in that country. although it is most likely that guevara did not intend for his diary to be widely read, it was soon published and circulated in the united states and cuba after its discovery following his death. this recent spanish-language edition of the bolivian diary provides new materials, such as photos, maps and paratexts as a means to further understand the conditions che encountered, thus expanding on the information available in previous editions. it is also dedicated by fidel castro to graduating university students in cuba with the hope that this “moving book” will aid in their continuing formation as “citizens inspired by che’s example” (my translation), indicating that che’s diary has become a crucial text inside and outside of that country. being the first press to publish the complete diary in any language in 19872 (the first editions published in cuba and the united states in 1968 lacked thirteen entries), editora política has here provided additional information such as a farewell letter from che to fidel in which he renounces his political posts in cuba to undertake the mission in bolivia (p.xxix). also provided are photos of the fake uruguayan passport that che used to enter bolivia disguised as adolfo mena gonzález, fake immunization records, and his letters of reference from bolivian officials introducing him as a special envoy from the organization of american states in bolivia to research social and economic relations in the countryside (p.xxxi–xxxvi). maps of the routes taken by che from la paz to lagunillas and ñacahuasú, and the shorter routes he and the other guerrilleros took during the time-span recorded in the diary have 1 gabrielle etcheverry is a phd candidate at the department of canadian studies, carleton university. 2 walters, mary-alice, ed. 1994. “introduction” in the bolivarian diary of ernesto che guevara by ernesto che guevara. new york: pathfinder. p.44 book review: el diario del che en bolivia | 315 also been added. photos of local roads, scenery, flora and fauna, such as tapirs, llamas, turkeys, and the kinds of fish che describes catching for dinner in one of his entries are included throughout along with photos of some of the key towns and surrounding areas his group would have crossed on their journey. like other editions of the diary, the book begins with fidel castro’s “una introducción necesaria” [a necessary introduction], here titled “nota al lector” [note to the reader], which provides a context for the political and military challenges faced by che and his cadre in the period covered by the diary (november 7, 1966 to october 7, 1967). some of this context includes difficulties guevara had with “pseudo revolutionary” (p.xvii) leaders such as mario monje molina of the communist party of bolivia (pcb) and che’s vision of the revolution in bolivia extending to the rest of latin america (p.xviii). according to castro, he saw the greater project of international socialism spreading from latin america to africa, south east asia and even the united states (p.xix) – information largely confirmed in che’s farewell letter. the editors have also included a transcript of the speech fidel gave at guevara’s wake, here titled “un modelo de revolucionario” [a model revolutionary] after the final entry in the diary. the diary entries have been extended by inserting text from castro’s introduction in the dates that che was captured by the bolivian military and then executed (october 7 to 9). while this helps mark the days between these two events, the addition of this text seems out of place as “entries” in a personal diary. guevara’s generally short notes provide small glimpses of the physical and psychological conditions he and the other forty or so rotating guerrilleros encountered. the main activity in the early days included making camp and digging tunnels for hiding food and “compromising” materials while they waited for more of his trusted reinforcements to arrive from cuba. as more of his men arrived and bolivian nationals began to join the group, che also noted which members of the group seemed more tired, lackluster, committed or efficient; which locals could be trusted and which could not, as well as how the men perceived (and interacted with) each other. guevara also noted the physical discomfort they experienced, such as the numbers and types of insect bites they suffered, the scarcity of food and water in the final days of their campaign, and his own failing health. as can be imagined, some of the more riveting diary entries describe details of their battles with the bolivian military in the deep countryside and the tense moments between ambushes. 316 | climate change and its discontents some of the more interesting moments guevara recorded were how the group coalesced and changed throughout the eleven months covered in the diary. this edition provides the reader with some useful background information such as photos and brief biographical sketches (p.405–425) of many of the people who worked with him in his last campaign, including juan vitalio acuña núñez (joaquin) from cuba, che’s second in command, and guido alvaro peredo leigue (inti), a bolivian guerrillero trained in cuba and member of the pcb who stayed with che after monje withdrew his support. of the forty people from cuba, bolivia and peru listed at the end of the book, only three survived, lending a dose of sobriety to the call of ¡hasta la victoria, siempre!. some of the photos provided in this edition may seem banal at first glance, particularly for readers who may already be familiar with the bolivian countryside. nevertheless, it is these commonplace details that help ground the reader in the real drama recounted in his daily entries – t he day-to-day survival in difficult conditions and the (sometimes flagging) will and discipline required by all the members of his group. the photos and biographical information on the fighters who joined him are a particularly welcome addition to the diary after so many years. whether one reads the diary as a manual for guerrilla subterfuge and warfare, as a historical document or a testament to the final days of a (glorious or misbegotten) revolutionary struggle, these everyday details help readers to distinguish the man from the myth and provide a valuable addition to what we already know of his final days. book review: don’t leave your friends behind | 317 book review don’t leave your friends behind: concrete ways to support families in social justice movements and communities by victoria law, china martens (eds.). oakland, california: pm press, 2012. $17.95 us, paper. isbn: 978-1-60486-396-3. pages: 1-234. reviewed by kevin partridge1 carleton university don’t leave your friends behind is a book that arises from the practices of anti-oppression activists largely based in the united states. the contributors to this book are arguing that parents and children need to be central to movements for social change and not relegated to the periphery. it is focused on experiences of inclusion and exclusion of families from activist practices. these practices rallies, marches, protests are often understood to be the activities of primarily young, ablebodied and economically independent individuals who have time and flexibility to attend and organize such events. this book offers thoughts and stories from people who are trying to create more inclusive spaces within an economic and social system they oppose as well as within the movements that are aligned with their opposition. raising children is posited as a necessary foundation for social change and a valuable source of energy and inspiration for organizations that advocate for this change. the social reproduction that occurs through the act of bringing new people into the world and socializing them as they mature is seen here as an inherently political act. the authors put forward different methods for including children and their caregivers within groups that advocate for social change. the editors of this book intend that it be used as a resource for people within activist communities and particularly for those who are intent on creating non-hierarchical structures they hope can and will supplant the 1 kevin partridge is a phd candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university. his doctoral research focuses on alternative constructions of genders and masculinities. he completed his master of arts at simon fraser university exploring women in the vancouver punk scene of the 1980s. he can be reached at kevin.partridge@ carleton.ca mailto:kevin.partridge@carleton.ca mailto:kevin.partridge@carleton.ca 318 | climate change and its discontents dominant structures, both economic and social, that they identify as the root cause of oppression. one of the primary means of oppression they oppose is to exclude people who are identified as ‘lesser’ or ‘othered’ by characteristics such as ability, appearance, wealth and age. they identify children and their caregivers as being a group that is not only excluded from positions of self-determination by dominant social forces but also within movements that do progressive work. they are concerned about the absence of spaces for children and the problems of providing childcare amongst social justice groups. changes must be made to allow both parents and children to be a part of the political work around which these groups are organized. this book also serves as a reflection and expression of the many challenges of the ‘behind-the-protests’ work of political organizing amongst and inside activist communities. it covers a broad range of different groups with over fifty short essays written by a variety of activists mostly based in the us, with a few additional voices from canada and the uk. the different narratives are organized in seven chapters. the editors of the book arrange the chapters so that they progress from descriptions of the many problems that people encounter when they are involved in social justice groups towards possible solutions to these problems. this allows the book to provide an outline of a broadly unifying project that can be applied in many different spaces. this structure is designed to motivate readers to look towards solutions that include as many activists as possible rather than dwell on differences and difficulties. each chapter features a number of independent essays that differ in style, focus and even language. one chapter on transformative justice and childcare is presented in a graphic narrative form. several chapters contain a mix of english and spanish that reflects the specific and dominant us context of much of the book. the benefit of this format is that there are likely to be specific chapters that appeal to many potential readers of the book. this matches the intent of the editors that the book be useful to diverse people who can pick out certain contributions that are helpful in their specific situations and ignore or browse those that are not relevant. the drawback to this format is that the book does not have a clear overall analysis or argument. consequently, although the editors have tried to slot these various works into a broader schema, there is a great deal of crossover, complexity and even contradictions between the various pieces. given the variety of political analyses referenced within the book, it is not a surprise that it is difficult to discern any broad conclusions. the book could have greatly benefited from some editorial material that added a greater book review: don’t leave your friends behind | 319 understanding of the context of the many disparate chapters. it seems to offer an implicit critique of certain social justice ‘movements’ without much analysis of why these problems exist and how they connect to the broader struggles in which they are located. while all the authors may be able to agree on the importance of an idea such as ‘inclusivity’, their experiences and analyses of exclusion and ideas for being inclusive vary considerably. this may be because there is a larger political focus on creating a community of diversity but this is not made very explicit within the book. some of individual authors advocate anarchist, vegan, christian, and/or feminist analyses that can all make interesting contributions to political thought but the book as a whole does not convey a cohesive political critique. readers who are not already engaged with these discussions and debates might find this lack of cohesion makes the book difficult to read as there are only a few framing remarks throughout the book. however, this format is helpful in showcasing many disparate approaches to social activism around children. for instance, there are chapters on schooling that advocate avoiding the public school system and others that describe different ways to navigate and advocate within public schools and in the interests of children and their caregivers. it is an excellent resource for those who may not have personal access to such a vibrant and wideranging political conversation and offers social researchers a set of intriguing and useful primary documents created by activists who are grappling with practical and specific aspects of organizing and building solidarity. this book allows access to debates that help shape the many different forms of social justice organizations and fuel the creative process that is required to positively resist oppression and fight for social change. 320 | climate change and its discontents book review resistance behind bars: the struggles of incarcerated women second edition, by victoria law. oakland, california: pm press, 2012. reviewed by rebecca jaremko bromwich1 carleton university victoria law’s book resistance behind bars: the struggles of incarcerated women is an account of the agency of women prisoners in the united states produced by an abolitionist scholar. resistance behind bars compellingly challenges and goes a distance to remedy the frequent failures of prior studies to document or theorize the agencies and resistances of incarcerated women. the information offered in the book about the agency of woman prisoners is valuable in that it provides a window into the under-studied and woefully under-appreciated agency of women prisoners. with sensitivity to issues of race and class, the text documents individual resistance and collective organizing by women in the united states. the book discusses problems faced by women in prison such as sexual abuse, isolation from families and especially children and a lack of opportunities for work and education. the text then uniquely discusses active steps women in prison take to challenge and change their conditions, from the formation by women in prison of peer education groups, the clandestine making of arrangements for children to visit mothers to prison rebellions and uses of the media by woman prisoners in raising public awareness about their lives. probably the best thing about this book is that it is such an accessible read. the narrative is personal and engaging in its presentation of thorough research. as such it is likely to be accessible to – and read by – woman prisoners themselves as well as people not specifically trained in law, criminology or any related academic discipline. clearly, the introduction from the second edition indicates that this has already begun to happen. providing for these women a context, community and history for their own struggles is invaluable. the great strength of the 1 rebecca jaremko bromwich is a phd candidate at the department of law and legal studies, carleton university. she has a b.a. (hon.) in social/ cultural anthropology from the university of calgary, an ll.b. and an ll.m. from queen’s and a graduate certificate in women’s, gender and sexuality studies from the university of cincinnati. book review: resistance behind bars | 321 book is the distance it goes to develop for women prisoners “a commonly known history of resistance” (p.6). the most obvious limitation of this book is its implicit american imperial hegemony. the subtitle of the book is the struggles of incarcerated women but there is no reference anywhere to women outside of the united states. the book only discusses conditions in certain states and makes at best passing reference to the possibility that a world outside the us even exists. i find this particularly jarring as a canadian reader given that much of the research presented comes from new york state and michigan, which of course border on canada. beyond the obvious geographical concerns here, a bigger danger of the book is that in seeking to present the struggles of incarcerated women as a unified resistance against an implicitly unitary prison industrial complex, it may miss the complexities and particularity of individual circumstances even within the systems it does describe. further, the very same things that are valuable about the book are also problematic when other audiences are considered. law’s overarching goal in her writing is to advocate for the abolition of prisons. law writes that she is working towards the “dismantling rather than reform of the prison system.” (p.ii) the passion and clear political commitment of the text that make it appealing for prisoners and advocates make it less likely to be read by policy-makers. unfortunately, the expressed political commitment of the text makes it unlikely to be taken seriously, by many whose work impacts significantly on the day-to-day lives of women in prison. corrections officers, prison psychologists, police, social workers, lawyers and students in those fields, whose present and future agencies have an effect on the day to day lives of woman prisoners – and whose actions can help humanize their conditions – are unlikely to read this book. this is not to say that the book falls short of its goals. law says she is not advocating for “humanized prisons.” it is therefore no criticism of the work’s quality that the book certainly will not achieve that. i worry though that, instead of “galvanizing outside support for their struggles” (p.17), this text may help galvanize discursive forces that see incarcerated women as dangerous, incorrigible and in need of containment. that the expressed ambit of the book not to advocate for prison reform is vexing for those of us who see the amelioration of conditions for women in prisons through systemic change as one part of a broader solution of reduced incarceration rates, social change and, yes, prison reform. this is therefore a troublesome and potentially alienating book for those who work in the prison industrial complex and strive to do 322 | climate change and its discontents what they can as agents within that system. resistance, after all, is possible and takes place within a range of social positions. just as the lives of women incarcerated in the prison system are complex and particular, so too are the agencies of those working within the walls. it would be interesting to develop a companion volume to this text that documents the struggles of those agents in the justice system working in solidarity with prisoners, albeit on the other side of the bars, to improve conditions inside. this book, therefore, achieves well, with the limitation of its american-centrism, its objective of building a discourse about the agency of women in prison. it tells stories about the actions and negotiations of power by people whose lives are woefully under-studied and represented. the book, read by woman prisoners, is no doubt a source of inspiration and encouragement. read by students and scholars, it can complicate over simplistic understandings of women in prison as victims or villains alone. as such, it makes an important contribution to study of women in prison. unfortunately, in my view, this contribution is limited in that rather than sparking a new conversation, it adds fuel to a polarized discourse. in our contemporary neoliberal climate, the political proponents, builders and beneficiaries of the prison-industrial complex are arguably in fact energized by precisely the kind of radical opposition by prison abolitionists offered by this book. victoria law succeeds elegantly in making her intended contribution to this discussion and the book is of great potential use for women in prisons themselves, but in my view this is not the primary sort of conversation canadian policy-makers, and the public in general, need. book review: what is critical social research? | 323 book review what is critical social research? volume 1. by babak fozooni. england: upfront publishing ltd., 2012. $13.50 us, paper. isbn: 978-1780352794. pages: 1-198. reviewed by mahnam a. malamiry1 carleton university babak fozooni’s book provides a genuine, provocative, and insightful opportunity to have in one book a number of previously published articles in the realms of cinema and iranian social movements; the ideological politics behind encyclopedic discourses on fascism, and engels; and critical social psychology. using such shock-and-awe titles as “fuck critical psychology” and “sand-nigger psychology”, fozooni intentionally disrupts the status quo as it relates to academic thought. this book, both amusing and very serious in its critical analysis, provides the reader with an opportunity to see the potential for social science research to contribute to the emancipation of the working classes. in the preface, fozooni calls for the abolition of the university as a bourgeois institution so as to develop a new academic system that is pro-working class. his criticism of pre-modernist, modernist, and post-modernist theories is embedded within a broader marxist analytical framework. he uses a variety of critical frameworks, including theorists mikhail bakhtin and lev vygotsky (p.56, 76), karl marx (p.132) and, to a lesser extent, michel foucault (p.90). his article on “the politics and parables of encyclopedias” examines the socio-political perspectives and assumptions between the encyclopedia britannica, encyclopedia of marxism, and wikipedia. such an analysis shows how sources of knowledge can be different in their authority and legitimacy, with a surprising conclusion that britannica, due to its positivist epistemology, is the least intellectually trustworthy of the three (p.132). in further elaborating on his examination of the development of progressive social thought, fozooni looks to the cinematic works of magnus hierschfeld and abbas kiarostami. 1 mahnam a. malamiry, m.a. department of law and legal studies, carleton university. i am grateful to babak fozooni and jerusa ali for their comments and feedback on an earlier draft of this review. 324 | climate change and its discontents in his work titled “magnus hirschfeld’s contributions to sexual politics”, fozooni examines the pioneering work of hirschfeld on sexual politics and explores how the undermining of hirschfeld during the weimar republic by liberals and social democrats paved the way for a full-scale attack by the nazis after 1933. in a similar examination of cinema, “debunking kiarostami” provides an intimate and in-depth analysis of world-renowned iranian filmmaker abbas kiarostami. this particular text provides a valuable means of contextualizing kiarostami’s politics and philosophy, as well as demonstrating some of his limitations as a filmmaker and the liberal humanist core of his ideology (p.182). in “sand-nigger psychology: towards a critique of the iranian psy-complex”, fozooni engages with nickolas rose’s conception of the psy-complex. this complex is defined to be “a complex of discourses, practices, agents and techniques […] which [provides] the basis for the generalization and development of applied and clinical psychology” in society at large (p.44). fozooni interestingly points out the similarities between “fundamentalist” societies of the us and iran. while the u.s. is more advanced in terms of wealth and geopolitical significance than iran, the two states share similarities as they have officially sanctioned fundamentalist socio-political regimes for the governance of everyday life (p.57). such an assemblage is said to perpetuate a bourgeoisie value system upon the proletarian especially through an authoritative regime that is regulating increasing divisions between the public-private divide, and values between religion and atheism (p.58). fozooni takes an opportunity in “cognitive analytic therapy” (cat) to foreground the genuinely emancipatory vygotskyan and bakhtinian aspects of cat, especially for the working class (p.19-20). the next article shows how socio-political systems of governance dominate iranian family and women. in “iranian women and football”, fozooni explores how surplus value is extracted from the family as a means of development and application of the elite mosque-islamic regime in iran. women therefore come to labour under both cultural repression and economic exploitation (p.90). fozooni’s theoretical framework for analyses in this article is interesting as it predominantly utilizes marx, the pankhursts’ family’s political heritage and bakhtin, along with some secondary foucauldian themes designed to elaborate on the link between family and the mosque as bio-power. fozooni conceptualizes how social movements in iran engage with and resist the dominant islamic discourses of the ruling “bourgeois” elite, and in such a way are not much different than book review: what is critical social research? | 325 other anti-oppressive social movements around the world (b. fozooni, personal communication, april 16, 2013). fozooni’s ability for critiquing dominant, problematic academic discourses are shown in the next article. “fuck critical psychology!” shows how, as a confirmed speaker at a critical psychology conference, fozooni abruptly changes his presentation in light of his experience during the conference lambasting critical psychology for having become too complacent in the politics of its analyses. fozooni declared that critical psychology was no longer sufficiently representative of the oppressed working classes and thus insufficiently critical. he argues that so-called critical psychology actually perpetuates “bourgeois modes of organizing and communicating” (p.77). he attempts to theorize a radical ‘iranian’ critical psychology so as to challenge the existing iranian psy-complex (p.67-69). there are important methodological considerations, however, that bear further discussion. fozooni sparingly uses foucauldian biopower theory. the reason for this, in his view, is because of the shortcomings and limitations of foucauldian analyses to engage with non-western socio-political systems of governance. fozooni’s theoretical frameworks for analysis are such that they provide a means of understanding iranian social relations, an area that has been relatively under-researched in the critical social sciences. fozooni utilizes marxist and bakhtinian theory as a means of having a more nuanced socio-political analysis of iranian social movements that takes into account not just power relations in a normative, foucauldian sense, but also classist challenges that are profoundly oppressive in the “fascist oriented” islamic regime (b. fozooni, personal communication, april 29, 2013). fozooni predominantly utilizes bakhtin, vygotsky, and marx to critically engage with socio-political systems of oppression in a way that addresses foucauldian analysis’s shortcomings. foucault’s analysis misled him to believe that the islamic revolution of 1979 would be the next evolutionary step in society, as a new “political spirituality” that could be beneficial not only for the middle east but also for europe. foucault kept this belief until he realized, after the revolution, the significant levels of oppression and outright statesanctioned deaths.2 foucault’s inability to adequately engage with the socio-political context in the middle east can be the result of his theories having developed out of european historical and socio-political norms.3 2 afary, j., & anderson, k. b. 2004. the seductions of islamism: revisiting foucault and the iranian revolution. new politics 37(10) 1-10. 3 beukes, j. 2009. hamartia: foucault and iran 1978–1979 (1: introduction and texts)’. hts theological studies, 65(1) 1-15; see also nichols, r. 2010. postcolonial studies and the discourse of foucault: survey of a field of problematization. foucault studies 9 111-144. p.124 326 | climate change and its discontents to transfer such a theoretical framework from its european origin into an iranian realm, without any consideration for the differences that such a transposition brings, is an ineffective means of accurately understanding how socio-political governance occurs. fozooni was aware of such foucauldian limitations in his writing, and chose to utilize more of a marxist-oriented critique in order to better understand the class struggle in iran. this book provides provocative opportunities to re-conceptualize the social sciences, psychology and cinema studies as a means of engagement with socio-political ideologies and iranian relations. the ultimate goal is to foster the development of a critical theoretical framework for alternatives to existing forms of oppression. persons interested in such themes will find this book very valuable. book review: josé carlos mariátegui | 327 book review josé carlos mariátegui: an anthology by harry e. vanden and marc becker, editors and translators. new york, ny: monthly review press, 2011. $29.95 us, paper. isbn: 978-1-58367245-7. pages: 1-480. matthew hawkins1 carleton university josé carlos mariátegui, the noted peruvian marxist activist and intellectual, wrote in 1925 that “each era wishes to have its own sense of the world” (p.386-387). to create a ‘sense of the world’ – achieved through a contextual and historical analysis of the contemporary reality – for mariátegui is the opening for transforming the dominant social relations. harry e. vanden and marc becker in their introduction to the anthology put forward mariátegui as an important non-dogmatic marxist thinker worth our attention amidst unfolding global political and economic crises. as a major influence on latin american heterodox approaches to marxism as well as other critical intellectual trends including decolonialist, dependency, and liberation theology perspectives, mariátegui has been an important reference for many movements and political actors from the region in their challenges to neoliberalism and global capitalism. mariategui’s seven interpretive essays on peruvian reality (first published as a collection in 1928), representing one of the first comprehensive marxist text from a latin american perspective, is an examination of the racial and class relations and the underlying vestiges of colonial feudalism in peru’s political economy. beyond this publication, much of mariátegui’s writing appears in the form of short articles and essays that were printed in newspapers and popular critical journals, as well as printed discourses to unions and political organizations. many of these texts, rarely translated into english, provide the basis for much of this anthology. mariátegui was born on june 14th, 1894 in moquegua, peru, a small southern provincial capital, and raised in a working-class household by his single-mother. he began a career in journalism at the lima news1 matthew hawkins is a phd candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university. 328 | climate change and its discontents paper la prensa where he eventually began writing on high society, literature and art. in 1919, mariátegui and césar falcón founded the political paper la razon. both falcón and mariátegui were exiled to europe by the military government of augusto leguía in october 1919 for their radical and critical viewpoints. in the following four years, mariátegui spent time in barcelona, paris and northern italy where he was exposed to the revolutionary-focused writing of georges sorel and italian critical thinkers in turin and became a committed marxist. returning to peru in 1923, he was invited to lecture at the universidad popular and interacted with organized labour in lima. mariátegui continued to be a target of surveillance and political imprisonment by the leguía government, which exacerbated his already poor health. mariátegui’s intellectual endeavours increased in this period: he founded the socialist-focused journal amauta – meaning “teacher” in kichwa – in 1926, participated in the formation of the partido socialista del peru (socialist party of peru) in 1928, and published the seven interpretative essays in the same year. deteriorating health and ongoing political pressure encouraged mariátegui to consider leaving peru once again in 1930; mariátegui died that year on april 15th from health complications that had persisted for most of his life. one of mariátegui’s greatest contributions to a revolutionary marxist perspective stems from his emphasis on mutual interactions of the working class and indigenous people as potentially creative producers of new social realities. mariátegui argued that in peru the “indian problem” – better understood he argues as the “problem of land” –emerged not from racial or cultural differences but the inequalities created by the colonial political economy and its particular vestiges left by an incomplete liberal revolution (p.69-115). mariátegui noted the resistance and resilience of indigenous people throughout the colonial process: the history of indigenous struggles against colonialism (p.147) and the continued reproduction of alternative non-capitalist and non-feudalist relations of production in contemporary indigenous communities (p.97). challenging marxist scepticism of rural ‘peasantry’, mariátegui encouraged the urban proletariat to form an engaged relationship with indigenous activists as equal participants in the revolutionary transformation of the peruvian political economy (p.142; 239; 322). for mariátegui, a socialist revolution only emerges by a process of creative and collective engagement of people acting with an understanding of their historical realities. vanden and becker have selected and organized selections in the anthology into thematic categories including sections on indigenismo, book review: josé carlos mariátegui | 329 myth, imperialism, women, and marxism and socialism – which is based on a large selection from mariátegui’s defence of marxism. academics may find that mariátegui’s brief articles individually rarely achieve theoretical or conceptual depth. through the organization of the anthology, however, each theme develops into a more holistic perspective demonstrating the peruvian’s complex and nuanced marxist understanding. the trade off in this organization is that the chronological development of mariátegui’s thought is obscured. as an activist intellectual, mariátegui’s writing often responded to and engaged with particular historical moments and organizational relationships – particularly with other anti-imperialist movements in peru and the developing influence of the comintern in south america. a pragmatic intellectual engagement that responded to the immediate political situation underlined important parts of mariátegui’s thought. while reading this anthology the reader should reflect on the contextual development of his arguments. mariátegui’s prose in rare moments suffers from the translation, which leads to awkward phrasing and the loss of some of the nuances. unfortunately notes were not written by the translators to explain their difficulties and translation choices. in the context of exposing an englishreading audience to mariátegui, however, the anthology is very readable and fairly precise. in the 1928 anniversary and balance sheet at the end of amauta’s second publication year mariátegui wrote: “history is endurance. the isolated cry, no matter how large its echo, is not valid; the constant continual persistent sermon is what matters. ideas that are perfect, absolute, abstract, indifferent to the facts, to changing and moving reality do not work; ideas that are germinal, concrete, dialectic, workable, rich in potential and capable of movement do” (p.127). mariátegui is a powerful example of an engaged intellectual whose ideas have contributed to latin america’s political transformations; greater attention by english readers is long overdue. vanden and becker’s anthology is an encouraging start. 330 | climate change and its discontents book review a new notion: two works by c.l.r. james by c.l.r. james, edited and with an introduction by noel ignatiev. oakland, california: pm press, 2010. $17.95 u.s., paper. isbn 978-155266-391-2. pages: 1-155. reviewed by paul whiteley1 queen’s university born in trinidad, living most of his life in the united states and in england, and an influence to marxist and post-colonial theorists alike, c.l.r. james (1901-1981) remains one of the most inspirational activist scholars of the 20th century. and also one of the least frequently read. noel ignatiev has brought together as a new notion two of james’s postwar pieces written while he was active on the american left. “the invading socialist society” (1947) is titled after a felicitous phrase of friederich engels’ socialism: utopian and scientific, and is orientated above all to workers’ struggle towards socialism. “any cook can govern” (1956) takes its inspiration and title from lenin, and originated as a pamphlet written after james was driven out of the united states by mccarthy-era persecution and state militancy. grateful as one may be to see these pieces in print, there are issues to be raised with aspects of this publication. “the invading socialist society”, by far the longer text, is credited to james and raya dunayevskaya. but grace lee boggs, the third principal of the johnson-forest tendency (the marxist-humanist splinter the text represents) is not listed even though her name (or pseudonym) was included as an author in a variety of previous editions. what is more, noel ignatiev’s introduction presents both pieces only in the context of james’s life and trajectory, which removes “the invading socialist society” from the dynamic and collaborative environment of the tendency in which it was produced. even the picture on the book’s cover represents the author more as aging inspiration to postcolonial cultural studies, rather than the much younger writer of these political pieces. 1 paul whiteley is a phd candidate at the department of geography, queen’s university. he completed his master’s in political economy at carleton university, exploring the connections between harold innis and contemporary post-humanist approaches. book review: a new notion | 331 granted, this slim paperback is not intended as a definitive scholarly publication, but ignatiev’s edition could have served its audience better by providing some additional background. contemporary readers of “the invading socialist society” may not be aware of max shachtman – the leader of the u.s. “workers party” who developed the interpretation of the soviet union as a “bureaucratic collectivist” society – or that “germain” was the early pen name for marxist economist ernest mandel. in 1946 mandel was made the youngest member of the secretariat of the “fourth international” and, as an orthodox trotskyite, he defended the conception of the soviet union as a “degenerate worker’s state.” presenting the competing “state capitalist” interpretation, james, boggs, and dunayevskaya critique both mandel’s bias to defend of the ussr, in spite of its shortcomings, and shachtman’s tendency to endorse bourgeois democracy based on his conviction that the soviet union is the “greater evil.” encountering these texts, the reader should not expect c.l.r. james as the ruminating commentator of beyond a boundary or the energetic historian of black jacobins. a new notion presents james as polemicist, pamphleteer and above all as one believing centrally in the power of revolutionary workers: with the world socialist revolution the history of humanity will begin. and that is precisely what is already shaking the world. vast millions of men are not thinking or acting as in the old days. they are flexing themselves for a leap that has become imperative for them – the leap from the realm of capitalist necessity into the realm of social freedom. this today is revolutionary politics (p. 36). james, boggs, and dunayevskaya believed in the 1940s and 50s that workers, rather than being pawns of the capitalist system or dupes of party or trade union bureaucrats, were already engaged in the historical process of shedding their chains, equally engaged against american or soviet imperialism. they saw the potential of american blueand white-collar workers alongside those in the soviet bloc and in colonial or post-colonial settings; a striking aspect of the johnson-forest tendency was its active engagement in issues of race and gender (they were also interested in decolonization, a theme which sits at the margins of tiss). in spite of the extensive references to lenin and trotsky, the reader will find their situational analyses cited in such a way as to undermine the conception of the “vanguard party” – in one striking passage, they assert that the fourth international “is far too much governed by the false idea of lenin in what is to be done that the party brings socialist consciousness 332 | climate change and its discontents to the masses from the outside” (p. 101). this willingness to critique not only the monstrosity of the stalinist experiment but also the limitations of lenin’s and trotsky’s analysis, shows the crucial role of the johnsonforest tendency in opening up alternative paths for marxist analysis and action in the mid-20th century. meanwhile, “every cook can govern” is a pamphlet which represents aspects of an important turn in james’s thought. in addressing the example of athenian democracy, he contends that direct democracy in ancient greece was instituted on the basis of popular organizing, maintained by careful institutional measures, and depended less on the institution of slavery and more on a robust, egalitarian conception of citizenship. for james, this example demonstrates that the possibility of self-management for ordinary working people – this ties together his interest in grassroots organization on the shop floor with immanent developments in the ex-colonies under a robust understanding of democracy. from a 21st century standpoint, it may seem obvious that the soviet union of the 1940s was an imperialist power, and that the alienation of workers and oppression of nationalities in eastern europe could equal their equivalents under western capitalism. however, the johnsonforest tendency continues to inspire analyses of state capitalism. it recognized the importance of gendered and racialized struggles, valorized the creative power of labour, and celebrated the capacities of workers for self-determination and self-management. in spite of the limitations of a new notion as a publication, its release must still be welcomed as a contribution to the continuing presentation of activist theory, in particular that of c.l.r. james, to new generations. book review: negotiating risk, seeking security, eroding solidarity | 333 book review negotiating risk, seeking security, eroding solidarity: life and work on the border by holly gibbs, belinda leach, and charlotte a.b. yates. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing, 2012, $18.95 can, paper. isbn 978-155266-527-5. pages: 1-147. reviewed by madalena santos1 carleton university this interdisciplinary study brings together approaches from political economy and social anthropology to show how working class solidarity is intrinsically linked to but extends beyond the workplace. gibbs, leach and yates argue that in examining solidarity more attention must be paid to the interplay between class, gender and race in relation to workers’ broader community experiences and sense of security and risk as a result of labour force changes. the authors set out to demonstrate how globalization and neoliberal policies and practices have lead to structural limitations which have impeded possibilities for sustained solidarity. through interviews with mexican and canadian automotive workers in the cities of ciudad juárez, guelph, stratford, windsor and brantford, they center their research primarily on working class women’s experiences of solidarity to examine the impact of structural inequities resulting from class, gender and race divides. their decision to focus on automotive workers in canada and mexico is based on what they see as the industry’s continued importance as both “a symbol of the good life in north america” and “an exemplar of globalization.” gibbs, leach and yates explain solidarity as the capacity for collective action based on collective identities and a shared sense of belonging. using a social relations paradigm that employs the concepts of “social reproduction” and “community”, they explore changes to the foundations of solidarity. first, they look at how the conditions and structure 1 madalena santos is a phd candidate in sociology at carleton university. her research interests include methods of creative resistance against settler colonialism, anticolonial feminist theories and practices, approaches to solidarity and allyship, intersectionality, and (im)migration issues. she is currently completing her dissertation on creative palestinian resistance and solidarity narratives focusing on the boycott divestment and sanctions movement, spoken word, and theatre 334 | climate change and its discontents of labour markets shape work experiences, then move on to introduce the research communities in detail. they subsequently explore the gendering of solidarity through the major themes which resonated from their interviews: 1. experiences and feelings of solidarity, risk and insecurity; 2. family lives and the changing world of work; and 3. the impact of (im)mobility on solidarity and community relations. importantly, their study connects workers’ experiences of risk and security, family life, and (im)mobility to both structural political-economic changes and new management control techniques, including increased competition leading to declined wages and benefits as well as job loss; restructuring of government income support programs and privatization of social services creating barriers to health, housing, and employment security; violations of labour laws and safety practices due to inadequate regulatory scrutiny and a lack of independent unions; and gender segregated work practices such as placement of women in parts production, scarce training opportunities, sexist job advertisements and screenings for pregnancy. the authors’ convincingly argue that these policies and practices, which more adversely affect women and racialized peoples than white men, have lead to the individualizing of collective responsibility and the destruction of collective identities as well as the deterioration of community needed to uphold long-term working class solidarity. this study demonstrates how the materiality and social relations of gender, race, family and community play significant roles in the experiences of automotive industry workers. according to the authors’ interviews and analysis, women in both countries are employed in less skilled occupations in the automotive industry which places them at the bottom of the production chain and translates into lower wages, less job mobility and more insecurity. while women in canada seek the benefit of unions when they can, the data presented reveals how women in mexico tend to distrust unions which are mostly state-affiliated and have a history of collaboration with management. despite this difference, women in both countries face negative impacts as a result of the social reproduction of gender norms, including being sexualized by coworkers and in the labour movement in general. women also bear the brunt of family responsibilities in the home. the social reproduction of gender norms at the family level means that women in juárez and the ontario cities examined here play dual roles as unpaid domestic workers and paid labourers. also, the increased pressure to relocate to places of employment after plant closures or in search of work further strains workers’ sense of community. racialized workers in canada are book review: negotiating risk, seeking security, eroding solidarity | 335 additionally affected by a competitive industry which has created an atmosphere of “us versus them”; where top-paying jobs remain in the hands of mostly white men. in mexico, the hierarchy of race based on skin colour, linked to the legacies of colonialism, determines who gets access to which jobs. to deal with sexism, racism, and overburdening responsibilities, workers rely on individualized coping methods rather than collective solidarity. these individualized responses internalize anxiety, stress, sexism, and racism so that responsibility for institutionalized sexist, racist, and violent behaviour and practice is placed on the individual experiencing these injustices rather than on the unjust structural and societal foundations that enable these practices to continue. the claim that solidarity is “deeply gendered” is not a novel one, as rightly acknowledged in this study; however, the authors’ analysis – grounded in the experiences of workers – provides a significant contribution to understanding the ways in which solidarity is gendered and how globalization and neoliberalism impact the manner in which solidarity is actualized. in this way, this study offers critical insight into the gendered effects of neoliberal policies and practices on solidarity in other employment sectors. in comparing the similarities and differences between worker experiences in canada and mexico while recognizing the generalizability limitations of their data due to the small number of mexican workers interviewed, gibbs, leach and yates underscore the importance of class to any analysis of solidarity. the authors also make a strong case for how independent unions can help mitigate risk and security through collective action, and education concerning the impact of structural changes on their workplace thereby reducing the tendency to scapegoat individuals based on race and/or gender. substantially, their research points to the contradictory processes that exist alongside the erosion of working class solidarity revealing traditional and nontraditional practices and possibilities for solidarity which has considerable implications for the exploration of solidarity movements outside the workplace in all fields of study and political contexts. 336 | climate change and its discontents book review the great revenue robbery: how to stop the tax cut scam and save canada edited by richard swift. toronto: between the lines. 2013. $19.95 cdn, paper. isbn: 978-1-77113-103-2. pages: 1-160. reviewed by matt fodor1 one of the main challenges facing canadian progressives is changing the discourse on taxation. over the past two decades, an anti-tax ‘consensus’ has emerged in canadian politics. tax cuts have deprived governments of billions of dollars in revenue. taxes are viewed as a burden to be avoided; in other words, taxes are separated from the services they pay for. it was in this context that progressive economist hugh mackenzie called for an “adult conversation” about taxes in canada.2 the great revenue robbery, edited by richard swift for the recently formed organization canadians for tax fairness, is a welcome contribution. featuring contributions from progressive economists, journalists, activists and others, the great revenue robbery offers a concise, wellargued challenge to what has become a near-consensus in canadian politics, and makes the case for taxation as an essential component of a progressive political agenda. the book is aimed at a popular audience and is particularly useful for political activists. a key theme of the book is how the tax issue is framed, with the book’s first three chapters devoted to it. trish hennessy calls for a return to the concept of virtue in politics, noting that during the postwar years, a time of expansion of public infrastructure and the social safety net, “[i] t was commonly accepted that taxes were the price of a civilized society, but also a happier one” (p.19). diana gibson discusses the success of the conservative movement in moving the overton window – the current spectrum of mainstream policy options, noting that: “the conservative movement brought the expansionist era of liberal social democracy 1 matt fodor is a ph.d. candidate in political science at york university, toronto. his research interests include social democracy, canadian politics and comparative political economy. he is a contributor to the book tax is not a four letter word: a different take on taxes in canada, edited by alex himelfarb and jordan himelfarb (wlu press, 2013). 2 hugh mackenzie, “can we have an adult conversation about taxes?”, toronto star, october 26, 2009. book review: the great revenue robbery | 337 to an end by being bold: by not being afraid to say things that were unpopular and by repeating them forcefully, and shamelessly” (p. 27). progressives, gibson argues, must learn from the example of the conservative movement and move the overton window leftward. swift’s own chapter provides an excellent overview of the role of the media, which overwhelmingly heeds conventional business opinion about free markets and for the most part excludes progressive perspectives, in shaping public opinion about taxation. while these chapters do raise the important point of the success of the conservative ‘counter-revolution’ and hegemony of neoliberal ideas, it does not explain why the keynesian welfare state went into crisis in the 1970s in the first place. what we now refer to as the ‘golden age’ of capitalism in the postwar period, a period characterized by high levels of economic growth where high levels of corporate profitability and very real increases in living standards, represented a unique phase of capitalist development that is unlikely to be repeated. other chapters in the book cover the topics of tax havens, corporate taxes, financial transaction taxes, ecological taxes, and taxes and cooperatives. peter gillespie’s chapter criticizes the canadian government’s lax attitude towards tax havens and the major presence of canadian banks in caribbean tax havens. jim stanford in his chapter on corporate taxes shows how corporate tax cuts since the mid-1980s have failed to deliver promised increased business investment and thus jobs and higher incomes for canadians. increases in public expenditure, stanford maintains, would have a greater impact on growth and investment than tax cuts. toby sanger’s chapter on financial transaction taxes offers a helpful and clearly-written debunking of several ‘myths’ about ftts. joe gunn in his chapter on eco-taxes makes the case for a progressive carbon tax, arguing (correctly, in my view) that carbon taxes are ultimately more effective than a cap-and-trade system (which is more subject to market fluctuations and requires the development of an emissions trading market). john restakis in his chapter on taxes and cooperatives discusses the role of the social economy in italy, spain and quebec, and calls for reform of the tax system to encourage the cooperative sector. however, a more critical assessment of what role this sector should play as opposed to government in terms of social welfare provision, for example, would have been beneficial. veteran journalist murray dobbin, who has written much on taxation and the consolidation of neoliberalism in canada, effectively reiterates the book’s key themes of changing the discourse on taxation and 338 | climate change and its discontents articulating an alternative to neoliberalism. dobbin stresses the need to link tax fairness with communitarian values and a progressive values and suggests that campaigners “frame the issue as a choice two very different futures: a continuation of the dystopian low-tax, high-privateconsumption regime; the other, a return to higher taxes but also to more public goods and stronger communities” (p. 141). overall, the great revenue robbery makes a strong case for the central role of taxation in a progressive agenda, and is presented in an accessible manner. it is especially helpful in light of the retreat of canadian social democracy on the question of articulating an alternative to neoliberalism, where the ndp not only accepts but even promotes anti-tax politics. the book represents just the beginning of an adult conversation about taxes in canada. it is a call to action to challenge to speak boldly in support of the necessity of taxes as a key component of the public good and our collective capacity to shape the future, and to develop a progressive tax policy to counter growing inequality and rebuild deteriorating public services. book review: the great revenue robbery | 339 book review: el diario del che en bolivia | 313 book review el diario del che en bolivia by ernesto che guevara. adys cupull and froilan gonzalez, eds. havana, cuba: editora política, 2006. price n/a, paper. isbn 959-010714-1. pages 1–428. reviewed by gabrielle etcheverry1 carleton university the diary of che in bolivia was written by ernesto “che” guevara during his 1966–67 revolutionary campaign in that country. although it is most likely that guevara did not intend for his diary to be widely read, it was soon published and circulated in the united states and cuba after its discovery following his death. this recent spanish-language edition of the bolivian diary provides new materials, such as photos, maps and paratexts as a means to further understand the conditions che encountered, thus expanding on the information available in previous editions. it is also dedicated by fidel castro to graduating university students in cuba with the hope that this “moving book” will aid in their continuing formation as “citizens inspired by che’s example” (my translation), indicating that che’s diary has become a crucial text inside and outside of that country. being the first press to publish the complete diary in any language in 19872 (the first editions published in cuba and the united states in 1968 lacked thirteen entries), editora política has here provided additional information such as a farewell letter from che to fidel in which he renounces his political posts in cuba to undertake the mission in bolivia (p.xxix). also provided are photos of the fake uruguayan passport that che used to enter bolivia disguised as adolfo mena gonzález, fake immunization records, and his letters of reference from bolivian officials introducing him as a special envoy from the organization of american states in bolivia to research social and economic relations in the countryside (p.xxxi–xxxvi). maps of the routes taken by che from la paz to lagunillas and ñacahuasú, and the shorter routes he and the other guerrilleros took during the time-span recorded in the diary have 1 gabrielle etcheverry is a phd candidate at the department of canadian studies, carleton university. 2 walters, mary-alice, ed. 1994. “introduction” in the bolivarian diary of ernesto che guevara by ernesto che guevara. new york: pathfinder. p.44 314 | climate change and its discontents also been added. photos of local roads, scenery, flora and fauna, such as tapirs, llamas, turkeys, and the kinds of fish che describes catching for dinner in one of his entries are included throughout along with photos of some of the key towns and surrounding areas his group would have crossed on their journey. like other editions of the diary, the book begins with fidel castro’s “una introducción necesaria” [a necessary introduction], here titled “nota al lector” [note to the reader], which provides a context for the political and military challenges faced by che and his cadre in the period covered by the diary (november 7, 1966 to october 7, 1967). some of this context includes difficulties guevara had with “pseudo revolutionary” (p.xvii) leaders such as mario monje molina of the communist party of bolivia (pcb) and che’s vision of the revolution in bolivia extending to the rest of latin america (p.xviii). according to castro, he saw the greater project of international socialism spreading from latin america to africa, south east asia and even the united states (p.xix) – information largely confirmed in che’s farewell letter. the editors have also included a transcript of the speech fidel gave at guevara’s wake, here titled “un modelo de revolucionario” [a model revolutionary] after the final entry in the diary. the diary entries have been extended by inserting text from castro’s introduction in the dates that che was captured by the bolivian military and then executed (october 7 to 9). while this helps mark the days between these two events, the addition of this text seems out of place as “entries” in a personal diary. guevara’s generally short notes provide small glimpses of the physical and psychological conditions he and the other forty or so rotating guerrilleros encountered. the main activity in the early days included making camp and digging tunnels for hiding food and “compromising” materials while they waited for more of his trusted reinforcements to arrive from cuba. as more of his men arrived and bolivian nationals began to join the group, che also noted which members of the group seemed more tired, lackluster, committed or efficient; which locals could be trusted and which could not, as well as how the men perceived (and interacted with) each other. guevara also noted the physical discomfort they experienced, such as the numbers and types of insect bites they suffered, the scarcity of food and water in the final days of their campaign, and his own failing health. as can be imagined, some of the more riveting diary entries describe details of their battles with the bolivian military in the deep countryside and the tense moments between ambushes. book review: el diario del che en bolivia | 315 some of the more interesting moments guevara recorded were how the group coalesced and changed throughout the eleven months covered in the diary. this edition provides the reader with some useful background information such as photos and brief biographical sketches (p.405–425) of many of the people who worked with him in his last campaign, including juan vitalio acuña núñez (joaquin) from cuba, che’s second in command, and guido alvaro peredo leigue (inti), a bolivian guerrillero trained in cuba and member of the pcb who stayed with che after monje withdrew his support. of the forty people from cuba, bolivia and peru listed at the end of the book, only three survived, lending a dose of sobriety to the call of ¡hasta la victoria, siempre!. some of the photos provided in this edition may seem banal at first glance, particularly for readers who may already be familiar with the bolivian countryside. nevertheless, it is these commonplace details that help ground the reader in the real drama recounted in his daily entries – t he day-to-day survival in difficult conditions and the (sometimes flagging) will and discipline required by all the members of his group. the photos and biographical information on the fighters who joined him are a particularly welcome addition to the diary after so many years. whether one reads the diary as a manual for guerrilla subterfuge and warfare, as a historical document or a testament to the final days of a (glorious or misbegotten) revolutionary struggle, these everyday details help readers to distinguish the man from the myth and provide a valuable addition to what we already know of his final days. © alternate routes, 2015 toronto www.alternateroutes.ca “alternate routes” issn 1923-7081 (online) issn 0702-8865 (print) managing editors: carlo fanelli and john shields interventions editor: jordy cummings and jeff noonan book reviews editor: priscillia lefebvre and rebecca schein editorial advisory board: nahla abdo, dimitry anastakis, pat armstrong, tim bartkiw, david camfield, nicolas carrier, sally chivers, wallace clement, simten cosar, simon dalby, aaron doyle, ann duffy, bryan evans, randall germain, peter gose, henry giroux, paul kellogg, jacqueline kennelly, mark neocleous, bryan palmer, jamie peck, sorpong peou, garry potter, georgios papanicolaou, mi park, justin paulson, stephanie ross, george s. rigakos, heidi rimke, arne christoph ruckert, toby sanger, ingo schmidt, alan sears, mitu sengupta, meenal shrivastava, janet lee siltanen, susan jane spronk, jim struthers, mark p. thomas, rosemary warskett journal mandate: established in 1977 alternate routes is committed to creating outlets for critical social research and interdisciplinary inquiry. alternate routes works closely with scholars, labour and community researchers to promote the publication of heterodox critical social research, as well as provocative and progressive analyses that may not find a forum in conventional venues. alternate routes seeks to be a public academic journal and encourages works that advance or challenge theoretical, historical and contemporary socio-political, economic and cultural issues. in addition to full-length articles, we welcome review essays sparked by previously published material, interviews, commentaries, book reviews as well as poetry, drawings and photo-essays. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research vol. 27, 2015 table of contents editorial introduction the paradox of low­wage work.................................................9 carlo fanelli and john shields articles introduction: raising wages.................................................... 12 stephanie luce marx’s theory of working-class precariousness – and its relevance today................................................................. 21 r. jamil jonna and john bellamy foster exploitation, stagnant wages and underemployment in advanced capitalism: a canadian perspective............... 46 david livingstone challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages.................................................... 55 stephen mcbride and jacob muirhead the precarity penalty: how insecure employment disadvantages workers and their families.....................87 wayne lewchuk, michelynn laflèche, stephanie procyk, charlene cook, diane dyson, luin goldring, karen lior, alan meisner, john shields, anthony tambureno, peter viducis ‘illegalized’ workers and the struggle for a living wage..... 109 charity-ann hannan, harald bauder and john shields paving their way and earning their pay: economic survival experiences of immigrants in east toronto...................137 keren gottfried, john shields, nasima akter, diane dyson, sevgul topkara-sarsu, haweiya egeh, sandra guerra lived experiences of unemployed women in toronto and halifax, canada who were previously precariously employed...........................................................................162 leslie nichols reality tv’s low­wage and no-wage work...........................187 tanner mirrlees finally the right to strike: but what about organizing?... 213 patricia mcdermott interventions living wage campaigns and building communities........... 235 don wells rethinking precarity and capitalism: an interview with charlie post...................................................................... 247 jordy cummings recomposing the casual class in precarious times............ 253 brett caraway digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity: in conversation with christian fuchs................................ 267 matthew flisfeder art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics...... 279 rebecca garrett and l.k. jackson detroit: realities of destructive accumulation.....................300 diane feeley destructive creation............................................................... 313 mireille coral, jeff noonan, and paul chislett book reviews janet abbate. recoding gender: women’s changing participation in computing............................................. 327 jennifer mackin sheila cote-meek. colonized classrooms: racism, trauma and resistance in post-secondary education.........................329 jiyoung lee-an linda deriviere. the healing journey: intimate partner abuse and its implications in the labour market..................... 332 julie poon tariq ali. the obama syndrome: surrender at home, war abroad...............................................................................335 dax d’orazio richard york and brett clark. the science and humanism of stephen jay gould........................................................... 338 jon careless yves engler. the black book of canadian foreign policy.... 341 kara brisson-boivin fred magdoff and brian tokar. agriculture and food in crisis: conflict, resistance, and renewal...................................344 katie m. macdonald kouri t. keenan and joan brockman. mr. big: exposing undercover investigations in canada..............................347 allison wallis the paradox of low-wage work | 9 the paradox of low-wage work carlo fanelli1 and john shields2 “the worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. the worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. the devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general.” “it is true that labour produces for the rich wonderful things – but for the worker it produces privation. it produces palaces – but for the worker, hovels. it produces beauty – but for the worker, deformity. it replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back into barbarous types of labor and it turns the other section into a machine. it produces intelligence – but for the worker, stupidity, cretinism.” – marx, 1844 in the economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844, marx wrote of work and labour as central to human existence. whereas classical political economy assumed but did not explain the existence of private property, marx took the estrangement of labour under capitalist social relations as his starting point. the process of alienation was intersectional and multifaceted, including: the estrangement of working people from the products of their labour and the work process itself; from nature and conscious life activity; and from other persons. for marx, then, the estrangement of labour simultaneously established the conditions for capital’s gain at the expense of labour’s pain: “accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital.” contrary to classical political economy’s conflation of 1 carlo fanelli is visiting professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. he is the author of megacity malaise: neoliberalism, labour and public services in toronto. 2 john shields is professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. most recently, he is the co-editor (with harold bauder) of immigrant experiences in north america: understanding settlement and integration. 10 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages capitalism with exchange (i.e. distribution or “the market”), the root causes of alienation resided in the social relations of production, and the instituted compulsions of capital, wherein relations of domination and subordination ruled. the conditions of particularly harsh worker exploitation which marx spoke to were from an earlier phase of laisse faire capitalism, a condition that to some considerable degree appeared to be mitigated in the developed west during the keynesian golden era. however, neoliberal capitalism which took hold beginning in the 1980s has once again brought to the fore a more social darwinian approach to capital accumulation rooted in a logic that celebrates the growth of deep inequality, aggressive social exclusion and a tolerance for the widespread existence of the working poor. sharing parallels with the processes so vividly described by marx long ago, contributors to this volume of alternate routes critically deconstruct the paradox of low wage work under neoliberal capitalism. contemporary neoliberal capitalism has championed the rollback of keynesian-based social policies, de-unionization, labour market restructuring, the individualization of risk, and the promotion of falling living standards for vast sections of the working population. a new age of intensified insecurity and widening socio-economic risks have been downloaded onto individuals and families. the growth of employment precarity and the need for a living wage by large sections of the population rest at the heart of this volume. using quantitative and qualitative approaches and informed by critical conceptual analysis the reader is treated to a detailed examination of the lived experiences and the broader implications of precarity and low wage work. the validity of marx’s insights regarding class exploitation and the degradation of work, as captured in the passages quoted above, for the contemporary period of neoliberal capitalism are uncovered in the essays that follow. the issues and concerns explored here were first raised in a series of panels explored at the conference labour pains, capital gains: the paradox of low-wage, no-wage work, which was held at ryerson university on march 27, 2015.3 we would like to thank the centre for labour management relations and its director, gerald hunt, for their tremendous support without which both the conference and this volume would not have been possible. thanks are also due to the department of politics and public administration, and the office of the dean at the faculty of arts, ryerson university, for their continued support. 3 these presentations are available for viewing at http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/pages/view/labour%20pains the paradox of low-wage work | 11 we would like to welcome henry giroux, jamie peck and sorpong peou to alternate routes’ editorial advisory committee, and jeff noonan as new interventions editor. a warm thank you and well wishes to priscillia lefebvre who has served in a number of roles since 2010, jordy cummings who served as interventions editor since 2014, and rebecca schein who served as book reviews co-editor for this volume, for their time and commitment to critical social research as they move on to new avenues of their work. thank you also to pance stojkovski for recording and editing conference presentations. finally, we wish to express our gratitude to authors and reviewers who worked under extremely tight deadlines in order to meet our publishing schedule. references marx, k. (1844). the philosophic and economic manuscripts. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/econom ic-philosophic-manuscripts-1844.pdf 12 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages introduction: raising wages stephanie luce1 nick hanauer is a venture capitalist and a tech-billionaire, based in seattle, washington. in june 2015, mr. hanauer traveled to new york city to testify in favor of the state raising wages to $15 per hour for fast good workers. when asked why he made the effort to make the trip, hanauer proclaimed, “this is the issue of our times.” his argument is that if employers don’t significantly raise wages, we will continue to be plagued by growing inequality, and there won’t be enough consumers to buy u.s. products. hanauer also warns that unless wages are raised, political instability is likely. he writes, “…if we adjust our policies in the way that, say, franklin d. roosevelt did during the great depression – so that we help the 99 percent and preempt the revolutionaries and crazies, the ones with the pitchforks – that will be the best thing possible for us rich folks, too. it’s not just that we’ll escape with our lives; it’s that we’ll most certainly get even richer” (hanauer, 2014). this story highlights the extraordinary moment for the movement to raise wages. a growing number of voices, some from very unexpected places, are highlighting the ways in which persistent inequality is bad for the economy – not just low-wage workers and their families. in just a short while we have seen the mainstream in the economics discipline and policy arena shift from a neoliberal view to a version of keynesianism. whereas 20, or even 10 years ago, we heard that raising wages would lead to job loss and inflation, today, tech billionaires to the international monetary fund are worried about low wages and the impact of growing inequality on the macro-economy. the demand for a “living wage” is at least as old as capitalism itself, but the modern movement to pass city and state living wage and minimum wage legislation has been underway in the u.s. for the past 20 years. activists in canada, the uk, australia, new zealand, japan, among other places have also engaged in related efforts to raise wages. in 1. stephanie luce is professor of labor studies at the murphy institute, city university of new york. she is the author of fighting for a living wage, and labor movements: global perspectives and co-author of the living wage: building a fair economy, and the measure of fairness. this article is based on her talk at the 2015 phyllis clarke memorial lecture, and as part of alternate routes’ 2015 conference keynote address at ryerson university. the presentation is available at http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/pages/view/labour%20pains introduction: raising wages | 13 this paper i will discuss the context for the current wave of wage campaigns, including the common arguments some economists and policymakers have used to explain low wages and inequality. i will then review the various kinds of wage campaigns, their similarities and differences. i then evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these efforts to improve wage standards. inequality, poverty and policy inequality is on the rise, reaching historic levels in many wealthy countries. but it is also an increasing problem in many global south countries. in rich and poor countries we see growth in wages and wealth at the top of the distribution and little, or at least less, at the bottom. in some countries, among some segments of the labor force, we have even seen wages fall in real terms. this persistent and growing inequality within and between countries is evidence that many tenets of the neoliberal vision are flawed. in fact it is possible to have growing gdp alongside stagnant wages and even persistent poverty. even where large numbers of people are moving out of poverty, such as in china, there is still be growing inequality. for a while, many economists and policymakers explained the growing inequality was a consequence of changing technology, globalization, and “skill mismatch” (workers failing to learn new skills required to obtain science, technology, engineering and math jobs). but this explanation does not hold up under close scrutiny and while it may explain some of the inequality it fails to explain it all. in recent years, analysts have pointed to other factors, including institutional factors (everything from weak labor laws to trade agreements), to the decline in union density. in early 2015, the international monetary fund released a report stating that they too had been wrong to keep arguing that globalization and technology were the main drivers of inequality, and their new research showed that the decline in union power was a significant factor (jaumotte and buitron, 2015). inequality does not have to necessarily imply low wages but in most cases, they go together. in fact, some might argue that low wages are not just a coincidence but integral to a highly unequal society. high-income workers demand services that employ low-wage workers, such as restaurants, tourism, retail, and personal services. and even those that are considered “middle class” may in fact depend on the existence of low wage service workers to make their own work/life balances possible. for example, it would be impossible for many middle class women to participate fully in the labor market if they did not have access to 14 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages affordable childcare. of course, this does not necessarily require these kinds of jobs to be low wage: in fact, there are higher wage child care and retail and restaurant jobs in some countries. but particularly in the u.s., and in many countries, these are mostly low wage. low wages are also one of the fundamental planks of neoliberalism. the theory rests in part on the notion of freeing up investors to engage in economic activity with little restriction. this is one way to create a “friendly business climate” and attract and retain capital. this involves deregulating (or reregulating) labor markets, keeping wages low, and shifting the risks and costs of the employment relationship from the employer to the employee. some common methods for this include the move to “just-in-time” scheduling where employers put employees on oncall shifts. workers may be hired on “zero-hours contracts” with no guaranteed work at all, or on contracts with few stable secure hours. instead they must call the employer the night before, or morning of, a scheduled shift to see if they are needed. or, they may come into work but be sent home early if the work is slow. in these cases, workers are not paid for the time they wait, or the time that they had kept free for work. this practice is common in low-wage service work, such as retail and food service. but it is also found in higher-wage jobs and professional occupations, such as adjunct faculty. employers in the high-tech, legal, and health care have moved toward hiring workers on a part-time basis, or contracts of limited duration – or even classifying them as independent contractors rather than employees. this allows them to evade a host of labor and employment laws, and it also allows them to reduce the commitment to regular hours and salaries. if there is any uncertainty due to poor weather, low sales, low enrollment, slack markets, the employee now bears the burden. low wages and inequality are not just a problem for low wage workers. the evidence is mounting that these are also a problem for the macro-economy. workers need income to engage in consumer spending. inequality and poverty are potential causes for social unrest and labor strife. commentators from thomas piketty to pope francis are highlighting these problems. the fight to raise wages in response to growing inequality is the move to raise wages for the lowest-paid workers. the u.s. established a federal minimum wage as part of the fair labor standards act in 1938. this set an hourly wage but did not base it on a formula or methodology, and did not include any provisions for increasing the wage level as the cost of living rose. not all workers are covered by the minimum wage, and some tipped workers are introduction: raising wages | 15 covered by a much lower minimum wage. states can set their own minimum wages at or above the federal level. some states also allow cities or counties to set their own wages, but that right is uneven and contested (for example, the state of louisiana took away that right from cities in 2002 after the city of new orleans passed its own citywide minimum wage). states can also expand the number of workers covered by the minimum wage in the state. seven states have eliminated the lower wage for tipped workers – meaning that tipped workers are entitled to the same state minimum wage as other covered workers. in addition to minimum wage laws, over 130 cities and counties across the country passed “living wage” laws in the past 20 years. these vary somewhat, but typically apply to firms that hold service contracts with the city or receive economic development subsidies. some also apply to firms that operate on city-owned property. for example, the mcdonald’s in the los angeles airport has been required to pay a living wage to its employees under the los angeles living wage ordinance since 1997. for much of the 1990s and early 2000s activists built broad labor-community coalitions to push their cities and states to pass living wage ordinances and raise state minimum wages. eventually the federal government raised the minimum wage in 1998, and then again in 2006. but since it was not raised by much and not indexed to inflation it was not long before the rate was low again. activists continued to push for higher wages and more expansive coverage. but by 2008, and in the years immediately following the “great recession” it appeared the movement had run its course. a new york city coalition was attempting to expand the city living wage ordinance to mandate that firms receiving economic development subsidies would be required to pay their employees $10 per hour. but the democratic speaker of the council refused to even let the issue come up for a vote, fearing that such a bill would be bad on the business climate. by 2010, all signs suggested that the living wage movement was over. the movement rebuilds in september 2011 occupy wall street came on the scene, capturing the public attention in a way that earlier, similar protests did not. somehow, the concept of the 99% and the 1% caught on and media mentions of inequality skyrocketed (milkman, luce and lewis, 2013). within a few months the new york city council scheduled a hearing on the living wage bill, and passed in soon after. and while the occupy movement was soon kicked out of parks and lost momentum, its impact was not lost on activists from various sectors who were inspired to take bigger risks and make bolder demands. in the spring and summer of 2012, 16 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages workers at warehouses servicing walmart in illinois and california went on strike against poor working conditions. they won some of their demands. in november 2012, the united food and commercial workers called for strikes at walmart stores on “black friday,” the shopping day held the day after the american thanksgiving. some workers, and community allies, joined in at rallies at walmart stores around the country. earlier in the month, that same november 2012, the service employees international union, along with some community organizations, helped fast food workers engage in a one-day strike in new york city. the workers demanded $15 per hour and a union. soon, the strikes spread to more cities. by 2014 there were strikes in over 190 cities. in the context of occupy and strikes, a labor-community coalition in the small town of sea-tac, washington decided to put an initiative on the ballot to establish a citywide minimum wage of $15 per hour. the measure won. at the same time, an openly socialist candidate ran for and won a seat on the city council in seattle, washington, and soon that city passed a $15 minimum wage as well (phased in over several years). by mid-2015, the wage movement in the united states had blossomed. whereas only three cities had citywide minimum wage laws in 2011, over 30 cities had passed citywide or significantly increased their wage in 2012-2015, including san francisco, california and emeryville, california all setting wages of $15 or more. a dozen more campaigns are underway. in addition 14 states raised their wage in 2014, including four republican dominated states where voters passed ballot initiatives to raise and index the wage. as of 2015, 29 states plus the district of colombia have state rates above the federal. the call for a $15 hour wage is remarkable, given that this occurred while the federal minimum wage is $7.25, and not long after the democratic new york city council would not even consider a $10 living wage for economic development recipients. there are different stories behind how the $15 amount was chosen, but according to fast food organizers, there was a meeting of fast food workers to establish demands. the workers thought the $10 living wage rate was too low, but the $20 rate would be hard to win, so they settled on $15. there is no magic formula or methodology behind it but somehow the number stuck, helping to launch a national “fight for fifteen” movement. explaining the upsurge it is not possible to explain the reasons why the current wage movement is having such success, but i offer a few hypotheses. as mentioned above, occupy wall street helped galvanize and sharpen public introduction: raising wages | 17 outrage about rising inequality and the weak economy. but it also helped unions and community organizations see that it might be worth taking a bold risk. rather than spending resources hiring public relations strategists, conducting polls with voters, and testing slogans, the occupy movement launched a campaign with no demands, no clear strategy, and no focus group testing. veteran organizers took note. second, the wave of strikes at walmart warehouses, black friday, and fast food restaurants brought increased public attention to the issue of low wages and inequality. the organizations involved in the strikes had also participated in occupy to some extent, in some cases advising occupy activists on strategy. unions have a lot of restrictions on their ability to strike: most unions agree to a no-strike clause during the life of their contract. they also are subject to labor laws that govern what counts as a legitimate strike and what does not. workers without unions have, in many ways, more rights than unionized workers, in that the labor laws are not nearly as strict. for example, workers without a union have the right to strike and get their job back if they are fired. as long as they are engaging in concerted activity they have the protection of the law. if mcdonalds workers and walmart employees were unionized most likely they could not have launched the strike wave that they did – or if they did, they would risk penalties. it also appears to have brought some pressure on the companies. there is no hard data on what the companies lost in terms of sales or profits due to the strike, or what they estimated the impact on their brand. but starting in 2014, a number of major companies announced that they would raise their internal starting wage. by mid-2015, approximately a dozen companies – including the gap, walmart, target, ikea, starbucks, and mcdonald’s – all committed to raising wages. this unusual move suggests the companies were feeling some pressure to raise wages. the pressure may have come externally from strikes or public opinion. it might also have been coming internally, from a growing sense that low wages could have negative direct and indirect impacts for employers. analysts showed that higher wages could lead to lower turnover and absenteeism, and higher productivity, saving companies hundreds of thousands, or millions, per year. for example, one writer estimates that costco spends about $244 million per year on turnover, or $3,628 per worker, whereas sam’s club spends $612 million, or $5,274 per employee (cascio, 2006). in addition, the upsurge happened at a time when an increasingly number of mainstream voices has begun to highlight the problems with inequality and poverty, as mentioned above. this all seems to have 18 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages coalesced in an opening for wage campaigns to take off. at the same time, issues related to low-wage work and inequality are on the agenda in many other countries. minimum wage and living wage campaigns are underway in dozens of places, and a few countries, such as germany, have recently established minimum wage laws for the first time ever to attempt to address the problem of the growing low-wage workforce (luce, 2015). higher wages as a solution? the growing movement to raise wages is exciting, and encouraging as a potential source of resistance to growing inequality and the downward trend in the standard of living in many rich countries. however, higher wage floors are not a solution on their own. many workers in low-wage jobs are in precarious employment: little or no job security, few and fluctuating hours of work. even with a large hourly raise they may still be in poverty if they don’t have enough hours of work. of course, higher wages do not help those without jobs, either because they cannot find work or because they dropped out of the labor market altogether. other workers face other problems at work: of too many hours (forced overtime), harassment, no paid leave, no benefits, no chance for promotion. the higher wages movement alone will not solve these. for these reasons, workers also need unions to enforce the legislation they win, and to address other problems on the job. fortunately, many of the campaigns for higher wages are being supported by, or even run by, unions. it has been much easier to win higher wages through legislation than to unionize so there is a big challenge to make this goal a reality. even though the gap and mcdonalds and walmart have increased their internal base wage slightly, the significant gains have come through legislation. when workers lose the power to win by withholding labor, they may need to increasingly resort to political leverage: forcing politicians rather than employers to make changes. but at places without any democratic representation, such as universities, even higher wages have been hard to win. at least in the u.s., the “living wage” campaigns have had a much higher success rate in cities than on campuses. the minimum wage and living wage efforts have also been most successful at the municipal level, where citizens have more power vis-a-vis business. once you go to the state level, and federal level, politics is driven much more heavily by money and worker movements are relatively worse off. the higher wages movement can also be problematic where it divides the “deserving poor” from the “non-deserving poor.” voters consistently support higher wages when they are put on the ballot. but voters, and legislators, also tend to approve measures that further criminalize introduction: raising wages | 19 poverty, such as anti-panhandling laws. to the extent that we support living wage campaigns in a way that rewards “hard working citizens” while punishing others, we damage the potential to build broader, more inclusive and impactful movements. another interesting fact about the trend in the movement in the u.s. is the impact of the strikes. there is no way to prove this but it seems unlikely we would have witnessed such a strong resurgence of the movement, and such a significant jump in wage levels, without fast food and walmart strikes. the strikes have likely influenced stores to raise their base wage, and influenced local politicians to raise minimum wages. but the strikes have not resulted in unions. it seems that even using a traditional labor strategy – the strike – is not enough leverage yet to win union recognition. it also seems clear that companies would rather raise their wages than allow a union. a higher wage may have benefits – such as reduced turnover and lower absenteeism; it also means more money in the pockets of low-wage workers who also overlap with the customer base. and a higher wage does not cede power in the way a union does. but without a union, workers will still have many problems on the job, and little job security. for this and other reasons, the efforts to raise wages must be paired with a broader policy and political agenda, which includes unionization, but also includes measures aimed at addressing the needs of the unemployed. one possible solution is the basic income grant, which has been tested in pats of namibia, india, canada and brazil, and in other forms elsewhere, including a new experiment in the netherlands (luckerson, 2015). other solutions include reducing the workweek to spread work among more people, which could improve conditions for those with too few hours of work, as well as those forced to work too many hours (messenger and ghosheh, 2013). the movement for raising wages can be a foundation for building broad coalitions, as the idea is consistently popular among voters. at the same time, activists should be aware of the limitations of wage standards as a solution in itself, and instead use the campaigns as a way to build bigger movements with more expansive demands. 20 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages references cascio, wayne f. (2006). the high cost of low wages. harvard business review. https://hbr.org/2006/12/the-high-cost-of-low-wages hanauer, nick. (2014). the pitchforks are coming: for us plutocrats. politico magazine. july/august. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-arecoming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html jaumotte, florence and carolina osorio buitron, (2015). power from the people. finance and development. 52(1), 29-31. luce, stephanie. (2015). “$15 per hour or bust: an appraisal of the higher wages movement.” new labor forum. 24, 72-79. luckerson, victor. (2015, june 26). “this dutch city plans to give residents a universal ‘basic income’.” time. http://time.com/3938210/dutch-basic-income messenger, jon carleton and naj ghosheh, editors. (2013). work sharing during the great recession: new developments and beyond. london: edward elgar publishing. milkman, ruth, stephanie luce and penny lewis. (2013). changing the subject: a bottom up account of occupy wall street in new york city. new york: the murphy institute/cuny. marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 21 marx’s theory of working-class precariousness – and its relevance today r. jamil jonna and john bellamy foster abstract: worker precariousness has become a major issue globally. much of this, however, is divorced from the central role that this concept played in marx’s critique of political economy. this article traces the notion of precarious labor back to its classical roots in historical materialism, including marx’s general law of accumulation and his reserve army of labor conception. it then examines related work of such important marxian political economists as harry braverman and stephen hymer. utilizing these theoretical foundations and data from the international labor organization, empirical estimates are provided of the extent of the global reserve army today. keywords: marx, braverman, reserve army of labor, precarious, precariat in the last decade and a half the concept of worker precariousness has gained renewed currency among social scientists (e.g. barbier, 2004; vosko, 2000; fudge and owens, 2006). this intensified after the great financial crisis of 2007-09 (vosko 2010; kalleberg 2011; kalleberg, 2012; olsthoorn, 2014; allison, 2013; fashoyin et al., 2013; fudge and strauss, 2013), which left in its wake a period of deep economic stagnation that persists to this day in large parts of the global economy. most investigators define worker precariousness by reference to what workers lack: access to work; protection from arbitrary firing; possibility for advancement; longterm employment; adequate safety; development of new skills; adequate income; and union representation (see standing, 2011, 10). the origin of the concept of worker “precariousness” is often traced to pierre bourdieu’s early work on algeria (bourdieu, 1963). yet investigators routinely pass over bourdieu’s own mature reflections on the concept (bourdieu, 1999, 81-87). bourdieu connected the notion directly to karl marx’s analysis of the reserve army of labor. “precariousness,” for bourdieu (1999, 82), is present when “the existence of a large reserve army…helps to give all those in work the sense that they are in no way irreplaceable.” in line with marx’s conceptions of the floating, stagnant and pauperized populations constituting the industrial reserve army, bourdieu (1999, 83), associated precariousness with what he called the “subproletariat.” however, he tended to see a disjuncture between such 22 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages “subproletarians” and the “proletariat,” with the latter defined by the stability necessary to initiate a “revolutionary project.” as a concept, worker precariousness is far from new. it has a long history in socialist thought, where it was associated from the start with the concept of the reserve army of labor. it was first introduced by frederick engels in his treatment of the industrial reserve army in the condition of the working class in england ([1845] 1993).1 marx and engels employed it in this same context in the communist manifesto (1848). later it became a key element in marx’s analysis of the industrial reserve army in volume i of capital ([1867] 1976). early marxian theorists, notably william morris, were to extend this analysis, explicitly rooting much their critique of capital in the concept of “precariousness.” the concept of precariousness was thus integrally related to the marxian critique. it was to gain added significance in the 1970s, in the work of marxian theorists such as harry braverman and stephen hymer, who explored the relation of surplus labor to the conditions of monopoly capitalism and the internationalization of capital. for many years, marx’s ([1867] 1976, 762-870) analysis of the “general law of capitalist accumulation,” which had pointed to conditions of growing precariousness with respect to employment and to the relative impoverishment of the laboring population, was dismissed by mainstream social scientists (see the discussions in rosldosky, 1977, 300-07; 012, 127; foster and mcchesney, 2012, 125; fracchia, 2008). in recent years, however, the notion of precariousness as a general condition of working class life has been rediscovered. yet, this is commonly treated in the eclectic, reductionist, ahistorical fashion, characteristic of today’s social sciences and humanities, where it is disconnected from the larger theory of accumulation derived from marx and the entire socialist tradition. the result is a set of scattered observations about what are seen as largely haphazard developments. some critical social scientists, most notably former international labour organization economist guy standing (2011), employ the neologism “precariat” to refer to a new class of (mostly younger) workers who experience all of the main dimensions of precariousness (see standing, 2011, 7). as french sociologist béatrice appay (2010, 34) explains, the term precariat “emanates from a contraction of the words ‘precarious’ and ‘proletariat.’ it regroups the unemployed and the 1 engels had initially introduced the reserve army perspective, though in less developed form, in his “outlines of a critique of political economy” in 1843 (marx and engels 1975, vol. 3, 438, 443). marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 23 precarious (manual and intellectual) workers in struggle in all sectors of activity.” since marx himself defined the proletariat as a class characterized by precariousness, the term precariat is often no more than a fashionable and mistaken substitute for proletariat itself (in marx’s sense) – or else is employed to refer to a subcategory of the proletariat, i.e., the “subproletariat.” this resembles earlier theorizations of the “underclass” as a separate entity divorced from the working class (wilson, 1987). in these various formulations, the notion of the precariat is often contrasted to what is characterized as an overly rigidified concept of the proletariat – the latter defined as a formal, stable industrial workforce of the employed, usually organized in trade unions (a notion, however, far removed from marx’s classical definition of the proletariat). radical french sociologist loïc wacquant (2007, 72-73) suggests that “contrary to the proletariat in the marxist vision of history, which is called upon to abolish itself in the long run by uniting and universalizing itself, the precariat can only make itself to immediately unmake itself” – meaning that its only choices are to join the formal workforce and obtain “stable wages” or to escape “form the world of work altogether.” for wacquant the growth of working-class precariousness is a movement toward “deproletarianization rather than toward proletarian unification.” the fact that marx himself presented the conditions of the working-class primarily in terms of the precariousness of working-class employment and existence – a fact we shall elucidate below – is here missed altogether. instead the concept of precariat is being advanced as an alternative to proletariat, often in order to suggest the impossibility of a worker-based revolutionary project in contemporary conditions, in the tradition of andre gorz’s ([1980] 2001) proclamation of farewell to the working class.2 2 the separation of the concepts of precariat, precariousness, precarity off from the proletariat, so that they are frequently counterposed to the latter can be seen in some influential feminist accounts as well. feminist theorist judith butler (2013) uses “precariat” to refer to “a group of people who are not only exploited workers, but whose labor is now regarded as dispensable,” closely related to marx’s industrial reserve army (but not presented in those terms). the implication is that this serves to set the precariat off from the parts of the workforce that experience greater security (i.e. the proletariat) in sharp distinction to marx who saw the proletariat as the working class as a whole. butler, moreover, implies (incorrectly) that marx’s proletariat can be viewed in narrow economic terms. she thus seeks to distinguish the precariat from the proletariat by referring to the precariat as those who also “are targeted by war or are living in regions that have been decimated by development,” ascribing to them the general inhuman condition that marx and engels identified with the proletariat. separating “precariousness” from both labor and the proletariat, butler describes precariousness as “a general feature of embodied life,” applicable to widely differing social situations, and sees “precarity” as an “amplification” of this “embodied” state of instability. 24 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages according to socialist critic richard seymour in “we are all precarious,” “the ‘precariat’ is not a class, and its widespread acceptance as a cultural meme in dissident, leftist culture has nothing to do with the claim that it is. rather, it is a particular kind of populist identification, one that “operates on a real, critical antagonism in today’s capitalism”: the growth on a world scale of an increasingly flexible work force, characterized by unemployment, underemployment, and temporary, contingent employment (seymour 2012). in contrast to such varied discursive views emanating primarily from the postmodernist-influenced left, establishment sociologists typically conceptualize worker precariousness in more prosaic terms as nothing more than a widening gulf between “good jobs” and “bad jobs” (kalleberg, reskin, and hudson, 2000; kalleberg 2011). moreover, there is a strong tendency to adopt a corporatist view in which the goal is to reestablish a “social contract between organized labor and organized capital” (kalleberg, 2012, 440). the object in other words is to regulate working conditions in order to shift back from informal to formal labor. this is naturally associated with the decline of organized labor (see quinlan, 2012, 16). but such surface, reformist analyses rarely explore the historical dynamics with respect to capital accumulation involved in the resurgence of precariousness in the center of the capitalist world economy. in general, conventional social scientists lack the analytical tools to address a phenomenon rooted in the intrinsic character of capital accumulation. century-long conceptual blinders stand in the way. in the face of such a confusion of views, the majority of which are nothing but ad hoc responses to what is seen as a separate and separable social problem, it is necessary to turn back to the classical marxian tradition where the issue of precariousness was first raised, examining the structural relation of precariousness to capitalism, and how this has changed in time. here the ideas of marx, engels, and morris in the nineteenth century, and those of later thinkers harry braverman, stephen hymer, and samir amin are indispensable. on the basis of the analytical frameworks provided by these thinkers, it is possible to look at the empirical dimensions of worker precariousness both in the united states and globally, and to arrive at definite conclusions about the evolution of capital accumulation and worker precariousness in our time, and its effect on the current epochal crisis. marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 25 engels, marx, and morris and the origins of the concept of precarious labor the theoretical construct of worker precariousness tied to the industrial reserve army of labor had its origin, as indicated, in classical historical materialism, particularly in the work of engels, marx, and morris. in the condition of the working class in england, engels ([1845] 1993, 149) wrote: “every new advance brings with it loss of employment, want, and suffering, and in a country like england, where, without that, there is usually a ‘surplus population,’ to be discharged from work is the worst that can befall the operative. and what a dispiriting, unnerving influence this uncertainty of his position in life, consequent upon the unceasing progress of machinery, must exercise upon the worker, whose lot is precarious enough without it!”3 the working class’s general condition thus can be described in terms of precariousness, where the constant threat of being thrown into the “surplus population” of the unemployed and underemployed only intensifies. for engels ([1845] 1993, 96) this was an integral part of the theory of an “unemployed reserve army of labor” that constituted the whole basis for bourgeois exploitation of the proletariat. in the communist manifesto, marx and engels ([1848] 1964, 17, 72) followed this same line of thought, stating that “the growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial cries, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. the unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious.” it was in capital, however, that marx was to develop fully the theory of the reserve army of labor, and with it a theory of the precariousness of working-class livelihood and working-class life itself. in explaining the general law of accumulation marx ([1867] 1976, 798) stated, “the law by which a constantly increasing quantity of means of production may be set in motion by a progressively diminishing expenditure of human power, thanks to the advance in the productivity of social labour, undergoes a complete inversion [under capitalism], and is expressed thus: the higher the productivity of labour, the greater is the pressure of the workers on the means of employment, the more precarious therefore becomes the condition for their existence, namely the sale of their own labour-power for the increase of alien wealth.” a few pages earlier he stated, similarly, “the more alien wealth they [the workers] produce, and…the more the productivity of their labour increases, the more does their very function as 3 punctuation of translation altered slightly in accord with marx and engels 1975, vol. 4, 433. 26 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages a means for the valorization of capital become precarious” (marx, [1867] 1867, 793). marx, in developing this analysis, discussed the “different forms of the existence of the relative surplus population,” as concrete manifestations of the “general law of accumulation.” here he singled out four distinct forms: the floating, latent, stagnant, and pauperized populations. the most tumultuous layer of the reserve army was the floating population, which comes into existence as a counterpart to the extensive application of machinery and the intensive refinement of the labor process. here, at the center of modern industry, the working population is in constant flux – not only because of an unceasing compulsion to reduce labor requirements, but also because the “consumption of labour-power is so rapid” that the human body can only withstand the physical torture of work for a short time before it is no longer suitable to capital. the factories, workshops, mines, etc., thus tend to seek out the freshest, most easily exploitable layers of the reserve army – particularly children, young women and “nomadic” (migrant) laborers. because of the chaotic and intense nature of production in modern industry, flows in and out of the floating population tend be extremely high. workers are “repelled and attracted, slung backwards and forwards, while, at the same time, constant changes take place in the sex, age, and skill of the industrial conscripts” (marx, [1867] 1976, 583, 795, 818). for marx, this manic relation to labor is a distinguishing feature of modern industry: the attraction of new labor at one moment, during an economic expansion, is matched by an equally strong repulsion the next historical moment, during an economic contraction (marx [1867] 1976, 794-95). nevertheless, the floating population consisted of workers who had a connection – if a precarious one – to the active labor army, with a recent history of employment; they constituted those who would likely be the first to be re-hired in an expansion. the next layer of the reserve army, in marx’s ([1867] 1976, 795-96) description, is the latent surplus population. for the most part this refers to the (self-sustaining) segments of the agricultural (or rural) population. this population served as a vast source of potential labor for capitalist industry (hence, “latent”). internationally, ireland, as marx pointed out, constituted a vast labor reserve, with a huge latent population of largely overpopulated rural workers at the beck and call of english industry. such conditions were the result of the english conquest of ireland and subsequent colonial history. “ireland,” marx explained, “is at present merely an agricultural district of england which happens to be separated by a wide stretch of water from the country for which it provides corn, marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 27 wool, cattle and industrial and military recruits” (marx, [1867] 1976, 57172, 860). so precarious were the conditions of rural laborers in england and ireland that they “had one foot already in the swamp of pauperism,” making it easy to attract them to industry when needed, and unceremoniously discarded them the moment they were no longer of direct use to capital accumulation (marx, [1867] 1976, 796). the stagnant population was for marx the sharpest representation of the precariousness that characterized the labor force as a whole. this layer continuously absorbed the stream of workers expelled from modern industry and agriculture, representing an “inexhaustible reservoir of disposable labour-power.” it was “characterized by a minimum of working time and a minimum of wages.” here employment was “extremely irregular”; and to the extent its members attained employment at all, their degree of exploitation tended to be extremely high (marx [1867] 1976, 796-98). this was the “self-reproducing and self-perpetuating element of the working class,” which was forced back further upon its own devices. the stagnant population represented “a proportionately greater part in the general increase” of the working class, with its increase in “inverse proportion of to the level of wages.” such was the condition of workers in the stagnant population, marx wrote, that “it calls to mind the boundless reproduction of animals individually weak and constantly hunted down.” it is here that marx famously anticipated the notion of the demographic transition, arguing that population increase, contrary to malthusian assumptions, falls rather than rises with an increase in wages (marx [1867] 1976, 796-97). in relation to the stagnant population, he pointed out that day laborers (particularly in ireland), constituted the “most precarious form of wage” labor, since it often required traveling long distances to get to work and back, long hours for abysmal pay, and 4 in marx’s analysis “manufacture” still had its original meaning of made directly by human labor, or handicraft production, while the term “machinofacture” was used to describe modern industry (corresponding to the way the word manufacture is used today). when marx refers to “modern manufacture,” he therefore means modern handicraft production, which is distinguished both from traditional handicraft and modern industry. in his analysis of unregulated (informal) work and outwork attached to the factory system, marx further distinguishes between modern manufacture and modern domestic labor (the latter, modern in the sense it is not to be confused with traditional domestic labor). yet, in practice modern manufacture and modern domestic industry were so closely related, in marx’s analysis, as to be almost indistinguishable – though in establishments where it was mainly women working in a small workshop (usually the home of some small employer), as in dressmaking or millinery, it clearly fit the character of modern domestic industry. in practice, marx seems to have often conflated the two under the rubric of modern domestic industry. 28 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages absolutely no safeguards, promoting sicknesses, disease, and want (marx [1867] 1976, 865). central to the structural conditions governing the stagnant population was the development of “so-called domestic industry” or “modern domestic industry” alongside with “modern manufacturing” (modern handicraft production) (marx, [1867] 1976, 591).4 modern domestic industry mainly took place in the homes of workers or in small workshops, for example lace-making establishments. this was a form of what marx called “outwork” or subcontracting attached to the factory system. in modern domestic industry, he wrote, exploitation is “still more shameless than in modern manufacture,” because the workers’ power of resistance declines with their dispersal; because a whole series of plundering parasites insinuate themselves between the actual employer and the worker he employs; because a domestic industry has always to compete either with the factory system, or with manufacturing in the same branch of production; because poverty robs the worker of the conditions most essential to his labour, of space, light and ventilation; because employment becomes more and more irregular; and, finally, because in these last places of refuge for the masses made ‘redundant’ by large-scale industry and agriculture, competition for work necessarily attains its maximum (marx, ([1867] 1976, 591). labor conditions were particularly horrid in modern domestic industry because it took the stagnant surplus population as its basis – i.e., the conditions of the former were reflective of the conditions of the latter. here was to be found a super-abundance of cheap, freshly exploitable labor – the majority of whom were women and children. the precariousness of workers in modern domestic industry was reflected in the fact that workers were rendered “redundant in the form of underpayment and over-work” to the point of superexploitation. workers in modern domestic industry, predominantly women and young girls, were “always paid less than the minimum wage” (marx [1867], 1976, 602-4, 825, 863). the typical modern domestic industry was preponderantly women and young girls working in dressmaking establishments as “outworkers” attached to modern manufacture. marx pointed to a shirt factory in londonderry that employed one thousand workers in the factory and a further “9000 outworkers spread over the country districts.” such outworkers were scattered around in the large towns and rural areas in marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 29 small establishments with the result that “worker’s power of resistance declines with their dispersal.” this tended to accentuate the “murderous side of this economy.” the most notorious of these were the “mistress’s houses” in clothing manufacture. “in english barracks the regulation space allotted to each soldier is 500 to 600 cubic feet, and in the military hospitals 1,200 cubic feet. but in those finishing sties there are between 67 and 100 cubic feet for each person. at the same time the oxygen of the air is consumed by gas lamps.” children began work at age six and fourteen-hour days (or more), “when business is brisk” were not uncommon (marx, [1867] 1976, 595-99). what marx called “modern industry” or the factory system increasingly came under the factory acts, while branches of production associated with modern domestic industry and modern manufacture, which the stagnant population depended on for its exceedingly precarious employment, were still “without legal limit to exploitation,” unfettered by “legal regulations” (marx, [1867] 1976, 353). it thus corresponded in today’s parlance with the informal economy. here, marx insisted, could still be found conditions where children were required to work from 4:00 a.m. to midnight. he quoted the daily telegraph to the effect that in these sectors there was still a struggle to limit the workday to an eighteen hour day! examining branches of production as varied as pottery, wallpaper making, bread making, and lacemaking, marx ended with a discussion of the conditions of dressmakers in london, which was to overlap with his later discussion of modern domestic industry. there he recounted the story, notorious at the time, of 20-year-old mary ann walkley who had died of working continuously for 26 ½ hours, in one of the most respectable dressmaking establishments in london, under conditions of a chronic lack of sleep, oxygen, and cubic space per individual. walkely was being forced to work long hours to produce dresses for a ball announced by the princess of wales. even the morning star, the organ of free traders responded by declaring “our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine and die.” (marx, [1867] 1976, 354-67). as joseph fracchia notes, the exploitation of labor power under capitalism with the reserve army as its fulcrum “is not abstract but concretely rooted in individual bodies, it is [for marx], ‘that monstrosity of a suffering population of workers held in reserve for the changing exploitative needs of capital.’…capitalism reproduces its supply of labourpower by perpetuating, over generations, a class of ‘needy individuals.’ and life-long neediness is a concerted attack on the body and the bodily capacities of those in need” (fracchia, 2008, 47; marx, [1867] 1976, 618, 30 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages 719, 784). the precariousness of employment under capitalism extends to the conditions of work itself, and to the using up of the corporeal basis of human existence. the stagnant population, for marx, fades over into the fully pauperized population. marx identified the “lowest sediment” of the relative surplus population with pauperized workers – who included both the lowest segments of the relative surplus population and elements that were past all employment. the pauperized layer held down the industrial reserve army and the working class as a whole. the largest portion of this layer dwelt “in the sphere of [official] pauperism” – the remainder being made up by “vagabonds, criminals, prostitutes, in short the actual lumpenproletariat.” the degrees of “official pauperism” marx identified included: first, those able to work. one need only glance superficially at the statistics of english pauperism to find that the quantity of paupers increases with every crisis of trade, and diminishes with every revival. second, orphans and pauper children. these are candidates for the industrial reserve army, and in times of great prosperity, such as they year 1860, for instance, they are enrolled in the army of active workers both speedily and in large numbers. third, the demoralized, the ragged, and those unable to work, chiefly people who succumb to their incapacity for adaptation, an incapacity which results from the division of labour; people who have lived beyond the worker’s average life-span; and the victims of industry, whose numbers increase with the growth of dangerous machinery, of mines chemical works, etc., the mutilated, the sickly, the widows, etc. pauperism is the hospital of the active labour-army and the dead weight of the industrial reserve army. its production is included in that of the relative surplus population, its necessity is implied by their necessity; along with the surplus population, pauperism forms a condition of capitalist production, and the capitalist development of wealth (marx, [1867] 1976, 797, 807; engels, [1845] 1993, 96-97). in the condition of the english working class, engels emphasized that the poorest sectors of the working class, the stagnant and pauperized sectors, engaged in a vast realm of hawking whatever they could, a realm of “huckstering and peddling” on every street corner, eking out a precarious existence by selling “shoe and corset laces, braces, twine, cakes, oranges, every kind of small articles,” as well as “matches...sealing wax, and patent mixtures for lighting fires.” other “socalled jobbers” went about the streets looking for any kind of small job: a few hours or a day of work. such was the kind of informal economy that has everywhere been associated with poverty (engels, [1845] 1993, 97). marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 31 marx drew on census statistics for england and wales to point to the much higher formal employment of working-class women than men, largely because women made up 85 percent of all domestic servants. the numbers of domestic servants exceeded those of all textile factory workers (the vast majority of which were women and young children) and metal workers (of which there were lower numbers, but which were predominantly men) put together. precariousness, in the sense of being part of the reserve army, was thus more likely to fall on men, who traditionally earned higher wages than women when employed, but were increasingly deemed unemployable by a capitalist industry forever looking for cheaper labor (marx, [1867] 1976, 574-575). capitalism, was not confined to single countries but was a global system of production. the reserve army of labor, in marx’s view, was thus an international phenomenon, but including the wider periphery via colonialism. “a new and international division of labour springs up, one suited to the requirements of the main industrial countries, and it converts one part of the globe into a chiefly agricultural field of production for supplying the other part, which remains a pre-eminently industrial field” (marx, [1867] 1976, 579-80). precariousness was itself understood as a global phenomenon, impacting the colonized regions most intensely. marx pointed out that “the profit rate is generally higher there [in the periphery] on account of the lower degree of development, and so too is the exploitation of labour through the use of slaves, coolies, etc.” (marx, [186365] 1981, 345). if life was cheap and precarious in the center of the capitalist system, he recognized, it was even more so in the colonized periphery where one found the conditions of primitive (primary) accumulation: “the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population...the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of india, and the conversion of africa into a preserve from the commercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production. these idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation” (marx, [1867] 1976, 915). marx’s theory of working-class precariousness was to be extended by the most brilliant marxian theorist of late nineteenth-century england, namely the celebrated artist, writer, and socialist, william morris. it was morris more than any other thinker in the 1880s and ’90s who built on marx’s theory of the reserve army of labor as manifested primarily in the growing precariousness of workers. as he declared in 1883, in “art under plutocracy,” the result of the degradation of the labor process under capitalism, and the terms in which employment was provided or denied, resulted in conditions for the worker that were extremely “precarious,” 32 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages creating conditions of absolute estrangement (morris, 1915, vol. 23, 17677). likewise, in his famous lecture “useful work versus useless toil” (first delivered in 1883 and later incorporated into his 1888 book signs of change), morris wrote of “the precariousness of life among the workers” resulting from the tendency “to increase in the number of the ‘reserve army of labour.’” the monetary contributions that workers made to trade unions were an extra charge that workers had to pay out of their wages simply to combat “precariousness of…employment” against which organized labor was the only defense. so important did morris consider the issue of “precariousness” in defining the condition of workers under capitalism, that in his 1887 lecture, “what socialists want,” he took the unusual step of penciling “precariousness” in the margin, indicating that it was a major, overriding theme to develop further (morris, [1888] 1896, 169, 187; morris 1969, 232; salmon 1996, 127; leopold 2003, xvi). later, in his 1894 lecture, “what is: what should be: what will be,” morris argued that “higher wages and less precarious work, more leisure, more share in public advantages” constituted the main demands of the workers, but that these goals could only be achieved via “the beginnings of socialism” (thompson, 1976, 613-14). for morris, it was the instability of working class life – the need constantly to struggle to hold on to or find a job, the threat (and reality for many) of unemployment and underemployment, the extreme moral and physical suffering, degradation, and even death brought on by exploitative working conditions, and the omnipresence of pauperism – that constituted the essence of working class life. such insecurity, degradation, and useless toil undermined all free human potential. the global reserve army in the age of generalized precariousness the structural basis of marx’s concept of worker precariousness was the reserve army of labor: the fulcrum of the general law of capital accumulation. as opposed to today’s use of “precariousness” or “precarity” as a kind of “cultural meme,” marxian theory thus offers an integrated theoretical approach and scientific outlook to working class insecurity and exploitation, geared to revolutionary social change. here the notion of the proletariat is not seen as opposed to precariousness – giving rise to a whole new category of the “precariat” – rather precariousness is a defining element in working class existence and struggle. in the immediate post-second world war years, the capitalist world economy, centered in the united states, western europe, and japan, experienced a period of relatively rapid economic expansion based marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 33 on: (1) undisputed u.s. hegemony, (2) a second wave of automobilization in the united states, (3) the rebuilding of the war-torn economies in europe and japan (and automobilization there), (4) the massive growth of the sales effort based in madison avenue, and (5) two regional wars in asia along with the general militarization associated with the cold war. the higher employment, particularly in the korean and vietnam war years, coupled with domestic repression in the united states, and a welfare state (especially in europe – necessary to counter the challenge represented by the soviet union and eastern europe), created an era of relative peace between monopoly capital and the business unions, which viewed themselves as its junior, imperialist partners. multinational corporations emerged in this period as major actors on the world stage. workers at the center of the system benefitted indirectly in this period from the world imperialist system. the u.s. economy peaked in the late 1960s, and in the mid-1970s, as the various external factors that had propped it up gradually waned. consequently, it entered a severe crisis (corresponding with the end of vietnam war), leading to a secular slowdown in economic growth that was to turn into full-fledged stagnation. by the late 1970s, capital had initiated the process of global economic restructuring, cutbacks in welfare state spending, attacks on trade unions, and other measures, commencing the heightened class war that was to become known as neoliberalism (kolko, 1988; magdoff and foster, 2014). in the 1980s, corporations and wealthy individuals seeking outlets for their surplus capital in a climate of overaccumulation and market saturation, in which productive investment no longer seemed viable, began increasingly to speculate, first in corporate mergers, and then in the financial system more generally – to which the financial sector responded by creating an endless array of exotic financial instruments that sliced and diced risk, all based on mounting debt. the financialization of the u.s. and world economy in the new age of monopoly-finance capital generated limited expansion, supported by new digital technology. yet, none of this was able to prevent the deepening economic stagnation at the center of the world capitalist system, with the rate of economic growth in the triad of the united states/canada, europe, and japan, declining decade by decade from the 1960s to the opening decades of the present century (foster and mcchesney, 2012, 4). in the new globalized economy promoted by multinational corporations, a global labor arbitrage was pursued whereby companies took advantage of the much lower wages in the periphery, shifting production to the global south, which by 2008 accounted for about 70 percent of world production 34 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages (as compared with around 50 percent in 1980) (foster, mcchesney, and jonna, 2011, 4). this put pressure on the real wages of workers in the global north, who were experiencing higher unemployment and increased competition from low wages of workers in the south. the latent reserve army of migrant labor from other countries (for example, mexican and central american workers in the case of the united states, turkish workers in the case of germany, and algerian workers in france) generated further conflict within the working class nationally and internationally, as did new waves of imperial wars in the middle east, the former yugoslavia, and north africa in the 1990s and the opening decades of this century (made possible by the disappearance of the ussr from the world stage). the fall of the soviet-type societies and the reintegration of china into the capitalist world market brought hundreds of millions of additional workers into the global reserve army, constituting a new era of globalization. all of this served to remove the floor on wages and working conditions of workers throughout the world. in general, the global working class and its various segments were soon in a race to the bottom: a reality bound to create a new sense of precariousness.5 the great financial crisis, emerging in the united states in 2007, and extending in 2008 and 2009 to the world economy as a whole, led to vast increase in global unemployment and restructuring. an enormous growth of part-time, temporary, and contingent work, as well as greater unemployment/underemployment generally, constituted the new, more perilous structural condition of the international labor market. the failure of most analysts, even on the left, to understand this in terms of marx’s general law of accumulation has created enormous confusion. conventional social science has characteristically treated the more exploitative relations between labor and capital as mere anomalies with no essential relation to the system and no prior historical or theoretical basis, while many left theorists have scarcely done any better, enamored by mere discursive constructs. within marxism itself, the return to marx’s reserve army of labor analysis in the attempt to understand both the reemergence of stagnation and its effects on the working class and the internationalization of monopoly capital began with the economic slowdown in the 1970s – even before the crisis had fully taken hold. the most important theoretical developments in the analysis of labor conditions and their relation to 5 an exception is in china and some countries in asia, where workers experienced rising wages due to rapid accumulation, based on the globalization of the world economy, and the incorporation of their latent (rural worker) reserve army into production. marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 35 accumulation emerged in the 1970s in the path breaking work of marxian theorists harry braverman ([1974] 1998) and stephen hymer (1979). braverman most famously drew on marx’s labor process analysis to demonstrate the degradation of labor under monopoly capitalism. but he also engaged in a close study of the structure and composition of the working class in the united states – both the active labor army and the reserve army of labor (jonna and foster, 2014). hymer emerged as the foremost theorist of multinational corporations, building his analysis on industrial organization theory and the theory of monopoly capital. he went on, however, to extend his work to examining the effects on the international division of labor, building on marx’s general law of accumulation. in 1975, braverman (1975, 29) pointed to the rapid growth of the reserve army of labor in the united states, as well as elsewhere: “the most striking thing to emerge from an examination of the [u.s.] unemployment statistics from the second world war to the present is the secular trend of the gradual but persistent enlargement of the pool of officially counted unemployment.… the unemployment rate of 5 to 6 percent which characterized the recession years of 1949-1950 has now become the prosperity rate of the seventies, the rate which we would be delighted to have back again.” nevertheless, the deficiencies of the data, braverman argued, meant that they were only crude indications of what was really happening, since the larger part of the industrial reserve army (the vast numbers of part-time workers wanting full time work, temporary workers, discouraged workers, the marginally attached, and the economically inactive population) remained uncounted in the official unemployment rate. it was the rapid growth of the reserve army of labor as a whole that was substantially undermining the relatively well-paid working-class sectors (and even the middle class), creating a wider sense of precariousness. more and more workers were drawn into the low-paid service and retail sectors, and into underemployment, unemployment, and unproductive employment. in a detailed statistical analysis, braverman ([1974] 1998, 261-62, 1994, 18-21) demonstrated that in 1970 approximately 69 percent of the available work force in the united states (encompassing both the active labor army and the relevant portions of the reserve army) were attached to the six basic working class occupations. more recent analysis has shown that this remains remarkably constant over forty years later (allowing for shifts in occupations) with the working class constituting some 69 percent of the available work force in the united sates in 2011 (jonna and foster, 2014, 5-8). however, there has been a big shift in the quality of 36 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages employment, with many more workers in low-paid sectors and with parttime, temporary, and contingent jobs. all of this means that the precariousness of the workforce and the downward pull of the reserve army on labor as a whole is growing. in 1975, in “international politics and international economics: a radical approach,” hymer (1979, 256-72) developed an approach to the international division of labor to accompany his analysis of the growth of multinational corporations. building on marx’s general law of accumulation, hymer (1979, 262-63) argued that the two major factors in the development of the capitalist exploitation of labor were technological change that allowed the development of a greater internal reserve army of labor, and the absorption of the “latent surplus population” in rural areas, breaking down pre-capitalist areas and incorporating them into capitalist production. by these two means (what hymer [1979, 269] called “the industrial reserve army” and the “external reserve army”) capital is able to increase the supply of labor in line with marx’s ([1867] 1976, 764) fundamental proposition that “accumulation of capital is, therefore, multiplication of the proletariat.” “above the proletariat,” hymer (1979, 263) wrote, stands a vast officer class of managers, technicians, and bureaucrats to organize it and to overcome its resistance by keeping it divided. below it is a pool of unemployed, underemployed, and badly-paid strata continuously fed by technological change and the opening up of new hinterlands, which undercut its position and inhibit its development toward class consciousness. this reserve army drives the labor aristocracy to keep on working and keeps it loyal to the capitalist system from fear of falling from its superior position. by the nature of things, these different strata often come from different regions within a country, different racial or ethnic groups, and different age and sex classes. thus, the competitive cleavages between workers often reflect lines of race, creed, color, age, sex, and national origin, which make working class consciousness more difficult. the class consciousness of workers, hymer (1979, 259) stressed – quoting from marx’s capital – required that the workers come to the conclusion that by generating through their labor the accumulation of capital, they only increase capital’s economic power relative to themselves, via the action of the reserve army of labor, thereby making their own situation “more precarious.” once that realization was reached, the marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 37 revolutionary role of workers depended on eliminating the competition and inequality within their ranks and reaching out to a wider human liberation. he held out the hope that labor, though increasingly divided by the new international division of labor, and by all sorts of differing social identities, and caught in a condition of growing precariousness, would nonetheless struggle to eliminate the competition within its ranks “at higher and higher levels until it reaches a world historic perspective far more total than capital and replaces capitalism by socialism. this unification, however, is a long-drawn-out process” (hymer, 1979, 271). today the field of operation of the global reserve army of labor spans the entire world. the struggle of labor, as thinkers such as marx, engels, and morris recognized in the nineteenth century, and hymer recognized even more so in the late twentieth century, must therefore be international. labor precariousness ebbs and flows with the global reserve army of labor, but the external labor army, though it remains vast, is not inexhaustible, and is diminishing, requiring that capital displace current labor if accumulation is to continue. meanwhile, billions of people – as fred magdoff (2004) explained in “a precarious existence: the fate of billions,” and as mike davis (2007) expounded in the planet of slums – are concentrating in the large urban centers of the global south where precariousness of existence is the reality, with close to a third of workers living on less than two dollars a day (ilo, 2015a, 28). nothing but a new international of labor is capable of addressing the catastrophic conditions that have emerged for innumerable people (along with the economic devastation of much of the world, rising militarism and war, and impending global ecological catastrophe).6 as hymer (1979, 270-71) wrote with respect to the tendencies at the top of the imperial order in his day: “the structure of the american empire, which kept some sort of order…in the past, is dissolving and a hobbesian-like struggle of all against all seems to be emerging at the world level.” under these circumstances, a rational, socialist society, geared to the common welfare becomes imperative, not simply for a better life, but increasingly as a requirement of human life itself. we can see the significance of the global reserve army of labor, and the source of the precariousness of most of the world’s population, using data from the international labor organization (ilo), which has employed categories closely related to the layers of the reserve army identified by marx. chart 1 shows “the layers of the global working class” from 1991-2013. here it can be seen that the global reserve army 6 on the question of a new international see mészáros, 2015, 199-217. 38 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages constitutes some 60 percent of the available working population in the world, exceeding that of the active labor army of wage-workers plus small proprietors. in 2013, according to international labour organization (ilo, 2015b) figures, the global reserve army consisted of some 2.3 billion people, compared to around 1.65 billion in the active labor army, many of whom are precariously unemployed. the number of officially unemployed at that time (corresponding roughly to marx’s floating population) was 200 million workers. some 1.5 billion workers were classified as “vulnerably employed” (related to marx’s stagnant population), made up of workers working “on their own account” (informal workers and rural subsistence workers) and “contributing family workers” (domestic labor). another 600 million individuals between the prime working ages of 25-54 were classified as economically inactive. this is a heterogeneous category but undoubtedly consists preponderantly of those of prime working age who are a part of the pauperized population. these figures, however, severely downplay the full extent of the global reserve army (in marx’s conception) because those who are parttime, temporary, and contingent workers show up in the ilo figures as employed wage workers, which do not consider the increasingly precarious conditions of many of those with only a partial and insecure relation to employment (foster, mcchesney, and jonna, 2011, 19-26). the share of workers globally making two dollars a day or less stood at 26 percent in 2013, though the percentage is much higher in parts of the global south, such as sub-saharan africa and south asia, where the working poor make up more than 60 percent of wage workers (ilo 2015b). nearly 60 percent of wage workers globally are part-time or in some form of temporary employment; in addition, over 22 percent are self-employed (ilo, 2015a, 13, 39).7 7 note: this data is based on the latest year available for the given country marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 39 chart 1. layers of the global working class, 1991–2013 chart 2 shows the same ilo data with respect to the developed countries. here the proportion of wage workers is larger, and the reserve army of labor proportionately smaller. however, what is clear from even these conservative estimates is that the reserve army even in the advanced capitalist states is massive, constituting some 27 percent of the available work force in 2013, and thus perpetuating, and indeed deepening, a condition of precariousness in the working class majority. in the developing countries he reserve army stood at 64 percent of the available workforce in 2013. sources: “table r3. status in employment,” “table r5. unemployment rate” (world and regional aggregates) and “table 13. inactivity” (standard query). international labour organization (ilo). 2015. “key indicators of the labour market (kilm), 8th edition.” geneva. notes: since the figures on inactivity are given by country they should be considered underestimates due to data unavailability for certain countries and years. 40 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages sources: see chart 1. notes: the category “developed countries” is equivalent to “developed economies & european union” given in kilm. also see the notes to chart 1. chart 2. layers of the working class in developed countries, 1991–2013 conclusion the renewed focus, particularly on the left, on precariousness reflects a kind of coming to terms with the capitalism, and particularly the globalized monopoly-finance capital, of our time. concepts like “precarity” and even “precariat” may have a role if it means describing more fully the conditions that characterize the reserve army of labor and the increasingly tenuous hold of the active labor army on its jobs and working conditions. such concepts can help to demonstrate the fact, as marx emphasized, that capital’s repeated promises to workers are false ones, and that it is now essential that the working class and society move on – in the direction of socialism. more than a century of marxian political-economic critique allows us to appreciate the extent to which the conditions that marx described, focusing on a small corner of europe in the mid-nineteenth century, are now global, and all the more perilous. but marx’s theory of working-class precariousness | 41 8 for marx the goal of the working-class movement was not the universalization of the proletariat but its “final emancipation...the ultimate abolition of the wages system” (marx, [1865] 1976, 62). in the age of what amin (2013a, 2013b) has called the “generalized proletariat” versus “generalized monopoly capitalism” the path lies clearly before us. indeed, in contrast to wacquant (2007, 72-73), who contends that “the precariat can only make itself to immediately unmake itself” – as opposed to “the proletariat in the marxist vision of history, which is called upon to abolish itself in the long run by uniting and universalizing itself” – we need to emphasize once again the significance of the reserve army of labor (the precariat) within marx’s understanding of the working class. here the historic task remains what it was before – the forging of working-class unity – not in order to “universalize” the proletariat, but to transcend it.8 references allison, anne. 2013. precarious japan. duke university press. amin, samir. 2013a. three essays on marx’s value theory. new york: monthly review press. amin, samir. 2013b. the implosion of contemporary capitalism. new york: monthly review press. appay, béatrice. 2010. “‘precarization’ and 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precarious—on thee concept of the ‘precariat’ and its misuses,” new left project, february 10, http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/we_ar e_all_precarious_on_the_concept_of_the_precariat_and_its_misuses. standing, guy. 2011. the precariat. london: bloomsbury academic. thompson, e.p. 1976. william morris: romantic to revolutionary. new york: pantheon. vosko, leah f. 2000. temporary work. university of toronto press. vosko, leah f. 2010. managing the margins. oxford university press. wacquant, loïc. 2007. “territorial stigmatization in the age of advanced marginality.” thesis eleven 91 (1): 66–77. doi:10.1177/0725513607082003. wilson, william julius. 1986. the truly disadvantaged. chicago: university of chicago press. 46 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages exploitation, stagnant wages and underemployment in advanced capitalism: a canadian perspective d.w. livingstone1 abstract: in the current context of heightened worker productivity, stagnant wages and increasing exploitation, underemployment of wellqualified workers is also increasing. basic features of underemployment include time-based, skill-based and intensity of effort. recent empirical estimates of these features of underemployment in canada are summarized. prospects for reducing current levels of underemployment are also briefly considered. keywords: underemployment; time-based underemployment; skillbased underemployment; intensity of work effort introduction a clear pattern has been widely documented since the 1970s. the real wages of workers, and especially of those employed in creating private goods commodities, have stagnated since the 1970s, while labour productivity in terms of the goods produced per hour has continued to increase significantly. this is true both in advanced capitalist economies generally and canada particularly (e.g. carchedi, 2011; lieberman, 2014; office of the parliamentary budget officer, 2014). in other words, workers are doing more work for less pay, while private capital increases its profitability – a condition of increasing exploitation. since the 1970s, this “innermost secret” of capitalism has become increasingly evident. the central driving force is the extraction of surplus labour from hired workers who combine their labour power with more automated technologies to produce more competitively priced commodities for more profitable sales. corporate capitalists and capital-aligned state agencies have crafted a new regime of accumulation with more stringent limits on workers’ rights and social benefits, and fewer limits on capital, commonly known as “neoliberalism” (see gindin, 2015). workers have diminished bargaining powers, with decline of unions and growth of reserve armies of labour. the most evident consequences of this new regime for working people are 1 d.w. livingstone is canada research chair in lifelong learning and work and professor emeritus in the department of social justice education at the ontario institute for studies in education at the university of toronto. exploitation,stagnantwagesandunderemploymentinadvancedcapitalism:acanadianperspective|47 stagnant wages, increasing debt loads to try to make ends meet, precarious employment and chronic unemployment. in this piece, i want to underline another pervasive aspect of this new regime that is often overlooked: underemployment. underemployment (also known as: “underutilization”, “overeducation”, “over-qualification” or much of the “education-jobs gap”) generically refers to the less than optimal use of labour potential. however, agreement on appropriate uses of labour and extent of utilization is problematic in all class-based societies. in advanced capitalist societies, most paid labour is related to the production and sale of goods and service commodities. from private employers’ standpoint, labour utilization, is efficient application of workers’ capacities to ensure the greatest number of units produced and sold in a given time, thereby enabling maximum profits. from hired workers’ standpoints, appropriate utilization may involve spending sufficient time and care to ensure high quality and social usefulness of finished units, as well as adequate monetary benefits and recuperation to enable maintenance of continuing good quality of work. most of the literature on underemployment ignores this difference. but it is implicit in discussions that argue that connections between knowledge and work are mediated by negotiating powers of those in different social groups (e.g. grugulis, 2003). with greater power comes greater influence over what is deemed to count as valuable labour and the extent to which its use is recognized and rewarded. workers with little workplace power may be relegated to ‘getting a little of our own back’ by withholding some skill or effort (e.g. hamper, 1991). effective labour utilization from the employer’s perspective may equate to being used up and excreted as waste from workers’ standpoints (yates, 2011). diverse theoretical perspectives have been used to explain relations between labour capacity and employers’ job requirements, including classical economic theory, human capital theory, segmented labour market theories and credentialism.2 i use a historical materialist theory positing that inter-firm competition, conflicts between employers and employees over working conditions, and technological innovation all provoke incessant shifts in the number of enterprises, employees, and types of jobs available. through technological innovation and workers’ learning on the job, increased efficiency leads either to expanded production or to unemployment of excess workers, in either case modifying 2 for fuller discussions of theories of mismatches between workers’ competencies and labour market needs, see desjardins and rubenson (2011), livingstone (2009), mckee-ryan and harvey (2011). 48 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the overall demand for labour. popular demand for general education and specialized training increases cumulatively as people seek more knowledge, different specific skills and added credentials in order to live and qualify for jobs in such a changing economy. in advanced capitalist countries, mismatches are inevitable between employers’ aggregate demand and requirements for employees on the one hand, and the aggregate supply and qualifications of job seekers on the other. with liberal democratic state regimes that still proclaim the right to equal educational opportunity and widespread public access to knowledge through such means as the internet, the predicted tendency is for the supply of qualified job seekers to exceed the demand for most jobs-a growing reserve army of qualified labour available for increasing exploitation by capital in the absence of greater collective organization of working people. this paper identifies a few basic conceptual dimensions of underemployment, briefly summarizes empirical research on patterns of underemployment, and more briefly discusses current prospects for underemployment and possible alternatives for reducing it.3 basic dimensions of underemployment three basic dimensions of underemployment can be distinguished: time, skill and intensity of effort. the underemployment of potential labour time is the most evident dimension. the amount of time people are gainfully employed may vary from zero to virtually all their waking hours. the most evident time-based aspect of underemployment is official unemployment including those without paid jobs who are actively looking for employment. but less official forms of unemployment include various discouraged workers and others such as prisoners and retired people who want paid work but are restricted from the labour market. in addition, there are those in involuntarily reduced employment, people holding temporary, part-time jobs but who want more employment. skill -based underemployment refer to the surplus capacities, skills, education, or knowledge that workers bring to the job, in comparison with what is needed for the job. there is much dispute over the notions of skills, relevant education, and knowledge. numerous ways of conceiving dimensions of the gap between employed workers’ capabilities and the requirements of their jobs have been suggested (e.g., kalleberg, 2008; mckee-ryan and harvey, 2011). three relatively straightforward aspects of the skill gap between workers’ capacities and their job requirements are 3 parts of this paper have been adapted from livingstone (forthcoming 2016) and livingstone (forthcoming 2018). for fuller development, see livingstone (2009). exploitation,stagnantwagesandunderemploymentinadvancedcapitalism:acanadianperspective|49 widely recognized: • entry credential gap between the training credentials that job entrants bring and those required by employers; • performance gap between the performance capability of workers and the performance level actually required to do the job; • subjective gap between job holders’ personal assessments of their capabilities and their perceived job requirements. with regard to intensity of effort, those who begin a job become more efficient as they gain experience needed to perform it (pankhurst and livingstone, 2006). the level of production of goods and services in a given time will be closely related to the intensity of effort given by experienced workers. employers’ imperative is to ensure that workers maintain or increase their intensity of effort to continue to produce more goods and services in that time. workers’ overriding objective is to ensure they provide sufficient effort to keep the job without exhausting themselves and losing it. underemployment of effort by workers is a continual threat to employers’ profitability; supplying adequate effort but not becoming over-employed to the extent they threaten their subsistence is the continual challenge for workers. consider these three dimensions together. for employers, having an ample supply of qualified workers to employ for varying amounts of time and skill use with high intensity of effort is central to profit maximization. for workers, being fully employed in a job that allows them to use their accomplished skills without exhausting efforts is the optimal condition. so, underemployment is a highly contradictory phenomenon. without pretending to resolve the contradiction between standpoints of capital and labour, we will look briefly at empirical patterns and then, more briefly, at prospects/alternatives. empirical patterns time-based underemployment. in global capitalism today, the vast majority of the labour force is located in developing and underdeveloped countries. as a result of agricultural enclosures and limited urban industrialization, there are now massively more adult people in these countries without any meaningful employment or only involuntary parttime jobs than the numbers with full-time paid employment, a burgeoning “relative surplus population” (neilson and stubbs, 2011). in advanced capitalist countries, official unemployment rates of those actively seeking employment, the long-term unemployed, discouraged workers and involuntary part-time employed all have been increasing secularly to the 50 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages point that chronic structural unemployment and involuntary underemployment are becoming widely recognized as major social problems (e.g. oecd, 2014). in canada, current estimates put official unemployment at around 7 percent of the eligible labour force, involuntary part-timers at around 5 percent, and discouraged workers (including many not actively searching but who want to work) at up to similar magnitudes (oecd, 2014; jackson, 2010). so, up to 20 percent of the potential canadian labour force could now be underemployed on the time dimension, a very substantial proportion and a growing trend in recent decades. skill-based underemployment. if the focus is limited to the employed labour force, a primary issue is the extent to which workers are able to use their skills in their jobs. leaving aside the issue of different conceptions and measures of “skill”,4 a series of canadian national surveys in 1998, 2004 and 2010 using self-report measures, found that credential overqualification for job entry increased from 27 percent to 31 percent , while under-qualification dropped from 22 percent to 18 percent during this period. the same series of surveys, found that the over-qualification for performance requirements remained at about 28 percent through this period, while the proportion under-qualified dropped from 20 percent to 15 percent. thirdly, this series found subjective feelings of overqualification increasing from 22 percent to 30 percent over this period while subjective under-qualification remained at around 5 percent (livingstone, 2012; 2013). if these three measures are combined, by 2010 a small majority of the employed canadian labour force reported experiencing one or more of these forms of skill-based underemployment. while few other studies have considered such combined effects, there are now many others that have found similar magnitudes of specific aspects of underemployment (see livingstone forthcoming, 2016). the basic conclusion is that skill-based underemployment is being experienced by a large and growing portion of the employed labour force in canada and throughout the advanced capitalist world. underemployment of effort. the weight of evidence suggests that the intensity of effort required of many employees has been increasing in recent decades. average wages have generally been stagnant over this period while productivity rates have increased significantly (carchedi, 2011). many workers have taken on heavier workloads without comparable compensation. for example, in the u.s. the proportion of salaried workers entitled to receive overtime pay for their effort dropped 4 illustrations of the effects of different measures of skill on underemployment measures may be found in livingstone (forthcoming, 2016). exploitation,stagnantwagesandunderemploymentinadvancedcapitalism:acanadianperspective|51 by about three­quarters in the 1979-2014 period (eisenberry, 2015). increasing numbers of workers have been doing more work for less pay. there is widespread evidence of intensification and few signs of underemployment of effort. in sum, both time-based and skill-based aspects of underemployment are found to be very substantial and growing in recent times, while evidence of underemployment of effort is becoming rarer and rarer. prospects/alternatives time and skill-based underemployment are now persisting for the potential labour force of advanced capitalist economies through different phases of business cycles. whatever measures of skill are used, it is also clear that: (1) workers’ knowledge and extent of learning activities now increasingly exceed the narrow formal requirements of existing jobs; (2) such underemployment also applies to computer skills in purported ‘knowledge economies’; and (3) higher and sometimes extreme levels of such underemployment occur among youths, recent immigrants, people of colour, and disabled people. workers have also been found to continually reformulate their knowledge to ‘micro-modify’ their jobs. a growing corpus of workplace learning studies indicate that workers’ rich array of learning activities increasingly exceed current actual job requirements and that people generally are already intently engaged in an ‘educational arms race’ for credentials (livingstone, 2009). these findings should raise serious doubts about the wisdom of policy responses to time and skill-based underemployment that continue to be preoccupied with education and training solutions to economic problems. advocates of both human capital theory and a knowledge-based economy persist in asserting educational investment, increasingly funded by students themselves, is the answer. indeed, from employers’ standpoint, a surplus of skills may continue to be both a short-term and long-term benefit. dominant discourse still insists that more training and more information about available (and generally diminishing) qualified jobs is the basic solution to time and skill-based underemployment. the fact that an oversupply of qualified workers is now essential to maintain levels of exploitation and reproduction of advanced capitalism is rarely hinted at. education provisions can always been improved, as well as more equitable guidance services for transitions between school and paid work. but effective policies for reducing time and skill-based underemployment are more likely to come from the adoption by employers of job designs and organizational practices that permit workers to more fully use existing 52 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages skills (e.g. warhurst and findlay, 2012), as well as from public policies that facilitate the redistribution of paid work time, wider recognition of workers’ prior learning, incentives for workplace democratization and creation of sustainable green jobs (livingstone, 2009). gaining more knowledge to cope with our environment is the most inherently human activity and virtually always valuable. it is only in the narrow sense of qualifications in excess of what employers require for specific jobs that the concept of ‘over-education’ is intelligible as wasted investment. on the other hand, the notion of ‘over-employment’ is rarely heard; it is absurd from employers’ standpoint which is committed to maximizing the profit-generating efforts of employees. to some employees, this notion is intelligible as intensification of work, or exploitation. wider recognition of such exploitation among employees is a precondition of movement toward alternative forms of production based on economic democracy, sustainable relations with our environment and decent, fulfilling jobs. the increasingly pervasive condition of underemployment within capitalism also provides more highly qualified workers with opportunity to recognize levels of exploitation they share with less qualified workers (livingstone and scholtz forthcoming, 2016). so, it is just possible that underemployment will also provide more potential time for many workers to engage in collective movements to create such alternative forms of production (e.g. baiman et al., 2011; gindin, 2015). references baiman, r., barclay, b., hollander, s., kurban, h., persky, j., redmond, e., & rothenberg, m. (2011). a permanent jobs program for the us: economic restructuring to meet human needs. review of black political economy,1-13, doi:10.1007/s12114-011-9118-y. carchedi, g. (2011). ‘behind and beyond the crisis’. international socialism: a quarterly review of socialist theory. http://isj.org.uk/behind-and-beyond-the-crisis eisenberry, r. (2015). the number of salaried workers guaranteed overtime pay has plummeted since 1979. economic policy institute. http://www.epi.org/publication/the-number-of-salaried-workersguaranteed-overtime-pay-has-plummeted-since-1979 exploitation,stagnantwagesandunderemploymentinadvancedcapitalism:acanadianperspective|53 gindin, s. (2015). global issues: bringing class back in. socialist interventions pamphlet series. http://www.socialistproject.ca/documents/globalissues.php grugulis, i. (2003). putting skills to work: learning and employment at the start of the century. human resource management journal, 13(2), 3-12. hamper, b. (1991). rivethead: tales from the assembly line. new york: warner books. jackson, a. (2010). work and labour in canada: critical issues. toronto: scholar’s press, 2nd edition. kalleberg, a. (2008). the mismatched worker: when people don’t fit their jobs. academy of management perspectives, 22(1), 24-40. lieberman, d. (2014). “re-examination of productivity and wages”. alternate insight. http://www.alternativeinsight.com/reexamination_of_productivity_and_wages.html livingstone, d.w. (ed.). (2009). education and jobs: exploring the gaps. toronto: university of toronto press. livingstone, d.w. (2012). “probing the icebergs of adult learning: comparative findings and implications of the 1998, 2004 and 2010 canadian surveys of formal and informal learning practices”. canadian journal for the study of adult education. 25, 1 (november), 47-71. livingstone, d.w. (2013). “skill utilization for sustainable economies: the illusion of an optimal skills mix”. keynote address to international conference on “the optimal skill mix for a modern economy”, marbach castle, lake constance, germany, september 12. livingstone, d.w. (forthcoming 2016). “skill underutilization”. in j. buchanan, d. finegold, k. mayhew and c. warhurst (eds). oxford handbook of skills and training. oxford: oxford university press. 54 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages livingstone, d.w. (forthcoming 2018). “underemployment in advanced capitalism: patterns and prospects”. in p. albanese and l tepperman (eds.). reading sociology. toronto: oxford university press. livingstone, d.w. and a. scholtz. (forthcoming 2016). “reconnecting class and production relations in an advanced capitalist ‘knowledge economy’: changing class structure and class consciousness”. capital & class. mckee-ryan, f., & harvey, j. (2011). “i have a job, but ...”: a review of underemployment. journal of management, 37(4), 962-996. neilson, d. and t. stubbs. (2011). ‘relative surplus population and uneven development in the neoliberal era: theory and empirical application’. capital & class. 35(3) 435–453. oecd (2014). preventing unemployment and underemployment from becoming structural. paris: oecd. report prepared for the g20 labour and employment ministerial meeting, melbourne, australia, 10-11 september. office of the parliamentary budget officer. (2014). labour market assessment 2014. ottawa, canada, march 25. www.pbo.dpb.gc.ca pankhurst, k.v. and d.w. livingstone. (2006). the labour process: individual learning, work and productivity. studies in continuing education. 28, 1 (march), 1-16. warhurst, c. and p. findlay. (2012). more effective skills utilisation: shifting the terrain of skills policy in scotland. cardiff: school of social sciences, cardiff university. skope research paper no. 107, january. www.skope.ox.ac.uk yates, m. (2011). the human-as-waste, the labor theory of value and disposability in contemporary capitalism. antipode, 43(5), 16791695. challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 55 challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages stephen mcbride1 and jacob muirhead2 abstract: the existence of a low wage sector is nothing new, nor are efforts to resist the conditions experienced by people whose incomes typically fall below the poverty line. in recent decades, under the rubric of neoliberalism structural and political factors in many western states have combined to expand the low wage sector. in policy terms this is represented by intensified efforts to flexibilize the labour market and to impose conditionality for the receipt of social benefits. various social and political forces have pushed for policies to address issues of low wages and poverty. the paper recognizes the intersection of social and labour market policies but focuses on the latter. it opens with an historical overview of efforts to address low wages that touches on sectoral councils in the u.k, and the awards system in australia. it then moves on to analyze contemporary minimum wage policy and campaigns for a living wage. we then turn to the discourses/argumentation associated with these initiatives, and those employed by opposition to them. our goal is to understand and evaluate the arguments advanced but move beyond discourse to identify the conditions in which particular means of addressing low wages can succeed. keywords: low incomes; low wages; minimum wages; living wage; labour low wages seem endemic to capitalist economic systems though the size of the low wage sector and its characteristics can vary over time. explanations of the low waged include systemic accounts, such as that of marx in which an industrial reserve army of the unemployed and underemployed serves to depress wages generally, or keynes, for whom deficiencies in aggregate demand could trigger depression with the same effect. orthodox economic accounts suggest a relationship between possession of human capital, productivity, and wages. here, the responsibility for being low waged lies with the individual who has neglected to acquire the right amount and type of human capital; and 1 stephen mcbride is professor and canada research chair in public policy and globalization in the department of political science at mcmaster university. 2 jacob muirhead is a phd student at mcmaster university in the department of political science. 56 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages who, as a result, is less productive than his or her peers and endures low wages as a consequence. human capital theory is open to a number of significant objections (see mcbride 2000, 172-6) which undermine its value as an explanation of low wages. although there has never been a time when low wages were unproblematic in capitalist society, the post-war period in which keynesian ideas informed public policy, unions tended to be stronger than either before or since, a relatively generous welfare state came into being, and income disparities became somewhat more equal, represented an exceptional era. with its demise, low waged employment has grown in most jurisdictions (see standing 1999, 208-221). this article focuses on efforts to deal with low wages through statutory minimum wages and, more recently, through living wage campaigns that pressure either government or private employers to pay rates that enable basic survival above the poverty rate. the latter living wage campaigns are a response to the continued and expanding presence of low wage sectors, even in jurisdictions that have statutory minimum wages. typically, minimum wage rates are at levels that consign their recipients to lives below the poverty level. however, other mechanisms to address the issue have been attempted and we provide a brief historical outline of two of them. in the ongoing battle against low wages and poverty we focus on wages and thus the labour market in this article. however it is important to keep all options in mind and to consider also the intersection between wages and the “social wage”, as represented by various income or in-kind supports that are, or could be available to those with insufficient market-generated income. the low waged are part of a larger group comprising all those who have low incomes. the first alternative method was used in britain, was to establish wages councils in a number of low-waged sectors such as retail, hospitality, social and child care, food processing, cleaning, textiles and clothing and hairdressing. founded in 1909, (bayliss, 1962) they were eventually abolished in 1993 under the conservative government’s deregulation of the labour market strategy. defenders of the councils fought to preserve them based on research findings that they had alleviated low wages and had not cost jobs, as opponents both of the councils and minimum wages generally claimed. once they were abolished however, it seemed that a national minimum wage had some advantages, not least broader coverage, and support rallied around that option rather than restoration of the councils (manning 2009; cabrelli, 2014, 245-6). there was also an institutionalized system of consultation in the public service particularly for lower waged public servants. it took the form of challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 57 joint consultative mechanisms, commonly referred to as whitley councils after their originator, john whitley, whose committee on the relations between employers and employees during world war i recommended a system of regular formal consultative councils involving workers and employers. the councils would be empowered to cover any issue related to pay and conditions of service, and to refer issues to arbitration if agreement could not be reached. in the uk a civil service whitley council was set up in 1919. surveys of its early records and other efforts to address poverty, reveal often archaic language but issues and arguments that are very current. these apply both to public sector-private sector comparisons and more generally with regard to low pay and what is now termed precarious work. demands for some kind of living wage had long preceded the councils. as early as 1893 a resolution in the house of commons (and restated periodically at later dates) provided that: “no person [employed by certain types of public sector establishments] be engaged at wages insufficient for a proper maintenance…” (cited in white, 1933, 56). later versions of the resolution extended similar provisions to workers directly employed by the government. the original motion also advanced the idea that public service employment should provide a model to be emulated by private employers: “conditions of labour as regards hours, wages, insurance against accidents, provision for old age, sickness etc., should be such as to afford an example to private employers throughout the country” (white, 1933, 158). however, the whitley councils found it difficult to operationalize such practices. the concept of public sector as model employer was unsuccessfully counterposed to the business argument that the employers should pay what was necessary for recruitment and retention in a market driven system (white, 1933, 158). by 1929 the concept had been dismissed. staff associations pointed out that almost half post-office employees had pay rates below the recognized poverty standard of living, one that recognized “bare physical efficiency.” similarly the associations noted large number of temporary staff (around 35 per cent in 1929) and significant wage differences between men and women employees in the same pay grades, amounting often to 25 per cent of starting salary and/or salary caps (white, 1933, 162-4). in australia, the “awards” system provides another historical model. it has undergone considerable revision in the neoliberal period (see bray and macneil, 2011). however, in its pre-1990s heyday, the awards system of compulsory conciliation and arbitration, working through ‘labour courts’ and tribunals was largely responsible for establishing minimum 58 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages pay and standards for the australian workforce (mccallum, 2011). conciliation was first attempted: if it failed, the labour courts could invoke compulsory arbitration which led to a binding award governing the employers, workers, unions, and employers’ associations applicable to the dispute. the awards specified minimum wages and conditions though bargaining above these minima could occur. the result was that: “all employees who employed workers in the relevant industry or craft were obliged to abide by the terms and conditions of employment (mccallum, 2011, 8). neither state nor commonwealth level governments were typically involved in legislating minima until the 1990s. instead they relied on the labour courts to establish these. although technically confined to the named disputants in an award, awards tended to establish standards which spread beyond those immediately affected to all employees of the listed employers’ associations and often became community standards (bray and macneil, 2011, 156). since the deregulatory neoliberal changes of the 1980s and 1990s statutory minimums, mostly at the federal or commonwealth level, have partially displaced the awards system. whatever its limitations, however, the awards system significantly contributed tone of the most equal distributions of income in the western world and its erosion coincided with increased inequality (pusey, 2003, 48). strategies addressing low-wage work: the minimum wage both examples discussed above have declined or been abolished. in place of them there has been renewed interest in minimum wage provisions and, in light of the perceived deficiencies of that model, in the concept of a living wage. the minimum wage has long been a central public policy used by a variety of states to address low-wage work and economic inequality with varying degrees of success.3 originally, the idea emerged as part of the ‘anti-sweats’ campaigns to protest exploitative working conditions in sweatshops in new zealand and australia in the 1890s. minimum wage systems now are embedded in over 100 countries 3 low wage work has commonly been defined by the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) as full-time work that pays at or less than two-thirds of median full-time earnings. this definition is not the only one, however, and many countries use their own definitions which incorporate different thresholds and vary on whether to include part-time, apprenticeship, young workers, and estimates of the informal economy into their measurements. the oecd, for example, does not include part-time work in its estimate and certainly under-estimates the size of the low-wage economy in countries. see, for example, damian grimshaw, 2011. challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 59 (neumark and wascher, 2008). the historical longevity of the minimum wage as well as its continued centrality in policy discussions around the world speak to the importance of assessing the utility and potential of the idea as a regulatory tool used by states to address and reduce low-wage work. yet this is no easy task. there is considerable variation in minimum wage policy both historically within countries and also comparatively between them. however, the basic function of all minimum wage policy is to set a minimum market value which employers, by law, cannot go below. based on this straightforward definition, one can begin to assess the utility of minimum wages through the degree to which they raise wages and their subsequent impact in reducing the size of the lowwage sector in relation to the overall labour market (schulten, 2014, 13). there are two distinct approaches to minimum wage regulation. generally, minimum wage policies differ most significantly in the manner in which they are determined. first, minimum wages can be set universally at the national level or, in federal countries possibly at a subnational level, and are enforced statutorily through legislation. these minimum wage systems set a common wage floor which applies to all employees unless exceptions are specified relating to age, or industry and historically, gender (schulten, 2014). lower minima for young, inexperienced, or workers in industries where tipping is prevalent are example of variations. universal minimum wage systems are the most common type of minimum wage system. if wage floors are not established through universal statutory legislation, they can be set through a collective bargaining process negotiated either bipartite between employer and union representatives, or tripartite between union, employer and state representatives (schulten, 2014). whereas universal national minimum wages tend to be consistent across all sectors of the economy, those negotiated in bipartite and tripartite agreements generally occur at the sectoral or occupational level. consequently, there is no common wage floor, but instead, a number of different minimum wages. although this system sounds piecemeal and consequently prone to inequality in the minima that are set, workers in those countries which use a collective bargaining system for minimum wage determination generally do so because they are well-represented by powerful unions, that are highly organized, dense, and provide broad coverage to the majority of workers. in addition, where union density is lower, states using this system often have various ways of extending agreement coverage from specific negotiations to all workers within a sector, whether they are unionized or not (eldring and alsos, 2012). countries with this type of minimum wagesetting system include finland, sweden, denmark, italy and austria. 60 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages categorization is not always straight forward, and the two systems are not mutually exclusive as the cases of france and austria illustrate (kampelmann et al., 2013, 31, 33). canada, like most liberal welfare states uses a statutory minimum wage system in order to establish a wage floor (bernard, 2008; esping-anderson, 1990; rueda & pontusson, 2000). minimum wage legalisation has a long history of regulation in canada at the provincial level as jurisdiction over labour issues falls primarily to the provinces (ontario labour relations board, 2013), although there is also a separate federal statutory minimum wage in canada for federally regulated sectors (benjamin, 2001, 187). indeed, the provinces first enacted minimum wage legislation in manitoba and british columbia in 1918, and this legislation was quickly followed by nova-scotia, ontario, quebec and saskatchewan by 1920. although these minimum wages were initially set only for women in the labour force, all of the provinces mentioned above had extended a minimum wage to include men by 1937 (human resources and skills development canada, 2005). minimum wage policy was enacted by the government primarily in response to public concerns, spearheaded most prominently by the national council of women of canada (mccallum, 1986, 32-34) this cause was also picked up by trade unions that fought to extend minimum wage legislation (mccallum, 1986). although the achievement of a statutory minimum wage system across the canadian provinces was a victory for labour activists, these early minimum wage systems still enabled employers to set low minimum wages (mccallum, 1986, 56). as indicated below in figure 4, these wages remain quite low today, at below 45 percent of the median wage of a full-time worker. this leaves full-time minimum-wage workers in ontario, for example, earning just 81 percent of the low-income challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 61 poverty­line measure for the province (tiessen, 2015, 6), although, the real value of minimum wages has been trending upwards in most provinces over the past decade (battle, 2011). countries that determine minimum wages collectively appear on average to have both more generous wage floors that provide a decent quality of life and also less overall income inequality between top and bottom earners (kampelmann et al., 2013). moreover, there is also a correlation between high union coverage and a reduction in the size of the low-wage economy more generally, as seen in figure 1 (schmitt, 2012, 3). statutory, universal minimum wages tend to be lower, but all encompassing, whereas those produced by a collective bargaining system tend to have higher wage floors and less inequality. these outcomes are dependent on high rates of bargaining coverage to be effective (kampelmann et al., 2013). this is important to note, as union density and union coverage has been on the decline in the global north, as illustrated in figure 2, and for this reason the model may have a limited future: the model of a national statutory minimum has therefore been gaining ground. ireland, the united kingdom, and most recently germany in 2015, all introduced a statutory minimum wage in response to declining union density which has increasingly led to fragmented, decentralized bargaining agreements and the erosion of coverage (bispinck and schulten, 2014; eldring and alsos, 2012; schulten, 2014). indeed, one can see in figure 1 that these countries all occupy a middle ground in collective-bargaining coverage between unregulated, decentralized labour markets such as the united states, and more 62 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages regulated centralized labour markets such as denmark or finland. the result of falling bargaining coverage in all three countries has been the growth of a low-wage sector, rising inequality and the emergence of a dual economy. work for unionized workers on the “inside” has remained well paid and secure, while non-unionized work on the “periphery” has become increasingly common, with workers employed in unregulated industries generally defined by low pay, insecure, short-term and flexible employment (bispinck and schulten, 2014; manning, 2013; milner, 1995; pothier, 2014). part of a policy response in all three countries has been a switch to a statutory universal minimum wage that sets a consistent wage floor at the national level without any gaps in coverage. potential of statutory minimum wage systems a great deal of labour market literature has identified an interconnected set of sobering themes: work is becoming increasingly precarious, egalitarian labour market institutions such as unions are in precipitous decline, wages for all but the richest have stagnated, the welfare state is in retrenchment, social benefits are declining and fulltime work is being replaced with jobs that are part-time, temporary and low paying (appelbaum, 2012; bivens et al., 2014; branch and hanley, 2011; brosnan and wilkinson, 1988; hutton, 2003; milner, 1995; western and rosenfield, 2011). statutory minimum wages have become increasingly important not only because of a general rise in low-paying, poor quality jobs within developed countries, but also because within flexible, deregulated labour markets very few alternative strategies to address low-wage work remain. to provide some indication of the incidence of low-wage work among economies in the global north, figure 3 quantifies the absolute numbers and percentage of employees in low paid work within a sample of oecd countries: challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 63 in 2009, over 88 million people within the oecd were employed in low-wage work, and this number has increased since that time as a result of the poor economic conditions that continue to plague many oecd countries and the concentration of post-crisis recovery through the disproportionate growth in low wage jobs. a cursory analysis of statutory minimum wages reveals that they are inadequate in providing a decent standard of living in most cases (oecd, 2015). for example, although there is no commonly accepted definition of what a “fair” minimum wage actually is, both the european council and the commission have at various times in the recent past suggested an equitable minimum wage as 60 percent of a full-time median salary (schulten, 2014). as figure 4 illustrates, most statutory minimum wages are well below this 60 percent cut-off, ranging between 38 and 48 percent in 2012: these meagre wages have remained relatively stagnant in terms of real value since 1975, in spite of consistent year on year growth in labour productivity in the global north. this relationship can be seen in figure 5: 64 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages this analysis reveals that though becoming more widespread, minimum wages are an inadequate approach to addressing low wagework. systems based on collective bargaining are becoming less feasible in the face of union decline and spotty coverage. most statutory minimum wage policies are set too low to meaningfully improve the quality of life for those working in low-wage employment, even while the proportion of lowwage work as a percentage of the overall labour force is rising within the oecd. low wage discourses neoliberal economic thought and public political discourse suggests that a “fair” wage is simply equal to the marginal revenue product of labour (o’neill, 2014). the divergence between labour productivity and real wages noted in figure 5 above is problematic for this perspective. nevertheless it remains in some version the dominant perspective most often articulated by economists and politicians. a minimum wage, therefore, is seen as a policy that interferes with the functionality of the market. those against a minimum wage argue that these policies have a net negative effect on the economy. because minimum wages increase the cost of labour, employers are forced to lay off workers, freeze hiring, increase prices, and reduce hours (brown et al. 1982; dolado et al. 1996; neumark and wascher, 1992; oecd, 1994;). moreover, economists have argued that minimum wages also disproportionately affect youth, and those worst off and in possession of the fewest marketable skills (brown et al. 1992; scott and neumark, 2005). since the 1990s dissenting economic literature has revealed that minimum wage policies may in fact have no impact on employment, or if they do, it is marginal (betcherman, 2014; card and krueger, 1993; dolado et al. 1996; doucouliagos and stanley, 2009; ilo, 2014; manning, 2013; metcalf, 1999). in addition, economic research inspired by the recent financial crisis suggests that not only do minimum wage policies likely do little to hurt employment, but they are also useful counter-cyclical tools that help counteract deflationary spirals, by reducing the burden of aftertax government redistribution, and stimulating overall purchasing power and aggregate demand (ilo, 2014; imf, 2013a; imf, 2013b; kapelmann et al., 2013). finally, recent evidence most powerfully articulated by thomas piketty also suggests that economic inequality is one of the greatest threats to stability in the 21st century. consequently, much more value has recently been placed on interventionary policies such as the minimum wage which can play a role in reducing inequality (kapelmann et al., 2013; piketty, 2014). although it is difficult to quantify, all of this economic challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 65 argumentation relating to the minimum wage as a policy tool has been instrumental in the adoption of statutory wage floors in the united kingdom, ireland and germany in 1999, 2000 and 2015 respectively (o’neill, 2014; pothier, 2014). it should be noted, however, that although the wage floors set in these three countries are more generous than in the united states, they are guided by cautious economic research that recommends very gradual and modest increases and stipulates clear “optimal” upper limits to the utility of minimum wages before they begin to harm the labour market. consequently, although these wage floors hover much closer to the 60 percent of full-time employment metric identified by the eu commission, they nevertheless remain below it. on january 1st, 2015, germany introduced its first national minimum wage. the wage itself is determined in large part through the recommendations of a minimum wage commission that is made up primarily of employer and union representatives. relative to other european and north american countries, the minimum wage level set in january of 2015 was generous (schulten, 2014). at 58 percent of median full-time income, this places the generosity of germany’s minimum wage second in europe only to france. germany’s move to a statutory minimum wage was made in order to fill a minimum wage gap left by a collectivebargaining system which had become inadequate in providing coverage and good wages to an adequate proportion of german workers (eldring and alsos, 2012). where the german labour market was once defined by strong unions which negotiated industry wide agreements on behalf of most workers, many negotiations now take place at the plant level, do not meet the legal requirements for government extension and provide irregular coverage between full-time permanent employees and other, less permanent contract and part-time work (bispinck and schulten, 2014; hassel, 2011). unsurprisingly, both contract and part-time work has been growing in germany as a percentage of overall employment since the 1980s with part-time work doubling between 1991-2007 (hassel, 2011, 19). similarly, the share of low-paid among all workers in germany increased from 14.5 percent in 1998 to 21.5 percent in 2007 (hassel, 2011, 20). based on concern over the composition of the german labour market, an increase in low wage work, and rising income inequality, a number of political parties, including the social democratic party began to prioritize a statutory minimum wage. one study estimated that the new wage floor would raise the income of six million workers and affect 15 percent of the german workforce (pothier, 2014). in explaining such a high initial wage floor, a primary factor has been the role of unions in germany which are, comparatively speaking, still fairly powerful actors despite their declining 66 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages membership. since 2006-2007, the confederation of german trade unions (dgb) has been campaigning for a minimum wage and they also played a key role in turning a statutory minimum wage into a highly salient political issue during the 2013 elections in germany (bispinck and schulten, 2014). during this time, the dgb successfully secured political buy in and support for a minimum wage from the social democrats who went on to form a coalition with angela merkel’s christian democrats in part on the condition of minimum wage legislation (bispinck and schulten, 2014). the outcome of this protracted union-led campaign for a statutory minimum wage is a wage floor that has potential to reduce the incidence of low-wage work and income inequality in the country. however, given its novelty it is too new for any comprehensive empirical work to have been undertaken regarding its effectiveness. the british case is also viewed as a success story although the level of income it provides is less impressive. throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the number of british workers covered by collective pay-setting institutions such as unions or wage councils fell below 50 percent (milner, 1995). within a neoliberal political climate which was fiercely freemarket, successive british governments during this time-period waged war on organized labour. this led to reduced union strength and coverage, as well as the abolition, in 1993, of bipartite wage councils which set minimum wages for 2.5 million of britain’s poorest (machin and manning, 1994). with perhaps the exception of the united states, the magnitude of growth in wage inequality in britain during this time was unmatched in any other industrialized country (gosling and lemieux, 2004; thornley & coffey, 1999, 526-527). the sharp growth in poverty and inequality, combined with sustained pressure from trade unions and activists led the labour government to introduce a nationwide statutory minimum wage in 1999 (thornley and coffey, 1999, 528). this national minimum wage was to be monitored by a non-partisan independent expert commission called the british low pay commission (metcalf, 1999). the wage itself is set each year following the commission’s recommendation (kampelmann et al., 2013). the minimum wage in the uk immediately raised the wages of around five percent of the labour force with no noticeable impact on unemployment (manning, 2013). the british minimum wage has been credited with reducing income inequality, producing higher than average wage increases, and putting more money into the pockets of the approximately 1.5 million low-wage workers who are directly affected by changes in the minimum wage each year (low-pay commission, 2015). in addition, regardless of methodological approach, economic research has challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 67 shown the minimum wage has had little or no effect on employment rates (manning, 2013). however, a common criticism of the national minimum wage in the uk is that it too modest and conservative to make a significant impact on low-wage work (dolton et al., 2010). the wage floor is still one that leaves workers in poverty and the low-wage economy continues to grow in the united kingdom. this brief overview of minimum wage regulation has discussed the potential of these policies to address low-wages. the conclusions are mixed. although some collective bargaining systems ensure relatively generous wage floors, these systems, which rely on strong union membership, are becoming rare. consequently, statutory minimum wages increasingly are the dominant approach to minimum wage regulation. unfortunately, these systems are generally ungenerous and set very low wage floors that leave many fulltime workers employed in poverty. overall, economics discourse has become more favourable to minimum wage regulation. in addition, popular opinion towards minimum wage policy as measured through national surveys, has become more positive (see for example, dugan, 2013; pew, 2014; dahlgreen, 2014; thomas, 2014). moreover, discourses around minimum wages increasingly are now influenced by historical and philosophical considerations preoccupied with issues of justice, fairness, human dignity, social decency, and the good society (brennan, 2012; figart, 2004). these discourses stand at the centre of an increasingly powerful and popular social movement known as the “living wage” movement to which we now turn (figart, 2004; luce, 2012). the living wage movement trends in the labour market over the past few decades have not been positive for the average worker in the global north and these pressures have only intensified as a result of the global financial crisis of 2007/2008. despite increases in labour productivity, the majority of income growth has gone primarily to the top one percent of earners (alvaredo et al., 2015). real wages for those in lower income deciles have remained stagnant or fallen. unions and organized labour typically have nowhere near the same levels of organization, density, power or coverage that they once did (western and rosenfield, 2011). the level of social security that welfare states once provided is declining or threatened. jobs are increasingly temporary, part-time, contract-based, without benefits and low paying (freeman et al., 2005; muffels, 2008). in this article, three different strategies to address low-wage work have been outlined: wages councils, the australian awards system, and minimum wage regulation. 68 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages none of these strategies have proven capable of permanently addressing the issue of low-wages in contemporary society. a relatively new strategy to address low-paying work has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. this is, the living wage movement, (bennett, 2014; bernstein, 2005; clain, 2012; devinatz, 2013; figart et al., 2002; figart, 2001, 2004; glickman, 1997; luce, 2004, 2012; pennycook, 2012; pollin et al., 2008; rossi and curtis, 2013; adams and neumark, 2005; wills and linneker, 2013). part of what has made this movement so compelling has been its ability to frame the battle over lowwages normatively. in particular, at the core of the movement is a plea to human decency, solidarity, and underlying concepts of “fairness” based on the simple notion that those who work should not have to work in poverty. the contemporary living wage campaign has deep historical and philosophical roots (werner and lim, 2015; figart, 2004). the term itself developed some profile in late 19th century america, attracting support from organized labour, faith-based organizations and well-known religious, political, and social advocates of the time that came together to demand a “wage level that offers workers the ability to support families, to maintain self-respect and to have both the means and the leisure to participate in the civic life of the nation” (glickman, 1997, 66). the basic question of what constitutes a living wage has led to the development of a number of complex calculators to quantify this number to an exact monetary amount in given locations at a particular time4 (rossi and curtis, 2013). these are important components of living wage campaigns though the intuitive ideas behind the campaigns are hardly technical. the modern iteration of the living wage movement began in baltimore, maryland in 1994. the impetus was straightforward. throughout the early 1990s, soup kitchens run by religious workers operating in the baltimore area began to notice two things. first, there was a rising demand for their services. second, many of those who visited the kitchen or homeless shelter with their families were people who worked (pollin et al., 2008). the conclusion drawn was that people with families and jobs should not have to work in poverty and bring their families to soup kitchens. over the next two decades over 140 living wage campaigns were won in the united states alone. in the intervening period, the movement also expanded to the united kingdom (2001), 4 see, for example, the “living wage calculator” developed by dr. amy glasmeier of the massachusetts institute of technology and in partnership with penn state’s livingwage project available at: http://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/about. challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 69 canada (2010)5, new zealand (2014)6 ireland (2013-2014)7 and more recently it has also spread to south and south east asia. the campaigns have been a response to mitigate the impact of union jobs lost because of increasing privatization in the public sector. they are also a grassroots response to minimum wages that failed to meet basic living requirements. additionally, they were a response to rising income inequality and wage stagnation in the bottom few income deciles. finally, they were a means of organizing low-wage workers in a post-union economy (bernstein, 2005; levin-waldman, 2005; luce, 2004). living wage campaigns have often focused on the municipal level which provides more direct access to the policy process than other levels of government where campaigns have made less headway (bernstein, 2005; luce, 2004, 2012). the specific demands made by living wage campaigns differ depending on geographical location and country. nevertheless, living wage campaigns tend to model their initial campaign strategies on the basic income requirements for a family of three or four that includes the average cost of child care, food, healthcare, transportation, clothing, and other basic necessities while also taking into consideration cost of living and rent in different geographic locations (brennan, 2012; rossi and curtis, 2013, 122). using these calculations, campaigns emerge with an income that is generally double the statutory minimum wage, and also includes benefits (pollin et al., 2008). advocates argue that these sophisticated models are far more reflective of a basic income than those articulated in relation to state poverty measurements which are generally simplistic and outdated (rossi and curtis, 2013). this is the case in the united states at least, which calculates the poverty line based only on the caloric needs of various sized families while excluding all other costs (u.s department of health and human services, 2014; luce, 2012, 13). once operationalized, living wages can differ in a variety of ways in terms of how they function, which groups or geographic areas they cover, and under what conditions they come into effect. conceptually, however, the vast majority of living wage policy falls into three broad categories. the first living wage model is by far the most dispersed and has been operationalized in nearly 150 american cities. outside the united states, it has had much less impact, although notably, it is also used by the city of london in the united kingdom, as well as in the city of new 5 see for example brennan, jordan. 2012. enhancing democratic citizenship, deepening distributive justice: the living wage movement toronto: canadian centre for policy alternatives. 6 see, for example, livingwage new zealand at http://www.livingwage.org.nz 7 see, for example, livingwage, republic of ireland at http://www.livingwage.ie 70 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages westminster, canada (brennan, 2012; pollin, 2008; wills and linneker, 2013). this particular model operates through municipal ordinances that might best be described as targeted ordinances. this is because they function quite narrowly at the municipal level to affect only those workers whose jobs can be traced to public money (luce, 2004; 45). specifically, they require any actor who interacts in some financial capacity with the municipality to pay their workers a living wage. these ordinances can be targeted towards businesses contracting with the city, businesses which receive economic subsidies from the municipality, subcontractors who work alongside principal contractors on city contracts, businesses which borrow financially from the city, and finally municipal departments themselves (luce, 2004; 45). given their narrow target parameters, the impact of these ordinances is typically fairly low, directly affecting only one or two percent of a municipality’s overall labour force (bernstein, 2005; 117). although the generosity of these ordinances varies from city to city, generally, they require employers to pay wages above the poverty line and also require employers to provide benefits for workers. in addition, these ordinances are often not automatic, and it is quite common that they include minimum requirement conditions before they come into effect. as an example, many municipal wage ordinances only apply to city contracts valued at $100,000 or more (bernstein, 2005; 107). a second living wage model is operationalized through municipal ordinances as well, but instead of targeting businesses involved financially with the municipality, these ordinances have much broader coverage and affect all businesses within the political boundaries of the municipality. essentially, these geographically oriented living wage ordinances are functionally equivalent in terms of how they operate, to statutory minimum wage regulation at the state or federal level. these geographic ordinances set a wage floor for the entire municipality and all businesses within it are required to pay their employees a living wage (pollin et al., 2008). currently, these living wage ordinances are operative only within a small number of cities in the united states although this number has grown more quickly recently. among larger american cities, they exist in chicago (2014), los angeles (2015), oakland (2014), sante fe (2003), san francisco (2003), seattle (2014), washington d.c, (2013), and campaigns with a high probability of success are also currently underway in new york and portland8. given its broad coverage, this type of living wage model has had a much greater impact on low-wage work than 8 for more information, see the national employment law project’s website at http://www.nelp.org/content/uploads/city-minimum-wage-recent-trendseconomic-evidence.pdf challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 71 targeted municipal ordinances, although they are less common within the united states, and do not exist outside of it as of yet. in addition, it should be noted that these geographic living wage ordinances while relatively generous in relation to the federal minimum wage in america, typically do not provide workers with a living wage income. a third type of living wage model does not operate through mandated and legally enforceable municipal ordinance, but rather through voluntarily adoption by businesses themselves. these living wage models have been most successful in the united kingdom, but are also found in canada, ireland, new zealand, and to a lesser extent, the united states. although initial description of these living wage models as voluntary conjures up images of goodwill, corporate social responsibility and amicable cooperation, successful campaigns are also often the result of protracted struggles that rely on public naming, shaming and blaming (moore, 2015). for example, a living wage campaign currently underway in the united kingdom has targeted the english premier league (epl), and the manchester city football club in particular. this football club pays its players an average of £100,000 per week, and has just recently secured a £5.1 billion television contract, however, as advocates involved in this campaign point out, the club refuses to pay an army of contract workers more than the statutory minimum wage. in this respect, it is not out of a sense of noblesse oblige that manchester city is responding to calls for a living wage. rather, the football club is responding to the public outcry that has been conjured up through a highly visible living wage campaign (moore, 2015). despite this example, relationships between businesses and living wage advocates are generally less antagonistic in these models and voluntary cooperation is much more common (wills and linneker, 2013). the uk living wage movement began in london in 2001 (wills and linneker, 2013). london citizens (now citizens uk), is a broad-based community coalition composed of over 300 education, faith-based, union and volunteer organizations (citizensuk, 2015, 3). it is credited with beginning the british iteration of the living wage movement and was directly inspired by the success of the american movement and in close consultation with living wage advocates from baltimore throughout 2001 (wills and linneker, 2013, 188). given this shared history, the british and american living wage movements share some similarities in terms of their approach. for example, one of citizens uk’s first campaign victories was to ensure that the city of london would require a living wage be paid to any jobs that were connected with public money. however, there are key differences between the british and american living wage 72 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages movements. first, living wage campaigns in the uk are much more focused on encouraging voluntary participation by municipalities and businesses in providing a living wage to employees. in this respect, far less emphasis is placed on achieving living wage ordinances through law, and much more attention has been placed on developing collaborative partnerships with employers, trade unions, and municipalities. citizensuk describes itself as a broad-based community coalition, and its membership is primarily faith and education based with some union participation. reportedly, there has been real tension between trade union leaders and citizens uk stemming from secular antipathy based on popular perceptions of misogyny, authoritarianism and homophobia associated with faith groups (wills et al., 2009, 448). this tension is not as visible in the united states, where faith (christianity) plays a more powerful role in politics, and religious groups have a much longer history of strong community activism, often working alongside organized labour activists (wills et al., 2009, 450-451). second, different strategies to ensure compliance and participation with living wages have evolved in the uk. in particular, an accreditation system developed by citizensuk helps to monitor and ensure company compliance. perhaps even more important, this accreditation body also incentivizes companies to participate by turning living wage accreditation into a desirable club-like good (jensen and wills, 2013). currently, about 1000 employers have become accredited (coulson and bonner, 2015, 2). finally, the living wage movement is far more centralized in the uk, as a result of citizenuk’s clear and continued leadership within the movement. they have been involved in every major development in the uk living wage movement. they spearheaded the creation of a living wage accreditation body and they have also monopolized control over setting and determining a living wage for london, and also nationally (wills and linneker, 2013). the movement that originated in london in 2001, has now spread outwards and includes all of england as well as scotland (coulson and bonner, 2015, 4). this is different than in the united states, where living wages reached through campaigns differ from place to place and are the outcome of individual, isolated contests. although there is evidence that the british living wage movement has had some success in securing living wages for low-income workers, clearly voluntary participation has not been effective enough (pennycook, 2012). in fact, since 2001, it is estimated that the movement has secured a living wage for approximately 60,000 workers out of a low-wage labour force of around six million workers. the main business participants in the movement to this date have been public sector employers and large challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 73 financial firms in the city of london. a common feature of many private sector participants in this respect is that they have very few low-wage workers and therefore benefit disproportionately from accreditation (pennycook, 2012). the development of canada’s living wage movement began in the mid-2000s. the movement is especially well organized in british columbia, where new westminster became the first municipality in canada to agree to a living wage for itself and its contracts in 2011, and more recently the city of vancouver agreed to become a living wage employer (aubry, 2010; kieltyka, 2015; ogle, 2015). the origins of the movement, like the american and the british are explained by opposition to the growing low-wage economy (aubry, 2010; ivanova & klein, 2015; johnstone & cooper, 2013; richards et al., 2008). in particular, it is generally accepted that like the us and the uk, the canadian living wage movement was spurred on by exceptionally low minimum wage rates and declining social benefits throughout the 1980s and 1990s (aubry, 2010, 30-31). in the case of british columbia in particular, a strong catalyst for the living wage movement was also the sudden privatization of unionized jobs for public sector cleaners and cooks in the british columbian healthcare sector (aubry, 2010). the canadian living wage movement shares a number of similarities with both the british and the american movements and as a result, can be regarded as sort of hybrid. like the american experience, the canadian living wage movement is relatively fragmented being loosely coordinated by a variety of think tanks, ngo’s, unions, faith-based organizations and academics from across the country. however, in terms of approach, the canadian movement is more closely aligned with the uk living wage movement. for example, like citizensuk, canadian activists have sought to pressure municipalities and corporations alike by educating them on the benefits of living wages, as they relate to things like worker performance, improved corporate reputation, improved community health and so forth (first call, 2014). potential of living wage campaigns during a time of declining union strength and a conservative political climate defined by austere policies and stagnating wages for lowincome workers, living wage campaigns have been successful both in terms of the sheer number of campaign victories they have enjoyed, but also in their ability to provide affected low-wage workers with improved salaries and benefits (luce, 2004, 2012; pollin et al. 2012). living wage campaigns in the uk estimate they have generated an additional £210 74 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages million for 60,000 workers between may of 2011 and november of 2014 (coulson and bonner, 2015, 6). in the united states, an old estimate in 2002 analyzing narrowly focused municipal ordinances cited 100,000250,000 impacted workers although with the introduction of geographic ordinances with much wider coverage, this number is now certainly much higher and in the millions (devintas, 2013). further, pollin et al. (2008) indicate that the average real wage increase for a narrow municipal ordinance in boston saw real wages rise 25 percent on average. in addition, reich et al. (2014) indicate that geographic living wage ordinances in the united states hover anywhere from 14 percent to 106 percent above the federal minimum wage. some argue that living wage campaigns can benefit organized labour (bernstein, 2005; devintas, 2013; luce, 2004 for two interrelated reasons. the first lies in the potential of living wage campaigns to create cross-social movement alliances between organized labour and local living wage activists. at a time when unions have been criticized as overly rigid and narrowly self-interested, living wage campaigns can provide unions with a broader platform to develop long term and enduring coalitions with community allies pursuing social and economic justice (freeman, 2005). second, living wage campaigns can potentially increase awareness of organized labour among non-unionized workers. for example, in both baltimore and los angeles, the campaigns for a living wage ordinance have been followed by unionization efforts for affected workers (nissen, 2000, 38; bernstein, 2005; devintas, 2013; luce, 2004). a review of the economic literature on the impact of all three living wage models outlined above finds only marginal negative economic impacts in terms of price increases, employment loss, business closure or lost contracts due to a more hostile business environment (bernstein, 2005; devintas, 2013; fairris and reich, 2005; pennycook, 2012; pollin et al. 2008; pollin and wicks-lim, 2015). in fact, regardless of the methodology or data set used, the overall aggregated cost of living wage ordinances is between one or two percent of an employers total costs (devintas, 2013). living wages generally do not have harmful employment effects.9 they can and do lead to cost savings for businesses as a result of increased worker retention, decreased absenteeism, improved morale and productivity, the ability to provide longer training, and improved customer service (devintas, 2013; flint et al., 2013; pollin et al., 2008). a recent study comparing turnover rates of employers moving to a living wage indicated a 25 percent reduction on average (wills and linneker, 2013). 9 however, a few studies have shown significant negative employment effects for lowincome earners in some cases (adams and neumark, 2003, 2004, 2005). challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 75 perhaps most important, however, is the living wage movement’s normative appeal. indeed, the international labour organization has specifically identified the potential of the living wage movement as a watershed concept capable of uniting the world’s labour movement in relation to the shared vision people have with respect to the good life, economic justice and a living wage (laliberté, 2012; 10). as wills and linneker point out, the flexibility of the living wage movement to be “translated across space” and be “reconfigured wherever it lands to take root” while still reframing wages as a moral and social justice issue is remarkable (2013, 184). despite their potential, living wage campaigns nevertheless have weaknesses. universal minimum wages at living wage levels would obviously be a better solution. how to get there remains a key political challenge. for now, the proportion of workers covered by living wages around the world is very low. even in the united states where the campaign is most advanced, the total impact of the living wage including all three living wage models may currently impact a few million workers out of a low-wage labour force of 35 or 40 million. in the united kingdom, the total number of workers affected is 60,000 low-wage workers out of about six million (jensen and wills, 2013). an additional limitation of living wage campaigns raised is the real difficulty in ordinance implementation (luce 2004). for a variety of reasons, municipalities do not do a good job of enacting living wage ordinances following successful campaigns. relatedly, municipalities are also fairly poor at monitoring compliance, or enforcing ordinances following violations (luce, 2004). and, of course, even to the extent they are successful, living wages only address part of the low-income problem, that which results from low wages. the broader issue of low incomes and the adequacy of the social wage is not addressed by this strategy and can be a source of tension between different social movements (bennett, 2014; cornish, 2012, 6-7). conclusion a significant sector of low waged workers seems endemic to capitalist economies. its existence, and that of an involuntarily unwaged sector outside the labour market arguably exerts a depressing effect on all wages. nonetheless, continual efforts have been made to at least alleviate the conditions of low waged employees. these include wages councils, the awards system, minimum wages of either statutory of collectively bargained types, and living wages. each mode has advantages and disadvantages. for example, universal statutory minimum wages provide 76 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the most coverage, but typically at rates that hover below the poverty line. collectively bargained minimum wages have tended to be more adequate than statutory ones but their coverage is less, and they depend for their success on strong trade unions. but unionization rates and union power have been in decline throughout the neoliberal period so the preconditions for sustaining, still less expanding such systems may no longer exist. living wages have enormous ideological appeal – the idea that someone working full-time should earn enough to live on resonates with basic concepts of fairness. however, coverage is spotty and in conditions where full-time, full-year work is declining, the hourly rates that express what a living wage is may fall short of an adequate standard of living. as with so much else in the labour market the low wage issue could be more easily addressed in conditions of full-employment. all these modes of dealing with low wages have enjoyed some success, at least for a time, yet none have seriously dented the low waged sector. precluding any enduring and widespread reduction in the low wage economy, in this respect, are the deeply embedded structural and systemic features of contemporary labour markets. in order to successfully reduce the low wage economy, potential solutions must overcome the increasingly common precariousness of work, the highly concentrated power of capital, the high and enduring levels of unemployment which exert downward pressure on wages and the neoliberal architecture which informs the majority of public policy. how might this happen? some have made the argument that the growth of low-waged work is an inevitable, epiphenomenal consequence of economic globalization, and technological innovation and consequently difficult to control. while these factors have certainly played an important role in shaping labour markets, the role of politics must not be underestimated. the war on organized labour and the dismantling of labour laws over the past few decades has been an explicitly political project. these decisions have hindered pro-labour opposition from the left, and contributed significantly to the construction and advancement of a low wage economy dependent on reserves of cheap labour. one way of alleviating the problem of low waged conditions would seem to lie in a revived trade union movement with the strength to push back against a political and corporate elite interested in maintaining the structural conditions necessary for the mass reproduction of cheap labour. however, the rebirth of organized labour in such impressive fashion seems highly unlikely, at least for the present. despite its shortcomings, the living wage movement can contribute to an effective pro-labour agenda. the movement has widespread challenging the low wage economy: living and other wages | 77 ideational appeal that resonates across the political spectrum and considerable mobilization has occurred around its demands. with that said, it is clear that the living wage movement is still in the embryonic stages and that the structural and political conditions required for the widespread adoption of living wages currently do not exist. the open question yet to be answered, therefore, remains whether the ideological appeal of the living wage can prevail within neoliberal labour markets whose current structural conditions lead to a systematic mass reproduction of cheap labour. references adams, s., & neumark, d. 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(2013). in-work poverty and the living wage in the united kingdom: a geographical perspective. the royal geographical society, 39, 182-194. the precarity penalty | 87 the precarity penalty: how insecure employment disadvantages workers and their families wayne lewchuk,1 michelynn laflèche,2 stephanie procyk,3 charlene cook,4 diane dyson,5 luin goldring,6 karen lior,7 alan meisner,8 john shields,9 anthony tambureno,10 and peter viducis11 abstract: this paper examines the social and economic effects of precarious employment in the greater toronto-hamilton area. the analysis is based on data from two surveys conducted in 2011 and in 2014 by the poverty and employment precarity in southern ontario (pepso) research group. the survey findings paint a picture of how low earnings and economic uncertainty translate into delayed formation of relationships, lower marriage rates for workers under the age of 35, and fewer households with children. they also suggest that workers in precarious employment are more likely to experience social isolation. these findings suggest that the precarity penalty is not limited to economic outcomes from employment but also includes disadvantages in establishing healthy households and being engaged in one's community. workers in secure employment enjoy better economic outcomes from employment that provide the basis for better household wellbeing and increased social integration. while much has been made in recent years of the unequal distribution of income, the pepso study also points to the unequal distribution of many of the non-financial aspects of life that people value including companionship, having a family and having friends. keywords: precarious employment; household wellbeing; families; communities 1 wayne lewchuk, mcmaster university. this chapter was made possible by the support of funds from the united way toronto-mcmaster university sshrccura project on poverty and employment precarity in southern ontario. caroline fram helped with background research and dale brown made comments on earlier drafts. 2 michelynn laflèche, united way toronto. 3 stephanie procyk, united way toronto. 4 charlene cook, united way toronto. 5 diane dyson, woodgreen community services. 6 luin goldring, york university. 7 karen lior, toronto workforce innovation group. 8 alanmeisner, quantacan. 9 john shields, ryerson university. 10 anthony tambureno, mcmaster university. 11 peter viducis, city of toronto. 88 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the poverty and employment precarity in southern ontario (pepso) research group was formed in 2010 to measure the prevalence of precarious employment in the greater toronto-hamilton (gtha) labour market and to examine the effects of insecure employment on workers, families and communities. in 2013, pepso released its first report it’s more than poverty: employment precarity and household well-being based on data collected in late 2011. in 2015, a second report was released the precarity penalty: the impact of employment precarity on individuals, households and communities – and what to do about it based on data collected in 2014. the results from these two reports are disturbing. they suggest that precarious employment is no longer an issue only for low paid workers, women or recent immigrants. it is becoming the norm in many sectors and amongst categories of workers who in the past were privileged to work in secure jobs with good career prospects. the reports show that the effects of insecure employment are much broader than simply low wages and irregular employment. households where employment is insecure face added challenges in maintaining a healthy family and individuals face added challenges fully participating in their communities. combined, these effects represent the precarity penalty associated with less secure employment. many of the survey questions asked in 2011 and in 2014 were identical. this chapter combines the two data sets to assess the nature of the precarity penalty focussing on the penalties that individuals experience as a result of their employment relationship. it is beyond the scope of this paper to explore in detail the effects on families and on communities. the discussion section of the paper will touch on some of the more obvious links between employment insecurity and the challenges maintaining a healthy family and participating fully in community life. these topics will be explored in more detail in future papers. the growth of precarious employment there is overwhelming evidence that labour market conditions in canada, and in much of the developed world, are in transition (weil, 2014; kalleberg, 2011; standing, 2011; vosko, et.al. 2009; farber, 2008; hacker, 2006; cappelli, 1999). for workers in their 20s and 30s, today’s labour market is fundamentally different from the one their parents knew. older workers looking for work after the loss of a stable and secure job find a labour market fundamentally different from the one they first encountered as a younger worker. as noted by hatton, many employers have moved from viewing workers as a long-term “asset” worth investing in to viewing them as a short-run “liability” and as a cost to be minimized the precarity penalty | 89 (hatton, 2011). one outcome of this shift is an increased reliance on insecure precarious employment. since the 1980s, precarious employment grew more rapidly than overall employment. between 1989 and 2014, the percentage of canadian workers in either temporary employment, or those who were self-employed without employees, increased from 13.7% of all workers to 21.8% (pepso, 2015, 24). as insecure forms of employment became more prevalent in the economy, earnings stagnated for the majority of workers in canada and in the united states. income in both countries has become less equally distributed (uwt 2015). in a recent comprehensive review of the performance of the u.s. economy, researchers from the economic policy institute described the period from 1975-2000 as one of wage stagnation and slow economic growth and the first decade of the 21st century as a “lost” decade for most american households (mishel et.al., 2012, 5). the increasing prevalence of precarious employment has not only contributed to the slow rate of wage growth but it also means that more and more workers and their families are falling outside of the protective shield of permanent full-time employment. an increasing number of workers are working on short-term contracts, earn only a basic wage and lack supplementary benefits or pension plans (kalleberg, 2011). the percentage of workers in canada who report having an employer pension plan fell by more than 10% between 1990 and 2013, and the percentage in defined benefit plans fell over 30% (pepso, 2015, 24). hacker (2006) describes this as the “great risk shift” as workers and their families are exposed to the vagaries of the labour market with fewer protections from either employers or the state. precarious employment and family wellbeing it is easy to imagine the link between precarious employment and the conditions of work, but how does the employment relationship affect family wellbeing beyond the obvious question of household income? a large body of feminist-informed research has pointed to the role of the fordist compromise of the post-world war ii period in shaping the norms that govern relations between men and women, social reproduction and welfare regimes (gottfried, 2000; vosko et.al., 2009). it is generally agreed that the fordist male – breadwinner/female care-giver model of economic and social organization privileged men and allocated to women the role of unpaid social reproduction. women who did enter paid employment generally worked at jobs that were low paid and insecure. however, what the erosion of this model of economic and social organization means for male privilege, for female employment, for families and communities is 90 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages less well understood. within households, the transition from the male breadwinner/female caregiver model is likely to lead to new family dynamics and potentially to new opportunities for women. kanji (2013) and fulcher et.al. (2005) argue that as male employment becomes less secure, the rational for the male breadwinner/female care giver model changes and many of the assumption regarding the roles of men and women in the household and in labour markets may also change. they argue that as the contribution of women to household budgets increases, women’s authority to shape household decisions may increase and their opportunities to launch their own careers may improve. a number of researchers including chan (2011); russell, o'connell & mcginnity (2009); hyman et.al. (2005); bohle et.al. (2004); carnoy (2000) argue that increased employment insecurity increases tension at home, as parents and children cope with varying income flows and periods of unemployment and the need to re-negotiate the boundaries between work and unpaid housework as work schedules change. craig & brown (2014) argue that precarious employment and the spread of non-standard hours and irregular work schedules may make it difficult to co-ordinate shared leisure time between couples with negative effects on the sustainability of relationships. a number of researchers have explored how precarious employment may change decisions to form relationships. a german study by (golsch, 2005) suggested for men, insecure employment is associated with delayed marriages and postponing the start of families. but, it has potentially the opposite association for women, providing them with opportunities to combine childcare and part-time employment. fuwa (2014) argues that as precarious employment disrupts the male breadwinner/female caregiver model and increases women’s “market related resources” while at the same time making men a less dependable source of income, women may find traditional marriage less attractive. mills et.al. 2005 speculate that, rather than marry, young people are more likely to live together to gain some of the benefits of marriage, including companionship and the sharing of housing costs, without making commitments to an uncertain future. quilgars & abbott (2000) suggest that renting will become a better option than home ownership as a way of dealing with employment risks. if a reduction in home ownership results in workers having weaker attachments to their community, it could have profound social implications. goldring & landolt (2009 & 2011) argue that for immigrants, early career employment precarity may have long-term negative consequences. a unique study based on 180 interviews with american families in the precarity penalty | 91 1998 and in 2010 provides strong evidence that insecure employment can lead to significant barriers to families trying to get ahead with implications for their children (thomas, boguslaw et.al., 2013). they found that families whose wealth grew more slowly were not necessarily the lowest paid, but rather lacked what the authors call “employment capital.” employment capital is the product of non-wage job benefits, job flexibility and consistent work. workers in a standard employment relationship will generally have more employment capital and those in precarious employment less. for families with limited employment capital, any savings from employment are used to finance the inevitable downturns and unexpected expenses associated with life and thus compromising their ability to accumulate wealth. families whose wealth grew more slowly, or needed to conserve savings for the inevitable rainy day, also risked being less able to invest in their children at the same rate as families with higher levels of employment capital, potentially putting their children at a relative disadvantage. the challenges facing children as they become young adults in families with limited employment capital was vividly described by putnam (2015) who explored how the social mobility of children has decreased in the ohio community where he grew up. how we collected our data to be eligible for the study, individuals had to be between the ages of 25 and 65 and have worked for pay in the last three months. the core objective of the pepso research group is to understand the impact of insecure employment on workers in the prime of their working lives who are more likely to be contributing to a household, raising a family and engaging as citizens in their communities. this is not to suggest that the challenges that younger workers face starting their careers or those of older workers who continue to work later in life are unimportant. historically, both of these groups of workers were more likely to be employed in less secure employment relationships. how these historical patterns of youth and senior employment are changing in the face of the changing nature of employment relationships identified in the pepso reports needs to be the subject of separate research projects. a representative sample of workers living in toronto, surrounding gta municipalities, hamilton and burlington was randomly selected and interviewed over the phone by experienced interviewers. both survey samples are representative by sex, age and the different regions that make up the study area, based on the 2006 census. pepso commissioned leger marketing to conduct both the 2011and 2014 surveys using random digital dialing which included both land lines and cell phones. the 92 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages interviews were conducted in english. the average length of the survey was 15-18 minutes. the data was analyzed using stata software. a total of 8,328 individuals were surveyed and form the data set examined in this chapter (see pepso 2015 for details on how the data was collected). understanding who is precarious while precarious employment is now recognized as an entrenched feature of our labour market, there is no agreed upon way to define it or to calculate how many workers are precariously employed. the challenge is that employment relationships vary across a wide range of characteristics other than simple rates of pay. some employment is more stable. some employment provides supplemental benefits, such as a prescription drug plan that insures workers from unexpected expenses. some employment provides a secure pension for workers when they retire. some employment provides a career path and helps workers acquire new skills. some employment provides predictable work schedules. all of these characteristics shape the degree of employment precarity. a simple approach is to focus on the form of the employment relationship including whether workers are in full-time, part-time, or temporary employment or whether they are self-employed. at best, this provides a rough indicator of precarious employment as the characteristics of employment can still vary widely within different forms of the employment relationship. pepso survey respondents were asked to identify both the form of their employment relationship (full-time, parttime, temporary, self-employment) and the characteristics of their employment (non-wage benefits, variations in earnings, future employment prospects). this makes it possible to identify the precariously employed with some precision. a widely recognized standard for secure employment is the standard employment relationship which represents a sub-set of workers in fulltime employment. as well as being full-time, workers in a standard employment relationship receive non-wage benefits such as a pension or supplemental medical benefits, work for one employer full-time, and have a degree of job security. about 65% of the pepso sample report they are in full-time employment. however, less than 50% are deemed to be in a standard employment relationship. another 8.5% of the pepso sample report they are in permanent part-time employment.12 12 19.1% of the pepso sample work less than 30 hours but only 8.5% report they are in permanent part-time employment. the majority of the remaining 10.6% of the sample working less than 30 hours report they are in temporary employment, on contract or self-employed. the precarity penalty | 93 this leaves about 40% of the pepso sample who are not in a standard employment relationship or in permanent part-time employment. there is no general agreement over how many of this group should be classified as precariously employed. in one sense, this entire group experiences a level of precarity which is greater than workers in a standard employment relationship. the most narrow approach to this question is to rely exclusively on the form of the employment relationship and to limit those in precarious employment to workers who self-report they are in some form of temporary employment. temporary employment includes workers hired into jobs with a fixed end date, including seasonal, temporary, term and casual employment. statistics canada first collected such data in 1996. using this narrow definition, 10.5% of workers in the pepso sample aged 25-65 would be classified as precarious. using a similar definition, statistics canada reported that 11.3% of all canadian workers over the age of 15 were in temporary employment in 2014 (pepso, 2015, 24). the u.s. government accountability office (2006 and 2015) refers to this category of workers as the "core contingent" category. in 2010, they identified 7.9% of the workforce as the "core contingent" category. while there has been some upward trend in this category in countries like canada and australia, it has been relatively stable in countries like the united states and britain since the late 1990s leading some researchers to argue that the spread of insecure employment has been exaggerated (doogan, 2009; cross, 2015). focusing only on workers who declare they are in temporary employment misses a large and growing segment of the workforce who may not self-declare as temporary, but are still precariously employed. this includes the growing share of the workforce employed as freelancers, contractors and the self-employed. 8.8% of the pepso sample were selfemployed and worked on their own without employing any other workers. statistics canada estimated that 10.5% of all canadian workers over the age of 15 in 2014 were self-employed without employees. u.s. bureau of labor statistics identified 16.2% employed as independent contractors or self-employed in 2010. temporary forms of the employment relationship plus the self-employed without employees represent 19.3% of the pepso sample, 21.8% using statistics canada data and 24.1% using data from the u.s. bureau of labor statistics. weill (2014, 271-72) also includes part-time workers in the contingent category. this would increase the number of contingent workers to 30.1% of the u.s. workforce in 2005 and the most recent u.s. data suggests this may have grown to 40.4% in 2010 (u.s. government accountability office, 2015). 94 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages approaches described above that identify workers in precarious employment based on the form of the employment relationship provide a rough estimate of employment security. however, some workers classified as precarious using this approach may have a high degree of employment security and some not classified as precarious may be quite insecure once the characteristics of their employment relationships are taken into consideration. in the pepso survey, almost one-quarter of the sample is neither in a standard employment relationship nor precariously employed based on the form of their employment relationship. many of these workers report uncertainty regarding their future employment prospects, variable hours of employment, uncertain future earnings and few if any supplemental employment benefits beyond a wage (pepso, 2015, 26). in ontario, workers in this category with less than one year of seniority can be terminated with one week’s notice, and even those with up to 3 years of seniority might only get 2 weeks’ notice. in a similar fashion, some workers who declare their job is temporary or are selfemployed without employees can still experience a degree of employment stability that makes their employment relatively secure. there is growing recognition that we can no longer assume that a worker who self-declares as being in full-time employment is also in secure employment.13 david weil (2014, 273) argues that the u.s. workforce has become more fissured, by which he means large lead firms are reducing their core workforce and relying more heavily on the contracting out of tasks to subordinate companies or employing temporary workers hired from external agencies. as a result he argues that, “though workers in those subordinate businesses may be classified as employed on a standard, full-time basis, the relationship between lead firms and those where these workers are employed may be fissured and therefore likely to have the characteristics of precarious employment.” given the inaccuracy of relying on the form of the employment relationship to identify who is in secure employment and who is in precarious employment, pepso developed the employment precarity index to provide a more precise way of identifying precarious employment. the index is made up of 10 questions from the survey and includes both measures of the form of the employment relationship and measures of the characteristics of employment. each of the questions below was scored on a scale of 0-10 and combined to generate the employment precarity index. 13 recent research suggests that many workers on short-term contracts mistakenly report on surveys that they are in permanent employment. see pavlopoulos and vermunt, 2015. the precarity penalty | 95 • do you usually get paid if you miss a day’s work? • i have one employer, whom i expect to be working for a year from now, who provides at least 30 hours of work a week, and who pays benefits. • in the last 12 months, how much did your income vary from week to week? • how likely will your total hours of paid employment be reduced in the next six months? • in the last three months, how often did you work on an on-call basis? • do you know your work schedule at least one week in advance? • in the last three months, what portion of your employment income was received in cash? • what is the form of your employment relationship (short-term, casual, fixed-term contract, self-employed, permanent part-time, permanent full-time)? • do you receive any other employment benefits from your current employer(s), such as a drug plan, vision, dental, life insurance, pension, etc.? • would your current employment be negatively affected if you raised a health and safety concern or raised an employment-rights concern with your employer(s)? the index is used to divide the sample into 4 more or less equal employment security categories as shown in table 1. nearly 20% of workers in the pepso sample in temporary forms of the employment relationship are not classified as precarious using the employment precarity index. table 1: employment security categories source: pepso surveys 96 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages table 2 describes some of the key characteristics of each of the employment security categories. men are under-represented in secure employment and marginally over-represented in precarious employment compared to the percentage of men in the entire sample. while somewhat surprising, this is indicative of the changes that are taking place in the economy of southern ontario as sectors where men enjoyed privileged access to secure employment such as manufacturing are shrinking. it is also a function of women being over-represented in the public sector where unions have been more successful in supporting secure employment and in the under-representation of women in self-employment which tends to be less secure. it is also evidence of the success women have had defending their employment rights through union representation where they now make up a majority of union membership. white workers are over-represented in secure employment and under-represented in precarious employment compared to the percentage of white workers in the entire sample. however, white workers still made up almost two-thirds of workers in precarious employment. the relatively high percentage of men and white workers in precarious employment is indicative of the extent to which precarious employment has spread to socio-economic groups that in the past were largely insulated from this form of employment. young workers, aged 25-34 are under-represented in secure employment and over-represented in precarious employment compared to the percentage of young workers in the entire sample. workers aged 35-54 are still the largest age group in precarious employment and made up just over half of all precariously employed workers. young workers aged 25-34 represented about one-third of precariously employed workers and workers 55-65 represented just under 20% of the category. workers in secure employment are more likely to be married and have children living in their household. nearly two-thirds of the workers in precarious employment are married and over 45% have children living in their households. workers in secure employment are more likely to be unionized. the precarity penalty | 97 table 2: socio­economic characteristics of the employment security categories (% of each employment relationship category) source: pepso surveys. table 3 describes some of the other characteristics of the four employment security categories. workers who describe themselves as doing knowledge work are over-represented in secure employment and under-represented in precarious employment. the pattern in the service sector was the opposite with service sector workers being underrepresented in secure employment and over-represented in precarious employment. manufacturing and construction workers are underrepresented in secure employment but about equally represented in the other three employment categories. it is not surprising that service sector workers represent the largest component of precarious employment. perhaps somewhat surprising is the large number of service sector workers in secure employment and the large number of knowledge workers in precarious employment. again this points to the extent to which precarious employment has spread to all sectors of the economy. the last two columns of table 3 report the distribution of jobs across the four employment categories by the education needed to perform these jobs. workers doing jobs that require a university degree are overrepresented in secure employment and under-represented in precarious employment. the exact opposite pattern can be found with jobs that require only on-the-job training. jobs that require a university degree still represent almost one-third of all jobs in precarious employment. almost half of all workers in precarious employment have a university degree meaning many are working at jobs that do not require the education these workers have obtained. 98 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages table 3: socio­economic characteristics of the employment security categories (% of each employment relationship category) source: pepso surveys. tables 1 to 3 provide a picture of precarious employment between 2011 and 2014 with a number of surprises. racialized workers and young workers are over-represented in precarious employment. however, precarious employment is far from being mainly the preserve of racialized or young workers. nor is it mainly the preserve of women workers, who are actually under-represented in precarious employment, nor is it predominantly found in the service sector. the two pepso surveys indicate that precarious employment has spread throughout the economy and that while racialized workers, young workers and workers doing jobs that require little training are over-represented in precarious employment, many of the precariously employed are white, work in the knowledge sector and do jobs that require university degrees. the employment relationship precarity penalty a critical penalty related to precarious employment with significant social implications is low pay. many researchers examining precarious employment include low pay as a characteristic of precarious employment. the pepso research group opted to examine employment precarity independent of income allowing the analysis of poverty and precarity as two separate characteristics of individuals and families. the main advantage of this approach is that it facilitates the analysis of the social effects of precarious employment amongst middle income households and the impact of low wages on families where employment is secure. over one-third of workers in precarious employment earn more than $40,000 or live in households where household income exceeds $80,000. the precarity penalty | 99 table 4 reports average individual and household income by employment security categories. being precariously employed results in a significant individual and household income penalty. workers in precarious employment earn half as much as workers in secure employment and live in households that earn over one-third less than workers in secure employment. the income ratios of workers in precarious and secure employment are virtually unchanged when the sample is restricted only to married workers who are not separated or divorced. it is often suggested that the model family in the last few decades of the twentieth century was one worker in a good paying secure job and a partner in a less secure low paid job. the findings from the pepso study suggest we are moving away from this model. if the average household was made up of one well-paid securely employed worker and one low-paid less secure worker, we would expect household earnings of married couples to be the same regardless of the survey participant's employment relationship. as shown in table 4 this is not the case.14 survey participants in secure employment report substantially higher household income than survey respondents in precarious employment. one reason for this was evidence that employment insecurity of one partner in a household negatively affects the labour market options of the other partner. there was a higher probability that the partners of workers in precarious employment were either not working for pay, or working in some form of less secure employment compared to partners of workers in secure employment. table 4: average individual and household income by employment security categories source: pepso surveys. 14 on the issue of clustering by employment relationships and how this affects family income and average neighbourhood family income, see chen et.al., 2011. 100 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages precariously employed workers are also penalized in not receiving employment benefits such as a pension or supplemental health benefits. table 5 reveals the unequal distribution of employment benefits by employment security categories. less than 20% of workers in precarious employment have an employer funded pension plan and less than 10% receive supplemental health benefits such as a dental plan or drug plan. everyone in secure employment and the majority in stable employment enjoy both types of benefits as a result of their employment. limiting the sample only to married couples does not result in a significant change in the access to benefits by employment security categories. table 5: employment benefits by employment security categories (%) source: pepso surveys. in 2011, a supplemental question was asked whether workers were eligible for any benefits as result of their partner's employment. just over one-third of workers in precarious employment report they received such benefits. this number increased to almost half for workers in precarious employment who were married. however, nearly 60% of all workers in precarious employment received benefits from neither their employment nor someone else's employment and over 45% of married workers in precarious employment received benefits from neither their employment nor someone else's employment. low income and lack of benefits are only two of the penalties that workers in precarious employment face. as shown in table 6, they also face irregular employment and uncertain future prospects. nearly 40% of workers in precarious employment experienced at least some weeks without work in 2014 and nearly 20% experienced more than two months the precarity penalty | 101 of unemployment. over one-third of workers in precarious employment also report their income varied a lot in the last 12 months. nearly onequarter anticipate their hours of employment will be reduced in the next six months. in addition, workers in precarious employment face uncertainty over their work schedules. table 6: employment insecurity by employment security categories (%) source: pepso surveys *only asked in 2014 inability to find work when work is wanted, variation in income from week to week, uncertain future employment prospects, and unexpected work schedule changes can create both financial uncertainty as well as creating stress and anxiety at home. over 15% of workers in precarious employment report work schedule uncertainty often negatively affected family life compared to less than 4% of workers in secure employment. in 2014, survey respondents were asked if scheduling uncertainty limited childcare choices. over half of workers in precarious employment report this was a problem compared to just over 20% of workers in secure employment. workers in precarious employment also face long-term career penalties. they are less likely to benefit from training provided by their employer and less likely to report their job offers good career prospects. as shown in table 7, less than 20% of workers in precarious employment receive training funded by their employer and over one-quarter fund their own training. one result of this is almost half of workers in precarious employment report their current job does not offer good career prospects. age did not have a large effect on whether the current jobs held by workers in precarious employment offered good career prospects. 102 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages table 7: training and career prospects (%) source: pepso surveys. * only asked in 2011 discussion: the precarity penalty, families and communities workers in precarious employment suffer a number of disadvantages related to their employment. together these disadvantages can be thought of as the precarity penalty. individual income and household incomes of workers in precarious employment are lower than for workers in secure employment. fewer than 1 in 10 workers in precarious employment receive supplemental employment benefits such as a drug plan. they face more employment uncertainty than workers in secure employment including more frequent periods of unemployment, variable earnings, irregular work schedules and increased short-term employment uncertainty. there are also long-term penalties. workers in precarious employment are less likely to receive training provided by their employer and are more likely to be in jobs with limited future career prospects. the final section of this paper examines how the precarity penalty shapes entering relationships, decisions to start a family and social isolation. a) forming a relationship. there are many ways insecure employment can create barriers to forming a relationship with someone. workers who are uncertain of future earnings or career prospects may be reluctant to enter into lasting relationships. low earnings and irregular work schedules can make it difficult to engage in many of the social activities that might lead to a relationship. 18% of workers in precarious employment reported they had delayed forming a relationship with someone due to employment uncertainty compared to only 3% of workers the precarity penalty | 103 in secure employment.15 such delays were most pronounced for workers under the age of 35. nearly one-quarter of workers in precarious employment under the age of 35 had delayed forming a relationship compared to only 4% of workers in secure employment. men in precarious employment were almost 50% more likely to delay forming a relationship than women. racialized workers in precarious employment were almost twice as likely to delay forming a relationship compared to white workers. young racialized men were the most likely to view their employment relationship as a barrier to forming relationships. decisions to delay forming a relationship with someone are reflected in the percentage of workers in different categories who are married. almost 70% of the sample reported being married. just over 62% of workers in precarious employment were married compared to just over 73% of those in secure employment. most of this gap in the overall sample represents much lower rates of marriage of younger workers in precarious employment compared to younger workers in secure employment. 42% of workers under the age of 35 in precarious employment were married compared to 65% of those in secure employment. for workers 35 and older, the percentage married varied very little by employment security category. women in precarious employment were marginally more likely to be married than men in precarious employment consistent with gender differences in delaying forming relationships discussed above. racialized workers in precarious employment were marginally less likely to be married than white workers. the reluctance of young racialized men to pursue relationships with someone is reflected in low rates of marriage for this group. only 31% of racialized men in precarious employment under the age of 35 were married compared to 41% of white men, 48% of racialized women and 56% of white women under the age of 35. b) starting a family. insecure employment can also affect decisions to start a family.16 over 16% of workers in precarious employment reported having delayed having children due to employment uncertainty compared to only 6% of those in secure employment. decisions to delay having children were more significant for younger workers. workers under the age of 35 in precarious employment were almost two and a half times more likely to delay having children than workers under 35 in secure employment. workers aged 35-54 in precarious employment were almost as likely to be married as workers in secure employment however they were still more likely to report delaying having children. over 16% of 15 asked only in 2014. 16 asked only in 2011. 104 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages workers in this age group in precarious employment reported delaying having children compared to just under 5% of workers in this age group in secure employment. men and women in precarious employment were equally likely to report delaying having children due to employment uncertainty. over 20% of racialized workers in precarious employment report having delayed having children due to employment uncertainty compared to 14% or white workers. decisions to delay having children as a result of employment uncertainty are reflected in the number of households with children. just over 45% of workers in precarious employment had a child living in their household compared to just over 55% of workers in secure employment. the impact of the employment relationship was most substantial for workers under the age of 35. 28% of workers under the age of 35 in precarious employment had a child living in their household compared to 40% of workers in secure employment. men and women in precarious employment appear to have approached the decision to start a family differently. 38% of men in precarious employment had a child living in their household compared to 52% of men in secure employment. 53% of women in precarious employment had a child living in their household compared to 57% of women in secure employment. racialized workers and white workers in precarious employment were equally likely to have a child living in their households. c) social isolation. precarious employment can also influence a capacity of workers to engage with their community. factors include low and uncertain earnings that can limit the ability to participate in activities that might lead to friendships. 21% of workers in precarious employment reported not having a close friend who they could talk to about what was on their mind compared to 14% of workers in secure employment. this form of isolation was especially significant for younger workers. 28% of workers under the age of 35 reported not having a close friend who they could talk to about what was on their mind compared to 12% of workers in secure employment. men in precarious employment were marginally more likely not to have a friend they could talk to than women. racialized workers were less likely to have a close friend who they could talk to about what was on their mind compared to white workers. 29% of racialized workers in precarious employment did not have a close friend who they could talk to compared to 17% of white workers in precarious employment. the temporary relationship many workers in precarious employment have to a workplace can also reduce the likelihood of co-workers being a source of friends. 35% of workers in precarious employment reported not the precarity penalty | 105 having a friend at work who they could ask a favour of, compared to 12% of workers in secure employment.17 the absence of friends at work was most significant for workers under the age of 55. men and women in precarious employment were equally likely to not have a friend at work they could call on for support. racialized workers were less likely to have a friend at work they could call on for support compared to white workers. 41% of racialized workers in precarious employment did not have a friend at work compared to 30% of white workers in precarious employment. conclusion this paper has mapped out the disadvantages that workers in precarious employment face at work and how this shapes social outcomes such as decisions to form relationships, to start families and to participate in community activities. the survey findings paint a picture of how low earnings and economic uncertainty translate into delayed formation of relationships, lower marriage rates for workers under the age of 35, and fewer households with children. they also suggest that workers in precarious employment are more likely to experience social isolation. these findings suggest that the precarity penalty is not limited to economic outcomes from employment but also includes disadvantages in establishing health households and being engaged in one's community. workers in secure employment enjoy better economic outcomes from employment that provide the basis for better household wellbeing and increased social integration. while much as been made in recent years of the unequal distribution of income, the pepso study also points to the unequal distribution of many of the non-financial aspects of life that people value including companionship, having a family and having friends. references bohle, p., m. quinlan, d. kennedy & a. williamson. 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(2009). gender and the contours of precarious employment. london: routledge. ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 109 ‘illegalized’ migrant workers and the struggle for a living wage charity-ann hannan1, harald bauder2 and john shields3 abstract: a higher proportion of workers are earning sub-poverty wages today, compared to few decades ago. illegalized migrant workers have been disproportionately affected by this trend through super-exploitative employer practices. to improve the wages of low-wage workers, members of unions, community groups, activists, and support coalitions have launched living wage campaigns in cities in the usa, uk and, more recently, canada. recognizing that illegalized migrant workers’ lack of legal status is valuable to neoliberalism’s economic “success”, yet at the same time, subjects them to arrest and/or deportation by federal immigration authorities, this paper examines modern living wage campaigns, and how they have incorporated the situation of illegalized migrant workers into their agenda. a review of the literature shows that living wage campaigns have not been very successful in achieving their broad goals while at the same time protecting low-waged illegalized migrant workers. these findings indicate that current and future living wage campaigns should consider working closely with sanctuary city campaigns to improve their strategies for protecting illegalized migrants from arrest and/or deportation while working to improve the working and living conditions of low-waged workers, including the illegalized. keywords: living wage; poverty; illegalized migrants; exploitation; rights “…the basic premise of the living wage movement could not be more simple: that anyone who works for a living should not have to raise a family in poverty” (pollin and luce 1998, 1). 1 charity-ann hannan is a phd candidate in policy studies at ryerson university. the authors thank natasha pei from canadian living wage movement for advice and acknowledge support from the sshrc grant policy engagement at multiple levels of governance: a case study of the living wage and minimum wage policy. 2 harold bauder is professor in the graduate program in immigration and settlement studies and the department of geography at ryerson university. 3 john shields is professor in the department of politics and public administration and a faculty member of the graduate program in immigration and settlement studies at ryerson university. 110 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages “…irregular/undocumented/clandestine migrants [illegalized migrants] … find themselves in ‘a situation of radical rightlessness’, without ‘voice’ or access to counter-balancing resources for representation. their situation could be designated as one of hyper-precarity, marked by super-exploitation.” (likić-brborić and schierup, 2015, 231). introduction within the past few decades, the income gap between low-wage workers and high-wage workers in western countries has increased, and a higher proportion of workers are earning sub-poverty wages today, compared to few decades ago. the living wage movement is centred on the struggle for what the international labour organization (ilo) calls the decent work and wages agenda to address the growing global problem of the working poor (ilo, n.d.). illegalized migrant workers, who have become an important segment of the working population in western countries, are disproportionately affected by this trend through superexploitative employer practices (steinlight and glazov, 2008). their lack of formal legal status strips them of basic rights, exposing such workers to extreme exploitation by their employers. to counter these changes, unions, community groups, activists, and support coalitions have launched living wage campaigns in cities in the usa, uk and, more recently, canada. this living wage movement pushes for change at the levels of policy and practice that will provide vulnerable workers with living wages and is helping more broadly, to revitalize the labour movement at a grass roots level. in this paper, we examine the development of the modern living wage movement considering its contribution to the support of vulnerable workers and the situation of illegalized migrant workers in light of the emerging living wage campaign in toronto, canada. the working population that the living wage movement addresses is an impoverished and disempowered segment of the workforce that is disproportionately racialized, gendered and often of immigrant background. however, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, workers who lack full legal status, are often not included in the movement’s target population. therefore, we explore how illegalized migrants fit within the living wage movement. as workers without access to many basic rights and lacking full legal status, illegalized migrants confront special circumstances. for example, they tend to work in the shadow economy where they are vulnerable to abuse, and lack access to government supported services for citizens and legal residents, which forms an important component of low-wage workers’ overall wage package. in ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 111 addition, workers who lack full legal status are unable to easily pursue legal action against employer violations of their rights. illegalized workers have become a necessary component of the contemporary labour market required by neoliberal capitalism. hence, illegalized workers are an expected, necessary but under-acknowledged contributor to neoliberalism’s economic “success”. approach we examine the contemporary living wage campaign with particular reference to illegalized migrant workers in toronto. as a point of entry into our investigation, we completed an extensive review of the englishlanguage literature on the living wage movement in the uk, us and canada, and on the labour market experiences of illegalized migrants. this review included peer-reviewed scholarly literature as well as grey literature drawn from civil society, municipal documents and public media sources (e.g. newspaper articles, living wage movement websites) published since 1990 when the contemporary living wage movement commenced. the relevant literature was identified through a variety of search terms, and various combinations of these terms including: “living wage,” “(im)migrant”, “undocumented”, “non-status”, “irregular”, “precarious”, “alien(s)”, “illegal(s)”, “unauthorized”, “informal”, and “illegalized”, “labour market”, “employment rights”, and “labour rights”. we define “illegalized migrant” as “a migrant who does not have the right to work or reside in which he or she lives because state policies have rendered him or her “illegal.” ” (bauder and shields, 2015, 421). most illegalized migrants have entered the country legally with the state’s authorization, as in the case of temporary foreign workers, foreign students, visitors, refugee claimants, but their status has lapsed. other terms that have been used to describe this group include: illegal aliens, unauthorized, undocumented, irregular and clandestine migrants (bartram, et al., 2014; pgs. 144-148; hannan, 2015, 144). we employ the term illegalized because it “shifts the emphasis away from the individual and towards the recognition of a societal process that situates immigrants in positions of precarity and illegality” (bauder, 2013, 2). background: rising inequality, the living wage, migration, and illegalization socio-economic inequality has existed within nation-states, subnational regions, and cities for centuries. however, intensified globalization of economic activity, the emergence of “global cities”, and the corresponding transformations in the organization of the labour process 112 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages since the 1960’s, have led to an increase in the socio-economic gap between low-wage and high-wage workers. this transformation has pushed larger numbers of workers into situations of serious economic vulnerability (sassen, 2006). a fordist economy “created the conditions for the expansion of a vast middle class [life styles] because it: (1) facilitated unionization; (2) was based in good part on household consumption, and hence wage levels mattered in that they created effective demand; and (3) the wage levels and social benefits typical of the leading sectors became a model for broader sectors of the economy” (sassen, 2006, 151). in contrast, the post-fordist domination of economy by the finance and services industries was associated with “the growth of an informal economy in large cities and highly developed countries” (sassen, 2006, 152). major cities in highly developed countries, including toronto, experienced greater informalization in the labour market, the decline of standard employment relationships, and an increase of employment precarity and own account self-employment (see lewchuk, et al. 2015). saskia sassen (2006) observed that a series of trends in global cities, including, on the one hand, the demand for high-priced, customized services and products by a narrowly based but growing high-income population; and on the other hand, the increased need for low-cost services and products by an expanding low-income population reflected in a polarizing economy. the rise of a more informal economy has become a conduit “for reducing costs, and for providing flexibility in instances where this is essential and advantageous, resulting in the various shifts in the earnings distribution and income structure in global cities” (sassen, 2006, 162). the recent report the precarious penalty vividly documents the growth of precarious insecure work within the labour force of the toronto region (lewchuk, et al., 2015; also see lewchuk et al., this volume). guy standing (2011) has expanded on global neoliberal capitalism’s need for hyper exploitable precarious labour. migrants “make up a disproportionate part of the growing social category whose experience in the world of work is marked by ‘precarity’ in terms of informal labour, wage squeezes, temporariness, uncertainty, and pernicious risk” (schierup et al., 2014, 2). for standing, illegalized migrants form a core element of the group of low-wage and vulnerable workers he calls the precariat (standing, 2011). according to schierup et al. (2014, 2): “exclusivist migration policies, together with the ‘irregularization’ of citizenship, have forged a globally fragmented and disposable labour force in industry, entertainment, hospitality, care-work, ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 113 cleaning, and domestic services subject to long hours of dangerous, demanding, demeaning, and dirty work in permanent fear of dismissal and, potentially, deportation. these workers are exceedingly vulnerable and many basic labour, citizenship, and human rights simply do not apply to them. it is a precarious workforce present globally; segmented and discriminated against through ascription of race and ethnicity and also gender through insertion into specific sections of the local and national labour markets.” while all low-wage workers including non-migrant and “legal” migrant workers have been the focus of attention for the living wage movement, illegalized migrants are playing a special role to modern capitalism, which requires corresponding attention within the living-wage movement. the living wage movement in 1906, john ryan, a roman catholic priest, argued that, “the laborer’s claim to a living wage is of the nature of a right” (ryan, 1920, revised and abridged edition, 3). he further stated that “the laborer’s right to a decent livelihood is superior to the employer’s right to enjoy goods that are superfluous to his social position” (ryan, 1920, 3). drawing from these ideas, unions, community groups and religious and other civil society organizations today, are lobbying municipalities to pass laws requiring employers to pay employees a living wage for work done for the city and to persuade employers to voluntarily pay a living wage to their employees. the calculation for the “modern” day living wage is usually based on the official poverty threshold for a family of four and centred on the concept that people who work full-time jobs, and their families, should not be forced to live in poverty (devinatz, 2013). the living-wage movement, however, is about more than raising workers’ wages to above sub-poverty levels. it encompasses a much broader agenda for improving the overall labour market conditions of low-wage workers (pollin and luce, 1998; reynolds, 2001). pollin and luce (1998, 7-8) explain: “the living wage movement is resisting dominant economic trends and posing an alternative economic vision, making it an effective voice for economic justice in the united states. [it]… is committed to reversing the economywide wage squeeze, stopping tax giveaways to big businesses, reenergizing the labor movement, and ending the war on the poor.” the goals of the los angeles living-wage campaign, for example, were to “directly affect the lives of workers who are getting a raise; to 114 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages develop a tool for union organizing actions; and to raise the public issue of the need for a living wage, the problem of wage inequity, and a certain level of dignified treatment for workers” (pollin and luce, 1998, 8). religious and union support for the modern living wage movement has also been tied to a broad agenda for equality and economic fairness (holgate, 2013; pollin and luce, 1998). while some living-wage campaigns have been unsuccessful and some living wage ordinances have been repealed, there are many examples of living-wage campaigns that achieved their goals (holgate, 2011; levin-waldman, 2008; luce, 2005; reynolds, 2001). beginning in baltimore in the early 1990s, the livingwage movement quickly spread to dozens of cities in the us, uk, and canada. while some effort has been made to bring living wage policies to the national and regional scales (bbc, 2015; freeman, 2005), it is at the municipal level of government that the greatest successes have been achieved. living wage movements tend to target municipalities in the core of larger metropolitan areas because “the problem of poverty and lowwage employment are more severe in cities than sub-urban regions” (pollin and luce, 1998, 54). in practice, cities typically will adopt only one of two versions of living wage policies. the first is the contractor-only ordinance, which covers companies that possess contracts with municipal governments. the second applies to private businesses that receive financial support from the governments. either way, these two kinds of statutes end up applying to less than 3% of the low-wage workforce (fairris and reich, 2005). nonetheless, pollin and luce maintain that living wage ordinances benefit low-wage workers, employers, and society in both direct and indirect ways: “as the low-wage family comes to rely far less on government support to keep themselves afloat, the corollary is that the government spends correspondingly less to help working people survive the effects of earning sub-poverty wages. … [f]irms employing a high concentration of low-wage workers will themselves benefit through establishing a living wage standard. this is because the raises to the low-wage workers will reduce absenteeism and turnover, i.e., the rate at which workers quit their jobs and firms then have to replace them (pollin and luce, 1998, 20-21).” evaluations of the effects living-wage ordinances’ on poverty levels, employment rates, and employee productivity show mixed results. while reducing the likelihood of families living in poverty (neumark and adams, ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 115 2003; schoenberger, 2000), living-wage ordinances have also been found to reduce employment by 3.2% to 17% depending on the type of ordinance that was passed (fairris, 2005; neumark and adams, 2003; yelowitz, 2005). in contrast, reich et al. (2005) found employment increased by 15.6% after the san francisco airport’s living wage policy was passed. similarly, lester (2011) concluded that the implementation of living wage policies in 19 california cities did not adversely impact employment growth. employers in london were also found to have benefited from living wage ordinances, with reports of higher work productivity associated with paying living wages (wills et al., 2009a). similarly, living wage firms were found to have lower rates of labour turnover and employee absenteeism, and a higher morale compared to non-living wage firms in the us (brenner, 2005; reich et al., 2005). living wage ordinances have made it easier for unions to organize low-wage workers and have contributed to the development of broad labour community coalitions that promote labour rights (de graauw, 2015; hearn and bergos, 2011; luce, 2004; pastor, 2001; tapia and turner, 2013). nevertheless, living wage campaigns continue to face opposition from business and its political allies. opponents argue that an increase in wages would weaken firms with a high proportion of low-wage workers, although studies suggest that cost impacts are modest (lamman, 2014; pollin, 2005; schoenberger, 2000). employers have also retaliated against workers who have been part of living wage initiatives. after employees unionized as a part of the living wage movement for example, a uk employer reported the presence of illegalized migrant staff in their organization to uk immigration authorities, who then conducted a worksite raid that led to their arrest and deportation (hearn and bergos, 2011; ivereigh, 2009). employers in the us have similarly reported illegalized migrant workers to immigration authorities, after learning about their attempts to: fight for unpaid wages; report labour violations; and participate in unionizing drives (harris, 2013; smith et al., 2009; smith and cho, 2013). despite resistance and retaliation efforts from living wage opponents, public support for living wage campaigns is strong, with local campaigns emerging in cities across north america, including toronto (ccpa, 2015; living wage canada, 2013; living wage canada: ontario, 2013; luce, 2005). 116 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages living wage advocacy efforts and illegalized migrants in the us, uk, and canada campaigners have applied a variety of strategies and tactics to counter resistance from living wage opponents including: taking advantage of political opportunity structures, helping to frame public policy debate, multi-racial coalition building, union organizing, grassroots actions, engaging in research, evaluation and evidence collection, educating workers about their rights, campaigning around regularization of illegalized migrant workers, and other forms of activism (de graauw, 2015; lopes and hall, 2015; luce, 2005; pastor, 2001; reynolds, 2001; wills, 2008, wills et al., 2009b). as a result of these strategies, many cities and employers have adopted voluntary or mandatory living wage policies. while these responses have benefited many low-wage workers, some employers have retaliated against illegalized migrant workers. such incidents in the us and the uk can provide important lessons for toronto’s living wage campaign. a growing number of workers in the us are earning sub-poverty level wages due to the growth of the informal economy. profit-maximizing, subcontracting and sweatshop work have resulted in greater earnings and occupation dispersions, weak unions and a growing share of casualized low-wage jobs along with a narrower layer of high-income jobs in cities across the us (nelp, 2011; peck and theodore, 2001; pollin and luce, 1998; sassen, 2006). while many low-wage workers have been affected, illegalized migrants have been disproportionately pushed into poverty. they often experience violations of basic employment standards rights, and retaliation by employers after attempts to defend themselves (bernhardt et al., 2009; sassen, 1998; smith and cho, 2013). in response to the rise of low wage work over 100 us municipalities had passed living wage ordinances by the early 2000s (freeman, 2005). leading up to the first living wage ordinance in the us, the first living wage campaign was initiated in the early 1990s by a group of pastors in baltimore who became concerned about the increase in workers using their soup kitchen. as members of the industrial areas foundation (aif), the pastors joined the american federation of state, county, and municipal employees (afscme), and the baltimoreans united in leadership development (build), a coalition of worker centres, to form the local living-wage campaign to pressure the mayor for a resolution to the increasing number of impoverished workers (devinatz, 2013; pollin and luce, 1998; reynolds, 2001). after facing strong opposition from the business community, the city passed the country’s first municipal living wage ordinance in 1994 (pollin and luce, 1998). soon thereafter, religious ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 117 organizations, community groups, labour unions, and student associations joined the iaf, afscme and other political actors to initiate living wage campaigns in other us cities (devinatz, 2013). as a result, living wage regulations were adopted in new york city, santa clara county, milwaukee, jersey city, los angeles, and numerous other cities in the late 1990s. living-wage campaigns also sprung up at colleges and universities across the us, including harvard, wesleyan, john hopkins, brown, and the university of virginia. living wage campaigns applied a range of strategies and tactics to persuade city authorities to pass livingwage ordinances and for employers to adopt living wage policies. the los angeles living-wage campaign was linked to a broader process to save hundreds of jobs at the airport and to organize 30,000 nonunion airport workers. led by the los angeles alliance for a new economy (laane), the los angeles living wage campaign applied multiple strategies and tactics before winning an 18-month battle with city council in 1997 (reynolds, 2001; saito and truong, 2014). to win over a city council that was led by an unsupportive mayor, laane led the living wage initiative with the goal of linking policy development and union organizing. the campaign conducted phone-in operations, asked organizations to fax letters of support, and mailed council members over a thousand decorated paper plates during thanksgiving that symbolized the struggle to feed a family on poverty wages (levin-waldman, 2008; reynolds, 2001). the campaign also used the media to champion living wage employers and to highlight the social-justice dimensions of the living wage issues. two employers, for example, wrote opinion pieces for the los angeles times explaining how high-wage policies have benefitted their companies. in addition, workers organized a media event that took reporters and city hall staff on a tour that showed the conditions under which they work. workers further made testaments at city hall about work injuries that went untreated, lack of insurance, families crowded into one-bedroom apartments to make rent, and how they visited food pantries to obtain enough groceries to live on. workers’ participation also developed an activist nucleus among low-wage workers that fed into union activity. the service employees international union (seiu), for example, won union jobs for janitors using the living wage law, whereas the hotel and restaurant employees union (here) used the coalition’s support to win union recognition in hollywood. furthermore, los angeles’ living wage campaign runs its own contract and financial assistance database, trains workers about labour law, and maintains a coalition network capable of going after employer violators, as well as employers that attempt to bust unions (pollin and 118 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages luce, 1998; reynolds, 2001). in contrast to portland’s and los angeles’ living wage campaign, which faced weak and moderate levels of opposition respectively, chicago’s living wage campaign confronted strong opposition for three years before the city passed an ordinance in 1999. to gain public and political support for their agenda, the chicago campaign employed a variety of strategies including participation in the may day march through downtown chicago, achieving media coverage through news articles that supported the “wage warriors”, championing prominent society members to pressure the un-supportive mayor for his support, shaming the mayor at the 1996 democratic convention, and by taking busloads of delegates on “tours of shame,” which included visits to low-wage employers who had public contracts and financial assistance. the campaign built a very strong coalition of more than 60 organizations, with a combined membership of 250,000. upon hearing of the strength of the movement, the city illegally closed its doors to the public from attending the city council meeting in which aldermen voted down the proposed living wage ordinance. when the mayor and council began the preparation for proposing salary increases for themselves in 1998 they realized that they could not risk a backlash from the living wage movement who would publicize the hypocrisy. a living wage law was therefore passed, although its terms were narrower than the originally proposed ordinance (reynolds, 2001). although cities with larger immigrant populations and higher union density are more likely to pass living-wage ordinances than cities that do not have these demographics (levin-waldman, 2008), less is known about the link between living-wage campaigns, living-wage ordinances and illegalized migrant workers. employers have fired illegalized migrant workers or called immigration authorities to arrest and deport workers after these workers attempted to retrieve withheld pay, obtain safer working conditions, pay increases and unionize (harris, 2013; nissen, 2005; smith et al., 2009; smith and cho, 2013). the us literature, however, does not demonstrate the extent to which living-wage campaign strategies and tactics have prompted employer retaliation against illegalized migrant workers. furthermore, if living-wage campaigns in the us have resulted in employer retaliation towards illegalized migrant workers, what have living-wage campaigns done to protect illegalized migrant workers from being fired, arrested and deported? like the us, income inequality has risen rapidly in the uk during the past four decades. changes in global production and employment systems have led to growth of precarious flexible, part-time, fixed-term, ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 119 temporary, or agency work, rather than full-time permanent work (mcdowell et al., 2009; sassen, 2006; thornley et al., 2010; wills, 2009c; wills et al., 2009d). also similar to the us, workers who earn sub-poverty level wages in the uk are more likely to be immigrants and illegalized migrants than native-born residents. as “invisible” workers immigrant and illegalized migrant workers often remain hidden from public view when they clean banks, hospitals, or universities while the city sleeps, or when they cook meals in the kitchens of countless restaurants (hearn and bergos, 2011; 2009; rienzo, 2011). studies have found that uk employers prefer to hire exploitable immigrants (with or without legal documents) to gain competitive advantage (hearn and bergos, 2011; tapia and turner, 2007). the east london communities organization (telco) launched london’s first living wage campaign in 2001 (holgate, 2009). the unison trade union and the transport and general workers union (tgwu) provided funds and the human resources to support workers to organize. after securing increases in pay, holidays, pensions and sick pay for cleaners in the early 2000s, tgwu and unison’s union membership grew and the living wage campaign expanded. additional lobbying efforts secured the living wage for all people working on the 2004 olympic projects, and resulted in the establishment of a living wage unit in the greater london authority. supported by the justice for janitors campaign in the us, the tgwu began a sector-wide campaign to unionize cleaners in the city and canary wharf and worked with london citizens (formerly telco) to demand a living wage for all. within months, the campaign expanded to higher education, focusing on low-paid contracted cleaners at multiple universities across london. the living wage campaign has employed a variety of strategies to achieve pay increases for low-paid, mainly migrant workers. however, as in the us, the campaigns have not been without opposition (hearn and bergoes, 2011; holgate, 2009; lopes and hall, 2015). throughout the living wage campaigns, telco, workers, and unions employed a variety of tactics to persuade employers and the city to adopt the living wage. during the beginning of the campaign, public protests (marches, demonstrations, public assemblies) and lobbying of politicians and employers attracted the support of the mayor and trade unions (tapia and turner, 2013). tgwu then decided to focus on a strategy for growth, putting more resources into organizing workers, many of whom were immigrants. including immigrants gave the labour movement an opportunity to transform itself into a stronger force. once the unions shifted their attitudes towards immigrants, and immigrants 120 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages began joining previously closed unions, they acquired new positions within the union structures, changing the union from within (tapia and turner, 2013). the growth in membership influenced unions to fight not only for a living wage, but also for structural changes in the labour market, demanding better social protection for immigrant workers, and, by extension, for all workers. campaigns framed the issues in terms of social justice and fairness. through sustained campaigns, including demonstrations, strikes and civil disobedience, vulnerable workers and their union supporters were able to pressure employers and policy makers to win significant concessions (tapia and turner, 2013; lopes and hall, 2015). telco initiated a ‘strangers into citizens’ campaign, after learning about the city’s role in exploiting illegalized migrant workers. the campaign came together in may 2007 at trafalgar square to call for regularization. the campaign’s proposal was debated in the uk house of commons in june 2007. by september 2007, the liberal democrats adopted the idea of an earned route to citizenship with residence conditions of 10 years and the uk border agency began granting legal status to thousands of asylum seekers whose claims had failed (ivereigh, 2009). not all illegalized migrant workers benefitted from regularization, however, due to strict exclusionary criteria (e.g. proof of long association with the uk). furthermore, uk unions were not united on this initiative (tapia and turner, 2013; ivereigh, 2009). on the one hand, union leaders perceived regularization as a very difficult and contentious issue that many members would not support. on the other hand, some leaders found telcos campaign to be too limited because it was tied to too many conditions. while an opening was created for the union to support regularization of illegalized migrant workers, the political willingness and strategy of the union leaders to make regularization a priority remained absent (tapia and turner, 2013). the deportation of eight cleaners in early 2009, approximately one year after the living wage was won for cleaners at the school of oriental and african studies (soas) at the university of london indicated that “it is not enough to be able to organize a successful campaign around union recognition and pay and conditions, unions must also be in a position to protect their activists” (hearn and bergos, 77). more specifically, “there are a number of important lessons for the trade union movement to learn; namely, the need to have specific legal and campaigning strategies in place to defend its migrant activists as well as calling for the regularization of ‘irregular’ workers” (hearn and bergos 2011, 65). ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 121 temporary foreign workers and the rise of low-wage illegalized work in canada canada’s growing temporary foreign worker (tfw) program is a prime example the use of cheap vulnerable migrant labour to perform expanding shares of the low skilled and poorly paid work in the economy. rooted in the 1973 non-immigrant employment authorization program (nieap) and 1966 seasonal agricultural workers program (sawp), canada’s tfw program has rapidly expanded during recent decades. while 69,901 tfws were employed in canada in 1973 in agriculture, by 2012, 338,221 tfws were employed across canada in agricultural, domestic, live-in caregiving work, food processing, catering, fast-food services, hotel housekeeping and services, engineering, and construction (sharma, 2006; curry, 2014). the tfw program is projected to continue to expand in upcoming decades (ilo, 2009; sawchuk and kempf, 2008). prior to the tfw program, most migrants who entered canada to work were issued a “permanent resident status”, giving them access to labour rights and enabling them to eventually apply for citizenship. with the implementation of the tfw, however, the canadian government began channeling migrant workers into two major status streams: (1) a lowskilled stream that issued “temporary migration status” and few real opportunities for gaining citizenship, and (2) a high-skilled stream that offered pathways to permanent resident status and eventually citizenship (basok, 2004). unlike the high-skilled immigrant workers who have pathways to citizenship, tfw low-skilled migrants’ are treated as disposable “guest workers”, subjecting them to exploitative employment conditions (binford, 2009). employers continue to claim to need temporary migrant workers because of labour shortages in low-wage, low-skilled work (barnetson and foster, 2013). they characterize the tfw program as a labourmarket necessity and as an opportunity to workers in developing countries to earn valuable dollars to send home. however, the tfwprogramhas beenmore accurately described as a program that bonds workers to importing particular employer (sharma, 2006), resulting in “low wages, often below the minimum, and long hours with no overtime pay; dangerous working conditions, crowded and unhealthy accommodation; denial of access to public healthcare and employment insurance, despite paying into the programs; and being virtually held captive by employers or contractors who seize identification documents” (walia, 2012: 72). due to these labour conditions, some tfws choose to leave their employer to seek employment elsewhere, in which case they lose their status in canada. other tfws overstay their visas. in both cases, workers become “illegalized” (bauder, 2013). 122 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages there are other ways in which migrants and refugees become illegalized. their paperwork can become lost in the bureaucracy; their application for asylum may be; or they can cross the border without the proper documents (bauder, 2013). in canada, most illegalized migrants likely entered the country with legal status of some kind (marsden, 2012). while, their precise number is unknown, reports estimate that the number ranges from 80,000 to 500,000, with half of them residing in toronto (magalhaes et al., 2010; mci, 2012). a 2000 rcmp report further estimated that approximately 15,000 migrants cross the us-canada border annually without proper authorization (oxman-martinez et al., 2005). the expanding tfw program will likely contribute to an increase of illegalized migrants due to an estimated overstay rate of 1.5%4 (basok, 2007). in 1976, the canadian immigration act criminalized the employment of illegalized migrants through employer sanctions. the criminalization of employing illegalized migrants continued with irpa in 2001, which states that, “every person commits an offence who … employs a foreign national in a capacity in which the foreign national is not authorized under this act to be employed”. while employers who violate this law can be fined up to $50,000 or imprisoned for up to two years, employers easily escape prosecution if they conducted “due diligence,” for example by asking for a sin number, when hiring employees (library of congress, 2015). illegalized migrant workers face the real brunt of sanctions as they are subject to arrest and deportation. to evade the arm of the law, they become extremely vulnerable to employer abuse and exploitation. american studies have found that us immigration and border policies enacted between 1985 to 2010 increased the vulnerability and undercut bargaining power in the lower segment of the labour force, where many illegalized migrants work (massey and gentsch, 2014). once contacted by a disgruntled employer or employee, immigration officials conduct worksite raids, whereby they arrest, detain, and/or deport illegalized migrant workers (smith et al., 2009). although illegalized migrants are formally be protected by labour rights, fear of employer retaliation usually prevents them from accessing these rights (mondragon, 2011). employers therefore continue to super-exploit illegalized migrants in the us (braker, 2012-2013; heyman, 1998; smith et al., 2009), and findings from studies conducted in canada indicate that illegalized migrants may be facing a similar situation here (goldring & landolt, 2012; magalhaes et al.; monsebraaten, 2009). 4 this rate would likely also increase in the case of a major economic downturn where tfws come to be laid off by their sponsoring employer before the expiry of their contract, as with the recent depression of commodity prices such as oil. ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 123 researchers have therefore argued that most important functions served by the illegal population is political, and resides in illegalized workers’ vulnerability to employers, who can control them easily due to their lack of formal legal status (grasmuck 1984, rivera-batiz 1999, champlin and hake 2006). furthermore, employers prefer illegalized workers during phases of rapid industrial transformation because their lack of legal protection prevents them from unionizing and protesting wage erosion (morales 1983-1984). "the category ‘illegal alien’ is [therefore] a profoundly useful and profitable one that effectively serves to create and sustain a legally vulnerable – and hence, relatively tractable and thus ‘cheap’ – reserve of labor" (de genova 2002, 440). the lack of status prevents migrants from competing for employment with nativeborn and legal immigrants on the same terms and conditions. instead, they are bonded to employers, forced into accepting greatly inequitable remuneration for their work and kept in low-paying occupations that legal residents would not accept (donato et al., 1992; gentsch and massey, 2012; gomberg-munoz and nussbaum-barberena, 2011). the living wage and the struggle for the protection of illegalized workers in toronto similar to the us and uk, canada’s labour market policies and practices have shifted dramatically during the past few decades, resulting in the polarization of workers’ income levels especially in cities (hulchanski, 2010; lewchuk et al., 2015; oecd, 2011). without intervention, projections indicate that 60% of toronto neighbourhoods will be low or very low-income neighbourhoods by 2025, threatening social cohesion and the overall inclusiveness and health of the city (city of toronto, 2011; hulchanski, 2010). illegalized migrants are particularly susceptible to employer exploitation. they often work in poor and unsafe work conditions, and do not receive protection against unfair labour practices (goldring and landolt, 2012; magalhaes et al., 2010; sidhu, 2013). to counteract these trends, living-wage campaigns have emerged in canadian municipalities such as toronto and vancouver. unlike cities in the us, however, explicit living wage ordinances have not to date been passed in canadian cities (pei, 2015). canada’s first living-wage campaign was officially launched in vancouver in 2007. in toronto, the emergence of efforts resisting the expansion of precarious work can be traced to councilor ana bailão’s request of toronto’s community development and recreation committee to study the social and economic impact of the city’s intentions to begin contracting-out cleaning and custodial work 124 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages (city of toronto, 2011; vosko et al., 2013). citing concerns of the ilo, the united way, and the toronto community foundation about the disproportionate impact of precarious employment on immigrants, bailão demanded that the study focus “on the social impact of hundreds of jobs being performed at salaries that are barely above minimum wage, often with no benefits, and particularly the impact on [low-income] priority neighbourhoods.” (city of toronto, 2011). after the study’s completion, the city took several steps to reduce the negative impacts of contracting-out services, including: updating the city’s fair wage schedule to reflect prevailing market rates, directing the fair wage schedule to be revised every three years, and revising requirements for companies that bid for custodial services to improve job quality contractors’ employees (wellesley institute, 2015). the toronto city council also directed its staff to develop of a job quality assessment tool that includes a living wage standard and that considers other dimensions of job quality, including skills and training opportunities, and working conditions (city of toronto, 2013; wellesley institute, 2015). in addition, the canadian centre for policy alternatives (ccpa), the toronto and york region labour council, cupe local 79, acorn canada, social planning toronto, the solidarity city network, justicia for migrant workers, the worker’s action centre, and savings and numerous credit unions are advocating for the living wage in toronto and elsewhere in canada (ccpa, n.d.). the ccpa has determined the cost of raising a family of four in various canadian cities as an evidence base in support of living wage policies. toronto’s 2015 living wage is calculated to be $18.52 per hour, which includes the costs for rent, transportation, child-care, food, clothing, internet, and laundry (ccpa, 2015). it builds into its living wage calculation that workers have access to public benefits such as healthcare, employment insurance, housing benefits etc. in general, however, these services are often refused to illegalized migrants who are unable to show identification cards required by service delivery staff and other public officials (sidhu, 2013; solidarity city network, 2013). to provide access to such benefits to illegalized migrants in toronto, and in response to pressure from no one is illegal, the solidarity city network, and other activist organizations, toronto became canada’s first sanctuary city in 2013. as a sanctuary city, toronto improved upon the previous don’t ask don’t tell policy, which enabled city staff to serve illegalized migrant clients without asking about their immigration status. the formal sanctuary city designation is now supposed to ensure that all residents receive access to the city’s funded core services, including ‘illegalized’ migrant workers | 125 healthcare, education, income support programs, employment protection, affordable housing, settlement services, social assistance and legal services (cities of migration, 2013). despite becoming a sanctuary city evaluations have shown that illegalized migrants continue to face barriers to accessing these benefits (sidhu, 2013; solidarity city network, 2013). sanctuary city activists are therefore continuing their struggle towards ensuring the successful delivery of municipal services to illegalized migrants and the broadening of coverage to public supports provided by the provincial and federal governments, while simultaneously protecting illegalized migrants from arrest and/or deportation. as the literature review has shown, living wage campaigns have not been very successful in achieving their broad goals while at the same time protecting low-waged illegalized migrant workers. current and future living wage campaigns should consider working closely with sanctuary city campaigns to improve their strategies for protecting to illegalized migrants from arrest and/or deportation while working to improve the working and living conditions of low-waged workers, including the illegalized. the public supports provided by sanctuary city protections are important to illegalized migrants’ economic and social well-being and are in this way complementary to living wage campaigns. conclusion the living-wage movement has directed its attention to workers who are, in guy standing terms, the precariat. illegalized migrants constitute the most precarious and exploited of this segment of the precarious labour force. neoliberal globalization requires a disciplined and low-wage labour force to sustain its economic foundations. in fact, global cities like toronto are a prime location in which to observe increasing income polarization and labour market insecurity for ever larger numbers of workers. therefore, living-wage campaigns have been most marked, and seen their greatest successes, at the urban scale. although illegalized migrants are among the most exploited workers, they are often invisible, even within the living-wage movement. the neoliberal logic maintains that “illegal” migrant work is ultimately a supply problem, and that tolerating or legalizing “illegal” migrants only create incentives that increases the supply of such migrants. hence, the solution according to this logic is to address the supply side and blame vulnerable illegalized migrants for the existence and increased use of unauthorized low-waged work. consequently, authorities are targeting illegalized migrants in addressing this policy problem. however, from the political economy perspective that sassen and standing assume, 126 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages illegalized migrant work is driven from the demand side. vulnerable and exploitable workers facilitate capital accumulation and labour market segmentation (bauder 2006). illegalized work is built into the very dna of modern neoliberal capitalism. addressing the situation of illegalized migrant workers is a way to confront the uncontrolled power of capital in a hyper neoliberal world. the labour market situation of illegalized migrants reveals some of the most exploitative aspects of neoliberal capitalism and the policy framework that supports it. the living-wage movement offers important strategies and tactics employed of active resistance to neoliberal globalization. however, illegalized migrant workers could be placed more centrally within this struggle and more visibly and organically connected to livingwage movement. the struggle for a living wage is not only an issue for lowwaged citizens and legal residents, but also for all workers, including the illegalized. winning living wages for illegalized workers is connected to broader protections from exploitation by employers and solidarity among workers. a living wage, enhanced security and status of migrants deemed “illegal” by the state is central to a progressive policy agenda. references barnetson, b. and foster, j. 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(2005). santa fe’s living wage ordinance and the labor market. employment policies institute. https://www.epionline.org/wp-content/studies/yelowitz_09-2005.pdf paving their way and earning their pay | 137 paving their way and earning their pay: economic survival experiences of immigrants in east toronto keren gottfried1, john shields2, nasima akter3, diane dyson4, sevgul topkara-sarsu5, haweiya egeh6, sandra guerra7 abstract: this paper lies at the intersection of precarious labour and immigrant employment experiences. the labour market has evolved over the past few decades such that jobs are increasingly precarious poorly paid, insecure, and lacking in employee protections. immigrants are overrepresented among those working precarious jobs and face compounded challenges to achieving socio-economic stability. immigrants, especially immigrant women, experience heightened exploitation and marginalization in the process of trying to economically and socially integrate into canadian society. the paper investigates how immigrants living in an east toronto ethnic enclave navigates the labour market and survive precarious and informal employment realities. it makes use of a unique empirical survey of this community to help shed light on the economic lives of this population. keywords: immigrants, informal economy, community research, neoliberalism, precarious work the rise of precarious work is a key phenomenon that is a defining feature of the 21st century canadian job market (lewchuk, et al. 2015). 1 keren gottfried is a public policy and performance measurement professional who has worked at indigenous and northern affairs canada and ipsos global public affairs. 2 john shields is a professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. he is also the acting academic director of the ryerson centre for immigration and settlement (rcis). 3 nasima akter is the executive director of bangladesh-canadian community services. 4 diane dyson is the director of research and public policy at woodgreen community services. 5 sevgul topkara-sarsu is the manager of settlement services at woodgreen communıty services. 6 haweiya egeh is a community development officer with the city of toronto’s toronto newcomer office. 7 sandra guerra is the partnership coordinator for the toronto south local immigration partnership. 138 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages many jobs that once formed the bedrock of middle class employment no longer offer the stability or economic rewards they once provided. precarious employment can be defined as work that has poor job security, poor benefits and employee protections, and it is often poorly paid. these jobs are commonly part-time, temporary, shift work, or informal jobs, many of which exist outside the formally-recognized employment market. this shift in the job market to more precarious work is taking place not only in canada but in many developed and developing countries. the international labour organization (ilo) identifies the absence of ‘decent jobs’ as the new labour market reality (2006), and reflects a ‘decent work deficit’ (likić-brborić and schierup, 2015, 229). the ilo statistics tell us that more than half of the world’s labour force is employed in insecure work today (wise, 2015, 28). the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd) situates precarious work at the intersection of “low levels of pay and high levels of labour insecurity” (campbell, 1996). employees generally are pushed into these positions because it is the only work they are able to find in today’s labour market and they quickly discover they have “minimal control over working conditions” (law commission of ontario, 2012, 1). a report by the wellesley institute (akter et al., 2013) notes that precarious employment often reflects substandard conditions that do not meet legislated minimum employment standards like minimum wage, hours of work limitations, health and safety codes, and the like. precarious jobs can also be defined as what they are not. poverty and employment precarity in southern ontario (pepso) defines “standard employment relationships” as working at least 30 hours per week, receiving a decent wage and benefits, and expecting to be working at the same employment a year from now (lewchuk, et al, 2013, 13). precarious employment deviates from these norms. some forms of selfemployment also fall in the category of precarious work. the wellesley institute places unregulated self-employment in the precarious umbrella, particularly unregulated self-employment that might run out of one’s home and operate “under the radar of most regulatory and tax rules” (akter, et al., 2013, 8). pepso contends that people who are self-employed but list no official employees are often working in precarious jobs because they tend to be “a disguised form of employment” that in normal circumstances would be part of the waged/salaried labour force (lewchuk, 2015, 19). many precarious jobs are also called “informal” because they fall outside of the formal employment framework expected in western economies (topkara-sarsu, 2013). colin williams (2010) writes these are paving their way and earning their pay | 139 jobs not registered for tax, social security, and/or labour law purposes. more broadly, informal work can be thought of as “emigration from the established ways of working” or operating “against the official norms and formal institutions for economic activity” (schneider and enste, 2013). williams (2008) distinguishes three categories of informal work. the first two reference various forms of unpaid work. first, ‘self-provisioning work’ includes unpaid household labour done by household members. second, ‘unpaid community work’ covers unpaid volunteering and kinship exchange between household members and their extended family, social, or neighbourhood networks. the third refers to ‘paid informal work’ and this encompasses all monetary exchange that is unregistered for tax, social security, and/or labour law but that is largely legal in other respects. informal jobs are united mostly by their heterogeneity (topkarasarsu, 2013); they can be legal or illegal, monetary or non-monetary, on or off the books, destructive or complementary to the formal economy, for profiteering or survival, and can be a person’s primary or supplementary income source (schneider and williams, 2013; topkara-sarsu, 2013). the sector includes a range of activity: favours for friends or community members, illicit activity like smuggling or embezzlement, undocumented workers, performing licensed activities without a license like electrical work, and some other forms of self-employment. questions posed in the east toronto enclave survey, however, attempted to tap into informal types of work that were engaged in by respondents or members of their household for some form of financial reward. neoliberalism, a political ideology and mode of governance that celebrates free markets, limited government, deregulation and encourages the heightened socioeconomic inequality that follows (burke, mooers and shields, 2000), tends to view informal work as an example of individual initiative and a creative alternative to its perception of ‘over-regulation’ in the labour market. without state regulation of informal activities, portes and haller (2005) contend, the flow and transactions of goods and services reflect the true will of market forces (topkara-sarsu, 2013). williams maintains that this view “portray[s] informal workers as heroes casting off the shackles of an over-burdensome state” that is blamed for economic and social problems (2010, 3). on the global scale, alternatively, the context is reversed. williams notes that informal jobs, in part, can be seen as having grown from an unregulated world economy that encourages “race to the bottom” labour practices. employers take advantage of opportunities to subcontract work to places where off-the-books workers face “degrading, low-paid and exploitative” conditions (2). the counterweight to these problems, according to the neoliberal viewpoint, is 140 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages that through informal work people can achieve some employment rather than no employment. it demonstrates the autonomy and creativity of individuals who take responsibility for their own livelihoods and make their own living rather than relying on welfare services from the public purse (williams, 2008). a recent ontario initiative, the “changing workplace review,” sheds some light on the evolution of these working conditions. ontario premier kathleen wynne’s mandate letter (wynne, 2014) calls for a review the province’s employment and labour standards processes. the review identifies five key trends that shape the changing labour market: (1) increased reliance on the service sector, (2) a rise of “non-standard employment relationships,” (3) globalization and trade liberalization (which drives competitiveness and increases pressure to keep costs low – including labour costs), (4) rapid technological change, and (5) increased diversity in the workplace. pepso describes the rise of precarious work as “a result of technological change, increased contracting out, and [internationally] extended supply lines” and “financial reorganizations, decisions to relocate, the entry of new competitors, or the inability to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation” (lewchuk, et al., 2013, 13). large companies that typically provide middle-income jobs find they now ‘face an uncertain future’ and are significantly reducing their workforces, reorganizing or even dissolving. though precarious jobs are rising on aggregate across the breadth of the labour market, immigrants are especially vulnerable to work in precarious jobs. this is not due to a lack of appropriate skills. in fact, immigrant newcomers on average have higher levels of education and human capital than those born in canada; despite this, they often remain unemployed or underemployed (shields, et al., 2010). a wellesley institute report explains that “immigrants are not only blocked from entering the professions for which they trained but a substantial portion of them are not in any type or form of secure employment. instead, canadian newcomers often face substandard, precarious and sometimes dangerous working conditions” (2013, 1). a law commission of ontario report (2012) concludes that this is due to the difficulty encountered by many newcomers in finding financially satisfactory standard employment. immigrants tend to take what they can get, i.e. survival jobs. the likelihood of immigrants working precarious jobs is also because of their overrepresentation in jobs most affected by the changing labour market. the worker’s action centre (wac) finds that “outsourcing, indirect hiring, and misclassifying workers takes place in sectors with distinctly local markets: restaurants, business services, construction, retail, paving their way and earning their pay | 141 warehousing, trucking, janitorial, home healthcare and manufacture of goods consumed locally.” moreover, wac explains that “low-skilled or labour intensive” jobs, where immigrants are disproportionately represented, are increasingly contracted out to third parties. to get one of these jobs, employees no longer look for a waged job but instead sign up with an employment agency as an “independent contractor.” the result is that immigrants face barriers to stable employment and experience very poor economic outcomes. these poor economic outcomes have been a reality facing many newcomers for the last number of decades and have been well documented in the literature (shields & türegün, 2014). moreover, some immigrant groups fare more poorly than others. for example, data from the 2006 canadian census show immigrants from racialized groups are more likely to live below the poverty line, as defined by before-tax low income cut-offs thresholds, than those from nonracialized groups (shields, et al., 2011). as root et al. (2014) explain, the neoliberal mindset has facilitated the development of a particular immigration policy framework in canada that prioritizes so-called “economic migrants” who are “perceived as selfreliant and embrace practices and expectations around personal responsibility” (5). over the last decade, the federal conservative government has been particularly active in reshaping canadian immigration policy along neoliberal lines. the focus is on highly-skilled immigrants and less of a priority is placed on allowing immigrants to sponsor family members. former minister of immigration jason kenney has been the “prime architect and force” behind these neoliberal reforms and responsible for articulating the “law-and order, family and religious values, small state and self-sufficiency agendas to the immigration portfolio” (ibid, 9). the driving force behind this policy framework is the assumption that highly-skilled immigrants are perceived to be less of a financial burden on the state, less of a challenge to integrate into society, and more likely to have the english/french language skills to succeed in the labour market. kymlica writes that this policy framework “affirms even valorizes ethic immigrant entrepreneurship, strategic cosmopolitanism, and transnational commercial linkages and remittances but silences debates on economic redistribution, racial inequality, unemployment, economic restructuring, and labor rights” (2013, 112). these policies also privilege recognized high levels of education, canadian employment experience, and formal credentials that many newcomers, particularly people of colour and women, often lack (arat-koc, 1999). neoliberalism perpetuates gender stereotypes. the so-called “selfsufficient family” is praised as one that reflects heteronormative, nuclear 142 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages family structures (root, et al., 2014, 7) and rely on women to provide care through family upbringing and voluntary and low-waged work in social services. with the care-taking responsibilities being offloaded from the public sphere to the family, attempts to balance family and employment obligations becomes impossible and particularly burdensome to immigrant women. neoliberal immigration policy asserts that there is a need to end purported immigrant overreliance on state social supports and ensure that they are making positive contributions to the economy. the charge that immigrants are a public burden is a myth utilized by neoliberal governments to further their ideological policy agenda. a 2013 report by the oecd, for example, notes that immigrants to canada use fewer benefits than might be expected and contribute more to the economy in taxes than they withdraw via public services and benefits – a position reinforced by hiebert (2005). recent changes in social policy, however, has worked to place greater restrictions on newcomer access to social and health benefits, further depressing their usage of such benefits. at the same time, neoliberal policy casts those who make ‘excessive demands’ on public welfare as undesirable and, in the case of newcomers, the language of ‘good versus bad immigrants’ comes to be employed (barrass and shields, 2015). significantly, the federal conservative government’s restrictions on refugee claimants’ access to health services has been ruled by the supreme court of canada as an “outrage [to] canadian standards of decency” (root, et al., 2014, 10). the end result is that immigrants have found themselves in an increasingly hostile environment with leaner settlement and social supports and a more hostile and competitive labour market that is marked by few good job opportunities. women, especially immigrant women, are particularly vulnerable. immigrant women are more likely to engage in precarious and informal jobs and are compensated at lower economic levels than men (akter, et al. 2013; shields & türegün, 2014; shields et al., 2010). peterson (2012) notes that within the labour market, women have unique experiences because “feminized” workers are assumed to be “less demanding, docile but reliable, available for part-time and temporary work and too [frequently] structurally vulnerable to contest low wages” (16). she also describes the immigrant mother as a person who is likely to be working out of desperation for money and the demands of raising children, all while maintaining normative gender appearances (ibid). during times of economic crisis, the double burden – having to care for social reproduction while making monetary contributions to the family – on women increases and is magnified when social services are cut in the name of government paving their way and earning their pay | 143 austerity (root, et al., 2014). immigrant women find themselves taking informal jobs that sacrifice workplace standards, protections, and employment stability in exchange for a degree of flexibility that might relieve the family-workplace juggling act. methodological approach this work is part of a community-university research project the social and economic inclusion of newcomers in toronto: navigating the informal economy and its impact on newcomer outcomes, funded by ryerson university’s rbc immigrant, diversity, and inclusion project. the partners on the project are: the south toronto local immigration partnership, woodgreen community services, and academic researchers from ryerson university. the project is based on an analysis of a dataset conceived and developed by the toronto south local immigration partnership and funded through wellesley institute. the range of community partners included: action for neighbourhood change, taylor massey, bangladeshi canadian community services, chinese canadian national council toronto chapter, neighbourhood link, riverdale east african association, and woodgreen community services (akter, et al., 2013). the data presented herein reflect a sample of n=453 households in east toronto from three communities: bangladeshi (n=199), chinese (n=214), and somali (n=40). the sample included n=284 women: n=122 bangladeshi, n=142 chinese, and n=20 somali. respondents in the survey were selected using interval sampling, were either male or female, and were aged 19 years or older. the stratified sample randomly selected participants in their homes and from street intercepts in east toronto. the interviews were face-to-face and used a semi-structured questionnaire delivered by multilingual, trained community researchers who conducted the interviews in either english or the interviewee’s mother language. interviews were conducted through october-december, 2011. the survey was primarily fielded in the neighbourhoods identified as ethnic enclaves in the east end of the old city of toronto: crescent town, broadview chinatown, and central riverdale. data presented herein were analyzed using spss 22. in the following analysis, we employ descriptive statistics to present a labour market profile of this immigrant enclave sample. we contrast this east toronto population with other groups along a number of dimensions and internally compare differences within the sample using factors such as gender and ethnicity. when employing ethnicity in the analysis of our sample, we are only able to contrast those of bangladeshi and chinese 144 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages background given that the somali sample size was too small to provide statistically meaningful results. furthermore, multivariate statistics are employed to deepen our analysis regarding the independent role of variables like ethnicity, gender, and english language ability on labour market outcomes. data findings demographic profile. about half (48%) of our sample population immigrated to canada under the immigration class of “family/sponsorship,” while one in three (34%) were “economic class,” 12% were “refugee claimants,” 5% were here on temporary visitor, student, or work permits, and less than 1% said “other.” more bangladeshi respondents moved here under the economic class (42%) than chinese respondents (30%). chinese respondents were more likely to be refugee claimants (13%) than bangladeshi respondents (3%). about half of the men in the survey were here under economic status (49%) while only one quarter (25%) of women were. considerably more women (62%) than men (26%) fell under family class designation. the majority of respondents (71%) were married, while two in ten (19%) were unmarried and 7% were divorced. the rest were separated (2%) or widowed (2%). a plurality (38%) moved to canada five or less years prior to survey participation, three in ten (28%) moved five to ten years ago, and three in ten (31%) had been in canada for more than ten years. these figures begin to demonstrate how demographic variables link together to compound their impact on labour market experiences. more specifically, six in ten (63%) of respondents had an english proficiency level8 of high intermediate or advanced: more men (73%) than women (58%) did so, however. approximately half (46%) reported using english at home sometimes or all the time (52% men, 43% women) and 87% reported using english at work sometimes or all the time (90% 8 respondents self-identified their english proficiency levels based on the following definitions: beginner (esl levels 1-2, linc levels 1-2)communicates only through a few words. may recognize and write letters and numbers and read and understand common sight words. high beginner (esl level 3, linc level 3) – communicates using basic learned phrases and sentences. reads and writes letters and numbers and a limited number of basic sight words and simple phrases. intermediate (esl levels 4-5, linc level 4) – can follow oral directions. has limited ability to understand on the telephone. can read simplified material on familiar subjects. high intermediate (esl level 6, linc levels 5-6) – ability to understand and communicate on the telephone. can participate in conversations on a variety of topics. advanced (esl levels 7-8, linc level 7) – can participate fully in social and familiar work situations; can understand and participate in conversations and in technical discussions in own field. paving their way and earning their pay | 145 men, 83% women). seven in ten (70%) said they use english in the community sometimes or all the time, while more men (75%) than women (68%) said so. hence, overall, a large proportion of all respondents did have good english language skills although there was also a clear gender differentiation. the weaker english language ability among women put them at a distinct labour market disadvantage. we will explore the place of english language and employment patterns more fully in later section of the paper but figure 1 provides an outline of the core nature of the relationship; more advanced english language ability results in improved economic outcomes. those with high intermediate or advanced english ability (62%) were more likely than those with lower levels (52%) to be employed at all – full-time, part-time or casual – though they are just as likely to have full-time work (35% vs. 33% respectively). critically, however, those with stronger levels of english (42%) were considerably more likely than those with weaker english skills (27%) to be living with household income levels above $30,000. n=453 (all respondents) 146 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages employment rates, types, and participation in the labour market. figure 2 gives us a snapshot comparison of general employment outcomes between our surveyed enclave population and the overall canadian workforce in 2011. what particularly stands out is the much lower rates of full-time employment from our surveyed immigrant population and their much higher rates of unemployment. one in three (34%) from our immigrant enclave report were working full time, defined as 30 hours per week or more, while data from the labour force survey by statistics canada report the canadian employment rate among those over the age of 15 in 2011 was 50% (statistics canada, 2015). the difference in unemployment levels between these two groups was 15% versus 7%, a rate that was twice the level for the enclave. the enclave sample also had somewhat higher levels of part-time and casual work. n=453 (all respondents) paving their way and earning their pay | 147 bangladeshi respondents in the survey (36%) were more likely than chinese respondents (32%) to have full-time work, while men and women both held, on aggregate, similar levels of full-time employment (34%). one in ten (10%) responded to having a current employment level that was “casual,” defined as “whenever you can get the work, but it is not very predictable.” chinese (11%) respondents were more likely than bangladeshi (8%) respondents, while men (15%) were more likely than women (7%), to hold casual work. our sample overall reflects 15% currently not employed and looking for work, compared with 7% of the overall canadian labour force, as reported by the labour force survey (ibid). while there is no apparent difference between the ethnicities surveyed, women (17%) were more likely than men (13%) to be unemployed but looking for work. hence, overall our sample experienced significantly greater rates of unemployment and nonstandard employment than the overall labour force. levels of household income reveal the grim employment and financial prospects facing respondents living in these ethnic enclaves. a majority of households (68%), where the respondent said they were working more than 30 hours per week, reported earning less than $30,000, versus only 25% at the city of toronto level (ibid). this is an earnings deficit figure that approaches three times the low incomes levels found in city of toronto households. looking at individual income, eight in ten (80%) overall reported earning less than $30,000 and 40% earned below $10,000. among the lowest income bracket, women (53%) were more than twice as likely as men (25%) to report income levels below $10,000. hence, low income levels displayed a distinct gender dimension with women being greatly disadvantaged. only one in three (37%) households reported being able to fully cover their household expenses on income earned through formal employment while a majority (67%) said they relied on other income sources. six in ten (62%) reported difficulty in meeting their monthly household expenses and one in seven (14%) reported great difficulty in doing so. a similar proportion (60%) of employed respondents (full-time, part-time or casual) said they were having difficulties making ends meet, indicating that this difficult situation reflects poor work prospects among those living in these communities. consequently, the problem for many of these immigrant households was not simple unemployment but employment that did not provide a living wage (i.e. a wage that provided them enough to meet the basic necessities of daily life). one in three (34%) of all respondents reported doing at least some self-employment work and three in ten (32%) reported that someone in 148 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the household was doing cash work. self-employed workers were most likely to say they pursued this route because of unemployment (37%), convenience (25%) or start-up costs (14%). these figures reveal that selfemployment activity within this immigrant enclave has become extremely important for providing a source of income – the survey provides important evidence revealing the turn to work outside the standard labour market for survival work. of those engaged in self-employed work, childcare or babysitting (20%) led the list, followed by self-employment work in food services (12%), building/renovating (10%), caregiving (8%), tutoring (8%), and taxi driving (8%). there were, however, distinct types of self-employment activity utilized by the different ethnic communities and by men versus women. bangladeshi respondents were more likely to say tutoring (16%) or taxi driving (16%) while chinese respondents were more likely to report working in food service (20%), providing room and board (13%), and sewing (8%). men reported building/renovations (20%) or taxi driving (17%) considerably more than women did (1% each) while women reported babysitting (27%) and caregiving (15%) more than men did (11% and 1% respectively). among those working for direct cash payments, factory work (35%), working in a store (29%) and restaurant (14%) work were the most popular forms of employment. bangladeshi respondents were more likely than chinese respondents to say they were doing restaurant work for cash (19% vs. 11%) or tutoring (13% vs. 1%) while chinese respondents were more likely to say factory work (35% vs. 19%). men were considerably more likely to say they were doing factory work for cash (45%) than women (28%). the amount of work carried out in the shadow economy by those in the ethnic enclaves is considerable and speaks to the reach and importance of ‘informalized work’ within the immigrant community (castles, 2015, 57-58). employment standards violations. one aspect of nonstandard employment forms and low wage based work is the notion that these workers are more exposed to employer abuse (rodgers, 1989; rubery, 1989). respondents were asked if they, or anyone in their household, had worked for cash and if certain employment conditions applied to that work. the survey data reveal that immigrants living in the east toronto bangladeshi, chinese and somali communities do in fact face poor employment standards. regarding the household member who was working for cash, about one third (36%) indicated at least one employment standard was not met at this job; 17% reported two violations, 11% reported three violations, and 7% reported four violations. these numbers vary considerably by ethnicity. fully half (50%) of those from paving their way and earning their pay | 149 chinese communities reported experiencing 1 violation while 23% of those from bangladeshi communities reported so. specifically, 16% received less than $10.25 an hour (the minimum wage in 2011) – 23% of chinese and 11% of bangladeshi respondents were below this level. overall, one in ten reported the household member working for cash experienced the following workplace violations: no paid holiday (11%), no vacation pay (11%), and cash payment without deductions (10%). figure 3 reports the frequency and percentage by type of employment standard violation for those who had experienced such victimization. the high incidents of violations of basic employment standard norms speaks to the deficits of employment quality experienced by so many racialized immigrants in urban centres. n=453 (all respondents) 150 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages an immigrant group that has faced particular challenges with integrating into the labour market has been the most recently arrived newcomers. figure 4 examines those who had come to canada within the last five years at the time of the survey. they are a group that are particularly vulnerable to employment standards violations and they survey shows that a high percentage of them were not aware of many of their employment rights. interestingly, however, very large majority were aware of what the minimum wage rate was, yet, as indicated previously, this was the most common form of employment standards abuse by employers. clearly, many newcomers do not feel that they are in a position to stand up for their rights against employer abuses. n=171 (respondents arrived in canada between 2007-2011) paving their way and earning their pay | 151 health and social outcomes. the labour market is closely connected to other parts of society. for instance, poor employment can negatively affect health and social outcomes. this relationship is outlined in the social determinants of health perspective that is widely used in policy circles (graham, 2007). figure 5 compares health outcomes for our sample with the general population. it indicates that there are large differences between these populations with our sample population fairing far more poorly. three in ten (31%) from our sample rated their health as poor (3%) or fair (28%) while the rest (69%) rated their health as good (44%), very good (19%) or excellent (6%). by contrast, only 10% of the canada-wide sample rates their health as poor, 62% as excellent or very good and 28% as good. from our immigrant enclave sample, more men (34%) than women (20%) rated their health as excellent or very good while more chinese (82%) than bangladeshi (70%) respondents said so. three in ten (30%) experienced stress, two in ten (19%) experienced difficulty sleeping, and 12% experienced depression more than twice per week over the past month. clearly, the health outcomes from the east toronto immigrant sample compared negatively along a variety of dimensions to the general canadian population. social determinant of health perspectives relate these kinds of differences directly to poor working and economic conditions of vulnerable populations living in immigrant enclaves (graham, 2007). n=453 (all respondents) 152 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages problems associated with social inclusion were also revealed in the survey. we use one measure here related to feelings of social inclusion – the respondent’s sense of strong attachment to community. the rather weak sense of attachment/inclusion is telling. less than one third (27%) said they strongly felt they are a part of their community. interestingly, more women (29%) than men (22%) and more bangladeshi (37%) than chinese (13%) respondents felt these strong attachments to their communities. as revealed in our findings, there is clearly an interrelationship at play between such variables as gender, ethnicity/race, immigration status and class. more work is required of researchers to untangle the nature of some of these differences within such ethnic enclave populations but what is clear in the results overall is that there exists a measurable deficit in feelings of social inclusion among this immigrant population. precarious work precarious forms of work encompasses those in our sample who are employed but are not well paid, who work in informal jobs like selfemployment or cash work but who cannot get by, those employed only part-time or casually but desire more hours, those working jobs where employment standards are not met, and those with poor job security. while there are various ways in which precarious work has come to be operationalized (see lewchuk, et al., 2013) we considered the following variables from our survey to help capture and measure elements of precarity in our sample: a. insufficient employment: those who work full-time (30 hours per week or more) but earn less than $30,000 at the household level; b. precarious informal work: those who work informal jobs (selfemployment or cash work) and report they ’cannot make ends meet’ each month; and, c. workplace violations: those who work full-time but where at least one employment standard was not being met.9 the survey of this east toronto enclave uncovered evidence that a large proportion of this population was struggling to make ends meet and working in precarious, insecure work. of those employed full-time (34%), 65% had household earnings of less than $30,000 at the household level and 32% experienced at least one employment standard that was not met. 9 the following employment standards were measured in the survey: minimum wage, irregular hours, cash payment without deductions, irregular pay schedule, working more than 13 hours per day, no vacation pay, no paid holidays, or poor physical working conditions. paving their way and earning their pay | 153 of those working informal jobs – either self-employed or earning cash without formal documentation – 26% said they could not earn enough to make ends meet. overall, one third (33%) of those surveyed fell into one of these three categories. the literature would suggest that gender, ethnicity and english proficiency are related to involvement in precarious work. taking a look first at some basic relationship testing10, a chi-square analysis suggests ethnicity and english proficiency may play a role though gender may not be a significant factor in determining whether one holds a precarious job, though the type of precarious work done is impacted by gender (see table 1; also refer to the appendix). in fact, a recent pepso study on precarity in the toronto-hamilton region reported broadly similar levels of precarious employment between men and women (lewchuk, 2015, 29-30). an ethnic breakdown of our sample found that eight in ten (78%) bangladeshi respondents who work full-time were also living in households earning less than $30,000, while this was the case for only half (51%) of the chinese respondents surveyed. however, full-time employed chinese respondents appear more likely to be exploited at work; half (47%) reported at least one employment standard as not being met while this was the case for only 21% of bangladeshi respondents. each ethnic group was about as likely to report engaging in any informal work, however; 37% of chinese and 13% of bangladeshi respondents working informal jobs also reported having a hard time making ends meet. those with an advanced level of english language proficiency were considerably less likely overall to do informal work, to have a hard time making ends meet (15% vs. 49%), and to experience at least one workplace violation at their full-time job (15% vs. 43%) among those who were employed on a full-time basis. there does not appear to be a statistical difference by gender, however. a logistic regression sheds more light on these relationships when each independent variable is controlled for11. again, ethnicity and english proficiency level appear to be driving the dependent variable of insufficient employment and involvement in precarious informal work, though only english language level appears to be driving the existence of workplace violations for those with full-time jobs. these models, however, once again do not uncover a significant independent role for gender regarding these relationships. this multivariate analysis may be masking 10 results presented herein are statistically significant to the .05 level according to chi-square independence tests. 11 these findings are also significant at the .05 level according to the multinomial logistic regression. 154 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages an important role played by gender in that it is the very intersectionality (the interconnectedness) of variables working together like ethnicity, gender and english language ability that suggests that gender not be dismissed here. table 1: logistic regression models: sig. values (full results in appendix) clearly, immigrant background/ethnicity (chinese versus bangladeshi12) plays a role in mediating employment type held and employment well-being. further targeted, in-depth research is required to uncover the dynamics behind ethnically-distinct employment outcomes; this should be the focus of future studies. the results point to the fact that ethnicity and/or racialization are experienced differently and unevenly by various segments of society. the role of english proficiency, by contrast, is easier to make sense of. clearly, poorer english skills translates into greater employment precarity and a high incidence of employment standards abuses, like employer wage theft (milkman, 2015, 165). some employers exploit the lack of english language strength of immigrant populations to break workplace rules, confident that workers are either unaware of their rights or too afraid to report employers to authorities (kerwin & mccabe, 2011). indeed, our data reveal that six in 12 the somali sample for the survey was not large enough to derive a statistically significant reading. paving their way and earning their pay | 155 ten (59%) of respondents believed it is likely that their future employment would be negatively affected if they were to raise employment rights or health and safety issues concerns with their current employer. problems communicating in the working language of english also push immigrant workers out of the formal labour market into the shadow economy where they are in greater danger of exploitation (akter, et al., 2013). immigrant men and women are both vulnerable but our sample points to women as having overall weaker english language skills than men, heightening their risk. the need for stronger employment standards legislation, accompanied by strong enforcement, is among the public policy implications of these findings, as is the need for more investment in immigrant language training with targeted programs for women. conclusion this paper provided an analytical perspective on the economic experiences of ethnically/racially identifiable immigrants in urban canadian cities with two approaches. the first approach provided a critical evaluation of the relevant literature that illustrated the nature of the informalize economy generally, the role of immigrants within that spectrum, and the relationship between informal economic activity and the increasing precarity found in jobs in canada today and around the world. the second approach leveraged empirical findings from a unique survey conducted in three ethnic enclaves in east toronto – bangladeshi, chinese, and somali. it has found that the drastic increase in precarious work – poorly paid, insecure, and lacking in employee protections – correlates with the rise of dependence on informal work by immigrants, a scenario reinforced by prevailing neoliberal ideologies. the literature pointed to a relationship between gender and economic outcomes, finding that women are particularly burdened by an increasingly precarious job market. the data presented from the east toronto immigrant survey, however, also demonstrate a strong correlation between economic outcomes and the variables of ethnicity and english language level. bangladeshi immigrants are faring better than their chinese counterparts. strong english speakers fare better than those with poorer english language skills. these two variables are linked; many more bangladeshi immigrants arrived in toronto with stronger english skills than the chinese immigrants surveyed. similarly, though the data did not show this driver, gender is strongly linked with ethnicity and language skills. these variables intersect; men were much more likely in the survey to indicate they had advanced or high intermediate english skills, for example. indeed, given the political economy of immigrant 156 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages selection, and the structure of the family, women are at a distinct disadvantage that is connected to the intersection of gender, language, and ethnicity. the study also demonstrates that women are experiencing job precarity differently from men, largely because they are employed in different types of work. they also report higher levels of experience of discrimination in the workplace and report worse health outcomes. given these results, further in-depth study is needed to more clearly see the full picture of the vulnerability of women in the labour market. the intersectionality of these variables is difficult to tease out but the literature and data point to a troublesome experience for immigrant women that merits targeted public policy attention. appendix: regression tables table 1 logistic regression: dependent variable = insufficient employment (works full-time but hh earns < $30k/yr) table 2 logistic regression: dependent variable = workplace violations (work full-time, at least one workplace standard not met) paving 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(2014). 2014 mandate letter: labour. http://www.ontario.ca/government/2014-mandate-letter-labour 162 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages lived experiences of unemployed women in toronto and halifax, canada who were previously precariously employed leslie nichols1 abstract: over the past few years, there has been an increase in the number of workers in canada who are not in standard employment relations but are instead in contract, part-time, or otherwise precarious employment. at the same time, the neoliberal policy paradigm has replaced the belief that we should support workers through full-time stable employment with an idea that labour can be utilized whenever and however required, as dictated by the economy’s needs. the detrimental effects of neoliberal market policies are well known. further exploration is needed on the differential impacts of these policies on women with intersectional identities, particularly in an era of increasing employment precarity. based on a qualitative study of unemployed women’s lived experiences in toronto and halifax, this article explores the issues surrounding unemployment, including financial impacts, job searching, retraining, and health impacts of unemployment and employment precarity. the results were analyzed using intersectional and grounded theory. the study concludes with key results related to the impact of precarity in the labour market: neoliberal erosion of the welfare state is manifested in a lack of supports for workers. keywords: precarious employment, women, unemployment, toronto, halifax unemployed workers in canada expect to have access to unemployed workers’ supports because they have paid employment insurance (ei) premiums. many have been unable to do so since 1996/1997, however, when unemployment insurance (ui) became employment insurance. this modification led to stricter regulations and rules, notably in the number of hours required to qualify for supports (macdonald, 2009a, 2009b). not everyone has been impacted to the same degree by the changes. those most impacted have been individuals from lower socio-economic levels in 1 leslie nichols is currently a visiting researcher at osgoode hall law school. dr. nichols' research focuses on the social conditions of women in canadian society through feminist theory and methods, with a focus on women workers in canada. the author would like to thank the editors of this volume, carlo fanelli and john shields, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. lived experiences of unemployed women | 163 society, particularly women, who as a result of their traditional role in the household have been more impacted than men (nichols, 2014a, 2014b; mcgregor, 2004; silver, shields, wilson, & scholtz, 2005; silver, wilson, & shields, 2004). household demands make it more complicated for women to access and remain in the labour market (shields, silver, & wilson, 2006; silver et al., 2005; townson & hayes, 2007). to follow up on this line of inquiry, in 2013 i conducted a study of the lived experiences of unemployed women with intersecting identities that included: being precariously employed prior to the period of unemployment; being a single parent, a parent of a child, or a parent of multiple children; caring for parents; lacking a partner’s income; having a precariously employed or unemployed partner; having a racialized identity or immigrant status; and having various gender, class, and age.2 these multiple identities bring attention to diversities and inequities in women's working lives. i interviewed 15 participants from each region to probe the socio-economic and psychosocial impacts of canadian unemployed workers’ supports, notably financial and health implications. two main findings related to precarious employment resulted from this study. first, the neoliberal policy paradigm has eroded state infrastructure, leading to a paucity of supports for unemployed women workers. second, unemployed women not only face poor ei support, but also have inadequate supports in relation to childcare, health care, retraining, and re-entering the labour market. as a result, many women experience inadequate living conditions if they do not have a domestic partner upon whom they can rely. notably, women’s health is negatively impacted regardless whether they are precariously employed or unemployed, and they develop insecurities because of their inability to plan for the future, their limited income, and the poor health-care benefits they receive. ultimately, neoliberal market policies place women in jeopardy, especially those with specific intersectional identities. women’s employment in canada more women are working in canada today than four decades ago, despite gender roles and the division of labour in the household. in december 2013, 67.6% of canadian men and 58.3% of canadian women were employed (statistics canada, 2014a). in comparison, 72.7% of canadian men and 41.9% of canadian women were employed in 1976 (ferraro, 2010). yet, despite the increase in their employment numbers, 2 these identities were the identities presented by participants. while there are many other identities (such as disability, etc.) to explore in a study related to access to ei policy, the participants did not focus on these other identities. 164 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages few women are able to access unemployment supports when they lose their employment. two segments of the labour market, the primary and secondary labour markets, have structured the labour supply through a variety of social differences (gordon, edwards, & reich, 1982). peck (1996, 46) noted that “segmentation theory holds that social space of the labour market is not only divided into submarkets . . . but also that the rules governing the behaviour of the labour market differ from one segment to another.” better working conditions, better jobs, higher income, secure employment, and possibilities for promotion exist in the primary sector (krahn, lowe, & hughes, 2008; peck, 1996; reich, gordon, & edwards, 1973), while the secondary sector incorporates the fewest desirable jobs, with poor wages and working conditions as well as job insecurity (krahn et al., 2008; peck, 1996). women have generally been employed in the secondary labour market as a result of their presumed domestic duties (peck, 1996), while men have had more access to the primary labour market. this is notably due to the impacts of household labour that, despite legal changes in relation to policies, the majority of women still complete (teghtsoonian, 1996). not all female workers desire to be attached to the labour market, though they generally are compelled to work due to a lack of resources, which limits their ability to choose. women in the middle and upper classes, however, often by virtue of having spouses with high incomes, have more resources that enable them to decide whether they want to participate in the labour market, and if so, to what degree (little, 2004). to address this social inequality, resources should be made available to women, including federal universal child care, so that if they choose to work, they will be on an equal footing in the labour market (little, 2004). changes from ui to ei. ui was introduced in the early 1940s in response to large-scale unemployment caused by the great depression. the program was administrated by the federal government, which contributed 20% of the combined employee and employer contributions to the program (lin, 1998). the goal of the program was to provide financial assistance during times of unemployment (lin, 1998). initially, ui eligibility was based on the number of weeks worked during the year prior to the claim. depending on the region, the claimant was required to have worked between 12 and 20 weeks, with at least 15 hours of work per week (townson & hayes, 2007). a claimant’s benefits were based on the total hours of work during the previous year and the total earnings for that year (nichols, 2012; townson & hayes, 2007). ui was replaced by ei in 1996/1997. the main policy changes included an increase in the number of hours required for receiving lived experiences of unemployed women | 165 benefits and a decrease in the benefit payouts. the change in the number of required hours meant that a worker would have to demonstrate 180 days of paid labour, based on a 35-hour week, within the last two years, twice the number of paid hours that had been required before the benefits were modified (townson & hayes, 2007). taking inflation into account, the average ei claimant received $514 per week in 2014, compared to the $595 per week that the average ui claimant received in 1995 (battle, 2009; government of canada, 2014). the changes in ei had noticeable impacts. for instance, only 39% of unemployed workers were approved for ei benefits in 2009, while 83% had been approved in 1990 (mendelson, battle, & torjman, 2010). growth of non-standard employment and its impacts on workers. over the past few years, the number of workers who are not in standard employment relations, but instead are in contract, part-time or otherwise precarious employment, has increased (chayowski & powell, 1999; joshi, 2002). as in a recent study that examined precarious employment (pepso, 2013), this study incorporates a wide range of forms of employment. as such, precarious employment is not solely defined as being low-wage work, but as any work that has some form of precarity. as a result of widespread changes in the economy (which are often related to new technologies), work has become more unstable and precarious. furthermore, the neoliberal policy paradigm has replaced the belief that we should support workers through full-time, stable employment with an idea that labour can be utilized whenever and however required, as dictated by the economy’s needs. in canada, 20% of the workforce is currently in nonstandard employment relationships, such as short-term and precarious contract work (pepso, 2013). townson and kevin hayes' (2007) study suggests that 30% of canadian men, compared to 40% of canadian women, are working in precarious employment relationships (see also chayowski & powell, 1999; pupo & duffy, 2003). the inequities resulting from precarious employment are summarized in the pepso's recent (2013) report for the greater toronto area: precariously employed workers (a) earn about 46% less than those in steady full-time employment, resulting in household incomes that are 34% lower than their full-time-employed counterparts; (b) face income variability; (c) rarely receive any benefits related to employment; (d) experience few opportunities for progress or promotion within their current employment relationship; (e) often face many weeks of no income; (f) ignore health and safety concerns due to concerns about the future of their jobs; (g) are subjected to more employer monitoring; (h) often hold more than one job; (i) commonly work on call; and (k) often have to pay for 166 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages their own training in the workplace. the increase of precarious employment in canada over the past two decades is associated with a lack of job security, income polarization between the upper and lower classes, and an intensified working life (mikkonen & raphael, 2010). the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) has noted that canada has poor employment protection, with only limited employment regulations and benefits for temporary workers. in fact, canada was ranked 26th out of the 28 oecd nations for employment protection (cited in mikkonen & raphael, 2010), which illustrates the plight that these workers face in neoliberal canada. women and the transition from ui to ei. ei policy does not acknowledge the range of reasons why someone may be unemployed (cooke & gazso, 2009). consequently, women are impacted when they temporarily leave the labour market to raise children (cooke & gazso, 2009; townson & hayes, 2007). canadian workers are viewed as reentrants or new entrants to the labour market if they have been not attached to the labour market for a period of time. this stipulation means that they are not credited with any of the hours they worked before the period when they were not attached to the labour market. furthermore, they are required to have worked 910 hours during the previous 52 weeks to claim ei benefits (townson & hayes, 2007). this stipulation limits individuals’ ability to access ei benefits even though individuals need these benefits to support their efforts to reenter the labour market (bezanson & mcmurray, 2000). theory and methods during 2013, i completed a qualitative interview study with 30 diverse women participants: 15 from toronto and 15 from halifax. this study was designed to explore the various ways that women deal with unemployment through a qualitative analysis. the study focused on lived experiences since becoming unemployed, but it was also designed to comprehend the reasoning behind (bryman & teevan, 2005) the decisions participants made when they were unemployed. from each region, 15 participants were interviewed to explore the psychosocial and socioeconomic impacts of being unemployed in canada. within toronto and halifax, participants were recruited through research advertisements in a variety of social service agencies. this article focuses on participants who were previously employed in precarious employment relationships prior to their unemployment. therefore, 23 interviews were explored for this purpose. lived experiences of unemployed women | 167 the most significant part of this study is its exploration of the effects of ei policy on the lived experiences of unemployed women in canada. the study's main focus was on unemployed women between the ages of 25 to 40 years of age who were caring for children or adult dependents. the study explored the lived experiences of unemployed women in the two cities who had a broad range of intersecting identities (see appendices a and b). the use of a variety of levels of identity analysis is central to a new development of intersectionality that notes the significance of multiplelevel analysis to an inclusive social theory (nichols, forthcoming; scheibelhofer & marotta, 2010). the study concluded with two main findings concerning the experiences of becoming unemployed while caring for children or having dependent adults, either siblings or parents. the first finding is related to the erosion of state infrastructure: there is a lack of supports for unemployed women workers, and they also face difficulties owing to a lack of supports extended through social programs and supports in the areas of health care, childcare, retraining, and reentering the labour market. as a result, many of these women face inadequate living conditions unless they have a supportive domestic partner. second, precariously employed and unemployed women experienced a negative impact on their health. they had to cope with insecurity in both situations, including having to live on a limited income, not having adequate health-care benefits, and not being unable to plan for the future. thus, neoliberal market policies place women in jeopardy, especially those who are caring for children or adult dependents and who have intersecting identities. there has not been much research on the use of intersectionality as a method (denis, 2008; mccall, 2005). my study built on the research of mccall (2005) and hancock (2007) and used intersectionality as a method to illustrate the importance of context specificity and the fluidity of identities (nichols, forthcoming). the main insight of intersectionality theory is that there is not one salient identity; rather, the impacts of identities are context dependent. in addition to using intersectionality as the research methodology, i coded the responses in my study using grounded theory (charmaz, 2004). this involves coding data with an eye to generating new concepts to guide the critical analysis (maijala et al., 2003). grounded theory helps establish a strict set of rules for analyzing qualitative data (charmaz, 2004, 96). in grounded theory the researcher will: “start with individual cases, incidents, or experiences and develop progressively more abstract conceptual categories to synthesize, to explain, and to understand your data and to identify patterned relationships within it. you begin with an area to study. then, you build 168 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages your theoretical analysis on what you discover is relevant in the actual worlds that you study within this area.” (charmaz, 2004, 497). grounded theory helps move qualitative research from narrative or thematic analysis to more carefully defined methods, similar to quantitative methods (bryman et al., 2012; charmaz, 2004). feminist epistemology feminists have critiqued social policies because they are based upon and perpetuate unequal gender roles, assumptions, and social relations. socialist feminists were among the first to analyze the ways in which forms of oppression interact and connect, with a focus on social class and gender (o’connor, 1996; o’connor, orloff, & shaver, 1999). socialist feminists also noted the need to address other forms of marginalization, beyond improving access to the labour market, changing the division of household labour, and ensuring the capability to have and maintain an autonomous household. we need to push the analysis further to explore how different social categories and identities are affected by social policies. the change from ui to ei policy, for example, has marginalized some individuals in the canadian population more than others, including those living in poverty, immigrants, and racialized individuals. starting in the 1980s, third-wave feminists noted that gender is not the salient reason for inequality and that there are instead many other reasons that are related to the creation of identities (tyyskä, 2007). tyyskä noted that “multiple feminisms associated with this most current wave attempt to address women’s local and specific experiences, with an emphasis on the interpretations of the women themselves” (2007, 378). these research endeavors occurred before the term intersectional was coined (walby, armstrong, & strid, 2012) by u.s. scholar kimberlé crenshaw in 1989. the aim of crenshaw’s study was to explore employment-related issues among black american women. crenshaw noted that in critical race theory and traditional feminist theory, one’s identity was seen to be a privilege (crenshaw, 1991). ludvig (2006) argued that gender is only comprehended where it is coined, due to context (time and place; see also acker, 2012; shields, 2008). therefore, intersectionality theory is important and relevant, because it espouses the notion that everyone has many significant parts of their identity, all of which are affected by relations in the social world (garry, 2011). scholars engaging in intersectional projects note, understand, and analyze the intersections among different forms of identity, including race, class, and gender, taking all of these as “fundamental traits” (hindman, 2011; manuel, 2007). using this approach, researchers explore lived experiences of unemployed women | 169 the many different social locations where individuals experience oppression within society, along with the structural systems of power that help marginalize individuals through forms of exclusion and inclusion (hankivsky, 2007). thus, this approach enables us to comprehend a wider range of experiences within society (christensen & jensen, 2012; phoenix & pattynama, 2006). the key theoretical argument of the intersectional approach is “that identity is not additive, fixed, or multiple, but rather that the coming together of race, gender, sexuality, class, and other factors creates distinct wholes” (boris, 2012, 1). although intersectionality was first developed in feminist studies, it has traveled across disciplines (christensen & jensen, 2012; denis, 2008). this approach has been taken by a variety of scholars, leading to many different methods and research studies (acker, 2012; bilge & denis, 2010; mccall, 2005), all of which demonstrate its interdisciplinary nature (shields, 2008) and complexity (mccall, 2005). therefore, it is not surprising to see it used in various ways (phoenix & pattynama, 2006); indeed, intersectionality has been called a “delightfully novel but irritatingly ambitious” term (davis, 2008, 79). at the same time, it is also not surprising that scholars have noted and are beginning to address the “limitations, implications or slipperiness of intersectionality or question its focus” (garry, 2011, 826). the intersectional approach is explored with many different methodologies (acker, 2012). quantitative methods use intersectionality to examine hidden issues that can be the basis for further exploration (covarrubias, 2011). the quantitative approach has a weak premise, however, as it depicts identities as an additive phenomenon. doing so does not capture the agency of the individuals being studied. i approached my interviews using an approach grounded in intersectionality theory, because it provides “a clearer picture of the way the intersections of identity impact individuals’ access to social policies, and, indeed, to full social citizenship” (nichols, 2013, 234–235). a fuller understanding of individuals' lives, choices, and decisions can be developed through the use of intersectionality (manual, 2007). comparing ontario and nova scotia the combination of ontario and nova scotia provides an interesting case study for comparing ei benefits in traditional “have” and “have-not” provinces. in the past, ontario was a “have” province with high levels of employment. because of this status, the province paid federal transfers to “have-not” provinces, such as nova scotia. a significant difference between the two provinces lies in the work patterns. ontario has 170 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages traditionally had high levels of employment in manufacturing. workers employed in this sector often hold standard full-time jobs. in nova scotia, employment has traditionally been in large fisheries that typically provide precarious seasonal employment (porter, 2003). since ei policy is regionally based (radmilovic, 2011), the history of manufacturing and fishing industries in these two labour market regions allow for an interesting exploration of ei policy. this study explored the largest city in each province: the greater toronto area (gta) and the halifax regional municipality (hrm). economic comparisons provide a good starting point. during december 2013, unemployment in canada was 7.2% (statistics canada, 2014a). the unemployment rates in toronto and halifax were higher: 9.2% and 7.9%, respectively (statistics canada, 2014a). during november 2013, 512,330 unemployed workers in canada processed claims for ei benefits, a decrease from 514,220 in july 2013. the number of claimants in ontario for this period decreased from 162,060 in july to 152,120 in november 2013. the number remained about the same between september and november 2013. the number in nova scotia was stable between july and november 2013, beginning at 27,020 and ending at 27,990 (statistics canada, 2014b; see table 1). halifax has traditionally had higher seasonal unemployment due to closed fisheries during the winter season. despite research strongly indicating that seasonal unemployment is better supported by ei programs than precarious employment (van audenrode, fournier, havet, & royer, 2005), it is still easier to make a claim in toronto than in halifax (pepso, 2013). the number of hours required to receive ei benefits in toronto is 530, while in halifax it is 630 (canadian economic insurance commission [ceic], 2012). differences in hours of employment requirements are tied to regional rates of unemployment. in areas where unemployment rates are 6% or less, the number of required hours to qualify for ei are 700; for areas with 9.1 to 10% unemployment rates, the requirement is 530 hours, and for 13.1% or more the cut off is 420 hours. lived experiences of unemployed women | 171 table 1: number of claimants for employment insurance, july to november 2013 note. numbers are actual figures of individuals receiving ei benefits. adapted from employment insurance program (ei) beneficiaries receiving regular income benefits by province, declared earnings, sex and age, seasonally adjusted, monthly (persons), cansim table 276-0022, by statistics canada, 2014. ottawa, on: statistics canada. discussion impact of precarious employment on work and unemployment. seven of the participants from toronto had previously worked in standard employment, while 8 had worked in precarious employment, including working as an educational assistant, a retail sales associate, a personal support worker, a program coordinator and counsellor, a customer service representative working through an agency, an administrative assistant working through an agency, and a tax consultant working through an agency. two participants from halifax had worked in standard employment and 13 in precarious employment, including working as a contract teacher, a hair stylist, a financial clerk working through an agency, an international program officer, a waitress, a retail sales associate, and an early childhood educator. significantly, those who had previously worked in standard employment were approved for ei benefits. previous precarious employment, however, was not a sufficient reason for denying benefits. in fact, nine participants from halifax who had worked in precarious employment were approved for ei benefits, because of the type of precarious employment in which they had engaged. for instance, jessica from toronto had worked multiple jobs as a way to support herself and her family: she had held both an educational assistant job and a retail sales job. she indicated that this was how she supported herself and that 172 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages she was now concerned about having to return to work with a child to care for and support. she was hoping to find a full-time educational assistant job with a nearby school board for the employment income, guaranteed hours, and benefits. participants who were able to work almost full-time hours on a contract, for instance, three participants who had been casual teachers, were able to acquire enough contract hours for ei approval. seven other participants also worked on temporary contracts that allowed them to acquire enough hours to be approved for ei benefits. many participants who had been precariously employed noted that they had also been previously unemployed at some point. for instance, danielle said: “i have been working pretty much since just before i turned 16 at various jobs growing up through high school and university. i’ve been on unemployment off and on…i haven’t jumped from job [to job]…like i’ve worked for a job for about two or three years and then i’d be off for like a month and then start a new job for a few years.” only five participants, three from halifax and two from toronto, noted that this was the first time they had been unemployed. yet these five participants had all previously worked in precarious employment relationships. in fact, the reason why this was the first time they were unemployed seems to have more to do with their age and when they earned their educational credentials. four of these participants were younger workers, all under the age of 31. therefore, one might argue that if they were older, they could have experienced a number of periods of unemployment. susan, the fifth worker who was unemployed for the first time, was an older worker at 38 years of age – but she was new to the teaching field, as she had recently completed her teaching degree. similar to the younger workers who were experiencing unemployment for the first time, susan was a new worker in the teaching field despite her age. in sum, it may be that precarious employment a common employment relationship for mothers attempting to deal with the lack of a social policies that support women and their children, and that young women and those who are new to their profession often face precarious employment. it therefore seems that new junior positions within different sectors of the economy are very unstable and that it is a difficult rite of passage to attain a better full-time and stable job within the labour market. women’s caregiving role was one identity that impacted the form of employment the study participants had prior to their unemployment. all of the participants who were previously employed were caring for a family, and two participants were caring for their parents. the participants who were caring for their children had different numbers of children. for lived experiences of unemployed women | 173 instance, six participants from halifax and four from toronto were each caring for one child; one participant from halifax was caring for two children; another had one child and was expecting a second; and three participants from halifax and two from toronto each had three children. one participant had twins, and another had children born close together. having children, particularly, multiple children or children close in age can lead to a more intensified double shift for working women. as well, it can lead to fewer leisure hours. thus, women’s caregiving role had a significant impact on their other identities arising from their previous precarious employment. ei benefits. participants in the study had substantially different experiences when applying for ei benefits. within this study, of those who were precariously employed in halifax (13 participants), 3 participants were denied ei benefits, and in toronto (10 participants) 4 participants were denied ei benefits and 3 did not apply because they knew they would not qualify. those who did apply, whether denied or not, recounted difficulties in obtaining support from service canada staff and with the online application form. in addition, many of the participants’ previous employers had delayed forwarding a record of employment (roe) to service canada, a situation that often necessitated numerous calls to both their previous employers and service canada. others who worked multiple jobs had to determine by themselves what their highest paid workweeks were, as these are needed for calculating ei benefits. for instance, claire from halifax, a contract teacher with irregular hours at different school boards, had to determine which weeks of employment would maximize her ei benefits. also, many of claire’s paycheques had inadequate hours listed on them, because of a human resources problem at the school board where she worked. these ongoing errors resulted in service canada receiving an incorrect listing of her weekly work hours. she had to visit service canada repeatedly and make multiple calls in hope that they would approve her for ei benefits. jessica from toronto also experienced a delay in benefits that her employer had caused. when she visited her previous employer in preparation for approval from service canada, the employer informed her that they could not give the roe to her directly; instead, they would forward it to service canada as soon as possible. this policy lengthened her waiting time for benefits. these participants had identities with open and fluid connections to one another that resulted in difficulties during the application process. the study participants who had difficulties obtaining ei benefits had previously worked in precarious employment. precarious employment has become a more common labour market attachment in the canadian 174 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages market. it leaves workers at their most vulnerable in the labour market, and yet many are denied ei benefits. financial insecurity and unemployment. financial insecurity was a common theme throughout my study. many participants noted that the first impact of unemployment was a lack of money. sarah from toronto clearly articulated this, saying that “everything [is] related to money.” danielle in halifax noted: “yeah. i can money manage like the best of them, it’s what i did for years, but when the income does not meet the output of what we need, there’s just…it’s impossible to manage a budget when there’s not enough income to pay the bills.” sarah’s and danielle’s words illustrate the general feelings shared by all participants in the study. all participants suffered from the same initial difficulty in maintaining financial security through employment, since they also cared for children or other dependents. as such, these participants strongly believed that their main priority was their dependent(s), which led them to do what was expected of them at home while simultaneously trying to achieve financial security. for instance, jessica, a racialized woman from toronto, noted: “now i am buying for two. when i do have money but it is not enough, i do have to think about my son first because he has to eat, so if it is about him getting his formula over me, then so be it. because, i mean, he is a baby, he was not asked to be born to this world to suffer. it is my responsibility to take care of him to make sure he is doing well.” similarly, tina, a lower-income woman from halifax, said: “i go without new clothes and food at times…if it allows my children to eat. they have no choice, but i have to help them. they are too young to understand. i need an income to pay the bills…i have maxed out my credit. i do not know what i am going to do. i need to support my family…i am worried.” through these examples, we can see that the participants’ roles as caregivers were significant in their view. thus, their financial security also rested on the ability to support their children or other dependents – and this applies to all participants in the study. unemployment and its health implications. despite reports about some health improvements following employment, a majority of participants noted that they had developed health concerns during their period of unemployment, ranging from a decrease in physical health to deteriorating mental health. eighteen participants in total referred to a deterioration of their health while unemployed: 10 from toronto (jules, jessica, ann, janet, jennifer, emily, hilary, carolyn, nancy, and brooke) and 8 from halifax (stephanie, kathryn, danielle, erica, sharon, susan, stella, and tina), despite all of them having different unemployment lived experiences of unemployed women | 175 durations. the duration of unemployment at the time of interview ranged from 1 month to seven years in both toronto and halifax. among the toronto participants, janet was unemployed for 2 and a half months, as were kate and carolyn (3 months), brooke and helen (4 months), sarah (5 months), laura (7 months), jennifer and jessica (8 months), diana (9 months), nancy (10 months), hilary(two years), emily (four years), jules (five years), and ann (seven years). among the halifax participants, meghan was unemployed for 1 month, as were claire and mary (2 months); sharon and susan (3 months); lois, kathryn, and victoria (4 months); tina (5 months); sophia (6 months); stephanie (9 months); danielle (10 months) erica (13 months); stella (14 months); and amy (two years). thus duration of unemployment was not a salient factor for the development of health concerns; what mattered was the unemployment itself. the prior employment relationships that these workers had were all precarious, except for those of jennifer and helen from toronto. jennifer was the manager of a restaurant that closed down. she was married with three children and her income was low, at $19,000 to 34,999 a year. thus, the stress of low prior income combined with the demands of multiple children, compared to helen being single while caring for aging parents, produced similar stress-related health care concerns. in sum, experiences while employed have a more salient impact on a worker’s health while unemployed, while caring responsibilities may have compounded this effect. women who were previously precariously employed suffered from unemployment-related stress as a direct result of their form of employment relationship. the women in the present study, similar to the ones in pepso's (2013) report, previously suffered from a lack of money and supports, and not knowing whether they had a secure future. as a result, since wages are related to hours worked, many of these precarious workers were not eligible for ei, which further compounded their difficult financial situation. jessica noted that her employment situation was difficult and made it hard to plan for her future: “i am praying, because i am a casual employee, that the job is still there. hopefully positions will be open for permanent because i need benefit[s] because i have a baby and medication and things…this would be really helpful plus the pay would be better than what i am receiving right now and then i actually know that i am guaranteed my hours for the week.” similarly, lois in halifax noted the inability to plan for her family’s future: “it just seems that, i don’t know if it’s just a bad string of luck that i’ve had in sales, and jobs i have had were either only temporary jobs or company shut down. or like 176 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages my most recent, they just, they cut out the department i was working in completely. and i just kind of want something that i can make a career out of and know that okay, this is what’s going to happen, this is what i’m trained in, and if something happens with this company i have no problem moving to the next one. i want to know my future.” thus, the main concern for these women was the precarious nature of their previous employment. they were concerned that despite the potential of finding employment, they could be right back into a similar position, including the ongoing stresses in both their employed and unemployed lives. in sum, the participants’ identities of having precarious employment and low-income status impacted how they experienced work, and this, in turn, impacts the length of their unemployment, leading to health complications. this study strongly suggests that within neoliberal markets, workers experience precarity and uncertainty, regardless whether they are employed or unemployed. these workers have limited knowledge about their future, live on a reduced income, and have ongoing concerns about their future. thus, their health situations are similar, whether employed or unemployed. conclusion the numbers of workers who are not in standard employment relations but instead are in contract, part-time, or otherwise precarious employment are increasing. in addition, the neoliberal policy paradigm has replaced the belief that we should support workers through full-time stable employment with an idea that labour can be utilized whenever and however required, as dictated by the economy’s needs. in my study, 23 participants worked in precarious employment relationships, 8 from toronto and 13 from halifax. individuals who work in precarious employment relationships suffer from a lack of money and benefits, and often hold multiple jobs (pepso, 2013). all of these known effects of precarious employment impacted this study’s participants while they were employed and unemployed. these women tended to be willing to accept any form of employment and had limited financial resources to live off of while unemployed, mimicking their employment situation. they also had health concerns prior to their unemployment that remained during their employment, due to difficulties in accessing health resources. most participants in this study would have had a better chance at attaining ui benefits than they had at getting ei benefits, and the ui benefits would have provided more support. through an exploration of participants’ identities and structural conditions, i was able to determine where and how ei policy is not supporting these unemployed women, such lived experiences of unemployed women | 177 as the lack of support for caring for children or dependents, health care and medical benefits, and a general lack of financial support. thus, even though intersectionality theory can be time-consuming and challenging to use in research analysis, it allows us to address fluid realities, personal identities, power relationships, and material conditions (manuel, 2007). policy analysts need to adopt an approach to understanding labour market issues based on intersectionality, which takes into account gender, race, immigration, socio-economic, immigrant, and other identities, in order to identify those areas where ei policy needs to be modified. the detrimental effects of ei policy vary based on identity intersections of immigrant status, parenthood, parenthood of young children, parenthood of children born close together, parenthood of children born as multiples, single parenthood, and racialization, as well as structural impacts, including those coming from the lack of child support and from socioeconomic status. identities are based on context-specific personal and structural circumstances, including single parenthood, and precarious employment before the period of unemployment. these factors significantly impact women’s experience when they are in the labour market, as well as when they are temporarily removed from it through unemployment. this study illustrates the need to analyze and change state policies by examining fluid and context-specific identities. as danielle, a participant in my study, put it, the state ei policy “needs to be customized per situation more…to actually tailor each situation to the person’s needs or their situation. 178 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages appendix a: characteristics of halifax participants lived experiences of unemployed women | 179 appendix b: characteristics of toronto participants 180 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages references acker, j. 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(2012). intersectionality: multiple inequalities in social theory. sociology, 46(2), 224–240. reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 187 reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work tanner mirrlees1 abstract: in keeping with this issue of alternate routes’ focus on forms of low-waged and no-waged work, this article focuses on low-waged and non-waged work in the reality tv production sector. how do reality-tv studios try to maximize profits by keeping the costs of making their commodities to a minimum, and how does the push for profit disorganize and devalue labour? this article contextualizes and critiques how reality tv studios try to maximize profits by minimizing production costs in three sections. “reality tv producers: work behind the scenes” shows how reality tv’s classification as “non-scripted” programming enables production companies to exploit a non-unionized workforce. “reality tv celebrities: work in the scenes” highlights how reality tv production companies exploit the no-waged labour of “contestant-participants.” “reality tv interns: work behind the scenes, and in them” shows how studios use internship programs to get workers to make reality tv programs without pay and how some of these programs glorify no-waged work. the article concludes on a more optimistic note with an overview of reality-tv worker challenges to reality-tv’s owners with unionization, strikes, litigation, publicity and discourse. keywords: cultural industries; reality tv; cultural work; political economy of communication introduction: the political economy of reality tv since the turn of the millennium, the north american reality-tv production sector has grown immensely, and it is a boon to tv networks as they compete for viewer attention, ratings and ad revenue in a period of tv industry transformation (kraidy and sender, 2011; murray and ouellete, 2009). in the 2001-2002 tv season, reality tv accounted for about a quarter of the prime time network tv audience watching the top ten programs. in the 2007 and 2008 tv season, reality-tv captured about 1 tanner mirrlees is an assistant professor in the communication and digital media studies program at the university of ontario institute of technology (uoit). his research focuses on the political economy of the global cultural and entertainment industries. he is the author of global entertainment media: between cultural imperialism and cultural globalization, hearts and mines: the us empire’s culture industry and the co-editor of the television reader. 188 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages three quarters of the audience for the top prime time tv shows; in 20102011 season, it took in more than half (nielsen, 2011). despite a recent downturn in reality tv ratings (collins 2014), north american tv networks still load their schedules with reality tv shows like big brother, america's got talent, duck dynasty and dance moms to collect viewer attention and cash in on advertising revenue (kraidy and sender, 2011; mirrlees, 2013; murray and ouellete, 2009). reality tv shows are pervasive not simply because viewers demand that tv networks schedule them, but because these shows cost tv networks so much less to acquire from tv production companies than scripted tv shows do (slocum 2005). and reality-tv shows cost less to buy because they cost less to make. on average, an hour long reality tv show costs a studio between $350,000 and $500,000 to make, while one episode of a fictional tv show costs anywhere from $1 to $2.5 million (adalian, 2015; eidelson, 2013; gornstein, 2008). that reality-tv is “cheap” to buy and make relative to more expensive scripted tv shows is not surprising, but newsy descriptions of reality-tv’s low exchange-value obscures the asymmetrical power relations between the owners of reality-tv studios and the workers whose labour they employ to make these commodities. at the base of abstract and impersonal market exchanges between tv networks and tv studios and the scheduled flow and happy consumption of the latest american idol or dancing with the stars knockoff, is the exploitation of human labour. in the capitalist system, especially in this epoch’s post-fordist neoliberal one, corporations competitively strive to maximize profit on behalf of shareholders and they regularly do this by selling commodities for more than what they pay their workers in wages to produce them. following this capitalist logic, high profits correlate with low wages (norris, 2014). the capitalist profit motive is full blown in the reality tv sector, where big tv networks demand cheap-to-acquire content from reality tv studios, and these studios compete against each other by slashing prices and labour costs. how specifically do reality-tv studios try to maximize profits by keeping the costs of making their commodities to a minimum, and how does this disorganize and devalue labour? this article contextualizes and critiques how reality tv studios do this in three sections. “reality tv producers: work behind the scenes” shows how reality tv’s classification as “non-scripted” programming enables production companies to exploit a non-unionized workforce. “reality tv celebrities: work in the scenes” highlights how reality tv production companies exploit the no-waged labour of “contestant-participants.” “reality tv interns: work behind the scenes, and in them” shows how reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 189 studios use internship programs to get workers to make reality tv programs without pay and how some of these programs glorify no-waged work. the article concludes on a more optimistic note with an overview of how reality-tv workers are challenging the power of reality-tv’s owners with unionization, strikes, litigation, publicity and discourse. this paper’s critical focus on reality-tv’s low and no-waged work builds upon important political economy of communication studies of labour in the cultural industries (mosco 2009). in general, political economists of communication analyze the “power relations that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources, including communication resources” (mosco, 2009, 24). over the past decade, scholars have illuminated the “blindspot” of labour in communication studies with significant research on work in the cultural industries, as well as the experiences of cultural workers (cohen, 2012; deuze, 2007; de peuter, 2014; hesmondalgh, 2010; huws, 2010; mayer, banks and caldwell, 2009; mosco and mckercher, 2008; ross, 2004; 2009). the cultural industries – all of the companies involved in the production, distribution and exhibition of cultural and informational commodities that convey meaning about the world –are surrounded by promises of “good work” and some jobs in these industries do enable cultural workers to express themselves, flexibly meet their needs by “doing what they love” and control the fruits of their labour (hesmondalgh, 2010). yet, research shows that the dream of good work in the cultural industries is often dashed by material conditions marked by class division between a few ceos and a “reserve army” of workers (miller et al., 2005), exploitation (cohen, 2012; ross, 2009), the corporate control of intellectual property (ip) rights to worker-produced content (miller et al., 2005), hard tayloristic managerial strategies that standardize, intensify and speed up the labour process (huws, 2010), softer techniques that build “humane workplaces” as a way to get workers to actively coordinate their own exploitation (ross, 2004), creativity automation systems, and the outsourcing of tasks to the new international division of cultural labour (nidcl) (miller et al., 2005). furthermore, political economists of communication have documented how life and labour in the cultural industries tend to be marred by precarity and existential insecurity, as many cultural workers routinely move from short-term contract to contract, never knowing what’s coming next or whether or not their labour will be sellable (cohen and de peuter, 2013; de peuter, 2014). the political-economy of communication method is useful to this article’s study of reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work in the following ways. first, it enables a contextualization of the reality tv industry is 190 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages part of capitalism, an economic system in which privately owned media companies produce cultural commodities for sale in the market (with the intention of making a profit) instead of for human need using privately owned capital goods (technology) and human labour power (the manual and mental capabilities required to complete tasks). second, it centers on the asymmetrical power relations between reality tv industry owners and workers and the class conflicts that emerge as result of them. third, it avoids textual fetishism, or, the tendency to analyze texts sans production contexts, by relating reality tv show texts to the conditions of their production as well as to the lives and labour struggles of the workers who produce them. fourth, its commitment to a good, equitable and just society enables a moral critique of the reality tv industry’s bad, inequitable and exploitative conditions, while also pointing beyond them. in the following three sections, reality tv’s real capitalist conditions are critiqued. this article does not break radically “new ground” in the field. but it hopefully offers readers, especially those unfamiliar with the political-economy communications’ labour turn, a succinct and pedagogically helpful synthesis of some research about, news reports on and union coverage of reality tv’s low wage and no wage work. reality tv producers: work behind the scenes the first way that reality tv studios keep production costs to a minimum is by exploiting non-unionized cultural workers in labour markets defined by post-fordist flex work and precarity. due to the efficacy of its exploitation of labour, the reality tv sector has been conceptualized as “paradigmatic” of post-fordism’s flex production model (hearn, 2014). over the course of the 20th century, workers fought and won battles against fordist-era corporations to establish standard employment regimes and pocket a larger piece of the surplus they generated (i.e. in the form of high wages, benefits and pensions). this fordist worker-capital “class compromise,” however, was rocked to the core in the 1970s and with the onset of political neoliberalism (harvey, 2007). in response to a profit-squeeze stemming from union militancy and strikes, some of which were motivated by worker efforts to escape the factory’s cage of a routinized and standardized “job for life,” corporations pushed a shift from a fordist to post-fordist flex regime of accumulation (harvey, 1989). to consolidate this post-fordist flex work regime, many corporations pushed against standard employment relations and unions, replacing fulltime and secure jobs with regular hours on a relatively fixed schedule with non-standard jobs that were part-time, contingent, insecure and reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 191 temporary (harvey 1989). post­fordism’s lean and mean flex work regime enables corporations to hire workers on contract and fire them as they like while spatially and temporally dis-aggregating work from one place and time into many spaces and time zones, often diminishing the collective power of workers and outflanking union initiatives to organize and bargain. across the many sectors of the post-fordist media and service industries, workers now commonly experience “intermittent employment and radical uncertainty about the future” (ross, 2009, 4) as well as “financial and existential insecurity” (brophy and de peuter, 2007, 180). this post-fordist work regime is typified by the rise of “freelancing, shortterm contracts, internships, solo self-employment, and other unstable work arrangements” (de peuter, 2014, 266). in this context, corporations strive to keep profits high and labour costs low by flexibly exploiting low to no paid workers who precariously move from contract to contract, task to task, without union protection and zero job security. for most of tv’s history, the production of “scripted programming” (i.e. dramas, sitcoms and soap operas) fell under union contracts, meaning that tv studios had to hire unionized workers if they wanted make tv shows. at present, the director’s guild of america (dga), the writers guild of america (wga), the screen actors guild (sag), the american federation of television and radio artists (aftra), the casting society of america (csa) cover “above-the-line” tv workers while the international alliance of theatrical stage employees (iatse) represents “below-the-line” workers and give them a means of negotiating wages, benefits and work conditions with the alliance of motion picture and television producers (amptp), a lobby for media owners. these unions are intermediaries between the interest of tv owners to maximize profits by reducing labour costs and the interests of tv workers to get equitable wages for their labour, residual payments for the reproduction of the tv content they create and benefits. the relationship between tv unions and tv owners is at times collaborative and at others conflicted. but overall, through collective organizing and strike actions, tv unions have clashed with tv owners and established a barrier to their push for maximal profits. the wga, for example, has organized three major strikes against tv owners. in 1960 (january 16 to june 10), the wga went on strike to increase the minimum wage paid to writers for their labour and to ensure that they would receive a fair share of studio revenue accumulated through the lease or sale of movie distribution/exhibition rights to tv networks. in 1988 (march 7 to august 7), the wga struck to try to get writers fair residual payments for hour-long syndicated tv shows, expand the creative power of writers to shape what actors and directors get hired 192 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages and to challenge tv studio strategies for lowering production costs. in the 2007-2008 wga strike (november 5, 2007 to february 12, 2008), the wga struck for pay raises relative to tv profits and a cut of what studios accumulated through dvd sales and deals with digital giants (i.e. itunes, amazon video on demand, netflix and hulu.com) (schechner, 2007). in the context of ongoing (class) struggles between tv owners and unionized tv workers, reality-tv tipped the balance of power in the favour of tv owners at the expense of workers. here’s how. reality-tv covers many different tv formats (i.e. game shows, talent competitions, mock documentaries, unscripted dramas, lifestyle episodes and home improvement shows) that mix different tele-visual genre codes and conventions. but what unites all reality-tv shows is their classification as “non-scripted programming.” to free themselves from collective agreements and bargaining, tv studios used “non-scripted programming” as part of a “wider industry move toward using non-union, freelance production crews” (raphael 2004, 129) and consequently, established a “non-union business model with a work force that is underpaid, overworked and made to feel fungible” (verrone ,2007). the distinction between scripted and non-scripted tv basically split the tv labour market in two. in the first, unionized workers create “scripted” programming; in the second, non-unionized workers make “non-scripted” programming, or “real-tv” (raphael, 2004; yglesias, 2006). in the nonscripted sector, tv owners replace unionized directors with precarious production managers and displace unionized scriptwriters with casualized story editors. workers in this sector get paid less than those in the scripted tv sector, work overtime without pay, lack health insurance and pensions, do not receive residual pay, are denied credits and flexibly move from one reality tv project contract to the next, some lasting weeks, others, many years (eidelson, 2013; rendon, 2004; waxman, 2005). the non-scripted label, however, obscures how reality tv is quite similar to scripted tv in terms of its labour process (delgado, 2007; richmond, 2004; rupel, 2014; stradal, 2014). like many scripted tv shows, reality tv shows entail formats that enable producers to standardize and routinize the labour process. akin to the procedural scripts of ikea furniture assembly manuals, reality-tv formats convey the “one best way” to assemble the given tv show. these taylorize the labour process, breaking it down into steps to be efficiently followed by workers, and they shape the action behind the scenes and the interactions of on-screen hosts and contestants alike. like the sequences in fictional tv, reality-tv scenes are contrived, shot by a production crew on sets that are built or found (mohan 2014). if the initially recorded material does not reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 193 provide the content from which a compelling story can later be fashioned, sequences are often re-staged and re-shot (delgado, 2007). reality tv is supposedly non-scripted, yet, writers, though not recognized as writers, shape what viewers see or don’t see. these “story producers,” “story editors” and “segment producers” turn hundreds sometimes thousands of hours of source material into compelling twenty-two to forty-four minute narratives with a beginning, middle and end, protagonists (heroes) and antagonists (villains) and conflict-driven action—all typical of scripted tv (rupel, 2014; stradal, 2014). they also use franken-byting techniques to splice together select pieces of footage or sound-bites to create sequential clips of contestants doing or saying things that better fit with the producer’s overall vision of the narrative or the story effect they wish to achieve (waxman, 2005). though non-scripted tv is a misnomer, it has helped tv studios and major tv networks outflank and outlast tv union strikes. during the 2007-2008 wga strike, for example, tv workers refused to write new tv episodes, anticipating that this would shut down tv production, compromise network profits, and compel tv owners to meet their demands. though the scripted tv sector stopped churning out tv shows, the non-scripted sector kept assembling tv shows and selling them to tv networks, which filled their schedules with reality-tv shows like american gladiators, farmer wants a wife, and my dad is better than your dad. with reality-tv in cue, tv networks drew mass audiences, upped ratings and collected ad revenue (strachan, 2008). “the strong performance of non-scripted series has network executives brimming with confidence about their anti-strike strategy” wrote a new york times journalist in an article appropriately entitled “reality tv is no lightweight in the battle to outlast strikers” (carter, 2008). furthermore, as reality-tv studios competitively raced to the bottom to sate tv network demand for a glut of cheap tv shows, the wga strike arguably helped major tv networks save money they would have otherwise spent on scripted tv programming. leslie moonves, cbs’s ceo, commented: “we have added a number of reality programs” and “costs will be down considerably” (wyatt, 2007). peter chernin, president of fox, announced: “my guess is that during fiscal 2008, a strike is a positive for us” because “we save more money in term deals and story costs and probably the lack of making pilots than we lose in potential advertising.” chernin continued: “our animated shows are a year ahead in terms of scripts, and we have american idol and other reality shows coming” (tv guide, 2007). 194 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages reality tv celebrities: work in the scenes the second way that reality tv companies keep production costs to a minimum is by exploiting the no-waged labour of anybody who wants to and consents to try to become a reality tv celebrity. for most of tv’s history, tv studios hired and paid for the labor of professional actors, many which were unionized. but reality-tv studios channel the labour of presumably “ordinary people” – as opposed to professionally trained and unionized actors – into the production of “on-screen” tv content. in effect, they bypass aftra and sag-supplied actors, decrease the number of paid jobs for tv actors and increase the number of unpaid jobs for amateur “scab” actors, all for the sake of maintaining low labour costs (utley, 2000). in fact, tv production companies have harnessed the unwaged labour of ordinary people to make tv since network tv’s emergence in the late 1940s. allen funt’s candid camera (1948-) filmed ordinary people being tricked and surprised, the art baker show (195058) invited viewers to interactively submit postcards to producers describing what they wanted to see on tv and ralph edwards’ this is your life (1948-52) profiled the biography of ordinary people before a live studio audience (slocum 2005). game shows that integrate people as unpaid contestant-workers in competitions for money prizes – such as what’s my line, i’ve got a secret and to tell the truth (the 1950s), jeopardy! (1960s), the price is right (1970s), wheel of fortune (1980s) – have aired for decades. pbs’s an american family (1973) turned the daily life of a middle-class santa barbara family (the louds) into a tv show that was a precursor to mtv reality-docu-soaps like the real world, the osbournes and nick & jessica. late in the 1970s, the airwaves carried tv shows based on the lives of people with unique talents such as real people and that’s incredible. in the 1980s, talent contest shows like star search showcased people singing, dancing and joking in spectacular competitions for $100,000. in the 1990s, rescue 911 and cops used police-generated video content to show the security state cracking down on petty criminals in racialized and poor communities. america’s funniest home videos repackaged video content submitted to its producers by people who used low-cost cam-corders to record and watch people just like themselves doing silly things. millennial reality-tv hits like survivor, big brother and american idol integrated the labour of people to make the on-screen reality content that fills each tv episode’s commodity’s form. the realitytv production industry’s incorporation of the labour of amateurs as cast members, life-tellers, contestants, participants into the content it generates, sells and screens significantly reduces, if not eliminates, the reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 195 cost of unionized “actors.” reality-tv’s “field for ordinary people vying for potential fame is virtually inexhaustible” and all of their performances are unwaged, but value-adding (collins 2008, 97). every year, people compete to be cast on reality-tv shows. some of these are trained actors searching for paid work in scripted tv (peterson, 2012) but can’t get it, so settle for unpaid unscripted gigs.tv studios mobilize their workforce by placing ads for casting calls and auditions in newspapers, on tv and on websites (kelley, 2006). at the same time, on websites like reality wanted (www.realitywanted.com), workers promote their talents and headshots in hopes that reality producers will take notice and give them an audition. each year, reality-tv studios audition thousands of people for roles that they’ve pre-designed to be filled by someone who by playing themselves, will fit the part. in preparation for the auditioning process, reality-tv hopefuls self-exploit, committing many hours of unpaid labour and spending a lot of their own money. tom sullivan, for example, worked hundreds of hours without pay and spent thousands of dollars to shoot, edit and mail videotapes of himself to survivor’s casting agents; he was auditioned five times but was never cast (ellin, 2007). sergio alain barrios, an aspiring fashion designer, worked over a thousand unpaid hours and spent $7500 to produce fifteen sample clothing designs in preparation for his project runway audition (ellin, 2007). while reality-tv hopefuls like sullivan and barrios may have believed that self-exploitation would give them an advantage over competitors in the reality-tv labour market, they were not cast by realitytv production firms and neither are most others. the people that do get cast for unwaged work on reality tv must forego waged work if they have it by taking leaves of absence, extended vacations or quitting (gornstein, 2009). how do tv studios get the people they cast to consent to the exploitation of their labour? prior to the audition, prospective reality-tv performers must sign a “participation agreement” with the tv studio (cianci, 2009). the contract for sirens media’s real housewives of new jersey, a bravo reality-tv show, sheds light on the asymmetrical, unequal and exploitative terms of the agreement. the contract asserts sirens media’s right to: 1) exert proprietary control over the contestant’s recorded image, voice, information, videos (footage and materials) and exploit this content in any way it likes; 2) “edit, delete, dub and fictionalize the footage and materials, the program and the advertisements as producer sees fit in producer’s sole discretion”; and, 3) not be held accountable for injuries or damages to the contestant for having “personal, private, surprising, disparaging and embarrassing” details of 196 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages their life (even if not true) represented. furthermore, the contract stipulates that the relationship between the production company and the contestant is not one of employer and employee, but voluntary. as such, the “volunteer” will not receive payment for their appearance on the tv show (“i hereby waive any and all rights i may have to any compensation whatsoever”). the contract implies that the volunteer exchanges their footage and materials – and the labour it requires – for exposure (“i acknowledge and agree that a significant element of the consideration i am receiving [ . . . ] is the opportunity for publicity”). by signing the contract, the participant exempts themselves from being covered by unions and governmental labour laws and regulations and agree to take full responsibility if they are injured, fall sick and or are even killed while making the tv show. also, the contract says the volunteer may be exposed to “public ridicule, humiliation or condemnation” but cannot sue if they don’t like the way that sirens media “took or used the footage and materials or used the footage and materials in the program.” furthermore, the contract says volunteers are not free to talk about their experience of making the tv show and must keep “in strictest confidence” “prior to, during, or after the taping” all “information or materials.” the agreement basically censors what each voluntary can and can’t publicly say about their experience. the agreement says the participant understands they are “giving up certain legal rights under this agreement, including without limitation, my right to file a lawsuit” and additionally, that if the volunteer breaches the terms and conditions of the deal, they could be sued (tereszcuk, 2013). the above “agreement” between sirens media and the “housewives” is comparable to many others in terms of its power to accumulate footage and material by exploiting the people who make it. by signing such agreements, participants voluntarily exculpate their legal rights to the audio-visual content of their labour, privacy, experience, free speech compensation for work, union and an attorney (blair, 2010; cianci, 2009; helppie, 2013; kelley, 2006). “reality tv cast members are subject to totally unequal terms of negotiations” says andrejevic (2009). “they are essentially a disposable commodity, and if they don’t sign the contract there are hundreds of other people lining up for their spot” (cited in wyatt, 2009a). participants do invaluable work for tv companies, but participant agreements obscure this fact (blair, 2010) and are designed by studios to maximize owner power and minimize the power of the workers that appear in their shows. liberal cultural studies scholars make much of reality-tv’s “democratization” of entertainment, citing its inclusion of “oddballs” (steinberg, 2014) and empowering “semiotic selfreality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 197 determination” (hartley, 2004), but the terms of reality-tv participation agreements undermine workplace democracy and creative autonomy on reality-tv. participation agreements give tv owners a “significant legal advantage over participants because reality show participants waive certain rights” and then fall into a “grey area of the law somewhere between the classification of an employee of the studios and an independent contractor” (kelley, 2006, 15). by freely signing the participation agreement, people consent to unfreedom on the job and producer control over their labour and lives. under contract and on sets – beaches, kitchens and stages – reality-tv celebrities are really serfs. survivor’s cast gets stranded on islands; big brother housemates cannot exit the house; bachelorette contestants can’t skip the late-night rosegiving ritual. “they locked me in a hotel room for three or four days” before production started, said jen yemola, a pastry chef who appeared on hell’s kitchen 2007. “they took all my books, my cds, my phone, any newspapers. i was allowed to leave the room only with an escort. it was like i was in prison” (cited in wyatt, 2009a). the labour of reality tv’s contestant-participants is objectively exploited, but what might motivate so many people to consent to this exploitation? political-economists have shown how workers will sometimes consent to work without wages in the cultural industries in exchange for the prospect of accumulating non-monetary rewards like peer recognition, self-actualization, or exposure that may be parlayed into a future oriented employment opportunity (hesmondhalgh, 2010; kuehn and corrigan, 2013; ross, 2004; 2009). what seems to unite many reality-tv contestants is the pursuit of an experience that may yield symbolic and monetary rewards in the near or distant future. some people jump into reality-tv for a shot at the money prize. others give their labour to reality-tv companies in exchange for a chance to build a celebrity profile (couldry, 2002). some may sing, dance, cook or manage on reality-tv in exchange for a coaching lesson from paula abdul, gordon ramsay or donald trump on how to hone their skills as artists, chefs or budding capitalists. others may exchange their labour for a fleeting feeling of being part of tv’s power networks, to rub shoulders and schmooze with industry gatekeepers and tastemakers like simon cowell or ryan seacrest. others exchange their labour for access to privatized services and lifestyle experts – psychologists, dieticians and coaches – that the post-keynesian state fails to provision while internalizing neoliberalism’s ethos of individual self-responsibility for social problems (ouellette and hay, 2008). 198 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages significantly, people may work without wages in the reality-tv factory in exchange for the opportunity to generate publicity for themselves that may translate into future monetary returns. as hearn (2008) says: “reality programming provides the means for individuals to produce their own image personae, or ‘branded selves,’ which, potentially, can be traded for cash down the line.” on chopped, chefs compete to make three course meals for a panel of culinary experts in hopes of winning $10,000, advertising their skills and generating publicity for their current restaurants. the hills’ lauren conrad says she used reality-tv to “help start a business” (fahner, 2008). dragon’s den and shark tank’s motley innovators consent to appear on tv in exchange for a chance to win the financing they need to start a company. sometimes, the unwaged work of reality tv pays off. keeping up with the kardashians gave the kardashian family members publicity that landed them franchising opportunities with advertising companies. survivor marquesas’s contestant hunter ellis did not win the competition, but still leveraged her appearance to get a job as host of history channel’s reality-tv show, tactical to practical and man, moment machine. idol winners like kelly clarkson and carrie underwood were shuttled into careers in the music business. in sum, reality-tv studios invite entrepreneurial cultural workers to gift their labour power to them as a way to publicize themselves and gain access to more lucrative cultural industry labour markets. but in the reality-tv biz, as in capitalism, inequality of outcome prevails, and there are always more losers than winners. a lucky few do profit from their reality-tv work experience while many others suffer great losses and hardships, subsisting “neither as employers nor traditional employees, in a limbo of uncertainty” (ross, 2014, 34). the physical and emotional toll involved in being on camera 24/7, working to be watched, judged and assessed on a weekly basis, trying to act in accord with cultural industry-standard entertainment values, recounting traumatic personal details like breakups, marital discord, accidents, deaths and layoffs, bearing the pressure to competitively complete challenges and crunch producer-ordered tasks, enthusiastically contemplating what it would mean to win the grand prize and then repressing the disappointment of losing it, punishing work routines, sleep deprivation and induced intoxication—all of this leads reality-tv’s reserve army to anxiety, depression and burnout. after the reality tv shoot ends and the deal between tv studios and tv networks is complete, tv studios dump their contestant-workers back into other labour markets of precarity while retaining proprietary control and secure exploitation reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 199 rights to their footage and material. much reality-tv focuses on the power of the makeover, but many former reality-tv volunteers cannot reinvent the image that tv made for them. ridiculed by publics, frowned upon by scripted tv casting agents and desperate to make ends meet, reality-tv’s “dispensable celebrities” chase low-paid appearance gigs at shopping malls, sporting events, conferences, nightclubs, resorts and colleges, often in violation of their “participation agreement” with tv studios (cave, 2005; collins, 2008). unable to exchange their unpaid appearance on reality-tv for a compensated acting career and dispossessed of the sign-value studios made of them, reality-tv has-beens try to regain former waged jobs in the service economy. but some get fired from waged jobs because of being on tv (princ, 2013). ebony, the winner of i want to work for diddy: season two, for example, did not receive her prize as one of diddy’s minions and was fired from her day job as a public school teacher because of her use of profane language. “i’ve been unemployed ever since” said ebony. “this is the most broke i’ve ever been in my life” (moore, 2010). reality tv interns: work behind the scenes, and in them a third way that reality tv studios keep production costs to a minimum is by exploiting the labour power of workers via internships, many of which do not pay in cash, but in experience (mirrlees, 2015). the “internship” is often a synonym for an “experiential education, volunteer work, participant observation, training, or apprenticeship” (perlin, 2012, 206), and the “intern” is often defined by companies as anything but an employee who does real work and is thus entitled to a minimum wage. yet, the “internship” label frequently act as a “kind of smokescreen” (perlin 2012, xi) for the real work that millions of people are doing for corporations in these programs and obscure the fact that many so-called interns are actually cultural workers whose labour power serves the firm’s bottom line (perlin, 2012). internships are pervasive in the contemporary tv industry (cohen, de peuter and brophy, 2013; de peuter, cohen and brophy, 2012) and at present, the us’s big six media conglomerates hire interns for little to no pay and channel their labour toward the completion of tasks that contribute to their tv properties. nbc-universal, for example, says it has “strengthened its commitment to developing young, high-potential talent through the creation of specialized internship and rotational programs” that establishes “a diverse pipeline of talent by building a team of graduates into future leaders.” walt disney says it offers “an internship 200 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages unlike any other world” and an “internship opportunity that only happens once-in-a-lifetime” that enables interns to “contribute to a global company” and explore their “passion alongside some of the most inspiring talent around.” news corp says its program “offers an exciting and fastmoving environment for aspiring media professionals to gain valuable learning experiences.” time-warner declares to prospective interns that an “internship with one of our divisions will not only provide you with valuable experience in media and entertainment, but an opportunity to develop key skills and build your network while learning and having fun within businesses at the top of their industries.” cbs corporation says it is “proud to offer internship opportunities in virtually every field of media and entertainment” and strives to “provide students [ ... ] with meaningful and practical work experience.” viacom claims its internships “allows college students to work in an innovative, progressive, fast-paced and professional environment” that exposes them to “all levels of the company” and which is “an invaluable experience to individuals interested in pursuing a career in the entertainment industry.” the big six media conglomerates offer some paid internships, but many of the sub-contractor reality-tv studios that source the tv networkexhibition subsidiaries of these conglomerates with cheap content do not. skip films, for example, is looking for unpaid reality-tv development interns for “2-3 days a week” to do “heavy research, drafting treatments/pitch materials, pursuing leads to determine if a show concept is feasible/interesting and misc office tasks.” nan fisher entertainment seeks a “highly organized, responsible intern” who has an “enthusiasm for reality television” to “be involved in every aspect of the making of a reality show.” departure films wants to hire “development and casting interns” who have a passion for unscripted tv and an eye for talent” to research “potential show concepts and talent” and conduct “preliminary interviews with talent.” half yard productions says its “looking for an intern” who will work two days a week on “various projects related to television production, including various jobs in the office.” the idea factory posts for “interns to work in [reality] development and production” who are “amicable,” “highly creative,” and “able to think on their feet” and “ready to wear lots of different hats.” clearly, reality-tv production studios are trying to mobilize the labour of young interns and channel it toward the completion all kinds of un-waged jobs “behind-thescenes” that add value of reality tv shows. these examples suggest that interns are actually unwaged cultural workers that do a lot of real work. they conceptualize, research, cast, edit and produce reality tv shows. reality-tv intern ads may attract people to labour without pay in reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 201 exchange for the prospect of career-relevant skills, mentorship and networking opportunities (mirrlees, 2015). and some reality tv shows promote the idea that unwaged internships are a stepping stone to waged work in the cultural industry. as perlin (2012) says: “reality tv truly embraces the intern” (xii). indeed, a number of reality tv shows represent people competitively doing jobs, not for pay, but for experiences that help them land paid careers at a later date. mtv’s the hills season one (2006) depicts lauren conrad and whitney port benefiting from an unpaid internship at the hip teen vogue. at this internship, they enhance their skills, meet peers and make connections, and then move from this experience onto paid creative careers. on cbs’s the cut (2005), fashionista interns square off to win an opportunity to design a clothing line for tommy hilfiger. project runway’s (2004-present) designer interns slog away for training (“mentorships” at companies like banana republic and inter-national concepts), publicity (editorials in marie claire and elle), sales platforms (on piperlime.com and bluefly.com) and cash prizes ($100,000). on america’s next top model (2003-present), women work without pay as walking ads for beauty industry products with the goal of winning a shot at a modelling contract or endorsement deal with one of the tv show’s sponsors. i want to work for diddy (2008-2009) got its contestants to work toward a chance to be a paid assistant to the rapper multi-millionaire sean “diddy” coombs, at bad boy entertainment. reality tv shows like these give expression to and crystallize the fundamentally asymmetrical power relations between corporations and interns but elide social antagonism by showing interned workers worshipping the boss. they depict interned cultural workers as hyperindividualistic and entrepreneurial subjects who employ their cunning to outsmart, out-perform and undermine each other in competitions to win exposure and pay, displacing emerging forms of worker solidarity. they degrade the value of labour in the cultural industries by depicting interns completing numerous high-skilled tasks that contribute to the production of cultural goods and services as a game played for fun rather than as real work that deserves pay. they normalize unpaid work by framing it as something that interns enthusiastically consent to do as a “stepping stone” to a future opportunity of paid work, not as something they are increasingly expected or compelled to do by necessity. moreover, these shows legitimize unpaid work with a meritocratic ideology that conveys the idea that the hardest working and most talented, not the already class privileged, will prosper. 202 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages conclusion: reality tv workers unite! this article has shown how reality tv studios feed upon the labourpower of a low and no waged workforce behind the scenes and in the contrived scenes of the reality tv shows they own. reality tv workers—precarious, flexible, self-branded, performative, entrepreneurial, risk-taking and self-exploiting—fit the job description of 21st century creative capitalism’s “role model worker” (de peuter, 2014). but just as the one-sided rendering of “role model” precariats as hyperexploited risk a “sense that there is no way out,” overlook the capacity of workers to collectively “contest” and “resist,” and gloss over “countervailing possibilities” (de peuter, 2014, 365), stock descriptions of reality tv workers as dupes or pawns fail to address how these workers possess the collective capacities for understanding and changing their circumstances, possibly for the better. it is thus important – analytically and politically – to balance the critique of the capitalist structures that exploit labour with an account of the different ways that workers are uniting to contest them. by way of conclusion, i briefly review five emerging reality-tv worker challenges to studio owner power. first, reality-tv workers are unionizing. from 2006 to date, the writers guild of america (wga) has been attempting to unionize the editors/writers of reality tv shows. during the 2007-2008 strike, it tried to bring reality-tv writers into its fold and called for reality-tv writers to be credited as “story producers” and “supervising story producers.” to elevate this issue in the public mind, the wga protested outside of fremantle north america, one of the largest reality tv firms. the wga lost this battle to the studios, which walked away from the bargaining table and refused to return unless the wga dropped its proposal to unionize reality-tv workers (the economist 2008). despite this setback, the wga continues to try to unionize reality-tv workers and has won some small victories. in 2010, workers at lion television (money from strangers) and optomen productions (worst cooks in america) voted to join the wga and did. in 2012, they won a three-year collective agreement that provides weekly compensation minimums, health benefits, a grievance and arbitration process and vacation time (cunningham, 2012b). following the lead of us unions, the canadian media guild (cmg) (2015) is fighting to expand union coverage to reality-tv workers. in britain, the broadcasting entertainment cinematograph and theatre union is fighting a similar battle. so, there is an emerging international effort to unionize reality tv workers, and some small victories. second, reality tv workers are striking against tv studios. some strikes result from union planning and others are spontaneous. in 2010, reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 203 the below­the­line crew members of the biggest loser who belong to the iatse struck against eyeworks-owned 3 ball productions and won health and pension benefits (andreeva 2010). in august of 2012, iatse’s local 700 won similar benefits for 11 story editors after organizing a strike against blueprint post-production, which was editing the syfy tv show hot set (finke, 2012). some of reality-tv’s on-screen workers have staged wildcat strikes during the shooting of the tv show to demand better working conditions or more control over the creative process. in 2012, participants of the biggest loser walked off set, refused to work and threatened to quit when they learned the producers were planning to bring back former loser-victors to compete with them for the $250,000 grand weight loss prize (hater 2012). by collectively withdrawing their labour, they challenged the power of owners to rig the game. third, reality-tv workers are struggling against tv owners through the courts. while studio participation agreements define the relationship between the studio and the worker as voluntary and outside of existing labour laws, entertainment lawyers are struggling to redefine this relationship as one of employer and employee. the courts should categorize reality-tv studios as employers and reality-tv participants as employees due to the amount of control that studios exercise over contestant labour power. “[r]eality show participants provide ‘services’ to the producers of these reality shows in an environment most often significantly manipulated and controlled by the producers” (kelley, 2006, 37). the fight to expand and enforce labour laws in reality tv is important given that the participation agreements workers sign violate existing labour laws and subvert minimum employment standards. reality-workers are also enlisting the help of attorneys to demand pay for work. in 2009, melody murray, aaron silberman and rosemarie disalvo, producers of reality-tv formats such as the osbournes: reloaded, thank god you’re here and american idol, sued freemantle media north, claiming the company compelled them to work in “sweatshop” conditions, seven days a week, up two twenty hours a day, and falsify payroll records (wyatt ,2009b). some reality-tv workers do not seek legal representation to confront wage theft because they fear employment deprivation. but some workers are gaining the confidence to challenge capital in the courts. fourth, reality-tv workers are using their precariously acquired celebrity power to demand payment for their labour from tv production firms. when a reality-tv series becomes a hit, reality-tv production studios find themselves in a relationship of relative dependence on the people they cast. for example, the thompson family of tlc’s smash hit, here comes honey boo boo, received a stipend of about $5000 per episode 204 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages in season one. the antics of the child amateur-star, honey boo boo, turned the tv show into hit, bringing in ratings and revenue for tlc. using honey boo boo’s fledgling star power as a bargaining chip, the thompson family got the tv studio to pay it a higher stipend—between $15,000 and $20,000 per episode – in exchange for the work they put in to season two (tmz, 2012). in 2014, the “cast” of party down south banded together to collectively demand a 1400% pay increase from 495 productions. each cast member hoped to increase their payment from $500 per episode (as stipulated by the participation agreement) to $7,500 per episode. after some bargaining, 495 productions agreed to a 400% pay increase and now pays each cast member $2000 per episode (daily mail, 2014). the pay increase is a pittance when compared to the $250,000 to $750,000 earned per episode by top-tier tv actors like ashton kutcher, mariska hargita and claire danes. but it does show how reality-tv participants and contestants are starting to perceive themselves as workers and their tv appearances as jobs deserving of pay. finally, reality-tv workers are challenging the discourse of owners by fighting over the definition of the commodity they produce and revealing the real labour that all reality-tv classifications hide. the power of tv studios to maintain a non-unionized, precarious and interned workforce relies in part on their power to define reality-tv as a type of tv that is categorically different from other types in terms of who makes it (non-professional or un-skilled amateur workers) and what it is made of (“the real”). this classification creates the illusion that reality-tv shows are made by workers who do not possess the same skills or do the same jobs as the workers who create un-reality tv shows (scripted programmes) and that reality-tv shows give viewers privileged access situations, events and happenings that are more true to life, original or authentic than conveyed by scripted tv shows (“reality”). this classification enables tv owners to build, control and exploit a low-waged and no-waged workforce (the workers who make reality tv are not unionized) and deflect claims that the people in reality tv are workers whose performances should be paid for (the people are contestants playing a game for fun, not workers in an employer-employee power relationship). in response, reality-tv workers argue that the classification of reality-tv as different from scripted-tv masks substantive similarities between them, namely, a division of labour and company efforts to control their labour as well as the property rights to the reality-effects the make. the struggle to define reality-tv as a product made of labour whose value is equivalent to the labour of making scripted entertainment is integral to the material struggle for expanding union membership, anti-wage theft reality tv’s low-wage and no-wage work | 205 legislation and fair pay to the workers toiling behind and within tv scenes. so, while reality tv studios degrade and disorganize the labour of cultural workers to profit-maximize, these workers are beginning to dignify their labour and organize. the reality tv workers toiling behind the scenes and in them – producers, contestants and interns – are quite different with regard to their professional roles and the distinct tasks they perform in the overall division of labour, but what they share in common is media capitalism’s dispossession and exploitation of their labour. a challenge for reality-tv organizers is to shed light on how these workers’ manifestly different orientations relate and link to a common social relation in capitalism as a class by and for itself. references adalian, j. 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(2009b, august 1). tv contestants: tired, tipsy and pushed to the brink. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/business/media/02reality.html finally the right to strike | 213 finally the right to strike: but what about organizing? patricia mcdermott1 abstract: the saskatchewan federation of labour decision from the supreme court of canada (january, 2015) is a landmark case in that, after a twenty-eight year judicial lead-up, it finally confirms the right to strike as guaranteed by the charter’s section 2(d) freedom of association. the decision found the provincial government’s unilateral authority over designating essential services during a work stoppage to be unconstitutional. the decision is indeed a victory for unions that goes far beyond the particular issues in the case and will have ramifications for years to come. this paper presents a preliminary look at the decision and discusses four interrelated areas of labour law that will be affected. the downside of this decision, however, is the finding that amendments to saskatchewan’s labour relations act that are designed to make organizing more difficult, are constitutional. this decision continues a trend in labour legislation that will undoubtedly help undermine the much needed organizing in saskatchewan in the face of declining union density, particularly for the fast growing cadres of precarious workers who need unions. this aspect of the decision, which represents the loss of a rare opportunity for the court to support organizing, will also be discussed briefly. keywords: right to strike; freedom of association; charter rights; essential services; back-to-work legislation the supreme court of canada’s (scc) saskatchewan federation of labour (sfl) decision has been touted in the media as “a stunning victory” (fine, g & m, 2015) for unions and their supporters, a description that is indeed justified. the purpose of this paper is to provide a preliminary look at this decision in which the court has finally accepted the right to strike as constitutionally protected by the charter. the legal impact of sfl on four interrelated areas of labour law will be explored: the designation of work as ‘essential’; assessing whether legislation can clear the section 1 (s.1) test of a justified limit to a constitutionally 1 patricia mcdermott is associate professor in the department of social science and the school of gender studies at york university. she would like to thank the reviewers for their helpful comments. 214 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages protected right; the issue of what constitutes a strike; and, perhaps most importantly, back to work and strike prohibition legislation. the evolving case law on s.2(d) in the industrial relations arena concerns the rights of union members with regard to the primary goals of their association: forming and joining unions, engaging in collective bargaining, and the focus here, striking. the facts of sfl involve the saskatchewan government’s legislation prohibiting certain government workers, deemed as ‘essential’, from striking. the decision represents the final shift in the scc’s twenty-eight year jurisprudential journey with regard to the right to strike. in 1987 the scc held that s.2(d) only protected rights for individuals and now sfl has finally affirmed it protects collective rights as well. as we shall see, however, although sfl is a ‘victory’ and indeed a ‘stunning’ one, it does come with another message that the court is not ready to move towards an equally important goal of helping to facilitate the much needed movement of people into unions. the decision will undoubtedly encourage ever more restrictions in the area of organizing as other provincial governments continue this decades old trend (bartkiw, 2009/10; 2008). the trade union amendement act (tuaa) will also be briefly discussed, a ruling that certainly dampens the celebrations for sfl for those interested in increasing the rate of unionization. in sfl the scc states that unions must have the right to negotiate the designation of which workers are considered “essential” and therefore required to work during a strike. if negotiations break down over this issue, the decision stresses that there has to be a fair, alternate dispute resolution process that can meet the tests involved in clearing the charter’s s.1 requirements, namely that a restriction on a right must be “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society” – a topic to which we will return shortly. sfl’s position on the right to strike goes far beyond the issue of essential services and, as noted, finds a charter guaranteed right to strike within the context of collective bargaining. in december 2007, the newly elected conservative government, the saskatchewan party, introduced two pieces of legislation: the public service essential services act (psesa) and the trade union amendment act (tuaa). both statutes became law on may 14, 2008. we will first explore the outcome in psesa since it is with regard to this act that the saskatchewan federation of labour was successful. sfl was a much-monitored case as it made its way up the hierarchy of canada’s court system. there were fifteen appellants along with the major litigant, the saskatchewan federation of labour, twenty-seven interveners that included six attorney generals and twenty-one union affiliates. finally the right to strike | 215 the public service essential services act the purpose of the psesa was to fill what the scc described as a “gap” in the law in that prior to the introduction of this act “strikes where regulated on an ad hoc basis” (para 52). although the court notes a socalled “gap” in the law, in fact the province’s policy represented a decision to allow an “unfettered strike” regime that permitted unions and employers to negotiate the parameters of their strikes and lockouts, rather than a “controlled strike” model in which government intervention becomes the norm (adell, 2013). a number of prominent strikes provided the rationale for the newly elected government in saskatchewan introducing this legislation, namely the 1999 province-wide strike by 8,400 members of the nurses union and a protracted strike in 2001 by health care workers. in the winter of december 2006/07 a third strike involving highway workers, snowplow operators, and correctional officers, the court noted, “sparked concerns about public safety” (para 6). the government decided there was need for a mechanism that would help designate which employees are doing “essential” work and thus required to continue working while their co-workers are permitted to go on strike. on the question of the constitutionality of the psesa, the trial judge ruled that given the scc’s recent interpretation of the scope of s.2(d) in two cases bc health services (2007) and fraser (2011), “the right to strike is a fundamental freedom protected by s.2(d) of the charter” (para 18) and further that the prohibition on this right contained in the psesa “substantially interfered” with the rights of the affected employees (para 19). his reasoning was: the government of saskatchewan failed to engage in meaningful consultation or negotiation with respect to essential services; good-faith negotiations are not possible when “one side has the capacity to impose an agreement”; the definitions of essential services and public employers are both “overbroad”; and, finally when compared to analogous legislation in other jurisdictions, the psesa is uniquely restrictive and devoid of both review mechanisms and alternate means of addressing workplace issues – such as binding arbitration (para 19). the saskatchewan court of appeal unanimously found the psesa to be constitutional and concluded that “[w]hile the court’s freedom of association jurisprudence has evolved in recent years, it has not shifted far enough, or clearly enough, to warrant a ruling by this court that the right to strike is protected by s. 2(d) of the charter” (para 23). justice rosalie abella writing for the 5-2 majority of the scc stated “i agree with the trial judge”, not the court of appeal: “… the right of employees to 2 unless otherwise indicated all para (paragraph) references refer to the sfl decision of the scc. 216 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages strike is vital to protecting the meaningful process of collective bargaining within s. 2(d).” as the trial judge observed, without the right to strike, “a constitutionalized right to bargain collectively is meaningless” (para 24). abella further finds that within the context of its role in the collective bargaining process “the strike is unique and fundamental” (para 52). following the then chief justice dickson’s minority opinion in alberta reference (1987), which she comments “has recently proven to be a magnetic guide” (para 63), she notes that dickson’s challenge to the majority’s ruling that constitutional protection only applies to individuals, was the starting point for the judicial evolution towards the “more generous approach” in sfl (para 33). dickson argued that “the very nature of a strike, and its raison d’etre, is to influence the employer by joint action which would be ineffective if it were carried out by an individual.” effective constitutional protection of employees in the collective bargaining process requires…“protection of their freedom to withdraw collectively their services, subject to s.1 of the charter” (para 49 & 59). alberta reference is one of a the original so-called “labour trilogy”, a set of 1987 scc decisions, including rwdsu v saskatchewan a case involving back to work legislation in the dairy sector, and psac v canada, which involved a challenge to the federal government’s imposition of wage restraint legislation. these three cases found that s.2(d) contained neither a right to bargaining collectively nor a right to strike.3 bernard adell, proposed another “labour triolgy”, consisting of: dunmore (2001), health services (2007) and fraser (2011) – the three decisions that were relied upon in sfl to shift the jurisprudence toward the final ruling on s.2(d) (adell, 2013, 415). indeed many observers now refer to the three january 2015 decisions, meredith, mounted police, and sfl as the ‘latest trilogy’ that has, after twenty-eight years, established a clear charter guarantee of a right to strike. robert j. sharpe and kent roach (2013, 193-204), panitch and swartz (2003,51-83), and paul cavalluzzo (faraday, et. al., 2012) provide excellent overviews of the jurisprudence leading up to sfl, a full survey of which is beyond the scope of this paper. as we shall see, the issues in the four areas of labour law that will be significantly impacted by this decision are quite closely interrelated and have been isolated for the purpose of exploring the particular issue under discussion. 3 the ‘labour trilogy’ generated a great deal of legal analysis. see harry arthurs, paul cavalluzzo, geoffrey england, and judy fudge in queen’s law journal, 13 (1988). finally the right to strike | 217 the definition of an essential service the psesa mandates that a public employer and the union are to negotiate an “essential services agreement” to govern how public services are to be maintained in the event of a work stoppage. if negotiations break down the public employer has the authority “to unilaterally designate, by ‘notice’, which public services it considers to be essential” along with the classifications of employees required to continue working during a strike, including the names and number of employees in each classification (para 11). a key factor in sfl is the fact that the psesa contains, as noted, a very broad definition of “essential services”, namely those whose work is necessary to enable the public employer to prevent: danger to life, health or safely; the destruction or serious deterioration of machinery, equipment, or premises; serious environmental damage; and disruption of the courts (para 9). in addition to the provincial government as employer, the statute covers all broader public sector employers including all crown corporations, health service agencies, both provincial universities and the saskatchewan polytechnic, and all municipalities (para10). the scc found, again in agreement with the trial judge, that this coverage is far too broad and questioned whether, for example, a university or a polytechnic college, and every crown corporation, including the liquor control board, engages in work that should be considered ‘genuinely’ essential. the trial judge thus proposed the much narrower definition commonly accepted in international law, and now definitively endorsed by the scc: the jurisprudence under ilo convention no.87, the icsecr (sic) and the iccpr has been consistent… each of these instruments has been interpreted as enshrining the right to strike, and their respective supervisory bodies have insisted that the right to strike may be restricted or prohibited: (a) in the public service only for the public servants exercising authority in the name of the state; (b) in essential services in the strict sense of the term (that is, services the interruption of which would endanger the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population) (emphasis added); or (c) in the event of an acute national emergency and for a limited period of time (para 86). 218 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages this definition represents a significant shift in the court’s approach to “what is an essential service” in that it conclusively makes canada a jurisdiction that accepts the international definition endorsed by the ilo. this move towards employing international standards was encouraged when the majority in b.c. health (2007) stated that: “…the charter should be presumed to provide at least as great a level of protection as is found in the international human rights documents that canada has ratified.” (para 70). the court’s assertion that the international definition of essential services should be used was an issue raised not just in alberta reference (1987) but in another ‘labour trilogy’ decision, rwdsu v. saskatchewan (1987), which contains a significant debate between chief justice dickson and justice wilson that will undoubtedly continue to be helpful for the ongoing discussions concerning what constitutes an essential service. since this decision involved both legislation that temporarily prohibited strikes, as well as the “demonstrably justified” limit under s.1, it could be discussed in the two sections below on these topics, however here we want to highlight its contribution to the issue of what constitutes an essential service. although dickson and wilson agreed that s.2(d) protected the right to strike, they disagreed on whether the legislation could be saved by the s.1 review. perhaps wilson’s dissent in rwdsu will prove to be as ‘magnetic’ a guide as dickson’s minority opinion in alberta reference (1987) was for sfl? dickson argued that a ban on strikes could be justified if the potential economic harm to a third party was “so massive and immediate and very focused in its intensity” while wilson viewed this reliance on economic harm to overreach the consensus in international law on the limits to the right to strike. she noted that the objective of the impugned legislation was to protect dairy farmers from economic harm and then cites dickson himself in alberta reference (1987) pointing out that he supported the use of the international standard for a strike as repeatedly set out by the committee on freedom of association (cfa) of the ilo. she continues that dickson was now sanctioning: “…the abrogation of the freedom to strike when the economic interests of a particular group are threatened. the implications of this for the collective bargaining process are extremely far-reaching since some measure of damage to the economic interests of the parties and the public is an inevitable concomitant (of) every work stoppage. indeed, the effectiveness of this negotiating tool depends on it (para 51).” finally the right to strike | 219 wilson further notes that although she agrees that economic regulation is a significant tool for governments, if it is to be done at the expense of our fundamental freedoms, “then it must, in my view, be done in response to a serious threat to the well-being of the body politic or a substantial segment of it”, again referring to the internationally accepted definition of an essential service (para 56, rwdsu v saskatchewan). she argues that the evidence regarding the harm to dairy farmers falls far short of establishing economic harm of the nature needed for it to come within the ilo’s definition. she is prescient in pointing out that legislative definitions of what constitutes an essential service “have gradually expanded to cover fire-fighters, and police and more recently the media, teachers” and so on, and asks whether this expansion of the definition of “essential” is “the route through which increasing government intervention in labour disputes is to be justified?” (rwdsu para 54-58). she further argues that she is not convinced that the “provision of milk” is an essential service. “milk is undoubtedly an important food product but there may be other food products which are an adequate substitute” and finally that it is possible, that “milk would be imported from outside the province to supply the saskatchewan consumer” (rwdsu para 71). after sfl the court will have to assess whether work is ‘genuinely’ essential and not a matter of inconvenience, a strategy designed to weaken the union’s bargaining strength, or as wilson suggests, the route for government to intervene in labour disputes. sfl also raises a relatively new issue in the canadian industrial relations setting – whether workers that are designated as ‘essential’ should also have to do non-essential work when carrying out their duties during a work stoppage (para 13). as part of the psesa scheme the saskatchewan labour relations board was given jurisdiction to review the number of employees required to work in a particular classification, but had no authority to review whether any service is ‘genuinely essential’, whether specific employees are being reasonably selected, or whether they are doing a job that is entirely or only partly “essential” (para 13). these questions will have to be addressed in any existing or future legislation of this nature. the acceptance of the international standard of what constitutes an “essential service” represents one aspect of sfl that will have a lasting impact on labour law, and hopefully labour legislation, now that it has been so definitively endorsed by the supreme court. k.d. ewing’s recent discussion of the sfl reminds us of canada’s extremely poor record in the eyes of the international labour organization’s (ilo) supervisory bodies particularly the committee on freedom of association (cfa). he notes 220 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages that canada has more cfa complaints launched against it than any other g7 country, which is “even more notable” since it is the country with the smallest population. there have been 98 cfa complaints against canada for issues that include an array of alleged violations of international standards to which it is a signatory. one prominent criticism of canada by the cfa is the banning of strikes in services that are not essential, such as education, ferry services, postal services, air travel, and so on. (ewing, 2015, 546) panitch and swartz also noted canada’s poor record in their from content to coercion and argued that since the canadian state’s “shift towards legislative interventions against labour rights” in the 1970s, canada accounted for 33% of all complaints before the cfa from 1974-91, a sharp rise from the 1954-73 period in which canada only accounted for only 4% of all complaints. (2003, 54) they also commented that: “...ilo decisions have generally been ignored by canadian governments, a sorry testament to the degree of dissonance between canada’s formal adherence to international declarations on labour rights and their actual embodiment in the practices of the canadian state” (2003, 58). meeting the section one challenge a further criticism by the international labour law community has been imposing legislation that either prohibits strikes or orders strikers back to work in services that are truly essential, without an appropriate alternative dispute mechanism to replace the removal of the right to strike precisely the case in sfl (ewing, 2015, 546-47). the necessity of honouring international legal standards to which canada is a signatory, was raised by dickson’s dissent in the alberta reference (1987). meeting the requirements of s.1 would essentially involve providing an alternate, fair, and independent method of dispute resolution for those denied their constitutional right to strike. as abella points out, sfl did not engage in a s.1 analysis since the full ban on striking in itself rendered the psesa to be “substantially interfering” with the guarantee of freedom of association. she does note, however, that when essential services legislation provides for such a mechanism “it would more likely be justified under s.1 of the charter” and further that “in my view the failure of any such mechanism in the psesa is what ultimately renders its constitutionality impermissible” (para 25, emphasis added). one of the clear impacts of sfl on future litigation will be to move the focus to s.1. governments both as employers and legislators will have to meet the onus of ensuring that these alternate methods, primarily systems of compulsory interest arbitration, will be implemented in such a finally the right to strike | 221 manner that they will be found to be in compliance with the standards set for s.1 not always an easy task. the first question that must be answered under the oakes test (1986) that sets out how the scc implements s.1, is whether the purpose of the legislation or provision is “pressing and substantial.” if it is found to be, then the court or tribunal will consider the next question whether the reason for overriding a constitutional freedom is “proportional” and “rationally connected” to the pressing and substantial purpose. in other words whether the legislation/provision is “minimally impairing” or could the objective of the legislation be achieved with less restriction on guaranteed rights or does it “overreach.” it is also noted in sfl that alternate dispute resolution mechanisms have not been considered “as sensitive to the associational interests of employees as the traditional strike/lock-out mechanism” (para 60 citing dickson in rwdsu v. saskatchewan, pp. 476-77) and such imposed settlements decrease the effectiveness of the collective bargaining process over time since they do not tend to be regarded as accepted by employees when compared to those that are collectively bargained (para 60 citing adell, grant and ponak, 2001). further there is also the belief that strikes are essentially good for democracy. pierre verge, for example, has argued that the right to strike is fundamentally important to “collective autonomy … and the democratic vitality of society as a whole” (cited in translation, adell, 2013, 414). indeed the theme of democracy runs throughout sfl particularly with regard to the assessment of s.1 solutions for denying the charter right to strike in that these must be “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” jamie cameron has argued that despite the court having been “notoriously rigid” about the oakes test and its “status as a universal standard of reasonable limits”, it has been “applied flexibly from case to case and guarantee to guarantee.” she suggests that the court should develop “customized standards” such as ones that would apply a specific test to determine whether a restriction on the right to strike is justified. (cameron, 2019/10, 310-11) wilson’s dissent in another labour trilogy decision, psac v. canada (1987), will hopefully offer another guide on the issue of meeting the s.1 challenge. this case involved the implementation of the wage restraint legislation by the federal government. wilson points out that, on the government’s own admission, the legislation had no direct effect on or causal link to inflation, but was passed “to persuade the general public to enter voluntarily into employment agreements” that provided for a wage increase no more than 6% in the first year and 5% in the second. she argues that the legislation, although its purpose was to induce ‘voluntary’ 222 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages compliance, did so by ‘mandatory’ measures that not only removed the employees’ potential to voluntarily comply, but violated their fundamental rights (para 61-62) by imposing restrictions. she stresses that the oakes test requires that legislation must be “carefully designed to achieve the objective in question” and concludes that the legislative measures it used were “arbitrary and unfair in that they were imposed upon a captive constituency”, were not “expected to have any direct effect on inflation”, and could not “constitute an example of voluntary compliance” (para 6667). what is a strike? the question of “what is a strike” could also become a key issue in the aftermath of sfl. in referring to a number of constitutions, including those of france, italy, portugal, south africa and spain, all of which abella notes contain a right to strike although not primarily within the strict context of collective bargaining that the scc clearly has in mind in sfl. however, the strong language supporting the right to strike could also be seen to protect political strikes more typical in europe. in canada rallies and marches such as events like the “days of protest” in opposition to ontario’s conservative government in the late1990s raise questions about what is an “illegal strike” (an untimely, ie. mid-term cessation of work) rather than what is a strike. labour lawyer paul cavalluzo has argued however, the wager model must be seen as a “whole package” that has been long accepted as effective in canada. he warns against tampering with the system for such objectives as parlaying the protected right to strike from the workplace into the political arena (cavalluzzo, 2015). the question of what will be considered a strike when further judicial treatment of this issue unfolds, as brian langille argues, will be far from an easy task. he notes that there is a mistaken assumption in canadian labour law that there is an objective definition of the right to strike, namely “any concerted cessation of work”. he maintains that the definition is overbroad and a narrower, subjective definition based on the reason/s for the work stoppage must be found. (langille,2009/10, 355-56) the collective refusal to do overtime or calling in sick, a slowdown or speed-up, and so on, have all been treated as ‘illegal strikes’ by labour boards and courts if done in an ‘untimely’ manner, namely during the life of a collective agreement. langille points out that there are many concerted cessations of work, however, that are not strikes, such as a group of employees ‘playing hooky’ to go and see a baseball game – done with no intent to pressure their employer to reach an agreement or for any finally the right to strike | 223 immediate workplace matter (361). langille also raises the concern about what the right to strike will mean for those excluded from the statutory schemes set out in labour legislation. there is indeed an accepted common law right to strike, yet there is no protection against an employer’s retaliation of dismissal for those who have taken strike action. employees covered by labour legislation are protected by a further set of employee rights, such as unfair labour practices and the right to retain their status as employees while on strike and thus have the right to their job back within certain time parameters. there are also statutory duties imposed on employers who must refrain from interfering with a right to strike (368-69). although those outside the statutory protection will not be able to look to any rules on striking, they, however, do not have all the restrictions the wager scheme imposes. they will be able to strike for recognition and engage in collective work cessations. with these seeming ‘advantages’ will come much uncharted territory such as will they need to take a strike vote, engage in conciliation? will their collective agreements set in place by a successful strike be binding, as so on? as langille comments that for courts to undertake such explorations will be “to enter a world without end.” (371) prohibiting strikes and back-to-work legislation back to work legislation has been described as an “immensely intolerant and uniquely canadian” practice. (ewing, 2015, 546). there has been a long-standing domestic critique of this practice (panitch & swartz: 2003, 3rd ed.). as touched upon earlier, there has been a running dispute between the ilo’s committee on freedom of association (cfa) and the ontario government about the use of back to work legislation particularly in the educational sector which, the cfa repeatedly points out is not an essential service “as normatively determined by the ilo supervisory bodies.” in 2004 the cfa commented in one of its decisions concerning a teachers’ strike that although it “recognizes that unfortunate consequences may flow from a strike in an non-essential service”, these do not warrant intervention in the right to strike until these become so serious “as to endanger the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population.” (caf, 2004, para 505, cited in ewing, 2015, 547). again this stresses the importance of moving to the internationally accepted definition of essential services, as has been discussed, since it is only in essential services that back to work legislation and an outright ban on strikes is appropriate if s.1 requirements are to be satisfied. 224 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the cfa has pointed out that the province’s repeated recourse to back-to-work legislation has been used in an “inpatient and disproportional” manner at early stages of a dispute. for example, in the case of a bc ferry dispute, (again not an essential service) the cfa argued that back-to-work legislation was employed “as a first rather than a last resort” during a legal strike “that had barely lasted 48 hours”. the committee pointed out the repeated use of this type of legislation in the ontario educational sector, four times from 1998 to 2011, creating a situation where teachers “theoretically have a legal right which, in practice however, is taken away from them when they exercise it.” (ewing, 2015, 547-48) in recent years the federal conservatives have repeatedly implemented back-to-work legislation in, for example, both air canada and canada post and legal challenges pending will likely now have successful results for the unions. statutes such as the protecting air service act (2012), designed primarily to prevent strikes, will have to be revised. governments will now have to be very careful about how they draft no-strike provisions and alternate dispute resolution mechanisms such as binding interest arbitration in the light of the heightened scrutiny in s.1 reviews. since the introduction of saskatchewan’s psesa in 2007 the federal government and other provinces have continued the long-term trend of introducing and/or modifying their essential service legislation. for example, nova scotia amended their trade union act to replace the right to strike for firefighters and police officers with interest arbitration. nova scotia’s recent (2014) essential health and community services act mandates “a binding method of resolving the issues in dispute” between the parties (s.15). similarly manitoba passed a relatively recent (2011) essential services act that specifies which public sector employees must continue to work during a strike and includes a broad array of services that the government considers essential – without regard to the internationally accepted definition of an essential service. quebec, p.e.i., alberta, new brunswick, newfoundland and labrador, ontario, the northwest territories, and nunavut all have public service legislation which contain various restrictions on the right to strike that will have to be reviewed. it is interesting to note that the conservative federal government amended a number of statutory provisions in several acts including the public service labour relations act (pslra) as part of its bill c-4, economic action plan act (2013). in the “frequently asked questions” document outlining the changes, the q & a section announces that going forward “the employer has the exclusive right to determine which services finally the right to strike | 225 are essential for the safety or security of the public” and further that “employees occupying positions designated essential are required to report to work during a strike.” question # 7 of this document asks: “why is the designation of essential services now exclusively determined by the employer?” – the answer – “the employer is in the best position to determine the number of employees required to maintain delivery of essential services within its organizations” (emphasis added). with such a unilateral scheme in place, there is no doubt that the federal government’s pslra will be one of the first statutes on the chopping block once the many legal ripples from sfl start to roll out. now that the right to strike has become a guaranteed freedom under the charter, it will hopefully be far more difficult to prevent workers from exercising this right. as suggested much current legislation will have to be revised or face judicial challenge that will hopefully be more rigorous than in the past forty years. panitch and swartz, well over a decade ago, noted canadian legislatures’ and the courts’ lack of respect and compliance with international law and asked whether governments “could hardly ignore so readily” the freedom of association in the charter? now that finally, after twenty-eight years, the right to strike is actually ‘enshrined’ in the charter, a question that still remains (2003:58). the trade union amendment act, 2008: what about organizing? sfl has a lot to say about power inequalities in the workplace, and by extension, in society. in addressing her colleagues in dissent in sfl, wagner and rothstein, abella argues that they essentially ignore “the fundamental power imbalance which the entire history of the modern industrial relations has been scrupulously devoted to rectifying” (para 56). she then points out that the scc has “long recognized the deep inequalities” that characterize relations between employers and employees and again refers to dickson in alberta reference who comments “throughout history, workers have associated to overcome their vulnerability as individuals to the strength of their employers.” (para 55 citing p. 368). mounted police, also stresses that the goal of s.2(d) protection is to empower “vulnerable groups” and “help them work to right imbalances in society. it protects marginalized groups and makes possible a more equal society” (para 53). mounted police also notes: “individual employees typically lack the power to bargain and pursue workplace goals with their more powerful employers. only by banning together in collective bargaining associations, thus strengthening their bargaining power with the employer, can they meaningfully pursue their workplace 226 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages goals (para 55).” with all this focus on vulnerable and powerless groups it is unfortunate that the scc did not take the opportunity to comment more fully on the necessity of preserving clauses in the saskatchewan labour relations act that have the potential to offer clear workplace protection to one of the most disadvantaged groups in society today precarious workers. this outcome, it has to be said, came after the appellants’ essentially declined to fully argue the case after clear defeats at both the trial and court of appeal. whatever the reason, it is unfortunate since the opportunity to hear the scc on this crucial issue comes so rarely. the part of sfl decision that was not successful was the finding that the trade union amendment act (tuaa) is constitutional. this statute represents a serious loss for the trade union movement in saskatchewan at a time when unionization could benefit so many low-waged workers. in finding that the tuaa did not breach s. 2(d) the trial judge acknowledged that the changes to the certification process had the effect of reducing the success rate of union applications for certification yet he argued that s. 2(d) does not require legislation that “ensures unions succeed easily in their efforts to be certified”, but it “precludes the enactment of legislation that interferes with the freely expressed wishes of employees in the exercise of their s. 2(d) rights” (para 22 – emphasis added). tuaa was clearly designed to make it more difficult to organize unions and introduced more “restrictive requirements” for certification. first it requires the “written support”, (signed union cards), increase from 25% to 45% before a certification vote can take place; it reduces the time for union organizers to collect cards from six months to three; and eliminates the automatic certification that used to be available when over 50% of employees signed union cards indeed a feature that has always had a positive impact on the certification process for unions wherever it has been part of the industrial relations regime. in addition, the discretion that the labour board had to decide whether a representation vote was needed, was also eliminated (para 14) and a vote is now mandatory. the act also decreased the level of “advanced written support” required for decertification from 50% plus one, to 45% and the period within which the written support for decertification has to be submitted is reduced from six to three months – amendments that make decertification faster and easier. the most significant amendment, and certainly a serious barrier for those interested in promoting unionization, is the employers’ new right to communicate “facts and its opinions to its employees” during an organizing drive. this practice will no longer be considered an unfair introduction: raising wages | 227 labour practice and will only be reviewable by the labour board if the communication is done in a manner that “does not infringe on the ability of the employees to engage their collective bargaining rights in accordance with their freely expressed wishes” (para 101). this qualification presents a new terrain for union organizers and labour lawyers to sort out, without reference to a comprehensive jurisprudence from the labour board, when this activity can be considered an unfair labour practice (para 22). the saskatchewan court of appeal unanimously found that the tuaa did not violate s.2(d) of the charter, and the scc’s majority also agreed that the act “does not substantially interfere with the freedom to freely create or join associations” (para 100). abella points out the trial judge’s conclusion was partly based on a review of comparable labour relations schemes and found that the right to organize was not substantially interfered with when the tuaa is compared to other labour legislation in canada (para 100). legislation, it has to be noted, that has been seriously undermined for at least three decades by neoliberal governments whose goal has been decreasing the rate of unionization. the majority in sfl also agreed with the trial judge that permitting an employer to communicate “facts and opinions” to its employees is constitutional. it is important to point out that the trial judge’s reasoning around this issue was that such a finding “is consistent with the employers’ freedom of expression under s. 2 (b) of the charter” (para 21). balancing an employer’s freedom of expression against the freedom of association of hundreds of workers in a potential bargaining unit is for many an extremely unfortunate feature of charter litigation. seeing the “corporation as person” with essentially an individual’s rights, has long been critiqued by social justice advocates as one of the fundamental flaws with our common law system as a whole (bakan, 2000). the result of this amendment will undoubtedly see employers bombarding workers with their “opinions” about how they will go bankrupt and everyone will lose their jobs if a union is certified. the outcome of this all too typical behaviour on the part of employers will be more lengthy and costly litigation and as the certification process drags on, enthusiasm for the new union will tend to wane. sid ryan, president of the ontario federation of labour and presenter at ontario’s 2015 review of both the employment standards act (esa) and the ontario labour relations act (olra) commented that the shift from a regime of card based organizing drives and automatic certification to one that mandates a vote gives employers “more opportunity to target organizers.” he also cited a survey of managers in canadian workplaces where union drives have occurred that found: “94 228 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages per cent had used anti-union tactics and 12 per cent admitted to using what they believed to be illegal practices to stop the union.” (toronto star, june 15, 2015). the six changes in saskatchewan’s tuaa will make it considerably more difficult to organize vulnerable workers and could likely, as mentioned earlier, set a new low standard for labour codes across the country. as neoliberal governments slowly but surely chip away at the ability to organize, the industrial relations landscape will have an ever more restrictive framework within which to meet the challenge of organizing the unorganized. when does making the certification process so difficult that it “substantially interferes” with organizing unions? what threshold must be crossed before the court recognizes that restrictions placed on unions are seriously hindering organizing drives to the extent that people are being effectively denied their right to be represented by a bargaining agent and thus unable to exercise all the rights now confirmed by s.2(d)? the protected right to strike, after all, comes with being in a union in the first place, and government assistance with certification was part of the wagner model compromise. if unionization is made more difficult it could mean many will not be able to access the “self-fulfillment and the collective realization of human goals, consistent with democratic values” now assumedly even more clearly promised by s.2(d) (para 30). in the review of ontario’s esa and olra noted above, the hearings have revealed a serious and growing lack of compliance on the part of employers with regard to even the most minimum employment standards the esa offers. this is partly due to the rapid growth of low-waged, parttime work in the past decade that makes monitoring workplaces an overwhelming task, particularly with cut-backs that have reduced the number of compliance officers. one clear solution for vulnerable workers would be to increase the rate of unionization among this group and rely on unions to ensure at least minimum standards are met. as sheila block, a senior economist at the canadian centre for policy alternatives comments from her study done for the centre that the share of ontario workers who make minimum wage is now five times higher than in 1997. she suggests that the ontario government “has to look at how (to) increase access to union membership for low-wage precarious workers” and notes that “having a trade union right in your workplace is really a very effective way to ensure that your rights are enforced” (toronto star, 2015). as noted, the adoption of the wagner act model of industrial relations from the us in 1935 has been recognized as a ‘compromise’ since the limitation on the right to strike during the life of an agreement is tempered with the right to enforce the terms of the agreement through introduction: raising wages | 229 grievance arbitration (para 44). the wagner model is also seen to have solved the need for recognition strikes by implementing a government run union certification process, along with enforcing ‘closed shop’ and automatic dues check-off provisions. see fudge and tucker for a comprehensive discussion of the history of the right to strike in canada in which we are reminded that “when legislatures restricted the freedom to strike they also gave the workers something in exchange.” yet, as pointed out, in the past three decades since the expansion of collective bargaining under the charter one or more of the freedoms to form and join unions, collectively bargain, and strike “have increasingly been suspended or limited, without giving them any compensating rights” as in sfl (2009/10, 352-53; see also panitch and swartz, 2003). it can be argued that the certification process, since it is part of the compromise regime under the wagner model, should be protected and encouraged and indeed labour boards should function to facilitate organizing. in fact they should ‘make it easy’ in the words of the trial judge, for unions to promote access to such important fundamental charter rights. what lies ahead? what lies ahead is surely litigation, litigation and more litigation. we have briefly touched on only four areas in which sfl will have a major impact on the law. what about injunctions against striking? or limitations placed on the scope of remedies an arbitrator can consider – such as no monetary items? how about restrictions on picketing and the right of unions to their s.2(b) right to ‘express’ their demands to the public in the hopes of gaining support for their cause? does sfl modify the law on secondary picketing (adell, 2003)? must an appeal process be included in ‘binding arbitration’ since it is replacing a constitutional right? and on and on. unfortunately there is little hope of avoiding extensive litigation now that the array of charter rights for unions under 2(d) seem almost fully in place. the hope is likely that after a certain point the need for turning to the courts will diminish, however, this is likely wishful thinking. in commenting on the court’s description of the strike as an “affirmation of the dignity and autonomy of employees in their working lives” (para 54) charles smith, who has written extensively on unions and the charter has noted: “to my knowledge, never before in its history has the scc shown such sympathy for the collective actions of workers to further workplace democracy” (2015, 5). perhaps this is also a victory in sfl – the clear, definitive and quite inspirational words throughout the decision about correcting power imbalances and supporting the right of 230 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages people to come together to pursue their workplace rights. such words, coming from the highest court in the land, would likely be impressive and persuasive in organizing drives for nervous and reticent potential members who are worried about their employers’ reactions if they sign on with the union. references adell, b. grant, m. and a. ponak. (2001). strikes in essential services. kingston: irc press. adell, b. (2003). secondary picketing after ‘pepsi-cola’: what’s clear and what isn’t. c.l.e. l.j., 10,135-159. adell, b. (2013). regulating strikes in essential (and other) services after the “new trilogy”. c.l.e. l.j., 17, 413-447. bakan, j. (2003). corporation: the pathological pursuit of profit and power. toronto: penguin. bartkiw, t. j. (2010). proceed with caution, or stop wherever possible? ongoing paradoxes, in legalized labour politics, c.l.e.l.j., 15 (1), 77-100. bartkiw, t.j. (2008). manufacturing dissent? labour law and union organizing in the province of ontario. canadian public policy, 34(1), 111-131. cameron, j. (2009-10). the labour trilogy’s last rites: ‘b.c. health’ and a constitutional right to strike. c.l.e.l.j., 15(1), 297-313. canada. (2013). bill c-4, economic action plan 2013 act. in “frequently asked questions.” http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/p-33.3/ cavalluzzo, p. (2015, april 24). the impact of saskatchewan federation of labour on future constitutional challenges, queen’s university’s law in the contemporary workplace symposium on saskatchewan federation of labour case. introduction: raising wages | 231 ewing, k.d. (2015).“the lady doth protest too much, me thinks:” the right to strike, international standards and the supreme court of canada. c.l.e.l.j., 18, 517-534. ewing, k.d. (2013). myth and reality of the right to strike as a ‘fundamental labour right’. international journal of comparative labour and industrial relations, 29(2), 145-166. faraday, f and e. tucker. (2014). “who owns charter values? a mobilizing strategy for the labour movement.” in matthew behrens ed., union matters: advancing democracy, economic equality, and social justice (pp.125-138). toronto, between the lines press. faraday, f. j. fudge and e. tucker, eds. (2012). constitutional labour rights in canada: farm workers and the fraser case. toronto: irwin law. fine, s. (2015). court protects public sector workers’ right to strike. globe & mail, january 31, a14. fudge, j. and e. tucker. (2010). the freedom to strike, in canada: a brief legal history. c.l.e.l.j., 15(1), 333-53. hepple, b. (2009/10). the right to strike in an international context. c.l.e.l.j., 15, 133-146. langille, b. (2010). what is a strike? c.l.e.l.j., 15(1), 355-374 langille, b. (2009-10). why are canadian judges drafting labour codes – and constitutionalizing the wager act model? c.l.e.l.j.,15(1), 101-129. panitch, l. and d. swartz. (2003). from consent to coercion, 3rd edition. toronto: garamond press. servais, j.m. (2009/10). ilo law and the right to strike. c.l.e.l.j., 15(1), 147-168 sharpe, r.j. and k. roach. (2013). the charter of rights and freedoms, 5th edition. toronto: irwin law. 232 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages smith, c. (2011). “the ‘new normal’ in saskatchewan: neoliberalism and the challenge to workers’ rights.” in david mcgrane, ed., new directions in saskatchewan public policy (pp.121-152): regina, saskatchewan. regina university press. smith, c. (2012). “labour, courts and the erosion of workers’ rights in canada.” in s. ross and l. savage, eds., rethinking the politics of labour in canada (184-197). halifax, fernwood publishing. smith, c. (2015). the politics of the right to strike. http://rankandfile.ca/2015/02/03/the-politics-of-the-constitutionalright-to-strike/ toronto star. (2015, june 15). eye-popping’ shift to low wages demands change, report says. a1 & 9. toronto star. (2015, june 17). lessons on precarious work from across the city. section gt, 2. cases cited dunmore v. ontario (attorney general), 2001 scc 94, [2001] 3 s.c.r. 1016. health services and support – facilities subsector bargaining assn. v. british columbia, 2007, scc 27, [2007] 2 s.c.r. 391. meredith, 2015, scc. mounted police association of ontario v. canada (attorney general), 2015 scc 1. ontario, (attorney general) v. fraser, 2011 scc 20, [2011] 2 s.c.r. 3. psac v. canada, [1987] 1 s.c.r. 424. re service employees’ international union, local 204 and broadway manor nursing home (1983), 4 d.l.r. (4th) 231. r v. oakes, [1986] 1 scr 103. introduction: raising wages | 233 reference re public service employees relations act (alberta), [1987] 1 s.c.r 313 [alberta reference]. rwdsu v. saskatchewan, [1987] 1 s.c.r. 460 [dairy workers]. saskatchewan federation of labour v. saskatchewan, 2015 scc 4. 234 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages interventions living wage campaigns and building communities | 235 living wage campaigns and building communities don wells1 the occupy movement’s ‘we-are-the-99%’ protests that erupted in some thousand cities around the world in 2011 have morphed into a growing anti-austerity politics. from athens to seattle, montreal to madrid, london to lagos, protesters in their thousands have been marching in the streets against increasing polarization of wealth, income and power. a principal focus of this anti-austerity politics is the need to end poverty wages. in los angeles, new york and over 200 other us cities, fast food workers and other low-wage workers have been demonstrating in front of macdonald’s restaurants and other low wage firms. together with home care workers, retail employees and other low paid workers in the “fight for $15” movement, they are demanding a minimum of $15 an hour as a “living wage.” recently the university of california agreed to a $15 an hour wage floor. new york state announced a $15 minimum wage for some 200,000 fast food workers and all state workers. seattle, san francisco and los angeles have also adopted a $15 minimum wage and chicago and kansas city have adopted a $13 wage (greenhouse, 2015, 2). similar policies are being debated in other cities, expanding a movement in which over 150 us cities and counties have adopted living wage policies over the past twenty years. in britain almost 1600 organizations have been officially recognized as living wage employers (cooper, 2015), and in 2012 the london olympics became the first living wage olympics. supported by advocacy, educational, research and anti-poverty organizations, such as vibrant communities canada, acorn (association of community organizations for reform now) canada, and the canadian centre for policy alternatives, living wage coalitions are also spreading across canada2. in many ways, british columbia is leading the way. vancity credit union became the largest employer in canada to 1 don wells teaches at the school of labour studies and department of political science, mcmaster university. thanks to tom cooper, carlo fanelli, peter foulds, trish hennessy and anthony marco for helpful comments and information. 2 in ontario alone there are living wage initiatives in at least 24 communities, including hamilton, waterloo, peel, toronto, chatham-kent, london, st. thomas, perth huron, thunder bay, sudbury, ottawa, renfrew county, simcoe county, oxford county, peterborough, kingston, brantford, guelph, windsor, grey bruce, haldimand-norfolk, halton, niagara and gravenhurst. 236 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages adopt a living wage, new westminster, b.c. became the first canadian city to adopt a living wage for its municipal employees, and vancouver city council recently voted unanimously for a living wage for city employees. so what is a living wage? and what is the difference between a minimum wage and living wage? a few minimum wages are living wages, but usually they are a lot less. minimum wages are whatever governments say the legal wage floor is in particular places for various kinds of work. by contrast, living wages are based on two normative premises. one is a moral premise that workers should be paid enough to raise themselves and their families out of poverty and maintain their dignity in society. the other premise is that everyone should have the means and leisure time to participate meaningfully in the civic life of their community. that means that living wages are almost always higher than the minimum wages that governments legislate. in canada there has been a sharp increase in the proportion of workers who work for low wages. wages in the high paying sectors are growing twice as fast as wages in low-paying sectors (tal, 2015, 3), especially in rapidly expanding service sectors. in ontario alone, 700,000 work for a minimum wage. add another million who earn between $11$15 and hour, and we have three out of every ten ontarians working for low wages – almost doubling the proportion of low wage workers in less than fifteen years. this doesn`t include the 11% of workers in ontario who are not covered by the minimum wage (vosko et al., 2014). particularly for those working for minimum wages, the proportions of low wage workers are even higher – often much higher – among women, first nations, youth, racialized workers and recent immigrants (block, 2015, 89; government of ontario 2012; lewchuk et al., 2014; block and galabuzi, 2011). these low wage workers are the ‘working poor.’ they are found across growing expanses of canadian labour markets, including retail, cleaning, hospitality, security, care work, and other sectors. in canada, 1.8 million work for less than they need to pull themselves and their families of out poverty (cooper, 2015). in 2008, two of every three families living in poverty in canada had one or more family members in the paid workforce (canada, 2012, 28). to lift them out of poverty, they need a living wage that allows them to make enough to meet their families’ basic needs – food, clothing, rent, transportation, child care and other essentials – and have a bit left over for things like their children’s soccer team so they and their families can participate more in community life. based on actual costs of meeting these needs, living wage rates vary from community to living wage campaigns and building communities | 237 community. for example, the living wage in vancouver is $20.68 an hour; in toronto it is $18.52 an hour; in hamilton – whose living wage campaign is the main focus here – it is $14.95 an hour. the best place to raise a child in hamilton, an ontario city of half a million, living wage coalitions have been making significant gains. they have also been facing formidable challenges. this mix of success and adversity provides insights into the special importance of community identity to the success of living wage campaigns. the overarching goal of the city council of hamilton and hamilton’s roundtable for poverty reduction, a local coalition of community, faith, policy, municipal groups, charities and private firms, is to make hamilton “the best place to raise a child” by reducing poverty. although the rate of child poverty in canada has been declining in recent years, it is still among the worst among rich countries, ranking 20th out of 30 industrialized nations (raphael, 2009). some parts of the city suffer poverty levels that are among the worst in canada. one of every five hamilton children lives in poverty, and in some neighbourhoods this runs as high as two or three children in five. every month the equivalent of over 270 classrooms of children use foodbanks. a big part of children’s poverty is due to their parents’ low wages. over 30,000 hamiltonians go to work for pay – and yet they and their families still live in poverty. a living wage is a top priority at hamilton’s public school board. teachers and school trustees know personally many of the children who are growing up in poverty while their parents are working for poverty wages. they see the impacts every day in their schools: physical and cognitive developmental delays, poor health, depression and anxiety, aggressive behaviour, kids who are too hungry to learn, and parents who are too stressed out to help them. at a recent recognition ceremony, about twenty hamilton organizations received official public recognition for adopting a living wage policy. this includes the public school board, the first public institution – and the first publicly elected body – in ontario to adopt a living wage. as school trustee who sponsored the board’s adoption of the living wage argued: “the best way to fight child poverty is to pay parents a living wage.” among the employers recognized was the co-chair of hamilton’s living wage coalition, the ceo of a local manufacturing firm. the head of the hamilton chamber of commerce, who adopted a living wage for employees at the chamber, spoke about how his support of the living wage arose in important part because he was raised by a working single mother. 238 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages a living wage policy is also a growing priority at hamilton’s mcmaster university. for several years the mcmaster community poverty initiative (mcpi), a coalition of faculty, staff, students, and unions, in partnership with anti-poverty groups in hamilton, has been promoting a living wage policy. support has been growing across campus, including among some senior administrators, as part of a new priority of “community engagement” inside and outside the university. the university appointed the co-chair of the mcpi to head up the university’s new office of community engagement. it was in this context that cleaners at the university, and their union, the building union of canada, made a major gain. before their most recent contract, many mcmaster cleaners were paid only $13.51 an hour. since many are single parents, what they earn is what their children live on. now, thanks to the university administration’s agreement to a living wage in their contract, they’re making a minimum of $15 an hour. the way the cleaners won the living wage points to the importance of community building. as has been the case for many years in regard not only to the cleaners but also to other low wage, predominantly female, often immigrant workers, including cafeteria workers represented by the service employees international union, university negotiators were very aggressive in contract negotiations. the cleaners were told they were expendable and that the university could get cleaners for even lower than the poverty wages many were making. the university threatened to outsource the cleaners unless they accepted the administration’s `final’ contract offer that would keep many well below the living wage. this threat came in the middle of summer when most students and faculty were not on campus. however, word got out and in a couple of days over 150 faculty, staff and students signed an online petition to the university president expressing their “strong disagreement with the ultimatum” the university had made to the cleaners. they called on the administration to “commit to paying all of its fulltime workers a living wage immediately.” as a “community dedicated to the fulfillment of human potential, mcmaster university should be leading the way on this issue.” after admonishing the administration for its “final best offer” which “perpetuates gender inequality” by keeping workers in the mainly female part of the bargaining unit (but not the mainly male higher skilled part) below a living wage, the petitioners said they wanted to “work in a community that values all its members.” in closing, they noted that many had been inspired by the university president’s public position that the university must “uphold above all else the obligations of the university to serve the living wage campaigns and building communities | 239 greater good, beginning with our immediate community”. with public support for a living wage for the cleaners growing among the public outside the university as well, the hamilton spectator newspaper soon picked up the issue. with the administration’s hard bargaining under pressure from many in the university community and in hamilton, mcmaster’s president, often a progressive voice, announced that the administration would offer a living wage in the new contract. challenges living wage campaigns in hamilton also illustrate formidable challenges. one is that such campaigns can lead to the redistribution of wages among workers: a transfer from higher paid workers to lower paid workers without helping to raise wages for all workers and without changing the overall distribution between the top salaries and bottom wages in the organization. at mcmaster, the lowest paid cleaners got a living wage but the wages of the higher paid cleaners and skilled trades in the bargaining unit were essentially frozen. and there was no redistribution of income from senior administration and other highly paid employees at the university, some of whom make annual salaries upwards of $300,000, $400,000 and more, on top of generous pensions and other benefits. a second major challenge is that the living wage is calculated on the basis of a fulltime job. this assumption does not reflect today’s increasing numbers of part-time and contract jobs. these and other ‘non-standard’ jobs are growing faster than full-time jobs (tiessen, 2014, 20; workers’ action centre, 2015). only about half of the workers in toronto and hamilton have standard employment (lewchuk et al., 2014). about half of ontario’s workers work less than 40 hours a week (block, 2015, 5). so in order for them to get out of poverty, they need either full time work or they need a living wage that is higher for part time work. a third challenge is that because the living wage focuses on raising the “working poor” out of poverty, it does not address the poverty of the unemployed. there is a danger that the unemployed poor, who are already pervasively stigmatized as ‘non-deserving poor,’ may be further excluded. in response to these challenges, the living wage needs to be part of a broader set of policies to reduce poverty. among them are policies to create more and better jobs, and better protection for those who lose their jobs. whereas in 1990 seventy five percent of canada’s unemployed received unemployment insurance benefits, today only thirty nine percent do. and canada’s employment insurance benefits are low compared to those in other rich industrialized countries. 240 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages more affordable housing is also crucial. at least 200,000 canadians use homeless shelters or sleep outside each year. untold numbers more ‘couch surf.’ in the 1990s government support for affordable and social housing was cut, and in 1993 the federal government got out of social housing altogether. about 95% of housing in canada today is built by private, for-profit developers (silver, 2014, 84). there is little profit to be made from building housing for very low income people. often wages and social assistance rates are so low that many people can’t afford to pay their rents. already one in five hamilton renters pay over half their incomes on rent (freeman, 2015). gentrification in hamilton encourages landlords to raise their rents higher, forcing many of the poor out of their apartments. a guaranteed minimum income could be a powerful companion to the living wage. as an experiment in the 1970s, the manitoba and federal governments implemented a policy in the town of dauphin, manitoba in which each family received a minimum income. those who were working had their income from the policy reduced by 50 cents for every dollar they earned in employment. while the minimum income’s impacts on hours of work were minimal, gains to the community were considerable. children and adults attained higher education levels. there were fewer hospital visits, work-related injuries, and car accidents. there was less domestic abuse and lower levels of reported mental illness (forget, 2011; goar, 2011). hours of paid employment went down but this was almost exclusively due to mothers of young children delaying their return to paid work so they could spend more time with their children, and to youth who continued in school instead of leaving to work for wages before graduation. building community politics much of the strategy of living wage campaigns in canada, the us, britain and elsewhere centres on a `business case’ and on local economic development. at the level of individual workplaces and organizations, there is growing empirical evidence associating the adoption of living wages with ‘efficiency benefits’ to employers, including higher employee productivity, lower employee turnover, lower training costs, better corporate reputation and other advantages (brenner and luce, 2008; fairris and reich, 2005; reich, hall and jacobs, 2005). a prominent example is costco, the ‘anti-wal-mart,’ where the yearly turnover is 20 percent in contrast to 50 percent at wal-mart, and where the savings in training and recruitment costs contribute to wages and benefits that average $20,000 more for each fulltime worker than at wal-mart (greenhouse, 2009, 162-4). furthermore, there is evidence that, as a living wage campaigns and building communities | 241 result of living wage contributions to increased consumer demand and `multiplier effects` that flow from that initial increased demand, local net employment is often modestly higher as well (card and krueger, 1994; dube et al., 2010). such benefits to employers and local economic development are important living wage contributions. there is another benefit of living wage campaigns: their contributions to citizen participation and community civic culture. living wage campaigns, and the values of social solidarity and community cohesion they embody, can be strengthened by being linked explicitly to community identity and to `grass roots’ participation. unlike minimum wage legislation and minimum income legislation, the living wage is not something citizens have to wait for politicians and public officials in legislatures to decide. it is a community option. on the one hand, this local character of living wages is a source of major weakness. whereas minimum wages apply to all workers specified in the provincial or federal jurisdiction, the scope of living wages is usually considerably less, so the benefits are fewer. in addition, living wage policies are largely urban-centred and leave out most rural areas. and often they are an option that is not exercised by many employers, especially those with small businesses in predominantly lowerskilled, labourintensive sectors such as retail, fast food, security, cleaning, hotels, etc. since living wages are a voluntary option for individual employers, another weakness is a built-in ‘free rider’ incentive problem. local employers who do not pay a living wage can benefit from or `free ride’ on the increases in local purchasing by the employees of businesses that do pay a living wage. by contrast, government minimum wage laws are mandatory, enforced (to varying degrees) by the state, and typically cover most smaller businesses. consequently they can provide benefits to larger numbers of working poor. on the other hand, the community focus of the living wage can also be a source of strength, but for different reasons. partly this is by default: while most provincial minimum wages have risen in recent years, and alberta’s new government has committed to increase the province’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, as yet no provincial government has provided minimum wage increases that meet a living wage across the province.3 and unlike minimum wage legislation which is largely based on a calculation of political benefits, living wages are, as the name suggests, based on local costs of living. 3 however, in some smaller communities and rural areas, where housing, food and other costs are lower, provincial minimumwages may approximate living wages. 242 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages living wage campaigns operate at multiple levels. they focus on persuading individual employers to pay their employees a living wage, on getting city councils to adopt living wage policies for municipal employees, on mobilizing neighborhood business associations to adopt living wages, and on negotiating living wages as part of local employment provisions in “community benefit agreements” with developers and officials building public infrastructure projects in the community (galley, 2015). this varied nature can make living wage values and arguments part of a multilayered political conversation in which community members, not just a few government officials and politicians, talk about the living wage in the street, at work and at school, at community and faith events, and across the kitchen table. these civic conversations can contribute to increased public awareness of social and economic inequality and exclusion and, at the same time, to a stronger sense of community belonging and commitment. by expanding the meaning and spaces of politics to include people who are left out, such conversations can contribute to popular participation in public policymaking. in addition to the goal of providing a better material basis for workers and their loved ones to participate in community life, by operating outside conventional electoral representation processes, living wage campaigns can strengthen political citizenship. to the extent living wage campaigns are embedded in community consciousness and identity, public moral and political pressure can come not only from those workers who are directly affected by living wage as a `labour issue’ but also from the community itself as a focus of civic identity and community development. in hamilton there is broad support across all party lines in city council for a living wage policy. “anchor institutions,” such as large public and non-profit employers (dragicevic, 2015), with strong identification with hamilton, such as the university, community college, hospitals, the catholic school board, and others are also likely candidates for living wage policies. large private sector employers, including the main newspaper and other media firms, credit unions and other financial institutions, the airport, and hamilton’s iconic steel and other manufacturing companies whose history is deeply intertwined with the city and its sense of itself, are also strategic to linking the living wage as part of hamilton’s community identity. faith organizations, the city’s beloved hamilton tiger-cats cfl team, and prominent community service organizations such as the ymca and ywca, are also strategic candidates for early living wage adoption. to the extent the living wage campaign and its values become integral to how people in hamilton see their city, a new community conversation with living wage campaigns and building communities | 243 employers who have yet to adopt living wage policies can begin, along the lines of “this is hamilton. hamilton is a living wage community. you’re part of hamilton, so why aren’t you paying a living wage?” the hamilton and district labour council is also making a living wage a top priority, vigorously promoting an online petition calling on the city council to adopt a living wage for municipal employees (hamilton and district labour council, 2015). at a time in ontario when union density has fallen to 14% in the private sector, even further to 11.3% for part-time workers in the private sector, and to 6.7% among the rapidly increasing numbers of small workplaces in the private sector (block, 2015, 6, 10-11), living wage campaigns are a way to help build community unionism. living wage campaigns can promote community issues linked to unionized workplaces, and build solidarity among union and non-union workers to help create a kind of informal community collective bargaining around a living wage floor. especially where, as is almost universally the case today, unionized workers are being pressured to make contract concessions, a living wage floor can help to limit employers’ ability to coerce already low paid workers to make more wage concessions or lose their jobs (as we saw for example in the case of the mcmaster cleaners). living wage campaigns are also about building intergenerational solidarity. a disproportionate and growing number of young workers are working for poverty wages. although the canadian charter of rights and freedoms prohibits discrimination on the basis of age, ontario allows employers to pay workers under 18 years of age, who work 28 hours a week or less, a lower minimum wage of $10.30 an hour. wage reductions for young males have been particularly dramatic: between 1981 and 2011, real wages for men 17-24 years old fell more than 14 percent (morissette et al., 2012). in 2014 some 400,000 workers, male and female, in ontario aged 15-24 were paid $11 or less an hour, and another 305,000 made $1115 an hour. together they comprise four of every five low paid ontario workers (block, 2015, 10-11). the impacts of low wage work also extend to parents and other family members, and this opens up new bases of community support for living wage policies. parents, including many who may have higher, more secure incomes, increasingly experience the impacts of the low wage economy through their children who can’t find decent, stable jobs, live with their parents because they can’t afford rent, can’t afford escalating costs of postsecondary education, can’t afford to start their own families and can’t participate in their communities in ways their parents do. growing numbers of low-paid, precarious jobs are transforming the living 244 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages wage into a broader community issue linking generations, as well as income and employment groups. finally, starting at community levels, living wage campaigns can be part of building a more `bottom up’ politics that contributes to more horizontal inter-community, province-wide and nation-wide politics which can foster more genuinely democratic popular participation and social solidarity. references online petition to patrick deane, president, mcmaster university. 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(2014, may 29). who’s covered by ontario’s employment standards act? assessing the relationships between workers’ characteristics and levels of protection. paper presented at the canadian association for work and labour studies, www.zotero.org/groups/crimt_conference_2014/items/itemkey/n8s6 ctfg rethinking precarity and capitalism | 247 rethinking precarity and capitalism: an interview with charlie post jordy cummings1 (jc): the theme of this year’s alternate routes is the “paradox of low­wage, no-wage work”, and there is a great deal of analysis of an allegedly new historical subject, “the precariat”. what do you make of this “paradox”? is capitalism really that different in 2015 than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago? charlie post2 (cp): capitalism is certainly different today than it was during the so-called “golden age” of 1945-1975. during those years, “full-employment” – unemployment below the “frictional” rate of 3-4 percent, the dominance of full-time work with unemployment insurance, health care, pensions and the like (provided by the state, private employers, or some combination) – was the norm. this “full-employment” model also included some measure of job security – either legal or contractual protections from arbitrary dismissal, etc. the “golden age” was, in my opinion, exceptional in the history of capitalism. it was the product of a combination of a long period of rising profitability (1933-1966) and a militant labor movement across the industrialized world. workers had threatened the foundations of capitalist rule (france and spain in the mid-1930s, france and italy immediately after world war ii, france in 1968, portugal 1974-1975) or severely disrupted capitalist accumulation in mass strike waves in the mid-1930s, immediate post-war years and again between 1965-1975. capital was forced to make major concessions to labor. the “full-employment” model and the expansive welfare state were the most important gains, giving workers unprecedented security of employment. however, the “golden age” was not typical of the history of capitalism. piketty, in his greatly overrated capital in the 21st century, has demonstrated that the very slight decline in income and wealth inequality in this period was a short-interruption of capitalism’s historic tendency to increase inequality. not only was the period exceptional for small decreases in inequality, but in the “full-employment” regime. the period since the mid-1970s – with the growth of part-time (but still mostly 1 jordy cummings is a phd candidate in political science at york university. he has published in redwedge, socialist studies and socialism&democracy. 2 charlie post is professor of sociology at the borough of manhattan community college-city university of new york. he is author of the american road to capitalism: studies in class-structure, economic development and political conflict, 1620-1877. 248 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages long-term) jobs, less job security and greater consequences of unemployment because of the dismantling of social welfare – is actually a return to the capitalist norm. if you look at the advanced capitalist societies before 1945, they all experienced lots of part-time work and lots of insecure employment – and guaranteed health care, pensions and the like were enjoyed by a distinct minority of the working class. even the most “privileged” workers – the skilled ‘labor aristocrats’ of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – experienced prolonged bouts of unemployment. jc: in a june essay for viewpoint magazine, aaron benanav3 wrote that in response to the rise of this theorization, some, you in particular are “seeking to defend a more or less classical orientation, [and] have sought to deny that any such radical recomposition of the working class has taken place.” he seems to, by implication, be suggesting a sort of nonworkplace oriented model of organizing, not dissimilar, some might argue, to how some labour leaders want to appear to be helping precariously employed service and other unskilled workers without actually organizing them. do you have anything you’d like to say about the benanav piece? cp: i will reserve my empirical criticisms of benanav’s use of data for my reply in viewpoint. to me it is unclear what benanav is advocating for strategically. he caricatures my strategic position. i do not advocate a return to the sorts of working class political parties (mass socialdemocratic/popular frontist-reformist, “communist”) and trade unions (dominated by the officialdom and committed to capitalist state regulated union recognition mechanisms, routine collective bargaining, reliance on the grievance procedure ) that characterized the “golden age.” benanav uses the term “fordism,” which is either associated with the problematic “regulationist school” or is, as simon clarke has argued, without analytic value. however, i do argue that strong workplace organization, based in key manufacturing and logistics/transport industries, is absolutely necessary if we want to rebuild working class power. so will some sort of political organization that gives expression to a new workers’ movement (recognizing, in the light of the experience of the italian prc and syriza, the problems such parties will inevitably face if electorally successful). however, i think that workplace organization, in particular, will only be rebuilt through a rejection of the current norms of “trade union legality.” the industrial unions were organized in the 1930s through direct action 3 benanav, a. (2015, june 15). precarity rising. viewpoint magazine, https://viewpointmag.com/2015/06/15/precarity-rising rethinking precarity and capitalism | 249 (strikes, sit­downs, etc.), rather than state sponsored ‘recognition’ elections. union power rested on strong organizations of shop stewards who lead brief short strikes and slow-downs over workplace grievances. this is the only road to the revival of workers powers today. the strategy of non-workplace organizing – at best workers’ centers of low-wage workers based in their neighborhoods; at worst, the seiu’s new attempts to convince employers that concessionary contracts with unions will help be more profitable than non-union firms – is a dead end. neither an emphasis on low-wage workers alone – especially those with the least social power – nor offers of “labor peace” will rebuild the labor movement. only a strategy based on identifying which groups of workers actually have the ability to disrupt accumulation – and on the exercise of that social power will lead to a new workers’ movement. i believe this strategy is applicable to the so-called “service sector” – in particular organizing the giant transnationals like wal-mart or mcdonalds. organizing store-by-store, relying on ‘moral power’ and symbolic disruptions will not organize this sector. only by organizing “up the supply chain” – among better-paid, more stably employed warehouse and logistic workers – will unions be able to wield sufficient social power to organize the industry as a whole. jc: you have long been critical of the so-called “labour aristocracy” thesis, that, to put it simply, workers in ‘advanced capitalist countries’ are not prone to militancy due to their being beneficiaries of ‘superexploitation’. do you see a relationship between the “precariat” line and the “labour aristocracy” line? cp: absolutely! both disparage the strategic importance of fullemployed, relatively well-paid workers in industry and transport-logistics. both fetishize low-wage workers with little social power. both appeal to elitist tendencies on the left and in the labor movement – either labor bureaucrats or leftists influenced by stalinism and/or social-democracy who believe that workers need to follow their ‘enlightened’ leadership. these sorts of folks are worried that better paid, more socially powerful workers will actually want to run their own organizations. workers with little social power tend to be much more reliant on their ‘leaders’ and their attempts to leverage influence with politicians and employers through symbolic actions. jc: among others, you have argued that there is growing potential working class power within the logistics sector. can you expand upon this? cp: the centrality of the logistics center is rooted in the spread of what kim moody and others call “lean production.” lean production was a very successful drive to raise the rate of surplus-value through a hyper250 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages taylorist division and simplification of tasks, massive speed-up, use of non-union workers (“out-sourcing”) and more contingent workers. along with these measures to increase the rate of exploitation, “just-in-time” inventory systems reduced the costs of capital and raised profitability. by eliminating large inventories of spare parts in manufacturing – or inventories of merchandise in retail – firms saved on building warehouse space and on the interest they paid while parts or merchandise remained unused or unsold. “just-in-time” inventory is actually a return to the norms in many industries before the organization of industrial unions in the 1930s and 1940s. what the auto industry used to call “hand-to-mouth” inventory systems proved to be highly vulnerable to disruption by small groups of workers, especially those who would stay at their work-stations and stop working (“sit-downs”). “hand-to-mouth” was abandoned because workers were willing to take advantage of their potential social power. with the smashing of the conventional union movement over the past forty years, capital has felt confident about returning to this system. however, it recreates potential bottlenecks and points of pressure for workers. when strategically placed workers act on their renewed power the results are quite amazing. in 1995, workers at a gm plant in flint, michigan that produced all the brake-assemblies for gm cars and light trucks in north america struck against forced overtime. within a week, they had shut down approximately 24 or 26 gm factories in the us, canada and mexico. gm gave in and suspended forced overtime in flint. more recently, port truck drivers (“truckeros”) on the west coast docks – mostly latinos classified as ‘independent contractors’ – struck, shutting down some of the largest ports on the continent (long beach, ca) and winning recognition as employees with the right to collective bargaining. the spread of just-in-time inventory systems to retail and fast food in north america also gives workers tremendous potential power. unfortunately, few unions involved in the attempts to organize workers in these industries (seiu, ufcw) have focussed on warehouse and logistic workers. instead, they engage in flashy acts of “symbolic” disruption – one-day strikes by minorities of workers at a single store – that are incapable of changing the relationship of forces and compelling capital to grant union recognition. only the small united electrical workers (ue) has chosen to focus on logistical and warehouse workers. jc: as well, you have been skeptical of claims regarding the centrality of the service sector. can you say a bit more about this? cp: i come from a political and intellectual tradition that has long been suspicious about claims that the industrial working class – workers rethinking precarity and capitalism | 251 in manufacturing, transport-logistics, telecommunications, etc. – no longer matters to the revival of socialist politics. all of the data indicates that industrial output, adjusted for inflation, has risen as both an absolute magnitude and a percentage of gross national product since the early 1980s – surpassing levels at the end of the last long boom. clearly, the percentage of industrial workers has fallen – as it has since the 1890s as a result of mechanization and a rising rate of surplus-value. put simply, the potential social power of industrial workers has probably increased in the neoliberal era. the notion of ‘immaterial labor’ is a hot mess. it confuses highly material labor – work in the telecommunications industry creating and maintaining the infrastructure for computerization – with forms of mental labor – designing machinery and work-systems. while the former is central, the latter workers are unlikely to be in the lead of a new workers’ movement. jc: like many of us, you are active in your union, as an academic worker. i would say that probably the majority of socialists in academia are precariously employed – at least by my own observation. my point in raising this is my contention that the reason that “precariousness” is such a ‘hot topic’ is that it has been theorized by often precariously employed academics. do you have any thoughts on this? what is the role of the academic labour movement and how can more solidarity develop between the tenured and untenured? cp: the growing experience of real precarity is quite marked among academics, and may help partially explain the popularity of the notion of the “precariat” among graduate students and young professors. however, we should not lose track of how labor bureaucrats and their intellectual supporters promote the notion. blaming “precarity,” “deindustrializationglobalization” and other “sociological” factors for the decline of the labor movement does two things for the labor officialdom. first, it lets them off the hook – their dead-end strategies are no longer responsible for the decline of organized labor. second, low-paid and precarious workers appear as “low hanging fruit” – workers who can easily be recruited into powerless unions, but who can pay dues. in terms of academic labor’s strategic place – i am skeptical. while i have been very active in my faculty union for over twenty years, i do not think that academic labor will be an important element in transforming the labor movement. i reject the essentially elitist notion (that leaders of my union are very fond of) that “academic labor” brings “big ideas” to the labor movement. actually, the greatest source of radical ideas in the labor movement has been skilled industrial workers – few of whom were college educated, no less college professors. i do, however, think is it crucial for 252 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages radicals in the academy to be engaged in workplace organizing. whatever social power academics have will only be realized through collective action at the workplace. i think the key to developing solidarity between different segments of the academic workforce is convincing the more ‘privileged’ faculty that their conditions of work are directly tied to those of less secure faculty. put simply, the more part-time and untenured faculty universities and colleges can hire, the greater the ability of managers to lower the salaries, increase the workloads, etc. of full-time faculty. if we can convince full-time and tenured faculty of this, solidarity may well increase. jc: you have called yourself a “capital-centric” marxist, in the tradition of robert brenner and ellen meiksins wood. does this account of the historical development of capitalist social property relations have any influence on your analysis of the prospects for the working class movement in 2015? cp: yes, in two ways. first, brenner and wood have been among the most important left intellectuals defending the centrality of workers and workplace organization to the survival (or revival) of the socialist project. brenner’s work on social-democracy/reformism is especially valuable in understanding the strategic and tactical limits of the labor officialdom. second, i have used “capital-centric” marxist, rather than “political marxist” (at least most of the time), to broaden the tradition. brenner and wood have demonstrated that only with the emergence of social property relations where exploiters and exploited must reproduce themselves through market competition do we see the dynamic of productive specialization, technical innovation and accumulation – the operation of the law of value. others, in particular anwar shaikh and his students, have done the heavy lifting in analyzing the dynamics of established capitalism – accumulation, competition, and crisis. the work of one of shaikh’s students, howard botwinick, on capitalist competition, capital mobility and differentiation within the working class is central to my analysis of the roots of the crisis of organized labor. the reissuing of his book, persistent inequalities as part of the historical materialism book series in 2016 – and its appearance as an affordable paperback in 2017 – is extremely important in disseminating these ideas to a broader intellectual and activist milieu. recomposing the casual class in precarious times | 253 recomposing the casual class in precarious times brett caraway1 the new york times magazine recently featured an article provocatively titled “the creative apocalypse that wasn’t” (johnson, 2015) in which the author surveyed statistical data from the u.s. labor department and the u.s. economic census to arrive at a somewhat upbeat assessment of the economic well-being of the creative economy. the article suggests that the recording industry’s recent shortfalls in album sales is negated in part by new revenue streams from live performance; hollywood’s abandonment of mid-budget films in favor of formulaic blockbusters and endless parades of sequels is made more palatable by the release of more eclectic films by independent production companies; the emergence of blockbuster economics in e-book publishing is made more palatable by niche markets supported by indie bookstores. in other words, our collective anxieties about the economic impact of recent technological developments in the creative economy are unwarranted because “…there are now more ways to buy creative work, thanks to the proliferation of content-delivery platforms” (para. 28). likewise, “...just as there are more avenues for consumers to pay for creative work, there are more ways to be compensated for making that work” (para. 29). the author concludes that the recent restructuring of production, distribution, and consumption has not significantly impacted the prospects of earning a livelihood within the creative industries. simply put, consumers can now choose from a larger selection of creative works than ever before and that means more people are getting paid to do what they love. in general terms the creative industry is analogous to the sector known as the information and cultural industries as defined by the north american industry classification system (naics). developed by the u.s. office of management and budget (omb), naics is a hierarchical classification system of industry sectors, subsectors, and groups. naics is also the departmental standard for statistics canada and industry canada. according to industry canada (n.d.), the 1 brett caraway is an assistant professor at the university of toronto in the institute of communication, culture, information, and technology at utm and in the faculty of information at st. george. his research focuses on the intersections between law, economics, and technological development. 254 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages information and cultural industries (naics 51): “…comprises establishments primarily engaged in producing and distributing…information and cultural products. establishments providing the means to transmit or distribute theses products or providing access to equipment and expertise for processing data are also included. the unique characteristics of information and cultural products, and of the processes involved in their production and distribution, distinguish this sector from the goods-producing and services-producing sectors. the value of these products lies in their information, educational, cultural or entertainment content, not in the format in which they are distributed (para. 1).” the emphasis on the immateriality of cultural and informational artifacts in this definition minimalizes the materiality of a number of the subsectors that comprise this sector. subsectors in the naics 51 category include the publishing industry, the motion picture and sound recording industry, broadcasting, telecommunications, data processing and hosting, and other information services (telephony, cable and satellite television, internet service providers, telecommunications reselling). the information and cultural industries may themselves be considered as a subset of the information and communications technologies (ict) sector. in addition to information and cultural industries (naics 51), industry canada also includes portions of manufacturing (naics 31-33), wholesale trade (naics 41), professional, scientific and technical services (naics 54), and other services excluding public administration (naics 81) in its definition of the ict sector. according to industry canada (2014), revenues in the canadian ict sector grew from $133.4 billion in 2007 to $159.9 billion in 2013, an increase of 19.8%. the ict sector accounted for 4.4% of canadian gdp in 2013, or $69.5 billion. canadian ict workers are also highly educated –47.2% have a university degree as compared with the national average of 27.4%. employment in the ict sector increased by 0.9% in 2013, amounting to 3% of national employment. the average income of ict workers in 2013 was $69,876 – 48% higher than the national average. even the lowest paid workers in the ict sector – workers in the electronics components industry – had annual incomes 9.8% higher than the national average. the assessments offered by industry canada seem to align well with the sentiments expressed in the afore-mentioned nyt magazine article. however, numbers like these can be misleading. unless incomes are recomposing the casual class in precarious times | 255 symmetrically distributed among ict workers, the mean values used by industry canada may not be representative of the true center. that is to say the average value may be significantly influenced by outlying values. similarly, yearly industry revenues and contributions to gdp tell us very little about the financial status of ict workers. highly educated workers may be shouldered with high levels of debt that adversely affect discretionary income. and gdp as a measure of economic activity is not a true measure of living standards. income distribution, product quality, composition of economic output, environmental degradation, and leisure time are all criteria for assessing standards of living that fall outside of ict contributions to gdp. the nyt magazine’s analysis of the economic well-being of workers in the creative industries was subjected to a biting critique by the future of music coalition (2015), a u.s. based nonprofit organization working to ensure that artists are fairly compensated for their work. the article was faulted for not recognizing the limitations of the data used in the analysis. in response to the claim that there was a 15% rise between 1999 and 2014 in the number of people with music as their primary occupation (music directors and composers), the future of music coalition (2015) noted that the u.s. department of labor reclassified a significant number of primary and secondary music teachers into this category. when this reclassification is controlled for, there appears to be a drop of 11% in the number of people identifying music as their primary occupation. the nyt magazine article also claimed that there was a 60% increase in the average income of music directors and composers, but the future of music coalition (2015) again noted that 55% of the individuals in this category are elementary and secondary school music teachers. the rebuttal goes on to critique the nyt magazine for relying on gross revenue numbers in a manner similar to industry canada’s summary of the ict sector. ultimately, neither the article nor industry canada’s assessment speak to the economic well-being of workers in the ict sector. precarious labor for some time now there has been a global concern with the rise of so-called non-standard work. during the latter half of the 20th century, many workers in the industrialized west labored under a set of conditions known as the standard employment relationship. this designated fulltime work, regularized work hours, employment at the employer’s facilities, lifelong employment with a single firm, standards for workplace safety, and benefits like pensions and unemployment insurance (fudge & owens, 2006). in recent years there has been a rise in casual employment 256 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages in which employees have no reasonable expectation of steady employment. today, full time public sector workers are the most likely to enjoy standard employment status. the general security of public sector employment stems from the fact that these jobs are typically found in larger institutions with greater transparency and standardization in employment practices. they also benefit from higher levels of unionization and the higher wages, pensions, and benefits that accrue to unionized workers – though public sector jobs are increasingly under attack. conversely, a substantial number of contemporary private sector jobs offer less security, irregular scheduling, fewer benefits, less on-the-job safety, and less pay. workers in these jobs often include those with high school educations, women, and migrant workers. some of the industries with the highest levels of insecurity include food services, agriculture, building support services, and retail sales. in the early 2000s activist groups in italy began mobilizing against deregulated labor flexibility under the mantra of precarious labor (mattoni, 2008). these mobilizations sought to push back against the capitalist rhetoric of flexible work by drawing attention to the damaging effects of precarious employment. in 2011 economist guy standing published his book the precariat: the new dangerous class in which he argues that globalization has caused employers to replace permanent jobs with contract and temp work. hence, increasing numbers of workers find themselves employed in jobs with higher rates of turnover, short contracts, and lower rates of unionization. standing (2011) asserts that these workers, many of whom are educated young people and immigrants, constitute an emerging social class distinct from the working class. closer to home the united way and mcmaster university have partnered to study precarious labor in the area stretching from hamilton to toronto. the research partnership has produced two studies to date on the greater toronto-hamilton area (gtha). according to a toronto star article (mojtehedzadeh, 2015), the project “…expand[s] on statistics canada data, which only measures temporary employment and selfemployment rather than other measures of precarious work such as uncertain work schedules and irregular earnings” (para. 27). the research defines precarious employment to “…[include] people in temp and contract work, along with those with uncertain work schedules, irregular earnings, inconsistent hours of work or jobs without benefits. it counts some self-employed people as precarious, only if they have irregular, unpredictable work” (grant, 2015). the researchers (lewchuk, et al., 2015) found that about 44% of workers aged 25 to 65 are working in jobs characterized by some degree of precarity. furthermore, the researchers recomposing the casual class in precarious times | 257 determined that workers in the most precarious forms of work (temporary and contract work, and own-account self-employment) account for about 20% of the workforce – an increase of nearly 60% since 1989. authors like standing (2011) and hardt & negri (2009) offer descriptions of trends in precarious employment that are premised in part on the belief that recent technological developments in the field of communications constitute a moment of discontinuity in the history of capitalist accumulation. this assumption has been challenged by doogan (2009, 6) who argues that the emphasis on international trade and investment, and recent technological developments: “…privileges discontinuity and it ‘over determines’ the role of technological change. in stressing the significance of global flows of finance, and the integration of capital beyond the national economy, it greatly exaggerates the mobility propensity of non-finance capital and neglects the continuing significance of the role of the state in the workings of the market economy.” in fact, doogan (2009, 4) utilizes worker survey data from north america and europe to argue, “…that job stability has not declined and that long-term employment has increased in many sectors of the advanced economies.” he continues (206): “a left wing mindset that sees only temporariness and contingency in new employment patterns is blind to the basic proposition that capital needs labour. despite all the rhetoric of foreign competition and threats to relocate and outsource, employers generally prioritize the recruitment and retention of labour. otherwise it would be difficult to explain the international evidence of job stability and rising long-term employment.” doogan’s work has been faulted for not providing a deeper analysis of some areas where there exists genuinely high levels of non-permanent contract employment (kimber, 2009). nevertheless, this debate begs the question: how widespread is precarious employment in the ict sector? recall that industry canada (2014) asserts that ict workers enjoy an average income 48% higher than the average canadian worker. and unlike workers in food services, agriculture, and retail sales, 47.2% of workers in canada’s ict sector have university degrees—27.4% higher than the national average (industry canada, 2014). yet a growing body of literature seems to indicate that ict workers are not immune to the spread of precarious employment. huws (2003) coined the term cybertariat over a decade ago in her seminal analysis of how icts were transforming the labor process. huws demonstrated how icts were implicated in deepening the social divisions of labor along race and gender lines while considering what this meant for those individuals and collectivities working to resist such transformations. in effect, huws’s 258 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages (1999) work rejects the utopian rhetoric surrounding icts “…to try to make visible the material components of this virtual world…” (127). in a similar vein, brophy and de peuter (2014) take a materialist approach to the analysis of the global supply chain of mobile communication technologies. the authors describe a circuit of exploitation in the production, distribution, and consumption of mobile technologies consisting of six analytically discrete moments: 1) the extraction of raw materials; 2) the manufacture of mobile devices; 3) the design of mobile apps; 4) the use of mobile technologies for work; 5) call center and support services; and 6) disassembly in the disposal of throwaway mobile technologies. at each moment in the circuit of exploitation, whether by the barrel of a gun, irregular hours, or unsafe working conditions, the authors find that conditions of precarity prevail. in a like manner, dyer-witheford (2015) provides a far-reaching analysis of the complex circuits of labor in the global supply chain of icts and the role that precarity plays within the circuits. dyer-witheford argues that the decomposition of the global working class has produced a stark division between upwardly mobile professionals on the one hand and precarious workers on the other. moreover, the intensification in the division of labor facilitated by the widespread adoption of information technologies has resulted in substantial challenges for cooperation among the various sections of the cybertariat. cultural workers organize (culturalworkersorganize.org) is a research project that explores precarious employment among contract workers, interns, the selfemployed, free-lancers, and part-time workers in the information and cultural industries. the project subjects the utopian rhetoric of the creative economy to critical analysis while contributing to the efforts of flexworkers to organize and adapt to the increasing prevalence of precarious employment. one of the projects researchers, greig de peuter (2011), acknowledges the linguistic and political functions of terms like cybertariat and precarity in stating, “troubling the fantasy that the merger of free trade and icts is equalizing the planetary economic playing field, the cybertariat confronts icts as levers of precarization within a familiar but mutating global division of labor whose wage logic is racing downward” (420). as with doogan’s (2009) criticisms, there is a sense here that there is nothing new under the sun. it is with this sentiment in mind that i consider how precarious employment fits within the historical trajectory of capitalist accumulation and where we might go from here. recomposing the casual class in precarious times | 259 circuits of struggle activists and scholars have gone to great pains to draw our attention to the emergence of precarious employment over the last several decades. the lack of security among precarious workers has contributed to rising income inequality and social unrest in many oecd countries (law commission of ontario, 2012). the intensified effects of global competition in the networked information economy have led many firms to increasingly rely on flexible and on-demand workers. apologists assert that many workers value this flexibility because it offers them greater personal autonomy. yet the discursive space opened up by precarity has to a large degree displaced flexible employment in the popular lexicon. accordingly, there has been a growing awareness of the plight of workers unwillingly forced into conditions of precarity. i would like to move the discourse one step further by suggesting that precarious employment itself persists in a state of instability owing to its inability to resolve the class antagonisms whence it came. a useful lens for understanding the rise of precarious employment is marx’s (1992) metaphor of circuits to describe the contingent reproduction of capitalist social relations on an expanded scale. marx’s (1904) basic premise was that these social relations were only possible through a unity of production and consumption, each occurring as a separate analytical moment in the circuit of capital. or as marx states “…every single sale or purchase stands as an independent isolated act, whose supplemental act may be separated from it in time and place” (117). thus marx (1978) explains that the reproduction of capitalist social relations is subject to repeated disturbances and interruptions. marx (1992) represented this contingent process of accumulation in his circuit of capital: lp / m—c.…p….c’—m’ \ mp in the above diagram, m is the money that capitalists spend to buy the commodities of labor power lp (ability and willingness to work) and means of production mp (tools and raw materials). these commodities are purchased from other capitalists before being combined in the process of production p to produce new commodities c’ whose value and price are greater than the initial investment. if the circuit is completed successfully, the capitalist will sell the new commodities for m’, at which point the 260 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages circuit begins again on an expanded scale. therefore the object is not the simple realization of profit through the sale of commodities, but the expanded reproduction of the class relation. as marx (1990) argued, capitalism did not invent surplus labor. rather it invented the limitless imposition of work – so long as the circuit continues uninterrupted. as we can see from the circuit above, waged workers sell their capacity and consent to work (lp) which capital then uses in the production (p) of commodities (c’). however, if workers are successful in their attempts to drive up wages, the amount of unwaged work in production decreases. thus the dueling dynamics of market competition and working class struggle have produced a long history of class decomposition and recomposition as capital explores new ways of increasing unpaid work. as harvey (2005, 168) comments: “employers have historically used differentiations within the labour pool to divide and rule. segmented labour markets then arise and distinctions of race, ethnicity, gender, and religion are frequently used…in ways that redound to the employers’ advantage. conversely, workers may use the social networks in which they are embedded to gain privileged access to certain lines of employment. they typically seek to monopolize skills and, through collective action and the creation of appropriate institutions, seek to regulate the labour market to protect their interests.” in the wake of the great depression, keynesian economic policy emerged to facilitate greater levels of employment, investment, and economic output in the hopes of allaying the most contentious sections of the working class. according to cleaver (2005), keynesian monetary policy was directed at “…the financing of accumulation through low interest rates, the achievement of full employment and the management of the price level” while keynesian fiscal policy was meant to “…encourage accumulation through the expansion of federal government expenditures, the limitation of taxation and deficit financing when necessary” (6). these policies sought to bind the success of working class struggle for higher wages to higher rates of productivity. as cleaver (2005) notes, “at the margin, monetary and fiscal policy in the aggregate could increase the flow of money to generate a little inflation to keep real wages in line with productivity growth, or reduce the flow to raise unemployment and slow the growth of nominal wages to the same purpose” (7). the subsequent collapse of the keynesian program stemmed in part from working class recomposition and wage push inflation. in the latter half of the 20th recomposing the casual class in precarious times | 261 century both waged and unwaged workers leveraged the welfare state’s social safety net to subvert the wage hierarchy by softening the impact of exclusion from the standard employment relationship. workers secured higher wages and greater access to consumer credit. these developments, when coupled with declining rates of productivity, sent inflation through the roof as the keynesian project could no longer control prices or effectively command labor via orderly accumulation. thus the capitalist response to the crisis of the keynesian state was to undermine real wages by removing income subsidies, lowering nominal wage growth, and raising unemployment and underemployment. the dual edged sword of economic liberalization cleaved government spending and tax revenues while anointing deregulation, privatization and global trade to the highest rungs of the capitalist pantheon of ideas. it is in this context that precarious employment emerged as one of austerity’s most useful accomplices. nonetheless, another potential crisis looms as firms thus far have failed to redirect adequate investment back into sectors capable of generating the sustained and stable rates of accumulation seen during the keynesian period. in effect, investment has followed the path of least resistance away from sites of working class struggle and toward speculative investments made possible by recent financial deregulation. cleaver (2005) confirms the potential for crisis, “this re-emergence in the late 20th century of the very fetishistic pursuit of money to the neglect of the management of class relations has undoubtedly hindered the resolution of the crisis of those relations which capital has sought for the last twenty years” (16). consequently we may understand precarious employment not only as the most recent moment in a long history of class struggle, but also as an obstacle or interruption in the capitalist quest for a stable program of accumulation. alternatives it has long been argued that working class struggle does not inevitably lead to revolution or even revolutionary consciousness. moreover, there is a sense that workers in the global ict supply chain are simultaneously interdependent and isolated. traditional labor organizations have largely failed to mitigate the spread precarious employment in any number of industries, including the ict sector. it would appear that new forms of organization are required. as ness argues (2014, 1): “existing labor unions have proved incapable of mobilizing rankand-file militancy to resist the ongoing deterioration in workplace 262 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages conditions and the systematic erosion of workers’ power. as capitalism pushes ever harder to reverse the labor gains established in the early to mid-twentieth century, workers are developing new forms of antibureaucratic and anticapitalist forms of syndicalist, council communist, and autonomist worker representation, rooted in the self-activity and democratic impulses of members and committed to developing egalitarian organizations in place of traditional union bureaucracies. in turn, these new forms of representation, which are gaining currency throughout the world, are expanding the democratic capacity of workers to advance their own economic, political, and social interests without external intermediaries.” in cities across north america workers in precarious employment have come together to form workers’ centers to improve working conditions and forge alliances with social justice organizations. for example, in toronto the workers’ action centre functions as both an advocacy and support group and as a resource center for precarious workers (watson, 2014). additionally, cohen and de peuter (2015, 305) from the aforementioned cultural workers organize project, have researched workers’ centers within the information and cultural industries: “across europe and north america, cultural workers are responding to similarly strained conditions by experimenting with organizational forms and collective activities.” the authors go on to propose three conceptual lenses for further research on worker resistance in cultural labor. first, they point to the practice of mutual aid, or providing support and infrastructure to independent work. while acknowledging that it is structurally challenging to organize creative workers, the authors point to a number of organizations that have provided health benefits and insurance to creative workers outside of the standard employment relationship. second, the authors assert that workers’ centers have produced quality policy proposals aimed at mitigating the worst aspects of precarious employment. again, they point to a number of workers’ organizations that have circulated a variety of policy proposals including basic guaranteed minimum incomes for creative workers and legal recourse to collect unpaid wages. and third, the authors advise counter-interpellation as a means of “…building alternate vocabularies to define cultural labour that resist dominant ideological codes attached to visions of, for example, ‘creatives’ and ‘free agents’” (306). cohen and de peuter state, “if interpellation designates the process through which ideology hails recomposing the casual class in precarious times | 263 individuals to inhabit a subject-position simpatico with the priorities of the dominant order, counter-interpellation encompasses practices through which workers and their associations challenge prevailing interpellative devices and adopt alternate identifications” (312). it is this last analytical lens that i find the most intriguing. as mentioned previously, the notion of precarity was introduced as a challenge to the capitalist rhetoric of flexible work by transforming shared grievances into a resource for raising awareness and mobilizing around the realities of precarious employment. tokumitsu’s (2014) incisive critique of the do what you love, love what you do mantra is an example of an effective counter-interpellation of precarity. when viewed through the lens of precarious employment, it becomes clear how business interests use the seemingly innocuous refrain to leverage creative workers’ passions against their own self-interest. in my own work (caraway, 2015) on networked social movements, i have documented how members of workers’ associations use social media platforms to share their personal experiences, creating a sense of group identity and collective understanding of shared social injustices. as bennett and segerberg (2012, 742) argue, these personalized action frames can serve as the basis for mobilization: “in this network mode, political demands and grievances are often shared in very personalized accounts that travel over social networking platforms, email lists, and online coordinating platforms. for example, the easily personalized action frame ‘we are the 99 per cent’ that emerged from the us occupy protests in 2011 quickly traveled the world via personal stories and images shared on social networks such as tumblr, twitter, and facebook.” of course some have been dismissive of the relative significance of online social practices in class struggle and social movements. there is a genuine feeling that these practices are no substitute for the tried and true approach of boots on the ground. indeed, many scholars doing research at the intersection of communication technology and social movements assess the significance of icts based solely on the movement’s success in realizing particular goals. however, if we consider the use of icts for purposes of counter-interpellation, recruitment, and mobilization, might there be something significant going on? after all, how does one measure the shifting landscape of institutional discourse and social interaction? would we not do well to remember marx and engels’s (1976) exhortation, “now and then the workers are victorious, but 264 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages only for a time. the real fruit of their battle lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers” (493). inasmuch as icts are implicated in their own circuits of exploitation – like some high tech ouroboros – they are also part and parcel of the efforts to resist exploitation and precarity. references bennett, w. l., & segerberg, a. (2012). the logic of connective action: digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. information, communication & society, 15(5), 739-768. brophy, e. & de peuter, g. (2014). labours of mobility: communicative capitalism and the smartphone cybertariat. in theories of the mobile internet: materialities and imaginaries, eds. herman, a., hadlaw, j. and swiss, t, (pp.60-84). new york: routledge. caraway, b. (2015). our walmart: a case study of connective action. information, communication & society. doi: 10.1080/1369118x.2015.1064464 cleaver, h. (2005). the subversion of money-as-command in the current crisis. https://libcom.org/library/subversion-money-as-commandcurrent-crisis-cleaver de peuter, g. (2011). creative economy and labor precarity: a contested convergence. journal of communication inquiry, 35(4), 417-425. de peuter, g. and cohen, n. s. (2015). emerging labour politics in creative industries. in routledge companion to the cultural industries, eds. oakley, k. and o’connor, j. (pp. 305-318). new york, routledge. doogan, j. (2009). new capitalism?: the transformation of work. cambridge: polity. dyer-witheford, n. (2015). cyber-proletariat: global labour in the digital vortex. london: pluto press. fudge, j. & owens, r. (2006). precarious work, women, and the new economy. oxford: hart publishing ltd. recomposing the casual class in precarious times | 265 future of music coalition. (2015). the data journalism that wasn’t. https://futureofmusic.org/blog/2015/08/21/data-journalism-wasnt grant, t. (2015). ‘precarious employment’ still rising in toronto, hamilton. the globe and mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/reporton-business/economy/jobs/article24531959.ece hardt, m. & negri, a. (2009). commonwealth. cambridge: belknap press. harvey, d. (2005). a brief history of neoliberalism. oxford: oxford university press. huws, u. (1999). material world: the myth of the weightless economy. socialist register, 35, 29-55. industry canada (n.d.) canadian industry statistics: information and cultural industries (naics 51). https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/scr/sbms/sbb/cis/definition.html?code=51 industry canada. (2014). information and communication technologies (ict): canadian ict sector profile. https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/icttic.nsf/eng/h_it07229.html johnson, s. (2015, august 19). the creative apocalypse that wasn’t. new york times magazine, retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/magazine/the-creativeapocalypse-that-wasnt.html kimber, c. (2009). precarious reflections. international socialism, 123. http://isj.org.uk/precarious-reflections/ law commission of ontario. (2012). vulnerable workers and precarious work. toronto, lco. http://www.lco-cdo.org/vulnerable-workersfinal-report.pdf lewchuk, w., laflèche, m., procyk, s., cook, c., dyson, d., goldbring, l., lior, k., meisner, a., shields, j., tambureno, a., & viducis, p. (2015). the precarity penalty: the impact of employment precarity on individuals, households and communities—and what to do about it. hamilton: united way-mcmaster university. 266 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages marx, k. and engels, f. (1976). manifesto of the communist party. karl marx frederick engels collected works: volume 6. new york: international publishers. marx, k. (1904). a contribution to the critique of political economy. chicago: charles h. kerr & company. marx, k. (1978). crisis theory. in r. c. tucker (ed.), the marx-engels reader (pp. 443–465). new york: w. w. norton & company. marx, k. (1990). capital: a critique of political economy (vol. 1). london: penguin. marx, k. (1992). capital: a critique of political economy (vol. 2). london: penguin. mattoni, a. (2008). icts in national and transnational mobilizations. triplec, 6(2), 105-124. mojtehedzadeh, s. (2015). precarious work is now the new norm, united way report says. the toronto star. http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/05/21/precarious-work-is-nowthe-new-norm-united-way-report-says.html ness, i. (2014). new forms of worker organization: the syndicalist and autonomist restoration of class-struggle unionism. oakland: pm press. standing, g. (2011). the precariat: the new dangerous class. london: bloomsbury. tokumitsu, m. (2014). in the name of love. jacobin magazine. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/in-the-name-of-love watson, h.g. (2014). organizing precarious workers: workers’ centres open their doors. rabble.ca. http://rabble.ca/news/2014/05/organizing-precarious-workersworkers-centres-open-their-doors digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity | 267 digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity: in conversation with christian fuchs matthew flisfeder1 (mf): in the “introduction” to digital labour and karl marx (2014a), you write that with the global crisis of capitalism that began in 2007-2008 we have entered “new marxian times.” what is particularly new here? does the context of the crisis add something new to marxism and marx’s critique of capitalism, or has the crisis brought about a renewal of interest in marx and marxism? christian fuchs2 (cf): since some time in the 1980s, marxist and socialist thought, politics and practice faced a backlash and repression because of the rise of neoliberalism, the colonisation of social democracy by neoliberalism, the rise of culturalism and postmodernism, the structural self-destruction of the soviet union, etc. being a socialist or marxist in politics or academia or everyday life meant that people were frowning on you and that you often had to face outright repression. the new collected interview volume key thinkers in communication scholarship (lent and amazeen, 2015) tells the stories of how marxist communication scholars faced and confronted different forms of antisocialist repression such as physical violence, hiring discrimination, salary discrimination, publication denial, denial of tenure, ideological scapegoating, racism, denial of important institutional positions, isolation, legal silencing by threat of legal proceedings or actual law-suits, or massive amounts of work-time. marxism and socialism were repressed although at the same time capitalist inequality was rising. in scholarship, the economy was often simply ignored and its relevance downplayed. all of this has changed a bit with the new crisis of global capitalism that started in 2008. now there is more interest in marxist theory and socialist politics. just look at the popularity of jeremy corbyn here in the united kingdom. 1 matthew flisfeder is assistant professor in the department of politics and public administration at ryerson university. he is the author of the symbolic, the sublime, and slavoj žižek’s theory of film, and co-editor of žižek and media studies: a reader. his current research focuses on the ideology of social media, and social media and entrepreneurship. 2 christian fuchs is the author of digital labour and karl marx, occupymedia!: the occupy movement and social media in crisis capitalism, culture and economy in the age of social media, and several other books and articles on social media and critical media studies. he is a professor at the university of westminster, where he is director of the communication and media research institute (camri), and editor of the journal triplec: communication, capitalism & critique. 268 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages this shows us that some changes are happening and that the left has new potentials for a renewal. we should think of the old and the new of marxism and socialist politics precisely in marxian-dialectical logical and dialectical-historical terms: capitalism changes dynamically in order to remain the same system of exploitation. marxist theory therefore needs to be based on a dialectic of continuity and change in order to understand the changes capitalist society and communications in it have been undergoing. so society, communications, and theory are neither completely new nor completely unchanged. it is one of the tasks of my own work to show the relevance of such a historical dialectic. mf: in the context of communications and media studies, dallas smythe’s (1977) essay communications: a blindspot of western marxism, and his concept of the “audience commodity,” is often taken up in critical political economic analyses of the media. his work also figures quite prominently in your analysis of social media and social media labour. could you explain the significance of smythe’s concept and how it translates over into the critical analysis of social media labour? cf: i have written in detail on these issues in the books digital labour and karl marx (2014) and culture and economy in the age of social media (2015a), so i would like to refer the reader to these works. i have just completed a companion to marx’s capital volume 1 from a media and communication studies perspective (fuchs, 2016). marx starts this key work with the statement: “the wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities’; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form” (marx, 1990, 125). this means that the critique of political economy always has to start with the questions: what is the commodity form we are confronted with? who produces it? let’s think of advertising-funded media. what is their commodity? the attention produced by audiences. this relates to smythe’s notions of audience labour and the audience commodity. now think of facebook, a targeted-advertising based social media corporation that is besides google the world’s largest advertising agency. what is the commodity form? the personal, social, and meta-data that users’ digital labour creates. so here the notion of the social media data commodity that is produced by users’ digital labour is important. the data commodity shares qualities with the audience commodity, but also has new qualities, such as constant real-time surveillance, the production of not just meaning, but also social use-values, the corporations’ total knowledge of user activities (in the case of the broadcast and newspaper audience commodity, one has in contrast to conduct audience studies in digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity | 269 order to learn about the consumers’ preferences), there is prosumption3 (productive consumption), advertisements can be targeted and personalised, there are algorithmic auctions that set the price of ad space, etc (see fuchs 2015a, chapter 5). this is again an example of the marxian dialectic of continuity and change: there is a continuity of the commodity form and the audience commodity as well as the emergence of new qualities that help to reproduce the commodity form. mf: if communications, then, was a blindspot for western marxism in the late 1970s, when smythe’s article was published, you now say that marxism has in fact become a blindspot for communications, and the whole of the social sciences more generally? why do you think that this is the case? cf: media and communication studies is overall a rather politically conservative field. its mainstream is focused on administrative research. there have been the traditions of critical political economy of the media/communications, critical cultural studies, critical media/communications studies, etc. but they are marginal in comparison to the mainstream. just look at the major journals in our field. the journal of communication has, for example, not published a marxist article in ages. this was a bit different in the 1980s when george gerbner was the editor and critical scholars could get their articles published in this journal. today, such journals that represent the mainstream simply ignore, reject and indirectly repress critical scholarship. at the same time, there is a growing number of critical scholars, especially in the younger generation and among ph.d. students, who also self-organise against the mainstream. we have a profound intellectual struggle between critical and administrative research going on in the field. a journal such as triplec: communication, capitalism & critique (www.triple-c.at) is explicitly a project that wants to be a home for critical communications scholarships that challenges the mainstream. we have to create more institutions and structures that foster critical scholarship. part of the problem is that critical scholars are often isolated in their departments and universities. therefore, it is important that they network with each other and act together. mf: digital labour and karl marx provides a detailed introduction to marx’s critique of political economy, with a particular focus on the exploitation and alienation of labour. early on, you distinguish between 3 the term “prosumption,” first introduced by alvin toffler (1980), refers to the confluence of production and consumption. internet and social media users are often in critical media studies thought of as “prosumers” since they are both producers and consumers of content. 270 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages “labour” and “work.” what is the difference between the two? how does each relate to digital labour (or work)? cf: i do not want to repeat this explanation in detail here because the interested reader can simply look at chapter 2 and especially figure 2.2 in culture and economy in the age of social media (fuchs, 2015a). linguistically, terms such as work (english), werktätigkeit (german), and ouvrer (french), on the one hand, and labour, arbeit, and travailler, on the other hand, have different societal roots. the first group has to do with anthropological features of human beings, the capacity to be creative and the fact that this creativity results in works that satisfy human needs. the second group of linguistic terms has emerged with the rise of class societies and often means things such as slavery, toil, pain, and hardship, etc. mf: i’d like to return to the question of work and labour in a moment, but first let’s talk some more about the role of marxism in communication and cultural studies. the third chapter of your digital labour and karl marx focuses on cultural studies’ “troubled” relationship with marx. how do you respond to the charge made by some prominent cultural studies thinkers in the 1990s that marxism is a form of economic reductionism, which privileges class above other markers of identity, such as gender, race, and sexuality? is a distinction between cultural studies and critical political economy justified, or does the debate obfuscate something central to both? in other words, what do these approaches share in common and how are they useful for studying digital culture? or, more to the point of your book, why might the exploitation of digital labour be a concern for cultural studies? cf: i personally do not care if someone is a political economist and/or a cultural studies scholar as long as she or he is a socialist and is inspired in his or her research by socialist goals. this also means that we have to see that the economic and the non-economic are in capitalism necessarily related to each other, but not reducible to each other. so when we talk about a non-economic topic, we have to talk about class, and when we talk about the economy, we also need to see its connections to racism, patriarchy, etc. there is both celebratory cultural studies as well as nonmarxist political economy of communication. i am critical of both approaches. shortly before stuart hall died, he gave an interview to sut jhally, in which he said that cultural studies should return to its marxist roots. otherwise it would be pointless. i think he made an important point there. if you remember the debate between garnham and grossberg, then the situation was quite polarised (see garnham, 1995a; 1995b; grossberg, 1995). the separation was probably very artificial and overstated. from digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity | 271 today’s perspective, the interesting thing is, however, that garnham, who in this debate took the position of a quite orthodox marxist, today opposes marxist political economy. you can read more about it in a debate between him and me in a forthcoming issue of media, culture & society as well as in a discussion published in triplec (see garnham and fuchs, 2014). personally i think that the gap between cultural studies and political economy can easily be bridged if we analyse how production, circulation, and consumption belong together. that was marx’s point in the introduction to the grundrisse. stuart hall took up the introduction in the centre for contemporary cultural studies’ stencilled occasional papers #1 in 1973. this was marxist cultural studies at its best. we have to again in a different context ask questions about capitalism, the relation of the economic and the non-economic, production/circulation/consumption, the commodity, labour, the relationship of exploitation and domination, class struggles, socialism, alternatives, etc. i also think engaging with raymond williams’ cultural materialism helps us in a lot of respects today. overall, we should overcome defining ourselves as either cultural studies thinkers or political economists. the point is if you are a marxist/socialist cultural studies thinker, a marxist/socialist political economist, a marxist/socialist critical theorist, a marxist/socialist feminist, a marxist/socialist critic of ideology and discourse, etc. the unity in diversity is to think of ourselves as socialist and marxist media and communications scholars and to explore the history of marxist and critical theories in a dialectical manner. mf: going back to questions about labour, there are now many contemporary critical theorists writing about digital media and culture, such as tiziana terranova, and michael hardt and antonio negri, who draw upon the tradition of autonomist marxism, and the concept of “immaterial labour” in particular. do you find anything useful in the notion of “immaterial labour”? how does your own concept of the “internet prosumer commodity” relate to or differ from the concept of “immaterial labour”? cf: i have argued multiple times that the very term “immaterial” is idealist and religious because it philosophically implies that there are two substances: matter and spirit, which contradicts the philosophical law of ground. i have co-authored a book called practical civil virtues in cyberspace: towards the utopian identity of civitas and multitudo (fuchs and zimmermann, 2009) that is a detailed engagement with hardt and negri. although i do not want to use the term “immaterial” and think all communication and all thought is material in a materialist philosophy, ontology, and epistemology, i find the notions of the social factory and the 272 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages social worker helpful because they allow us to overcome orthodox and stalinist versions of the labour theory of value that only see wage-labour as creating surplus-value. also housework, unpaid labour in the free economy, the 30 million slaves in the world, etc. create parts of global capitalism’s surplus-value. in reading marx in the information age: a media and communication studies perspective on capital volume 1 (fuchs, 2016), i repeatedly point out the connection of the notion of the social worker and marx’s concept of the collective worker that he introduces in capital volume 1’s chapter 16. value-production, and therefore class and exploitation are quite complex and global today; they form a differentiated unity in diversity organised as a global division of labour. mf: as with smythe’s argument that audiences work when they are watching tv programs, there are probably many who might disagree with the idea that facebook or twitter users, for example, are in fact exploited labourers. after all, aren’t users receiving a payment in kind from the service provided by the platform itself? isn’t there value in the modalities of connectivity made possible through social media? how do you respond to this argument? how can users’ participation on social media be conceived as a form of exploited labour? cf: i think my recent books give the answers to this question, so there is no point that i repeat the argument here in detail. the wage is the price of labour-power. and price is the monetary expression of a commodity’s labour-power. in capitalism, price is measured in monetary terms. money is a universal commodity, a universal equivalent of exchange. you can buy food by money, but not by facebook access. facebook access is not a universal equivalent of exchange, it is no payment and no wage. most people who argue facebook users are not exploited actually think that everything is alright with facebook and google and nothing needs to be changed. but in fact these are large monopoly-capitalist corporations whose power has negative impacts in many respects. mf: but where does the money come from? since exploited labourers only produce surplus value and not profit itself, which has to be realized in the market through the sale of goods, how in fact is the internet prosumer commodity realized as profit? who is purchasing this commodity? cf: there is a production and a realisation process. the users create the data commodity’s value. the actual realisation and sales process that generates google and facebook’s profits is either a user’s click on an advertisement (pay-per-click) or the presentation of an ad on a profile digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity | 273 (pay­per­view). google and facebook’s advertising clients purchase the data commodity and only pay if a user clicks on an ad or views an ad. of course this advertising economy is connected to the circulation process of other commodities that the advertisers want to sell. there are however a lot of uncertainties about the question of how efficient and effective targeted advertising is, and as a result of these uncertainties the social media economy is also a financialized, crisis-prone bubble economy. mf: could you please elaborate a bit more on the production and realization process. where, in fact, is surplus value produced and how does the users’ labour relate to socially necessary abstract labour time? cf: this question has resulted in a quite substantial debate about what marxian concepts we should use for understanding advertising and digital labour on social media. i can best refer the readers to chapter 5 in culture and economy in the age of social media (fuchs, 2015a) that gives an overview of the state of this debate and to the forthcoming volume reconsidering value and labour in the digital age (fisher and fuchs, 2015) that documents the contributions of a workshop that eran fisher and i organised in 2014 at the open university of israel. the workshop focused on exactly this question. the basic difference is between those that use the concept of rent and those who use the concept of productive labour. i belong to the second group of thinkers. the scholars in the first group argue that advertising in general and targeted advertising on social media in particular is an unproductive attribute of monopoly capital and that the whole advertising sector does not produce, but consume surplus-value created in other industries. it is seen as a “parasitic” sector of the economy, one, in which there is no productive labour, but in which rent is created that comes out of a transfer of the surplus-value exploited in other economic sectors. the second approach argues that there is productive labour and therefore exploitation, wherever labour produces commodities that are sold in order to accumulate capital. advertising is not just part of the sales and production process of other commodities, but is also a capitalist industry in itself that produces a distinct service that is sold as commodity. the fact that we have social media prosumption as form of user-labour that transcends the boundaries between production, circulation, and consumption shows that drawing a division between productive industry and unproductive advertising is monolithic. such an assumption is a form of orthodox marxism that has an old-fashioned understanding of the working class that goes back to the time when advertising and consumer culture did not play an important role in capitalism. 274 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages there is a third approach, namely those autonomist marxists, who speak of the becoming-rent-of-profit. in my view, we do not need the term rent for understanding the political economy of advertising-based social media. but at a level of abstraction, these authors share theoretically and politically more characteristics with the second group than with the first. in the book that eran and i edited, these three positions become quite evident. there is a reason why an apple iphone 6 costs around £450-£550 and an acer liquid jade smartphone only around £100-£200: the iphone is a more well-known brand. you pay more for the brand ideology. but ideologies are not free-floating structures; they need to be produced by someone. the commodity’s ideology that is expressed in advertising is produced by concrete and abstract labour so that additional value, i.e. labour-time, beyond the basic value is objectified in the products that are advertised. apple invests much more into marketing, branding and advertising than acer. and such investments mean actual labour conducted by workers in advertising, marketing and pr departments, and labour conducted by user-workers and consumer-workers. marx thought of transport labour as a special form of labour. if you think of a commodity, then it is not just physically transported from the producer to the consumer or in the case of a digital information commodity not just sent over the internet. there is something more: the commodity ideology expressed in advertisements needs to be produced (by advertisement workers) and transported (i.e. targeted) to consumers and users. the use of targeted advertising-based social media and the consumption of advertisements in general is ideological transport labour, it helps “transporting” the commodity ideologies created by advertising workers to potential consumers. i make this argument in detail in culture and economy in the age of social media (fuchs, 2015a). the point is that there are many forms of labour that do not immediately appear to us as labour because they are unwaged. audience labour and digital labour on social media are just two of them. housework is another one. a specific orthodoxy only considers wage-labour as productive, which downplays the importance of the exploitation of housework and other forms of unpaid labour in capitalism. it is a quite patriarchal argument that fetishizes the wage, a form of wage-labour fetishism. earning a wage is not a necessary criterion for being a productive and therefore exploited worker and thereby part of the working class. advertising as ideological commodity aesthetic has become an integral part of contemporary capitalism. substantial amounts of time are invested into the production and consumption of ads. the labour theory of value is a theory of time in digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity | 275 capitalism (see fuchs, 2015a, chapter 4). advertising as ideology is organized in space and time and needs to be produced and reproduced. the fact that producing and transporting advertisements creates commodity ideologies also points towards the important interconnection of the economy and culture, labour and ideology, in capitalism. we have to stop separating the economy on the one hand and ideology on the other hand (o’brien, 2015). one should in a cultural-materialist manner in the analysis of labour not just analyze the work-process, but also ideology (the ideology of labour, how ideologies are part of management, how they play a role at the everyday workplace, can be challenged by unions and activists, etc.); and we should, when we analyze ideology, not just analyze texts, but also the labour context (the labour that creates and transports ideology). labour and ideology are in a dialectical manner identical and non-identical at the same time. ideologies are created by labour, but also have emergent properties, by which they go beyond the economy and as distorted meanings take effect all over society. mf: speaking of which, i’m quite interested in the way that you deal with the relationship between exploited labour on social media and the problem of ideology. you attend to, in parts of your book, the cultural studies critique of “false consciousness” as a way of explaining the problem of ideology. in dealing with the question of ideology, you note (similarly to others, like jodi dean) that social media and the internet are often championed as platforms for democracy and participatory culture. if users are in fact merely contributing to the mechanisms of their own exploitation as parts of the internet prosumer commodity, are claims about democracy on the internet not simply new forms of “false consciousness”? what about the use of social media for purposes of resistance, such as the so-called “arab spring” movement, occupy wall street, and the “maple spring” and the idle no more movements in canada? cf: i say a lot about this issue in my book occupymedia!: the occupy movement and social media in crisis capitalism (2014b). the problem of social movement media studies is that they tend to neglect political economy. scholars conducting such studies sympathise with the movements they study. this often blinds them from asking critical questions. it does not help social movements if scholars in a technodeterminist manner celebrate them. it is however also wrong to argue that the internet and social media have no influence at all on political change. they are neither unimportant nor determinant, there is a dialectic of online/offline, media/society, face-to-face/mediated communication, etc. there is a lack of political economy and a lack of 276 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages profound empirical studies that address the actual role of social media in protests. for finding out the actual role, theory alone is not enough, we need empirical studies. occupymedia! is a quite unique approach in this respect. i also recommend that people interested in social media politics read todd wolfson’s book digital rebellion: the birth of the cyber left (2014; see also fuchs, 2015c). reading occupymedia! and todd’s book together opens up a dialectical political economy perspective on digital media and social movements. mf: if, then, the internet, digital culture, and social media are mechanism of exploitation, today, how might they figure in an emancipated society? you mentioned, for instance, the unpaid free labour of housework earlier. do campaigns like “wages for facebook” (modeled after the “wages for housework” campaigns of the 1970s) hold any traction? what possibilities are there for the development of a nonexploitative internet? to put it more bluntly: what would the internet look like in a “communist” society? can you propose a way forward towards this possibility? cf: the question is if as the left we should demand “wages for facebook” or public funding for alternative social media and alternative non-commercial non-capitalist media in general. i find the idea of wages for facebook interesting, but i disagree with it. only arguing for wages and higher wages is purely immanent and reformist, it cannot go beyond facebook and capitalism. it makes facebook less exploitative, but does not question exploitation as such. therefore, i think we need to foster initiatives that channel resources towards non-capitalist media projects. one idea for this is taxing advertising and capital in general to a higher degree and using participatory budgeting for channelling such income to non-commercial media. i call this policy perspective the “participatory social media fee” (see fuchs, 2015b). it combines state action and civil society action, the public, and the commons. we need a renewed left, which means in the end a renewed social democracy in the sense that rosa luxemburg understood social democracy, and as part of it we need left-wing media politics. socialism is not an idea of the past, but a democratic idea for the future. references fisher, e. and christian f., eds. (2015). reconsidering value and labour in the digital age. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. digital labour and the internet prosumer commodity | 277 fuchs, c. and r. zimmermann. (2009). practical civil virtues in cyberspace: towards the utopian identity of civitas and multitudo. munich: shaker. fuchs, c. (2014a). digital labour and karl marx. new york: routledge. fuchs, c. (2014b). occupymedia!: the occupy movement and social media in crisis capitalism. winchester, uk: zero books. fuchs, c. (2015a). culture and economy in the age of social media. new york: routledge. fuchs, c. (2015b). left-wing media politics and the advertising tax: reflections on astra taylor’s book ‘the people’s platform: taking back power and culture in the digital age’. triplec: communication, capitalism & critique, 13(1), 1-4. http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/triplec/article/view/661 fuchs, c. (2015c). reflections on todd wolfson’s book digital rebellion: the birth of the cyber left. triplec: communication, capitalism & critique, 13(1), 163-168. http://www.triplec.at/index.php/triplec/article/view/689 fuchs, c. (2016). reading marx in the information age: a media and communication studies perspective on capital, volume 1. new york: routledge. garnham, n. (1995a). political economy and cultural studies: reconciliation or divorce? critical studies in mass communication, 12(1), 62-7. garnham, n. (1995b). reply to grossberg and carey. critical studies in mass communication, 12 (1), 95-100. garnham, n. and c. fuchs. revisiting the political economy of communication. triplec: communication, capitalism & critique, 12(1), 102-141. http://www.triplec.at/index.php/triplec/article/view/553 278 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages grossberg, l. (1995). cultural studies vs. political economy: is anybody else bored with this debate?” critical studies in mass communication, 12(1), 72-81. lent, j. and m. amazeen, eds. (2015). key thinkers in communication scholarship. new york: palgrave macmillan. marx, karl. (1990). capital volume i. ben fowkes, trans. new york: penguin. o’brien, d. (2015, june 28). culture and economy in the age of social media: christian fuchs. http://newbooksincriticaltheory.com/2015/06/28/christian-fuchsculture-and-economy-in-the-age-of-social-media-routledge-2015/ smythe, d. (1977). “communications: a blindspot of western marxism.” canadian journal of political and social theory, 1(3), 1-27. toffler, a. (1980). the third wave. new york: bantam. wolfson, t. (2014). digital rebellion: the birth of the cyber left. chicago: university of illinois press. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 279 art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics rebecca garrett1 and liza kim jackson2 precaria we are aware of recent contributions to an ongoing conversation about the politics of precarity that arise from the intensifying devaluation of the labour of cultural workers: aruna d’souza’s dying of exposure, yasmin nair’s scabs: academics and others who write for free, and barbara ehrenreich’s in america, only the rich can afford to write about poverty. each of these authors comment on the increasing lack of job security and pay for their work as writers, and point out that only people with other income sources can really afford to write for free. a similar situation exists for other cultural workers, including artists such as ourselves. our involvement in this discussion took a turn with an invitation to participate in mayworks3 windsor in 2012, where we presented a performative relational video screening workshop called homunculus: occupy y/our life. we continued the conversation in 2013 with a subsequent work: abundant future: interactive performative art philosophy embodied value debate exchange. both projects ran up against and tangled with labour, value, art, embodiment, academic politics, and our precarity as artists within a neoliberal economy. artists have always lived in the land of precaria. however, in the 1970’s a generation of canadian artists fought for and won respect for artist’s work and recognition for the necessity to remunerate artist’s labour. while this did not impact all of the art world, gains were achieved 1 rebecca garrett is a toronto based artist whose community based video projects and experimental videos and installations have been exhibited and/or screened at numerous venues in canada and abroad. garrett’s use of media is situation specific and she has worked collaboratively and/or collectively with a number of groups and individuals in canada, usa, zimbabwe and kenya. 2 liza kim jackson is a community artist and phd candidate at york university in environmental studies. she researches social praxis art as a method to resist and survive gentrification and broader issues of poverty, homelessness and violence under capitalist colonialism. 3 mayworks festival of working people and the arts is a multi-disciplinary arts festival that celebrates working class culture. “founded in 1986 by the labour arts media committee of the toronto and york region labour council, mayworks is canada’s largest and oldest labour arts festival.” (mayworks, n.d.). 280 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages in key sectors of government and labour.4 canada was the first country to instigate artists’ exhibition fees and to make the fair payment of artists’ labour a funding requirement. has neoliberalism threatened these gains? our experience with mayworks would suggest that it has. mayworks, as a labour arts festival, “was built on the premise that workers and artists share a common struggle for decent wages, healthy working conditions and a living culture... mayworks festival is fully committed to paying artists’ fees.” (mayworks, n.d.). and so we just assumed that we would receive artists’ fees. however, the response to our eleventh hour query regarding payment tells a now familiar story about the erosion of these kinds of gains: “sorry, i meant to discuss this with you but in the excitement it slipped my mind. mayworks here runs strictly on volunteer labour. what little money the committee raises goes to advertising. but i meant to tell you to list your expenses (the car, materials, cake and whatnot) and i’ll reimburse you, and i’ll extract the $ from the committee at a later date. hope that’s ok.”5 these are the strange economics that occur in the context of relations of respect, solidarity, mutual support, and the desire to collaborate and share knowledge between the mayworks representative and us, the artists. suddenly these relations shift into something that at the same time leads us dangerously close to a charitable volunteerism we had not agreed to. this situation brings up a pile of uncomfortable questions that need to remain unasked in order for this cultural economy to sustain itself. art garrett and jackson share settler ancestry, and within a wider social and national context, the advantages and privileges of material accumulation at the expense of the indigenous peoples and their resources locally and globally, and the cultural legacy of the 1950’s postwar economy. we have also shared experiences of precarity/scarcity from an early age. we both received art educations that were structured through european power, and aspects of both of our work have been formed in reaction to that history. working within and outside the art world/institutions/economies, we recognize the importance of a broader creative sociality and output than what is generally termed the contemporary art 4 in 1976, due to canadian artists’ representation/le front des artistes canadiens (carfac) activism, canada became the first country to pay exhibition fees to artists, adopting it as a funding requirement for public galleries by the canada council. in 1988, carfac’s lobbying resulted in the federal copyright act amendment. the act recognized artists as the primary producers of culture, and gives artists legal entitlement to exhibition and other fees (carfac, n.d.). 5 correspondence between jeff noonan and rebecca garrett, 2012. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 281 world and the valorized forms that art takes within the capitalist paradigm. we feel that our position as both privileged and at the same time experiencing class (and other) oppressions complicates our relationship to the question of precarity. art is completely and thoroughly contentious. art is embodied, phenomenological and intersubjective. it registers across the senses and can include the subjective and the particular, the historically specific, in relation to the world. despite the assertion that the meaning of a work of art resides autonomously in the art object, art, like everything else, is always relational in its production, its operations and its value within the world/context in which it is accorded meaning. art is embedded in cultural, class, geographical, material and embodied networks. in the contextual specificities of life, art has the potential to reveal, expose, challenge and engage y represent, and at the same time, can hold contradiction without forcing or demanding a resolution. we are artists and women who perform work. we perform in urban social settings. we perform again in the toronto academic and/or art worlds. we each have our own individual practices as well as our collaborative work together and with other diverse communities. in our practices we generally do not take public space without those with whom we work present. in this text, we are speaking to our experiences as individual artists engaged in a multiplicity of practices on the specific issue of artists and precarious labour. every day we grapple with the problem of how our bodies, labour and creative desires are understood, involved and impacted on living within neoliberal capitalism. our work is about realizing forms of “community”: not utopic community, but necessary community – communities as recognition of interdependent embodiments. these are communities of endurance and resistance to poverty, colonialism, prison, homelessness, gentrification and police violence. like many others in precaria, we inhabit and work between many different worlds, doing what we need to do to get by, following parallel and interweaving paths, patching together sustenance and budgets. we work from locations that are frequently outside dominant economies, institutions and art streams, continually negotiating the terms of engagement, knowledge, and value. in a neoliberal climate of devalorized labour, our labour power and our bodies are taken for granted and exploited, often in gendered ways that we object to. we very often work for free as artists in communities because some things that are necessary for our survival, and that we care about, are not considered value producing within capitalism. 282 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages dark light under austerity, we document increases in police and security guard violence – the policing of property and rhetoric of ‘safety’ in increasingly corporatized and bourgeoisified public spaces experienced by our colleagues on a daily basis. mbembe (2003) articulates necropolitics as a zone of death, or living death, created by economic and political dispossession and social abandonment. necropolitics is defined by mcintyre and nast (2011, 1472) as: “racialized hyper-exploitation determined via a calculus of death.” not all bodies are treated the same. while normative bourgeois bodies (who perform whiteness and extend themselves through space transnationally via gentrification, accumulation by dispossession and war) are supported and their lives extended, poor, marginalized and othered bodies (most often a complex of racialized, gendered, disabled, indigenous, trans, queer) are seen as a threat, as well as resource, to bourgeois cultural, economic and political dominance. in a situation where the social safety net is continually cut back, austerity provides a weapon against the peoples’ communities on the ground. as elizabeth povinelli (2011, 22) says: "new source: dark light video still, 2013. mashed economies and monday art group, featuring hazel bell koski. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 283 semi­public and secret ways of making die have their counterpart in market disciplines. any form of life that is not organized on the basis of market values is characterized as a potential security risk." in the context of economic and state attacks we are forced to rely more and more on each other in order to survive, and so the problem of equitable relations becomes integral to our art making practice. we work with video in urban communities where people are largely excluded from the labour market and where informal economic exchanges and social reproduction comprise much of the labour performed. the emphasis of these projects is on embodied, local and lived experience: knowledge that is produced by and within communities. the conditions of work are the contingent situations of communities trying to enact democratic participation and self-representation with scant resources and while under attack. our practices aim to reflect the knowledge of community members back to the community in a way that produces agency and ownership of the modes of representation. this is especially important in these spaces because marginalized folks are subject to forms of symbolic violence in the way they are represented (or discounted) by media, academics and artists, who either ignore the multiple structural reasons for poverty and oppression or fetishize and romanticize the victim and their circumstances. in either case, a distance from messy engagements is maintained. we do this work politically to cultivate just and equitable exchange relations, a redistributive ethos within fluxing privilege/oppression positionalities, an alternate symbolic economy that extends into highly significant material concerns. veneer “historically the suffering of artists is as interesting as their work. apparently, the public likes its artists to be poor. history bears this out. there is even a thirst for the suffering artist as a kind of product in and of itself. the musical rent springs to mind but there have always been media glamorizations of the artist in the garret. the sufferings of artists whether physical or mental, have always been marketable” (miller, 2006, 125-6). artists are the least paid of the so-called professions and generally live under the poverty line. artists dangle between self-employment, casual contract work, artists’ grants, and the very remote possibility of success on the art market (a star system that promotes exceptionalism). the fact is that artists must work for free in order to pay their dues, never 284 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages knowing if they will ever be able to make a living. this is the norm and what most in the art world believe will produce the most excellence in the field. in this way the art world works in sync with the structures of neoliberal late capitalist power and under a condition of extreme surplus value extraction. artists don’t just exist within neoliberal economics. in the european tradition, a certain mythology of the artist is put to work propping up the iconic bourgeois hero who today morphs into the ideal neoliberal subject: the autonomous individual whose independence, desire for liberty, flexible life of self-expression and consumption, personal success and lack of accountability, cannot be tamed by a trade union. in short, the ultimate self-exploiting individual whose personal fulfillment takes priority over social responsibility. actual living artists are increasingly joined by working people whose labour value has been restructured and devalued by neoliberal economics: sessionals, contract and part time workers in all sectors, as well as fully employed people who are forced to work unpaid overtime. and now everyone is expected to bring their creativity to work for minimum insecure wages. art mirrors, or expresses in a concentrated form, the unfair conditions of capitalism in the neoliberal era. even when artists make it into that elite class of those who do manage to sell their work, problems of market exploitation arise. unlike with the commodity form where labour is consigned to the hidden abode, with art, both the art object and the artist are fetishized on the market. the artist’s brand name continues to add surplus value to the art, while the artist does not receive any percentage of future sales or exhibits of their work. as goldberg (2014, n.p.) notes: “the seemingly unstoppable u.s. [art] market grew at a rate of 10% year-on-year to a total of $21.1 billion in sales. this is mostly thanks to its business-friendly regulatory environment, reasonable tax rates for buyers, tax advantages for sellers, favourable trade regulations, and first-sale doctrine – meaning artists cannot control or profit from subsequent sales.” the mythical persona of the art star and their signature is the integral structuring component of the art economy. we observe the art market operating when well known american artist richard prince recently appropriated another (female) artist’s instagram photos, and created prints which he put his name on and sold for $90,000. instead of suing prince, the artists’ response was to sell her original prints of the same work online for $90 each in order to devalue the status or value of “his” works on the market. art works are bundled into portfolios and traded as futures. as max haiven (2011) notes, fictitious capital has an investment in maintaining art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 285 relations and systems of value and controlling the future in order to protect investments. collectors pay large sums for prince’s work with the expectation that it will increase in value. in order to protect the value of their investment, they must also defend the value system out of which the art object was created, namely, that of the bourgeois male subject who feels entitled to appropriate young women’s cultural production. the use value of the art object, the socially relevant meaning in its form, is a veneer over its fetish form. the art object doubles as an investment receipt, a form of private property purchased by an investor, a bond that is backed by the symbolic and cultural value system of hierarchized capitalist relations. when art enters the marketplace its transformative potential is extinguished. artists are imbricated in other markets too: in the gentrification of neighbourhoods that they are then priced out of to make room for condo lofts for the service workers to the global city elites. globalizing/gentrifying cities such as toronto work with corporations to host spectacularized festivals that take advantage of artists who are desperate for exposure in order to entertain the city’s cosmopolites and boost the city’s symbolic capital as a centre for culture. heather mclean (2010, 7) writes: “before we race out to pound the pavement to save festivals promising ‘world class’ artists, red carpet openings, and overall ‘revitalization’ with culture, we need to stop and think about the causalities of corporate friendly arts policies that are being framed as the ‘progressive’ and only option. the ‘restructured’ ago workers and underfunded grassroots arts spaces are solemn reminders that ‘creative cities’ policies have been a vehicle for accumulation by cultural entrepreneurs and for advertising by major corporations, but no answer for a democratic and inclusive arts policy...they promote neoliberal artistic competition and economic development at the expense of under-funded, often unpaid workers and artists as well as residents displaced by the steady advance of gentrification promoted by the ‘creative cities’ policy agenda.” there’s nothing like “slumming” it with some weekend drunks and starving artists, many from really oppressed communities, to make one feel culturally in touch – or maybe you’re doing research for your next ad campaign. there’s a neoliberal aesthetic of the art spectacle that has big funding, government and corporate, that supports jet setting large-scale art projects that can also be read as both anti-social and un-ecological. in 286 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages practice, these capital motivated cultural tours are often sites of macroviolence performed against individual women's bodies, as is the case in other problematic spaces such as sports, extractive industries and war zones. unless we understand and critique art as imbricated in the totality of cultural/economic relations we cannot understand its potential as a radical form. cages on october 4-5, 2014 a group of people set out to intersect the mass spectacle of nuit blanche in various locations in downtown toronto with a guerrilla mobile projection. test#1:cages was a project by media activists, and individuals who were arrested during the g20 in 2010. test#1:cages linked the policing of the g20 to ongoing everyday violence perpetrated against vulnerable communities by the state security apparatus. footage taken by the police of the inside of the temporary cells or cages was acquired using a two year freedom of information process during the making of the film what world do you live in? which documented the illegal incarceration of gabriel jacobs, one of the many innocent citizens source: test#1: cages: the site of the arrest of gabriel jacobs, the test#collective, october 4, 2014. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 287 arrested. test#1:cages moved across multiple locations where violations occurred, jogging public memory of events that have been erased or forgotten, giving witness to violent police tactics and a concerted effort to violate the civil rights of dissenting citizens. the video projections incorporated images and testimony of the assault, mass arrest and brutal incarceration of citizens during the largest mass arrests in canadian history. labour “we offer an experiment in systems of art-exchange that do not emphasize financial capital, but rather celebrate abundance and connection. we believe that art is not a commodity for speculation but rather a fundamental part of the commons, inherited and shared by all.” (occupy museums, 2012, n.p.) the necessity to sell y/our labour to survive is taken for granted. the violent histories of colonization and the privatization of land that created these conditions are remembered only vaguely. we are given money in exchange for our alienation. and what of money? this form of measurement that abstracts and forces equivalences, values and devalues our exchange relations with increasing arbitrariness. are wages ever an adequate measures of our life energies and labour investments? the bottom line is that being forced to sell ones’ labour to survive, whether it is art labour or flipping burgers, is a violence period. we agree that the concept of labour needs to be extended well beyond the paid employment that someone might offer us (ferguson, 2008; gibson-graham, 2008; kuokkanen, 2011) (which might also be something quite different than what our communities actually need, or what we are inspired to do or contribute), to everything we do in life to sustain communities. a de-alienated labour relates to desire and the things that people have to offer, and what they want to do in the world. as max haiven (2011) points out, culture and economics are both also spheres of imagination, belief, values and ethics. we want to see labour as the essential creative moment: economy as in weaving a social fabric, an interdependent drive to create, share and exist. we can’t live on a reductive view of economics as capitalist exchange, it does not satisfy, it does not feed or give enough. at the edge of capitalism, in its cracks and crevices, at home after work, among friends and community members, unpaid labour is performed. alongside historical forms of gendered social reproduction labour, housework and childrearing, is everything else that we need to live, or the most important things, or the things that actually 288 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages give us pleasure that we love to do. the incredible output of artists fits in with this understanding of social reproduction labour as an unpaid form that both supports capitalism and is a basis for resistance, of imagined new worlds. this is where we are now. not only do we often do this work for free, in many instances we actually pay to do this work. yup, that’s what we said. we redistribute the dollars that come into our possession towards community resistance. in the film beauty and truth, alice walker states: “activism is the rent i pay for living on the planet.” this is a different kind of exchange that’s more important to us than the possibility of our individual monetary advancement into the middle class. escaping into privilege might always be an option for some of us, but it also feels true that the more we participate in community cultural economics of informal exchange the farther we move from this possibility. we conceptualize “just relations” as a critique of systemic privilege within capitalist colonialism. there is no correct position: it’s a practice, a concept, a tradition of engagement; it’s an ethic. just relations are not defined in a normative, legalistic sense: resistance to hierarchization of embodiments takes place both in response to powerful economic and political structures and as they manifest within our struggnles. we place ourselves within a history of liberation thought and practice. our own genealogies include working out of traditions of participatory engaged direct cinema, community arts, and our long time involvement in overlapping liberation movements and decolonizing struggles, including: afrikan decolonizing struggles, palestinian resistance, indigenous rights, prison abolition, punk anarchist feminism, disability activism, liberation theology, anti-imperialist, anti-apartheid, anti-poverty, housing, and squatting movements. as people with working class experience we have occasionally engaged in the union movement; however, we mostly identify and draw from our association with more informal sectors. many of these movements include groups that have been on the forefront of organizing with women, queer, working class, poor and disabled folks within larger community identifications. we primarily draw inspiration from those in low income communities with whom we work. in our experience, there is an ethic and culture of sharing that we step into and take direction from – it’s not a big deal – it’s just getting by. during a community meeting in a social housing complex a neighbour pokes her head in the door to check that everyone has enough to eat since it is a week before cheque day and she is concerned that people don’t have enough money to buy food. this is also a critique that models on a local and interpersonal scale what needs to art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 289 happen on a global economic scale. we regard this redistributive aspect of our work to have political import, as prefigurative of alternative economies. in contrast to the neoliberal belief in the central competitiveness of humans, it is our belief that human society has always been inherently cooperative in order to survive and thrive (alfred, 2005; anzaldúa, 1987; kuokkanen, 2011; la duke, 2005; lappé, 2011; mann, 2005; marx, 1988; mohanty, 2010; roy, 2011; shiva, 1992; simpson, 2004). exchange the performative workshop abundant future (2013) was held at cool hand of a girl in toronto. abundant future was an effort to engage questions and extend a conversation concerning artists’ labour and value that arose at the mayworks windsor 2012 performance, homunculus: occupy y/our body. source: abundant future: interactive performative art philosophy embodied value debate exchange. mashed economies. 290 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages an excerpt from the performance script reads: we have chosen a selection of organs to represent our will or volition or passion or investment of caring deeply. we are trying to understand our embodiment within capitalism and to questions about relations between theory, embodiment and social practice. this is deeply personal and at the same time inherently social. these organs function as symbolic metaphors at the same time as they are filtering out toxins, pumping our blood, letting us breathe. our organs can be seen as media membranes of exchange with the environment. list: heart, brain, lungs, adrenal glands, kidneys, liver, phallus, ovaries… these organ presented here as cakes represent for us the conflicted conditions in which our bodies exist in trying to nourish ourselves in a society with heavily industrialized food production. we recognize the material implications of words. we recognize the material. there are aspects of the body that cannot be spoken. we make material forms to be able to voice things that we can't say with words. once we began investing in the stories of our own organs, they quickly led us to stories that we encountered through the news media. we relate to all these stories, our own and those of others, as metaphor or dilemma. we respond to these stories from another location in a landscape of uneven development by which our bodies are differentially supported/disciplined and yet our organs are connected across space through economy. the body asserts itself in living. does the body speak through living? we are now going to create an opportunity for exchange by auctioning off the organ cakes. these cakes took approximately 10 hours each of our labour power, and about $60 in raw materials. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 291 the audience can bid with any kind of currency. it can be money, labour power, an in kind exchange, an object, art work...whatever is considered fair or affordable. source: abundant future: interactive performative art philosophy embodied value debate exchange: vegan, gluten free brain cake exchanged for labour power. 292 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages what world? “bourgeois subjects, the new citizens of the nation-state, knew themselves as respectable and civilized largely through a spatial separation from those deemed to be degenerate and uncivilized. degenerate spaces (slums, colonies) and the bodies of prostitutes were known as zones of disorder, filth and immorality. the inhabitants of such zones were invariably racialized, evacuated from the category human, and denied the equality so fundamental to liberal states.” (razack, 2000, 116-117). we are always thinking about the spaces that we come from, spaces that are down a gravel road or the side of a field, alleyways that people don’t see, the corners of parks and abandoned industry. if you walked through the city and then talked about your trip, you wouldn't include any of these spaces. spaces beyond the law and beyond regulation where women always get fucked over. spaces of police violence, of informality, of homelessness and rough living which are also spaces of refuge, wild urban nature, community and queerness. interconnected social and geographic spaces that mirror society’s indifference and are regarded as waste, as potential, as “terra nullius” – as prior to and in need of bourgeois development. source: what world do you live in? community video by rebecca garrett and the sanctuary community, 90 min, 2014. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 293 the work we do in these social spaces (and more interconnected public spaces such as shelters, drop-ins and city parks) has difficulty registering in the larger world for a number of reasons. there is a persistent tendency to see the work we do in such spaces as volunteer or charitable labour. that definition just doesn't fit, and the moral ladenness of the category offends. in fact, it is a term that covers over and keeps at a safe distance the reality and the challenge of the possibility of working radically across difference. what is the value of art made by, with and for communities of endurance and resistance? the collective output of the communities in which we work produces its own aesthetic, language and knowledge form that speaks to the conditions of social abandonment under which we create. we re-create the community in every instance, through the very complex labour we perform. ideas, activities, material engagements and exchanges, connections with others, daily life chatter, knowledge, gesture, nurturing – all these things are taking place as praxis. reducing this complex to a reading of the discrete art object is not adequate. the reproduction and cultural labour of mending and tending the social fabric under conditions of necropolitics is devalorized in the art, activist and academic worlds. people don't want to have to actually encounter and engage oppression up close on the daily life street level. because the art world (and academia) is dominated by conceptual aesthetics, the embodied and experiential knowledge and creativity of the rest are negated. the farther one travels away from the contemporary art/academic/activist discourse (towards those abandoned, neglected social spaces) the more illegible the work becomes, and the more illegible you become to those who are distributing the money, the more vulnerable you become to neoliberalism. the segregation of activism, art and academia from community is unforgivable. we need a radical redistributive cultural economics to support all the labour that people do, artists and non-arts identified folks alike. a redistribution that doesn’t depend on over work, overproduction and overconsumption. a redistribution that is ecological and considers embodied difference. such redistribution must occur through public mechanisms that recognize the inherent sociality of the economy, and not through private or corporate avenues that maintain those hierarchies by which capitalists have gained their monetary and political power. we don’t know if the state can be transformed, but we do know that change necessarily happens from the community up. 294 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages disclaimer we believe that it is important to talk about the economics under which we work including that we are writing this piece for free. we are assuming that you, dear reader, may in some way also be implicated in and benefitting from the vast institutional economy of which this journal is surely a part. we would like you to consider the value of this writing within an institutional economy and look at it upside the economies of art we have presented. as d’aruna asks: is your ability to write and publish for free based on your privilege as a paid academic? can this writing be transformative within the contradictory context in which we work? “if you can’t see unpaid writing as part of the neoliberal machinery of affective exploitation, you should stop writing about its evils. nothing, nothing that you ever write for free, about the problems of our time, including relentless war, the exploitation of workers, queer or trans politics, the banking system, or the prison industrial complex will ever be valid, until you confront your own role as a source: what world do you live in? community video by rebecca garrett and the sanctuary community, 90 min, 2014. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 295 neoliberal. until then, you're just another hypocrite…and just another scab.” (nair, 2014) nair offers a critique of people who can afford to write or make art for free. ehrenreich points out that those who could be writing about poverty and social justice issues because they know them first hand, can’t afford to write because they are busting their asses at low wage jobs. and so we appear to have a situation where the whole epistemological layer of lived experience is being evacuated from the discourse, before it properly arrives; and where activist writing (and the same can be said for art) slides into neoliberal muck. nair and d'aruna talk about their oppression in relation to privilege and ehrenreich discusses her position as privileged in relation to those with more dire class oppression. this discussion reflects a competitive and comparative regard of privileges as a logic of neoliberalism that obscures the issue of just relations that requires us to work according to a redistributive ethic in a larger economic context. we are proposing a different future. nair is right that under capitalism, complicity with veneer politics is our condition. however, working and making art is also part of our resistance struggle, part of our survival, and thus we can’t go on strike or stage a refusal. where do we sit as artists, and here as authors, in this complex of relationality to precarious labour, paid and not? this is the contradiction. 296 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages source: abundant future: interactive performative art philosophy embodied value debate exchange. mashed economies, 2012. art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 297 references alfred, t. and corntassel, j. 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(2011). changing the way we think, to create the world we want. new york: nation books. mayworks. (n.d.). about. http://mayworks.ca/about mclean, h. (2010, october 17). competitive creativity? arts and culture in toronto’s mayoral debates. the bullet: no. 420, http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/420.php mbembe, a. (2003). necropolitics. public culture, 5(1), 11-40. mcintyre, m. and nast, h. j. (2011). bio(necro)polis: marx, surplus populations, and the spatial dialectics of reproduction and “race”. antipode, 43(5), 1465-1488. miller, b. (2006). red goods, white goods. in s. mckay and a.j. paterson, eds., money-value-art: state funding, free markets, big pictures (pp.124-144). toronto: yyz books. mann, c. c. (2005). 1491: new revelations of the americas before columbus. new york: alfred a. knopf. marx, k.(1988). economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844 and the communist manifesto. buffalo: prometheus books. mohanty, c.t, alexander, m.j. (2010). cartographies of knowledge and power: transnational feminism as radical praxis. in richa nagar and amanda swarr, eds., critical collaborations: transnational feminist practice (pp. 23-45). new york: suny press. nair, y. (2014). scabs, academics and others who write free. yasminnair.net, http://www.yasminnair.net/content/scabs-academicsand-others-who-write-free art, labour and precarity in the age of veneer politics | 299 nair, y. (2009). make art! change the world! starve!: the fallacy of art as social justice – part i. jasminnair.net, http://www.yasminnair.net/content/make-art-change-world-starvefallacy-art-social-justice-–-part-i occupy museums. (2012). open call: free art for fair exchange at the 2012 armoury show. new york. http://occupymuseums.org/index.php/actions/36-open-call-armory povinelli, e. (2011). economies of abandonment; social belonging and endurance in late liberalism. durham/london: duke university press. razack, s. (2000). gendered racial violence and spatialized justice: the murder of pamela george. canadian journal of law and society/revue canadienne droit et société, 15 (2), 91-130. roy, a. (2011). listening to grasshoppers: field notes on democracy. new delhi: penguin. shiva, v. 1(992). women's indigenous knowledge and biodiversity conservation. india international centre quarterly, 19 (1-2), 205214. simpson, l. r. (2004). anticolonial strategies for the recovery and maintenance of indigenous knowledge. the american indian quarterly, 28(3&4), 373-384. test #1 collective. (2014, october). test#1: cages, nuit blanche. toronto. https://vimeo.com/112074117 300 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages detroit: realities of destructive accumulation dianne feeley1 the media are full of good news stories about the “rebirth of detroit.” the reality – viewed from the ground of struggle against foreclosures, evictions and water shutoffs – is the story in which life remains precarious for the majority of its citizens, 82 percent of whom are african american. as the 2008 crisis gathered storm, an economic tornado tore through black detroit. that year the number of employed detroiters fell by 26 percent and, in a city with a high proportion of african-american homeowners, foreclosures mounted. seven years later one out of three homes lies abandoned. still, 10,000 occupied homes were slated for sale in the fall 2015 tax foreclosure auctions. like the bankruptcy detroit was forced to undergo, the foreclosure process is the result of decisions made by financial and governmental institutions. the city’s debt mounted with the one-two punch of the economic crisis and high fees and interest rates on loans that wall street sold to city officials. financial advisors worked with mayor kwame kilpatrick (200208) to “save” the city millions by using variable interest swaps instead of fixed rates. claiming the transaction could prevent layoffs and keep the city pensions nearly 100 percent funded, the mayor badgered the city council into supporting a complex $1.44 billion deal. wall street feted the mayor – since convicted on federal corruption and fraud charges – and presented him with the bond buyer’s midwest deal of the year award in 2005. three years later the stock market collapsed and detroit’s credit rating was downgraded. to avoid a $400 million penalty, the city pledged casino tax revenue as collateral. with principal, interest and insurance payments, the original loan was projected to double over the next two decades. the response of city officials was to lower operating expenses by almost 40 percent, reducing wages and healthcare benefits and laying off 2,350 workers. while city revenue declined 20 percent, annual debt service payments rose. by 2009 annual debt repayment stood at $330 million, and a year later would rise to $597 million. as the city ran out of cash, mayor dave bing (2009-13) was forced to turn to the michigan state 1 dianne feeley is a retired autoworker active in autoworker caravan, a rank-andfile organization, and detroit eviction defense. she lives in southwest detroit, where residents battle against high levels of air pollution, and is an editor of against the current. detroit: realities of destructive accumulation | 301 finance authority, which arranged a $129.5 million bond underwritten by bank of america. the fee was $1.6 million – the best available offer. by 2012 residents were told that the city’s $11-12 billion debt was unsustainable, but after michigan governor rick snyder’s financial review board investigated, the figure cited was $18 billion. snyder appointed bankruptcy lawyer kevyn orr (from the jonesday firm) emergency manager in 2013 and gave him full power over city finances. within weeks orr started bankruptcy proceedings. despite the fact that the michigan constitution states that for government workers pension benefits “shall not be diminished or impaired,” that guarantee was negated in federal bankruptcy court. city workers and retirees were savaged by the bankruptcy. forced to vote for a reduction of their pensions and health care or promised an even worse “deal,” a majority of the 32,000 retirees and workers agreed. since police and firefighters do not receive social security benefits, their pensions took less of a hit than the majority, who accepted a 4.5 percent cut and lost cost-of-living increases. instead of health care benefits, retirees receive somewhere between a $125-400 check each month. amru meah, retired director of the building safety and engineering department and a cancer patient in remission, remarked to the michigan citizen, “god forbid i should have another operation – i’ve already had two.” his monthly healthcare cost rose from $280 a month to $1200, with a $2800 yearly deductible for him and his wife. reduction in health care coverage alone wiped out $4 billion of the city’s debt. an investigative reporter for the aclu, curt guyette calculated that of the $7 billion trimmed through bankruptcy, 80 percent came from the city workers and retirees. austerity prepares the ground for gentrification gentrification is touted as the way urban centers whose industrial base has collapsed can reinvent themselves. yet in a city that covers 140 square miles, new investment continues to be concentrated downtown, sweeping away african-american-owned businesses and displacing lowincome senior citizens. since 2006, $6 billion has been invested in real estate development in greater downtown; between 2010 and 2012 more than $2 billion was invested in 130 downtown projects. detroit, however, is a city of neighborhoods, so gentrification has been accomplished by starving communities where the vast majority of detroiters live. most people don’t live in a city for its downtown sports arenas, but rather for good schools, strong, safe neighborhoods and access to jobs. from that vantage point, detroit is a disaster. block after block is littered with 302 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages foreclosed homes and vacant stores; more than 100 schools have been closed. in a city where once many walked to factories in their area, or took a trolley across town, those plants are now shuttered. meanwhile downtown has comerica park, where the tigers play; ford stadium, home of the lions; and an expanded (though no longer cityowned) cobo hall, where the international auto show kicks off at the beginning of each year. the planned hockeytown, brain child of mike ilitch, will be not only the new home for his red wings team, but a residential and entertainment complex. while the city donated some of the land, the state arranged a $650 million 30-year bond that will be paid through a private-public partnership. the ilitch organization’s share is estimated to be $367 million; the city will receive little in taxes or even parking fees. mayor mike duggan – detroit’s first white mayor in 30 years – subsequently announced that brush park, an 8.4 acre parcel of land just across from the hockeytown site, has been turned over to dan gilbert of quicken loans. never mind that of the more than 1,000 detroit mortgages quicken loans wrote between 2005 and 2014, the majority ended in foreclosure. in fact the u.s. justice department is currently suing the company for falsifying the worth of its fha-insured loans. yet it is gilbert’s construction company that will be building over 330 townhouses and apartments in historic brush park. formerly derelict downtown buildings have been transformed into elegant hotels, apartments, offices and restaurants. previously some had been abandoned while others had become housing where low-income seniors paid with a federally funded voucher providing 75 percent of the rent (section 8 housing). this was the story of the griswold, designed by detroit’s most famous architect albert kahn, built in 1929. the new owners gave the 100+ residents, several with disabilities, a year’s notice to vacate. initially the company said they would preserve 10-20 units of lowincome housing, but when federal and state agencies declined to negotiate a higher voucher rate, all were given notice. the building received an $8 million upgrade. today the renamed building, the albert, has 127 luxury apartments with such amenities as an exercise room, dog walking services and a 24-hour concierge. perhaps to lure middle-class residents and new businesses, city officials have prioritized building a 3.3 mile track for the m-1, a fast train running up woodward, the only area of the city already adequately serviced by buses. each mile of construction will cost $42 million. the m-1 rail is a public-private partnership and dan gilbert, touted as detroit’s savior, has purchased the naming rights. such partnerships bundle business and foundation monies to attract federal, state and local detroit: realities of destructive accumulation | 303 subsidies and grants to drive their projects. presenting themselves as the city’s business and philanthropic leaders, these partnerships soak up public money for projects residents have not prioritized, and marketize what would once have been considered a public good. detroit uses publicprivate partnerships to establish amenities for the new downtown. these are an essential element to gentrification because city services, according the mayor, are limited to police, fire, street lights and garbage pickup. the detroit police department represents a lingering sore. in 2003 it signed two consent agreements with the justice department, agreeing to independent monitoring for use of excessive force, illegal arrests and unconstitutional conditions of imprisonment. originally the agreement was to last for five years, but failure to meet goals extended that monitoring system until 2016. police misconduct, however, has not been eradicated. between 2008-14 more than 300 people were awarded a total of $27 million in damages. how detroit became poor and black while african americans had been part of detroit since before the civil war – and in fact had built a strong black abolitionist movement – beginning in 1910 the population increased as blacks streamed out of the jim crow south in search of opportunities in northern cities. in detroit they also found the ku klux klan and black legion: a klan sympathizer served briefly as mayor in the late 1920s and the police force was riddled with klan members. housing and steady work were hard to come by, but henry ford viewed black men as hard workers. the company used the black church as a hiring hall and as a means of securing loyalty to ford. at one point 25 percent of all african-american men living in detroit worked at ford’s rouge plant. when a workman fell asleep on the trolley going home, people identified him as a “ford” man. while black organizers played a crucial role in organizing the union at ford, the racial divide in housing, employment and social life continued. hate strikes by white workers broke out in a number of plants during world war ii as more black workers – including black women – were hired or promoted. a 1943 race riot lasted three days and left 34 dead, mostly african americans. although the uaw leadership opposed the violence and used its authority to end the hate strikes, it was timid in defending black workers’ advancement on the job and failed to promote black leadership. as capital expanded in the postwar period, the racial divide widened. auto companies built 33 new plants in metro detroit between 1945 and 1960 – but not one in the city. the biggest of the city’s plants, including 304 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages dodge main and the clark street cadillac plant, shut down just as african americans had gained a strong foothold in the industry. new highways, constructed with federal money under president dwight eisenhower’s administration – combined with federal housing policies that red-lined neighborhoods and enforced segregation – lured the better-off sector of the working class to nearby suburbs. over six decades total detroit property values shrank from $37 billion to $9.4 billion (in 2012 dollars.) this history is the background to understanding today’s detroit. in 1950 there were almost 300,000 manufacturing jobs in the city; now there are 25,000. as industry began to leave and much of the white working class (and some african americans) followed, unemployment and poverty grew. as early as 1963 there weren’t enough white students in the detroit public schools to desegregate them. in the early 1970s a federal judge ordered busing across city boundaries but the michigan supreme court struck the busing plan down, concluding that since the suburbs didn’t cause the city’s problems, they didn’t have to be part of the solution. this court decision articulated the reasoning that easily dismissed the racial and economic divide as it continued to deepen. in 1999 the state took over the city schools. programs to “restructure” education – allowing charter schools, constructing a state-run system for the supposedly “worst” schools and appointing an emergency manager over the public schools – have resulted in the loss of 100,000 students to the detroit public schools, cuts to teacher salaries and benefits, and the closure of more than 100 schools. by 2016 the school debt will balloon to $515 million. deep inequality and poverty produces alarming statistics. detroit’s maternal death rate stands at 58.7 per 100,000 babies, higher than in libya, uruguay or vietnam. while the murder rate has declined, detroit, with a population of 680,000, has as many murders as new york city. no other u.s. city has such concentrated poverty. sixty percent of detroit’s children live in poverty – an increase of 34 percent since 2004 – and children die at a higher rate than any other u.s. city, victimized by poverty, lack of access to health care and violence. while one-third suffers from asthma, at least 35 percent of the total student population has lead poisoning. in a city where there is almost one murder a day, most young people have friends they have seen buried. federal and state governments this entire history was buried under the rug as the city approached bankruptcy. kevyn orr infamously explained his perspective in a wall street journal interview: “for a long time the city was dumb, lazy, happy detroit: realities of destructive accumulation | 305 and rich.” it was that wealth that made people believe “if you had an eighth-grade education, you’ll get 30 years of a good job and a pension and great health care, but you don’t have to worry about what’s going to come.” (battaglia, 2013). what orr did not say was that michigan had actually been reducing detroit’s portion of state revenue sharing since 2003. athough state sales tax collection went from $6.6 billion a year to $7.72 billion over the decade, revenue sharing to cities and towns declined from an annual $900 million to $250 million. over that decade detroit was cheated out of $732 million. (minghine, 2014) was the bankruptcy necessary? not according to wallace c. turbeville’s (2013) report. rather than the assertion that the city had a crushing debt, he concluded that detroit suffered from a $198 million annual cash flow deficit. the demos senior fellow pinpointed three immediate sources that could cut that in half: $43 million from state revenue sharing, $30-45 million in uncollected taxes from reverse commuters, and saving $20 million by not providing tax incentives to corporations. two of those could have been solved by the state, and one by city officials. (turbeville, 2013) the water shutoffs as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, the emergency manager demanded that the detroit water and sewerage department (dwsd) shut off service to delinquent accounts. in the spring of 2014 the department targeted more than 15,000 homes with bills exceeding $150. many did not receive notice or a chance to dispute the bill. (in this writer’s own four-unit building, water has been shut off more than once due to administrative billing mixups.) nearly 10 years ago michigan welfare rights organization spearheaded a water affordability plan (designed by roger colton) for income-eligible residents. this plan was in line with both environmental protection agency recommendations that households pay 2-3 percent of their income for water/sewerage service and un documents that recognize “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights.” the city council passed the plan but the dwsd never implemented it. over time the federal government has reduced its share of funding infrastructural improvements so water department officials responded by borrowing more money and raising residential rates – by 120 percent over the last decade. having made a series of disastrous interest rate swaps, dwsd officials then borrowed more than $530 million to buy their way out of the deals. by the time of the bankruptcy, dwsd was making 306 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages annual debt payments of $420 million, which amounted to more than it spent on its operating costs ($380.6 million). as a result, residents were receiving water bills for as much as 20 percent of their income. in response to the shutoffs the people’s water board, a coalition of two dozen organizations, set up water stations in community centers and churches. delegations from indigenous communities, from canada and from the rural south caravanned to the city, bringing containers of water. groups blockaded trucks to be dispatched for water shutoffs and were arrested. the emergency manager hastily turned the problem over to the mayor, who briefly suspended the shutoffs in order to set up a payment plan option for the poorest. he got various businesses and foundations to contribute funding, but by the summer of 2015 it run dry. as news of the shutoffs went viral, the people’s water board asked the united nations to intervene. two un special rapporteurs visited the city in october 2014, holding an informational meeting attended by several hundred, toured the city and met with water department and city officials. the report they wrote contained recommendations that were promptly ignored by the mayor, who proclaimed that there is no such thing as “free” water. (aclu, 2015). working with block clubs that cover 20 percent of the city, detroit eviction defense and the organizations that make up the people’s water board canvassed neighborhoods and confronted the mayor at public meetings. officials have been forced to adjust their policies, but foreclosures and water shutoffs continue. who can access jobs? in 2015 detroit’s official unemployment rate stood at 10 percent, twice the state’s average, but more importantly about 175,000 workingage detroiters no longer look for work, or never started. a map of metro detroit pinpointing where the jobs are starkly reveals the problems detroiters face. seventy-seven percent of metro detroit jobs are at least 10 miles from the city’s central business district. given that one quarter of detroiters lack cars, the inadequate bus service adds hours to the daily commute. witness the human interest story about james robertson. robertson rode buses and walked 23 miles each way to get to his $10.55 an hour job as an injection molder. many opened their hearts and wallets so that this african-american man in his 50s now has a car and secure housing. yet there are at least 10,000 other detroiters in the same circumstances. the reality is that only 28 percent of city residents are employed within the city; of those working in the suburbs, 42 percent earn less than $15,000 annually. the “fight for 15” campaign is one attempt to overcome detroit: realities of destructive accumulation | 307 the individual problems low-wage and usually non-unionized detroiters face. spearheaded by seiu and supported by southeast michigan jobs for justice and the interfaith committee for worker justice, the detroit campaign has targeted 50 metro detroit companies whose 50,000 workers earn $7.40 an hour. doubling their wages would definitely increase the quality of their lives and dramatically impact other low-wage workers. while the metro area remains an auto manufacturing center, threequarters of the jobs are in the lower-paying and generally non-union auto parts sector. even at the big three assembly plants, workers hired after 2007 make $10 an hour less than what the company calls “traditional” workers. they also have an inferior health care plan and no pension benefits. this two-tier system breaks the lines of solidarity between workers. the newly negotiated big three/uaw contracts do manage to bring the second-tier workers’ wages up to the standard, although only over an eight-year period. however, the contracts also carved out exceptions and extended the use of temporaries, who are locked into a permanently lower wage, few benefits and little job security. multitier wages and benefits are the new normal, locking in inequality. foreclosures continue, blight spreads probably 10,000 occupied homes – around 25,000 people – faced tax foreclosure in 2015. their homes were auctioned off in september and october, just before winter hit. you might wonder why the city and county pursue foreclosure when 42 percent of detroit residents are poor; many living in homes inherited from relatives, or bought in better days. detroiters actually have the highest residential property taxes in the country, and if we fail to pay, an annual 18 percent interest is tacked on. until recently unpaid water bills – now averaging $75 a month – were added on. as a result, property taxes on a foreclosed home are often more than its market value. in 2014 the online tax auction recovered $107 million of the $691 million that was supposedly owned. in short, for a 15 percent recovery rate the city suffered another round of abandoned homes that are quickly stripped by scalpers and often burnt, creating more blight. detroit eviction defense and many other organizations demand a stop to tax foreclosures. even mayor mike duggan admitted current tax assessments are not linked to the market value of homes, but announced it would take several years before reassessments are completed. meanwhile he claims his hands are tied. somehow it’s okay to move quickly through bankruptcy, but be slow as molasses in responding to continuing foreclosures. this is the policy whereby african-american 308 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages working-class homeowners are being displaced. but this “irrationality” in the face of a disaster does have the effect of clearing out large sections of the city. developers will have a unique opportunity to redesign a major u.s. city. foundations have already mapped out what “detroit future city” might look like, with trees and ponds where african-american homes once sheltered generations. “blight removal,” reminiscent of the “urban removal” schemes that destroyed the black communities of paradise valley and black bottom in the 1940s and ‘50s, is reducing african-american homeownership. given that homes represent 53 percent of the african-american families’ total wealth, that drop in ownership will only increase the already widening wealth gap between black and white families. david harvey has summarized this process by noting: “capitalism has periodically to break out of the constraints imposed by the world it has constructed. it is in mortal danger of becoming sclerotic. the building of a geographical landscape favourable to capital accumulation in one era becomes…a fetter upon accumulation in the next. capital has, therefore, to devalue much of the fixed capital in the existing geographical landscape in order to build a wholly new landscape in a different image. this sparks intense and destructive localised crises. the most obvious contemporary example of such devaluation in the usa is detroit.” (harvey, 2014, 155). possibilities, hope and struggle a city is an exciting place to live because of the history and culture residents have created. detroit has been a center of not only industry, but of distinct neighborhoods. it has forged a wide-ranging cultural production from the symphony to the blues, jazz, motown, gospel, hip hop, and techno music to poetry, dance, painting and sculpture. we are home to diego rivera’s industrial murals, the cass corridor art of the 1960s and ‘70s, and the found art installations of tyree guyton’s heidelberg project and street murals. as an activist involved in fighting aspects of gentrification and environmental injustice over the years, and as an active member of detroit eviction defense, i am both proud of our victories and aware of how far we are from what we need. like a number of organizations and coalitions, detroit eviction defense focuses on a particular issue. in our case it is stopping foreclosures. in listening to people’s stories, we encourage them to stay in their homes and advise them of what few resources there are. we accompany them to court – and the presence of a dozen or so people standing up when the case is called puts the judge and attorneys on notice that we have this person’s back. a number of phone calls and of emails, detroit: realities of destructive accumulation | 309 marches through the neighborhood and strategic demonstrations can make a difference. although it is intensive to carry out a 10-hour day, five-days a week watch over a foreclosed home, through the help of neighbors and our committee’s alert system we have stopped eviction orders from being carried out long enough to enable a settlement to be forged. we are fortunate in having several uaw locals work with us, but while they contribute important resources and sometimes their physical presence, most union members are not involved in our ongoing organizational work. a more organic unity would strengthen the work, although brutal alternative work schedules and mandatory overtime make that difficult. certainly if we compare the 1930s factory sit-downs and how they spread like wildfire, or compare ourselves to the mass uaw marches that filled cadillac square during the 1950s and ‘60s, our organizations are a shadow of that working class. clearly the forces that impacted detroit were shaped by business decisions and governmental policies, but organized labor’s willingness to accept deep concessions especially from the early 1980s is also a factor. concessions were sold to the membership on the promise to regain what we lost as the economy picked up. the uaw leadership, having consolidated its power, was threatened by the idea of discussing the economic downturn with its membership. so as the auto industry restructured, that narrow vision undermined the solidaristic culture key to the industrial organizing that made detroit a union town. breaking those bonds reinforced the capitalist culture of “taking care of one’s own” and its embedded racism. it’s musical chairs writ large. today, of every two african-american families living in the city, one is living in poverty. given both the history of racism and the failure of uaw, the city’s main working-class institution, to chart a solidaristic response, politicians demonize detroit. detroiters feel very much alone – and the anger that blames detroiters for the mounting city debt seems very similar to how european powers speak of the greeks and their debt. the key to detroit’s revival is not the gentrification mania and fist of austerity, but meeting the needs of the working class. while that could be more easily possible by pooling the resources of the metro area, given the reality of racism that isn’t an available solution now. yet detroit is alive with organizations and projects that honeycomb the city. at the base, block clubs depend on the initiative of residents to come together, decide priorities, take action and reach out to other residents. in those few areas of the city where a large project is projected, the demand for community benefits is being raised. if such an ordinance were 310 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages adopted by the detroit city council, projects of more than $3 million would need to set aside a certain number of jobs, apprenticeships and training for local residents as well as having provisions for environmental protection, sustainable practices, minimal displacement and first preference to local business for service and supplier contracts. but even this modest demand for jobs and other community benefits is under attack. the detroit economic growth corporation claims such an ordinance would undermine economic progress. for its part the state legislature is attempting to cut off the discussion, with the house having fast tracked a bill that forbids ordinances that would dare to require higher than minimum wages or apprenticeships. in reality, the problems of detroit are similar to those faced by other cities like cleveland, buffalo or east st. louis. without successfully challenging austerity budgets, the growth of low-wage and temporary work, funneling resources to corporations, continued environmental pollution and increased military spending, the will to end poverty and develop sustainable jobs can’t take root. a multi-dimensional organization with a grassroots, democratic culture, some institutional framework with resources and an alternative perspective doesn’t exist. what does exist is a wealth of organizations and larger ngos that carry out small projects and job training that indicate what could be done if resources were available. two models that suggest themselves at the city level, although clearly those by themselves can only provide an outline of an alternative. while not explicitly anti-capitalist, these models attempt to unite grassroots democratic decision-making to an institutional structure. the first was developed in puerto alegre, brazil when a radical section of the workers party won the majority of the city council. a committee of several thousand residents reviewed and recommended which programs were to be prioritized and funded. known as the “participatory budget” process, it was handicapped by an inadequate budget. nonetheless resources were funneled to lower-income communities, resulting in improving community education and health services and reducing corruption. this democratic and transparent process goes far beyond a community benefit ordinance – as important a step as that would be for detroit. another aspect to such a budget would be considering projects to take the place of the auto industry, such as building trains and busses for much needed national and local mass transit systems. the second example is that of richmond, california, a formerly industrial city of little more than 100,000 and home of chevron’s most productive refinery. over the last decade, the richmond progressive detroit: realities of destructive accumulation | 311 alliance has emerged as an organization whose candidates have been elected to the city council on a platform to reduce environmental pollution, stop police violence and develop a transparent and accountable city government. currently of richmond’s seven councilors, three are members of rpa. allied to community organizations willing to challenge chevron’s attempts to make richmond a company town, the councilors have been able to champion legislation that meets the needs of its diverse population – 40 percent latino, 30 percent black, 14 percent asian and fewer than 20 percent white. in both of these actual models, structures have been created to carry out the needs of the majority, not the corporate elite. working only on the local level, clearly there are limits to what can be accomplished at that scale. nonetheless, if detroit residents, through a commission structure similar to puerto alegre, had been able to audit detroit’s finances year after year, chances are that wall street would not have suckered the city into swaps. further, a broad group of residents would understand how the city budget is put together rather than the opaque view that exists today. that would give us a fighting chance to develop an alternative budget – for example, to help the community urban garden movement flourish rather than encourage big box stores and large-scale, for-profit agricultural projects. we need a better, community-driven model, and one that brings union strength into the center of community organizing. references aclu. (2015, august 5). drops in the bucket. youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywzicirvyoc battaglia, tammy stables. (2013, august 15). orr apologizes for 'dumb, lazy' detroit comments. usa today, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/15/orrapologizes-for-dumb-lazy-detroit-comments/2658515 harvey, david. (2014). seventeen contradictions and the end of capitalism. new york: oxford university press. minghine, anthony. (2104). the great revenue sharing heist. michigan municipal league, http://www.mml.org/advocacy/great-revenuesharing-heist.html 312 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages turbeville, walter c. (2013). the detroit bankruptcy. demos, http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/detroit_bankr uptcy-demos.pdf destructive creation | 313 destructive creation mireille coral1, jeff noonan2, and paul chislett3 joseph schumpeter famously explained the ability of the capitalist system to survive and recover from its structural crises by a process of “creative destruction.” schumpeter agreed with marx that the productive dynamics of capitalism generate crises, but he did not regard these crises as proof of the irrationality of capitalism and the necessity of its ultimate collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. on the contrary, he saw crises as essential to the open-ended survival of capitalism. in crises new means of production, new technologies, new labour practices, and new commodities displace those that were dominant in a previous moment of capitalist evolution. while for those who were dependent on the old structures (capitalists and workers, but mostly workers), periods of crisis can be catastrophic. judged from the abstract perspective of the system and the future, crises are the conditions for intense social and technological creativity unmatched, and unmatchable, by any competing system. schumpeter argues that capitalist history is therefore a history of “industrial mutations…that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. this process of creative destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. it is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live with.”(schumpeter, 1942, 83). it is also what every worker has to live with, and from the perspective of those whose lives are constantly overturned, the process is more destructive than creative. we aim to allow some of those voices to speak, that everyone might better understand the on-the-ground reality of capitalist “creativity.” before turning to the voices of the victims, let us first try to understand more clearly the general outlines of the process. marx too argued that capitalism constantly revolutionized the means of production, and schumpeter acknowledges as much (schumpeter, 1942, 82). whereas marx believed that these crises would become cumulatively more severe and provoke increasingly global working class action, ultimately ending in the overthrow of the ruling class, schumpeter argued that because there is no specifiable limit to what 1 mireille coral is a phd candidate in the faculty of education at the university of windsor, and an adult educator at st. michael’s adult secondary school in windsor, ontario 2 jeff noonan is professor of philosophy at the university of windsor. 3 paul chiseltt is president of the windsor workers’ education centre (wwec). 314 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages capitalists may invent in the future to counteract tendencies towards falling rates of profit, capitalism is potentially endlessly dynamic and not vulnerable to undermining itself from within. since the eighteenth century, capitalism has revolutionized itself through the application of heavy machinery to production, through faster modes of transportation, through the shift towards the mass production of consumer goods as a major source of profitable investment, the application of real time communication technologies to production, and the globalization of financial products and services those same communication technologies have permitted. thus far, it has proven schumpeter and not marx correct. there has as of yet been no successful global revolution (although there have been waves of global struggle, most recently the arab spring-occupy wave beginning in 2010) and no definitive proof that capitalism cannot invent yet another structural revolution to absorb the surplus capital awaiting opportunities for profitable investment ($680 billion in canada alone) (press progress, 2015). there are worries, even from critical mainstream economists like thomas piketty, that capitalism may have reached the limits of profitable growth in the production of real commodities (picketty, 2014, 93-5). should that prognosis be true, and only financial speculation remains to absorb surplus capital – a result that would mean no growth in employment and wages outside the upper reaches of the financial industry – then a political crisis, exacerbated by rejection of the politics of surveillance and control dangerous for the future of capitalism in north america, europe and the bric (brazil, russia, india, china) countries far more dangerous for capitalism may erupt. chris hedges (2015), notably, believes that such a global uprising is inevitable. predications about the inevitability of revolution, especially successful revolution, are always questionable. what seems unquestionable is the fact that capitalism faces material limits to its growth that schumpeter could not see in 1942. the global crisis in lifesupport systems that a century of fossil fuel burning, resource extraction, habitat depletion, and pollution have collectively caused is incompatible with the long-term future existence of any highly organized industrialtechnological economy. a threat to the general environment is a threat to human life itself. at the same time, as movements towards “green capitalism” attest, capitalists as well as environmentalists can recognize long-term ecological dangers, and adjust their practices accordingly. while capitalist production up to this point in history has been materially irrational in its environmental destruction, no one can say for certain that a sustainable capitalism is impossible. environmental crisis could prove destructive creation | 315 to play the same revolutionising role as economic crisis – a spur towards creative destruction of old production methods. david harvey avoids the doomsday talk that dominates much discussion on the left and says, correctly, that “if there are serious problems in the capital-nature relation, then this is an internal contradiction within and not external to capital. we cannot maintain that capital has the power to destroy its own ecosystem while arbitrarily denying that it has a like power to cleanse itself and resolve or at least properly balance its internal contradictions” (harvey, 2014, 259). that which has the power to destroy (being a power over the object destroyed) also has the power to preserve. capitalism could cause global ecological collapse, but since it is essentially a dynamic and self-revolutionising system, that outcome is neither a logical entailment of its principles of organization nor a material necessity of its actual operations, precisely because capitalism lives by changing its actual operations. the future remains open – and that is a good thing for socialists, who can help change that future by effectively organizing to transform capitalism into a democratic socialist life-economy in which natural wealth and human labour are marshalled to produce life capital. life capital is according to mcmurty (2015): “the life wealth that produces more life wealth without loss and with cumulative gain. we defend it by life goods to ensure our life capacities are not reduced but grow through time. most are unpriced – the sun and air, the learning, the home environment, the delight in nature, the play, the love, the raising of children, the fellow arts, and so on. on the social level, the same holds and any well-governed society provides for them in many ways. all may recognise the principle of life capital in their own lives as self-evident, and that all which lasts through time that is worthwhile is life capital.” while political struggle must be future-oriented, it must be anchored in the present, in where we stand now, and not on the non-foundation of abstract principles and dogmatic beliefs. where people stand in the present is determined by where people find themselves in the system of production. as michael lebowitz argues in his must read beyond capital: the political economy of the working class, because needs can only be satisfied through the purchase of proceed commodities in capitalism, the natural object of struggle for working people is not socialism straightaway, but higher wages and better working conditions. “rather than pointing beyond capital, the inability to satisfy their needs in itself leads workers 316 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages not beyond capital, but to class struggle within capitalism”(lebowtiz, 1992, 131). this fact has two implications: first, the struggle to satisfy needs can only ever be completed in a socialist society, but second, workers can make their lives better through successful struggles within capitalism for higher wages, for better working conditions, for shorter working hours, and for pensions that ultimately free workers from the need to keep working for wages. it is in light of this second implication that precarity is best understood. what is called precarious labour, short term, non-unionized, insecure work with few, if any, benefits, is a consequence of class struggle – the class struggle of capitalists against the gains that working class people had made over two centuries of struggle. precarious workers are the victims of capitalist success in undermining historical gains. when we look at precarity from this perspective, schumpeter’s creative destruction looks more like destructive creation. the past gains of working class struggle and the improved lives these gains have enabled are being destroyed by the creation of new forms of precarious labour. while politicians and system-servants will try to draw our thoughts away from the victims through their usual formula of “necessary sacrifices,” human fellow-feeling and critical attention to the real implications for displaced workers’ lives and livelihoods must hold attention fixed on the destructive moment: for those expelled from any sort of secure employment, in a context where a democratic socialist life-economy alternative is not immanent, precarious employment makes life a de-humanizing struggle just to survive. it is in this light that we want to consider precarity by sharing a few of the voices of its victims. although the alienating and oppressive conditions in which they work is de-humanizing, their capacity to endure and to resist lets their dignity as human beings – the foundation of the struggles of all oppressed people – shine through. precarity, from our perspective is first of all a matter of the conscious destruction of the achieved level of life-security won by the organized working class. only in a secondary sense is it a matter of precise sociological analysis (has not work under capitalist conditions always been precarious, which raises the question to what extent the term ‘precariat’ is sociologically meaningful?). these questions are important, but their value lies in the extent to which they help orient struggles to improve life and life’s conditions. as henri lefebvre argued in the first volume of his masterpiece, the critique of everyday life: “once the philosopher is committed to life, he will watch over its meaning and its development from within…at the very heart of the everyday, he will discover what is hindering…the march forward.” destructive creation | 317 (lefebvre, 2014, 120). in order to guide practice, theory must listen to the everyday voices of working people struggling against the destructive creations of new and worse conditions of work. the city of windsor, ontario has lost 14,000 manufacturing jobs in the last decade – unionized work with pensions and benefits that provided real protection against the life-blind cruelties of the capitalist market (pearson, 2015). these jobs have not all been replaced, but to the extent that they have, it has been with precarious labour, often in the service industry, call centres and temporary agencies. the windsor workers’ action centre sat down with some workers struggling with precarious work conditions. in what follows we share their thoughts on workplace precarity, its social and political implications, and how it has affected their personal and familial lives.4 stories from the margins: the precariat speaks our conversations with workers revealed a number of disturbing themes, many which extended precarity beyond the workplace and into the very fabric of their lives. this minimum wage work often included high-stress and fast-paced work environments with ever more demands for multi-tasking, parking lot rendezvous with shadowy contractors, and workplaces that pitted employees against each other in a fear-driven struggle to protect their own jobs. precarity is accompanied by a general atmosphere of fear: fear of supervisors, fear for personal safety, and, overriding everything, the fear of being fired. what became clear in these stories is that, in a climate of ‘no-work’, people felt compelled to take any work. this included jobs that they understood to be unsafe both physically and mentally, and which also undermined their dignity as human beings: work shifts, for example, so demanding that there was no time to go to the washroom, having to eat lunch at the same counter where they worked, and working conditions so crowded that workers rubbed against each other while performing their duties. in an effort to better understand our role as worker advocates in a time and place marked by the displacement of manufacturing jobs 4 these interviews were conducted over a two hour period on august 5, 2015 at the windsor workers education centre by paul chislett and mireille coral. four workers took part in the discussion on their respective workplaces: retail, construction, street organizing, and vegetable packaging plants. each has agreed to the inclusion of the selections of their stories we have chosen. their names have been changed to protect their identities. 318 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages through deindustrialization, and in keeping with the principles of a liberatory critical pedagogy which encourages dialogue rooted in the lives of people (freire, 2005; freire & horton, 1990; horton, 1998, 2003, kane, 2001), the windsor workers’ action centre invited workers who had left precarious workplaces to tell their stories. an ancient and powerful practice, storytelling has been a means for conveying knowledge throughout human history (white, 1980; wilson, 2008). we saw the telling of stories as an opportunity for workers working in marginalized situations to be heard, but also as an opportunity for us to learn from them. in keeping with the model of critical pedagogical practice wherein power relationships are supplanted and inverted (freire, 1995; horton, 1998), as worker advocates we became “students” and the workers became our teachers. by listening to their stories, we gained a more exact understanding of the kinds of problems workers face in windsor, problems which, we are sure, can be generalized across the capitalist world. the following descriptions of workplaces and work experiences come from the workers themselves. packing produce: contractors and cliques two of the workers who shared their stories, norma and cheri, worked in leamington packing produce in greenhouse packaging plants. their stories are immediately characterized by intrigue, as they describe meeting men in minivans in parking lots outside fast food restaurants early in the morning. norma and cheri never learned the full names of the men who picked them up, drove them to work, and paid them on pay day. as norma explained, the job of her contractor was to “find people to work at the farm for another guy that's affiliated with that farm. he talks to people to find people who want to work. he goes to mcdonalds [in windsor] standing outside and gets people to work that way.” cheri described being paid on payday out of “buckets of cash,” which was handed to the workers out the window of the contractor’s minivan: “with my contractor, his wife would hand it out through the car window out of a laundry basket, like the kind you would put in your sink, and there would be little envelopes in line, with your name on it, and they had their little 2 year old son in the back seat.” on her pay envelope were written the deductions from her pay – “i had to pay $60 for my ride, $20 for the privilege of having a time card, $5.50 for the privilege of having a coat because they have to clean it, so for 46 hours i cleared $328.50” – but no mention of ei or cpp deductions required by law. “who are these men with no last names and who do not pay ei or cpp?” cheri was puzzled: “they're off the map. they're taking $2 per hour off your pay and putting destructive creation | 319 it in their pocket, and how they get away with it i don't know. if they have 200 workers they're making $400 per hour. the companies say they are paying so and so, and so it’s off our hands, but they know what’s going on.” furthermore, the cash workers are all paid on the same day and in the same way, adding to the mystery of the identity of the contractors: cheri observed, “obviously people felt pretty comfortable with $5000 cash in their vehicle”. inside, the packing plants are chaotic stressful places: “they had a 25 minute lunch and you have a gown, gloves, and a hat. you can't eat your lunch dressed, so you have to dispose of your stuff and you have to get rid of your smock. well there's 200 people working there; you have 25 minutes to get undressed, go eat, and come back, and they would blow a siren and you're supposed to be at work within 3 minutes and if you weren't in line in time, they were suspending you for a period of time. so basically you are trying to figure out where your coat is…if you want to put your smock in your locker, it’s going to take you 5 minutes to get there, 5 minutes to get to lunch, 5 minutes to put your smock back on, so people were throwing them all over the place and then trying to get them on before the bell went off.” once back at their work places, workers were crowded together: “we’re really packed in together. doing your job, your bum rubs against the person behind you.” workers packing tomatoes and peppers are required to step up on a grate in order to avoid slipping on a floor that, as the shift progresses, becomes increasingly strewn with vegetable matter. when asked about safety training, norma said, “they talked a little bit about it [in orientation] but not much. they said to make sure that you stood on the grid.” norma described her experience at the plant as “worked to the bone and that’s what we expect of you.” she also speaks of groups or cliques that form among workers in the plant, “and if you don’t get into a clique then you just eat by yourself. i didn't talk to many people.” the formation of cliques also proved to be a source of stress and fear, as norma discovered on her last day at work. after being warned of a zero tolerance policy regarding drugs in the workplace, norma approached her supervisor to tell him that she needed to take medication for her bipolar disorder. on her break, she was asked by other workers about “being bipolar because they overheard the conversation with the boss and i was honest with them and thinking it’s my time, it’s my break, and i didn't think there'd be any consequences, so i finished off the work for that night and the next day the driver wouldn't pick me up and the driver wouldn't answer…i got a hold of him 2 days later and he told me i was fired for saying i was bipolar and i was on medication.” norma suspects that one of 320 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the few people she spoke to at work told the contractor about her condition: “i think he was the one talking about me being bi-polar and on my meds and stuff, and i think that’s how they found out. it was actually through a friend of mine.” street labourers: a union of mutual aid while precarious labour makes organizing even more dangerous, it is also a spur to creative resistance on the part of precarious workers. in windsor, panhandlers and buskers have recently come together to form a union. street labourers of windsor (slow) is an organization that provides direction and assistance for anyone who finds him or herself on the street. ryan the organizer who grew the membership from three to twelve, describes his motivation as coming from a place of understanding: “what took me to organizing is because, well, i've seen it all. i've done it all. i know what these people go through. i know their needs; i know that they need to be talked to. i know that people don't know where to go, what to do, and i'm trying to find a connection somewhere where they can reach out.” making sure that people on the street receive guidance and assistance in finding food and shelter is one of the main priorities of the union. why a person is on the street is less important to slow than how; for ryan, “the key is to try to work with people.” slow recognizes the work of panhandling and busking as work, as “just a way of seeking money so that you know you can survive.” as with any work, working conditions are a concern for the union. panhandlers and buskers are very often working with mental illnesses, addictions, or both. in a number of cases, street labourers are people who were injured at work and now find themselves on the street living with chronic pain. communicating needs under these conditions is difficult, and, as r explains, “trying to work with everybody in this to make it one is a very great challenge.” equally challenging is the attitude of the public. antipanhandling sentiments expressed in the windsor star (vander doelen, 2014) in the spring, as outdoor patios began to open, fuelled an angry discourse in the city in which panhandlers were characterized as pests. ryan speaks passionately of remarks from passersby that panhandlers must endure: “i've watched and seen how people have said, ‘you shouldn't be on the street.’ well, that's not yours to say. you don't even know the reason why i'm here, what i'm doing here. are you in the same predicament that i'm in? do you even know who i am? i don't know who you are. and one day you could be doing the same thing.” this concern for the wellbeing of street labourers is not limited to providing material assistance. during the weeks of anti-panhandling destructive creation | 321 arguments, slow represented its membership by undertaking political action. as the anti-panhandling rhetoric increased, the downtown business improvement association proposed the installation of so-called care meters in the downtown core. putting money in the meters would ostensibly be a way for concerned people to help the poor – the money would be distributed among agencies – without contributing to panhandling and its related problems of drug addiction, alcoholism and so forth. for ryan, this was an important political cause. he saw care meters as taking money out of the hands of poor people and giving it to bureaucracies: “we fought against that i was spearheading that, and then it actually went out the window; the motion did not get passed, and then the care meters were never installed, which was a victory for us.” working at the gas station: secret shoppers and chocolate bars joan worked the night shift at a gas station that is located near the last automotive plant in the city still running three shifts. joan earned an undergraduate degree at the university of windsor in the 80s; she argues that she stands as proof that, propaganda about the causal connection between higher education and secure, well-paying work notwithstanding, earning a degree is not a guarantee against precarious work. this was not her first time working as a gas station attendant. “i want to tell you what it’s like, what is expected of minimum wage workers today,” she begins. when she worked as a gas station attendant in 1986, “there were four pumps, and we got to sit at a desk, inside, with a few bags of chips and maybe five different kinds of chocolate bars on the counter to sell. and you sat at this desk and you could read, you could do crossword puzzles or watch t.v.” in 2009, “i had two pages of things to do between customers.” the new gas station had 12 gas pumps, “every chocolate bar made in north america; the whole front counter, bottom of the counter is nothing but chocolate bars. i’ve counted them: there were over 2000 individual chocolate bars, gum packages, tums, you name it, and we also sold lottery tickets. there was a lottery machine, cell phone minutes, as well as seven refrigerated cases where we sold sandwiches, pop, cold drinks. we also sold newspapers, magazines, and car products, like oil and windshield wiper fluid. we were a gas station, convenience store, and there was a tim hortons.” some of the tasks she was required to perform during her shift included watching the pumps, watching the store, selling goods, removing expired food from the refrigeration units, cleaning the inside of the units, cleaning the toilet, and wiping dust and grime off every chocolate bar and package of gum and candy at the front of the store by the cash register. 322 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages “employers find more things for workers to do, ridiculous things to do, to merit any raise in minimum wage.” no chairs were provided; workers improvised by sitting on stacked milk crates and cushions. there were no scheduled breaks and no one to take over if the worker had to use the washroom. workers were expected to eat lunch at the counter while waiting on customers. the only option for a worker who became sick or had to use the washroom was to ask the tim hortons employee to watch the store. “you went to the washroom as fast as you possibly could and then ran back. nine times out of ten somebody would be standing there waiting to pay for something. you’re never really off the job, ever.” gas station attendants were also financially responsible for customers who drove away without paying for gas even though this policy endangered workers’ lives. a gas station attendant in calgary was killed earlier in the summer trying to prevent such theft. once again, the phenomenon of third party contractors – in this case, private franchise owners – plays a role in this dangerous practice. “the corporation can claim to the media that it does not have a policy of making attendants pay for stolen gas,” joan explains, “but you don’t get a paycheque from the corporation. your paycheque comes from the guy who runs the gas station on behalf of the corporation.” in her most recent job as a gas station attendant, joan was assessed in a variety of ways, most notably the “secret shopper” test. she scored 93% on this assessment, but was told that she had failed. “the supervisor approached me like i had done something terrible. i thought, ‘i got 93, that’s an a,’ but the supervisor told me that, in fact, i had failed the secret shopper and the boss is really mad.” the “secret shopper” was actually a corporate spy sent to the store to see if the worker did her job according to corporate standards. anyone coming to the counter might actually be a secret shopper; the worker would find out the next day. of particular concern to the secret shopper was the matter of up-selling: joan was supposed to ask anyone who purchased anything at the store if they wanted one other product: if the customer purchased gas, for example, joan was supposed to ask if the customer wanted washer fluid as well; if the customer bought cigarettes, did he or she want a lighter? joan found it hard to remember to upsell, especially during peak hours. in the wake of her 93% “failure”, she began to use sarcasm as a form of resistance, asking customers who bought only a newspaper if they wanted washer fluid, too. would they like a lighter with their chocolate bar? when the supervisor suggested that joan didn’t need to upsell to everyone who came to the counter because the secret shopper would be a customer who purchased gas, joan pointed out that the next person in line could very well be the destructive creation | 323 secret shopper, listening. to this, the supervisor could make no reply and walked away in frustration. “so i had my little ways of protesting the ridiculousness,” joan said. conclusion the workers’ stories vindicate lefevbre’s argument that the struggle for socialism must be grounded in concrete understanding of workers’ everyday lives. how can workers be mobilised effectively in ever changing conditions of destructive creation of new and worse conditions of employment unless everyone hears the human experience of what it means to be a precarious worker? grounding political practice in everyday life means starting from and accepting the contradictions of everyday life for workers, especially precarious workers, under capitalism. one of the main frustrations of the precarious workers we spoke with was the problem of not being able to organize effectively against the corporation they nominally worked for, because of the role of third party contractors or private franchise owners. these contractors did not provide even the most basic health and safety training; furthermore the use of these contractors or private franchise owners allowed major corporations to not be responsible for policies that could endanger workers’ safety. drawing from a pool of the desperate unemployed, contractors are middle men who stand between multinational corporations and the people who seem to be working for those corporations. workers must always fight on two fronts: first, against the immediate indignities and deprivations of precarious work, and second, against the deeper structural problems of capitalist society itself. norma and cheri, for example, went to work at a major greenhouse operation but were not clearly paid by the greenhouse operators; joan worked at a major gas station chain, but was not employed by that corporation, but by a franchise owner who, because he or she must pay up the chain, is difficult to organize against. in an effort to employ the cheapest most flexible workforce possible, multinational corporations help create the conditions for low-wage flexible work. this demand for ever more low paying and insecure work is the foundation upon which precarious work is created. large employers become less and less responsible for the working conditions of the human beings working in their plants and shops, as administrative costs are minimized, as well as costs associated with health and safety training. this fractured flexible workforce faces an additional challenge of trying to organize to improve their conditions, as workers have done in the past. still, as slow shows, political resistance is also creative. while it is easy to dismiss twelve street workers in a small southern ontario city as 324 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages a woefully inadequate response to global economic problems, one must also keep in mind that global circuits of capital must still pass through human beings, human labour, to reproduce themselves and grow. to the destructive creation that capital imposes on workers’ lives, the selforganization of workers can still be a force of real creative destruction: supersession of the private control of universally required life-resources and their redistribution according to the principles of a democratic lifeeconomy: production and distribution for life need satisfaction, and lifeneed satisfaction for the sake of enjoyed and meaningful contribution to the on-going project of human life-development. references freire, p. (2005). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: continuum harvey, d. (2014). seventeen contradictions and the end of capitalism. new york: oxford university press. hedges, c. (2015). wages of rebellion: the moral imperative of revolt. toronto: knopf canada. horton, m. (1998). the long haul: an autobiography. new york: teachers college press horton, m. (2003). the myles horton reader: education for social change. d. jacobs, ed. knoxville: the university of tennessee press horton, m. & freire, p. (1990). we make the road by walking. b. bell, j.gaventa, and j. peters, eds. philadelphia: temple university press kane, l. (2001). popular education and social change in latin america. london: latin america bureau. lebowitz, m. (1992). beyond capital: the political economy of the working class. new york: st. martin`s press. mcmurtry, j. (2015, february 25). breaking out of the invisible prison. the bullet no. 1085, http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1085.php destructive creation | 325 lefebvre, h. (2014). the critique of everyday life. london: verso. schumpeter, j. (1942). capitalism, socialism, and democracy. new york: harper and row. pearson, craig. (2015, july 22). mulcair in windsor: ndp would campion auto sector. windsor star, http://windsorstar.com/news/mulcair-in-windsor-ndp-wouldchampion-auto-sector press progress. (2015, september 13). corporate canada is sitting on 680 billion, 85% of canadians say raise corporate taxes. press progress, http://www.pressprogress.ca/corporate_canada_is_sitting_on_680_bi llion_85_canadians_say_raise_corporate_taxes vander doelen, c. (2014, april 9). don’t encourage street pests. the windsor star, http://windsorstar.com/uncategorized/dont-encouragestreet-pests white, h. (1980). the value of narrativity in the representation of reality. critical inquiry, 7(1), 5-27. wilson, s. (2008). research is ceremony: indigenous research methods. halifax: fernwood publishing. 326 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages book reviews book review: recoding gender | 327 recoding gender: women’s changing participation in computing by janet abbate. massachusetts: mit press, 2012. $34.00 us, hardcover. isnb: 978-0-262-01806-7. pages: 1-247. reviewed by jennifer mackin1 the call for women’s increased representation in computer science has been resonating in the halls of government, industry, and academia for nearly thirty years. as abbate (2012) demonstrates in her earlier work, unlike most science and technology fields, computer science did not start out as a male dominated domain. the first “computers” were women. these technological pioneers played prominent roles in shaping the industry and its technologies over the last 60 years. much like women’s lack of representation in other contexts, however, women’s contributions have often been minimized or absent from the retelling of the history of computer science. this book seeks to set the record straight. in recoding gender: women’s changing participation in computing, janet abbate recovers this rich history by retelling the narratives of women’s participation in computer science from the second world war (wwii) to the late twentieth century. she focuses specifically on the computing cultures in the united states and britain, and on the personal triumphs of the women who have successfully navigated these cultures. the book begins by describing two of the earliest computer devices invented. the electronic numerical integrator and computer (eniac) was operated by civilians in america and the colossus was operated by the military in britain. as abbate argues, women were pulled into computer work as a result of the war effort. this new science provided novel opportunities and a means of escaping ‘women’s work’ and dead-end ‘computing’ jobs. abbate also explores the constraints women faced: lower status positions, the fight for recognition, and the closing of opportunities with the end of the war. the book then investigates the social construction of expertise, including questions related to the way expertise has been defined in distinct roles (programmer, coder, engineer); how it has been measured 1 jennifer mackin is completing her master’s degree in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university, after which she is set to begin a phd at cambridge university. her main research interests are narratives surrounding academic journeys, cultural barriers to educational pursuits for underreprsented groups, including girls’ interest in science, science policy and cultural influences in scientific knowledge production. 328 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages (aptitude tests and degrees); and how these phenomena have been filtered through a gender lens. based upon 52 interviews with female computer scientists from america and britain, as well as archival evidence, abbate focuses on women’s ingenuity in overcoming obstacles related to their lower status and the stereotypes they have had to confront. stories from women’s experiences are peppered throughout the book, though chapter four recounts in detail the personal journeys of elsie shutt (first women entrepreneur in the us) and stephanie shirley (second female entrepreneur in the uk). here abbate details the way these women navigated the prevailing view that motherhood and professionalism were not compatible. in starting their own businesses, they created the uncommon opportunity to work part-time, allowing them to maintain their professional and traditional roles. this also opened up employment opportunities for other mothers who had been ushered out of the business and created a unique avenue for women to maintain a presence in the field despite social opposition. the book concludes with an examination of the trend of women’s increased participation into the 1980’s followed by a steep decline. at the undergraduate level, this decline was so drastic that the current enrolment of women was found to be equivalent to those at the start of the industry. it then highlights the ways women have come together over the years to share their experiences and overcome barriers. she identifies hurdles such as hiring bias, social alienation and the penalization of nontraditional routes into academia. she then shares some stories on how women made computer science their own. this includes sharing stories in woman’s bathrooms at male dominated spaces, and organizing feminine spaces including forums and all-female computing conferences. this provided an appropriate conclusion for two running themes in the book, which were the use of a positive perspective to view the problem of women in computer science, and the coming together of women to tackle such hurdles. this book provides a fresh look at computing history from a gendered perspective and will be of interest to scholars interested in women’s history. book review: colonized classrooms | 329 colonized classrooms: racism, trauma and resistance in post-secondary education by sheila cote­meek. halifax & winnipeg: fernwood publishing, 2014. $24.94 canada, paper, isbn: 9781552666531. pages: 1-198. reviewed by jiyoung lee-an1 in colonized classrooms: racism, trauma and resistance in postsecondary education, sheila cote-meek raises a fundamental question: how do/can aboriginal students and professors contend with ongoing colonization taking place in canadian university classrooms? to answer the question, the author first examines challenges and dilemmas that aboriginal groups who are constructed as 'inferior and unintelligent' racialized subjects face in canadian university classrooms. not only does the author reflect on some of the dilemmas and challenges faced by racialized subjects, but she also pays attention to the struggles and resistances including thought-out personal strategies in response to racism and violence in university classrooms. the author goes further in her analysis by providing practical advice for teaching and learning about colonization as ‘difficult knowledge’ in mixed classrooms. difficult knowledge in university classrooms includes not only the history of colonial violence against aboriginal people and social trauma, but also individual encounters with such violence and trauma in their lives. to convey difficult knowledge without re-traumatizing the colonizer/colonized relationship, the author suggests transformative pedagogies such as ‘communities of memory’ as a space where remembrance is valued with community support, ‘a holistic model of education’ that pays attention to the mind, body, emotion and spirit of a person who experiences violence, and ‘red pedagogy’ which focuses on the quest for sovereignty, and indigenous knowledge and praxis. one of the significant contributions of cote-meek’s book is that she constructs a non-linear understanding of history by placing the postsecondary classroom as a space where past, present and future are concurrently alive. in other words, the author emphasizes that history is not a fossilized form of knowledge; rather, it still affects the ways in which the lives of aboriginal groups are understood and taught in university classrooms. the author emphasizes that colonial violence is not a past product, rather it is still imposed on aboriginal students’ lives in the 1 jiyoung lee-an is a graduate student in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university. 330 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages classroom as a form of discrimination, silencing and denial. what is taught and learned in classrooms are thus struggles for history and memory in order to rectify both a colonial past and present colonialism. for aboriginal groups, education is an element of the ongoing violent colonial regime, which undermines aboriginal peoples' self-determination and ways of knowing (163). cote-meek suggests traditional aboriginal cultural practices should be negotiated outside of the classroom, rather than simply creating a setting in the classroom where culture is consumed by non-aboriginal students (145). the author describes in detail the classroom dilemma in which both aboriginal educators and students are expected to practice aboriginal culture. while both aboriginal students and professors have challenged the racialized constructions of themselves as cultural/spiritual beings, these students and professors have at the same time put significant efforts into revitalizing aboriginal cultural strategies and recovering forgotten histories. the author warns that emphasizing aboriginal culture as a source of empowerment may contribute to perpetuating existing constructions of aboriginal people as the ‘cultural native,’ in contrast to what these cultural practices intend to contribute. in chapters 3 and 4, cote-meek provides detailed narratives of dilemmas, limitations, frustrations and constraints that aboriginal professors and students have experienced in the classroom such as the denial of racism, being silenced, degradation of native studies, and demeaning the intelligence of native students (100-112). the author interprets these narratives as negotiating practices. however, the author does not clearly define what these negotiations actually mean and these interpretations aim to achieve. also, she does not explain how these negotiating practices specifically differentiate from other aspects of individual practices such as opinionating, adapting, complying, and resisting. not only would this book benefit aboriginal students and professors, but also non-aboriginal students and professors who participate in native studies. in particular, this book does provide insight into non-aboriginal professors who either advertently or inadvertently, fall into a trap of reproducing colonized practices. cote-meek criticizes these professors with examples such as asking an aboriginal student to provide a cultural ritual for the class that was predominantly non-aboriginal (143). she emphasizes the responsibilities of professors to provide anti-racist and anti-oppressive pedagogies in four main ways. first, that professors acknowledge that aboriginal students come to the classroom carrying a huge burden of racialized construction and ongoing colonial violence. book review: colonized classrooms | 331 second, that professors engage in holistic pedagogical approaches which focus both on the emotive aspects of students and critical understanding of colonialism. third, a proactive prevention of racism by engaging with any forms of racism and violence. and fourth, the necessity of creating safe and supportive spaces solely for aboriginal students. throughout her book, cote-meek borrows many ideas from antiracist and feminist scholars such as bell hooks, patricia hill collins, and minh-ha trinh, who have provided critical insights of other racialized groups and, in particular, struggles of women of color in north america. cote-meek's research focus on aboriginal groups is meaningful given the lack of academic attention the topic has received. however, where cotemeek does not succeed is in presenting how experiences of aboriginal groups are different from those of other racialized groups. many racialized experiences and their resisting strategies overlapped and are interchangeable with the experiences of many other racialized groups. while she does briefly mention the connection (130), she does not develop this point further. touching upon the complicated relationships of other marginalized and racialized groups in the classroom beyond the binary construction of aboriginal and non-aboriginal would have taken her analysis a step forward. 332 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the healing journey: intimate partner abuse and its implications in the labour market by linda deriviere. winnipeg: fernwood publishing, co-published by resolve, 2014. $18.95 can., paper. isbn: 978-1-55266-654-8. pages: 1-199. reviewed by julie poon1 the healing journey: intimate partner abuse and its implications in the labour market seeks to provide insight into the challenges that women confront when leaving an abusive partner within the labour market as well as their everyday lives. linda deriviere argues that examining women’s paths to employment, income, and employment training outcomes are crucial to understanding women’s experiences with intimate partner abuse. the book draws upon two theoretical perspectives: 1) human capital theory emphasizing education, employment training, and work experience as needed for an individual to progress in the workforce; and 2) segmented labour market theory focusing on workplace characteristics consisting of ‘good’ secure, high paying occupations with advancement opportunities versus ‘bad’ undervalued, intermittent work with limited new skills. considering the highly competitive market and the financial and time commitment needed to gain skills and experience, women may face obstacles in competing to earn a living wage upon leaving the abuse. for deriviere, labour market and welfare policies do little for women who have difficulties maintaining employment in terms of getting them out of the secondary labour market. this places women in ‘bad’ jobs and exacerbates their continued dependence and chance of re-victimization. data for this study were part of a tri-provincial (manitoba, saskatchewan, and alberta) longitudinal, labour market study with 414 women interviewed in seven-wave, six-month intervals from 2006 to 2010. chapters 2, 3 and 4 provide empirical evidence to determine the importance of abused women taking part in any employment, education and training throughout their healing journey. results indicated participants were economically disadvantaged irrespective of their level of education and employment. trauma from abuse including childhood 1 julie poon is a phd candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at the university of guelph, ontario, canada. her research examines violence against women with a focus on criminal justice policy responses toward women who are victims and offenders of intimate partner violence. she can be reached at jpoon@uoguelph.ca book review: the healing journey | 333 victimization may have hindered participants’ educational and career performance early on creating a lasting barrier to participating in labour market opportunities. many women had irregular employment histories which may have hindered their attempts to secure a connection to the labour market; 44.7% of the women reported that they had taken a leave of absence, quit, or been fired due to abuse (42). additional education and/or training did not necessarily result in a corresponding growth in earnings for these women. women who increased their income did so by working more hours within low paying, peripheral employment. upon leaving the abuse, women often became the primary provider, however, their earnings within the secondary labour market fell short of securing a family wage. finally, stalking or harassment occurred frequently while attending school or work and this was exacerbated for those who were obliged to maintain child custody agreements with their abuser. taken together, these findings provide strong support for deriviere’s argument that the impact of abuse places women at a disadvantage in the labour market extending beyond the duration of the intimate relationship itself. chapter 5 discusses health-related causal factors to explain why abused women experience difficulties participating in or progressing within the labour market. the findings suggest that some low-income women suffered from chronic physical and mental health concerns including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress, which resulted in extended absences in the workforce. the author advocates for gradual training and workforce entry for abused women, while recognizing the need for welfare policies that promote extended assistance for those who may never be able to participate. however, the author points out that further inquiry is needed with respect to the impact of health conditions on employed immigrant women. in chapter 6, the readers are presented with the effects of the abuse by comparing the women’s prior aspirations and the actual outcomes after separation. upon separating from their abuser, nearly half of the women re-evaluated or abandoned their aspirations citing the need to be pragmatic about their employment and training goals. narrative analysis provides a glimpse into the lived realities of mothers who share testimonials relating to their abuser’s efforts to thwart their familial aspirations by alienating them from their children. chapter 7 provides an estimate of the costs of intimate partner abuse. by drawing upon each participant’s job classification, average hourly wages and weekly hours on the job, and number of years until retirement at 65, deriviere calculates that “the net present value of lifetime earnings losses totalled $37.2 million (2012 dollars) for participants who experienced health issues that 334 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages were attributed to abuse” and that this shortfall “translated into earnings-related productivity losses in the economy” (152). this figure did not account for any additional lifetime reliance on social welfare and social housing, or any loss in revenue that the government would have generated from taxable incomes. the final chapter discusses labour market policies in terms the similarities and differences among the three provinces. deriviere argues that current and supposedly “gender-neutral” policy strategies that center upon assisting individuals and families in becoming financially selfsufficient are, in actuality, examples of workfare that do not adequately address women’s realities. while a thorough list of the strategies is presented to assist abused women in successfully participating in paid work, it would have been beneficial highlight where priority should be given considering the scale of this undertaking. the healing journey is unique in its contribution as the first labour market study to analyze their labour market outcomes of canadian women who have experienced intimate partner post separation. one key criticism of this study is the limited use of narrative analysis; increased use of narratives could have provide greater insight into the complex realities that hindered the women’s ability to pursue their goals and this would have been a valuable addition throughout the rest of the book. also, while the book makes an effort to explain statistical significance and correlations between variables to the novice reader, it lacked a thorough discussion regarding the methodology, interview guides, and data analysis. furthermore, the analysis requires greater recognition of the experiences of visible minorities and immigrant women. overall, this book provides valuable insight to academics, activists and policy makers advocating against violence against women in canada. the findings highlight the need for policy responses that begin from the ground up in order to provide meaningful assistance to women whose everyday lives are faced with poverty and violence. the book provides a degree of insight into the labour market and everyday challenges faced by women leaving abuse and the quantitative analysis is valuable in highlighting patterns of earnings and occupational outcomes as well as economic costs associated with intimate partner abuse. book review: the obama syndrome | 335 the obama syndrome: surrender at home, war abroad by tariq ali. new york, ny: verso, 2010. $16.95 u.s., hardcover. isbn: 978-1-84467-449-7. pages: 1-156. reviewed by dax d’orazio1 with another american election looming, the effort to define barack obama’s presidential legacy will officially commence. after two consecutive terms and a series of major legislative initiatives ranging from health care reform to the iranian nuclear deal, there will be no shortage of political accounting attempting to reconcile obama’s campaign words and his elected deeds. political author and analyst tariq ali’s the obama syndrome is what he calls ‘a ‘preliminary report on the first 1,000 days of the obama presidency’ (ix). although certainly limited temporally, it is a worthwhile refresher for those looking to review what will soon become the obama legacy. further, it provides some particularly insightful commentary in the context of hilary clinton becoming the democratic presidential candidate, an establishment politician with far less convincing progressive credentials than obama (especially concerning foreign policy). voters looking for more potent progressive reforms will again confront the dilemma of whether the ‘lesser of two evils’ approach to a two party system can ever meaningfully deliver. for those who have followed american politics closely – including critical commentary on issues such as foreign policy, wall street and health care – ali’s preliminary appraisal may not be a revelation. nonetheless, for those seeking a relatively accessible post-mortem of ‘obamamania’ and the accompanying disillusionment of the left following the rollback of campaign promises, the obama syndrome is concise and incisive. one key point overshadows much of ali’s book: the policies pursued by the obama administration are not solely idealism constrained by the realities of american politics and an intransigent republican party. in many cases, obama’s policies reflect an ingratiation of status quo structures and institutions. ali convincingly diagnoses an acute defeatist element to the administration’s consensus driven approach in which the compromises and appeasements came one after another. he aptly 1 dax d’orazio is a phd student in the department of political science at the university of alberta. his primary research interest is academic freedom in the context of the israel-palestine conflict. he can be reached at dorazio@ualberta.ca 336 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages describes obama as “prone to use mass indifference as an excuse for his own opportunism” (88). in other words, obama willingly truncated his momentum and political capital in favour of a more cautionary and consensual approach. nowhere is this more conspicuously exhibited than the capitulation on health care policy, due largely to a failure to confront the oligopoly of private insurers that have resulted in exceedingly high per capita health care costs (94-96). the first chapter is a retrospective of the election process itself and delves into some of the mischaracterized details of obama’s past. pointing to specific examples of obama on the campaign trail – including the distancing of reverend jeremiah wright as well as obama’s sloganeering, lavish corporate donations, and admiring references to ronald reagan – ali argues that progressive observers should have been more cautious. yet, the massive mobilization of youth (across race and class) who genuinely believed that obama could retreat the american empire and take head on ‘democracy inc.’ cannot be faulted. as ali puts it, “their enthusiasm was infectious” (6). ali seems to believe that obama was electable precisely because he did not constitute an existential threat to established order and, therefore, his presidential prerequisites included assuaging power blocs that ‘hope’ and ‘change’ would eventually meet reality. for proof one need look no further than the lion’s share of total campaign donations obama garnered from the country’s largest corporations (32). perhaps the most poignant analysis inhabits the second chapter, an assessment of the foreign policy record of the obama administration. considering the history of american intervention in the middle east, the author dedicates a significant portion of this section dissecting american policy in the region. according to ali, “[t]here was no fundamental break in foreign policy” from his predecessors (38). in iran, iraq, afghanistan, and palestine, obama failed to drastically alter a longstanding american predilection towards intervention and its attendant regional instability. ali closes by refocusing his scope domestically and taking aim at some of the missed opportunities including health care reform and the economic crisis of 2008. ali contends that the latter’s fallout was entrusted to a cadre of predictable advisers (even respected keynesians were shunned with a wink to wall street) who set out to ‘re-regulate’ a financial system that simply required some occasional tailoring. although beyond the immediate scope of ali’s assessments, his book also evokes much wider political questions, including political strategy, electoral politics and the paradox of progressive incrementalism. for example, is it ethical to support liberal political projects that can, in some cases, deliver upon book review: the obama syndrome | 337 their incrementalist credentials? or, is it incumbent upon those seeking radical change to insist that american democrats, for example, vigorously mobilize and educate for reforms like health care and immigration? more importantly, how can social movements translate grassroots support into political capital without compromising their vision and integrity? ali’s argument does somewhat falter, but not due to a lack of evidence. the main setback is its polemical nature that fails to consider how american policy might be different with obama’s rivals in the white house, democrat or republican. yet, there is still a redeeming quality to ali’s writing in that he mainly attempts to reconcile the public preelection euphoria with obama’s actual policy record while in office. although it is fair to say that many of the left exhibited cautious optimism, the brilliant marketing of obama’s campaign trail in tandem with his courtship of the american press solidified a genuine feeling that ‘change’ need not necessarily be a vacuous or rhetorical ploy. obama’s progressive credentials (either real or imagined) allowed him to uniquely garner unqualified support from wide swaths of the left, even amid policy that could easily be mistaken for bush era bellicosity. nonetheless, as time has passed, obama appears more as an adept politician always striving for coveted consensus, eschewing confrontation and constantly offering apologetics for american exceptionalism. ali captures this well. while reading this book you get the distinct sense that the original sin of obama’s presidency is that it offered this misguided optimism, at least partially obscured by the elation of genuine progressives. 338 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages the science and humanism of stephen jay gould by richard york and brett clark. new york, new york: monthly review press, 2011. $16.95 u.s., paperback. isbn: 978-1-58367-216-7. pages: 1-223. reviewed by jon careless1 gould saw “the transformation of society by scientific progress” as “the greatest dialectic in human history.” it involves a world filled with constraints and possibilities. it creates contingent historical moments that force the confrontation between the power to change and the limits set by external structures (184). the above passage is illustrative of the late stephen jay gould’s commitment to producing an evolutionary theory predicated not on deterministic principles, but on a dialectical and humanist understanding of evolutionary dynamics. establishing this point is the central thrust of this informative, well-written account of gould’s career as a preeminent “paleontologist, evolutionary theorist, historian of science, and prolific writer.” gould’s most prominent challenge to orthodox ideas is his critique of the modern synthesis, “the neo-darwinian theory based on the merger of darwinian natural selection and mendelian genetics,” which gained paradigmatic status in the 1950s (18). gould, the authors note, greatly admired darwin and did not dispute the validity of selection as an evolutionary factor. rather, gould contested the deterministic assumptions underlying the modern synthesis. this included the idea that evolutionary processes occur strictly through changing gene frequencies in populations regulated by selection (as is argued by gould’s peer richard dawkins). the theory neglects organismal structure and processes taking place at levels other than selection among genes or individuals, along with any events occurring on timescales other than dayto-day interaction between organisms in ecological time. accordingly, proponents of modern synthesis assume organismal structural changes take the form of gradual adaptations generated in response to changing selection pressures. in response to the deterministic assumptions underlying ‘gradualist’ theories, gould and his colleagues developed a dialectical explanation for evolution which they called 1 jon careless is a phd student in the department of political science at york university, with an interest in theories of the state. he can be reached at careless@yorku.ca book review: the science and humanism of stephen jay gould | 339 punctuated equilibrium. according to this theory, most species undergo long periods of relative stasis, during which there are only minor, nondirectional changes in organismal structure. these changes are nondirectional in that their occurrence doesn’t necessarily build upon or progress from the changes that preceded it. indeed, the structural form of development can limit the types of forms organisms can take. these periods of stasis, furthermore, are punctuated by brief periods of rapid evolution. during such moments, new species emerge through separation and speciation by way of geological change, which occurs over millions of years between events of mass extinction. gould thus placed great emphasis on historical contingency as impacting evolutionary pathways. unpredictable events may cause mass extinctions, like the asteroid of the cretaceous era, which ended the evolutionary path of some species (dinosaurs) and opened a path for others (small mammals). the authors allege that the orthodoxy afforded to gradualist evolutionary theories likely stems in part “from the ideology of the social elite, for slow, predictable change against the notion” that historical change can occur in brief revolutionary moments (40). though the authors neglect to explore this elite conservatism in detail, they do include gould’s critiques of biological determinist theories which, the authors purport, legitimize social hierarchies. such theories, like that put forth in the bell curve by herrnstein and murray (1994), argued that intelligence is determined by race, and that “the poor occupy their social position due to their inherently inferior intellects” (123). gould reasoned that such theories fail due to the “proclivity of scholars to interpret ambiguous evidence in a manner that confirms their prior convictions” (119). such logic flows from gould’s alignment with the marxian scientific tradition through which he worked to unmask those cultural biases that were used for the ranking and ordering of humanity. a principal strength of this book is its capacity to communicate gould’s ideas in a way that is not overly technical, but still establishes how gould’s theories contributed to a humanist understanding of evolutionary science. this is due, in large part, to the author’s chosen methodology, which involved an in-depth analysis of gould’s work. the book provides an account of the wide range of philosophical ideas that influenced gould’s work, such as mark twain’s satirical critique of the view of evolution as having determinately prepared the world “for the eventual rise of human beings” (7). through their commitment to excavating gould’s worldview, the authors are better able to illustrate his “insights into a wide range of fields” (8). given their efforts to produce a work that establishes the multi-disciplinary usefulness of gould’s ideas, it 340 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages is clear that this book is intended for audiences across a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences. this feat is made more impressive given that york and clark are not evolutionary scientists, but in fact are practicing sociologists possessed with a keen interest in gould’s work. one of the book’s weaknesses is that it does not include arguments from contemporaries of gould who have challenged his theories. while notable modern theorists like daniel dennett and richard dawkins come under heavy criticism, gould’s own positions are left largely unchallenged. this oversight is likely due, as the author’s note in the introduction, to their desire to focus “on the broader intellectual insights that underlie gould’s work, rather than debating any single particular claim about natural history” (12). in this sense, it is reasonable to suggest that if the authors were to delve heavily into the debates concerning theory, it might detract from the central purpose of the text. that said, the absence of such debates encourages the reader to accept the validity of gould’s criticisms against his peers without having to first consider counterpoints made against him, and thereby decide on what is credible themselves. ultimately, though, this is a minor point of concern in what is an otherwise fantastic and highly readable text that gives due credit to an important thinker. book review: the black book of canadian foreign policy | 341 the black book of canadian foreign policy by yves engler. co-published by: fernwood publishing and red publishing, 2009. $24.95 paper. isbn: 978-1-55266-314-1. pages: 1-285. reviewed by kara brisson-boivin1 regarding canada’s role and reputation in the field of international relations the widespread public belief is that canada is a tolerant and peaceful nation maintaining a safe distance from conflict and acting as a force for good in the world. yves engler challenges this taken-for-granted assumption asking readers ‘whether or not we should be so proud of canada’s foreign affairs?’ (4). engler’s aim is to expose readers to a side of international relations that remains hidden from public knowledge and to generate public debate as to canada’s actions abroad. in this way, he intends for the book to be an antidote to what he sees as ignorance regarding the actions of the canadian government in support of multinational corporations, military coups and authoritarian governments abroad. engler’s book is not organized into clearly identifiable chapters, rather case studies divide the book into sections, including the caribbean, the middle east, mexico, central and south america, east asia, central and south asia, and africa. within each section, engler outlines canada’s self-serving, anti-democratic, colonial, and environmentally destructive foreign policy initiatives (34). in doing so, engler attempts to cover a variety of contentious topics including colonialism, canada’s unique bind to the united states, the fight against communism and terrorism, war, aid and exploitation, and how these measures are very lucrative profit making opportunities. the author employs a ‘journalistic approach’ to the case studies, whereby he reports facts, news bulletins, policy briefings, and headline stories regarding canada’s role in a particular region. while the case study method can provide a rich connection between empirical observations, as well as the concepts and theories utilized to explain these observations (see blatter and haverland, 2012, 20), this book would benefit from an overarching theoretical framework and conceptual terminology informed by theories and approaches to colonialism and imperialism. 1 kara brisson-boivin is a phd candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university in ottawa. her research examines international governmentality studies, penal standardization, and international penal reconstruction efforts. 342 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages engler is clear that he is not writing for an academic audience, rather his objective is to engage a wider public debate about canada’s actions abroad and its multi-relational implications. however, the absence of a theoretical approach and its lack of engagement with other works in the field of colonialism and imperialism are a major shortcoming of engler’s book. while he is interested in a contemporary discussion of canadian foreign policies, this discussion could be better situated in, for example, post-colonial critiques which highlight the ways modern international relations are simply ‘old formulas of colonialism’ reworked under the guise of liberal democracy and modernization (duffield, 2001). engler’s case studies could be read as illustrations of a wide range of important theoretical subjects such as global governance, the rule of law and global political economy. however, with little to no engagement with these bodies of literature the reader is left to make these connections on their own. further, with an emphasis on contemporary international relations, the book would benefit from a more in-depth discussion of controversies and debates about “globalization” at the outset in order to contextualize the various cases provided. a strength of engler’s book is the inclusion of discussion questions, which does help readers to reflect on commonly held assumptions about canadian international relations as well as the lessons learned in each case. this book would be well suited as a course reader for intermediate level political science, global studies or political sociology courses, however it should be read alongside theory in order to provide students with the tools necessary for analysis. following the case study portion of the book, engler provides a section on international alliances that details canada’s relationship with several prominent international organizations such as the united nations, the world bank, and the north atlantic treaty organization (nato). had this section been integrated within the case studies, engler could have provided specific examples of canada’s international alliances at work in the various global regimes he presents. as it is, this section reads as a disjointed extension of the case studies. further, engler problematically reifies the dichotomy between ‘strong western states’ such as canada which under the guise of aid, and often in conjunction with international alliances, intervene in the affairs of predominantly ‘weak states’ in the global south. yet noam chomsky (2006), david chandler (2010), and mark duffield (2001) argue against this dichotomy of ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ states pointing out that canada and the united states also possess characteristics found in so-called ‘weak states,’ including poverty and unequal access to social services such as healthcare and the colonial objectification and alienation of indigenous peoples. book review: the black book of canadian foreign policy | 343 following the work of barbara heron (2007) on the desire for development, engler’s book fails to capture the ways in which the third world is present in the first world and the first world is present in the third world. in the final section entitled “why our foreign policy is the way it is and how to change it,” engler provides the reader with tangible advice for fixing the problem of canadian foreign relations. the author does not shy away from the difficult task of equipping canadians with tools for demanding democratic, respectful, benevolent, and caring foreign relations. some of his suggestions are bold (such as the suggestion that canada pull out of nato immediately), but by far the strongest section of the book rests on a call to invoke the “golden rule” in foreign policy, versions of which he claims exist in every culture, country, and religion (243). in conclusion, this book has much to contribute to the field of canadian international relations. although the case study approach is underutilized due to the lack of a theoretical framework, engler does successfully challenge the assumption that canada is a peaceful nation acting as a force for good in the world. references blatter, j and m. haverland. (2012). designing case studies: explanatory approaches in small-n research. palgrave macmillan. new york. new york. chandler, d (2010). international state building: the rise of post-liberal governance. critical issues in global politics. london: routledge. chomsky, n. (2006). failed states: the abuse of power and the assault on democracy. holt paperbacks. new york. new york. duffield, m. (2001). global governance and the new wars: the merging of development and security. london: zed books. heron, b. (2007). desire for development: whiteness, gender, and the helping imperative. waterloo. ontario: wilfrid laurier university press. 344 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages agriculture and food in crisis: conflict, resistance, and renewal by fred magdoff and brian tokar. new york, new york: monthly review press, 2010. $18.95 u.s., paper. isbn: 978-1-58367-226-6. pages: 1-298. reviewed by katie m. macdonald1 the economic and political failings of a dated and self-interested system based on capital accumulation have generated a new battle cry for the modern era: our food system is in crisis! this system, centred upon tightly consolidated, large-scale, transnational corporations, is also responsible for squeezing all stages of food production – scarring the land, air, and people that are each an integral part of this same system. taking the 2008 global food (and financial) crisis as the point of departure, magdoff and tokar paint a damning picture of the truly global scope of our failing food system. unearthing the true stranglehold that political and economic power has had on many facets of the food supply, magdoff and tokar outline a number of contemporary issues. the use of biotechnology in the age of peak oil and soil, food sovereignty and land reform, and the perennial question of how we are to feed the nine billion eaters that this planet will carry by 2050. each of these concerns have erupted from age-old issues of colonialism, degradation of indigenous knowledge systems, and the erroneous belief in free trade as a solution to food provision. this is a rendition of the usual suspects (e.g. international monetary fund, world bank, world trade organization, governments), up to their usual tricks (faith in export-oriented markets and the illusory benefit of comparative advantage), except in this version of the story – the masses are beginning to resist. the book is set in two parts: first, pieces by philip mcmichael and walden bello contextualize the latest iteration of the food crisis through the historical and politico-economic underpinnings of capitalized production of agrofuels, livestock feed, and international land grabbing. in order for institutional, long-lasting change to occur, the workings of the industry must first be laid bare. in the next section, the book offers case studies of resistance to this dominant food system. while the call for food 1 katie m. macdonald is a phd candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at the university of guelph. her primary research surrounds the political economy of food systems, value chains, and the ontario pork industry. katie can be reached at kmacdo08@uoguelph.ca book review: agriculture and food in crisis | 345 policy based on food sovereignty, agro-ecology, and small-scale landholding – particularly from a global south perspective – provide a hopeful and improved form of agricultural productivism, rhetoric of export-oriented production is one of the most truly devastating and thus lasting influences that capitalist agribusiness firms have had in this crisis. the inefficient global marketplace is one where food is treated and traded like any other commodity, essential skills are destroyed, and those we depend on for its production, while dwindling in number, have become disenfranchised “labourers for agribusiness” (magdoff and tokar, 2010,14). each of these facets signals the lasting degradation of poor and ineffectual agricultural policies mirrored as food policies. when food’s status as a nourishing life-essential is degraded to speculative futures trading deals, we all risk marginalizing the health of our bodies and of our communities. the message of the book is clear: if you eat, and if you care about your ability to eat in the near future, you should care about the issues considered in this book. the range of disciplines represented by the contributing authors is among the book’s strengths. contributions include work by a sociologist (mcmichael), an economic geographer (fahy bryceson), food activists and advocacy groups (kirschenmann; schiavoni & camcaro; grain), agroecologists (altieri; holtz-giménez), economists and policy analysts (patniak; murphy), alongside some contributors who fall across a number of different categories. this transdisciplinarity adds depth to the treatment of such a complex set of problems, which are intertwined with an array of agricultural, ecological, social, and policy questions. the information offered here provides evidence of the truly global linkages that exist between flawed production and consumption patterns. a central theme in this collection concerns the glaring inefficiencies of industrialized agriculture, which have become normalized as unavoidable costs of production. the contribution from grain outlines the land-grabbing that results from finance capitalists seeking to diversify their portfolio stocks (grain, 2010,143), while the tokar piece describes the implications for land-use of expanding ethanol agrofuel production (tokarm, 2010, 127). contributions by howard, patnaik, and fahy bryceson detail the gross inefficiencies of our current food system, as land is diverted to use for mono-cropped soy for livestock feed (howard, 2010,176), which later results in a grossly insufficient consumptive calorie conversion (patnaik, 2010, 87), and risk to biodiversity (fahy bryceson, 2010, 81). 346 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages once the reader is sufficiently angered by the bleakness of the current food crisis, and the powerful institutions and the governments that have played a role in its development, the latter half of the text provides cases of resistance. there are accounts of peasants enacting change through “occupation and reclamation – “reform from below…” (rosset, 2010, 195) when higher levels of reform were ineffective, along with the subsequent potential for poverty alleviation through more labour-intensive, small-scale holdings. there is also a wonderfully positive spin to the projected spike of oil prices that will serve to make the cost of industrial agriculture prohibitive (kirschenmann, 2010, 232), and essentially force a better designed and managed food system. our food system is indeed in crisis. the 2008 food crisis that swept across much of the globe was one of those times when the sheer magnitude of the impacts became glaringly obvious. the issues are not new, but are rather the intensification of productivist policies based on greed and appropriation. we must each state our claim and our position in this crisis, and insight into the historical development and complex path ahead, is the first step for us all to fight for a fairer food system. book review: mr. big | 347 mr. big: exposing undercover investigations in canada by kouri t. keenan and joan brockman. winnipeg, manitoba: fernwood publishing, 2010. $19.95, can., paper. isbn: 978-1-5526-63769. pages 1-133. reviewed by allison wallis1 this book presents a critical evaluation of the “mr. big” investigative technique, a tool used by the royal canadian mounted police (rcmp) for obtaining incriminating evidence from key suspects in murder investigations. easily located in legal, sociological, and criminological research on the topic of wrongful conviction, the book would be most useful to those with an academic background or interest in the social sciences, particularly in the disciplines of criminology and criminal justice, law and legal studies, and sociology. although the book is written plainly enough for engagement and understanding by a reader of any discipline, some of the legal and other specialized jargon might limit the reach of this critical evaluation of investigative practices in the canadian criminal justice system. keenan and brockman do three things: 1) they present the reader with a thorough account of the mr. big investigative technique, its prominence, and its general script; 2) they relate the tactics employed during mr. big operations to the rate and risk of erroneous convictions; and 3) they draw on a number of procedural, legal, ethical, and moral issues that arise through its use. the study draws on 81 documented canadian mr. big operations and relevant journalistic reports as their supplements, analyzing transcripts, court documents, and journalistic reports through coding and content analysis. the authors begin by providing an effective illustration of the mr. big investigative technique by detailing three notorious operations, with varying outcomes, in order to provide the reader with an understanding of this increasingly common police tactic. the mr. big investigative technique is a tool employed by the rcmp to elicit incriminating information from targets – suspects in criminal investigations. generally, the technique follows a standard script, staged by undercover officers who 1 allison wallis is a master’s candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university. her current research focuses on the embodiment and performativity of animal rights by self-described animal rights activists within her community. she can be reached at allison_wallis@carleton.ca 348 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages purport to be figureheads in a criminal organization. the target is groomed by undercover operatives and is encouraged to become involved in the criminal organization. once the target has become involved in the fabricated criminal organization, undercover operatives, posing as crime bosses, suggest that criminal charges or suspicions of guilt can be disappeared under the condition that she or he fully discloses to mr. big the details of her or his involvement in the crime. providing verbatim transcriptions of interactions between mr. big operatives and their targets, keenan and brockman identify important moral and ethical questions arising from the mr. big method of investigation, noting particularly the role played by deception to elicit incriminating information from a target. the mr. big investigative technique comes with a high risk of wrongful conviction, the authors argue: the targets of investigation are not only subject to threats of violence, intimidation, and manipulation, but also face incentives such as opportunities for financial gain, recognition and status distinction within an esteemed criminal organization, which may significantly increase the likelihood of obtaining a false confession. the mr. big tactic also opens up moral and ethical questions about canada’s criminal justice system when, for example, public funds are used to enable the elaborate schemes and lavish lifestyles of these fabricated criminal syndicates. the use of “derogatory statements about women and children” and the psychological impact of such investigative tactics are further cited by the authors as evidence of the “moral decay” of our criminal justice system (94). keenan and brockman present a number of legal issues that arise through reliance on the mr. big investigative technique. first, there is the question of whether the technique infringes upon the section 7 charter rights of an individual to remain silent in the presence of an authority. here, it is unclear whether the definition of “person in authority” is applicable to the mr. big undercover operatives who pose as criminal figureheads, and whether ignorance of an individual’s authoritative status negates a target’s charter right to silence (65). second, canadian common law requires that in order to be considered admissible as evidence in court, out-of-court admissions of guilt to a person in authority must be voluntary, and therefore not induced. again, definitions of “person in authority” become blurred when one is presenting himor herself otherwise (68). finally, the authors establish that in canada hearsay – a statement made out-of-court – is bound by the requirement to establish necessity and reliability prior to its admission as evidence in court. in the context of self-incriminating information provided to mr. big, it is unclear whether such information should be governed according to book review: mr. big | 349 the hearsay rule when being admitted as evidence in court. this results in inconsistency in the use of evidence obtained through this investigative technique (75). as the authors note, “no legal safeguards or mechanisms are in place to regularly challenge the reliability of a suspect’s out-of-court statement in a mr. big operation” (76). setting aside questions of ethics and morality in relation to the use of deception and manipulation in obtaining an admission of guilt, we have an investigative technique – sometimes successful in obtaining rightful convictions, but likely to induce false confessions – and a legal system that is not equipped to safeguard against the risks it presents. keenan and brockman conclude that the procedural, legal, moral, and ethical issues that arise, as well as the undue risk of false confession presented as a result of the theatrics and dupery key to the mr. big investigative technique, require that its use be significantly curtailed or discontinued entirely (115). the authors present and analyze several recommendations to reform the laws applicable to the mr. big technique, which they suggest might mitigate its negative effects. they recommend that: 1) the rcmp should be required to obtain judicial authorization prior to commencing a mr. big operation; 2) self-incriminating statements made to mr. big operatives be considered ‘hearsay’ and subject to tests for necessity and reliability prior to admission as evidence in court; 3) self-incriminating evidence should be supported by evidence; 4) jurors should be informed of the potential for false admissions of guilt; 5) expert testimony or evidence should “assist the trier of fact”; 6) the charter right to silence should be applicable to the mr. big technique; and 7) mr. big operatives should be considered “persons in authority,” which would require tests for the voluntariness of admissions of guilt (98). taken together, these recommendations for legal reform might curtail the risk of wrongful conviction. however, as keenan and brockman acknowledge, constraining the mr. big investigative technique through legal reform, while curtailing the risk of erroneous convictions, might also restrict the mr. big investigative technique to the point of ineffectuality. keenan and brockman offer a thorough critical analysis of the mr. big investigative technique, its relation to wrongful convictions, and the procedural, legal, moral, and ethical issues that arise from its use. keenan and brockman provide a number of constructive and potentially useable suggestions for ameliorating methods of interrogation used in the canadian criminal justice system. their call for change will further contribute to the continuing conversation about the accountability of canadian law enforcement. while the authors have established the undue risk of wrongful conviction presented by this investigative technique and 350 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages have acknowledged its utility in securing rightful convictions sometimes, and given keenan and brockman’s call for legal reform or an ultimate discontinuation of the investigative technique, the book might benefit from entertaining the question “if not mr. big, then what?” book review: recoding gender | 327 recoding gender: women’s changing participation in computing by janet abbate. massachusetts: mit press, 2012. $34.00 us, hardcover. isnb: 978-0-262-01806-7. pages: 1-247. reviewed by jennifer mackin1 the call for women’s increased representation in computer science has been resonating in the halls of government, industry, and academia for nearly thirty years. as abbate (2012) demonstrates in her earlier work, unlike most science and technology fields, computer science did not start out as a male dominated domain. the first “computers” were women. these technological pioneers played prominent roles in shaping the industry and its technologies over the last 60 years. much like women’s lack of representation in other contexts, however, women’s contributions have often been minimized or absent from the retelling of the history of computer science. this book seeks to set the record straight. in recoding gender: women’s changing participation in computing, janet abbate recovers this rich history by retelling the narratives of women’s participation in computer science from the second world war (wwii) to the late twentieth century. she focuses specifically on the computing cultures in the united states and britain, and on the personal triumphs of the women who have successfully navigated these cultures. the book begins by describing two of the earliest computer devices invented. the electronic numerical integrator and computer (eniac) was operated by civilians in america and the colossus was operated by the military in britain. as abbate argues, women were pulled into computer work as a result of the war effort. this new science provided novel opportunities and a means of escaping ‘women’s work’ and dead-end ‘computing’ jobs. abbate also explores the constraints women faced: lower status positions, the fight for recognition, and the closing of opportunities with the end of the war. the book then investigates the social construction of expertise, including questions related to the way expertise has been defined in distinct roles (programmer, coder, engineer); how it has been measured 1 jennifer mackin is completing her master’s degree in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university, after which she is set to begin a phd at cambridge university. her main research interests are narratives surrounding academic journeys, cultural barriers to educational pursuits for underreprsented groups, including girls’ interest in science, science policy and cultural influences in scientific knowledge production. 328 | precarious work and the struggle for living wages (aptitude tests and degrees); and how these phenomena have been filtered through a gender lens. based upon 52 interviews with female computer scientists from america and britain, as well as archival evidence, abbate focuses on women’s ingenuity in overcoming obstacles related to their lower status and the stereotypes they have had to confront. stories from women’s experiences are peppered throughout the book, though chapter four recounts in detail the personal journeys of elsie shutt (first women entrepreneur in the us) and stephanie shirley (second female entrepreneur in the uk). here abbate details the way these women navigated the prevailing view that motherhood and professionalism were not compatible. in starting their own businesses, they created the uncommon opportunity to work part-time, allowing them to maintain their professional and traditional roles. this also opened up employment opportunities for other mothers who had been ushered out of the business and created a unique avenue for women to maintain a presence in the field despite social opposition. the book concludes with an examination of the trend of women’s increased participation into the 1980’s followed by a steep decline. at the undergraduate level, this decline was so drastic that the current enrolment of women was found to be equivalent to those at the start of the industry. it then highlights the ways women have come together over the years to share their experiences and overcome barriers. she identifies hurdles such as hiring bias, social alienation and the penalization of nontraditional routes into academia. she then shares some stories on how women made computer science their own. this includes sharing stories in woman’s bathrooms at male dominated spaces, and organizing feminine spaces including forums and all-female computing conferences. this provided an appropriate conclusion for two running themes in the book, which were the use of a positive perspective to view the problem of women in computer science, and the coming together of women to tackle such hurdles. this book provides a fresh look at computing history from a gendered perspective and will be of interest to scholars interested in women’s history. alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review the radical imagination: social movement research in the age of austerity, by max haiven and alex khasnabish. halifax and winnipeg, canada: fernwood publishing, 2014. $26.95 isbn: 9781552666937. pages: 1-256. reviewed by sophie del fa1 the authors of the radical imagination make a promise: to do research on social movements differently. the book is a presentation of “the radical imagination project” which was initiated in 2010 by max haiven and alex khasnabish “to study, analyze, foment, broadcast and promote the radical ideas that emerge from social movements” 2, in halifax, canada. to go beyond mere academic ethnographic research, the authors organized, in collaboration with the activist groups they were studying, film sessions, public talks and workshops. they also created a website that provides a wealth of information about the activities held during the project. the radical imagination project’s main goal was to explore the “radical imagination” (hereafter ri) that moved activists. it must be understood as a driving force in the dynamics of the present political moment. the uniqueness of haiven and khasnabish’s definition is that they view the ri as a collective process emerging from the activities of the people involved in social movements. for them, activists perform ri; and, in return, ri drives them. it is an aspirational term that encompasses the ability to imagine the world, life and social institutions as they might be. in other words, it is the ability to think how things could be different through narrating where we come from, where we are now, and where we are going. this definition is built upon a theorization of the ri by castoriadis and stoezler and yuval-davis. following these thinkers, the ri is “a volcanic substance” that is “constantly in motion under the surface of society” (p.6). it is also “shaped by our experience as embodied subjects” (p.7). motivated with the will to understand how the ri works, the authors start with three observations: 1) social movements are convocations of the ri: members share a specific view of the world in a radical sense. as social movements are very diverse, the ri is the only aspect that social movements share in common; 2) social movements are animated by the movement of the ri; although all members do not share the same imaginary landscapes, the social movements are driven by tensions, conflicts and dialogues that animate these various “imaginative actors”; and, 3) the researchers seek to “convoke” the ri. rather than merely observing it, the researchers assume that their research and their writing are intimate parts of the way social movements reproduce themselves (p.8). 1 sophie del fa is a phd student in communication at university of quebec in montréal. her research focuses on alternative organizations. she is particularly interested in alternative universities which is the subject of her thesis. she tries to understand what it is to be “different” in higher education. her interests lie also in critical approaches of communication and in organizational ethnography. email: del_fa.sophie@uqam.ca 2 http://radicalimagination.org/ mailto:del_fa.sophie@uqam.ca http://radicalimagination.org/ www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research as they sum it up bluntly in the first pages: “[it is] a book about the ri as it is being summoned into being by people struggling to change their world, not one that offers a snapshot of movements in specific location and at a particular moment in time” (p. 22). this performative stance opens up interesting avenues to study this “embodied presence.” a strong critique towards academia motivates the authors’ manoeuvre. indeed, they state that in our life world, which is being subordinated by capital, critical inquiry and academic freedom are highly affected. for the authors, researchers in universities undertake tasks that are mostly dedicated towards the accumulation of capital. in the context of this “entrepreneurial university” (barnett, 2011), the methodology used to explore the ri aims to figure out: if institutions like the university and scholars at work within the matrices of power they enclose function either to facilitate the construction of a more just, democratic, egalitarian and liberated socio-political and economic orders or to entrench, defend and deepen power, privilege and inequality (p. 40). in that sense, the project has two objectives: exploring the ri and doing research “outside the box.” therefore, they organize several other activities alongside the interviews they conducted: free classes, conferences, film screenings, and they created the aforementioned website. in doing so, they wished to disavow the outcomes of what the university usually does. indeed, diversifying activities while conducting research ensures that the people being studied get something out of the process. the legacy of the project is then a different model of critical education and critical research that they call “a solidarity research.” the book consists of four parts. part 1 presents at lengths the authors’ methods and their posture towards academia. part 2 addresses scholars themselves and explores what the authors call a “hiatus” that emerged when they asked their participants: “what does it mean to win?” participants would always pause before answering this question. the authors investigate what dwells in this pause, this “hiatus.” in doing so, they present their analytical tool: the “greimas square” (p. 123 and 124), in reference to french narratologist a. j. greimas’ semiotic square. they use it to say that success does not necessarily mean “not failure” and failure does not mean “not success.” the greimas square allows them to explore the intricacies of how activists embrace their “success.” part 3, revisits the notion of time. for the authors, time remains the key axis of capitalist exploitation. in their last part entitled “the methods of movements” they ask a central question: “how can social movement researchers and social movements themselves reimagine solidarity?” (p. 210). for them, the answer lies in a prefigurative methodology that borrows from the future that we should create. the book tries to answer a real challenge and opens promising avenues to study social movements differently. the initiative is laudable and certainly needed in a time when scholars feel increasingly stuck in their ivory tower; and, as disciplines are increasingly segmented. in some aspects, the book echoes derrida’s (1980) question on the responsibility of the university: we are responsible for the university and only us through our methodology can bring research out from the institution. haiven and khasnabish’s book illustrates the urge to become aware of this responsibility. we, as social researchers, have to bring research outside the university, be it about social movements or in any other fields of research. www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research despite its distinctiveness and usefulness, something crucial is missing in the book: the activists’ voices. as progressing through the authors’ argument, the reader is constantly looking forward to reading quotes from the participants. they would have given to the book a livelier aspect and made it more attuned with the authors’ “solidarity methodology.” moreover, both the book and the website do not give enough “results.” in the end, we do not have a clear idea of the contribution of the project for the researchers and for the activists. the outcomes remain unclear. the radical imagination is an introductory book to a research project that was ongoing at the time. it is thus difficult to have a precise sense of rather or not the researchers achieved their goal of doing social research differently. at first sight, the project seems to come across some pitfalls. first, to what extend does organizing screenings, public conferences and having a website is making research “differently”? the contents of these activities are not enough developed to get a sense of what the researchers have been up to. secondly, we do not have a sense of how the activists react to the project: do they agree right away to have the researchers on site? how to they perceive the research? what did they get from the activities? do they consult the website and for what purposes? in short, a lot of questions remain unanswered when closing the book. despite these few pitfalls, this kind of book is a necessity in academia today. it gives a breath of fresh air that could lead us to a renewal of our writing and our research; and, bring us to consider again how we view our academic career. references barnett, r. (2011). being a university. london: routledge. derrida, j. (1980). mochlos; or, the conflict of the faculties. in centenary of the founding of columbia university’s graduate school. orginally published in french as mochlos : l’œil de l’université. in du droit à la philosophie. galilée: paris. pp. 397–498. navigating a necessary inequality: children and knowledge-based injustice michael d. baumtrog1 introduction at best, children live their everyday experiences as subjects of deep rooted paternalist ideologies, which (rightly or wrongly) limit their freedoms in the name of protection.2 at worst, children are subject to living atrocities such as labour and sexual exploitation, which in extreme cases can end in death. all of these are very real-life experiences. unfortunately for philosophy, our earliest years are often overlooked, treated as a conceptual black box where critical approaches to lived experience need not apply. philosophy is nearly never joined with childhood as a lived experience worthy of philosophical reflection in its own right. this article focuses on children and epistemic injustice – injustice done to an individual in their capacity as a knower and transmitter of knowledge. the aim of the paper is to lay out what i see to be the central topics and main questions that a philosophical project addressing the lived experience of childhood epistemic injustice should cover. the overview starts what i hope will be a much deeper and enduring discussion by providing two benefits that can be taken-up immediately. first, methodologically, it constitutes an attempt to engage the lived experience of childhood, taking it as worthy of mature philosophical investigation and reflection equal to the seriousness that philosophical reflection permeating adult life takes.3 doing so means understanding children as persons meriting full and genuine philosophical engagement in their own right. second, it points to an area where the main 1 michael baumtrog is assistant professor in the ted rogers school of management at ryerson university. email: baumtrog@ryerson.ca. many thanks to federica berdini and katharina stevens for comments on an earlier version of this paper, and to michelle baumtrog for countless conversations on the topic. 2 legal definitions of “children” vary from country to country. for present purposes, there is not need for a strict definition and i leave it up to the reader’s intuition to delineate. 3 this does not mean attempting to write as though i were/from the perspective of a child. rather, it means not taking childhood as something to be merely endured until the serious business can begin. i cannot help but write from an adult point of view and, at least here, for an adult audience. 294 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice theory of epistemic injustice would benefit from expansion overall, namely, the development of the practical dimension. in what follows, i proceed with a brief synopsis of the concept of epistemic injustice, highlighting why its application to children may be considered problematic from the get-go. temporarily setting aside prima facie worries about children living in unavoidable inequality, i then connect the standard focuses of epistemic injustice to some examples of the lived experience of childhood in medical and legal contexts. serious reflection on these experiences points to a new general form of epistemic injustice that has yet to receive much attention in the literature, namely, the injustice an individual may face in their capacity as a decision-maker. the article concludes with a substantiated call for continued research. epistemic injustice in 2007, miranda fricker published a seminal book entitled epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing. there, she characterized two types of injustice an individual can face in their capacity as a knower and transmitter of knowledge: testimonial and hermeneutical. the first identifies situations in which a hearer attributes a lack of credibility to a speaker due to an identity prejudice. the second identifies injustice that occurs “when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences” (fricker, 2007, 1). to illustrate these kinds of injustice, fricker focuses on racial and gender discrimination. her central example of testimonial injustice is when a police officer does not believe a man because he is black. as a central case of hermeneutical injustice, fricker discusses the experience of “a woman who suffers sexual harassment prior to the time when we had this critical concept, so that she cannot properly comprehend her own experience, let alone render it communicatively intelligible to others” (6). as is now well established, discriminating on the basis of race and gender is unjust. accordingly, all things being equal, discrediting what someone says or preventing someone from understanding and/or communicating their lived experiences simply due to their skin colour or gender is unjustly discriminatory. when it comes to age, however, the case is not so clear.4 in the 4 i do not here mean to overlook the existence and importance of intersectionality. children, beyond being young, may also face differing challenges based on their being of navigating a necessary inequality | 295 case of children this is primarily because children are necessarily in an earlier stage of intellectual and physical development than their adult counterparts. acknowledging this fact makes it unclear whether something like the injustice against the black man or woman mentioned above could apply to children. accusations of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice against children may fail from the start because children’s inexperience may negate the default assumption of intellectual credibility usually accompanying adults. in other words, when discrediting someone’s sharing of their knowledge based on their race or gender, the default assumption is that if blinded from these factors, the subject in question would be considered credible. for children, however, who are by definition lesser experienced, it may seem just to remove the default assumption of credibility that adults carry. thus, it may appear sensible to instead hold a default position of skepticism toward the testimony of children due to their understandable lack of knowledge and experience. on this account, discriminating against children as knowers and transmitters of knowledge may not be unjust, rather just consistent with the facts. in terms of hermeneutical injustice, we may run up against the same problem; children may not have access to the collective interpretive resources required for them to make sense of their social situation not through any individual restriction, but because they have to learn about those resources and how to access and engage them. that learning and ability comes in time. in short, then, children may be thought to be justly excluded as potential victims of knowledge-based injustice, thereby undercutting any potential claim to either of these unique types of harm, before they get off the ground. while i appreciate the weight of the worry, i do not think it need be taken all the way to the end. rather, as i will argue in more detail below, recognizing the status of children as necessary learners does not negate the possibility of their being treated epistemically unjustly. it does, however, mean that the characterization of that injustice must be articulated in unique ways from the central cases. the acknowledgement of the fact that children are by definition young, and that that fact brings with it unique considerations, should thus guide the central research questions pertaining to the possibility of children being treated unjustly as knowers, but not undermine them. for example, as an overarching question, we might ask: how does the physical and social situation of a certain race, or gender, or from a certain economic status, etc. for this paper, i am isolating youth only for starting point simplicity. 296 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice childhood impact determinations of just and unjust knowledge-based discrimination against them? children and testimonial injustice fricker’s articulation of testimonial injustice describes it as occurring when a person is wrongly judged a less credible knowledge bearer/sharer due to their perceived social identity (2007, 9-29; see also wanderer, 2017). while examples of this injustice resulting from stereotypes attached to gender and race are most discussed, age also impacts social identity and stereotype creation.5 children may be stereotyped by being identified with certain cultural trends, as having certain interests and jargon, and expectations to act and re-act in certain ways – all of which lend to their social identities and ultimate social inequality. they are often generalized as “overly emotive, irrational, and incompetent” (364) and recently a new characterization of ‘millennials’ as lazy ‘snowflakes,’ who are unwarrantedly entitled and selfish, has emerged. these labels contribute to the creation of a class-based social identity of youth in similar ways as stereotypes based on gender or race. and like the stereotypes associated with gender and race, this identity-prejudice can cause children to be unjustly discredited as bearers and sharers of knowledge – (“what does he know about hard work?”) (fricker, 2007, 22-29).6 recent research has pointed to the impact of child testimonial injustice in the medical field. carel and györffy (2014) have written an excellent, concise article on the topic, highlighting instances where children’s testimony being rejected led to misdiagnosis and in some cases death. they argue that “[medical] doctors make distinctively epistemic judgements when assessing patients’ statements, even if they do not explicitly recognise this skill as such” (1256). if children are then stereotyped as “irrational, with reduced powers of reasoning, flawed or non-existent memories, [who can] be easily swayed” (ibid.), it would be very easy for a physician to reject their credible articulations of their symptoms. on the other side, overly positive stereotypes may also cause harm. for example, when a parent and child have conflicting testimony, the doctor may wrongly side with the parent, who is viewed as more credible because s/he is 5 for young, old, and equal as they are perceived relative to the judger. 6 fricker acknowledges that not all instances of credibility deficit are unjust. in some cases, we might discredit someone accidentally or unknowingly, in which case the deficit will be “innocent.” navigating a necessary inequality | 297 older. this may happen, for example, in cases of child abuse, where the adult claims the child’s injuries originate from a different or an unknown source. considering cases of child abuse leads us to the other obvious domain where children’s testimony may be unjustly discredited: the legal domain. although it appears that both canadian and american legal systems are making improvements to account for what is being called “the voice of the child” (welder, 2000; chong and connolly, 2015), a gap still remains between studies of child testimony and legal practice (brainerd and reyna, 2012; birnbaum, 2009: birnbaum and saini, 2012). fixing this gap is important especially since children’s testimony is crucial in a number of legal situations. for example, in some situations a child may be the only witness. this could be in a crime unrelated to them, or a crime that happened directly to them, as in many cases of child abuse. they can also be central figures in civil cases such as custody hearings, the resolutions of which depend immensely on the testimony of all involved. even if the ‘voice of the child’ is taken into account, traditionally it is not given equal weight to that of an adult. in fact, the view that children’s memories are less reliable than adolescents, and adolescents’ less reliable than adults, is so ingrained that it is considered common knowledge, thereby negating any special training for jurors on the matter (brainerd and reyna, 258). this “common sense” view results in (or stems from) deeply held stereotypes. burroughs and tollefsen (2016, 366) summarize a study by goodman et al. (1984, 1987), “in which groups of adults were provided with both written and filmed testimony of children (6 and 10 years of age) and adults (30 years of age) regarding cases of vehicular homicide and murder. in each case the eyewitness testimony was identical and all details of the trial were exactly the same with one exception: the age of the eyewitness. the studies showed that adult potential jurors consistently rated child testifiers as less credible than adult testifiers, especially so in the case of 6 year olds.” given that the testimony was the exact same, the results of this study clearly support the contention that children face an identity-prejudice in the courtroom on a regular basis despite their being little evidence to support it. in fact, as 298 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice brainerd and reyna (2012) point out, a number of studies have actually demonstrated a decrease in reliability as people age, depending on the situation. they conclude unequivocally that “the notion that children’s evidence is necessarily more infected with false memories than adolescents’ or adults’ is mistaken, and there are domains of everyday experience in which age increases in false memory are likely to occur and may even be the rule” (259). for present purposes, it is important to note that the prejudice children face in the courtroom is not born there. rather it comes in with the jurors who contracted it during their traversing through everyday social life. now, to be fair, in some cases identity-prejudice can attribute expert knowledge to children. in my experience, this is likely to happen during discussions of basic technology. growing up, a number of members of my family counted on me as the ‘tech guy’ because i knew how to set up a vcr and fix basic computer problems, even though i was astutely aware of my limited knowledge relative to my own peer-group. recognizing the potential for children to have domain specific credibility led burroughs and tollefsen (2016) to the conclusion that “the important question is whether, given a relevant domain of competence, children can be reliable testifiers” (2016, 368). the problem with such a view, however, is that the exact same question could (and should) be asked of all adults. as such, making this determination does not directly address the unique character the injustice toward children takes. the injustice children face is not that they may lack knowledge in certain domains, as all adults also do, but that they live in a world where epistemic and communicative resources are constructed and enforced by adults by default.7 they live in an epistemic tyranny of the majority. when they are attributed with being credible knowledge bearers, it is an exception, not the rule. whoever the victim, testimonial injustice causes harm in several ways. on the surface, wrongly discrediting a speaker will result in the hearer losing knowledge they could have gained. more foundationally, however, fricker argues, that “the capacity to give knowledge to others is one side of that manysided capacity so significant in human beings: namely, the capacity for reason.” as such, “when someone suffers a testimonial injustice, they are degraded qua knower, and they are symbolically degraded qua human” (2007, 44). degrading someone in this way, especially repeatedly, can have a direct impact on that person’s educational, intellectual, and/or psychological development (2007, 47 7 this point is developed in the section on hermeneutical injustice below. navigating a necessary inequality | 299 58). in severe cases, it can cause victims to fall into a trap of embracing the false prejudices held against them, giving them a “self-fulfilling power”. when this happens, “the victim is constituted as the prejudicial stereotype depicts her” (burroughs and tollefsen, 2016, 365; fricker, 2007, 55). while this threat is present for all victims of epistemic injustice, threats to development are even more pressing for children, than for an already well-developed adult. what, then, do these considerations mean for a full inquiry into the relationship between testimonial injustice and children? a guiding research question might be presented as: how, given their shifting developmental needs and abilities, should childhood testimonial injustice be characterized? practical injustice the examples from the medical and legal domains hint at an area of injustice that has yet to receive attention – the injustice done to people in their capacity as a decision-maker. to be sure, oppressing someone as a decisionmaker has overlap with oppressing them as a testifier. we can here draw a parallel with the separation between theoretical and practical reasoning. if theoretical reasoning is about beliefs and practical reasoning is about action,8 then we could separate epistemic injustice into the theoretical (testimonial and hermeneutical) and practical (decisions and actions) as well. and just as practical reasoning operates on both beliefs and actions, so too does practical epistemic injustice involve both beliefs and actions. further, the practical can be subdivided between the competency to make a decision and knowledge regarding how to do something.9 a few quick examples will help highlight the central differences. first, imagine a case where as a child you are accused of stealing a cookie you in fact did not steal. your parent notices a cookie is missing, asks you if you took it, and rejects your “no” answer based on an identity-prejudice credibility deficit of your youth. this, i believe, is a clear case of testimonial injustice – however, menial or severe. second, consider an adolescent who invites a friend over to their house, but on the basis of the stereotype that all young people are just trying to have 8 strictly speaking, practical reasoning only involves intentions to act that unless inhibited will come to fruition. i use “actions” in this section for simplicity, rather than technical accuracy. 9 see hawley (2011) for a general discussion of the latter. 300 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice sex, his/her parents insist on an ‘open door’ policy that states (more or less explicitly) something like “whenever there is a potential for sexual activity with another person, my child’s bedroom door must remain open”. in this case there is no testimony. the issue is not about believing the child’s testimony of their relationship status with their friend. rather, it is about discrediting him/her as a decision-maker – as someone who can determine for themselves how they would like to manage their personal relationships. in such a case, the child is being unjustly discredited as a decision-maker based on an identity-prejudice, while being forced to sacrifice their privacy as a result. third, imagine you have spent a number of hours in driver’s training, successfully completed your course, and have recently received your licence allowing you to drive without an instructor or other experienced driver. excited, you ask to borrow the car, but based on the stereotype that people your age are always bad drivers, your parents refuse. in this case the identity-prejudicial credibility deficit relates directly to your knowing how to drive. it is not about your belief that you know how to drive, nor your decision that you’d like to borrow the car – it is just about your ability to operate it. fourth, as an example of a mixed-case, imagine you are a senior in elementary school and you ask your teacher to use the bathroom, but she forbids it. in such a case, the teacher may doubt that you actually have to use the bathroom, perhaps suspecting you really want to go chat with your friends in the hallway. however, the teacher may very well believe your testimony that you feel like you need to use the washroom, but deny permission based on a doubt about you knowing how long you can hold it until the lunch break. the two central components of all of these examples are that they remain knowledge-based knowledge of facts, of decisions what to do, and of how to do things – and they are all discriminations based on a youth identityprejudicial credibility deficit. to be clear and to reiterate, however, not all cases of testimonial or practical epistemic restriction against youth are unjust. i suspect that more often than not, disbelief of testimony and paternal doubt about decisions and actions are indeed just. this is because the injustice only stems from the restriction resulting from an unjust stereotype. testimony that is not believed for a just reason, such as the fact that you know it is impossible for there to be a real, full-grown, wild grizzly bear in the fridge, or practical epistemic judgements, such as knowing that your 3-year-old does not know how to appropriately use a butcher’s knife, are not unjust. as such, i am not saying that children are always victims of epistemic injustice, just that stereotypes mean navigating a necessary inequality | 301 they can be – and the injustice might a subtler and more common occurrence than is currently appreciated. now, of course practical injustices like these are also not restricted to children. indeed, i think they could apply to all groups facing an identityprejudicial credibility deficit – and that list grows every day. i agree with hawley (2011, 294) that no matter who you are, “if i unfairly think that you lack knowledge how, then this is a distinctively epistemic injustice, one that wrongs you as a knower,” but i also suggest that if i unfairly think that you cannot make your own decision regarding what to do, then you are facing a related, but importantly distinct epistemic injustice as well. applied to children, the term “unfairly” here becomes a central focus since all of the nuance of children’s shifting developmental needs and abilities mentioned above, apply here as well. taking stock of these considerations, two guiding research questions come to the fore. generally, we can ask: what kinds of practical epistemic injustice exist and how are they related to their theoretical counterparts? for children we can ask: how, given their shifting developmental needs and abilities, should childhood practical epistemic injustice be characterized, and what is its relation to its theoretical counterpart? children and hermeneutical injustice fricker defines hermeneutical injustice as “the injustice of having some significant area of one’s social experience obscured from collective understanding owing to hermeneutical marginalization” (2007, 158). recall from above, that this occurs as a result of a gap in collective interpretive resources. her central example focuses on the experience of women who were sexually harassed by men, especially in positions of power, before the term “sexual harassment” was coined. since the term emerged from groups of women sharing their individual experiences and reflecting on what they discovered was a widespread phenomenon, before they spoke out about the experience, many women experiencing sexual harassment felt alone and unable to make sense of or articulate the character and extent of the wrong they were enduring. while it is true that the harassers were also missing the term and the subsequent understandings of the wrong that its coinage helped facilitate, the absence for them did not cause them any harm. as such, the epistemic component of the wrong was only unjust to those being harassed even though the conceptual “lacuna” existed on both sides. indeed, before “sexual harassment” the same act was largely proclaimed as “flirting” by its perpetrators, which supports the 302 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice notion that “the whole engine of collective social meaning was effectively geared to keeping these obscured experiences out of sight” (2007, 153). unlike testimonial injustice, for fricker hermeneutical injustice is rarely, if ever, the result of an individual’s action. instead, it is a cultural phenomenon, occurring in society broadly. developing the idea, jose medina suggest that “when it comes to hermeneutical harms and injustices, the question is not simply whether or not there are expressive and interpretative resources available for meaningmaking and meaning sharing, but how those resources are used, by whom, and in what ways.” (2017, 43). phrasing the question in this way starts toward an approach that could be fitting for children. this is because in the case of children, the ability to use interpretive resources and the ability to make meaning out of life experience are necessarily developmental. accordingly, it is not simply a matter of whether or not resources are available because even if they are, it does not necessarily mean children would be able to use them. and, in these cases a lack of access may be an inequality, but it is not an injustice. nevertheless, on first thought, children seem to suffer hermeneutical injustice on two levels. on the first level, most (north american) children are systematically excluded from the design and implementation of their daily activities – the most obvious example being education.10 the result is that children in the north american public school system11 have their experience of education, especially the (benevolent?) dictatorship of all of their teachers and administrators, obscured owing to an intentional hermeneutical marginalization – their exclusion from participation in the design of the means and goals. this exclusion also systematically limits their ability to come together and enrich their social world of understanding. while they may be able to join in groups for brief periods, this is done on dictate from the adult world. ‘free time’ like recess and lunch might provide opportunities for this kind of development, but they are 1) exceptional and 2) generally viewed as breaks away from the real work of learning in the classroom. if children were encouraged to get together to discuss 10 importantly, not all schooling is this way. a number of north american educational organizations are very careful to include student input, most notably, sudbury schools (cf. the finnish education system). differing approaches to home-schooling may also prioritize child input, the most extreme of which is called “unschooling” advocated for most prominently by john holt. 11 i use this term very loosely here to encompass all aspects of the roughly 6.5 hours a day, 5 days a week, that children spend in public school institutions: including the physical and social aspects. navigating a necessary inequality | 303 their experiences of education, i wonder if they might coin a new term for their experience? i can see a parallel between what we call “education” and what the harasser in the example above called “flirting” that may only become salient once the new term makes it into the popular lexicon. on a deeper level, (north american) children face hermeneutical injustice in a number experiences12 due to the perpetuation of what i call the default world of adult social and communicative understanding. being the majority of the population, adults are rather comfortable operating with the interpretive resources they use on a daily basis and make little to no effort to systematically adapt them for their younger counterparts. there are of course exceptions to the rule, such as a good lawyer who connects with a youth in a trial, or a teacher who learns the most recent jargon of her students so as to facilitate an understanding of their world and improve intergenerational communication. but they are indeed exceptions, leaving the structural and cultural force of the marginalization largely intact. this level of marginalization also permeates philosophy. acknowledging it can help explain why children and childhood have traditionally been excluded from serious philosophical reflection.13 in fact, it permeates so deeply that i suspect when fricker speaks of “collective understanding” and “collective interpretive resources” she is not including children’s understandings or resources. conceptually, “collective” is by default, adult. in light of the considerations raised in this section, a guiding research question for a full investigation into the topic might ask: how can childhood hermeneutical injustice be characterized given the fact that children’s lack of access to the communicative and social resources held by the majority is in many cases simply biological? 12 almost by definition of the problem, i cannot be more specific here. in a full study of children and epistemic injustice the invention of terminology would accompany detailed investigations into children’s lived experiences to give some substance to concrete examples. 13 again, there are exceptions such as jean-jacques rousseau’s work on education, originally published in 1762 and the contemporary philosophy for children (p4c) movement. 304 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice conclusion the aim of this paper has been to justify and outline central questions/pillars that a full investigation into children and epistemic injustice should address. in so doing, i hope to have also raised some worthwhile insights for the field more broadly that might not have been come to otherwise. while the paper raises many more issues than it resolves, i hope that their articulation supports the contention that a full research project into the topic is both needed and possible. fricker warns us that “wherever power is at work, we should be ready to ask who or what is controlling whom, and why” (2007, 14). in the case of children, there are sensible answers to these questions. we might answer “adults are controlling children, for their benefit”. indeed, in many cases the stewardship of children explains or justifies an unavoidable social and epistemic inequality between them and adults. as i have argued in this paper, this necessary inequality does not negate the possibility that children can be oppressed in their unique capacities as knowers. rather, it provides a useful frame within which a full characterization of the oppression can be investigated. finally, i am reminded of the important distinction between equality and equity. although some children are unavoidably epistemically unequal to adults, this inequality does not necessarily have to translate into injustice. there are more and less just and unjust ways of navigating this inequality and creating equitable epistemic resources that help recognize society’s youngest as the people that they are, in their own precarious positions, just like the rest of us. valuable future work is needed to continue clarifying the philosophical foundations and day-to-day management of the just merging of these social worlds. references birnbaum, r. (2009). the voice of the child in separation/divorce mediation and other alternative dispute resolution processes: a literature review. ottawa: department of justice of canada. birnbaum, r., & saini, m. (2012). a qualitative synthesis of children's participation in custody disputes. research on social work practice, 22(4), 400-409. bocill, c., & bulley, c. j. (2011). a model of active student participation in curriculum design: exploring desirability and possibility. in c. rust (ed.), improving student learning (isl) 18: global theories and local navigating a necessary inequality | 305 practices: institutional, disciplinary and culture variations (76-188). oxford: oxford brooks university: oxford centre for staff and learning development. burroughs, m. d., & tollefsen, d. (2016). learning to listen: epistemic injustice and the child. episteme, 13(3), 359-377. chong, k., & connolly, d. a. (2015). testifying through the ages: an examination of current psychological issues on the use of testimonial supports by child, adolescent, and adult witnesses in canada. canadian psychology, 56(1), 108-117. fricker, m. (2007). epistemic injustice: power & the ethics of knowing. oxford: oxford university press. goldman, g. s., golding, j. m., & haith, m. m. (1984). jurors' reactions to child witnesses. journal of social issues, 40, 139-156. goodman, g. s., helgeson, v. s., haith, m. m., & michelli, j. (1987). when a child takes the stand: jurors' perceptions of childrens' eyewitness testimony. law and human behaviour, 11, 27-40. hawley, k. (2011). knowing how and epistemic injustice. in j. bengson, & m. a. moffett (eds.), knowing how: essays on knowledge, mind, and action (283-299). oxford: oxford university press. medina, j. (2017). varieties of hermeneutical injustice. in i. j. kidd, j. medina, & g. pohlhaus, jr. (eds.), the routledge handbook of epistemic injustice (41-52). new york: routledge. wanderer, j. (2017). varieties of testimonial injustice. in i. j. kidd, j. medina, & j. g. pohlhaus (eds.), the routledge handbook of epistemic injustice (27-40). new york: routledge. welder, a. n. (200). sexual abuse victimization and the child witness in canada: legal, ethical, and professional issues for psychologists. canadian psychology, 41(3), 160-173. 306 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice global citizenship as neoliberal propaganda: a political-economic and postcolonial critique debra d. chapman,1 tania ruiz-chapman2 and peter eglin3 abstract: we make the case for a program of critical studies devoted to analyzing the features, sources, institutional carriers and uses of the concept of global citizenship as neoliberal propaganda serving to mystify young people’s understanding of their place in the world. to illustrate the analytic possibilities, we provide a case study of the concept’s use in the neoliberal canadian university with particular reference to international service/experiential learning. in a counter-example we unpack the mutual constituting of the cartesian subject as ideal global citizen and the latinx undocumented migrant as its ‘other’ by describing and analyzing the existential situation of the undocumented migrant at the us/mexican border. keywords: global citizen; neoliberalism; university; undocumented migrants; postcolonialism “global citizenship: [our] mission is: to responsibly provide financial services that enable growth and progress … global institutions like ours are uniquely positioned to help society address global problems on a global scale.” (michael corbat, ceo, citigroup) 1 debra d. chapman teaches political science, global and north american studies at wilfrid laurier university. email: debchapman@golden.net 2 tania ruiz-chapman is a ph.d. candidate in social justice education at the ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto. email: t.ruiz.chapman@utoronto.ca 3 peter eglin is professor emeritus of sociology at wilfrid laurier university. email: peglin@wlu.ca 142 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice “it takes a global outlook and a global approach to solve problems. in a word, it takes global citizenship citizenship that acknowledges that each and every one of us has a responsibility to be part of the solution.” (un secretary-general ban ki-moon, 2012) “education for global citizenship helps enable young people to develop the core competencies which allow them to actively engage with the world, and help to make it a more just and sustainable place.” (oxfam) “take off with york international. broaden your horizons. experience new cultures. become a global citizen.” (york university) informed by marxist political economy and foucauldian postcolonialism, we provide herein the basis for a program of critical studies of the features, sources, institutional carriers and uses of the concept of global citizenship as a propaganda device serving to mystify young people’s understanding of their place in the world by incorporating them into the benevolent sphere of its operations, while withholding from them, and cultivating their blindness to, the ideological function of the notion itself for neoliberal capitalism (cf. potter’s [2010] “structural mystification”). we offer as illustration of the analytic possibilities a case study based on empirical documentation and fieldwork that examines the concept’s use in the neoliberal canadian university (newstadt, 2008; eglin, 2013; fanelli and evans, 2015) with particular reference to international service/experiential learning. this is followed by a counter-example describing the existential situation of the undocumented migrant at the us/mexican border in terms of a foucauldian, postcolonial analysis of the mutual constituting of the cartesian subject-citizen and the non-human non-citizen. the purpose of the counter-example is to show not just that global citizenship, actually rather than ideally, implicates a global non-citizen, but who it is that fills that slot.4 4 this paper was prepared for and presented at the alternate routes conference on “social inequality and social justice: north and south, north versus south,” holguin, cuba, 27 april 2017. it was subsequently presented at the encuentro de posdoctorantes de estudios del desarrollo, universidad autónoma de zacatecas, mexico, 11 may 2017. it has been revised based on the comments and questions received at the presentations, notably those of dr. darcy tetreault, discussant at the zacatecas presentation, and from the anonymous reviewers, for which the authors express their sincere gratitude. global citizenship as neoliberal propaganda | 143 we should emphasize that the paper is programmatic and illustrative. it does not pretend to fulfill the promise of critique with full-blown analysis of its subject but aims only to open up the topic to inquiry. it is important to note, also, that although drawing on marxist and foucauldian perspectives we are not primarily advancing, theorizing or debating a particular definition of citizenship, whether global or otherwise, but attempting to describe and analyze a concept to be found in use across a range of contemporary institutions. after wittgenstein, we are not asking for the meaning of global citizenship but looking for its use. and that includes not theorizing actions that traverse frontiers such as, for example, those of would-be global activists (see isin, 2012). accordingly, we don’t engage, beyond perfunctory citations, the large literature on citizenship in professional political science, global studies and sociology devoted to distinguishing liberal, communitarian, radical and cosmopolitan theories of citizenship (delanty, 2000), or legal, social and other forms of the concept (see, for example, dower, 2003; dower and williams, 2002; hudson and slaughter, 2007). similarly, we don’t engage other critiques of global citizenship that are developed under different auspices, such as miller’s (1999) argument that when stacked up against the weighty demands of republican citizenship the global type comes off as thin in substance. or, as soguk (2014, 49) puts it, “like the buzzwords ‘global’ and ‘citizenship’ from which it is formed, ‘global citizenship,’ both as concept and praxis, is often simply announced rather than exemplified or substantiated … [d]espite considerable advances in theory, global citizenship as a practical ordering ideal and political agency is yet to establish strong roots … it remains resilient as an aspiration but is unable to shake off doubts about its materiality.” consistent with soguk’s point is the rather remarkable fact that his is one of only two contributions to the 600-page routledge handbook of global citizenship studies (isin and nyers, 2014), the other being lee’s (2014) consideration of decolonizing global citizenship, that actually addresses the concept of global citizenship. the book otherwise surveys citizenship by continental regions of the globe, a different matter entirely. the political-economic argument 144 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice the concept of citizen implies the liberal state. the concept of global citizen implies the neoliberal state (cf. rygiel, 2010, 1). in the liberal state the citizen is the locus of the rights and responsibilities that define citizenship. in this conception the state is a nation-state, one among a population of such states, with ad hoc inter-national bodies like the united nations dependent on their will; this is liberal internationalism. but in a political economy of “global monopoly-finance capitalism” (foster, 2015) – what harvey (2003, 158) calls “accumulation through dispossession” via privatization and market liberalization, a new “enclosure of the commons” – neoliberalism extols the primacy of private property rights and thus the commodification, privatization and deregulation of everything except state protection of these very rights (teeple, 1995, 75-127; george, 2000; harvey, 2005, 64-67; teeple and mcbride, 2011). via the concept of globalization the neoliberal state claims that it seeks to remove the boundaries of nation-states for the purpose of conducting global economic transactions in the name of free trade.5 these transactions are then regulated by corresponding global institutions like the world trade organization that define the rights and responsibilities of the relevant actors. these actors are de-nationalized entities which, thanks to 132 years of us corporate law, are primarily corporations defined as persons (noble, 2005, 117). they are, in effect, the actual global citizens of the neoliberal world order, corporate citizens conceived as investors whose rights are paramount. they seek to re-make the world after their own image by postulating such a ‘global citizen’ as the fitting identity for any fully integrated member of that order (cf. marx and engels, 1848/1987, 25; see also shultz, 2007, 249, as cited in decaro, 2014, 6). citigroup is such a corporate global citizen. the neoliberal capitalist corporation does not, however, own the concept of global citizen. like citizenship itself (rygiel, 2010, 23) it is a “contested concept” (decaro, 2014, 5) with ancient antecedents (carter, 2001, 1; schattle, 2008a, 1-2). previous formulations include international citizen, cosmopolitan citizen (see, for example, hutchings and dannreuther, 1999) and world citizen. they reached a sort of culmination in the kind of citizen postulated in the universal declaration of human rights of 1948. though still defined in relation to the nation state to which they belong, the rights-bearing 5 as chomsky, in many places (for example, 2014, 139-140), and mirowski (2013) have stated, neoliberals neither believe nor practice their own free-market doctrines when it doesn’t suit them. global citizenship as neoliberal propaganda | 145 individual of the declaration is “born free and equal in dignity and rights” and is thereby nominally a member of a single, universal “human family,” a noble ideal. but when translated from the national to the global context the idea of universal human rights has itself been understood in terms of other, longstanding notions of how to think about the foreign ‘other.’ the concept of the rights-bearing global citizen arises, we argue, from the secular humanism, liberal possessive individualism, christian evangelism and obligation of self-realization that have formed the modern self in western thought (cf. delanty, 2000, 68-73). together these provide a particular view of the self and of the other and of the relations between them. thus, the good global citizen is constructed as a ‘helper’ motivated by a ‘saviour complex’ to deliver a ‘gift’ to the ‘other’ who, being ‘in poverty,’ is thereby ‘in need’ (jefferess, 2014; cf. boltanski, 1999, as cited in martin, 2003, 79). this is the benevolent image promoted in the rhetoric of the un, ngos and universities; see, for examples, benham rennick and desjardins (2013). following foucault’s discussion in his lectures of 1978-1979 of how “liberalism was transformed into neoliberalism” (hammer, 2011, 87) with its particular technologies of governance, including of the self, we may say that under the neoliberal dispensation both the corporate capitalist global citizen and the benevolent global citizen come to embrace the idea of “one’s life as the enterprise of oneself” (gordon, 1991, 44, as quoted in hammer, 2011, 87; see brady and lippert, 2016) where the market is a “regime of truth” (hammer, 2011, 87). this motivational idea is evident in the proliferation of social entrepreneurship programs at universities and in the corresponding growth of individually-run ngos (chapman, 2017). what is missing from this picture, however, is the socio-political-economic context in which these concepts of the global citizen are formulated and applied. historically, liberalism came to political prominence in conjunction with capitalism, imperialism, ableism and the patriarchal state. its attendant rights were understood to be those of the white, heterosexual, male, colonizing, ablebodied property owner (cf. rygiel, 2010, 22-25). the task of extending these rights to non-property owning, female (and now trans), gay, non-white, colonized and disabled persons has been taking centuries of struggle and remains far from completion. while the contemporary idea of the global citizen may be thought to represent the culmination of the liberal dream of universal citizenship, our position is that the dream, in theory and practice, is fatally compromised. it is compromised by the restriction of the possibility of its realization to a small minority of the world’s mostly rich, mostly male, mostly 146 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice white, mostly straight, mostly northern and mostly able-bodied people. it is also itself a means by which that subjection is actually exercised. this is the propaganda argument. capitalism, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity and ableism work to ensure that a designated few realize the dream while the rest of us, in being seduced by it, are thereby mystified. given that we are talking about global citizenship then it is capitalist imperialism that is of particular significance. as decaro (2014, 5) puts it, “imperialism is thus advanced through a concept of global citizenship in which northerners impose their own values, and political and economic systems on the south. the global citizen becomes representative of the north through embracing a neoliberal approach to economic globalization.” furthermore, although we do not develop the argument here, part of our thesis is that the concept of global citizenship is particularly focused on the young people who will become what michael albert (2009) calls the co-ordinator class, the technocrats, professionals and managers who will run the neoliberal world order for the party of davos, including taking on the task of international social work required to fix the global poor who are permanently re-produced as the inevitable outcome of the workings of global capital (for the racial dimension of international social work see thomas and chandrasekera, 2014). since the fixers are found in both the global north and south this distinction is better articulated as one between the rich of the north and the south and their respective poor. finally, for all that some international development scholarship has developed a radical understanding of global citizenship as the practice of interrogating northerners’ own participation in the imperialist subjection of the people of the south, this idea is not what generally informs the prevailing use of the concept. on the contrary, we argue that there is a nexus of discourse and practice that links together the following four institutional complexes: transnational corporations like citigroup (the “leading global bank” according to its website), the united nations (un), major non-governmental organizations (ngos) like oxfam, and northern schools and universities like york university (cf. schattle, 2008a, 3). this nexus originates in the corporate capitalist intrusion into the un represented by the global compact (teeple, 2004, 153-159) and extends through the international ngos facilitated by and linked to the un, to international financial institutions such as the world bank and to large global citizenship as neoliberal propaganda | 147 charitable foundations such as the gates foundation, through to the universities and schools whose internationalization strategies have linked them to these same corporate, governmental and non-governmental organizations (eglin, 2013). in good liberal tradition the whole nexus is very much focused on liberalism’s panacea for all social ills, namely education. it is called ‘global citizenship education’ (schattle, 2008a, 93-116; 2008b), that is to say, in our terms, neoliberal propaganda. we take it up next in the context of the neoliberal canadian university,. global citizenship in the neoliberal canadian university global citizenship is a concept steeped in northern privilege implicating and implicated in neo-colonial relationships with the global south. “the rhetoric of global citizenship often serves to obscure the north’s complicity in perpetuating systems of dominance that ultimately create an imbalance of power between the north and the south” (decaro, 2014, 3). furthermore, the idea of global citizenship education emerges within the neoliberal politicaleconomic model that emphasizes, as we have said, “one’s life as the enterprise of oneself”. on the basis of an extensive empirical study schattle (2008b, 75) finds that it is in educational institutions (compared to governments, businesses and civil society organizations) that the discourse is most prominent. he holds that its aim is “[to] promot[e] moral visions for a more just, peaceful and sustainable world and [to] enhance[e] the academic achievement, professional competence and economic competitiveness of the next generation” (ibid). it is, in short, a blend of benevolence and self-interest. what it does not do, we argue, is educate young people about their actual place in the neoliberal world order of accumulation by dispossession, managed, supervised and protected by imperialist northern states, above all the united states. it thus serves as propaganda for that very order. to determine the use of the concept of global citizen(ship) at canadian universities, we examined the top four ranked universities in each of maclean’s (2017) three categories of types of universities. maclean’s rankings were chosen because they are most peculiarly attended to by canadian universities, because they do distinguish different types of university and because of their convenience. the universities examined are listed here in order of their ranking. in the medical/doctoral category we examined mcgill university, university of toronto, university of british colombia (ubc) and queen’s university. in the comprehensive category we looked at simon fraser university, university of 148 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice waterloo, university of victoria and the university of guelph. in the primarily undergraduate category we examined the university of northern british colombia, mount allison university, the university of lethbridge and trent university. we find that the concept of global citizen(ship) is used repeatedly on university websites. while most commonly occurring in international development studies and global studies, programs across the university claim to be providing the tools for students to become global citizens. as ideological marketing tool advancing the idea of “one’s life as the enterprise of oneself”, the concept is used in the self-descriptions of economics, international development studies, engineering, global studies, philosophy, fine arts and history programs. the concept is typically not defined on such websites so that it tends to have the character of a buzzword or mantric charm. for example, the economics department at queen’s university considers all its students to be global citizens. its website states that the study of “economics will help [them] make better decisions in [their] personal life, in [their] business life and as a global citizen” (qua). the university’s international at home program invites students to “immerse [themselves] in international cultures and student led activities that will help [them] become…true global citizen[s] – right…on campus” (emphasis added) (qub). the university of british columbia’s vision statement asserts that the university “creates an exceptional
 learning environment 
 that fosters global
 citizenship, [and] advances
 a civil and sustainable 
 society” (ubca). among the variety of programs designed to enhance or create global citizenship are midwifery, english for global citizens, the global citizens stream within the coordinated arts program and a “road to global citizenship” educators’ toolbox that is a joint initiative with the united nations children’s fund (unicef) and the (former) canadian international development agency (cida) (ubcb). this case is a transparent example of the links among the nexus of institutions posited above. ubc also has a global citizenship award that is given “to an alumnus in recognition of significant community or voluntary service that has gained international recognition and made a global difference” (ubcc). the university of victoria (uvic) has the mantra engraved in its mission statement: “we are committed to…promote civic engagement and global citizenship…the university will enhance its leadership with regard to…the development of global citizenship” (uva). its 2017-2022 international global citizenship as neoliberal propaganda | 149 plan states: “our vision reinforces the importance of a global perspective and commits to enhancing uvic’s international leadership in teaching, research, scholarship, community outreach, experiential learning and the development of global citizenship.” the same document proposes the creation of a global citizenship minor (uvb). this mission is further developed in the exercise science, physical and health education (esphe) program which states that “programs offered by esphe provide opportunities for you to immerse yourself in the exciting field of exercise science, physical and health education, to study abroad on international exchange or combine work with study to help prepare you for life as a responsible global citizen” (uvic). these are just a few of the examples of how global citizenship is promoted and marketed at uvic. the university of guelph offers a certificate in civic engagement and global citizenship and global citizenship awards. in 2007, 10 “renowned global citizens” were given honorary degrees at convocation. one of the recipients, paul rusesabagina of hotel rwanda fame, was invited to participate in a panel discussion on canada’s role as a global citizen (uga). this example instructs us as to how the reference of the concept of global citizen may be extended from a person to a collective entity such as a country or a state. the marketing management program promises students that they “will be ready to start [their] careers as…more engaged, active global citizen[s]” (ugb).the global studies program at the university of northern british columbia claims to “train students to be global citizens”. by “developing a sense of global citizenship, [students will have the skills] to function in [the] cosmopolitan world” (unbca). while referring to international students, the president’s 2016 statement attempts to reassure students that the university is “right for them and…[that it] will help them become the global citizens of tomorrow” (unbcb). mount allison university’s philosophy, history and fine arts programs all help to develop “thoughtful, engaged global citizens”, “responsible global citizenship” and the tools needed to “become a global citizen” (maua). the student affairs strategic plan “challenge[s] students to become leaders as local and global citizens” (maub). in addition the university’s 2016 internationalization strategy states “international education has the potential to develop well-rounded global citizens…” (mauc). the alberta government’s 2013 international strategy had four objectives. the second was to “build alberta’s reputation as a global citizen” (alberta government, 2013). as a provincially funded and mandated institution, this objective is reflected in the university of lethbridge’s “certificate of global citizenship”, its reference to a 150 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice “global citizenship cohort” and its proposal “to develop global citizenship from a gender perspective” (ul). trent university is one of the canadian universities most tuned in to global citizenship. in fact champlain college at trent “has established itself as the college of choice for those who are passionate about adventure, discovery and global citizenship”. their volunteering abroad program allows students to “become…global citizen[s]” (tua). through the impact program, students can take a workshop on “becoming a global citizen” (tub). international students can apply for the global citizenship scholarships and awards (tuc). in partnership with aga khan foundation canada, the university has organized a going global together exhibit that “inspires students to be global citizens”. one of the interactive components is an online quiz that claims to “determine what type of global citizen” one is (aga khan foundation canada). the university of waterloo “creates global citizens in a global economy” (uw). it encourages students to become global citizens through its international experience program. while nowhere defined in the statements reviewed above, the meaning of the concept of global citizenship for universities can be gauged from the practices claimed to embody it. prominent among these is international service or experiential learning. international service/experiential learning (isl) international service/experiential learning and volunteer abroad programs, which have flourished throughout canadian universities over the past 15 years in blind ignorance of ivan illich’s (2012/1968) stunning denunciation of the practice, typify the neo-colonial relationship between north and south. it is expressed in the northern values, culture and political-economic outlook students bring to their placements (see decaro, 2014, 10). the concept of global citizen is appropriated by canadian students providing ‘services’ to people in small communities in the global south, people who will never be seen by themselves or by others to be global citizens (see andreotti, 2006, 9). whether designed to facilitate student recruitment and research opportunities, to give students an alternative learning experience or simply to create so-called global citizens, isl raises several troubling ethical concerns (tiessen & huish, 2014; chapman, 2016) that reveal not only the neo-colonial character of the practice of global citizenship but also its neoliberal colouring. zemach-bersin (2009, 303) warns that isl programs appeal to students’ “sense of entitlement, consumerism and individualism”. as evident in the examples of global citizenship as neoliberal propaganda | 151 global citizenship at canadian universities above, “foreign destinations and their citizens are products or commodities” (ibid, 305) that can be bought though isl course enrolment and used to enhance canadian students’ self perception. in order for them to turn into global citizens, ‘the locals’ serve as “backdrops [or] props” (ibid). furthermore, “[b]oth study abroad advertisements and participating students discuss international education as an entitlement, a nonacademic adventure, and an experience primarily for personal advancement” (ibid, 313). in fact one could say that there is little ‘global’ about global citizenship in the context of isl. students return from their isl experience describing it as “life-changing, very rewarding [or] an opportunity to meet awesome people” (chapman, 2016, 10). rarely is there reflection on the impact their actions may have had on the people receiving the services or the unfinished projects that are left behind after students depart. language barriers often limit the value of the interaction students have with people in the communities, casting doubt on the ‘globality’ of isl. other concerns emerge around the double standard universities shamelessly hold around such issues as proper certification (tesl certification to teach english as a second language not required; student doctors taking on the responsibility of a fully-trained doctor by performing procedures that they would not be allowed to perform in canada), ethics approval (using names and photos of people encountered abroad in their written reports back home, without consent), police checks for those interacting with under-aged children (not required) and the eurocentric values present in the determination and realization of projects, all in the name of global citizenship. unfinished projects, divided communities (the creation of haves and have-nots – those who receive services and those who do not), providing services that might otherwise be paid jobs, and travelling the world without disclosing one’s true intentions (tourist visa versus student visa) clearly do not fit well with the abstract ideal of ‘global citizenship’ (chapman, 2016). furthermore, it is only the privileged among canadian students who will participate in isl programs, as they are required to pay tuition fees for the course, plus an additional $3,000 to $9,000 cdn to go abroad. in fact, this is why at universities such as carleton, the global and international studies program offers six different ways for students to fulfill the required international experience component of their program, one of which does not require going abroad at all. a further consideration is the poverty porn many students engage in while abroad. for example, photographs of students surrounded by a bunch of local kids in africa, or pictures of sick, 152 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice mal-nourished children, depict the needy and their superior, first-world helper. these images are often used in community and classroom presentations back in canada. concepts or assertions closely tied to isl including, “let’s wake up the world” (zemach-bersin, 2009, 307), “the world is my classroom” (benham rennick & desjardins, 2013) and ‘culture shock’ inflate the importance of the programs. to suggest that the world needs waking-up and that students have the power and know-how to wake it up, suggests that the world is asleep and that a dose of northern values and practices will get them on the right path. fanon (2005/1961, 2008/1952), said (1978, 1994) and a host of other anti-colonialist and post-colonialist writers are the necessary antidote for this misconceived propaganda, not to mention harvey’s (2005) analysis of accumulation by dispossession already alluded to above. to consider the world as a classroom places communities at the disposition of students who will deconstruct them and fix them by reconstructing them using their eurocentric norms. freire’s (1970) radical critique of education that serves individual needs over collective transformation is a forceful rejection of the neo-colonial, eurocentric characteristics of isl. culture shock implies that the communities to be serviced somehow shock our northern values and negatively impact the cultural norms of our students, without considering how the community members might feel about the presence of students in their communities, often doing jobs that they are already doing, albeit in their way (illich, 2012/1968, 78). the lesson being taught about global citizenship by the analysis of neo-colonialism inherent in and revealed through the ethical dilemmas posed by isl can be radicalized in the language of foucauldian postcolonial critique, to which we now turn (see also lee, 2014). the mutual constitution of the global citizen as cartesian subject and the latinx undocumented migrant as non-citizen the concept of global citizenship is rooted in the assumption that there is a ‘communality’ among us, as we are all human, and as such share a commonality of values and rights. this rhetoric is problematic insofar as it does not attend to the modes of production that create inequities in the first place, the inequities (or inequalities) referred to in the first part of the paper. materially, we are not born equal. global corporate capitalism would not function if we were. in this section of the paper we intend to show how the concept of global citizenship ultimately aids in the re-staging of some bodies, specifically latinx global citizenship as neoliberal propaganda | 153 migrants, as non-human or less than human, which in turn ‘borders them out’ of any form of citizenship, including the global kind. we argue that crossing borders is a privilege of the cartesian subject while migrants face ‘death zones’ in the search for work, subjectivity and humanity.6 the global citizen is always already an embodiment of the cartesian subject. the celebration of global citizen rhetoric reduces citizenship to a metaphor, one that erases the material inequities of access to legal and social citizenship. the current division of the world into nation-states is a legacy of imperialism and colonialism. so too is the cartesian subject. the cartesian subject is one that inhabits coherent, consistent, rational space, demarcated by exclusionary borders. it is through the development of the science and logics of cartography that the cartesian subject comes into existence. “cartography […] is both an expression of the new form of subjectivity and a technology allowing (or causing) the new subjectivity to coalesce” (kirby, 1998, 25). cartography is the science of mapping borders corresponding to the territorialization of power and control. the cartesian subject can only be formed through an identification and subsequent bordering out of the ‘other’. ‘otherized’ bodies can never embody northern (or western) superiority and are part of an exploitable population, one that represents, and is only ever apprehended as, cheap labour or an excessive burden. this in turn keeps the ‘other’ in a state of nonhumanity. the cartesian subject is a legal citizen of the imperial state. the undocumented migrant, on the other hand, is perpetually excluded from enlightened subjectivity, which is based in legal citizenship according to the white imaginary of the cartesian subject (lipsitz, 2007, 13). the cartesian subject is a white construct, so while the brown body can become the settler it can never embody the ideal cartesian subject. the presence of racialized settlers, however, upholds the power of white settlement on indigenous land, through their complicity in imperial settlement. the undocumented migrant, though seeking to engage in this system, is always already excluded because of the processes of racialization that understand the latinx as degenerate, but also because of their illegal status. merleau-ponty points to the importance of marking boundaries as a way to organize, categorize and establish hierarchies. the “marking of 6 for a rather different treatment of “citizenship and the politics of death at the border” see rygiel (2014, p. 62 onwards). 154 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice boundaries is necessary to give a sense of organization to the world, thus building ‘into geographical setting a behavioural one’” (merleau ponty, quoted in mohanram, 1999, 17). mapping the physical boundaries of the nation-state identifies who belongs where, which bodies belong on which side of specific borders. through their undocumented status, and ‘taking up’ of imagined white space, the undocumented migrant suggests a weak imperial control of the border. the policies and institutions that target the capture, containment and/or death of undocumented migrants attempt to re-establish imperial rule and the superiority of the valid cartesian subject. mohanram writes, “bodies are specifically linked with nations” (ibid, 4). the white subject is the truest embodiment of the american nation-state and the cartesian subject, while the undocumented migrant gets locked into a zone of illegality (da silva, 2001). through a re-articulation and reproduction of these hierarchies the legitimacy and power of the cartesian subject and the imperial/neo-colonial state, under which the cartesian subject exists, are fortified. boundaries (both physical border boundaries, and categorical boundaries) are constructed in order to exclude some bodies from full, enlightened subjectivity. teune (2008) acknowledges that “the linkage of citizenship to territory attained maturity with the emergence of modern territorial states, where land is decisive as a component of wealth and hence of political power” (239). by implication global citizenship entails the deterritorialization of citizenship (ibid). the abstract ideal of benevolent global citizenship introduced in the first part of the paper embraces the idea that we can identify with a global community as an entry point for delivering help to impoverished people. it understands identity to transcend geographic borders and calls for a unity amongst people. it celebrates that we are, at our core, all humans. the idealism of unity and underlying humanism is easy to accept as wholly beneficial. however, this take on ’development’ overlooks the material conditions that create the inequities faced by marginalized groups, specifically by migrants who are perpetually deported to the site of non-humanity and global non-citizenship. a non-critical embracing of global citizenship reduces the concept to a metaphor at best, a restaging of the cartesian subject as all-powerful at worst. constructed death zones: constructing a cartesian global citizen stasiulis and bakan note that “while citizenship appears to be an inclusive, universalistic concept, in reality all state citizenships are not global citizenship as neoliberal propaganda | 155 equivalent; nor are all state citizenships allocated in equivalent ways” (stasiulis & bakan, 2006, 2). as citizens of imperial states, cartesian subjects can cross all borders easily and safely. their universal and materially experienced global citizenship grants them legitimized access, occupation and use of all space. the undocumented migrant, conversely, risks disability and death, perpetrated by the imperial state with impunity, when crossing borders. the imperialist u.s. state, for example, constructs death zones in an attempt to safeguard the pure white cartesian subject, while catching, killing and disabling undocumented migrants along their journey to safety. the journey of undocumented latinx migration claims many lives. most bodies and/or body parts never get identified (maril, 2011). the journey of undocumented migration is one that disappears people at high rates with little to no public reaction and total impunity. the falfurias traffic checkpoint exemplifies the murderability of undocumented people. falfurias is located in the interior of texas and is specifically designed to catch undocumented migrants who have managed to cross the border. there are 33 permanent traffic checkpoints inside the u.s. (jimenez, 2009) that operate as internal manifestations of the border. instead of risking driving through these checkpoints, undocumented migrants will walk around them. it is this part of the journey that claims the largest number of lives within the u.s. portion of the migrant’s journey. most of these deaths are attributed to dehydration and heat stroke, as the land is dry and desolate. undocumented migrants must walk for days, frequently running out of water and food as they are exposed to the harsh elements of the land. migrants are at the mercy of the land they travel across rather than being in control of it. the rational occupation and control over land is a right reserved to the truest citizen, the cartesian subject. the migrant in contrast travels through a death world designed to legitimize and safeguard the power of the cartesian subject. the checkpoints are strategically positioned to ‘deter’ migrants from attempting to go around them. the intentional threat of death surrounds the checkpoint. according to the institutionalized logic of deterrence theory, the migrant will cross through the checkpoint and subsequently be caught by government officials in order not to risk dying. deterrence theory concludes that if the undocumented migrant ‘chooses’ to walk around the checkpoint then they are also choosing to expose themselves to possible death. mbembe articulates what a death world is: 156 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice “michel foucault has argued that biopower is, to a large extent, power’s hold over the right to preserve life and administer death. he also showed how modern societies that function through biopower can justify the killing of populations only through appeals to race or racism, that very ‘pre-condition that makes killing acceptable’ by ‘killing,’ foucault meant not simply ‘murder as such, but also every form of indirect murder: the fact of exposing someone to death, increasing the risk of death for some people, or, quite simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on.’” (mbembe & foucault, quoted in mbembe, 2004, 392) the establishment of the checkpoint pushes undocumented migrants either to travel through these spaces that kill many of them or succumb to the political death resulting from deportation. detention/deportation showing the impossibility of global citizenship for the non-cartesian subject the result of being caught as an undocumented migrant is detention and subsequent deportation. “when the state punishes, say, a murderer, it not only removes a threat from the body politic, it also authoritatively repudiates the criminal person as an offending individual not deserving recognition as a citizen” (kumar & silver, 2008, 61). the undocumented migrant is always already understood as criminal. when they are detained they lose all rights to citizenship. in canada, undocumented migrants face indefinite detention while in the u.s. they are thrown into the detention industrial complex: “this type of industry operates with a market that pursues private profit not only at the expense of the taxpayers but also those who are held in immigration detention” (welch, 2012, 30). that profit can be extracted in the us from detainees living under conditions worse than citizens in correctional detention facilities, and that the canadian government can indefinitely detain undocumented migrants, reifies the undocumented migrant’s status as non-human. detainees cannot enter the fold of humanity and can therefore not enter any kind of citizenship. even once released, this constructed criminality follows them, keeping them outside of citizenship. the criminal cannot embody the global citizen as their movements are restricted and monitored. furthermore, the philanthropic helper imagined to embody global citizenship is not imagined as the criminal, global citizenship as neoliberal propaganda | 157 demonstrating once again the propaganda value of this rhetoric. the sovereignty of the individual (teune, 2008) that is celebrated in global citizen rhetoric always already refers to a specific type of individual, one who can move freely and safely through the world bridging gaps across borders. the undocumented, the criminal, and the poor themselves cannot do so. most detainees face deportation upon release. the forcible removal of undocumented migrants again points to the fact that some bodies – those of cartesian global citizens – have control over where and how their bodies move while others have none. furthermore, once ‘returned’ to their ‘homeland’ many are still unable to embody citizenship. “first, despite the popular and legal rhetoric depicting deportation as the unproblematic return of non-citizens to their homelands, deportees frequently experience removal as an exile from their home. this sense of exile is often reinforced by the reactions of fellow citizens in their countries-of-origin, who perceive and treat deportees as outsiders, foreigners, and/or violent criminals threatening state security. second, deportees and their family members experience a postdeportation victimization that confounds popular perception of the migrants as troublemakers who, at a minimum, have violated prohibitions on unauthorized entry or, at a maximum, have victimized others through violent crime” (dingeman-cerda & coutin, 2012, 114; emphasis in original). their criminality is not specific to the site of detention but rather is treated as inhering within them. hence, even after living as documented citizens they are still understood and often understand themselves as non-citizens, looping them out of humanity and subjectivity and ultimately out of any possible embodiment of global citizenship. conclusion “the question for the future of citizenship is whether a ‘global’ citizenship can transcend citizenships defined by ‘local’ states on the basis of blood and birth or through an act of the state itself. that is beginning to happen” (teune, 2008, 249). in sharp contrast to teune our answer to his question is an unequivocal no. we reject any claim that ‘transcendence’ is beginning to happen 158 | social inequality and the spectre of social justice for anyone outside those embodying the cartesian subject. universal global citizenship is an impossibility until there is a complete dismantling of the neoliberal world order that requires the colonialist territorializing of nationstates and bodies (cf. lee, 2014, 76). to suggest that universal global citizenship is a current possibility is only to reify the dominance of the cartesian subject – whether as transnational corporation or co-ordinator class member or rich tourist – at the expense of marginalized ‘others’. the imaginary of good global citizenship ‘desires’ that our loyalty be to humanity as a whole, to all humans around the world with a particular emphasis on speaking and advocating for the global poor. global citizenship is taken up as a call to action for people in the north to save people in the global south under a mirage of unity and ally-ship. moreover, under the neoliberal dispensation whereby one’s life [is] the enterprise of oneself, “the rhetoric of global citizenship contributes to the illusion that global inequities and poverty are issues that can be addressed through simplistic methods, such as fundraising. although these methods may alleviate specific hardships, they fail to advocate for systemic change” (decaro, 2014, 3). as a result, ‘global citizens’ turn out to be in practice “privileged individuals who have the opportunity to learn about the world, often through travel” (roddick, 2008, 55, quoted in decaro, 2014, 8). no sources that we found that celebrate global citizenship offer a concrete critique of the neoliberal world order, nor do they recognize the legacies of and ongoing colonization projects that allow some to embody the global citizen over others. furthermore, few call for individuals to hold their own states to account or 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http://www.uvic.ca/assets2012/docs/international-plan.pdf http://www.uvic.ca/education/exercise/ https://uwaterloo.ca/international/waterloo-worldwide/international-offices https://uwaterloo.ca/international/waterloo-worldwide/international-offices ar2015_pages.indd neoliberalismand thedegradation ofdegradation of degradation of edited by: carlo fanelli & bryan evans alternate routes 2015 © alternate routes, 2015 toronto www.alternateroutes.ca www.aupress.ca www.redquillbooks.com “alternate routes” issn 1923-7081 (online) issn 0702-8865 (print) produced by: published by: alternate routes: a journal of critical social research vol. 26, 2015 managing editors: carlo fanelli and bryan evans interventions editor: jordy cummings book review editors: priscillia lefebvre and nicolas carrier editorial advisory board: nahla abdo, dimitry anastakis, ian angus, pat armstrong, tim bartkiw, david camfield, nicolas carrier, sally chivers, wallace clement, simten cosar, aaron doyle, ann duffy, luis fernandez, randall germain, peter gose, alan hunt, paul kellogg, jacqueline kennelly, mark neocleous, bryan palmer, garry potter, georgios papanicolaou, mi park, justin paulson, stephanie ross, herman rosenfeld, george s. rigakos, heidi rimke, arne christoph ruckert, toby sanger, ingo schmidt, alan sears, mitu sengupta, meenal shrivastava, janet lee siltanen, susan jane spronk, jim struthers, donald swartz, mark p. thomas, rosemary warskett journal mandate established in 1977 at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university, alternate routes is committed to creating outlets for critical social research and interdisciplinary inquiry. alternate routes works closely with scholars, labour, community and social justice researchers to promote the publication of heterodox critical social research in all its forms, as well as provocative and progressive analyses that may not find a forum in conventional academic venues. alternate routes seeks to be a public academic journal and encourages works that advance or challenge theoretical, historical and contemporary socio-political, economic and cultural issues. in addition to full-length articles, we welcome review essays sparked by previously published material, interviews, commentaries, book reviews as well as poetry, drawings and photo-essays. 4 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education table of contents | 5 table of contents editorial introduction capitalism in the classroom: the commodification of education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 carlo fanelli and bryan evans articles the corporate corruption of academic research . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 jamie brownlee the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 jeff noonan, and mireille coral why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? critical theory on policy movement in the context of contemporary reform in mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 paul bocking free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: the bologna process in turkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 simten coşar and hakan ergül rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 garry potter from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial: the consolidation of neoliberalism in ontario’s universities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 eric newstadt the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign: an assessment from a social movement unionism perspective . . . . . . . . . . . 170 caitlin hewitt-white precarious employment in ontario’s university sector: reflections on collective bargaining at carleton university . . 200 mathew nelson and lydia dobson neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 paul orlowski 6 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education “between a rock and a hard place”: negotiating the neoliberal regulation of social work practice and education . . . . . . . . 251 teresa macías a critique of the millennial: a retreat from and return to class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 tanner mirrless interventions neoliberalism and the attack on education: an interview with henry a. giroux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 heather mclean the new brutalism in higher education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 henry a. giroux neoliberal standardization and its discontents: an interview with diane ravitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 christopher bailey beyond education, brains and hard work: the aspirations and career trajectory of two black young men . . . . . . . . . . 332 carl e. james the abode of educational production: an interview with peter mclaren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354 jordy cummings learning without sages? reflections on “flipping” the university classroom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 joel d. harden beyond the first rung: an interview with jim silver . . . . . . . . . 390 jordy cummings critical education and insurgent pedagogies: an interview with e. wayne ross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 carlo fanelli book reviews john marsh. class dismissed: why we can’t teach or learn our way out of inequality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 peter brogan gamel abdel-shehid and nathan kalman-lamb. out of left field: social inequality and sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 christine pich table of contents | 7 meg luxton and mary jane mossman. reconsidering knowledge: feminism and the academy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 jordan fairbairn alain deneault and william sacher. imperial canada inc.: legal haven of choice for the world’s mining industries . . . . . . 343 j.z. garrod nikolas barry-shaw and dru oja jay. paved with good intentions: canada’s development ngos from idealism to imperialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 madalena santos scott neigh. resisting the state: canadian history through the stories of activists. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443 amanda joy a.l. mccready. yellow ribbons: the militarization of national identity in canada . . . . . . . . . . . . 446 shannon t. speed perry anderson. the new old world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 aaron henry articles 10 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education editorial introduction: capitalism in the classroom | 11 editorial introduction capitalism in the classroom: the commodification of education education policy and politics reflect, as so few other areas of social policy do, the role of the state not just in capitalist economic development but also in constructing a working class to fit the needs required for that development. education, at least at the primary level, emerged as among the first public services concerned with human resource development. the industrialization and urbanization of 19th century capitalism required that its working class be numerate and literate. this link to capitalist relations of production and economic development was organic and necessary. education not only provided workers with skills but socialized children into understanding their role as disciplined workers. and that link has been continuous. the confluence of postwar prosperity and the cold war expanded the need for a still more broadly educated workforce capable of undertaking professional and quasi-professional work within the expanding private and public sector organizations, and to contribute to scientific research and development which was largely centred on military strategy. consequently, post-secondary education (pse) underwent an unprecedented expansion and one largely funded by the state. at an ideological level, a new social contract emerged which wove liberal democratic citizenship, state-subsidized research and innovation, and increasing rates of productivity and capital accumulation into a virtuous cycle of mutual social, political and economic gains. such was the golden age of capitalism! today, into the fourth decade of neoliberalism, another new social contract is in the process of being written, and within this new regime of class relations, contemporary education policy and practice corresponds to and reproduces the new balance of class power expressed by this ‘variety’ of capitalism. the contributions presented in this volume deal with a range of foci in education but all illustrate from their own perspective the “new brutalism” (giroux) in education. all, to some degree, are concerned with the role of the state in neoliberalizing education. however, two (cosar and ergul; bocking) are explicitly centred on the politics of public policy in enabling neoliberalization. others are centred around the resistance, uneven though it is, of education workers and students to this process 12 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education (potter; nelson and dobson; hewitt-white; and orlowski). still others take a more labour process and ideational framing approach where the focus is on how professions are ideologically reconstructed (macias) and how the critical centre-place of employability and entrepreneurship in post-secondary education have served to displace, if not destroy, the role of the university as a space for a broad range of perspectives, including critical ones, to incubate and engage with the larger society. instead the only incubation is that of likely-to-fail business ventures. and entrepreneurship is an ideological carrier serving to prepare students for a life of precarity (newstadt; noonan and coral; mirrlees). and informing all of this is the corporate penetration and occupation of the university. the result is an astonishing tale of transformation, de-democratization and a narrowing of vison and therefore of purpose (brownlee). the issues and critiques raised here reflect and respond to the assault of fundamentalist neoliberals, who view education as a commodity to be bought and sold like any other, while the market is presumed to effectively (i.e. profitably) allocate scarce resources. approaching some $3 trillion in market opportunities, the education sector has come to be seen as a major source of untapped privatization. indeed, along with health care, education is a significant dimension in the public services privatization and marketization ‘gold rush’ (huws, 2008). as performancebased evaluations become more prevalent, testing and assessment niche markets are expected to continue growing. a recent (and astonishing for its forthrightness) example of fundamentalist neoliberalism is found in the pages of rebuilding america’s middle class: prosperity requires capitalism in the classroom. this report from southern methodist university’s school of business, o’neil center for global markets and freedom, reads as a revisionist history of us capitalism that trumpets the virtues of further marketizing education in all its forms. for instance, dean of the school, albert w. niemi, contends “...only more competition will improve education,” while chairman of the o’neil center’s advisory board jerry fulinwider, lamenting his distrust of big government, calls the “wagner act, a new deal labor law...unfair, un-american.” the target, in both respects, is the us’s allegedly “centralized, bureaucratic public school system” and the unions “fighting to protect their own interests, not students’ well-being.” contending that us public schools have become a fiefdom for unionized workers and government waste, the author’s of the report, w. michael cox and richard alm (2012, 11), argue: “the superiority of editorial introduction: capitalism in the classroom | 13 the private sector over government arises from choice and competition... government fails because it replaces choice and competition with the ‘take it or leave it’ diktat of politicians and bureaucrats. they decide what people ought to have – one size fits all. government wallows in red tape, resists change and protects entrenched interests.” part populism and part right-wing propaganda, the report is soft on comparative data lacking both methodological rigour and theoretical clarity of comprehension. rather, exaggerated rhetoric and repetitive ideological tropes dominate: “the impediment is a government-run school system resistant to innovation, indifferent to student needs and mired in mediocrity. we won’t improve our school’s until we get government out of the way.” bemoaning unions and their political meddling as obstacles, in a vain attempt at comparative analysis the authors then go on to make the case that the education sector should be run more like apple as opposed to a fictitious government telecommunications company, or more like federal express as opposed to the united states postal service; both companies with well-documented exploitative labour practices, tax avoidance schemes and significant public subsidies which simultaneously go to fund their anti-corporate tax and social security fighting politicking. further, in a twist of methodological manipulation, cox and alm (2012, 10-13) aim to eliminate “demographic bias” by “adjusting each state’s data to reflect the national mix of major ethnic groups in public schools: 59.2 percent whites, 24.6 percent hispanics and 16.2 percent blacks.” this seemingly benign method, while on the face of it incorporating ethno-racial oppressions, in fact does the opposite; it homogenizes state-level demographic differences in math, reading and science to demonstrate the apparent coincidence that students from predominantly white, higher-income earning states outperform their hispanic and black counterparts. drawing on friedman’s capitalism and freedom, the authors argue that public school systems should be run more like restaurants providing bare minimum standards. “government penalizes individual success with higher taxes...failure often gets rewarded with a bigger subsidy” (ibid). they make a case for the total privatization of the educational sector, which includes vouchers, charter schools, tax deductions, credits, online learning and home schooling, without a mention of how such measures exacerbate ethno-racial and class-based oppressions or increase women’s share of unpaid socially reproductive labour. their report reaches its culmination when cox and alm (2012, 16) claim: 14 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education “students will be better serviced in private schools run like a business. there’s no reason to shy away from what this means: operating for profit, replacing principles with ceo’s, paying good teachers more, firing bad teachers, giving schools freedom to innovate in instruction methods and curriculum, letting new schools enter the market, allowing bad ones to fail, encouraging successful schools to takeover unsuccessful ones, getting rid of unions that protect bad teachers and stifle change.” without a glimmer of critical engagement, the authors assert that the market, god-like, simply knows best; but education policy should never be left to faith alone, especially in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. yet, in a recurring set of narratives, the o’neil centre is less concerned with improving education in the sense of enhanced democratic capacities, public engagement and social justice, but in a purely profit motivated sense. as one of the centre’s keynote speakers held at a conference organized on “the future of economic freedom” expressed: “very curiously, despite the tremendous success of capitalism, it has what i call a very serious branding problem. business isn’t seen as good. instead business is mostly seen as selfish, greedy, exploitative, fundamentally unethical” (john mackey in cox and alm, 2012, 21). rather than continuing this promising line of inquiry, however, mackey proposes “conscious capitalism” – a branding exercise to ideologically imbue notions of ‘responsible capitalism’ and counter criticisms of capitalist class power or deficiencies in policymaking outcomes. in line with neoliberalism’s most vocal expositors seeking to transform the role of the state in the provision of social services, veronique de rugy argued: “i want government to compete with each other as ferociously as possible.” in an attempt to draw attention to the global benefits of neoliberal policies in raising living standards, benjamin powell, director of the free market institute at texas tech, added: “..outlawing sweatshops would just make workers in poor countries worse off. sweatshop workers feel fortunate to have their jobs because garment factories offer better pay and working conditions than the most likely alternatives – subsistence farming, begging, scavenging and informal service sector jobs” (cited in cox and arm, 2012, 22). other conference participants such as distinguished professor of capitalism, edward lopez, and a host of others, went on to make similar arguments proclaiming the value of consolidating capitalism in the classroom. in an unrelated but growing choir, the economist (2013) praised small heath secondary editorial introduction: capitalism in the classroom | 15 school in birmingham, england, for their recent change to a businessfriendly curriculum that welcomes “capitalists in the classroom.” unfortunately, many canadian universities have been steadily emulating the us model of privatized post-secondary education.1 the user-fee model, which assumes private, post-graduation returns by charging up-front fees borrowed against expected future earnings, as the articles in this volume argue, has shown itself to be a fundamentally flawed model that has reinforced ethno-racial, gender and class-based oppressions (giroux, this volume; ravitch, this volume). in canada, this signifies a considerable movement away from a publicly funded post-secondary education system financed through a broad range of progressive taxes which, considered historically, have increased equality as measured by social mobility rates, enhanced working conditions, decreased student debt loads and provided a measure of insulation against corporate directed research and study (brownlee, this volume). in order to cope with chronic underfunding, many universities and colleges are turning to part-time instructors rather than full-time, tenured faculty, resulting in an increased rate of precarious employment as well as reduced student-professor face-time (silver, this volume; mclaren, this volume; harden, this volume). for neoliberal proponents “...knowledge [is viewed] as a commodity…and education as a path to income generation that must be privatized and made profitable in order for it to be maintained effectively.” (caffentzis, 2005, 600). increasingly, then, democratic control over resources, knowledge production and public space is monopolized by private interests with no other aim but to make a profit. hence, many universities are streamlining their services and course offerings to those that address market considerations or are “business-related,” while those more critically inclined, and therefore less likely to buy into a purely market driven educational model are isolated or have their program spending reduced or axed all together. this includes smaller departments and/or programs such as women’s and cultural studies, history and philosophy, critical interdisciplinary centres, especially those focused on labour-capital relations and smaller specialized programs like political economy, social and political thought or, oddly enough, canadian studies. as a consequence, university investments in the arts, humanities and the social sciences pale in comparison with the physical sciences and explicitly entrepreneurial or business-related research. rather, university administrators navigate the grant economy seeking to partner with 1  parts of this section are drawn extensively from fanelli, 2013 16 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education private sector philanthropists, in the process endangering scholastic independence by catering to the needs of powerful sectoral interests. this necessarily “curtails the pedagogic processes that potentially generates a critical perspective against the [capitalist] system…” as kumar (2010) continues: “education is more than formal institutional structures and classroom transactions. it is an arena that reflects the agenda and need of the dominant class interests in a society. therefore, to understand whatever happens in education it is important to understand the class politics, or labour-capital conflict, characterizing a society.” in this sense, the terrain of education and what is taught is at its core an ongoing field of class struggles across its diverse forms, including against racism, heteronormativity, gender-based discrimination and other intersecting axes of oppression. these issues, as much as concerns over universal accessibility, social justice, knowledge production and labour-capital-state conflicts in the pse sector and beyond, are themselves deeply entrenched within capitalist power structures (james, this volume; macias, this volume; mirrless, this volume). the province of ontario, where we are located, is exemplary in this respect (newstadt, this volume). between 1988-9 and 2005-6 consecutive federal governments have reduced total transfer (both cash and tax points) payments for pse by 40 percent (in 1998 dollars), while simultaneously pushing for enhanced partnerships with business counterparts in order to create new profit-making opportunities. this has resulted in the semi-privatization of ontario’s pse fees and thereby the creation of a quasi-market in the public sector (fisher et al., 2006; jones and young, 2004). this is perhaps best reflected in the steadily advancing privatization of pse in ontario as there has been a proliferation of private career colleges opened since the 1990s as commercial enterprises. the number of these colleges rose from just over 200 in 1990 to over 450 by 2004 (fisher et al., 2009; levin, kater, and wagoner, 2006 ). in ontario, between 1992-3 and 2004-5 provincial expenditures on pse (in 2004 dollars) decreased by nearly 15 percent (fisher et al. 2009, 553). transfers to colleges and universities per full-time equivalent student enrollment over the same period decreased by nearly 32 percent (caut, 2006). thus in ontario, user-fees and privatization measures are subtly being introduced under a policy framework of incrementalism, with recent reports proposing an expansion of for-profit pse (drummond commission, 2012). in ontario, spending as a share of university operating revenue between 1994 and 2004 decreased from 73 to 49 percent (fisher et al. 2009, 554). while in 1990 tuition fees accounted for 20 editorial introduction: capitalism in the classroom | 17 percent of institutional operating budgets, today it’s over 50 percent. as a consequence, between 1991 and 2008 average domestic tuition fees across canada increased by 176 percent. it is useful to point out that approximately 40 percent of the canadian population lives in ontario and roughly 42 percent of canadians choose ontario as their destination for pse (jones and young, 2004; dylan, 2012). thus what happens to pse and labour disputes in ontario may reveal broader trends canada-wide (hewitt-white, this volume; nelson and dobson, this volume). ontario occupies the unenviable distinction as the most expensive province in the country to complete an undergraduate degree. in 1990 the average cost of canadian tuition was under $1,500 but now stands at more than $6,000 per year. this mirrors a similar process for graduate students who now have to pay the highest fees in the country at over $9,000 per year.2 the tuition fee freeze that students won between 2004 and 2006 was cancelled by the liberal government and replaced with a new tuition framework. that framework, which ran from 2006 to 2012, allowed tuition fees for undergraduate students in their first year to increase up to 4.5 percent, while fee increases for the continuing years were limited to 4 percent. fees in graduate and professional programs, however, could increase by up to 8 percent for students in their first year, and 4 percent for students in continuing years. overall, tuition increases were limited to an annual average of 5 percent at each institution. this framework was succeeded by the current framework where the overall cap is 3 percent and that for graduate studies is a maximum 5 percent increase. the ontario government has done away with specifying a separate undergraduate cap and leaves it to institutions to sort out the undergraduate increase within the overall limit of 3 percent based on their particular program mix (artuso, 2013; yan, 2013). as a result, ontario undergraduate students hold the largest debt at graduation averaging more than $37,000 per student and increasing to over $44,000 for phd graduates. at $9,718 average per-student funding, ontario spends 20 percent less than the national average of $12,500. this has lead to larger class sizes and debt overhangs that have resulted in the number of summer days a student would have to work to make 2  this pales in comparison with quebec’s average undergraduate cost of $2,415, which were previously frozen for thirty-five years. it must be recalled that quebec never passed the cost of federal funding cuts onto students, while college generally remains free for residents and scholarships are ‘needs-based’ in an effort to reduce socio-economic inequalities. similarly, between 2002-04, the government of newfoundland and labrador reduced tuition fees by 25 percent and have since then been frozen, although recent austerity measures have begun to undermine the freeze and the quebec differential. 18 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education enough money to pay tuition fees for one year rising from barely over six weeks in 1980 to fifteen weeks by 2010 (based on undergraduate fees averaging $5,951, minimum wage and an 8-hour work day). as well, ontario continues to provide zero funding transfers to universities for international students. this has not stopped many university administrations from seeing international (particularly graduate) students as a strong source of foreign capital since they pay upwards of three times what domestic students pay (see ross, this volume). all things considered, the trajectory of pse in ontario is one where higher education is envisaged as serving business-related vocational and technical labour market needs, sustaining competition and ensuring market-oriented research (noonan and coral, this volume).3 international trends suggest similar processes of neoliberalizing pse (bocking, this volume; coşar and ergül, this volume). thus recent austerity measures must be considered in historical perspective as budget cuts and the pressures related to austerity are merely the latest in a sustained assault on public colleges and universities (potter, this volume; orlowski, this volume). this has been reflected in a de-democratization tendency or ‘disciplinary democracy’ in the pse sector as across the public sector more generally that ever-more deploys authoritarian measures that marginalizes, and even criminalizes, dissent in defense of austerity and market freedoms (albo and fanelli, 2014). the articles collected here challenge the unsubstantiated assertions of free market fundamentalists dogmatically insisting that education in all its forms requires capitalism in the classroom. this raises the question without providing any easy answers, of course, about under what conditions a social justice-centred approach to education that deepens and extends democratic capacities may flourish. alternate routes first explored these concerns in a series of panels organized at the conference capitalism in the classroom: neoliberalism, education and progressive alternatives held at ryerson university on april 4, 2014. like previous alternate routes conferences, video presentation can be found online at www.alternateroutes.ca. all things considered, this volume builds on our previous conference, while continuing to grapple with subject matter challenging the neoliberal degradation of education. we would like to extend our gratitude to ryerson university’s faculty of arts, office of the dean, 3  some have argued that the university of ontario institute of technology – the first new university in the province in forty years – is explicitly oriented to serving the automotive, technological and electrical power generation industries in ontario (see fisher et al., 2009). editorial introduction: capitalism in the classroom | 19 department of politics and public administration, department of sociology, centre for labour management relations, and toronto centre for social justice for providing us with financial support in order to see both the conference and this issue through. thanks are also due to the conference presenters and participants for their thoughtful contributions and engagement. with this volume, bryan evans joins our editorial advisory board and john shields as co-editor for our next issue. we look forward to continuing and extending alternate routes’ commitment to critical social research. references albo, g. and c. fanelli. (2014). austerity against democracy: an authoritarian phase of neoliberalism? teoria politica: an international journal of theory and politics, 2014, 65-88. artuso, a. (2013, march 28). ontario university, college tuition gets ok to rise 3% per year. toronto sun, http://www.torontosun.com/2013/03/28/ university-college-tuition-to-rise-3-per-year caffentzis, g. academic freedom and the crisis of neoliberalism: some cautions. review of african political economy, 106, 599-608. canadian association of university teachers. (2006). caut almanac of post-secondary education in canada. ottawa: caut publications. commission on the reform of ontario’s public services (drummond commission). (2012). public services for ontarians: a path to sustainability and excellence. toronto: queens printer for ontario. cox, w.m. and r. alm. (2012). rebuilding america’s middle class: prosperity requires more capitalism in the classroom. o’neil center for global markets and freedom, smu cox school of business. texas: southern methodist university. dylan, a. (2012). safety in the classroom: safeguarding liberal arts education from the neo-liberal threat. canadian journal of higher education, 42(2), 34-48. fanelli, c. (2013). fragile future: the attack against public services and public sector unions in an era of austerity. unpublished doctoral dissertation. ottawa: carleton university. fisher, d., k. rubenson, g. jones and t. shanahan. (2009). the political economy of post-secondary education: a comparison of british columbia, ontario, and québec. higher education, 57, 549-566 fisher, d., rubenson, k., shanahan, t., trottier, c., bernatchez, j., clift, r. (2006). canadian federal policy and post-secondary education. vancouver: centre for policy studies in higher education and training. 20 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education huws, u. (2008). the new gold rush: the new multinationals and the commodification of public sector work. work, organisation, labour and globalization, 2(2), 1-8. jones, g.a. and s.j. young. (2004). ‘madly off in all directions’: higher education, marketization and canadian federalism. in texeira, p., b. jongbloed, d. dill and a. amaral (eds.), markets in higher education: rhetoric or reality? (185-206). dordrecht, netherlands: kluwer academic publishers. kumar, r. (2010, december 2). neoliberalism, education and the politics of capital: searching possibilities for resistance. radical notes, http:// radicalnotes.com/category/commentaries/page/4/ levin, j.s., s. kater and r.l. wagoner. (2006). community college faculty: at work in the new economy. new york: palgrave macmillan. the economist. (2013). capitalists in the classroom. the economist, http:// www.economist.com/node/21587817 yan, t. (2013, april 8) . ontario announces tuition fees compromise. the varsity, http://thevarsity.ca/2013/04/01/ ontario-announces-tuition-fees-compromise/ articles 22 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the corporate corruption of academic research | 23 the corporate corruption of academic research jamie brownlee1 abstract: in canada, and elsewhere, universities are becoming increasingly corporatized. this paper explores one aspect of the corporatization process: how university research has been transformed. i provide a detailed analysis of how corporate influence has corrupted academic research, from the selection of research topics, to research secrecy, through to how conflicts of interest and research bias influence the collection and release of information. as part of my analysis, i include an in-depth case study of biomedical research and academic medicine to show how the corporatization of higher education has led to systematic research bias and compromised the values that have historically defined scientific research. for universities and the medical profession, corporatization has produced a crisis of credibility in the published literature and tarnished the academy as a source of disinterested knowledge. for the public, the consequences run much deeper. i conclude by locating the corruption of academic research in the fundamental antagonism between corporate and academic institutions. keywords: corporatization, conflicts of interest, research bias, biomedical research, academic medicine introduction supporters of the corporatization of higher education present the benefits of university-industry research ties in clear, decisive terms. these purported benefits include financial support for universities, commercially valuable product development, faculty access to research and development opportunities, enhanced technological innovation and scientific progress. some even claim that industry funding and public-private partnerships enhance customary measures 1  jamie brownlee (jamie.brownlee@carleton.ca) teaches in the department of law and legal studies, carleton university. he is the author of ruling canada: corporate cohesion and democracy. 24 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education of academic quality, such as publication productivity (crespo and dridi, 2007). in contrast, i argue that the corporatization of academic research has not been beneficial for universities or for society. on the contrary, it has reduced researchers’ ability to pursue independent lines of scholarship, compromised the values and practices that have historically defined scientific and other academic research, and tarnished the university as a site of unbiased inquiry. using this position as a starting point, this paper explores how university research has been transformed – and the public interest threatened – by the corporatization process. i provide a detailed analysis, including an in-depth case study of academic medicine, of how corporate influence has, in effect, corrupted academic research, from the selection of research topics, to research secrecy, through to how conflicts of interest and research bias influence the collection and release of information. i conclude by locating the corruption of academic research in the fundamental antagonism between corporate and academic institutions, while advancing the need for radical changes to the corporate-academic research interface. selection of research topics corporate influence crosses all aspects of the academic research process, including at the outset with the selection of research topics and projects. rather than setting their own research agendas in response to social needs, academics are increasingly joining with partners from the private sector to define their research priorities. as a result, the basis for deciding what knowledge is worth pursuing is defined more and more by the criteria of corporate demand. many areas of university research have been affected by this shift. in agricultural research, for example, the influence of agrochemical companies has moved research agendas in the direction of resource intensive production technologies, genetic engineering and chemical-based pest and weed control. in the latter case, hundreds of millions of dollars are being allocated to the development of new toxic pesticides in university labs, while the study of biological control – the discipline of controlling agriculture pests through means other than pesticides – has all but disappeared. likewise, because of their dependence on industry funding, the research of most weed scientists centres on chemical herbicides rather than alternative forms of management like biological the corporate corruption of academic research | 25 control and crop rotation strategies.2 according to john mcmurtry (2009, 17), independent agricultural research in areas such as “integrated pest management, organic farming for productive efficiency, management-intensive grazing, small-scale producer cooperatives, alternatives to factory-processed livestock and avoidance of ecological contamination by genetically-engineered commodities” have been “silently selected out” of universities because corporations are not interested in funding them. the same is true in many areas of health research. in recent years, far more resources have been put into investigating the cellular/genetic basis for cancer than into environmental factors, which are now widely recognized to be key determining factors. not only are corporations unwilling to fund research into the linkages between cancers and industrial toxins, they have also made a concerted effort to suppress academic research that demonstrates any kind of causal relationship. in the same way, corporate and government funding programs have worked to redirect cancer research from causes to cures (thompson, 2008). it is often claimed that without the money and support of large corporations, universities would lack the capacity (and the incentive) to produce new life-saving drugs, medicines and therapies. the reality, however, is quite different. corporate influence has diverted academic attention away from vaccine research and diseases that affect the world’s poor (e.g., malaria, schistosomiasis, tuberculosis and dengue fever). in fact, a recent study of the top 54 canadian and us research universities found that less than 3 percent of research funding is devoted to diseases that affect the world’s poorest people. the report also notes that more than a billion people currently suffer from “neglected diseases,” or diseases that are “rarely researched by the private sector because most of those affected are too poor to provide a market for new drugs” (universities allied for essential medicines, 2013, para. 8). for commercial reasons, the vast majority of research investments by the pharmaceutical industry (and increasingly universities) focus on what are called “lifestyle drugs” – highprofit treatments for obesity, baldness, wrinkles and sexual dysfunction. of course, the impact of corporatization on academic research agendas is not limited to the sciences. in her work, laureen snider (2000; 2003) has documented a precipitous decline in social science research on corporate crime in canada and elsewhere. she attributes this decline 2  nearly two decades ago in toxic deception, dan fagin and marianne lavell (1996, 52) quoted the former president of the weed science society of american as stating: “if you don’t have any research [funding] other than what’s coming from the ag[ro] companies, you’re going to be doing research on agricultural chemicals. that’s the hard, cold, fact.” 26 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to the unwillingness of private sponsors and governments to fund this type of research, and to political pressures both inside and outside of the academy. in some ways, academics may be viewed as victims in this process. university researchers are under intense pressure to secure outside funding and many would be unable to continue their research programs without such support. a recent survey by researchers at the ontario institute for studies in education, for example, found that three quarters of canadian academics said that pressures to raise external funds had increased since their first appointment (tamburri, 2012). furthermore, the distinction between research choices made out of scholarly interest and those made because of funding availability is not an easy one to draw. many academics believe they are engaging with particular topics out of their own free choice when in reality they are often “adjusting their curiosities” to match the interests of available sponsors. according to jeff schmidt (2000), many funders are aware that they can arouse the necessary interest in academic circles without formally dictating research priorities. on the other hand, academics are also active participants in the selection of their areas of research. the fact that so many of them acquiesce to (or embrace) corporate lines of research suggests a high level of conscious complicity. as claire polster (2000, 30) explains, many canadian scholars freely admit to doing “whatever it takes” to strengthen their granting performance, including “switching their research topics to well-funded areas in which they often have lesser expertise.” in sum, although corporate-university ties may reduce the ability of some academics to engage in alternative or critical research agendas, the selection of research topics are moral and political choices that cannot simply be blamed on financial necessity or the demands of funders. research secrecy universities have traditionally been an important source of the knowledge commons, which jennifer sumner (2008, 193) defines as “cooperative human constructions that protect and/or enable universal access to the life good of knowledge … this knowledge is shared, not privatized, packaged, priced, and profited from.” similarly, david bollier (2002) describes the academy as a “gift economy.” the gift economy of academia presumes that research and scholarly resources are produced in accordance with publicly articulated purposes, and supported by the free production and circulation of the corporate corruption of academic research | 27 knowledge, both within and outside of the university. for bollier, gift economies are “potent systems for eliciting and developing behaviors that the market cannot,” such as honesty, information sharing and mutual collaboration (30). in their seminal work on the scientific enterprise, robert merton (1973) and michael polanyi (1969) reached similar conclusions about the nature of academic research. both argued that the products of research should be open and shared and that researchers should be primarily disinterested or motivated by a commitment to advance knowledge rather than personal or financial gain. these are not simply proscriptions for the way academics ought to behave; rather, the open and disinterested nature of academic inquiry is precisely what makes it so innovative. as jennifer washburn (2005, 195) explains, the system “does a remarkably good job of speeding the creation of new discoveries, hastening public disclosure, and enabling peers to evaluate and replicate new research findings to ensure their accuracy – all of which helps to broaden the stock of reliable public knowledge that is available for future research and innovation.” these concepts – of knowledge commons and gift economies – are idealized terms. research secrecy has always had a place in academia, as some professors have always been reluctant to share ideas out of fear that they will be appropriated by others. nonetheless this practice runs counter to academic ideals and has increased under corporatization.3 one of the ways that corporatization has fostered academic secrecy is through the creation of a more competitive, utilitarian and performance-based research culture. for example, as publication productivity becomes more important for academic appointment and promotion there are fewer incentives for collaboration and knowledge sharing among researchers. the same is true for graduate students, whose phd experiences increasingly resemble competitive self-marketing marathons. and, as noted above, greater pressures has been placed on faculty to obtain external grants, which has helped to transform the university from a knowledge sharing institution to a site of competitive fundraisers. as polster (2007, 610) discovered in her research, the importance placed on grant acquisition “is reducing some colleagues’ willingness to support one another in a variety of ways, such as reading or discussing research 3  some have been particularly critical of academics who keep research findings secret. “like a lie,” writes robert wolff (1969, 129), “the commitment to secrecy sunders the moral bond between the members of the university.” a person who keeps their research secret “is no more capable of entering genuinely into the public discourse of the university than is an fbi agent posing as a student radical.” 28 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education proposals and papers. it is also taking a toll on academic collegialism and morale.”4 polster also found that there is a growing tendency for canadian academics to avoid scientific conferences for fear of disclosing valuable information and, when they do attend, these “private academics” often refuse to provide details of their research or engage in discussions that might compromise funding or commercial interests (polster, 2000). in addition to these pressures, corporate funding and public-private partnerships contribute to research secrecy more directly, including through non-disclosure and intellectual property (ip) agreements. whereas academic secrecy is often a short-term expedient to ensure publication, commercial secrecy via ip arrangements can be a lengthy process that remains in place for as long as proprietors deem it to be in their interest. in some cases, contractual arrangements can force academics to transfer the results of their research to the firms who paid for it. in others, the publication of findings may be delayed until a corporate sponsor obtains a patent on its ip. selective disclosure and withholding of data may also occur if the research results are potentially damaging to the corporate bottom line. efforts to maintain research secrecy by certain industries, such as the pharmaceutical industry, are especially harmful, with some companies using “gag orders, appealing to trade secrets, concealing [drug risks] behind a veil of attorney-client privilege, settling legal actions out of court to hide data and documents, [and] stalking and harassing academic critics” (healy, 2012, 119). a recent example of how corporate influence leads to research secrecy involved the oil giant british petroleum (bp). in the first few months after the gulf oil disaster in 2010, bp enlisted academic scientists into exclusive research and consulting contracts that were replete with secrecy clauses and barred them from making their findings public (lea, 2010). not only was bp attempting to subvert the scientific process, but it was putting measures in place to ensure it would control academic data and evidence about the disaster. this example, and others like it, demonstrates how corporate-university alliances have the potential to stifle research in the public interest. of course, it is not just the proprietary control of capital that is responsible for ip-related secrecy in higher education. it has also resulted from the autonomous initiatives and commitments of academic actors. for much of the twentieth century, academics (and universities) did not consider research-related ip as an opportunity for economic enrichment. 4  this increased emphasis on “performance” and competition in university research has been well documented at some institutions, such as the university of ottawa, where reduced collegiality was identified as one of the most noticeable consequences (chan and fisher, 2008). the corporate corruption of academic research | 29 in fact, limiting scholarly or public access by commercializing research results was regarded as a suspect practice, or worse.5 however, these ideas about the role of ip in higher education have since largely been abandoned. under corporatization, “academic capitalists” within the university have become far more aggressive about pursuing the material benefits of knowledge production, including by embracing ip agreements (slaughter and rhoades, 2004). this trend highlights the active, sometimes leading, role that professors and administrators can play in corporatizing university research. although the extent of research secrecy in canada is not well documented, this topic has been explored extensively in the us. to summarize the literature, us research suggests that researchers with industry support are more likely to (i) report that “trade secrets” resulted from their research (information kept secret to protect its proprietary value); (ii) be denied the information/data necessary to publish their results; (iii) delay publication of their research; and (iv) deny other academics access to their data and research findings (krimsky, 2003; washburn, 2005). research also suggests that graduate students may be especially vulnerable to secrecy agreements because they rely on the prompt publication of their findings in order to secure funding or employment, yet they are often prevented from publishing in a timely fashion or even from completing their projects. in one harvard study, researchers found that 88 percent of life sciences companies reported that their university contracts required graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to keep information confidential (blumenthal, causino, campbell, and louis, 1996). a more recent investigation of graduate students and postdoctoral holders in computer science, chemical engineering and the life sciences found that one in four had been denied information relevant to their research, and this was especially prevalent in research groups with links to industry (holden, 2006). to summarize, research secrecy is incompatible with academic values and has negative implications for researchers, universities and the 5  many renowned university inventors who were formally entitled to patent royalties, for example, did their best to avoid personal remuneration, preferring to channel the obligatory profits back into their laboratories. others resisted patenting altogether. for instance, when jonas salk discovered the polio vaccine in 1954 (an invention clearly worth millions), he did not patent the vaccine because he believed that no individual should own or profit from discoveries made about the natural world. similarly, stanley cohen and herbert boyer, who discovered the gene-splicing technique in 1973, resisted patenting because they recognized that their discovery depended upon the freely available work of other scientists. in short, the prevailing academic view was that knowledge should be placed in the public domain without proprietary restrictions. 30 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education public at large. within the academy, secrecy disrupts collegial relationships, reduces knowledge sharing and promotes waste as researchers needlessly duplicate work that was not made freely available. secrecy also restricts the course of knowledge production because scientific progress depends on researchers building on the findings of others. ip protections such as patents, for example, are highly protectionist and tend to stifle innovation by restricting the diffusion of knowledge both to and from universities (murray and stern, 2007; rosell and agrawal, 2009). according to mike lazaridis (2004, 2), former president and co-ceo of research in motion, “patenting is an inherently secretive process requiring its proponents to withdraw from the very processes that expand and transfer knowledge in a research university – open disclosure, peer review, and publication in scientific journals.” most importantly, research secrecy inhibits the amount of knowledge that is available in the public domain, including in areas such as food production and medicine. jennifer washburn (2005) has reported that roughly one quarter of patented inventions in agricultural biotechnology – which have been tied up under restrictive commercial agreements – originated in public institutions at public expense. the same is true of many medicines (e.g., aids drugs) and even human genes, which have been patented and exclusively licensed to biopharmaceutical companies (e.g., the gene responsible for hereditary breast cancer). as universities and academics are increasingly guided by market logic, research secrecy will continue to present a serious threat to the public interest. conflicts of interest and research bias the corporatization of the academy has brought about other changes in the university research process, including conflicts of interest and research bias. in general, a conflict of interest occurs when a person is inclined or obliged to pursue interests that compete with one another in a fundamental way. more specifically for the purposes here, conflict of interest situations are those in which financial or other personal considerations may compromise a researcher’s professional judgement in considering or reporting research results. an obvious group who are affected by conflicts of interest are senior academic economists in the us (and elsewhere) who occupy lucrative and high ranking positions in governments and/or major financial institutions. as charles ferguson (2010) observes, “the economics profession – in economics departments, and in business, public policy, and law schools – has become so compromised by conflicts of interest that it now functions almost as a support the corporate corruption of academic research | 31 group for financial services and other industries whose profits depend heavily on government policy.” ferguson adds that the build-up to the 2008 financial crisis “runs straight through the economics discipline” (para. 12). what is particularly noteworthy about academic conflicts of interests is that they are rarely disclosed. for example, one study examining 62,000 articles in 210 scientific journals found that only one half of one percent included relevant information about authors’ researchrelated financial ties, even though all of the journals formally required such disclosure (king, 1999). conflicts of interest may be especially damaging for universities; short of outright fraud, nothing is as threatening to the integrity of the university than the perception that it has been bought off. there is no shortage of scholars who, by virtue of their corporate and other connections, are affected by conflicts of interests. one of the main consequences of this conflict is the resulting research bias. in some cases, research bias results from direct corporate censorship or academic corruption. for example, one study of university-industry engineering research centres in the us found that 35 percent allowed corporations to delete information from papers prior to publication (washburn, 2005). likewise, a small minority of academics have deliberately falsified results to produce findings that accord with their interests or those of their sponsor. however, a much more prescient cause of research bias is the unconscious effect of financial benefit or career advancement. the logic is simple: researchers with a vested interest in reaching a particular conclusion will tend to weigh arguments and evidence in a biased fashion. the mechanisms though which this occurs are varied and subtle, including how questions are framed, how studies are designed, how contrary interpretations are emphasized and how conclusions are worded. complicating matters is that the vast majority of academics perceive themselves to be objective and impartial, and corporate sponsors often recognize the importance of encouraging researchers to “feel” impartial (freudenburg, 2005). in any event, a substantial body of empirical evidence indicates that even if corporate sponsors allow researchers free reign over the research process – which they often do not – projects financed by big business are far more likely to reach conclusions that support the interests of their sponsor. many areas of academic research have been affected by research bias. one of the most obvious examples is food and nutrition. researcher marion nestle (2007) has documented the extensive network through 32 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education which food companies sponsor nutrition research, nutrition conferences, food and nutrition journals and the activities of professional societies. as a result, research findings in this area often favour the interests of their sponsors. in fact, nestle argues that sponsorship almost invariably predicts the results of research into specific foods or nutrients. similarly, lesser, ebbeling, goozner, wypij, and ludwig (2007) looked at studies on the relationship between soft drinks and childhood obesity. they found that while independent studies almost always find an association between habitual consumption of soft drinks and obesity, industrysponsored studies rarely do. tobacco research offers another example of how industry funding distorts the research process. one study found that 94 percent of articles that had authors who were affiliated with the tobacco industry concluded that second hand smoke was not harmful. in contrast, only 13 percent of articles where the authors had no tobacco ties reached the same conclusion (barnes and bero, 1998). when the researchers ran a multivariate regression controlling for other variables (article quality, peer review status, article topic and year of publication), having an author with a tobacco-company affiliation was the only variable associated with the conclusion that second-hand smoke is not harmful. the basic strategy of the tobacco industry has been to use university scientists to make the dangers of cigarettes appear controversial. these companies depend on the fact that observers tend to associate academic research with independence and impartiality. of course, this is not only true of tobacco companies; “decency by association” is one of the reasons why most corporations that produce harmful products or engage in destructive practices actively seek academic partnerships. in the area of climate science, for instance, this is precisely why “academics”, and not the president of imperial oil, are chosen to deliver the message that global warming is not occurring” (gutstein, 2009, 305). the ability of the tobacco industry to downplay the risks of tobacco consumption partly resided in the extensive network of ties it had created with medical researchers (cohen, 2008; kaufman et al., 2004). although these relationships have dissipated in recent years, the same cannot be said about the relationship between academic medicine and the pharmaceutical industry. more than any other area of academic research, conflicts of interest in biomedicine are threatening the health and well-being of people around the world. the corporate corruption of academic research | 33 big pharma, biotechnology and the perversion of academic medicine historically, medical schools and researchers advanced medical science (and built their reputations) by maintaining clear boundaries between the academy and industry. in the area of pharmaceuticals, academic distrust of business ran especially high (atkinson-grosjean and fairly, 2009). in canada, this changed in the late 1980s when government support for medical research declined and medical schools embraced the pharmaceutical industry as a way to maintain a stable influx of new funds. these efforts were facilitated in 1992 by the creation of the council for biomedical and health research, which brought together the association of canadian medical colleges (representing 16 university faculties of medicine), the canadian federation of biological societies and the health research foundation of the pharmaceutical manufacturers’ association to generate public support for drug-related research. at the same time, the field of biotechnology expanded in canadian universities and set the stage for widespread commercial involvement in biomedicine. over the past few decades, the life sciences – mostly represented by biotechnology – has accounted for a disproportionate share of canadian universities’ commercial output (niosi, 2006). today, the association between big pharma, medical science and university facilities and researchers is well established. drug companies spend billions each year wooing physicians (more than they spend on consumer advertising or research) in order to generate support for their products, align medical research with corporate interests, and amass a network of well-respected consultants and lobbyists. according to one estimate, 94 percent of psychiatrists-in-training have accepted gifts from pharmaceutical firms by their third year (ferrie, 2013). further, canadian medical researcher joel lexchin (2010) notes that drug companies in canada spend between $2.4 and $4.8 billion annually pushing their drugs to doctors. these figures are not surprising, considering that doctors have sole prescription power over some 20,000 pharmaceutical drugs that generate hundreds of millions of prescriptions every year. according to psychiatrist david healy (2012, 8-9), the industry monitors the prescribing habits of doctors in the western world, and data on who prescribes what is used by corporations to shape their marketing strategies. the fact that drugs are made available on a prescriptiononly basis has put a “relatively small group of people with no training in or awareness of marketing techniques – doctors – in the gun sights 34 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education of the most sophisticated marketing machinery on the planet.”6 the pharmaceutical industry also provides hundreds of millions of dollars in financial subsidies to medical journals via the purchase of advertisements, special supplements and reprints, and it spends billions more on continuing medical education (cme) programs. the proportion of cme programs that are funded by industry has climbed steadily in recent years (elliot, 2010). sales and marketing divisions dominate corporate decision-making around the distribution of cme money because the primary goal of these “public service” programs is to push new drugs (ridgeway, 2010). through these marketing and outreach efforts, corporations have infiltrated medical schools. in the us, for example, one survey found that nearly two thirds of department heads at medical schools and teaching hospitals had financial or other ties to industry (mangan, 2007). according to the new england journal of medicine, a national sample of over 3,100 us physicians revealed that 94 percent were involved with drug companies and 28 percent were paid consultants for the industry (campbell et al., 2007). a further set of connections involves the millions of clinical trials for drugs and other medical treatments that are conducted in academic medical centres around the world. industry funds approximately 70 percent of all clinical trials and 70 percent of these are run by contract research organizations that produce data that is wholly owned by their sponsors (sismondo, 2009a). although clinical trials are ostensibly “research” activities, a large proportion amount to marketing exercises and commercial product testing. remarkably, even members of institutional review boards and committees, whose job it is to “police the researchers” and protect human participants in medical trials, have extensive conflicts of interest because of their relationships with the drug industry (brainard, 2006; campbell et al., 2003). a recent study of 288 panel members responsible for clinical practice guidelines in canada and the us found that over half of these individuals had financial conflicts of interest (neuman, korenstein, ross and keyhani, 2011). as this cursory review makes clear, a myriad of potential conflicts and inherent tensions are involved in the relationship between corporations, the medical profession and biomedical researchers. in fact, medical journal editors now frequently complain that they can no 6  for example, healy notes that marketers have learned to distinguish between “high-flyers,” “sceptical experimenters,” “rule-bound” and “silent majority” doctors (55). each of these groups is targeted differently by marketers in an effort to direct the prescribing habits of physicians. the corporate corruption of academic research | 35 longer find academic experts without conflicts of interest.7 the most common conflicts are financial in nature; these range from the provision of “hands-off” corporate sponsorships to situations where researchers hold a personal financial stake in their research outcomes. the latter case is especially troublesome, yet surprisingly common. in his seminal study, sheldon krimsky and his colleagues (1996) looked at the industry connections of the authors of 789 scientific papers published by 1,105 researchers in 14 major life science and biomedical journals. the study found that 34 percent of the articles (267) had at least one lead author with a financial interest in the outcome of the research (not one article disclosed this interest).8 moreover, the 34 percent figure likely underrepresented the actual level of conflict of interest because the researchers were unable to account for certain variables, such as authors who received consulting fees from companies involved in commercial applications of their work. shortly after the release of krimsky’s findings, the leading life sciences journal nature published a statement in which it acknowledged that financial conflicts of interests were common in biomedical research, but asserted that this was of little consequence. according to the journal, krimsky’s study provided no evidence that the “undeclared interests led to any fraud, deception or bias in presentation, and until there is evidence that there are serious risks of such malpractice, this journal will persist in its stubborn belief that research as we publish it is indeed research, not business” (avoid financial ‘correctness,’ p. 469). since nature’s aggressive rejoinder, an abundance of evidence has been accumulated supporting the hypothesis that corporate funding and conflicts of interest are associated with research bias in the medical field. this pattern holds not only for research where investigators have a personal stake in the outcome, but for industry-sponsored studies more broadly. for example, mildred cho and lisa bero (1996) found that 98 percent of drug studies funded by pharmaceutical companies reached 7  ellen schrecker (2010) recounts an incident where the new england journal of medicine decided to ban authors with a financial interest in any company (or its competitor) that made a product discussed in the author’s work. it eventually had to add the word “significant” because the editors could find only one submission over the previous two years that complied with the requirement. likewise, the canadian medical association journal attempted to implement a similar conflict of interest policy but the editors could not find enough qualified researchers that did not have ties to drug companies. for additional examples, see washburn (2005: chapter 5, note 9). 8  “financial interest” in this study included (i) serving on a scientific advisory board of a biotechnology company that develops products in the area related to the scientist’s research; (ii) holding a position as an officer, director or major shareholder in a company whose products are related to the scientist’s research; and/or (iii) possessing a patent or a patent application closely related to the scientist’s work. 36 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education favourable conclusions about drug safety and efficacy, compared with 79 percent of studies not funded by industry. another investigation found that studies of cancer drugs funded by drug companies were nearly eight times less likely to reach unfavourable conclusions compared with similar studies funded by non-profit organizations (friedberg, saffran, stinson, nelson and bennett, 1999). similarly, medical researchers in toronto reported a strong association between purported drug safety and financial conflicts of interest (stelfox, chua, o’rourke and detsky, 1998). more specifically, they found that 96 percent of authors whose findings supported the safety of a particular class of drugs had a financial relationship with the drug manufacturers, compared with 60 percent of “neutral” authors and 37 percent of authors who were critical of the drugs’ safety. more recently, several meta-analyses of the biomedical literature have provided compelling evidence about the linkages between industry funding and research bias. the first by justin bekelman, yan li and cary gross (2003), looked at research published over a twenty-three year period on the extent, impact and management of conflicts of interest in biomedical research. they found a strong and consistent correlation between industry sponsorship (mainly, but not all pharmaceutical) and pro-industry conclusions. in a similar review, lexchin, bero, djulbegovic and clark (2003) found that studies funded by pharmaceutical companies were far more likely to have outcomes favouring their sponsors than studies sponsored by other organizations, and that “systematic bias” favours products that are made by companies funding university research. some years later, sergio sismondo (2008) found that 17 out of 19 studies investigating the effects of drug company sponsorships showed an association (usually a strong association) between industry sponsorship and pro-industry conclusions.9 taken together, these studies illustrate the impact of corporate power in academic medicine and the important differences between publicly funded versus privately funded research. it should be noted that in addition to research bias, outright research fraud is also on the rise. one recent review of survey research on scientific misconduct found that falsifying data is far more common than 9  within this larger review, sismondo (2008) reports that of 100 articles published in the pulmonary/allergy literature, 98 percent of articles sponsored by drug companies reported findings that were favourable to the drug being studied (compared with 32 percent of other articles). moreover, in a sample of 542 articles on clinical trials in psychiatry, 78 percent of sponsored studies favoured the sponsor’s drug versus only 48 percent of those without industry sponsorship. the corporate corruption of academic research | 37 previously estimated, and that this form of misconduct is reported most frequently in the case of medical and pharmacological research (fanelli, 2009). approximately one third of respondents in the study admitted to some form of questionable research practice, such as altering the research design, methodology or results in response to pressures from funders. more evidence of biomedical fraud came to light in 2012, when a team of 100 scientists tried to replicate the results of 53 of the most widely cited cancer research papers. this effort resulted in only six research studies being validated, while the rest could not be replicated. many of the studies were apparently bogus (sharav, 2014). “shockingly,” writes medical journalist helke ferrie (2013, 284), “this was not pharma-generated junk science, but came from university researchers who misled companies wanting to use their research for new cancer drugs. indeed, there is no honour among thieves.” these studies of research fraud support the growing consensus that big pharma funding and partnerships in academic medicine is distorting scientific evidence to promote commercial interests. corporate funding and conflicts of interest help to explain the preponderance of research bias in academic medicine, but it is not the whole story. under corporatization, academics are increasingly ceding control over every stage of the clinical research process. ghost-writing and ghost-management within the biomedical literature, corporate employees routinely write “academic” papers that emerge from corporate-sponsored research. this practice – often referred to as “ghost-writing” – generally works as follows: when research results are ready to be written up, a corporation’s marketing department will contract with medical writers from a public relations or “medical communications” firm to produce a manuscript. after several drafts have been completed, the manuscript is then inspected by the company’s marketing and legal departments for approval. it is usually around this time that an academic “author” will inspect and sign off on the article. when the article subsequently appears in a pre-selected journal, the ghost-writer(s) either disappears or is subtly acknowledged as providing some form of editorial assistance. frequently, the academic who assumes authorship will not have had access to the data on which the study is based and, in some cases, is simply paid to have his or her name appear on the publication. the compensation rates for professors who participate in ghost-writing generally range from $1,000 to $2,500 per article; however, payments 38 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education can be as high as $10,000, especially if the writer presents the findings at conferences or in medical education lectures (elliot, 2010; krimsky, 2003). meanwhile, professional ghost-writers are often paid between $10,000 and $20,000 per article and have annual salaries that can exceed $100,000 (mirowski and van horn, 2005; schafer, 2004). how prevalent is ghost-writing in the medical literature? given the inherent secrecy of the process, firm data are not available. evidence suggests, however, that the practice is commonplace, and even extends to medical textbook publishing (e.g., basken, 2009; lacasse and leo, 2010; wilson, 2010). in fact, according to one study, the majority of articles on lucrative pharmaceutical drugs in leading medical journals are likely to be wholly or partially ghostwritten (healy and cattell, 2003). it is important to note that many ghost-writing campaigns are launched (or continue) after evidence of dangerous or deadly drug side effects are produced. examples include wyeth (now part of pfizer) and the hormone replacement drugs prempro and premarin (breast cancer, heart disease, stroke); eli lilly and the antipsychotic drug zyprexa (obesity and diabetes); and glaxosmithklein and the antidepressant paxil (suicidal ideation in children) (elliot, 2010). healy has even suggested that in some areas – such as on-patent drugs and the safety/effectiveness of antidepressants for children – virtually all of the published literature includes material that is authored by medical writers or pharmaceutical company personnel (fine, 2009; healy, 2008; 2012). it follows that studies of antidepressants in children “offer the greatest known divide in medicine between what published reports in the scientific literature say on the one side and what the raw data in fact show” (healy, 2012, 149). as healy documents, what the studies say is that these drugs are remarkably safe and effective. in contrast, the data show that children are killing themselves at a much higher rate while they are on some of these drugs. for years, psychiatric drugs prescribed to children and adolescents have been associated with a long and adverse list of physical and emotional effects (whitaker, 2010). if medications that carry a high risk of disability and death in children are considered fair game for this kind of corporate-academic fakery, it would appear that there are few, if any, limits. as disturbing as these practices are, ghost-writing is only one part of an increasingly sophisticated system of “ghost-management” in medical research (sismondo, 2007; 2009b). ghost-management refers to the broader phenomenon whereby drug companies and their agents direct and shape the entire research process, from funding and design to publication and promotion. this process often begins before the onset of the the corporate corruption of academic research | 39 research trials when company officials, in consultation with “publication planning” companies, shape the research design. the corporations participating in these networks sometimes manipulate trial design in ways that escape detection by peer review processes, including by conducting a trial drug against a treatment known to be inferior, excluding placebo responders, and testing a drug against too low a dose from a competitor’s drug (smith, 2005). many companies also conduct multicentre trials and artificially select for results that are favourable to their interests. in fact, 30 to 40 percent of clinical trials are never reported on because they fail to produce the “correct” results (healy, 2012; kirsch, 2010). before and during the trials, the corporate network will select target journals and audiences, anticipate peer-review criticism and identify which academics (ideally key “opinion leaders”) are going to be included as authors. some of these opinion leaders – who are often considered the most distinguished in the field – are creations of the pharmaceutical industry. in part, this is because they are repeatedly selected for ghost authorship, meaning their names may appear on 800 to a 1000 articles (healy, 2012). in addition to these recruitment efforts, industry can also fund their research and travel, make them investigators on clinical trials, put them on scientific programs, and arrange for them to present at continuing medical education events (elliot, 2010). it is especially important for publication planners to get involved early if “there is a need to create a market or to create an understanding of unmet need,” otherwise known as “disease mongering” or “selling sickness” (sismondo, 2009b, 177). a well ghost-managed publication may also include the targeting of conferences and professional meetings where results can be advertised, and the development of other communication opportunities such as “symposia and round-tables, journal supplements, advisory board meetings, slide programs, formulary kits, and more” (sismondo, 2009b, 176). the size of the publication planning industry continues to grow. over 50 different agencies now openly advertise publication planning services, and many of them boast of having hundreds of employees who handle hundreds of manuscripts each year. in fact, the industry is large enough that two international associations of publication planners exist to organize seminars and meetings (the international society of medical planning professionals, and the international publication planning association). according to sismondo (2009b, 172), up to 40 percent of “important journal reports of clinical trials of new drugs (and, more anecdotally, perhaps a higher percentage of meeting presentations on clinical 40 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education trials) are ghost-managed through to publication.” as a result, not only are most published reports of clinical trials likely to be ghostwritten in some way, but roughly a quarter of published trials are altered so that a negative result for a drug will have been transformed into evidence that the drug is effective and safe (healy, 2012). the large number of medical writing and medical education and communication firms, whose tasks are generally limited to ghost-writing and preparing presentations, may be viewed as adjuncts to the more sophisticated work of publication planners. medical journals should not be seen as dupes in this process, as many editors have extensive dealings with medical writers and publication planners and are fully aware of the process. ghost-management and publication planning have as a primary goal the extraction of monetary value from scientific research. needless to say, they amplify research bias because commercial interests are involved at virtually every stage of the research process. these practices should not be seen as a breakdown of ethical standards or editorial oversight; on the contrary, this is a well-organized industry that forms an integral part of the corporate production of knowledge. assessing the impact the corporatization of academic medicine has had a profound impact on researchers, universities and the public. for researchers, it has reduced their ability to pursue independent lines of scholarship, increased restrictions on academic freedom and, in some instances, resulted in severe consequences for scholars who defy this corporate-university complex. the high profile cases of nancy olivieri and david healy in canada, the details of which have been amply documented elsewhere, are cases in point.10 for universities and the medical profession, it has produced an unprecedented crisis of credibility in the published literature and severely tarnished the academy as a source of unbiased research. the public impact, however, goes much deeper. for one, underwriting the 10  for firsthand accounts, see olivieri (2000) and healy (2008). for useful overviews, see schafer (2004) and woodhouse (2009: chapter 3). what was most disturbing about the two cases was not the behaviour of the drug companies but the behaviour of the university. when olivieri and healy were removed from their positions at the university of toronto, university and hospital officials failed to recognize – or, at least, failed to acknowledge – that their actions represented outrageous violations of academic freedom. the treatment of olivieri was especially heinous. professor margaret somerville, founding director of the faculty of law’s centre for medicine, ethics and law at mcgill university, has stated that the olivieri case “reads like a horror story on the involvement of corporations in universitybased research” (as cited in woodhouse, 2009, 109). both cases would eventually become flashpoints for larger political debates about whistle-blowers and the influence of corporate money in academic medicine. the corporate corruption of academic research | 41 costs of drug research is a costly venture. canadian taxpayers pay most of the costs of discovering and developing new drugs, and they pay again as consumers for mass marketed treatments that offer little or no benefit. evidence from france and canada suggests that no more than 15 percent of new drugs represent any significant therapeutic advantage over those that already exist (lexchin, 2010). likewise, some widely used drugs such as antidepressants have been shown to be only marginally more effective than placebos (kirsch, 2010). there are also severe risks associated with corporatized medical research. not only are violations of human research protection rules on the rise, but there is reason to believe that adverse trial events are increasingly treated as “confidential commercial information” and never made public (washburn, 2005). as well, the many drug scandals that have erupted in recent years illustrate the human toll that can result from corporate sponsorships, compromised clinical trials, research bias and data suppression. in the case of vioxx, for example, millions of people took the drug before it was exposed as causing a serious risk of heart attack and stroke, a fact that was known to academic and corporate researchers but explained away and eventually suppressed (schafer, 2008). one estimate suggests that half a million premature deaths in the us alone may have been caused by vioxx use (cockburn, 2012). compromised research and publishing practices also explain, in part, why hundreds of thousands of americans die each year from “correctly” prescribed drugs (starfield, 2000). using data from the canadian medical association, ferrie (2009) asserts that the comparable figure for canada is at least 23,000 annually, which represents only the incidence of reported deaths. moreover, the number of adults and children disabled by mental illness continues to rise, with some researchers concluding that pharmaceutical drugs are fuelling, rather than alleviating, the epidemic of mental illness (whitaker, 2010). with approximately 20 percent of the north american population currently consuming pharmaceutical drugs for anxiety, depression, and other ailments, and with pharmaceuticals and medicine accounting for the largest number of industry-sponsored research contracts in canadian universities, these issues could not be more pressing (council of canadian academies, 2012). while there has been some effort to address these problems on the part of medical schools and journals in recent years, most research universities and medical centres remain heavily integrated with and influenced by the pharmaceutical industrial complex. there is also increasing corporate and government pressure to reduce regulations 42 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education on drug research and eliminate independent watchdog groups.11 in the corporatized university, marketing and profit continue to replace science as heavily compromised research infiltrates the peer-reviewed literature and the “knowledge” base of physicians. conclusion: the need for radical solutions critics of the corporatization of higher education generally share the baseline assumption with those who support corporatization, which is that there is no alternative. given that they see at least some degree of market restructuring is inevitable, the goal is ostensibly to “make peace” with the market while preserving academic values and some semblance of collegial governance. former harvard university president derrick bok (2003, 176), for example, notes that corporate involvement in university research may warrant radical action, but the only viable response at this point is to “tighten up the rules to limit the damage.” these critics, who often include university administrators and faculty organizations, accept corporatization as a given and focus on adapting to market forces, balancing these forces with the public interest, and finding ways to reconcile commercial and academic values. it follows that they generally advocate targeted reforms or regulatory strategies to address the problems of corporatized research. reformist approaches call for clear rules and guidelines to “manage” the conflicts of interest inherent in corporate-university alliances and to “regulate” the contracts between researchers and business firms. in contrast, i would argue that the corrupting influences in academic research today are located in a fundamental antagonism between corporate and academic institutions. corporate-university conflict is exemplified by the differences between academic and industrial science. the ideals of academic research centre on disinterested inquiry and knowledge sharing, whereas industrial science tends to be motivated by financial gain and encourages research secrecy. likewise, academic research 11  in 2011, for example, the harper government put the interests of industry ahead of patient safety when the canadian institutes of health research eliminated its internationally praised transparency requirement for full public disclosure of trial drug results. the policy, which was just three months old when it was scrapped, required scientists funded by the agency to reveal all their raw data to the public, regardless of what they chose to publish. more recently in 2013, the internationally acclaimed therapeutics initiative (ti) based out of the university of british columbia had all of its funding suspended by the bc government under pressure from big pharma. ti had been conducting independent, evidence-based drug reviews for the bc government since the 1990s. it has been reported, for example, that ti’s work indirectly saved an estimated 500 lives in the province with its independent assessment of the drug vioxx (canadian health coalition, 2011). the corporate corruption of academic research | 43 relies on peer review and the replicability of results, whereas industrial research does not involve the same verification process. moreover, the goal of academic research is to advance public knowledge, whereas industrial research aims to produce proprietary knowledge or a product that succeeds in the marketplace. in the area of scientific research at least, the cultures and practices of these two institutional spheres are fundamentally, and irreconcilably, opposed. and, interestingly, neither institution has yet to succeed when they step outside of their respective basic functions: corporations are poor performers when it comes to knowledge sharing and research integrity, and universities are equally inept when it comes to venture capitalism and generating revenue from commercialized research. this incompatibility explains why corporate involvement in university research has had such a corrosive and corrupting impact. in the words of david healy (2012, 116-117), “insofar as commerce depends on secrecy and acquisitive self-interest rather than free communication of data and other findings, business will inevitably be as inimical to science as the catholic church once was to galileo.” in my view, these deeply-rooted institutional differences suggest that reformist approaches will not and cannot address the problems facing higher education research, and that more radical approaches are necessary. in his work, arthur schafer (2004; 2008) notes that corporateuniversity partnerships are almost “preordained” to produce research findings that favour the interests of business, meaning that the proprietary interests of corporations routinely win out and any attempt to regulate or manage conflicts of interest are destined to be ineffective. building on schafer’s analysis, i would argue that a more effective, long-term solution for addressing these problems would be an outright prohibition on corporate research funding, at least in those disciplines where the potential for harm is high. while critics of this strategy may claim that denying corporate funding on moral grounds is a slippery slope that violates academic freedom and aggravates the funding crisis in higher education, so long as faculty are not prohibited from (or penalized for) speaking, writing, teaching or researching about a particular topic, restricting a funding source does not violate academic freedom. as krimsky (2008, 94) explains, academic freedom “is not extinguished in the case that a university community takes responsible and transparent collective action, following accepted governance procedures that prohibit certain funding from entering the university.” the suggestion to prohibit corporate funding is not to suggest that other kinds of sponsored research funding never result in problems, or 44 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education that all corporate money is detrimental. the influx of private funding for applied research has, in some instances, accelerated scientific progress to an extent that would not have been possible without such support. but the harms that result from corporate involvement far outweigh the benefits. in addition, when the actual financial costs of participating in corporate research alliances are taken into account, the monetary implications of cutting these ties for universities is far less than is commonly assumed. to participate in corporate research partnerships, universities must spend significant funds to attract sponsors, build labs, purchase equipment, and support a growing number of administrators and other specialists to help broker and negotiate complex agreements. while a detailed exploration of this issue is well beyond the scope of this paper, it is worth noting that there has been some movement toward going beyond simply managing or regulating corporate-academic relationships. some medical schools have restricted ties between drug companies and physicians, and have eliminated industry support for continuing medical education. medical journals have also made some progress. the journal open medicine, for example, was formed in 2007 by former editors of the canadian medical association journal who resigned from their positions in part due to corporate threats to their editorial autonomy. the journal publishes its material freely online, has completely banned all pharmaceutical and medical device advertising, and has strict 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(2009). selling out: academic freedom and the corporate market. montreal: mcgill-queen’s university press. the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 51 the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education jeff noonan1 and mireille coral2 abstract: this paper explores the ways in which neoliberal schooling is threatening education. we define education as the development of cognitive and imaginative capacities for understanding of and critical engagement with social reality. education opens horizons of possibility for collective and individual life-experience and activity by exposing the one-sidedness and contradictions of ruling-value systems. schooling, by contrast, subordinates thought and imagination to the reproduction of the ruling money-value system, narrowing horizons of possibility for collective and individual life to service to the prevailing structure of power. our paper draws on our overlapping experiences as educators, one in the university system, the other in the adult education system. in both systems, students’ life-requirement for education is subordinated to the capitalist need for compliant wage-labourers and consumers. in opposition to this instrumentalization we will present an interpretation of “real world education” as a unique form of collective work through which teachers and students construct alternatives that can serve as the guiding ideas for new projects for social and political transformation. keywords: education, schooling, neoliberalism, life-requirements, capitalism neoliberal demands for school reform have emphasised the supreme social importance of education even as they have threatened the ability of school institutions to educate. these demands bring to the fore a contradiction between the liberatory implications of education and the ideological effects of schooling. schools both enable students to develop and expand their capacities to imagine and think beyond the established 1  jeff noonan (jnoonan@uwindsor.ca) is professor of philosophy at the university of windsor. he is the author, most recently, of critical humanism and the politics of difference; democratic society and human needs; and materialist ethics and life-value. 2  mireille coral (coral@uwindsor.ca) is an adult educator and phd candidate in the faculty of education, university of windsor. 52 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education limits of what ruling classes define as good, just, meaningful, and true, and at the same time try to produce citizens who confine their thinking and imagination to the ideological meaning of those norms. education builds critical consciousness and political agency, while schooling aims to keep students’ horizons confined to the given world, its class, racial, sexual, and gender hierarchies, its reward systems. education enables students to expose social contradictions, schooling tries to keep people blind to their existence. neoliberalism has intervened in an openly partisan way on behalf of schooling against education. as we will reveal, neoliberalism has been actively attacking the educational mission of schools at all levels of the education system, but especially secondary and post-secondary. if the neoliberal agenda were to be realised, the primary role of schools would be reduced to preparing students for a life as little but complacent alienated workers, quietly content with the ephemeral pleasures of consumer society. there are, fortunately, both political and philosophical barriers to the success of this project. politically, there are the manifold forms of resistance that students and teachers are capable of mounting. the last three years in canada have witnessed intensified struggles against the neoliberal schooling agenda. in quebec, post-secondary students organized a massive, months long strike, ostensibly against tuition hikes but in reality against the neoliberal attempt to further commodify and instrumementalize education. in 2012 in ontario, tens of thousands of teachers, along with many student supporters, waged a brave campaign against draconian legislation designed to not only undermine their bargaining rights but to make them compliant executors of an educational policy imposed by government. in the spring of 2014, teachers in british columbia struck to defend their working conditions and the educational integrity of their schools.3 philosophically, schooling presupposes the development of cognitive capacities that once awoken, by their very nature, cannot be limited in their exercise to providing unthinking support for any prescribed, ideological agenda. schooling of even the most narrow and instrumental sort must teach students to read and write and critically evaluate claims. the development of the capacities for politically engaged social self-conscious agency cannot be avoided, no matter 3  it is not our purpose to provide a careful political analysis of these various struggles. for cogent and concise commentary, see nesbitt, 2012; cooke, 2013; camfield, 2012; brett and mehreen, 2012. information on the settlement agreed to by the british columbia teachers can be found at the website of the british columbia teacher’s federation: https://www. bctf.ca/. the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 53 how narrow and instrumental the scope of schooling. hence, there is always space within schools – bureaucratic and authoritarian as they are already at the primary and secondary level and as they are becoming at the post-secondary level – to educate. educating, we will demonstrate, frees students from intellectual subservience to established norms and structures, not by dogmatic imposition of a radical oppositional agenda, but simply by enabling them to question, think, evaluate, and communicate. our argument will be developed in three steps. in the first, we will elaborate upon the contradiction between schooling and education. in the second, we will examine the recent history of neoliberal school reforms in the ontario secondary school and university systems, concentrating on the way in which the “employability agenda” is an attack on the educational mission of schools. unlike some critics of schooling (most famously, ivan illich) we do not argue that schools should be abandoned in favour of the emancipatory possibilities of popular education. instead, we will argue that the contradictory nature of schools means that there is a space to import and adapt popular education methods into the institution. in the concluding section, we will provide an example of how we were able to use the adult educational classroom as a space for the development of a project in which students, through their own efforts, transformed their experience of school from an oppressive system of imposed rules to a free space for the development of critical consciousness, political agency, and non-alienated labour. schooling and educating our argument proceeds from a contradiction in school institutions. the contradiction is between the socially reproductive demands governments and business leaders try to impose upon them and their educational mission. education frees cognitive and imaginative capacities from subservience to the established social reality, while schooling seeks to conform expectations, imagination, and thought to the given reality, with all of its tensions, hierarchies, and injustices accepted as normal and natural. one might say, following gramsci, that schooling is a set of practices through which the ruling class tries to extend its hegemony over new generations, while education is always at least implicitly a set of practices that enables students to develop the critical consciousness and political agency that allow them to contest hegemony (gramsci, 1971, 26-43). let us examine both sides of this contradiction in more detail. 54 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education schooling is a politically motivated socialisation process through which the ruling powers hope to ensure conflict-free social reproduction by masking the roles power, force and domination play in establishing and maintaining the given social reality. this socialization process involves the inculcation of basic forms of self-discipline (learning to conform one’s demands to the established structure of rules in the various public and private spaces that constitute society), the development of deferential attitudes towards authorities, the cultivation of basic inter-personal skills needed to get along more or less peacefully with others, and the acquisition of basic intellectual skills required for productive functioning in social and economic life. above all else, the schooling process transmits the ruling value system of the society it serves to younger generations. as erich fromm argues, the purpose of schooling is to “qualify the individual to function in the role he is to play later on in society...to mould his character in such a way that...his desires coincide with the necessities of his social order.”(fromm, 1969, 284). the ruling value system of any society justifies the prevailing structure of power and wealth and the rewards and sanctions it makes available and imposes as supremely good, the only sound and sane basis for the formation of individual goals and life plans. to the extent that young people internalise the ruling value system, they bend their efforts to finding a place within the existing structure of power, challenging it only in terms of its failure to provide in practice what is promised in theory, but never in terms of its overall coherence or the substance of the values it affirms. in other words, if the ruling value system is in fact internalised, the capacity for social criticism is dampened, because the political imagination is prevented from exploring different possibilities of social life-organization. if the political imagination is thus hampered in its exercise, the political intellect refuses to accept the real possibility of radically different and better ways of living and instead confines itself to working within the established social reality. thus, confined, it cannot discover the structural contradictions that stand in the way of realizing the values of freedom, equity, justice, and democracy that liberal-capitalist order claims to serve but cannot coherently realize. before students are subjected to alienated capitalist work conditions, schools, in the words of ivan illich (1970, 46), “pre-alienate” young people: young people are pre-alienated by schools that isolate them while they pretend to be both producers and consumers of their own the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 55 knowledge, which is conceived of as a commodity put on the market in school. school makes alienation preparatory for life, thus depriving education of reality and life of activity. school prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught. once this lesson is learned, people...close themselves off to the surprises life offers when it is not predetermined by institutional deformation.” of all the alienating effects school produces, none is more damaging to the formation of individual and collective agency than the belief that making oneself marketable to potential employers is both a primary duty of social life and a natural necessity. once that idea has been instilled, fear of compromising one’s marketability to potential employers strongly impedes the formation of desires for fundamental social changes necessary to abolish alienated labour. while we agree with illich’s critique of schooling, and while we believe that education can and should be pursued outside the walls of school institutions through a variety of experiments in popular education, we do not agree with his “de-schooling” agenda.4 schools, as we have emphasised, are contradictory institutions. all people are thinking beings, and thinking beings cannot be schooled without at the same time having their imaginative and cognitive capacities developed and extended. since students are educated at the same time as they are schooled, their capacity for transformative political agency can developed within their walls, the “pre-alienating” intentions of school authorities notwithstanding. schools are therefore sites of struggle between authorities who want to limit them to purposes of social reproduction and the reality-transforming implications of education. schools are politically essential because they create intellectual space and time free from the very social forces whose demands students are being prepared to accept. one cannot prepare students for life in the contemporary world without cultivating in them basic literacy and numeracy skills, without enabling them to distinguish causes from effects, without developing in them basic communication skills and the ability to negotiate diverse and unfamiliar environments, and without discussing values like freedom, equality, democracy, and human rights. even if the later values are defined 4  both authors have been involved, individually and together, with a variety of popular education initiatives and projects. popular education allows for freedom from institutional formalities, bureaucratic administration, and government interference, but also faces challenges reaching wide numbers of people. the authors conclude that the struggle for education against schooling needs to be pursued both outside and inside the institutional walls. 56 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education operationally in terms of the norms of liberal-capitalist democracies, and even if all the basic intellectual skills listed above are taught in the most narrow and instrumental manner, once they have been developed, they cannot be controlled by external authorities. if one can read, one can read anything readable; once one can perform basic mathematical operations, one can apply them beyond the narrow range of examples used to teach them; once one can talk and communicate with others, one can discover other perspectives and goals, and once one learns the meaning of democracy, one can begin to ask whether its current instantiation is adequate to the idea. these basic intellectual capacities, therefore, are the basis of the educational mission of schools. education is the process whereby the cognitive and imaginative capacities of human beings are developed beyond their given range and depth, freed from subservience to the ruling value system, for the sake of enabling more comprehensive understanding of what there is to be known. education and freedom are related in two ways. first, the development of cognitive and imaginative capacities is freed from programmed service to ruling value systems. second, educated people become free to think for themselves in continually expanding scope and critical depth. once education has drawn out the latent imaginative and cognitive capacities of the human brain, the subsequent development of those capacities can no longer in principle be programmed by institutional authority, because to become educated means to become aware of the freedom of thought in relation to its object. what we mean can be illustrated by unpacking the implications of the colloquial phrase, “i’ll think it over.” rather than just accede to whatever request has been made, the person transforms the request from an externally imposed demand to an internally constituted object of thought. as a thought-object the request is submitted to the critical inspection of the thinker’s mind, which can consider its legitimacy in various dimensions and weigh its value against alternative considerations. the person who thinks something over does not simply do what he or she has been told to do; rather, he or she explores the reasons behind the request and the reasons supporting compliance or refusal. that which she ultimately does is her decision, not the external authority’s and she can account for what she does on the basis of the reasons she herself determines. this capacity to think critically presupposes understanding of the language in which the request has been made, the ability to weigh consequences, the capacity to judge the request against a life-value standard, and the ability to understand the effects of compliance on the natural and social the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 57 worlds of which one is a dependent and interdependent member. these are generic capacities, but they have potentially profound social and political implications – by unhinging thought from service to imposed system-requirements, education frees peoples mindless subservience to social power. the specific values of critical consciousness and political agency affirmed and cultivated by the traditions of popular education are built into the very nature of education, even when it takes place in school institutions. although schooling tries to exclude these values, schools cannot, because schooling presupposes some degree of education and education is always subversive of mechanical incorporation of ruling ideologies into students’ minds. as apple understands, “counter hegemonic activities [are possible] in...schools [as well as] communities.” (apple, 2001, 231). he reminds educators that society is not a place of happy cooperation, but a site of struggle and contestation where working people fight for advancements. (apple, 1990, 96). teachers who take their role as educators seriously recognise that, as the great popular educators paulo freire and myles horton argued, neutrality in education is not possible (horton and freire,1990). educators take sides, but not for one party as against another in any narrow and dogmatic way, but against the attempts of ideological schooling to present social life as fixed, its hierarchies natural. once students understand that social life is historical, that the ways things are is the way they have been made to be by various struggles, they can work out for themselves in whose interests these hierarchies are maintained. at that point, they can insert themselves into the on-going history of struggle without needing to be told on which side their interests lie. education is thus political but not in a way that “silences in the name of orthodoxy [or] imposes itself on students while undermining dialogue, deliberation and critical engagement.” (giroux, 2012). education, popular or institutional, opens students to dialogue about a reality that schooling presents as beyond discussion dialogue is essential to any genuine educational process, for it is only through dialogue that the hierarchical relationship between teacher and student – the form of relationship that makes students resent teachers and impedes the educational process – is broken down. as horton explains, “i think that any kind of dialogue...means that you don’t have inferiors and superiors all in the same conversation... but you respect each other’s experiences and you aren’t trying to use that dialogue to hornswoggle people into accepting your views, because you think it’s good for people. it’s a bottoms-up operation instead of 58 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education a top-down operation. and it’s everybody on the same level trying to come up together.” (horton, 2003, 274-275). although school institutions militate against dialogue, the classroom remains a space shielded from the prying eyes of administrators. therefore, as cunningham (1989) and quigley (2006) note, the classroom can subvert, to some extent, the aim of schooling to simply reproduce oppressive social and cultural relationships. because the teacher is alone with her students in the classroom she can, if she chooses, embed effective popular education practices – basing the curriculum in the life experience of the learners, respecting for the knowledge people bring to the classroom, opening dialogue among equals, and recognizing that education is always political and always on the side of freeing people from oppressive hierarchies. to sum up, any genuine educational process, whether within schools or outside of them, enables students to transform their self-understanding. from thinking of themselves as objects of power, educated people learn to think of themselves as subjects, as people capable of intervening, as individuals or as members of social movements, in the determination of the social reality they inhabit. education, (as opposed to schooling) thus always threatens unjust value systems and institutions. even in the institutionalized classroom educators can put into practice the legacy of one of the great popular education movements of canadian history, the antigonish movement. as both alexander (1997) and lotz (2005) remind teachers, that legacy is one of encouraging critical thinking about established structures of oppression and alternatives to them and never acquiescing in mere training and adaptation to the system. that sort of education, of course, is a potential threat to liberal-capitalist reality. the aim of neoliberal educational “reforms,” to which we now turn, is thus above all to eliminate as much education from schools as possible. neoliberal schooling and the tyranny of work the historical origins of neoliberalism tell us much of relevance about its educational reform agenda. neoliberalism is a set of prescriptions for managing capitalism that emerged in the 1970’s as a response to the “stagflation” crisis. the cause of the crisis was attributed to the failure of labour markets to adequately discipline labour and control its costs. unions were judged too strong, welfare state support for the unemployed too generous, and public services and state enterprises too inefficient. attacking all three became central to the neoliberal project. referring to its first systematic elaboration in thatcher’s england, harvey the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 59 lists its core goals as “confronting trade union power, attacking all forms of social solidarity that hindered competitive flexibility, the privatization of public enterprises, reducing taxes, encouraging entrepreneurial initiative, and creating a favourable business climate.”(harvey, 2005, 23). the intended effect of this package of reforms was to make individual workers more dependent upon market forces and thus more willing to accept terms of employment (lower wages, less benefits, less control over the nature and pace of work) favourable to the owners. as albo, gindin, and panitch argue, neoliberal changes to labour laws, combined with the material pressure exerted by public and private austerity, have “compelled workers to become more dependent on the market as individuals so as to limit their ability to contest the social relations of the capitalist market as a class.” (albo, gindin and panitch, 2011, 90). neoliberal educational reforms, at the secondary and post-secondary level, extend these goals into school institutions. there are external and internal drivers of this agenda. externally, financial pressure and market forces are used to squeeze institutions so as to encourage or force compliance with the internal transformations necessary. for example, the harris government, elected in 1995 and the first ontario government to pursue an openly neoliberal agenda, slashed the education budget by $400 million (maclellan, 2009, 60). in the canadian university sector, public funding as a proportion of operating revenue has been going down and tuition going up (canadian association of university teachers, 2012). in order to meet higher tuition costs more and more students must borrow to finance their education (canadian federation of students, 2013). the deep debt students find themselves in gives them an understandable interest in prioritising future employment over the development of critical consciousness. of course, there is no mechanical relationship between debt and the internalization of neoliberal ideology about employability, but it would be naive for educators to ignore the real economic pressures students face. neoliberal reformers do not, of course, aim to abolish schools or even eliminate all public funding, but to transform expectations about the place and purpose of public institutions. neoliberalism has facilitated a move towards what slaughter and rhoades call “academic capitalism.” “academic capitalism” does not necessarily involve privatization, but works more by “a redefinition of public space and of appropriate activity in that space. the configuration of state resources has changed, providing colleges and universities with fewer unrestricted public revenues and encouraging them to seek out and generate 60 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education alternative sources of revenue.”(slaughter and rhoades, 2004, 306). the new private revenue sources schools and universities are forced to seek come at the price of conformity of curriculum and pedagogy to labour and commodity market demands. instead of educating people for the sake of the free development of imaginative and cognitive capacities, schools are encouraged to produce compliant employees happy to have whatever job is made available. let us now examine the details of the effects neoliberal school reform has had on ontario secondary schools and universities. the neoliberal agenda and ontario’s elementary and secondary schools for our purposes the neoliberal assault on public education in ontario begins with the mike harris government’s “common sense revolution.” ironically, although premised on the neoliberal credo of less government, it actually mandated more government interference in schools. the harris government “reconstituted school governance, standardized and centralized testing, [imposed] massive curricular reform, strict systems of accountability, and the intru[ded]…market goals into public schooling” (maclellan, 2009, 66). the common sense revolution was a political assault on the power of schools to educate. instead of education, the harris reforms attempted to make hegemonic a very narrow conception of schooling as training. as sears (2003, 11) points out, the “agenda for education reform seeks to reorient schooling so that the individual develops a self in relation to the market rather than the state.” a case in point is the 1998 science and technology curriculum for elementary students, which saw the inclusion of skills described as important for the workplace. these skills are often learned by rote and are easily tested, thus having the effect of standardizing the curriculum and exerting tighter control over the work of teachers, making teachers “accountable” to government rather than students’ life-requirement for education (maclellan, 2009; mcnay, 2000). under harris, highly standardized curriculum framed students as nothing more than job seekers motivated only to become aware of the fixed social realities to which they must conform. schools were reconceptualised as manufacturing facilities making future employees: “the key to the meal ticket of the nation.”(bouchard, 2006, 165). while the liberal government, first elected in 2002, increased spending on education 24 percent between 2003 and 2008, they did nothing substantial to reverse the assault on the educational mission the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 61 of schools (ontario ministry of education, 2007). standardized testing continues in grades 3, 6, 9, and 10, administered through the education quality and accountability office (eqao), mirrored at the postsecondary level by the higher education quality assurance council (heqac). the future employability of students remains the core educational objective as outlined in the ministry document growing success: assessment, evaluation, and reporting in ontario schools (2010). arguing that developing the “learning skills and work habits needed to succeed in school and in life begins early in a child’s schooling,” and that these work habits and learning skills may be “strengthened through the achievement of the curriculum expectations” of grades 1 through 12 (ontario ministry of education, 2010, 12), the document goes on to provide a list of employability skills as defined by the conference board of canada. these skills focus on “personal management skills that facilitate growth….and teamwork skills that enhance productivity” (ontario ministry of education, 2010, 12). sample behaviours include being responsible, adaptable, and able to work in teams while completing assigned projects. a more complex list of competencies as outlined by the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) is also cited in the ministry document as necessary for student success. this list is prefaced with an acknowledgement of the complex demands of living in a globalized and modern economy, the need to make sense of rapidly changing technologies, as well as the need to make decisions that represent collective challenges: for example, “the need to balance economic growth with environmental sustainability and prosperity with social equity” (ontario ministry of education, 2010, 13). the sample behaviours associated with these skills are organized into three “categories of competency,”: “using tools interactively,” “interacting in heterogeneous groups,” and “acting autonomously” (ontario ministry of education, 2010, 13). the subordination of education to schooling for the sake of employability might seem to be contradicted by the inclusion of the ability “to defend and assert rights, limits, interests, and needs.” (ontario ministry of education, 2010, 13). despite appearances, this invocation of rights, limits, interests, and needs has nothing to do with developing the capacity of students to identify ways in which existing structures and value systems undermine rights and freedoms. the defense and assertion of rights and interests is framed as the acts of lone individuals content with the existing value system and institutions, not as political subjects motivated to overcome the structural injustices of liberal-capitalism. 62 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education this emphasis on employability is repeated in the adult education sector of the secondary school system. unschooled adults who became injured or unemployed and who looked to the public school system for an opportunity to earn a high school diploma did not fare well under the harris reforms. according to the ontario secondary school teachers federation (osstf), the harris government cut funding to adult day schools by 70 percent; as a result, 85 percent of the student population disappeared between 1995 and 1997, with a net loss of 70,957 students between 1994 and 2001 (osstf, 2014). many of these people, particularly injured workers, were sent to private business colleges to earn diplomas of questionable value quickly (social policy in ontario, 2010). although this practice has been stopped, adult education in ontario remains in need of a “home,” in the words of kathleen wynne, then-parliamentary assistant to the minister of education (ministry of education, 2005, 1). in the case of secondary education, courses taught in an adult high school use the same curriculum guidelines as those taught in any other high school, despite the great differences in age and life-experience between adult and adolescent learners. in the case of adult education, then, the curriculum that reproduces the neoliberal values is being imposed on the very people – unemployed and injured workers – whose lives have been most painfully disrupted by neoliberalism. neoliberalism and the university when we turn our attention from secondary schools to universities, changes in the internal governance and administration take on a significance they do not have in the secondary schools. given the fact that universities traditionally have greater autonomy from government policy than secondary schools, and thus have had greater latitude for the cultivation of socially critical dispositions and capacities, aligning university education with neoliberal objectives requires governance changes that compromise institutional autonomy and academic freedom. one can learn a great deal about the goals of neoliberal reform by examining changes in the administrations that are expected to impose them. the first noticeable change in administration is its growing size. noam chomsky, speaking to a group of unionized adjunct faculty in pittsburgh, described the process: “in the past 30 to 40 years there has been a very sharp increase in the proportion of administrators to faculty and students...[who are] very highly paid. this includes professional administrators like deans...who used to be faculty members that took a couple of years off and then go back to faculty; the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 63 now they’re mostly professional, who then have to hire sub-deans, secretaries, etc.” (chomsky, 2014, 2). more important than the growing size of the administration, is the way in which the professionalization chomsky notes increasingly alienates them from the faculty and students. as senior administrators become more professionalized and more highly paid, they begin to change their sense of mission, from providing academic leadership to managing finances and promoting institutional growth (in student numbers, in the value of research grants and other income, in the architectural footprint of the institution). one mid-level administrator interviewed by a research team in the uk studying the effects of “new mangerialism” in the university system describes the change she felt in herself: “very often when i go to work i have to pinch myself and say ‘look, i’m sure i originally was an academic, but gosh now i feel like an accountant, i spend all my time...talking about issues about money...the academics and the quasi-managers are at logger heads with the real, full-time mangers who have a different career structure and a different career path.” (deem et. al., 2007, 179). these changes to the structure of management are not driven solely by forces endogenous to the university, but have been encouraged by government policies that openly challenge the capacity of universities to govern themselves according to their founding mission – the creation and dissemination of knowledge that serves the public good. universities have been mostly compliant with these demands, rushing to undertake costly and time wasting program reviews to prove their worthiness for government funding. the recently announced “differentiation strategy” for ontario universities and colleges forces every university and college in the province to submit a “strategic mandate agreement” detailing the ways in which the institution is aligning its objectives and strengths with government priorities. the government of ontario (2013, 10) report asserts: “differentiation strengthens alignment between regional development needs and defined institutional mandates. this will advance innovative partnerships and programs that serve the distinct ontario communities to which institutions are connected, as well as broader provincial needs. this alignment will ensure that students graduate with skills that respond to local and provincial labour market needs and contribute to social development. in areas that align with institutional capacity, these partnerships may be global in scope.” 64 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the real implications are clear: only those programs and institutions which can demonstrate a commitment to government policy can be assured of future funding. the overall objective is to contain costs by eliminating duplication in the system, forcing universities to specialise on narrow bands of expertise in contradiction to the very nature of a university. the differentiation policy follows directly from the 2011 commission on the reform of ontario’s public services (the drummond report) which explicitly recommended “differentiation” as a means of using resources efficiently and “encouraging and rewarding quality” as a means of ensuring compliance with government imposed-objectives (commission on the reform of ontario’s public services, 2012, ch.7). in order to tie the goals of schooling more tightly to labour market demand, the traditional rights of professors must also be challenged. the attack on academic labour takes a number of forms. tenure track positions are on the decline or, as in england since 1988, no longer available. in the united states in 2007 the percentage of tenured and tenuretrack professors had declined to 31 percent, while precarious part time academic labour had increased to 50.3 percent (wilson, 2010, 1). as in the private sector, employees without job security are more easily managed. by subjecting faculty to the discipline of academic labour markets, in which supply always far exceeds demand, their willingness and ability to develop in their students the capacity to understand and critique the social forces driving neoliberal reforms (threatening the student’s future as well) is undermined. every proposed change, from centralizing control over the university in senior administrative hands to raising enrolments through on-line courses is justified the same way: better preparing students for the real world of tough competition. as alan sears (2014) has recently argued, “ultimately, the goal of this transformation is a university system that, along with certain skills and knowledge, teaches students: “you are entitled to nothing. you have no right to anything you cannot afford, and you will only be able to afford things through a life of constant hustle.” in other words, students are being prepared for a life in which their personal freedom is reduced to forced self-reinvention at the behest of labour market demand. free choice of life-project remains as a justifying slogan, but is excoriated as irrational if it is exercised to choose courses of study for which there is no market demand. in the neoliberal universe interest and enjoyment count for nothing; life is about making rational investments in oneself, the good of life is maximizing returns on investments. a recent study of the employment outcomes of canadian the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 65 university graduates by the canadian imperial bank of commerce makes this point clear: “another important driver of the relatively low return on education is field of study. for students shelling out thousands in higher-learning costs, a university degree can be viewed as an investment with upfront expenses, and a stream of future benefits.” (benjamin and enenajor, 2013). although it purports to concern itself with graduates’ income, its real concern, since it is studying labour in a capitalist economy, is how much money-value employees create (wages and salaries track labour productivity, such that one can be paid more only if one is producing more for the firm). thus we arrive at the real truth of neoliberal educational reforms at the secondary and post-secondary level – their mandate is to produce productive and compliant workers that will produce more money-value for appropriation by the ruling class, at the expense of understanding the real dynamics and contradictions of this process and their capacity to change it. the real target of these reforms is not any particular subject or discipline, but the time and space that education requires. to conclude, we will examine how education itself is an example of non-alienated work, and thus itself a momentary liberation from the coercive objectifications to which labour markets subject people. education as an example of nonalienated work if neoliberal education reformers are to be believed, the primary interest of young people is to allow their life-horizons to be determined by the changing demands of labour markets. satisfying labour market demand becomes a moral imperative that overrides the openness to the future and freedom from imposed routine that, in propitious social circumstances, generates the feelings of freedom associated with youth. the neoliberal school speaks the language of goals, opportunities, and self-realization, but defines these values in terms of finding paid employment – and then being “flexible” enough to start all over again when market conditions change. in this way, neoliberal schooling confuses being a free subject with being an object of labour markets. our point is not that students can afford to be nonchalant about their future in a society where basic life-necessities are priced commodities. rather, our point is that education enables people to understand the contradiction between the labour on offer in capitalist labour markets and the human life-requirements for meaningful, socially valuable, non-alienated labour. not only does education help people grasp this 66 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education contradiction, it is itself a form of non-alienated. non-alienated labour, for marx, is essentially a labour of self-creation through world transformation, undertaken freely, that is, without the compulsion of natural or social necessity (marx, 1975, 274). through non-alienated labour processes, human capacities are developed for their own sake and the contribution their realization makes to others’ ability to satisfy their own life-requirements. when educational institutions and students are adequately funded, when the life-values of cognitive and imaginative development govern the organization of the institutions, and when the pedagogical methods are collaborative and interactive, education is a non-alienated labour process through which learners and teachers together transform themselves by expanding their capacities for understanding, imagining new social relations and criticising the impediments that stand in the way of the realization of those relations. both transform themselves by meeting and overcoming the limitations that defined their initial levels of understanding. at the same time, not only their own development as individuals, but their willingness and capacity to contribute to social well-being only fully develops when educational activity is experienced as free, un-coerced, non-alienated labour. to illustrate our point we want to share an example of a collaborative project we were involved in with adult learners. as teachers of adults in a city that is experiencing the painful fallout of neoliberal policies, especially unemployment as a result of deindustrialization, we looked for a way to break the reproductive processes at work in schooling. to this end, coral, a teacher in an adult high school, carved out a space within a course the ontario social sciences curriculum mandated her to teach – canadian politics and citizenship – for a critical discussion of neoliberalism. the class studied the hallmarks of neoliberalism: tax breaks for the wealthy, upward redistribution of income, governments consequently starved of revenue for social programmes, downward social mobility and the weakening of unions and workers’ organizations as a function of the globalization of capital. interest in this list of hallmarks led to a request by the class for a more systematic historical and theoretical discussion of neoliberalism and its implications for people in their situation. noonan, a professor at the university of windsor, was invited to speak to the class. he led a collective discussion about neoliberalism that revealed it to be the ideology shaping the economy and public policy of windsor. the discussion spurred the students to begin to think differently about their own social situations. thus were the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 67 the aims and methods of popular education brought into the school institution. instead of being “instructed” the students were engaged in a back and forth conversation in which their own experience enabled them to make sense of the historical and theoretical points under discussion. with the new knowledge of the world they were developing they fashioned a new self-understanding. they began to abandon the sense of victimhood inculcated in them for a sense of their own political agency. the day of the lecture ended with noonan and coral inviting the class to tell their stories of what it means to live under neoliberalism. this ending proved in fact to be the beginning of a new project in which students discovered that education is not synonymous with schooling and work is not identical to alienated paid labour. the students decided that they would take up our invitation and tell their stories of life under neoliberalism and that this would become the major assignment for the semester. in other words, they ceased to rely on the teacher-authorities to tell them what to do to pass the course and instead took the future direction of the course into their own hands, working with coral rather than just listening to her. students wrote about their life experiences: factory closures, unemployment, accessing dwindling social services for themselves and for loved ones with special needs, living on meagre social services, and the deterioration of neighbourhoods. the undertaking and completion of this assignment – writing the stories and reading each other’s stories – was itself a counter-hegemonic process. decisions regarding how the stories would be organized, illustrated, bound, categorized, and titled were collectively made, as was the initial decision to write the book for the major assignment. in the end, as a class, we decided how the assignment would be marked, collectively creating a marking rubric. the generic intellectual capacities cultivated through education enabled the students to not only re-describe their own experience, understand its causes more clearly, and begin to think of themselves as subjects capable of doing something about it, but also to look upon education as a process in which they are active subjects and not just the objects of administrative power. at one point in the book-making process, the students, in a deep discussion about how to organize the stories while coral typed, looked over at her and laughingly commented that the roles had reversed: the teacher had become the typist and the students were making all the decisions. “don’t worry,” they reassured me. “we’ve got this under control.” 68 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education as we emphasised in section two, this project was not about imposing upon students our own beliefs about neoliberalism. instead, it incorporated the popular education practice of co-exploration of a problem, using classroom space and time as a matrix within which students could develop their own critical attitudes towards neoliberalism’s effects on their lives. we understood that adult students are not children – they are living on a daily basis in a social order where their wages are falling, their livelihoods are being exported to other countries for socio-economic reasons they did not initially understand – and that their life experiences had a place in the classroom, connecting the curriculum to the actual lives of the students and empowering the students to speak openly about what they know best: their own life experience. as a result, the classroom became a place where this hegemony could be critically examined and contested. as the course progressed, students began to request classes in “how to vote,” more specifically, how to make sense of the differences between parties, how to make sense of election campaigns, and how to critically examine campaign promises. one man asked to stay after school to talk about how he could “get more involved.” later that week, he walked to the local workers’ action centre to sign up as a volunteer. a student who had been unemployed for a while and had shared with the class the humiliation he experienced applying for welfare, made a comment one day that resonated around the room: “this is making me feel better. it’s good to know i’m not a loser.” it also motivated the foundation, by coral and noonan and some of the most active students, to found the windsor peoples school, a popular education experiment housed in the windsor workers’ action centre. the project we undertook in the adult high school classroom challenged the reduction of education to schooling. in doing so, students discovered the class structures and ruling value systems underlying as social causes the challenges they faced every day in their own lives. our educational objectives had less to do with employability and more to do with living in this historical moment. our concern as teachers was for engaging students in a form of educational labour that enabled them to transform themselves form passive objects to active political subjects, not because we told them to do so, but because their new knowledge spurred a hunger for solutions to the social and economic problems they faced. one man’s comment on his experience in the class was most telling: “finally, i’m learning something in school that i can use to live my life!” that seemed a most appropriate educational objective for a high school curriculum. the tyranny of work: employability and the neoliberal assault on education | 69 this new critical insight was achieved within a school designed almost explicitly to reprogram adults for labour markets. yet, their own experience, combined with the basic imaginative and cognitive capacities their classes enabled them to develop, led them to an investigation of the causes of their situations, which transformed their self-understanding. formerly, they thought of themselves as objects, whether of bad luck, bad choices, or bad circumstances; subsequently they thought of themselves as individual and collective subjects whose value as human beings demanded social changes. as they became clearer about the causes of their objective situation, these students – often decried as lazy immigrants, as criminal, as addicts, developed a tremendous capacity and appetite for work, just because in their book project they could both “contemplate themselves in a world they had created” and feel themselves as capable of making a (small but real) contribution to solving the problems of the community which affected them as individuals (marx, 1975, 276). it might be objected that this exercise achieved no practical result; the problems that the students faced before the class they faced after, the ‘real world” was still there and the limited range of opportunities they faced was still limited. they would have been better served by job-specific retraining or apprenticeships that focused on real skills. aside from the obvious rejoinder that there is no contradiction between becoming educated and skilled, the deeper point that must be made in response is that the objection assimilates the entire value of human life to being valued as a commodity by a potential employer. this collapse of the difference between the life-value of experience, activity, and interaction and the money-value of skills that you can sell to an employer is precisely the “tyranny of work” under capitalist society. that these students learned to take initiative when they had been told to obey authority their whole lives, that they learned to cooperate when the instinct of many when confronted with a different idea than their own was to fight, and that they enjoyed, for the first time in their lives, learning something because they could feel it making a difference in their lives is essentially relevant to the future course of their lives. moreover, it is obviously not the case that learning to understand society as a field of problems (as opposed to fixed commands to which one must comply), to cooperate with others to understand those problems, to learn to communicate and convince others (and be convinced in turn by them), and to think about concrete solutions that go beyond the established structures of power and ruling value system, are useless. 70 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education these are the capacities by which human history is developed. the neoliberal subordination of education to schooling says, in effect, there was once history, but now that our class has achieved ascendency, not only must history stop, no one is to be enabled to understand even that there once was history. neoliberalism conflates agency with acquiescence, student life-requirements with passive compliance with system demands, lifevalue with the production of money-value for the delectation of the appropriating class, and the “real-world” with the circuits of labour and commodity markets. what is on offer with neoliberal educational reforms is not, therefore, education for the real-world, but the attempt to permanently impede people, save for the select few chosen to rule, from understanding reality. references alexander, a. 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(2010). “tenure, rip.” chronicle of higher education, http:// chronicle.com/article/tenure-rip/66114 (accessed, march 9th, 2014). 74 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? critical theory on policy movement in the context of contemporary reform in mexico paul bocking1 abstract: both the fields of critical human geography and comparative education have developed substantial thinking on the spread of neoliberal public policy across national and subnational boundaries. key means for explaining policy transfer include external advocacy from powerful transnational authorities such as the world bank and the oecd, ideological influence in the form of think tanks, and domestic structuralinstitutional pressures in the form of the interests of national business elites. the relative strength of opposition groups such as teachers’ unions and pro-public education organizations is a significant counterbalancing factor. in this paper i investigate the relative weight of each factor behind education policy development in the context of mexico’s contemporary adoption of neoliberal ‘education quality’ reform. i focus on the so-called ‘alliance for quality education’ enacted in 2008 under the 2006-2012 calderon administration, subsequently amended into the constitution under the 20122016 government of enrique peña nieto. these measures include among others, the tying of teacher salary and job security to an expanded regime of student standardized testing, and increased private sector involvement in the public provision and financing of education from kindergarten to secondary level education. the neoliberalization of public education has advanced significantly in mexico, especially due to the advocacy of mexican business lobbyists facilitated by ideologically predisposed state officials. however due to a conjuncture of factors, their success is threatened by a consolidating pro-public education teachers’ movement. 1  paul bocking (pbocking@yorku.ca) is a phd candidate at the department of geography, york university. his research interests centre on labour and political economy in canada, mexico and the united states. his projects include union organizing and canadian mining companies in mexico, the development and transnational movement of neoliberal education policy, and teachers’ unions in north america. he is also a community activist and high school teacher active in the ontario secondary school teachers federation. why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 75 keywords: mexico, neoliberalism, education reform, teachers, policy transfer, unions critical human geography and comparative education have developed substantial thinking on the means through which neoliberal public policy spreads across national and subnational boundaries. key means for explaining policy transfer include external advocacy from powerful transnational authorities such as the world bank and organization for cooperation and development (oecd), ideological influence in the form of think tanks and powerful lobby groups, and domestic structural-institutional pressures, in the form of both the interests of national elites as well as the relative strength of opposition groups such as teachers’ unions and pro-public education organizations. in this paper, i investigate the relative weight of each factor behind education policy development in the context of mexico’s contemporary adoption of neoliberal ‘education quality’ reform. i focus on the so-called ‘alliance for quality education’ (ace) regulations enacted in 2008 under the 2006-2012 calderon administration, subsequently amended into the education statutes of the national constitution under the subsequent government of enrique peña nieto in december 2012 and enshrined through legislation in september 2013. these measures include the tying of teacher salary and job security to an expanded regime of student standardized testing, and increased private sector involvement in the public provision of education from kindergarten to secondary level education. these practices strongly resemble both policies advocated by the latest world bank and oecd education strategy papers (making schools work, 2011; getting it right, 2012) and the demands of domestic corporate education lobby groups like mexicanos primero. i argue that the prominent role of the world bank and the oecd in articulating education policy adopted by the mexican government rests significantly on a convergence with the agenda of mexico’s powerful domestic business lobby, which is interested in privatizing public education. the importance of these external groups is principally to offer a technocratic form of legitimation, above the partisanship of mexican electoral politics and interest groups. the close ties of the current secretary-general of the oecd, josé ángel gurría, with the administration of peña nieto is an additional, more coincidental factor which elevates the oecd to greater prominence than it would otherwise likely have in influencing mexico’s education policy. however the rollout of the agenda of these powerful domestic and external elite forces has been uneven because of mexico’s 76 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education democratic teachers’ movement, which has gained strength as the official state-aligned leadership of the teachers’ union has weakened. this empirical study brings together theories on neoliberal policy movement from critical geography, especially peck (2002, 2011), harvey (2007) and prince (2012) and the ‘globally structured agenda for education’ (gsae) approach within comparative education, influenced by steiner-khamsi (2000, 2012), verger (2009), carnoy (1999), klees (2008) and dale (2000), to consider the actors in neoliberal education reform and the relative importance of their roles in the context of mexico. having identified “the agents of transfer” (steiner-khamsi, 2000, 164), i will study the extent to which ‘borrowing’ states actually implement foreign policy, and how this process reinforces or undermines political movements for neoliberal education reform in mexico.2 comparative education and critical geography: theories of policy mobility i begin with the argument that critical perspectives from geography on policy transfer are highly complementary with those of comparative education for understanding why and how neoliberal education policies cross national borders. steiner-khamsi notes how despite the broader, ‘transsectoral’ focus of the policy studies field of research, it supports a welcome depth to the approaches of comparative education. this approach can more specifically be identified as the gsae approach, with its emphasis on situating local or national policy developments within political and economic changes at the global scale (steiner-khamsi 2012, 4). she explains how these two fields of research complement each other with: “...a similar interpretive framework and method of inquiry, that enables them to draw attention to the local meaning, adaptation, and recontextualisation of reforms that had been transferred or imported. they have systematically adopted a lens that lends explanatory power to local policy contexts, and makes it feasible to explore the contextual reasons for why reforms, best practices, or international standards, were adopted. for these authors, reforms from elsewhere are not necessarily borrowed for rational reasons, but for political or economic ones.” (steiner-khamsi, 2012, 4) 2  much of the research and writing of this paper was done while i was living in mexico city in july and november of 2013. during the latter visit, i represented my teachers’ union, the ontario secondary school teachers federation (osstf) at an international conference in solidarity with the mexican teachers’ movement, facilitating much of the access to movement activists and journalists which informs my analysis. why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 77 prince (2012) positions critical geographers as sharing a similar analysis to what steiner-khamsi would likely describe as the gsae approach, emphasizing the importance of studying political and economic causalities within their historical and geographical contexts. more concretely, this means situating the study of policy transfer within an understanding of neoliberalism as a globally dominant political-economic ideology that consistently seeks the expansion of markets into public education. in doing so, he supports the broad methodological analysis developed by fellow geographers harvey (2007, 115-116) and peck (2011, 387-388). critical geography contributes an articulated analysis that is perhaps more explicit than the gsae literature of how neoliberalism’s globally prevalent ideology is highly uneven in its spatial implementation. as will be discussed below, negotiations and conflicts between domestic and elite groups, and especially the opposition of teachers’ movements, are important reasons for this disconnect between policy and reality. recent works in critical geographies of education also emphasize how practices within school systems can have a strong association with political dynamics at the urban scale (thiem-hanson, 2009), such as lipman’s study (2011) concerning the use of charter schools to aid the gentrification of south chicago.3 here, i primarily consider policy transfer and political contestation at the national-international scale, which contains many similarities with the gsae work that is rooted in country-level development studies. mexico’s education system is highly centralized, with key decisions made by the secretary of public education in mexico city. the official teachers’ union, the sindicato nacional de trabajadores de la educación (snte), is tightly controlled by its national executive. during the period examined here from 2008 to 2014, mexico’s teachers were able to mount an opposition movement that spanned the country. however, an awareness of uneven resistance and divergent institutional contexts at the subnational level is critical to understanding why many state governments were compelled to reach compromises with the movement, despite the abstinence of the federal government. like steiner-khamsi (2012) and dale (2010), prince (2012) defines the approach of critical geographers engaging in policy mobilities research against approaches conventionally taken, principally policy convergence as the inevitable result of cultural and social globalization and the up-take 3  other recent urban-focused examples include seattle (lizotte 2013), new orleans (huff 2013) and toronto (basu 2013). few similar studies exist for mexico, however my forthcoming dissertation will study the construction of teachers’ resistance to neoliberal policy in mexico city, among other north american cities. 78 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education by governments of ‘best practices’ from abroad. within education policy studies, this line of argument is most clearly identified with the common world educational culture approach, primarily identified with the work of john meyer ( see dale 2000, 455). this approach has been criticized by steiner-khamsi (2012, 4) as being “naive” for not considering the contingencies of power struggles at various political scales relevant to education policymaking.4 while broadly sharing her critique of ‘consensus-based’ policy convergence (steiner-khamsi 2000, 158), prince (2012, 189) positions that analysis as principally the product of mainstream policy studies, arguing: “but geographers have had a different focus, studying policy transfer in order to think about how they manifest the changing power relations which shape the circumstances in which they occur. this work speaks to the interscalar and cross-national power struggles that produce the policy harmonization and differentiation that together constitute internationalizing policy regimes.” peck (2011, 775) makes a similar distinction utilizing categories to distinguish between positivist best practices ‘policy-transfer’ anchored in political science, and a social constructivist ‘policy mobilities’ that is transdisciplinary and contextual. finding complementary analyses between critical geographers engaged in research on policy transfer and the gsae approach within comparative education, i will now discuss the political and economic causalities behind the latest wave of neoliberal education policies in mexico. constitutional amendments: the contemporary roll-out of neoliberal education policy the package of neoliberal education reforms at the centre of this study were introduced to the mexican congress by enrique peña nieto on december 10, 2012 less than two weeks after his presidential inauguration on december 1. in an instance of what peck has described as ‘fast policy’ (2010, 195), the swiftness by which mexico’s lower and upper 4  dale (2000, 436) draws a key distinction between the common world educational culture (cwec) approach and gsae, with the former emphasizing ‘idealistic’ causality, and the latter using a structural-materialist lens, “for cwec, the world polity is a reflection of the western cultural account, based around a particular set of values that penetrate every region of modern life. for gsae, globalization is a set of political-economic arrangements for the organization of the global economy, driven by the need to maintain the capitalist system rather than by any set of values.” why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 79 legislatures passed this legislation on december 21 and became law on february 6, 2013 was remarkable.5 seemingly intent on distinguishing himself from his two predecessors, whose legislative agendas were largely blocked over each of their six-year terms, as well as shaking off considerable political attacks during the election campaign and allegations of massive vote fraud, peña nieto moved fast and effectively to build a political consensus with his two principal rival parties. the ‘pact for mexico’, co-signed with the leaders of the conservative national action party (pan) and the centre-left party of the democratic revolution (prd) (in the latter case provoking substantial internal dissension), was unveiled on peña nieto’s second day in office. the accord comprised a series of major proposed bills, of which primary-secondary education reform was only the first. others included changes to labour statutes in the constitution that legalized already prevalent precarious employment practices, reforms to the tax code and the denationalization of mexico’s energy sector. the ease by which these major changes passed in peña nieto’s first year in office, with the endorsement of all three dominant parties (though with the prd opposing energy liberalization and leaving the pact for mexico on this basis) is virtually unprecedented since the fading of the institutional revolutionary party’s (pri) seventy year rule over mexico as a one-party state in the 1990s.6 this elite ideological consensus behind the roll-out of neoliberal policy provides much of the basis by which profound changes to mexico’s education system were enacted (hernández navarro, 2013, 27-28). key contents of the reforms centered around teacher hiring, salaries and job security, many of which were in fact previously established in the 2008 ‘alliance for quality education’, negotiated between the prior president felipe calderon, and snte president elba esther gordillo. 5  peck defines ‘fast policy’ as emerging transnational networks of rapid policy exchanges between technocratic experts, typically claiming a pragmatic ambivalence to any political ideology. their activities and policy conclusions tend to be insulated from direct public influence or oversight and in fact emerge from within defined, usually narrow ideological frameworks (peck, 2010, 195-196). 6  the pri and its predecessor parties ruled mexico at the national level, and in nearly all states and municipalities, nearly all of the time, from the end of the armed period of the mexican revolution in the 1920s until 2000, when it lost what was arguably the second free election held during this period. the significance of the rapid enactment of significant neoliberal reforms through peña nieto’s ‘pact for mexico’, is evident when contrasted to the previous three terms of pri and pan presidents. beginning with prista ernesto zedillo’s election in 1994 (the first free election), emerging social movements and fiercely partisan opposition parties made the passing of sweeping policies difficult, defeating radical changes to public education. shifts in the internal dynamics of the pan and the prd that led both to collaborate with peña nieto are beyond the scope of this paper, but the ideological convergence of the three parties and the clear resurgence of the pri after twelve years out of national office are key factors. 80 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education however due to fierce resistance by long-standing opposition within the union, these reforms were wholly or partially unimplemented in several key southern and central states.7 by embedding these policies within the mexican constitution, with all the legal weight this implied and then implementing them through new legislation in a renewed effort to impose them nationally, peña nieto strived to overcome this resistance. the legislation passed in february 2013 inserts new language under the education clauses of the mexican constitution (article 3), stipulating that teacher hiring will be subject to the passing of standardized exams, and that the continuation of their employment will depend on success at subsequent evaluations over the course of their career. the implementation of these articles was defined by subsequent ‘secondary laws’ passed in september 2013 (arriaga, 2013, 13-14). a series of standing proposals from the government were planned to determine teacher employment. the singular focus of these proposed policies lead many education activists to argue that the reforms really have very little to do with so-called education ‘quality’, and should properly be considered as labour market reforms targeting employees in the public education sector.8 new teachers would be hired on the basis of passing a professional exam, a policy advocated as a means of eliminating widespread nepotism in the form of teachers inheriting a position from a retiring parent, or otherwise bidding on an opening in exchange for the outgoing teacher’s ‘endorsement’, a process also reputedly coordinated by corrupt union officers for personal enrichment. the reality was quite different in the southern states of oaxaca and chiapas, where the democratic teachers’ movement union won control of union locals in the 1980s. here, teacher hiring as well as promotions to administrative and supervisory positions have been handled transparently, with the latter determined through elections by their peers, in a remarkable form of workers’ self-management (cook, 1996, 194-195). nevertheless, with teacher hiring practices widely criticized by the public as corrupt due largely to sensational media exposés like the film de panzazo! and the experiences of applicants in states controlled by union officials tied to gordillo, provisions around union control of hiring were eliminated with little resistance. another proposed change in hiring would remove the mandatory requirement of a minimum one-year university degree in education, reducing the qualification 7  oaxaca, chiapas, guerrero, michoacan, morelos and mexico city. 8  in hernández navarro’s (2013, 16) words: “their real goal is to change the nature of work for teachers.” why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 81 for becoming a public school teacher to holding an undergraduate university degree and passing the exam (hernández navarro, 2013, 40).9 under the ‘alliance for quality education’ (ace), salary and job tenure were largely removed from the stipulations of union negotiated collective agreements, with increases determined on a formula weighted 50 percent on the annual standardized exam results of their students (professional development accounts for 30 percent, ‘school leadership’ for 10 percent and seniority 10 percent). however as was mentioned above, teachers’ groups organized outside the official snte union defeated the implementation of the ace in states across central-southern mexico (bocking, 2012, 14). laws under consideration would revive this effort of replacing negotiated salary increases with merit pay driven by student and teacher testing. ace also included the creation the national institute for education evaluation (inee) as a branch of the secretary of public education (sep) to oversee teacher and student exams. the constitutional amendment makes the inee autonomous office, directly overseen by the federal executive, ostensibly to provide it with both greater impartiality and to insulate it from the political contestation of the teachers’ union within the sep. the constitutional change strengthens existing ace policies, with failure on a test stipulating mandatory professional development training at the teachers’ expense at one of many newly opened privately-run training schools, with subsequent failure leading to dismissal (arriaga, 2013, 13-14; bacon, 2013). an additional proposal is the trial roll-out of an extended school day from six to eight hours with some, but not proportional increased compensation for teachers. according to investigative journalist hernandez navarro (2013), peña nieto preempted teacher opposition to this demand by “demagogically” portraying resistant teachers as unwilling to work hard to educate children. finally, a touchstone of the proposed reforms emerging from the constitutional amendment is enhanced ‘school autonomy’. promoted as a measure to increase parental participation in their children’s education, coupled with teacher exams, it would empower principals to directly hire and fire teachers, significantly weakening collective agreement provisions regarding employee 9  even the latter could be negotiated, provided one held sufficiently strong reference letters from administrators, according to some anti-reform activists in the state of morelos who had fought the original pre-constitutional version of this hiring practice initiated in many states as part of the ‘alliance for quality education’. in effect, coupled with a defacto deskilling, one form of patronage was replaced with another, favouring school authorities (bocking, 2012, 14). 82 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education discipline. while the overwhelming focus of the reforms is on changing the employment conditions of teachers, the ‘school autonomy’ measures are also important because of its encouragement of individual schools to set student fees (previously widespread but legislated at the state level, despite violating the spirit of constitutionally guaranteed free access to primary and secondary education). education critics fear the measure will encourage schools to enter into increased corporate partnerships to make up for chronic underfunding. measures also provide for the increased provision of school-based and mobile internet-ready computer labs, with significant private funding. two weeks after the signing of the education reforms into the constitution, mexican authorities arrested the president of the snte since 1989, elba esther gordillo, and charged her with embezzling hundreds of millions of pesos in union funds (tuckman, 2013). the democratic teachers’ movement joined the broad mexican public in celebrating the fall of a power broker legendary for her personal corruption. the arrest of arguably the most powerful woman in mexican politics was strategic both for the roll-out of the education reforms, and for setting the terms of peña nieto’s presidency: “the unpopularity of elba esther gordillo in public opinion is so great, that any action to change the system of teaching in the country that included the defeat of the lifetime leader of the snte, easily won broad popular support.... this announcement [of her arrest] and the intense publicity campaign that accompanied it, led to employer’s associations, academics and parts of the population giving their support to the new government.” (hernández navarro, 2013, 27) i now turn to the political and economic implications of these policies, drawing attention to the intersections of external policy advocacy, cross border ideological movement and domestic institutional struggle. world bank and the oecd: the influence of transnational actors on education policy formation aside from the ‘best practices policy learning’ models proposed by advocates of cwec, and critiqued by researchers using the gsae approach as lacking a nuanced contextual analysis of political and economic power relations, verger (2009) proposes several key ‘mechanisms’ through which global institutions influence national education why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 83 policy: imposition, imf attaches conditionalities related to the implementation of specific economic policies in return for loans; the dissemination of policy through recourse to technical expertise and the shaping of data, as in the case of the extensive research and policy papers produced by the wb and the oecd; and standardization, whereby states agree to adhere to an international norm such as the administering of the program for international student assessment (pisa) exam (verger, 2009, 382). similarly, carnoy (1999) associates these mechanisms with the roll-out of competition and finance-driven reforms, under varying degrees of compulsion by the world bank and the imf, and strongly held beliefs within the national state that such measures are critical for ensuring international competitiveness in the context of capitalist globalization. while advocates of the cwec approach would agree with the significance of the latter two mechanisms, researchers applying a gsae analysis argue that cwec ignores the contextual political conflict in which these exchanges occur, which are important to understanding their role in the context of neoliberal education reform in mexico. the role of the imf and its capacity for influencing state policy through loan conditionalities has declined in mexico in the decades since the massive bailout following the peso crisis of 1994 (sigmond, 2010). the wb and the oecd have a major presence in mexico and a significant impact on the formation of national education policy. however, in my view, the mechanisms by which the wb and the oecd influence mexican education through advocating policy reforms are best described as collaboration through dissemination and standardization, with the leading role played by mexican authorities, rather than through involuntary imposition. klees describes the world bank as “the major player in global education policy” and “at the forefront of the shift to neoliberal thinking” (klees, 2008, 312). mexico is the wb’s fourth largest ‘portfolio’, with loans reaching $6.4 billion in 2010 and dropping to $2.8 billion in 2011 (world bank 2013).10 of twenty-two active projects in 2010, five related to primary, secondary or tertiary sector education, including a $1.5 billion supplement to the mexican government’s oportunidades program, which provides small cash transfers to impoverished families tied to completing tasks such as maintaining school attendance. $220 million was also budgeted in a ‘school-based management’ project 10  mexico’s gdp shrank by 6 percent in 2009, far worse than the average for latin america and the caribbean, which shrank by 1.5 percent, due to mexico’s far greater economic reliance on the struggling us market for exports and as a source of remittances (world bank, 2013). 84 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education intended to assist the roll-out of ace, though at the submission of the 2010 annual report, no funds had been disbursed (world bank, 2010). certainly the world bank’s capacity to provide significant funding for projects it supports has an influence on the priorities of a national education system with pressing needs in numerous areas. in addition to its significant budget, the world bank (like the oecd), can also clothe its recommendations in a veneer of objectivity, making highly political assertions difficult to contest: “the various statistical tables, diagrams, spreadsheets, charts and other abstracting and universalizing technologies which enable comparisons and translations to be made with ease bring these objects, and the places that contain them, into a virtual space of comparison where policy learning, exchange and transfer can take place. the assembly of these technical systems across geographical space enables particular objects that draw on and refer to them... to travel relatively unproblematically from place to place.” (prince 2012: 193) mexico’s constitutional reforms incorporating teacher evaluation and related legislation under deliberation do appear to strongly resemble those advocated by the wb in its making schools work report, which is also primarily focused on changing teachers’ employment conditions, rather than advocating for distinct pedagogical approaches or increased funding for schools. as in the bank’s other recent major education policy document, learning for all (2011), the language centers around increasing ‘accountability,’ ‘quality’ and ‘effectiveness’. the wb’s concept of ‘school-based management’ (sbm), mirrors the ‘school autonomy’ policies found in ace and the proposals for the realization of peña nieto’s constitutional amendments, giving principals the right to grant salary raises, discipline and fire teachers based on their performance on exams or that of their students. while not directly advocating school fees and confronting the basic principles of ‘education for all’, like mexican advocates of school autonomy, the bank suggests additional benefits from sbm can be derived from more “resources from parents (whether in cash or in-kind)” and school committees with parental involvement engaged in fundraising (burns, 2011, 88-90). writing in 1999, carnoy’s critique of ‘school autonomy’ remains prescient. in terms of decentralizing decision-making, he argues that in practice, public school teachers in most countries (including mexico) already enjoy substantial autonomy why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 85 in how they approach curriculum in their classrooms. carnoy notes that ‘autonomy’ policies have been opposed on the grounds that they have tended to consist of downloading some funding responsibility from federal or state authorities to the municipal level, which usually has a more limited capacity for raising revenue, or to the parents of students themselves, as the wb itself implies (carnoy, 1999, 52-56). peck describes this downloading of public services like education since the 1990s as a widespread scalar strategy associated with neoliberalism intended to shift risks and responsibilities where possible to local and extra-state authorities which are increasingly encouraged to compete for globally mobile private investment (peck, 2002, 391-394). as described by carnoy (1999) and klees (2008), while deploying substantial language around improving student learning and despite various ancillary programs, the focus of the wb remains the limitation of state expenditures on public education, principally through reduced labour costs of teachers and privatization. making schools work presents several case studies of experiments in african and south asian countries of the impact on student achievement of replacing permanent teachers with contract employees paid a fraction of the standard salary, and sometimes without professional qualifications (burns, 2011, 147-156). however, despite the bank’s undeniably strong presence in mexico, it is difficult to impute the extent to which the wb directly influences policy of the mexican government, beyond the implementation of specific projects such as the ‘school-based management’ program mentioned above. however a complex and significant relationship can be assembled between the government of enrique peña nieto and the oecd, especially in the persona of its secretary-general, josé ángel gurría, who has deep connections to the president’s institutional revolutionary party (pri). after joining the party at 18, as a “fanatic of the free market” according to hernández navarro (2013, 99), in the 1980s he sided with the ascendant neoliberal technocrats over the populist corporatist faction who had built the pri from its origins in the 1920s. gurría was mexico’s chief negotiator for nafta and later served as minister of foreign affairs and secretary of finance in the zedillo government (1994-2000). a rising star within the pri, he was considered a potential presidential candidate, prior to 12 years of pan rule (hernández navarro, 2013, 99-101). first appointed to lead the oecd in 2006 with an endorsement by outgoing mexican president vincente fox, gurría maintained nominal relations with the government of felipe calderon of pan. however he has only strengthened his ties to peña nieto from when the latter served as governor of 86 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education mexico state prior to winning the presidency, playing an active role in the president-elect’s preparation of policy up to his assumption of office, and afterwards frequently voicing his support publicly for initiatives like the pact for mexico and the education reforms (brito, 2013). in a cnn español article titled “oecd reading the script to peña nieto”, journalists reported on gurría’s initiative to speak out in september 2012 soon after the confirmation of peña nieto’s victory on the urgent need for structural reforms. the president welcomed the comments, replying “i propose that the oecd become a strategic ally for the design of the policies that mexico needs, and what greater contribution than to have a friend at the head of this organization.” (jiménez, 2012) for his part, gurría responded graciously and with urgency that the oecd, “awaits its orders to work with mexico, its institutions...day by day to make the pact [for mexico] a reality.” (hernández navarro, 2013, 101). he adds in the forward to getting it right: strategic reforms for mexico, a document released in september 2012 and explicitly intended to help shape the agenda of peña nieto’s transition team prior to entering office in december, that “the new mexican government should consider the oecd an extension of its own capacities.” (oecd, 2013a, 4). during his inaugural visit with european heads of state in october 2012, the president-elect made time to include a personal visit to the oecd headquarters in paris (hernández navarro, 2013, 114). one month earlier, peña nieto signed a “declaration of intentions” with the oecd to begin the privatization of the publicly owned oil company pemex. the action was seen as evidence of the oecd’s influence, given that this was one of the key recommendations of getting it right (villamil, 2012).11 the education section of this document echoes the wb in encouraging the mexican government’s ongoing drive to increase use of standardized student and teacher evaluations as the surest means to improve education ‘quality’. it also diagnoses a deficit of ‘school autonomy‘, defined as the ability of principals to directly hire, set salaries and fire school staff (oecd, 2013a, 129-130). the consistency of the neoliberal orthodoxy in the oecd’s recommendations and its fealty to ‘finance driven reforms’ as defined by carnoy (1999, 42), is evident by their consistent dismissal of their own extensive survey data, which would reasonably suggest that ‘teacher quality’ in mexico would be best improved by raising salaries and providing paid preparation time, rather than increasing workplace 11  however it should also be noted that privatization of pemex has been a long standing and key demand of mexican business groups, foreign investors and pro-free trade transnational agencies like the oecd as well as the world trade organization, imf and wb. why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 87 discipline. the report cites a secretary of education survey of school principals indicating frequent lateness among staff, due to teachers working at different schools in the morning and afternoon. improvements in teacher scheduling are not suggested, nor are low salaries acknowledged as the reason why many primary and secondary teachers seek an additional shift or ‘plaza’ (oecd, 2013a, 129, 132). according to the oecd’s comprehensive survey of the education systems of member nations, education at a glance 2013, annual classroom instructional hours in 2011 for mexican secondary teachers were 1050 hours (the oecd average is 709), the third highest in the oecd after argentina, chile and the us (oecd, 2013b, 396). another strong indicator provided by this survey of the likely widespread high levels of stress experienced by mexican teachers is that 100 percent of recognized work time for primary teachers and 90 percent for secondary teachers is spent on classroom instruction, by far the highest average in the oecd (oecd, 2013b, 399).12 this means virtually no recognized, scheduled and compensated time is provided for mexican teachers to mark, prepare lesson plans or attend meetings with other school staff or parents. all of the tasks described above are pushed into time unrecognized by education authorities (e.g. evenings and weekends), usually performed away from the worksite. however, rather than disbursing the additional funds required to free up additional teacher time enabling them to improve the ‘quality‘ of education, the mexican government, wb and oecd, in conjunction with business advocacy organizations, pursue a strategy of increasing the ‘quantity‘ of teacher work, disciplined by increased employment precariousness. the specific political conjuncture of the return of the pri to national power and the leadership of one of its own at the head of the oecd has led this transnational agency to obtain significant influence over policy formation within mexico. the context parallels the policy mobilities scenario outlined by koenig-archibugi (2010) and verger (2009) in which outside experts are enlisted to validate the contested policies of factions of the state. navarro clearly makes the connection to the close relationship between the mexican government and the oecd: “[mexican] governments have systematically adopted the great majority of their recommendations. at key moments, this has supported 12  in canada by comparison, elementary and secondary school teachers respectively spend 65 and 60 percent of their recognized work time directly instructing students (oecd, 2013b, 399). 88 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education government policies that did not hold sufficient internal consensus, to be legitimized when presented as the advisories of the supranational organization. in this manner internal negotiating positions are strengthened.” (hernández navarro 108-109) however if this has been the case at least since the affiliation of mexico to the oecd in 1994 and participation in pisa since 2000, how has the close relationship between peña nieto’s government and gurría manifested itself? navarro explains the new closeness of this relationship: “but if the influence of the organization [oecd] on defining education policies has been so significant for many years, what’s new about it now being decisive at the moment of setting these new education norms? the difference between the previous reforms to teaching and the recent changes to the constitution is that these elevate to a higher level the oecd’s proposals, constitutionalizing them....preventing a regression on these reforms.” (hernández navarro, 2013, 103) if it is evident that the wb and especially the oecd have provided critical support in laying the groundwork for the mexican government’s contemporary neoliberal education reforms, another key form of cross border ideological movement has been the role of mexican-based business lobby groups, which strongly resemble similar organizations in the us. while the wb and oecd supply policy rationales and authoritative research, the latter groups strive to open up political space for reforms within the broader mexican public. by studying these organizations, especially the activities of mexicanos primero (mexicans first), a clearer picture of the balance of elite structural-institutional pressures within mexico in favour of neoliberal reforms becomes evident. of course, this broader political-economic context remains a contested space, particularly in light of the democratic teachers’ movement in confronting and potentially transforming these policies. mexicanos primero and domestic structural-institutional factors behind education reform like the world bank and the oecd, since its founding in 2005 mexicanos primero, has worked extensively to popularize the notion that “only quality education will change mexico” (mexicanos, 2013) within policymaking circles and civil society at large. in doing so, it has represented the consortium of corporate interests which comprise its why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 89 directorship and funding sources, emerging as perhaps the most important mexican business lobby group on education. its founder, claudio x. gonzález guajardo was previously the president of fundacion televisa, the corporate social responsibility arm of the televisa conglomerate, mexico’s massive private tv and radio monopoly. he is also the honourary president of the unión de empresarios para la tecnología en la educación (union of businesspeople for technology in education, unete), a corporate lobby group for obtaining technology contracts in mexican public schools. unete funders include intel, microsoft, toshiba and ford (a major private funder of mexican schools). guajardo’s father is multi-billionaire claudio x. gonzález laporte, president of kimberly clark mexico, chair of the mexican businessmen’s association, and one of the most powerful business leaders in mexico (bacon, 2013b; hernández navarro, 2013b; economist, 2008). mexicanos primero rose to significant power with the victory of peña nieto, however the group first emerged to prominence with the release of their film, de panzazo! in 2011. the documentary has been frequently described by critics and supporters alike as a mexican version of the earlier released and us-focused waiting for superman. in both films, education reform advocates decry the failings of their respective national education systems, especially for the most marginalized students, present the power of teacher unions as a principal cause through its alleged role in protecting bad teachers and opposing reforms, and position neoliberal policies as the solution (zebadúa, 2012; bacon, 2013b). how can we account for the strong parallels between messaging of mexicanos primero and similar groups in the us behind waiting for superman, like students first, founded after the mexican organization in 2010 by michelle rhee? david bacon (2013) quotes the founder and former rector of the autonomous university of mexico city, manuel perez rocha, on the parallels between corporate-led strategies in the us and mexico: “the mexican right always copies the united state’s right... the politics of merit pay and the correlation with standardized exam results is identical between the two countries. the right wants to convert education into a commodity and students into merchandise – ‘let’s fill their heads with information and put them to work.’” he notes there are important differences because the national union in mexico [the snte of now deposed elba esther gordillo] is an entrenched part of the power structure. in spring 2013, new york state authorities backed the substance of the concessions demanded by new york mayor bloomberg (a key funder and proponent of students first) and imposed a new teacher evaluation system in response to a deadlock in negotiations between 90 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the united federation of teachers and the city administration. the system closely resembles policies outlined in mexico’s constitutional amendments and specified in the earlier ace policies, evaluations are decided 20-25 percent from the results of standardized student exams, 15-20 percent through ‘in school mechanisms’ and the remainder through principal observation. after two consecutive annual ‘ineffective’ ratings, the teacher is fired (jaffe, 2013). in the absence of evidence of direct exchanges of policies between organizations like students first and mexicanos primero, following the globally structured agenda for education (gsae) methodology, one can conclude that mexico and the us are both subject to a combination of influences from similar waves of policy recommendations from transnational organizations like the oecd and wb, and structural-institutional pressures from domestic business elites embedded within global capitalism (dale, 2000). de panzazo! received a wide release in central mexico through the cinepolis movie theatre chain, whose ceo alejandro ramírez magaña, is also the vice-president of mexicanos primero (mexicanos, 2013), as well as coverage on televisa in the months leading up to the 2012 national elections. the film’s fervently anti-union, pro-privatization message received at least nominal support from the wb, which hosted a special screening of the documentary with a panel discussion at its mexico city offices.13 a promotion for the event on the wb’s website describes the film: “the documentary features interviews with key actors in the education system, hard data, and poignant testimonials from students, parents and teachers. one can see similarities to the u.s. documentary, waiting for superman, which generated widespread debate for its biting criticism of the deficiencies of us public schools and its suggestion that teachers’ unions bear a significant responsibility for them.... we hope that ¡de panzazo! will spark the same type of debates as its u.s. counterpart, and that it continues to draw attention to a much-needed educational reform in mexico.” (world bank 2012) mexicanos primero draws similar support from the oecd. according to navarro, gurría delivered a video address to the organization at its 2011 general meeting soon after the release of de panzazo!, praising its “exemplar work” (hernández navarro, 2013, 111). 13  an event taken seriously by the wb, the panel featured its lead education economist, harry patrinos and its sector manager on education, robin horn (world bank, 2012). why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 91 beyond these instances and the closely aligned policies presented above, it is difficult to know the extent to which the oecd and the wb cooperate with each other and with mexicanos primero in coordinating a strategy for the roll-out of neoliberal education policy in mexico. their relationships with each other are clearly more substantial than that of a mutual recognition of shared interests, but what is unquestionable is the strong influence of the three in the formation of policy under peña nieto. this is particularly evident in the case of mexicanos primero. as the most important representative of mexican capitalism advocating for the privatization of education, its status at the forefront of shaping the roll-out of neoliberal education policy in cooperation with the mexican state underlines the significance of domestic structural-institutional factors relative to the capacities of transnational institutions for determining the roll-out of policy. this is the case considering how so much of the oecd’s apparent influence in mexico as a transnational organization is actually contingent on ‘domestic’ political connections in the persona of gurría, who happens to be its secretary general, with the present regime of peña nieto. contrary to peck’s early description of the emergence of neoliberalism in the developing world as a result of “externally impos[ed] unbending rule regimes enforced by global institutions and policed by local functionaries” (peck, 2002, 381), at least in the case of a contemporary mid-sized ‘middle-income’ state like mexico, national capitalist classes appear to possess a substantial degree of agency in implementing neoliberal reforms in collaboration with the state. peck himself presents a more nuanced analysis along these lines, when he and brenner argue that: “...it is problematic to assume that neoliberalization processes normally or necessarily move ‘downwards’ along a global-to-national vector....this superordinate gaze fails to take account of the strategic role of national, regional and local state apparatuses as active progenitors of neoliberalizing institutional reforms and policy prototypes, and as arenas in which market oriented regulatory experiments are initiated, consolidated and even extended.” (brenner, 2010, 195-196). the mexican state would surely constitute such an actor leading the implementation of neoliberal policy, without whose commitment, associated with its strong connections to mexican capital, much of the recommendations of the wb and the oecd would be ignored (harvey, 2007, 117). soon after the confirmation of peña nieto’s electoral victory, on september 12, 2012 mexicanos primero publicly released the following 92 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education proposals: removal of principals from union membership and reclassification as management, the tying of teacher employment to the results of mandatory standardized evaluations, increasing school autonomy (in the sense defined by the oecd and the wb above) and removing funding for teachers on union time release (hernández navarro, 2013b). shortly afterwards, peña nieto appointed claudio x. gonzález guajardo to lead his education transition team, and lending strong support to the second and third of mexicanos’ recommendations, gurría presented getting it right, “prepared by the oecd in the context of the agreement for a strategic alliance between mexico and the oecd for the 2012-2018 administration.” (oecd, 2013a, 5). during the following three months, peña nieto’s transition team conducted intensive closed door negotiations with the leadership of the two opposition parties to create a toplevel consensus over a significant range of proposed policies prior to any legislative debate (bacon, 2013b). this was the political context in which the pact for mexico gestated before release in the form of the proposed constitutional changes at the start of the new president’s term. resistance to neoliberal education policy: the democratic teachers’ movement there are many more significant actors beyond the state and business associations like mexicanos primero which shape the political and economic context in which neoliberal education reforms are rolled out. however the democratic teachers’ movement, the national coordinating committee of education workers (cnte), has emerged as the most important organization to contest these policies, frequently resulting in their modification or annulation. emerging in a nationwide wave of strikes and organizing in 1979-82, the cnte has since served as a strong pole of resistance within mexico’s largest union, the 1.4 million snte which following its formation in 1943, has been controlled by authoritarian leaders loyal to the national government and affiliated with the governing pri. though the cnte’s strength has fluctuated, it is generally considered to be the dominant force within the union in state-level locals representing roughly a third of the total membership. much of its power is concentrated in the south, with its bedrock of support in michoacán, chiapas, guerrero and oaxaca, mexico’s poorest states with strong traditions of organizing and protest, as well as the elementary teachers’ local in mexico city. here, the cnte has generally led the union locals, and provided historically strong opposition to neoliberal reforms from the secretary of education’s national and state offices. the why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 93 movement has also risen and fallen in many other central and northern states during this time (cook, 1996; foweraker, 1993). coinciding with the power vacuum following former union president gordillo’s ouster, the cnte experienced a resurgence of energy and support among teachers over 2013 as it seized the initiative channeling widespread rank and file teacher frustration following the constitutional reforms. in the months following approval of the constitutional reforms it lead short strikes first in guerrero, followed by michoacán, chiapas and mexico city.14 new outreach by the cnte through regional meetings and forums over the summer of 2013 spread the geographical reach of the democratic teachers into northern and eastern states including zacatecas, chihuahua, jalisco, san luis potosi and veracruz, which previously lacked a significant presence. the broader upsurge also strengthened the movement in states where it was previously divided between dissident factions, as in puebla and morelos. a clear sign of the success of this movement was the ministry of the interior and secretary of education’s recognition of the cnte as a negotiating party, in addition to the official union leadership of the snte. the start of the 2013-14 school year in august witnessed the eruption of full strikes by cnte members in its strongholds, as well as new bases of support in veracruz and campeche. regular demonstrations, occupations of government buildings and toll roads, and one day work stoppages in many more, led to a historic height of major mobilizations by teachers in all of mexico’s thirty-two states and the federal district of mexico city. while recognizing and meeting with national cnte negotiating teams, the interior ministry (gobernación) which took the lead from bargaining from the education secretary, appears to have adopted a scalar strategy according to many teacher and media observers of not yielding on the most contentious issues. these include expansion of student and teacher testing to define teacher effectiveness, the circumvention of union ‘just cause provisions’ to give principals discretionary power to fire teachers on the basis of these exams, and the devolution of significant school financing to local parent councils. the strongest dissident teacher sections would then be compelled to seek negotiations at the state level and thereby isolate and leave vulnerable to repression weaker regions of the movement when the former reach agreements and demobilize. indeed, in mid-september 2013, peña nieto again mobilized the ‘pact for mexico,’ easily passing the 14  information in the following section emerged principally from the author’s time in mexico city in july and november 2013 observing teacher marches, rallies and meetings, and through unstructured conversations with participating teachers, movement allies and journalists. 94 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education ‘leyes secundarias’ (secondary laws).15 meanwhile, negotiations continued between the most consolidated cnte sections in oaxaca, chiapas, michoacán, campeche, veracruz, guerrero and their state governments, amid protests and strikes across most of mexico and a joint encampment of the national movement in mexico city. tentative agreements in the first four were reached by the end of the year, with these teachers returning to the classroom and a smaller group of union activists rotating through the main protest camp in support of unresolved states (proceso, 2013). is the mexican government’s apparent approach of containing opposition to education reforms in a handful of states in order to dampen a national movement, while refusing to compromise on its core policies successful? as i write in late 2014, it is uncertain. journalists and movement participants i discussed this with in november 2013 as protests were demobilizing, believed that in chiapas, oaxaca and michoacán, along with victories on local issues including hiring more teachers, settlements included a de facto agreement that these key aspects of the secondary laws would not be imposed.16 however the interior ministry and peña nieto insist that no circumventions will be tolerated from the core elements of the constitutional changes and their enacting laws, filing complaints in april 2014 with the mexican supreme court that the state governments of oaxaca, chiapas, michoacán and sonora had reached agreements with their teachers that were contrary to federal legislation (aristegui noticias, 2014a). in place of the standardized exams for teachers and students stipulated by ace and the constitutional reforms in oaxaca, an alternative union-designed program is being implemented, the ‘program for the transformation of education in oaxaca (pteo)’. in place of a reliance on multiple choice tests, the pteo conducts student and teacher evaluation primarily through written journals, work portfolios and collective reflection. a comprehensive response to many of the deficits in education structures which neoliberal reforms like ‘school autonomy’ claim to remedy, the pteo strives to increase 15  this time, with a large bloc of prd legislators dissenting, insufficient in the face of unanimous pri and pan support. 16  interview with chiapas journalist, november 22, 2013, mexico city; interview with oaxaca journalist, november 22, 2013, mexico city; interview with trinational coalition in defense of public education activist 1, november 22, 2013, mexico city; interview with michoacan teacher, november 24, 2013, mexico city; interview with veracruz teacher 1, november 24, 2013, mexico city; interview with veracruz teacher 2, november 24, 2013, mexico city. one long time education activist disagreed and argued that agreements reached by these cnte locals left the movement vulnerable because the key text of the secondary laws were included, and could later be put into effect by these state governments (interview with trinational coalition in defense of public education activist 2, november 22, 2013). at the time of writing, the full text of these agreements were not obtainable by the author. why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 95 parent connections with schools by instituting new recognized and funded committees, which in deliberations with local teachers, staff and older students can modify existing programs and timetables, such as including more indigenous language instruction. pteo pilot projects were initiated in 280 schools across oaxaca in may and june 2012 (bacon, 2013). these successes in oaxaca and their clear departure from the national plan for education reform are a legacy of years of militancy on the part of the state’s teachers and their effectiveness in reaching accords with broader civil society. with their focus on democratizing public education through enriched pedagogy which recognizes teacher professional capacities and strengthened community ties through meaningful parent participation (in contrast to more symbolic forms of consultation advocated under school based management), the pteo is a significant local reform contradicting neoliberal policies that are globally dominant.17 in the face of pressure from the mexican federal government, oaxacan governor gabino cué insisted that these measures, “do not contravene in any way the provisions of articles 3 and 73 of the constitution or the secondary laws” (aristegui noticias 2014b), despite the absence of standardized teacher evaluation. oaxacan teachers continued to mobilize as the 2014-2015 school year began to ensure cué did not succumb to this pressure. meanwhile, the cnte succeeded in reopening a national level negotiating table with the interior ministry, which could reduce pressure from the federal government against state-level agreements that circumvent peña nieto’s reforms (solano, 2014).18 during previous national upsurges in 1979-1982, 1989-1990 (foweraker, 1993; cook, 1996) and in 2008 in response to the ace, state-level agreements were reached which combined with 17  parental support for striking teachers during the weeks in which their children were out of school was also bolstered in several states including chiapas and veracruz, which made an apparent strategic error by moving quickly following passage of the secondary laws in september to publicize the exact expenses for which parent councils would now be responsible at their children’s schools. the non-salary expenses included school routine maintenance, utilities and classroom supplies. interview with trinational coalition in defense of public education activist 1, november 22, 2013, mexico city. 18  in the course of revising this article, mexican teachers rallied in support of forty-three rural student-teachers in guerrero, who disappeared in september 2014 following protests against discriminatory hiring practices. news reports suggest that many of these students were murdered by police complicit with one of the state’s powerful drug cartels. in the following weeks, the cnte, university students and families of the disappeared occupied city halls across guerrero, calling for the return of the students and the resignation of the governor. these disappearances and acts of violence against teachers in guerrero, michoacán and northern border states, point to the serious threat posed to civil society by narco power and complicit governments in large regions of mexico (morelos 2014). 96 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education government and official union repression, led to the containment of the movement when its strongest contingents demobilized. this time with the departure of gordillo, the balance of power within the snte is much more favourable to the cnte, lending credibility to declarations that it will challenge control of the union at the national level (solano, 2013). however, as with former president carlos salinas with whom peña nieto is sometimes compared, peña nieto has otherwise enjoyed significant political momentum.19 in the terms of constructing a contextual political-economic analysis, a significant factor in the unevenness of the mexican state’s success in implementing neoliberal education reforms across regions and states are the differences in the balances of class forces, with the strength of the democratic teachers’ movement serving as a key variable. these findings support the claims of harvey (2007) and others (herod,1997; 2001) that aside from the intentions of the state, capitalist actors and transnational organizations, the presence or absence of concerted struggle from labour and other social movements is crucial for determining the degree to which neoliberal policies are implemented. this assertions is supported by cook (1996) and foweraker (1993) when considered in historical perspective though the 1970s-1990s. conclusion this paper explored the relationships of transnational actors, the wb and the oecd, alongside mexicanos primero, a representative of domestic capital, in working with the mexican state to implement neoliberal education policy. i have also emphasized the role of the democratic teachers’ movement as a key actor resisting this agenda. by seeking to understand the activities and relationships between these organizations and key individuals within them, i have mapped the lines of responsibility for contemporary education reforms and constructed the relevant political-economic context. my research supports and reinforces the conclusions reached by others adopting the globally structured agenda for education analytical framework, as well as other critical social scientists. while possessing significant power through access to resources and expertise, much of the wb’s and oecd’s considerable influence on mexico’s education system is contingent upon the political interests of 19  peña nieto, mexico’s business class and foreign investors overcame significant resistance to win a tremendous victory in partially denationalizing the oil and energy sectors in december 2013, which the prior two pan administrations were unsuccessful in achieving. why do governments adopt neoliberal education policies? | 97 the mexican state, which themselves are shaped significantly by domestic structural-institutional pressures defined by a powerful capitalist class organized 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(accessed june 30, 2013). free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 101 free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: the bologna process in turkey simten coşar1 and hakan ergül2 abstract: this article focuses on the neoliberalization of higher education in turkey. our analysis is based on the historico-political dynamics of the stateacademy-free market nexus in post-1980s turkey. the paper relies on two layers of analysis. first, we focus on the regulatory mechanisms that have eased the neoliberalization of higher education. we analyze the legal regulations, and mainly the law on higher education and related amendments that have been carried out to restructure the higher education system. the second layer of our analysis concerns academia itself and how the neoliberalization process has been perceived, internalized or opposed from within academia via ethnographic data gathering techniques (e.g. participant observations, in-depth interviews and field notes). here, we focus on those academics who have been actively involved in the implementation of the bologna process in the universities of turkey. relying on field data, we argue that the bologna process is the most recent example of neoliberalizing education in turkey that has included authoritarianism as an important asset and that has further fragmented academic work through both the internalization of neoliberal thought and alienation. keywords: turkey, universities, academia, neoliberalization, bologna process 1  simten coşar (simcosar@gmail.com) is professor of political science in the faculty of communication at hacettepe university in ankara, turkey. her areas of research include feminism, political thought and political parties in turkey. she is co-editor (with gamze yücesan-özdemir) of silent violence: neoliberalism, islamist politics and the akp years in turkey published by red quill books. 2  hakan ergül (hkergul@gmail.com) is associate professor of communication studies in the faculty of communication at hacettepe university in ankara, turkey, and visiting researcher at jacques berque center for studies in social sciences and humanities in rabat, morocco. 102 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education introduction this article aims at a critical analysis of the neoliberal reorganization of higher education in turkey. it focuses on governmental practices and legal instruments that reorganize higher education, while at the same time bringing in field data related to the unfolding of the neoliberalization process from the accounts of the academics themselves. our analysis is built on the historico-political dynamics of the state-academy-free market nexus in post-1980s turkey. the period is especially important for understanding the present era since the institutional makeup and political frame for today’s educational policies were introduced in the 1980s. post-1980s turkey is characterized by the mark of the 1980 coup d’état and the following three-year long military regime (1980-1983), which is known to be the most violent of the three coup d’états in the country’s political history. the previous two took place in 1960 and 1971. the neoliberalization process was initiated almost simultaneously with the most recent coup d’état. the january 24, 1980 stabilization package is exemplary (seven months before the coup occurred) because it symbolized the start of turkey’s integration with the neoliberal world economic order.3 the first among the economic packages that would unfold in the course of turkey’s neoliberalization, the package hinted at the priorities of the new regime: stability and consensus in politics – that is to say, no structural opposition. it endorsed export-oriented policies, as opposed to the import substitution industrialization (isi) model of the previous two decades, and promoted foreign investment, in tandem with the emphasis on privatizing state-owned enterprises. over the course of the 1980s, these three priorities coalesced and, at times, fluctuated as governments’ searched for popular support. 2001, however, was a turning point as the economic crisis cemented neoliberal orthodoxy. while serving as vice-president for the world bank (wb), kemal derviş was unilaterally appointed to cabinet in order to implement policies that would ease the recession. derviş’s economic program was retained by the justice and development party (adalet ve kalkınma partisi, akp), which came to power 2002.4 3  january 24 decisions symbolize a turning point in turkey integration into the capitalist world system. the decisions were supported by the imf and world bank. in the aftermath of the decisions turkey signed a three-year long standy agreement with the imf. 4  we refer to neoliberalism as the reordering of the socio-political sphere in accordance with the prerequisites of the post-fordist accumulation regime that is characterized by the preference for transnational commercial activity over production, and private investment at the expense of public investment (harvey, 2005; 2003). in this sense, neoliberalism is also an ideological project intent on justifying this reordering of civil society. free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 103 there are two contesting views as to the last decade of turkey under the akp’s rule. the first is based on the assumption that the akp’s terms in office signify a new era in the political history of the country due to the party’s islamist origins and policy preferences. the second is based on the assumption that the akp years in turkey signify the closing of a period marked by the consolidation and crisis phase of neoliberalism. our approach is informed by the latter argument (coşar&yücesan-özdemir, 2012). the article is built on two layers of analysis. first, we focus on the regulatory mechanisms that have facilitated the neoliberalization of higher education. we analyze mainly the law on higher education (lhe) and related amendments that have been devised to restructure the higher education system. the second layer concerns how academia has been involved in and affected by neoliberal transformations in the universities. in our view, the bologna process (bp) is the most recent policy example of the state’s quest to implement neoliberal reforms. in order to ascertain academics’ reception of, positioning toward and involvement in the bp, we draw on multi-sited ethnographic research, including participant observation in everyday settings of the universities, interviews and field notes. it is our contention that academics have by and large been systematically excluded from policymaking decisions over the last three decades in this article, we mainly focus on the data we derive from the semi-structured in-depth interviews. the interviews serve to explore the views and the first hand experiences of the academics responsible for the implementation of the bp action plans endorsed by their universities. here, our aim is not only to enrich our analysis with emic perspective regarding the meaning the academics make of their own experiences related to the bp, but also to give them voice as they have been systematically excluded from policy making processes during the last three decades. in this we join couldry (2014, 114) who reminds that “[t]here is no short-cut to understanding neoliberalism’s consequences for the people’s daily conditions of voice without listening to the stories people tell us about their lives.” our field research covers fifteen public and foundation/private universities, which were selected as a result of their historical, social, academic and regional significance in turkey.5 our discussion in the second half of 5  according to the council of higher education “[t]here are two types of universities in turkey, namely state and non-profit foundation universities” (higher education system in turkey http://www.yok.gov.tr/documents/10348274/10733291/tr’de+yükseköğretim+sistemi2. pdf ). this official discourse limits universities to “state” instead of “public” and does not point out to the commercial motivation behind the foundation universities. indeed, since the introduction of the first foundation university in 1984, the higher education area has attracted considerable attention, transforming the field of education into a profitable and competitive business. 104 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the article relies on an analysis of selected interviews, addressing interrelated issues such as the participants’ a) level of knowledge concerning the global/regional vision, educational policies and historical milestones of the bp; b) personal experiences during the implementation of the bp in their organizations; c) level of awareness about the criticisms of the bp and organized anti-bp movements in and outside turkey; and d) personal views concerning the role of higher education and university in society. participants are drawn from different academic and administrative positions, working for different public and foundation universities (hacettepe university, başkent university and ted university). the literature on the neoliberalization of higher education in general and the bp in turkey in particular has so far tended to unfold along three axes. first, there is a descriptive and sometimes affirmative literature (reinalda, 2011; yağcı, 2010; dikkaya&özyakışır, 2006; kwiek, 2001). second, there is a newly-emerging literature, which considers the transformations in academic knowledge production and definitions of science (gibbons, et.al., 1994; hessels&van lante, 2008). the third category offers a critical perspective, which considers the ways intersecting axes of oppression (e.g. race, class, gender) are further reinforced through the implementation of neoliberal policy objectives (giroux, 2014; soydan&abali, 2014; brown&carasso, 2013; i̇nal&akkaymak, 2012; ercan&korkusuz-kurt, 2012; stech, 2011; fejes, 2008; lorenz, 2006; özbudun&demirer, 2006; hill, 2005; olssen&peters, 2005; slaughter&rhoades, 2004; peters, 2002). this article builds on the third axis by contributing to existing debates concerning the bp in turkey. while there are examples for integrating the academics’ voices into the studies on the topics worldwide, though not many, (knuuttila, 2013; shapin, 2008; slaughter&leslie, 1997) in the turkish context one cannot observe a study that combines historical perspective with the voices from the field. the article is composed of three parts. in the first part we offer a critical reading of the legal regulations concerning higher education in post-1980 turkey. the second part is reserved for the data, collected from the field. in the final part we discuss the current state of academia in the midst of the neoliberal crisis and the possibilities that it offers for resistance to the neoliberal structuration. we argue that the bp represents the fine-tuning between neoliberal educational policies and statist authoritarianism in the turkish context as portrayed not only in institutionallegal terms, but also in the accounts of the academics themselves. the dominant discourse in the educational sphere supports our argument: it free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 105 is possible to observe repeated emphasis on notions associated with the bp in general. for example, there is constant reference to employability, lifelong learning and stakeholders’ weight in the educational design. here, employability points to the dismissal with the right to work; lifelong learner signifies a parallel tendency to subordinate the principle of the right to lifelong employment. and finally, stakeholders’ imply students-as-consumers and market forces. historical backdrop to the de/ re-politicization of the university the higher education system in turkey has been going through intensive restructuring since the early 2000s. the roots of this restructuring should be traced in the overall socio-political restructuring process in the post-1980 period. the importance of higher education for the restructuring process is hinted at the lhe, which defined the council of higher education (yükseköğretim kurulu, yök) as a constitutional organ in 1981, when turkey was still ruled by a military regime.6 in the official discourse, the council was justified on the grounds that the increase in the number of university students called for a standardized educational policy and administration. it was also claimed that a central body to oversee the university life in its totality would preempt the politicization of the university students and academics that marked the 1960s and 1970s (tarihçe, n.d.) thus, the official justification for the institutionalization of a centralized university structure was mainly based on the incapacity of the previous higher education system to offer solid grounds for coordination among different higher education institutions and to ensure a viable system of instruction due to high politicization. this, in turn, hampered the prospects for university autonomy. university autonomy has been a persistent issue throughout the republican era. the 1961 constitution is important for it represents the first instance when universities were considered as constitutional organs and granted constitutional guarantee for autonomy. the 1970s, on the other hand, witnessed restrictions in terms of academic freedom. the justification was that the constitution provided the grounds for extensive liberties leading to over-politicization among academic personnel and students, which was deemed to hamper routine university education. thus, the 1971 amendments contained measures such as giving 6  a higher education council had already been established in 1973, within the scope of the law on universities (no. 1750) to ensure state control over the universities (dölen, 2010,114-115). 106 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the council of ministers the authority to seize administrative power in the universities, and to dismiss academic personnel, as well as bringing in the council of higher education and university supervisory board, which might be considered as the precedent of the yök. though university autonomy was not eliminated with these amendments, it would not be inapt to point at the continuity between the 1971 measures and the overall restructuring process in the 1980s (dölen, 2010). in the larger picture, it can be argued that yök was designed to work in line with the coup spirit: instituting the structural prerequisites for the smooth working of neoliberal transformation in turkey. this meant authoritarian measures for ensuring depoliticization among the populace, tuned with conservative cultural priorities. during the military regime the political opposition of the 1970s was silenced through bans on political parties, on the leaders and members of the political parties of the previous decade to participate in politics, and the wide scale arrests and imprisonments of the political activists from the left and the right. the dominant discourse of the period labeled any kind of political activism that carried the potential of opposition to the to-be-initiated neoliberal structuration, as marginal and/or extreme (read as threat to national security). while the political ground was secured vis-à-vis any socio-political opposition through the narrowing down of the political space, subsequent legal measures were enacted to prepare the legal framework for the new regime. in a nutshell, the military regime set the background to the initiation of neoliberal sociopolitical ordering, thus pointing the way to a synthesis between the national security discourse and democracy, understood in terms of free market economics. the most persistent assets in this synthesis have so far been a turkish-islamic synthesis – as the dominant form of turkish nationalism in the post-1980 period – and the valorization of private initiative, free market individualism, as the sine-qua-non for liberty.7 all these assets can be observed in the current state discourse on higher education; thus, the repoliticization of the university. in other words, the universities are expected to stay within the boundaries of a conservative-nationalist discourse that is fine-tuned by neoliberal capitalism. here, repoliticization also involves the state and its related institutions, acting as monitoring agencies over the universities. 7  turkish-islamic synthesis, developed by nationalist intellectuals in the early 1970s, and later appropriated by the ruling military cadres in the early 1980s, is based on the contention that “the best fit religion for the character and nature of the turks is islam. the turks could not survive with other religions, those who tried, lost their identities” (güvenç et.al., 1991, 50, quoted in coşar, 2011, 166). for a detailed analysis of the restructuring of the educational sphere along turkish-islamic priorities see kaplan, 2006. free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 107 nationalism, colored with statism, has been a common asset in higher education legislation. examples in this respect can be observed in the lhe, especially through the articles related to the aims and principles of higher education: “educating the students as citizens who are committed to atatürkist nationalism … who embrace the national, moral, human, spiritual and cultural values of the turkish nation and who feel honored and happy for being turk[s], who prioritize common benefit over individual benefit and who are filled with the love for the family, country and nation, who are aware of and habituate their duties and responsibilities toward the …state … [and who work for] …the turkish state with its indivisible integrity with the land and the nation… to [make it] a constructive, creative and noble partner to the contemporary civilization…” (article 4, law no. 2547) this article sits in the same row with the priorities of critical thinking, scientific outlook and scientific research and accumulation of knowledge (article 5, law no. 2547). the coexistence of contradictory aims aside, the law also aims guaranteeing statist loyalties among the students and the academics, by including acting against the state interests into the list of deeds requiring disciplinary action (yükseköğretim kurumları, yönetici, öğretim elemanı ve memurları disiplin yönetmeliği, 1982; 2014). such a contradictory juxtaposition of core values of the modern (european) university and the nationalist motifs within the same educational outlook leads to overemphasis on the latter at the expense of freedom of expression, democracy and human rights. it also delineates the discord with the principles of the bp, as envisaged in the communiqué of the bp 2020-conference (2009), accepted by 46 countries, including turkey: “the aim is to ensure that higher education institutions have the necessary resources to continue to fulfill their full range of purposes such as preparing students for life as active citizens in a democratic society … the necessary ongoing reform of higher education systems and policies will continue to be firmly embedded in the european values of institutional autonomy, academic freedom and social equity and will require full participation of students and staff.” in line with its authoritarian nature, the law also foresees the risk of “blocking the instruction” as a disciplinary deed, which in the recent 108 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education governmental discourse has been posed as a warning against oppositional academics, especially with respect to their active involvement, mainly through unions, in opposing the akp government. a similar style of warning can be observed in the yök president gökhan çetinsaya’s statements in the midst of gezi resistance that started at the end of may 2013 in i̇stanbul and spread throughout turkey, which turned into wide-scale and mass-based opposition first against police violence and subsequently against the government. briefly, while çetinsaya emphasized the need for scientific responsibility rather than “daily comments” on socio-political developments, at the same time he indirectly labeled the academics supporting the resistance and displaying critical stances toward the government for tending to (the discourse of) violence: “first of all i shall note that the notions of university and violence can never coexist. in democratic and academic traditions everyone is free to express her/his opinions. but this freedom shall not go hand in hand with violence and nobody shall support violence. those demands, which contain and which praise violence do not accord with the boundaries of academic freedom. the academics shall not approach the spheres of tension – in social, cultural, political issues – with partisanship. in this [gezi] process we tried to preempt the blocking of education-instruction on the campuses.” (interview with çetinsaya, 2013).8 when one considers yök’s structure and related legislation this perception of oppositional academics is not surprising. although the legislation persisted throughout the decades under different governments from various political orientations, there have been certain amendments to the lhe. however, as i̇nsel (2003) notes, despite more than thirty changes in the law over the same period, its essence has been kept intact. this can be observed in the resonance between the military discourse and yök’s disciplinary practices. at the symbolic level the resonance has been functional in the justification of the yök as a necessity for preempting the politicization of the universities, with negative reference to the 1970s.9 at the policy level it was reflected in 8  here we should note that when the quotation is read in its constative form it tells little more than the yök president’s denial of violence. but when it is contextualized it is revealed that the president is referring to the academics, involved in and/or sympathetic to gezi resistance as perpetrators of violence. 9  the 1980 coup d’état has been justified by the same style, which contained the claim that the intervention was meant to give an end to the civil strife and political violence in the country due to the incapacity of the civilian bodies to govern. free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 109 the organization of yök’s structure as well as the “top-down, stage by stage authoritarian institutionalization of the higher educational structure” (i̇nsel, 2003, 76). today, it is possible to note the continuity in this militaristic style in fulfilling the to-dos and/or getting things done in the adjustment of the university structure to the bp, as devised by the yök. alongside with the statist-nationalist authoritarian tunes in the lhe, it has been presented as a remedy to the rather scattered, inefficient working of the higher education system. while this style of justification hints at another feature of the yök system – the valorization of free market mentality in the sphere of education – it has so far served as a rationale for dissolving the autonomous structure of the universities. briefly, autonomy of the universities had long occupied the agenda of the governments in turkey since the 1940s. the decisive turn came with the 1961 constitution.10 according to article 120 of the 1961 constitution the universities were recognized as “…public corporate entities with administrative and financial autonomy…” (dölen, 2010, 112). yet the notion of autonomy was not formed with reference to academic freedom as a priority. on the contrary, while the academics were guaranteed job security by the constitution via the provision that “the university bodies, staff and assistants cannot be dismissed from duty by the authorities outside the university” (dölen, 2010, 112), the law on universities (no. 115, october 28, 1960) was preceded by the law on liquidation (no. 114, october 27, 1960), which formed the legal basis for the dismissal of 147 academics from their posts in the universities (dölen, 2010, 189-190). the 1971 military intervention by memorandum was, on the other hand, proclaimed to aim at correcting the 1961 constitution so as to fit it to the socio-political dynamics in the country. the basic rationale of the military cadres was that the constitution was too permissive for turkey. the formula for the enactment of constitutional amendments was devised as forming “supra-parties governments.”11 between 1971 and 1973 turkey was ruled by four such governments, which passed laws that seriously curtailed the constitutional guarantees for basic rights and liberties (aydın&taşkın, 2014, 223-228). in parallel to the rationale that the 1961 constitution brought in too much liberty to turkey, article 120 of the constitution that concerned the universities was amended. briefly, the 1971 amendments (law no. 1488) enabled “the council of ministers 10  1961 constitution was devised and enacted immediately after the first military coup d’état that turkey had experienced in 1960. 11  here, by “supra-parties governments” aydın and taşkın point at the coup discourse emphasizing the need for forming governments, which supposedly have no connections with the existing political parties (i.e. technocratic rule). 110 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to suspend the university bodies and the academic personnel in case the liberties of the students and the right to education are endangered” (dölen, 2010, 114). yet, the decisive cut would be introduced by the lhe of 1981. the post-1980 military regime followed the traditional pattern: the law was shelved until the dismissal of selected academics was managed. in this case martial law (no. 1402) was put into effect in order to curb the university structures from the opponents, and mainly the leftists (dölen, 2010, 194). the law was enacted afterwards, in a rather neutralized political milieu. unlike the 1971 amendments, the law contained no concern, provision, and/or article that opted for academic freedom and university autonomy: internal functioning of the universities was tied to the state organs; the election of the presidents, the deans, and the appointment of the department chairpersons were determined by the yök. likewise, financial autonomy no longer meant the independence of the universities in deciding on the allocation of the state funds, which they received as public institutions within the frame of the right to education. actually, the issue of university autonomy would arise merely with respect to the initiation of private education, and would take on a different meaning in terms of financial independence. önal (2012, 131) notes that the introduction of a tuition system to higher education and providing the constitutional grounds for private education can be considered as the initial measures for the later dominance of a neoliberal frame in defining academic freedom. private education at the higher education level was not constitutionally recognized until 1982. article 130 of the 1982 constitution recognized the right of the foundations to “establish higher education institutions on the condition that they do not seek profit” (türkiye cumhuriyeti anayasası, 1982. the initiation of private education marked the reflection of the neoliberal structuration process in the educational sphere.12 private higher education at the university level was managed through the foundation system.13 this enabled the emerging private universities to escape from the financial burdens of corporate establishment and functioning, since they have been considered as non-profit institutions, and more importantly to receive financial assistance from the 12  the first foundation university (bilkent university, in ankara, turkey was founded in 1984, two years after the military cadres handed over governmental power to civilian political parties. 13  according to the related constitutional article (article 43), “[i]nstitutions of higher education under the supervision and control of the state, can be established by foundations … provided that they do not pursue lucrative aims” (önal, 2012, 131). free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 111 state budget. more specifically, foundation universities, due to their non-profit institutional status are considered as legal public entities, they have the right to fix their tuition fees on their own; they receive financial support from the state; they have the right to dispose statecontrolled lands; they enjoy the same right to tax exemption with the public universities (soydan&abali, 2014, 380; lhe, 1982; vakıf yükseköğretim kurumları yönetmenliği, 2005). the number of foundation universities rapidly increased in the coming decades, reaching sixty-five, compared to one-hundred and four public universities as of march 2014. the neoliberalization process involved transformation on the plans about the structure, instruction/education and the academic profile in the universities. it can be argued that despite a brief period of autonomous university practice turkey’s higher education system has worked through centralized oversight throughout the republican era. by the turn in the 1980s the oversight was maintained through the lhe and the yök. yök’s function has so far been twofold. first, it ensures administrative control over the universities so as to preempt the emergence and/or effectiveness of oppositional political groups among the students and the faculty. second, through the discourse on the need for standardization in scientific production, increasing the quality of education and the efficiency in academic work, it manages the infiltration of free market mentality into the university campuses. the disciplinary regulations for higher education institutions are instrumental to carry out such a task. the regulations are designed so as to depoliticize academic life, hinder political and/or social activism of the students and academics (most directly, unionization and strikes on campuses), with the disciplinary penalty of suspension from public service for the academics, and suspension from higher education for the students (yükseköğretim kurumları, yönetici, öğretim elemanı ve memurları disiplin yönetmeliği, 1982; 2014). all these developments cannot be understood merely in terms of the political milieu of the 1980s. neither one can satisfy with the analysis of the related legislation. for a more comprehensive analysis, one needs to inquire about the shifting dynamics of the neoliberalization process in turkey throughout the three decades, which extend beyond the scope of this article. yet we believe that the bp, which was added to turkey’s neoliberal (education) agenda more recently, offers a snapshot in seeing the basics of neoliberalization in the educational sphere. 112 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the bp experience in turkey the bp was first initiated as an attempt to ameliorate the deteriorating higher educational system, which included increasing expenses and low employment rates of university graduates in western europe in the late 1990s. the first step was the sorbonne declaration (1998), emphasizing the need for a pan-european coordination for higher education, to be followed by the bologna declaration (1999), aiming for a european higher education area (ehea). the socio-political background to these declarations was shaped by the “shift in the structure of the international education market along neoliberal ideas” (rienalda, 2011). the recurrent topics of concern in the related meetings, agreements, declarations are “citizens’ mobility,” “employability” (of the graduates), and economic utility (of higher education). the measures, adopted for standardizing higher education brought in a discursive set comprised of an emphasis on flexibility in teaching, flexibility in employment, measurability of the quality of the curriculum and accountability towards the stakeholders. in the bp frame flexibility in teaching is supposed to be achieved through lifelong learning (güllüpınar and gökalp, 2014), while flexibility in employment is supposed to rely on performance in terms of learning outcomes. however, it would not be apt to call the bp as essentially a neoliberal project (reinalda, 2011). rather it involved the reformation of the higher education system in european countries, without leading to a “single bologna model” (yağcı, 2010, 588). yet since it evolved within the neoliberal international context and proceeded to extend beyond the boundaries of european union (eu), including such countries as turkey, armenia, azerbaijan, and kazakhstan, neoliberal socio-political priorities eventually penetrated into the higher educational reform. in this respect, the bp represents the shifts and relocations in the worldwide accumulation regime in the context of higher education systems. as hartmann (2008, 217) argues, “what takes shape is a transatlantic norm-setting process,” signifying the flux in the centre of the global neoliberal order. in parallel, it would not be apt to argue that the bp in turkey points at the hidden agenda of the global imperial actors and thus the government to impose neoliberal educational structure. rather it is an integral part of the neoliberal order of things. turkey has been in the bp since 2001 within the context of its candidacy to the eu membership. the yök made it compulsory for the universities to take measures for the adjustment of the higher education system to the european credit transfer system (ects) (özgün, 2011). free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 113 yök has assumed the pivotal role in the adjustment process both as a supervision and coordination agent. it continues with its authoritarian style in getting things done, especially in the case of those universities, which are reluctant to consent to the process. in the process, the universities started (willingly or just technically, or both) to adjust their curricula to the ects. this process of a centralized body imposing a certain standardized scheme on the universities evolves through the yök’s extensive authorities over the universities, the most conspicuous one being the allotment of academic cadres. in line with this extensive authority, according to our field notes and the interview data, the bp in turkey has so far been working regardless of the opposition that the academics might (or actually) raise against the related measures: the strategy of putting the required amendments as just technical issues on the one hand, and pointing at the risk that relations with the yök might (and most probably would) get tense on the other hand, exemplifies forging consent through authoritarian measures. besides, the curricular adjustment also carries in itself a teaching and education mentality that is based on free market rationality. in this respect, the university-industry relation emerges as the key ingredient in yök’s discursive practices. thus, the adoption to the ects is directly linked to a utilitarian approach, which calls for the assessment of the value of the knowledge produced and/or transmitted in terms of the utility it raises in the free market (yükseköğretim kurulu, 2010). the most recent development in this regard is the new draft law on yök, which contains measures that would open academic work to the evaluation of the industry and government. briefly, the draft law proposes the involvement of the ministry of science, industry and technology for approving academic research abroad (10 maddede yeni yök yasası, 2014).14 in this 14  university-industry relation has been a long-standing priority of the neoliberal policymakers in the educational sphere. in this respect, the law on the development of technology zones (date: june 26, 2011; no.: 4691), which forms the basis of the technoparks to be founded in the universities is telling. according to article 1 of the law the aim is “to produce technological knowledge, ensure innovation in the product and production methods, increase the quality or standard of the products, increase efficiency, decrease production costs, commercialize technological knowledge, support technology-intensive production and entrepreneurship, ensure the adjustment of small and medium-scaled enterprises to new and advanced technologies, creating investment opportunities in technology-intensive spheres in accordance with the decisions of the science and technology higher council, creating job opportunities to the qualified researchers, contributing to technology transfer and ensuring the technological infrastructure that would accelerate the flow of foreign capital to the country, which would offer high/advanced technology by enabling cooperation among the universities, research institutions and sectors of production in order to realize an internationally competitive and export-oriented industrial structure” (teknoloji bölgeleri geliştirme kanunu, 2001). (see polat, 2013,170-171). 114 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education respect, the adjustment to the bp criteria works as a technical tool for the standardization of higher education. briefly, hartman’s point noted above regarding the bp as a “transatlantic norm-setting process”, hints at the use of the bp in the unfolding of the neoliberalization of education. the formula seems quite functional: authoritarian means at home, liberal claims abroad. the utilitarian approach is further revealed in the discursive strategies employed during the adjustment process. here, the manipulation of the principles of academic freedom, flexibility in teaching, student-centered instruction and autonomy in the courses is exemplary. terms and concepts that are put in frequent use in the justification of the bp by the council are helpful in understanding this manipulation: the terms shareholder/stakeholder, competition-quality and strategy are directly linked to the corporate discourse so as to lay the grounds for the designing of the courses according to free market dynamics and for opening the university education to corporate control. terms like autonomy, accountability, transparency, quality, learning-centered education, flexibility in learning and lifelong learning are mainly presented as democratic and egalitarian credentials. however, autonomy is considered as the ability of the universities to raise their own financial resources and the “strategy” to do so is already spelled out: making the industry a shareholder/stakeholder on the campuses. academic autonomy as such, does not relate to academic freedom in terms of academics’ freedom of expression, research and teaching. accountability and transparency are understood as making the universities open to outside control; “outside” meaning the free market forces. quality is understood as the quantification of the teaching process, calculated in terms of students’ performances in the courses.15 learning-centered education is presented as student-centered teaching, with a nod to democratic education philosophy; yet it ultimately connotes the compatibility between the teaching/learning (“learning outcomes”) and free market demands. flexibility in learning is advertised as crosscutting the strict disciplinary boundaries, and offering the grounds for multi-disciplinarity. in parallel, lifelong learning is presented as a means to keep the individuals sociable and “employable” throughout their 15  the emphasis on quantification is most manifest in the guidelines for adjusting the course outlines to (what are deemed to be) the bologna standards. in the guidelines that concern specifically the “learning outcomes” it is recommended to refrain from using such verbs as “knowing, understanding, getting acquainted with, being subject to, being informed about” since they are considered “ambiguous.” these terms are considered to fail to meet “measurability, observability and assessibility” of what the students learn for the market (yükseköğretim kurulu, 2010, 28-29). free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 115 lives (meb, 2009, 30). both end up with referring to strategies for not educating but training the students into flexible labor force, making them employable, and not offering the grounds for employment (güllüpınar and gökalp, 2014). also in this context not knowledge but information is considered as a yardstick for the social value of individuals. here, the key term turns out to be measurability, in terms of cost-benefit analysis, on the basis of free-market demands. neoliberalization through cooptation: academia and the bp the emphasis on measurability parallels the technicalization of the bp. while the yök presents the bp as a means for the improvement of higher education it does not get into dialogue with the universities, rather it declares the to-dos as technical matters. the same style can also be observed in the accounts of the academic personnel who are in charge of the coordination of the bp. in our research we were especially attentive to avoiding the risk of falling into the technicalities in order not to diverge our attention from the academics’ immediate experiences. as noted at the outset, we conducted interviews in order to achieve the academics experiences regarding the bp, and make their concerns heard since the academics’ freedom of expression has been under increasing pressure during the last years. a most commonly used technique for such a dual purpose are semi-structured in-depth interviews (hennink, hutter and bailey, 2011, 109). as a “knowledge-producing conversation” (hesse-biber and leavy, 2006, 128), it seeks to understand the meaning of respondent’s experience from her/his point of view without imposition (spradley, 1979, 34); encouraging participants to tell their stories, with their own words and from their own perspective (holstein and gubrium, 2003); and penetrating “the defenses people put up to prevent their hidden beliefs from coming to light – defenses that they frequently are not conscious of” (berger, 1998, 55). the preliminary interview data encourages us to argue that the academics who are actively involved in the adjustment to the bp in the universities display limited awareness as to the historico-political dynamics of the process. when inquired about the fundamental drives promoting the process they respond with the standard bp designers’ and yök’s formula. accordingly, the bp is adopted “in order to encourage the mobility of academics, students and the personnel in europe.” for example, dr. defne,16 senior expert in educational measurement and 16  we use pseudonyms when referring to the interviewees. 116 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education evaluation, currently serving as a dean in one of the private universities responded to our question regarding the dominant conceptualization of higher education, university and knowledge production in the bp as follows: “well, i don’t think the bp suggests anything new on that...all it says is ‘i want to expand the [ehea]…and for this, i want to introduce certain standards for accreditation procedures.’ the bp doesn’t intervene in universities’ internal policies…” (interview with dr. defne, 2014). this particular reply, ignoring the neoliberal background of the bp, its variation in different eu countries, and its implementation in turkey through yök’s dictates matches the definition on the council’s official webpage (bologna process in turkey), thus reducing the process into a set of technical measures, while carefully disguising its free market dimension. aside from bypassing, there are instances when the academics themselves naturalize the authoritarian, top-down running of the bp. as dr. erol (interview with dr. erol, 2014), vice-dean in charge of academic curricula and the bp in a foundation university, notes: “bp is an obligation for us…imposed by the yök. there are sanctions, certain official directives and instructions. everybody must follow. we are talking about yök, the superior institution…nobody has such luxury to say ‘we do not subscribe to this idea.’” the self-surrender that is well-tuned in this account also hints at the permeation of neoliberal approach as the raison d’être of the university-knowledge-academic responsibility nexus – that is, getting things done in order to keep your place in the university sector. dr. deniz, who has been responsible for the implementation of the bp in a public university for seven years on the other hand, underlines the authoritarian-cumtechnical working of the bp with a totally different concern, and thus in a totally different style (interview with dr. deniz, 2014): “the unit in charge of the bp [in the university] regularly informs us about the procedures or deadlines via official announcements…with a very hierarchical, very patriarchal language…as if someone gives you an order [in the army]…‘those teams in charge of bp: you are requested to finish this and that by the deadline mentioned...’” actually, all of these remarks give hints about the passivity, read in terms of the dismissal with autonomy and critical thinking, on the side of the universities.17 while dr. erol’s stance and similar stances might be considered as examples of the colonization of the academics’ imagination by the neoliberal educational policy preferences, it seems that others who are more critical 17  an interview with dr. sevgi, a member of an educational commission in charge of the implementation of the bp in a public university, also demonstrates that even those rare voices, relatively critical and active, raised during the regular internal bp meetings, are not heard by the university’s advistory bodies (interview with dr. sevgi, 2014). free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 117 about the process lack the means to challenge the process:18 “i think none of us was sufficiently informed about or aware of the bigger picture when we started to implement the system. the yök dictated us: ‘here is the calendar you must follow… you are obliged to adjust your system by the deadline” (interview with dr. deniz, 2014). so, as dr. defne notes (interview with dr. defne, 2014):“i do not think the academics were given any chance to discuss the bp before it started to be implemented in turkey. the process first arrived as something technical…we found ourselves in an incredibly heavy, bureaucratic burden of…adjusting the entire curricula to the new accreditation system until the deadlines. we didn’t even know why we were doing this at the time…and honestly speaking i think this is still the case today.” this top-down mentality is certainly prone to questioning not only by the outwardly critical academics but also by the more neutral ones too. as the bologna coordinator in her university who started the interview with her plain remark that the bp neither imposes sanctions nor dictates a new definition for academic activities, dr. defne, as the interview proceeded, revealed her suspicion about the effects of the process as “taking away the university from its authentic spirit; jeopardizing the basic values…such as freedom of allocating sufficient time, sufficient effort to your academic work; freedom of thought…” (interview with dr. defne, 2014). these quotations can be linked to what we noted as the overwhelming technicality in the discourse that surrounds the bp in turkey, disguising the neoliberal-authoritarian synthesis in related educational policies. the dominance of technicality is also revealed in dr. deniz’s accounts. as one of the most well-informed and critical participants, she cannot escape from locating the cumbersome nature of bureaucratic details into the center of her account. yet she, at the same time, acknowledges the alienating function of the contradiction between what she observes and thinks, and what she does (interview with dr. deniz, 2014): “i find the bp’s imagination of higher education and university environment quite problematic since the beginning. but then, for years, it’s…me who has been officially responsible…in our faculty, monitoring things that are completely against my understanding….such a schizophrenic way of existence…i have never been able to raise my 18  similar tendencies can be observed in the eu countries. reinalda (2011, p.4) notes that “despite the fact that teachers and staff have to implement the changes set in motion in their disciplines … the initiating ministers of education did not invite any professional or other organization of university staff to consultative membership.” 118 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education voice during the meetings once, and say something like ‘that is all ridiculous’…my thoughts, ideas, criticisms, political stance…all are parenthesized during such meetings.” one might expect that such a critical stance, though silenced, calls for counter movements to the transformation process, as evidenced not only in europe but also in the latin american context against the “tuning project” (aboites, 2010). yet none of the participants are informed about the global counter movements, or as we observed in some cases, they are reluctant to share their personal opinions. dr. erol, in parallel to his approach to the whole transformation process and the council’s role in it “googled” the words “bologna process, student protest” on his office pc, and then continued: “what do these people complain about? cultural corruption? imperialist influence? these are completely meaningless. it’s the eu who is giving you [the students, protesting] the money, not us…” (interview with dr. erol, 2014).19 besides, it would be apt to note that the trade unions in the education sector have not yet taken the bp on their agendas as a particular issue. they have rather treated it through general opposition against neoliberalization, and thus have not developed specific strategies in order to counter the policies implemented gradually at each and every stage of the process. conclusion although the rhetorical packaging behind the neoliberal discourse manipulates respecting democratic values and diversity of voices and thoughts, the last decade of higher education in turkey demonstrates that it operates through a collective performance of illusion of democracy and power of autocracy that values only the voices of the market, whereas the main voices and subjects in academia are keenly excluded. this is in line with couldry’s (2014, 135) assertion that dominant discourses of neoliberalism, under the disguise of seemingly democratic values such as individual’s/consumer’s freedom of choice, does not value voice; in fact, it “denies the voice”. looking at the last thirty years 19  this rather rough rationalization can be considered as a neoliberal mark on the academic mind, which rhoades and slaughter (2004, 37) name as “academic capitalism.” although coined specifically with reference to the “marketization” of higher education in the us the term recalls what can be read in-between the lines of the documents on the bp in turkey: “strategic decisions about the development, investment in and delivery of curriculum are being increasingly driven by short-term market considerations and made outside the purview of shared governance” (ibid., 47); hence the dominance of utilitarian mentality. free-marketization of academia through authoritarianism: | 119 of neoliberal policies in britain, couldry, who, together with mcrobbie, had once announced “the death of the idea of the university” (2010), argues that “neoliberal democracy” is an oxymoron, responsible for the “social recession” that preceded the economic recession (2014, 2).20 by this, couldry implies that the neoliberal mentality, working through the illusion of liberty and estimating all facets and the purpose of life in economic terms creates social decay. academia is by no means immune to such social crises and recessions. as the rich critical literature testifies, through the policies promoting market-oriented solutions for persisting educational problems, positioning the academics as self-absorbed competitors instead of public intellectuals, and replacing academic/ social values with commercial ones, neoliberalism has transformed not only the core of higher education around the world, but perhaps more significantly “how we think and what we do as teachers and learners” (robertson, 2007, 11, italics in original). the state control over the universities in post-1980 turkey has worked in a similar way. all the policies that have been gradually implemented throughout the three decades targeted the “subversive [nature of] the social and intellectual role of the university” (chomsky quoted in grioux, 2006, 65-66) and pacifying the “engaged public intellectual [who] must function within institutions, in part, as an exile, ‘whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma…to refuse to be easily co-opted by governments or corporations”’ (said, quoted in grioux, 2006, 73). the bp can be considered as an example of this pacifying strategy.21 it is initiated, controlled and manipulated by the yök as the sole authority; the universities are forced directly or indirectly to adjust to the educational models, devised within the bp frame. and as the interview data suggest, academics –irrespective of their position vis-à-vis the bp – consider the recent transformations as another top-down intervention into the field of higher education. they tend to see the to-dos as part of their professional and administrative duties, willingly or not, but certainly with a high sense of responsibility to follow the instructions given by the university board or the yök; respect the deadlines 20  couldry and mcrobbie’s critical essay addresses the browne report, defining the higher education as a market where the services (education) are merely determined by student choice, and introducing “a system for distributing resources based on individual market choice’ in order to “somehow generate the system that society needs” (2010, 3). couldry borrows the concept “social recession” from lawson (2007) who sees the free-marketization of every aspect of life as the source of major social crises in contemporary capitalist societies: “neoliberalism promised a utopia but has failed to deliver (…) working harder to keep up on the treadmill of the learn-to-earn consumer society is deepening our social recession.” 21  on the pacification process in post-1980 turkey see, özcan (2014). 120 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education announced in a dutiful manner; and continue their everyday academic practices under given conditions.22 perhaps the active involvement of academia awaits the finalization of the free-marketization of higher education – that is to say, the liquidation of critical academic groups, and the consolidation of the new specialist and technician 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relatively new one. wlu’s integrated planning and resource management (iprm) process is very much like similar processes being undertaken at a number of canadian universities. it is a management strategy to more easily enable unpopular cuts to staff and programs and legitimate the process through enlisting faculty “cooperation”. the aprm is the faculty union’s commissioned alternative report and will be a focal point of resistance with its very different set of recommendations. however, an argument is also made that, though while worthwhile, such-like actions will not nearly be enough to prompt a significant change in institutional direction. it is argued that though there are many prongs to the neo-liberal attack upon higher education, the most significant one is the casualization of its teaching labour force. it is argued that strong action by tenured and tenure track faculty is required to not only eradicate the injustices inherent in the situations of our contract academic colleagues but that this is actually the key to preserving quality education. keywords: neoliberalism, education, casual labour, resource management, austerity 1  garry potter (gpotter@wlu.ca) is a filmmaker and associate professor of sociology at wilfrid laurier university. he has made two feature length documentary films: whispers of revolution, and dystopia: what is to be done? he is also author of the book dystopia and two other books: the bet: truth in science, literature and everyday knowledges, and the philosophy of social science: new perspectives, as well as numerous scholarly articles. he is also co-editor of the book after postmodernism. currently he is producing a series of educational films about classical sociological theory for insight media. 126 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education introduction walmart: the high cost of low price was a documentary film showing the uglier side of the corporation. if cost cutting and cheap products are two of walmart’s prominent characteristics, and if a hidden but nonetheless extremely high cost, is also part of the neoliberal management of the higher education sector, then walmartization is indeed an apt metaphor to apply to canadian higher education.2 some would even assert that with the walton family foundation becoming the major source of private funding support for the development of charter-school alternatives to public schools walmartization is more than a metaphor (martinkich, 2014). but there are more similarities between higher education and walmart as well. there is an ever increasing reliance upon cheap casual labour. there is a constant aggressive expansion of universities, both in a physical sense, a never ending building program, and in terms of student numbers. understandably universities are leaders in technological innovation but they are also at the forefront of the battle to manage and control it. there is also a constant review of its various “systems”: systems of knowledge delivery, systems of administration, systems of resource allocation. this last review, the review of resource allocation, will be the particular focus of this article, as a focal point of this walmartization process and as a site of resistance to it. the hidden, high cost of this walmartization of higher education is the destruction of quality education. the hidden, high cost is the end of the university as an institution in any presently recognizable form. first, i provide an overview of the strategies and policies commonly implemented by canadian universities in the last few decades. i then discuss faculty involvement in a certain kind of resource allocation exercise as one of the more recent processes imposed upon them. this has been attempted in a number of canadian institutions but i will focus upon my own university – wilfrid laurier – as an example to illustrate most of my points. next, again using my own university and my own union, i discuss two different sorts of “rebellious responses”. the first of these is already being done; while the second may never be, but is instead being presented as an analysis, an argument and a call to action. it is an intervention in those ongoing marxist questions: who will educate the educators? and what is to be done? 2  for further utilizations of walmartization in relation to higher education see, for example: bios, 2013; hoeller, 2014. rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 127 strategies of the canadian neoliberal university government regulation and financing of education in canada is a mixture of federal and provincial responsibility, with the latter having the greatest responsibility, effects and control over direction. the kind of governance they provide varies by province from year to year dependent upon the vagaries of electoral politics. however, there is nonetheless a country-wide common trend. this has been in accord with an even broader trend internationally in the english speaking countries of new zealand, australia, the uk and the us. the trend is to move toward neoliberal ideals of educational service, to acting upon short term economic interests, to privatizations, and most crucially, to a cost-benefit analysis being the guiding principle of resource allocation. this broad ideological context internationally has framed the more particular policy direction and strategies that will be outlined below.3 the first thing to note is that there has been an enormous expansion of student enrollment in the last decades or so. but this expansion in numbers has been without a corresponding increase in the government financing of universities. the trend can be clearly seen for ontario in table 1. wilfrid laurier has doubled its enrollment in the last five years (wilfrid laurier, 2014). table 1: summary of fall term full-time enrollments in ontario universities, 2003-04 2012-13 year students year students 2003-04 312,987 2008-09 367,150 2004-05 330,772 2009-10 383,805 2005-06 346,673 2010-11 397,653 2006-07 355,763 2011-12 409,569 2007-08 359,250 2012-13 419,963 source: ontario ministry of training, colleges and universities, 2014. a single sentence from the report of the advisory panel on future directions for postsecondary education to the ministry of training, 3  there is a large and growing scholarly literature upon various aspects of neoliberal reforms and its philosophical framing of issues affecting higher education management. see for example: tores and schugurensky, 2002; sears, 2003; lipman, 2011. 128 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education colleges and universities (mtcu) in 1996 sums up the ontario policy direction for the past decade: “historically, colleges and universities have demonstrated their ability to accommodate increased enrollment demand in an environment of constraint.” professors, both full-time and sessionals, have often acceded to the constant administrative pressure to “do more with less”. this certainly includes more marking and administrative responsibilities, but it is questionable whether this includes more educationally. i support the democratization of education, including higher education. but i do not believe that an increased percentage of the population attending university simply achieves this. while the underfunded expansionary policies of government and university administrations has resulted in a number of things, a better educated populace is not one of them. the first thing to result from the “do more, with less policies”, were larger class sizes, often much larger. this point was made in dramatic fashion in a joint senate and board of governors (bog) meeting at laurier. one of my colleagues, thomas hueglin, had taught the then chair of the bog twenty-five years earlier. he asked the chair if he remembered the class and received a complimentary reply. he then followed with a question as whether he remembered the size of the class. twelve or fifteen was the reply. “well” said thomas, “i’m glad you liked the class. i still teach it. only this term the class size is one hundred and seventy-five!”. small seminar classes still exist of course, though now usually only in the students’ final year. the large introductory classes are now largely devoid of written work because the marking load would simply be too onerous. written assignments have been shifting more and more to machine marked multiple choice assessment. this educational choice was certainly not thought desirable by any professor. rather it was and is a pragmatic response to increased class sizes. in order to enable a higher percentage of ontario high school students to attend university required a lowering of entrance requirements. this manifested itself particularly at laurier in the faculty of arts. these lower entrance requirements went along with a simultaneous general grade inflation in high school. in an interview with journalist michael woods, james côté, a sociology professor at the university of western ontario, notes: “when the ontario scholar program was introduced in the 1960s, average performers were c-students and a-students were considered exceptional...now, 90 per cent of ontario students have a b average rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 129 or above, and 60 percent of students applying to university have an a average.” grade inflation is also occurring at the university level because we were not only supposed to admit these “lower achievers” but to retain and hopefully graduate them. the lowered entrance requirements for laurier’s arts faculty produced a crisis in the fall term of 2010 (the cord, 2011): after closely monitoring their fall-term data for the first time in recent years, the faculty of arts has discovered an alarming statistic – out of five first-year arts students, approximately two are at a high risk of landing on academic probation or not being able to declare their major in second year. thus, an ever increasing amount of time and resources was needed to address this crisis in order to retain these students. thus, more and more time is needed to be spent upon remedial instruction. while many students are ‘getting through’, this strategy overall is resulting not in a better educated public but rather a public with a higher proportion of academic credentials. both the politicians and the university administrators seem content with this. austerity budgeting and surplus transfers as naomi klein (2007) argued in the shock doctrine, a crisis is a way of achieving otherwise unpopular changes. the crisis need not be real. as caut director jim turk (in kershaw, 2009) asserted: “what is publicly perceived as a crisis can be a convenient opportunity to push through changes that administrators may want even when the circumstances at a particular university don’t justify them.” senior administrators, particularly the finance vice-presidents, are perpetually telling their university communities that we are in very bad shape financially. they scare us about our pensions. and they insist on austerity budgets. so, we never get the budgetary increases necessary to deal with the burdens of the increased student numbers. and we often get cuts. we get cuts to course stipends available, cutbacks to program offerings and demands for penny pinching savings to be made to normal office or teaching practices. an example of this last sort of cut at laurier was the decree that we could no longer afford to pay for the printing of course outlines. so instead of the usual practice of instructors at the beginning of courses to pass out course outlines to students and go over them, we now simply tell them to download them and print them themselves from the website. well, some students do this, some students do not. some students prefer 130 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to individually email their instructors to ask them for the relevant pieces of information, as and when it occurs to them. this “money saving” policy, in terms of the additional time spent by instructors emailing, seems like a false economy. oftentimes there are surpluses at the end of the budgetary year. these surpluses, however, seldom go back into operational budgets, which includes staff and faculty wages, heating and light and materials, etc. rather they are transferred into the capital fund. this is reserved for real estate acquisitions and construction costs. laurier, it seems (and this may certainly apply to other universities), is increasingly a real estate and holding company, as much as an educational institution. we are buying and selling; we are renters and rentees; we are constantly tearing down and building. apparently we do this well. laurier has got a good deal renting prime space in a downtown toronto building. our recent sixty million dollar apartment purchases alongside the waterloo campus are set to bring in rental profits for years to come. this is why the bog, with their preponderance of a business people membership, cannot see any problem. yes, we are buying and selling and building. but we are also profiting on this. this is precisely the neoliberal vision, the bottom line as they say. but while we are making millions in the real estate game, we still cannot afford to give our students course outlines, or an anthropology department (laurier’s was recently abolished). this is because the transfers of surplus from operations to capital are never transferred back because the profits made in real estate never come back to pay for actual education, only buildings. the university of western ontario has had a similar situation to laurier’s in this regard (as have had most other ontario universities). the university of western ontario faculty association (awofa) recently commissioned some financial analysts to prepare a report on the issue, entitled every budget is a choice (university of western ontario, 2014, p.3). it is worth quoting from this document at length: “when we hear that our employer doesn’t have funds available to hire the normal contingent of contract academic staff, or to give pay increases that match those at other universities, it is because they have funds tied up in assets – investments, buildings and equipment – and are unwilling to liquidate any of their investments or finance buildings and equipment through debt in order to allow them more cash to meet operational needs. what they are saying is that when rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 131 money is used to fund capital projects, or is invested, that is where it stays. this creates a one-way street: money doesn’t ever flow back to the operating fund to help with operating deficits or rising costs, or to maintain an appropriate staffing level, no matter how flush the capital or reserve funds are. it would only require a change in policy for the board of governors to transfer money back into the operating fund. at this university, at this time, any shortfall of operating funds is an artificial problem of the board’s own making.” casual labour: the keystone of the walmartization process it is a simple strategy that worked for walmart and seems to be working for higher education as well. universities are replacing tenuretrack and tenured full-time professors with a casual labour force to do the teaching. this is what contract academic labour essentially is: casual labour. adjuncts, as they are called in the us, sessionals as they are called in canada, are very low paid, have extremely tenuous job security and few, if any, benefits. fortunately, canada has public health coverage, which, of course makes canadian sessionals immediately much better off than their american colleagues. but they still lack such things as dental coverage or supplements to health insurance for prescription drug purchases, for example, and quite crucially they lack a pension plan. sessionals have historically been called part-timers. this is not only a very misleading term, it is positively insulting. as a tenured professor my full-time teaching load is four course units – two courses each term. many of the contract academic faculty at wlu teach three courses a term here and sometimes another three in the spring and summer terms. many, of course, do not do all their teaching at laurier’s main campus but have their teaching split between campuses (an hour apart by car and impossible to reach by public transit). many do not do all their teaching at laurier at all as they teach for multiple universities. a character in a recent novel – fight for your long day by alex kundera (2010) – taught at four different universities in philadelphia. this novel might be fiction but it was grounded in the realities of the canadian, as well as the american, adjunct/sessional experience. most american adjuncts are much worse off than their canadian colleagues in matters of pay as well. few of them are unionized, which contributes to a situation where the pay scale of the canadian underpayment of teaching would seem like a positively utopian dream to them. 132 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education but it is no utopia. were a sessional at laurier to teach twice as many courses as i do (and many, of course, do) their pay would still be (literally) less than half of mine. expanding class sizes is not sufficient alone to make the “do more with less” strategy work. an ever increasing casualization of the academic workforce is in fact absolutely key to the whole process of the transformation of universities into big box stores of educational credentials. the next step in the neoliberal onslaught so far the replacement of tenure-track and tenured full-time professors with a casual labour force has mainly been done by not replacing tenured retirees with tenure track positions and by ensuring that the new teaching requirements of the university (because of the enormous expansion in student numbers) has mainly been filled by contract academics. but this is not sufficient. a new strategy is required for the further cuts to staff and programs required to achieve the neoliberal multi-campus, mega-university ideal. senior administrators are aware that these coming cuts will be very unpopular among faculty. thus, with the help of some american consultants, they have devised a way to head off such resistance as may be generated in advance through enlisting the faculty’s aid, through giving them an emotional and intellectual investment in making the cuts, and by also causing the faculty to fight among themselves.4 the integrated planning and resource management (iprm) process was thus initiated at laurier. the iprm is simply the laurier variant of a larger process called ‘program prioritization’ developed by u.s.-based consultant robert dickeson and implemented at a variety of universities in that country. this american process is now being exported to canada where a small number of universities – including the university of saskatchewan, brock, york, guelph and laurier – are implementing this method (salatka and kristofferson, 2014). the university’s web page (wlu, 2014) describes it thus: “a resource-allocation process will be developed that will then be utilized to direct resources to the major academic and administrative priorities of the university”. in other words: the process will decide where cuts to staff and academic programs are to be made. it should be emphasized that implementing cuts is something that was being planned anyway. although this would be vigorously and directly denied by the 4  see dickeson, 2010. and for a specific critique of dickeson’s thinking see heron, 2013. rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 133 administration as being the purpose of the iprm exercise. rather they would say things like ‘the process is to discover our strengths and weaknesses and to channel resources toward areas of excellence’. (i am paraphrasing here things repeated many, many times in the senate debates about whether or not to implement the process). however, they are quite correct to assert that the process is not all about making cuts. this was going to be done anyway. rather the process is very significantly about ideologically legitimating such cuts. it states on the laurier website (wlu, 2014): “the planning task force is strongly represented by faculty and will approve the prioritization criteria for both academic and administrative areas”. translation: we want you to make the cuts for us! the recommendations the iprm makes will still have to be approved by senate, as the legally constituted academic decision making body of the university and by the bog as the financial decision making body. a good deal of time and energy was spent in senate discussing and debating this and its ultimate decision making powers were affirmed. however, i believe many missed the ideological point with respect to the initiative. when the iprm issues its report and recommendations in the fall of 2014, the process will have involved a huge number of person-hours. estimates were for three hours a week, from something like sixty faculty on the iprm’s various committees, for two years. this is not to mention that all the university’s faculty and staff have had to have meetings and fill out forms and templates as well. all of this effort thus meant for some, a tremendous investiture of emotion, as well as time. people working so hard and so long in a process quite naturally become emotionally invested in it. when it comes time to implement the recommendations to discontinue programs or layoff staff members, it will be much harder to argue against such after this long lead up involving so many faculty and staff. further many faculty in departments and programs that are feeling very secure in terms of possible cuts, have short-sightedly concluded that the process may be advantageous to them. so, staff and faculty are also divided among themselves. from the point of view of a neoliberal political strategist, it is a brilliant initiative. resistance to the iprm there were probably some faculty members in many departments that thought the iprm was a good idea. there were also quite certainly a great many that did not. but resistance and support for the process was not distributed evenly throughout the university. unsurprisingly, the greatest support for the, at time of writing still ongoing process, is to be found among 134 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the business and economics faculty (sbe). first, many sbe faculty members share the same neoliberal viewpoint that the administration does. second, those in sbe who believe that the iprm process may possibly benefit their particular department or faculty or that at least it won’t disadvantage it, are likely correct. very definitely, all faculties are not equal in terms of, well, anything. there is a growing disparity between the faculty of arts and sbe. it is evident in terms of average faculty salaries and in the buildings in which their respective offices and classrooms are located. a new, very expensive business faculty building is now under construction. but the inequality between these faculties most relevant in terms of this article’s argument, concerns student admissions. what was earlier alleged concerning the general dumbing-down of the neoliberal university is a very unevenly applied situation. thus, the grade admission average for a business administration honours bba degree program for 2013 was 87.5 percent. the average entrance to the bachelor of arts honours ba program was only 75 percent (wlu, 2014). this difference also accords well with the neoliberal vision of the university being primarily about directly servicing the economy. the greatest opposition to the iprm has not only come from the faculty of arts, however, but from the two faculties – the faculty of human and social sciences and the faculty of liberal arts – at the brantford campus. there is a definite political disjuncture in terms of radicalism and resistance between the waterloo and brantford campuses. it has a simple political-material basis. in the preceding fifteen years of laurier’s general expansion, brantford went from near nothing to begin with in 1999 (five administrators and only two part-time faculty) to today’s figure of 2700 students. the new tenure-track, but then still untenured faculty, during this period at the waterloo campus, sometimes had onerous service demands placed upon them. but nearly all of the branford faculty members had this experience. for a time nearly the entire brantford faculty was untenured. they were untenured but forced to head programs and perform other time consuming administrative tasks at the very same time in their career as they faced the greatest demands of time for research and publication to ensure they received their tenure. management was not very sympathetic to this. these early years created lasting resentments and a greater politicization of the workforce. at any rate, the brantford campus has led the iprm opposition thus far. at the beginning not a single faculty member volunteered to be a part of it. and more recently the two brantford faculties passed motions expressing a lack of confidence in the methodology of the process. the waterloo campus faculty of arts quickly followed them and passed a rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 135 similar motion. below is the original brantford faculty of liberal arts (council minutes, february 3, 2014) motion: be it resolved that the concept, method, data collection and analysis of the integrated planning and resource management process is so fundamentally flawed that this body has no confidence that it will provide reliable information upon which sound academic decisions can be made. as such, this body calls for the immediate cessation of the activities of the iprm and the return of academic decision-making to the senate, its rightful place as established by the wlu act. regardless of these calls for cessation, the process continues. however, there is another equally significant piece of resistance underway. the alternative planning and resource management (aprm) report is being researched and written. this is an intended shadow process to the iprm commissioned by the faculty union (wlufa) and i am the chair of the committee entrusted with this. it is interesting to note with regard to faculty involvement in this process the degree of fear connected to it. the researching and writing of this report is a collaborative effort involving staff and contract academic faculty. however, it is only the full-time faculty members’ names which will appear on the report. contract faculty and staff members fear identification and management reprisals and so (perhaps wisely) have chosen to remain anonymous. the aprm will have a radical set of recommendations. the first and foremost of these will counter directly the iprm. we will recommend that there need be no cuts to programs and staff. further, this recommendation will include the clarification that “no cuts to programs” also includes the kind of cuts disguised as mere amalgamations of programs and departments. in preparing this report we have had the benefit of the university of saskatchewan experience. their iprm equivalent process, labeled “transformus”, while still not complete, is further along than our own. in the college of arts and science, transformus will likely merge women’s and gender studies, philosophy, modern languages and religion and culture programs into a new department. those departments feature popular classes, but few people graduate with degrees from the departments, said peter stoicheff dean of arts and science. he said he doesn’t see the changes as cutting programs, but rather building a new department that retains popular classes from the shuttered departments (warren, 2014).”shuttered departments”, of course, 136 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education referring to departments that were cut. to imply otherwise is simply deceptive administrative-speak. while our report will clearly state that we neither accept the need for austerity budgets nor the neoliberal reductive bottom-line ideology that reduces all to simply financial cost-benefit analyses, we do hope to hoist them by their own petard, so to speak. we will be looking at the proliferation of senior administrative positions from a cost-benefit point of view. as table 2 illustrates, while staff and faculty increases have lagged well behind student enrollment increases, senior administrative positions have greatly exceeded them. table 2: wlu workforce growth 50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% should this be laurier’s priority? student enrollment increased by 23% workforce growth 2007/08 to 2011/2012 cupe/iatse/ufcw wlufa full-time wlusa/osstf 0% 7% 12% 44% management *wlu hr annual report of 2011-2012 source: human resources annual report, 2011-12 neither laurier, nor indeed canada, is unique in their senior administrative proliferation, as the us experience equally indicates (ginsberg, 2011). but it does call into question the honesty of then council of universities (cou) president, paul genest, when he asserted: “you could get rid of the entire senior level of an administration and you would still be seeing a number of our universities trying to wrestle a deficit to the ground.” (kershaw, 2009). rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 137 in countering such proposals, we will be recommending a comprehensive, fully transparent review of laurier’s senior administration, including hiring practices, compensation, bonuses, travel funds and so on. we will also recommend that the review seriously consider the need for any of these positions in the first place, bearing in mind that from a cost-benefit perspective none of them are revenue generating. to put this in perspective, the yearly cost of all the teaching of the cultural analysis and social theory master of arts (ma) program and the sociology ma program together with all the teaching of the archaeology department (at least as considered in terms of the value of contract faculty stipends) is actually considerably less than the salary for the vice-president student services. these executives are paid large sums in order to allegedly make important decisions that will effect the wlu student community. and yet, the biggest decision made by the position’s current occupant was to privatize food services. finally, we shall recommend a reversal of the budget transfers from operations to capital projects. we are making profits out of real estate and have accumulated enormous assets. laurier’s total assets over the course of may 2011 to may 2013 was $128,000,000 (wlu budget, 2013). we propose, putting some of that one hundred and twenty-eight million back into education, perhaps even by reducing class sizes. this report will also be made fully public; in addition to sending it to the union membership and the student union newspaper, we will send it to relevant ministers, and members of both provincial and federal parliament. it will also, of course, be sent to the senate and the bog. but we are under no illusions about its recommendations being followed. it will be a consciously political document, intended to provoke thought and discussion, to fire a shot, so to speak, across the bows of both the laurier administration and the politicians who so poorly govern education in the province and country. we hope it shall have some resonance with public discussions about the future of higher education. but we know this will not be nearly enough to fundamentally change the neoliberal directions higher education is heading in. to have a chance of affecting that something much bigger is required to be done. what is to be done? the most obvious aspect of the canadian (and certainly wilfrid laurier’s) neoliberal university not yet mentioned in this article is the increased corporate involvement with universities. wlu came very close to receiving academic censure from the canadian association of 138 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education university teachers (caut) for its, and the university of waterloo’s, official governance regulations for their basillie school of international affairs because it gave a hitherto unprecedented degree of corporate power over academic decision making. but universities are becoming increasingly dependent upon corporate funding. and corporations, unsurprisingly, are wanting increased control as their price for donations. this process has been written about extensively elsewhere (bradshaw, 2012; polster, 2008). however, it is not, i believe, the most serious challenge presented by the walmartization of higher education in canada. it could well become so, but we have not yet reached that stage. in my view, the key issue is the situation of contract academic faculty. it is central to both the overall problem and to its solution, if there is ever to be one. at one time faculty were the senior administrators of the university. they would undertake these tiresome but necessary chores for short durations, a few years perhaps, and then go back to the much more important business of teaching and doing research. but that is certainly no longer true. if a university president once taught and researched, it is something long abandoned and never to be returned to (if they had such an academic background at all). today, university administrators are professional managers. thus, faculty lost all control over the university long ago. and to save higher education they need to get it back. the governance of most canadian universities is bicameral, consisting of a bog and a senate, with the former having responsibility for financial decision making and the latter for academic matters. in practice, there is no clear separation between academic issues and financial ones. academic decisions frequently have financial consequences and more crucially the financial decisions of the bog completely determine the boundaries of possibility for academic activities. there is staff, faculty and student representation on the bog but such is largely token. the majority of the board membership is drawn from the business community, and thus have little problem with the neoliberalization process. in one of the senate meetings at laurier when we were still fighting the initiation of the iprm process, a faculty supporter of the administration admonished senators with a lecture to us asserting that we must be “financially responsible”. a couple of weeks later i referenced this speech and quoted this phrase while addressing the bog. but i added that if that is so for senators, the other side of bicameral governance was that board members must demonstrate academic responsibility in their decision making. i concluded my little speech with a polemical rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 139 flourish: “this isn’t no burger chain we’re running here people”. blank faces greeted this remark. it appears that the distinction between corporations and universities was lost upon many of them. if the university is making money then any decisions that facilitate that process are wise ones, seemed to be the general opinion. the composition of a university’s senate is legally inscribed in its founding act and thus is very hard to change. wlu has a “plus one” clause in its -that is to say, faculty, student and staff representation at senate need have one more member than the administration. however, given that this grouping would have to have complete unanimity (and total attendance) in practice to ever defeat an always united administration, it means that the senate is a largely impotent body. the fact that unanimity is rarely achieved even amongst senators from other faculties other than sbe and that sbe has strong sympathies with a neoliberal vision, means that the senate can achieve little in terms of putting a brake upon the present direction in which we are headed. so what can be done to halt or reverse the bad direction in which higher education is heading? there is little hope to be had from our existing university governance institutions. there is also little hope to be had from government policies. and there is little hope to be had that either students or the general public will insist upon progressive changes. students seem to live with a perception of an eternal present of massive class sizes (“hasn’t it always been like this?”). this leaves only the faculty, as the most directly knowledgeable and invested party, to do something about the situation. but the faculty is divided in many ways and their sole organ of institutional representation and self-defence – the faculty association union is an imperfect one. a great many sessionals are well aware of not only the injustice inherent in their own personal situation but have a sophisticated political generalization of it. many are ready to fight. however, sessionals at any university are a very divided group. many of them, still early in their career, are living with the delusion that a past reality still exists. in other words, once upon a time, sessional teaching could be regarded as simply a stage in their career, a final apprenticeship stage before the tenure-track position. this still is the reality for a few, but statistically this reality belongs to the past. many sessionals are well aware of this fact but nonetheless still live in a personalized state of denial; no matter how long the odds are of them getting a tenuretrack position, they cling to the belief it will happen. they don’t have time for politics with the teaching load they carry and research agenda 140 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education they set for themselves. then, of course, there are the long-time sessional faculty, who have so many different employers and workplaces that to be politically involved in all of them would be impossible. in essence, what i am arguing here is that the contract faculty themselves have structural weaknesses built into their collective situation, so as to make strong coordinated resistance near impossible. evidence of this is the persistence of their dire situation over years and years. full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty have no such deep structural weakness that would prevent coordinated action. yet, the situation for them is far more ironic. this group, at the top of the heap of salaried knowledge workers, whose occupations are much more of a calling than merely a job, who have a direct vested interest in a good education system, are themselves the ones in most need of political education. who indeed, will educate the educators? while tenured faculty do not have direct structural impediments to coordinated political action there are, nonetheless, structural impediments to transcending the neoliberal ideologies that impede the development of political consciousness. in a way, privilege not only begets privilege but it also clouds awareness of privilege. for example, as a group, full-time faculty do less of the teaching of the very large lower level service classes and instead teach more of the higher year seminars and graduate courses. there is thus a polarized collective experience of teaching realities. in a nutshell, the situation for full-timers just doesn’t seem so bad at the moment so as to demand political consciousness and struggle. collectively they have been insulated from many of the harsher changes that have come in recent years. it takes but a moment of reflection for full-time faculty to realize that regardless of the situation of higher education getting worse and worse, their own personal situation is one of privilege. they are impacted by increasing administrative burdens placed upon them, by increased numbers of students requiring remedial instruction, by growing class sizes (though it is much more frequently the contract faculty that teach the lower level mega-classes). but still they are paid well and have benefits; they have time for research; and are privileged. most faculty are aware of their privilege. however, many of them have also been disciplined by the experience of precariousness and fear that led to finally reaching the promised land of tenure. few put it to themselves in terms of a choice with respect to collective action. few put it to themselves with respect to deciding to protect the future of higher education, or even their own situation, if they are to remain part of it long enough. rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 141 the choice is a simple one. the first alternative is to continue not to look beyond the end of your own nose and be ready to fight for two things only. the two things i refer to are simply reactive to the (so far) relatively minor administrative assault upon faculty privilege: pay and pensions. if the university administration pushes too hard upon these issues full-time faculty will likely be willing to strike. my argument here is that there is another choice possible. there is a different set of things entirely that full-time faculty ought to be willing to strike for. and make no mistake, powerful, determined and coordinated action by the faculty is the only thing that will even possibly slow or reverse the walmartization process. of course, we will also need to involve the students. we will need to make them much more aware of hierarchies and the practical ways that “our teaching conditions, are their learning conditions” (lafrance and sears, 2012,). the fight i am proposing, that could be and should be undertaken, could be done much more easily than actual walmart workers effecting political change. they are as yet un-unionized. canadian higher education -of both tenure track and sessionals -is largely unionized. but, as discussed earlier, there is weakness structurally built into the sessionals’ collective position. this could be addressed by the full-timers. and this is exactly what i am proposing here. full-timers could demand change to the contract faculty situation! full-timers could demand change to the hierarchical employment structure of canadian higher education. by doing so – and by showing they were serious about it – they could not only work toward the achievement of justice for a grossly exploited group of colleagues but actually toward the preservation of quality higher education, as these two things are intimately related. my argument here could easily be misunderstood. it could be read as simply a call for full-time faculty to be more altruistic. rather than altruism, however, what i am calling for could be more aptly described as enlightened self-interest. there is a widespread impression that full-time faculty benefit from the exploitation of sessionals. this is a common belief among both full-time and contract faculty, rather more bitterly among the latter group. each can easily perceive the glaring inequalities between their situations. nonetheless, it is a mistake to believe that the exploitation by the institution of the one creates the privileges of the other. when sessional teaching was a rarity, the notion of it being an apprenticeship was to quite some degree a reality. universities did not always depend upon a large casual labour force to fulfill their educational missions. the full-timers of the past were always in a pretty good 142 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education situation vis-à-vis working conditions, perks, security and salary. if anything their collective situation now has significantly deteriorated relative to other professions such as lawyers and medical doctors. the casualization of such a large percentage of the academic labour force has not actually benefited the full-timers; they gained no new benefits or privileges. in fact, sessional labour has been used in part to keep wages for full-timers down. recognizing that fact, however, is only part of what i would consider necessary for full-timers to recognize their “enlightened self-interest”. my argument is that the casualization of the labour force is the flagship policy, as it were, of the neoliberalization of higher education and that this process overall is destroying all the good qualities of the university. full-time professors have both a vested interest and powerful emotive linkage with the maintenance of educational quality. at the same time as maintaining decent salaries, benefits and pensions they have felt the burden of increased class sizes and ever more onerous administrative duties. they have been witnessing the gradual decline of educational quality, and it has pained many of them to witness this. they are experientially aware of many of the negative aspects of the neoliberal university. what they need to put together in their minds (in their hearts and minds!) is the fact that these things come in a package. they need to grasp the fact that the miserable salaries and working conditions of the contract faculty are indirectly but nonetheless powerfully affecting their own working conditions and at some point in the near future are very likely going to profoundly affect their salaries as well! lest i be accused of being an idealistic dreamer, whether what i’m suggesting is seen as “enlightened self-interest,” or simply an altruistic concern for social justice, let me assert quickly that i do not believe what i am calling for is even remotely on the horizon. management has succeeded very thoroughly in dividing us ideologically. a first step toward the kinds of action i am advocating though, would be for the union to engage in an educational campaign to convince tenured and tenure track faculty of the proposition that justice for our seriously exploited colleagues is essential to the preservation of quality higher education. to preserve the university, we must educate the educators! rebellious responses to the walmartization of canadian higher education | 143 references bios, jason (2013) “the walmartization of higher education” the new existentialists, dec. 30. http://www.saybrook.edu/newexistentialists/ posts/12-30-13 bradshaw, james (2012). the tricky business of funding a university, the globe and mail, october 17. cote, james e. & anton l. allahar (2011). lowering higher education: the rise of corporate universities and the fall of liberal education. toronto: university of toronto press. dickeson, robert, (2010) prioritizing academic programs and services: reallocating resources to achieve strategic balance, san francisco: jossey-bass. faculty of liberal arts divisional council minutes (2014) wlu online. http://www.wlu.ca/documents/57710/dc_minutes_ february_3,_2014_1.pdf greenwald, robert (director) (2005) wal-mart: the high cost of low price, brave new films. heron, craig (2013) “robert dickeson: right for ontario” ocufa report. http://ocufa.on.ca/assets/dickeson-right-for-ontario-craig-heron.pdf hoeller, keith (2014) “the wal-mart-ization of higher education: how young professors are getting screwed” salon february 16. http://www. salon.com/2014/02/16/the_wal_mart_ization_of_higher_education_ how_young_professors_are_getting_screwed/ human resources annual report (2011/12) wlu online. https://www.wlu. ca/documents/54203/hr-annual_report_2011-12.pdf kershaw, anne (2009). canada: academics call for greater transparency, university world news. http://www.universityworldnews.com/article. php?story=20090528175147 619 klein naomi (2007). the shock doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism, new york: picador. kundera, alex (2010). fight for your long day, madison, new jersey: atticus books. lafrance, xavier and sears alan (2013) “campus fightbacks in the age of austerity: learning from quebec students”, new socialist, february 6. http://www.newsocialist.org/678-campus-fightbacks-in-the-age-of austeritylearning-from-quebec-students lipman, pauline (2011) “neoliberal education restructuring: dangers and opportunities of the present crisis” monthly review. http:// monthlyreview.org/2011/07/01/neoliberal-education-restructuring/ 144 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education martinkich (2014) “no metaphor here: the walmartization of public education”, the academe blog.http://academeblog.org/2014/06/04/ no-metaphor-here-thewalmartization-of-public-education/ mtcu (1996). “report of the advisory panel on future directions for postsecondary education.” http://www.tcu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/ reports/futuree.html ontario government progress report: education (2014). https://www. ontario.ca/government/progress-report-2014-education polster, clare (2008). waste not, want not: corporatization and ‘efficiency’ in canada’s universities, our schools/our selves volume 17(2), winter 2008. salatka, bill and kristofferson, rob (2014) the wlufa advocate, january 22. http://advocatewlufa.wordpress.com/iprm/ sears, alan (2003) retooling the mind factory: education in a lean state. aurora, ontario: garamond press tores, carlos a. and schugurensky, danial (2002) “the political economy of higher education in the era of neoliberal globalization: latin america in comparative perspective”, higher education, netherlands: kluwer aacademic publishers. http://www.del.ufrj.br/~ricardo/ docsarcusur/carlos.pdf the cord. (2011). struggling to overcome first-year obstacles, march 9. http://www.thecord.ca/struggling-to-overcome-first-year-obstacles/ university of western ontario, (2014). “every budget is a choice.” http:// www.uwo.ca/finance/reports/index.html warren, jeremy (2014) “university of saskatchewan to close four campus libraries” the star phoenix, may 6. http://www.thestarphoenix.com/ news/university+close+four+campus+libr aries/9810436/story.html wilfrid laurier website (2014). https://www.wlu.ca/homepage. php?grp_id=1928 woods, michael (2008) quoting james côté, the journal, issue 8, vol. 136, september 19. http://queensjournal.ca/story/2008-09-19/features/ making-the-grade/ from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 145 from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial: the consolidation of neoliberalism in ontario’s universities eric newstadt1 abstract: extracurricular programs designed to provide ontario’s university students with an opportunity to explore and develop their entrepreneurial talents are now at every university in ontario. largely ignored by mainstream scholars, the significance of such extracurricular programs should not be under-estimated simply because they are not part of the regular curriculum in most programs. on the contrary, the new entrepreneurial programs mark the ascension of neoliberal notions of self-help and self-reliance to the very core of ontario’s universities. tracking the development and evolution of neoliberal understandings of entrepreneurship, helps to illustrate how being an entrepreneur and being entrepreneurial are the by-products of very calculated efforts by chicago school economists milton friedman, arthur director and others. accounting for the agency of students is also critical to understanding the recent outgrowth of extracurricular entrepreneurial programs, just as it is to understanding the potential to press back against the neoliberal program. keywords: entrepreneurialism; higher education; crowd funding; inequality all too frequently, the degree to which students and faculty have been active agents in making and maintaining ontario’s system of higher education is either ignored or underestimated. and in so failing to either recognize or sufficiently emphasize the agency of students and faculty in making higher education in the province, scholars have often tended to also underestimate how rooted and extensive neoliberalism is, not just within the university but also, and perhaps more importantly, outside 1  eric newstadt received his phd from the department of political science at york university. he currently teaches in the department of politics at acadia university. 146 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education ontario’s universities too.2 as such, the significance of any particular policy or program also tends to be misdiagnosed generally as little more than an indication of the fact that neoliberal discourses and policy frameworks have become hegemonic within ontario’s policymaking and university administrative circles. the parameters of neoliberalism are thereby made into a laundry list of policies, some more disciplinary and coercive than others, but none of which affect “everyday life” in ways that have transformed and which continue to transform our subjective self-understanding, not the least as scholars concerned with understanding the dynamics of higher education in ontario.3 when open to and considerate of the agency of students and faculty in the remaking of higher education in ontario, and, at the same time, to a similarly expansive understanding of neoliberalism, one where hegemonic policy paradigms are seen to have a life and a significance beyond either policymaking circles or disembodied notions of “globalization” and “austerity” and not any clear relation to everyday life. in this regard, the recent emergence of extra-curricular programs designed to encourage and support student entrepreneurialism in all of ontario’s 2  throughout, i define neoliberalism as a program of accumulation that emerged after 1980 in response to the crisis of the immediate post-war order. under the aegis of key states and the us in particular, the neoliberal program of accumulation is premised upon the ability of investors to rapidly invest and divest into and out of different jurisdictions. such investment decisions are based primarily, though by no means exclusively, on relative levels of labour market flexibility. such flexibility is not understood as simply a measure of relative wage rates. rather, labour market flexibility is better thought of as an ongoing approximation of capital’s potential to accumulate profit in a particular jurisdiction given multiple considerations. the neoliberal era is also described by the ascent of neoclassical cum neo-liberal theory to a position of unrivalled and global hegemony. the ‘neoliberal university’ and or ‘neoliberalism in the university’ is intended to describe the imposition and normalization of market or market-type signalling at multiple levels (i.e. prices or quasi-prices are attached to virtually all aspects of the university), and institutional functional preoccupation with the (re)production of flexible/quiescent labour and “monopolizable” (patentable/ownable) forms of knowledge. for a fuller description of neoliberalism and its development see (harvey, 2005; gindin and panitch, 2012; fast, 2013). for a fuller description of what is meant by the neoliberal university see newstadt, 2013. 3  what i describe below as “mainstream” scholarship on ontario’s system of higher education is the product of a group of scholars whose work on the subject is most frequently cited and/or relied upon both in the extant literature and in public policy debates. thinkers like michael skolnick, glen jones, donald fisher, david trick, knell rubenson, ian clark, theresa shanahan, paul axelrod, and a handful of others have produced a wide body of literature. their work is frequently referenced in government reports and has even been sponsored by government agencies with an eye to having them outline a policy program for the province to follow. also, skolnik, jones, and fisher have played key roles on various government agencies or advisory bodies at various points in their careers. axelrod is the dean of education at york university in toronto. many of the above have also published together on the subject, and their work – and supervision – has had a clear impact of the extant literature, such that it is hardly a stretch to describe their work as comprising a kind of canon on ontario’s system of higher education. as i outline below, these scholars also tend to share a common ontological and epistemological framework. from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 147 universities is neither marginal to the operation of the university as a whole nor merely about teaching students “disentitlement”, as two critics recently suggested (sears and cairns 2014).4 rather, the recent fascination with student entrepreneurialism is also demonstrative of students’ desire to learn what the proponents of such programs hope to teach: a more individuated and consumer-based form of entitlement, one that seeks to “free” the individual consumer from the fetters of – or potential for – collective action. in other words, the emergence of business incubators and crowd-funding programs in ontario’s universities suggests that patterns of interaction and behaviour that neoliberal capitalism and neoliberal policies encourage are already well-established in and outside of those institutions. what this in turn means is that the new entrepreneurial programs, though extracurricular, will likely play an increasingly notable role in the further extension and consolidation of the facile instrumentalism (like notions of self-help and “free” competition) that describe neoliberal ideology. thus, the new entrepreneurialism will work to undermine the potential for deep and critical analysis in ontario’s universities and to further normalize the kinds of hyper-competitive conditions, managerial rationalities, and disciplinary capacities that all but force even the most critically minded scholars to somehow, and in some way, accommodate. the ubiquity and ambiguity of entrepreneurialism that ostensibly isolated and extracurricular business incubator and crowd-funding programs have a significance that cannot be diagnosed when we focus on the fact that such programs are optional and extracurricular, as is the norm, is best illustrated by those who have championed such programs most aggressively. the remarkable ambiguity of the language used by government agencies and university administrators in discussing the new entrepreneurial programs makes it difficult to discern what the intended ambit of “entrepreneurial education” really is, or who ontario’s “student entrepreneurs” really are. just as quickly as entrepreneurs are described in terms that set them apart from the rest of the student population, so is one pushed to conceive of every student as a kind of entrepreneur. though clearly also suggestive of some grander policy design, the ambiguity of the language also plays 4  for sears and cairns (2014) “teaching disentitlement” is done, “either openly in the curriculum (for example, through entrepreneurship education) or through the structure of the system (for example, through user pay, sharp tuition increases, and ever-expanding class sizes”. 148 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education on another significant, though far less commented on, manifestation of neoliberalism: the idea that students could be entrepreneurs, or even that entrepreneurialism could be learned. before turning to this issue, it is helpful to briefly explore the ambiguity just described. in a recent report by the body that represents all of ontario’s universities, the council of ontario universities (cou), entrepreneurship is described in terms that do little to help readers understand that the business incubators and crowd-funding programs explored therein, are in fact extra-curricular, optional, and not intended as mandated interventions into curricular design: “entrepreneurship, upon which economists say economic growth depends, has moved from the margins to the mainstream of university education. there are entire programs devoted to teaching students what it takes to invent the next big thing, attract investors and take their service or product to market…as a result, universities are now preparing students to create their own jobs, as well as jobs for other people. at the core, they are developing an innovation capacity in students that will enable them to be “intra-preneurs” – employees who behave like entrepreneurs within the context of a large organization. this is much more than an interesting campus trend. it is the key to success for many thousands of students. it is vital to the strength of the economy … many thousands of students a year are learning entrepreneurship in dozens of programs and hundreds of courses at ontario’s 21 publicly funded universities. this focus on innovation is reaping rewards, with hundreds of startup companies being created each year.” (cou, 2013, 1) the government of ontario has also suggested that the proper purview of “entrepreneurial education” is rather broad. in a recent discussion paper intended to frame debate over higher education policy in the province, the government asks: “the government is committed to providing new and dedicated support for ontario’s young entrepreneurs. how can the postsecondary education system contribute to this objective through experiential learning initiatives? what kinds of curricula, programs, or support are needed to increase the labour-market readiness and entrepreneurship capacity of students graduating from ontario colleges and universities? what lessons can be learned from the apprenticeship from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 149 programs as we design new experiential learning opportunities for ontario college and university students?” (mtcu 2012, 21) in those instances where either/both the government and university administrators have indicated that entrepreneurial programming is/will continue to be circumscribed and not completely generalized, such is often discussed with reference to government sponsored efforts to ensure greater institutional “differentiation” between the province’s eighteen publicly assisted universities. apparently, by having some institutions focus on developing students’ entrepreneurial talents, while others look to develop their research skills, the government’s allegedly “armslength” advisory body, the higher education quality council of ontario (heqco) claims that it intends to both provide on-going support for entrepreneurialism and sufficient institutional autonomy so as to ensure programmatic diversity (and academic freedom).5 but the discourse around “differentiation”, which is how the government is described its efforts to direct institutional and programmatic focus/diversity, is also contaminated with references and allusions to the purported benefits of entrepreneurialism, so much so that one is again forced to wonder about the programmatic and curricular limits of “entrepreneurial learning”: “differentiation promotes institutional quality and system competitiveness by enabling each postsecondary institution to grow preferentially in those areas where it already excels, or aspires to excel. higher quality programs means that the credentials students receive upon graduation are more highly valued; this makes the students more competitive relative to those from other jurisdictions and makes ontario universities more attractive to international students.” (weingarten and deller, 2010, 17) in other words, by imposing competitive pressures the government believes it can compel both students and our institutions to behave as would any wise entrepreneur, in a manner that would exploit and capitalize on their competitive advantages. again, beyond the obvious fetishism for the alleged efficiency of markets, what is striking about such discursive constructions is the degree to which they are replete with references to entrepreneurialism. such references are what distinguishes 5  with remarkable alacrity the heqco’s recommendations have either anticipated or mirrored government policy. and the ontario confederation of university faculty associations (ocufa), has even suggested that the heqco’s research is perhaps less “objective” than is sometimes claimed by either the heqco or the government. 150 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the current discourse around entrepreneurialism in ontario’s system of higher education, as something other than a classically liberal articulation of the same idea. and this not only raises the spectre of neoliberalism, it also begs that we consider how and why such articulations have become more widely comprehensible, not least to students and faculty. as it happens, the ubiquity of entrepreneurialism is a relatively recent phenomenon, one which follows hotly on the heels of a series of very deliberate and concerted attempts to both revise and extend neoclassical and neoliberal ideas. indeed, the foundations of the “new”, more inclusive and encompassing entrepreneurialism were laid over sixty years ago, when the fathers of contemporary neoliberalism set about trying to develop – with generous support from the volcker foundation – the theoretical and discursive basis for what they always conceived of as a political project. more specifically, between the 1940s and early 1950s three theoretical “innovations” facilitated and helped drive the ideational, ideological, and discursive extension of entrepreneurialism. first was hayek’s redefinition of the central problematic of economics, which posited markets as a kind of super-computer, massively more dynamic than mere human beings (mirowski, 2011, 26). second, was the neoliberal reconciliation with monopoly, which made market structure irrelevant, anti-trust legislation a fetter on competition, and neoclassical narratives about perfect competition and equilibrium central to public policy (van horn, 2009). and third was the concomitant development of “entrepreneurship studies”, which, during the 1950s, drew heavily from the chicago school in making entrepreneurship less about business enterprise and more a kind of learned decision-making capacity useable in any and every context (soltow, 1968; blaug, 1995; rocha, 2012). by the middle of the 1950s the theoretical stage was set: the market had been inscribed as central to the efficient allocation of scarce resources; the state was resurrected as an invaluable champion in that cause; every organization was subject to intense competition; and entrepreneurialism was effectively freed from the fetters of the corporation and turned into a generalizable set of skills that anyone and everyone could (and should) wisely learn. when in the 1970s and 1980s neoliberal theory began its ascent to the hegemonic position it now enjoys, the scope of entrepreneurialism likewise expanded.6 where entrepreneurialism was once exclusively 6  as fine and and milonakis (2009, 62) describe, the key turning point came after the us federal reserve’s failed attempt to limit the growth of the money supply based on friedman’s understanding of inflation. from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 151 defined in relation to a class of individuals who possessed a high tolerance for risk and a skill-set associated with the management and operation of a private-sector business, it came to also refer more generally to an individual’s learned ability to self-help, tolerate risk, and adapt to fluid and hyper competitive conditions. again, not only was this transition and expansion hardly noticed, at least in terms of the theoretical manipulations just outlined, it was also assiduously prosecuted by the likes of friedman, director, and a host of other like-minded members of the mont pelerin society (van horn, 2009; fine and milonakis, 2009). by the end of the 1980s, the extension of entrepreneurialism was increasingly normalized. david harvey (1989), for example, highlighted what he describes as the turn from “managerialism to entrepreneurialism” as critical to the transformation of urban spaces in the 1980s. more germane to the current subject, slaughter and leslie (1997), as well as slaughter and rhoades (2004) usefully discussed the development of the “entrepreneurial university” in american higher education, also after 1980. for them, the press towards entrepreneurialism in the emergent neoliberal university was evidenced, first and foremost by a series of juridical changes that were intended to incentivize particular forms of research and behaviour, specifically those that had an entrepreneurial bent. in the us, a suite of legislation including, but not limited to, bayh-dole (1980), made it possible for the results of publicly-subsidized research to be held privately (i.e., licensed or sold to the highest bidder). following this, jurisdictions throughout the world rapidly followed suit, or, where legislation was not required, simply became more permissive with respect to the privatization of publicly-funded research. thus faculty the world over were encouraged to explore and develop their entrepreneurial talents. states also began to encourage university-based scientists to commercialize the results of their research by setting new funding guidelines and priorities. as in many other jurisdictions, canada and ontario were quick to move, albeit somewhat less aggressively than was the case in places like the uk, new zealand, and australia. in 1997, canada’s federal government founded the canadian foundation for innovation (cfi), a cdn$ 9 billion concern that is focused on financing the capital costs related to conducting commercially oriented and university-based research (polster, 2007). of course, such moves by the federal government came a decade-and-a-half after ontario’s universities, through the cou, first suggested that the government link research funding to commercial priorities (trick, 2005). and the 152 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education formation of the cfi also came a decade and a half after the provincial government announced the ontario centres for excellence program, which has since been the hallmark of neoliberal science policy in the province. and this policy drift has hardly stalled since then, as has been elucidated by scholars of various stripes (fisher, atkinson-grosjean, and house, 2001; fisher et al., 2009; newson and buchbinder, 1988; newson, 1998; coleman and kamboureli, 2011). entrepreneurialism normalized the fact that the roll-out of policy, backstopped as it has been by a theoretically transfigured liberalism and a politically minded juggernaut, has helped to normalize and universalize entrepreneurialism, is of course, only half of the story. the other half has to do with the various ways in which such policies have been reinforced by both other system and institutional-level changes (in ontario and around the world) as well as by social forces that hardly reside within the policymaking domain, conventionally defined. for instance, the bid to publish and avoid perishing has almost certainly helped to transform conventions of collegial self-governance and thereby to empower an ever larger class of professional managers inside ontario’s universities. the time required to prepare publication makes it necessary for faculty to forgo involvement in the management of their institutions, a role they therefore have ceded to managers.7 the “intersticial organizations” with which both slaughter and leslie (1997) and slaughter and rhoades (2004), were concerned in their analyses of academic capitalism and the entrepreneurial university in the us, things like tech transfer offices8, also became increasingly visible – and powerful – components of every university in 7  the “publish or perish” orthodoxy and its arrival in ontario is hard to date precisely. this is because that orthodoxy is reinforced by a multitude of policies operating and practices at different levels of the university and also because it is reinforced by the way in which the pressure to publish plays-out in other jurisdictions ontario’s universities compete internationally for standing, status, market-share in the lucrative market for foreign students, as well as private-sector funding. also, tight and hyper-competitive job markets in other jurisdictions are forcing newly minted phds to compete on a world-scale. ontario’s universities’ increased reliance on contract and contingent faculty, itself a by-product of fiscal tightness since the late 1970s, has certainly increased the pressure to be productive (rajagopal, 2002). the increasingly heated competition for funding from the three federal granting agencies has also long played a role (polster, 2007; polster, 2003). the progressive imposition of productivity measures, which began with unregulated, but nonetheless significantly regulative, ranking exercises in the early 1990s has also intensified the issue immensely, as has the recent advent of performance-based pay at some of ontario’s universities (newstadt, 2013). 8  since the mid-1990s, all of ontario’s universities have developed either tech-transfer offices, offices of research and innovation, or similar institutional bodies designed to developed greater links between the private-sector and the university. from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 153 ontario, not least because a large and growing segment of the faculty have come to require and demand the assistance and support that such offices provide.9 insofar as a core segment of the faculty has been insulated from many of the pressures and changes just mentioned, they have, nonetheless, also been forced to prove their utility by being entrepreneurial. programs need to ensure enrolment targets are met; faculty need to demonstrate a certain level of productivity in terms of things like grant dollars earned or measures of bibliometric impact (grant, 1998; handford, 2002).10 thus, regardless of whether or not academic work is commercially-oriented or even steadfastly opposed to “academic capitalism”, it is necessarily caught-up in a process of commodity production. the ideological and ideational consequences of such behaviour are difficult to overstate. the need to publish, to compete for funding, or to improve one’s bibliometric ranking, propels scholars to undertake forms of inquiry that can quickly yield publishable results: quantitatively oriented, model-based, and/or circumscribed, discrete, and ideologically narrow exercises that are precisely the forms of thought that are now hegemonic within the contemporary university. of course, the pressure faced by full-time and tenured academics are amplified for academics whose employment is temporary and contingent. though there are some very recent indications that contingent faculty are mobilizing in opposition, most contingent faculty are still forced to comply and attempt to eke out an existence by shoring-up the proverbial boat: publish feverishly and reward students with high grades in the hope that they may, in turn, reward them with good student evaluation of teaching questionnaire scores. and for the army of postdoctoral researchers upon which ontario’s research-intensive institutions depend, the pressure to commercialize 9  as i have argued elsewhere, the pace of neoliberal transformation in ontario was certainly slower than it was in other jurisdictions. this is so for several reasons, including the relatively militant and active nature of organized labour in ontario right-up until the early 1990s. in the 1970s and early 1980s, faculty in ontario’s universities, also waged a vigorous effort to press-back against the ascendant neoliberal tide as the spate of faculty unionizations in the province during that period is testament (newstadt, 2013). but that process stalled in the mid-1980s, when faculty at the university of toronto balked at the idea of unionization in part because the government and the cou embraced the idea of market-based, rather than government-directed, institutional reform. apparently, a sufficient number of faculty at the university of toronto saw in such reform the potential for terrific advantage, given the university’s position as the largest and most research-intensive institution in the country (newstadt, 2013, 384). 10  aside from the fact that faculty at several universities in ontario have been subjected to performance-based pay, there is a growing number of examples, albeit outside of ontario and canada, where contracts around tenure have simply been broken (pitchford, 2012; willmott, 1995; willmott, 2003). 154 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education and be entrepreneurial is intense and outlined as an embedded and inescapable “fact” of university-based research (holloway, 2014). the recent, and largely successful, efforts of postdoctoral researchers to unionize in ontario (and across canada), has often been inspired by the apparent need for postdoctoral researchers to protect their stake in the intellectual property they participate in developing.11 similarly, students have responded to governmentand university administration-led efforts to turn students into customers by thoroughly embracing that ideology.12 increasingly, students are concerned to ensure that they get their money’s worth, not so much by dedicating themselves to the pursuit of higher learning, but rather to the pursuit of high-grades, irrespective of the quality of the work they submit. unquestionably, this attitude has been fostered and fomented by the imposition of ever-higher tuition-fees and the frequently repeated dictum that a university education is best viewed as a kind of investment vehicle.13 nonetheless, students do increasingly conceive of themselves in terms that hardly change when they leave the local mall and head to ontario’s institutions of higher learning. in fact, at ryerson university it is not even necessary to leave the local mall in order to get to the university. even where campuses are more easily distinguished from retail outlets, they often house malls and are increasingly replete with the very same kinds of advertising and branding campaigns that one encounters in retail contexts. much of the advertising and branding that students encounter is put out by their universities, which have become aggressive advertisers with carefully crafted branding campaigns of their own. students’ desire to obtain the most marketable degree is also understandable as a by-product of ongoing economic malaise and 11  i was recently involved in an organizing drive for postdocs at dalhousie university. not only did we draw heavily from similar such drives in ontario and draw from peoples’ experiences in that province, but postdocs at dalhousie also identified the protection of their intellectual property as one of the most important reasons why they felt the need to unionize. 12  the “student-as-consumer” model and its ubiquity in ontario’s universities is evidenced in a multitude of ways. first, tuition-fees have increased dramatically, as have levels of student-debt and consumer-debt held by both students and their families. the final report of the rae review, like several other such reports through the 1980s and 1990s consistently use the language of investment and the private-returns to investment in education as a means by which to encourage students to conceive of themselves as investors/customers. 13  bob rae, among others, has been one of the most notable champions of the idea that a university education is a kind of investment vehicle, one whose benefits accrue to the individual. see the final report of the so-called “rae review”, the 2005 government appointed committee investigating the state of higher education in ontario, to which rae was appointed the chair (rae 2005). from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 155 historically high levels of youth unemployment. in such a context, students are understandably wont to forgo the apparent risks of an “impractical” education when it comes to things like program and course selection or the demands that they make of their professors for “useful” knowledge that can be easily applied in the pursuit of employment and security. either way, students increasingly demand that all of their courses take on an applied or practical bent. the aforementioned ryerson university, a one-time polytechnic long described as “rye-high” because of its ongoing focus on applied programming, has seen the largest net increase of applications by high-school seniors, something that the university’s current president attributes to, “our message of innovation, entrepreneurship and connection to community” (ryerson university, 2012). of course, as readings (1996) pointed out in his excellent excurses on the university (he discussed canada’s institutions most closely) and the discourse of “excellence”, the stranglehold of ranking and measurement, and, it might be added, of entrepreneurialism and commercialization, is such that the content of a course no longer matters very much; in breaking the university into so many discrete and measurable bits, the utility of which are only ever a by-product of market valuation, students’ intellectual curiosity is undermined and made alien and unrecognizable, except perhaps as its own kind of commodity. it is perhaps useful to recall that student evaluation of teaching (sets) were, in an all too ironic twist of capitalist fate, dreamed-up by students as a means by which to force their teachers to assign the kinds of radical texts, like marx’s capital, (not piketty’s), which were once hard to find in american universities, as they have arguably become again, albeit with a decidedly less vocal an opposition (gray and bergmann, 2003). the mutually reinforcing bottom-up and top-down march towards applied and instrumental forms of knowledge just described is also having an impact on the nature and disciplinary background of the faculty in ontario’s universities. as new programs and strategic directions are chosen less for their academic excellence than for the degree to which they provide new streams of potential revenue, new links to emerging private-sector players, as well as potential reputational gains (dill, 2003; hazelkorn, 2007; readings, 1996), ontario’s universities are shifting their programmatic foci. according to data from the cou’s new council of quality assurance, of the 146 programs approved since september of 2011, fully 107 are of an 156 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education obviously-applied nature.14 where faculty in those quarters of the university still bent on teaching radical ideas have not already been forced to adapt, as was outlined above, they are nonetheless rapidly becoming outnumbered by those whose concerns and ambitions jibe more fully with students/customers, university administrators and government bureaucrats. insofar as the scope of entrepreneurialism in the university stretches beyond that of any particular program or curricula, it also stretches beyond the university as well. as i suggested above, the emergence of the neoliberal university, and within it of “entrepreneurialism” coincided with (and was partly a response to) an emergent orthodoxy concerning the state’s appropriate role in the political economy. just as critical, however, was the reemergence of global finance in a renewed and transformed program of capitalist accumulation. what is germane about this is the fact that the rebirth of global finance in the 1970s and 1980s involved incredible innovation and extension such that every aspect of daily life was/is measured and subsumed within global flows of capital (langley, 2008; lebaron, 2010; lapavitsas, 2011; krippner, 2005; gindin and panitch, 2012). the university – and those within it has hardly been insulated either from such transformations or from the avowedly political calculations of those that authored them. thus, the spread of entrepreneurialism throughout the whole university has been “over-determined”, and that over-determination is itself evidence of a new “common sense”, a new neoliberal subjectivity to which no one is entirely immune. as is discussed immediately, the proverbial “facts on the ground” place the promises and realities of neoliberalism in sharp relief. and while this relief makes it all the more tempting to dispense with the issue of agency, we should not be so easily seduced, for the reproduction of neoliberalism is nonetheless affected by so many acts of commission at all socio-economic and political levels of our society. neoliberal subjects: (not)facing the facts it is, of course, hardly coincidental that the new entrepreneurialism is deeply embedded and at absolute odds with the realities that most students are likely to face when they graduate. simply put, the idea that students-cum-entrepreneurs will act as any kind of impetus for durable 14  this calculation is based on my own review of the information published on the quality council’s website at: http://oucqa.ca/program-approvals-menu/program-approvals/ from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 157 forms of economic growth, which is frequently presented as the reason why ontario’s universities have had to develop and expand their business incubator and crowd-funding programs, is not credible given the facts. according to statistics canada, in 2012, most workers in ontario were employed by firms employing over 300 people. moreover, firms employing over 500 people, which statistics canada counts as “large” firms, employed roughly 90 percent of that majority. firms with fewer than five employees, which is the size of most start-up firms, have never made-up much more than 6 percent of total employment in ontario. in fact, between 2001 and 2014, smalland medium-sized employers (smes) of all sizes have accounted for a decreasing proportion of total employment. while it is perhaps true that smes have generated relatively more job growth than have large firms, between 2001 and 2012 they also generated about the same amount of job destruction. in other words, smes have tended to shrink and go out of business far more frequently than their larger counterparts.15 seventeen years ago, in 1997, researchers at statistics canada recognized these facts, and detailed some of the risks associated with employment in smes. there is no reason to believe that any of these facts have changed, particularly given the stagnancy of ontario’s economy. although the overall tone of the statistics canada report nonetheless champions the cause of entrepreneurialism in canada in notes that, “people working at smalland medium-sized firms are especially susceptible [to unemployment and insecurity]. while small businesses have accounted for a disproportionately high share of employment growth over the past decade (picot, baldwin, and dupuy, 1994), they are more prone to failure. young firms are also more at risk: over half the new firms that fail in the first ten years of life fail within the first two years of operation.” (statistics canada, 1997, 11) and not only are workers at small firms more susceptible to business failure when they wind up working for smes, they are also susceptible to lower incomes: between 2001 and 2012, workers at start-ups earned, on average, 17.2 percent less than did workers at large firms. small firms also tend to offer fewer benefits and do not provide workers with access to either defined benefit or defined contribution pensions with nearly the same frequency as do large employers. and we also know that dollarfor-dollar, larger, multi-employer pensions are significantly more stable, 15  all data is from statistics canada, cansim database. cansim table 2810041 158 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education provide workers with a better return on their investment, and thereby ultimately add to the health of the economy than do single employer or matched contribution pensions (arthurs, 2008). these patterns are unlikely to change any time soon. this is because growing inequality and stagnating wages pose real challenges to the ability of most canadians to continue to consume at current levels, let alone invest in the next “big thing”. also, the reluctance on the part of corporate canada to start investing what are now unprecedentedly large stockpiles of cash is also exacerbating the problem of youth unemployment (isfeld, 2014). the unwillingness of those same corporations – as well as the federal and provincial government – to relent on wages and permit even mild inflation likely add further fuel to the unemployment fire. at any rate, the point is that absent the sudden and massive expansion of available seed capital, it is unlikely that many more start-ups than currently get funded will be able to swing into business let alone succeed; even the status-quo for start-ups will be difficult to maintain. and finally, the relationship between smes and large firms is such that the success of many smes is utterly dependent on the performance of large firms. one indication that both the government and ontario’s universities understand how wide is the chasm between the promise of the new entrepreneurialism and the realities of the market, is the recently outlined assertion that “entrepreneurship” programs will teach students to become “intra-preneurs”, that is, “employees who behave like entrepreneurs within the context of a large organization” (emphasis added) (cou, 2013). in so describing the hoped-for impact of entrepreneurial learning, the universities are not only offering a far more realistic assessment of graduates’ life-chances, they are also helping to shed some light on what the new entrepreneurialism is, in part, really about the acculturation to a particular way of life. this point is central to sears and cairns’ (2014) recent analysis of the new entrepreneurialism as a policy program designed, on the one hand, to “teach disentitlement” and, on the other hand, open room to manoeuvre ontario’s universities into a more clearly hierarchical, “differentiated” and class-based “family” of institutions. the problem with their analysis lies not so much in terms of what sears and cairns describe as the intent of the new entrepreneurialism, but rather in what this assessment seems to imply, namely that disentitlement is being taught anew and has not already been thoroughly assimilated by the great majority of students in ontario’s universities. this assessment is perhaps reasonably made, given the design and intent of their article, students’ life chances, and the cou’s rather from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 159 revealing deployment of ‘intra-praneurialism’.16 however, the perhaps unintended implication of their analysis, namely that students are only being taught disentitlement because of top-down influences, and not actively demanding the same, is a conclusion that should be avoided. this is so for several reasons, all of which stem from the analysis provided above. first and foremost, there is absolutely no indication that students are objecting to the neoliberal orthodoxy, either as wouldbe entrepreneurs or intra-praneurs. to be sure, groups like the canadian federation of students have consistently and laudably pushed for a complete overhaul of funding for higher education and research. however, the absence of a vigorous labour movement willing and able to champion the cause of public investment and national ownership means that calls for low or no tuition-fees, or the removal of conditional ear-marks for research funding amount to little more than a kind of reform-liberal “level playing field” type of argument. whether students are to be entrepreneurs or intra-praneurs, the oppositional scope that the students’ movement enjoys is incredibly restricted. there is also good reason to suspect that students are increasingly less able to cogently question the logic behind either the new entrepreneurialism or neoliberalism in general. aside from a slate of anecdotal evidence regarding writing quality and critical thinking ability (smith, 2000), data from now three oecd and statistics canada sponsored international adult literacy tests suggests that the majority of university graduates are only literate enough to read and follow directions (statistics canada and oecd, 2011; oecd and statistics canada, 1995; oecd, 2013). and again, the neoliberalization of higher education, in ontario as elsewhere, has also involved a sizeable shift in terms of both the normative position occupied by a large chunk of the professoriate, and the epistemological and ontological foundations upon which their academic practices are built. the idea that government policy merely continues to “teach” disentitlement is also best avoided because it is reproductive of several far more problematic tropes and tendencies within the “mainstream” literature on higher education in ontario. unlike sears and cairns, mainstream analyses of higher education in ontario are rooted in what can best be described as a kind of left institutionalism. in this frame, the neoliberal “drift” of higher education policy is generally explained as 16  it should be pointed out that the article in question is not – and was clearly not intended as – a scholarly work. their article appeared in a popular and politically oriented magazine, and was clearly meant to describe government policy and the kind of oppositional organizing that is required to press-back against such policy. the article does not seek to problematize or understand agency, so much as it seeks to mobilize. 160 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education a by-product of decision-making at the upper echelons of government bureaucracies and university administrations. without ever denying the social, political, and economic impacts of neoliberal policy in and around ontario’s universities, or the reproductive and redistributive impacts of neoliberalism outside of the university, little attempt is ever made to understand power in a manner that would make visible the kinds of issues raised above. in fact, though rife with references to “academic capitalism”, most analyses of ontario’s system of higher education tend to see government policy as having had a decidedly uneven impact on the university, often in a kind of zero-sum manner. accordingly, some departments are heavily impacted, while others are left largely untouched. david trick (2005), for example, diagnoses a “paradigm shift” around university-based research and research-funding, but not with respect to programs taught.17 as such, neoliberal policy appears within the mainstream literature as that which is only ever threatening to takeover and transform apparently “far from the market fields.” (fisher, atkinson-grosjean, and house, 2001; axelrod, 2008; fisher et al., 2009; clark, 2009; trick, 2005). this analytical frame is not particularly new to the study of higher education in ontario. for the most part it is built on epistemological and ontological foundations that favour clearly institutionalized and obviously proximate lines of causation. for example, the commonly held belief that ontario’s universities enjoy a considerable degree of autonomy and independence is generally gleaned from studies of ontario’s system that have emphasized the fact that ontario’s universities have consistently been allowed to self-regulate, generally in response to threatened intervention (jones, 2004; trick, 2005; royce, 1998). even in instances where the universities’ self-regulatory response to threatened intervention operates according to the same logic and set of priorities as would have government imposed programs, as was arguably the case with quality assessment, the mainstream literature interprets such as an example of neoliberal policy being kept at bay.18 in other words, absent the imposition of neoliberal policy and clear new regulatory practices/ programs that effect and substantively change the nature of academic work, what happens in ontario’s universities is not “neoliberal”. in this 17  in his above referenced doctoral dissertation, david trick (trick, 2005) sees the emergence of conditional forms of research funding tied to commercialization as evidence of an emerged “paradigm”, but one that he does not see as in any way dominant. 18  apparently because the universities can control and amend quality assessment processes, and, most importantly, maintain systems of peer review, institutional autonomy and academic freedom is (re)secured (gesink-walsh, 2007; jones, 1991; jones, 2004). from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 161 way, the university, or the day-to-day rhythms and practices therein, is ascribed an ontological status outside and apart from the political economy (or “politics”, “society”, “the market”). more than this, the university and those within it are held to be almost inert and plastic receptors whose transformation and reconfiguration happens episodically and infrequently. though these assertions map into a hierarchical ordering of causation, there is no way to subject that ordering to critique. on the contrary, key or primary “causative variables”, like the neoliberal orientation of policy, are simply asserted as such without any sustained or coherent way to assess whether policy should be analytically privileged or viewed alongside other such ‘causative variables’. it is also not possible within this analytic frame to understand how policy is ontologically different and more important than, for example, students’ level of indebtedness or professors’ pre-occupation with publication counts, when it comes to explaining either the presence or absence of direct governmental intervention. as a result, most analyses of ontario’s system of higher education fail to pick-up on or understand: 1) the impact had by neoliberal policy on all areas of the university; 2) the links between and impact of the development and evolution of neoliberal capitalism and the transformation of both public policy and the whole university; and, 3) the reasons why a simple “regulatory fix” are not likely to either resuscitate or preserve the capacity for critical thought within ontario’s universities.19 this is perhaps why mainstream scholarship on higher education in ontario has all but ignored the emergence of new business incubators and crowd funding programs; though arguably exemplary of neoliberal drift, such programs are viewed as relatively insignificant manifestations of such given their status as extracurricular programs. towards an ontological and epistemological holism in recognizing the manner in which the domain of entrepreneurialism has shifted we are better able to recognize and make plain the degree to which the new entrepreneurialism, as well as the surrounding discourse, are remarkable, and in some ways quite subtle, obfuscations that work much as they are intended to work: they aid in the reproduction of 19  whether or not the cou maintains control of the province’s quality assessment program, it will still operate to rationalize the system along neoliberal lines, and even if some provision is made to ensure the maintenance of adequate levels of funding for all programs so as to avoid pedagogical convergence, that convergence will still continue to take place. 162 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education neoliberal capitalism. also, by connecting broader shifts in the political economy with the development and evolution of students’ and faculty members’, and administrators’ subjectivities, we see agency in a new light and, simultaneously, open new avenues for the progressive reform of the university. we are also better positioned to understand why practitioners in the mainstream may be less willing or able to see agency where it exists, and to thereby locate and understand power dynamically instead of as something that has ossified in particular parts of particular institutions or institutional arrangements. generally speaking, marxian and some post-structural analyses of higher education, in and outside of ontario, have proven much more adept at documenting and describing the extensive nature of neoliberalism than have their institutionalist counterparts. indeed, critical analysts have usefully outlined the way in which the redirection of funding is not just ghettoizing so-called “basic” or “frontier” research, but also, and at the same time, normalizing the pursuit of commercially oriented research, such that the further instantiation of neoliberal policy often comes at the behest of academics themselves and not just as a by-product of either governmental or administrative efforts to grow the amount of commercially oriented research undertaken in ontario’s institutions (polster, 2007). similarly, sears (2003) has also outlined the way in which higher education has been “retooled” with the aim of “producing” students that are better able to fit within, and thereby reproduce, contemporary, neoliberal capitalism. and newson and buchbinder (1988), famously detailed the manner in which faculty have oftentimes demanded neoliberal reform, as much as they have organized against it. but even here, there remains something of a gap in the literature, not least as concerns the significance of the new entrepreneurialism, which has not received very much attention at all. the gap in question has to do with the failure to fully account for the scope of both neoliberalism and the accordant neoliberalization of higher education, which even radical scholars have tended to describe in terms that seek to preserve concepts of agency less by outlining the ways in which students and faculty have worked to produce neoliberalism and the neoliberal university, than by seeking to accentuate the cracks, fissures, and contradictions of those processes. by focussing, as sears and cairns do, on the vicious malevolence of government and university administrative policy and the importance of a “decolonized” curriculum, they arguably pull us away from a longer, far more disconcerting, look in the mirror and the myriad ways in which even oppositional activities can from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 163 help to reproduce the very malevolence to which we object.20 students and a huge swathe of the professoriate have internalized the lessons of disentitlement that neoliberalism – operating both in and outside of ontario’s universities has had to teach, so much so that a large component of both groups now feels entitled to learn disentitlement, by which i mean the skills and aptitudes necessary for self-help and increasingly competitive labour markets. the new entrepreneurial programs are thus additive to and reinforcing of the entrepreneurial self-understanding that has been consistently encouraged in the neoliberal university since the early 1980s. as a result, the new entrepreneurial programs will operate as “poles of adjustment” around which every other taught program will be forced to articulate; to compete for students and funding, every program taught will be pushed and prodded to root students in methodological approaches to art, or geography, or political science, or anthropology, or whatever, that can be used instrumentally by students when they inevitably look to pull up their boot-straps and make entrepreneurial hay. thus, to the extent that previous rounds of restructuring have not completely evacuated critical thought and potential from the contemporary university, the most recent incarnations of “entrepreneurialism” promise to do just that: annihilate the limited space that remains for meaningful forms of pluralism. of course, the terrain of neoliberalism, like that of the neoliberal university, is hardly even or seamless. perhaps the most pressing contradiction with which neoliberalism and the neoliberal university will have to reckon has to do with the inability of neoliberal ideology to speak to, and explain, peoples’ lived realities. high rates of unemployment, particularly amongst youth, alongside ever-higher levels of consumer and student debt, all in the context of growing inequality will likely pose 20  sears and cairns are entirely correct when they highlight the fact that the new entrepreneurialism is a significant force behind the pressure to differentiate. sears and cairns are also right insofar as mainstream thinkers are wont to read any symptoms of decay and crisis when diagnosed in relation to ontario’s system of higher education as having less to do with the emergence of the neoliberal university than with efforts to contain it. indeed, within mainstream circles, the problems that are affecting ontario’s eighteen publicly assisted universities are seen to be a by-product, if anything, of the government’s unwillingness and inability to support the further marketization of ontario’s universities. indeed, by enabling the universities to maintain operating revenues without concomitant demands that courses properly prepare students for life after graduation, the government is alleged to have fuelled expansion in ways that have created programmatic duplication and an overriding sense of entitlement. this form of analysis generally yields a diagnosis that highlights the need for market-based or market-type reform, albeit in a manner that is cast as a humane and “realistic” response to the present situation (see for example, weingarten and deller, 2010). 164 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education a serious challenge to the hegemony of entrepreneurialism. but still, the need for peoples’ frustration and anger to be mobilized and directed is inescapable. in this regard, the trajectory promised via the pursuit of entrepreneurial learning and institutional differentiation will possibly prove to be fecund ground for organizing in ontario. already, higher education is the most unionized sector of the canadian political economy. while the government’s program of institutional differentiation will not change that, it is likely to create a new set of internal divisions, for instance between teaching-stream and tenure-stream faculty, as well as between faculty at teaching-intensive and “full-service” institutions. while such divisions may internally fracture some unions, they may also lead some faculty to feel stronger allegiances to part-time and contingent faculty, to teaching and research assistants, to students groups, and to other public-sector unions, where austerity has involved persistent attacks. in other words, where the “precariate” in the academy have, to date, not been able to foment particularly strong connections to tenure-stream and tenured academics, they may well discover strong allies in the precariate working outside the academy, in organized labour more generally, and among those faculty, contingent or not, who are converted to – and ghettoized in – teaching stream positions. in this the new entrepreneurial programs and the drive to differentiate ontario’s institutions via market-type mechanisms and incentives, may be sowing the seeds of transformation in a manner entirely befitting the so-called “knowledge-based economy”. in looking to intensify the exploitation of those workers whose work is to produce “knowledge workers” that are less likely to object to the intensification of exploitation, the government may well create the conditions for “knowledge workers” throughout the services based economy to organize and object. then again, the alternative possibility seems now just as likely. given the remarkably compromised position of organized labour and the relative quiescence of students in ontario in the face of a stagnant economy and high youth unemployment, it would seem that students have already come to understand that their fates lie not collectively, but as individual businesses. it may well be that the new entrepreneurial programs help to consolidate and reproduce an ideology that will be linked to a still more flexible labour force than the province now enjoys. again, it is important that we recognize how efficient the university has already proven to be in the “production of ignorance”, and thereby in producing the conditions that complicate the organization of an opposition. of course, if students do come to challenge the neoliberal from being an entrepreneur to being entrepreneurial | 165 university, it will likely not be as a 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(2010). the benefits of greater differentiation of ontario’s university sector. toronto: higher education quality council of ontario. 170 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign: an assessment from a social movement unionism perspective caitlin hewitt-white1 abstract: in the past decade, social movement unionism (smu), also referred to as social justice unionism, has garnered a lot of attention from labour activists and scholars. the recent experience of the chicago teachers’ union has especially invigorated this conversation. the ctu made unprecedented gains in mobilizing with parents in the campaign to tie an imposed extended school day to increased resources and staffing, and in the campaign against school closures. this paper aims to contribute to this conversation by highlighting how two key aspects of smu member control and non-economistic goals shared with the public – offer powerful possibilities for resisting neoliberal attacks on education workers. to this end, i reconstruct and assess the 2012 campaign of the ontario secondary school teachers’ federation (osstf) against the ontario government’s anti-labour bill 115, with an eye to member involvement and the union’s relationship to the public. osstf’s top-down concessionary approach is at odds with union committees, policies, and autonomous rank-and-file activities that are oriented towards social justice and anti-neoliberalism. to strengthen the social-justice oriented currents within osstf, leaders and members would need to need to reconsider its internal democratic structures and how it builds coalitions with groups outside of the union. keywords: ontario secondary school teachers’ federation, education, neoliberalism, social movement unionism 1  caitlin hewitt-white is a secondary school teacher in toronto, member of the ontario secondary school teachers’ federation, and m.a. student in social justice education at the ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto. the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 171 introduction in the past decade, social movement unionism (smu), also referred to as social justice unionism, has garnered a lot of attention from labour activists and scholars (camfield, 2007; fletcher & gapasin, 2008; gall, 2009; fletcher, 2011; ross, 2012; ross & savage, 2012; weiner, 2012). the recent experience of the chicago teachers’ union has especially invigorated this conversation. the ctu made unprecedented gains in mobilizing with parents in the campaign to tie an imposed extended school day to increased resources and staffing, with the campaign against school closures (moran, 2012; uetricht, 2012). this paper aims to contribute to this conversation by highlighting how two key aspects of smu – member control and non-economistic goals shared with the public – offer powerful possibilities for resisting neoliberal attacks on education workers. to this end, i reconstruct and assess the 2012 campaign of the ontario secondary school teachers’ federation (osstf) against the ontario government’s anti-labour bill 115, with an eye to the role of members, parents, and a social justice agenda in the fight-back strategy. the union’s eventual concessions, and its confusing strike strategy, compromised both member morale and public perception of osstf’s sincerity as a union that fights for the common good. this paper offers a sketch of neoliberalism in ontario’s education system, an overview of social movement unionism, a brief reconstruction of bill 115 and osstf’s response to it. i also look at examples of osstf member dissent and the problems with internal democratic practice at their root. this dissent, in my view, indicates that members want osstf to embrace deeper member engagement: a hallmark of social movement unionism. i will refer to cases of unions that have developed deeper member engagement in tandem with deeper public engagement, in the process of reframing union struggles around the shared interest of preserving public education. osstf provincial leadership’s approach to resisting bill 115 was centred on an understanding of osstf members as passive recipients of knowledge and strategy crafted by the leadership. the internal democratic structure of osstf theoretically allows for member engagement from the bottom up, but in practice, leaders have low expectations of members’ willingness to mobilize. in its campaign against bill 115, osstf consistently opted for business-union tactics, leaving member knowledge and power untapped. this resulted in important moments of dissonance between members and leaders. furthermore, the anti-bill 172 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education 115 campaign did not incorporate education workers’ relationships with students and the public. while it would be remiss to conclude that better member involvement and public buy-in would have necessarily resulted in a better contract, unions that have built both types of involvement have enjoyed gains in contracts and in popular support. while this paper highlights deficiencies in osstf’s 2012-2013 strategy and identifies business union practices that blocked full member engagement, osstf’s structures and practices cannot be accurately reduced to a simplistic model: either one of social justice movement unionism or of gompersian business unionism. as a province-wide organization covering thirty-five geographical districts and one hundred and forty bargaining units – each with its own local executive, school delegates, and committees of member activists – the degrees of local member involvement, public involvement, and social justice activism are diverse. organizational documents can provide a picture of the institution “in theory”, but say little of what unfolds on the ground locally. the present study offers a glimpse at practice through texts produced by dissenting members, in the hopes that these marginal voices can shed light on grassroots experience. within union committees and in osstf policy, there exist a range of progressive positions on access to quality education for students affected by class, race, gender, and sexual inequality; inequalities which have been taken up, exacerbated, and rearticulated by neoliberalism.2 i consider such positions to be in the interest of social justice, as they attempt to repair social inequality. furthermore, osstf has policy statements against neoliberal educational practices like privatization and standardized testing.3 but these commitments to social justice and against neoliberalism were not evident when the union had the opportunity to respond to neoliberalism in the form of bill 115. in other words, osstf’s response insufficiently drew on the organization’s pre-existing social justice values. 2  particularly noteworthy are the following osstf policies: policy 8.9.4.5 opposes the streaming of “working class and immigrant students” into “lower levels of academic instruction”; a number of policies under “aboriginal education” (8.21) asserts the need for aboriginal knowledge to be incorporated throughout the curriculum; 8.15, “anti-racism and anti-discrimination”, has a number of policies aimed at protecting students and osstf members from discrimination, including discrimination based on gender expression; and 12.14 states that osstf is opposed to all forms of racial profiling (osstf 2013a). 3  osstf’s policy 11.8.1 is in favour of abolishing the ministry of education office that administers ontario’s standardized tests (osstf 2013a, 27) and policy 2.1.6 states that standardized tests should not be used to evaluate teachers. furthermore, no less than thirteen policies under section 8.2 state that the osstf is opposed to privatization, outsourcing, and commercialization in the education sector, in addition to policy 6.1.4. the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 173 to prove these claims i rely on archival research: publicly-available osstf documents including bargaining bulletins, annual action plans, and annual standing committee reports from the years 2011 to 2014. in constructing a critical lens to use in document analysis, and to attend to the gaps between history on paper and history as rank and filers experienced it, i referred to my own notes and observations from the strike as an osstf member, and to publicly-available documents produced by dissident members including the group rank-and-file education workers of toronto (rewt), of which i was a member in late 2012 and early 2013. neoliberalism in education although the neoliberal project of “privatization, deregulation, casualization of the workforce” and “deunionization” (fletcher and gapasin, 2008, 9) is global in reach, neoliberal reforms to the ontario education system have not come about easily. in part, this is due to steady opposition from public education workers’ unions. compared to reports about the dismantling of entire school districts in american cities and their reconstituted patchwork of privately-run charter schools and eviscerated public schools4, neoliberalism in the ontario school system seems fairly benign. but neoliberal practices can be seen in both well-developed and embryonic forms in ontario’s system. bill 115 is an example of the latter. neoliberal reforms to the ontario education system started to emerge in earnest in the 1980s, intensified at a rapid pace in the 1990s, and were somewhat mitigated by union-government collaboration in the 2000s. introduced in 2012, the liberal government’s bill 115 sought to reduce teacher salaries, sick days, and retirement gratuities, while leaving intact relatively decent features of the school system, like class size caps, a clever strategy that made use of the public’s perception of teachers as well-off and spoiled. at the heart of bill 115 was the attempt to set a precedent for the disempowerment of education worker unions, which are uniquely positioned as the defenders of a common good that is both necessary and burdensome for neoliberal capitalism. when considered as part of the global neoliberal project, education can be seen as a way to reproduce workers who are subservient to the state and capital. education gives individuals the skills needed for producing commodities, as hopkins and wallerstein (1977, 128) describe in their account of global commodity 4  see, for instance, the schooling situation in philadelphia, recently described by distefano (6 may, 2014). 174 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education chains. from this perspective, students and the education they receive are worth as much as the labour the students will eventually contribute to commodity chains. students with basic math and literacy skills are the products of the labour process of teachers. like social workers and other public sector workers, teachers’ work is driven by quality service rather than quantity of product. quality public education, then, can be seen as an expenditure that is simultaneously necessary for reproducing the labour force as well as a burdensome expenditure. as lois weiner (2012, 6) puts it: “since most jobs being created require no more than an eighth-grade education (think of walmart’s “associates”), only a handful of people need to acquire the sophisticated thinking skills to manage and control the world’s productive resources...therefore, a well-educated (and well-paid) teaching force, it is argued by elites establishing educational policy, is a waste of scarce public money.” in the global economy, curriculum that covers liberal arts and critical thinking can be sacrificed for concrete skills-based learning delivered by educators controlled by excessive managerial oversight. however, studies in resistant teacher practices point to the transformative potential and semi-autonomous character of education; the process of teaching and learning cannot be reduced to its economic role in keeping the system going.5 seen from a profit-making perspective, education is unwieldy, costly, essential, and a potential source of private wealth. public sector unions are obstacles to the process of dismantling public school systems. in so doing, they also block the opening up of education to privatization; they stand in the way of transforming the education sector into a source of private wealth. neoliberal imperatives help create chaos in a public system by making schools, jobs, and programs all insecure by being subjected to constant evaluation and elimination. in the context of stagnant wages and increased costs of living, submitting education to marketized control – making funding contingent on student achievement and teacher performance funding, or forcing school boards to balance budgets – turns schools into spaces of competition and scarcity. in this precarious and insecure environment, teachers and students become more easily disciplined, and made increasingly willing and able to be part of a precarious, flexible and submissive workforce. as is generally the case in jurisdictions where labour rights exist, when 5  see, for instance, brogan, 2014. the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 175 ontario governments have not achieved their desired changes to public sector spending through collective bargaining, they have forced these changes through legislative attacks on labour rights, such as bill 115. in his 1999 study retooling the mind factory, alan sears discusses the reorganization of the public sector in ontario along the lines of lean production; a project he calls the “lean state”, to mimic the profitability of the private sector. in ontario’s education system, this process began with state-commissioned educational policy papers in the 1980s that recommended curriculum compression for students and work intensification for teachers. these papers threatened to bring neoliberalism into the classroom by proposing that the government link curriculum with measurable outcomes and accountability (hanson, 2013, 149). under the new democratic party provincial government from 1990 to 1995, teachers’ wages were cut through unpaid furlough days (hanson, 2013, 300). in 1995, many of the recommendations from the 1980s became reality when progressive conservative mike harris was elected as ontario’s premier. the harris era saw dramatic changes to the nature of ontario’s primary and secondary curriculum, funding, and laws governing teachers’ unions. these changes brought technocratic discourses of markets and efficiency to bear on education, and created a public climate hostile to teachers. prominent features of ontario students’ contemporary experience come from that era. for instance, the grades 3, 6 and 10 standardized tests, the four-year high school curriculum (as opposed to the five years that existed previously), and a heavy emphasis on job readiness across the curriculum. legislation removed principals and vice-principals from the teachers’ unions and amalgamated school boards. local taxes no longer fund education; instead, the provincial government both raises and directs education funding. school boards no longer have local financial autonomy. the new funding formula, still operative today, allocates money based on number of students instead of per school. in effect, this has forced boards to balance budgets year after year through job and program reductions. the liberal party came to power in 2003 and has enjoyed financial and moral support from education workers’ unions. although it has occasionally increased education funding for the purposes of keeping class sizes “down” (though never as small as teachers would prefer), it has not reversed harris’ neoliberal reforms. successive liberal governments have not scrapped the harris-era funding formula, so that school boards remain underfunded, and job and program reductions continue. one effect of downsizing and underfunding in a context of increasingly 176 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education complex student needs is the neoliberal hallmark of work intensification. education workers undertake more and more job tasks without equivalent training or compensation to do so well. faced with declining enrolment in addition to the harris-era funding formula, boards are certainly laying off education workers (rushowy, 2013), but union-driven placement procedures still protect staff with seniority, and retain and gradually re-place laid off staff for up to a year. this could be described as a type of managed precarity that affects increasing numbers of permanent teachers. meanwhile, the number of newly certified unemployed teachers expands while the possibility that they get hired into permanent jobs dwindles. although ontario schools boards have not been selling off schools or programs to private service providers to the extent that school authorities in the u.s. have, discourses of declining student achievement have contributed to perceived need for low-cost programs like teach for canada to “rescue” racialized and poor students from a public system in crisis (choise, 2013). bill 115 went after the salaries and benefits of teachers – a far less disturbing spectre than wholesale school closures and layoffs – but it sought these cuts via the imposition of unconstitutional changes to the collective bargaining process. bill 115, discussed below, should be understood as a step towards disabling unions’ already limited control over education funding and working conditions, and this step is essential to opening the door to well-organized precarity and privatization in the public sector. social movement unionism a growing literature contends that social movement unionism is a powerful model for resisting these neoliberal attacks on public sector unions and on public services (camfield, 2007; fletcher, 2011; weiner, 2012). camfield specifically delineates the three types of social unions, and this delineation is also used by bill fletcher jr. (2011): social unions, mobilization unions, and social movement unions, each of which involve member involvement and the involvement of non-union members in setting unions’ agendas and designing campaigns. rooted in an economism that takes workers’ workplace-based interests as its starting point, business unions are not critical of status quo social relations and they focus on providing service to members through grievances and contract enforcement. often understood as corporatelike organizations, they pride themselves on being a respectable and pragmatic (if not non-partisan) partner of industry and the state. their main interest is to defend the workplace interests of their members (e.g. the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 177 wages and working conditions), hence the emphasis on staff providing service to members. in contrast, social unions do not necessarily abandon more traditional and business-union mechanisms for defending workers’ workplace interests (ross, 2012), but they are additionally motivated by the interests of its members as citizens. social unions mount campaigns based on noneconomistic interests in ways that emphasize that their members share interests with non-union members, and that show that the public stands to benefit from gains made by the union. they see inequality within and beyond the workplace and, as such, are more critical of current social relations (camfield, 2007; ross, 2012). this orientation means that social unions understand their members as sharing a range of workplace and non-workplace interests, such as quality public education or health care, with the working class in general. the example of osstf’s practice supports ross’ claim that unions do not normally adhere to only one model of unionism. through its focus on servicing members, maintaining contracts, and collaborating with the employer, osstf engages in business union practices; through its coalitional work with larger labour bodies like the ontario federation of labour and the canadian labour congress, its internal democratic structure that theoretically enables member involvement, and its (albeit limited) support for non-economistic campaigns and movements, osstf engages in social unionism practices. activists and leaders in osstf can avail themselves of a rich literature on the transformation of unions from outdated corporate entities that earn the resentment of the unorganized, to vibrant working-class organizations that can mobilize beyond their traditional membership base in the interests in social justice. social movement unionism, as articulated through the work of activist-scholars like lois weiner and jane mcalevey, positions members as the key to unions as vehicles for social justice. weiner (2012, 24-28, 38) emphasizes the necessary work of relationship-building with education workers across different job classes, many of whom have far less income and protections than teachers, and with parents. mcalevey’s recent book (2012) documents contract victories won through the whole-worker approach to organizing. this approach collapses the false dichotomy between union members and community members so that a union member’s interest extends beyond her immediate economic interests in good wages and working conditions, to include her wider interest in, for instance, affordable housing or quality public healthcare. in this model, union organizers depend on 178 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education members as organizers and tap the power of worker knowledge before and during bargaining through constant surveying, petitioning, open meetings, and open bargaining. mcalevey’s work makes clear that the involvement of members and that of the public go hand in hand: it is through rank-and-file knowledge that deeper coalitions with the public can be formed; it is through sensitivity to public interests that unions can take on campaigns that are more likely to be relevant to society as a whole. amanda tattersall (2009) has written about the case of the new south wales teachers’ federation taking a substantial risk when it convened extensive public inquiries into education as a precursor to establishing bargaining demands. a major parents’ organization was equal partner in the coalition and insisted that salaries not be made an issue at the beginning of the process, but by the end of months of televised town-hall meetings, parent representatives decided they wanted teachers’ salary increases to be one of their demands in improving public education. parents came to see salary increases as essential to qualitative improvements in public education. a case that brings together a startling degree of involvement of members with that of the public comes from st. paul, minnesota, where the teachers’ union first opened up the bargaining process to rank and file members, and then to parents and the public. members, parents, and the public sit in the bargaining room during talks, participate in caucuses with the union’s negotiators, and sometimes address the audience on issues like class sizes or resources. in preparation for their most recent round of bargaining, the union formed their demands from member surveys as well as from parent “study groups” (faber 2013). mccartin (2013, 60) sees the key to public sector union survival, first, as the ability to redefine the common good along lines that resonate with private sector workers and, second, as the willingness to put the common good at the centre union campaigns, including contract campaigns. in addition to the case of the chicago teachers’ union, he cites the example of the oregon’s service employees international union (seiu) local 503 which, as part of their 2013 bargaining campaign called “in it together”, demanded a cap on post-secondary tuition and “renegotiation of predatory interest rate swaps.” it is no coincidence that education unions that engage members to an extraordinary degree also engage parents; the two depend on and strengthen each other. the fact that osstf member survey results from 2009 indicated that members wanted a better partnership with the public the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 179 and with parents casts a tragic shadow on the missed opportunities of the bill 115 campaign to engage union members, parents, and students. osstf lacks the type of longer-term relationship building with parent and community organizations that can foster genuine public understanding and support for contract demands. the longer-term effects of mobilization, such as member education, empowerment, and transformation into member-organizers, can only make the union a more powerful threat to neoliberal forces, whether it be in the context of shared issues like healthcare or workplace issues like a fight for a good contract. bill 115 and osstf’s response osstf’s history dates back to 1919, and is punctuated by moments of radical action including the successful 1920 campaign for equal pay for women teachers, an illegal walkout in 1973 that secured teachers’ right to strike, and participation from 1995 to 1998 in various actions against mike harris’ attacks on the poor, workers, and public services. whereas the osstf had traditionally supported the ndp, it shifted to “strategic voting” in the 2000s, a strategy that translated into support for the liberals. in preparation for the 2003 provincial election, unions launched an anti-conservative campaign called the working families coalition which called on voters to vote for any party but conservative (savage, 2012, 80). the liberals were voted into power in 2003, 2007 and 2011. throughout this period, osstf positioned itself as a “partner” with the government under the premiership of dalton mcguinty, known as the “education premier”. it also made more contributions to liberal election campaigns than it did to those of the ndp (cooke, 2013). although local osstf districts and school boards did experience intermittent bargaining battles, osstf as a provincial organization did not undertake major strike activity in this period. additionally in the 2000s, the tradition of osstf provincial bargaining emerged, in which the provincial government and the osstf provincial team start talks months about education funding before local bargaining begins. local autonomy has been preserved only for negotiating working conditions.6 the era of labour peace came to an end in early 2012 when mcguinty announced that he would cut public sector salaries in a move towards balancing the provincial budget (mills, 2012). in february, the province released its commissioned drummond report which outlined cuts to public programs and services. the report 6  the most recent iteration of “two-tiered bargaining” (hanson, 2013, 107) is bill 122, passed in early april, 2014 (see brown, 2014). 180 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education informed the subsequent 2012 ontario budget’s $500 million cuts to education funding through wage restraints on education workers. the government warned it would enforce these cuts through legislation if the education unions did not accept them. osstf thus went into organizing mode; by april 16 its legal team had drafted a constitutional challenge (coran, 16 april, 2012). in the months that followed, provincial-level talks crumbled between the government and all affected education unions save for the ontario english catholic teachers’ association (oecta). in july, oecta signed a memorandum of understanding (mou) with the government, which included a two year wage freeze, frozen salary grid movement for teachers who have been teaching less than ten years, a fifty percent sick day cut, and abolishing the sick day bank (oecta, 2012). in order to bring osstf and other education worker unions in line with the oecta mou, minister of education laurel broten introduced the cynically-named putting students first act, bill 115, to legislature in august. passed on september 11, bill 115 imposed terms and conditions on osstf members identical to those in the oecta mou by stipulating that any collective agreement the local bargaining units and local employers came up with could not be substantially different from the oecta mou and would be subject to modifications and approval by the minister. bill 115 also gave education unions the deadline of december 31 by which they had to bargain identical agreements or have them imposed. during the period of time in which bill 115 was in effect, from september 2012 to january 2013, collective bargaining effectively no longer existed for education workers’ unions because they were hamstrung by austerity parameters and the minister’s discretion over the contents of the agreements. osstf’s anti-bill 115 campaign began with mcguinty’s announcement that he would seek education sector cuts, and was characterized throughout by an emphasis on the government’s “unacceptable” and “unprecedented attack on members’ rights” and labour rights in general, rather than on the economic losses teachers would suffer, or on the effect of the bill on the quality of education (mills, 2012). at this point, osstf was not alone in opposing the impending attack on the public sector. on april 21, osstf bussed members from across ontario to participate in the ontario federation of labour’s day of action against the cuts. ken coran’s speech at that rally emphasized the non-economic element of teachers’ opposition to austerity: the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 181 “and when you respect something, that means you value it, you appreciate it, and you listen to it. the recent actions from this government show exactly the opposite. there is not respect... we’re here today to change that, to show this government that they better start respecting the power of the people.” (osstf/feeso stands strong, 2012) coran here is mourning the abrupt unilateral withdrawal of the government from what had been perceived as a respectful partnership, and he invokes popular power, something that veers away from business unionism and gestures towards the broader non-economistic outlook of social movement unionism. yet it gradually became known to osstf members that coran had made this speech only days after offering a major concession to the government on april 18, 2012, without member consent or prior knowledge. the offer appears to have been an attempt to appease the government because the main component of the offer was a 0 percent wage increase for two years. in a bargaining bulletin dated april 23, 2012, osstf’s provincial office outlined the offer and called it an “equitable and manageable wage freeze” (coran, 23 april 2012). although this bargaining bulletin was available online, many members found out about the offer through an osstf advertisement in the toronto star in late may that announced the proposal underneath the headline “we’re doing our part to ensure stability in public education...now it’s the government’s turn” (“we’re doing our part”, 2012). osstf made this offer in exchange for nothing, it presumed this would be enough to convince the government to not pursue legislation to enforce the cuts. the union signalled to the government that it was willing to start from a weak, concessionary position; it accepted the neoliberal narrative of there being no alternative but to find savings by cutting “costs”. early on, osstf communicated with its members by issuing bargaining bulletins that outlined the impact of the impending crisis and the likelihood of a strike vote after the contracts expired on august 31. at its disposal in crafting a bargaining and fight-back strategy were the results of local negotiating surveys from early 2012 as well as decisions taken at a provincial gathering of local presidents. these methods of communication and collaboration between leaders and members will be discussed more fully below. noteworthy here is that communicating with and building support among parents, students, and wider communities was not as visible, beyond the issuing of press releases. this was 182 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education evident when the elementary teachers federation of ontario (etfo), canadian union of public employees (cupe), and osstf held a joint rally on august 28 at the provincial legislature drew thousands, and few in the crowd were not union members. after having cancelled an earlier scheduled strike vote (osstf district 13, 2012)7, osstf finally held a successful strike vote in its locals in late september. in october, osstf and other education worker unions filed a court challenge on the grounds that bill 115 is unconstitutional8, and teachers in etfo and osstf voluntarily withdrew their supervision of extracurricular activities. the following month, osstf initiated a limited two month strike during which teachers continued reporting for work but did not complete attendance or administrative duties, and formally stopped supervising extracurricular activities (coran, 25 october, 2012). public interest in the conflict ramped up: call-in radio shows, news segments, and social media buzzed with stories from parents frustrated with the extracurricular boycott. starting on december 10th, osstf members took the further step of entering their worksites only fifteen minutes before the beginning of the school day and leaving fifteen minutes after its end (nesbitt, 2012). this selective strike occurred while local osstf bargaining teams, under the direction of osstf’s provincial bargaining team, tried to come up with local agreements with school boards that would satisfy the minister of education’s strict criteria. many found osstf’s willingness to negotiate under conditions it was publicly protesting to be confusing. when members of seven local bargaining units were asked to vote on tentative agreements, only two, york and upper grand, voted in favour (pecoskie, 2012). upper grand osstf had three local executive members quit in protest of provincial office interference in the local democratic process (shuttleworth, 2012). the osstf provincial leadership took the “no” votes as a sign they were on the wrong track, and they called off all further local bargaining (osstf, 28 november, 2012). it is possible that this dissonance between members and leaders could have been prevented by involving members in the process of setting priorities and crafting strategy well before bargaining had begun. osstf protested in other ways, but at no time significantly included in their actions people who stand to benefit the most from strong labour 7  an osstf member’s account of ken coran’s demise claims that “he even, at the request of andrea horwath, called off strike votes 2 days before the k-w [kingston-waterloo] election as it was perceived that the publicity surrounding such votes would damage the chances of the ndp candidate” (heffernan, 2013). 8  to date, this court challenge is still in process (côté, 2013). the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 183 rights of the sort osstf claimed to stand for. parents, students, and nonosstf workers were noticeably absent at osstf protests at liberal mpp offices throughout the fall. this is in contrast to the extensive community and labour collaboration that osstf and other unions undertook during the days of action against harris; workers allied with church groups, anti-poverty organizations, social services organizations, and unemployed people hit by social assistance cuts to mount city-wide strikes across the province (labotz, 2011). the equivalent to this in the bill 115 case would have been collaboration with parent groups, youth, and other labour organizations. not only had there been a historical precedent of working with non-union members on a shared campaign against a government’s neoliberal assault, but there were also opportunities for collaboration: in late september and in december, high school students autonomously organized high school walkouts. the media reported that the walkouts were against the teachers’ extracurricular boycott, but also against bill 115 (sweetman, 2012). notably, education worker unions did not support the student actions. furthermore, osstf did not engage parents beyond printing a leaflet aimed at the general public; this was not accompanied by any plan for how to distribute the leaflets.9 meanwhile, osstf’s allies in the elementary teachers’ federation of ontario staged one-day rotating walkouts across the province. although cupe, the union representing education support staff, threatened a one-day walkout should agreements be imposed after december 31, they did not engage in any job action. osstf members and other observers complained about this lack of coordinated strategy between unions (kanter, 2013). a public opinion poll showed that many ontarians thought that the anti-bill 115 strategy of limited strike, combined with narrowly conceived protests and ongoing local bargaining, was ineffective and confusing (benzie, 2012). osstf generated the most controversy in its decision to cut extracurricular activities. capitulation to the government’s austerity agenda began in earnest in late december as the deadline for “substantially identical” agreements approached. cupe negotiated their own mou with the government on december 31 which members ratified by mid-january. because bill 115 declared strike activity after december 31 illegal, osstf provincial office told members to resume all normal duties, yet many continued 9  the pamphlet featured a photograph of predominantly white students and a white teacher. after teachers expressed criticism that this was not an accurate portrayal of ontario’s diverse student population, in december osstf released a version with a different photograph portraying a more accurately diverse group of students. 184 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to voluntarily boycott extracurriculars. etfo had been planning a full walkout on january 11, and osstf followed suit. but to the bewilderment of education workers who wanted cross-union coordination, the latter planned their walkout for january 16. the ontario labour relations board (olrb) ruled the walkout illegal and both unions called off their planned actions. on january 23, laurel broten took any remaining steam out of the anti-bill 115 movement by repealing the bill, declaring that it had accomplished what it had set out to do, by virtue of forcing unions to come up with their own concessionary mous or by having imposed them as of january 1. the terrain shifted again days later. because dalton mcguinty had resigned amid scandal in october, the post of premier had remained empty until the liberal party leadership convention in late january. while osstf, other unions, and various anti-poverty groups protested outside the convention, party delegates inside elected kathleen wynne. she promised to repair the government’s relationship with teachers but refused to rip up any forced concessionary contracts (“ontario’s premier-designate”, 2013). regardless, osstf went ahead and resumed negotiations with the new government, with liz sandals as minister of education. in late february, osstf recommended that teachers end their extracurricular boycott as it was ready to engage in discussions with the province again, even as etfo did not end theirs until a month later (alphonso, 2013). in april, a majority of members voted in favour of a tentative agreement in the midst of rank and file “vote no” campaign (rewt, 2013). the agreement solidified a loss of nine out of twenty sick days and the sick day bank, a 97-day freeze for newer teachers still moving through the salary grid, and guaranteed “savings” to the province through a voluntary unpaid leave scheme combined with mandatory unpaid professional development days (alphonso, 2013). the osstf’s relationship with the liberal party of ontario from the spring throughout the fall of 2012 has been described as an aberration from a longer pattern of financial and political support (cooke, 2013). in addition to public statements declaring disappointment and a sense of betrayal, the aberration also took the form of the osstf throwing its organizational resources behind ndp candidate catherine fife’s provincial by-election campaign in the riding of kitchener-waterloo. fife won, decisively putting the ruling liberals into a minority position in legislature, though this did not stop bill 115 from passing on september 11. despite its support for the ndp in kitchener-waterloo and its public rhetoric, osstf demonstrated a reluctance to truly the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 185 upset its relationship with the liberals. when news of mcguinty’s resignation broke in mid-october, the union even issued a bizarre press release congratulating him on his term in office and wishing him well (osstf, 16 oct, 2012). murray cooke (2013) observed: “some activists have feared that the unions are merely waiting for an opportunity to patch up their differences rather than fight against bill 115.” these fears were correct. in late january 2013, the press exposed $30,000 in donations from the toronto local of osstf district 12 to four liberal candidates running in the leadership race (toronto star, 4 feb, 2013). having started with the extracurricular ban, the public image of osstf leadership as “uncaring” towards students became entrenched. commented a toronto star editorial: “when teachers appeal for public support by denouncing the liberals and bill 115 as an affront to democracy, let’s remember that their toronto local is playing an old-fashioned political game. now that we know how generous the union was with liberal candidates, including those who were in cabinet when bill 115 was passed, it’s even more of a pity that they can’t extend a similar kindness to students.” (toronto teachers’ union plays, 2013) more public embarrassment arose when, having retired from his position as osstf president, ken coran agreed to run (unsuccessfully, in the end) as a liberal candidate in the august 2013 by-election in the riding of london west (taylor, 2013). although he was roundly shamed by unionists and the left for this move, it lent credence to long-standing doubts about the sincerity of osstf’s commitment to fighting bill 115. the union’s commitment to respectability and electoral politics overshadowed its commitment to resisting the government’s attack.10 throughout the bill 115 period, by rhetorically focusing on the antidemocratic nature of the government’s agenda, the union put itself in a better position than it would have if it had emphasized material losses, given that teachers’ decent salaries and benefits are regularly derided in the media as exorbitant. each of the education unions attempted to use the rights framework to argue that other workers could end up suffering from austerity-by-legislation’s downward pressure on wages and labour rights. the narrative of “if they can do this to us, then they will do this 10  in the 2014 provincial elections, the teachers’ unions again implicitly supported the liberal party by directing union members to vote strategically (for anyone but the conservatives). some went further. unsurprisingly, the osstf district 12 (toronto) executive explicitly asked its members to vote for liberal candidates. 186 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to you” indicated a sense of social justice and a transcendence of narrow economic interests. however, osstf’s attempt at a non-economistic orientation was more rhetorical than real: it did not translate into actions on the ground that were broadly inclusive of workers other than unionized education workers. the rhetoric was also more militant than the union’s actions: in its initial concessionary wage freeze offer, its unpopular tentative agreements bargained during the bill 115 period, and its inability to severe its ties to the liberal party, osstf accepted imposed conditions of austerity and pursued “respectability” even as it claimed to oppose the government’s machinations. the union continued to attempt to reassure members that the pending constitutional challenge still held promise, which was the same advice given to the union by the government throughout the bill 115 period: take the fight to the courts and leave the kids out of it. as was abundantly clear in the unions’ acceptance of the olrb ruling, the rights framework depends on legal institutions for enforcement and takes the struggle out of the realm of public protest and into the courts. in other words, the rights framework has a deep demobilizing affect. additionally, the case of teachers in british colombia11, in which the b.c. government blatantly ignored the courts’ ruling in the teachers’ favour against the government’s abrogation of collective bargaining rights, demonstrates the unreliability of pro-labour court decisions. while a position of “rights for all” is better than a position of “rights for us”, any rights-based approach might not be as convincing as one that shows that degraded labour rights compromises the common good of quality education. for instance, ending collective bargaining rights would take teachers’ front-line knowledge out of the decision-making process over what students and schools need. mccartin (2013, 59) observes: “while such rights-based arguments resonate well among many union members, they translate poorly to the vast majority of unorganized workers... these arguments can also at times seem blind to the realities faced by the vast majority of private sector workers who currently lack a realistic prospect of improving their own lot through unionization. such workers doubt that the benefits gained by someone else’s union will ever trickle down to them.” 11  the court ruled in 2011 that the b.c. government’s 2002 legislated removal of class sizes and composition from collective bargaining amounted to a breach of constitutional labour rights (podaski, 2014). the recent b.c. teachers’ strike (settled in september 2014) hinged on class composition. the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 187 member dissent and participation there is no doubt that osstf provincial and local leaders wanted the best deal for their members, and because of the dire situation they were aiming for as few losses as possible. but the task of deciding that the goal was to minimize losses rather than defend the status quo or seek gains, and then the task of deciding how to minimize losses, was monopolized by provincial leaders. one could argue that union leaders and their staff are best situated to take on the hard decisions that rank and file members lack the skills or interest to do themselves. the assumption about members in such a model is not only that they are disengaged, but also that they are comfortable with being disengaged. osstf’s resistance to bill 115 might have drawn on the expertise of lawyers and staff, but it lacked member involvement which resulted in some of osstf’s moves being criticized by members on the grounds that they did not represent what members wanted and that they had conceded too much. members communicated their dissent through a variety of texts, from petitions to articles, usually posted online. here i highlight a few examples of these texts and i look at underlying union practices that enabled the neglect of member concerns. two petitions to the osstf provincial executive (pe) circulated in the winter of 2012, calling on them to increase member input into provincial strategy, and taking issue with their concessionary position. the first, signed by 500, came within the same week that bill 115 imposed the parameters of the mou on all education workers that had not come up with agreements, and that laurel broten repealed bill 115.12 it stated: “what we, the members of the osstf, need from our union is a strategy of education, ongoing democratic input, and mobilization of our membership and our surrounding communities” (adopt a real strategy, 2013). the second petition to provincial executive received 122 signatures and took aim at the recent announcement that talks with the government were in progress. a signatory explained her reasons for signing the petition as follows: “before our pe can speak on behalf of members they must survey them. the rank and file do not feel their voice is heard. there needs to be a formal and regular vehicle for promoting communication up from the members to executive (as well as improved communication from pe). do not say pe speaks for members when they have never asked them directly how they feel about issues.” (push the pause button, 2013). 12  the author of this paper participated in writing this petition. 188 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the union’s decision to resume talks with the new government of kathleen wynne generated member criticism. in response to the union’s late february announcement that it had resumed talks with the government, teacher jim springer stated in an open letter to the provincial executive: “in short, it is painfully clear that our leadership has accepted the most significant strips to our collective agreements in decades and is no longer prepared to fight against the almost certainly permanent loss of significant benefits accumulated over many years of hard fought negotiations.” (stringer, 2013). an ottawa teacher published an article online in early march, similarly dismayed at the resumption of talks, and addressed the osstf decision to resume extracurriculars even though etfo continued their ban: “here’s a thought: how about the leaders of osstf and etfo sit down with each other and come up with a collective, cooperative, collaborative, and united course of action?.” (kanter, 2013). kanter wrote that he had abandoned his initial draft that had asked the provincial executive to resign, and stated: “what i ask instead is that you... survey the membership on the issue. are we willing to accept the strips? if not, are we prepared to stand firm until we achieve a satisfactory resolution. i am confident that you will be surprised by the strength of the resolve of the membership.” (stringer, 2013). these comments directly challenge the union’s low expectations of members’ militancy. criticism, debate, and dissent within unions is par for the course, but when a union is in bargaining, the strength of their position requires member buy-in of the sort that comes from sustained member involvement from the beginning. there is no evidence that osstf leaders sought out and processed rank-and-file member input in a systematic, province-wide manner. in contrast to member initiative and power at the heart of social movement unionism, osstf’s response to bill 115 suggests that osstf leaders view the members’ role in the union as primarily supportive of their union leaders, a view that aligns osstf with the tradition of business unionism. what internal structures exist in osstf, and how did they contribute to the dissonance between members and leaders? both communication (conveying information) and consultation (incorporating member feedback) in the period under study relied on osstf’s internal democratic structure. in theory, this structure facilitates member engagement from the bottom up, but in practice, a laissez-faire approach to member engagement means that the bottom-up potential of the structure is under-utilized. while communication is no substitute for collaborative discussion, it is essential for organizational cohesion and rank-and-file morale. the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 189 members’ knowledge of the volatile situation before, during, and after the strike came from provincial office, either directly, or through local executives. osstf’s provincial office primarily used online bargaining bulletins to communicate with its members, but the distribution of these bulletins was organized in a hierarchical, trickle-down fashion: the provincial office posted the bulletins on their website and then it was up to local districts to notify their members via email of the website link to check for updates. there was no way to check that the members at the worksites actually read the information. these bulletins were later supplemented with confidential negotiations updates emailed from local offices directly to members, sometimes containing text written by osstf provincial. if rank and file members did not take individual initiative to follow these bulletins and updates, they could receive information from their branch president.13 however, the activity of branch presidents is voluntary, and not monitored or ensured. it is unsurprising that many members only heard about the offered wage freeze of april 2012 through the media. osstf’s consultation with members for the purpose of developing bargaining and strike strategies was almost non-existent, and where it did exist, it assumed the same laissez-faire, voluntary character as its communication methods: members were welcome to be as uninformed and uninvolved as they wished. in addition to analysis of political and economic forces, osstf leaders based their strategy on negotiating surveys, and meetings with local leaders (coran, 2012a). as is the case in many unions, the bargaining issues on osstf’s local bargaining surveys from 2012 were preselected, and members were asked to simply rank them. this diverges from the more intensive member-surveying methods used in social movement unions in which union representatives present surveys to members in one-one conversations or small meetings, allowing the feedback to take on an open-ended, qualitative, and collaborative character. in 2012, osstf member surveys were then fed into conceptual briefs. before the union’s negotiators head into local bargaining, branch presidents at local council meetings approve the conceptual brief. an equivalent process occurs at the provincial level. however, conceptual briefs are vague and do not indicate priorities. after councils vote on these conceptual briefs, osstf bargaining becomes a confidential process without any transparency or accountability mechanism. because there are no publicly available documents from osstf that show the results of bargaining surveys, it is unclear 13  a branch president in osstf is the equivalent of a shop steward. 190 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education what percentage of the membership completed them, and it is unclear how the conceptual briefs compare to the raw data. it is also unclear to what (if any) extent members had indicated prior to the strike that a 0 percent wage increase, or any of the other conditions arrived at in the final osstf mou of april 2013, was acceptable to them. the internal democratic structure of osstf underlies the problems that arose with communication and collaboration with members in regards to bill 115. structurally speaking, osstf branch presidents and the members at their worksites can be as uninformed and unengaged with the process as they want. theoretically, rank-and-file members can communicate their concerns to branch presidents who then bring these concerns, in the form of motions or questions to the local executive, to district or bargaining unit council meetings. and theoretically, branch presidents attend district council meetings to hear updates from their district executive about what they had been told by provincial office, and then pass this information to members at the worksite. however, to date, there is no widely-adopted mechanism to ensure that branch presidents attend district council meetings or that they report back to their membership. additionally, district and bargaining unit meetings tend to be weighed down with informational updates from executives at the expense of healthy debate and decision-making by delegates. these factors meant that strategy-making ultimately rested in the hands of provincial office, at times in consultation with a provincial council made up of local presidents. this process assumes that local presidents accurately understand their local members’ desires, and possess the will to represent them at the provincial level. but just as there is no standard practice to ensure that branch presidents bring forward concerns from the worksite, there is none to ensure that local presidents bring forward concerns from their district. there are few ways to ensure fair representation of rank and file concerns beyond the stock belief that if members do not approve of their representatives’ actions, they will vote accordingly during internal elections; a belief that has been contested by a range of accounts of internal union clientalism, repression of dissenting members, and “grooming” of loyal supporters.14 strike votes and ratification votes are two measures of member consent to provincial strategy. that the strike vote of november 2012 resulted in a positive majority indicates that members consented to the strategy of a strike, yet this does not shed light on member approval of 14  for example, see d’arcy martin’s discussion of vertical union cultures (1995), and weiner’s work more generally. the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 191 other elements of the fight-back campaign such as the protests at mpp offices and the refusal to walk out. strike votes cannot substitute for consultation with members for the purpose of creating a strategy; it is rather a measure of consent after the fact, as is the ratification vote. the agreement reached between the ontario government and osstf provincial in april 2013 received an 84 percent ratification vote in favour of the agreement. however, official communications from osstf do not reveal what percentage of members actually cast ballots in either the ratification vote, or the earlier strike vote. while the present study can only gesture to potential areas for further research into osstf rank and file participation in and consent to executive decision-making, broad rank and file concerns are identifiable in ephemeral grassroots publications produced by osstf members. these concerns indicate a criticism of the types of activities in osstf that are aligned with the hierarchical organizational structure of business unionism, and indicate a desire for the type of strong internal democracy and member control at the heart of social movement unionism. the conflict between members and leaders over strategy points to a disunity that weakens osstf’s ability to take on a legislative neoliberal attack on the grounds that it affects all workers. if the fight against bill 115 symbolized osstf’s commitment to labour rights for all and a social justice orientation that extends beyond the immediate economic concerns of its members, then bargaining agreements within the parameters of bill 115 (even after it was repealed) signal an inability to follow through on these commitments. furthermore, osstf’s claim to take on a fight for the labour rights of all ontarians is seriously undermined by osstf members’ insistence that osstf did not even fairly represent its own members. beyond symbolic implications, osstf also set a material precedent: it proved that a government could effectively get a union to consent to and participate in austerity measures against its own workforce. conclusion in terms of the member control and public involvement that are key aspects social movement unions, osstf’s campaign against bill 115 and its associated bargaining were clearly wanting. however, the same is not necessarily true of osstf as an entire province-wide organization, because it is constituted of multiple spaces driven by genuine social justice goals and member activism. osstf has numerous provincial committees composed of provincial executive 192 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education liaisons, provincial staff members, local leaders, and rank-and-file members, which are oriented towards movements for social justice. for example, in recent years the provincial osstf first nations, métis and indigenous provincial committee has supported the idle no more campaign for indigenous sovereignty (osstf, 2014a), and the provincial osstf human rights committee has directly linked the struggles of migrant and precarious workers to education workers’ struggle for labour rights (osstf, 2014b). it is often committees and rank and file delegates who bring motions to osstf’s annual convention that result in social justice-oriented policy positions. for these reasons, the case of osstf supports stephanie ross’ claim that business unionism and social unionism (what i call social movement unionism) contain “elements [that] came together in particular historical and institutional contexts but are not inevitably tied to one another” (2012, 45). it is possible for some business unionism tactics, such as a strong focus on bargaining, to co-exist with and bolster a union’s social justice agenda. however, in the case of osstf’s campaign against bill 115, osstf’s use of the business unionism tactics – prioritizing collaboration with the employer while keeping members out of strategizing and negotiating – undermined osstf’s agenda to preserve public education as a common good. in addition to greater member involvement and buy-in, osstf would have benefitted from greater public buy-in to the union’s goals. public buy-in was not impossible, given osstf members’ unique position as workers whose labour arguably enhances the greater social good, given the correlation between better working conditions and better learning conditions, and given osstf members’ social justice activism inside and outside of the union. public buy-in could have been secured through tactics such as rotating one-day strikes, which could have had less impact on student life than an extracurricular boycott. instead, the withdrawal of extracurriculars seemed uncoordinated and indefinite to the public, and was easily manipulated by media and politicians to stir up anti-teacher sentiment. the narrow interest of mounting resistance to the government while avoiding the possible fines associated with full walkouts trumped the importance of the relationship between education workers, students, and parents. often, contemporary unions are accused of too narrowly focusing on the economic interests of its members to be capable of acting in the osstf anti-bill 115 campaign | 193 concert with equality-seeking groups outside of the union. this can be seen as a part of a broader problem of union sectionalism: unions have become progressively smaller bubbles of a progressively smaller range of privileges.15 today’s north american unions usually do not represent the most precarious, the least paid, and the most vulnerable layers of the workforce. in order to maintain relevance, numbers, and bargaining power, unions must address the fact that many of their members are much more privileged than the members of the public from whom they request support. both social movement union literature and osstf member accounts indicate that parent engagement in the agenda of education workers’ unions is key to bridging the gap between bargaining and social justice, between the traditionally economistic interests of unions and the non-economistic interests of the public (of which union members are a part). the potential for the anti-bill 115 campaign to be member-driven are deeply connected to members’ own communities. this top-down approach was at odds with union committees, policies, and autonomous rank-and-file activities (like the various “vote no” campaigns) that are oriented towards social justice, union democracy, and anti-neoliberalism. to strengthen the social-justice oriented currents within osstf, leaders and members would need to transform its internal democratic practises so that members are expected and enabled to become more active in the union. only then can member-driven relationships with the public and broader social movements move to the centre of union culture. without this member-driven social justice orientation, osstf’s bargaining strategy has ultimately set a precedent of union defeat in the face of a government’s legislative neoliberal attack. acknowledgements the author would like to thank mary-lu brennan and scott burgess of the osstf library and archives for their assistance in accessing archival records, luis filipe for sharing his copy of the april 2012 toronto star advertisement, sam gindin, herman rosenfeld, and greg flemming for providing feedback, and especially rhiannon maton for her invaluable collaboration on an earlier version of this paper presented at the alternate routes conference in april 2013. 15  see rose, 2009 for a discussion of union density in canada. 194 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education references alphonso, c. 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[paid advertisement]. a23. 200 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education precarious employment in ontario’s university sector: reflections on collective bargaining at carleton university mathew nelson1 and lydia dobson2 abstract: in this article, the qualitative experiences of the authors as union leaders at carleton university are drawn upon, along with the public testimonials of union members, during the 2013-14 round of collective bargaining between carleton university and the canadian union of public employees local 4600. we contend that the trend towards rising precariousness must be seen as the further “proletarianization” of an increasingly insecure segment of the labour force in ontario, which includes workers employed in ontario’s university sector. first, precarious employment in ontario is examined broadly. second, we explore precarious work in the university sector more specifically. third, a case study analysis examining the most recent contract negotiations between cupe 4600 and carleton university in ottawa is examined. this includes: (1) the challenges of mobilization within the union bureaucracy; (2) challenges between the local and national office; and; (3) the role of solidarity in combating precariousness. to conclude, the conditions in which unionized precarious workers can achieve improvements in their workplaces are discussed. it is hoped that other postsecondary union activists can gain from this experience, and in doing so, expand the fight against the negative effects of precarious employment in ontario and elsewhere. keywords: precarious work, carleton university, austerity, unions 1  mathew nelson is a phd candidate in the department of political science at carleton university. 2  lydia dobson is a phd candidate in socio-legal studies at york university. precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 201 introduction since the 2008 global economic crisis, political power has overwhelmingly come to favour business and corporate interests at the expense of canadian workers, while neoliberal processes such as privatization, outsourcing, and the spread of precarious employment have accelerated (peters, 2012). for public sector workers, precarious work provides less pay with few or no benefits, acting as a cheap labour supply for employers purportedly facing cost pressures due to government austerity measures. this restructuring and reorganization of work is regularly carried out through attacks on the historical gains of unions and organized labour. the impact of rising precariousness or “precarity” (lewchuck et al., 2013) in ontario is particularly prominent in the area of post-secondary academic employment. in this article, we draw upon our own qualitative experiences, along with the public testimonials of fellow union members, during the 2013-14 round of collective bargaining between carleton university and the canadian union of public employees (cupe) local 4600, which represents nearly 2,400 teaching assistants (ta’s) and contract instructors (ci’s).3 these first-person accounts, we argue, lend support to bryan palmer’s (2013) materialist, class-analysis, which notes the trend towards rising precariousness or “precarity.’ in our view, workplace precarity can be understood as the further “proletarianization” of an increasingly insecure segment of the labour force in ontario, which includes workers employed in ontario’s university sector. we contend that the growing core of precarious academic labourers in ontario can be understood as a constitutive part of the working class based on their socioeconomic position in relation to broader processes of capital accumulation. it thereby follows that, from a class struggle perspective, the theoretical construction of the notion of an entire new social class or “precariat” (standing, 2011; scott, 2012), in contrast to a declining “professoriat” (burns, 2014, 30), is both theoretically and politically erroneous; this misdiagnosis is class divisive in our view. in the postsecondary sector, the conception of a novel precariat accentuates worker alienation by impeding the development of revolutionary class consciousness amongst workers and students, including adjunct faculty, both inside and outside the university. 3  as local executives involved in strike mobilization activities, lydia dobson served as recording secretary for cupe 4600, while mathew nelson acted as vice-president internal (unit 1). we participated extensively in the bargaining processes at carleton over several years, but during this round our contribution was largely directed at devoting our activities to the local’s strike mobilization committee. 202 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education in what follows, we examine precarious employment in ontario. second, we focus our analysis in the university sector. third, our case study examines the 2013-14 round of contract negotiations between cupe 4600 and carleton university. we explore three features inherent to precarious employment: (1) the challenges of mobilization within the union bureaucracy; (2) challenges between the local and national office; and third, the role of solidarity in combating precariousness. to conclude, we highlight the conditions in which unionized precarious workers can achieve improvements in their workplaces. while the summary that follows is brief, it is our hope that other postsecondary union activists can gain from this experience, and in doing so expand the fight against the negative effects of precarious employment in ontario and elsewhere. employment precarity in ontario workplace precarity is not a new phenomenon, but its qualitative and quantitative dimensions are. from the 1980s onwards, and especially since the 2008 global economic crisis, the use of part-time workers and other forms of precarious labour (clc, 2014), including shift work, temp jobs and contract positions, has increased markedly (grant, 2014). “temporary and part-time work grew faster than full-time and permanent work. the squeeze on the middle class had begun, and employment precarity had become a typical feature of employment for many individuals” (tiessen, 2014, 6). this suggests both a weakness of organized labour to challenge these workplace conditions, as well as disproportionate capitalist class power over the interests of the working class as a whole (barkawi, 2013). the 2008 crisis provided an opportunity for businesses and governments to capitalize on the gradual erosion of job security and life-long employment that has been occurring over the last four decades. as workforces are eroded, different forms of contingent and precarious labour are introduced4 “precarious employment tends to involve greater exposure to hazardous work environments, increased workload, stress, and more time spent travelling between multiple jobs” (mccaffrey, 2013). in both the public and private sectors, these workers are taking on more and more of the tasks and responsibilities previously performed 4  one such example is the temporary foreign workers program (tfwp), which has been highly controversial largely due to its association with the exploitation of low-skilled, service sector workers. a moratorium was recently placed on some aspects of tfwp expansion due to rising evidence that the misuse of the program has increased employment rates in certain areas and has contributed to downward pressures on wages (strauss, 2014). precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 203 by full-time workers.5 the impact spills over into “family, health and community involvement” (grant, 2014). according to the law commission of ontario (2012), around 22 percent of jobs fit the “precarious” definition in the province. in many cases, those adversely affected are women, youth, racialized communities, persons with disabilities, and recent immigrants. according to a mcmaster-united way (2013) study based in the greater toronto and hamilton area this phenomenon is increasingly affecting all income and education levels. a 2012 report by the international labour organization (ilo) documents the growth in precarious work in oecd countries over the last decade and attributes the increase to a “worldwide corporate attack on the right to organize and bargain collectively, by shifting to subcontracting and individual contracts, [and] attacking sectoral and national bargaining” (ilo, 2011, 1). women workers in particular are disproportionally paid lower wages. a recent report by the pay equity coalition found that the gap has grown from 28 percent in 2010 to 31.5 percent in 2014, which is further amplified for racialized and aboriginal women, as well as women with disabilities (drennan, 2014). in a similar vein, “young workers are facing low wages, precarious work, poor work/life balance, and a high cost of living coupled with exorbitant student debt. the problems are even more significant for young workers marginalized by structural racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and sexism” (cupe national, 2013, 3). younger workers also tend to struggle with unemployment and under-employment, exploitative work conditions, a high cost of living and significant student debt (yalnizyan, 2014). the uniting factor in all of these struggles is the fight against precarious employment. from a marxist perspective, as fanelli (2014, 39) has argued, the renewal of working class politics, and the struggle for public services in canada, requires a class-oriented labour movement that is not based in the reformism and sectionalism of business unionism and labour aristocratism. the fight for class-based unionism must involve “the freedom of association to collectively bargain on behalf of and in accordance with other workers…” this fight is a potentiality, that under specific historic conditions, embodies “an emancipatory force capable of transcending social relations of servitude.” organized labour has 5  it is important to note that precarity also differs between the public and private sectors. in the public sector, precarity relates mainly to the use of short-term, full-time employment, while in the private sector, part-time, long-term employment is most frequent (see fanelli, 2014a, 123). 204 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education transformational capacity; and however small, it can be a venue for a radical working class unionism. the precarious university in ontario in ontario’s postsecondary education (pse) sector, austerity measures have long been directed at colleges and universities across the province (fanelli, 2013, ch. 5). budget changes and chronic underfunding have shifted funding away from direct public provisioning towards user-fee models (i.e. tuition) based on competition and profit (nelson and meades, 2013). at the same time, colleges and universities have experienced significant spending cuts over the past decade, and while the recession is usually blamed, right-wing governments continue to cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations. the use of precarious workers, in large corporations and universities alike, is quite often a costcutting strategy that allows employers to shed legally mandated obligations to their employees in the name of greater workplace “flexibility,” less job security, and lower wages and benefits (crow, 2008; sears, 2012). “this labour-cost reduction strategy…has had the effect of increasing the number of precariously employed workers in the university sector” (lafrance, 2010, 2). the neoliberalization of the university entails new forms of privatization, deregulation and corporatization that are connected to reductions in public funding and oversight (giroux, 2002). while the adoption of such austerity measures does not necessarily mark the beginning of a new era, the global economic crisis has intensified this funding crisis. different forms of privatization in the neoliberal university include securing private funding for research, increasing the number of private corporations on campuses, and user fees in the form of higher tuition (crow, 2008). moreover, since the 1970s, an attack on the humanities – and their “so-called promotion of anti-establishment sentiment” has accompanied these changes (scott, 2012). a concerted effort has also been made to transform the role of academia and the university into little more than something resembling a “technical training facility” or a “corporate research institute” (eagleton, 2010). for student-workers such as teaching-assistants (ta’s), as well as contract-instructors (ci’s) and other “contingent faculty” (turk, 2008), increased competitiveness creates the insecurity of “being permanently on the edge of unemployment, having to make do with casual, temporary, perhaps part-time work, or combining several jobs” (callinicos, 2006, 24). as part of an ongoing research project, cupe’s national body precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 205 has undertaken the creation of profiles that show demographic and precarity patterns of occupations within sectors. with respect to temporary jobs, “the post-secondary sector stands out; one-third of low-paid jobs in post-secondary education are temporary.” (jansen, 2014, 4). many of the lower-paid employment sectors also have higher rates of part-time and temporary work. the rise of a “precariat”? in the us context, ehrenreich and ehrenreich (2014, 22) argue that the continued downward mobility of the “professional-managerial class” captures the new economic reality of a system increasingly structured around precarious employment where part-time, contract and temporary workers who are in an unstable position have limited control over working conditions and wages, and may lack union protection or regulations governing their workplace. this trend has led some to proclaim “the rise of a ‘precariat,’ a new, distinct class characterized by insecurity and atomization, and therefore, impervious to traditional labor organizing” (burns, 2014, 31; see also chomsky, 2012). undoubtedly, there are parallels between the us and canada, yet there remains vast differences between the two countries, their postsecondary education, as well as the availability of public health, factors that make a huge difference in the quality of life of workers across the continent. canadian sociologists have begun to call attention to the rise of such a precariat, or “social class,” whose working conditions are void of consistent “predictability” and financial security. with respect to wages, compared to a full-time professor teaching four courses a year whose salary may range anywhere between $80,000 to $150,000 per year, contract faculty teaching the same course load earn on average earn around $28,000 per annum (basen, 2014). in precariat: the new dangerous class (2011), economist guy standing concludes that it is unlikely that “trade unions could be reformed to represent precariat interests” (cited in burns, 2014, 22). however, labour historian bryan palmer (2013, 42) challenges claims that the contemporary significance of precariousness indicates a separate and distinct class formation in the present context. palmer critiques standing for viewing precarious workers as somehow part of a distinctive, “new class force,” within “a hierarchy of differentiated class formations,” as part of “a new neoliberal global economy” (palmer, 2013, 42-43). 206 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education palmer counters the view that, “stable working-class identities have been swept aside; a sense of proletarian power as a transformative agent of social relations of exploitation and oppression is now ended.” (ibid). standing (2011), on the other hand, argues that in light of this new, youth-led precarious class -the so-called dangerous precariat – the traditional labour movement finds itself antiquated and dying. for palmer (2013, 45), however, precariousness has always been “the fundamental feature of class formation rather than the material basis of a new, contemporary class, with an agenda silent on the necessity of socialism.” while the experience of dispossession is highly heterogeneous “…dispossession, in general, nonetheless defines proletarianization” (palmer, 2013, 49). rebecca burns (2014, 33) argues that “precarity is not a new phenomenon…[but a] state of affairs that occurs when the balance of power tips in the favour of employers.” similarly, fred magdoff and john bellamy foster (2014, 2) note that marx himself characterized the general condition of workers as one of precariousness: “the higher the productivity of labour, the greater is the pressure of the workers on the means of employment, the more precarious therefore becomes the condition for their existence, namely sale of their own labour-power for the increase of alien wealth, or in other words the self-valorization of capital.” in the present context, however, the great recession and the deep stagnation that followed, has made the situation of canadian workers ever more precarious. as unifor economist jim stanford (2013) has recently noted, there is “a myth of canadian exceptionalism” when federal leaders consistently espouse the virtues of canada’s recovery following the great recession. in reality, overall prosperity, as well as economic and employment performance, has largely stagnated since that time. in examining the impact of precarious employment on pse, we focus on carleton university, which in many respects has reproduced/ reinforced? the growing ranks of low-wage, precarious workers within institutions that once anchored the so-called white-collar “professoriat” across the sector. we focus on the most recent round of collective bargaining between the administration and cupe 4600, which represents ta’s and ci’s. but rather than juxtapose a precariat, with the stable working class identity of the proletariat, what is needed in the university sector is a unified politics of class struggle that highlights the reality of differentiation within the dispossessed, but does not accentuate divisions that can minimize collective responses or incapacitate the working class in its entirety. precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 207 bargaining austerity at carleton university cupe 4600 was founded in 1979 as cupe 2323 in response to widespread workplace inequality across campus. ta’s received different rates of pay for the same work, had no guarantee of reappointment in successive terms, job security or benefits of any kind. employees could be fired with little or no warning cupe 4600s predecessor, then as now, fought for improved wages, working conditions, job security, and benefits for its members. ta’s merged with contract instructors of carleton university in 1994 forming cupe 4600, which then represented nearly 1800 tas (unit 1) and over 600 contract instructors (unit 2). cupe 4600 has a long history of challenging unilateral administrative prerogatives (see nelson and meades, 2013). more recently, the union has had to contend with budgets that have called for increased enrollment without a corollary increase in paid working time or wages. in effect, this translates into both a wage cut and workload increase. the most recent rounds of bargaining, which spanned from june 2013 to march 2014, offer an avenue for exploring the structural and relational problems that union activists face in the pse sector when bargaining against precarity. during this round of bargaining, the primary concern for ci’s was receiving health benefits, while ta’s were focused primarily on attaining fair wage increases and fixed tuition indexation.6 other key concerns for both units included caps on class sizes, cost of living adjustments (cola), and improved sick leave and seniority provisions around leaves of absence. teaching assistants and contract instructors operate under separate collective agreements, and despite coordinated bargaining efforts, many of their interests are quite different. despite these differences, non-tenured and non-permanent teaching staff share a common experiences of precarity, along with a desire for enhanced pay, improved treatment and working conditions. in a january 29, 2014, edition of the undergraduate student newspaper, the charlatan (armstrong, 2010), unit-1 member tabatha armstrong noted the extent to which the amount of work carried out by 6  during the 2008-09 round of collective bargaining, tas failed to achieve a strong strike mandate, with 49 percent of the membership opposing the possibility of job action. the vote took place in the midst of an ongoing ottawa transit strike and a prolonged ta strike at york university. the low vote resulted in the loss of fixed tuition indexation, where the tuition rate for tas was fixed to either 2000 or 2005 levels depending on the commencement of a student’s program of study. fixed indexation was instead replaced with a rolling index, which stabilizes tuition rates to the year that a student begins their program. the effect is multi-tiered student tuitions; for instance, a student who began their studies in 2011-12 pays approximately 6 percent more than a student who began in 2010-11. 208 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education ta’s is taken for granted, even though “we learn and teach the material, make lesson plans, schedule meetings with students, answer hundreds of emails, and we mark, mark, and mark some more.” in the context of ongoing negotiations, cupe 4600 framed its message to carleton students the following way: “the working conditions of the people teaching and marking are also your learning conditions, and the way your administration chooses to treat ta’s and contract instructors is an example of how they are willing to treat you” (armstrong, 2014). teaching and research assistants, as well as some contract instructors, are the only employees at carleton who have to pay to go to work through user-fees or tuition. as tuition and other compulsory fees continue to steadily rise,7 “the quality of education seems to be ever-decreasing because the people who get the most face time with students are overworked and underpaid” (cited in letson, 2014). contract instructors are responsible for teaching nearly one-quarter of the classes taught at carleton university. while ci’s typically have higher educational qualifications compared to ta’s, they face equivalent precarity. lacking health and dental benefits, they earn only around $6,500 per course, and are “disproportionately responsible for the massive 450 person lectures” in “stadium-style classrooms,” aided by “a small army of tas” (hurl, 2014). the following is how one unit 2 member described his experience: “even though i have three years of teaching under my belt, there are no guarantees i will get another job. if a tenured professor decides they want the course, then i’ll be booted. it’s especially bad in the summer. the limited number of courses means that you are lucky if you can land a job.” (hurl, 2014). his letter concludes, “in the end, after all this time and investment i have put into something i love, i feel that i deserve a little respect, recognition, and some semblance of security. i’m tired of living a double-life” (ibid). in an attempt to alleviate some of the negative effects of precariousness on carleton academic workers, cupe 4600’s negotiating team devised a series of bargaining proposals that for both units proposed improved benefits and a 5 percent pay increase to keep up with rising tuition and costs of 7  according to a recent report produced by the canadian centre for policy alternatives (ccpa), shaker and macdonald (2014, 5) note that tuition and other compulsory fees in canada have almost tripled between 1993-94 and 2014-15, with tuition increasing in ontario by 239 percent. while a tuition fee increase cap on graduate programs remains stagnant at 5 percent, the authors report that “ontario’s tuition fees have been consistently among the highest in the country since the mid-90s” (17). from a broader perspective, whereas in 1988, 12 percent of university revenue was generated via tuition fees, by 2012 41 percent of revenue was generated through tuition (fejzic, 2014). precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 209 living fees.8 however, as a result of having a highly transient workforce, the executive board of the local is constantly struggling in its efforts to mobilize and engage with the rank-and-file membership. while often guaranteed employment for the duration of their studies, tas and cis operate only on four-month contracts. in various ways, the precarity of such working conditions can inhibit the organizing and mobilization efforts ordinarily carried out within the traditional union models. in the following section, we look at several examples of the challenges that were encountered during the 2013-14 year of collective bargaining at carleton university. engaging precarious workers within big union structures a significant challenge facing union locals at present is the need to involve and engage their respective membership in more creative and effective ways (camfield, 2011). however, precarious workers such as ta’s primarily operate on two to four year contracts, the majority of which are two years in duration. these contracts are also dependent on the worker being a tuition-paying student. because collective bargaining takes place every second year at carleton university, many of carleton’s ta’s rarely see the benefits of the collective agreement that was negotiated during their own employment period. many ci’s work multiple jobs both within and outside of academia. the effect is an overall disconnect between workers and their peers, their physical workplaces, their union representatives, and most importantly, the benefits they will accrue from collective bargaining. in our experience, it is extremely difficult to build solidarity amongst contract instructors who have likely never met the majority of their colleagues, or ta’s who are being asked to fight for a collective agreement that will not impact them directly. furthermore, because many ci’s work for more than one employer, they may benefit from preferable salaries and health agreements outside of their contract with the university. thus, attempts to engage these individuals in struggles for higher wages and benefits, which may be far less relevant to their needs, introduces yet another set of challenges. as a result of a bargaining impasse, both the administration and cupe 4600 filed for conciliation in december 2013. despite the appointment of 8  to contextualize this demand, the average wage increase over three years amongst cupe locals in the ontario university workers coordinating committee (ouwcc), a voluntary organization consisting of locals in the university sector, was 1.5 percent for 2010, 1.4 percent for 2011, and 2.1 percent for 2012 (nelson and meades, 2013, 115). 210 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education a conciliation officer by the ministry of labour, university administration was unwilling to meet the demands of the membership. in particular, the employer’s salary proposals remained well below even projected cost of living increases, especially when taking into consideration the rise in tuition costs over the next few years. in the case of unit 2, the administration regularly refused to substantively discuss the issue of health benefits even though during the last round of bargaining they agreed to enter into discussions on the implementation of health and dental benefits for ci’s (cupe, 4600d). this unwillingness to respond adequately to ci concerns must be contextualized within an environment where canadian institutions are increasingly using non-tenured teaching faculty as cost-cutting measures, a phenomenon directly related to declining public funding and increases in overall student enrolments (macdonald, 2013). precarity and solidarity after bargaining had reached an impasse, we acted as participant-observers in the organizing for a strike vote, which included developing and distributing literature across campus, organizing info sessions for both units and the broader university community and providing updates on bargaining that were disseminated to the membership. from february 11-13, 2014, tables were set out at several locations across campus to inform members and to serve as polling stations. these organizing efforts were met with a strong 82.5 percent in favour of strike action for tas, and 87.5 percent in favour for contract instructors (news editors, 2014).9 while this result indicated a strong 85 percent in favour of strike action between both units, the low turnout rate of only 44 percent for ta’s and 32 percent for ci’s reflected the overall disengagement of the membership from the bargaining process. moreover, under cupe national’s instruction, members who were physically unable to be on campus for the voting process could not be accommodated in time.10 while voter participation was less than 50 percent, the outcome did constitute an above-average turnout. as bargaining continued throughout february and march, the administration suddenly offered contract 9  on february 25, 2014, the union issued a communiqué discussing the outcome of the “strong” strike vote: “at issue for carleton’s academic workers are the links between their working conditions, the value of their contribution to the students’ success and the quality of the teaching they provide to students. (cupe 4600e). . 10  our request to cupe national for a legal opinion around proxy voting came days prior to the scheduled vote. outside of concerns about potential legal issues, the timing of our request was a factor considered against advanced polling and proxy voting. precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 211 instructors much of what they were asking for, including a substantial health benefits package. the move had the potential of seriously dividing the local. for ci’s, the proposed collective agreement accommodated the expressed interests of the unit 2 membership. but while the ta unit had proposed zero percent wage increase for three years in order to achieve fixed indexation, the bargaining team was told that the administration would not consider indexation, and that no amount of time spent on strike would change their minds. faced with a satisfied unit 2 bargaining team, the ta unit had to accept that tuition indexation would not likely impact many outgoing members, making it difficult to justify strike action to a large portion of the membership. the bargaining team was forced to accept a collective agreement that did include a small wage increase and no concessions. with the support of the majority of ci’s, a strike would have proven far less effective, as many lectures and tutorials would continue to operate in spite of the work stoppage. neither unit went on strike, although the university administration was ultimately able to leverage a minimalist agreement for ta’s by providing substantial gains for contract instructors. when the details of the collective agreements were presented to the membership, they were met with little resistance from ci’s. however a vocal group of ta’s criticized the agreement for dropping the issue of tuition indexation wherein a tas tuition level is linked to the first year that they commence work (cupe 4600b, 2014). in the lead up to the ratification vote, several teaching assistants even circulated emails advocating against the ratification of the ta collective agreement. however, both collective agreements were eventually ratified with 76.4 percent of unit 1 tas and 86.2 percent of contract instructors in favour. these organizational problems are reflective of the broader structural barriers that unions may face when representing precarious workers. as will be discussed in the section that follows, the policies of cupe national are based on traditional employment relationships that are often stable and full-time, and which can also run counter to the interests of the precariously employed. (un)organizing residence fellows the executive board of cupe 4600 was contacted by a group of non-unionized residence fellows in the months leading up to the local’s strike vote and preparations. as the first point of contact for all disturbances in residence, these workers are constantly on-call, and are 212 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education amongst “the most overworked and precariously employed on a university campus” expected to perform multiple roles as “leaders, administrator, facilitator, and educator” (lefebvre, 2013a). citing a rise in health and safety concerns – including active intimidation, harassment, verbal threats, and cyberbullying (lefebvre, 2013b) the group was frustrated that they were consistently being ignored when voicing their complaints to the university administration. while residence fellows, much like ta’s, have their pay directly allocated to student-associated costs, everrising residence fees has meant that fellows do not receive, as do the majority of tas, a traditional employer-employee paycheque. it was proposed in november 2013 that residence fellows would enter cupe 4600 as a third bargaining unit. after discussions with cupe national, this process began. residence fellow organizers were provided membership cards for the 36 workers on staff and quickly had more than 50 percent of them signed. after submitting the cards to cupe national on november 25, a week later they were informed by cupe that it would not support the union drive. three primary reasons for retracting the initial decision were provided. first, residence fellow contracts were too short to meaningfully organize members; second, their capacity to pay dues was insufficient (despite a pre-approved structure with cupe 4600), and third; as canada’s largest union, cupe national would “not be able to make a big difference” for them (rml, 2013a). the fellows had taken on significant risks, and the decision led ultimately to the resignation of the primary organizers for fear of continued health and safety concerns, as well as employer pressure to resign, face isolating working conditions and other forms of potential retaliation (lefebvre, 2013ab; hendry, 2014). nearly two weeks later, however, national representatives met with residence fellow organizers and cupe 4600 board members to explain the decision. at the time, cupe 4600 member, priscillia lefebvre (2013b), explained: “the needs of young workers are becoming increasingly important if the current labour movement is going to be effective in protecting the right to organize in the workplace. however, the perception of unions as untrustworthy and ineffectual bureaucratized institutions serves as a barrier to many young workers who are hesitant to get involved. unfortunately, the recent actions of cupe national only serves to further reinforce this cynicism.” precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 213 likewise, in an interview given with rabble.ca, the president of cupe 4600, james meades, argued that the move was contrary to the values of “a union that is committing more resources and support to organizing unorganized workers, there was supposed to be a focus on workers that are in precarious positions and there was supposed to be a focus on young workers” (cited in watson, 2013b). in other words, a successful organizing drive would have provided an important opportunity to engage in new or ongoing attempts to organize not only traditional, more stable workplaces, but contemporary new and precarious ones as well. after a public backlash inclusive of several media articles and a public online petition condoning cupe nationals revoked support (lefebvre, 2013ab; rml, 2013a; dehaas, 2014), on january 16, 2014, cupe national president, paul moist, met with residence organizers and cupe 4600 board members to personally apologize, and assign responsibility for the mix-up to a breakdown in communication that led union officials to believe that membership cards had not yet been signed at the point that support was revoked. cupe national also formally supported a unionization drive, led by the now-unemployed organizers (watson, 2014). despite cupe national’s renewed support, however, efforts to unionize the carleton residence fellows were ultimately unsuccessful. falling just short of 50 percent in favour, the remaining residence fellows chose not to unionize with cupe 4600. the ordeal had pulled away the attention of some members of the executive board and the bargaining team. although the objective was to add a third unit to our local during the bargaining process, thereby increasing our capacity for collective action and leverage at the table, the organizing drive had the opposite effect of portraying to the university administration the picture of a weakened and dysfunctional union. the actions of cupe national resonated more broadly with disapproving labour activists across the province, who called into question the ability of contemporary unions to represent precarious workers (rml, 2013a). on december 30, 2013, rebuilding militant labour (rml) issued an open letter addressed to moist, which points specifically to increasing precarity as a major grievance among young cupe workers. it reads, “this action not only dismantled the diligent and extremely effective organizing efforts of these young workers, but has also resulted in 214 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the loss of jobs and housing for those involved in the union drive. the blatant disregard for the vulnerability of these precarious workers has had a massive and devastating impact on the organizers involved. rather than “standing up for fairness,” this decision serves to effectively disenfranchise all those who occupy vulnerable positions across canada.” rml describes itself as “an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial network, which seeks to ally with all the just struggles of the working-class and peoples in canada against our common enemy, the enemy of capitalism” (rmla, 2013). rml emerged out of the 50th cupe national convention in october 2013 by rank-and-file delegates frustrated with the electoral politics of the union, and its perceived inability to strategically defend workers by defeating the neoliberal austerity agenda (da silva, 2013).11 rebuilding militant labour in the university sector rebuilding militant labour (rml), with its heightened emphasis on the plight of precarious workers, provides an important opportunity for academic workers and their union activists to help orient their political activities towards “a comprehensive fight against colonialism and racism, patriarchy and the exploitation of women,” in addition to a renewed struggle against class-based forms of oppression (rml, 2013b). we have argues throughout that while ta’s, ci’s and residence fellows may operate under separate (or nonexistent) collective agreements, possess different educational qualifications and occupy different financial situations or institutional positions, they nonetheless share working conditions that lack “the security or benefits enjoyed in more traditional relationships,” and are thereby becoming more and more part of the precarious “new normal” in our postsecondary workplaces (lewchuk et al., 2013). but if rising precarity is part and parcel of contemporary forms of proletarianization this is because the logic induced by an unequal class system implies that the appropriation of surplus value is the means by which capital is accumulated. precarious faculty are undeniably 11  lydia dobson challenged cupe national president paul moist from the floor during the election portion of the convention receiving a substantial 21 percent of the overall vote, despite lacking the support of the cupe young workers caucus (da silva, 2013; watson, 2013a). precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 215 constitutive of the broader working class to the extent they are the mere owners of their labour power; and at carleton, ta’s, ci’s and residence fellows consistently perform a litany of activities in which they are not compensated for their time and effort. while it is certainly the case that public sector workers do not create exchange value for the capitalist system by producing marketable products, they nonetheless are exploited to the extent that their work can be characterized by the extraction of unpaid surplus labour. they are enumerated, in other words, for their socially determined reproduction costs, not for the entire expenditure of their labour time (finger, 2011, 53-54). it is therefore necessary for a unified class resistance on the part of workers and students to provide the potential for labour activists working in solidarity in the pse sector to move beyond those union models and structures that are less and less capable of addressing the emerging needs of precarious, temporary and casualized workers. they resistance may involve participation in something like rml, student-worker alliances,12 coalitions and solidarity pacts with non-cupe academic locals.13 trade unions, in this regard, can draw on some of the organizing models that led to the 2012 general strike by students in quebec. for workers, students and activists, our collective struggle against austerity must involve not only organizing to strike, but fighting to win (see savard and charaoui, 2012). other potential avenues include campus-specific coalitions (such as campus united at carleton university) or general assemblies, comprised of like-minded individuals, union members and representatives of progressive associations that mobilize together in areas of common interest. effective resistance may also necessitate, to some extent, bypassing large bureaucratic union structures in order for academic locals to work with cupe district councils to develop rapid responses to mobilize immediate support for locals with precarious members facing difficult bargaining situations or much-needed public service cuts – community 12  an interesting development in this regard is the involvement of the canadian federation of students (cfs) in partnering with unifor to organize a good jobs summit at ryerson university from october 3-5. like many workers, students are impacted by “high unemployment rates, unpaid internships, and a precarious job market.” student-worker solidarity, in this sense, means recognizing that that these local forms of solidarity on university campuses are based in “the knowledge that firstly, students are workers, and secondly, we are stronger united” (ponting, 2014). 13  at the provincial level, an interesting example of this sort of network is the ontario university and college coalition, formed in early 2010 to unite different unions (including cupe), as well as student, staff and faculty associations, in the fight to preserve high-quality, accessible and affordable postsecondary education. see http://ontariouniversitycoalition. ca/section/1. 216 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education unionism. recognizing that precarity affects both public and private sector workers alike, councils could undertake grassroots organizing initiatives in support of other precarious workers in the services, hospitality and retail sectors. such proposals fall neatly in line with cupe’s commitment to work with labour allies, coalitions, students, and community partners to engage the public on the need to preserve public services and jobs against privatization and precarity. in the struggle against precarity, the stakes are high. public institutions such as universities are increasingly under siege: “the verdant campuses of many of our universities bespeak peace and stability. don’t be fooled! you are actually looking at a battlefield. the universities are under deadly siege, in a crusade led by neoliberal financial and corporate leaders (backed by their hired think tanks), and with the willing connivance of our governments” (valleau and hamel, 2013). the way in which postsecondary education is predominantly viewed must be challenged: the university is a public good, not simply an individual privilege or a commodity to be purchased for someone else’s profit. conclusion in large union structures there exists any number of cleavages that interfere with organizing efforts directed at precarious workers. nonetheless, the institutional structures and memories that cupe 4600 had in place, along with the resources provided by cupe national, did in many ways prove effective in connecting these divisions during the mobilization and negotiation periods of the bargaining process. for instance, in the week preceding a possible strike, a solidarity rally and march throughout campus was organized, which was well-attended by campus unionists, other members of cupe locals and leaders in the broader labour movement. in the post-settlement period, in the months leading up to the 2014 cupe ontario convention, cupe 4600 submitted three resolutions that addressed rising precarious employment in the university sector, and which called for the funding of a research project examining the impact of precarious employment on post-secondary education in ontario; the launch of a public awareness campaign that links precarious employment in universities to rising tuition rates, student debt levels and growing class sizes; and a significant expansion of cupe ontario’s organizing activities in order to “grow the base of our union and enable precarious precarious employment in ontario’s university sector | 217 and non-unionized workers to benefit from union membership.”14 it is hoped that the incoming cupe ontario executive board members seriously consider the extent to which these resolutions may provide a potential first step in bridging the expanding the disconnect between the discourse to advance the struggles of precarious workers, and the resources, political commitment and organizational restructuring necessary for achieving concrete gains in workplaces and within local communities. while traditional union structures provide a foundation from which to build labour activism and engagement, in many ways they have proven incapable of accommodating the growing precarity of organized labour in employment sectors such as pse. in future mobilizing efforts, it is essential that alternative models be considered in order to mitigate the negative effects of precarious work. this means seeking out innovative organizing strategies that nonetheless remain situated in a broader politics of resistance that emphasizes the reality of class struggle. in the context of this ongoing neoliberal assault on pse, students and workers across campuses must recapture and revitalize a militant commitment to class-based forms of struggle, if they hope to capture and secure tangible gains on a university battlefield that already favours the interests of corporate leaders and corporate-minded administrators. while class has always embodied different manifestations of insecurity and precarity in different historical contexts, the strategic necessity of uniting the dispossessed in struggles that can realize a more equitable social order, remains highly relevant to contemporary struggles against precarious working conditions on university campuses. 14  the resolutions are in the possession of the authors, along with various other members of cupe 4600’s executive board. 218 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education references armstrong, t. 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(march 25, 2014). what the federal government could do if it really wanted to reduce youth unemployment: submission to the house of commons standing committee on finance study of youth unemployment, march 25 2014. canadian centre for policy alternatives (ccpa). available at: https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/ files/uploads/publications/national%20office/2014/04/youth_ unemployment_finance_committee.pdf. accessed 3 october 2014. neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 223 neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response paul orlowski abstract: the biggest threat to civil society in canada and the united states is the economic doctrine known as neoliberalism. sometimes referred to as the corporate agenda, neoliberalism supports the deregulation of industry, privatization of the commons, the weakening of workers’ rights, and corporate tax cuts. it first gained acceptance in canada and the united states during the 1980s, and ever since has had deleterious effects on public services and assets in both countries. the paper asks whether neoliberalism represents a class war waged by the corporate sector and economic elites on the working and middle classes. the province of saskatchewan in central canada is used as a case study. the bir thplace of public healthcare in canada, saskatchewan appears to have experienced a sea change in terms of its dominant political ideology. indeed, provincial governments across the political spectrum have eschewed the collectivist nature inherent in saskatchewan’s history in favour of adopting neoliberal economic policy. the paper argues whether social democracy is strong enough to withstand neoliberalism. there is a focus on the effects of neoliberalism on the province’s public school system, and also a brief discussion of idle no more, one of the largest indigenous mass movements in recent history, that first arose in saskatchewan to resist the federal government’s deregulation of canada’s rivers and lakes. acknowledging that teaching is a political act, the second part of this paper describes pedagogy designed to lift the hegemonic veil for students. this pedagogy uses ideology critique, critical media literacy, and the re-framing of hegemonic neoliberal discourses with progressive discourses. keywords: neoliberalism, social democracy, saskatchewan, critical pedagogy 224 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education introduction saskatchewan is one of three prairie provinces in western canada. for much of the second half of the twentieth century, it has been governed by socialist and social democratic parties (blakeney, 2008; warnock, 2004). perhaps best known as the birthplace of the first publicly funded healthcare system in north america, saskatchewan also has a strong ethos of public ownership of various industries. the province’s progressive roots, however, seem to be withering in an era in which corporate power is becoming firmly entrenched in the body politic. as in other parts of canada, saskatchewan first began to embrace this corporate agenda in the 1980s under a progressive conservative government. despite the social democratic saskatchewan new democratic party (ndp) forming government from 1991 to 2007, corporate power grew during this period. in fact, it could be argued that saskatchewan evolved from its socialist roots in the 1940s and 1950s into a social democratic province in the 1970s, but since then has been embracing the corporate agenda known as neoliberalism. this paper discusses whether social democracy is too weak an ideology to counter neoliberalism. it briefly describes major tenets of neoliberalism, followed by a discussion of protest politics and social movements. following a discussion of class warfare today in canada and the united states,i then turn to a case study of the saskatchewan experience since the 1980s. i argue that this prairie province is not just experiencing a neoliberal assault, but that for far longer it has been the site for a continuing colonial project exacerbated by neoliberalism. notwithstanding this, i conclude with a note of optimism with pedagogical suggestions designed to foster political consciousness in future teachers. the stance the article takes is that in order to effectively challenge neoliberalism, citizens must have a political consciousness. the first step, therefore, is to understand what is meant by neoliberalism. neoliberalism: laissez-faire economics revisited? neoliberalism is the term used to describe economic and public policy based on a powerful discursive formation with the aim of entrenching the corporate agenda throughout society. as gerry caplan (2012) notes: “[e]verything that’s happened in the past several years has gone to further empower and enrich the 1 per cent (or maybe the 5 per cent) at the expense of the rest of us. look anywhere you want. what else neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 225 does the universal demand for austerity programs mean? what else does the sudden concerted attack on public sector workers mean? what else does the intransigent line taken by multinational corporations against their unions mean? what else does the demand for “right-to-work” laws mean? what else does the widespread attack on seniors’ pensions mean?” citizens in both countries have been inundated with a “permanent campaign of persuasion” to win support for the economic policies favoured by neoliberals and politicians willing to implement them (kozolanka, 2007, 7). of course social values are also affected, but economic and political policy is the main focus of neoliberalism (albo and fanelli, 2014). the “liberal” part of neoliberalism refers to its association with the economics of classical liberalism in opposition to the social liberal and state liberal orthodoxies of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. both liberal and conservative governments across the u.s. and canada have passed pro-corporate or neoliberal legislation while touting the free market discourse on domestic and international fronts. indeed, some provincial social democratic governments, too, have supported neoliberal policies. neoliberalism has elicited various definitions from academics since the 1970s when the first attempt at implementation into a nation’s economic policy took place in chile (boas and gans-morse, 2009). it has been described as a broad set of macroeconomic policies, as a procorporate worldview, and as an approach to public policy leading to the commodification of the commons. for the purpose of explaining this current stage of capitalism to prospective high school teachers of history and social studies, i focus on the following key components of the neoliberal agenda on the domestic front: the deregulation of private industry, increased regulation of the public sector, tax cuts (especially for corporations and the wealthy), privatization of the commons, and the weakening of collective bargaining rights for workers. the major theorists of neoliberalism are friedrich von hayek (1944) and, more recently, milton friedman (2002). in high school social studies and history courses, students learn that income inequality, inhumane working conditions and the lack of social safety nets were features of pre-keynesian (or pre-wwii) government policies. government regulations on industry were seen as impediments to financial profit for the capitalist class, and were therefore 226 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education unacceptable. through the eighteenth to early-twentieth centuries, supporters of this doctrine preferred the ‘invisible hand’ of the market to influence economic arrangements and were hostile to the state intervening in economic affairs, especially around regulation of industry. despite the fact that laissez-faire economics has been largely discredited, it is clear that similar thinking continues to permeate the thinking of many economic and political elites today (albo and fanelli, 2014). yet, contemporary social class issues are virtually ignored in high school today (orlowski, 2011a). one particularly effective discourse emanating out of corporate propagandists is the well-known trickle-down theory, that neoliberalism will help everyone no matter their social and economic standing – the deregulated economy will create a rising tide and all of the boats, big and small, will rise with it (harvey, 2005). another current powerful discourse in support of corporate tax cuts touts corporations as job creators. research in canada and the united states, however, demonstrates that large corporations do not use money from tax cuts to create more jobs; rather, they tend to hoard this money or pay dividends to shareholders (stanford, 2011; hungerford, 2012). despite these findings, the job creator discourse is very powerful and works to gain the public’s support for corporate tax cuts. this is clearly the case in saskatchewan today (mcgrane, 2011). under the banner of fiscal responsibility, neoliberal supporters in government, the private sector and in the media have been calling for opportunities to profit from privatizing the commons. indeed, the “politics of austerity...encourage the “total privatization of the public sector” (albo and fanelli, 2014, 14). in canada, entrepreneurial forces are pushing for the creation of a two-tiered healthcare system to replace its treasured, however much-maligned, universal public healthcare system. most provinces are tacking on “medical services plan” fees to erode universality. pension plans for public sector workers and the general public are also very much in peril (kennedy and press, 2012). the reason given is that it is no longer affordable to fund these public institutions and programs through taxes. much of the public seems to be understandably confused over the replacement of the social welfare state with discourses of “personal responsibility and individual culpability” (albo and fanelli, 2014, 9). moreover, these deficit discourses are being trumpeted during a period in which the gap in income inequality between the rich and the poor is widening dramatically to proportions not seen since the 1930s (frank, 2012; albo, gindin and panitch, 2010). neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 227 electoral politics does not seem capable of stopping neoliberalism from dismantling the remaining vestiges of public services and assets. democracy enacted through protest albo and fanelli (2014, 26) contend: “neoliberalism reinforces the inequalities of social class and the differentiated dependence on markets at the expense....of the egalitarian and developmental processes of democracy.” the neoliberal impulse is to reduce our democratic traditions to the procedural democracy of formal elections. indeed, with the possible exception of the nordic countries, it appears that social democratic parties have joined their conservative and liberal counterparts in accepting the main tenets of neoliberalism (albo, gindin and panitch, 2010). with an economic convergence among political parties in canada and the united states, it is little wonder that popular voting in elections have for the most part been on a steady decline since the 1980s. this does not totally translate, however, to the acceptance of neoliberal values promoted by economic and political elites. democratic avenues for expressing counterhegemonic views still exist. amidst countless stories in the united states of home foreclosures, job losses, and increased poverty during the summer of 2011, occupy wall street arose to challenge the growing wealth gap: “we are the 99%” became the slogan of this social movement, the first serious populist resistance to the neoliberal agenda in north america. likewise, in any european nation where austerity is being touted by the government, massive protests have filled the streets of urban centres. in the spring of 2012, moments after the quebec government announced university tuition hikes, huge student protests appeared that were so relentless that they helped force a change in government (giroux, 2012). in the autumn of 2012, another social movement arose out of saskatchewan as indigenous activists reached out to non-indigenous canadians in a show of solidarity to challenge corporate hegemony, environmental degradation and the weakening of democracy (dobbin, 2013). the flashpoint for the idle no more movement was the federal government’s two omnibus budget bills, c-38 and c-45, which effectively gutted the regulation of canada’s lakes and rivers. the idle no more movement continues to attract support across the world as progressive and concerned citizens join with indigenous peoples (kin-nda-nilmi collective, 2014; georgetti and barlow, 2013). indeed, since 2006 there has been a significant increase across the world in citizen protest in favour of increased human rights, economic justice and global justice, 228 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education and against the failure of political representation (ortiz, burke, berrada and cortes, 2013). to counter these democratic expressions of civil disobedience, however, neoliberalism is focusing more and more on disciplining dissent (albo and fanelli, 2014). technological advances have made surveillance a normal part of government activity. and as anyone attending neoliberal events such as the 2010 g20 meetings in toronto can attest, the state has readily utilized authoritarian measures to crack down on these albeit unevenly accepted avenues of democratic expression. despite the state response to dissent, however, it is important for students to note that the creation of the social welfare state was helped through the protests of the 1920s and 1930s. activist trade unions in canada and the united states were essential to the gradual acceptance of keynesian economic policy into the body politic and the social fabric of both nations after the second world war. the conflicts of the past provide inspiration to resist corporate hegemony today. this is crucial because since the 1980s economic elites have waged a vicious attack on the social welfare state. is this what class warfare looks like? the term class warfare means different things to different people. it is a provocative phrase that elicits anger from both the right and the left. i will not suggest a definitive definition for class warfare. rather, the debates about what is occurring in canada is instructive. when one considers the dramatically increasing gaps in wealth, there can be little doubt that neoliberalism is indeed “a project aimed at the restoration of class power” (anijar and gabbard, 2009, 45–46). harvey (2005, 202) states that “if it looks like class struggle and acts like class war then we have to name it unashamedly for what it is.” although it is difficult to prove that the extreme rise in wealth inequality since the 1980s is the result of neoliberalism, it is clear that the two occurred simultaneously. a look at specific neoliberal policies over the past three decades leads one to at least inquire about causality. during the 1980s, reagan republicans began touting deregulation as a way for the economy to flourish (krugman, 2009; laxer, 1999; mcquaig, 1998). this was instrumental for the neoliberal agenda to gain traction in the american economy. today, it is clear that the savings and loans scandal of the 1980s and the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007-08 are directly related to the deregulation of the financial industry (frank, 2012). of course, deregulation was also responsible for the 2010 british petroleum neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 229 horizon explosion in the gulf of mexico that resulted in eleven worker deaths and the largest oil spill in the history of the oil industry with two-hundred gallons of crude oil spilling into the gulf every day for eighty-seven straight days (orlowski, 2011b). in canada, deregulation of the private sector has resulted in too many catastrophes. to name but a few recent examples: the 2013 lac megantic train explosion that resulted in forty-seven deaths (campbell, 2013); the e. coli outbreak at xl foods in alberta in 2012; and in toronto, the 2008 maple leaf foods listeriosis tragedy that resulted in twenty deaths (rouseau, 2013). in divided we stand: why inequality keeps rising, the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd, 2011) reports that the united states has the fourth-highest inequality level in the oecd, after chile, mexico and turkey. moreover, the average income of the top 10 percent of americans was $114,000, nearly 15 times higher than that of the bottom 10 percent, whose average income was $7,800. by comparison, the ratio was 10 to 1 in the mid 1980s, and 12 to 1 in the mid 1990s. keeping in mind that neoliberalism began to gain traction in the u.s. during the reagan presidency of the 1980s, it is clear from the oecd numbers that there is a strong connection between a rising wealth gap and neoliberalism policy. moreover, in 2009, nearly 44 million americans were living in poverty, which was four million more than the previous year (herbert, 2011). in terms of child poverty, 23 percent of american children live in poverty, which is barely better than the situation in romania (monsebraaten, 2012). the growing inequality trend is similar in canada. unicef reports that canada ranks twentyfourth out of thirty-five industrialized nations with a child poverty rate of 13.3 percent. another feature of neoliberalism pertains to work stoppages and the attack on unions. recent american statistics attest to the increase in employee lockouts: “the number of strikes has declined to just one-sixth the annual level of two decades ago … [l]ockouts, on the other hand, have grown to represent a record percentage of the nation’s work stoppages” (greenhouse, 2012). there is growing evidence that this strategy is gaining further traction in canada as well. the day after michigan passed a “so-called right-to-work law aimed at weakening unions in that state,” the canadian federal government passed bill c-377 in the house of commons (walkom, 2012). this new law was “designed to tie the unions up in red tape and – its backers hope – embarrass labour’s leadership” (walkom, 2012). bill c-377, while temporarily halted due to the prorogation of parliament in 2013, was reintroduced in the house 230 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education of commons in september 2014 and aims to impart a host of new financial reporting practices on unions as part of its generalized attack against organized labour (stanford, 2014). indeed, canadian workers have learned that “[a]cross the 1990s, the employment relationship was re-worked to expose workers more forcefully to ‘market forces’” (albo and fanelli, 2014, 11). the fordist arrangement between labour and capital has been torn asunder. another plank in the neoliberal arsenal involves the commons. the current trend toward austerity is most often a precursor to privatizing components of the public sector. indeed, privatization of the public sector is “enforced by a ‘disciplinary democracy’ that ever more deploys anti-democratic measures that marginalizes, and even criminalizes, dissent in defense of austerity and market freedoms” (albo and fanelli, 2014, 7). the display of extreme force used by the security apparatuses of the state during the g20 protests in 2010 attests to this. these included csis, the rcmp, the opp, and the military. since the 1980s, canadian and american citizens have been inundated with a set of discourses and legislation designed to further the economic power of the elites. these discourses have evolved into an extremely powerful discursive formation that comprises the underpinnings of neoliberalism: corporate tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, free markets, and union busting. the neoliberal paradigm provides the basis for a rejuvenated class war. conservative, liberal, and even social democratic governments have supported the dismantling of public services and assets, as well as the weakening of democracy. saskatchewan, a province that for the most part was built on social democratic principles, is a case in point. saskatchewan: a case study “[t]he ndp and the saskatchewan party have accepted, to varying degrees, that labour union freedoms are antagonistic to the free market principles they both endorse” (smith, 2011, 123). the cooperative commonwealth federation (ccf) first came to power in saskatchewan in 1944, becoming the first socialist government in north america. this was the first of five straight electoral victories during which time they enacted policies and laws for the general welfare of society at large as opposed to the narrow interests of the captains of industry. led by premier tommy douglas, some of the ccf’s most notable accomplishments include the first bill of rights in north america (1947), the first arts board in north america (1948), and the rural electrification program neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 231 (1949). in 1961, the ccf evolved into the social democratic new democratic party (ndp), with closer ties to organized labor (mcgrane, 2011; laxer, 1999; whitehorn, 1992). shortly after this, the saskatchewan ndp passed what many consider to be its crowning achievement: a universal public healthcare system. during the years 1971-1982, the ndp returned to government and, led by premier al blakeney, passed progressive legislation in support of labour and the agricultural sector (blakeney, 2008). many crown corporations were created in the energy sectors, telecommunications, car insurance, and the burgeoning potash industry. in october, 1982, the 11-year rein of the saskatchewan ndp government came to an end with the election of the grant devine progressive conservatives (pc). this shift from the ndp to the pcs established the first stages of neoliberalism. during devine’s second term as premier, the pcs sold off some of saskatchewan’s crown corporations, including saskminerals and the especially lucrative potash corporation. when the pcs broke their election promise not to sell off the public utilities and attempted to sell the natural gas division of saskpower, the collectivist impulse of the saskatchewan public was activated (mcgrane, 2011). massive public sentiment against the privatization of saskpower was so intense that the pcs backed down (pitsula and rasmussen, 1990). the progressive conservatives reduced spending on social programs, curbed the power of labour unions, and brought in massive tax cuts. in 1991 voters showed their displeasure by returning the ndp to power in a landslide (pitsula and rasmussen, 1990). the roy romanow-led ndp governed with a decidedly neoliberal perspective, far removed from the strong social democratic values of the blakeney-led government of the 1970s (mcgrane, 2011; smith, 2011). romanow’s first term was marked by a massive effort to “eliminate the deficit with the social democratic goal of redistributing wealth and the need to maintain economic competitiveness in an era of globalization” (mcgrane, 2011, 95). although neoliberal policy prescriptions dominated during this first term, the ndp showed some resistance as they raised corporate taxes and introduced a progressive 10 percent deficit surtax on all taxpayers. romanow’s second and third terms, however, showed a markedly clear move toward attracting business investment simultaneously with social spending cuts. as well, corporate tax cuts and low royalties from resource extraction combined with a regressive sales tax increase (mcgrane, 2011). the ndp, long time supporters of the province’s trade union movement, did little to help organized labour during the romanow 232 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education years (smith, 2011). the ndp’s desire to be economically competitive with its alberta neighbor led to the erosion of workers’ rights, including erecting barriers to organizing unions in previously non-unionized sectors. by the end of romanow’s tenure as premier in 2001, personal income tax cuts had been added to the ndp financial plan. the strategy of tax cuts continued when lorne calvert became premier in 2001, as the governing ndp attempted wealth redistribution through raising the minimum wage and rebates from publicly owned utilities (mcgrane, 2011). despite the decrease in resource royalties and the lowering of “the corporate income tax rate from 17% to 12%” (mcgrane, 2011, 102), it was not enough for the ndp to win a fifth term. in 2007, the newly branded saskatchewan party formed government in 2007. in 2007, voters elected a new government under the moniker, the saskatchewan party, a coalition of former conservatives and liberals. the saskatchewan party, led by popular premier brad wall, embraced neoliberalism even more than grant devine’s pc government or the ndp governments of romanow and calvert. that said, the collectivist nature of saskatchewan’s political culture has resulted in a slower acceptance of neoliberalism than one might expect (mcgrane, 2011). based primarily on resource extraction and agriculture, saskatchewan has been enjoying a period of unprecedented economic prosperity for the past decade or so. since 2008, 26 percent of saskatchewan’s total government revenue is from non-renewable resources, mostly from potash and oil, which is even slightly more than what alberta derives from its non-renewable resources (enoch, 2013). because of its dependence on external capital and markets, saskatchewan is increasingly being integrated into continental and global capitalism. major problems arise when there is an over-reliance on income for government coffers from resource extraction. the cyclical nature of volatile global commodity prices results in an unstable situation in which governments cannot depend upon this income to adequately fund social programs, public healthcare and public education. saskatchewan has recently experienced this situation as “resource revenues came in $563 million lower than was expected in the 2012-13 budget,” but it was even worse in 2009 when falling potash prices resulted in a “$1.8 budget shortfall” (enoch, 2013). as predicted, the current saskatchewan government has been reducing its funding for the social welfare state, including public education and higher education (mcgrane, 2011). rampant extraction of resources is particularly hard on saskatchewan’s indigenous peoples, many of who still live off the land and neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 233 waterways. indeed, “[f]or land-based people the natural environment is the heart of their economies and their very existence” (settee, 2011, 74). this has not been a new phenomenon for the province’s indigenous peoples, however. settee (2011, 76) sums up this relationship thusly: “in spite of saskatchewan’s social democratic political tradition that emphasizes egalitarianism, colonialism has been a consistent reality for the province’s indigenous people.” clearly, colonial attitudes have informed all of saskatchewan’s provincial administrations, regardless of political ideology. this is an aspect of the political culture that must be addressed by critical pedagogy. although saskatchewan has now been governed by provincial governments influenced by neoliberalism for some thirty years, the current saskatchewan government is moving further in its priorities from the province’s social democratic and collectivist roots. indeed, saskatchewan is embracing neoliberalism more ambitiously than ever before. saskatchewan today: a neoliberal province trickle-down economics is clearly not working in saskatchewan. despite the newfound prosperity generated by the recent resource boom, the province’s poverty rate of 15.3 percent remains among the highest in canada (hunter, douglas and pedersen, 2008). also striking is the fact that this poverty is not distributed evenly across racial lines: excluding people living on reserves, aboriginal people, who comprise approximately 16 percent of saskatchewan’s population, are almost four times as likely to be living in poverty than non-aboriginals (hunter and douglas, 2006). this race/class intersection is not only the result of neoliberalism, however. indeed, it seems to be caused by long entrenched colonial attitudes among the province’s settler population (settee, 2011) the situation is especially grim with respect to child poverty. again, despite record royalties from potash and other resources, saskatchewan still has the third highest child poverty rate among canadian provinces (douglas and gingrich, 2009). in 2007, the last year for which there are accurate figures, the rate of under 18-year olds living in poverty was 16.7 percent (douglas and gingrich, 2009). child poverty is even more pronounced for aboriginal families in saskatchewan as a staggering 45 percent of aboriginal children live in low-income families, a proportion six times greater than that of non-aboriginal children. while disadvantage was less pronounced (but still significant) for metis children at 28.3 percent, an overwhelming 57.9 percent of first nations children in 234 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education saskatchewan regularly go without some of the basic necessities of life (douglas and gingrich, 2009). as race and social class are major determinants of educational achievement as well as future life chances, to be born poor and aboriginal in saskatchewan effectively condemns a person to a life of poverty. the job creator discourse has been particularly effective in normalizing neoliberalism in saskatchewan. neoliberal government policy has used this discourse to implement massive corporate tax cuts. as mentioned earlier, since the resource boom hit saskatchewan in 2007, the corporate tax rate has been reduced from 17 to 12 percent with a further 2 percent cut recently announced (enoch, 2013). as well, taxes for small businesses in saskatchewan have recently been cut from 4.5 to 2 percent, and the rate for the wealthiest individuals has been reduced to 15 percent (enoch, 2013). almost every provincial budget since 2000 highlights tax cuts as a government priority. (government of saskatchewan budgets, 2013). this significant revenue shortfall leaves the provincial government with few options. the saskatchewan government’s adherence to neoliberalism is evident in its attempts to make up some of the revenue shortfall by “raiding crown dividends, higher tuition fees, the erratic and haphazard cuts to programs and services and growing public debt” (enoch, 2013). moreover, funding cuts have been employed rather than adopting progressive tax strategies and resource royalty rates successful in places like scandinavia (moore, 20013). in 2012, the saskatchewan government further indicated its support for neoliberalism by launching an attack on labour rights. bill 85 attempted to make it much easier for employers to claim the work of their employees to be an essential service, thereby negating their collective bargaining rights. this attack, however, suffered a setback when the provincial court of queen’s bench sided with the province’s unions by declaring the province’s essential service legislation unconstitutional (ccpa, 2012). in april 2014, the saskatchewan government passed a new saskatchewan employment act, which makes union membership more difficult, and gives workers fewer rights and protections. as expected, the province’s newspapers hailed the law as a victory in which labour was outsmarted by a conservative government in a “labour war” (mandryk, 2014). another major plank in the saskatchewan government’s neoliberal agenda is its preference to privatize the commons. for example, in the melee caused by the federal conservative government’s omnibus neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 235 bill-c38, the saskatchewan government moved to privatize 1.77 million acres of community pasture lands (arbuthnot and schmutz, 2013). this move also effectively negates environmental regulations of the lands, which is consistent with the province’s stance on deregulating industry. privatization of the commons is also on the table: in october 2014, premier brad wall announced that his government is considering “the idea of allowing private companies to charge people directly for diagnostic medical scans” (french, 2014, a1). this is a major shift away from the publicly-funded medicare system that first appeared in saskatchewan in 1962. equally disturbing, the public school system is also being targeted. the neoliberal assault on saskatchewan’s public education system a major objective of canadian social democracy in its ideal form is to protect the commons, especially public education and public healthcare. the saskatchewan ndp that governed from 1991-2007 was more true to this aspect of social democracy than in other areas. the change in government to the more corporate-friendly saskatchewan party has resulted in the province’s public school system being particularly vulnerable to the neoliberal threat. inadequate funding for saskatchewan public schools has resulted in a deterioration of learning conditions for all students, but some students more than others. since 2007 education assistants for special needs students have seen their numbers reduced by 350 full-time positions at the same time that student enrollment has increased by 5,676 and special needs students rose by 764 (cupe, 2011). the decision to make these cuts during an era of economic prosperity in order to facilitate corporate and personal tax cuts seems particularly mean spirited. at the least, it is ideological. moreover, in late 2011, the saskatchewan government announced that it is “committed to funding associate [christian] schools at 80% of the provincial per-student average” (government of saskatchewan, 2011). the most visible manifestation of neoliberal influence in public education is seen in the manner in which the saskatchewan government has treated the province’s normally passive 12,000 teachers. working without a contract since august 2010, teachers responded to stalled contract negotiations by walking out of the classroom for the first time in saskatchewan’s history for a one-day strike (graham, 236 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education 2011). in early 2013, the saskatchewan government unilaterally increased the number of hours teachers spend in the classroom (french, 2013b). in may 2014, 64 percent of the province’s teachers rejected a new contract, demonstrating a degree of militancy rarely seen with this particular group of workers. the most obvious neoliberal influence, however, involves teacher accountability. in early 2013 the saskatchewan government announced plans to increase the frequency of these tests to levels beyond anywhere else in canada (french, 2013a). at a time when most jurisdictions in both canada and the u.s. are moving from standardized assessment (orlowski, 2013a), the saskatchewan education ministry stated that by 2016, “students across the province will participate in annual standardized tests, including evaluations of kindergarteners and pre-kindergarteners, readings tests for grades 1 to 3, and exams in science, math and english for students in grades 4 through 12” (couture, 2013). predictably, this led to an outcry from the saskatoon teachers association (french, 2013a). as well, education professors from the province’s two universities went public in newspapers, radio and television citing numerous studies to explain why the plan was wrong-headed (see mcvittie, 2013; orlowski, 2013; spooner and orlowski, 2013; malone, 2013). it is noteworthy that in this era of tax cuts and reduced funding for public education, the saskatchewan government earmarked $5.9 million annually for this venture. given the research, it is particularly telling that the saskatchewan government plans to spend significant tax dollars to increase the frequency of standardized exams beyond anywhere else in canada. in fact, most other provinces are moving to a random sampling approach to standardized testing (spooner and orlowski, 2013). it is also disconcerting that they are increasing testing at the same time they are reducing funding in other important areas of public education. when resistance to standardized testing strengthened, the minister of education called the term itself “too toxic,” and proceeded to rebrand this assessment strategy as “common assessment” (spooner and orlowski, 2014). this orwellian wordplay indicates the strength of support the saskatchewan government has for neoliberalism. the silence of the media on this rebranding is also telling. it should not be surprising to learn that corporate media have corporate interests. by corollary, corporate media is clearly on the side of neoliberalism. neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 237 challenging neoliberalism in the classroom: teaching for civil society as apple (2004, 14) notes: “[a]n understanding of how the control of cultural institutions enhances the power of particular classes to control others can provide needed insight into the way the distribution of culture is related to the presence or absence of power in social groups.” when it comes to understanding politics, a significant portion of the population is unable to do so; they are politically uninformed and unaware of how economic power operates. this is likely a reason why neoliberalism has been able to replace the keynesian model without very much effective resistance. in critical democracy and education, kincheloe (1999, 73) suggests using critical pedagogy so that students become politically conscious: “the curriculum becomes a dynamic of negotiation where students and teachers examine the forces that have shaped them and the society in which they live.” bearing this important point in mind, the first concept i teach in every social science methods courses to preservice teachers is ideology critique. ideology critique in order to help students understand the major political ideologies, i first have students categorize issues as either social or economic (see appendix 1). for example, on the social spectrum minority rights are on the left side, while the conservative pro-life and pro-death penalty positions are on the right. on the economic spectrum, tax cuts are on the right side, while publicly funded social welfare programs are on the left. in canada, both conservative ideology and liberal ideology are positioned on the right, although liberalism is slightly to the left of conservatism. in its ideal form social democracy is on the left side of both the social and economic spectrum. social democrats and liberals often agree on social issues. in canada, for example, the federal ndp and the liberals agree on rights for aboriginals and lgbqt people. they usually differ on economic issues, however, as their traditional stances on trade unions and free trade indicate. the social democratic ndp, however, has accepted neoliberalism. this approach allows me to demonstrate the extent to which each of the parties stands in relation to the neoliberal agenda. in this way, students comprehend that neoliberalism is an economic paradigm with significant social and political consequences. in recent years, i include a discussion of democratic socialism, and how it differs from neoliberalism and other ideologies on economic issues. by the end of every course i teach in teacher education, the student has at least a basic understanding of 238 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education political ideology in relation to various social and economic issues. the next pedagogical step is to emphasize the role of the corporate media as a hegemonic device. the case for critical media literacy media literacy can take two basic forms: one looks at the pleasures within a capitalist society and how certain groups are represented; the other looks at politics and the media’s role in shaping public opinion. this second approach is the one i focus on, especially around neoliberalism, since it enables the teacher to illuminate the effects of various hegemonic discourses used by the media that portray the poor as lazy, or public sector workers as entitled while ignoring the growing wealth gap. as herman and chomsky (1988) point out, the major role of the corporate media is to “manufacture consent,” to shape the collective consciousness in ways that further the interests of the elite. this is accomplished not only by how issues are covered, but by which issues receive coverage. there are myriad examples of the media ignoring or distorting certain events and policies if there is a perceived threat that the public might turn against the ruling classes. for example, over the past few years there has been a concerted effort in many western nations to weaken or eliminate altogether pensions plans for public sector workers. corporate media have virtually ignored the fact that the attack on pensions is occurring across most western nations. students come to understand this omission as a hegemonic strategy. another hegemonic strategy that i use in teacher education involves understanding the power of language. we are living in a time in which bias, or “spin”, has been hyperbolized to extreme proportions. as an example of current spin, the tendency to limit workers’ collective bargaining rights is not called union busting; rather, the mainstream media and neoliberal politicians refer to it as labour flexibility. lowering the minimum wage is called right-to-work legislation. the orwellian spin strategy has recently been put to good use in canada. in 2011, the federal conservative government passed a bill called “marketing freedom for grain farmers act” that effectively ended the grain price controls put in place in 1935 through the canadian wheat board. this creates a clear disadvantage for the small wheat and barley farmers. right on cue, the neoliberal national post ran a headline equating the wheat board to an “iron fist” (gunter, 2011). students were able to understand how corporate media is a hegemonic device. neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 239 a counterhegemonic strategy that i have found successful involves students accessing and assessing media sources. students demonstrate the degree to which they have become adept at explaining cultural struggles in ideological terms in their “current events” presentations. each student chooses an article from one of the mainstream newspapers or from an alternative news source such as rabble.ca, most of which come from the internet. the chosen article must address a cultural issue pertaining to race, class, gender, sexuality, war, or the environment. each student provides a 2-page written analysis to address issues of bias by showing which groups benefit and which ones lose from the given ideological perspective. they must offer their thoughts about who was quoted and why, and which affected groups were excluded. each student must also present his or her findings to the class with a four-tofive minute presentation. some students choose only articles from mainstream sources, while others willingly, even enthusiastically, search the alternative sources. this has worked well, pedagogically speaking, because students often choose articles on similar topics – climate change and the 2011 canadian election come to mind – and the ideologies emanating from mainstream and alternative sources are not difficult to discern. for another example, students compared how mainstream news and alternative media outlets differed in their coverage of the idle no more social movement. most preservice teachers i recently taught were completely unaware of the role the federal conservatives’ omnibus budget bill had on the rise of idle no more and its focus on the deregulation of canada’s fresh waterways. media bias is quite apparent with such pedagogy. these assignments offer preservice teachers a framework in which to critique the media in terms of the ideological influences of journalists. through this process, they come to understand how most mainstream media often reflect the views of powerful interests. indeed, when students challenge the language and the assumptions that many journalists use, they see how the hegemonic function of the media works in the interests of large corporations and other privileged groups. some students learn to see past the effects of a false political consciousness. in recent years, i have had students look specifically for neoliberal policy being promoted or challenged by some politicians or business representatives in the corporate media. they look for news articles discussing deregulation, privatizing the commons, unions or tax cuts and analyze the language used. the goal of this exercise is two-fold: first, to demonstrate to students the proliferation of neoliberal policies; and 240 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education second, to help them comprehend how language leads many people to believe that work stoppages are most often a result of striking workers rather than lockouts. students come to understand that the dominant discourses used in corporate media support the interests of elites over the common good; indeed, they support profits over broad, societal interests. the dominant neoliberal discourses in the corporate media over the course of neoliberalism – tax cuts, deregulation, debt reduction, cuts to social programs and free global markets – have been the building blocks for a resurgence in economic and political power for elites in north america. re-framing discourse i have recently been engaging in a more sophisticated kind of media literacy, one based on reframing political discourse from different ideological perspectives (lakoff, 2004). the basic theory behind reframing is to address the observation that people who are strongly influenced by any particular ideology find it difficult to listen to facts that might shake their beliefs. the facts do not seem to matter; the intended listener most often remains entrenched in their belief. rather than become frustrated, progressive ideologues need to use positive discourses on policy that rely on progressive values and language. in other words, rather than using the familiar frames of neoliberalism, progressives ought to use ones based on social democratic values. one example from the teacher education program may help to explain the value in reframing. for the neoliberal agenda to continue, significant numbers of poor and working-class people must vote against their own best interests, or not vote at all. the necessary reframing efforts on the part of neoliberal conservatives were successful because a commonly held belief today is that conservative ideas are populist, while liberal or progressive ideas are elitist (frank, 2012). to counter this, i use a critical pedagogy that has the preservice teachers reframe neoliberal arguments using progressive values. for example, neoliberal politicians often attack any notion of increasing the mandated minimum wage by calling it antithetical to business success. instead of defending an increase in the minimum wage, one student reframed the debate and focused on the value of prosperity for all who work hard. this is an idea that people across the ideological spectrum could support. another student produced a defense of taxes not by buying into the neoliberal frames of tax relief or taxes as burden, but by using a social democratic frame – fair tax reform – which indicates that wealthy people neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 241 and corporations should pay their fair share, and that taxes are an investment for the future prosperity of everyone’s children. this led to a reframing of a very contentious local issue that recently made headlines far beyond the university of saskatchewan. the university’s board of governors was trying to implement a major cost-cutting exercise called transformus (hill and french, 2014a). some students in my classes, all of whom were recently elected to the college of education student council, quickly organized a large student rally. they reframed the cost-cutting transformus to defendus and by all accounts, the student action was a catalyst that led to the firing of the university president (hill and french, 2014b). my students became acutely aware of the role that political agency can have in exacting positive change, and found themselves explaining to the media that the university needs to be adequately funded (see figure 1). of course, media access and media compliance are usually important obstacles to these progressive frames becoming commonly accepted. for now, however, if teachers can comprehend corporate media neoliberal discourses, they should be better able to help their students deconstruct the bias that they are experiencing. after all, a major objective of critical media literacy is to help students interpret the news rather than simply absorb it without reflection. this is a crucial pedagogical strategy to develop a political consciousness in which individuals understand and defend their own best interests. some final reflections neoliberalism replaced keynesianism in canada and the us as the dominant socio-economic and political paradigm in the 1980s and 1990s. the saskatchewan experience demonstrates that social democracy is not strong enough to withstand these powerful forces to increase corporate profits at any cost. if not social democracy, then effective resistance to neoliberalism is more likely to emanate from a social movement based on democratic socialist values. compared to other provinces, saskatchewan is in a unique position for a variety of reasons. bucking the global trend, its economy is actually growing more than ever before, thanks to the demand for natural resources the province is bestowed with. one trend the province is subscribing to in a major way, however, is its embrace of neoliberalism. saskatchewan governments ostensibly representing various political ideologies have been adhering to the major tenets of neoliberalism ever more so since the 1980s. these include deregulation of private industry, 242 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the dismantlement of the public sector, corporate tax cuts, privatization of the commons, and the curtailment of free collective bargaining rights for workers. neoliberalism has had particularly grave consequences for saskatchewan’s public school system. tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations mean fewer dollars for the public school system and more private schooling. moreover, the current attack on the province’s teachers and their union is also in keeping with the neoliberal doctrine. paradoxically, the deregulation of private enterprise is occurring simultaneously with increased teacher accountability. this highlights the insidious discourse of neoliberalism; namely, that private enterprise is to be trusted while the opposite is true of public workers such as teachers. it is also unconscionable that saskatchewan’s aboriginal peoples have not been given the same opportunities to benefit from the relatively prosperous economy. the long history of white settler racism toward aboriginal peoples in the province and elsewhere is still clearly present. yet, where there is power, there is also resistance. the idle no more movement is a case in point. this is where hope resides, even in a province that has long held onto colonial values, and seemingly accepted the neoliberal doctrine. perhaps the citizens of saskatchewan, including its teachers, are waking up to the fact that public services and assets are not to be taken for granted. in fact, the social democratic drift toward neoliberalism in saskatchewan might suggest that democratic socialism may be a more viable alternative to the dismantling of oppositional groups, unions and progressive social forces more generally. appendix a an effective way for students to understand political ideology is to consider all issues as either economic or social. economic issues are those that represent significant amounts of money, while social issues do not. for example, capital punishment is a social issue while tax reform is an economic issue. the case can be made that some issues are both social and economic – healthcare is a case in point – yet, to save on getting mired in semantics, the basic economic/social distinction is useful. with political ideologies and political issues divided into the economic and the social, students are able to make headway around why certain media are called left-wing by some, and the very same neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 243 media outlets are called right-wing or right-leaning by others. for example, during the past few federal elections in canada, leaders of the federal liberal party appeal to social democrats (that is, supporters of the new democratic party) as having values that have appeared out of the same concerns for justice, and that their vote should switch to the liberals. the truth of the matter is that on social issues, they are correct. on economic issues, however, the two parties diverge significantly – the liberals are to the right of center, closer to where the conservative party are positioned, while the ndp are to the left of centre. (note: the point about the liberal party being left-wing on social issues and right-wing on economic issues is rarely mentioned in the corporate media.) figure 1: left and right on the social and economic spectra 29 point about the liberal party being left-wing on social issues and right-wing on economic issues is rarely mentioned in the corporate media.) figure 1: left and right on the social and economic spectra assignment 1. research the platforms of the following saskatchewan political parties: – the saskatchewan party the new democratic party 2. research the platforms of the following canadian political parties: – the liberal party – the conservative party – the new democratic party social lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i pro-choice pro-life anti-death penalty pro-death penalty pro minority rights anti-minority rights economic lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i strong social welfare state anti social welfare state pro publicly funded universal healthcare for profit healthcare pro-union anti-union wealthy pay tax at a higher rate tax cuts for all assignment 1. research the platforms of the following saskatchewan political parties: the saskatchewan party the new democratic party 29 point about the liberal party being left-wing on social issues and right-wing on economic issues is rarely mentioned in the corporate media.) figure 1: left and right on the social and economic spectra assignment 1. research the platforms of the following saskatchewan political parties: – the saskatchewan party the new democratic party 2. research the platforms of the following canadian political parties: – the liberal party – the conservative party – the new democratic party social lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i pro-choice pro-life anti-death penalty pro-death penalty pro minority rights anti-minority rights economic lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i strong social welfare state anti social welfare state pro publicly funded universal healthcare for profit healthcare pro-union anti-union wealthy pay tax at a higher rate tax cuts for all 244 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education 2. research the platforms of the following canadian political parties: • the liberal party • the conservative party • the new democratic party • the bloc quebecois • the green party of canada 3. use the social scale or the economic scale to place the various political parties. be prepared to explain why you placed each one where you did. (i) the two main saskatchewan political parties (ii) the five main canadian federal political parties 30 – the bloc quebecois – the green party of canada 3.use the social scale or the economic scale to place the various political parties. be prepared to explain why you placed each one where you did. (i) the two main saskatchewan political parties (ii) the five main canadian federal political parties (iii) using a separate set of axes to represent the economic and social scales, place the letter representing each of the following issues on one of the scales. be prepared to explain why you placed each one where you did. a – capital punishment b – increased rights of gay people c – allowing industry to self-regulate d – tax cuts for all e – increased funding for public education f – pro-life (on abortion issue) g – pro-choice (on abortion issue) h – government regulations of the financial industry social lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i social scale economic lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i (iii) using a separate set of axes to represent the economic and social scales, place the letter representing each of the following issues on one of the scales. be prepared to explain why you placed each one where you did. 30 – the bloc quebecois – the green party of canada 3.use the social scale or the economic scale to place the various political parties. be prepared to explain why you placed each one where you did. (i) the two main saskatchewan political parties (ii) the five main canadian federal political parties (iii) using a separate set of axes to represent the economic and social scales, place the letter representing each of the following issues on one of the scales. be prepared to explain why you placed each one where you did. a – capital punishment b – increased rights of gay people c – allowing industry to self-regulate d – tax cuts for all e – increased funding for public education f – pro-life (on abortion issue) g – pro-choice (on abortion issue) h – government regulations of the financial industry social lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i social scale economic lw rw i_______________________________________________i___________________________________________i a – capital punishment b – increased rights of gay people c – allowing industry to self-regulate d – tax cuts for all e – increased funding for public education f – pro-life (on abortion issue) g – pro-choice (on abortion issue) h – government regulations of the financial industry i – increased military spending neoliberalism, its effects on saskatchewan, and a teacher educator’s response | 245 j – increased social welfare spending k – private or 2-tiered healthcare system l – subsidized daycare m – the idle no more movement n – “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” philosophy o – support for unions p – banning sex education in schools q – honouring aboriginal land treaties r – support for public transit s – progressive tax reform (eg., raising taxes on large corporations) t – support for using replacement workers during a strike figure 1: college of education, university of saskatchewan students protest transformus cost-cutting exercise (2014, may 21) 246 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education references albo, g. and fanelli, c. 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(1992). canadian socialism: essays on the ccf-ndp. toronto, on: oxford. “between a rock and a hard place” | 251 “between a rock and a hard place”: negotiating the neoliberal regulation of social work practice and education teresa macías1 abstract: in this paper, i reflect on the neoliberalization of social service and educational institutions by using as a departure point a recent province of alberta health services (ahs) corporate directive instructing social work schools to implement training on standardized reporting and investigation protocols in cases of “adult abuse and neglect” as a condition for student placement and employment. the neoliberalization of practice, i propose, is articulated through corporate-oriented and professional competency discourses, which together with ongoing processes of restructuring in social work institutions, submit social work to a governmental regime that shapes practice and social workers as neoliberal. the neoliberalization of practice occurs in coordination with similar processes taking place in the university in which professional programs, such as social work, are being constituted and regulated through market-driven educational discourses and the neoliberal re-structuring of the university. the author argues that the neoliberalization of social work practice and education is posing important challenges for educators committed to critical pedagogical projects in social work. these challenges require a commitment to ongoing pedagogical practices that promote and foment critical thinking and commitments to social change situated in the political contingencies of neoliberalism. keywords: neoliberalism, education, social work, alberta health services 1  teresa macías is assistant professor at the school of social work, york university. she earned a ph.d. from the ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto for her thesis entitled “on the pawprints of terror”: the human rights regime and the production of truth and subjectivity in post-authoritarian chile. her research deals with national processes for addressing and accounting for gross human rights violations such as forced disappearances and torture through devices such as truth commissions and compensation policies. her research and teaching interests also include professional and research ethics, nation and identity making, governmentality, and anti-oppressive and anti-colonial practice and teaching methods. the author would like to acknowledge the invaluable editorial work and research assistantship of catherine van mossel and anna lerner, as well as the invaluable feedback of the anonymous reviewers. 252 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education introduction recently, the province of alberta health services (ahs) issued a “corporate directive” (hereafter referred as the directive) instructing schools of social work wishing to place students in their programs to comply with the education requirements of their “adult abuse and neglect” policy. under the title keeping everyone safe, the directive aimed at targeting “efforts to increase ahs representatives’ knowledge about patient abuse prevention, awareness and reporting” in order to maintain “safety” as one of ahs’s “core values” (2012a, 1). the directive indicated that in order for students to be able to do placements and/or be employed in ahs, social work curriculum needed to include information, knowledge and skills related to awareness, prevention and reporting of adult abuse and neglect. specifically, students had to be trained, not on assessment and counselling – generally associated with social work clinical skills – but rather on standardized reporting protocols, investigation techniques and discipline procedures, as well as on the detection and management of the risk associated with allegations of “patient abuse by ahs representatives.” social work curriculum, the directive indicated, was also expected to train social workers in the provincial “internal” and “mandatory” reporting procedures in order to ensure “a standardized approach to business and operating practices” as well as “quality service and cost-efficient operations” (2012a, 1). the directive is part of a current trend in canada and other western countries in which social work practice is being subjected to disciplinary devices. these devices include managerial technologies that minutely regulate practice processes and outcomes, and remove discretion and decision-making powers from the hands of social workers and their clients; changes to budget formulas that reorient social service provisions towards corporate models of cost-effectiveness and efficiency; evidence-based practice models that focus practice towards the achievement of deliverable outcomes; and, entry-level competency profiles that regulate professional registration and licensing, facilitate the labour mobility of social workers and introduce standardized conceptions of practice (rossiter and heron, 2011; aronson and hemingway, 2011). in this paper i argue that these disciplinary, regulatory and standardizing technologies – of which the directive is a case in point – are part of a process of transformation that, not only is turning social work into a tool of neoliberalism, but also is producing social work and social workers as neoliberal. furthermore, the expectations of social service institutions that universities train social workers in standardized, evidence and “between a rock and a hard place” | 253 competency-based practice models converge with similar processes of neoliberalization underway in higher education. the effect of this is the alignment of social work and social work education with a neoliberal regime whose goal is to squeeze critical practice and educational projects out of social work, and shape social workers and educators to become neoliberal subjects. i use a foucaultian notion of governmentality, which i discuss in the first section of the paper, as a useful conceptual tool for charting neoliberalization processes at macro and micro levels in practice and education (foucault, 2007). a governementality framework allows us not only to understand neoliberalism as a politico-economic and social system, but also to theorize it as an onto-epistemological project that consistently shapes social environments, social policies, state institutions, and the subject that is captured and lives within these environments, policies and institutions. in the second part of this paper, i discuss the neoliberalization of practice by using the directive as a starting point to explore how the social work practice discourses it contains, as well as its location within ongoing institutional changes, work to align social work and social workers with a neoliberal governmentality. in the third part of this paper, i make my way from practice to education and describe how instruments such as the directive and the recently instituted entrylevel competency profile for social workers in canada (ccswr, 2012) find a receptive environment in universities that are themselves also being subjected to processes of neoliberalization. i pay attention to the governmental effects of neoliberalism in the daily work of academics and the effects of neoliberalism for critical social work pedagogical projects. in the concluding section, i explore some of the possible pedagogical, political and ethical commitments that a resistance to neoliberalism necessitates from critical social work educators. this paper is not intended to be an exhaustive analysis of the ahs directive or of health, welfare or education reform. nor is the paper intended as a condemnation of adult abuse and neglect policies. rather, the paper is a reflection of how instruments such as the ahs directive use discourses of abuse and neglect prevention to sneak neoliberalism into practice and education and subject practitioners and educators to its regulation and discipline. while these kinds of instruments are a manifestation of neoliberal discourses that produce and regulate practice and pedagogical encounters, their power lies in their consistency with institutional reforms underway in social service institutions and in the university. 254 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education neoliberalism as a governmental regime in the field of political economy, neoliberalism is generally associated with a western economic model that, since the 1990s, has prompted a wide array of structural social, political and economic reforms. neoliberalism is responsible for the deregulation of the market, the expansion of financial capitalism, the imposition of free-market economies in the global south, the submission of the state to the needs of the economy, the advancement of neoconservative agendas, the privileging of corporate interests over community interests, and the reduction of state responsibility for marginalized and vulnerable populations (brenner and theodore, 2002; garrett 2010; mahon, 2008). neoliberalism leads to welfare reform whereby universal systems of social support and benefits are dismantled to give way to means-tested programs that reduce benefits and increase regulation, police and individual responsibility (mcdonald and marston, 2005; teghtsoonian, 2009). as a result, brown (2005, 46) argues, neoliberalism creates a significant rupture in the historical “modest ethical gap” between economy and polity leading to what wallace and pease (2011) suggest is the loss of state-centred institutions and the distribution of social theories that install the idea of the moral blindness and impartiality of the market (bauman, 2000; 2001; davies and bansel, 2007; lemke, 2002; rose, 1996). while the impact of neoliberalism on state, economic and social institutions becomes readily observable through a structural institutional analysis, neoliberalism reflects some critical conditions that are not easily explainable through a purely top-down analysis of neoliberalism as repressive power, or as a hegemonic ideology that sustains false consciousness. as dey (2014) observes, analyses that overemphasize the role of institutions, privilege an understanding of power as purely repressive, or promote a conception of neoliberalism as simply an ideological untruth can make us blind to the multiple ways in which power circulates through social relations, how it produces truth, and how power relations and truth regimes shape the subject. a purely institutional analysis, for example, can result in overlooking an important condition of neoliberalism: its effects in producing subjects that, while suffering the detrimental effects of neoliberal de/ regulation, nevertheless internalize neoliberal discourses and use them to understand themselves and others as rational, calculative, enterprising, and individually responsibilized subjects (brown 2005; burchell, 1996). “between a rock and a hard place” | 255 foucault (2007) proposed governmentality as a conceptual framework to interrogate state power not only in its institutional and political manifestations, but also in its effects at the level of individual life and human relations. as lemke (2008) indicates, governmentality is part of foucault’s larger preoccupation with the interrelation of power, knowledge and subjectivity and it cannot be divorced from foucault’s concern with the discursive constitution of the subject. thus, governmentality, burchell (1996, 20) suggests, refers to a “contact point” between techniques of domination applied through the state apparatus and techniques of the self deployed through subjectivity discourses. therefore, while not rejecting a structural analysis, governmentality opens an opportunity for conceptualizing neoliberalism as a complexity of social power relations and material elements sustained by truth regimes that reach from the centrality of the state to the very soul of the subject/ citizen (foucault, 2007; burchell, 1996; gordon, 1991; miller and rose, 2008). further, a governmental framework uncovers neoliberalism’s reliance on the deployment of power-knowledge devices that, rather than describing, produce a reality and the subject who inhabits that reality. governmentality allows us to see the onto-epistemological project that is neoliberalism and its efforts to explicitly and specifically produce the social environment and the subject who becomes known, and knows herself, within that environment. brown (2005, 42) argues that neoliberalism not only defines, but also interpolates the subject to become homo economicus who, by adopting neoliberal technologies of self, comes into being through highly prescribed discourses of rationality and calculability that “equate moral responsibility with rational action.” as rose (1999, 152) adds, neoliberalism introduces a market rationality into discourses of subjectivity making it possible for subjects to “translate their activities into financial terms, to seek to maximize productivity… to cut out waste, to restructure activities that [are] not cost-effective, to choose between priorities in terms of their relative costs and benefits, to become more or less like a financial manager of their own professional activities.” through these subject-making discourses, subjects can experience the mutually sustaining technologies of abandonment and regulation that result from neoliberal reform as conditions that foster their personal choice and individual freedom. a governmental conceptual framework is, therefore, useful for my exploration of the neoliberalization of social work because it allows me to situate documents and policies such as the ahs directive in the context of ongoing institutional neoliberal changes taking place in 256 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education social work institutions and the university. it also makes possible the exploration of these policies as devices that contain, articulate, deploy and distribute neoliberal power-knowledge in order to minutely produce and regulate practice and educational encounters and the subjects that participate in them. as i argue in the next two sections of this paper, the directive reflects not only neoliberal institutional changes, but also renders practice and practitioners, as well as education and educators explicitly thinkable, knowable and governable in ways that are coherent with the neoliberal regime (miller and rose, 1990). i begin the next section with a brief analysis of the ahs directive in order to render explicit the discourses of practice and professional subjectivity manifested within its text and to situate it within the ongoing institutional neoliberal transformation of social work practice and the neoliberal regulation of social work practitioners. the ahs corporate directive and the neoliberalization of practice the neoliberalization of social work practice can be observed in the way in which instruments such as the directive delineate a discursive field of action for social work and produce and organize professional encounters and ideal professional performance. the directive, for instance, seizes discourses of safety and abuse prevention and binds them to neoliberal practice discourses of calculability, objectivity, risk management and standardization. practice becomes neoliberal by producing health services as restricted and organized around principles of cost-efficient, standardized approaches to “business and operating practices,” which have as their main objective the calculation and management of risk and the reduction of personal bias through the imposition of standardized practice processes (2012a, 1). risk management, parton (1999) suggests, shifts the focus of practice from meeting the needs of service users to the assessment and calculation of cost and liability. risk, he continues, “gives the impression of calculability and objectivity” (102), concepts that become perfectly logical within neoliberal discourses of cost-benefit calculations that submit social work to the market mentality that, brown (2005, 40) observes, characterize neoliberalism’s constructive project. neoliberal market rationalities are sustained by discourses of practise standardization that reduce risk associated with social workers who either over-step professional boundaries or exercise personalized judgement. discourses of standardization capture “between a rock and a hard place” | 257 interpersonal and potentially unpredictable social work relationships within a rationality of objectivity, predictability, calculability and rational action. for example, a literature review prepared by ahs to support the formulation of the directive (2012b, 4) identifies carefully circumscribed practice and policy approaches with regards to “physical interaction,” “same sex” chaperoning, “knock and enter policies,” and staff “screening.” we see here the careful management of practice encounters in which the bodies of professionals and clients are placed and regulated according to minutely staged practice procedures that can be assessed and calculated according to their capacity to comply with standards of practice. furthermore, we see the disciplinary work of practice discourses that indicate, for example, that staff screening should “go beyond criminal record checks, and include screening for past interpersonal violence, stress, emotional instability, substance abuse and previous complaints of abuse” (4). abuse and neglect become the result of individualized actions, errors in judgment, and personal miscalculations and deviance. these conditions can be prevented and eliminated through the imposition of carefully regulated practice standards, and through careful screening and institutional disciplinary actions taking place within the context of a market mentality dominated by market-oriented discourses of cost efficiency. a significant objective of standardized practice discourses is the elimination of personal and cultural bias by creating apparently objective definitions of abuse manageable through regulated practice. for example, using child abuse literature the literature review mentioned above states that a major obstacle to effective recognition of abuse and neglect is “the [service] provider’s personal and cultural values (when child-rearing practices are viewed through his/her own set of lenses based on his/her personal upbringing and own set of cultural values) conflicting with legal [and institutional] definitions of abuse” (ahs, 2012b, 3, emphasis added). the solution to this potential conflict is the constitution of standardized and apparently unbiased and objective definitions of abuse and the distribution of this definition – for which it is necessary to recruit the assistance of the university – to each and every practitioner. while personal and cultural bias are produced here as dangerous risk, the neoliberal and historically specific discursive construction of notions of abuse and practice, along with the manner in which these discourses are already embedded in white, middle class and heteronormative values, are disguised under apparently objective legal and institutional definitions. 258 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education it is important to restate that it is not the prevention of adult abuse and neglect that i question in this analysis, but rather how such prevention is articulated exclusively in a neoliberal framework of practice. the regulatory, disciplinarian and normalizing bureaucratic processes these practices enact on the populations that are subjected to them, and on social work professionals who enact them, are obscured when standardized, cost-efficient and risk-managerial approaches are unproblematically presented as unbiased and objective solutions to abuse (drinkwater, 2005; waldschmidt, 2005). furthermore, the modest headways that anti-racist, anti-colonial and culturally aware approaches to practice have made in social work become null when cultural values are produced as the cause of abuse and neglect, and practice is subjected to market-driven calculability. the constitution of social work subjectivities is a critical effect of the neoliberalization of social work. such constitution is mediated through discourses of self-regulation and competency that effectively produce social workers as policing agents, individually responsible for their own actions and as well as for the regulation and policing of others. for instance, the directive instructs social workers to adopt behaviours of self-discipline and self-alignment (through the adoption and incorporation of the standard practices already discussed) as well as to engage in the surveillance of others, including potentially abusive and culturally biased colleagues and unscrupulous patients (ahs, 2012a, 3). visible is the discursive production of the “competent professional” who is skilled in the identification, calculation and elimination of personal bias and the identification of abusive behaviour; knowledgeable and competent in relation to standard reporting and risk reducing protocols; and capable of identifying clients who are lying about abuse experiences. competency, understood along the lines set up by the directive, becomes a marker of rationality and prudence that is akin, as brown (2005, 42) suggests, with neoliberal discourses of subjectivity embedded in “rational deliberation,” “individual responsibility” and risk management. in fact, the calculation, management and individualization of risk in cases of abuse become not simply a matter of social or institutional policy, but come to define the moral behaviour of social workers. the directive is embedded within ongoing neoliberalization processes taking place in social work institutions that sustain, and are sustained by, the practice discourses manifested in the directive. in addition to the welfare reform strategies already mentioned, the social work field is being relentlessly shaped as neoliberal through, for “between a rock and a hard place” | 259 example, power-knowledge regimes that reconstitute the welfare state as excessively costly both economically and socially in order to justify not only budget cuts and the privatization of care, but also the reconceptualization of funding structures and state responsibility (ferguson and lavalette, 2004; garrett 2010). social workers experience budget cuts and the restructuring of funding programs that shift funding regimes from core-funding to project-based funding (ogbor, 2001), and from funding concerned with the support of vulnerable populations to funding concerned with enticing, if not forcing, those populations into the labour market (morrow, hankivsky and varcoe, 2004). social workers are required, within these regimes, to work under conditions of increasing insecurity and vulnerability (baines, 2006; smith, 2007). they are also required to negotiate regimes of practice that are increasingly concerned with regulation, surveillance and control of marginalized and vulnerable populations, and with the valorization of human action almost exclusively through discourses of productivity and individual responsibilization and autonomy (morrow et al., 2004; pulkingham, fuller, and kershaw, 2010; teghtsoonian, 2009). women, especially women raising children, the poor, racialized minorities, peoples with disabilities, and other marginalized groups, bear the brunt of these neoliberalizing processes; they experience most concretely the direct effects of a neoliberal regime that criminalizes poverty and need, privatizes responsibility and individualizes the social effects of neoliberalism (moffatt, 1999; mcdonald and marston, 2005; melamed, 2006). under these conditions, social work becomes not simply a social institution required to negotiate the neoliberal regime. rather, it is itself shaped as neoliberal through, for example, the submission of practice to managerial policies, corporate discourses of cost-efficiency and evidence-based models that intimately regulate helping relationships (dominelli, 2009). the recently instituted “entry-level competency profile for social workers in canada” developed and imposed by the canadian council of social work regulators (2012) is another case in point. the profile summarizes the skills and competencies that social workers in canada should demonstrate in order to qualify for registration in the professional colleges and for practice in any of the provinces. disguised within discourses about the need to create high quality standardized systems of practice – practice discourses very much in tune with the directive – this competency profile combines some of the standardised practice discourses i have already discussed with efforts to submit social work to neoliberal labour discourses of mobility, flexibility, insecurity 260 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education and market dependability (rossiter and heron, 2011; aronson and hemingway, 2011). as is the case with the directive, the social worker in the competency profile is the worker capable of “skilful” engagement in the management, regulation and standardized discipline of populations. yet, as is the case with most other examples of how neoliberalism represents itself, these determined social functions of social work are presented as devoid of ideology, as simply the ‘natural’ and most commonsensical way of doing social work, and as a set of de-politicized, rational, objective and evidence-based techniques. the neoliberalization of social work is also supported by the introduction of technologically mediated reporting, assessment and managerial technologies such as computer business systems (cbs’s), computer databases, and managerial systems that not only capture the work of social workers within complex information technologies, but also dictate the outcome of practice in ways that are removed from the actual interpersonal relationships historically so central to the work of helping (harris 2003, wallace and pease, 2011). as head (2014, 5) observes in his book on the use of cbs’s in white collar professions and human service work, these systems introduce industrial “regimes of quantification, targeting and control” into decisions regarding how many patients or clients or, in the context of the university, how many students should be processed within a system of work that resembles the industrial production line. the central effect of these technologies is the production of mindless, or, as head calls them, “dumber” professionals whose practice does not require much more than imputing information and following direction. technology mediated assessment and practice tools and their related standardized competency profiles and evidence based practice discourses, in turn, render social work practice, and the professionals and clients in them, permanently visible within managerial regimes concerned with the minute calculation of practice (morgan and payne, 2002; tsui and cheung, 2004; van heugten, 2011), and with the shaping of social work along discourses of marketability (o’connor, 2002). managerialism, as is the case with computerized practice and assessment technologies, produce social workers not as expert professionals capable of independent thought and judgement, but as workers whose expertise and thinking abilities are not only unnecessary, but also discouraged. most importantly, managerialism conceptualizes society as market. as tsui and cheung (2004, p. 439) argue: “managerialism views society as a market with competing interests, not a community with a common goal. in a market, the important “between a rock and a hard place” | 261 elements are supply, demand and price; not support, dignity and peace. market value is the ultimate standard for decision making. managers care about the profit of the enterprise, not the benefit of clients. their pursuit is market share, not sharing. they work for being well, not for the well-being of others. the spirit of community and the value of society have been shelved and replaced by commercial principle – the maximization of profits.” neoliberalism, as deployed through technologies of practice and management, seeks to shape the very subjectivities of social workers and how they think of themselves, their practice and their encounters and relationships with clients. as garrett (2010, 343) observes, the aim of neoliberalism is to install a “new ‘common sense’” and to ensure that social workers not only “begin to think and act in a manner which is conducive to neoliberalism,” but also experience neoliberal governmentality as something to be freely embraced. “the political and economic aspiration,” continues garrett, is “to prompt a cultural shift even, perhaps, to change the soul [of social workers]” (garrett, 2003). neoliberalism shows its onto-epistemological character in social work not only in the way in which social work regulates, disciplines and cares or fails to care for certain life, but also in the manner in which it installs powerknowledge regimes that produce desirable conduct and shape both practice and practitioner. consequently, while authors such as green (2009) suggest that the management models imposed through neoliberalism interfere with wise or ethical professional action, a governmental analysis allows us to argue that neoliberalism has the capacity to delineate the very notion of morality and ethics and the subject that engages in moral and ethical practice. the neoliberal university the directive arrived in my email inbox through the general counsel office of the university where i taught at the time, attached to a message that clearly and succinctly instructed the school to comply with its expectations “to have specific content on adult abuse and neglect in our curriculum for our students to be able to practice in the alberta health services” (p. miller, personal communication, june 14, 2012). the directive generated mixed responses among my colleagues, with some faculty wholeheartedly embracing and actively searching for ways to comply with its expectations, and others expressing not only concern about its contents, but also frustration and incredulity at the audacity of an agency telling us how to do our job. these discussions 262 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education reflected long-standing debates taking place in the university over the role and function of education and its relationship to the labour market. in social work, these debates have, for the most part, been characterized by discussions over whether social work education should teach clinical and competency skills or theory and critical thinking skills (burke, 1996; moffatt, 2001). pedagogical approaches that centre the teaching of professional competencies advance the idea that technical knowledge and practices skills prepare practitioners for ‘good’, objective, transparent and evidence based practice, and reduce the potential of harm to client populations (cheetham and chivers, 2005). as bogo, mishna, and regehr (2011, 276), for instance, argue, the teaching of “competence models can provide a transparent blueprint of what students can expect to learn, what teachers will ensure is provided, what practitioners have a responsibility to master, and what consumers and policymakers can expect” from the social work profession. conversely, critical approaches to social work education insist on unpacking the social power relations that determine the living conditions of individuals and communities and inform and delimit helping relationships (baines, 2006; de montigny, 1995; fook, 2003; gilbert & powell, 2009; ife, healy, spratt, and solomon, 2004; lindsay, 1994). in other words, critical social work approaches adhere to a political commitment to considering the social power relations (racism, patriarchy, class inequality, colonialism, heteronormativity, etc.) that inform individual conditions, resisting individualizing conceptions of social problems, and working with individuals and communities towards social change. this commitment is reflected in anti-oppressive, anti-racist, feminist, class conscious, anti-colonial, etc. approaches to social work practice that politicize social problems and seek to create socially conscious, flexible and creative helping relationships. the purpose of critical social work is not simply to graduate readily employable social workers who can blindly follow the rules, but also to produce professionals capable of unpacking normative practice discourses and resisting oppressive social structures. furthermore, critical social work turns the analytical gaze towards the profession itself in order to unpack professional complicity in historical and contemporary conditions of injustice and to uncover how the reliance on skills and competency helps to secure hegemonic professional identities. as jeffery (2005, 411) suggests, within a profession historically charged with the “benevolent treatment of society’s marginalized and ‘unfortunate’ individuals and groups,” demands for skills “between a rock and a hard place” | 263 and competencies are not only unsurprising, but also speak to a deeply embedded professional identity centred on the premise that the capacity to ‘skilfully do’ social work intimately defines who social workers become (see also heron 2007; margolin, 1997). by interrogating the very conception of competency skills and their reliance on what schick (1998, 277) calls “technical-rational solutions,” critical social work interrogates the impetus demonstrated in competency-based training programs to “entrench and privilege a unitary and specific understanding of social work theory, practice, and education” (campbell, 2011, 311; campbell and whitmore, 2004; fook, 2011; martinell and jacobsson, 2012). as campbell (2011, 312) argues, competency-based educational approaches are grounded on un-examined assumptions that social workers share or should share the same values and ethics and that social work knowledge can be captured within a set of “pre-defined, discrete, measurable tasks.” critical approaches to social work education, therefore, promote learning experiences that not only explore the power relations at work in helping and social workers’ complicity in the perpetuations of conditions of social injustice, but also entice students to explore their own motivations to become social workers and to find security in the acquisition of competency skills (jeffery and nelson, 2011). at first sight, competency-based and clinical social work education programs with their focus on teaching technical knowledge appear to be well-equipped to meet the expectations included in the directive and to impart knowledge that can ensure standardized, cost-efficient practice. yet, i would argue that neoliberalism is specifically shaping education, including competency-based education, within a market driven rationality that might not be what proponents of competencybased social work education intend. the neoliberalization of social work is sustained not only by the changes in practice i previously discussed, but also by similar processes of neoliberal transformation underway in the university itself that facilitate the unobstructed transition of the directive and the power-knowledge regimes it contains and advances, from practice to education. neoliberalizing processes in the university are insidiously shaping higher education, undermining critical pedagogical approaches, including critical social work, while capturing and re-constituting professional and competency-based education as neoliberal (van heugten, 2011). neoliberalism results in concrete structural and material conditions in the university such as, for example, the proletarianization of education through increased numbers of seasonal instructors who labour for low 264 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education pay and under insecure working conditions; the introduction of corporate, business oriented approaches to the management, evaluation and regulation of universities and their research and educational agendas; and, the reconstitution of education along consumer-driven, customer service and profit-seeking neoliberal values (canaan and shumar, 2008; church, 2008; naidoo, 2008). these material and structural conditions are combined with an increased emphasis on profit and the corporatization of the university that require departments to increase registration while confronting budget restrictions and reductions as well as to implement auditing techniques and funding formulas that are dependent on economic impact (ball, 2012; shore, 2010).2 while economic restructuring and budget cuts are at times presented as the result of crises, discourses of efficiency, streamlining and efficacy attach themselves to crisis discourses and in more insidious ways shape the neoliberal university (lewis, 2008). neoliberalization shapes the nature of university education though the articulation of, for example, discourses of ‘human capital’ and ‘knowledge-based global economy’ that capitalize knowledge and turn education from the pursuit of knowledge into an individualized consumer-driven pursuit for profit (shore, 2010). “attached to this sense of schools as producers of ‘human capital,’” argues apple (2006, 23), “is an equally crucial cultural agenda [that] involves radically changing how we think of ourselves and what the goals of schooling should be.” along with the reorientation of universities towards international markets, which conjures up old colonial forms of knowledge production and distribution, as lim, duggan and muñoz (2010, 133) argue, “the intensification of professional training as a first priority is also helping to promote profit, entrepreneurial innovation, and university brand names.” this shift becomes perfectly logical for, as lyotard observes, “the question now asked by the professionalist student, the state or institutions of higher education is no longer ‘is it true?’ but ‘what use is it?’” (cited in ahmed, 2012, 84). lewis (2008, 46) observes that the neoliberal restructuring of higher education “is not serendipitous. it has been triggered by specific political and economic shifts in ideology that are making a global sweep and catching education up in its wake, not by coincidence but because the 2  for example, many universities in canada have implemented tools such as the “academic and administrative program reviews.” informed by the us dickeson approach, these program reviews are founded on the economic theoretical premise that periods of scarcity and austerity offer the perfect opportunity for ‘refocusing’ and prioritizing funding in educational programs (dickeson, 2010). “between a rock and a hard place” | 265 control of education is a significant component of the process.” in social work, neoliberalism finds expression in competency-based educational discourses that, as van heugten (2011) argues, emphasize the standardization of taken-for-granted professional practices. while these professional practices gain dominance, they are themselves being produced as tools for the introduction of economic and neoliberal imperatives into social work education. as rossiter and heron (2011, 306) suggest, neoliberalism captures competency-based social work education and shapes it to conform to normative discourses of labour flexibility and market calculability and dependability that “eliminate the intellectual and ethical foundations of the profession in favour of rudderless behaviours.” the alignment of the curriculum with neoliberal governmentality serves, as giroux (2002) observes, to discredit and sacrifice social justice interests, override democratic agendas and regulate intellectual curiosity in favour of producing education as totally dependent on market relations (comaroff and comaroff, 2001). therefore, competency-based education becomes, van heugten (2011, 175) continues, the ‘trojan horse’ “via which an emphasis on competency, skills, essentialist ideology, and knowledge for practice in agencies will squeeze critical social science and critical scientists out of the social work academy.” within the neoliberal university, social work curriculum is expected to produce social workers who can simply follow the neoliberal rules of the game and conduct themselves uncritically within established neoliberal practice models. education is supposed to train social workers who can apply the neoliberal welfare reform policies already mentioned in ways that have concrete material consequences for peoples and communities with which social workers come into contact (garrett, 2003, 2010; lymbery, 2003; rosenman, 2007). furthermore, the neoliberalization of social work education results in the technocratization of social work teaching in which professional training becomes about the transference of technical skills and competencies. through the work of teaching, neoliberalism ultimately produces the academic subject who lives and works in the neoliberal university and who, through the already mentioned processes of regulation, management, and reporting of research and teaching labour, herself is disciplined into becoming a neoliberal subject. as gill (2010) observes, academic capitalism and the corporate university are insidiously shaping academic work, creating conditions not only for the intensification of academic work – through institutional expectations that academics do more with less – but also its extensification, understood as the virtual elimination of the academic office walls and the expectations that academic work will be done anywhere 266 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education and everywhere. computer mediated technologies such as moodle and their application to teaching models such as online teaching, with their accompanying discourses of ‘accessibility’ and teaching “innovation,” play a critical role in insidiously shaping the kind of neoliberal scholars we are required to become. as gill (2010, chapter 17, para. 12) continues, a critical analysis of neoliberalism in the university “directs our attention to new and emerging forms of discipline, which operate as technologies of selfhood that bring into being the endless self-monitoring, planning, prioritizing ‘responsibilized’ subject required by the contemporary university.” in addition to the structural and institutional constraints and discursive shifts previously identified, neoliberalism infiltrates education by informing the kinds of encounters we experience in the classroom. students, especially those already practicing in the field, come into social work classrooms already experiencing neoliberal regulation and, as a result, their expectations that we teach them competency skills and the standardized practice protocols contained in the directive are not surprising. additionally, if we accept that neoliberalism insidiously produces subjectivities, we can see how students come into the classroom already being produced as neoliberal subjects. in my teaching experience, i have several times been confronted with resistance on the part of students to course content, resistance that is expressed in marketdriven language that allows students to argue, for example, that the critical thinking skills i teach ‘are not what they are paying for,’ or that they ‘are not getting their money’s worth’ in the course. this language of the market makes it perfectly logical to question curriculum content that challenges neoliberalism and the historical role of social work and its foundation on race, gender and class conditions of inequality, for example. in neoliberal governmentality, the ideal citizen is the consumer citizen and subjectivity expressed in the language of the market becomes perfectly logical and commonsensical. as lim et al. (2010, 131) argue, neoliberal “common sense is the water and [students] are the fish.” conclusion as the title of this paper suggests, neoliberalism is placing critical social work and its pedagogical projects between “a rock and a hard place.” we, those committed to critical social work, are being squeezed between relentless processes of neoliberal welfare and institutional restructuring taking place in social and human service institutions, and similar neoliberalization processes taking place in the university. while the detrimental effects of this squeezing experience should not be “between a rock and a hard place” | 267 underestimated, i would like to suggest that this narrow space between the rocky side of neoliberal practice and the hard place of the neoliberal university constitutes an important vantage point from which to reflect on the political and pedagogical challenges that neoliberalism presents as well as the commitments that teaching against the grain of neoliberalization requires from critical social work educators. in other words, while, as van heugten (2011) suggests, neoliberalism attempts to squeeze critical social work out of the university, it is within critical social work that we can mount a critique and a political challenge to neoliberalism, critique and challenge that can still take place in the university classroom and within the contours of critical pedagogical projects. as i have argued in this paper, neoliberalism is more than an economic model; it encompasses a multiplicity of discursive and material conditions that serve the purpose of shaping society, its institutions and the subjects that exists within them. power-knowledge regimes produce the university as a marketplace in which student-consumers acquire skills and competencies and in which education is defined as responsible for producing “specialized, highly trained workers” that will enable “the nation and its elite workers to compete ‘freely’ on the global economic stage” (canaan and shumar, 2008, 5). moreover, neoliberalism aligns the university to its social project by constituting it not only as the place where the production of neoliberal knowledge is enticed, but also where that knowledge is deployed through education for the purpose of producing the neoliberal student and future professional. neoliberalism, in other words, constitutes the university not only as a product of neoliberalism, but also as an instrumental site in which the biopolitical and ontological project of neoliberalism is accomplished. that is, the university becomes an example of what foucault (1990, 103) called a “dense transfer point for power relations” that have specific effects, not only in the production of knowledge, but also in the constitution of subjectivity. nevertheless, the constitution of the neoliberal subject is not a passive process; neither is neoliberalism a complete project. again, foucault (1980; 1982; 1995) is helpful here for he argued that power is not a possession but a relationship that flows in a network of social processes in dynamic, always in-flux, and never completed, ways. neoliberalism and its ontological project, while presenting itself as all encompassing and the only available reality, is in fact a project in the making. i have used ‘processes of neoliberalization’ and ‘neoliberalizing processes’ as expressions throughout this paper precisely to call attention to the 268 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education ongoing and incomplete project that is neoliberalism. similarly, subject formation, the ontological constitution of the neoliberal subject, is also a project in the making. as foucault (1994c, 225) proposed, the constitution of the subject is mediated by power-knowledge regimes, but requires active work on the part of the subject, work that “permit[s] individuals to affect by their own means, or with the help of others, a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thought, conducts and ways of being so as to transform themselves” into subjects. this conception of neoliberalism as a project in the making and the subject as actively implicated in her own constitution opens up important possibilities for a politicized commitment to render neoliberal governmentality and the subject of that governmentality visible and thinkable. that is, critical pedagogical projects can render neoliberalism and the neoliberal subject specifically and politically thinkable. this is a pedagogical commitment to interrogate discourses of practice that, while disguising themselves under the cloak of good practice and even justice, in fact work to sneak neoliberalism into our very sense of being/doing social work. this is also a commitment to render unquestionable realities questionable in ways that problematize apparently stable power mechanisms in order to interrogate their making, rationality and apparent coherence (bay, 2011, 231). in the context of competency discourses and the educational demands of policies such as the directive, a critical pedagogical project may, for example, not only make us, students and academics, aware of the competencies and practice protocols that are being demanded, but also render visible, questionable, and thinkable the social power relations that produce and sustain these discourses and demands, as well as their location within neoliberalization processes. this interrogation can lead to collaborative and politically strategic processes of resistance as well as to the development of alliances between social workers, educators, communities and clients. the pedagogical commitment i propose is a commitment to a pedagogy of thinking. arendt (2003; 2006) in her work on totalitarianism and the holocaust argued that a central condition of totalitarianism is the constitutions of subjects who are incapable of thought. while some may argue that neoliberalism is not comparable to nazi totalitarianism, i want to call attention to the increasing totalizing effects of neoliberalism, its historical consolidation as the only viable socio-economic regime after the fall of the berlin wall and the eastern front, and its progressive distribution in the global context. furthermore, as i have discussed in this paper, neoliberalism installs systems and technologies of practice, work and “between a rock and a hard place” | 269 subjectivity that aim at limiting, if not removing, the capacity for critical thought from the actions associated with social work. as arendt (1978, 4) argued, the imposition of standardized systems of management “have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking that all events and facts make by virtue of their existence.” if we carry arendt’s work into the realm of teaching, we can argue that in the face of totalizing regimes such a neoliberalism, we need to commit to a pedagogy of constant critical thought. critical thought, understood as an activity that by its very nature searches for the roots of problems, is fundamentally contrary to the mindless effect of neoliberal governmentality. this commitment to thinking does not adhere to a set of practices, competencies, standards, or codes of conduct that by their mere existence may promote thoughtlessness. neither is thinking a purely intellectual or elitist endeavour. rather, a commitment to thinking is a commitment to engage in a constant dialogue with oneself so as to continuously examine social events and our role in them (assy, 1998). this commitment to a pedagogical project of thinking means a commitment to thinking through and thinking with: this is a commitment to thinking through the social conditions and power relations that affect us and surround us in order to render visible the totalizing effects of neoliberalism. this is also a commitment to thinking with others – or at least in the company of others – as a political strategy to undermine the individualizing effects of neoliberalism. this commitment to a thinking pedagogy is fundamentally a commitment to a situated pedagogical project that anchors our thinking in the socio-political realities of our present, a present that becomes the object of thinking as well as of change. thinking, therefore, is a commitment to remain anchored in the world; it is as an activity that takes place in the world and in the social conditions within which we are being produced and in which we produce ourselves as subjects (macias, 2012). in addition to rendering neoliberalism and its effects on practice and education critically and politically thinkable, the commitment to a pedagogy of thinking i propose encompasses a commitment to uncovering, unpacking and, through thinking, disrupting the ontological project of neoliberalism. freire (2006) argued that education has a fundamental ontological function in creating spaces for the re-imagination of the self. a commitment to thinking in social work education needs to translate, therefore, into pedagogical practices that create spaces in the classroom for politically conscious exercises in the re-imagination of ourselves and/ 270 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education in the world. i regularly ask my students what would a world outside capitalism and neoliberalism look like. many times the answers remind me how old i am for many of my students were born after the fall of the berlin wall, or were too young when the current regime started to assert itself. as a political refugee who is the product of global conflicts in which i was part of, and who participated in movements that were actively imagining a world otherwise, i think that enticing and at times even coercing students to re-imagine other ways of being and doing social work is not just a politically urgent project, but also an ethical demand. in committing to a constant and vigilant process of critique that looks at how neoliberalism penetrates not only our practice but also our very sense of self, we can potentially, as foucault suggests, “separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, thinking what we are, do, or think” such a commitment to thinking in social work can, i hope, open possibilities for meaningful resistance to the neoliberalization of social work education and practice. references ahmed, s. 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(2011). neoliberalism and australian social work: accommodation or resistance? journal of social work, 11(2), 132-142. doi: 10.1177/1468017310387318 a critique of the millennial | 277 a critique of the millennial: a retreat from and return to class tanner mirrlees1 abstract: since the turn of the millennium, millions of people born between the late 1970s and the late 1990s have been categorized as “millennials.” a media discourse tells people what a millennial is and is not, shaping how those people it depicts as “millennial” may perceive themselves and how others perceive them. this paper examines four media representations of the millennial: a member of a youth cohort, a consumer, a worker to be managed, and an immiserated victim of hard times. it argues that these four media representations of the millennial distort the capitalist determinations of millennial life and labour and prevent the millennials from seeing themselves as part of the working class. by way of a critique of these four ideological media representations of the class-less millennial, the paper forwards a historical-materialist account of the millennial working class in a new capitalist millennium. keywords: millennial, capitalism, class analysis, youth, media, ideology introduction: the millennial sign as site of struggle since the turn of the millennium, scholars, journalists and marketing consultants have categorized millions of people born between the late 1970s and the late 1990s as “millennials” (dorsey, 2014; pew research, 2014; reason-rupe, 2014; stein, 2013; howe and strauss 2000). books, news articles, tv clips, websites, documentaries, polls and public conversations add to an already large and growing media discourse on the millennial identity. everyone from obama to nike to google analytics has taken part in the “recognition” of the millennial, which is one more identity on a big list of media generated identities that governments, 1  tanner mirrlees (tanner.mirrlees@uoit.ca) is an assistant professor in the communication program at the university of ontario institute of technology. 278 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education corporations and marketing firms use to talk about youth or the “spirit of the age.” whether championing the millennial as the early twentyfirst century’s winner or ridiculing the millennial as its biggest loser, numerous people take part in the construction of this “new” youth identity. images of and messages about the millennial flow through the media, showing and telling people what a millennial is, and is not, and shaping how those they address as “millennials” may perceive their identities in society. this paper analyzes four ways that the media represents the millennial identity: a member of a youth cohort, a sovereign consumer, a worker to be managed, and an immiserated victim of hard times. it argues that these four media representations of the millennial distort the capitalist determinations of millennial life and labour and may prevent millennials from seeing themselves as part of the working class. through a critique of these four media representations of the class-less millennial, i forward a historical-materialist account of the millennial as working class in a new capitalist millennium. this paper’s analysis of media representations of the millennial identity intervenes in current semiotic and political struggles over the meaning of the millennial in twenty-first century capitalist society. the “millennial” is a sign for an identity that the organic intellectuals, movements and parties of the left and right articulate to their projects as they struggle for hegemony (or “moral leadership”) in society (gramsci, 1971). the russian linguist valentin voloshinov (1973) conceptualized words as “signs” that social classes fight to narrow (make “uni-accentual”) or broaden (make “multi-accentual”) as they struggle for political power. extending voloshinov’s account of the role of language in class struggle, the late stuart hall (1982, 70) argued that signs “enter into controversial and conflicting social issues as a real and positive social force, affecting their outcomes” and that signs are part of “what has to be struggled over,” for they are part of the “means by which collective social understandings are created – and thus the means by which consent for particular outcomes can be effectively mobilized.” at present, the millennial sign is fought over by liberals and conservatives who think and write about the world within the normative boundaries of liberal capitalist ideology. liberals and conservatives battle to win the “hearts and minds” of millennials by articulating the millennial “interest” to their own, linking millennial identity to their political identity and reducing the millennial worldview to the precepts of their ideology. liberals, for example, gush at the prospect of the a critique of the millennial | 279 millennial being “our liberal future”(chait, 2012) while conservatives say that the “millennial generation is abandoning liberalism”(street, 2013) and “may grow up more conservative”(leonhardt, 2014). the left, however, has largely remained on the sidelines of the struggle over the millennial sign. this is too bad given that forty twopercent of millennials recently polled say they prefer socialism to capitalism as a means of organizing society but only sixteen percent understand what that really means (harris, 2014). the goal of this paper is to intervene in the battle over the millennial sign. it critiques some dominant media representations of the millennial and sheds light on the capitalist determinations that shape the circumstances of the millennial as working class. by doing so, i assert the continued salience of class analysis in spite of decades of its forced retreat (wood, 1999). panitch and leys (2000, vii-viii) observe how “class analysis as a mode of intellectual discourse, and social class as the pivotal axis of political mobilization, have both suffered marginalization, although certainly not complete collapse, in the face of the casualization of work, trade-union decline and the fracturing of socialist political formations, not to mention the impact of neoliberal and post-modernist ideas.” despite the stultification of class analysis by neoliberal academics, capitalism lumbers forward, and with it, class divisions, conflicts and inequalities. so long as capitalism exists, class will persist as a fact of society and site of analysis. palmer (2014, 57) says it is “imperative that those on the socialist left – as well as those working in unions, social movements, and all matter of campaigns that see themselves challenging capital and the state in the interests of the dispossessed – reassert what is most solid in the marxist tradition,” that being, “a politics of class that speaks directly to the betterment of humanity through insistence that the expropriated are as one in their ultimate needs.” this paper supports this praxis, but does so without illusion and with some qualification. the following section elaborates upon this point by defining some key terms, capitalism and the working class in particular. capitalism, the working class, media and ideology the capitalist system divides people into two antagonistic classes: the owning class (the minority chief executive officers and shareholders who control corporations) and the working class (the majority of people who must sell their labour to corporations in exchange for the wages they depend on to live). in capitalism, workers enter the market and sell 280 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education their labour power – the manual and cognitive capabilities required to do tasks – to corporations as a commodity in exchange for the wage they need to meet their basic needs and cultural wants. in the absence of a “basic income” and advanced welfare state, capitalism “proletarianizes” the great majority of people, meaning that it makes them dependent on the wage relation to live and the “silent compulsion of economic relations” (marx, 1959). in factories and call centres, fast-food restaurants and cafes, mega-malls and boutique retail stores, condo build sites and video game studios, a diversity of people must try to sell their capacity to work in exchange for a wage. the market exchange relationship between workers and corporations appears to be “free” (because there is no direct coercion) and “equal” (because workers and corporations meet in the market as sellers and buyers of labour). yet, this apparently “free” and “equal” exchange relationship mystifies the substantive un-freedom of work (i.e. corporations try to control the worker’s labour process) and the unequal outcome (i.e. the corporation exploits the worker’s labour power to enrich its owning class of executives and shareholders). in the capitalist system, the goal of all corporations is profit and to make it, they bring money, technology, media, and hundreds (if not thousands) of waged workers together into productive social relations. in pursuit of profit, corporations try to sell what they produce for more than what they pay their workers. profit is the difference between the value the corporation takes from selling commodities and the value it pays workers to make them. in capitalism, owners try to squeeze more value from workers than they return to them as wages; workers sometimes respond and resist the terms of their exploitation through acts of solidarity and struggle. in capitalism, being “working class” is not a lifestyle choice or a performance of the self, but a rudimentary social relation experienced by millions of different people who do not own the means of production and for that reason, must sell their labour power to those that do in exchange for the wage they need to live. capitalism makes a working class “in-itself” (i.e. people that sell their labour power to corporations for a wage), but it does not necessarily make a working class “for-itself” (i.e. people that identify themselves as being in opposition to capitalism and as having interests distinct from corporations). the people that sell their labour to the target retail store, for example, are part of a working class in-itself. but there is no guarantee that target’s employees will act as a class for-itself by taking up a fight for workplace democracy, job security or benefits. as gindin (2010) says, “there’s nothing inherently radical a critique of the millennial | 281 about the working class. it just has the potential to be radical”(cited in lilley, 2010). though the wage relation is common to most working people, it does not necessarily foster in each worker a revolutionary consciousness about the perils of capitalism or automatically inspire in them an “interest” to move beyond it. in the twenty-first century, more people are proletarianized than ever before due to the universalization of the wage relation, but the convergences and divergences of exploitation and the oppressions of racism, sexism, ableism and more mean the wage relation is experienced differently (coburn, 2014). also, the worker’s identity (their sense of who they are and who they are not) and interest (their sense of what issue matters most to them and what cause they are committed to) do not mechanically spring from the wage relation, but are socially and discursively constructed by big organizations (i.e. governments, parties, corporations, media firms, organized religion, unions) and their discourses (laws, policies, doctrines, stories, press releases, ads) as they are transmitted from one historical period to the next (hall, 1995). identities and interests carried over from the past shape those available to working people in the present, but they can be transformed. in twenty-first century late-capitalist, postmodern-consumerist and multicultural societies like canada and the united states, working people embody and experience their identities in and across a range of contextually defined and shifting social roles. a worker’s identity is shaped by and shaping of a combination of salient social factors: place (i.e. “torontonians” for or against the ford nation), age (i.e. boomers or millennials), “race” (black power or white power), ethnicity (proud poles or proud germans), nationality (canadian or american), sport (british or brazilian football fans), diet (meat lover or vegan), gender (machoman or metropolitan metrosexual), sexual preference (heterosexual or lgbtq), religion (islam or judaism), consumerism (nike or reebok loyal), political ideology (liberal or conservative), lifestyle (sedentary or active), nationality (chinese or american), fandom (kanye west or drake), occupation (day maintenance associate at wal-mart or apple family room specialist at the apple retail store) and more. these are but a few of the scraps of self that may constitute a worker’s identity and which workers embody and live in their hearts and minds, sometimes fleetingly, sometimes, forever. none of these essentially link with anticapitalism or the politics of socialist struggle. so, though the working class in-itself exists (waged labour and exploitation is a fact of capitalism), the working class for itself (workers 282 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education that recognize their interest to be in conflict with capitalism and unite to move beyond it) always haunts the capitalist system but infrequently takes material form. save moments and movements in periods of prolonged crisis and upheaval, the working class is most often dis-united. the “working class” ought to be one for itself, but most of the time, it is not. the working class’s identity politics and the ways that workers of the world identify themselves and their interests are not consonant or predictable, but contradictory and fluid. the working class is made and unmade in tandem with capitalist transformations, state formations and initiatives, wars of maneuver and of position, the clash of ideologies and the cycles and circuits of struggle. the media and culture industries play a significant role in making and unmaking the working class. these industries are at once profitseeking firms and a powerful means of representing the social world. “[t]he communications industries play a central double role in modern societies, as industries in their own right and as the major site of the representations and arenas of debate through which the overall system is imagined and argued over”(wasko, murdock and sousa, 2011, 2). the media industries are a major source of the representations of the world which express and shape how people think about the world, their identities and those of others (dines and humez, 2011; kellner, 1995). books, magazines, newspapers, bulletins, podcasts, radio broadcasts, hollywood films, tv shows, ads, websites and video games convey representations of the world that address and shape how people come to perceive the world and what it means to be an owner or a worker, rich or poor, man or woman, white or black, adult or youth, us or them. in pursuit of profit, the media industries try to inform and entertain, but in doing so, they play a powerful role in socializing people; they often construct and normalize certain ways of being, thinking and acting that align with capitalism while denying and stigmatizing anti-capitalism. by taking part in the social construction of reality, the media industries and their many representations of society may shape, in significant ways, how workers perceive capitalism and their place in it. media representations might reveal or conceal the conditions of capitalism – the hierarchical class structure, the class division and the class conflicts. they might also recognize or deny the existence of a working class (in and for itself) and encourage or discourage people to see themselves as part of it. the meaning of the working class is “constituted within, not outside of representation”(hall, 1995, 4) and media representations “provide the materials out of which many people construct their sense of a critique of the millennial | 283 class”(kellner, 1995, 1). indeed, the media industries have the power to frame the working class in positive or negative terms by representing it as a source of pride or shame, empowerment or disempowerment, ossification or transformation. overall, the media is an important site where working class identities are formed and deformed, where people’s understanding of their place in society takes shape and where dominant norms, beliefs and values about what a worker should expect or demand from a life of waged labour can be affirmed or opposed. the north american media industries – the vertically and horizontally integrated conglomerates that own the dominant means of producing media representations in society – underrepresent the working class. many media products abnegate the working class by portraying everyone as part of an expansive and upwardly mobile “middle-class” society in which no class antagonism exists (kendall, 2004; zweig, 2000). some fetishistically over-represent people as consumers and underrepresent them as workers, emphasizing the sphere of consumption and hiding the abode of production. others render the working class invisible by glorifying and making role models out of the lives and lifestyles of the system’s rich, privileged and powerful. when media products do address social class, they often stereotype working people as being inherently wasteful, ignorant, angry, childish and tasteless (butsch, 2003; kendall, 2004; skeggs, 2004; zweig, 2000). in sum, media conglomerates and media products often deprive viewers of the ability to see themselves in positive terms as a working class with an outlook and interest different from capitalism and its owners. media firms repackage and sell partial and selective images of and messages about already existing identities that are aligned with the status quo to resonate with the “common sense” of viewers and reproduce capitalist ideology. when media corporations produce and sell media products that conceal the real social relations of the capitalist system – class divisions between owners and workers, structurally antagonistic class interests and the ebb and flow of class struggles – they uphold the ideology of the system and its rulers. the media commodities that under-represent and misrepresent real capitalist social relations are “ideological” because they carry misleading and false ideas about the essence of the system. that said, in periods typified by crisis, media firms may produce and sell goods that convey real representations of capitalist social relations which unsettle ideology and express opposition to it. now that i’ve posited a historical materialist conceptualization of capitalism, the working class, the media industries and ideology, i turn 284 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to examining the media-generated discourse about “the millennial.” do media representations of the millennial help the young people they address as millennials understand the real capitalist social relations that shape their present circumstances? do media claims and statements about the millennial hold a mirror to capitalist logics or distort them? do they support or undermine the formation of a millennial working class, in and for itself? in what follows, i highlight and analyze four significant media representations of the millennial that seem to float above the capitalist forces and relations that act upon it and the youthful bodies it possesses. i critique these media representations and show how they distort real capitalist social relations and may prevent millennials from seeing themselves as part of the working class. the millennial as a member of a youth cohort one way the media represents the “millennial” is as a person born in a certain period of time, as a member of a cohort. according to some millennial authorities, a millennial is someone (anyone) born between 1977 and 1995 (dorsey, 2014). other “experts” say the “millennial” period of incubation spans from 1982 to 2001 (howe and strauss, 2000). most millennial specialists, however, do not clearly explain what the special social significance of the space between these two moments in historical time is for the formation of the millennial’s identity, why it has been selected as a period or how. one wonders what two big events bookended these moments. was it deng xiaoping’s readiness to forge “socialism with chinese characteristics” and the oj simpson trial? perhaps it was the 1982 u.s. embargo on libya’s petroleum imports and the 9/11 terrorist attack? many of the authors who routinely depict every person born at some point in this ill-defined period as belonging to a big group whose common characteristics are different from those exhibited by other cohorts do not seem to care much for careful signposting. some purveyors of millennial discourse, then, presume that a common birth period spanning two decades or so gives people a common identity and set of traits that are unlike those of people born into other periods. hence, the millennial is different from “gen xers” (people born between the mid-1960s to late 1970s) and those labelled “baby boomers” (people born between the mid-1940s and mid-1960s) because they “came to be” and “came of age” in the period they did. commonality of birth period is said to unite millions of people as millennials, cement together their a critique of the millennial | 285 ideas and practices, and ultimately divide them from the gen xers and the boomers. history matters to the making of identities, no doubt. but what’s missing from media discourse on the millennial identity is any sense that the history which makes it moves due to cycles of struggle between protagonists (the workers of the world) and antagonists (the global rich, the 1 percent). by representing the millennial as a member of a cohort defined by period of birth, not by class relations, the media obscures capitalism’s class divide. it is as if the silicon valley-dwelling, facebook owning and conservative-cause supporting billionaire mark zuckerberg and the queer, black and waged worker at the h&m down at the local mall have everything in common, more so than say zuckerberg and google-owner larry page, just because they were born in the 1980s and likely watched the cosby show. by defining age as the thing that unites and divides people, millennial media discourse distorts the substantive division between owning and working class millennials. yet, a division exists. ruling class millennials, for example, include perenna kei (worth $1.3 billion), duston moskovitz (worth $6.8 billion), mark zuckerberg (worth $28.5 billion), anton kathrein ($1.35 billion), drew houston ($1.2 billion), scott duncan ($6.3 billion), yang huiyan ($6.9 billion), fahd hariri ($1.2 billion), robert pera ($2.7 billion), julia oetker ($1.65 billion), and marie besnier beauvalot ($2.7 billion) (mac, 2014). 1 percent of the millennials under thirty-two years old who control $1 million or more do so because this wealth was handed down to them by their rich parents (o’donnel, 2013). over the next two decades, the millennial kids of the 1 percent super-rich boomers and xers are set to inherit about $15 trillion (donovan, 2014), which will further solidify an oligarchic class structure and exacerbate the indisputable problem of class inequality. in twenty-first century capitalism, a millennial owning class minority and working class majority exists. but the media representation of the millennial obscures class division within this cohort and substitutes generational conflict for class conflict, pitting “the young” against “the old” and “the old” against “the middle-aged.” it hides the growing gap between the inter-generational owning and working classes and how all workers – boomers, xers, millennials – live in a class divided society. capitalism’s class divide is growing. one percent of the world’s population controls forty percent of the world’s total wealth, the eightyfive richest people in the world control more wealth than the nearly 3.5 billion people who belong to the poorest half of the population, the 286 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education 400 richest americans own more assets than the poorest 150 million combined, the top one per cent of u.s. households controls about twentythree percent of the nation’s total income and the average u.s. chief executive (ceo) is paid approximately three-hundred and thirty times more than the u.s. worker (cassidy, 2014; olive, 2014; picketty, 2014). two hundred and twenty five million people are unemployed, wages as a percent of gdp are at an all-time low while profits as a percentage of gdp are at an all-time high and one in three people on the planet are poor, barely able to meet their basic needs (common dreams, 2012). between the early 1980s and 2010, the wealth of canada’s ruling elite grew and now, the nation’s 1 percent accumulates at least 10 times more than the typical worker. in 1980, the ratio of pay for canadian chief executive officers vs. frontline workers was 20:1; in 2013, it was 171: 1 (olive, 2014). in 2013, the100 highest-paid ceos in canada took home a total of $7.9 million, each making about 171 times more than what they paid workers (olive, 2014). in 2012, canadian pacific railway ceo hunter harrison received $49.2 million; thomson reuters ceo james smith got $18.8 million; talisman energy ceo john manzoni collected $18.7 million; eldorado gold corp ceo paul wright accumulated $18.7 million; magna ceo donald walker absorbed $16.9 million; open text corp ceo mark barrenechea took $14.8 million; royal bank of canada ceo gordon nixon, $13.7 million; onex corp ceo gerald schwarz, $13.3 million; and, catamaran corp ceo mark thierer, $12.9 million. the top ten highest-paid ceos in canada accumulated a total of $177 million dollars in 2012, a sum larger than what is earned by a small town of about 10,000 median waged workers. capitalist history, not abstract time, is what makes the millennial working class. as marx (1852) might put it, the millennials “make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” the millennial working class lives and works alongside previous generations of workers in a class divided society, but it came to be in a set of circumstances that were slightly different from those which were endured by their parents and their parents. the millennial “structure of feeling”(williams, 1977) was crystallized in a period of time not exactly like the one experienced by the “gen xers” and the “boomers.” the millennials did not live through the radicalizing upheavals of the 60s or grow up feeling that the revolution was around the corner. they were not alive during the keynesian welfare state’s highpoint and the “class compromise” from which the energies a critique of the millennial | 287 of the 1960s exploded into different political formations. they did not face the onset of neoliberal restructuring in the mid-1970s or know that they came of age as this ruling “class project” took off (harvey, 2007). the millennial working class came to be in circumstances shaped by the effects of major economic transformations, state policies and ideologies that its members did not choose, but inherited. though shaped by capitalist conditions, the millennial working class has the power to change them in solidarity with other cohorts, young and old. the millennial as a sovereign consumer a second significant way the media represents the millennial is as a consumer of commodities and services (business, 2013; hoffmann, 2014; ray, 2014). since the 1950s, capital’s mind management corps have mined, co-opted and integrated the trends, styles and mannerisms of youth culture into their selling campaigns. today, marketing, advertising and promotional relations firms – the combined promotional industries – frame the millennial subject as a consumer of the goods and services sold by their corporate clients. in “here is everything you need to know about the millennial consumer,” hoffmann (2014) describes the millennial consumer’s characteristics. millennials are said to constitute 27 percent of the u.s. consumer market and “are more diverse than any previous generation.” this multi-cultural millennial is a “digital native” (i.e. they grew up with new technology) and a proactive consumer (i.e. they search for tips about what to buy from friends, partners, parents and websites). the millennial consumer is networked at all times, uses the internet to browse for commodities and presumably wants to be targeted with sales pitches for goods via facebook, twitter and all kinds of social media platforms and digital devices. in marketing to millennials: reach the largest and most influential generation of consumers ever (2013), barkely advertising’s executive vice president jeff fromm and his lawyer co-author, christie garton, affix some other traits to the millennial consumer. they claim that “80 million members of the millennial generation (born 1977 to 1995) represent over 25% of the u.s. population and more than $200 billion in annual buying power.” they say the millennial consumer values social networking, isn’t shy about sharing opinions, is a prosumer who likes to participate in product development and marketing, expects and demands authenticity and transparency from companies and is a tastemaker, effective at swaying and shaping the shopping habits of others. promoting their book, fromm and barton (2013) explain how marketing companies can build the “trust and 288 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education loyalty” of the millennial consumer and “persuade” it to buy what their clients sell. this media representation of the millennial as consumer is typical in a capitalist system which depends for its survival on the ideological reproduction of consumerism as the dominant way of life. in the capitalist system, corporations produce an abundance of commodified goods and services for market exchange (and profit), not for social use (or human need). but no one corporation can guarantee in advance of circulation how many of their commodities will be consumed or how much profit they will make as result. to increase the prospect of maximal commodities being consumed and optimal profit realized, corporations spend a tremendous amount of money on promotional campaigns that try to persuade people to desire what they sell (sweezy and baran, 1966). in the early twentieth century, the promotional industries –advertising, marketing and pr – developed to service capitalism’s consumer cultivation imperative (ewen, 1996). in the twenty-first century, the “sales effort” still performs a crucial consumer-demand management function for the corporations that rule the market. “consumer spending in today’s economy, dominated by giant firms, is significantly dependent on the sales effort, i.e., marketing as a whole, with advertising as its most conspicuous form”(holleman, stole, bellamy-foster and mcchesney, 2011). the identity and interest forming promotional industries are not in the business of making ads that reflect existing consumer wants for commodities but are instead paid by the captains of industry to engineer images of “what people need and must have” to sustain massive “waves of enthusiasm” for commodities (debord, 1994). manufacturing and managing the consumer and the commodity spectacle is what keeps the promotional sector profitable. the promotional firms are paid to differentiate the images of their client’s commodities from the images that rival firms attach to the goods and services sold by others. they design, for example, the brand images which aim to differentiate tim horton’s from starbucks, mcdonalds from wendy’s, apple from samsung and nike from reebok. in 2013, u.s. corporations collectively spent about $140.2 billion on multi-media marketing campaigns to manage consumer wants for well-crafted brand images (kantar media, 2014). in that same year, apple spent $662 million, samsung spent $597 million and microsoft spent $493 million to get people to buy the images of their technology (advertising age, 2013). in capitalism, the very corporations that produce “want” pay other corporations to define what the want is a critique of the millennial | 289 and convince consumers to pay for its image. consumers do not decide what corporations make or sell, nor do they always know exactly what they want from corporations in advance of the spectacular campaigns that tell them what to want and what the meaning of their want is. though dubious, the media representation of the millennial as an empowered consumer aligns perfectly with neoliberal-capitalist ideology’s champion and hero, the “sovereign consumer.” neoliberal authors posit that human freedom is best advanced by the maximization of business freedoms within a state characterized by property rights, free markets and free trade. for free-market fundamentalists, to be free is to be a sovereign consumer and to be a sovereign consumer is to rationally choose what commodity one wants, when one wants it, from a “free” marketplace (harvey, 2007; hutt, 1940; tucker, 2004; von hayek, 2007). the media represents the millennial as a sovereign consumer in a freemarket that reflects their every demand with a commodity supply. the hipster millennial wants a quizzical hamburger: wendy’s launches the “pretzel bacon cheeseburger”; the health conscious millennial wants low calorie fast food: mcdonald’s releases the mcwrap; the millennial college student wants a big box store: wall-mart builds on-campus (thrasher, 2013). corporations use the idea of millennial consumer “demand” to rationalize the quarterly roll out of new products and to make millennials collectively feel as though they are really in control of the marketplace (when they are not). by representing each new commodity in the marketplace as reflective of millennial demand, the media makes the millennial consumer appear to have decision-making powers comparable to a ceo. as if apple inc. discovered a collective millennial desire for the apple ipad in 2009 and that this is what inspired steve jobs to announce the ipad’s global launch in 2010. in reality, most commodities available in the marketplace are chosen by corporate decision-makers far in advance (and in anticipation) of the millennial consumer’s “choice.” millennials do select commodities to consume (from hundreds upon thousands of available selections), but corporations possess the power choose what commodities actually get made as “selections.” though consumer demand matters to corporations, it is not the primary cause of the capitalist process through which they research and develop, manufacture and bring things and services into the world as commodities. the corporate imperative to expand operations in pursuit of profit on behalf of shareholders is what maintains the ongoing production of “new” commodities. the capitalist goal of ensuring people will buy these 290 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education commodities is what buttresses the growth of the promotional industries and their management of millennial consumer want. in addition to perpetuating the myth of the sovereign consumer, the media representation of the millennial consumer is deeply classist. to make “free” market choices, the millennial must first have money to spend, but not all millennials possess the same amount of money due to the class system. in fact, the media’s ideal-type multicultural, smartphone-owning and brand-conscious millennial panders to the already wealthy millennials who have the new technology, the internet access, the digital literacy skills, the time and the money to shop for and consume commodities. the millennial consumer depicted in the corporate mediascape is a hybrid, urban, tech-savvy, college-educated and “middle class” hipster, never a rural and racialized poor person who cannot afford an ipad, who is deprived of a computer and internet connection and who struggles to earn a college degree in the time left over after working flex-time shifts for a meager wage in the service sector. the consumer market includes and excludes and targets and ignores millennials based upon their ability to pay. in addition to being classist, the media’s millennial consumer hides the human source of the commodities available in the market: the bodies and minds of millions of waged workers. the image of the north american millennial as a free and equal consumer in a marketplace of branded commodities made just for them conceals how corporations exploit young waged workers all over the world. furthermore, the media representation of the millennial consumer erases half of the millennial’s waking life by encouraging them to see themselves as only consumers. to consume, most millennials must work, but the media representation of the millennial as only a consumer conceals the waged work the millennial must endure to acquire the money they need to buy the branded commodities they have been taught by the spectacle to want. the american eagle slacks, the olive garden salad bar, the smirnoff mickey, the apple ipad and tiffany pearl broach cost money and to get it, the millennial must sell a piece of themselves to a corporation. through this exchange relationship, the millennial gets some of the cash they need to buy status commodities, but loses a piece of their being in the process. the dispossessions and sorrows of millennial work (waged and unwaged) are many: deference to management’s control over embodied emotions; the “one best way” of speaking customer service scripts, all day; the psychological drain and physical strain of labouring with one’s a critique of the millennial | 291 heart and mind to personify the company’s “brand promise”; flexibly coming together with others in projects that quickly fall apart and do not reflect one’s true passions; virtually working round the clock, tethered to technologies that collapse pre-existing boundaries between labourtime and leisure-time, work and home. work in capitalism wears the millennial down, but the promotional industries motivate the millennial to keep slogging away at it in exchange for the engineered promises of consumerism. the media representation of the millennial as a consumer conceals the capitalist dispossessions and degradations of waged work but is nonetheless functional to the reproduction of the capitalist circuit. this representation teaches the millennial to see their freedom in the marketplace, not the work-space (the freedom to consume perhaps makes the unfreedom of work bearable); it encourages the millennial to view their means to change the world as the marketplace, not the state (“vote with your dollars” for the best corporate brand, not for a party that best represents your class interests); it gets millennials to view their common interest in lifestyle niche markets, not pro-worker organizations (mobilize with fellow shoppers to lobby for bargains, forget about class solidarity, collective bargaining and political demands). overall, the millennial-as-consumer hides the millennial-as-worker and closes down yet another space in society for the millennial to see themselves as part of a working class with interests non-identical to the mall. the millennial as a worker to be managed a third way the media represents the millennial is as a worker, but one that is an object of modern management (ashkenas, 2014; bradt, 2014; espinoza, ukleja and rusch, 2010; heathfield, 2014; lancaster and stillman, 2010; o’malley, 2014; sannelli, 2014). this media representation depicts the millennial as a “young worker” whose ethos poses all kinds of opportunities and challenges for hr departments. for example, in managing the millennials: discover the core competencies for managing today’s workforce, espinoza, ukleja and rusch (2010) describe the work habits and values of the millennial to provide “managers of all ages with specific recommendations and tools for engaging this burgeoning demographic – some 78 million strong.” in the m-factor: how the millennial generation is rocking the workplace, lancaster and stillman (2010) profess to offer “the definitive guide to millennials in the workplace – what they want, how they think, and how to unlock their talents to your 292 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education organization’s advantage.” in motivating the “what’s in it for me” workforce: manage across the generational divide and increase profits, marston (2007) explains how managers can motivate the millennial to help their corporation “achieve peak performance” and “organizational success” so they “can get more out of every worker, no matter their age and attitude.” moore (2014) says the millennial worker holds “a postmodern worldview, which is quite different from the generations before” and encourages managers to “better understand the postmodern worldview to effectively work with millennials.” in some accounts, the millennial worker is a value-added benefit to business operations. equipped with a smart phone and always connected by the internet to a virtual network of cosmopolitan, civicallyminded and multi-cultural “friends,” the millennial helps corporations to compete in a fast-changing and global marketplace by pioneering new-fangled customer service models, collaboratively solving efficiency problems and innovating new products (burstein, 2013; fuscaldo, 2014). in others, the millennial is a problem, a slacker who undermines corporate performance. distracted by the instant gratifications of web 2.0, obsessed with brand images, coddled by helicopter parents and willfully under-performing, the millennial is a lazy, entitled, selfish, atomized and disengaged worker (stampler, 2013). as a boon or burden to capital, the millennial is a worker that exists as a reified object, a resource to be managed in ways that align with a firm’s profit goals. this managerial-manufactured media representation of the millennial as a manageable worker reflects the fact that in capitalism, owners do rely on human relations experts and consultants to run their operations. in early twentieth century capitalism, owners hired engineers, fredrick w. taylor being the most renowned, to figure out how to control how workers worked (noble, 1977). taylor said that owners could increase production efficiencies by studying the worker’s labour process in minute detail, determining the one best way to do a job and then imposing this standard upon workers. taylor’s “scientific management” tried to maximize the productivity of workers by increasing their “efficiency” with strategies that aimed to standardize and speed up work (noble, 1984). by advising managers to break down production into small and repetitive steps, taylorism divorced the conceptualization of the work process from the workers themselves and put it in the control of managers. by standardizing the steps in each production process, taylorism made it possible for managers to easily train workers, thereby undermining their skill set and bargaining power. taylorism taught owners that the labour a critique of the millennial | 293 process could be engineered and that workers could be replaced, just like the machines that workers used to assemble goods (braverman, 1974). taylorism persists in many millennial-filled workplaces such as mcdonalds (ritzer, 2009), but this fordist and hierarchical managerial strategy of control exists alongside a post-fordist and vertical managerial strategy that aims to get workers to coordinate their own exploitation. in the nominally “humane workplaces” of the new economy, managers recognize each worker’s unique identity and enable them to express their feelings and contribute to decision-making (ross, 2004). by encouraging individualized acts of task-mastering and autonomy, managers deter workers from uniting as a class for itself and fighting for more just workplaces. in postmodern management theory and practice, this “new spirit of capitalism”(boltanski and chiapello, 2005) gets millennial workers to superintend their own dispossession. self-actualization occurs through self-exploitation and freedom is attained by subordinating oneself to more tasks. this mode of capitalist governance encourages workers to loathe themselves, not the system, for their plight. as a tool of the owning class, management takes sides in class struggles. yet, the media representation of the millennial as a worker to be managed makes management seem benign, even class neutral. a well-managed corporation seems to support a win-win situation for millennial ceos, managers and workers alike. this sanguine view of the power relationship between managers and workers downplays the often intense conflicts between management and workers and the fact that the outcome of a well-managed organization can lead to a win-lose situation, with managers and ceos being the winners and workers, the losers. for example, a manager may have an interest in getting the millennial worker to work harder and faster for little pay so as to maximize their productivity and add to the overall profit margins of their organization; the worker may have an interest in working at a pace they determine and feel comfortable with and for as much pay as possible to enhance their quality of work and life. the amount of pay a millennial gets for their work, the amount of time they must work to get paid, and the way they think and act at work are all sites of contention, negotiation and struggle. but these sources of class conflict don’t appear in the made-tobe-managed media representation of the millennial. instead, media discourse on the managed millennial focuses on solving the problem of a supposed “generational conflict” in the workplace between the millennial, gen xer and boomer workers. the pr for lancaster’s (2003) 294 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education when generations collide: who they are. why they clash. how to solve the generational puzzle at work, for example, declares the workplace to be “a battle zone” where “colleagues sometimes act like adversaries” and “generations glare at one another across the conference table” in a blitz of “conflict and confusion.” this ad copy for the book says that “eighty million baby boomers vacillate between their overwhelming need to succeed and their growing desire to slow down and enjoy life,” gen xers “try to prove themselves constantly yet dislike the image of being overly ambitious, disrespectful, and irreverent” and millennials “mix savvy with social conscience and promise to further change the business landscape.” here, workplace conflict arises from cohorts, not social classes; class conflicts between owners and workers of all ages over the terms of work are invisible. furthermore, the media representation of the millennial as an object of management effaces the continuing intersections of sexualized and racialized class inequality and oppression within the twenty-first century workplace. of all the ceos currently running fortune 500 hundred companies, six are african-american (1.2 percent), nine are asian (1.8 percent), eight are latin (1.6 percent) and 23 are women (4.6 percent) (zweignenhalf, 2013). though a rainbow colored ruling class of ceos does business round the world, at least 90.8 percent of the u.s.’s largest companies are still run by white men (diversity inc., 2014). the ceos of the u.s. venture capital industry, for example, are predominantly male (89 percent) and white (76 percent) (teten, 2014). and u.s. media conglomerates are mostly run by white men and staffed by white male cultural content producers (pesta, 2012; women’s media center, 2014). sexualized class inequality (the oppression of working women by corporations predominantly owned and run by men) continues to keep many women in subordinate positions. women are over-represented in the ranks of the poor and under-represented among upper income earners; women working full time earn about 76 percent of what men do for similar jobs; and women spend over one and half times more hours than men doing unpaid domestic work (bouw, 2013). racialized class inequality (the oppression of people who are racialized by those who imagine themselves to be colour blind: “white people”) persists as well. racialized workers are under-represented in managerial positions and over-represented in low-end service jobs. also, racialized workers take home less in pay than non-racialized workers: racialized working men make 68 cents to 76 cents for every dollar earned by white workers and a critique of the millennial | 295 racialized women earn even less than racialized and non-racialized men (galabuzi, caspiullai and go, 2012). clearly, postmodern management’s recognition of the millennial worker’s “diversity” does not support the equitable redistribution of the surplus or challenge the power of a largely white and male ruling class. instead, it transforms diversity into a resource to be exploited on behalf of it. the millennial as immiserated victim of hard times a fourth way the media represents the millennial is as an immiserated victim of hard times. over the past few years, numerous news stories have framed the millennial as part of a completely impoverished cohort with slogans like “generation jobless” (the economist, 2013), the “in-debt generation” (parsons, 2014), “generation precarious” (shupac, 2013) and “generational hopeless” (richards, 2013). there is truth in this media framing of the millennial. in the united states, 40 percent of unemployed workers are millennials, meaning there are about 4.6 million millennials who depend on extra-economic support systems to subsist (fottrell, 2014). while the overall unemployment rate in canada is about 6.9 percent, among millennials, it hovers between 13.5 percent and 14.5 percent (cbc, 2013). debt has become a way of life and a way of work for millennials (ellis, 2014; ljunggren, 2013). bonded to banks and struggling to keep up with debt payments, millennials work for meager wages, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, chipping away at mountainous totals on their credit card bills. yet, the jobs they work to pay down debt are increasingly precarious (cohen and depeuter, 2013). temp work is growing at a faster pace than full-time jobs and in 2012, two million temps competed for contractual gigs (grant, 2013). half of the workers who live in the greater toronto area (gta) subsist in a precarious employment relation to numerous firms (mcisaac and yates, 2014). a recent pew research (2014) poll called “millennials in adulthood” explains that millennials “have higher levels of student loan debt, poverty and unemployment, and lower levels of wealth and personal income” than the gen xer and boomer cohorts “had at the same stage of their life cycles.” the millennial working class is under-employed, indebted and precarious. these circumstances foster intense psychological disturbances: stress, fits of anxiety, low self-esteem, muddled thoughts of depression and nihilism. 296 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the media representation of the millennial as an immiserated victim of hard times sheds light on the real circumstances of the millennial working class but fails to explain them as an outcome of capitalist logics. pew research (2014), for example, frames the millennial’s “difficult economic circumstances” with regard to the great recession (2007-2009) and the long-term effects of “globalization and rapid technological change.” but the recession, globalization and rapid technological change are not in themselves responsible for the millennial working class’s immiseration. they are effects of capitalist production for profit and the decisions made by corporate managers in pursuit of the goal of maximal profit on behalf of the shareholders they serve. as marx (1990) might say, “[millennial] pauperism forms the condition of capitalist production and of the capitalist development of wealth...in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the [millennial] worker, be his [or her] payment high or low, must grow worse.” in the capitalist system, the ultimate goal of all corporations is profit. corporations try to maximize profit by keeping the cost of producing and circulating commodities as low as possible. to do so, they strategize to keep the amount of money they must pay workers for the jobs they do to as little as they can. at present, corporate profits are at an all-time high while wages are at an all-time low (blodget, 2012; brennan, 2012; norris, 2014). corporations are raking in super-profits because they are paying their millennial workers lower and lower sums for the work they do. first, corporations reduce labour costs by demolishing standard employment relationships with workers. in response to a profit-squeeze stemming from worker mobilization, strikes and the autonomous impulse, corporations coordinated a shift from a fordist to post-fordist regime of accumulation and flexibilized employment relations (boltanski and chiapello, 2005; harvey, 1989). corporations started replacing fulltime and secure jobs with regular hours on a relatively fixed schedule with a non-standard employment regime that is part-time, insecure and temporary. by shirking a standard employment relation with workers, corporations flexibly hire and fire workers as they please, eliminate costs associated with benefits and maintain a precarious reserve army (standing, 2011). second, corporations slash their labour costs by generalizing internment, or unpaid work programs (perlin, 2009). these reinforce the class structure by privileging wealthy millennials and discriminating against the poor ones who cannot afford to work for free. corporations use intern programs eliminate paid positions while millennials actively intern a critique of the millennial | 297 themselves in hopes of acquiring the experience, skills and connections needed to land a waged job (de peuter, cohen, and brophy, 2012). third, corporations drive down labour costs “here” by off-shoring tasks to low paid workers elsewhere. “blue-collar” manufacturing jobs lost to offshoring were supposed to be replaced by higher-paying and less strenuous “service” collar jobs. but service corporations offshore tasks to workers in other countries as well and the primary reason they do so is to save on the cost of labour (cheung and rossiter, 2008). also, corporations reduce labour costs by importing foreign workers – mechanics, builders, engineers, machinists and cooks – to do jobs here but for a wage that is less than what domestic workers are paid (coles, 2013; collacott, 2014; goodman, 2014). fourth, corporations buy and implement automation systems to minimize or completely eliminate waged jobs. in almost every sector, corporations have developed and acquired information and communication technologies (icts) and algorithms to replace waged workers (brynjolfsson and mcafee, 2014). boeing’s gigantic jets are automatically riveted by giant machines and philips electronics are assembled by hundreds of robots. in transportation, firms are building driverless vehicles, conductor-less trains and pilotless drones. in music, algorithms write songs; in fashion, they design t-shirts; in publishing, they write books; in the news, they generate headline stories and daily information feeds. the more robots corporations employ, the fewer workers they must to pay. using some or all of the above strategies, corporations keep profits high by paying millennial workers as little wages as they can get away with. the profit-motive thus immiserates the millennial working class. conclusion: pedagogy of the millennial working class as argued in this paper, four dominant media representations of the millennial distort and deflect attention away from the real capitalist determinations of twenty-first century millennial life and labour. the media representation of the millennial as a member of a youth cohort obscures the reality of class division within this cohort and all generational cohorts. the media representation of the millennial as a sovereign consumer gets millennials to see their freedom in the marketplace, not in the workplace. the media representation of the millennial as a worker to be managed obscures the capitalist power dynamics of modern management and the class, sexual and racial oppressions of the workplace. the 298 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education media representation of the millennial as a victim of hard times sheds light on the dire circumstances of the millennial working class but fails to explain millennial immiseration with regard to real capitalist determinations, the profit-motive in particular. together, the four media representations examined in this paper constitute a neoliberal capitalist pedagogy of the millennial. this media method of instruction teaches millennials to see themselves and their interests as identical with the capitalist system and the worldview of its owning strata. it obscures the real capitalist social relations that shape millennial life and labour and works to deter millennials from seeing themselves, their problems and their possibilities, as part of the concerns facing the working class. in a context in which pundits teach millennials to conform with the status quo, left educators might try speaking with millennial workers about the essence of 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(2013). diversity among ceos and corporate directors: has the heyday come and gone? http://www2.ucsc.edu/ whorulesamerica/power/diversity_among_ceos.html neoliberalism and the attack on education | 305 neoliberalism and the attack on education: an interview with henry a. giroux heather mclean heather mclean1 (hm): in your latest book, neoliberalism’s war on higher education, you identify the broad project of neoliberalism as the key mode of governance, policy and ideology threatening public education. what are your greatest concerns? how can we fight back? henry a. giroux2 (hag): public and higher education are under siege in neoliberal societies for a number of reasons. first, they are under attack because they are public, not necessarily because they are failing. as public sites, they offer potential spaces, pedagogies, and modes of thinking that are critical, thoughtful, and, frankly, dangerous because they not only offer the conditions to inspire students to be self-reflective and critically engaged, but also energize them to connect what they learn to what it might mean to hold power accountable, address social injustices, and both imagine and struggle for a more just world. public and higher education are considered dangerous because they harbor the possibility of speaking the unspeakable, uttering critical thoughts, producing dissent, and creating students willing to hold power accountable. the apostles of neoliberalism, on the other hand, want to eliminate the critical function of public education on all levels and they are working hard to transform these institutions into disimagination factories. my biggest fear that as more and more students labour under onerous debt, subjected to a form of indentured citizenship, coupled with modes of 1  heather mclean is an urban studies post-doctoral research fellow in the geography department at the university of glasgow. inspired by feminist and queer ways of knowing, being, and making, her research examines the contradictory role of community-engaged arts practice in neoliberal urban planning regimes. 2  henry a. giroux currently holds the mcmaster university chair for scholarship in the public interest in the english and cultural studies department, and is distinguished visiting professor at ryerson university. his most recent books are neoliberalism’s war on higher education (haymarket press, 2014), and the violence of organized forgetting (city lights, 2014). he maintains a collection of his writing at www.henryagiroux.com. 306 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education education that are utterly instrumental and depoliticizing, they will become less and less interested in defining themselves as individual and social agents. inhabiting zones of hardship, suffering, exclusion, and joblessness, young people increasingly live in fear as they struggle to survive social conditions and policies more characteristic of authoritarian governments than democratic states. indeed, many young people around the globe appear to be caught in a sinister web of ethical and material poverty manufactured by a state that trades in suspicion, bigotry, state-sanctioned violence, and disposability. democracy loses its character as a disruptive element, a force of dissent, an insurrectional call for responsible change; democracy all but degenerates into an assault on the radical imagination, reconfigured as a force for whitewashing all ethical and moral considerations. what is left is a new kind of authoritarianism and depoliticized individuals increasingly subjected to regimes of greed, dispossession, fear, and surveillance that becomes normalized. these dark times that are now pushing more and more societies into a distinct form of neoliberal authoritarianism demand a new political language and strategies to match. first, educators and others need to figure out how to defend more vigorously public and higher education as a public good and democratic public sphere. given the global attack on all levels of education, it is crucial for faculty, students, and others to be able to articulate how central it is in producing the formative culture necessary to educate young people to be critical and engaged agents willing to fight to deepen and expand the promises of a substantive democracy. second, this also means addressing what the optimum conditions are for educators, artists, activists and other cultural workers to perform their work in an autonomous and critical fashion. in other words, we need to think through the conditions that make academic labour fruitful, engaging, and relevant. in addition to developing an international movement for the defense of public goods, especially public and higher education, we need to turn the growing army of temporary workers now swelling the ranks of the academy into full-time, permanent faculty. the presence of so many part-time employees is scandalous and it both weakens the power of the faculty and exploits them. the neoliberal governing model must be abolished for more democratic modes of power sharing and faculty must fight diligently for eliminating all of the corporate and other fundamentalist ideological and structural forces that prevent this from happening. neoliberalism and the attack on education | 307 third, how we view the role and purpose of education is inextricably linked to how we address young people as critical and engaged critical agents who are willing to take risks, engage in thoughtful dialogue, and address what it means to be socially responsible. students must be treated as engaged learners, critical citizens, and socially responsible agents, rather than as commodities and consumers. this suggests developing modes of pedagogy that are about the practice of freedom; that is, pedagogical practices that create the conditions for students to be selfreflective, critical, and self-conscious about their relationship with others and to know something about their relationship with the larger world. pedagogy in this sense not only provides important thoughtful and intellectual competencies; it also enables people to act effectively upon the societies in which they live. this is a pedagogy that both inspires and energizes by making knowledge meaningful in order to be both critical and transformative. finally, the attack on public and higher education must be understood as part of a systemic attack by neoliberalism on all public goods and institutions that do not serve the interests of the military-industrialsurveillance state. the attack on the social state and the rise of the punishing state go hand-in-hand with the attack on education under regimes of neoliberalism. hm: you claim that public intellectuals, academics who connect their scholarship to important public issues, play an important role in generating critical debate. can you elaborate? hag: neoliberalism is a toxin that is generating a predatory class of the walking dead who are producing what might be called dead zones of the imagination. this points to both a political and educational challenge for academics. faculty have a moral and political responsibility to connect their scholarship to those important social issues that make clear that the role of both public and higher education and pedagogy itself must be part of a broader political and moral practice that believes that issues of justice and democracy are worth fighting for in both the classroom and the larger society. the time has come for academics to develop political languages and transformative pedagogies in which critical understanding, civic values, and social responsibility – and the institutions that support them – become central to invigorating and fortifying a new era of civic imagination, a renewed sense of social agency, and an impassioned international social movement with the vision, organization, and set of strategies capable of challenging the neoliberal nightmare engulfing the planet. surely, this is one role that academics 308 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education can take on in order not only to defend the conditions of their own labour but to make clear to a wider public why education is central to the struggle for a substantive democracy. academics can play a vital role in helping broader publics recognize that the attack on higher education cannot be fully comprehended outside of the attack on the welfare state, social provisions, public servants, and democratic public spheres. nor can such attacks be understood outside of the production of the neoliberal subject, one who is atomized, unable to connect private issues to larger public considerations, while being taught to believe in a form of radical individualism that enables a fast withdrawal from the public sphere and the claims of economic and social justice. as stefan collini has argued, under the regime of neoliberalism, the “social self’ has been transformed into the “disembedded individual,” just as the notion of public and higher education as a public good are now repudiated by the privatizing and atomistic values at the heart of a hyper-market driven society. i would think that in a time of systemic violence and terror, the individualizing of the social, the militarization of everyday life, and the ever present policies of permanent warfare overtaking the globe, that faculty would do more than retreat into the cult of professionalism, the impenetrable jargon of specialization, or succumb to the seductions of corporate power. some academics such as stanley fish claim that faculty should not address important social issues in either their research or teaching. to do so is to run the risk of not only becoming incapable of defending public and higher education as a vital public sphere, but also of having no influence over the conditions of their own intellectual labour. without their intervention as public intellectuals, education defaults on its role as a democratic public sphere willing to produce an informed public, enact and sustain a culture of questioning, and enable a critical formative culture that advances not only the power of the imagination but also what kristen case calls moments of classroom grace. pedagogies of classroom grace allows students to reflect critically on commonsense understandings of the world, and begin to question, however troubling, their sense of agency, relationship to others, and their relationship to the larger world. this is a pedagogy that asks why we have wars, massive inequality, a surveillance state, the commodification of everything, and the collapse of the public into the private. this is not merely a methodical consideration but also a moral and political practice because it presupposes that the creation of critically engaged students can imagine a future in which justice, equality, freedom, and democracy neoliberalism and the attack on education | 309 matter. gayatri spivak is right in asking academics the question: “can one insist on the importance of a training in the humanities in the time of legitimized violence?” of course, this question applies to all levels of education and whatever subject is being taught. hm: in your writing, you discuss how an erosion of social responsibility, public values and community is shaping everyday life in north america. can you comment here about everyday ways to contest neoliberal hegemony? hag: one essential issue is to recognize that politics is not exclusively about economic power or what might be called the financialization of all aspects of society. it is also about culture, the politics of subjectivity, or what can be called the educative nature of politics itself. the left, for the most part, has ignored the importance of education being central to politics because it refuses to acknowledge matters concerning how rightwing formative cultures work to produce subjects that internalize their own oppression as a political issue and not merely an academic one. the issue of politics being educative, of recognizing that matters of pedagogy, subjectivity, desire, and consciousness are at the heart of political and moral concerns should not be lost on academics and students. as the late pierre bourdieu argued, it is important for all of us to recognize that the most important forms of domination are not only economic but also intellectual and pedagogical, and lie on the side of belief and persuasion. this suggests that it is crucial to recognize that academics and other cultural workers bear an enormous responsibility for challenging this form of domination. the late stuart hall’s remarks are instructive here. he recently insisted that the state of progressive thought is in jeopardy in that, as he puts it, “the left is in trouble. it’s not got any ideas, it’s not got any independent analysis of its own, and therefore it’s got no vision. it just takes the temperature…it has no sense of politics being educative, of politics changing the way people see things.”3 of course, hall is not suggesting the left has no ideas to speak of. he is suggesting that such ideas are often removed from the larger issue of what it means to address education and the production and reception of meaningful ways of thinking as a pedagogical practice that is central to politics itself. he is also saying that the left and progressives are often short of ideas that can move people. in other words, there is no sense of how to make ideas meaningful in order to make them critical and transformative. theoretically, this means that educators and others can work 3  williams, z. (2012, february 11). the saturday interview: stuart hall, the guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/feb/11/saturday-interview-stuart-hall 310 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to create public spaces where desires, subjectivities, and identities can be produced capable of fostering critical and engaged individual and social agents. such struggles demand a new notion of politics, one in which progressives work with social movements to create educational apparatuses dedicated to creating new political formations capable of challenging neoliberal notions of commonsense through a discourse of both critique and possibility. neoliberalism produces anti-public spaces that function as disimagination zones, spaces that produce forms of social and civic death. academics and others must reclaim the radical imagination by rethinking the crucial relationship among cultural institutions, power, and everyday life. given the assault on both subjectivity and popular needs, it is crucial to reinvent the meaning of democracy, create a comprehensive vision of change, and develop new political formations that are international in scope. hm: many of my peers are piecing together a living as contract faculty, researchers and part-time workers in other sectors. what are your thoughts on working towards labour equity and social justice for all university workers? can you comment on strategies for greater reciprocity and solidarity with workers in other labour networks? hag: i think working towards labour equity and social justice for all university workers is a noble and important ideal because it provides a discourse for organizing diverse groups of workers in the academy around a number of common themes. at the same time, it forces such groups to redefine the nature and purpose of education and why it is so central to any viable notion of politics and change. in addition, such struggles point to the need for academics and others to build alliances with other groups and social movements outside of the university as part of a more comprehensive struggle not just for education as a public good but for expanding and deepening the struggle for democracy itself. the left historically has been too fragmented, mired in often strangulating forms of identity politics that become zones of political purity that shut down rather than open up possibilities for new alliances and broader movements while retaining the spirit of specific struggles. particular struggles for freedom must be aligned with more general struggles so a broad based political formation can be developed to offset neoliberal hegemony and global power relations. hm: i am currently a university researcher in the uk where public research funders are pressuring academics to prove their usefulness in terms of developing partnerships with civil society groups, public-private partnerships, ‘regeneration’ initiatives and community organizations neoliberalism and the attack on education | 311 to name a few. does this emphasis on ‘impact’ undermine the work of public intellectuals? or does it open up new contradictions or spaces for critique and critical engagement? hag: i think it does both. surely, the current governments in the us, uk, and australia view such alliances as a way to consolidate corporate control over the university, faculty, the academic fields, and students. at the same time, the ideologies driving these counter-reforms can be a challenge for the misery, powerlessness, and damage they do to any democratic society and in doing so hopefully new alliances can be opened up with a range of groups that can assume a less instrumental and more democratic role in such alliances. hm: what are your thoughts on the role of artistic practice as a radical pedagogical strategy in a moment when universities, think tanks and arts institutions are caught up in the ‘buzz’ of neoliberal ‘creative city’ and ‘innovation’ regimes? hag: neoliberalism kills the radical imagination which is crucial to any real definition of creativity so central to artistic public spheres. surely, neoliberal attempts to colonize the arts and to turn them into a hegemonic pedagogical force for imposing modes of political conformity must be challenged on both political and pedagogical grounds. crucial here is the need for academics, artists, and other cultural workers to provide an alternative understanding of the potential of the arts as a radical pedagogical practice and strategy. the attempts to colonize the arts as an extension of neoliberal public pedagogy and repression testifies to how cultural apparatuses have become increasingly responsible for the darkness that surrounds us. this recognition points to more than despair, it also opens up the possibilities for new alliances with artists and other cultural workers while extending the power of radical pedagogical practices. 312 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the new brutalism in higher education henry a. giroux1 abstract: in spite of its broad-based, even global, recognition, higher education in the united states is currently being targeted by a diverse number of rightwing forces, which have highjacked political power and have waged a focused campaign to undermine the principles of academic freedom, sacrifice critical pedagogical practice in the name of economic growth, and dismantle the university as a bastion of autonomy, independent thought, and uncorrupted inquiry. the article argues that under the material and affective assaults of neoliberalism, higher education across the globe is experiencing an unprecedented attack on its role as a democratic public sphere. at stake in this struggle is a concerted attempt by right-wing extremists and corporate interests to strip the professoriate of any authority, render critical pedagogy as merely an instrumental task, eliminate tenure as a protection for teacher authority, define students as consumers, produce a form of indebted citizenship, and remove critical reason from any vestige of civic courage, engaged citizenship, and social responsibility. the article offers both a critique and some suggestions about how such an attack can be collectively resisted, especially by those of us working in the universities. keywords: higher education, neoliberalism, united states, academic freedom, critical pedagogy across the globe, a new historical conjuncture is emerging in which the attacks on higher education as a democratic institution and on dissident public voices in general--whether journalists, whistleblowers, or academics – are intensifying with sobering consequences. the attempts to punish prominent academics such as ward churchill and steven salaita and others are matched by an equally vicious assault on whistleblowers 1  henry a. giroux currently holds the mcmaster university chair for scholarship in the public interest in the english and cultural studies department, and is distinguished visiting professor at ryerson university. his most recent books are neoliberalism’s war on higher education (haymarket press, 2014), and the violence of organized forgetting (city lights, 2014). he maintains a collection of his writing at www.henryagiroux.com. the new brutalism in higher education | 313 such as chelsea manning, jeremy hammond, edward snowden, as well as on journalists such as james risen.2 under the aegis of the national surveillance-security-secrecy state, it becomes difficult to separate the war on whistleblowers and journalists from the war on higher education – the institutions responsible for safeguarding and sustaining critical theory and engaged citizenship.3 marina warner has rightly called these assaults on higher education, “the new brutalism in academia” (warner, 2014). it may be worse than she suggests. in fact, the right-wing defense of the neoliberal dismantling of the university as a site of critical inquiry in many countries is more brazen and arrogant than anything we have seen in the past and its presence is now felt in a diverse number of repressive regimes. for instance, the authoritarian nature of neoliberalism and its threat to higher education as a democratic public spheres was on full display recently when the multi-millionaire and beijing-appointed leader of hong kong, leung chunying, told pro-democracy protesters that “allowing his successors to be chosen in open elections based on who won the greatest number of votes was unacceptable in part because it risked giving poorer residents a dominant voice in politics” (bradsher and buckley, 2014). offering an unyielding defense for china’s authoritarian political system, he argued that any candidate that might succeed him “must be screened by a ‘broadly representative’ nominating committee, which would insulate hong kong’s next chief executive from popular pressure to create social provisions and allow the government to implement more business-friendly policies to address economic” issues (ibid). this is not just an attack on political liberty but also an attack on dissent, critical education, and public institutions that might exercise a democratizing influence on the nation. in this case the autonomy of institutions such as higher education are threatened as much by corporate interests as by the repressive policies and practices of the state. 2  for the war on academics see giroux, 2007; 2014. for an analysis of the war on journalists, see radack, 2012 3  there is nothing new about the squashing of dissent in the united states and the complicity of liberals in such acts of repression. while i have not focused on this history, it is well to remember that the suppression of dissent is not a recent phenomenon. the sordid attacks against scott nearing, paul sweezy, paul piccone, and dozens of leftists who were fired just before and after world war ii, including the sixties, represents a glaring indictment of a history that is being repeated. as a number of intellectuals such as robert lynd, i.f. stone and others have pointed out, it is hard to overlook the morally and politically poisonous role that liberals such as schlesinger, reuther, almost the entire group of “new york intellectuals,” as well as most universities, unions and liberal organizations, played in suppressing dissent in a wide variety of fields. 314 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the hidden notion of politics that fuels this market-driven ideology also informs a more western-style form of neoliberalism in which the autonomy of democratizing institutions are under assault not only by the state but also by the ultra-rich, bankers, hedge fund managers, and the corporate elite. in this case, corporate sovereignty has replaced traditional state modes of governance and can be seen in attempts by powerful corporate elites to both undermine the common good and dismantle higher education’s democratizing influence on american society. as the south african nobel prize winner in literature, jm coetzee, points out, the new power elite “reconceive of themselves as managers of national economies” who want to turn universities into training schools equipping young people with the skills required by a modern economy” (coetzee, 2013). viewed as a private investment rather than a public good, universities are now construed as spaces where students are valued as human capital, courses are determined by consumer demand, and governance is based on the walmart model of labor relations. for coetzee, this attack on higher education, which is not only ideological but also increasingly relies on the repressive, militaristic arm of the punishing state, is a response to the democratization and opening up of universities to a more multiracial, diverse, and empowered spectrum of working and middle-class students that reached a highpoint in the 1960s all across the globe. in the last forty years, the assault on the university as a center of critique and democratization has intensified, just as the reach of this assault has expanded to include intellectuals, campus protesters, an expanding number of minority students, and the critical formative cultures that provide the foundation for a substantive democracy.4 in the united states and england, in particular, the ideal of the university as vital public good no longer fits into a revamped discourse of progress, largely defined in terms of economic growth. under the onslaught of a merciless and savage financialization of society that has spread since the 1970s, the concept of social progress has all but disappeared amid the ideological onslaught of a crude market-driven fundamentalism that promises instant gratification, consumption, and immediate financial gain. if dissident intellectuals were the subject of right wing attacks in the past, the range and extent of the attack on higher education has widened and become more insidious. as ellen schrecker (2010, 3) succinctly notes: 4  for an excellent analysis of the conservative reaction to the growing democratization of the university from the sixties on, see newfield, 2008. the new brutalism in higher education | 315 “today the entire enterprise of higher education, not just its dissident professors, is under attack, both internally and externally. the financial challenges are obvious, as are the political ones. less obvious, however, are the structural changes that have transformed the very nature of american higher education. in reacting to the economic insecurities of the past forty years, the nation’s colleges and universities have adopted corporate practices that degrade undergraduate instruction, marginalize faculty members, and threaten the very mission of the academy as an institution devoted to the common good.” memories of the university as a citadel of democratic learning have been replaced by a university eager to define itself largely in as an adjunct of corporate power. civic freedom has been reduced to the notion of consumption, education has been reduced to a form of training, and agency has been narrowed to the consumer logic of choice legitimated by a narrow belief in defining one’s goals almost entirely around selfinterests rather than shared responsibilities of democratic sociability. education is increasingly reduced to a form of instrumental rationality that kills the imagination, and exorcises any attempt to connect pedagogy to the goal of educating students to be thoughtful, civically courageous, politically engaged, and complex critical thinkers. coetzee’s defense of education provides an important referent for those of us who believe that the university is nothing if it is not a public trust and social good; that is, a critical institution infused with the promise of cultivating intellectual insight, the civic imagination, inquisitiveness, risk-taking, social responsibility, and the struggle for justice. rather than defining the mission of the university in terms that mimic markets based ideologies, modes of governance, and neoliberal policies, the questions that should be asked at this crucial time in american history concern how the mission of the university might be better understood with respect to both developing and safeguarding the interests of young people at a time of violence and war, the rise of a rampant anti-intellectualism, the emerging specter of authoritarianism, and the threat of nuclear and ecological devastation. what might it mean to define the university as a public good and democratic public sphere rather than as an institution that has aligned itself with market values and is more attentive to market fluctuations and investor interests than educating students to be critically engaged citizens? or, as zygmunt bauman and leonidas donskis (2013, 139) write: “how will we form the next generation of…intellectuals and politicians if young people will never have an opportunity to experience what a non-vulgar, non-pragmatic, non-instrumentalized university is 316 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education like?” even worse, how can students become critically engaged agents if they constantly subjected to the effective spaces of neoliberalism which promote a immobilizing hedonism, suffocating narcissism, culture of glitter, the endless commodification of everything, and a tawdry privatization. under neoliberalism’s regime of affective and ideological management, youth are inducted into the cultures of wall street, silicon valley, and the idiocy of celebrity culture where all the young men and women wear what richard rodriquez (2014) calls “an astonishing vacancy.” what role will higher education play in fighting against the disavowal of democratic and egalitarian impulses and the denegration of public values, goods, and the promises of a radical democracy? with the advance of a savage form of casino capitalism and its dreamworlds of consumption, privatization, and deregulation, not only are democratic values and social protections at risk, but also the civic and formative cultures that make such values and protections intelligible and consequential to a sustainable democratic society. as public spheres, once enlivened by broad engagements with common concerns, are being transformed into “spectacular spaces of consumption” and financial looting, the flight from mutual obligations and social responsibilities strengthens and has resulted not only in a devaluing of public life and the common good, but also in a crisis of the radical imagination, especially in terms of rethinking the purpose, meaning, and value of politics itself (kurlantzick, 2013). moreover, not only have academic fields become financialized but so has time and space. students now labor under time constraints marked by the speeding up of time to pay off debts, the choosing of spaces and spheres of labor that offer quick returns – all done in the name of an indentured form of citizenship predicated on consuming and going into debt. and the consequences far exceed the more volatile examples of the violence waged by police on student protesters. another index of such a crisis, as mike davis point out, is that we live in an era in which there is a super saturation of corruption, cruelty, and violence” that fails any longer to outrage or even interest” (cited in fisher, 2009, 11). moral outrage has been replaced by the shouting and screaming that is symptomatic of talk radio and television shows whose purpose is to replace critical dialogue with a cartoonish spectacle in which evidence and argument dissolve in opinions expressed in deafening volume. this type of celebrated illiteracy finds its counterpart in university commencement speeches often delivered by business icons such as bill gates, or more problematically, celebrities who confirm the new brutalism in higher education | 317 the triumph of anti-intellectualism consumerism over thoughtfulness, social responsibility, and the ethical imagination. rarely are students in such commencements exposed to writers, journalists, artists, and other cultural workers who believe in the public good, fight against injustices, and dare at the risk of their jobs, and sometimes their lives, to hold power accountable. needless to say, the crisis of higher education is about much more than a crisis of funding, an assault on dissent, the emergence of a deep-seated anti-intellectualism, or its service to the financial elite, it is also about a crisis of memory, agency, and politics. what mike davis is suggesting is that politics has been emptied out of its political, moral, and ethical registers – stripped down to a machine of social and political death for whom the cultivation of the imagination is a hindrance. commerce is the heartbeat of social relations, and the only mode of governance that matters is one that mimics wall street. we live in the age of a new brutalism marked not simply by an indifference to multiple social problems, but also defined by a kind of mad delight in the spectacle and exercise of violence, permanent war, militarism, and cruelty. america is sullied by a brutalism that is perfectly consistent with a new kind of barbaric power, one that puts millions of people in prison, subjects an entire generation to a form of indentured citizenship, and strips people of the material and symbolic resources they need to exercise their capacity to live with dignity and justice. academics who speak out against corruption and injustice are often censored and sometimes lose their jobs, proving that dissent has become a dangerous activity. at the same time, the obama administration criminalizes public servants who expose unethical behavior, the violation of civil liberties, and corruption. one egregious and symptomatic case reported by morris berman took place in 2011 when “environmental activist tim dechristopher was sentenced to two years in prison for his repeated declaration that environmental protection required civil, i.e., nonviolent disobedience” (berman, 2012). as berman points out, one wonders if the judge that sentenced dechristropher to prison “would also have put rosa parks and mahatma gandhi in jail, had he been around their lifetimes” (ibid). if democratic political life is emptied out by the rise of the national security apparatus, the increasing criminalization of dissent, and the ongoing militarization of everyday life, it is equally devalued and threatened by modes of public pedagogy, circulating in fox news, for example, that trade in lies, ignorance, and a full-fledged attack on reason and critical thought. 318 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education in this instance, the new barbarism produces and sanctions a civic illiteracy and retrograde consumer consciousness in which students are taught to mimic the economic success of alleged “brands” such as the reality tv star, kim kardashian. her celebrity is promoted around a kind of idiocy, as exemplified in the publicity surrounding the publication of her new book, selfish, the unique selling feature of which is that it contains 2,000 selfies. the challenge for higher education in this debacle goes beyond refusing to produce modes of agency that embrace this kind of deadly anti-intellectualism and rabid individualism, but to enable students to critically interrogate what stands for public engagement, and how this debased mode of being in the world gains prominence in the public sphere. more importantly, what obligation does a university have to teach students to judge the character of their society not by the lives of celebrities, new technologies, or the endless production of needless consumer goods, but by its intellect, reason, compassion for the poor, social investment in young people, and its willingness to provide economic support and social provisions for all, including those marginalized by race, class, gender, and sexual orientation? how we treat those considered vulnerable says much more about the state of a democratic society and the institutions that support it than how we treat the rich, celebrities, and those who either trivialize democracy or intentionally undermine it for their own benefit. there is no way to escape the relationship between education and power, pedagogy and social justice, knowledge and the production of the ethical and civic imagination. these neoliberal agendas have sought ways to mystify and undermine these connections. as the corporatization of higher education intensifies, there is little talk in this view of higher education about the history and value of shared governance between faculty and administrators, nor of educating students as critical citizens rather than potential employees of walmart. there are few attempts to affirm faculty as scholars and public intellectuals who have a measure of autonomy and power. instead, faculty members are defined less as intellectuals than as technicians and grant writers or they are punished for raising their voices against various injustices. students fare no better in this debased form of education and are treated as either clients, consumers, or as restless children in need of high-energy entertainment—as was made clear in the 2012 penn state scandal and the ever increasing football scandals at major universities, where testosterone fuelled entertainment is given a higher priority than the new brutalism in higher education | 319 substantive teaching and learning – to say nothing of student safety and protection. precious resources are now wasted by universities intent on building football stadiums, student dorms that mimic resort hotels, and other amenities that signal the disneyification of higher education for students and the walmartification of labor relations for faculty. for instance, high point university seeks to attract students with its first-run movie theater, ever present ice cream trucks, a steakhouse, outdoor hot tubs, and dorms with plasma-screen tvs” (matlack, 2012). such modes of education do not foster a sense of organized responsibility fundamental to a democracy. instead, they encourage what might be called a sense of organized irresponsibility – a practice that underlies the economic darwinism and civic corruption at the heart of a debased politics of consumption, finance, and privatization. when one combines the university as a disneyfied entertainment center with labor practices that degrade and exploit faculty the result is what terry eagleton recently calls the “death of universities as centers of critique” (eagleton, 2010). governance under higher education is being stripped of any viable democratic vision. in the united states, college presidents pride themselves on defining their role almost entirely in a vocabulary that mimics the language of wall street and hedge fund managers. with few exceptions, they are praised as fund raisers but rarely acknowledged for the quality of their ideas. moreover, trustees have not only assumed more power in higher education, but are largely drawn from the ranks of business, and, yet as in the steven salaita case, are making judgments about faculty that they are unqualified to make. for those of us who believe that education is more than an extension of the business world marked by a new brutalism, it is crucial to address a number of issues that connect the university to the larger society while stressing the educative nature of politics as part of a broader effort to create a critical culture, supportive institutions, and a collective movement that supports the connection between critique and action and redefines agency in the service of the practice of freedom and justice. let me mention just a few. first, educators can address and make clear the relationship between the attack on the social state and the transformation of higher education into an adjunct of corporate power. the attack on higher education cannot be understood outside of the attack on the welfare state, social provisions, public servants, and democratic public spheres. nor can it be understood outside of the production of the neoliberal subject, one who 320 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education is atomized, unable to connect private issues to larger public considerations, and is taught to believe in a form of radical individualism that enables a fast withdrawal from the public sphere and the claims of economic and social justice. as stefan collini has argued, under the regime of neoliberalism, the “social self’ has been transformed into the “disembedded individual,” just as the notion of the university as a public good is now repudiated by the privatizing and atomistic values at the heart of a hyper-market driven society.5 clearly, in any democratic society, education should be viewed as a right, not an entitlement. this suggests a reordering of state and federal priorities to make that happen. much needed revenue can be raised by putting into play even a limited number of reform policies in which, for instance, the upper 10 percent and corporations would be forced to pay a fair share of their taxes; a tax could also be placed on trade transactions; and tax loopholes for the wealthy would be eliminated. it is well known that the low tax rate given to corporations is a major scandal. for instance, and this is only one egregious example, the bank of america paid no taxes in 2010 and “got $1.9 billion tax refund from the irs, even though it made $4.4 billion in profits” (snyder, 2013). in addition, academics can join with students, public schools teachers, unions, and others to bring attention to wasteful military spending that if eliminated could provide the funds for a free public higher education for every qualified young person in the country. brown university’s watson institute for international studies has done extensive research on military spending and the costs of war and states that as a result of the iraqi war alone “american taxpayers will ultimately spend roughly $2.2 trillion on the war, but because the u.s. government borrowed to finance the conflict, interest payments through the year 2053 means that the total bill could reach nearly $4 trillion” (armbruster, 2013; watson institute, 2013). while there is growing public concern over rising tuition rates along with the crushing debt students are incurring, there is little public outrage from academics over the billions of dollars wasted on a massive and wasteful military budget and arms industry. as rabbi michael lerner of tikkun has pointed out, democracy needs a marshall plan in which funding is sufficient to make all levels of education free, while also providing enough social support to eliminate poverty, hunger, inadequate health care, and the destruction of the environment.6 there 5  these two terms are taken from collini, 2014, 1-2. 6  for tikkun’s marshall plan, see http://spiritualprogressives.org/newsite/?page_id=114 the new brutalism in higher education | 321 is nothing utopian about the demand to redirect money away from the military, powerful corporations, and the upper 1 percent. second, addressing these tasks demands a sustained critique of the transformation of a market economy into a market society along with a clear analysis of the damage it has caused both at home and abroad. power, particularly the power of the largest corporations, has become more unaccountable and “the subtlety of illegitimate power makes it hard to identify” (george, 2014). the greatest threat posed by authoritarian politics is that it makes power invisible and hence defines itself in universal and commonsense terms, as if it is beyond critique and dissent. moreover, disposability has become the new measure of a savage form of casino capitalism in which the only value that matters is exchange value. compassion, social responsibility, and justice are relegated to the dustbin of an older modernity that now is viewed as either quaint or a grim reminder of a socialist past. this suggests, as angela davis, michelle alexander, and others have argued that there is a need for academics and young people to become part of a broader social movement aimed at dismantling the repressive institutions that make up the punishing state. the most egregious example of which is the prison-industrial complex, which drains billions of dollars in funds to put people in jail when such resources could be used to fund public and higher education. as ferguson makes painfully clear, the police have become militarized, armed with weapons from the battlefields of iraq and afghanistan (balko, 2013; nelson, 2010). the united states prison system locks up more people than any other country in the world, and the vast majority of them are people of color (alexander, 2010). moreover, public schools are increasingly modeled after prisons and are implementing policies in which children are arrested for throwing peanuts at a school bus or violating a dress code (giroux, 2012). the punishing state is a dire threat to both public and higher education and democracy itself. the american public does not need more prisons; it needs more schools, accessible, low cost health services, and a living wage for all workers. this type of analysis suggests that progressives and others need a more comprehensive understanding of how politics and power are interrelated, of how different registers of oppression mutually inform each other and can be better understood in terms of their connections and deeply historical and social relations. this suggests that educators and other progressives need to develop a more comprehensive view of society and the mutually informing registers of politics, oppression, and political struggle. there is a noble and informing example of this type of analysis in the work of 322 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education theorists such as stanley aronowitz, angela davis, and the late martin luther king, jr., who drew connections between militarism, racism and capitalism as part of is call not for reform but for a radical restructuring of american society. third, academics, artists, journalists and other young people need to connect the rise of subaltern, part-time labor – or what we might call the walmart model of model of wealth and labor relations – in both the university and the larger society to the massive inequality in wealth and income that now corrupts every aspect of american politics and society. no democracy can survive the kind of inequality in which “the 400 richest people…have as much wealth as 154 million americans combined, that’s 50 percent of the entire country [while] the top economic 1 percent of the u.s. population now has a record 40 percent of all wealth and more wealth than 90 percent of the population combined” (degraw, 2011). senator bernie sanders (2014) provides a startling statistical map of the massive inequality at work in the united states. in a speech to the u.s. senate, he states: “today…the top 1% owns 38% of the financial wealth of america, 38%. and i wonder how many americans know how much the bottom 60% own. they want people to think about it. top 1% own 38% of the wealth. what do the bottom 60% own? the answer is all of 2.3%. top 1% owns 38% of the financial wealth. the bottom 60% owns 2.3%. madam president, there is one family in this country, the walton family, the owners of wal-mart, who are now worth as a family $148 billion. that is more wealth than the bottom 40% of american society. one family owns more wealth than the bottom 40% of american society...that’s distribution of wealth. that’s what we own. in terms of income, what we made last year, the latest information that we have in terms of distribution of income is that from 2009-2012, 95% of all new income earned in this country went to the top 1%. have you all got that? 95% of all new income went to the top 1%, which tells us that when we talk about economic growth, which is 2%, 3%, 4%,whatever it is, that really doesn’t mean all that much because almost all of the new income generated in that growth has gone to the very, very, very wealthiest people in this country.” democracy in the united states is has been hijacked by a freefloating class of ultra-rich and corporate powerbrokers and transformed into an oligarchy “where power is effectively wielded by a small number the new brutalism in higher education | 323 of individuals” (mckay, 2014). at least, this is the conclusion of a recent princeton university study, and at the risk of being charged with hyperbole, the report may be much too moderate in its conclusions. fourth, academics need to fight for the rights of students to get a free education, be given a formidable and critical education not dominated by corporate values, and to have a say in the shaping of their education and what it means to expand and deepen the practice of freedom and democracy. many countries such as germany, france, denmark, cuba, and brazil post-secondary education is free because these countries view education not as a private right but as a public good. yet, in some of the most advanced countries in the world such as the united states and canada, young people, especially from low income groups are being systemically excluded from access to higher education and, in part, this is because they are left out of the social contract and the discourse of democracy. they are the new disposables who lack jobs, a decent education, hope, and any semblance of a life better than that of their parents. they are a reminder of how finance capital has abandoned any viable vision of a better future for young people. youth have become a liability in the world of high finance, a world that refuses to view them as important social investments. and the consequences are terrifying. as jennifer m. silva points out in her brilliant book, coming up short, coming of age for young people “is not just being delayed but fundamentally dismantled by drastic economic restructure, profound cultural transformations, and deepening social inequality” (silva, 2013, 10) the futures of young people are being refigured or reimagined in ways that both punish and depoliticize them. silva writes that many young people are turning away from politics, focusing instead on the purely personal and emotional vocabularies of self-help and emotional self-management. as she (ibid) puts it: “…this emerging working-class adult self is characterized by low expectations of work, wariness toward romantic commitment, widespread distrust of social institutions, profound isolation from others, and an overriding focus on their emotions and psychic health…. [they] are working hard to remake dignity and meaning out of emotional self-management and willful psychic transformation.” finally, though far from complete, there is a need to oppose the ongoing shift in power relations between faculty and the managerial class. too many faculty are now removed from the governing structure 324 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education of higher education and as a result have been abandoned to the misery of impoverished wages, excessive classes, no health care, and few, if any, social benefits. as political scientist benjamin ginsburg points out, administrators and their staffs now outnumber full time faculty accounting for two-thirds of the increase in higher education costs in the past 20 years. this is shameful and is not merely an education issue but a deeply political matter, one that must address how neoliberal ideology and policy has imposed on higher education an anti-democratic governing structure. we may live in the shadow of the authoritarian corporate state, but the future is still open. the time has come to develop a political language in which civic values and social responsibility—and the institutions, tactics, and long-term commitments that support them – become central to invigorating and fortifying a new era of civic engagement, a renewed sense of social agency, and an impassioned international social movement with the vision, organization, and set of strategies capable of challenging the neoliberal nightmare that now haunts the globe and empties out the meaning of politics and democracy. references alexander, m. (2010). the new jim crow. new york: the new press. armbruster, b. (2014, march 14). study: iraq war cost u.s. $2.2 trillion, claimed nearly 200,000 lives. thinkprogress, http://thinkprogress.org/ security/2013/03/14/1721961/study-iraq-war-cost-2-triillion/ balko, r. (2000). rise of the warrior cop: the militarization of america’s police forces. new york: public affairs. bauman, z. and l. donskis. (2013). moral blindness: the loss of sensitivity in liquid modernity. cambridge, uk: polity press. berman, m. slouching towards nuremberg. counterpunch http://www. counterpunch.org/2012/07/25/slouching-towards-nuremberg/ bradsher, k. and c. buckley. (2014, october 20). hong kong leader reaffirms tough stance on elections and economic discontent. new york times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/world/asia/leungchun-ying-hong-kong-chinaprotests.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=h omepage&version=hpsumsmallm edia& module=first-columnregion&region=top-news&wt.nav=top-news coetzee, j.m. (2013, november 1). universities head for extinction. mail & guardian, http://mg.co.za/ article/2013-11-01-universities-head-for-extinction the new brutalism in higher education | 325 collini, s. (2014, february 5). response to book review symposium: stefan collini, what are universities for, sociology, http://soc.sagepub.com/ content/early/2014/02/14/0038038513518852 degraw, d. (2011, august 11). meet the global financial elites controlling $46 trillion in wealth. alternet, http://www.alternet.org/story/151999/ meet_the_global_financial_elites_controlling _$46_ trillion_in_wealth eagleton, t. (2010, december 17). the death of universities. the guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/ death-universities-malaise-tuition-fees fisher, m. (2009). capitalist realism. washington, usa: zero books, 2009. george, s. (2014, february). state of corporations: the rise of illegitimate power and the threat to democracy. transnational institute and occupy. com, state of power 2014: exposing the davos class, http://www.tni.org/ sites/www.tni.org/files/download/state_of_power-6feb14.pdf giroux, a.h. (2007). the university in chains: confronting the militaryindustrial-academic complex. new york: paradigm. -----(2012). youth in a suspect society. new york: palgrave. -----(2014). neoliberalism’s war on higher education. chicago: haymarket. greenwald, g. (2014). no place to hide. new york: signal. kurlantzick, j. (2013). democracy in retreat. new haven: yale university press. matlack, c. (2012, april 19). bubble u.: high point university. bloomberg business week, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-19/ bubble-u-dot-high-point-university mckay, t. (2014, april 16). princeton concludes what kind of government america really has, and it’s not a democracy,” popular resistance, http://www.policymic.com/articles/87719/princeton-concludes-whatkind-of-government-america-really-has-and-it-s-not-a-democracy nelson, j., ed. (2000). police brutality. new york: norton. newfield, c. (2008). unmaking the public university: the forty-year assault on the middle class. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. radack, j. (2012, april 9). obama targets journalists. salon, http:// www.salon.com/2012/04/09/journalists_casualties_in_the_war_on_ whistleb lowers/ sanders, b. (2014, april 1). a threat to american democracy. rsn, http://readersupportednews.org/ opinion2/277-75/22830-focus-a-threat-to-american-democracy schrecker, e. (2010). the lost soul of higher education. new york, n.y.: the new press. silva, m.j. (2013). coming up short: working-class adulthood in age of uncertainty. new york: oxford university press. 326 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education snyder, m. (2013, february 19). you won’t believe who is getting away with paying zero taxes while the middle class gets hammered. infowars.com, http://www.infowars.com/abolish-the-income-tax-youwont-believe-who-is-getting-away-with-paying-zero-taxes-while-themiddle-class-gets-hammered/ tikkun. (n.d.) global marshall plan, http://spiritualprogressives.org/ newsite/?page_id=114 warner, m. (2014, september 11). dairy. the london review of books, 36:17, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n17/marina-warner/diary watson institute. (2013, march 14). costs of war project, iraq war: 190,000 lives, $2.2 trillion, http://news.brown.edu/articles/2013/03/warcosts neoliberal standardization and its discontents | 327 neoliberal standardization and its discontents: an interview with diane ravitch christopher bailey chris bailey1 (cb): you have worked in the u.s. department of education in various capacities since 1991. what attracted you to that institution? and what were some of your impressions of the education policies produced by that organization? diane ravitch2 (dr): i worked in the u.s. department of education from mid-1991 to january 1993. i was invited to be assistant secretary for education research by lamar alexander, who was secretary of education for president george h.w. bush. i accepted his invitation because i was excited by the opportunity to learn about federal policy and congress. during the time i was there, we pushed for voluntary national standards. we encouraged their creation by funding professional organizations of teachers and scholars. standards were produced, but they didn’t have much traction at the time because of the huge furor over the history standards. cb: what was the rationale behind your initial support for the no child left behind (nclb) policy under g.w. bush, and why did you eventually leave your position in the u.s. department of education to become one of the more vocal critics of neoliberal education reform in the usa? 1  chris bailey is a phd candidate at the department of political science and member of the global labour research centre at york university. his doctoral research is a comparison of neoliberal restructuring of k-12 public education in ontario and british columbia as well as teachers’ union struggles against neoliberal restructuring in both provinces. 2  diane ravitch is research professor of education at new york university and a historian of education. from 1991 to 1993, she was assistant secretary of education and counsellor to secretary of education lamar alexander in the administration of president george h.w. bush. she was responsible for the office of educational research and improvement in the u.s. department of education. as assistant secretary, she led the federal effort to promote the creation of voluntary state and national academic standards. 328 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education dr: i left the u.s. department of education when the first bush administration ended. i spent three years at the brookings institution, where i wrote a book about national standards, then went to new york university in 1995, where i have been ever since. during the 1990s and early 2000s, i was part of three conservative think tanks – the manhattan institute, the thomas b. fordham institute, and the koret task force at the hoover institution. i was deeply engaged with the last two, and became convinced over time that no child left behind was a failure. i also became convinced that charter schools had become a vehicle for privatization. i became increasingly alienated from the other board members and eventually became a full-fledged critic of these policies. i wrote a book about it called the death and life of the great american school system, which came out in 2010; i began researching and writing it in 2006 or 2007. cb: what are the origins of the movement to privatize public education in the u.s.? are there any important similarities or differences between bush’s nclb and the race to the top (rttt) initiative under obama? how is public education currently funded under these programs? dr: the privatization movement began with economist milton friedman’s proposal for vouchers in 1955. vouchers were a favorite cause of the far-right fringe for many years. however, the public never voted for vouchers, largely because of opposition to funding religious schools. in the early 1990s, the rightwing turned to charters as its substitute for vouchers. both were a way of promoting the transfer of public funds to private hands. the charter movement began with liberal support, especially from the clinton administration. they were seen as innovative. but the right cheered them and eventually became their strongest supporters. there is not much difference between nclb and rttt. they both promote high-stakes testing and privately managed charters. rttt is actually worse, however, because it was sponsored by a democratic president, our first black president, who showed a strong preference for charters, not public schools. this gave cover to democrats in many states to support the neoliberal agenda. rttt also insisted upon the evaluation of teachers by the test scores of their students. secretary of education duncan punished states that did not accept this strategy, even though it mislabelled teachers, demoralized teachers, and has not worked anywhere it has been applied. duncan also heavily promoted the common core standards and funded tests for these standards. they neoliberal standardization and its discontents | 329 have been highly controversial, having attracted opposition from the right and the left, and from teachers. cb: can you signal some of the key features of the neoliberal education reform movement in the u.s.? how does this movement serve to undermine public education? dr: the key features of neoliberal education reform are 1) a heavy reliance on standardized testing; 2) a willingness to eliminate collective bargaining and tenure; 3) a hostility to public education as such; 4) a preference for privately managed charter schools; 5) support for attacks on the teaching profession, including hostility to tenure and professionalism; 6) support for alternate routes into teaching like teach for america, whose recruits have only five weeks of training and typically leave after 2-3 years in the classroom.this movement clearly will undermine public education by taking funding from public schools to support privately managed schools and cyber schools, as well as harming teacher professionalism. cb: lois wiener and michael apple consider the current movement to privatize public education in the u.s. to be a part of a wider international neoliberal movement to restructure public education into a profit-oriented model. how would you characterize the charter/voucher school movement within the u.s.? what are the global implications of this reform movement? dr: i don’t know whether the movement in the u.s. is international in scope. it might be. but i have no doubt that the driving force behind it is to transition to a profit-making model. this has occurred in many of our states, where for-profit organizations and individuals are siphoning off millions of dollars from public schools. in many places, public schools are starved of resources, stripped of programs, while charter schools have small classes and all the programs that were eliminated in public schools. the cybercharters are especially profitable but the quality of education provided by computer is very poor. nonetheless, these companies (like k12 inc.) are profitable. cb: an essential part of the education reform movements’ rhetoric has been the demonization of the public education system and teachers’ unions. is there any merit to these accusations? why do you think teachers’ unions are being blamed? dr: there is no merit to the accusations made about either public education or the unions. these accusations are part of the neoliberal effort to destroy public education and to leave teachers powerless. 330 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education cb: in past articles you’ve suggested several education reforms to combat chronic problems within public education in the u.s. how can we fight racial segregation and class stratification via progressive education reform? do reforms need to extend beyond curriculum and classroom conditions? would this also require progressive reforms to healthcare and welfare? dr: the leadership to end racial segregation must come from the federal government and state governments. there will be no progressive reforms without progressive leadership. unfortunately, our current leadership is entirely neoliberal, not only in the federal government but in usually progressive states like new york and connecticut, whose governors are indistinguishable from conservative republicans on education issues. our secretary of education arne duncan bemoans racial segregation, yet hails charter schools that are completely segregated without seeing any contradiction. i have often wondered why he didn’t take the $5 billion devoted to race to the top and award it to districts that promoted desegregation. as i wrote in my last book reign of error: the hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to america’s public schools, true reform must involve not only the schools but government and social policy. that is not happening, but i think it must happen. cb: in light of some recent examples of fight back against the education reform movement by teachers unions, students and community members in chicago, l.a. and wisconsin, what are your thoughts regarding the viability of mounting popular challenges to the charter/ voucher movement? dr: i see a growing movement against high stakes testing and privatization. the two are intertwined. the common core is at the heart of the neoliberal agenda because it raises standards so high that it generates failure. the tests have passing marks so high that they are designed to fail most students. i believe the standards and tests were designed to generate failure, thereby encouraging people to seek alternatives to the public schools. at the same time, the common core creates huge profits for the testing industry and the tech industry, because all testing must be done online, requiring the expenditure of billions of dollars on bandwidth and new tablets and computers. parents and educators are waking up to the destructive wrecking ball aimed at their children, their schools, and their communities. there are more parents opting out, more teachers and administrators speaking out. i believe that this movement will grow and that neoliberal advocates will neoliberal standardization and its discontents | 331 be exposed for what they are: a tiny elite seeking to privatize our schools and profit from them. everything they have promoted as “reform” has failed. you can’t fail your way to success. cb: given the vast amount of corporate funding and resources behind the charter/voucher movement, what are some concrete strategies that supporters of public education could employ to fight back? dr: the corporate and philanthropic funding is huge, but the numbers of those pushing neoliberalism are small. if we are still a democracy, and i believe and hope we are, those fighting this agenda must organize and educate the public. that is what we are best at: public education. if parents, teachers, and activists grow their movement, they – we – will win. our numbers are vast. their numbers are puny. i have often thought that if they called a meeting of all the so-called reformers, they might convene 25,000 people, maybe less – and most of them would be employees of the movement itself. we have millions of teachers and administrators, and tens of millions of parents. our great strength are students and parents. they can speak out and no one can fire them. they work for our movement without being paid because they work from conviction, not with hope of profit. conviction will triumph because we will outlive them and outlast them. if their profits dry up, they will go away. we will not. 332 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education beyond education, brains and hard work: the aspirations and career trajectory of two black young men carl e. james1 abstract: it is commonly accepted that through education, intellectual ability, and hard work, individuals will attain the education and careers to which they aspire. with reference to this neoliberal ethos, i use case studies of two african canadian young men from the same stigmatized neighbourhood to examine their social, educational and occupational experiences, aspirations and achievements. the findings indicate that while equally ambitious, determined and university educated, one of the young men successfully attained his career goal immediately after graduating from university while the other still waits to achieve the same more than two years after graduation. keywords: education, neoliberalism, african canadians, neibourhood stigma, agency, structure introduction a 2011 edition of forbes magazine featured an article by gene marks (2011), “if i were a poor black kid,” in which he referenced president obama’s “excellent speech” a week earlier about the possibilities of social mobility for working class people in america. marks argues that “everyone in this country has a chance to succeed,” and prospects are not “impossible for those kids from the inner city.” he continues to say that “it takes brains. it takes hard work. it takes a little luck. and a little help from others. it takes the ability and the know-how to use the resources that are available. like technology….” (ibid). like marks and many 1  carl e. james is the director of the york centre for education and community. he also teaches in the faculty of education and in the graduate programs in sociology and social work. beyond education, brains and hard work | 333 other americans (see the feedback that his article generated2), canadians too have long pondered why “poor black kids” do not take advantage of the educational opportunities and the technological resources available to them. the idea that equality of opportunity exists, and that all black youth have to do is to use their “brains,” work hard, and access necessary resources is premised on individualism, competition, personal responsibility, free choice, accountability, exercise of agency, resiliency, and strategic aspirations – all of which constitute a neoliberal ethos (porfilio & malott, 2008; braedley & luxton, 2010). influenced by this ethos, particularly through their schooling, black youth and their parents come to expect that the educational, social and material successes they seek will be realized. but the path to such realization is contingent on many social, institutional and structural factors beyond an individual’s control. in fact, in the case of young black men, the neoliberal “success formula” is remarkably precarious when we take into account how race, class and gender operate in their lives. in this article, i reference the experiences of two 29-year old african-canadian young men, kobe and trevor (pseudonyms), to show how neoliberal discursive rationalities operated in their social, educational, career and aspirational trajectories. while they have grown up in the same media-branded “troubled” toronto community, and would appear to have made “all the right moves” in terms of their efforts to attain their career aspirations and become full participating and productive citizens, their achievements are asymmetrically different. i argue that this difference cannot be explained simply by intellectual ability, level of education attained, or professional qualification, but by (probably more importantly) the complex ways in which the opportunities are afforded by the educational and occupational structures to which they had access. in proceeding, i review the principles of neoliberalism, and using critical race theory (crt) as a rejoinder, discuss the ways in which neoliberalism obscures the effects of race, class and gender on the lives of racialized members of society. before discussing the findings, i present the methodology followed by a brief description of the neighbourhood in which the participants grew up. 2  see responses to article by c. emdin (2011, december 20), five lessons from the ‘if i were a poor black kid’ debate, huffington post; i. gandy (2011, december 14), ‘if i were a poor black kid’: really, forbes? the root; l. peiztmann, (2011, december 13), if i were a middle aged white man. huffington post; and touré (2011, december 15) 334 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education theoretical considerations: neoliberalism and critical race theory (crt) there is a generally accepted notion that individuals can attain the education they desire (as education is free), make choices, freely pursue employment opportunities, become wealthy, and take responsibility for their lives in ways that they see fit. the prevailing neoliberal ethos which informs this common-sense notion also holds that competition is an important “social good” and the “least restrictive way” of addressing and re-distributing inequitable resources (braedley and luxton, 2010, 8). principally, neoliberalism is “a transnational political project” (wacquant, 2008) that is premised on the principles of a market economy in which individuals are free to pursue wealth without the constraints a welfare state often imposes (braedley and luxton, 2010; wacquant, 2008). in such context, individuals and families are tasked with taking responsibility for their own care and social outcomes (braedley and luxton, 2010, 15). but in a context of structural inequity, the resources and opportunities to which individuals have access, and concomitantly their freedom and choices, are inevitably structured by the economic and social conditions over which they have little or no control (braedley and luxton, 2010; porfilio and malott, 2008; tabb, 2003). the sustained attempts by neoliberal advocates “to promote competition, choice, entrepreneurship, and individualism” constitute what connel (2010, 26-27) calls a “sociocultural logic” that offers formerly excluded individuals access to opportunities without changing the existing “systems of inequality or the ideologies that sustain them” (35). in canada where there is an official multiculturalism policy (1971) and legislation (1988) which purport to promote “inclusive citizenship” and guarantee “value and dignity of all canadian citizens regardless of their racial and ethnic origins, their language or religious affiliation,” minority group members continue to experience educational, social, civic and economic marginalization and exclusion (basu, 2011, 1308; see also reitz et al., 2009). understandably so, since the multicultural claim of recognizing “cultural groups” (i.e. minorities) is up against the hegemonic neoliberal ideology of individualism and competition) which places responsibility for their circumstances on individuals. as a consequence, individuals attribute their social or economic circumstances to poor choices they have made, rather than to the limited, problematic or bad choices available to them. according to luxton (2010, 172), liberalism’s “perverse form of individualism – an obstinate and persistent belief beyond education, brains and hard work | 335 that blames the victim by privatizing social problems”– immobilized individuals as they became resigned to the inevitability of their situation and a failure to see that they are both formed by and subjected to the prevailing values and practices of the economic, social and political structures. in their examination of how youth are incorporated into “a global, neoliberal economic system,” sukarieh and tannock (2008, 304) argue that today’s youth are caught in a capitalist system which has led to the growth of large populations of unemployed, working class, poor and racialized youth, typically residing in urban settings, with worldviews, identities, and ways of life that are oppositional or peripheral to the existing social order. in this regard, educators and other youth service workers set about to make these youth “fit functionally” into society socializing them into a culture of responsibility and entrepreneurship premised on white middle-class “standardized and universalized notions” of youth development. they learn, then, that if they cannot make it in the existing employment market it is because they, “lack the skills of employability, and you should work on yourself more in order to better make it in the system” (sukarieh and tannock 2008, 309). they also come to know of the “ever-increasing educational requirements for jobs” which as bills and brown (2011, 2) contend, amounts to a practice of “credential inflation.”3 within this neoliberal paradigm, racialized youth must wrestle with the dynamic and complex aspects of racism – a structural barrier to which critical race theorists (crt) draw attention. critical race theory is particularly useful here to understand how youth of colour fare in neoliberal contexts. by situating the experiences of people of colour at its centre, it highlights how seemingly race-neutral and colour-blind practices and policies disproportionately affect minorities (aylward, 1999, 34). according to howard (2008, 73), crt holds that peoples’ experiences and opportunities are significantly shaped by their race, and that “any attempt to eradicate racial inequalities has to be centered on the socio-historical legacy of racism” which also means challenging the prevailing ideas of meritocracy, fairness, and objectivity that maintains the discriminatory and exclusionary practices in society (see also charles, 2011; gillborn, 2008; stovall, 2008; trevino, harris and wallace, 2011). 3  bills and brown (2011, 1) define credentialism as the “extent to which societies allocate individuals to slots in the occupational hierarchy on the basis of the educational qualifications that the candidates present at the point of hire.” 336 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the “inextricable layers of racialized subordination” (howard, 2008, 73) based on gender, social class and generational status play a significant role in determining the opportunities young people will have, the neighbourhoods in which they live, the schools they can attend, and the educational resources to which they will have access (james, 2012). participating in the inequitable education system tends to be difficult for students who do not possess or have access to the normalized middle-class “cultural capital,” which in yosso’s (2005, 76) words, is “an accumulation of specific forms of knowledge, skills and abilities that are valued by privileged groups in society.” nevertheless, as yosso argues, youth of colour utilize (77) “community cultural wealth” – i.e. “an array of knowledge, skills, abilities and contacts… to survive and resist macro and micro-forms of oppression” – which enables them “to dream of possibilities beyond their present circumstances,” even without the “objective means” to attain their educational, occupational or social goals (78). for young black males, the resources and supports from their community are crucial to their journey through life; for as walcott (2009, 75) asserts, “under the contemporary regime of the global terms of neoliberal economy and by extension... its culturally rhetorical disciplinary apparatus”, black masculinity is always constructed as deficient. as a counter to this hegemonic cultural message of neoliberalism, black males have to operate on a framework of masculinity that enables them to hold on to their “hopes and dreams for the future” sustained through aspirational capital, navigational skills, familial supports and community validation, whereby they are able to, in yosso’s words (2005, 77), “challenge (resist) oppressive conditions.” research method kobe and trevor were first interviewed for two different qualitative research studies i conducted with toronto youth over a ten-year period. i took a constructionist approach to the studies in that i used the interviews (each of about 1-1/2 to 2 hours) as opportunities to have participants engage in a process of meaning-making or “sense-making work” (roulston, 2007, 16). as such, i was not a neutral observer simply trying to access and then represent certain truths about the participants (stephenson, 2005). to this end, the audio-typed interviews were unstructured, hence enabling me to engage with the experiences and realities of kobe and trevor. in fact, as critical race theorists encourage, research with racialized participants should take an approach that captures their beyond education, brains and hard work | 337 stories and counter-stories in ways that incorporate their perspectives on their lives noting how they cope with and respond to their social, educational and material conditions (fernandez, 2002; moore, henfield and owens, 2008). in this regard, the case study approach with its detailed examination of a particular issue, incident or individual, not only serves to recognize and address the issues of participants’ lives, it also enables a range of broad understandings that might otherwise be missed (creswell, 1994). notwithstanding its lack of generalizability, scholars assert that case studies can be used “to illuminate the nuanced complexity of social life in a variety of contexts” (singer and buford may, 2010, 305; see also lichtman, 2013; stake, 2000). the study in which kobe participated was conducted with twentytwo young men and women between the ages of eighteen and twentyfive who grew up in a marginalized toronto neighbourhood. this study explored the raced experiences of african canadian university students of caribbean origin, their educational and career aspirations, and their perceptions of their occupational opportunities and outcomes. participants were first interviewed in 2001 or 2002; follow-up interviews were conducted in 2006 with ten of the original respondents, and kobe was again interviewed in 2011 for this article. first interviewed in 2002 during his third year of university, kobe, then twenty-two years-old, was one of about three participants who were born in the caribbean – in his case, jamaica. he stood out initially from the other research participants, not only in his display of self-confidence, tenacity, high achievement, and the ways in which he engaged with his schooling (his teachers specifically) but also his ambivalent relationship with the community. he recognized that being from that community could be a liability, hence he would distance himself; but at the same time, he used that liability as a motivation to for his aspirations. the study in which trevor participated was first conducted in 2006, and was designed specifically to study the athletic motivations, experiences and aspirations of black/african canadian male basketball players between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight who were living in metropolitan toronto. this study sought to answer the question: was playing on their high school basketball team a liability or an asset for black student-athletes? trevor was one of twelve participants in this study and the only one that grew up in the same neighbourhood as kobe. trevor was initially interviewed in 2006 at the age of twenty-five during the fourth year of his university program; and again in 2011 for this article. in the initial interview with trevor, i observed a strong tie to the 338 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education community that was unlike that of kobe; hence my curiosity to explore their similarities and differences in terms of their educational and career paths and ambitions, and the role of the community in their lives. while similar in many ways, such as having grown up in the same stigmatized toronto neighbourhood, there are important differences that make this exploration of their lives of compelling interest – specifically, the ways in which they were supported by the educational system and its educators, and the privileging of particular educational and occupational interests over others. in the follow-up interviews with kobe and trevor, i asked about their educational achievements and occupational situation to date noting their optimism and satisfaction with how they approached the goals they had set for themselves. kobe and trevor, like the other participants in the studies i conducted, represent a growing group of second-generation and generation-and-ahalf black/african-caribbean-canadian youth for whom the immigrantdrive and expectations of their parents have served to motivate them to do well educationally in order to be socially and economically successful. in fact, canadian studies of black university students (gosine, 2008; james and taylor, 2008) show that their educational aspirations were motivated by their sense of obligation to their immigrant parents and their desire to “give back” to their (black) community. and although aware of the structural realities of racism and other related barriers, they maintained that with their individual efforts and willpower, and on the basis of merit “education had worked, was working, and would continue to work for them” (james and taylor, 2008, 585). gosine (2010, 9) contends that such logic is informed by the larger society’s neoliberal ethos of meritocracy and individualism, and “the belief that racism can be overcome by way of academic and occupational attainment, hard work, determination, and black solidarity.” in the following section, i discuss the neighbourhood in which kobe and trevor grew up and then go on to examine their career trajectory noting the similarities and differences in their strategies, their familial support, and their achievements to date. the neighbourhood kobe and trevor lived and attended school in one of toronto’s “priority areas” characterized by high rates of poverty, low-income earners, public housing tenants, and high proportion of immigrants and racialized population (hulchanski, 2007; james, 2012; stapleton, murphy and xing, 2012). established during the 1960s, the community is commonly referred to as an “urban” or “inner city” neighbourhood. but beyond education, brains and hard work | 339 keil and young’s (2011, 1) term “in-between” seems more fitting, in that it is an urban space “coached between the glamour zones of the downtown neighbourhoods and the exploding single-family home suburbs and exurbs…; an area that oscillates “between unwelcome notoriety (for poverty and crime) and outright invisibility.” about eighty thousand people live in this high-density neighbourhood with a large cluster of high-rise apartment buildings and townhouses. characteristic of what myles and hou (2004, 31) term a “low-income immigrant enclave”, it is home to a broad representation of canada’s diverse ethno-racial population. black/african canadians – most of them born in canada to caribbean parents – make up the largest (about twenty percent) racial minority group (the next largest is south asians – a two percent difference), but the largest racial group is whites with nearly thirty percent of the population. it also has “one of the highest proportions of youth, sole-supported families, refugees and immigrants…of any community in toronto” (james, 2012a, 54). schooling issues (such as low educational achievements, high drop-out rates, and absenteeism) and social issues (such as drugs, gangs, and violence) draw wide-spread attention from educators, governments, police, and the media (ezeonu, 2008; lawson 2013). many of residents have a strong sense of loyalty, responsibility and commitment to the place they consider home. but some residents, weary of the marginalization, stigmatization and racialization, choose to leave the neighbourhood – oftentimes move to the suburbs – seeking safety, comfort and better schooling conditions for themselves and/or children. these residents, many of them first generation canadians construct going to live in the suburbs as a marker of upward social mobility (james, 2012a; myles and hou, 2004). family, community and school at the age of twelve, kobe immigrated to canada from rural jamaica with his older sister to join his single mother who had already been living in toronto for six years. he recalled that while he was “excited” about leaving jamaica because of the changes that would come to his life, he was nevertheless “indifferent” about what to expect. about two years after settling in toronto, his family moved to a rented apartment in the neighbourhood that kobe would call home for the next ten years. trevor, on the other hand, was born in that neighbourhood to a single mother who had also grown up in that neighbourhood. he lived with his mother, grandmother and uncle (a police officer). trevor’s mother 340 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education had immigrated as a teenager to canada from london, england with her mother and brother. both young men grew up with their working mothers – kobe’s mother worked as a legal secretary, and trevor’s mother as a nurse – who had concerns about raising their sons in the neighbourhood. so the message the sons received from their parents about the neighbourhood was one of risk and danger – a place from which they should move as soon as possible. this rendering of the neighbourhood was somewhat consistent with that of the media and other canadians. it is therefore understandable that kobe would, at that time, avoid interactions with peers in the neighbourhood outside of school since he did not want “to get in trouble because of its reputation.” he also stated: “i went to school, went to track, and went home and did my homework….i had no friends in the area….i didn’t really, i guess, associate with a lot of people from the area outside of school.” but for trevor growing up in the neighbourhood “was a blessing.” as he explained: “growing up in [the neighbourhood] helped me by allowing me to see and feel what it was like to live in a community which did not have the best reputation. i think it helped make me a critical thinker based on the fact that i was able to experience the positive things that the community had to offer rather than just hear about the negative.” in keeping with their determination to leave the “bad neighbourhood” for the sake of their children, especially sons, the families did move from the neighbourhood. kobe moved about two miles away during his second year in university; and trevor moved to the outer suburbs at the end of grade 7. as trevor reported, his mother did not want him to “fall into the stereotype” or “become a statistic” – a reference to gang violence, shootings, and police targeting of black youth in the neighbourhood (ezeonu, 2008; lawson 2013). however, trevor was allowed to complete middle school in the neighbourhood – a request he had made to his mother because, as he said, “i didn’t think i would be comfortable going to a new school for just one year.” this enabled trevor to spend “a lot of time” in his old neighbourhood; hence was able to maintain his friendships. but trevor’s transfer to high school in the new suburban neighbourhood to which he had moved with his mother, was not a welcoming experience for him. he referred to his early experience in his high school as “a culture shock” which was, in part, due to the fact that it was not a “multicultural” neighbourhood like the one he left – residents in his new beyond education, brains and hard work | 341 neighbourhood were “either white or asians.” in reflecting on his experience in his new school, trevor said: “i had a hard time adjusting to the new environment and fitting in with the rest of the students. i felt that i was completely different from everyone else. it seemed that the students and teachers knew about me and where i came from before i was formally introduced to any of them. i felt as if they already had their prejudgments about me before they even got to know me.” and in our most recent interview, trevor noted: “it seemed that they thought i should be a certain way because of where i grew up. they were expecting to see this thug or from what some people said, ‘someone more black’.” trevor recalled that there were “approximately ten black students in the entire school” when he was in grade 9. while he moved in a different academic circle, he ‘bonded’ with them because they were having “the same feelings” about the school. that bonding was also facilitated by their involvement in the school’s sports teams. in fact, as trevor said, “all of the black students in the school were on the sports team, whether it was basketball, volleyball, or track and field”4 and some of them were in special education classes “for behavioural or academic reasons” – classes in which black students tend to be over-represented (see toronto district school board, 2010). further, the recognition and related supports that trevor and his black peers received from their teachers for their athletic prowess were not the same in their academic programs. in fact, as trevor observed, among his peers, “academics became secondary to athletics, and the black students relied more on their athletic ability than on their academic ability.” that many of the black students were to be found on athletic teams is likely a reflection of sports being used as an intervention and pre-emptive strategy – serving as a form of social control and regulation which has become, as spaaij (2009, 247) would argue, “a substantial aspect of the neoliberal repertoire.” for his part, complying with his mother’s desire for him “to have access to the best education” – hence their move to the suburb – trevor resisted the effort of his coaches and peers to sell him 4  trevor also added: “it seemed as though a black student was always the star of the sports teams – usually basketball or track and field.” 342 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education on the benefits of athletics as a route toward his educational and career goals. he explained: “i remember my basketball coach insisting that we make a videotape to send to schools in the states in hopes that i would receive a scholarship to play basketball at an american university. he also took it upon himself to give me a basketball rim to put up at my house so that i could practice. my mom was offended by this gesture, because she probably felt that me being a black student, he should have been encouraging me more with academics instead of sports.” like with trevor, sports played a role in helping kobe negotiate and navigate his schooling environment, and to acculturate to life in canada. during his first year in high school, kobe was invited by his gym teacher to try out for the track team – something he gladly did with the knowledge that his school has a reputation for producing students who won athletic scholarships to u.s. universities. kobe did become a member of his school’s track team, and he valued the opportunities that his athletic abilities and skills provided, but he had no interest in trying for an athletic scholarship.5 what he expected from his schooling – essentially from his teachers and coach – was support in his academic work. and as a child with an immigrant mother who had limited understanding of the educational system, it was to his teachers kobe looked for and received help in navigating the school system. this is not to say that his mother did not do her part; she provided, according to kobe, “a lot of the basic principles of the hard work ethic” required to get through school. in his initial interview, he also credited “the principles i learned in jamaica” for how he was able to apply himself to his schooling and education. unlike trevor, kobe was able to identify “good’ teachers with whom he could relate effectively, and who worked to address his needs and interests. aside from his caribbean-born teachers with whom he “had a good rapport” (given that they were able to understand and appreciate his situation as an immigrant youth from the region), kobe credited one teacher, “who is actually…a white teacher,” for his generosity and support. kobe felt that this teacher genuinely cared about him, saw him for who he was, and went out of his way to help kobe. in expressing his appreciation for this teacher, kobe mentioned that even though he 5  in reflecting on the plausibility of u.s athletic scholarships, kobe reasoned that the larger population of black people in the united states makes possible “more opportunities for… black students.” and he added, “while there is discrimination, i think that there [the u.s.] is better, in terms of community trying to help people that are black.” beyond education, brains and hard work | 343 was “the pickiest teacher [he] ever had,” he learned from this teacher “the skills to see my mistakes and that i had the ability to correct them.” not underestimating “the socioeconomic conditions” of the neighbourhood, and believing that teachers were influenced by media and other negative representations of the neighbourhood – and by extension the students – kobe did what he could to show that he was “someone who is pretty smart,” and had the “personal drive,” and “family support” to do well. ostensibly, in such a context – an “urban” school with mainly disadvantaged racialized students, many of them black – being seen as “a black male who had potential” meant that teachers were willing to go out of their way to help. indeed, as kobe reported, he went from a student with “a very indifferent attitude” toward school to a scholarship student because his teachers saw “promise.” he recalled that teachers encouraged him to take advanced-level courses (as opposed to generallevel courses) which prepared him for university. even though, as kobe suggested that schools such as his were more likely to get “bad teachers” – because only certain “type of teachers want to go there” – there were the few committed teachers who turned out to be “amazing” because “they care about students” and they recognized the social and cultural capital that the students brought to their education (milner, 2010; moore, henfield and owens, 2008). interestingly, in reflecting on the idea that “bad schools get bad teachers,” kobe made reference to his experience in university with students from the suburban area where trevor attended school. kobe surmised that the students who attended school in urban areas did better educationally because they had a “better” system of education. but trevor, a student who, like kobe, was a black male with potential and was receiving the necessary family support, missed out on having similar caring teachers to support him in his academic endeavours. that the most significant help trevor received from his coach was a basketball net and the opportunity to make videos to solicit athletic scholarships, suggests that his coach, who was also his teacher, was unable to look past his 6-feet, physically-fit appearance; in other words, a basketball player who would bring him and the school accolades – to see a student with academic potential and promise. it might be said, then, that for black students, and males in particular, attending an “urban” racially diverse school with committed and aware teachers is likely to lead to better educational experiences compared to attending middle class suburban schools with uninformed and uncommitted teachers. the situation is even more problematic for black male students like 344 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education trevor whose bodies are persistently read in relation to the reputation or stigma of their former “urban” neighbourhood – in essence, a racialization process in which they are defined as underachievers, troublemakers and athletes (james, 2012) and unable to change. how kobe and trevor construct their aspirations and worked to attain them is taken up in the following section. career aspirations, employment opportunities, and achievements kobe recalled that upon entering high school, he expressed interest in becoming a lawyer. he attributed this career goal to his exposure to lawyers and legal education through his mother who “went back to school” to become a legal secretary. he admitted that he did not know what career his mother wished for him, but he understood that while she had the attitude: “do whatever you want to do,” she expected him “to go to school, do your homework, do well” and then go to university. kobe understood that if he were to fulfill his mother’s expectations, he needed to stay focused on his work, have a career goal, avoid distractions (he did this by isolating himself from his neighbourhood peers), and establish himself as a model student (counter to the stereotype of black males in the community) who would gain and retain the support of his teachers because they recognized his academic potential. many of the black students, especially males like kobe, were encouraged by their teachers to become role models for other students, and to this end, were often guided to become teachers and return to work in the community. this expectation to return to work in the community is part of neoliberal thinking of teachers’ approach to working with these black students. it served to re-inscribe the notion that the social welfare of the community rests on them, and as individuals they were responsible and expected to do something about the conditions in the neighbourhood. one consequence of this expectation is that it could limit young people’s aspirations and their possibilities; but fortunately for kobe, this was not the case. at no time during any of the three interviews did kobe say that he was becoming a lawyer so that he could return to work in the community. and he never entertained the idea of becoming a teacher. in fact, in his most recent interview (2011), kobe declared that he was “careful not to take on the responsibility of a saviour.” so even though during his undergraduate years, he accepted invitations from his former teachers to give presentations to students (in other words, be a role model), he did beyond education, brains and hard work | 345 so out of a sense of good civic responsibility and not because he was, as he put it, “taking on the mantel of saving lives.” having had what might be described as a successful high school experience, kobe entered university on a scholarship and pursued a four-year degree in business administration. upon graduation, he worked for one year in marketing, before returning to the same university to pursue his law degree concurrently with a master’s degree in business administration. during his seven years of university, kobe supplemented his scholarships, with financial assistance from his mother, his student bursary, and his part-time weekend and summer jobs. and he was a recipient of a number of corporate philanthropic support, including a summer job with a marketing firm that turned into the full-time employment for one year after his business degree. the connection to the marketing firm was secured by a service organization dedicated to preparing and placing “underserved youth,” particularly youth of colour, in business or professional organizations and corporations. as resident of an “underserved” or disadvantaged neighbourhood, kobe was an ideal recruit for the corporate world as a lawyer – the kind of black male youth who embodied the neoliberal ethos of individualism, hard work, and entrepreneurship (braedley and luxton, 2010). put another way, kobe was someone whom one might say had a knapsack of disadvantages but through his abilities, skills and efforts (individualism) was able to surmount the disadvantages thereby showing that career ambitions can be realized. since he had moved, trevor was unable to benefit from his residential address as kobe did, even though like kobe, trevor had similar disadvantages and high aspirations. in fact early in his life, trevor aspired to become a police officer, but given his interest in sports, his friendship with athletic peers, and encouragement from his coach, when time came to apply to university, he thought of entering a program related to sport. he gained entry to kinesiology at the same university as kobe. but after one year in that program, he transferred to sociology because he “was not doing very well in kine.” at that time trevor planned to complete his honours degree in sociology and then apply to the police force. but in his final year of university, he was encouraged by his mother and others to pursue teaching. he applied to education faculties and was accepted a year after graduation. during the in-between year, trevor worked as a waiter at a restaurant (where he had worked part-time while attending university) so that he “could pay off his student loan.” he graduated with his teaching degree, applied to school boards around toronto, but 346 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education was unsuccessful in getting a job. in the summer following his graduation, trevor worked as a youth worker in his old neighbourhood and at the restaurant on the weekends. unable to obtain a teaching job in toronto, and encouraged by friends, who had taught in london, england, to do the same, trevor decided to take a chance and migrated to london in 2009. his decision to go there was made easy as he was also a british citizen since his mother was born there. in many ways, london turned out to be a productive move for trevor in terms of his personal and professional growth. as he stated: “teaching in london seemed to be an easier process than teaching in toronto. there were less hoops to jump through and i found work almost instantly.” in fact, after two weeks in london, trevor found a job at an alternative school “located in a lower socio-economic community” (similar to the one in which he grew up) where he worked for two years. he taught special needs students6 with whom he was able to build relationships and helped them, not only in their education, but also with their social and emotional issues. according to trevor teaching in london “was extremely challenging and difficult, but rewarding at the same time.” he explained that the rewards came from seeing students go from “selling drugs, fighting, or just negativity in general…to applying to different colleges, or finding an apprenticeship. the difficulty came from seeing some students sent to prison, a mental hospital, or just give up on their future in general.” trevor returned to toronto in summer 2011, hopeful that with his experience and biography he would be able to get a teaching job, especially having heard about the need for black male teachers to work in toronto and surrounding area schools. but six months after returning, he was still unemployed despite his many applications to teaching jobs at the four school boards in the greater toronto area. running out of money7, trevor has had to consider his options which were to apply for jobs as a youth worker or return to his job at the restaurant. but as he suggested, “once you have made a certain amount of money or have been doing a certain type of work, you become accustomed to it. [hence] i find it extremely difficult to go back to a part-time job or a service job. to me it feels like a step backwards and i am trying to move forward.” on this basis, trevor returned to his earlier career interest which was policing noting that “my uncle 6  these were students who were “excluded from mainstream schools due to their behaviour, lack of attendance, or special needs.” 7 trevor said that he did manage to save a significant amount of money from working in london, and living with his parents was helping with his financial situation. beyond education, brains and hard work | 347 was a major influence in me deciding to get into policing when i was younger…i have always looked up to him and thought that joining the police force would be a natural progression.” in moving forward, trevor applied to police forces in the greater toronto area – as he said, “the ones that are hiring.” it is interesting that trevor remained interested in becoming a police officer, given that he grew up with neighbourhood peers who had always accused the police of racial profiling which has contributed to police-youth-community relationship filled with tension and conflict (chapman-nyaho, james and kwan-lafond, 2012; ezeonu, 2008). yet, evidently influenced more by his uncle than his friends, trevor remained convinced that there are opportunities and possibilities for him as a police officer. in the meantime, while waiting to hear about his application to become a police officer (which he did not get), he worked part-time as a youth worker and afterwards as a full-time city transit driver. in many ways, trevor could be said to have the same determination and level of motivation to attain his career goal as kobe. but unlike kobe, he has not been fortunate enough (or has not been at the right place at the right time) to receive the necessary institutional help.8 nevertheless, well-schooled in the neoliberal ethos of individualism, personal responsibility, and rules of competition, trevor continued to pursue his career goal believing that it is up to him to do everything possible to succeed even though his many attempts – the numerous applications and job interviews – have been unproductive to date. in trying to understand his failures, and admitting frustration, trevor directed his attention to “the process” in which he engaged – with which he had to cope (luxton, 2010) – rather than the opportunity structures he has been up against. as he said: “some of my frustrations come with the process and time it takes to find a job/career that you want….working in england for two years, and having a teaching degree, i believe i have jumped through enough hoops that the process should be somewhat easier.” clearly, the difference between kobe and trevor obtaining their respective career goals cannot be attributed only to their individual efforts, abilities and commitment. 8 while kobe might have had the social and educational support of his friends, trevor did not. in fact, their friendship groups were quite different. kobe reported that all of his close friends have “at least two degrees.” and trevor, in suggesting that the move from his neighborhood might have been “a good idea,” went on to say that a number of the people with whom he grew up and “called friends… have become victims of murder or have had someone in their family murdered, and others… have fallen into life of crime….” 348 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education conclusion: beyond education, brains and hard work apart from their personal efforts and attributes, kobe’s and trevor’s path toward their career goals have been shaped by how effectively they were able to navigate the layered multifaceted structures of inequity which sustain the hegemonic ideology and common-sense rhetoric of neoliberalism, as well as the confounding obstacles. on the one hand, their imagination and acceptance that success in the competitive labour market is dependent on “the rational choices they make and their own skilled and diligent work” (luxton, 2010, 180) seem to have inspired their consistent efforts and tenacity. but on the other hand, these qualities alone proved insufficient (at least for trevor) without the support and sponsorship of individuals and institutions. in effect, kobe, trevor and their parents – encouraged by teachers and coaches – dutifully worked with the idea that education is largely (if not singularly) what it takes for them to succeed in society. this would appear to be the case, if kobe is used as an example of someone whose education and intellectual ability enabled him to become the corporate lawyer he is today working between toronto and new york city. but his relationship with caring teachers and coaches, and the supports he received from them, as well as from charitable service organizations, cannot be underestimated. indeed, these resources all played significant roles in helping kobe to navigate the educational and employment structures and become a role model and example for others to follow. as such, kobe became evidence that one can escape the conditions in which he grew up. trevor, on the other hand, was left to find his way on his own with whatever supports his family members were able to provide. trevor’s move to the suburbs for better schooling and education did not occur as his mother expected (deluca and rosenblatt, 2010). ironically, having left his neighbourhood might have contributed to trevor’s loss of educational, social and other opportunities to which black youth living in “troubled” neighbourhoods” might have access. in other words, trevor might have lost his “at risk” status – a social capital that might have served in building relationships with educators and human service personnel who are interested in ‘helping’ black young men with potential to escape their delinquency-producing neighbourhoods. neither kobe9 nor trevor eschewed the significance of education as a means to attain their career goals – neither did they challenge the idea that it was up to them to work hard toward this end. but they 9  in all of the interviews i have conducted with kobe he admitted to being highly influenced by capitalism. beyond education, brains and hard work | 349 recognized that what they have achieved to date, or what anyone is able to achieve, is not totally of their own making. in fact, when asked what they thought of the notion that a person can become whatever he wants to be, kobe submitted: “life is much too unkind for that. you control maybe ten percent; fifty to sixty percent depends on winning the birth lottery. while there is no guarantee, you’re well on your way....this is the reality of life. watch the interview process and see who gets hired.” kobe concluded by saying that for someone like him “the climb is a lot steeper.” similarly, while saying “if someone works hard at what they want to become in life eventually it may come true,” trevor went on to suggest – probably hinting at his coping mechanism: “what should be said is that even if you work hard and do everything the way you are supposed to do it, your end result may not be exactly what you expected and your end goal may not happen when you expect it to happen. there are other factors that come into play when trying to become someone or entering into a certain career – factors such as location (the area where you have always wanted to work is not hiring for the career you are interested in); [and] competition for the career you’re looking into is high. although you may be the most qualified for the position, i am a firm believer in the idea that it’s who you know that really gets you into a career rather than what you know.” the stories of kobe and trevor illustrate how individual agency is mediated by social, economic and educational structures. if youth like them are to maintain confidence in the potential and possibilities of education, then educators and others of us working with youth need to help them read, understand, and in turn successfully, navigate and negotiate the societal structures. they need to know how factors outside of their control – many of which cannot be anticipated – affect their life goals. whereas the rational success formula and seductive reasoning of neoliberalism lays out a seemingly reasonable path to success, the reality is, it is primarily individuals who have access to and are conversant with ‘mainstream’ social and cultural capital who will ultimately realize their high aspirations through hard work, determination and brains. 350 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education references aylward, c.a. 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(2005). whose culture has capital? a critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. race, ethnicity and education, 8(1), 69-91. 354 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the abode of educational production: an interview with peter mclaren jordy cummings jordy cummings1 (jc): you’re from toronto, and politicized in the era of the new left, after attending grad school at massey college and even taking a course with foucault…is there anything particular to toronto’s culture that has inspired you, as an educator, an activist and a socialist? peter mclaren2 (pm): i left toronto kicking and screaming since i couldn’t find a tenure-track university position in canada, but the renowned american educator henry giroux (what irony, he is now a canadian citizen!) had helped me find a position in miami university of ohio, and who could resist that offer? working with henry was an education on its own that could never be purchased. henry has a generosity of spirit that still staggers me. toronto, ah yes. well, as far as my perceptions of schooling and society goes, there was this magazine is about schools that i read in the late sixties and into the seventies, edited by george martell and satu repo. it was housed, as i recall, in rochdale college, where i frequently hung out with friends. it became this magazine sometime in the seventies, i think. i learned a lot from reading that magazine but i was never a subscriber, but rather an intermittent reader. which probably accounts for why i didn’t have much of a coherent theoretical trajectory when i started to write professionally in 1979. i was never recruited by left organizations, nor did i really attempt to join political groups, even school activists. 1  jordy cummings is interventions editor of alternate routes, and a phd candidate at york university. 2  peter mclaren is distinguished professor in critical studies, college of educational studies, chapman university, where he is co-director of the paulo freire democratic project. he is the author and editor of over forty-five books and hundreds of scholarly articles and chapters. his writings have been translated into over 20 languages. the abode of educational production | 355 when i published cries from the corridor, my diary chronicling my experience as an elementary school teacher in the jane-finch corridor, i was basically your missionary liberal educator with a rucksack stuffed with some radical ideas, and the canadian left as i recall was pretty snobbish, maybe that residue of british colonialism, and i was told that my professors at oise (where i did my doctorate) resented all the publicity i received from that book. i think, too, that when i left for the us, there was this feeling that i was abandoning canada. and while i am a dual-citizen and might not be as thoroughly canadian as pierre berton, i consider myself died-in-the wool canadian. i was always hoping to receive offers to return and teach in canada but they never came. i would have returned in a heartbeat. maybe the biggest political lesson i learned was walking down yonge street in willowdale in 1968 on whatever the hallucinogen of the day was, and flipping off a metro cop. i was thrown into a black and white and taken to jail, where i was systematically beaten with a flashlight during the night. i still have a raised section of my skull that you can feel – my wife wang yan calls it my “dragon forehead.” my subsequent trip to california that year was fraught with similar incidents, and i won’t list those now. but, thanks to the bohemian culture of downtown yorkville, where i spent years in the coffee houses and hippie lofts, and romantic moments with pre-raphaelite looking lovers in velvet gowns in the shadows of philosopher’s walk on the university of toronto campus, you could confidently say that prior to leaving canada, i felt i had imbibed the spirit of the beat poets, and consumed as much of underground culture that i could hold in one brainpan without flipping out – poetry, philosophy, eastern religion, psychedelic drugs, all kinds of new ideas – gestalt theory, rational emotive therapy, irving layton, leonard cohen, joni mitchell, buffy saint-marie, gregory bateson, r.d. laing, general semantics, psychoanalysis, anarchism, acid rock, john c. lilly, the occult, pyramid energy, theosophy, darwin, zen buddhism, the bloomsbury group, the inklings, dadaism, mcluhan, gordon lightfoot, luke and the apostles (my guitar teacher was toronto’s own david wilcox), catholic saints, well where should i stop? stompin’ tom connors? even throughout the torment and joy of those troubling and troubled years, i watched hockey night in canada with my dad, and reminisced about how we would go curling together in matching sweaters during the four years my family spent in winnipeg. i really miss those days. that eclecticism no doubt influenced my (thankfully short lived) attraction 356 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to postmodernism in the mid-1980s. i think toronto is one of the great cities of the world, and i have visited many of them. but perhaps my perceptions of the city are dipped in an all-too saccharine romanticism that from time-to-time plagues me and my thinking. one thing that i learned from my countercultural days in toronto was that you make your path by walking and before you can travel the path, you have to become the path. this is the essence of praxis. i had become the path away from willowdale, away from my home in the beaches, away from everything i knew in order to step into the void of the united states. but i had yet to find a path towards something, towards an understanding of capitalist society and what would constitute a socialist alternative. my first impression of the united states was of the vastness of the armies of the homeless, haunted by the slow death that stalked the dispossessed in the so-called most progressive democracy in the world, or so the us was described in those days. it would take me years to understand that when the spectre of progress twists his hourglass watch upside down to mark the death-rattle countdown of those millions who are dying on city streets of preventable diseases and who lay unattended in hospital beds crammed into the corridors of decaying urban medical centers, he is present around the world wherever the logic of capital prevails. the pitted and pock-marked lungs of his victims are now unfillable, their life force fading behind curtains of dust and dead memories. these casualties of ‘progress’ are not restricted to one country. and they are not necessarily living in the streets. they are in office buildings, schools, monasteries, sanctuaries, offices, and shopping malls. they are often our own children, our relatives, our friends, ourselves. jc: the theme of this issue is “capitalism in the classroom”. what does it mean, to you to be an anti-capitalist and a marxist in a pedagogical setting, both in practical and theoretical terms? relatedly, what kind of shifts have you been seeing, and how can marxist theory account for these shifts? it seems to me, as an educator, that this is an uneven, dialectical process. on one hand, we see an increase in online courses and a casualization of the academic profession. on the other hand, the range of information available to scholars has increased. as a marxist, what do you make of all of this, and how does it affect your praxis? pm: clearly from where i sit, a spontaneous wave of indignation has swept throughout the united states, an uprush of animosity against intolerable indignities suffered by the working-class, and people of color. the social character of our life-activity, forged by the hammer blows the abode of educational production | 357 of value-producing labor and stamped by the impact press of capitalist social relations, rests on the pervasive dependence and dehumanization of workers, the ever-increasing interdependence of capital and labor. the ontological conception of alienation was unpacked magnificently by marx and that was what first drew me to his work. there is nothing more alienating than schools, which serve as conceptual, emotional, and epistemological prisons for too many students. the miasmic system of capitalism in which we are inextricably enmeshed is one whose flexibility, omnipresence and omnivalence of oppression has been as expansive as the air that we breathe. but our labor power is both key to our enslavement and our liberation. everywhere people are clamoring for justice. we have been stricken to the quick by an outlawry and scoundrelism exercised with prideful efficiency by the ruling class but the problem is not with personal behavior of capitalists, as egregious as that might be, but with the structure of capitalism itself. youth here in the united states are fed up with war, yet i teach classes where the entire population of students who enrolled in my courses have never not known a time where their country was at war. at this time of endless wars against terror, there are no wistful interludes between wars. wars today are forever ongoing and we merely suffer between the exasperating diminuendos and crescendos of events. now, for instance, the latest crescendo is the push forward by the islamic state. we are a society that fights symptoms and refuses to treat the root causes of our ongoing crises – of the environment, of terrorism, of resources, of personal security, of education and so on. one of the most entangling of these disconcerting relationships is how capitalism structures, organizes and mediates all of these antagonisms in contextually specific ways. in the current interregnum we are, for all intents and purposes, existing as human capital. we have sold our life-activity to other people and some sections of the population (such as the african american populations who are being replaced as cheap labor by the latino/as), are relegated to surplus populations that are unable to sell their labor-power. to acknowledge that we live in a capitalist society is to tremble and shudder. witness today the prodigious and virulent expansion of surveillance technology beyond the exigencies of any agreed-upon notion of decency, technologies that efface the divisions between the real, the hyperreal and the suprarenal and lock us into a scenario much worse that even orwell envisioned, a scenario where will become willing agents of capital. 358 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education we have sold our labor-power for a wage and we can only use those silver dollars squeezed out of the profit ledger of the capitalist to cover the eyes of our corpse and hope that the ferryman of hades will convey our soul across the waters of the styx or acheron as quickly as possible. we are prone in this society to be critical of primary assumptions and of course to protect them from attack they are solemnly made sacerdotal, and hide behind religious prerogatives. as i have argued for decades, the capitalist marketplace is the new god. i live in old town, orange, in california and the most convenient coffee shop for me is in a wells fargo bank. truly, the building from the inside looks like a cathedral. my friend at uc santa barbara, bill robinson, notes that the negative of an anti-capitalist movement does not necessarily involve the positive (and here we can clearly see he is echoing hegel’s negation of the negation) of an alternative post-capitalist or socialist project. which is precisely why, along with my marxist humanist comrades, i have called long and hard for a philosophy of praxis grounded in absolute negativity. here, i have been influenced greatly by the work of hegel and marx, and dunayevskaya’s theory of state capitalism. i’ve learned that you can’t separate hegel’s dialectical method from this absolute idea (the transcendence of the opposition between theory and practice). just as hegel advised us to always, ceaselessly, call into question the grounding ideas from which a phenomenon is grasped, we need to break down external as well as internal barriers to liberation through a philosophy of praxis grounded in absolute negativity. regrettably, marx’s ideas have been ripped out of their revolutionary soil by decades of toxic bombardment by the corporate media and repotted in greenhouse megastores where, under hydrofarm compact fluorescent fixtures, they can be deracinated, debarked and made safe for university seminars and condominium living alike for highly committed twentysomethings who like to whistle to ballpark tunes in their faux-victorian bathtubs. for me, marx provides a dizzying macro-level montage of society filled with autonomous narratives that evoke ineluctable paradoxes that take on new meaning when put all together. in other words, what i find most useful in marx is his dialectics of internal relations, how all of social life is internally related. to stick with a film metaphor, marx gives you that tracking shot with voiceover spiked with the ambient noise of workers marching forward…a relentless tracking shot that won’t let you escape…and you have to follow it. once the setting of the drama has been established, you become the protagonist and you are obligated to play the drama out. as we struggle the abode of educational production | 359 for the supersession of property and labor determined by need and external utility, we look to marx for direction in building a new society based on co-operation and production absent the pressures of external determination, where all manner of people interact and collaborate in freely associated, spontaneous and unpredictable ways. as a teacher, i am interested in how global capitalism is dialectically interwoven with underdevelopment, and how this process is related to the production of knowledge, specifically in school systems and how such school systems teach us how to think, to research, and to develop our methodological skills that often leave us degage and docile. prior to the ascendency of neoliberal capitalism, the primary mission of mass schooling was to create the “deep character” of the nation state by legitimizing the superiority of elite culture, trans-coding the culture of the ruling class with the culture of the nation state so that both were essentially seen as ‘natural’ symmetrical reflections of each other. schools were important mechanisms in the invention of the identity of the modern nation state in the era of industrialization and played an important role in developing the concept of the citizen (a concept always contested by many groups, including conservatives, liberals and radicals). however, schools today (since the mid-1980s), are discernibly shifting their role from building the nation state and creating democracy-minded citizens to serving the transnational corporations in their endless quest for profits. the nation state, it appears, is losing its ability to control capital by means of controlling the transnational corporations. corporations have become in many instances more powerful than nation states (although i am not diminishing the role of nation states here). schools that were once an important political entity that had a public code-setting agenda in creating conventional rules and regulations to be followed by each citizen are fast becoming part of the private sector bent on creating consumers within the capitalist marketplace. as society abandons its outmoded historical garb and takes on new forms, the perpetuity of the existing social order is increasingly called into question. so-called non-political forces – those associated with financial and commodity markets – are now the dominant forces of indoctrination and code setting within our market society and this has greatly impacted education. our collaborative existence as consumers has produced a closure on meaning through the very activity of opening up our desire to consume market commodities by means of a default set of blinders created by a capitalist imaginary that provides the formula or criteria of choice. industrial capitalist schooling was occupied with conventional problem 360 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education solving designed to provide students with the rules and conventions to solve particular problems via rule-based reasoning. knowing the rules of the democratic state was the most important goal and this was often taught by means of a text book-assignment-recitation pattern. with the advent of consumer society and the replacement of western high culture with transnational corporate culture (which relies on well-trained technical workers), the focus has moved away from conventional thinking to technical thinking. what this ultimately excludes, of course, is critical reflection, or producing knowledge from real-life problems or what richard quantz calls “meaningful action.” meaningful action does not always take place in situations where relevant knowledge is available or where people are aware what the right choices and actions might be. meaningful knowledge does require some knowledge of technical reasoning but it requires as well the ability to interpret and critique – to make moral choices and to commit to some action even when relevant knowledge is not available. it requires larger patterns of understanding and reasoning – and it requires us to create and recreate its own foundations and goals as it goes along. given the abandoning of political institutions such as schools by the state, the focus has been on technical problem solving as a means-ends reasoning that involves selecting from available rules those that will help individuals achieve a particular given end. in short, critical reflection is not a priority. it is in fact, the enemy of today’s education, even as schools tout the value of critical literacy and social justice agendas. being a marxist educator means that i see education as a path to socialism. simply put, my struggle as a teacher is to create protagonist agency to fight three very powerful forces, what i call the ‘triplecides’—genocide, ecocide and epistemicide. i see capitalism as a form of genocide (see the work of gary leech) and a number of my students have been developing the field of ecopedagogy (turning traditional forms of environmental education on their heads) –addressing the issues of ecoside, sustainability, ecosocialism and alternative epistemologies found often in first nations cultures. the moral imperative behind today’s neoliberalism reflects a distinct form of neo-mercantilism. the move in the us economy in the 1970s towards financialization and export production helped to concentrate wealth in the hands of ceos and hedge-fund managers – and, as chomsky and others have noted, this led to a concentration of political power, which in turn leads to state policies to increase economic concentration, fiscal policies, deregulation of the economic, and rules of corporate the abode of educational production | 361 governance. neoliberalism as it factors the field of education reflects the logic of possessive individualism, urging all citizens or potential citizens to maximize their advantage on the labor market; and for those who are unable to accomplish this requirement – a requirement, by the way, that functions as a moral imperative – such as undocumented workers, they must as a non-market underclass live in a bottom-tiered netherworld of sweatshop labor that serves those of more fundamental worth to the social order – the more successful capitalist class. all that is to have worth in neoliberal democracies must be directly linked to the functional needs of capitalism, so that capitalism and the capitalist class can reproduce itself along with capitalist society, and the capitalist worldview that legitimates the entire process. so here we can see neoliberalism linked to legal systems and mechanisms of legitimation that will help secure the market as the only authentically potent form of political and social organization. the state, in other words, becomes synonymous with the market. certainly global financial institutions such as the international monetary fund and the world bank comprise the ramparts behind which neoliberal ideology is to be protected at all costs, and it is important to view these institutions as basically controlled by the wealthy western powers, the united states in particular. and it is in this sense that neo-liberal ideology is an imperialist ideology. anything left outside market forces would be under suspicion of being subversive of civilization – after all, there is no alternative to neoliberal capitalism. we could even say that we are living in a neoliberal modernity, in which the capitalist class is gaining power by dispossessing the working-class and selling or renting to the public what was commonly owned. neoliberalism is a revolution from above on the part of the transnational capitalist class to give ever more structural advantage to the global capitalist production system. between this global ruling-class and the working class still exists the shrinking middle class, a fragile buffer between the rich and the poor. according to sociologist bill robinson, we inhabit a loosely constituted historic bloc, a social base in which the transnational capitalist class produces the consent of those drawn into this bloc and exercises moral, political and economic leadership – hegemonic leadership in the classical gramscian sense. my focus as a marxist is on this emerging transnational hegemony – this new historic bloc based on the hegemony of transnational capital – where, of course, the us is definitely playing a leading role. while national capital, global capital and regional capitals are still prevalent, the hegemonic fraction of capital on a world scale is now 362 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education transnational capital. the purpose of the transnational ruling class is the valorization and accumulation of capital and the defense and advance of the emergent hegemony of a global bourgeoisie and a new global capitalist-historical bloc. this historical bloc is composed of the transnational corporations and financial institutions, the elites that manage the supranational economic planning agencies, major forces in the dominant political parties, media conglomerates, and technocratic elites. capitalism, which marx portentously argued was written in letters of blood and fire, continues to be reproduced as robbery, as outlawry. as a marxist educator, i raise these issues with my colleagues, with my students, but mostly i raise them in the context of arguing that critical pedagogy must not remain solely in the classroom but become part of a transnational social movement. jc: the sixth edition of your classic life in schools, one of the few marxist texts on teacher-education, has just been issued, updated for the obama era. what were you trying to do with this book, and what kind of impact has it had? in turn, what kind of obama-era shifts have provoked shifts or tweaks within the book? finally, have you received any “pushback” or red-baiting around the impact of this book? pm: the book has had a number of publishers, and the fifth edition was pearson. yes, the textbook and assessment company that produces standardized texts, that is singled out by progressive educators as one of the companies that is destroying public education. it owns penguin books and the financial times and operates in over seventy countries. i mention in the latest edition that after scheduling a meeting with a pearson editor to discuss the new sixth edition, and after making copious notes and presenting them to her in the lobby of the mark twain hotel in san francisco, she told me that my ideas were “too complex”, that pearson was too “corporate” and that american students could not really absorb the difficult concepts i present in life in schools. there was not going to be a sixth edition, i was told. in fact, she told me that pearson was dropping the book. i asked her if it was because i critiqued the company in the fifth edition of the book, and she said no, that was not the reason. she tried to soften the blow by offering me twenty free copies of the book. and of course the rights resorted back to me, and within ten minutes i had found another publisher. how was it possible to find another publisher in that short time span? well, my meeting with pearson took place during the annual convention of the american educational research association and after the book was dropped by pearson, my wife, wang yan, and i the abode of educational production | 363 walked across the street to the lobby of the hilton. once inside, i noticed a grey-haired fellow frantically waving to me. it was my old friend dean birkenkamp, the head of paradigm publishers. he shouted across the room, “is there any way i can get the rights to your life in schools?” i was a taken aback at my good fortune and of course the deal was sealed within minutes. yes, the book is updated but the problem is when you do a new edition of the book you have to remove the same amount of the old material as you add in the new material. and i have trouble losing what i feel is very good work. but i made room for obama. obama has hurt education reform immeasurably. obama has really carried over the george bush jr. initiatives and rebranded them with some cosmetic touches. you aren’t a good educational leader when your race to the top initiatives tie federal funds for states and localities to their use of assessments of national “college and career readiness” standards; when you set yourself on a mission to privatize or quasi-privatize public schools through an expansion of charter schools; when you evaluate teachers by linking an individual teacher’s salary and employment status to student test scores; or when you pink slip teachers and principals in schools that have been designated as failing schools; and especially when your entire philosophy of education is driven by the logic of assessment and competition that includes merit pay for teachers, etc. to use federal leverage to get your initiatives in place, to sow distrust of public schools and to give preferential treatment to charter schools (that don’t do as well as public schools overall even though they can cherry-pick their students and can refuse to admit students with learning disabilities), to create such a mess that teacher drop-out rates are at an all time high – the voluntary drop out rate for teachers is higher than the failure rate of students as nationally, 16 percent leave after the first year and approximately 45 percent leave within five years – is to give educational reform another kick in the teeth. whether it’s a democrat or republican in the white house doesn’t seem to matter – the democratic will wear hobnailed boots to kick out your teeth, the republicans will use army surplus store boots from the invasion of iraq to do the job. i’m surprised that the book is doing so well in classrooms across the us, because of the political climate here. the works of paulo freire and rudy acuna were banned in tucson, arizona’s public school system, there is a wave a evangelical fervour percolating throughout the us, particularly with the tea party folks, and “socialism” is a hot word. university undergraduates and sometimes graduate students – and their parents – can get riled up if they think they are being encouraged 364 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to criticize the united states. again, at ucla, i was labelled “the most dangerous professor at ucla” during the bush jr. administration. death threats, of course. hate mail, yes. not so much now as during the bush jr. administration but yes, it is there. there is at least one evangelical book that recently cited me as a grave danger to the young minds of america. and yes i get the usual commie in the classroom criticism, and the cuban american community frequently gets on my case because of my book about paulo freire and che guevara. but the support i receive is so much stronger, and that is what keeps me going. and good friends. when you come under criticism you quickly learn who are your fairweather friends, and who are your true friends. and now i am teaching at chapman university, a private university located in one of the most conservative and most ‘charming’ cities in the united states, the city of orange. well, after 20 years at ucla i was made an offer by chapman that i accepted. there is a small community of freireans whom i very much enjoy working with and who walk their talk. you really do need other like-minded people to work with if you want to survive university life. that’s why i decided to join the faculty here. the college of education studies has a progressive dean, don cardinal, who is just about the best leader you could imagine. if you enter chapman from one side of the campus, you see a statue of margaret thatcher, then ayn rand, then milton friedman, and then ronald reagan, so your blood might curdle if you are a leftist. but if you approach chapman from another route, you will encounter statues of marin luther king, benito juarez and, yes, paulo freire. i have found chapman to honour diverse viewpoints and to encourage critical thinking. and the faculty here is highly committed to social justice. we also have dodge college, one of the top film schools in the country. while i teach regularly, i often spend half the week working in america latina with different organizations, teachers unions, indigenous populations, and more recently the europeans have been inviting me to participate in discussions about education. jc: you are very influenced by the work of paulo friere and emancipatory education. can you tell alternate routes a little bit about how you came to be inspired by friere and how academics can make use of his work? pm: i met paulo freire through the esteemed educational scholar and public intellectual henry giroux and one of his close friends, donaldo macedo who is a professor of linguistics. henry giroux had helped bring me to miami university of ohio, after the controversy the abode of educational production | 365 over my book, cries from the corridor, made it impossible for me to land a full-time professorship in canada during that time (although i did manage a one-year appointment at brock university with help from john novak, a prominent deweyan educationalist). henry introduced me to paulo during a conference in chicago in 1985 and later, donaldo macedo helped to facilitate and solidify our relationship. my formation as a teacher has been forged and tempered in the crucible of freire’s copious and courageous works and my life profoundly shaped and keenly affected by the leadership and teachings of paulo freire. paulo in his formidable generosity of spirit wrote several prefaces to books of mine, invited me to cuba and brazil, and while in brazil hosted me in his university and his home. a mentor and friend over the ensuing years, he modeled the kind of educator i wanted to become. i have been fortunate to have met several world-historical figures who exemplify the best of our revolutionary spirit, and i would consider hugo chavez another such individual. freire, chavez, marx – these are figures of inescapable relevance for revolutionary critical pedagogy, all in different ways. while the legacy of paulo freire stands immeasurably beyond us as individuals, his world-historical vision of a just and equitable democratic society nevertheless serves as a quilting-point and guide to the future of education for millions of progressive educators worldwide. revisiting the legacy and vision of paulo freire today chillingly reminds us that the dreams that have been programmed into today’s sterile educational instruments of test-taking, accountability, technocratic thinking, and managerial control have led to an abandonment of the search for what it means to live critically, creatively and democratically in the service of those who have been marginalized and excluded in today’s immiseration capitalist society. we would do well as educators to read today’s ‘businessification’ and corporatization of education against the liberatory vision of paulo freire with the hope that we can and will regain the vision of a critical democracy to which freire’s storied corpus of works points and build the kind of democracy that lives up to its principles and pronouncements. whether this can be done within a capitalist society is doubtful; in fact, i do not believe it can be done. it has become clear to me in traveling to approximately thirty countries in the course of my educational work, that paulo freire is still very much alive in the hearts and minds of all those teachers, administrators, cultural workers, and students who still choose to dream. we need to read the world as well as the world, that is, we need to be able to transcend through absolute negativity those barriers that keep us from realizing our full humanity. 366 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education teachers need to be spokespersons for agency, the embodiment of a critical praxis – i call this protagonistic agency. with wide-eyed awareness, freire serves notice that not only must we raise questions that the world refuses to raise but is incapable of raising at this historical moment. there is always a quixotic aspect of risk-taking in our attempts to transform the world through critical pedagogy. and we need to remember that critical pedagogy is a necessary but not sufficient for bringing about the socialist revolution. freire would advise us, his comrades, not to reproduce his work, to import his work as we would some foreign commodity into our classrooms but to re-invent his ideas in the contextual specificity of where we found ourselves in our struggles, and by this he meant, socially, economically, culturally, geopolitically and the like. critical educators who have been influenced by freire recognize that history is always open and refuse to postulate history as a determinate truth, relinquishing the subjective in the making of history. there are no iron laws of history, since history works backwards, retrospectively, like benjamin’s angel of history, caught in the swirling storm from paradise. for critical educators, ends and means must be interdependent. we can’t read off from science our moral goals. even if scientific laws of history obtained they cannot a priori stipulate moral ends because that would make moral ends meaningless. freire clearly worked within a dialectical materialist epistemology that attempted to posit a dialectical relationship between the objective world and our subjective understanding and knowledge of that world. freire was concerned with the ‘dialecticity’ between consciousness and the world where he views critical consciousness as a type of metaconsciousness or “consciousness as consciousness of consciousness,” as what i have come to term, “protagonist agency” or a type of intentionality towards the world that is intent on transforming the world as much as understanding the world. this means seeking ontological and ethical clarity in our relations with the world and with other human beings. jc: you have an international reputation, having worked with the bolivarians in venezuela, the mst in brazil among many progressive elements in latin america. what kind of innovation is happening, in particular, within the context of the boliviarian process? can any of these innovations be translated into a canadian or american context? pm: i’m not an expert on the bolivarian process. for that kind of expertise, you would need to read the important work of michael lebowitz and marta harnecker. recently, instituto mclaren de pedagogia critica y education popular helped to sponsor a lecture in mexico the abode of educational production | 367 city where marta harnecker appeared as the keynote – the conference is called volver a marx. we at instituto mclaren are helping to organize that conference every year and we have been holding it in various cities throughout mexico. we are trying to interest the general public – workers, students, artists, teachers, managers, farmers, indigenous groups, in the ideas of marx as a way to initiate transformation and change. i certainly admire the potential of the communal councils of the bolivarian revolution, which serve as public pedagogical sites for socialism and endogenous development, and to what michael lebowitz calls ‘a vehicle for changing both circumstances and the protagonists themselves’, and deepening the struggle for socialism for the twenty-first century. such a struggle is founded on revolutionary practice, famously described by lebowitz as ‘the simultaneous changing of circumstances and self-change’. the new socialist society stresses that the control of production is vested in the producing individuals themselves. productive relations are social as a result of conscious choice and not after the fact. they are social because, as lebowitz (2013) perceptively notes, as a people we deliberately choose to produce for people who need what we can produce. since more than seventy percent of university students came from the wealthiest quintile of the population, chávez instituted the bolivarian university system, in which the students themselves were able to participate in the management of their institution. education was designed to promote citizen participation and joint responsibility, and to include all citizens in the creation of a new model of production that stressed endogenous development, that is, an economic system that was self-sufficient and diversified. misiones were created to create a social economy and a diversity of production, and designed to meet the needs of venezuela’s poor and to counteract venezuela’s oil dependency. higher education was de-concentrated from the urban centers in order to assist rural communities. i remember how much i enjoyed teaching at the bolivarian university of venezuela, located near the central university of venezuela – part of mission sucre, which provides free higher education to the poor, regardless of academic qualification, prior education or nationality – housed in the ultra-deluxe offices of former pdvsa oil executives that chávez had fired for their attempt to bring down the government. college enrolment doubled under chávez. student projects were insolubly linked to local community improvement. at a graduation ceremony in the early years of the university, chávez famously said: 368 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education “capitalism is machista and to a large extent excludes women, that’s why, with the new socialism, girls, you can fly free.” chávez set up a structure to offer employment for the graduates of ubv through a presidential commission that enabled new graduates to be placed around the country in development projects. the graduates would receive a scholarship that was slightly above the minimum wage. some of these projects involved mision arbol (tree mission), recovering environments damaged by capitalism such as the guaire river. when i was first invited to venezuela by the government to help support the bolivarian revolution, i remember speaking at the central university of venezuela. the students who attend this university are mainly the children of the ruling elite. not many were chavistas, well, at least not when i spoke there. after i announced to the students present that i was a chavista (soy chavista!), i was told later that some students in retaliation had ripped my portrait off of a mural students had created of critical theorists. yet i was able to have very good conversations with some of the students there in the years that followed. education under chávez was education for the creation of a “multipolar” world. for chávez, education either meant giving life support to capitalism’s profit-orientation in such a way as to bolster the remains of the welfare state, or education meant recreating a socialism for the twenty-first century. chávez was not concerned with incorporating the oppressed within the liberal-democratic framework, but rather in changing the framework through the reorganization of political space through education, that is, through making the state function in a nonstate mode by reorganizing the state from the bottom up through the education and initiatives of the popular majorities. socialism, chávez understood, could be sustained only by the subjective investment of those involved in the process. under chávez, venezuelan education was not only geared to help provide universal access to education (as venezuela’s poor had been shut out for generations), in particular, to those traditionally disadvantaged and/or excluded groups such as the urban and rural poor, those of african descent, and indigenous communities, but to help prepare the next generation of venezuelans to enhance the conditions of possibility of a socialist alternative to capitalism. venezuelan education aspired to be a combination of freirean-influenced critical and popular education, where horizontal and dialogic (subject-subject) relationships were pursued using holistic, integral and transdisciplinary pedagogies and methodologies based on andragogical principles for a liberating and the abode of educational production | 369 emancipatory education. under chávez, little attempt was made to distance educational reform from a politicized approach. education reform clearly directed itself towards an organic form of endogenous socialist development of the social-community context as part of a larger struggle for a participatory-protagonistic democracy. against the privatization of education and approaches hegemonized by the neoliberal education industry, and its consumerist role grounded in egoism, competition, elitism and alienation, venezuelan education aspired to be humanistic, democratic, participatory, multi-ethnic, pluri-cultural, pluri-lingual and intercultural. the development of a critical consciousness among the population was crucial, as was an integration of school, family and community in the decision-making process. venezuelan education favored a multidisciplinary approach linking practice and theory, curriculum and pedagogy, with the purpose of creating social, economic and political inclusion within a broader vision of endogenous and sustainable development, and with the larger goal of transforming a culture of economic dependency to a culture of community participation. this approach, for example, underwrote the courses at ubv where mentorship was provided to students who undertook projects in their local communities. over ninety-three percent of venezuelans aged fifteen and over can read and write. the venezuelan government has more than ninety institutions of higher education and remains committed to the idea that every citizen should be able to have a free education. education was conceived within an integrationist geo-political conception of latin american countries in a way that enabled latin americans to challenge economic dependency fostered on them by the imperialist powers, to resist colonialist globalization projects, and to create spaces where students could critically analyze local problems from a global perspective. chávez’s approach of municipalización refused to isolate universities from the rest of society and geographically de-concentrated the traditional university infrastructure and took the university to where the people are, to municipalities that had traditionally been underserved as well as factories and prisons. canadians and americas can learn a lot from these important initiatives. jc: as of late, you have become a poet. as someone who does cultural analysis, i’m wondering if you can help me develop a marxian take on the idea of “poetic knowledge”? how can we conceive “poetic knowledge” from a materialist standpoint? pm: i like your question but i haven’t produced any systematic analysis of poetic knowledge, although i am certainly drawn to the concept. 370 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education as an undergraduate at the university of toronto, i was influenced by the power of myths, rituals, symbols and this was motivated in part in my study of old english and middle english and eventually elizabethan drama. later, i incorporated my interest in rituals and symbols into my own ethnographic work, influenced mostly through the comparative symbology of the anthropologist victor turner. when i was 19 i met the poet allen ginsburg, and spent time with timothy leary, and i was very much involved in the yorkville scene in toronto. between san francisco, los angeles, and toronto, there was a lot going on. i was quite the fan of andre breton – and you know, the morning star anarchist rebellion work of guy debord and others. the situationists international influenced me. so did claire cahun. my interest continued up through to my reading of benjamin. recently i visited the trotsky museum (for the third time) in mexico city and was quite captivated of the photos of trotsky, diego rivera and breton. writing for academic journals is painful, and to make it less so, i often use images from my dreams and approach topics in a very unorthodox fashion. some readers like it, some don’t, some think it is pompous for an academic to view his or her work as art, others appreciate it. scattered throughout my dreams lately have been disturbing dystopian images; i recall one such dream recently where i discover myself squatting atop a gothic cathedral, whose gargoyles perched below my feet are spouting the blood of history’s time-enduring saints to quell the maelstrom of angry crowds below – crowds made up of the powerless, the forgotten, the excluded, victims caught in the crossfire of capitalism (the result of watching too many zombie or vampire films, no doubt). i peer down at the collarless, blood-covered, and spindle-shanked figures below, shafts of brilliant light slicing through the clouds that hover hesitatingly over the entangled gloom, and then the noxious exhalation and clouds of putrid effluvia wafting upwards from the dank and pungent sewer mist rises to meet the light, and suddenly everyone is playing and celebrating in the city streets, like neighborhood kids who have yanked open a fire hydrant during a heat wave. it is then, in my dream, that a heaven-sweeping yearning to return the planet back to its pristine state wells up in me and i leap into the shadows below. that’s about the time i usually wake up. right after i have been swallowed by the darkness. for me, the challenge becomes thrusting our heads higher than cathedrals, through the confines that limit the imagination, through the boundaries of terminate optimism to a boundless hope so that we can create a world beyond our corrupted self-interest. without the abode of educational production | 371 starting to sound or think like obama. we all have our dreams and nightmares and while i tend to pain our unmooredness or rudderlessness as dystopian it could easily be described under a different name. life does not unfold as some old sheet strewn across a brass bed in the dusky attic of history; our destinies as children, parents, and teachers do not flow unilaterally toward a single vertigo-inducing epiphany, some pyrotechnic explosion of iridescent and refulgent splendor where we lay becalmed, rocking on a silent sea of pure bliss, or where we are held speechless in some wind-washed grove of cedars, in the thrall of an unbridled, unsullied and undiluted love of incandescent intensity. our lives are not overseen by a handsome god who blithely sits atop a terra cotta pedestal and with guileless simplicity, quiet paternalism and unsmiling earnestness rules over his eager and fumbling brood, ever so often rumpling the curly heads of the rosy-cheeked cherubim and engaging the saints in blissful conversation. were there such a god, wrapped in the mantle of an otherworldly platonism and possessing neither moral obliquity nor guilt, who brings forth the world through supernatural volition alone, the world would be nothing but an echo of the divine mind. hunger could be ended by merely thinking of a full belly and sickness eliminated by a picture of perfect health. most of us, jordy, sling ourselves nervously back and forth across the great manichean divide of the drab of everyday existence, where, in our elemental contact with the world, our human desires, for better or for worse, tug at us like some glow-in-the-dark hustler in a carnival midway. we go hungry, we suffer, and we live in torment and witness most of the world’s population crumpled up in pain. we don’t have to witness a final miracle of eschatological significance to reclaim the world. what we do have to accomplish at this very moment is organizing our world to meet the basic needs of humanity. i don’t now if there is something poetic in this. if i have developed a poetics of revolution, then it attempts to endow critical pedagogy with a mission of reconciling love and justice. is love without justice meaningless? or could love without justice be complicit in the reproduction of deepseated structural injustices? i approach the bible as a work of great poetry. i find that i am able to reach students – don’t forget that i live in orange county, behind the orange curtain and there is an evangelical church on nearly every street corner – with the message of socialism through biblical references. recently i’ve re-engaged the work of the jesuit thinker, jose porfirio miranda, who argues with verve and passion that the official teachings 372 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education of the church falsify the gospel, since it is clear from reading the texts of the bible that jesus maintains an intransigent condemnation of the rich. even liberation theology gets this wrong when it asserts that there should be a “preferential option for the poor” – it is not an option, but, as miranda notes, it is an obligation. we cannot shirk from this obligation without imputation of culpability and still remain christians. there is no abstention from this struggle. the condition of the poor obliges a restitution since such a struggle is injustice writ large. jesus died for participating in political transgression aimed at liberating judea from the romans. according to miranda, jesus clearly was a communist, and this can convincingly be seen throughout the new testament but particularly in passages such as john 12:6, 13:29 and luke 8:1-3. jesus went so far as to make the renunciation of property a condition for entering the kingdom of god. when luke says, “happy the poor, for yours is the kingdom of god” (luke 6:20) and adds, “woe to you the rich, because you have received your comfort” (luke 6: 24), luke is repeating mark 10:25 when jesus warns that the rich cannot enter the kingdom. the bible makes clear through jesus’ own sayings that the kingdom is not the state of being after death; rather, the kingdom is now, here on earth. essentially jesus is saying, according to miranda, that the kingdom is a classless society. there is something revolutionary in this, and something immediately poetic. while history may be indifferent to the pontifications and bloviations of both church pulpit and lecture hall, there are few places now to turn for poetic inspiration given the commodification of the life world, not even to the receding forests where death mocks us, dancing on the leaves of jimsonweed (you can see it if you focus your imagination). jc: any final thoughts on “capitalism in the classroom” in the post2008 era of lean production and assembly line education? are there any cracks in the facade that give you hope that a different education is possible in a north american context? pm: i wrote cries from the corridor in the mid-1970s and it was published in 1980. it was a descriptive account of jane-finch that operated from an unconscious missionary, blaming-the-victim ideology. as i grew in my understanding, i remedied this situation by publishing cries from the corridor as life in schools nine years later, three years after schooling as a ritual performance was published, which was a analysis of a canadian catholic school. schooling as a ritual performance received the usual criticism but also many accolades as an example of critical ethnography, such as a glowing review in the london times. but i always the abode of educational production | 373 knew that life in schools would have a larger and more lasting readership, so moving ahead and correcting many mistakes with cries from the corridor was important to me, and having the opportunity to create a text that is not just about pedagogy but also pedagogical in its format was welcomed. i hope there is another edition down the road, and what that road will bring is forbiddingly unclear. i often urge teachers under the press of modern social competition linked to capitalism not to be deceived by the timeless tenor of capitalist life. but, of course, an overtone of guileful distinction creeps into the comparison of capitalism and socialism, especially here in the usa, where fox news equates socialism with the national socialist german workers’ party commonly known as the nazis. try talking about socialism in the corporate media and you won’t get far, unless you are on one of the very few progressive programming slots. recently i published an article, education agonistes: an epistle to the transnational capitalist class, where i drew attention to the development, integration and consolidation of the transnational capitalist class, transnational state capitalism and the emergence of the superclass. these ideas, of course, have been developed by bill robinson, jerry harris and others. some theorists think that the brics (india, china, brazil, south africa, and russia) offer a counterweight to the g-7 countries. the brics are really helping to integrate global capitalism worldwide, although their political strategies vary and are indeed complex and their politics might appear counter-hegemonic at times. so my position is that any counternarratives we want to put forward, any revolutionary practices we wish to engage, must grasp the nature of transnational state capitalism in the current world-historical context. take a look at the crisis of 2008. it was not created by the policies and whims of some cabal of banksters; rather the crisis was and is structurally rooted in the nature of capital. the crisis is structural. some rightwing critics agree that the crisis is indeed structural but they think it has to do with public debt. on the contrary, the root of the crisis can be found not only or mainly in the reality of public debt and political corruption – clearly there has been a contagion of frantic recklessness on the part of banksters and hedge fund slime-masters – but in issues of profitability and renewed capital accumulation. as capital consumes a greater share of the social wealth, the only source of profit and value becomes living labor and as long as the share of living labor relative to capital declines due to increases in productivity and technological innovation, there remains a tendency of the rate of profit to decline. and as peter hudis and others 374 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education have noted, we have seen since the 1970s an acute situation whereby living labor at the point of production has been replaced by new and advanced labor saving devices (and sometimes this pushes us towards exosomatic evolution where we are compelled to give subjective selves away by transforming ourselves into a machine). what we are seeing as a response to the falling rate of profit is a desperate and slovenly unimaginative attempt by governments to redistribute value from labor to capital by imposing economic austerity that is part and parcel of today’s immiseration capitalism. we can’t tame capitalism through planned production, or by trying to provoke the ruling class to recognize the clear intimation that their transitory powers are destroying the planet or by trying to resurrect keynes from his ashes scattered on the downs at tilton, in sussex; rather, we need to theorize how to abolish capitalism through a new kind of labor and human relations that has no use for value production. but we can’t abolish capitalism and leave in tact the ideological causes that engendered it, or we will build even more exploitative systems of survival. but the road must lead to socialism or we will have to contend with the consequences of social dissolution on a scale never before imagined, of social convulsion that will shred the planet of all life. look what happened in greece. bill robinson reveals how, in the wake of 2008, the transnational state failed to intervene to impose regulations on global finance capital. but it did intervene to impose costs of devalorization on labor. goldman sachs advised greek financial authorities to pour state funds into derivatives to make their national accounts look good. this way they could attract loans and bond purchases. but then, as robinson points out, goldman sachs began participating in “credit default swaps” (speculation on sovereign debt) which is a type of parallel derivative trading where they bet on the possibility that greece would default. the cost of borrowing for greece became prohibitive as a result, increasing interest rates dramatically. the whole situation raised the prospect of sovereign debt default while goldman sachs made enormous profits. and of course, all of this made it possible for the eu and imf to offer greece bridge loans on the basis of accepting massive austerity measures. the bailouts of transnational capital represent, as robinson notes, a transfer of the devaluation of capital onto labor, onto the working and popular classes. so here we are, teachers, educators, living in the belly of the beast, watch all of this going on. we watch the actions of alec, or the american legislative exchange council advancing precisely, this transnational corporate agenda. we see the abode of educational production | 375 connections between the state, corporations,, surveillance, militarization of the police. it is all frightening. when we look at the militarization of the police, we see the execution of young black males. as robinson has noted, african-americans went from being the super-exploited sector of the working class to being marginalized as employers switched from drawing on black labor to latino/a immigrant labor as a super-exploited workforce. african-americans are now structurally marginalized than they have ever been in recent history and they are slated for the schoolto-prison pipeline of mass incarceration and police and state terror. capital has fused with reactionary state power, and the white workingclass awaits its salvation from the tea party and their ilk. the road to socialism is made by the path of critical pedagogy. it is achieved by bringing teacher activists together with labor struggles at the point of production, political struggles at the point of reproduction, and political struggles in political society. kees van der pijl and bill robinson and others, have written more extensively about this. richard kahn, sam fassbinder, tina evans, david greewood, steve best and others have studied these implications in the context of ecopedagogy and animal rights. we have an enormous challenge before us. the best advice i can give to north americans who want to improve education is to fight poverty. study after study has shown that students fare better in societies that are more equal, where the gap between the rich and the poor has been appreciably closed. but even this is not enough. we must create a social universe where the idea of economic inequality is unthinkable. we will not be pulled into the future by a carriage with chestnut-coloured warmbloods with ribbon-braided tails. likely we will be pushed into the unknown by our own ignorance and by meekly following the coattails of those who purchase our labor-power. freire urges us to be a subject of history and not a casualty. the stakes are high. they always are. 376 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education learning without sages? reflections on “flipping” the university classroom joel d. harden1 there is a serious crisis in education. students often do not want to learn and teachers do not want to teach. more than ever before...educators are compelled to confront the biases that have shaped teaching practices in our society and to create new ways of knowing, difference strategies for the sharing of knowledge. we cannot address this crisis if progressive critical thinkers and social critics act as though teaching is not a subject worthy of our regard. bell hooks, teaching to transgress. whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning. paulo freire, pedagogy of hope. it was a decision whose time had come: in january 2012, i left a wellpaid job in the union movement. after seven years, i felt disconnected from labour’s activist base; in general, my work involved meetings with union officials, and overseeing large projects. those efforts, while useful in some respects, fell short of my own pedagogical expectations. i had learned valuable administrative skills, but wanted more exposure to a classroom setting as well as learning opportunities with students and fellow educators. i wanted to change my situation, so a new set of circumstances could change me. 1  joel harden is an activist, writer, and educator. he teaches in the department of law and legal studies at carleton university. he is the author, most recently, of quiet no more, which explores the role of grassroots activism in various places, and its impact on the world around us. learning without sages? | 377 but where was i going? my answer at the time was two-fold. on the one hand, i wanted to be more present for our young children; my partner had a very busy job, and i wanted to bolster our existing child care arrangements. on the other hand, i had been writing a manuscript about contemporary social movements (based, in part, on my own doctoral dissertation) and, by 2012, it was time to re-commit myself to that project. from the arab spring to occupy wall street, dissent was making its mark around the world, and i needed to absorb the meaning of this moment in history. over the course of eight months, as more social movements (e.g.: idle no more, chicago’s teachers, anti-pipeline movements) shook north american society, i wrote a book (2013) for a broad audience of researchers, students, curious readers, and activists; but a unique place was needed to test the book’s merits beyond activist publications or scholarly journals. that led me back to university teaching, with all its opportunities and constraints. and so, in the fall of 2013, i re-joined the ranks of the campus precariat. for about $6,500 per half-semester course, i found work as a sessional instructor in carleton university’s department of law and legal studies, right around the time my book was released. i facilitated a first year seminar on “security and social movements” (with twenty-two participants), a third year course on “crime and state in history” (with forty-six participants), and a fourth year seminar on “environment and social justice” (with thirty-five participants). my re-entry into university work would be a teaching-intensive year. these courses were largely based on the canadian political context, though aspects of them ranged beyond these parameters. i used my book for each of these courses, and also utilized recent movement publications, historical studies, and scholarly research. by this point, i had also made contact with several impressive colleagues at carleton, and was excited to be part of a community with like-minded thinkers and doers. the campus was also home to my son’s daycare, and many of the movements in which i was active. but as i thought about “how” to re-engage as a university educator, i struggled with several vexing questions. in using my book, was i compelling students to engage with my ideas, and would they be interested in “dissent and the law” from a movement perspective? and how would i learn from what students brought to class, while still addressing my responsibilities in evaluation and mentorship, and the inevitable power dynamics that exist in university classrooms? 378 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education this article describes my journey in seeking to answer these questions. it documents my use of critical pedagogy, a term widely used to describe teaching that challenges narrative, instructor-centric models of teaching and learning (giroux, 2011; mclean, 2006). it also documents the challenges i faced in doing so, and the insights this provided about current debates on “flipping the classroom” (mazur, 2009; schell and lukoff, 2012; bergmann and sams, 2012). as i explain, i find much in common with advocates of flipped learning, particularly in their efforts to challenge traditional models of education (an objective that, until recently, had largely remained within the concentric circles of radical academe, or popular educators in social movements). and yet, i also worry that flipped learning, in our age of austerity, could become the latest strategy to infantilize students, placate professorial egos, and justify massive spending in technology-based education at the expense of academic staff. locating “flipped learning” inside the political goals of critical pedagogy, i think, offers the best means for educators to resist that outcome. revisiting critical pedagogy as i designed my teaching for 2013-2014, i revisited two sources of critical pedagogy. the first of these could be loosely called “radical academe”: scholars who challenge historic forms of exploitation and oppression, while blending the realms of progressive dissent and academic research in doing so. in the north american context, i am thinking of people like angela davis, michael apple, bell hooks, howard zinn, greg albo, sunera thobani, henry giroux, david graeber, judith butler, noam chomsky, barbara epstein or cornel west. my second source was “popular education”, a pedagogical approach that has challenged passive models of student learning. for popular educators, students are co-learners with teachers, and not empty vessels awaiting the wisdom of some sage. students have their own valuable ideas and experience; popular educators understand this, and design learning environments accordingly. paulo freire (whose work as an educator began working with illiterate peasants in brazil, and later inspired millions around the world) was a forerunner of this method, but others soon followed in his footsteps. i had encountered popular education in graduate school, but immersed myself more deeply in this community while working for unions, notably as education director for the canadian labour congress. while expert-driven learning had been dominant in unions for decades (taylor, 2001), most labour educators learning without sages? | 379 i met were inspired by popular education, and sought to apply its philosophy using an array of updated materials (e.g.: burke et al., 2002; martin, 1995). but as i assessed the merits of radical academe and popular education for my own teaching, various strengths and weaknesses were apparent. radical academe had inspired a generation of social scientists (like me) to question assumptions, and urge students to do likewise. popular education had fostered a vibrant approach that challenged expert-driven teaching, built confidence in learners, and humility in educators. and yet both approaches, in my experience, were focused on narrow left-wing communities, and reliant on a limited pool of trained hands (or wise sages) to survive. as i refined my own university teaching, i wondered how to transcend these limits. could i challenge students with radical academe while using the pedagogical insights of popular education? could i utilize critical pedagogy in a way that retained its principles, but reach out to a broader audience? as i developed answers to these questions, i discovered a recent literature on “flipping the classroom” that had freire-like themes, and met colleagues at carleton university who used this pedagogical approach. the flipped class, according to its advocates, was less about students receiving the wisdom of a wise lecturer. it was, instead, about creating learning environments where students could test the merits of course materials in class after parsing through them first at home. students would receive articles, videos, or recorded lectures by email, or these would be posted to the course website. educators then used class time to facilitate learning exercises designed to apply the insights of course materials; this could involve completing a written assignment, a quiz, or debates in small groups. this method has been used for classes of varying sizes, from large lecture halls to small seminar rooms. as students engage in this process, professors or teaching-assistants circulate throughout the learning environment, listening to discussion and posing questions to stimulate debate. flipped classrooms, as i came to understand them, were more interactive than traditional lectures, and allowed students to influence the direction of their own learning. this approach appealed to my pedagogical instincts, and spoke to my own frustrations in university learning. as a student, i struggled with being “talked at” for extended periods of time, and generally found extra-curricular debates more useful than classroom discussions. in class, it seemed to me, most students were performing for professors or teaching assistants with the hope of earning 380 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education high grades, strong reference letters, and related academic success. they rarely engaged their educator critically; but in lively conversation outside of class, many spoke more openly about their opinions. to my colleagues in graduate school, i lamented how this reflected the meritocratic role of universities, and their function in “sorting” our future roles in society. but must thoughtful educators, i asked, affirm this process? were there not other teaching methods that inspired independent thinking, or intellectual capacities that build engaged, active citizenship? it was questions like these that led me to paulo freire in the mid1990s. in fact, i remember first reading pedagogy of the oppressed (1970) in toronto’s annex-based future bakery, soaking in its countervailing wisdom between gulps of coffee and bites of mashed potatoes. in page after page, freire named the flaws of what he called “narrative learning”, or the “banking system of education”: “narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. worse yet, it turns them into “containers”, into “recepticles” to be “filled” by the teacher. the more completely [s/he] fills the receptacles, the better a teacher [s/he] is. the more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are...in the banking system of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry.the teacher presents themself to students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, s/he justifies their own existence. the students, alienated like the slave in the hegelian dialectic, accept their ignorance as justifying the teacher’s existence -but, unlike the slave, they never discover that they educate the teacher.” (53) nearly two decades after i read these words, i revisited critiques of narrative learning, only now espoused by advocates of “flipping the classroom”. the most astute of these writers cited freire as an influence, quoting his remarks that “education is suffering from narrative sickness”, and that “passive education cultivates passive people” (schell and lukoff, 2012). but could “flipping” legitimately claim the mantle of popular education, and meet the analytical rigour of radical academe? was “flipping” truly about building intellectual capacities of student learning without sages? | 381 learners, or prettifying the massive classes that financed university budgets? were students being challenged as intellectuals, or entertained through nuanced teaching methods? these were the questions i asked while considering the merits of flipped learning, and planning my teaching work for 2013-2014. my adventures in (and lessons from) flipped learning in 2013-2014, my approach to “flipped” learning involved regular writing, limited lecturing, and creative discussion in both small and large groups. in three carleton university courses for the 2013-2014 academic year, i asked for weekly written reflections (including a thesis, evidence, antithesis, and synthesis, to a maximum of 500 words), group facilitation, a short paper (1,000 words), a major essay proposal (1,500 words), a major essay (3,000 words), and discussion-based learning in class. this meant an increase in my evaluation workload, but it helped me regularly convey a clear sense of my expectations. for shorter weekly reflections, my comments were more succinct; for longer assignments, i offered more substantive feedback. no quiz, mid-term, or exams were scheduled, and students were freed from worrying what aspects of our course would show up on tests. instead, in our initial discussions, they were asked to focus on three things: to be “present” (completing written work, participating in class debates, and actively listening to others); to be “honest” (and convey their actual opinions, not ideas they believed were sanctioned by me or our course materials); and to be “fair” (by taking our class seriously, and accurately depicting perspectives with which they disagreed). their final grade was based heavily on class participation (40 percent), while the balance was distributed between the assignments named above. inspired by various popular educators, i ensured the physical layout of each class was amenable to debate and discussion. this meant avoiding rooms with fixed chairs or row-based seating, where students, in my experience, typically search for anonymity in the back with screened devices. instead, tables were pushed against the wall, and chairs were arranged in an horseshoe or circle format. class started with an opening roundtable where everyone provided brief responses to two questions. after that came limited remarks (5-10 minutes) from me, followed by a range of group work (or interactive, popular-education-based exercises), where various multimedia tools were used to engage different learning styles. in one course (“security 382 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education and social movements”), students helped choose curriculum readings in the second semester; in this and a second course (“environment and social justice”), students led in facilitating class discussion. they did so after i demonstrated appropriate readings, and interactive facilitation techniques in previous classes. inspired by radical academe and social movements, i chose provocative topics for our survey of dissent and canadian law. many were introduced for the first time to moments in north american history with which they were rarely familiar: the red river and north-west rebellions of 1869-1870 and 1885; the winnipeg general strike of 1919; the on to ottawa trek (and regina riot) of 1935; quebec’s anti-communist padlock law of 1937, and canada’s related gouzenko affair of 1945; the eviction and relocation of black africville residents by nova scotian officials from 1964 to 1967; the longest student occupation in canadian history of sir george williams college (now concordia university), inspired by black power activism, in 1967; the pro-choice movements of the 1970s and 1980s; the stonewall riot of 1969 in new york city, and gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgendered activism in north america since. added to these cases were more recent examples: anti-oil-pipeline movements, palestine human rights campaigns, occupy wall street, slut walk, pussy riot, and idle no more. as i canvassed colleagues on this selection of topics, i generally heard two criticisms. first, that this course material may provoke more than was necessary, and second, that i risked providing scant attention to many cases over considered attention of a few. my experience, in fact, revealed the precise opposite. students appreciated a larger sweep of history which allowed them to make a more informed choice about the research focus for their major essay. i also found, in general, that controversial topics improved class discussion. the most memorable classes featured tough, passionate debate which generally stayed within the boundaries of respect. but how, overall, was my pedagogy received? in retrospect, it yielded mixed results. our learning, as several students explained in course evaluations, was not “what they expected”, but most enjoyed a different perspective on law and society, and the manner in which we engaged course materials. at the same time, many found the writing demands of our work onerous, and a vocal contingent insisted on more lecturing and testing. my teaching evaluation scores, historically well above average, were fixed more in the average range. the decisive factor were a few learning without sages? | 383 frustrated students who provided very low assessments which impacted my overall scores. there were two moments that embodied this frustration, each of which yielded valuable learning for me as an educator. in the first instance, i was challenged by an infuriated student who received a lower-than-expected grade for his first essay. his essay, in my view, did not demonstrate a critical grasp of our course materials; the text was also loosely cobbled together with little effort at proper editing. and so, as i entered the hallway after class, i was accused by this student of being “biased”, and pigeon-holing him at a “b” level (which, he impressed, he had never been). after listening for some time, i asked the student what he wanted from our conversation. did he want me to re-grade his assignment? did he want to withdraw from our class? or did he just want to communicate his frustration, and leave it there? after more fulmination, the student indicated a potential interest in me re-grading his work, but he wanted more time to consider his options. soon after that, i was contacted by our department’s undergraduate coordinator. the student had now changed his grievance towards the entire course, and alleged it was “unfair” to expect weekly writing given this was not explicitly referenced in our course outline. after i demonstrated that this was mentioned in class, the expectations for which were communicated several times by email, the grievance went away (but i learned, after this experience, to list all my expectations in the course outline). of course, because the quality of this student’s work did not improve, things did not end there. at one point, i was accused of racism by this student in an email following a meeting he had with our department chair (which, i surmised, did not go well). at the chair’s request, the head of carleton’s student services then got involved, and this prompted an apology from the student (retracting the racism charge, but re-asserting the belief that our course had unfair expectations). the student later appealed his final grade to the registrar’s office, which meant several queries that took valuable time to answer. after this experience, i had a better understanding about why many educators prefer a lecture-and-testing approach; in a context of a massive workload (which is true for most tenured, tenure-track, and sessional professors), why not choose a pedagogy that is less time consuming, and easier to defend when challenged? writing-and-discussion-based learning requires more effort for both 384 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education student and educator, and leaves much open to interpretation should emotions run high. another instance of heightened emotion happened the same year, but this time with a much different outcome. in this case, i was approached early in the semester by a student who had shown great promise, but was concerned about her prospects for a decent grade given the demands of her part-time employment. her “part-time” work day, i learned, consisted of waking up at 4:00am and commuting to the ottawa airport. upon arrival, she booked in travelers as a flight attendant, and staffed the rapid route between ottawa and toronto. and so, when our three-hour seminar was held (at 8:30am on tuesday mornings), this student had already worked a half-day shift, which didn’t bode well for being “present” in class discussions. but this job, the student insisted, was crucial as a means to finance her undergraduate studies. she was a first time university goer from a racialized family, and faced intense pressure as a consequence. she was also excited about our learning, and very much engaged in debates over human rights. she asked if i could be flexible in assessing her participation grade, given some days it would be impossible to attend class (as her employer required help as a flight attendant after check-in was completed). after further reflection, and some indication of how many classes would be missed (only three, as it turned out), i agreed to accommodate this request. while some might dispute that choice, my notion of supportive pedagogy does not require identical treatment. i knew i was challenging students, and that some of them faced unique learning challenges and constraints. some of these had institutional supports on campus, while others proved more difficult to assist. for that reason, early-on in our learning, i urged students to approach me personally (or through an institutional advocate) if they needed an accommodation. a few did, and i took their requests, in general, at face value (particularly if they were made well in advance of deadlines). so the student-flight-attendant i discuss here, it should be understood, was following up on an existing invitation. in her case, i asked that her weekly written work be submitted by email; i would look to its quality to evaluate her participation grade for classes in which she was absent. this arrangement worked relatively well, until later in the semester when the intensity of employment/education demands (and, i gathered, a consistent lack of sleep) was having its toll. after receiving the grade for her major essay proposal, this student nearly came undone in a tense conversation, and lamented the effort necessitated by a learning without sages? | 385 writing-based course. with further discussion, however, she was able to focus her research, and produce a strong final essay. despite the challenges she faced, this student scored in the top ten percent of the class. that, of course, was a good news story, and there were other cases where students produced strong work in spite of various challenges (mental health and employment were common reasons). at the same time, i empathized with students who also struggled because my pedagogy was atypical. university education, after all, is a high stakes enterprise – and this is particularly true for first-time university goers in their respective families (a reality which is quite common at carleton university). in our increasingly “marketized” society, parents expect a “return” on their investment, and students want grades to meet such expectations. post-secondary institutions, as many argue, are catering to such sentiments, and designing academic programming based on the “attractiveness of student life”, the “employability of graduates” or “likelihood to attract outside funding” (cairns and cairns, 2014; cbc, 2014; giroux, 2013; groake and hamilton, 2014). these pressures make alternative learning methods dangerous, raising any number of legitimate questions about my motives. how could students, accustomed as most are to lecture-and-testing pedagogy, earn high grades in a flipped classroom? could i be trusted to assess varying points of view (certainly those critical of social movements) fairly? and why place such an emphasis on writing, which is onerous for learners more accustomed to lecture-and-testing classes? flipping into the future? (yes, with a few caveats) as i struggled with these questions, i gained insight from educators at carleton who had also used versions of flipped learning. melanie adrian, a colleague in the department of law and legal studies, hosted a lunch seminar discussing her effort to bring “democracy” into the classroom (2014). she described how (in a second-year human rights law course) students were invited to help co-create the course outline, or accept a syllabus that had already been prepared. if the students opted for the former, they were expected to design a process by which decisions could be made, and present their final syllabus to adrian for comment and approval. to adrian’s surprise, students developed their own course outline over the first three classes, utilizing a painstaking, consensus-driven process in doing so. the reading and assignment expectations were 386 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education more challenging than what adrian had designed in her prepared syllabus, and classes brimmed with lively debate from start to finish. at the same time, a committed minority also wanted a return to more lecturing and testing, and hid behind laptops (or other devices) during class discussions. in debates over the course outline, however, these students realized they could not persuade others and opted, instead, to “go along for the ride” (adrian, 2014). adrian’s takeaway from the experience was two-fold: first, that most students wanted a new challenge, and would rise to the occasion; and second, that some would resist but not, as it turned out, prevent learning opportunities for others. this, she concluded, validated her belief that it was worth taking risks in pedagogy, and pushing students to demand more from their classroom experience. richard nimijean, another carleton colleague based in canadian studies, recounted a similar experience (2014). in his case, he opted to flip large classes (with over 150 students) by circulating pre-recorded lectures, and using lecture time for small group exercises where students (with the help of nimijean and teaching assistants) applied the insights of course materials. in doing so, he noticed a few developments. first, that this methodology “drew out” keen learners who used classroom interactions to advance their research interests. second, that it “woke up” other students who had previously ignored class discussions, and compelled them to either participate or absent themselves (in general, nimijean found the former more common). and lastly, it frustrated those who preferred the anonymity of a large class, and the reception of knowledge through lectures and note-taking. in general, nimijean found the last of these trends did not impact the tenor of class, or the outcome of his teaching evaluations. he therefore concluded, like adrian, that the benefits of flipped learning outweighed its potential negative consequences. like these colleagues, i will continue my use of flipped learning, and largely for two reasons. first, because i fear we often infantilize undergraduate learners, and avoid challenging them with work that respects their intellectual potential. reinforcing this tendency, as giroux (2014) explains, is our neoliberal age of austerity; as social science departments compete to recruit students (and retain crucial funding), educators are resorting to strategies that simplify learning in unhelpful ways. multiple choice exams or are preferred over written assignments, extended film segments over lively debate, or “ted talk” lectures over teaching that develops capacities for engaged citizenship. learning without sages? | 387 these trends, i believe, undermine the potential of social science, and transform learning into a limited, self-congratulatory process, and my experience suggests that students expect better. many want to be challenged, to be taken seriously as thinkers, and not mollified as consumers of a pleasant experience. in saying this, i do not deny the appeal of flashy styles, thoughtful lecturers, or the possibilities inherent in new communication technologies. my point, instead, is that educators must set their sights much higher. we live in a moment when students, staff, and faculty of our institutions are justifiably frustrated with the status quo. the same is true for most in our society who rarely set foot on campus, and regard postsecondary learning with great suspicion. mindful educators must enter this context with creativity, humility, and ambition. we must also recall’s friere’s notion that critical pedagogy is never neutral, but carries an important political vision: it either challenges the status quo, or it facilitates the “integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system...” (1970, 43). second, taking another cue from freire, i also regard teaching as a learning opportunity for educators, and that process is undermined by pedagogy that promotes passive absorption, descriptive analysis, and rote memorization from students. an instructive defense of such pedagogy was made during adrian’s seminar, when a film studies professor remarked, in discussion, that his goal was to actually “disempower students”, and avoid the “vain pursuit” of democracy in the classroom. “too many”, he explained, “think they know cinema after lengthy tours on the internet, or visits to film festivals.“ “my role”, he claimed, “is to use twenty years of experience to challenge that attitude, and to educate students in way they could not manage on their own.” of course, that observation misses the point of flipped learning, and critical pedagogy in general. the goal is not to dismiss an educator’s expertise, but to re-imagine teaching in a way that values student experience, the ideas they bring to class, and their own ability to test the merits of course materials. creating space for interaction facilitates new learning opportunities, and avoids the hubris, in fact, of educators who believe they alone have an answer for every question. powerful writing, active listening, and vigorous debate assisted my survival of narrative teaching. these skills, as i constantly refined them, helped me grasp ideas, and grow in intellectual terms. as i did so, there were certainly moments when a “wise sage” was useful, and i owe these mentors a debt of much gratitude. but those moments were far outnumbered by my own efforts to understand, apply, 388 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education and assess the value of what i was learning. we must encourage that kind of self-reliance in postsecondary learners, and this requires careful thought and practice from educators. that is what i attempted in 20132014, and what i will continue to attempt looking ahead. where will it lead, you might ask? only more experience, more breakthroughs and failures, will reveal that for me. for as friere once said to his colleague myles horton, “we make the road by walking” (1990, 76). references adrian, m. (2014, february 27). “democracy in the classroom a viable pedagogical approach?” presentation made to juristalks, carleton university’s department of law and legal studies, and carleton university’s education development centre. ottawa, on, canada. apple, m. (2011). education and power [third edition]. new york: routledge. apple, m. (2004). ideology and curriculum [25th anniversary 3rd edition]. new york: routledge. basen, i. (2014, september 7). “class struggle.” documentary produced for the canadian broadcasting corporation’s sunday edition with michael enright. http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/ documentaries/2014/09/07/class-struggle/. bergman, j. and sams, a. (2012). flip your classroom: reach every student in every class every day. iste: arlington, va. burke, b. et al. (2002). education for changing unions. toronto: between the lines. friere, p. (1992). pedagogy of hope: reliving pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: bloomsbury academic. freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: continuum. giroux, h. (2014). neoliberalism and the politics of higher education: an interview with henry giroux. truthout, http://truth-out.org/news/ item/15237-predatory-capitalism-and-the-attack-on-higher-educationan-interview-with-henry-a-giroux. giroux, h. (2011). on critical pedagogy. new york: bloomsbury academic. groake, l. and hamilton, b. (2014, january 13). “doing the ppp: a skeptical perspective”. academic matters: the journal of higher education. http://www.academicmatters.ca/2014/01/ doing-the-ppp-a-skeptical-perspective/. hooks, b. (1994). teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. new york: routledge. horton, m. and freire, p. (1990) we make the road by walking: conversations on education and social change. philadelphia: temple university press. learning without sages? | 389 martin, d. (1995). thinking union: activism and education in canada’s labour movement. toronto: between the lines. mazur, e. (2009). “farewell, lecture?” science. 323: pp. 50-51. mclean, m. (2006). pedagogy and the university: critical theory and practice. new york: continuum. nimijean, r. (january 31, 2014). “flipping or flopping? reflections on efforts to engage students in introductory canadian studies.” seminar hosted by the carleton university education development centre. ottawa, on, canada. schell, j. and lukoff, b. (october 15, 2012). “flipping the classroom: how to turn your students’ worlds upside down.” presentation to the new england board of higher education. boston, ma, usa. sears, a. and cairns, j. (2014). austerity u: preparing students for precarious lives. new socialist. http://www.newsocialist. org/736-austerity-u-preparing-students-for-precarious-lives. taylor, j. (2001). union learning: canadian labour education in the twentieth century. toronto: thompson educational publishing. 390 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education beyond the first rung: an interview with jim silver jordy cummings jordy cummings1 (jc): this issue of alternate routes has the theme of “capitalism in the classroom.” so to begin i’d like to ask you, in the broadest sense, what you see as the effect of capitalism in its various forms in the classroom. did neoliberalism introduce a different logic? what about post-crisis capitalism? jim silver2 (js): in the last thirty to forty years, the era of neoliberalism, capitalism has done a lot of damage to education. consider the case of universities. public funding has been systematically reduced in real terms over a long period. tuition is rising in real terms, reducing access for many, but especially for those already on the margins of our society. a high and still rising proportion of classes are taught by nontenured faculty who are part-time, poorly paid and have minimal job security. universities are increasingly corporatized – management is less collegial and more top-down, and private sector fund-raising has assumed enormous importance, adding to the influence exercised by corporations and wealthy individuals. an even greater problem lies outside the classroom. one of the strongest correlations in the social sciences is that between income and educational outcomes. the higher the income, the better are educational outcomes; the lower the income, the worse are educational outcomes. those who grow up in poverty are much less likely to succeed educationally than those who are economically better off. since a major consequence of the neoliberal era is the growth of poverty and inequality, more and more people are left behind educationally. this is worsened by the 1  jordy cummings is interventions editor of alternate routes, and a phd candidate at york university. 2  jim silver is the chair of the university of winnipeg’s department of urban and innercity studies, and is a long-time board member of the canadian centre for policy alternatives-manitoba. beyond the first rung | 391 dramatic changes in the global labour market. here in canada there are very good jobs, and very bad jobs, and ever-fewer in between. to get the very good jobs generally requires high educational achievement. so those who are poor are less likely to succeed educationally and thus less likely to get good jobs and more likely either to get poor jobs – those precarious jobs that are poorly paid, part-time, with no benefits, no security and no union – or no jobs at all. growing numbers are completely detached from the labour market, and have few educational skills. they are the new “surplus” population. capitalism does not need them. and the children of those marginalized from the labour market and the educational system are themselves less likely to succeed in school, thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty that produces poor educational outcomes that lead to poor or no jobs, which then reproduces still more poverty in a vicious downward cycle. this is a huge problem in western canada, especially as regards aboriginal people, who historically have had many negative experiences with education, and who continue to face discrimination in the labour market. educational outcomes amongst aboriginal people are, on average, especially low – although when income levels are factored out this is not the case; it is poverty, not aboriginality that is the issue. this is the case with newcomers as well, especially non-european newcomers, who disproportionately experience poor educational outcomes and poorly-paid jobs. the problems of education, jobs and poverty are increasingly racialized. education is not just about jobs. it is about the joy of learning, the sense of self-worth that educational achievements can produce, the creation of a populace that can participate fully in the increasingly difficult decisions that face us as a society. but capitalism’s neoliberal era produces large numbers who are marginalized from the educational system, the labour market and much of civic society. educational strategies that work well to meet the needs of those, especially adults, who have been marginalized have been developed and have proved effective, but they are non-mainstream approaches that require a commitment – both ideologically and fiscally – to meeting the needs of those least advantaged. little such commitment exists in the age of austerity. neoliberal governments choose instead to pour funds into correctional systems and policing. punishing the poor is an important characteristic of the age of neoliberalism; supporting creative, alternative educational strategies for low-income adults is not. 392 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education jc: as a related question, much of the work you do surrounds building community resistance to capitalism in the classroom. you have written about and worked in adult education. is this kind of empowerment-based approach under threat? in turn, tell me a bit about how it develops community capacities. js: i have written elsewhere (silver 2013) about alternative forms of adult education, especially aboriginal adult education, being practiced in winnipeg’s inner city. these approaches to adult education work well and produce significant numbers of graduates. a high proportion of these graduates choose to “give back” to the low-income neighbourhoods in which they have grown up, contributing to a home-grown, bottom-up form of community development that is effective. the current ndp government of manitoba has been supportive of these alternative educational initiatives, far more than conservative governments would be. successive ndp governments have not invested enough in these forms of alternative education to make the gains that would be possible, but they have been supportive enough that it is worth keeping them in office given the alternative. in manitoba now, the provincial conservative party is led by a former reform party mp who is likely to be as brutal to the inner city, and to alternative and successful forms of education in the inner city, as was the conservative government of gary filmon in the 1990s. much of the aboriginal adult education that has been developed in winnipeg’s inner city, as elsewhere, uses a de-colonizing approach, by which adults are made aware of what colonialism has done and continues to do to them collectively. as a result, they come to see the problems they have experienced in life as being the product not of their personal failings, but of the broad social forces related to colonialism. coming to that realization is often liberating, and enables aboriginal people to develop greater self-esteem and self-confidence, to succeed educationally, and then, in so many cases, to give back to their communities. when individuals start to succeed in such educational settings, they bring their cousins, their sisters, their friends into the program, creating a ripple effect by which the benefits of this form of education spread beyond the individual to families, extended families and friends and neighbours. low-income communities benefit when graduates choose to work in the communities in which they have grown up, making possible a “rebuilding from within” form of community development (silver, 2011). in this way these adult educational approaches are transformative. beyond the first rung | 393 when educational strategies have a de-colonizing character, community development takes a form inspired by traditional aboriginal values, which are collective and egalitarian. developing the capacities and capabilities of individuals and of communities is the goal of this form of community development, and it can reasonably be argued that this is foundational for the building of a better world – a world less driven by individualism and competition than by the egalitarian commitment to ensure that no one is excluded or left behind. the transformative character of these alternative educational strategies is, for the most part, politically progressive. jc: you make the point that literacy is the “first rung on the literacy and education ladder” for working-class people. beyond the obvious, tell me more about how this builds the condition of possibility for improving the lives of working class canadians. if you have any particular stories to share, that would be helpful. js: literacy programs can be seen as the “first rung on the ladder” of an educational journey that can change peoples’ lives in positive ways. in manitoba, 285,000 people have literacy levels that are below the level needed to participate fully in their communities and in the broader society. this is a shocking number. across canada, mainstream economists associated with the chartered banks – that is, they are not radicals – have argued recently that low levels of literacy cost the canadian economy billions of dollars. that’s because people cannot participate in the labour market because of their literacy levels, so there is an “opportunity cost,” and because low levels of literacy correlate with poverty, poor health, poor educational outcomes, and higher rates of incarceration, adding significantly to these costs. many of those who are illiterate become part of canada’s growing “surplus” population. they are no longer needed, not even as a reserve army of labour. so the system – at least a system guided by the values of neoliberalism – does not need to invest in them, and has no particular incentive to do so. but literacy programs and other adult education programs, especially communitybased programs in low-income neighbourhoods, are relatively inexpensive to mount, and can produce dramatic changes in peoples’ sense of themselves, and in their capacities to be part of building a better world. in early october 2014, i spoke to people in a public housing project in winnipeg where i had done a small research project, at the request of a community-based organization, on a literacy program in the housing complex. i reported back to a community gathering on the outcomes of the research, as we typically do in our collaborative and community-based 394 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education form of research in winnipeg’s inner city. the highlight of the event was two of the students in the literacy program, jean and alice (pseudonyms). they are middle-aged women who previously could not read to their children at bedtime, could not read the newspaper to learn more about the world outside their housing project, and who felt a deep sense of shame as a result. each of the two spoke at the community gathering to a crowd of 25-30 people, and described their newfound joy at now being able to read. jean said that she had previously had to rely on her four sons to read anything that had to be read, and now she felt a deep pride in not having to do that, and in being able to read the newspaper and become aware of the wider world around her. she is now volunteering with the kindergarten class in the neighbourhood school. she is a contributing part of the community. her sense of dignity has grown significantly. alice said she had not been able to read to her two older sons, and they had not done well in school, but she was now able to read to her youngest son, and he loves school and is doing well. these are, in the grand scheme of things, small gains, but for these women they are huge gains. with improved investment in such literacy and other alternative adult education programs many such gains could be made, but such investments are completely inconsistent with the neoliberal and austerity-driven capitalism of today. much of the political left in winnipeg is involved in these kinds of grassroots struggles, working closely with those who have been damaged by neoliberalism and by colonialism. this means that we are engaged in day-to-day efforts to make small changes. this may appear to be something other than revolutionary. however, i think it is our collective view that we have to be part of these local struggles, since peoples’ needs are so very great. by being part of these struggles, we are connected with a part of the real world that is being seriously damaged by today’s capitalism, and we are part of a process by which the capacities and capabilities of those otherwise marginalized by the system are being developed. this is the basis of change that can be positive from a left point of view. it means that those who are poor can develop the capacities and capabilities to themselves become the agents of the change so desperately needed in their communities. at the same time, the corporate world is expending considerable effort and money to draw the aboriginal community into their fold. business schools offer specialized programs for aboriginal students; corporations make efforts to hire these graduates. an aboriginal middle class is gradually emerging. our collective efforts in the inner city are beyond the first rung | 395 aimed not at all at creating an aboriginal middle class, but at contributing to a process by which those otherwise marginalized from the dominant society can take charge of their lives to build communities characterized by solidarity and lives lived in dignity. jc: relatedly, you’ve written about doing adult education among indigenous communities. what kind of challenges have you faced? what do you see as short, medium and long-term goals for shifting our practices? js: adult education involving aboriginal people brings its own particular challenges, over and above the key challenge, which is poverty and all the human damage that complex poverty can produce (silver, 2014). aboriginal people have had a century of negative experiences with education. education has produced few if any benefits for the vast majority of aboriginal people. many young aboriginal people see no point in struggling to succeed educationally. they are alienated from the educational system. they are alienated from many systems – the justice system, the corrections system, the child welfare system, for example. most have experienced racism on an almost daily basis. many have internalized the false claims of colonialism – the claims of their own and their cultures’ inferiority – and this often produces a lack of self-esteem and self-confidence and in some cases even a sense of worthlessness and hopelessness. this, and the constant challenges created by life lived in complex poverty, are the greatest challenge to educational success. in the program i run – the university of winnipeg’s department of urban and inner-city studies, located off-campus in the heart of winnipeg’s very low-income north end – we often say that the greatest challenge faced by our students, and especially our many aboriginal students, is life itself. by that we mean that their immersion in complex poverty and the lasting impact of colonialism weighs them down, and consistently produces multiple barriers to educational success – they lose their apartment because of a bed bug infestation, or their son is in the remand centre and they’re worried sick and can’t concentrate on their studies, or two people in their extended families have died in the past week and they have to travel to their home communities for funerals, or they were “jumped” on the weekend and lost all their identification, or any number of other problems. being poor and being aboriginal makes educational achievement difficult. on the other hand, however, approaches to aboriginal adult education have been developed that work well. many aboriginal peoples’ lives have been changed for the better. more of these gains could be made if 396 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education such alternative educational initiatives were expanded, and especially if they were connected with some of the very innovative job creation strategies developed in winnipeg’s inner city. the model that we use can be described as a convergence approach (loxley, 2010), by which linkages are consciously constructed via local hiring, local purchasing, and investing locally to meet peoples’ needs. alternative educational strategies are central to this approach. typically, the educational approaches that work are physically located in low-income neighbourhoods, feature small class sizes, create a warm and friendly and personalized environment, make available extra supports, both academic and personal supports, and design a curriculum that relates to the students’ experience and has a de-colonizing character (silver, 2013; mackinnon, 2013). such educational initiatives can work well and adults can make great gains, improving their level of formal education and perhaps even more importantly, improving their sense of themselves and their preparedness to be agents of change. people who make these gains often choose to give back to the low-income communities in which they have grown up and lived. they become the agents of change that are so desperately needed in such communities. my goal is to be part of a collective effort to expand these kinds of initiatives, and to produce more such agents of change. we are working hard to do this in winnipeg’s inner city. for example, the redevelopment of the old merchants hotel – previously a magnet for a wide variety of serious problems in the north end – will have a very significant impact. merchants corner will be a large complex over seven city lots that includes thirty units of subsidized housing for students with children, and educational space that is shared between the department of urban and inner-city studies, which will hold classes during the day, and the north end high school support program, ceda-pathways to education, which is an after-school program and will use the same classrooms from 4:00-8:00 pm. merchants corner will become part of what we are calling the “north end community campus,” which includes other alternative educational initiatives, plus a childcare centre with a strong aboriginal character that gives first priority to students, and the thirty units of rent-geared-to-income student housing. the north end community campus, located in a one-block area on selkirk avenue in the north end, is a coherent and strategic approach to education for people who would otherwise be likely to be marginalized in a low-income urban space. most of the graduates of urban and inner-city studies, many of our current students, and many of the graduates of the other alternative beyond the first rung | 397 educational initiatives work in inner-city community development initiatives that are driven by values that are, in many important respects, the values of those of us on the political left. merchants corner will create more people who, having grown up in poverty, become the source and the agents of positive change in their low-income communities. it is a “rebuilding from within” strategy. other examples of related winnipeg inner-city initiatives include, to name but a few, social enterprises like build (building urban industries for local development) and mgr (manitoba green retrofit), which hire from marginalized communities and provide training to do useful work – renovating and retrofitting buildings and a range of related tasks, for example. people otherwise marginalized become productive members of society, doing useful work that produces in them a sense of dignity. most of those working in such jobs experience a process of healing from the damage of racialized poverty and colonialism. their lives are improved; their families are strengthened; their communities are healthier. jc: affordable and accessible housing are intrinsically connected with the education of a democratic polis, and you have written about them extensively. how do you connect the two? it seems to me, using michael lebowitz’s idea – out of the early karl marx – that this is to foster “rich human beings” or what the labour activist jane mcaleevy calls “the total worker.” she wrote about how workers unite with community members to demand not merely a better collective agreement but better housing. what can we do when so many people are poor and on the streets or shelter system while condos and luxury homes sit empty? js: housing is a central part of the daily realities of winnipeg’s inner city and of the people who live there. poor housing is a daily experience. as an important social determinant of health, poor housing contributes to ill health, lowered educational outcomes, difficulties with employment. decent and affordable housing, by contrast, is foundational – it is the basis for the building of a better life. the heart of the problem with housing in canada, and in winnipeg’s inner city, is that some ninety-five percent of housing in canada is produced by private, for-profit builders and developers. they build what is profitable, which means single detached dwellings in the suburbs or high-priced condominiums downtown. they do not build low-income rental housing, because low-income people can’t pay enough in rent to make such buildings profitable, and the builders and developers are in the business of making profits. this means that if low-income rental is 398 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education to be built, it requires some kind of subsidy, and it is governments that can provide those subsidies. but the federal government abandoned social housing – that is, subsidized housing for low-income people – in 1993 and later that decade off-loaded responsibility for housing to the provinces, which are less fiscally able to produce subsidized housing. the result is a cross-canada crisis in low-income rental housing. there is a lack of supply; rents are unaffordable; in winnipeg’s inner city many private rental houses are poorly maintained and over-priced by landlords. the ndp government in manitoba has been exemplary in producing low-income rental housing and in renovating existing stock, and their efforts have made and continue to make a real difference. but the problem continues, because the backlog is so great and because the federal government, which has the real fiscal capacity, is for the most part not involved in solving the low-income rental housing crisis. the housing crisis in winnipeg’s inner city can, however, be seen and is seen as an opportunity, particularly when viewed through the lens of a community economic development model shaped by a convergence philosophy. deteriorating housing can be renovated and retrofitted; inner-city residents otherwise disengaged from the labour market can be trained and employed to do this work; social enterprises can be created to organize such activity and to supply materials for the purpose. the result of using this approach in winnipeg’s inner city has been increased employment of those typically seen as hard to employ, improved housing quality, reduced heating and water bills for low-income people, strengthened families and healthier communities. the production of low-income rental housing and the financial support of those organizations engaged in a convergence approach to housing and other inner-city issues is a good example of why so many of us in winnipeg continue to support the provincial ndp government, despite its limitations. subsidies are essential if low-income rental housing is to be built, and governments have to provide those subsidies. to produce low-income rental housing in the volumes that are needed is very costly; only governments can do it. the provincial ndp government is doing it, despite its fiscal limitations, while also supporting many of the community-based organizations that do excellent community development work in winnipeg’s inner city. jc: in your work with the working classes of winnipeg, do you see a difference, in terms of levels of consciousness of their class interests, between winnipeggers and people from other parts of canada? tell me about the differences and commonalities you see. beyond the first rung | 399 js: many of those we work with in winnipeg’s inner city are not part of the working class. they are part of capitalism’s surplus population. they experience “complex poverty” or “spatially concentrated racialized poverty” (silver, 2014; 2010). they are either completely detached from the labour market – in many cases inter-generationally – which is a key factor in street gang activity (comack et al., 2013) and in children’s involvement in survival sex, for example, or they have low-level jobs –cleaning motels or seniors’ residences, for example. few appear to be active in retail-level service sector jobs, probably a function of racism, given that so many entry-level service sector jobs require direct interaction with the public. our work in the inner city produces jobs, and growing numbers are employed in such jobs, although most of the community-based organizations in which they are employed are dependent upon government for all or most of their funding, and so this employment is precarious in its own way – subject to changes in governments. winnipeg and other western canadian cities are distinctive in canada because of large and still rapidly growing aboriginal populations, a significant proportion of whom are struggling with complex poverty and the damage caused by colonialism. many still suffer from the inter-generational effects of the residential schools and colonialism more generally, and an astonishing proportion of them have at some point in their lives been institutionalized. in fact, in comack et al. (2013) we use the term “trauma trails” to describe, among other things, the long and largely uninterrupted trail of institutions in which aboriginal people have been incarcerated – residential schools, youth detention centres, the “sixties scoop” (by which many thousands of aboriginal children were seized from their homes and sent away from their parents, often to other cities and even the usa), child and family services (10,000 children, over eighty-five percent of them aboriginal, are now in the care of cfs in manitoba, in foster homes or group homes), and provincial and federal penal institutions, which in western canada are wildly disproportionately populated by young aboriginal men and, increasingly, women. relatively few are the aboriginal families that have not been touched by this institutionalization, and this adds to and reproduces the complex poverty and related trauma that are such a central part of so many aboriginal peoples’ life experience. the results are many – street gang activity as a form of resistance, low levels of formal educational attainment, poor health (diabetes, for example, is an epidemic), the constant struggle with racism, the connection of racism and poverty to 400 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education the tragedies of missing and murdered indigenous women, low levels of self-esteem and self-confidence as the result of the internalization of colonialism. our efforts in winnipeg’s inner-city involve our working with people there, as allies, finding ways to create educational approaches that are relevant and that will produce collective benefits, and finding ways to create employment in which inner-city people feel comfortable and can earn a living, and finding ways to support families in building healthier futures for their children. in this work, we spend a great deal of time listening and learning. many inner-city people themselves, and particularly inner-city aboriginal people, have a deep understanding of the character of the problems they face, and of the kinds of solutions that will work. we learn from them and work alongside them. the result is that many of us who come from progressive political backgrounds have become relevant to the lives of those who are poor. we are not disengaged from, but rather are deeply involved with, the complexities and challenges of real-life, day-to-day struggles and the search for real solutions. jc: the late french socialist theorist andre gorz coined the very useful concept of “non-reformist reforms.” these are reforms that don’t fundamentally overthrow the system as a whole, but nevertheless are reforms that actually decommodify aspects of our daily lives, and can help develop our capacities to build a better world and engage in transformative politics. on the other hand, this is counterpoised to “reformist reforms,” in other words, reforms that may indeed provide immediate help to people in need, but actually serve to reinforce the status quo and disempower popular activity from below. how do you see the work you do as fitting in this continuum? it seems to me much of what you do is the former, that is to say, “non-reformist.” js: the question of “reformist” versus “non-reformist reforms” is an interesting one in the case of those of us working in winnipeg’s inner city. one interpretation might reasonably be that we are engaged only in “reformist reforms” – those that provide immediate help to inner-city people and that don’t challenge the status quo. it could well be argued that what we do here simply keeps the bottom from falling out of the inner city, as it has done for example in detroit. many of the communitybased organizations with which we work closely are involved in healing those damaged so greatly by colonialism and racialized poverty. it is responding to immediate and terrible problems. beyond the first rung | 401 i think, however, that the case can be made that overall, our work is, at least potentially, much more than that. the alternative forms of education, especially adult education, that have been developed here in winnipeg’s inner city, and the innovative job creation strategies, really do develop the capacities and capabilities of people, and enable them to play an active and productive role in the communities in which they live. much of the work of community-based aboriginal organizations is aimed at healing at a pre-formal educational level, and can appear to be a classic case of “reformist reforms,” but shauna mackinnon has been able to show in her work (mackinnon and stephens, 2008) that these organizations enable people to take small but exceptionally important steps in developing their agency. i have argued (silver, 2006, chapter 5) that aboriginal forms of community development, rooted in the traditional aboriginal values of sharing and community, can lead from personal healing to individual agency to collective engagement, thus leading to stronger and healthier families and communities. some young aboriginal people are beginning to organize in ways that are exceptionally creative and attractive. their aim is not to overthrow the system, but rather to create a space in which they can live in a dignified and decolonized fashion, as aboriginal people, while emphatically not being a part of the crazed competitiveness and greed of the capitalist system. their approach to change is emerging from their experience of racialized poverty, and of colonization, and is rooted in the aboriginal cultural re-awakening that is part of what is happening in winnipeg’s inner city, and which is built in large part upon traditional aboriginal values, which are non-capitalist values. i would argue that these can legitimately be seen as non-reformist reforms. these reforms, it is true, are not aimed at overthrowing the system and creating in its place a socialist society. they are aimed at enabling the very poor – and in western canadian cities especially, aboriginal people – to build alternative ways of being within a cruel capitalist system. these are ways of being that are rooted in such concepts as sharing and community. as we head toward ever-greater global economic crisis and ever-more climate disasters, these ways of being will increasingly be seen as attractive, and in that sense may well be “non-reformist reforms.” jc: keeping the previous point in mind, you have also written that manitoba’s new democratic party must return to its social democratic roots. you point out the past achievements of social democracy which are not inconsiderable in central canada. you offer a compelling alternative vision of provincial social democracy. with that said, how would 402 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education you respond to the charges that with the combination of low-levels of struggle from below, and the mechanics of capitalism right now, that this type of social democracy is impossible. what kind of agency would make it possible in manitoba or in any other province? js: in the work that we are trying to do in winnipeg’s inner city, governments play a large role, for better or worse. manitoba’s ndp government plays a positive role. they do not do enough, and we work hard to push them to do more. but the difference between their approach and that of manitoba’s conservative party is so great that we believe it is essential to offer critical support to the government. the needs of those who are poor are so great that it would be difficult to justify our not being a part of these struggles. as a result, many of us who are on the political left and outside the government are actively engaged in the inner city, doing what we can as allies to promote positive reforms. in that work we have been, by and large, supported by the ndp government, and in return we offer the government support, and constantly push them to do more. ndp governments could do more, much more. this is possible. there is enormous wealth in canada, but over the past thirty to forty years most of the gains in our collective wealth have been appropriated by the wealthy. they ought to be taxed, and those tax revenues ought to be put to work to solve the kinds of problems being discussed here, and to build an environmentally sustainable future. doing so would produce enormous societal benefits. more people educated and employed – it is possible to create many jobs, because there are so many needs to be met – would increase tax revenues, and reduce government expenditures on health and corrections and social assistance, for example (silver, 2014, chapters 5 and 6). done in an aggressive and systematic and long-term fashion, with governments taking advantage of their capacity to educate the public and win broad-based support for such an approach, this is possible. it may or may not happen, but it is possible. by abandoning the realm of electoral politics and the real-world struggles of those most damaged by neoliberal capitalism and the politics of austerity, the broad left has created a great empty space into which a mean-spirited political right has marched, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. these narrow-minded right-wing ideologues do not have the support of the majority of canadians, but that majority has difficulty seeing any viable alternative. that alternative, i believe, is best built by active engagement in struggles, including electoral struggles. beyond the first rung | 403 jc: it’s a difficult struggle right now for those of us in academia, social movements and policy circles with truly progressive politics. what gives you hope in these dark times? js: i’m not quite sure that my attitude could be described as hopeful. these are, in many important respects, dark times. personally, i enjoy the challenge of being actively engaged in low-income communities, contributing whatever skills i might have to progressive struggles, and learning something new and interesting every day. how much potential this kind of work has to stave off future disasters, i don’t know. but there is in my opinion no real alternative to involvement in the struggle at a grassroots level, and to thinking and talking and writing about the character of that involvement and what it may mean for building a better world. i appreciate gramsci’s slogan, “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will,” and think of that phrase on those days when the going is especially tough. many days are like that, but we win the occasional battle, and one of the important things learned by those of us involved in the great social justice organization of the 1990s here in winnipeg – cho!ces – was the importance of celebrating victories, no matter how small. to celebrate victories, you have to be involved in struggles. being involved in struggles – in the case of many of us in winnipeg’s inner city, struggles alongside those who are particularly poor and marginalized and racialized and colonized – implies a belief in the importance of human agency. marxism has made enormous contributions to our understanding of the dynamic structures of capitalism, but perhaps in doing so has under-estimated the importance of human agency in the process of change. i think that the work we are doing in winnipeg’s inner city is especially focused on the importance of human agency in the process of change. in working alongside those in the inner city our objective is to produce, from within the ranks of the poor, and in many cases the racialized and colonized poor, the human agents of a form of change in which the poor themselves become the means by which their poverty is overcome – in ways and toward ends that they themselves determine. the alternative forms of education and related initiatives that many of us are involved with in winnipeg’s inner city are an important part of this process. 404 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education references comack, e., l. deane, l. morrissette and j. silver. (2013). indians wear red: colonialism, resistance and aboriginal street gangs. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing. loxley, j. (2010). aboriginal, northern and community economic development: papers and retrospectives. winnipeg: arbeiter ring publishing. mackinnon, s. (2013). healing the spirit first: aboriginal second-chance learners in three inner-city programs. in j. silver, ed., moving forward giving back: transformative aboriginal adult education. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing. mackinnon, s. and s. stephens. (2008). is participation having an impact? measuring progress in winnipeg’s inner city through the voices of community-based program participants. winnipeg: canadian centre for policy alternatives-manitoba. silver, j. (2014). about canada: poverty. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing. silver, jim, ed. (2013). moving forward giving back: transformative aboriginal adult education. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing. silver, j. (2011). good places to live: poverty and public housing in canada. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing. silver, jim. 2010. segregated city: a century of poverty in winnipeg. in p. thomas and c. brown, eds., manitoba politics and government: issues, institutions, traditions. winnipeg: university of manitoba press. silver, j. (2006). in their own voices: building urban aboriginal communities. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing. critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 405 critical education and insurgent pedagogies: an interview with e. wayne ross carlo fanelli carlo fanelli1 (cf): before working in the post-secondary education sector, you also taught as a pre-school and high-school instructor. could you explain the impact that neoliberalism has had philosophically and as a political economic project on the institutional aspects of education. have there been noticeable cultural shifts, differences in pedagogical emphases or allocation of funding priorities? e. wayne ross2 (ewr): for more than three decades now there has been a steady intensification of education reforms worldwide aimed at making public schools and universities more responsive to the interests of capital than ever before. and, neoliberal ideology is at the heart of what’s been labelled the global education reform movement or germ. key neoliberal principles such as reducing government spending for education (and other social services) and privatizing public enterprises has led to targeting the very existence of public education or more precisely education in the public interest. indeed, a key aim of neoliberalism is the destruction of the commons, the very idea of the common 1  carlo fanelli is a social sciences and humanities research council postdoctoral fellow at the department of politics and public administration, ryerson university, and scholar-inresidence at the global labour research centre, york university. in addition to serving as editor of alternate routes, he has published widely on critical political economy, labour studies, canadian public policy, climate change, social movements, urban sociology and education. he maintains a collection of his writing at www.carlofanelli.org 2  e. wayne ross is professor in the department of curriculum and pedagogy and co-director of the institute for critical education studies at the university of british columbia. he has published more than 20 books and over 200 articles, book chapters, essays, and reviews on curriculum studies, social studies education, teacher education, and critical pedagogy. his most recent books include: the social studies curriculum: purposes, problems, and possibilities (4th edition, state university of new york press, 2014) and critical theories, radical pedagogies, and social education (with abraham deleon, sense publishers, 2010). wayne is co-founder of the rouge forum and co-editor of the academic journals workplace, and critical education. he maintains a collection of his writing at http://blogs.ubc.ca/ross/ 406 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education good, instead substituting individualism and individual responsibility. this idea is reflected in stephen harper’s calls to avoid “committing sociology” or margaret thatcher’s declaration that there is “no such thing as society.” denying the existence of the commons and public interests transforms long held notions about what democracy is and the role of public education in democratic societies. neoliberal education reform aims for a large-scale transformation of public education that opens it up to private investment, enabling extraction of private profits. in 2005, the global education market was valued at $2.5 trillion; and the latest estimates are $4.4 trillion, with projections for rapid growth over the next five years. so, the opportunity for profit extraction is huge. corporations and the governments that serve their interests, along with neoliberal think tanks like the fraser institute and frontier centre and philantrocapitalist entities like the gates, broad, and walton foundations have been systematically reconstructing the discourse about public education as well as education funding and the nature of teaching and learning that goes in classrooms so that public education better serves the interests of capital. as a result, education aimed at helping students develop personally meaningful understandings of the world and contributing to a flourishing civil society is stifled. there are three key strategies of neoliberal education reform: (1) school choice and privatization; (2) human capital policies for teachers; and (3) standardized curriculum coupled with the increased use of standardized testing. charter schools are publicly funded independent schools that are attended by choice. neoliberal education reformers promote policies that would close public schools deemed “low performing” and replace them with publicly funded, but privately run charters and/or expanded use of vouchers and tax credit subsidies for private school tuition. human capital policies for teachers aim to alter the working conditions of teachers, which makes eliminating or limiting the power of teacher unions a primary objective of neoliberal education reform. human capital education policies include increasing class size (often tied to firing teaching staff); eliminating or weakening of tenure and seniority rights; using unqualified or “alternatively certified” teachers; increasing the hours that teachers work and reducing sick leave; and replacing governance by locally elected school boards, with various forms of mayoral and state takeover or private management; and using the results of student standardized tests to make teacher personnel decisions in hiring, firing, and pay. critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 407 key parts of the education reform discourse in the usa, which can be traced directly through every republican and democratic presidential administration from reagan to obama, include a focus on standardization of the curriculum and de-professionalization of teachers as teaching is increasingly reduced to test preparation. from reagan’s a national at risk, to george h. w. bush’s national education summits, clinton’s goals 2000, to george w. bush’s no child left behind act, and obama’s race to the top, there has been an ever tightening grip on what students learn and what teachers teach. the primary instruments used in the surveillance of teachers and students and enforcement of official knowledge has been the creation of state level curriculum standards paired with standardized tests, creating bureaucratic accountability systems that undermine the freedom to teach and learn. in parallel to the rise of standards-based, test-driven education there is been an ever growing resistance at the grassroots levels in the usa. what started has a small movement in the education community in the 1990s – led by groups such as the rouge forum, chicago public schools teachers and other educators who produce the newspaper substance, including teacher and writer susan ohanian, the national center for fair and open testing (fairtest) and the rethinking schools collective – has blossomed into a wide-spread resistance movement.3 for example, teachers in chicago and seattle have recently won important victories for the resistance to corporate education reforms. while community-based groups across the usa continue to gain traction in efforts to derail test-driven education, the education de-formers led by obama’s education secretary arne duncan and corporate/philanthropic backers including the gates, broad and walton family foundations still have the upper hand, demanding use of student standardized tests results to make teacher personnel decisions in hiring, firing, and pay. and, the next big thing in standardized curriculum is known as the common core state standards, which were created by gates foundation consultants for the national governors association. the common core is, in effect, a national curriculum that will be enforced via tests that are currently being developed by publishing behemoth pearson. the political and educational landscape in canada differs in important ways from the usa, but it is certainly not immune from the deleterious effects of neoliberal education reform. the canadian education 3  see, for example: fairtest’s “testing and resistance reform news” (http://fairtest.org/ news/other); substance news (http://www.substancenews.net/); susan ohanian’s website (http://www.susanohanian.org/); rethinking schools (http://www.rethinkingschools.org/); and the rouge forum website (http://www.rougeforum.org/). 408 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education system is a collection of regional systems in which governments have advanced neoliberal agendas for public education, including “increasing choice” by fostering private schools, introducing a number of market mechanisms into the public education, imposing standardized tests that used to create ranking or “league tables” to enhance competition between schools as well as allowing private companies to advertise in schools. the province of british columbia, in particular, is an important battleground over neoliberal education reform. bc is home to one of the most politically successful neoliberal governments in the world and schoolteachers have been waging a pitched battle against the bc liberals since the party swept into power in 2001. i’ll say more on that later. school governance in the province is also entirely top-down, with the appearance of local influence via local school planning councils. while bc does not have the proliferation of standardized tests that exist in the usa, standardized tests scores are used by the fraser institute, an influential neoliberal think tank, to rank schools in bc. fraser institute rankings are used to promote the notion “choice” in education and generally serve as a means for categorizing poorer, more diverse public schools as “failing,” while wealthy private schools dominate the top spots. in bc, government retains its authority over public education, but no longer undertakes the responsibility of assuring the educational wellbeing of the public. instead, this responsibility is devolved to individual school boards. the funding model for public education in bc, which i’ll mention again in a moment, reflects the neoliberal principle that more of the public’s collective wealth should be devoted to maximizing private profits rather than serving public needs. canada, like the usa, has also seen a dramatic pushback against neoliberal education reform. perhaps the most widely known recent action was the 2012 quebec student protests, also known as the maple spring, in response to government efforts to raise university tuition. significant examples of resistance to the common-nonsense of neoliberalism in the past decade are the british columbia teachers’ 2005 and 2014 strikes, which united student, parent, and educator interests in resisting the neoliberal onslaught on education in the public interest. the first step in resisting neoliberalism is realizing that we are not “all in this together,” that is, neoliberalism benefits the few at the expense of the many. the corporate mass media would have us adopt the mantra that what is good for the corporate capitalist class is good for the rest of us, thus we have the logic of efficiency, cost containment critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 409 and (deceptive claims about) affordability in education prized over the educational well-being of the public. the central narrative about education (and other social goods) has been framed in ways that serve the interests of capital. for example, in north america, free market neoliberals in think tanks and foundations and in the dominant media outlets have been successful in framing discussions on education in terms of accountability, efficiency, market competition, and affordability. the assumptions underlying these narratives are typically unquestioned or at least under-analyzed. indeed, neoliberal education reforms are not only flawed in their assumptions, but also even when judged on their own terms these reforms are empirical failures and have worsened the most pressing problems of public education, including funding inequalities, racial segregation, and anti-intellectualism. it is imperative that educators challenge the dominant neoliberal frames that would define education as just another commodity from which profits are to be extracted. cf: you are currently involved in the rouge forum and the institute for critical education studies, which also happens to publish the academic journals critical education and workplace. could you explain what initiatives the rouge forum is involved in? in what ways does the institute for critical education studies and its companion journals support critical social research, intellectual freedom and democratic political engagement? ewr: the origins of the rouge forum can be traced back to anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-chauvinist actions carried out by social studies, literacy, and special educators in the mid-1990s. the rouge forum emerged from a series of political controversies within the national council for the social studies (the largest professional organization for social studies teachers and teacher educators in north america) during the 1990s. specifically, two events at the 1994 annual meeting of ncss in phoenix galvanized a small group of activists who later founded the rouge forum. first, a staff person from the central committee for conscientious objectors (who was also a certified social studies teacher) was arrested for anti-rotc leafleting at a ncss conference event; and secondly, the governing body of ncss rejected a resolution condemning california’s proposition 187 (which established a state-run citizenship screening system and prohibited undocumented us persons from using health care, public education, and other social services) and calling for a boycott of the state as a site for future meetings of the ncss. these events fuelled a level of political activism the ncss 410 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education had rarely experienced and emphasized the need for organized action in support of free speech and anti-racist pedagogy in the field of social studies education in general and within ncss in particular in 1998, rich gibson, michael peterson (both then on the faculty at wayne state university), and myself organized what became the first meeting of the rouge forum in detroit. the meeting of around 300 education activists was described by one participant as a “72 hour conversation without end.” people came and went and the agenda flowed with the ideas of attendees. most found it a refreshing change from the routine of reading papers to each other. one important advantage was having access to a venue that was open 24 hours a day, offering a large room for plenaries and small breakout rooms at no cost; testimony to the working class roots of wayne state university. toward the close of the meeting, we chose the name, rouge forum, after the nearby ford river rouge complex, and all of its implications, and our dedication to open investigations of the world. we have never been troubled with the relationship to the french, “red,” but that was not on the minds of the locals to whom the rouge means a river, and a huge factory in death throes, and the possibility to overcome. since, we have been accused of being nothing but reds (hardly true, liberal democrats, libertarians, us troops, socialists, anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, and many others belong to the rouge forum.) we’ve stuck with the name since and the reds inside the rouge forum seem comfortable with the action-oriented liberals, and vice versa. friendship, sacrifice for the common good (solidarity), all remain ethics of the rouge forum. the rouge forum is perhaps the only school-based group in north america that has connected imperialism, war, and the regulation of schooling. the rouge forum has been active in efforts to resist curriculum standardization and high-stakes testing in schools, particularly as a result of the no child left behind act and obama’s race to the top scheme in the usa. the rouge forum produced the first petition against high-stakes testing in schools in the usa and has been a key player in the testing resistance movement from its beginning, working strategically with groups like fairtest (the national center for fair and open testing) and locally organized groups in michigan, new york, illinois and many other states in a variety of campaigns, protests, and direct actions. rouge forum members have also joined, and assumed leadership in, community coalitions organized against the wars in iraq and afghanistan, usually coalitions involving labour, leftists, grassroots collectives, critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 411 and religious groups aimed at ending the war, and they are frequently involved in school-based organizing, and counter-military recruitment as well. the rouge forum holds an annual, theme-based, meeting and members also participate within various professional organizations and union conferences as well organizing local events. the 2015 meeting is in the planning stages and will be san diego state university (rougeforum.org and rougeforumconference.org). the operative principle for the actions of the rouge forum is the idea that schools hold a key position in north american society and educators play a critical role in the creation of a more democratic egalitarian society, or one that increases inequality and authoritarianism. at issue for the rouge forum, as rich gibson and i wrote in a 2007 counterpunch article, “school workers do not need to be missionaries for capitalism, and schools its missions…” the metaphor is nearly perfect. schools hold centripetal and centrifugal positions in north american society. one in four people are directly connected to schools: school workers, students, or parents. many others are linked in indirect ways. schools are the pivotal organizing point for most people’s lives, in part, because of de-industrialization and, in part, the absence of serious struggle emanating from the industrial working class despite its historical civilizing influence. school is not merely school, but the point of origin for health care, food, and daytime shelter and safety for many people. schools are also huge markets (consider the bus purchases, architectural and building costs, salaries), as well as bases for technological instruction and skill training. schools warehouse children, serving as an important tax supported day care system for companies whose increasingly poorly paid workers come from dual income family who see their children an average of 20 hours less a week than they did in 1979. the beginning point in understanding the role teachers play as major actors in a centripetally positioned organization is to understand the value teachers create within capitalist societies. this is what marx had to say: “the only worker who is productive is one who produces surplus value for the capitalist, or in other words contributes to the selfvalorization of capital. if we may take an example from outside the sphere of material production, a schoolmaster is a productive worker when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his pupils, he works himself into the ground to enrich the owner of the school. that the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of a sau412 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education sage factory, makes no difference to the relation. the concept of a productive worker therefore implies, not merely a relation between the activity of work and its useful effect, between the worker and the product of the work, but also a specific social relation of production, a relation with a means of valorization. to be a productive worker is therefore not a piece of luck, but a misfortune.” (marx, 1976, 644) the institute for critical education studies is a relatively new entity, which i co-founded with two of my colleagues in the faculty of education at the university of british columbia, sandra mathison and stephen petrina. as paul simon sings “that’s astute…why don’t we get together and call ourselves an institute.” on the lighter side, that’s what we’ve done. we had been informally networked since 2004. the institute for critical education studies was formally established in october 2010 to support studies within a critical education or critical pedagogy tradition. ices maintains a network that conducts and circulates cultural, educational, or social research and discourse that are critical in method, scope, tone, and content. ices, critical education and workplace: a journal for academic labor defend the freedom, without restriction or censorship, to disseminate and publish reports of research, teaching, and service, and to express critical opinions about institutions or systems and their management. co-directors of ices, co-hosts of ices and workplace blogs, and co-editors of these journals resist all efforts to limit the exercise of academic freedom and intellectual freedom, recognizing the right of criticism by authors or contributors. ices, critical education, and workplace all function with an independent and free press ethic, as a publisher and as media for its academic and citizen journalists. critical education and workplace publish academic research along with a range of critical opinion while the ices and workplace blogs, twitter stream, and facebook walls support academic and citizen journalism. the co-directors of ices function in various capacities as editors, researchers, teachers, cultural critics or intellectuals, and academic and citizen journalists. ices, critical education and workplace promote and defend open access and the principle that making information or research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. critical education is one of a small handful of journals in the field of education that exclusively publishes articles in the critical social science tradition. workplace was one of the very first online, open access scholarly journals ever, and was founded by a collective of critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 413 scholars in higher education, with close ties to the modern language association, particularly the mla graduate student caucus. in its short history ices has been involved with advocacy on public education issues in bc through its own media outlets as well as contributing to mainstream and independent print and broadcast media in bc and nationally on a variety of topics including school curriculum, teaching, education funding, teacher education, academic labour, and education policy. the institute’s major new project is a cohort-based masters of education program in critical pedagogy and education activism (cpea) through the faculty of education at ubc (http://pdce. educ.ubc.ca/cpea/). labour action, appeals to environmentalism, equity and social justice, and private versus public education funding debates challenge teachers to negotiate the fluid boundaries between everyday curriculum and evaluation within the schools and critical analysis and activism in communities and the media. this new program is built on the rationale that teachers, teacher educators, and researchers must realize that intellectual (and political) activism is essential to teaching, learning and evaluation that is transformative. based on principles of solidarity, engagement, and critical analysis and research, the cpea masters program frames education activism as an intentional action with the goal of bringing about positive change in schools and education. an education activist works for positive change at the school level in how teaching and learning are conceptualized and the nature of relationships in education, and also at the workplace and community level in how educational policy, working conditions, and community relations are conceptualized, developed and maintained. cf: what critical theories and radical pedagogies have had the greatest impact on your thinking? how do you integrate these insights in the classroom and in your research? ewr: a colleague once described my thinking as heterodox and that’s fair. i have been influenced by a wide spectrum of thought and has evolved over time in dramatic ways. growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in south and north carolina i lived in the racially segregated world of jim crow and as a high school student experienced the tumultuous events of desegregation of schools in charlotte, nc. my father was a pentecostal minister and my family life revolved around the church and christian fundamentalist beliefs, which rejects theological liberalism and cultural modernism. these contexts have had huge impact on my thinking as i struggled with and against authority and hierarchy. 414 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education my early career as a social studies teacher and teacher educator was marked by interests in critical sociology of teaching, social psychology, and questions about the relations of individuals and community, particularly as explored in the philosophy of john dewey. i would say the roots of my thought can be traced to john dewey’s radical reconceptualization of democracy, though dewey is not a critical theorist. dewey’s notion of democracy cannot be found in the electoral democracies of capitalism. for dewey, the primary responsibility of democratic citizens is concern with the development of shared interests that lead to sensitivity about repercussions of their actions on others. dewey characterized democracy as a force that breaks down the barriers that separate people and creates community. the more porous the boundaries of social groups, the more they welcome participation from all individuals, and as the varied groupings enjoy multiple and flexible relations, society moves closer to fulfilling the democratic ideal. from a deweyan perspective, democracy is not merely a form of government nor is it an end in itself; it is the means by which people discover, extend, and manifest human nature and human rights. for dewey, democracy has three roots: free individual existence; solidarity with others; and choice of work and other forms of participation in society. the aim of democratic education and thus a democratic society is the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality. while dewey’s democratically informed education philosophy is quite familiar to folks in education, it has largely been influential only conceptually, it’s radical potential remains, in almost every respect, unrealized in schools and society. as part of my doctoral studies in the 1980s, i was immersed in the frankfort school critical theory, an interdisciplinary approach to emancipatory social theory. i was particularly influenced by jürgen habermas’s work on communicative action and communicative rationality. the latter, has been described as free and open discussion of an issue by all relevant persons, with a final decision being dependent upon the strength of better argument, and never upon any form of coercion. in my view, this admittedly idealized construction still has tremendous pedagogical power. marx, foucault, and guy debord have also loomed large for me, as well as chomsky’s political thought and critique of capitalist media. i’ve learned much from bertell ollman’s work on dialectics, alienation, class-consciousness, and ideology (not to mention radical humour). my colleague and collaborator, rich gibson, who is an emeritus professor at san diego state university, has been a tremendous marx mentor for critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 415 me. gibson has also extended and deepened my understanding of paulo freire’s critical pedagogy. kevin d. vinson and i have worked together for many years and our collaborative work is deeply indebted to the thought of foucault and debord, the marxist theorist and filmmaker who was a founder of the situationist international. through debord, i began to explore anarchist thought and its vast potential for critical educational work. and, i will be teaching a course in 2015 that draws heavily from the deschooling and free school traditions in education. the oppressive and inequitable consequences of authority and hierarchical organizations in social relations – the church, the state, and capitalism –continue to motivate me in my journey that has taken me from a liberal christian to deweyan democrat and onward to a concern for creating a society characterized by positive liberty as i continue to struggle with and against authority and hierarchy. the radical pedagogical principles that emerge from my study of these scholars include: educators should seek to create conditions in which students can develop personally meaningful understandings of the world and recognize they have agency to act on the world, to make change; education is not about showing life to people, but bringing them to life. the aim is not getting students to listen to convincing lectures by experts, but getting them to speak for themselves in order to achieve, or at least strive toward an equal degree of participation and better future. cf: you have written extensively about the challenges of standardized testing. could you present a snapshot of the debate and briefly explain the promises and perils of “high-stakes accountability” (as you and your colleague sandra mathison refer to it)? ewr: accountability strategies of neoliberal education reform rely heavily on measuring outcomes, especially student achievement, and attaching consequences, either positive or negative, to various levels of performance (e.g., the stakes involved might be advancement in grade level, assignment to a particular curricular stream, or graduation). these accountability strategies affect everyone and every aspect of schools and schooling at local, regional, national, and international levels. in most places, outcome-based bureaucratic accountability prevails. this form of accountability holds teachers and schools accountable to government education authorities for producing improvements in student learning outcomes (e.g., test scores). this accountability strategy focuses teachers, administrators, schools, parents, and students on specific forms of limited knowledge and skills. government agencies 416 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education create guides for common content and standards that are manifest in performance on mandated student tests. accountability, as a concept, is fundamentally an economic interaction in hierarchical, bureaucratic systems, between those who have power and those who do not. it is a state of being in which persons are obligated to answer to others. but complex hierarchical systems, like schools, do not permit those in power to be everywhere and do everything at the same time to achieve what they consider to be desirable outcomes. consequently, authority is delegated to others, which disperses power to lower levels of the hierarchical system. when power is delegated and dispersed to those within a hierarchical system, there is an expected return from the investment of that power in others. those to whom power has been delegated are obligated to answer, or render an account of, the degree of success in accomplishing the outcomes desired by those in power. because of the diffuse nature of many hierarchical systems, accountability depends on both surveillance and self-regulation. the power of surveillance is born out in part by the spectacle that may result from accounting by those to whom power has been delegated. in other words, the powerful in small numbers are surveilling the performance of many (through means such as standardized tests), which in turn become spectacles observed by the many (as in when schools test scores are reported on the front page of the newspaper). self-regulation, that is the faithful exercise of delegated authority (teachers, principals, etc.), is in part based on surveillance and the possibility of spectacle, but also on the perception of the legitimacy of those delegating power. this perceived legitimacy is key to the hegemony of accountability. hegemony is based on a projection by a dominant group (such as governments and corporate leaders) of their own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it (such as school administrators, teachers, students, parents) accept it as “common sense” or “natural.” these groups subordinated in the hegemony of accountability thus live their subordination, and this subordination is sustained through everyday discourse and practice, as well as in the popular media. cf: from pre-school to post-secondary education, public funding has often failed to keep pace with inflation. in many ways, this has led to the development of new user-fees, so-called public-private-partnerships and corporate philanthropy. could you discuss what challenges this ‘privatization by stealth’, as some have called it, poses for publically critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 417 funded, universally accessible education? does corporate sector penetration threaten academic independence? ewr: earlier i briefly mentioned that in bc, the government retains its authority over public education, but no longer undertakes the responsibility of assuring the educational well-being of the public. instead, this responsibility is devolved to individual school boards. this is a fundamental principle of neoliberal government: devolution of responsibility, without authority. again, as mentioned before, the funding model for public education in bc is based upon the principle that more of our collective wealth should be devoted to maximizing private profits rather than serving public needs and you can see how this plays out in the privatization through the backdoor, or stealth privatization. for example, the privatization and marketization of public schools in bc is being pursued through multiple strategies: private schools now receive over $200 million per year in public funding, with some schools receiving 35-50% of their funding from taxpayers and private schools for low-incidence, severely disabled students receiving 100% public funding; school districts are encouraged to sell seats in public schools to international students. international students pay about $12,000/year tuition to attend bc public schools, which is about twice as much as the provincial grant for canadian students in public schools; public school districts are now allowed to create private, for-profit business companies to set up overseas schools staffed by bc certified teachers teaching the bc provincial curriculum as a way to make up for inadequate government funding; inadequate funding from the province has pushed local parent groups into more and more fundraising and made schools more vulnerable to corporate incursions, which include advertising and corporate-branded private grants to support core curricular as well as extra-curricular school activities. a prime example of corporate incursion into public schools is chevron’s “fuel your schools” program, in which the vancouver school board recently refused to participate, prompting something of a backlash in corporate-owned media. the basic logic is underfund public education to create opportunities for supposedly altruistic corporations to fill the funding gap. then you have public schools in the position of relying on the largesse of corporations. in chevron’s case, you have a multinational corporation that runs irresponsible and unsafe operations around the world and in ecuador, for example, despoiling the lands of indigenous peoples and then running away from $9.5 billion court judgement for their illegal actions. the “fuel your schools” program is one way 418 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education chevron whitewashes it corporate image, with a pittance of money that does little in terms of closing the serious funding deficits public schools are grappling with in the province. then when patti bacchus, chair of the vsb, rejects the dirty chevron money, the journalists who do the bidding for the corporate capitalism, like gary mason at the globe and mail, attack bacchus for being “ideological.” of course, chevron is not ideological… this strategy – underfunding public education to create openings for corporate incursion into schools – is employed globally. in mexico, ford and coca-cola have undermined academic independence by offering poorly funded public schools money then requiring them to illustrate their effectiveness in the form of improved test scores. schools become reliant on corporations for basic infrastructure then become obligated to transform teaching and learning into test prep, drill and kill pedagogy aimed at creating a compliant workforce to continue to receive corporate funding. here in bc, the liberals waltzed into the legislature in 2001 and started an unprecedented program of inequitable tax cuts. as a result, bc now has a regressive tax system. a broadbent institute report released earlier this year points out that in bc the poor are now paying more in all taxes as a percentage of income than the rich. bc liberals’ tax cuts over the past 10 years have benefited the richest 1 percent of british columbians to the tune of $41,000 per year, while the bottom 40 percent have benefited by an average of $200 per year. both the canadian centre for policy alternatives and the conference board of canada agree that despite the elimination of the provincial deficit and the recently announced $353 million surplus, overall spending as a share of the provincial gdp in bc is shrinking and will reach a record low in 2017. with bc near the bottom in provincial per student education funding and bc teachers near the bottom in average salary, government budgeted only 0.6 per cent increases for k-12 education the next three years. while the provincial budget conservatively projects revenue increases at 8 percent annually, it has budgeted less than a one per cent annual increase in the budget for b.c. schools. it is within this frame that the government’s public relations machine shaped discourse around what was affordable or not in negotiations with teachers and discussions about remedies for illegally stripping the teachers’ contracts of language around class size and composition. cf: based on your understanding of events, could you summarize the significance of the 2014 british columbia teachers’ strike? what critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 419 was the position of the liberal government and why did teachers go on strike? how was the strike received by the broader community and characterized in the press? ewr: bc has been ruled for over a decade by arguably one of the most successful neoliberal political parties in the world. and the british columbia teachers federation has not shied away from battling against the bc liberals efforts to make the province into a haven for corporations and wealthy individuals at the expense of working people and the environment. the bc liberals have closely followed the neoliberal blueprint by cutting taxes for the wealthy, slashing social programs, privatizing state-owned enterprises, goods, and services, and attacking unions, particularly the bctf. in 2002 the bc liberal government imposed draconian legislation on public sector workers that overrode provisions in existing collective bargaining agreements – a neoliberal human capital strategy, as i previous mentioned. bills 27 and 28, which applied to teachers, unilaterally deleted contract provisions that applied to class-size maximum; class composition; staffing levels; support for inclusion of students with special needs; length of the school day; and hours of instruction in the school year. over the past decade bctf has challenged and won legal decisions against the government’s actions, yet the government has not complied with the court decisions. these were the key issues in the strike, and the bctf was able to secure a deal that did not undo their courts wins and provided improvements on class size and composition for bc schools. but their success in protecting these court wins was tempered by failure to get the kind of gains on wages and benefits that would lift teachers to within shouting distance of the canadian averages. i think a there are a few big take away messages from the strike and the settlement. first, neoliberal governments are ruthless in their policies aiming to slash social services budgets so that taxes can be cut for the wealthy and mega tax breaks can given to corporations. the bc liberals illustrated they were ready and willing to make teachers hurt financially (and they did) by refusing to negotiate in good faith, until they started to feel the pressure from parents and businesses affected by the strike. then a few weeks after squeezing the teachers, bc liberals announced sweetheart tax breaks for the liquid nitrogen gas industry that equal hundreds of millions of dollars. the second takeaway is that bc teachers continue to put teaching and learning conditions in schools at the top of their priority list. it’s not that they don’t need, want, or deserve increases in benefits and wages, 420 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education but in this settlement individual self-interest took a backseat to issues of learning conditions for students. and, as in the illegal strike in 2005, teachers found that more of the public backed their position compared to the government’s. when teachers’ unions fight hard for improved teaching and learning conditions they are much more likely to receive broad public support because it illustrates teachers solidarity with the needs and interests of their students. this principle has been proven in other contexts as well, notably the detroit teachers wildcat strikes, such the one in 1999, which used the slogan “books, supplies, and lower class size.” lastly, public dialogue about the strike was dominated by the government’s news frame. for example, the deceptive “affordability” narrative that advertising man/education minister peter fassbender hammered on for months was accepted at face value by corporate media. this is not surprising given who owns the mainstream media and it highlights the importance of unions and other social movements constructing counternarratives to one’s that serve elite interests. part of what we have tried to do with the institute for critical education studies is provide platforms that support progressive policy initiatives and that insert alternative perspectives, drawing from critical research and analysis into the public discussion on teaching, learning, schooling, and academic labour. cf: are there parallels to be found here in the university sector? i’m thinking also of the tendency to move away from secure, tenure-track employment to increasingly contractual and precarious arrangements, along with larger classroom sizes for example. ewr: absolutely. despite steady growth in post-secondary enrolments over the past thirty years there has been a parallel decline in the number of full time, tenure track jobs. in the us, over seventy percent of the instruction in post-secondary education is delivered by contingent and part-time professors, with canadian universities not far behind. the corporate university is now the norm. for example, university of british columbia’s land trust (the provincial endowment to the university) operates completely independently of the academic side of the university. as a result, we have the anomaly of reduced instructional budgets, loss of faculty lines, increases in part-time sessional faculty, and demands that graduate students and faculty bring money into the university to finance their own programs of research and to justify their continued existence. my own department no longer supplies me with toner for my printer; “get a grant for that or use your professional development benefits to buy one,” i’m told. for technology and research needs faculty are largely critical education and insurgent pedagogies | 421 self-funded. these conditions exist on the academic side, while the university’s real estate development program runs in high gear, building and selling on-campus condos for multi-million dollar price tags neither students or faculty can afford. and, like schools in bc, universities are now selling more and more of their seats to international students who pay about five times more for their education at ubc than canadian students. indeed, ubc is currently building an exclusive new stand alone college for international student that will cost nearly $130 million, which will exclusively enrol international students who will be paying over $50,000 per year to live and study at ubc. while the university pours money into this venture, there is a waiting list of over 5,000 current students seeking housing on campus. and, of course, there is a crisis of student debt across north america. cf: in addition to your formal academic writing you also publish extensively in newspapers and magazines, appear on radio and television, and maintain an active social media presence. how does this work complement your scholarly publishing? do you think critical scholars have a responsibility to engage as public intellectuals? ewr: too often the work of academics stays within a small scholarly community, available and often only fully comprehended by a few researchers who are pursuing similar interests. of course, this circumstance is justifiable as part of the work of academics, but i do believe that as chomsky asserted in the late 1960s intellectuals also have a responsibility to “speak the truth and expose lies.” as chomsky has pointed out, academics, particularly in the west, are something of a privileged minority (although this is less true now than in the 1960s, with reconstruction of academic work from primarily full time, tenurable positions to contingent labour) who have power that comes from political liberty, access to information, and freedom of expression. chomsky argued that the responsibilities of intellectuals are thus deeper than the responsibilities of the people. as a scholar whose work embraces critical social theory i feel a particular obligation to participate in the public discourse on issues relevant to my scholarly work. and my scholarly interests have always been driven, in large part, by social issues. so, for me there is a reciprocal or dialectical relationship between by public engagement and my scholarly work. there are two philosophical statements that i frequently invoke that are relevant to the question. in normative discourse, paul taylor (1961) says “we must decide what ought to be the case. we cannot discover what ought to be the 422 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education case by investigating what is the case.” we – educators and citizens – must decide what ought to be the purpose of schools, education, etc. that requires asking and answering questions like what kind of society (and world) we want to live in. and, michel foucault wrote that critique is not merely a matter of saying that things aren’t good the way they are, but that critique is seeing what types of assumptions, of familiar notions, and unexamined ways of thinking that accepted practices are based on. to do criticism, he says, is to make facile gestures difficult. and that is what i try to do in my scholarship and my engagement with the public issues. references marx, k. (1976). capital, vol. 1. new york: penguin. taylor, p. w. (1961). normative discourse. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. book reviews 424 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education book review : class dismissed | 425 book review class dismissed: why we can’t teach or learn our way out of inequality by john marsh. new york: monthly review press, 2011. $19.95 can, paper. isbn 978-1-58367-243-3. pages: 1-217. review by peter brogan1 in class dismissed, john marsh critically deconstructs the myth or common trope that education is the panacea for alleviating poverty and economic inequality. drawing on a wide-range of both qualitative and quantitative secondary literature, marsh makes the case that economic inequality and poverty are rooted in economics and politics, not formal education or the lack thereof. arguing that it is still important what happens in classrooms across america, marsh contends, “equality of educational opportunity may not lead to greater equality of outcomes, but that does not mean it has no value” (202). the book is organized into three parts. the first draws on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative economic and sociological research to detail the depth of the divide between the rich and poor in the united states, which is the widest its been since the 1920s and among developed countries. here, marsh demonstrates why the default position of using education to address economic inequality has failed. the second part of the book examines why, when, and how education has come to dominate discussions about “opportunity, prosperity and poverty in american life” (21), as well as alternative ways americans once imagined they could advance in society (e.g. through collective struggle and a more expansive welfare state) has been pushed out of public policy debates. marsh also suggests that despite a plethora of evidence to the contrary, many americans continue to believe that they (and anyone) should be able to learn their way out of poverty. marsh contends that the belief in the transformative power of education flows from a core desire of many people to want to think that we live in a just world, in which people get what they deserve if they work hard enough and apply themselves in school. however, little effort is made to offer supporting 1  peter brogan (pbrogan@yorku.ca) is a phd candidate at the department of geography, york university. 426 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education evidence or interrogate the cultural mechanisms through which such an ideology takes root in the american context. in the third and final section of the book, marsh analyzes economic literature discussing what else it would take besides, or in addition to, a good education to reduce poverty and economic inequality. the author tends towards an explanation of increasing inequality resulting from a decrease in the bargaining power of workers, and unions in particular, therefore placing an emphasis on rebuilding and expanding union strength as the key to genuinely addressing economic inequality and poverty. in this section marsh also tries to answer why in spite of all the evidence, the “united states has done and appears poised to do so little to act on this consensus [in the sociological and economic literature]” (22). he then turns to a discussion of what ways an education might be beneficial for addressing economic and political problems rooted in social inequality. he makes the case that the best way to improve educational outcomes is by decreasing poverty and inequality in the first place: “the point of this book is that we need to cultivate a new modesty regarding education, to stop believing that it is a magic potion for the poor or for anyone else. only after we’ve cleared the deck of these mistaken beliefs can we embark on a serious effort to fix these problems” (22). while it may be the case that “some people may escape poverty and low incomes through education the problem arises when education becomes the only escape route from these conditions – because that road will very quickly become bottlenecked” (19), marsh argues that despite claims to the contrary, the us economy continues to see an expansion of employment that does not require a college degree. he writes that a “college degree will not make those jobs pay any more than the pittance they currently do…what will make those bartending and other unskilled jobs pay something close to a living wage – if not a living wage itself – constitutes…one of the major public policy challenges of the twenty-first century. education, however, is not the answer” (20). alternatively, marsh argues that education should be focused on learning for its own sake, rather then seeing a direct correlation between learning for earning. thus, a good education (however we may define it), according to marsh, cannot be the solution to economic woes without the necessary expansion of useful, secure, well-paying remunerative jobs. “we should not make economic rights, or economic security more generally, dependent upon how far one goes – of how short one comes up – in exercising his or her right to a good education. rights are requirements” (203). concurrently, marsh is clear that education should serve book review : class dismissed | 427 the working classes, the poor, and the marginalized, hence we should not completely disregard the impact that schooling can have on ones economic fate. “for it remains the case in the united states today that if someone wants a living wage, if she wants her family to not live in or on the edge of poverty, she had better go to college” (209). perhaps the biggest weakness of class dismissed is that it concludes with too brief a discussion of solutions to poverty and inequality, if not how to improve the substance of education. in general, marsh points to the expansion of union numbers and strength as key to a more serious strategy for addressing these problems. he also offers a number of moderate proposals to public policy, but does not substantially address the politics of achieving even modest changes. another limitation is that while marsh dismantles the mythology of education as the key to upward social mobility, while at the same time acknowledging that education can still have a major positive impact on individuals, he fails to interrogate the relevance of education (broadly conceived) for political struggle, or schools’ roles as both sites of ideological reproduction and contestation. while scholars (such as the late historian christopher lasch) have been making similar arguments to that of marsh for quite some time, the claim that education is the primary vehicle out of poverty continues to dominate public policy across the us and canada. with an eye to deconstructing these taken for granted assumptions, marsh’s book is likely to be of interest to scholars and activists interested in an introduction to education justice. 428 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education book review out of left field: social inequality and sports by gamel abdel-shehid and nathan kalman-lamb. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing, 2011. $19.95 can, paper. isbn: 978-155266-439-1. pages: 1-135. reviewed by christine pich1 out of left field provides an engaging and clearly written text with the double aim of introducing a sociological perspective towards understanding high-performance sports and emphasizing the usefulness of critical theory in doing so. being an introductory text, critical theory is defined in a straightforward manner as encompassing “a basic assumption: the world we live in is fundamentally unequal” (6), with inequality conceptualized as the enjoyment of privileges for certain groups of people “at the expense of others who are marginalized and whose marginalization those privileges rely” (2). the central argument of the book that “in a capitalist society […] sport as spectacle serves to further the interests of capital” (9) – is made with respect to a marxist theoretical approach where it emphasizes the centrality of economic inequality and situates social inequalities in broader historical processes of capitalism and colonialism. however, it further challenges the reader to consider the continuous production and reproduction of interconnected forms of inequality (e.g., ‘race’, gender, sexuality), and how these are not homogenous sites of oppression. in drawing upon primary and secondary scholarly literature, the authors discuss an array of theoretical ideas including those of michel foucault, benedict andersen, and bell hooks, and develop their argument by tying their discussion back to the necessity of considering economic factors, such as commercialization and profit motives, towards understanding high-performance sports. the book is organized into three main parts with the first looking at the nature of sports, the second considering the influence of inequalities upon identity in sports, and the third exploring sports’ impact on broader societal views and beliefs. as noted, the focus is specifically on ‘high-performance sport’, which is defined as “elite, often professional 1  christine pich is a phd candidate in sociology at carleton university. her research interests are in the sociology of knowledge and ignorance, work, and health. book review : out of left field | 429 sport” (5), with examples including team-based sports, individual athletes, and periodic large-scale events such as the olympics. the rationale for this selection is based upon the strong influence that this level of sports has upon sports more generally, as it constitutes an aspirational model through which sports are constructed and played. each chapter addresses a different sociological aspect of understanding sport, with a fairly comprehensive scope that covers areas such as normative masculinity, film, imperialism, and spectacle. in connection with its stated aims, a particular strength of the book is its overall organization, as it is formatted in a way to clearly introduce core ideas from various critical theoretical approaches and identify social problems related to sports. the authors are cognizant of not taking academic ideas for granted. rather they succinctly define the meaning of key concerns (such as the importance of social context in reading theoretical literature) and concepts (e.g., feminism, ideology, modernity). all key terms are bolded within the text, with a glossary of these terms being included at the end of the book. the chapters are also clearly designated and discussed, with each chapter engaging with a few core ideas from a short list of selected authors. in considering the introductory format of this book, however, one key tension was that in arguing for a structural approach, the authors could have been more explicit in acknowledging other frameworks (e.g., post-structuralism) and debates (e.g., structure and agency) as a way to clearly present these ideas to the reader and to strengthen their own argument around the important impacts of broader societal forces. the book contributes to sociological literature in two central ways. first, the authors acknowledge that marxist discussion towards sports has been quite critical – for instance, by dismissing it as a spectacle – and while the authors encourage such critical analysis, they also argue that sports has the potential to be a site of transformation where it could encompass leisure, pleasure, and social cohesion. that is to say, they argue that sports are not in themselves the problem; what is of concern is how sports are undertaken and the purposes they serve in capitalist societies. second, by engaging with an array of literature the authors add multi-dimensionality to their discussion by considering not only how various identity-based inequalities interact with economic inequalities, but also by emphasizing the significance of what non-western and multinational perspectives may reveal. for example, in drawing upon the work of eduardo galeano, who wrote about sports in the context of imperialism in latin america, the authors highlight how people may 430 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education turn to sports to find pleasure and resistance in otherwise repressive environments. while the intention of the book is to provide a foundational level text, some points nevertheless require a slightly more nuanced analysis. for instance, in arguing for the usefulness of a marxist lens towards understanding the exploitation and commodification of the labour of professional athletes, they present the example of team owners in the national basketball association (nba) extracting surplus value from the labour of their players, even if the player is getting paid multi-millions of dollars per year. to be sure, the authors do make many convincing points, including how the players are working for the benefit of the owners, how many athletes are not paid such high amounts, and how some athletes have the benefit of a celebrity status that other workers do not. however, there is a lack of sufficient discussion about further qualitative distinctions and theoretical complexities in using similar concepts to understand the labour of high-performance athletes and that of workers who are employed in more traditional fields, such as manufacturing or service. for example, do we require more of a multi-pronged analysis in order to better understand the inequalities experienced not only between athletes and workers, but also between differently positioned athletes? although the authors acknowledge that economic inequalities have lessened in recent decades for some athletes due to higher salaries, there was a lack of clarity surrounding the theoretical implications of this for a class analysis. overall the accessible style and tone of this book, with clearly presented key concepts and theoretical ideas, as well as its engagement with relevant issues from high-performance sports, provides a useful text for introductory level undergraduate courses in sociology, sociology of sport, and sociological theory. book review: reconsidering knowledge | 431 book review reconsidering knowledge: feminism and the academy edited by meg luxton and mary jane mossman. halifax & winnipeg: fernwood publishing, 2012. $29.95 can, paper. isbn: 978-1-552266476-6. pages: 1-168. reviewed by jordan fairbairn1 in 2009, a group of feminist academics at york university participated in a lecture series revisiting key themes from the canadian research institute for the advancement of women (criaw)’s 1984 collection knowledge reconsidered: a feminist overview. the lectures were held with the aim of “refocusing the lens on feminist knowledge in the academy” (15). this book is the literary product of these lectures. the seven substantive chapters in the book deal with one or more of three central themes: 1) the importance of feminist knowledge production; 2) challenges posed by neoliberal approaches to education and university corporatization; and 3) feminist scholarship as a form of activism and/or resistance to the increasingly corporate university environment. as a whole, this is a collection rich in reflexive analysis of how knowledge production shapes, and is shaped by, the environment in which it occurs. in chapter one, meg luxton explores the transformative nature of feminist scholarship on the academy while effectively demonstrating through the discussion of gendered distribution of elite research positions in canada that academia is not exempt from patterns of inequality. in chapter two, m. jacqui alexander and chandra talpade mohanty further explore the politics of knowledge construction by mapping transnational feminism throughout women’s studies and lgbtt/queer studies syllabi in u.s. colleges and universities. the author’s conceptual use of cartographies to map histories and geographies of power is a significant contribution, as is their challenge to the academic/activist divide so often employed in academic discourse (see eschle and maiguashca, 2006). chapter three shifts from feminist knowledge in the academy to a focus on sexuality research in a global context. here, elisabeth young-bruehl 1  jordan fairbairn (jordan.fairbairn@carleton.ca) is a phd candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university. her research explores the relationship between social media and violence against women prevention, feminism, and public sociology. 432 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education reminds that in exploring the politics of knowledge construction it is important to explore not only what knowledge is created, but also what terms or concepts remain absent. to this end, young-bruehl provides the example of “childism” to illustrate the conceptual absence of terms to speak of groups that disproportionately inflict harm on children (e.g. child pornographers, child sex traffickers, armies recruiting child soldiers). while the argument that there is increased global tolerance for multisexuality (sexual identities outside binary understandings of sex and gender) is convincing, the implication that this will naturally lead to an understanding of sexual minorities as “different but equal” (73) is less so given the lack of historical evidence of this occurring. part two of reconsidering knowledge shifts from exploring feminism and knowledge production to consider current neoliberal influences on the university and the implications for its role in knowledge production. in chapter four, margaret thornton unpacks the concept of “neoliberalism” and focuses on three central phases in the university’s evolution (modernization, feminization, corporatization). thornton argues that we have entered a period of focus on a “new knowledge” economy, which has enabled “the remasculization of the economy behind a façade of rationality, neutrality, and technocratic knowledge” (77). while overall a convincing chapter and important contribution, considering the focus on the book (feminism and the academy), i found more explanation of feminization and remasculization to be needed, in particular a more clear distinction between remasculization and neoliberalism. in chapter five, janice newson situates neoliberalism within the university “on-theground” through an analysis of how universities have responded to policy changes that “promote the corporatized trajectory” (98). a significant contribution of this chapter is its resistance to the notion that neoliberalism simply “happened” to universities, absent of any agency of the actors within. instead, newson argues for complex (and reflexive) analysis, provocatively suggesting that we consider the academic attitudes and practices that have allowed, and may even be implicated in “the shift of the university towards more commercially oriented endeavours” (97). although further unpacking is needed around how to separate attitudes and practices from their institutional context, i found the author’s detailed use of historical explanation of policy development as a multi-faceted process convincing as an initial argument for reflexivity. in the final section of this collection, chapters six and seven illustrate the research richness that comes from applying feminist lenses to cultural histories. in her discussion of bluestockings and goddesses, ann shteir book review: reconsidering knowledge | 433 draws from mythology and iconography to challenge feminists to “take the past more seriously” (130) when pursuing present-day scholarship and activism. in particular, shteir identifies new technologies and digitized materials as tools to opening up new (or freshly revisited) research avenues. in reconsidering the past through feminist praxis, shteir summarizes a core idea of this collection: that we must remember that “scholarship is activism too, and we should be making it work for us” (147). in the concluding chapter, lorraine code moves themes of reflexivity, feminist praxis, and the politics of knowledge production back on front stage by analyzing the work of eminent marine biologist rachel carson (1907-1964) in “unsettling” key tenets of scientific knowledge and practice in the twentieth century. overall, reconsidering knowledge does important work through connecting core themes of social inequality, transformative knowledge, and the role and purpose of feminism and the university in our current social world. despite the eclectic mixture of chapter subject matter, the revisiting and resurfacing of feminist praxis and reflexive knowledge production as core themes holds this book together well; part of its success may, therefore, lie in highlighting that these important strands of debate transcend perceived boundaries of subject matter. yet given the vastness of feminism as a theoretical orientation, and the absence of explicit discussions and definitions of feminism in many chapters, an editorial introduction and conclusion would have been helpful to bring together the contributors’ various theoretical lenses as well as to increase accessibility of the text more broadly. nonetheless, this collection is a valuable read, not only for those committed to feminism and its role and relationship in the academy, but also for scholars and students concerned more broadly with the expansion of neoliberalism in universities and the politics of knowledge production. while reconsidering knowledge provides plenty of reasons to be concerned about entrenched resistance to feminist research and activism, it remains optimistic and steadfast about feminism’s transformative potential and critical importance in scholarship and activism, or, perhaps more accurately, scholarship-as-activism. references eschle, catherine and bice maiguashca. (2006). bridging the academic/ activist divide: feminist activism and the teaching of global politics. millennium-journal of international studies, 35 (1), 119-137. 434 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education book review imperial canada inc.: legal haven of choice for the world’s mining industries by alain deneault and william sacher. vancouver: talonbooks, 2012. $29.95 canada/u.s., paper. isbn: 978-0-88922-635-7. pages: 1-244. reviewed by j.z. garrod1 imperial canada inc. begins with a very simple question: why are 75 percent of the world’s mining corporations registered in canada? alain deneault and william sacher attempt to answer this question by, first, providing a history of canada’s questionable stock exchanges which promote irresponsible financial speculation and, second, through a case study of quebec’s mining sector demonstrating the significant weight and enduring presence of colonialism in canada. the first section of the book is split into two parts: ‘the argument,’ and ‘the history.’ in the argument chapter, deneault and sacher make the case that canada has become a legal haven for the global mining industry. building on deneault’s (2011) previous work on tax havens, the authors claim that there are a number of different advantages that the canadian state offers global mining firms: 1. unlimited speculation on resources through extremely permissive, self-regulating, stock-exchanges that have extremely ambiguous distinctions between ‘resources’ and ‘reserves;’ 2. tax advantages for investors, and the export of canadian mining investment policies to other countries via agencies like the international monetary fund (imf) and world bank (wb); 3. the use of diplomacy to put pressure on foreign countries, as well as providing mining corporations with legal cover by failing to charge them for various human rights abuses; 1  j.z. garrod is a phd candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university. book review: imperial canada inc. | 435 4. the utilization of the law to silence critics (see deneault and sacher’s earlier book, noir canada, which was pulled due to a lawsuit from barrick gold corp) through particularly restrictive libel laws and through institutions such as the wb, in which it files complaints demanding damages from governments who refuse to authorize resource exploitation; 5. the support of global mining corporations through a ‘made-incanada’ propaganda offensive through the education system, in which these corporations provide funding, advertising, and other philanthropic activities, including the development of provincial science curriculums; 6. ‘diplomacy of convenience,’ in which the canadian state provides overseas diplomatic support within a context in which there is a revolving door between high-level politics and the mining industry. in the historical chapter, deneault and sacher focus more explicitly on the wealth of canadian political economy scholarship to demonstrate how canada has always been a jurisdiction based on speculation from london and european capital markets trading on land, railways, and mines. they argue that this speculation was made possible by virtue of the extremely close linkages between state officials and capitalists who, in canadian history, were often the same person. in other words, those who created and enforced the laws did so for the purposes of personal gain. in order to reproduce these profits, canadian capitalists have long focused on foreign investment to fund short-term profit-making endeavours, such as the railways, regardless of whether or not they were suitable for commercial or industrial purposes, or whether they were even built at all. the rest of the book consists of a case study of quebec’s mining sector. in it, deneault and sacher claim that quebec “might as well be called a mineral state” (128) given the extent to which the provincial government has been appropriated by the mining sector. in fact, despite the influence of the quiet revolution, they note that key positions in the industry are still held by english-speaking canadian and foreign investors. ranked as “the most favourable jurisdiction for mining” by the fraser institute, quebec continually subjugates environmental and labour concerns under the concerns of corporate profit. to avoid public pressure, the 436 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education government uses the ‘strategy’ of public consultation and negotiation, which provides for a veneer of democracy, without any decision-making power invested in the consulting bodies. similarly, public investment in the mining sector is high, providing public financial and logistic support, alongside government programs to aid such firms. such practices aid an industry that for a century has been engaging in ecological crime and the dispossession of aboriginal peoples. quebec is thus the ‘standard’ that the industry would like to see replicated worldwide. in their conclusion, deneault and sacher call for canadians to demand greater regulation and oversight of these corporations, and for legal action to be taken against them. the problem, however, is whether this remains possible given the structure of global capitalism today. despite their extremely sound empirical work, deneault and sacher fail to engage with a growing debate on the character and nature of contemporary globalization and imperialism (see hardt and negri, 2000; harvey, 2003; robinson, 2004; and wood, 2003). the absence of an engagement with this literature raises many questions as to whether the relations of global capitalism fundamentally challenge the autonomy and sovereignty of the national state, and thus, the ability of national states to regulate transnational corporations – and this is above and beyond the question of whether globalization can be considered a novel form of imperialism. indeed, despite being part of the book’s title, imperialism is left undefined throughout and there is no discussion as to why we should understand the practices of the canadian state as being imperialistic. for example, one might ask why it would be imperialistic for canada to defend a belgian mining company registered in canada whose primary operations are located in central america? without engaging with fundamental theoretical questions about the nationality of capital today, the reader is left to wonder whether these practices are evidence of a more profound shift in the global political economy, rather than imperialism. similarly, there is little engagement with the renewed debate over whether canada should be understood as a dependent or imperial country (see kellogg, 2005; klassen, 2009; stanford, 2008; and watkins, 2007). by engaging with this debate, deneault and sacher might be able to better explain canada’s particular history of colonization – being both a colony of the british empire and a colonizer of both quebecois and indigenous populations here in canada – and now abroad via destructive mining practices. as it stands, the book simply argues a rather basic point: that the canadian state serves the interests of “speculators book review: imperial canada inc. | 437 and exploiters of the resources of the world’s land” (185). in this sense, there is a feeling that the authors are suggesting that the canadian state simply reproduces the practices of colonialism for the interests of the ruling class, but without any discussion over whether globalization is a qualitatively novel epoch in the history of world capitalism, the reader is left to speculate whether this ruling class is more transnational than national, and whether or not this might have some bearing on the book’s conclusions (see the debates on the character of the contemporary ruling class by mann et al., 2001). some further engagement with the wider literature and debates of global political economy scholarship would greatly help to both contextualize and sharpen their argument. in any case, imperial canada inc. sheds light on the practices of an incredibly opaque, destructive industry, and for that alone the book is extremely valuable. students of global and canadian political economy will find much of interest here and indeed, the sections outlining the ways in which these mining corporations have entered the educational sphere might hit a little close to home. interested scholars should especially keep an eye on deneault’s forthcoming book canada: a new tax haven. one can only hope that this book will address some of the shortcomings of imperial canada inc. and continue to provide a critical view of contemporary canadian political economy. references deneault, a., & holoch, g. (2011). offshore: tax havens and the rule of global crime. new york: new press. hardt, m., & negri, a. (2000). empire. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. harvey, d. (2003). the new imperialism. oxford ; new york: oxford university press. kellogg, p. (2005). kari levitt and the long detour of canadian political economy. studies in political economy, 76, 31-60 klassen, j. (2009). canada and the new imperialism: the economics of a secondary power. studies in political economy, 83, 163-190 mann, m., arrighi, g., moore, j., went, r., van der pijl, k., robinson, w. (2001). the transnational ruling class formation thesis: a symposium. science & society, 65(4). robinson, w. i. (2004). a theory of global capitalism: transnational production, transnational capitalists, and the transnational state. baltimore: johns hopkins university press. 438 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education stanford, j. (2008). staples, deindustrialization, and foreign investment: canada’s economic journey back to the future. studies in political economy, 82, 7-34 watkins, m. (2007). staples redux. studies in political economy, 79, 213-226 wood, e. m. (2003). empire of capital. new york: verso. book review: paved with good intentions | 439 book review paved with good intentions: canada’s development ngos from idealism to imperialism by nikolas barry-shaw and dru oja jay. black point, nova scotia: fernwood publishing, 2012. $24.95 can, paper. isbn: 978-1-55266399-8. pages: 1-303. reviewed by madalena santos1 paved with good intentions provides a critical perspective on the negative impacts of canadian non-governmental organization (ngo) projects in relation to achieving the goals of equality and social justice in countries that are not considered to be part of the west (i.e.: canada, the united states, or western europe), or what the authors refer to as the “global south.” citing various studies from ngo specialists such as sangeeta kanat and michael edwards, james petras, eboe hutchful, mike davis, laura macdonald, tina wallace, and arundhati roy, the authors situate their work within an anti/decolonial framework that seeks to achieve social justice from the bottom up. they examine the power of donors in controlling the direction and focus of development ngos, which they contend reinforce colonial legacies of resource extraction and genocidal policies in the name of benevolence. the authors provide a nuanced yet perhaps contentious view of ngo work suggesting ngos have become at best toothless critics which define the limits of dissent, and at worst proponents of canadian imperial interventions. they distinguish between development ngos and humanitarian ngos, although they devote less space to the latter. in their view, humanitarian ngos provide assistance for short periods of relief efforts such as during natural disasters, for example, while development ngos try to alter the fundamental ways in which societies are organized. in their own words: “we consider development ngos to be distinct from humanitarian agencies. humanitarian action seeks to alleviate episodic instances of suffering, whereas development work seeks to address the root causes of poverty” (14). 1  madalena santos is a phd candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university. 440 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education going further, barry-shaw and oja jay define development ngos as “professionalized, non-profit organizations that depend on cida [canadian international development agency] for funding and whose primary aim is to permanently remedy poverty in the third world” (13). yet while the stated goal of these ngos is to eliminate poverty, the authors show how development ngos often present a paternalistic view of poverty that is unconcerned with power relations and structural or systemic change, but instead emphasizes the individualized goals of “empowerment” and “participation” through projects such as microcredit financing that are closely tied to neoliberal market reforms. they explain how neoliberal ideology promotes greater economic liberalization, privatization, free trade, open markets, deregulation, and reductions in government spending in the public sector in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy. they claim that the work of development ngos not only fails to link development to state politics and ideology, but also disrupts local grassroots activism that attempts to effect transformational change through efforts such as wealth redistribution. in short, they argue that ngos obscure their own role in implementing neoliberal reform through what they call the political project of “ngoization” or “privatization by ngo” (44). over the course of ten chapters, paved with good intentions covers a number of areas in the study and analysis of ngos offering a succinct history of ngos in canada that traces changes within the goals and aspirations of ngos to foreign policy and the geopolitical climate of the day from the fear of communism to the rise and continuance of neoliberal policies and the link to western imperial military interventions. using a structural analysis that examines the underlying systems and methods of development, the authors convincingly argue what they understand as the myth of the benevolent canadian ngo, which they contend has never existed. the authors draw attention to the dependence of ngos on government financial support, which now sees the typical development ngo relying on federal funding for over 50% of its annual budget (59). according to barry-shaw and oja jay, the increase in government money for development work limits and at times prevents ngos from critiquing the canadian state, in particular canada’s foreign state policies. tracing the origin of development ngos in canada to the cold war era of the 1950s, barry-shaw and oja jay provide the historical context for the current growth of neoliberal policies and free trade agreements. the ongoing era of “globalization,” which the authors contend is really a euphemism for capitalistic expansion, has increased ngo book review: paved with good intentions | 441 bureaucratization and collaboration with the state, as well as the simultaneous suppression of social justice and anticapitalist activists. barry-shaw and dru ojay discuss the radicalization of ngos during the 1960s and 1970s, which saw projects put into practice based on a frierian pedagogical approach concerned with the “uprooting of unjust political and economic structures and systems” (144). they show how this period of radical development was stifled through government cuts to funding in the 1980s furthering the depoliticization of resistance and the relationship of dependency of the global south on the global north through clientalism and the cooptation of development projects. the professionalization of ngo projects, the authors go on to argue, helps to maintain or create an educated minority of middle and upper class elite who are not interested in change that would redistribute wealth and make structural and systemic transformations to relations of power that would actually eliminate poverty. much of the money spent on ngo “development” for instance goes to training and the institutionalization of projects rather than going directly to beneficiaries. moreover, they point out how ngo workers from the global north who work in the global south reinforce colonial relations where race, class, and gender play a significant role in establishing and maintaining relations of social and economic privilege (42). the book offers concrete examples of the destructive outcomes of development ngos in a number of countries, including haiti, palestine, honduras, afghanistan, and bangladesh. the authors discuss how development ngos have not only been ineffective in making the substantial changes needed to create more equitable and just societies in the global south, but have actually lead to greater violence and injustice in these countries through support and imposition of corrupt regimes. they present haiti as an extreme yet significant example of the connection between development ngos, the neoliberal goals of canada, france, and the us, and the violent criminalization and marginalization of popular dissent. in this case, they detail how the canadian government helped to overthrow the democratically elected and popularly supported president aristide through the use of military force while providing ngos with the funds necessary to undermine aristide’s popular fanmi lavalas movement, which was overwhelmingly supported by the haitian poor who form the majority of haiti’s population. while more needs to be said about the neocolonial legacy of ngo development and the exacerbation of colonial legacies in the global north, paved with good intentions underscores the possibilities for transformational change that can come 442 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education about through solidarity work that centres the aims and strategies of people working for justice and recognizes the connections between the struggles of peoples across international borders. book review: resisting the state | 443 book review resisting the state: canadian history through the stories of activists, by scott neigh. halifax and winnipeg: fernwood publishing, 2012. $24.95 can, paper. usbn: 978-1-55266-520-6. pages: 1-227. reviewed by amanda joy1 resisting the state is one of two books in which author scott neigh explores the history of canadian social justice activism through the experiences of longtime organizers. the second book focuses on issues of gender and sexuality, while resisting the state is organized around movements targeting the state in some way, such as anti-poverty work, immigration policy and anti-racism. neigh refers to his approach as “history from below”: whereas we normally learn history from the top down, focusing on elites, institutions and “great men,” he argues that it is not only the powerful who create social and political change. instead, he shows us the course of history as collectively made through the struggles of regular people in both big and small ways. neigh introduces his readers to eight activists in six chapters. these include isabel and frank showler, a couple of pacifists whose radical christian beliefs led them to resist the second world war; charles roach, a trinidadian-canadian lawyer who repeatedly challenged racism and colonialism in the course of his work; and lynn jones, a labour activist who fought racism from within the labour movement. we also meet kathy mallett and roger obonsawin, who have worked with indigenous communities and families in canadian cities, bringing leadership to friendship centres and other indigenous-led organizations; don weitz, an anti-psychiatry activist who helped to develop a radical antipsychiatry magazine; and josephine grey, a human rights activist who has worked with and on behalf of poor communities in ontario. neigh’s approach to telling these stories is to use individual biographies as “nodes” from which to tease out “strands” that can be followed to investigate the social relations in which they are embedded. each chapter begins with relevant context on the historical moment 1  amanda joy (amanda.joy@carleton.ca) is a phd candidate in the department of sociology and anthropology at carleton university, ottawa. her research interests include canadian social movements, anarchism, political anthropology and hiv/aids activism. she has an ma in sustainable development from chiang mai university, thailand. 444 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education in canadian society and politics, including both an explanation of the problems that the activist is struggling against, as well as the theoretical underpinnings needed to give insight into their perspective and actions. for example, in the chapter on lynn jones, neigh gives a brief history of black nova scotians, followed by some background on slavery and how capitalism has organizes different “kinds” of people to do different types of work; he then discusses race, gender and work in the canadian context. he approaches social theory at an introductory level, incorporating critiques of nationalism, colonialism, capitalism and racism into his historical narratives. neigh writes in solidarity with his subjects by describing them and their struggles in their own terms. while he comes from a radical, antiauthoritarian perspective, his subjects come from a more diverse range of viewpoints and backgrounds. some work from within state systems to effect concrete changes for their communities, and others organize from outside, and in opposition to, the state. the majority of the activists profiled have been involved in either grassroots community organizing or in organizing through official channels, such as the legal system, while only a couple were involved in protest and direct action organizing. the choice of who to include in the book seems to be guided by a desire for a diversity of movements, regions and identities, and in this respect neigh is quite successful. neigh’s approach is reflexive, continually positioning himself by relaying his own autobiography and learning process as it relates to each chapter. in the chapter on josephine grey’s anti-poverty work, neigh describes his own middle-class upbringing, his relationship to money, and how he came to learn about poverty through his activist involvement. he makes himself and his own journey present in his writing, and in the process invites readers to evaluate their own positions in relation to power and oppression. because these stories span decades of activist organizing, neigh is able to detail not only some inspiring victories, but also the ebb and flow of movements over time, including what happens when movements fizzle out. in chapter 3, indigenous activist kathy mallett describes how making gains can be a double-edged sword, contributing to complacency or causing the community to lose focus. similarly, in chapter 4, lynn jones describes the difficulty of engaging a community in struggle over the long term, particularly when people are putting in a lot of volunteer work; in her case, people began to burn out after achieving a significant book review: resisting the state | 445 victory. for activists, there are important lessons to be learned from the histories described here, both from victories and failures. one criticism is that the scope and intent of the book does not appear to match up with what neigh actually delivers. although the book’s introduction frames the project as offering an alternative canadian history, what neigh delivers is a partial history of struggle against the canadian state, told through the stories of a collection of activists and organizers. a narrowed scope would help to keep the stories in focus and prevent the book from seeming fragmented. the book would also benefit from a more thorough discussion of what ties the chapters together, and of what is uncovered by studying activist history “from below.” for example, how is this perspective more insightful than what is offered by “top-down” historians? it would be nice to see neigh in conversation with other scholars for this reason, but direct engagement with other historians is notably absent. neigh’s greatest strength and contribution is in personalizing important moments in the history of resistance in canada. the personalities of the profiled activists, most of whom are now seniors, shine through in neigh’s writing, and this makes for engaging reading. scholars of canadian history or activism may find neigh’s personal approach to these subjects a refreshing change from a more top-down history, while remaining accessible to social justice activists providing insights from prior generations. 446 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education book review yellow ribbons: the militarization of national identity in canada by a.l. mccready. winnipeg, manitoba and black point, nova scotia: fernwood publishing, 2013. $18.95 can, paper. isbn: 978-1-55266580-0. pages: 1-128. reviewed by shannon t. speed1 post-9/11 there have been many changes to canadian military practices both domestically and internationally. in yellow ribbons: the militarization of national identity in canada, mccready sets out to contextualize the cultural “shift” of an increasingly militarized canada as reflected in canadian national identity. an overarching theoretical framework for this book is not specifically laid out, but the idea of national identity ties each chapter together. through consideration of both military support campaigns and radio/television productions, mccready argues that canada’s peacekeeping history is used to justify current imperialist military practices. a motivation for this project stems from a concern that campaigns and cultural productions have shifted in focus from supporting soldiers to validating military spending. contextualizing military practices within an environment of canadian multiculturalism, mccready distinguishes between 1) state ‘militarism,’ the belief in the funding, maintenance, and support of militaries and armaments, and 2) ‘militarization,’ a deep and cultural process through which society adheres to the significance of militarism. the author analyses both ideologies in connection with neoliberalism, race, and gender. mccready acknowledges that this book may be received as unsupportive of the troops, and is upfront regarding its controversial content. the topic of war and military service can be polarizing, but mccready successfully addresses a wide-range of stances on military support and spending and explains there, at times flawed, logic. mccready ends the introductory chapter with a brief reference to the notion of “make live or let die” and “protofacism,” neither of which are carefully defined, explained, or contextualized. key ideas such as 1  shannon speed (sspeed@uwaterloo.ca) is a phd candidate at the department of sociology and legal studies, university of waterloo. book review: yellow ribbons | 447 ‘culture’ and ‘national identity’ are left for the reader to interpret, which is problematic as they are crucial to the author’s argument. in the second chapter, mccready provides a discussion of how the myth of canada being a “nation of peacekeepers” allows for the advancement of a “new” militarism (31). referencing canadian literature on race and multiculturalism, mccready notes how canada’s domestic history of colonialism is erased by a global peacekeeping image. a thorough history of yellow ribbons as an image of war is presented from its origins in america to its canadian use. the author argues that the many uses of the commodified yellow ribbon have resulted in it no longer having a single message. it “binds together the often contradictory narratives and affective impulses of militarism and national idealism” (41). mccready connects the semi-privatized organization of the yellow ribbon “support our troops” campaign to neoliberalism and privatized defense, arguing that militarization is a contested notion. this is illustrated by poll results cited by mccready, indicating that canadians differentiate between their support for the war in afghanistan and those fighting in it, although political decision makers conflate this. the author argues that the yellow ribbon is a performative and declarative act that presents a sense of collective identity. mccready goes on to argue that the yellow ribbon is also linked to white privilege through its use in 1992 to show support for those defending the beating of rodney king, and again in 1993 to show support for prison guards held hostage in a racially motivated prison uprising. another public display of supporting the troops presented by mccready is the highway of heroes phenomenon. despite quoting the reason for the initial gathering on an overpass in port hope being to show “support and condolences for the families” (54), mccready contextualizes this phenomenon within patriarchy and the “crisis of masculinity” through an examination of the campaign’s key supporters and its emphasis on the masculine figure of the soldier. although relevant to the book, the highway of heroes phenomenon is not clearly connected to the literature nor is it located within the “cultural shift” referred to by the author. the third chapter is an analysis of cultural productions that provide a link between militarization, entertainment, and industry. mccready looks at canadian forces recruiting ads, the cbc radio show afghanada, and the canadian film production passchendaele. the politics, funding, and support of each of these productions are examined, providing insight into the power of each as contributing to canadian military culture, and 448 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education consequently canadian national identity. furthermore, the author identifies particular themes for canadian forces recruitment ads released in 2006 – the ‘adventure’ ad and the ‘helping’ ad – both of which, mccready concludes, deviate from war-like imagery in favour of showing instances of altruism. mccready suggests that this is a rather alarming reflection of the canadian military as it reinforces a misleading image of canada’s role as ‘peacekeeper’ having created “a military role for itself as moral authority and enforcer and arbiter of democracy” (78). mccready’s subsequent analysis of cbc radio’s afghanada and the film passchendaele provides a detailed description of each production in addition to their financial and political patronage. according to mccready, these productions indicate that militarization has seeped into what is referred to as the ‘national imagination’ through cultural production. here, further consideration of audience demographics and opinion may be useful in order to prevent overplaying what mccready admits are formulaic productions that are not new in their premise or representations. mccready’s conclusion of having located “the new canadian exceptionalism” as “an emerging cultural and political idiom” is unconvincing as it is the first mention of this idea (111). a summary of literature is used to explain exceptionalism as change, newness, the circumvention of laws, exclusion, colonialism, and ‘canadian nationalism becoming american.’ though exceptionalism is applicable to some canadian practices, this idea is not traced throughout the book, nor does the author’s general analysis amount to one of exceptionalism. this book has many important ideas and is an admittedly ambitious project, but would have added impact with a better-organized and more in-depth discussion of the case studies and their main significance. it is difficult to situate yellow ribbons within the literature because the fundamental concepts are not carefully defined and aligned with those of other authors. the concluding chapter begins by characterizing yellow ribbons as having focused on the “transformation” of canadian culture, whereas introductory discussions indicate a “cultural shift.” this book’s contribution would benefit from an explicit conceptual outline, a consistent trajectory, and clearer connections to the literature. overall, mccready offers a descriptive and unapologetically critical look at the militarization of canadian national identity. book review: the new old world | 449 book review the new old world by perry anderson, new york: verso press, 2009. $39.95 us. isbn: 978-1-84467-312-4. pages 1-561. reviewed by aaron henry1 perry anderson’s the new old world (now) interrogates both the historical processes through which europe emerged and the forces that structure the european union (eu) polity today. in some respects, the historical scope, detail, and length of the text make it an impossible object to review beyond a mere recap of broad themes. so what is the theme of now? in two sentences: ‘europe is dead. long live europe!’ the focus of now is the tumultuous history of europe, its declines, its renewals, and its periods of malaise. anderson’s primary argument is that europe has now entered a period of economic, political, social, and cultural decline. although decline is the guiding thread that binds this study together the structure of now and its method of analysis is very much in the character of comparative politics. now is laid out in four parts: the union, the core, the eastern question, and conclusion. anderson’s focus is predominately on five member states – france, germany, and italy are used to analyze the established core of europe; turkey and cyprus are mobilized not only to tilt the geo-physical borders of the eu but also point to the ahistorical nature of ‘integration.’ while in these individual studies anderson develops a number of insights and detailed historical biographies, each study is used to demonstrate the stagnation or decline of the eu polity. in what increasingly appears as an endangered method, anderson examines his case studies through a historical materialist analysis. he deftly weaves economic transformations to ruptures in intellectual conditions his analysis of germany from philosophy to visual art is most striking (266-277) cultural developments and sea-change shifts in national politics. the linkages and relations that anderson offers between these spheres are well constructed and ensure that the 1  aaron henry is a phd candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology, carleton university. his research focuses on ‘the district’ as a practice of colonial and state rule in the early nineteenth century. 450 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education ‘economic’ does not emerge as an overly determinative site. drawing on statistics of economic growth, education and art, anderson argues that europe is adrift, economically stagnant, intellectually torpid and falling under the thumb of american imperium. though spanning the registers of the historical, economic, social and cultural, anderson’s erudite focus on the intellectual history of europe is where the work shines brightest. the conclusion of the project consolidates this theme and reveals much of anderson’s purpose in now. now concludes with a discussion of the displacement of christendom within europe, a shift, anderson notes, that was not fully solidified even in the seventeenth century. working from this transition, anderson focuses on the making of europe in both ‘left’ and ‘conservative’ traditions. this intellectual history combs the lives and works of voltaire, rousseau, kautsky, saint-simon and schlegal, and monnet, to name but a few. this conclusion serves to align the text’s case studies with a much longer historical trajectory. as anderson outlines, the intellectual history of europe was one characterized by disequilibrium and equilibrium, a progression of historical forces pushed by ‘left’ and ‘right’, without either ever obtaining intellectual hegemony (504). rather, it is in the course of struggle that europe inherited the bedrock of ideas that would cyclically create and destroy it. knowing his audience, anderson does not belabor this point. the history of europe is as much bound up with the intellectual tradition of dialectics, as it is dialectical. the primacy anderson accords between productive and vibrant intellectual thought underscores his preoccupation with the declining intellectual culture that has taken hold of europe today. although the technocratic class is a running theme in now, the subtlety with which it is handled gives it an ethereal character throughout the text. of course, europe is no stranger to specters so it is not surprising that anderson’s account contains a few of them. we are given glimpses of its processes of class formation, a neoliberal social form born of 1980s restructuring. we see its affects on political ingenuity and its formative role in the disconnect between democratic participation and the supranational offices of the eu; however, much like in political practice, the technocratic class rarely shows face. indeed, while the subtlety that anderson develops in this treatment can be appreciated, foregrounding the intellectual hegemony of the technocratic class would have served to bind some elements of the project closer together. furthermore, in a lengthy chapter entitled “theories”, anderson devotes nearly sixty pages in what appears to be a literature review. book review: the new old world | 451 however, on closer inspection anderson develops an important point here. the chapter demonstrates that the best work in european studies is the product of american political scientists. thus, eu funding bodies have generated an insular ‘techno-academocratic’ culture that is aloof to “wide public consciousness” and is in terms of its style and purpose “as technical as the regulations and directives of brussels [itself]” (80). thus, the review of the literature on the european union doubles as an indictment of the colonization of the intellectual conditions in the eu by a technocratic culture. sadly, this provocation remains underdeveloped and the reader is left with the task of mining out its significance to the project at large. written before the 2008 crisis, now also suffers from the absent presence of the financial crisis. to his credit anderson tries to rectify this and considers the implications of the crisis in an extended conclusion. however, this absence coupled with the rigor of the earlier analyses gives anderson’s discussion comparatively little weight in relation to the rest of the text. the nuance of the analysis and the promise for a future politics comes through at the very end of the book. anderson does not mince words. europe’s cultural, economic, intellectual and political decline has sent it adrift. its place in world politics is, at the moment, aligned with a foreign policy agenda that is related to, if not in the immediate family of, the united states. for anderson though not all is lost; decline holds a special place in europe’s intellectual history. now suggests perhaps as they have done in the past, the destructive forces of economic recession, political malaise, cultural atrophy and intellectual inertia, may “reignite the engines of political conflict and ideological division that gave the continent its impetus in the past” (547). the longstanding disequilibrium, the dialectic, of the old world that past generations sought to conquer, to institutionalize or balance, and in so doing further propelled, have renewed europe before. thus, europe’s current languid state may be the forces of its very renewal. after all it is too much, anderson reminds us, to settle on the “idea that time and contradiction have come to a halt” (547). anderson does persuasively demonstrate that social, economic, and political systems in eu states have weakened. however, as anderson’s analysis of europe’s intellectual history reveals, the meaning of decline has roots that extend beyond some form of empirical state. rather, to borrow from weber, decline is a ‘demonic concept’; once summoned its powers extend far beyond the empirical conditions it is put in service of representing. indeed, decline is a political imagination that serves to 452 | neoliberalism and the degradation of education superimpose ‘the’ historical moment on the present, and historically its political currency does not fall evenly on left and right. offering little to the left, discourses of decline were central to the ideologies of ‘national rebirth’ and ‘new order’ that shored up authoritarian regimes of the 1930s. moreover, writing from the hundred-year anniversary of the start of wwi, it would be remiss not to add that if ‘decline’ revved the engines of political conflict that renewed europe, these engines churned not only on ideas, but on blood and bone as well. introduction: interventions on labour transnationalism as practice reflections from trade union activists and staff thomas collombat1 while the emergence of neoliberal globalization and the rise of multinational corporations since the 1970s have prompted calls for unions to also ‘go global’, attempts to do this have been limited and faced with numerous obstacles. many of these obstacles have been sources of serious debate amongst socialists and trade unionists since the founding of the first international in 1864. for instance, there is the risk international solidarity actions have or could pose to the immediate material needs of workers. this is exemplified in the case of the solidarity shown by british textile workers in their support for the cotton blockade in the us civil war. despite the impacts it would have on their immediate material needs these workers engaged in solidarity action (marx, 1872; featherstone, 2012). this case exemplifies the tremendous challenges to building genuine solidarity in the face of the structural disadvantage of workers vis-à-vis employers within capitalism. if we add to this the stark differences in material conditions between workers globally today as well as social hierarchies and ideological challenges like nationalism, the task of coordinating efforts between workers globally appears dimmer still. as lenin noted about workers movements in the first world war, nationalism led to a breakdown of coordination efforts between movements across borders within europe. trade unions today remain on the whole not only organized on national lines but some are actively engaged in championing or fostering nationalist affinities. this is evident in everything from histories of labour imperialism (scipes, 2010; sims, 1992; gupta, 1975; bass iii, 1 thomas collombat is associate professor of political science at the université du québec en outaouais (uqo). he leads uqo’s research team on work and society (équipe de recherche travail et société, erts). his research focus on the dynamics of labour internationalism in the americas, in particular north-south relations within the trade union confederation of the americas (tuca) and global union federations, and the role of latin american unions in those organizations. he also studies the socio-political dimensions of trade unionism, specifically through a research project on central labour councils in québec. thomas collombat serves as the president of the canadian association for work and labour studies (cawls). special section introduction | 231 2012; nastovski, 2016b) to the development of explicitly nationalist union campaigns (frank, 2010; gindin, 2016; johns, 1998). nevertheless, textile workers engaged in solidarity action and unions have and continue to initiate a range of strategies from genuine grassroots international solidarity actions (nastovski, 2016a; southall, 1994; waterman 1987, 2012; zweig, 2005; fox-hodess, 2017) and efforts to build transnational movements and unions (boris fish, 2014). what is necessary to build international labour solidarity? if we are to put up effective resistance to the free reign of global capital and its seemingly infinite strategies to deepen competition between workers, then this must be a critical question for organizers today. it is in this context that the “new global labour studies” (webster, 2010; waterman, 2012; lambert 2014; taylor and rioux, 2017; mccallum and brookes, 2017) has emerged to produce scholarship and promote dialogue between organizers and academics on this question. how do we make sense of the various historical forms of international labour solidarity? what are the particular openings produced by the reorganization of work globally? how can we assess the potential for interactions between the different scales of action? in an effort to advance this scholarship and particularly to help facilitate practical discussion of international labour solidarity today, the following articles provide rich empirical data and analysis of contemporary practices of international labour solidarity. these are concrete reflections from key organizers on different sectoral initiatives within public sector unions (hoogers, casselman and cameron), private sector unions (marshall) and efforts within global union federations (gibb). the articles that follow provide a glimpse inside the everyday practices of building specific international labour solidarity actions and efforts at labour coordination. each article speaks to particular sectoral and structural challenges and contradictions. however, common themes run through the three articles. one of these themes is the critical role of local unions and union members in building long-lasting cross-border ties between workers. while often seen as the purview of expert leaders and staff, these authors show the impossibility of sustainable and effective international solidarity and coordination without rank and file involvement. further they speak to the role of specific union cultures and capacities and how this shapes the outcomes of the different initiatives. another theme is the ongoing impact of labour imperialism which contributes to asymmetrical dynamics between workers in the global north and global south. each of these contributions provide concrete examples of how 232 | populism, power and protest union activists have been successful in creating spaces where support, knowledgesharing and solidarity can go both ways. references bass iii, g. n. (2012). organized labor and u.s. foreign policy: the solidarity center in historical context. phd diss., miami, fl: florida international university. bieler, a., i. lindberg, and d. pillay. (2008). labour and the challenges of globalization: what prospects for transnational solidarity? london: pluto. boris, e. and j.n. fish. (2014). domestic workers go global: the birth of the international domestic workers federation. new labor forum (23)3, 76-81. brookes, m., and j. mccallum. (2017). the new global labour studies: a critical review. global labour journal 8(3), 201-218. burawoy, m. (2010). from polanyi to pollyanna: the false optimism of global labor studies. global labour journal 1(2), 301-313. choudry, a. and a.a. smith eds. (2016). unfree labour? struggles of migrant and immigrant workers in canada. oakland: pm press. featherstone, d. (2012). solidarity: hidden histories and geographies of internationalism. london: zed books. frank, d. (2000). buy american: the untold story of economic nationalism. boston, ma: beacon press. fox‐hodess, k. (2017). (re‐) locating the local and national in the global: multi‐scalar political alignment in transnational european dockworker union campaigns. british journal of industrial relations 55(3), 626-647. gindin, s. (2016). internationalizing the struggle: from slogans to class politics. in a world to win: contemporary social movements and counterhegemony. edited by w. carroll and k. sarkar. winnipeg: arp books gupta, p. s. (1975). imperialism and the british labour movement, 1914-1964. london, uk: macmillan. johns, r. a. (1998). bridging the gap between class and space: us worker solidarity with guatemala. economic geography 74(3), 252–271. special section introduction | 233 lambert, r. (2014). free trade and the new labour internationalism. globalizations 11(1), 119-129. nastovski, k. (2016a). worker-to-worker: a transformative model of solidarity: lessons from grassroots international labor solidarity in canada in the 1970s and 1980s. in building global labor solidarity in a time of accelerating globalization, edited by kim scipes. chicago: haymarket press. nastovski, k. (2016b). towards transformative solidarities: wars of position in the making of labour internationalism in canada. phd diss., toronto: york university. price, j. (2003). canadian labour, the cold war and asia, 1945-1955. victoria, b.c.: centre for asia-pacific initiatives. http://www.uvic.ca/research/centres /capi/assets/docs/price_canadian_labour.pdf saskatoon solidarity committee (scc). (1981) partners in imperialism: the canadian labour congress and social democracy in the third world. regina: saskatoon solidarity committee. scipes, k. (2010). afl-cio’s secret war against developing country workers: solidarity or sabotage? lanham, md: lexington. sims, b. (1992). workers of the world undermined: american labor’s role in u.s. foreign policy. boston, ma: south end press. sharma, n. (2002). immigrant and migrant workers in canada: labour movements, racism and the expansion of globalization. canadian woman studies/les cahier de la femmes (21/22) 4/1, 18-25. southall, r. (1994). the development and delivery of ‘northern’ worker solidarity to south african trade unions in the 1970s and 1980s. the journal of commonwealth & comparative politics (32)2, 166–199. taylor, m. and s. rioux. (2017). global labour studies. new york: polity. waterman, p. (1987). the more real thing than big, big coke: the new internationalism. iss working paper series/general series 37, 1-30. http://repub.eur.nl/pub/18818/wp37.pdf waterman, p. (2012). an emancipatory global labour studies is necessary! on rethinking the global labour movement in the hour of furnaces. interface 4(2), 317-368. webster, e. 2015. labour after globalisation: old and new sources of power. institute of social and economic research (iser), rhodes university. iser working paper no. 2015/1. 234 | populism, power and protest wright, c. (2009). between nation and empire: the fair play for cuba committees and the making of canada–cuba solidarity in the early 1960s. in our place in the sun: canada and cuba in the castro era, edited by robert anthony wright and lana wylie, 96-120. toronto: university of toronto press. zweig, m. (2005). iraq and the labor movement: the remarkable story of uslaw. new labor forum 14(3), 61-67. special section introduction | 235 making sense of italian populism: the five star movement and the lega joe galbo1 abstract: this paper examines the rise of two italian populist movements, the cyber-populism of the five star movement under beppe grillo, and the nativist populism of the lega under matteo salvini. i first frame the rise of italian populism and the brief coalition government the two parties formed in 2018-2019 within broader political and institutional trends, and then compare the role of leadership in the two movements and analyse the discursive strategies used in both to mobilize “the people” and win voters’ support. keywords: right-wing populism; populist discourses; italian politics; matteo salvini; beppe grillo introduction “populism” is now one of the most researched words on the internet and in 2017 the cambridge dictionary declared it the word of the year. it is a much contested and protean concept. scholars have variously described populism as a political strategy (weyland, 2001), a discursive style (jägers and walgrave, 2007), a political style (moffit, 2016), an organizational form (taggart, 1995), an illiberal political manifestation (zakerea, 1997; müller, 2016), and an authoritarian experiment in democracy (finchelstein, 2019), but it was dutch political scientist cas mudde (2004) and his collaborator rovita kaltwasser (mudde and kaltwasser, 2013; 2016) who provided what has now become a dominant definition of populism, one which was used as the conceptual basis for a series of 1 joe galbo is professor of sociology at the university of new brunswick. earlier versions of this paper were presented at the society for socialist studies, circuits of capital, circles of solidarity, congress of social sciences and humanities (vancouver, june 4-7, 2019), and at the alternate routes conference, the globalization project: falling behind or failing forward? (universitá degli studi di torino, turin, italy, june12-14, 2019). i would like to thank the two reviewers from alternate routes who gave me useful feedback to make the paper stronger and more focused. i appreciate their input and, of course, all errors are mine. i would also like to thank miriam jones for her editorial suggestions and critical commentary. making sense of italian populism | 51 articles in the guardian published between 2018 and 2019 about populism and how to fight it (baker, 2019). mudde famously described populism as a “thin” ideology: it does not have the intellectual sophistication of nationalism, socialism or liberalism. instead, it focuses narrowly on the antagonistic relationship between the “pure people” and the “corrupt elites” (mudde, 2004). populism’s ideological thinness explains the diversity of its manifestations for one of the advantages of being a “thin ideology” working with an elemental duality between purity and corruption is that it is highly flexible and can be easily attached to more “thick” host ideologies such as nationalism, socialism, liberalism, or right-wing extremism. these characteristics have led mudde to conclude that the main reason for the success of today’s global populist parties is the ease with which populism can be attached to xenophobic forms of nationalism. mudde’s conceptual framework will be used as a starting point in my investigation of the two types of italian populism because it helps to explain how leaders like matteo salvini change their identities in order to thrive politically, and how beppe grillo can claim that the m5s has gone beyond right and left political distinctions. but i also want to analyse the discursive strategies used by both movements to mobilize “the people” and win voter’s support. the central claim of many populists is that politics should be an expression of the “general will” of the people and power can be seized democratically by the mobilization of this will by a strong leader. the people’s will is “common sense” and the basis of good politics while the leader is the embodiment of the people’s feelings. “the people” are represented by the populists as a single entity, much like “the nation” functions for nationalists: an idealized construct of a collective political subject, an “imagined community.” how “the people” are discursively envisioned in different populist movements, and how these movements define leadership, are key elements in understanding them. the m5s draws on a form of populism with a deeply rooted notion of democracy that voters now perceive as being betrayed. beppe grillo wants to bring the membership of the m5s into direct participation with political power and redress a democratic deficit through digital means, but this strategy has its own contradiction, as i will discuss. matteo salvini and the lega appeals to its supporters by using the rhetoric of ethnic belonging and exclusion, and by building a relationship between the leader and “the people” who see in salvini’s rising political status an extension of their own power. both movements grew out of a unique set of historical circumstances, which we will now briefly review. 52 | populism, power and protest populism, parties and leaders critics of various theoretical persuasions have noted that populism emerges from a crisis of political representation (finchelstein, 2019) and partly as a response to neoliberal globalization (laclau, 2005; laclau and mouffe, [1985] 2014; mouffe, 2018). a cursory look at the lega’s and the m5s’s policies shows how many of their political objectives are shaped by these concerns. lanzone and woods (2015), who analysed the platform policies of the lega and the five star movement, have argued that both movements claim to be against establishment politics and both define the elite as a corrupt international oligarchy grounded in neoliberal global capitalism. both see the eu as a trojan horse of globalization. they oppose austerity measures dictated by brussels as well as many aspects of free trade agreements and open borders. both movements are critical of widening social inequality but only the lega is wed to the extreme language of nationalist xenophobia with emphasis on “the leader” as a reflection of the will of the people. one other element they share is that they both mobilise the electorate’s feelings of political disempowerment, itself a symptom of the crisis of democratic representation. the crisis of political representation was brought into sharp relief in italy at the end of the first republic (1948-1992). as a result of corruption scandals (tangentopoli) and criminal investigation of connections between leaders and their parties to the mafia and other criminal organizations (mani pulite) in the early 1990s, the old establishment parties – the socialists, the italian communist party, and the christian democrats along with others – disbanded and new political parties were formed. according to katz and mair (1995; 2009), many european parties had by the mid-1990’s lost their ability to represent society and had become “cartel parties.” they no longer represented different interests or opposed one another by promoting alternative policies; instead parties colluded with each other in order to share the resources that the state made available to them through public funding. the parties became part of the state rather than representative of society, and the differences between parties diminished, denying voters genuine political alternatives. the resulting frustration fuelled the rise of new populist politicians who positioned themselves in opposition to establishment elites. by the mid-1990s, the italian electorate had become less deferential to party labels and more attracted to leaders like silvio berlusconi and his new party forza italia. previously, traditional parties had mediated between the state and making sense of italian populism | 53 voters organized in local networks and territorial bases, but berlusconi’s electoral success was achieved largely through the appeal of a charismatic personality and sustained by a personal party. italian political scientist mauro calise (2010) has called this transition the “personalization of power.” when political power is personalized it manifests certain traits. the new leaders seem to be both all powerful and extremely fragile. they ride popularity waves and are generally short-lived. berlusconi was both a reflection of and an exception to this rule. he came to power by establishing forza italia as a personal power base and, as one the most long-serving politicians of the post-war era, he survived because of his control of a significant segment of the national media. berlusconi gave us the model of the anti-establishment millionaire as populist leader, and of a party tied to a political figure rather than a specific national policy. matteo renzi, the former leader of the centre-left democratic party (pd) who formed a short-lived government in 2014-2016, provides an example of the fickle nature of personalized power (calise, 2013). initially, renzi came to power with enthusiastic popular support and the promise of “rottamazione”: the scrapping of the old generation of centre-left politicians and networks in order to give space to a younger and more honest group of politicians. the sympathetic foreign press called him a “demolition man” who wanted to alter the italian constitution and reform the “rigid” labour market that business claimed plagued the italian economy. renzi’s reforms were closely tied to neoliberal policies (anderson, 2013) and his political rise and fall illustrates the fate of some european left parties that compromised with neoliberalism. many italians voters came to perceive renzi as arrogant and aloof and his party, the pd, was soundly defeated by voters in the 2018 elections. the coalition of the lega and the m5s was the result of the aftermath of renzi’s and the pd’s political collapse. beppe grillo and the cyberpopulism of the five star movement when italians voted in the 2018 election, the five star movement emerged as the largest single party with 32.7 percent of the vote, and the far-right lega party won 17.3 percent. these were impressive results for both parties, and a particularly significant win for the five star movement as only four parties previously – the christian democrats, the italian communist party, forza italia, and the democratic party (pd) – have achieved comparable results in the history of post-war italy. beppe grillo, the comedian and blogger who founded the m5s, envisioned it not as a party but as an internet movement driven by a duty to “remoralize politics” and by a practical “common sense” that goes beyond the 54 | populism, power and protest conventional labels of left and right. he wanted to create a new model of political communication and an innovative form of governance. parliament could be replaced by an on-line democracy where citizens, informed by the internet, could drive policy directly. grillo was an early social media adopter at a time when the web was beginning to rewire politics. he recognized that politicians could bypass traditional gatekeepers and speak directly to their base without the mediation of national journalists, newspapers or television. much like occupy movements globally, the m5s is interested in building democratic political engagement through social media. using crowd-sourcing techniques, the movement spread by forming local “meet-up” groups around the country and soon became an important political force that succeeded in bringing together a wide variety of groups concerned with local issues into a national grievance network. the five star refers to the five dominant organizing themes of the movement: public water, sustainable development, sustainable transport, right to internet access, and better environmental protection. the m5s originated as an alliance between beppe grillo and the internet guru gianroberto casaleggio. beppe grillo had built a large national audience as a stand-up comedian who criticised corrupt local politicians and greedy bankers. giancarlo casaleggio, owner of a large private milanese internet and publishing company that advises on network strategies, casaleggio associates, helped beppe grillo set up a blog and a well-run interactive site and later collaborated on a book about what the coming of interactive politics could look like (casaleggio and grillo, 2011). grillo’s blog at first dispensed “counter-information” as a way to fight the “fake news” of traditional media but quickly moved on to other matters. in 2007 in bologna, grillo launched a successful national campaign, v-day (vaffanculo or “fuck off” day), as a protest against bad government, which spread to many other italian cities. in 2009, the year the m5s was founded, grillo (2009) promised an epic biblical battle between david and goliath. “we only have the web, the meet ups, our enthusiasm and my meetings. they have all the rest. we are the last, the excluded, the derided. that is why we will succeed,” he wrote in his blog. four years later, in 2013, the movement won 25 percent of the national vote (lanzone, 2015), and a decade after its inception, as noted, it had 32.7 percent of the national vote and was in power in a coalition with the lega. much of the m5s’s success rests on beppe grillo’s deft use of the media: television, radio, newspapers, and the web (ravelli, 2017). he is a charismatic personality, a trickster figure who became a media hub for the m5s, and he uses making sense of italian populism | 55 his powers of persuasion and his flair for entertainment to challenge traditional political elites and appeal to a wide audience. grillo’s populism began by denouncing the “blood sucking” oligarchy made up of the different “social castes” that dominate italian society and protect their own narrow interests. in italian political discourse there is a powerful argument that the ruling class has been transformed into a number of castes (rizzo and stella, 2007). the castes, “ le caste,” include politicians and trade unionists who defend “anachronistic” labour privileges, but more centrally, media elites. as grillo explains in his blog: “the castes are united together and form an immense body, a supersocial group that feeds on the blood of those who produce…the castes do not derive their power from controlling the means of production but by controlling the means of information. the political caste, the caste of the newspapers, the caste of the central government…[they are like]…a parasite that kills the body that hosts it” (2013). the founders of the m5s believe that “the will of the people” can be digitalized and they have been at the forefront of exploring how this can be done. when the m5s was created, casaleggio associates, who designed the five star platform and managed beppe grillo’s blog, searched for ways to digitally capture the “will of the people,” and that meant collecting massive amounts of data about its members and developing strategies for keeping the membership engaged. the online platform is regularly used to poll members and track their preferences. in 2015, davide casaleggio (the son of gianroberto, who had recently died of brain cancer), upgraded the five star online platform into an advanced system called rousseau, which made it easier for members to put themselves forward as candidates and decide who would stand for election. some critics (lanzone, 2015; horowitz, 2018) have painted davide casaleggio and his father gianroberto before him as mysterious svengali figures manipulating the issues in the background; others (gerbaudo and screti, 2017; gerbaudo, 2018; loucaides, 2019) point out that the tactics the m5s uses to produce online engagement and make followers feel that they are part of an organic movement are not much different from the corporate branding strategies of a tech startup which aims to grow rapidly, “upgrade” followers to “paying supporters” and keep them engaged through interactive content and email signups. the very digital tools that were supposed to give members control over the movement, critics suggest, are being used by the leadership to control the membership. 56 | populism, power and protest m5s’s anti-authoritarian stance has led it to join with parties and movements on the european right that are also anti-establishment and critical of brussels. in the european parliament the m5s allies with nigel farage and the uk independence party (ukip). the m5s position can be classified as a “soft” euroscepticism. they are critical of the international elites and the bureaucrats in brussels, but are more willing to negotiate changes than some of their allies. farage’s ukip and the m5s share one trait: a digital populism effectively managed by a tightly controlled leadership. much has been written about how the ukip was a virtual carbon copy of the m5s and how the lessons in anti-establishment “direct digital democracy” that casaleggio learned from building the m5s were passed on to farage (loucaides, 2018; davies, 2019). these examples further underscore the point that amassing and analysing data from the membership can both hone party strategy and enhance new forms of electoral manipulation: the latter is a growing concern to voters who were originally drawn to the m5s’s popular democratic message. during the 2018 election, the m5s’s winning card was economic populism: it promised to challenge austerity measures and introduce a “citizen’s wage,” the “reddito di cittadinanza,” a basic income plan that offers €780 a month for the unemployed. the “citizen’s wage” attracted many new voters, especially in italy’s less well off southern regions of sicily, campania, and puglia, and the appeal of the “citizen wage” was used by many of the foreign press to characterize the m5s as a soft form of “left populism,” a characterization which is not quite accurate when we examine the movement’s restrictive positions on refugees and immigration, which are ideologically more to the right. for example, grillo was against “jus soli” legislation that would have given italian citizenship to children of immigrants born in italy. the issue was extremely divisive within the movement and the m5s abstained from voting on the jus soli bill, effectively defeating it. and during the 2018 election, the m5s’s new leader, luigi di maio, consistently fired up rhetoric against refugees and migrants and articulated the position that the m5s wants to “stop the ‘taxi service’ that brings migrants to italy. while the european right looks to a “strong” leader, m5s is suspicious of the term “political leader.” grillo is ineligible to stand for parliament because of a conviction for manslaughter related to an automotive crash that resulted in the deaths of two of his friends and their nine-year old son, and has defined his role as that of a “mediator” rather than a leader. the m5s’s political figurehead is luigi di maio, who in september of 2017 put his name forward in an online primary election as candidate for italian premiership through the new rousseau making sense of italian populism | 57 platform. he won handily and went on to win an election and form a government in coalition with the lega. despite having a father who was involved with the farright neo-fascist movement, di maio says he does not share his father’s ideology. he is young, reassuring, and more like a practical old-style centrist politician (horowitz, 2018), but in polls after the election he was over-shadowed by the more charismatic and aggressive coalition partner, matteo salvini. the m5s has varied constituencies and mixes right wing cultural stances with more traditional leftist platforms; it attracts voters from both the right and the left by taking euro-sceptical and anti-globalization stands and by attacking government handling of the “refugee crisis.” the m5s has no platform commitment to ethno-nationalism, though the rhetoric of some of its members leans in that direction. what we can say about the m5s policy is that it is “fuzzy”; it has no clear ideological attachment and draws, at times incoherently, from a variety of ideologies. some critics (lanzone and woods (2015); ivaldi, lanzone and woods, 2017) have called the m5s a “populist idiosyncrasy.” depending on the issue and public mood they can trend either right or left. it has both an inclusive economic notion of “the people” like the populist left, and an exclusionary cultural nativism like the populist radical right (muddle and kaltwasser, 2013). what has kept voters who hold these divergent views together is their dissatisfaction with the way that italian democracy has been functioning and a commitment to a “moral revitalization of politics” (corbetta et al., 2019): these are the feelings that beppe grillo has been able to mobilize. the lega and matteo salvini: the people, the leader, and the rhetoric of fear matteo salvini’s lega party is the closest thing italy has to donald trump, especially when it comes to immigration, law and order, and social media. “if trump has twitter, salvini is the king of facebook,” writes alexander stille (2018) in the pages of the guardian. salvini’s use of social media has been the source of much coverage in the popular press (volpicelli, 2018; giuffrida, 2018; kalia, barr and giuffrida, 2018) and journalists and commentators have compared him to a chameleon that pops up everywhere in different guises. he has learned to both provoke and charm, and he shifts between soothing traditional italian references to family and friendship, and brutal attacks on his enemies. the rhetorical strategies of stimulating both positive and negative emotions are familiar to those who study right-wing activism and discourses (caporale, 2018): lower the voter’s guard by playing on fear and anger, and then suggest that the solution lies in the populist values of the lega and its leader. through these 58 | populism, power and protest discursive strategies, salvini has made himself a relatable figure to his audience: he is a tough guy but he is “one of us.” matteo salvini’s most notable achievement was expanding the lega from a separatist northern party to a national one. after salvini wrested control of the lega nord party from umberto bossi in 2014, the autonomist cries against rome were replaced with slogans against brussels, international banks and corporations, while the enemies of “the people” were no longer “southerners” but immigrants and refugees. under salvini, the tag “northern” was dropped and the party became simply the lega, stressing its defence of all italian people against external threats and lessening its traditional autonomist agenda. what helped matteo salvini change his political identity was the “refugee crisis”: the huge jump in the number of people entering italy through north africa, and the perception that the european union had abandoned southern europe (greece, italy and spain) to deal effectively alone with what is properly a pan-european problem. the “refugee crisis” was a game changer for many parties. as stille (2018) reports, there was an influx of 42,000 refugees into italy in 2013. the following year that number increased to 170,000 then peaked in 2016 at 181,000, a year in which 500 people drowned making the crossing from libya to sicily, one of the most dangerous refugee crossings in the world. government inefficiency and corruption in refugee resettlement programs have also created a national perception that housing and caring for refugees has become a business dominated by various local mafias, such as the sicilian mafia, the neapolitan camorra, and the calabrian ’ndrangheta. references to the mafia and their links to migrants are ubiquitous in salvini’s rhetoric of fear (caporale, 2018). salvini’s political narrative focuses on immigrant invasion, terrorism, and crime, all of which are claimed to threaten the national security, identity, and sovereignty of italians as a people. issues such as unequal economic development and the increase of social and economic inequalities are difficult to solve or even to explain but terrorism, anti-islamic feeling, and the fear of being replaced are easy to manipulate. and so salvini proposed to bring back the crucifix in every public space in order to reinforce italy’s catholic tradition. he pushed law and order issues and has passed security laws that protect the use of firearms as selfdefence against intruders. he has also tried to scrap laws that ban hate speech, the promotion of racial discrimination, and the advocacy of fascism, as well as laws supporting gay families. the lega is now a much broader party than it used to be and its electoral success is largely based on fear of migrants and immigration and the promotion making sense of italian populism | 59 of nativist ethno-nationalism. as interior minister, salvini quickly made his mark by turning away a boatload of more than 600 african refugees on a ship named aquarius operated by the non-profit organization, sos mediterranée, which rescues people stranded while trying to reach europe by sea. the move greatly boosted salvini’s ratings in italy but attracted international condemnation. “while we are standing here, the third load of slaves in a single month is not arriving in italy,” he announced, “[t]he warning has been sent to the human traffickers, mafiosi and camoristi: the carnival is over” (quoted in stille, 2018). “la pacchia é finita” (the party is over) is one of salini’s favourite phrases. salvini pushed to pass the so-called “salvini decree”: a bill which abolishes humanitarian protection for those not eligible for refugee status but who cannot be sent home. the majority of migrants who have arrived in italy have been granted humanitarian protection, with some 100,000 people estimated to hold a permit valid for two years that enables them to work. many of these migrants are in welcome centres while some are employed as temporary workers. the “salvini decree” effectively means that people can suddenly become reclassified as illegal immigrants. italy’s national statistics office estimates that the decree will make 130,000 migrants illegal by 2020 (tondo and giuffrida, 2018). journalist roberto saviano (2019) has written about the ways in which the migrant population is now being exploited both for profit and political gain. immigrant ghettos have sprung up in the agro-business sectors of italy, especially in the south where “migrants earn fifty cents a crate of picked oranges or a euro per crate for mandarins under inhumane working conditions.” the politics that incite hatred towards migrants do nothing to change these conditions because, writes saviano, “migrant workers have become a low-cost workforce with no rights” and they “can be both exploited and blamed for the purposes of garnering populist votes.” the rise of the lega has given new life to the extreme right and fed a climate of racism and hate. the number of racially motivated attacks has increased sharply in italy. every day we read or hear of ethnically motivated abuses and refugees and migrants being targeted by fascist groups like casa pound and forza nuova. the mainstreaming of fascist ideology is particularly disturbing. the postwar italian constitution was explicitly anti-fascist and in much of italy fascism had been marginalized, but as the historian andrea mammone (2016) writes, fascism has been rehabilitated in contemporary italy by populist politicians who see in fascists and racists potential allies. in europe, not just in italy, fascist ideologies never fully disappeared; they survived and now thrive under the current 60 | populism, power and protest climate of nativist xenophobia. in fact, in italy, three of mussolini’s descendants have entered the political arena: caio mussolini, the great grandson of the italian dictator, ran in the european election as a candidate for the right-wing brothers of italy in may 2019. his second cousin, alessandra mussolini, has been at forefront of right-wing politics for nearly thirty years. she is a member of the european parliament allied to berlusconi’s forza italia, while rachele mussolini is a city councillor in rome and also associated with brothers of italy. salvini and the lega have enabled the far right to publicly display its face and spout its hateful messages. at a recent protest against the roma people, the neo-fascist forza nuova read a statement: “we are ready to raise black flags and italian flags against the invasion and ethnic replacement” (quoted in tondo, 2019). the rhetoric is all too familiar and the results have been deadly. the most egregious example occurred in december 2011, when a supporter of casa pound opened fire at two central markets in florence, killing two senegalese street vendors and injuring three others before turning the gun on himself. another horrific incident occurred in 2018 when a supporter of the northern league injured six african migrants in a racially motivated shooting spree in the central city of macerata. salvini’s political popularity surged during his coalition with the m5s to a near cult status, emboldening his push for power. in the european election (may 25, 2019), the lega won over 34 percent of the vote, doubling their percentage of the vote in the year since the 2018 general election and making it the party with the largest voter support in italy. rising poll numbers, along with the growing perception that some of the m5s elected officials were ineffectual amateurs, gave salvini the confidence to try to bring down the government. during the months of july and august of 2019, salvini became “il capitano” and unleashed a media blitz that intensified his ethnic nationalist message. he combined state power with personal media presence and posed as a “strong man,” giving stump-like speeches on the beaches bare chested, praising vladimir putin as the best hope for europe, displaying and kissing crucifixes, stopping more ngo ships involved in refugee rescue from entering italian ports, and asking for the people to give him ill defined “full powers.” (broder, 2019). the backlash came quickly and decisively from his coalition partner whose popularity had dropped from 32 to 17 percent. in august 2019, beppe grillo (2019) wrote a blog about self-preservation called “the consistency of the cockroach” (la coerenza dello scaraffoggio) where he called for the formation of a new government that would stop the “barbarians” rather than triggering an making sense of italian populism | 61 election. plummeting popular support left the m5s with a stark choice of either losing an upcoming election or allying itself with the left of centre party, the pd, in order to stop salvini. the m5s and the pd put aside their differences and created a new governing alliance to end the “barbarian” invasion. it is difficult to predict how long the new coalition between the pd and the m5s can last: it will most likely be short and salvini will be waiting in the wings. conclusion what can we learn from this schematic comparison between the lega and the m5s, and how does it help us to understand some of the dynamics of contemporary italian populism? populism in italy arose, in part, in response to a feeling of non-representation, of being excluded from a political world perceived as dichotomized between the few who have power and the many who do not. i have outlined some of the reasons that can account for this pervasive feeling of dissatisfaction with and hostility to political elites, such as the rise of the cartel party and widening social inequalities due to neoliberal globalization, the increase in anxieties about being left behind economically and disempowered politically, and the “refugee crisis” that reinforced fears about national security and ethnic replacement. the comparison between the lega and the m5s demonstrate a key point about leadership and personal power. one reason why populist movements develop and grow is because they have a leader who can act as a “social entrepreneur” for the demands of “the people.” political personal power, as calise suggests, matters more now in the italian electoral landscape than it has at any time since mussolini, and this has opened new opportunities for “entrepreneurial leaders” such as grillo and salvini (and before them berlusconi and renzi) to attract and mobilize disaffected voters and turn them into enthusiastic supporters. populism is highly dependent on the figure of a leader to mirror the “will of the people.” when the voice of “the people” is perceived as being expressed through the mouth of a leader we come close to understanding some of the dynamics of populism. grillo’s ineligibility for parliament and the failure of the m5s to elect a political figure that can match the charismatic grillo most likely hindered that movement’s success, though there are other reasons why voters turned against the m5s, including growing suspicion of the m5s’s democratic digitalism. italian populism, it seems, achieves better electoral results if the leadership is like that of salvini, authoritative and authoritarian. salvini, through his narrative about 62 | populism, power and protest corrupt elites and nationalist xenophobia, has already come very close to political power, and he has not gone away. references anderson, p. 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(2001). clarifying a contested concept: populism in the study of latin american politics. comparative politics 34 (1), 1-22. zakeria, f. 2007. the future of freedom: illiberal democracy at home and abroad. new york: norton and norton. 66 | populism, power and protest alternate routes: a journal of critical social research www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 1 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research book review productivity and prosperity: a historical sociology of productivist thought, by karen r. foster. toronto: university of toronto press, 2016. $34.16 cdn., paper. isbn: 978-1487520571. pages: 3-292. reviewed by susan marie martin1 productivity, prosperity, and progress are handy words for politicians: who can possibly argue against a platform that promises any or all on that list? these terms are, of course, relative. however, think about how productivity works on one’s psyche: it is not at all uncommon for it to be used as a measure of quality in so many areas of life. output at work, household tasks, selfimprovement regimes, and fitness goals are measured by young and old using challenges on social media, and apps that graph progress. few are comfortable taking on the label ‘unproductive’. karen r. foster argues that, as an economic concept, productivity is neither good nor bad; instead it is “dangerous” (6), perhaps the best characterization of the term i’ve encountered. foster, an associate professor in the department of sociology and social anthropology at dalhousie university, is also the canada research chair in sustainable rural futures for atlantic canada. her book, productivity and prosperity: a historical sociology of productivist thought, explores the danger of both the concept and its application, and the implications across time of its use as an economic tool. in a post-enlightenment world, science and expertise have come to solidify this and similar concepts, and to define others that work with it such as health and welfare. early in the text, foster cites the work of margaret somers and, by her admission, “leans hard” on somers’s concept of an “ideational regime”; thus, she explores productivity's development as an ideology built on “public narratives and assumptions that have become widely taken for granted in the political culture” (7). drawing, too, on foucault’s concept of governmentality, she demonstrates, solidly, how productivity and economic measures are used by the government of canada, among others, to guide the conduct of individuals in that economy as workers, producers, and consumers. for any researcher wanting to understand governmentality, and how it is that governments can extend their reach beyond centres of power into the lived experience of citizens using seemingly innocuous policies, foster’s case studies of statistics canada, the national productivity council, and the evolution of the atlantic canada opportunities agency, provide detailed and thorough genealogies of these branches of government, and the ideological underpinnings of each. furthermore, she demonstrates how each has constructed productivity as critical, ultimately, for the wellbeing and prosperity of the citizenry. 1 susan marie martin is a historical sociologist and holds a ph.d. in applied social studies from university college cork. her interdisciplinary research focuses on the impact of gentrification on the urban poor. her book, the shawlies: cork’s women street traders in the ‘merchants city’ was published in 2017. email: susan.martin@umail.ucc.ie www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 2 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the opening chapters are exhaustive and fully prepare the reader for the case studies that follow. for those who turn to productivity and prosperity primarily to understand how both concepts have shaped the canadian political landscape, economic imperatives, and workplaces, these two chapters may read as too thorough. to those readers, i suggest that this text be thought of as two: turn to it for the exploration of the local, and return to the opening chapters when ready to replicate the case studies in new projects. to this end, foster’s work is an invaluable theoretical resource and critical to understanding how it is that an abstract location like ‘the market’ has taken on a life of its own, and an entity that responds to human economic activity positively or negatively. in chapter 1, “the discovery of productivity”, she examines the historical and global context across centuries that has constructed an economy as a “fixed space” with boundaries that conform to national boundaries (44). indeed: in the 21st century it is difficult to believe that it has ever been anything but a fixed space. however, having searched the phrase “canadian economy” in google books, foster found that it “does not appear anywhere in the 8 million english-language” books the platform has digitized “until 1930” but “increases in frequency” from there and rises “most sharply around 1940, 1960, and 1980” (70). the second chapter, “managing and measuring productivity”, traces how governments and business leaders created managerialism when confounded by the fact that “the industrial world”, moving into the twentieth century, “seemed a more chaotic plan than the pre-industrial world” (49). managerialism here is defined as “the reorganization of relations between workers and employers, and ultimately workers’ loss of control over the labour process itself” (51). again, foster’s work in this chapter is a thorough history of ideas and the processes that grew out of them, historically and globally, but the transition to the canadian context is signposted, and she reveals that many business-centred policies and practices may have their roots earlier in the country’s history. for example, john falk, director of mcgill university’s department of social work in 1918, believed his discipline could bolster economic productivity if it supported “the maladjusted to productive states”, and a strong economy was needed to alleviate poverty rather than turning to social reform (60). the three case studies set down a genealogy of each institution, and are of value to historians and sociologists who research and write about the history of work, labour, society, and economics. the chapter on the dominion bureau of statistics, now statistics canada, is one example how gathering and disseminating data about economic activity can work at a subliminal level on a population; in foster’s words, “the presumed link between productivity and prosperity permeates stories, theories, and conversations that do not, on surface, appear to have much to do with productivity at all” including those as disparate as shorter workdays and stand-up desks (89). www.alternateroutes.ca ‖ twitter @arjcsr 3 alternate routes: a journal of critical social research the rest of the chapter surveys the deepening of the link between productivity and prosperity with the goals of government policy to the point that, at least in government circles, there was no turning back. with time and the advent of bodies such as the oecd, and later its klems2 framework as a source of indicators, there was a move to international harmonisation of economic measures. this move was, in turn, embraced by statscan at, it would appear, the expense of made-in-canada indicators. although not mentioned, foucault’s proviso that even the most well-intentioned policies can do harm, came to mind repeatedly while reading productivity and prosperity. this text predates the outcomes of the brexit referendum and america’s presidential election of 2016; as such, it is worth revisiting to question how those events problematized international cooperation and alliances documented. as canada and much of the world came to embrace international ‘norms’, foster demonstrates how privileging the link between productivity and prosperity, enshrined in macroeconomic policies, has bred individualism among citizens. for the times we are in, the intersection of productivity with covid-19 protocols makes this analysis particularly timely as the canadian government and canadian workers, small business owners, and corporate canada navigate an economy in flux and crisis at the hands of a virus. 2 k-apital l-abour e-nergy m-aterials s-ervices.